SUNDAY November
15 2015
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Honouring our veterans BRIGHT LIGHTS 12
Business Excellence Awards SPORT 31
Terrific trio win gold $1.25
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Local News . Local Matters
INTERACT WITH THE NEWS at N S N E W S .C O M
North Van volunteers head to Lesvos
Deep Cove women journey to Greek isle at epicentre of refugee crisis to lend a hand JANE SEYD jseyd@nsnews.com
This week, a group of four North Vancouver women will land on a Greek island in the Aegean Sea that has become the epicentre for the Syrian refugee crisis. Lesvos is normally a tourist destination, but the
local women aren’t going for a holiday. In recent months Lesvos has been swamped with wave after wave of desperate refugees. They arrive in large rubber boats captained by smugglers, wet and cold on the shore of the island that has few resources to cope with their numbers. Laurie Cooper, who heads to Lesvos on Sunday,
SYRIAN REFUGEE CRISIS compared the population there to the District of North Vancouver. “What would it be like if we had 2,000 to 3,000 refugees landing on
Cates Park beach every day? How would we cope?” she said. The North Vancouver women were inspired to take action after seeing the photograph of Alan Kurdi’s body on the beach of another Greek island – the young refugee boy who drowned on one of the dangerous crossings. The women met and decided they needed to do something – thinking at first of organizing a fundraiser or
trying to sponsor a refugee family. But when Cooper began contacting the small aid groups most active on Lesvos to find out what was needed, she was told, “We need volunteers. We need people here to help us.” The four North Vancouver women – Cooper, Ellen Fulton, Erian Baxter and Baxter’s 19-yearold daughter Hannah Dubois – will arrive on the island to do just that, starting on Monday.
They’ll be taking $6,000 they’ve raised to buy sleeping bags, blankets and food for the refugees. Each of the women will also carry two large duffle bags which they’ll stuff with warm wool socks and hats plus 500 emergency blankets donated by Mount Seymour. Cooper acknowledges they don’t know exactly what they’ll find when they arrive on the island. See Refugee page 9
Trudeau orders Kits Coast Guard base reopened BRENT RICHTER brichter@nsnews.com
The new federal minister in charge of the Canadian Coast Guard has been given his marching orders: reopen the Kitsilano Coast Guard base. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau published his official mandate letters to his ministers on Friday. Among the directives for Fisheries and Oceans Minister Hunter Tootoo is to reopen the base, which was closed by the previous Conservative government in 2013. It makes good on a campaign promise Trudeau made during a visit to North Vancouver in May. Former Kitsilano base commander and See Former page 8
FARM FRESH Emily Jubenvill, manager of Edible Garden Project, and farmer Holly Rooke joke around in a crop of brassica at Loutet Farm. The City of North Vancouver has extended the five-year-old urban farm’s licence for another half-decade. Read our story on page 5. PHOTO MIKE WAKEFIELD