WEDNESDAY MARCH 2 2022
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Heritage hunting
West Van District hoping to add to its historical registry
PARALYMPIAN MOLLIE JEPSEN
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Tim Jones Award
Outdoorsman Jay MacArthur earns prestigious North Shore honour
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Paralympic star Mollie Jepsen teams with Xwalacktun for helmet design
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RUSSIAN INVASION
Family in Ukraine fighting for their country, North Van woman says JANE SEYD
jseyd@nsnews.com
Lisa Upton of North Vancouver has watched flickering images of explosions in Ukraine for almost a week now with a sense of horror and disbelief.
Though she was born in Canada, her family has strong roots in Ukraine. “My first language was Ukrainian,” she said. Upton still speaks the language and has travelled to the city of Vinnytsia to teach English to Ukrainian students. Her Canadian aunt was also part of a Canadian delegation of neutral observers of Ukrainian elections. Her family has long been part of a movement to protect and restore Ukrainian culture and language. Now Upton can only worry and hope from a distance, as Russian military forces invade the country where members of her family still live. One of her cousins is serving in the Ukrainian Continued on page 30
North Vancouver’s Lisa Upton holds embroidery by her Ukrainian grandmother Anastasia Protas. Upton has watched with dread as friends and family members in Ukraine come under threat by a Russian invasion. MIKE WAKEFIELD/NSN
LONG TIME COMING
Construction starting on new Harry Jerome rec centre
BRENT RICHTER
brichter@nsnews.com
The City of North Vancouver’s Harry Jerome Community Recreation Centre and Silver Harbour Centre rebuild is moving from concept to construction. Council voted unanimously Monday
night to start issuing contracts for site preparation and excavation work with construction contracts soon to follow. Getting the facility to this point has taken more than a decade of public consultations, deferments by successive councils, a major scaling back of the project’s amenities, protests aimed at keeping the
centre operating until the new one is built, and a last-minute collapse of the deal with Darwin Properties to fund the construction through long-term lease of the adjacent lands. Council members were relieved to cast the votes that would get work started. By mid-March, the site should look like an
active construction site. “Wow, wow and wow,” said Coun. Holly Back. “This has taken such a long time and I am very excited to see that it is moving ahead and nothing is going to stop it. We are getting those shovels in the ground.” As part of the update, district staff Continued on page 18
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