THE FRIDAY
2010 WINNER
JUNE 10, 2011 www.tricitynews.com
TRI-CITY NEWS Buying bomber jets
Teddy time on Sunday
SEE FACE TO FACE, PAGE 11
SEE THINGS-TO-DO GUIDE, PAGE 21
INSIDE Letters/12 Tri-City Spotlight/23 Books Plus/26 Sports/56
CARRYING A TORCH Coquitlam Mounties and Port Moody Police officers are among cops from around B.C. taking part in the Law Enforcement Torch Run to aid the Special Olympics, which made its way through the region on Friday. CRAIG HODGE THE TRI-CITY NEWS
Would you help seduce this man? By Diane Strandberg
see COQUITLAM COQUITLAM,, page 18
By Gary McKenna THE TRI-CITY NEWS
THE TRI-CITY NEWS
Maillardville will be gussying itself up and putting its best face forward for a popular francophone television show called La Petite Séduction. The program, which is aired by Radio-Canada television and seen by 1.3 million people each week, is a kind of tourism promotion/ reality television hybrid in which a community tries to seduce an artist by showing off its attributes.
More help for homeless
SUBMITTED PHOTO
Daniel Lemire, a comedian, will visit Maillardville to film the TV show ‘La Petite Séduction.’
Homelessness initiatives in the Tri-Cities may have helped significantly reduce the overall number of people sleeping on the streets but the hardest work still lies ahead, according to one housing advocate. Rob Thiessen, director of the Hope for Freedom Society, said that as the number of homeless people shrinks, those who remain on the streets are generally the hardest to house. Whether their challenges are mental illness or severe drug and alcohol addictions — or all three — and unless services adapt, Thiessen said many will remain stubbornly committed to living outdoors. “We are getting down to the hard stuff,” he said. “Some of these people are the hardest to house.” During the winter months, when the cold/wet weather mat program is in operation, the society tracks the number of people it has moved from the shelter into permanent housing. Thiessen said that while his organization has been successful in finding housing for many people, the
BOOK ’EM: Looking for something to do on a summer Sunday? The library isn’t always an option. See page 3 numbers show signs that things appear to be slowing down. Last year, more than 50 people were moved off the streets during the course of the mat program while this year, the society reported about 30 who found a place to live. But today, many of those who have been using the shelters are the same people who started coming out when the program was first launched four years ago, he said. Hope for Freedom Society and many provincial services are going to have to adapt and more mental health resources are needed if the hard-to-house homeless are going to be moved off the streets, he said. see WE HAVE TO ADAPT ADAPT,, page 14