Waimea Weekly
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Wednesday 9 August 2017
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Tasman’s finest to battle Canadian wildfires
Richmond School’s, from left, Nicole Lams, Kate Stiven and Coral Smith, at the Book Character Parade on Friday. Photo: Rachel Last-Harris.
Jessie Johnston The Tasman district’s finest rural firefighters are on their way to Canada to join the battle against forest fires raging across the country. Graham Staples, Cory Rusbatch, Bruce Hampton, Matt Pearless and Steve Packer make up the local crew and are a combination of Tasman Volunteer Rural Fire Force members and silviculture workers. “It’s a pretty neat experience, being able to go over and help out and see another country, we’ll be doing the same sort of thing we do here,” says Matt. Thousands of people have been evacuated from western Canada, with British Columbia suffering the worst damage from a succession of blazes. “I’ve been to Australia twice to help, but it will be totally different fire behaviour in Canada,” says Graham. “In Australia, we had to actually steer the fire around the settlements because they had no water, so I have no idea what Canada is going to be like.” Their deployment to Canada will be for one month, starting off with two to three days of orientation when they arrive in Vancouver.
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Book Parade Simon Bloomberg Characters from fairy-tales, Disney cartoons, Dr Seuss books and superhero comics transformed Richmond into a fantasy world on Friday when hundreds of colourfully dressed bookworms from Richmond School paraded through the town centre. The school’s annual Book Parade was the finale to a week of learning activities centred around books, and featured pupils and teachers dressed as their favourite fictional characters. A whole classroom of Playing Cards from Al-
ice in Wonderland, a dozen Cat in the Hats, Snow Whites and Where’s Wallies, and enough Captain Americas and Supermen to save the world a hundred times over, were just some of the characters who enthralled on-lookers as they wound their way through the Richmond Mall before returning to the school. “It’s always the highlight of Book Week and we get such amazing support from parents and shoppers,” principal Tim Brenton, who dressed as a jester, says. “When it first started a few years ago, a lot of the seniors didn’t dress-up be-
cause it wasn’t cool, but now the whole school gets into it.” However, organising teacher Nicole Lams says Book Week is no joke, with pupils also learning a lot about books and reading. The week’s activities also featured visits to the Richmond Library to learn how to use its resources, a Book Fair that raised $1500 for the school library and a photography competition with pupil’s entering images of them reading in unusual places. “It took weeks and weeks of preparation but it all came together for an amazing week,” Nicole says.
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