WCS students rehearse Peter Pan musical
By April Zielke The cast and crew for the production of “Peter Pan Junior” have been hard at work rehearsing scenes for the upcoming Comp musical. In the photo, Tinkerbell (played by Ember Schira), Wendy (Nina Deane) and Peter Pan (Owen Burdan) rehearsed their “You can fly “number for the musical, Peter Pan Junior, as opening night is less than four weeks away. Burdan said that as opening day comes closer, more things are coming together. “I think rehearsals are going very well. All of our songs are coming together, everyone is starting to memorize their lines and the whole play is just starting to look really good.” With Grade 7 to 9 students participating and auditioning for the musical, the ninth graders usually get the lead parts. This year
however, Burdan and Deane were able to snatch up lead roles as Grade 8 students. “It is a big responsibility having a lead. Over the summer I had to work extremely hard. Memorizing lines and songs, working on actions, and it felt like a fantasy to get a lead, but when I did, it was amazing and I’m so grateful for the opportunity,” said Deane. Along with learning about singing and acting, being in a musical can offer educational and life skills. Schira, who is in Grade 9, said being in the musicals since Grade 7 has helped teach her patience and leadership skills. Tickets are on sale now and are available at the Weyburn Comprehensive School main office. The show will run for three nights from Tuesday to Thursday, Nov. 27, 28 and 29 from 7 to 8:30 p.m. in the Cugnet Centre.
Students warned to keep eyes safe By Greg Nikkel Industrial arts students were urged to keep their eyes safe from injury and blindness by wearing the proper safety glasses when needed, at home, on the job or around the shops at school. A presentation was given by Jackie Lay, program lead for communications and outreach for the Canadian National Institute for the Blind (CNIB) at the Weyburn Comp on Friday afternoon, and afterward handed out a pair of safety glasses and a pair of sunglasses to every student. The presentation, and the provision of the safety glasses, was sponsored by WorkSafe Saskatchewan along with the CNIB Foundation. She noted there are about 1,900 eye injuries every year in Saskatchewan, a quarter of those in manufacturing facilities or welding shops, and three-quarters of eye loss injuries are preventable. The students were shown photos of actual eye injuries, caused in a variety of ways, such as by metal or wood splinters in a shop, or even tiny shards of glass or metal that become embedded in the eye, and by chemical burns. These are injuries that could have been prevented with the right safety eyeglasses, noted Lay, then showing a video of a teen who lost sight in one eye when he was hit by a rock thrown by the riding mower he was using to cut the grass at his home. According to information provided by WorkSafe Saskatchewan, the three main causes of injury or death among youth in the workplace are a lack of supervision and/or training, minimal knowledge of their rights and responsibilities, and a lack of experience in recognizing hazardous situations. She did a demonstration to show how
one can be impacted by the loss of sight, by having a student wear a blindfold, and getting a second student to lead him around the room, noting how disoriented a person can get when they have to suddenly adjust to the loss of sight. The CNIB provides assistance for people learning how to make that adjustment to blindness or to partial sight, including getting puppies trained to be guide dogs. Currently, the CNIB estimates there are more than 25,000 people in Saskatchewan who are blind or only have partial sight. “If you lost your sight, you would lose your independence,” said Lay, pointing out that one way the CNIB will help is to provide canes that use sonar sounds to help the blind person navigate on the street or at home. She also noted that only 32 per cent of Canadians who are blind or partially blind are employed, even though they are capable of doing most anything a sighted person can do. The CNIB began a century ago, to help those injured in the First World War and by the Halifax explosion, which left hundreds of people blind or with partial eyesight, and today are the only agency that provides vision loss rehabilitation in Saskatchewan. Some of the services provided through the CNIB Foundation include peer groups for those who have just lost their sight, youth leadership, family funding, children and youth camps, public education and advocacy, and the guide dog program. With guide dogs, Lay noted the waiting time is about a year right now for a person to get a trained dog, but they are hoping to train up more dogs and reduce that waiting time for those who need the dogs.
Winner of WestJet’s ‘Gift of Flight’ from Communithon Eileen Bouchard accepted her prize from the WestJet “Gift of Flight” raffle, which was drawn at Communithon on Oct. 19, from Sabrina Kraft, president of the Weyburn United Way and chair of Communithon. With this prize, Bounchard gets a round-trip flight for two anywhere that WestJet flies in the world. The raffle for the airline tickets was held as a fundraiser for Communithon and the member agencies of the Weyburn United Way, and was donated as part of Review Photo 6485 — Greg Nikkel WestJet’s Cares for Kids program.