The Terrace Standard, Wednesday, April 11, 2001 - B}

TERRACE STANDARD |

INSIDE

COMMUNITY
EVENTS B2

COMMUNITY-==

Around Town
Seeking savvy parents

ANYONE interested in supporting parents in
our community is asked to attend an informa-
tion session taday at the Northwest Health
Unit.

The Parent Support Circle program, opera-
ling in the northwest since 1978, is looking for
caring people who can continue the work of
local volunteer facilitators, people who are the
heart of the program.

Facilitators provide a safe group setting for
parents to share their fears, joys and chal-
lenges, and to find support, relief and effective
ways to parent with love.

If you’re a healthy parent with good com-
munication skills, and a knowledge of parent-
ing issues, you're invited to join the provincial
network of volunteers.

Skills training and support is provided on an
ongoing basis at no cost,

To find out more, head over today’s infor-
mation session, scheduled from 11:30 a.m. to 1
p.m. at the Health Unil, in room 223. The
health unit’s telephone number is 638-2200.

If you miss the meeting but still would like’
more information on how to get involved, you
can contact the toll free information line: 1-
866-561-0607. ;

There is another information meeting plan-’
ned for Kitimat tomorrow, at Kitimat Home
Support, located in room 355, at 370 City,
Centre. Contact Kitimat Home Support at 632-
2715.

Not so fast

IF YOU think fasting for 30 hours sounds like a
great way to raise money to combat world
hunger and drop a few pounds — think again.

A Terrace-based community nutritionist has
some sobering advice about fasting, even for
fasts lasting just slightly longer than one day.

World hunger is an overwhelming problem
that needs to be addressed — but not at the cost
of our own health, warns Flo Sheppard.

Fasts like 30-hour famines organized by
local churches and other groups to raise money
for international causes pose a health tisk, ac-
cording to Sheppard, a community nutritionist
‘with ‘the North West Community Health Ser-
vices Society.

“A room full of fasting children is a hot-
house for’ viruses and bacteria,” Sheppard

schools are a prime location for illnesses to
spread, particularly since fasting suppresses
the immune system, '

Fasting also leads to tiredness, dizziness
and irritability, as well as an impaired ability
to concentrate, Sheppard says. .

Fasting also sends the wrong message to
teenage girls worried about weight loss be-
cause it may reinforce the notion that not eat-
ing is a good way to drop pounds quickly.

“It can teach her one of the forms of bule-
mia nervosa.”

Fasting for 30 hours will result in about a
‘three-pound weight loss, but it’s temporary,
and potentially harmful. .

Sheppard says the abrupt drop in weight is
caused by the burning of glycogen, a stored -
form of carbohydrate. The brain and nervous
system use up glycogen as fuel. When glyco-
gen gets burned up by the body, it releases
water.

“The rapid weight loss is due to water, not
fat loss,” she says. “Drinking water, broth or -
,juice will not replace the lost fluid because
“only the storage of more glycogen (which re-
quires eating) can do that.”

Fasting also puts the bady into a state of
ketosis. and muscle wasting, which can dam-
age the heart and kidneys, and could result in’
arrhythmias and even death.

Sheppard suggests people who are commit-
led to participating in a group fast for a charity
observe a modified fast instead.

That could mean skipping lunch, or sub-
slituting a meal for a simple bow] of rice. Fail-.
ing that, just eat the minimum food choices
‘from Canada’s Food Guide to Healthy Eating
each day of your fasl,

That, she says, will result in feelings of
hunger and deprivation — without risking the
adverse affects of a 30-hour fast.

Or, just compare what a Canadian teen eats
each day with three simple rice meals.

Everyone should have
enough good grub

SPEAKING OF food, Terrace is the lacation
for an upcoming meeting to discuss ways of
ensuring people in our own community have
enough food to eat.

Cathleen Kneen, project manager for Ac-
tion for Food Security, is speaking on April 19
at Building Healthier Babies, at 4665 Park
Ave., between 2 and 4 p.m.

Organizers say everyone in our community .
should have good food.

Anyone interested in discussing long-term
food security in Terrace is welcome to attend.’
You'll learn how to link farmers and food pro-
ducers with businesses, food banks and other
self-help food projects. a

Confirm your altendance by calling Jeanie
Kealing at 635-1830. me

says, adding public venues like churches and —

Curb service
WARM SUNNY skies convinced Ashton Persson (left) and Shawnel Mac-
Donald, both aged 9, to set up a temporary juice stand on Graham Ave-
nue last week. Juice sales were pretty good, and will no doubt increase

as the weather improves. Last year Shawnel and another business part-
ner made more than $11 in one day selling juice at her roadside stand.

Digital upgrade signals
new TV offerings in fall

CABLE TV subscribers
here will soon be able to
pet a set-top box that will
deliver a range of new di-
gital audio and video
channels.

Monarch Cablesystems,
which just completed its
purchase of Skeena Cable-
vision, will unroll the new
digital service by the fall,
said president Grant Pisko..-

It will include 200
audio channels and at
least 16 new TV channels
over and above those now
offered.

New channels are still
in the approval stage but
ones that have the green
light so far include Biogra-
phy, Health Network, In-

Ae

dependent Film Channel,
Tech TV, Movie Central
and Pay Per View chan-
nels.

Digital alsa -usually
means a better quality pic-
ture.

Pisko said there will be
much more flexibility in
choosing packages that
cater to individual inter-
estay- Pa

The digital set-top box
costs about $350 or can be
rented for about $10 per
month, Pisko said.

Although the cable in-
dustry is expected to even-
tually become completely
digital, he said Monarch
expects to run both digital
and analog options for the

CAUSE FOR CELEBRATION: Members of the Terrace Daycare Society, Ter-

foreseeable future and not
attempt to force subscri-
bers to switch.

However regular cable
service won't be able ta
keep up with the service
expansion in the much
higher capacity digital
systems.

“When more channels
are added to lineups they
will be added to- the digital
format,” Pisko said.

Also changing is the
cable company’s high-
speed Internet access here.

Monarch plans to
switch cable modems here
to a different “more reli-
able” brand, he said, add-
ing the change is slated for
May 1.

race's child care planning committee, and representatives from the school dis-
trict and the college are thrilled with a $100,000 grant that will bring school
aged child care to Thornhill. Above, Heimut Giesbrecht hands over the money.

NWCC program and new
care centre are on track

NEWS THAT a new
school-aged child care
centre for Thornhill will
become a teality is right
on cue with a new training
program at Northwest
Community College.

The Terrace Daycare
Society’s plans for a li-
censed, 20-space program
for kids aged six to 12 in
Thornhill has just received
a Child Care BC grant
worth $100,000,

But the program will
need staff, too. And that’s
where NWCC comes in,
according to Early Child-
hood Education coordina-
tor Karen Chrysier.

The college has deve-
loped a Itaining program
for people who want to
work in school aged care
facilities Ilke the one
planned for Thornhill.

“The timing is very
good because we're offer-
ing it just when there's

going to be a demand for
it,” Chrysler says.

Two 21-hour madules
will be offered on week-
ends al the Terrace, Smi-
thers and Prince Rupert
campuses next fall, mak-
ing the non-credit program
flexible for candidates who
are currently working,

“This course is open to
anybody who is interes-
ted,” Chrysler says. “It’s a
community-based course.”

Meanwhile, the Terrace
Daycare Society is work-
ing with the Coast Moun-
tains School District to get
the new centre up and run-
ning.

The society hopes the
program can be offered in
a portable trailer right on
school property at Thorn-
hill Primary School,
Thornhill school trustee
Gary Tumer says.

“We're looking at it

tight now,” Turner says,

adding sewer and water
hook-up will be a necess-
ity.

Locating a suitable trai-
ler is another hurdle, he
said, adding it’s possible
the society may be able to
use one of the education
ministry’s surplus trailers.

The demand fer child
care, particularly school-
aged care is climbing.

Four out of five parents
in B.C. are working cou-
ples with two incomes.

“That presents a critical
need for more child care
spaces,” Skeena MLA
Helmut Giesbrecht says.

Kitimat's child deve-
lopment centre also re-
ceived a $100,000 Child
Care BC grant for a school
aged care propram in the
Aluminum City, he added,

For information about
the college’s new training
program, contact Marc
Battle at NWCC,

Book review

Author bio
is a candid
self portrait

The ‘perpetual outsider’ finds
her sense of self — at last

By JENNIFER LANG

FOR SOME of us, Terrace is where we find ourselves as
a stop along the way before moving some place else.

For Stratford, Ontario author Marianne Brandis, Ter-
Tace was her first Canadian home.

She lived here as a girl, brought here after the Second
World War by her Dutch immigrant parents, who were
seeking a new, untroubled life far away from the ravages

of post-1945 Europe,

Her time in Terrace turned out to be a small step

Finding Words
A Writer’s Memoir
Penumbra Press

Marianne Brandis

along the path that would
lead her from brutal war-
time experiences in Nazi-
occupied Holland, to an
uncertain, outsider-like ex-
istence in North America,
and, eventually, to her pre-
sent-day status as a fully-
realized novelist.
Brandis’s painful journey
of self-discovery is re-

called in her new book, Finding Words, A Writer's Mem-

oir.

Brandis was born to a cultured, upper class family in
the Netherlands before the Second World War.

Her father spent time as a prisoner of war. Her mother
bartered for food in the Nazi-occupied country.

When the war ended,
her family emigrated to
northern B.C., where they
owned a farm on Eby Road
in Tesrace, a town with a

population of 1,400 in those |

days. a
Things were pretty rustic
for the family.

Water at the farm came |

from a well with a pump
worked by hand.

Carpets were swept
clean with a broom after a
sprinkling tea leaves or
snow them to catch the dirt,

“When I write about
pioneering times, the life
we led in Terrace supplies

Marianne Brandis

information and pictures, and the kinds of memories that

are recorded in eyes and ears and hands,” she writes.
The family stayed here for nine years, leaving for

Vancouver in the 1950s when the mother, father and

daughter enrolled at UBC.

‘After the cultural wasteland of Ter-
race, Vancouver was an improvement.’

“T strode with giant steps from that pioneer life to the
middle of the twentieth century,” she recalls,

Although Brandis would later regard Terrace as one of
the most permanent homes her family had, she's unsen-
timental about leaving it behind.

“After the cultural wasteland of Terrace, Vancouver
was an improvement,” Brandis writes.

Interestingly, Brandis’ mother, Madzy, also wrote a -
book about her experiences in Terrace. It’s called Land

Jor our Sons.

Brandis notes her mother didn’t write about how Ter-
race was less nourishing in spirit and mind than their

country of origin,

This memoir is not told in a straightforward narrative.
Rather, Brandis picks a theme and goes where it takes
her, her memories coiling back in time and then jumping

ahead again to the present.

‘When | write about pioneering times,
the iife we led in Terrace supplies infor-

mation and pictures.’

It's a useful structure for an autobiography. After all,
no one can deny that we move forward in time as we
age, but we never quite move beyond our past, try as

though we might.

One of the most tragic elements in the work is that
Brandis’s self-portrait describes a lonely woman who al-
ways felt isolated from others. She formed few close
friendships or relationships except with her mother and

one of her brothers.

Cast in the role as a tall, ungainly outsider who
couldn’t speak English when she first arrived here, Bran-
dis has remained a solitary figure for most of her life,

Scarred by the war and her attempts to fit in as one of
Terrace’s first post-war immigrants, Brandis appears to
have closed herself off from others.

She never married and she didn’t come to terms with

' her sexuality until very recently, in her mid-50s.

Continued on page B3