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— Youth Corps grooms deserted Furlong

The camping season is over -at.

_ Bay in wake of summer cam

Furlong Bay park, and for the
Environmental Youth Corps it’s
time to get some serious work
done. Rick Valcourt’s five-man
crew have the park to themselves
and they’re flying at it.

The Environmental Youth Corps
was started by the provincial
government in 1989. The program
was designed to offer young
people between 16 and 24 years of
age in B.C. the chance to work on
projects that are good for both the
environment and communities and
: develop some work skills and
employment credentials at the
Same time.

Around Terrace, projects this
year have mainly concentrated on
making provincial parks attractice
and a bit more camper-friendly.
‘Youth Corps crews have cleaned
up and extended the picnic site at
Exchamsiks River, landscaped the
far end of the picnic area at
‘Kleanza Creek that allows a new
view up the canyon and done
extensive work on Furlong Bay,
the largest and most heavily
forested of the local government
campgrounds,

At Furlong crews have cut,
Cleared and gravelled new trails

that interconnect the blocks of fim

campsites, giving campers easy
access to mewly constructed
shower and washroom buildings.
The Youth Corps also did the
landscaping and site preparation
for the buildings. ;

Their next project is to create a
smooth grave] pad in an area that
is now swamp and stumps off
Twin Spruce trail as a space for
the park's summer interpretive
programs and lectures. B.C. Parks
supervisor Gord MacDonald says

- ~ {he program has proven so popular

that the crowas can no longer be
accommodated in the beach-side
picnic shelter that has been used in
the past. _

The gravel area will be furnished
with benches, tucked among cen-
turies-old trees and facing a screen
for slide projection.

Looking out over the lake, Sam
Evans, a representative for the
Youth Corps administration in
Victoria, said last week that the
Furlong Bay project is one of 300
current underway in B.C., being
done by 150 crews. Each crew
consists of five workers and a

supervisor.

The Youth Corps can take on
‘any project that benefits the en-
vironment and enhances the com-
munity, she said. Anyone can put
‘forward a project proposal, which
is then evaluated by the EYC
administration. Most of the work
‘done in the ‘Terrace area has been

DRAINING THE SWAMP — This Environmental

trail cutting and a variety
July. Now Jason Kinney,

Levesque are preparing to clear out and fill in this bo

ping season

Youth Corps crew has been doing clean-up, landscaping,

of other improvement and maintenance work at Furlong Bay provincial park since
Supervisor Rick Valcourt, Fred Benard, Peter Smith, Matthew Kinney and Norman

ggy clearing to create a small amphitheatre for the park’s

summer weekend interpretive program presentations.

but the program takes on a broad
scope of work, with other
examples being fish enhancement,
data and computer work on en-
vironmental research, and one
project in which Youth Comps
members did night-time counts of
owl populations using infrared
binoculars.

Evans said the bottom line pro-
ject criterion is that "all projects
must benefit the community". The
program accepts support from
corporations and non-profit
agencies, she added, in exchange
for the "gcod will" of being
allowed to use the EYC name
under certain conditions.

_ The program is jointly funded by
the Ministry of Environment and
the Ministry of Social Services and
Housing. Although many of the
crew members are former recipi-
ents of social assistance, Evans
notes that anyone between the ages
of 16 and 24 can join. The projects
pay $7 per hour most of the time,
and the guys on the job at Furlong
stated that they are acquiring skills
and work habits that will probably
help them get jobs when the pro-

cosmetic work on provincial parks, ject is over.

-HandiDART in full operation

HandiDART is a public transit.

service with a wheelchair ramp
that recently started in Terrace.
The service caters to anyone who
might need it - seniors (residents
of the Willows use it extensively),
the handicapped (@ student at
NWCC who is wheelchair bound
uses the system daily), patients
needing to get to the hospital, and
arthritis sufferers who have diffi-
culty boarding a regular bus. Bus
driver Marj Anne Cline explains,
"In the bigger cities, a passenger
has to have a doctor’s recommen-
dation. Here, we take the doctor's
name and then it’s up to the
driver’s discretion."

Since its inaugural run in the
Terrace area in July of this year,
HandiDART has registered 35 to
40 users, The system is also amal-
gamated with the regular transit
system to make better use of the

buses. As HandiDART business’

increases, it is expected that its
involvement with the regular bus
schedule will decrease. Users of

the HandiDART system are urged
to phone ahead for a pick-up ap-
pointment, preferably a few hours
ahead or even the day before.
One new and young (33 years
old) user of HandiDART uses the
system because it’s handy. She
suffers from arthritis and is under
doctor's care for a potential blood
clot. She uses the system to go to

the lab and to visit the hospital. If
HandiDART weren’t available, she
says she would have to use a cab,
and that would be expensive when
she sometimes has to go out at
least twice a day.

The number to call for an orien-
fation or HandiDART pick-up is
635-2666,

UNBC pres to visit

The appointment of the first
president of the University of
Northern B.C., Geoffrey R.
Weller, currently vice president
(academic) of Lakeside Univer-
sity in Thunder Bay, Ontario,
was announced by the UNBC
Interim Governing Council at its
fall meeting Oct. 17 in Dawson
Creek,

Professor Weller will assume
his new office on Jan. 1, 1991,
In the meantime, he will
familiarize himself with his con-
stituency and visit the Northwest

while attending the UNBC coun-
cil meeting Nov. 20 and 21.

A second important appoint-
ment at the UNBC meeting was
the project manager, Desmond
Parker, currently Assistant
Director and University Ar-
chitect of Campus Planning and
Development at the Universit
of British Columbia. .

The council also noted that
the site selection has been nar-
towed and is presently being
discussed with the Ministry of
Crown Lands.

EScRiipret! -