INSIDE COMMUNITY EVENTS B2 a Helping others DAVID SESSFORD of the Salvation Army heips Julianne, 3, drop a loonie in the kettle. The annual Kettle Campaign began Nov. 25. Money raised helps support the Christmas Hamper drive and other programs. Sessford says they're preparing between 500 and 600 hampers for needy families. SECTION B JENNIFER LANG 638-7283 yore ge poi DANIELLE PIGEAU (right) with students learnin g how to make medicine bundles using local materials. Sharing traditional ways with a modern generation WHEN YOU’VE got a headache, you probably head straight to the medi- cine cabinet in your quest to find relief. But long before Bayer forumlated its familiar Asprin tablets, the first peoples of this region dis- covered that willow bark took those nagging aches and pains away. For Danielle Pigeau, a precision reading teacher with School District 82 and a Role Model with the First Nations Education Centre, the practice of using plants, trees and ve- getation as health ailment remedies is something all cultures share in common. It's called traditional medicine, and recently, some Grade 9 students al Skeena Junior Secondary were given a glimpse into how First Nations people in the northwest use com- monly-known plants for medicinal and spiritual purposes. Your old furniture helped train fire fighters at the Kemano townsite WHEN THE CALL went out for donations of old furniture to be used for fire fighter training, the people of greater Terrace enthu- siastically responded. The Terrace fire depart- ment received so many mattresses, chesterfields and sofas nobody wanted anymore, that Williams Moving and Storage had to use four containers to ship them to Kemano, site of a live. fire training program this fall. Terrace’s Mishl Prins lost no time grieving for her former couch, “The couch we donated used to belong to my greal-grandparents, then it was my grandparents’, then il way my parents’, then it was my mine, and then it was my dog’s,” ex- plained the young mum, “We thought, ‘Perfect — let them burn it!” Her not-so-beloved fa- mily heirloom is little more than a pile of char- coal dust, now that the fall session of the Kemano Public Safety Initiative has wrapped up. About 700 volunteer and career firefighters from across B.C. took part in the life fire training. sessions, held at Kemano from Sept. 25 to Nov. 9, Among them were 21 member of the Thornhill Fire Department, and as many again from Terrace. “It was just an_incred- EJ FIRE CHIEF Randy Smith, with Mishl Pins, son Shayle, Hawkair’s Donna Kurth, and Shawn Kluss of Williams Moving and Storage. Prins won airline tickets after donating her couch to the live fire exercise held at Kemano this fall. ible experience,” Thorn- hill’s deputy fire chief Wes Patterson said. Alcan allowed the for- mer company townsite to be used for fire fighting practice, presenting a on- ce-in-a-lifetime ‘training opportunity. The company town once had a year-round po- pulation of about 250 , but as of July 31, the last of the former residents were moved out, Alcan now uses rotating work crews {oO man. the power generator for the Ki- timat aluminum smelter. © Alcan’s plan to demol- ish the residential homes by the year’s end and re- turn the townsite to. its for- met, natural state fit in perfectly with the need for live fire training for B.C.’s fire fighters — particularly those in the north, who otherwise might not re- lieve this type of intensive training with live fires, Fire fighters arrived from Fort St. John, Taylor, Prince George, Kitimal, Prince Rupert, Macken- zie, Dawson Creek, and White Rock to take part in the exercise. “It was phenomenal,” said Terrace Fire Chief Randy Smith, who spent 13 days in Kemano. “The puys, we figured they were geiting on average five years experience” fighting live fires. - About 30 houses at Ke- mano were burned this fall. Each home was used a number of times before being allowed to safely burn completely. Fire fighters were able to practice their skills on fires involving a range of realistic scenarios, Smith said there isn’t much visible evidence of the infernos that raged this fall, because after a Ke- mano home was burned to the ground, the foundations were bulldozed, covered up and planted with grass seed, “It just looks like nice, clean, vacant lots.” The live fire training was just one aspect of Lhe Kemano Public Safety In- itiative. The National Research Institute will be studying how fires and smoke move through wood structures, and RCMP emergency fe- sponse teams will be using some of the buildings to practice tactical and sur- veillance skills. In April, the townsite will be used for a fire in- vestigation training exer- cise. Another 30 homes will be used for fire train- ing this spring: That means anyone who missed the original call for unwanted furniture will have another chance to get rid of their musty old cou- ches and dank mattresses = perhaps in time for spring cleaning, Pigeau says the trees, plants and vegetation that grow in the northwest that are still being used by First Nations people to treat common ailments — from headaches, to heart trouble and diabetes. Devil’s Club, the tall, spiny plant with gigantic leaves commonly found around here has both medicinal and spiritual uses, due to its cleansing and deodorizing properties. A few weeks ago, Pi- geau showed some Grade 9 students how to make a small medicine bundle. Because of the spiritual and medicinal power of the bundles, the students were cautioned to think positive thoughts while as- sembling them — particu- larly if they were going to give the bundle to some- one else, say an ailing re- lative. She also warned them not to use any of the plants she’d shown them for medicinal purposes unless they consulted an expert first. “Devil’s Club is poisa- nous if you use a lot of it,” she pointed out. “It’s the same as going into your medicine cabinet. You have to know whiat’s be- hind it before using it.” Learning about tradi- tional medicines was jusi one component of the First Nations culture and history unit in the Grade 9 social studies class. *-While the unit centres on First Nations subjects, Pigeau believes the mater- ial she presented may help the students understand their own cultural tradi- tions and heritage, too. “I always remind them that [the use of traditional medicine] extends all the way through Europe and Asia.” The students also learned how to make bra- celets from another com- monly found material in the northwest — cedar bark, under the expert direction of a carver. Harvested in the spring, the bark must be kept sup- ple in order to braid, fold, or weave it. Role Madel Lorna Johnson remembers her own mother painstakingly weaving a cedar bark rug for the family over the course of an entire winter. The unit also included a presentation on land claims by a Prince Rupert lawyer. . : Students alsa kept a journal where they wrote about the information they were learning. They also got to hear local legends. “It’s been really posi- tive,” said student teacher Carolyn Sousa, who ap- plauded the class’s in- structor, Chris Eliot, for choosing to use the First Nations Education Centre based at the school and the Role Model program for the unit. EMER EL COMPUTER FRIENDLY: Day a na, Grant and Nichole at Spring Creek School. School wins computers in cross-Canada contest THE COMBINED collect- ing ability of the students, staff, and same of their friends, helped push the Spring Creck Adventist School. to the top of the heap in a recent contest. The school has won three brand-new computers through a Canada-wide contest sponsored by Kel- logp’s, oe Over the last schoo! . year, they collected 1,129 product labels, meaning the school earned top marks for the most per ca- pita in western Canada, an impressive feat considet- ing there’s just 10 students al-the school, Instructor Betty Fraser cites thelr ability to net- work with friends and fa- mily for the win. The new. computers. ar- rived in early November, Fraser says they ‘arc: much: faster than the school’s ex- isting compulers and will be used to reinforce math, teading, geography and keyboarding skills, as. well oe as assist wigs: a French. oe Another bonus to the additional computers is the students, enrolled from - Kindergarten to Grade 5, won't have to. share as much when they are as- signed computer work,