The Terrace Standard, Wednesday, December 12, 2001 - BI

TERRACE STANDARD

INSIDE COMMUNITY EVENTS B2

SECTION B JENNIFER LANG 638-7 283

Around Town

IT’S BLOOMING good news. Judges in the Communities in

Bloom Contest have awarded Ter-

race four blooms — the maximum

term pedestrian and cycling plan and tries to use sound enviton- mental practices.

For example, the city made a

volvement — and the spirit of co- operation here — clearly impressed the judges.

“The judges themselves were

gional district, the beautifica- tion sociely, the highways

Local UVic grads

FOUR TERRACE residents were among 1,200 students to receive degrees from the University

I 3 a

nae eg a ranking in the provincial compo- particularly interested in how the ministry, B.C. consious effort a number of years of Victoria at the universily’s fall convocation nent of the program. beautification society works,” Hydro and ago not to use pesticides in its fast month. a f That means we've been invited Scott said. local industry, parks. Skye McGowan received a Master o Arts, to enter next year’s national com- The Terrace Beautification Scott said. “Despite our remoteness and Carlo Desierto and Lisa McDonald received petition, says Steve Scolt, the Society acted as the city’s main Another our size, we've got a fairly pro-

Bachelor of Arts degrees and Josh McDonald received a Bachelor Science degree.

COMPLETE: The Gazebo in the Grand Trunk Pathway was officially completed last month. That's Rotarian Brian Downie with the city’s Steve Scott.

A place to ponder

THE WOODWORKING is done. Next up is landscaping.

The new gazebo in the Grand Trunk Path- way was finished last month.

City officials say landscaping and brick work will be put in place around the octago-

_ nal building next spring.

The fence will be removed. at that time. The work was done by Terrace Rotary

Club members, with a number of local dona-’

tions,

Mortons still at it

KEN AND Lorna Morton, former Terrace residents now living in the White Rock area, remain heavily involved in amateur theatre.

Ken is directing Arthur Lovegove’s Goodnight, Mrs. Puffin, making tt the fourth time he has staged this particular production. One of those four times was here in Terrace where the couple'was a mainstay of Terrace Little Theatre.

Lorna is the assistant director for the pro- duction and has helped coach dialogue for the play which involves Mrs. Puffin, a Cockney, who places herself in the middle of the up- per-crust Fordyce family as it prepares to marry off its eldest daughter.

Lorna also played Mrs, Fordyce when it was staged here in Terrace.

Aside from Terrace, Morton directed the play in England and again in Malaysia.

Encyclopedia on-line THE ENCYCLOPEDIA of B.C., published in print and put on a CD-ROM last year, is now available on-line.

While individuals can purchase site [i- cences, there are two places in town that pro- vide other options to gain access to the more than 4,000 articles and thousands of photos, maps and charts concerning B.C,

The Terrace Public Library provides ac- cess from its own computers through its own web site, says head librarian Ed Curretl.

Northwest Community College’s library also provides access through computers on access but-also from home provided a person has a Ubrary card, says head Hbrarian Patti Barnes.

“Anywhere you have access to the inter- net, you have access to the encyclopedia,” she said, The college library is updating its data bank of cardholders and wit] have the at- home option available for everybody by Jan- uary.

Passes exam

A TERRACE resident is one step closer to becoming a chartered accountant. Laura Pru- ner has passed the unifarm final exam, a na- tional exam for those wishing to become a chartered accountant,

She must now complete 30 months of ex- perience with o chartered accountant firm and, upon completing all of those require-

ments, will be officially designed asa char- ©

tered accountant, . B.C. students had ‘the third highest pass rate of those taking the final exam,

city’s parks and recreation super- intendent. “T always knew we were doing

community partner for Communi- ties in Bloom and has spearhea- ded various landscaping projects

strong factor in

our favour is Steve Scott the fact that

Terrace is in touch with current

gressive recycling, waste manan- gement policy and plan through- out the city,” Scott added.

a pretty good job in Terrace,” Scott said. “I’m really pleased we got recognition for it.”

The amount of community in-

over the years that have spruced up the tawn.

The judges praised the coop- eration between the city, the re-

practices.

environmental trends and park

The city has developed a long-

Terrace’s application for next year’s Communities in Bloom contest will be sent in by the end of the month.

Nyce new chair of RD

HARRY NYCE is the new chairman of the Ki-

. timat-Stikine regional district. He unseated Kitimat councillor Joanne

Monaghan, the long-serving chair of the regio-

@ Santa rides again

‘SANTA CLAUS made his annual appearance at the Kermode Christmas parade on Dec. 1. The event was the biggest and best yet in what is now an annual tradition.

A, covering the Nass valley, for about 12 years. He is the dir- ector of fish and

Nisga’a Lisims was on the nego- the Nisga’a lead- treaty.

“1m pleased,” Nyce said. “I’m confidence the

board members have in me.”

wildlife for the Ff Government and f tiating team for §

ing up to the con- [| clusion of their |

happy with the.

nal district board, in a vote Friday night.

Nyce, who was nominated by Terrace city councillor and regional district rep Rich Me- Daniel, has been the elected director for area

Harry Nyce

Nyce said it’s the first time he’s chaired a non-Nisga’a organization.

He’s been the driving force in the Nisga’a drive to bring artifacts now in museums and

collections around the world back to the Nass

valley.

Nyce unsuccessfully sought the Social Cre-

dit party nomination in North Coast for the

1991 provincial election.

Postcard from Taiwan

lly KRISTER H. PARTEL WO SHI YINGYU JIAOSHI — 1 am an English teacher,

Four and a half years ago I left the comforts of my home cn Mountain Vista Drive, and the fami- liar surroundings of Ter- race, to explore the world, gain some knowledge, and make my way to our na- tion’s capital.

T had studied political science at the University of Victoria and worked later as summer intern for federal environment mini- ster David Anderson.

The spring of 2001 saw the end of my life as an undergraduate student, the

beginning of my student’

loan payments, and me once again relurning to Ot- tawa to resume my life in polities.

I had both gained an in- credible amount of know- ledge through my forma- tion at university and f had already made my way lo Ottawa, but I hadn’t really explored ‘the world, at least not to its fullest ex- tent. ‘

As fortune would have it, the idea that I should teach English in Taiwan all of o sudden became very present in my life.

Two good: friends had Just recently. returned from leaching English in Taipei, Taiwan, and they were all abuzz with tales of their adventures in the Orient..

Articles started. to ‘ap- pear in local magazines and student newspapers written by individuals who

KRISTER PARTEL recounts some of his experiences of culture shock in Tai- wan alter leaving Terrace, He’s now teaching English there.

had managed to pay off their sizable student loans in a very short period of time with the earnings they had made teaching English in Asia,

The final clincher was when 1 discovered that, upon graduating from UBC, Gordon Campbell and his wife fad taught in Africa for a period of time 1 saw this as an act of di- vine intervention. Within weeks a friend and I began preparations for our own adventures overscas.

My life packed up in boxes, an open-ended round trip plane ticket to Chiong Kaishek Interna- tional in one hand, the Lo- nely Planet Guide to Tai- wan in the other, Canadian Monopoly safely stowed with my check-in luggage,

and a 60-day visilor’s visa stamped in my passport (obtained with a little de- ception on my part), Jo- seph and | were ready to leave,

“Gordon Camp-

_ bell and his wife

had taught in Afri- ca for a period of time | saw this as an act of divine in- tervention.”

Our route was simple. Leaving Vancouver Inter- national the evening. of Aug, 28, we flew Vancou- ver to Los Angeles, Los Angeles to Seoul, Scoul to Taipei. -

Fourteen hours in the

air and three days of travel (two actually, but crossing the International Date Line miraculously adds a third) we arrived the morning of Aug. 30 to the sweltering heat of Taiwan (a.k.a, the Republic of China or ROC) no worse for wear.

Our first tense moment occurred while waiting to pass through customs, as we Weren't too certain if we were going to have any problems. We had failed ta state a return date or flight on the visitation papers that we had to fill out.

In order to obtain a vi- silor’s visa we had our tra- vel agent doctor. up a fake itinerary showing a pseudo

—reluim dale and flight with-

in the allotted 60-day vi- sitation period, but we hadn't thought of bringing

a copy of the itinerary for the customs? officials on the other side of the Paci- fic. False alarm, however, as the official merely waved us through not real- ly paying allention to us or the forms that we had filled out.

As we had planned on

making Kaohsiung our ~

final destination, Taiwan's second largest cily found near the southern tip of the island, we had planned on bussing to Taipei’s central train station and catching a high-speed train straight to Kaohsiung.

Easier said than done. Due to a language barrier, as well as our limited knowledge of Taiwanese geography, we purchased a bus ticket to what we thought was a closer train station a bit to the South,

Two hours on a bus with lazy-boy chairs as seats, tinted windows with cur- tains, and halfway down the island we arrived in Taichung. Speakers of English being few and far between, and a noticeable lack of Roman lettering on most signs, we were able find what seemed like the soul English speaker in all of Taichung who helped us purchase train tickets to Kaohsiung.

A mix up on the train platform, a conductor who somehow managed to put us On & Wrong train, and three hours latter, we fin- ally arrived at Kaohsiung at last!

Continued Pg. B3

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