WEST
VOCAL COACH Michelle Bailly wants to help everyone find their inner voice through singing, even those in business.
THE BRIER Canadian mens’ curling championship this year in Saskatoon will be something of a homecoming for the B.C. representative rink coach Rick Folk and third Kevin Folk, his son.
KRAFT HOCKEYVILLE campaign has the support of the Central Okanagan community mayors as the final countdown to the initial 15 finalists starts this weekend.
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THURSDAY March 1, 2012 The Central Okanagan’s Best-Read Newspaper www.kelownacapnews.com
▼ EDUCATION
RSS students will ‘strike’ to back teachers
Jennifer Smith
STAFF REPORTER
A group of Rutland Senior Secondary students will go on strike Friday after deciding the students affected by B.C. teachers’ ongoing contract negotiations should be able to express their views. Mariah Johnson said she believes teachers need the student body’s full support in their fight for fair pay and better working conditions and, after speaking with her teachers about the issue, has decided the students can help. “I’ve thought about it for a couple of weeks, but decided to do it on Monday,” said Johnson. Friend Catherine Aujla-Fieldt, 17, is one of those committed to joining her on the picket line on Rutland Road. “I think that the teachers have a right to be on strike and to get what they deserve,” she said. Aujla-Fieldt has classes where students do not even have desks to sit in and believes the teachers’ are fighting to get better resources for her and her classmates. “I guess we’re just trying to show it affects us too,” she said, when asked why she wants to forgo her first class and stand out in the cold. Johnson made a video and posted it on Facebook mid-week and has permission to put posters up around the school. She said most of her information about the strike has come from the teachers themselves, though she also consulted online media sources as she developed her point of view. She feels teachers need to be compensated adequately for helping shape her future and that of her friends, and she’s not alone on this point. Students across the province are expected to walk out of class early on Friday. Johnson said her idea was separate and she doesn’t want the half-hour demonstration she’s planned to turn into an easy early weekend for her classmates. Neither the Central Okanagan School District nor Central Okanagan Teachers’ Association could be reached for comment on the matter. See Strike A8
DOUG FARROW/CONTRIBUTOR
FRENCH CULTURAL DAY…Canadian French traditions and customs will be celebrated by students at French immersion schools across the Central Okanagan School District this week. On Wednesday at Peter Greer Elementary School in Lake Country, Seth Gizen works on his own artistic rendering of a sugar shack, a small building often constructed in the woods where sap is boiled down to make maple syrup.
▼ LEGALIZING MARIJUANA
Coalition calls pot laws a ‘dramatic failure’ Kathy Michaels STAFF REPORTER
Just as alcohol prohibition failed, laws aimed at snuffing out Canada’s underground drug industry have fallen short, say members of a coalition in Kelowna today to talk
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about legalizing and regulating pot. “If the goal is to reduce the availability of marijuana, it’s clearly been a dramatic failure,” said Dr. Evan Wood, a founding member of the coalition called Stop the Violence BC, who will be speaking
at UBC Okanagan, 12:30 p.m., and the Rotary Centre for the Arts, 7 p.m. “As it stands now, we know marijuana is more available to young people than alcohol and tobacco…the price of marijuana is going down, and the potency is going up.”
Conditions for organized crime improved in tandem, as what was once viewed as a basement pursuit morphed into what the Fraser Institute, in a recent report, deemed to be a $7 billion a year business. “Then we spend millions on lawyers, judges
and prisons in this cat and mouse game,” said Dr. Wood. “By every metric, prohibition has not achieved its stated objectives.” Just imagine, however,
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