Along the Fraser Maple Ridge is bigger than Mayberry. p6
KEEPS centre top project in Canada. p12
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Gardening Drought tolerant plants need time. p23
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Councillors defend FCM hotel costs $501 each for three nights while attending convention by Ph i l M e lnych uk staff reporter
Despite the furore over hotels costs at the Federation of Canadian Municipalities convention last weekend in Vancouver, local politicians say it’s money well spent, for a busy few days. Masse Coun. Bob Masse defended his attendance on CKNW Monday, adding on Tuesday that the all-day conferences and the receptions that run late into the evening made it worthwhile staying over at the Renaissance Vancouver Harbourside Hotel. “There was a lot of good conversation. We kept the expenditures to a minimum and, in my view, it was money well spent.” Masse provided a copy of his bill for his three-night stay at the Renaissance, a total tab of $501. All the meals for the weekend were included in the $770 FCM conference fee. “Theoretically, for sure, you could have stayed until 11 o’clock at night, then got in your car and driven home, then back in time for the meeting to start at 7 a.m. the next morning.” But that would have incurred all-day parking charges, he pointed out. Masse said that councillors often attend meetings and pay for them out of their own pocket. Maple Ridge councillors get an annual $5,000 allowance for such conferences. If spouses come along, councilllors pay for them separately. He said it does get tiresome to hear said in the media that all politicians are crooks or liars.
Photo illustration by Colleen Flanagan/thE nEwS
RCMP are concerned that more and more youth of elementary school age are “sexting.”
Kids and private exchanges I S tor y by Monisha Mar tins
t began as an innocuous preteen crush, the kind that was commemorated in the past with long, hand-written letters, filled with stickers of hearts, sparkles and angst-filled poetry.
These days, the love notes are more succinct, sent in the form of a text, or expressed visually with intimate photographs. For a 13-year-old girl, in her final year of elementary school, they were a private exchange
between her and her first boyfriend. A few months later, he had shared her photographs at school. She soon became the school “slut,” whispered about in the classroom, the subject of a post and comments from strangers on a gossip site. Getting the photos back was impossible. Sending naked or semi-naked photos of yourself – “sexting” – is common among teens and pre-teens in Canada. “I wouldn’t do it,” says Chastity Gillis, a Grade 8 student at Garibaldi secondary in Maple Ridge, “but there are some people who do at school. It’s to get attention or they think it’s cool. I think some parents know, but most don’t.” To date, there have been no published stud-
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ies examining how many Canadian teens have used their cellphones to send or receive nude photos. A recent U.S. study revealed one-third of teens had sent a ‘sext.’ The high-tech form of flirting is alarming both police and school administrators, who are struggling to find a way to stop it as victims get younger – in Maple Ridge, one girl was nine. Ridge Meadows RCMP are investigating multiple cases where children have taken nude photos and sent them to individuals they have met online through social media websites. In some cases, the child was coerced into sending the images, while others exchanged photos with casual, online acquaintances.
Opinion Letters Looking Back As we Age home&gardening Sports Classifieds
See FCM, p10
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