THE FRIDAY
CANADIAN COMMUNITY NEWSPAPER AWARD 2012
TRI-CITY NEWS THE TRI-CITY NEWS
R
uth Foster and Rod MacVicar are natural teachers. On a visit to Mossom Creek, the waterway they have been instrumental in resuscitating over the last 38 years, they can’t stop themselves from picking up fish bones and naming off the birds and plant species that inhabit the area. The pair taught biology at Centennial secondary for decades and love teaching so much that they could not give it up after retiring in the early 2000s. But instead of working with young people, these days Foster and MacVicar spend their spare time teaching student teachers. “It can be really powerful in its impact,” Foster says.“If you can encourage one teacher to use environmental ed. to get across ideas in a subject, you have possibly made an impact on a lot of people.” Many of the studentteachers they work with at the Reed Point Marina Education Centre and through the SFU Faculty
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CANADIAN COMMUNITY NEWSPAPER AWARD 2012
Hall tour, spring break
B-ball and bowling, too
SEE THINGS-TO-DO GUIDE, PAGE 13
SEE SPORTS, PAGE 31
Teaching the next enviro ed. leaders By Gary McKenna
MARCH 14, 2014
INSIDE
Letters/11 Elaine Golds/15 Seniors/16 Community Calendar/30
MOSSOM CREEK HATCHERY PROJECT
More Mossom info on page 3 of Education are from overseas and here mainly to improve their English. But any subject can be taught using environmental education, Foster says, from writing assignments about a sensitive ecosystem to mathematical word problems that calculate the number of fish in a stream. “We talk a lot about incorporating environmental concepts into the classroom,”she said. “You can take just about any subject and use environmental education as a medium to get your information across.” Foster and MacVicar have heard from people they have worked with who have had great success taking what they learned in Canada back to their own classrooms By inspiring a new generation of teachers, the two hope to enhance the educational experience for young people while fostering a healthy respect for the environment. gmckenna@tricitynews.com
GARY MCKENNA/THE TRI-CITY NEWS
Rod MacVicar and Ruth Foster were teachers at Centennial secondary school when they started a salmon club in the 1970s. The club was instrumental in establishment of the Mossom Creek Hatchery and while both are now retired, they’re still involved as volunteers.
Closed doors for $ talks Calls for SD43’s finance meetings to be public EVERGREEN ACTION ■ Tunnelling work is to begin to make way for Evergreen: page 8 ■ Environmentalist concerned about Coquitlam creeks: page 6
By Diane Strandberg THE TRI-CITY NEWS
School District 43’s board of education voted Tuesday to establish a new finance committee in the wake of massive deficit and budget woes
over the last 14 months. But the head of the union whose membership sustained dozens of job losses as a result of that deficit said it’s not right that the committee’s meetings won’t be open to the public. Dave Ginter took issue with some aspects of Tri-City school trustees’ decision Tuesday to establish a finance committee that will meet
regularly, keep minutes, report out its discussions and recommendations at public board meetings but won’t invite the public, partner groups or the media to participate. A key recommendation of a forensic audit by KPMG that looked into the reasons SD43 racked up an $8-million deficit last year, the committee will be made up of six people: two trustees
— chair Melissa Hyndes and Coquitlam’s Gerri Wallis this year — plus representatives from the district’s senior management and its finance department. It will begin meeting by April and terms will last one year, except for the first year (there is an election in November). Ginter, president of CUPE 561, which represents district support
staff, said he welcomes the establishment of the finance committee but wondered why SD43 didn’t follow the example of other districts, such as Vancouver, where finance meetings are public. “Don’t they preach that they want to be transparent?” Ginter asked. see ‘IT’S GOING’, page 12