FRIDAY SEPT 9, 2016
VOL. 42, NO. 81
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Fentanyl
Public information night on Bowen
The long-table dinner
A magical evening of food and community on Bowen Island
Peter King lets go of Bowen’s bus service
Peter King (behind) and Bowen Island Transit drivers (from left) Murray Nosek, Robin Butler, Pam Mitts, Richard Goth and Hal DeGrace on the 15th anniversary of the service. Meribeth Deen, photo
MERIBETH DEEN EDITOR
Olivia Harding with the updated and original versions of her Rockridge Survival Guide. Meribeth Deen, photo
Guide book helps Bowen kids navigate first year at Rockridge MERIBETH DEEN EDITOR
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raduating grade sevens from Bowen Island face the leap into the world of high school alongside a commute across Howe Sound and suddenly being thrown in to a much wider social circle. Olivia Harding says she found this transition particularly challenging, given her first year at Rockridge High School started late, due to a teacher’s strike. After a year of experience though, she had a few tips to pass on to her younger cousin, Ryan. Now, those tips, compiled in a booklet she called “The Rockridge Survival Guide,” have been edited and re-compiled for the benefit of all the Bowen student’s heading to Rockridge for the first time. The booklet contains dos (read at least one book from the library, do things because you like them not just because your friends are doing them) and don’ts (sit in the middle of the hallway during lunch, other students will find it annoying to step over you) as well as tips on how to open your locker, find your classes, organize your work, find the right buses, and how to navigate the first day of school. There’s also an exclusive survival list, just for Bowen kids.
Highlights include the advice to not miss the bus (because you’ll miss the ferry too – and most of your teachers will have never taken the ferry so they won’t understand when you roll into class at 10am); bring stuff even if you’re not sure you’ll need it (because your parents won’t be able to run stuff to you that you forgot at home) and always have $20 in your pocket so that if you find yourself stuck, you can take a cab from Caulfield to Horseshoe Bay. In an interview, Harding told The Undercurrent that her number one piece of advice for kids entering high school is to be optimistic. “It’s not the end of the world, its just high school,” she says. “Everyone goes through it.” Harding adds that kids from the city are used to meeting kids from other schools and having friends come in and out of their lives, whereas Bowen kids have known their whole class since kindergarten. “Rockridge is a pretty welcoming space so it’s not too intimidating,” she says. “Bowen kids do tend to stick together. Relationships change in high school, I’ve seen a lot of friendships bend and twist but they don’t break. For the kids who grew up on Bowen, old friendships are like a backbone.”
The contract for running the TransLink buses on Bowen Island expires at the end of December. In keeping with standard practices, TransLink has issued a Request for Proposals (RFP) for potential service providers. This year, however, the man who created the Bowen Island bus service is not bidding on the contract. “It’s very hard to let go of this, it’s like losing a child,” says Peter King. “But there was an incident where a representative from First Transit boarded one of my buses and spoke to the driver. When he got off, he had a coffee with someone from TransLink. It is very inappropriate and just leaves me feeling like I know which way the wind is blowing.” King says things have not been going his way in terms of the relationship with TransLink since 2012. “In the fall of 2012, they brought in Coast Mountain Bus Company’s procedures. Now, that just doesn’t make sense. You can’t run a company made up of seven people the same way you run a company of more than 3000,” says King. “We make $80 profit at the end
of every day, do we really need a third party coming in to count the fares?” King first started the bus service on Bowen Island in May, 1999 after what he describes as 10 years of groveling to the Vancouver Regional Transit Commission and BC Transit. “I credit Don Bellamy, a former councilor in Vancouver, for helping to shift things in the right direction at a critical moment,” says King. “And also, former islander Richard Littlemore was instrumental in getting things rolling.” Since its beginning, Bowen’s bus service has run in three-year chunks, followed by two one-year extensions. King says he was hoping to get the next one year extension starting in 2017 and in that time, to bring Pam and Steve Mitts up to speed on running the service so they could bid on the contract the following year. “My greatest fear is that the bus service goes to an off-island company that is looking at it strictly in financial terms,” he says. “It’s a service not a business. This thing will never make money, it’s not designed to.” King says he plans to continue offering his charter service as well as the express bus to downtown Vancouver.
Alternative energy on the curriculum
Solar panels installed on school roof
MERIBETH DEEN EDITOR
A technician from Terra Tek Energy solutions installed an array of solar panels on the roof of Bowen Island Community School (BICS) just in time for the new school year. The 30 panel, 7.95 kW array will produce roughly enough energy to power the average home on Bowen Island, and an estimated 2 – 3 percent of the school’s energy requirements. The panels will give
students the opportunity to learn about renewable energy first hand. “The data about how much energy the panels are producing, and how much energy we are consuming will be collected and displayed in real time on a kiosk in the BICS library,” says Principle Scott Slater. “This fits into our science and environmental curriculum in so many ways, but also into one of the pillars of the BC curriculum which is contributing to the community and caring for the envi-
ronment.” The BICS installation is part of a program called Solar Now that aims to put solar panels on prominent public buildings in Vancouver in order to raise awareness. Funds from the Knick Knack Nook, the Bowen Island Community Foundation and the North Growth Foundation covered the cost of the project. The school will be hosting a community launch for the panels on the afternoon of September 16.