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No legs No limits
Redefining possible: Free the Children motivational speaker Spencer West (in blue) celebrates fundraising success with students at Burnaby’s St. Francis de Sales Elementary School Thursday as part of Free the Children’s cross country We Create Change Tour.
Students hear inspiring message from man who climbed Mount Kilimanjaro Cornelia Naylor staff reporter
A group of Burnaby students got a lesson in redefining the possible last week from a legless man who climbed Africa’s highest peak, mostly on his hands. Spencer West, who lost his legs just below the hips to a genetic disorder at age five, climbed Mount Kilimanjaro two years ago and last year made his way by hand and wheelchair from Edmonton to Calgary, all to raise money for Africa water projects. The Free the Children fundraiser and motivational speaker touched down at St. Francis de Sales Thursday during his cross-country We Create Change Tour that ended this week in Toronto. “One of the things that I try to do is use myself as an example,” West told the NOW. “I’ve got a bunch of challenges; we’ve all got challenges. If I can do these things, so can you. That’s sort of what I
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Cornelia Naylor/ burnaby now
hope they walk away with.” His message wasn’t lost on the nearly 300 students from St. Francis de Sales, St. Mary’s and St. Francis of Assisi who gathered to hear him speak. “I heard that he wanted to stop, but he kept going,” said Grade 7 student James
Iglesias of the Kilimanjaro climb. “That really inspires me.” The same feat stood out for Grade 7 student Mia Malinowski. “Him climbing that mountain was just, wow,” she said. “It just shows that you can do whatever you put your mind to and to
never give up.” Classmate Anna MacGregor, meanwhile, said she was touched by a story she had once heard West tell at We Day, Free the Children’s annual youth empowerment event aimed at motivating kids to get Students Page 4
Burnaby gondola falls off transit plan Cornelia Naylor staff reporter
SFU students are disappointed Metro Vancouver mayors left the Burnaby Mountain gondola out of the 10-year $7.5 billion regional transit plan they approved last week. “There’s a lot of competing projects, but given that this project is such a high benefit, we were quite shocked,” SFU Student Society president Chardaye Bueckert told the NOW. “They seem to have ignored the
business case that was prepared in 2011 by TransLink, which said essentially that this project should be built; it had such a high benefit ratio.” The $120-million gondola – which planners say should be slung between the Production Way-University SkyTrain station and SFU – would bring $3.60 worth of benefits (in the form of savings on travel time, vehicle kilometres, auto operating costs, collision costs and carbon emissions) for every $1 spent, according to the TransLink report.
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And it would cut travel time up the mountain in half. The SFU Student Society, Graduate Student Society and Sustainable SFU, which represent a combined 30,000 students, had pressed metro mayors to include the project in their new plan. “At this point we are just calling to have them reconsider that – the provincial government as well as the mayors,” Bueckert said. She said a gondola would liberate 32 buses during a single peak hour, which
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could feed the 11 new B-line routes proposed in the new transportation plan. “It seems really complementary,” Bueckert said. But the students will get little support from Burnaby Mayor Derek Corrigan. He was the only member of the mayors’ council on regional transportation to vote against the new transit plan approved last week, saying it was too expensive. “It was a wish list, an attempt to get support around the region by promising ◗Gondola Page 3