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LIVING 13
Martial arts
New special needs program launches in North Van
TASTE 33
Veggie Japanese
Workshop Vegetarian Café offers options
SPORTS 29
Ballet to football
Dancer tosses tutu to join Argyle team NORTHSHORENEWS
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Warnings issued over ‘creepy clown’ pranks Social media craze prompts school official’s safety concerns
JANE SEYD jseyd@nsnews.com
Teens at North Vancouver high schools are being told that “creepy clowns” are no laughing matter.
Teachers and principals spoke with secondary students Tuesday after threats of creepy clowns appearing at local high schools began to surface. North Vancouver RCMP were called out to Windsor secondary last week after word got out that someone was threatening to show up to the school dressed as an evil clown. That never happened, said Deneka Michaud, spokeswoman for the North Vancouver School District. But the talk among teens about the creepy clown threats was enough to prompt a letter home to parents from Mark Pearmain, schools superintendent. The recent “creepy clown” craze, fuelled by social media, involves people dressing up like frightening evil clowns, scaring people as a prank and posting photos and videos of that to social media. When people do show up dressed as creepy clowns, those events are sometimes announced ahead of time by social media posts. In some cases fake scenarios are posted as though they are real. The craze began in the U.S., but has recently sparked copycat behaviour in Canada, especially in the run-up to Halloween.
“Either you love them or you hate them,” Boo La La costume shop owner Laurie Sluchinski (left) says of clowns, while employee Erin Walker gets her scare on, dressed as an evil clown. One day each year (Oct. 20 this year), the entire staff at The North Van shop dress as clowns. PHOTO MIKE WAKEFIELD “While we understand that students likely believe it is a harmless prank, it truly is terrifying for people and can spark violence,” Pearmain wrote in the letter to North Vancouver parents. “The costumes can be quite terrifying,” said Michaud. Sometimes, people on the receiving end of the scare become so angry they
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Woman dies in diving incident at Whytecliff
JANE SEYD jseyd@nsnews.com
A 43-year-old Surrey woman is dead after going into medical distress while scuba diving off West Vancouver’s Whytecliff Park on Sunday. The woman was diving
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during the fourth day of a four-day diving class being conducted by a Lower Mainland dive shop. She was about 40 metres below the surface on her second dive of the day just after noon, when another diver in the group noticed there was a problem, said Const. Jeff Palmer of the
West Vancouver Police Department. Palmer said the second diver helped the woman to ascend. At that point, the woman’s regulator – which supplies air – had come out of her mouth and it was clear she was in medical distress, he said. Other people in the dive
group got the woman to shore and began CPR, along with bystanders, which was taken over by fire and ambulance crews who arrived at the beach shortly after. Palmer said efforts to resuscitate the woman were not successful and she was
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