Saturday, August 17, 2019 | Your community newspaper since 1916
CITIZEN PHOTO BY JAMES DOYLE
Have at thee Lady Christina of Crankbrook Hill County, right, takes on Lady Galbraith of Scotland Proper as the two compete in noodle jousting on Friday afternoon at the 107th BCNE.
Help a Super Hero
Overdose deaths down in city
Christine HINZMANN Citizen staff chinzmann@pgcitizen.ca About four years ago she was in Honduras helping a non-profit. She saw too much of what goes on in the streets not to take action. When Alyse Willmann got back to Prince George after a year of helping, she knew she could do the same for those in need in Prince George. “When you come back home you really just want to continue by helping in your own community,” Willmann said. “Helping people has been my passion.” She started by taking to the downtown streets with her friends, handing out hot chocolate, coffee, gloves and toques. Then she and her church community, family and friends filled stockings and the Christmas on the Streets project has grown to handing out just a few stockings the first year, 50 the next year and last Christmas they handed out 75 stockings. Now she’d like to focus on the children living in the VLA. “I wanted to do something bigger but I didn’t know where to start,” Willmann said. After getting a little direction from community members, Willmann and her friends, Emily and Nolan Hanson, have created the Help a Super Hero project where they’re asking the community to donate backpacks filled with all the school supplies needed for those children going into Grades 1 to 3 and lunch kits for Kindergarteners. “Emily and Nolan, with their knowledge and they’re ability to reach out to
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Mark NIELSEN Citizen staff mnielsen@pgcitizen.ca
CITIZEN PHOTO BY JAMES DOYLE
Alyse Willman shows off some of the items that will given to children in need as part of Help A Superhero. the community have helped so much,” Willmann said. “So we’re putting out the challenge for people to either fill a backpack or a lunch kit.” There’s 221 children in inner city schools in Kindergarten up to Grade 3 that will get the donations collected by Willmann and the Hansons, while Willmann’s church, College Heights Baptist, and the Hanson’s church, Westwood Mennonite, will collect for students in Grades 4 to 7. “I think it’s important that the children
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know we’ve got their backs,” Willmann said. “Every kid is a super hero. A good education gets a kid so far, right? It gives them a chance to pursue their dreams and gives them self-worth. I want to get as many people involved as possible because it gives us all a chance to change a kid’s life.” Willmann wants to be part of giving children the boost they need. And what better way than to give them everything they need to get a fresh start at the beginning of the school year? — see ‘ALL KIDS, page 3
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The number of deaths from illicit drugs has taken a more than four-fold drop in the city, according to numbers released Friday by the BC Coroners Service. In all, there were 11 such deaths by midway point of this year, compared to 49 by the same point in 2018. “It’s good news and it’s important that we take this good news to recognize a lot of the good work that’s happening in our communities to try to prevent these overdoses,” Northern Health medical health officer Rakel Kling said. “But at the same time it still shows that there are still overdoses happening and we still need to put in our time and effort to really do our best to try to stop overdoses from happening.” That effort will continue, Kling said. “Nothing changes, it’s still a top priority.” The decrease is also part of a province-wide trend that has seen a 35-per-cent drop, to 538 deaths from 763. Vancouver continues to lead the way at 144 deaths, down from 389, followed by Surrey at 72, down from 214. However, on a per capita basis, the Northern Health region is the second-most prolific at 22 per 100,000 population, while Vancouver Coast Health is first at 27 per 100,000. The average for the province is 22 per 100,000. Kling said the widespread distribution of Naloxone kits and the establishment of overdose prevention sites may have played significant roles in the drop but could not say for sure. — see OVERDOSE DEATHS, page 3
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