Inside Board Game Warriors, at 708 Clarkson St.

Board Game Warriors, at 708 Clarkson St., is a little gem of a store tucked under the SkyTrain tracks. It offers a large selection of games for teen and adult gamers, plus a few for younger gamers age five and up.  Like Settlers of Catan? It looks like they’ve got every expansion ever made (and most were in store). Ditto for Carcassonne. The selection in-store seemed to lean towards the quasi-historical strategy games, but it may be that we just noticed what we like! There’s a lot to see.

But the very best thing about Board Game Warriors? Open box gaming nights. Three nights a week, board game lovers are invited to come and geek out on hundreds of games you can play for free. Talk about an awesome free night out with friends. No reservations are needed, just drop by with your posse and choose something to play. Open gaming sessions are listed on Board Game Warriors’ website, and are currently Tuesday and Thursday from 5-9pm and Saturday noon-7pm.

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Tough customer sampling some green beans at the source.

As it says on the website, it “builds on the long-standing tradition of gardeners loving to share their harvest with others. It is a people-helping-people program to assist in feeding the hungry in their own communities”. In short, gardeners are asked to produce just a bit more than they otherwise would plant, and donate the surplus to the local food bank. The Plant a Row, Grow a Row group makes it easy by having a weekly drop off point in the community. As last year, St. Thomas More Collegiate. has volunteered to host the drop-offs.

This year, as last, the group, organized locally by well known city horticulture manager (and neighbour) Claude LeDoux, is holding the annual Gardener’s Party at the gym of St. Thomas More . It is a great chance to come and meet some fellow gardeners, listen to some fascinating speakers and learn about this great program.

At the event this year, scheduled for March 18th at 6pm, speakers include renowned horticulturalist Brian Minter; Daniel Mosquin and Ingrid Hoff from the UBC Botanical Garden, Conrad Lum from GardenWorks Mandeville and Mark McDonald from WestCoast Seeds. Expect refreshments and some free goodies. The evening was entertaining and informative last year but consider bringing a cushion (seating is on the bleachers in the gym). From the recent press release:

Growing food is this year’s hot horticultural trend, and it’s a great family activity, especially when you can help kids learn about the importance of helping others at the same time. You can grow vegetables and fruits in containers, in with your perennials, or in your own backyard plot. You can even grow Tumbler tomatoes or strawberries in a hanging basket!

So please join us March 18^th at 6 pm at St Thomas More Collegiate (7450 12^th Ave., Burnaby) to find out more. Admission is free, but we would appreciate the donation of non-perishable food for the Food Bank. See you there!

With the undeniable passion for gardening in New Westminster, the developing sense of food security and local sources of food, the sustained two-year push to gain another community garden in this city (culminating in the recently announced new plots at St. Mary’s in Sapperton), groups like Plant a Row, Grow a Row, really help form a network of community involvement and responsibility out of a passion for a good hobby. Congratulations to them for another great year, and happy gardening.

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We’ve written about Strong Start here before. The Cole’s Notes version of that post: Strong Start is awesome.

The new Strong Start centre will open March 29 at Connaught Heights Elementary, at 2201 London St. in the city’s West End. Strong Start will share space in the school with New Westminster Parks, Culture & Rec’s long-running Tiny Tots preschool program.

Among the three programs, there should be a time to suit every parent/child schedule. The new program at Connaught will be open 12:30-3:30pm, Monday to Friday. Meanwhile, the program will continue to operate in Sapperton at McBride Elementary every weekday from 9am-12pm, and in Queensborough at Queen Elizabeth Elementary on Monday and Friday from 9am-12pm and Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday from 4-7pm.

Strong Start follows the regular school schedule, which means it is closed on professional development days and school holidays including spring break (which is this week).

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Future Home, by Dennis Sylvester Hurd via flickr

I know some people out there aren’t on board with the City of New Westminster’s decision a while back to purchase the land along the waterfront of the Fraser River. But, like the Olympics, the decision was made, it’s inevitable, and you either have to quietly rage about it or just get on with trying to enjoy it.

Admittedly, I’ve always been one of the supporters of the decision to purchase the land and do something - anything – with it. I can’t stand looking at the wasteland that is that stretch of the Fraser, and I can’t stand the idea that it was just going to sit there and rot. So, I’ve always been “Yay City!” about the whole thing. Yes, I know it cost a lot of money. But so does more or less anything these days, and the addition of park space is win win.

So when we here at Tenth to the Fraser got an email from the very helpful Carolyn Armanini from the Planing Department at the City, with info about the open houses and links and all sorts of other stuff, I had to drop what I was doing and go have a good look.

Here’s a page with all sorts of linky goodness about the project. The important info missing from that page is that there is an Open House and Workshop to finalize the Park Master Plan scheduled for March 17th, 2010 and if you want to have questions answered or find out more or have your say, that’s your chance to do it.

Date: Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Time: Open House 4:30-6:00 pm (drop-in, Front foyer)

Workshop 6:00-8:30 pm (Council Chamber)

Location: City Hall, 511 Royal Avenue, New Westminster

Now. Let’s talk about the design. Here’s the current proposed design concept and rationale, and if you go and have a look at that, you’ll see a few interesting things. They’re running with a thematic design of three areas:  ”Front Porch”, “City Living Room”, and “City Play Room” (check out page 11 of the proposed design package), with activities and structures to accommodate that theme.  They’ve incorporated historical elements, ecological elements and places for festivals or play. Can you imagine a summer music festival there? Where you can bring your kids and play at the playground as the sounds of music and the river fill the air?

I grew up on the Island, and Nanaimo has Swy-a-lana Lagoon near the centre of the city as their nod to an oceanfront town. Swy-a-lana is always busy and features, among other things, a tidal pool, terraced tidal steps, lawns for bocce and other games, and a playground. It’s always been a nice, downtown park in a city laid out like a hub.

But New Westminster is a riverfront city, first and foremost, and the Westminster Pier Park design reflects that. First, and most obviously, it’s on the river. Second, it contains elements of history, ecology, and the future. And third, its proposed elements are actually useful – playing fields, water parks, day moorage places, children’s play areas… these are all things the City desperately needs more of as the demographic of New Westminster changes.

Today, I’m in love with my city.

What do you think?

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The author of the report, Sandra Pace, has been very careful to say “I’m not making recommendations, I’m just presenting options.” Yet based on the information I saw at the Tweedsmuir presentation of Pace’s report, there are good reasons why this review is going on. It is dishonest for the district to ask parents to comment on all these “options” as though they are all equally viable.

The locations of the programs of choice impacts the district’s efforts to balance enrolment at our schools. For example, Tweedsmuir, a “triple-track” school with Montessori, French Immersion and a “regular’ program, is overpopulated and surrounded by portables. Down the road and still in the West End, Connaught is practically empty. An easy way to solve the discrepancy on paper is to move one of the programs of choice from Tweeds (almost certainly Montessori) over to Connaught, and presto! Connaught gets a boost in enrolment and some of the pressure is off Tweeds.

But talk to the Montessori and EFI parents at Tweeds, not to mention those of us with preschool kids who chose this neighbourhood in part because Tweedsmuir is a triple track school, and it’s clear many if not most Tweedsmuir parents would not support moving Montessori to Connaught. The same follows for other schools in the district. No one wants to see kids uprooted from their school.

The district admits that most parents say they don’t want to see programs moved from their current schools. Does the district really think that parents would choose fewer options for their kids at the schools they attend? And if they know what we’re going to say, why are they asking us to bother sending in feedback forms?

Just be honest about it: if we need to move programs of choice, so provide us with the recommended options and tell us why. If we don’t need to, then why raise it at all?

It’s a waste of time to ask parents to reiterate what you already know: we don’t want the schools who have these programs now to lose them. If you think they should be moved, make the case for it. Give us real choices, not fairytale “options” that you can’t really consider given the budget and space constraints in this district. For the feedback to be meaningful, parents must be aware of the district-wide repercussions of these decisions.

Perhaps the idea is that this public consultation will offer some measure of transparency in the process of moving programs of choice, but I have trouble seeing how this feedback process will do anything other than inform trustees which schools’ parents will protest most loudly about these changes. And that’s a cowardly way to make hard choices.

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Photo: Juli Shannon via Flickr

Lately I’ve been thinking about how my surroundings inspire my food choices. Reading my way through the Canada Reads books inspired a date with bacon ice cream, a rise in my comfort food intake, and delight in a layered chocolate torte! But what about where we live? What effect does our city have on our food choices?

My career started in downtown Vancouver in a tall building surrounded by sushi and Asian fusion restaurants. Lunch of choice: sushi most days. It’s clean (no chance of soup slippage on your suit), and is fast to eat. Plus, it looks fashionable! It’s a nice ensemble of different colours and shapes wrapped in a black suit of seaweed – somewhat resembling my corporate ensemble.

Or, a loopy salad for the days you need a break from soy sauce. I say loopy because salad bars abound in Vancouver and the kinds of toppings you can put on your salad make bacon ice cream sound quite normal.

So what happened when I started working in New Westminster?

The first thing I noticed about New Westminster is how much it is a “home.” The inclusive community included an array of late afternoon pies, and local and family run restaurants and cafes. Suddenly I found my lunch of choice shifting towards paninis, real hearty foods, and it-looks -like-your-mother-made-it concoctions.

Sometimes I look at paninis filled with freshly colourful vegetables and wonder: how am I going to eat this? Luckily we have panini presses, and although the vegetables add height, it is great to know that as much as possible they are locally sourced and put together with high quality ingredients.

Some of my favourite haunts are La Rustica and La Lorraine providing a perfect ambiance for office meetings and business lunches. The quiet atmosphere combined with an assortment of freshly made pastas, seafood, and sauces might just be what you need to seal that all important deal.   For a working lunch that’s in a relaxing atmosphere I like The Hide Out Cafe. Computer stations and wireless Internet make sure that you stay connected, while delicious paninis and soups and relaxing music make your connectivity stress free.

You may not have to look far to find what the answer to your lunch cravings — just look at your city.

What are your thoughts? How do you think your city is influencing your food choices?

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I remember being in French class in highschool and not enjoying it. I thought it was such a waste of time since I wasn’t going to use it anyway. Why is my teacher making me make strange linguistic noises? Why are they torturing me? I think I did okay though… a few words did stick like “bonjour” and “merci”.

Fast-forward to my mid-twenties. I just quit my job, got work visas, and was on my way to France with my husband to start a new life. Why France? My husband was fluent in French and I wanted to live and experience a culture that was exciting and different… besides, I had French 10 under my belt and I knew my two French words.

After being in France for 3 weeks, we found out that I was pregnant. I had pretty severe morning sickness (or all-day sickness in my case) which prevented me from going out and socializing. Between keeping my food down and trying to understand what these French people were saying, interacting with people in French was very difficult for me. I remember wishing I knew more French so that I could communicate well and not be so lonely in this foreign country. I started longing for comfort food (read: bland) such as Kraft Dinner. Can you imagine purchasing Kraft Dinner in France? Sacré bleu! Didn’t matter anyway because I couldn’t find any mac n’ cheese in the land of fine cuisine, but I did find microwavable hamburgers there strangely enough.

Ultimately, we went back to Canada after 3 months. I’m pretty sure we’d still be in France if I knew more French.

Now I have a 5 year-old daughter who is in French Immersion. I want to show her the value of learning another language, French in particular. I think it’s working… she likes to insert French words here and there when I least expect them! I think everyone should be exposed to and excited about French. There’s a whole world out there and it’s pretty handy to know at least one other language.

This is where Canadian Parents for French come in. I joined CPF – New West Chapter 6 months ago because they too believe that everyone should have the opportunity to learn French and be involved with activities and events in a French-speaking environment.

The next event coming up is the French-Canadian film night on March 9th, 2010 at 7pm to 8:15pm. So, please come out and enjoy an animated short (in English) and a documentary (in French with English subtitles) for FREE. They are family-friendly films – let’s get everyone excited about French!

CPF – New West will present selected National Film Board films in the auditorium at the New Westminster Public Library (716 6th Avenue) on Tuesday, March 9, 2010 from 7pm to 8:15pm – doors open at 6:45pm. There will be popcorn and door prizes! The event is free and everyone is welcome.

For more information about the screening or CPF, call 604-526-6630.

Film Summaries:

On The Road With La Mouette

On the Road with La Mouette (documentary with English subtitles) follows Louise, Philippe and their three sons – Simon, age 19, Félix, 16, and Étienne, 14 as they hit the road with their travelling puppet show, Le Théâtre de La Mouette.

Oma's Quilt

Oma’s Quilt (animated short in English) is about love, life and change. Oma is moving from Maple Street, where she lived for most of her life, to a senior’s residence where she doesn’t know anyone. Granddaughter, Emily, senses that her grandmother isn’t sure she will like her new home. Wishing to help, Emily does something to ease the burden of such a momentous change in all their lives.

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Wires by soma_slim via flickr

New Westminster residents receiving their electricity bills this week will get a special little insert featuring none other than His Worship Wayne Wright cajoling us to take action and join Team Power Smart, and reduce our electricity consumption by 10%.

Most BC Hydro customers have already been asked to do the same, but those of us here in New West with our quirky independent utility department haven’t yet received the usual BC Hydro mailouts. As an incentive to BC Hydro customers, they are eligible for a $75 rebate if they commit to, and complete, a 10% reduction on their bills for a year. I can’t quite figure out if New Westminster residents are also eligible, because we can’t enter our accounts into the Team Power Smart website because you need a BC Hydro account to do that. Still, over 5,000 people from New Westminster have made the commitment to reduce their energy consumption – and I am one of them.

Check it out.

Be Power Smart like the Mayor!

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Alas, I was led astray by an undated (and apparently stale) PDF - the only information I could find online - which said the program would start at 1:45pm. I discovered at 1:40 when I called the school to confirm that the start time was in fact 1pm and it was just then ending. A second look at the PDF made it clear that the dates didn’t match, and I figured out that it was an old file. I looked for a current version on the SD40 website but found nothing about the program.

As in the ‘programs of choice’ registration fiasco, in which I discovered that I am two years late to register my two-year-old for Early French Immersion or Montessori, the problem is fundamentally one of poor communication with parents. An ad in the Record and a few notices on corkboards around town just aren’t enough. For efficiency, convenience and best overall accessibility, information like this needs to be online, where Google and everyone who uses it can find it.

Take a moment and go look at our School District website:

It’s obvious that it’s been cobbled together by someone off the side of her desk with little to no support. I pity whoever it is who manages this page. It looks like it’s built either by hand-coding the HTML or with a clunky desktop program like FrontPage. Either way it’s got to be time-consuming to update and manage.

New Westminster’s school district might not have the budget of Burnaby, Coquitlam or even Maple Ridge, but even Mission has a decent website with relatively easy to find information for parents.

There’s just no excuse for a website like this anymore. There are lots of free, open-source content management systems all with free and low-cost templates to dress them up. Our website uses Wordpress, which costs us nothing but web hosting fees. Wordpress would be an unusual choice for a school district site, but as many businesses have found, it doesn’t have to be used for blogging. It can be used to help manage more conventional websites as well. Our Wordpress template and all our plugins were free. If no one on staff has the skills to set it up, hire someone to set it up and train a staff person to maintain. If money is too tight even for that, hire a freaking intern. I bet half of NWSS could build a better website.

I’m picking on the school district today, but this problem is endemic to New Westminster institutions. Word-of-mouth is the primary source of information on how things work in this town. But when you’re relatively new here, or segueing into a new phase of life (in this case, parenting soon-to-be school-aged children) it can be almost impossible to find this stuff out in time.

Improving the way New Westminster represents itself online is a vital step to improving how we are perceived beyond our borders. It’s one of the reasons we at Tenth to the Fraser are putting so much of our time and energy into this project, and why we chose our tagline: Hyack the Web.

“Hyack” means “quickly, quickly” or “hurry up” in the Chinook language:

Hyak was a potent word-of-all-trades in the old Chinook Jargon. As an imperative verb, it meant hurry up or get a move on. As an adjective and adverb it was perhaps the most widely-known Chinook Jargon word on our west coast. Hyak! Quick!

- Casselman’s Canadian Words

Hurry up, New West – get online already. Make us proud.

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Wesley at play in the StrongStart sandbox. Photo: Briana Tomkinson.

Strong Start is a free, provincially funded, parent-participation preschool prep program for babies and children under five. It’s a great way for parents and caregivers to get the kids out of the house and socializing with other children while also getting preschoolers a small taste of school routine.

There are currently two Strong Start centres in New Westminster: McBride in Sapperton(9am-12pm Monday-Friday)  and Queen Elizabeth Elementary in Queensborough (9am-12pm Monday & Friday; Tuesday, Wednesday & Thursday 4-7pm). A third centre is planned to open in the West End at the end of March, at Connaught Heights Elementary (drop-in times haven’t yet been announced).

A typical Strong Start day begins and ends with free play in a room full of toys, art supplies, books and costumes. Sandwiched in the middle is a simple “school” routine: clean-up, snack, gym, and circle time.

I can’t say enough about how awesome it is. I can’t even pick a favourite activity. My son adores the free play, but I think the snack/gym/circle routine is really cool and good for him to experience.

The snacks are healthy and yummy, typically including fresh fruit pieces, cheerios and fishy crackers with water to drink. Gym is a lifesaver during the cold and rainy winter months. Parents and kids trek over to the school gymnasium and the little ones run wild with bouncy balls, hockey sticks, wiffle balls and hula hoops. And during circle time, Wesley not only gets to hear a story and play some silly circle games, but I also get to learn a few new tunes & tricks to deploy when he gets too squirrelly at home.

I also appreciate that the Strong Start teachers have no fear of messy activities. My son can choose to be up to his elbows in flour, mash shaving cream all over a table, shake glitter all over a picture, mush around a goopy cornstarch-powered paste or cut construction paper into teeny-tiny pieces – all things I’d been a little afraid to try at home!

Plus, while all this is going on, parents, grandparents and babysitters can enjoy coffee or tea and commiserate about the crazy things small children do. Of all the kid activities I’ve tried, Strong Start has been the best environment for meeting other local parents. The only downside is that the program is so good that it’s very popular (and therefore can get so busy that it can be overwhelming).

I’ve got to give the B.C. Government, our local school district and the others behind this program full props. It’s amazing, and I’m so happy to see it expanding here in New West. In my opinion, it would be a worthy addition to every neighbourhood school. Then, kids could actually attend the Strong Start at the school they will enter in kindergarten, which could go a long way to relieving kids’ (and parents’) anxiety on the first full day of school.

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