Kwantlen, KSA distribute on-campus H1N1 vaccines

In a joint effort, Kwantlen Polytechnic University and the KSA are providing free H1N1 vaccinations this week to students and employees at all four campuses.

Since Tuesday, more than a hundred on-vaccinations have been administered at the Surrey and Richmond campuses.

Lesley England, a registered nurse with ProGroup, said the turnout for vaccinations has been quite good. On Monday, she expected to give 70 vaccinations at the Surrey campus. She gave 88.

By 12:30 p.m. on Tuesday, she’d vaccinated another 45 students on the Richmond campus.

“A lot of people who are getting the H1N1 [vaccine] have never had flu vaccines before,” said England, who is expecting a third wave of the H1N1 influenza virus to arrive in February.

Nurses will visit the Langley campus Thursday and the Cloverdale campus Friday in hopes of immunizing procrastinating students.

When the H1N1 vaccine was being developed last fall, the KSA hoped to include it in the health and dental plan. However, the government purchased enough of the vaccine for all Canadians and offered it for free at clinics.

“It’s readily available now. You can go to your doctor and get the shot,” said Eddie Lee, coordinator of the Student Health Improvement Program.

“However, we know that there are students and employees who probably still won’t go–it’s a lack of convenience for them, so we decided to bring it on campus.”

It’s that inconvenience that has kept Nick Mostar, 22, from finding time for the vaccination.

“I’ve been doing schoolwork and haven’t really had the time to go to a clinic or anything,” said Mostar who is in the engineering program.

Not all students have waited quite as long. Brandon Tuason, 21, got the H1N1 vaccine several months ago. He was at risk of getting the virus because, at birth, he was diagnosed with severe asthma, making him more prone to infection.

“We’re in an environment where everybody’s kinda in close quarters,” said Tuason. “Infections can spread really quickly. I think the school is taking a good initiative in preventing a lot of that by giving the immunization away.”

Believe it or not: The unexpected history of three Lower Mainland roads

An award-winning racehorse, a severed leg and a murderer are not typical inspirations for street names, unless you live in B.C.

Those three items are the basis of street names in Richmond, Surrey and Vancouver, and among the weirder stories collected by the cities’ archivists.

City archivists collect and record the histories of the various municipalities, and store it for later reference.
Melanie Hardbattle, an archivist with the City of Vancouver, said her job offers a necessary service to those in Vancouver.

“It’s very important for people to feel a connection to the past,” she said.

Many use the archival records to research city events, family lineage, even the history of their houses.
“We provide an important service to those people. If we didn’t have the records, we wouldn’t be able to provide that info,” she said.

Sometimes that provided info can get a little strange. Below are the three of the wildest stories behind street names.

Richmond – Minoru Boulevard

A quick Google Maps search for “Minoru” in Richmond gives about 500 results, covering one area of the map in little red dots. There’s Minoru Chapel, Minoru Place Senior’s Centre, Minoru Laser Dental, not to mention the actual boulevard itself. Minoru is everywhere.

“Most people think that Minoru is a Japanese name, and has something to do with the Japanese-Canadian community,” said Bill Purver, a Richmond archivist. Purver explained that many Japanese immigrants came to the Steveston area in the 1800s to seek out lives as fishermen.

But the popular name has absolutely nothing to do with the Japanese-Canadian community.

The boulevard et al are actually named after the thoroughbred horse Minoru, who, in 1909, was the first horse to win two classic races, the 2,000 Guineas and the Derby, while wearing a reigning monarch’s colours.

In August of that same year, construction on a Richmond racetrack finished. It was christened Minoru Park in honour of the record-holding horse.

The racetrack was a hit, with 7,000 spectators attending the first day, according to a Richmond News feature. The track closed in 1941, but the name’s popularity had spread, leading to the many things Minoru.

Surrey – Hall’s Prairie Way

It was once the best horse-and-carriage road south, with an infamous claim to fame.

Hall’s Prairie Way, now 184th Street, may be the only British Columbia street named for a murderer.
In 1845, Sam Hall and his First Nation’s wife were the first to settle the southeast Surrey district.
Soon after, Hall killed his wife. He later died in prison.

When the next wave of settlers came they called the place Hall’s Prairie, after the homicidal husband.

“Only a mouldering cabin and a legend remained,” wrote Fern Treleaven in his 1981 book Rivers, Roads and Railways.

He also wrote that the children of the new settlers feared the old Hall cabin, believing it to be haunted.

Vancouver – Leg-in-Boot Square

Since late 2007, B.C. residents have been living with a strange occurrence: severed feet washing up on shore.
These feet are unidentifiable and unclaimed, but also not a new thing. This has happened once before.

In 1887, local police found a knee-high boot, complete with severed leg, in the forests of False Creek.
The police placed the limb outside the station, hoping someone would claim it, according to Elizabeth Walker’s Street Names of Vancouver. No one did.

Stuart Cumberland, a 19th-century writer, mentions the boot in his 1887 book The Queen’s Highway.

“Just before I visited Vancouver, a man had mysteriously disappeared; and, on the day of my arrival, a top-boot, containing a foot and portion of the leg, had been found in the forest of False Creek. This, it was surmised, was all that remained of the missing man, a cougar having disposed of the rest.”

The forested area is long gone, but the story lives on. In a 1976 act, the city named the False Creek location Leg-in-Boot Square.

Sidebar:

If you’re looking for a perfect Christmas present, why not get something truly original: a street named after the recipient. Vancouver’s street-naming committee receives about half-a-dozen letters a year from Vancouverites putting forward the names of relatives and major contributors to the city’s development.

Nominations run the gamut from someone’s great grandfather to the recently deceased Jack Poole, former VANOC president.

“We maintain a fairly extensive list of people who have been nominated,” said Marg Coulson, acting city clerk and chair of the committee. When a name comes before the panel, an archivist researches it, determining the nominee’s contributions to the city. “We really don’t want to be too restrictive, because people make contributions in different ways,” said Coulson.

When the merits of the name are proven, the name gets shortlisted. The list has just over 100 names on it, said Coulson.

If a street is created and a name required, the committee peruses the list to see which fits best, usually someone from the related area. A recommendation is then made to city council. The need for a name is rare, as Vancouver has very little in the way of new developments. The panel usually receives only one request a year.

“One thing I should say is that we do not consider people who are alive,” said Coulson, which could create a slight set-back for those considering self-nomination.

“We’ll have to kill you and then we can consider you,” she said, laughing.

Homeless find refuge in Surrey suburbs

Every night, in the parking lot of a low-rise Whalley building off King George Highway, dozens of workers distribute food and clothing to the homeless at the home base of NightShift Ministries.

Located at 10759 135 St., the outreach program serves the home- less 364 nights a year, providing hot meals, blankets and clothing for the cold and wet with the help of nearly 40 churches.

“We provide for those that don’t have a nourishing meal, that don’t have a fixed address,” said MaryAnne Connor, who founded NightShift in January 2004.

As well as NightShift Ministries, Connor runs a thrift store, located next door, called Sister’s Marketplace, and just down the street is the Surrey Food Bank. She said that residents are quite giving to the homeless and have helped her ministry over the years.

“Ninety-five per cent of our people are volunteers,” she said. “We wouldn’t be able to do it without the generosity of the community.”

Dane Watson of Peace Portal Alliance Church gets to see NightShift make a difference first-hand. He leads a group of Peace Portal volunteers two Saturdays a month, and on those nights, he’s always moved by the people he meets as they come in off the streets.

He recalled a night last fall when he was working in the clothing truck and a man asked for a button-up dress shirt. When he found one, the man’s eyes lit up and he showed much gratitude to Watson.

“He said to me, ‘Bless you, sir. You’ve now made it possible for me to go out tomorrow for a job interview,’” Watson said.

Watson said he knows that other volunteers have had similar experiences, and though some are initially apprehensive about meeting the homeless, he assures them it’s safe and controlled by the ministry.

“In the year and a half that I’ve been doing it, I think I had to call 9-1-1 twice,” said Watson, who acknowledged incidents have happened, but the ministry deals with them and moves on.

Homelessness is less visible here than it is in Vancouver, and compared to the Downtown Eastside, Connor said it’s harder to notice the homeless because Surrey is more geographically spread out.

“It depends on the time of night,” she said. “We serve between 100 and 150 people every night.”

A 2008 report by the Tyee counted 2,592 homeless people in Metro Vancouver, 402 of whom were in Surrey.

“Anyone telling me there’s 400, that’s the actual number of homeless, I would definitely beg to differ,” said Peter Fedos, program manager of Hyland House in Surrey. “If I count just between the three shelters in the area, there’s close to 2,000 different individuals that are seen every year, and I’m turning away 500 per month ’cause I’m full.”

Homelessness in Surrey suburbs such as Fleetwood, Newton and Guildford is hard for local shelters to handle. All of the 35 beds at Hyland’s Surrey location (6595 King George Hwy.) and the 10 beds at the Cloverdale location (17910 Cole- brook Rd.) are full every night.

“Everyone has a different situation that caused them to become homeless,” said Andrea Dodd, assistant program manager of the Cloverdale Hyland House. “Whether it’s mental health, addiction, losing their job, having no support system…. It’s not all just one group or one stereotype of homeless.”

Fedos added that the only thing in common these people have is that they’re homeless or at risk of becoming homeless.”

“A homeless person told me, ‘Don’t confuse someone being homeless with street people,’” said Fedos, who clarified that “street-entrenched” people choose to live on the street and have trouble getting out of the lifestyle.

The street-entrenched are familiar with the street and prefer to be there, according to Fedos.

$4.9 million in renovations for Surrey campus

Kwantlen’s Surrey campus is getting a facelift, funded by $4.9 million from the federal and provincial Knowledge Infrastructure program.

The money will first be put towards the replacement of cladding and windows of building C, said James Meschino, associate director of planning and construction. After that is finished, in January, the rest of the money will go to upgrading other buildings on Surrey campus. According to Meschino, the building has been well maintained over the past 20 years, but wear is starting to show and the cost of maintenance is more then the cost of replacement.

Windows will be replaced with more energy-efficient ones and stucco will be replaced with metal cladding made of zinc, which has a 40-100 year lifespan and will not require painting or maintenance.

Maintenance costs and energy efficiency are not the only goals Kwantlen has for the building. According to an overview of Kwantlen’s Building Expansion projects, Kwantlen wants to reduce its natural gas consumption by 25 per cent and its electricity consumption by 45 per cent for 2010. All of this is in the hopes of getting LEED certified and LEED gold ratings.

LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) is a program created by the U.S. Green Building Council that certifies buildings that are built in an efficient and sustainable manner. The awards range from LEED certified to LEED silver, gold and platinum.

Kwantlen’s Cloverdale campus achieved LEED gold status, while the new library at Surrey campus is shooting for the platinum award, said Meschino. He is aiming for LEED gold status for building C.

Building C will be the first to receive a facelift, mainly because it is an administration building and students will not be disturbed. Meschino is treating this project as a test for when construction moves to other buildings. As for what this means for students at Surrey campus, Meschino said they are hoping to create as little disruption as possible and the worst of it will be looking at scaffolding from now until January.

“There’s going to be noise just like any other construction project, but we’re going to work with both the users of the building and the contractors to make sure those noisy activities can happen either off hours or at times that will be less of an issue for users.”

Get ready to sweat

Bootcamp is a scary term. Visions of an army sergeant yelling in my face flash through my mind. My muscles burn at the mere thought of the intensity it suggests.

Last week on the Surrey campus, fitness trainer Emily Taylor put on a free bootcamp session for those interested in signing up for a six-week program. My prediction about intensity was dead on, but the army sergeant turned out to be a peppy fitness trainer who is motivating, not terrifying.

The work-out began with a few laps, followed by lunges up and down the length of the gym. Ten minutes in and I was already sweating.

About halfway through the work-out, I revisited an old feeling from my cross-country running days back in Grade 7. The I-can’t-go-on-I’m-going-to-die feeling. Sweat was dripping from my forehead, and I’m pretty sure I was a bright shade of pink that is unnatural. But Taylor pushed us on.

I particularly enjoyed some of the new exercises that she introduced. One was a partner exercise in which we used an extremely stretchy plastic rope. Partners both go inside the rope, facing the same direction, approximately three feet from one another. The person in the back does a squat, and holds the rope behind them taught, grounding the person in front. The person in front then takes two large steps forward, touches the ground, jumps up in the air, then takes two steps back and repeats. Switch positions. Hard to imagine? Just as hard to do.

We also did intervals at various stations, a minute at each. They included step intervals, jump rope and more. And for abs, I found a new fun workout that a friend and I could do at home – without the horrible exercise that is the crunch. The exercise involved both partners lying on their backs, feet facing one another and linking those feet. With a weighted ball in one person’s hand, in unison, both partners sit up, pass the ball to the other person, and go back down to the floor. Crunches with a friendly twist.

The workout ended with lunges across the gym, and doing “monkey jumps” at each side. Monkey jumps require you to hold a weighted ball. With feet shoulder-length apart, you squat and, keeping your arms locked straight, swing your “monkey-arms” up jump and repeat. My legs were burning and almost buckled nearing the end of the exercise.

Aafter some wind-down stretches, it was over and I was thankful, yet felt surprisingly rejuvenated and energetic. I learned a few new exercises and was pushed harder than I ever would have pushed myself on my own.

I was expecting to only recommend this class to those who can handle high-intensity workouts. As it turns out, Taylor is perceptive to the needs of each person in the class, and it is safe to say that anyone could take this class, regardless of fitness level.

But that doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy.

• • •

Those who want to sign up; contact Taylor at (604) 599-2307 or email her at emily.taylor@kwantlen.ca. You can also visit the program website for more info.

Prices are to be announced and the classes don’t officially begin until next week. They will take place on Tuesday and Thursday, from 4:30-5:30 p.m., in the gym on the Surrey campus.

Upcoming Lecture on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Israeli activist Jeff Halper will be delivering a lecture on the situation of Palestinians in Gaza on Wednesday, Jan.28 at 10 a.m. at the Surrey Kwantlen campus. Professor Hapler is the co-ordinator of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolition, and is a critic of Israel’s policy towards Palestinians. His recent book is entitled “An Israeli in Palestine.”

The lecture will be held at 10 a.m. in room D128.

Two singers, two poets for second open mic event

With less than a dozen people in attendance, four of which were performers, the second Open Mic Night finally got underway an hour later than advertised at Kwantlen’s Surrey campus on Nov. 5.

Despite the lack of audience, Johann Holekzo, one of the performers, thinks that “Open Mic Night is a good opportunity if you have some words or tunes on your mind.”

Holekzo thinks that the event can be beneficial to the audience as well. He says it’s live entertainment, which is something that he enjoys more so than listening to his stereo.

“The audience doesn’t have to pay attention to the musician and it’s a good place for people to socialize,” Holekzo said.

Kari Michaels is the main organizer for Open Mic Night, along with the newly-elected Director of Events and Student Life, Vanessa Knight.

Michaels originally planned to have Open Mic Nights every week; the Nov. 5 show was the first one since the opening event in September.

One of the biggest problems with the event is getting enough performers to come out and play, which is why the event is held once in a while instead of weekly.

To encourage performers, Michaels and Knight had pizza to hand out to audience members as well as performers on Nov 5. Michaels also decided to open up the night with poets as well as singers. Two poets, one of them Michaels, read from their works.

Atrium tiles at Surrey campus a thank-you from potters

Ceramic tiles made by the Fraser Valley Potter’s Guild, Kwantlen staff, alumni and students are currently on display in the atrium at the Surrey campus, waiting to be mounted in the library.

David Lloyd, ceramics instructor and vice-president of Fraser Valley Potters’ Guild, was in charge of the project, which saw between 40 and 50 volunteers create 500 tiles.

According to Lloyd, the Fraser Valley Potters’ Guild, largely made up of Kwantlen students and alumni, donated clay and resources to Kwantlen Polytechnic University as a “thank-you” for allowing them to meet in the ceramics lab since the group was formed in the early ’70s.

Lloyd said it “took hundreds of hours of work,” from May until September, to complete the tiles. They kept going until they “used up all the clay and resources.”

Students and staff designed 30 tiles and made molds from the originals.

“Caring for molds is a whole piece of work in itself,” said Llyod. “So, we did most of the mold-making in May and April and started pressing the tiles through June into July. Then everything else became firing and glazing.”

The tiles are displayed temporarily on the floor of the atrium until they can be mounted in the library once renovations are complete.

Pubs nights first step toward Kwantlen campus pub

The fall semester brings Kwantlen students a new status as a university, a new president and along with that, approval for a pub night.

The Kwantlen Student Association approached the school’s new president, Dr. David W. Atkinson, about creating a pub on campus soon after he arrived last July, said Nathan Griffiths, Director of Operations for the KSA. Atkinson was on-board with the idea and suggested starting with a pub night, as opposed to a fully licensed pub. Although the KSA is interested in creating pub nights on all campuses, Surrey is the only campus that currently has space to do so, Griffiths said.

Pub nights will be held Fridays in the Grassroots Lounge on the Surrey campus. “There are still finer details to work out with administration,” said Griffiths, adding that the KSA plans to focus on this project after CramJam is finished.

Griffiths says that the KSA has a “gentleman’s agreement” with Atkinson to aim to have a fully-licensed pub in one year.

“Campus pubs are typically a hub of campus culture,” said Griffiths. “Now that we are a university, its important that we foster bringing students together, bringing students and professors together.”

Added Atkinson: “We’ll take another look at it at the end of the semester and I am absolutely convinced it will have been a success. We will look at doing more in the spring.”