Breslau teen moves on to semi’s of Shining Star competition

One competitor from Woolwich has made it through to the second round of the Shining Star vocal talent search held by Kitchener radio station Faith FM.

Breslau’s Daniel Gascho is one of 33 singers to make it through to the semi-final round this weekend, which represents almost half of the 60 singers who participated in the preliminary round of competition in late March and early April.
“It feels great. I’m not sure what to expect, but I’m just grateful that I’ve made it through to the next round,” said the 16-year-old.

The competition, started back in 2007, is an opportunity for undiscovered Christian singing talent in the region to be recognized by the musical community, said Faith FM general manager Dave MacDonald.

“Canadian Christian talent hasn’t had much of an outlet in the past because Christian radio is still fairly new to Canada compared to the U.S.,” said MacDonald. “They have literally thousands of radio stations, while we only have few dozen.”
The remaining singers will be broken into three groups and the semi-finals will be hosted by three churches in Waterloo Region; the International Gospel Centre in Kitchener on Apr. 27, Koinonia Christian Fellowship in Bloomingdate today (Saturday) and Calvary United Church in St. Jacobs tomorrow (Sunday). Gascho performed in Kitchener.

MacDonald said that those three churches were selected because they have the space to accommodate the competition, and have also been tremendous supporters of the event in the past.

“In St. Jacobs the church has always been extraordinarily supportive, as has Koinonia in Bloomingdale,” said MacDonald. “It’s really worked well for us to be outside the main streets of Kitchener and Waterloo.”

Following the semi-finals this weekend the field of competitors will be further reduced to between nine and 12 competitors for the finals, to be held on May 12 at Calvary Pentecostal Assembly in Cambridge. The cost to attend the semi-finals is free with a good will offering, while the cost to attend the finals will be $15, with tickets available through TicketWindow or local Christian bookstores.

The winner of the competition will receive a prize valued at $20,000 which includes a professional recording session at Revelation Sound in Guelph for a full 10-song album, along with promotional materials and marketing expertise including photography, video, and help in launching their own website.

All competitors who advance to the finals will also receive a free performance coaching session and a free vocal lesson as well.

MacDonald hopes to see a large crowd this weekend, as well as at the finals, where upwards of 1,000 people have attended in the past.

“The crowds get pretty vocal about who they’re coming to support, it’s kind of neat because everyone brings their own family and friends along and it’s a fun time. Kind of like Canada’s Got Talent on a smaller scale.”

The large crowds do not intimidate Gascho either, as he has been performing since he was 11 years old in front of large crowds at church, and he leads the service each week at The Gospel Centre in Breslau where is father is the pastor.
“I don’t really have nerves; it’s more about what the judges are going to say.

“I think it’s going to be an interesting competition. There are some very good singers.”

For the performances this weekend, doors open at 6 p.m. and the competition begins at 7. For more information visit www.faithfm.com.

Tags: James Jackson

Voting against provincial budget best course, says MPP

Kitchener-Conestoga MPP Michael Harris says that the province is no further ahead following the budget agreement between the NDP and the Liberal’s ratified by Tuesday’s vote in the Legislature.

The New Democrats followed through on a promise not to defeat the minority Liberal government by abstaining from voting on the budget, allowing it to pass 52-37. The PC party had already said it would vote against the budget after it was unveiled late last month.

“We’re in no better shape than we were at any other time, especially moving forward,” Harris said on Wednesday afternoon.

The deal between the Liberals and NDP was struck following revisions to the budget by the Liberals to appease some of the NDP’s demands, including an agreement to increase Ontario Works payments by one per cent and to provide $20 million in funding to help rural and northern hospitals achieve more efficiency.

The highlight of the deal between the two parties, however, is a so-called “tax the rich” plan that will charge a surtax of two per cent on Ontarians earning more than $500,000 per year, under the condition that the approximately $500 million annualy that would be collected by the tax would go towards paying down the provincial deficit, and that the tax would have a fixed, five-year lifespan.

Harris said that the deal was further proof that Premier Dalton McGuinty couldn’t be trusted, and that the money raised through the surtax was “chump change” compared to the cost-cutting suggestions made by the Conservatives, such as a mandatory public-sector wage freeze which would save upwards of $2 billion a year.

“The Premier said that he wouldn’t raise taxes, and he broke that promise again,” the MPP added.

“The area he should be focusing on is the expenditure side of the ledger. That is where we feel he has the greatest ability to make an impact, and he failed to do so. We don’t have a revenue problem, but he’s always looking for new streams of revenue because he’s a spendaholic.”

Harris also doesn’t believe the Conservatives were left out in the cold when it came to negotiating a new budget by outright refusing to accept it when it was tabled last month. He said his party wasn’t willing to play political games with the Liberals, adding that the province has gone adrift and will only float further off course under the Liberal party.

“I want to clear up that misconception that we didn’t even bother to read the document, which is false,” he said. “We had to draw a line in the sand.”

Late last week Harris, along with several other PC members across the province, submitted their nomination papers for their ridings, a move that the Liberals claimed was a clear sign that they were “gunning for an expensive [and] unnecessary election” but Harris said it was merely a formality and in no way signaled that his party wanted a second election in just seven months.

“The last thing folks want or need is an election right now. I’ve heard that clearly from our residents. However, I have heard that we can’t afford to continue down this path, either, or reckless spending.”

Tags: James Jackson

Music to their ears

It takes a village to raise a child, and Elmira’s Rachel Clark hopes her hometown community can help her ongoing work to support a Kenyan orphanage when she holds a benefit concert today (Saturday) at Trinity United Church.
The variety show is titled “Until Alone is Over” and will include performances from 50 of Clark’s friends and family, and audiences can expect a show ranging from acoustic duets to solo dance routines. There will also be African jewelry and other items for sale, and all money raised will be sent to Kenya to help ongoing orphanage and community work.

Clark first travelled to Kenya back in 2009, but has returned every year since and made a deep connection with her host family and with the children at the Faraja Children’s Home in Ngong – about 40 minutes outside the capital city of Nairobi.

“Even before I went I had always had a heart to help and I’ve been overwhelmingly blessed,” she said while sitting in her Elmira home.

“I can’t help but have compassion, especially after being there and seeing how they lack the basics. It’s so overwhelming that we can live at such extremes in our world, and it’s not fair.”

After her first trip with the Global Volunteer Network, Clark made the trek in 2010 with two of her friends, and last year she brought a group of nine other Canadians to volunteer at the orphanage and to tour the Kenyan countryside in conjunction with the Waterloo-based Bucket List Travel Adventures.

This year, however, Clark will not be making a return to the country she loves so dearly, for several reasons. The trained dancer and actress has been offered a role in the upcoming stage production of Annie – “I can’t perform forever and once you get your foot in the door at a professional theater you want to keep it there” – but she also hopes the money she saves from not travelling will be put to better use by the Kenyan people.

She is helping her host family build a bigger house so they can accommodate more volunteers from around the world, and she hopes they can convert their existing home into a safe house for street kids or families looking for a fresh start.
This will be Clark’s second benefit concert for her ongoing work in Kenya. The first was in 2008 in preparation for her first trip, and the fact she can now speak personally about the work being done there and show photos of her working with orphans will inspire others to do the same.

“It’s an interesting perspective now, having gone three times,” she said. “They’re going to see pictures of me with the kids and it makes it more tangible.”

Her travels even inspired her cousin, Heather Clark, to write a novel incorporating Rachel’s stories of Kenya. “Chai Tea Sunday” was published earlier this month and Heather will be at the show to read excerpts of the story and to sign copies of the book.

“We went through my journals and pictures and she videotaped me and interviewed me. We kept in touch while I was in Kenya the last two times, and she wrote a book based on some of my experiences there and characters that I’ve come in contact with.

“It’s literally as if she was there. I read the book and thought ‘these are my words’ and it’s still sinking in.”

Never one to sit still for long, Clark has toured the world while working on a cruise ship, and is currently working as a waitress in Waterloo while also teaching Zumba dance classes and working at Reid Woods group home in Elmira – work that she says has helped make her transition from working in Kenya to returning to North America.

She hopes to return to Kenya in the next few years and take her parents with her to show them the work she has done and to teach them about the country she has grown to love so much.

The benefit concert on Apr. 28 will have two show times, 4 p.m. and 7:30 p.m., and admission is $10 for adults, $5 for children and students, or whatever you can. It will be held at Trinity United Church, 21 Arthur St. N. in Elmira and the church is wheelchair accessible and care for young children will also be provided.

Tags: James Jackson

Wellesley firefighters, college students burn down the house

Fire students from Conestoga College had the rare opportunity to witness a house burn in a controlled setting on Apr. 13 as Wellesley fire crews razed it to the ground. The house, located at 3438 Weimar Line, had been donated to the fire department earlier this year.

“The current owner purchased the property and were planning on redeveloping the site and they had taken out a demolition permit on the house,” said Wellesley fire chief Andrew Lillico.
“It was basically a donation of the building for the purposes of training.”

A thick plume of smoke rose to the sky around 10:30 a.m. Apr. 13 and was visible as far away as St. Jacobs as about 25 students from the college participated in a range of training exercises, from water relay exercises to the application of water and the affects of various fire attack techniques.

At no time, however, were students or fire crews permitted inside the building while it burned.

“We follow National Fire Protection Association Standards, which prohibit us [from entering],” said Lillico. “If we want to do interior firefighting scenarios we would do that at the training centre, which is a more controlled environment.”
The fire raged for more than two hours as training officers from the college took students through various scenarios on how to attack a fire, where to spray water for the greatest affect, how to safely climb to the roof and combat a fire on the second storey, and how to operate manual water relays from a pond some 1,300 feet away – a reality in rural firefighting with no access to municipal water supplies or hydrants.

“I think the students were very impressed,” Lillico said.

The fire was also the final stage of training in the home that had been used by the fire department for exercises since early March. Lillico said his own volunteers had been practicing ventilation tactics, search-and-rescue and self-rescue exercises, as well as aerial operations and water supply and tanker operations for the past six weeks or so.

Before the fire they also ensured all utilities had been disconnected and that there were no hazards left inside the building.

The opportunity to practice on a real structure is a rare one, as many homes that owners wish to donate to the fire department simply aren’t in good enough condition.

“It can’t be in such a state of decay that there is no value to it,” the fire chief explained.

A couple of hours after it all began, fire crews used the aerial ladder truck to extinguish what was left of the flames and a backhoe was on the scene for cleanup.

For the dozens of passing motorists that stopped to watch it must have been an odd scene watching dozens of fire fighters watch a building burn to the ground.

“This was more […] to observe the fire rather than to see if you can physically put this fire out,” said Lillico.

“It was never our intent to extinguish the fire.”

Tags: James Jackson

Gale Presbyterian ready to complete move to new church

For more than 140 years, Gale Presbyterian Church has stood on a quarter-acre lot at 2 Cross St. in Elmira, but on Apr. 15 the congregation held its final service as the parish comes close to completing a nine-year journey to find a new location.
Tomorrow (Sunday), the church will officially open its new building, located near the intersection of Barnswallow Drive and Church Street.

“It almost feels like it has come too fast,” said Kim Denstedt, a member of the congregation for 23 years and who, along with Lee Coulman, co-chaired the relocation steering committee.
“It’s a day of mixed emotions, for sure.”

The service last Sunday had to be developed from scratch by Rev. Linda Bell, who has been with the church since 1994, as there were no guidelines for moving from one church to another.

“Most of them are about dissolving a congregation, or amalgamating two congregations, or opening a new church, none of which we were doing,” she said following the final service that saw a packed house overflow into the main foyer.
She said she tried to strike a balance between those who cannot wait to move to the new location – “of which there are many” – and those who still feel the nostalgic tug of the old church and may be reluctant to say goodbye.

She wrote what she called the Rite of Transition and in it she entrusted 10 symbols of the church, ranging from the cross and baptismal bowl to the pulpit bible, to members of the congregation to keep at their homes for the week and to bring to the inaugural service at the new location.

Members of the congregation were also supplied with reusable cloth bags and were asked to take home a bible and praise book from the pews and to return them at the next service, the beginning of which will include a tenor soloist singing “Bless This House.”

During the song, Bell will ask for the sacred items to be returned to her one by one to symbolize the completion of the move.

The closing service included numerous classical hymns that took advantage of the old pipe organ, which Bell said would be left behind because of the costs involved in moving it. The final hymn was “Joyful Joyful We Adore Thee” to the tune of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9.

The search for a new location began in 2003 when the church launched what it called their Voyage of Discovery to determine if it would be feasible to find a new location for the church. Much has changed in Elmira since builder Hiram Martin and an architect were selected to build the church at the site in 1868.

Now, the church is landlocked and after building a new addition in 1986 it has nowhere to grow. There is no parking available except on the street, and the church is difficult for visitors to find.

The new site is certainly much larger and in a more visible location. Situated on about 3.5 acres of land, the new church is approximately 10,000 square feet on the main floor, with an extra 4,000 square feet of space in the basement – nearly double the approximately 8,000 square feet of total space available to them in the old church.

There will also be 110 parking spaces, a new dishwasher in the kitchen, and numerous other perks that the congregation is excited about.

This move didn’t come cheap, however. The land cost upwards of $300,000 per acre to purchase, and the building itself cost about $2.5 million to build – a considerable increase over the $450 it cost to build the original church back in 1868 on land that had been donated four years earlier by Robert Kenning.

Part of the costs were offset by an anonymous donation of $1 million near the beginning of the project, and the rest was realized through tireless fundraising campaigns such as pie baking, selling gift cards, talent auctions and summer galas.
“We thought the million dollars would buy the land and part of the church, but it barely paid for the land,” said Denstedt. “That’s a lot of pies.”

The church has been sold to a local couple who intend to use it as a dance studio and a residence, and Bell said she was happy to learn that they didn’t intend to simply tear the building down.

“It’s really nice to know that there is going to be music. It’s a different use of music, but it’s still music, and there will still be joy and movement.”

The first worship service will be held at the new location at 10 Barnswallow Dr. in Elmira at 10:30 a.m. tomorrow (Sunday).

Tags: James Jackson

Big changes in store for next season’s Sugar Kings

When the Elmira Sugar Kings 2011/2012 season opened back on Sept. 9 there was a buzz in the air as fans packed the Dan Snyder Arena to watch the Sutherland Cup Champions collect their rings and watch their championship banner rise to the rafters.

The players didn’t disappoint, either, and the team went on to defeat the visiting Owen Sound Greys 5-2 in that game, eventually stringing together a team-record 14 straight wins to start the year.
Not bad for a team with a completely rebuilt defence, a new head coach, and a new general manager.

The team ultimately fell far short of their goal of defending the Cherrey Cup and Sutherland Cup, as they bowed out to Stratford in a hard-fought six-game semi-final series that ended on Mar. 26, with injuries and undisciplined play the primary culprits in their early exit.

“It was a tale of two seasons,” said head coach Dean DeSilva earlier this week. “On paper, we probably had the most talented team, and we definitely had the oldest team in the league, and at times that was our nemesis.”
The Kings took a different approach this season, moving away from the traditional dump-and-chase Sugar King hockey fans are familiar with to adopt a more skilled game with a veteran lineup of forwards in order to compete in what they knew would be a very competitive Midwestern Conference.

To put the competitiveness of their season into perspective, the Sugar Kings set a team record for wins in a season with 40 (eclipsing the previous record of 38) and points in a season with 82 (previous record was 81) yet they still only finished third in the conference.

The team carried eight 20-year-olds on the roster: six forwards, defenceman and team captain Colton Wolfe-Sabo, and goaltender Nick Horrigan, yet they had one of the youngest defensive units in the league, leading to some questions as to how management decided to assemble their lineup.

The January trade of all-star first-year defender Craig Johnson to Listowel for forward Brett Catto epitomized that mentality.

“People may ask why we played all these older players. It was a damned if you do and damned if you don’t situation,” said DeSilva. “What we looked at as coaches is we wanted to ice the most experienced lineup that we possibly could.”
DeSilva said that the team is expecting all eligible players to return next season, meaning the Kings will have a strong core of returning defenders, led by veteran Clayton Greer, but the forwards are going to be decimated by the loss of the top two lines of players.

Michael Hasson, Brett Priestap, Scott Nagy, Brad Kraus, Lukas Baleshta, Riley Sonnenburg and Andrew Smith are all gone next season, along with their 155 combined goals – or 65 per cent of the Kings’ total offense from last year.
“That’s a huge amount of offence, and yes, I’ve actually got a blueprint and a plan in place for next year,” said DeSilva.

Add the fact that their captain and starting goaltender are gone as well, it is clear that more than a few players are going to have to step up next season.

DeSilva’s plan involves a return to the more traditional style of Sugar Kings hockey of banging, grinding and fighting for every inch on the ice, as well as a heavier reliance on players like Cass Frey and Clayton Greer to lead the way.
In goal, it will be nearly impossible to replace Nick Horrigan, who is graduating from Junior B this season, but DeSilva said the job will be backup goalie Justis Husak’s to lose come training camp, and that the transition should be made easier by greater experience on the blueline.

The work to execute that blueprint begins in earnest next month when the Kings will hold their spring rookie training camp May 12-13 in Cambridge. The camp will be for players hoping to move up from the minor hockey ranks as well as the Junior D and C levels of hockey, and no returning Kings players will be on the ice that weekend.

“What I’m looking for there is work ethic and their compete level. What I like to look for is their attitude and how they react after they get checked – do they continue to battle? What’s their body language?” said DeSilva.
Registration forms for the spring camp are available on the Sugar Kings website, elmirakings.pointstreaksites.com.

Tags: James Jackson

Major Atoms take third in OHF

Playing in a home-game atmosphere all weekend, the Woolwich Major Atom AA team secured a third-place finish on the Ontario Hockey Federation finals last weekend in Kitchener. The boys were seeded second in the four-team tournament following the round-robin portion of the competition with a record of 2-1-1, but lost in the semi-final matchup to the North York Knights.

“It was bittersweet, but the kids really held their heads high,” said team trainer Tim Rollins. “To finish third overall in the province is pretty fantastic.”

Rollins said that the competition was fierce and that by the end of the weekend the boys were both physically and mentally exhausted. The tournament consisted of three periods of 15-minutes each, compared to 10-10-15 in the regular season and 10-15-15 in the Ontario Minor Hockey Association playoffs.

“Over the span of five games and two days, that’s a lot,” said Rollins.

The tournament started on Friday morning where the team earned a tough 2-1 win over North York, but dropped a 4-1 decision to the eventual champion North Bay Trappers that afternoon.

The team then secured a 3-2 win over London and a 2-2 tie with the Kitchener Jr. Rangers to earn a second-place seed after the round robin.

The team couldn’t put it all together in the semi finals against North York as they fell 3-1. North Bay would go on to beat North York 2-0 in the finals to take the title.

Rollins noted that the crowd for all of their games was incredible as friends and family made the drive from Woolwich to watch the team compete, making all of their games feel like they were being played on home ice – even in the match against the hometown team from Kitchener.

“We can’t thank the fan support we got enough, it was incredible, and they were home games for us,” said Rollins. “We were so excited, the boys in particular, to see the crowd and to see all the kids that came out.”

With their season now over, the team is already looking forward to next year and Rollins said the coaching staff are excited by the fact that most of the players from the current squad are planning to return next year and hopefully mount a defence of their OMHA title and make a return to the OHF finals.

And despite not coming home with the gold, the players understand just how much they actually accomplished this season.

“Although it was bittersweet losing they will remember this for a long time and I think that most of the boys by the time they left the dressing room were holding their heads real high,” said Rollins.

“They did Woolwich really proud.”

Tags: James Jackson

A new take on aboriginal issues

When news of the horrific housing situation in the northern Ontario aboriginal settlement of Attawapiskat first broke last fall, many Canadians were confused with how conditions in the community could have become so bad. Dropping temperatures and health and safety concerns due to inadequate housing was what prompted a state of emergency to be declared. Many residents were living in tents, trailers and temporary shelters that lacked running water and electricity, and some were even living in buildings right next to the site of a raw sewage spill from 2009 that was never adequately cleaned.

Those conditions created a public outcry and political debate over what should be done for the residents and how the $90 million that the community has received in federal funding since 2006 was spent.
For St. Jacobs’ Mark Bauman, the feelings surrounding the conditions at Attawapiskat are much more visceral.

“I was ashamed to be a Canadian,” Bauman said Monday, a little more than a week after the contractor and Woolwich Township councillor returned from a two-week trip to the isolated Aboriginal community as part of a Mennonite Central Committee Ontario project called Building Hope.

Bauman, who has more than 35 years of construction experience, wanted to donate his time and talents to the community after an announcement was made at his St. Jacobs Mennonite Church by the MCCO that they were looking for volunteers for the purpose of helping to rebuild and renovate some of the dilapidated homes in Attawapiskat, as well as learn more about the challenges that affect the people of that community.
He submitted his application and was readily accepted onto the team.

Since 1981 MCCO has received invitations from the community to improve the quality of life for the approximately 2,000 people that now live there.

There are currently 122 families living in condemned housing that was built in the 1970s and has not been properly maintained, and there are 19 families living in makeshift tents and shacks without electricity, running water, or plumbing. The MCCO estimates that some 250 new homes are needed to alleviate the over-crowding ad sub-standard housing in the Mushkegowuk Cree community.

Bauman arrived at the MCCO north office in Timmins on Mar. 19 and after a couple days of orientation, the group of three volunteers travelled 500 km north to the community. He said that from the moment they arrived he felt welcomed by the people that call Attawapiskat home.

“We were strangers, we were a minority definitely in their community, and they would stop and talk to us; you wonder if we would do the same here, stop and talk to a minority that was working in our community,” Bauman said.
Attawapiskat is very similar to towns in southern Ontario, Bauman explained. They have a hospital, an airport, an arena and a community centre. There is an elementary and a high school, a number of churches, coffee shops, gas stations, a fire department and government offices.

Yet the community is so remote that it is only accessible by air year-round. It is accessible by water in the summer as it sits on the edge of a river that is one of the main drainage rivers of James Bay. It was historically a seasonal camp site that had been visited for centuries by aboriginal ancestors, and families traditionally left the location during the winter.

That all changed in the 1960s and ’70s when the temporary dwellings gave way to more permanent buildings. Yet those buildings have not been properly maintained, leading to the problems seen today.
While in the community, Bauman worked on about three separate houses to try to improve the standard of living for those families. Most of the work was focused on removing wet wallboard or floorboards, and any insulation that was wet or moldy. He replaced the floors and the ceilings in several bathrooms, as well as the front entry on another home.

Bauman admitted the work he could do was limited mainly by the lack of supplies. Given the isolated nature of Attawapiskat, supplies must be transported in via an ice road from the south, but because of the warmer temperatures this spring the road broke up nearly six weeks early, which meant many supplies failed to make it to the community this year.

“You don’t go next door to Fairway Lumber; you have to plan six months ahead,” he explained.

As a result Bauman said that he had to be much more frugal with his demolition jobs than he would be working at his job with Menno S. Martin Contracting, located in his hometown.

“We would tackle one room in a house, or part of a room, and get that done and try and finish everything up in one day,” he said, “whereas around here I would just gut the whole room.”

The actual construction process was similar to his experiences working in more southern climes, but with one major exception: in Attawapiskat the frost can reach depths of up to 10 feet, compared to about four feet here, and there is even permafrost in some areas, meaning a lot more care was required when installing underground water pipes to prevent them from bursting.

“Their main waterlines are 18-feet below ground,” Bauman said, adding they placed styrofoam around the pipes as well to insulate them from the cold, and that a second piece of pipe surrounded the original pipe to prevent frost from tugging the joints apart.

While he may not have accomplished as much work as he wanted to before returning home on Apr. 5, Bauman said that the trip really opened his eyes to the challenges that face the First Nation’s people of Canada.
“I’ve learned to take a second look. When people say ‘they should just move’ well, no, they shouldn’t just move,” he said, noting the fact that they were living on that land centuries before Europeans ever set foot in North America.
“It really bothers me when people say ‘here’s the solution.’ First Nations people are rightly suspect of ‘White Man’ solutions.”

Bauman believes that a movement towards the Habitat for Humanity model of volunteers building new homes hand-in-hand alongside the people who will actually be living in those homes could be adopted for future projects like this, and he is acting as a construction liaison for MCCO to determine what needs to be in place before any similar projects next year.

“I’ve laid out what has to happen each month for the next year in order to make a new house or a renovation, and it would be the chief and council that would need to identify where the need is the greatest and we’ll work with that.
“Obviously this isn’t the whole solution, building one house, but it’s a way of building a bridge and saying that we here in the south understand and sympathize with their plight.”

Tags: James Jackson

MCC collecting e-waste through to Earth Day

The Mennonite Central Committee has just the answer for the piles of electronic waste accumulating in our basements and attics. From Apr. 10 to Earth Day on Apr. 22, five MCC locations, including the thrift store in Elmira, will be collecting e-waste, and funds raised will be put towards sustainability features ranging from rainwater harvesting and solar technology, to improved energy efficiency at the organization’s new building that will be built at 50 Kent St. in Kitchener.

The other four locations are the Waterloo thrift shop at 50 Bridgeport Rd. E., the MCC head office at 50 Kent St., the New Hamburg Thrift Centre at 41 Heritage Dr., and the MCC office in St. Catharines at 22-595 Carlton St.

“It’s very important,” said Betty Marshall, the general manager of the Elmira thrift store located at 59 Church St. W. “The MCC envisions communities worldwide in relationships with God, one another and creation, and this will help fulfill that part of their vision statement.”

Given the nature of thrift, Marshall said that the store receives a lot of e-waste, but given the uncertainty of whether or not the devices still work (or how well) the store does not re-sell those electronic devices to the public. Instead, MCC used to take the waste to the landfill for proper disposal,

But about a year ago the Ontario Electronic Stewardship starting paying local electronic recycling companies to purchase e-waste, Marshall said, and now MCC receives about 11 cents per pound of waste which translates into about $500 a month for the Elmira shop.

“This is a great money-maker for thrift shops – that $500 is significant,” said Marshall.

The money collected between now and Earth Day will go towards greening their new provincial headquarters, which will be located on the same site as the current headquarters.

Unveiled last year, the plan is to bring their current thrift shops located at 50 Bridgeport Rd. E. in Waterloo and 335 Lancaster St. W. under one roof, along with a branch of the Mennonite Savings and Credit Union (MSCU), an office of the Mennonite World Conference, an office of the Mennonite Foundation of Canada, as well as the Mennonite Church of Eastern Canada.

They must raise $4 million in capital and $12 million in total to expand their operations, with hopes of completion by 2013 to coincide with their 50th anniversary in Ontario.

Acceptable electronics for donation range from CD-ROM drives and computer keyboards, to radios and speakers. A complete list is available at the organizations website, http://mcco.ca/earth-day-2012.

Tags: James Jackson

Annual Ride n’ Stride event will raise funds to fight cancer

Walkers, runners and cyclists of all skill levels are invited to the annual Ride n’ Stride event in Elmira on Apr. 29, organized by the Canadian Cancer Society. The non-competitive event encourages participants to complete a 4 km, 10 km or 20 km course with the goal of raising funds for research and support services for people in Waterloo Region that are living with the disease.

“The problem is that so many of us have been touched by cancer,” said Sarah Bradshaw, the chair of the Woolwich event and herself a survivor of breast cancer.

“We always have a core of people that come back. There are some people in the community who have participated for well over 20 years, which is quite cool.”

Last year some 50 to 75 participants in Elmira raised nearly $10,000 for the Canadian Cancer Society, and over 30 years in the region the Ride n’ Stride has raised more than $2 million benefiting people in Waterloo Region and beyond.

Participants familiar with the event will also be familiar with the route, as it will once again start out at Elmira District Secondary School, follow Arthur Street north to the Kissing Bridge Trail, and then along the trail to either Floradale Road or Side Road 18 at Wallenstein, depending on how far you choose to go.

“It’s anyone who can get themselves to the Kissing Bridge Trail and back again,” laughed Bradshaw.

“Whether they’re riding or walking or running, we always have people pushing strollers and doing whatever works for you.”

Every year between 75 and 100 people participate in the Elmira event, but numbers were down slightly last year due to a scheduling conflict that placed the Healthy Communities Month triathlon on the same day as the Ride n’ Stride, but with no such conflict this year Bradshaw is hoping for a strong turnout and for upwards of $15,000 for crucial cancer research.

Participants can register on the day of the event, which is free and has refreshments and entertainment by the band Wishful Thinkin’, which includes musicians Larry Lesperance and Paul Bossenberry.

You can register and collect pledges online at www.greatride.ca or by contacting Bradshaw at (519) 669-2599 or emailing angusquinn@rogers.com.

Tags: James Jackson