A COMMUNITY UPDATE FROM THE VILLAGE OF PEMBERTON MARCH 2015 WWW.PEMBERTON.CA THE PEMBERTON PAGE Growing Arts & Culture in the Pemberton Valley Get Involved! NE RYO EVE COME L E W ing a Br d! frien Pemberton Arts & Culture Council Annual General Meeting Monday • March 16 • 7pm Pemberton & District Community Centre Say Yes to Arts AND Culture. Save the Date for the Pemberton Arts Council AGM, March 16, 7pm at the Community Centre. It’s not a wedding, but it could be! Arts and Culture are hitching up together, to ensure a more fruitful union in the Pemberton Valley and celebrate all forms of self-expression for professionals, amateurs, life-long practitioners, dabblers and kids. Find out what’s on the AGM agenda, as the Pemberton Cultural Roundtable disbands, and the Pemberton Arts Council amends its by-laws to reinvigorate that organization to be more inclusive of all forms of culture and all types of practitioners and appreciators. Join the Board. Invest $30 in a membership. Say yes to arts and culture. Find out more by visiting: www.pembertonartscouncil.com. Pemberton, Where Are You At? We know that it takes time to stay engaged, so the Village of Pemberton is making some changes to our community outreach efforts, to ensure we’re reaching you where you’re at. In addition to our ongoing Coffee with the Mayor dates, we’re actively posting news and updates on the Village of Pemberton Facebook page, to the NEWS section at www.pemberton. ca, posting community events at the Roundabout sign, and sending out the eNews every two weeks. This spring, we’re also shifting our Pemberton Page in the Question to a bi-monthly schedule. Every other month, the Pemberton Page will come as a mailbox drop, delivered to your door. We’re not investing any more dollars into communications – just spreading our outreach across a range of platforms, hoping to catch you when you have some free time to catch up on local news. We’re always interested in your feedback. The best way to get that to us is by email: [email protected]. Management Team in Place for 2015 February was a busy month at the Village of Pemberton, particularly for the newly appointed Manager of Operations & Development Services, Pete Neff, and Manager of Finance & Administrative Services, Lisa Teggarty, who brings the management team to full complement. Teggarty immigrated to Canada for “lifestyle” in 2006. “Pace of life in England can be a little bit stressful,” she says, “and we love the mountains. We’re outdoors people.” Teggarty and her husband settled in Canmore, before moving to Terrace to take up a position as Assistant Director of Finance for the 12,000 person city. “Pemberton was one area we really did like when we first arrived,” says Teggarty, “but the work opportunities weren’t here at the time.” Now juggling a 19 month old toddler and two dogs, Teggarty has also arrived just in time to tackle the year end financial reports and the 2015 Budget for the Village of Pemberton. move to Pemberton, he left one of his two cruiser bikes in Victoria. “It was a cruiser I fixed up with fenders and a basket and I walked it out to the bus stop, put the kickstand down and walked away. Someone will get a freebie.” So, it seems there’s room for one more… “I’m looking forward to continuing the good work that Nikki Gilmore has done. It’s always great when the CAO knows the finances and budget inside-out, and the fact that Nikki has lived here for so long is a real asset. It’s so much harder to get a new person caught up on all that history and context.” “I was here briefly two years ago. I really liked Pemberton. The weather, the mountain biking, I understand the skiing is usually pretty good. I’ve been collecting mushrooms with my family forever, and I’m looking forward to doing some gardening. I grew three tomato plants in Victoria and got some pretty good yield, so I’m hoping to take advantage of the agricultural scene here. Honestly, I don’t know why the whole planet is not moving here.” The team is also joined by Pete Neff, as Manager of Operations & Development Services, a position that adds the oversight of new development to the operations role that Lonny Miller recently vacated. “I envision it as the cradle to grave of infrastructure,” says Neff. “Installing infrastructure, taking care of it, then renewing it.” An engineer with over 15 years’ experience, Neff most recently worked with the City of Victoria in the engineering department with infrastructure planning, focusing mostly on underground infrastructure. An avid mountain-biker, Neff’s been busy getting up to speed on the Village’s systems. “I came just after the flood, so our “storm system” is definitely something I want to get educated on, to inform myself about the weak points, where the water gets into the system, where sandbags are most need. I’m very technically orientated. For me, there’s nothing better than putting a system in place that works well.” Neff is excited about experiencing Pemberton by bike - he’s already got his eye on an electric bike, so he can “electrify” his bike-commute from the Plateau to muni hall. Luckily, because of the space and time constraints associated with his COMMUNITY EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS 101: Do you keep your gas tank full? If an emergency happens in our community, it may take emergency personnel some time to respond to you. Individual personal preparedness is key to being able to take care of yourself and your family. The Village of Pemberton will be sharing regular Emergency Preparedness tips to help us become a more resilient community. Keeping your vehicle fuelledup, having a battery-powered radio to access weather warnings and disaster instructions from the radio station, and an emergency supply kit (food and water, medications, flashlights, toiletries, cash, ID and important documents), are 3 signs of preparedness. How does your household rate? COMMUNITY SPOTLIGHT: SENIORS SOCIETY SET SIGHTS ON A MEN’S SHED How do you transition from being a warrior to being an elder? It’s a rite of passage every man must face, but there’s no real place to do that work in Pemberton. At least, there hasn’t been, until now. So, the Pemberton Valley Seniors Society have dedicated their energy to the development of a Men’s Shed in Pemberton. Marnie Simon, with the Pemberton Valley Seniors Society, cites the statistics that have motivated a trend of Men’s Sheds around Canada over the past four years - the highest rate of suicides in Canada are in men 67 or older. This stoic, often isolated segment of the population isn’t necessarily well-versed in talking about their feelings or asking for help. “The women in the PVSS have, over the last years, been worried by how few men we have participating in the activities we hold.” In European towns, senior men are often hanging out at the local square, playing dominoes or chess or bocce ball, watching the world go by and offering their wry commentary on it. In the New World, older men don’t have a space or a ready-built community to join, on retirement from the work-force. As Simon says: “There’s a saying: men work shoulder to shoulder and women work face to face.” Men’s Sheds are a solution that sprang out of Australia, where blokes don’t have man-caves - they have backyard sheds. Frances Hopkins, the Vancouver Coastal Seniors Supported Housing Coordinator had direct experience with them. The Seniors Society has now successfully received three grants to get a Men’s Shed running in Pemberton. They’re also part of a pilot project being run by the University of Manitoba, funded by Movember, to develop a Men’s Shed toolkit, giving the group comprehensive resources to get going. “It really seems to be falling together,” says Simon of the momentum the project has gathered in a few short months. “And the projects are coming in, too!” Doug Mackie founded the first Men’s Shed in Canada four years ago, in Winnipeg, where members meet to play card games, go for walks and work on projects. He visited Pemberton earlier in the winter to share his experiences. The initiative will also benefit from the wisdom of Bill Reynolds who co-founded the very successful tool-lending library in Vancouver and is in the process of moving up here to Pemberton to be closer to family. An Advisory Committee has been set up in Pemberton to represent the men, while Hopkins and Simon keep the money rolling in and the vision growing. Right now, the group are most keen to receive donations for a tool-lending library. “We’d like to have that viable by April.” To get involved, find out more, or donate tools, contact Marnie at [email protected].
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