Colleen Perrault is the lucky winner of the top prize in the New Westminster Lions Club's Gardener's Grand Slam Raffle.
The Lions Club recently held the raffle to raise funds for student scholarships at New Westminster Secondary School. The top prize is an eight-by-eight-foot garden shed built by women in a trades training program offered by the New Westminster based United Food and Commercial Workers union.
"The happy winner, Colleen Perrault, bought a ticket, not for herself, but for a neighbour who had longed for a garden shed and was particularly fond of gnomes," said Louisa Lundy, president of the New Westminster Lions Club. "And so our happily ever after ending begins with a gnome finding home, sweet home."
It seems the Lions had a lonely garden gnome in search of a home. He'll accompany the shed to its new home.
New Westminster Scotiabank branches sponsored the event by selling tickets and matching raffle ticket sales.
Doug Bodner won the raffle's second prize (plants, seeds and time with a horticulturist), and Linda Davidson from the Fort Langley Lions Club won third prize (plants and seeds).
"It worked out very well," said Lions publicist Vic Leach. "We raised probably $1,500 to $2,000."
ACTIVIST SPEAKS
A peace activist who lost his legs when he was run over by a munitions train while protesting a U.S. weapons shipment to Central America will soon be visiting Douglas College.
Brian Willson, a Vietnam veteran who has been speaking out for peace and justice since his military service, will appear at the college's New Westminster campus on Feb. 28 to talk about U.S. imperialism and the state of the environment. He'll also discuss his memoir, Blood on the Tracks: The Life and Times of S. Brian Willson.
Blood on the Tracks tells the story of Willson's journey from growing up in small-town America, where he was a "commie-hating, baseball-loving Baptist," to fighting in Vietnam, to protesting former president Ronald Reagan's Contra wars in Central America, to his continued goal of educating the public about American foreign and domestic policies and about environmental sustainability.
Jeff Schutts, a former U.S. Army officer, Douglas College history instructor, and co-director of the college's Institute for Ethics and Global Justice, said Willson is "not your typical speaker."
"Through his experiences in Vietnam and visiting Third World countries, Brian Willson has developed an informed, radical critique of contemporary society, both in terms of its warmongering and its environmental destruction," Schutts said in a press release. "And his critique doesn't just point out what's wrong with the world but includes a vision of what we can do to make it better. His is a message of simple global justice: 'We are not worth more, they are not worth less.'"
Willson lost his legs and fractured his skull on Sept. 1, 1987 when he was run over by a U.S. government munitions train during a protest of weapons shipments to El Salvador and Nicaragua. He gets around on two prosthetic legs, and on a three-wheeled arm-powered hand cycle, which he rode from Portland to San Francisco on the first leg of his book tour last summer.
"He is an impressive man, tall on his artificial legs, with his flowing grey hair and a hippie headband," Schutts said. "But what he has to say is far from the expected."
The talk takes place on Tuesday, Feb. 28 from 2: 30 to 4: 30 p.m. in Room 2203, 700 Royal Ave. It's free, open the public, and will be followed by a question and answer session.
For more information, visit douglascollege.ca.
TAKE TO THE RIVER
If you're interested in the fieldtrip of a lifetime, the Rivershed Society of B.C. may have the trip for you.
The society is accepting applications for the 2012 Sustainable Living Leadership Program, a three-week field course that spans the length of the Fraser River. From Aug. 2 to 26, participants will journey by foot, van, canoe and raft from the Fraser's headwaters near Valemount B.C. to where it meets the shores of Vancouver, 1,400 kilometres away.
"There is no better way to learn about sustainability than to travel along the river, seeing firsthand how the issues affect Fraser River communities," said Fin Donnelly, who has swum the Fraser River twice to raise awareness about threats to river ecosystems and what can be done to protect them.
Donnelly, who founded the program that's now in its ninth year, currently serves as the member of Parliament for New Westminster-Coquitlam.
Participants must be 19 years of age or older and physically fit. Community volunteer experience is an asset.The application deadline is May 18. More information can be found at www.rivershed.com.
Send Around Town ideas to Theresa, tmcmanus@royal cityrecord.com.
