New West youth with a burning desire to try out firefighting are in luck.
The 2015 New Westminster Youth Firefighter program includes first aid/CPR certification, a live fire, ladder carrying, searches, hose handling, an interactive auto extrication demonstration, high-angle rescue and a fitness challenge. Applications, which are available at the fire hall at Sixth Street and McBride Boulevard, must be dropped off at any of the city’s recreation facilities this week.
The youth fire academy is open to students in Grade 10 to 12 who are interested in the fire service as a possible future career. It’s being held July 7 to 11 at the Queensborough fire hall (final day is at the Justice Institute campus in Maple Ridge).
Anyone with questions about the youth firefighter program can contact Capt. Dan Wilson at [email protected] or 604-519-1014.
New West to screen documentary film
The community is invited to attend the screening of a documentary film about the persecution of Bahá’ís of Iran.
The persecution of the Bahá’ís and the denial of education to Bahá’ís is the subject of To Light a Candle, a new documentary by Iranian-Canadian journalist Maziar Bahari. The documentary is being screened on Friday, Feb. 27 from 7 to 9 p.m. in the lecture theatre (Room 2203) at Douglas College, 700 Royal Ave. and will be followed by a panel discussion.
“Maziar Bahari was imprisoned in Iran, following the 2009 Iranian presidential elections, and is featured in the major motion picture, Rosewater, which was produced by American TV personality Jon Stewart,” said organizer Eman Elmasri. “The film documents the persecution of the Bahá’ís in Iran and focuses on the denial of their higher education.”
According to a press release bout the event, Iran’s government forbids members of the Bahá’í faith, the country’s largest non-Muslim religious minority, from studying at universities. In response, Iranian Bahá’í professors who were fired from their university posts developed an informal, distance-learning program to try and provide some training in subjects ranging from accounting to biology.
“Though degrees are not recognized by the Iranian regime, some Canadian universities have accepted Bahá’í students into graduate programs,” states the press release. “The Iranian government has attacked that program providing informal university courses, arresting those involved in trying to provide some university education to Bahá’ís. Included among those arrested have been a few with graduate degrees from Canadian universities who have returned to Iran to help provide some university education to Bahá’í youth. This is only one among several ways the Iranian regime is persecuting Bahá’ís – persecution involving arrests, attacks on business, hate propaganda and destruction of cemeteries that has intensified over the past 18 months.
A global campaign, Education is Not a Crime, is being organized and supported by Bahari and a number of prominent individuals, including Nobel Peace Prize winners, educators, writers and actors Rainn Wilson and Mark Ruffalo.
