Steveston losing small-town feeling?

The fishers have laid out their catches and are selling them to the locals walking the Steveston docks on a Saturday morning. Many kinds of fish and seafood, including crab, prawns and halibut, are on display, along with the boats that crowd Fisherman’s Wharf. This has been a source of income for seamen since Steveston was first founded as a fish- ing village in 1890. There is a smalltown feeling to it all.

Turn around though, and you might get a different feeling. The other side of the wharf is loaded with restaurants and shops for the tourists. Walk a block to the east and you see three coffee houses — Blenz, Starbucks and Waves — all within one glance. A block north, there’s a McDonald’s nestled into the old train-station building across from Steveston Park and Community Centre. With more commercial development moving into the Richmond subdivision, there are those who think the sense of community in Steveston is getting lost. Given that it’s one of Richmond’s first neighbourhoods, some feel that the “gritty” feel of Steveston should be a priority.

Dave’s Fish and Chips’ manager Bryan Scott is one of them. “[The development] is becoming a little

too much. The way it’s being built is taking away from the overall appearance of Steveston,” Scott said.

“There were lots of older buildings that were one storey and and now there are two-storey buildings with the apartment above. It’s becoming bigger than it should,” added Scott, who has worked at Dave’s for 17 years.

Dave’s has been in Steveston since 1978 and although it’s moved a couple of times, business has been pretty solid, even after McDonald’s opened just down the road.
Scott said that McDonald’s moved in at a time when a lot of apartments were being built and more people started to live in Steveston.

Development might not be that bad, said Terry Crowe, manager of the Policy Planning Division for the City of Richmond and member of the Richmond Heritage Commission.

Crowe said that of the 90 buildings in Steveston Village, only 17 are protected by the Steveston Area Plan, a heritage-conservation strategy. The other 73 buildings can be demolished or changed in any way. The 17 protected buildings cannot be knocked down and the exteriors must comply with the 14 federal heritage standards set by Parks Canada.

According to the Parks Canada Standards and Guidelines Report, some of those standards are:

• Conserve the heritage value of a historic place. Do not remove, replace or substantially alter its intact or repairable character-defining elements. Do not move a part of a historic place if its current location is a character-defining element.
• Conserve changes to a historic place which, over time, have become character-defining elements in their own right.
• Find a use for a historic place that requires minimal or no change to its character-defining elements. The exteriors of the buildings must stay the same, but the interiors can be altered.

“We’re just interested in the exteriors of the buildings. We don’t care what is done with the insides, so that gives the village a lot of flexibility,” Crowe said.

Dave’s Fish and Chips is one of the protected buildings. The structure itself is made up of brick and wood with two bright-blue doors and big bay windows facing Moncton Street. On the east side of the building, there’s a take-out section and some picnic benches.

Another one of the 17 heritage buildings is the post office/museum, which looks like an old house sitting on the corner of Moncton and First Streets. It was Steveston’s first bank, built in 1905. The top half of the building is painted burnt orange, the bottom is a creamy yellow. The house exterior is accented by thick, white trim. There is a park in the back that is shaded by leafy trees in the summer. The outside of the building has been preserved to match the federal heritage standards, but the inside is a functioning post office and museum dedicated to Steveston’s history.

Crowe also explained that some of the 73 buildings not protected by the Steveston Area Plan are privately owned, so the City of Richmond cannot decide what businesses can move into that space.

“It’s like when an apartment is built. The city cannot pick and choose who the tenants are,” said Crowe. “The City does not interfere with privately leased spaces. I get that there’s some anti-McDonald’s opinions and all that, but the City has no control over it. We do not deal with occupancy.”

Crowe said he feels that as long as the Steveston Area Plan and federal heritage standards are followed, the new commercial development doesn’t affect the small-town feel of Steveston at all.

He said that people want someplace to live, work and play in a community and because of that, both commercial development and heritage buildings can co-exist in Steveston.

“You could create a Disneyland in there,” he said, “but no one wants it to go that far.”

Green Wednesdays are more than a free movie ticket

Film screenings and discussion forums on contemporary issues are a common part of university culture, but Gary Jones thinks his evening series of documentary films and speakers at Kwantlen’s Langley campus is more than just a clichéd fixture of campus life.

For the last two years, Jones, chair of Production Horticulture at Kwantlen’s Langley campus, has been organizing a monthly evening of films and discussion on sustainable agriculture, called Green Wednesdays.

Beginning in October and ending in March, the event happens on the second Wednesday of every month in one of the labs that Jones teaches in at the Langley campus.

Jones began the event as a government-funded speaker series in the fall of 2008, but government funding was eventually curtailed, forcing him to look elsewhere for material to inspire discussion.

Luckily, people involved in the Green Ideas Network, a Burnaby-based environmental advocacy organization, were looking for a new venue for to the Surrey Environmental Film Festival. Jones linked up with the network, and began hosting evenings of film, discussion and networking around an array of environmental issues.

So far this year, Jones and his students have shown features dealing with peak oil, energy use and climate change, all films that highlight the need for people to consider more sustainable lifestyles. This Wednesday, Jones, his students and some members of the Langley community will gather to watch Good Food, a 2008 film about the resurgence of small-scale, family-run farming initiatives in the Pacific Northwest of the United States.

Participation in setting up and promoting the evening has become required coursework for students in Jones’ Sustainable Horticulture class. Students help organize the event and do assignments based on the films being shown.

“It’s a good way for the students to get involved and to make connections out there with the organic community and the public who turn out,” said Jones.

Jones is enthusiastic about the potential for exposing people to the broader issues that affect the environment. He is aware that the evening has an outreach potential, in that it brings people to the campus who might not otherwise.

“One of my desires for the Green Wednesdays was to use it as a link between the community and the school, so people in Langley or Surrey or wherever could come on to the campus when they might otherwise not do so,” said Jones.

“The evenings are bringing new information to the students, but they’re also getting the students to share their information with the public. It’s a good way of extending the education to the wider community,” said Jones.

Increasing number of papa bears stay in the den

There’s an old stereotype of the family: Mom stays home with the kids while dad goes off to work to support his wife and children.

That stereotype doesn’t necessarily apply anymore. More dads are staying home while moms are the family breadwinners, says Kwantlen sociology instructor Seema Ahluwalia.

Those are fathers like Chad Skelton, reporter for the Vancouver Sun and current stay-at-home father. He’s in the middle of an unpaid leave of absence from his job to stay home with his 18-month-old son.

“I’ve actually enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would,” said Skelton. “I was worried that as the year got closer, that I might find it boring, and there are moments, but I really enjoy it a lot.”

Skelton, 33, has been home with his son since March and although he loves it, his role at home still isn’t understood by some older men.

“People my age are completely fine with it, but people, especially older men, from my parents’ generation, assume that it would be boring to stay home for a year,” he said. “They always ask me what I do with my time.”

His response is that he takes his son out to places in the city such as
the aquarium or the park on nice days. And his son has two naps a day, giving Skelton some time to work on the weekly parenting column that he writes for the Sun or to mark papers from the class he teaches one night a week.

Not all men take to stay-at-home parenting like Skelton does, though.

“I’ve got a friend who works at one of the police departments and under his contract, he can take three months off once he has a kid, but he’s not sure if he’s going to because he might get teased.”

Ahluwalia, who has been teaching for 10 years, finds the worries of a stay-at-home dad not being a “real man” common.

“We hear a lot from stay-at-home dads about the stereotype of not being treated like a real man because they’re not getting a real job,” she said.

“Men still feel that pressure about not being the breadwinner. It’s one of those stereotypes that chips away at their masculinity.”

Ahluwalia said that after 40 years of cultural changes, before which a father as the stay-at-home parent was “utterly inconceivable,” roles have changed into more of a whocan-actually-do-it-right-now style of parenting.

“With the economy becoming more and more expensive over the years, that has forced the ways of parenting to change. Sometimes, the woman has a better job and, for that family, it might be a better solution with the dad staying home,” said Ahluawalia.

Ahluwalia is a working mother and her husband stays at home with their child for most of the day. She and her husband are known as “radical unschoolers,” which means they don’t send their child to public school. They let their son “learn about the world around him in ways that engage him.”

Her husband, a ceremonial leader in his Lakota First Nation, takes their seven-year-old son around to all his lessons, which include piano, horseback riding and art.

“My husband and I see ourselves less as teachers and more like facilitators. Our son wouldn’t be able to have the schooling experience he’s having if my husband didn’t stay at home,” she said.

Statistics show that stay-at-home dads are becoming more common in Canada.
“In 1976, there were 36,000, whereas now, there are 77,000,” said Ahluwalia.

With more women getting into the workforce, she said, it’s not as easy for a man to graduate from school, get the ideal job and live the stereotype.

Extreme measures to avoid extreme flu

How far would you go to avoid getting the H1N1 virus, more commonly known as swine flu?

Some countries have been taking extreme measures against the virus, but local health authorities say that’s not necessary.

• In April, Egypt ordered the slaughter of the country’s 300,000 pigs, believing it would calm people because pigs are seen as unclean, reported the Sydney Morning Herald.

• The majority of the Japanese public has worn masks since May to avoid the H1N1 virus, thousands of schools were closed and testing centres were flood with people, reported Foreign Policy magazine. Also, Japanese politicians have announced that they will not shake hands with anyone until the H1N1 scare has died down.

• The Big Gig Weekend festival at the Royal Bath and West Showground in Britain has taken out insurance of up to one million pounds for performers Katherine Jenkins, James Morrison, Boyzone and Diversity, in case they come down with the virus, reported the London Telegraph.

• According to l’Agence France-Presse (AFP), when a case of H1N1 was confirmed in a passenger coming from Mexico, Hong Kong quarantined the hotel where the traveller was staying, and tired to track down all the passengers who were on the plane with the man.

• China was prepared to close schools and convert a holiday camp into a quarantine centre when the virus hit the country, reported AFP.

• The Local (Sweden) reported that some Swedish churches have started serving fortified wine at communion, hoping that it will reduce the risk of the spread of H1N1, while others have advised Swedish faithful not to attend communion.

But all the action that needs to be taken is being prepared, said Roland Guasparini, the Chief Medical Officer at the Fraser Health Institute.

“I’ve heard of people avoiding air travel and keeping kids out of their activities, but there’s no need to do anything much more than that,” said Guasparini. “What you need to do is stay healthy, sleep, eat well, get some exercise and keep away from sickies.

“If you do have to look after someone, put a mask on them, so that they’re not coughing all over you, and then wash your hands thoroughly or use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer.”

Though it’s a bit of an odd idea, Guasparini said that the Japanese politicians may be on to something by not shaking anyone’s hand.

He said that if you shake hands with somone with the virus, and then eat something without washing your hands, you could get the virus. Guasparini thinks that the ru- mour of how H1N1 is contracted – humans getting it from pigs – has been put to rest because of media coverage. He said that it’s actually the other way around: humans give H1N1 to pigs or to other humans.

“[The disease] is passed on per- son-to-person through the eyes, nose and mouth, usually through hand-to-hand contact with objects and then touching your face, where the cells attach to the inside of your nose and/or mouth.”

Richmond steps up and rocks out: Community centres expand the music scene with local band nights

Everybody loves to see their favourite stars perform, but nobody likes the empty wallet when the show is over.

For example, tickets to the Oct. 23 Rascal Flatts concert cost at least $85 for a decent seat, which for some is too much for four hours of music.

A way to remedy that is to see the talent showcased a couple nights a month at Richmond community centres, for $5 or less.

Youth programs at both Steveston Community Centre (SCC) and South Arm Community Centre (SACC) run the band nights on Fridays during the Night Shift program, a weekly youth hangout night and now Cambie Community Centre is getting in on the act.

The Cambie centre, at the corner of Cambie and Jacombs roads in Richmond, is hosting Richmond based band Venice Queen’s first all-ages show on Oct. 23. Opening for them will be local youth bands Ill and Fallen, and The Chase. All three up-and-coming bands play serious rock music, and the Cambie Night Shift coordinator is excited that they’re playing at the community centre’s first ever band night.

“We’re just beginning to explore the musical side of things at Cambie,” said Brandon Bloomfield. “If this night goes well, we plan on having more.”

Venice Queen is one of the winners of the 2009 Vancouver Seeds competition, held by The Fox radio station for indie bands. The band has also played a number of shows downtown, but wanted to become better known in its hometown, so agreed to headline Cambie’s band night, which has a $5 cover charge.

Venice Queen has also played at South Arm Community Centre, which, along with Steveston Community Centre, has regular shows featuring high-school-aged and young adult bands.

Alvin Li, a Steveston Community Centre youth development worker, said that the band nights are more about the kids and their music than making money..

“It’s the chance to give youth in the area an opportunity to play and show their talents,” said Li. “We rarely ask for more than $2, sometimes it’s free [to get in] or… we ask for clothes during the winter to give to charity.”

SCC presents five or six acts a night, consisting of acoustic music with some rock and alternative thrown in. Li said they also want to expand into hip hop.

Most of the youth-oriented events at Steveston, including band nights, are “run by youth for youth,” said Li. He also said it’s a chance for SWAT, Steveston with Active Teens program, to learn how to organize events and members to develop leadership qualities.

Band nights at South Arm Community Centre are also run mainly by its youth group, Mosaic, and organized with the help of Andy Roy, a youth worker.

SACC has a band night once a month, featuring three or four local bands who play some metal, screamo, rock and alternative music, with a $5 cover charge. The next show at SACC is Nov. 13; the bands haven’t been announced yet.

Wearing their faith keeps their identity: headcoverings worn out of religious respect

Dur-e-aden was apprehensive about wearing the hijab when she first moved to Canada two years ago; in Pakistan wearing the hijab was normal, but in Canada she stands out when walks down the street.

“It gives away my identity. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s bad, but I’m ok with that,” said Dur-edan. “People should know who I am, like I don’t want to hide it or anything.”

The Islamic religion requires a woman to dress modestly in loose clothing covering her body, except for her hands. The wearing of the hijab comes
from the Qu’aran, the Islamic religious text, which says that Muslims, not just Muslim women, should dress modestly.

“The main purpose of it is to like protect your chastity, so you’re not supposed to reveal to much,” said Dur-e-aden, who started wearing the hijab when she was 14.

Wearing the hijab doesn’t pose any problems for Dur-e-aden, who wears it everywhere she goes. She even has a hijab designed for playing sports.
Dur-e-aden isn’t unique. Whether you’re wandering down Main Street or hanging out downtown, one of the most visible indication that Vancouver is a multicultural city is many people wear some form of head covering.

The Muslim population in B.C. is approximately 56,000, making it the third-largest such population in Canada after Ontario and Quebec, according to Statistics Canada.

B.C. also has a large Sikh population. The 2001 census reported there are 125,000 Sikhs living in B.C., many living in Surrey and East Vancouver.
According to Pritam Singh Aulakh, president of the Akali Singh Society, Sikhism became prominent in the 15th century, and men began to wear the turban because it was considered unnatural and unreligious to cut the hair from any part of the body. Sikhs would wear a turban to keep their uncut hair neat and tidy.

Sumanpal Singh, a student at Kwantlen Polytechnic University said that those who choose not to wear the turban are not really Sikhs.
“Wearing the turban is doing Gods will,” said Singh.

Aulakh said that if you are living your life in the way of God but choose to not wear the turban, you are still Sikh.
“Believing in God in Sikhism is doing good things…don’t tell lies, work for a living and share with others, and be truthful,” said Aulakh. “So if you are not practicing these things, then you are not Sikh.”

In Sikhism and Islam, the head coverings are gender-specific. In Judaism, men and women can wear a head covering called the yarmulka or kippah.
The yarmulka and the kippah are the same thing, but, said Rabbi Infeld of the Beth Israel Synagogue, “yarmulka” is Yiddish, from a dialect of Hebrew that grew out of German. The word “kippah” is Hebrew.

A kippah is a small round hat that sits on the back of the head and, according to Infeld, is worn as a sign of respect to God and to all people.
Many Jews don’t wear the kippah all the time, many wear it only when praying and eating.

“I personally keep my head covered at all time,” said Infeld. “People who are more observant of Jewish law tend to do that.”

To Infeld, a Jew does not have to where a kippah to be faithful.

The Jewish population is small in B.C. with only 21,000 Jews. The Jewish community in Vancouver is concentrated around Oak Stre

Beer for bus fare: cheapest drinks in town

It’s mid-semester and mid-terms are closing in, your school savings may be disappearing and you might be feeling the need to blow off some steam.

Spending $10 on a cocktail at Lux on Granville may not be some-thing you want to do, but you can still have a rocking night out and not wake up in the morning wondering where your money went.

The first thing you need to know about having a bevvy on a budget is that beer is the cheapest drink on the menu, so if you’re into the $8 martinis at Cactus Club you’re going to have to make some sacrifices.

A survey of 15 different places in Vancouver revealed that most places charge about $5 a beer before taxes, which are 10 per cent on liquor. Two beers will cost you $10 to $11 on average, and don’t forget to tip your bartender or server.

The standard for tipping, according to Lonely Planet Canada, is 15 per cent on the bill before tax, but if the service is excellent, 20 per cent is recommended.

The important thing to know is when the good drink specials are on and plan around them. Check out the Tuesday-night $7.50 pitchers at Whineos on Granville Street. The cozy wine-cellar atmosphere attracts the mid-20’s to 30s crowd and the pitchers of beer only come out on Tuesdays.

Any other night you pay by the bottle, which will set you back $5.75 each.

Hungry? Order a burger at any Vera’s Burger Shack and add a Granville Island Honey Lager for $3 any night. If you wait until Wednesday, you can get two beers and Vera’s massive burger for $9.95; go on a Friday and get two beers for $6.
Any given Tuesday you can hit up The Cambie in Gastown for $7 pitchers, which give you about four glasses of beer, depending on the size of the glass.

You can also grab a pint there on Mondays for $3.50 and any other night you won’t pay more then $4.50 for a beer. The Cambie is underneath a hostel and has a lot of character, with its old glass windows and big communal picnic tables.
It’s most unique feature is the picket fence that runs up the centre of the bar. Half of the bar has a restaurant license and the other half has a pub license, which means you can’t cross over the picket fence.

The clientele is mixed, and you may be sharing a table with someone from Europe, a UBC student or a local Gastown resident.

Richard Saunders, the manager of The Cambie, said he knows that the cheap drinks are what attracts people, but said that it’s the relaxed vibe that keeps them coming. “There’s just no pretentiousness here,” said Saunders.

Bars like The Cambie may have a laid-back vibe, but if you don’t want to share your table with a stranger and just want a beer at a nice place and are willing to pay a little more, you can get pints at the Yaletown Brew Pub on Sunday nights for $4.50.

The pub serves comfort food including meat loaf, schnitzel and pizzas, which you can get on Sundays for $8.

But be warned, any other night a pint will run you $6.50 and if you decide to change your beverage to some wine, it can cost you up to $11 per glass before tax.

Emerging from the shadow of divorce: Today’s youth slower to marry than previous generations

In a 1979 article in the Globe and Mail called “Did the family unit become the casualty of the seventies?” a bleak picture of what divorce had done to society was painted.

“There were runaway wives and mothers; children were kidnapped by divorced parents who didn’t have custody; middle-aged men going through what psychologists termed the male menopause walked out on their wives of 20 or more years and took up with much younger women,” said the Globe and Mail.

The article described children of divorced parents as “latch-key kids” because they lived in high-rise apartment buildings without parents waiting for them after school.

Barbara Mitchell, a sociology professor at UBC said she feels that the image of divorced families in the past wasn’t fair.

“A lot of these children were regarded as different. I think there was this stereotype that divorce would lead to all kinds of problems with children and family dysfunction, and kids would grow up to be delinquent criminals and have a lot of these psychological problems,” said Mitchell, who has studied family relations for 20 years.

Thirty years after the Globe and Mail article was written, being a kid of divorce is, for many, just being a part of the club.

Erica Bauer was 15 years old when her parents split up and she joined most of her friends who had already been through a family break-up.

“When I was in elementary school, most of my friends’ parents were getting divorced then and I was one of the only people who had parents together,” said Bauer, now 23 and living with her boyfriend. “When they ended up getting divorced, I was just like everybody else.”

According to StatsCan, divorce hit its peak in 1987, around the time many generation Xers were kids and Ys were being born. In that year, according to StatsCan, there were 96,200 divorces. The laws for divorce were softened in 1985, when the Divorce Act was revised and anyone was allowed a divorce as long as they could prove they had lived apart for one year.

Divorce became an everyday occurrence, and with that the opportunity arose for generation X and Y to do what other generations couldn’t: break with tradition.

Instead of going from dating to marriage, many people started taking a middle-step by living together in a common-law relationship before marrying or choosing not to marry at all.

In 1991, according to StatsCan, there were 719,000 common-law couples in Canada, and in 2006 the number nearly doubled to 1,377,000.

“I don’t think that the institution of marriage is going away and the ideal of wanting to marry somebody for a lifetime, you know till death do us part … I think most young people still ideally want that,” said Mitchell, who sees co-habitating before marriage and common-law relationships as the way of the future.

The average age of marriage has gone from 24 for women and 27 for men in 1968, to 32 for women and 34 for men in 2005, reports StatsCan.

Colin Macdougall, 25, can’t envision himself getting married, but doesn’t write it off. Macdougall was 17 years-old when his parents divorced, something he says affects the way he thinks about marriage and relationships.

“I think it is probably right for some people, but I think it’s a little different in this day and age to get married,” said Macdougall. “People have different values and I think people are beginning to understand that they don’t need to be in marriages as much anymore.”

In 2005 there were were 71,000 divorces according to StatsCan. A 26 percent decrease that Mitchell feels can be attributed to generation
X and Y’s cautious attitude towards marriage, a trait which distinguishes them from their parents.

However, Mitchell said that even with all the precautions, marital instability is a common trait among those from divorced parents.

Quarantined down under

When Charlotte Stokes boarded the plane to go from Vancouver to Australia in August, she was amused by the people who wore masks to protect themselves from catching the H1N1 virus. It hadn’t occurred to her at that time that they were protecting themselves from her.

“I walked into the plane and there were all these people wearing masks, and I thought to myself what stupid over-reacting people,” said Stokes.

Stokes was going to Sydney to be a bridesmaid at a friend’s wedding. Two days after she arrived, she was quarantined in her mother’s house because she was suspected of carrying the H1N1 virus.

When the plane landed, Stokes was fatigued and achy, but assumed it was just the effects of a 20-hour flight, so she went to meet the bridal party for a dress fitting.

Soon after, the symptoms started getting worse.

“I saw all the bridal party and then the next morning I felt really sick. It felt like I had taken an aspirin on an empty stomach,” said Stokes.

She went to a clinic and told them that she had just arrived back from North America and they automatically assumed she had the H1N1 virus. Because test results would take about a week to process, she was quarantined at her mother’s house.

“Immediately if they thought you had the swine flu you weren’t allowed to leave the house for five days,” said Stokes, “so I went all the way to Australia to sit at home for five days.”

At first she did not believe she had the H1N1 virus because she didn’t have all the usual symptoms. According to the World Health Organization (WHO) the symptoms of H1N1 are those of any other flu: fever, aches and pains, sore throat, coughing, diarrhoea and headaches.

Stokes said she did not experience the cold-like symptoms such as coughing and a sore throat, but certainly felt the other flu symptoms such as alternating chills and fever. She said she felt as if she was hungover from dehydration and had an intensely high fever.

To Stokes, who usually combated the flu by resting for a day and then heading back to work, the H1N1 virus was like the flu on steroids.

“I seriously have never felt so sick in my life,” she said. “I could not have left the house even if I wanted to. I couldn’t even get up to get a glass of water without a huge amount of effort.”

WHO makes clear that those with underlying health issues and weakened immune systems are the most vulnerable to H1N1 and will have more severe symptoms than a healthy person who catches the virus.

“I could see how if you already were really sick how this could put you over the edge,” Stokes said.

After the five days of quarantine, Stokes had another checkup and was given a clean bill of health. She found out a few days later that it was the H1N1 virus that had made her so ill.

None of the people in the wedding party contracted the virus and Stokes was able to be a part of the wedding, although she did have to deal with the stigma of being the “swine-flu girl.”

Despite concerns, children ‘safe as ever’

The ways we keep children safe have changed from generation to generation, but nothing compares to the way today’s kids are monitored.

Events such as Richmond Centre Mall’s Halloween trick-or-treating for kids, which brought them off the street and into a supervised atmosphere to go store-to-store collecting candy, are becoming commonplace.

“I think events like mall trick-or-treating are crucial these days to making parents feel comfortable,” said Pamela Lau, a teacher at Small Talk Preschool in Vancouver. “It’s not like it used to be. Parents these days pay much closer attention to who’s watching their kids and even who’s watching the people watching their kids.”

As a result of increased fear of abduction, preschools and daycares have adopted many new security measures. According to Lau, all children at her school must be signed in and out by both their approved parental guardians and one of the teachers.

Even though people’s fears continue to rise, Statistics Canada num-bers show no substantial increase in the number of Canadian children abducted by strangers over a 10-year period from 1997 to 2007.

During those 10 years, the average number of missing children cases filed with the RCMP yearly was 63,896, with an annual average of only 42 of those being kidnappings by strangers. That number makes up less than 0.001 per cent of all missing-children cases filed during that time period.

“I truly believe children are just as safe as they ever have been, maybe safer,” said Susan Jones, an earlychildhood educator at a downtown Vancouver children’s centre. “With the increased attention facilities pay to children’s safety today compared with 20 years ago, it would be much more difficult for a child of this generation to be taken, period.”

Jones, who has worked in early childhood education for more than a decade, said she believes increased media coverage of every abduction, or even potential abduction, goes a long way to increasing concern.

In June, the RCMP warned Richmond parents that there was a potential kidnapping threat, and that the target was of elementary-school age and Asian descent. This warning was widely distributed through the media, even though the information the RCMP had obtained about the threat was minimal, according to a Vancouver Sun article.

“We completely understand it might instil fear in people but we want to get the message out to parents. I can’t see any other way this can be done,” Cpl. Jennifer Pound told the Sun.

The RCMP’s plan appears to have worked, because parents kept an even closer watch on their kids than usual, and there were not any kidnappings.

Every school in Vancouver has a school-liaison officer whose job it is to educate parents and students on dangers such as Internet luring and “stranger danger.”

“We are very proactive with the youth in Vancouver, and work very closely with the Vancouver School Board,” said Const. Lindsey Houghton, media relations officer with the VPD.

Twenty years ago, police techniques for finding missing children included putting their pictures on milk cartons. These days, authorities have many new programs in place to help in the search.

One relatively new tool police utilize in the recovery of abducted children is the Amber Alert Program. The program, which was first used in the United States, was introduced in Alberta in 2002 and was Canada-wide by the end of 2005. Since its inception, there have been 29 Canadian Amber Alerts activated, including four in the last year.

In order for an Amber Alert to be issued by the RCMP, the abduction must first meet the program’s four criteria. Law enforcement must confirm that an abduction has taken place, the abducted child must be under 17 years of age and be at risk of death or serious injury, and there must be a sufficient description of the child, the captor and the captor’s vehicle.

Amber is a acronym based on the U.S.-program name: America’s Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response. Amber Alerts in both Canada and the U.S. are distributed via radio stations, cable TV, e-mail and electronic traffic-condition signs.

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