Daniela Ginta, Freelance Writer

Gratitude makes the journey better. Kindness, too.

Tag: Kamloops Page 7 of 8

Kids Need Many Things; Among Them, A Community School

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On June 5, 2014

In Armchair Mayor Column, Kamloops, Life Stories, Social issues

Initially published as a column in the AM News on Friday, May 30, 2014. 

One of the books both my sons loved when they were little was ‘The Little House’ written and illustrated by Virginia Lee Burton, first published in 1942. It tells the story of a house that stood ever so happily on a hill, surrounded by apples trees and the sound of children.

The house stood as the hills became more populated and a new city grew around it until – spoiler alert! – city life almost crushed the little house. Luckily, it was saved by the well-meaning descendants of the people who built it.

Lots of meaningful lessons to say the least.

We read it countless times. Every time they would look at the detailed drawings they’d find yet another thing they’d missed last time.

Here’s what I will always remember about it, unrelated to the way it was written. I bought the book when my oldest son was two and we had just moved into a neighborhood that had an old street with many old stores. Among them, a children’s bookstore with many gems and reasonably priced.

A year later, the bookstore closed and was sorely missed. Rent and maintenance costs were too high.

Many old stores in Vancouver had the same fate and so did many old, yet well-built heritage houses. Unfortunately, there was no timely arrival of well-meaning descendants of the people who built them to save them all…

The recent discussions about the closure of Stuart Wood Elementary brought back the memories of those days and much more.

A few days ago, many feared that the fate of the school was to be announced during a School Board meeting, but the said meeting was in fact a presentation of the available options.

The alternatives to what we have at the moment are many and interesting at that.

One is moving Stuart Wood Elementary to where the Beattie School of Arts now stands and thus following a chain of events that imply a massive shuffling of students between many schools. Or we could renovate it to bring it up to a modern standard and take it from there.

The first has been met with resistance from students, parents and teachers for many good reasons.

The other, which implies a series of serious renovations to the existing Stuart Wood building, a designated heritage building and presently owned by the City of Kamloops, brings out many important issues as well.

Some necessary modifications, such as an external fire escape, are inapplicable due to the heritage designation (though some believe that they could be done nonetheless,) and removal of asbestos can be potentially harmful if not done right. And yes, renovations are expensive. Very.

As it stands now, the school is not suitable for what a school should offer. There is restricted parking for staff members, which could be a serious issue should an emergency vehicle be needed at the school, there is no access for disabled students, staff or parents, and some of the students bathrooms are, simply put, scary to some of the young students. Dark and moldy can do that.

If these problems could be solved, and others too (increased enrollment numbers sound good only on paper when a school is not suitable for increased numbers,) the bright side is that Kamloops would maintain a beautiful heritage building that has long served the community and has seen many generations of students graduate and bidding goodbye to its unique Doric columns proudly guarding one of the entrances.

Another alternative proposed by one of the school trustees, Annette Glover, is to move the students from Stuart Wood to Lloyd George (thus make the latter bi-lingual once again,) so that children residing in the downtown area will have access to a community school.

With options abounding and no solution yet, here’s the most important thing of all: every community needs a school. More so, it needs a school that children can walk to.

Whether we are parents of students from any of these schools, downtown residents or not, we should agree that a community school is not something we should let go.

As it stands now, Stuart Wood Elementary is the only English-speaking school in the downtown area and it is not a school of choice, but one that serves downtown residents, including many low-income ones whose options go from limited to very limited should a community school disappear.

Yet renovating and keeping it as a school takes a back seat to the vital issue this closure has brought forth: the possible disappearance of a community school. That, we cannot and should not allow.

When we lose a community school, we fail our children. Let’s not.

When Home Is Spelled With a K

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On May 1, 2014

In Armchair Mayor Column, Kamloops, Life Stories

Views...We spent Easter weekend in Seattle with our extended family. We drove through the Okanagan, camped in Osoyoos waking up to a perfect mirror of a lake, drove alongside blooming orchards and passed through small towns that look like accent pillows thrown around.

We stopped for ice cream, we stop by antique shops, talked to people who have been collecting signs of the past since they can remember, and we stopped here and there by the side of the road just because.

We stayed in a suburb of Seattle, but went to visit the city one day.
It was dazzling. Wide ribbons of highways, some on the ground, some in the air, all tied up in knots you get to untangle once you live there long enough, peppered with cars of all sizes rushing this way and that. Did I say dazzling?

We visited the farmer’s market and walked around downtown just until the boys begged to go home. Rivers of cars streaming in the streets, bumping shoulders with countless people at the market and being parked on the K level of a A to P parking lot proved too spicy a dish for us all.

Seattle is a big city, we knew that of course. We know of big cities from living in Vancouver until two years ago.

I want to believe that every city, no matter how big, has pockets of neighborhood that create the small town feel (maybe?) because deep down everyone connects that way with the place they’re in. Yet even with that hope in mind, the thought of suddenly being thrown into a city that size and having to live there a while made me feel uneasy.

Perhaps I’ve become a bit spoiled by the comforting lull, still vibrant but on a different scale, of life in Kamloops.

And for good reasons.

Most times I walk to downtown I am bound to run into someone I know. I may not know their but we know of each other.

Farmer’s market season will start soon and I will see many familiar faces I’ll keep on seeing all summer. We will talk to people the always we always have and get to know more than the price of goodies they sell. As one should.

We often forgo our cowboy-coffee-on-sun-splashed-porch ritual and opt for a coffee shop in town and it is always a treat. In most coffee shops we visit, I know we will see familiar faces; owners, baristas and customers.

We know of their life, they know of ours. We talk, catch up on the latest and say ‘see you later’ knowing we’re not saying it because how else can you end a conversation.

We will see them later because the place we live in is small enough that neither of us will go unseen.

There’s comfort in it.

There’s a mesh of good warm feelings that grows around you when you get to know the place you’re in and the place is small enough for you to be more than a rushed pair of legs or two sets of wheels, respectively.

And just like that, there’s nothing wrong with choosing to live in a big city either. As they say, to each their own. In the end, it’s about coming to know where you feel most at home and why.

I’ve lived in many big cities since leaving my hometown, similar in size and appearance to Kamloops, at the age of 18. It was fascinating at times, it was frustrating too, it was exciting and then it was tiring.

The rushed rhythm of the big city was, more or less, in sync with my own rushed lifestyle (which was rushed because I was in a big city, some could argue.) Following life’s fluid ways I got to visit smaller communities and knew right away that I’ll never return to the big city.

It takes going places to realize where you want to be the most and it takes going to places loud enough to barely hear your thoughts to actually hear them loud enough.

Last but not least, gratefulness to realize that you’re in a good place. Imperfect at times, but real is like that. Charming too.

The Magic Behind Gloomy Skies On A Winter’s Day In Kamloops

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On March 1, 2014

In Armchair Mayor Column, Kamloops, Life Stories

(Originally published as a column in The Armchair Mayor News on February 28, 2014)

ShoresThat day last week was the first sunny one in a while. So we picked up the boys after school and walked home along the river. The ice was thick enough to walk on, and smooth enough to skid every which way. Funny makes life better every now and then.

We threw rocks towards the other shore. Frozen solid, the ice held our rocks mid-river until many days later when, on a snappy-cold windy day, we ventured again to one of our favorite spots along the shores. The boys’ cheeks were red, but they kept on walking, holding sticks for swords and turning their backs occasionally on a wild wind.

It is a pleasantly puzzling thing, this river shore walk, especially in winter. We come across different things every time. A beaver pond not far from where we live was the subject of many lively discussions and the mystery of how beavers do it so beautifully is still alive with the boys. Just a few steps away . . .

Other times we see birds galore waddling their slippery ways on the ice, or discover rinks that could not be more perfect for the silliest games of ‘human bowling’. Rules are invented on the spot, in case you were ready to ask.

It is our second winter in Kamloops and the delight keeps growing.
There’s no two things you get to repeat the same way and that is magic. Sure the sun is often taking a multi-day leave of absence, I was warned of gloomy winter as soon as I moved here, but the magic stands.

During the first cold spell this winter we ventured to Lac Le Jeune for some cross-country skiing. It was sunny but cold; very. The wind added to the dreaded chill. I had never heard a creakier sounding snow. We skied and our breaths made any loose hair strands white with frost and the boys kept talking about frostbite.

We realized it is no longer dedicated ski hills or trails that hold the highest appeal for us but the frozen lakes and the gentle long slopes around Kamloops where every hundred steps a thicket of birch trees guarding animal tracks makes us stop and realize once again that we’re but humble visitors. Privy to pure beauty.

The places we visit are alive with sounds of life muffled by thick curtains of snow draped around trees by occasional winds. Silence is a reminder of the necessity to honour our own…

SnowySometimes the clouds pile up quick and the air becomes thick with white specks. Tracks erased, we stop and become part of it all for a bit. Trees sway sideways, and far away we see farms with thin smoke slithering through the roof and black cows peppered around hay feeders. It’s peaceful.

It simply never gets old. Winter here I mean. A few weeks ago we drove to Stake Lake to see the ice racing. A first for all of us. It was cold but fun. A Kamloops tradition we had to witness, which happened to include parking on a frozen lake. West coast transplants like us find it fascinating.

CaveAnd why not? Ice and snow transform winter here in Kamloops and surroundings. Lakes and rivers freeze, if you walk along beaches and shores you can find ice caves that have the most beautiful stalagmites and stalactites that sparkle just so when a few sun rays sneak in.

There are countless ice rinks to skate on and clouds wrapped in orange sunset ribbons if you happen to look up at the right time.

There are forests to tiptoe in and spot red-tufted woodpeckers and if you keep on driving on snowy roads you’ll find lakes that have giant upside down old trees trapped in ice and half-covered in white powder, speckled with bunny tracks lining up all the way to a burrow under a pile of frozen branches.

Road to wonderNo excuse is good enough to not try and discover yet another place that’s so different than the others when you have the time. No electronic game satisfying enough to compete with the exhilaration of a first perfect no-tumble downhill run under a ski so blue you almost doubt it’s real.

The skies may be glum many days here but there are rewards that go beyond the city limits and even within, if you’re careful enough to look for clues of magic. Because there are plenty.

Because is more to winter in Kamloops than meets the eye (initially)…

Why Every Community Needs A Diner

By

On December 1, 2013

In Kamloops

(Originally published as a column in the Saturday edition of the Kamloops Daily News on November 30, 2013)

The one thing I remember about the diner that night is that it smelled like a home rather than a restaurant. Also, the invitation to sit wherever we wanted and being addressed with “dear.”

When you’re new in a place, “dear” sounds right.

An elderly couple smiled from across the room and nodded welcome — a remnant from the days when looking at someone you didn’t know was not rude but rather a greeting that meant just that, ‘welcome.’

We spent a tired first night in the attached inn and late morning found us in the diner again, for breakfast. In less than 24 hours, the diner had become a familiar place with familiar faces and “dear” was tucked motherly into every other sentence. Breakfast was good and warm.

Life rolled on and we moved into our house a few blocks away from the diner. Nightly walks had us by its red-lit OPEN sign often, and every time I looked inside I was reminded of our first night in Kamloops.

A sign outside the door says ‘Coffee and pie, all day, $2.95’ and you see it every time you walk by.

The first time we tried it we had just dropped off the boys at school. Coffee and pie sounded like an invitation and we said why not.

We sat by the window and got engrossed in talking.

The second time, we took the boys there after school and we each got different pies and a big blob of whipped cream on the side.

Someone sitting at another table waved at us, then walked over to say hi. It was one of the paramedics who helped during my youngest son’s asthma attack. He remembered us, my son’s name and the fact that we all have the same kind of boots.

When he left, saying “see you around,” we said the same because we knew it was true. It happens all the time.

The boys pointed at the black-and-white historic photos on the walls, of cars parked outside the same diner, of the inn, of people smiling. I wondered how many of them were still stopping by for meals and conversations. I wondered if the diner will still be when the boys have grown up.

Somehow I know it will. Many diners have been around for a long time and they have the best social-media platform there is: face to face conversations, people from the next table asking how your day has been and actually waiting for an answer.

But not all diners are like this. I remember one in Fort Langley where the old charm is all there but the young waiters who take your order and give you the correct change never ask about your day or whether you live close by.

Another diner near Kootenay Lake had a cold feel to it, literally and otherwise. People there did not connect the dots between visitors and food and you felt isolated.

So we ate and went on our way. It was a freezing sunny day in March, but the outside felt warmer.

Neighbourhood diners where people smile and say “hope to see you again” are a sign of a healthy community and a reminder of the good old feeling of never being far from a friendly face. Locals come and lean back on chairs as if at home, which is somewhat accurate, and travelers feel welcome.

The ladies who bring you coffee and pie and meals call you “dear” and “honey” and you’re tickled pink every time just because. They address children the way an aunt would, they carry smiles from table to table and they laugh with old customers over this or that with a familiarity that you want to be part of because it feels warm and good.

So I want diners like this to stay. Not because I cannot find coffee and pie or a good meal elsewhere, but because of that warm space that connects people to food, to other people and to the community they all live in, for a night, a few years or a lifetime.

After all, a place is a place. It’s the people that make it special.

Stories of Nearby Coffee Shop Charm

By

On November 17, 2013

In Life Stories

(Originally published as a column in the Kamloops Daily News on Saturday, November 16, 2013.) 

You know a good place as soon as you enter it.

WarmthIt was Thursday morning; we were the first two customers to sit in the Barnhartvale coffee shop and the big wood stove was quietly churning out heat — an invitation in itself.

We sit next to it and set up the computers. It was a working day, after all.

“A few local people will be here soon for a jamming session,” one of the owners, Carrie, tells us.

I like the quiet and the usual kitchen noises you hear from a kitchen you don’t always see, but there’s something special about witnessing a music morning in Barnhartvale.

We sit and write and the coffee is pleasantly hot.

A few people pour in shortly before 11 and take their seats around the big round table by the window after pulling their guitars out for the jamming.

A few more show up and the first notes fly around the room.

Christmas carols, old songs, interruptions here and there to adjust pace, tone, or to exchange words and jokes and all those “good to be here” looks one would expect.

The group seems so well oiled in creating music, we assume they formed a long time ago.

“It’s their first time like this,” Carrie says.

We write, eat homemade parsnip-and-ginger soup, and music fills all the spaces that would have stayed uselessly empty otherwise.

Music people chatter, other locals step in to warm up over a cup of coffee and to exchange a few words, and writing turns plump and satisfying. I am glad I gave in to the morning invite.

Before leaving, we take a look around the store the coffee shop is adjacent to. Half is old country antique and some has one-of-a-kind fair trade and local art pieces.

In the antique and consignment side of the country store, there is a handmade thick wool sweater with a few moose and evergreen on it. I am hardly the impulse buyer, but this time is different. Every now and then we each give in to a “winter’s on our doorstep” kind of gift and this is mine.

Outside, it smells like winter and feels like it’s about to snow.

We take a stroll through the yard. We’ve seen it before during a drive-through trip in the spring when the coffee shop was still a project and greenness abounded.

PondThere is a pond with edges festooned with dormant water lilies and ruffled-top reeds and a wooden dock in the middle of it. Two mallards with orange feet and a whole lot of confidence make their way out and question our empty hands. The only place where a sense of entitlement doesn’t seem exaggerated.

There is no denial that country charm has dipped its toes in this pond and frolicked about the yard. We’ve seen it in bloom in early spring and we’re not scared by its rather stark autumn appearance, but comforted by its slow pace and leaf-covered paths.

I am partial to quirky coffee shops. I admit it. And though I like walking to my favourite ones in town, the 15-minute drive to and up the windy Barnhartvale road was well worth it.

You know it’s a good place to be when people, who know each other only by virtue of inhabiting the same community, gather to strum a few chords in the warm place that has coffee and homemade lunches — and all the stories and smiles a good host should.

The “Right in the heart of downtown Barnhartvale” sign outside in the parking lot calls it straight.

There’s a heart to it.

 

Night Out In Kamloops

By

On September 30, 2013

In Kamloops

It was last Wednesday evening that I honored an invitation to go about town with a bunch of strangers and eat at four different restaurants for a first time of a culinary and social event called Dishcrawl. I did not know what to expect as everything had been kept a secret until that evening.

Sometimes all you need to do is sit back and relax, but how to? It’s becoming a lost art in our hurried times. Often chased by gadgets into physical isolation, people often find online socializing easier.

It is not unusual for people to go hang out at an eating place because they know for a fact if any of their friends are there. There’s an app for that.

But there was none of that during the Dishcrawl event I attended. I sat down with people I didn’t know at 7 o’clock in place I had not scheduled ahead of time and knew that by the end of the night we will have learned at least the basics about each other.

We ate pizza at Papa Tee’s, sweet potato noodles and other Korean-inspired bits at the Cornerstone Sushi, tacos downtown at Quilas and a raspberry sauce-doused torte at Romann’s Swiss Pastries. Food is food is food you could say and that may be true, but this was more.

All places are family owned and operated. Every one of them came with a smiling host explaining the food in simple, user-friendly terms. Curiosity and the novelty of it added new flavors.

My table-mates and I talked life, careers and whether Kamloops is anyone’s birthplace. Less important in the end, it turned out, since we all call Kamloops home no matter how far from it we were born. There’s consent about the beauty of the hills and mountains spreading forever, and the wonder of our somewhat small but lively city.

I discovered that night that even when you hang out with strangers – and they are only strangers until one breaks the ice really – mentioning a name will have someone at the table say “Oh, I know that person!”

It is a small world, but how small could you go in the end? It turned out that a Labrador native is no stranger to a handful of Kamloops native. Or someone could tap you on the shoulder and say they know you and you realize that you know them. Conversation ensues and you feel the comfortable homey warmth of a place like Kamloops.

I may or may not see my table-mates any time soon, but what I know is that saving seats or seeing an arm raised signaling the seat that someone saved for you connects you to people you’ve never met before. An intimacy of some sort that will not go away. Memories of a time when you did know what to expect.

I wondered what made people sign up for the event. Perhaps curiosity or something to do on an ordinary Wednesday night, or both. At least one person moved to Kamloops two weeks ago.

At some point I am asked about advice for a newcomer to Kamloops. Someone just acknowledged my “no longer new in town” status! A rite of passage for sure. I take pride in telling of the many places I have visited with my family since we moved here a year ago, skiing across frozen lakes and hiking on crumbly cinnamon-hued hills included. It comes down to three words: Just do it!

In a time where we schedule our next breath with apps and such, a surprise evening may throw the proverbial stick in the wheels. There’s no app for that. It better not be.

Four places to go, countless conversations to be had, snippets of life to be swapped over a glass of wine, laughter and a brisk walk back to the car when the evening is over.

There’s something to be learned every time you take the word “usually” out of a schedule. For Dishcrawl, you shake hands, smile, introduce yourself and let the evening unfold while tasting good food prepared by local chefs you meet and greet as you walk in. “Thank you,” and then you’re off to your next adventure.

Originally published as a column in the Saturday edition of Kamloops Daily News on Saturday, September 27, 2013

Because It’s White and Cold And Beautiful

By

On January 14, 2013

It’s snowing again but now we’re inside and it’s warm. I am making some cowboy coffee and mending my frozen toes and fingers. They are almost warm and not hurting anymore. Almost.

We went out to the lake today. Kamloops lake that is.  We haven’t been there since a sunny October afternoon and that day was bright and warm and the shores were decorated with gentle lapping sounds. Today the road here was but a thick smooth ribbon of whiteness, thick and dense like a heavy wool blanket laid on the ground. The shore was white and spreading far, a most perfect postcard…

We make our way to the very edge of lake stepping over logs tucked under blankets of snow. The cold bites the tip of my nose and the boys would agree. Their noses get new hues as we walk: first pink, then nose and cheeks turn red.

The gentle laps that were dancing in the fall are now frozen. Two feet from where we’re standing the ice becomes thin and unfriendly. The boys don’t need many warnings, they’ve met frozen waters before. Four steps further out there’s a fast moving stream, courtesy of Thompson river, that carries an all-size assortment of ice slabs into the lake. The whooshing sound of the floating ice is an eerie one. It’s cold and we need to get moving.

I put my boots on, clamp the skis on and as I slide around on the slightly hardened snow, I create my own frozen sound. It almost sounds like the whirring of a snow robot finding its way around. The boys shoot the bow and the arrows fly like long thin birds into the sky and then land most elegantly, burying their pointed metal heads in the snow. As it sometimes happens, the boys fight their way into learning how to take turns. Egos are sharper then the arrows’ heads and it shows. As it sometimes happens, the boys find a way to stop arguing.

In the distance – shooting arrow distance – a man walks his two majestic Husky dogs and I envy their furry coats that are perfectly impenetrable to the cold that’s nipping at toes and fingers, wool coats on both notwithstanding. It’s freezing cold and I vow to never take my mitts off or change my snow boots for ski boots ever in the middle of a snowy field.

We spend the rest of the time exploring, shooting the arrows, searching for arrows when they get lost in the snow and skiing further down the shores.The boys search for signs of prehistoric life (Sasha) and they plunge on a frozen giant puddle that shines a strange turquoise hue at us (Tony). “Mom, can you pull me around on the ice?” Like a human puck, he means, but I decline. Cross-country skis on ice spell disaster. The cold nips at every square centimeter of exposed skin and it does so to my fingers every times I take my mittens off to take a photo.

“Mom, look, this drift log is stuck in the ice!” Indeed it is, in the middle of the frozen turquoise pond. Sasha caresses it like it’s a frozen animal and it almost looks the part with the ruffled shredded bark all over its half-naked trunk. Sasha gathers some “nest material” and then we head to see an icy crevasse that opens like an icy mouth into one of the frozen rivulets tributary to the big lake.

Round lacy perfection with the gurgle of unstill water underneath: I take photos knowing for a fact that perfection of that kind never shows up in a photo. It’s the angle of the light at that particular moment, the sounds of the snow my boys are stepping on, Tony’s excitement as he kneels and looks into the ice cavern, the distant wailing of a train that plunges head-first into the snow all over just like the boys’ arrows a while ago… How do I catch all that in a photo, you tell me.

We try to walk across the frozen stream, just a couple of steps over a thick bridge of ice, but the light cracking sounds make Sasha back up. His big winter hat is slightly pushed sideways and his big eyes are glowing from above red cheeks. There’s no making him and I like that. He’s cautious. We walk further down where the we can cross in one step and he’s holding onto my pole the whole time. That keeps my heart warm, no matter how freezing cold the outside is: the mama bear soul coat. Backpack on my back, quiver with arrows on the side, a big piece of perfectly-shaped white driftwood in my arms, and Sasha on a stick. There’s no better way of bidding goodbye to the lake shores today.

It started snowing as we were making our way back to the car. We take a path through bushes that are subdued by cold and snow: tangles of rigid branches shaped like countless octopi sown all over the field. I make my way through snow, followed by the same mechanical whirring I started out with. I take a couple of more photos and with that my hands give in to freezing. It’s almost sudden and it feels revengeful. The mitts hurt as I put them back on, a useless act now because my fingers are stiff and hurting.

We unfroze slowly on the drive home. I can’t deny the beauty of snow just because it’s so cold but I wished for the hurting fingers to stop hurting. The fields on each side of the road were endlessly white, some studded with distant minuscule-looking cows and some with random patches of trees and bushes.

It’s been a good white afternoon. Cold too. As I type this, my fingers have returned to being warm and mine. Coffee is done with and tonight we’ll watch Shackleton. Antarctica expeditions have been the talk of the day for a week or so…

 

 

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