Children learn by dancing

Here & Now column by Dan Hilborn
Published Sept. 13, 2003


Something very colourful is going to be happening in the community centres and banquet rooms around Burnaby this year.

The Burnaby International Folk Dancers have put together a special youth folk dancing group for children aged six to 12 years old, and they intend to start making a name for themselves over the next few months.

"If we don't teach these dances to our children, these dances will die out," said Linda Dawson, a retired school teacher who's been fascinated by the variety of folk dancing styles around the world for the past 30 years.

"We're trying to keep the ethnic dances from all countries," Dawson said. "Israeli dancing is my favourite - I really like the Hora - but we're fair to all cultures and this is an international club.

"We do dances from Serbia, Croatia, Denmark, plus Irish dance and one Japanese dance," she said. "Often, with our adult groups, we'll bring in a specialist such as a choreographer who recently immigrated from Serbia."

Next month, the young dancers will have their first show at a birthday party for seniors at Confederation Centre. And it's sure to be a delight!

RIDING FOR THE KIDS

Burnaby RCMP officer Const. Terry Faulkner will be joining 14 of his colleagues from around the Lower Mainland in the annual Cops for Cancer bike ride taking place later this month.

Faulkner, a seven-year veteran of the local detachment, will also be hosting a fundraising pub night at the Burnaby Lake Rugby Club on Sept. 19, where the public can come out and support his efforts.

"Basically, we're raising money for the Canadian Cancer Society pediatric cancer research programs and for Camp Goodtimes, a camp for kids with cancer on the Sunshine Coast," Faulkner said.

"I'm involved in this for a couple of good reasons," he said. "Number one, my family has been affected by cancer, and more recently we have a well-liked member in the Burnaby detachment who recently came down with cancer."

The pub night promises to have lots of fun. Beside the music, dancing, and raffles, members of the local RCMP detachment will be having their heads shaved in support of the cancer research programs.

Faulkner said that head shaving is one of the most favoured fundraising methods for police officers who want to help out the cancer society.

"Back in the '80s There was a police officer in Edmonton who knew a young kid with cancer who was being teased by the other kids at school because he was losing his hair due to the chemotherapy," Faulkner said. "The police officer wanted to support this young man, so he said he'd shave his head, too. And it's been a long-standing tradition for law enforcement officials ever since."

Faulkner has committed himself to raising $10,000 for cancer research through his pub night, other activities and the week-long, 600-kilometre bike ride that starts from Pemberton on Sept. 21.

To get tickets to the pub night, or lend your support to the bike- a-thon, contact Faulkner through the local RCMP detachment at 604- 294-7676.

Burnaby resident Laura Endridge truly knows how to chart her own path. The high tech consultant and analyst is the author of Tro- tros and Potholes, a 160-page book that chronicles her 2001 solo trip through a variety of west African countries.

The book, which consists of a mixture of e-mails to friends and families plus her thoughts written down after the three-and-a-half- month journey, offers Endridge's insight on the affairs of the world in general.

"The countries I visited - Ghana, Cote d'Ivoire, Mali, Burkina Faso and Togo - were among the most fantastic studies of contrast of any place I'd ever been," she writes in the prologue. "They were both ancient and modern, deferent and bold, corrupt and virtuous."

Some of her stories are hilarious - such as her explanation why a man she just met really wouldn't want to marry a Canadian, or her letter to newly elected B.C. premier Gordon Campbell, which ends with the postscript "Please keep Christy Clark's sound bite to a minimum."

And the book closes with a list of things to pack should the reader ever choose to travel to Africa. Most surprising to me is her advice to pack only two pair of socks. "You'll never use them," Endridge writes.

Tro-tros and Potholes: West Africa Solo is published by Four Corners Publishing and is available for $11.99.