Teenager's good deed makes senior's day

Here and Now column by Dan Hilborn
Published Jan. 10, 2004


After 28 years of living in the same house, Mary Bion was convinced that her central Burnaby neighbourhood had lost most of its original charm.

The 71-year-old senior no longer knew many of her neighbours and, frankly, she and her husband had been feeling an awful lot more isolated over the past few years.

But that all changed after this week's snowstorm left a giant dump of the white stuff over all our city's streets and sidewalks.

Despite her advancing age and bad back, Mary went out to shovel the snow off her sidewalk on Monday, and that's when she met 16- year-old Stephen Koke, a young kid who was delivering catalogues as a way to raise some money for a trip to Spain this summer with his grandfather.

When Koke noticed Mary struggling with the giant snow shovel, he put down his bundle of Sears catalogues and offered his help.

And the kid just didn't help out a little bit - he told Mary to make herself comfortable while he finished the job completely. Then, when the job was done, he flat out refused to accept any money for his fine deed.

"Well, I was just overwhelmed," Mary told the Burnaby NOW. "You hear so much these days that even if you wanted to hire a teenager they wouldn't want to do any hard work, and here, this young man comes up and offers his help."

When the job was done, Stephen pointed to his home, just a few doors away, and told Mary that if she ever needed help with anything else, all she had to do was call.

"I thought this kind of thing just didn't happen anymore," Mary said. "I guess sometimes it takes somebody in the neighbourhood to bring people together again."

Even more surprising, when Mary walked the few doors up the street to say thanks to Stephen's parents, the young man had not even told his family about his good deed for the day.

And it's certainly nice to know that some people understand what it means to live in a community.

TEMPLE HELPS IRANIAN EARTHQUAKE VICTIMS

The Hindu temple of Burnaby raised more than $3,000 for the victims of the devastating earthquake in Bam, Iran during a special New Year's Day service.

Satinder Bhandari, spokesperson for the Vishva Hindu Parishad of B.C. on Albert Street, said it took just a few minutes for the money to come in after the appeal by head priest Pandit Sharad Chandra.

"If you remember a couple of years ago, we had an earthquake in Gujarat, India, and at that time we collected money for those victims," Bhandari told the Burnaby NOW. "So, under the same spirit, our priest said we should do the same thing for earthquake victims in Iran.

"When it happened in India, almost everyone in the temple had families and friends who were affected. So when it hits you at home, you know how these people feel."

The temple, which has been located in North Burnaby for about 25 years, has about 800 members total, and will continue to raise funds for another week or so before deciding whether to send the contribution to the Red Cross, World Vision or some other international aid agency.

To add your own contribution to the cause, contact the Hindu temple in Burnaby at 604-299-5922.

IT'S A SMALL WORLD - ESPECIALLY IN BURNABY

Burnaby Village Museum curator Colin Stevens is still shaking his head after an article in the Sept. 3, 2003 Burnaby NOW led to an unexpected reunion with several long-lost relatives.

The article in question explained how museum staff were taking digital photographs of some of the rarer pieces in the museum's collection - including several Burnaby Police pins and a mannequin dressed in what was supposed to be an authentic and historic RCMP uniform.

But, while the RCMP uniform was indeed historic, the display was less than authentic, leading to several complaints to the museum and one letter to the editor of this newspaper.

As it turns out, one of the local retired Mounties who visited the museum to set them straight turned out to be a long lost relative of Stevens - none other than longtime local Tory and realtor Neil MacKay.

Making the meeting even more bizarre was the fact that the two relatives had actually been members of the same Rotary Club for several years and simply didn't know about the family connection.

"We were talking about history and I said my family was related to the MacKays of Nova Scotia, and then Neil said his were, too," Stevens said this week. "So I told him my family had roots on the Isle of Muck, and Neil said 'Mine did too' and then that's when we got down to our ancestors' names and realized we were from the same family."

The local MacKay and Stevens families eventually got together over the Christmas holidays, and the museum curator was finally able to compare the actual family trees. That's when they learned that Stevens' great-grandfather and MacKay's grandfather were brothers.

During the small reunion, Stevens was able to add several names to his own family tree - the names of the ancestors who made the original trip from Scotland to Canada.

And that's not all. All the interest in the police exhibit has prompted Stevens to prepare a show this coming spring featuring artifacts from the former Burnaby Police detachment, the B.C. Provincial Police and the historic Royal Canadian Mounted Police.