RoasteR does it while you wait
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independents have a dReam
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ndp Review, not halt casinos
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wednesday
February 13 2013 www.burnabynewsleader.com
prime minister stephen harper wants to ensure the dangerous mentally ill are kept behind bars. See Page a5
‘Harper proving NDP’s case’ Grant Granger
ggranger@burnabynewsleader.com
MarIO barTeL/NeWSLeaDer
John white and his operations team, dave mcRae, Jim dobbs and monika vriend, have been putting on events at the michael J. Fox theatre for 20 years.
Michael J. Fox Theatre marks 20th year wchow@burnabynewsleader.com
As Michael J. Fox Theatre marks its 20th year, retired Burnaby school district superintendent Elmer Froese recalled it was a minor miracle that the school it’s connected to got built at all. When planning started for a new Burnaby South secondary in the late 1980s, it had many cards stacked against it. The student population of the district was half what it had been in 1972 when Froese took the helm.
The Social Credit government was in a period of budgetary restraint. And the neighbourhood around Rumble Street and MacPherson Avenue was largely industrial, what homes were nearby belonged mostly to greying, empty nesters. Referring to the disappearing student population, Froese said, “we had to do something.” That something ended up being Burnaby South 2000, a strategy to revitalize and renew the district’s high schools by taking maximum advantage of technology, with a new
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South being something of a flagship for the new approach. For the first time, Burnaby companies B.C. Tel and IBM partnered to make it happen on the high-tech end, starting with Cariboo Hill and Alpha secondaries. But the idea of building a new school when the existing South and other Burnaby high schools weren’t full and the government was cutting back? “It was, in the minds of many people, crazy,” Froese said. “To have a theatre as part of that exam mpleteonly with co tients new pa
Wanda Chow
project was pie in the sky.” What would become Michael J. Fox Theatre was far from a reality but even then, there were staunch supporters of building a professional-level theatre, such as then-school board chair Carol Jones,. “I had an ally in her saying, ‘you don’t build a big high school if it doesn’t have a proper performing facility and we need a theatre and it’s got to be a real theatre,’” Froese said. please see FOx’S, a2
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The federal New Democratic Party thinks Canada should scrap the Senate. And Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his party continue to provide more reasons why that should happen soon, says Burnaby-New Westminster MP Peter Julian. In recent weeks the residency qualifications of Conservative senators Patrick Brazeau, Mike Duffy and Pamela Wallin and Liberal Mac Harb have been called into question. On Thursday, Harper removed Brazeau from the Conservative caucus after he was put in jail while police investigated reports of domestic violence. “The poor character of the people he has chosen has done more to tarnish the reputation of the Senate than anything before this,” said Julian from Ottawa on Friday. “What he has done very effectively is he is making the case for abolishing this very archaic institution and for stopping what the Conservatives have been doing all along which is making this a partisan chamber. It’s just absurd.” please see beTTer, a14