Wednesday March 16, 2016 (Vol. 41 No. 21) Free Appeteaser with the purchase of any entrée
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Bird watching: The sight of great blue herons is a common one in parts of the Semiahmoo Peninsula – and across the Fraser River delta – but their attempts to nest are often disrupted, writes PAN columnist Anne Murray. i see page 13
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Live Like Ben Foundation makes positive impact on Thai orphans
Adventurous spirit continues abroad Tracy Holmes
T
Staff Reporter
ara Trompetter always knew her son, Ben, had a heart for the children of Thailand, where he worked for years as a guide. But it wasn’t until last year, when she and her family took some of his ashes “home” to his favourite places, that she realized just how much of an impact he had made on the people there.
“Everywhere we went, his spirit was there,” Trompetter said Thursday, recalling some of what she learned during the sixweek visit – all of which was reinforced during a more recent, three-month trip to build a school in Ben’s name in the remote northern village of Pha Dang Luang. Trips to the village were a regular thing for Ben, who rode a motorbike up the long, rugged mountain road on his time off work to spend time with the children, teaching
them English in the “shanty box” they called school, or playing soccer with the makeshift nets. “I was so proud of my son… so proud that was so important to him,” Trompetter told Peace Arch News. “That was the guiding force for the foundation. I knew how much Ben loved Thailand. Going there showed me how much Thailand loved Ben.” i see page 11
Niki Young photo
Tara Trompetter & Terry McCallum at school.
Worst damage in years
Windstorm aftermath Tracy Holmes Staff Reporter
The play’s the thing
William Lauzon photo
With a provincial title on the line, Southridge Storm coach Steve Anderson gathers his team and calls a play during a timeout late in Saturday’s BC High School Boys AAA Basketball Championship final against the Steveston-London Sharks. The Storm won the game 78-71, securing their first-ever AAA banner. For more, see page 21.
The storm that battered the Semiahmoo Peninsula last week was one of the worst to hit White Rock’s waterfront in years, officials say. “There’s significant damage,” Greg St. Louis, the city’s director of engineering and municipal operations, said Tuesday of the impact to East and West Beach. While addressing East Beach erosion was already slated for this year, waves that further undermined areas of the promenade and washed away temporary measures to shore up the waterfront “just kind of made the situation a little bit worse for us,” St. Louis said. “It’s unfortunate, but we knew we had issues with erosion and we were already set to deal with it.” Winds of up to 90 km/h hit early last Thursday and stayed for several hours, knocking out power to thousands across southwest B.C., sending trees across roadways and creating dramatic waves that crashed over both White Rock’s promenade and the pedestrian walkway in Crescent Beach. In West Beach, “the shoreline has been eroded substantially,” St. Louis said. Concrete barriers installed “a number of years” ago to curb erosion were uncovered i see page 5