Friday, October 18, 2013 - North Shore News - A3
Off the streets and into the kitchen HAVE program expands to North Shore
BRENT RICHTER brichter@nsnews.com
Finding a job and making ends meet is hard enough, even when you don’t have to struggle with mental or physical disability, poverty, addiction or homelessness. That’s where HAVE Culinary Training Society comes in. After eight weeks of customized kitchen training, students emerge with some serious help to get over those barriers and a foot in the door to a career in the hospitality industry. The non-profit program recently expanded from the Downtown Eastside to the Lookout Emergency Aid Society’s North Shore shelter and graduated its first four students, all of whom are now working in North Shore restaurants. “They head out and in 86 per cent of the cases in six years, they’ve got a job,” said Ian Tostenson, who cofounded HAVE with fellow
HAVE Chef Amber Anderson and Mayor Darrell Mussatto finish off trainee line cook Alex Boon’s plating as Mayor Michael Smith (left), Lookout Society’s Karen O’Shannacery, Ian Tostenson and Mayor Richard Walton (right) look on. PHOTO MIKE WAKEFIELD North Shore resident Brad Mills. That impressive stat holds up over time as well, Tostenson notes. Of the
There’s a market need for the oil: KM From page 1
the protestors had been arrested though the RCMP still have that option, Hudema noted. Kinder Morgan is applying to the National Energy Board to twin it’s TransMountain pipeline from central Alberta to the Burnaby terminal, which would almost triple the capacity of the pipeline to a total of 890,000 barrels of oil and bitumen per day. Tanker traffic in Burrard Inlet from the facility would go from about five per month now to more than 30. “That’s something we definitely don’t want to see,” Hudema said, “What we know is that we’re in a climate-constrained world and we’re already seeing superstorms, we’re seeing intense floods, we’re seeing more and more extreme weather events taking place all the time because of climate change, and we need to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and reduce our greenhouse gas emissions immediately
in order for us to continue thriving on this planet.” Asked to respond to Greenpeace’s argument that Kinder Morgan is fuelling climate change, Kinder Morgan Andrew Galarnyk spoke about the process. “We have a project that we’re looking to expand: our pipeline for the customers who have determined there is a market need for it. Just as other pipeline projects that are being put forward, we are approaching our project with an open and transparent approach to sharing factual information and we’ll file an application at the end of this year and let the board determine whether or not our project is approved for expansion,” he said. Any pipeline expansion work that happens will make human and environmental safety a top priority, Galarnyk added. Greenpeace last staged a process on the North Shore in May 2012, when activists rappelled from the edge of the Lions Gate Bridge to unfurl an anti-pipeline banner.
more than 600 students who’ve graduated, about 77 per cent are still working in restaurants, and Tostenson said, and they often
become valued as the “best employees” in their business, because they have so much invested in their own success. It costs about $3,500 to
put a student through the eight-week program, which is mostly covered by federal grants, though there is a near instant return on investment,
Tostenson said. “They’ve gone from social assistance, which is just over $7,000 a year to earning $20,000 a year and actually paying taxes,” he said. Tostenson attributes HAVE’s success to the way they greet and interact with their very marginalized students. “The magic is that HAVE is built around total individual respect.When people come in through our doors, the first thing they get is support and respect as a person. In many cases, those are things that those people have not felt for years.They’ve been basically written off and shunned,” he said. The Lookout Society, which runs the North Shore Shelter, approached HAVE and asked if they’d consider expanding onto the North Shore. Getting into the HAVE program is as simple as walking through door and saying “I want to work here,” Tostenson said. From there, applicants are screened, mainly for how serious they are about completing the program. All three North Shore mayors recently sat down for lunch at the shelter’s kitchen to welcome HAVE to North Vancouver.
Glass reef protection sought Fragile glass sponges thought extinct until 1980s JANE SEYD jseyd@nsnews.com
A group of international scientists and conservationists travelled deep below the ocean’s surface offWestVancouver and Howe Sound this week, exploring some extraordinary glass sponge reefs. The glass sponge reefs are made by creatures that date back to the Jurassic era and are so rare in the world that, until recently, they were thought to be extinct. When scientists confirmed the existence of the reefs deep in B.C. waters, it was like discovering “a herd of dinosaurs,” said Sabine Jessen, oceans director with the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, who lives in North Vancouver. This week, the
Sabine Jessen photographs fragile glass sponges on the ocean floor near Passage Island on Tuesday. Use the Layar app to see more photos. PHOTO BRUCE KIRKBY conservation group partnered with the North Vancouver submersible firm Nuytco Research to lead an expedition to the reefs, found in about 75 metres of water near Passage Island. From a mini submarine, they filmed the intricate tubular structures of the reefs, which are created by the prehistoric sponges, and
vaguely resemble coral reefs. The glass sponge reefs, made out of silica, are unique to B.C., said Jessen, because “there are very few places in the world that have so much dissolved silica.” In some places, like the northern waters of Hecate Strait where the reefs are found as deep as 200 metres, the reefs can reach 14 metres
in height — the height of a five-storey building, she said. Jessen said the glass sponge reefs play an important role in the marine ecosystem, providing habitat and keeping the ocean clean by feeding on bacteria. But Jessen said the glass sponge reefs are also under See Trawl page 5