Letters sent to The Premier, Minister of Education, MLA's and Quesnel School District Trustees...
Date: Tue, 27 Aug 2002 09:12:27 -0700
To: scottl@quesnelbc.com, girvinj@sd28.bc.ca, sandy@goldcity.net,
nielsenc@uniserve.com, andrewsk@sd28.bc.ca, cunningd@sd28.bc.ca,
demerss@sd28.bc.ca
From: Cathryn Wellner
To School District 28 Trustees:
As Project Coordinator for HEAL (Healthy Eating and Active Living in Northern BC), I urge you to vote tomorrow night to keep the Wells school open. North Cariboo is experiencing a dramatic increase in lifestyle-related diseases, a phenomenon that is reaching down into the population of children and youth. Poor diet is one of the primary contributors to what is becoming a global epidemic of Type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and other chronic diseases. A second is lack of physical activity.
Having spent a considerable amount of time in Wells this summer, I have been struck by the health and vigor of the children. The school plays a major role in that. The Wells school serves nutritious meals, which the children help prepare (after Food Safe training), and does not allow the distribution or sale of nutritionally suspect, high fat, high sugar foods and beverages, all commonly found in Quesnel schools and nearby convenience stores. Wells children walk, run, ride bicycles, clamber over playground structures, and join in informal, physically active games. Because the community is safe, they are outside and physically active during daylight hours.
Closing the school will change that. There is a considerable body of research showing the deleterious social and educational impacts of spending 2-3 hours on a bus every day. In addition, the Wells children will no longer have daylight recreation hours available to them in winter, except on weekends. This will increase the risks associated with sedentary lifestyle, leading to added health costs in future.
I heard Louise Scott's interview with CBC, in which she stated that other Quesnel children would be spending equally long periods of time on school buses. This is an appalling admission, given the health impacts of inactivity, but it is also an apples and oranges comparison. No other children will be bussed that distance over a mountain road in winter. No other children will be so far from their parents in the event of accidents or illnesses. No other children will be so thoroughly removed from their home community five days a week. Thus the Wells children will be unfairly penalized for living at a distance from Quesnel and will be educationally, socially and physically harmed.
There is, of course, another issue of importance to all British Columbians. Closing the school will undermine the viability of the province's premier heritage site, Barkerville. A community without a school dies. A heritage site without service infrastructure dies. Quesnel without Barkerville suffers an economic hit beyond the cost of keeping the Wells school open. Therefore, your decision has ramifications far beyond short-term economic considerations for SD #28.
As a British Columbian who values the province's few heritage sites and understands their importance to tourism, I urge you to take full measure of the impact your decision will have on the largest and most significant heritage site in western Canada. Please vote to keep the Wells school open. The children of Wells and the residents of British Columbia are counting on you to make the right choice.
Sincerely,
Cathryn Wellner, Project Coordinator
HEAL - Healthy Eating and Active Living in Northern BC
Miocene Box 15, 4030 Horsefly Road
Williams Lake, B.C.
Canada V2G 2P3