Fredericton Police Force Welcomes New Four Legged Recruit

Endzo is the newest member of the Fredericton Police Force’s K-9 Unit.

The Fredericton Police Force has a new four-legged recruit, and he’s sniffing out crime around the city.

Endzo is the newest member of the force’s K-9 Unit. The two-year-old purebred dark sable German Shepherd was born at the RCMP Police Service Dog Training Center in Innisfail, AB. He is trained to track people, detect drugs, find guns and spent shell casings. He can also track down anything with a human scent.

Endzo’s partner, Cst. Allie Yerxa, said he hasn’t been with the force very long, but he’s already seen a lot of action.

“He has been extremely busy,” Yerxa said. “There haven’t been a lot of nights when we haven’t been called out.”

Yerxa and Endzo are on call at all times, so they have to be ready to go at a moment’s notice.

Since he came to Fredericton, Endzo has successfully tracked two elderly people who went missing from their homes. He has also sniffed out guns and drugs in the city.

The German Shepherd got his name at the RCMP training center in Alberta. At their kennel, the pups are named after a letter from the alphabet depending on their year of birth. The letter ‘E’ was used to name all of the seven pups in Endzo’s litter.

Cst. Yerxa says Endzo is very obedient like most police dogs, but like humans, each dog has their own personality.

“We look at him like a big goofball,” she said. “He’s long-legged and gangly – but he’s really good at his job and he likes to work.”

Endzo hasn’t been with the police force for long, but he has already seen a lot of action.

Even when he’s not technically on the job, Endzo is always working. Yerxa noticed this specifically when she was walking Endzo the other day. He was walking ahead of Yerxa when he suddenly laid down. When his handler got in front of him, she saw he had a quarter underneath his snout.

“The quarter wasn’t frozen, so somebody must have just dropped it,” Yerxa said.

Endzo weighs 82 pounds, but German Shepherds grow until they’re about two and a half years old. Yerxa thinks he will finish growing over the next year.

K-9 units are an important aspect of the police force. Dogs are able to notice things humans can’t. Yerxa says that Endzo can pick up a human scent on something as small as a dime. Certain situations like a missing person require Endzo’s exceptional snout.

“Our nose does not have the same capability that his does,” Yerxa said.

Endzo has been getting a lot of experience around town. But according to his partner, he doesn’t mind being so busy. Yerxa says that Endzo isn’t rolling over for crime. The dynamic duo is doing their best to keep Fredericton safe – and Endzo is doing his best to put criminals in the doghouse.

“It’s incredible what those dogs can do,” Yerxa said. “Endzo and I aim to train above the regular standards so we can help out the citizens of Fredericton and make it a safer place.”

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STU Men’s Rugby Team Lending A Helping Hand In Community

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Satirical news website The Manatee making waves in New Brunswick

Johnny Cullen/NB Beacon – IMG 9186 260×300 Satirical news website The Manatee making waves in New Brunswick 

It started as an inside joke between friends. Now the whole province is in on it.

Alex Vietinghoff and Shauna Chase launched The Manatee – a satirical news website about New Brunswick – less than a month ago. Like their stories, the site’s name has an underlying significance – the manatee is an endangered aquatic mammal.

Vietinghoff crafted the slogan, “saving the endangered truth”, because, like the manatee, the truth can be hard to find.

Over the summer, Vietinghoff and Chase shared articles with each other from The Onion, a popular satirical news site based in the United States. That’s when they got the idea for The Manatee.

They believe satire is important because it provides a different angle on issues in society – one that uses humour. They realized New Brunswick didn’t have a source of satirical news, so they put pen to paper and got to work.

Now, three weeks after launch, The Manatee is gaining popularity in the province. To date it has more than 141, 000 views. Vietinghoff thinks the launch was successful because he didn’t tell people about the site, he showed them.

“It was kind of a soft launch,” he said. “Instead of announcing what the Manatee was, we were just writing our articles and sharing them on our own Facebook page.”

He didn’t have to explain. At a glance, The Manatee looks like other news sources -complete with sections for hard news, sports, features, science/technology and entertainment. The difference is, their articles have a fictional twist.

Last week, CBC broke a story on a man who found a dead mouse in his McDonald’s coffee cup. A few days later, The Manatee responded to the piece with an article saying a McDonald’s employee was looking for help finding his lost pet mouse.

According to Vietinghoff, it’s stories like this that have been grabbing people’s attention.

“Our most popular stories so far have been the ones people see that are relevant to something that just happened,” he said.

Social media spreads information like wildfire. Facebook in particular has helped the Manatee gain popularity – people either share stories because they think they’re funny, or because they think they’re real. With the help of the jokesters and news junkies sharing these stories, the site is getting a lot of publicity.

On its biggest day The Manatee received 30,000 views.

Vietinghoff says satire is important because it uses humour to draw attention to important issues in a society. That’s one of the site’s main objectives. But sometimes, they write a story just for the laugh.

One of its articles looks at Humans of Fredericton – started this past summer by photographer and fourth year St. Thomas University Journalism student Jon Munn.

He created the page after being influenced by a similar concept, Humans of New York. Munn photographs interesting people around the city and interviews them, posts the pictures on Facebook and tells the person’s story in the caption.

The Manatee recently poked fun at Munn’s project in a post called “Humans of Millville”.

They satire his style and content, but in a comical way. Instead of being offended, Munn was amused.

“It’s all in good fun,” he said. “It was a well-written article, and the majority of what they said was true, like the way people are approached and the way people act when I approach them.”

Although The Manatee parodies certain topics, like choosing Baxter milk over Northumberland, Munn says it’s a news source in its own way. Satire or not, the website draws attention to local businesses and groups.

“Jon Munn Interview Part 2 ”

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“It’s a neat way to look at news,” he said. “You look on The Manatee and read a story and laugh at it. But then you think, ‘what’s the real story here?’ ”

Right now The Manatee is a hobby for Vietinghoff and Chase. They have full-time jobs, so they usually only write satire in the evenings or on weekends. Once the site gets more followers, Vietinghoff hopes to sell advertisement space to companies so he can off set costs and pay his writers. If The Manatee continues to gain popularity, he wants to cover more than just New Brunswick.

“It feels really good to have this idea come to fruition,” he said.

“It’s nice to know work we’re passionate about and doing for our own enjoyment is enjoyable for other people as well.”

 

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Controversy over Energy East Pipeline on the rise in New Brunswick

Johnny Cullen/NB Beacon – The Council of Canadians held a meeting in Fredericton on Monday night. They say the Energy East Pipeline proposed by TransCanada has too many environmental risks.

More than 300 people from across the province gathered in Fredericton on Monday night to discuss the environmental impact of TransCanada’s proposed Energy East Pipeline.

TransCanada says the pipeline will create 14,000 direct and indirect jobs across Canada, but Council of Canadians Chairperson Maude Barlow said this won’t benefit New Brunswickers in the long run. According to her, most of the jobs will be on the Alberta oil sands.

She said most of the jobs will be on the Alberta oil sands, and a 40 per cent increase in tar sands production would “send even more New Brunswick young people out west.”

She acknowledges that people need jobs, but they also need to know the facts.

“The only side of the story [the people] have heard so far has been through TransCanada,” she said. “They have to hear a different side of the story, so that’s what we’re doing here.”

The Energy East Pipeline would transport Bitumen, a close relative of crude oil, from the Alberta tar sands to refineries in Quebec and New Brusnwick. The 4,600 kilometre-long pipeline would transport 1.1 million litres of diluted bitumen per day.

Environmentalists are concerned because previous bitumen spills in the United States have destroyed ecosystems in the surrounding areas.

Bitumen is very thick, so it is diluted with chemicals to liquefy it for transportation through the pipeline. If a spill occurs, these poisonous chemicals could pollute the environment and even drinking water.

Matthew Abbot, Fundy Baykeeper for the Conservation Council of New Brunswick, says Bitumen doesn’t behave like crude oil or natural gas – if it’s spilled in water, it sinks to the bottom and forms tar balls making clean up almost impossible.

Environmental concerns aside, there is also controversy over how the pipeline will affect the provincial economy. Most of the oil refined in Saint John will be exported overseas.

Green Party leader David Coon says the construction of the pipeline would be a step in the wrong direction for our economy.

“We need to be building a new green economy in this province,” he said. “Not deepening our economic dependence on fossil fuel production.”

He also said building trades in this province need to be building nursing homes, not tar sands pipelines. But the building trades are confident the pipeline will leave a positive impact on New Brunswick.

Gary Ritchie, President of the New Brunswick Building and Construction Trades Council said he supports it because he thinks it will brings jobs to the province and strengthen the economy.

“Our members hunt, fish, and do everything everyone else does. China is going to get their oil one way or another. If they don’t get it from us, they’re going to get it from someone else,” he said.

The meeting was the fourth of five stops of the Council of Canadians’ “Energy East: Our Risk – Their Reward” Atlantic tour designed to raise awareness of the environmental risks of the pipeline. The tour will conclude tomorrow night with a final meeting in Edmundston.

 

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From Their Family To Yours

Everett’s apples.

Ten minutes outside of Fredericton, a hidden gem sits on a hillside overlooking the Saint John River.

A long gravel driveway leads up to a farmhouse that has been resting on the edge of the hill for over 200 years.

For eight generations, the sweeping slopes and picturesque landscape above the Saint John River Valley have been home to the Everett family.

“My greatest grandfather settled here on this farm in 1792,” said Chuck Everett, owner of the family estate.

He and his brother lost the war to George Washington in Long Island, so they jumped ship to come up here,” he said.

Since Everett’s Loyalist ancestors settled in New Brunswick, there has been a farming tradition in the family.

But the family doesn’t farm potatoes or corn. They don’t have chickens, cows or pigs.

Everett’s orchard has a large variety of apples.

The Everetts are apple farmers.

Wanda Dunphy loves visiting the family orchard.

“Every year I come probably two or three times during the season,” she said.

Dunphy says she would rather buy her apples at a local orchard than imported apples from a supermarket.

“We know the quality is really good,” she said. “The pricing is good too.”

The orchard runs up the hill behind their house in tidy rows. While the garden just off their driveway is busy with bumblebees, the

Everett says the orchard is popular with children.

orchard is likewise filled with apple-lovers of all ages.

Weekends tend to be the busiest, but that doesn’t mean Chuck has the week off.

“During the week we have a number of bus loads of children come, either preschool or elementary,” he said. “So that keeps us busy.”

But that doesn’t bother Chuck.

If he’s not buzzing through the orchard on his golf cart pruning trees along the way, he’s chatting with customers.

He likes the friendly faces.

Chuck Everett owns the family orchard with his Father.

At one time the farm was commercial. The Everett’s hired pickers and sold their apples to Atlantic Wholesalers.

But according to Chuck, their orchard wasn’t big enough to be competitive in the commercial market, so they switched to U-Pick.

“This has worked very nice,” he said. “It provides something for families and children.”

When they made the switch, the orchard transformed completely.

Wagons once used to transport apples to storage were pushed aside. The Everetts found another use for them.

They built benches along the sides and mounted a staircase on the back. Chuck hooked the wagon up to the tractor. Now he shares the history of his family farm with customers on guided tours.

For the Everett family, it’s not all about selling apples.

With five apple orchards in the Fredericton area and two farmer’s markets in the city, there are plenty of apples to go around.

But for customers like Dunphy, Everett’s Family Orchard will always hold a special spot in her heart.

“We eat a lot of apples,” she said. “I like knowing that I’m getting fresh fruit and supporting a local business.”

For a list of apple orchards in the Fredericton area, visit the Fredericton Tourism website: http://blog.tourismfredericton.ca/update-2013-take-your-pick-orchards-around-fredericton-getting-ready-for-apple-picking/.

International Students on International Waters

Photo: Laura Fraser – Fraser and her peers carrying on a tradition on the MV Explorer: girls paint the flags of the countries visited on their backs.

Some students just sail their way through school.

At least, that’s what Laura Fraser did last semester.

Fraser, a fourth year student at St. Thomas University, was looking for something different when she heard about an exchange program called Semester At Sea.

“I always knew I wanted to study abroad,” she said.

With several different programs available, it was difficult for Fraser to decide where to go.

Most exchanges involve students travelling to one country and staying there for a number of months. But according to Fraser, Semester At Sea isn’t your typical exchange.

“It was exciting to me to be able to circumnavigate the globe all while earning transfer credits,” she said.

Fraser was the first student from St. Thomas to participate in this program.

In just 114 days, the ship, called the MV Explorer, visited 12 countries stopping at historical ports along the way.

The Explorer was a small university, complete with classrooms, a library, professors and about 500 students.

In fact, this nautical institution is similar to Canadian universities in a lot of ways.

Students enroll in courses, go to class, and do their homework – even if it is on the deck of the ship.

Except in this program, going to class doesn’t always mean sitting in a room and listening to a lecture.

“For our field lab in our East Asia in the Modern World class, we went to China Town in Singapore to discuss how Chinese culture has influenced the people of Singapore,” she said.

A photo Fraser snapped while on a safari in the bush of South Africa.

For these students, experiences like this were an everyday thing.
Semester At Sea is based on experiential learning. In this style of education, students learn certain aspects of cultures, then immerse themselves in those cultures to experience what they’re learning in the classroom.

From Hawaii to England and everywhere in between, Fraser experienced a lot of different cultures during her four months abroad.

Before they embarked on their journey through Asia, Fraser and her classmates studied different styles of Buddhism.

Not long after that, she found herself in Buddhist temples in Myanmar, China and Japan meditating with monks and learning the ways of this ancient religion.

Photo: Laura Fraser – Fraser hiking a section of the Great Wall of China outside Beijing.

 

For her, that was something that made the experience so valuable. Each subject they studied in class, they got to experience first hand on field trips.

That’s because each class had a field lab component. On days when the boat was in port, the professor would take their class into cities or towns for a lesson. Whether they were taking in lectures in a hospital, or touring the streets with locals, the field trips were always an eye-opening experience.

Aside from schoolwork, students had time to travel independently. This was also a large part of Fraser’s learning experience.

“What we learned when we were off the boat travelling by ourselves is a lot different than what we would learn in a class,” she said.

When the ship docked, students were free to explore on their own. They had the choice of either returning to the ship to travel to the next port, or finding their own way by plane, train, or another means of transportation.

Photo: Laura Fraser – Fraser on a camel trek to a nomad camp in the middle of the Sahara Desert in Morocco.

 

This is where the students did most of their travelling. While on the ship, they were often busy with homework. Fraser explains that the ship was usually in port for a few days, depending on the location.

On the first day, students would usually have to stick with their professor for a field lab. But after that, they could travel on their own or with a group of friends.

Like any university, the people who surround you shape your experience. Fraser says that different groups of people had different motivations when they were off the boat. While some wanted to find the nearest Holiday Inn and party the whole time, others were more concerned with learning about different cultures.

Lucky for her, she found friends that shared her curiosity and sense of adventure.

While travelling in South Africa, Fraser and her friends accidentally ate at a restaurant where Nelson Mandela’s Great Grandson was celebrating his birthday party.

Not only did Fraser gain academic credits, but she also learned valuable life lessons along the way.

“It’s about gaining your independence,” she said. “If things go wrong, you can’t just call your parents for help.”

But Fraser didn’t focus on things going wrong.

Perhaps the most valuable thing she learned on the voyage was how a human connection can bridge all borders and languages.

“My favourite part was talking to people and learning about their culture,” she said.

“People were eager to learn about my culture when they realized I wanted to learn about theirs. It was amazing to see how genuinely nice people were in every country.”

For more information on Semester At Sea, visit their website: http://www.semesteratsea.org

Mock Business Memo for a Communications Class

Memorandum

27 February 2014

Robichaud-Hatfield Frozen Foods

Johnny Cullen – Head of department of communications

Social Media Integration

The field of communications has changed rapidly over the past few years. As you very well know, the hay day of landline telephones, desktop computers, formal letters, and other classic means of communication from the 20^th century has passed and given way to new, more efficient forms of communication. Companies that are still relying on billboard advertisements and television commercials are falling behind. Our sales have decreased because we are out of the loop, so to speak, in the modern world of advertising and communication with our customers. We need to turn this around, and to achieve this goal, we are going to have to get social.

Social media is being used by large corporations to advertise and connect with their customers in ways that were not possible before. By simply posting updates and announcements on social media networks, companies are able to reach thousands of people at the click of a button. This ability to access customers – or supporters of the company – is priceless.

Harold Innis, a professor at the University of Toronto in the 1900s, developed a communications theory that explains how different media are used and interpreted. He explains how different forms of media are more effective than others, and why this is the case. Innis divides media into two separate categories: Time Binding media, and Space Binding media.

Time Binding media is a form of media that lasts for a very long period of time. It is durable, but it is difficult to transport the message it carries, and as a result of this, the message does not reach large numbers of people. A stone tablet from ancient Greece, for example, can last for thousands of years. The message it carries, however, is viewed by a small, exclusive group of people. Space Binding media are able to spread messages to large audiences in a very short period of time. Though the message they carry does not last long, it is rapidly viewed by thousands of people. Computers, smartphones, tablets, Blu-rays, and other forms of Space Binding media quickly become outdated in our society due to advances in technology.

Social media comprises of various platforms (the big ones are Facebook and Twitter) and are operated through Space Binding media. Computers, smartphones, and tablets are all used to convey social media. The messages conveyed through social media, like a Facebook post for example, becomes available to a large audience with one simple post. However, this post will not be relevant for a very long period of time. The ‘newsfeed’, or continuous list of posts on Facebook, is updated very frequently, giving individuals or corporations numerous opportunities to have their message made accessible to large quantities of people.

Marshall McLuhan, a leader in the field of communications during the 1960s, argued that there are two types of media: Hot and Cool media. According to McLuhan, hot media is direct and leaves nothing to the imagination. Math textbooks with specific directions for a formula, movies with a specific plot, and lectures delivered with a clearly stated argument are all examples of hot media. Cool media is the exact opposite. Cool media leaves room for people to fill in the blanks; it asks us to use our imaginations. Examples of Cool media are comic books with their limited text but detailed pictures and television shows that show action and use very few words to do so. Social media can be categorized under both of these sections. While some posts on social media networks, such as a Facebook status that has great detail and an image to further contextualize the message for the audience, and thus rendering it an example of Hot media, other posts, like a “tweet” on Twitter are ambiguous and leave opportunity for the imagination to do the work. A tweet giving a headline, or asking a question with a link posted underneath is an example of Cool media, as it calls for the audience to use their mind to fill in the gaps and investigate the message.

McLuhan invented a model called a “Tetrad” to show how new media affects society and the impact it will have on old forms of media. The Tetrad model poses four questions:

1. What does the new medium enhance, impact, make possible, accelerate?
2. When pushed to its limits, the new form will reverse to its original, positive characteristics. What is the reversal potential of the new form?
3. What earlier action, service, form is brought back into play by the new form?
4. What is pushed aside or made obsolete by the new media?

When we apply this model to social media, we can predict where it is headed in the future.

1. Enhances speed and efficiency of communication.
2. Gives everyone a chance to voice their opinion, could be a bad thing because some people may have skewed perceptions of whether they are right or wrong.
3. Retrieves our ability to control which content we have access to.
4. Reduces the role of traditional media – why wait for a newspaper in the morning when you can read it on Twitter at midnight.

Based on this model, we can predict that social media will open more discussions worldwide and encourage steady, constant interaction. It may, however, eliminate traditional forms of media, like the newspaper.

Proper utilization of social media could be of great benefit to Robichaud-Hatfield Frozen Foods. Our Facebook page is out of date, and our Twitter account was hacked recently. Both of these conditions make it very difficult for us to stay in the game with the competition – they are, in a sense, on a whole other level than us. If we remodel our approach to social media as a corporation, our sales will increase. Advertising is much cheaper and more effective over Facebook and Twitter. Promoting a new product is made much easier on these models. We can post the same advertisement five different ways, attach pictures of the product to the post, and consumers can ‘retweet’, ‘share’, or ‘like’ the post, leading to more exposure and promotion of the product. Hosting contests, or free giveaways, is also a very useful technique for marketing our products that is made available to us through the use of social media. We can be creative with contests – “the person to post the funniest pictures with our French fries will win a Robichaud-Hatfield Frozen Foods duffle bag and T-shirt.” Customers love free giveaways, and we can use the amusing pictures they send in for further advertisement. Social media serves one essential role: it allows consumers to market our products for us. The people that subscribe to our social media networks are showing that they support us, which increases our sales and overall popularity.

Though the integration of social media into our corporation may at first seem daunting, the process is actually quite simple. First, we need to hire younger, more tech savvy employees who can bring their knowledge of social networking to the workplace and can educate our more senior workers. Employees that have been with us for a long period of time have respectable interpersonal communication skills, they simply lack education in our modern society. If we give them the tools to succeed in the field of 21^st century advertising, we will be strengthening our corporation as a whole. We need to get our employees on these social networks to keep our consumers informed. In the same fashion you would tell your friend what you did at work if a new product came out that day, you can “tweet” or “post” this, bringing the message to large masses of people that are interested in what we do – put our famous French fries on their dinner plates.

If we can educate our employees by bringing in fresh minds with fresh ideas, our sales will soon be back on top. Steps forward require your complete cooperation, but together, we can once again make Robichaud-Hatfield Frozen Foods the brand New Brunswickers choose when they go to the grocery store.

Fredericton Opens First Hookah Lounge

Going against the grain has its perks – something Shokooh Mostafaie, 52, knows first hand.

Mostafaie is the owner of Cinnamon Café, a new coffee shop on King Street in Fredericton’s downtown center. At first glance, the café seems like an ordinary place where people gather to drink tea, nibble on snacks, and talk about their day.

But it has another element.

In addition to Persian Tea and baked goods, the Cinnamon Café has something that sets it apart from other cafés in the city: a hookah lounge.

“I didn’t expect business to go well because there are a lot of other coffee shops around,” Mostafaie said. “But business has been very good.”

The owner, previously a dentist for 28 years in her native country of Iran, thinks access to the hookah lounge is what attracts many customers to her business.

A hookah is a traditional Middle Eastern water pipe used to smoke flavoured tobacco. It is made of three layers of decorated glass. Heated charcoals are placed on top of the bowl containing the tobacco, creating smoke that travels from the water-filled chamber to the smoker’s mouth.

Mostafaie has noticed her customers use the hookahs as they socialize.

“It’s fun for them,” she says “young and older customers love my service and my location.”

But smoking tobacco is not as popular in New Brunswick as it once was. In October of 2004, the provincial government banned smoking in public spaces and workplaces.

That’s why Mostafaie had to take certain precautions in order to open her café.

“We have a license, but it was very difficult to get,” she said.

For many, the thought of smoking indoors seems distasteful. But the tobacco smoked out of hookahs in Mostafaie’s shop is not the same tobacco that is used in cigarettes.

“Our tobacco doesn’t contain nicotine like cigarettes. It’s flavoured, herbal tobacco,” she said.

No nicotine means the tobacco smoked in the Cinnamon Café is non-addictive.

Mostafaie’s business is the first of its kind in Fredericton. She thinks her café will draw in curious customers who want to experience an interesting aspect of Middle Eastern culture.

Customers may choose from eight flavours of herbal tobacco, order a hookah along with their tea or cookie, and enjoy the comfortable atmosphere the café has to offer.

The cost of a hookah is $9, a price the storeowner thinks is affordable for her customers.

“$9 between three people is only $3 each,” she said. “It is a good price for our customers, and for us too.”

Tyler Mullin, 19, and Ian MacIsaac, 21, two first-time customers, think smoking a hookah while sipping on Persian Tea is a very enjoyable experience.

“It’s very relaxing,” Mullin said.

The storeowner’s son, Mehdi Mostafaie, 19, agrees that smoking out of a hookah is pleasant experience, and says people do it for different reasons.

“It is a social thing,” he said. “And for Middle Eastern people, it is a cultural thing.”

In his native country of Iran, Mostafaie says smoking a hookah is very common for people of all ages.

Shokooh Mostafaie, however, has placed an age restriction on the hookahs in her café. Customers below 16 years of age may enjoy the atmosphere of the lounge and purchase beverages and snacks, but are not permitted to purchase tobacco.

Although she will not sell tobacco to younger children, Mostafaie says she enjoys the age of her customers.

Many adult customers will sit in the front section of the café, which is smoke free. The back section, or hookah lounge, contains some smoke, but is moderated by a powerful ventilation system that purifies the air every few seconds. This is where most of the younger customers typically sit.

Mostafaie likes that her café is a comfortable place for her customers, and enjoys greeting the friendly faces as they come to experience what she has to offer.

“I love all of the young customers like my two boys,” she said.

She is pleased with the reception her business has had locally, and is excited that her idea has sparked interest in Fredericton.

Pioneering a new idea is a difficult thing, but Shokooh Mostafaie is satisfied with her café’s success since its opening last month.

“Anything you want to do, you can do,” she said.

Fredericton Volunteers Begin Planning 2014 Relay For Life

They laughed, smiled, joked and even cried as they decorated their Bristol board posters.

Nearly twenty people and an excited blonde toddler filled the cafeteria of Leo Hayes High School on Sunday to plan out the early stages of the Fredericton Relay For Life set to take place at Leo Hayes on June 14.

The participants gathered around tables and worked in teams to create their masterpieces meant to commemorate those who lost their battle with cancer.

“It’s a good way to memorialize things,” said Mark Kirby. “It’s my first time participating in the event in terms of being on the fundraising side of it.”

Kirby lost his sister to Ovarian cancer 4 years ago, and has been involved with the Relay For Life ever since.

He likes the organization and the reason behind the relay.

“It’s a good way to spread awareness to the different cancers that are out there,” he said.

The Relay for Life is a non-competitive 12-hour event that takes place overnight. Participants take turns walking or running around a track with their teams – rain or shine. Teams raise money while they relay in an attempt to aid Canadian cancer research.

It began in the United States in 1985 when a surgeon from Washington who enjoyed running marathons decided to run around the track at the University of Puget Sound to raise money for cancer research.

Dr. Gordon Klatt walked and ran 83 miles that night, and with the help of others, raised a total of $27,000.

Although the Relay For Life has not been going on since 1985 in Fredericton, according to Andrew Despres, Manager of the Canadian Cancer Society, it has been an annual event in New Brunswick’s capital for the past 14 years.

Despres, having only acquired his new position six months ago, is confident that 2014’s relay will be successful thanks to the hard work and dedication of his event planning team.

“I have a great team behind me of volunteers that come back year after year,” he said. “They believe in the cause, and they know how fun it is.”

A group from Remax Real Estate has been contributing to the cause for the past six summers. They normally have a strong representation at the event – their squad typically consists of 15 members.

“We’re all committed to it,” a member said. “We have two people in our office who have been touched by cancer.”

The group was involved in the Relay before their coworkers were diagnosed, but now it means much more to them.

“As a team we’ve committed to raise $10,000, and we’re almost there – we’re at $8,300,” another team member said.

Although the Relay For Life is a great help, much of the Remax team’s fundraising is done aside from this event.

They hold 50/50 draws and have meals every second week at their office that are sold to coworkers for $10. All of the proceeds of these fundraisers go towards the Relay For Life. One dinner auction they hosted raised $3,500 in an hour.

The volunteers who sacrifice their time and energy are the heart and soul of the Relay. Despres works with the volunteers in the province to hold 32 Relays For Life – something that wouldn’t be possible with the cooperation of many.

“We’re grassroots,” he said. “We’re volunteer driven, we have very few staff and we’re here to support [the volunteers].”

Despres says that as much as the event is about fundraising, it is also about raising cancer awareness in Canada. It is about people banding together and working as a team towards a common goal – a cure for cancer.

The Canadian Cancer Society Manager has high hopes for June, and thinks his team of volunteers will pull through this June.

“If it is a great event and everybody has a good time, it is a successful event,” he said.

From The Rugby Field To The Hockey Rink

Canadian winters aren’t ideal for rugby, so the Fredericton Loyalists rugby club found another way to keep active in the off-season.

Over the weekend, the Loyalists braved the cold as they held their first annual Shinny Hockey Tournament at their club grounds on Fredericton’s north side.

Over sixty players hit the ice on Saturday to compete for the trophy and bragging rights around the city’s rugby community.

Blake Edwards, a member of the Loyalists club and tournament organizer, was pleased with the way the community came together for the event.

“We can’t complain at all,” he said. “We didn’t think it would go this well, but judging from the amount of people that had big smiles on their faces, it was great.”

Edwards said the ice surfaces were originally constructed for the club’s annual milk jug curling competition a week earlier, but when bad weather made the ice soft and uneven, the competition was postponed. A club member suggested the rinks be used for shinny hockey the next weekend, allowing the ice time to harden.

Two out of three ice surfaces behind the Loyalists’ clubhouse were in great condition on the day of the tournament, but the third was still in rough shape from the weather.

The two smooth surfaces were filled with fast-paced action, while spectators and children cheered on the twenty teams from the third.

Loyalist player Austin Comeau thought the tournament was a great way to bring people together for something other than rugby.

“We all play rugby, and its just nice to see people doing something different and staying together as a club,” he said.

Like Comeau, many of the participants who laced up the skates on Saturday do not play organized hockey. In fact, many participants were not members of the Loyalists rugby club.

But the event was certainly not limited to Loyalist rugby players.

“It’s just a big community event,” said Edwards. “It’s great exposure for our club, and makes people realize they can have fun here even if they’re not members.”

The Loyalists take pride in their community involvement. In addition to the Shinny Hockey Tournament, the club also hosts the annual Fredrock music festival each August, a washer-toss tournament, the milk jug curling competition, and has recently been added to the Fredericton FROSTival itinerary.

The club also makes an effort to grow the popularity of rugby in the province.

Last year, the Loyalists launched a ‘mini’ program for young players ages five to twelve, and a touch rugby league for non-experienced rugby players to learn how to play the sport.

Hosting these community events helps them promote their sport, and attracts new members that allow the club to grow.

Casey Flanagan, a spectator at the Shinny tournament, liked the idea that a rugby club was hosting a hockey tournament.

“It was cool how people who play a sport in the summer wanted to get together and play a sport in the winter too,” she said.

Flanagan, a student at St. Thomas University, used to play hockey growing up. Watching her friends play on Saturday made her miss the sport.

“I love hockey and its fun to see everyone else having fun as a community,” she said.

Flanagan enjoyed the location of the rinks. The ice surfaces were very close together, making it convenient for spectators who didn’t want to miss out on the action.

“It was nice that the ice was so close to the clubhouse because you could go inside and warm up – or even watch from inside,” she said.

The clubhouse was open all day so people could sit and socialize in between games. Participants played shuffleboard, watched the British and Irish Lions rugby team take on the Melbourne Rebels on the club television, and petted Edwards’ dog, Beaker, who rotated between watching the action on the rinks and mingling with the crowd inside the clubhouse.

Moving forward, the club hopes to draw in more participants who are not members of Fredericton’s rugby community.

But for now, Edwards is very pleased with the way the tournament turned out.

“We can’t go wrong,” he said. “Everybody is having fun, and that’s the main thing.”