Tenth to the Fraser

I really can not believe Miss 604 beat me to it!

New Westminster is a haven for snow sledding for the youthful and the young at heart. As any one who has walked uptown from the New Westminster Skytrain station can attest, we have got some hills in this fair city! While there are a good number of sledding sites around the Royal City and a notable one at the North East corner of Queen's Park, perhaps the snowy hill most slid upon is the one on the South side of Grimston Park, in New Westminster's West End.


Miss 604 agrees noting briefly that it is "rather tube-friendly", an important technical detail for the sledding enthusiast. With the long, excitingly steep decline, gradual leveling bottom and stunning Fraser River / Delta Shore views, this park really offers the best slope available for safe sledding. While the diminutive denizens of New Westminster used to freely slide down 6th street and 8th street (a practice now reserved for BC Transit vehicles) the slopes of Grimston Park offer a safer thrill and an alternate "bunny hill" in the park by 7th ave for the young sledding fan that, let's admit, is still mastering walking.

I would love to post a sledding photo of the Queen's Park hill or another (perhaps by Richard McBride or Hume Park?) Send us one and we will post it up.

Labels: grimston, growing up NW, Things to do, winter

Grimston Park will be protected space, and will not be considered as a future school site according to last night's school board vote. This is great for the West End, who would have lost its only large park, but leaves New West in a bit of a pickle. New schools must be built, but where? To further complicate matters, our school district is facing a $2 million budget shortfall. We have neither time, nor money, nor resources. So what to do?

Some creative thinking is called for! Some of the ideas I've heard kicked around include:

• Sending some New West kids to Burnaby schools (working with that city's school authorities, of course ... though attending by stealth would be funnier ... I'm picturing balaclava-clad kids scurrying across Tenth every morning, hiding behind bushes and trees like you'd see in some Merrie Melodies cartoon ... maybe that's just funny to me)
• Building a new high school in Queensborough, where there's a little more room to breathe
• Building multi-storey elementary schools instead of single-storey
• Building parking lots underground in order to build on smaller lots (not currently funded by the province, but that should change IMHO)

Labels: grimston, Queensborough, school, West End

• Casey Cook wants Grimston "off the table" for new school site [The Record's Time Out Corner blog]
• New West-based Credit Counselling Society offers tips to rein in holiday spending . [Financial Post]
  
• Royal City Ballet's Nutcracker ticket sales for Vancouver performance affected by news of Ballet B.C.'s financial woes [Georgia Straight]
• Local kid made good Justin Morneau named Canada's top baseball player [CBC]
• Fraser Health Authority apologizes after a Royal Columbian Hospital night nurse shaves off a Sikh man's beard [Maple Leaf Sikh]
• Local lacrosse star Paul Parnell will be inducted into the B.C. Sports Hall of Fame next year [Province]

Labels: casey cook, grimston, NW in the news, royal columbian hospital

Royal City Blogger Niki Hope, who excels at all things educational in her website, has recently posted that the Glenbrook Middle School Parent Advisory Council has passed a resolution that, while focusing on the need for a new High School, also calls for the use of Grimston Park as a school site for a middle school.

While the idea of a school on Grimston has been almost universally reviled by the West End community (see Facebook Page Here) and the need for a middle school is still hotly debated, I don't personally see why the Glenbrook folks (and fine folks they be, I am sure) would really concern themselves with building a middle school way on the other side of town. Perhaps the Westend folks could suggest the removal of Queens Park in favour of a municipal waste to energy incinerator (you see, I am exaggerating for effect).

The content of the letter is below. I invite all concerned to comment here. I will try to have expounders of the Grimston School topic (for and against) send in comments also.

December 1, 2008

Jim Alkins
Project Director
School District #40
1001 Columbia Street
New Westminster, BC
V3M 1C4

Dear Mr. Alkins:

As the Parents’ Advisory Council (PAC) for Glenbrook Middle School, we are writing to you regarding the school construction public consultation process in our City. After significant discussion at our meeting on November 24, 2008, the PAC passed the following motion:
THAT the ÉCOLE GLENBROOK MIDDLE SCHOOL PARENTS’ ADVISORY COUNCIL:
• urges the construction of the high school move forward as soon as possible:
• supports the idea of building a new middle school on the west side; and
• believes that Grimston Park should be considered as an option for that middle school.
CARRIED.

In our view, it is absolutely critical that this initiative – AND PARTICULARLY THE HIGH SCHOOL – move ahead as quickly as possible and NOT be allowed to “go back to the drawing board.” Too much time and money have already been spent and further delays will only continue to compromise the education of all our children.

Yours truly;

Stephen Bruyneel
Chair

Labels: grimston, school

Labels: election, endorsements, grimston, Kirpaul Kaur, politics, school

Labels: grimston, politics, school

Labels: cemetery, Chief Ahan, grimston, new westminster, NWSS, park, school, West End