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Avaline shows signs of progress |
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Written by Sherri Gallant
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Sunday, August 08 2010, 10:02 PM |
A four-year-old Coalhurst girl has completed the first week in what will be a month of intensive physiotherapy in Florida to help her to walk on her own, and already her parents have seen hopeful results.
Jim and Helena Hogan arrived in Florida July 28 for a month of hard physical and emotional work at Therapies4Kids, a unique program designed to help children — and sometimes adults — achieve their full potential with mobility and/or speech. The Hogans’ daughter Avaline is developmentally delayed — for reasons that have eluded diagnosis — and they believe the American program can take the little girl to the next level. They hope the techniques will help Avaline to walk on her own and give her a boost with her speech. What’s more, after only a week in the program, Jim is so impressed by what he’s seen that he’s become determined to find a way to bring it to Canada.
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'Music was his mainstay' |
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Written by Sherri Gallant
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Sunday, August 08 2010, 10:01 PM |
The Alberta Ranch Boys backed up Roy Rogers and Gene Autry, made hit records and had a weekly radio show in Vancouver for two years.
Even after their members settled down with families and “real jobs,” in the late 1940s, most of the men continued to make music at community functions and in other ways; but the death of Buck Waslovich in Lethbridge last week means only one of the five Alberta Ranch Boys remains.
Buck had been living at the Good Samaritan’s assisted living facility in North Lethbridge.
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Strawberry tree a rare find |
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Written by Ric Swihart
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Sunday, August 08 2010, 10:00 PM |
Marjorie Olsen loves to garden, and her double lot yard in Barons is a veritable oasis.
She also loves strawberries, and for years, harvested bumper crops. Her yields are limited these days, mostly because many of her plants simply quit growing the past three years. That has created quite a mystery.
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Nobleford draws crowds for Heritage Days |
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Written by Ric Swihart
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Saturday, August 07 2010, 9:05 PM |
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Neither Nobleford mayor Paul Goldade nor chief administrative officer Kirk Hofman were taking credit Saturday for the ideal summer weather or record crowds for the parade and a host of activities and entertainment for the village’s annual Heritage Days.
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Pushing to get kids outdoors |
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Written by doyle
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Friday, August 06 2010, 10:28 PM |
Sherri Gallant
LETHBRIDGE HERALD — Coaldale
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Bernice and Donald Curle want kids everywhere to get off the couch, go outside and ride their bikes.
And if they don’t have a bike because they can’t afford one, the Curles will give them one. It’s that simple.
The couple hopes more families will come forward and take advantage of their generosity while there’s still some summer weather ahead, said Bernice.
“I think maybe some people aren’t coming to us because they’re too proud,” said Bernice. “Or maybe they don’t know about us. But I’d like people to know because we’re already more than halfway through our summer.”
Bernice and Don are not people of great means themselves — they live on a fixed income. But they remember the days when children spent time outdoors being active, not glued to TVs, computers and video games as many are now. With childhood obesity rates rising and Type 2 diabetes showing up in kids now instead of just adults, the Curles felt the urge to do something that woud help kids get moving, and at no cost.
They had a gut reaction to a story that appeared on the front page of Thursday’s Herald about a University of Alberta study that reveals poor families do not benefit from the federal government’s fitness tax credit. The tax credit was designed to give families a credit of about $75 per child when they register the children in sporting activities. But to claim it, parents must have paid the fees already — something poorer families often can’t afford.
“That’s so true,” said Bernice. “People can’t afford it in the first place so how are they going to get the tax credit? That’s why my husband and I do this, we recycle old bikes, make them usable again, and give them away.”
Programs like KidSport™, which has a Lethbridge chapter, make it possible for low-income households to get their kids into sports as well. KidSport™ was launched in Alberta in 1995 at the AGT March of Champions Torch Relay enroute to the Canada Winter Games in Grande Prairie and is now has 33 Alberta chapters providing support to over 100 Alberta communities. The group was created in B.C. in 1993, not only to promote the benefits provided by sports, but also because the rising costs of registration fees and equipment was steadily reducing the number of kids signing up. So far, the organization has helped more than 36,000 Alberta children.
The Curles started looking for old bikes to fix up last fall.
“We started dumpster diving,” she explained. “We don’t have any money of our own to put into it, so that’s how we started out, by finding ones that were thrown out and recycling them. Sometimes they look kind of funny, but kids don’t always mind. We had one little girl, eight years old, and she was so happy to be getting her own bike she was almost coming to tears. She said, ‘That’s OK, I can make it look pretty.’ There’s the reward, you know.”
Their service, called Re-Cycle, has helped them place 44 bikes this summer. A few were donated to the Lethbridge YWCA for a new incentive program there that encourages staff to use the bikes instead of cars for running errands. Some low-income adults have been provided with bikes to ride to work, as well.
Still, some people just miss the point, Bernice said. One day, a parent pulled up outside the Curle’s home and sent a child in to ask for a bike. As she chatted with the boy, Bernice learned he already had a brand new bike. But mom and dad were urging him to get one of the recycled bikes “so he could trash it.”
“I said to him - ‘you already have a brand new bike? Well, the kids who get these bikes don’t have any bike at all,’” she said. “Imagine that.”
Since they launched their project, people have begun to donate used bikes rather than scrapping them.
“We have an ad on Kijiji (online classifieds) and all the information is there,” she said. “It’s brought people to us with donations and it’s brought kids to us who need bikes. We’ve got lots of bikes here — it keeps them out of the landfill and it helps families at the same time.”
To contact the Curles, phone 403-345-3125.
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