Caps off for successful student philanthropy project

A fledgling students’ group at Capilano University in North Vancouver has raised more than enough money to house the family of a sick child at Ronald McDonald House for a year.

Ronald’s Helping Heroes, a directed study project in the School of Business, hoped to raise $27,375 by Oct. 18. The sum represents 365 nights at $75 per, the cost of housing a family at the Angus Drive property. As of 7 p.m. on Oct. 15, they had raised $28,683. 

The project was the brainchild of Sian Hebden and Kimia Tajbakhsh, who did fundraising and cooking three times a week at Ronald McDonald House in Vancouver over a two-month period last semester to more than satisfy the requirement of a one-day leadership class assignment. 

“We could've gone to the SPCA and walked dogs or fed the homeless, but Kimia and I decided we wanted to do more than that. We started researching charities, we decided we wanted to do something to help children who were sick and Ronald McDonald house fits that,” Hebden said. 

The group has gone classroom to classroom wearing pyjamas, some branded with Ronald’s Helping Heroes, and elicited donations from fellow students, faculty and staff.  

“We're trying to create what is known as a changemaker campus, we're trying to really build a community here of changemakers, people that go out and do projects,” Hebden said. “We want to create things that go outside the four walls of school and reading textbooks. We think it's important to 

engage in the community.”

The Oct. 18 deadline coincides with the annual We Day inspirational conference/concert at Rogers Arena. One of the members of Ronald’s Helping Heroes is scheduled to speak to the full house of Lower Mainland schoolchildren about the project. 

“In an organization there are approvals that have to happen, there hasn't been any drama, these kids are focused on getting it down in five weeks,” said instructor and convenor Carolyn Stern. “They've learned the process of how things get done.”

Stern has been teaching at Capilano for 13 years and student projects normally “stay within the department or stay within the faculty.” 

“I've never seen a student group get an office. They've been given this office to use for this project but they have bigger plans.”

The website, including an explanatory video, is the start of that under the Cap U We Do name. And donations are still accepted.  

Cup Crazy

Has the Stanley Cup been to Stanley Park?

Why, yes it has. And I was right there with it, at the foot of the statue of Lord Frederick Arthur Stanley of Preston: the former Conservative Member of the British Parliament, the Earl of Derby and Canada's Governor General from 1888-1893.

When Labatt was the official beer of the National Hockey League, it conducted its Cup Crazy promotional tour across Canada.

The tour came through North Vancouver in 1999 and made a stop at the North Vancouver city fire hall.

I was working for the North Shore News newspaper at the time and arranged for West Vancouver resident and Hockey Hall of Famer Clint Smith to show up for a photo with the grandest trophy in North American sport.

Smith was a member of the 1940 Stanley Cup champion New York Rangers.

Hold your booing, please.

Mr. Smith, who lived to be 95 before being called up to the Heavenly Hockey League in 2009, was a Saskatchewan native. Before becoming a Ranger in 1936, he spent three years as a Vancouver Lion in the North West Hockey League. In 1933-34 he scored 25 goals and assisted 14 in just 34 games.

By virtue of being a Hockey Hall of Famer and a member of a Cup-winning team, Mr. Smith, whose nickname was "Snuffy," got to hoist the Cup. Needless to say, it made his day.

It made my day when I continued on with the Labatt and Hockey Hall of Fame crew for lunch and a jaunt into Stanley Park where we posed with the Stanley Cup at the popular statue of the park's namesake.

Lord Stanley never witnessed a Stanley Cup game. But he did enjoy Vancouver's most famous park. It opened on Sept. 28, 1888, but Lord Stanley himself came for the official dedication on Oct. 29, 1889.

I predict the Stanley Cup will return to Stanley Park sometime during June 2011. And Vancouverites will be proud of calling the park -- and the trophy -- theirs.

Will the ex-VP become an MP?

This time last year, there was a lot of buzz around VANOC CEO John Furlong and whether he would stay in the public eye and run for public office. It was one-way hype.

Furlong always issued an abrupt denial when asked. What's more, his leadership of the Vancouver Olympic committee was a tiring, nearly decade-long campaign fraught with politics and economics. He once said he would have done his job with a paper bag on his head if he could have. Despite his rousing speeches and sometimes feisty answers to relentless journalists, Furlong always seemed a tad reluctant to be in the public eye.

Different story for Taleeb Noormohamed. Noormohamed, 34, is a former VANOC vice-president of strategy and partnerships who worked closely with Furlong. That's Noormohamed with Furlong pictured above at the United Nations in October 2009. The charismatic, intelligent North Shore-raised Noormohamed was born in 1976 (after the Montreal Olympics) in Ottawa and he wants to go back to the nation's capital. This time as the Member of Parliament for North Vancouver.

Noormohamed is running for the Liberal Party in the May 2 election against incumbent Conservative Andrew Saxton. It was at a Noormohamed-hosted rally for Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff that the legendary Nardwuar the Human Serviette convinced Ignatieff to do the Hip Flip. One of the best moments of the campaign, I say.

I caught up with Noormohamed on election eve.

Q: Talk about the experience of running for office in this election.

"It's been a really good opportunity to hear the issues and talk to as many people as you can. I've knocked on thousands of doors, I would hazard to guess, I would say over 4,000 doors.

Q: What have you learned about yourself and the process?

Taleeb: "It's a process that requires you to really trust in people and you have to be willing to work extremely hard. I've been knocking on doors quite literally eight hours a day. This is a team sport and so many people are doing this with you and around you.

"It's a very humbling experience, you have to really be aware of how important elections are to people and how seriously people take them. I've heard people share some amazing and very sad challenges they're facing. It really does inspire you to do this and do better for people.

"If I win, I carry this responsibility that I do keep that dialogue going not just when it's election time."


Q: What are your thoughts on the Jack Layton surge and how the campaign has evolved?

Taleeb: "It's very easy to make whatever promise you want when there is almost no chance you're going to form government.

"Mr. Ignatieff has quite literally years of the Conservatives putting out negative media, negative press, leaving Jack fairly untouched. Part of the fundamental image of Ignatieff that was created was created by the very offensive, negative media work done by the Conservatives. At some point, what Mr. Ignatieff had to say got lost in the hype around Jack…

"Mr. Ignatieff got a much rougher ride than the others did. I was surprised that the media let Harper get away with the kind of campaign that he ran, where questions didn't get answered or Conservatives didn't show up for all-candidates meetings. People didn't scrutinize as closely just the fundamental disrespect Harper had for the media in this campaign."

Meanwhile, though Furlong did not become a candidate, he did endorse Gary Lunn, the Conservative running for re-election in Saanich and the Gulf Islands. See the photo below. Lunn was the junior sport minister before and during the Vancouver Olympics. Furlong appeared at the opening of Lunn's campaign office on April 3.

VANOC needed more taxpayers' money -- including at least $74.4 million directly from the federal government -- because of the Great Recession. The Conservatives have still not disclosed the final bill to taxpayers for the Vancouver Olympics, yet Prime Minister Stephen Harper has been campaigning across the country while wearing his Team Canada jacket. At least one political blog has noticed and it even posted a gallery of Harper modelling the jacket. The Canadian Olympic Committee did not respond to my query about whether Harper signed a commercial rights agreement to use the jacket in such a way.

On May 2, voters get to decide which party forms government and, ultimately, which leader can attach himself to the Olympic rings.