Dear Prince Rupert.

Dear Prince Rupert,

I know I don’t live in you anymore, and I haven’t for years and it has been four years since my last visit but I do love you and I want the best for you.  I think what’s best for you is Blair. I’ve known Blair for I’d say 13 years now, and yes for a majority of that we haven’t lived in the same place so I wouldn’t call us close, but none the less I do consider him a friend and I know that gives me a certain bias. I do believe that my love for Prince Rupert outweighs that bias, and I know the mayoral and city council doesn’t exactly affect me but it does affect you and I care about you.

Let me tell you about Blair. In all the time that I’ve known him, I have not known Blair to make the bad choice; where bad is meaning not good and not bad meaning wrong. He has never been one to talk about people behind their backs or even to speak ill about people in general and he tended to be inclusive no matter how weird the person(me). Blair has always been smart and reliable but he has never been cocky about it. He is and always has been a good person. Now, ask yourselves in today’s world what does politics need? and the answer is good people this is because good people will bring about a good change wherever they have influence.

It is my belief that Blair Mirau is one of these people for Prince Rupert. He is running on a platform of accountability, efficiency, and prosperity and how I see it those also branch off to transparency, fiscal responsibility, and increased inter-community co-operation. I know what you might be thinking now, these are all common promises made by many politicians running for office.  But it in my heart I know that if there were one person who could make these promises and do their hardest to follow through on them, that person is Blair Mirau.

In closing, I believe in Blair Mirau.

From Tommy Roberts

With a "Y" the Stages of Friendship.

The Introduction.

“Y” is one of my oldest friends; I met him shortly after my first remembered city to city move. It was the first day of the 6^th grade, and for me it was a new town, and new school. Till then school had not been overly pleasant for me, I was bullied at both of my previous schools, didn't really fit in and at that point I was thinking “at least I knew people at my old school, and here I don’t know anyone.” But it being elementary school in a small town, and me being in french immersion it didn’t take long for “Y” to come over and ask me first if I was “Brooke” as what I thought was a joke to which I only responded with a shake of my head in the negative. Then he asked if I was “Tommy”, and once again I shook my head except this time in the affirmative. And from there he told me to come and wait with him because we were in the same class. It was a grade 6/7 split, which I don’t think is actually all that uncommon for French immersion classes, he was grade 7, and as mentioned above I was in 6^th.

The beginning.

Now the friendship between me and Y didn’t grow out of geography, where we went to summer camp (because we went to two separate summer camps), it didn’t grown out of me thinking of him being an older or younger brother type thing, it wasn’t a matter of me being inspired by him or aspired to be him, or for any of man other reasons. But our friendship had sprung from something much simpler. Our friendship came from having similar interests, things like Lego, Legend of Zelda, collecting things, the first Matrix movie, as well any number of other RPG video games. And we complimented each other quite well.

But then I moved. And I had thought that was it. It was another friendship that had ended because I had moved again. It wasn’t nice, it was by no means good in my eyes, but at that time I had accepted it.

The Return.

Then an opportunity for me to return to the town I thought I’d said goodbye to. And so I jumped at it, not because I expected to see the people I knew but because I enjoyed the town itself. (Also not just because visiting also happened to mean that I would be missing school.) Then by pure coincidence during some of the, well I guess you could call it, free time, I went out with a couple other people for what was supposed to be a brisk walk. But who should I come across, but Y himself and his at then girlfriend. And we got talking, only for a short while because we were both busy for the rest of that day. But before I left, we proceeded to meet up again several times that weekend. Before the weekend was over we had agreed to keep in touch and so we did, electronically of course, at that time meant through MSN messenger and myspace. This time when we parted I had no doubt we would see each other again.

And we have seen each other since, several times in fact. And on more than one of these such occasions happened to be instances where we stayed at each other’s houses for days at a time.

Post script: He had this nickname in a somewhat self-imposed manner. Because though he had a somewhat common name, rather than it being spelled normally it unconventionally had a “Y” where commonly there is an “I”.

Community... No not the show.

In my life, I have lived in four different communities, no one say "greater" than the next. Each of varying sizes and geographies. Now other than these four places being not only in the same timezone but the same province, you wouldn't assume that they had much in common. But first I should name there places, they are Nanaimo, Prince Rupert, Prince George and Port Hardy, and despite their names Prince Rupert and Prince George don't have all that much in common. One of the things that all four of these places do have in common though is that they each have an annual community event. For Nanaimo it's the Marine Festival and Bathtub races, Prince Rupert has SeaFest, Prince George has the PGX, and Port Hardy has FiLoMi days. Now I call these community events because they are not associated with any national or other holiday and they also have the fortunate side effect of show casing local businesses, displaying local artistic talents, and just generally showing all that the community has to offer.

Fireworks Also Commonly Accompany Community Events

What I like about these events is that they are very much all inclusive and help to bring very diverse communities together. Now in saying this I am very unsure about how events like this would work in larger places because I lack all experience in larger places, you know for anything more than visits. An example of the places I am referring to would be like Vancouver or Toronto.

So the best advice I can think to give is that no matter where you live, how ever long that you've lived there or however old or young you are. If you are somewhere that does any sort of event like this, I highly recommend that you attend not only because they can be fun but you are also supporting that community. And if you are new to the place it's a nice environment to meet people.

Post Script: Some of these events include parades. Now parades mean free candy, and I mean who doesn't like free candy.