It’s not too early to call upon your inner baker and start planning for the annual National Gingerbread Showcase at Victoria’s Laurel Point Inn.
Each Christmas season the hotel teams up with Habitat for Humanity to raise money with a gingerbread showcase, pitting baker against baker in a fun competition to create culinary and architectural splendours. Gingerbread might be the standby construction material, but the only criterion for the show is that all materials used must be edible.
The theme this year is “Around the World,” so expect creations to be inspired by travel and culture.
Competitors are placed in one of two categories, professional or home baker. All entries go on display at the Laurel Point Inn. The public, by making a donation to Habitat for Humanity, can earn the chance to vote for the People’s Choice Award.
In the past six years, Canada’s National Gingerbread Showcase has raised $128,292 for Habitat for Humanity.
The showcase opens on Saturday, Nov. 19, and runs until Monday, Jan. 1. The public is welcome from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.
Our Place clients get first-class dinner
Clients at Our Place will be treated to extra-fine dining Monday evening when students from Camosun College’s Hospitality program put on the dog.
Camosun hosts will sit the clients down at tables dressed with white linen. Waiters will serve the food and clear away the dishes. About 600 diners are expected.
The meal will be a two-course menu: spice-rubbed pork tenderloin, root vegetable mash, beans and mustard jus. Dessert will be apple gateau with raisin/apricot chutney topped with cinnamon cream.
Students and instructors at the Camosun Hospitality Management Program have been treating Our Place clients to a special meal for the past six years.
This year marks the beginning of a new tradition performing the service twice a year, fall and spring.
The special menu will be served 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. Monday, Oct. 1,7 at Our Place, 919 Pandora Ave.
Brentwood Bay turns out for longtime volunteer
Brentwood Bay has always called on Liza Glynn, every teacher/parent assembly, every bottle drive to buy soccer jerseys and every community committee needing volunteers.
That Glynn, 49, is in the advanced stages of multiple sclerosis and in a wheelchair has never stopped her from helping or smiling.
“I will look out at a room full of 25 people and ask for someone to make a phone call,” said Sandra Arthur, past-president of the Bayside Parent Advisory Committee. “Who’s the one who volunteers, Liza, it’s always Liza.”
So hearing of Glynn’s new struggle to get her cousins out of Syria to come to Canada as refugees, the community of Brentwood Bay has stepped up to help.
“Everybody in Brentwood knows Liza,” said Arthur. “So now, this is an opportunity for us as a community, we hope, to help Liza.”
So on Nov. 26, at Friendship Community Church in Central Saanich, there will be a full Middle Eastern supper, music and entertainment, including violinist Sari Alesh, former member of the Damascus Orchestra and himself a refugee.
Arthur said since the word has gone out over the grapevine of Glynn’s need, the response has been electric.
The Friendship Church offered its space for free; a local restaurant, Zanzibar, agreed to prepare the supper at cost; other churches are looking at raising money or stepping up as a sponsor. Even an elderly woman has arranged for a ride to church to save the cab fare, which is now going to Glynn.
“The response has been amazing,” said Arthur. “But then everybody in Brentwood who has kids knows Liza because she has been the driving force behind every fundraising drive we’ve had over the past eight, nine years.”
Glynn’s Syrian cousins, one woman, already close to approval and two men, one with a wife and two small children, are all Armenian Christians. They were subjected to persecution. But with civil war they have fled Damascus and are living as refugees in Lebanon.
Glynn said she plans on bringing out the woman cousin first. She’s 37, has a university degree, speaks English, French, Arabic and Armenian, and should be able to adjust quickly.
After her will come the family, her two brothers, one of them mentally handicapped, the wife and two boys, ages five and seven.
“When I Skype with the boys, they keep asking me things like: ‘Is there a playground here, or a slide, are there people on bicycles, can we swim or can we run outside without bombs,’” said Glynn. “They have never known anything but war.”
On the Road From Damascus benefit dinner and show is on Saturday, Nov. 26. Tickets are $50 for adults and $20 for under-18 and will be available at businesses in and around Brentwood Bay.
For other information, go online to Facebook and find BrentwoodBayCommunity.
City of Victoria wants your leaves
The City of Victoria has announced it’s time to “Leaf it on the Boulevard.”
City work crews will begin the annual Leaf Pickup Program a little earlier this year and include two dates for neighbourhood leaf collection, instead of just one.
Leaves can be left ready on the boulevard in neat piles or in tied, clear, compostable bags. There is no limit to the number of piles or bags of leaves that will be picked up.
Victoria neighbourhood leaf pickup dates are:
• James Bay, Fairfield, Rockland, Gonzales — Oct. 17 and Dec. 13,
• Oaklands, Fernwood, North Jubilee, South Jubilee — Nov. 8 and Dec. 20,
• Victoria West, Burnside Gorge, Hillside Quadra, North Park, Harris Green, Downtown — Nov. 29 and Dec. 27.
Also, from Oct. 17 to Dec. 16, Victoria residents can contact city parks at [email protected] or 250-361-0600 to arrange for bagged leaves to be picked up from the boulevard within five days.
With recent heavy rains, crews are busy and anxious to keep storm drains clear of leaves. Blocked drains should be reported to the city’s 24-hour line at 250-361-0400.
Clear, compostable bags are available at Victoria city hall and Crystal Pool. The price is $12.50 for 10.
Leaves and garden waste can also be dropped off for free, year-round at the city public-works yard, 417 Garbally Rd. on Saturdays, 7 a.m. to 2 p.m.
For the leaf pickup schedule and map, go online to victoria.ca/leafpickup.
Sailor ready for circumnavigation
Anyone hoping to wish Jeanne Socrates “Bon Voyage” on her attempt to become the oldest person to sail single-handedly around the world should head to the Inner Harbour today.
Socrates and her boat Nereida will be in the Inner Harbour today and those interested are welcome to come down and deliver personal best wishes, maybe even get an autograph.
On Monday, at 8 a.m. her boat will be towed out of the harbour, arriving at Ogden Point about 8:45 a.m. and she will set sail. All Victoria is invited to wave her off. Whistles, horns and any noisemakers are welcome.
All these plans, however, are weather permitting.
Socrates, 74, is already in the books, including Guinness World Records, as the oldest woman to sail, solo, unassisted and non-stop around the world. It was a trip she completed in 2013, sailing Victoria to Victoria in 258 days at the age of 70.
The record for oldest person to circumnavigate the globe, solo, unassisted and non-stop is held by Japanese sailor Minoru Saito, who completed the trip in 2005 at the age of 71.
To complete the trip, a sailor must not use any machinery-assisted power, such as an engine, must not tie up to any land and is allowed no face-to-face contact with any other person.
To learn more, go online to Socrates’ website at svnereida.com.
Ugandan kids are focus of Saanich campaign
Saanich resident Leanne Stokes believes a little divine intervention occurred when she first met Ugandan social worker Jolly Nyeko at University of Victoria years ago.
That first meeting allowed Stokes to come to know Nyeko, then finishing a PhD, and something of the work she was doing helping children and families in her home community in Uganda.
But it also allowed Stokes and her husband, Geoff, to introduce the 58-year-old Ugandan woman to all Greater Victoria and beyond.
“I really believe God brought us together,” said Leanne in a telephone interview. “There is really no better explanation for it.”
“I wasn’t looking for anything, but there was something inside that said: ‘It’s important for you to get to know this woman.’ ”
She has since started the Jolly Nyeko Foundation Canada to work hand-in-hand with Nyeko’s own Action for Children in Uganda to help children and their families.
Also working with the foundation is a Saanich optometrist who has visited Uganda twice where she provided eye examination to more than 500 children and adults and distributed more than 600 pairs of donated eyeglasses.
At Nyeko’s school, children, four to 14, can attend classes, get a school uniform and receive one meal a day. At the same time, social workers will meet with a child’s family to see if any help is needed at home to ensure the child can succeed at school.
Nyeko, in Victoria for a few weeks, said she was spurred to help children because she swore early on she would never jolt herself or her family about just to feed her children.
Now with her own children all grown and some with their own families, she turned to help other kids in her community.
One of the ironies about Uganda is that geographically speaking it is incredibly lush. The soil is rich and fertile, and people can grow many things.
But decades of civil war and the modern African scourge of HIV/AIDS have left many children without parents and their communities in dire straights. But a few simple tools and agricultural seed can mean the difference between poverty and self-sufficiency for a village or family.
Nyeko said even a hoe, worth a few dollars in Canada, can mean survival for a family in Uganda.
“But if you can supply people with a few gardening tools and some seed, then they can have enough to eat,” she said.
Anybody who wishes to meet or hear Nyeko can attend St. George’s Anglican Church, 3909 St. George’s Lane, today for the 10 a.m. service, followed by a light meal and chance to talk.
She will also be at St. Philip’s Church, 2828 Eastdowne, next Sunday, Oct. 23, for the 9 a.m. and 11:15 a.m. services.
To learn more about the Jolly Nyeko Foundation Canada, or to give a donation, go online to JNFCanada.org.
University conversation gave birth to a charity
Two university students from Nanaimo received a hard schooling when they helped at a hometown food bank. So they are now putting the lesson to work.
Andrew DeGroot and Wes Richardson, both now 20 and in their third year at Trinity Western University in Langley, have started a charity organization called Takes A Dollar. It’s based on the notion when many people help out just a little, a great deal can be accomplished.
Since Takes A Dollar went into operation in 2015, the group has raised more than $16,000 and is aiming to raise $20,000 by March. And the majority of the donations are small, $1 to $5.
But DeGroot said it all started just over one year ago with a conversation in the university dorm after a class on global issues. The two agreed overseas aid is important, but wondered about needs close to home and decided to look into Loaves and Fishes, the Nanaimo food bank.
He said they visited the food bank one day in the summer of 2015 and were stunned. Not only were the shelves empty that day, but people were showing up only to be turned away.
“There was just a lot more need and a lot less food than we ever expected,” said DeGroot.
“Then we thought: ‘If we didn’t know that, then a lot of other people in Nanaimo probably don’t know it, either.’ ”
So he and his friend went to work raising money and spreading awareness. They held a silent action and erected booths at community events and in shopping malls, explaining about the need and asking people to help, just a little
That first year, they helped four Nanaimo organizations: Loaves and Fishes, Island Crisis Care Society, Salvation Army Nanaimo and the Child Development Centre, and raised about $7,000.
This year, they will be helping Nanaimo Community Kitchen, Vancouver Island Mental Health Society, Vancouver Island Crisis Line, Nanaimo Unique Kids and the Haven Society women’s shelter.
“We were trying to focus on a broad spectrum of groups,” said DeGroot, “so people who are interested in donating can see the differences they are making.”
The pair have also created a secure website allowing people to give money directly to the group of their choice or select a group for monthly donations.
To learn more, go online to takesadollar.org.
