On January 30, a group of residents from Tumbler Ridge visited a number of towns across Canada that are designed to deal with the effects of climate change, and they didn’t even have to leave town.
They did, however, have to visit the school, where teams of students from the grade 11 class has been building their mini-communities. “They’ve been working on this for about a month,” says Miss Maitland. “We’ve had guest speakers come in from the community to talk to them about community development and safety and security within a town, and how to build a sense of community within their town.
The project is worth ten percent of their final grade. “I don’t mark it,” says Maitland. “They have to sell their ideas to industry leaders and business professionals and community members.”
One of those was District Operations Manager Doug Beale. Did he learn anything from the designs of the towns? “I learned a lot of great students in their design of their towns,” he says. “Their theme was climate change, but they all kind of had this flood theme. Protecting the town with a lot of emergency services which is good to see.”
But was there anything he saw that he’s planning on bringing back to Tumbler Ridge? He laughs. “I don’t know I think we do a pretty good job at looking after our town. Most of these towns are built on a floodplain, which makes it more difficult to get rid of excess water. We’re lucky here, in Tumbler Ridge.”
