A Love-Haiti Relationship Creston Teen Reconnects with Roots in Humanitarian Way

Bringing the FREE Creston Valley together. January 2012 A love-Haiti relationship Creston teen reconnects with roots in humanitarian way Creston Literacy Museum Sports Engage in Random Acts of Flush with agricultural Meet the 2011-12 Reading throughout the month success thanks to water works C.V. Thunder Cats contents what’s inside Town 9 Afternoon meetings remain in 2012. Literacy 10 Get caught reading in January. Community 11 Affordable housing cited as top priority. Junior Hockey 12 Up close and personal with the T-Cats. History 14 Irrigation the lifeline of valley orchards. Wildlife 16 Word of wetlands spread far and wide. Health 17 Back to basics for pain One of the 30 handmade quilts generously donated management. by Creston residents. Martial Arts 18 The yin and yang of Chinese trigrams. Mission accomplished – for now Wellness 5 Aaron Gregory delivered the goods to the orphanage he 19 Embrace your life in 2012. was adopted from in Haiti, but his work is not finished. Entertainment 20 Best Singer event goes regional. The Magazine I Love Creston Magazine is produced monthly and distributed free of charge by I Love Sports Creston Marketing Ltd. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohib- ited. Any advertisements or graphics designed in-house are property of I Love Creston 21 Best skaters coming to the Marketing Ltd. and may not be used in any other medium without permission. Views Johnny B. expressed in the magazine does not necessarily reflect those of the company. Letters to the Editor Letters to I Love Creston Magazine may be emailed to [email protected] or mailed to Box 143, Creston, BC, V0B 1G0. Letters may be edited for clarity and space. I Love Creston Marketing Ltd. www.ilovecreston.com Wendy Franz - Sales/Graphic Design email: [email protected] Justin Ziola - Sales/Financials emai: [email protected] COOLEST KOOTENAY Box 143, Creston, BC V0B 1G0 • Ph/Fx 250.428.2631 WEBSITE www.ilovecreston.com January 2012 3 this issue Guest over the front-running Kimberley the month, when the T-Cats are From the editor Dynamiters before Christmas. chased out of town by the Kootenay A brutal schedule sees them on championships. More than 130 skaters will be vying for berths in appy New Year to all the the road for seven of 11 games in the provincials. It’s a rare chance to faithful readers of I Love January, including a three-game H see this calibre of skating so close to Creston magazine, without whom road trip at the end of the month, home, and a handful of local club (along with our loyal advertisers) but they are trending upward. You members will be putting their best this publication would not thrive. can “meet the Thunder Cats” on a two-page spread that provides a peek feet forward as well, so turn out and It hardly seems possible that we at the faces beneath the helmets that show them the support they deserve. are a dozen years into the new normally guard their noggins. Judging by the first two editions of millennium, which began with Creston’s Best Singer, big crowds the all-but-forgotten Y2K frenzy And you can piece together some will not be in doubt when the 2012 that swept the globe for months in trivia about the team, such as the version of the popular performance 1999 before disappearing – virtually fact 13 of 23 players are from B.C., contest hits the stage Jan. 19 at overnight – when nothing remotely including one home-town product Prince Charles Theatre. As in 2011 apocalyptic occurred once the clocks – defenceman Jesse Gartland. it will be a two-part, audience- struck midnight on New Year’s Eve Another seven hail from Alberta participation affair (concluding in 2000. (including four from Calgary), with the remaining three drawn from February), so get your tickets early. But here we are in 2012, which gets more exotic locales (Newfoundland, This month’s feature, meanwhile, is off to a roaring start in the Creston Whitehorse and Spokane, to be the feel-good tale of a transplanted Valley with a handful of noteworthy precise). Creston teen who’s determined events – all of which are highlighted to make a difference in the in subsequent pages. They’re a hard-working bunch under first-year head coach and general impoverished country from which First off there’s hockey, C.V. manager Brent Heaven, so after he was adopted as an infant – Haiti. Thunder Cats style. The Kootenay checking them out in print be sure Read all about Aaron Gregory and International Junior Hockey League to check them out in person up at then resolve to reach out to the club has been holding its own in the John Bucyk Arena. under-privileged in some way, big or the Eddie Mountain Division and small, during the year. boosted its confidence, if not its Speaking of which, the Johnny So, without further ado, let’s get on chances of actually rising up from B. will be overtaken by figure with 2012 . third place, with a thrilling victory skaters on the third weekend of 4 January 2012 www.ilovecreston.com feature Mussotte mountain school in southern Haiti. Aaron Gregory’s home is in Canada, and he’s most grateful for that, but his heart remains in Haiti aron Gregory garnered quite the looks as he passed The sight was incongruous, to say the least, until one Athrough terminal after terminal en route to the discovered this was not a typical sun-seeking junket to Caribbean. escape another cool Canadian fall, and neither was this a Not that there’s anything unusual about a Creston kid typical teen. taking a trip to the tropics with his family. Except this one Gregory, raised in Canada from infancy but born in Haiti, was literally packing a quilt (a handmade Creston quilt) at was a young man on a three-fold mission: connect with all times, practically cuddling it like a security blanket – at his roots; search for his biological mother; and, boost the age 17. dozens of underprivileged youngsters who populate the www.ilovecreston.com January 2012 5 feature institutions of the Foundation for Children of Haiti, from which he himself was adopted. “We had 30 home-made quilts that we couldn’t fit in our luggage because we had all this stuff that was generously donated by Creston (residents),” says his mother, Mary, “so we had this one lone quilt that Aaron actually carried. He had it with him the whole time. He had it on every airplane we had to ride on. He was sleeping on it. We just couldn’t squeeze it in with all the other stuff. “He carried it into the (foundation) guest house and then we took pictures of it at the orphanage because it was like, ‘We actually got this thing here!’ I found it amazing.” Much like the story of Gregory himself, who was actually envisioned as a sister for Ebby, whom Mary and then- husband Darren (the couple separated seven years ago) adopted in 1991 – at age three – from an orphanage in Dessalines, Haiti. Unpacking donations at the Guest House. “It took us three years to get Ebby home to Canada,” says given the contrasting skin Mary, who got wind of the foundation’s Haiti Home for tones. She felt responsible for Children the second time around, when things progressed fostering cultural ties, to the “Gregory is proud of his more quickly. degree each boy wanted them. “Initially I wanted a little girl, but at the time there “I found Haiti stressful the background and says he were no girls under 18 months like we had requested. two times I went there before The orphanage wrote and (asked), ‘Would the family because I was becoming a mom feels Haitian despite reconsider?’ I decided, ‘What right did I have to deny a in a Third World country and boy child a home if that was what it was supposed to be?’ uprooting these children from So the foundation matched us to Aaron. He was able to their birth land, so there were being raised Canadian” come home by the time he was 10 months old. I was quite mixed emotions,” she says. “You shocked.” are taking them from their country to Canada, and they Assimilation was inevitable at such a tender age, yet Mary didn’t choose that. So for me it’s always been, ‘That’s part of never hid the boys’ ethnic past – even if that was possible who they are.’ By choosing them, I chose Haiti.” Their origins were reinforced by looking at photos, telling stories and even watching TV shows. “Ebby wasn’t that into it, but as Aaron got older he really wanted it,” Mary says. “So when Aaron showed such an interest we would go out to Nanaimo to camp with other Haitian adoptive families where we looked like everybody else, because we don’t look like everybody else in Creston.” Gregory is proud of his background and says he feels Haitian despite being raised Canadian. “I was just born with that love for my country,” he says, “but I also think that my mom wasn’t afraid to show me where I came from. It really helped being taken back to that country to see it first-hand two years ago.” The 2009 trip was shared with acquaintances from the Vancouver Island camp whereas this one, in November, was conducted through Dillon International adoption services Facepainting at the Haiti Home for Children. of Tulsa, Okla., as part of a 19-member party, including an 6 January 2012 www.ilovecreston.com feature aunt of Gregory’s.

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