Gr. 6 Student Presentation at the

Comox Valley Sustainability Strategy

Workshop

Huband Park SchoolFeb. 14, 2009

We are all Grade Six students here at Huband School. We have been meeting over the

past few weeks and discussing our vision of a

future Comox Valley.

But first we talked about what we like abut our Valley

– and there was LOTS. We brainstormed a list, and then tried to find pictures

of as many of these things as possible to put

here on the left side of our Peace sign collage.

So what do we love about our Valley? We appreciate the multicultural aspect of our First Nations people as well as immigrant newcomers. We love the fresh local food we have available, and the arts . . .(Kaitlin Emery)

. . . and our environment that lets us ski and

snowboard and hike and swim and sail and bike. We

love the wildlife. We appreciate all the volunteers

who work to make the Comox Valley better. And

the bike paths – though we need more! What else do

we like? We love the swans and the eagles and kayaking and fish spawning and the

festivals and seeing the sun rise and set.(Mollie Green)

There are some things that we could do without here. If you look at the bottom of the peace sign you will see some of those. It is getting too busy and those crowded roads add to noise and air pollution. Biking from part of the valley to another is not easy, we need more bike routes. We worry about too much new development, which means our forests and wildlife are disappearing and there are too many lights on at night. There is too much garbage on the ground -- if you drop, it pick it up. The

landfill is filling up too fast. We need to change our bad habits.(Alisa Tatham)

We have many ideas for the future – you can see some of them on the right side of our peace sign. You will notice that many

of these are the same as what we love about the Comox Valley already – we don’t want to lose them!! We put the glacier in

the centre because we hope it stays forever. We want to continue to be able to

do all the great outdoor activities. We hope the First Nations people and their

traditions and culture will always be a part of the valley. It is important that we have

more locally grown foods and organic farms. Perhaps people who live in the

town should be growing more vegetables instead of lawns.(Lauren Sargent)

In the future we would like to see more trees, so everyone needs to log selectively. We would also like to see more bike paths and routes, darker skies, and better transit

for rural areas. Maybe some clean beaches, solar power and more walking

and bike riding, even carpooling. We could also try to start a walking school bus for

some schools.(Katinka Neumann)

So these are the thoughts and ideas of a few pretty normal Grade Six kids. We know how fortunate

we are to live in the wonderful Comox Valley. Not only do we want to keep it that way – we have ideas

to make things even better. To begin, we need to get out of our

cars. If we do that, then we have to build the paths and sidewalks so

that we can walk and cycle safely. More of us need to learn how to grow gardens and preserve food.

We need to look at newer, less damaging technologies. Doing all

this means that we may have to put out a little more effort, or that we many not have as much stuff – but

isn’t is worth it?Thanks for listening to us.

(Liam Pidnosny)