7, November 15, 1981 The Castlegar News has agreed to be | my helper this year | and receive letters from you to me. These letters will be published ina special edition on | December 9, in : plenty of time for | meteiread them: In your BEST Handwriting (or | printing), write your letter to Santa and mail it to: Sanita Claus, . y c/o Castlegar News, » Box 3007, Castlegar, B.C. VIN 3H4 Be sure it is in the mail by December 2. Remember to be good boys and girls and mind your parents. I'm starting my list right now. Love, P.S. Be sure to put your name and age at the bottom of your letter. LINDA HALL : Getting to Know Your Neighbor Glenda Frisk: skating pro A half-a-dozen aspiring lit- tle figure skaters are lined up anxiously against the boards, whispering to each other and shuffling back and forth. “OK now,” the instructor shouts moving toward them, “I want you all to touch your toes and skate across the ice.” A few giggles as the youngsters attempt this new maneuver. She watches them, giving individual help where it is needed. She is Glenda Frisk, Castlegar's fig- ure skating pro. “I like work- ing with the kids,” she says smiling, “I must, because I certainly don't like being fro- zen.” Anyone who has wandered down to the rinks to watch the little figure skaters in action may have noticed Glenda. She's the one wear- ing the six layers under her buffalo sweater and her teeth are still chattering. “It’s a joke around here, everyone says how many sweaters is Glenda wearing today?” Sometimes she is on the ice almost all day, and “when you're teaching you're not moving very much.” This is Glenda’s third year as a pro with the Castlegar Figure Skating Club. She and the other Castlegar pro, Jeff Hann, use the NST (National Skating Tests) for the be- ginner and intermediate badge skaters. In this pro- gram the children progress through a series of 14 badges, Each badge has four skills that the skater must com- plete. . her pro thinks she is ready to progress, the skater goes onto the CFSA (Canadian Figure Skating Association) program and moves through levels of crests, pins and medals, Glenda teaches girls at this level in daily sessions of private lessons at the un- earthly hours of 6 in the morning. While the rest of Castlegar is grabbing a few more prec- fous minutes of sleep, these skaters are down at the She has toured Europe and South America with Holiday on Ice but all she really wanted was to teach. For example, in the very first “Beginner” badge the youngster must (1) skate the width of the ice, (2) glide on both feet for three feet, (8) touch his toes while skating, and (4) stop (falling doesn't count). The ninth badge, the “jump” badge, is more ad- vanced. The skater must go through a series of four specific jumps. After the skater has com- pleted all badges, or when arena using metal “scribes” to imprint perfect circles on the ice to practice their fig- ures, The highest level in this program is the gold medal. I learned that all the figure skaters on the Canadian Olympic team are CFSA gold medalists. The advanced CFSA girls volunteer their time to coach the younger badge skaters. “We really encourage them to coach,” says Glenda. “You learn a lot by teaching, You have to start thinking about what you're doing.” Glenda says that she has around 25 CFSA skaters en- rolled and probably three times that number enrolled in the NST. program. Says Glenda, “Out of 60 skaters in the beginning program we might get 10 good figure skaters. A lot of kids come for a year to learn.” She does recommend a couple of years of skating for any child, boy or girl, and says that four or five is a good age to start. It’s a good way to get little minor hockey players ready for years of good skating fun. Basic skating fundamentals are the same for hockey or figure ‘skating. Currently the CFSC (Castlegar Figure Skating Club) holds. three skating schools; the large and popu- lar winter school, a fall school, which is four weeks of intensive private lessons, and asummer school which is six weeks of private and group Glenda Frisk (foreground) during the time she toured with Holiday on Ice. in lessons. This year the club is hoping to offer a spring school. Besides her work with the Figure Skating Club, Glenda is also employed by the rec- reation commission to teach tiny tots skating, Children’s Learn to Skate and Adults Learn to Skate. She uses the NST method of teaching for all her lessons, but says that the recreation lessons, al- though they provide a good skating foundation, aren't as cad pe é Under her layers of sweater, Glenda Frisk instructs her long or intensive as figure skating. Glenda has been skating since she was a little girl growing up in New West- minster. She started formal NST lessons when she was 10 at the North Surrey Skating Club and quickly earned all 14 badges. She got through eight figure levels in the CFESA program, but never took her gold medal test. Before school each morn- ing she remembers bicycling to the rink to be there by six. “That was very tiring.” By age 11 she knew she wanted to teach figure skating and nothing else. No Olympic Gold medals in your dreams? Tasked. “No. I just wanted to teach. I guess it was because Tloved my pro so much that I decided I always wanted to teach skating.” When Glenda was 14 her family moved to Castlegar where she finished her figure skating training. She turned pro.when she was 18 and got cher first job ‘at the ‘Nakusp PaMting na MNiCrtaL Sai Itwasa i Figure Skating Club where she stayed for two years. Then a dreanred-for exper- ience came her way. For a year-and-a-half she toured Europe and South America with Holiday on Ice, a pro- fessional skating tour group made up mostly of young people. “It was fun and a good experience,” she says. They skated their way through France, Belgium, Holland and Germany per- forming on all sizes’ and shapes of rinks and. arenas from a bull ring in Spain to outdoor coliseums which are not at all like our hockey rinks she says.’ _ Glenda loved the gorgeous costumes, the friends she met and made, the excite- ment of travel and the thrill” of performance, but she says, “you can't live like that for- ever.” She returned home after a year-and-a-half. What are her future plans? She doesn't know but is taking each day as it comes : along. For! wo years: TROY young pupils. Glenda has been studying ballet, an exercize she enjoys as well as finds profitable for skating. “It helps with the movements of the arms, I'd like to be able to eventually help the kids.” This past summer she worked with the Miss Castle- gar pageant showing the girls how to walk and present themselves. “I enjoyed it. It was nice working with the girls.” _ Glenda lives at home with her family in Castlegar and has one married sister, Lynn, who lives in Genelle. almost all of the layers of sweaters that she wears. She finds layers of pure wool the -best for keeping her warm on the ice. ‘This coming spring Castle- gar: residents will get the chance: to see some) of our own ‘skaters at a, carnival which promises to outdo all previous skating shows here. “We're already preparing for uy d-a-half of georgaus cos the excitement of travel and the thrill of performing. Text of John Charter’s Remembrance Day addres This day is called Remem- brance Day. When I went to school it was called Armistice Thirdly, to remind us that the battlefield is only one of the many fields on which Day and. a single event — the end of the First World War on Nov. 11, 1918, after more than four years of incredible destruc- tion, horror and heroism. It was the war to end all wars, but since that time we have been through the Sec- ond World War and the Kor- ean War and the shadow of a third world conflict — a nu- clear war is ever hovering in the background. The name change, therefore, from Ar- mistice Day to Remembrance Day, is entirely fitting, for it calls on us to remember many things: First, to remember once again the debt that we owe to the men and women who made the supreme sacrifice in three wars fought by Can- adians in the past 60 years so that we might be free to de- termine our own destiny today. Secondly, to remind us of the fact that many more served and returned home wounded in mind and body and ‘will carry the scars of those injuries to the grave. the of men. and of nations is determined. The pages of history and the daily press teem with the names of those who have paid and are paying dearly for the strug- gle, a struggle which never ends, to achieve the freedom and dignity of their people. Finally, it forces us to remember that we are hu- man and, as humans, are all too prone once a crisis is past, the danger safely by, to for- get all that has gone before. An editorial in the October edition of the Royal Canadian Legion magazine is very much to the point when it states: “We live in a society in which thousands of publi- city agents compete for space and time to bring rock stars, and h of clubs in Canada; that it is the largest sponsor of the Boy Scouts in Canada; that it contributes to land, sea and air cadets corps track and field events, sponsors meals enced the horrors of war, will speak well of it. However, we cannot forget that the fires and adversities of war, like the fires and hammers of the forge, has welded a special on wheels, public contests and provides dozens of scholarships and bursaries for youth every year. The writer might have added that the Legion carries on unceasing efforts in the ‘field of improved pensions for led an good causes, and a lot of bad ones, to the public attention, (but) the ‘sweats’ r disab! id ade- quate care for their families, makes thousands of hospital still march each year and. plug away at doing a great many good things which all too often are not noticed.” The article then goes on to point out that the Legion is one of the largest service with comforts and extras, holds out a helping hand in hundreds of different situations to the living and ensures proper and dignified service to the dead. There is no one, I am certain, who having experi- among JOHN CHARTERS’ Reflections & Recollections —asense of ip not usually found in our society. It is no better expressed, I believe, than'in Shakespere’s play, Henry Fifth; Henry is addressing his troops just before they are to engage the huge French army at the his- toric battle of Agincourt, fought in 1415. He says: “This day is called the feast of Crispin; He that outlives this day and comes safe home Will stand on tiptoe when this day is named And rouse him in the name of Crispin, And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by, From this day to the end of the world, But we in it shall be remembered, We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.” President Lincoln, in his immortal Gettysburg Add- ress carries forward the idea that we, the living, have a responsibility. He says: “It is for us the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be ded- ieated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” The dead whom. Lincoln honored and the dead whom we honor today, died in the name of freedom, but free- dom is an indivisible word —if we want to enjoy it, and fight for it, we must be prepared to extend it to everyone regardless of race, creed or color, for we have all a common humanity. This idea is nowhere better expressed than in John Donne's famous lines: No man is an island: “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea. Europe is the less, as well as ifa promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” Two-and-on-half thousand years ago, Xerxes, the king of the then-mighty Persian empire, a totalitarian state, decided to destroy the tiny collection of city states called Greece. His gigantic army was: denied entry to the k mainl Ss hood of man. We are chal- member that price — always. Martin Niemoeller, the German churchman who was imprisoned for years for his by the Spar- pass of Thermopylae. + They died in that pass to the last man but their, sac- rifice enabled the rest df he Greeks to rally their-fprpes defeat the Persians an@ for Greece to become the pirth- place of the democracy.and the western culture of which © we are the inheritors. In that pass there is today. a plaque. It speaks to each one of you: “Stranger, go thou and tell the Greek people that we lie here faithful to their charge.” * We cannot forget for'a mo- iste a Jew. ition to the Nazis has I, didn't speak up because I wasn’t, a communist, Then they came for the Jews and I did not speak up’ because I dh nt they came for the Catholles, and I didn't speak up because I am a Protestant, “Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up.” Those of you standing here teday — Legion members and interested citizens alike — are a living tribute to those who have served. You are the bearers of the torch, ment that everything in this the challenge that they have world has a price, a sacrifice. thrown to us all, the advance We are faced today by forces guard of a responsibility that that are no less dangérous to no one today can ignore, for, the democratic ideal; the concept of the worth of each individual and the brother- as Lincoln said, “We cannot escape history,” we cannot” fail to remember.