Bloganagan

Grandma Wears Hiking Boots – Preview

Mighty Music Maven – Heather Davis

Kelowna City Band members won’t want to give their new music director any lip. Trained in weapons and defence tactics, this 27-year veteran of the Canadian Armed Forces is a one-woman force to be reckoned with. In this tough environment, Heather Davis took on the completely male dominated enclave of military music and worked her way from private to captain, the first female in Canadian history to take on the role of full time commanding officer in the CF Band Branch.

Okanagan Mushroom Safari

Roseanne Van Ee has eight of us circled in the parking lot at the Vernon Visitor Centre. My favourite naturalist/tour guide and owner of Outdoor Discoveries reads us a quote from one of her heavily thumbed field guides, this one by David Arora. “All that the rain promises … the miracle of mushrooms in their spontaneity …” It’s her way of telling us how lucky we are after days of poor weather to be setting out this crisp, October morning on a mushroom safari.

CrocTalk

Conservation through education is Doug Illman’s mantra. It’s inspired him to focus a childhood interest in dinosaurs that expanded to a passion for crocodilians, into a life’s-work business dedicated to rescuing animals, informing people and changing attitudes—CrocTalk.

Located in Kelowna, Doug’s educational crocodilian talk show has attracted 35,000 visitors in the last four years with rave guest book comments from croc fans from around the world.

The Commonage

Here's a book title for you - Where the Grass is Always Browner on the Other Side of the Fence: A History of the Okanagan Commonage...

It may sound a little tongue-in-cheek and it's certainly a tongue-twister, but this book by retired veterinarian turned historian and author, D. John Price, should be in the library of every Okanagan history buff.

I met Dr. Price one sunny summer day and we sat on the deck of his stunning log home overlooking Kalamalka Lake, with the brown grasslands of the Commonage all around us. Behind the house, several horses loafed around in corrals next to the bright red barn that centres the cover of his book. A big black dog, lounged at our feet.

Here's a bit of what he had to say.

Toe-tappin’, Train Talkin' Troubadour – Jack Godwin

You've likely gathered that I'm quite a history buff and I don't much mind the shape my history lessons come in: museums, castles, interpreters, roadside plaques, recreated villages,  even the History Channel. But I know that lots of you would rather eat raw eggs; shave your legs with an emery board; listen to a thumbnail scraping a blackboard - well, maybe not that. But you're really not into the history thing.

Jack Godwin understands. This retired history teacher learned in the classroom that “the way to get students involved is to hook them emotionally with a question or a story.”

In his second career as chief engineer of the folksy, bluegrass Kettle Valley Brakemen, he uses the same technique, drawing audiences into the performance with tales from the railway days, stories about how he came to write the songs and lots of humour. Every concert is a rollicking history lesson with special emphasis on the Kettle Valley line.

Queen Bee Volunteer - Twylla Genest

It’s the morning after the night before … no hangover involved. This night before was Twylla Genest’s regular orientation session for Vernonites who think they’d like to do some volunteer work in the community. As coordinator of the Vernon Volunteer Bureau, an arm of the Social Planning Council for the North Okanagan, Twylla established these bi-weekly sessions to showcase available opportunities and give prospective volunteers an inside look at some specifics like liability, the requirement for criminal record checks in certain positions, a code of ethics and how to avoid burnout. But the meeting is just the beginning.

Socially conscious songwriter - Ryan Donn

What if good ol' Rapunzel, let down her hair

But the extensions gave way on the climb?

What if Little Bo-peep never had any sheep?

and she was really just losing her mind
…
What if life didn't work out as you thought it would sometimes?

Kelowna singer/songwriter Ryan Donn makes his point in three verses of Nursery Rhyme, a song with roots in a local classroom (where the kids spent a lot of time on the classic rhymes) and his day job as a Certified Education Assistant. Working for months on exercises to teach an autistic child the alphabet, he realized the kid had picked up the capitals but not the small letters. Life doesn’t always work out as you thought it would.

Artistic Blacksmith - Lisa Huth

Talk about non-traditional careers – it wasn’t enough for Lisa Huth to take a production job with a steel fabricator when she left school, she had to go the whole nine yards and get her welding tickets (C and B) from Okanagan College. That’s when things got really interesting. Another student told her about a Vernon blacksmith, Joe Delisimunivic, who offered to let her spend a day giving it a try.

“I loved it right away – it was amazing,” says Lisa, watchfully rotating an iron rod in the glowing embers of the coal forge in her Joe Rich workshop near Kelowna. “I’d been working with metal for four years but I had no idea you could do the things a blacksmith can do. When Joe showed the way the metal could be bent, twisted and formed into shapes, I was in awe.”

Frances Greenslade - Author

I got to know Frances (Francie) Greenslade through the pages of her second book, By the Secret Ladder. A review copy turned up in our office and after a quick browse through the cover blurbs, I snatched it for a thorough read. Greenslade, who now lives in Penticton, BC, and teaches English at Okanagan College, left it all on the field with this book – candidly filling the pages with her traumatic experiences, erudite references and very personal insights. Here's what she had to say in a Q&A we did for Okanagan Life.