Representatives from environmental groups across the region will discuss ways to build its vision as a new non-profit tackling invasive species in the region.

Highlights of the meeting are likely to be a brief history of CSISS by Hamish Kassa, a primer on strategic planning and a discussion of operational planning led by Juliette Craig of Silverwing Ecological Consulting, a talk by Francis Maltby about invasive reproductive control and a discussion about the Invasive Species Council of BC’s Clean, Drain Dry Initiative.

The meeting is set to begin at 9:30 am and will continue through the day until 3:30 pm.

***

Here’s something to sate the appetite of local number crunchers: the City of Revelstoke Consolidated Financial Statement as audited by BDO Dunwoody.

“In our opinion, the consolidated financial statements present fairly, in all material respects, the financial position of the City of Revelstoke for the year ended December 31, 2012 and their financial performance and cash flows for the year then ended in accordance with Canadian public sector accounting standards,” the accounting firm said in the statement.

The statement found the City had 18,894,417 in revenue in 2012. It’s budget for 2012 had estimated its revenues at $18,909,667.

Its expenses in that year came to $18,395,333. The 2012 budget had estimated municipal expenses at $17,753,771.

There are a lot more figures like that in the statement, which you can read by clicking here.

***

International Skateboarding Day? Who knew? Well, it’s real:

According to Wikipedia:

“The name for the holiday possibly originated from the ‘No Skateboarding’ signs which often were changed to “Go Skateboarding.” by local skaters. The holiday was conceived by the International Association of Skateboard Companies (IASC) to help make skateboarding more accessible to the world through various events held in major cities around the world.”

Held on June 21, which is also the longest day of the year, you can celebrate the solstice and skateboarding at The Traverse to support the Columbia Valley Skateboard Association starting at 9 pm for the International Go Skateboarding Day aprés party.

Tickets are on sale at Society for $15. They’re $20 at the door. Proceeds from the ticket sales go towards the CVSA. The CVSA has an ambitious plan to build a modern skateboard facility near the ball fields at Centennial Park.

Fernie’s Shred Kelly will start off the night just after 9 pm with their 6 piece band. Jackie Treehorn’s funk/rock/soul sound storm from Vancouver will keep the party moving. And local DJ Big E will wrap up the night spinning tunes to keep you dancing into the wee hours of the night.

***

Social Development Coordinator Jill Zacharias reported an excellent year in her field.

She applied for, and received, grants worth $51,300 to support a variety of initiatives including age-friendly exercise equipment at Kovachs Park near Mount Begbie Manor and it villas, healthy living, and the Welcoming Communities Action Plan.

Click here to read her entire report.

Click here to visit the Social Development website.

***

Burned once by their clumsy handling of Benoit’s Wine Bar’s original licence request, City councilors complained about the bar owner’s drawing of a back deck he proposed but went ahead and approved his plan.

Bar owner Benoit Doucet had applied to build a back deck that could seat 50 people. He included a drawing of the deck in his application. But Councillors didn’t think it answered some of their questions even though the RCMP, Fire Rescue Service and the Planning Department had signed off on it.

Council received only two comments from members of the public. One woman said she did not think it was in the public interest. Another resident, and business owner, said he saw “no negatives” in the plan. It even held a public hearing but only one person attended.

However, Mayor David Raven’s prompted Council’s collective memory by reminding Councillors that they bobbled Benoit’s original application.

Councillors voted to approve the plan.

Click here to read the staff report to Council.

***

A request that Council renew the Visual Arts Society’s use of the old RCMP detachment has been sent to staff for more study.

The original five-year lease between the City and the society had contained a clause that automatically called for renewal.

“We are concerned with the proposed new Lease Agreement document in that “Section 2.00 Renewal” has been deleted,” Visual Arts Society Chairman Ken Talbot said in an e-mail to the City. “Previous versions of the Agreement contained a Renewal clause as follows:

“’If the Tenant duly and punctually observes all of its covenants and agreements in the Lease, the City shall, at the expiration of the Term, at the Tenant’s written request delivered to the City one month before the end of the Term, grant the Tenant a renewal lease of the Premises for a further term of five years on the same terms and conditions of the lease.’

“Our concern, of course, is proceeding with the $10,000 flooring project without some sort of assurance of lease renewals beyond 2017. This lack of certainty would be even more of a concern for a structural expansion and landscaping project, or any other leasehold improvements beyond regular maintenance and upkeep.”

Removal of that clause could allow the City to sell or otherwise dispose of the building, which now houses the Revelstoke Art Gallery, its community woodworking studio, pottery studio, classrooms and studio spaces.

Council asked staff to meet with the society board to discuss the issue.

Click here to read the report to Council on this issue.

***

The City approved nine new business licenses in May.

The new licences went to Revy Sled Rent Ltd, Leapinʹ Lizards Family Day Home, Kamloops Harley Davidson, Little Journeyʹs Child Care, Sarathaimassage, Stoke Paddleboard Adventures, Have a Nice Stay bed & breakfast, Monashee Lodge Revelstoke and Hodgson King & Marble Ltd.

They bring to 877 the number of licenses currently in Revelstoke. At this same time in 2012 there were 912 business licences in the city.

Click here to read the full report.

“Thank you Revelstoke for another great successful Relay For Life,” she said in a statement.

Cheryl said the great prizes went to:

Top Teams

The Waterways Houseboat Trip went to Team Gloria for raising $18,304.15, in turn they gave their trip to the Cancer Group.

Halcyon Hot Springs Pool Passes went to Coopers’ Troopers for raising $6,540.77.

Honorable Mentions went to Farmersavers for raising $4,409.25, the Wright Cause team who pulled in $3,317.41 and the Dazzling Divas who raised $2,734.48

Top Individuals

Wayne Murray, who raised $4,381.50. He won the first prize, a day of heli skiing with Selkirk Tangiers .

Carrie Ball won the second prize — a season’s pass to Revelstoke Mountain Resort for raising $1,425.

Honorable Mentions went to Brenda Schonfelder for pulling in $1,335, Bruce Tremblay who raised $1,300 and Trevor Hollenberg, who had donations of $1,090.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you to all of the committee members: Lindy Silano, Kim McTaggart, Evelyn Daniels, Leslie Pirnke, Rob Tippe , Lyn Welock, Greg Louttit, Wayne Murray,  Joel Olson, and all of the volunteers for the day,” Cheryl said. “You all did a tremendous job. Thank you also to our two MCs for the day — Jeff Murray of E-Z Rock and James McDonald of A&W.”

She also thanked all of the event’s sponsors:

Hillcrest Hotel and Coast Resort, Waterways Houseboats, Revelstoke Times Review, EZ-Rock Radio, The Revelstoke Current  Stoke FM, Revelstoke Pharmasave, Revelstoke Mountain Resort, A&W Restaurant, SkyTrek Adventure Park, Halcyon Hot Springs, Cooper’s Foods, City of Revelstoke, Rona Building Supply, School District 19, Class A Construction, Revelstoke Septic Service, the Last Drop, Free Spirit Sports, Flowt, C.P Rail, Isabella’s Ristorante, Conversations, La Baguette, Infinite Power sports, Buns and Beyond, Beyond Gifts, Evolve, Grizzly Auto, Rev Child Care Society, Regent Inn, Mt Begbie Brewing , Apex rafting , Tim Hortons, Southside Food Mart, Revelstoke’s Own Water and Ice, Signs Ink, Refinery Day Spa and Salon, Salon Safari and Academy, Revelstoke Florists, Ron Nixon, Bonafide Accessories, Carol’s Corner, All Good Things Revelstoke, Miranda Astra, Lashed and Lavished, Selkirk Graphics, Benoit’s Wine Bar, Kowakubo, the Inn On The River and everyone in the community else who helped this be a successful event.

“I apologize if I left anyone out as there are so many to say thank you to,” Cheryl said.

“See you all next year — Sunday June 8, 2014, at the Mountain View School Ball Field.”

“We are absolutely thrilled to have met the requirements of both Habitat for Humanity Kelowna and the Community Housing Society and to get on with the excitement of building in July,” project team member Cindy Pearce said in a statement.

“A huge thank you to our project team, to everyone who made financial donations, to all the businesses who have committed trades and materials and to all the volunteers who have signed up to help out – you’ve made this happen.”

Through a memorandum of understanding with the Revelstoke Community Housing Society, the Kelowna affiliate of Habitat for Humanity will help with a renovation of the Hunt family’s home to create an accessible, supportive space for the family, which includes two young daughters, as they all learn to live with Pauline’s diagnosis of ALS/Lou Gehrig’s disease. Lou Gehrig’s disease is a debilitating illness that eventually requires wheelchair accessibility and costly patient care in the later stages. Patients with ALS become progressively paralyzed due to degeneration of the upper and lower motor neurons in the brain and spinal cord.

A team of co-workers and friends have come together to make this happen for the family and the community. They have raised all but about $12,000 of the $200,000 goal in just six months – and are hoping to receive an elevator through a supplier’s Giving Back program. The family is making a significant contribution of their own to the project through $60,000 that was raised by family and friends, through repayment of a substantial no-interest loan that will create a legacy fund for future projects in Revelstoke and by putting in sweat equity during the project.

“Habitat for Humanity Kelowna is proud to be part of this community effort,” Ed McLean, chairman of the board said in the statement. “Revelstoke can take real pride in the impressive progress that the Home for the Hunts’ team has achieved so far. They have clearly contracted what is known as Habitatitis and I expect they will soon be infecting many others in the community.”

Habitat Canada’s motto is “A hand up — not a hand out,” and Habitat Kelowna’s mission is to help establish a region where everyone has a decent place to live. Both of these aims will be supported through successful completion of this project. As well, Habitat volunteers from Kelowna and Vernon hope to contribute to the construction, along with volunteers from Revelstoke, and materials will be made available via the newly opened Habitat ReStore in West Kelowna.

The Revelstoke Community Housing Society is sponsoring this pilot to showcase Habitat’s programs to the community and measure the interest in and fit of these programs in Revelstoke.

“The Housing Society knows the community will embrace Habitat for Humanity and support this pilot project,” said society chairman Mark McKee. “We look forward to working with the project team, Habitat for Humanity Kelowna and many community supporters to make this a successful project.”

A community celebration of the start of construction is planned for the near future, so please watch for a community notice about the date and time.

Revelstoke citizens can still help create a community legacy for future Habitat projects and give this family a hand up by:

• Volunteering during construction – Fill out the volunteer form at http://www.homeforthehunts.com/volunteer.html, send a note to the Volunteer Coordinator at jolsen@lendingmax.ca or talk to Team members – Dean Prunkle, Geoff Battersby, Pam Doyle, Bill Shuttleworth, Joel Olsen, Bob Fournier, Dana Prunkle, Tuulikki Tennant or Cindy Pearce;
• Making a financial donation, either to the Home for the Hunts community fund at the Revelstoke Credit Union, or for a charitable tax receipt, by mailing a donation to Habitat For Humanity Kelowna, 1793 Ross Road, Kelowna, BC V1Z 3E7 or contributing online at http://www.canadahelps.org/GivingPages/GivingPage.aspx?gpID=18591
• Purchasing materials from the project registry at Home Hardware; or
• Donating your Coopers Save On More points – Coopers will match them dollar for dollar.

Soccer Berry Pie has an obvious inspiration, but was invented by Thomas MacDonald. Watch the video of Leslie and Tom showing how to make the non-roll crust for this end of soccer-season dessert.

By Leslie Savage

To celebrate the wrap up of local soccer team, my grandson and I made a video about making Soccer Berry Pie. We also made Hockey Puck Pizzas, which you can see next week as the Stanley Cup playoffs come to an end — great combo game supper.

This is cheesecake pie, really, with ricotta and mascarpone, and makes a great after-game snack — full of protein, but super delicious. The berry part consists of fresh berries atop soccer insignia. We wrote soccer words around the edge of the pie, which are fun but optional. The flavours are mild but delicious.

The pie crust is adapted from a Jamie Oliver recipe (Jamie’s Kitchen) for a sweet pie crust that is great because it needs no rolling out, and the filling is also a simplified version of a Jamie Oliver dessert. But credit for the soccer berry part is all to Thomas MacDonald, who came up with the idea. Watch the video to see how it’s done.

Sweet No-roll Pie Crust
This is fun to make and requires no tricky rolling out. You can use any pie plate — a springform pan with removeable sides makes a pretty presentation, but is a little more difficult to handle in that you need a big cake spatula to remove the crust and pie from the bottom of the pan.

1 cup plus 2 tbsp cold butter
1 cup plus 6 tbsp icing sugar
¼ tsp salt (omit if your butter is salted)
3 cups all purpose flour
4 egg yolks
2 tbsp cold milk
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp orange zest
1 egg white

Put into a big bowl or a food processor the sugar, butter, flour and salt. Whiz until it looks like fine crumbs. Depending on the size of your processor, you may have to do this in two batches.
Add the egg yolks, milk, vanilla and zest, and whiz again until the dough forms a ball in the middle of the bowl. Press together into a neat log and wrap in waxed paper or plastic wrap. Refrigerate one hour in the fridge, or ½ hour in the freezer.
Preheat the oven to 350°F.
Remove the wrapping from the dough and slice into pieces about 2 mm thick  — a little less than a quarter of an inch.
Lay the pieces on a pie plate, close together, and press together so they form a single crust. Add side pieces and press them into the bottom crust with your fingers, Shape the whole crust this way, overlapping pieces slightly then pressing with fingers to even up the thickness. You will use up about 2/3 of the dough for a 9” or 110” pie crust. (You need some in reserve for the soccer shapes later on.)
Once the crust is complete, prick it all over with a fork to help let air escape so the crust won’t balloon up. To be sure it won’t, put a large piece of foil on the crust and fill the shell with pie weights, macaroni or dried beans.
Pre-bake the pie shell for 15 minutes in a 350°F oven. Remove and cool. Remove weights and foil after 5 minutes, and paint the bottom of the crust with the egg white. Return the crust to the oven and bake for 5 minutes. This thin layer of cooked egg prevents the filling from penetrating the crust and making it soggy. (This works well for fruit tarts as well.)
With some of the remaining dough, cut seven pentagon shapes approximately 2-3 inches across. Keep these in reserve on a flat surface.

Make the Filling
1 cup ricotta cheese
1 cup mascarpone cheese (the whole of the small 250 gram container)
7/8 cup icing sugar
2 eggs, separated
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup raspberry jam (optional)
Mix the ricotta, the mascarpone and the icing sugar together until smooth. Beat in the yolks of 2 eggs and the vanilla.
In a separate bowl, whip the 2 egg whites until stiff.
Fold the egg whites into the cheese mixture until well blended.
Spread the jam over the bottom of the pie crust.
Pour the filling into the pre-baked pie shell.

Arrange the soccer shapes on top of the pie so that they resemble a soccer ball.

Bake the pie in a 350 oven for 60 minutes. This seems like a long time but will produce a firm filling and a nicely browned top.

Finish the soccer berry pie
1 cup raspberries
1 cup blackberries or blueberries
½ cup water
½ cup sugar
Dissolve the sugar in the water in a small saucepan and boil like mad until the sugar begins to get thick, about 4 minutes at a high boil, stirring all the time with a long wooden spoon. Cool slightly.
With a small brush, paint the soccer shapes on the top of the pie. Some may have disappeared beneath the filling—don’t worry, paint on top of the shape anyway. Arrange the berries on top of the soccer pentagons, and drizzle the remaining syrup on top of the berries.

Come on… crack a smile! It’s good for you!

June 17

Uncle Bad Touch, perhaps better known simply as UBT, will bring their near 60s sound to the Last Drop on June 20. Find out more about this great band at https://www.facebook.com/ubtiscool. Photo courtesy of UBT

Arrow Heights Elementary Students proudly show off their math competition medals.
Grade 7/8 Competition Participants Back Row: Kate Granstrom (2nd Place at AHE), Alana Brittin (1st Place at AHE)
Grade 3/4 Competition Participants Front Row: Emily MacLeod (4th Place at AHE), Kaity Herle (3rd Place at AHE), Josh Larsen (2nd Place at AHE), Megan Hoshizaki (5th Place at AHE), Stefan Spataro (6th Place at AHE)
Note: Josh is holding the Arrow Heights 1st Place winner medal for Griffin Velichko who recently moved to Alberta. Griffin will be receiving his medal in the mail shortly. Julian Corbett photo

By Julian Corbett
Arrow Heights Elementary School

The Brock University Math Competition is a series of tests that happen over the school year.  Brock University then chooses the best 5 out of 6 results and then the winners are ranked.  This competition is Canada-wide.

AHE students worked hard.  Below are their rankings for Arrow Heights School.  Rankings also came in for Revelstoke, BC, and Canada, so students could figure out where they placed over-all.  Everybody at AHE did really well.  We are very proud of them.

Last Drop will reverberate with the sound of Moonlight Express on June 18. Photo courtesy of Moonlight Express

The Current is pleased to present short videos by and about local people and events. Most videos are produced by The Current, but we will accept other videographers’ clips in the two-to-four-minute range taken of local people and events.

If you would like to see more local video from The Revelstoke Current’s YouTube Playlist please go to The Current Editor’s Channel on YouTube to see the full list of Revelstoke Current video productions.

RBC Manager Lynn Welock examines one of the devices available to local homeowners facing watering restrictions. The City’s display was in the bank on Friday and will be at the Farmers’ Market on Saturday. You can find out more about watering restrictions at the City’s website at http://city.revelstoke.ca. David F. Rooney photo