Young fashion designers show their own style (Adrienne)

This summer, a Capilano University classroom with white walls and brown desks has a brand new look. Everything is so amazing. There are boxes of ribbons and bows and fake flowers with dew drops and sparkles. The classroom is where the budding fashion designers are at work.

They are learning all about clothing, techniques, skills of sewing, categories and the history of fashion. The teacher, Jerry, has taught the camp for nine years. She has also taught a number of other classes.

“They are trying out the idea of their own fashion,” says Jerry. Through her life she has done fashion design, painting, and artwork for plays.

Now, she enjoys sharing her skills with the next generation.

Magic (Paige)

Cards, Dice, tricks, Optical illusionists gedazzle their audience! Magic is an amazing profession, it takes years to master.

While I was in summer camp, I got to interview a great magician, Rod Boss, he was teaching a magic camp. He told me that when he was 10 or 11, he performed a magic trick in his class. All his friends kept on asking “Rod, how did you do that?” He decided to keep on going with magic because he loved to the looks on people’s faces after he did a magic trick. When he was 20 years old he thought about becoming a professional magician; and he did become a professional magician! He has been practising magic for 39 years in total.

While I was interviewing some of his students I asked them to perform a magic trick. One girl named Isabelle showed me a magic trick where there were three cups and three pom-poms. She put a pom-pom on top of a cup and put her two other cups on top of the pom-pom. Somehow, she managed to get the pom-pom through the cup! It was so cool. Isabelle did the same trick to every pom-pom and in the end all the pom-poms fell through the cup.

Leah, another girl in the camp, showed me the Jiffy coin trick. It looked really hard.

At the end of the interview, Rod showed me the hardest magic trick of all, Jumping Cards. It was amazing! Rod fanned his playing cards in front of me. He gave me 13 of them. He reorganized his cards, and suddenly I had 16. He reorganized again and then I was holding 19! No wonder they call this camp amazing.

All in all, this camp is awesome, intense, cool, funky, funny and if you become so good at magic you may be able to take on Rod Boss.

More Amazing Magic for eight to 12-year-olds runs from Aug. 9 – 13. If you’re interested in magic camp, visit www.capilanou.ca/summercamps. Or call 604-984-4901 to register. Check it out!

Saskatchewan Success (Julian)

The Saskatchewan Roughriders are 2 – 0. The reason for this is quarterback Duranett. He has 620 passing yards in the first two games. In his first game against Montreal, he passed for 452 yards to defeat the Allouettes 54 – 51 in double overtime. At one point in the game, his passes were 12 for 12. Another thing that helped them win was their defence. The first play of the game was a pick-off that resulted in a field goal. The thing about Saskatchewan is they never give up and the person who keeps them going is Duranett. Saskatchewan is just a very solid team. Their coach is doing well. We’ll see how they do next game on home turf against the Edmonton Eskimos.

Animal abuse takes many forms (Kelsy)

Lots of people think that animal abuse is just when their owners hit them or starve them, but there are other ways of abuse that people don’t think about.

The wild animals are losing wild spaces, they are left roaming the streets for food. They often get too close to people, so they get shot anyway.

People make problems for the pets they love, for instance, with indoor cats they don’t get to go outside, or if they do they are enclosed or on a leash. That abuses them by not letting them run around.

With outdoor cats they get to go outside, but they kill on average five birds a day, leaving lots of fledglings without parents.

Dogs get bought by people who can’t physically take them for walks. They also get bought by old people who die and leave the dogs without family, people beat them or they live their lives in stores.

Fish normally live in oceans, lakes and rivers, so when they get put in fish tanks it’s like taking away most of their world.

Same thing with hamsters, they came from the desert. They got taken out of their home and put in little cages.

Zoos are nice to look at, but have you ever thought of how the animals must feel? Their entire lives they’ve been put in a cage and been looked at.

So the next time you feed your fish think of how they have to live and how small their world is.

Stop Child Labour? Think Again! (Matt)

Walking down the streets happily, last week you have had a breakthrough in your campaign against child labour; it has been outlawed world-wide. You walk down the streets and you notice 75% of the shops are closing down. You walk into a shop to buy a new phone but the cashier says they’re bankrupt. What’s happening? Was this the cause of child labour being banned? Of course not, banning child labour isn’t important to yo at all! It will not even affect you! Really? Think again!

Did you know that child labour is one of the most helpful jobs in the world? This is how it works; the families get enough money to survive, while the businesses have to pay lower for the cheap labour the children supply. Since there is more money saved on the labour, businesses can supply more people with jobs, therefore enabling more products to be made for the businesses and boosting the economy. Amazing isn’t it? Just one job area can sway economies, governments, businesses and families! Statistics show that in the past couple of years child labour in India has grown with its economy! Now that’s pretty impressive.

Child labour is also extremely useful for children. They learn to tolerate everyone and everything around them, they build confidence through success in their job and they and they become committed. Children can build valuable life skills through labour! They also will probably have to do a similar job later on, so it prepares them for their work.

Of course, in an ideal world we would prefer to end child labour for ethical reasons. But that's not the reality behind this. Imagine a family of six, a mother, father, two sons and two daughters. They are living in a small poor village in the heart of Africa. The father is brutal injured from war and the mother is sick from malaria. In the fields the two sons, thirteen and nine, are working for the pure survival of not only their families, but for themselves.

So what would happen if child labour was outlawed? One word: chaos. The developing countries’ economies, governments and businesses would come crashing down due to the loss of this cheap labour. On top of that hundreds upon millions of innocent poor children would perish; every day. The huge effect on the third world countries would result in no resources transferred into the modernised countries. Thousands of the things we have in our products come from these countries through child labour. The modernised economies would crash due to the lack of trade. In effect, this would send the world into the biggest crisis every known to man-kind.

Is this the cause of the bankrupt shop?
Yes.
So, how important is child labour to you now?

Deforestation Equals Destruction Editorial (Claire)

Did you know that every minute a slice of forest equivalent to 7 football fields is destroyed in the Amazon rainforest? Originally the Earth was home to 6 million square miles of tropical rainforest but today only 2.6 million square miles remain. This is deforestation and thanks to agriculture, urbanization, mining, logging and many more the earth is being destroyed, just like the forests. The problem is that few trees are replanted which means a depleting forest and organism population. If we don't do something soon then the death of the world will be the blood staining our hands. The world is our gift, our earth and we have to take responsibility for it. Deforestation is the destruction of our home.


Forests can give so much to everybody and everything. Firstly, they produce wildlife. Much wildlife is protected and given life to by forest which provide a home to a massive abundance of organisms. Secondly, trees are a huge need to humans and other animals. Forests create a large community of trees and other plants that work together to produce oxygen. Thirdly, forests provide food and water. One fifth of the world's fresh water is found in the Amazon basin. Next, medical value can be provided by these important sources of life; much of which we have not discovered. If we eliminate forests from the equation then much information will be exterminated. Finally, forests regulate temperatures and weather patterns. This provides a good habitat and a home for many.


Deforestation is a terrible and selfish gesture that destroys the homes of many animals. forcing them to move and adapt to other areas during a process in which many die. Bigger animals are hit harder by this disaster, one example being the panda which has been put onto the endangered species list due to urbanization and habitat fragmentation. Apart from threatening the condition of many organisms, deforestation also encourages global warming by reducing the amount of trees that can extract carbon dioxide from our already inflated atmosphere.


The world's resource institute believes that the activity of deforestation is one of the earth's biggest land-use issues. We must put a stop to it at all costs. Luckily, here in Canada there is little deforestation to be named and we must keep it that way. In order to bring back what we have exterminated we must work together to replant new trees and plants in areas where forests once stood but have been reduced to ruins.
We must rebuild as much of the world as we can.
Do you care?

Despicable Me Review (Claire)

Despicable Me, displayed in the box office this week, was a huge hit among viewers.

The film is about a villain who adopts three little orphan girls for use in his devious plan to capture the moon. But he has just met one of his hardest challenges. The suceed in his task he must first prove himself and outplay another evil mastermind who is trying to beat him to his goal. The villain soon

learns to love the children as his own.

This is a fantastic story aimed at all ages. "Everyone can learn from it at different levels of understanding depending on age." There are many morals in this story such as "Love wins over greed", Your children are your memories and they will stay in your heart forever and that children can impact people drastically. What I personally took from the film is that while children are at a need for adults, adults also need children. "All humans need love in order to be happy.

When a viewer of Despicable Me, Pascale Arundel of Vancouver, was asked which other books or movies shared a similar plot with the movie she replied "It reminds me of the children's series, The Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket. In both stories a group of three orphans are adopted by an evil man with negative intensions and who is using then to do his work."

But although the dastardly villain in this story is selfish, grouchy and uncaring, he also has a soft side to him that he never knew that he had. He just wants to know and feel loved.

While Despicable Me holds vast depth it is also funny, and a great story for the whole family to enjoy. So if you like windswept tales of fun, fiction and creativity, then Despicable Me is one for you.