Taber Christian Alternative School hoping park video a hit

By Nikki Jamieson
Taber Times
njamieson@tabertimes.com

The Grade 8s at Taber Christian Alternative School, are in the home stretch to win a video contest, run by Parks Canada.

For the contest, classes across Canada were to make a video on a Parks Canada location. They would then post the video online for people to vote on. The top ten videos with the most votes would then go to a panel of judges who would decide the winners.

Philip Vriend’s Grade 8 class had seen a flyer advertising the contest, and decided to enter it. They did their video on Pacific Rim National Park.

Located in British Columbia, it consists of three parts – the Long Beach Unit, the Broken Group Islands and the West Coast Trail Unit – and it is home to one of Canada’s rarest ecosystems, the sand dunes, which covers only one per cent of B.C.

“A lot of people like to travel, and it’s a lot different than where most people live,” said Christina Wiebe, a grade 8 TCS student, on the class’ choice.

The class did their filming at Henderson Lake in Lethbridge at the end of February, to do their filming, since it looked a lot like the National Park.

“For our class, for how good we worked together, I would say it worked out pretty well,” said Wiebe. “The fun things we did in there, like when two boys went in the dumpsters, for our ‘special home’, and doing funny things behind the trees and stuff (were my favourite parts).”

Prizes include five honourable mentions that receive prize packs that contain either a Parks Canada gift bag, including a pair of sunglasses for each student, a one-year subscription to Canadian Geographic, one Canadian Geographic Parks photo magazine for each student or resource materials from Canadian Wildlife Federation. The two runner-ups will receive either $750 for their own trip or a local field trip to a Parks Canada site worth $750. Then, there is the grand prize, which Wiebe has her eye especially on; a five-day, all expenses paid, class trip to Jasper National Park.

“Our class is trying to get the Jasper National Park one (prize)… Our whole class really loves camping, and we would basically be camping out over there, and there is a lot of cool things you can do, I think they said like zip-lining and going onto the lake and stuff, and we really, really wanted to see how different it would look over there, than how we live over here in Taber.”

To vote, go to http://contest.myparkspass.ca/en/vote/class/pvriend/TCSG8, or visit http://contest.myparkspass.ca/en/vote/ and look up class name TCSG8 or under school name Vriend.

You must have a valid email address to vote, and you can only vote once a day. The contest ends on March 18.