Inspiring... and fun

I had the wonderful opportunity to speak to a grade 10 Prince Rupert class this week. I was dreading it, as I had NEVER spoken in front of a group of teens before. It sounds wierd, but although I'm comfortable speaking to the northern B-C masses every morning on Daybreak... I was terrified of facing off with a grade 10 class.

How did it go?

BRILLIANTLY!!! It was fun, and a lot easier than I thought it would be. The class was actually a "Planning 10" class. I basically shared with them, my story of how the "Green Traveller" came to be. I even shared a fair bit of myself that I had never done before.

I gave the usual intro about myself. THEN, I gave them the REAL intro about who I was. I felt it necessary to show them that I was not by any means anyone special. I consider myself an average dude, who like everyone else has the capacity to do great things (or terrible things). I shared with them the less then proud moments of my life as an alcoholic, smoking, college drop-out loser... before I changed my life for the better. I also told them why I was NOT a good "green" role model, and all the funny nuances along the way as Marc and I filmed over the summer. It sounds like it would have been difficult to have been so transparent in my presentation, but in fact it all came out a lot easier then I thought it would.

Before the class started, the students, did not seem attentative... they were chatting amongst themselves, and I thought "man, they're going to eat me up and spit me out..." but as soon as I started speaking, they were extremely attentative. It was nice. Hopefully they enjoyed it as much as I did.

Another neat update. I had been looking for some more music for our pilot and trailer. I found some. Local musician (Terrace) Brad North has performed in northern British Columbia for years. He's a family friend, and we are going to see if we can implement his tunes in our project. Pretty exciting!!!!

Also, by some wierd coincidence... I self assigned myself some homework over the holidays. That was to locate some archival Haida photos we could draw from, for our project. The very next week, i was booking a guest for our morning radio show to reflect the 'officializing,' of the name Haida Gwaii for the now former "Queen Charlotte Islands." The guest I booked is president of the Bill Reid Foundation. I quickly learned he has access to photos that date back as far as 120 years ago, and we may be able to use some. What LUCK!!!

So all in all, its been a great week. Now back to getting ready for the holidays!!!


rd