How does culture shape values from generation to generation? How do your values affect your workplace and your community? What are the impacts of cultural stereotypes and discrimination?
These are just a few of the topics up for discussion at a Burnaby “inclusion café” in February.
The café is on Monday, Feb. 3, from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at the Tommy Douglas library branch, at 7311 Kingsway. The Burnaby Neighbourhood House, Burnaby Family Life and AMSSA are organizing the café. (AMSSA stands for Affiliation of Multicultural Societies and Services Agencies of B.C., the provincewide coalition of immigrant services organizations behind the Safe Harbour program.)
The café is mostly for business managers and non-profits, but everyone is welcome to attend the dialogue. To get involved, RSVP by Jan. 31 by calling or emailing Lindsay Marsh at 604-718-2776 or [email protected].
Happy 100th birthday
Happy birthday, or buon compleanno, to Burnaby resident Maria Giuseppa Iorio.
Her family threw a party for her at Little Billy’s Steak House in Burnaby on Saturday to mark her 100th birthday.
Maria’s son, Tony Valentini, told the NOW his mother moved to Canada in the 1990s. She spent her life as a farm worker in Italy, and came from Morrone del Sannio, a small town in the Campobasso province.
Maria has seven children, and has outlived them all except for Tony.
Author seeking Williams’ family
I received a rather curious email from an author in the U.S. looking for any surviving relatives of Burnaby resident Frank Williams, who passed away in 2013. Author and journalist Robert Weintraub contacted us because he’s writing a book on Williams, who was best known for taking care of a dog named Judy during the Second World War. According to Weintraub, Judy is the only known dog that achieved prisoner-of-war status during the Second World War, and Williams took her into his care while imprisoned on Sumatra, an island in Indonesia.
“The two shared many life and death scrapes,” Weintraub wrote. “While their story is somewhat known in the Commonwealth, it isn’t in America, which I hope to remedy a bit.”
Weintraub is hoping to track down Williams’ widow or any of his children, Alan, David and Ann. If anyone has info or leads, call 404-234-2623 or email [email protected].
Literacy Day
Family Literacy Day is on Monday, Jan. 27, and the Burnaby Public Library has tons of events on for the public.
From Jan. 24 to 27, each branch will have something different planned, and the programs are for families with children aged three to eight.
For details on what each location is offering, go to www.bpl.bc.ca.
