Editorials
July 4, 2007, Stouffville Sun-Tribune
The Love Stouffville campaign of service and good deeds was a welcome addition [to the Strawberry Festival]. Hats off to the Stouffville Ministerial Association and its crew of volunteers.
Off The Top
By: Jim Mason, July 5, 2007, Stouffville Sun-Tribune
It was a love-in, under a tent.
Stouffville Christians packed the magnificent white marquee in Memorial Park Sunday morning for a message. Hope. Renewal.
They got all that and a pep talk of the best kind.
Scott Clubine, the youth pastor at EastRidge Evangelical Missionary Church, addressed the annual inter-faith church service at the 23rd annual Strawberry Festival.
He’s a local kid, who grew up on T&R Donuts and Clipper hockey games. His only time away from his home town came while attending university.
While Scott’s classmates at Stouffville District Secondary School couldn’t wait to blow this town, he couldn’t see any reason to leave. His family has more than 200 years of deep roots in the community. Everything he wanted was here.
So he stayed, or at least returned after school, and now leads the youngest of our residents in this town’s newest church.
He also led the Love Stouffville campaign, which hit town like a friendly tornado over the last week of June. The project of the Stouffville Ministerial Association was intended to show love to local residents.
Participants, in their nifty t-shirts with the Love Stouffville logo (a small town version of I Love New York, one guesses) t-shirts washed cars, cooked lunch, handed out bottled water and newspapers to commuters and cleaned the park in preparation for the festival. All for free. No strings attached.
“I’ll take the free car wash, but I won’t eat a free hotdog,” one resident told Scott, as if not wanting to fall under a spell. Fair enough, until he wolfed down three dogs.
No plans were announced for recurring Love Stouffville acts of kindness. That’s a shame.
A town in transition needs all the love it can get.
Jim Mason is editor of The Sun-Tribune.
Letters to the Editor
Jul 11, 2007
Re: Showing us the love, Stouffville, column by Jim Mason, July 5.
Thank you for your kind words concerning Love Stouffville. Our planning and organizing committee was absolutely blown away by the positive response to Love Stouffville 2007.
The comments and encouragement we received from the variety of people we encountered during our campaign has motivated us to plan for a recurrence of our campaign of acts of kindness.
Keep your eyes and ears open for future Love Stouffville activities including a proposed Sept. 4 kindness blitz, fall and spring town cleanups, and our 2008 campaign week, June 22-29.
We agree wholeheartedly with you: a town in transition needs all the love it can get. We hope to continue to model that much needed love.
For more information, please visit our website at www.lovestouffville.ca
Scott Clubine
Love Stouffville Committee
Sep 19, 2007
Stouffville Sun-Tribune
Some spend more time on cars: course leader
By: Hannelore Volpe
Do you pay more attention to keeping your car tuned up than keeping your marriage running smoothly?
Have you ever felt you need help in understanding your spouse a little better?
More and more people are turning to marriage maintenance courses.
One of them is The Marriage Course, which is being offered in Stouffville next month.
The courses are for healthy marriages and not for those in crisis. Couples facing serious difficulties in their marriage are advised to seek counselling or family therapy.
The eight evening sessions of The Marriage Course cover all the hot-button issues that crop up in any marriage, with the aim of building a healthy marriage that lasts a lifetime.
The course deals with improving communication, resolving conflicts, good sex, dealing with parents, children and in-laws and other topics.
“The course fosters an appreciation for each other,” Stouffville resident Nancy Stover said. “It is definitely an affirmation that respect within marriage, proper attitudes, honesty and openness are very critical to a healthy relationship.”
Calling themselves life-long learners and realizing that they are in marriage “for the long haul”, Bob Stover said “that leads us to putting an investment in our marriage.”
That investment also makes the couple better role models for their children and grandchildren.
For a younger couple, who have only been married three years, such as Mark Black and Meiyan Wong, the course gave them the tools to deal with their differences and covered the different ways people express their love.
“Nobody tells you how to be married,” Mr. Black said.
However, “when my wife first suggested (the course),” Mr. Black said, “I said we didn’t need to go.”
The Marriage Course is presented through the Love Stouffville program, a joint effort of the Stouffville Ministerial Association. The Love Stouffville program was started last year by local churches to express Christ’s love by having volunteers perform various service projects in town. Love Stouffville volunteers helped with many aspects of Strawberry Festival as well as holding other events.
When it comes to many marriages, the biggest issue is communication, course facilitator Baha Habashy said.
The course encourges people to talk about what is important, about things that may have been left unsaid for too long and about resentments and other feelings that could eventually threaten a marriage.
“We know that one in two marriages is breaking up,” Mr. Habashy said, “and this has a very negative impact on children and society.”
More people are looking for marriage maintenance courses because of today’s faster-paced life, Mr. Habashy said.
There isn’t the same degree of extended family support as previously, families are under more financial strain, and children are exposed to more problems at an earlier age.
In his introduction to the course, Mr. Habashy points out that “many men spend more time and money maintaining their cars than their marriage. Some women pay more attention to the quality of their wardrobes than their marital relationships”.
During the first session of The Marriage Course, couples get to complete a marriage health check. Each spouse rates statements such as ‘my spouse regularly gives me his undivided attention, we are able to talk about strong emotions, excitement, hope, grief and anxiety, and my spouse is sensitive toward my sexual needs. Couples then compare notes.
Couples at the course don’t have to worry about discussing the most private parts of their marriage in public.
After an introduction by Mr. Habashy, the course is taught on video and each couple sits at their own table to discuss what they’ve learned. There are no group discussions.
One main problem facing many marriages is that “we don’t know how to communicate love,” Mr. Habashy said. “We all have different love languages.”
That means while one person feels receiving gifts from their spouse makes them feel loved, others appreciate having help around the house. The course helps make couples aware of what is most important to the other person.
About 25 couples are expected to take part in the course.
The Marriage Course is presented in Stouffville from Oct. 14 to Dec. 2 at The Cafe at EastRidge Evangelical Missionary Church, 12485 Tenth Line. It runs from 6:45 to 9:15 p.m. each night.
The cost is $65 per couple, which includes a resource book and two work books. Desserts are served as well.
The Marriage Course was started in England 21 years ago and is now being run in 28 countries around the world.
Oct 04, 2007
Stouffville Sun-Tribune
You’ll see more trees and shrubs along the creek in Memorial Park in downtown Stouffville after Oct. 13. That’s the day Love Stouffville, an initiative of local churches and residents, is enhancing Sangster’s Grove in the park.
The event is a partnership between the Town of Whitchurch-Stouffville and the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority. All residents are welcome to join the tree planters from 10 a.m. to noon. Shovels and gloves, as well as refreshments, will be supplied.
Jun 26, 2008
Stouffville Sun-Tribune
24th annual fest kicks off tonight in memorial park with lots of help
By: Alyshia Higgins
Strawberry Festival volunteers were feeling the love and the time crunch this week.
The 24th annual event officially opens tonight and volunteers from the community and Love Stouffville have been working feverishly to get ready.
Thousands of residents are expected to browse the streets this weekend. The festival runs through Sunday and resumes Tuesday with Canada Day fireworks and other events in Memorial Park.
“We look at the festival as our baby,” Strawberry Festival Committee chairperson Laura Roessler said. “It takes nine months of hard work to put it all together.”
The 10-member committee, along with hundreds of other volunteers, is responsible for putting on the event, which draws crowds from across the GTA. Planning for the event begins a year in advance, and committee members put in as many as 10 hours a day, Ms Roessler said.
Love Stouffville, a group of churches, was created last year and is ready to help out again. This is the second time they are participating in the festival.
“I’ve heard great things from the volunteers (of Love Stouffville),” said Scott Clubine, youth pastor at EastRidge Evangelical Missionary Church and leader of the campaign. “You get different people from different churches working together. It’s a great way for them to be involved with the community.”
Love Stouffville supplies “80 per cent of the logistical volunteers throughout the festival”, said Ms Roessler.
“Without Love Stouffville, it’s almost as if there wouldn’t be a festival,” she said.
Besides the approximately 75 volunteers Love Stouffville provides, many other volunteers not involved with the committee also contribute to the success of the festival. Ruth Hadji, a Stouffville resident, has volunteere with the festival for 10 years.
“It’s a great way to help out the town, and of course they need as many volunteers as they can get,” Mrs. Hadji said.
Her daughter, Sarah, 22, also volunteers.
Despite all the hard work, the volunteers agree the end result is well worth the effort.
“It’s just been a fantastic festival,” Mrs. Hadji said. “It’s grown so much. It’s become huge.”
For Mrs. Roessler, there’s another kind of satisfaction.
“It’s a great sense of accomplishment,” she said. “You get to meet some fabulous and interesting people. I love the opportunity to lead a team of such dynamic and passionate people.”
April 17, 2009 10:00 PM
Green activities, pool party challenge next Saturday
BY SANDRA BOLAN
Last year's local Earth Day clean-up produced 1,000 large garbage bags stuffed with trash residents picked up off the streets, sidewalks, lawns and parks.
An entire pick-up truck full of tires and rims, as well as a box spring and mattress were also among the discarded items cleaned up last April.
This year, organizers of the event, which takes place next Saturday, April 25, are hoping to pick up less trash, but have more participants.
First launched as an environmental awareness event in the United States in 1970, Earth Day, which is officially April 22, is celebrated as the birth of the environmental movement.
In 1990, two million Canadians joined 200 million people in 141 nations in celebrating the first International Earth Day.
Whitchurch-Stouffville launched its own program last year.
"If you throw something on the ground, you just leave it for someone else to clean up," said Micole Ongman, the town's manager of recreation in the department of leisure services. "There are a number of receptacles around town, get to know where they are."
Once again, the municipality's Stouffville Reservoir will be the primary clean up site.
"It can definitely use a clean-up and it's a place people want to go for a nature walk. So you really notice" the trash, Ms Ongman said, noting they will also do tree planting at the reservoir.
Also at the reservoir, on Millard Street east of Ninth Line, this year will be a 'green' display area for people to get information on active transportation and other ways residents can be environmentally-friendly. Participants will also be able to build a birdhouse.
People looking for a new outdoor activity will be able to try urban polling, which is fitness walking with poles.
"By using the poles you get the upper body moving ... (and) it doesn't matter how old you are. People love it," Ms Ongman said.
Africycle, which is an Uxbridge-based organization that refurbishes old bikes and sends them to Malawi, will also be on hand to collect bicycles. Africans use them as catalysts for sustainable and effective development, thus breaking the cycle of poverty,
"We may find bikes in the clean up, but we're also asking for people to bring old bikes to the reservoir," Ms Ongman said.
The reservoir is not the only place in need of a clean-up. Schools and residential neighbourhoods could also use one.
In an effort to get more neighbourhood groups participating - there were six last year - all registered clean up groups will be entered into a draw for a free pool party at the Lebovic Leisure Centre.
The town's youth are also being encouraged to form their own neighbourhood clean-up groups or join Love Stouffville, which is comprised of area youth church groups.
"It's very important for them to take ownership of the community they live in," said Scott Clubine, youth pastor at EastRidge Evangelical Missionary Church. "We often hear a lot of negative stuff about young people, but this is a way to show ... there are good kids in our neighbourhoods."
The reservoir clean-up will take place next Saturday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., rain or shine.
Gloves and garbage bags will be supplied to everyone at the reservoir, as well as to registered clean up groups. Pick up of all collected trash will also be provided.
To register a team, call Scott Clubine at 905-640-3911 ext. 22 or e-mailyouth@eastridge.ca
Bikes for Africycle can be brought to EastRidge church, on Tenth Line north of Main Street, anytime next week.
May 02, 2009 06:39 AM
Letters to the Editor
April 25, 2009. What a great day. The town, along with community partners, ran a celebration in honour of Earth Day. The reservoir is a beautiful spot and people of all ages came out full of energy, wanting to do their part to help.
More than 300 people filled 1,200 garbage bags in their cleanup efforts. Cleaning took place at the reservoir and surrounding areas. Also this year, 13 neighbourhoods signed up to beautify their community. There were 300 trees planted, more than 80 bicycles donated to the Africycle effort and 60 birdhouses built to take home. Urban poling was also popular.
Thank you to Ralph Tonniger of TRCA, Scott Clubine and EastRidge church participants, members of Love Stouffville, Leisure Services staff, Walmart, Boston Pizza, Timber Creek Golf and the Mayor's Youth Council.
Also, thank you to the residents for taking such pride in your town. Community spirit was definitely in abundance last Saturday.
Micole Ongman
Town of Whitchurch-Stouffville
