 Marilyn MacDougall and Capt. Bill Griffin from the Orange County Sheriff's Department will be serving customers during today's Wendy's DreamLift Day. |
The two representatives of the Orange County Sheriff's Department returned to Kelowna for today's 19th annual Wendy's DreamLift Day to raise money for a special needs flight to Disneyland in December.
"This is so much fun. I love it. It's nothing like anything I've ever seen before: the spirit of this community and the support for this event to make this happen and make it extremely successful," said Marilyn MacDougall, the department's director of community programs.
She is always the first host to enter the Alaska Airlines aircraft to welcome Southern Interior children to Orange County. This is her fifth visit to Kelowna for Wendy's DreamLift Day.
Capt. Bill Griffin, who is in charge of South Operations in Orange County, is back for a second year. Both will rotate between the dining rooms at the Kelowna, Rutland and West Kelowna restaurants.
They won't be cooking in the kitchen, emphasized Griffin, adding with a laugh: "It's probably safer for both sides (of the counter) if we don't. Everybody's happier."
MacDougall is looking forward to seeing people she's met during the past four years, especially the special needs children who have been on a DreamLift and their families.
"I've made some friends. There are a couple of women in particular that I'm anxious to see. It is a smiling day at both ends, here and there (in California)."
It would stretch southeast to Trail and Castlegar, and north to Nakusp but not include Nelson or Kaslo.
Commissioners reviewed their options for the overpopulated Kelowna-Lake Country riding for more than two months before adopting a provincial solution, a federal riding that stretches from the U.S. border almost up to Kamloops and includes part of Kelowna.
Ladyman, who lives in the Interior, points out the provincial riding of Westside-Kelowna takes in downtown Kelowna and the Westside down to Summerland. Ladyman served on a similar provincial commission five years ago.
The commission's objective was to balance the numbers of voters to around 104,000 in each riding. The new riding will have 104,398.
There was resistance to removing Falkland, Chase and Sorrento from North Okanagan-Shuswap so the commission left them grouped together.
The B.C. commission's report will be reviewed by the House of Commons' procedures committee and MPs could still argue for changes.
The commission is required to consider a number of factors including "the community of interest or community of identity in or the historical pattern of an electoral district in the province" and "a manageable geographic size" for rural or sparsely populated districts.
Deviation from the electoral quota is allowed by 25 per cent, more or less. Six new ridings were added in B.C., five in the Lower Mainland and one on Vancouver Island.
