First wood frame school related to Houston
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The first wood frame school in China is going to be the sister school of Silverthorne Elementary in Houston, B.C.
Just over one year ago an earthquake ripped through the Sichuan Province, leaving 88,000 dead or missing. The B.C. and Canadian government’s joined together in putting $8 million together into the Wenchuan Earthquake Reconstruction Fund, part of which will reconstruct an elementary school in Dujiangyan. Built using Canadian lumber and utilizing Canadian seismic standards, the hope with this building is that it will be able to withstand future earthquakes.
“It’s neat Canada-wide because the government has been backing this thing partly to develop relationships and to extend B.C’s wood market into China,” Silverthorne principal Mark Fehr said.
Silverthorne Elementary was chosen to be their sister school partly because of Houston being a resource-driven community, Fehr added, and in a couple of weeks the Minister of Forests Pat Bell will be heading to China to sign the agreement on the school’s behalf.
“We’re hoping to make them aware of life and culture here,” Fehr said.
“We plan to start with a scrapbook, photos, maybe some videos to send to them, then they send stuff back.”
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