‘A good winter wallop’
More than 30 cm of snow falls in Charlottetown; winds gust to 60 km/h
Islanders got to put their shovels to work as they awoke to another storm Monday morning.
More than 30 cm of snow fell in Charlottetown overnight Sunday and into Monday as the second storm in less than a week swept through the province.
SaltWire Network’s chief meteorologist Cindy Day said the storm didn’t come with the strong winds that hit Newfoundland and Labrador, so P.E.I. was spared a little bit.
“It was a good winter wallop, if you want to call it that,” she said.
Although the province was spared from long periods of blizzard conditions, Charlottetown did get 36 cm of snow, Day said.
“That was a fairly intense rate of snowfall with this snow maker.”
The storm moved into the area overnight Sunday bringing snow and strong winds with gusts reaching peaks of more than 60 km/h in parts of the province.
By mid-afternoon all winter storm warnings for P.E.I. were lifted.
Day said the snow amounts dropped off west of the capital, including 12 cm in Summerside.
As snow continued to fall throughout the morning and winds caused drifting, the RCMP warned Islanders to stay off the roads because of unsafe driving conditions.
A driver in the North Tryon area was stuck in his vehicle for about four hours before an RCMP officer helped him get out at around 6:20 a.m.
The RCMP said the officer saw a car with its hazard lights on stuck in a ditch and found an elderly man stuck inside waiting for a tow truck.
Because of the weather conditions, tow vehicles couldn’t get to the man.
Photos of the car showed it tilted toward the driver’s side several feet from the road and surrounded by snow drifts.
The RCMP said the officer shovelled out the buried driver’s side door to free the man because the passenger side door wasn’t working.
After freeing the man, the officer took him home and left him in the care of his family.
Poor driving conditions
meant schools across the Island were closed, including Holland College and UPEI.
Canada Post also suspended deliveries for the day, saying weather conditions made it unsafe to send staff out.
With the weather conditions worse in eastern P.E.I., all provincial civil service offices in the East Prince area, Queens County and Kings County were closed for the day.
Some provincial government services resumed in western P.E.I. by the afternoon as the system moved east.
Day said the snow will stick around as temperatures stay below freezing all week.
Occasional snowsqualls of a few centimetres will add to what’s already on the ground.
“With cold temperatures and that little additional light snow triggered by the wind, we can expect the week to feel and look a lot like winter should,” she said.
More snow may be on the way this week as Day said another system is expected to
impact the region Sunday and into Monday, although what hits P.E.I. likely won’t be a storm.
Richard Pellisier-Lush believes strongly in positive role models. He thanks them for saving his life.
And the 31-year-old has been paying it forward ever since.
Pellisier-Lush grew up in Winnipeg when it was the murder capital of Canada, in part because of gang violence between the Indian Posse and the Crips. Pellisier-Lush is Mi’kmaw and was being recruited by the Indian Posse in high school.
It came down to a choice. He’d been through some of the initiation with his best friend, who was also being recruited.
However, Pellisier-Lush was also a football player – playing on the offensive line – and was inseparable from his friend, who was the team’s quarterback, both on and off the field. Pellisier-Lush idolized him and did whatever he did.
The choice was whether to make the final step into committed gang life.
“If I go to this thing, this is the life I’m choosing,” he thought.
Pellisier-Lush was ready to do it, but his friend said no.
“Look, man. We can’t go to that. We can’t do this. We’ve got to go to football practice. Football is what we need to be focusing on.”
Pellisier-Lush looked at him.
“You’re right, man,” he said. “Let’s go and practice.”
That was all it took. They went to practice and turned away from gang life.
In Grade 10, Pellisier-Lush moved to P.E.I. with his mother, Julie, to be closer to their Mi’kmaq culture and community in Lennox Island, where Richard’s aunt, Darlene Bernard, is the chief.
Eventually, he joined the Colonel Gray Colonels football team, where he played well enough to find his way back to Manitoba, playing for the University of Manitoba team.
His involvement in the sport evolved into coaching and in November, at the age of 31, Pellisier Lush was the recipient of the Aboriginal Sport Circle’s National Indigenous Coaching Award for his work coaching in P.E.I.
“I was so proud. I was so happy,” he said. “It was just a huge honour, and some of the people, the coaches that won it before, were my mentors.”
Because of his experiences, he sees his role now as an advocate for youth, he said.
A role model can be anyone, though, he said. In high school, it was his quarterback.
“It’s not just mentorship and not just coaches and stuff. It’s your peers.”
Because of the help he got from role models, Pellisier-Lush works hard at giving back, he said.
“I’m a firm believer in getting role models that are doing things actively and mentors that are doing things actively and getting them involved in the community and showing the community and the youth that you can be successful.”
Pellisier-Lush became that role model himself when he was still young, his mother, Julie, said.
“Saturday mornings, he would go out into the back fields, and any of the young kids that wanted to learn to play football, he would sit there and coach them.”
Richard was only 15 when he started coaching, but he was old enough to recognize other kids didn’t have the opportunities he did, Julie said.
“He knew that the kids in his community, the younger kids, didn’t all have that access.”
Coaching is a thing some people are just meant to do, she said.
“You feel it in your heart that you have that ability, you can get the kids to pay attention and learn all these fundamental skills.”
Pellisier-Lush, who has also received a Lifetime Achievement Award from Sport P.E.I., is getting his Island Mariners football team ready for a championship run this spring. He is also the founder of the Island Demons female tackle football team and two flag football teams in Scotchford First Nation.
“We’re working diligently to make sure these kids have opportunities they may not have had,” he said.
One thing he tries to do is emphasize the importance of Mi’kmaq culture for the players, he said.
“Before every game, we would be very cultural, and we could smudge and pray for a successful game and we would do a lot of culturally appropriate things for the kids to show that sport and culture can co-exist together.”
He and his fellow coaches also abstain from drugs and alcohol to demonstrate positive actions, he said.
“We wanted to showcase to the kids that alcohol and drugs, they’re never going to help you in any of these calibres and there’s been a lot of hurt from these things.”
The opportunity to be that role model for young people who need it is what keeps him going, he said.
“Those are the reasons why I do it. I come back because I know kids need it.”
“I’m a firm believer in getting role models that are doing things actively and mentors that are doing things actively and getting them involved in the community and showing the community and the youth that you can be successful.”
Richard Pellisier-Lush