It’s that time of year again, when we at Garaventa Lift come together to give back to our local community. What better way to do this than a [mostly] friendly Christmas Hamper Weigh-Off and Pancake Breakfast…Each department goes head to head in an attempt to bring in the most food, gifts, and money towards the Surrey Food Bank. Within 6 working days, Garaventa Lift collectively brought in 900lbs worth of goods and raised $1,100 in cash donations, 2 x 50/50 draws, and recycled pop cans this Christmas season!

Paul Bryan of Garaventa Lift is interviewed here by Mike McCardell of Global Television News in Vancouver.

For those of you who know Paul, this will definitely bring a smile to your face.

There are not very many people who have been with Garaventa Lift for longer than Paul Bryan. He has been a mentor to many of us and has been generous with the wisdom he has gained over the years. We are all very proud of how he represents Garaventa Lift.

Many of us have known Paul for so long that we sometimes forget how many obstacles he overcomes on a daily basis. Thank you, Mike McCardell, for putting it into perspective for all of us.

Are you considering building a new home? Perhaps you have already started the process. For most of us, building a new home starts with a list of “must haves” and a list of “nice to haves”. Maybe there is even a list of a few luxuries that you want to choose from.

Some elements of a new home have transitioned over the years from being considered luxuries to being commonplace additions to today’s custom home designs. One of those elements is a home elevator. Once thought to be an item exclusively for the rich and opulent, home elevators are becoming increasingly common within both contemporary and traditional home designs.

The benefits are clear. Since most new homes are constructed with multiple levels, the addition of a home elevator allows visitors and everyone in the family continued access to the entire house, even after their mobility is compromised due to illness, injury or advancing age.

You may be concerned with the cost of a home elevator. After all, aren’t home elevators expensive? They are not as expensive as you might think. Some of the factors that affect the price are the kind of machine you are purchasing, the interior finish options chosen, the floor-to-floor travel distance and the remoteness of the installation site. When you consider that a home elevator quickly becomes one of the most-often used elements of your new home, the investment is wise. Adding a home elevator to your home will increase the resale value of your home up to 10% while being extremely practical. They essentially pay for themselves! Not only does a home elevator allow for increased access, it can help to avoid injury or damage when transporting objects from one floor to the next.

Another concern may be the space it takes to incorporate a lift or elevator into either an existing home or new home plans. Home owners worry about whether there is enough space, or if the room available can have a home elevator customized to fit. Traditional hydraulic drive systems are great for premium ride quality and commercial grade components. However, hydraulic drive systems also require dedicated machine room space for the drive unit.

Garaventa Lift is proud to announce the release of an excellent solution, the new Machine Room-Less drive option for the Elvoron Home Elevator. With customizable cab sizes, the ability to remotely locate its control box, and the elimination of the need for a machine room; the Elvoron Home Elevator with the machine room-less drive option is the ultimate space-saving solution.

Designed using high quality components and technology that have been well proven, the Elvoron Home Elevator machine room-less drive also represents excellent value; legendary Garaventa Lift quality combined with a simple, cost-effective design. The generously-spaced modular rail system provides rigid stability and a smoother and quieter ride than other machine room-less home elevators on the market. Another benefit: It is straight-forward and fast to install!

For more information on Garaventa Lift Elvoron Home Elevators, please visit our  web site at www.garaventalift.com all us Toll Free at 1-800-663-6556 or email us at productinfo@garaventalift.com.

The Langois’ served up a traditional family favorite: the massive shrimp boil. It took 2 guys just to pick up the strainer pot and pour out all of that fantastic food onto the picnic table (see video). From there, we just picked away at it. It was fantastic!

As many families do down on the Bayou, Madame Langois and her family host regular family cookouts. Over the years, they have developed lots of great recipes and they have even published their own family cookbook with some amazing creole cooking.

A giant thank you to Madame Langois, Bernard and the rest of the family for being such excellent hosts! And an even bigger thanks for sharing all of your recipes.

Check out the Video of the Cookout!

Faregates are 1.3 metre tall structures with paddle-style turnstiles that will be installed at every station in the system over the next year and a half. That means a total of 400 gates, of which 150 will be wheelchair-accessible. These gates will enable TransLink to better prevent people from riding the train without paying for it. Although I can understand TransLink going the way of most other subways by installing turnstiles; I do not understand why accessibility has to be restricted for this to happen.

I realize that our SkyTrain system is not without its flaws, and is regularly broken down in some respect (over five times in the ten years I’ve used it). My primary concern when I read this article was the fact that it made no mention of what might happen in the event that a wheelchair bound individual needed to be evacuated. Only on their website does TransLink mention that “Passengers requiring assistance are to pick up the red emergency phone or speak to SkyTrain staff.” However it doesn’t really say what the SkyTrain staff will be able to do to help. I can’t really picture them hauling a power chair up two or three flights of stairs. So what is their plan of action? Is there one? This has been poorly communicated.

Not only did TransLink give little warning that this closure would be occurring, they also gave elevator users a rather poor solution of boarding the train using the elevator at either Waterfront (at least a 5-10 minute wheel from Burrard), or Granville (same distance). This isn’t a totally unreasonable solution, still I do feel that it should have been handled a little better. It seems as though individuals who are affected most by this closure were kind of sidelined in the pursuit of “progress”.

The communication could have been much better. For instance, it is still unclear why the operation of the elevator needs to be stopped because of the installation of turnstiles. Caitlin (a dear friend of mine who is in a wheelchair) only found out about this closure by looking up at the scrolling announcement screen while waiting for the SkyTrain. I just hope the estimated four months of construction doesn’t take any longer, and that the elevator which many people rely on can be used again as soon as possible.

Vanessa

Jack was born in 1997 and began his service with Paul Bryan in 1999. He took Paul all over British Columbia, pulling him through even the most inaccessible towns. Paul Bryan is in a wheelchair, needing Jack for assistance with difficult terrain and opening the odd door. Even after Jack had become too old to serve, he still went everywhere with Paul as a companion. Paul said “I try to leave him at home but he’s not use to it, so I still take him even though he’s no longer working”.

PADS (Pacific Assistance Dogs Society) dogs are trained to not be left alone at home for more than four hours at a time from an early age. All volunteer trainers and dog sitters have to commit to taking the dogs everywhere, and are required to provide written permission from their employer to ensure this happens. Pacific Assistance Dogs are life changers, providing assistance to people with a number of disabilities. They can make a huge difference to people and their quality of life. To learn more about PADS visit www.pads.ca.

PADS - Pacific Assistance Dogs Society

For the month of October we will donate $1 for every Facebook like to Garaventa Lift on Facebook in Jack’s Name to the Pacific Assistance Dogs Society.

Jack was a wonderful dog, very friendly and loving; he will be missed by all of us, and most of all by Paul.

If you have a story or a few words of support for our good friend Paul, please leave a comment and know that the message will be passed along.

Just this side of heaven is a place called Rainbow Bridge.

When an animal dies that has been especially close to someone here, that pet goes to Rainbow Bridge.
There are meadows and hills for all of our special friends so they can run and play together.
There is plenty of food, water and sunshine, and our friends are warm and comfortable.

All the animals who had been ill and old are restored to health and vigor; those who were hurt or maimed are made whole and strong again, just as we remember them in our dreams of days and times gone by.

The animals are happy and content, except for one small thing; they each miss someone very special to them, who had to be left behind.

They all run and play together, but the day comes when one suddenly stops and looks into the distance. His bright eyes are intent; His eager body quivers. Suddenly he begins to run from the group, flying over the green grass, his legs carrying him faster and faster.

You have been spotted, and when you and your special friend finally meet, you cling together in joyous reunion, never to be parted again. The happy kisses rain upon your face; your hands again caress the beloved head, and you look once more into the trusting eyes of your pet, so long gone from your life but never absent from your heart.

Then you cross Rainbow Bridge together….

Author unknown…

 Standing at the edge of the building and looking over 200 Ft below, the words nuts, crazy, insane were just a couple of the thoughts going threw my mind. While repelling down, all I kept on saying was: “Oh my god!” What I thought seemed like a life time as I went down, turned out to be only about 4 minutes.  When I finally touched the ground, I could hardly move let alone stand: Then I looked up and saw this young boy looking at me saying THANK YOU!  All my fears were gone and joy simply took over including some tears…

 I believe that going over the side of that building; I wasn’t amazing and certainly wasn’t even brave.

 The Children and Adults that we all did it for are the real brave and remarkable individuals.

Thank you to Robyn for taking on this endeavor and all of the contributors from our Garaventa Lift family and everywhere that helped Robyn make this goal become a reality. It was truly an amazing cause and I hope to see more of us take action the way Robyn did in the future.

Change starts with us.

She may not come with the lift, but she comes to the rescue for a cause!

Robyn Robertson, a Garaventa Lift employee who you may recognize as our Home Elevator model extraordinaire, has decided to plunge down a building to help elevate someone’s quality of life. On September 13^th she will be rappelling down a 20 story building to raise money for Easter Seals.

Easter Seals is dedicated to fully enhancing the quality of life, self-esteem and self-determination of Canadians with disabilities. As Canada’s largest local provider of programs, services, issues-leadership and development for the disability community, Easter Seals is dedicated to helping more than 100,000 Canadians with disabilities participate fully in society.

Easter Seals is best known for its camp programs held nationwide. Caitlin, who I mentioned in an earlier blog, worked for Easter Seals one summer as a counsellor. She loved the experience and getting to know all of her campers. It was incredible seeing photos that she brought back from the camp and hearing about the services that they provided. This is definitely an amazing cause to be donating time and money to. Go Robyn Go!

If you wish to donate, see Robyn’s donation page.

Vanessa

The events surrounding hurricane Irene have caused quite a stir in the United States since it hit Virginia on August 27^th.

The last time a hurricane hit Virginia was the tail end of 1969’s hurricane Camille which caused flash flooding and 157 deaths. I know personally one of my friends recently became a fire fighter in Virginia, and was stunned by the occurrence of a hurricane there. The amount of emergency calls his team received that night also tripled that of a usual busy shift, with fallen trees and fires caused by the aftermath of the storm.

The states that were forecast to be hit by hurricane Irene all along the east cost went into emergency mode, especially New York. New York was originally thought to have been in danger of falling directly into the eye of the storm and was therefore divided into Zones: Zone A was likely to flood with a Level 1 storm or above; Zone B with a Level 2 or above; and Zone C with a Level 3 or 4 storm. Higher areas were considered safe to stay in. However Zone A was subject to a mandatory evacuation including hospitals and care homes. An article from Workers World describes the difficulties that resulted from some of these evacuations: http://www.workers.org/2011/us/hurricane_irene_0908/.

The evacuations presented problems but finding accessible shelters presented others. While New Yorkers were promised accessible shelters, fair amounts were not what they were promised. An article from Public News Service describes some of the shelters and their accessibility flaws: http://www.publicnewsservice.org/index.php?/content/article/21929-1

It is clear that Mayor Bloomberg tried to make New York as prepared as possible given the limited notice they received. However it is also clear that despite the ADA, people with disabilities still have a fair amount of adversity to face in emergencies. Especially given that prior to the storm the Mayor ordered that the power be turned off and elevators be shut down to avoid people becoming stuck. So your in a wheelchair, you live on the 10^th floor, the power has been turned off, and you have to get out? The Mayor explains the method to this madness: MAYOR BLOOMBERG UPDATES NEW YORKERS ON CITY RESPONSE TO HURRICANE IRENE

If you have any stories about your own personal evacuation experiences, join the conversation, I’d love to hear from you!