CCF Grad 06 - Words of Ada Wong

And so we each should carry our torch and burn the school down together!

- Auntie Ada Wong

We’ve all heard and seen the cliché. United we stand. A bundle of sticks is harder to break than a single. And so forth. We all know unity is important. Yet...it may very well be the thing that is lacked the most. Having coming from World History IB, and being shown to see things (such as the “national identity of Canada”)...it’s increasingly easily to see how fragmented we all are. Individually we can do much. One person does matter.

But...if one person can do much...how much can two do? Or three? If CCF was fully united, how can we shake this world? Sure, we can each carry a candle... or we can gather a few of us and carry a torch... but if we unite, we can do a lot more. It is not a coincidence that a major symbol of the Olympics is the torch, carried from the scared village of Olympia to the city of the Games. Fire has many meaning throughout different periods in the past and to different cultures, passion being a common one. And so we each should carry our torch, given to us from the Sacred one, and burn the school down together.

Fire is one of those things that have both positive and negative uses. Fire is often harnessed for destruction. To be utilized for things like slash-and-burn operations in rain forests, or incinerating garbage, created by society. Yet...a great deal of things depends on fire to be productive. Metallurgy and glassblowing, for example, cannot be done if heat wasn’t applied to ores and glass. Electric power (especially here in Alberta) is achieved by burning gas and oil. Yet, I think the most compelling example is the plants that survive and even thrive after a fire has passed. Lodgepole pine depends on fire to spread. Spruces grows better due to mineral changes in the soil. Grasslands can be virtually immune to the effects of wildfire. What we should now decide isn’t weither or not to pick up this torch...it is what we should do with it once we realize we must utilize the fire.

Reference:
Fire Ecology: http://www.cnr.uidaho.edu/range456/hot-topics/fire-ecol.htm
Auntie Wong, Graduate of 2006