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Townsman, 1991-07, Page 32k©pfl® You might say that Danielle Dingle travels in fast company. The young Kincardine woman recently returned from the Junior World Cycling Cham- pionships in Colorado Springs where she placed eighth in the world in her road race event. She's a member of the Canadian Junior Women's National cycling team. The going will be slightly slower for Dick Kloss of Hensall but the challenge will be as big. Mr. Kloss wanted to be the oldest person to swim across the English Channel but according to the Guiness Book of World Records, he would have to wait another 20 years to try so he settled instead for Lake Huron. On Aug. 17, a week before his 50th birthday, he plans to set off from Port Sanilac, Mich. to Grand Bend in what he hopes will be a 21-30 hour swim. He's been training since last Septem- ber under the coaching of Paul Dock- stader of Godcrich. You might say that even though she's still a student at Sacred Heart High School in Walkerton, Celeste Striukas, a 15 -year-old Hanover art student has graduated to a higher level. Her work has been chosen to decorate the walls of the Ministry of Education's London office. The artist, who has been creative since the age of four, created a work specifically for the Ministry office. It shows a woman sitting on a rocky landscape at a beach. "I like to do my own thing," Celeste says. "At the strangest times I'll feel like I have to draw, even at 1 a.m. in the morning." Walkerton's Bob Creighton went a long way to come back home. The 23 year old actor who says he can't remember when he didn't want to be a performer, has studied at the Banff Centre of Fine Arts and New York's American Academy of Dramatic Arts but this summer he's working only a few miles from home, playing in all three shows at the Drayton Festival Theatre. It's a hectic schedule but in these recessionary times in theatre, Creighton doesn't mind at all. He 30 TOWNSMAN/JULY-AUGUST 1991 started out singing in Walkerton's St. Michael's Boys Choir at age seven, touring extensively to places as far off as England. His first acting role came at 15 when he played Artful Dodger in the Grey -Wellington Theatre Guild amateur production of Oliver at Har- riston. The last two summers he had spent at the Huron Country Playhouse in Grand Bend where he performed in The King and 1 and Annie Get Your Gun. Until his year in New York he considered himself a song and dance man but now feels at home in dramat- ic roles as well. The versatility, he hopes, will help in future as he tries to make a living from his craft. "You'd have to be very fortunate to have act- ing as your only thing in Canada," he said. Two former Stratford residents have both been back in the Festival city this summer talking about books they've written on the subject of fac- ing the tears and trouble of losing a loved one. For Betty Jane Wylie the launch of her book New Beginnings: Living Through Loss and Grief is old hat. It's the 20th book for Wylie, who lived in Stratford from 1967 to 1973 when her late husband was general manager of the Stratford Festival. It was his shocking death that led to her first non-fiction book, Beginnings: a Book for Widows in 1977. Since then she's written for magazines, radio and television, everything from recipes to short stories. Her first love, however, goes back to the theatre and she loves to write plays above all else. Grief also triggered Peggy Ander- son to write her first book Wife After Death. The former teacher at Strat- ford's King Lear school, lost her hus- band in a car accident in 1982 and says she "wasn't prepared to be a widow. It was an isolating experi- ence " Yet one positive thing emerged from the whole experience, she says. "I realized I could do any- thing I wanted to do in life." What she did do, about four years after her hus- band's death, was to take a leave of absence from her job, move to Lon- don and apply for the University of Western Ontario's School of Journal- ism. She wasn't accepted but decided to use her year off to write a book about widows who have successfully learned how to live life fully again. "Writing the book taught me everyone has unique ways of dealing with grief. This book is about ordinary women, but they have done wonderful things with their lives." For those of us for whom figuring out what puts the fizz in ginger ale is a major puzzle, the accomplishments of Zurich's Dave Thiel are down right frightening. He recently returned from the 23rd International Chemistry Olympiad in Warsaw, Poland with a bronze medal, placing third among the 120 students from 30 countries who took part. The competition involved a three-hour lab test and a five-hour examination. It's the second year in a row he brought home a bronze medal. He's working at a painting job for the summer but this fall he'll be off to Harvard University to study arts and science. It's hard work being a model but for Walkerton's Heather Schnurr so far the work has been worth it. In June she was judged to have "the look of the '90's" in a prestigious modeling contest in Windsor, winning the opportunity to travel to New York to work with some of the best models in the business. The 5'11" 15 -year-old had only finished a 13 -week modeling course in Guelph a few weeks before winning the competition against 200 other models. The 13 weeks were spent learning to walk on a runway and learning skincare and makeup. But she was given homework to do before she went off to New York— lose another 10 pounds off her already svelte frame. "I tone massively...I never watch television, but walk, bike and jog (about five miles a day)." But all that work has paid off in making the girl the boys in public school never looked at because she wasn't pretty enough into a potential super - model of the '90's.