Olivia Rutt

The internship began a year after Belalcazar completed his studies at Laurier’s Brantford campus in 2011. It gave him the opportunity to brush shoulders with some of heavy metal’s most influential musicians, including members of the band DEATH.

Ali Ibrahim, a second-year Human Rights and Human Diversity student at Wilfrid Laurier University’s Brantford campus, was just 11 when his family fled their home in Somalia and settled in a refugee camp in Kenya. It was at this refugee camp that Ibrahim was raised and educated.

BRANTFORD – Wilfrid Laurier University alumna Shazlin Rahman (BA ’11) is returning to Laurier’s Brantford campus Oct. 16 to host a screening of the documentary, Her Sarong. Co-created with filmmaker Asad Chishti, the film follows Rahman’s journey to Malaysia to retrace her late grandmother’s roots and explore the art of making batik sarongs in Malaysia.

MOUNT FOREST - In a small wooden shop, no larger than a single car garage, Steve Close works on making reins for a western bridle. With his glasses low on his nose, he works the leather into shape.

GUELPH - Opioid-related emergency department visits in the region have doubled over the last decade. Overdoses can be “immediate” and “irreversible,” which is why various government officials and community partners in Wellington County and Guelph are working to address the problem.

WELLINGTON CTY. - Thirty-nine. That’s the number of significant fires in Wellington County in 2016, including 11 barn fires and 21 house fires. The blazes, 10 of which were deemed suspicious, caused well over $14 million in total damages.

FERGUS - Chase Kowalchuk is a crew boss on an initial attack fire ranger crew with the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry (MNRF). He recently returned to Fort Frances, Ontario after two weeks in Alberta fighting the over 500,000-hectare wildfire around Fort McMurray.

ARTHUR - Crystal Conway (nee Bartholomew) has lived in Fort McMurray, Alberta since 2008, but before that she called the Arthur area home. She went to school in Arthur and her family still lives in the area. Crystal, along with her husband Nick and their two children, Maddison, 4, and Maxim, 2, have been displaced due to the 200,000-plus hectare wildfire that has been burning in the Fort McMurray area since May 1.

photo by Olivia Rutt MOUNT FOREST - “Attention Mount Forest firefighters, attention Arthur firefighters, please respond for a fully-involved barn fire,” called a dispatcher on the night of Jan. 14. As Wellington North firefighters, along with three other fire stations, were being called to Woolhaven Arabians just west of Mount Forest, Doris and Rob Woolner were desperately trying to save 13 horses from their barn.

photo by Olivia Rutt PUSLINCH - The brief pounding of hooves against dirt and the ripping of roots break the forest silence. On his 25-acre private property, Greg Parker is busy removing invasive buckthorn from his forest with his team of Belgian draft horses.

Your hand is secure. You can feel the muscles of the bull underneath your legs, hoping the bull will stay calm in the chute. You breathe. You clear your mind and nod. The gate flies open and everything happens at once. The bull is out, bucking, and it takes everything in you to stay on. Those eight seconds are the longest eight seconds of your life. Then it’s over, whether you stay on or get bucked off, it is over.