The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

Join the Fun Ask About Birthday Partie s Get Your Wheels in Motion 2105 Royal Windsor Drive (just west of Southdown Road) www.scooters.on.c a (905) 823-4001 Scooters Roller Palace Public Skating Bowling Gifts Billiards Video Games Snack Bar 11 Thursday , D ecem ber 23, 2010 O A KVILLE BEA V ER w w w .o akvillebeaver .co m By Dominik Kurek OAKVILLE BEAVER STAFF The votes are in and the new James W. Hill Public School is just that much closer to getting funding for its much-needed play- ground. The school entered its Project Playground A safe place to play, learn and meet idea into the Aviva Community Fund online con- test. Some 2,200 ideas were entered by com- munity groups across the country with the hope of getting funding for a project that would help their neighbourhoods. Now, the playground idea has survived the various online voting rounds and made it into the top 30 in the contest to enter the final found. We are absolutely delighted, said Maureen Grice, who spearheaded the project on behalf of the school council, speaking of the finals selection. Our whole community has rallied incredibly. Clearview has about 7,000 people and everybody has worked to get the word out. However, unlike before, voting has ended and the winners will be chosen by a panel of judges. Id like to say were very worthy, Grice said of what she believed the chances of win- ning are. There are a lot of playgrounds on there across Canada. All of the projects are very worthy. Id love to see it because cur- rently we dont have any sort of playground whatsoever and its going to take us years to fundraise. Up to $1 million will be handed out by the insurance company Aviva Canada to the var- ious winners. The maximum amount of money a project could ask for was $500,000, but many were much smaller than that, meaning there could be many winners. The James W. Hill project is asking for about $52,000. Grice said the total project would cost around $60,000 but some fundraising has already been done. Its a project that once we get the fund- ing we can start immediately. We can start building next summer to have it completed by September 2011 when the children come back to school, she said. The playground would have various activ- ities such as slides, balance boards, stairs, tic tac toe and more. It would also provide activ- ities to children of all ages. We want it to be accessible of all ages and we want it to be accessible to all levels of play. So people who may have some disabilities, we want it to be accessible to them and also safe for them, Grice said. She thanked the community for its sup- port, saying it helped bring the community together. If we dont win its still been good because its brought everybody together and its made us really rallied towards getting funding for the playground and understand- ing this is a great thing and its a priority. The judging panel consists of representa- tives of the business, media and philanthrop- ic sectors. The winners will be announced Jan. 25. James W. Hill School project is finalist in online contest Turismo 5 test drive NIKKI WESLEY / OAKVILLE BEAVER TOY DRIVE: Michal Pilarski test drives the new Gran Turismo 5 game at Oakville Toyota - Scion. After logging hundreds of hours with the Gran Turismo games Pilarski said that the full HD in the newest version made it feel like he was actually in a race car. Observing his test drive are Scion Champion Stephen Balla (l-r), Scion Regional Brand Manager Martin Darlet, and Scion Brand Manager Joey Qaderi. Speak up! You can comment on any story in todays Oakville Beaver at oakvillebeaver.com. What can you learn from an MBA professor who climbed Everest? a lot and you can learn it from Scott Kress, president of Summit Training & Frontier Team Building in an Oakville Chamber of Commerce event on Friday, Feb. 18. Registration begins at 11:30 a.m. with the event running from noon to 1:30 p.m. It takes place at the Holiday Inn Oakville-Centre, 590 Argus Rd. Cost is $35/members, $45/non- members. Open to the public. Register at www.oakvillecham- ber.com or contact Nesrene Salem at nesrene@oakvillechamber.com or 905-845-6613, ext. 28. Chamber speaker discusses conquering new heights