Recruiting New Members & Board Members

Come Join Us!

“Be the CHANGE that you wish to see in the world” Mahatma Gandhi

As a non-profit board member responsibilities can include

strategic plan, oversee management, maintain society

requirements, build community relationships, fundraising

& work towards society mandate.

Merritt Youth & Family Resources Society is an agency that has been registered

under the Societies Act since 1978. The Society currently administers an

array of programs which include child care (infants, toddlers & school age),

special needs, youth support, workshops and more. MYFRS Board of

Directors is comprised of volunteers from the Nicola Valley.  For over forty

years the agency has relied on willing and able volunteers to help us carry

out our mandate.   Can you contribute some of your time to this valuable

endeavour?  We believe that your presence would be highly beneficial to

the children, youth and families of the Nicola Valley.

The Board of Directors is responsible for the overall management of the

Society’s business. The Board of Director positions are one-year terms and

re-elected at the Annual General Meeting that is held in September.

The Board generally meets ten times per year and occasionally

has special meetings; with Aug and December off. If you are interested in

becoming a Society Director, please confirm that your membership has been

in place for at least 30 days which is a requirement of the Society Act.

If you are interested; feel free to contact our office at 1914 Quilchena Avenue.

Thank you for considering our request and your interest in the Society!

For additional information, call 250-378-4878 or email   This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Lenora Fletcher, MYFRS Executive Director

MYFRS – Family Place Mandate

· To operate a family resource centre that provides structured programs, counseling, workshops / training, and support services to address issues faced by youth in the Nicola Valley and Merritt communities of British Columbia who are at-risk, financially disadvantaged, or who have developmental or physical disabilities

· To provide supervised and structured childcare and after school programs for the children in the Nicola Valley and Merritt communities of British Columbia

· To relieve poverty by providing food, clothing, other basic necessities to low income families, as available resources may dictate.

· To undertake activities ancillary and incidental to the attainment of the aforementioned charitable purposes.

Working in three genres, A Taste of the Valley occasionally bites off more than it can chew. Thankfully, those genres invite light grazing and let readers decide when they have had enough.

A Taste of the Valley, a new book produced by local seniors and youths, aspires to be a cookbook, a travel guide, and a shared memoir of the Nicola Valley, all within less than 100 pages.

To that end, the youthful recollections of town elders, as recorded by today's young Merrittonians, form the centre of the slim volume.

Those same town elders contribute recipes for appetizers, main courses, and desserts.

A Taste of the Valley also contains co-ordinates and short descriptions for 35 geocaching sites, the descriptions often carrying local memories as well.

The recipes and geocaches fill the margins of the book's pages.

A Taste of the Valley invites readers' interaction on three levels: absorbing grandfatherly anecdotes, sampling their favourite dishes, and combing the countryside for the secret corners only longtime residents would know about.

To someone who has an interest in the community but not a deep knowledge of it, the book offers an entertaining snapshot of the characters that populate Merritt.

Somewhat surprisingly, the locals do not only recount their lives in the Nicola Valley.

For example, Ann van Steenes recounts some of her experiences in the Second World War while living in the Netherlands and describes immigrating to Canada in the 1950s.

Of course, there is plenty of attention paid to Merritt-specific tales as well.

Stan Grimshire writes of taking a rubber-tired wagon ride with his father to Merritt.
Instead, however, he ends up dropped off at a family friend's house in Nicola hauling firewood and being fed boiled cabbage.

"So much for my exciting trip to Merritt!"

The personality filling the individual stories is one of A Taste of the Valley's strengths.

The fact that not all of the anecdotes take place in the Nicola Valley helps the storytellers' personalities shine through since they are free to truly be themselves, important considering how many individuals are included.

At times, the personality even extends to the recipes. While that works for A Taste of the Valley as shared memoir, it works against A Taste of the Valley as cookbook.

Lou Birk's recipe for calf brain soup lists no ingredients or quantities for the same. As for directions, the first step is "Devein", the second step is "Take out everything that does not belong."

Skip ahead to the fifth step, "Put brains into the water", and the sixth, "Add spices, any kind you want."

Most chefs looking for new ideas would probably learn far more about Birk than making soup from following that recipe.

Roger Shackelly's Indian taco recipe, while more refined, still leaves room for confusion. Among the ingredients listed are two "sm. cans of tomato paste" and one "big can tomatoes."

If everyone agreed what a small can is and what a big can is, world peace would have been achieved long ago.

However, these faults are most obvious when reading A Taste of the Valley cover to cover. By design, cookbooks, travel guides, and even anthologies of brief recollections suggest reading by instalment.

While the genres do operate at cross-purposes sometimes, at least all three are meant to be digested in small portions.

A Taste of the Valley can be purchased at The Baillie House, Jeff Bloom event table, at our Family Place building.