A philanthropist is a person who donates time, money, experience, skills or talent to help create a better world. Anyone can be a philanthropist, regardless of status or net worth.

Emerson was a philanthropist.I didn’t personally know Emerson. I probably said “hi” to him a few times and that was all. I grew up in a Grand Forks in the 1970s and early 1980s.

Grand Forks is a small bucolic town in southwestern B.C. that skirts the 49th parallel with the United States. It emerged from a mining era, and is rich in natural beauty and other natural resources like logging. The town intersects with the confluence of the Granby and Kettle Rivers and is dotted with the southern border of the Monashee Mountain range.

Emerson was a tall, slender bespectacled man with a bald spot and wisps of grey hair parted to one side. He had a thin, sunken face and wore circular round glasses. He resembled a librarian more than a Zamboni driver.

Reid’s Hill is the colloquial name given to a short hill on the southeastern flank of Observation Mountain in Grand Forks. The hill connects a short path from a section of 7th Street to 8th Street, just north of Central Avenue. The bottom of........

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