Editor’s note: The following is part of a series of letters from students in teacher Jennifer Mansour’s class at Learning Expeditions. The students are in grades 7 to 12.
If you would like to get your class involved in writing letters — includes a visit from The Chief editorial staff — email [email protected].
Squamish used to have such enjoyable things to do and now there aren’t as many fun activities for people, especially teenagers. Squamish used to have a movie theatre, the bowling alley, and even the Squamish Valley Music Festival. But now we don’t have any of those things, so I think that it would be an amazing idea to bring back a movie theatre to Squamish.
However, the movie theatre closed down and they put another dollar store in, even though we already had two at the time. So, it was very inconsistent and pointless to do that. Now that I am 15 years old and hangout with friends, I am realizing there really isn’t a lot to do in Squamish nowadays. I think bringing back a movie theatre would be absolutely amazing because ages 13 to15 want to get jobs, but they can’t work anywhere other than either a fast food place, or grocery store.
Most teenagers don’t have anything to do except go to a fast food place and either sit there because there’s Wi-Fi or wave to people through the window. Sometimes kids sleep there because it’s open 24 hours. Most teenagers like to push things to the next level and sleep outside, or for example at Tim Hortons. We need way more fun things to do other than that, which is why we need a movie theatre, or at least some more fun activities.
A lot of people say the movie theatre closed down because no one went or they weren’t making enough money or they didn’t have enough staff, but that’s not the reason at all. The reason they closed down is because they had to upgrade all their electronics and that would’ve cost around a million dollars, and of course no one has a million dollars laying around. So, they had to close down and then people thought they closed because they didn’t have enough business. If we open another movie theatre we don’t even have to have as many screens as we had before. We had eight and not enough money to upgrade them. If we have two screens — one for older kids/adults and one for younger children, and play movies from two that wouldn’t cost as much. Also, if we open another in 2018 it will already be upgraded so we don’t have to worry about upgrading it.
Jenna Pisch
