Bow Valley High School's 2023 valedictorian has two contrasting messages to share with her fellow Bobcats.
On one hand, Jade Janzen encourages next fall's incoming seniors at Bow Valley High to embrace their final year of high school. She encourages them to get involved on campus in whatever way best suits them – be it sports, band, theatre, or another pursuit – and to truly live in the moment.
But as she and her fellow graduating classmates prepare to leap into whatever comes next, Janzen said her message to the rest of Bow Valley's Grade 12 contingent is admittedly the opposite – to look forward.
It's a message the 17-year-old said is the key theme of her valedictorian address, which she will give at Bow Valley's convocation ceremony on June 28.
“We’ve all very much experienced the years of COVID, and we know we’ve made it through, so now it’s about looking forward at our journeys and piecing parts of our lives together,” she said. “Now, we’re truly branching out of our shells, essentially, and that means we’re on our own a little bit. We’re graduating, so we have to figure out what we want to do with our lives.”
In terms of her own life, Janzen said she was accepted into the University of Victoria's marine biology program. She will be heading to B.C.'s capital at the end of August to begin her post-secondary studies in that field.
While she admitted her original plan was to study engineering after completing high school, Janzen said her interest in marine biology emerged after she and several other Bow Valley colleagues had the opportunity to attend a week-long field trip to the Bamfield Marine Sciences Centre on Vancouver Island earlier this school year.
“I’ve always been involved with the environment and I love the ocean,” she said. “We spent a week doing marine biology things and it was just so cool, and I just fell in love. As I was looking at programs, the U of C and U of A both have awesome biology programs and environmental science programs, but the ocean and being immersed in that experience is not something you can get in Alberta. I thought, ‘Marine biology, that has to be it.’”
For anyone who knows Janzen, an interest in marine biology seems like a natural fit. Many Cochranites are already familiar with the precocious student's passion for the environment, as evidenced by the non-profit organization she founded as a middle-school student: Lives with Less Plastic.
What started as an attempt to get single-use plastic straws and bags banned in Cochrane eventually led to a bustling organization that launches various projects and spreads messages to the the public about the importance of sustainability and sustainable practices. In 2021, Lives with Less Plastic even won an Emerald Award in the youth category.
Considering much of what Lives with Less Plastic does can be completed virtually, Janzen vows that even as she moves from Cochrane to B.C. this summer, the local non-profit is “definitely not going to disappear.”
“Lives with Less Plastic has been a part of my life for so many years,” she said. “I did found that organization in Grade 8 and it’s truly shaped my high-school experience.”
