ALASKA HIGHWAY NEWS
THURSDAY, APRIL 1, 2021 | SPORTS | A7
Jake Gardner starts season strong at Florida PBR Dillon Giancola sports@ahnfsj.ca Jake Gardner got his 2021 bull riding season off to a great start with an 11th place finish at the Pensacola Invitational in Pensacola, Florida, on March 20, missing out on the money by one spot, and one point. Gardner burst out of the gate with an 85 point first ride, but was unable to record a score in his next two rides. It’s his best finish to date at a PBR Velocity Tour event, and is even more impressive considering there were 45 riders competing at Pensacola. Still, Gardner wishes he would have placed higher. “It’s not bad, though I would have liked to place higher. It’s better than nothing,” Gardner said. Next up for Gardner is the PBR at Tuacahn Amphitheatre, part of the PBR Touring Pro Division, in Ivins,
Utah, April 2. The Pensacola Invitational was Gardner’s first American competition since the PBR Global Cup in Arlington last February, before the pandemic forced him back to Canada. Though he had success on the Canadian PBR tour last year, finishing 13th overall, Gardner was thrilled to be back down South. “It feels great, I know on the flights down here I felt like a kid at Christmas. It feels good to be doing what a guy loves,” Gardner said. Though masks are still required at events, fans are allowed back in the stands up to 50% capacity. “There are still signs of the pandemic at events and it feels the same as last year, but you can tell they are moving faster than we are (in Canada),” said Gardner. There are only two PBR events currently scheduled for Canada this summer.
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Jake Gardner
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Left: Jeffrey Belcher finished tied for third in the 11-16 year-old category of New Totem’s winter season. Right: Kori Meyer finished first in the 11-16 year-old category.
Curling club turns page, looks ahead to brighter future Dillon Giancola sports@ahnfsj.ca With the strange and bizarre 2020-21 season in the rear view, the Fort St. John Curling Club is ready to look ahead. At the AGM in February, Kent Evenson was elected president, replacing longtime club member and supporter Connie Richter, who stepped in two years ago to help the club get through a rough patch. “Connie has been a part of the club for a really long time, and we want to thank her for the impact she’s had on the club and everything she’s done,” Evenson. With a new president, two new board members, and a new club manager in place, the executive is poised to tackle the challenges it faces with optimism and excitement. Evenson said the member-
ship stayed steady this year, despite there being no season, as most members were willing to return and play if games started up. With that, a brand new ice chiller that hasn’t been used, and a solid partnership with the Fort St. John Soccer Club that enables the ice to be full each night with just four sheets, things are looking up. “The partnership really helped us keep the doors open for next year, and we are focused on having the ice used every night,” said Evenson. The club will be starting more youth programs, and is pushing to start a doubles league, to increase the amount of curling taking place each week. Plus, Evenson said, they should get a boost of new members and players when people can finally curl again. “It’s the first time I’ve missed a full year of curling
in my life. There are some really die-hard curlers in our club, and I’m excited for when we can all finally play again.” Evenson said there are
some exciting, new curling events being planned for next season, though he couldn’t announce any details right now. As PHO restrictions evolve
and it becomes more clear what people can expect from a curling season in the fall, the Fort St. John Curling Club will start unveiling a plan to take things to the next level.
Boater safety on the Peace River A four-kilometre section of the Peace River is permanently closed to boaters during the construction of the Site C project. River users are advised to use extreme caution when on or near the river this summer due to strong undertows, especially in locations immediately upstream of the dam site. Portage program: To move boaters around the construction area, a portage program for non-motorized boats will operate between the Halfway River boat launch and the Peace Island Park boat launch from May 15 to September 15. Reservations are required seven days in advance of pickup. For more information visit sitecproject.com/boating or call 1 877 217 0777.
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ALASKA HIGHWAY NEWS
A10 | NEWS | THURSDAY, APRIL 1, 2021
Creating food security, cutting emissions in local farming Tom Summer Local Journalism Initiative tsummer@ahnfsj.ca
TOM SUMMER PHOTO
Steve Mackenzie enjoys the spring breeze with his dogs Yogi and Elsa, March 26, 2021.
Continued from front page After some years, helping to establish the family in a new country, Manfred began to explore the rest of Canada. He travelled from east to west and then north, where he fell in love with the west and eventually settled. He earned his private pilot licence in Toronto and bought his own airplane, which became one of his favourite hobbies exploring Canada. Fred also expanded his flying ability and upgraded to a commercial licence, gaining his instrument rating and passing the float certification. Eventually Fred took his plane and settled In British Columbia where his first job in the province was setting up prefabricated homes and working in the oil fields. In Penticton, he met and married his wife Margaret. After some years, the couple bought a lot up in Charlie Lake, where they moved their trailer and made their home. After arriving in Charlie Lake Fred became a volunteer firefighter for the Charlie Lake Fire Department, where he served for years and made many friends. Fred also loved the outdoors, spending his free time sailing, fish-
ing, snowmobiling, walking his dogs. Another favourite pass time was growing flowers and attending to his large vegetable garden. Fred was a carpenter by trade. He and Margaret planned to replace their trailer with a new house once he retired. Sadly, Margaret passed away suddenly a couple of years before his retirement, but he still completed their dream with her in mind. They were married for 36 years. Later as a retiree, he became an active member of the Fort St. Johns Seniors Association where he enjoyed helping in the kitchen preparing lunches for the group and joined them on occasional outings. He also spent many happy hours playing games and cards with his friends. Niki Hedges, Executive Director, said, “We are honored in establishing a Named Endowment Fund in Manfred’s name. His name is now placed on the Endowment Fund panel located in the Hospital lobby and his and Margaret’s names will also be placed up on the Foundations Memorial Wall. Manfred’s gift will have a lasting impact in a way that was meaningful to him.”
The National Farmers Union (NFU) released a new report this month, titled ‘Imagine If.... A Vision of a Near-Zero-Emission Farm and Food System for Canada’. It details strategies for tackling climate change and meeting global emission targets, presenting what farming could look like in Canada. “What follows is neither prediction nor projection, but rather a picture of what could be—one possible future among many,” reads the report, which is a follow up to their 2019 discussion paper, ‘Tackling the Farm Crisis and the Climate Crisis’. Bess Legault of the Northern CoHort in Fort St. John says the report aims to support family farms across Canada, including farmers in the Peace region who have strong roots with the NFU. “NFU is a family farm focused organization that tries to listen to our members and have a voice, so the average farmer is represented when policy decisions are made on the federal level,” says Legault. “We truly believe there is an ton of capacity for climate change solutions to happen on our agricultural landscape.” Legault says the report highlights a need to focus on soil health to increase biodiversity, produce nutrient dense crops and livestock, and reduce the need for synthetic nitrogen fertilizer. The report also recommends the adoption of electric tractors to meet climate goals, and a return to traditional farming to reduce carbon footprint. “It’s a vision for the future, but it’s
based in real time climate science, and soil carbon capture science,” says Legault. “We do have very progressive producers up here.” Federal legislation aims to curb 30% of all fertilizer use by 2030. “That’s nine growing seasons from now. Knowing that we have many producers of all scales and modalities in the region, a lot of them are very dependent on synthetic fertilizer inputs for their production,” says Legault. “We just want to have the federal government step up and support them with knowledge transfer and researchers.” The Peace region is home to the majority of B.C.’s prairie land, says Legault, with the potential to regionally process and store crops, creating food security for northern residents. Despite the challenges, Legault feels Peace farmers have some distinct advantages, such as regenerative farming, precision agriculture, no-till production, rotational grazing, winter bale grazing, cocktail forages, and cover crop rotations. “I do strongly believe that these producers need to be supported as they explore finding a carbon balance on their farms because ecology is complex,” she adds. “We cannot expect our farmers to carry a depth of knowledge in topics that researchers spend decades exploring on top of being skilled agricultural producers specific to their farm or ranch.” She added that increasing net incomes is also a goal of the report, as family farmers have experienced severe income drops over the last several decades, taking on more land and debt to stay in business.
Club looks to build bee community Tom Summer Local Journalism Initiative tsummer@ahnfsj.ca The BC Peace Region Bee Club is getting its wings this year. The club has been operating since 2017, with a new website launched earlier this month. A meeting is also scheduled for the first week of April, and club president Claude Paradis is encouraging novice and experienced beekeepers to take part. While not much can be said for now on the club’s 2021 plans, Paradis says the public is more than welcome to explore its website for resources and support. “I am very pleased with how much traction it has been getting in such a short time. I have preloaded the website with tons of content and there is much more planned to be put there in the near future,” Paradis said.
The club hosts between 40 to 60 active members at any given time, and includes the communities of Fort St. John, Dawson Creek, Chetwynd, Hudson’s Hope, and others. Paradis says the club’s aim is to provide educational content and local context to beekeeping. It’s currently seeking volunteers to serve as archivists to add historical articles to its website. “The intention of the site is to establish an online presence,” Paradis said. “Until now, we have been difficult to find and hard to reach.” The club also explored real-time hive monitoring in 2019 with the help of the Bee BC Program, tracking eight hives between Fort St. John and Dawson Creek of 42 monitored in the province, with another five in the Yukon. For more information on the club, contact peacebeeclub@gmail. com.
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Chris Schulman and her pup Koda, March 26, 2021.
ALASKA HIGHWAY NEWS
THURSDAY, APRIL 1, 2021 | OP-ED | A11
The elephant in our habitat
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ention industry and wildlife management in the same breath and, unless you’re talking to yourself, differing opinions will soon follow. Changes to our natural environment wrought by industry fit into one’s thoughts somewhere between “leave industry alone, we need the jobs”, to “shut ’em down, our environment is more important than their jobs.” As in most instances where there are a wide range of opinions, reality is somewhere in between. We can certainly acknowledge and agree that our resource-based industries do change our environment. We can also agree that these same industries do not always follow all the rules, either intentionally or inadvertently. Despite this, it’s time to stop blaming industry for our wildlife management woes and start blaming those responsible for our industries, our government, with the exception being for those who break the law. Government makes the rules. Government can change the rules. If industry is following the legislation and regulations that govern their actions, then it is the responsibility of government to correct laws that are not achieving the desired outcomes. Rural B.C. needs our resource-based industrial jobs for our communities to survive; these same industries need healthy fish and wildlife populations with sufficient habitat to ensure that we continue to support their businesses; fish and wildlife relies on us all to get it right so they can not only continue to survive, but thrive. Hard to know how to get our heads around just what this means, or entails, or how to get there. And as god knows, we have tried.
EVAN SAUGSTAD Successive governments have implemented all sorts of strategies to regulate and manage industry and their effects on the environment. But the piece that always seems to go missing is that our wildlife and their essential habitats do not seem to gather the same attention for funding, focus and attention. The result is the mess we currently call fish and wildlife management in B.C. History shows that when we do not place sufficient values on wildlife and their habitat, we quit caring. And when we quit caring governments will soon follow. When this happens, the result is predictable. Our wildlife will disappear along with the need for their habitat that now no longer supports wildlife. History also shows that a healthy economy and prosperous communities will sustain local fish and wildlife populations, but without that healthy economy communities will also disappear as the standard of living declines. If anyone thinks there is one simple fix and if we just did that one thing then things would be better, is either naive or fooling themselves. Balancing our economic needs with those of wildlife are complicated, and more complicated when polarizing views prevent us from having reasoned conversations to find solutions. In B.C., we should have it all: A huge land base with a wide diversity of industries, habitats and wildlife species that all require their own unique, and sometimes very local, management strategies to survive. Forestry, hard rock and placer mining, gas, oil, and other energy production,
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Carbon Creek cutblocks.
ranching and farming, commercial fishing, guide outfitting, and tourism-based sectors of all shapes and sizes shape our province. And all, to one degree or another, effect our wildlife and their habitats. Although all industries have some detrimental effects to wildlife and habitats, we tend to focus on forestry as they have a larger footprint than all other industries combined, when considered at the provincial scale. It’s easy to single out industrial forestry as the biggest “culprit” when it comes to habitat alteration, degradation, or destruction. Each year they build thousands of kilometres of roads and harvest a couple hundred thousand hectares of forest. Simply put, forestry is the largest modifier of our environment. With that in mind, it is quick and easy to say stop the logging until all the young forests grow up and then things will be better. But better for what? If forestry were to disappear tomorrow, along with the jobs and the economy it creates, so would the hundreds of thousands of kilometres of roads and bridges they operate and maintain, roads that we use to access our favourite
hunting, fishing, camping, trekking, viewing, camping, and skiing spots. So would access to our many remote rural properties and businesses that rely on access in their daily lives, along with access for others such as grazing leases, mining claims, and wildfire. Some will say great, put it back to what it was. We could, but that would benefit very few. But, if that is truly what we wish for, we could also plan for the demise of much of our rural wealth as many communities would cease to exist, at least as we currently do. As some know, and yet others refuse to admit, forestry does create new habitat and opportunities for wildlife. Just depends what species you focus on, as at the same time forest alterations can be detrimental to other species. And that is our conundrum. What do we manage for? Do we give priority to one and not the other? How should we manage our wildlife populations when they are impacted by forest operations? If forestry makes game birds and animals, furbearers, and fish more vulnerable to exploitation by people and predators, should we not change the rules for those who exploit them?
Normally, it is about at this point in the discussion that the hunting, fishing, and trapping communities begin to diverge in opinions, as our natural tendency is to push for others to make changes, and not one’s self interests. What hunter wishes for seasons and bag limits to be restricted or closed? Same happens with fishers and trappers. Easier to say no more roads, no more cutblocks, just let me continue as I always have. This mentality needs to change. We as hunters, trappers, and fishers can play a big part, and it begins with the acceptance that we are all partly to blame. Forestry with their roads and cutblocks made it easier for us, and our four-footed predators, to find our quarry, and now we face the reality that in some places, there is not much of our quarry left. Next week, I begin a more in depth look at some of the issues industrial forestry creates for wildlife management. Evan Saugstad is a former mayor of Chetwynd, and is one of hundreds of thousands of hunters and fishers in B.C. He lives in Fort St. John.
How to live your best financial life
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uch of my work is with the Emerging Affluent, and those that aspire to be. I call the successful outcome to a lifetime of good financial planning “Being Done.” When you are done, there is nothing outstanding left to do. You have arrived. These are people who have put in a lifetime of hard work and good decisions and are now finally seeing the fruits of their labours. These are the people that have made it, or at least are close enough that the finish line is in sight. For the people that aspire to one day to “be done” – to have successfully achieved all their lifetime financial goals – here is a financial blueprint for a successful lifetime. The very first, most important thing: live within your means. As Charles Dickens wrote, “Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen and
BRAD BRAIN six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.” Protect your finances from catastrophic health events. Buy term insurance when you are young and have mortgages and dependents. Buy more coverage than you think you need because, if something happens to you, your widow and orphans will need more than you think. As your needs evolve convert the term insurance that you bought for income protection to permanent insurance for estate planning. Buy both disability insurance and critical illness insurance, and buy proper policies, not the cheap stuff that comes with strings
attached. Disability and critical illness coverage are similar, but they are not the same, and having both is best. A disability policy will replace your income if you can’t work because you are hurt or sick. A critical illness policy will pay out cash if you are stricken with a covered condition, such as heart attack or cancer, to help you deal with your new reality. Have a rainy-day fund that you can turn to in times of emergency or opportunity. Your RRSP is not a rainy-day fund. Taking the kids to Disneyland is not an emergency. Have a debt paydown strategy, and never carry a balance on your credit cards. Take advantage of mortgage prepayment options. Pay your mortgage biweekly and set your mortgage payment so you pay a little extra each month. Pay yourself first. Every month put money into your RRSP and TFSA straight from
your bank account and live off the rest. If you wait until the end of the year to invest you will likely find that somewhere along the way you found a different use for the money. Use the Registered Education Savings Plan for your kid’s post secondary education expenses, but buy your own RESP, not a pooled RESP. I hate pooled RESP plans. Take full advantage of the tax-sheltered plans like RRSPs and TFSAs. But use them intelligently and in the way they are intended to be used. If you use up your TFSA contribution room on a daily interest savings account, yes you will not pay tax on the interest, but how much interest is your daily interest savings account paying anyway? Get a will and a power of attorney and keep them current. They will expresses your wishes about what you want to happen when you
are not here to tell anyone what you want to happen. The power of attorney allows someone to act on your behalf in case you are not able to. To be clear, life won’t as simple as this “financial blueprint,” and its impossible to cover everything in 600 words. Having said that, it is likely that if you do most or all these things, your lifetime financial picture is going to turn out pretty good. One day you might even get to being done, and achieving all of your goals over your lifetime is about as good as it gets. Brad Brain. CFP, R.F.P., CIM, TEP is a Certified Financial Planner in Fort St John, BC. This material is prepared for general circulation and may not reflect your individual financial circumstances. Brad can be reached atbradbrainfinancial.com