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Wolfpack earns epic playoff victory Page A16
TUESDAY
Tuesday, February 18, 2014 X Volume 27 No. 19
THIS WEEK
WHO IS KEN LEPIN? By Dale Bass
STAFF REPORTER
dale@kamloopsthisweek.com
By Cam Fortems STAFF REPORTER
cam@kamloopsthisweek.com
Ken Lepin never went to university — but he believes in the one Kamloops claims as it own and has helped build and promote it through the years. Dave Eagles/KTW
he said, “a bird house that I made with stuff from my grandpa’s woodshed. I don’t think it amounted to much but I always had a talent for making things, building things.” He also had a strong work ethic, one he saw in his childhood through his father, who worked on the Kettle Valley Railway keeping his allotted 15-mile section clear and in top shape, and from his mother, who eventually went back to school to
become a home-economics teacher. “I was so proud of her,” he said. About the same time he was building the birdhouse, Lepin was a newspaper carrier, working for a couple of papers. Soon, he added part-time jobs at The Bay and Safeway because “if I wanted clothes — and I liked clothes — you did what you had to do to be able to buy them.” X See $200 A10
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Drinking, driving decision imperils law
And why did he give TRU more than $2 million? Ken Lepin spent his early years living in the bush with his family and a trapper in Chute Lake, just north of Penticton. He was home-schooled by his mother in his early years, not setting foot into a traditional classroom until Grade 3. Mom herself had left school in Grade 8. “I grew up to be a loner,” the Kamloops man said, “semi-unsociable. It did affect me.” University wasn’t for him. “I wasn’t disciplined enough,” he said. “I just squeaked through Grade 13, spent most of my time playing pool.” Through the years, Lepin has given back to the community he calls home now. He’s given thousands to Royal Inland Hospital. There’s a studio named for him at the Kamloops Art Gallery. He’s helping pay for a rehabilitation enclosure at the B.C. Wildlife Park for fawns and deer. Years ago, after reading a story in KTW about the Salvation Army’s need of a new van, he bought it one — and, recently, when a call to the agency to pick up donations revealed the van needed repairs, “I bought them another one,” Lepin said. Through the years, he’s also supported Thompson Rivers University, adding more than $250,000 to its coffers to help students. Last weekend, at TRU’s annual gala, Lepin and his wife Maureen presented another $2.25 million. Lepin said he’s had an ongoing relationship with TRU, acting as a sounding board for its deans and, for a short period of time, teaching there. He said he thinks the partnership has been successful because “I come at things from a different perspective. “I tend to ask why a lot. You cut to the cause, apparently, as you get older. You don’t pussy-foot around.” It’s a philosophy built on his own life. “I was 10 when I built my first house,”
Charlie Chaplin silently meets The Little Tramp Page B1
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A second B.C. Supreme Court ruling against the Superintendent of Motor Vehicles has placed the province’s four-year-old drinking driving law in jeopardy, lawyers said on Friday (Feb. 14). Sam McLeod, B.C.’s Superintendent of Motor Vehicles, responded “that our laws remain in place and we’ll continue to be tough on those who drink and drive.” The B.C. Ministry of Justice is reviewing the decision to determine next steps. B.C. Supreme Court Justice Jane Dardi sent back a roadside prohibition — given to a driver who blew a ‘fail’ on a roadside screening device — to the superintendent’s office for a rehearing, said Vancouver lawyer Kyla Lee, who successfully argued the case. Lee and other lawyers contacted on Friday said the decision imperils the way police deal with drinking drivers and jeopardizes thousands of driver suspensions already handed out. Lee said in a telephone interview the oral decision in B.C. Supreme Court in Vancouver follows a similar finding by a B.C. Supreme Court justice in Kamloops in September last year. That case was successfully argued by defence lawyer Jeremy Jensen. In the Kamloops decision, Justice Dev Dley found there “is no presumption that a driver’s ability to drive is affected by alcohol solely on the basis of a ‘warn’ reading.” Blowing a ‘warn’ on a roadside screening device indicates a level of intoxication between 0.05 and 0.08. In that case, Lee Michael Wilson of Kamloops was handed a driving ban after being stopped by police in Coombs on Vancouver Island last September, a ban overturned by Dley. The province appealed and that decision is being heard in the B.C. Court of Appeal next month. X See APPEAL A5
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