‘Many dark memories’
Lheidli T’enneh chief reacts to deadly Enbridge pipeline explosion in Kentucky
Mark NIELSEN Citizen staff
Lheidli T’enneh First Nation
Chief Clay Pountney says the pipeline explosion in the United States has strengthened the band’s resolve to pursue its lawsuit against Enbridge Inc. following the rupture and blast last October just north of the boundary of the Shelley reserve.
One person was killed and five sent to hospital as a result of the fiery incident Thursday in Junction City, Kentucky. It also damaged structures within 450 metres, including destroying at least five homes and railroad tracks and forcing the evacuation of a nearby mobile home park, authorities said.
No one was injured in the incident in Prince George but it left some Lheidli members with heightened anxiety. Some still grow fearful at the sound of loud noises, according to the band.
“Today’s pipeline explosion in Kentucky has brought back many dark memories for some of our members who are still dealing with the impacts of last October’s explosion near our Northside neighbourhood,” Pountney said in a statement issued Thursday evening.
In February, the LTFN launched a lawsuit against Enbridge, alleging in part that the explosion and its aftermath have “caused serious and constant distress and anguish within the Lheidli T’enneh community.”
The LTFN also claims the pipeline trespasses on its territory, saying Enbridge never adequately consulted the band over its con-
struction and failed to consult with the band prior to bringing it back into operation. In a response, Enbridge has denied the allegations.
“Today’s incident also raises additional questions about the integrity of older pipelines across North America and just how safe they are,” Pountney said.
“Our lawsuit launched against
Enbridge in late February this year was based on the poor response by Enbridge to the impacts of the explosion on our territory and around the question about how safe is the rest of their pipelines that run through our territory.
“Today’s unfortunate incident in Kentucky has only given us more resolve to pursue these matters through the courts.”
In a response, an Enbridge spokesperson said that in general practice, the company does not comment on matters that are in litigation.
However, the spokesperson said that following the incident last October, steps were taken to avoid a repeat. They included lowering the pipeline’s operating pressure and increasing the number of inspections.
“By November 2019, we will have nearly doubled the number of dig inspections undertaken in a typical maintenance year,” the spokesperson said. “This work goes well beyond the industry standard in terms of comprehensiveness.”
On Friday, Endbridge CEO Al Monaco said in a news release that he is “deeply saddened” by the death in the incident involving the company’s Texas Eastern natural gas pipeline. He also said the pipeline will not go back into service until it is “absolutely safe to do so.” Pountney also said he sent thoughts and prayers on behalf of all Lheidli members to the families of those killed and injured after learning about the gas pipeline explosion in Kentucky. - with files from The Canadian Press
Wood Innovation Square opens downtown
tables, seating, and paths, along with trees, flowers, and shrubs. The area has been designed for social interaction and events. There is a small stage, lighting and hook-ups to water and electricity for food trucks, entertainment, or other vendors. It can be booked for events at www.princegeorge.ca/bookings
Mayor Lyn Hall called the park a “terrific complement to the WIDC and the award-winning Wood Innovation Research Lab.”
“Council is excited to see the continued development of downtown Prince George and this new park provides a dynamic, safe, and inviting urban space,” Hall said. The project came with a $1.4
million price tag. Of that, the provincial government contributed $750,000 and the city $650,000. Construction began last summer and was led by Viking Construction of Prince George. It’s estimated that 20 local jobs were created as a result of the project.
“The new Wood Innovation Square will bring families, tourists and local residents together, support local arts and culture, and spur local economic development for years to come,” said Jinny Sims, B.C. Minister of Citizens’ Services.
Prince George has nearly 120 parks covering close to 12 square kilometres – nearly three times the area of Vancouver’s Stanley Park.
Enbridge crews were on the scene after
World blend
plays a yatga while performing with her band Namgar on Thursday night at the Prince George Legion.
played a fusion of traditional Mongolian and Buryat music with modern pop, folk, jazz and rock.
Prolific offender gets jail time for stolen truck
Citizen staff
A man caught with a stolen pickup truck was sentenced Thursday to a further 474 days in jail.
Dale Al West, 39, must also serve one year probation on a count of possessing stolen property over $5,000.
Identified as a prolific offender by RCMP, West, along with Danielle Jean Rizmayer, 27, were arrested on June 20 when they were seen riding away on bikes from a stolen Ford F150 pickup truck parked on Vanier Drive. The pickup had been reported stolen from a Wilson Crescent address eight days before. West had remained in custody since his arrest, a total of 42 days. A warrant has been issued for Rizmayer after she failed to appear in court on July 17. On Thursday, West was also sentenced to 120 days in jail for fraud $5,000 or under and possessing stolen property under $5,000 from an October 2018 arrest. And he was fined $400 for possessing a controlled substance from a December 2018 charge.
Making it right
Contrary to a story in the July 31 edition of the Citizen, “Couple, city at odds over flooding,” it is actually the couple’s insurer that filed the lawsuit against the city. The Citizen regrets the error.
Coffee attacks might be racially motivated
The Canadian Press
Regina police are investigating reports that two men had coffee thrown at them and the possibility the attacks were racially motivated.
The bizarre attacks happened Tuesday in a parking lot near a Walmart and Winners store.
Falgun Vaviya, a university student from India who works at the Walmart, said he decided to sit outside on a bench that evening because of the warm weather.
The 19-year-old said he was looking down at his cellphone when a group of young men approached him just before 9 p.m. and one threw coffee in his face.
“They were laughing and insulting me.”
The coffee wasn’t hot, Vaviya said, but he was still shocked.
Vaviya doesn’t remember what they said, but noticed they were shooting a video. He immediately went inside the store and told a manager.
Police said they’re aware of a video circulating online and that the person throwing the coffee in the video appears to be white.
The second victim hit with coffee is a 54-year-old black man.
Police spokesman Les Parker said investigators believe the two cases are connected and aren’t ruling out racism as a factor.
But he said officers don’t yet have a motive and are asking other possible victims to come forward.
Regina Mayor Michael Foug-
We are, I believe, a very open and friendly city. I know we are.
Mayor Michael Fougere
ere says he’s seen the video and doesn’t believe it represents the city.
“We are, I believe, a very open and a friendly city. I know we are,” Fougere said. Neither of the two men were injured, but Parker said such attacks are upsetting and can affect a person’s sense of safety.
Vaviya, who is studying biology at the University of Regina, said he believes the people may have been playing a prank or were motivated by the colour of his skin.
“There any many immigrants coming like me... they might be thinking that they should not come.”
He said he wants to see the culprits held accountable and won’t feel safe leaving his home until that happens.
The community has been supportive, he added, and strangers have been reaching out to apologize for what happened.
“I’m pretty positive about the Canadians,” Vaviya said.
“Such people don’t represent the community.”
Lead singer Namgar Lhasaranova
Namgar
Soggy July well short of record
Mark NIELSEN Citizen staff
The raindrops added up to a markedly wetter than usual July.
Rainfall measured 85.2 mm over the course of the month – 37 per cent more than the norm of 62.1 mm, but still short of the record of 131.2 mm set in 1982, according to Environment Canada, which has kept records for Prince George since 1942.
It also marked a rebound from the exceptionally dry – as well as smoky – Julys the city went through during the last two summers, when rainfall added up to 37.2 in 2018 and 28.2 mm in 2017. And it was the first time this year that monthly rainfall ended up higher than normal.
“It’s not enough to alleviate the dry spell,” Environment Canada meteorologist Matt MacDonald said Friday. “Those precipitation deficits are really pronounced so it’s really good that we’ve had this one really wet month but still not enough.”
This past month will also be remembered for the number of thunderstorms. Provincewide, there were 246,000 lightning strikes, well up from the average of 96,000.
“Fortunately, a lot of our lightning this summer has been accompanied by rain, so we haven’t had these dry lightning episodes that are historically responsible for a lot of fire starts,” MacDonald said. He said an unsettled weather since the end of June is behind the pattern.
“There’s been this broad up-
per trough that’s been covering the province and it’s been very stubborn and reluctant to leave,” MacDonald said. It rained on 21 of July’s 31 days, compared to the normal of 14 days and at 15.3 C, brought cooler than
normal temperatures by a half degree, he noted.
“Despite it being not ideal barbecue weather, I think it was much needed from a drought perspective,” MacDonald said.
August got off to a “soggy start”
as Friday morning’s rain added up to 18 mm, already a third of the norm for the month. It also forced closure of the city’s sports fields and ball diamonds for the day.
Other than a chance of showers today, he said it should be sunny
and warm with highs around 27 C for the next four to five days.
“But then we return to kind of an unsettled pattern towards the end of next week,” MacDonald said.
“We’ll likely see some more rain and showers in August.”
Ont. police on lookout for murder suspects
The Canadian Press
Ontario Provincial Police have assigned a team of investigators to look into a spike in tips regarding two young men wanted in multiple murders in British Columbia.
Police said Friday the reports have come in from across the province, and investigators cannot confirm at this time whether any of the sightings are, in fact, of 18-year-old Bryer Schmegelsky and 19-year-old Kam McLeod.
A few possible sightings were reported in Ontario at a time when the hunt for the suspects was focused in Manitoba, and those were dealt with by local detachments, said Staff Sgt. Carolle Dionne.
But reports have been pouring in over recent days, with more than 30 coming in over eight hours Thursday, she said. As a result, a team was created to investigate the tips in a centralized manner, including revisiting earlier reports, she said.
While some reported sightings are quickly debunked, it’s important that people send in their information, Dionne said.
“The more information (there is), it makes it easier for us to follow up on... We can’t dismiss it either if it’s vague or doesn’t have enough content but it may take us
longer to filter through and try to figure out was there any merit into this tip,” she said.
“We really don’t want to discour-
A Coastal GasLink contractor drives over a bridge at the Unist’ot’en camp on a remote logging road near Houston in January.
LNG pipeline work began before archeological study was finished
The Canadian Press
The company behind a controversial natural gas pipeline in northern British Columbia says construction began in a number of places before archaeological assessments were complete.
Coastal GasLink says an internal audit found there were two areas along the right of way east of Kitimat where land was cleared before archaeological impact assessments occurred. It says the assessments are conditions of the permits issued by the BC Oil and Gas Commission and the B.C. government’s Environmental Assessment Certificate.
Coastal GasLink says it has suspended all clearing activity in the area until an internal review is complete and actions are taken to prevent it from happening again.
It says it has also notified affected Indigenous communities and welcomes their participation in post-impact assessments.
The Coastal GasLink pipeline inspired global protests when hereditary chiefs of the Wet’suwet’en First Nation said it had no authority without their consent.
The company says it had signed agreements with all 20 elected First Nations along the 670-kilometre route to LNG Canada’s export terminal on the coast in Kitimat, including the Wet’suwet’en council.
It says the land cleared in the affected areas measure 600-by-50-metres and 240-by10-metres respectively and assessments of neighbouring lands had identified them as having low likelihood of archaeological significance.
Coastal GasLink president David Pfeiffer says he regrets the errors that led to the construction.
“I have directed the team to complete a thorough investigation of these incidents and have halted clearing work in the area until the investigation is complete and recommendations are put into practice,” Pfeiffer said in a statement Thursday.
age people from continuing to report because it could be that one tip that might be legitimate, that might be a true sighting.”
officers look through a remote lake area alongside a landed helicopter in the Gillam, Man., area last Sunday.
The fact that so many people are flagging possible sightings shows the case has captured public attention, she said.
“It’s telling us that people are listening to the news and people are being extra vigilant... And there’s that heightened sense of, ‘hey, we don’t know where they are, we don’t know where they may be, they could show up in my backyard.”’ Provincial police are working with the RCMP as they probe incoming reports, Dionne said. A manhunt spanning several provinces began last week after Schmegelsky and McLeod were named as suspects in three killings.
Vancouver researcher Leonard Dyck and Australian Lucas Fowler and his American girlfriend Chynna Deese were found dead last month in northern B.C. Ontario Provincial Police warn the two suspects are considered dangerous and should not be approached.
Seen from the cutbanks Friday morning, downtown Prince George and the Bowl were socked in by clouds and rain.
Art of concentration
Edmonton police sorry for delay after assault
The Canadian Press
A woman who waited more than an hour for emergency responders after she was assaulted and found outside covered in blood will be getting an apology.
Supt. Darrin Balanik said in a statement Friday that there was a breakdown in communication with police and ambulance staff, resulting in an “unacceptable delay.”
The statement comes after a man found the victim early Wednesday morning on a walkway calling out for help.
John Saunders, who has a background as a firefighter, said he was on his way to a gym when he found her on the ground with blood on her legs, chest and face. He checked the woman over and called 911, but Saunders said he was told that because it was a possible assault, paramedics would have to wait for a police escort.
“I said, ‘What about my safety?’ And she said, “Well, you don’t have to be there; there’s no obligation for you to be there.’” He said he called 911 twice more and, 90 minutes later, another bystander went to a nearby fire station and got firefighters to help the woman.
Nunavut struggles with homeless crisis
The Canadian Press
Nushupiq Kilabuk wakes up every day in a shack on the shores of Frobisher Bay in Iqaluit with only a lantern and a camping stove to keep him warm – but he says he’s one of the lucky ones.
Next to his shack, which he built himself a little over four years ago, there are two abandoned boats. One is a wooden fishing boat with a small front cabin, the other, an overturned canoe. Inside the fishing boat are sleeping bags and a jerrycan. Underneath the overturned canoe is a mat and an empty packet of cigarettes.
People have been sleeping in and under these boats at night – often several people crowded together to escape the elements.
That’s why Kilabuk believes he’s fortunate for his shack.
“I thank God for the abundance of what I have. But the people around me that are sleeping around in the boats... I have warmth. I’m lucky. I feel bad for them,” he said Friday.
“But I feel bad for myself too because I don’t have an apartment or running water or power.”
Kilabuk is one of many homeless Inuit living in dilapidated shacks along Frobisher Bay. Some are families with small children. Some are elders. Some, like Kilabuk, do have jobs and incomes, but simply cannot afford the steep rents for homes and apartments.
A Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation report published last year found the average monthly rent for a two-bedroom
apartment in Iqaluit was $2,648 in 2017.
There is also a major shortage of housing across the vast territory of Nunavut.
The federal government estimates Nunavut needs more than 3,000 units to meet its current housing demand, with over 4,900 individuals on waiting lists.
That’s why Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was keen to call a media conference during his two-day visit to the territory to announce a new housing agreement with Nunavut.
It will provide $290 million over eight years to “protect, renew and expand” social and community housing, as well as repair and build affordable homes across the territory.
“We recognize that this is a big step forward that is going to make a huge difference in creating thousands of homes and we know this is really going to make a tangible impact in the lives of people here in the North,” Trudeau said. The newly allocated money will flow to the territory under the Trudeau government’s previously announced, decade-long national housing strategy.
Nunavut Premier Joe Savikataaq and Iqaluit Mayor Madeleine Redfern stood next to Trudeau and expressed gratitude for the federal cash but both also noted that more is needed.
“It is a housing crisis,” Savikataaq said. “Nunavut is a cold and harsh environment and it’s no place for anyone to be homeless and we’re happy for this funding.”
Evynne Oklen, 6, works
Lawless returns with new show
The Associated Press
The next time you find yourself in a courtroom, look around. There’s a chance you might spot Lucy Lawless there, too.
The actress is fascinated by trials and on days when she’s not working will often go to court as a member of the public. There you’ll find the onetime Xena: Warrior Princess trying to look inconspicuous, soaking it all in.
“It just teaches you so much about life and your own society and justice and about yourself,” says Lawless. “It’s really important that we participate in the democracy. That’s a really good way to hold the justice system to the standards of the people.”
Lawless, 51, has attended a murder trial in her native New Zealand, jury selection for a grisly case in Louisiana and was even at Jeffrey Epstein’s bail hearing in New York last month when the financier faced sex trafficking charges.
On that rainy day, she showed up bedraggled in flip-flops and watched Epstein “shamble in,” acting shaky. The whole thing was over quickly.
“Sedate is not the right word. It was sombre. And methodical. And meticulous. And all over in 20 minutes,” she says.
Lawless’ fascination with crime – she even will go so far as calling herself a “court ghoul” – has filtered into her latest project, the new crime TV series My Life is Murder.
“This much more closely mirrors my own personal interests,” she says.
Lawless plays Alexa Crowe, an ex-homicide detective who bakes bread, loves Crowded House, speaks German and corrects people’s grammar when she’s not chasing baddies.
She is a fully realized modern woman – unfiltered, sexy, funny and prone to giving unsolicited advice.
In a typical scene, a villain holding a knife orders Alexa to stand up. “Get up slow,” he snarls. She responds calmly: “I think you’ll find ‘slowly’ is the adverb.”
There are differences between Alexa and Lawless, of course.
One is the character’s love of bread, which on the show is a symbol of new life and nurturing. In real life, Lawless is gluten intolerant.
“It’s kind of a joke that I’m always up to my elbows in flour. But I sure earned my intolerance. For 40 years, I ate bread like a mad thing and I know what it tastes like alright.”
The show, set in Melbourne, Australia, explores closed worlds – undertakers, models, escorts and even bicyclist enthusiasts nicknamed MAMILs (middle-aged man in Lycra). The show also tweaks conventions, casting a woman as a mob boss or making Alexa’s annoying neighbour a millennial rather than a crusty older woman.
“I just want to give people a little psychic holiday from all the grim stuff so they can recharge the batteries and go back out there and fight the good fight,” Lawless said.
Creator Claire Tonkin wrote Alexa with Lawless in mind. “There’s a lot of me in the character and that’s the advantage of having writers build something around you. I’m a very lucky woman,” says Lawless.
Matthew Graham, the gen-
eral manager of Acorn TV, which specializes in offering British and Australian TV shows, says Lawless’ new show continues the streaming service’s push for strong, relatable female leads.
“We love Lucy Lawless. We love what she brings to the screenher strength, her vivaciousness, her intelligence and her sense of humour. We think that My Life is Murder is the perfect vehicle to showcase all of that,” he says.
Lawless’ strength and humour were present when she burst into the public’s consciousness as Xena in a show that mixed dark mythology, action, campy humour and sly sexuality. It aired from 1995 to 2001.
Xena was a she-hunky leather queen in a breastplate who battled bad guys with sword, shiv, crossbow, frying pan or the ultimate
Country music’s roots go back to slave ships
Jordan-Marie SMITH
The Washington Post
The summer megahit Old Town Road set a record this week for longest-running No. 1 song after 17 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 list.
But the “country trap” tune, with its southern twangs and cowboy imagery, didn’t have the same influence on the country music chart, from which it was dropped earlier this year.
Billboard asserted that the song, by black rapper Lil’ Nas X, “does not embrace enough elements of today’s country music.” But today’s country music, critics say, has lost sight of its history, rooted in black instruments and traditions.
Singer-songwriter Valerie June said that Old Town Road is just one of many tracks that call back to black Americans’ involvement in early country music. “‘You do know the banjo is an African instrument, right?’” June said she often tells people.
Dr. Dina Bennett, senior curator at the National Museum of African American Music in Nashville, said country music can trace its roots back to 17th-century slave
ships, where captors made Africans bring instruments from their homeland.
The akonting, an early folk lute version of the American banjo, came from West Africa, for instance. “They would have them perform and play the instruments... to exercise them,” Bennett said. “That was called ‘dancing the slaves.’”
So how did country music become a genre associated with white people? “They began to, if you will, segregate the listening audience,” Bennett said. “African Americans recorded music that marketers put a label on, and they would call that race music.” Blues, jazz, and gospel were categorized as “race records” while “hillbilly” music was made by white people, who assumed the title of country music’s early stars.
One prominent black country singer, Charley Pride, was popular in the 1970s, but was marketed in a specific way. “When he first started out, they did not reveal or print anything with his face on it, so most people didn’t even know he was African American,” Bennett said. “And they didn’t want him to record any love songs. We can’t have him singing to these blond-haired, blue-eyed chicks out here.”
weapon, a murderous missile called the chakram.
She and her sidekick, Gabrielle, were part of one of television’s more intriguing gal-pal duos, with many viewers celebrating what they saw as lesbian affection.
“It was fun. It was about universal themes, of the triumph of the human spirit: love, courage and, of course, hate and fear underneath that,” Lawless says. “The legacy is that it inspired, by some kind of alchemy, positive change in the lives of individuals.”
Lawless constantly hears from fans about how the show empowered them, especially from people who feel marginalized - minorities, invalids, and gay men and women. She once asked an AfricanAmerican woman why it resonated with black women.
That woman’s response: “African-American women feel that they need to be warrior woman every day of their lives.”
Lawless is something of a warrior off-screen, too.
Activism is something she takes seriously and calls the environment “my No. 1 commitment.”
She was arrested in 2012 for protesting Arctic oil drilling with Greenpeace and says the movement needs to keep going despite political setbacks.
“You get compassion fatigue. You go, ‘I’ve only got so much bandwidth, and this is making my heart hurt’ and the world’s really heart-hurty right now,” she said. “So in order to keep us buoyant, we’ve got to start hearing about the great innovations and people who are doing good work and there’s tons of it out there.”
AP PHOTO
Actress Lucy Lawless is promoting her new crime TV series My Life Is Murder.
AP FILE PHOTO
Rob Quist plays the banjo during a 2006 performance in Livingston, Montana.
Opinion
Plastic bags useful, not evil
Iwas pleased to hear that the B.C. Court of Appeals has struck down Victoria city council’s ban on plastic shopping bags. While strictly a jurisdictional ruling, it’s a start at ending these very fashionable bag bans. In June 2018 the Texas Supreme Court unanimously ruled that municipalities in that state could not ban plastic shopping bags. Legislatures in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Michigan and Indiana have done much the same. These bans are almost always based on fictitious and contrived environmental data.
One city councillor here called it “absolutely fraudulent rubbish.” I couldn’t agree more.
Canada is one of the cleanest countries in the world. Our contribution to the floating oceanic garbage nightmare is barely measurable. Shopping bags do not litter our landscapes and waterways.
Just look around you. To suggest that we travel to our ocean beaches to discard our plastics is beyond ludicrous.
The plastics debris on our beaches is flotsam from Asia. The great ocean gyres have been dropping it on us for perhaps 30 years. And we are really lucky, compared with other beaches in the Pacific.
The Surfrider Foundation should be held responsible for the false, misleading and insulting propaganda it spread widely in the lead-up to this bylaw being enacted. And
Victoria council, except Coun. Geoff Young, but especially Mayor Lisa Helps and Coun. Ben Isitt should be ashamed of themselves for just “drinkin” their Kool-Aid.
Let’s have a close look at the evil shopping bag. Called a “tee-shirt” bag, it’s made from polyethylene film, and is actually a bit of an industrial marvel.
The poly shopping bag is easily the most useful “free” thing since there were free book matches on every store counter decades ago. Those were of course replaced by cheap, non-refillable, disposable plastic lighters, of which there are now billions in the landfills.
The term “single-use” does not apply to poly shopping bags at all. Because they squish very small, I have clever dispensers for them in my kitchen and my shop.
A tote when you need one. Great for carrying anything you need when you need it, such as books – or your lunch.
They squash so flat, I have one in my back pocket and my wife has a cute little dispenser in her purse.
When we shop at stores that don’t have poly bags, we carry our own.
Methinks most people do not realize that almost all of the plastic bags they buy and use everyday, including shopping bags, are made from the same plastic — polyethylene. In our society, we use hundreds of different types of poly bags. Zip-Loc, shopping,
“kitchen catchers’, sandwich, deli, produce and garbage bags are just a tiny few.
Recently, my wife and I counted the poly bags that were involved in one of our average shopping trips to the grocery store. After cruising deli, bakery, produce and bulk foods, we had accumulated 16 poly bags.
We also grabbed a box of 20 Zip-Loc bags making the total 36. At the checkout counter, the clerk asked us if we would like little poly bags for our meat. That brought it to 38. Our groceries were then packed into three paper sacks.
Huh? After acquiring this many poly bags, our stuff cannot be packed into re-usable poly bags as well? How does the shopping bag alone become such a singular target amongst the myriad bags of the same plastic?
Simple.
It is the only plastic bag that local councils can regulate through bylaw bullying. And the bags are really visible at every checkout counter. It makes for good propaganda.
Garbage bags are a wonder. They answered eons-old questions about how to move garbage — perfectly. In the late 1960s, New York City experimented with poly garbage bags and found they super improved the efficient and hygienic handling of residential garbage.
And in that function, they are made specifically as “single-use” bags. When you
How to get people to vote
Despite a cumulative increase of nearly 10 per cent in voter turnout in Canadian federal elections between 2008 and 2015, the country’s voter turnout rates remain moderate.
And they’re about 20 per cent lower than they were before the 1990s.
This current rate means governments are being formed with the support of a minority of the population.
While encouraging political participation to young voters aged 18 to 34 has been somewhat successful, two problems remain as a Canadian federal election approaches:
1) Young people still vote at a relatively lower rate than older voters did at their age;
2) Political socialization efforts via education systems do not target voters aged 35 to 54, so the rate of abstention in these groups remains constant.
Based on my findings, I propose five basic recommendations that may improve the effectiveness of non-partisan campaigns aimed at encouraging voting, mostly among a segment of the population called non-habitual voters — people who vote only occasionally:
1) Localized content is preferable to imported content. Many campaigners import ideas and even full campaigns from other countries. But non-habitual voters react negatively to imported content, perceiving it as artificial and dishonest.
Instead, they react more positively to content produced within their political system and that
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reflects their political reality.
This recommendation is especially important to multi-national non-governmental organizations, such as Rock the Vote or other civil engagement groups that run campaigns in multiple countries.
2) Non-habitual voters shy away from factual statements – which they perceive as condescending and preachy – and react positively to open-ended questions that invite them to think and discuss matters on their own terms.
The wording of voter turnout slogans should also be positive, rather than negative, so the occasional voter doesn’t feel they’re being guilted into voting.
Negative language will only make non-habitual voters feel guilty, and slogans like: “If you didn’t vote, don’t complain,” are among the worst things they can be told, my research determined. In contrast, a StudentVote.ca slogan: “A Million Reasons to Vote. What’s Yours?” is a positively worded question that received the best reactions from voters and non-voters alike.
3) Non-habitual voters react better to language that does not address elections specifically (think, imagine, wish) than they do to language that is more political (choice, count, vote). Indirect wording encourages interaction, engagement and consideration of the appeal, while direct language
is perceived as empty promises by voting advocates. To illustrate this point, consider a typical non-voter’s response to the slogan “Your Vote is Your Say” – a 1990s Elections Canada poster. In my research, a 39-yearold woman from southern Alberta had this to say about the ad: “Like they really care what I think.”
4) Simple, straightforward designs work best.
My research findings are consistent in showing that many people, not just occasional voters, prefer clean and comprehensible designs over visually complex ones.
As well, voters aren’t fans of whimsical word puns. That’s not to suggest people don’t want to see images or symbols at all, or that all wordplay should be dismissed. They just need to be used in moderation.
5) Countries like Canada that have ballots should stop using an X and instead use a check mark, both on the ballot itself and in their marketing materials, and allow any marking on ballots. Too many people associate the X with incorrect answers during their school years. In the split second it took my research participants to scan imagery, on the ballot or in marketing materials, many of them made a negative association. These five principles are the most basic ones to adopt. Any organization – elections agencies, NGOs, even family members trying to convince loved ones to vote – should use them.
— Ofer Berenstein is a sessional instructor at the University of Calgary. This article first appeared in The Conversation.
compare a garbage bag with a shopping bag, some bylaw silliness starts to appear. A household garbage bag has five to six times more polyethylene in it than a shopping bag. Yet only the shopping bag is an environmental problem? Go figure.
In all the anti-bag rhetoric I’ve heard in the past few years, there is one word that is never, ever mentioned: Recycle. There are hundreds of plastics, but we “consume” mainly three. They are polyethylene (PE), polypropylene (PP) and polyethyleneterephthalate (PeT).
All three are perfectly recyclable into something else, and that must be stressed.
Polyethylene or poly is the second most recyclable and recycled plastic after PeT. All (clean) poly bags should be bundled and put in the recycle bin at your grocery store.
Remember, every pound of plastic that is re-used is a pound that doesn’t come out of the ground. As with metals, these plastics can be re-used for durable products such as traffic cones, cargo pallets and rail ties, to mention but a few.
It is incumbent on all of us to manage our “waste” plastics properly.
We can only do that if we have the proper information about them.
— Robert Matthews is a retired plastics factory owner who lives on Vancouver Island.
Humans behind computer errors
So a computer “glitch” has drastically misreported Grade 12 exam results for about 350,000 B.C. students. Full disclosure – I have been an enthusiast ever since the day in the mid-’60s when I was allowed to walk around inside SILIAC, Sydney University’s first full-size, million-dollar computer.
Since that time, computers, and the people who input the data into computers ranging from my Apple Watch to IBM’s “Summit,” have ruled our lives.
“Summit” is capable of more than three billion billion (not a misprint) mixed precision calculations per second, which has allowed researchers to run the world’s first exascale scientific calculation.
Computers have also introduced an entirely new vocabulary to explain to laymen why it is computers, not computer operators, that bungle their jobs so often: words like “bug,” “glitch,” “malfunction,” “snafu” and so on.
But the golden rule is still “garbage in garbage out,” no matter how sophisticated the computers become.
Public education in B.C. has often been on the rough end of these “garbage in” misfires, mishaps or flaws. Not long ago, British Columbia’s new $95-million student information system, MyEducationBC, was found by school district users to be glitchy and slow, causing back-to-school headaches for teachers trying to set up student schedules, take attendance and enter marks.
MyEdBC had been brought in to replace the $89-million BCeSIS student tracking computer, which was expensive and unreliable.
I remember just entering the marks in a book and giving the book to the principal.
Now comes the Grade 12 transcript calamity, caused by a data input “anomaly” in the tabulation of Grade 12 provincial exams written in June.
The Ministry of Education is reviewing every June 2019 exam result to ensure students’ final grades are accurately reflected on their transcripts – transcripts that can affect admission to post-secondary schools. Good luck. That covers at least 32,000 Grade 12 kids we now know about whose transcripts are wrong.
Student transcripts report both exam and class marks. In order to meet graduation requirements, B.C. students must earn a minimum of 80 credits (four credits per course in grades 10 to 12) and write provincial graduation nu-
meracy and literacy assessments. That’s a lot of data to process before 32,000 grads even know if they’ve actually graduated, much less where the results will lead them.
But worse things happen when we hand over our futures to the whims of an electronic binary bookkeeper that simply sees our goals and desires as an array of zeroes and ones.
In 2017, the credit reporting agency Equifax explained that hackers had gained access to sensitive personal credit data –social insurance numbers, birth dates and home addresses – for up to 147 million clients, including 19,000 Canadians. That data breach happened because of a mistake by a single employee, not any computer, according to the credit reporting company’s former chief executive. Last week, Capital One said that data from more than 100 million American customers and six million Canadians had been stolen by a hacker. No computer “glitch” this time either, no “bug.” The FBI arrested a 33-year-old tech worker named Paige A. Thompson, who goes by the online handle “erratic.” Indeed.
None of this is really new. Stuff happens all the time with big computers.
In 2011, approximately 450 inmates incarcerated for violence and about 1,000 inmates incarcerated for serious drug and property offenses were set free in California as a result of an “anomaly” in a computer system that evaluates inmate risk levels.
In 2013, to the joy of online shoppers, a computer repriced many items on Amazon to just one cent. This mistake occurred due to a “malfunction” in the repricing software used by the online retail giant.
So sit back, kids. Relax.
The hundreds of post-secondary schools here and in the U.S. that received the wrong transcript data will, we hope, sort it out. Your Grade 12 results and your future are safely in the hands of data input processors and the voracious mainframes they feed. The transcript problem will never happen again.
— Geoff Johnson is a former superintendent of schools.
SHAWN CORNELL DIRECTOR OF ADVERTISING
GUEST COLUMN GEOFF JOHNSON
How are you feeling?
‘Emotion detection’ AI is a $20 billion industry but research says it can’t do what it claims
The Washington Post
In just a handful of years, the business of emotion detection –using artificial intelligence to identify how people are feeling – has moved beyond the stuff of science fiction to a $20 billion industry.
Companies like IBM and Microsoft tout software that can analyze facial expressions and match them to certain emotions, a would-be superpower that companies could use to tell how customers respond to a new product or how a job candidate is feeling during an interview.
But a far-reaching review of emotion research finds that the science underlying these technologies is deeply flawed.
The problem? You can’t reliably judge how someone feels from what their face is doing.
A group of scientists brought together by the Association for Psychological Science spent two years exploring this idea.
After reviewing more than 1,000 studies, the five researchers concluded that the relationship between facial expression and emotion is nebulous, convoluted and far from universal.
“About 20 to 30 per cent of the time, people make the expected facial expression,” such as smiling when happy, said Lisa Feldman Barrett, a professor of psychology at Northeastern University, who worked on the review. But the rest of the time, they don’t. “They’re not moving their faces in random ways. They’re moving them in ways that are specific to the situation.”
It’s not surprising that something as complex and internalized as human emotion defies easy classification. Humans tend to instinctively draw on other factors, such as body language or tone of voice, to complete their emotional assessments.
But the majority of emotion detection AI makes inferences purely on mapping facial positioning, a concept that stems from the work of Paul Ekman, a psychology professor at the University of California, San Francisco.
He posited that six emotions –happiness, sadness, disgust, fear, anger and surprise – are represented by universal facial expressions across all cultures.
When Microsoft rolled out its emotion detection technology in 2015, it said its algorithms could “recognize eight core emotional states – anger, contempt, fear, disgust, happiness, neutral, sadness or surprise – based on universal facial expressions that reflect those feelings.”
Can artificial intelligence understand how this baby is feeling? Industry proponents say yes but research
It’s a common justification for such technology, and exactly what Barrett and her colleagues are pushing back against. The companies are not trying to be misleading, she said, but they need to dramatically change their approach to emotion detection to get the kind of accuracy many already purport to have. (Microsoft declined to comment about how or if the review would influence its approach to emotion detection.)
“We now have the tools and the analytic capability to learn what we need to learn about facial expressions in context and what they mean,” Barrett said. “But it requires asking different questions with that technology and using different analytic strategies than what are currently being used.”
Such technological limitations come with risks, especially as facial recognition becomes more widespread.
In 2007, the Transportation Security Administration introduced a program (which Ekman consulted on, but later distanced himself from) that trained officers to try to identify potential terrorists via facial expression and behavior.
A review of the program in 2013 by the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that TSA hadn’t established a scientific basis for it, and that the program didn’t translate to arrests. In 2017, a study by the American Civil Liberties Union concluded that the program fueled racial profiling.
To get on the right track, Barrett said, companies should be working with far more data, training their programs to consider body language and vocal characterization just as a human would.
At least one company says it’s embracing the more multifaceted approach: Affectiva, the first company to market “emotion AI.” The company, which claims to hold the largest collection of emotion data in the world, works with naturalistic video rather than static images and is trying to integrate such factors as a person’s tone or gait into its analyses.
Rana el Kaliouby, Affectiva’s co-founder and chief executive, said she welcomes the review’s findings, adding that they mirror issues she’s been trying to tackle since she was a doctoral candidate at Cambridge University in the
early 2000s. “I’ve tried to solve the same issues all these years, but we’re not there yet as an industry,” Kaliouby said. “I liken it to the emotional repertoire of a toddler: A toddler will understand simplistic states, but they won’t have the language or sophisticated sensing to recognize complex emotions.”
Affectiva has encountered these limitations organically in the course of business and tried to adjust to them, she said.
Several years ago, Kaliouby said, a client complained that Affectiva’s technology wasn’t producing results in China when it tried to analyze responses to ads.
It turned out that the program had trouble recognizing a subtle “politeness smile” many subjects displayed because of a lack of training specific to region.
This helped highlight how different cultures display facial expressions, Kaliouby said, leading Affectiva to incorporate “culturally specific benchmarks” for facial movement.
The company now trains its systems with more than 8 million faces from 87 countries.
The industry will evolve as it acquires more data, Kaliouby said. In the meantime, the technology is already being put to use.
“The naive mapping that people in academia and, unfortunately, in the industry are doing is quite dangerous, because you’re getting wrong results,” Kaliouby said.
Oftentimes, she added, clients aren’t interested in the more comprehensive approach, asking instead for analyses based on the six basic emotions defined by Ekman’s research decades ago. Kaliouby said she hopes the review will educate both consumers and those in the industry about the limits of emotion recognition, and reinforce how far the industry has yet to go.
The theoretical aim for much artificial intelligence is to create machines that are able to operate just as well as, or better than, a human.
But even creating a machine with the perceptiveness of a person wouldn’t be enough to solve the problem of emotion detection, Kaliouby said.
“Humans get it wrong all the time.”
Surrender control and hold them close
What my daughter’s addiction taught me about parenting
Trina J. WOOD
Special to The Washington Post
The day after Christmas, I lay on a padded table, left arm outstretched, ready to allow my skin to be pierced by a needle 80 to 150 times a second while my daughter stood next to me, holding my hand.
“Are you ready?” the tattoo artist asked. I inhaled deeply and nodded.
A soft whirring filled the tall-ceilinged room as he began to inject dark dye into the stenciled outline of a feather below the simple script I’d chosen.
Focus on the breath, I reminded myself as the pinpricks alternated between a sharp sensation and an almost pleasant vibration.
“Does it hurt?”
My daughter documented the first few minutes of my tattoo by shooting a video on her iPhone.
“Not too bad... about what I expected.”
My teeth were chattering, though.
I was wearing a down vest, but the stress of anticipating pain had chilled me.
She brought my oversize jacket from the hook on the wall and placed it over the right side of my body, tucking it up close to my chin.
Along the other part of the wall, adjacent to drawings and images of intricate tattoo art, hung a red plastic biohazards sharps container, similar to the one I helped my daughter fill seven years ago.
We’d collected used needles throughout her apartment the weekend after she told me of her heroin addiction.
She didn’t want me to see all the places where she’d stashed them: under couch cushions, in laundry baskets beneath dirty clothes, tucked in the back of drawers where her boyfriend wouldn’t find them and realize she had been using more than he was.
We needed to clear them out before she started an outpatient rehab program the following day.
On that day, I’d listened to the first hollow thuds as the needles fell to the bottom of the bin we had picked up from the pharmacy.
The thumps grew more muffled as they piled on one another in twos and threes, in dozens.
Until the bin was full.
Before we were finished, I pulled out my Nikon to document a used needle perched against a blackened teaspoon on the glasstopped coffee table.
If I could approach this more as a journalist than a mother who wanted to scream into the sky, maybe I could jam my emotions into a dark place where they couldn’t escape either.
After about 30 minutes, the whirring stopped and I was done.
It was my daughter’s turn on the table.
She chose to have her matching ink placed across the inside of her left wrist, below the group of seven ravens that ascend her inner forearm, taking flight.
The outer part of her arm is already covered by a delicate weave of poppy flowers on stems and lush serrated leaves. Papaver somniferum.
Somniferum meaning “sleep-bringing” in Latin.
The plant’s seeds are used in baked goods, and the latex collected from its immature seed pods is used to produce opium, which is modified to produce heroin.
When I had picked my daughter up 24 hours earlier for Christmas, the first thing I’d noticed had been the bruises on her hands.
She had pulled long sleeves down to her fingers, but I could still make out swollen dark purple lumps along her skin.
I tried not to stare at her hands as I drove past a grove of walnut trees on the outskirts of town.
“Are those still bruises from the relapse in November?”
“Yeah, but it hasn’t done this before, I mean stayed bruised for so long.”
She pulled up her sleeve to show me old injection sites atop her hands, along the side of her wrist just below her thumb.
Some have healed from abscesses; others have scarred.
Delicate fingers that once played Elgar’s Cello Concerto were now puffy and swollen.
The last time I’d seen anyone puncture my daughter’s skin was two years ago in the emergency room.
A urine test had ruled out a kidney infection, so the doctor had ordered a CT scan to determine the source of the pain that brought her there.
She was lying in the hospital bed covered in several blankets, still wearing her black boots, waiting for the nurse to start an IV.
She’d been wearing a beanie when I picked her up, but with her hat off, she looked disheveled, hair tangled and matted in the back.
I wanted to brush it out.
“Mom, I need to tell you something before the nurse comes back in.”
She was shaking with chills.
I glanced at her arms almost as a reflex.
There was a small pinpoint bruise in the crook of her left arm, a swollen bruise on her hand, another bruise on her right arm.
“I used last night.”
She looked down at her hands and I reached out to hold them.
I fought to keep tears from building.
After three years of numbing her need for heroin with methadone, my daughter had just spent the past 10 weeks weaning off it.
She was tired of all the side effects and visiting the clinic daily.
She had come so far, and yet I knew the months immediately after getting off methadone were dangerous territory.
Relapse is part of recovery.
How many times had the counselor at the treatment center told us that?
But I wanted to know how many times it would take before she could stay clean and I could get a decent night’s sleep again.
After 20 minutes of trying to find a vein, the nurse called for help.
A second nurse finally landed a spot she could work with and hooked up a bag with fluids, an anti-nausea drug, an NSAID and a dose of fentanyl.
“Wait, isn’t that the same drug being added to heroin sold on the street and causing overdoses?”
I couldn’t believe the doctor had approved this.
They knew my daughter was an opioid addict and had struggled recently to get clean.
Now they were shooting her up.
The nurse assured me it was a small dose, had a short half-life and was just for immediate pain relief.
She didn’t seem concerned that she was giving my daughter more of the drugs from which she had just struggled so hard to get clean.
My daughter looked completely in her zone on the tattoo artist’s table, eyes closed, the comfort of feeling her skin pierced.
He brushed the vibrating needle against her flesh, re-creating the contoured flight feather of a juvenile red-tailed hawk that I had pulled from a Ziploc bag.
A symbol of vulnerability, of learning to fly. Marking her the same way I was now marked.
He shaded the alternating dark and light bands until he reached the whisper-fine filaments at the base of the feather.
These downy barbs help a bird stay warm by trapping air close to its body.
With the lightest touch of the needle, the artist made them appear as if they were floating on her wrist.
Above our matching feathers, we both had inscribed “stammi vicino,” or “stay close to me.”
If I’ve learned anything over the past seven years of this journey with her through addiction, it’s that I have no control.
I cannot fix the situation.
I cannot save her.
My greatest hope remains in holding her close to my heart.
— Wood, a writer in Davis, California, is working on a memoir about her journey through her daughter’s heroin addiction.
Earlier is better for bedtime
The Washington Post
My wife and I put our five-yearold twins to bed by 7:30 most nights. This isn’t out of any virtuous concern for their health or well-being, mind you, it’s primarily because by that point we’ve had about as much of them as we can take for the day, and need the rest of the evening to unwind and decompress.
But bedtime can be challenging in the summer, with the late evening sunlight streaming through the twins’ bedroom window, signaling to them that they should be outside running around instead of tucked under their blankets. Recently it’s been enough to make me wonder whether we’re putting them to bed too early. What’s a “normal” bedtime for a five-yearold, anyway?
To find out, I got in touch with Dr. Mark DeBoer, a pediatric endocrinologist at the University of Virginia who’s done research on the sleep habits of American 5-year-olds. DeBoer pulled data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort (ECLSB), a nationally representative study that tracked the growth and development of 14,000 kids born
in 2001. When those children were kindergartners, researchers asked their parents what time they went to bed on weeknights. By DeBoer’s calculations, the median bedtime was 8:30 p.m.
Half of the kids went to bed earlier, with 40 per cent dropping off between 8 and 8:30 most nights, and the earliest 10 per cent in bed by 8 p.m.
Conversely, 40 per cent of the kids went to bed between 8:30 and 9:30 p.m., and 10 per cent typically stayed up past 9:30.
The relevance is tied to the large body of research that links childhood sleep with various health and educational outcomes. Among kids, insufficient sleep is linked to obesity, poor academic achievement, depression, physical injuries and, as every parent knows, grumpiness. The American Academy of Pediatrics’ recommends kids ages three to five get 10 to 13 hours of sleep each day.
DeBoer has found that a lot of children aren’t getting enough sleep, and late bedtimes are a culprit. “Later bed times are the major cause of short sleep duration,” he said via email, driven predominantly by children getting more screen time and parents who’ve adopted later bedtimes than was
seen in previous generations. His research found, for instance, that kindergartners in the mid2000s got about 30 minutes less sleep, on average, than those born in the 1970s. That shift was largely driven by later bedtimes; wake times haven’t changed much over the years, primarily because schools generally start at the same time they always have.
DeBoer found that television time is a big factor, with kids who watch more than two hours of TV in the evenings going to bed about 20 minutes later than kids who watch less than that.
Overall, DeBoer says, most younger children are at the low end of the recommended daily amount of sleep, with about one in five not even meeting that threshold. He’d like to see parents make an effort to get their kids to bed earlier. Regardless, simply knowing what time other kids go to bed could be useful for parents trying to assess whether their own kids are getting enough sleep.
Parents of late sleepers may even have some luck convincing their kids to go to bed earlier with the knowledge that most kindergartners are hitting the hay before they are.
Above the feather is the inscription “stammi vicino,” or “stay close to me.”
Christopher INGRAHAM
Over the fence
Layritz player Aiden Leslie connects with a pitch during the home run derby on Thursday evening at Nechako Park on the first day of the 2019
championships.
Athletes using unproven stem cell therapy
Liz SZABO Kaiser Health News
Baseball superstar Max Scherzer ,whose back injury will prevent him from pitching for the Washington Nationals until Monday, is the latest in a long list of professional athletes to embrace unproven stem cell injections in an attempt to accelerate their recovery.
But many doctors and ethicists worry that pro athletes who have played a key role in popularizing stem cells are misleading the public into thinking the costly, controversial shots are an accepted, approved treatment.
“It sends a signal to all the fans out there that stem cells have more value than they really do,” said James Rickert, president of the Society for Patient Centered Orthopedics, which advocates for high-quality care. “It’s extremely good PR for the people selling this kind of thing. But there’s no question that this is an unproven treatment.”
Stem cells and related therapies, such as platelet injections, have been used for the past decade by top athletes like golfer Tiger Woods, tennis pro Rafael Nadal, hockey legend Gordie Howe, basketball player Kobe Bryant and NFL quarterback Peyton Manning. Stem cells are offered at roughly 1,000 clinics and some of the most respected hospitals nationwide. Depending on the treatment, the cost can range from hundreds to thousands of dollars. Insurance does not cover the treatments in most cases, so patients pay out of pocket.
Yet for all the hype, there’s no proof it works, said Paul Knoepfler, a professor of cell biology and human anatomy at the University of California at Davis School of Medicine. Referring to Scherzer, Knoepfler said, “There’s really not much evidence that it’s going to help him, other than as a psychological boost or as a placebo effect.” Scherzer, 35, said he received a stem cell shot Friday for a mild strain in his upper back and shoulder. According to a news story on the Major League Baseball website, Scherzer also previously had a stem cell injection to treat a thumb injury.
If Scherzer’s diagnosis is correct, it should completely heal itself with 10 days of rest and he would probably feel ready to play by Monday even without the stem cells, Rickert said. “The risk from the stem cell procedure is that it could give someone a false sense of confidence, and they could go back to play too early,” and reinjure themselves, he said.
A spokeswoman for the Washington Nationals declined to provide information about Scherzer’s treatment, such as the type of stem cells used or the name of the clinician who administered them.
Clinics that offer stem cell treatments prepare injections by withdrawing a person’s fat or bone marrow, then processing the cells and injecting them back into aching joints, tendons or muscles.
Another popular treatment involves concentrating platelets, the cells that help blood clot. Many people confuse platelet injections with stem cell injections, perhaps because the shots are promoted as treatments for similar conditions, said Kelly
Scollon-Grieve, a physical medicine and rehabilitation specialist at Premier Orthopaedics in Havertown, Pa.
When it comes to pain, injections can act as powerful placebos, partly because suffering patients put so much faith in treatment, said Nicholas DiNubile, an orthopedic surgeon and former consultant for the Philadelphia 76ers. In a recent analysis, more than 80 per cent of patients with knee arthritis perceived a noticeable improvement in pain after receiving a placebo of simple saltwater shots.
Team doctors often treat athletes with a variety of therapies, in the hope of getting them quickly back on the field, said Arthur Caplan, director of the division of medical ethics at New York University School of Medicine. Athletes may assume that stem cells are responsible for their recovery, when the real credit should go to other remedies, such as ice, heat, nonsteroidal antiinflammatory medications, cortisone shots, massage, physical therapy or simple rest.
“These are the richest, most highly paid
athletes around,” Caplan said. (Scherzer and the Nats agreed to a $210 million, seven-year contract in 2015.) “So anything you can think of, they’re getting. But I wouldn’t use them as a role model for how to treat injuries.”
While athletes often talk about their stem cell treatments, Caplan said he wonders, “Would the inflammation or problem have just gone away on its own?”
Sports fans shouldn’t expect to have the same reaction to stem cells – or any medical intervention – as a professional athlete, DiNubile said.
In general, athletes recover far more rapidly than other people, just because they’re so young and fit, DiNubile said. The genes and training that propelled them to the major leagues may also aid in their recovery. “They have access to the best care, night and day,” DiNubile said.
Whenever a top athlete is treated with stem cells, word spreads quickly on social media. Fans often end up doing the stem cell industry’s marketing for them: A 2015 analysis found that 72 per cent of tweets about Gordie Howe’s stem cell treatments were positive. Of 2,783 tweets studied, only one mentioned that Howe’s treatment, delivered in Mexico after Howe’s stroke, was unproved and not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Howe died in 2016.
The Mexican stem cell clinic provided Howe’s treatment at no charge. Clinics use such donations as a form of marketing, because they generate priceless publicity, said Leigh Turner, an associate professor at the University of Minnesota’s Center for Bioethics who has published articles describing the size and dynamics of the stem cell market.
“Clinics provide free stem cell treatments or offer procedures at a discounted rate, and in return they can generate YouTube testimonials, press releases and positive media coverage,” Turner said. “It’s also a good way to build relationships with wealthy individuals and get them to refer friends and family members for stem cell procedures.”
CITIZEN PHOTO BY JAMES DOYLE
B.C. Minor Baseball AA provincial
AP PHOTO
Washington Nationals starting pitcher Max Scherzer throws to the Colorado Rockies in the third inning of a baseball game July 25.
Wentz set for season without Foles
The Washington Post
That Super Bowl trophy isn’t quite as glisteningly brand new any more. The former Super Bowl MVP is gone. For the Philadelphia Eagles, now it’s all about Carson Wentz getting back to being the franchise quarterback he was drafted to be, the league MVPcaliber player he once seemed well on his way to becoming, the team centerpiece he suddenly is being paid to be.
And there’s no Nick Foles safety net any longer.
It was Foles, not Wentz, who led the Eagles to their Super Bowl triumph to conclude the 2017 season, with Wentz sidelined by a knee injury suffered late in the regular season. It is Foles, not Wentz, who has a statue at Lincoln Financial Field, depicting him consulting with Coach Doug Pederson on the famed Philly Special trick-play call during the Super Bowl victory over the New England Patriots. It was Foles, not Wentz, who rallied the faltering Eagles to the NFC playoffs last season, with Wentz sidelined by a stress fracture in his back.
But it was Wentz, not Foles, on whom the Eagles’ brain trust of owner Jeffrey Lurie, front office executive Howie Roseman and Pederson doubled down this past offseason. They allowed Foles to exit via free agency and sign a four-year, $88 million contract with the Jacksonville Jaguars. The Eagles handed the starting job back to Wentz and signed him in June to a four-year, $128 million contract extension.
So Foles was nowhere to be seen as Wentz led the starting offense through drills Monday during a steamy training camp practice, then offered his assessment of the work being accomplished.
“It’s been solid progression so far,” Wentz said. “There’s been mistakes made personally. There have been mistakes offensively as a whole. It’s always early in camp, there’s some sloppy play. There’s false starts. There’s this and that, miscommunication. Definitely it’s never perfect, never where we want it to be. But I feel confident in the guys just to keep growing and to keep building from here.”
The Eagles’ decision to stick with Wentz makes perfect sense. He is, at 26, four years younger
than Foles. The Eagles traded up to take Wentz second overall in the 2016 NFL draft and made him their season-opening starter as a rookie. He was in the league MVP conversation as a second-year pro in 2017 before suffering the knee injury that gave Foles his chance.
But it is unavoidable that the Eagles, a popular pick as the preseason NFC East favorite, had their greatest moments the previous two seasons with Foles in charge. Now it’s up to Wentz to show that he can remain in the lineup and justify the Eagles’ unshaken confidence in him. This is, indisputably, his team now.
“Every year, you’re a year older and you’re no longer really the young guy any more,” he said. “It’s just like I’ve said in the past: it’s just organically the leadership is built. But we have a handful of guys who have been here from my Day 1 here, that have been
here a long time. And so you start to build that culture, build those relationships. And it just makes everything a lot smoother and a lot more effective when you have a bunch of guys that are trying to lead and lead in the same direction.”
Without Foles, Wentz’s understudy is likely to be Nate Sudfeld, the former sixth-round draft pick by the Washington Redskins who’s entering his third season in Philadelphia and has thrown a total of 25 regular season NFL passes.
“I just want to put my best foot forward and show the coaches that they can trust me, put the ball in our playmakers’ hands, play fast, be decisive and just be efficient,” Sudfeld said. “I’m not trying to be Superman. Sometimes with natural instincts, you want to throw the deep bomb every time. But I’m trying to make the smart play every time so that they can
trust me.”
But this is about Wentz, and the Eagles fortified the offense around him when they added wide receiver DeSean Jackson and running back Jordan Howard in the offseason. Jackson, who turns 33 in December, returns for a second stint with the Eagles and is to provide a still-speedy complement to fellow wideouts Alshon Jeffery and Nelson Agholor.
“It’s different playing with a guy like him,” he said. “It’s definitely exciting at the same time. That’s why it just takes a lot of communication. Physical reps are second to none. But just talking through everything – feel really good. I feel I’m in a really good spot with him. I think we just keep building.” The getting-to-know-you process between Wentz and Jackson is being watched closely in this camp. The two seemed out of sync during a practice last weekend.
But Jackson provided some big plays during Monday’s practice.
“It’s still a work in progress,” Pederson said later that day. “He made some plays today. It’s great to see out on the practice field. They spent some time even after practice. That’s what it takes. You don’t build chemistry overnight.”
The offense could be imposing. Howard, a two-time 1,000-yard rusher for the Chicago Bears, and rookie Miles Sanders, a secondround draft choice from Penn State, take over as the primary runners. Promising youngster Dallas Goedert complements Zach Ertz, coming off a 116-catch season, at tight end.
“It’s gonna be fun this year to have Coach designing game plans to get everybody on the field, to get everyone touches, to spread the ball around,” Wentz said. “For me, it makes my job way easier to know that.”
Elliott holdout doesn’t worry Cowboys’ owner
The Associated Press
Ezekiel Elliott’s contract holdout doesn’t have Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones worried about a resolution or a timeline. At least that’s the message Jones is offering about trying to get a deal done with his missing two-time NFL rushing champion.
“When have I ever not done one?” Jones said after practice at training camp Thursday night. “So I don’t worry about that. You just keep plugging.”
Elliott has missed five camp practices while seeking a new contract despite having two years remaining on his current one.
The fourth overall choice in the 2016 draft, Elliott is due to make $3.9 million this season and $9.1 million in the fifth year, which was a team option since the former Ohio State star was a first-round pick.
Two days after seven-year veteran and former Elliott backup Alfred Morris returned to the Cowboys, Jones suggested he was prepared for a long holdout with the 2016 All-Pro who led the league in rushing as a rookie that year.
“I don’t see a point months into the season,” Jones said. “While we’re not there right now, there are some lines there. And they do bite when you don’t play. I don’t have a time that I’m looking at that is a concern.”
The Cowboys can fine Elliott $40,000 per day, and Elliott risks losing a season that would count toward free agency if he doesn’t report at least 30 days before the Sept. 8 season opener at home against the New York Giants.
Elliott isn’t the only offensive star for the Cowboys with a big payday coming.
Quarterback Dak Prescott, a rookie sensa-
tion alongside Elliott when Dallas won the NFC East three years ago, is in the final year of his first deal. The 2016 NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year has a base salary of just $2 million after going 32-16 as the starter in his first three seasons.
Receiver Amari Cooper, who joined the Cowboys in a midseason trade last year and sparked a sluggish offence, is by far the highest-paid of the three at the moment.
Cooper is at $13.9 million in the fifth year of the rookie deal he signed as the fourth
overall pick a year before Elliott.
“As far as doing something that would disrupt and shake the base of our plans for how to keep the talent we’ve got here and how to do that, I’m not about to shake that loose over that concern,” Jones said.
Elliott was seen in Frisco, Texas, where the Cowboys have their practice facility, on reporting day for players in California. He has since gone to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, where he spent time two years ago during his six-game suspension over domestic
violence allegations.
“I’m not even giving it a second thought as to his conditioning, which is part of his ability to step right in,” Jones said when asked about Cabo. “That’s not even an issue. I’m not concerned about him missing reps out here relative to getting his timing down.”
Elliott had another off-field issue this past off-season – a run-in with a security guard at a music festival in Las Vegas. The NFL cleared him in that incident about three weeks before camp.
“A lot of the negative stuff you hear about him in the news and all that, that’s not who he is,” said running backs coach Gary Brown, who said he has talked to Elliott since the team arrived in California. “He’s a really good guy, cares about his teammates and it’s killing him not to be here.”
Morris was the primary back during Elliott’s 2017 suspension, rushing for 430 yards and a touchdown in those six games. He had a career-high 1,613 yards rushing as a rookie with Washington in 2012.
“I’m definitely confident in myself that I can be a featured back,” said the 30-yearold Morris, who spent two seasons with the Cowboys after signing as a free agent a few weeks before they drafted Elliott. “I still have it. I feel better now than I did my rookie year.”
Darius Jackson, a sixth-round pick by the Cowboys the same year they drafted Elliott, is running with the first team in camp. Dallas drafted two more running backs this year in Tony Pollard (fourth round) and Mike Weber Jr. (seventh).
“You try to develop,” Jones said. “We have to do that in case Zeke might not be here period, without a contract issue. We all know that can happen.”
AP PHOTO
Dallas Cowboys running back Ezekiel Elliott smiles as he walks off the field after participating in drills at the team’s training facility in Frisco, Texas, on June 12.
AP PHOTO
Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Carson Wentz looks to pass during practice at the team’s training camp in Philadelphia on July 30.
Walking the UK’s deadliest path
William BOOTH
The Washington Post
The ramblers call it the deadliest walk in Britain, the “most perilous path,” and so for some it is as irresistible as a siren’s song.
A yellow sign with a stark exclamation point at the trailhead announces that this ancient “right of way” – first recorded in the 15th century – is “hazardous to pedestrians.”
We are skeptical.
We are city people.
But we looked up the records and read that 100 people have died here over the centuries.
Truth be told, the many warnings stir the bowels, especially the caution of “unexploded objects.”
The path crosses a still-active military test-firing zone, pelted with bombs since long-gone boys slaughtered each other in the trenches in the First World War.
On marine charts, the fabled, infamous Broomway trail is shown traversing a nebulous gray shoal, half land, half sea, not entirely here nor there.
One can only venture onto the path at low tide.
At high water, the Broomway disappears – abracadabra, thanks to the moon – to become the North Sea again.
The footpath is marked on the maps by a confident straight line just north of the mouth of the mighty River Thames and its estuary, running for six miles through a vast delta called the Maplin Sands.
The word “sand” doesn’t sound so bad? But skimming the travel essays and local histories, one discovers some of these sands are the quicksand ones, far from shore.
Then there is the equally disturbing caution of the “Black Grounds,” closer to land, described as a kind of jellied pudding of mud that swallows people and animals.
So, please, let’s avoid those spots.
One of the charts advised, “Seek Local Guidance,” and that is what we did.
We met Brian Dawson on a recent Sunday evening at the entrance. Dawson is 76 years old, with one new knee, awaiting a second.
He herded us half-dozen ramblers in rubber boots into a tight flock and, clucking about the tides, said, “Can’t wait. Let’s go. We’ll turn back if the wind picks up.”
So we began: out onto the wooden wattling of the Wakering Stairs, down a descending causeway built of sticks and stones that transitions the walker from the low marshlands of Foulness Island onto the Maplin Sands. Dawson was pleased with the first 100 yards.
“The walking’s good, the sand is hard, but please keep up with me,” he said. “Don’t go wandering...”
We clung to him like barnacles.
The path is called the Broomway, Dawson explained, because walking the Sand Bar at low tide was once the only way to get to Foulness Island without a boat, and farmers erected a line of rushes and reeds as signposts to help them get back and forth from market.
There are few brooms now.
“The path goes out to sea – and then? It just disappears,” said Jim Mackenzie, 66, a retired computer engineer and one of our group, grinning with the oddness of it. There is a metaphor there, he said.
Even at dead low tide, the sand was covered by six inches of briny, swirly water.
We navigated over long braids of eel grass, scuttling crabs, the odd blue mussels and small bait fish, trapped.
The sea floor was solid enough – but still a little needy. The muck tugged at our boots, then reluctantly let go, and our progress sounded like suction cups applied and released, over and over: pluck, pluck, pluck!
It was tiring and spooky and sublime.
Once away from land, gazing out, it was hard to tell where open water began and sand ended.
We could understand how a person without GPS or a compass could become disoriented if a fog rolled in.
We were guppies in a milky white fishbowl.
“I like something peculiar – and this is it,” said Jan Knight, 46, a retired military man turned teacher who came out for the hike.
In the far distance, toward the sea, we could see the wind turbines off the Essex coast, spinning like children’s pinwheels along the horizon.
There were also tankers, freighters and cruise ships plying the Oaze Deep and The Warp channels.
The ships would appear and then recede into the haze.
Toward land, on Foulness Island – today owned and guarded by Britain’s Defense Ministry – one could glimpse faint objects, towers and scaffolds. They looked like Cold War ruins. “All very hushhush,” said our guide Dawson. He pointed to one: “That’s an ejection-seat tester” – to test catapulting a pilot out of a failing military aircraft.
We sloshed on and arrived at a marker for Havengore Creek. It stood there like a battered cross at Calvary, salt-pocked and tilting.
There was no creek at low tide, but there would be again soon.
Dawson told us that as the tide returns and the North Sea races to cover the Broomway, the metabolism of the pathway quickly changes from benign to malevolent.
“The tide comes in faster than a man can run,” Dawson warned. “It comes in from all directions.”
In minutes, sea up to your calves, then thighs, then hips.
“Can you swim two miles against a current?” Dawson asked.
An account at a parliamentary hearing noted the deaths of three young men who ventured onto the sands to shoot waterfowl but were lost in the mist in January 1969.
“Exactly how they died will
probably never be known,” the record concludes. “Richard Pinch’s body was discovered on the outer edge of the sands in March. Andrew Bull’s body was found closer in to land in June, and Robin Perry’s body has never been found.”
On the day of our trek, though, with an eye on the tide charts, mobile phones tracking our positions, and Dawson guiding us along, it all felt fine.
Why would people want to do the Broomway?
There is no need anymore. There is a bridge to Foulness Island, built in 1922, maintained by the military.
A local farmer and historian,
Peter Carr, told us the islanders are tough and resilient, but their culture is fading away – the school, church, pub, post office are all shuttered. Homes are abandoned. About 150 people, mostly farmers and pensioners, remain.
“When people call, we tell them, ‘There’s nothing here!’ And I think that’s why they want to come,” Dawson said.
The esteemed British nature writer Robert Macfarlane hiked the Broomway for his 2013 book, The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot. He recalled “the walk out to the sea as a soft lunacy, a passage to beyond this world.” Macfarlane confessed it might
not be the most perilous journey, but it was “the unearthliest path I have ever walked.”
Paul Carter, a veteran hiker, wrote on a British walking website that the Broomway was “like nothing else I have experienced in this country.”
It is barely 40 miles from London.
At the halfway point of our three-hour hike, Asplins Head, we stopped and drank tea from our thermoses and nibbled biscuits before turning back. We were in the middle of nowhere. Our feet in the salt.
Britain is a nation of walkers, and this was a fine place to admire the view.
WASHINGTON POST PHOTO
Above, hikers led by Brian Dawson turn around at Asplins Head along the Broomway path in England. Right, a map locating the Broomway path.
Can chess be bad for your health?
Allan FALLOW Special To The Washington Post
The quest memoir is a balky beast. To tame it as well as Canadian journalist Sasha Chapin does in All the Wrong Moves, you’ll need an obscure but preferably universal target of obsession – chess mastery, in his case – a vague discontent with your present existence, a lover or two, a guru and the globe-trotting freedom to pursue your quixotic quarry. Leaven the chase with comic doses of self-doubt, then sift out any epiphanies at odyssey’s end.
“It’s tricky to explain the appeal of chess to someone who doesn’t play,” Chapin concedes, yet he makes all the right moves in doing just that. The game’s “infinite tapestry” first hooked him when he joined the Pawnishers, his high school team in Toronto: Chapin fell so hard for the 64 squares that “it felt like a possession – like a spirit had slipped a long finger up through my spine, making me a marionette, pausing only briefly to ask, ‘You weren’t doing anything with this, were you?’”
That fascination spawned an addiction – Chapin’s nearly ruinous (see subtitle) two-year plunge down the rabbit hole of online blitz and live tournament chess. Mesmerized by the game’s “ecstatically various” combinations, he “spent almost all of my money, neglected my loved ones, and accumulated a few infections” to prepare for the Los Angeles Open, where Chapin (rated 1,390) hoped to topple a player rated 2000.
Slow your roll there, board freak – didn’t the United States reach peak pawn when Bobby Fischer became world champ in 1972? Nope – chess commands the devotion of 600 million acolytes around the globe today, meaning one in 12 Earthlings play the game in some capacity. Chapin name-checks fellow fanatics Humphrey Bogart, Albert Einstein and ex-world champ Garry Kasparov, the latter exuding “a barely contained combination of rage and desire (at the board), as if he were an intemperate bull forced to sit and have brunch.” Earlier obsessives included a caliph of the Abbasid empire who refused to abandon a promising endgame when assassins burst into his throne room (he won the game but lost his head), and avant-garde French artists Marcel Duchamp, “a man whose chess problem was a lot like mine”: he spent most of his 1927 honeymoon at the local chess club in Nice. (Madame Duchamp retaliated by gluing every piece in his set to its board, then divorcing Marcel six months later – chuckmate.) Bullied and ostracized as a child – “nobody liked me,” the author confesses, and “they were probably right not to” – Chapin finds a measure of peace by pushing 16 miniature warriors around a blackand-white battlefield: “When I played chess, I felt, like, different... None of my superficial attributes, which I so hated, translated onto the board. When I was checkmating someone, I shrank in importance compared to the pieces before me.” It’s chess hall as transporter room, and the oversharing wins us over.
A loss to his older brother triggers Chapin’s first renunciation of the game. He attends university, then falls in love with a stripper named Courtney, whose sharp smile “you could easily imagine encircling the necks of her enemies.”
Among the latter is an ex-boyfriend who appears to be “monitoring” (Canadian for “stalking”) the new couple. So the lovebirds share a hit of psilocybin –dropping ‘shrooms is a standard Chapin dating move – and decamp to Bangkok. There the relationship dissolves (shocker!) and Chapin lets himself get sucked back into the chess vortex, entering the Bangkok Open. Slaughter ensues: “I played worse than I ever had,” he confesses. “I began laughing a crazy, redfaced laugh. A tournament official threatened to eject me if I didn’t quiet down.”
On a reporting trip to Kathmandu, Chapin wanders down “an arbitrary lane” and gets trounced in 20 moves by a chess hustler named Tenjing. Back home in Toronto he uses the Queen’s Gambit Declined to beat a tournament foe, unleashing manic glee: “Diamonds filled the air, I was sure, which I could pluck out at any time.”
But then comes a humiliating defeat at the hands of a “weird, weird kid” – a 10-year-old with the unnerving habit of getting up between moves and rubbing a small patch of the wall for 30 seconds or so.
In the end Chapin ruins precisely nothing, unless you count a couple of botched writing assignments –one of which leads to love with his magazine editor, an empath named Katherine. (Chapin’s idea of pillow talk: “I concluded that spending time without Katherine was objectively nonsensical.”)
Realizing that a chess nut’s best move is simply not to make that fateful first one, he finds solace in the example of fellow melancholic Paul Morphy, who torched the chess world for two years in the 1850s before abandoning the game for good: “The ability to play chess is the sign of a gentleman,” Morphy once said. “The ability to play chess well is the sign of a wasted life.”
HANDOUT
The cover of Sasha Chapin’s memoir, All The Wrong Moves.
Beer brings sisters together
Wendy SMITH Special To The Washington Post
J. Ryan Stradal’s engaging debut, Kitchens of the Great Midwest, portrayed heartland foods both traditional and trendy with a knowledgeable eye and a warm heart. He turns to the art and commerce of beer in his second novel, which like its predecessor deftly propels a family drama through a savvy account of changing tastes in a changing culture.
In The Lager Queen of Minnesota, the family drama concerns two sisters, Edith and Helen, estranged since their father died and left the family farm to Helen in 1967. We meet Edith first, in 2003, and she remains convinced at age 64 that her younger sister finagled this injustice: “Helen had to have manipulated him into changing his will; there was no other explanation.” Her bitterness is uncharacteristic; Edith strives to be as sweet as the pies she bakes at the nursing home where she’s worked for 37 years. Her idea of a salary negotiation is to tell her boss that she’s looking for a second job to make ends meet, then gratefully accept his offer to raise her pay 50 cents an hour. Even after a local paper rates her pies “third-best in Minnesota” and an upscale bakery approaches her, Edith hesitates; in her mind, satisfying a personal ambition makes her too much like Helen. But she has a husband with early-onset Alzheimer’s to support, and the first chapter closes with Edith nervously deciding to pursue her opportunity. Rolling the narrative back to 1959 and shifting to Helen’s point of view, Stradal draws a sharp contrast. Helen is a rule-breaker; she’s just had her first taste of beer at 15, and she wants another one almost as much as she wants to get out of her Minnesota hometown. Vignettes from her high school years show that Helen can be manipulative, but they also make palpable her desperation for wider horizons and her frustration that no one around her shares her dreams.
“These kids were her best friends,” she thinks during one aimless night, “and they made her feel like the loneliest girl in the universe.” At Macalester College, she sets her sights on Orval Blotz, whose desire to revive his family’s brewery business fits nicely with her plans to make beer and get rich. Orval has the brewing equipment but no money; they will have to raise that themselves. Helen is close to her father, and this section closes with her forming the germ of the idea that will lead to the sisters’ estrangement.
Stradal skillfully develops his story in a nonlinear fashion, moving forward from 2003 in chapters seen through the eyes of Edith and her granddaughter Diana, but interspersing episodes from Helen’s development of Blotz Special Light beer in the 1970s, through its huge success then decline in the early 2000s after craft beers with more flavor and prestige enter the market. It’s a shrewd strategy. Providing Helen’s perspective humanizes her without whitewashing her behavior, and as the years go by, we see the emotional price she has paid for “only ever do(ing) what’s good for Helen.” Edith, by contrast, makes friends wherever she goes, as she struggles to support herself and Diana after the girl’s parents are killed in a car crash. Her granddaughter is a welcome third protagonist, blending Helen’s tough-minded outlook on life and Edith’s gift for connecting with others.
Diana is smart and angry about the hard knocks that life keeps dealing her hard-working grandmother. “Do you know what I have to do now, just to help me and my grandma get by?” she asks a nice but clueless classmate who wonders why someone with a perfect PSAT score isn’t planning to go to college. She doesn’t tell him, because what she’s doing is stealing expensive tools from rich people’s garages and selling them online, so she can help pay the bills Edith’s two part-time jobs and her after-school gig at a coffee shop never quite cover. “Two jobs. That’s a decent living isn’t it?” says a man who catches her lifting his tools. “I can see how it would comfort you to believe that,” she shoots back.
Intrigued by her feistiness, Frank Schabert decides that instead of turning Diana in, he’ll hire her as a janitor at his brewery. It’s a blatant setup for Diana to eventually make beer herself, with all the concomitant possibilities for resolution of the family drama, but this authorial license is forgivable, because the novel is so rich and satisfying. Characterizations are pleasingly three-dimensional. Edith, for example, is by no means a simpering goody-two-shoes; she is quite stubborn and often judgmental, though too well-mannered to let anyone see it. There’s a good deal of tart humor, including a customer from hell at Diana’s brand-new brewery and a portrait of craft beer nerds overly eager to share their knowledge: “A few of them were even interesting, briefly.” The zingers don’t disguise Stradal’s fundamentally optimistic view of human nature, a belief that people can change and virtue can be rewarded, at least sometimes. This generous spirit makes The Lager Queen of Minnesota a pleasure to read and the perfect pickme-up on a summer day.
HANDOUT IMAGE
The cover of J. Ryan Stradal’s new novel, The Lager Queen of Minnesota.
Pet furniture options run wild
Jura KONCIUS
The Washington Post
Pet furniture has come a long way from teal carpeted cat towers and lumpy plaid dog beds.
For discerning pet owners who treat their cats and dogs like family – in some cases better than family – designers are creating stylish, even glamorous, furniture. Witness the new $5,000 (all prices in US dollars) Crystal Clear Lotus Cat Tower by the Refined Feline, with three platforms for lounging and a hideaway cubby at the bottom lined in white faux fur. (You can see one at the trendy Los Angeles cat cafe Crumbs & Whiskers.) And now you and Buddy can catnap or watch DOGTV on matching tufted Chesterfield-style Wayfair
Archie & Oscar sofas; his is a $399 miniaturized version of yours in faux-leather scaled with similar nailhead trim and turned legs.
None of these products, however, guarantee that they will keep their paws off your favorite club chair.
Over the past five years, pet furniture has been growing in sophistication and durability, says Phil Cooper, a pet industry expert with more than 50 years in the business. This trend has blossomed with the development of regional pet stores and local pet boutiques, which tend to offer more personalized service than big-box stores, plus the rise of fancy pet product websites, he says. An army of pet experts, behaviorists and designers is looking for ways to make dogs and cats sleep and play more comfortably, stylishly and safely.
“The choices available to pet owners today did not exist even a few years ago,” says Steve King, chief executive of the American Pet Products Association.
Jackson Cunningham, founder of Tuft + Paw, just got back from Italy, where he was sourcing partners to develop designer cat furniture. His three-year-old company has appealed to fussy feline owners with sleek gray scratching towers and retro birch litter box furniture.
“Making pet furniture is very interesting because you have a customer who is human and the user who is a pet. You have to make sure it works for the user, but the decision-maker is human,” Cunningham says. “We want to make pieces that owners take joy in seeing their cats use.”
So what’s sparking joy these days for whippets and Maine coons? Here are some trends you’ll see on Instagram and pet blogs.
Space-savers
Space is a problem for pet owners in urban areas. Ikea’s Scandinavian-style clean lines and affordable prices are popular with a younger crowd that’s often living in smaller apartments. So in 2017, with the introduction of its Lurvig line of furnishings for pets, it made sure the pieces fit in with what was already in their collection.
For example, the Lurvig cat house ($10.99) is a cozy cube fitted with a cushion (with a removable washable cover) inside that slides perfectly into Ikea’s Kallax shelf storage unit. No room for a separate dog bed for your schnauzer? Try the Abigail Murphy Classic Dog Bed by New Age Pet. The bed (available in espresso and antique white) folds up when not in use and has a memory-foam mattress with a machine-washable cover.
Josh Feinkind, president of RefinedKind Pet Products, whose brands include Refined Feline, is constantly looking for ways to accommodate pets in small spaces.
“We New Yorkers don’t have floor space, but we have wall space. Cats want to climb and perch, so we make lots of interesting shelves,” he says.
When Kristi Pond of Tacoma, Washington, remodeled her house, she wanted to keep the furniture simple and clean, but she also wanted a place in her living room for Oliver, her one-year-old Bengal cat, to hang out.
“He jumps on everything, so I wanted something up high, but I didn’t want one of those tacky
WASHINGTON POST/HANDOUT IMAGES
For the pet who deserves nothing but the best, try Refined Feline’s Crystal Clear Lotus Cat Tower, above, which retails for $5,000 US or the Archie & Oscar faux leather Cornelia Dog Sofa, below, which sells for $399.99 US.
shelf units that looks like it belongs in a cat room,” Pond says. She bought Refined Feline’s Lotus Branch Cat Shelf ($149.99) lined in white faux fur. “It looks very classy,” she says.”When Oliver is on it, it looks like a piece of art.”
Mini human furniture
Last year, Wayfair launched the Archie & Oscar line of pet furnishings with nearly 1,000 pieces, including a gray rattan domed cat lounger and a white Chippendalestyle dog gate made of chew-re-
Similarly, the humans that run the Casper mattress brand were intrigued that so many of their customers posted social media photos not of themselves but their dogs luxuriating on their pressurerelieving memory-foam mattresses. “We decided to launch a pet-friendly version of our people mattress, with little tweaks that are dog-specific,” says Jeff Chapin, Casper’s co-founder and chief of product. They interviewed dog owners, pet retailers and dog psychologists to come up with the best design details. Two years ago, they introduced a specially contoured dog bed available in three sizes and colours ($125-$225) with a washable outer cover made to shed fur and withstand bites and scratches.
Double-duty furniture
Owners like furniture that serves both them and the pet, King says. At New Age Pet, the Sundown Nightstand Pet Bed, available in espresso, antique white and Nantucket gray, lets your dog sleep beside you on his own little cushion, and you can keep your bedside lamp on the same piece of furniture. Joss & Main’s 60-inch Henrietta Cat Tree provides a jumping area and hideaway for your cat and a faux tree for your living room.
Some companies are creating discreet accent furniture that hides the lowly litter box. The Rifiuti by Tuft + Paw ($599) is made of birch plywood with horizontal stripes and tapered legs; the company website says it references “mid-century modern furniture and classic retro radio designs.” Where to put all your pet’s accessories? Joss & Main’s Lula Entryway Dog Bed ($394.99) is a stylish multitasking piece of wood veneer furniture with a dog bed and hooks to hang leashes plus your dog’s raincoat and yours. The pullout storage drawer can be filled with dog toys or your gloves and scarves.
High design
It used to be that cat poles, condos and towers came only in a few colours, “and none of them matched your decor,” Cooper says. Now there are many more choices. “Cats, like dogs, have now been elevated to child status,” he says. And they are finicky about where they like to hang out. (He’s got two at home, Pumpkin and Tigger.)
Walmart’s new pet collection from Drew Barrymore’s Flower Home includes a $79.99 brown wicker cat bed with whisker detailing that will accommodate “tiny kittens to full-grown cats up to 40 pounds.”
And for those turned off by ugly wire crates in the kitchen, B&B Kustom Kennels offers sophisticated solid wood kennels in seven finishes (from $749) in a variety of sizes and colors to fit a Pekingese or a Great Dane.
New York interior designer Alex Papachristidis often designs custom pet beds in chic cottons and florals for clients. (Would your poodle prefer chinoiserie or Hollywood Regency?)
“The fabrics I use are not really washable; they are decorative. But you can spot-clean them with Ivory soap and water,” he says. He told Susanna Salk, for her 2017 book At Home with Dogs and Their Designers, that he often looks for antique children’s chairs or vintage stair steps to use as step stools for clients with pets – as well as for his own dog Teddy, a 16-year-old Yorkie.
“Little dogs love to jump around, but you have to be so careful about their backs,” Papachristidis says.
“This can give them a leg up.”
Salk is working on another book for Rizzoli due out in 2020 about designers and dogs in the English countryside.
sistant wood. “We conceptualized a lot of the product to look like human furniture,” Wayfair spokeswoman Julie Cassetina says. “Our pets have tested our sofas and armchairs, and we know they enjoy them, so we scaled them down to size.”
It’s a dog’s life both here and across the pond.
“The truth is, designers love their dogs so much, they let them on all their furniture. They don’t worry about the fabrics,” Salk says. “Their pets are a part of the family, and that’s what makes a room feel like home.”
John Frederick Norman April 22, 1940July 28, 2019.
It is with sadness that our family shares the passing of John Norman. He had a full and happy life that began in Langley Prairie, BC and other areas of the Fraser Valley. While attending Langley High School he met his life’s partner, Ellen. Together they completed their university training and as young teachers headed to Prince George where they built their careers and a life with their three daughters. John was an active athlete, coach, volunteer, and fan in a wide variety of sports (Go Cougars Go!). He enjoyed tennis, basketball and baseball in his younger years and curling and golf later on. John began his career as a Physical Education teacher and later became a respected principal of many elementary schools around Prince George. He felt strongly about ensuring that what was best for kids was at the forefront of his teaching and he had great admiration for teachers that made a difference for students. John was passionate about building and contributing to the community. He was generous with his time in supporting his belief that a strong community needs a balance of sports, arts, culture, and learning. Over the years he volunteered for the arts, biathlon events, golf tournaments, fundraising for the Two Rivers Art Gallery, and archiving Prince George’s educational history. After retirement John embraced new challenges in his work for Elections BC. During his free time John was often found in the outdoors, he particularly enjoyed canoeing, fishing and spending time at the family cabin. Most of all, he loved having his family around him and will be remembered for his fondness of family dinners and strong values. He is survived by his wife of 58 years, Ellen Norman; daughters: Heather (Ed) Tandy, Kathy (Paul) Norman, and Robin (Glenn) Norman; grandchildren: Megan (Dominik), Stephanie (Luke), James (Robin), and Erin (Ben); greatgrandchildren: Predo and George. He will be greatly missed by his sister, Mary Hochglaube. He also leaves behind many extended family members and friends. A celebration of his life will take place on Sunday, August 25th at 2pm at the Prince George Golf and Curling Club. In lieu of flowers, donations to Prince George Hospice Society, Nové Voce Choir, or the UNBC Nordic Sport Leadership Award would be appreciated. Links for these organizations can be found at: https://inmemoryofjohn.wixsite.com/2019
Dimitrios (Jimmy) Vardacostas Prince George 02/19/1935 - 07/26/2019
Jimmy passed away peacefully among family at Simon Fraser Lodge on July 26, 2019. Jimmy was born in Avlonari, Greece on February 19, 1935 to Vasilis and Chrisavyi (Gounaris) Vardacostas. Jimmy is survived by his wife Kathy, children Bill, Christos (Michelle) and Vivian, brother Jean, grandchildren Emma, Ekaterina, Mia, and Ashan. Jimmy is predeceased by his sister Stavroula. The family would like to acknowledge and thank all the staff at Simon Fraser Lodge, for the excellent care given over the past year and a half. Service will be held at the Greek Orthodox Church (5th and Tabor) at 10:30 am on Saturday August 3rd Followed by a celebration of life gathering at the Bon Voyage (4366 Highway 16 West). In
Bradley,JohnD.S.
May18,1952-July18,2019
Johnpassedawaypeacefullyattheageof67.John issurvivedbyhisdaughter,Sarah(Mike);hisson, Justin(Jezelle);histhreegrandchildren,Lily,Logan, andLuca;hissister,Susan;histwonieces;andfour great-nieces.Hewaspredeceasedbyhisparents, AlfredandJoan.
ManythankstothestaffatCarewestSarceewhere Johnspenthisfinalmonths.
Asmallfamilycelebrationoflifewillbeheldatalater date.
Condolencesmaybeexpressedat: www.countryhillscrematorium.ca
responsibleadults(19plus)toworkatKoolCatsKid Care.Thispositionisforbeforeandafterschool, plusoursummerprogram.Experienceinthechild carefield,plusresponsibleadultcourseorECE,and currentchildcareFirstAidarerequired.Benefits offeredaswell.Emailresumestokoolcats@telus.net ormailto: KoolCatsKidCare,Box2662, PrinceGeorge,BC,V2N4T5 Thosecandidatesshortlisted willbecontacted. 6989GladstoneDrive PrinceGeorge,BCV2N3N7 koolcats@telus.net
Erna Harris (nee Kittler) 1928 - 2019
“Mom was our complicated, poetic, angel of ingenuity and perpetuity; Of endurance and giving and hard country living; Tough as nails, with a kitten - soft heart; Mom played the practical part of “the knot”
Erna was born in Hannah Alberta and grew up with many brothers and sisters. She met William Harris after he came back from the war they married and started on an adventure to a parcel of VLA land located on a picturesque tree lined dirt road in Salmon Valley just north of Prince George. They raised their family there and valued the small community. Erna was widowed in ‘82, but continued on the property with much energy until being struck by cancer recently. She passed gently away on June 11, after a short time spent at hospice in Prince George. Erna is extremely missed by her surviving family and friends. A celebration of Erna ‘s life will be held in the Valley at a later date.
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Full Time and Temporary Routes Available. Contact for Details 250-562-3301 or rss@pgcitizen.ca
How one city does downtown public toilets
The Associated Press
The sidewalks surrounding Ahmed Al Barak’s corner market in one of San Francisco’s roughest neighbourhoods are filled with cardboard, used syringes and homeless people who have nowhere safe to go at night.
But Al Barak says it’s an improvement from a year ago, before the city posted a portable toilet across the street from his business in the city’s Tenderloin district.
He no longer regularly sees people relieve themselves in broad daylight, and he does not see as much feces and urine on the streets. In his opinion, it’s the one bright spot in a city where taxes are too high.
“We used to have a disaster here. I used to call the city all the time to come and clean, because they don’t know where to go,” he said, recalling one woman in particular who shrugged at him in a “what can you do?” gesture as she squatted to pee.
San Francisco started its “Pit Stop” program in July 2014 with public toilets in the city’s homeless-heavy Tenderloin, after children complained of dodging human waste on their way to school. Today, the staffed bathrooms have grown from three to 25 locations, and the program has expanded to Los Angeles. In May, the toilets in San Francisco recorded nearly 50,000 flushes, all logged by attendants.
The condition of San Francisco’s streets has been a source of embarrassment to city leaders, and cleaning up is not cheap. The city received nearly 27,000 requests for feces removal in the most recent fiscal year, although not all are human.
Mayor London Breed last year announced the formation of a special six-person “poop patrol” team where each cleaner earns more than $70,000 a year.
Advocates say steam cleaning requests have dropped in areas surrounding some of the public toilets. The mayor signed a budget Thursday that includes money for seven new Pit Stop bathrooms for a city where a one-night count of homeless people grew 17 per cent in the past two years. The toilets each cost an average of $200,000 a year to operate, with most of
the money going to staffing and overhead.
Some of the bathrooms are permanent fixtures, while others are portables with two toilets that are trucked in and out. The stops have receptacles for used syringes and dog waste. Attendants who are paid the city’s minimum wage of $16 an hour check after every use and knock on doors to make sure people are not doing drugs or other illicit activity. The bathrooms must shine or they do not open. The staffing is what makes a toilet a Pit Stop, and the work is usually done by men coming out of prison after decades behind bars.
The “practitioners” stand guard at some of society’s bleakest intersections of poverty, addiction and mental illness, says Lena Miller, founder of non-profit Hunters Point Family and its spinoff, Urban Alchemy, which staffs the Pit Stops in San Francisco and Los Angeles.
They prevent overdoses, break up fights and greet regulars, she says.
“Really what we’re doing is we’re creating this space where people know that they can walk into it, and it’s going to smell good. It’s going to look good,” Miller said. “There won’t be trash everywhere, and they’re safe. And I think that makes all the difference in the world.”
Nelson Butler was a 19-year-old Los Angeles gangster when he went to prison for 30 years for killing a person. Butler was released last year from San Quentin State Prison, scared and apprehensive and in need of a job. He went to work at a Pit Stop.
Technically, his job was to prevent drug use in the bathrooms and make sure homeless people didn’t set up camp.
“The reality is I’m a security guard. I was a babysitter, I was
a social worker, I was a counsellor. I did a lot of things that was not necessarily in the scope of my job description, but this is my community,” Butler said. “So my thought was, if I saw somebody that needed help, that’s why I’m there - to help.”
Homelessness has surged in California, and cities are struggling to open more bathrooms. Officials are considering adding port-apotties and special loos designed by the city of Portland, Oregon, and expanding hours of restrooms in government buildings.
Sacramento, which is in a county where a one-night count of the homeless increased 19 per cent in two years, tried a Pit Stop but stopped after a few months because it cost too much.
Los Angeles Council member Mike Bonin initially thought the stops too pricey, but he now understands that having someone
Canada maintains trade surplus
The Canadian Press
Canada’s trade surplus narrowed in June to $136 million, as both exports and imports dropped, largely due to trade decreases in crude oil, aircraft and other transportation equipment and parts, Statistics Canada said Friday.
June’s surplus narrowed from a revised $556 million in May, but was much higher than the $300 million trade deficit analysts had expected, according to financial services firm Refinitiv.
The positive trade balance for Canada, combined with a “sturdy” gross domestic product report of 0.2 per cent for May, suggests more upside for the Canadian economy, noted Robert Kavcic, senior economist at BMO. He projects secondquarter economic growth of three per cent.
“There’s no debate that Canadian real GDP roared back in Q2... with trade carrying softer performances for consumer spending, residential construction and business investment,” he said.
The federal agency’s international merchandise trade report said exports fell 5.1 per cent to $50.3 billion, offsetting a strong gain in May amid a 3.6 per cent drop in export prices.
Exports of crude oil dropped 8.6 per cent, the first monthly decrease this year, as crude oil export prices fell 13.5 per cent even as volumes rose 5.6 per cent. However, the data collection agency noted that crude export levels are still much higher than the lows reported in December 2018, largely due to higher prices.
Aircraft exports, meanwhile, were down 40.8 per cent, mainly on lower shipments of commercial aircraft to the United States. Exports of boats and other transportation fell by more than half in
June, largely due to a decline in exports to Saudi Arabia.
Imports were down 4.3 per cent to $50.2 billion, the lowest level since November 2018, with declines also focused in the aircraft and energy sectors.
June marked the first full month following the end of U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum that had been in place since mid-2018. Exports of steel products to the U.S. that had been subject to the tariffs increased 15.8 per cent in June, while exports of aluminum products that were previously tariffed rose 47.2 per cent, Statistics Canada said.
Statistics Canada noted that Canada’s trade surplus narrowed slightly to $5.7 billion from $5.9 billion in May, which was the highest level since 2008, as the loonie gained strength compared to the month before. A strong loonie makes Canadian goods more expensive for foreign buyers.
US trade deficit falls
The U.S. trade deficit shrunk slightly in June, as did the politically sensitive trade deficit with China, the principal target of President Donald Trump’s tariffs.
The gap between the goods and services the U.S. buys and what it sells abroad fell 0.3 per cent to $55.2 billion in June from May, the Commerce Department said Friday. Exports declined 2.1 per cent to $206.3 billion on declines in shipments of autos, computers, crude oil and consumer products. Imports also fell, 1.7 per cent to $261.5 billion, on declines in crude oil and petroleum products. On Thursday, Trump escalated trade hostilities again, announcing the U.S. will apply a new tariff of 10 per cent on about $300 billion worth of products from China beginning Sept. 1. China on
Friday threatened retaliation if those tariffs are enacted.
The deficit in the trade of goods with China fell 0.8 per cent to $30 billion.
The U.S. has already applied tariffs of 25 per cent on $250 billion worth of goods from China. China retaliated with tariffs on $110 billion in American goods, including agricultural products, in a direct shot at Trump supporters in the U.S. farm belt.
Trump has sought to reduce America’s persistent trade imbalance, which he sees as a sign of economic weakness and the result of bad trade agreements crafted by previous U.S. negotiators. He has slapped tariffs on foreign steel, aluminum, dishwashers, solar panels and on thousands of Chinese goods. He also has renegotiated a trade pact with Canada and Mexico that awaits approval by Congress. The June trade deficit with Mexico was $9.9 billion, the highest on record.
Earlier this week, Trump’s trade negotiators completed a 12th round of talks with China aimed at pressuring Beijing to curb its aggressive push to challenge American technological dominance. That includes curtailing cyber theft and forcing foreign companies to hand over proprietary tech information. More talks are planned in September.
Economists say the trade gap is the product of economic factors that don’t respond much to changes in trade policy: Americans buy more than they produce, and imports fill the gap.
A strong U.S. dollar has also put American exporters at a price disadvantage overseas. On Wednesday, the Federal Reserve cut its key interest rate for the first time in a decade, partly to counter the impact of Trump’s trade wars.
to watch over the bathrooms has its upsides. Los Angeles saw a 16 per cent increase over a year in its one-night count of homeless, to 36,000.
“I heard from everyone, from people affiliated with law enforcement, from people who live in the neighbourhood, from homeless advocates, from people who are homeless themselves, that it’s important to have a staff to make sure they stay clean and free of destruction or abuse,” he said. Down the street from Ahmed Al Barak’s corner market is Aref Elgaali’s Z Zoul, a Sudanese cafe. The public bathroom by his eatery has helped, he says, but it closes too early, and there should be many more of the toilets.
“Why not to have in this corner one and that corner one and the other corner one? That will solve a lot of problems for the people here in San Francisco,” he said.
AP PHOTO
An attendant exits a Pit Stop public toilet Thursday on Sixth Street in San Francisco.
Sanctuary comes with huge fines
The Associated Press
Devotional candles to St. Jude, the Holy Trinity and the Virgin of Guadalupe sit on a bookshelf by the door of a classroom in a United Methodist church. A sewing machine is a few feet away between a bed and a set of wicker furniture. In a corner, an electric skillet warming chicken thighs acts as a kitchen.
It is from these makeshift quarters that Maria Chavalan-Sut, an indigenous woman from Guatemala, has spent 10 months staving off a deportation order to a country that she says has scarred her life with violence, trauma and discrimination. Her fight for asylum could now cost her at least $214,132.
Chavalan-Sut is among a number of immigrants taking sanctuary at houses of worship who have received letters from immigration authorities threatening them with huge fines under the latest move by the Trump administration. It’s unclear how many immigrants have been targeted, but Church World Service, an organization that supports refugees and immigrants, is aware of at least six who’ve received letters.
“Where am I going to get (money) from?
I don’t know,” said Chavalan-Sut, who worked for a while at a restaurant after arriving in Virginia more than two years ago but hasn’t been able to hold a job since seeking sanctuary. “God still has me with my hands to work, and they’re the only thing I have. If God thinks that with my hands I can pay that, give me a job.”
Chavalan-Sut began living at Wesley Memorial United Methodist Church on Sept. 30, the day she was told to report to a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office for deportation. She crossed the border into the U.S. and was detained in November 2016 near Laredo, Texas, after a weekslong journey that started in Guatemala’s capital. She said her decision to emigrate and leave her four children behind came after her house was set ablaze.
Chavalan-Sut, 44, doesn’t know who set the fire while she, her children and their father were asleep inside. But she believes it was linked to a dispute over land rights because she is an indigenous woman, her immigration attorney, Alina Kilpatrick, said.
Chavalan-Sut said an area fire official declined to investigate because there were no fatalities.
Immigrants have sought relief from deportation at houses of worship because immigration officials consider them “sensitive locations” in which enforcement action is generally avoided. Forty-five people currently live in sanctuary at churches across the U.S., up from three in 2015, according to Church World Service.
Among them are Honduras native Abbie Arevalo-Herrera and Edith Espinal-Moreno, of Mexico. Arevalo-Herrera took sanctuary at the First Unitarian Universalist Church in Richmond, Virginia, in June 2018, while Espinal-Moreno has been living at the Columbus Mennonite Church in Columbus, Ohio, since October 2017.
Like Chavalan-Sut, both women received notices of fines. The three letters were signed June 25. Arevalo-Herrera’s fine is for $295,630, and Espinal-Moreno’s was set at $497,777.
Attorneys, activists and faith leaders have decried the fines. Krish O’Mara Vignarajah,
president and CEO of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, characterized them as a “scare tactic.”
“So long as ICE continues to respect its own policy of avoiding sensitive locations like churches, which may not be a given, the agency will have to continue to resort to psychological games to coerce families out of their legal protections,” she said.
Wesley Memorial joined the sanctuary movement after an immigrant rights activist contacted the Rev. Isaac Collins asking for help. The church’s 31-year-old pastor said that while he has heard from other pastors who have expressed concern over mixing religion and politics, for him making Wesley Memorial a sanctuary was not a political move: It was a decision based on Christian ethics.
“When you start at, ‘Maria is a human being who’s in trouble and needs a place of safety,’ OK, (that’s) very firmly in the realm of ideas in Christianity about hospitality and human rights and loving our neighbours,” he said. “The church is a space that can provide that safety and that neutral space while she figures out due process. ... It doesn’t get political until your political party is the one saying ‘Actually, Maria doesn’t deserve all these things.”’
Since seeking sanctuary, Chavalan-Sut has been able to talk to her children, now ages 7, 11, 14 and 21, for an hour a day, making sure the youngest ones do their homework. The oldest is now pursuing a degree in civil engineering. She left them all under the care of a family in Guatemala City. She weeps thinking about them.
The devout Catholic participates in
This is my father’s world
“This is my Father’s world, and to my listening ear, all nature sings and round me rings the music of the spheres.” It began with walking our daughter’s dog in the wilderness near our home, the profusion of wild flowers in their glory – daisies, buttercups, fireweed, paint brush – then a drive to Vancouver with spectacular scenery of forest lands, rolling grasslands of the Cariboo, desert interspersed with irrigated hay fields near Cache Creek. The rugged Fraser Canyon opened up to the lush plains of the Fraser Valley, bordered by mountain ranges to the north and Mt. Baker to the south. Then we rode the ferry to Vic-
CLERGY COMMENT
ALAN BROMLEY COLLEGE HEIGHTS BAPTIST CHURCH
toria for two wonderful weeks on the Saanich peninsula at my brother’s seaside home. The view was spectacular with constant activity on the water – the grandfather bearded great blue heron perched in the tree or fishing along the shore, a pair of otters at play or seals poking their heads up.
Human activity included sailboats, kayaks, paddle boards, swimmers, water skiers, fishermen
Sunday services at Wesley Memorial with the help of a Spanish translator. She prays daily, and tends to a garden of flowers, herbs and vegetables. She sews headbands and bags using fabric that a son mailed from Guatemala. She can’t sell the items, but she accepts donations in exchange. She occasionally cooks tamales and other traditional foods at the church’s large kitchen.
At least one volunteer guards the church property around the clock. People take turns buying her groceries. Some are helping her learn English. All volunteers have been instructed to ask for a signed warrant should immigration officers show up.
The church has also provided ChavalanSut with a mental health therapist. The fire at her home is only one of many traumatic events she says she has experienced for being Kaqchikel, an indigenous Mayan group. As a seven-year-old living in Guatemala’s highlands during the country’s 1960-1996 civil war, she saw her cousins buried alive. Indigenous communities disproportionally suffered during the 36-year conflict. Rachel Nolan, an assistant professor at Boston University whose research includes Central American civil wars, said the Kaqchikel experienced enormous discrimination and violence. While the peace accords signed in 1996 ended large-scale massacres for the most part, she said, indigenous people continue to face lower-levels of violence, including land dispossession.
Carissa Cutrell, a spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said a judge ordered Chavalan-Sut to be deported after she failed to appear for an immigration hearing in July 2017. Kilpat-
checking crab traps, and coast guard ships on patrol.
Everywhere we were surrounded by beauty, reminding me of the psalmist’s words: “O Lord by God, you are very great; you are clothed with splendor and majesty... How many are your works, O Lord! In wisdom you made them all; the earth is full of your creatures.”
Beacon Hill Park displayed a gorgeous profusion of flowerbeds and rose gardens with peacocks strutting by, and rugged garry oaks, arbutus and wild grasses closer to the coastline. Butchart Gardens wowed us with a spectacular display of flowers and shrubs in an old limestone quarry that the Butchart family had transformed it
rick, the immigration attorney, said that was because the notice to appear did not have a date and time, something immigrant rights activists say is common.
Chavalan-Sut’s motion to reopen her case was denied in July 2018. An appeal filed in December is pending in the Board of Immigration Appeals.
Cutrell said the Immigration and Nationality Act allows the agency to impose civil fines on individuals “who have been ordered removed or granted voluntary departure and fail to depart the United States.” The fines are calculated at $799 a day, from the date the immigrant took sanctuary to avoid removal.
Immigrants like Chavalan-Sut who have received fine notices have 30 days to dispute them in writing or request an interview to respond, which would mean risking leaving their sanctuaries. It’s unclear whether any of the immigrants, including ChavalanSut, have filed paperwork to fight the fines. For now, Chavalan-Sut has turned to self-help books to try to cope. The Spanish versions of the New York Times bestseller Rising Strong by Brene Brown and bilingual evangelist’s Jason Frenn’s Power to Persuade are among the stack of books in her room. In sanctuary, she said, she has begun to heal.
“So, I say, I’m just an example of the decisions that governments make,” she said. “They do not measure the damage that they are making. They are the ones who plant the seeds, and then many people leave their countries... Why do they leave their country? Because they cannot stand it anymore.”
into an amazing wonderland.
We explored the wild beauty of the coast – hiking on trails and wandering along the shoreline, overturning rocks on the tide flat with our granddaughters to find crabs; enjoying a picnic lunch at windy French Beach; exploring the “potholes” along the Sooke River and climbing among the giant cedars at Avatar Grove near Port Renfrew.
We followed a pod of orcas with their new baby calf travelling through Active Pass and a pair of humpback whales. The Dominion Astrophysical Observatory focused our eyes on the universe around us and displays marking the 50th anniversary of the Apollo moon land-
ing where Neil Armstrong left a copy of Psalm 8:“O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!... When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him?” The amazing fact is that the God who created this majestic universe also cares for us. Jesus taught us that God of creation is a father who cares for the flowers and tiny creatures. The beauty that surrounds us reminds us of an awesome, almighty Creator who we can call “Father.”
Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. What a privilege to be His child!
AP PHOTO
Maria Chavalan-Sut shows the garden she tends at Wesley Memorial United Methodist Church in Charlottesville, Va.