Prince George Citizen August 17, 2019

Hero

Christine HINZMANN Citizen staff chinzmann@pgcitizen.ca

About four years ago she was in Honduras helping a non-profit. She saw too much of what goes on in the streets not to take action.

When Alyse Willmann got back to Prince George after a year of helping, she knew she could do the same for those in need in Prince George.

“When you come back home you really just want to continue by helping in your own community,” Willmann said.

“Helping people has been my passion.” She started by taking to the downtown streets with her friends, handing out hot chocolate, coffee, gloves and toques. Then she and her church community, family and friends filled stockings and the Christmas on the Streets project has grown to handing out just a few stockings the first year, 50 the next year and last Christmas they handed out 75 stockings.

Now she’d like to focus on the children living in the VLA.

“I wanted to do something bigger but I didn’t know where to start,” Willmann said.

After getting a little direction from community members, Willmann and her friends, Emily and Nolan Hanson, have created the Help a Super Hero project where they’re asking the community to donate backpacks filled with all the school supplies needed for those children going into Grades 1 to 3 and lunch kits for Kindergarteners.

“Emily and Nolan, with their knowledge and they’re ability to reach out to the community have helped so much,” Willmann said.

“So we’re putting out the challenge for people to either fill a backpack or a lunch kit.”

There’s 221 children in inner city schools in Kindergarten up to Grade 3 that will get the donations collected by Willmann and the Hansons, while Willmann’s church, College Heights Baptist, and the Hanson’s church, Westwood Mennonite, will collect for students in Grades 4 to 7.

“I think it’s important that the children

know we’ve got their backs,” Willmann said. “Every kid is a super hero. A good education gets a kid so far, right? It gives them a chance to pursue their dreams and gives them self-worth. I want to get as many people involved as possible because it gives us all a chance to change a kid’s life.”

Willmann wants to be part of giving children the boost they need. And what better way than to give them everything they need to get a fresh start at the beginning of the school year?

— see ‘ALL KIDS, page 3

Overdose deaths down in city

Mark NIELSEN Citizen staff mnielsen@pgcitizen.ca

The number of deaths from illicit drugs has taken a more than four-fold drop in the city, according to numbers released Friday by the BC Coroners Service.

In all, there were 11 such deaths by midway point of this year, compared to 49 by the same point in 2018.

“It’s good news and it’s important that we take this good news to recognize a lot of the good work that’s happening in our communities to try to prevent these overdoses,” Northern Health medical health officer Rakel Kling said.

“But at the same time it still shows that there are still overdoses happening and we still need to put in our time and effort to really do our best to try to stop overdoses from happening.”

That effort will continue, Kling said.

“Nothing changes, it’s still a top priority.”

The decrease is also part of a province-wide trend that has seen a 35-per-cent drop, to 538 deaths from 763.

Vancouver continues to lead the way at 144 deaths, down from 389, followed by Surrey at 72, down from 214.

However, on a per capita basis, the Northern Health region is the second-most prolific at 22 per 100,000 population, while Vancouver Coast Health is first at 27 per 100,000. The average for the province is 22 per 100,000.

Kling said the widespread distribution of Naloxone kits and the establishment of overdose prevention sites may have played significant roles in the drop but could not say for sure. — see OVERDOSE DEATHS, page 3

CITIZEN PHOTO BY JAMES DOYLE

Alyse Willman shows off some of the items that will given to children in need as part of Help A Superhero.

Lady Christina of Crankbrook Hill County, right, takes on Lady Galbraith of Scotland Proper as the two compete in noodle jousting

Quilters showcase traditional home arts at BCNE

Christine HINZMANN Citizen staff chinzmann@pgcitizen.ca

There’s more than 60 homemade quilts on display at the B.C. Northern Exhibition in Kin 1 this year, showcasing a variety of techniques, colours and patterns.

Some quilts are traditional in nature, while others explore a cutting-edge creativity by using flowing styles of stitching to offer their subjects texture and a sense of movement.

Home arts and horticulture are the cornerstone of any traditional fall fair and with a resurgence of interest towards knitting, sewing and preserving food through canning, a showcase of quilts lends itself nicely to the BCNE.

The Prince George Quilters’ Guild, 118 members strong, has a community service project called Community Gift Quilts, Barb Friesen, vice president of the guild, said.

They are holding a raffle for one of the quilts on display at the fair and the proceeds will help fund the material used to make the donated quilts as all the quilters donate their time and talent.

“We give between 125 and 175 quilts away every year,” Friesen said.

“We will give a quilt to anyone in need.”

The quilters donate regularly to the newborn intensive care unit (NICU) at the hospital, Baby’s New Beginnings, Victim Services through the RCMP, the cancer society, the Prince George Hospice.

“And this year we gave 28 quilts to AWAC for their new housing complex,” Friesen said.

“Each one of their rooms now has a quilt in it. So when people are ready to leave the program – that goes from three months to two years, I believe – they can take their quilt with them. So that will be an ongoing donation from us so every person gets a quilt.”

Other community programs saw the quilters’ guild using a New Horizons for Seniors

program grant three years ago to purchase 10 sewing machines to engage seniors in sewing and quilting.

The group gives back to the community and provided 250 cloth bags for the Prince George Council of Seniors hamper project at Christmas, 250 pillow cases for those who had to be evacuated from their homes during the wildfires last year and veterans at the Legion are also gifted quilts made up

of squares sewn by community members, which are then assembled by the guild.

“I can’t believe how many people are coming back to quilting,” Friesen said.

But it’s on a whole other level these days.

“We used to go to the thrift shops for clothing and material or use old shirts to make quilts, now people choose their new material carefully,” she said.

It’s more of an art form for many people

who are looking for a hobby they can enjoy during their retirement, Friesen added.

The guild meets at the Connaught Youth Centre for their general meeting once a month and other meetings for special interests like machine embroidery and other projects also meet throughout the month.

To reach out to the group for more information visit their Facebook page PG Quilters Guild.

Regional district seeks voter approval for dispatch upgrades

Mark NIELSEN Citizen staff mnielsen@pgcitizen.ca

An alternative approval process to borrow $3 million for upgrades to the fire dispatch system was put into motion Thursday by FraserFort George Regional District directors.

Starting on Aug. 22, those who oppose the proposal will have until Oct. 1 to submit their elector response forms. If at least 6,447 –equal to 10 per cent of the voters in the FFGRD – submit the forms, directors will be forced to either nix the plan or take it to a full referendum.

The money is to go toward a $5-million project to relocate the fire operations communications centre to the new Prince George Fire Rescue No. 1 fire hall and to develop a backup location near the corner of Ospika Boulevard and Opie Crescent.

The system would also be upgraded to meet new federal requirements.

The centre not only looks after dispatch for Prince George Fire Rescue, it also serves, through a series of contracts, fire departments in the Fraser-Fort George,Cariboo, Kitmat-Stikine, Bulkley-Nechako and Central Kootenay regional districts and the Creston area.

It adds up to 81 departments covering 210,000 residents.

Currently, the service’s operating and equipment reserves total

Starting on Aug. 22, those who oppose the proposal will have until Oct. 1 to submit their elector response forms. If at least 6,44... submit the forms, directors will be forced to either nix the plan or take it to a full referendum.

$3.6 million and staff is recommending it be maintained at no less than $950,000 to deal with operational issues and emergencies.

As result, the FFGRD will need to borrow $3 million to maintain the reserve and pursue to project.

The money would be borrowed from the Municipal Financial Authority over as much as 20 years. Because the term is more than five years, it must be taken to an AAP.

The forms will be available through the FFGRD website, www. rdffg.bc.ca, the FFGRD’s main office at First Avenue and George Street, as well as at the McBride, Valemount and Mackenzie municipal offices and the Bear Lake Community Commission office starting Aug. 22.

Quilts made by members of the Quilters Guild were on display in Kin 1 during the BCNE.

B.C. business groups cry foul in WBC review

Rob SHAW Vancouver Sun

VICTORIA

— The business community has resigned en masse from a review of B.C.’s workers’ compensation system, saying the government-appointed reviewer is regurgitating recommendations made a decade ago for the B.C. Federation of Labour.

A group of 46 associations representing the bulk of the business sector – including the B.C. Business Council, the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade, the Tourism Industry Association of B.C. and the B.C. Council of Forest Industries and Restaurants Canada – announced their immediate pullout from a review into the rights of injured workers, how much compensation they get and the responsibilities of employers. The review is headed by retired labour lawyer Janet Patterson.

“When you undertake a review in this area, it has got to be done ensuring it’s a fair independent review that is going to strike an appropriate balance,” said Chris Gardner, president of the Independent Contractors and Businesses Association of B.C., one of the 46 groups that quit the process.

“The concern is Janet Patterson is biased in how she approaches this review and the focus will be on fairly significant and dramatic wholesale changes in WorkSafeBC.”

The business groups that withdrew include associations representing small businesses, agriculture, seniors’ care providers, construction, mining, engineering, hotels, restaurants, road builders, home builders, manufacturing, trucking and roofing companies.

Ultimately, employers fear changes to workers’ compensation could increase their costs. WorkSafeBC is funded by premiums paid by employers.

However, unions say WorkSafeBC has a sizable surplus and all that is being sought is a rebalancing of the system to better help injured workers and their families.

The business groups say Patterson abruptly added supplementary “selected issues” to the review on Aug. 6. Patterson wrote that the topics came up during months of public consultation.

But the selected issues also mirrored almost all of the 24 recommendations Patterson made in a 2009 report about workers’ compensation she co-wrote for the B.C. Federation of Labour.

Some of the selected issues included:

Entrenching a policy of compensation regardless of who is at fault, allowing the WorkSafeBC board to reopen its decisions for review at any time, treating compensation for chronic pain like other disabilities, basing wage benefits on 100 per cent of a person’s net earnings, calculating future lost earnings for an injury, and reinstating “medical review panels” like those used in Alberta and Washington state to provide independent medical exams.

“Those are all common sense things,” said Laird Cronk, president of the B.C. Federation of Labour. “If you took that (list) down the streets of Vancouver and asked if those things made sense for injured workers and their families, I think most people would say they do.”

Labour Minister Harry Bains said the review will still be completed because it has already gone through three rounds of public consultation and has received written sub-

Overdose deaths at five-year low

— from page 1

“Now that we’ve seen a decline for a period now, It’s a good time to take a check to see what’s happening but I can’t say with any confidence about (the reasons behind) what’s going on,” Kling said.

The count for Prince George so far is the lowest seen in five years.

From 10 deaths by halfway through 2014, the total rose to 12, 18, and 24 during the same periods respectively in 2015, 2016 and 2017.

For 2016-18, illicit Fentanyl and analogues accounted for 81.3 per cent of the deaths across B.C., followed by cocaine at 50.1 per cent, methamphetamine and amphetamine at 31.9 per cent, ethyl alcohol at 27 per cent and heroin at 17.4 per cent.

The full report is posted with this story at www.pgcitizen.ca.

‘All kids need a little help, a little hope’

— from page 1

“Backpacks and school supplies are expensive,” Willmann said.

“So we decided to make a challenge out of it.”

People are welcome to partner up with their friends, family and groups to donate backpacks filled with school supplies or lunch kits filled with colouring books and nutritional treats for children in Kindergarten.

“All kids need a little help, a little hope and somebody who believes in them,” Will-

RCMP recover stolen property

Citizen staff

If you’re missing an all-terrain vehicle, dirt bike or rifle, Prince George RCMP may had found it. The detachment’s street crew unit seized several stolen items, police said, when members executed a search warrant on a Northwood Pulpmill Road home on Thursday evening.

Among them are three ATVs, a dirt bike and six rifles.

A 43-year-old Prince George man was arrested but has been released pending the completion of the investigation and charge approval from the B.C. Prosecution Service. His name was not released.

mann added. People who are donating can also include a message of encouragement if they wish.

Deadline to donate is Aug. 29.

There is also an option to donate the cash for either the backpacks, which cost $55 each or lunch kits which cost $25 each by emailing helpasuperhero@gmail.com, password superhero.

To put together backpacks or lunch kits get the list of items needed for each by visiting Help a Super Hero on Facebook and drop donations off at 1350 Fifth Ave.

missions from groups including the business community.

“I’m reaching out to them and hopefully will convince them to get engaged again because their views are really important to me,” Bains said Thursday. “You can’t make good decisions if one important part of your stakeholders are not at the table.”

WorkSafeBC has a more than $2 billion surplus, and Bains said the types of changes being discussed would not increase costs for employers. “The money is there,” he said. “My goal, again, is to not impact employers and their premiums.”

The disagreement has a long history and deep political undertones.

Patterson’s 2009 report focused on reversing changes to workers’ compensation made by the B.C. Liberals in 2002.

The Liberals had, in turn, overhauled many of the NDP’s policies from the 1990s in order to save money for businesses, who

traditionally support the Liberals. Now, the NDP is pushing the system in the opposite direction to help unions that traditionally support New Democrats, the Opposition Liberals allege.

“What John Horgan and the NDP have cooked up is just another smoke and mirrors review to make it look like they aren’t just going to do whatever their union donors want,” said Liberal critic John Martin.

BC’s Chamber of Commerce said it was happy with how the NDP government conducted a review of the Labour Relations Code (which covers bargaining and how workers join unions) over the last year, which included three-person panel that represented unions, employers and an experienced arbitrator.

“But regrettably, when it comes to the current WorkSafeBC review, we are not seeing that same balanced, fair, independent approach,” said Val Litwin, chamber CEO.

Transit system eliminating transfers in September

Mark NIELSEN Citizen staff mnielsen@pgcitizen.ca

Longer service days and a revamped fare schedule will come into effect for the city’s transit system at the beginning of September, BC Transit said in a reminder issued Friday.

Starting on Sept. 3, the operating hours will be increased for two routes so that 91 Spruceland/Hart will run until 8 p.m. on weekdays and Saturdays and 46 Queensway will operate until 7:30 p.m. on Sundays.

Route 46 will also feature a conventional-sized bus with more seats.

Transfers will no longer be handed out. Instead, riders will have the option of paying for a single ride or a pass that will allow them to use the system all day long.

Transfers have been regarded as the top cause of conflict between drivers and riders and as means of fraud through the use of expired transfers.

The development comes with a change to the fare structure designed to encourage the use of the so-called DayPASS. Its cost decline for adult and discount customers by $1.25 and 25 cents respectively to $5 while student and senior single-ride tickets will increase by $0.50 to $2.50 to match the price for the adult single-ride tickets. Also, adult monthly passes will increase by $2.50 to $60, student monthly pass will increase by $2 to $50, semester passes will increase by $10 to $135 and handyDART fares go up by 25 cents to $2.50 In addition, the Family Travel Program will now allow parents or guardians with a valid monthly pass, DayPASS, ProPASS, U-PASS or BC Bus Pass to bring up to four children (12 years and under) for free on Saturdays and Sundays. For more information on the service expansion, fare change and FAQ, visit BCTransit.com/prince-george or pick up a new Rider’s Guide.

Labour Minister Harry Bains defended the province’s review of the worker’s compensation system.

Feds to spend $1.75B helping dairy farmers

Pierre SAINT-ARNAUD

The Canadian Press

COMPTON, Que. — Canadian dairy farmers who lost domestic market share resulting from free trade agreements with Europe and countries on the Pacific Rim will share $1.75 billion in compensation over the next eight years, Agriculture Minister MarieClaude Bibeau announced Friday.

The country’s roughly 11,000 dairy producers – about half of whom are in Quebec – will receive $345 million to be distributed this year, Bibeau told reporters on a farm in Compton, Que. She promised a similar program when the Canada-United StatesMexico Agreement comes into force.

The sums will be allocated according to producers’ quotas, with an average farmer with a herd of 80 cows receiving $28,000 in the first year.

Bibeau added her party has committed to no longer cede market share in the dairy sector in future international free trade negotiations.

She also rejected accusations that Friday’s announcement – two months before October’s federal election – was a ploy for votes.

“In terms of financial mechanisms, there is a lot of complexity,” Bibeau said. “The producers of dairy, eggs and poultry each had their preferences in terms of financial mechanisms. So with all this complexity ... that’s what explains the delays. So, it’s not really about an electoral timeline.”

The Liberal government’s March budget earmarked $2.15 billion to help farmers who lose income because of the trade deals with Europe and the Pacific Rim, both of which make it easier for foreign egg, dairy and poultry producers to enter the Canadian market.

Bibeau said negotiations are ongoing between the federal government and egg and poultry farmers, for a separate compensation program. She said money for those farmers will be available “as quickly as possible.”

Jacques Lefebvre, chief executive officer of Dairy Farmers of Canada, said the government’s commitment is “a very good announcement.” But he said Prime Minister

Justin Trudeau made two promises to his members.

“The first one was to compensate, and he’s followed through on that,” Lefebvre told reporters following the announcement.

“The other one is there would be no future concessions in any new trade deals, and we’ll be very vigilant on that one.”

Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer said the Liberals’ plan is the “exact same formula” the Conservatives put forward under Stephen Harper’s government before the 2015 election.

“I know a lot of producers are concerned it took this long,” he told reporters in Moncton, N.B. “This is the same plan that

Canadian’s Australian fiance killed in New Zealand

The Canadian Press

WELLINGTON, New Zealand — Police in New Zealand say a Canadian woman is “shocked and distressed” after her Australian fiance was murdered in an apparently random attack.

Insp. Graham Pitkethley says New Zealand Police are providing the woman, identified by Canadian sources as Nova Scotia native Bianca Buckley, with the support she needs after what he called a “tragic incident.”

Police did not immediately identify the victim, but New Zealand media report he was 33-year-old Australian national Sean McKinnon.

A manhunt was underway after the Australian tourist was found dead in his van near the village of Gordonton, in the country’s North Island, Friday morning.

Police say McKinnon and Buckley, his 32-year-old Canadian fiance, had been sleeping inside the van at a scenic spot near the coastal town of Raglan when a suspect approached the vehicle just after 3 a.m. Friday.

Pitkethley says the suspect fired a number of shots into the van, injuring the Australian tourist.

The woman managed to escape and run away, and she called police.

“We are supporting the female victim, who is un-

derstandably very shocked and distressed,” Pitkethley told a news conference.

In Nova Scotia, Sacred Heart School of Halifax announced Buckley, a 2005 graduate, had been involved in a “violent incident” in New Zealand in which her fiance was killed.

The school noted in a Facebook post that the Buckley family appreciates the prayers of the school community.

“Bianca thankfully is safe,” the school said in the post. “Our thoughts are with Bianca and her family and of course with the McKinnon family.”

Buckley’s parents, reached in Halifax, said Friday they had spoken with their daughter after the attack.

“I’m devastated,” her mother said. Her father said they preferred not to comment any further.

“It’s an absolutely unbelievable event, and we don’t have any comment,” he said.

A statement from Counties Manukau Health in Auckland, which Buckley listed on her Facebook page as her employer since January, said the organization is providing support to one of its staff members, a midwife, who was involved in the “tragic incident.”

Pitkethley said after the initial shooting, the suspect stole the van and drove away with McKinnon still inside.

Conservatives originally put on the table. This would be in line with what a Conservative government would do and has done in the past, and has proposed in the past.” Scheer added Trudeau “gave away” too much to U.S. President Donald Trump during negotiations of the new Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement.

Scheer calls for further probe SNC-Lavalin affair

Joan BRYDEN The Canadian Press

OTTAWA — Federal ethics commissioner Mario Dion says he’s willing to testify about his scathing report on Trudeau’s handling of the SNC-Lavalin affair – if he’s invited to do so by the House of Commons ethics committee. But there’s the rub: the Liberals hold a majority on the 10-member committee and are unlikely to agree to an opposition attempt to keep the SNC-Lavalin controversy in the spotlight as MPs approach the starting gate for the Oct. 21 election.

However, Conservative and NDP members have the numbers to at least force an emergency meeting of the committee on Wednesday, during which they intend to move a motion to invite Dion and possibly others, including Trudeau himself, to answer questions about Dion’s bombshell report.

The report, released Wednesday, concluded that Trudeau violated the Conflict of Interest Act by improperly pressuring former attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould to halt a criminal prosecution of SNC-Lavalin on corruption charges related to contracts in Libya.

Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer appealed directly Friday to the six Liberal committee members “to do what’s right.” And he launched a “grassroots” campaign, encouraging Canadians to pressure the Liberal MPs directly to allow a full hearing into Dion’s report.

Scheer said Trudeau “betrayed the trust” of Canadians and the Liberal party.

“So it’s time for the Liberals on the committee to take a stand. Do what is right and do what Canadians expect of you,” Scheer told a news conference during a pre-election swing through New Brunswick.

He reiterated his belief that Dion’s report contains enough evidence of misconduct to warrant an RCMP investigation, which Scheer requested last winter.

Wilson-Raybould said Friday that the RCMP has not contacted her since Dion’s report was released Wednesday. However, she said in a statement that she was contacted by the Mounties last spring “regarding matters that first came to the public’s attention on Feb. 7,” a reference to the Globe and Mail article that put the whole saga in motion. She declined further comment on the content of her discussions with the police force. In her testimony before the

justice committee in February, however, Wilson-Raybould said she didn’t feel that anything illegal had occurred. On Wednesday, the Mounties issued a statement saying the force is “examining this matter carefully with all available information and will take appropriate actions as required.”

If, as expected, Liberal MPs on the committee reject the opposition attempt to keep the controversy boiling with testimony from Dion and others, that will add fuel to opposition charges of a coverup.

Scheer said Friday he finds it “incomprehensible” that Trudeau is refusing to let the full story come out, pointing to the fact nine witnesses told Dion they couldn’t reveal everything they knew about the SNC affair due to cabinet confidentiality.

“We still see evidence to this day that Justin Trudeau is going to great lengths to cover up the full truth from coming out.”

Last winter, Trudeau partially waived solicitor-client privilege and cabinet confidentiality to allow the Commons justice committee to hear in-depth testimony from Wilson-Raybould, bureaucrats and senior officials in his office about the former minister’s allegation that she’d been relentlessly and improperly pressured to intervene in the SNC-Lavalin matter.

The director of public prosecutions last fall refused to negotiate a remediation agreement with SNC-Lavalin, which would enable the Montreal engineering giant to avoid a criminal conviction that would result in being barred from receiving federal contracts for 10 years. Trudeau has acknowledged that he and his aides wanted Wilson-Raybould to reconsider her decision not to overrule the public prosecutor but he’s insisted they were motivated strictly by a desire to ensure thousands of innocent SNC employees, pensioners and suppliers didn’t end up paying the potentially crippling price of a conviction.

CP PHOTO

Farm owner Veronica Enright, Dairy Farmers of Canada president Pierre Lampron and Minister of Agriculture

Marie-Claude Bibeau walk through the stalls of a dairy farm in Compton, Que., on Friday.

SCHEER

Sept. 3, 2017.

Archeological teams to excavate, map wrecks of Franklin expedition

OTTAWA — Canadian archeologists are on their way to a remote area in the Arctic Circle for another chance to dig up the secrets held by the Franklin expedition wrecks, Parks Canada announced Friday.

The task of exploring and excavating the two shipwrecks is the “largest, most complex underwater archeological undertaking in Canadian history,” Parks Canada said in a release.

Archeological teams will travel to the wreck of HMS Terror and use an underwater drone and other tools to create 3D structural maps of the ship.

Work on the expedition’s other ship, HMS Erebus, will involve searching the officer cabins and lower deck for artifacts.

Parks Canada said there may be thousands of artifacts aboard the wrecks that will help enrich the country’s knowledge of the expedition.

Based on an existing agreement, those artifacts would become shared property of Canada and the Inuit.

The two ships are the remains of an expedition launched by British explorer John Franklin in 1845, leaving England with a crew of 134 sailors.

Seeking the Northwest Passage, the two ships eventually became trapped in the ice near King William Island, in what is now Nunavut.

Some of the crew members attempted to walk to safety starting in 1848, but all eventually perished.

Many searches were launched since the ships were lost, seeking to find the wrecks and unravel the mystery of the

ill-fated expedition.

It wasn’t until 2014, though, that an expedition supported by a broad partnership of Canadian government agencies, Inuit, the Government of Nunavut and other groups discovered HMS Erebus.

Two years later, an expedition launched by the Arctic Research Foundation discovered HMS Terror.

Since then, the focus of Parks Canada, Inuit and other partners has been on protecting and conserving the wrecks, while exploring them in stages.

The wrecks are designated as a national historic site but for now access is restricted. Parks Canada is working with a committee responsible for advising on the wrecks to figure out how visitors might be able to experience the ships in ways that maintain their integrity.

First Nations women finally equal under Indian Act

Kristy KIRKUP The Canadian Press

OTTAWA — First Nations women will finally be treated the same as men under the Indian Act, enabling them to obtain the same status and category of membership as their male counterparts and their descendants, Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Carolyn Bennett said Friday.

Past provisions within the long-controversial Indian Act meant women lost their status when they married nonIndigenous men, while men who married non-Indigenous women kept their status, Bennett said.

But with the remaining provisions of the legislation known as S-3 coming into force, descendants born before April 17, 1985, who lost their status or were removed from band lists due to marriages to non-Indian men dating back to 1869 can now be registered as First Nations members.

When a modern registry was created in 1951, registries from individual Indian Act bands were merely folded into the modern registry so the women who lost their status were not contained within it, Bennett said.

“What we are saying now is that ... there will be now gender equality for all of the women even before the registry was created and their descendants,” Bennett said in an interview.

On Friday, the Canadian Feminist Alliance for International Action thanked Bennett for “finally removing the sex discrimination in the Indian Act.”

On Twitter, the group said the move amounts to a “great first step” towards implementing the recommendations from the national inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, and it is looking forward to working on a national action plan to respond to the inquiry’s calls to action.

Registration in the Indian Act affords First Nations individuals federal benefits and services, including access to post-secondary education funding and non-insured health benefits. Parliament passed it in 1876, giving the federal government enormous power over the control of registered First Nations people, bands and the reserve system.

Critics have long complained that since its inception, it has treated women unfairly, particularly when it comes to the ability of women to pass on their status

to their descendants.

Advocates have been fighting to address sex discrimination in the Indian Act for a very long time, Bennett said Friday, adding they will finally be able to see their persistence has paid off and the government is righting a historical wrong.

“We now have an obligation to these people in their section 35 rights and that we need to be able to make sure they’re able to exercise their rights in a timely manner and that that money will be made available as they register,” she said without specifying an expected dollar figure.

S-3 was in response to a Quebec Superior Court decision that ruled certain sections of the Indian Act related to registration status violated the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The case was brought by Stephane Descheneaux of the Abenaki community of Odanak, about 40 kilometres northwest of Drummondville, Que.

Descheneaux was unable to pass on his Indian status to his three daughters because he got it through his Indigenous grandmother, who lost her status when she married a non-Indigenous man.

NEWS IN BRIEF

Gondola likely out of commission until 2020

SQUAMISH (CP) — The operators of the Sea-toSky Gondola say the popular tourist attraction near Squamish likely won’t reopen until early next spring.

In a message on the company’s Facebook page, they say the cleanup has started and it’s hoped the gondola can reopen in early 2020, but that depends on the delivery of a replacement cable and new cabins from Europe.

When the attraction does restart, the post says it will feature a brand new haul rope and a completely new line of 30 cabins. No one was hurt last Saturday when the RCMP say someone deliberately cut the gondola’s main cable, sending all of the cars crashing to the ground.

The company has said the damage will reach into the millions of dollars.

The Sea to Sky Gondola officially opened in 2014 and carries between 1,500 and 3,000 people who visit the gondola every day during the summer season, with each cabin holding up to eight people. When in operation, it takes around 10 minutes to reach an elevation of 885 metres above Howe Sound.

Most residents allowed home after house explosion

LONDON, Ont. (CP) — More residents have been cleared to return home after an explosion in London, Ont. A statement from the city says all but 10 of 100 homes were declared safe Thursday night and some pets have been reunited with their owners. Seven people were injured Wednesday night after the blast, which was caused by a vehicle slamming into a home and hitting a gas line. Fire officials have said the home that was hit by the vehicle was destroyed and no one was inside at the time. The city says two homes have been demolished and a third home is also expected to be bulldozed.

Four firefighters, two police officers and one civilian were taken to hospital. One firefighter was in serious condition while the others had minor injuries and were released.

London police said Daniella Alexandra Leis, a 23-year-old woman from Kitchener, Ont., was charged with impaired driving in connection with the crash. For the residents unable to return to their homes, the city says it will continue to provide accommodation if required. The blaze was largely put out by Thursday afternoon, but firefighters remain on the scene clearing debris from the neighbourhood.

Man in custody after unidentified man fatally attacked in Surrey

SURREY (CP) — Homicide investigators say one man has been taken into custody following a deadly attack in Surrey. A spokesman with the Integrated Homicide Investigation Team says the man was arrested at a home just a few blocks from the parking lot of a south Surrey mall where the unidentified victim was found early Friday. Sgt. Frank Jang says charges have not been laid. Surrey RCMP said in a statement that the victim was found by officers around 3 a.m., and died a short time later from apparent stab wounds. The statement said the attack was believed to be targeted but Jang says further evidence is required before that can be confirmed. He says a police dog led officers to the home where the suspect was arrested and the investigation is ongoing.

Tolko reducing shifts

VERNON (CP) — Tolko says its Armstrong, Lumby and Heffley Creek operations in British Columbia will see shift reductions as volatile conditions continue to plague the province’s lumber industry. It says more than 700 workers will be affected by the curtailments running from Aug. 17 to Sept. 2 at the Armstrong and Lumby plants. Workers at the Heffley Creek veneer mill will be off the job for one week, starting Aug. 24. Troy Connolly, Tolko’s vice-president of solid wood, says in a statement that the company prefers to remain in operation but wants to manage the business responsibly and remain sustainable in the future.

The Canadian Press

FILE PHOTO

Canadian archeologists are on their way to a remote area in the Arctic Circle for another chance to dig up the secrets

held by the Franklin expedition wrecks, Parks Canada announced Friday. Terror Bay, where the sunken ship the HMS Terror lies, is seen from the air near Gjoa Haven, Nvt., on

Make these change to prevent drug shortages

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has assured Canadians they will continue to have access to the medications they need, and that there is a “steady and solid supply.” His remarks came in response to a decision by the Trump administration to permit U.S. wholesalers to purchase drugs in Canada, where prices are sometimes lower.

We’ll return to the threat from America in a moment. But first, how can the PM give such an assurance when there is already a major shortage of drugs in Canada? This is literally whistling past the graveyard.

Health Canada’s website lists medications that are either in short supply or outright unavailable. There are 38 drugs on the list, and it is not up to date. Verapamil, for example, a widely prescribed medication for high blood pressure and arrhythmia, is not on the list. Yet pharmacists in Greater Victoria say they cannot find a supplier, and have no idea when that will change.

Now there are several reasons why a medication might come off the market for a time, and not all can be blamed on government inaction.

Sometimes pharmaceutical companies have to pause production because of technical issues. Occasionally drugs are recalled because a dangerous side effect becomes known.

But there are other problems that very

Drugs are sometimes cheaper here, because unlike the U.S., Canada has a medicine prices review board that works to keep costs under control. However, we certainly do not have the quantities required to meet U.S. demand, and at the same time maintain domestic supplies.

definitely could be remedied. First, large numbers of American visitors are crossing our border each year to buy drugs that are cheaper than at home. Insulin is one example.

Now this is only possible if a Canadian physician co-signs a prescription written by an American doctor. Otherwise pharmacies here cannot fill the order.

But this is not appropriate medical conduct. Those Canadian doctors who cosign prescriptions know nothing about the patient involved.

Colleges of physicians and surgeons decry the practice, and some physicians have been disciplined. Yet the practice continues. This must stop.

Second, in recent years some pharmaceutical companies have been replacing existing, low-cost drugs with medications that are no more effective, then raising the price, sometimes astronomically.

For example, until 2017, patients with a rare genetic disorder that affects eyesight

could be treated with a drug that cost around $5,000 a year. The medication was not licensed in Canada, meaning patients had to get a special authority from Health Canada to import it.

But recently a pharmaceutical firm gained the right to distribute a similar drug in Canada, and promptly raised the price of a year’s supply to $300,000.

How is this possible? Because Health Canada gave the company a licence. That meant the cheaper version was effectively shut out, because a licensed product was now available.

What were our federal bureaucrats thinking? Children might lose their eyesight because of this shocking display of indifference. B.C.’s health minister, Adrian Dix, has raised the matter with his federal counterpart.

Perhaps it will be argued that Health Canada was merely following a long-standing policy. Then change the policy.

Returning to the Trump administration,

YOUR LETTERS

Plastics plant puts health at risk

The spokesperson for the proposed plastics plant was dismissive of Dr. Hay’s concern about the harmful emissions that would come from the plant. He said with new technology, the emissions would be decreased. But there will still be emissions and those are very harmful ones for human health, according to my understanding.

The 2008 report that identified only three possible sites for this type of heavy industry was written before the spread of housing south along the Fraser River, which puts the proposed plant in fairly close proximity of that housing.

I believe that building the plant where it is currently proposed would pose an unacceptable risk for human health in that area.

If it is built, it must go north of town.

Heather Sapergia Prince George

Do something

So Justin Trudeau and Doug

Ford met to discuss the ongoing gun violence in Toronto.

Hey, guys, here’s a novel idea: call the prime minister of New Zealand who, within a week after the massacre at the synagogue in Christchurch, banned all assault rifles.

You’re welcome.

Damn. I knew I should have run for public office.

Doug Strachan Prince George

Vehicles cause most air pollution

On Feb. 20, 2015 the Vancouver Sun printed an article by Larry Pynn and Chad Skelton, “The Top 10 Air polluters in B.C.” Yes, P.G. made the list at No. 4, PG pulp and Paper and intercontin, operating as Canfor Pulp Limited Partnership.

After the top 10 the article goes into an extensive list of other point-source polluters of all types, examples are given of garbage dumps, sawmills, mines and many other types of stationary polluters. The article ends with an interesting observation about pollution in general.

Point source polluters are only 29 per cent of total pollution in BC. Transportation is the major source at 40 per cent and other categories are put at 29 per cent.

Recent letters to the editor in the P.G. Citizen are slamming a new proposed petrochemical plant in Prince George.

The latest “stinky smog” complains about smog.

Well it appears that a lot of that smog is coming out of the 100,000 plus vehicles that commute daily around Prince George or transit through the city on one of two major highways that intersect at Prince George.

Point-source polluters like the proposed olefin petrochemical plant in Prince George are easy targets for people annoyed about air pollution for the simple reason that they are stationary. If air pollution is really a concern to the letter writers opposing development in Prince George they should take on the difficult moving targets of tail pipes. A reasonable summation as pointed out in the Vancouver Sun is that tail pipes produce more smog than anything else in B.C. Wayne Martineau, Fraser Lake

LETTERS WELCOME: The Prince George Citizen welcomes letters to the editor from our readers. Submissions should be sent by email to: letters@pgcitizen.ca. No attachments, please. They can also be faxed to 250-960-2766, or mailed to 201-1777 Third Ave., Prince George, B.C. V2L 3G7. Maximum length is 750 words and writers are limited to one submission every week. We will edit letters only to ensure clarity, good taste, for legal reasons, and occasionally for length. Although we will not include your address and telephone number in the paper, we need both for verification purposes. Unsigned or handwritten letters will not be published. The Prince George Citizen is a member of the National Newsmedia Council, which is an independent organization established to deal with acceptable journalistic practices and ethical behaviour. If you have concerns about editorial content, please contact Neil Godbout (ngodbout@pgcitizen. ca or 250-960-2759). If you are not satisfied with the response and wish to file a formal complaint, visit the web site at mediacouncil.ca or call toll-free 1-844-877-1163 for additional information.

the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has been tasked with helping American wholesalers purchase large volumes of medications sold in Canada.

Drugs are sometimes cheaper here, because unlike the U.S., Canada has a medicine prices review board that works to keep costs under control. However, we certainly do not have the quantities required to meet U.S. demand, and at the same time maintain domestic supplies.

Some in the legal community believe the FDA’s new policy is forbidden under American law, and will not withstand a challenge. But that could take years.

There are several solutions our federal government could examine. One might be to declare this a matter of national security, and halt the export of targeted drugs to the U.S. if doing so would endanger domestic supplies.

Another option could be to prohibit Canadian manufacturers from re-selling their product to U.S. wholesalers. This would almost certainly provoke a legal dispute, but one the government has a good chance of winning. Regardless, the federal government has no more critical duty than ensuring an adequate supply of life-saving medications. As things stand, Health Canada appears more interested in a quiet life, than getting on with the job.

— Victoria Times Colonist

Sober-minded Trudeau tale dodges dirt, sticks to the facts

The political book has been reshaped in the last quarter-century, for better and for worse, by the innerworking explorations of high-profile journalists like Bob Woodward and Michael Wolff.

Their use and misuse of anonymous, contentious, often vexatious sources of information about leaders, lieutenants, decisionmaking and policy-framing has zoom-lensed us from a faint distance into a close-up intimacy with the political world.

Which is why it is mostly, but not totally, refreshing that Canadians have as a resource the timely release of Trudeau: The Education of a Prime Minister on the eve of the federal election. Journalist John Ivison (full disclosure: a former colleague at the launch of the National Post) has depended for the most part on unconcealed informants as the book’s framework. There are no stoolies of significance, no riveting ratting out and thus – a little disappointingly – no major news flashes as one consumes it.

Instead, the basis of the book is clear research, checked facts and a moderate hand in stating the obvious about the prime minister –that he is brand-obsessed, privileged and not particularly plugged in to the plights of anyone’s struggles.

Access is always important with political books. Without it you’re largely curating Google results. Woodward seems to be some sort of snake charmer, Wolff manages to befriend the right squealer, but Ivison doesn’t have the same seeming guile of method.

He depends on the public record, on his plentiful on-therecord talks over the term with Justin (wife Sophie Grégoire Trudeau would not co-operate) and on some benign and often eye-rolling tire pumping by the prime minister’s past and present aides.

There is little of the gleeful unattributed criticism that besets the genre today, none of the recreated conversations that Woodward and Wolff employ as literary devices, and if there are insiders in the book, they are well hidden.

Which is to say the book is a reliably reported document of Trudeau’s term as prime minister and a rather spartan account of what preceded it. There is no dirt here, no pursuit of salacious rumours, and as a result his critique is a little inarguable.

To wit: the absurdist India trip, the Aga Khan holiday, the back-

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ing away on electoral reform, the payment to Omar Khadr, the reckless smear of Vice-Admiral Mark Norman, the debacle of smallbusiness tax reform, the morass of SNC-Lavalin, the black hole of infinite deficits, the precocious culture of apologies, the fumbling of Jody Wilson-Raybould, the miscalculation of China, the hubris of handling Donald Trump and the shortcomings of First Nations reconciliation. Among others. These and more tales are told with sobriety and restraint.

Only in the last chapter does Ivison take the velvet gloves off and tackle one of the critical questions: Is Trudeau his own man, or is he a cog in a machine of others’ making?

No question, the influence of former principal secretary Gerald Butts is immense. But Ivison does not absolve the PM of agency. On each count he chides Trudeau for choosing, whether it was something symbolic like his appropriating wardrobe for India or something substantial like his gang-tackling pressure to keep SNC-Lavalin away from a trial.

Still, the author asserts, Justin had the last word and made the bad call. Repeatedly. Write him off as a single- termer, though? Not quite.

The book is fresh enough as journalism to capture the sense of resilience and rebound in the Liberals as the campaign looms, even if Ivison surmises the party is to the left of Canadians.

He credits the impact of tax changes, perhaps all the way to the ballot box, that helped lift many families to better straits. He does not proffer Andrew Scheer and certainly Jagmeet Singh as eminently deserving successors.

But he does question the exercise of Trudeau’s term as one of excessive promises and plentiful failures to deliver. If the book strives to examine the education of a prime minister, there is little evidence of a gifted student applying the hard-earned lessons.

(Trudeau: The Education of a Prime Minister is published by McClelland & Stewart; 368 pages, $32.95.)

Kirk LaPointe is editor-in-chief of Business in Vancouver and vice-president, editorial, of Glacier Media.

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KIRK LAPOINTE

Jimmy Kimmel named honourary mayor of Dildo, N.L.

The Canadian Press

ST. JOHN’S, N.L. — After weeks broadcasting his passion for Dildo, N.L., late night comedian Jimmy Kimmel was named “honourary mayor” Thursday night and made a commitment to visit the community.

A gaggle of residents and politicians appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live Thursday, offering the comedian a key to the community before setting off fireworks over the picturesque Dildo Cove.

Dildo has been bustling with visitors since Kimmel began running segments on the “magical place” that shares its name with a sex toy, declaring his intent to become mayor after learning the local service district does not have one.

Producers have been in Dildo this week to erect “Kimmel for Mayor” signs and meet residents, with the host noting that the running joke has cost network ABC about $100,000.

Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Dwight Ball appeared on the show along with local politicians, boasting of his province’s friendly people.

Kimmel thanked residents for welcoming him and closed out the segment by unveiling a Hollywood-like Dildo sign, erected on a hilltop overlooking the community.

CP PHOTO

The sun sets on Didlo, Newfoundland on May 25. The picturesque Newfoundland community of Dildo is taking in unprecedented international attention over its name, as late night comedian Jimmy Kimmel continues his televised quest to become its mayor.

‘Des Moines punches above its weight’

There’s

more to Iowa than corn, starting with its amazing capital city

Melanie D.G. KAPLAN

Special To The Washington Post

I didn’t exactly go to Des Moines, Iowa, expecting cornfields, but I didn’t want to miss them, either.

One night in the capital city this summer, I drove 30 minutes northeast of Des Moines and joined a weekly bike ride in the rural town of Maxwell. Our small group pedaled along quiet farm roads, past corn and soybean fields and over idyllic rolling hills, just as I had pictured. A small plane buzzed overhead, playfully looping and rolling, and I slowed to see grazing cows and a small cemetery. We finished our ride as the fiery sun set. Only then was I ready for the big city.

Des Moines, or DSM to locals, is a laid-back, easily navigable city with an impressive network of bike trails, one of the most beautiful and interesting capitol buildings I’ve toured and an emerging food and cocktail scene. Locals I met were kind and welcoming, probably more informed about presidential candidates than many of my Washington, D.C., neighbours and proud to host the country’s first caucuses during election season. Next year, the city will unveil the largest skate park in the country (with an 80-foot-long, totally skatable “WOW” sculpture) and host its first Ironman competition. It also plans to create a whitewater destination on the river with a surfing simulator for extreme paddlers.

Go LOCAL FAVES

The colder the winter in a city, the more joyful the summer market-goers. I haven’t substantiated this claim, but in Des Moines, folks are downright gleeful about the Downtown Farmers Market, which attracts 25,000 to 40,000 people each weekend through October with 300 vendors, live music, street performers and a bike valet. The Saturday market, criticized by some for selling too much nonlocal produce and Wisconsin cheeses, still sells plenty of Iowa sweet corn, local jam and hot sauce. But the scene itself is the biggest draw. Go for people-watching, and eat your way through the market (pupusas, juices) or hit a nearby brunch spot.

GUIDEBOOK MUSTS

Driving into town with the majestic five-domed Iowa State Capitol on the horizon, I thought I was approaching a kingdom. Come to find out, this kingdom is magical, with free parking and free temporary tattoos. On a tour, I learned that the ornate building was completed in 1886, constructed over 15 years by day laborers. It originally housed all three branches of government and was built without electricity – which was thought to be a fad. The gold leaf on the dome, the guide told us, is as thin as ash. The highlight was a marblewalled, five-level law library with white wrought iron railings, spiral staircases and a spectacular view of downtown. It houses more than 100,000 books, including titles on the state’s railroad, prairie plants and baseball.

DES MOINES ART CENTER

“You might hear people say, ‘Des Moines punches above its weight,’” a local told me. “The Des Moines Art Center is a big example of how.” For starters, the museum – a complex of three designer buildings (Eliel Saarinen, 1948; I.M. Pei, 1968; Richard Meir, 1985) – is showing Queer Abstraction (until Sept. 8), the first exhibition in the center’s 70year history to focus exclusively on queer sexuality and gender identity. The permanent collection includes modern and contemporary masterpieces by Francis Bacon, Alberto Giacometti, Henri Matisse, Georgia O’Keeffe, Mark Rothko and Andy Warhol and the New Shelton Wet/Dry Triple Decker from Jeff Koons’s hermeti-

Above, cyclists ride along the High Trestle Trail Bridge in Madrid, Iowa. Right, the John and Mary Pappajohn Sculpture Park, part of the Des Moines Art Center, features work by 24 artists. Below, a Des Moines gift shop T-shirt reads: “Iowa! For some reason you have to come here to be president!” Bottom, the Downtown Farmers Market in Des Moines attracts up to 40,000 people each weekend through October.

cally sealed vacuum series. Stop at the restaurant, Tangerine, and the museum’s fantastic four-acre sculpture garden park downtown. Museum and park admission are free.

Eat

LOCAL FAVES

The avocado toast craze has hit Des Moines, and judging from the orders at St. Kilda, locals are all in. The small, two-year-old cafe offers breakfast, lunch, coffee and cocktails with full table service.

I loved Hello, Marjorie even before I learned it was named after one of the owner’s grandmothers, who drank sloe gin by the glass and smoked cigarettes by the pack.

My own 99-year-old grandma Marjorie enjoys her cocktails and would feel right at home amid the bar’s mid-century mod furniture.

Located in the former Des Moines Register building and designed to look like your great aunt’s house (gold velvet curtains, brass clock collection), Hello, Marjorie is the city’s go-to cocktail bar. For other themed watering holes, try El Bait Shop, with hundreds of craft beers on tap; Iowa Tap Room, which specializes in Iowa beers; and High Life Lounge, a doppelganger of your ‘60s rec room, where patrons inexplicably enjoy Spam and egg sandwiches with Miller High Life and Schlitz.

If you love greasy spoon diners, politics and servers who call you “Sweetie,” Waveland Cafe will make your ticker tick just a little faster. If Waveland’s not your jam, you can’t go wrong at beloved La Mie, where the spread of housebaked breads and pastries is so vast it’ll force your calorie-counter app into submission.

Shop

LOCAL FAVES

Men who hate shopping, Fontenelle Supply Co. may turn you. Built by guys who blog about camping and motorcycle trips and made for guys who appreciate

well-made (read: pricey) items like Japanese selvage denim, Filson shirts and jackets, work boots that look like they’ll last a generation, safety glasses for hazardous manly activities, restored and hand-sharpened vintage axes and motorcycle helmets.

Valley Junction in West Des Moines has been down on its luck in recent years, but the buzz and lure of new retailers and restaurants is making this eight-block shopping strip DSM’s Comeback Kid. Once known for its dozens of antique and vintage shops, the compact neighborhood (about five miles west of downtown) still has some old-school survivors, like Atomic Garage (polyester pants, disco dresses and go-go boots) and sister shop A OK Antiques (jukebox, mid-century furniture).

Popularized by HGTV’s West End Salvage reality show, West End Architectural Salvage is a treasure-hunter’s paradise, with inventory from across the nation and four floors of fabulous finds. On the ground floor, grab coffee (or a Bloody Mary, if it’s that kind of morning). Strolling around the century-old building, you’ll find an old amusement park car and carousel animal, a barrel of old yardsticks, vintage metal lockers, Underwood and Smith Corona typewriters, stained glass, a metal cowboy bathtub, old motel signs, a bench from the Des Moines airport, tin ceiling tiles and doors, license plates, a bench made from the back door of a flatbed truck and window grates from an Iowa jail. You’ll also find tables made from reclaimed barn lumber.

Things to keep in your freezer

Rachael Ray, Christopher Kimball and more experts weigh in

Becky KRYSTAL

The Washington Post

When was the last time you took a good, hard look at your freezer? Think about what’s in there. Is it a random assortment of things stashed away and forgotten? Yes, it’s easy to turn your cold storage into permanent, inefficient storage. But the freezer can also be a godsend when it comes to having versatile, ready-to-use ingredients and ready-to-eat meals.

We peeked into our own freezer and then surveyed some of our favourite food people to see what they like to have on ice. Below find their answers, as well as mine.

1. Yours truly

Tomato paste: You never use up the whole can or tube in a timely manner. Portion into 1-tablespoon scoops, freeze on a lined baking sheet and then pack away in a storage bag or container. The scoops thaw quickly.

Hot peppers: Mostly jalapeños and some other chiles. They store well and can be used straight out of the freezer.

Cooked beans: A whole batch in my Instant Pot is too much to use at once, so I freeze 1 1/2- and 3-cup portions in storage bags that I can easily pull out for burritos, quesadillas and salads.

Ginger: Something else you buy a lot of and only use a little of at once. Freeze in 1- or 2-inch chunks. I find it much easier to peel and grate when frozen anyway (give it a few minutes at room temp if it’s a bit too solid).

Bread: A sandwich (or toast or French toast) is always just a meal away with some bread in the freezer. Especially if I have eggs and cheese in the house, which I always do, I’m set for a quick improvised dinner.

2. Rachael Ray

Cookbook author and television personality

Go-to meals: “I often have some sort of home-cooked and cooled food,” such as a soup, ragu, sauce or a chili. “When I make these things, I cook a double batch, keep some aside, cool it and freeze.”

Pork: “My husband John’s favourite four-letter word is pork. I always have bacon, sausage, pancetta, smoked pancetta, chorizo in many varieties, hot and sweet Italian sausage,” as well as other types of meat.

Bread crumbs: “I always keep bread crumbs in the freezer,” including superfine and panko. She also stashes bread ends for making her own.

Nuts: “Nuts have oil, and oil spoils. I toast pine nuts, hazelnuts and almonds when I need them, but until I need them, I keep them in the freezer,” at least the ones for cooking, not snacking.

Thin cutlets: “I always have swordfish cutlets and chicken cutlets.”

She asks the fishmonger to cut the swordfish thin and individually wrap the pieces, and at home, she pounds boneless, skinless chicken cutlets with a meat mallet before wrapping them one by one. Thin cutlets defrost and cook quickly.

3. Christopher Kimball

Founder of Milk Street magazine and public-television show Rice: Spread cooked rice on a baking sheet to cool and then freeze it before packaging it. Use it for stir-fries and definitely for fried rice.

Specialty flours: “Those go bad pretty quickly,” Kimball says, but not if you cold-store them. Kimball’s stash includes almond meal, cornmeal and rye flour, which he likes to mix into desserts (such as Milk Street’s chocolate chip cookie) to cut the sweetness.

Lard: Worth stocking up on if you can find the good rendered leaf lard.

“That’s something I think Americans have stopped cooking with,” he says. Use it for sauteing onions for soups or stews, and Kimball notes that in Mexico, browned lard is smeared on tortillas for flavour.

Coffee beans: Kimball says they will last much longer in the freezer.

Venison: Kimball’s home base is in Vermont, where he hunts, so you’ll often find lean cuts in his freezer that he likes to grill. He

recommends double-wrapping venison or any meat going into the freezer, as well as defrosting in the fridge on a metal pan, as metal is a better conductor (to almost wick away the chill) than air.

4. Sunny Anderson

Cookbook author and co-host of The Kitchen on Food Network

Compound butter: Some people like to freeze their fresh herb bounty in oil or ice, but Anderson goes for the butter. Combine herbs with butter in a bowl or food processor and season with salt and spices. Roll into a log and freeze. With a sharp knife, you can cut off just what you need. Use on steak, for sauteing eggs or brushing on top of pitas and naan.

Nuts: She likes to add them for texture to almost anything but specifically employs them for salads, cookies and pesto.

“They’re very easy to toast right out of the freezer” and come to room temperature quickly, she says.

Cranberries: “I buy cranberries” in the fall, “and I stockpile them.” Freeze on a lined baking sheet and then pack away. Use them to make cocktails, chutney and flavoured syrups, and sprinkle them over grilled meat.

Pearl onions: “They’re already peeled, they’re little nuggets of love,” Anderson says. Add them to stock, or throw them in a soup or stew the last few minutes of cooking. They make an easy side for steak when paired with mushrooms. Or cut in half and grill.

Summer corn: Shuck the ears, cut off the kernels, freeze on a lined baking sheet and then store. You can use them straight out of the freezer without even cooking them, or add to chowders, soups, burritos, enchiladas and spoon breads.

5. Michael Solomonov

Cookbook author, restaurateur and Philadelphia chef (Zahav, Federal Donuts, Dizengoff)

Overripe bananas: “You never have to worry about bananas going bad. If some have gone too far, simply pop them in the freezer and save them for your morning smoothie!” Also great for banana bread and banana muffins.

Mahlab: A powder made from the seeds of a specific type of

cherry. Solomonov suggests sprinkling it on breads and pastries to add a mix of bitter, floral and nutty flavours.

Grapes: “Frozen grapes are a fresh and healthy little burst, feels like a treat – perfect during the summer when it’s hot.”

Chicken stock: “Chicken stock is a great way to really build flavour into a rice dish,” such as rice pilaf. “Chicken stock is a beautiful base for cooking.”

MorningStar Farms Chik’n Nuggets: “You can say they’re for the kids, but they’re really for yourself as well.”

6. Pati Jinich

Chef, cookbook author and host of Pati’s Mexican Table on public television

Puff pastry: If you’re motivated like Jinich, make your own. (“Since I started making it at home, it just doesn’t compare with store bought.”) Or grab a package from the freezer aisle and use it to make empanadas, appetizers, cheese sticks and desserts.

Chicken broth: “I make a super big pot of chicken broth every Monday, without fail, and store it in quart containers.”

She uses it for soups, stews, enchilada casseroles, cooking rice, finishing off salsas, flavouring sauces and pasta dishes.

Homemade chocolate salami:

“A great dessert to bring along to a dinner or potluck when you forgot you needed to bring something to a dinner, and you can also pull it out when you didn’t have time to whip up something” for guests.

Mexican chorizo: “We love it for so many things,” including tacos, quesadillas, chilaquiles, eggs and charro beans. It lasts in the freezer for months and thaws quickly. Adobo or mole sauce: “Whenever I make some, I make it a point to make extra.”

The adobe sauce is for marinating chicken, pork and seafood, and a mole sauce can go into enchiladas and chilaquiles or on top of grilled chicken and potatoes.

7. Stella Parks

Cookbook author (Brave Tart:

Iconic American Desserts) and contributor at Serious Eats

Unbaked pies: Freeze, wrapped

in plastic, in a glass or disposable aluminum pie plate. Thaw overnight in the refrigerator and then a bit more on the counter.

You may need to bake a bit longer to get the fruit hot and bubbling, covering the crust as necessary to keep it from burning.

Caramel sauce: “A homemade sauce is great for dressing up store- or bakery-bought desserts.” Thaw in the microwave or on the stove top – you want it warm anyway.

Swiss buttercream: “I can whip up a cake on short notice since I can thaw the frosting while the cake bakes and cools.” Freeze flat in a gallon zip-top bag, which also helps it thaw quickly.

You want it at about room temperature after thawing, which can be done on the counter or very carefully in the microwave. Rewhip before using.

Ground cookie crumbs: Parks says she has a stash of gingerbread crumbs. Use them like graham cracker crumbs in a press-in crust, or over ice cream.

Portioned cookie dough: Ideal for when she wants something freshly baked, especially for visits from her niece and sister-in-law. She prefers to thaw them to about room temperature to avoid having to think about adjusting timing, but many recipes can go straight from the freezer to the oven with good results.

8. Molly Yeh

Food blogger, cookbook author and host of Girl Meets Farm on Food Network

Tater tots: “For tater tot hotdish emergencies!” I daresay, tots are a pretty satisfying side dish or snack, too.

Green smoothie packs: “I make a bunch at a time with tons of kale, spinach, apples and peanut butter and then have easy access to greens.”

Halvah: “It lasts longer in the freezer, and I put it in everything from cookie dough to straight in my mouth.”

The sesame candy is widely available at grocery stores these days, and I can confirm, it is in fact delightful eaten right out of the freezer.

Maser motivated for his New York audition

Ted CLARKE Citizen staff

tclarke@pgcitizen.ca

Josh Maser has never been to New York City and he’s a not exactly a frequent flier to the United States.

The only trips south of the border the 20-year-old left winger has ever made have been on the Prince George Cougars bus, riding to the team’s WHL U.S. Division destinations.

Now that he’s on the New York Rangers’ radar, Maser’s passport could be getting stamped much more frequently. The Cougars most valuable player last season turned the heads of NHL scouts with his rugged work habits and goalscorer’s touch and the Rangers were the first to bite when they sent him an invitation to their rookie camp in New York, Sept. 4-11.

“It’s going to be a little different coming from one of the smallest towns in Canada to New York – the only time I’ve left Canada was to go the States to play Portland and Seattle and stuff,” said Maser. “Houston has maybe 2,500 people and there’s one stop light in town here. Just being in New York will be an experience by itself.

“I’m pumped, it will be fun,” he said. “I just want to see how I am against everyone else. The competition there will be top-end and it will be fast and fun hockey to play.”

Maser’s consistency was one of the bright spots in an otherwise miserable 2018-19 season for the Cougars. After a 28-goal, 49-point sophomore season, the six-foot-two, 215-pound Houston native led the Cats with 30 goals last season and also contributed 12 assists for 42 points in 61 games. They missed the playoffs for a second-straight year and endured a clubrecord 17-game winless streak which led to the firing in February of head coach Richard Matvichuk.

Mark Lamb took over behind the bench and has since shed the interim head coach tag and Maser says there’s legitimate cause for optimism as he prepares for training camp at CN Centre next weekend.

“Obviously we want to be winning games out there, especially for the fans who come out every night, and I think this year we’ll definitely be ready to go,” said Maser, acquired by the Cougars in October 2016 in a trade from the Prince Albert Raiders which sent winger Adam Kadlec to Prince Albert.

“Mark is definitely a bit harder on us, but none of it’s bad. It’s constructive criticism. Just in our practices at the end of the year,we really brought the tempo up and it seemed to be working out against some of the better teams. At the end of the season I think we were playing some of our best hockey and we have to carry that through into next season and come out hot.”

Maser and his twin brother Tyler, a forward in the AJHL for the Fort McMurray Oil Barons, have been skating with Dan Hamhuis in nearby Smithers and they’ve been on the ice throughout the summer with a group of junior and pro players in Nick Drazenovic’s Northern Elite Hockey skills camp in Prince George.

“I’m excited to get things going,” said Josh Maser. “We’ve got a new coach and new assistant coach (Jason Smith) and both those guys are very knowledgeable hockey players and they’ve both been through the ropes and I’m excited to hear what they have to say and excited to learn from them.”

Maser was an assistant captain with the Cougars last year. Now that captain Josh Curtis has moved on to university hockey Maser is a good bet to wear the ‘C’ this season. Last year he played the left side mainly on a line with centre Ethan Browne and right winger Vladislav Mikhalchuk. Browne, 18, is back from another season but the 20-year-old Mikhalchuk will be playing in the KHL in Russia.

“We have a solid leadership group in that

room and some of us have been together four years so we’re pretty close, and that will be a big part of our team’s success this year,” he said. “We have a lot of younger guys coming up who have reached that age where it’s kind of their time to shine and they’re in the spotlight now.

“A lot of guys I know have been training really hard in the summertime and I think they’re going to come to camp and just blow a lot of guys away. It took one summer for me, after not being in the lineup consistently, to realize I wanted to be a player on the ice every time and not be in and out of the lineup. I think a lot of guys will come in with that mentality and want to play bigger minutes and play a bigger role.”

Maser’s versatility as a skilled forward who plays with an edge makes him a logical fit on the Cougars’ top line, drawing occasional double-duty on the fourth line to create breathing room for some of the younger forwards. His shot-blocking and defensive-zone play improved significantly in his third WHL season and he learned how to stay calm under pressure with the puck

on his stick. As a result, he became better at the holding his team in the offensive zone, which led to scoring chances. The Cougars scored just 152 goals in 68 games and 30 of those goals were Maser’s. Maser will go through fitness testing when he gets to New York, then head to Traverse City, Mich., to play for the Rangers’ in the rookie tournament. The eightteam tournament includes the Chicago Blackhawks, Columbus Blue Jackets, Dallas Stars, Detroit Red Wings, Minnesota Wild, St. Louis Blues and Toronto Maple Leafs. Blackhawks draft pick Cole Moberg, 18, picked by Chicago in the seventh round (194th overall) in June, will likely cross paths with Maser in Traverse City. The 18-year-old Moberg was one of 11 defencemen who attended the ‘Hawks development camp in July.

Cougars goalie Taylor Gauthier, 18, wasn’t drafted in his first year of eligibility but has earned an invitation to the Boston Bruins rookie camp. Gauthier was among five goalies who attended the Bruins’ development camp in late June in Boston.

Knights lose opener at Western Canadian championship

Citizen staff

The start of the Western Canadian 18U midget double-A baseball championship in Strathmore, Alta., was delayed by rain.

That led to a power failure that dampened the spirits of the PG Surg Med Knights. They could only muster three hits in their opening game Friday evening which ended in a 3-1 loss to the Unity Cardinals of Saskatchewan.

The Cards got to Prince George pitcher Nolan Hull early and scored all three runs in the bottom of the first inning. Hull walked the first batter he faced, gave up a single, a double and another single which brought in the third run, but was airtight on the mound the rest of the game.

“The highlight of the game for us was our pitching,” said Knights assistant coach Dylan Lukinchuk. “Nolan Hull gave up three in the first inning but the next five innings he didn’t allow a run. He probably only gave up six or seven hits.”

Hull did his job the rest of the game, not allowing any more runs, but the Knights’ batters were unable to get him out of the hole. They threatened in the fourth inning with two on base and nobody out when Kolby Lukinchuk led off with a single and Derian Potskin also delivered a hit. The next batter, Jacob Ross, sacrificed, Jake Anker flied out and Kaelon Gibbs ground out to end the inning.

In the fifth, Luka Kim singled and stole two bases, then came home with the only Prince George run on a passed ball.

“We struggled hard today on offence,

with only three base hits,” said Dylan Lukinchuk.

The start of the game was delayed four hours by an intense rain storm that left big puddles on the field. Tournament volunteers dumped wood chips to soak up the water and the first game of the day started at 1 p.m. Alberta time.

“The way we were slated to play was probably a good time but because of the rain delay I think maybe everyone got a little too comfortable sitting around and they didn’t have enough time to fully come around and mentally prep for the game,” said coach Lukinchuk.

“We still control our own destiny. If we win the next three games we’re in the final. We have two big games (Saturday) and we need two ‘W’s.’ We have to change our strategy after losing the first one.”

The Cardinals were playing the host Strathmore Reds and were in the third inning when the skies opened up. Unity went on to win that game 5-4 and now boasts a 2-0 record atop the five-team standings. In the game that followed, the Altona Bisons of Manitoba beat the Leduc (Alta.) Giants 12-8.

The Knights have two games on Saturday. At 8 a.m. PT they play Altona, then take on Strathmore at 1:30 p.m. PT. Lukinchuk said the team hadn’t yet decided on a starting pitcher. The Knights wrap up preliminary round play Sunday at 8 a.m. PT against the Alberta champions from Leduc.

The final is scheduled for 4:45 p.m. PT on Sunday. If a tiebreaker is needed that would be played Sunday at 1:45 p.m. PT.

Daycare operator denies wrongdoing in toddler’s death

The Canadian Press

VANCOUVER — The operator of a Vancouver daycare where a toddler was found dead more than two years ago is denying responsibility for the death.

In court documents filed with the British Columbia Supreme Court, lawyers for Suzy Saad say the death was a tragedy but not the result of negligence.

They say Saad met the requisite standard of care and acted in accordance with provincial law.

Macallan (Mac) Saini was found dead at the Olive Branch Daycare in East Vancouver on Jan. 18, 2017.

A lawsuit filed by the toddler’s mother, Shelley Sheppard, alleges he choked on

an electrical cord and claims he died in the facility because he was left alone. None of the allegations have been proven in court. Documents filed with the court also accuse Vancouver Coastal Health Authority and the Ministry of Children and Family Development of failing to warn parents or close the facility despite multiple complaints of overcrowding or operating without a licence.

The health authority and ministry say they in no way contributed to the 16-month-old boy’s death. The ministry said in February that it never received or investigated complaints about Saad operating an unlicensed daycare with too many children in care.

Prince George Cougars forward Josh Maser poses with the Dan Hamhuis Award during the Cougar’s fourth Annual Awards brunch. The Dan Hamhuis Award is given to the most valuable player on the team.

Grichuk, Guerrero hit back-to-back homers for Jays

Melissa COUTO The Canadian Press

TORONTO — Charlie Montoyo thought the swing that Vladimir Guerrero Jr. put on a ball that was well outside the strike zone on Friday night looked familiar.

The result was something he’d seen before too.

Guerrero hammered a down-and-in pitch from Wade LeBlanc deep to left field for his 14th homer of the season, helping the Blue Jays beat the Seattle Mariners 7-3.

“I’ve seen it before from somebody else – his dad,” Montoyo chuckled, referencing the 20-year-old’s Hall of Fame father Vlad Guerrero Sr., who was known for getting a barrel on pitches well out of the zone.

“That’s what I said on the bench, man that reminded me of his dad.

“It’s amazing. Not many people can do that.”

Even Guerrero was surprised when he saw video of the home run after the game.

“I knew when I hit that ball the pitch was down but when I saw video, I don’t even know how I hit that ball,” he said through a translator. “So I guess I looked like my dad.”

Guerrero’s homer, a two-run blast, raised his RBI total to 54 on the season. He came into the game leading all rookies in hits (93), doubles (22) and extra-base hits (36), putting him into the conversation for the American League rookie of the year award.

Montoyo said Guerrero is well on his way to proving he deserves that accolade. But the young third baseman said he’s not thinking about that.

“A lot of people are calling me and letting me know about that but I’m very, very focused on the game here,” Guerrero said. “I just come here every day, work hard and help the team win and whatever happens happens.”

Randal Grichuk follower Guerrero’s drive with a solo shot of his own, marking a franchise-record 12th time this season that Toronto has hit home runs in consecutive at bats - and the third time this week.

Both connected off LeBlanc (6-7) in the third inning, giving the Blue Jays a 7-2 lead. Toronto had tied the previous franchisehigh 11, a record originally set in 1999, in a win against Texas on Tuesday. The team also went deep in back-to-back at bats against the Rangers Monday night.

Derek Fisher and Danny Jansen both added to Friday’s home run tally and Brandon Drury tacked on an RBI as Toronto (52-73)

won for the fifth time in seven games.

“Hitting is contagious right? And when you have that momentum on your side anything can happen,” said Toronto starter Jacob Waguespack. “I think up and down through our lineup anybody can put the ball out of the park.”

Waguespack (4-1) allowed two runs and five hits with a walk and five strikeouts in 5 1/3 innings. The rookie right-hander was applauded by the crowd of 20,844 when he exited the game after giving up a one-out single to Omar Navarez in the sixth.

Matt Wisler opened the game for Seattle (50-73) with a scoreless first inning, striking out two, and LeBlanc worked the rest

of the game. The 35-year-old lefty allowed seven runs and 11 hits with one walk and three strikeouts over seven innings as the Mariners lost for the 10th time in 13 games.

Tim Lopes opened the scoring with a tworun single off Waguespack in the second inning but the Blue Jays got those runs back and more in the bottom of the frame. Drury singled home Justin Smoak and Fisher followed with his fourth homer of the season, a two-run shot to put Toronto up 3-2.

“That second inning took a lot out of me,” Waguespack said.

“I threw a lot of pitches and for them to go and put a three-spot on the board that was amazing... We have a good chemistry on our team and our offence is rolling and

it’s fun to be out there when you’re pitching and your offence is giving you runs like that.”

Malex Smith cut Seattle’s deficit to 7-3 with an RBI single off reliever Justin Shafer in the eighth.

Blue Jays rookie sensation Bo Bichette struck out twice and had his on-base streak snapped at 17 games, the second longest for a player 21 or younger to begin a career.

“Slowly he’s going to come down, there’s no way he can keep it up,” Montoyo said of the shortstop losing his streak.

“But what he did the other day, he went 0 for 4 and then followed the next day 3 for 5. So he could do the same thing tomorrow... he’s going to be all right.”

Harris throws three TD passes, runs for Eskimos

Dan RALPH The Canadian Press

TORONTO — Trevor Harris threw three TD passes and ran for two others to earn the Edmonton Eskimos a 41-26 win over the Toronto Argonauts on Friday night.

Harris completed 28-of-41 passes for 420 yards, his 22nd straight game with 20 or more completions. That’s two short of the CFL record held by former Eskimo-Argo Ricky Ray. Toronto pulled to within 34-26 on McLeod Bethel-Thompson’s 28-yard TD pass to Brandon Burks at 5:24 of the fourth. But Harris’s one-yard TD run at 11:44 put Edmonton ahead 41-26. Edmonton (6-3) earned a third straight win over the Argos and seventh in nine contests. But it was

the club’s first victory in Toronto since 2016.

Greg Ellingson had 10 catches for 170 yards and two TDs for Edmonton. DaVaris Daniels added five receptions for 155 yards.

Toronto (1-7) was chasing a second straight home win. It beat Winnipeg 28-27 in its last contest Aug. 1.

Harris, who began his CFL career with Toronto in 2012, found Ellingson on a 10-yard TD pass at 13:24 of the third before Sean Whyte’s 13-yard field goal at 4:48 of the fourth put Edmonton ahead 34-19.

Toronto got its first TD of the game on Bethel-Thompson’s oneyard scoring strike to S.J. Green at 6:13 of the third. The 83-yard, nine-play drive cut Edmonton’s

lead to 24-19. Bethel-Thompson was 19-of-26 passing for 200 yards and two TDs before a BMO Field gathering of 16,490 on the opening day of the CNE. It marked the first time in three home games Toronto announced its home attendance. Edmonton defeated Toronto 26-0 on July 25 at Commonwealth Stadium. It was the Eskimos’ first shutout win since 2014 and marked the first time since ‘09 the Argos hadn’t scored a point in a game.

Toronto running back James Wilder Jr., was a healthy scratch, prompting speculation the 2017 CFL top rookie is on the trade block. Coincidentally, on the Argos first offensive play Burks reeled off a 29-yard run.

It was Toronto’s longest run of the season and helped the Argos open the scoring with a field goal.

Ricky Collins Jr., had Edmonton’s other touchdown. Whyte added the converts and two field goals. Toronto’s Tyler Crapigna had four field goals and two converts. Whyte’s 15-yard field goal with no time left staked Edmonton to a 24-12 lead in an entertaining first half. It came after Crapigna connected from 32 yards out - his fourth of the half - at 14:22.

Harris was a stellar 14-of-22 passing for 243 yards and two TDs in the first half as Edmonton accumulated 276 yards. Toronto actually had the ball longer (16 minutes 31 seconds) and posted 181 yards.

Both teams scored on their first three first-half drives. But while Edmonton capped its lengthy marches with TDs, Toronto settled for field goals.

Harris’s four-yard touchdown strike to Collins Jr., at 11:37 of the second put Edmonton ahead 21-9. Crapigna’s 20-yard field goal at 5:34 pulled Toronto to within 14-9 after Harris scored on a one-yard run at 14:42 of the first.

Crapigna’s 27-yard field goal at 5:23 came after a promising Toronto drive stalled with consecutive sacks by Edmonton. Harris then hit Ellingson on a four-yard TD pass at 8:09.

Crapigna’s 42-yard boot at 11:53 pulled Toronto to within 7-6 after opening the scoring with a 27-yard field goal at 5:23.

CP PHOTO

Randall Grichuk and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. celebrate after hitting back to back home runs for the Blue Jays against the Seattle Mariners during a game in Toronto on Friday.

Liberals unveil $3B sole-source deal for armoured vehicles ahead of election

Lee BERTHIAUME

The Canadian Press

OTTAWA — The federal Liberal government has unveiled plans to award a sole-source contract for hundreds of light armoured vehicles to General Dynamics Land Systems-Canada, while also promising the London, Ont., company a $650-million loan.

The surprise deal and loan were announced by Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan on Friday, only weeks before the federal election, sparking Conservative allegations the Liberals were trying to buy votes and distract from the SNC-Lavalin affair.

While final negotiations are still underway, the government says it plans to spend $3 billion for 360 LAVs as well as associated infrastructure upgrades and testing, which will replace two of the army’s aging armoured vehicle fleets.

The markets today TORONTO (CP) — Canada’s main stock index posted a triple-digit advance in latemorning trading at the end of a roller-coaster of a week for stock markets that has seen investors taken for a wild ride. The S&P/TSX composite index was up 125.67 points at 16,138.20.

In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average was up 280.49 points at 25,859.88. The S&P 500 index was up 39.13 points at 2,886.73, while the Nasdaq composite was up 126.89 points at 7,893.51.

The Canadian dollar traded for 75.19 cents US, compared with an average of 75.05 cents US on Thursday.

The October crude contract was up 20 cents at US$54.62 per barrel and the September natural gas contract was down 5.7 cents at US$2.17 per mmBTU. The December gold contract was down US$13.90 at US$1,517.30 an ounce and the September copper contract was down 0.55 of a cent at US$2.59 a pound.

The Defence Department spokeswoman Jessica Lamirande said the vehicles the government will be purchasing through the pending deal are different from those GDLS is building as part of a $15-billion deal between Canada and Saudi Arabia.

That deal has caused the company and federal government endless grief since it was brokered in 2014, partly because of criticism about the sale of weapons to the kingdom given its abysmal human-rights record.

There have also been reports that Saudi Arabia has failed to pay for the hundreds of vehicles it has already received, with a CTV report in June pegging the outstanding debt at more than $1 billion.

The new LAVs are instead largely the same as those already being used by the Canadian Forces, Lamirande said, which was one reason the government decided to forgo a competition and move on negotiations with GDLS.

Awarding a contract now rather than in several years, as the Defence Department had planned, will also save time, money and prevent layoffs at the company as GDLS recently upgraded the military’s existing LAV fleet, she added.

Departmental documents show

officials had not planned to start moving out on the project in earnest for several more years.

During an event with Sajjan in London on Friday, GDLS vice-president John Ellison underscored the economic importance of the solesourced deal, saying it “represents good jobs for our employees and our network of suppliers in all regions of Canada.”

Neither the government nor GDLS provided details about the loan, including whether it was intended to cover a shortfall in payments from Saudi Arabia.

Conservative defence critic James Bezan blasted the Liberals over the timing of Friday’s announcement even as he expressed his party’s support for GDLS and the purchase of needed equipment for the military.

“After failing to deliver for the Canadian Armed Forces over the past four years, the Liberals are now desperately using the needs of our military to distract from Justin Trudeau’s SNC-Lavalin corruption scandal right before an

election,” he said in an email.

“While GDLS is a trusted partner and Conservatives support its workers, today’s announcement is nothing but cynical electioneering from a scandal-plagued Liberal government that will do anything and say anything to cling to power.”

Southern Ontario has long been a battleground region for the three major parties, with the Liberals and NDP fighting for the urban centres of London, KitchenerWaterloo and Windsor while the Tories have taken large swaths of the rural countryside.

Asked about the announcement’s timing, Public Procurement Minister Carla Qualtrough’s spokeswoman Ashley Michnowski said the project was part of the Liberals’ 2017 defence policy “and has been planned over many months.

“This project is important to ensure the Canadian Armed Forces have the equipment they need to do the work we ask of them.”

Qualtrough’s office also said the

project would sustain 1,650 jobs in the London area and around 8,500 across Canada, “bringing certainty to both GDLS and the community of London.”

Defence analyst David Perry of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute said he believes the pending deal with GDLS, much like the government’s decision to add a third shipyard to its national shipbuilding plan, could have been announced months earlier.

The process for naming that shipyard was launched two weeks ago after more than a year of discussion, with many observers expecting the government to choose Davie Shipbuilding in Levis, Que.

“But that doesn’t mean some of these on their own aren’t actually objectively good ideas,” he said.

“What they did today was smart... It’s clearly an important opportunity to move a program significantly faster than intended because this project wasn’t slated to go for another three or four years.”

CP PHOTO BY GEOFF ROBINS

A variant of the Light Armoured Vehicles, similar to the ones ordered by the Canadian Armed Forces, sits inside the General Dynamics Land Systems-Canada factory in London, Ont., Friday.

More mayhem from Slaughter

Richard LIPEZ The Washington Post

There’s never a dull moment in Georgia with Karin Slaughter on the literary rampage.

In her newest book, The Last Widow, the popular thriller writer lays out her customary spread of clinically observed, bloody mayhem.

I lost count of the dead and dying after the first bomb went off at Emory University on page 22.

With real-life mass murder an American fixture now, this book’s gore makes it something of a surreal beach read.

Thankfully, as usual, Slaughter also gives us characters who are easy to care about: Sara Linton, a pediatrician and part-time coroner, and state investigator Will Trent.

The two are together for the ninth time – along with believable baddies you can’t wait to see drawn and quartered, and not necessarily metaphorically, either.

This time it’s an all-too-timely far-right white supremacist militia destined for comeuppance. It takes quite a while for this reckoning to eventuate, however, and 448 pages of blood-and-guts is more than some readers may need – or want.

Luckily, interspersed among the carnage are some nice scenes with Linton and Trent, who are on the verge of moving in together despite his inability to communicate and her intimidating stock portfolio. Slaughter is wonderfully adept at showing decent people struggling in their relationships.

Will, she writes, “was trying to be more open with Sara about what he was feeling,” so “he just made a note on his calendar every Monday to tell her something that was bothering him.”

Later, he will have to survive not only domestic terrorists but also Linton’s mother, Cathy, who was “like a skunk who could not stop spraying in Will’s direction.”

The novel’s bang-up opening scene has a clever twist on a current trend in pop fiction. A mother and her 11-year-old daughter are in a mall parking lot when a van pulls up, snatches one of them and speeds off.

But it’s not the child who is taken this time, it’s the mother, Michelle Spivey, who happens to be an epidemiologist with a top-level security clearance at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

This hints early of biological weaponry in the making. When the truth of what the racist nuts (called the Invisible Patriot Army) have in mind eventually comes out – after Sara is also kidnapped and Will goes undercover to rescue her – the exact scientific nature of what the group is planning is truly bloodcurdling.

Again, not just in the metaphorical sense.

A few of Slaughter’s plot turns are shaky, while some are off-the-wall but still believable. The CDC scientist Spivey, for instance, is helping the IPA leader, a psychotic ex-military man named Dash, create a vast store of biological weapons. Spivey is doing this to keep Dash from kidnapping and raping her young daughter Emma.

But things go haywire for Dash when Spivey develops appendicitis, of all things, and needs surgery in a hospital so she can live long enough to finish her job at the IPA’s secret camp in the Appalachians.

It’s odd complications like a bursting appendix that keep increasingly desperate investigators – and pleasurably anxious readers – guessing as to what could possibly come next.

Dash is among the all-too-believable characters who make up the IPA’s leaders and motley recruits. The dozens of IPA members like to march around chanting “Blood and soil! Blood and soil!” – shades of Charlottesville 2017 – and Dash himself has devoted his life to “cleansing the country of the enablers and mongrels.”

To do so, “we must destroy this corrupt society to remake ourselves as the Framers intended,” he says –and by “destroy,” he isn’t speaking figuratively.

It’s unnerving that a novel as thoroughly researched as this one seems to be saying we have to rely on a couple of near-superhero types like Linton and Trent to save us all from cataclysmic mass murder.

The FBI is depicted as politically factionalized and borderline ineffectual.

Slaughter also writes convincingly about the ease of killing hundreds of thousands of Americans employing science and technology that’s not all that hard to come by.

One kilo of a particular substance, Slaughter posits, would be enough to wipe out the entire human race. To prevent that from happening, we shouldn’t have to rely on an evildoer’s helper coming down with appendicitis.

— Richard Lipez writes the Don Strachey PI novels under the name Richard Stevenson. Killer Reunion is the latest.

HANDOUT IMAGE

The Last Widow is Karin Slaughter’s new novel.

Meet the women who freed France

The Washington Post

Nearly three years into the Second World War, Odette Sansom received a mysterious inquiry from the War Office in London inviting her to interview for a role in helping the Allies. The French-born Sansom had fled London’s nightly bombings and was living in the English countryside with her three young daughters while her husband was away fighting. When she traveled into the city, Capt. Selwyn Jepson offered her a job in France working for Her Majesty’s government but didn’t specify the dangerous details.

“Her chances of returning alive were no better than even – or less,” writes Sarah Rose in D-Day Girls: The Spies Who Armed the Resistance, Sabotaged the Nazis, and Helped Win World War II.

Sansom is one of the daring women who engaged in gallantry and sacrifice in the service of Britain’s secret agency, the Special Operations Executive. Equal parts espionage-romance thriller and historical narrative, D-Day Girls traces the lives and secret activities of the 39 women who answered the call to infiltrate France. All were vetted; they had to hold British citizenship and speak French like a native to elude the Nazis in the lead-up to D-Day, the Allied invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944.

Some of the women were trained to parachute into enemy territory by the light of the moon, with agents on the ground waiting to take them to safe houses. Once settled, they began their espionage operations, convening in smoky bars to collect information from fellow spies, bicycling around the country, their backpacks overstuffed with explosives to blow up power and phone lines, and forever peering over their shoulders fearing their covers might have been blown. Some agents in the vast resistance network of men and women invariably made mistakes; others betrayed their comrades and flipped. As a consequence, some women endured Gestapo torture; some were raped.

In addition to Sansom, Rose details the lives of several women such as Andrée Borrel and Lise de Baissac. Sansom was ultimately arrested by a secret police officer, Sgt. Hugo Bleicher, after he successfully turned an operative in her circuit. Though she was starved and tortured by the Gestapo, she never divulged information about the Resistance. She was imprisoned at Germany’s Ravensbruck concentration camp, the largest women’s prison in history, but managed to escape. When Fritz Suhren, a German SS officer and Ravensbruck’s commandant, came to trial for his activities at the camp, Sansom testified and helped convict him using the evidence she collected during her time there.

Borrel was regarded by her fellow male paratroopers as “lower-class and scrappy,” though “the men found her accessible, playful, easy to like, easy to share a smoke and a laugh with.” She wound up playing an integral role in an underground escape line that escorted as many as 600 Allied invaders home. De Baissac, who had grown up in Mauritius, the French-speaking British colony off the coast of Africa, led the resistance in Normandy in 1944. Like Borrell, she had parachuted into France and helped set up safe houses for new agents and organized the pickup of ammunition.

Many of the female agents portrayed in D-Day Girls were searching for nontraditional ways to be of service to the cause. In the words of de Baissac: “I didn’t want to get married. I would have been just... a wife and mother during the war.”

D-Day Girls is scrupulously researched. Rose not only scoured diaries, oral histories, war crime testimonies and declassified military files, she moved to France to learn the language, went parachuting and studied Morse code so she could immerse herself fully in the lives of her heroines. Packed with details and multiple storylines, D-Day Girls may be a bit dense for some readers, but history buffs are likely to find it a treasure trove of previously unexplored details about the lives of these female spies.

Rose doesn’t end her story with the triumphant Allied victory. Rather, in her final chapter, she addresses the inherent sexism in war: that the women who offered themselves in a fearless fight for democracy weren’t heralded back home in the way their male counterparts were.

In her author’s note, Rose also addresses the way women at war have been minimized or erased in the way history has framed their roles.

“It silences women’s stories while privileging everything else in conflict. Were it not for oral histories, most of women’s history would be lost forever.”

Rose does point to some important if belated recognition for the women of the Special Operations Executive.

De Baissac, for example, who ran several of her own operations, received the Croix de Guerre and the Legion of Honor, and, at age 91, was finally awarded her paratrooper wings.

HANDOUT IMAGE

Sarah Rose tells the story of the women who helped liberate France in her book D-Day Girls.

Faith compels her

Retired doctor performs abortions, circumcisions

The Washington Post

Jonathan Goldstein and Jennifer Schiller were nervous, but they handed their eight-day-old son to Sara Imershein anyway.

Sara Imershein, a kippah affixed to her brown hair with a pearl-studded bobby pin, pulled on white surgical gloves and – as family and friends watched in the couple’s District of Columbia apartment – circumcised Noah Goldstein in less than 60 seconds with a steel scalpel.

Imershein, 65, noted the parents’ pale faces.

“He’s doing so well,” she said.

Two days later, she doled out a very different kind of comfort.

Approaching a patient in a Falls Church, Va., abortion clinic, Imershein saw a tear slipping down the woman’s cheek.

As a nurse administered anesthetic, Imershein rested her hand – now purple-gloved – on the patient’s knee. She left it there until the woman’s eyes closed.

In less than five minutes, with movements equally confident, Imershein performed an abortion on the woman, who was seven weeks pregnant.

Since retiring from her obstetrics-gynecology practice in 2015, Imershein has spent her time this way: performing first-trimester abortions and ritual circumcisions, known in Hebrew as brit milahs.

She believes both practices achieve the same goal: allowing women to create the families they want. Given that, she said, her Jewish faith compels her to offer the two services to Washingtonarea residents.

She cited the Jewish concept of “mitzvot,” which means “commandments.” For her, she said: “It means I am commanded, if I have the skills as a physician, to use them to alleviate suffering. Not to use my skills would be wrong.”

She is “hyper-aware,” she added, that the two procedures are “under attack” in the United States. Imershein pointed to the Trump administration’s ongoing rollback of abortion rights and a rising antiinfant-circumcision movement that says the procedure should be outlawed because babies cannot consent.

Imershein sees the opposition as another reason she must do what she does – and speak out about it, especially abortion. She has advocated for access to abortion in speeches at churches and synagogues and on her website.

Dennis Ross, a New York rabbi who directs Concerned Clergy for Choice for the state’s branch of Planned Parenthood, said it is important that Imershein is speaking up, especially as a Jew.

“People forget that there are religious groups that support access to the spectrum of reproductive health-care services, but, hey! There’s another religious perspective,” Ross said. “We’ve just got to be louder.”

The vast majority of American Jews (83 per cent) believe abortion should be legal in “all” or “most” cases as of 2014, according to the most recent Pew Research Center data, making them the most liberal faith group on that topic. What Jewish law, known as “halakhah,” says is more complicated, failing to conform to either the perspectives of those who fight to end abortion access or those who promote it.

Halakhah mandates that abortion is necessary if the woman’s life is in danger.

For Jews to be able to “fulfill our religious tradition, actually, abortion must be legal,” said Rabbi Marla Feldman, the executive director of Women of Reform Judaism, a group within the Reform segment of Judaism, the faith’s largest and more liberal denomination.

But Jews vary on what constitutes a sufficient threat. By performing abortions for all women who meet the clinic’s standards, Imershein, who is Reform, is taking a “very permissive” position that some more conservative Jews may see as immoral, said Elli Fischer, an Orthodox rabbi and halakhah historian.

Orthodox Jews also dislike the idea of a female “mohel,” or circumcision performer, because a traditional interpretation of the law dictates that only men should fill that role.

Imershein said she is undeterred by backlash, whether from fellow Jews or non-Jewish Americans.

“My mother says I enjoy working in areas that are controversial,” she said.

“I laugh and come back with my line: ‘I like areas that empower women.’”

Imershein did not explicitly link religious principles to her practice of medicine until late in her career.

And, though she performed abortions before retiring, she kept quiet about it. Imershein worried that she and her family might be targeted for her work – fears that came true once in the early 1990s when antiabortion activists papered her home in fliers alleging she was a murderer.

Imershein’s thinking started to shift after she signed up for mohel

trainings in 1995, partly as a way to meet other Jews in the area.

That’s when she learned about mitzvot as a commandment – and, prodded by class conversations, began studying what the Torah and the Talmud, a book of Jewish oral law, said about abortion.

As she pored over the texts, sometimes helped by local rabbis, Imershein became convinced: she had to devote her retirement to circumcision, abortion and advocacy. In 2015, her two children now adults, she did it.

Nowadays Imershein spends about two days a week performing abortions at the Falls Church clinic. When she can, she conducts brit milahs for local families – at most “a few a month,” she said. She does not advertise, operating by word of mouth, and she does not “make much,” she said. Of course, Imershein’s advocacy –appearing at Planned Parenthood rallies in a white doctor’s coat, for example – is free. When she performs an abortion,

Imershein believes she is not ending a human life. Jewish law – as laid out in the Torah, the Talmud and the “responsa,” rabbinic wisdom gathered across centuries – teaches that human life starts at birth rather than conception, according to Fischer. The fetus “attains the status of a fully human life” when its head emerges, Fischer said.

The theory stems from a Torah passage about two men who got into a fight, said Daniel Eisenberg, a doctor and Orthodox Jew who lectures and writes on Jewish medical ethics. One man hits a passing pregnant woman by accident, causing her to miscarry – but the crime was treated as a “financial offense, not a capital one,” Eisenberg said.

Eisenberg said some rabbis have understood this to mean the fetus is more akin to a kind of property than a person. Because of that, they say abortion is not murder, defined as the ending of a human life. Some faith leaders believe it

still counts as killing, given that it ends a form of life, Fischer said, but halakhah insists there can be extenuating circumstances in which killing is permissible.

One rule is clear: “The woman always takes precedence,” Fischer said.

“All else being equal, if there’s a question of the mother’s life versus the fetus’s life, Jewish law privileges the former.”

That’s how Imershein sees it.

When a woman comes to the clinic asking for an abortion, Imershein does not second-guess her reasoning.

Same goes for when a mother asks her to officiate a brit milah – a less controversial procedure, though a small but growing number of Jews are questioning the tradition’s merits.

“I ultimately give all rights to the mother,” Imershein said.

“With brit milahs, they’re having the family they want, and if I’m doing the abortions, I’m just fulfilling the wish of women to have the lives they want.”

WASHINGTON POST PHOTOS

Sara Imershein, who retired from her obstetrics-gynecology practice in 2015, has since spent her time performing first-trimester abortions and ritual circumcisions. Right, she performs a brit milah, a ritual circumcision, on an eight-dayold boy.

At Home

This sultry plant will break your heart

Adrian HIGGINS

The Washington Post

The tropical hibiscus produces some of the most lurid blossoms in the garden – a broad, ruffled, flared collar around a central antenna full of knobbly, nectar-rich protuberances.

The flower seems to embody some sinful, Gauguinesque escape to the tropics. So why haven’t we all got them?

They remain reasonably popular, especially among newer gardeners who have yet to discover the rewards of subtlety, but the tropical hibiscus can break your heart. There is a price for its voluptuary nature: Hibiscus rosasinensis is demanding of water and food, pest-prone, and difficult to overwinter indoors.

I have embraced other tropicals that I might have once considered over the top – banana plants, elephants ears, cannas, even coleus, but for the tropical hibiscus, I can’t quite shake the image of it being used to create instant effects in tiki bars and around hotel swimming pools.

If you are unburdened by such associations, if you are up to the challenge of keeping it or are happy to trash the thing at the end of the growing season (a valid tack), then grab one by all means. There is still enough of the growing season ahead and there are lots of choices.

You can find them at the box store, in garden centres and online houseplant vendors. I would look for named varieties with superior traits such as more bushiness and flowering stamina.

A few years ago, a friend showed me his potted hibiscus; the petals were a copper brown. I thought he had forgotten to deadhead a faded flower until he said that was its peak display and wasn’t it marvelous? I remained quiet but regarded it as the worst thing since sliced bread. Alas, this grotesque became a trailblazer for a whole class of “fancy” hibiscus that seem to outdo themselves in terms of unnatural hues, jarring color combos and sheer weirdness.

My view is that if you’re going to have a plant as hotblooded as a tropical hibiscus, you need to keep it under a tight optical rein.

If you don’t want it to clash with your Hawaiian shirt, go for some of the deeper reds, quieter pinks, softer yellows, etc.

Justin Hancock, horticulturist at Costa Farms, a major grower of houseplants and tropicals, said one of his favorites is Boreas White, a creamy hibiscus with a magenta eye that gives the flower depth. It is compact and floriferous. “The number of flowers it produces is really impressive compared to old school white hibiscus varieties,” he said.

I am drawn to another variety by the same Danish breeder – Graff Breeding – named Petit Orange. Images show it to be a small bush with handsome dark foliage and orange flowers about half the size of the grossest hibiscus but covered in blooms. This is the tropical hibiscus for me.

Before turning to shrinking the hibiscus, the company’s breeders worked on doubling flower life, now to a week or more, and keeping the blooms open after dark (they like to curl up for the night). Petit Orange is one of a new series of diminutive varieties, trademarked HibisQs Petit.

Growing tropical hibiscus can be challenging. They need an open sunny site to keep the flowers coming, but they are thirsty and may need watering every day in high summer – perhaps twice a day if confined to a container. Producing enormous flowers takes it out of them, and they need regular but not excessive fertilizing. They draw spider mites and aphids, both dealt with by hosing

off the plant regularly, especially the undersides of the leaves. The more tenacious pest is whitefly, and the options for dealing with this range from biological controls that include ordering parasitic wasps to heavy-duty systemic pesticides, with the risk of harm to beneficial insects.

A middle ground might be to spray with insecticidal soap or neem oil. The key with whitefly – whether on your hibiscus or Brussels sprouts – is to eradicate it early before the numbers build.

If you are overwintering indoors, it is important to get hibiscus plants as clean of pests as possible before bringing them in. Mealy bugs can be a real problem, not just for the afflicted plant but for neighboring, healthy houseplants.

A badly infested hibiscus should be thrown out.

If you have an airy, humid, climate-controlled greenhouse conservatory, you can keep the hibiscus in flowering vigor all winter, but most of us don’t. In dark rooms, often way too dry, they go into a sort of leaf-dropping torpor.

Hancock recommends cutting back the plant by a third or so before bringing it indoors.

There will be immediate leaf drop, but winter leaves will grow to be better adapted to the darker conditions. You then cut back on watering and feeding. The object “is survival rather than a showworthy plant,” he said. Put it out in the spring. It might need root pruning and re-potting then.

At this time of year, the challenge is to prevent it from drying out. If you’re going on vacation, “get somebody to water it for you,” said Nate Roehrich, greenhouse production manager at Brookside Gardens in Wheaton, Md.

The hibiscus Petit Orange, above, is part of a line of smaller-flowered, more compact hibiscus by Danish plant breeder Graff Breeding. Graff has also been working on hibiscus such as Adonicus Pink, below, bred to extend the life of each bloom.

Raymond Allen was born on January 28, 1953 and was sadly taken from us far too soon on Friday, July 19, 2019 at the age of 66 years. Ray was predeceased by his beloved wife Dianna on August 30, 2016. Ray is survived by his loving son Joshua (Taylor), brother Ron (Dianne) Christianson, sisters Judy Christianson and Sandy (Doug) Cherry, grandchildren Autumn, Easton and Sawyer, nephews Neil (Renae), Steven (Dena), Shawn (Tanya), Kyle (Chloe), niece Nicole, brothers-in-law Pat (Joy), Stephen (Teresa) and Michael Thomas, along with numerous extended family members. Ray is also predeceased by his father Arthur and mother Jane ‘Bunty’ Christianson.

Ray was born in Prince George, BC where he spent his youth enjoying all that life had to offer. At the age of 16, he met the love of his life, Dianna. After a long courtship they married in 1982 and their son Joshua James was born the following year. Together they built a wonderful life for their family, with Ray dedicating his career to the construction industry where he proudly built single-family homes and multi-family communities throughout BC, Northern Alberta and the NWT. In 2005, the family moved to the Okanagan Valley, settling in Peachland where they have remained.

Ray will always be remembered for his amazing love of life and his positive attitude. A day wouldn’t go by that you wouldn’t hear him say, ‘I’ve just been thinking…’ and a new idea would blossom from this amazing man’s mind, and inevitably a new adventure would begin. Whether heading down the highway on a casual drive or finding an unknown backroad, Ray had a passion for discovering all things new. That, and good food!

Driven by his strong sense of ethics, loyalty, devotion and immense love of his family, Ray was always at their side throughout his life. He was a loving husband who cherished his wife Dianna and an amazing father who was devoted to his son and best friend Joshua. He was a proud, wonderful and kind grandfather whose face lit up every time he looked at one of his beautiful grandchildren. Ray was a caring and loving sibling who was always there for his brother Ron and sisters Judy and Sandy and an incredible uncle to his niece and nephews. Family was everything to Ray. And for those that were fortunate enough to have called this wonderful man their friend, they were truly blessed; he was loved by all who knew him.

Ray’s incredible spirit and love for life will live on forever in those of us who were lucky enough to have had him in our world. He will be missed more than there are words to describe. We love you Ray; you were and always will be ‘awesome’.

In lieu of flowers, the family asks that donations be made to the BC Cancer Foundation in support of Prostate Cancer Research. A Celebration of Life for Ray will be held in Peachland, BC at a later date.

Van Beek Cornelus Evert (Casey)

Sept 2, 1946 to Aug 9, 2019

Went to be with the Lord August 9th, 2019, beloved husband of Patricia. He is survived by his son Duane (Gabbi) and daughter Michelle and grandson Taggart. Sister Evelyn (Ernie) Leboe, several cousins, nephews, & nieces. Funeral Service will be held on August 20th, 2019 at the Christian Reformed Church, 1905 Willow Street at 1:00 p.m. Interment to follow at the Prince George Cemetery. In lieu of Flowers, donations can be made to the Salvation Army or the charity of your choice.

NOEL WILLIER

Dec 21, 1934 - Aug 12, 2019

It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of our beloved Husband, Father, Grandfather, and GreatGrandfather, Noel. He passed away at UHNBC with his family by his side. Noel will be greatly missed by his loving wife Edna of 64 years, and all of his family and friends. A viewing will be held at Assman’s Funeral Chapel on Sunday, August 18, 2019 from 1:00pm until 2:00pm. Funeral service to start at 2pm. Following the service, everyone is welcome to join the family at the Native Friendship Centre for a POTLUCK at 4:00pm.

Rebman(Strom),EvelynJuneMarie June1,1925-August13,2019

EvelyndiedpeacefullysurroundedbyfamilyinPrince George,BC,onAugust13,2019. ShewasborninWillowRiver,BC,andresidedin PrinceGeorgeherentirelife.EvelynmarriedJohn (Jack)RebmanonJune19,1943,justbeforehe wentoverseaswithRCAFBomberCommand.

Predeceasedbyherparents,CarlWilhelmStromin 1963andBorghildStrom(Benson)in1933; husband,Jackin1991;stepmother,Ruth Cunningham;brothers,AlfredStromandCarlStrom; andsister,LillianCoulling.

Evelynenjoyedbeingamother,grandmother,and great-grandmothermostinlife,butalsoenjoyedthe outdoors,poetry,reading,travel,gardening,and, laterinlife,hercomputer.Shewasveryactive writingletterstotheeditorintheCitizennewspaper formanyyearsandveryactiveonFacebook.Shewas agreatsourceoflocalhistoryinformation.Atruly remarkablewomanwhowillbemissedbyfamilyand friends.

Evelynissurvivedbyherchildren,John(Joan) RebmanofChilliwack,Don(Alice)RebmanofPrince George,Mark(Lynn)RebmanofCoquitlam,Kirk (Cindy)RebmanofPrinceGeorge,andSherri (Marina)RebmanofVancouver,plusfive grandchildren;sixgreat-grandchildren;sister, Elizabeth(Jim)O’RourkeofVancouver;brothers,Bill (Muriel)StromofKamloopsandEric(Annette) StromofAbbotsford;andmanyniecesandnephews, aswellasmanyextendedrelativesinNorwayand Sweden.

VeryspecialthankstoDr.Serwelandthenursesand staffonthesecondfloorofUHNBCHospital-Evelyn receivedsuchexcellentcare.Alsospecialthanksto thestaffatthePGHospiceHouse. TherewillbenofuneralserviceasperEvelyn’s wishes.Inlieuofflowers,pleasegivedonationsin hernametothePGHospiceSociety.

Apr 5, 1937 Hairy Hill, AB Aug 4, 2019 Vernon, BC

A loving husband, father and grandfather, he is survived by his wife Carole and their children. Son Andrew Tkachuk (Katherine) of Prince George, Daughters Janice Tkachuk (Margaret Stephens) of Peterborough, ON and Catherine Featherstone (Peter) and the Featherstone grandchildren Gareth, Simon, David and Amelia of South Surrey, BC, and Grand dog Walter. Grateful thanks to the staff at Gateway, 3rd floor, and Simon Fraser Lodge in Prince George and Noric Care Home and hospital in Vernon. In lieu of flowers, donations to Canadian Cancer Society, SPCA or charity of your choice would be appreciated. Private service to be held in Vernon, BC. Arrangements in care of Vernon Funeral Home, 3007 28th Street, Vernon BC. 250-542-0155.

SwankyParker,JuneE. June20,1931-August15,2019

JunediedserenelyonAugust15,2019,atPGRotary HospiceHouse.Ifthereisformforit,herdeparted gracewillsurelybrightenthehereafter.Junewas predeceasedbyherhusbandof63years,Laurie Parker;herparents,RudolphandSusanSwanky;her olderbrother,GordonSwanky,andhisyoungson, Matthew.Sheissurvivedbyherthreeremaining siblings,OlieSwanky,LannySwanky,andLinda Lines;herfivechildren,Gerry,Janet,Randal,Lorelee, andRussell;hergrandchildren,Jesse,Chris,Allison, andSarah;andtheconstantjoysofherfinalyears, herthreegreat-grandsons,Robert,Logan,andNoah. Herchildren-in-lawmournthepassingofthe sweetestmother-in-lawimaginable. Asayoungwoman,JunestudiedattheBanffSchool ofFineArtandisstillrememberedthereforthejoyin herresponsivewatercolours.Butsheputthataside todedicateherselffirsttohermother’slate-born twins,andthentoherownhomeandchildrenforthe following20years,returningtoherartinherearly middleage.Shespentherlast45yearspaintingand coachingothersinthejoyofamediumshenever reallyabandoned.Shewasactiveinthelocalart communityandwasamemberoftheMilltownartists formanyyears.Shesoughtthebloominallthingsin thelargebodyofworkthatcanstillbeseenonpublic andprivatewallsacrossBC. Junewassoft-spoken,evergracious,andformany faithfulyearsabelovedmemberofthecongregation oftheKnoxUnitedChurch.Shewasagenteel womanwhotypicallyaccessorizedwithabeautiful scarfandamorebeautifulsmile,bothlong rememberedbymany. AcelebrationofJune’slifeandartisplannedfor Sunday,August25,2019,at2212LaurierCrescent inthebackgarden.Pleasecomeandgoforteaand refreshmentsbetween1:00and3:00pm.Someof herremainingpaintingswillbeondisplay,anditwas June’swishthateveryoneattendingtakeoneto rememberherby.Asmalldonationfortheseworks directedtoHospiceHouse(oranothercharityofyour choice)wouldbeafittingwaytothankthewonderful staffatHospiceHousefortheirsuperblygentleand dignifiedcare.Shelovedeveryoneofthem.

BATEMAN LITTLEdo you know Jack? In addition to selling “schmoos”, picnic tables, pallets,fences, and any other

Raymond Allen Christianson

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