Prince George Citizen August 22, 2019

for adventure

Brian Kuney, Ryan Astles and Jeff McLaren, all with the

feature a dirt and wood bike track, bike and

Community Hall.

Lost boy suffered minor scratches, dad says

Christine HINZMANN Citizen staff

chinzmann@pgcitizen.ca

There’s a little scratch on his cheek and another on his left arm but that’s all the harm that was found on little George Hazard-Benoit’s body when he was taken to hospital Sunday night after spending about 31 hours in the wilderness near his home town of Mackenzie.

It all started when George’s mom Tykao Hazard and a friend went berry picking near Mackenzie’s Lions Lake campground and left George to nap in the family van Saturday around 12:30 p.m.

When George woke up alone, he left the van and wandered into the woods.

A huge search was launched and at about 7:30 Sunday evening, George was spotted from the air and the spotter then directed the RCMP officer who handles police dog Kash to George who was then immediately taken to the hospital.

The search involved hundreds of people including police, search and rescue personnel and an army of volunteers.

George’s father Kris Benoit is very grateful to everyone for all their efforts. Benoit stayed at home during the search.

He said he was afraid that if he saw Hazard among the searchers he would have hurt her.

“But I was just so mad at Tykao for losing our child,” Benoit said.

“I do feel bad – I feel kind of guilty for not helping to search for George because I wonder if we could have found him sooner.” Benoit said he knows Hazard is still beating herself up over losing George.

“I told her when we got to the hospital that I was still mad – and I really was – I was glad that George was home but I was still really mad at Tykao,” Benoit said. “And I wanted to be mad at her, but at the same time all I could do was give her a hug.” Beniot said Hazard told him she was so sorry and not to hate her for losing their son.

“I told her ‘I don’t care, George is home, George is alive, George is safe and he’s with us,’” Benoit said.

He and Hazard have not been together since George was one and a half.

Benoit said that when he was told by police George had been found it was all he could do to stay in the house.

“I wanted to run to the hospital to see George,” Benoit said, who lives close by.

The police came and got him and they couldn’t come fast enough.

“I ran into the hospital room and just cried when I saw my little boy covered in all those blankets,” he added.

— see ‘GEORGE SAID, page 3

Mackenzie rally

today

Christine HINZMANN Citizen staff

Mackenzie residents are gathering for an afternoon rally today, hoping political leaders invited to speak can offer hope to the troubled community north of Prince George.

“We would like our logs to stop leaving the community, we would like our sawmills to be able to run and you know, the bottom line is we’d like them to change the legislation so logs have to stay in the community and be milled here,” Kim Guthrie, chair of the Mackenzie Matters rally, said.

“We have a small community here that keeps shrinking and how do we keep towns like this surviving and thriving and being sustainable when we keep losing our ability to maintain,” she said. “We’re hoping he comes up with some good news they’ve been working on in the background.”

The Canfor sawmill in Mackenzie was put on an “indefinite curtailment” July 19, a few days later the Conifex facility was on temporary curtailment and then because it couldn’t get the wood from local mills. Parallel 55, which is a finger joint mill shut down, too. It’s a trickle-down effect, Guthrie, a notary public, said.

“There’s also indirect job loss for other businesses in the community,” she added. “We’ve already had lay-ffs at the grocery store and small businesses like mine.”

Guthrie said when she moved to Mackenzie 30 years ago there were three elementary schools and a high school, a dentist, a chiropractor, an eye doctor, two grocery stores and three gas stations.

— see ‘SOMETHING’S GOT TO BE DONE, page 3

FAMILY HANDOUT PHOTO

George Hazard-Benoit, 4, left, plays with step-brother Tobias, 5, at home. George was lost in the forest for about 32 hours and was found Sunday not much worse for wear. He was released from hospital on Tuesday.

Watch for kids on the road as school returns this fall

Citizen staff

The Canadian Safety Council is reminding motorists to take extra care on the roads when the school year starts again.

In Prince George, classes resume for the fall on Sept. 4.

“Patience, extra attentiveness and situational knowledge go a long way toward keeping our roads safe for everyone,” Canada Safety Council president Gareth Jones said in a press release. “It’s our responsibility as conscientious road users to make sure that nobody is unnecessarily put in harm’s way.”

Children, especially young children, aren’t always attentive to danger and can act unpredictably, the council says. Children run-

ning to catch their bus may dart unexpectedly into traffic, so drive cautiously, watch for children on the sidewalk or side of the road and be prepared to stop suddenly. It is against the law to pass a school bus when its red signal lights are flashing – regardless of which side of the road the bus is on (except on median-divided highways).

Also be vigilant to watch for children walking or riding bicycles to and from school, especially at crosswalks, in school zones and on residential streets without sidewalks.

Being aware of your surroundings and obeying speed limits will give you more time to react if a child steps into the roadway suddenly.

Free fun day for kids happening this Saturday

Citizen staff

A group of local non-profit organizations is hosting a day of free fun activities for kids on Saturday. The second annual Great Park Escape runs from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Lheidli T’enneh Memorial Park, and will feature free hotdogs, a bouncy castle, crafts and other kid-friendly activities. The event started in 2017 as

Forget the Fires, an event for families displaced by wildfires in the region.

Local organizations rallied to put on the event in 48 hours, and have continued the event in the following years.

The free event is a partnership between the Prince George Hospice Society, ConnectPG, The Exploration Place, YMCA, Two Rivers Art Gallery and other groups.

Kelly Road crew

Crews work on the new Kelly Road Secondary school on Wednesday morning.

‘Something’s got to be done’

— from page 1

Now there is one elementary school, a high school, doctors, but no dentist, no chiropractor, and only one grocery store and one gas station.

“I drive down my street and there’s houses for sale here, there and everywhere because young families are having to go – you know you can’t blame them. It might be too simple to change the legislation but they did it in 2003. I just get so frustrated watching the logging trucks drive out of our community. Our mills aren’t running and we see people having to leave. We’re not just faced with what’s going on in the forest industry, we have issues with our lake level and the Caribou recovery plan. It feels like we’re getting slammed on every side.”

The rally, scheduled to start at noon, was organized by members of the community that were spurred into action.

“Something’s got to be done,” Guthrie said. “We can’t just sit back and watch our community go down the tubes.”

One of the many speakers to attend Thursday’s rally is Nechako Lakes MLA John Rustad, who serves as the B.C. Liberals critic on Forest, Lands, and Natural Resource Operations.

“The forest sector has been reeling for most of this year, if not longer,” he said.

The extensive curtailments of sawmills and how Fort St. James has declared a

‘George said he bunkered down and ate blueberries’

— from page 1

“We’re such a close community in Mackenzie and it’s been just so amazing. The amount of volunteers who came out to search for George – it was amazing.”

Doctors told Benoit to keep George hydrated and try to get him to rest but he’s a high energy child and he just wants to play.

When Benoit asked George about the experience of being lost in the woods the only thing George didn’t seem to remember was the helicopter ride. Benoit said George is really smart and by the time he was three years old he knew the names of his favourite kind of dinosaurs.

Benoit said when George realized he was lost he knew just what do to.

“George said he bunkered down and ate blueberries,” Benoit said.

“And then when we were in the hospital and he’s feeling a little bit better the little monkey asked for blueberries.”

An Emergency Medical Services staff member had just finished picking blueberries and gave George a small container of them, Benoit said.

“So he just sat in his hospital bed and ate his blueberries,” Benoit laughed. “The bounce back from this kid is just phenomenal. We’re just so glad that he’s home.”

financial state of emergency is unprecedented, he said.

Mackenzie has already seen a really tough time in the mid-2000s during the last time the forest sector took a big downturn, he added.

“Mackenzie knows what it’s like,” he said. “They know forestry is a big part of their future and they want to fight for it. They want to raise the level of awareness and hopefully they’ll get some attention from different levels of government that will be able to help them with their issues and that’s what this rally is all about.”

Rustad said the forestry issues were raised to the NDP government in the legislature last fall and again in the spring.

“They have ignored this financial forestry crisis for many months,” Rustad said.

Just recently a letter was sent to the federal government, he added.

“So, quite frankly, I believe they will blame the federal government for not coming to the table but they could have sent that letter months ago, which is what we had asked them to do back in June,” he said.

“So what I’m hoping is that perhaps the federal government has put out a package that the provincial government will be able to announce. I’m hopeful that something like that could happen

because now the province is actually engaged. “I would like to see the provincial government step up with a package to help communities like Fort St. James and Mackenzie to help the workers and contractors who are being hit so hard.”

Other speakers at the rally include fellow Liberal MLAs Mike Morris and Donna Barnett, Mackenzie Mayor Joan Atkinson, MP Bob Zimmer, Peter Ewert of Stand up for the North, regional district rep Pat Crook, Vince Lucas from Unifor, Tony Zabinsky who is acting mayor of Ft. St. John, Dale Bumstead, mayor of Dawson Creek, Mike Whalley from the Resource Municipalities Coalition and Northern Coalition, United Steelworkers, Cam Shiel from the Forest Stewardship Council, Andy Barnes a councillor for the District of Mackenzie, and Gary Fiege and Todd Smith for Public and Private Workers of Canada (PPWC).

First Nations representatives were invited to attend as well.

Doug Donaldson, the Minister of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development, also attending the rally Donaldson has agreed to speak but there won’t be a question and answer period, Guthrie said.

“It’s my hope that’s he’s going to give us some hope,” she said.

B.C. man denies killing daughters

Hina ALAM The Canadian Press

VANCOUVER — A Vancouver Island man testified Wednesday that he didn’t kill his two daughters and denied he tried to take his own life on the day they died.

Instead, Andrew Berry’s lawyer Kevin McCullough presented a different theory to a Vancouver jury.

Berry was a problem gambler who owed a lot of money to bad people, McCullough said.

He said his client will testify that he was attacked in his apartment on Christmas Day 2017 and when he came to, six-year-old Chloe Berry and fouryear-old sister Aubrey Berry were dead.

Berry took the stand in his own defence, charged with two counts of second-degree murder.

A jury has already heard the children were stabbed to death in Berry’s Oak Bay apartment and that police found him injured in the tub.

“Did you kill Chloe and Aubrey,” asked defence lawyer Kevin McCullough.

“No, I did not,” Berry answered.

“Did you attempt suicide on Christmas 2017?”

“No, I did not.”

Berry testified that he had a happy life with the two girls.

He described going camping with them, reading books before bedtime and taking the girls to school. He talked of how their personalities changed as they grew.

Chloe was outgoing while Aubrey was shy, he said.

“(Chloe) would talk to anyone,” he said choking up. “She was not shy.”

Berry described Aubrey as a watcher.

“She wasn’t as easy as Chloe was,” he said.

The court has already heard that Berry and the children’s mother had a difficult relationship coparenting the girls.

Sarah Cotton had testified previously that she had called the Children’s Ministry twice saying that Berry had sexually touched Aubrey, but police found no evidence the touching was sexual or criminal in nature.

Berry told the court that he did not sexually assault Aubrey.

Cancer language all wrong

Iam not a “fighter” because I survived Hodgkin’s lymphoma at 19. I am lucky among the unlucky.

In the face of serious illness, especially cancer, we immediately declare patients as “fighters,” or talk about “winning” or “losing” the battle with the disease. That stock phrasing shows up in news headlines and charity campaigns; it’s spoken by politicians, celebrities and well-meaning acquaintances alike. Each person has the right to describe their experience of their disease as they see fit, but it often feels impossible to avoid terms like “attack,” “invade,” and “fight,” which are so deeply embedded in cancer culture.

For me, military language was a way for the people around me to evade the complex realities that accompanied my diagnosis. It put the gray areas of living with cancer – the physical anguish and the existential uncertainty – into stark, confrontational terms. That vocabulary stamped me as brave and heroic when I felt most weak and defenseless. I was convinced that I would let everybody down. When news of my diagnosis broke out, my community forgot I was the same person. They saw only illness and it showed in the way they spoke to me. They tried to console me with encouragement.

One family friend confided, “I’m close with a woman who had a breast growth and worked full time during treatment, didn’t

even lose her hair.”

A classmate offered: “I read about this man who cured his inoperable malignancy on his own. Poof, gone one day to the next.”

Within days, I had dropped out of college and moved home to get chemotherapy full-time; my eyelashes and eyebrows fell out. I couldn’t measure up to these cancer prodigies.

But I did the best I could to muster the energy and composure that these words demanded of me. I tried to hide the atrocities of my daily life from the well-wishers who seemed unable to accept life’s impermanence with me. I hid my IV pole in my bedroom closet, along with a bag of pill bottles and the needles I used to give myself shots of white blood cells. Despite my best efforts, my basic presence, a walking reminder of death, could darken the mood in the room. I lifted a hood over my cancer tell – a shiny head – exchanged the word “cancer” for “sick” and shoved down my anxiety to appear put-together.

People wanted me to be the face of cancer – upbeat and optimistic, despite my suffering – while lymphoma acted like a tornado in my life, tearing through any normalcy. In others’ eyes, my diagnosis had put me on the fast track to sainthood, but on the inside, I was an angst-filled teenager, feeling singled out and misunderstood. I didn’t know how to express how others’ vocabulary affected me. Eventually, my dad had to

act as a gatekeeper, politely telling friends I wasn’t up for visitors. My mounting isolation lengthened the road to recovery. When a fellow patient died, people would say “she lost her battle, but you’ll win yours.” They thought that this metaphor would uplift me. But the implication that someone else died because they had, in some way, failed, or not been persistent enough to survive, put more pressure on my own health.

The only war raging on was the one between my doctors and my lymphoma. My oncologists ordered chemo, which coursed through my veins to combat the tumour growing on my heart and lungs. Tumour vs. chemo. I was a body stuck in the middle.

After my course of treatment was finished, my parents threw a dinner party, inviting family friends who made us weekly meals and drove me to chemo, through blizzards, in their four-wheel drives. I wanted our loved ones to enjoy their sense of relief, but I didn’t understand why I was the focus of celebration. Everything had happened to me. Unlike a soldier given an external enemy, mine was internal – when it came down to it, the enemy was me. I was to blame for my family’s unrelenting fear and sleepless nights. Every congratulatory “you won the battle” just reminded me of what I’d really, privately won: post-traumatic stress, agoraphobia and addiction to morphine. I

Resilience is this region’s greatest strength

B.C. forests have been hit hard in so many ways, from past years’ fires, timber supply, allowable cut, pine beetle, spraying, caribou protection plans, tariffs, loss of a softwood lumber agreement, political pressures, and more. Systems are designed for the outcomes achieved. Our forests are in trouble – environmentally and systemically. How does every facet work together to achieve a balance in the industry? Globalization is also a contributor to these opposing market forces. Aug. 9 was the last day of work for the Louisiana Pacific OSB mill in Fort St. John. Northern B.C. is reported to be home to 39 per cent of pulp and paper mills, 55 per cent of the province’s sawmills, 79 per cent of pellet mills, and 45 per cent of veneer plywood and panel mills. Northern economies depend on forestry. The State of Forestry in Northern BC reported by Northern Development Initiative Trust reports that one in five jobs in Northern B.C. are tied to the forestry sector. That report goes on to indicate that, as of July 10, with four mill closures, there were 710 direct

jobs affected, which impacts an estimated 1,500 indirect jobs and an estimated annual payroll of $40 million.

The payroll loss due to curtailment is an estimated $175,000 per week per mill.

One thing that is for certain in the north is there will be ups and downs. The challenge is balancing the ups and downs between resource industries. Slow, steady sustainable growth offers more stability than the boom-bust we are accustomed to in the north.

We have a strong community and we are resilient. Contractors will need to react quickly to remain competitive for a smaller market share. Larger organizations will need to downsize to cut unnecessary costs. The fallout in the community trickles into the service shops, the supply stores and retail sector. It is a time for tightening the belt and spending less for the forest industry and their employees.

I see small communities become more resilient. How do we support one another through economic hardship? Secondary jobs are now becoming the primary jobs. Stay at home dads are embracing an opportunity to better their family in ways never experienced. I look around my community and am constantly identifying opportunities for small businesses to thrive.

I personally have changed my spending habits. My preference is to shop/eat/support local. Sure, we all have the odd visit out of town, but it is no longer the weekly or monthly visit. Maybe you really aren’t saving anything when you go out of town and overspend.

If memory serves from the Hydro project employee demand, we are entering a period that requires the most manpower. This will help offset some of the job losses. On the upside, there is a lot more resource activity and pipeline construction currently. These are temporary, short-term jobs… which we are quite familiar with.

No wimps allowed in the north. Ride the wave. Resilience rules.

— Edwina Nearhood is a lifelong resident of Fort St. John.

LETTERS WELCOME: The Prince George Citizen welcomes letters to the editor from our readers. Submissions should be sent by email to: letters@pgcitizen.ca. 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.

didn’t feel victorious. Now, I had to piece my life together, wracked with guilt over why I’d lived, while others – who I’d been sure would survive – hadn’t. Yet despite this experience, when I was in remission and learned my friend was diagnosed with leukemia, I fell back on the euphemistic language I’d rejected. I rushed to the hospital to spend time with her. Her morale was low; she was upset at her lack of freedom. “Nurses walk in and out, these IVs are stuck to me, there’s no privacy,” she said. She asked if I knew anyone with the disease. I said yes and then clammed up. I didn’t want to divulge that he’d died. Reading my expression, my friend told me, “Alex, I know people die from what I have. We can say it out loud.” Even as a survivor, I’d fallen into the pattern of trying to shield her, through language, from the dangers already inside her body. From that moment on, we had an understanding: no tiptoeing allowed, even with a difficult topic. That understanding bonded us forever. What we both craved most during our treatment was openness.

We didn’t want people to hold us up as brave warriors; we wanted them to face the discomfort with us. The sick and the healthy are on the same side – all scared of the same malady. But the destructiveness of cancer can’t be glossed over with cliches.

— Alex Dvorak, Washington Post

Ride-hailing plan hits dead end

Isuppose the next best thing for governments to do when they can’t please everyone is to ensure they don’t please anyone. Case in point is the regime emerging in British Columbia to launch – actually relaunch, because we forget the province smacked down the first effort – the ride-hailing business. Permit me some restraint of enthusiasm for its arrival later this year, now that the independent Passenger Transportation Board (PTB) has outlined the rules, and let me present the lunchbag letdown of the interested parties. How can consumers be happy they will not get a break on fares?

How can taxi drivers be happy they will not get a break on their absurd boundaries to pick up those fares? How can the new entrants be happy when they cannot be all-in as they are in most civilized markets?

The PTB, the final bump on this most meandering, pondering and rocky of roads to deliver ride-hailing after an earlier false start, has issued regulations with all sorts of water in the wine. To be sure it feels intoxicating, but that’s because we have been on the wagon for so long now, even cheapened plonk will taste like VQA.

But we might miss the truth that the twin attractions of Lyft, Uber and the like have been price and convenience. On the former, the new regime is an epic fail; on the latter, it may be yet.

We will be a province of regulated minimum and unregulated maximum fares. Imagine that: another industry being told how little it can charge – but strangely, not how much – at the literal expense of the passenger. Is this truly a consumer-friendly regime?

With its mandated floor rates on fares, the province has chosen to serve the incumbent taxi companies. The new entrants can’t offer discounts, coupons, loyalty points, whatever to entice business, as they do in foreign vistas like Toronto. The taxi rate prevails, and that means the meter starts at somewhere between $3.25 and $3.90 in the Lower Mainland.

If the government was trying to protect the taxi industry, it has a dark sense of humour about it. Why would someone stay in a cab fleet when it will be possible now to charge anything when bad weather hits, a concert is letting out, or a bar closes?

Then again, the new entrants in ride-sharing will be challengesharing, too. A sizable portion of the ride-hailing drivers are couple-

Mailing address: 201-1777 Third Ave. Prince George, B.C. V2L 3G7 Office hours: 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday to Friday General switchboard: 250-562-2441 info@pgcitizen.ca General news: news@pgcitizen.ca Sports inquiries: 250-960-2764 sports@pgcitizen.ca Classifieds advertising: 250-562-6666 cls@pgcitizen.ca

hours-a-day types. They take fares on the way home from work or when they drop their children at soccer practice. What isn’t clear is whether this new regime – in particular, its semi-hassle and cost of procuring the more extensive Class 4 licensing – will cultivate the same gig-economy cohort. I suspect we’re going to see pretty much full-timers in new and old entrants alike – few mortgagehelping roles, mainly mortgagemeeting ones.

Sure, cabbies get to claim the port and the airport as their basic preserve. And even though the industry is called ride-hailing, you will only be able to physically (as opposed to technologically) hail a taxi. Ride-hailing here will be an app that courts a vehicle on your smartphone, not your arm courting one on your street.

Still, the Vancouver Taxi Association feels betrayed. To which many of us can say on behalf of the charter members: welcome to the club, junior associates, your orientation is about to begin. The Horgan government long ago made clear that the consumer would not enjoy the ride-hailing regimes elsewhere and that the province would adopt a made-inB.C. approach. But even its friends in the taxi business would have been delusional to expect the sort of victories Donald Trump expects at the trade table; into its wine has gone some water, too.

What is fair to say is that the PTB did its best to balance the unbalanceable. It was handed a tough, long overdue, insanely politicized task and it foraged as best it could for the few berries it thought we could collectively digest. Its public consultations to reach an accommodation reflected different warring factions in different occupying universes. The shorthand is we are getting ride-hailing. Rejoice the chimera! The longhand is that we are not getting ride-hailing. We are getting more vehicles to roam more and charge what the market will bear – unless it’s too little, in which case the Horgan government is there for you, beleaguered taxi driver, to deal with a sudden storm you thought your votes and support had provided you a safe port to weather.

Shawn Cornell, director of advertising: 250-960-2757 scornell@pgcitizen.ca Reader sales and services: 250-562-3301 rss@pgcitizen.ca Letters to the editor: letters@pgcitizen.ca

Website: www.pgcitizen.ca

Website feedback: digital@glaciermedia.ca

of

Autism overdiagnosed, researcher warns

The Canadian Press Autism has become so overdiagnosed that within five to 10 years there could be almost no difference between groups of people who have been diagnosed with the condition and those who haven’t, a Montreal researcher warns following the publication of a new study.

A new meta-analysis published Wednesday in JAMA Psychiatry that analyzed 11 previous major studies carried out since 1966 found that individuals diagnosed with autism have become progressively less different from the general population.

IN BRIEF

Retired fisher claims $60M jackpot

A retired fisherman from Richmond has reeled in the catch of a lifetime – a $60-million lottery haul.

The B.C. Lottery Corp. says Joseph Katalinic matched all seven numbers in last month’s Lotto Max draw to win the largest lottery prize in the province’s history. It says in a release there have previously been three $50-million winners in the province.

Katalinic retired as a commercial fisherman 20 years ago and told the lottery corporation he now plans to “live like a king.”

He says there was a lot of hugging and kissing when he broke the news to his family, which is planning a vacation in Hawaii and a visit to a town in Europe where his parents were born.

Katalinic says he scanned his ticket at a mall where he bought it and couldn’t believe he’d hit the jackpot.

“I had to go to two other locations to scan my ticket again just to make sure it was real.”

— The Canadian Press

Province unveils long-term care help

People in assisted-living residences will soon have more options to stay longer and access more services to avoid being prematurely moved into long-term care, says B.C.’s health minister.

The changes to the Community Care and Assisted Living Act, announced Wednesday in New Westminster by Adrian Dix, will come into force on Dec. 1. The regulations will give people, including seniors and people with disabilities, the flexibility to stay in their communities longer.

“What this means is people will be able to live in assisted living longer and to continue to pursue an independent life longer,” Dix said.

Currently, those in assistedliving facilities must require “two and only two” prescribed services, such as managing medication and provision of and monitoring therapeutic diets, he said. Those requiring more support – assistance with the activities of daily living, behaviour management, psychosocial supports, or safekeeping of money and personal property, for example – were asked or advised to move along to long-term care.

“The gulf between assisted living and long-term care is large,” Dix said.

Assisted living offers semiindependent housing – private rooms in a house or an apartmentstyle building with suites – that provides extra supports for daily living, such as meals, recreation, medication management and psychosocial supports. Long-term care is 24-hour care. Placing people in long-term care prematurely could take away their independence and sense they are still living in their own home, Dix explained.

— Victoria Times-Colonist

Affordable housing funds announced

The federal government is investing in what it calls an innovative financing model that it says will help generate funds for affordable housing projects.

A government news release says the new lending institution, HPC Housing Investment Corporation, will provide funds to investors by creating and offering bonds in capital markets at long-term fixed interest rates. Fisheries Minister Jonathan Wilkinson made the announcement in Vancouver saying the corporation will have the ability to take a relatively small investment and maximize it.

An investment of $20 million from the Affordable Housing Innovation Fund is being used to complete the first round of financing that the release says is valued at approximately $33.1 million for two separate projects in British Columbia and Alberta.

— The Canadian Press

Laurent Mottron, a research psychiatrist at the mental health unit of the Rivieredes-Prairies Hospital and one of the study’s authors, said the gap could soon narrow to nothing.

“Autistic people we test now are less and less different than typical people - really less and less, to the point where if the trend continues, we won’t be able to find the least difference within five or 10 years,” he said.

Mottron says the problem is that the criteria have lowered to the point where a diagnosis could become nearly meaningless.

Mottron and four other researchers conducted a meta-analysis of previous studies

that compared people who have been diagnosed with autism with those who haven’t.

The analysis, which included data from 27,723 individuals, includes practically “the whole of planetary research on the autistic brain,” Mottron said.

The analysis found that the differences between the groups have decreased over time in five of the seven main constructs that define autism, including emotion recognition, theory of mind, planning and brain size.

In contrast, the group found no such tendency when it comes to the prevalence of schizophrenia, which has remained stable

for the past two decades. Globally, the number of people diagnosed with autism has risen dramatically in recent years, going in the United States from less than 0.5 per cent of the population in 1966 to more than two per cent. In Quebec, the number is approaching two per cent. The study’s authors say their findings may be due to several factors, including a true increase in the condition, greater public awareness, the fact that a diagnosis leads to greater support, a lowered threshold for diagnosis, the use of “checklist diagnoses” and a greater tendency to diagnose individuals with a normal IQ.

Voter turnout campaign targets youth

The Canadian Press

Caro Loutfi is busy at her Montreal office preparing ways to get young voters to cast a ballot in this fall’s federal election.

Loutfi is the executive director of Apathy is Boring, a non-partisan organization that works to educate young voters and get them involved in politics.

Until the 2015 federal election, turnout among the country’s young voters - those between the ages of 18 and 24 - had been on a long-term decline since the 1970s.

With another vote scheduled for October, Loutfi and 400 other groups and activists are organizing events in the coming weeks to ensure the ground gained in 2015 with young Canadians isn’t lost on Oct. 21.

Their work culminates with a day of action on Sept. 15 that Apathy is Boring styles on its website as the largest, non-partisan voter engagement campaign in Canadian history.

“It’s important to maintain that momentum to ensure that diverse voices are actually taking part in deciding who governs our country,” Loutfi said.

Elections Canada data from the 2015 election showed that 57 per cent of voters aged 18 to 24 cast a ballot, an increase of 18.3 percentage points from the almost 39 per cent recorded in the 2011 election. The increase was the largest the elections agency has recorded since it began reporting demographic data in 2004.

helped the Liberals win the support of 45 per cent of young voters.

Parker said hasn’t seen any indicators that show excitement or interest among young people about this fall’s election. He said the issue is a lack of civic literacy of voters, particularly young people, don’t have enough information that encourages them to vote.

“I’m really optimistic from 2015 results and the increase in young voter turnout, but it’s not yet a pattern,” said Parker, who worked on the Liberals’ successful campaign four years ago. “I wouldn’t be at all surprised if first-time voter turnout moves back down towards what has traditionally been more normal levels.”

To ensure turnout remains high, Loutfi and her colleagues have dedicated their time to provide more information online and in person to young electors.

A survey this year from the Samara Centre for Democracy found that 71 per cent of youth said they were interested in federal politics, adding that young people are “among the most active participants” in Canadian politics, including through their activism.

Four years on, those voters have aged and new voters are coming of age to cast a ballot. The so-called millennial generation, which includes those 18 to 34, will account for just over one-quarter of voters in this election - making them a potentially powerful voting bloc in 2019 and beyond as they reshape politics just as the baby boomer generation before them.

But the findings from the Toronto-based non-profit don’t mean those young electors will turn out to vote on Oct 21.

Jon Parker, a political science professor at Algonquin College in Ottawa, said the increased turnout in the last election was largely driven by work the Liberals, in particular, did to target young voters. Research conducted by Abacus Data on behalf of the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations following the 2015 vote suggested the party’s efforts, and get-out-the-vote campaigns,

There is a “democracy dictionary” where first-time voters can find information about words they may not understand - such as absentee ballot, canvassing and field liaison officer – and an online tool that will help young Canadians find and get in touch with their local candidates. Apathy is Boring is also working with Elections Canada to train youth volunteers and send them to concerts, festivals and events to talk directly with and encourage young electors to vote.

Loutfi said getting more young people involved in the election will mean their issues are more likely to be reflected in party platforms.

“Politicians tend to not spend their time and energy on a non-voter,” she said. “It creates a vicious cycle where you don’t vote, politicians don’t talk to you.”

CP PHOTO

Caro Loutfi, right, manager of Apathy is Boring, and Samantha Reusch are seen in their office in Montreal on Wednesday.

Sports

What’s new with the Cougars?

Get the latest on trades, injuries, post-game analysis and more in The Citizen

Americans thump Canada in World Cup qualifier

The Canadian Press AGUASCALIENTES, Mexico — Megan Baltzell and Brittany Schutte each drove in five runs and Alex Hugo had a home run and four runs batted in as the United States thumped Canada 21-4 Wednesday in a women’s baseball World Cup qualifier.

Canada, ranked No. 2 in the world behind Japan, had no answer for the fourth-ranked Americans as they belted 23 hits and posted a pair of eight-run innings.

Canada fell to 3-1 at the eight-team tournament, while the U.S improved to 4-0.

“It’s a wake-up call,” Canadian manager Aaron Myette said.

“We were chatting before the game about how we came out flat yesterday (a 7-5 win over Cuba), and then we came out a little flat today, lacking intensity. As a group, what we can take away from that is that we need to be on point for every game. We’ve got to be prepared and not just come in and hope that we get things started later in the game.

“We’ve got to start from the minute we show up to the park, be mentally prepared and focused on each game.”

Canada had eight hits behind multihit games from Ellie Jespersen of Spruce Grove, Alta., and Kelsey Lalor of Red Deer, Alta., but couldn’t solve the American pitching any further. Marti Sementelli opened with two shutout innings, allowing just one hit, to pick up the win.

The U.S. also capitalized on five walks and four errors from the Canadians.

“They’re a fantastic team,” Myette said of the Americans.

“They have a ton of good arms and a very strong lineup. The runs and hits speak for themselves. They hit balls hard today, and you have to give them credit for hitting pitches hard.

“We made a lot of mistakes and got away from our strengths and our game plan, and

pitched into their strength and their game plan. That’s an adjustment we have to make.”

Amanda Asay of Prince George got the start for Canada and allowed four runs (three earned) on four hits with three strikeouts. The U.S. opened up the game

after Asay left, as Elizabeth Gilder allowed eight earned runs on eight hits over twothirds of an inning in the bottom of the fourth. Katie Hagen pitched the final 3 1/3 innings, allowing nine runs (seven earned) over 11 hits.

“Luckily, this came in the middle of the

Summer Hoops Classic raised $18K

Ted CLARKE Citizen staff

tclarke@pgcitizen.ca

The Mann Dental/P. G. Summer Hoops Classic three-on-three basketball tournament not only provided a day of fun for a bunch of teenaged athletes June 1 at Duchess Park Secondary School but it was a slam-dunk fundraiser.

The fifth annual event drew 159 players who played each other for bragging rights in girls, senior boys and junior boys divisions just before summer vacations began and it raised $18,000 for the Heart and Stroke Foundation.

“It’s awesome, it’s the most we’ve ever raised, we’re pretty happy,” said tournament organizer Nav Parmar, an assistant coach for the UNBC Timberwolves men’s basketball team. “We raised $17,000 the second year (2016) and this year we were able to surpass that at $18,000. I’m extremely humbled.”

The money will be used by the foundation to buy equipment and fund research projects.

“It’s just great to see we’re getting more and more sponsors every year and a record number of participant every year willing to take on the task of trying to raise as much money as we can,” said Parmar. “You can see the passion within the players to want to give back. That’s the most rewarding part of this entire experience, when you see the players going out every year to fund-raise on behalf of the tournament.

“This is the entire city’s accomplishment. To be able to present a cheque of that magnitude is not possible without the continued support for the entire community. They’ve gotten behind it and they’ve believed in this event from Day 1 and we’ll continue to work as hard as we can to make sure the put in the best event possible, but at the same time try to make an even greater impact on an annual basis within the community.”

tournament,” Asay said. “It may be a devastating loss because of the score, but not so devastating in the standings.” Canada next faces Venezuela on Thursday. The top four teams at the regional tournament advance to the World Cup.

Batter Amanda Asay settles into the batters box during a game at Citizen Field on May 11. Asay is part of Canada’s team competing at the World Cup in Mexico.

CITIZEN FILE PHOTO

Ajay Nickolet attempts to put up a shot over the outstretched hand of Raymon Dhillion during the 2017 PG Summer Hoops Classic three-on-three high school basketball tournament.

Bombers boss expects around 20,000 fans for NFL game in Winnipeg

Judy OWEN The Canadian Press

WINNIPEG — Wade Miller wants to make sure football fans enjoy Thursday’s NFL pre-season game in Winnipeg between the Oakland Raiders and Green Bay Packers, even if they can’t afford to be in the stands.

The president and CEO of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers said the CFL team and the Raiders are hosting a viewing party downtown so fans can watch the Week 3 exhibition contest live-streamed from IG Field, home of the Bombers.

“Based on the price of these tickets, there was going to be a lot of fans who wouldn’t be able to afford to come to the game and we wanted to make sure that our seasonticket members and football fans in the entire community had a place to gather and have a great event,” Miller told The Canadian Press on Wednesday.

“We think it’s a great opportunity to engage the entire community of Winnipeg.”

The game will be shown on a jumbo screen at The Forks, a downtown tourist attraction. There will be food and activities with the cost a cash or food donation to the Winnipeg Harvest charity.

Ticket prices for the game were controversial since the event was announced in June.

Tickets were $75 to $340 before taxes and fees. The limited cheapest upper-deck seats sold out fast. Up to 6,000 end-zone tickets were recently reduced through a sponsorship deal to $75 from $164, for a total cost of $94.25 after fees.

Prices were set by promoter John Graham, president of Canadian-based On Ice Entertainment Ltd., and the Raiders. Oakland gets the gate revenue.

“We rented out the venue,” Miller said. “Those (prices) are decisions made by the promoter. We can’t control those, but what we can control is putting on a good event down at The Forks and making sure the stadium looks great.”

Miller initially predicted the game wouldn’t sell out.

“I’m sure there will be around 20,000 here,” he said. “The ticket sales are what they are and we can’t control that. At the end of the day, it’s still a pre-season game and that is what it is.”

Although starters traditionally get the most playing time in a Week 3 exhibition

CITIZEN SPORTS

game, that may not happen Thursday.

New Packers head coach Matt LaFleur said after Tuesday’s practice that star quarterback Aaron Rodgers is a game-time decision.

The 15-year veteran hasn’t yet played in the pre-season. He was held out of last week’s loss to the Baltimore Ravens because of tightness in his back.

“I’ve never been to Winnipeg, but I’m sure there’s some Packers fans up there,” Rodgers told reporters after a practice this week.

“I’m excited to get up there and see the folks. I’ve been a fan of the CFL for a while so I know how much those cities that have a team, how much it means to them, and it’s going to be exciting to get up there and play.”

It’s the first time Green Bay has played a neutral-site exhibition game since it faced the Kansas City Chiefs in a Hall of Fame game in Canton, Ohio, in 2003.

Oakland, which is moving to Las Vegas

next season, may not have starting quarterback Derek Carr take any snaps, nor new receiver Antonio Brown catching passes.

Raiders head coach Jon Gruden told media after Tuesday’s practice that it depends “on the health of a team, who’s in and who’s out.”

Brown is recovering from frostbitten feet he suffered during cryotherapy in France last month. He’s also testing new helmets after he recently lost a grievance to wear his old, uncertified helmet.

At the press conference announcing the game, Graham said he was hopeful Oakland (2-0) and Green Bay (1-1) would hit the field in Winnipeg before the game for a practice or walk-through. That didn’t happen. Also, no announcement has been made about the halftime show.

However, Miller said the community has been drawn into the event.

The Bombers and Raiders put on a sevenon-seven football competition at IG Field

last month. Winners from three age groups received tickets to the game and there was a draw for more.

Thirty youth and members from northern Manitoba First Nations are also being flown in to attend the game.

He added amateur football players will hold the Canadian and American flags at the game and some will line the teams’ tunnels when players come onto the field, which has been converted to the smaller NFL size.

“Our operations staff have done an amazing job in turning our field from football to soccer, now to an NFL field,” Miller said.

“Our team’s working really hard here to make sure our city shows well and it will, and IG Field will, too.”

It’s the first NFL contest in Canada since the Buffalo Bills completed a run of eight games in Toronto with a regular-season clash against the Atlanta Falcons in December 2013.

Oakland Raiders’ A.J. Cole, is shown in this image from the Raiders’ twitter account, arrives in Winnipeg on Wednesday to prepare for a pre-season NFL matchup against the Green Bay Packers.

Seaweed invasion hits Mexico

Mary Beth SHERIDAN

The Washington Post

It started washing ashore in the Caribbean eight years ago, the smelly, yellow-brown seaweed known as sargassum. Then, just as mysteriously, it disappeared.

Now the avalanche of algae is becoming an annual event – with increasingly dire consequences.

This year, tons of the seaweed have fouled white-sand beaches from Miami to Mexico’s Mayan Riviera. Local officials are fretting about economic fallout. Scientists are warning of harm to the largest reef system in the Americas. In some places, the famously clear Caribbean water turns so murky it resembles gas-station coffee.

“It’s a little bit disgusting,” said Sara Fargeas, 29, a French tourist, wrinkling her nose at the stench from piles of decaying sargassum.

Fargeas and her husband were sunbathing one recent day on Playa Paraiso in the Mexican resort of Tulum, but it was anything but paradise. The water was too choked with bristly weeds to swim. “It’s disappointing,” she said.

The scale of the sargassum invasion is immense. In the past three months, more than 57,000 tons has been raked and scooped up on Mexico’s Caribbean coast alone. Even the Mexican navy has joined the battle, sending ships to fish the seaweed out of the water.

“You reach a point where you can’t keep up,” said Lucila Rodriguez, who manages a beachfront luxury-tent hotel in Tulum. By mid-July, business was so slow the hotel closed its restaurant.

The sargassum is highly unpredictable, its movement dependent on the winds and currents. In late July, the onslaught of seaweed suddenly eased along the Mexican coast, disappearing in some areas. But by mid- August, it was again sullying many of the country’s loveliest beaches.

Sargassum has been noted since the days of Christopher Columbus. But until recently, it stayed largely in the expanse of the North Atlantic off the U.S. coast known as the Sargasso Sea.

Scientists were stunned this year to see the algae had grown so explosively that it had formed a 10,000-km archipelago spanning the Atlantic, from West Africa to the Gulf of Mexico.

The sargassum has been inundating coasts from Florida to the French Caribbean. But this year, it’s hit Mexico particularly hard, inflicting pain on everything from $800-a-night hotels to flipflop-casual beach restaurants.

“Who’s going to eat here with the smell?” asked Manuel Vasquez, 36, a waiter at one such restaurant in Playa del Carmen. A rotten-egg odour wafted from piles of blackened seaweed.

Scientists worry the damage could go well beyond the tourist industry. They say the coastline itself could be in jeopardy. That’s because sargassum is weakening the coral reefs that serve as a buffer to waves, and the sea grass that anchors the sand. That means future hurricanes could take increasingly big bites out of Caribbean beaches, said Brigitta van Tussenbroek, a marine biologist at Mexico’s National Au-

tonomous University.

“It’s still really difficult for people to understand the magnitude of the problem,” she said. If anyone understands the size of the problem, it should be the government of Quintana Roo, home to Cancun and the lush, 70-mile Riviera Maya. The state’s beaches and ancient ruins pull in around $14 billion a year – more than half of Mexico’s tourism earnings.

Officials here have declared a state of emergency – they’ve called sargassum an “imminent national disaster” – and are spending $30 million to remove it.

The state tourism minister, Marisol Vanegas, says there haven’t been mass cancellations at beach hotels. But along the Riviera Maya, businesses have been hit hard – even the fanciest properties.

One resort north of Tulum charges upward of $700 a night. It’s 50 acres of pure luxury, including a jungle crisscrossed with pristine paths and spacious rooms with champagne bars and solariums.

The property hugs a quiet white-sand cove, where the water is normally “as clear as a swimming pool,” its manager said. But one recent sunny day, workers with rakes were fighting a losing battle with the yellow-brown seaweed lapping up on the beach.

The hotel normally takes in around $50,000 a week in the summer, the manager said, but revenue in recent months has dropped by more than half. He asked that neither he nor the hotel be identified, to avoid further cancellations.

Scientists are only beginning to figure out what’s causing the massive bloom. A key culprit, they believe, is the increased flow of nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus into the ocean.

Those are superfood for sargassum.

One suspected source is fertilizer washed into the Amazon and then the ocean, due to increased farming and deforestation in Brazil. But nature could also be contributing to the sargassum bloom – with strong winds churning up nutrient-rich material from the ocean floor off West Africa.

Some scientists theorize that climate change is a factor, but others minimize it, saying the algae grows more in years when water is cooler.

It’s difficult to predict which beaches will be hardest hit. In mid-July, for example, Cancun had relatively little, while Tulum was clobbered.

But there’s little doubt among scientists that the onslaught will continue. As the algae dies off each fall, it leaves behind seeds that bloom the following season.

“Most years in the next decade we will see a lot of sargassum,” said Chuanmin Hu, the oceanographer at the University of South Florida who led the study mapping the giant sargassum belt.

In the open ocean, researchers say, sargassum can be beneficial, providing a habitat for fish, crabs and turtles.

But once it approaches the shore, everything changes.

“It’s a major socio-ecological catastrophe,” said Jesús Ernesto Arias, who analyzesMexico’s coral reefs at Cinvestav, a governmentbacked research centre.

The mats of algae block the light that corals need to grow. And as the sargassum decomposes, it releases hydrogen sulfide and ammonium, which kill flora and fauna in the sea. Researchers recently found that at least 78 species had been affected, with fish, sea cucumbers, crabs and other marine organisms dying.

Scientists suspect the seaweed is contrib-

uting to the spread of white syndrome, a disease that has destroyed 30 per cent or more of some coral species in Mexico over the past year.

But that’s not all. The sargassum kills sea grass – sort of an underwater meadow that holds sand and sediment in place. If both coral reefs and sea grass are damaged, hurricanes can whisk away bigger chunks of beach.

“We have a scenario of losing the line of the coast,” Van Tussenbroek said.

More than 10,000 workers and volunteers have been furiously raking, scooping and hauling the sargassum from Mexico’s beaches this year. Floating barriers have been installed to try to trap the weed.

The navy has deployed two ships to capture sargassum in giant nets.

“We wound up with the most complicated part” of the job, said Rear Adm. Enrique Flores Morano, who is commanding the anti-sargassum operation. That’s because farther from the shore, the algae often moves in thin strands that are difficult to trap. Only around 287 tons of sargassum have been collected in open seas so far, less than one per cent of the total.

Mexican officials have boasted of the success of their cleanup operations.

“I hope that in short order, we’ll be able to say that the problem is solved, although of course it will require constant attention,” President Andrés Manuel López Obrador told reporters this month.

But researchers say the algae was simply swept to other areas by climatic conditions. It’s been returning to some beaches in recent days.

“It’s very likely that huge amounts of the sargassum will return next year,” said Arias, the biologist. “This is a multinational problem. And it’s critical.”

I see a red door and I want to paint it black

Last week, we were talking about oil paints and the media used to generate durable paintings. However, colour is really the important component of paint. It provides what we see and more importantly how we see it.

Some modern paints rely upon organic compounds synthesized in chemical laboratories. Tweaking the shape, size, and constituents in a molecule can modify the colours perceived.

But long before we had modern synthetic pigments, artists relied upon the earth around us to provide colours. Paints were made of finely ground minerals or metal ion containing compounds pulled from the earth. Indeed, all minerals are composites of cationic metal ions and some anionic component such as sulphides, oxides, carbonates, or other species.

The richness of colours obtained from metal ions is seen in the names of the elements. Chromium, for example, provides a wide variety of different colours depending upon what anion is present. It is a chameleon, able to take on a variety of hues.

If we go far enough back in history to the cave walls of Altimira and Lascaux, we find there red and yellow pigments obtained from the iron oxide haematite crystallized with varying numbers of waters of hydration. Modern versions of these pigments can be seen in rusted metal which can range across the reds and yellows, and can be altered by the simple process of heating. The browns the cave painters used were derived from manganese oxide while the greens came from the aluminosilicate clays celadonite and glauconite. White was available from chalk or calcium carbonate but also from ground up dried bones which are a mineral called hydroxyapatite.

All of these colours are inorganic and permanent, which is one of the reasons the artwork has stood the test of time. The only organically derived component of cave paintings was the charcoal used to provide black lines. Carbon is intrinsically black and not susceptible to simple oxidation so it was a suitable and long lasting pigment.

Essentially, our ancestors in Europe had available a palette consisting of red, yellow, black, and white, which is common to most ancient cultures. They had a few extra colours in the greens and browns but they worked with a very limited palette.

Because they were working in primitive conditions and with these primordial hues, it is easy to dismiss the artistry and ingenuity that went into these cave paintings. Yet they have lasted over 30,000 years and provide a record of life long before the written word.

The paintings also demonstrate a sophisticated understanding of both colour and the methods of painting. Our artistic ancestors ground up haematite into a fine powder in a mortar-and-pestlelike apparatus. They mixed it with a binding medium, such as vegetable oil, and in at least some locations employed spray painting techniques by perhaps blowing paint from a hollowed out reed. They left behind incredible outlined handprints on the walls much as you might see in an elementary school classroom today.

Around 12,000 years ago, the artists at the Niaux caves of the Pyrennes devised new methods. By adding neutral materials called extenders, they were able to make their precious pigments go further while also improving the properties of the paint itself. A similar process is employed in any modern paint store where a neutral white paint is tinted by the addition of colour prior to purchase. They also discovered they could alter their pigments. For example, the addition of potassium feldspar to haematite red results in a darker, richer colour and a paint which is less prone to cracking. A better recipe was obtained some 1,500 years later by the addition

of biotite to the feldspar extender. These early artists didn’t just copy the techniques of their predecessors. They experimented with different materials and explored new methods. The one thing they didn’t do was come up with a very good version of blue. These ancient artists principally relied on physical modification of their stock material. Grinding stones into powders and mixing the resulting pigments to make colours was about the limit of their abilities. However, eventually, they learned to employ the single transformative agent they had available – fire.

Heat is a powerful agent. It has been argued our modern denta-

tion and the structure of our skulls with our comparatively large brains would never have evolved if we hadn’t learned how to tame and utilize fire over a million years ago. But in order to use heat to create new pigments, the temperature had to be much hotter than provided by an open flame. It wasn’t until the rise of modern city states in Babylonia and Assyria that furnaces capable of transforming colours were built. Invariably every culture around the world developed a richer artistic palette as they experimented with the generation of higher temperatures. More on the development of pigments next week.

AP PHOTO

Part of the famed Lascaux cave drawings are photographed in southwest France, during a rare visit in

WASHINGTON POST PHOTO

A child covers his nose because of the rotten-egg odour of the seaweed along the shore in Playa del Carmen, Mexico.

Outspoken doctor unfazed by attacks

The Canadian Press

Outspoken doctor and Goop critic Jen Gunter is known for her hot takes on vaginal health, abortion restrictions, and some of the more controversial Gwyneth Paltrowbacked wellness trends.

“My feature and my flaw is bravery,” Gunter says of her no-holds-barred tactics on social media and in interviews, adding she’s not afraid to “shame” those she feels are spreading misinformation and exploiting the vulnerable.

But while Gunter’s quippy delivery and online prowess have cast her as a firebrand, she insists she never envisioned that identity for herself when she studied medicine in Winnipeg and London, Ont.

“I was very impacted by the second wave of feminism and I think I really believed that at this point in my life as a 52-year-old woman that we wouldn’t be fighting for these things – we wouldn’t be fighting for bodily autonomy; we wouldn’t be fighting for access to all the types of health care that we need, and yet we are. So I felt that if people are listening to me that I have a duty to speak up.”

Gunter, now based in the San Francisco Bay area, does exactly that in a new docuseries for CBC’s streaming service Gem, in which she tackles women’s health in 10 episodes 12-to-15 minutes long. Topics include menstruation, the wellness industry and vaccines.

Jensplaining begins streaming Friday, while Gunter’s book, The Vagina Bible,”came out earlier this week.

During a recent stop in Toronto, Gunter sat down at CBC headquarters to discuss her mission to be “an advocate for good health information.”

The Canadian Press: Doctors face backlash for speaking politically, but you seem unfazed by that.

Gunter: This idea that the health of the public isn’t a concern for physicians is incorrect. We care for people whether they’re in our office or globally. I mean we talked about vaccines – that’s the health of the public – we talked about seatbelts, that’s the health of the public, bicycle helmets. Incorrect information can harm us in so many ways. We see individual harm in the office but we also see people voting to have fluoride removed from water because of unfounded fears. This can affect us all in so many negative ways and I just kept thinking that if people were listening to me, I really had a duty to do it right.

CP: How do you handle social media backlash?

Gunter: I’ve had to get people involved at higher levels at Facebook and on Twitter –

although Twitter doesn’t really take threats very seriously, unfortunately. Unless you’re somebody threatening a white man – and not even really making a threat – then that’s serious... Fortunately, I don’t care what anyone thinks about me so that’s probably a positive feature. And I know who I am. I have a really good sense of self and I know what I’m doing is right.

CP: Where are we now in addressing vaccine misconceptions?

Gunter: People who are the hardcore (anti-vaxxers) are actually a minority and the most important thing that we can do is try to contain those views so they don’t contaminate the people that maybe don’t actually have all the information who are maybe more fear-driven.

CP: A lot of smart women know crystals aren’t magical but they enjoy having them. What’s the harm in that?

Gunter: A lot of people have used wellness as an excuse to have joy. So the analogy I always give is my shoes – I love high-end shoes (and) I don’t kid myself that those

shoes help the health of my feet in any way.

If having crystals on your counter or having expensive jars of beauty products sparks joy for you that way, that’s OK. That’s totally fine. But there’s a big difference between saying, ‘I love all these different crystals, when I look at them it’s cool’ (and) saying, ‘I’m going to spend $85 on crystals because I’m really worried about my health, and I think that’s going to help me get better.”

CP: But women are not getting the information they need. So who has failed them?

Gunter: It’s a global failure across the board. Medicine has long dismissed women. We have only had women in medicine, really, for 30 or 40 years and even then, I still have never had a female head of a department until recently in my whole career. I’m 52. I didn’t even meet a female surgeon in my medical school and that was in the ‘80s, so I didn’t have a female mentor to look up to in my training in OB-GYN.

CP: And then there’s the abortion debate.

Gunter: I always say there’s no abortion debate, there’s an abortion discussion

because a debate would mean one side’s wrong and there is no wrong side. I’m pro-abortion. I’m happy to say that. Being pro-abortion doesn’t mean that I’m hauling women off subways telling them that they should have abortions. I’m pro-abortion in the same way I’m pro-appendectomy, or I’m pro-C-section or I’m pro-podiatry. If you have a medical condition or a situation where that procedure is indicated, great, then you should have it. And if you don’t have a situation where that procedure is indicated then you shouldn’t have it. Abortion is health care and in Canada, we’ve proved that. We don’t have abortion in the criminal code in Canada and women are not flocking to have buy-one-get-one free abortions with their best friends at malls. We can trust women and we can trust their providers. (And) we know studies tell us that laws ... don’t change the abortion rate, all they do is change the safety for the people having abortions. To say that abortion laws are pro-life is the exact opposite because it’s affecting the life of the pregnant person.

CP PHOTO

Dr. Jen Gunter is photographed in Toronto in June.

Margaret Trudeau taking show to Toronto

The Canadian Press

Margaret Trudeau is bringing her one-woman show to the JFL42 comedy festival.

The Toronto laugh marathon has revealed a full lineup that includes a four-show run of Trudeau’s autobiographical Certain Woman of an Age. It follows

three sold-out shows at Montreal’s Just For Laughs Festival. Other additions include another set from headliner John Mulaney; the world premiere of Billy Connolly’s big screen stand-up special, The Sex Life of Bandages; and a screening and Q-and-A of Between Two Ferns: The Movie.

Trudeau’s show promises to

feature candid accounts of her wild-child days, insight into her marriage with then-prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, and her delayed mental illness diagnosis.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and other family members attended her performance at Chicago’s Second City earlier this year.

Passes and tickets for the new

programming go on sale Friday.

Organizers said Wednesday they added a second show for Mulaney, who is already set to co-headline the fest with Pete Davidson. His special guest for the additional performance will be revealed in the coming weeks. Also on tap is a live read of Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle in honour of the

French-Canadian composer killed by bear in N.W.T.

The Washington Post

Three years ago, Julien Gauthier began planning to carry out his childhood dream. He had reached his 40s and was determined finally to explore the rugged landscapes of northern Canada.

Soon an idea took shape, one that combined the French-Canadian composer’s love of music and adventure.

In the summer, Gauthier would embark on a roughly month-long canoeing and camping trip through part of Canada’s remote Northwest Territories.

Along the way, he would record nature sounds for a collaborative music project in Paris.

“It was his dream to go there, to go to the north,” Camille Toscani, a biologist who joined Gauthier on the journey, recently told Le Parisien.

“He asked me to take part in this adventure, which he had been thinking about for three years... He was a unique artist, he was inspired by the great outdoors and by nature.”

But last Thursday, Toscani said, Gauthier’s long-awaited trip came to a tragic end.

As the pair slept in their camp along the Mackenzie River near the hamlet of Tulita, a bear attacked, dragging the 44-year-old musician from his tent in the middle of the night, Le Parisien reported.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police said an emergency beacon signal was activated Thursday morning about 48 km south of Tulita, an isolated area accessible only by water or air, according to the CBC.

A woman in need of help had come across a second group of travelers who sent the alert with their emergency communications device, CBC reported.

“A woman reported her traveling companion had an encounter with a bear,” RCMP spokesperson Marie York-Condon said in a Friday news release. “The man was reported missing after the encounter.”

Authorities recovered a man’s body Friday afternoon, noting that evidence from an investigation “confirms a bear encounter,” CBC reported.

The man was not identified, but

friends of Gauthier said it was him.

A black bear and a grizzly bear found near Tulita were killed Friday and necropsies are scheduled to see if either animal was involved in the fatal attack, CBC reported.

The incident marks the fourth bear-related death in the Northwest Territories in 20 years, according to CBC.

About 4,300 black bears and 4,000 to 5,000 grizzlies are in the largely uninhabited region.

“Human-bear encounters in the Northwest Territories are not out of the ordinary, although fatalities are rare,”

Meagan Wohlberg, a spokeswoman with the region’s Department of Environment and Natural Resources, told the news outlet.

Canoeing through the territories wasn’t Gauthier’s first time venturing into remote wilderness.

According to a biography on his personal website, the composer was “attracted by the most unusual or extreme places” and once spent five months in a group of islands in the Antarctic more than 3,200 km from civilization.

Drawing inspiration from the sounds of nature recorded during his stay, Gauthier composed “Southern Symphony” and produced an album, “Inaudita Symphonia.”

Music was also a factor in the Canada trip, but this time Gauthier planned to work with a cellist on the composition and incorporate photos taken by Toscani, the biologist, into an accompanying display, according to a crowdfunding page for the project.

“They never wanted this project to be only their trip,” the page said, adding that Gauthier and Toscani hoped to “share the experience upon their return.”

Ahead of the expedition, Gauthier’s social media posts were brimming with excitement as he promoted the crowdfunding page and provided periodic updates on his preparations.

In a Facebook post, Gauthier wrote that the excursion was a “very old dream” he had while growing up in Canada.

“To have the opportunity today of fulfilling that dream combined with a real

Spicy choice for dance show criticized by show’s host

The Washington Post

Former White House press

secretary Sean Spicer will compete alongside Christie Brinkley, James Van Der Beek and other notables on the upcoming season of “Dancing With the Stars.”

But the show’s host, Tom Bergeron, isn’t on board with the casting decision.

After Spicer and his Season 28 castmates – the usual mix of athletes, singers, actors and reality stars – were announced Wednesday on ABC’s Good Morning America, Bergeron tweeted an informal statement that did not mention Spicer by name, but clearly addressed his addition to the cast.

Bergeron said he met with the show’s new executive producer a few months ago, and thought they agreed the reality competition’s upcoming season should “be a joyful respite from our exhausting political climate and free of inevitably divisive bookings from ANY party affiliations.”

“Subsequently (and rather obviously), a decision was made to, as we often say in Hollywood, ‘go in a different direction,’” the veteran host added. “We can agree to disagree, as we do now, but ultimately it’s their call.” Bergeron isn’t alone in his sentiments about the former aide.

Exhibit A: the many harsh replies to Spicer’s tweet celebrating the announcement, including some saying ABC was “normalizing” him and that he had already “danced around so many questions while he worked in the White House.” Spicer was rumored to be in talks with the show after leaving the White House two years ago, rankling many who have criticized

him for frequent dishonesty in press briefings.

That made for an awkward moment on “GMA” when Bergeron cracked: “The nice thing is that Sean will be in charge of assessing audience size.”

Spicer began his White House tenure with the infamous (and provably false) claim that President Donald Trump’s inauguration drew the largest crowd ever.

He later said he “absolutely” regretted the claim – an admission that followed his controversial appearance at the 2017 Emmy Awards.

He explored his White House role in detail in his 2018 book

The Briefing, which was widely panned by critics.

Spicer’s other foray into the entertainment world unfolded during his White House run when he was portrayed several times on Saturday Night Live by Melissa McCarthy – whose work got far better reviews.

Radio host Bobby Bones and his dancing partner Sharna Burgess won the most recent season of DWTS.

The long-running series skipped its typical spring season this year, so it will end a year-long hiatus when the show returns Sept. 16.

This season’s other cast members include: Queer Eye co-host Karamo Brown; Fifth Harmony alum Ally Brooke; country singer Lauren Alaina; Kel Mitchell (of Kenan & Kel and All That fame); Mary Wilson, a founding member of the Supremes; former NBA star Lamar Odom; The Office’s Kate Flannery; former NFL linebacker Ray Lewis, who was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame last year; and the network’s most recent Bachelorette, Hannah Brown.

News Tip? Call 250-562-2441

artistic project is even better,” he wrote on July 15.

As the trip neared, Gauthier appeared eager to set off, sharing an image of the route he and Toscani had planned to paddle.

In a July 28 post, he wrote that he was “having a bit of trouble realizing that in a few days” they would be in Canada.

“He really wanted to go,” Marc Feldman, a manager of the Brittany Symphony Orchestra in France where Gauthier was an associate artist, told Ouest-France.

“He was very happy to make this long trip to Canada. He is someone who held onto this sense of wonder about the world.”

On Monday, Feldman mourned Gauthier’s death on Facebook.

“He was a sensitive, generous and talented man that many of us had the chance to know by his work and the gift of his friendship,” he wrote in a post shared to the symphony’s official website page.

“His work was faithful to his curious spirit, humble in front of the vast power and beauty of nature.”

Feldman continued: “On a personal note, I am extremely happy to have known Julien. He brought me a sense of adventure, wonder and a rare intelligence. I’m going to miss him terribly.”

Losing Gauthier felt like a “real punch in the gut,” Feldman told Ouest-France.

“A colleague from the orchestra said that he died like a 19th century adventurer,” he said.

In his final social media post on Aug. 7, less than a week into the trip, Gauthier provided a brief update, describing the experience as “intense, tiring and inspiring.”

One photo showed Gauthier standing near the river’s edge holding what appeared to be a microphone. In another, his unshaven face was visible through the mosquito netting attached to his hat.

Gauthier wrote that he and Toscani had reached a small village with WiFi.

The pair had gone three days without seeing a single other living soul, he wrote, except for four bears.

film’s 15th anniversary.

rector Scott Aukerman and actress Lauren Lapkus in advance of its Netflix release Sept. 20.

Conolly’s film traces his final stand-up tour in 2015 during the Australian leg. It’s set to hit select theatres Nov. 1. And Between Two Ferns: The Movie will feature a post-screening talk by writer-di-

WAITE, Regnald Percy Nov. 19, 1949 - 2018

Reg was predeceased by wife Audrey (nee, Quinn), father Charlie, mother Sadie, step mom Edna, and brothers Lewis, Freeman and Victor; survived by and ‘Dad’ to Mike (Teresa) and Rick (Katrina) Grounds; ‘Poppa’ to his grandchildren, Melissa, Tiffany, Julia, Megan, Madison, Brooke, Luke and Thomas; and to Kelly, Aidan and Bria; ‘Brother’ to Charles Waite, Doug Pettigrew, and Geraldine (Larry) Nixdorf, to Joanne (Alan) Gallant-Chilton, and to Stephen (Joanne) and Calvin (Anita) Meldrum and Anna (Norm) Hamilton. Reg will also be fondly remembered by his entire extended family and the many friends he made everywhere.

Born in Parrsboro, Nova Scotia, and raised in the Maritimes, about age-14 Reg ran away to join the circus and worked up and down the entire eastern seaboard. About age-18, Reg ‘headed west’ and stayed with Stephen and his family. Loving the outdoors, he quickly embraced a logger’s life. Reg met Audrey in the late 1970’s and they were together almost 40-years. Since the early 1990’s they enjoyed being grandparents, Island living and traveling together.

Reg went missing last August. His remains were found this July, apparently having passed away quickly in the course of a walk along the Nechako River. Many thanks to RCMP who conducted a thorough investigation and to search volunteers.

Reg’s ashes are to be interred alongside Audrey’s at Memorial Park Mausoleum (Prince George, BC) in a private service for the family, on Friday, August 23, followed by an open house to celebrate Reg’s life from 4:00-6:00 pm at the Lheidli T’enneh Memorial Park Pavilion.

John Frederick Norman April 22, 1940July 28, 2019.

It is with sadness that our family shares the passing of John Norman. He had a full and happy life that began in Langley Prairie, BC and other areas of the Fraser Valley. While attending Langley High School he met his life’s partner, Ellen. Together they completed their university training and as young teachers headed to Prince George where they built their careers and a life with their three daughters. John was an active athlete, coach, volunteer, and fan in a wide variety of sports (Go Cougars Go!). He enjoyed tennis, basketball and baseball in his younger years and curling and golf later on. John began his career as a Physical Education teacher and later became a respected principal of many elementary schools around Prince George. He felt strongly about ensuring that what was best for kids was at the forefront of his teaching and he had great admiration for teachers that made a difference for students. John was passionate about building and contributing to the community. He was generous with his time in supporting his belief that a strong community needs a balance of sports, arts, culture, and learning. Over the years he volunteered for the arts, biathlon events, golf tournaments, fundraising for the Two Rivers Art Gallery, and archiving Prince George’s educational history. After retirement John embraced new challenges in his work for Elections BC. During his free time John was often found in the outdoors, he particularly enjoyed canoeing, fishing and spending time at the family cabin. Most of all, he loved having his family around him and will be remembered for his fondness of family dinners and strong values. He is survived by his wife of 58 years, Ellen Norman; daughters: Heather (Ed) Tandy, Kathy (Paul) Norman, and Robin (Glenn) Norman; grandchildren: Megan (Dominik), Stephanie (Luke), James (Robin), and Erin (Ben); greatgrandchildren: Predo and George. He will be greatly missed by his sister, Mary Hochglaube. He also leaves behind many extended family members and friends. A celebration of his life will take place on Sunday, August 25th at 2pm at the Prince George Golf and Curling Club. In lieu of flowers, donations to Prince George Hospice Society, Nové Voce Choir, or the UNBC Nordic Sport Leadership Award would be appreciated. Links for these organizations can be found at: https://inmemoryofjohn.wixsite.com/2019

It is with heavy hearts that we announce that Guy Kristian has made his transition in life on August 14, 2019 at the age of 50 years. Guy was born on September 20, 1968 in North Battleford, Sask and raised in Prince George, BC. Guy had a great love of sports, was an avid skier and hockey fan. He was a lover of animals and nature, especially his dog, Bennie. Guy loved working outdoors and working with his hands and had a great love of music, singing and playing his guitars. He was a Youth Counselor, Diamond Driller, Personal Trainer, Professional Photographer and Graphic Designer. Guy was a warm loving man with a kind spirit and a deep love of God. His love and laughter will be missed by his family, parents, Ray and Arna Kristian, sister Bonnie Squire (Brock, Julian and Chanel), sister Diane Jansen (Ashleigh and Brett Harris), sons, Zakary and Dylan Kristian, Debbie Critchlow, Aunts, Uncles and cousins. Guy will be missed by numerous friends and tenants.

A viewing and friendship gathering will be held at Prince George Funeral Services at 1014 Douglas St, Prince George on Friday, August 23, 2019 at 7:00 PM.

In lieu of flowers donations made be made to the S.P.C.A.

In Loving Memory of George Kostas Blanis October 26, 1937August 17, 2019

It is with great sadness and heavy hearts that we announce the peaceful passing of George Blanis, aka “George the Barber”, on August 17, 2019 in Hospice House with his devoted son by his side.

George was predeceased by his beloved wife Helen on February 19, 2010. George is survived by his son Dean (Irina), daughter Lisa (Fred), and his grandchildren Brandon, Connor and Victoria. George’s many family and friends in Greece and Canada will deeply miss him.

George was born in Diava, Kalambaka, Greece and immigrated to Canada in 1962. He married Helen shortly after and together they built a wonderful life for their family and became integral parts of the Greek community helping to build the Greek Orthodox Church. In 1964 he opened up his own shop - George’s Barber Shop - at the Simon Fraser Inn and was cutting hair for 55 years. He was proud that he was the oldest and only European barber in town and worked in the oldest shop in Prince George. George’s passion, dedication and commitment as a barber will be remembered and missed by everyone.

George was known all over the city for his work and great personality. George was an institution in Prince George. He had an amazing love of life and positive attitude.

George loved cooking, baking, making wine, listening to Greek music and singing in the Greek Church. George had a big heart and a great sense of humour.

George had many passions including gardening and fixing things; spending time at the cabin at Cluculz Lake was his favourite.

Family was everything to George. He was loved by all who knew him. His magnificent spirit and love for life will live on forever with all who were fortunate enough to have had him in their lives. He will be always loved, never forgotten and forever missed. Our grateful thanks to the staff at the Hospice House who were so compassionate and caring for Dad.

A celebration of life for George will take place on Saturday, August 24, 2019 at Koimisis Tis Theotokou Greek Church at 511 Tabor Boulevard at 11:00am. Viewing to be held on Friday, August 23, 2019 at Assman’s Funeral Chapel at 7:00pm. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the Greek Orthodox Church.

Adult & Youth Newspaper Carriers Needed in the Following areas:

• Hart Area

• Driftwood Rd, Dawson Rd, Seton Cres,

• Austin Rd. College Heights: Needed for Sept 1, 2019

O’Grady Rd and Park, Brock, Selkirk,

• Oxford, Cowart, Simon Fraser, Trent, Domano, Guelph, St Lawrence, Hartford, Harvard, Imperial, Jean De Brefeuf Cres, Loyola, Latrobe, Leicester Pl, Malaspina, Princeton, Newcastle, Prince Edward, Melbourne, Guerrier, Loedel, Sarah, Lancaster, Lemoyne, Leyden,St Anne, St Bernadette Pl, Southridge, Bernard Rd, St Clare, Creekside, Stillwater, Avison, Davis, Capella, Speca, Starlane, Bona Dea, Charella, Davis, Polaris, Starlane, Vega.

• • Needed for Aug 1, 2019

• • Moncton, Queens, Peidmont, Rochester, Renison, McMaster, Osgood, Marionopolis.

• Quinson Area

• Lyon, Moffat, Ogilvie, Patterson, Kelly, Hammond, Ruggles, Nicholson Full Time and Temporary Routes Available. Contact for Details 250-562-3301 or rss@pgcitizen.ca

Banking enters twilight zone

The Associated Press

Imagine lending money to someone and having to pay for the privilege of doing so. Or being asked to invest and informed of how much money you’ll lose.

Sounds absurd, but increasingly that’s the global bond market these days. A rising share of government and corporate bonds are trading at negative interest yields – a financial twilight zone that took hold after the financial crisis and has accelerated on fear that a fragile global economy will be further damaged by the U.S.-China trade war.

On Wednesday, for the first time ever, the German government sold 30-year bonds at a negative interest rate. The bonds pay no coupon interest at all. Yet bidders at the auction were willing to pay more than the face value they would receive back when the bonds mature.

The sale added to the mountain of negativeyielding bonds around the world that investors have gobbled up, suggesting that they expect global growth and inflation to remain subpar for years to come. After all, accepting a negative yield on a bond – agreeing, in effect, to lose money in exchange for parking money in a safe place – could reflect expectations that yields will sink even further into negative territory.

“You’re essentially paying a warehouse fee by paying these negative rates,” said Jim Bianco of Bianco Research in Chicago. Worldwide debt with negative rates has surged to $16.4 trillion from $12.2 trillion in mid-July and $5.7 trillion in October, Bianco said.

“Until a few months ago, negative-yielding debt was an interesting curiosity,” he said. “In the last three months, it’s become a mainstay in the marketplace.”

The negative-yield phenomenon – 87 per cent of it in Europe and Japan combined – is above all sign of pessimism about the future.

“This is like a temperature gauge for the economy, and it says the economy is sick,” said Sung Won Sohn, business economist at Loyola Marymount University in California.

The bond market is also responding to expectations that many central banks such as the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank will respond to economic weakness and the raging trade conflict between the U.S. and China by unleashing more stimulus to try to drive down interest rates. The ECB has indicated that it may decide on a stimulus package as soon as its Sept. 12 meeting.

Despite its strong credit rating and demand for its bonds, Germany is a big part of the growth problem for the eurozone. The German economy shrank 0.1 per cent in the second quarter and could tip into recession with an-

other quarter of falling output.

Negative rates aren’t just an indicator of economic distress. They can cause problems in the financial system, too. They make it harder for banks to turn a profit or for insurance companies to fund their future payouts.

“Why would you want to lend money when you can’t make money?” Sohn said.

Indeed, bank stocks have tumbled – 24 per cent in Europe and 23 per cent in Japan – over the past year.

Most of the negative-yielding debt is in government bonds, in part because they are seen as ultra-safe. But there are also about $60 billion U.S. corporate bonds that are in negative territory.

Something similar is going on with U.S. government debt: the yield on the 10-year Treasury note has sagged to 1.57 per cent – a rate that would amount to a negative one after accounting for inflation. Japan has been stuck in years of low inflation and sluggish growth. And growth rates in Europe have slowed in recent quarters.

German bonds are prime candidates for negative rates. The country’s financial solidity means that safety-seeking investors will at least receive most of their money back. German 10year bonds yield negative 0.69 per cent. Other countries with negative yields on government bonds include Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden and Spain.

What was especially unusual about the German bond sale was its long maturity. As anyone who has shopped for a bank CD knows, you usually get more interest the longer your money is tied up. Yet bond yields are sagging

not just for shorter term issues but also for longer-term bonds.

The negative yields on German bonds have fueled debate over the government’s insistence on running budget surpluses and avoiding new debt, even though the government could borrow to spend more on roads and bridges and in effect be paid to do so.

Economists and such outside voices as the U.S Treasury and the International Monetary Fund say Germany could support growth at home and abroad by spending more. Germany’s economy shrank 0.1 per cent in the second quarter, held back by slowing global trade and the auto industry’s adjustment to tough emissions standards and new technologies.

A little bond math helps to understand things. Bond yields and prices move in opposite directions. If investors think inflation and interest rates will rise above levels now reflected in bond yields, they may sell the bond, sending its yield higher. Conversely, demand for bonds – as seen now – drives the price up and the yield down. The more investors foresee low growth and low inflation ahead, the more willing they become to buy bonds that offer low returns. They can earn healthy returns from rising bond prices, even when the yields are negative.

One big reason for falling yields is purchases by central banks. The European Central Bank bought 2.6 trillion euros in government and corporate bonds as part of a stimulus program that ended in December.

As the economic picture has worsened, the bank has signalled those purchases might start again.

Economy still trundling forward

Today, borrowing heavily from a current piece by RBC’s Global Asset Management group, I touch on a few arguably interesting, and certainly salient, financial issues we are up against this year. Financial markets have been choppy throughout 2019, but volatility ramped even higher over the past week, with the U.S. S&P 500 Composite Index recording swings of more than one per cent in five out of the six trading days between Aug. 12 and 19. Aug.14 was, by far, the most violent, with a sharp 2.9 per cent decline. At its worst, the equity index closed down 6.1 per cent relative to its late-July peak.

Subsequent days have managed to reclaim a fair chunk of the decline, with the Aug.19 reading now a mere 3.2 per cent lower than the late-July peak, and level with readings from a few weeks ago.

Bond yields have mostly continued their lengthy downtrend, with the U.S. 10-year yield now just 1.59 per cent, which is nearly 50 bps lower than a mere month ago, and well over a percentage point lower than a year ago. The macrorelated motivations for these market jitters include slowing growth, mounting protectionism, the aging business cycle, Brexit expectations and the perception that the U.S. Federal Reserve Board (Fed) is treading too gingerly in its delivery of monetary stimulus.

Notably, the U.S. two-year to 10-year bond spread temporarily inverted last week. Although it has since re-normalized, this was a big part of the financial market’s sudden concern as the two-year–-10-

year spread is considered by many to be an even more important signal of coming recession than the three-month–10-year spread that has already been inverted for several months. Loosely speaking, the former is considered better for predicting recessions, while the latter is better at predicting central bank rate cuts.

In reality, it is not binary – both say something about the economy and monetary policy. It is notable that the three-month–10-year spread also unwound its first inversion earlier in 2019, only to reinvert more enduringly later.

To recap global economic weakness, manufacturing indicators have fallen substantially since the start of 2018. Germany just reported its second quarterly decline in economic output in the past year, leaving the annual rate of GDP growth at a bare +0.4 per cent.

Chinese deleveraging may be at least in part to blame, given the two countries’ close commercial ties.

In aggregate, this economic weakness is unwelcome. Although it still falls well short of a recession, the case for one continues to mount. RBC’s business cycle scorecard argues for a “late cycle” interpretation. On the other hand, a variety of forces for good are pitted against the gloomy economic trend. China has just announced that it will better align its policy rate with

the actual borrowing rates that bank customers pay, which could have the equivalent stimulative effect of a rate cut of nearly 50 bps.

U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Powell is expected to reverse concerns, which arose following the central bank’s last meeting when the Fed was only lukewarm toward further rate cuts. Stay tuned.

The recent U.S. fiscal stimulus, (inexplicably initiated near the peak of the economic expansion) is nearing expiration. But globally, the German finance minister acknowledged willingness to deliver something on the order of 50B euros of fiscal stimulus in the event of an economic downturn.

Suffice it to say fiscal levers still exists and Keynesian (votebuying) principles are still widely followed.

That public debt loads are already high is concerning, but not enough to stop governments from doing what they want: the cost of borrowing, after all, is stunningly cheap.

The growing North American service-sector shows a less volatile growth trajectory than other sectors, helping smooth things out.

U.S. consumer confidence is still notably robust, and the sector constitutes by far the greatest share of GDP.

On balance, despite increased risks, RBC continues to acknowledge the possibility that the economic expansion will defy fears and continue to trundle forward.

I just spent 45 minutes trying to work the word “trundle” in to this article.

My day is complete.

•••

Interesting fact.

Toronto has enjoyed remarkable population growth in recent years,

sustaining a building boom that has raised eyebrows in terms of the number of cranes on the skyline, but which ultimately aligns fairly well with actual housing demand.

The Toronto metropolitan area enjoys the second-fastest population growth among North America and European cities, adding around 120,000 new residents per year. That’s about 1.5 Prince George’s each year. (Dallas sneaks slightly ahead).

Even sunbelt boomtowns such as Phoenix and Houston lag moderately behind, while behemoths such as New York, Los Angeles and Chicago are in outright decline.

In a Canadian context, Toronto was responsible for nearly a quarter of overall population growth in recent years. Running at 1.9 per cent per year on a population of 6.4 million, this growth rate is roughly double the national rate, but not wild.

The city’s population growth is supported by a vibrant economy, increasing economies of scale, a high level of national immigration, strong immigrant communities and a robust service sector that includes major financial institutions, a myriad of head offices and a rapidly-growing tech industry.

They also have the Leafs.

— Mark Ryan is an investment advisor with RBC Dominion Securities Inc. (Member–Canadian Investor Protection Fund), and these are Mark’s views, and not those of RBC Dominion Securities. This article is for information purposes only. Please consult with a professional advisor before taking any action based on information in this article.

See Mark’s website at: http://dir. rbcinvestments.com/mark.ryan

points at 16,309.23, about 30 points shy of where it was before last week’s major drops. In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average was up 240.29 points at 26,202.73. The S&P 500 index was up 23.92 points at 2,924.43, while the Nasdaq composite was up 71.65 points at 8,020.21. Minutes from last month’s Federal Reserve meeting failed to move markets much. The central bank cut interest rates for the first time since before the financial recession even as a couple of members wanted a 50 basis point cut and a couple saw no need to cut rates at all. Investors will be watching closely as Fed chairman Jerome Powell is expected to provide commentary on interest rates Friday at a symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyo.

The Canadian dollar rose to its highest level in about a week after Canada’s annual inflation hit the Bank of Canada’s target of two per cent for a second straight month in July. The loonie traded for an average of 75.31 cents US compared with an average of 75.06 cents US on Monday. Eight of the 11 major sectors of the TSX were higher, led by information technology. It rose 1.85 per cent as Shopify Inc. hit an all-time high of $519.69 and closed up four per cent at $519.07. That’s up 225 per cent from the 52-week low. Also rising were health care, energy, industrials and financials.

The key energy sector climbed 0.95 per cent despite a dip in crude oil prices as Kinder Morgan Canada Ltd. surged 31.6 per cent after Pembina Pipeline Corp. announced it would buy the company the U.S. portion of the Cochin pipeline system in deals it valued at a total of about $4.35 billion. The October crude contract was down 45 cents at US$55.68 per barrel and the September natural gas contract was down 4.8 cents at US$2.17 per mmBTU. Financials was up as the Royal Bank increased its dividend as its third-quarter profit rose by five per cent but the lender’s latest earnings missed estimates as challenging market conditions weighed on its capital markets division. Materials was lower even though the December gold contract was unchanged at US$1,515.70 an ounce.

AP FILE PHOTO

The European Central Bank is seen during a June sunset in Frankfurt, Germany.

How to brown bag in style

Becky KRYSTAL

The Washington Post

The greatest thing since sliced bread.

We’ve all heard and probably used the famous adage, and as transformative as that innovation was, to me it leaves out half (at least) of the equation – that is, everything that goes between those slices.

Yes, I’m talking about the sandwich. Without the filling, all you have with sliced bread is... thinner bread.

There are about as many reasons to love sandwiches as there are ways to make them. They’re portable and you can eat them with your hands. They’re fast, easy and cheap to make. Oh, and they’re fun!

That’s where these recipes come in. If your familiar brown-bag sandwich has left you feeling kind of blue, fear not. We took five classic lunch sandwiches and gave them a boost. These updates won’t make them unrecognizable or twee, but they will make them taste fresh, flavourful and special.

But first, a few sandwich best practices:

• Don’t overstuff. Sure, you can put anything in a sandwich. That doesn’t mean you should put everything in a sandwich. Being judicious with your filling means you can focus on a few quality ingredients. Plus, the sandwich will stand a chance of actually holding together.

• Incorporate flavors in highimpact, low-volume ways. There are plenty of strategies for amping up flavor without making your sandwich heftier. Whip up a flavored mayo (call it an aioli, if you like) by doctoring it with Sriracha, chipotle peppers, citrus zest and more. Incorporate a spice blend into yogurt. Repurpose bacon fat for toasting bread. You might be surprised how creative - and thrifty - you can be.

• Aim for a mix of textures. It’s just as important as the right balance of flavors. Choose elements across a few categories, including creamy, crunchy, crispy, saucy and soft.

• Protect the bread. Insulate the bread when using wet fillings, or at least wait to assemble until you’re ready to eat. Something fatty (butter, mayo) or a slice of cheese can do the trick. So does toasting the sides of the bread that will face the inside of the sandwich. This also gives your teeth something soft to sink into first.

• Protect the sandwich. Why go through the effort of making a sandwich only to pull it out of your bag smashed? Do yourself a favour and pack your homemade beauty in a hard-sided container or sturdy lunch bag. If you really want to be extra, wrap it in parchment or wax paper first. Ready to assemble? Great. Try one of my custom creations and then start putting together some of your own.

Sriracha Mayo BLT

Here’s a sandwich where it doesn’t pay to go too far off script. Good bacon, good tomatoes and good mayo, tweaked ever so slightly for extra flavor impact, turn this diner staple into a desk lunch worth savoring.

Ingredients

2 slices white bread

2 slices cooked thick-cut bacon, drippings reserved 1 tablespoon mayonnaise 1 teaspoon Sriracha

2 to 3 slices ripe tomato, sprinkled with salt 2 to 3 leaves green leaf lettuce

Steps

Brush one side of each slice of bread (something sturdy such as country or hearty white) with the bacon drippings. Toast the greased side for a few minutes, either in a skillet or under the broiler set on high, until golden brown. In a small bowl, mix together the

mayo and Sriracha. Spread half the Sriracha mayo on each of the toasted bread sides, then assemble the bacon, tomato and lettuce between the slices of bread.

Variations: Peach instead of, or in addition to, tomato. Leave the Sriracha out of the mayo. Try a different kind of lettuce – classic iceberg and butter are both good.

Raspberry PB&J

A peanut butter and jelly is so easy to make and so easy to mess up. I wanted to resist the temptation to turn it too fancy and precious, but a few simple upgrades gave me a satisfying, well-balanced sandwich I wish I’d had packed in my school lunch bag.

Ingredients

2 to 3 tablespoons crunchy natural peanut butter

2 slices whole-wheat bread

2 tablespoons raspberry jam or preserves

2 to 3 thick (about 1/4 inch) slices tart apple

Steps

Divide the peanut butter between the slices of bread. Spread the raspberry jam on top of one of the peanut butter layers. Place the apple slices on top of the jam, followed by the other slice of bread.

Variations: Use fig preserves. Try a different crunchy nut butter. Make it a club with another slice of bread and more filling.

Spicy, smoky turkey

Chipotle mayo and smoked turkey will remind you of the outdoors even if you are eating it at

your desk. Another boring turkey sandwich? Never again with this zesty number.

Ingredients

1 chipotle in adobo, drained and minced

3 tablespoons mayonnaise

2 slices sourdough bread

1 slice pepper jack cheese

4 ounces smoked turkey

Handful baby spinach leaves

Steps

In a small bowl, combine the chipotle and mayonnaise. You’ll need about a third of it (or as much as you want) for this sandwich; the rest will keep in the fridge for a few days. Spread half of the reserved mayo on one side of each slice of bread. Assemble the cheese, turkey and spinach between the slices of bread.

Variations: Decrease the chipotle or leave it out of the mayo. Swap in Monterey jack, or any deli sliced cheese, for the pepper jack. This would also be good on a kaiser roll.

Dill pickle egg salad

I prefer a mustard-based salad over a mayo-based one, so I pulled inspiration from my potato salad recipe. The eggs worked great in lieu of potatoes, with the dill, pickles and rye bread coming together for a very punchy sandwich.

Ingredients

1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil

1 tablespoon brine from a jar of cornichons, gherkins or other small pickles, plus more as needed

1 1/2 teaspoons white or red wine vinegar, plus more as needed 1/2 teaspoon mustard, such as

Dijon

1 tablespoon honey, plus more as needed

Kosher salt

Freshly ground black pepper

2 hard-boiled eggs, diced

3 cornichons, gherkins or other small pickles, finely chopped

2 teaspoons minced fresh dill

2 slices rye bread

Handful mixed baby lettuces

Steps

Combine the oil, pickle brine, vinegar, mustard and honey in a mini food processor or lidded jar you can shake. Season lightly with salt and pepper. Process, or seal and shake, to form a creamy vinaigrette. This should take a minute or less. Taste and add more brine, vinegar or honey, as needed. Combine the egg, cornichons and dill in a medium bowl. Add 2 tablespoons of the dressing. Tuck the egg salad into the bread in between two thin layers of lettuce.

Double mango curry chicken

A double dose of mango – fresh and chutney – goes into this aromatic salad. My version is based on a yogurt dressing reminiscent of a tandoori marinade. There’s no need to cook a chicken unless you want to, because this is the perfect use for a store-bought rotisserie bird.

This recipe scales up easily if you want to make enough chicken salad for a few days.

NOTE: Toast the almonds in a small dry skillet over medium heat, tossing frequently, until fragrant, three to five minutes.

Ingredients

3 tablespoons whole milk Greek yogurt

1/2 teaspoon curry powder

1 tablespoon olive oil

Squeeze fresh lemon juice

Pinch kosher salt

Pinch sugar

3 to 4 ounces cooked chicken, torn into 1- to 2-inch pieces

1 tablespoon chunky mango chutney, such as Major Grey’s 1 tablespoon toasted slivered almonds

2 tablespoons diced mango

2 or 3 leaves butter lettuce

2 slices challah

Steps

In a medium bowl, whisk together yogurt, curry powder, olive oil, lemon juice, salt and sugar. Stir in the chicken, chutney, almonds and diced mango.

Pile the chicken salad on top of the lettuce in between the slices of challah.

Variations: Use cucumber instead of mango. Opt for another kind of nut.

Change the flavor profile with a different spice blend. Try in a wrap or pita.

WASHINGTON POST PHOTOS

Bring style to weekday, brown bag lunches with the Sriracha Mayo BLT, top right, a crunchy Raspberry PB&J, middle right, a spicy, smoky turkey sandwich, right, a double mango curry chicken salad sandwich, above, or a dill and pickle egg salad sandwich.

5

BMX racing on track

Friday and Saturday

THURSDAY, AUGUST 22, 2019

STUDENT EXHIBIT LOOKS AT LOGGING

There’s a student-led exhibit at the Central B.C. Railway and Forestry Museum that focuses on logging and how it impacted the region.

The exhibit is called Forestry in the 20th Century: Changing Technology and its Ecological Impact and will be on display until the end of October when the Celebration of Lights display will take its place in the main room of the museum.

It took two months of research and collecting artifacts and two weeks to physically put it all together, including making a skid road for a forestry sleigh and models of streams and railways, and a miniature beehive burner to speak to the issues of the ecological impact logging had on the area.

“We fashioned a makeshift skid road or corduroy road, which is a road they would have built in the forest so they could transport the logs on sleighs,” Neyve Egger, a student at the University of King’s College in Halifax, said. There is a display showcasing logging on a stream.

“It’s basically looking at the ways logging or moving logs through vulnerable stream beds affect the environment, including salmon and how it impacted the ecosystem around it,” Tehja Orcherton, College of New Caledonia student, said. A part of that display is the component of how the logging industry changed their ways in order to better sustain the environment instead of destroying it, she added.

“Look at our beehive burner,” Molly Fandrey, University of Alberta student, said. When visitors crawl inside there’s a light at the top of the interior that makes is look like it’s burning.

Fandrey was happy to share a recent experience where children had come in from taking a ride on the Cottonwood mini rail train and the route goes through a full-size beehive burner. The children immediately went to explore the

miniature version in the museum that was created by student Kathryn Rempel, who was absent from the interview. The children were quick to explain how the beehive burner worked to their grandparents.

Fandrey had a strong reaction to that.

“Yes! Children learning. I’m so proud!”

The display explains how impactful the beehive burner was to the environment and how those in the industry have positively changed the way wood waste is utilized as the City of Prince George now uses a biomass system to heat some of the buildings in the downtown core and at the

There’s a video of the whole logging

process which includes a look at Eagle Lake Sawmill in 1963, which is a Wally West Production.

“We’ve also got a display about forestry and the railroad,” Fandrey said. “The rail was a huge part of forestry and it ties into why there was so much forestry because as the railroaders built up into Prince George there’d just be sawmills dotted all along the railroad because it was so easy to transport.”

It got to the point that logging was so rampant, the government finally put limits on how much logging could be done, Fandrey added.

The students’ enthusiasm spread throughout the park and there were many

changes made all over the site this summer.

“We were so fortunate to get as many students as we had this year,” Katherine Carlson, curator at the museum, said. “It’s been a really good summer.”

The museum was able to get grants for 12 student workers through Canada Summer Jobs and Young Canada Works to help develop the site, offer guided tours to visitors, help with archiving an extensive inventory as well as create the exhibit to provide education about logging to guests.

For more information about the exhibit visit the museum at 850 River Road or visit www.pgrfm.ca.

97/16 photo by Brent Braaten Molly Fandrey, Neyve Egger and Tehja Orcherton, summer students at the Central B.C. Railway and Forestry Museum, stand with part of the exhibit on railways and forestry that they created.

CHRISTINE HINZMANN 97/16 staff

EVERYONE WELCOME TO OPEN DRUM CIRCLE

CHRISTINE HINZMANN 97/16 staff

To promote Indigenous and Dakelh languages, knowledge, culture and history the Omineca Arts Centre hosts the Khast’an Dummers as they present an Open Drum Circle on most Sundays.

“We just like to get together and drum, learn the songs and learn the cultures and share among different cultures,” Jennifer Pighin, local artist and Omineca Arts Centre organizer, said.

“We’ve had people from different cultures here. They were from Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and people from all over Canada, too. We even had one man from the Czech Republic. It’s interesting to learn how the drum has roots in many different cultures.”

The Open Drum Circle is a place where people join together to learn local and Canadian songs, Pighin added.

“We sing songs from across Canada that were gifted to us or shared with us that are open for people to drum and sing,” she said.

Part of the circle is going over drum and song protocol. Pighin said organizers share a bit of information each time because it can be extensive.

“Some of the main points is to recognize

The Khas’tan drummers perform in February during the opening ceremonies for the Prince George 2019 Para Nordic Skiing Championships

the drum is alive and it needs to be treated like you treat yourself and when you’re drumming you don’t hit it any harder than you’d hit yourself because it’s made with the skin of an animal,” Pighin said. “We make the connection to the land through the frame that was built, the sound that

reaches through all of us and vibrates to the energies of the Earth and to each of us. It’s a very healing power.”

For song protocol it’s important to acknowledge the song’s origin, meaning and which clan it belongs to and how to sing it.

Pighin was able to speak to Martina Pierre from the Lil’ wat First Nations who has given to the people the Women Warrior Song or the Strong Woman Song.

“The song must be sung slowly and while you’re singing you have to think about the female spirit that lives in every blade of grass, rock, plant, animal, human being and harness that for meditation so you can ground yourself in that so you are standing strong in the female spirit that is being connected through you and through the song to everywhere in the world,” Pighin explained.

While some people would just enjoy the beat and hear the sounds this process involves a bit more.

“We try to make sure people know the meaning of the song and why we choose the songs that we sing,” Pighin said.

The next Sunday Open Drum Circle is on Aug. 25. Everyone is welcome to attend.

Admission is by donation.

For more information about the Open Drum Circle visit Khast’an Drummers on Facebook and for a full schedule of events at Omineca Arts Centre or to host an event using the venue visit ominecaartscentre.com.

DIGESTION REQUIRES ATTENTION

Digestion is the body’s process of mechanically and chemically breaking down food to a form that can be used for energy and to help build cells. From start to finish, the digestive system is eight metres long in most adults and while the stomach seems to get all the criticism when it comes to digestion, the process actually begins when food enters your mouth and involves multiple organs and functions.

For better or worse, digestive symptoms, including diarrhea, constipation, gas and bloating, are often attributed to specific foods and/or fluids. Diet and dietary habits can have a big influence on digestion and the prevention of uncomfortable and embarrassing symptoms. The tips below from the Dietitians of Canada can help support a healthy digestive system and potentially avoid these issues.

1. Eat lots of fibre-rich foods. Fibre promotes digestion by helping your body remove waste. Insoluble fibre in particular can help to keep your bowels regular and improve constipation. Sources of insoluble fibre include the skins of fruits and vegetables and the bran portion of

FOR THOUGHT

body can get rid of waste, the softer your stool will be.

— Kelsey Leckovic is a registered dietitian with Northern Health working in chronic disease management. FOOD

whole grains. Increase your fibre intake slowly to avoid gas and bloating and be sure to drink water throughout the day.

2. Get active. Light physical activity (e.g. a short walk, taking the stairs) can increase blood flow and improve digestion by aiding in the movement of food through your digestive system. Adults need at least 150 minutes of physical activity per week, in bouts of 10 minutes or more.

3. Eat and “go” regularly. Eating regular meals and snacks throughout the day will help to move food through your digestive system. To prevent constipation, it’s also important to go to the washroom when you feel the need to. As waste sits in your large intestine, water is slowly removed from it, which makes your stool harder and in turn, more difficult and possibly painful to pass. The sooner your

4. Avoid foods that upset your stomach. If you have heartburn, celiac disease, diverticulitis, inflammatory bowel disease or irritable bowel syndrome, you may find that certain foods trigger your symptoms. Foods that commonly cause digestive pain include caffeine, spicy foods, fatty or fried foods, alcohol, dairy products for those who are lactose intolerant and gas-producing foods such as beans, onions, broccoli and cabbage. Swallowed air makes up 90 per cent of the gas in our digestive system and can contribute to gas and bloating. You can lessen this impact by eating food slowly, relaxing while you eat, not drinking from straws, cans or bottles, avoiding chewing gum and drinking lukewarm fluids instead of hot (when you drink something hot, you swallow more air).

5. See your doctor for ongoing problems. Ongoing gas, bloating, diarrhea and constipation can be signs of something more serious. It may be time to see your doctor if you’ve had a sudden change in bowel movements, you’re taking medications that can cause con-

stipation and dietary changes have not helped, or have had ongoing issues with constipation or diarrhea.

97/16 file photo

This is the front page from the August 20, 1919 edition of the Prince George Citizen. You can search all of The Citizen’s archives online at pgnewspapers.pgpl.ca

AROUND TOWN

Northern Lights BMX National Races

Friday to Sunday at Rolling Mix Supertrak BMX Track, 323 Del Laverdure Way, Supertrak BMX is hosting a national event sanctioned by BMX Canada. There will be 500 to 700 participants from Western Canada and USA. Contact: 250-561-2691 | pgbmxinfo@gmail.com

The Great Park Escape

Saturday at Lheidli T’enneh Memorial Par,k Connect PG is hosting a a free day of activities for the whole family. Connect PG is a volunteer-led program which provides new residents to Prince George with social connections within the community. Visit their facebook page for details.

Brian Smith: Fly-Tying Demo & Book Signing

Saturday from noon to 2 p.m. at London Drugs in the Parkwood Plaza, 1600 15th Ave., meet author Brian Smith, have a copy of Essential Fly Patterns for Lake and Streams signed and learn to tie proven fish-catchers for your next fly-fishing trip. Fly-Tying demonstrations are at 12:30 and 1:30 p.m. This is Smith’s third book where he shares the result of more than 50 years of developing and refining fly patterns, offering more than 80 flies with pattern recipes and instructions for each. Contact: 604-885-9194 | monica@caitlin-press. com

Sherlock Saturday

Saturday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Huble Homestead Historic Site, 15000 Mitchell Rd., guests are invited to take on the task of solving the case at everybody’s favourite homestead. Calling all amateur sleuths. It’s time to put your basic investigatory skills to use at the homestead by taking part in this fun and inexpensive activity that’s great for groups. Choose the easier version for a pressure-free puzzle experience, or challenge yourselves to the advanced option. This self-guided event, which we would describe as an outdoor escape room. Huble Homestead Historic Site is a 30 minute drive north of Prince George, BC. Leave the city behind, and make your way up Highway 97, before turning off on Mitchell Road to continue another 6 kilometres down a well-maintained dirt road. Entry into the site is by suggested family donaiton of $10. Contact: 2505647033 | programs@ hublehomestead.ca

Foodie Fridays

97/16 file photo

Jeremey Pope of Garibaldi Highlands leads the pack around the track at Rolling Mix Supertrak BMX Park during the Supertrak BMX Ride for Life in May.

Every Friday until Sept. 6 from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., 808 Canada Games Way, hungry residents and visitors are invited to come downtown for Foodie Fridays. Tantalize your tastebuds at a variety of licensed sidewalk and food truck vendors and listen to live music throughout the lunch hour. For more information call 250-6147880.

Friday Night Mics

Every Friday at 7 p.m. Books & Co., 1685 Third Ave., in Cafe Voltaire, hosts an open mic night for all musicians local or just passing through. The weekly event features great music, audience engagement, tasty beverages and treats while intermission finds people browsing through book shelves filled with contributions from local authors as well as best sellers. For more information visit www. booksandcompany.ca.

Family Fun Day

Saturday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. the Central B.C. Railway and Forestry Museum, 850 River Rd., is hosting Family Fun Day where admission is by donation to the Humane Society and Two Bunnies Rescue. All activities are geared for the whole family, including a giant lawn chess

game, big checkers game, lots of toys for the younger set, blacksmithing demonstrations and Huggleberry the clown will make balloon animals from 3 to 4 p.m. Mini rail rides and concession items are available for purchase. For more information call 250-563-7351 or visit www.pgrfm.bc.ca.

Open Drum Circle

Sundays until August 25 from 2 to 4 p.m. at Omineca Arts Centre, 369 Victoria St. Building community in an inclusive drum ceremony, we use it to learn and promote Indigenous and Dakelh languages, knowledge, cultures and histories. Everyone is welcome to our Open Drum Circles on Sundays to participate, share, dance, learn or observe.

Contact: info@ominecaartscentre.com

Free Yoga in the Park

Every Sunday until Aug. 25 from 10 to 11 a.m. join Chinook Yoga at Lheidli T’enneh Memorial Park bandshell all summer long for free Yoga in the Park. Bring a mat or do yoga in the grass. Bring a water bottle and grab a friend or two, all ages welcome.

Contact: 250-564-9642 | www. chinookyoga.com

Scrabble Sundays

Every Sunday from 1 to 3 p.m. at Books & Co., 1685 Third Ave., in Cafe Voltaire there is Scrabble Sunday every weekend. Bring friends, family or yourself and your scrabble board.

Contact: 250-563-6637 | orderbooks@shaw.ca

Walking Tours

Tuesdays, Aug. 22 from 11 a.m. to noon take a free interesting trip through the city’s core provided by the Prince George Public Library. Meet in the main lobby of the Bob Harkins Branch for a guided tour of Prince George’s fascinating historic sites. Done in partnership with The Heritage Commission and The Exploration Place. Contact: 250-563-9251 | ask@ pgpl.ca

DJ Dance Nights

Thursday, Aug. 29 from 9 p.m. to 1 a.m. the Omineca Arts Centre, 369 Victoria St., presents various local, regional and/ or touring DJs to get bodies grooving and keep spirits and energies high. Each night will feature various local, regional and/ or touring DJs. Both licenced and dry DJ

Continued on page 6

AROUND TOWN

Nights will occur each month. Admission by donation (suggested $5-20 sliding scale). No one turned away for lack of funds. Contact: 250-552-0826 | info@ ominecaartscentre.com

Wordplay Open Stage Night

Third Thursday of every month Books & Co., 1685 Third Ave., hosts Wordplay Open Stage Night in Cafe Voltaire from 7:30 to 8:30 p.m. This event is geared for poets and storytellers, aspiring, published or professional. Bring original work, take the stage and share with a creative reading.

Tapestry Singers

Sept. 12 at 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. for junior choir and 6 to 8 p.m. for senior choir all students in the community are invited to attend Everybody Welcome rehearsals at Trinity Downtown, 1448 Fifth Ave., where students in Grades 4 to 7 and Grades 7 to 12 can see if the choirs are the right fit for them. For information visit http:// tapestrysingersd57.weebly.com/ or email carolynduerksen@hotmail.com.

Red Green

Sept. 26

He’s colourful in name and deed. Red Green is the bumbling but pleasantly practical TV fix-it man, the clown prince of duct tape, the sage of the man-shed. This Canadian comedy icon is coming to Vanier

Hall on his Red Green-This Could Be It Tour. His P.G. shows are always a sell-out. Get tickets at the TicketsNorth website/ box office.

Chris Gaskin Comedy Tour Special

Oct. 5 from 7 to 10 p.m. at Artspace, above Books & Co., 1685 Third Ave., hometown boy Chris Gaskin will be taping his first ever comedy special. Hailed by Brielle Magazine as the Baby-Faced Assassin, Gaskin is known for commanding audiences’ attention with his innocent looks and sharp tongue, which has led to him being described as, brutally honest and hysterical. Tickets on sale at eventbrite.com

Patrick, Scott & Tessa

Oct. 12

During last year’s sold out Thank You Canada tour, it was clear to figure skating superstars, Tessa Virtue, Scott Moir and Patrick Chan, that they were far from done creating and developing a new style of skating entertainment. They and some special guest performers come back to CN Centre to show the Prince George fans what they’ve come up with next.

Rock The Rink is the first edition of an annual tour that focuses on being more than a figure skating show. Combining the highest level of on-ice superstar talent with an ever-evolving touring production, Rock The Rink will produce the highest value of entertainment in the figure skating realm. This year – along with upgrades to lighting, video and interactive technology – live music will be introduced to the show, with featured special musical guest,

Burton, Live

Oct. 18

Canada’s piano man, the Guess Who’s epic vocalist, the only artist inducted into the nation’s music Hall of Fame for both his band and his solo career, the incomparable Burton Cummings is coming to PG. He was the power voice propelling American Woman, These Eyes, No Time, Clap For The Wolfman and many other hits of the groundbreaking band The Guess Who, but then when he went solo he continued the multi-platinum success with I Will Sing A Rhapsody, Stand Tall, My Own Way To Rock, Fine State Of Affairs, You Saved My Soul, Break It To Them Gently, and more besides. Cummings will be solo at the piano at Vanier Hall. Tickets are on sale now through all TicketsNorth platforms.

World Curling

March 14 start

Don’t let the date fool you. The event may be in 2020 but the plans are underway now and the tickets are on sale for this Prince George groundbreaker. P.G. goes global as the host of the World Women’s Curling Championships. Get your tickets now, and spread the word to friends and family everywhere that this is the time to come spend some Prince George time and get a close, personal view of the world-class action the rest of the winter sports community will only get to see on TV. Oh yeah, and there’s also the great social side of curling –there’ll be no bigger party in Canada. Contact Tickets North for tickets and info.

Birds of Bellwoods.

97/16 file photo

From right, Cheryl Du Bois, Doran Schuur, and Izzabelle Du Bois, 3, examine a clue at Huble Homestead. The three generations took part in Sherlock Saturday in 2017. The event returns this Saturday.

DOCTORS LINK VAPING TO LUNG ILLNESSES

MIKE STOBBE

NEW YORK – As many as 50 people in at least six states have come down with breathing illnesses that may be linked to e-cigarettes or other vaping products.No deaths have been reported, but at least a few have come close.Some patients have likened onset of the illness to a heart attack, and others to the flu. Symptoms have included shortness of breath, fatigue, chest pain and vomiting. Doctors say the illnesses resemble an inhalation injury, with the body apparently reacting to a caustic substance that someone breathed in.Dr. Melodi Pirzada, a pediatric lung specialist at NYU Winthrop Hospital in New York, said she’s seen two cases this summer - one of them an athletic 18-yearold who almost died.“We’re all baffled,” Pirzada said. The only common factor was they had been vaping, she said.Wisconsin health officials on Thursday said they’re seen 15 confirmed cases, with another 15 illnesses under investigation. New York state officials are investigating 10, Illinois has seen at least six, and Minnesota doctors this week said they have four more. California and Indiana have also been looking into reported illnesses.Health officials have only been counting certain lung illnesses in which the person had vaped within three months. Most are teens, but some adult cases have also been reported. No single vaping device or liquid is associated with the illnesses.Dylan Nelson, a 26-year-old Wisconsin man, went to see a doctor when he first became ill. He has asthma, was diagnosed with pneumonia and was treated and released.Within a few days, he could barely breathe. He went

to a hospital and was put on a breathing tube. His two brothers kept a round-theclock vigil over him in the ensuing days, and at one point one called his mother to the hospital, saying: “Mom, I don’t think he’s going to make it. ... He can’t die without his mom.”He rallied and was released from the hospital late last month.But “he still has lung damage and heart damage,” and doctors still don’t know how much they’ll heal, said his mother, Kim Barnes of Burlington, Wisconsin.Electronic cigarettes have been described as a less dangerous alternative to regular cigarettes, but health officials have been worried about kids using them. Most of the concern has focused on nicotine, which health officials say is harmful to developing brains and might make kids more likely to take up cigarettes.But some vaping products have been found to contain other potentially harmful substances, including flavouring chemicals and oils used for vaping marijuana, experts say.Wisconsin officials did do not know the names of the products the sick people had vaped, but added they could include several substances, including nicotine and THC - the main active chemical in marijuana.Dr. Anne Griffiths, a lung specialist who saw all four of the reported Minnesota cases, said each had vaped different products.“I really do think the primary cause of these illnesses is what’s been inhaled,” said Griffiths, of Children’s Minnesota.Among the many questions: Why are cases only surfacing now, when e-cigarettes have been around for years and are now being used by more than 10 million Americans?It’s possible illnesses previously weren’t recognized as being related to vaping, Griffiths said.

FeaTured In FrIday’S ClaSSIFIed SeCTIon

DeaDline for the friDaY Map is 12 noon on thursDaY sorrY, no exceptions

You Will receive

• a six line word ad in our Friday Classified Section

• an address listing on our Garage Sale Map (Friday Classified edition)

• a six line word ad in our Saturday Classified Section

• online listing at princegeorgecitizen.com

• Balloons, neon signs and list of garage sale tips (while quantities last)

Bonus $12 value

We are committed to helping you sell your items. as a bonus, we will run your unsold items in our Bargain Corner classified section. Maximum 6 items for 6 days.

The Citizen will re-run your ad the following week at no charge! (Sorry, no refunds)

97/16

photo by Brent Braaten

CLASSIC ROCK FOR CLASSIC ROCKERS: Tim Yule and The Chevys entertain the crowd at Riverbend Seniors Community on Aug.

BASEMENT STUDIO IN TUNE

CHRISTINE HINZMANN 97/16 staff

Wooden Fish Studio is a local recording studio run by a man who understands how an artist can struggle to get their music to the masses.

As a successful performing and recording artist, Bob Hanson is now focusing on helping others achieve their musical goals.

Hanson has produced six CDs and mostly toured in the United States.

“I was playing in the clubs for a lot of years and then I started doing gospel music,” Hanson said. “They don’t have a lot of Christian radio stations in Canada but they do in the States so that’s where I ended up.”

His first album was released in 1987 and his career included appearances on television shows including 100 Huntley Street, his big hit was his single Child on the Run in the late 80s. Hanson believes the highlight of his career was in 1992 when his album ‘Nuff Said came out and was distributed worldwide. His CDs got airplay but not on a level that he would consider a great success, he said.

“It’s the kind of industry that if you don’t have the right people around you, the phone stops ringin’,” he said.

Looking for a better quality of life Hanson, wife Janine, a teacher, and their two sons Joshua, now 27, and Michael, 23, moved to Prince George from Vancouver 11 years ago.

“It’s really a hand-to-mouth existence down there and it’s really hard to make ends meet,” Hanson said, shaking his head. “So many musicians, so many studios.”

The family spent two months traveling around the province in their burgundy Buick looking for the ideal small town to call home. They’d never gone further north than Williams Lake and were at the point where they thought they’d just try Prince George and found it was a great combination of affordability and friendliness.

In his new hometown Hanson was able

to purchase a house with a basement seven years ago.

“And that’s where the vision of the studio was,” he said. “Me and my sons went at it with hammers and a crowbar to make it happen.”

Hanson’s two sons are the band Redwhyn, who have recorded their first album at the studio, with the second in the works.

Knowing the music industry is a tough one, Hanson built the recording studio primarily to help his boys.

Having your own recording studio can have its perks.

Living in a Different World is Hanson’s

latest album, which he produced in his own studio. It’s the first album he’s released since 2002.

He created the album under the fictional character name of Oldham Ward to honour his mother’s memory. Irene Ward Hanson, who was always Hanson’s biggest supporter, would say she was from Shaw near Oldham and described herself as an ordinary Manchester girl and songs on the album reflect that.

Hanson never stopped writing songs and said he’s got hundreds of them and knows what it’s like to have the music but nowhere to put it.

“There’s very little mercy in this business,” Hanson said. “I want to be able to sit down with an artist, right from scratch, and help build their songs, record their songs - I’m a producer so I produce other artists’ work as well as my own - and be able to take that and give them a professional demo. I’ve got a lot of experience to share with people. It’s really sad to see an artist with a gift who can’t do anything with it because of finances. The music, the art, is far more important to me than the money.”

Check out Wooden Fish Studio on Facebook.

EVEN PROFESSIONALS STRUGGLE WITH MENTAL HEALTH

Istopped at the intersection, unable to go further. Needing to cross the busy road in front of me, I was unable. My heart was pounding in my ears and it felt like my chest would explode. I was gasping for breath, shaking, immobile. I became aware of a loud noise – along with a voice – banging on the driver’s window. An angry face, my fear increased, I think I screamed. Everything went black. The next thing I remember is something on my face and a calm voice.

“Just take normal breaths, in and out, nice and slow.”

This is what I recall from an onset of anxiety many years ago. I am a counsellor and had, at the time this occurred, treated anxiety – successfully - many times over.

I moved to Prince George from Southern Ontario five years ago to be close to my daughter and her family. We all live together, my daughter, her husband and my two granddaughters and myself. It’s an adventure I wouldn’t trade for anything.

After a long career in mental health, brain injury rehabilitation and develop-

OPEN FOR DISCUSSION

CHRISTINE RICKARDS

mental services, I retired and hoped to just help care for the family and do some sewing. Now, five years into retirement, I work part time as a counsellor, coordinate a grief program at my church, host a blog and always have new irons in the fire somewhere.

My first awareness of a mental health struggle myself was when I had my daughter 30-plus years ago and experienced postpartum depression (PPD). It is hard to know how much was PPD and how much was just a very difficult transition to parenthood, but eventually my marriage ended and I found myself returning to school to study psychology. I don’t think I ever fully got back to myself in terms of depression, but the intensity lessened and I told myself I was fine.

The second time my mental health needed attention was many years later when I was in two car crashes within two years. This led to an increase in depressive symptoms and an encounter with anxiety, a new mental health experience. I had treated many people with anxiety disorders by this time, but experiencing it gave me a whole new perspective. Even though I knew how to treat anxiety, that didn’t mean I didn’t need help. A wonderful psychologist helped me through that season of my life and now when I experience times of anxiety I am well equipped to address it.

My desire to share this and so much more about mental health grows out of the pervasive stigma that is sadly still attached to mental health issues. Although it is widely documented and understood that mental health issues are not a choice, a failing, or a condition that makes one dangerous to others, stigma persists. This is at least in part because the average person does not have the necessary information to distinguish between mental health disorders and some other disorders.

For example, the layperson often confuses mental health disorders with developmental disorders. It is human nature that what we don’t understand, we fear. But there is little need to fear someone with a mental health diagnosis or a development disability for that matter. One in 10 people will experience a mental health issue in their lifetime and many more will support a person with a mental health diagnosis. Most of us are still functioning well enough that you would not look at us and discern our diagnosis and many people you encounter each day are dealing with a mental health diagnosis.

My daughter, who also works in the field of mental health and has her own story to share with you, will be alternating from week to week with me, so next week you will have the pleasure of meeting her.

Although this is definitely not an advice column, we welcome topic suggestions or general questions.

Thanks for joining in the discussion with us.

97/16 photo by Brent Braaten Bob Hanson at the console of his Wooden Fish Studio in Prince George.

Fall Sign-up!

Fall Sign-up!

Fall Sign-up!

Read the newspaper for a few minutes every day and you will be on your way to success in school and life! Kid Scoop is fun to read once a week, but what can you do on the other days of the week?

This week, use Kid Scoop all week long. We have created a fun newspaper reading game for each day of the week!

I’m a

MARS

The Romans named Mars after their god of war, because its color reminded them of blood.

Each time you read 10 column inches of the newspaper, color in a planet in our solar system. When you reach Neptune, cut out the sun and wear it as a badge to let everyone know you

Planet Adjectives

Read the short description of each of the eight planets, plus the dwarf planet, Pluto. Each day, look through the newspaper for adjectives that describe three planets. Glue the adjectives near the planet they describe.

NEPTUNE

Hold on to your hats! Neptune is storms, storms and more storms!

VENUS

MERCURY

Closest to the sun, Mercury’s days are a whopping 800° F and at night the temperature drops to 300° F BELOW zero!

How heavy is the asteroid?

Asteroids are space rocks that orbit the sun between Mars and Jupiter. They come in all shapes and sizes.

Look through the newspaper for a number to put into each of the boxes on the asteroids. Do the math and find out what each asteroid weighs!

Covered with a poisonous acid, Venus is the hottest planet in our solar system. The planet’s thick clouds let the heat in, but not out! This is called the greenhouse effect

EARTH

Not too hot and not too cold, it is the only planet where we know there is life.

JUPITER

Jupiter is the largest and heaviest planet. If it was hollow, more than 1,000 Earths could fit inside.

Farthest from the sun, Pluto is colder than all the other planets and dark all the time, even during the day.

SATURN

Saturn is nearly as big as its neighbor, Jupiter, but it is not so heavy. Scientists say that if you could find an ocean big enough, Saturn would float.

URANUS

Uranus has rings just like Saturn, but the rings go around the planet up and down like a ferris wheel. Through a telescope, this icy planet looks greenish-blue.

Pretend you are sending a package into space that, if life exists on other planets, will tell about life on Earth. Look through today’s newspaper to find pictures and articles that you would put into your package. Tell why you selected each one.

Find the words in the puzzle. How many of them can you find on this page?

Satellite Story

The moon is a satellite. A satellite is a smaller object that orbits around a larger one. Some satellites, like moons, are natural. Others are man-made. People have launched man-made satellites into orbit around the Earth to take pictures of clouds and land forms, and to study space.

Natural or Man-Made?

Look through the newspaper and find five things that are natural. Then find five things that are man-made.

This is a thriller starring a group of kids trapped inside a moon base. When one of the top scientists turns up dead, Dash jumps into action to find the killer. This chapter book is a fast paced/murder mystery/science fiction read and the first in a series of space thrillers.

To discover the name of this book, find the letter on the outer ring, then replace it with the letter below it on the inner ring.

• Going to a library regularly will result in you reading more.

• Owning a library card teaches you the responsibility of looking after it and the responsibility of looking after the books you take home and returning them on time.

• The wealth of choice in books, movies and tapes allows you access to more information that you otherwise would ever be able to reach.

• Children’s librarians are a great resource steering you to more books and topics than you might otherwise have considered.

• Children’s libraries everywhere have programs that encourage reading, researching and exploring mind-expanding information.

race as fast as a rocket to Mars! Make up your own exaggerations.

PLUTO DWARF PLANET

Standards Link: Grammar: Identify adjectives.

Standards Link: Earth Science: Students know that each planet has unique characteristics.

© 2019 by Vicki Whiting, Editor Jeff Schinkel, Graphics Vol. 35, No. 36

Use the Kid Scoop Secret Decoder Ring to discover the name of this book by Stuart Gibbs, which is available at the library.

WHAT THE CARS WE DRIVE SAY ABOUT OUR PRIORITIES

American actress Alexandra Paul summarized the sentiment of much of the world when she said, “The cars we drive say a lot about us.”

The climate crisis also says a lot about us as a society, and one of its greatest culprits is the automobile.

Many are therefore choosing to switch to electric cars and trucks, and the auto industry is responding by increasing production of these vehicles.

Is this is the best and only solution, however?

While electric cars do not create exhaust, the electricity which powers them has to come from somewhere. They also need to be manufactured, and manufacturing creates pollutants.

There are also many components which go into an electric car that are different from those in fossil fuel burning cars. We need to remember that this too will have a far-reaching global impact, as did the mass production of cars which began more than 100 years ago.

In the early 20th century, the demand for rubber increased at an astronomical rate. King Leopold II of Belgium gladly responded to this by pillaging the Congo Free State, making it his own personal rubber plantation.

LESSONS IN LEARNING

GERRY CHIDIAC

This resulted in millions of deaths in what could easily be called the first genocide of the century.

Ironically, today we turn to the Congo again, this time for cobalt to be used in lithium-ion batteries for our electric cars. The Congolese infrastructure has changed little since the time of Leopold. It is still dominated by corruption, violence and organized crime.

As the auto industry shifts to electric cars, the global community has a choice to make. Will we use this opportunity to make life better for people in the Congo, or will we allow the ghost of King Leopold to continue to inflict suffering on a beautiful nation?

Perhaps there are even more fundamental questions we need to ask concerning our cars. First of all, how are they are impacting our health? When we drive, we are not exercising. Many are surprised to learn that city dwellers tend

to be healthier than those who live in the country. While this is a multifaceted statistic, one thing is clear, city dwellers spend more time walking and less time driving.

Even those of us living in smaller cities can embrace opportunities to get out of our vehicles. For example, 20 years ago I acquired a teaching position within walking distance of my home. I thus sold one family car and bought a really good backpack.

Walking to and from work has been a wonderful experience. I easily exceed the 10,000 step minimum encouraged by health experts. I also really enjoy every aspect of walking, even in the cold of winter. When I see people warming up their cars and scraping off their windshields I realize how fortunate I am.

Of course, not everyone can walk to work. We often have to rely on our vehicles because we live far away, or because we need to pick up and drop off our children.

The point, however, is that the climate crisis is real, and we need to begin to make choices which will have a positive impact on the environment. Getting an ethically-produced electric car or a fuelefficient gas or diesel-powered vehicle is

The point, however, is that the climate crisis is real, and we need to begin to make choices which will have a positive impact on the environment.

a step in the right direction, but our big city dwellers know that public transportation, rideshare services, and bike lanes can reduce or even eliminate the environmental impact of car ownership, not to mention the cost. There is no reason why these programs can’t be expanded in smaller communities.

The bottom line is that global warming is very real, and much of it has to do with our love affair with the automobile. Perhaps it’s time to consider what the car we’re not driving says about us as well.

Gerry Chidiac is a champion for social enlightenment, inspiring others to find their greatness in making the world a better place. For more of his writings, go to www.gerrychidiac.com.

ABOUT US

• Colleen Sparrow, publisher and GM

• Neil Godbout, editor-in-chief

• Shawn Cornell, director of advertising

• Call us at: 250-562-2441 or 250-562-3301

• Find us at: 505 Fourth Avenue, Prince George, B.C. V2L 3H2

• Follow us on Facebook, by going online to: https://bit.ly/2SdAmek

• Visit https://bit.ly/2S9W4zW to find the location nearest you to pick up extra copies of 97/16.

NEW CAR VALUE FOR UNDER $10K

I can’t believe Chevrolet still sells their 2019 Spark — a brand-new car — for under $10,000.You can’t buy much for $10,000 in a used car these days, so finding a new one for that price usually has people shaking their heads in disbelief.

When the second-generation Spark was introduced in 2015, there was something of a price war taking place in the subcompact market.

The Nissan Micra, Hyundai Accent, Kia Rio and Mitsubishi Mirage were all in and around the $10,000 mark.

Chevrolet came in and priced the 2016 Spark at $9,995, beating out the nearest competitor by $3, to grab the crown of the least expensive new car in Canada.

Fast-forward three years and the Chevrolet Spark is at that same price, while competitors all raised their prices, in some cases, by thousands of dollars.

Why haven’t you heard more about the Spark? Probably because there is little profit in small cars. The money is to be made in the ever-popular SUV and truck market.

With no national advertising support, the little Spark has to survive by simple word of mouth.

As I drove the base Spark when it was introduced, I thought that it was fitting that I would drive the top-of-the-line version this time.

The Spark is available in five trim levels, with the LS Manual the $9,995 model. My tester was the 2LT CVT, with a list price of $19,095.

Regardless of the model you choose, the Spark comes in only one body style — a four-door hatchback.

When you initially look at a Spark, you would swear that it is a two-door because you can only see one door handle when approaching the car.

The second handle is there, it’s just hidden just behind the window frame of the back door. It’s a neat optical illusion, as people perceive two-door cars as more attractive (but buy four-doors for their practicality).

The 2019 features what the industry calls a mid-cycle refresh, when designers can give a vehicle a go-over so as to revise styling cues. The grille is slightly different with the opening larger, following current trends.

A bigger change has centred around the introduction of the third-generation MyLink infotainment system. It is also a telematics system, integrating OnStar services such as vehicle diagnostics, automatic collision notification and turn-by-

turn navigation.

The seven-inch colour screen is clear, bright and easy to navigate.

The system is capable of making the vehicle into a 4G wi-fi hotspot (your children will love this) and is both Apple CarPlay and Android Auto compatible. Bluetooth audio streaming is a given. Also included is SiriusXM (subscription required after a three-month trial).

The Spark is a subcompact, so space is tight. The front seats are adequate for most adults. The back seat only accommodates two passengers (the space between the seats features a cupholder in lieu of an extra occupant). The back seat bottom folds up, and the seat backs fold 60/40 to increase cargo capacity. The Spark can carry up to 770 litres of cargo.

Part of the reason for the price jump over the base car is the addition of

leatherette seating surfaces, a leatherwrapped steering wheel and heated front seats. A power sunroof tops off the list of desirable options.

Still, there is ample evidence the Spark is an economy car at heart, with a fair bit of hard plastic in the interior.

But if you are safety conscious, you will probably be impressed with the inclusion of forward collision warning, low-speed forward automatic braking and lane-departure warning systems. These are desirable options not commonly found in this segment, let alone price point.

There is a back-up camera and, more importantly, a rear park assist function, with an audible warning (if you can’t turn your head comfortably, this last feature is a godsend).

There is only one powerplant, a

1.4-litre four-cylinder engine producing 98 horsepower and 94 pound-feet of torque, mated to a continuously variable transmission and operating the front wheels.

The engine produces ample power for acceleration to merge onto highway onramps and is generally unobtrusive.

The highlight of the Spark is its fuel economy, with a 6.2 litre/100 km rating on the highway and 7.9 in the city on regular fuel.

Best of all, you have a new car warranty, with three years/60,000 km new car and five years/100,000 km on the powertrain and roadside assistance.

The Spark is not glamorous, sexy or fast. It’s just inexpensive, reliable transportation. It certainly won’t bust the bank and, in this day and age, is a heck of a deal.

Victoria Times Colonist photo by Adrian Lam

PEDRO ARRIAS VictoriaTimes Colonist