Prince George Citizen August 24, 2019

Inside the search to find George

Christine HINZMANN Citizen staff chinzmann@pgcitizen.ca

MACKENZIE – It was a rainy and cold Saturday afternoon last weekend. Somewhere, in a forest filled with bears near this isolated community north of Prince George, there was a lost boy.

“At about 1:42 p.m. – I was on days off – and I received a call from one of my constables, Jeff Ludovici, notifying me of a missing four-year-old in the area of Lions Lake,” RCMP Cpl. Martin Neveu said. “He explained that there had been over an hour time delay and gave me the circumstances that mom and a friend had taken the boy berry picking. When they had arrived on site the boy was sleeping in the van. She laid him on the floor and they moved to the berry patch, which was approximately 30 feet away. A few minutes later, they went back to check on him and the door was open and the boy was gone.”

Tykao Hazard had searched for her son George with her friend with no success before calling the police.

Neveu turned on his police radio and started monitoring the investigation from home, hearing the Police Dog Service call was already put out, along with Air Services and Search and Rescue was in the process of being activated to locate George.

As he continued to monitor the situation, he was given a description of the area that Neveu is familiar with because that’s where he often goes fishing.

Lions Lake is about 18 kilometres from the Mackenzie Junction.

It’s a small forestry service road that leads to a small lake. CN was notified because the location was right beside the track and information was shared on local logging truck channels.

Sgt. John Grierson, the detachment commander, was away during the start of the investigation. Neveu called to tell him about the lost boy.

The initial attempts to search for George were hindered because the two constables

at the site were instructed by the Police Dog Services personnel not to contaminate what little tracks a four-year-old could make through the bush.

“So it was search in a certain pattern, keep track of where you’ve been so that the dog could be more successful,” Neveu said.

Two more officers were deployed to attend the scene but had to be redeployed to a domestic dispute. After that situation was resolved, they hauled out the two RCMP ATVs.

That’s when Neveu went to the site and established the Search and Rescue (SAR) command post at the Lions Lake Provincial Park campsite about one kilometre from where George was last seen, so not to con-

taminate the scene.

“In my mind and heart at this time there are two possibilities,” Neveu said.

“There is a possibility that this is legitimate that the boy got out of the van and he’s now out in the wilderness in these rainy conditions – he’s a four year old with no exposure to wilderness – so that is a grave concern and there’s also the side that’s always going to be in the back of our minds – is there another angle to this? Is it possible that there could be a parental abduction, or anything like that – is there any sign of anything suspicious?”

To consider those options is just part of police training, said Grierson.

“You don’t want to have tunnel vision

about this,” he said. “The overwhelming concern is the safety of the child but we have to be cognizant of any other possibilities.

There’s always a concurrent investigation as well as the search. And then you cross your fingers and toes.”

When Neveu went to the site, Knut Herzog, the Mackenzie SAR manager, was already on the scene and preparing his team, establishing search patterns to ensure they would conduct an effective search.

Neveu said when he talked to George’s mom, she said she believed she could hear George calling her a few times shortly after he went into the bush.

— see ‘THERE WAS ALREADY, page 2

Cpl. Martin Neveu with the Mackenzie detachment of the RCMP, Knut Herzog, search manager with Mackenzie SAR and Dale Parker, president of Mackenzie SAR, talk about the search for George Hazard-Benoit, a four-year-old Mackenzie boy who went missing while berry picking with his family near Lions Lake, south of Mackenzie on Saturday afternoon. He was found safe and uninjured Sunday evening and has been reunited with his parents.

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.

‘There was already a huge outpouring... from the community’

— from page 1

Neveu had Hazard and her friend reenact the scene to show exactly where they were standing when they heard George’s calls in relation to the van and Neveu took the opportunity to examine the scene firsthand.

It was then confirmed they both concluded George’s call came from a specific direction.

In the meantime, Neveu looked for evidence of other vehicles in the area but found none.

“It’s not like this took place in the middle of town where someone could randomly walk up to the van and take George and go,” Neveu said. “You’re in the middle of the bush.”

During his 19 years on the force, Neveu said he’s seen a lot of things that are not what they seemed at first and it’s always in the back of an officer’s mind.

“But despite that, we have to keep boots on the ground and get the search going,” Neveu said. “It wasn’t too long before SAR was rolling in and things were starting to happen.”

To get SAR mobilized, Herzog called Dale Parker, the president of the Mackenzie SAR, to get as many members of their team out to the scene as soon as possible. There are 23 members of the SAR group in Mackenzie. Most are shift workers and some have employers who understand the gravity of circumstances when SAR members are called out and release the employee to do their volunteer duty.

Herzog went out to the scene and established communications with Neveu, the incident commander, while Parker got the gear

they needed after he put out the call for SAR members to come out.

“That’s when we discussed the plan and I made some recommendations that we needed to get pretty big quick here, so I was going to be putting in a call for a lot more resources to come our way,” Herzog said. “I needed to know where the police dogs were working because we do not want to contaminate the area so we can work jointly. Then I went

out to look at the place last seen for George and then try to find a direction of travel. Through the training we receive as trackers, given the size and nature of George he did not leave us a lot of signs, a lot of things in that area were already pretty hard to see because people had already been looking for him.”

The plan was made to start the search from the van and expand outwards.

“There was a team of five SAR members going out and doing a sound sweep,” Herzog said. “So we stop whistle, listen for him, and then we move along and keep expanding on that.”

Because children are taught about stranger danger, trying to communicate with a lost boy can be difficult and even if George was close enough to hear or see people around him, would he call out or go towards them?

“One of the first things we always ask parents is if their child has a safe word,” Herzog said. “I know when my kids were growing up they all had safe words so if a stranger came up to them and gave them that safe word they knew that mom and dad OKed this person and that’s a pretty good idea to have with all children so that if they’re ever in a situation like this they can use that and know that the people are approachable.”

Unfortunately, George didn’t have a safe word.

“So we tried to do a sound sweep by whistling to get his attention without people calling out because at that time with the amount of people we had there we tried to cover as much ground as we could because maybe he just wandered a little bit away so we were covering a fair amount of ground,” Herzog said.

It became clear that George was not responding to the sound sweeps which led to the knowledge that they needed more boots on the ground as quickly as possible. Herzog knew that a child could choose to hide from a person they consider a threat so the more eyes in the woods to find George the better, because if he’s not coming to them, they had to find him.

To Herzog that meant people had to be searching in sight of each other. They would now assume they are looking for a little person who could be hiding, so looking for the sleeve of his coat as he’s hiding in a bush or the top of his head as he’s crouching down was now the focus.

They put a request out through the Emergency Coordination Centre to bring in all SAR teams in the area, so the call went out to Fort St. John, Dawson Creek, Chetwynd, Prince George, Vanderhoof

and Fort St. James.

Critical Incident Stress Management (CISM) was also called in to assist SAR members who would struggle with the stress of trying to find a lost boy for long stretches of time.

Any time there is a lost child the pressure on people can be immense, Herzog said.

For the parents, including George’s father Kris Benoit, and other family members who are in distress, the RCMP call in Victim Services.

Because they wanted to get as much ground covered as possible before it got dark Saturday, the Mackenzie SAR turned to social media to get the word out they needed people to help with the search.

“There was already a huge outpouring on the first day from the community,” Herzog said.

By the time it was all over early Sunday evening, there were more than 500 volunteers involved with the search, logging more than 3,000 volunteer hours.

The first wave of members of the public who wanted to search saw 168 people attend Saturday. The hardest thing to do for the search organizers was to tell them to go home when it got dark.

“The rationale for pulling them off at night is because your chance of injury at night goes up significantly,” Parker said.

But that didn’t stop the search. That’s when the specially-trained SAR teams took over, usually in groups of five.

“As the teams arrived from around the province, they were put to work,” Herzog said.

There were 17 SAR members searching overnight.

During the night search came the threat of several bears in the area.

One bear was so aggressive he was making chomping motions with his teeth near at least a dozen searchers. No amount of noise from them was going to scare off the bear and those searchers had to be pulled out of that area for their own safety.

Conservation officers had to be called in to take care of the problem. No bear was destroyed as the officers were able to scare them off.

While some people were searching, others were organizing what the search would look like come first light Sunday and they were expecting more than 200 people to arrive for a 6 a.m. start up.

Parker spent Saturday night in the field so that Herzog could go home and be ready for what was to come on Sunday.

“It was just knuckle down, get it done and make sure things were working,” Parker said. “There really wasn’t much thought at that point. For me the extra thoughts came about when I got up in the morning at about 11 o’clock and I looked at Facebook.”

Parker said you always hope in these situations that when you leave that things would change in your absence.

Parker has been in the community for more than 30 years as a supervisor at Conifex. He raised his children in Mackenzie.

“You’re going through all the turmoil that’s going on in the community at the same time and you’re going’ they don’t need this’,” Parker said.

Mackenzie, a forest industry town, is experiencing major mill shut downs that has put hundreds of people out of a job right now. — see ‘THERE WERE, page 3

CITIZEN PHOTO BY BRENT BRAATEN

A map shows all the locations RCMP and SAR personnel searched for George Hazard-Benoit, a fouryear-old Mackenzie boy who went missing while berry picking with his family near Lions Lake, south of Mackenzie on Saturday afternoon.

Crown cross-examines B.C. father accused of killing daughters

VANCOUVER — The prosecution got the opportunity Friday to challenge the story of a Vancouver Island father who denies killing his two young girls.

Andrew Berry is charged with seconddegree murder in the stabbing deaths of six-year-old Chloe Berry and four-year-old Aubrey Berry on Christmas Day 2017.

The girls were found in their rooms at Berry’s Victoria-area apartment and he was found naked and injured in the bathtub.

The Crown’s theory is that Berry killed the girls and then tried to kill himself, but Berry has testified he owed thousands of dollars to a loan shark named Paul and was attacked in his apartment.

When he came to, he said he found his daughter’s dead.

Prosecutor Patrick Weir had rapid-fire questions about Paul in a cross-examination that was fiery at times.

Weir questioned Berry for more details about the loan shark.

“It wasn’t a friendship. It was a transaction,” Berry answered.

Weir asked what else Berry knew about the man that he owed $25,000.

Berry said Paul was in his 30s when Berry first got to know him about 20 years ago, tall, Chinese, wore collared shirts, sounded Canadian, had a few girlfriends and dated someone who worked for the airline Cathay Pacific.

Berry told his jury trial he didn’t know Paul’s last name.

In January 2017, Berry said he took a loan of $10,000 from Paul who he had met

at River Rock Casino at an interest rate of $2,000 a week.

He testified that he decided to quit his job at BC Ferries so he could cash his pension and pay Paul the loan. He said Paul agreed to the proposal on the condition that he could store a bag in Berry’s apartment.

Paul later demanded a set of keys to his apartment, Berry said.

Weir said nothing about the story made sense.

“Can you think of any reason why Paul who you were storing a bag for ... had a key to your apartment, would do this?” Weir asked.

“None of this makes sense,” Berry answered. “I don’t know what his possible motivations could be.”

Weir asked Berry about his time in the hospital after his daughter’s death and why he felt he was under arrest.

“Didn’t you want to say, ‘you’ve got it all wrong?”’ Weir asked.

“I needed a lawyer,” Berry said. “I was under arrest and that’s just what it felt like.”

The trial has already heard that police found a note at the crime scene. It was written by Berry, addressed to his sister, and detailed grievances with relatives and the girls’ mother.

“Betrayed, bullied, and miscast I set out to leave with the kids,” the letter read.

“But I thought it better for myself and kids to escape.”

The note contained Berry’s passwords and banking information.

But Berry has testified that the note was old. He had written it a month earlier when he tried to kill himself, but survived.

‘There were two burly guys hugging each other in the middle of the bush’

— from page 2

“For me, what kept me going, was being there, finding problems, solving problems interacting with people and not thinking about what was happening outside of what I was doing,” Parker said.

It’s the downtime that’s the killer, Grierson agreed.

Neveu said he’s got a six and seven year old at home and he just always had to stay on task during the single biggest event he had ever taken command of.

The convergence of volunteers and searchers was like trying to take a drink from a fire hose, Neveu said.

The problem that arises with members of the public eager to help find a missing boy is the willingness of people to put their own safety at risk. That’s when police officers and search commanders have to step in. Volunteers also needed to be told the hard truth that George might not be found alive and they must not contaminate the scene that might interfere with a police investigation. It was a heartbreaking possibility everyone had to face.

Each team of volunteers had an experienced leader to guide them and the terrain made it very challenging at times as the search took place in such dense forest people had to walk shoulder to shoulder for hours on end.

The search did not take place only on the ground. It was by boat on Williston Lake, combing the shoreline and it took place from the air as well as long as the weather would allow.

Withinin two hours of the start of the search on Saturday, air services were called to the scene. It was raining so hard it was difficult to see out of the helicopter because the rain drops were so big.

On Sunday, something went wrong

with the helicopter and the mechanic who was located in Regina was rushed to Prince George to fix it. There was no other aircraft available to come to the scene. By 6:30 p.m., the helicopter was back in the air and within the hour George was seen.

There was a police dog and handler in the area and when George was found, the spotter in the helicopter guided the pair to George.

Grierson talked to the dog handler, who was not available for an interview, and he said he and his dog were eight feet away from George and they still couldn’t see him.

The chopper pilot told Herzog they are right over George and he wasn’t moving and they couldn’t be sure it was him. Then George moved his arm and then they knew.

“The helicopter pilot said he moved 10 feet to the left and he couldn’t see him,” Parker said.

The Mackenzie RCMP and SAR members stressed that it was a team effort that led to the happy outcome.

“Yes, the spotter and pilot saw him and the dog man got directed to him and picked him up,” Grierson said. “But it’s 500 other people who made it happen.”

George was found 990 metres – just shy of a kilometre – from the point he disappeared.

There were plenty of tears of relief among the volunteers as word got out that George was alive and well and on his way to the hospital to get checked out.

When Grierson first saw Herzog, some 30 hours after their work began, they didn’t hold back their feelings, either.

“Let’s just say there were two burly guys hugging each other in the middle of the bush,” Grierson said.

The Canadian Press

A Vancouver Island man charged with murder in the deaths of his two young daughters says a suicide note police found at the scene was a month old. Andrew Berry, centre, appears in B.C. Supreme Court in Vancouver.

Police looking for convicted murderer who fled jail

DORCHESTER, N.B. (CP) — Police in New Brunswick are looking for a convicted murderer from Dorchester Penitentiary who failed to return to a minimum-security unit after he was granted an unescorted temporary absence.

The Correctional Service of Canada says 66-year-old Jack Woods is serving an indeterminate sentence for manslaughter and second-degree murder.

The agency says Woods was staying at a community-based residential facility in Moncton when he left and didn’t come

back Thursday. Woods stands five-foot-seven, weighs 223 pounds and has a fair complexion, blue eyes, brown hair and is missing both of his little fingers. He also has a leopard tattoo on his right upper arm and skull tattoos on his left forearm and upper arm.

A warrant has been issued for his arrest and the RCMP have been called in.

Woods has escaped before. In 2011, a Canada-wide warrant was issued for him after he fled to Nanaimo from an Ontario halfway house.

An Ontario shipyard is accusing the federal government of trying to unfairly award Davie Shipbuilding in Quebec potentially billions of dollar in work without a competition. The Davie shipyard is shown in Levis, Que., on Friday.

Shipyard accuses feds of unfairly awarding contract to competitor

Lee BERTHIAUME The Canadian Press

OTTAWA — An Ontario shipyard is accusing the federal government of trying to unfairly award Quebec’s Chantier Davie shipyard potentially billions of dollars in work without a competition.

The allegation is contained in a complaint from Hamilton-based Heddle Marine to the Canadian International Trade Tribunal over the government’s search for a third shipyard to add to its multibillion-dollar shipbuilding strategy.

The winning yard, which will join Halifax’s Irving Shipbuilding and Seaspan Marine in Vancouver in the massive naval procurement process, will be tasked with building six new icebreakers for the Canadian Coast Guard. However, Heddle alleges in its complaint that many of the requirements the government says shipyards must meet to qualify for consideration are not legitimate or reasonable – and will disqualify virtually every yard but Davie.

Heddle, which in recent years purchased the Thunder Bay shipyards and the Port Weller dry docks, is asking the tribunal to order the removal of the requirements or the launch of a new search process.

The federal procurement department has not responded to questions posed to it Friday. Davie declined to comment.

Davie, which received several federal contracts without a competition in recent years and whose surrounding area is likely to be hotly contested in the fall federal election, has previously expressed confidence it will become the third yard.

One of the requirements flagged by Heddle, which has previously focused on

the repair and maintenance of ships, is that qualifying shipyards must have a contract now or recent experience in building a ship weighing more than 1,000 tonnes.

“No shipyard in Canada that is eligible to apply for the contract is capable of satisfying this requirement except Chantier Davie Canada,” the complaint reads.

Qualifying shipyards must also be able to launch vessels wider than 24 metres, which Heddle says disqualifies all Ontario-based shipyards because vessels must be 23.8 metres or less to traverse the St. Lawrence Seaway.

Yet Heddle says that requirement doesn’t make sense because the icebreakers the third shipyard will be tasked with building must be able to access the Great Lakes –meaning they must be able to fit through the Seaway. Those requirements and others “appear to pre-determine and/or unduly favour Davie as a qualifying supplier and unreasonably disqualify all other shipyards, but specifically Ontario-based shipyards,” the complaint reads.

Heddle also takes issue with a lack of industry consultation before the search was launched on Aug. 2, and the 15-day deadline shipyards were given to respond. The deadline was later extended to Aug. 26. There are also concerns about comments made by a Davie official and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau when he announced the government’s plan to add a third shipyard to the national shipbuilding strategy.

“We recognize that it’s an opportunity for Davie to apply to become that third shipbuilding facility because there will be a tremendous amount of work in the coming years,” Trudeau said in May.

RCMP plane chases fleeing helicopter during drug bust

Joe FRIES The Canadian Press

PENTICTON — RCMP east of Vancouver were involved in a cross-border drug bust this summer that involved nearly 300 kilograms of meth, more than 100 guns and an aerial chase between a police plane and a helicopter.

Details of the bust are in paperwork filed at the Penticton Law Courts to support multiple search warrants for a property near Chilliwack where a helicopter at the centre of the chase is alleged to have landed with an RCMP plane on its tail.

Documents filed on behalf of the RCMP Federal Serious and Organized Crime Section in Osoyoos say the office was alerted in early June by U.S. Homeland Security about a planned cross-border drug deal involving nearly 200 kilograms of methamphetamine.

U.S. officials staked out a landing site in Washington state about 110 kilometres south of Princeton, B.C., where they believed the drugs would be transferred to Canadian buyers. Something spooked the pilot of the helicopter, and it fled north into Canadian airspace.

Two men who tried to leave the landing site in Washington were arrested by U.S. agents who seized 188 kilograms of methamphetamine. In Canadian skies, an RCMP plane was patrolling near Princeton hoping to intercept the unmarked, black helicopter. Mounties spotted it in a shadowy landing site on a remote mountainside in E.C. Manning Provincial Park. The helicopter lifted off and headed west.

The chase was on.

“The helicopter took deliberate evasive action, attempting to lose surveillance,” the documents say.

“The helicopter flew at very low altitudes, near the tops of trees and up narrow draws. It repeatedly changed direction, and made rapid ascents up towards the mountains.

“The helicopter varied its speed in an attempt to outrun the RCMP aircraft, and slowed down to have the RCMP aircraft overtake it.” The dogfight continued for 45 minutes, the documents say. On two occasions, the chopper pilot tried to lure the RCMP aircraft to a lower altitude and then rapidly ascended, in a vain effort to shake the pursuers.

The helicopter eventually landed at a rural property near Chilliwack.

The court documents say searches of that property turned up 72 long guns, 35 handguns, ammunition, cellphone jammers, U.S. government helicopter decals, drones and currency from Canada, the U.S. and Mexico.

RCMP have not said if anyone has been charged and referred a request for comment to Homeland Security.

Homeland Security spokeswoman Tanya Roman said the investigation turned up an additional 84 kilograms of drugs, bringing the total amount of drugs seized to 272 kilograms.

“This sizable amount is indicative of the possible involvement of a large and sophisticated smuggling organization,” she said in a statement.

“Due to the ongoing investigation and law enforcement sensitivities, we are unable to provide further comment at this time.”

Authorities believe the pilot was one of two men arrested at the Chilliwack-area property.

The Canadian Civil Aircraft Registry shows the helicopter’s registration was cancelled last May.

NAFTA, China on agenda for Trudeau, Trump at G7 summit

The Canadian Press

OTTAWA — White House officials say Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will have a tete-a-tete with President Donald Trump this weekend on the margins of the G7 summit in France, where their collective grievances with China are sure to dominate the agenda.

Officials say the wide range of issues to be discussed include the ongoing tensions in Hong Kong, where pro-democracy protests have been escalating for weeks, sparked by proposed legislation that would have seen some suspects in criminal cases sent to mainland China for trial.

NEWS IN BRIEF

BC Hydro seeks approval for rate decrease

VICTORIA (CP) — The B.C. government says BC Hydro customers could see their bills go down for the first time in decades as part of a smaller than anticipated five-year rate hike if Hydro’s application is approved by an independent regulator. The Energy Ministry says in a statement the Crown utility is applying to the B.C. Utilities Commission for approval and the commission is expected to make a decision early next year. The proposal would see a rate decrease of one per cent in April 2020, an increase of 2.7 per cent in 2021, a decrease of 0.3 per cent in 2022, followed by an increase of three per cent in 2023. The new plan would see an overall rate hike of 6.2 per cent over the next five years, a drop from the eight per cent announced by Energy Minister Michelle Mungall in February after a report found customers would be on the hook for $16 billion over the next two decades. That report, commissioned by the NDP government, found the former Liberal government manufactured an urgent need for electricity but restricted BC Hydro from producing it, forcing the utility to turn to private producers and sign long-term contracts at inflated prices.

The ministry says the new application is based on its audited fiscal 2019 financial results and the latest financial forecast. They reflect higher than anticipated income from BC Hydro’s trading subsidiary Powerex, and lower than expected forecasted debt financing costs and purchases from independent power producers, it says.

“As a result of our updated financial forecast, we’re in the unique position to apply for a rate decrease for our customers that would start on April 1, 2020, if approved by the B.C. Utilities Commission,” Chris O’Riley, BC Hydro’s president and chief operating officer, said in a statement. “We’re committed to continue to work with government and the B.C. Utilities Commission to keep rates affordable while ensuring we continue to provide safe, reliable power to the province.”

First Nations, feds eye selfgovernment deal

OTTAWA (CP) — Negotiations have concluded on a proposed self-government agreement in Ontario that Ottawa says would be the first of its kind if ratified. Indigenous-Crown Relations Minister Carolyn Bennett says the milestone shows groundwork has been laid for First Nations in Ontario to move beyond the Indian Act and toward the goal of self-government. Parliament passed the Indian Act in 1876, giving the federal government enormous power over the control of registered First Nations people, bands and the reserve system. The federal government says four parts of the act that deal with governance will no longer apply to Anishinabek First Nations who ratify the proposed agreement. The changes would mean that First Nations could make decisions about leadership, citizenship, government operations and how to best protect and promote their language and culture. Anishinabek First Nations are now set to hold a ratification vote in February.

Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland last week expressed support for the right to peaceful protest in Hong Kong, earning a rebuke from China. China is already furious with Canada for detaining Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou late last year and has retaliated by detaining two Canadians and blocking imports of Canadian canola. Freeland was front and centre Thursday with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who pushed back hard against any suggestion that the detention of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor should be equated with the detention of Meng, who was arrested last December at the behest of the U.S. Justice Department.

She is now awaiting extradition to the U.S. to face allegations of fraud in violating Iran sanctions.

“These are fundamentally different matters than the Canadian decision to use their due process and the rule of law to behave in a way that’s deeply consistent with the way decent nations work,” Pompeo told a news conference in Ottawa, where he met with Trudeau and Freeland.

“They want to talk about these two as if they are equivalent, as if they were morally similar, which they fundamentally are not.”

On Friday, China fired back.

“The U.S. and Canada are singing a duet aimed at confusing right and wrong

in a political farce,” said Geng Shuang, a spokesperson for China’s Foreign Ministry, according to an English transcript of a news conference posted online.

Geng described the arrests of Spavor and Kovrig as legitimate, saying the pair stand accused of allegedly gathering, stealing and sharing state secrets with foreign intelligence, and that the U.S. has no standing to make public comments about their cases.

“The U.S. choreographed the entire incident involving Ms. Meng Wanzhou and resorted to state power to suppress Chinese high-tech companies,” an incident in which Canada “played a disgraceful role,” he said, according to the transcript.

Site C’s financial mysteries

On December 14, 2017, Premier John Horgan, stood in front of a microphone with Energy Minister Michelle Mungall. The imminent decision regarding the fate of the Site C project was soon to be sealed during this press conference.

Months after having been crowned as the new premier, Horgan became an apologist for the third dam on the Peace. He stated what former premier Christy Clark had already made clear during her tenure, saying her objective was to get Site C “past the point of no return.”

This was, in effect, the identical statement made by Horgan during his December press conference. He also pointed out that it was too late to stop the project. As a result, the NDP could not and would not justify stopping the project.

In moving forward, Horgan did announce, however, a new Project Assurance Board, which, according to him, would “mandate delivering the project on time and on budget.” BC Hydro had also revised the Site C budget up to $10.7 billion, from an estimate of $8.9 billion in 2014. So, this would be the final figure. No

more diddling with numbers. The NDP had put its proverbial foot down with BC Hydro and told it to live within its means.

Fast forward to July 2019, and along comes BC Hydro’s latest quarterly report, based on January 2019 to March 2019. In the 55 pages or so of fun facts, BC Hydro was required to release a variety of updates on the Site C project to the BC Utilities Commission.

In this latest update, BC Hydro was required, by law, to give the commission a variety of budgetary data based on its own best estimates.

Pages 51 to 53 of the report identify 13 specific “material project risks.”

These are risks that BC Hydro has clearly identified about the Site C project. There are even more risks not included in this quarterly report.

BC Hydro did not include risks that might affect certain partners or contractors under its “confidentiality obligations or solicitorclient privilege” clause.

With each description of identified risks comes the BC Hydro risk response. Here is the general list of risks and BC Hydro’s responses:

• River diversion delay – increased costs

• Borrowing costs for project – interest costs

above amount budgeted

• Labour costs – increases beyond prescribed amounts

• Safety incidents – associated costs

• Work fronts other than left bank diversion

– increased cost

• Highway 29 realignment – overall cost increase

• Spillway design changes – higher construction costs

• Indigenous groups & issues – increased costs

• Insufficient local aggregate – increased costs

• Reservoir clearing – overall cost increases

• Roller compacted concrete productivity –schedule not achieved

• Hwy 29 realignment not completed on time – increased costs

• Retention of skilled workers – productivity and cost

If each of the known 13 categories are going to cost more, and there are still those confidential additional risks, another question is: what is the real cost increase in dollars? Will it be more than the overall allotment already prescribed by Horgan and Mungall?

Given that BC Hydro has not given any definite numbers for the above increases in

YOUR LETTERS

Drive electric

I would like to thank Wayne Martineau for raising the concern of vehicle tail pipes producing smog and poor air quality. Wayne and others can correct this problem by choosing to drive electric vehicles (EVs).

EVs have no tail pipe, emit no fine particulate matter, emit no chemical fumes, emit way less greenhouse gases and emit way less medium size particulates (as the brake shoes wear down slower due to the regenerative breaking).

In addition, the cost of fuel to drive an EV is about 80 per cent less than the cost of fuel to drive a gas or diesel vehicle, compared to a 30 mpg vehicle. I have saved $8,000 since we started driving our EVs.

Doug Beckett

Prince George

Melting the fear

Wednesday’s Citizen carried an article titled “Earth’s future is being written in fast-melting Greenland.”

In the article we are told (in alarming language) that 53 billion metric tons of ice melted over

a four-day period and that record temperatures are occurring.

But, not surprisingly, there’s a lot left out of the article. We are not told that the high temperatures are an anomaly, that two weather systems acted together to pull hot air up from Africa giving Europe a brief, brutal heat wave, and then pushed it northward over Greenland. It’s a brief anomaly, not a long term change.

But 53 billion tons is a lot of ice loss, no question about it. Should we be alarmed?

Snow builds up on the ice sheet in the winter, and melts, sublimates, and is lost in icebergs in the summer. So this four-day loss tells us very little about the longer-term changes, what is called the “mass balance” of an ice sheet over an entire year or a longer period.

Greenland has been steadily losing ice, as can be learned from the research organization, ScienceNordic, which provide information from the Danish Meteorological Institute and Polar Portal on the state of Greenland’s ice.

From the data, we learn that over the 1981–2010 30-year period, the mass balance for the Greenland ice sheet had an average net loss of 103 billion tons

per year! Even scarier! How long can this go on?

Well, the Greenland ice sheet contains about 2,600,000,000,000,000 tons of water in the form of snow and ice. We’re into the quadrillions here.) Just to lose half of it by melting at a rate of 103 billion tons per year would take about 12,500 years. That hardly sounds like an imminent threat. Will it keep melting at that rate? From 1981 to 2012 it melted, but since then it’s been increasing until this year’s African heat wave anomaly, which is highly unlikely to be repeated annually.

And let’s keep in mind that Greenland overall is still considerably cooler than 1,000 years ago when the Norse settled there and farmed for 500 years before the cooling climate forced them out. The graves of their dead are still encased in permafrost.

Articles such as the one that appeared in The Citizen are intended to frighten us with misleading information. There’s no reason for concern over Greenland’s ice sheet.

Art Betke Prince George

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

its report adds to the financial mystery. The real litmus test will come from the Horgan government’s response to the report. The likelihood of the general public learning of any specific amount increases referred to in the report also seems highly unlikely. We are rarely, if ever, given the appropriate numbers of cost overruns.

In November 2017, the BC Utilities Commission did its own study of Site C costs and overruns and identified a possible number as high as $12 billion for the Site C project. If this is the case, the NDP might well be willing to “rationalize” its latest budget figure upwards to the $12 billion mark without any guilt or apprehension.

But Horgan’s Project Assurance Board mandates that the project be delivered on budget. Horgan and Mungall may well be hoping that the public has simply forgotten about his promises through the Assurance Board.

Public be warned: Look forward to more excuses, finger pointing, whitewashes, and blame deferrals coming from the NDP and BC Hydro as costs continue to skyrocket upwards of $12 billion. — Mike Kroecher is an artist and retired resident of the Peace. Rick Koechl is a retired teacher of the Peace.

Public sector fuels inflation

Reviewing trends in inflation can provide useful insights into the evolution of the larger economy. Consumer price inflation in B.C., as computed by Statistics Canada, averaged 1.6 per cent annually over the past two decades. This annual rate translates into a 38 per cent increase in the cost of living over the past 20 years, as measured by the consumer price index (CPI).

But the aggregate number hides important details. As consumers know, the prices of some goods and services have risen substantially, while other items have seen stable prices or – in some cases – price declines. Generally, price increases have been bigger for services and non-durable goods than for durable and semi-durable products. Durable goods are manufactured items that are used repeatedly or continuously. Most are imported into the province. Growing international trade, the development of complex global supply chains, the rise of China as a manufacturing powerhouse and productivity gains in manufacturing have all contributed to lower overall durable goods prices.

Semi-durable goods don’t last as long as durable products. Examples include clothing, footwear and household textiles. Inflation in this category has been muted, with the CPI subindex for semidurables rising just 10 per cent over the past 20 years.

Items that are commonly consumed within a year are classified as non-durable goods.

Food and gasoline are examples.

The non-durable goods subindex has seen the largest price rise –about 60 per cent – among the three goods subindexes in the CPI, mainly due to food and gasoline, which have witnessed sizable price hikes.

If these two categories are stripped out, prices of the remaining basket of non-durable goods are essentially flat over the past two decades.

Collectively, prices for the services captured in the CPI are up by approximately 45 per cent since the late 1990s. The services with the biggest price increases include water consumed by households, local property taxes, home insurance and tuition.

The price for water services delivered by municipalities has soared by more than 200 per cent since 1998.

Property taxes are also an area of dramatic price escalation. The property tax index in the CPI mea-

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sures changes in the taxes levied on a constant sample of dwellings in selected municipalities. This sample is used to estimate the average increase in property taxes by community, with weighted averages used to determine the increase at the provincial level. With jurisdiction over both water services and property taxation, municipalities can step to the front of the line as the source of some the largest percentage increases in living costs for B.C. residents.

Digging deeper into the data, we learn that prices for home entertainment products have fallen by half in the last two decades. The cost of home appliances is also lower. Clothing costs for a representative B.C. household have declined slightly while footwear prices are up a bit.

Something that may surprise readers is that the price of a vehicle is essentially unchanged from 1998.

In tabulating the CPI, Statistics Canada attempts to identify pure price effects and avoid capturing price changes that reflect quality improvements. For items like cereal, flour or gasoline, this is straightforward because there is little change in quality over time. But with a vehicle, quality improvements are significant and frequent.

The CPI boffins try to adjust for such quality improvements. So what the CPI is really saying is that after taking quality improvements into account, the price of a typical vehicle sold in B.C. today is basically the same as in 1998.

Finally, prices for food bought from stores and restaurants have risen steadily and outpaced the average rate of inflation.

Consumers are also paying significantly more for home insurance. Of interest, beer drinkers are paying substantially more for their beverages while the price of wine has remained more or less flat over the past two decades.

In general, goods and services provided or controlled by the public sector have had aboveaverage price and cost inflation, while those produced and sold under competitive market conditions have seen less pronounced upward price pressure as well as greater improvements in quality. That won’t come as a shock to those who believe in the power of competitive markets to keep producers on their toes and cater to the preferences and interests of consumers.

— Jock Finlayson is the Business Council of British Columbia’s executive vice-president and chief policy officer. Ken Peacock is the council’s chief economist.

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Endless cycle of guilt has parents tripping over expectations

Mary WIDDICKS

Special to The Washington Post

Back to school used to be a time of excitement and anticipation. Who would be my new teacher? Would I remember my new locker combination?

Which electives would I have to choose from?

For a few weeks of the sweltering late summer, the academic future was filled with infinite possibilities. I’d lay out new clothes – different styles because I was convinced I would be a different person. I’d buy a new binder – the one with all the dividers because I was convinced I would be more organized. I’d vow to make new friends – popular ones because I was convinced the new and improved me would be in constant demand.

Then, somewhere between choosing my final college courses and packing lunches for my child’s first day of Kindergarten, that magical feeling of boundless opportunities turned to expectation, obligation and competition.

I was suffering from back-toschool-induced parent guilt, and no matter how hard I tried to recapture the excitement of a fresh start, my mind and social media feed were filled with reminders of all the things I should be doing better. Like making creative Bento-style lunches with bite-sized finger-sandwiches fit for Marie Antoinette and veggies cut into easily stackable slices. Sounds simple, right?

Wrong.

I remember standing at my kitchen counter, a blood-spattered paper towel wrapped around the tip of my thumb, and glaring daggers at a pile of mangled vegetable slices.

The sandwiches fell apart and the veggie-flowers had started to wilt.

One unfortunate carrot-victim lay on a cutting board beside the world’s smallest heart-shaped cookie cutter. Except the carrot looked more like an anatomical heart, and the blood certainly wasn’t helping. Somehow my adorable garden-themed lunch had turned into a scene from a horror movie.

I cursed Pinterest for the idea, my kids for being fussy eaters and my fingertip for sticking out farther than I’d realized. But more than anything, I cursed myself for failing to live up to the idealized version of the super-parent the internet and I both thought I should be.

And if guilt was my primary symptom, then the word “should” was the underlying virus chewing through my subconscious at an alarming rate.

The more it replicated and spread in my internal monologue, the worse I felt. And let me tell you, parental guilt isn’t a fluke occurrence. It’s a full-blown cultural epidemic.

A study conducted by Time magazine found that half of new mothers felt guilt, shame or anger that motherhood did not match up to their expectations. Another study found that one in five dads felt guilt about not being “present” enough for their kids. Western culture has cultivated an idealized expectation that all parents should be caring, nurturing, patient and above all else, ever-present.

Researchers refer to this guiltinducing trope of perfectionism as the motherhood myth or the goddess myth, though I believe it applies to fathers as well. Both are essentially describing the same phenomenon: unrealistic expectations accepted by parents who don’t have the experience or support to differentiate fantasy from reality.

Practically from conception, parents are bombarded with news stories and friendly advice telling them what they should and should not be doing.

And if you don’t fall in line, you’re doing it wrong. The constant reinforcement that we are all relentlessly failing bolsters the unattainable standards of the perfect parent and forces us to continue to set goals we’ll never achieve. Enter nagging, obsessive, gutwrenching guilt.

Now, guilt isn’t always a terrible thing. Guilt is an emotion, just like anger or sadness or jealousy. Its purpose is to communicate to ourselves and others, and to nurture relationships with those we care about. Guilt often signals to us that we’ve harmed another person and drives us to repair that damage.

But guilt can easily be misinterpreted or internalized in a way that is not healthy.

I should be able to make bento lunches for my kids every day, so if I fail, it must be because I’m lazy and don’t deserve a break until I get it right.

Students play in a school playground in Phoenix, Ariz., in 2018.

Back to school time can put a lot of pressure on parents to make everything perfect for their kids.

Guilt can also lead to anxiety, panic and further harming those we love. How many parents out there have yelled at their kids for minor annoyances simply because of stress? It’s an inescapable cycle.

So, if parent-guilt is evolutionarily designed to nurture and protect our children, how can we avoid standing in a puddle of our own tears at 10 p.m. before the first day of school, with a savaged thumb and a grudge against a smug lunchbox? There is a simple answer: perspective.

Just because something is “natural” doesn’t mean it comes easily.

We are all still learning how to be parents.

Many new mothers have limited or no prior experience with children. As few as a hundred years ago, this would not have been the case.

Humans were designed evolutionarily to raise children in small, collective groups.

We evolved in communities that exposed us to child rearing from an early age and from which we receive constant support. With the widening spread of our modern cosmopolitan society, those familial, tribal groups have almost disappeared. But the instinct has not.

Instead we look to social media.

Unfortunately, the internet is a vast one-way mirror leaving us feeling constantly like failures for not living up to the ideal person we imagine is on the other side.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. Instead of perpetrating the myth of the perfect parents, social media could provide a community – a village, if you will – that celebrates and encourages unique experiences and helps us realize that children don’t need us to be perfect. They need us to model for them how to thrive in the real world.

Acknowledging that we are all works in progress is probably the most liberating thing we can do. That we are still learning is a simple fact without judgment.

Guilt is the feeling we have when we pass judgment, and it’s something that we overlay on top of the facts. Perhaps we could stop focusing on what we should be doing, and focus instead on what we are doing: growing.

Kids look up to their parents. If the model they are presented with is a spiral of unrealistic expectations and guilt, then that is the standard to which they will hold themselves.

One simple fix would be to eliminate “should” statements from our self-talk. “Should” statements have been found to increase anxiety, frustration and feelings of unworthiness.

When we use the word “should,” we’re not accepting reality. We’re talking about things that we wish were so, but aren’t (or vice versa). Next time you are confronted with the feeling of failure, try using the discomfort to motivate rather than shame.

Let’s take my bento lunch example. It was easy for me to fall victim to the idea that “I should make fun, healthy lunches for my kids every day.” Except real life has a way of getting in the way, and more often than not I end up stuffing leftover pizza into a container alongside some Goldfish crackers and carrot sticks. Reality did not live up to the ideal. But there are ways I could frame my guilt.

I could focus on the benefits of what I want to do: “I feel great when I get up early enough to prepare a balanced lunch for my kids.”

I could focus on how what I want fits into my value system:

“It’s really important to me that my kids eat fruits and vegetables at every meal.”

I could focus on accepting and exploring the reality of what I’m

feeling: “OK, I’m feeling embarrassed by the lunch I sent with my kids today. I wonder why that is.”

There’s a fine line between inspiration and aspiration, and we are probably doing ourselves more harm than good by expecting perfection. Mothers already are goddesses. Fathers already are superheroes. The act of creating and sustaining life is what makes us divine. There’s nothing left to aspire to.

Eliminating the word “should” from our self-talk – even though it is hard to overwrite societal and evolutionary pressures – can be a rewarding way to start the new school year. A fresh start. A new you. Just like when we were kids going back to school. And let’s be honest, we all fail. Over and over. But that doesn’t mean we stop trying. And no matter what the internet says, we’re all doing great.

Costume party

Venice’s Carnival offers the perfect backdrop

Kinsey GIDICK

Special To The Washington Post

With suitcases full of handmade dresses, skirt supports, petticoats, corsets and wigs, Taylor Shelby and a group of five friends flew to Venice’s Carnival in February with one goal in mind: to live like 18thcentury women of means.

Shelby, a 36-year-old reproduction jewelry designer, is part of a growing number of would-be time travelers, people who plan their vacations around the past. Festivals in cities such as Versailles and Venice are giving international travelers like her the opportunity to don period-specific clothing and frolic as if in another age.

Recent viral sensation Zack MacLeod Pinsent, a 25-year-old bespoke period tailor in Brighton, England, who wears only Regency, Edwardian and late Victorian clothing (he burned his last pair of jeans when he was 14), frequently travels for historic getaways.

“I’ve gone to historical events in Europe, like Regency weekends in Malta and Italy, and I’ve done some in Paris,” he says. “There are these amazing moments when I go to a historical place and think to myself, when was the last time someone was wearing this outfit in this place?”

For costume enthusiasts like Shelby and Pinsent, Versailles’ Fêtes Galantes – a one-night-only, baroque-themed throwdown in the French royal residence –provides just that kind of time-hop sensation. Varying price tags and levels of participation – from a Hall of Mirrors grand ball (about $150 US) to an elegant feast, complete with unlimited buffet, private visit to the Royal Opera and a dedicated cloakroom (about $570) – lure roughly 700 guests each year with the promise to party like the Sun King. But for her money, Shelby says Venice’s Carnival offers a lot more time to indulge.

Carnevale di Venezia has been entertaining travelers for centuries. Though it began as a celebration of the Venetians’ victory over Aquileia in 1162, the city eventually turned it into a pre-Lent festival. Carnevale translates into meat (“carne”) and farewell (“vale”).

As Thomas Madden writes in Venice: A New History, the Venetians had noted by 1600 that the number of foreign visitors swelled during Carnevale and Sensa. Festa della Sensa, a 12th-century observance of the city’s marriage to the sea on Ascension Day, offered only so much economic impact. With Carnival, however, Venetians quickly realized they could capitalize on tourist revenue by extending the celebrations as long as they wanted, from weeks to months.

Padding the calendar with even more diversions – opera, plays and plenty of prostitutes – Venice quickly became a must-stop destination for 18th-century gentlemen on their Grand European Tours, and Carnival, with its seductive promise of masked anonymity, made it an even more powerful draw. By 1700, Madden writes, nearly 50,000 people were showing up for the festivities.

Today, Carnival is two weeks long and culminates on Fat Tuesday, the day before Ash Wednesday, but many of the same attractions persist. With varying levels of merrymaking to partake in, three million visitors will descend on the Venetian lagoon next year from Feb. 8 to 25. Most of those revelers will be wearing rental costumes, many choosing the Commedia dell’arte classics popularized in the 16th century, including Harlequin, the witty rake; Pantalone, the aging merchant; and the Doctor, with the half mask featuring the famously long nose.

But for history connoisseurs good with a needle and thread, the combination of the festival atmosphere and rich architecture make it an ideal setting to strut about in homemade18th-century duds.

“One day we toured the Ca’ Rezzonico museum, and there weren’t

for

period attire

a lot of visitors,” says Shelby. “In the 18th century there was this fad where European tourists would go to places like Italy and look at fancy houses and art, and it felt very much like we were 18thcentury tourists who were looking at a beautiful Italian home full of art because the museum is just so immersive.”

Immersion is the key here. Shelby spent six months sewing her ensembles, which spanned a couple hundred years; fantasystyle Mucha dresses, Moulin Rouge-inspired outfits and an 18th-century ballet costume. She says the costly reams of fabric, $600 round-trip flight and $3,300 Airbnb palazzo split among six people were a small price to pay for gondola rides, Piazza San Marco parades, and going to parties clad in layers of reproduction shoes and stays.

Travelmate Carolyn Dowdell agrees. The 41-year-old dress historian, who holds a doctorate from Canada’s Queens University and runs the website Modern Mantuamaker, says that while she and her compatriots have shared plenty of fun afternoons in costume at Colonial Williamsburg or at dinner parties she’s hosted at the historic Capitol Hill home in Washington, D.C., she shares with her husband, there’s something about strolling in a Francaise gown down a narrow Venetian alley that’s akin to hopping in Doc Brown’s Back to the Future DeLorean.

“It adds a depth and an immersive element to the experience when you’re in an environment that is genuinely historical,” she says. “It makes you feel a bit more like you’ve actually time traveled.”

To get the right effect, Shelby brought four outfits, plus two lounging ensembles featuring a robe and peignoir. Dowdell packed seven. With an investment of roughly $500 in supplies, including 47 yards of fabric in addition to notions like feathers and ribbons, she says her only major purchase was a custom-styled wig.

That said, Dowdell confesses that during the day the travelers often wore “muggle” clothing, which Harry Potter fans will tell you refers to modern-day streetwear. Night was a different story. Thanks to a fixer in their party, the women had ins at all kinds of private events, including the Black and White Dinner, a Bohemianthemed fete; and the Medianoche Venitien, a 17th- and 18th-century-themed harpsichord concert where the guests (many multilingual) spoke English, French and Italian. So how would a Carnival first-timer find out about these intimate gatherings? “You have

to have a sherpa,” says Dowdell, meaning a Carnival insider to hook you up. Dowdell suggests visiting Caffè Florian to gather party intel. “That is sort of like Carnival Central,” she says. “That’s where the people who are in the know hang out.”

Of course, there are plenty of public parties with tickets for purchase. The candlelit Mascheranda Grand Ball, for instance, takes place in Palazzo Pisani Moretta and offers attendees a masked palace gala with tickets starting at about $270 and reaching up to about $1,450 for VIP treatment complete with costume rental.

Pro tip: The 18th century tends to be the “go-to” period for Carnival in general, but by no means does everyone do it. “Costumes totally run the gamut,” Dowdell says. “Some were more elaborate, more stylized than ours, some were less so.”

On the days the women did wear their historical costumes from sunup to sundown, they got the occasional stare or request for a photo, but Dowdell insists the trip was in no way an attentionseeking exercise.

“We don’t really like the attention,” she says. “We just enjoy visiting the past.”

WASHINGTON POST/HE MODERN MANTUA-MAKER/ DAMES A

Carolyn Dowdell, above, says she and Taylor Shelby got the occasional stare or request for a photo when they were in costume. Shelby, right, brought four outfits on the trip to Venice, plus two lounging ensembles featuring a robe and peignoir.

The Citizen archives put more than 100 years of history at your fingertips: https://bit.ly/2RsjvA0

Kings land their own private Jett

Ted CLARKE Citizen staff tclarke@pgcitizen.ca

There’s no rule in the B.C. Hockey League which prevents goaltenders from being designated team captains.

So don’t be too surprised if Prince George Spruce Kings goalie Jett Alexander gets a ‘C’ stitched on his jersey.

Jett Alexander drove all the way from his home east of Toronto for the start of training camp and has only been in Prince George for a week and already he’s impressed the Spruce Kings players and staff with his leadership qualities.

“I’ve always liked to be part of the team, I think a lot of time goalies get that rep of being a weirdo and being kind of an outcast and I try to fit in as best I can and I like to sit there and shoot the breeze with the boys,” said Alexander. “So far I’ve felt really comfortable with everyone, there’s been a lot of respect going around the room so hopefully that will continue.”

On the ice, Alexander’s hockey credentials speak for themselves.

The 19-year-old from Bloomfield, Ont., played 43 games last season in the Ontario Junior Hockey League for the North York Rangers and was lights-out stingy. His 1.67 goals-against average and .945 save percentage led the OJHL and his 10 shutouts set a league record. He posted a 30-11-1 record in his second junior A season and sported a 2.24 GAA and .936 save percentage in 16 playoff games before the Rangers were eliminated by Wellington in a sevengame OJHL semifinal series.

That got him noticed around the country and Alexander won the OJHL top goaltender award and was a national MVP finalist. So when he made it known he wanted to come to B.C. for his final junior season he made a list of teams he would go to and the defending BCHL-champion Spruce Kings won that bidding war when they completed a future considerations deal for his rights.

“I know the BCHL is widely regarded as the best league in Canada for junior A hockey and being my last year of eligibility I thought it would be a good time to make the change from playing in Ontario and I’m excited to be here,” Alexander said.

“I played in Toronto for three years and you don’t get the same crowds and fan base and support as you do in a more community-minded environment like you have here. I know the support’s unbelievable and the community gets behind this team and I’m really excited to have it, especially with the home opener only a couple weeks away.”

The Spruce Kings will raise their Fred

Page Cup and Doyle Cup banners to the rafters at Rolling Mix Concrete Arena on that night, Sept. 6, when they start the season against the Surrey Eagles.

Alexander, who turns 20 on Nov. 8, takes up a lot of net. He stands six-foot-five and tips the scales at 207 pounds. Size has become much more of attractive commodity for NHL teams drafting young goalies and Alexander certainly has that going for him.

“Anyone can be big, it’s one thing to just have the natural gift of being six-footfive, but a lot of it is you have to be a good skater,” he said.

“That’s something I’ve really had to work on, making the jump from minor hockey to junior. I had to become a way better skater. I relied on my size and reflexes more than I needed to. You have to be fluent and calm and you can’t overreact and I’ve worked on that a lot and it’s still a work in progress.”

Spruce Kings head coach Alex Evin is a former college goaltender at Colgate University who played five seasons in the BCHL and Alexander is looking forward to having him around to help him refine his game.

The Kings were left with a large hole in net when Logan Neaton moved on to college hockey at UMass-Lowell. Neaton

played well enough in the Kings’ championship season to get drafted in June in the fifth round by the Winnipeg Jets. Alexander will start the season as the designated starter, with 18-year-old Waterdown, Ont., native Jack McGovern slotting in as the backup. McGovern played last year for St. Catharines of the Greater Ontario Junior Hockey League.

“I remember hearing about Logan halfway through the year and then he was committed and now he’s a draft pick and he’s definitely a really talented goalie and in my mindset I’m not replacing him, I’m here to pave the path with the new team,” said Alexander. “I’m just going to play my game and hopefully that brings success to everyone.”

The Kings have just eight returning players from the team that fell one win shy of a national championship and with camp officially beginning Friday, Alexander has already had a chance to get to know his new teammates and their on-ice tendencies after skating with team all week.

“I know they’ve traded for a couple of veteran guys, kind of like myself, and there are a lot of new faces – more than half the team is new, but that’s a good thing,” said

Alexander. “You have a good core group that’s coming back and good leadership and it’s easy for everyone to fit in. I think they’ve done the right thing and brought the right people in.”

Fifteen players from last year’s team earned college commitments and Alexander is obviously motivated to try and lock up the right NCAA scholarship. He had a few offers last season but none he thought were the right fit. After winning their first league championship in May and getting to the final in 2018, Alexander knows the Spruce Kings will attract attention wherever they play.

“This (league) is very well recruited here and just with the success they’ve had I know it will bring scouts and I know we’ll have a good team,” he said.

“The first goal is having team success and after that I’m sure the individual stuff will come after that.”

The 32 players in camp split up for team practices this morning at 10 and 11:15 a.m. Scrimmages are scheduled for 6 p.m. Saturday and 10 a.m. Sunday at RMCA. The Kings host the Merritt Centennials in their first exhibition game Tuesday night, then travel to Merritt to play the Cents Friday.

Manitoba premier says fans disappointed after NFL controversy

The Canadian Press

WINNIPEG — The premier of Manitoba says “there’s a lot of disappointment” in the province after a controversial NFL pre-season game at IG Field on Thursday night.

During a campaign stop Friday, Progressive Conservative leader Brian Pallister was asked about the Oakland Raiders-Green Bay Packers game, which was played on a shortened field because of concerns about the turf in the end zones.

“I would remind people to remember that the organizers tried to do something that hadn’t been done before so let’s give them respect and credit for trying,” Pallister said. “I would rather see a person try and fail then see somebody who had never tried. Yeah, it didn’t work out the way they wanted, and I’m sympathetic to the fans who felt disappointed obviously but not being a provincial responsibility I’ll limit my comments to that.”

Manitoba NDP leader Wab Kinew said he noticed plenty of fans of both teams downtown, but acknowledged there were issues with the game played at the home of the CFL’s Winnipeg Blue Bombers.

“I think there was a lot of buzz.

It’s just that I guess because of a few fumbles here and there with the field and a lot of fans being disappointed (Packers star quarterback) Aaron Rodgers didn’t start, this game didn’t end up being the touchdown it could have been,” he said.

Just before the game started, the NFL announced the field would be shortened to 80 from 100 yards because of concerns about the area where the Bombers’ goal posts usually are located. The end zones were marked with bright, orange pylons at the 10-yard lines and there were no kickoffs.

Minutes before the opening play, the Packers announced they would not dress 33 players, including Rodgers. Tim Boyle ended up starting at quarterback for the Packers.

“I don’t know what happened with Aaron. That whole debacle with the field was going on,” Boyle said. “Decisions were made that we were going to hold our starters out. The plan was for me to play after, so this moved me up and I was able to start, which was fun.”

The Raiders also held out most of their starters, including quarterback Derek Carr and marquee receiver Antonio Brown, for the Week 3 pre-season contest. Week 3 games traditionally see teams give their starters the most time in

the pre-season.

Announced attendance was 21,992 at 33,000-seat IG Field. Ticket prices, much higher than for most other NFL pre-season games, were highlighted in media reports in the leadup to the game.

The Raiders were the home team. Canadian-based On Ice Entertainment Ltd. staged the game and was the promoter.

On Ice president John Graham originally was in negotiations with Regina as a venue for the game before shifting his focus to Winnipeg. Regina Mayor Michael Fougere said if the game was in Saskatchewan, there would have been differences.

“I won’t comment on the busi-

ness model that was used,” he said. “It would have been different here than there. I would just say that when we put on events, we put on world-class events.”

Saskatchewan Roughriders running back Kienan LaFrance, a Winnipeg native and University of Manitoba product, said the field was an eye-opener.

“It was my understanding they were just going to repaint the lines, change the goal posts and everything was going to be normal,” he said. “Then I saw all the changes and it was like, ‘Whoa, what’s going on here?’ I was kind of confused.”

LaFrance wasn’t surprised by the lack of starters.

“You’ve just got to expect that because it’s the pre-season,” he said. “If you’re a true football fan, you can see that coming.”

B.C. Lions quarterback Mike Reilly said there was a uniqueness to the game.

“It was kind of interesting to watch, when they get down to the 15-yard line and they’re getting into their goal-line packages and stuff like that,” he said. “But it was what you expect out of a pre-season NFL game, not many starters, if any, playing and stuff like that.” When asked if he was concerned if the game could have an impact on future events in Manitoba,

Pallister said, “I hope it reminds people to support the Bombers, support the Jets, support the Goldeyes, support every sports franchise we have got in the city and province and make sure that our young athletes are encouraged, nurtured.”

Longtime University of Manitoba football coach Brian Dobie, whose team also calls IG Field home, said stadium staff work hard and don’t deserve criticism.

“Some of the comments that I heard on some national TV this morning, I thought were a little tongue-in-cheek and a little unfair to the perception of our city and our province,” Dobie said.

“It’s first class here. This is a for-real sports city and a for-real football city and we all take great pride in that and we all recognize that. I don’t think anything negative should be on the city of Winnipeg, the province of Manitoba or football in this province in any way, shape or form.”

Winnipeg newspapers had negative headlines about the event above columns. The Winnipeg Free Press went with “No Fun League flops at IG Field” and the Winnipeg Sun had “Fans fleeced.” Thursday’s game was the first NFL contest in Canada since the Buffalo Bills completed a series of games in Toronto in 2013.

Jett Alexander makes a save for the North York Rangers last season in an undated handout photo.

Securing Olympic spot latest test for softball squad

Gemma KARSTENS-SMITH

The Canadian Press

VANCOUVER — When Canadian softball pitcher Danielle Lawrie hits the mound this weekend, she won’t be thinking about what’s on the line.

The squad is competing for a spot in next summer’s Tokyo Games at a qualifying tournament in Surrey, B.C., starting on Sunday, but Lawrie insists that every player is simply focused on the next game.

“Right now it’s just one day at a time and get ready to go to war,” said the right-handed veteran.

Locking up an Olympic spot would mark a big milestone for the Canadians.

Softball hasn’t been included in the Games since 2008 when Canada finished fourth in Beijing. While the sport is in for Tokyo, softball has already been nixed from the 2024 Olympics in Paris.

Dwelling on that, however, would put extra pressure on the team, said Lawrie, one of three women on Canada’s current roster who also went to the Beijing Games.

“Pressure’s a privilege and we all know that. But at the end of the day, if I’m thinking about this maybe being the last Olympics for the next (eight) years, No. 1, I’m getting ahead of myself and No. 2, I’m not putting myself in a position to be present in what I’m doing,” she said. “Right now, we need to qualify and that’s the only thing on my mind.”

It’s been a busy summer for the Canadians, and one that’s put them in a strong position heading into the qualifiers.

The team moved to Marion, Ill., earlier this year to play in the National Professional Fastpitch league as the Canadian Wild and finished the season third with a 22-20-1 record.

In July, the squad won gold at the annual Canada Cup in Surrey and earlier this month they took home silver from the Pan

Am Games in Lima, Peru after dropping a 3-1 decision to the No. 1-ranked U.S. in the gold medal matchup.

All that preparation has left the group feeling mentally and physically ready for the Olympic qualifiers, said infielder Emma Entzminger.

“We’ve put countless hours into practising, playing, repetition after repetition. And our sport’s big on reps,” she said. “So I think going into this tournament we’re as prepared as we can be.”

The trick now is remaining consistent, said coach Mark Smith. “We’ve worked really hard to

prepare for this particular week,” he said. “Now it’s a case of not going out and really trying any harder or doing anything differently than we’ve done all summer. If we can play within ourselves and do the things we’re capable of then we should be successful.”

At No. 3 in the world, Canada is the top-ranked team heading into the Olympic qualifiers and is grouped with Puerto Rico (4), Cuba (17), Guatemala (18), Argentina (25) and Bahamas (39) for the preliminary round.

The Canadians faced a number of those squads at the Pan Ams earlier this month. Each time, the team was able to preserver through a lot of tough challenges, Entzminger said.

“We have a lot of depth on this team and we’ve played a lot of games this summer. And we’ve kind of had to deal with a lot of failures,” she said.

“I think we sent messages in the Pan Ams of who we are and what we’re here to do so I think that’s good moving forward to this tournament.”

The other group includes Mexico (5), Brazil (14), Venezuela (16), Dominican Republic (19), Peru (20) and the British Virgin Islands (57).

The top two teams at the qualifying tournament will punch their tickets to Tokyo 2020. Canada’s chances might look good on paper but rankings don’t matter heading into an international event, Lawrie said.

“Anyone can beat anyone on a given day,” she said.

“So at the end of the day, I’m playing as though we’re the lastplace team and people are coming and literally trying to beat us all the time, like we have the biggest target on our back. And that’s how we have to play.”

Team Canada will play Cuba on Sunday to kickoff the tournament.

Re-energized Whitecaps look to shake up slumping San Jose Earthquakes

Gemma KARSTENS-SMITH

The Canadian Press

Vancouver Whitecaps coach Marc Dos Santos believes the soccer field is no place for vengeance.

While the ‘Caps (6-12-9) certainly remember dropping a 3-1 decision to the San Jose Earthquakes (11-10-5) last month, the team won’t be looking for payback in California on Saturday, Dos Santos said. “It makes me laugh, these revenge things and payback. Payback is when, I don’t know, they kidnap your kids,” he said after training on Thursday.

“In sports, I always hear these things of payback and revenge. No, it’s another game.” Still, a lot has changed since the Whitecaps last faced the Quakes.

When the teams met on July 20, Vancou-

ver was in the midst of a five-game losing skid in Major League Soccer.

Recently, the ‘Caps have rallied, taking seven points from their last four outings.

“I think we were just mentally drained (in July),” said Vancouver defender Doneil Henry.

“I think we found our feet again. We’ve just got to keep the momentum going and keep playing games.”

Tosaint Ricketts joined the ‘Caps earlier this month, and said the energy among the players isn’t that of a losing squad.

“Coming in, I wouldn’t feel like the standings are what they are. The team is just as hungry as ever and nobody’s head is down,” said the striker, who made his Whitecaps debut in the team’s 1-0 win over D.C. United last weekend.

“We’re looking to the next match and we all want to get results and finish the season strong.”

While the Whitecaps have been on the upswing, the Quakes have faltered recently and have lost three MLS games in a row.

San Jose is still clinging to the secondlast playoff spot in the Western Conference, however, and will have a lot to play for come Saturday, Dos Santos said.

While the ‘Caps linger at the bottom of the Western Conference, the Quakes are clinging to the second-last playoff spot.

“It means a lot to them. And in MLS, you can go through a spell and suddenly it changes. We hope it doesn’t change against us,” Dos Santos said.

On Wednesday, San Jose was crushed 4-0 by Los Angeles FC in a game that included a stunning strike by the deadly Carlos Vela.

Earthquakes coach Matias Almeyda missed most of the match after he was sent off for protesting what he felt was a missed handball by an LAFC defender in the box.

The ejection means Almeyda won’t be on the sidelines Saturday, but Dos Santos doesn’t expect the absence to have much of an impact on the game.

“In the flow of the 90 minutes, there’s very little effect,” the coach said. “He’s not suspended for the training sessions, he’s not suspended from talking to the team (Thursday and Friday). So I don’t look at that as a big factor.”

Despite their recent form, the Quakes have some deadly pieces, including Chris Wondolowski, the league’s all-time leading goal scorer.

San Jose also plays a unique marking system that can tax opponents, Henry said. “You catch one guy and then just end balance within their system,” he said. “We have to pick times when we can play and when not to play. I think each one of us is smart enough to understand the difference. So it’ll be interesting.”

CP PHOTO

Canada women’s national softball team pitcher Danielle Lawrie pitches during practice at the 2018 Canada Cup International Softball Championship in Surrey on Tuesday.

CP PHOTO

Brooke Henderson hits her tee shot on the 17th hole during second round of the CP Women’s Open in Aurora, Ont., on Friday.

Henderson still in contention

a 45-year drought by Canadians at their national championship last year at Wascana Country Club in Regina.

stood back from the green to check her notes and watch groupmates Stacy Lewis and Min-Jee Lee finish the hole.

A small voice behind her called her name and she turned, giving a smile and a quick fist bump to a young fan decked out in red and white golf gear. Then it was back to work for Henderson as she tried to stay in contention at the CP Women’s Open on Friday.

“Sometimes you just see a little kid smiling at you and wanting a high five, and it takes you out of the moment for a second,” said Henderson by the practice green at Magna Golf Club. “I feel like that’s good. Kind of brings you back to real life, I guess you could say.

“They just have so much belief in you, and I think that kind of inspires me a little bit.”

Henderson, from Smiths Falls, Ont., shot a bogey-free 3-under 69 in the second round, finishing at 9 under overall. She’s three shots back of Denmark’s Nicole Broch Larsen, who had back-to-back 66s to sit atop the leaderboard at 12 under heading into the third round.

The field at this year’s CP Women’s Open is one of the toughest on the LPGA Tour, with 96 of the top 100 money earners competing. That puts pressure on Henderson to defend her crown after ending

“I’m happy with where I am, to be close to the lead and know that I could have played a little bit better today” said Henderson, who was tied with China’s Yu Liu and Thailand’s Pajaree Anannarukarn after two rounds. “I feel confident going into tomorrow that I could get on a run and make a bunch of birdies, which is always a great feeling.

“I’m excited to tee it up.”

World No. 1 Jin Young Ko was in sole possession of second, one stroke behind Broch Larsen. Ko captured two of the LPGA Tour’s five majors this year, winning the ANA Inspiration and the Evian Championship.

“I like Brooke. Hopefully she likes me too,” said Ko with a laugh.

“We have a great relationship on the Tour and she helps me with my Bible readings, everything, so I like her.”

Broch Larsen has just one top-10 finish this year. Two years ago she tied for third at the CP Women’s Open after holding a third-round lead with Mo Martin at Ottawa Hunt and Golf Club.

“I feel like I’m more confident in this position now than I was two years ago even though I haven’t been here for a while,” said Broch Larsen. “Whatever the next few days brings, I’m still really happy with my two rounds.”

Quebec City’s Anne-Catherine

Tanguay was the only other Canadian to make the cut. She started the day tied with Henderson one back of the lead but shot a 2-over 74 to fall into a tie for 25th in the morning wave.

Tanguay rebounded after a disastrous three-hole stretch from Nos. 4-6 featuring a bogey and two double bogeys.

“It was a pretty rough start. Really happy with my comeback,” said Tanguay.

“Honestly didn’t feel bad at all this morning. I was feeling great, and even better than yesterday, I want to say.

“So it was a bit shocking for me to make these mistakes early in the round, but I think I was just lacking a little bit of commitment on my decisions, and maybe a few decisions that are questionable.”

Michelle Liu, a 12-year-old from Vancouver, shot a 10-over 82 and will miss the cut at 19 over. She was the youngest player in the history of the tournament, earning her spot by finishing as top Canadian at the national women’s amateur championship earlier this month.

Hamilton’s Alena Sharp just missed the cut, with a 1-under 71 on Friday leaving her even par overall, one stroke too many for the cutline.

Other notable Canadians to miss the cut included Brittany Marchand of Orangeville, Ont., and Canadian Golf Hall of Famer Lorie Kane of Charlottetown, who was competing in her 29th national championship.

Timberwolves can’t take the Heat

Citizen staff

The UNBC Timberwolves ran into a roadblock Friday night in Kelowna.

They lost their U Sports Canada West men’s soccer season opener, dropping a 2-1 decision to the UBCOkanagan Heat.

Goals from Tyler Dhillon and Sam McDonald, on a penalty shot 9:07 into the first half, staked the Heat to a 2-0 lead.

B.C. Lions preach finish, toughness against Ti-Cats

Gemma KARSTENS-SMITH

The Canadian Press

VANCOUVER — Despite a tough start to the season, Bryan Burnham says the B.C. Lions are still in good spirits – albeit with a bit of an edge.

The Lions (1-8) have yet to win a game in Vancouver this season, but the mood in the locker room is still “loose and fun” with a serious over tone, the wide receiver said.

“At the end of the day, you wake up and you’re playing a game for a living that pays the bills. So I wake up with a smile on my face and I’m excited to come to work every day,” Burnham said Friday. “But at the same time, we’re 1-8. If we continue this trend, some of us aren’t going to be waking up with jobs.”

The Lions’ next opportunity to change their fortune comes Saturday when they host the East Division-leading Hamilton TigerCats (7-2).

The two teams faced off just two weeks ago, with the Lions giving up a 15-point fourth-quarter lead en route to the Ticats’ 35-34 win.

Finishing strong has been an issue for B.C. all season and quarterback Mike Reilly said he simply wants his squad to consistently play good football.

“It’s not going to be the whole 60 minutes that you’re going to play a perfect game,” he said.

“But when things start to go bad, they can’t be catastrophic. And you’ve got to find a way to flip the momentum quickly,” he said.

“None of the first 57 minutes matter if you can’t finish it in the last three.”

While B.C. has repeatedly held leads heading into the final frame, the team will go into Saturday’s contest on a five-game losing skid.

Part of the issue has been that players are trying to do too much in the final moments, said head coach DeVone Claybrooks, adding that the problem was particularly acute during the game in Hamilton.

“I mean, they didn’t do anything different in the fourth quarter than they did in the first,” he said.

“It’s just that we were trying to press to make the game changing, winning play that’s going to be on (TV), that type of thing instead of just making the tackles and moving methodically.”

three of those things we did at a high level.”

Strong defence has been a challenge for B.C. all year. The team leads the CFL in sacks allowed with Reilly having been brought down 36 times in the first nine games.

Despite the hits he’s suffered this season, the 34 year old remains one of just two starting quarterbacks in the league to not have been brought down by an injury so far this year. The other is Edmonton’s Trevor Harris. Reilly suffered an ankle injury when the Lions played the Ticats back on Aug. 10, but returned to practice two days later.

“We’ve gone nine more regular season games to go and I don’t think anyone in the league feels physically great,” he said on Friday. “But that’s just part of your job, to come out and play regardless of how physically beat up you feel or don’t feel.”

Reilly’s mentality has provided a strong example for the rest of the Lions, Claybrooks said.

“The toughness definitely trickles down and it definitely holds other guys accountable when they have little knicks and bruises,” the coach said.

“This guy can come and we’ve seen some of the hits that he’s taken and the ankle injury and those type of things and he’s out there the next day. It definitely makes the other guys say ‘Well, if Mike’s out there, I’ve definitely got to be out there.’ So it brings some more toughness to the whole group, for sure.”

Hamilton Tiger-Cats (7-2) at B.C. Lions (1-8)

Saturday, B.C. Place

The T-wolves outshot the Heat 7-5.

The T-wolves and Heat meet again today at 5:30 in Kelowna.

UNBC has its own opener set for next Friday at 6 p.m. at Masich Place Stadium against the Fraser Valley Cascades. The UNBC women are playing exhibition games this weekend in Victoria. They open their season next Thursday at noon against the Thompson River University WolfPack.

Anthony Preston, a second-year striker, cut the gap for UNBC with his first of the season just before the end of the first half but that’s as close as it got.

The Ticats come into Saturday’s game after posting a convincing 21-7 victory over the Ottawa Redblacks last weekend.

Coach Orlondo Steinauer said he liked the way Hamilton’s defence was flexible in the win.

“The game plan is one thing, but then there’s the game within the game, making adjustments along the way and then the players executing,” he told reporters this week. “And I thought all

ROSTER MOVES: Hamilton’s Luke Tasker will miss Saturday’s contest after being placed on the one-game injured list. The veteran receiver has 292 receiving yards on 26 catches through seven games this season. Jalin Marshall will take over Tasker’s spot in the starting lineup.

HISTORY BOOKS: This season marks B.C.’s worst start since 1996. The last time the Lions began the year 1-9 was 1969, when they finished with a 5-11 record.

MILESTONE WATCH: Reilly is just 224 passing yards short of 30,000 in his CFL career.

The Canadian Press

AURORA, Ont. — After Brooke Henderson birdied No. 15 she

BURNHAM

Controversial billionaire dies

The Associated Press

Billionaire industrialist David H. Koch, who with his older brother Charles poured a fortune into right-wing causes, transforming the American political landscape and shaping U.S. policies on such issues as climate change and government regulation, died Friday at 79.

The cause of death was not disclosed, but Koch Industries said Koch, who lived in New York City, had contended for years with various illnesses, including prostate cancer.

A chemical engineer by training, Koch was an executive in the family-run conglomerate, the Libertarian Party’s vice-presidential candidate in 1980 and a major benefactor of educational, medical and cultural organizations.

But he and his brother became best known for building a political network dubbed the “Kochtopus” for its many-tentacled support of conservative and libertarian causes, candidates and think tanks, including the Cato Institute.

The brothers in 2004 founded the anti-tax, small-government group Americans for Prosperity, which remains one of the most powerful conservative organizations in U.S. politics, and they were an important influence on the Tea Party movement.

While celebrated on the right, the Koch brothers have been vilified by Democrats and others who see them as a dark and conspiratorial force, the embodiment of fatcat capitalism and the corrupting

influence of corporate money in American politics.

“I was taught from a young age that involvement in the public discourse is a civic duty,” David Koch wrote in a 2012 op-ed in the New York Post. “Each of us has a right –indeed, a responsibility, at times –to make his or her views known to the larger community in order to better form it as a whole. While we may not always get what we want, the exchange of ideas betters the nation in the process.”

Some prominent Republicans praised his legacy upon his death, with libertarian-leaning Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky saying “his many contributions will have lasting impact on our country.”

On the other side of the political divide, Beth Rotman of the government watchdog group Common Cause said the Kochs and their network of wealthy donors “undermined so many important

American values over the past several decades as part of the Kochs’ attempted corporate takeover of American politics.”

Among other things, the Kochs and their company bankrolled a decades-long movement to cast doubt on man-made climate change and to thwart efforts to fight global warming through reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

“David Koch will likely be remembered as one of a small handful of individuals who singlehandedly thwarted efforts to act on climate change and other pressing environmental threats aimed at preserving our planet for future generations,” said Pennsylvania State University climate scientist Michael Mann.

The brothers also invested heavily in fighting President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul. They pressed to bring conservative voices to college campuses. And they developed a nationwide grassroots network backing conservative causes and candidates at the state and national levels.

They drew the line at Donald Trump. The Kochs refused to endorse him in 2016, warning that his protectionist trade policies, among other priorities, weren’t sufficiently conservative.

Trump, for his part, tweeted last year that the brothers were a “total joke in real Republican circles,” calling them “two nice guys with bad ideas.”

David Koch had stepped away from a leadership role in recent years because of declining health, including a decades-long battle

with prostate cancer, and his brother became the network’s public face. In an interview after the 2012 Republican convention, his mind was on his legacy.

“When I pass on,” he told The Weekly Standard, “I want people to say he did a lot of good things, he made a real difference, he saved a lot of lives in cancer research.”

Koch donated $100 million in 2007 to create a cancer research institute at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He also gave millions to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, the M.D. Anderson Cancer in Houston and other institutions.

The Lincoln Center theatre that houses the New York City Ballet became the David H. Koch Theater in 2008 after he gave $100 million. Parts of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History are named for him after he contributed a total of $50 million for exhibits devoted to dinosaur fossils and human evolution.

He said his philanthropy was fueled by a brush with death during a 1991 collision of two airliners at the Los Angeles airport. Thirtyfour people were killed. Koch spent two days in intensive care with smoke inhalation.

“I felt that the good Lord was sitting on my shoulder and that he helped save my life because he wanted me to do good works and become a good citizen,” he told Barbara Walters in 2014.

Disney, Sony battling over Spider-Man

The Washington Post

Whether you follow each creeping development of every comic-book property in Hollywood, or just generally think Avengers was kind of cool, you probably heard about the skirmish that has played out this week between Disney and Sony over Spider-Man.

The battle was over money, as so many battles in Hollywood are. But it also spoke to a more significant question: how should a massive conglomerate operate in the modern landscape?

Here’s what unfolded. An agreement four years ago allowed Disney’s Marvel Studios –and its King Midas-like top executive, Kevin Feige – to produce and manage Spider-Man movies for rival Sony Pictures, which has long held Marvel’s Spidey license. Sony initially had a lot of success with Spider-Man movies beginning in 2002. But after a wobbly reboot of the franchise a decade later, Sony faced a tricky question: what should the studio do with a property it badly needed yet somehow couldn’t maximize?

Enter Feige and Marvel. Marvel had begun producing its own movies in 2008 and was bought by Disney the next year. Making bigensemble superhero films was hard, however, with some of Marvel’s biggest properties licensed elsewhere. (In addition to Spider-Man at Sony, the X-Men were with Fox.) Marvel was eager to bring as many characters inside its tent as possible.

So Disney and Sony came up with a sharedcustody arrangement. Feige would guide Sony’s films, using his muscle and the flex of the whole Marvel cinematic universe. Disney would get merchandising revenue and the chance to use the popular Spider-Man in its own movies. And Sony, which would be releasing the films, would benefit from the promotion that came from appearances in another studio’s blockbusters – oh, and from the involvement of Feige, who has made magic on Marvel films to the tune of $23 billion. In 2015, the pair signed a deal. The partnership seemed to be going well. It gave rise to this summer’s Spider-Man: Far From Home, a $1.1 billion worldwide grosser and the fifth-highest-grossing film of 2019 in the United States (It’s the only movie in the top five not to be released by Disney.) And the character, played by Tom Holland, became a big draw in other Marvel movies such as Avengers: Endgame and Captain America: Civil War, especially for younger viewers. Everyone had reason to be happy. Until recently. For all the shared profiting, the sides couldn’t agree on a renewal. According to industry website Deadline, to continue lending Feige’s expertise, Disney wanted to be a full partner – a box-office revenue share of 50-50, not just a pickup of ancillary revenue such as merchandising. But Sony didn’t want to give up that much. (The Hollywood Reporter put the Disney ask at 30 per cent, but same difference.)

But this wasn’t only a battle about money.

Talking to five producers and studio executives around Hollywood, all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity so as not to anger potential partners, it’s clear that another, more profound question was percolating: what should a megalith entertainment conglomerate like Disney look like in 2019?

Should it be one that seeks to control every last property, steering it creatively and overseeing as much of its development as possible? Or is it OK, even smart, for a conglomerate to have properties scattered among other entities, because other companies can bring fresh ideas, and it’s impossible to effectively oversee all known franchises anyway?

In short, will Disney function best as an empire, tightly overseeing its subjects? Or as a confederacy, allowing a degree of autonomy in places far from the capital?

That’s where the modern landscape comes in to play. While the partnership made a lot of sense in 2015, a lot has changed since the deal was struck. Netflix, Apple and other Silicon Valley players have entered Hollywood. Traditional firms have felt they had to get bigger and stronger. Disney chief executive Bob Iger especially realized this and, in late 2017, bought Fox and its X-Men license.

If Disney was to become the behemoth it aspires to be, it needed not only to make the movie but to become a full partner in it. If it was to let Feige run the show, it had to make sure it owned the house.

But Sony wasn’t having that. And thus Disney faced a quandary: should it let Feige keep guiding the movies despite unfavorable financial terms? Should it keep its subject close, not allowing a studio in a far corner of its empire to go off and do what it would with an important property?

Or should it walk away, letting the far-flung corners of its kingdom do as they please and

just live off the licensing fee?

Disney chose the latter. It opted, uncharacteristically, to give up control, believing the movies weren’t worth their effort for minimal return – and gambling the films may not succeed as much without them anyway.

“Everything Iger has practiced since he took over has been ‘bring it in-house.’ But maybe in this case it was smarter to leave it outside,” said one executive not involved with either company. The studios aren’t acknowledging that this was about money or strategy. Disney has yet to comment, and Sony said in a statement it was simply a matter of Feige’s time. We “understand that the many new responsibilities that Disney has given him – including all their newly added Marvel properties – do not allow time for him to work on IP (intellectual property) they do not own.”

Sony, incidentally, faced its own existential question: could the studio craft its own superhero hits without relying on an executive from Disney to help? In an industry where pride can be a greater currency than greenbacks, having a rival produce your hits isn’t a good look.

If you’re wondering about consumers, well, diversity of content providers seems like a good thing. Except a lot of fans like the shared universe that has become Marvel’s stock-intrade. Or as a Twitter trending topic Wednesday put it: #SaveSpidermanFromSony. Disney, though, seems determined to walk away. Executives have taken the position they don’t need firsthand control of every last property in their stable.

Of course, it’s not clear they are doing this happily – or would do so in the future. After all, there was that previous case of X-Men and Fox. In that instance, Disney let its licensing studio do as it pleased. Then it bought the entire company.

firestorm by announcing tariff hikes on US$75 billion of U.S. products including some agricultural products, crude oil and small aircraft in retaliation to U.S. tariffs. China will also boost import duties on U.S.made autos and auto parts. Trump reacted by ordering U.S. companies to “immediately start looking for an alternative to China,” although it’s unclear what authority he has to make this happen.

Markets plunged as investors digested the back-and-forth, said Philip Petursson, chief investment strategist at Manulife Investment Management. “As of today this trade war seems to have escalated and the uncertainty has escalated and the impact on the global economy, the downside risks we would argue, have accelerated as well,” he said in an interview.

The S&P/TSX composite index closed down 215.88 points at 16,037.58. That’s 3.8 per cent below the record high reached in April but up 12 per cent so far this year.

In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average was down 623.34 points at 25,628.90, the third large fall in as many weeks. The S&P 500 index was down 75.84 points at 2,847.11, while the Nasdaq composite was down 239.62 points or three per cent at 7,751.77. Trump further responded after markets closed by saying the 25 per cent tariff on US$250 billion worth of Chinese imports will rise to 30 per cent on Oct. 1 and that 10 per cent tariffs on US$300 billion worth of goods would rise to 15 per cent on Sept. 1.

Trump had previously delayed some tariffs until Dec. 15 in a reprieve to holiday shoppers buying electronics, apparel and shoes.

“So it would be difficult to deny that Americans are paying for the tariffs in that environment,” Petursson said in reference to Trump’s claims that China pays for tariffs instead of U.S. consumers through higher prices. Among the “shocking comments” from the president was his lashing out at China’s president Xi Jinping, and Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell for refusing to signal a large interest rate cut, said Petursson.

HANDOUT COURTESY OF JAY MAIDMENT/SONY

Spider-Man (Tom Holland) shakes hands with Mysterio (Jake Gyllenhaal) in this summer’s hit Spider-Man: Far From Home.

KOCH

By the content of their character

Rachel NEWCOMB Special To The Washington Post

Less than a century ago, a group of American cultural anthropologists used their research about other societies to combat racism, which was centered on fears that America’s supposed racial purity was being defiled by immigration. These anthropologists, whose stories Charles King tells in Gods of the Upper Air: How a Circle of Renegade Anthropologists Reinvented Race, Sex, and Gender in the Twentieth Century, would also challenge other prevailing attitudes of the time, including the idea that sex and gender were natural, immutable characteristics that prescribed heterosexual monogamy and legitimated male dominance over women.

The leader of these anthropologists was Franz Boas, known to his students as “Papa Franz.” Scientists of Boas’s era were determined to prove that Euro-American civilization was the apogee of an evolutionary process in which natives the world over, most of whom were in the process of being colonized, represented prior stages of humanity, such as “barbarism” and “savagery.” Boas was among the first to question these assumptions.

Born into a Jewish family in 1858 in what is now northern Germany, Boas received his formal training in physics but shifted his interests to the study of people after taking part in an Arctic expedition to Baffin Island, Canada. There he came to realize that the supposedly more “primitive” Inuit people he was encountering possessed a complex culture that allowed them to survive on the icy tundra, their skills as significant within their contexts as his doctoral degree was in his. Boas, who immigrated to the United States and spent years in temporary positions before finally securing a job at Columbia University, argued that cultures did not evolve but were, in fact, products of the influences of their environment.

But it was Boas’s ideas on race that were the most revolutionary. While scientists were using pseudoscientific methods, such as measuring skull size, to argue that race was a biological characteristic indicating who should be at the top of the social order, Boas asserted that race was merely a genetic trait that had no bearing on intelligence or ability. “What people did,” King writes, “rather than who they were, ought to be a starting point for a legitimate science of society and, by extension, the basis for government policy on immigration.” Further, Boas and his followers promoted the idea of cultural relativism, the idea that prejudices and judgments need to be suspended to better understand others.

The lives of Boas and his students make for riveting storytelling, and the author’s imaginative prose enlivens their discoveries, romantic exploits and professional jealousies. Perhaps the most famous member of Boas’s anthropological circle was Margaret Mead, who wrote prolifically from the 1920s until the 1970s, relating anthropology to contemporary issues such as monogamy and teenage rebellion. Observing that adolescents in Samoa did not experience the moodiness and rage common to American teenagers, Mead noted that “the stress is in our civilization, not in the physical changes through which our children pass.” In another study across three islands in Papua New Guinea, Mead cited multiple examples of what was considered appropriate behavior for men and women, leading her to conclude that gender practices varied widely from culture to culture. To Mead, the point of gender liberation wasn’t to remake women in men’s image but rather to unleash “human beings’ potential from the roles that society had fashioned, seeing each person as a parcel of possibilities that might get expressed in many creative ways.” For an era when American women had a relatively narrow range of social roles, this was a radical idea. King observes that the outrage most Americans felt about the Holocaust did not extend to a recognition of the common humanity of all those within our borders. Throughout much of the 20th century, the United States practiced forced sterilization of those considered “socially inadequate,” subjected African Americans to Jim Crow laws and sent Americans of Japanese ancestry into internment camps during the Second World War. Echoing today’s debate over what to call migrant detention sites at the U.S. border, the government’s War Relocation Authority insisted that the Japanese camps “should be referred to as ‘relocation centers’ or ‘relocation projects,’ not as ‘internment centers’ or ‘concentration camps.’ “ Boas died in 1942, but his students went on to “shape an entire discipline according to his vision.” King’s timely history reveals that Boas and his intellectual descendants spent their careers fighting for recognition of the basic humanity of those considered “other” to the white men who ruled the country. Sadly, even in 2019, this fragile battle for equality and human rights is one that has still not been fully won.

HANDOUT IMAGE

Charles King’s book Gods of the Upper Air introduces readers to the social scientists who transformed how we think about race and gender.

Gravity exists but how does it work?

Amelia URRY Special To The Washington Post

In 1888, astronomer Simon Newcomb proclaimed, “we are probably nearing the limit of all we can know.” At the time, it was believed that the universe comprised some 6,000 stars – a vast expansion of the heavens previously charted by Galileo and Copernicus and Kepler, who had, in turn, radically overhauled the authority of Aristotle’s celestial projections. As a man of his era, Newcomb had a point. Having seen farther into the sky than previous generations ever could have imagined, and having settled on a way to explain what we saw there, how much more could we expect to learn?

A lot, of course. The struggle to see past what we think we already know gives Richard Panek the theme of his new book, The Trouble With Gravity. “Nobody knows what gravity is, and almost nobody knows that nobody knows what gravity is,” he writes – that’s the trouble. And though the subtitle is “Solving the Mystery Beneath Our Feet,” no new mysteries were solved in the making of this book. Instead, by unfolding the succession of visions and revisions that led to our current cosmic understanding, Panek sets out to demonstrate how fundamental, and how fundamentally strange, gravity really is. To get there, he first leaves the beaten track of science narrative for a detour through mythology. Creation stories, whether descended from Mount Olympus or aboriginal Australia, are rife with separations between earth and sky. Maybe our world was strained out of the heavens, like a handful of mud drawn up from a river, or perhaps the two were chiseled apart by a crafty god or estranged like lovers. In any case, this division between terrestrial and the celestial, Panek asserts, can be seen as an early attempt to delineate the force we would come to know as gravity. There’s the world we can see and touch “down here,” and then there’s everything else “up there.” Something keeps the two apart, after all. So what is it?

It can be hard to imagine just how radical the idea of universal gravity once was. Isaac Newton’s theory that an invisible force might be acting equally on Earth’s tides and on the comets speeding through the solar system (not to mention on us) required a leap of imagination so dizzying it turned the known world upside down. Theologians scoffed, philosophers balked. No one, not even Newton, claimed to know how it worked.

We’ve gotten used to the view since then. The decades spent grappling with the theory are now summed up by an apocryphal apple to the head, but the central puzzle remains. We can calculate what gravity does – whether to a cup elbowed off the edge of a table or the disk of light bent around a black hole – but we still don’t have a clue what causes it.

In other words, gravity is a “common unintelligibility,” a phrase coined by physicist Ernst Mach for a mystery that hides in plain sight. Just because we now accept the theory of universal gravitation – and its later elaborations by Einstein and others – doesn’t make the theory itself any more intelligible. We just forget how much we still don’t know.

The riddle of gravity shows signs of yielding –maybe not totally and maybe not in our lifetimes, but someday. In 2015, scientists detected the first “gravity wave,” confirming that space-time sloshes around like water. That particular wave was the wake of two massive black holes colliding 1.3 billion light-years away, but its existence means we’re all making gravity waves, all the time. That’s another radical legacy of Newton and Einstein: light and time and space and matter operate by the same rules everywhere in our universe. What happens out there must be happening here, too. Move your hand, and the universe vibrates with you.

The implications are, once again, dizzying, and Panek takes evident pleasure in the whirl of new ideas. There are multiverses and quantum dynamics, pulsars and hypothetical particles, as Panek unearths the uncommon wonder hiding behind common unintelligibility. Gravity is both inextricable from our daily lives and hard to reconcile with our sense of the world. “We know that Earth orbits the Sun, but at the end of the day, we still say that the Sun goes down,” Panek writes. “When we think about gravity, what comes to mind isn’t black holes or the Big Bang but airplanes and apples and us.”

Today, we know that Newcomb’s 6,000 stars were just a small sample of the 300 billion that make up the Milky Way, which, in turn, is just one of 140 billion galaxies in our universe. Edwin Hubble, the astronomer who first identified an “island universe” beyond our own galaxy, described astronomy as a history of receding horizons: The farther we look, the bigger the universe gets. But you have to know how to look to see the questions that persist much closer to home – so close, in fact, you might be forgiven for thinking we’ve already figured it all out.

HANDOUT IMAGE

Richard Panek wrestles with a basic universal force in his new book The Trouble With Gravity.

Fancy coffee names no cover for Mormons

The Associated Press

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has issued a warning to members that coffee is prohibited no matter how fancy the name, that vaping is banned despite the alluring flavours and that marijuana is outlawed unless prescribed by “competent” doctors.

The new guidance in the August issue of a church youth magazine does not include fundamental changes to the religion’s strict health code, but the clarifications are significant and seem to reflect growing concern about young Latter-day Saints’ adherence to the rules.

The article says it aims to clear up issues that could be confusing for young people within the religion’s Word of Wisdom, a set of rules about what foods and drinks are good for members and what substances they should avoid.

The rules prohibit alcohol, tobacco, illegal drugs and coffee and tea.

They are based on what church members believe was a revelation from God to founder Joseph Smith in 1833.

The faith’s rejection of coffee has long generated curiosity and more than a few jokes, including a scene in the biting satirical Broadway musical called The Book of Mormon where dancing cups of coffee appear in a missionary’s nightmare.

The new instructions about coffee make clear that there’s no gray area allowing coffee-infused drinks and allude to the wide variety that could tempt members of the faith widely known as the Mormon church.

“The word coffee isn’t always in the name of coffee drinks. So, before you try what you think is just some new milkshake flavour, here are a couple of rules of thumb: one, if you’re in a coffee shop (or any other shop that’s well-known for its coffee), the drink you’re ordering probably has coffee in it, so either never buy drinks at coffee shops or always ask if there’s coffee in it,” the article said. “Two, drinks with names that include cafe or caffe, mocha, latte, espresso, or anything ending in -ccino usually have coffee in them and are against the Word of Wisdom.”

As coffee shops have become common in the United States, more young church members feel comfortable going to places like Starbucks and drinking iced coffee, said Patrick Mason, a church member and religious scholar who is the Arrington Chair of Mormon History and Culture at Utah State University.

For past generations, just entering coffee shops was considered taboo, he said.

The guidance will dash the hopes of some members who hoped the church would loosen the rules about coffee, he said. Starbucks announced recently that it would open its first stand-alone shop in the heavily Mormon city of Provo near the church-owned Brigham Young University

next year. Starbucks offers some non-coffee drinks, including hot chocolate and lemonade.

“This is the church clearly responding to higher levels of non-compliance to the Word of Wisdom than we’ve seen in previous generations,” Mason said.

Jana Riess, a church member and author, said she was shocked to find that four in 10 active church members under age 51 had drunk coffee during the previous six months in a 2016 survey she conducted for her book, The Next Mormons: How Millennials Are Changing the LDS Church.

She also found that younger members are less concerned than older members about obeying the health code, which is one of the ways that makes the religion distinct from many other faiths.

Church leaders have occasionally issued similar clarifications based on changing social norms and eating and drinking habits, Mason said. In 2012, church leaders clarified that the health code did not prevent members from drinking caffeinated soft drinks.

Church leaders provide additional instructions as needed to help guide members about the health code designed for the “physical and spiritual benefit of God’s children,” according to a statement sent by spokesman Eric Hawkins on behalf of the church.

The church declined to say why it decided to issue the new clarifications now.

Brandt Malone, a church member from Detroit who hosts the Mormon News Report podcast, said he wishes the section on coffee would have instead provided guidance to young members about how to order and behave in coffee shops, which are a common place for professional work meetings.

“Let’s teach people how to make the proper choices and think for themselves based on the construct of your religious health code,” Malone said.

Malone and Riess both praised the church stance on vaping, which laments the misconception that e-cigarettes contain only flavours.

“Most vaping pods contain nicotine, which is highly addictive, and all of them contain harmful chemicals,” the article says.

The passage about marijuana seems to underscore the faith’s desire to carve out a space to allow some members to use medical marijuana, while reiterating that recreational use is prohibited.

The faith worked with Utah state legislators, many of them church members, and medical marijuana advocates to craft a medical marijuana program last year.

“Medical uses are being studied, but just like many pain medications such as opioids, marijuana is an addictive substance,” the article said. “Such habit-forming substances should be avoided except under the care of a competent physician, and then used only as prescribed.”

Church blames racist dog for denying work to black housekeeper

The Washington Post

The home of a Catholic priest was the last place LaShundra Allen ever would have expected to be denied work because of her skin colour, she said.

Allen, who is black, arrived with her white co-worker the morning of May 3 for what was supposed to be her first day cleaning the Rev. Jacek Kowal’s rectory at the Catholic Church of the Incarnation in Collierville, Tenn. The co-worker from the cleaning company who accompanied her, Emily Weaver, was quitting and came along to introduce Allen as her replacement.

But the women wouldn’t get far. The secretary stopped them, Allen told The Washington Post, and said she would have to go ask Kowal if the new arrangement was OK.

The secretary soon informed them it was actually not OK – because of the priest’s “racist” dog.

“I’m sorry,” Kowal’s secretary said, according to a complaint sent to the Catholic Diocese of Memphis last month. “We are not trying to be rude, but the dog doesn’t like black people.”

Allen said she “didn’t really even have words,” baffled at what she just heard. She was ultimately turned away, and the experience haunted her so much that she felt

she could not stay silent. “They came at me like it was supposed to be a joke,” she said, “but it was not funny. There was nothing funny about it.” Allen and Weaver sent a racial discrimination complaint to the Diocese of Memphis on July 3, seeking a “settlement and compromise.”

But on Friday, the Diocese of Memphis said in a statement that it completed its investigation and found that what happened at the priest’s rectory “simply was not a case of racial discrimination” and that Kowal “did nothing wrong.”

The investigation came in response to the complaint, which was first reported by the Commercial Appeal last week.

In the church’s version of events, the secretary’s words were, “Father Jacek’s dog is kinda racist” – although in the eyes of the diocese, the statement did not stem from any racial discrimination.

The priest and church staff were strictly concerned that the dog, a German shepherd named Ceaser, could attack Allen or both women, based in part on a past incident the dog had with an African American person, according to the letter from Bishop David Talley.

“Although the parish staff member’s choice of words was highly unfortunate and imprecise – they were not motivated by racial

animus,” Talley wrote. “Rather, the concern by all involved was the safety of these women, one of whom was a stranger to the dog, and they knew that attempting to crate the dog would be dangerous when its owner was not present.”

Allen’s attorney, Maureen Holland, said she was disappointed in the bishop’s finding.

Allen said she feared the diocese was not taking her complaint seriously, especially because the church did not respond for weeks to her letter.

Blaming a dog for racism, she said, appeared to mask underlying discrimination. And she felt both discipline and training for the priest and staff should have been required, “because he needs to know that it’s not OK to say something like that to people.”

“I took it to be that he was using (the dog) as an excuse,” Allen said. “Dogs can’t see colour. Dogs can only be taught who to be around and who not to be around.”

According to the diocese’s letter, Weaver said she would be happy to put Ceaser in his crate if the secretary was concerned the dog would become aggressive in Allen’s presence. Weaver never had any problems with the dog previously, according to her and Allen’s complaint. But Kowal insisted putting the dog in the crate would

be too dangerous without his supervision, “as he was concerned that they would be at risk of being bitten,” Talley wrote. Talley said Kowal would have had the same fear regardless of any new visitor’s skin colour, because the dog does not like strangers.

Still, skin colour was also part of the discussion.

“The staff were aware that years ago the dog had been threatened by a person who happened to be African American, causing the dog to be somewhat more agitated initially around strangers with darker skin, until the dog gets to know them,” Talley wrote. “The replacement employee who was planning to enter the rectory was an African-American person the dog had never met.”

Talley said the employees’ interpretation that Kowal was “motivated by a desire not to have an African American housekeeper” was “simply not true.” He had previously employed an African American housekeeper for five years during his last assignment, Talley noted.

Nick Signaigo, the owner of the cleaning company, Master Building Service Contractors, said Allen and Weaver each called him “hysterical” in May to tell him what happened. The women’s accounts synced up, he said, and

he felt like he needed to take immediate action. “I had to take care of my employees,” said Signaigo, a parishioner at Kowal’s church whose children attended Catholic school there.

He immediately severed the contract to clean Kowal’s rectory, although he retained contracts to clean the church and school. He also pulled his children out of the school, saying he felt as if the diocese was ignoring his employees.

“I’m Catholic, I’m a part of the diocese – that’s where I attended church, and I expect something like that to be handled professionally, quickly, and handled immediately,” he told The Post. “But it was not... For this to happen to my employees upsets me highly.” Kowal did not respond to requests for comment from The Post, but in a statement to the Commercial Appeal last week, he echoed Talley’s explanation, mentioning the dog’s “bad experience” with an African American person.

“Since that time, Ceaser (the dog) has been aggressive with strangers until he gets to know them. And this is especially true for strangers that happen to be African American,” Kowal wrote to the newspaper. He strongly disagreed that the incident could be described as racist.

The angel Moroni statue sits atop the Salt Lake Temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints at Temple Square in Salt Lake City.

Flowers for the fall

Adrian HIGGINS

The Washington Post

Robert “Buddy” Lee has been a grower of wholesale plants and a registered nurse over the years, but his one abiding preoccupation has been his need to find a springflowering azalea that blooms through summer and fall.

More than 40 years ago, from his fields in southern Louisiana, this was a lonely quest, but not a quixotic one. As the inventor of the Encore Azalea brand, he has given gardeners more than 30 azaleas in various sizes and bloom colour, with more in the works.

“You have waves of colour in summer,” he says, “and as it cools down to return to more of the spring temperature range, you’ll get a lot more bloom.”

Lee may have been a pioneer in the desire for a deja vu moment in the garden, but he is no longer alone. The ornamental plant industry is defined by a race to develop and trademark plants that keep on blooming beyond their natural moment in the growing year.

“It’s what we are all striving for in every genus,” said Jonathan Pedersen, vice president of sales and business development at Monrovia Nursery, a major wholesale grower.

In addition to fall-blooming azaleas, consumers can find hydrangeas that flower in September, sunflowers still going strong in October, lilacs in fragrant bloom in August and even a clematis that produces its bell-like blooms until frost.

Roses have always been pushed by breeders to re-bloom, but the days of them flushing every eight weeks or so have been replaced by near continuous display.

The floral conveyor belt may upend our sense of a garden’s seasonality, but the breeders, growers and marketers are confident that homeowners will be drawn to the continuous displays like bees to nectar. They already are.

More than 2.6 million of Lee’s creations are sold annually, and their popularity is squeezing out traditional evergreen azalea offerings.

Garden centres are reducing classic offerings, said Kip McConnell, director of Plant Development Services, which has brought Encore Azalea to market. It works with 70 licensed growers, who also grow ornamentals for others, and many of them have dropped spring-only azaleas in favor of rebloomers, he said. “It’s been a big transition.”

There may be purists who feel a garden is characterized and made more interesting by a parade of blooming plants adhering to their own season, but such a view may not be widely shared.

“Anything that gives gardeners more confidence and gratification is good for the world of horticulture,” said David Roberts, head breeder at Bailey Innovations. “It makes it easier even for a novice gardener to feel successful, and that drives the industry.”

The company is the plant development arm of Bailey Nurseries, which markets the Endless Summer brand of re-blooming hydrangeas, represented by five varieties. Since their introduction in 2011, almost 30 million plants have been sold.

Shrubs that bloom in spring, such as azaleas, must get their flower buds through the winter. Summer-flowering shrubs flower from new growth, so the key to developing ever bloomers is to find plants that do both. All those years ago, Lee noticed that some azalea varieties had a tendency to flower sporadically in the fall, so he crossed those with a summer-blooming azalea from Taiwan (and many others along the way). The 31 he and McConnell have introduced were selected from tens of thousands of seedlings Lee has made over the past four decades.

Another way to keep a plant flowering is to give it sterile flowers. Denied successful pollination, it keeps producing blossoms.

A few practical points: Flowering takes a lot out of a plant, so it’s a good idea to give the plants optimal conditions. For azaleas, that means a little shade, organi-

Above, Summer Crush is the latest in the series of Endless Summer hydrangeas. It was bred to speed up the flowering cycle - an issue in northern gardens. Right, re-blooming lilac Bloomerang Dark Purple. Bottom right, Weigela Crimson Kisses is a spring bloomer that repeats through the summer.

cally enriched, moisture-retentive soil on the acidic side, and a light mulch.

Some of the re-flowering shrubs should be given a light trim after the initial spring flowering. This will encourage the new growth that carries the new flower buds. More so than with other plants, it’s important that re-bloomers be allowed to rest before the arrival of freezes, because if they are in tender growth, they are prone to damage or death. Stop fertilizing by the end of July, don’t prune them in late summer and cut back on watering in early fall.

Azaleas

The first Encore Azalea, Autumn Rouge, was introduced in 1997. The series includes dwarf plants (up to three feet) and intermediates (three to five feet high), and colors such as red, purple, shades of pink and white.

Spring Meadow Nursery in Grand Haven, Michigan, under the Proven Winners brand, produces a re-blooming azalea developed by North Carolina State University breeder Thomas Ranney and named Perfecto Mundo. It was selected for its compact size, hardiness and resistance to lacebug, said Stacey Hirvela, horticulture marketing specialist at Spring Meadow. A second will be available to consumers in 2021, she said.

Monrovia has five varieties under its Double Shot series. The energy the plant puts into the flowers helps to keep it compact, Pedersen said.

Hydrangeas

We speak here of the eternally popular hortensia hydrangea. Its flowering on the previous year’s wood led to three basic problems: in northern locations, it could be counted on to survive but not bloom after a harsh winter, especially without a protective snow cover.

The first re-bloomer, Endless Summer, was launched 15 years ago. The range extends to five varieties, including a lacecap named Twist-n-Shout. The latest was introduced this year as a compact red-purple mophead variety named Summer Crush.

Hydrangea breeders have been focusing on such smaller varieties, which cycle into repeat bloom faster than larger ones. One criticism of re-bloomers in northern areas has been the endless wait

for Endless Summer. In addition, breeders are seeking to reduce the wilting that besets hydrangeas in hot climates, Roberts said.

Spring Meadow and Proven Winners have released their own line, under the Let’s Dance trademark. Diva is a showy lacecap. The latest introduction is Rave, a domed mophead with violet blooms. Hirvela says it’s the best bloomer to date, with other varieties available in 2021.

In its Seaside Serenade series of hydrangea, Monrovia lists seven varieties as repeat flowering.

Other shrubs

Lilacs, or common French lilacs especially, take up too much valuable real estate for the amount of ornament they provide. Proven Winners has four re-bloomers named, cleverly, Bloomerang, and which grow to just five feet or so. The key to re-flowering, Hirvela said, is not in trimming but to keep them in vigorous growth with one late spring feed, plenty of sunlight and sufficient water when it gets hot and dry.

Bailey has introduced a whiteflowering crape myrtle shrub –Lunar Magic – that will cycle into bloom every 40 days or so. It also produces a re-flowering chaste tree.

Proven Winners markets reflowering weigelas – five varieties under its Sonic Bloom brand. Double Play Doozie is a Japanese spirea that also fits the bill. Monrovia has a re-flowering weigela named Crimson Kisses, and a line of rose of Sharon – the Chateau series – that repeats.

Perennials

Some may consider bearded irises as a blast from the past, but many of the newer varieties are of re-blooming types that put on as much of a show in the fall as they

do in May – to a degree that they can mess with your mind.

Proven Winners has its own suite of repeating hardy salvias, three under its Profusion series, and one named Crystal Blue.

“It’s a clear light blue,” Elenbaas said. “It attracts way more bees than any other salvia.” Walters Gardens has also developed three summer phlox varieties and a catmint named (what else?) Cat’s Meow. I can’t leave this topic without mentioning an annual that repeats. Isn’t that what annuals do, you ask? This is a sunflower named SunBelievable Brown Eyed Girl, introduced in North America

by Monrovia. Instead of a tall, thick-stalked beast reaching to the sky, it forms a clump no more than three feet high and across and is festooned in continually appearing blooms, golden yellow with sterile brown discs. I have been growing it since June, and it functions ornamentally as a perennial or even a small shrub, if only for one season.

Monrovia produced half a million in its first year and plans to more than double that for next season, said Pedersen, who brought it over from England. “I feel pretty lucky to have stumbled across a plant like that,” he said. “It’s a blooming machine.”

WASHINGTON POST/ ENDLESS SUMMER HYDRANGEAS/ PROVEN WINNERS/ MONROVIA

In Loving Memory Of LORRIE ARNOLD-SMITH

October 22, 1955-August 25, 2009

You can shed tears because he is gone, or you can smile because he lived. You can close your eyes and pray that he’ll come back, or you can open your eyes and see all he has left for you. Your heart can be empty because you can’t see him, or you can be full of the love you shared. You can turn your back on tomorrow and live in yesterday, or you can be happy for tomorrow because of yesterday. You can remember only that he’s gone, or you can cherish his memory and let it live on.

You can cry and close your mind and feel empty, or you can do what he would want, smile, open your heart, love, and go on.

We will always love and miss you.

Lydia, Brett & Marisa

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LAND ACT: NOTICE OF APPLICATION FOR CROWN LAND

Take notice that David Nicholson, from Bear Lake, BC, has applied to the Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development (FLNRORD), Omineca Region, for a Crown Grant for Rural Residential purposes situated on Provincial Crown land located in the vicinity of Bear Lake, described as Lot 36, District Lot 2971, Cariboo District, Plan 16017.

The Lands File for this application is 7405093.

Written comments concerning this application should be directed to Susan Spears, Land Officer, Omineca Region, FLNRORD, at 5th Floor 499 George et, Prince George, BC V2L 1R5, or Susan.Spears@gov.bc.ca Comments will be received by FLNRORD up to September 30,2019 . FLNRORD may not be able to consider comments received after this date. Please visit the website at http://arfd.gov.bc.ca/ApplicationPosting/index.jsp for more information.

Be advised that any response to this advertisement will be considered part of the public record. Access to these records requires the submission of a Freedom of Information (FOI) request. Visit http://www.gov.bc.ca/freedomofinformation to learn more about FOI submissions.

A hard copy MAP showing the location and extent of the application area may be acquired by calling the land officer named above at 250561-3479.