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goal as the Timberwolves won their season home opener 1-0.
First Nations exploring cannabis opportunities
The cannabis industry is seen by some First Nations as an opportunity to take the initiative and get out of poverty, says the regional chief of the B.C. Assembly of First Nations.
Cultivating, buying or selling cannabis could provide economic support to those First Nations devastated by a downturn in the province’s forest industry, Terry Teegee said Wednesday at a summit on cannabis held by the Assembly of First Nations.
“A lot of the communities are tired of living in poverty,” he said. “It’s an opportunity for your community to assert your jurisdiction, assert your self-determination. We want to be a part of the community.”
The two-day First Nations Cannabis Summit is attended by chiefs or their representatives from across the country to hear about policy, safety, health, and social and economic development.
There are varying points of view among First Nations on how involved they want to be in the cannabis industry with some “dead set against it,” while others look at it as an economic development opportunity, Teegee said. While he doesn’t have statistics on how many First Nations want to be involved in the cannabis industry, Teegee said eight licences out of 122 were given to First Nations in Ontario.
“So in Ontario that’s a real issue because there’s a lot more than eight First Nations interested in having a distribution site or cultivating them.”
Teegee said it’s unclear how much money can be made in the industry because there’s
been a limited number of licences distributed in most of Canada.
“The only one that came out aggressively has been Alberta and that’s why you see Alberta leading the nation in terms of tax revenue,” Teegee said.
Wesley Sam, owner of Nations, an Indigenous-controlled cannabis production company based in Burns Lake, said one of the main challenges for First Nations is financial backing.
But there is still room for First Nations to get involved in the industry, he said, adding that profits could be used to fund housing or other projects. Sonia Eggerman, a lawyer with MLT Aikins who has extensive experience with Aboriginal and treaty rights, said after speaking to the conference that current federal and
CITIZEN FILE PHOTO British Columbia Assembly of First Nations Regional Chief Terry Teegee speaks in April at an announcement in Prince George about funding for advancing First Nations economic development.
provincial regulations have cut First Nations out of opportunities to take part in the cannabis industry.
“And I think that’s a real missed opportunity,” she said.
Drew Lafond, also with MLT Aikins, said the key obstacle is lack of meaningful engagement by the federal government to work with First Nations.
“Much like gaming and tobacco, cannabis carries a spiritual connotation, has traditional significance, medicinal significance, plus socio-economic significance,” he said. “From a legal perspective, it’s an area that First Nations have a close relationship with historically. So breadth and history are the two things that make this such a huge issue in Indigenous country.”
Black bear put down after man attacked
NIELSEN Citizen staff
A black bear believed to have been the one that chased a man into Ferguson Lake on Wednesday evening has been put down.
“We did euthanize one bear early this morning that we set a trap for last night,” Conservation Officer Service Sgt. Steve Ackles said Thursday.
“It just showed the behaviour of a highly-habituated bear and it was within a hundred metres of the incident.”
Ferguson Lake Park, meanwhile, will be closed for one or two days to allow conservation officers to carry out their investigation.
The man escaped with some scrapes and cuts but not before some scary moments.
At one point, the bear was holding the man underwater before a woman who was in the area unleashed her dog in an effort to distract the animal.
The tactic worked and saved the man from potentially bigger trouble.
“You don’t like to talk about what could have happened but we do know he sustained relatively minor injuries and survived the incident,” Ackles said.
A necropsy will be performed on the bear, a large male that was in good condition, to determine whether it had come to rely on food from human sources like garbage and fruit trees.
“But the thing that was really a driver in the decision to euthanize was the bear’s behaviour,” Ackles said. “It was very indicative of habituated behaviour.”
The dog’s owner, Alana Bull, described the incident in a posting on social media.
She, her two boys and their grandmother had just started on a walk around the lake when they heard the man screaming for help.
From another onlooker at the dock, they quickly learned a bear was chasing the man across the lake.
“I ran my dog, Musket, down the trail with me as fast as we could. I knew he would distract the bear from a safe distance and hopefully the man could get away,” Bull said.
“During this time the bear made contact with the man in the water and tried to push him under.
“When we got to the other side, Musket caught scent and sight of the bear and started barking ferociously. The bear was distracted! He started to turn around and swim away from the man back towards shore and towards the barking.”
“We then booked it back to the dock and away from the bear. I’m so proud of my dog.”
The man was able to swim back towards the dock while police, ambulance and conservation officers were called to the scene.
Ackles said bear-human conflicts are rare in the Ferguson Lake area but added it can be a matter of just one person failing to take care of their garbage or neglecting to clean up around their fruit trees to create a problem.
And with bears beginning their annual feeding frenzy in the run up to hibernation, Ackles said conservation officers will be clamping down on households who refuse to do the right thing.
Fines for failing to clean up attractants begin at $230. — See MANAGE on page 3
The Canadian Press
CITIZEN PHOTO BY BRENT BRAATEN
Julia Burkart of the Thompson Rivers University WolfPack tries to slow down Sofia Jones of the UNBC Timberwolves during their women’s soccer game Thursday afternoon at Masich Place. Jones couldn’t be held back the whole game. She assisted on Paige Payne’s
Mark
Red Dress Campaign goes Sunday
Christine HINZMANN Citizen staff chinzmann@pgcitizen.ca
It’s been 21 years since her best friend’s body was found near Little Lillooet Lake.
Tammy Meise, the organizer of the fourth annual Prince George Red Dress Campaign, got to visit the site for the first time just two weeks ago to gain some closure about Kari Anne Gordon’s unsolved murder.
“And now I’m crying,” Meise said. “At least they found her. At least they found her and I could say goodbye.”
It’s the heart of why Sunday’s Red Dress Campaign to honour murdered and missing women and girls is so very important to her and others.
“We have to support each other, we have to help each other with our healing,” she added.
“That’s why we do this.”
Not everyone gets to physically go to where their loved one’s body is discovered, Meise said.
Many are still missing and sometimes that’s the hardest part, she added.
“How many people get to do that?” Meise asked tearfully. “I got to have some closure. I hung a red dress for her. I released a balloon for her and put flowers in the tree. But so many people don’t get to do that. It’s so important that we support each other because it is heart wrenching.”
That’s why this campaign is so important, she said.
“It’s in the hopes that families feel supported,” she added. “We’re hoping they’ll feel a connection so they can start their healing journey.”
Sunday at noon drivers who are at the crossroads of Highway 97 and 16 will see a drum circle with the Khast’an Drummers and shortly after that participants of the Red Dress Campaign will line up along Highway 97 holding empty red dresses.
Similar events will be held across Canada to raise aware-
ness about murdered and missing women and girls.
“It creates a conversation, why are people there, why are they holding a red dress,” Meise said. “So holding the empty red dress is symbolic. That’s where all of our murdered and missing women and girls should have been. They’ve been taken from us. It’s also to give them a voice. To honour them and to ensure they
are never forgotten.”
The event then moves to Lheidli T’enneh Memorial Park’s Pavilion where the empty red dresses will be hung in the trees. Special guest speakers, including an elder to welcome everyone to the traditional territory and Mayor Lyn Hall will say a few words. There will also be traditional dancers.
“The Red Dress Campaign is ultimately to honour all murdered and missing women and girls and to support one another in our own journey of healing,” Meise said. “It’s about coming together as a community, coming together as people to recognize that this is an issue that still goes on. It’s still happening. It’s to bring awareness and make sure they are never forgotten.”
New policy could help B.C. treaty process
The Canadian Press
The federal and provincial governments along with the First Nations Summit have reached an agreement on a new policy approach that could accelerate the treaty-making process in British Columbia.
Treaty negotiations in B.C. have been plodding along since the early 1990s, with 11 agreements reached and another 28 in advanced negotiation stages.
Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Carolyn Bennett says the changes mean First Nations will no longer have to give up their rights to self-government and negotiators will automatically recognize those rights.
Bennett says that change – along with the federal government’s move to forgive or reimburse First Nations about $1.4 billion in legal costs – may convince other Indigenous groups to come to the negotiating table.
The summit represents 65 First Nations involved in the treaty process, which is about half of all Indian Act bands in the province.
The Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs, which has opposed the treatymaking process over the issue of giving up Aboriginal rights, says in a news release it’s disappointed the policy doesn’t address the issue of overlapping territory between neighbouring nations.
Robert Phillips, a First Nations Summit political executive, says
they’ve heard from many chiefs in and out of the treaty process that the issue of overlapping and shared territory needs to be dealt with and a forum is planned for next March to find solutions. Bennett says she wants critics of the treaty process to read the policy changes.
“It will, I think, allay a lot of fears. We’re dealing with the cynicism that’s rightfully there of 150plus years of broken promises.”
Phillips says he’s hopeful that the changes will lead to more treaties because the policy is based on principles from the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
He says one of the biggest criticisms of the treaty process in the past has been lack of recognition of Aboriginal title.
This treaty process won’t be like a divorce separating the governments and First Nations, Phillips says.
“It’s actually a marriage where we can work together nation to nation with Canada and government to government with British Columbia.”
About 60 men, women, and children hold up red dresses at the junction of Highway 97 and Highway 16 during last year’s Red Dress Campaign to honour murdered and missing women and girls . This year’s event takes place on Sunday.
Salmon passing Fraser slide
The Canadian Press Helicopter airlifts of migrating salmon have been temporarily halted at a rock slide in British Columbia’s Fraser River because officials say large numbers of fish are now getting past the obstruction on their own.
Mountain biking webpage unveiled
A page devoted to mountain biking has been added to the Tourism Prince George website.
The page, which can be found at tourismpg.com/mountainbiking, is aimed at drawing attention to the trails available in and around the city. It also compliments a campaign among tourism organizations along Highway 16 dubbed “Ride North,” and features video of top notch riders such as Kyle Norbraten taking on local trails and those around the region.
“The riding is good here, we have had the pleasure of hosting mountain bikers from as far away as Mexico and Denmark to shred the trails at Pidherny”, explained Tourism PG CEO Erica Hummel.
“Each year we partner with Mountain Bike BC and BC Bike Ride North to host international riders, influencers, bloggers, videographers, and photographers to help us produce content that will garner further tourist attraction.”
Active Living Market goes this weekend
The city’s fall and winter 2019 Community Active Living Guide has been released in advance of the fall Fall Active Living Market this weekend.
It runs on Saturday, from 9:30 a.m. to 6 p.m., and on Sunday, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., at Pine Centre Mall.
The Market will feature nearly 40 booths.
The statement says the fish are getting past the blockage because water levels have fallen and crews have successfully shifted some of the boulders that created a five-metre waterfall across the river earlier this year.
It had the potential to prevent millions of migrating Fraser River salmon from reaching
A statement from the management team working at the Big Bar landslide, northeast of Vancouver, says acoustic monitoring, radio tags and visual observations confirm chinook and sockeye salmon are swimming through the landslide unaided.
spawning grounds north of the Clinton area.
Helicopters had been used to lift nearly 60,000 fish over the rockfall, but experts remain concerned about the ability of the returning run of 1.5 million pink salmon to get past the slide.
They say helicopter and truck-transfer operations will resume if the smaller, weaker species can’t follow its chinook and sockeye cousins upriver.
Stolen vehicle sentence issued
Citizen staff
A man who led police on a brief chase in a stolen vehicle has been prohibited from driving for two years.
Leonard Earl Prince, 41, was also sentenced to one year probation for the July 4 incident that began when members of the Prince George RCMP’s street crew spotted a vehicle that had been reported stolen two days before going through an alleyway near
the 4300 block of First Avenue.
“Officers attempted to stop the vehicle, however the driver made attempts to exit the alley, but was quickly surrounded by police,”
RCMP said at the time.
“The driver exited the vehicle and attempted to flee on foot, but was apprehended a short distance away.”
The vehicle had gone missing from a spot near the corner of 14th Avenue and Irwin Street.
“A window was left down and
the keys were left in it,” RCMP noted. According to court records, Prince was released from custody five days later on $500 bail but by July 24vfound himself back in custody for breaching his conditions and had remained there since.
Prince was issued the sentence Wednesday in Prince George provincial court on counts of dangerous driving, fleeing police and possessing stolen property under $5,000.
Fall fair features best pot category
The
One of Canada’s oldest fall fairs is putting a new twist on its annual showcase of local livestock, produce and fruit by adding a new category for best home-grown marijuana.
The Cowichan Exhibition in Duncan, which dates back to 1868, has created a best cannabis category to embrace legalization and celebrate local pot growers, said exhibition vice-president Bud James.
The fair starts today and the cannabis entries will be on display in the main hall at the Cowichan Exhibition Grounds along with the region’s top vegetables, fruits and baked goods. First prize is $5, second is $3 and third place gets a ribbon.
“We just decided this year, because it’s an agricultural product, and it’s been grown in the valley for years, and now that it’s finally legally grown, we would allow people to win a ribbon for the best,” said James.
He said fair officials believe the Cowichan cannabis category is the first of its kind in Canada.
An official at the Canadian Association of Fairs and Exhibitions, a non-profit organization representing rural and urban fairs, said she had not heard of any other cannabis judging contests prior to the Cowichan Exhibition, but couldn’t confirm it was the first.
A fall fair in Grand Forks is also judging local cannabis, but the event starts Saturday, one day after Cowichan’s fair.
— from page 1
“Time’s up people,” Ackles said. “You’ve got to manage your garbage or your apples. We don’t want to habituate these bears where they become a possible public safety risk.”
Those who come across a bear in their neighbourhood or a neighbour who is causing such trouble as leaving their garbage bins out the night before pickup are urged to call the Conservation Officer Service a 1-877-952-7277. Only bears that show signs of habituation or serious injury will be put down.
“We don’t euthanize a bear for being on the landscape or being in your yard, but if it’s breaking into secure structures, being defensive of non-natural sources, bluff charging people... we can’t move an animal like that. We’re just moving a problem to another area where somebody else may encounter it.”
Bears habituated to human-based food sources don’t unlearn the behaviour, Ackles added.
“It’s pretty tragic when you think about it,” he said. “It’s so simple for people to manage their attractants to save bears and bears have got no reason for being in residential neighbourhoods if they (attractants) were managed.”
The guide will showcase the many groups and clubs Prince George has to offer for activities such as swimming, skiing, martial arts, adapted sports, yoga and fitness, figure skating and ringette, art and education and music and dance.
The guide can be found online at princegeorge.ca/ActiveLiving and hard copies should be available at City Hall, the Prince George Aquatic Centre, and the Four Seasons Leisure Pool by Tuesday of next week.
CP PHOTO
A salmon is placed in a vessel to be lifted by a helicopter and transported up the Fraser River past a massive rock slide near Big Bar, west of Clinton, on Wednesday.
Canadian Press
Slow, intense, relentless
The scary science behind the new normal of Hurricane Dorian
Sarah KAPLAN
The Washington Post
The science connecting climate change to hurricanes like Dorian is strong. Warmer oceans fuel more extreme storms; rising sea levels bolster storm surge and lead to worse floods. Just this summer, after analyzing more than 70 years of Atlantic hurricane data, NASA scientist Tim Hall reported that storms have become much more likely to “stall” over land, prolonging the time when a community is subjected to devastating winds and drenching rain.
But none of the numbers in his spreadsheets could prepare Hall for the image on his computer screen this week: Dorian swirling as a Category 5 storm, monstrous and nearly motionless, above the islands of Great Abaco and Grand Bahama.
Seeing it “just spinning there, spinning there, spinning there, over the same spot,” Hall said, “you can’t help but be awestruck to the point of speechlessness.”
After pulverizing the Bahamas for more than 40 hours, Dorian finally swerved north Tuesday as a Category 2 storm.
“Simply unbelievable,” tweeted Marshall Shepherd, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Georgia and former president of the American Meteorological Association. “I feel nausea over this, and I only get that feeling with a few storms.”
The hurricane has matched or broken records for its intensity and for its creeping pace over the Bahamas. But it also fits a trend: Dorian’s appearance made 2019 the fourth straight year in which a Category 5 hurricane formed in the Atlantic – the longest such streak on record.
Shocking though the storm has been, meteorologists and climate scientists say it bears hallmarks of what hurricanes will increasingly look like as the climate warms.
Dorian’s rapid intensification over the weekend was unprecedented for a hurricane that was already so strong. In the space of nine hours Sunday, its peak winds increased from 240 km/h to 290 km/h. By the time the storm made landfall, its sustained winds of 300 km/h were tied for strongest ever observed in the Atlantic.
The link between rapid intensification and climate change is robust, said Jennifer Francis, an atmospheric scientist at Woods Hole Research Center. Heat in the ocean is a hurricane’s primary source of fuel, and the world’s oceans have absorbed more than 90 per cent of the warming of the past 50 years, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The water that Dorian developed over was about a degree Celsius warmer than normal, Francis
NOAA
Above, while Hurricane Dorian lashed the Bahamas throughout Labour Day weekend, two other storms were brewing –one in the Atlantic and another in the Eastern Pacific. NOAA’s view was captured at 1:20 p.m. EDT on Tuesday. Right, extensive damage from Hurricane Dorian can be seen Wednesday in this aerial photo over the Island of Abaco, Bahamas.
said: “That translates to a whole bunch of energy.”
Because warm air can hold more moisture, climate change has increased the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere, leading to wetter hurricanes that unleash more extreme rainfall.
The warm, wet air also gives further fuel to a growing storm.
“When that water vapor condenses into cloud droplets, it releases a lot of heat into the atmosphere and that’s what a hurricane feeds off of,” Francis said. “These factors are very clearly contributing to the storms we’ve been seeing lately.”
Models predict that Category 4 and 5 hurricanes in the North Atlantic could become nearly twice as common over the next century as a result of climate change, even as the total number of storms declines.
Once a hurricane makes landfall, the sea level rise created by global warming can exacerbate its effects by amplifying storm surge. A hurricane’s strong winds will push water toward the shore, causing extreme flooding in a relatively short time.
The higher the water level on a clear day, the worse floods will be
once a storm arrives – and global sea levels are predicted to rise by about a meter by the end of the century.
Hurricane Dorian was particularly striking – and devastating – because of the way it lingered over the Bahamas. Such “stalling” events have become far more common in the past three quarters of a century, said Hall, who is a senior scientist at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
In a study published in the journal Climate and Atmospheric Science in July, Hall found that North Atlantic hurricanes have slowed about 17 per cent since 1944; annual coastal rainfall averages from hurricanes increased by about 40 per cent over the same period. A
2018 paper found that tropical cyclones worldwide have slowed significantly.
In stalling events, “you have longer time for the wind to build up that wall of water for the surge and you just get more and more accumulated rain on the same region,” Hall said.
“That was the catastrophe of Harvey,” he added, referring to the hurricane that dumped more than 1.5 metres of rain over Texas in 2017. Hurricanes Dorian and Florence, the latter of which deluged the Carolinas last year, also fit this pattern.
Hall and his colleagues believe there is a “climate change signal” in this phenomenon, though they are still teasing out the link between human-caused warming and slow-moving storms.
Hurricanes have no engines of their own; instead, they are steered across the Earth’s surface by large-scale atmospheric winds, like corks bobbing in a turbulent stream.
If these guiding winds collapse, or even simply shift around, a hurricane can get caught in an eddy and “stagnate,” Hall said. Climate
simulations have shown that atmospheric winds in the subtropics, where Dorian is, are slowing down – making these types of eddies more likely.
“But there are a lot of points in the chain of cause and effect that remain to be elaborated,” Hall said.
Such stalling events make hurricanes more difficult to track. Without a known large-scale wind to propel them, the storms are buffeted about by small-scale fluctuations in their environments that are far harder to forecast.
Both Hall and Francis cautioned that scientists can’t attribute any single weather disaster to climate change – especially not while that disaster is unfolding. What researchers can do is evaluate how much worse the disaster was made as a result of human-caused warming, and how likely it is that this type of disaster will occur again.
When it comes to Dorian, Hall said, the answers to both those questions are grim.
“This is what we expect more of,” he said. But he doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to seeing it.
HANDOUT PHOTO/AP PHOTO
‘He was my everything’
Widow in grief after man released from psych ward accused of killing again
Paul DUGGAN
The Washington Post
Javed Bhutto, a caregiver to mentally disabled adults, got home from work about 11 that morning with bags of groceries in his Toyota Corolla. After his overnight shift at a residential facility, he had stopped in a supermarket with a list from his wife. In the parking lot of the small condo complex where the couple lived, he stepped out of his car in the chill March air, opened the trunk and reached for his bundles.
A man identified by Washington, D.C., police as Hilman Jordan –who had killed before for no sane reason and was locked in psychiatric wards for 17 years – walked up behind Bhutto, pulling a 9mm semiautomatic from a pocket of his coat. Spreading his feet in a combat stance, he aimed the weapon with a two-handed grip at close range. Bhutto, leaning into the trunk, didn’t see him coming. Although they were neighbours in City View Condos, in southeast Washington, D.C., the two were barely acquainted. Bhutto, a few days shy of his 64th birthday, was a former philosophy professor in Pakistan who found a new career in his adopted country, working in group homes. Jordan, 45, acquitted by reason of insanity in an unprovoked fatal shooting in 1998, had been released from St. Elizabeths Hospital and was renting a condo largely at taxpayer expense.
The first slug whizzed past Bhutto, striking the Toyota, and he spun around aghast, holding up his hands. The attacker tried to squeeze off another round, but the Smith & Wesson jammed. He racked the slide again and again, ejecting unspent cartridges onto the pavement, as Bhutto ran, arms flailing, toward the parking lot gate. The gunman caught him there, pistol-whipped him until he fell, kicked him twice in the head and fired a bullet into his heart.
Now the victim’s widow, Nafisa Hoodbhoy, 63, angrily wonders why the D.C. Department of Behavioral Health, legally obligated to monitor Jordan, wasn’t also required to warn City View residents that he was a St. Elizabeths outpatient with a homicidal history. And echoing others, she questions why Jordan was allowed to remain free despite what neighbours say was his chronic pot smoking – a trigger for his psychotic delusions and a violation of his court-approved release terms.
After Bhutto was shot to death March 1, detectives say, they saw Jordan sitting calmly on his balcony overlooking the crime scene, his right shoe stained with blood. They say they found a 9mm Smith & Wesson and a marijuana joint in the condo.
“Someone didn’t do their job, obviously,” Hoodbhoy, a journalist, says bitterly. “Someone who should have been watching this insane murderer didn’t do their job.”
Schizophrenia and paranoia had driven Jordan to kill years earlier. The court order authorizing his release from hospital confinement in 2015 required Behavioral Health to screen his urine regularly for traces of intoxicants, and a failed test was supposed to land him back in St. Elizabeths immediately. Yet he rapped about pot use in YouTube videos that show him with apparent marijuana joints on his balcony, his eyes narrowing as he smokes. Neighbours say he would sit outside getting high for hours.
Seven weeks before the shooting, Bhutto, who lived directly above Jordan, complained to Jordan’s landlord about the persistent odor of marijuana coming from downstairs, and the landlord says he warned Jordan that Bhutto was upset. After the killing, a prosecutor said in court, Jordan “tested positive for PCP,” or phencyclidine, a powerful hallucinogen. The drug, often mixed with marijuana, can induce frenzied aggression, especially in users who are prone to violence.
Jordan also was forbidden to have a firearm; how he allegedly got one isn’t publicly known.
Citing privacy rules, the Behavioral Health agency, which pushed for Jordan’s release in 2015, won’t comment on his mental state back then or discuss details of its supervision of him at the condo complex. The agency’s chief of staff, Phyllis Jones, says records show Jordan “was in compliance with the conditions of his discharge,” but she adds, “An internal review is ongoing.”
WASHINGTON POST PHOTOS
Above, Nafisa Hoodbhoy talks about her husband as she packs up the condo she shared with him. Right, she shows photos on her phone of her husband, Javed Bhutto. He was a caregiver in an Alexandria, Va., group home who was killed March 1.
Today, six months after the shooting, the internal review still isn’t finished, Jones says.
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser’s office also won’t comment on Jordan, referring questions to mental-health authorities. In D.C. Superior Court, though, Judge Milton Lee made his opinion clear at a June hearing. Rather than return Jordan to St. Elizabeths, which is run by Behavioral Health, Lee ordered him jailed while he awaits a trial on a first-degree murder charge. “I have no faith whatsoever” that the agency and hospital “will do what is necessary to keep you consistent with your treatment and to monitor you in a way that will protect the community,” the judge said, staring down at the shackled Jordan, who has yet to enter a plea in the killing. “It appears in this regard they have failed, and I’m not going to give them another opportunity.”
Insanity-defense laws vary among U.S. jurisdictions. In D.C. Superior Court, as in about 20 states, a defendant is entitled to acquittal if he proves that during the offense, he “lacked substantial capacity to appreciate the wrongfulness of his conduct or to conform his conduct to the requirements of the law” because of mental illness.
Research shows that a majority of the public thinks the insanity defense is a loophole through which criminals often escape punishment. In fact, trials involving the defense are exceedingly rare nationwide, and the success rate for defendants in those cases is minuscule. Usually when lawyers invoke the defense, they have valid reasons for doing so, and prosecutors typically end up conceding that the defendants aren’t legally guilty.
So it was with Jordan.
Fourteen months after the killing, he admitted in court that he pulled the trigger, and a prosecutor acknowledged he wasn’t criminally responsible. On Oct. 1, 1999, a judge declared him not guilty by reason of insanity and committed him to St. Elizabeths.
Back then, the hospital, in southeast D.C., resembled the 19thcentury asylum it had once been, with Victorian-era brick edifices and acres of rolling fields behind a foreboding, wrought iron fence. Today, the rebuilt hospital houses about 260 patients, half of them “civil commitments,” meaning people not charged with crimes. The rest, being treated in prisonlike wards, are insanity acquittees or defendants undergoing pretrial psychiatric evaluations or accused criminals found mentally incompetent for trials. Jordan was ordered confined there “indefinitely.”
Which wouldn’t be forever.
In the eyes of the justice system, he was innocent of any crime, and the hospital’s job was to reduce his psychotic symptoms until the law considered him fit to be released. Jordan’s illnesses caused “persecutory delusions... hallucinations... and lethal conduct,” a clinical report said. But over time, psychotropic drugs led to “considerable improvement.” He learned coping skills and behaviour-modification strategies. His marijuana dependence, a catalyst for his psychoses, was addressed in counseling. Gradually, his symptoms subsided, a report said, and he presented “little or no management problem.”
Just as the process of adjudicating insanity verdicts is highly subjective, so is the process of deciding when acquittees should be freed. Jurists and others without medical training are forced to predict the future behaviours of latently dangerous mental patients, relying on recommendations from psychiatrists who acknowledge that theirs is an inexact science.
If Jordan had been convicted of first-degree murder in 1998, he would have been imprisoned with no parole eligibility until 2028. But the legal principles for dealing with insanity acquittees are far different. The parameters were established by federal appellate decisions in the past half-century, including landmark U.S. Supreme Court rulings in forensic mentalhealth law.
People found not guilty by reason of insanity – known as NGRIs – can’t be punished. They are legally entitled to freedom after successful treatment, and hospitals must try to render them sane enough that they won’t pose too much of a threat if let out.
•••
Javed Bhutto, born in 1955, was the eldest child in a Pakistani family of modest means. “For a while after college, his father sent him to medical school,” his widow, Nafisa Hoodbhoy, says. “But he didn’t like medicine. He preferred
philosophy.”
Bhutto left his dusty hometown, 300 miles inland from the Arabian Sea, and traveled to Bulgaria, where he earned a graduate degree at Sophia University in the waning years of communist rule.
In the late 1980s, back in Pakistan, he joined the philosophy faculty at the University of Sindh, eventually becoming chairman.
He met his future wife in tragic circumstances.
Hoodbhoy, a year younger than Bhutto, was raised in the sprawling port city of Karachi, where she attended English-language schools. After moving abroad in 1978, she got a master’s degree in U.S. history at Northeastern University and worked as a reporter for London’s Guardian newspaper. Then, in 1984, she returned to her male-dominated Muslim homeland to become a pioneering female journalist.
As the only female reporter on the staff of Dawn, Pakistan’s biggest English-language daily, her goal was to “affect change” for women in the Islamic world, many of them brimming with career aspirations, as she was, yet stifled and routinely victimized.
As for Hoodbhoy and Bhutto –“a study in contrasts,” the pushy newshound and the reflective scholar - they formed a bond that ran far deeper than their common interest in civic integrity. On Aug. 28, 1992, they married.
“He was my everything,” she says now. After a tumultuous decade of democracy, Pakistan’s return to military rule in 1999 prompted the couple to emigrate. They moved into a tiny apartment in Massachusetts – just the two of them; they never had children – and Hoodbhoy began a teaching fellowship at Amherst College in 2001. Bhutto thought he’d find a place in academia, too, but it turned out his Soviet-bloc master’s degree and Pakistani professorship weren’t sufficient for U.S. higher education.
He toiled in low-wage jobs for months before discovering a new vocation, working in group homes with developmentally disabled adults. “He had such a way with people, such compassion,” his widow says. “Even the mentally effected people really took to him. I mean, he adored them.” In 2003, Hoodbhoy joined Voice of America in Washington as an Urdu-language radio host. (She now writes for VOA’s Extremism Watch Desk.) She and Bhutto bought a one-bedroom unit at City View Condos, a brick blockhouse in the tumbledown Barry Farm area of Southeast D.C. Hoodbhoy planted peppers and cilantro in balcony pots, and Bhutto stuffed the place with his vast collection of philosophy texts. In 2012, they raised their right hands in a federal building and were sworn in as U.S. citizens.
A northern Virginia nonprofit, CRi, which says its mission is to help people with developmental disabilities improve their lives, hired Bhutto in 2015 as a caregiver in an Alexandria group home – and he would work there happily until the morning he was killed. “He was so adept at knowing what everyone’s needs were,” a former colleague says, referring to the support Bhutto gave to the home’s four residents. “He’d study them, study their cues, and understand them as unique human beings.”
In his adopted country, he went by the first name “Jawaid,” which is pronounced in English the way “Javed” sounds in Urdu. Hoodbhoy recalls hearing him in the condo bedroom holding forth in their native language on Skype and Facebook Live. Scores of students at his old university would gather for video talks by the longdeparted professor, who lectured for the joy of it.
She’d peek in, see him hunched at a computer under shelves filled with books, smiling, gesturing, querying, expounding.
“Content, at peace,” is how she remembers him.
No mystery behind gas prices
So the B.C. Utilities Commission reports there is “a significant unexplained difference” in gas prices between Metro Vancouver and Seattle. The differential is around 13 cents per litre. This finding came after Premier John Horgan complained of corporate “gouging” and asked the commission to hold a public inquiry into the matter.
In passing, that’s a bit rich from the premier of a province which taxes gasoline at a whopping 28 cents per litre.
By comparison, state gasoline taxes in Seattle are just 13 cents per litre. Might that be one cause of the “significant unexplained difference?”
But the broader issue is this. It’s the avowed intent of our provincial government, as it is Ottawa’s, to reduce fossil fuel consumption by various means. These include carbon taxes, stifling regulatory processes and public shaming.
Indeed, carbon taxes were introduced with the explicit purpose of pricing fuels like gasoline to heights that would discour-
age their use. Costly gasoline isn’t some unexplained mystery. It is the consequence of deliberate policy. However, there’s another aspect that needs examining. In normal circumstances, if you reduce the supply of a product or service, its price goes up.
This has been known since Adam Smith’s days, though it is apparently news to some politicians.
Yet that consequence only follows if demand remains high. If you have at hand an alternate product, supply can be cut and the price won’t go up, as consumers switch to the fall-back option.
So is that where we stand? Is there an alternative to fossil fuels readily available, such that we can make gasoline less obtainable and the price won’t increase?
The answer is no. Currently, renewable sources of energy contribute just 17 per cent of our national requirements.
We are nowhere near ready to replace fossil-fuel consumption, nor is it likely we will in the foreseeable future.
According to the Manhattan Institute,
the solar panels we have today are already at two thirds of their maximum achievable efficiency. Wind-power turbines, likewise, are at two thirds of their potential output. These limits are set by physics, not politicians.
Let’s step back for a moment and consider how new technologies became available in days gone by. The sailing ship wasn’t replaced by government fiat. It was replaced because steam power proved reliable and more cost effective.
Horse buggies weren’t forced off the road by crusading politicians. They became obsolete when the combustion engine arrived and proved a better alternative.
Wireless telegraphy didn’t replace handdelivered messages as the result of public policy. It came about through invention.
In none of these cases were governments the change agent. Old and less efficient technologies were abandoned only once superior versions emerged as viable replacements.
This is not to say that government has no role in driving innovation. For example, a
Parents agonize over kids’ career paths
As children and teenagers across British Columbia go back to school this week, parents across the province may be thinking about their future earning potential.
We have recently seen how workers are worried about the effect of automation in places like the Port of Vancouver and the nervousness of would-be university students earlier in the summer over a Grade 12 test score tabulation snafu.
The federal election campaign will provide many opportunities for politicians to discuss job creation, but just what form the jobs of the future will ultimately take is a complex matter.
Skilled trades have become more attractive in recent years but parents may continue to believe that the best course of action for their kid is a university degree.
With this in mind, Research Co. asked parents across British Columbia about their perceptions of specific career choices that their children might make.
This is by no means a comprehensive list of possible occupations that a kid might decide to pursue, but it serves to assess current views of some future jobs against others.
A couple of career paths were especially compelling to parents in British Columbia. We found that 91 per cent would encourage their child to become a doctor or a nurse. A child pursuing a career in engineering is also an appealing choice for practically nine in 10 parents in the province (89 per cent).
Almost three in five parents (59 per cent) would encourage their child to become a police officer,
BY THE NUMBERS
MARIO CANSECO
and a slightly smaller proportion (56 per cent) would encourage a son or daughter to become a professional athlete.
There is no gender gap on encouraging a child to play sports for a living, as identical proportions of moms and dads would partake in this motivational exercise.
The idea is attractive to majorities of parents in southern B.C. (57 per cent), the Lower Mainland (56 per cent), Vancouver Island (55 per cent) and northern B.C. (50 per cent).
Seeing parents in British Columbia enthused at the prospect of their kids pursuing a career in health care or engineering is not a surprise. But we also see a majority appearing hopeful that, if the right combination of talent and hard work is present, their kid could be the next Connor McDavid, Bianca Andreescu, James Paxton or Brooke Henderson.
Almost seven years ago, I had the opportunity to participate in a research project with the Rick Hansen Institute that entailed asking Canadian parents of hockey-playing children about safety issues in the sport, including the adequate age to introduce bodychecking.
The parents we interviewed back then, understandably, expressed concerns about the safety of their offspring. But one of the findings that caught my eye was how realistic they were about their child’s potential: only seven per cent of them expressed a firm belief that their kid would
ultimately become a professional hockey player.
It was clear that, for most parents, the rink was there to help their children grow into adults. The sport was perceived by only a few as a de facto career choice. Delaying bodychecking would not make kids unqualified for a professional career that few parents believed was attainable.
In stark contrast with doctors, nurses, police officers and even athletes, there was one profession that ranked painfully low in our province. Only 28 per cent of parents in British Columbia would encourage their child to become a politician.
The best region of the province for kids who want to serve their communities as elected representatives is northern B.C., where more than a third of parents (35 per cent) would praise this career choice. The worst is Metro Vancouver (26 per cent).
The career decisions that today’s children will ultimately make will vary greatly from what is currently available. Technology has provided platforms that were hard to grasp a couple of decades ago, in all walks of life.
Still, parents in British Columbia are decidedly more convinced that a career that entails a degree – medicine, nursing, engineering – is worth encouraging.
More than half may hope for their child to become a professional athlete, and fewer than three in 10 would react positively if their kid expressed an interest in politics.
For a quick glance at what might be leading parents to move their children away from elected office, type the name of a politician on Twitter and gaze in awe at the memes, attacks and allegations that users – many times “anonymous” – can hand down.
variety of new drugs have been brought to market because public agencies funded the necessary research. But never before, in any instance I can recall, have technologies central to our wellbeing been abandoned before better options had been found and proven able to supplant them. Yet that is where we are headed. The presumption appears to be that if we kill off fossil fuel, the pressure generated will summon the required alternatives. Perhaps in the very long run it will. But in the near term, the result will be shortages, and to repeat the obvious, when demand remains high, those drive up prices. If I may amend a quote by Sir Humphrey Appleby from the British sitcom Yes Minister, the cause of the gas price differential “is not shrouded in quite such impenetrable obscurity as (the commission’s) disclosures may have led (us) to assume.” It is the inevitable outcome of government policies in which ideology has trumped practicality.
— Lawrie McFarlane Victoria Times Colonist
From my cold, dead hands
On my 14th birthday, I bought my first gun, a beautiful lever action Marlin 30-30. I had to sell my skis and use most of my savings to get the $100 for the gun, a box of shells and still have enough left over for licence and tags. I still have that gun. Guns and hunting have been part of my life for 50 years. Most every weekend during hunting season in my teenage years would find me out wandering the mountains near home, looking for a deer or mountain goat, mostly with my brother. Even though we weren’t technically old enough to hunt by ourselves, we did. We had been taught how to use guns and with our parents’ permission, off we went. I never got caught by the game warden, although I’m sure he knew we were out there, but it was never that important to him. We had our licenses and tags and followed the rules, except for the one about having an adult with us. Gun ownership was easy in those days. If you had the money, you could buy a gun, some shells, a licence and tags and off you went. Once we got pickups, we even got those gun racks for the window behind the seat, so the gun was always handy. Most everyone had these, as that was the rural way. When not being used, guns were usually found leaning up against the wall in the closet, with bullets close by in case some marauding bear came by that needed an attitude adjustment.
Since those early years, I have gone through all the successive steps and complications of owning guns and hunting. The gun rack went with the truck when I sold it and I never did get another one. I took the gun safety courses so I could get my Firearms Acquisition Certificate, registered all my guns when the feds thought that would make Canada safer, and re-registered them when things changed.
I guess that made Canada more safer again. I unregistered them when that program was scrapped.
I complained when the feds of the day proposed gun armouries and that would compel everyone to place their guns in government warehouses, and when you wanted to use them, you would have had to ask for permission to take them out. That kind of fell apart when it was pointed out that rural Canada would need thousands of these armouries, and aboriginal people who needed their guns for their right to hunt would be exempted, and trappers couldn’t comply and, and, and… that boondoggle soon ended.
I re-applied for my gun licence a few times and now its my Firearms Possession Licence. I guess this makes Canada more safe again.
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That is me and that is my story. I’m pretty sure most people who have grown up owning guns, hunting, or having them around the property to keep the two and four-legged varmints at bay have similar ones. Gun safes, trigger locks, and securely stored ammo are good things, as one never knows when an inquisitive youngster is tempted to play with a gun. This part is good.
I don’t really have an issue with the paperwork of having a licence to own or purchase guns, and even the registration didn’t bother me all that much, though I always did wonder if it accomplished anything other than giving some unemployed east coast people something to do.
The crazies are getting the headlines now with the “let’s shoot everyone in sight” mentality. What are our politicians going to do with us next? Are they going to look at the mess the good-old U.S. of A has got themselves into and mess with our system? Will they think we just might have a few Canadian crazies who wish to be like our crazy American cousins? I hope not.
So what is left to do? Anything to fix? Yes. Fix those who break the law.
Now, all you good socialists, you may want to stop reading here, as what I am about to say is archaic – so archaic that it worked before Canada was Canada.
Public executions for crimes such has mass shootings, killing of law enforcement personnel, etc., might help. And when I mean public, I mean done in full view of the public, with the public doing the job.
Remember the movies that had stockades in the town square? Remember the people lining up to throw stones while the criminal sat with hands and feet bound? It may have taken a lot of squealing, but never took too long. And to think, with today’s social media showing all the details, what would that do to every wannabe mass shooter?
If they could watch how horrible a slow death can be as the aggrieved victims extract their pound of flesh, would they really want to be subject to the same?
Unfortunately, in the world that goes round and round, we are too civilized.
That only worked back when the world was flat.
— Evan Saugstad is a former mayor of Chetwynd and lives in Fort St. John.
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Vaping contaminant links to deadly lung illnesses
The Washington Post
State and federal health officials investigating mysterious lung illnesses linked to vaping have found the same chemical in samples of marijuana products used by people sickened in different parts of the country and who used different brands of products in recent weeks.
The chemical is an oil derived from vitamin E. Investigators at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration found the oil in cannabis products in samples collected from patients who fell ill across the United States. FDA officials shared that information with state health officials during a telephone briefing this week, according to several officials who took part in the call.
That same chemical was also found in nearly all cannabis samples from patients who fell ill in New York in recent weeks, a state health department spokeswoman said.
Vitamin E is found naturally in certain foods, such as canola oil, olive oil and almonds. The oil derived from the vitamin, known as vitamin E acetate, is commonly available as a nutritional supplement and is used in topical skin treatments. It is not known to cause harm when ingested as a vitamin supplement or applied to the skin. Its name sounds harmless, experts said, but its molecular structure could make it hazardous when inhaled. Its oil-like properties could be associated with the kinds of respiratory symptoms that many patients have reported: cough, shortness of breath and chest pain, officials said.
“We knew from earlier testing by New York that they had found vitamin E acetate, but to have FDA talk about it from their overall testing plan, that was the most remarkable thing that we heard,” said one official who took part in the briefing but was not authorized to speak publicly.
The FDA also told state officials Wednesday that its lab tests found nothing unusual in nicotine products that had been collected from sick patients, according to another person who took part in the call. State health departments are
reporting new cases weekly. As of Aug. 27, there were 215 possible cases reported by 25 states. Additional reports of lung illnesses are under investigation, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which is leading the investigation.
On Wednesday, Oregon health authorities said a middle-aged adult who died in late July of a severe respiratory illness had used an e-cigarette containing marijuana oil purchased from a legal dispensary. It’s the second death linked to vaping nationwide and the first to be linked to a product bought at a store. Illinois officials reported the first death last week. They did not specify what kind of product was used in that case. State and federal health authorities have said they are focusing on the role of contaminants or counterfeit substances as a likely cause of vaping-related lung illnesses. Many patients have told officials and clinicians that they bought cannabis products off the street. Many of those who have fallen ill say they have vaped products
containing marijuana, but some also used traditional nicotine e-cigarettes. Many report using both. Authorities said they are not ruling out adulterants in nicotine vaping products.
Although the discovery of a common chemical in lab tests from the FDA and New York’s highly regarded Wadsworth Center lab offers a potential lead, officials cautioned that they are a long way from understanding what exactly is making so many people sick.
An FDA spokesman said the agency is “looking into potential leads regarding any particular constituent or compound that may be at issue.” The FDA is analyzing sample for a broad range of chemicals, including nicotine, THC, other cannabinoids, “cutting agents” that may be used to dilute liquids, other additives, pesticides, opioids, poisons and toxins.
“The number of samples received continues to increase and we now have over 100 samples for testing,” FDA spokesman Michael Felberbaum said Thursday.
Not all the samples are suitable
Sweet or diet makes no difference
The Washington Post
Hold up, diet soda drinkers. Regular consumption of soft drinks – both sugarsweetened and artificially sweetened – was associated with a greater risk of all causes of death, according to new research published this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Participants who drank two or more glasses of soft drinks per day had a higher risk of mortality than those who consumed less than one glass per month.
The study tracked 451,743 men and women from ten countries in Europe. It found that consumption of two or more glasses of artificially sweetened soft drinks a day was positively associated with deaths from circulatory diseases. For sugar-sweetened soft drinks, one or more glasses a day were associated with deaths from digestive diseases, including diseases of the liver, appendix, pancreas and intestines.
The researchers recruited people from Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden and the U.K. between 1992 and 2000, surveying them on their food and drink consumption. Participants were excluded if they reported incidents of cancer, heart disease, stroke or diabetes. Mean age was 50.8 and participants were 71.1 per cent female.
Similar results have been shown in recent studies but the researchers cautioned that elevated soft drink consumption may be part of an overall unhealthy lifestyle.
“In our study, high soft drinks consumers had a higher body mass index (BMI) and were also more likely to be current tobacco smokers,” said the study’s chief researcher, Neil Murphy of the International Agency for Research on Cancer. “We made statistical adjustments in our analyses for BMI, smoking habits and other mortality risk factors which may have biased our results, and the positive associations remained.”
sioner Howard Zucker said in a statement Thursday.
As of Thursday, New York had received 34 reports from doctors of severe pulmonary illness among patients who ranged in age from 15 to 46 who were using at least one cannabis-containing vape product before becoming sick. All patients reported recent use of various vape products, officials said. Many are suspected to be counterfeits or recreational cannabis-containing vape products available in other states.
The second report of a death has emphasized the danger of this lung disease. “It was surprising that the patient suddenly appeared without any other underlying health conditions and became ill enough to die from this syndrome,” said Ann Thomas, a physician with the Oregon Health Authority.
Vaping refers to the increasingly popular practice of inhaling vapor from an e-cigarette device, which frequently involves heating a liquid that can contain nicotine, marijuana or other drugs.
for testing. The FDA analyzed 12 viable nicotine samples and 18 viable THC products, state officials said. Vitamin E acetate was found in 10 of the 18 THC products.
“This was the only thing that seemed to show up in 10 of the 18 cannabis products,” said one state official who took part in the call.
The federal lab results seem to confirm findings from New York State. Late last week, its lab found “very high levels of vitamin E acetate in nearly all” its cannabis samples tested. More than a dozen samples were tested, a health department spokeswoman said Thursday. At least one vape product containing vitamin E acetate has been linked to each patient who submitted a product for testing, the department said.
“Vitamin E acetate is not an approved additive for New York State Medical Marijuana Programauthorized vape samples and was not seen in the nicotine-based products that were tested. As a result, vitamin E acetate is now a key focus” of New York’s investigation, New York State Health Commis-
Vitamin E acetate is basically grease, said Michelle Francl, a chemistry professor at Bryn Mawr College. Its molecular structure means that “you have to heat it up pretty hot” for it to vaporize. Its boiling point is 363 degrees Fahrenheit, which is well above the 212 degrees F boiling point for water, and nearly four times higher than normal human body temperature.
Once the oil is heated hot enough to vaporize, it can potentially decompose, and “now you’re breathing in who-knows-what,” Francl said.
When that vapor cools down in the lungs, it returns to its original state at that temperature and pressure, she said, which means “it has now coated the inside of your lungs with that oil,” she said.
In Utah, clinicians have treated several patients with acute lung injuries who were diagnosed with a rare condition known as lipoid pneumonia, with symptoms including chest pain and difficulty breathing. Those patients had abnormal immune cells filled with lipids, doctors said.
CP PHOTO
A man exhales while smoking an e-cigarette in Portland, Maine, last Friday. Health Canada says people who vape should get medical attention right away if they’re worried their electronic cigarettes are harming them.
ISIS women impose brutal rule in Syria
Louisa LOVELUCK and Souad MEKHENNET
The Washington Post
The woman told aid workers it was an accident. Her 14-year-old daughter had slipped and fallen, she said. There was nothing they could have done.
But the body told a different story. The girl’s neck had been broken in three places, doctors said, and she died with eyes open, biting her lips and struggling to breathe. Photos and medical records suggested she had been beaten about the torso, then strangled. It was murder, not a misstep.
The teen, an Azerbaijani girl who had lived until earlier this year with her mother under the Islamic State’s caliphate, had run afoul of the die-hard ISIS adherents who have come in the past few months to dominate parts of the al-Hol displacement camp here in northeastern Syria, according to camp residents. They said she had suggested dispensing with her black niqab, the face covering worn by ultraconservative Muslim women.
Half a year after the territorial defeat of the Islamic State, the vast sprawl of tents at the al-Hol camp is becoming a cauldron of radicalization. About 20,000 women and 50,000 children who had lived under the caliphate are held in dire conditions at the camp, which is operated and guarded by 400 U.S.-supported Kurdish troops. With the men of ISIS imprisoned elsewhere, the women inside the fences of al-Hol are reimposing the militant group’s strictures, enforcing them upon those deemed impious with beatings and other brutality, and extending what residents and camp authorities call a reign of fear.
Several guards have been stabbed by women who conceal kitchen knives in the folds of their robes. Women are threatened for being in contact with lawyers who might get them out of the camp or for speaking with other outsiders. A pregnant Indonesian woman was murdered, medical officials say, apparently after speaking to a western media organization. Images of her body suggest she might have been whipped.
“It’s happening at night, and it’s happening in the shadows, but no one informs on who did it,” said a senior member of the camp’s intelligence department. “They’re afraid of each other here.”
Fourteen people with direct knowledge of camp conditions described in interviews the mounting anger, violence and fanaticism growing amid the squalor. These people, including camp residents, aid workers and Kurdish officials, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of security concerns.
Kurdish security officials, affiliated withe U.S.-allied Syrian Democratic Forces, say they have the troops to guard the facility but do little else. “We can contain the women, but we can’t control their ideology,” said the intelligence official. “There are many types of people here, but some of them were princesses among ISIS. There are spaces inside the camp that are like an academy for them now.”
In a report last month, the U.S. Defense Department’s inspector general, citing information from the U.S.-led coalition fighting ISIS, warned that the SDF’s inability to provide more than ‘minimal security’ at the camp has allowed for the ‘uncontested’ spread of ISIS ideology there.
In some places, children, including an estimated 20,000 born in the caliphate, are literally a captive audience.
Near one gate of the camp, guards have collected homemade toy guns and Islamic State paraphernalia that children have made to pass the time. Replica weapons are made from water pipes and bound tightly with duct tape. Flags have been colored in painstaking detail, the hand neat but unmistakably childish.
“The children need help here, you can see it,” said the intelligence official, fixing the pile with a tired stare. “How do we stop them becoming their parents?”
Conditions are desperate in the camp, erected on a barren hillside. Sewage has leaked into tents, and residents are drinking water from tanks containing worms. Many women have yet to learn what happened to husbands or teenage sons when they were carted off by the SDF that defeated the caliphate and now mans various camps and prisons.
Since the start of the year, when the camp accommodated fewer than 10,000 people, al-Hol has swelled dramatically. Many of the women and children were transferred to the camp after the last ISIS stronghold in the Syrian village of Baghouz was overrun
by the SDF, with U.S. military backing.
The residents are now segregated by nationality. Most sections house Syrians and Iraqis, while more than 9,000 others - among them the camp’s most radical inhabitants - are penned behind chain-linked fences in a sunbleached and closely guarded patch known as the “Annexe.” It is home to Arabs, Asians, Africans and Europeans, among others.
The guards enter this zone warily. An ambush late last month left one with broken bones.
“They can do anything to you here,” said one European woman in her 20s, her blue eyes darting around the camp as she spoke.
Three camp residents said that they had been stopped by women who first corrected their attire and then threatened that repeat behaviour would be punished.
The relative of a European woman confined in the Annexe with three children described her as more fearful than ever before. The woman had changed tents several times after a group of Tunisian and Indonesian women began threatening her upon learning that the family’s lawyer was trying to bring her home, according to the relative.
“They threaten other women who either gave interviews and declared they were no longer supporting ISIS, or who are trying to return to their countries,” the relative said.
In the nearby city of Hassakeh, two doctors said that patients from the camp were refusing to come for follow-up appointments in facilities run by Kurdish authorities or international organizations.
“They tell us ‘we cannot come,’ “ said one. “They say, ‘If we come to you, [hard-liners] beat us, or worse.’ “
Nor is this growing menace confined to al-Hol. Aid workers from the smaller al-Roj camp, an hour’s drive away, describe frequent disputes between Iraqi and other foreign residents. In one instance, an Iraqi woman was barred from communicating with her neighbours after she removed her veil. In another, the children of alleged Islamic State fighters tried to bury a young Iraqi boy alive.
As conditions deteriorate, the inhabitants remain in limbo. Some of the women want to return to their home countries, but few foreign governments are eager to take them back, fearing in part the risk that unrepentant ISIS adherents might pose and that the evidence against them might not hold up in court. The SDF says it
cannot be counted on to hold the camp residents indefinitely. But neither the United States – which ultimately holds sway in this corner of Syria – nor European and Arab allies have advanced a workable solution.
“Given that ISIS had women’s units and also taught them how they should still spread the idea and ideals of the caliphate once they are back in their countries of origins, they are a serious risk to the society, so their children could be also,” said an Arab intelligence official.
Iraq has yet to repatriate tens of thousands of its citizens, and other governments are evacuating their nationals at a trickle.
Eight American citizens were repatriated from the camp to the United States in June. President Trump has urged European countries to “take back” and prosecute their citizens.
One European intelligence official said the approach had to be “pragmatic” and “case by case,” adding, “We will have to study: Who was this woman married to? What role did [she] play inside ISIS? Is [she] really ready to give up the ideology?”
But aid agencies insist that the international community does not have the luxury of time and cite the dangers that al-Hol now poses to the children trapped inside it.
Aid workers from Save the Children, one of the largest organizations working with children in the camps of northeastern Syria, say they often show signs of deep trauma.
Boys, in particular, can be aggressive.
Girls have faced early marriage or sexual violence.
“The children who have been traumatized by living through all of this need a lot more than we can really offer in a camp,” said Sonia Khush, the Syria country director for Save the Children.
“It’s not only the missing out of school, it’s the violence that women and children were exposed to. People talk about seeing the beheadings in the town square, seeing the heads roll around,” she said. Some of the women interviewed said they are no longer true believers, and some said they never were but had been coerced by radicalized husbands to go to the
Islamic State.
Others, however, said they remained proud to have joined a group that tries to foster what it describes as an Islamic paradise. In a video posted online in July, several women, fully veiled and holding the Islamic State’s blackand-white banner, said they were delivering a message from al-Hol. “Brothers,” one urges, “light the fire of jihad and free us from these prisons.’
And then, addressing the “enemies of God,” she says, “To you we say, women of the mujahideen: You think you have us imprisoned in your rotten camp. But we are a ticking bomb. Just you wait and see.”
WASHINGTON POST PHOTOS
Above, a woman walks through the al-Hol camp in northeast Syria. Right, a member of the Kurdish security forces runs toward a group of women who forced open a gate during a brief dust storm at the foreigners’ section of the al-Hol camp. Bottom right, women and children stand by the gate.
Banner night
The Prince George Spruce Kings will be raising the two banners from their incredible playoff run this past spring at their 2019-20 regular season home
Concrete Arena. The veterans from that run to the national final back for this season include, left to right, Fin Williams,
and Nick Bochen.
Horvat ready to wear the C for the Canucks
The Canadian Press
Bo Horvat is ready and willing to be the next captain of the Vancouver Canucks.
He’s just waiting for the tap on the shoulder.
The team left the role vacant last season following the retirement of Henrik Sedin and his twin brother Daniel, but Horvat said Thursday he’d be willing to take on the hefty responsibility in a razor-focused Canadian hockey market.
“It’d be an unbelievable honour to wear the ‘C’ – to wear any letter for that matter,” the 24-year-old centre said at the NHL/NHLPA North American Player Media Tour.
“Even to be in consideration is definitely humbling. But it wouldn’t change who I am and it wouldn’t change the type of player I want to be. I wouldn’t let it affect me that way, but I’d just try to be the best leader I can be.”
Horvat certainly had some good teachers.
He sat a couple stalls away from the Sedins in Vancouver’s locker room from the time he made the league at age 19 until the Swedish superstars waved goodbye in April 2018. There were lean years, but the superstar Swedes were always there to face reporters.
“Their last three years, it definitely wasn’t easy standing in front of the media and taking the heat, and talking every single day,” Horvat said. “Just watching it, you were like, ‘How did these guys do it?’ I kind of had that responsibility last year, so I got a little bit of practice.
“I’d be ready to make that next step.”
Vancouver is far from the only NHL team without a captain –the Toronto Maple Leafs, Vegas Golden Knights, Ottawa Senators and Detroit Red Wings are among the other seven without one – but Horvat said it’s important in the long run to have one voice.
“It is nice to have a guy to lean on and a guy to go to when times are tough and have somebody to set the tone,” he said. “But at the same time there’s no rush for our team or any team to name one right away. It’s obviously up to the (general manager) and the coaching staff to decide who they think is the best fit.
“We have a lot of great guys in our room.”
The Canucks have missed the playoffs the last four seasons, but made a number of off-season acquisitions in hopes of challenging for a spot in the Western Conference in 2019-20. Vancouver dove into free agency by signing defencemen Tyler Myers and Jordie Benn, as well as winger Micheal Ferland, while forward J.T. Miller was acquired in a trade with the Tampa Bay Lightning.
“I really like our additions,” Horvat said. “I definitely think they’re going to help us make the next step.”
Another key would be getting restricted free agent Brock Boeser in town for training camp, but the star winger continues to negotiate a new contract with the team.
Horvat knows what the uncertainty can be like after waiting until Sept. 8, 2017, to sign a six-year, US$33-million extension with Vancouver coming out of his
entry-level deal.
“I’ve been talking to (Boeser) a little bit, just asking how things are going,” Horvat said. “I’ve been through it. It’s not easy, especially this late in the summer.
“We’d love to have Brock for camp and love to have him to start the season, because he’s such a huge part of our team. Hopefully they can get a deal done.”
One player Horvat and his teammates will be counting on from Day 1 is Elias Pettersson – the slick Swede that took the NHL by storm early last season on the way to capturing the Calder Trophy as rookie of the year.
“I don’t think he has a ceiling,” Horvat said. “He hasn’t completely filled out in his body yet – and he’s already doing what he’s doing right now.”
Horvat – who put up careerhighs in goals (27), assists (34) and points (61) in a breakout season of his own – said it was hard to
tell how good Pettersson was until he recorded a goal and an assist in his very first game, and didn’t look back.
“You’re just like, ‘Wow, this kid’s a player,”’ he said. “He continued to keep doing it game after game after game. It’s not easy. As a young guy, maybe you have a couple good nights here and there, but he just seemed to keep doing it night in and night out.
“He’s a special player. We’re lucky to have him. He’s just going to keep getting better as he gets older and gets more experience and bigger and stronger.
“So... look out.”
The Vancouver Canucks have re-signed right winger Nikolay Goldobin to a one-year contract.
The team announced the deal on Wednesday, saying the restricted free agent had agreed to a one-way deal worth US$900,000. Goldobin put up seven goals
and 20 assists in 63 games for the Canucks last season, his third in Vancouver.
He was also a healthy scratch for several games as coach Travis Green challenged him to work more diligently on various aspects of his play.
Canucks general manager Jim Benning said in a statement on Wednesday that Goldobin has “taken steps to round out his game.”
“Nikolay is a gifted offensive player who has shown good chemistry with some of our other younger players,” Benning said. “We’re excited to see continued improvement from him this season.”
The 23-year-old native of Moscow was originally taken 27th overall by the San Jose Sharks in the 2014 NHL entry draft. The Vancouver Canucks are set to begin training camp in Victoria on Sept. 13.
opener tonight at Rolling Mix
Nolan Welsh, Nick Poisson, Chong Min Lee, Corey Cunningham
Vancouver Canucks’ Bo Horvat walks onto the ice before an NHL hockey game against the San Jose Sharks in Vancouver on April 2.
CITIZEN
The UNBC Timberwolves women’s soccer team warms up prior to their home opener Thursday afternoon against the Thompson Rivers University WolfPack.
Als look to feast on toothless Lions
The Alouettes defied critics and expectations in the first half of the year. Now they want to prove their record is more than just a fluke.
Heading into the second half of their 18game season, the Montreal Alouettes (5-4) are looking to extend their winning streak to three games when they host the dreadful B.C. Lions (1-9) on Friday night.
Both Montreal and B.C., who have lost six straight, are coming off bye weeks.
“We embrace everything that’s spoken about us, whether it’s negative or positive,” said running back William Stanback after a light practice Thursday morning.
“We know what we have here. It feels different this year.
“It’s only my second year, I haven’t been in this league that long, but it’s a totally different feeling in the locker room and on the field.”
Stanback has fully recovered from his heel injury and will return to his regular workload on Friday. After missing games against Saskatchewan and Calgary, the CFL sophomore played a limited role in Montreal’s 28-22 victory over the Toronto Argonauts on Aug. 25.
“We have something good going on here, something really special,” said the 25-yearold Stanback. “We’re going to work hard and do what we have to do to make sure we come out on top every week.”
A series of setbacks has done little to slow down the Alouettes this year. Montreal has been without an owner all season and remains under the control of the CFL. The team fired coach Mike Sherman one week before the start of the season, and dismissed general manager Kavis Reed under mysterious circumstances in July. Starting quarterback Antonio Pipkin also sustained a leg injury in the season opener.
But what should have derailed the struggling franchise has done the opposite. Led by breakout star quarterback Vernon Adams Jr., the Alouettes start the second half of their season with a winning record for the first time in seven years. Their five wins equals last year’s total at the end of the season.
Montreal is second in the East Division behind the Hamilton Tiger-Cats, who have two games in hand. The third-place Ottawa Redblacks are 3-7. Barring a collapse in their final nine games – five of those at home – all signs point to Montreal clinching a playoff berth for the first time since 2014.
“Things are a little better than the mindset
at the beginning,” said coach Khari Jones. “Just because we didn’t know what we had. I felt good about the team and I told them that from the beginning. When I took over, I felt we had the pieces in place to win here and play good competitive football.”
The Lions are hoping a change in their coaching staff will propel their team to a second victory. This week the Lions sacked offensive line coach Bryan Chiu – a former Alouettes player – and replaced him with Kelly Bates. The B.C. offensive line has allowed a CFL-worst 43 sacks this season – 14 more than second-worst Toronto.
That constant pressure from opponents and lack of protection has taken its toll on
star quarterback Mike Reilly’s numbers this season. After leading the CFL in passing for three consecutive years, the 34-year-old Lions QB has already racked up 11 interceptions – on pace for the most picks of his career. The Lions embark on a stretch of five straight games against East-Division opposition. B.C. is 1-2 versus the East this year. Even with a minuscule chance of making the playoffs, B.C. Lions head coach DeVone Claybrooks says the focus remains on this season.
“Whatever you do, you want to go down swinging,” said Claybrooks earlier this week. “And we’re going to make teams pay every week. And that’s our mindset, trying to go out and win every game, every week.
“Everybody here is playing for jobs and playing for next year as well. So we understand that’s the business that we’re in.”
B.C. LIONS (1-9) AT MONTREAL ALOUETTES (5-4)
Friday, Percival Molson Stadium
GOOD COMPANY: Veteran defensive end John Bowman will play his 224th game on Friday, which will tie Ben Cahoon for fourth most in Alouettes history.
BYE BYE BYE: All three of Montreal’s bye weeks were scheduled in the first half of the season. The Alouettes now play once a week for the remainder of the calendar.
HALF CENTURY: The Lions’ 1-9 start is the club’s worst since 1969, when they went 1-10 to start the season.
NEW TARGET: The Alouettes added veteran receiver Chris Matthews to their offence. The 29-year-old, who won a Grey Cup with Calgary last year, will not be ready to start for Montreal on Friday.
WINNING FORMULA: Reilly and the Lions have had success against the Alouettes historically. Reilly is 11-2 versus Montreal while the Lions have won their last seven versus the Als.
Curling ponders switch to eight-end games
The Canadian Press
When Russ Howard moved to the men’s level from junior competition over four decades ago, curling games were usually 12-end affairs.
The Hall of Famer, who played third in his rookie season for skip Paul Macdonald, recalled one particularly taxing day when a two-out-of-three regional playdown was required for a berth in the Ontario championship.
“We played 37 ends in the same day swinging a corn broom,” said Howard. “I can still feel the blisters.” Relief from those marathon games soon arrived as 10-end games were implemented at the 1977 national men’s championship. The Tim Hortons Brier has stuck with the format ever since
and it has been the norm at the Winter Olympics, Scotties Tournament of Hearts, provincial playdowns and world championships.
The long-standing tradition could soon be coming to an end.
Discussion on moving to a shorter eight-end game has been a talking point for years and it’s the headline subject at this week’s World Curling Congress in Mexico. The World Curling Federation’s 61 member associations could put it to a vote today at their annual general assembly.
“I think it needs to happen yesterday,” said Warren Hansen, a 1974 Brier winner and former Curling Canada event operations director. “But that’s my opinion and I know a lot of the old guard of the sport still want to cling on to the 10 ends.
“But I think as we move forward
here there’s just so many things that have to happen to shorten this game up. It’s just simply too long and if we want to get people that are younger participating, it’s got to be shorter.”
If the WCF does go ahead with a change, a rollout is not expected until after the 2022 Winter Games in Beijing. Curling Canada is expected to follow the WCF’s lead.
The World Curling Tour, including the Grand Slam circuit, currently uses the eight-end format. Spectators, broadcasters and athletes often gravitate to the shorter model since it usually offers more excitement and games wrap up about a half-hour earlier.
The 10-end game tends to favour the stronger team since more ends are in play. Traditionalists feel consistency should rule since national, world and Olympic rep-
resentation can be on the line.
The WCF board began an initiative at the end of last season to investigate the potential impact of shorter games. The Olympic debut of mixed doubles at the 2018 Pyeongchang Games moved the issue to the front burner.
“The audience that watches curling at the Olympics obviously is not just curling fans, it’s sports fans,” said curling author and TSN broadcaster Bob Weeks. “I think when they saw the comparison between the two, it was obvious.”
Mixed doubles was a big hit thanks to its quicker pace. The discipline made regular team events seem sluggish in comparison. It can be hard to believe that when curling made its Olympic debut in 1924 in Chamonix, France, games were a whopping 18 ends.
A 16-end game was used eight
years later at the 1932 Games in Lake Placid. The first Canadian men’s championship – the 1927 Macdonald Brier at Toronto’s Granite Club – featured 14-end games. The length was trimmed to 12 ends the following year and that format remained in place for almost five decades.
WCF member association representatives are discussing a variety of curling topics over the three-day event in Cancun. On Thursday, the WCF said a new world team ranking system for the three Olympic disciplines (women’s, men’s, mixed doubles) will start this season. The system, to be administered by CurlingZone, will ensure that all relevant competitive events are eligible to earn points and that there’s a fair weighting of points distributed globally, the federation said in a release.
The Canadian Press
CP PHOTO
Montreal Alouettes’ Ryan Carter is tackled by Toronto Argonauts’ Jimmy Ralph, right, in CFL action in Moncton, N.B., on Aug. 25.
Competition Bureau eyes Google, Facebook
The Canadian Press
The Competition Bureau’s examination of possible anti-competitive practices by digital giants like Facebook and Google could offer a reprieve to the traditional media they “decimated,” but industry watchers say the step feels years behind action taken by other world powers.
“Finally, finally, we have movement,” said John Hinds, president of News Media Canada, an advocacy group that represents hundreds of print and digital news organizations, including the Prince George Citizen, that has been pushing the federal government to take action for a long time.
The Competition Bureau announced Wednesday it wanted the public and businesses to provide it with confidential information on what companies in the digital economy may be doing to harm competition.
It declined to name specific companies, but said it is interested in those that work in online search and social media, among other core areas.
Facebook, one of the biggest players in the space, said in a statement that it was committed to working with and being accountable to governments across the world.
Google, another giant of the space, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Local advertising once paid for local news production, said Hinds, but since the entrance of Google and Facebook around the new millennium that circular economy broke.
“The traditional advertising market has been totally decimated by the rise of the digital players.”
About $6.8 billion in advertising dollars in 2017 went to Facebook and Google, according to the Canadian Media Concentration Research Project’s most recent report.
That’s out of a total $13.8 billion spent across all commercial media, the report found, adding the two tech titans are carving out an enormous role in a shrinking advertising market.
Those two companies benefit from a tax system that advantages foreign suppliers, said Hinds.
When companies purchase an advertisement in a local paper, they pay a tax, he said, but that doesn’t apply when they advertise products or services on digital platforms.
Current regulations also allow news aggregators, like Google, to take parts of articles produced by other organizations without payment and repurpose them, he said.
Canadian media struggled to adapt to this changing landscape with major newspapers seeing revenues slip and carrying out mass layoffs.
Since 2008, 235 local media outlets closed with a further 46 shuttering as a result of mergers, according to the Local News Research Project’s August report.
Meanwhile, only 94 new local outlets opened, with 17 more produced through mergers during that same time.
Phillip Crawley, Globe and Mail publisher
and CEO, welcomed the Competition Bureau review in a statement.
“We believe that a review would be an important first step in ensuring there is healthy competition in digital markets. Other jurisdictions like the EU and Australia have already started looking at the practices of dominant digital players, so it is right for Canada to follow suit.”
Torstar Corp. and Postmedia Network Inc. did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Hinds hopes the call for information leads to a broader investigation that could eventually create regulatory or legislative change.
He points to an inquiry by the bureau’s Australian counterpart that examined the impact of digital companies, predominantly Google and Facebook, on advertisers, media and consumers as a good example for how to tackle the problem.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission released a more than 600-page report in June with 23 recommendations that included developing and implementing a platform-neutral regulatory framework for all companies that produce or deliver content in the country, and providing stable and adequate funding for public broadcasters.
“They’ve come out with some very, very solid recommendations and a pathway to a new model,” said Hinds, adding he thinks there’s an opportunity for Canada to do the same.
But that’s not necessarily what the Competition Bureau plans.
The information gathered could lead to investigations, said Brad Callaghan, an assistant deputy commissioner at the bureau.
Those investigations would be carried out confidentially, he said, and it doesn’t intend to publish a report similar to the Australian one.
The bureau can’t comment on whether any of its possible investigations could lead to
broader changes, he said, adding its work is investigative and enforcement oriented.
Callaghan couldn’t say whether the public consultation would benefit traditional media companies.
“Our work is really based on the information that’s available to us and it wouldn’t be appropriate for me to predict the way that something would play out down the road,” he said.
However, should the bureau find any evidence of wrongdoing, it wouldn’t hesitate to take action, which could mean bringing a case before the Competition Tribunal.
That process could be lengthy as the public consultation ends Nov. 30 – though the bureau notes it’s always open to hearing from people or businesses.
And while the process is now underway, Canada still lags well behind other countries, said Christopher Waddell, program director for Carleton University’s bachelor of media production and design program.
“It feels like we’re about four or five years behind the rest of the world.”
The European Union has been exploring this issue for a long time, he said, dating back to a case that began in the late 1990s against Microsoft.
The case concluded in late 2009 with Microsoft agreeing to give users a choice of which web browser to use rather than requiring them to use its Internet Explorer browser, and paying more than a billion pounds in fines.
The European Commission also recently announced it opened a formal antitrust investigation into Amazon, while the U.S. Department of Justice has opened one into major online platforms.
“They’ve been going on in other places for a long time,” said Waddell. “We don’t seem to have caught on to the potential anti-competitive practices that may exist until, I guess, now.”
The pain of business shame
We all feel shame sometime in our lives. Usually we feel this powerful emotion when we do something that doesn’t quite match up with our personal values. As a child, we might feel shameful if we told a lie to our parents or were mean to a friend. As a teenager, we might feel the shame of shoplifting, cheating on a test or doing drugs. As adults, there is all kinds of shame that we might feel in not living up to our own expectations. However, one of the most powerful shames we can feel is the shame of business failure. When I was in my early thirties, I thought I was on the top of the world. By all accounts, I was successful, I had recently been happily married to a beautiful woman, the love of my life, and had a child on the way. I had a good income and was able to support her to go back to university and complete her master’s degree. We had money in the bank and we were building a new house. I was a partner in an expanding business that was successful and profitable. I was recognized locally and was sitting on the board of a national association.
What happened next was like watching a train wreck in slow motion. We decided to expand the business and I made some poor decisions. As a result, the busi-
BUSINESS COACH
DAVE FULLER
ness lost money – hundreds of thousands of dollars over the next three years. When we look back decades later, three years seems like nothing. However, when you are going through a tough time, a week can feel like an eternity, never mind three years.
Personally, I went from feeling that I was on top of the world to being in a pit of despair. I felt like I had let everyone around me down. Our family income dropped by 70 per cent. I had trouble paying the bills and my wife had to take a job. We had to sell the new house we had built and downsize to something older and much smaller.
From a business point of view, I felt like I had failed my partners and lost their money and their confidence. While our customers and community might have thought the business was successful because it seemed like it was going well and I managed to put on a brave face, each and every day I felt like I was a fraud.
I didn’t want to talk to our suppliers when they called and avoided our bankers at all costs.
While I gave direction to my staff, often I felt like those directions were futile in the sense that I had lost my vision. On the days after
payroll, I kept a low profile just in case one of the paycheques bounced. I was intensely aware of my failings and felt the shame of that failure.
So how do we deal with those intense feelings of shame? Frequently we might see people dealing with shame by blaming others and raging with anger. When my business was failing, I wanted to blame a certain contractor who had large cost overruns. It took me years to get over that anger. Sometimes we want to escape our shame by trying to block it out. We see this in the use of drugs, or alcohol to make the pain of our shame go away. In business, we often have the sense to cut and run.
I was recently talking with an owner of a struggling business who said that the best thing might be for them to shut the doors and take all their equipment out and then leave the community.
I get it.
I remember back to the days when I thought it would be easier to disappear and start over somewhere else leaving all my problems behind. However, imagine the shame that could cause. The truth is that problems like money and banks tend to follow you with bankruptcy proceedings no matter where you are. You might run but you can’t hide for long. Sharing our struggles with our staff, admitting our weakness to our family and explaining our
financial situation to our suppliers is not only humbling but it relieves the weight of our shame. It’s amazing what happens when the people around you start to look at you as human, not the superman figure that you have built yourself up to be.
Admitting our failures can be deeply healing. One of the best suggestions my partners made after our business failure was asking me to write down what went wrong and sharing that with them. It’s easy to blame ourselves for the brunt of all the failure but the reality is often that there are contributing factors that we need to acknowledge.
Forgiving ourselves is often the hardest part of dealing with shame. Despite what others say or how they might forget our failings, the shame from our losses lives on in our memories if we don’t let go. One of the key factors of moving beyond the shame of any failures we might have in business is to realize that the sum of who we are is much larger than our entrepreneurial ventures. We need to recognize that to become the person our families and communities need us to be we must be gentle on ourselves, learn from our mistakes and have hope in a future that is bright with possibilities.
— Dave Fuller, MBA, is an award-winning professional business coach and the author of the book Profit Yourself Healthy. There is no shame in emailing dave@profityourselfhealthy.
composite index gained 125.97 points to close at 16,574.81, its highest close since July 24 and less than 100 points off its record high. U.S. markets also surged, outpacing the Toronto market because technology companies had a strong day after the world’s two largest economies announced they would meet again next month in Washington, D.C.
“So investors are welcoming this reprieve today and risk assets are rallying broadly across both global equity markets but also commodities prices,” said Candice Bangsund, portfolio manager for Fiera Capital. Markets have rallied before only to have hopes dashed by a tweet.
It’s encouraging that the two sides are continuing to talk and seem willing to come to a deal despite imposing increased tariffs last weekend, she said.
“The fact that they are getting together face-to-face, that has sparked speculation that there could be some sort of deal and obviously that’s come as a relief for investors,” Bangsund said in an interview.
“Our sense is that a deal will be done by year-end and this is a step in the right direction.”
The positive trade sentiment followed a de-escalation in political instability in Hong Kong and in London as lawmakers moved to block a no-deal Brexit.
Strong U.S. economic also diminished fears of a recession. Private payrolls increased by 195,000, exceeding expectations, ahead of Friday’s monthly non-farm payrolls report.
The U.S. services industry also had its fastest expansion last month since February, according to the Institute for Supply Management’s non-manufacturing purchasing managers index (PMI).
Strong economic data should prevent the Federal Reserve from cutting interest rates beyond 25 basis points in September, she added.
In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average ended up 372.68 points at 26,728.15. The S&P 500 index was up 38.22 points at 2,976.00,
CP PHOTO
The logo for Facebook appears on screens in 2018 at the Nasdaq MarketSite, in New York’s Times Square.
WITH LOVE IN OUR HEARTS, the family of Eleanor Bertha (Tobin) Badry wish to announce the passing of our wife, mother, grandmother and great grandmother. Ellen passed away on August 29, in Edmonton at the age of 85. Ellen was born September 20, 1933 in her grandmothers’ home in Paradise Hill, Saskatchewan. She was the only girl in the family of six children. Ellen was formally trained in Admitting and Transcription. After finishing school and working a short time in Maidstone Saskatchewan she left the family farm in Paynton Saskatchewan to work in Edmonton. She lived with her brother Edward and his wife Josephine and took a job working at the reception desk in the Misericordia Hospital. It was there that she met the love of her life Girvin, a handsome young man who worked in the greenhouse and made floral deliveries for Tyler’s Flowers. They were married in December 1954. Ellen was a devoted wife and mother, together with Girvin they raised seven children. The family has fond memories of many family camping trips during the summer months. When Ellen had the opportunity, she took on various part time work including housekeeping at the Royal Alexandra Hospital and serving up food at the local Burger King. She valued her relationships with her many friends, neighbours and relatives and loved arts and crafts. She is missed by her husband Girvin, and her children Randy (Bev), Dwayne (Kim), Sherry-Anne, Terry-Lynn (Tony), Wanda (Gerald), Wendy (Brian), Steven, and her 14 grand children, her 14 great grand children. She is predeceased by her parents Mable and Bernard, her 5 brothers John, Edward, Jim, Harold and Don. The mass and the interment will be held on September 20th at 1PM at St. Peters Catholic Church Strome AB (searchable on Google maps). A lunch will follow at Heisler Community Hall. Donations may be made to the M.S. Society of Canada.
The Lord is my Shepherd
Our dear Waldemar (Wally) Neufeld, left us to be with his Heavenly Father on August 27, 2019. He was born in Niverville, Manitoba to Abrahm and Maria Neufeldt, on April 3, 1932.
Wally leaves behind the love of his life, his wife Ella, three beloved daughters; Janet, Brenda (Dave), Gwen (Tim), his cherished grandchildren Ellie (Doug), Ryan (Lana) Eric, Kevin, Trevor (Montana), and greatgrandchildren Arthur, Duncan, and Sophia. He also leaves behind his brother Jacob (Irene), sister Adeana (Pete), and sister-inlaws Violet and Millie.
At 17, Wally joined the army in the Canadian Airborne Regiment as a paratrooper, and bravely served our country overseas in Korea. After his military service he met his beautiful future bride, Ella in Lethbridge, Alberta, were married, and started their family. He established his profession as a corporate banker, ending his 35 year business career retiring from GE Canada Equipment Financing as a Senior Branch Manager. He was well known in the business community for his integrity, a man of his word, and a friend to many.
Wally was truly a fearless one of a kind man with an incredible love of life, and lived many adventures. He was a genuine Renaissance man, a lifelong learner with an insatiable appetite for reading and acquiring new skills. His many interests and self-taught skills included sausage making, gardening, fishing, hunting, cooking, carpentry, and a great love of hummingbirds. His strong faith and love of singing as a tenor in the Church Choir with Ella led him to run weekly hymn sing at the Simon Fraser Senior’s Lodge for many years.
Wally’s sense of humor, infectious laughter, story-telling and a smile that would light up a room will be remembered by his family, and all who knew him. Wally loved and valued his family, friends, and his dog Blue. He was always lending a hand to those in need, and shared his vast knowledge with many.
Wally will be greatly missed by family and friends. A service will take place at 2:00 pm on Saturday, September 14th, 2019 at the College Heights Baptist Church, 5401 Moriarty Crescent. Donations can be made to Rotary Hospice House in Wally’s name, or a charity of your choice.
JOHN E KRAUSE
May 3, 1942 - Aug 19, 2019
It is with heavy hearts that we announce the passing of John on the evening of August 19th at Prince George Rotary Hospice House, with family by his side. John was predeceased by his parents, Eugene in 1954 and Hilda in 1967 John is survived by his wife of 53 years, Irene. Also left to cherish his memory are his children Eugene (Lisa), Carolyn, and Michael (Clarice); and three precious grandchildrenMatteo, Trayce and Mila. He also leaves behind siblings - Betty Krause and Albert Coutu (Kelly) and many more relatives and friends. John will be greatly missed by all.
A celebration of life to be held September 7, 2019 at the Columbus Community Centre, 7201 Domano Blvd. Prince George, BC, between 11 am - 3 pm. Bring your favourite stories to share. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to a charity of your choice.
Steven Anthony Felker (Mistahiy) March 9, 1976August 28, 2019
Steve passed peacefully on to the spirit world on August 28, 2019 surrounded by loving family and friends.
Steve was born in Quesnel, BC on Tuesday March 9, 1976, baby brother to sister Lea (Adrienne) Felker. Steve was a good dad and deeply loved his children: his little kids Adrienne and Anthony Felker; and his big kids Max Stewart-Michell, Shakira Michell and Micheal Angus. He also loved and watched over his now grown nephews Nicholas and Dylan Felker their whole lives.
Steve also leaves behind to mourn his passing his girlfriend, Corie Skulsh and her family; mom, Barb Ward-Burkitt and stepdad, Jim Burkitt; cousins, Sheryl Elgie and Crystal Garro; many cousins, aunts and uncles; and numerous long time friends.
You are gone Steve, but will never be forgotten.
aminimumofsevenyearsinasawmill.Theideal candidatewouldhaveaddedtechnicalcoursestohis resume,AdvancedPLCtraining,designingand workingwithAllenBradleyforcorrectiveand preventivemaintenance.Excellenthourlyrateand benefits.Ourelectricaldepartmenthasrotatingday
Andrew John Haan
April 11, 1963August 20, 2019
Andrew passed away peacefully at the Prince George Hospice House on August 20, 2019. He was taken from us far too soon after a six year battle with cancer. Throughout his fight he never lost his sense of humour, even when the cancer took away so much of what he loved to do including hiking with his dogs, golfing, photography and being a professional driver. Andrew is survived by his beloved wife and best friend Trina, fur babies Max and Smokey and his birds. He is also survived by his mother Elizabeth, sisters Sarah (Rob), Jane and their families. Andrew will also be dearly missed by his in-laws Judy, Larry and Trish, all of his extended family and a huge group of friends. He was predeceased by his father John and all of his aunts, uncles, and grandparents. He was also predeceased by his fur babies Gizmo, Goofy, Maggie, Molly, Monty, Bandit and Murphy. Andrew had a twenty day stay at the Hospice House and the staff and volunteers ensured our entire family had the opportunity to make important memories in such a loving atmosphere. Thank you to everyone who had a chance to visit us all there. You all helped make such a scary time so much easier. Throughout Andrew’s journey he met many health professionals and we would like to thank them all for their compassion and care.
A special thank you to Dr. Kathleen O’Malley for always making sure we had everything we needed. Also a huge thank you to Dr Kraima, Tracy and Marilyn for making sure Andrew’s last eight months were as pain free as possible. You allowed him a quality of life that we did not believe was possible. Andrew will forever be remembered for his big heart and his quick wit. His laugh lit up the room and he will be missed by everyone who had the pleasure of meeting him. We know he is now pain free and playing golf and hiking with his fur kids. He was also looking forward to a brand new Freightliner to drive.
A service to celebrate Andrew’s life will be held at the Grace Anglican Church on Saturday September 7, 2019 at 11:30AM with a tea to follow downstairs at the church. In lieu of flowers we will have donation boxes at the church for the Prince George Hospice Society and the Prince George SPCA.
Peter Lukianchuk August 28, 1931August 27, 2019
Peter (Blonde Pete) passed away on August 27, 2019 at the age of 87. His parents, five brothers and three sisters predecease him. There is no service by his request, in lieu of flowers; donations can be made to the Canadian Cancer Society.
Obituaries
Adult & Youth Newspaper Carriers
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• • Moncton, Queens, Peidmont, Rochester, Renison, McMaster, Osgood, Marionopolis.
• Quinson Area
• Lyon, Moffat, Ogilvie, Patterson, Kelly, Hammond, Ruggles, Nicholson
Full Time and Temporary Routes Available. Contact for Details 250-562-3301 or rss@pgcitizen.ca
