Daniella Vdengwu, a Grade 2 student at Sacred Heart School, plays on some of the new playground equipment over the lunch hour on Thursday. The school is celebrated its 70th anniversary by holding a barbecue on Thursday evening. The school also thanked the many donors, including IDL Projects, Pittman Ashphalt and Novatone, who contributed more than $200,000 to refurbish the playground, basketball courts, garden area and field at the school.
Glacier Media
The provincial government should move casinos to cashless gaming systems as seen in other countries to cut money laundering, Union of B.C. Municipalities (UBCM) delegates voted Sept. 26.
A motion from Delta said there’s credible evidence linking B.C. casinos to organized crime and large-scale money laundering but added, “The current regulatory and monitoring system has failed to stop money fraud in B.C. casinos.”
The approved resolution requested Victoria take immediate steps to address money laundering in casinos and to undertake an evaluation of cashless gaming systems, whereby account-based card technologies are used to verify player identity and track gambling transactions on all gaming devices.
Earlier this week, Simon Fraser University School of Public Policy Prof. Maureen Maloney said a key to combating money laundering
is ensuring governments, regulators and industry are sharing data across Canada.
Maloney authored the report
Combating Money Laundering in B.C. Real Estate. Researchers found $46.7 billion was laundered through Canada’s economy in 2018. Of that, Alberta had $10.2 billion, Ontario $8.2 billion and B.C. $6.3 billion.
And, that, Finance Minister Carole James said, has added five per cent to the price of B.C. residences. James said that translates to an average price boost of $32,000 for a condominium, $39,000 for a townhouse and $71,000 for a detached house.
The UBCM resolutions committee noted membership in 2011 endorsed a resolution calling for changes to provincial gaming governance in part to address concerns that criminals were using casinos to launder illegally gained money.
In May 2019, the provincial government announced that it would hold a public inquiry into money laundering.
Mark NIELSEN Citizen staff mnielsen@pgcitizen.ca
The city’s first burst of subzero weather for this season is in the cards.
The overnight low is forecast to dip to -2 Celsius over Friday night and is to be followed by dips to -4 C, -3 C and -1 C over the three nights to follow, according to Environment Canada.
Daytime highs, meanwhile, are to reach 8 C on Friday, when there is a 40-per-cent chance of rain showers or wet flurries, followed by 9 C on Saturday and Sunday and 11 C on Monday.
Given the time of year, it’s to be expected, said Environment Canada meteorologist Doug Jones, who attributed the event to a colder air mass moving in from the Yukon and Northwest Territories.
He also urged drivers planning to drive through the Pine Pass or through the Rockies to be prepared.
“Especially in Southern B.C., the mountain passes will be snowy likely at the beginning of the weekend, so people might want to put their winter tires on a little earlier if they’re planning on travelling out and about,” Jones said.
Environment Canada is calling for warmer temperatures by the middle of next week but it should be short lived.
“There is another system that may move down towards the end of next week, so the general pattern for the next week to 10 days is generally colder than average and unsettled,” Jones said.
Meteorological fall began Sept. 1 and meteorological winter begins Dec. 1. Jones said the change over that time can be drastic.
“So every time we head downhill, it feels worse because the drop is bigger than the rise,” he added. “It does give a little bit of a shock... but it’s Canada after all.”
Expect below-zero daytime highs in about six to eight weeks.
Looking back, Jones said rainfall over the past 30 days was close to the average of 55 millimetres. It was wetter than usual to the south and drier than usual to the north, he added.
He declined to provide specifics on where exactly he found it, but Prince George resident Larry Johnson found this mushroom of gigantic proportions last week while out exploring west of the city. Measuring nearly one metre across, it’s a shaggy parasol, and it’s edible. It was too big to fit the whole thing in his frying pan, but Johnson was able to make a meal of it by frying it in butter with salt and pepper. Johnson said he also made a point of cutting it off at the stem, rather than tear it out by its roots, so it could grow back.
Derrick PENNER Vancouver Sun
When log-haul contractor Levi Brownscombe left his home in Hixon, 60 kilometres south of Prince George, at 2:30 a.m. on Wednesday, there were already logging trucks on the road driving south to join the protest convoy headed to Downtown Vancouver.
More trucks joined at Quesnel, Williams Lake and other towns along Highway 97 to a rally point in Merritt, with supporters showing up at the side of the road holding ‘We Love Loggers’ signs to cheer them on.
“We’re talking four in the morning, and they got up to wave us on, and it hasn’t stopped,” Brownscombe said, “We feel supported.”
Brownscombe, 24, is an independent contractor with two trucks and is a five-year veteran of the industry. He hasn’t lost work yet, but knows many other drivers who have run out of contracting jobs during what has become a long summer of production curtailments and closures at more than 20 Interior sawmills. He is nervous enough about the future to take part in the effort.
Some 3,000 mill workers have lost work in direct employment this summer, 500 permanently and another 750 indefinitely, according to the province’s last count. Indirect job losses among contractors and logging-truck drivers haven’t been tallied.
Logging-truck drivers are hardworking people, Brownscombe said, and “it speaks volumes” when upwards of 200 of them have the time to take part in the convoy. The protest aimed to make the point that small-town
B.C. is hurting, and needs help.
“We don’t want to see smalltown B.C. die,” Brownscombe said, and he wanted to join the effort because “small-town B.C. needs forestry.”
The number of trucks turned into something around 300 in a convoy that stretched 17 km, said organizer Howard McKinnon, a
Merritt-based trucking contractor.
McKinnon, along with coorganizer Frank Etchart, started planning the protest six days ago and the idea spread rapidly on social media.
“Last Friday, Frank Etchart and I, over coffee, were wondering when we were going to go back to work,” said McKinnon, a second-
generation trucking operator with 40 years in the business. “And we thought we’ve got to do something – do something to support the towns like Vavenby and 100 Mile House that have lost their mills in a permanent capacity.”
Having taken part in a 1994 convoy of trucks to Victoria in a previous downturn, McKinnon said “let’s do a rally.”
From the rallying point in Merritt, the convoy culminated in a boisterous procession of logging trucks rumbling in a circuit past the Vancouver Convention Centre, honking their horns in a staccato cacophony as they passed by.
“We’re not here for a handout,” McKinnon said. “I want to make that perfectly clear, we’re here to secure jobs in the forest industry.”
Loggers are looking for changes to B.C.’s stumpage system that he believes the province can make. Stumpage is the fee paid by forestry companies for the rights to cut timber on Crown land. Stumpage rates are calculated quarterly, using a formula that reflects market prices for lumber, which is important because of the CanadaU.S. softwood lumber dispute.
Forest Minister Doug Donaldson, in announcing a $69-million aid package for the beleaguered industry last week, said he wasn’t prepared to alter stumpage because of the risk to Canada’s position that provinces don’t subsidize the industry. McKinnon, however, argued that if stumpage rates were calculated more frequently, it might more accurately reflect the type and amount of wood being cut, potentially reducing costs for lumber companies.
Donaldson met with the convoy late Wednesday afternoon.
“I know that (mill closures) is a terrible situation for these smallbusiness people to be facing, and our government is working with them to address their short-term needs,” he said. “We talked about the $69-million assistance package… and committed to meet with the contractors again next week to discuss other ways to assist their sector.”
McKinnon said he knows of B.C. loggers who have gone to Alberta
to work, because mills there “are operating flat out.”
B.C.’s Interior mills are also running into timber shortages in the aftermath of the mountain pine beetle infestation and record years for forest fires in 2017 and 2018.
McKinnon said the industry has known that timber shortages were coming, but more mills could still be operating now if the province could step in to help reduce the costs of their timber supplies.
“We don’t have the luxury of time anymore,” McKinnon said.
“We have run out of money and we refuse to just sit by silent and watch it all come crashing down.”
Brownscombe followed his father into the industry and wants to maintain his hope for a long-term future. In the short term, however, “I’m as unsure and uneasy as anyone,” Brownscombe said.
The sawmill near Hixon that he contracts to is still running, but Brownscombe worries whether it might have to take downtime in 2020.
Brownscombe travelled to the Vancouver rally with his girlfriend, Paige Johnston, a fourth-year forest ecology student at the University of Northern B.C. Johnston crammed in extra work to finish assignments early so she could miss a few days of class because she felt it was important enough for her to take part.
“It’s a little bit nerve-racking,” Johnston said about being in a class that graduates next spring facing an industry in turmoil.
Starting last May, companies have listed five sawmills – four in the Interior – for permanent closure, cut the number of shifts at three mills and indefinitely curtailed four more.
Johnston said the summer jobs for some of her classmates ended early because of closures, “and we haven’t gotten into the workforce yet.”
She added that “a lot of people close to me” drive logging trucks or are involved in logging contracting, including her father and brother.
“I want to support people like me looking for a future, hopping for a better one,” Johnston said.
Medical incident behind playground death, RCMP say Prince George RCMP believe a “medical incident” was the cause of death for a person whose body was discovered at the Duchess Community Park on Tuesday morning.
“Anyone affected by this incident is urged to speak to someone about it for their own mental wellness,” RCMP added in a statement issued Wednesday. The Prince George RCMP’s Victim Services Section is available for support and can be reached at 250-561-3329. The Crisis Prevention, Intervention and Information Centre is available 24 hours a day at 1-888-562-1214. Both services are free of charge.
— Citizen staff
Ministry of Social Development and Poverty Reduction
Shane Simpson will be in Prince George on Saturday to get feedback from the public about accessibility in the province. The event is set for Duchess Park Secondary School, 747 Winnipeg St., from 2:30 to 5 p.m.
— Citizen staff
The City of Prince George is welcoming applications for funding from two grant programs. The community enhancement grant offers $200 to $1,000 for projects to improve neighbourhoods, foster civic pride, and “grow a proud, confident, safe, sustainable and healthy community.” Past recipients include the organizers of Candy Cane Lane, the College Heights Community Association Halloween event, and the 12th Avenue garden project. The contact for this program is Marta Gregor, 250.561.7798 or marta.gregor@ princegeorge.ca. The myPG grant helps local organizations develop and implement innovative activities, projects, and events. Eligible activities can be large or small, and activities or projects and should be accessible to residents of all backgrounds, ethnicities and income levels. The contacts for this program are Sarah Brown, 250.614.7897 or sarah.brown@ princegeorge.ca, and Doug Hofstede, 250.561.7646 or doug. hofstede@princegeorge.ca Applications can be submitted through the city website, princegeorge.ca. The deadline is Oct. 15.
— Citizen staff
VICTORIA (CP) — Six homeowners have launched a legal challenge against British Columbia’s speculation and vacancy tax, arguing the law is unconstitutional and the provincial government doesn’t have the power to collect revenues from the levy. The homeowners filed their petition Thursday in B.C. Supreme Court in Vancouver. The lead petitioners are two Victoria area residents, Denise Simpson, 72, and her husband Robert Simpson, 93. Four other homeowners from Metro Vancouver have joined the petition. Lawyer Kailin Che, whose firm Lawrence Wong and Associates is representing the homeowners, says Denise Simpson is a Canadian citizen and has lived in her home since she was five. She inherited the home from her mother 20 years ago.
“In her words, it’s the last piece of physical connection she has to her family, who have all passed away,” Che said. The Simpsons are joint owners of the property and both their names are on the property title, but Robert is a U.S. citizen. They live part of the year in Texas, which under the speculation tax means the Simpsons are classified as a satellite family and that results in a $6,000 tax bill.
Local firefighters with Prince George Fire/Rescue held their annual boot campaign to raise funds for Muscular Dystrophy Canada on Sept. 6-7.
The local Rona matched the funds raised by the firefighters on the Saturday they were set-up at Rona. Wednesday Rona showed their generous support of the firefighter fund raising efforts and donated a cheque for $1,000 to MD Canada. This year the firefighters raised a total of $23,000 through out the community.
Laura KANE The Canadian Press
VANCOUVER — A jury has found a father guilty of killing his two young daughters in his apartment in a Victoria suburb on Christmas Day in 2017.
Andrew Berry hung his head as the verdict was announced Thursday, finding him guilty of two counts of second-degree murder in the deaths of four-yearold Aubrey Berry and six-year-old Chloe Berry.
The verdict also elicited a loud gasp of relief from a woman in the front row of the courtroom and she later embraced Crown prosecutors outside.
Berry had pleaded not guilty to the murders of the little girls in his home in Oak Bay.
British Columbia Supreme Court Justice Miriam Gropper told jury members she knew they had been through a “great deal” in reaching their unanimous verdict before she gave them time to consider whether they wanted to make a recommendation on Berry’s eligibility for parole.
Second-degree murder carries an automatic life sentence, but parole eligibility can range from 10 to 25 years. In cases where a person is convicted of multiple counts, they may serve each period consecutively or concurrently.
The jury deliberated for about an hour before returning with their recommendation. Two jurors recommended 10 years concurrently, six recommended 15 years consecutively, while four made no recommendation.
Crown and defence lawyers declined to speak outside the court. A date for a sentencing hearing will be set on Oct. 9 in Victoria.
The trial heard that police found the two children dead on beds in separate bedrooms with dozens of stab wounds. Berry was found naked in the bathtub with stab wounds to his neck and throat, and he told first responders “Kill me” and “Leave me alone” when they arrived.
In his testimony, Berry told the jury that two men connected to a loan shark named Paul stored what he believed was a bag of drugs at his apartment in March 2017 in exchange for a delay in the repayment of a loan worth thousands of dollars.
Berry testified that he was attacked by a man with dark skin and hair, but the Crown argued his wounds were self-inflicted after a failed suicide attempt.
In his closing submission, Crown attorney Patrick Weir said Berry’s testimony was “like the plot from a bad low-budget movie.”
“Like everything in his life, he wouldn’t accept his responsibility,” he said. “There was no Paul... no dark-skinned child murderer...”
Weir said the motive for the murders was Berry’s “long-simmering animosity” towards his estranged partner, Sarah Cotton, who he believed planned to seek an end to their joint custody of the girls after Christmas.
“If he couldn’t have them, Sarah couldn’t either,” he told the jury.
Defence lawyer Kevin McCullough said the Crown’s case was circumstantial and Berry was consistent in his denials.
McCullough also disputed the Crown’s claim that Berry attempted suicide after killing his daughters.
“The accused was subjected to the most rigorous cross-examination in this trial and his evidence, whether you like it or not, was eternally consistent,” McCullough said in his closing arguments.
Citizen staff
A new chief executive officer for the Prince George Airport Authority has been hired.
Currently the managing director of the North Peace Airport in Fort St. John, Gordon Duke will take on the new role in Prince George on Nov. 1.
He takes over from John Gibson, who announced in March he would be leaving at the expiry of his contract this year and sparked a search for a replacement.
“Our board is thrilled to appoint Gordon Duke as our CEO. In our extensive search, Gordon impressed us with his qualifications and reputation. We think that he will be a great fit for the community,” said PGAA board of directors chair Dean Mason in a statement issued Thursday.
“We have had a decade of excellent growth and airport improvements, and we will continue our strategic growth with Gordon Duke as CEO.”
Duke’s background includes 11 years with Air Canada Cargo, an eight-year period as director of operations at Halifax Regional Airport, as well as time with GardaWorld Aviation Services.
He has served as chair of the Canadian Airport Council’s operations, safety and
technical affairs committee, and “brings a high degree of technical skill to the job, including logistics, Six Sigma and labour relations,” according to the PGAA.
“I’m excited to join PGAA and the Prince George community. I look forward to bringing my skills and leadership style to their strong team of professionals,” said Duke.
Mike BLANCHFIELD The Canadian Press
Justin Trudeau and Andrew Scheer evoked the populism-fuelled political turmoil in the United States and Britain and the SNC-Lavalin scandal to vilify each other on the federal campaign trail Thursday.
The Liberal leader drew a link between his Conservative opponent and the instability caused by the impeachment drama unfolding in the U.S. and the Brexit agony that has racked the U.K. Trudeau revived his accusation that Scheer is relying on the “politics of fear” to scare voters.
Scheer returned to the SNC-Lavalin affair that has dogged Trudeau in recent months by promising a new law to investigate “sleazy” politicians.
Trudeau fired the first shot on Thursday, saying the uncertainty in the United States and Britain serves as a warning to Canadian voters to resist the pull of divisive populism that he accuses his Conservative opponents of fostering.
While he did not mention President Donald Trump or Prime Minister Boris Johnson by name, Trudeau continued to link Scheer to other conservative politicians, such as Ontario Premier Doug Ford and former prime minister Stephen Harper.
Trudeau said Scheer is running on the same failed Harper policies as the Tories did in the 2015 campaign that brought the Liberals to power.
“Some of the consequences of the populist tendencies that we’ve seen over the past few years in places like the U.K. and the United States are clearly on display for Canadians right now,” Trudeau said in the Lake Laurentian Conservation Area in Sudbury, Ont., after announcing a series of new environmental conservation measures.
It was the latest in a series of environment-related announcements this week, including a pledge to protect one-fourth of Canada’s lands and oceans by 2025 and
measures to help low-income families go camping in national or provincial parks. Afterwards, Trudeau headed to a rally in Peterborough, where cabinet minister Maryam Monsef is fighting to keep her seat.
Trudeau has branded Scheer a climatechange laggard and said he would be joining Friday’s large climate change protest in Montreal, where Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old Swedish climate activist, is expected to be feted for her symbolic leadership in the movement to fight climate change.
Scheer said he plans to be in Vancouver on Friday but he responded with a scathing attack on Trudeau in his own backyard – the Montreal riding of Papineau – where Scheer promised a Conservative government would launch a judicial inquiry into
the SNC-Lavalin affair.
Only an inquiry would provide Canadians the answers they deserve about the government’s involvement in SNC-Lavalin’s criminal prosecution.
“It’s a cover-up on an historic scale,” said Scheer.
Scheer said he would introduce legislation that would allow the RCMP to ask the Supreme Court of Canada for access to information covered by cabinet confidence, saying it would prevent politicians from hiding behind the current system that’s meant to permit frank and open discussions among ministers.
“The measures I’ve announced today and others I will announce later in the campaign will safeguard our democracy against the whims of sleazy and unscrupulous politi-
cians,” Scheer said.
In August, the federal ethics watchdog ruled that Trudeau violated the Conflict of Interest Act by improperly pressuring former attorney general Jody WilsonRaybould to stop the prosecution of the Montreal-based engineering giant. Trudeau has refused to apologize and said he was only trying to protect Canadian jobs by pushing for a deferred prosecution agreement, which offers companies facing criminal charges the option of paying fines or other remediation and demonstrating they’ve changed their ways, rather than facing criminal punishment.
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh said Thursday he supports an inquiry and has been calling for one since the scandal erupted.
But he criticized Scheer for not saying whether he approves of deferred prosecution agreements in principle. Singh has said the NDP would do away with them.
“The root cause of this was a deferred prosecution agreement and he (Scheer) hasn’t talked about that,” Singh said in Campbell River, B.C., where he announced an NDP government would offer an annual rent subsidy of up to $5,000 to help families struggling to afford housing.
Singh was spending his third consecutive day in British Columbia trying to protect some of his party’s ridings from a surging Green Party. Vancouver Island is where the Greens see their best chances of picking up seats, after a byelection win over the New Democrats in Nanaimo-Ladysmith in May.
Green Leader Elizabeth May was focused on breaking new ground in Quebec. She was in Montreal on Thursday, alongside several Quebec candidates, before her own participation in the Friday climate march.
“The province of Quebec has been playing a leadership role for a long time. We have in this country everything we need to make a change that ensures our children have a livable world,” she said.
Adina BRESGE
The Canadian Press
She’s not old enough to get her learner’s permit, but Autumn Peltier has been a driving force in the fight to protect water in Canada’s Indigenous communities for years.
The teenage activist from Wiikwemkoong First Nation on Manitoulin Island in northern Ontario has been engaged in the issue since she first came across a boil-water advisory in a nearby Anishinaabe community when she was eight years old.
But Peltier said she’s had this connection since she was in the womb, where according to cultural teachings, one learns to love water as they love their mother. It traces back even further to her female ancestors, from whom she inherited her traditional role as a water carrier.
As she turns 15 on Friday, the same day students across Canada are expected to march in a massive strike intended to disrupt climate-change inaction, Peltier finds herself at the forefront of an environmental movement being
led by youth like her and Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg.
This weekend, Peltier – the chief water commissioner for Anishinabek Nation, which advocates for 40 member First Nations in Ontario – will return to the United Nations to share her vision for a world in which everyone has access to clean water.
“I’m willing to do my best to represent Canada and the Indigenous people and have a strong voice for our future,” she said by phone from New York.
“I basically want to tell them about the importance of water from a cultural, spiritual level, and then try to tell them that it’s time for action.”
Peltier is set to address hundreds of international guests on Saturday at the Global Landscapes Forum, a platform on land use backed by UN Environment.
It’s her second time speaking at the UN headquarters in Manhattan, having urged the General Assembly to “warrior up” and take a stand for our planet last year.
Peltier, who is nominated for the 2019 International Children’s Peace Prize by the David Suzuki
Foundation, has spread her message at hundreds of events around the world, her mother, Stephanie Peltier, said.
In 2015, Peltier attended the Children’s Climate Conference in Sweden, and a year later, confronted Prime Minister Justin Trudeau about his “broken promises” at a meeting of the Assembly of First Nations.
“She has taken Canada’s water crisis on Indigenous lands to the global stage,” Robert Nasi, executive director of the Global Land-
scapes Forum, said in a statement.
Peltier will help kick off the forum’s conference on ecosystem restoration with a speech drawing on her spiritual knowledge about Indigenous Peoples’ connection to land, water and Mother Earth.
The event comes on the heels of the UN’s Climate Action Summit, where earlier this week 16-year-old Thunberg delivered an impassioned plea and scolded world leaders for their inaction on climate change. Thunberg is expected to attend Friday’s climate protests in Montreal.
Peltier had hoped to meet up with Thunberg in New York, but said making plans proved to be difficult. She’s still excited to connect with other international youth activists, particularly those from Indigenous communities.
Peltier feels her generation is leading the charge on climate change, because while they may not have created the problem, they’re poised to suffer the most severe consequences.
“Will we even have a future to look forward to, for our future children, grandchildren?” she said.
“This is our future we’re trying to
protect and take care of, because it’s being basically destroyed.” With youth-led climate strikes sprouting up across the globe, Peltier’s mother said there are signs that adults are finally catching up.
“Where I come from, the youth are our teachers. We learn from them, and so you have to listen to them,” Stephanie Peltier said. “Today, I think it’s just an eye-opener, and the youth are being empowered and they’re being allowed to share.”
She said her daughter’s Instagram audience has seen a tenfold increase this week from 5,500 followers to more than 55,000 as of Thursday afternoon.
She assumes that Thunberg’s moment in the global spotlight may be a factor in this exponential growth. She noted that young Indigenous activists have long been advocating for environmental issues, but are only now receiving recognition.
“We know first hand... that our people have been impacted for many years,” she said. “Now everybody’s saying, hey, what about the Indigenous people? They’ve been doing this work too.”
Dirk MEISSNER
The Canadian Press
VICTORIA — The number of doctors in Canada is growing at a rate more than double that of the population, says a report by the Canadian Institute of Health Information.
Canada’s population increased by 4.6 per cent between 2014 and 2018, while the number of physicians grew by 12.5 per cent over the same time period, says the report released Thursday.
Manitoba and British Columbia registered the largest increases in doctors at more than 17 per cent each while Quebec had the lowest level of physician growth at 5.9 per cent, just below the 6.5 per cent growth in Nova Scotia.
While the supply of doctors has grown faster than the population over the past dozen years, many Canadians continue to report difficulties finding a family physician, said Geoff Ballinger, the institute’s physician information manager.
“The big question is why does there seem to be this disconnect between the growing numbers of physicians and the fact that around the same proportion of Canadians are still having a challenge accessing physicians,” he said.
The Canadian Institute of Health Information is an independent, not-for-profit organization that works with governments and stakeholders to gather and provide
information on policy, management, care and research.
The report found that in 2018 there were almost 90,000 physicians in Canada, which is equivalent to 241 physicians per 100,000 population, the highest number per capita ever, said Ballinger.
Statistics Canada figures from 2016 show 15.8 per cent of Canadians aged 12 and older, or about 4.8 million people, reported they didn’t have a regular health care provider.
The figures show Quebec, at 25.6 per cent, had the highest proportion of residents who were without a regular doctor, followed by Saskatchewan at 18.7 per cent and Alberta at 18 per cent.
Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau made an election promise earlier this week to ensure all Canadians have access to a family doctor.
Ballinger said the higher figures were encouraging for patients looking for a regular physician.
“The issue that we don’t have a handle on yet is whether those increased numbers of physicians are perhaps in parts of the province where the greatest need is,” he said. “We are seeing across the country that patients do have an issue trying to get access to a physician, particularly patients more in rural and remote areas.”
The report also reveals a changing demographic trend among the physician population, citing more female doctors in Canada than ever before.
B.C. offers
VANCOUVER (CP) — The B.C. government is offering rebates for electric vehicle drivers who want to install charging stations at home or work.
Homeowners can get a $350 rebate to install a Level 2 charging station in a singlefamily home.
A $2,000 rebate is available for installation of a Level 2 charging station designed for multiple users in apartments or workplaces.
The government says in a statement that BC Hydro customers can apply for an additional $350 in a matching rebate to buy and install the equipment in single-family homes.
More than $4 million has been set aside for the new CleanBC rebate program.
Michelle Mungall, minister of energy, mines and petroleum resources, says the rebates will make it easier to switch to electric vehicles.
To qualify for the rebates, the stations must be installed and final documents submitted by March 31.
VANCOUVER (CP) — Police
say a man has pleaded guilty in British Columbia Supreme Court to conspiracy in the murder of a gang member at the height of Metro Vancouver’s gang war in 2009.
Police say 38-year-old Kreshnik Ismailaj pleaded guilty more than a decade after Kevin LeClair was murdered in a hail of gunfire at a Langley shopping centre.
At the time of the murder, police said LeClair was a highranking member of the Red Scorpion gang.
Cory Valley, who police have said was a member of a rival gang, was convicted last year of first-degree murder and conspiracy to murder LeClair.
Supt. Paul Dadwal of B.C.’s gang squad, the Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit, says Ismailaj and his fellow gang members are responsible for an “unprecedented level of gang violence in the history of British Columbia.” Dadwal says the latest conviction should send a message to those involved in organized crime that police will relentlessly pursue justice.
VANCOUVER (CP) — A woman found guilty of smothering her eight-year-old daughter and sentenced to life without chance of parole for 15 years is appealing the conviction and sentence.
Lisa Batstone’s lawyer Eric Gottardi and the British Columbia Prosecution Service confirmed Thursday she had filed appeals with the B.C. Court of Appeal. B.C. Supreme Court Justice Catherine Murray said while delivering her sentence earlier this month that Batstone killed her daughter Teagan in a “selfish” and “deliberate” act. Murray said Batstone’s goal was to hurt her ex-husband when she held a plastic bag over the little girl’s nose and mouth until she died on Dec. 10, 2014, in Surrey. Batstone was convicted of second-degree murder, which carries an automatic life sentence, but the Crown asked that she be ineligible to apply for parole for 16 to 18 years, while the defence sought 10year term.
Murray said although Batstone likely had borderline personality disorder, it didn’t significantly diminish her culpability and she told several lies to psychiatrists in an effort to be found not criminally responsible for the murder due to a mental disorder.
The Canadian Press
SURREY — The RCMP will release its investigative findings today into the murders of three people in northern British Columbia that sparked a manhunt for two teenage suspects across Western Canada.
Bryer Schmegelsky, who was 18, and 19-year-old Kam McLeod were found dead of self-inflicted gunshot wounds last month in the wilderness of northern Manitoba.
Before their deaths, the teens were charged with the murder of Leonard Dyck, a University of British Columbia botany lecturer, and were also suspects in the deaths of American Chynna Deese and her Australian boyfriend Lucas Fowler.
Police have said it appears Schmegelsky and McLeod were dead for a number of days before their bodies were found on Aug. 7.
The RCMP committed to publicly sharing the details of its investigation after providing the families in the case with an update.
Police said two firearms were found with the dead men.
The manhunt began July 23 when police announced Schmegelsky and McLeod were suspects in the deaths.
The young men had initially been considered missing persons when a truck and camper they were driving was found burned a few kilometres from where Dyck’s body was discovered at a highway pullout on July 15.
The bodies of Deese and Fowler were found near the Alaska Highway, 470 kilometres from where Dyck’s body was discovered, on July 19.
The manhunt for McLeod and Schmegelsky led to Gillam, Man., where Dyck’s Toyota Rav 4 was found burned. Officers converged on the area to begin what would be a two-week
The RCMP will release its findings in the investigation into the murders of three people in northern B.C. today. McLeod and Schmegelsky were suspects in the murders.
search. Police used drones, dogs and even had help from the Canadian Armed Forces to scour the remote area.
The search was scaled back July 31 and a few days later a damaged rowboat was found in the Nelson River. A search of the river turned
up little of interest, police said.
On Aug. 6, police said some items linked to Schmegelsky and McLeod were found on the river’s shore. The bodies were discovered the next day, about a kilometre from where police said they found the items.
Bob WEBER The Canadian Press
Scientists spent weeks up to their elbows in coffee grounds and banana peels to come up with what they say is the most accurate measure yet of how much food is wasted in Canadian kitchens.
“To be honest, it’s not something you’d want to do forever,” said Michael von Massow, a food economist at the University of Guelph.
Food waste has become an increasingly hot research topic in recent years.
Previous efforts have relied on industry data or household self-reporting to assess how much uneaten food goes in the garbage. But people underestimate how much they chuck and industry figures provide little detail on individual homes.
The only way, von Massow thought, was to get down and dirty.
He and his research colleagues worked with 94 households in Guelph, Ont.. The scientists took out the trash, went through recycling, organic waste and composting, separated mushy asparagus from dubious rice and weighed it all out over the course of several weeks.
“Rubber gloves,” von Massow laughs. “It’s not as bad as you might think.”
Items commonly dumped down the sink, such as expired milk or mouldy yogurt, weren’t measured.
The detailed, teabag-by-applecore approach allowed von Massow to precisely measure just how much was thrown out and whether it was once edible. That was crucial for determining the value of what got tossed.
“If you have a T-bone steak and you throw that bone out, putting a value on that bone of whatever you paid for the steak seems inaccurate,” von Massow said.
Waste from the families, all of whom had young children, varied widely. Some threw out up to eight kilograms of once-edible food a week, some barely one-sixteenth of that. The median figure was 2 1/2 kilograms.
That represents enough calories to have an adult over for dinner five nights a week without adding a dime to the grocery bill.
The value of that food was about $18. Producing and disposing of it generated about 23 kilograms of greenhouse gases.
Bread, tomatoes and apples were the top three items. Chicken was the most frequent meat.
Von Massow’s figures are lower than those arrived at in some previous research. A 2017 study estimated the amount of avoidable food waste in Canada at 2.7 kilograms per household.
Von Massow attributes that to his exclusion of non-edible waste.
Going through the garbage was revealing, he said. People know the
plastic wrap around that yucky cucumber should go in the recycling, but they toss it in the trash anyway.
“People hide things that they feel guilty about. I saw people hide batteries in a Pringles tube. They know they’re doing something they shouldn’t and I think the same thing happens with avoidable food waste.”
Von Massow acknowledges that his sample size is small and, to some extent, self-selecting. But he maintains his results are, if not statistically bulletproof, at least representative.
The point of the research, he said, is to eventually understand what works best to persuade people to cut down on food waste. For some, it’s an ethical issue. For others, it’s economic and for still others it’s an environmental problem.
For von Massow, spending weeks picking through garbage has already had one effect.
“We have not audited my house yet, but it sure makes me more cognizant of when I’m putting something into the garbage.”
Iam reluctant to write a letter to the editor of The Citizen since my last three letters have not been published. If I write a non provocative letter thanking the health care system for excellent care I received, for example, it gets published, but a letter on the civil war in Yugoslavia, raging at the time, with local illustration is, I guess, too flammable. Or my experience departing Hawaii where I was subjected to a shirt pulled over my head, pants down, frisking around in my underwear airport search while departing the U.S. compared to that received upon my arrival home – “welcome back to Canada, Mr. Hoffman, no, it doesn’t matter to us that you have a metal hip joint” – does not get published. It will be a rare day that I do another tourist trip to the U.S. Having gotten this off my chest, I am more confident Neil Godbout will publish this letter! Jo-Anne Berezanski, thank you for your eloquent letter. It was good to read and I am on the same page as you. I also will not be voting Liberal and not because of Justin Trudeau’s black or brown face, which I think are of negligible significance but I would like to present a slightly different perspective which I hope can still leave us on the same page.
I am a white man with some questions and observations. Who of us has not done or said something stupid in our immaturity 20 or 50 years ago, something we would say or do a little differently today if we had the chance? I have and I think every one else has, too. The mature way to handle this is to recognize that is the price paid to gain maturity for most of us. And it is not productive to judge history by today’s standards. I have noticed that mankind is racist and
suspicious of people different from oneself. This may not be nice but it seems to be the natural way we are. Perhaps part of original sin?
Like Trudeau, I grew up white but I was not privileged, yet I still had a massive blind spot regarding racism. I remember the first black family that moved into Kelowna and their son was seated beside me in Grade 1. Some of us in the class (including me) just stared. I had never seen a black person before and was astonished. I tentatively reached out my hand to touch his crinkly, coiled hair. It was so different from mine. There was no malice or racist intent in our stares or actions – just six-year-old children amazed at a very different looking person from what we had ever seen before.
Kelowna was a white town and most of Canada was white too. But even within the white world we could discriminate. My family was German. My mom remembers being called a Nazi while in Grade 3 in Alberta.
Mom’s family knew nothing about the Nazis but they had a funny last name and accents and that was enough.
On my father’s side, he was told in Canada you don’t spell Hoffmann with two “n”s and the teacher crossed one out. Others were told their names were too difficult to pronounce so effective right now your name is John or Mike. Heaven help you if you had the honourable name of Adolph. There was a lunatic in Europe who totally besmirched the name of Adolph so a friend of mine said “call me Al” and that’s what we have done for the last 60 years. We wanted to become Canadians so we assimilated. We have no divided loyalty and I think that’s a good thing for us and for Canada. When I see people dressing as though they live in
another country, that says “divided loyalty” to me.
We prided ourselves on being better than Americans with their history of outright slavery (slavery existed amongst our First Nations but we don’t talk about that much) and talked about how the underground railway brought blacks to Canada and to freedom and quietly went on being racist in our own way, to the Chinese, to anyone different from us.
The Japanese situation is a little different because Canada was at war and during war you throw away the rule book. I don’t think it is right to apologize to the Germans or Japanese who were mistreated in Canada during the war simply because we were at war and the rule book was out. After all, in war you kill people and give medals to those who kill many. But back on topic, even though we were racist, in the world context we were good and comparatively virtuous. That’s why Canada earned such a great reputation and people are dying to immigrate here. So let’s not be too hard on ourselves.
On a side note, it’s popular today to criticize our colonial past. England was the most enlightened colonial power of the day. There was no other colonial power who would have left a better legacy in Canada. Look at Hong Kong. Young people are fighting to preserve England’s colonial legacy there. On the other hand, I just returned from a small vacation on Haida Gwaii where I learned children from isolated fishing villages were sent to Edmonton during the 1960s for reeducation. Considering the poor travel conditions in northern B.C. at the time, that would be similar to sending children to the far side of the moon today.
Think fast! We have no more time.
There is no other Earth and this one is really, really sick.
Headlines in The Citizen read:
This: “Scheer, Trudeau spar over climate pledges; May offers cost breakdown.”
And: “Three local businesses reach carbon neutrality.”
And: “Victoria taking plastic bag ban to Supreme Court.”
And: “Paid to protect the planet - CEOs step up when bonuses tied to environmental goals.”
And: “Risk rising for oceans, report finds.”
The last headline is a report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, of September 2019. Our rising oceans are not just a problem for island nations or coastal waters.
Glaciers, which feed our rivers, normally melt a bit every year and are replenished every winter, but they are disappearing now, at an alarming rate. Permafrost, which is supposed to be permanent, has always stored twice as much carbon as the atmosphere – twice as much.
Oxygen is disappearing, the oceans are acidifying, which is killing shellfish and not birthing more of them. Fish and sea mammals have much less to eat. Salmon are in tremendous peril. Polar bears are emaciated and dying. Millions of Canadians, ocean to ocean to ocean, are being affected today. This is serious stuff.
The North and South Poles keep our planet cool enough to support all life. Polar ice refreshes the Earth every single winter season. When the ice at the poles is gone, there is no reflective cooling from the effects of the sun, on our Earth. The Earth will heat up beyond repair. We will burn up faster than the B.C. forest fires, the Australian forest fires, the fires in Portugal or the fires of the Amazon rainforest.
The single, most serious reason the Earth is burning up is because of the burning of fossil fuels: gas, oil and coal. And, what we call Big Oil, has known about the extreme damage this is causing since the 1970s.
We use it, we burn it. We must phase it out within this decade, not by 2030 or 2050, but within this decade. This isn’t a Conservative problem, or a New Democrat problem, or a Liberal problem or a Green Party problem. We can’t
What a horrible, beyond words horrible, way to treat children. And that was enlightened thinking of the day! At least in Canada we can talk about it. There are many countries where this would just be buried. Why is our media so politically correct to give platform to our whiners without balance?
Back on topic, if you went to a party then, where blackface would fit in, a white person did it because there were no black around to play the part. These activities were done without malicious intent.
And that’s what Trudeau is guilty of, too, just having fun without malicious intent. But why I won’t vote for him is that he has painted himself into such a self righteous, sanctimonious corner by pretending he never did such things and refusing to extend grace to his political opponents who have admitted to doing or saying similar things. Now that the universe knows Trudeau puts his pants on one leg at a time just like the rest of us he asks for forgiveness! The office of the prime minister deserves more depth of character and maturity than he can deliver. Besides, I’m not sure Canada can survive another term of his leadership. And where is the news media in all of this? The CBC must be deep in the Liberal Party’s pocket the way they do not present the news but rather interpret it so supportively of the Liberal Party.
While the Dominion of Canada was the best country in the world in 1955, it still managed to improve for the better and we are now used to seeing black, white, yellow, purple, whatever people and our sensitivity towards others has grown. This is a great thing. Let’s remember to get out and vote.
Thanks, Neil, for printing this letter.
Ernie
Hoffman, Prince George
pretend it’s “their” problem, it’s our problem.
The single, most serious problem we face is not the burning of fossil fuels, but our refusal to give a damn. Frankly, if we want to live, there is no more time to spare.
The single, most important thing we must do is to stop burning any fossil fuels for any reason, no exceptions, within this decade, not later, not by 2050, but now.
We cannot look away, because it’s staring us in the face. No more diddling about taking plastic bags to court or giving CEOs a bonus to do their jobs as human beings, no more pretending it will go away.
How desperate are we that a picture of Green Party leader Elizabeth May has been photoshopped to have her hold a reusable cup with a steel straw? We must move beyond staging and into the real world. May’s heart may be in the
right place, but we can no longer wait for someone else to get us out of this mess.
Should rogue actors get in the way, we must be brave enough to call them out and act collectively anyway. The rest of us have collective power. The expression “Necessity is the mother of invention” is a time-honoured concept we can rely on. Everyone must be involved, not just a handful of businesses or individuals pushing and pulling at
us for action from the edges. We must actually teach each other, learn from each other, discuss solutions openly, with everyone becoming upfront, front-of-mind aware of the danger we face. Then and only then can we act in concert to save the planet. Collectively – everybody –we must break the problem down and act in concert to fix it. It begins by learning exactly what is going wrong, worldwide, and acting step by step to stop the damage.
We can start here in B.C., in schools across the province. Let’s make environmental protection and restoration the first, most important topic in our schools. We need to relearn the compelling significance of our world’s environment. Thinking critically and acting critically about this problem is absolutely essential. Without a healthy environment, we just don’t survive, and neither does anything else.
Jan Manning, Prince George
LETTERS WELCOME: The Prince George Citizen welcomes letters to the editor from our readers. Submissions should be sent by email to: letters@pgcitizen.ca. No attachments, please. They can also be faxed to 250-960-2766, or mailed to 201-1777 Third Ave., Prince George, B.C. V2L 3G7. Maximum length is 750 words and writers are limited to one submission every week. We will edit letters only to ensure clarity, good taste, for legal reasons, and occasionally for length. Although we will not include your address and telephone number in the paper, we need both for verification purposes. Unsigned or handwritten letters will not be published. The Prince George Citizen is a member of the National Newsmedia Council, which is an independent organization established to deal with acceptable journalistic practices and ethical behaviour. If you have concerns about editorial content, please contact Neil Godbout (ngodbout@pgcitizen.ca or 250960-2759). If you are not satisfied with the response and wish to file a formal complaint, visit the web site at mediacouncil.ca or call toll-free 1-844-877-1163 for additional information.
Mailing address: 505 Fourth Ave. Prince George, B.C. V2L 3H2 Office hours: 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday to Friday
General switchboard: 250-562-2441 info@pgcitizen.ca General news: news@pgcitizen.ca
Sports inquiries: 250-960-2764 sports@pgcitizen.ca Classifieds advertising: 250-562-6666 cls@pgcitizen.ca
Shawn Cornell, director of advertising: 250-960-2757 scornell@pgcitizen.ca
Reader sales and services: 250-562-3301 rss@pgcitizen.ca Letters to the editor: letters@pgcitizen.ca
Website: www.pgcitizen.ca
Website feedback: digital@glaciermedia.ca
Member of the
Canada established very stringent anti-spam legislation a few years ago in an effort to cut down on unwanted messages. The regulations have significantly reduced the number of “commercial” emails, but little can be done about what political parties and third-party groups want to ask.
Research Co. asked British Columbians about unsolicited text messages they may have received over the past two months. More than a third (37 per cent) got at least one message from an individual they did not know asking them if they supported a specific party or policy.
Men seem to be more appealing targets with 42 per cent of male respondents receiving these messages, compared to 33 per cent of women. British Columbians aged 18 to 34 were also more likely to get these questions (44 per cent) than those aged 35 to 54 (36 per cent) and those aged 55 and over (26 per cent).
BY THE NUMBERS
MARIO CANSECO
There is another, significantly more hazardous type of phone call, that can get through our phones, even when we assume that Caller ID is working properly.
Technology has allowed anyone to change the way their name and number is shown on a cell phone, making it easier for fraudsters to pretend they are reputable government employees.
Just this month, the RCMP arrested a person in Burnaby who appears to be involved in a tax extortion scam.
In these phone calls, a scammer pretends to be a Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) employee and suggests that the recipient of the phone call owes a debt.
The call is intended to provoke fear that leads the recipient to share sensitive information and
even send money directly.
The scammers are casting a wide net.
We found that more than a third of British Columbians (35 per cent) received phone calls or messages over the past two months from an individual purporting to represent a government agency – a proportion that rises to 39 per cent in Metro Vancouver.
There have also been calls to cell phones in British Columbia with a recording in Cantonese or Mandarin.
At least two of the messages that have been translated allege that the recipient of the phone call needs to contact a representative of the Government of the People’s Republic of China for an “emergency dispatch” by pressing “9.”
Some reports from recipients who have pressed “9” outline a similar pattern: accusations of money laundering, embezzlement or possessing fake travel documents that can swiftly be dealt with by providing a credit card number.
Three in 10 British Columbians
(31 per cent) report receiving a message where an individual spoke Cantonese or Mandarin.
Metro Vancouver, with a higher concentration of residents who may take a phone call from the Chinese government seriously, has been targeted extensively (42 per cent).
But in a curious twist, the proportion of residents of European descent who have received these messages in a foreign language stands at 37 per cent, higher than what is reported among those of East Asian descent (31 per cent).
Only 27 per cent of British Columbians have not received any of these three messages in the past two months.
Having to deal with these calls or messages can be unnerving, especially for residents whose mobile phones are used to conduct business.
At a time when telemarketing fraud was more common than unwanted calls from people professing to represent the CRA or Beijing, the federal government established Phone Busters to al-
low Canadians to report numbers where callers had overpromised or were misleading. Phone Busters eventually became the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre, a repository of information on deceitful activities, with or without telephones. Still, while we do possess a way to proceed against this nuisance, few of us have used it. While 73 per cent of British Columbians have received these messages, only 37 per cent have reported an unwanted call or phone number to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre. In spite of all the illusory talk of millennials being entitled, Canada’s youngest voters lead the way on acting to end these annoying messages and calls.
Almost half of British Columbians aged 18 to 34 (46 per cent) have reported an unwanted call or phone number to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre – significantly more that their older counterparts. Our province’s youngest adults are being pestered the most on their mobile phones. They are also more likely to be doing something about it.
Emily GIAMBALVO
The Washington Post
Not long before lunchtime, Mya’s wagging tail splashes as she waits for the tank to drain.
The bowlegged black pit bull just finished a three-minute hydrotherapy session, guided by treats offered from a staffer reaching down into the apparatus. But while Mya walks slowly on the submerged treadmill, she notices Laura Rethoret’s car through the window. Once the tank empties, Mya scurries down the ramp as fast as she can with her weakened legs, which have splayed more as she’s aged.
“Good morning, beautiful!” says Rethoret, who embraces Mya with a towel. “I’m right here!”
Rethoret loads Mya and her runmate, Curly, into her car and drives to the quiet office where the dogs hang out a few times a week. These dogs are reminders that even now, 12 years later, survivors of former NFL quarterback Michael Vick’s dogfighting operation live on in pockets throughout the country, including here at Best Friends Animal Society’s 3,700acre sanctuary. Vick pleaded guilty in 2007 to running an illegal dogfighting ring in southeastern Virginia, a scandal that cast a spotlight on the problem of dogfighting rings around the nation. But for 47 dogs pulled from Bad Newz Kennels, there was another, less publicized development that helped change how dogs taken in large-scale dogfighting busts are treated. Rather than being euthanized, the Vick dogs were given a chance to live.
The dogs became ambassadors, tail-wagging proof of what’s possible through rescue and rehabilitation. In doing so, they changed how the public – and some prominent rescue organizations – view dogs freed from fighting rings.
Dogfighting remains prevalent, but now, in large part thanks to these dogs, others seized in fight busts are evaluated to see if they can become pets.
The Washington Post tracked down all 47 dogs and compiled a comprehensive look into their post-adoption lives and the families they joined. They landed in homes from California to Rhode Island, embraced by people with jobs ranging from preschool teacher to attorney.
Some adopters love sports. Others had never heard of Vick, once the highest-paid player in the NFL who at the time of the bust starred for the Atlanta Falcons. Some of the dogs struggled to heal emotionally and remained fearful through their lives.
But they all found homes far more loving than the horrorfilm kennel that made headlines around the globe.
In late August, just a few weeks after her therapy session, Mya spent her final moments lying on blankets and surrounded by Best Friends staffers, including Rethoret, whose face turned red as Mya slipped away.
She’s one of five of the Vick dogs who have died in recent months, leaving just 11 survivors. They are
poignant reminders of their tragic beginnings but also of the grace, patience and unexpected opportunities that followed.
When Vick’s dogfighting operation was broken up, animal rescues from around the country understood the gravity of the case but also the opportunities it presented because of the NFL star’s fame. Eight organizations received custody of the animals. Some groups placed a single dog into a foster home. Best Friends agreed to give the 22 most challenging cases a place to recover and, for some, a permanent home.
The organizations worked to redefine what made a dog adoptable. The dogs were seen as victims, not irreparably damaged. They weren’t just pit bulls or fight dogs. They became Mya and Curly, Frodo and Zippy.
“Michael Vick brought dogfighting into the living room of every American,” said Heather Gutshall, who adopted Handsome Dan and later founded a rescue organization that aims to help survivors of dogfighting. “Am I glad it happened? No. Am I glad, that if it was going to happen, that it happened the way it did? Absolutely. They changed the landscape.”
In southern Utah, the city of Kanab makes the NFL feel like a distant enterprise. The feature of the town, which has fewer than 5,000 residents and two stoplights, is that it once served as the backdrop for Western films.
As the highway curves from the tiny town centre and through a scenic southwestern landscape of vast skies and towering orange cliffs, one right turn leads into Best Friends, a haven for second chances that is home to 1,600 animals, including dogs, cats, horses and birds. Dogs cruise by
with caregivers on golf carts. The chorus of barking chaos quiets as you venture deeper through the sandy trails. It’s busy and boisterous yet vast and peaceful.
John Garcia, who at the time of the Vick case co-managed the Dogtown at Best Friends, grew up in a neighboring town without a TV. He doesn’t watch sports. Garcia only learned of Vick through his case, but he remembers the message from the rescue’s senior leadership: “Hey, if we get involved in this, it’s a big deal,” he said. “We may be able to change the world.”
The pressure to help the dogs –and to prove they could indeed be helped – was palpable. Because Vick’s fame turned the dogfighting bust into a national story, not just a conversation in the animal welfare community, many watched with curiosity or skepticism, wondering whether a dog from a traumatic past could ever live normally in society.
BADRAP, an Oakland-based organization, emerged as an early voice advocating for the dogs.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and the Humane Society of the United States thought they should be killed, in keeping with their long-standing belief that the emotional trauma such dogs had suffered would be too much to overcome.
Of the 51 dogs listed in court documents, just one needed to be euthanized for behavioral reasons. One was euthanized for medical reasons and two died in care.
BADRAP had worked with individual dogs seized from fighting situations many times, which gave the organization confidence.
Donna Reynolds, the director of BADRAP, said once staff members met the dogs for evaluations in Virginia, there was a sense of
relief – “wiping brow with back of hand,” she called it. They knew they’d be able to work with them.
Most involved with the Vick case, from the adopters to rescue staffers, express indifference toward the former quarterback himself. Visitors often ask Michelle Weaver, who once co-managed Dogtown and now oversees all animal care at Best Friends, what she thinks about the quarterback who abused dogs such as the ones that have lounged in her office for years. Her answer: she doesn’t think about Vick. Her energy usually goes toward the dogs. Is Curly feeling OK? He’s been slowing down lately. How’s Cherry, whose photo hangs near Weaver’s desk, doing in his Connecticut home?
Vick, who paid nearly $1 million restitution for care of the dogs, says he regrets it all and didn’t have the strength to stop what he realized was wrong about a year before he was caught.
Vick, 39, retired in 2017 and is an NFL analyst with Fox Sports. He has advocated for stronger animal cruelty laws and works to educate children.
“I think people have moved on,” Vick said in a telephone interview. “I think they’ve moved past it. It’s been 12-plus years since it all happened, so I don’t get any questions about it anymore. People don’t talk about it. They don’t ask me about it. Life is kind of normal. But I still have a responsibility, and that will never change.”
Across from a small church in rural Virginia, Vick’s property has been purchased by Dogs Deserve Better, an organization that focuses on rescuing chained and penned dogs. On a summer day, dogs run in the fenced yard and the mood feels cheerful.
Then there are the four sheds,
where Vick kept and fought his dogs. All are painted black, even the windows, to make them less visible at night. The group decided to preserve these relics of the dogfighting operation for educational purposes. The kennels inside one of the buildings still show claw marks on the walls. But there’s hope and remembrance, too, through memorial candles and trees dedicated to each dog planted in a grassy field out back.
“They’ve gone through so much, and they’ve changed so much,” Garcia said. “They’ll never be forgotten.”
Garcia now works as the safety and security manager at Best Friends. Sometimes during night shifts, he wanders up to the sanctuary’s cemeteries, where hundreds of wind chimes ring at different pitches in the breeze and intensify into a song when a strong wind arrives. It’s peaceful and quiet.
A number of the Vicktory dogs rest there, with small memorial stones towering into mountains on top of their graves. One has a toy golf cart, representing how the dog loved riding around with caregivers, along with an old tennis ball. A couple of the adopters brought their dogs’ ashes back to Best Friends, the place that gave them a chance. That’s what felt right, and it helps preserve their legacy, as the dogs fade further from the public eye.
But far from this canyon and across the country, other dogs live because of these 47. So as time eventually defeats them all, the message on a slab of stone in the cemetery carries hope and truth.
“Do not stand by my grave and cry,” the poem reminds those who enter through the ornate gates. “I am not there. I did not die.”
The Citizen archives put more than 100 years of history at your fingertips: https://bit.ly/2RsjvA0
Ted CLARKE Citizen staff tclarke@pgcitizen.ca
If you’re an armchair quarterback, Ethan Browne is the kind of athlete you love to hate.
Growing up in Sherwood Park, Alta., it didn’t matter what sport he tried – baseball, football, basketball or hockey – the skill it takes to play those games well just came naturally to him.
Thankfully, for the Prince George Cougars’ sake, hockey was the one that caught Browne’s full attention as a young teenager. Since coming to the Cats two seasons ago in a trade from the Everett Silvertips, Browne has endeared himself to Cougar fans as a dazzling puckhandler and pinpoint passer with a knack for finding his teammates through a crowd.
Last season he centred the top scoring line with Josh Maser and Vladislav Mikhalchuk and it was no coincidence, with Browne as the setup guy, they led the team with 30 and 25 goals respectively.
For Browne, it was just a case of relying on his instincts.
“I guess I didn’t really work on my hands too much or skill as a kid, it just came natural to me,” he said. “I was more that guy who could just watch and I could just do it after that. I played football for a bit, I was a running back when I was 13 or 14, but I would have loved to play baseball or basketball.”
Playing hockey in the WHL he’s turned a few heads, he just needs to find a little more consistency.
“I want to be a top guy on this team and be a bigger leader, just be the guy I am and work harder,” Browne said. “I was a highpoint guy in bantam growing up but getting points in this league is tough.”
Browne played both games of the seasonopening weekend against the Vancouver Giants on a line with wingers Maser and Reid Perepeluk but that line was shut out of the scoring in a pair of losses.
“I played together with Maser a lot last year and we had pretty good chemistry going so why ruin that,” said Browne, who produced nine goals and 31 points in 57 games last season. “They work hard. They’re both big guys and I’m not the biggest guy (six-feet, 180 pounds) so hopefully they can get me the puck and I can give them the puck back.”
Like the rest of his teammates, Browne works hard in the gym after practice and he’s grown up around that atmosphere most of his life with two role models in-house.
“My parents are bodybuilders,” he said. “I don’t want to be as big as them, but they’re in really good shape.”
Browne, 18, joined the Cougars as a 16-year-old on Jan. 1, 2018 when he was traded from the Everett Silvertips for forward Ethan O’Rourke. The Silvertips picked him 14th overall in the 2014 WHL bantam draft. He played just eight games for a firstplace Everett team and he says the trade was just what the doctor ordered, giving more opportunity to play.
“I love it so far, I love the fans and love my billets and I love the guys, I just love it here,” said Browne.
What he doesn’t love is the pain that sometimes comes with being a junior hockey player. Browne missed 11 games last season due to lingering back and hip injuries which kept him off the ice through much of training camp and he wasn’t available until late in the preseason. He missed a day of practice this week and he’s still not 100 per cent healthy.
“For sure, it’s tough being out with an injury, not skating as much but I want to
Ted CLARKE Citizen staff
Injuries are part of life in the B.C. Hockey League and all teams go through their share.
They’ve hit the Prince George Spruce Kings especially the first month of the season, coming in bunches that have ravaged the blueline. Last weekend on their three-game Mainland Division tour, with Brendan Hill and Cole Leal both at home in Prince
George with lower-body injuries, the Kings were left with just four defencemen for Sunday’s game in Coquitlam. Evan Orr hurt his shoulder in the second game of the trip Saturday in Langley, then in Coquitlam Nick Bochen aggravated an ankle injury he’s been dealing with since the start of the season. The Kings also lost right winger Nolan Welsh, their 20-year-old captain, to a hip-flexor injury he suffered
try to skate more and more each day and be back to my full self,” he said. “It goes away and comes on again, I just have to figure out what it is and get it sorted. I’m close.”
Heading into his third WHL season in Prince George, Browne has yet to make the playoffs and he knows his team will have its share of struggles with a young roster. But he thinks Cougar fans will eventually be rewarded for their patience watching the team develop into a contender.
“Obviously we felt we should have came out with at least a point last weekend in the matchups against Vancouver but it’s still early in the year and we’ve got time to figure ourselves out,” he said.
“We’re not that physical but we’re fast and we can hit and when we want we can hit. I think we’re way better than last year, guys came to camp in better shape and we’re way more skilled than last year and we’re faster.”
The Cougars head to Victoria for games Friday and Saturday against the Royals (01) without two of their best players – centre Ilijah Colina and defenceman Cole Moberg. Colina hurt his shoulder in the preseason and is still three weeks away from returning. Moberg left near the end of the second period of Saturday’s game against Vancouver when he suffered an upper-body injury in a collision with one of the Giants that will keep him on the shelf for the next two or three weeks.
Colina returned to the Cougars after leaving the team in February to deal with a personal issue. The 19-year-old from Delta is expected to be the Cougars’ top-line centre. Moberg, 18, was the only Cougar selected in the June NHL draft (picked in the seventh round by Chicago) and with his ability to move the puck he rates as their top defenceman. In the Giants’ series he was being used as a winger on the Cougars’ power play.
in the Langley game.
“We’ve certainly got some injuries on defence to some key guys with Evan Orr, Nick Bochen and Cole Leal out for at least another couple weeks,” said Kings general manager Mike Hawes.
“We played that game in Coquitlam with four defencemen, three of them were rookies (Colton Cameron, Amran Bhabra and Nolan Barrett) and one was an affiliate player (Ryan Sukuvich).”
“It’s a huge blow, as was Colina,” said Cougars head coach and general manager Mark Lamb. “Browne had a tough training camp because he was injured all the time and we’re trying to get him up to speed. That’s our skill on the team, that’s the biggest problem.”
Cole Beamin just returned from an upperbody injury will take Moberg’s spot in the lineup.
The Royals are coming off a 6-0 loss in Everett, their only game so far this season. Compared to the Cougars they’re an older team, with eight 2000-born players on the roster. Lamb didn’t like the outcomes last weekend – 5-3 and 4-1 losses to the Giants – but saw plenty of encouraging signs from his players.
“We did a lot of good things without the puck, we limited them to not a lot of shots, and we limited their scoring chances,” said Lamb. “That’s the way we have to play. We need our goaltenders to be strong and if they are strong and we play a good team game we’ll have success. We don’t have the offence and it’s not just offence, you’ve got to play away from the puck. Everyone talks that a good defence creates offence and it’s so true. But if you just think you’ll go out and score goals you’re never going to win. It’s a mindset.”
Lamb hinted the Cougars might be willing to part with a few veterans to make the team better in the long run.
“We’re probably going to get younger as the season goes, if we make any deals or stuff like that,” he said.
“We’ve got to do the right things now. The biggest thing is we’ve got to have patience. It’s probably going to be hard for people, because they want to win, but there’s no way to win right now. There’s no quick fix. It’s going to take some time.”
Barrett has since been traded to the Cowichan Valley Capitals for 18-year-old forward Colton Cousins. The Kings also acquired 19-year-old defenceman Mason Waite in a trade with the Lloydminster Bobcats for forward Mack Stewart. That movement of the defencemen in and out of the lineup began one game into the season when 20-year-old Sol Seibel left the team and returned to his home in Kamloops.
“That was a mutual thing, it wasn’t just him saying he didn’t like it here, he wasn’t a good fit for us either,” said Hawes.
“His style of play, especially in that one game he played, it didn’t go very well.”
Barrett, a 19-year-old Merrimack University recruit from New Jersey, also had difficulty adjusting to the Kings’ style of play, according to Hawes. — see ‘TEAMS RUN, page 10
The Associated Press
LONDON — Former middleweight boxing champion Nigel Benn is returning to the ring at the age of 55 for a one-off fight, saying he wants “closure” on a career blighted by drug abuse, depression and the death of his brother. Benn, who has not fought professionally since 1996, will face 40-year-old Sakio Bika in Birmingham on Nov. 23.
“It’s been a long time coming,” said Benn, whose boxing nickname was the “Dark Destroyer.”
“This fight is all about me,” he said. “It wasn’t financial. It was always about closure that I wanted that I never had.”
Speaking at a news conference in his home city of London, Benn said he is in the best physical condition of his life and compared himself to Benjamin Button, the
character created by F. Scott Fitzgerald who ages in reverse.
“I feel the time is right now. People may say, ‘You’re 55.’ It’s nothing to do with age,” Benn said.
“I’m fitter now than when I was world champion. It’s not the ‘Dark Destroyer’ because everything synonymous with that name is not who I am. Now it’s Nigel ‘Benjamin Button’ Benn – the older I get, the fitter I am and I 100 per cent mean that. I am so fit.”
The fight with Bika, a former WBC super-middleweight champion, will be licensed by the British and Irish Boxing Authority (BIBA), rather than the British Boxing Board of Control.
BIBA’s chief medical officer said Benn is fit enough to return to the ring.
“The tests that we have done on Nigel Benn to date indicate that
his physiological age is at least 15 years younger than his chronological age,” Professor Michael Graham said. “That’s scientific blood tests, MRI scans, cognitive function, body fat, etc.
“If you look at some of the other boxers who have been sanctioned by other sanctioning boards and provided licenses, Nigel’s certainly as fit, if not fitter, than most of them. Certainly the fittest 55-yearold boxer on the planet.”
Benn said he carried the death of his brother through his adult life, leading to drug-taking and depression.
He said he had suicidal thoughts after his last fight, a loss to Irishman Steve Collins in a WBO supermiddleweight title bout.
Benn claimed the WBO middleweight title in 1990, and held the WBC super-middleweight title from 1992-96.
‘Teams run into (injuries) and I guess it’s our
— from page 9
“Nolan was struggling a little bit, he’s a tremendously talented player but we have certain expectations for our guys and attention to detail is important within the structure we want guys to play and he was battling that,” said Hawes.
“We were able to turn him into Colton Cousins, a hardworking wears-his-heart- on-his-sleeve type of player and he’s really going to endear himself well to the fans and his teammates.”
The Spruce Kings became interested in Waite during the summer.
“Alex (head coach Evin) and I talked about him several times as somebody we liked, he has good size, he’s mobile for a big guy and he put up some pretty good numbers (five goals, 24 assists) on a team that didn’t have a lot of
success last year,” said Hawes.
The Kings will have 18-year-old defenceman Brendan Hill back for his first game since he suffered a lower-body injury in the game Sept. 7 against Penticton.
Winger Corey Cunningham is also back after missing three games with the flu.
“When we do get healthy back there I’m pretty confident the back end is going to be fine,” said Hawes. “Teams run into (injuries) and I guess it’s our turn. Last year we got pretty fortunate with injuries and didn’t have a lot of them. It just gives others guys an opportunity to step up and take the bull by the horns here.”
In one other trade completed Wednesday, the Kings shipped the junior A rights to 20-year-old defenceman Jameson Murray to the Trail Smoke Eaters for future
considerations. Hawes said Murray, a three-year WHL veteran who had three goals and 19 points in 59 games last season with the Victoria Royals, wanted to play his final junior season closer to his home on Kelowna.
The Spruce Kings host the Alberni Valley Bulldogs under head coach Joe Martin tonight (7 p.m.) at Rolling Mix Concrete Arena, then will take on Trail on Saturday. The Smokies will be bringing BCHL player-of-the-week Kent Johnson, a Michigan University recruit who is the 16-year-old brother of former Spruce Kings’ captain Kyle Johnson. He has three goals and eight assists in seven games so far.
The Kings went 1-2 on their last trip. They started with a 6-2 loss in Chilliwack, beat Langley 2-1 and lost 5-1 in Coquitlam.
Judy OWEN The Canadian Press WINNIPEG — Adam Bighill thinks the timing is perfect for the Winnipeg Blue Bombers to have a big bounce-back game.
The Bombers (9-4) host the CFL-leading Hamilton TigerCats (10-3) Friday and can make amends for giving up a 24-point lead in a loss to Montreal last weekend. It was the biggest blown lead in Bombers history.
“It doesn’t matter who we play next game, but, honestly, this is going to be a good test for us, coming right back after the Montreal game,” Bighill said Thursday after the star linebacker and his teammates finished their walk-through at IG Field.
“We’re excited to do it. They’re a good football team, we’re a good football team and it’s going to be a battle here tomorrow night.”
The Bombers were dominating the Alouettes 34-10 late in the second quarter last Saturday and still held a 37-17 lead heading into the fourth. That’s when things unravelled, as Montreal added three more touchdowns and won 38-37 on a convert with six seconds left in the game.
The 24-point collapse erased the franchise’s previous mark of 20 points, which came earlier this season when the Bombers blew a 20-point lead in a loss to Toronto.
“I think guys did a great job of flushing that (Montreal) game, but also kind of keeping that motivation from losing a tough game like that and pushing us forward into this week and having a great week of preparation,” Bombers quarterback Chris Streveler said.
“We definitely learned from the film and had some major things to clean up and hopefully we can do that.”
Winnipeg has clinched a playoff spot, but has lost two of its past three games. Its 9-4 record is tied with Calgary, but the Bombers hold the top spot in the West Division because of their win over the Stampeders earlier this season. Hamilton has lost only one of its past six games, a 19-18 defeat at the hands of Calgary on Sept. 14. The Bombers and Ticats are tops in the league in two key categories.
Winnipeg is No. 1 for points scored with an average of 30.2 per game. Hamilton is second at 29.5. The Tiger-Cats have allowed the fewest points per game at 20.2 and Winnipeg is next at 20.5.
Streveler is making his fifth start since replacing injured Matt Nichols. Hamilton is led by rookie pivot Dane Evans, who’s starting his eighth game for injured Jeremiah Masoli.
Ticats star linebacker Simoni Lawrence, meanwhile, was fined the league’s undisclosed maxi-
It doesn’t matter who we play next game, but, honestly, this is going to be a good test for us, coming right back after the Montreal game.
— Adam Bighill
mum this week for his hit to the head and neck of Edmonton Eskimos quarterback Logan Kilgore last week. In Week 1, the league suspended Lawrence two games for a direct contact to the head of Saskatchewan quarterback Zach Collaros. His appeal was unsuccessful.
Streveler was asked if he’ll be thinking about Lawrence.
“Simoni Lawrence is a great player and plays hard, plays with passion,” Streveler said. “But, for me, it’s about seeing the entire defensive picture. He fits into there as well.
“I wouldn’t say I’m keying specifically on him on any plays, but it’s important to see everything in front of you as a quarterback and he’s obviously a good player.”
Bighill said Winnipeg’s defence will have to be on its toes for Hamilton’s diverse offence.
“(Brandon) Banks has obviously been their most explosive guy, but you look at distribution, everybody’s touching the ball,” Bighill said. “Receivers are running the ball, running backs are running the ball, running backs are catching the ball.”
Evans is also doing a good job extending plays, he added.
“They have some creativity mixed in their play calling so it’s not just what you see is what you get. They have a little bit of trickery,” Bighill said. “We’ve just got to be able to play by our rules and play disciplined.”
Friday, IG Field BACK IN ACTION: Bombers defensive lineman Jackson Jeffcoat returns after missing six games with a lower-body injury. Veteran running back Tyrell Sutton is expected to make his Hamilton debut after being signed to the club’s practice roster Sept. 9.
FINISHING STRONG: The Tiger-Cats have outscored their opponents 110-49 during the fourth quarter of their 10 victories.
REACHING FOR A RECORD: Bombers quarterback Chris Streveler has 12 rushing touchdowns this season, a Winnipeg record and two short of the CFL record for a QB. The mark of 14 was set in 1991 by Doug Flutie and tied last year by Toronto’s James Franklin.
The doctor’s office has become a fierce battleground for Canada’s biggest banks.
But as financial institutions expand their physician-focused offerings in a bid to snag the wealthy clientele, some health care professionals are taking their investments into their own hands.
The Ontario Medical Association has been developing its own pension-like solution tailored for physicians, which should be up and running by the end of the year, said its president Dr. Sohail Gandhi.
The OMA – which represents more than 40,000 physicians in the province – is a non-profit, allowing it to lower management costs and increase retirement income, he added.
“I’m hopeful that when physicians realize that this is something that their own association is sponsoring on their behalf... that most physicians, even though they’re given a choice, will come this way,” Gandhi said in an interview.
Doctors are a key market for wealth management providers because physicians are largely their own employers, don’t have pensions and rely on saving from their own earnings.
Competition for management of physicians’ dollars has heightened since the Bank of Nova Scotia acquired doctors’ wealth services company MD Financial Management from the Canadian Medical Association last year. Scotiabank also struck a 10-year deal with the CMA to exclusively promote the Toronto-based company as the preferred provider to its base.
With the CMA as its owner, MD Financial had been seen as an independent financial services provider with physicians’ interests at heart, but its acquisition by a big bank prompted some to re-examine their money management options.
In June, Bank of Montreal launched a full suite of banking and wealth management services aimed at health-care professionals, such as financing options for those looking to grow their practice.
While the MD Financial deal shone a light on the health-care industry, BMO had long looked to launch a more focused approach to the sector, said Romal Bryce, Bank of Montreal’s head of health care, North American industry sectors.
He noted that with one-million health-care professionals in Canada, including dentists and others with higher-than-average incomes, it was a segment that could not be ignored.
Last July, BMO beefed up its business banking team focused on this portfolio to roughly 80 people, many whom came from other industries such as pharmaceuticals, he said.
“We’re going to be aggressive in this space. We see good things...
and our annualized growth rate is about 35 per cent,” Bryce said.
Other Canadian banks have also been launching new, specialized products targeting the health-care sector in recent months.
Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce in March announced its new full service physician package and a new offer for medical and dental students.
In August, the Royal Bank of Canada launched RBC Healthcare Advantage, a membership program which offers “customized perks and rewards” and solutions to help physicians to establish and run their practices, among other things.
Toronto-Dominion Bank, meanwhile, has been strategically advertising its TD Wealth Management for Health Care Practitioners service in the vicinity of several large hospitals in Toronto’s downtown core.
The bank has placed prominent advertising in one of the underground pedestrian walkways connected to a key subway station, which brings commuters to the Hospital for Sick Children and Toronto General Hospital, among others.
Dave Kelly, senior vice-president of TD Wealth Private Wealth Management, said MD Financial’s acquisition didn’t prompt the launch but encouraged the bank to move quickly with its new service, which was launched in December 2018.
“It was clear there was an op-
portunity in the marketplace,” he said.
The bank already has about 20 dedicated private bankers in 20 markets, from Halifax to Victoria, but hopes to add 10 more, particularly on the West Coast and Quebec, Kelly said.
TD had already been catering to roughly 60,000 medical professionals, he said, but since the launch of the new service he estimates they have added another 1,500 to their clientele.
Meanwhile, in July, TD and the Canadian Urological Association announced an agreement to become the exclusive financial service sponsor of the organization. Kelly said sponsorships are effective in increasing visibility among association members, and there are more of these in the pipeline.
However, even as the playing field grows crowded, Scotiabank said there has not been an increased outflow of investments of MD Financial.
Assets continue to grow at record levels and have surpassed $50 billion for the first time, said Glen Gowland, Scotiabank’s executive vice-president of global wealth management.
After the acquisition, Scotiabank looked to retain the features that were popular with physicians but also looked for ways add more value for their clientele, added Gowland.
“We actually lowered fees across the board, and that’s been very
popular,” he said. “And MD was already a low cost (provider).”
It also launched the MD Physician Council, with more than 1,000 applicants from which nine were chosen, to allow for doctors to weigh in. And in March, Scotiabank launched its Healthcare+ Physician Banking Program developed with MD Financial.
“We’re seeing tremendous interest from physicians across the board,” Gowland said. “We’ve just actually done 15 exclusive partnerships with medical groups.”
More doctors are also looking at alternatives including self-managed or passive online investment options, said Paul Healey, an emergency room physician who also manages a Facebook discussion group where doctors discuss personal finances.
“They are doing different things, depending on their needs,” he said. “A lot of them are moving to low-cost investing, which means opening a brokerage account ... and then they are buying ETFs.”
Wealthsimple, which has both a commission-free trading platform and robo-adviser service, has also been a beneficiary and has seen an increase in physician clients, said portfolio manager Michael Allen in an emailed statement.
Questrade’s chief operating officer Stephen Graham said the Toronto-based online brokerage has seen a “more than a doubling to tripling of that segment, interested in our products coming over the last year,” he said.
The Canadian Press Rogers Communications is opening a new customer call centre in Kelowna that the company says will create 350 jobs.
The centre is scheduled to open next summer and Rogers says it is expected to handle about one million interactions with Rogers and Fido customers a year.
The company says in a news release it will open the centre in the city’s Landmark District and it will begin hiring next spring.
Rogers says it expects the call centre to grow to 500 employees over time.
Renovations on the space that will house the 3,000 square metre call centre will begin early next year.
The company says over the last 18 months, it has hired more than 1,000 workers in similar positions across the country.
closed up 6.11 points to 16,790.40, breaking a threeday slide. In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average was down 79.59 points at 26,891.12. The S&P 500 index was down 7.25 points at 2,977.62, while the Nasdaq composite was down 46.72 points at 8,030.66.
The lack of big movement on the broader index follows the pattern of the past couple of days as investors consolidate as they wait for signs of the market’s direction, says Mike Archibald, Associate Portfolio Manager with AGF Investments Inc.
“I think everybody’s waiting on looking for the next catalyst to move the market in either direction, so whether that be political or whether that be macro or more likely probably Q3 earnings reports, which start off in the U.S. in a couple of weeks,” he said.
Thursday’s decrease in U.S. markets came a day after they rose when President Donald Trump signalled that a trade deal with China could come sooner than people think. That reversed Tuesday’s losses in response to Democrats announcing they would begin a formal impeachment inquiry.
Archibald doesn’t see Thursday’s decreases in the U.S. linked to Congressional testimony about a whistleblower complaint that accused Trump of pushing Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden, one of his main political rivals in next year’s U.S. presidential election. With bond yields down, investors moved to defensive dividend-yielding stocks that pushed up sectors such as utilities, real estate and financials.
The heavyweight financials sector rose as banks had another strong day with the Bank of Nova Scotia gaining on heavy trading.
The bank index is up 8.5 per cent from the August lows on the possibility of higher yields in the fourth quarter and 2020. The materials sector was lower as copper prices dropped following the downgrades of some big Canadian companies that pushed shares of First Quantum Minerals Ltd. down 10.5 per cent. The December gold contract was up US$2.90 at US$1,515.20 an ounce and the December copper contract was down 3.45 cents at US$2.58 a pound.
Robert Allen Wiebe July 25, 1968September 7, 2019
It is with deepest sorrow that we announce Rob Wiebe’s passing, born July 25, 1968 in Prince George, British Columbia. Rob courageously battled cancer for almost twenty years and is now at peace. Rob was predeceased by his father, Peter and his mother, Marianne. Rob is survived by his wife Barb, children Scott and Sarah, his sister, Barbara (Ray), niece, Natalie and nephew, James. A celebration of life will be held on September 28, 2019 at 1:00pm, at the First Baptist Church, 483 Gillett St, Prince George, BC. In lieu of flowers donations can be made to the Canadian Cancer Society or the Prince George Hospice Society.
Charles Eliel Butler
November 15, 1917 -September 12, 2019
Charlie was born in Greenspond Newfoundland and served in the British Merchant Marine during WWII. After the war he moved to British Columbia where he stayed the rest of his life. Charlie passed away after a brief health complication. He was predeceased by his wife Frances, his mother Alice ,his father Caleb and sister Jeannie. He now goes to be with them after nearly 102 years. Many thanks to the kind and caring staff at the UNBC Hospital and Parkside Care Home. Rest in Peace Charlie you will be missed.
Diane Eugene Both May 18, 1955 to Sept 22, 2019
Diane passed away peacefully surrounded by her loving family by her side, at Vancouver General Hospital. Diane was a loving wife. Survived by her partner Patrick Pinko, sister Patricia Bell (Lonnie), Brother Allan Both (Marilyn). Niece Kim McIntosh, nephews Dean Bell, Shayne Bell, and many other nieces and nephews, brother in law Tom Pinko. Her beloved dogs Button and Mandy. She will be greatly missed. No service by request.
Joan Mavis Yurkowski (Nee Corless)
August 1, 1928September 25, 2019
H&RBLOCKCANADAINC.TAXPROFESSIONAL BECOMEATAXPROTODAY! EnrollinTaxAcademyandlearntoearnasatax professional.
OVERVIEW:Seewhatittakestobecomeaproattaxesat H&RBlock’sTaxAcademy.Thealwaysin-demandskills andknowledgeyou’lllearncanopendoorstorealjob opportunities.
CAREERBENEFITS:Trainingfromindustryleaders,the
Joan is the last of the Corless pioneer family. Predeceased by mother and father, three brothers, and two sisters. Left to mourn are her husband Stan, son Jim (Margaret) and son Russell (Anne), four grandchildren (Rebecca, Laura, Emily and Samuel), three great-grandchildren (Haedyn, Ava and Vivienne), nieces, nephews and special friends Patricia, Christine and Ken. Joan was born in Prince George and lived here all of her life. She remembers an enjoyable childhood with many occasions spent at Summit Lake. Joan married Stan in August of 1958 and spent her life raising her two children and working at various jobs. The highlight of Joan’s work life was being the owner/operator of Nature’s Vita Centre, Health Food Store on 4th Avenue from 1982 to 1999. Joan spent her retirement years enjoying travel, activities at the Prince George Senior Centre, learning how to play piano, painting and spending time with family and friends. She especially enjoyed her birthday bonfires. Joan will be remembered for her fabulous cooking, love of candy, sense of humour, lifelong friendships, and her determined nature. No funeral service or life celebration as per her request. May she Rest in Peace
Jack Michael Meda Nov 17, 1945 to Sept 22, 2019
Born in New Westminister on Nov 17, 1945 the 8th in a family of 10 children. Jack is survived by his loving family, wife Carol, daughters Jody Matters (Trevor) PG, Bobbie Meda PG. Grandchildren Lauren, Kelly, Erin, Rylan Matters PG, and Dalton & Jordan Cote AB. Survived by his siblings Olga Englot (Merritt), Joan Heighton (Armstrong), Bill (Seattle), Jim (Smithers), Pat Goertzen (Marvin) PG, Iris Richards (Kamloops) and numerous nieces and nephews. Predeceased by son Todd, parents Mike & Mary, brothers Stan & Dan, sister Ruby. Jack was well known in th logging and mining industries. In his younger years he was an amateur heavy weight boxer, winning many championships. He held the Canadian heavy weight title from 1967-1972, travelling to many countries fulfilling this ambition. Fond of hunting and fishing, and his dogs. His fun loving nature will be missed. Service to be announced later. Donations to charity of your choice.
It is with broken hearts that the family announce the untimely passing of Francis Herbert Mitchell on September 1, 2019 in the Vancouver General Hospital. Francis will be dearly missed by his children: Herb, Mitch, Darlene and Roger, his grandchildren Tashia, Raymond and Shane, and his great grandchildren Tyler, Jaide and Lana. But, most of all, Francis will be missed by his wife and friend of almost 58 years, Shirley. A Celebration of life will be held at the Native Friendship Center in Prince George Saturday, October 5 at 12:00 noon until 4:00pm with a pot luck lunch to follow.
Gross Revenues of $150.000 plus annually from seasonal work Lots of opportunity to expand the business. Transition support available to the right buyer Serious Enquiries Only Office 250-596-9199 Cell 250-981-1472
BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY
Established Franchise Tax Preparation BusinessMackenzieservicing and McLeod Lake area for over 30 years.
Gross Revenues of $85,000 to $90,000 Annually and Potential to expand revenues in a growing economy. Transition support available for the right buyer. Serious Inquires Only Office (250)997-9003 Home (250)997-5538 Cell (250)990-0152
www.hrblocktaxacademy.caorcall250562-6247
& Youth Newspaper Carriers Needed in the Following areas:
• Quinson Area
• Lyon, Moffat, Ogilvie, Patterson, Kelly, Hammond, Ruggles, Nicholson
• Gateway
• Victoria St, Tamarack St, Strathcona Ave, Moss Ave, Wiggins Pl. Full Time and Temporary Routes Available. Contact for Details 250-562-3301 or rss@pgcitizen.ca
YRB-WINTEROPERATOR/ LABOURER
YRBisseekingwinter operators/labourersforthe PGarea. Minimumrequirements includeavalidclass1or3 driver’slicensewithair,a cleandrivingrecord,and driver’sabstract. YRBisalsolookingfor candidatesavailableonan asandwhenneededbasis. Ifyouaresemi-retired, andlookingforoccasional winterwork,thismaybe theperfectopportunity. Pleasedropoffaresume at2424HartHwyoremail tobens@yrb.ca. bens@yrb.ca www.yrb.ca
