Prince George Citizen December 12, 2019

northern B.C. FriendS oF Children SoCiety

The Northern B.C. Friends of Children Society is an amazing charitable organization that helps support families of children with extensive medical conditions. These medical conditions can mean months of hospital stays far from home. Northern B.C. Friends of Children Society helps cover the costs of hotels, groceries, and any other costs associated with travel from Northern B.C. down to locations like Vancouver, Kamloops or Kelowna for a child’s medical treatment.

We are proud to donate $10,000 to support the Northern B.C. Friends of Children Society and hope this funding can help so many families while their children receive the medical care they need.

KordyBan lodge

Everyone knows someone who has been affected by Cancer. We are proud to support the Kordyban Lodge Peace of Mind Campaign in Prince George with our $15,000 donation this year.

This great facility allows patients and their caregivers a place to recover from cancer treatment while receiving care in Prince George. This donation will help towards their goal of lowering the nightly fee to $20.

You can get more information on this awesome program by contacting Aimee Cassie (250) 645-2367.

PrinCe george Community Foundation (autiSm endowment Fund)

Prince George Ford has a few employees who have a direct relationship with people who have autism. It was a natural choice to support the Autism Endowment Fund, created by the Bassermann family, with Rob Bassermann as a member of our management team. We are happy to donate $15,000 to support families who have children with Autism right here in Prince George.

PrinCe george theraPeutiC riding aSSoCiation

The Prince George Therapeutic Riding Association offers therapeutic and recreational riding to children and adults with disabilities. The staff at Prince George Ford nominated this charity to receive a donation of $15,000. Getting to meet some of the riders that take part in this program was truly a pleasure. This program brings a light to those who take part in it and Prince George Ford is so pleased we could be a part of it.

PrinCe george Brain injured grouP SoCiety

The Prince George Brain Injured Group Society has been a part of Prince George for 30 years. The amount of support they provide in our community is immeasurable. The staff at Prince George Ford chose to donate $10,000 to support the programs offered to individuals with acquired brain injury. Some of the donated funds will be going towards the launch of a new client assessment tool.

thank you to all of these charities and the countless others in Prince george, for all that you contribute to our community.

How compassion saved one local man

Ted Clarke Citizen staff

Daniel Roy came agonizingly close to reaching the end of his rope.

With one end tied around his neck and the other anchored to the John Hart Bridge over the Nechako River, he was all set to jump.

Addicted to heroin and methamphetamine, he had fallen into a deep depression when his girlfriend, also a drug addict, was moved by her parents to Kelowna to escape her desperate existence living alongside Roy on the streets of Prince George. Lonely and heartbroken, he’d spent weeks trying to end his life by overdosing on heroin but it didn’t work.

A passing motorist saw what was happening on the bridge and called the police.  RCMP Cst. Shawn Ingham convinced Roy to reconsider and sat with him while he was recovering in hospital.

“My rock-bottom had a cellar… I was tired of what I had become,” Roy told a packed city council chamber gathered last week to hear health and social workers, business owners, police officers and politicians trying to find solutions to the growing problems of crime, poverty, homelessness, mental health and substance abuse concentrated in the downtown core.

“Had it been any other officer that day on the bridge, my life would be a lot different,” he said. “I’d either be dead or I would have gone into the psych ward and it would have been just a vicious cycle. (Ingham) told me straight up, ‘If you’re dead, how are you going to change the things in your life?’ He was absolutely right.”

That day, in early June 2017, Roy made the choice to get help and go for treatment and was taken in by the Hope for Freedom Society’s lodge in Maple Ridge. He returned clean of all his addictions and hasn’t used drugs or alcohol in two-and-a-half years.

That also ended 15 years of being homeless in his hometown. It was a life of sleeping in tents or behind buildings under a makeshift shelter he made each day out of wood pallets, carpet underlay and a tarp. Among his possessions on his bike and trailer was an electric space heater, which kept him alive through the winter months. To feed his addictions, Roy would steal what he had to, just to get his daily fix.

“I was one of the worst prolific offenders

in the city,” he said. “I had 235 run-ins with the RCMP in my last year of addiction. I was addicted to meth and heroin, two of the most addictive drugs that are out there and the thing is I didn’t want to be homeless, but addiction took hold. I came from a great family.”

A few minutes before Roy spoke to city council last week, Salvation Army Maj. Neil Wilkinson was given his turn at the mic and told the success story of Bob and Betty, a homeless, drug-addicted couple he got to know through his work at the Curt Garland Community Support Centre thrift shop compound at 3500 18th Ave. Wilkinson spoke about how they used to steal from the centre but had since made abrupt changes to their lifestyles and are both now working full-time jobs, leading productive lives.

“I’m Bob,” said Roy, which drew a round of applause from the audience in city council chambers.

On more than one occasion, he got caught stealing from the compound, cutting holes

in the fence to gain access to the building. He was trying to steal food one day and was taken into the office where Roy Law, the ministry’s community services director, was standing with two police officers. Caught red-handed, Roy didn’t deny his true intentions.

“In the heart of my addiction, he sent the officers away and dealt with me with grace and compassion,” said Roy. “A little bit of compassion goes a long way. I can understand the business owners in this town are frustrated. These people downtown need people to love them and need people to reach out to them.”

The “Betty” in Roy’s life was his girlfriend of 18 years and they’re no longer together as a couple. They got into the homeless habit by choice because they wanted to be able to stay together rather than sleep in shelters that keep men and women separate.

“Addiction and relationships don’t go hand-in-hand,” he said. “At the end, we were so toxically codependent on each other. We

weren’t always addicts, we just kind of fell into it.”

After he kicked drugs, Roy volunteered for seven months at the Salvation Arm centre until they offered him a full-time job and he now works on the loading dock where people bring their donations to the store.

The job pays minimum wage but he has enough to take care of the bills and keep food on his table. He commended a previous speaker at the Dec. 2 meeting, Jordan Tucker, for her efforts to collect toques, socks and gloves in boxes set up in local businesses and encouraged others to support her initiative. He uses some of his own money to buy jackets, hoodies and sweaters to give to people in need. He knows as well as anybody how much that means to them. Roy, 43, reminded councilors that while the city has a treatment centre at Baldy Hughes for males with substance abuse addictions, there’s nothing comparable for females. They can get temporary respite at detox centres but once the effect of whatever substance they’ve injected, drank, smoked, or inhaled wears off, they’re back on the streets.

“I can understand the business owners’ frustrations with the downtown core,” he said. “If we can come with a viable solution to a natural recovery centre for men and women, I would be part of that. There’s a lot of great, viable ideas but we need to come together as a community to address these issues.

“I want to help clean up the problem, I’m tired of being anonymous. The stigma of addiction needs to be broken. We do heal. Recovery is possible and these people just need a little bit of compassion.”

Roy is convinced drug and alcohol addictions are the root cause of 95 per cent of the problems with downtown.

“The addiction rate in this town is quite high and the people downtown are going to be under fire,” said Roy. “Nobody’s going to get clean until they want to.

“For me it took a suicide attempt and the grace of one good officer to help me make that choice. He’s a good man. He’s got a really big heart and we talk still to this day. I call him my hero, but he’s like, ‘You’re the one who saved your life, I just pushed you in the right direction.’”

citizen photo by James Doyle

Daniel roy sorts through clothes on the loading dock at salvation army curt garland centre resale store on Friday afternoon.

Kelly Road Craft Fair still a go for next year

Christine hinZMAnn Citizen staff

Opinions and protests were heard in the halls of Kelly Road secondary school last weekend during the 34th annual Kelly Road Craft Fair about the fate of the event’s future.

The school district was quick to respond, reassuring those who took to social media to continue the conversation that craft fairs and other public events will continue to be hosted at schools throughout the district.

“When we look at the joint-use agreement between the city and the school district there are certain spaces that can be booked for community use,” Tim Bennett, School District 57 board trustee chair, said. “So looking at booking events that fall most nights after 6 p.m. and on weekends are most normally booked through the city as part of our joint-use agreement.”

Bennett said he was on social media and read some of the concerns about this Kelly Road Craft Fair being the last.

“We heard from the community that this was because the school district had said the craft fair could not happen,” Bennett said. “I can say that at no point has the board had a conversation that the craft fair could not happen at Kelly Road. However, there are things that need to be taken into consideration when groups book our facilities. One is adhering to the school district policy and the second is ensuring they’re meeting the

a shopper chats with a vendor about alpaca items for sale at Kelly Road secondary school during the 34th annual Kelly Road Craft Fair held earlier this month.

regulation of the fire code.”

Things like making sure no tables are blocking fire exits, and making sure there is enough room between tables to make it safely accessible as well as keeping within limits of capacity of the space are some of the factors to be considered, Bennett added.

“These are the new realities the district and the community are dealing with for the safety of everyone involved,” he said.

Bennett said he was engaging with residents on Facebook about the requirement to have tarps covering the floor underneath tables to prevent damage. All the rules apply to all venues, so just because Kelly Road school has old floors doesn’t mean the rules should not be followed.

“We as a school district spend public dollars,” Bennett said. “We have a responsibility to prolong the life of our assets as long

Shopping fun at Trench Artisan Fair

Christine hinZMAnn Citizen staff

Amy Heise was looking for a cozy venue to sell her Just Add Water Bath and Body Creations so the Sip and Shop Artisan Craft Fair was set up at Trench Brewing & Distilling Sunday that saw a variety of artists selling their wares.

The youngest entrepreneur was Lexi Shymanski, 9, who was selling her wooden coasters she makes with help from her dad, Travis. Residents of Prince George may remember

Lexi as the little hero who saved her family when she was five years old. When the vehicle they were in went off an embankment during the trip home from a vacation left her mom, Angela, trapped and unconscious and baby brother Peter, then 10 weeks old, still in his car seat, Lexi unstrapped her five-point harness and scampered barefoot up to the road to flag down a passerby to get help.

It’s been bit of a long road to recovery for Angela and Peter but moving forward is how this family works best. Angela has always had

CNC approves tuition hike

The College of New Caledonia’s Board of Governors approved a two-per-cent increase to the school’s domestic tuition and mandatory fees and a three-per-cent hike for international tuition and mandatory fees for the 2020/2021 academic year.

The two-per-cent hike is in line with those other B.C. colleges have been approving and CNC has not increased international tuition fees since August 2016.

Full-time domestic students will pay $2,831, or $55.52 more than this year, and $754.80 in mandatory fees, or $14.80 more than this year. $526.32 will go to the student society.

What the hike will mean for international

students was not immediately available.

“Tuition fee increases are a direct response to continued cost pressures and are necessary to cover fixed costs,” said Tara Szerencsi, CNC Vice President Finance and Corporate Services. “CNC is mindful of costs for students with tuition fees that remain among the lowest in the province.”

The board also approved a motion directing revenues generated from both the domestic and international tuition increases be noted in the 2020/21 budget and invested directly into services supporting students.

Also, with CNC’s current one scheduled to end in 2020, the Board approved plans for CNC President Dr. Dennis Johnson to

the entrepreneurial spirit and believes it’s never too early to instill some business sense into her children.

It all started when Lexi and Travis were walking in the woods and a fallen tree got Lexi’s attention because in the centre of it was a shape of a star. Travis brought home the broken trunk of the tree and dried it out and then the idea came about  hat coasters would be the perfect way to showcase the tree’s unique and beautiful flaw. Along with the coasters the family makes and sells cutting boards and other

as we can. No, the current Kelly Road does not have a new floor but there are many craft fairs that happen in our schools and buildings that do have new floors and what we make one do, we can’t make exceptions for another. So I know there was some push back regarding that as well and for us it’s about how we can best utilize taxpayer dollars and that includes prolonging the life of our assets.”

Organizers of any event are encouraged to reach out to district staff if they need more information, he added.

“Trustees are available if there are questions,” Bennett said. “We hope there is an opportunity to have the craft fair back at Kelly Road next year. It’s going to be a beautiful building. As long as the organizers are willing to work within the restrictions the school district has to put in place, especially around fire code, then we can have a really successful year. Kelly Road Craft Fair has an amazing legacy in the community. It’s probably one of the largest community-run craft fairs and generates a lot of money to support organizations such as the Kelly Road dry grad so I 100 per cent understand the stress and anxiety and anger that the community is feeling and the board just hopes we can reiterate to the community that we are willing and wanting to work with organizers to ensure the craft fair continues on its great legacy in our community.”

lead the planning and development of a new five-year strategic plan starting in the new year.

“The development of a new strategic plan will include broad research and stakeholder consultation to ensure the priorities of CNC reflect the changing realities of the region,” Johnson said. “We are committed to sharing more information about the development of the plan as the process unfolds.”

CNC’s Board of Governors also announced two new student representatives who joined the board in November. Kyndra Farrell and Navjot Singh Brar were elected by students to represent the CNC student body on the board and will serve a one-year term.

handmade wooden items, while Peter, at four years old, makes home-baked dog cookies.

“All the money goes into our jar for when we go to Mexico,” Lexi said.  “We get to buy all our souvenirs with the money we’ve saved. Peter and I put our piggy bank money in there, too.”

Rosie Hamilton is the administrative assistant slash event coordinator at Trench Brewing and she said when organizer Heise asked for help it became clear that grabbing a drink and a meal and shopping at the same time was a great idea.

Citizen staff

Citizen photo by James Doyle

Roadside checks underway

Citizen staff

Local police and ICBC have launched the CounterAttack for impaired drivers campaign that sees frontline officers at several roadside checks throughout the community.

Multiple officers using a variety of tools to help detect and apprehend impaired drivers, including approved screening devices, physical coordination testing and assistance of specific officers trained as drug recognition experts.

Although the official CounterAttack launched Saturday night officers have

already been enforcing the law in the community. There are more officers on the roads watching for impaired drivers and this will continue until the new year. As an alternative for a safe ride home, Operation Red Nose is offering rides for you and your vehicle throughout the holiday season. This is the 20th year Operation Red Nose is volunteering to help the community with its by donation service, which is presented by the Rotary Club of Prince GeorgeNechako. For more information or to sign-up as a volunteer go to www.ornpg.ca.

Fire puts Hixon-area couple out of their home

Mark NielseN Citizen staff

A Hixon-area couple is struggling to get their lives back in order after a fire burned their home to the ground.

Bruce Brady was sitting in the hot tub when he heard his dog barking linside the home - a trailer on a rural property about 15 kilometres north of the community. He went to investigate and discovered thick, black smoke. The home is located outside the Hixon fire protection area but even then, it was doubtful firefighters could have saved it, it went up so quickly, Brady’s stepdaughter, Kristin Bonner, said.

“He was thinking it was a chimney fire but it’s really hard to tell because there is nothing left,” Bonner said.  “He said he went to where the fireplace normally is and he said there were flames in between the floorboards and he tried putting that out with his fire extinguisher but he

didn’t stop it so he just got what he could and got out.”

Brady and his wife Lorraine, who was in Vancouver at the time, are grandparents to 15 children and were hoping to hold a family get-together at their home over Christmas. Now they’re living in Prince George with Bonner and her husband.

The home had been insured up until about two years ago when the insurer told them they needed to upgrade the wiring to get their policy renewed. They were in the process of gathering the material they needed when the fire broke out.

Bonner said the Hixon community has been “amazing” supplying the couple with basic items like clothes and shoes. But they a long way to go - a page has been posted on GoFundMe seeking donations and a fundraising event of some kind is being mulled for February.

citizeN Photo by James doyle

const. Keith mccreadie conducts a roadside check on saturday night as the Prince George rcmP launched the counterattack impaired driver campaign.

Body found near Moberly Lake

Citizen staff

The BC Coroners Service and the RCMP are asking for the public’s help to identify a male who was found deceased on November 1, near Moberly Lake.

He was found in a farmer’s field in the 1100block of Boucher Lake Road, about 10 kilometres northeast of Moberly Lake.

“This individual’s death has been determined as non-suspicious by the RCMP and is believed to have occurred earlier this year,” the Coroners

Service said.

He is an adult male, most likely under 40 years ofageandabout180centimetrestall(5-11).Atthe time of his death, he was wearing what appears to have been a camouflage-style shirt, blue “True Religion” brand jeans, and size 11 Nike Air Max running shoes.

Anyonewithinformationthatmayhelpidentify thisindividualisaskedtocontacteithertheFortSt.

John RCMP at 250 787-8140, or the BC Coroners Service’s Special Investigations Unit at 1 877 6605077 or by email at bccs.siu@gov.bc.ca

Child porn culprit denied parole

A former Willow River man who was at the centre of a notorious child pornography case will remain behind bars.

In a Nov. 15 decision, a Parole Board of Canada panel denied James Darren Bennett, 59, both full and day parole.

In February 2000, he was sentenced to an indeterminateterminprisonafterhewasdeclared a dangerous offender. In spring 1999, he pleaded guilty to key charges in the case from the late 1990s.

Bennett’s co-accused, wife Crystal Diane Henricks,wasconvictedoneightcountsandsentenced to13yearsinprison.Thetermwaslaterreducedto seven years on appeal.

According to a psychological assessment completedthisyear,Bennett’sriskforsexualreoffending is high, representing a backslide from the moderate-to-high assessment he had been given two years ago.

He is also no longer complying with his parole officer’s request to self-monitor by journaling or

loggingrisk-relevantthoughtsandbehaviours.Asa result,heisbeingdeniedpermissiontoparticipate in a daily-return work release program.

“You continue to blame others, remain reluctant to review and discuss your offences and have presented with limited motivation to address your primary risk factors,” the panel commented.

Bennett has no viable plans for release, the panel also found.

Charges to which Bennett pleaded guilty include five counts of sexual assault, three counts of overcoming resistance to the commission of an offence by administering a stupefying or overpowering drug and three counts of printing or publishing child pornography.

Bennett’scriminalrecordpriorto2000includes morethan50convictionsforproperty,fraud,driving, breach of trust and violent offences.

Thecouple’svictimswereathree-year-oldboy, a pair of 10-year-old girls and a 15-year-old girl and the offenses were committed primarily in their Willow River home.

Mark NielseN Citizen staff

Council to consider 4.5 per cent worth of tax hikes

Mark NielseN Citizen staff

The average homeowner’s property tax bill could rise by as much as 4.5 per cent next year, with nearly half that amount going towards dealing with the city’s homeless. It all depends on how receptive council will be to some $2.6-million worth of service enhancements being proposed in the name of safety and cleanliness.

As outlined in a report presented to council’s finance and audit committee last week they include:

- hiring six bylaw officers to provide around-the-clock year-round service at a cost of $523,040;

- putting $501,800 towards cleaning up camps as well as sites where illegal dumping has been found;

- devoting public works staff to the downtown for nine months at a cost of $408,986;

- improving security at city facilities to the tune of $400,000;

- assigning seven two-member RCMP patrols to the downtown at six hours each per week for nine months, a $273,249 proposal;

- contributing $236,000 towards staffing the downtown homeless service hubs.

The total would be offset by $578,900 of savings in other related areas. If all are adopted, they would increase the city’s prop-

Cold storage funds released

Citizen staff

Carrier Sekani Family Services has secured $114,257 in provincial funding to install new cold storage facilities at the Stellat’en First Nation’s reserve west of Fraser Lake.

The idea is to increase fresh food production from community gardens and food preservation through the winter months.

“When people have access to safe, secure and culturally appropriate food sources, it creates a more inclusive community that can

better support the well-being of the people who live there,” said B.C. Minister of Social Development and Poverty Reduction Shane Simpson.

“We will continue to reduce poverty in our province by supporting organizations that understand local issues.”

The money comes from the Victoria Foundation’s new Food Security - Provincial Initiatives Fund.

Mineral deposits targeted

With the help of an organization dedicated to the task, a search for “hidden” copper and gold deposits in B.C.’s Central Interior is about to begin.

erty tax levy by 1.84 per cent or 40 per cent of the 4.5 per-cent jump.

Prince George RCMP is also asking the city to pay for a forensic video analyst ($101,476) and a data processor supervisor ($91,070), the city’s environmental services department is seeking a climate change and energy coordinator ($100,407) and the city’s development and planning department wants council support to hire an additional planner ($94,559).

In all, council will be considering $2.4-million worth of enhancements that would add 2.19 per cent to the property tax levy if all are adopted.

Maintaining existing services will require

a further increase of $3.9 million or 2.32 per cent, making for a potential hike of $6.3 million or 4.51 per cent.

For the owner of a home priced at the average for the city that would work out to an additional $99 over and above the $2,200 paid last year.

In 2018, average assessed value for a home in Prince George was $278,509. The figure for 2019 will be known in early January when B.C. Assessment provides its values for the year.

Council’s budget meetings are set for Mon., Jan. 6 and Wed., Jan. 8 in council chambers at city hall.

City cuts $2M in debt

Slightly more than $2 million has been trimmed from the city’s debt for capital projects.

During their Nov. 18 meeting, city council members voted unanimously in favour of bylaws to relinquish debt the city would otherwise have borrowed for four projects.

North was finished at $428,791 less than estimated, an extension of the sanitary sewer line along Killarney, Sussex and Wildwood in the Hart Highlands came in $359,974 below budget and the replacement of the floor at Kin 3 ended up $55,356 less than anticipated.

City engineering and public works general manager Dave Dyer attributed said staff tries to make sure healthy contingencies are built into the cost estimates.

The project is called the Central Interior Copper-Gold Research series.

Data and reports from the project will be shared publicly.

At an open house held Thursday in Prince George, Geoscience BC announced $2.9 million worth of work to determine the potential for finding such deposits below the layer of sediment or till left by receding glaciers between the Mount Milligan and Gibraltar and Mount Polley mines.

A $1.17-million upgrade of the Plaza Parkade comprised the biggest chunk. Although it survived an alternative approval process, the project was cancelled. However, a $2.8-million upgrading of the facility remains on the books as an unfunded project. The cost of operating and upgrading parkades are covered by users though an off-street parking levy  Debt on three other projects was relinquished because they were completed under budget.

A replacement of a culvert on Kelly Road

“A lot of times, when we get into a project, we’re not having to use that contingency and on a number of these projects, we just got some good prices,” Dyer said.

The 80 homes along the route of the sewer line extension are to pay the back the remaining $1.58 million over 20 years at a pace of $99,819 per year through an addition to their property tax bills under a local service area agreement.

Citizen staff

Ring of Fire burns up Theatre NorthWest stage

Christine hinZMAnn Citizen staff

A show presented at Theatre NorthWest sees five actors playing 10 instruments showcasing 33 songs during Ring of Fire: The Music of Johnny Cash which tells the amazing life story of the legend himself through song.

By popular demand the show has been extended until Dec. 23 and director Anna Russell said she knows those who love to sit back and be entertained by talented musicians can look forward to a real treat.

“It’s pretty spectacular what these actors and musicians are capable of on stage,” Russell said. “It’s really quite amazing to watch.”

There is quite a variety of musical genres within the production.

“You’ve got some really beautiful ballads, a lot of fun more upbeat country songs and there’s a lot of moments, especially with the recordings Johnny Cash did in Folsom prison and when he spent time at the Grand Ole Opry and what that represents and you picture it one way - or at least I did - and then you find out there were some comedy acts and stuff that were part of it and so it’s interesting because there’s not really a specific genre flavour. You find that it touches on everything and I found it wasn’t what I

was expecting when I first heard about Ring of Fire.”

For most of Russell’s directing experience it’s been at Judy Russell Presents where those working on a production are trying to fit it into their already busy lives.

“Ring of Fire is unique in that some of the actors are local, some of them are brought in from out of town but they are kind of making this their full time commitment for about a three-week rehearsal process and then for the run of the show so the process changes a little bit in that regard,” Russell.

The biggest difference Russell added was the expectations of the actors to be acting, singing and playing their musical instruments while a Judy Russell Presents production usually has a full orchestra providing the music.

“So this is pretty unique in that,” Russell said.

Curtis Abriel is a local actor musician and was also the music director for Ring of Fire.

“So he and I had to work quite closely together to manage the rehearsals and the work load to make sure everything managed to make its way onto the stage in that short of a rehearsal time,” Russell said.

Tickets are at www.theatrenorthwest. com.

Unemployment rate rises to 6.4 per cent

recorded for the same month last year and the 5.9 per cent recorded in October.

The city’s unemployment rate stood at 6.4 per centinNovember,accordingtoStatisticsCanada labour market survey estimates.

The figure is up from both the 5.2 per cent

Even with the sampling errors taken into account, College of New Caledonia economics instructor Al Idiens said the year-overyear difference is “definitely higher.”

And despite Statistic Canada’s strong suggestion that only year-over-year figures be considered, he  noted an upward trend month-over-month since this past summer. The figure bottomed out at 4.2 per cent in June and has been rising ever since.

At 48,000, roughly 1,100 fewer people are holding down jobs compared to October, although the figure is still 1,900 higher than that for the same time last year. The numbers are based on a three-month rolling average and do not separate part-time from full-time work.

Citizen staff

Frankie cottrell as eddie sings during a performance of ring of Fire on stage at theatre Northwest recently for ring of Fire - the Johnny cash story.

Railway museum hosts CelebRation of lights

Christine hinZMAnn Citizen staff

The annual Celebration of Lights event at the Central BC Railway and Forestry Museum gets its shining start on Wednesday, Dec. 18 and goes until Dec. 23.

There are more than 100,000 lights glowing through the park and the best seat in the house is on the Cottonwood Minirail Express that shows off the entire light display.

The lights have been collected over the years and those who remember the Connaught Hill light display will be happy to hear they have found a new home at the museum on River Road.

The Celebration of Lights starts off with a charitable boost to St. Vincent de Paul Society and the Fire Pit as entry into the park on Wednesday is by donation of a non-perishable food item.

All proceeds from the last by-donation event at Halloween was so successful it took two trucks to get more than 2,500 items packed up and shipped over to the non-profits who feed the most vulnerable community members in the heart of downtown Prince George.

After the admission-by-donation day, entry is by regular admission because it’s the Railway Museum’s major fundraiser of the year and the money raised during the Celebration of Lights will go to operating costs for the non-profit society who runs it. There were about 5,000 people

who visited the sight during the holiday season last year and the same numbers are expected this year.

Visitors are in for a real treat when they find their way into the tree-lined bistro to listen to live music by a variety of entertainers like choirs, duets and instrumentalists who are all volunteering to perform during the celebration. Santa and Mrs. Claus will also be making surprise appearances throughout the event.

Moving into the gift shop, guests can browse through a variety of items, including those being sold by other non-profit organizations who are looking to raise funds for their causes including handmade knitwear with proceeds going to the Kordyban Lodge and the two editions of the books written by Kathy Nadalin called People of Prince George, with all proceeds going to the Prince George Community Foundation. There are also a variety of items created by local artisans, train-themed treasures including conductor’s hats, Thomas the Tank Engine items and Railway Museum schwag all waiting to be purchased in time for Christmas giving.

One step beyond the gift-shop door people walk right out into a unique winter wonderland filled with delightful images and glowing lights. There are bigger-than-life happy elf-faces, a true to life Hallmark old red truck with the expected Christmas tree in the back. Penny

Maria Martins, an intern at the Prince George Railway and Forestry Museum, sets up lights on site last year in preparation for the Celebration of Lights. This year’s 100,000 light display goes Dec. 18 to 23.

Station is fully decorated this year, inside and out, as well as some of the train cars.

“Penny station is decorated like it would have been 100 years ago,” Nadine Fieber, event coordinator at the museum.

There’s an extensive Christmas miniature village to be explored in the school house on the museum site.

“I am sure we have the biggest Christmas village display in town,” Fieber said.

“Every year we change up the landscape and this year it’s a huge mountain with villages built around it. We have more than 500 houses that were donated to us years ago and we haven’t used them all because we ran out of space but the display is very impressive.”

After all the adventures there’s a few food options available for those who have worked up an appetite. Guests can roast hot dogs and make s’mores over a bonfire or get a meal from the concession for purchase and to ride the minirail it’s $3 for each person.

Huble Homestead will be on site Dec. 20 to do a children’s Christmas craft for free and there will be face painting for purchase while Gingy the mascot from Gingerbread Toys will visit Dec. 20 and 21.

For more information and a detailed schedule of events visit www.pgrfm. bc.ca.

Citizen staff photo

FamiLy PorTraiT a voLunTeer eFForT

Christine hinZMAnn Citizen staff

It was a happy scene at the hall in St. Michael’s Church in downtown Prince George Saturday.

There were drop sheets hung side by side all along one wall. There were camera shutters clicking away, big light diffusers were set up and black chairs were placed strategically throughout the hall. There were mirrors hung on the opposite walls with make up kits, curling irons and hair dryers resting in their holders ready for action.

It was Help Portrait day and volunteers taking a commemorative photo were making a happy fuss over one family that included Mom, her two precocious sons and a sweetly dressed tippy toddler.

Volunteers were trying to wrangle Cattleya, 18 months, but waving a toy to make her smile only inspired a new game to go get the toy over and over again, not just to look at it. Try explaining that concept to a go-getter who never quits moving.

Help Portrait is a global movement that occurs on the same day each year since 2008 in 67 countries and sees volunteer photographers, hair stylists and makeup artists come together for a good cause. So far there’s been 3,049 events with help from 75,442 volunteers with 381,856 portraits given to those low-income families, the homeless, and anyone else in need who can’t afford a photo but would like one.

Cynthia Tommy, a single mom, brought Leland, 8, Spencer, 6, and daughter Cattleya down to the event that her mom

Paula Wilson first heard about it when she got her hair dressing training at Loxx Academy of Hair Design in 2016. Loxx owner, Peggy Zettl, and students volun-

taken,” said Tommy. “It’s important to capture a moment with my family. The kids were all excited to get dressed up and come down. Leland was happy to wear his ‘fancy shirt’.”

The event has taken place in the community for the last decade.

Organizer Crystal Wood has been volunteering for the event for four years and has been organizing it for last three years.

Wood knows what it means to the people who come get their pictures taken.

“When the people come to get their pictures the level of gratitude - coming from low income myself - it is just the most humbling experience and to see it unfold - that’s what gets me,” Wood said.

“This is my baby and I love it. We get to help these families and last year when one single mom came in, all she wanted was a portrait with her and her babies and she was in tears when she got it and we all cried.”

W.D. West prints the photos for Help Portrait and a few days later recipients are invited to come back to the hall for lunch and to get their photos.

The project gets the word out through St. Vincent de Paul’s soup kitchen, invitations are included in all the food hampers that are handed out by the non-profits downtown and those who patronize the thrift stores are also invited.

teer their time to do hair and makeup for those wishing to use those services before having their photo taken.

“This is my third year getting a picture

About halfway through the event, there had already been eight people who came in to get their portrait done while still more people had come in from the cold to have a hot drink and some snacks that were available.

Citizen staff photo

From left, Spencer, 6, mom Cynthia Tommy, Leland, 8, grandmother Paula Wilson, and Cattleya, 18 months, were at the Help Portrait event Sunday that offered low income families the opportunity to be gifted a family portrait by volunteer photographers, hair stylists and makeup artists.

Hospital staff thanked

Christine hinZMAnn Citizen staff

Noreen and Rick Woodford were part of the group who wanted to give back during BC Transplant’s Operation Popcorn that took place last week at the University Hospital of Northern B.C.

The project offers organ transplant recipients, living donors and donor family members the chance to thank hospital staff in intensive care units, emergency departments and operating rooms for their good work supporting organ donation throughout the province.

The Woodfords lost their son Matthew in a fire in Vancouver last year and he donated his lungs, both kidneys and his liver to transplant recipients. He was 34.

“That’s how old I am right now,” said Veronica Vandermeulen, holding her son Logan, 6, who is a heart recipient. Noreen and Veronica, two mothers on opposite sides of the spectrum of organ donation, shared a look of profound understanding before young Logan was introduced to the Woodfords.

“We were looking forward to meeting you,” Noreen leaned over to speak with the energetic Logan. “It’s so nice to see you.”

Rounding out the group that would hand out popcorn treat bags to hospital staff was team captain Joyce Grantham, who received a heart transplant 20 years ago.

The group moved to the emergency department to present a big red beribboned box of popcorn treats to staff members.

“I think it’s amazing - it’s wonderful,”

Drug Deaths way Down

CitiZen stAff

Deaths by illicit drugs in the city have tumbled to less than half of last year’s total, according to the latest report from the B.C. Coroners Service.

As of the end of October, Prince George was home to 22 such fatalities compared to 48 for all of 2018. Likewise, deaths in which fentanyl was detected stood at 14, compared to 46 last year.

Northern Health medical health officer Rakel Kling said the decline reflects a province-wide trend.

The count on that measure stands at 823 drug-related deaths, well down from 1,542 last year. Fentanyl-detected deaths added up to 702, slightly more than half the 1,337 recorded last year.

Susy Marotta, registered nurse and clinical practice lead, said looking at Logan.

“I love meeting this little guy.”

Grantham has been in and out of the emergency department many times in her life and she said it’s important to give back even in a small way.

“The hospital staff does so much to help everybody and we all end up spending a lot of time in ICU and in the emergency department and the OR staff does so much,” Grantham said.

Noreen was able to offer a different perspective.

“For us, we know the staff sees the tragic part of the transplant process and this way they get to see the good news, too,” Noreen said pointing to Logan, who is here today because of the heart he received as an infant. “He’s the magic part of this and he’s here as the result of all their hard work.”

Operation Popcorn 2019 took place in 26 hospitals and more than 100 boxes were delivered by more than 100 volunteers who are recipients, living donors and donor families. The project is in its 28th year.

For Kling, its a sign the right steps are being taken.

“It’s just further reason to keep giving Naloxone and drug checking and other harm-reduction work that is going on in the community,” she said.

While down, the number of deaths is still high compared to past figures. In 2009, for example there was just one drug-related death.

“We still need to work very hard on all the great work that we’re doing to prevent overdoses,” Kling said.

Citizen Photo by James Doyle

From left are Joyce Grantham, heart recipient, Noreen and Rick Woodford, whose son donated four organs, Logan, 6, heart recipient, and Veronica Vandermeulen.

City task force a great first step

The best of Prince George was on display in the overflowing city council chambers Monday night as speaker after speaker after speaker courageously went before mayor and council to declare how much they care about the health and safety of all local residents.

It was notable for the lack of finger pointing. There was no yelling from downtown business owner/operators and people who work in the area, demanding city council clean up the mess left by “those” people. There were no tirades from social advocates that the cops, the capitalists and the privileged are why we have suffering on our streets in the first place.

Perhaps the finger pointers all stayed home, ate roast pork and amused themselves in the sanctity of their social media echo chambers.

And we’re all better for it, despite the best effort of the bureaucrats to suck the energy and good will out of the room with a nearly half-hour presentation to kick off the evening.

Senior managers from the city, the RCMP and Northern Health all took turns patting themselves on the backs for their hard work so far, for throwing more money, sending out more patrols, holding more meetings, forming more partnerships and launching more initiatives at the problems.

Other than a grudging acknowledgment that things have gotten worse in recent years, not one of them admit-

NIGHT SHIFT

NEIL GODBOUT

ted their efforts haven’t been enough.  Thankfully, the leadership came from local residents, who stepped forward with compassion, wisdom and understanding.

Jesse Cody started off by acknowledging the meeting was being held on the traditional territory of the Lheidli T’enneh First Nation, gently scolding mayor and council for not doing so at the beginning of the night. To expand on Cody’s point, reconciliation is an ongoing process that doesn’t end with the renaming of a park or being the first Canada Games city to have a host First Nation.

Cody then praised council for the plan to develop the NR Motors property on First Avenue into social housing but noted that’s a long-term solution when immediate action is also needed. He made suggestionsrepurposing currently vacant buildings into emergency shelters, offering safe spaces during the day instead of just at night. He didn’t just ask government to step up. He encouraged downtown businesses to increase security and do more to keep their properties safe and clean.

The ideas kept flowing.

Daniel Gallant pointed to a University of Alberta program that connects

social work students with street youth.

Nancy Long noted how successful the Bear Clan Patrol has been in Winnipeg in making city streets safer for everyone, from workers and business owners to disenfranchised street residents.

Major Neil Wilkinson of the Salvation Army told a story about how the 18th Avenue support centre was constantly being broken into since it opened in 2015 but compassion and engagement with clients has helped reduce vandalism and theft.

Dawn Matte, the manager of Ave Maria on 20th Avenue, told a similar tale of a problem panhandler who was offered food and cash in exchange for keeping the outside storefront clean and safe.

She started her presentation by admonishing local government for celebrating all of its partnerships with other groups and agencies without mentioning that downtown business owners and operators are a hugely valuable partner to address these issues.

She wrapped up her talk by encouraging city council to “put your foot down and hold your partners accountable.”

Multiple speakers stressed two important points. First, street people should not be addressed as “them” and “they” because it separates them from local residents. “The royal we,” as one person put it, needs to sepa-

rate the criminal element from people on the street dealing with significant hardships and just trying to survive from day to day.

Connie Abe , the executive director of the Association Advocating for Women and Children (AWAC), reminded everyone that “many people on the street don’t want to be housed. If they don’t want to be housed, what do we do? I don’t know what the answers are. I wish I did.”

Bernie Schneider, the first speaker of the night, spoke eloquently of the challenges of owning and operating a business downtown without demonizing the vulnerable street population. He called for local government to form a committee to continue the discussion and work towards solutions that will improve the city to benefit everyone. Nearly five hours later, his wish was granted as mayor and council voted to form a task force to tackle the social issues the city is facing.

It was a good first start but we must be realistic. A continuous effort over the long haul is needed to improve things. The problems will never completely go away and they certainly won’t disappear after a positive meeting or some policy changes. Our very best is needed to ease the suffering of the city’s marginalized and vulnerable populations on our streets. When the community comes together to help the less fortunate, everyone benefits.

Childcare in the 21st century

During the last provincial election, there was much discussion about daycare. Since the left generally believes proper childcare means to institutionalize all children, it behooves the right to explore better options to the childcare concerns. Voters need to have more options, and parents, especially mothers, need more options.

When formulating policy for big problems it is best to actually understand the problem. To understand a problem we have to have an honest discussion about what we value, the concerns we have, the problems faced, and what kind of province we want to live in, and of course, human nature. In the case of childcare, there are a number of conflicting values that I see at play, some of which are: what parents want and/or need, what governments think parents and children need, what the tax base can support, current workplace values, and what children actually need. Times have changed, work has changed. It used to be that children learned to work by working alongside their parents or were apprenticed. This all changed after the industrial revolution, but we haven’t had an economy-wide, meaningful discussion about the negative consequences of removing children from our work since

THINKING

ALOUD TRUDY KLASSEN

then. Nor have we made the business world flexible enough to accommodate parents. In much of the business world, employee’s childcare needs are seen as the worker’s problem, despite the shiny company ads saying they have a familyfriendly work environment.

The human nature of parents cannot be ignored. Nearly every mother and father are overwhelmed by a great, previously unimaginable love for their babies. I have heard too many mothers talk about the difficulty of the decision to return to work to believe that it is merely a result of cultural conditioning. To deny this normal biological desire to have our children with us is to deny our humanity. Forcing new parents to send their baby to an institution so that the parents can “contribute to the economy” seems like a new form of barbarianism to me.

Children want and need to be valued. They need to feel the love of their parents. They need to spend time with their parents. If we wish to continue having a

civil society (or get back on track to one,) we cannot ignore this basic fact. How do we solve the problem of children’s needs seemingly at odds with the business and working world that rewards us for ignoring our children?

Parents need to have options that empower choice in childcare. Parents are the best suited to make that choice. Government policy shouldn’t be making their choice for them with punitive taxes, inflexible workplaces, or lack of childcare options.

Employment and childcare policy should reflect the realities of low-income families, the parents who want to stay home with their children, as well as the families where both parents choose to work. Employers and customers need to recognize that children are a wonderful fact of life. Some possible solutions that I have thought about include:

• Community daycares where rates are determined by income.

• Employers could increase employer flexibility. This idea has been floated around and implemented with some success by some employers. (This will improve as the millennials begin having children, as they are more attuned to the importance of work-life balance.)

• Career flexibility. Chopping up some

of the more highly skilled and trained professions in a way that includes the importance of parenting may yield some innovative solutions. For moms, taking a few years away from their chosen profession to raise their children has historically contributed to women being paid less for equal work. We need to explore ways to keep women engaged during those years, even if not working.

• Income-splitting would help some families choose to have a stay-at-home parent.

• Make government childcare funding a universal payment for every child, regardless of who is caring for the child.

• Taxpayer funded Early Childhood Education training. This would remove the barrier to getting licensed, and would mean that a stay-at-home parent could more easily provide quality childcare for her friends and neighbours during the time she wishes to stay at home. This could help with a number of issues; lack of spaces, distance to travel, distance to schools, etc. Children being able to stay in their neighbourhood would help build vibrant neighbourhoods as well.

Times, technology, and economic opportunities have changed, and we need to figure out a better way to integrate children into our working lives. Let’s talk about this, and begin a needed discussion.

laST week’S queSTIon: Did you spend too much on Black Friday?

Children not getting the justice they deserve uestion of the week

Luke Strimbold, the former mayor of Burns Lake, was sentenced to two years less a day and two years of probation Wednesday after he pled guilty in May to four counts of sexual assault against four boys under 16 between May 2014 and August 2017.

In stories like this, including the one that’s on the Citizen website, there’s plenty of talk about the offender and the details of the sentence. Words like pedophile and phrases like sexual predator of children are avoided because it’s seen as editorializing but they are the words we should be using

and that is the lens through which we should be seeing men like Strimbold. He is not the victim here.

OUR VIEW

The victims are a group of boys and their families who will have to live with what he did to them for the rest of their lives, which will likely be significantly longer than his sentence. Sadly, sexually touching a child repeatedly is dismissed as “it could have been worse - it wasn’t a violent rape.”

What a cynical perspective. It’s as if the victim is supposed to somehow feel gratitude that the violation of their body, their childhood wasn’t as bad as it could have

been.

Any sexual touching by an adult on a child is a violent act because the adult is asserting their physical and social power over that child.

In the vast majority of cases, the adult - and it’s almost always a man - knew he was doing something horribly wrong but couldn’t help himself, didn’t seek professional help to deal with his deviant desires and invented some elaborate internal lies to justify his behaviour.

The sentences for pedophiles and sexual predators are woefully inadequate. They are not punitive enough. The length of sentences for sex crimes against children should reflect the long-term harm caused to the victims. Jail time should not be the

A beach walk into deep time

If you walk Kiritehere Beach, just south of Marokopa on the west coast of New Zealand, you come across rocky outcroppings of the Kawhia syncline. Within the rocks –and sometimes fully exposed – are the fossil remains of Triassic shellfish from around 200 million years ago.

Our lifespan is such a short period of time, we rarely notice the world changing significantly but in these rocks is evidence of life from a time we can only imagine. We might not notice the rise of mountains, the disappearance of seas, or the shifting of the continents but an ancient sea floor forming a rocky coastal outcrop puts things in perspective.

Geological time has a way of boggling the mind. All of recorded human history is encompassed in the last 5,000 years or so. This is a blink in the eye of the Earth as a whole – nothing compared to the 200 million year old fossils found strewn across a rocky beachhead.

One of the great accomplishment of the last century is the development of the scientific tools and expertise which allows us to look at the history of the world with fresh eyes. The age of rocks, for example, can be measured using isotopic analysis, mineralogy and stratification. Geologists can literally read the history of the world by staring at an exposed cliff face and analyz-

ing its content.

Or by simply picking up a rock on Kiritehere Beach.

Since the mid-1800s, collecting geological samples and developing this understanding of Earth’s ancient history has shifted from the amateur scientist to the professional geologist. And while we have learned a great deal, much remains to be discovered. But some of the things we have learned tell us a great deal about the evolution and development of life on our planet. For example, in a search for iridium in rock samples traversing the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary, Luis and Walter Alvarez discovered a narrow peak of extremely high concentration. Its position in the rock coincided with the mass extinction which took place at the time.

The layer of iridium is so thin, it represents a span of time less than 100,000 years and is a perfect marker for the disappearance of many forms of life. Many creatures, of which dinosaurs are the most prominent, disappear from the fossil record across this thin strip of rock. No one has found any

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remains in younger rock strata.

The iridium signal has been found in locations around the world at the same age. Clearly, the source of the iridium represented a global event. More to the point, the elemental composition pointed to an extraterrestrial source.

With the discovery of the Chixculub impact crater near the modern Yucatan peninsula, the rock record provided an explanation for the extinction of the dinosaurs and approximately 75 per cent of all species on the planet. A killer asteroid impacted Earth 65 million years ago leaving its footprint in the geological record.

But it wasn’t the only significant geological event at the time. It has been hypothesized that the impact of the asteroid could have had a rippling effect through Earth’s mantle resulting in a magna plume and the eruption of the Deccan Traps in what is now southeast India.

Such a dual event – impact followed by massive volcanism – seems a more likely scenario as the cause of the mass extinction because most other large impact craters do not correlate well with mass extinction events. It would seem a double whammy is necessary.

Geology might also provide answers for the evolution of species. Thirty million years before the shellfish of Kiritehere Beach lived and died, the Earth appears to

same as the terms handed out for theft. There’s a big difference between stealing items that can be replaced (and are likely covered by insurance) and stealing childhood innocence to gratify sexual urges. The current jail sentences do not protect children from these offenders for long enough and they do not adequately express the legitimate outrage we should all feel when adults, for their own pleasure, sexualize children, the most vulnerable and valuable members of our society.

Child victims of sex crimes deserve to know that when predatory adults harm them in the worst possible way, society will respond, not just to help them recover from their trauma but also to deliver harsh justice on their behalf.

have entered into the Carnian pluvial episode. After millions of years of dry climates – possibly a result of the super landmass Pangaea – the Earth’s climate shifted to a wet period lasting between one and two million years.

The evidence is in the fossil record as nearly any place geologist look for rocks of that age, they find signs of weathering and a wet Earth. The Carnian pluvial was first noticed by Alistair Ruffell and Michael Simms. They first published their analysis in 1989 but after years of academic obscurity, the episode has become a major focus of research.

The reason is that the Carnian pluvial may have kickstarted the evolution of a group of early reptiles giving rise to two major groups of dinosaurs - the ornithischians, from which developed Stegosaurus and Triceratops, and the saurischians, which include huge long-necked species such as Brachiosaurus and theropods such as Tyrannosaurus rex.

Dinosaurs weren’t the only creatures impacted by the wet conditions. Reef-building corals and marine plankton evolved into more modern forms. The period might have also seen the emergence of the first mammalian species.

Geological history is long and not easily read but when we can read it, it tells us a lot about life on Earth.

LETTERS to the eDItoR

Make aMerica pay

Since 1982, Canada’s softwood-lumber exports have been subject to five separate rounds of U.S. trade litigation.

In January 2016, with the expiration of the softwood lumber agreement of 2006, the American government said it was launching investigations to determine whether softwood lumber imports from Canada were hurting American producers.

The U.S. Commerce Department said that it will work with the U.S. International Trade Commission to examine allegations that wood was being dumped at less than its fair value and that Canadian firms received unfair financial assistance from governments. The trade commission found that there was a reasonable claim that softwood-lumber products from Canada have injured domestic lumber producers, setting the stage for the imposition of preliminary duties.

The B.C. Lumber Trade council rebutted the claims levelled by the U.S. lumber lobby, claiming that U.S. arguments were based on unsubstantiated allegations that were previously rejected by an independent panel.

In 2017 the forestry sector employed 60,000 persons and exported $4-billion worth of softwood to the U.S.

According to B.C’s softwood-lumber envoy, attached to the Washington embassy in 2017, it’s the smaller lumber producers that will be devastated financially if the negotiations and litigation are allowed to drag on, as they have been to do since April of 2017.

On April 22, 2017, it was reported that U.S. President Donald Trump included softwood-lumber when he described NAFTA as a “disaster” that allowed Canada to “take advantage” of the United States. He said he was particularly concerned by Ottawa’s trade practices on lumber, dairy and energy. In one oft he following talks, it was mentioned that there was a possibility that a “border adjustment tax” could be levied. Pushing his “America First” agenda, President Trump slapped tariffs averaging 20 per cent on Canadian lumber exports on 26 April, 2017.

By November of2 019, when Trump was

commenting on a trade deal with China, he said that China would have to make a deal “that he liked”, and if there was no deal made with China, he’d ‘’just raise the tariffs even higher.”

As softwood is not covered by NAFTA, the federal government filed a complaint with the World Trade Organization (WTO), not realizing that Trump already had a strategy that blocked such an appeal. It seems that the WTO cannot consider softwood-lumber adjudication against the U.S. because the president, who makes the U.S. appointments to that body, did not replace the two missing American members, and he appears not to be in a hurry to do so.

This U.S. tariff was imposed when British Columbia was right in the middle of the provincial election campaign,which allowed the two major incumbents to safely address their plan to defuse the current softwood-lumber debacle.

Liberal leader Christy Clark claimed NDP leader John Horgan “turtled’ in the fight over softwood-lumber trade with the United States. This had been her theme since the day the U.S. Commerce Department announced preliminary duties of about 20 per cent, stressing that she was the only one capable of defending the forest industry. In addition, she threatened to choke off exports of U:S. thermal coal from the Fraser-Surrey docks by imposing an onerous levy.

NDP leader John Horgan held that he had prospects of getting a new deal despite the harsh protectionist mood of Trump. He suggested that B.C. could retaliate by applying a “border adjustment tax” on its natural gas exports, or by playing hardball in the Columbia River Treaty renewal. This treaty regulates flood control and electricity production in Washington State, with a negotiated amount of that electricity credited to the province.

Imposing a “border adjustment tax” that would increase the rate charged for exported electricity from British Columbia into the U.S. from the current charge of about three cents per klwlhr. to the aggregate production cost of 8.5 cents should persuade the Americans to appoint their

Thanks to Trump

Our newsfeeds have been overwhelmed in recent weeks with the impeachment hearings of the American president Donald Trump. He is charged with violating American laws, primarily the U.S. Constitution. With regard to many of the accusations, Trump supporters point out that he is not doing anything recent Democrat and Republican presidents have not also done.

It is interesting to note that, for the most part, they are correct.

The United States Constitution is one of the most revered human rights documents in the world. Its writers are praised as visionaries, yet the country supposedly governed by this constitution has seen its principles horribly violated. What happened?

Quite honestly, past presidents bent the rules, the legislatures turned a blind eye, the news media did a poor job reporting and the general public allowed it to happen. The American Constitution stipulates, for example, that only Congress can declare war and bring the nation from a state of peace to a state of war. George

two members, and that would bring the WTO back into operation.

Given BC Hydro’s massive debts, exports of electricity into the United States from British Columbia should be set at whatever aggregate rate it costs to produce it. That way, the B.C. government could not be accused of subsidizing our American neighbours at the expense of its own citizens.

Abe Bourdon Clinton

More for our vets

Two things that are sticking in my craw of late, one has been an irritant to me for quite some time now.

Every Veteran’s Day, Nov. 11 of every year, we gather at the Prince George Cenotaph to honour and remember those who were blown apart, lost limbs, eyes, half a face; whose innards were spilt all over the ground, by bullets, bayonetted; those whose blood ran like rivers, whose mental and emotional abilities were shredded to pieces, some to never be the same again, ever.

We gather to honour families losing two, three, four or five members in one family to the war effort, and all of those of our country and other countries that put forth costly efforts to keep our freedom for us, our families, and those who have come to Canada to become Canadians and experience a good life they may have never known, if not for our veterans of every war we have had to engage in, and fought to the bitter end. So what officials or who is responsible, for having us backed into a corner, not being able to leave our wreaths out on Veterans Day?

What cowards allowed this action to take place. Running like scared rabbits to keep ahead of the thieves or thugs targeting them for destruction? Who is running the show here?

Veterans Day is sacred. They gave us years of freedom, and we can’t give them one whole day of honour, enabling the disabled and those who cannot attend the earlier service a chance to come and see and read the donors of the wreaths,

LESSONS IN LEARNING

W. Bush, however, invaded Iraq. Barack Obama invaded Libya. These are only two recent examples of the violation of this article of the Constitution.

Conservative American Constitutional scholar Bruce Fein has outlined 13 articles of impeachment of Donald Trump. It is not that others haven’t violated the rights of American citizens; it is simply that Donald Trump’s violations have been the most egregious.

It should also be noted that violations of human rights have happened in other developed countries as well, but statistics point to their greatest decline in America.   While life expectancy has increased throughout most of the world in recent decades, life expectancy in the United States has been dropping since 2014. It is the only wealthy country to experience

and reminisce and give their respects and honour through out the day, to those who died a bloody death or lived disabled the remainder of their lives because they protected and saved this country from the evil that threatened it. For those who lie in the grave, bodies twisted and broken, earned through great cost, the giving of their lives to the people who were depending on their ability to fight and keep our freedom. Whatever religion, whatever background, honour our vets by wearing a poppy. Don’t condone war? Most of us don’t. Our vets had no choice.

Shirley Ballum Prince George

Bending rules

Everyone knows that posted speed limits are the law, but everyone in the world (with the possible exception of Singapore) treats them as “guidelines”, not to be taken too seriously. (And here I ignore Quebec and most of the Third World where limits are either taken as challenges or total irrelevancies. Germany ignores the issue on its Autobahn by abolishing limits altogether.) This issue of speed limits has me wondering how does an adult respond to ,a child who asks why the parent is ignoring a posted law? Does one say that it does not matter as it is not rigidly enforced? Or that the police give some latitude for excess before interfering?

If such an obvious restriction is ignored, are there not others that don’t always apply? Is it all right to shoplift if the stolen object is worth less than five dollars? May one beat one’s spouse or child as long as blood is not drawn? After all, they are prohibited by “only laws.”

As with other laws, speed restrictions are supposedly drawn by experts (or politicians, may the gods help us) with our collective order and safety considered. Is it up to us to choose which laws and rules to follow?

When we choose to ignore the laws of the land, what are we telling our children?

James Loughery Prince George

this phenomenon, and it is not something that can be blamed on Trump.

Many educational experts are also discussing what they call a “literacy crisis” in America, pointing out that over 30 million American adults cannot function beyond the third grade level. University tuition rates are also among the highest in the world in the United States, as are student debts, thus putting a great deal of financial stress on those who are not in the wealthy class. It is important to note that this is a global trend, however, and these costs have been increasing for decades. Again, one cannot blame Trump.

The Ronald Reagan era saw the appearance of private, for profit prisons in the United States.  Despite declining crime rates, incarceration rates in the United States have continued to soar. Today, they have the highest documented incarceration rate in the world and a very disproportional number of visible minorities in prison.  Again, this is not a Trump phenomenon.

Recent years have also seen wages for CEOs balloon while real wages for common workers have declined, with the American

minimum wage frozen at $7.25 an hour since 2009.  Today the average CEO is paid 271 times the wage of the average worker in the United States. It is important to note as well that this is a global trend. The wage disparity in Canada, for example, is 149 to 1. It should also be pointed out that it was not Trump who bailed out the banks in 2009.

Despite the fact that he cannot be blamed for all of the troubles of the world, Trump has inadvertently mobilized the American public and people around the world who believe in the rights of the common citizen. While these issues may be felt most deeply in the United States, it is dangerous for any of us to point our fingers at America and claim that we are exempt. In far too many ways the citizens of the world have been asleep since the protests of the 1960s and 1970s.

Thank you, Mr. Trump, for rousing us from our complacency.

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

GERRY CHIDIAC

Hikes in fees on way

Mark NIELSEN Citizen staff

A bylaw to increase a wide range of fees and charges over the length of the current city council’s term was advanced to final reading on Dec. 4.

Most of the hikes are three per cent per year for each of the next four years and are mostly in answer to inflationary costs, council was told.

Exceptions include garbage collection, where an across-the-board two-per-cent rise is on the line.

Final approval pending, households using small containers through the automated collection service will pay $38 per quarter year 2020, rising to $40.25 in 2023. Medium containers will cost $50, rising to $53. And those using large

containers will be charged $60.75, rising to $64.50.

Three per cent increases will be applied to the so-called subsidized services - namely the city’s pools, arenas, parks and fields, as well as the Civic Centre and Prince George Playhouse - where the cost of running them is covered in part by the users through admissions and rents with the rest paid for through the property tax levy. Sales taxes not included, a singlevisit admission to either of the city’s pools will stand at $7.11 in 2020, rising to $7.77 by 2023 for an adult, while for a child, it will be $3.81 rising to $4.16, and seniors, students and youth will pay $5.36 rising to $5.85.

The family rate will be $5.36 for the first adult and $3.81 per additional fam-

ily member rising to $5.85 and $4.16.

The standard rate for ice time at the city’s arenas will be $333 per hour rising to $364 while the discount adult rate for prime-time ice will be $209 rising to $228 and, for non-prime, $168 rising to $183.

Council still reserves the right to review the rates each year but it was also noted that user groups like men’s hockey will now be able to better predict what their costs will be down the road.

The increases for the subsidized services will generate an additional $145,000 in revenue in 2020 awnd offset the increase needed to the property tax levy to maintain existing services by 0.13 per cent. Other increases include:

- The city’s cemetery, a full-cost recovery service, will see yearly across-theboard three per cent increases.

- Off-street-parking, another service in which the City works to recover the full cost from the user, will go up by two per

cent per year.

- Households and businesses on nonmetered water and sewer accounts will see a four-per-cent increase. For a household, the bill will be $995.78, up $37.90. Similar to what is in place for those on metered water, those on metered sewer accounts will pay a flat fee tied to the size of the pipe to cover the capital cost of the service and a charge per gallon to cover the operating cost.

For metered households and businesses in a 19 mm pipe, that would have meant an almost 50-per-cent increase to their sewer and water bills in 2020, but council agreed to spread the rise over two years to soften the blow. They will be paying $685.84 in 2020, rising to $818.67 in 2021.

There are 1,307 residential metered accounts and 639 commercial metered accounts in the city. Non-metered accounts total about 22,000.

Parent Portal unveiled

CItIzEN Staff

Skipping school?

Students in School District 57 schools might think twice about it now that their parents have an electronic tool that allows them to track their kid’s attendance.

The SD 57 Family Portal gives parents direct online access to school records on attendance, grades and other private information now available through the district’s website - www.sd57.bc.ca and its link to the provincial site MyEducation BC.

MyEd BC is bound by the School Act and the Freedom of Information and Pro-

tection of Privacy Act to protect student information.

Access to student records through the Family Portal is only accessible through a secure password.

The new service went online on Tuesday and more than 10,000 accounts have been created in the district.

“It’s been a while coming across the province but we have finally reached that point where we’ve issued invitations to parents to create their accounts,” said SD 57 interim superintendent Rod Allen. “It provides parents with up-to-theminute access to what’s going in in their child’s learning.”

housing about the type of accommodation and services you prefer as part of your new home.

Not-for-Profit housing provider, Oncore Seniors Society, at RiverBend Seniors Community are proposing to build NEW Affordable Seniors (55+) Housing in Prince George. The potential completion is late 2021. Oncore strives to provide more than just housing! We aspire to develop a sense of community for residents through design, services and amenities that will contribute to a healthy and fulfilling lifestyle for years to come.

Not-for-Profit housing provider, Oncore Seniors Society, at RiverBend Seniors Community are proposing to build NEW Affordable Seniors (55+) Housing in Prince George. The potential completion is late 2021. Oncore strives to provide more than just housing! We aspire to develop a sense of community for residents through design, services and amenities that will contribute to a healthy and fulfilling lifestyle for years to come.

Oncore strives to provide more than just housing and aspires to develop a sense of community through design, services and amenities that will contribute to a healthy and fulfilling lifestyle for residents for years to come.

We would like to hear about the type of accommodation and services you prefer as part of your new home. Your ideas could help shape the design and development of a new affordable Seniors Community. Please complete an Expression of Interest Form and forward to us by email, fax or in person.

We would like to hear about the type of accommodation and services you prefer as part of your new home. Your ideas could help shape the design and development of a new affordable Seniors Community. Please complete an Expression of Interest Form and forward to us by email, fax or in person.

If you would like to assist in the design and development of new affordable 55+ communities please complete and submit the Expression of Interest Form.

www.oncoreseniorssociety.ca www.riverbendmanor.ca RiverBend Manor Facebook Page

T-wolves satisfied with their 4-4 start SPORTS

Ted CLARKe Citizen staff

The graduating class at UNBC that turned over four starters from last year’s men’s basketball team created plenty of uncertainty around the Timberwolves’ camp.

Head coach Todd Jordan would be the first to admit he’s been pleasantly surprised at how well those holes in the starting lineup have been filled on a T-wolves team that’s taking a 4-4 record into Christmas break.

Who would have figured that after those first eight games that Tyrell Laing, a product of the Prince George Polars high school program, would be the leading scorer in U Sports Canada West and that his backcourt sidekick Vova Pluzhnikov would be second in the conference in assists and eighth in scoring? Laing has scored 22.5 points per game and Pluzhnikov is not far behind, averaging 19 points. Together they form a dynamic duo that’s allowing the T-wolves to maintain a playoff position.

“I’m not surprised that those guys have stepped up and are scoring more and taking on bigger leadership roles, what has surprised me is how fast that’s happened,” said Jordan. “Vova has kind of been in that position for a couple of years now, but Tyrell is leading the conference in scoring right now and for a Prince George kid to be doing that is a pretty cool story.

“Our offence is built to put those guys in primary decision-making and scoring positions as much as we can. But at the end of the day it’s those guys who are stepping up and playing at a high level and we’re going to need that to continue. Their confidence is really high right now.”

Playing without the services of last year’s regulars - Jovan Leamy, James Agyeman, Austin Chandler and Vaggelis Loukas - a T-wolves team that went 0-7 in the preseason started out with a seven-point win over UVic in the home-opener at the Northern Sport Centre. The Vikes turned the tables in the rematch and won by 23. The following weekend in Langley and UNBC won both over Trinity Western to jump to 3-1. Beaten handily at home by the UBC T-birds, the T-wolves went down to Kamloops and split with Thompson Rivers, in their final weekend of action in 2019.

“Going into the season obviously there was a ton of turnover from last year’s team and a growth process with a lot of guys having to step into new roles and we were just hoping the guys would continue to grow and get better and I think that has happened,”

UNBC Timberwolves guard Tyrell Laing gets high fives from alumni during the starting lineup announcements prior to their game against the University of Victoria at the Northern Sport Centre earlier this season.

said Jordan.

“For us to be 4-4 and having played a really strong team (UBC) within those eight games, I think we’re in an OK spot. We’ve put ourselves into striking position for playoffs going into the second half. I think with all the turnover and stuff that’s something we can be proud of, but we’ve got to continue to grow.”

Returning veterans Anthony Hokanson and Saje Gosal have figured out how to play off the strengths of Pluzhnikov and Laing and use them to their advantage. Stopping teams from scoring is where the T-wolves need to improve most and they’ll have to keep working on reducing the points they allow (84.9 per game, 12th in Canada West).

Perhaps the biggest surprise has been the play of six-foot-six rookie forward Fareed Shittu, who despite just two years of basketball experience as a high schooler in Edmonton, he’s in a position to beat

T-wolves team records for rookie scoring and rebounding. Shittu is an extraordinary leaper and he pulled in 68 rebounds in those eight games to rank seventh in Canada West. He can hit the basket. In field goal percentage, Shittu (60 per cent) and second-year Spencer Ledoux (63.6 per cent) are both in the top 10.

UNBC drew the bye last weekend and won’t play a league game until Jan. 3 in Calgary. After that, the T-wolves face two teams with near .500 records (Fraser Valley and Regina) and three teams that rank near the bottom of the league (UBC-Okanagan, Brandon and MacEwan).

“Calgary is one of the top teams in the country and they’re going to present a real challenge to us coming out of the break,” said Jordan. “After we’re done playing them you’re looking at almost every weekend going in with a good opportunity to notch some wins on the board.”

Having that extra week off came at a good time for the T-wolves, who had the added stress of dealing with the faculty strike, which finally ended on Friday. The picket lines came down after the labour dispute shut down classrooms for more than three weeks.

The T-wolves men won’t be idle over the Christmas break. They’re heading to California Dec. 15 for a five-day, three-game exhibition series at Vanguard University against NAIA teams. Jordan plans to do some experimenting with his team during the break which he hopes will keep his players improving.

“Our goal is to go into the second half a better team than what we are now,” he said. “It’s probably going to take eight or nine wins to get in (to playoffs) and we have 12 games left so we have to find a way to get at least five or six wins to give us a good shot at winning a playoff game.”

City to host native fastball championships

Fastball teams from across the nation will gather in Prince George during the Canadian Native Fastball Championships next summer.

Set for Aug. 1-3, the event will feature over 80 teams competing in five divisions with games played on 11 baseball diamonds throughout the city on the traditional territory of the Lheidli T’enneh First Nation.

The tournament is expected to bring in about 2,500 visitors and deliver a $3.5-million economic impact.

Started in 1974, it has also been held in Prince George in 2016, 2004, and 1994. The tournament is overseen by the Canadian Native Fastball Association a non-profit volunteer organization with First Nation representatives across Canada.

“The CNFA is pleased to bring the Native Fastball Championships once again to Prince George,” said Randy Potskin, President of CNFA. “We are honoured to

continue the rich culture of native fastball handed down to us by our fathers and grandfathers.”

Locally, the bid to host the event was prepared jointly by the Spruce City Men’s Fastball Association, the PG Big Guy Lake Kings Fastball Club, Tourism Prince George, and the City of Prince George. For more information or to sign up to volunteer or support the event, visit nativefastball. com.

From left, Lheidli T’enneh Dayi (Chief) Clay Pountney, Tourism Prince George Interim CEO Sarah Kirk, CNFA President Randy Potskin, Mayor Lyn Hall, Harley Desjarlais and Peter Ghostkeeper celebrate the announcement of the 2020 Canadian Native Fastball Championships.

Jalbert wins national silver

Paul Jalbert wasn’t ranked as a medal threat going into the boccia national championships in Victoria.

As it turned out, those pre-tournament prognosticators were way off.

It took him a couple games to zero his sights but once Jalbert got rolling there was no stopping the 56-year-old from Prince George, who came back with the silver medal in the B2 class, his best-ever finish in nine years of taking on the best in Canada.

“I didn’t expect to even make it through the round-robin,” said Jalbert. “When you lose your first two games it’s hard to come back. I didn’t win the first day but I had two close games and won the third game 7-3, and that created a three-way tie for second in the pool.”

In Sunday’s playoff round, Jalbert then beat Danik Allard of Quebec, ranked No. 1 in Canada, 4-1 in the semifinal. In the final, Mike Mercer of Newfoundland scored two on his last shot and won 4-2.

“It was a good tournament, I played differ-

ently this year than the previous years,” Jalbert said. “Everyone was saying I couldn’t miss a shot.”

The games were webcast, which allowed Jalbert’s wife and seven-year-old daughter Audrey and the rest of his family in Prince George to watch. Jalbert just missed a team medal on the three-member BC 1 team, finishing fourth. He finished second in B.C. at the provincial championship in Victoria. He has one other national medal, a bronze in singles he won in 2015.

Boccia is one of the Canadian Cerebral Palsy Association’s showcase sports. Athletes at nationals compete in one of six classifications, based on the level of disability. As a B2, Jalbert is able to stand on his own without the use of devices to help keep his balance.

He’s had a few health problems this year and on his doctors’ advice he gave up his job of 19 years working on the maintenance crew at CN Centre.

“That was hard but I could see it was coming,” he said.

Kelowna set for MeMorial Cup

Next May, for the second time in their Western Hockey League history, the Kelowna Rockets will host the Memorial Cup major junior hockey championship. Last time they did that, in 2004, it worked out extremely well for them when they won the national title.

The Rockets are one of the most successful WHL teams over the past two decades and they’re still in the process of assembling a team good enough to win the four-team tournament, May 22-30, 2020.

“This will be our sixth Memorial Cup since the one we hosted and that’s not bad, there’s a lot of teams that have never been to one,” said Rockets owner/general manager Bruce Hamilton, now in his 29th season as a WHL owner.

The Rockets had seven players attend NHL camps in September, several of whom were high picks in the draft in June, including forward Nolan Foote, drafted 27th overall by Tampa Bay, and defenceman Kaedan Korczak, picked 41st by Vegas. Also in the mix is forward Dillon Hamaliuk, San Jose’s 55th overall pick in 2019, acquired in an off-season trade from the Seattle Thunderbirds.

Since 1995, when the team arrived after four for seasons based in Tacoma, Wash., the Rockets have won the Ed Chynoweth

Trophy four times as league champions (2003, 2005, 2009 and 2015).

In 2004, the Rockets had a couple weeks rest before the Memorial Cup after losing the Western Conference championship to Everett in a seven-game series.

The Rockets and their stingy defence allowed just two goals in three roundrobin wins, beating Guelph, Gatineau and the WHL-champion Medicine Hat Tigers. Armed with nine future NHL’ers, including defencemen Shea Weber and Josh Gorges, the Rockets defeated the Gatineau Olympiques 2-1 in the final, May 23, 2004. Kelowna qualified for three-straight Memorial Cup tournaments from 2003-2005 and returned in 2009, losing in the final to the Windsor Spitfires in Rimouski, Que. In 2015, after sweeping Brandon in the WHL final, the Rockets were Memorial Cup finalists again in Quebec City, losing in overtime to the Oshawa Generals.The Rockets have missed the WHL playoffs only twice (2006-07 and 2018-19) in 28 years since Hamilton started the franchise as an expansion team in Tacoma. Last year, with a younger squad, they finished ninth in the Western Conference (28-32-6-2), six points behind Seattle for the final playoff berth.

Citizen staff

Citizen staff

Citizen staff

pipeline work picking up

Glacier Media

The first segments of pipe for the Coastal GasLink project begin to arrive at storage sites last week in anticipation of construction ramp up later next year.

The $6.6-billion pipeline, which will provide the natural gas feed for the $40-billion LNG Canadaproject,willstretch670kilometresfrom the Dawson Creek area in Northeast B.C. to the coast at Kitimat.

TC Energy said that starting this month, pipe will be transported by rail and truck and stored at sites across the project route until it’s needed for assembly and installation. That phase of construction is expected to start next summer and continue through to 2022.

InitialdeliveriesareplannedfortheChetwynd andKitimatarea.Deliveriestootherareasacross the route will continue through April 2021, the company said.

“WithconstructionprogressingontheCoastal GasLinkProject,wearecommittedtodelivering economic benefits across the province. With more than $1 billion in employment and contracting opportunities for Indigenous and local communities, significant benefits are already being realized across the project right-of-way,” TC Energy said.

“In fact, nearly 1,000 women and men are currently working on the project to make sure we are ready for mainline construction in 2020.”

Kettle campaign seeKs volunteers

Citizen staff

The Prince George Salvation Army is asking residents to volunteer a few hours this holiday season for its annual kettle campaign.

The ringing of the bells asking for donations is the Salvation Army’s major annual fundraiser and the proceeds are used to help support about 1,200 local households throughout the year.

The kettles are located at 12 partner businesses around Prince George.

To volunteer, call 250-596-4673.

Dawson Creek group sCores lottery win

Citizen staff

A group of 15 co-workers from Dawson Creek has some ‘extra’ Christmas shopping money on its hands after matching all four Extra numbers in the Daily Grand draw to win $500,000.

Stephen Gibson bought the winning ticket for the Dec. 2 draw at the Dawson Co-op, and that’s where he discovered he and his work mates won.

“The lady at the counter mentioned someone from Dawson Creek won $500,000 playing Daily Grand … She scanned my ticket and I couldn’t believe it was ours that won it,” he said.

The first person Gibson called was his wife, followed by a member of his group pool.

“I told him ‘you gotta get everyone at the office for the end of the day,’” said Gibson.

“We all got together and my coworkers

Online camping reservatiOn system revamped

Campers hoping to stay at B.C. parks will find a revamped online reservation system with new features on the Discover Camping website.

Campers who can’t get a reservation for a favourite site because someone beat them to it, for example, can choose to be notified if that campsite becomes available at a specific time.

If your first-choice campground is fully booked, new online search features will help you find available campsites in nearby parks.

You can also sign up for B.C. Parks information such as newsletters and event notices.

More features will be added in stages, a statement from B.C. Parks said Wednesday, including the option of buying items such as firewood, ice and park-related merchandise ahead of time.

The website will also allow users to buy and send e-gift cards to use on the website.

B.C. hired US eDirect to beef up the online

reservation system. The company supplies reservation systems for governments in places including California, Missouri and New Zealand, the statement said.

Reservation fees are not changing.

About 55 per cent of the approximate 10,700 campsites in B.C. parks can be reserved. The rest are available on a firstcome, first served basis.

B.C. hit a record this year, with more than 253,000 reservations made through Discover Camping. Most bookings come from within B.C.

Last year, close to 231,000 reservations were made.

B.C. is home to 1,033 provincial parks, recreation areas, conservancies, ecological reserves and protected areas. They cover more than 14 million hectares.

- To book a B.C. Parks campsite: discovercamping.ca

- For more information on the new reservation system: bcparks.ca/reserve

- For more information about B.C. Parks: env.gov.bc.ca/bcparks

thought something was wrong… Once I told them the news, there was a lot of hugging, screaming and disbelief.”

Gibson, who works as a gas fitter and was born and raised in Dawson Creek, says he plans to use his share of the $500,000 to help pay his kids’ college tuition and per-

haps take a winter vacation to Nashville.

“We also have our staff Christmas party coming up… I’m sure it will be an extra hurrah,” said Gibson. “We’ve all pretty much been playing together for over 13 years and we have a pretty close group.”

citizen Photo by James doyle

Winter traction Cyclists make their way along the Greenway Trails on Saturday afternoon while participating in the Prince George Cycling Club’s Fat Bike Season Opener.

Northern appreciates customer support

Christine hinZMAnn Citizen staff

On Saturday morning, as people headed into Northern Hardware on Third Avenue, hot dogs and hamburgers were already sizzling on the barbecue as early as 10 a.m. and the flame continued to grill until 2 p.m. during the Northern’s customer appreciation event.

Kelly Green, president of Northern Hardware, was outside on the chilly morning serving up food and reassuring customers who were concerned that the doors were closing at the end of February.

“My voice has been hoarse from reassuring so many customers that it was really OK that the Northern is closing,” she said. “Staff will move on to find jobs and they’ll be at the stores where people are shopping at.”

The customer appreciation event was held to give back to the people who have been so loyal to the Northern all these

years.

“We appreciate the customers coming in and this is our way of saying thank you,” Green said. “Whenever we do something like this it goes over really well and we were hoping people would come down and share their shopping experiences at Northern Hardware and this is just a small thank you for 100 amazing years.”

Liz and George Haley have been shopping at the Northern since 1975.

“Northern Hardware is why we moved to Prince George,” Liz said.

“We were headed to Dawson Creek but after George walked into Northern Hardware he told me we were going to stay here.”

George was a general practitioner until he retired five years ago and now teaches at the Northern Medical Program at the university. In 1975, he was in Prince George for two weeks helping out while another doctor went on vacation. After the two week stay they were moving on

to Dawson Creek. They were from Southern California and wanted a change.

“It even gets more complicated - our first house we bought here was the old Moffat house at the corner of Moffat and Hammond,” Liz said.

A coin toss determined who was going to buy the old home between two family members and Liz and George spent the next 10 years in that house having their children, living their lives and going to Northern Hardware.

They kept returning to the Northern for all their needs because of the exceptional customer service.

Liz shared a prime example.

“When we moved here I was 22 and I wanted a boat,” she said.

“But we didn’t know what kind of boat to get.”

They were thinking about getting a small aluminum boat for recreational purposes.

When one of the Moffats asked what they wanted to do with the boat, Liz

Gratton receivinG citizenship medal

CitiZen stAff

For the second year in a row, a Prince George resident has been chosen to receive the Medal of Good Citizenship. Shirley Gratton is one of 18 people in B.C. that will receive the medal. Last year, Selen Alpay was presented with the honour.

A longtime Prince city councillor, Gratton is a member of the Prince George Sports Hall of Fame in the builder category for her work with the local baseball community. Among her many other volunteer activities over the years, she is perhaps best known for her work with the B.C. Northern Exhibition

knew exactly the answer.

“So I told him that when we had kids I wanted them to go for joy rides and hang over the edge,” Liz said.

“He told us that we didn’t want what they sold - they sold flat bottomed boatsand that we should go to Howie’s Marine to get a boat with a V-shaped bottom. So we took our $700 and went to Howie’s Marine. And that told me the Northern was our go-to place. That they will be honest and they will send your $700 away to buy something that suits you.”

Liz said she has modeled her own life after that example and she’s told that story too many times to count because it epitomizes what customer service and caring is all about and that’s Northern Hardware.

George and Liz said they could tell a hundred more stories just like that one and that’s what kept them coming back year after year, decade after decade.

“We are heartbroken the Northern is closing,” Liz said.

(formerly the PGX), Communities In Bloom, the Festival of Trees, the Prince George Hydro Power Pioneers and Huble Homestead.

Gratton was awarded the Freedom of the City in 2013, Prince George’s highest civic honour for her extensive volunteer and community work.

“I know in the rules of the Freeman of the City, you are allowed to graze your cow on city hall’s lawn,” she said at the time, noting her grandfather used to do just that in the very early days of the city. A month later, she did just that to raise awareness of the start of that year’s BCNE.

Pack a Police car sets record

Shoppers donated enough food to fill 35 vehicles when Prince George RCMP police and staff held their annual Pack a Police Car at local Save On Foods on Sunday. It worked out to five more cars filled than last year’s record.

Moreover, $5,800 in cash and gift cards

were donated, over $1,800 more than the previous record set in 2017.

The donations were delivered to the Prince George Council of Seniors on Monday by RCMP with help from Duchess Park and D.P. Todd Secondary Schools.

LocaLs join Bahamas reBuiLding efforts

Virginia O’Dine Special to The Citizen

Three Prince George residents have returned home after two week operations in the Bahamas. As members of Team Rubicon Canada, they volunteered to help rebuild homes, schools, and medical facilities after Hurricane Dorian caused catastrophic damage in early September.

Team Rubicon is an international notfor-profit organization that specializes in disaster response. The first operation on Canadian soil was in Fort McMurray with members from around the globe arriving to assist. This action birthed the formation of Team Rubicon Canada, mirroring Team Rubicon USA, Team Rubicon Australia and Team Rubicon UK.

“There were five waves of 37 Team Rubicon Canada Members from across the country that travelled to the Abaco Islands,” Cristian Silva, the direct response unit manager for British Columbia NW, said. “The majority of our volunteers are veterans, active members of the armed forces, first responders and of course our kick ass civilians. The initial groups cleaned out a badly damaged school, “Every Child Counts”, a vocational school for children and adults with special needs. We also make sure that buildings are structurally safe, remove fallen trees, tarp buildings and homes.

“When you talk with the survivors, you find yourself applying your training. That first morning Sept 1, many of

the islanders were getting ready to go to church to pray and prepare for the hurricane. The hurricane hit the island three hours before it was scheduled. Some of them found themselves on the roads, they were getting dressed for church, and they encountered storm surges of over 20 feet, along with 295 km/hour sustained winds. Here is when you see real heroes. People that were seeing their neighbours struggling to stay afloat, some of them using their own vehicles to take people off of roofs. Others were getting in their boats fighting the high winds and rain to save fellow human beings. The hurricane lasted for almost 40 hours. Can you imagine what hell that must have been? Seeing family members disappearing in the waves, being buried under the rubble, but the people had to continue, to help their loved ones and neighbours survive.”

Larry Sivell landed in the Bahamas on September 18.

“When I first arrived on the island of Abaco there were not a lot of locals to be seen as most had evacuated the island. We arrived shortly after Dorian had done her damage. No homes that I saw were inhabited and many of the roads still had trees across them, making access difficult. There were few if any cars on the roads some days but our own two suburbans and a medical van. In those early days you got to recognize who was out driving around the island. There is a lot to process as you drive around so much

destruction. Most people don’t hear about or see in a photo of a devastated area the smells that are left in the air after a situation like this, forcing us to line our masks with mentholated ointments to cover the odours just to be able to do our jobs. The absence of birds for the first ten days created an eerie environment unlike anything I had been in prior.”

“No matter where we went on the island,” adds Silva, “people said thank you to us. At one point I was buying something for the team, and the owner said that she was upset that we were leaving. She said ‘I have met my heroes, and they don’t wear capes, they wear grey shirts.’ I want to say thank you to all my brothers and sisters from another mother from the

United States, UK, Norway, and Canada.

I am proud to wear that Greyshirt.”

“We wouldn’t be able to do it without the support from our community. The Forge, Three Ranges Brewing Company, Home Depot, Starbucks, and The Railway and Forestry Museum have been invaluable with their assistance.”

Local members have in the last year also volunteered in Ottawa working on flood relief, Burns Lake with wildfire relief, and local projects that make a big difference, such as helping the Goodsir Nature Park with firewood and projects at The Forge in Quesnel.

For more information on Team Rubicon Canada, visit www.teamrubicon.ca.

Eric Depenau surveys the scene in Marsh Harbour.

Around town

AROUND TOWN COMMUNITY CALENDAR

OperatiOn red nOse

Friday, dec. 13 and saturday, dec. 14 and dec. 20 and 21 and new year’s eve, operation red nose Prince George allows party-goers to get themselves home safely, and their vehicles too.  The safe ride home service is organized by the rotary club of Prince George-nechako in partnership with icbc and the Prince George rcmP and is by donation. donations received from clients stay in Prince George and go towards local youth and amateur sport organizations. To get a ride between 9 p.m. and 3 a.m. call 250-962-7433.

ring Of fire

until monday, dec. 23 at 8 p.m. at  #36556 north nechako rd., Theatre northWest presents ring of Fire: The music of Johnny cash, which features five actors, 10 instruments and more than 30 songs played live to tell the amazing true life story of Johnny cash through song. Tickets at theatrenorthwest.com.

HOliday fair

saturday, dec. 14 and sunday, dec. 15 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the roll-a-dome, 2588 rec Place dr., there is a holiday small business Fair where more than 80 vendors will sell their wares.

Winterfest Craft fair

saturday dec. 14 and sunday, dec. 15 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Prince George civic centre, 808 canada Games Way, the

Winterfest craft Fair takes place. This is the last of the big fairs before christmas where more than 100 vendors, including bakers, artists, crafters and creators will showcase their wares. admission is free. For more information email  pgwinterfestmarket@gmail.com.

ligHt Up tHe OrCHard

until monday, dec. 23 from 4 to 9 p.m. northern Lights estate Winery, 745 PG Pulpmill rd., enjoy a family-friendly walking tour and get into the spirit of the holidays with a stunning lights display in the winery’s orchards. Kids receive a complimentary hot chocolate and treat while the adults get to enjoy $3 off a bottle of wine to take home. concession will be available with adult and kid-friendly beverages as well as snacks. admission is $5 for adults, $4 for wine club/seniors 65 and older, a toonie for children two to 14, which includes a hot chocolate and small treat, children under two years old are free. Family rate is $12 for two adults, up to three children, all plus GsT. The orchard will be closed dec. 4 and 19. For more information call 250-564-1112.

CelebratiOn Of ligHts

Wednesday, dec. 18 to monday, dec. 23 at the central bc railway and Forestry museum, 850 river rd., the museum transforms during its celebration of Lights event. enjoy a walk taking in the sight of more than 100,000 christmas lights or hop onto the cottonwood minirail express to explore the eight-acre park for a small fee. Guests are invited to roast hot dogs and marshmallows over a bonfire or have a meal from the concession for purchase. People can enjoy a visit with the special guest in a red suit and live entertainment. on dec. 18 admission to the park will be with donation of a nonperishable food items. For more information visit www.pgrfm.bc.ca.

tHe nUtCraCker

Thursday, dec. 19 to sunday, dec. 22 at 7:30 p.m. and sunday at 2 p.m. at Vanier hall, 2901 Griffiths ave., Judy russell Presents the nutcracker, the seasonal favourite. Treat the family to this beloved local tradition this holiday season, featuring the Prince George symphony orchestra. Tickets at centralinteriortickets.com. contact:  250-5632902  |  judydance@shawcable.com

fUM-fUM-fUM

saturday, dec. 14 from 7 to 9 p.m. at st. michael’s & all angels’ anglican church, 1505 Fifth ave., the Prince George cantata singers present a christmas performance called FumFum-Fum. The event is suitable for all ages. Tickets rae $@5 for adults, and children 12 and younger are $12 each. For more information visit www.pgcantatasingers.ca.

grieving parents CHristMas dinner

sunday, dec. 22 from 6 to 9 p.m. at the omineca art centre, 369 Victoria st., the Grieving Parents united organization is inviting those who have lost an infant or experienced loss in pregnancy to gather together to enjoy a traditional turkey dinner together. during the free event guests are invited to create memory boxes that will be donated to the hospital. everyone is welcome to attend the dinner, including those with living children who can show their support and help raise awareness for this kind of loss.

Guests must rsVP by emailing shayla mena at shaylamena@outlook.com or natasha saunders at tashtalkshealing@gmail.com.

adUlt band

every monday until June 29, 2020 from 5 to 7:30 p.m. at the First baptist church, 483 Gillett st., the alban classical new horizons adult band meets.

contact:  250-563-4693  |  admin@ albanclassical.org

pJ stOrytiMe

every monday until dec. 9 from 6 to 6:30 p.m. at the bob harkins branch, Prince George Public Library, 888 canada Games Way, bring the little ones dressed in their PJs for stories, rhymes, and songs before bedtime. suitable for children up to five years old. contact:  2505639251  |  adhanjal@pgpl.ca

Heartbeat Meetings

on the third monday of the month at the Foundry, 1148 seventh ave., at 5:15 to 6:30 p.m. for youth between 12 and 24 and for adults at 6:45 to 8 p.m., there is a peer support group meeting offering empathy, encouragement and direction for those who have lost a loved one by suicide. if the door is locked, please knock. For more information contact sandra Galletti at galletti@telus.net or call 250-961-9330.

aCapella CHOrUs

every Tuesday at 7 p.m. at studio 2880-15th ave, back entrance, the White spruce city acapella chorus is looking for women of all ages to tuneup and re-energize their passion for singing. everyone is welcome for fun, laughter and friendship. For more information call Pam 250-562-9855.

Mental HealtH Meetings

The first and third Wednesday of every month at 11:15 a.m. at 1139 sixth ave., the Prince George mental health consumer council welcomes the public to regular meetings. For more information call sherry at 250-5621839.

A&E

Fundraiser pays tribute to Mah

Images that have inspired titles like Peaceful Easy Feeling, Chipmunk Lunch and Autumn’s Daydream are part of the Friends of David Mah Canadian Cancer Agency Relay For Life team fundraiser where about 30 framed images taken by the great man himself are on offer with all proceeds going to the Canadian Cancer Agency for cancer research.

One of the curators of the pieces and

organizers of the fundraiser, Glen Moose Scott, was a good friend of Mah’s and said the pieces were discovered when Mah’s house was cleaned out after his death from cancer in 2016. Preparing the home for sale, the signed, framed images were found tucked away in a room. They weren’t hung up. They were just sitting waiting and ready.

“There was no sense leaving them hidden way,” Scott said.

“We wanted to let the public know about these prints and then we thought about selling them as part of a fundraiser.”

Other members of the Friends of David Mah relay team include Jason Peters and fellow photographer Chuck Nisbett who walked the entire 24-hour relay in 2017, then shaved his head in honour of Mah’s memory last year during the Prince George’s 24-hour Relay for Life.

Scott is also organizing an annual event

that sees Steve Elliott, an Elvis impersonator, performing in his ninth Gospel Concert on Jan. 18 at the First Baptist Church, 483 Gillett St., which is a fundraiser for the Kordyban Cancer Lodge.

Scott said some of the prints will be on display at that event as well.

Organizers are thinking about putting the images on Facebook but for now those interested in the images can contact Scott for more information at 250-963-9472.

Christmas tree Cutting permits available Film Festival set For next Fall

Permits are now available for cutting down Christmas trees on Crown land.

The permits are free but must be carried at all times and available to show a natural resource officer, conservation officer or peace officer. The permits also set out the conditions under which a tree can be cut.

They’re available at the Prince George Natural Resource District office, 2000 S. Ospika Blvd., the FrontCounterBC office, in the Wood Innovation and Design Centre at 499 George St., or online at www.gov.bc.ca (type “Christmas tree permits” in the

search field).

Local natural resource district offices can provide details about specific cutting requirements and approved harvest areas. Maps provided by the districts showing where the trees can be cut can also be checked online.

When cutting a Christmas tree, keep the following tips in mind:

- Leave home prepared. Bring ropes, gloves, tools, tire chains, a first aid kit, a mobile phone and warm clothing.

- Drive carefully and be prepared for logging trucks. A resource road user safety guide can be found on the B.C. Forest Safety Council website, www.

bcforestsafe.org.

- Make sure to find the right tree before cutting. Some permits specify only one tree can be cut.

- Do not leave a pointed stump as this may cause injury to livestock, wildlife, pets or humans.

- Choose a tree that can be cut near the base and is easy to transport. Wasted tree remains left in the forest can form a summer fire hazard.

- Clean up and remove all debris associated with the activity.

Members of the public are reminded to check online maps provided by districts to ensure they are cutting within a designated area.

Citizen staff

The Treasure Cove show lounge will be hosting a four-day film festival next fall.

The Great Northern International Film Festival will run Sept. 10-13, screening more than 100 films and hosting filmmaker workshops, organizer Norm Coyne announced Thursday.

A gala event will be held on Sept. 12 with 24 awards handed out to category winners for excellence in filmmaking. The films will be judged by a jury of industry professionals and winning filmmakers will receive $500. Interested filmmakers can submit entries through the Filmfreeway website and Prince George-based filmmakers will be able to enter their work for free. Tickets will be available at Treasure Cover and online at Eventbrite with prices to attend the festival will be $20 for a day pass and $60 for a festival pass.

Arts efforts help coping with grief

When I was younger I hated to lose anything, even if it was the most insignificant and replaceable item like a favourite pen or a sweater. I would moan at the injustice and frustration. It’s funny how over time material things have become less important, and loss has taken on a whole new meaning. Now that I’m older, there is a lifetime of loss to reflect on. Relationship problems, breakups, devastating fires and business failures have all pierced my heart. But there is nothing that brings me to my knees more than losing someone deeply loved.

Death ushers in the unknown, unfamiliar and the unsafe. When someone who held permanent residence is gone, never to be seen in the flesh, or heard out loud ever again, somewhere in my abdomen pain begins. This heart-wrenching realization

LATITUDE

LINDA REMPEL

creates a specific suffering that reconciles me to my fragility and insignificance. What a laborious and painful effort it is to move forward with the heavy burden of grief firmly affixed to my being.

Death is a teacher and a motivator. It is poignant reminder that our time is finite, especially if we are fortunate enough to get older. I sometimes deceive myself when I try to run from this brutal reality that will not be denied. I am quite sure that it is because of this truth that with each passing year my priorities have slowly shifted to the search for meaning.

As I struggle with my own personal grief,

I can’t help but think that maybe this is the reason why I find myself journeying with the Community Arts Council during this time of transition in its history. It is the end of an era in Prince George with the pending loss of our Studio 2880 location. Nonetheless, it is a beginning too. I can sense new life; birth.

On Wednesday, Dec. 4, I attended a captivating meeting along with 40 other community-minded leaders, artists, volunteers, politicians and professionals from all walks of life, vocations and organizations. We were invited to discuss the feasibility of creating a new Creative Hub in the old BMO building on Third Avenue and Quebec Street in the downtown core. The format of the meeting was a World Café Style Workshop, where we moved from table to table to wrestle with practical questions. Who will the users and partners of the new Creative Hub be? What changes to the building

are needed? How can we optimize the existing floor space of the building? What are some conceptual uses and who else could be involved? What are key operational priorities that will create a foundation of short and long term success? Finally, what does the architect say?

Answers derived from the wisdom, experience and generosity of those who attended were enthusiastically shared. It was an amazing four hours of focused collaboration absent of personal and political agendas. We are fortunate in Prince George to have many honorable individuals among us who step up. I mean people who truly care and who are willing to roll up their sleeves and work hard for something that could potentially serve the citizens of our city for generations, no matter what it takes.  Pure love in action for the future of the arts and culture in Prince George. A gift and a tonic for this broken heart.

Citizen staff

Citizen staff

New course supports INdIgeNous pareNts

Mark NIELSEN Citizen staff

Indigenous parents who are going through separation or divorce can now access a free online course to help them make decisions in the best interests of their children.

Parenting After Separation for Indigenous Families offers information about how Indigenous parents can honour their children while working through challenges like determining parenting time and child support.

It also explains how intergenerational trauma from colonization can affect parents’ experiences of separation and provides strategies they can use to manage stress during this difficult period.

Christina Draegen, the Prince Georgebased northern regional manager of the B.C. Native Courtworker and Counselling Association, was a member of an advisory committee that played a key role in

putting the course together over the past year and a half.

It was a matter of taking the online course already in place for the general population and looking at it through an Indigenous lens.

“Our experience with the traditional Parenting After Separation online course was that our Indigenous people were not being successful at connecting with it or even completing it with long-term benefits,” Draegen said.

Through a choice of video, audio or text, the course takes three to four hours to complete but is divided into eight modules so it can be done at the parent’s own pace.

“There are elders and other champions that provide their wisdom, advice and personal experiences throughout the course,” Draegen said. “All of the tools inside this course are designed with the

respect and mindfulness of an Indigenous compass - all the handouts, all the pictures, the completion certificate, everything.”

When it comes to the value of connecting with one’s culture, she speaks from experience. Draegen’s roots are Algonquin and Ojibway in Ontario but she was adopted and raised in Prince George by a “beautiful Cree family and they raised me to be proud to be indigenous.”

When her relationship with her now ex-husband didn’t work out, Draegen became a single parent raising two boys. But that didn’t stop her from making sure they took on their father’s Carrier identity.

“I made the decision for them to know their grandparents and their family on their dad’s side and brought them to their community to practice their culture,” Draegen said.

Every summer, her boys would join their relatives harvesting salmon and just spending time with their grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins.

“They learned how to repair net and set net and how to take care of salmon and how to take care of a smokehouse and how to pick berries and how to respect the land and how to respect animals - the cultural values that we want to restore and maintain with our young people,” Draegen said.

“And I’m so glad that I did that because now my sons are in their 30s - they’re young Indigenous men who are confident and they’re solid in their identity. They know who they are and they have a solid foundation to embrace society in a good way.”

To review the materials or take the course, go to www.gov.bc.ca/ ParentingAfterSeparation.

no final exams for UnBC stUdents

TEd CLarkE Citizen staff

In the wake of a faculty strike which shut down classrooms for three weeks, UNBC students had another 10 instructional days added to the current semester and will not be writing final exams to complete their course requirements.

The decision was made Dec. 2 at a special meeting of the UNBC senate and the motion to extend the semester and conclude classes on Dec. 13 was passed unanimously.

“This seemed to be the most appropriate course of action,” said student senate representative Steven Horianopoulos.

“Other possibilities, such as going into January, were really unfeasible when you consider the mental health of students and international students’ programs that can’t afford to do that. This is the only real option and of course it’s tough because we’re going to be losing some days of instructional time.”

Students were concerned that a semester extending into January were worried about having already lost three weeks due to the strike, another break over Christmas would impact their retention of course material for final exams.

“We all go into a semester preparing for final exams and now it’s a different beast and we’ll have to tackle it and I trust that the professors at the university will have our thoughts in mind,” said Horianopoulos, a fourth-year biology major.

“I don’t think anyone’s happy. It was said multiple times by Senator (David) Casperson, there is no solution, there is no fixing. It’s mitigating damage. Everyone’s been damaged by this. In the end, this is the best we can do for now.”

While the senate recognized the extended semester will adversely affect some students who have already made travel plans or face the expiration of their student visas, faculty members were ad-

vised there will be some flexibility granted to students with special circumstances and program chairs and deans will have the full support of administration to find solutions. In same cases, foreign students will have the opportunity to finish their courses at other universities which have working relationships with UNBC.

“This has been an outstanding balancing act between where we are with all the students with all the different programs and all the different requirements and I’m quite pleased with that,” said UNBC provost Dan Ryan.

“At the end of the day the faculty have the flexibility to do what they need in order to help complete the programs.”

Environmental science professor Peter Jackson said some student assignments require time-consuming evaluations and raised concerns at the senate meeting over a requirement that students have their final grades released within three days after the final day of classes, Dec. 13. The time crunch for instructors could be further impacted by teaching assistants having already left the city at the expiration of their contracts.

“The challenge is sometimes when you have major papers to mark they may take half an hour to an hour each and if you have a hundred of them and don’t have TA support it’s very difficult to fit that in,” said Jackson. “Instructors need flexibility to do a proper evaluation and I’m confident they’ve allowed flexibility to address the changing situation.”

The senate also indicated there’s a real possibility student evaluations of their instructors will be cancelled, with more discussions on that topic upcoming. There is still no agreement between the faculty association and administration. After a week of talks with provincial mediator Tony Sones, faculty agreed to take down picket lines Nov. 29 and classes resumed Dec. 2.

The faculty filed a complaint over their concerns administration was not bargaining in good faith.

Store hit by brazen break-in

Mark NIELSEN Citizen staff

The owners of a downtown clothing shop were sent scrambling after a thief broke in through the store’s ceiling to make off with cash from the till.

Butterfly Boutique co-owner Robyn Shergill said she got a call from the security company at 3 a.m. on Dec. 1. When she and partner Jacquie Clarke arrived at their 555 George St. business, they found a massive hole above and a pile of dust and insulation on the floor.

A security camera caught the robbery

from start to finish and they are hoping it will give police enough to track down the culprit.

It was among the latest in the growing list of robberies and other types of crime being committed in the downtown.

Representatives from Downtown Prince George, the Prince George Chamber of Commerce and The Gateway plan to make a presentation to city council during their Dec. 16 regular meeting.

Previously located at the corner of Fourth and Dominion, Shergill and Clarke said they moved to their current

Westcana named contractor of the year

CItIzEN Staff

A local contractor has emerged a double winner at an awards ceremony. Westcana Electric was named both a contractor of the year and community champion at the Builders Code Champion Awards.

To be recognized as a Builders Code Champion, entries must show commitment towards advancing and retaining women in their company and achieving the provincial goal of 10 per cent tradeswomen by 2028.

Westcana employs about 30 women in trades that are either apprentices or journeyperson electricians, has partnered with the Prince George Nechako Aboriginal Education and Training Association’s

Women in Trades program, created an “Apprentice-Shop Program” to provide youth with hands-on experience in an electrical warehouse and provided more than $300,000 in sponsorship for activities, teams and organizations.

Westcana also won the 2018 Industry Training Authority award for carrying the most apprentices to journeyperson and the Northern Regional Construction Association construction leadership award in 2018 and 2019.

Nanaimo-based Chinook Scaffold Systems was named a co-winner for contractor of the year.

The awards were presented in Victoria on Nov. 29.

home about a year ago after noticing a decline in business.

“Customers just didn’t want to go near that corner,” Clarke said. They said the move has helped but only somewhat. With people hanging out in the alley behind the store and doing drugs, Shergill and Clarke said employees have not felt safe. The people have even used ductwork on the back of the buildings exterior to crawl up onto the roof and camp out. Sleeping bags and other items have been found there and installing barbed wire did not help.

Whenever the people are confronted, something gets vandalized. When the heads of two statues at the store’s entrance were knocked off, Shergill said they stopped efforts to beautify the spot.

And when the store is open they have constantly had to deal with shoplifters.

“They’re very aggressive,” Shergill said.

They estimated the damage at $20,000 to $30,000, and Shergill and Clarke own the building.

The break-in left Clarke disappointed but still compassionate, saying the trouble in the downtown is a social problem.

report calls for accountability

CItIzEN Staff

Areport reviewing government’s and WorkSafeBC’s actions following two fatal sawmill explosions recommends changes to strengthen and streamline the investigative process, provide more accountability and better supports and safeguards for workers.

On Jan. 20, 2012, Robert Luggi, 45, and Carl Charlie, 42 died and 19 more workers were injured in an explosion at Babine Forest Products in Burns Lake.

Three months later, on April 24, Glenn Roche, 46, and Alan Little, 43, were killed and 44 workers were injured in a similar explosion at Lakeland Mills in Prince George.

BC Coroners Service inquests were

conducted into the deaths of the four individuals and government also commissioned two reports in 2014 - the Dyble Report and the Macatee Report.

Together, these reports and the 2015 BC Coroners Service verdicts included numerous recommendations directed at government and other agencies on how to make improvements to workplace safety, inspections, education, enforcement and investigations.

Vancouver lawyer Lisa Helps was contracted earlier this year to assess both government and WorkSafeBC’s progress in implementing recommendations stemming from the past reports.

Helps noted in the WorkSafeBC and

Government Action Review: Crossing the Rubicon report that all recommendations from these reports have been implemented and the changes have largely been effective and positive. She was also tasked with making recommendations for further actions to strengthen investigations to ensure those responsible for workplace incidents are held accountable.

Government and impacted agencies are now reviewing the recommendations:

- Restructure WorkSafeBC’s fatal and serious incident investigation team from its current two-team model to a one-team model, to improve efficiency and timelines, and avoid duplication of efforts.

- Amend the Workers Compensation Act to remove the unnecessary step of getting approval by WorkSafeBC executives before an investigating officer can recommend charges be laid.

- Separate WorkSafeBC’s investigation unit from the worker and employer services group.

- Amend the Workers Compensation Act to include search and seizure powers. Currently, investigating officers must apply for a search and seizure warrant under the Offence Act.

- Amend the Occupational Health and Safety Regulation to strengthen worker protections around the right to refuse unsafe work.

Handout photo

From left, tara Fong, Manager, equity trades Programs, industry training authority; Wendy Gaskill, Corporate Safety Manager, Chinook Scaffold Systems; Gabrielle herle, Safety Coordinator, Chinook Scaffold Systems and taylor Manhas, Safety Coordinator, Westcana.

Interim SD 57 superintendent leaves lasting impact

TED CLARKE Citizen staff

Like many who decide to make the move to Prince George or northern B.C., Rod Allen came thinking he was going to be there for just a short time.

In his case, that happened to him twice.

He came to Smithers for a three-month teaching job and stayed two decades. The second time around, when he flew up Prince George at the end of May to take on the role as interim superintendent of School District 57, Allen figured he would be in the city for a month, just long enough to see the end of the school year.

That month back in the education game stretched into five for Allen, who had just retired as superintendent of the Cowichan Valley school district. The search in Prince George for a replacement for Marilyn Marquis-Forster, who resigned in May after three years on the job, took longer than anticipated and Allen agreed to come back to P.G. until the position was filled.

“Just with the timing of summer, there was a pile of work that we all wanted to get rolling on and I just wanted to stay and keep working,” said Allen. Allen is no stranger to cold-winter climates. He was born in Whitehorse, Yukon and lived big chunk of his life in Ottawa before he wife settled in Smithers. He worked in the Bulkley Valley for 20 years as an teacher and superintendent before he was hired by the education ministry in Victoria. He served as an assistant deputy minister at a time when

School

3 school board meeting.

B.C. schools were undergoing a major overhaul of the academic content and the way it is taught to allow students more flexibility to personalize their own learning experiences.

“You learn a lot about how government works, that’s all important, and I got to bring in new curriculum, got to lead all that transformation stuff,” said Allen. “That’s why I wanted to leave the ministry to try to put that stuff into operation in Cowichan.”

After nearly eight years at his government post he left to take on a four-year term as superintendent for the Cowichan

Valley school district. Like Prince George, Cowichan Valley has a large indigenous population, which gave Allen unique insights on how to connect with aboriginal students. One of his achievements during his short time with SD 57 was to create a new position which led to Pamela Spooner being hired in August as director of aboriginal education.

“A third of our students are indigenous and we changed the role from a district principal to a director in recognition of the importance of that work,” said Allen. He also streamlined and simplified the district’s policy manual from 106 operational procedure policies to just 19, which are posted publicly on the website, sd57.bc.ca.

“That took a huge commitment by the board,” he said. “That work usually takes a year and we were done in abut four months.”

Allen has reached out to trade unions and encouraged school administrators to concentrate their efforts on building collaborations with local businesses to create work experience opportunities and help convince more students to consider trades as career choices.

“That was a focus in government, it was a focus in Cowichan, where we went from almost nothing to having the greatest number of youth apprentices,” Allen said. “For many males who are struggling at school trying to understand the relevance, a hands-on experience can really turn that around. It’s a great way to keep kids in school, keep them focused, and provide a great lifestyle if they decide to pursue that.”

Grad rates on the rise

TED CLARKE

Citizen staff

The graduation rate for School District 57 high school students is catching up to that of the rest of the province.

Eighty per cent of students enrolled in Grade 12 in 2018-19 met the requirements for graduation, a 7.8 per cent improvement compared to the 2013-14 school year, while the rest of the province graduated an average 85.4 per cent, up 1.2 per cent from five years ago.

Those findings, contained in a six-year completion rate study, were released this week by School District 57.

In 2013-14, the first year of the study, just 72.3 per cent of students in the Prince George area graduated, while the provincial average was 84.2 per cent. Over the course of the study there was steady growth in SD 57 in all but one of those six years (2015-16), when the graduation rate dropped to 73.2 per cent, a decrease of 0.7 per cent from the previous year. The district rate sharply rose

the following year to 79.7 in 2017-18.

“We continue to work hard and continue to see significant improvement for all our students on six-year completion rate,” said SD 57 interim superintendent Rod Allen.

“The six-year completion rate is sort of the gold standard. It gives students an extra year and captures the number of students who graduate within six years of entering Grade 8.”

SD 57 schools also lag behind the rest of the province when the graduation rates are separated by gender. The sixyear completion rate for female students improved 6.5 per cent, from 75.4 per cent in 2013-14 to 81.9 per cent last school year, while the rate for females in the rest of the province improved one per cent over the past five years, from 86.4 to 85.4 per cent.

Male completion rates in SD 57 jumped 8.9 per cent, from 69.6 per cent in 201314 to 78.5 per cent in 2018-19, compared

to the provincial averages of 82.1 per cent in 2013-14 and 83.4 per cent last year.

“The trades (skills) trailer and those kinds of things that we work hard (on) to find ways to engage males, we’re seeing that in statistics like this,” said Allen. “So we can see that while the province over this period of time has improved 1.3 per cent, the district’s improved 8.9 per cent.”

The six-year completion rate for indigenous students continues to improve province-wide. The rate for SD 57 students climbed 16.3 per cent, from 48.8 per cent in 2013-14 to 65.1 per cent in 2018-19. The provincial average improved 7.5 per cent, from 61.6 per cent in 2013-14 to 69.1 in 2018-19.

“It’s not where we’d all like it yet, but there has been significant improvement,” said Allen. “That (16.3 per cent improvement) speaks to the hard work of folks in the district and the commitment of the

Next semester, Prince George secondary school will roll out a new trades sampler program for indigenous students which will give them a taste of three Red Seal trades. There’s also a plan to work with the College of New Caledonia to create a dual-credit apprenticeship program.

“I only came for a month and somehow it felt like eight months,” quipped Allen while speaking to trustees last week at his last school board meeting before he returns to his wife and their home on Vancouver Island near Duncan, close to where their two adult children live.

He’s looking forward to getting back to his hobbies, woodworking and playing guitar.

“Retirement was meant to be more family time, not less, so I’ll rectify that,” Allen said.

“I just want to thank folks for making me feel welcome and feel instantly part of the team.

“There’s something about the north. Northern communities get how to be communities. Folks are here because they want to be here. One of the unique challenges here is the geography, it’s a really big place and its hard to get around and it’s more difficult to have a cohesive district when you’re so disbursed. It’s not a bad thing, it’s a challenge.”

Incoming superintendent Anita Richardson, hired in October from Horizon school division Taber, Alta., where she served as an associate superintendent, will be starting her new job when school is back in session the first week of January.

community to work collaboratively.”

The findings of the study were presented at Tuesday’s school board meeting. Board chair Tim Bennett was especially pleased to see graduation rate got better last year after a 6.5 per cent gain the previous year. Trustee Sharel Warrington said all school staff in the district, including teachers, support staff and maintenance workers, deserve thanks for the work they do to create innovative programs and better learning environments for students.

“The magic happens in our classrooms and our schools and everyone is working hard to improve the outcomes,” said Allen.

“I think often graduation statistics seem to get pinned to Grade 11 and 12 teachers. This is also the work of kindergarten teachers and Grade 1 and Grade 2 teachers. That’s why these long-term trend lines are so gratifying, when you have that steady growth over time.”

Citizen photo

District 57 interim superintendent Rod Allen receives a Jennifer Pighin print presented to him by trustees at the Dec.

How deregulation Hits rural communities

Joel McKay

Special to The Citizen

Buckle up, my friends, today’s topic: why deregulation isn’t the answer for stimulating growth in rural B.C., much as free market leaning individuals tend to embrace it when times get tough.

And times are getting tough.

If you think giving businesses a longer leash – or eliminating the leash altogether – will help, consider a recent article by urbanist Richard Florida who pointed out that the U.S. Airline Deregulation Act (ADA) of 1978 “tilted the playing field toward larger cities and metropolitan areas.”

Essentially, the act stripped the requirement that airlines fly to small and medium-sized cities.

In the U.S., like Canada, airports have increasingly become critical components of economic development in both rural and urban areas – and a straight line can be drawn between their growth, population increases and local diversification.

Once the industry was deregulated, airline companies did exactly what should have been expected of them –they pursued profit.

The greatest growth opportunities were in large population centres, which resulted in more flights to and from major cities and fewer flights to smaller centres. It’s a classic “rich get richer, poor get poorer” story.

The airline example is just one and, of course, there are myriad reasons why small cities and rural areas have suffered in recent decades.

Much of the conversation regarding rural decline tends to focus our attention on globalization, exchange rates, commodity prices and technology as our collective bogeymen, overlooking sometimes-elusive public policy instruments that have long-lasting effects and are difficult if not impossible to reverse.

Deregulation in Canada over the past 40 years has, in many ways, mirrored similar experiments in the U.S. and significantly altered the way our telecommunications, transportation, agriculture, forestry and other sectors operate –sometimes for the better, sometimes not.

Between 1975 and 1996, a total of 208 interventions were made to deregulate Canadian industries as the federal government, influenced by the Competition Bureau, increasingly highlighted the costs of regulation and benefits of open markets, according to a paper on regulatory reform published in the Review of Industrial Organization in 1998.

This shift resulted in drastic changes in everything from the level of rail passenger service Canadians could expect, to access to cheaper airfares and airline routes, availability of freight movements by truck and, of course, the amount of CanCon we suffer through on our local

radio stations.

Most of the deregulation occurred in the telecommunications and transportation sectors, yet precious little research has been done in Canada that studies the impact of this shift on the provincial and territorial norths.

Not so in the U.S.

In the fall of 1987, U.S. lawyer and researcher Paul Dempsey highlighted in the Administrative Law Review the ‘dark side of deregulation and its impact on small communities’ – paying attention to the air, rail and bus deregulation in the U.S.

In 1929, 20,000 passenger trains provided daily intercity service in the U.S. – by 1970, thanks in part to deregulation, only 360 intercity trains were left, according to Dempsey.

The lines that remained in operation by 1987 were largely to and from major cities.

Many rural areas were completely abandoned.

Back to airlines – by 1984, six years after the introduction of the ADA, “225 airports had suffered more than a 50 per cent decline in seats, including some 119 airports that lost service completely.”

It’s a similar story with buses. In looking at the U.S. Bus Regulatory Reform Act of 1982, which axed the requirement for bus companies to service specific routes and gave them the power to increase fares, Dempsey found that by 1986 “4,514 communities had lost bus service, while only 896 gained it.”

He also found that 3,432 of the towns that lost service in that four-year period had a population of 10,000 or less, showing the disproportionate impact on rural areas.

Dempsey’s research was published in 1987 – now fast forward to 2019, 40 years after the first major deregulation reforms took place in Canada, and ask

yourself: how good do you feel about intercity bus service in rural B.C.? How about flight schedules and costs? Ferry routes and availability?

I thought so.

The thing is, as one source pointed out to me, deregulation – or regulation – are blunt force instruments often driven by ideology.

Care and attention are required when using them to avoid the mistakes of the past.

For that, let’s dissect an example at home here in B.C. – appurtenancy in the forest sector.

In 1929, 20,000 passenger trains provided daily intercity service in the U.S. – by 1970, thanks in part to deregulation, only 360 intercity trains were left, according to Dempsey.

Unless you’ve lived in a forestry town or worked in the industry, you’ve probably never heard of that term.

Appurtenancy is one of those obscure policy tools you’re not likely to come across – yet one that’s still groused about in places like Mackenzie, Fort St. James and Quesnel.

Appurtenancy was the policy tool that linked harvesting areas to community benefit – essentially, the trees that were cut in an area had to be milled in that area.

The idea was to use public policy to incentivize local community sustainability and development – it was particularly championed by the government of W.A.C. Bennett in the years following the Second World War.

But riding the wave of deregulation through the 80s and 90s, appurtenancy was mostly phased out by 2002 – with

only 11.5 per cent of B.C.’s harvest subject to it.

A year later, the then-Liberal government axed it as part of its forestry revitalization plan, responding to industry concerns that existing rules made the industry uncompetitive and, if not removed, more mills would close.

In addition to removing appurtenancy, the government also removed the requirement that forestry companies pay penalties to transport logs to mills beyond the areas the logs were harvested in.

These critical changes, not dissimilar to what happened with U.S. airlines following ADA, changed the way B.C.’s forest sector operated.

Unlike the U.S. experience with deregulation in the transportation sector, we didn’t see mass consolidations in our forestry sector until 2019. Why?

I’ll come back to that in a moment.

First, was appurtenancy effective in the first place?

As Rob van Adrichem points out in Knowledge Appurtenancy: Universities, Regional Development and the Knowledge-Based Economy, the policy worked well in the initial decades after the Second World War when there was a perception that we had an endless supply of trees and demand was high for forest products.

By the 1980s, as mills implemented new technologies, employment declined relative to productivity and our industry was being challenged by competitors in other countries.

Van Adrichem points out that despite appurtenancy’s intentions, at least 30 mills closed while the legislation was in place.

Worse, what was intended – that a well-regulated primary industry would provide security and lead to the development of secondary and tertiary industries and, ultimately, a sustainable community – didn’t happen as intended.

In fact, our experience in B.C. means we are stuck even deeper in the Staples Trap, providing the local population with wealth from primary sectors, but entirely too much comfort to recognize the urgent need for diversification.

Writes van Adrichem: “Like a gambler waiting for his/her next big win, employees and communities would endure periods of bust in anticipation of the return of boom times, which would inevitably come.”

And they have, and so have the busts.

In the eight years I’ve been in Northern B.C., I’ve seen economic busts in a dozen towns – and booms as well.

Interestingly, the busts appear to serve as better incentives to diversify than the booms.

Continued on page 39.

Citizen file photo

Steve Zika, CEO of Hampton Affliates, speaks to a small crowd gathered outside the forestry ofices in Burns Lake in September 2012 announcing that the Babine mill will be rebuilt.

Developing emerging leaders

It wasn’t the several times that I almost died on the job.

It wasn’t when I fell off the roofs, or when I rolled the heavy equipment. However, I can remember specifically the day and time when I knew I had to get out of construction and move on. It was 35 below and I was demolishing a gas station for my employer. As I went to remove the toilet from the bathroom, water came gushing out of the tank and filled my boot. My foot immediately became cold and I walked for the rest of the day with frozen toes and a frosty foot. When I got off work that evening, I went home with the intention of getting a job where I didn’t have to work out in the elements year around.

I signed up for a marketing class at the local college, “and the rest” as they say “is history.”

Knowing when to look at your options and diversify your opportunities can be critical not only to your business but to your health. It is well documented that stress and over-stress particularly plays an important factor in disease, especially immune disorders.

Often in our businesses when we become frozen by inaction, cannot decide how to move forward or overcoming obstacles. We end up with such a level of stress that we get sick. Understanding that we need to make a change can be

BUSINESS

COACH

critical in determining how our lives will be lived out and how our businesses will survive.

More often than not, as a business coach looking at organizations and companies, I run into individuals who are leaders of businesses and at their wits’ end. Perhaps they are affected by a number of company near-death experiences. Often, they may be having cash flow challenges, competition issues or challenging employees that leave their organization. They are always seemingly on the brink of disaster with the stress related to trying to fit a square block into a round hole.

In recent articles I’ve talked about the necessity of persistence. However, there can be a time when we realize we need to make significant changes for the sake of our health and the success of our organization. There are times as leaders when we need to recognize that our organizations have outgrown us and the skills we possess. It may be time to pass ownership or leadership to younger and more ener-

gized staff who are ready to step forward with the skills and knowledge necessary to lead our company to the next level.

Having clarity about when this time of change is needed can be difficult for leaders. Not only are we tied to the egotistical notion that we are the reason for the survival of our business, but we often believe, that the business will fail without our leadership. We don’t recognize that times have changed, technology has moved on, we have been holding the organization back, or that perhaps we are just exhausted by our years of leadership. Regularly, as aging leaders we hold on to the reigns of change because we ourselves are unsure about what to do.

In order to feel comfortable in change, we need to have a number of viable options. Unfortunately, we leaders, business teams and companies, tend to think that our best option is to continue doing what we have always done in order maintain the status quo.

The problem with this is that we stagnate both as organizations and people. In order to adapt to changing environments and transform our organizations to meet the future needs of our stakeholders we need to make fundamental changes in our thought patterns and processes. Many times this requires enlightenment through self reflection and strategic thinking as well as the contributions of

emerging leaders.

Development of the emerging leaders in our organizations is critical to the future success of fulfilling the purpose of our establishments. Unfortunately, most companies leave that development to chance. In most companies, there is little investment in the next generation of leadership. We wrongly assume that we will be able to turn our company over successfully to our kids, next level managers, or outside brains the day we turn off the lights in our office and hand over the keys. If we want to be successful in moving on ourselves or taking our business to another level where we can reduce our efforts and spend more time thinking strategically or on a beach somewhere, we need to develop a plan for the development of our upcoming leaders.

The question that leaders should be considering is “What am I doing to develop the next generation of leadership within the organization?”

Regrettably for most leaders the answer is frozen silence.

Dave Fuller, MBA, is an award winning business coach and the author of the book Profit Yourself Healthy. Need your emerging leaders developed? Email dave@profityourselfhealthy.com

AppurtenAncy A word we should All know

Continued from page 38.

So, if the blunt force of deregulation tends to cause industry consolidation in rural areas, why was it delayed in rural B.C. since appurtenancy was cut in 2003?

The answer, in part, lies with an insect. The mountain pine beetle epidemic set off a period of forestry sector stimulus that helped offset the consolidation of mills that likely would have occurred sooner without it.

Significantly increased harvest levels to get rid of the dead pine, rock bottom stumpage fees, and the ability for industry to choose where to harvest and where to mill without penalty, helped keep things afloat (not to mention a booming U.S. housing market pre-2008).

Additionally, public policy such as wood-first building initiatives, a green agenda that incentivized biomass power development, the creation of a wood pellet industry and energy upgrade projects improved utilization of both the harvest and mill residuals and created new revenue streams.

Between 2003 and 2018, these policy tools, among other things, delayed the worst of the consolidation – yet sooner or later we’d run out of the dead wood that was relatively inexpensive to access and the cut levels would come down.

Enter 2019 and a prevailing narrative in the industry is that the cumulative impacts of the market and public policy decisions we’ve made over the past 40 years, appurtenancy included, have come home to roost.

Industry does need flexibility to consolidate and ensure the most efficient operations survive – reintroducing appurtenancy now would be a disaster for the interior forestry sector.

Yet, shades of regulation that ties resources to origin points – once even championed by a right-leaning Socred government in the 50s and 60s – have showed signs of revitalization under an NDP government.

Bill 22 has given the province the ability to veto the transfer of timber-cutting rights between companies.

The province recently used its veto to

ensure that Hampton Forest Products committed to build a new mill in Fort St. James within three years, following its purchase of Conifex Timber’s sawmill and forest license in the area – sending the message that the timber harvested in an area should again be processed there.

Two weeks later, the province issued a news release regarding the Quesnel Timber Supply Area, highlighting new apportionment rules within the harvest that guarantees more community and Indigenous control over how the timber is harvested and managed.

As a casual observer of political history in B.C., I find it interesting to see an NDP government embrace a philosophy once championed by the Socreds, but that’s a column for another day.

On the topic of deregulation and its impact in rural communities – the advice is this: be careful, very careful.

And don’t let ideology win over otherwise sound public sector practices – once the cat’s out of the bag, as it were, good luck getting it back in.

Deregulation is typically championed

by the private sector to solve its competition issues, and government responds in kind to protect the industries that form the basis of the economy and generate significant tax revenue.

But, as we’ve seen in rural areas, it can result in significant consolidation and job loss in resource-based communities and lead to a situation where the primary purpose of those industries ceases to be about community sustainability and instead is largely about profit-making and tax revenue for senior levels of government.

The problem is, as experience with the transportation sector in the U.S. illustrates, while ideology might not have the best interests of rural communities at heart, neither does unregulated industry. So here’s my question (and this is coming from someone who supports industry), to what extent do we want to host industries that generate diminishing returns for rural B.C.?

— Joel McKay is the chief executive office of the Northern Development Initiative Trust.

DAVE FULLER

MELANIE MCLEOD

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Moore,MelvinGarth

May24,1957-November14,2019

REMEMBRANCES

Melvin(Garth)Mooreunexpectedlypassedawayon November14,2019.Hewasalovingbrotheranduncle, whoselossisfeltdeeply.Garthispredeceasedbyhis belovedmother,PaulaMoore;hisfather,AllenMoore; youngerbrother,BradMoore;andhisgreatestfurry companion,Bandit.

Garthwouldtakeprideinknowingthatthelossofhislife hashelpedtofurtherthelivesoffourothersthroughthe donationofhisorgans.

Pleasecontinuethegenerosityandmakedonationsto A.C.E.PrinceGeorgeonGarth’sbehalf.

Gregory Harry Couston

November 21, 1947November 27, 2019

It is with great sorrow we announce the passing of our loving husband and father.

Surrounded by his loving family and friends in his final days, Gregory passed peacefully at home in the loving arms of his wife and his sister. We will miss his bright smile, warm laugh and wonderful stories.

Predeceased by his father Harry, his mother June and his daughter Kerry.

Survived by his loving wife of 52 years Christine, his daughter Heather, his son Robert, his brother Ken, his sister Brenda, his six grandchildren, other family and friends.

A Memorial Service will be held on December 13 at 1pm at The Church of Jesus Christ of LatterDay Saints, 4180-5th Avenue in Prince George.

MARK SELKIRK 2x72.5

January22,1951-November21,2019

Darlene Joanne Dunphy (Deane)

November 26, 1952November 30, 2019

In lieu of flowers donations may be sent to Hospice House

Forever in our hearts and always in our stories. Condolences may be offered at www.LakewoodFH.com

It is with great sadness we announce the sudden passing of our beloved wife, mother, sister, grandmother, aunt, great grandmother and dear friend on November 30, 2019.

WeareverysadtoannouncethatBarriepassedon Thursday,November21,2019.Barriehadbeenaresident ofSimonFraserLodgeforeightyears,afteranaccidentin Julyof2011.Barriewaspredeceasedbyhisparents,Ian andJosephineSelkirk,andson,Matthew.Heissurvived byhissons,Andrew,Mark,andOwen;hissisters,Ianna andRoxanna,whowereverydevotedtoBarrieduringhis timeatSimonFraser;andhislovingsister,Glenda.He willalsobemissedbyhisnephews,PatandMike (Kathleen);andMike’skids,GraceandSean. Barriewassmartandfunny,charming,andkind.Hehada drysenseofhumourandlovedtolaugh.Healways believedapersonwasgooduntiltheyproveddifferent.He wasagreatloverofagoodread,whosetastesranfrom RebustoTheOnceandFutureKing.Hewasanexcellent cookandlovedhavingpeopleoverforsupper.Barrie lovedtotravel,andinhisyoungerdaystookmany journeyswithlifelongfriends.Barriewasalsoaloverof music,howeverweirdorunusualitsounded. Barriewasagreatdad,evidencedbyhissonswhoareall happy,healthy,smart,andhardworking.Hewasalsoa greatbrother-"ladies,ladies,ladies,andIusetheterm loosely"usuallystoppedmostargumentsbetweenhis sisters.HealwaysrememberedalilyforMomonEaster. NowthatBarrieisgone,wewillneverknowforsurewho threwthesoupagainstthewall. Acelebrationoflifewillbeannouncedatalaterdate.

Darlene was born a twin on November 26, 1952 in Vanderhoof BC. She spent her younger years on Vancouver Island and some of her life in Prince Rupert and Quesnel before purchasing the Willow River General Store with her husband, and children in tow, in 1985. There, they built up a successful business and were very active in her community for 34 years. She loved her horses and all animals. You could find her happiest in her garden or in her home surrounded by family. She missed the warmth and salt air of “The Island” the most.

She is predeceased by her father Alfred Edgar Deane and mother Verna Gertrude Deane, nee Stevens.

Darlene is survived by her loving husband Kevin Dunphy, children; Derek, Shannon (Bruce), Erin (Craig), Michelle (Paul), her twin brother Darrel, sisters; Sharol and Sandra, grandchildren; Kyle, Breanne, Brylee, Aiden, Logan, Kiah, Jorja, Jaxon and Kacey, great granddaughter Vanessa and numerous nieces, nephews, family, friends and her horses.

A Celebration of her Life will be held on December 21, 2019 at Ferndale Hall, 3595 Upper Fraser Rd. Doors will open at 1:00pm, and service will start at 2:00pm.

In lieu of flowers, the family asks you donate to Prince George Hospice Society in her name. Condolences may be offered at www.LakewoodFH.com

SELKIRK,BarrieJ.

Sharon-Anne Tagami

July 29, 1943November 30, 2019

It is with deep sadness that my father and I share the news that his loving wife, my mother, and nana SharonAnne Tagami passed away peacefully at Hospice House on Saturday, November 30, 2019 after living with Type 1 diabetes for over 54 years and recently kidney disease.

Sharon was born on July 29, 1943 in Winnipeg, Manitoba to Michael and Eileen Lobe.

Sharon was predeceased by her mother Eileen Mary (Lynne) and her grandmother Jane, her father Michael, stepfather Ian Sutherland and her infant son Todd Newton.

Sharon is survived by her husband Gary and daughter Jocelyne (Brian), granddaughters Brynne, Drew and Kenna, her twin sister Karen (Wayne), stepsisters Linda Sutherland, Janice (Ted) Spry, brother-in-law Terry (Judy) Tagami, Bob Tagami, sister-in-law Joan Tagami and many nieces, nephews and cousins.

Sharon loved life and all the wonderful things it brought to her, especially family.

Sharon was known for her infectious smile, sense of humour and love for all who knew her. She loved her close friends that she played Canasta with, singing with the Sweet Adeline’s for many years and fishing with her husband.

Special thanks to Dr. Higgens and Dr. MacRitchie, nurses and staff in hemodialysis, nurses and staff on 3rd floor surgery south A & B.

There will be no service at this time, but there will be a Celebration of Life announced in the spring.

In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to Rotary Hospice House, Canadian Diabetes Association and the Kidney Foundation of Canada.

Mom...Good-byes are not forever, are not the end, it simply means “I’ll miss you” until we meet again....Love you Forever.

George Olesik

May 2, 1938 to Dec 8, 2019

George passed away peacefully surrounded by family on the evening of Dec 8. He will be missed by his wife of 48 years Else, his children Melanie and Cam and their spouses, and his three granddaughters Hannah, Jessica, and Lily.

Dad loved spinning a yarn and chewing the fat. He was a real people person, and considered himself a lucky man, spending his life surrounded by family, friends, and neighbours.

Thanks to Dr Bond and Dr D Reddy, and all of the people involved in his life and care. There will be no funeral by request. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the Rotary Hospice House in Prince George and their wonderful staff.

“Goodbye to all my friends.”

CHRISTENSEN, Margaret (née Henderson)

With sadness, we announce the passing of Margaret Mary Christensen (née Henderson) on Friday, November 22nd, 2019. Margaret died at home, as was her wish, with her family, friends and other care givers supporting her to the end. Margaret (“Skumpy”) was predeceased by her two sisters, Pat and Dorrie, and their husbands, as well as by her own husband, Aksel (“The Viking”). She leaves her children, Paul and Missy, and her grandchildren, Logan and Chase; along with nieces, nephews, two sisters-in-law, and friends beyond numbering. She asked that her fond remembrances be acknowledged to her dear friends from the old neighbourhood, from her Sacred Heart school days and from her time in Mackenzie; to her Gleneagles pals, her rec centre fitness chums and, of course, to her beloved bridge club, who always included her so wholeheartedly, even after she could no longer play.

Margaret was a “good egg”. Hers was a life well and truly lived. Her cheeky humour, deep generosity and anointing of “trolls” were legendary, as was her lifelong love of music and animals.

Healthwise, the last few years were challenging, but “The Viking” would have been proud of Margaret’s fighting spirit. She wanted everyone to know of her gratitude for her life adventures; for the people she loved, and for those who loved her. The family is especially grateful to cousins and friends who rallied around, to Lion’s Gate Hospital, The North Shore Palliative Home Care Team, and Nurse Wendy Lea.

A Celebration of Life will be held on Saturday, January 4th, 2020 from 2pm to 4pm in the Creekside Room of the Hollyburn Country Club (950 Cross Creek Rd, West Vancouver). Feel free to wear red or whatever reminds you of Margaret, and to bring stories to share. In lieu of flowers, the family suggests that you make a donation to Lion’s Gate Hospital, the North Shore Hospice, the SPCA, or a theatre or music organization of your choice.

We are so deeply saddened to be announcing the passing of our beloved Douglas Everett Branton.

Doug passed away on November 29, 2019. He was born November 28, 1963 in Vernon, BC.

Doug is survived by his daughter Kelsey Faye and his granddaughter Aubrey Jillian - Dad and Grandpa will be missed dearly by them. He loved you to the “Moon” and back.

Doug is also survived by his 6 sisters: Katherine, Dianna, Cheryl, Charlene, Lillian and Pauline as well as his Brother Bill. We will miss him with all of our hearts. Doug’s Uncle Vic and all of his cousins and his many nieces and nephews, will miss him as well.

Doug was predeceased by his older Brother, David (1976) and his Mom and Dad, Patricia (2014) and David (2018).

Doug loved the bush and was happiest when it surrounded him. When the moss began to grow beneath his feet, it was time to move on. His dog, Bear, was his constant companion; “the stories that Bear could tell us”.

Thirty plus years ago, Doug went looking for the elusive mushroom - he was hooked for the rest of his life. Doug was always onto his next greatest adventure, some accomplished, some not. But these setbacks never kept him from moving on to the next one. Through his “mushroom adventures”, Doug developed many life-long friends.

Doug’s 2nd family includes his friends from these notorious adventures. We have listened too many of his stories of each of you.

For this, we are forever grateful - for his friends, that we have met, and for those that we haven’t.

Our thoughts and prayers are with you, as well, at this time of sadness.

Doug’s greatest legacy was his love and kindness for his family and friends. We are all blessed to have been part of Doug’s life.

Upon leaving or hanging up, Doug would say “I love you the same today, as I did yesterday”.

And we would say “I know you do Doug. I love you too.”

Dad would say “I was going to phone Doug today, but I didn’t know what tree to phone”.

We will miss Doug’s laughter and humour. Not to mention his stories. Doug has left a piece of himself with each of us.

“We will never be the same because of you, but we will never be the same without you.”

Doug’s Celebration of Life will be on May 23, 2020 (May Long Weekend) in Prince George, BC.

We will spread the news when we get closer, with the location. Doug’s family would love for all of you to join us at this time. We will each come with our own stories and share in Doug’s love for each of us. Doug’s obituary can be viewed online @ Prince George Citizen/Obituaries and The Terrace Standard/Obituaries.

Established Franchise Photography Business

Serving Northern B.C for over 35 years

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 Business

Mackenzieservicing 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.

Inquires Only

Registered Dental Hygienist

Dr. Redman is seeking RDH to join our friendly and committed team in this beautiful oceanside city. A full time position is available January 6, 2020. Top wages available.

Call or email Debbie Phone: (250) 624-9809 Email: wredman@citytel.net

2x10.7 PGC001880

Wearelookingfortwoexperiencedjourneyman plumberstojoinourserviceteam;weofferacompetitive benefitspackage.Ifthisopportunityissomethingyou wouldbeinterestedin,pleaseemailyourresumetoBrett atoffice@mayfairinc.comoraccounts@mayfairinc.com.

Registered 12 yr Morgan Gelding Sire: Blue Diamond Hawk, Dam Sun-West Omega Chestnut, tail flaxen, mane mixed red/flaxen. $4,500. Located in Hazelton, BC Calm, yet inquisitive, and enjoys both the arena and trail. 250-842-5560 email:dtahouney@gmail.com

Maintenance Planner

Babine Forest Products is currently searching for a full time Maintenance Planner to join our Burns Lake operation.

The successful candidate will have strong communication, mathematic, organization and problem solving skills. Red Seal certification in industrial mechanics (Millwright) is preferred. Good hand-eye coordination and a strong understanding of mechanical and engineering concepts are required. You should be detail oriented with an ability to meet deadlines and oversee teams, and have advanced knowledge of Microsoft applications (specifically Excel). Understanding basic financial concepts (estimating and budgeting) would be an asset.

Core responsibilities include: creating maintenance schedules for all plant equipment, determining tools and supplies needed for each piece of equipment, maintaining spare parts inventory, developing maintenance and training manuals, estimating labour and parts costs for industrial equipment.

Babine Forest Products, working jointly with First Nations, provides equal opportunity for employment including First Nation status privileges. All applicants will receive consideration for employment. We offer competitive compensation, benefits and the potential for career advancement.

Resumes will be accepted until January 3, 2020. We wish to thank all those who apply; however only those selected for an interview will be contacted.

Please forward your resume to:

or 250-568-2338

KW 900 370, c/w 400 pump, 44 RR’s,

Steel Buildings / Granaries INTEGRITY POST FRAME BUILDINGS since 2008. Built with concrete posts. Barns, shops, riding arenas, machine sheds and more. 1-250-351-5374 Adam.s@integritybuilt.com

QUANSIT Future building, 35’X50’, 18’ high. $20,000 obo. 250-962-8302

STEEL BUILDING CLEARANCE..”FALL BLOWOUTPRICED TO CLEAR!” 20X25

$6687. 25X29 -$7459. 28X29

$8196. 30X35 $9840. 32X37

$9898. One End Wall included. Pioneer Steel 1-855-212-7036 www.pioneersteel.ca

14” steel chop saw, used very little, $750.

Apartments / Condos-For

appliances, fenced, $2650/mo revenue. $398,000. 250-5682338, 614-6667

Houses for Sale

COUNTRY Living, Quesnel area. Modest home atop a hill with trees, garden, babbling brook, minutes from town, just short of 1 acre, 3 bdrm, 2 bath, full

60X110

yrd completely paved. Suitable for rezoning to commercial or home based business. Currently rented. $320,000. 250-981-3583

2740 PETERSEN RD (Peden Hill). House and estate for sale. 3 Bdrm, finished basement. Open to offers. 250-564-0318

Property For Sale

“DUNSTER PROPERTY FOR SALE” 115 acres with 1/2 mile Fraser River frontage. 10 acres Island. 15 acres cleared. Mixed forest. 100% reliable water source. Log cabin attached to mobile home. Water line and hydro. Easy access. Mountainscape views. Private. 250-479-5545

45.5 ACRES Corner of Upper Fraser Rd & Beaver Forest Rd. with good driveway & building pad. $155,000. 250-614-6667

Lots & Acreages for Sale

1.148 AC. LOTS 35 & 36, Birchill Cres. 16 W., city limits. No GST. (250)563-7414

12 ACRES of commercial zoned land, 1400 ft of Hart Hwy frontage $150,000 per acre. 563-6985 or 981-1950. Will consider partial trades.

2.186 ACRE, 9341 Birchill Cres, close Hwy access, no gst. (250)563-7414

BUILDING Lot 8091 Flamingo Rd. 80’X135’ with city sewer & water. Allows mobiles as well. $85,000. 563-6985, 981-1950

HART Area, 400’ frontage X 100’ deep, serviced $300,000. 250565-4888

LARGE Res. lot, serviced, green belt on back, Oak Ridge Cres, Hart hwy. $89,900 obo 250-5623886 LOT for Duplex, 4-plex or apartment/condo. Fully zoned. Ready for permit. Near Multiplex & Walmart. 250-961-6786

Recreational Property

1000sq m building lot, #L72NCorintoPearleco-development Honduras. Contact Recap Investments, Toronto 1-888-212-8584 for more info and owner 250-5634999 $35,000 Canadian Cluculz; Meier Rd, 11.26 acres sub-lakeshore with lake access, and top location $299,000. 604908-0313 4.0

#11 near intersection of Catherine Drive and Harold Drive In Miworth 330’ wide and 550’ deep

N1T Forest Stewardship Plan (FSP)

The Forest Stewardship Plan (FSP) for Woodland License N1T (Nak’azdli First Nation) is available for review and comment. This is a new FSP that applies to an area in the vicinity of Inzana Lake as well as Great Beaver Lake, within the Fort St. James Forest District. This plan can be reviewed Monday to Friday 8:30 am to 4:30 pm at the KDL office located at 561 Stuart Drive. Questions or comments are received by: John-Paul Wenger, RPF at jwenger@kdlgroup.net (250) 996-8032 ext. 33

The Court Bailiff offers for sale by tender bid, interest in the following goods of the Judgement Debtor(s): Coulombe Custom Building Inc. pursuant to a Writ of Seizure and Sale, Registry No. 1956664

2010 Dodge Ram 2500 VIN# ED7TT2CT6AG178441

Item(s) can be viewed at our 2706 Jasper St. & Ottawa St and 3rd Ave compound(s) in Prince George. Go to www.northcentralbailiffs.bc.ca to view photographs. Closing date December 13, 2019. Highest or any other bid not necessarily accepted. Bidders are solely responsible for determining the make, model, year of manufacture, condition, quantities, sets and or usefulness of all items for tender. All items are sold on an “as is, where is” basis with no warranty given or implied. As vehicles have not been inspected, we are declaring that they may not be suitable for transportation and may not be compliant with the motor vehicle act. Sale is subject to cancellation or adjournment without notice. Terms of sale: Immediate payment in full by bank draft or cash only upon acceptance of successful bid. Call (250) 564-4900 for details.