9716 January 31, 2019

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Morrow’s new book An Arts Compedium chronicles the Arts Council’s early years.

Thursday, January 31, 2019

On the road to recovery christine hinzmann 97/16 staff

Brad Baylis likes to say he won a headbutting competition with a moose.

On Aug. 26, Baylis, 39, was driving home to Prince George at about 9:30 p.m. when the vehicle he was driving collided with a moose near Fraser Lake on Highway 16.

The impact sent the animal into the car through the windshield, breaking every bone in Baylis’ face and leaving him near death.

Quick action from a resident living along the highway who heard the horrific crash, along with others who stopped to help, pulled the dead moose from the car to get to Baylis, who was airlifted to Vancouver General Hospital.

A cutting-edge medical procedure called brain microdialysis saved his life (as last week’s 97/16 cover story explained).

Sitting down to talk about his ongoing recovery a short five months after the accident, Baylis was emotional in his gratitude for everyone who has helped him, from the man who came out of his house when he heard the crash, first responders, emergency personnel, Prince George medical staff, Vancouver General Hospital staff, physiotherapists at GF Strong and family and friends.

He is especially grateful to his partner of two years, Carla Lewis, who works for the First Nations Health Authority as a traditional wellness specialist. She helps integrate alternative and traditional wellness into the mainstream healthcare system, lives in Burns Lake and is a member of the Wet’suwet’en First Nation.

“I was very fortunate to have the people around me that I did, especially Carla,” Baylis said.

“We had tons of support and I can’t imagine going through something like this without it,” Lewis said.

Taking a step back to think about how far he’s come, Baylis only knows what happened after the accident from what he’s been told.

“I don’t remember the accident or a

Citizen photo by James Doyle

Brad Baylis and partner Carla Lewis talk about Brad’s recovery from brain trauma after an accident that saw his vehicle collide with a moose last summer. month and a half after it,” Baylis said, who suffers from no other injuries except those to his head.

There were a lot of factors involved that contributed to Baylis’ healing including his age, that he was healthy and the fact that he was rescued right away.

“First responders treated it as a brain injury immediately,” Lewis said. “And without that care Brad wouldn’t have even made it to the microdialysis. When Brad got to Vancouver General doctors told us he had a 50 per cent chance of survival just to be nice and then later they admitted he actually had less than a 10

per cent chance.”

Even after Baylis, a pipe fitter and quality control officer for a local company, was stabilized, his prognosis was uncertain.

“Doctors said they were going to take him out of the induced coma after a week and they had warned me that he might never come out of it or it could be months or days, they just didn’t know,” Lewis said, who had told doctors she wanted to be there at the time they took him off the medication.

It was only a matter of a few hours when Lewis saw Baylis struggling to open

his eyes. As soon as she saw that movement she immediately started to talk to him to let him know where he was and what had happened.

His eyes popped open and he looked terrified, Lewis added.

She called in the nurse who couldn’t believe Baylis was awake.

“She told him if he was okay to give us a thumbs up and Brad gave us a thumbs up,” Lewis recalled. “After that it was a very slow progression – the first couple days he was awake for five to 10 minutes.”

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Great support helping local man on the mend after horrific crash Continued from page 1

Then gradually he was awake for 15 to 20 minutes and then a good month and a half later he was awake most of the day.

Baylis said he doesn’t remember anything from those early days in hospital.

His children, Holden, 9, Bodie, 8 and Grier, 6, came to visit early on in his recovery and he has no memory of it but he remembers what someone told him his oldest son said before he went into the room to see his dad for the first time.

“I guess it’s too early for moose jokes,” Holden said to those left in the waiting room and Baylis loves knowing that his son had a great attitude going into it.

Lewis said that not only could they credit Baylis’ recovery to modern medicine but also to alternative healing practices that saw her consulting with his specialists to introduce supplements to enhance the healing process, including mega doses of melatonin, which contains high amounts of antioxidants that fuse to brain cells and can actually repair them, according to Lewis’s medical journal research.

When it was time to reintroduce foods to Baylis, Lewis said she’d bring homemade meals to him for optimum nutritional value. Baylis said he didn’t like the hospital food much.

“I will never forget this – I was on a puree diet and they pureed my toast and I had finally had enough and so I looked at the nurse and I said to her ‘how the heck is a man supposed to put peanut butter on this?’”

Lewis said they also did reiki, a Japanese technique for stress reduction and relaxation that also promotes healing.

Handout photo

Brad Baylis, 39, whose vehicle collided with a moose on Highway 16 near Fraser Lake on Aug. 26, is seen here during his stay at Vancouver General Hospital.

Lewis said. “So he hasn’t had headaches, “I had my cousin come in and do Reiki noise doesn’t bother him, light doesn’t on him and that was when his brain was bother him.” hooked up to the monitor and you could “I think I’ve maybe had one headache, actually see all his levels changing, which maybe two, since I’ve been home,” Baylis was really cool,” she said. said, who was discharged from VancourvThere was another healer that came to er General on Oct. 4. help Baylis in the hospital.

During early days in hospital Lewis said “We had (Tsimshian and Haisla) healer some family members, guided by an elder Tom Smith come in and the things that he of the Wet’suwet’en First Nation, went did were just mind-blowing miracle-level to the accident site to call back Baylis’ stuff,” Lewis said. “He also fixed me up. I was just walking around in an utter state of spirit while he was still in the induced trauma and I felt like I was just barely hold- coma. They used a sacred bundle, which included spruce, cedar and juniper. It was ing it together and I went into a session then brought to Baylis in Vancouver and with him and he put me back together.” placed under his bed.

Baylis said the only real pain he ex“And that was done the night before he perienced during the whole ordeal was woke up,” Lewis said. “So that was pretty because he had broken his palate bone amazing.” that had been wired in place.

It took a month for Baylis to be able to “As soon as they took the wires out, the move and his first attempts saw him sitheadaches stopped,” Baylis said. ting on the edge of the bed and flopping “And that’s pretty crazy,” Lewis said. back down. It took a couple of weeks of “Because even with people who have that before he could stand and then he mild concussion deal with headaches,”

started shuffling his feet.

“Then day by day his steps with the walker got bigger and bigger,” Lewis said.

“His progress after that was really rapid.”

After being released from hospital, Baylis attended rehabilitation at G.F. Strong and he went from a wheelchair the first week, to a walker for a week and then left that behind.

“The first day he got off the walker, we walked around Stanley Park, that’s eight kilometres,” Lewis said.

Both Lewis and Baylis believe some of his quick recovery was due to the fact that Baylis was an avid mountain biker before the accident that saw him at a peak fitness level. Baylis said he hopes to get back to it eventually.

“Today Brad has no weakness in either side of his body,” she said.

“Except my vision,” he said.

Baylis has lost 100 per cent of his peripheral vision in both eyes but still has 20/20 eye sight.

“We’re hoping that gets better because that’s going to be the difference between him driving and getting back to work or not,” Lewis said.

Little things that should improve over time is the loss of a significant amount of his sense of smell and the dozen titanium plates used to help reconstruct his face makes him more sensitive to the cold when he’s outside.

“The plastic surgeons said they could do something with my scars,” Baylis said, who has barely visible scars all around his eyes and nose that are the only indicator of the entire facial reconstruction. “But I’m just going to leave them. They tell the story and I’m keeping the scars.”

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Citizen photo by James Doyle

Marnie Hamagami and Jack Grinhaus of Theatre Northwest prove it takes two to run a successful professional theatre company.

For the love of the theatre christine hinzmann 97/16 staff

They fight really well.

At least that’s what Jack Grinhaus, artistic director at Theatre Northwest, said about his working relationship with general manager Marnie Hamagami and about how they make it work as they strive to ensure the Prince George professional theatre company thrives.

“It’s the same in any great relationship,” Grinhaus said. “We don’t take it personally – when it’s a business decision – whether it be the artistic business or the administrative business, which are the two sides of the coin here - we both respect that in each person’s department they have that final say. One of us might say ‘I feel strongly about this thing’ but it’s your world and you make that decision.’”

Grinhaus said that was the way it was between him and Hamagami even before the working relationship saw Hamagami take on the GM role, when she sat on the Theatre Northwest board.

“I knew then I could just be honest,” Grinhaus said, who has been with Theatre Northwest for the last five years.

And when it comes to differing opinions, it’s worked out.

“We both say ‘you know what? I don’t necessarily agree with this’ and the other says ‘great, thank you for your feedback’ and...”

“I’m doing it anyway,” Hamagami finished Grinhaus’s statement with a laugh.

Other times Grinhaus said one of them will think about it and call the other up the next day and admit the other one was right in the first place and carry on.

“That’s what really works,” Grinhaus said. “We have worked together for three or four years and we haven’t had a fight like a fight fight.”

Even if one of them has to walk away, it’s not out of frustration but rather to think about what was discussed, Grinhaus said.

Even if they don’t agree completely, they always come together when they need to report to their board of directors, as Theatre Northwest is a non-profit society.

Hamagami, who has been general manager for the last two-and-a-half years, wanted to emphasize one thing.

“To be clear, our fighting is the exception – I shouldn’t even say ‘our fighting’, when we disagree – it’s the exception,” she said. “Ninety-nine per cent of the time we’re lockstep and another thing I think is really important for Jack and I and the way that we operate is that publicly we have each other’s back. It’s only when we’re making decisions and we’re in the process of working out our business that we can disagree about things.”

Grinhaus thinks it’s a good thing they can disagree because he certainly doesn’t want to work with someone who is always doing what he says, he added.

“We have very complementary skill sets,” Hamagami said. “There’s no overlap – we don’t have two artistic directors here, which makes it a lot easier for both of us.”

And that means between the two of them they cover all the bases, Grinhaus added.

“Like in any good relationship the key is communication,” Hamagami said.

“We communicate often, we communi-

cate easily and when we do disagree it’s both professional and respectful of each other.”

As with many non-profits, the organization offers many tasks under one job title.

“This is a two-person operation that really is a six-person job,” Grinhaus said.

“We’re each doing many jobs. I think what we both know is that we both give everything we have.”

Hamagami said when she was first hired, she and Grinhaus spent time defining the two roles as Theatre Northwest’s artistic director and general manager.

What makes TNW unique is that it is the only professional theatre company for about 700 kilometres, Grinhaus said.

“When you’re one of the top cultural institutions in the vicinity, and I say ‘one of’ because there are different aspects, there’s a responsibility there,” Grinhaus said. “There’s a responsibility to community. There’s a responsibility to 15 to 100 people you’re feeding, depending on how the year is going. That’s a big responsibility and you need to have trust there.”

Grinhaus said Hamagami brought a trust-based system into the building.

“We don’t micromanage,” Grinhaus said. “We hire people we believe can do the job. We don’t want to be looking over people’s shoulders.”

The business has an ebb and flow to it, Grinhaus explained.

“Some weeks you can come in three, four, five hours a day, some weeks you can come in for 10, 12 or 14 hours and it’s still not enough to get it all done,” he said.

Grinhaus said they’ve figured out when the busiest times happen, but surprises pop up all the time.

“But we know the ebb and flow and that’s when we can best help each other,” Grinhaus said. “For example, Marnie’s most difficult period is late August to early December.”

For Grinhaus it’s February, March and April.

“That’s when I’m building the season, writing the big grants, when I’m starting casting and sometimes directing, so that’s great too, because hers is more fall and mine is more spring, so then we can help each other,” Grinhaus said.

There are three keys for Hamagami.

OK, there’s definitely four.

“Communication, communication, communication, and a sense of humour,” Hamagami laughed.

As a preventive measure and getting in front of the #metoo movement that continues to be part of the current entertainment headlines, Hamagami and Grinhaus developed some policies around intimate choreography that are now being used on a national level.

Inovations like that make Theatre Northwest a continued success.

“When I first got here I had to focus on both the art and the administration side and they both suffered,” Grinhaus said.

“Now I can focus and the art has raised itself in the last few years.”

Grinhaus credits Hamagami with the outstanding ticket sales TNW has enjoyed recently.

“It only works because Marnie sees to it that word gets out and while I’m making sure the art on stage is at its highest level.”

— Theatre Northwest’s next production of its 25th season is The Occupation of Heather Rose, which runs Feb. 7 to 24.

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Citizen file photo by Brent Braaten

Granville Johnson, who has performed in the community for decades, drummed at the IMSS Multicultural Summer Fair in 2015.

Popular musician facing Alzheimer’s head on christine hinzmann 97/16 staff

The annual Alzheimer’s Walk in May, will honour Granville Johnson, 71, who was diagnosed in 2016.

Before his diagnosis, Johnson experienced symptoms that didn’t quite fit the norm. He said he was happy to finally have a label put on it because for a long while some medical practitioners kept telling him it was all in his head - and now he knows it really is.

Symptoms started in 2010, Birgit Luesgen, Johnson’s partner of 18 years, said.

He was then diagnosed with peripheral neuropathy, which sees damage or disease to nerves that make up an intricate network that connects the brain and spinal cord to the muscles, skin and internal organs. There were other conditions as well but the first things Luesgen noticed that spoke to a form of dementia was when Johnson started forgetting things and misplacing others.

He’s best known in the community as a drummer and for the last two decades he’s been drawing and doing digital collages online.

Citizen photo by Christine Hinzmann

Granville Johnson and partner Birgit Leusgen take a moment during the local Alzheimer’s Society open house to talk about living life with the disease.

“The only time I can get away from my obsession with Alzheimer’s is when I am painting pixels or I am playing my drum because everything else is completely co-opted by dementia,” he said. “And how that’s influenced me in my art is now I am writing songs about the experience.”

He already has three completed and he’s working on a fourth.

“So in a way it’s breathed new life into my heart,” Johnson said, who will soon be looking to set up a blog to give voice to his experience with the disease while he still can.

Johnson said he’d like to help remove the stigma that he didn’t even know came with the diagnosis.

“From my point of view the diagnosis of dementia is a lot like cancer, there’s a bit of interest, but there’s not a whole lot of support – yet,” he said. “I find it really strange – I read that one out of five people have some form of dementia, which means hundreds of thousands of people are part of “the club” – I call it the club – but it’s not very well recognized.”

Johnson said sometimes what’s in his

head won’t come out of his mouth.

“But I refuse to let it quiet me,” he said. “But at the same time when I’m in a discussion I listen rather than speak. I do tell everyone who I am interacting with that I have dementia so when I am stuttering over my words and having trouble I don’t have to fake it. I don’t have to hide it. I think a lot of sufferers out there just get very, very quiet and then life becomes very quiet and mono-focused. As Birgit can attest, I was very self-absorbed before this, and now it’s even worse.”

Although it has changed Johnson’s and Luesgen’s relationship, Johnson said it’s become better in some ways as they came closer to battle against what the disease has taken away and will continue to take away from them.

“Birgit has learned that you can’t argue with an Alzheimer’s patient,” he said.

“He’s got a good excuse now,” Luesgen bantered back. “We certainly have changes in how we interact and our relationship changes because I am now the care partner so I take care of him and he does take care of me in certain ways,

but still for me it’s now gotten even more important at this stage of my life that I’m living healthy so that we can manage for another few years depending how far this progresses, which is an unknown.”

Through this progressive disease, Luesgen said she’s learned to take a lot more things day by day.

“I can’t dwell on all the losses and all the things we can’t do anymore and what we had envisioned what we’d do when we retired,” Luesgen said. “We still have a very high quality of life and we just enjoy that.”

“There will come a day when the thought of the loss of yourself makes you a basket case,” Johnson said. “Then there will not be much cognitive direction at all.”

During that time period, Johnson said he’d like to move to the Lower Mainland because that’s where his three children reside. Johnson refered to the progressive stages of dementia as the second and third tertiary.

“And I don’t want Birgit to have to deal with that.”

Luesgen tried to interrupt because she has other ideas but Johnson insisted on finishing his thought.

“I don’t want Birgit to have to deal with that because I will no longer be me,” he said.

“Basically I will be a body, an immobile entity but my personality and all my cognitive worth and self-worth will be gone. I feel like at that point I need to reward my wife for all her support and give her her life without having to hang with me for who knows how long.”

Luesgen shooke her head but Johnson was adamant.

“No, who knows how long that will be – it could be five, 10, 20 years,” he said.

“And by that time that’s not much time left for you, dear.”

“And we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it,” Luesgen responded. “It’s hard to say what it’s going to be like and what’s going to happen. I think we have to plan for the worst and hopefully live with the best.”

Johnson smiled at Luesgen.

“This is brand new ground,” he said.

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How glass arrived in Barkerville sidebars to history by willow arune

W

andering around Barkerville is stepping through time.

On one of my visits I was struck by a thought about its construction. Certainly the surrounding hills provided the timber needed for building and blacksmiths could provide hinges, nails and other hardware. Indeed, the surrounding hills were denuded and what trees you now see are new growth.

But most of the buildings have windows made of glass. Glass is fragile and heavy, especially in bulk. Given the conditions that existed when Barkerville was flourishing, how did the pioneers get glass for their windows and businesses and at what cost?

Trying to find the answer to those questions became a two-year hunt.

Fur traders added panes of glass to the supplies brought overland to the Hudson’s Bay trading forts that were sparingly used. Needless to say, glass panes brought this way made them very valuable.

Back then, few countries made window glass for export. In the area surrounding Barkerville certainly lots of sand and quartz could be found. Could some glass be actually made in Barkerville? Possible but no likely. The alternative was to bring window glass from the few mass produc-

Handout photo

Barkerville Historic Site is seen here in full swing during their summer season. ers of glass in England and the Continent.

The main producers of glass in the 1860s were to be found in Great Britain, Belgium and a much smaller amount in France. The largest producer was Pilkington Glass of St. Helen’s, near Liverpool. It was a private company until 1972.

The trip of window glass from St. Helens to Barkerville would be long and arduous. By canal from St. Helens to Liverpool, loaded onto sailing and steam ships to cross the Atlantic and then – there being no Panama Canal – around Cape Horn and South America or perhaps unloaded in New York and going across North America by the first transcontinental railway to San Francisco.

From there by steamer to Victoria and across the Straight of Georgia to New Westminster. Loaded onto horse drawn wagons, the glass would have to travel on the new Douglas Highway to Quesnel, perhaps travelling part the way by paddlewheel steamship. The last stage of the trip would be by wagon to Barkerville.

Given the heavy weight of bulk window glass, the cost of transporting it would be very high, all of which would be passed on to those in Barkerville.

The Pilkington archives would provide records of the start of this voyage and the records and ship’s logs of Lloyd’s of London and the British Maritime Museum some detail of the ships that carried

window glass cargos. In the San Francisco Maritime Museum, at least one ship carrying window glass is recorded.

We do have one letter that speaks of the high cost of the last part of these journeys. Father Reynard had arrived in Barkerville with his family just prior to the fire that all but destroyed the town.

He organized the building of St. Saviour’s Church that remains in Barkerville today.

The church needed window glass and an order for that glass was presumably made with one of several glass dealers in Victoria. The normal window glass of church might be stocked in Victoria or ordered from suppliers in San Francisco.

There appears to be no record of where the stained glass of St. Saviour’s came from. It may have been assembled in San Francisco or England.

The one letter that gives us a hint of the high cost of window glass arriving in Barkerville was sent by Father Reynard to B.C’s Attorney General after the glass had arrived in Barkerville. The cost of freighting the all window glass from Victoria to Barkerville was six times the cost of the glass that has been bought in Victoria; the price of the window glass in Victoria included the shipping costs from Liverpool to San Francisco and then to Victoria.

The Hudson’s Bay Company opened in Barkerville just before the massive fire that almost totally destroyed the town.

When it reopened, amongst the goods it carried was window glass in 10x12-inch panes, generally sold by the boxload.

The is no record of the price demanded.

around town

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Events feature music, hockey and art Coldsnap Music Festival

organization working to end violence against women and girls and 10 per cent to the V-Day Spotlight Campaign: women in prison, detention centres, and formerly incarcerated. Warning: some content is extremely graphic and may be distressing to some. For more information visit www. facebook.com/pgtheatre.

Friday at 11 a.m. at the Exploration Place, 333 Becott Place, Kobo Town presents free workshop Roots Rockin’ Calypso, while free workshop Fiddle and Cello is presented by Elizabeth and Elizabeth at 12:20 at the PG Conservatory of Muscic, 3555 Fifth Ave., and concert Dance Up a Storm by The French Connection goes at 7:30 p.m. at the Ramada Ballroom, 444 George St. Saturday, Swagger and Wing workshop is presented by Red Haven at noon at the Railway and Forestry Museum, 850 River Rd., and the concert Coldsnap Turns Up the Heat featuring Kobo Town, Red Haven and Insterstellar Jays goes at 7:30 p.m. at the Ramada Ballroom, 444 George St. For more information visit www.coldsnapfestival.com.

CFUR Artist Showcase

Saturday from noon to 2 p.m. at Ritual Coffee Bar, 1085 Third Ave., CFUR is hosting an artists showcase the first Saturday of every month. First up is Brock Patch who will showcase his many talents. Everyone is invited to attend. Entry is by donation, which goes directly to the artist. For more information call 250-9605995 or email cfur_hello@cfur.ca.

Fashion Show and Sale

FrancoFUN Festival

Friday, to Sunday, Feb. 10, the Prince George French Canadian Circle presents the 34th annual FrancoFun Festival featuring many activities throughout Prince Geroge, including an art exhibition, on Saturday at 7 p.m. at Cercle, 1752 Fir Street.

On Monday, outdoor enthusiasts will have the chance to enjoy a free skating party at the Oval from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.

Shows at schools will be presented by the group Father Garneau and The Rats of Swomp. A movie night with the biopic La Bolduc will be held on Tuesday at 7 p.m. at the Cercle des Canadiens. Finally, our seniors will have the chance to enjoy the show that will be presented at the Château and enjoy a hearty meal.

The 34th edition of the FrancoFUN Winter Festival will conclude with the traditional Sugar Shack at St. Mary’s Hall, on Saturday, Feb. 9, from 9 a.m.a t 2 p.m. with music from the Old Time Fiddlers, Father Garneau and Les Rats of Swomp.

Once again we will hold a silent auction.

This grand finale will be followed by the Downtown Winterfest on Sunday, Feb. 10 from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. For more information call 250-561-2565 or email infolecercle@gmail.com.

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Red Haven is holding a workshop during the Coldsnap Music Festival Saturday at the Railway and Forestry Museum.

Spruce Kings games

Friday and Saturday from 7 to 9:30 p.m. at the Rolling Mix Concrete Arena,

Simon King Live

Saturday at 7 p.m. at Omineca Arts Centre, 369 Victoria St., comedian Simon King returns to Prince George for one night of hilarious stand-up comedy, with special guests Mike McGuire and MC Alex MacKenzie. Tickets are $20 at Books & Co., 1685 Third Ave. For more information call 250-552-0826 or email info@ ominecaartscentre.com.

Unist’ot’en and Gidumt’en Benefit Concert

Sunday at 7 p.m. at Omineca Arts Centre, 369 Victoria St., there is a night of music in support of Unist’ot’en and Gidum’ten, featuring Kym Gouchie, The Melawmen Collective and Sabina Dennis.

Entry by $10 to $20 donation but no one will be turned away. For more information call 250-552-0826 or email info@ ominecaartscentre.com.

Stitch n’ b!tch

UNBC Timberwolves

Friday and Saturday at Charles Jago Northern Sport Centre, 3333 University Way, the Timberwolves play their final regular season home games against the University of Lethridge Pronghorns from the Canada West Conference at the Northern Sport Centre. Tickets are available at the door. On Friday women’s game starts at 6 p.m., the men’s game starts at 8 p.m. On Saturday women’s game starts at 5 p.m., men’s starts at 7.

Saturday from 2 to 4 p.m. at First Baptist Church, 483 Gillette St., there is a scholarship fundraiser called Go Forth Scholarship Wedding Dress Fashion Show and Garage Sale. Entry is by donation.

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UNBC Timberwolves foward Vasiliki Louka (#13) sets a perfect pick so foward Madison Landry (#6) has a clear lane to drive to the net against the University of Manitoba Bisons at the Northern Sport Centre.

888 Dominion St., enjoy the action as the Spruce Kings play on the road to the RBC cup. For more information visit www. sprucekings.bc.ca.

V-Day Prince George

Friday and Saturday from 8 to 9:30 p.m. at Artspace above Books & Co., 1685 Third Ave., the Nechako Community The-

atrics Society joins the global movement to end violence against women and girls.

On Friday there is a benefit production of Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues and on Saturday there is a benefit reading of A Memory, A Monologue, A Rant And A Prayer. Tickets $20 for each event at Books & Co. or at the door. All profits donated to charity 90 per cent to a local

Monday at 7 p.m. at Omineca Arts Centre, 369 Victoria St., join a cozy evening of crafting and tea. Bring your projects or try something new. Drop-in is by donation.

For more information call 250-552-0826 or email info@ominecaartscentre.com.

Teen Tabletop Meet Up

Monday from 4 to 5 p.m. at the Bob Harkins Branch, Prince George Public Library, 888 Canada Games Way, try your hand at a variety of tabletop games. All experience levels welcome. Bring your own decks for MtG, Pokemon or Yu-GiOh. For 13-18 yrs.

For more information call 250-5639251 or email ask@pgpl.ca.

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Music tells us we shall overcome Lessons in learning Gerry Chidiac

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ebanese-American writer Kahlil Gibran said, “Music is the language of the spirit. It opens the secret of life bringing peace, abolishing strife.”

If any group has experienced strife over the last several hundred years, it is the people of Africa. First having a significant portion of their population dragged into slavery and then having their territory pillaged by European colonials. One can wonder how they have managed to keep hope alive and it is significant to note the role that music has played in this.

African-American historian Jerome LeDoux points out how during slave times people would go to church and then gather at Congo Square in New Orleans on Sundays. There they would sing and dance, remembering their African roots. They also reflected on what they had learned in church, strongly identifying with the people of Israel enduring slavery in Egypt and the suffering of Jesus Christ. People sang “let my people go” and “nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen.” LeDoux calls this music the “holy blues.” Secular musicians heard it and basically changed the words and created the blues. This then evolved into jazz, rock ’n roll and more modern gospel music.

One song which came out of this tradition, Down by the Riverside, first became

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In this March 21, 1965 photo, Dr. Martin Luther King, foreground row, fifth from right, waves as marchers stream across the Alabama River on the first of a fiveday, 50-mile march to the state capitol at Montgomery, Ala. popular around the time of the Civil War and it remains well known today.

In 2009, an organization called Playing for Change released their version of Down by the Riverside, featuring musicians from Serbia, Portugal, Brazil, Los Angeles, France, Japan, and of course New Orleans and the Congo. What this organization accomplishes by recording artists with differing styles from all over the world, singing and playing in harmony, is a testimony not only to the technical

skill of the Playing for Change team but of the amazing gift music is to the world.

Playing in harmony is perhaps the most perfect example of the highest degree of human cooperation, what author Stephen Covey refers to as synergy. Each musician and singer has to not only have confidence in their own abilities but also listen attentively to the others, thus creating a sound that no one person could produce.

Because Playing for Change draws artists from all over the globe who joyfully

share their time and talent, the songs they produce have a richness that perhaps has never been created before. Down by the Riverside is only one example of their amazing work, the profits from which are used to improve the quality of life in impoverished regions of the world.

As I reflect on the topic of the power of music, another story also comes to mind as well. It is more than 50 years since the huge rallies of Dr. Martin Luther King.

The anthem of the civil rights movement was also from the “holy blues” tradition, We Shall Overcome. Masses of people sang this, and continue to sing, in beautiful harmony.

It is as if all of these songs of the “holy blues” contain a very deep and profound truth which we all know. Horrible crimes have been committed. There is tremendous injustice in the world, not only in Africa and the United States but in every country.

Yet this music demonstrates that we can create harmony and when we do so we are living the highest essence of our humanity.

People have not only survived, we have been able to thrive despite horrendous wrongs being institutionalized, and it is music which has touched our hearts and given us hope. We know that better times are coming.

Thus the entire world joins Dr. King and sings in beautiful harmony, “deep in my heart, I do believe that we shall overcome one day.”

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.

Drowning in effort to book swim lessons

M

y continuing frustration with trying to get the kids registered in swim lessons has reached its

peak.

Who are these women who know instinctively when the registration for swim lessons opens and have the ability to actually pick a time and day that is convenient for them and their family?

I have a picture in my head of a young mom with far more energy than me sitting happily at her kitchen table drinking coffee on a Saturday.

Her hair is not in need of a cut and her coffee pot has been cleaned at some point in the last two weeks.

She sips her coffee and casually scrolls through the City of Prince George leisure registration website and remembers what level her kids were in last without trying to track down the water-stained swim cards which are somewhere in her filing “system.”

She is not getting frustrated scrolling through the youth and the preschool swim lesson options and making notes, trying to find a time for her two kids to be in swim lessons at roughly the same time without having it be the worst time ever in the history of swim lessons.

The lessons she chooses are not full and she laughs at the idea of a Hail Mary waitlist.

This is, of course, after she logs into the site successfully on the first try without having to reset her password only to have the password reset option not work because somehow, the last time she was on the site, she managed to lock and freeze her account.

She will not have to wait until the pool opens so she can call and talk to a teen-

Home Again Megan kuklIs

ager to reset the registration account and feel moderately foolish.

She will not likely close the lid of her ancient laptop in disgust and frustration, feeling that her kids will never learn to swim because she can’t seem to manage a registration site.

She won’t have to look at private lessons as an option only to run the math to discover it is not a viable option.

She won’t stop what she is doing to imagine herself as a lifeguard, teaching her own kids to swim at no cost.

Meanwhile, I bet her kids are playing nicely together and not running after one another attempting ninja drop kicks on their siblings.

She won’t be interrupted to be asked if ninjas are real or for another piece of fruit (after they have eaten all of the fruit in the house within eight minutes of returning from the grocery store to refill the fruit basket).

She will not be asked for a treat, snack, second breakfast or lunch.

Her house will be clean and when she walks into her living room.

She will not step on any Lego or mysteriously naked, broken crayons.

She sips her coffee, signs up her kids in the appropriate swim level and manages to get both kids in at the same time.

Someone pours her another coffee, maybe she reads a book, relaxes.

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SPORTS

Thursday, January 31, 2019 | 9

97/16 news service photo

Megan Tandy competes in the mixed relay 2 x 6 km / 2 x 7,5 km at the Biathlon World Cup event on Dec. 2 in Pokljuka, Slovenia.

Tandy calls it a career ted clarke 97/16 staff

Family first, career second.

Megan Tandy knows she’s made the right choice to retire from biathlon after 12 years with the national team.

The 30-year-old three-time Olympian from Prince George informed Biathlon Canada of her decision a few weeks ago after she learned she will have full custody of her eight-year-old son Predo indefinitely.

Based in Klingenthal, Germany, Tandy’s family situation unexpectedly changed earlier this month when her ex-husband Illmar Heinicke, Predo’s father, became institutionalized, unable to provide parental care for his son while Tandy was away racing.

“I decided for family reasons to stop racing,” said Tandy, from her home in Germany. “There’s no way forward from there. If I don’t race World Cup in January. then there’s no opportunity to qualify for the North American World Cups (next month in Canmore and Salt Lake City) and without participating in those races there was no opportunity to qualify for world championships. It was kind of a make-or-break part of the season.”

Tandy, who lives in Klingenthal with her partner Domenik Wolf and his nine-year-old son Leni, was unable to shed much light on that’s happened to Heinicke, who, up until last year, was coaching in Germany’s junior national program.

Heinicke, 46, first met Tandy in 2006, when he moved to Prince George to re-

place Knut Tore Berland as B.C. provincial biathlon team coach.

They moved to Germany in 2010 and separated in September 2014 after four years of marriage.

“He’s, for personal reasons, in treatment and not able to be present here for a longer period of time,” Tandy said. “I couldn’t tell you if it’s for stress or for a medical condition or for drug addiction, it could literally be anything.

“I can’t tell you that much because I don’t know that much, it’s a pretty tough situation I have over here,” she said. “I have my son and we’ve been through multiple custody battles and we don’t have great communication (with Heinicke) but it became apparent in November that Ilmar was going to be away for an extended period of time and unable to

be at his home in Klingenthal at all.

“So at that point I decided to end my season to be home with Predo, he’s my priority. It’s been a super-rough transition from planning how to progress my season to being a full-time mom but that’s OK, I’m enjoying it. Predo has always come first but I’ve never had a custody situation where I could be a full-time mom. Now that opportunity is presenting itself and it’s more important for me to be there for him during that time period than to be racing.”

Tandy started the season on the World Cup team after winning the Canadian team trials in November but her ski times in those first few World Cup events fell short of expectations.

Continued on page 10

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took up biathlon at age 12 Continued from page 9

Biathlon Canada informed her just before the new year she was being dropped down to the IBU Cup international B circuit, replaced on the World Cup team

by Megan Bankes of Calgary.

Tandy was coming off a disappointing a 2017-18 season leading up to the 2018 Olympics in Pyeongchang. She made the Olympic team and qualified for the pursuit after racing the sprint but a viral illness caused her heart muscle to shrink and that forced her to give up her spot on the team to Sarah Beaudry of Prince George for the rest of the Olympic competition.

Tandy did not race the final World Cup events last winter. Once she learned what was causing her to feel so fatigued and began responding to treatment she decided to extend her career for one more season.

“It was a crazy year, I started in the worst shape I’ve probably ever been with major health problems and then had one of the best summer and fall training seasons ever,” said Tandy.

“I was feeling totally stoked for the season, really excited to win Canadian trials and I couldn’t have started in any better way but I overdid it after trials. I was a little bit too motivated. I was willing to take the risk (training all-out). I wanted to be in the top-15, I didn’t want to train to be 50th if I’m looking at this as my last race season.”

Tandy’s World Cup results to close out 2018 were among the worst of her career.

In Pokljuka, Slovenia she was 62nd in the individual event and 73rd in the sprint.

In Hochfilzen, Austria she finished 87th in the sprint and in Nove Mesto, Czech Republic she was 81st in the sprint.

“The ski speed just wasn’t there and it was so frustrating,” she said.

Tandy first took up biathlon when she was 12, just starting to find her racing stride as a junior team cross-country ski racer with the Caledonia Nordic Ski Club in Prince George. She joined as one of the pioneers of a junior biathlon program overseen by volunteer coaches Jeremy Campbell and Fiona Coy. Working on a shooting range at Otway Nordic Centre they had tucked in the woods, using a snowmobile to haul in lights and other equipment, they trained young gunners like Tandy to become provincial champions. On her first try on the shooting range, using a rest in prone position, Tandy went 5-for-5 and was immediately hooked.

She was 22 when she first competed in the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver-Whistler, where her best result was 35th in the pursuit. Her greatest Olympic moment came in Sochi in 2014 in the women’s team relay, where Tandy, skiing third in the order, was flawless in two shooting bouts, nailing all 10 targets without a miss. She tagged anchor skier Zina Kocher with the team in fourth place and the Canadian team finished an all-time best eighth just enough to secure athlete assistance national funding for the entire relay team for the following season.

Tandy followed up her impressive Olympic performance with her best season on the World Cup tour. In 2014-15 she posted five top-16 solo race results and had five top-11 team relay finishes.

“I never made it in the top-six, was never on the podium but I was really consistent, shooting well and skiing consistently,” she said. “I had two 20-for-20 races in that season, one was an individu-

97/16 file photos

Top, Megan Tandy practices at the Otway Nordic Centre in 2007. Below, Tandy rollerskis in Miworth on an August afternoon in 2015.

al where I placed (a career-best) 11th and one was a pursuit where I raced from 41st position up to 14th. There were weekends where I felt I couldn’t miss a target and it was a cool place to be.”

Based in Germany the past eight years, Tandy had to adapt to training on her own, apart from her teammates. She had planned to retire after the 2018 Olympics but was encouraged by her cardiologist to try come back for her “bonus season” when he explained to her how remarkable it was she was able to compete at all last season, considering her compromised circulatory capacity caused by the viral condition.

Unlike their European counterparts, who are well taken care of financially, government funding for Canadian biathletes is uncertain from year to year be-

cause it is performance based. She won’t miss that aspect of being on the team.

“The IBU Cup team (which includes Burns Lake native Emily Dickson), they’re paying thousands of dollars every year to represent Canada on our international development circuit,” said Tandy. “It’s the hardest for our development athletes between 17 and 22 - they’re the future of our sport and yet if they’re not able to deliver exceptional results at that age that qualify them for federal athlete funding they’re really on their own.’

Tandy is encouraged to see the next generation of Canadian biathletes coming up in the world rankings. Two of the current national team members – Beaudry and Dickson – are products of the Caledonia club.

“Sarah impresses me, she’s a really

positive person and it’s cool to watch her develop and grow up as an athlete a few years behind me,” Tandy said. “She’s super positive. She had to drop one of her races at trials and had the guts to put all her eggs in one basket. She started the season on IBU Cup and by the third World Cup she had a personal best by far with a near-perfect race and a 12th place finish. She has lots of potential.

“Emily was definitely skiing faster this year and her times behind the top six athletes at trials wasn’t as much. In previous years that gap was minutes and this year it’s really closed and that’s exciting to see.

For sure, there’s some ski speed improvements needed for international results but there’s time for that.”

Continued on page 11

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News

97/16 news service photo

Megan Tandy competes in the biathlon world cup women’s 4x6 km relay at the Alpensia Biathlon Centre in Pyeongchang, South Korea, on March 5, 2017.

‘So thankful for everything the sport has given me’ vibes from start to finish.

“It wasn’t a moment I would have chosen for myself with the family situation Tandy plans to spend the next few just to step out of the sport abruptly, but months completing her business adminat the same point I’m ready for it. I want istration masters thesis in sport manageto be able to watch biathlon races on the ment and is about to begin a new job as weekend and see the Canadians fighting sport manager of a new biathlon club program set up by GK Software, the com- for it. It’s good to have the next tier of girls coming up and being ready to fill the pany that’s backed Tandy as her major sponsor the past two years. Over the next shoes of the athletes who are retiring.”

Tandy is the second high-profile Canamonth she will help plan the club’s project to build an air rifle range in Schoneck, dian biathlete in the past two months to call it a career. Nathan Smith of Calgary, near Klingenthal. the country’s most decorated male “I’m really looking forward to stepping biathlete, announced in December he into a whole different set of shoes in the was retiring after biathlon world,” two years of dealing said Tandy. “It’s I’m so thankful I was able with a cytomegapretty cool to step lovirus, an energyout of the sport and to represent Canada sapping disease. have something Smith made a name waiting for me right for so many years and I had so much support for himself interat home.” nationally when he Tandy is fluent from different sponsors silver in the in German and and family but also from won sprint at the 2012 plans to utilize her home in Prince George world championextensive biathlon ships and later that connections to the positive vibes from season won World help with her latest start to finish.

Cup gold in the venture.

Megan Tandy pursuit.

“It’s been pretty “When I look incredible, the sport back I’m so thankhas been my career ful for everything for my entire adult the sport has given me, it taught me so life, I’ve spent the last 12 years pursuing much about self-confidence, about falling it professionally,” she said. “It’s been a down and getting up, about perseverconstant in my life when I’ve had in my ance and teamwork and trust in others as private world lots of tough things going well as trust in myself,” Tandy said. “This on. It’s taken me through a lot of highs journey has given me so much I’m excited and lows on and off the race course and about potentially stepping into a different I have no regrets. I’m so thankful I was role where I can help give everything the able to represent Canada for so many sport gave to me to the next generation of years and I had so much support from athletes, whether that’s in Canada, Gerdifferent sponsors and family but also many or somewhere else in the world.” from home in Prince George the positive Continued from page 10

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Citizen photo by Brent Braaten

Mary and John Row have enjoyed growing their family in Prince George and are now enjoying their retirement years.

Hard work and good times John and Mary Row look back on family, business success Seniors’ Scene Kathy Nadalin

I

n the mid-1970s, the Federal Business Development Bank and the Chamber of Commerce of the day named John Row, the president of Crossroads Construction, as the Prince George businessman of the year. Here is his story in a nutshell.

John was born in 1931, just north of Prince Albert, Sask.

In fact, he was delivered by his father at their homestead.

He left the farm at the tender age of 16 and headed to southern Alberta for a job in construction. He moved to Nanaimo in 1950 for a six-month construction job and then moved back to southern Alberta.

In 1964 he moved to Prince George for work on the construction of the pulp mills and he has been here ever since. He started working for Crossroads Construction and bought the company in 1972.

John said, “I used to employ 200 construction workers. I got into the habit of putting the coffee on early every morning; that meant I had to be there before 7 a.m. My union workers would arrive well

before their 8 a.m. shift for their coffee and we would talk about the jobs and all it cost me was the coffee. I called it managing for success.

“We were a success and some of my employees worked for the company for 24 years with an average length of employment of eight years. Pete Jensen worked for the company for 36 years until he retired. We are still good friends today.

“The company is a lot smaller now; my son is the manager and we have only two employees. I semi-retired in 1995 but I still act as a consultant if they need me.”

Over the years, Crossroads Construction built the Victoria Medical Building, the addition for Reid’s Prescriptions, the Phoenix Medical Clinic, Lakewood Dental, the new Civic Centre, numerous schools and the Library Commission building at Quinn and 15th Avenue. His company worked on the construction of the Northwood, Intercontinental and the Prince George Pulp mills, as well as B.C. Chemicals Ltd. They contracted all the way south to Castlegar, north to Fort Nelson, west to Prince Rupert, east to Grimshaw, Alta. and everything in between. John was an inspector on the University of Northern B.C. building project for eight years.

John met Mary Riediger in 1952. Mary was born in 1933, on the Oxly Ranch, in Stavely, Alta.

She had a twin brother and comes from a family of five girls and three boys.

John was doing some construction work south of Calgary and the wife of his boss just happened to be making Mary’s graduation dress.

Mary said, “I already had my eye on John and his car. I watched him drive by in his Model A and I fell in love with the car. Two years went by before I actually met him. His boss told him about me and told him to look me up sometime when he was in Calgary and he did. I let him chase me until I caught him. We married in 1955 and we will celebrate 64 years of marriage in May. “I was attending business college in Calgary when John looked me up. After college I worked for the federal government in the office of the agricultural department in plant products.

“When the children started to arrive, I quit work and became a stay at home mom. I enjoyed being at home with my children. I sewed all their clothes and did lots of knitting. We grew a large garden and I either froze or canned all the produce.”

John and Mary have four children: Karen (Bob) Rutherford, Jack (deceased), Cheryll Johnson and Graham (Becky).

They have seven grandchildren and nine great grandchildren.

John has been a member of the Rotary Club since 1978, the Shriners since 1968

and he has been a member of the Masonic Lodge since 1966. He has served as a director for the Prince George Construction Association for about 38 years and a trustee of the Carpentry Apprenticeship Joint Board.

Mary was a member of the Daughters of the Nile for 28 years until the group folded and she sang with the Sweet Adelines for 28 years until her voice wore out.

She was a member of the Master Bowlers Association, developed her skills, became a Master Bowler and taught youth bowling from 1968 to 1982.

Mary said, “I taught many great kids from the ages of seven to 12 years of age. I took a team to the Provincial Zone Championships and from there we went on to the nationals.

John concluded by saying, “We moved to Prince George in 1964 with the intention of only staying here for five years.

That was 55 years ago and we are still here. Prince George has been a great place to raise a great family.

“We took winter vacations for 30 years but I stayed in touch with the office every day. Now, because of health issues, we spend our winters here at home.

“I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of our customers, construction associates and suppliers and all the wonderful people we met along the way to our retirement.”

health

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A diet of crazy, risky ways to lose weight debra bruno 97/16 wire service

Welcome to diet season, when people are looking for a reset after the overconsumption of the holidays.

Before the 20th century, few people cared whether a person put on a few pounds. An ample middle was seen as a sign of prosperity and good health. Joan Jacobs Brumberg, author of The Body Project: An Intimate History of American Girls, says people were “uncomfortable with extreme thinness, because it signaled wasting diseases,” such as tuberculosis and cancer.

Then several things changed.

One was that insurance companies, which had been compiling actuarial tables that looked at the risk factors connected to occupation, age, gender, height and weight, started to become more sophisticated. The “average” weight for men and women changed to “ideal” height and weight in the early 20th century, says Susan Speaker, a National Library of Medicine historian, because insurance companies saw a correlation between excess weight and early mortality. Those charts started appearing on the walls of doctors’ offices.

Fashion also played a role. In the 1920s, as the flapper look took off, women began wearing slimmer, figure-hugging dresses that often ended just below the knees and bared the arms. Being plump didn’t seem as pleasing in such attire.

The advertising world, powered by new businesses, was ready to jump in with solutions.

The result? Here are seven of the strangest – and often unhealthy – strategies for getting thin.

• Smoking instead of snacking. A 1928 advertisement for Lucky Strike cigarettes said, “reach for a Lucky instead of a sweet,”until the confection industry threatened legal action. Cigarettes do burn calories and probably do substitute for snacking for some users. And those who quit smoking do tend to gain weight when they replace the oral gratification of smoking with eating. But no one can call cigarette usage a healthy approach.

• Speed pills to suppress your appetite. Amphetamines were first prescribed after the Second World War. They generally were discontinued in 1979 when addiction and the potential for abuse became better known. Amphetamines were used on the battlefields during the war to help sleep-deprived soldiers stay awake and alert. After the war, the drug company Smith Kline & French started selling the drugs for weight loss and depression. Similar to amphetamines were the “rainbow pills” of the 1940s, 50s and 60s, a colourful array of pills that included laxatives, diuretics, and amphetamines, and were connected to several deaths. Although amphetamines are out, methamphetamine (yes, meth) is still approved by the Food and Drug Administration for short-term weight loss for certain people.

• A diet “candy” with an unfortunate name. Then there was Ayds, a fudgelike candy that was designed to be taken before meals as an appetite suppressant.

First introduced in the 1950s, Ayds grew

97/16 news service photos

The grapefruit diet, above, or the all-junk-food diet, below, are just two of the craziest weight loss fads ever promoted.

in popularity for the next 20 years. One commercial shows a thin woman wearing a yellow shirtwaist dress (that looks no larger than size 4 in today’s measurements) saying, “And I love being a size 10 again!” But there was something in those little brown squares - the supplement first included benzocaine, an oral anesthetic

that would presumably numb the taste buds. Later Ayds were infused with phenylpropanolamine, a decongestant also used for urinary incontinence in dogs.

But when the AIDS crisis hit in the 1980s, the word association appeared to be just too much. Ayds was withdrawn from the market in the late 1980s.

T h u r s d a y , J a n u a r y 3 1 , 2 0 1 9 | 13

• All junk food, all the time. Also known as the “Twinkie diet,” this approach – more of an experiment than a serious diet – was tried by Mark Haub, a professor of human nutrition at Kansas State University, in 2010. For 10 weeks, Haub ate Twinkies, Doritos, Oreos, and other junk food exclusively, but kept his calorie limit to about 1500 calories a day, a good 800 calories below what he would need to maintain his weight. And he lost 27 pounds. Today, Haub says he’s put back on all but seven of the lost pounds, but he feels the diet helped him jumpstart his weight loss. “I got to the point where I wanted to make some lifestyle changes, and used it as a way to start that process,” he says. His current diet focuses on whole grains, fruits and vegetables, and more mindful eating, he notes.

• Grapefruit. Sometimes called “the Hollywood 18-day diet,” or just the grapefruit diet, this plan, which has existed in some form since the 1930s and had a resurgence in the 1980s, restricted food to almost nothing but grapefruit and maybe a hard-boiled egg. It came in at somewhere between 400 and 800 calories a day. To be sure, a diet of so few daily calories is probably going to result in weight loss, so yes, many on this diet do lose weight. But being famished often meant that dieters turned to binge-eating and weight gain after the diet ended.

• The tapeworm cure. The concept is that a tapeworm living in the intestines consumes calories that might otherwise feed the human host. Elizabeth Tucker, co-author of Folk Culture in the Digital Age, said ingesting worms “could have pretty bad consequences,” including causing intestinal blockage and damage to the brain, liver and eyes. Oh, and there’s no evidence the tapeworm diet works.

• A spoonful of vinegar. The idea is to take a couple of teaspoons of the vinegar, diluted by water, before a meal, which advocates say induces weight loss by decreasing appetite and even reducing insulin levels. Robert Shmerling, senior editor at Harvard Health Publishing and rheumatologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, says no studies have conclusively proved that vinegar leads to weight loss, although it might cause a feeling of nausea that will make people eat less. The downside is that “because it is highly acidic, it can damage tooth enamel or irritate the esophagus,” which can lead to acid reflux.

Nutritionists say that as people turn their attention and efforts to shedding holiday weight, it’s worth remembering that lots of diets can help you quickly lose pounds; the issue is keeping them off after the diet.

“The real challenge is what you do when the weight plateaus,” Bray says.

“For most people, they’re unable to maintain that” since maintaining a weight loss requires permanent changes in eating habits and lifestyle.

Along with that, she says, is a growing understanding “that once we put weight on, it’s so hard to take it off. The newer thinking is ‘Don’t put it on in the first place.’”

No one has figured out how to do that either, she says.

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97/16

Addiction is a disease Dear Ann: Why do people blame the addict for their disease while not blaming people with other visible diseases?

The World Health Organization and the Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons deem addiction a disease. This fact is not in dispute. People tend to think addiction is a personal choice.

Addiction is horrible and hellish. It is not something anyone chooses.

Picking up the first drink or drug may have been deliberate but when true addiction kicks in, choice is no longer an option.

Addicted brains are hijacked and no amount of personal resolve can overcome this powerful biological drive.

Imagine trying to stop breathing; it will never happen on will power alone.

The difference between addiction and other visible diseases is that addiction has observable actions which tend to hurt surrounding people.

If I have diabetes, you don’t see my high blood sugar hurting others. I don’t cheat, lie, steal or sell my body if I have diabetes. I do not conduct crime or break into houses.

The behaviour of addicts/alcoholics hurts other people – mothers, fathers, children and sisters; even strangers are impacted by drunk driving. These observable actions are why people blame addicts.

When you pick up a cup of tea, I tend to think this a personal choice. When you pick up a drink, we tend to think this is

Ask an Addict

also a personal choice.

People hurt by addicts direct their anger and pain onto to the person causing this. Many say “if you loved me enough, you would just quit.”

Unfortunately addiction isn’t about loving or not loving another.

If love could cure illness, there would be no diabetes, no cancer and no addiction.

Addicts hurt people.

Hurt people hurt people.

When hurt, people lash out at addicts and call them weak willed and immoral.

Unfortunately the lying, cheating and manipulative actions are indicative of the substance being used, not about the person themselves.

People tend to confuse alcoholic rage as being the alcoholic.

It is actually the alcohol, the drug which causes the behaviour. Society confounds the two and tends not to separate the person from the substance.

When a young child acts out, we are taught to separate the behaviour from the person. We tell them, “I love you but not your behaviour.” This should be true with addiction: “I love you but not your disease” (including addictive behaviours) but sadly it is not.

97/16 news service photo by Bebeto Matthews

An addict prepares heroin, placing a fentanyl test strip into the mixing container to check for contamination last August in New York. If the strip registers a pinkish to red marker then the heroin is positive for contaminants.

What addicts need most is less stigmatization. People do not seek help when judgment prevails.

This is why it is important to be aware of the facts: addiction is not a lifestyle choice. Addicts who are actively ill already hate themselves enough without having more judgment from you.

As a closing thought, consider your

child falling on the floor with a seizure— urinating and defecating on themself. Consider your mother having had a stroke with verbal profanity now coming out.

These two conditions would be not be met with judgment or anger, nor would they be considered a personal choice.

Sadly, addiction is.

TV show helps man use CPR on woman 97/16 wire service

When it came time to save a life, the mechanic turned to the lessons of Michael Scott and Dwight Schrute.

Cross Scott, a tire shop technician, was test driving a customer’s vehicle on Jan. 11 when he saw a peculiar thing: a sedan pulled over, its hazard lights blinking, according to the Arizona Daily Star. He got out to inspect the vehicle.

There was a woman inside who appeared unconscious as the car crept forward, he told the newspaper. He stuck a rock under the wheel and used another to smash a window, and two women who pulled over dialed 911.

He checked for a pulse. Nothing. Help could be minutes away. He had to act.

But there was one problem.

“I’ve never prepared myself for CPR in my life,” Scott told the Star. “I had no idea what I was doing.”

Well, that’s not entirely true. He had seen Season 5, episode 14 of The Office.

In a classic scene from the TV series, Dunder Mifflin regional manager Michael Scott acknowledges his leadership style may have led to a heart attack, and, fearing future emergencies, he organizes CPR training for his employees. When he thrusts too fast on the practice dummy, the instructor tells him to sync his rhythm with a well-known disco hit.

“A good trick is to pump to the tune of Stayin’ Alive by the Bee Gees,” she explains, because at around 100 beats a minute, it matches the recommended tempo to perform chest compression on a patient.

The memory was seared into Scott’s memory. He crawled onto the woman

and began compressions while singing the song aloud, he told the Star, thinking of Steve Carell’s character hunched over the dummy and belting “Ah, ha, ha, ha, stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive.”

The woman, later identified as Clare, awoke after a minute and threw up, according to the Star. She was then taken to a hospital. Scott, recalling the words of a paramedic from the Tucson Fire Department, told the newspaper her fate could have been much different had he never intervened.

Of course, experts do not expect a passerby to shuffle their Spotify playlist to find the perfect beat while someone is in cardiac arrest but rather suggest songs many people know by, well, heart. The New York-Presbyterian Hospital crafted a list of popular songs that fit the criteria: Just Dance by Lady Gaga, Rock This Town by Stray Cats or Crazy in Love by Beyoncé.

Scott appears to have done the right thing despite a lack of training, said Jonathan Epstein, the senior director of science at the American Red Cross training services.

The organization encourages people to take one-hour CPR courses to familiarize themselves with the process, which has proved to increase someone’s willingness to help out in an emergency, he told 97/16 news service.

But failing that?

“Chest compressions alone are a benefit to the patient,” he said. “You can’t hurt them if they’re not breathing, so all you can do is make them better.”

Stayin’ Alive, with 106 beats per minute, is a pretty good candidate for getting in the 100 to 120 sweet spot.

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Handout photo

Victoria-based musician Sam Weber will co-host a workshop with Terra Lightfoot this morning starting at 10:30 a.m. at the Omineca Arts Centre as part of the Coldsnap music festival. Weber will also be performing a show tonight at the Prince George Legion with Naomi Kavka. Doors open at 7 p.m., and the show starts at 8 p.m.

Weber takes Legion stage tonight frank peebles 97/16 staff

It has been almost four years since Sam Weber has been to Prince George. On his two previous visits, he succeeded in winning fans over with his smooth, slowburn alternative rock.

The rest of Canada is now alive to the Victoria guitar slinger with the voice like a Salish Sea fog and he has just pushed a new EP out into the water. One of the places he most wanted to perform it for was P.G. “We met a bunch of people when we were there the first time and we’ve been trying to get back,” he said.

He and his band have been down in Los Angeles working with go-to producer Tyler Chester. As a musician, Chester has worked with a spread of stars from Joan Baez to Christina Aguilera to Jackson Browne and he is a veteran producer as well. In fact, the comparisons between Weber and Browne make a compelling case. He could be called a cross between Steely Dan and the Grapes Of Wrath. Or a mashup of Springsteen’s introverted side and X Ambassadors.

He could be called a lot of things, as long as it makes mention of his unmistakable command of the guitar and his way with stickhandling a lyric.

For those just getting started on Weber’s music, a good place to begin are songs like Burn Out, August, Valentina, and Anybodys with its video starring fit-

ness celebrities Hal Johnson and Joanne McLeod in a hilarious pantomime.

Weber got another star to step up for him the other day, totally out of the blue and unsolicited. He’s been smiling with the surprise ever since.

“Afie Jurvanen of Bahamas was on the George Stroumboulopoulos show and he said Ex Lover by Sam Weber was the best song of 2018.’ We’ve never had any accolades or recognition like that. That meant a lot. And that just happened so we’re like reeling from it.”

Weber didn’t even know how Jurvanen heard the tune. Music doesn’t move around anymore like it did up to the early 2000s when it was a predictable line of radio and music video. Now music can’t be aimed as surely by those who perform it, but it can also wander in ways unknown to the artist.

Weber estimates the peak of the music industry’s power was the 1990s “right before Napster came along, and that was the collapse of that wing of the music industry. But I’m barely disparaged by that anymore because where we make money and where we find joy is in playing live.

I never really have the expectation of making money off the recordings. We can monetize just travelling around playing music for people. We are completely happy with that.”

It is also a shared experience. The relationship between artist and audience in a concert setting, large or small, is akin to an act of magic. And Weber said there

is also a deep personal meaning among musicians when they lock into each other. The fans who don’t play music probably don’t know just how organic a live performance is.

You might think you play the same old song one night exactly the way you played it the 100 nights before that.

Live music is not like painting by numbers, though. Every note struck by a finger on a guitar string or snap of drumstick or inflection in a singing tone creates a different pathway to the next one and the next one, and over the course of a concert, another world is created using the songs as merely a familiar frame around the ever-changing kaleidoscope image of sound.

That inter-relationship between himself and his bandmates can feel like an angry mess or it can edify your spirit.

“We’ve been trying as a band to listen to each other and reach this hyperconsciousness thing,” he said, with a shy laugh.

“I know that sounds super new-agey and weird but if everyone in a band context is paying really close attention to each other, you can reach almost like a meditative level. You can react to each other. You reach this point when your mistakes can just disappear.

“We’re not an eye-contact oriented band, but it can go as far as the relationships with the band members. It’s about having strong relationships with those people personally so when mistakes

happen they can just go by and not pull you out of the moment. Because when someone makes a mistake on stage, it is the responsibility of all the other players on stage to try and fix it, in terms of the fabric of the song. If the guitar player does something weird, the drummer can do something off of that and just make it this moment, rather than allow it to be an awkward situation. These are hard things to explain, but when you go out together and do 60 shows you start to dissect it at that level.”

Someone who gets what they are trying to do is Canadian alt-rock darling Terra Lightfoot. She and her band have been solid pals of Weber and his band. When they found out Lightfoot was performing at this year’s Coldsnap music festival (see story, page 16), and they were in the general area themselves, Weber rushed to book himself into P.G. as well so they could enjoy each other’s shows.

In a twist of fate, though, Weber is scheduled to be at the Prince George Legion tonight, the same night Lightfoot is playing her Coldsnap concert at the PG Playhouse.

To get at least a little time in the same room, though, Weber was invited by the Coldsnap organizers to conduct a free workshop with Lightfoot. That workshop happens from 10:30-11:30 a.m. today at the Omineca Arts Centre. Guitar players are encouraged to bring their own instruments; fans are encouraged to bring their clapping hands.

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Handout photo by Dustin Rabin

Terra Lightfoot will be co-hosting a guitar workshop this morning, and then playing a concert tonight as part of the Coldsnap music festival.

Lightfoot headlines Coldsnap show Frank PEEBLES 97/16 staff

If you were a songwriter, you’d want Terra Lightfoot to cover whatever you did. She’d do it better than you and it would plump up with more authenticity than you imagined it had. You’d be wondering what the writer meant by that middle line in the second stanza, then remember with a jolt that she was giving answers for which only you had the original question.

If someone were going to write a song about you, you’d want it to be Terra Lightfoot. You wouldn’t be named in the song but you’d know.

Even if her honesty felt a bit painful, she’d never be cruel, she’s paint you right, you’d be ooo-la-la-ing right along with the background singers, and you’d hit the replay button as soon as the last guitar clang faded into the grey smells and neon buzz of the honky-tonk .

Lightfoot has never been to Prince George, so her two appearances this coming week are circled on her calendar.

She’s looking to expand her audience to a new region.

Fans can expect to hear a mix of tracks from her New Mistakes album, her Every Time My Mind Runs Wild album and some carefully chosen covers to add some depth and fun.

“We’re doing it in the format of being a trio, which is really fun because it’s guitar-centric music and it allows the guitar to be the centre of it all,” she said.

“But at the same time it gives my drummer and my bass player a big chance to shine, so we are having a lot of fun with this arrangement. And it’s rock ‘n’ roll, and it’s country, and it’s folk, and it’s soul, and it’s kind of everything.”

Lightfoot is a true scribe within the craft. Lines like “I am burdened by a blindness to your flaws” and “every time my mind runs wild, you are always where it goes” carry her songs down the literary path more like a modern dirt-road poet.

When you run out of compliments for her lyrical balladeering you can move on to her smooth-burn Scotch whisky vocal tones, and then finish with her pinnacle asset of all, the guitar.

“I actually started on piano when I was five,” she said.

“Then I moved along to an acoustic guitar when I was in Grade 7 or something.

My mom bought me a guitar at a garage sale. Then I just started playing electric at around 12 and I never put it down again, and I still haven’t. I noticed today on my guitar, Veronica, my beautiful Gibson SG that I’ve had for many years (it’s the one that looks like the one AC/DC’s Angus Young uses), there is a deep hole in the body. It’s a solid body. It’s gotten so deep.

It’s like a tiny mountain range in my guitar’s finish, in my warped mind.”

You can clearly see the beginnings of that stum-scar in the video for her honeydipped song Ruthless.

If you took note that her devil-horned axe had a name, get ready for more.

Veronica has sisters.

“For this trip I packed three. I had four, but I left one at home, at the last minute,” she said. “So I have Veronica, I have Charlotte and I have Ashley.

“Charlotte is an Epiphone that is newer but everyone thinks she is from the ’60s.”

Charlotte is a voluptuous blonde that looks like the vintage arch-top guitars handled by golden age rockers like The Beatles and John Lee Hooker.

“Ashley is a handmade guitar made for me by a luthier named Ashley Leanne so I named the guitar after her.” Ashley Leanne Rowley builds guitars in Burlington, nearby to Lightfoot’s hometown of Hamilton. Rowley studied under master luthier Paul Saunders. She imbedded Lightfoot’s guitar with a unique image – a bird made of abalone.

Lightfoot crafts unique images of her own, carved out of chord and stanza.

One of the most vivid so far is the single Norma Gale, a true old fashioned ode to the Canadian country music legend. Gale passed away before hearing the song, but Lightfoot crafted it after meeting her son who introduced the two singers, the younger struck with inspiration by the older.

“That song really has become something else,” Lightfoot said. “I did not write it with that intention, to get it where it’s sort of gotten to. I got to play it at the Junos, and Sarah Harmer texted me for the lyrics to cover it, it’s just been so cool.

I don’t write songs about other people, generally, from their perspective. It’s usually about me or sung in the first person.

But her story just struck me so much I had to write about it. For a song to walk on its own is all I could ever ask for, and I didn’t know it would be that one, and I’m so happy that it is.”

Other Lightfoot songs have also gotten up and walked on their own, thanks to the appreciation of other musicians. A whole album was made in which Lightfoot was called in to collaborate with the National Academy Orchestra of Canada.

“That is an unspeakable privilege,” she said, remembering the sound of her songs renovated with orchestra arrangements.

“I actually couldn’t play with them in the first rehearsal because I was crying. I couldn’t sing because I was overflowing with gratitude. It was such a beautiful experience, and I highly recommend even going to see a symphony orchestra.

There is something just so beautiful and visceral and it taps into where we came from, I think. And the instruments are so gorgeous, and the players are incredible – so much better than rock musicians.”

Lightfoot will show Prince George some of that material at her Coldsnap concert tonight at the P.G. Playhouse. The night also offers opening acts Grace Hoksbergen (Limelight Quest winner) and the Celeigh Cardinal Trio.

Lightfoot will also conduct a guitar workshop with Sam Weber this morning from 10:30 to 11:30 a.m. at the Omineca Arts Centre. It’s free of charge and guitar players are encouraged to bring their instruments.

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author explores goodness paradox 97/16 wire service

In the past century, millions of humans have died at the hands of other humans through mass genocides, serial killings, wars and nuclear devastation. As a rule, however, people today are markedly less violent than our distant ancestors. In The Goodness Paradox: The Strange Relationship Between Virtue and Violence in Human Evolution, Harvard anthropologist Richard Wrangham takes the reader through the most current knowledge about human evolution to explain why people have developed into relatively docile creatures while retaining a capacity for acts of unspeakable violence.

“How,” he asks, “could our domesticated qualities and our capacity for terrible violence be reconciled?”

The question of how humans came to be domesticated has plagued philosophers and scientists for hundreds of years. Wrangham addresses this question with fascinating evidence from studies of primates, foxes, domesticated animals and hominid fossils to reconstruct the process of our domestication as a species.

Chimpanzees and bonobos, which inhabit neighboring terrain in Congo and are genetically similar, provide useful living examples of animals that share much of our DNA and exhibit humanlike emotions and behavior. But while bonobos are relatively peaceful creatures, chimpanzees exhibit no scruples about killing friends, lovers and even infants. In this way, Wrangham argues, chimpanzees and bonobos demonstrate the violence and peacefulness that coexist in humans.

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Tina Chastant hugs her daughter Rosalina Chastant, 5, in Gonzalez, La., on Sunday, after they arrived to comfort Kim Mincks, left. Five people were shot to death in the community on Saturday.

But how did they evolve so differently? In part, chimpanzee violence enabled them to compete with gorillas for resources, whereas the bonobos lived in an area with abundant foliage and little competition. Because violent bonobos were not necessary to the evolution of the species, they became more domesticated.

But is there a way to go beyond mere theory and observe the process in action?

A Russian experiment with foxes underway since 1959 provides one interesting example.

Soviet geneticist Dmitri Belyaev selected a population of silver foxes and bred those exhibiting friendliness and a lack

of fear of humans.Within 35 generations, almost 80 per cent of these foxes were as tame as dogs. Presumably dogs underwent similar domestication processes that transformed them from wild wolves into household companions.

In addition to becoming tamer, domesticated animals tend to change physically as well, which Belyaev witnessed in the silver fox population.

Wrangham has studied embryonic development for clues as to why domesticated animals often have smaller bodies, white spots on their foreheads, floppy ears or curly tails, traits almost never found in animals in the wild. As species

become more domesticated, their form changes to resemble that of juveniles of their species. Humans changed from broader bodies with thicker bones and wide faces to lighter forms with narrower and almost feminized features. The difference in the body size of men and women also declined.

A popular myth is that foraging groups were peaceful until colonialism took away their mobility and restricted their traditional way of life, and that our capacity for great violence did not develop until we were in settled agricultural communities. But Wrangham cites numerous small-scale societies where brutal violence against other groups was the norm. He shows that in part, fear of the punishment meted out by governments in settled societies has gone a long way toward curbing violent impulses.

The author asserts that the capacity for cooperation is an important characteristic that allowed our species to flourish. He contrasts us with Neanderthals, who died out 35,000 years ago after living in Europe for half a million years, until Homo sapiens arrived about 43,000 years ago.

Wrangham suggests that Neanderthals’ cognitive inability to cooperate with one another to pass on important cultural knowledge necessary for survival may have led to their demise, especially once they came into competition for resources with the invading Homo sapiens.

The Goodness Paradox pieces together findings from anthropology, history and biology to reconstruct a vivid and comprehensive history of how humans evolved into domesticated creatures.

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See solution on page 21

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Morrow unveils new book frank peebles 97/16 staff

Trelle Morrow wrote such a necessary book for the Community Arts Council that they made it the subject of their latest feature gallery.

An Arts Compendium is a collection of the CAC’s early years. It was just released as part of the arts agency’s 50th anniversary celebrations.

Morrow, the city’s most decorated and prolific writer of local history, was in charge of compiling all the materials from the various artists and arts groups from which the CAC was formed.

He was also given access to the boxes of material held in the CAC’s own closet of saved materials dating back to 1968.

The book included the input of such foundational organizations as the Prince George Concert Association, the Opus 1 Choir, Theatre Workshop, New Caledonia Orchestra, The Alaska Music Trail and other now-defunct entities that enlivened the community’s quality of life half a century ago.

It also included vignettes from modern organizations and included information about the structure and evolution of the CAC and the buildings that comprise their Studio 2880 complex on 15th Avenue.

On the day the book was released to the public, it was also revealed that a number of pages had been blown up and framed to form a visual display in the feature gallery.

“That’s a little surprise for you,” Morrow was told by Sean Farrell, executive director of the CAC, when the announcement was made.

97/16 photo by Btent Braaten “He’s such a beloved member of the Trelle Morrow looks over a photo of arts community, a pillar of Prince George him teaching pottery class in 1954 that society,” Farrell said when asked about turning the book into an exhibit. is in An Arts Compendium, the Com“It was this whole process. It involved munity Arts Council of Prince George so many people, and artifacts, and dusty and District 50th Anniversary Book old items, so it leant itself to a physical that he edited. There was a launch display.” of the book and opening of a special Morrow, a retired architect also celexhibit at Studio 2880. ebrated for his building designs, is the you have to have quality information with author of 10 titles on the shelves of the which to work.”

Prince George Public Library, for which He hoped this first edition would lead, he has won three Jeanne Clarke History at future milestone years, to updated Awards, more (tied with the late Kent versions that would carry on building the Sedgwick, who once wrote a book about legacy of the CAC and thus tell the story Morrow) than any other writer. of the city’s quality of life and health of He is also an active member of the culture.

Prince George Heritage Commission.

The fragility of that knowledge is a “He is a very busy boy,” quipped Doug problem in this city, he said. The docuHofstede, the community services manager for the City of Prince George, calling ments and physical items that represent different arts orMorrow a unique ganizations have treasure “we are so Compiling the information largely been lost lucky to have” as a is important work but you almost as soon as documentarian of they happened, our local area. have to have quality inforand the same Morrow has a mation with which to work. could be said for number of projects Trelle Morrow sport or business underway and is or municipal glad to have An work.

Arts Compendium The UNBC Arbehind him. It was chives, the public library, the Exploration a different process for him, more akin to Place, the Railway & Forestry Museum, an editor than a writer, but he enjoyed these all have their place in holding onto having such formative information papers and other physical materials that tucked between two permanent covers, represent our community for future genall together. erations, but a key institution is lacking, “I thought we had a pretty good smattering of the city’s arts community at that he said.

“The city of Prince George will never time, and it makes up an important docube a cultural centre of the north until ment,” he said. “I love the compendium City Hall starts its own archives,” he said. medium for documenting local history.

“Archives are important, they should be It could be five times bigger on future available to the public, and municipalities endeavours if someone could persevere. need to run their own. And many do, but This was my first attempt at a compendium. As an experiment, I think it turned not Prince George.”

An Arts Compendium is available out to be a good platform, a good format, especially if you have someone pushing at in participating bookstores and at the people to contribute and dig up the infor- Studio 2880 Artisan Gift Shop where the mation. That’s what you need. Compiling feature gallery has the companion art exhibition on display now. the information is important work, but

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Crafts great teaching tool 97/16 wire service

Teaching kids social and emotional skills is getting renewed attention, and arts and crafts are a good way to do that, at home as well as at school.

“Anxiety and depression are on the rise for young people,” says Melissa Schlinger, a vice-president at the Chicago-based Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning, an advocacy and research organization that tries to make social and emotional learning a priority in education.

Jacqueline Jodl, executive director of the Aspen Institute’s National Commission on Social, Emotional, and Academic Development, concurs.

“Families and parents are requesting help with social and emotional learning,” she says. “Teachers also are really starting to express demand for it, and the business community continues to express demand for students with a broader cross-section of skills.”

Why does art help?

“Because there is a lot of invention and also trials and tribulations that get worked out in the creative process, a child can learn how to manage frustration,” says Marygrace Berberian, a licensed art therapist and clinical social worker.

“They’re also learning to connect to more emotional aspects of themselves that are not necessarily encouraged in other aspects of their lives.”

Four ways to more intentionally integrate social and emotional learning into

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In this November 2013 photo provided by Marygrace Berberian, students share artwork from school-based art therapy workshops at Standing Tall, a public exhibit at New York University in New York. Arts and crafts are getting renewed attention as a way to teach social and emotional skills to kids at school and during extracurricular activities. youth art projects, at home, school or anywhere: • Consider the specific needs of the child when selecting material. “Art materials range from being controlled to very expressive,” Berberian says. A

child seeking control might benefit from beading or pencil drawing, for example, whereas a child who needs to let go and be more expressive might learn more from working with paints or clay, which encourage spontaneity.

• Give kids agency over their project.

Give students the freedom to “interpret a project or prompt through their own experience and perspectives,” says Christian Ortiz, senior manager of studio programs at Marwen, a visual-arts organization for youth in Chicago. For example, Marwen hosted a printmaking class in which students were asked to create small patches depicting what was important to them, he says.

Berberian advises parents not to dictate how a child should do an art project at home. Rather, they should be “affirming the child’s process” through dialogue: Ask kids about their creations, the decisions they made and why.

• Create a lesson along with a project. Melissa Mellor, a spokeswoman for Jodl’s commission at the Aspen Institute, recalls an art project that her first-grade son did in school that focused on learning from mistakes. The class read a book about a girl who made a mistake on a project and turned it into something beautiful. Then, each student received a piece of paper with marks already on it and, using permanent marker, was tasked with turning it into a new piece of art.

The goal was to teach flexibility, problem solving, creativity and the ability to grow from mistakes.

• Make art together. “When people make art together or engage in creative processes together, it’s a natural form of empathy-building because you’re doing something together, mirroring each other and celebrating each other’s artistic practice,” says Berberian.

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Senior an instagram hit elazar sontag 97/16 wire service

Lan Lin doesn’t go around telling her friends she’s famous on Instagram.

For that matter, Lan, 73, isn’t really sure how Instagram works.

Nevertheless, first-, second- and thirdgeneration immigrants across the country have rallied around the videos her daughter Lisa films as she cooks traditional Chinese dishes with her mother. Although she can’t for the life of her figure out why, Lan has become an online mother figure and cooking teacher for thousands of young people she’s never met.

In an early video posted to Lisa’s Instagram account, Lan stands in her tiny San Francisco kitchen, sporting her favorite floral print apron and pink plastic slippers. She’s making an enormous sticky rice casserole, laced with homemade Chinese bacon, dried shrimp and vegetables.

As she cooks, she explains the recipe in Taishanese, the dialect she grew up speaking in Taishan, a city in South China’s coastal Guangdong province. Lisa leans over her mother’s shoulder, recording the video on her phone. “I asked my mom how much rice is in here, and she said seven cups,” Lisa, a lawyer turned food blogger, translates. “But she apparently used this cup to measure it.”

Lan, or Mama Lin as her daughter affectionately calls her, holds up a tiny plastic cup she was handed on her flight to America 32 years ago. It’s been her standard of measurement ever since.

Lan never relies on exact measurements or precise cooking times, so Lisa

retests her mother’s recipes before posting a simplified version to her blog. For many of Lisa’s 66,000 Instagram followers, cooking along is an afterthought.

They watch Lan’s videos for a sense of belonging, a reminder of grandmothers still in China, dishes they haven’t eaten since childhood, recipes they never thought to learn before moving across the world.

On this November day, in her daughter’s Sacramento apartment, where she’s spending the weekend, Lan is wearing new pink slippers and a polka dot apron as she pours sweet rice flour into a metal bowl to make tang yuan, or black sesame dumplings. Lan, Lisa and their family always make some version of these glutinous rice dumplings for Chinese New Year, crowding around Lan’s counter and taking care not to stain their hands and clothes with the jet black filling as they form each ball. At first, Lan weighs the flour on a small kitchen scale and sprinkles in tablespoons of hot water, keeping her measurements exact, while she stirs with a chopstick.

“This doesn’t feel right,” she says, putting the chopstick aside and poking the dough with her fingers. “I’ve been making this without measuring anything for years.” Lan can tell the dough is too dry. Lisa’s efforts at a concise recipe have been defeated, the measuring spoons are thrown in the sink, and Lan smiles as she pours boiling water straight from her kettle into the bowl.

Despite what her daughter tells her, Lan isn’t convinced that any of Lisa’s followers actually watch her videos. “Don’t you think it’s weird that people like watching an old lady, and hearing an old woman’s story?” she asks, as we sit around Lisa’s island counter eating light, pillowy turnip cakes Lan has fried for lunch.

“She doesn’t really understand the whole Instagram thing,” Lisa, 32, says of her mother. “Sometimes I don’t understand why people enjoy watching us cook, either.”

When Lisa recorded the first video, she didn’t intend to share it. Lan had just turned 70, and Lisa realized she had lim-

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Above, Lisa Lin makes a video of her mother describing savoury fried butterfly crackers. Below, mother and daughter work together.

ited time to learn from her mother. She wanted to post a version of her mother’s peanut candy to her food blog but was struggling to replicate its snappy texture and amber hue. So she asked Lan to make it while she recorded. When Lisa shared the video on Instagram, hundreds of excited followers reached out.

“That’s when I knew, this was different,” she recalls.

Jiar Fong, one of Lisa’s followers, came across the videos early last year and felt pangs of homesickness. Fong, 29, had just moved from Malaysia to New York City.

“When you live in your home country, all this food that you love is so easy [to find] that you never learn how to make it,” she says. “The minute you move, you wish you remember how your mom made it, how your grandma made it.” Watching Lisa’s videos, she was overwhelmed. “I teared up, being so far away from home.

Now that I watch these videos, maybe when I go back home I’ll record my mom cooking, so that I can keep the recipes in my family.”

When she’s filming, Lisa often pauses her translations, to show her mother’s eccentricities. In one video, she pans to the busy, patterned apron Lan found in Chinatown for 99 cents. In another, she points out her mom’s little pink radio, balanced on the counter and blasting Chinese opera while Lan cooks. “I kind of know these are Asian mom quirks in the back of my head,” Lisa says. “I can spot it immediately. And I present it so other people whose parents are similar can relate to that. I feel like we have a personal connection.”

Gillian Der, another of Lisa’s followers, couldn’t believe what she was hearing when she first came across a video of Lan and Lisa chattering in Taishanese as they shaped and fried sesame balls.

“It meant so much that when I was watching those videos and seeing her make this food with her mom, I was also hearing these familiar sounds that I grew up with,” she said.

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‘Cuisines are living cultures’ Continued from page 22

Der, 22, was born and raised in Toronto, and only heard Taishanese spoken in her own home. “Growing up, I didn’t have access to amazing cooks like Lisa’s mom, or even my own grandmother,” she says. “Now I can go to Lisa’s account and watch these videos and see her learning, and it reflects my own learning. When I hear the language and when I see the beautiful food that those two make, it feels like home.”

In 1986, when Lan moved to Portland, Oregon, from China, she cooked in her brother-in-law’s restaurant. But she didn’t think of it as a real profession. “Cooking was more of a survival thing,” she told me. Thirty-two years after Lan stepped off her flight with her plastic airline teacup in hand, cooking has become a central part of her life. When she isn’t in Sacramento with Lisa, she spends her time cooking for her husband and assorted children and grandchildren who stream through her kitchen, staying for dinner or picking up plastic containers of food on their way home. “She won’t say this,” Lisa tells me, “but I know that it’s hard work. But she is very willing to help her children. And there are certain dishes that, if my mom doesn’t pass over to the next generation, will just be gone.”

Lisa takes her mother’s recipes, which often have a dozen spices and other hardto-find ingredients, and adjusts them for her followers. “I’m targeting an audience that isn’t my mom, but people like me who grew up with these foods but don’t

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Lisa Lin and her mother prepare fried sweet dumplings. necessarily know how to cook them,” Lisa explains. “I’m thinking about people who might not necessarily have access to the Asian supermarket. I try to simplify.”

Fuchsia Dunlop, the British food writer and cookbook author famous for introducing Western audiences to regional Chinese cooking, knows that sometimes traditional recipes have to evolve and become more accessible as they’re passed down through generations. “Cuisines are living cultures, and they’re always changing,” she says. Dunlop was the first Westerner to train at the prestigious

Sichuan Higher Institute of Cuisine in 1995, and has since adapted and translated hundreds of Chinese recipes for an English audience. “One shouldn’t be too conservative. You just have to accept that things change, from mother to daughter and father to son.”

Still, Dunlop, who most recently penned the cookbook Land of Fish and Rice, sometimes finds that Chinese cooking phrases or techniques can’t be directly translated into English.

Lisa knows this challenge all too well.

In her videos, she regularly trails a few

steps behind her mother as she tries to translate, sometimes losing track of what Lan is doing, unable to identify a spice her mother has thrown in the wok.

When Lan is finished adding boiling water to the rice flour, and the sweet sesame paste is set to chill in the freezer, she pulls a black binder from Lisa’s bookcase.

In it are hundreds of pages of Lan’s handwritten notes, with little sketches accompanying every recipe they’ve made together.

The notes and drawings illustrate how to properly fold dumplings, wrap sticky rice in bamboo leaves, dehydrate dried shrimp and properly mix a variety of doughs.

Lan often shakes her head in exasperation when they’re done filming, Lisa tells me. “It would be best if you were still a lawyer,” she’ll say, “I wouldn’t even have to teach you any of this.”

No amount of explaining can convince Lan that running a food blog, in this day and age, constitutes a real profession.

When she’s finished eating, Lan sits on her daughter’s couch and rests the black binder on her lap.

Opening to one of the last blank pages, she begins to sketch and neatly label each step of her process. Soon, she’ll hand the notes off to Lisa.

And as Lan’s admirers begin to meticulously measure out their own tang yuan dough, she’ll be back in her own kitchen, measuring rice and water and sauce with the same tiny plastic cup she’s used for 32 years.

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