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GATEWAY Your community voice for the north! Thursday, December 10, 2015

HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE

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Spruce Kings show home ‘warm and elegant’ Citizen staff

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hen you walk into the Spruce Kings lottery show home, you get a warm and cozy feeling.

There are warm colours on the walls, there’s a floor-to-ceiling fireplace and an inviting kitchen.

It feels like you’re home.

“It’s a beautiful open concept,” said Spruce Kings business and marketing manager Lu Verticchio.

“The fireplace divides the living room and dining room. It has a really warm and elegant feel. It has a lot of windows with a lot of light. Everybody has their own interpretation of it. It’s hard to describe. It ranges from Whistler, country to French provencal.”

The custom-built executive home by Scheck Construction, valued at $495,000, is a 2,712 square-foot three-bedroom, three-bath home located at 2662 Links Drive in the Aberdeen Glen subdivision.

Tickets, all 10,000 of them at $100 each, are now on sale with the grand prize draw slated for April 18, 2016.

The home features five appliances, vaulted ceilings in the great room, dining room and kitchen,

Citizen file photo

This years Spruce Kings show home is located at 2662 Links Dr. covers the floor. and a back and front deck.

Walk downstairs and you’ll There’s under-counter lighting discover a spacious rec room and quartz and marble countercomplete with a Custom Live Edge tops. wood bar (built by 3D Wood The cherry cabinets throughout Design) perfect for unwinding the home are thanks to 3D Wood after a long day or entertaining Design. guests.

The main floor includes the Adjacent to the lounge area is master bedroom and ensuite the entertainment suite where bathroom (including a walk-in six people can sit in comfortable custom-tile shower), along with recliners watching a surroundan office decorated by Speedy Printers that can be converted into sound 60-inch TV. The third bedroom and batha smaller bedroom. Hickory wideroom are also downstairs. plank hardwood, supplied by “You can see and feel the quality Northern Capital Wood Products,

in this home,” he said. “There is a lot of craftmanship in the home.

If you appreciate quality, you will appreciate this home.”

It’s the fifth year Scheck Construction has built the Spruce Kings home and owner Brent Scheck takes special pride in it every year.

“It’s neat to be creative and come up with new ideas,” he said, adding construction began at the end of April and concluded six months later.

“It’s a collaboration of all the trades coming together and com-

ing up with this. It worked.”

The home comes fully landscaped, with an underground sprinkler system and inter-locking brick driveway.

The Spruce Kings show home lottery, in its 35th year, is the team’s largest fundraising effort.

It accounts for more than 65 per cent of the team’s operating budget, which allows the Kings to compete in the B.C. Hockey League. All proceeds stay in Prince George and also allow the team to offer fans the lowest ticket price in the BCHL. The three longest-running businesses in Prince George – The Northern, McInnis Lighting and SpeeDee Printers – are supporters.

Dennis Busby from The Northern staged the entire home once again and McInnis Lighting has donated all the lighting since Day 1.

Tickets are available at the show home, Canadian Tire, Pine Centre Mall, The Northern, Central Builders, Hart Home Hardware and the Spruce Kings office.

50/50 tickets are also available, with the prize as high as $40,000.

A 24-hour ticket hotline is available, call 250-962-4946 (IWIN).

Within B.C., call 1-855-962-4946.

For more information, see page 19 or go online to www.sprucekingsshowhome.ca.

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GATEWAYnews

Quarry consultation ongoing

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Citizen staff

he environmental assessment process on a proposed limestone quarry and lime plant in the regional district is underway.

Graymont Western Canada is looking to develop a site about 27 kilometres northeast of Prince George, in the community of Giscome.

The province’s Environmental Assessment Office (EAO) began its 180-day review of Graymont’s application on Monday.

At the end of the review, it will provide a recommendation to the government on whether the company should be given its EAO certificate.

The Environmental Assessment Office will collect public comment on the application from Dec. 1 to Jan. 15.

At full build out, the quarry would have the capacity to extract up to 1.7 million

tonnes per year with a life span of 40 years.

Some area residents have expressed concerns about the size of the project, potential noise, air quality and increased traffic.

In a project description filed to the office, Graymont initially plans to quarry 600,000 tonnes per year of high-calcium limestone from a 220-hectare quarry site four kilometres southeast of Giscome.

The rock will be crushed and screened at the quarry site, before being transported by a five-kilometre, covered conveyer system to the lime processing plant 400 metres from the shore of Eaglet Lake.

The proposed plant site was previously used by CN Rail to quarry ballast rock and has an existing rail connection and gravel road access. The lime plant’s footprint will be limited to previously disturbed land on the site, company officials said, which currently is a mix of gravel and scrub.

— see 10-15 JOBS, page 10

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10-15 jobs to be created

— from page 4 At the processing plant, the limestone will be heated to approximately 1,000 C in a vertical kiln and converted into lime (calcium carbonate), a chemical used in a wide variety of industries including construction, steel manufacturing, water treatment, pulp and paper, mining and for removing sulfur dioxide from smokestack emissions.

The initial construction is expected to employ 40 to 60 people, and the project

is expected to create 10 to 15 permanent, full-time jobs.

According to the project description, the plant is expected to run 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. The kilns will burn coal, or potentially natural gas or wood biofuel, according to the report. However, the project description said, natural gas lines were currently unavailable at the location. — see KILNS, page 12

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Kilns have large carbon footprint — from page 12 Graymont estimated that if 100 per cent coal fuel is used for the kilns, the quarry and lime plant operations will produce the equivalent of 716,898 tons of carbon dioxide per year – enough to increase B.C.’s total greenhouse gas emissions by 1.19 per cent, based on 2012 emission levels.

In it’s submission, Graymont reported that burning 100 per cent natural gas would cut greenhouse gas emissions by 14 per cent, and the use of 100 per biofuel would cut greenhouse gas emissions by 30 per cent.

In its report, Graymont said the project is expected to “cause an increase in air contaminant concentrations.”

“For all air contaminants except for PM10, emissions associated with the project are predicted to be below the BC Air Quality Objectives and World Health Organization guidelines. PM10 modelled results indicated potential exceedances of the

Graymont estimated that... the quarry and lime plant operations will produce the equivalent of 716,898 tons of carbon dioxide per year – enough to increase B.C.’s total greenhouse gas emissions by 1.19 per cent... objectives, of limited magnitude and within a limited area, immediately surrounding the quarry which the public is not expected to access,” the report says. “Fugitive dust mitigation measures will be implemented to ensure the impact of PM10 emissions during operations does not exceed BC Ambient Air Quality Objectives.”

For an electronic copy of the application and to submit comment, go to eao.gov.bc.ca.

— with files from Arthur Williams

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Citizen file photo

Krista Levar, Prince George RCMP Victim Services coordinator, sits with therapy dog Max in a December 2010 file photo.

Therapy dog takes stand beside young witness Mark NIELSEN Citizen staff mnielsen@pgcitizen.ca

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hen a nine-year-old girl had to testify at a B.C. Supreme Court trial last month, a furry, tail-wagging friend was at her side.

Max, an eight-year-old yellow Labrador Retriever and trained therapy dog, has become an old hand at easing the stress for victims of crime as they wait to take to the stand. But it was the first time he had stepped inside a courtroom during an actual trial.

The week before, Krista Levar, the dog’s handler and the Prince George RCMP’s victim services coordinator, took Max and the girl to the courtroom to get them familiarized with the surroundings. With the help of some volunteers, they simulated what it’s like during an actual trial.

By the time he was by the girl’s side at the trial, Max was ready.

“He’s trained to pick up on the energy in the room,” Levar said.

“When it was actually happening, everybody was a bit more intense because of the emotional stress level, but he just sat there and the little girl would pet him as she was testifying and he would gaze back at her. It was wonderful.”

The girl first met Max in January when she gave a statement to police and a relationship had developed since then. She taught Max commands in German and made name tags for him.

“Seeing him again was a treat,” Levar said.

Children usually testify via closed-circuit television and Max’s appearance in a courtroom during a trial was a first for Prince George, although another therapy dog had previously appeared in a Surrey courtroom.

In the U.S., the program has reached the point that therapy dogs can accompany adults into the courtroom when needed, Levar said.

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Regional district may crack down on unsightly properties Charelle EVELYN Citizen staff cevelyn@pgcitizen.ca

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he regional district may be getting new tools to crack down on problem properties.

During the Nov. 19 board meeting, Tabor Lake-Stone Creek director Bill Empy introduced a successful motion to have the Regional District of Fraser-Fort George’s unsightly premises bylaw reviewed.

It’s been almost a quarter of a century since the bylaw was last updated in 1991, said district chief administrator Jim Martin.

“There have been changes to the Local Government Act and our bylaw needs to be updated in order to reflect some of that,”

Martin said.

A challenge for the regional district is its sheer size and finding a way to consistently apply a bylaw across the entire rural area.

The local government oversees 52,000 square kilometres – about the size of Nova Scotia – and “different communities have different standards and expectations of what ‘unsightly’ means to them,” said Martin.

But one of the biggest issues for the regional district in enforcing its existing bylaw is the fact that it is complaint-driven only. In a July interview, the regional district’s bylaw enforcement officer – yes, singular – Anita de Dreu said when complaints come in, she works with the property owner to bring them into compliance.

— see CLEAN-UP, page 32

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Clean-up can be costly — from page 31 De Dreu said it is rare for the district to have to enforce a clean-up order.

However, just because a complaint was made doesn’t mean that the look of the subject property will be changed quickly – or at all.

In the past, the board has allowed up to four non-roadworthy vehicles on a property, de Dreu said.

“There’s a process. People think ‘OK, so we call in and next week it will be cleaned up.’ We have to give the property owners absolutely every opportunity to make it right before we actually step in and do it for them,” de Dreu said.

There are some cases where she’s been working with property owners for several years.

Part of the review will involve ensuring the board of directors is aware of what the

full implications are of being more proactive.

Allowing bylaw enforcement to become more proactive could lead to more clean ups, but it could also lead to a bigger bill.

As Martin and de Dreu said, if the regional district has to take over, that’s also a costly practice. If a local government has to step in and conduct a clean up on a private property, the cost is added to the owner’s property tax bill.

In Prince George, that money will make its way back to the city eventually.

“Unlike municipalities, on the cost recovery piece, if we’re out there being active in doing property clean ups ourselves as a local government because there is non-compliance in place and the property owner does not want to be compliant it is much harder for us to recover funds because we don’t have the ability to take over land and do tax sales,” Martin said.

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Handout photo

Alexisonfire member Dallas Green is bringing his solo act, City and Colour, to CN Centre on June 5.

City and Colour coming Frank PEEBLES Citizen staff fpeebles@pgcitizen.ca

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allas Green is bringing the city and the colour to Prince George this spring.

He is one of Canada’s biggest musical buzz stories, as a member of acclaimed rock band Alexisonfire (now back together), as Pink’s collaborator in their folk duo You+Me (their album Rose Ave. was one 2014’s biggest), and with his solo smash success as City and Colour (Get it... Dallas Green, City and Colour?)

The material he generates as City and Colour has been lauded by sources like the BBC, Rolling Stone and the Wall Street Journal, and it has won both MuchMusic and Juno awards.

Long before Green’s career turned to shades of gold and platinum, he was earning the outspoken respect of his musical peers. Artists as diverse as Gord Downie, Ron Sexsmith and Tegan & Sara put their collaborative stamp on his solo stuff right out of the gate, and he hasn’t had a dry spell since then.

City and Colour is out on tour to support the new album If I Should Go Before You. — see SHAKEY GRAVES, page 40

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Shakey Graves to open show — from page 35 It’s the first new release since 2013’s The Hurry And The Harm, which produced platinum sales results, hit No. 1 in Canada in its first week, cracked the Top 20 in the U.S., and the live tour was so popular he sold out Air Canada Centre in Toronto.

Now he is back. He is coming to P.G. for the first time as a soloist (he performed here with Alexisonfire), on what is only a 12-concert tour of Canada.

With him is special guest Shakey Graves in the opening performance slot. Shakey Graves is based in Austin (the mayor of Austin once proclaimed it Shakey Graves Day – quite a feat in a town as musically endowed as that one) but he has been north of the border many times in recent years.

He has been a sellout act in numerous Canadian markets. Now he gets a chance to tour a wide chunk of the country and see places he’s never been like Prince George.

Esquire Magazine called Shakey Graves

Shakey Graves “a rising folk hero” after the success of his first three albums Roll The Bones (2011), Donor Blues (2012), And The War Came (2014) plus the limited-edition special release Nobody’s Fool earlier this year.

City and Colour and Shakey Graves play at CN Centre on June 5.

Tickets go on sale Friday at 10 a.m. at CN Centre Box Office, Studio 2880, and online via the Ticketmaster website.

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Not that John A. Macdonald Frank PEEBLES Citizen staff fpeebles@pgcitizen.ca

Handout file photo

Artist John A. Macdonald has an exhibit, called Unnatural Histories, running at the Two Rivers Gallery until Jan. 10.

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ohn A. Macdonald gets credit for a lot of things: founding Canada, gracing the $10 bill, being the country’s first and third prime minister. But he doesn’t get the same level of credit for being a master artist.

OK, it’s another John A. Macdonald on display at the Two Rivers Gallery, but this one is alive

and still delivering visual statements the way the 19th century politician delivered oral ones.

“This is my third show in Prince George,” said the Saltspring Island painter.

“I had one in 1978 on the children’s art wall. I had a show in 1992 at the gallery when it was at the Studio 2880 facility. And now George (Harris, gallery curator) has asked me to do this. But I’m so proud.

“I thought P.G. was a great

place, when I was growing up there, and I think it’s gotten a lot of bad press for different things over the years and its not fair or representative of the place. I think it’s a hothouse of different things, especially in art. It was a great place to be from, if you were an artist.”

Macdonald said he was in track and field with Daniel Lapp, who went on to become one of Canada’s eminent musicians.

— see ‘BEING, page 44

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‘Being an artist has been very difficult at every stage’ — from page 42 His neighbour was wildlife art superstar Ken Ferris and although the two didn’t know each other on an artistic level, Macdonald

was always excited that such an acclaimed painter was so close at hand. He also got a lot of motivation from art classes as a child, because he wasn’t in the

art classes of a child. He said his parents often enrolled him in courses that would get cancelled due to lack of interest so he’d get bumped up to the adult sessions

Hyatt Regency in Calgary, and one as a compromise. He also got to painting in the collection of the know other emerging artists like Anne Bogle and Doris Dittaro who Department of External Affairs in Ottawa. were alongside him also learning, “Macdonald’s large expressive and went on to their own acclaim paintings tackle a broad range of as painters. themes, from sunbathers to road “Being an artist has been very trips to museum exhibitions,” said difficult at every stage, but I Harris, describing the exhibition kept passing the marks,” he said. that now hangs at the gallery.

“When I went to Emily Carr (Uni“There is often an air of the surversity of Art + Design straight real in his paintings emphasized out of high school) they took 200 by his use of people of the figurative ele1,400 or so they Some are ments that seem interviewed that ugly in a about to materiyear. A bunch alize. They sugdropped out. way, some gest characters Only about 100 are nightmarish in a from memory graduated. And way. I call them my or dreams that after 25 years I think I’m the monstrous paintings. warble and shimmer just the only one from I’m trying to evoke other side of our my cohort doing cubism without grasp.” it for a living.

Macdonald Hardly anyone doing a cubist said, by way of survives in it, you painting. self-assessment, don’t always get treated very well, — John A. Macdonald “Some are ugly in a way, some are and you have to nightmarish in a way. I call them learn to be versatile. my monstrous paintings. I’m try“I knew I wanted to be an artist, ing to evoke cubism without doing at a conscious level – when I was 10 or 11. I’d come home and draw a cubist painting.”

His show at the gallery gave him for three or four hours every day a chance to clean out the invenand then do a bit of homework. If tory piling up at his home studio.

I didn’t get any accolades it might He called into action some have been different, but I got paintings he’d done and were in some accolades along the way, and that was definitely motivating others’ collections, so he believes this exhibition to be part reveal of for me.” new work and part retrospective.

Now he has had showings of his “I have a number of different work in New York, West Hollywood, galleries all over the world, systems I engage with when I’m making work,” he said. he was a courtroom illustrator “Sometimes I’m more linear, for the CBC, he did trempe l’oeil sometimes more spontaneously. art for tanks at the Vancouver Aquarium, he and wife did murals I go back and forth depending on how much coffee I’ve had to drink. and illustrations, and he has a But particularly towards the end 10-by-10 oil painting hanging of something, things get focused perpetually at the Bentall Centre on the work to the detriment of all in Vancouver, another work on else.” permanent display at the Grand — see MACDONALD, page 46 Pacific Hotel in Victoria and the

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Macdonald created tribute to lost Fathers of Confederation painting — from page 44 “I lose my hammer, I can’t find my staples, everything gets helter skelter,” Macdonald added.

He strives to make work that might seem at first to be scattered in thought, or without thematic purpose. He wants final

interpretation to be up to the viewer, but he assures the audience his images do indeed have their underlying messages.

He even riffed one on his name and its similarity to the historical figure in Canadian politics (the only material difference being his middle name is Alistair whereas

the former prime minister’s middle name was Alexander). The Parliament Hill fire of 1916 destroyed a famous painting of the Fathers of Confederation painted by Robert Harris. It was famously reproduced in 1967 by artist Rex Woods. Macdonald thought he would create his own response to that work, in three-dimensional form.

“It became a jokey thing to me to redo that work,” he said.

“I made it with junk lumber I found at the recycling place on Saltspring Island here.

Part of it came from a recycled cabinet – get it? cabinet? – and I had no plans as I worked. It just worked out and paralleled how Canada is a place of diversity, coming together of parts from all over the world, and turned into a growing thing, just like this artwork. The piece itself is not completed, it could always be ongoing. I jigsawed it out with a sawzall and George Harris said he had never received a piece at the gallery in such a state of disrepair, but I

Part of it came from a recycled cabinet – get it? cabinet? – and I had no plans as I worked. It just worked out and paralleled how Canada is a place of diversity, coming together of parts from all over the world...

— John A. Macdonald

got it all back together again. The disrepair is part of the point, as it relates to the way the country is put together with passion and imperfection even though politicians try to plan things.”

The exhibition is called Unnatural Histories and is on at Two Rivers until Jan. 10.

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