Enbridge denies
Lheidli T’enneh claims from pipeline explosion
Mark NIELSEN Citizen staff
mnielsen@pgcitizen.ca
Enbridge is fighting back against legal action brought by the Lheidli T’enneh First Nation over the natural gas pipeline explosion last fall.
In a response filed this week in B.C. Supreme Court in Prince George, the company maintains the LTFN’s entire lawsuit lacks merit and that the company has met or exceeded the standard of care for the pipeline.
The company also says that notwithstanding Enbridge’s prior instructions that members living south of the Fraser River remain in their homes in event of a leak, the Lheidli T’enneh self-evacuated without instruction to do so from the RCMP or the company. Only after the evacuation did the RCMP and Enbridge agree that, for consistency, other homes within two kilometres of the rupture should also be evacuated, the company says in the response.
On Oct. 9, 2018, the system’s 36inch pipeline ruptured, shooting a massive fireball into the air. The company says the location is about 700 metres from the reserve’s northern boundary while the Lheidli T’enneh says the distance is 500 metres.
In February, then-Chief Dominic Frederick filed a notice of civil claim on behalf of the LTFN against Enbridge, saying in part that the explosion and its aftermath have “caused serious and constant distress and anguish
The agreed compensation includes payments for damages suffered by individual Lheidli T’enneh members as a result of the pipeline.
— Enbridge statement
within the Lheidli T’enneh community.”
The band is seeking an injunction ordering Enbridge to dismantle and remove the pipeline from LTFN territory. The band is also seeking damages.
Enbridge’s so-called T-South system consists of two lines, one 36 inches and one 30 inches. It runs from Fort Nelson to HuntingdonSumas in Washington State, and supplies 60 per cent of the natural gas consumed in B.C.’s Lower Mainland.
About 139 kilometres of the pipeline traverses LTFN territory and 1.5 kilometres runs through the southwestern corner of the LTFN’s Fort George No. 2 Indian Reserve.
The LTFN also claims the pipeline trespasses on its territory, saying Enbridge never adequately consulted the band over its construction and failed to consult with the band prior to bringing it back
into operation.
In reply, company says in part that in 1955, the LTFN, then known at the Fort George Band, agreed to allow Westcoast Transmission, which has since become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Enbridge, to use lands on the reserve for the pipeline in return for agreed compensation.
“The agreed compensation includes payments for damages suffered by individual Lheidli T’enneh members as a result of the pipeline,” Enbridge says.
LTFN is not entitled to damages, Enbridge maintains, saying it has not suffered any loss, damage or expense and, if there were any, the band is not entitled based on the doctrine of remoteness and forseeability and a failure to mitigate.
Among other things, the LTFN unreasonably failed to follow the company’s instructions to stay in their homes in the event of an incident and the company has provided accommodation and support to the band, “both financially and through the delivery of service programs.”
Enbridge also denies LTFN is entitled to injunctive relief, saying the pipeline has operated safely for over 60 years and following the explosion, service was restored on a careful and incremental basis.
“There is no irreparable harm to Lheidli T’enneh,” Enbridge says.
None of the allegations have yet been tested in court.
Both the LFTN notice of claim and Enbridge’s response are posted with this story at princegeorgecitizen.com.
Jail sought for cheque fraud
Mark NIELSEN Citizen staff
Crown counsel is seeking a three-year prison sentence for a woman who stole more than $350,000 from her employer while working as an office manager in Prince George.
Between November 2004 and February 2011, Debra Velma Penttila, 63, used her co-signing authority to alter 166 cheques adding up to $362,740 to make them payable to herself, the court heard Friday during a sentencing hearing.
In outlining the circumstances, Crown prosecutor John Neal said that her employer “prides itself in paying its suppliers on time and, in fact, they used that as a negotiating tactic.”
It meant that twice a month, Penttilla had the authority to create a large number of cheques, as many as 60. She would sign them and pass them on to her general manager who would review the cheques and the accompanying remittances then sign them in turn.
“And what happened next is that the offender would alter some of the cheques to make the payee herself,” Neal said. “The company books would reflect that the company had been paid when, in fact, they had not.”
Cancelled cheques that showed Penttila as the payee would disappear. As well, it was also discovered that cheques from customers to her employer were not reported in the company’s books even though they had been deposited into the account.
“The belief there was that the money was being misattributed to other suppliers in order to
string out the fraud,” Neal said. He said it lasted until year-end accounts had to be reconciled in 2011 and Penttila realized she could no longer cover up the fraud.
“It’s my understanding that she had a breakdown, she left the office and the person who was appointed to do her work uncovered what was going on,” Neal said.
Charges weren’t sworn until February 2017 because of the time it took for the company to determine the extent of the loss and for the RCMP to gather the evidence in a way that was admissible to the court.
“The books, when she left, were in terrible shape,” Neal said. “There were documents that had been physically hidden away in the office or documents, such as the canceled cheques, that were missing entirely.” In May 2018, less than a week before the matter was to go to trial, Penttila pleaded guilty to one count of fraud over $5,000. Defence counsel Jason LeBlond is seeking a conditional sentence order, where the term is served at home, of two years less a day followed by three years probation. Although it would mean Penttila would not to go jail, he noted it would mean she would be serving a term two years longer than the total Neal is seeking. Penttila admitted she was carrying out the scheme to cover the cost of her gambling addiction. At issue for Crown and defence counsels is whether she was suffering from depression in the lead up to launching the scheme.
The sentencing hearing before Judge Michael Gray will continue at a later date.
Loretta Yates, left, shows Lt.-Gov. Janet Austin the art of making bannock in the Smokehouse kitchen in the Native Friendship Centre Friday afternoon.
Local
Police focus on bicycle, motorbike safety
Citizen staff
The Prince George RCMP’s municipal traffic services unit will be focussing on bicycle and motorcycle safety during the month of April.
Frontline officers have begun by targeting cyclists, riders and drivers that fail to obey the Motor Vehicle Act as it pertains to cyclists and motorcyclists.
Police are offering the following advice to road users:
DRIVERS
• Do not park in designated bike lanes marked with No Stopping signs. This is a
violation and puts cyclists at extra risk;
• Do not use a bike lane as a turning lane. Under the Motor Vehicle Act, a driver cannot drive in a designated bike lane prior to the turn itself;
• Do not engage in negative driving behaviour that directly impacts cyclists and/or motorcyclists. This includes distracted driving, unsafe lane changes, follow too closely and other violations;
• Always check mirrors and over shoulders to minimize blind spots.
CYCLISTS
• Always wear a helmet. Failing to wear a helmet is a violation under the MVA. A
helmet is designed to protect your head in a collision or crash;
• Do not ride on sidewalks. Sidewalks are for pedestrians including those that choose to walk their bike on sidewalks. If you choose to ride your bike, ride it on the road and obey traffic laws;
• Do not run through stop signs. MVA laws apply to cyclists too.
• Ride in a designated bike lane and on designated bike routes in the same direction as vehicles. Where there are no designated bike lanes, ride as far right as possible without putting your safety at risk;
• Always use high visibility clothing when
riding in traffic. MOTORCYCLISTS
• Always use high visibility clothing when riding;
• Do not ride in blind spots;
• Be predictable. Quick movements can cause drivers to react suddenly, putting all road uses at risk.
“Our officers will be out on bikes and in vehicles targeting those persons that make bicycling and motorcycling unsafe in our community” said Sgt. Matthew LaBelle, in charge of the municipal traffic services unit. “Let’s all do our part to keep all road users safe throughout the riding season.”
The art of cooking
Dana Gronning, 9, puts the toppings on her pizza that she made at Studio 2880’s Art Monkeys ProD day camp on Friday. Children learned fundamental art skills with some local artisans and then baked some special treats with culinary artists.
Theatre Northwest unveils new season
Frank PEEBLES Citizen staff fpeebles@pgcitizen.ca
Theatre Northwest is going to cash in big, this next season. Scratch that, they are going to Cash in big, with that capital C and a Johnny to go with it.
The centrepiece of this coming TNW season of professional plays is Ring of Fire: The Johnny Cash Story.
Coming into this past season, the record holder for TNW’s box office was The Buddy Holly Story, but that was surpassed by the wildly successful Million Dollar Quartet that told the story of a real life studio meeting one night by Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash, the man in black who also has a play all his own.
“Do you know how many people came up to me after Million Dollar Quartet and asked me if the actors were playing their own instruments for real?” said Jack Grinhaus, TNW’s artistic director.
“Yes, and wasn’t it amazing? That was so much fun to experience, including for me, so when I discovered that we could get the rights to Ring of Fire I knew our audience was in for a big treat. This is going to be five actors, all of them playing their instruments live, and more than 30 songs. It’s going to be fantastic.”
Ring of Fire will amp TNW up in the leadup to next Christmas, but it is a biting comedy that will lead things off when the 2019-20
season gets underway in fall. Grinhaus has programmed a horror comedy to get things started.
Dracula: The Bloody Truth felled audiences in England and Calgary, and now it will wrap its cape around central B.C. for the third time in as many years, TNW will partner with Western Canada Theatre Company in Kamloops to share a play, so both cities will get to feast on Dracula.
“It’s a comedy that throws you a couple of chilling characteristics, this is Dracula we’re talking about, after all, but there’s clownish humour and actors throwing themselves into multiple characters, and a lot of cool action,” Grinhaus said. “It gives you the Dracula story in this hilarious revision, and it gives us something to sink our teeth into right at Halloween.”
The third play in the four-production set is the full-scale version of a show local audiences already got a taste of in development. Isitwendam (An Understanding) was the brainchild of one of Canada’s leading Aboriginal actors. Meegwum Fairbrother is one of the stars of the hit TV series Burden Of Truth, and he was also a regular on the television program Mohawk Girls. He was a regular on Helix and Hemlock Grove as well.
Fairbrother called in Grinhaus to work on a passion project he had in mind, and together they created what is shaping up to be an innovative hit stage production that digs into the personal side of the Canadian residential school
atrocities and provides audiences with a virtuoso performance by Fairbrother in this next-level drama experience.
“This is one guy playing eight roles with movies going on all around him,” Grinhaus said. “There’s one moment where he’s supposed to be flying an airplane and it looks just like he’s in an airplane. It takes you away. And here we have a prime time TV star who developed his work of art right here in Prince George at our facility. How exciting that we have seen this play in its earlier stages and now we get so see it come home in full force.”
Isitwendam (An Understanding) will bridge cultures and the midwinter, running through most of February.
Heroes deliver the heavy stories to a triumphant conclusion. That’s when an audience wants to end on a big laugh. Grinhaus went out to the island of mirth to find this coming year’s comedic conclusion.
“We are going to enjoy a good ol’ Irish comedy,” he said. Stones In His Pocket is a worldwide hit (it won an Olivier Award and nominations for three Tony Awards) written by Marie Jones who also penned TNW’s Fly Me To The Moon a few years ago.
It’s such a respected work that TNW got famed Persephone Theatre Company in Saskatoon to partner with them on this production.
“It’s got two actors playing 15 parts, it’s designed to move at
quite a pace,” Grinhaus said. “It’s about extras in a small Irish town working on a Hollywood movie that’s come to film there. It’s about that whole small-town-meetsbig-city mentality. It’ll take your breath away just with astonishment at what two really good actors can do, and the laughter. There’s a lot of heart in this one, and it gives us a good look at what fame and celebrity and fortune really mean. You’ll see acting at its best in a way that Netflix just can’t give you.”
That’s the theme of the entire season. Grinhaus is bringing together four plays that will convey to the Prince George audience the true muscle and beauty of live theatre. All of them will demonstrate performance qualities that movies cannot replicate.
The four plays can be seen more cost effectively and with benefits like specifying dates and seat preference if a season’s pass is purchased. This package deal is available now on the TNW website even though their current play, Meet My Sister, still has some days in its run.
It has been reported that Grinhaus has left his position at TNW due to a family matter that requires his attention in Toronto. This is true, but he said he would be closely connected to these plays at the theatre company throughout the 2019-20 season so the audience gets the best live drama experience possible. He thinks he has programmed the plays to do it.
Frank PEEBLES Citizen staff
Prince George is one of 14 Canadian communities to receive federal funding as a Welcoming Francophone Community.
The designation was earned under the Government of Canada’s Action Plan for Official Languages.
The amount of money coming to Prince George was not disclosed, but officials with the Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada ministry said it would be invested in the creation of “programs and activities to help Frenchspeaking newcomers feel welcomed and integrated into Francophone minority communities.”
The overall initiative seeks to enhance the vitality of official-language minority communities through immigration specifically, by increasing the proportion of French-speaking permanent residents outside of Quebec, supporting the integration and retention of French-speaking newcomers, and building the capacity of Francophone communities.
“Prince George will be able to be even more inviting to Francophone immigrants so they can feel welcome and where they will have more opportunities to make Canada their home,” said Ahmed Hussen, the minister responsible.
“Through the launch of the Francophone Immigration Strategy, we are committed to increasing the proportion of French-speaking immigrants in Francophone minority communities.”
Local
D.P. Todd band to perform at Disneyland
Frank PEEBLES Citizen staff
fpeebles@pgcitizen.ca
When you have one of the best band programs in the province, you want to perform for the best ears you can find. Which ears are more iconic than Mickey Mouse’s?
The D.P. Todd Secondary School’s touring band is heading down to Disneyland to perform inside the theme park and also go behind the scenes to see how orchestras record the soundtrack scores of popular movies. They will even get to try their hand at it themselves.
A band cannot simply set up in Disneyland and crank out the tunes. There is an application process and only those that attain a carefully curated standard are allowed in. Susan Klein, teacher of the D.P. Todd program, has been to the Happiest Place On Earth five previous times dating back to 1990 so she knows how to train her pupils to reach those performance levels. The 60 students and their adult chaperones are off in a few weeks to entertain the Disneyland crowds.
“Dallyn Long, there (she indicated an oboe player), her mom was in that first trip I did with the band to Disneyland,” said Klein. She got a roar of laughter out of the students when she announced to the room “Yeah, so, I don’t know if you understood, but all those forms you had to fill out? –one of them gave us the rights to your first-born child, they have to be in the DP Todd band, but I’ll take them to Disneyland, too, you can come along as a chaperone, and we’ll let you play in Disneyland again.”
Mateh Kitalemire, 18, knows that Klein’s bands really do hit the required notes to go on the road. Since he was in Grade 8 he has
The D.P. Todd concert band rehearses on Friday morning. The band is off to Disneyland to perform inside the theme park and also do a workshop on performing orchestral scores for movies.
played clarinet and saxophone in Vancouver, Sun Peaks, Cuba and now Disneyland. “I think it’s so cool that we get to go to an actual recording studio for movie music,” he said. “Disneyland will be fun, too, of course.”
The travel music has allowed him to do is one more reason he appreciates the focus he’s put on school band over the years, starting in Grade 6 at Foothills Elementary.
“There’s a lot of good people in band, and always a variety of people, so there is always someone you like. I feel like I could have done more with my music, but I’m happy with where I’m at as a player. In the future, if there’s a campfire, I’ll have a tune for it. I really enjoy knowing the construction and composition of a song, and I especially loved learning a bit about how to write our own.”
Around the band’s practice room
the students are dressed in their blue team jackets, but there are signs all around of the youthfulness of the group. There’s a bright yellow Bass Pro hat on the head of a sax player, ripped jeans all over the flute and oboe sections, a toque back at the drum kit. These are youngsters – two in Grade 9, the rest climbing up to Grade 12 – but they have an entertaining command of the music. It was a pleasant listen to hear them work over segments of Route 66 and Life Is A Highway from the soundtrack of the animated movie Cars. And, what was that?
Was that a waft of our national anthem inside one of those songs?
The sheet music said New Forest March by Johnnie Vinson but it sounded more like it was standing on guard for thee.
“There was a 12-bar segment that reminded us a little bit of O Canada,” Klein said. “So we wrote
Terrorism report maligned Sikhs, Goodale says
The Canadian Press
OTTAWA — Public Safety Minister
Ralph Goodale says future reports on terrorist threats to Canada will not refer to Sikh extremism and instead use “extremists who support violent means to establish an independent state within India.”
Goodale says the language used in his department’s 2018 terror-threat report “unintentionally maligned” certain communities and is not in keeping with
Canadian values. But Goodale isn’t going to change the language in the existing document, which drew ire from Canada’s Sikh community, nor has he provided public evidence backing up the decision to include Sikh extremism in the annual report for the first time.
Balpreet Singh Boparai, the lawyer for the World Sikh Organization in Canada, says admitting the language was wrong and fixing it in the next report is a small step forward.
to the composer and asked if we could tweak it a bit and make it really, really sound like O Canada. He said yes.”
As the band plays at Disneyland, any Canadian passersby or any Americans who happen to be hockey fans are likely going to stop and involuntarily look for the faceoff circle.
It’s a bit of cultural fun, but it also taught those 60 kids that music has flexibility, and so do composers if you say please.
“Disney takes musical standards very seriously, and that’s a big part of the importance of this trip,” said Klein. “Those demands are there to ensure a high quality of work, that the entertainment industry is a profession and they are asked to be professional about what they do there.”
There are about 200 students overall in the DP Todd Band program, including all grades and
their various ensembles (jazz, concert, touring, their small community outreach bands, etc.).
It is traditionally the case that students arrive at Klein’s doors in Grade 8 with a working knowledge of their instruments and introduction to reading music.
There are no elementary schools, anymore, that have band programs feeding DP Todd, and there are few across School District 57 that do.
“We have been there before,” said Klein, optimistic in spite of this development. “We’ve had other times when we had to start band students out for the first time at the Grade 8 level. They are wonderful young souls, we believe in them, and we believe in what we do. We’ve seen such amazing results over the years, so we will always work with that.”
A number of fundraising concerts have already been performed, as well as other money-making activities to cover the expenses of the band’s trip. Another one comes up on Monday for parents and family of the performers, to get a sneak peek at what the band will be performing in California.
The public can watch DP Todd and many other performance groups during the MusicFest Fanfare Band Festival at Vanier Hall from April 24-26. After that, they’re off to Disneyland.
The DP Todd band is also selling $2 wrist bands to support two of their former members. Grade 9 student Kyra Edgson is battling leukaemia at BC Children’s Hospital, and her sister has donated bone marrow to help.
A GoFundMe page has been collecting donations for months, and more financial help is still needed by the family, so the band is aiding that cause.
Appeal court upholds RDBN’s position on water bottling business
Citizen staff
The B.C. Court of Appeal has sided with the Regional District of Bulkley-Nechako on whether a water bottling company’s operation near Fraser Lake qualifies as a homebased business.
The decision hinged in part on what constitutes a family.
In 2012 and 2014, FRC Holdings Inc. acquired two adjoining properties on Gala Bay Road where a family had been running the operation as a permitted home-based business.
The site remained zoned waterfront residential and Jace McCord took over the operation while also moving onto the property. However, while he owns shares in Gala Bay Springs Water Company Inc. he does not own shares in FRC.
That became a sticking point, with the RDBN arguing McCord had moved onto the property primarily for commercial reasons and not because he wanted to live there.
In the decision, issued March 15, the Court of Appeal agreed and found that the definition of family put forward by FRC and Gala Bay “unduly extends the ordinary meaning of the work and suggested that all shareholders of a corporation are ‘family members.’”
In February 2013, the RDBN board of directors turned down FRC’s application to have the restrictions for home-based businesses lifted for the property.
After receiving complaints about the operation, the RDBN sent a letter in November 2014 expressing a concern that an accessory building on the adjoining property was being used for business purposes.
In response, FRC and Gala confirmed it would not be used for business but, in March, June and November 2016, RDBN inspections found the bottling materials were being stored on the adjoining property, in contravention of the home occupancy bylaw, and the operation’s floor space was larger than the maximum allowed.
In February 2018, the RDBN secured an injunction from a B.C. Supreme Court Justice effectively ordering Gala Bay to stop operating and the matter was taken to the Court of Appeal.
Reached Friday, McCord said the operation has been shut down for three weeks but he will be working to bring it into compliance.
“We are looking at restructuring the company into a form that the regional district will approve of,” he said.
Contrary to a proposal raised during a public hearing on the matter, McCord said moving the operation into Fraser Lake is out of the question.
“It doesn’t make sense for us,” he said.
“It adds a major cost when the source (of the water) can’t move. That’s been our biggest struggle.”
The full decision is posted with this story at www.pgcitizen.ca.
Changes to 911 dangerous, B.C. fire chief says
Camille BAINS The Canadian Press
VANCOUVER — Patient safety is at risk in British Columbia because of changes to the 911 dispatch system, says a fire chief who has instructed city staff to ask for an ambulance during medical emergencies.
Nick Delmonico of the Port Coquitlam Fire Department said aspects of a so-called clinical response model adopted by BC Emergency Health Services last May are ineffective, leaving people waiting too long for an ambulance while firefighters are not contacted in many situations.
He said 911 callers with a medical emergency at municipal facilities in his community should immediately ask for firefighters and a dispatcher would also transfer the call to the ambulance service.
Both firefighters and an ambulance crew previously responded to 911 calls in B.C., but firefighters are now dispatched only if paramedics can’t attend a call within 10 minutes, though Delmonico said the reality has turned out differently.
Dispatch systems vary widely across the country and within provinces, with firefighters in some departments trained as paramedics who respond to more serious medical issues.
Neil Lilley, spokesman for Emergency Health Services, said British Columbia’s policy avoids doubling up on resources as part of a first-of-its kind model in Canada that is similar to those used in other countries, including the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand.
Delmonico, a former medical rescue chief for Vancouver and a one-time member of the Emergency and Health Services Commission before it was renamed BC Emergency Health Services in 2013, said an attempt to save resources has eroded patient care that could be provided by firefighters, who typically arrived ahead of paramedics before the change.
“The head scratcher for us is not including fire in high-profile calls that they can’t make it to in a certain amount of time,” said Delmonico, who recently wrote a memo instructing staff at city facilities to specifically ask for firefighters when they call 911 for medical incidents.
“I believe this is important information to ensure prompt response to the citizens using our facilities, as well as assist staff who may need assistance because they are alone trying to address the patients’ medical needs during these long waits,” he said in the memo.
Delmonico said he was frustrated after several recent incidents, including a drug
overdose at a recreational centre, where he said two young employees waited too long for an ambulance after finding a semiconscious man on a bathroom floor “surrounded by needles and a bunch of white powder.”
“The next morning I got called by their
Terry Fox organization launches cancer network
The Canadian Press
ST. JOHN’S, N.L. — It is being touted as the “Team Canada of cancer research.”
Exactly 39 years after Terry Fox dipped his artificial leg in St. John’s harbour to begin his Marathon of Hope, the research institute that bears his name launched a new, national network that – for the first time – brings together Canada’s leading cancer hospitals and research universities.
The announcement Friday in St. John’s, at the spot where Fox started his run, also provided a poignant reminder that his ambitious bid to raise money for cancer research was barely noticed when it began on April 12, 1980. But his gritty determination to run across Canada inspired a nation.
“Terry said the Marathon of Hope must continue without him and he would be very proud to see this happening in this highly collaborative and inspired way,” Darrell Fox, Terry’s younger brother, said in a statement.
The Terry Fox Research Institute says the Marathon of Hope Cancer Centres network, which it describes as a “powerful collaborative platform,” will help accelerate so-called precision medicine.
The network will help close the gap between research in the lab and patient care in the clinic, the institute said.
Dr. Victor Ling, the institute’s president and scientific director, says this “Team Canada of cancer research” will use genomics, advanced imaging and artificial intelligence to ensure cancer patients across the country gain access to the care they need.
“There is no other country that has the potential that we have in Canada to link up all of our cancer centres to share information,” Ling said in an interview from St. John’s.
“This is really big.” Ling says advanced cancer research and treatments have become more focused on finding harmful genetic mutations. And one of the best ways to sort harmful mutations from benign ones is to compile data from as many patients as possible.
That’s where the network comes in.
“By comparing many different people and their genetics, we will be able to home in on the important mutations, where drugs can be effective,” Ling said.
“What we learn in precision medicine – or genetic medicine – will have an impact worldwide because our diverse population represents the population of the world.”
In the past, this kind of information sharing was limited by the fact that the provinces were reluctant to transmit sensitive health information across borders.
The new network will provide a secure platform. Cancer research and care institutions in British Columbia, Ontario, Quebec, the Prairies and Atlantic Canada are expected to participate in the network. The federal government will be spending up to $150 million over five years to support the network.
manager and she said, ‘This happened in our facility last night. Why didn’t fire attend?’ I said ‘I have no idea. We were not called.’ This kind of stuff is happening in our facilities and I said enough is enough.”
On Feb. 26, an ambulance responded two hours and 47 minutes after staff at a rec
On Feb. 26, an ambulance responded two hours and 47 minutes after staff at a rec centre called 911 when a woman experienced chest pain, Delmonico said...
centre called 911 when a woman experienced chest pain, Delmonico said, adding staff finally phoned their boss, who happened to be in a meeting with him, and he dispatched firefighters who arrived before the ambulance.
Jeff Freeze, a firefighter in Kamloops, said he realized the impact of the policy on Feb. 11, when his 16-year-old son Cohen was slammed into the boards during a hockey game.
“He was fully spinal immobilized,” Freeze said. “I play hockey, and it was one of the ugliest things I’d ever seen.”
Freeze said the ambulance crew eventually transported his son to hospital, where he was assessed as having strained muscles in his neck and a separated shoulder.
The policy is based on a colour-coded system, with dispatchers categorizing calls into one of six colours to prioritize response. Purple is at the top for serious conditions, such as cardiac arrest, and blue is at the bottom for non-urgent calls that could be referred to a nurses phone line.
It’s the orange category in the middle, involving potentially serious but non-lifethreatening issues, that is causing contention, Delmonico said. Firefighters are not always dispatched to attend potentially serious but not life-threatening calls and collaboration between the first responders on how the system works is “horrid,” he added.
He supports parts of the policy change because all patients are no longer automatically taken to emergency rooms.
Lilley said ambulance response time has improved in all categories since the policy was implemented, including in Port Coquitlam, though the fire chief said Lilley is relying on data showing median response times instead of average response times.
“We’ve drawn from best practices across the world,” Lilley said.
“Many different ambulance services have a response model similar to the one which we’ve introduced and it’s around ensuring that we respond to the sickest patients as quickly as possible.”
HANDOUT PHOTO BY JEFF FREEZE
Hockey player Cohen Freeze is shown in a handout photo provided by his father
Jeff Freeze. Cohen Freeze injured himself at hockey game in Kamloops and his father, a firefighter, says a change in the provincial 911 dispatch system meant an ambulance took too long to arrive because firefighters are no longer routinely dispatched to medical emergencies.
Conservatives shouldn’t celebrate yet
Conservatives in Canada are fond of telling a simplistic story about Justin Trudeau’s relationship with the press. Journalists are knee-jerk partisans, the argument goes, and their love of Trudeau’s Liberal administration is deep and uncomplicated. Accordingly, the news media is engaged in an unwavering project to praise, excuse and protect the prime minister. Recent weeks must have been confusing to fans of this theory.
The Canadian media at this point is vividly hostile to Trudeau. Coverage and analysis cling to the most uncharitable interpretation of the “Lavscam” affair – essentially that the prime minister engaged in a pseudo-criminal coverup and abused his power to protect the sinister SNC-Lavalin corporation from prosecution, then unjustly fired two heroic cabinet ministers. Headlines blare stories of a prime minister scrambling for his political life; editorial pages thunder that the scandal isn’t going away. On social media, meanwhile, journalists engage in an outrage arms race, inflating every incremental Lavscam development into an unprecedented assault on truth and justice. Pundits who express contrarian opinions, like Neil Macdonald or Susan Delacourt, get smothered in a tsunami of denunciation by the blue-check-mark set.
How can this be reconciled with the conservative belief in a pro-Trudeau press? Did Tory partisans hallucinate the past four years? Has the horror of Lavscam forced
formerly liberal journalists to convert?
The answer begins by conceding the obvious: there’s no such thing as a singular “press.” Social media often makes it seem as though all headlines and hot takes emanate from a common pipeline, but in practice the news media remains a diverse collection of outlets, not all of which share ideological and institutional biases.
Take the distinct journalistic sub-genre “entertainment and lifestyle.” Soft media of this sort has undoubtedly been a Trudeau ally, as it’s been to other “celebrified” politicians, such as Barack Obama and Beto O’Rourke. Good looks and an intriguing biography will always make a compelling subject independent of politics. Accordingly, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, Vogue, Chatelaine, and Reader’s Digest have all turned their gentle lens on Trudeau at some point. The resulting profiles, sycophantic in the ways celebrity profiles often are, became major news events in their own right.
A similar sub-genre is the international press. Major non-Canadian outlets such as the New York Times, the Economist, BBC and the Guardian have all sought to explain the Trudeau phenomenon but have been hampered by a shallow understanding of Canadian politics.
Reporting on foreign nations is inevitably clouded with stereotype, metaphor and cliche. In Canada’s case, this means framing the country as a Scandinavia-like beacon of progressivism in contrast to its backward neighbour. Trudeau’s flair for showy virtuesignaling – beginning with his “because it’s
2015” quip at his inauguration – offered reliable fodder for outside journalists filling holes in pre-written scripts. As populist conservatives won power elsewhere, obsequious praise was heaped on Trudeau for his “lonely defense of liberal values.”
The irritating omnipresence of these flavours of Trudeau coverage made it easy to ignore a third category: the Canadian political press.
Go back and revisit the domestic political commentary that greeted Trudeau’s meteoric ascension to the prime ministership, and you’ll be struck by two themes: extraordinary hostility to his Conservative predecessor, Stephen Harper and extreme apprehension about the skills and talents of Trudeau himself.
“Justin Trudeau may have the heady combination of external charisma and internal strength, but we don’t know whether he has the discipline, the knowledge, the moxie to face down the mega-ton of malice that would come his way,” wrote the Globe and Mail’s Lawrence Martin back in 2012. I’m not sure “even Trudeau knows why he’s running for the leadership of his father’s former party, other than that everybody expects him to,” said the Montreal Gazette’s Don Macpherson .
Andrew Coyne called Trudeau a man with “next to no qualifications for the job” who had “made a virtue of his opacity” and turned his party into a “personality cult.”
The similarly ultra-establishment Chantal Hebert at the Toronto Star described a politician in need of “training wheels” who
For the time being at least, the man of the moment in national politics is Andrew Scheer, the soft-spoken Saskatchewan MP who leads the Conservative Party of Canada. With the Liberals entangled in the SNCLavalin scandal, can he capitalize on his chance?
Clues emerge through conversation about his vision – these are early days in the pre-election period – but a sensible question prevails of why he and his party are not fully subsuming a Justin Trudeau government in its third month of fumbling its greatest challenge.
The dismal Liberal period has afforded the Conservatives the lead in the polls, but rather tenuously and marginally. If this is the worst it will get for the Liberals, there are tangible prospects of a rebound.
How does Scheer ensure they do not get back on solid footing?
His appearance Friday morning at the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade offered another iteration of a leader-in-grooming who would be our prime minister. Each time he appears in the city, he is lighter on his feet and more relatable.
He is naturally self-deprecating and, yes, he has a sense of humour.
He is young as a leader but rather old for his age at 39; he jokes about Lucy moving the
football from Charlie Brown and his children asking “why do you say, ‘Hang up the phone?’”
But where some leaders run into trouble when they move into the robotic world of a message track, Scheer’s effectiveness actually diminishes when he improvises on the serious stuff. His tendency is to bring us into the weeds instead of paddling us through the currents.
He began by departing from a written speech, most likely for most leaders a sound strategy, but in his case well-briefed does not easily translate into wellspoken.
He brings the audience into detailed territory without a discernable beginning, middle and end to the point he wishes to make; it is often an explanation more than an incantation, and it can leave you recognizing he knows his material inside-out but cannot plainly and simply provide his position.
Obviously it is not time in April to roll out the campaign slogans he must muster in September and October, so the event is predictably rather content-free. The greatest applause he gets is for criticizing foreign-funded
advocacy on the pipeline debate and – no kidding here – on how he would stop municipalities from dumping raw sewage into our waterways. Which is not at all to say he brings weak or few messages on the economy, on the environment, on the need to review our tax burden without harming social services, or on how our country’s prime minister needs to be selling our energy abroad and not apologizing for it. It’s just that he hasn’t found a snappy, memorable way to deliver these goods, and that he has to avoid running too fast this early in the marathon.
He is, like most public figures, more affable in person than in the limelight. Last time I encountered his predecessor, Stephen Harper, he wanted to talk hockey and the mess of the Edmonton Oilers; the second the microphone was on, though, he was on message and deliberately stern. Scheer doesn’t have quite that switch of hot and cold, so he can toggle with a little more personal ease – albeit with a fair amount of meander.
A few weeks ago, the business crowd for Finance Minister Bill Morneau left shaking its head about his disconnectedness with its issues. That wouldn’t have been the case Friday with Scheer; he was well-liked by the business crowd, it’s just that there is still work to do to connect.
could “only avoid putting his foot in his mouth by sticking to banalities.”
Yet many of these same voices portrayed Harper as such a glowering, scheming, reactionary tyrant that his removal could simultaneously be regarded as a self-evident good. This was a bias in Trudeau’s favour, but not an affirmative endorsement. Few pundits may have believed he deserved to win, but they were near-unanimous that Harper deserved to lose.
If those who make a living talking about Canadian politics have now turned on Trudeau, it may be less a reflection of a broken heart than a rediscovery of old suspicions, given they don’t have Harper to kick around anymore.
Conservatives are savouring their current alliance with the press, but it’s surely unsustainable. As the October election draws closer, it’s easy to imagine a scenario in which Canada’s mostly urban and progressive commentators ultimately conclude that whatever the prime minister’s flaws, he remains less frightening than Tory leader Andrew Scheer. Indeed, even as Trudeau enjoys a wave of bad press, Scheer’s remains arguably worse, with pundits linking him to white supremacy, religious bigotry and Islamophobia.
Canada’s journalists have proved capable of being anti-Trudeau. What’s less clear is if they have the capacity to be fair to a Conservative in the moment that matters.
— J.J. McCullough is a political commentator and cartoonist from Vancouver who writes for the Washington Post.
Tip for landlords
I am a cleaner for a landlord who owns several apartment buildings in Prince George. I take great pride in my job, and enjoy making the places nice and clean. As I travel around Prince George I see apartment buildings where there are piles of garbage by the bins and broken pieces of furniture on the grounds, broken glass, cigarette butts, needles, condoms and toilet paper. There are entry ways and hallways with carpeting that has not met a vacuum cleaner for months. I see a solution. Respect your tenants. Give them what they pay for.
I have observed disregard by landlords to the day-to-day expectations of tenants for the rent they pay.
Spring has sprung and normal outside cleaning could be done by now. I observed that it did not matter what neighborhood an apartment building was in. My previous prejudice was that it would be by neighborhood. It is not.
Jacqueline Levesque Prince George
Heavy-handed action
I attended the caribou session and I’m very concerned about the suggestion of closing the South Peace to all industrial and recreational use. There’s a possibility that in the future there could be closures of all the Rocky Mountain areas in B.C. I am not confident that the proposed closures to recreational and business access will achieve the expected results.
I have lived and worked in the Prince George area all my life and I have been an avid snowmobiler for over 35 years. I’m a member of the Prince George Snowmobile Club which is affiliated with the British Columbia Snowmobile Federation and the Canadian Council of Snowmobile Organizations.
I agree that something needs to be done to restore the herds of caribou. Very little was has been done in the last 20 years and I’m not certain that what has been done was properly measured. In 2009, the Ministry of Forests and Lands started closing access to snowmobiles in many areas. There were 61 closures as of 2016 but I have not been able to find measures and results. For example; what were the herd numbers before the closures? What are they now? I’m sure those numbers are somewhere. They should be published for our reference. Snowmobile clubs throughout
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the province care about the habitats and want to help.
We are a small group and we have historically been targeted by politicians as a reason for the caribou decline.
No scientific data has been published or provided. In spite of all the closures to date, numbers are still declining. If a closure didn’t work, why not open it before closing more?
It is unfortunate that government officials have mismanaged the caribou population until they have become “a species at risk” and now drastic changes have to be implemented to the detriment of industry and back-country recreational users.
We want to make sure the government is implementing – and is held accountable to – solutions that work.
More closures without justification is a heavy-handed technique that takes the easy way out in order to give the public “the perception” that action is being taken. Mike Sexsmith
Prince George
Stop drugs, not guns
So there were over 10,000 overdose deaths in Canada in the last three years. That in itself is a significant number to achieve. Even in war any commander would be proud of that body count. Seems very little attention is being paid to this tragedy of mostly young people dying because of drugs from our so-called honourable leaders.
I am sure that at one point in their short lives the victims were assets to their communities, happy people who were loved and loved. Drugs took them away from their children. Drugs became more of a priority. The victims of these deaths are the children who are left without parents, but somehow these deaths are not as important as gun deaths are.
There were 424 gun-related deaths in Canada with 96 in the GTA in 2018 but the political elite do not believe it is appealing to the public to attempt to save thousands of lives of drug users who may die. They seem focused on banning handguns from legally obtained firearms owners as it is more attractive to the voters.
Plainly put, drugs take ten times more lives than guns even with the gang violence. Begin to deal harshly with the importers of death and then the body count from both sources may diminish.
Phil Gatehouse Prince George
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What Game of Thrones teaches about business leadership
WASHINGTON – Where most Game of Thrones fans were horrified by the beheading of the beloved Ned Stark and blamed it on a ruthless king, Columbia University business professor Bruce Craven saw a lesson in failed leadership.
The northerner Stark was simply too proud to adjust to the cutthroat nature of King’s Landing as it became mired in a scramble over royal succession. His execution set into motion battles, intrigues, romances and resurrections that will culminate this Sunday with the show’s highly-anticipated final season.
The Associated Press asked economic and business experts the central question:who will win the Iron Throne?
The judgment of Craven and other academic minds may surprise you: Sansa Stark, Ned’s eldest daughter.
Sansa has grown from a oncehelpless princess with dreams of lemon cakes into a wily strategist. She has endured marriages that were degrading and abusive, finding ways to adapt and survive that her late father could never manage.
“She’s had probably the closest
involvement with the widest array of different leaders,” said Craven, who has written a new business book, Win or Die: Leadership Secrets from Game of Thrones.
Sansa has learned from Littlefinger’s manipulations. She’s seen the pitfalls from what Craven calls Cersei’s “transactional” approach to leadership. And she’s seen her kinsman Jon Snow’s idealism transform him from a brooding teenager into a military commander capable of challenging the zombie army of the Night King.
This education might be the ultimate advantage, even if she lacks the firepower of Daenerys Targaryen’s dragons or the Valyrian steel sword wielded by Jon Snow.
“She doesn’t have dragons. She didn’t learn to become an assassin,” added Craven, who admits his prediction is just a hunch. “Everything she’s gone through, part of me wants to see her leverage that in some unpredictable way.”
Sansa does enjoy a major edge in terms of resources, said Mark Wright, research director at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
From the U.S. Civil War to the Second World War, victorious armies have often gained a decisive edge by having the best equipment, stable supply lines
Party chatter can be awkward
Karla L. MILLER Special To The Washington Post
Q: I have worked at my employer for 20 years, 10 in my current department, longer than almost everyone. Last week at our department meeting, other staff members chatted about the fun they’d had at a social activity in town the night before. I said it was awkward hearing about this event to which I was not invited. The apparent organizer said she would keep that in mind, and then they continued to talk about it. The boss said nothing. No one else spoke up to say this felt exclusionary. What say you?
A: Generally, workers are free to form their own social affiliations outside of working hours. But even my grade-schoolers have the upbringing not to discuss their birthday parties in front of peers who weren’t invited. If your direct statement about feeling awkward didn’t shame them into finding another topic, a cheerful-bordering-on-needy “Oh, that sounds like such fun! I would have loved to join you!” every time they bring up a social outing might accomplish a similar end through nuisance.
Q: I’m a longtime staffer in academia. I need to know the proper protocol for disclosing my voluntary retirement plans. This being a small school, telling even one person means that word will probably spread rapidly to everyone in my department. I have a meaningful longtime acquaintance with my direct supervisor, her supervisor and our top boss. I want to tell each of these three, in person, about my retirement plans before they become general knowledge. Who should I tell first?
A: It may or may not be official protocol, but practicality dictates starting by notifying the people who determine your employment status, top to bottom. In your case, since you’re close to all three supervisors, I recommend arranging a short meeting – in person or via conference call – so you can let them all know at once. Have a written, dated message ready to email or hand deliver to them and HR. Afterward, as a courtesy, ask if you can share the news with your colleagues, in case your bosses want to make an official announcement themselves.
and multitudes of soldiers. Her perceived rivals for the throne are running close to empty militarily and economically.
Thanks to her feeble cousin Robin Arryn, the Knights of the Vale are under her command. Her troops are the freshest and arguably best provisioned, given the Vale’s rich soil that provides for wheat, corn, barley and enviously large pumpkins.
Her rivals have suffered the destruction of their farmland and the depletion of their armies after years of warfare and the occasional scorched-earth dragon attack.
“I think it was Napoleon who said an army marches on its stomach,” Wright said.
Not everyone, however, is convinced that Sansa will rule.
The betting markets have picked Bran Stark, her mystical and disabled brother. He might also seem like an unexpected pick. Bran has the ability to journey through time. This gives him an oracular power, but it has extinguished his former emotional warmth for cold prophecies. He seems too detached from humanity to sit on the Iron Throne or establish the personal connections that a ruler would need to rally a weary populace. But to economists, his popular-
ity on the betting markets matters a lot. The market is the closest thing the public has to a threeeyed raven. It can forecast the future by distilling the wisdom of the crowds. The stock and bond markets do this daily. He has no charisma and can’t fight, and the show suggested last season that he’s no longer even a Stark. But Boyle Sports gives him 4/5 odds.
But of course, markets can be wrong. So can experts.
Carolyne Larrington, a professor of medieval European literature at Oxford and author of Winter is Coming: The Medieval World of Game of Thrones, doesn’t think Sansa wants to sit on the Iron Throne, any more than her father did. Instead, she sees Daenerys as the most likely choice, with her dragons and Dothraki hordes.
Larrington said the show, once known for its moral shades of grey, has become more clearly a fight of good vs. evil as it nears its end.
“I think that’s why they’ll play it safe, and give it to Daenerys,” she said.
Craven credits Daenerys with having developed superior leadership skills: she inspires people by walking into flames and surviving. She frees slaves and tries to rule
for the benefit of others.
Plus, she has dragons.
She is “the queen we chose,” in the words of her interpreter and adviser, Missandei. It’s a surprisingly positive lesson from a show that has relentlessly crushed so many beloved characters.
“All the leadership that goes forward successfully against the odds – with the exception of Cersei – involves leaders that are motivated by helping other people,” Craven says. “Their leadership isn’t strictly about their own achievement or standing at the top of the org chart.”
Let’s hope that leadership style works against the army of the Night King.
The Associated Press
This combination photo of images released by HBO shows Sophie Turner portraying Sansa Stark in Game of Thrones.
The best times to visit D.C.’s monuments
The Washington Post
WASHINGTON – Millions of visitors descend on the National Mall every year, touring the U.S. Capitol, posing for photos in front of the memorials and picnicking on the Washington Monument grounds. With so many people jostling for space in the strip of green running between the Capitol and the Lincoln Memorial, the key to an enjoyable visit is finding the right time to go.
U.S. Capitol
Best time to visit: morning
If you want to get inside the Capitol, the easiest and fastest way is to arrive at the same time as the people who work there. The U.S. Capitol Visitors Center, accessed from the East Front of the Capitol, opens at 8:30 a.m. – a half-hour before some senators and representatives begin public office hours. The Visitors Center begins offering its free 45-minute guided tours at 8:40 a.m., and starts new ones every 10 minutes. Visitors can reserve slots online, but if you haven’t, an early arrival is usually your best chance for first-come, first-served passes. And on your way out, you’ll notice how the lines to get through security have grown throughout the morning.
Early arrivals are also good for photographers: the morning sun shines brilliantly against the Capitol dome, which finished an extensive restoration in 2017.
Washington Monument
Best time to visit: afternoon
The Washington Monument remains closed as repairs to its elevator continue, and while the National Park Service has promised a “spring 2019” reopening for the landmark, there’s still no specific date. In the meantime, the best place to take pictures of the obelisk is from the area between the Second World War Memorial and the
Vietnam Veterans Memorial
Best time to visit: afternoon
Most visitors feel the solemn presence of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial before they reach the famous Three Servicemen Statue or see the austere memorial’s black granite panels, inscribed with the names of 58,318 American casualties. Even the teenagers on school trips instinctively seem to know that this is a place for hushed voices; when you do hear someone talking on their phone, it’s a visitor calling a family member for help finding a specific name on the wall.
You can visit after dark, when the memorial feels even more somber. But for firsttime visitors, it’s better to go during the day, when park rangers and volunteers – often veterans themselves – can assist in finding the name of a friend or loved one, so you
can make a rubbing, or just reach out and touch the name. In daylight, it’s easier to see the photos and tributes left at the wall, or see people reflected in the polished surface. That’s when the emotional impact of the memorial is most striking.
Lincoln Memorial
Best time to visit: afternoon or sunset
Situated at the western end of the Mall’s axis, the Lincoln Memorial is a popular gathering spot for tourists who want to take a photograph in front of Daniel Chester French’s statue of the 16th president or stand on the spot where Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his I Have a Dream speech. It’s more than just history that lures them here: The steps and benches provide a great place to rest and enjoy the view, and the adjacent parking lot is a convenient place for tour buses to pick up their charges.
Once the school groups have left for the
day, though, the atmosphere becomes less frenetic. (Except, that is, on summer Tuesdays, when the Marine Corps’ Drum and Bugle Corps and Silent Drill Platoon perform on the plaza at the base of the memorial.) The Lincoln Memorial offers one of the most beautiful and memorable vistas in Washington, and the white marble glows ethereally with the light of the setting sun behind it. The bookstore, focused on Lincoln and the Civil War, and a small display of images relating to the construction of the memorial are open until 8 p.m.
Luther King Jr. Memorial
Best time to visit: afternoon
There’s a lot of inspirational reading to be done at the most recent memorial to grace the Mall: the walls surrounding the 30-foot statue of Martin Luther King Jr. contain famous quotations from his Letter from Birmingham Jail, his Nobel Prize acceptance speech and other notable works. Because of this – and because you’ll want to take photos – it’s easier to visit during daylight hours. Park rangers are on hand to lead tours and discussions; a recent talk covered King’s approach to voting rights and the 15th Amendment. Talks often begin at 2 p.m., but check with rangers or the nearby bookstore for more information.
Roosevelt Memorial
Best time to visit: evening
The Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial is the most immersive on the Mall: it’s a series of outdoor “rooms,” representing Roosevelt’s four terms, filled with bronze sculptures, waterfalls and pools, depicting the Great Depression and the Second World War. Because the layout calls for exploration, it’s most rewarding at night, when the statues cast shadows, the water shimmers, and it’s peaceful enough to linger.
Lincoln Memorial, where you can catch its reflection in the Reflecting Pool.
WASHINGTON POST PHOTO
The Vietname Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., with the Washington Monument in the distance.
WASHINGTON POST PHOTO
The U.S. Capitol dome.
Below left, the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial with the Washington Monument in the background and, below right, the Lincoln Memorial.
WASHINGTON POST PHOTOS
Sports
Spruce Kings beat Vernon Vipers in Game 1
Ted CLARKE Citizen staff tclarke@pgcitizen.ca
Call it a holy roller.
For the Prince George Spruce Kings and their loyal fans, Ben Poisson’s last-shot volley into an empty net was the ultimate tension-reliever that took the stuffing out of the Vernon Vipers Friday in the opening game of the BCHL Fred Page Cup championship series.
Nursing a 2-1 lead, Poisson gained the puck just outside his own crease and chipped a shot that landed outside the blueline. The puck landed on edge and took off on a solo journey with the Vipers desperately trying to catch up. It appeared to be rolling wide but at the last second took a Prince George turn and found the empty net just inside the post.
That sealed a 3-1 Kings’ victory in Game 1 of the best-of-seven series. Game 2 of the series is set for tonight (7 p.m.) at RMCA. Until that point it was still anyone’s game and the nervous tension on the ice was shared by a sellout crowd of 2,112, many of whom have seen nothing but home-ice victories for the Spruce Kings, who had won all seven of their previous playoff games at Rolling Mix Concrete Arena.
“It’s obviously good to get the first one out of the way but we have to have a short memory here and focus on tomorrow and getting the next one,” said Kings goalie Logan Neaton, who made 23 saves in a firststar performance that improved his playoff record to 13-1.
“It was a tight game but it was what we expected. We knew we weren’t playing as high calibre of offence, per say, but they’re a team that plays the right way. They play hard, they get in on the forecheck and get a lot of pucks deep and put pressure on you. We knew it’s not going to be games where we’ll blow them out. We’re going to have to play good smart hockey for 60 minutes.”
Lucas Vanroboys and Ben Brar were the other goalscorers for Prince George. Jesse Lansdell notched the Vipers’ goal.
Just before Poisson’s empty-netter, the Vipers had a couple of good chances with Aidan Porter on the bench and Teddy Wooding just missed putting the puck in from the side of the net with Neaton flat on his belly.
“We had a great start and I thought all three periods we played fairly well and that was a great first game,” said Vipers captain Jagger Williamson, a fifth-year centre.
“I haven’t seen this team for a long time so it was just play out the wrinkles. It was just two good teams going head-to-head and unfortunately they came out of top. (Neaton) has been the backbone for them and I think they’ve only lost one. We just have to get traffic in front of him, take his eyes away and just make it hard on him because he’s a helluva goalie.”
The shots ended up 24-23 in Vernon’s favour.
The Kings were ahead 1-0 seven minutes into the third period when Jack Judson led a Vipers’ rush and hit the crossbar with a high-slot ripper. Three minutes later Vernon got the equalizer they were after. Williamson let go a shot that was tipped in by Lansdell. Neaton thought Lansdell’s stick was above the crossbar when he deflected the
puck but the officials were well-positioned to make the call. The goal came 9:53 into the third.
The Kings had an answer for that and it came with 7:38 left on the clock. Chong Min Lee, the hardworking Korean-born winger, got his legs moving as he carried the puck into the high slot and let go a hard shot that Brar deflected in for his third of the playoffs.
Prince George struck first 4:32 into the second period.
Nolan Welsh’s speed made the goal possible when he turned on the jets and beat defenceman Carver Watson to the puck. Welsh carried behind the net and left it deep in the Vernon end for Layton Ahac. Vanroboys was left unguarded in the slot and he deflected Ahac’s pass in for his fourth of the playoffs.
The play opened up slightly in the second period and both teams had their chances on power plays. The Vipers went on the attack 15 seconds in with Dustin Manz sent off for slashing and had the puck in the Kings end for a good chunk of the penalty but thanks to the shot blocking of defencemen Dylan Anhorn and Jay Keranen they were unable to get much rubber on Neaton.
“I don’t know how many shot blocks we had tonight but it was pretty amazing to see,” said Neaton. “Even our forwards were filling lanes and that’s a group that’s
committed to the team goal and it’s good to see.”
The Kings put some heat on Porter when they had the extra skater for two minutes late in the period but the Vipers kept the shots well to the outside.
This is expected to be tight-checking series and that’s exactly how it shaped up in the opener as the teams fought for real estate on the ice. The Kings did not allow a shot until the 10-minute mark and right after the media timeout the Vipers came close to scoring. Carver Watson let go a shot from the point that Neaton stopped and Wooding got to the rebound and put the puck through Neaton’s pads but the puck slid just wide of the net.
The Kings’ fourth line made effective use of its icetime and tested goalie Porter about seven minutes in when 15-year-old rookie centre Finn Williams fed a back-door pass to Nick Wilson and his shot from close range was stopped by Porter’s glove.
Vernon will host Game 3 and 4 Tuesday and Wednesday.
LOOSE PUCKS: The Spruce Kings were without 20-year-old D Liam Watson-Brawn, out with an upper-body injury he suffered in Game 4 of the Coastal Conference championship in Victoria, April 2…The BCHL champion will go on to meet the Alberta Junior Hockey League champion in the
best-of-seven Doyle Cup series. The AJHL champion will host the first two games of that series, April 26-27. If either team sweeps the first two games the next five games, if needed, would be played in the BCHL champions’ rink. Those games would be played on Tuesday, April 30, Wednesday, May 1, Friday, May 3, Saturday, May 4 and Sunday, May 5. If the first two games of the series are split, Game 3 would follow in Alberta on Sunday, April 28, with the next four games, if necessary, to be played in B.C., May 1, 2, 4 and 5… The AJHL championship between the Brooks Bandits and Spruce Grove Saints started Friday night in Brooks, Alta., and Brooks skated to a 3-2 win. The Bandits went 57-3-0 in the regular season and after a first-round playoff bye they’ve put together a 9-2-1 playoff record. The Saints, defending AJHL champions, finished third in the South Division (40-17-3) and are 113-1 so far in the playoffs…Brooks is hosting the national junior A championship, May 11-19. If the Bandits win the AJHL title, they would still play the BCHL champs in the Doyle Cup and both teams would automatically qualify for the six-team national tournament. If Brooks loses the series to Spruce Grove, only the Doyle Cup winners would advance and the Bandits would retain their host team slot.
Timberwolves add national champ to the pack
Ted CLARKE Citizen staff
The UNBC Timberwolves men’s soccer team has landed a national champion to patrol the midfield next season.
Hussein Behery, a 23-year-old native of Cairo, Egypt, who won the 2018 Canadian Colleges Athletic Association national championship in his second of three seasons with the Vancouver Island University Mariners, has signed a commitment to join the T-wolves as a transfer student next season.
Behery scored three goals for the Mariners last season in the Pacific Western Athletic Association and finished second in team scoring. He made two site visits to the UNBC campus before he
decided to commit to the Twolves. Behery will be counted upon to help fill some of the void left by 10 departing players from last year’s team.
“Hussein is a tremendous dribbler and has terrific attacking ability,” said T-wolves head coach Steve Simonson, in a team release. “He fits our attacking needs really well, and has a chance to really contribute here.
“He gelled seamlessly with our team during his visit to UNBC, and his experience in the PacWest will really help him step in and make a significant impact at U Sports level.”
Behery had a chance to work out with the T-wolves indoors at the Northern Sport Centre fieldhouse and will rejoin his UNBC
teammates in late July.
“Coming to UNBC, I know I am going to improve a lot,” said Be-
hery. “I am going to work on my weaknesses. I know Steve is going to put lots of effort into helping me. If I am going to pursue soccer afterwards, UNBC is a good spot for me. It’s a great fit.
“I like the indoor facilities. I like to train indoors. The gym, the changeroom, all that stuff is big for me. I like it. The facilities are very nice. The program that Steve has is all about helping his players improve. It is a huge thing. Everyone is close, everyone is positive. They are all tight, and you can tell from the vibes.”
The five-foot-eight Behery is blessed with playmaking abilities and above-average speed and he says the quality of play in PacWest will serve him well as he makes the jump to U Sports. He’s
hoping the T-wolves, who ranked third in attendance in the Canada West Conference last season, will continue to draw crowds for their games at Masich Place Stadium.
“I like to assist goals,” he said.
“My scoring is going to improve under Steve. I am quick with the ball, and I am a good dribbler.
“Teams in the PacWest, there are some very good players. We had a very good team, winning nationals. We hosted the nationals in Nanaimo, and there was probably 1,000 people there. It was a great experience. One of the best experiences of my life, by far.
“There is nothing I like more than people watching me play, “ he said. “I am not shy. It makes me play better.”
CITIZEN PHOTO BY JAMES DOYLE
Prince George Spruce Kings forward Ben Poisson tries to put a shot on net past Vernon Vipers defender Trey Taylor on Friday night at Rolling Mix Concrete Arena in game one of the BCHL championship series.
Tiger Woods makes a Masters logjam even larger
Doug
FERGUSON The Associated Press
AUGUSTA, Ga. — Tiger Woods ran into the long leg of the law and escaped with a most unlikely birdie.
He just couldn’t take the next step – one more birdie on a back nine filled with so many chances – to join the largest 36-hole logjam in Masters history.
Golf’s best worked their way to the top Friday at Augusta National to set up a weekend pregnant with possibilities. Francesco Molinari, Jason Day, Brooks Koepka, Adam Scott and Louis Oosthuizen created the first five-way tie for the lead going into the weekend at the Masters.
All of them are major champions. Three have been No. 1 in the world.
Looming just as large was Woods, who made it look even more crowded at the top by making Augusta National sound as loud as ever. Despite missing two birdie chances inside 8 feet on the back nine, he holed consecutive 30-foot birdie putts for a 4-under 68.
One of those big birdies followed a bizarre moment on the 14th hole.
Trapped in the trees, Woods hooked a low punch toward the green and was walking toward the fairway when a Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent trying to contain the gallery slipped on the rain-slickened grass and slid into the lower right leg of Woods. He managed to keep his balance, winced, hobbled and flexed his ankle repeatedly when he made it to the fairway. Then he turned trouble into a birdie and was walking just fine the rest of the way.
“I’m fine. It’s all good,” Woods said.
“Accidents happen and move on.”
What’s happening is a weekend at Augusta National loaded with top players, and not just those tied at 7-under 136. Dustin Johnson, poised to return to No. 1 in the world after Justin Rose missed the cut, has looked effortless over two days and was one shot behind.
Nine players were separated by one shot, a group that includes seven major winners and five former No. 1-ranked golfers. Phil Mickelson, at 48 trying to become the oldest major champion, was three shots back. Justin Thomas and Rickie Fowler were four shots behind.
“This is really stacked,” Scott said. “I think it’s going to be an incredible weekend no matter what happens now.”
Corey Conners (71) of Listowel, Ont., was in a group tied for 16th at 3-under par, four shots back of the leaders. Mike Weir of Brights Grove, Ont., missed the cut by a shot.
Woods has gone 14 years since he last won the green jacket, 11 years since his last major and had five surgeries – four on his back, the other to rebuild his left knee.
But he feels he’s getting closer.
“The last three majors, I’ve been right there,” Woods said.
He briefly held the lead Sunday in the British Open. He chased Koepka to the finish line in the PGA Championship. And now he goes into the weekend one shot behind, the closest he has been to a lead going into the weekend at a major since the 2013 British Open at Muirfield.
But that’s not just anyone he’s trailing. Molinari, the British Open champion who has shown he belongs among the elite in golf, had a 67 and was the first to reach 7 under. Day was right behind, coping with nagging soreness in his lower back with a 67 to match the Italian.
Koepka, the U.S. Open and PGA champion, began with a birdie to quickly take the lead, only to hit out of the pine straw, off a tree and into the creek to make double bogey on the par-5 second hole. He made two more bogeys before reaching the seventh hole, and then pulled himself together to salvage a 71.
just keep going on. You’ve got a lot of holes left, and you can make up some ground.”
I was just very patient today, felt very good to be out there doing what I was doing. This is now three straight majors that I’ve been in the mix and so it’s good stuff.
— Tiger Woods
Scott was the only player to reach 8 under with a 2-iron into 5 feet for eagle on the 15th, only to miss a 3-foot par putt on the 16th. It added up to a 68 for the Australian who won the Masters six years ago, and has gone three years since his last victory. He had a chance to win the PGA Championship in his last major until Koepka pulled away and Scott made a careless bogey at the end to finish third.
He has shown flashes this year on the West Coast, at Torrey Pines and Riviera, but has geared his game toward this week.
very well,” Scott said. “This is the best players in the world on the biggest stage that we all want to be in so badly.”
Storms stopped play for only 29 minutes, long enough to stall Woods. He made the only birdie on No. 11 all day, and hit his tee shot on the dangerous par-3 12th to 5 feet when the horn sounded. Woods returned and missed the putt, and then took three shots from 35 feet behind the par-5 13th green to lose another prime birdie opportunity.
But he made it up for them with a couple of long birdie putts, and he had no complaints with his position.
“I feel like I played my own way back into the tournament,” Woods said.
“I was just very patient today, felt very good to be out there doing what I was doing. This is now three straight majors that I’ve been in the mix and so it’s good stuff.”
“You’re going to be tested in a major championship one way or another,” Koepka said.
“I hit a bad shot; just got to suck it up and
Here he is, with a lot of company.
“Look, tomorrow is a very important day because there’s no doubt someone in the top 15, or a few of them, are going to play
As for Rory McIlroy, the career Grand Slam might need to wait another year. McIlroy played the par 5s in even – two bogeys, one par and an eagle on No. 8 that got him under par, but only briefly. He was only seven shots behind, but he had 35 players in front of him.
Rays quell Jays’ comeback
Melissa COUTO
The Canadian Press
TORONTO — Austin Meadows and Brandon Lowe both homered twice, Willy Adames added some insurance with a two-run shot in the ninth, and the American League East-leading Tampa Bay Rays fended off a late Toronto comeback for an 11-7 win over the Blue Jays on Friday.
Mike Zunino, Kevin Kiermaier and Tommy Pham also drove in runs as Tampa (11-3) extended its win streak to five games.
Down 8-0, the Blue Jays (410) erupted with six runs in the bottom of the seventh to turn a rout into a close game.
Teoscar Hernandez and Lourdes Gurriel Jr. hit back-toback run-scoring doubles, Alen Hanson followed with an RBI single and Luke Maile punctuated the rally with a two-run homer to the delight of the sparse crowd of 17,326. All the runs were charged to Yonny Chirinos, working his third inning of relief.
Justin Smoak cut the deficit to 8-7 in the eighth, scoring on a fielding error before Tampa intentionally walked Hanson to bring up Maile with the bases loaded and two out. Deigo Castillo struck out the Jays catcher on a borderline 3-2 pitch to end the inning. Zunino hit an RBI double in the ninth off Javy Guerra and Adames followed with a two-run shot, his first homer of the season, to put the Rays ahead 11-7.
The Tampa bullpen, following two scoreless innings from opener Ryne Stanek, had been stellar until cracking in the seventh. Toronto didn’t get its first base-runner until the fourth inning when Chirinos issued a lead-off walk to Randal Grichuk.
Richard Urena got the Blue Jays’ first hit later in the inning, a twoout single.
Rookie left-hander Trent Thornton (0-1) took his first loss of the season, allowing five runs in just three-plus innings of work. The 25-year-old gave up eight hits, walked two and struck out three.
The game was significant for Toronto’s rookie manager Charlie Montoyo, who faced his former team for the first time. Montoyo spent the last four seasons as a coach with Tampa (three as the Rays third base coach and the last as bench coach). He also managed Tampa’s triple-A affiliate Durham Bulls for eight seasons before that. Meadows wasted no time getting Tampa on the board in the first inning. The Rays’ lead-off batter launched a 3-2 pitch from Thornton over the right-field wall for a 1-0 lead.
The Rays tacked on four more runs in the third inning.
Meadows hit a massive solo shot off the top-deck facade for his first career multihomer game, Lowe followed with a towering two-run shot - again off the top deck - and a Kiermaier triple drove in another run to extend Tampa’s lead to 5-0. Pham drove in the Rays’ sixth run with a base hit off Sam Gaviglio in the sixth, extending his franchise-record on-base streak to 46 games.
Lowe’s second homer, a two-run shot to centre off Elvis Luciano in the seventh, gave Tampa an 8-0 lead. Ryan Yarbrough (2-1) pitched the third and fourth innings to earn the win. The Rays outhit Toronto 16-9.
Freddy Galvis doubled in the seventh to extend his hit streak to seven games. Toronto continues its threegame series with the Rays today.
Spectators react as Tiger Woods birdies hole No. 6 during the second round of the Masters golf tournament on Friday at Augusta National Golf Club in Augusta, Ga.
Blue Jackets stun Lightning
DIDTLER Citizen news service
TAMPA, Fla. — The Columbus Blue Jackets are making a serious bid to knock the team with the best regularseason record out of the playoffs.
Matt Duchene had a goal and three assists, Sergei Bobrovsky made 23 saves, and the Blue Jackets stunned the Tampa Bay Lightning 5-1 on Friday night to take a 2-0 first-round series lead.
Two down. Two more to go.
“It’s half the wins that we need,” Duchene said.
“We’re keeping our heads down and our eyes on the prize.”
Columbus also got goals from Cam Atkinson, Zach Werenski, Riley Nash and Artemi Panarin. The Blue Jackets started the playoffs last season by winning the first two games of the first-round series with eventual Stanley Cup Washington, which won the next four games.
Mikhail Sergachev had a goal and Andrei Vasilevskiy stopped 22 shots for the Lightning, who lost two games in a row just twice in the regular season.
Tampa Bay matched the 1995-96 Detroit Red Wings for the most wins in a regular season with 62.
“The regular season is different than the playoffs,” Lightning coach Jon Cooper said.
“Things just happen so fast. Alarms are going off. This is a five-alarm fire. But it’s adversity and sometimes that’s good that you have to go through stuff like this to see how we respond. One thing I do know about being with this group is, they find a way.”
Lightning right wing Nikita Kucherov,
who led the NHL with 128 points, was held off the scoresheet for the second consecutive game and picked up tripping, boarding and 10-minute misconduct penalties late in the third period.
It’s likely that Kucherov will face discipline from the NHL.
“I’m not going to give you any thoughts on it,” Columbus coach John Tortorella said. “It’s self-explanatory.”
The Blue Jackets rallied from a threegoal, first-period deficit to beat Tampa Bay 4-3 in Game 1 on Wednesday night as Seth Jones scored the go-ahead goal on the power play to cap Columbus’ three-goal third period.
Tortorella said he’s not surprised about the 2-0 series advantage even after the early hole in Game 1.
“No, and I’m serious about that,” Tortorella said. “I think we’re a good team. We’ve gone through a lot as a team. If we’re going to be successful as a team, we have to play as a team. So, even when we were down 3-0, I don’t think we got away as far as how we have to play.”
Duchene assisted on both of Columbus’ goals during the first period and put the Blue Jackets ahead 3-0 on the power play when the centre scored on the rebound at 1:28 of the second after Vasilevskiy had stopped his tip-in try. Columbus, 28th in the NHL on the power play during the regular season, converted two of four chances and is 3 for 6 overall.
Tampa Bay’s top-ranked power-play unit has failed in all five opportunities in in the series.
The Lightning got within two goals at
3-1 when Sergachev’s shot went into the net off Blue Jackets defenceman Markus Nutivaara’s skate five minutes into the third. But, Nash and Panarin scored goals over a three-minute span midway through the period.
Bobrovsky stopped Kucherov’s shot and got a piece of Steven Stamkos’ scoring chance that also went off the crossbar during an early second-period power play.
“We’re better than we’re executing,” Stamkos said. “There’s no sense in pouting right now. We have to find a way to win.”
Duchene stole the puck from J.T. Miller along the left-wing boards and sent a pass into the low slot that Atkinson redirected past Vasilevskiy 5:15 into the game.
Werenski made it 2-0 from the blue line after Duchene won a faceoff during a power play at 11:44 of the first. Werenski also had an assist, and fought Brayden Point.
NOTES: Duchene’s four points set a team playoff record. ...The Lightning outscored Columbus 17-3 in sweeping all three games between the teams in the regular season. ... Tampa Bay D Anton Stralman (lower-body injury) sat out his third consecutive game, but took part in the morning skate. Cooper is noncommittal about when Stralman will be back. ... Lightning RW Ryan Callahan and D Braydon Coburn were healthy scratches for the second straight game. ... Tampa Bay scored 325 goals in 201819, the most by any team in 23 years. Columbus hosts Game 3 on Sunday night.
Sundqvist lifts Blues over Jets
Judy OWEN The Canadian Press
WINNIPEG — Oskar Sundqvist scored twice to propel the St. Louis Blues to a 4-3 victory over the Winnipeg Jets on Friday in Game 2 of their Western Conference opening-round playoff series.
The Blues lead the best-of-seven matchup 2-0 and host Game 3 on Sunday.
Pat Maroon and Ryan O’Reilly, with the gamewinner, also scored for St. Louis. Rookie netminder Jordan Binnington made 26 saves for the visitors.
Blake Wheeler and Mark Scheifele each had a goal and one assist for Winnipeg. Patrik Laine also scored and Dustin Byfuglien contributed a pair of assists.
Connor Hellebuyck stopped 28 shots for the Jets.
O’Reilly gave the Blues the 4-3 lead at 3:46 of the third when he used Jets defenceman
Ben Chiarot as a screen to beat Hellebuyck on the blocker side. It was his first playoff goal since 2014 while he was with Colorado. The teams were tied 1-1 after the first period and 3-3 following the second.
SUNDQVIST
The first and second periods featured good and bad times for Scheifele.
The Jets went on the power play 3:58 into the first period after O’Reilly was called for tripping, but Scheifele took an interference penalty 1:03 into the man advantage.
After Winnipeg defenceman Josh Morrissey bobbled the puck in the neutral zone, Sundqvist and Jay Bouwmeester capitalized with a two-onone and Sundqvist beat Hellebuyck at 5:23. Scheifele was dinged for another interference penalty two minutes later, and then with 17 seconds remaining in the penalty kill, Jets forward Andrew Copp was sent to the box for cross-checking.
The Jets survived and Scheifele made up for it when he sent a pass from behind the net out to Wheeler for the captain’s goal at 12:01. Shots on goal were tied 8-8 after the first. With Blues defenceman Robert Bortuzzo off for interference, Laine blasted a shot past Binnington for a 2-1 lead at 2:49 that sparked chants of “Go Jets Go.”
St. Louis quieted down the crowd by responding with goals by Maroon and Sundqvist by the 9:50 mark, but Scheifele stepped up with a power-play goal to tie it 3-3 with 1:05 left in the second.
The Blues held a 23-14 margin in shots on goal after two periods. Bortuzzo went to the dressing with a bleeding wrist midway through the third period, but returned.
Jets forward Mathieu Perreault left the morning skate early with an undisclosed injury and didn’t play, but winger Brandon Tanev returned after missing three games with a hand injury.
p.m. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 17 Boston at Toronto, 7 p.m. Nashville at Dallas, 8 p.m. Calgary at Colorado, 10 p.m. THURSDAY, APRIL 18 Washington at Carolina, 7 p.m. x-Pittsburgh at N.Y. Islanders, TBA x-St. Louis at Winnipeg, TBA x-Vegas at San Jose, TBA FRIDAY, APRIL 19 x-Columbus at Tampa Bay, TBA x-Toronto at Boston, TBA x-Colorado at Calgary, TBA SATURDAY, APRIL 20 x-Carolina at Washington, TBA x-N.Y. Islanders at Pittsburgh, TBA x-Dallas at Nashville, TBA x-Winnipeg at St. Louis, TBA SUNDAY, APRIL 21 x-Tampa Bay at Columbus, TBA x-Boston at Toronto, TBA x-Calgary at Colorado, TBA x-San Jose at Vegas, TBA MONDAY, APRIL 22 x-Washington at Carolina, TBA x-Pittsburgh at N.Y. Islanders, TBA x-Nashville at Dallas, TBA x-St. Louis at Winnipeg, TBA TUESDAY, APRIL 23
MONDAY, APRIL 22
APRIL
APRIL
Mark
AP PHOTO
Tampa Bay Lightning defenseman Dan Girardi tries to move the puck away from Columbus Blue Jackets center Ryan Dzingel during Game 2 of an NHL Eastern Conference first-round hockey playoff series on Friday.
The red-cloaked responsibility of Elisabeth Moss
The Washington Post
AUSTIN, Texas – Elisabeth Moss wants to go to an honest place.
If you can’t watch what we’re making, she says, how can you look out and confront what’s happening around you in our country and in this world?
Sitting at a two-top near a hotel bar to promote the nationwide release of her indie film Her Smell, the conversation casually turns to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. As she tells it, Moss was shooting a scene at the Lincoln Memorial for the third season of The Handmaid’s Tale when she looked down at her feet and saw the engraved space honoring King’s landmark I Have a Dream address. Then, in her red handmaid’s cloak, she knelt down on the marker. Moss, who has forged June “Offred” Osborne – and Peggy Olson before her – into some of legacy television’s most notable yet unplanned feminist icons of the last dozen years, didn’t shy away from recognizing the link between the show and some of the political and social issues unfolding in the country. She even calls it cathartic. “I don’t know how many people have this experience of being in that costume on those steps,” she says, “with the president a few blocks away making massive decisions that will affect immigration and the freedom and rights of many citizens.” If the red cloak is now the international protest symbol for women’s issues, whether it’s in support for reproductive rights abroad or against a Supreme Court nominee in the United States, then Moss, or her character, is the face of that branch of the resistance.
Moss hopes Gilead is “a long walk” from President Donald Trump’s America, but that doesn’t change the present reality. It’s a role she admittedly wishes she didn’t have to take on, but says she remains honoured for the responsibility in the “really unusual circumstance.”
“How would that feel for you?” she says, calling the situation “nuts.” “The fact that it’s entered the culture the way it has is incredibly unusual. I wish it was fantasy. I
wish it was Game of Thrones, you know? I wish it was like, ‘This is crazy!’ “But unfortunately, it’s not.” If you ask her, Moss will tell you that Her Smell was the hardest thing she’s ever done. The angst, anger and depression of ‘90s grunge put Moss – who grew up with jazz and blues musicians for parents and adored Paula Abdul and whose first concert was Michael Jackson’s Bad tour – squarely out of her element.
Becky Something, Moss’s character in the fictional biopic, is the toxic, self-destructive frontwoman of the riot grrrl feminist punk movement.
She is less Courtney Love and more Kurt Cobain, as well as Amy Winehouse, Marilyn Monroe and James Dean – those who struggled with a life of incredible fame mixed with crippling addiction. You can’t take your eyes off the anxiety and instability of Becky, whose jarring benders, violent outbursts and subsequent sobriety are both gripping and holistically awkward. From the time she debuted on Mad Men in 2007 until now, heading into her third season on another critically acclaimed show and booking lead roles in feature films at a breakneck pace, the focus on the actress has never been higher.
But there’s a price. With the increased spotlight on Moss and her work has come questions from fans, colleagues and critics regarding her beliefs in the Church of Scientology. She declines to expand on those criticisms but says she stands by what she describes as a personal matter.
“What I’ll say is, honestly, I have very little control over what is mine and what is private and what isn’t,” Moss says. “It’s been my choice to keep certain things private and not talk about, ‘cause otherwise it sort of feels that you don’t have anything that’s personal. The truth is what I believe, and what’s important to me is in my work. Often, the things I stand for, the things that mean something to me and my heart, I try to put into my work.”
Artwork vested with legal rights
The Canadian Press
WINNIPEG – An art installation honouring survivors of residential schools is being recognized as a “living entity” in an agreement combining Indigenous teachings and Western law.
The Canadian Museum for Human Rights and First Nations artist Carey Newman are signing an agreement Friday to be joint stewards of The Witness Blanket, which is comprised of more than 800 items collected from the sites and survivors of residential schools.
Newman, a Kwagiulth and Coast Salish artist from Vancouver Island, said he has never felt ownership of the 12-metre-long installation, but rather a responsibility to honour the survivors’ stories it carries. In devising a way to share this responsibility with the CMHR, Newman said he and the Crown-owned
museum came to an “unprecedented” agreement that would vest legal rights with the artwork itself, rather than treating it like a transfer of property.
“It’s a Crown corporation really following through on the idea of being Indigenous-led, of reconciliation,” Newman said. “By putting the rights with the work, and putting responsibilities with ourselves, we’ve become collaborators trying to figure out our way forward.”
Heather Bidzinski, the CMHR’s head of collections, said the museum will care for The Witness Blanket working in co-operation with Newman to ensure the artwork’s rights are being respected in keeping with Indigenous cultural practices.
The stewardship agreement will be ratified both in written documents and an oral ceremony to be held near Newman’s home territory of Kwakwaka’wakw at a traditional feast later this year.
Stormy Daniels coming to B.C.
The Canadian Press American adult film star and author of a tell-all book about her alleged affair with U.S. President Donald Trump is coming to Kamloops.
Stormy Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, will be holding a meet and greet at the Duchess nightclub on June 2 to promote her book Full Disclosure.
The city is the only Canadian stop listed on Daniels’ website. Riis Ingalls, an event promoter with the club, says it’s an opportunity for fans to hear her speak, get photos and autographs.
In 2018, Daniels became embroiled in a legal dispute with Trump and his lawyer Michael Cohen.
Trump and his surrogates allegedly paid $130,000 to silence Daniels about an affair she says she had with him in 2006.
GUNPOWDER & SKY VIA WASHINGTON POST PHOTO
Elisabeth Moss stars as Becky Something in Her Smell.
How Noah’s wife saw the flood
The Washington Post
In the beginning, the word of God was mediated by men, and they believed patriarchy to be a celestial order, and the work of women went unrecognized. Things need to change around here. We might start with Naamah, Sarah Blake’s fresh telling of the flood story as seen by Noah’s wife, now rescued from submergence.
Blasphemous, carnal and committed to exaltation, Naamah delivers its truths in a torrent of heresies. In biblical exegeses, Judaic scholars named Noah’s wife Naamah. With her modern interpretation of the Book of Genesis, Blake fills the mostly absent references with a wholly unruly woman.
No thought nor indiscretion is too despicable to escape Blake’s empathy as she follows Naamah through construction of the ark, the wet vengeance of God and her becalmed wait – afloat with her husband, three sons, their wives and the stink of sacred animals – for land. Stripping this primeval creation story down to its characters, Blake lays bare the biblical tendency to shunt aside the women from whose bodies our society emerged.
God disappoints. Naamah seeks rapture in the company of women, lovers to whom she cannot lay claim, belonging, as they do, to other men, even her son. Startled by her own betrayals, she takes comfort in the company of the dead, who understand her despair.
Blake knows the world of women – “every sight a chore to be done” – and the divine burden of motherhood. Naamah is reluctant to claim her birthright after the “great abandonment” of the flood. For this mythological matriarch, forgetting is no mercy. Embodying a collective trauma, inundated by doubt and desire, nevertheless, she persists.
The Bible is the most translated and enduring work of literary fiction, a genre-crossing compendium of psalms and stories written by many authors over the span of centuries. Their combined text, an intergenerational collage of forms, continues to inspire modern iterations like Blake’s, a fabulist expansion upon the lean rigor of Colm Toíbin’s The Testament of Mary and an urgent feminist response to the Old Testament and reworkings of its flood myth by Robert Coover and Bernard Malamud.
Blake is a poet. In her debut novel, Naamah escapes the hold of the ark to feel God’s wrath on its deck, “her brown skin beaten pink,” her body too tender to be held for days, “overwhelmed by her new understanding of the deaths of the people God no longer wanted.” In her grief, “Naamah wonders if God has considered this: women so distrustful of Him that they might never bear children for the new world.” Together, the family reckons with their responsibility to salvage entire species from extinction, including our own.
Sinful and spared, they find purpose in a fate they survive under duress and in direct conversation with God.
Naamah is saddled with hallucinatory insights that scare her and yet answer a deep need for transcendence. Sometimes, she can’t see the animals. Sometimes, she can breathe underwater, where she faces angelic intervention with equanimity and no small amount of lust.
Blake intersperses her stark tale with Naamah’s lush, animist dreams, her body metamorphosing at will, disgorging from her subconscious the carcasses of whales ashimmer with bees.
Traveling through millennia, her descendant Sarai appears to affirm the flourishing of their family tree, and with it, humanity.
In these chapters, time – and the novel’s pacing – slackens, expands, pivots and delivers the protagonist back to the narrative like a tornado tearing through town only to set a cradled babe, yet living, on the earth.
Annie Dillard wrote, “It is a weakening and discolouring idea, that rustic people knew God personally once upon a time – or even knew selflessness or courage or literature – but that it is too late for us. In fact, the absolute is available to everyone in every age. There never was a more holy age than ours, and never a less.”
No longer at the beginning of our journey, like Naamah we are “conspicuous with living,” to borrow Blake’s phrase, and perhaps have sighted our end. As the seas rise, our society will meet the consequences of collective inaction.
What will we save, and whom?
To which path are we committed, since innocence is gone and knowledge free for the taking?
Naamah dares us to centre the experience and wisdom of women as we devise answers to these questions, reminding us that the final covenant – our future – belongs to our children, the latest of a long lineage that emerged, crawling, from the same bitter water to which we will return.
WASHINGTON POST HANDOUT IMAGE
Sarah Blake’s Naamah recasts the biblical flood story from a woman’s perspective.
Jack took their lives but not their stories
The Washington Post
Hallie Rubenhold’s hard-edged, heartbreaking biographies of the five women killed by Jack the Ripper over two months in 1888 offer a blistering counter-narrative to the “male, authoritarian, and middle class” legend of a demonic superman preying on prostitutes. Three of these women were not prostitutes at all, but wives and mothers fallen on hard times. Another had been forced into state-regulated prostitution in Sweden by an out-of-wedlock pregnancy; she emigrated to London as a housemaid and later married. Only the final victim worked in the sex trade for most of her short existence. Resurrecting these women’s complicated lives through diligent research in public records, Rubenhold aims to restore them to history as full human beings. Equally important, she places them in context within the beleaguered Victorian working class, struggling to survive in the brutal society forged by the Industrial Revolution.
She opens with a pointed contrast between two 1887 events: Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee in June and an encampment of homeless people in Trafalgar Square broken up by police in November. Among those arrested was 42-year-old Polly Nichols; a year later, she was the Ripper’s first victim. On the day she went to jail, Polly was an angry drunk, known to police as a habitual beggar. But she spent her early years in the respectable working class, daughter of a blacksmith and the wife of a printer. Nonetheless, life was hard. Polly had five children, and the ever-expanding family meant finances were always precarious. Throughout the book, Rubenhold uses the particulars of her subjects’ lives as a springboard to depict social circumstances that shaped millions of lives. When Polly left her husband as the result of his affair with a neighbour, the author reminds us, divorce was economically impossible for working-class women. The only way to get an official separation was to demonstrate destitution by entering one of Victorian England’s feared and despised workhouses; officials might then order the estranged spouse to provide (minimal) support. Polly’s reluctant arrival at the Lambeth Union Workhouse was the beginning of a long downward slide oiled by alcohol. It included a liaison with another man, domestic service, “tramping” as an itinerant labourer, further residences in the workhouse and frequent stays in London’s lodging houses.
These filthy, dangerous dives rented beds for the night to those too poor for regular housing. On the night she was killed, Polly told a friend, “I have had my lodging money three times today and I have spent it.” Because her body was found on the street, police assumed she was soliciting. On the contrary, Rubenhold demonstrates, homeless women often “slept rough” when they didn’t have the price of a bed. Three of the Ripper’s victims – Polly, Annie Chapman and Kate Eddowes – were almost certainly sleeping rough when they were murdered. The sole verifiable prostitute, Mary Jane Kelly, was the only one killed in her room. Elisabeth Stride, the Swedish immigrant, may have been seen arguing with a man before her death and may have been soliciting, but she may also have gone out to drink.
Alcohol and desperation were common denominators among these women. Annie’s addiction propelled her from the top of the working class, wife of the head coachman on a country estate, into a handto-mouth existence hawking crocheted antimacassars and flowers. Free-spirited Kate found a sociable refuge from backbreaking labour in a tinware factory at the local public house; drink became a problem and stays in the workhouse a necessity after her marriage to a roving ballad-seller collapsed in poverty and violence. For Elisabeth, alcohol may have eased the symptoms of syphilis acquired 20 years earlier in Sweden. Mary Jane Kelly would have tippled cautiously during her days in a high-end brothel in London’s posh West End, but that ended when she accepted the offer of a Paris trip from a “gentleman” who turned out to be a trafficker. She managed to escape but had to relocate and wound up in a squalid single room in Whitechapel. Mary Jane appeared to be very drunk when a neighbour saw her take a man into that room around midnight the night she died. Rubenhold does not pretend her subjects were admirable characters, but she makes a compelling case that “the cards were stacked against (them) from birth.”
In a society where female employment options were drastically limited, poor women separated from their husbands or otherwise unable to marry often cohabited with men as a matter of economic necessity. All five of the Ripper’s victims did at one time or another, so it was all too predictable that they would be falsely lumped together as “prostitutes,” stigmatized by the same punitive code that considered poverty a moral failing.
WASHINGTON POST HANDOUT IMAGE
Jack the Ripper’s victims are brought to the forefront in Hallie Rubenhold’s The Five.
For some, declutter is a bad word
The Washington Post Books are more than objects. They are filled with ideas, stories, versions of ourselves, memories. Bookshelves are like your wardrobe: They send a message. And the message these famous book lovers shared with us is loud and clear: Books spark joy.
Jane Green
I’ve run out of space. Books are starting to get stacked up on the floor, underneath tables, underneath chairs, on top of tables. They’re everywhere. With no more room on the bookshelves, I’ve been eyeing this gorgeous French armoire that takes up an entire wall. That wall is just perfect for shelves and would make the room warmer. I know, however, that my husband really likes the armoire. He sees: storage, storage, storage. I see: books, books, books. We’ll see who wins.
For years, I couldn’t get rid of anything. I have had to learn to manage the flow. Paperbacks I tend not to keep unless I love them and know I’m going to reread them. Hardcovers are really hard for me to get rid of. They all signify a time in my life. They all have stories around the stories. I will sometimes just stand there and look at my books and remember. The first place I go in someone’s house is their bookshelves. You can tell exactly who they are.
I used to do something that I now realize was a bit creepy. After my first book was published and very successful, I was looking for a flat in London. Almost every flat I went into had my book on the shelf. I’d take it down and sign it! Sometimes, I even personalized it: “To Julia, with love, Jane Green.” I’ve never heard from anyone, but if they ever come across that, they’ll likely freak out.
Last summer, I started a little mobile library called the Remarkable Bookcycle. For 35 years, there was a bright pink bookstore in my town called Remarkable Book Shop. We had this cargo tricycle just sitting in our garage. I paid a high school student to turn it into a mobile free library. We cycle it around the beach in summer. I lurk around the bookcycle; I love to watch what happens. What’s extraordinary is that everyone gathers around the bookcycle and has conversations. I’m now able to get rid of books much more easily knowing they’re going to a good home. I think I like to be surrounded by books when I’m writing, but the truth is I don’t. I’m easily distracted. I’ve done my best writing at my local public library in one of those little cubbies with noise-canceling headphones. If I need to do some research, I just make a note for later. If I go to a book or online, the whole day could be gone. Writing takes focus, and books pull mine in a million directions.
I subscribe to Nancy Lancaster’s rule of decorating; she’s an American decorator who moved to England in the ‘20s. She brought the English country-house style into the mainstream. Her rules were that a home should always have books, candles and flowers. I walk into so many houses today that have been decorated. They’re exquisite. I find them beautiful: two artfully placed objets, stunning coffee table books. For a minute, I think, “I wish my house looked like this.” But then I remember I don’t feel like taking off my shoes and curling up on the sofa in these homes. In fact, I sit there terrified I’m going to spill red wine. A home needs a bit of curated clutter, and that curated clutter has to include things that tell the story of your life, of what you love. For me, that’s books.
Martellus Bennett
I have a couple thousand books now, so I had to take my library out of the house and into my studio. But we still have books all over the house. I like to stack them on the floor, use them as decoration, put them on a coffee table. I like them within reach. When you’re surrounded by them, you’re more inspired to pick them up. We’re in a new house and even my wife said, “I kind of miss the books. Where are we going to put them?”
I was like, “I thought you’d never ask.” I plan on building a library in the house so my daughter can be surrounded by them. I want shelves on the staircase, too, so you’re reminded to read every time you walk up and down. When you’re surrounded by books it reminds you of what you don’t know.
Whenever I start a project, I start with books. I don’t go to the Internet. On the Internet, algorithms are the new librarian. And you can pay the algorithm to offer up certain content. That’s why everything starts to feel the same, because we’re all going to the same source. I want to find my own result. I look at every book as a conversation. I may never get to meet that person or talk to them, but I can still learn so much from them through their books. I organize by ideas. If I’m writing about dinosaurs, I’ll have every single book about dinosaurs already in the same section – children’s books, history books, comic books. For me, Alice in Wonderland and Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy are together because they’re both about traveling through another universe, finding another world.
I like to have a book in my hand. It’s super motivating when you can look back and see how much you’ve already read, how many pages are behind you. It’s like running: If you can look back and see how far you’ve come, you’re inspired to keep on going. That’s
why e-readers are hard. I tried, but I like to feel things. I like to look around me and see all the books, all the possibilities. I don’t ever want to be the smartest person in the room. As long as I have books around me, I won’t be.
José Andrés
My book collection is little bit messy. I have books in the bathroom, books in the TV room. My wife and I both have books in the bedroom, on both sides of the bed. Books in the main library, books in the dining room. And in the kitchen, we have whatever we are working with at that moment. Right now, it’s a book from a chef in Spain, from the 1890s. I have a lot of books everywhere. It gives you a feeling of protection. I like the smell of old books – especially old books that have a dried flower, a piece of paper, a note on the edge. It’s fascinating. For a guy like me who left
his country young, it’s almost like my cape. I’m more powerful with them around.
The Kindle works very well for new books. But when you want to have a true window into the past, if you have the original version of it, it’s very powerful. If you don’t really understand the first edition of The Joy of Cooking, then you really don’t understand The Joy of Cooking. The first Joy gives you a window into what was happening in America in the beginning of the 1900s. Sometimes we forget that more information doesn’t equal better information.
I have enough books in my house for the rest of my lifetime.
I have more than 30 Japanese manga books that I haven’t even opened, and at least 26 comic books from a Spanish comic. I don’t give away books to make room for more. I’m not in that moment in my life yet. I’m still a keeper.
A book that I have in my bed-
room is by Leopoldo Alas, a very important novelist in Spain at the end of the 19th century. His novel Adios, Cordera tells the story of two kids in a rural Spanish area that’s meeting new technology. It’s a beautiful story that I’ve read several times. I like melancholy, and this is a very melancholy book. They see their cow, Cordera, leaving on the train. And then one of the boys leaves on the same train to go to war. It’s about how modernity is great sometimes, but it can disturb the peaceful life of normal people who just want to live their lives. Every time I read this book, I find something new. The connection to Washington, for example. I had a place across the street from the Old Post Office, and there’s a plaque stating it was where the first commercial telegraph was sent. I thought that was a hint when I read it, of all things connecting: that all these stories mix together in the beautiful chaos of life.
WASHINGTON POST PHOTO
Martellus Bennett, former NFL player, at his studio in Los Angeles.
Below left, José Andrés in the library of his Bethesda, Md., home and, below right, bestselling author Jane Green in her Westport, Ct. home.
WASHINGTON POST PHOTOS
LAMOTHE
Normand Michel
With great sorrow, the Lamothe family announces the sudden and tragic passing of Norm on April 6, 2019 at the age of 42 years.
Norm was born April 21, 1976 in Mackenzie, BC to Norm Sr. and Jutta Lamothe. Raised in Edmonton, AB, Norm spent many happy summers at the family cabin on Lake Bednesti, outside Prince George. From a young age, Norm embraced life outdoors, swimming and boating in the summers and skiing and skating in the winters. Norm and his brother, Chris, spent many hours playing lacrosse and hockey. As a young man, Norm moved to Jasper, AB, working in the ski shop at Marmot Basin. He later worked for Parks Canada in Jasper and spent time in the backcountry building and repairing trails. Norm enjoyed long road trips on his motorcycle in the company of good friends. In Jasper, Norm found a community of likeminded adventurers with whom he formed deep, lasting friendships, none more so than the love he found with Melissa Warren. Melissa and Norm enjoyed many wonderful travels together; a notable trip involved camping and surfing down the Oregon and California coast. They married in Prince George on June 29, 2013.
In 2013, Norm received his arborist certification and established Bednesti Tree Services in Prince George. In a few short years, he and his company developed a reputation for outstanding workmanship and service to the community. Norm’s gregarious nature, kind heart, warm voice, and friendly smile endeared him to all who knew him. He was a beloved son, brother, nephew, father, husband, cousin, uncle, and friend. As successful as he was in his work, Norm found no greater joy than his role as a husband to Melissa and a father to Olivia and Christopher. He thrilled at sharing his passion for the outdoors with his children, teaching them to ski and taking them skating during the winter. Norm also enjoyed time with his family in Mexico, where he would take Olivia and Chris snorkeling and play with them on the beach; every trip to Mexico, Norm would shave his beard so he could do one of his favorite water activities: scuba diving with sharks. He was immensely proud of the family he and Melissa created; he loved sharing laughter and hugs with all of them.
Left behind with many wonderful memories are his wife, Melissa; his children, Olivia and Christopher; his mother, Jutta; and many, many other family and friends. He was preceded in death by his brother Chris, and father, Norm Sr. A memorial service will be held at the Prince George Civic Centre on Sunday, April 14, 2019 at 3:00pm, 808 Canada Games Way. The family asks that in lieu of flowers, donations be made to the memorial established by the family.
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The markets today
TORONTO (CP) — Canada’s main stock index set another 2019 high Friday on gains by the energy sector and a strong start to first-quarter results in the banking sector.
The S&P/TSX composite index closed up 81.06 points at 16,480.53, after reaching 16,487.14 shortly after the open. That’s just a half a percentage point off the all-time high set last summer.
The market was driven by a strong performance from the energy sector on the back of higher oil prices and a blockbuster US$33-billion acquisition of Anadarko Petroleum by Chevron, the largest such deal in a decade, says Cavan Yie, a portfolio manager at Manulife Asset Management.
The energy sector was led by Encana Corp. and Crescent Point Energy Corp, which rose 5.33 and 5.22 per cent respectively.
The transaction also helped market sentiment as whole, he noted, as all 11 major sectors gained ground.
Oil prices rose with the May crude contract up 31 cents at US$63.89 per barrel and the natural gas contract was down 0.4 of a cent at $2.66 per mmBTU.
The influential financials sector also gained on the day after J.P. Morgan and Wells Fargo got the quarterly results rolling by beating analyst forecasts after posting solid profits. Toronto-Dominion Bank was up 1.07 per cent, followed by the National Bank of Canada.
Analysts had predicted that overall U.S. corporate earnings would decrease about 2.5 per cent on the S&P 500 for the first year-over-year fall in about three years.
Yie said gains this year in Canada have been driven by the two sectors that have been huge laggards over the past year or two.
The Toronto market rose for the 13th week of 2019, gaining 15 per cent year-to-date and up almost 20 per cent from December’s low.
U.S. markets have similarly recovered and are nearing new highs. Yie said there’s more room to run because of the supportive interest rate environment.
In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average was up 269.25 points at 26,412.30. The S&P 500 index was up 19.09 points at 2,907.41, while the Nasdaq composite was up 36.80 at 7,984.16.
The Canadian dollar traded at an average of 75.02 cents US, up from an average of 74.75 cents US on Thursday.
The June gold contract was up $1.90 at $1,295.20 an ounce and the May copper contract was up 5.9 cents at US$2.95 a pound.
Disney unveils streaming service
The Associated Press
SAN FRANCISCO – Disney raised the curtain on a hotly anticipated video steaming service that’s aiming to topple industry pioneer Netflix, once a valuable ally of the Magic Kingdom. The service, called Disney Plus, has been in the works for more than year, but Thursday marked the first time that the longtime entertainment powerhouse has laid out plans for its attack on Netflix and a formidable cast of competitors, including Amazon, HBO Go and Showtime Anytime.
Disney Plus will roll out in the U.S. on Nov. 12 at a price of $6.99 per month, or $69.99 per year.
That’s well below the $13 monthly fee Netflix charges for its most popular streaming plan, signalling Disney’s determination to woo subscribers as it vies to become a major player in a field that has turned “binge watching” into a common ritual.
Like Netflix, Disney Plus will be free of ads. Subscribers will be able to download all of the shows and movies on Disney’s service to watch offline.
Netflix will still have a far deeper video programming lineup after spending tens of billions of dollars during the past six years on original shows such as House of Cards, Stranger Things and The Crown.
But Disney Plus will be able to draw upon a library of revered films dating back several decades while it also forges into original programming.
Its animated classics, including Aladdin and The Jungle Book will be available on the service when it launches.
New shows already on tap include The Mandalorian, the first live action Star Wars series, created by Jon Favreau; a prequel to the Star Wars film Rogue One, starring Diego Luna; a series about the Marvel character
Loki, starring Tom Hiddleston; a rebooted High School Musical series; and a new documentary series focused on Disney.
Disney is approaching the streaming industry from a “position of strength, confidence and unbridled optimism,” CEO Bob Iger said Thursday.
Iger has led the company since 2005 and expects to step down when his contract ends in 2021.
The service’s entire lineup will cover five categories: Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars and National Geographic.
Although Disney has an enviable track record of producing shows and films that attract huge audiences, its attempt to build its own Netflix is risky.
To make the leap, Disney ended a lucrative licensing relationship with Netflix, which had become the video streaming home for its latest films after their theatrical release, as well as many of its TV series and classic movies.
But now movies that came out in 2019, and going forward, will be streamed only on Disney Plus. That includes Captain Marvel, which came out earlier this year; Avengers: Endgame, which debuts in late April; and the upcoming Toy Story 4, live-action movies The Lion King and Aladdin; and Star Wars Episode IX.
In many ways, it’s hard to compare Netflix with Disney because of the widely different types of shows each offers, said eMarketer analyst Paul Verna.
“The interesting thing is both companies have ended up in the same place, but they’ve come to it from vastly different backgrounds,” he said.
Disney will also contend with a new streaming service from Apple, which is expected to be released in the fall.
Apple has not yet said how much its service will cost or when exactly it will launch.
Last month, Disney completed its biggest
deal yet with its $71 billion acquisition of Fox’s entertainment business. The first 30 seasons of The Simpsons will now stream exclusively on Disney Plus.
The Fox takeover helps Disney tighten its control over TV shows and movies from start to finish – from creating the programs to distributing them though television channels, movie theatres, streaming services and other avenues. Disney will also get valuable data on customers and their entertainment-viewing habits, which it can then use to sell advertising.
The Fox deal also gave Disney a controlling stake in Hulu. Iger has said Hulu will continue to offer general entertainment programming while Disney Plus will be focused on family fare.
Along with its strong brand, Disney has the advantage of having a clear strategy for each of its streaming services, Verna said, including Disney Plus, Hulu and ESPN Plus. Disney executives hinted the company would “likely” bundle the three at a discounted price, but declined to give more details.
Terminating its deal with Netflix will cost Disney about $150 million in licensing revenue alone during its current fiscal year ending in September.
Disney is betting its new service will quickly offset that.
By dangling a mix of familiar franchises and beloved animated classics, along with original programming, it figures the new service will be irresistible to families, even if they already subscribe to other services. It expects Disney Plus to be profitable during its 2024 fiscal year.
The plunge into video streaming is likely to confront Disney with new challenges. One of the biggest dilemmas will centre on how long Disney waits after a new film’s theatrical release to make it available on its new streaming service.
Netflix drops $8B in value on Disney news
Bloomberg Netflix Inc. lost as much as $8 billion in market capitalization in a few minutes of trading on Walt Disney Co.’s news of its upcoming – and cheaper – rival streaming service.
Disney unveiled details of the service on Thursday after the close, saying it would launch Nov. 12 at a price of $7 a month, or $70 a year. That undercuts Netflix, whose most popular U.S. plan costs about $11 a month.
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Netflix shares fell as much as five per cent to $349.36 shortly after the open in New York Friday, sending its market as low as $152.5 billion.
Analysts have been sanguine about Netflix’s rising subscription prices, which haven’t seriously dented its 60 million-strong U.S. customer base. Still, the company has rarely faced a challenge like the deep-pocketed Disney, which is willing to lose money for years on Disney+ as it moves to grab market share. Disney went the opposite way. Its shares jumped to a record high, adding as much as $25 billion in market value, for a total of about $235 billion.
The entertainment giant presented Disney+ on a sound stage used to make the original Mary Poppins, delivering an Applestyle presentation of the online product. The service will live or die based on its content – and that’s where Disney made a big statement. Disney+ will feature an arsenal of kidfriendly programming, including 13 classic animated movies, 21 Pixar features, original series, and material from its Marvel and Star Wars franchises.
This image provided by Disney shows a product image of Disney Plus on a tablet. The video steaming service has been in the works for more than a year and will roll out this November.
Kindergarten teacher Haniyfa Scott gives a lesson during class in Montreal on
Immigrants, visible minorities feel targeted by religious laws
The Canadian Press
MONTREAL – Immigrants and visible minorities are noticing how some of the most significant pieces of legislation introduced by the Quebec government since it took power last October have something in common: the bills disproportionately affect them. Quebec’s Bill 21, which bans some public sector employees including teachers and police officers from wearing religious symbols, has drawn widespread criticism since it was tabled it last month. The bill targets all religious symbols. But Haniyfa Scott, a teacher at Montreal’s Carlyle Elementary School, says it is Muslim women who wear the hijab – as she does – who will feel it the most.
“I’d like for the government to live a week in the shoes of all the people they are targeting,” she said. While the secularism bill has grabbed a lot of attention, two other major pieces of legislation addressing immigration levels and the province’s taxi industry have had outsized effects on the province’s minority communities. Bill 17, tabled last month, overhauls a taxi industry that is heavily composed of immigrants. Another bill affecting immigrants was tabled in February. Bill 9 would allow the government to be more selective over who receives permanent residency. Shortly after introducing the bill, the government said would throw out a backlog of 18,000 immigration applications, including roughly 3,700 applications from people already residing in the province.
Living with Jesus as king
In June 2011, I was one of the many people who took the Skytrain to downtown Vancouver for Game 7 of the Stanley Cup finals against the Boston Bruins. It was incredible to be part of the masses and to see thousands of people place all of their hope in their team to carry them all the way to give them what they want.
As I was heading downtown everyone started singing cheers, or groups of people started shouting with great, Messiah-like expectations: “We want the cup, we want the cup!” People could taste it.
But those same crowds who were yelling ‘We want the cup!’ were the same ones destroying the city in rebellion and crucifying the Canucks as false Messiahs
CLERGY
COMMENT
ANDREW AUKEMA CHRISTIAN REFORMED CHURCH OF PRINCE GEORGE
five hours later. It was easy to bandwagon with the Canucks when they were a source of hope and fulfillment. But they had few followers when they fell short of their goal.
That afternoon in Vancouver almost eight years ago was a lot like Palm Sunday in Jerusalem 2,000 years ago. And that evening in Vancouver was more like Good Friday because the crowds that were yelling “Hosanna to the Son of David!
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” were the same people yelling “crucify him!” to Pilate five days later. Palm Sunday spirituality shows us how our relationship with Jesus can change – and change quickly.
On Palm Sunday, we give all the glory to God and sing his praises and sometimes wave palm branches – we name Christ as king. But it is one thing to name him king on Sunday, and it is another thing to live with Him as king on Friday, let alone Monday, or a mere five hours later.
Do we let him be the kind of king that we need on Monday – taking our everyday lives and experiences and transforming them into His image of what it means to live as redeemed people, saved through
N.B. MLA questions legislature prayer
The Canadian Press
FREDERICTON – A Green Party legislator has sparked a debate over mandatory Christian prayers in New Brunswick’s legislative assembly, calling instead for periods of silence as practised in Quebec.
Kevin Arseneau said that when the house returns in May he’ll bring in a motion calling for an exploration of practices other than the speaking of Christian prayers for the Queen, the legislature and the Lord’s Prayer before legislature business commences.
“I find it’s exclusive. It’s not inclusive enough. In New Brunswick we have many people, practising many religions. And there’s also the separation of state and religion,” said the member for Kent North. “A moment of silence would generate the inclusivity and give everyone a chance to reflect in their own manner.”
However, the push for change by Arseneau – who has declined to take his turn speaking the prayers in the assembly – has been swiftly shut down by Tory Premier Blaine Higgs.
Higgs said last week he finds it sad that some are attempting to “pick away” at historical traditions in the province, and he won’t change the prayer practices so long as he’s premier.
A spokeswoman for Kris Austin, the leader of the People’s Alliance Party of New Brunswick, said her leader is on the record opposing Arseneau’s plan.
The People’s Alliance has been providing support to the minority Tory government.
However, Arseneau said the tradition argument from Higgs and Austin isn’t sufficient. He said he’ll carry on his push to have a system of silence similar to that practised in other provincial and municipal jurisdictions.
Raissa Marks, a 39-year-old resident of Riverview, N.B., wrote to Arseneau to express her support of his effort.
“When I learned last week that they did a Christian prayer at the beginning of the legislature... I felt they were doing something there that didn’t represent me and my religion,” she said. “I think this has opened an important conversation and reflection among those who pay attention to what’s going on.”
Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia both continue to have Christian prayers said before the legislature opens to the public, while there is no prayer in Newfoundland and Labrador.
Jesus’ death and resurrection.
Or, by the time that Friday comes around is he no longer a part of our life and we end up disowning him when people look for Him in us, like taking off the jersey after your team loses.
It is easy to live with Jesus as king when everything is going our way. But can we live with him as king when we have to stand up for what is right, when we have to forgive someone, or confess something, when we have to give up a bad habit that goes against the king?
Many people are willing to live with Jesus as a good guy, or as a consultant, or an inspiration. But Jesus did not come to a hip guru with a following.
Secular life leads to a dead end
Just before Holy Week gives rise to more personal reflections, the time has come to address the sacred versus the secular. On this point, more than any other, I am haunted by a deep skepticism regarding the foundational concepts of our “secular age,” as Charles Taylor labelled it. This series began with the quip, “man is not a political animal but a religious one.” What follows are my interpretations of our time that lend credence to that line of argument. First is man himself. Every culture he has ever created has left a central role to religion, and even now, in the most secular times, all of his possessions, and sometimes even his body, are littered with expressions or symbols he believes to be truly profound, almost transcendent.
The second evidence is science,
RIGHT OF CENTRE NATHAN GIEDE
well recognized as simply taking up the mantle of the religious sphere that preceded it. All science is the study of matter and energy; by its very nature, any people group could have made the steam engine, electricity, or antibiotics with the proper method – quite the opposite of a miracle. Yet, both its experts and creations are given the same reverence as high priests and oracles – despite their innumerable and obvious failures.
Lastly, the secular paradigm frames everything, from human nature and gender to climate change and the cosmos. There is nothing materialism and positivism cannot answer: sanctioned
and enforced by state authorities, secularism is both omniscient and omnipotent.
Ergo, whether people hold any particularly religious values or not, they always act upon their beliefs as if they are, even rationalizing or defending them with the same moral words. If one subscribes to the idea that before the Enlightenment, life was nasty, brutish and short, I’ll happily take them on a tour of modernity’s sins: from chattel slavery and abortion to the great slaughters and show trials of the 20th century.
The Inquisition and the Crusades have nothing on us.
Even our highest ideals ring some very old bells. What is the European Union but the Holy Roman Empire started again? What are “tolerance and inclusion” but the attempt to grasp the Great Chain of Being anew? What are garish parades or Earth Day but feasts and fasts?
This phenomena is given special attention in Canada, as Taylor, Marshall McLuhan, George Grant, and Jordan B. Peterson attest, likely due to the late “disenchantment,” of our country when the Quiet Revolution overcame ultramontane Catholicism in Quebec. Indeed, our French brethren display the ultimate end of secularism, as bills are passed to strike down religious symbols in public with all the zeal of holy warriors, creating an iconoclastic theocracy. Hence my often sardonic tone – what does progress, secularism, or futurism have to tell me?
As a Roman Catholic, I belong to a flow of history that has seen it all before and will again. And by the behavior of the most devout secularists, particularly those who have tried to destroy the Church or our beliefs, the constancy of human nature is proved: man cannot live on facts alone, but must have a metanarrative to understand his
He came to be king. It is as big of a claim that it sounds. Being followers of King Jesus means that we must be willing to trust in the grace of God more than anything else that our world or culture may want us to trust in. It means being servants of Christ the King, and no other, even if it means disappoint the crowds.
But the good news is that this king is a servant king, who humbly lays down his life for the world he loves. He did not die because he failed to win.
But in his crucifixion he won the victory over death. And for all who believe in him and follow him as this king, you will inherit the same reward of Jesus: resurrection.
existence and all the world around him.
Thus, the question becomes what kind of paradigm, metanarrative, or, even, theocracy do you prefer, since such a result is all but inevitable?
The gospel of our times says you are a random monad without purpose; your best course of action is obedience and productivity, lest you be put in a cell; your pains hold no more meaning than your pleasures; and the deep desire you feel for “something more” is just neurosis – they have a plenty of pills or therapists for that. The world’s message seems rather depressing, appearing to need endless distractions just for survival.
There is of course an alternative, which I subscribe to through my Catholic faith, best summed up by Jesus himself: “the water I shall give will become a spring up to eternal life.”
