Mary Westlake, 100, carpet bowls at the Brunswick Street Seniors Centre on Tuesday morning. Westlake, who turned 100 on April 4, is a late comer to carpet bowling – she started when she was 82. Westlake carpet bowls twice a week and plays bingo once a week. She was born in Greenbrier, Sask. and her family moved to Fort Fraser when she was nine months old. She has been living in Prince George since 1995. Westlake has eight grand children, 11 great-grandchildren and three great-greatgrandchildren.
Red hand prints cover court steps
Action was intended to draw attention to opioid crisis, rally
Mark NIELSEN Citizen staff
mnielsen@pgcitizen.ca
A cleanup crew was called in Tuesday morning after the courthouse steps were covered with red hand prints.
Washable paint was used and the intent was to draw attention to the opioid crisis and a rally on the issue planned for that evening. But Jordan Harris, program coordinator for The POUNDS Project, which is organizing the rally, conceded it drew a mixed reaction.
“Positive feedback for the people who stand in solidarity with us,” she said.
“People have told us that it’s really impactful, that it’s inspiring to see people speaking out and demanding attention on a huge problem that is really close to home for a lot of people. There has also been some negative attention. People are upset that public property was temporarily defaced, I guess you could say. But it was not permanent and has been washed off at this point.”
The columns at the courthouse entrance were also targeted with hand prints and “We are Dying, Wake Up” was written on the plinth in front of the building. A worker using a pressure washer hosed off the marks on Tuesday morning.
Harris said the rally was held as part of a national campaign called We Still Grieve and in memory of 10,000 Canadians who have died from overdoses in the last three years.
It is also being held to boost a call for decriminalizing drug use and ensuring a safe supply.
“When we criminalize what is essentially a health and a medical issue, when we moralize it, we create a whole new kind of vulnerability and negative perception of people and it really reduces the compassion and the approach that we use to deal with people who use substances,” Harris said.
“If we decriminalize substances and look at treating people instead of sending them to jail, it creates a whole new world of possibility for people who use substances.”
— see ‘PEOPLE ARE DYING, page 3
Beaverly victorious in Battle of the Books
Frank PEEBLES Citizen staff fpeebles@pgcitizen.ca
Seven kingdoms did final battle. Only one could win.
The war of words pitted 35 teams against one another, sometimes schoolmates fighting amongst themselves, until finally the battlefield was yielded to the finalists in the annual School District 57 Battle of The Books.
Many of the participating schools entered two teams, each comprised of three students who had won their local joust to earn the spot. They came from all over the city and region, the farthest being Morfee Elementary School in Mackenzie who trekked to this grand tournament.
After two preliminary rounds, the seven emergent armies were Beaverly 1, Heather Park 1, Heather Park 2, Lac Des Bois 1, Peden Hill 1, Southridge 2 and the host Blackburn 1 squad. There were six positions allocated for the finals, but a tie allowed one extra this year.
The teams of three were lined up at desks facing the tournament officials and the audience of about 100 parents, teachers, students and other enthusiasts. The officials would ask a question that pertained to one of the 10 titles on the Battle of The Books reading list. Each team would raise a card emblazoned with the title they believed to be correct. The judges would take note of those answers, and the team with the highest number of accurate responses after 20 questions was deemed the winner.
When the ink dust settled, Lac Des Bois was third, Heather Park 2 was second and the winner was the team from Beaverly. All the prizes were denominations of gift certificates to Books & Company.
“It’s great that the prizes are books, because these are readers, these are kids who really connect with books,” said one of the event’s longtime coordinators, Tina Cousins, a teacher librarian at Vanway Elementary School. She called the Battle of The Books “a great celebration of reading.”
Teacher Shawn Ponto agrees and has been putting months of effort into it, as the co-coach of the winning Beaverly Elementa-
ry School team along with teacher-librarian Sarah Goudal.
“It gives them a chance to read a lot of books. It’s great for their comprehension, and you always pick up knowledge of some kind whenever you read,” Ponto said. “We had about 10 kids involved, we had a school battle to determine the Top 6, and I’m pretty proud of how it turned out for them.”
Addie Scheck, 13, read nine of the 10 books on the list, and felt prepared when the competition started.
“I really enjoy reading, it’s one of my favourite things to do,” she said. “I have done the Battle of The Books two years before so I knew it would be fun.”
Dylan Kennedy, 13, was also on the winning team.
“I have a fairly good memory, so I didn’t
think being ready for the questions would be too hard, but I got nervous. It is nervewracking when you have to come up with the answers from the quotes.” He prepared by reading eight of the 10 books.
The youngest member of the team, 11-year-old Carmen Aubichon, said she, too, was “quite nervous at the start, but it was actually quite fun once it was happening.” As the questions came at them and they had to huddle up to determine which book they thought was correct, the pressure mounted but Aubichon “didn’t think of it as scary. It was happening too fast.”
She read all 10 books on the list.
The Battle of The Books questions all came from one of the following books: From Ant to Eagle, by Alex Lyttle; A True Home, by Kallie George; The Lotterys Plus
Cedar Book Awards.
One of the authors, Yolanda Ridge, was in attendance at the battle, giving the participants an extra thrill as they competed. “She will be doing school tours this week, so we are very grateful that she’s here in our district for this event,” said Cousins. Blackburn Elementary School was announced as the host for next year’s Battle of The Books, to allow their learnings from this year to transfer ahead.
One, by Emma Donoghue; Inside Hudson Pickle, by Yolanda Ridge; Dominion, by Shane Arbuthnott; Clara Humble: Quiz Whiz, by Anna Humphrey; Mine, by Natalie Hyde; The Tiny Hero of Ferny Creek Library, by Linda Bailey; The Painting, by Charis Cotter; and Innocent Heros, by Sigmund Brouwer. All are up for this year’s Red
CITIZEN PHOTO BY BRENT BRAATEN
The Beaverly 1 team – Carmen Aubichon, 11, Adleigh Scheck, 13, and Dylan Kennedy, 13 – won the School District 57 Battle of the Books on Tuesday.
Theatre supporting kids
Miracle Theatre director Ted Price and producer Anne Laughlin, along with Community Foundation development officer Mindy Stroet and president Al LeFebvre, announce that $84,039.45 was raised through the production of Halfway There. Proceeds from the play will launch the new Children of Prince George Fund under the trusteeship of the Prince George Community Foundation. The foundation will establish an endowment to provide ongoing grants to local non-profits addressing the needs of children.
Community wants old Mackenzie school put to new use, not demolished
Frank PEEBLES Citizen staff fpeebles@pgcitizen.ca
The public wants to know if the old, unused Mackenzie Elementry School structure can be used for something.
School District No. 57 had announced their consideration of demolishing the old building, but after a public consultation meeting Friday in Mackenzie they have promised to hold off until more input can be gathered from the local public.
“I don’t have any information as to what that is going to look like yet,” board chair Tim Bennett told those in attendance.
“That’s going to be a conversation that the board is going to have.”
Those in attendance at the meeting asked questions about the extent of the building’s condition.
“Rather than demolition, a desire to see the building – or parts of it – retained for future use in the community was expressed by some,” said Bennett. “General support for retaining public use of existing playground structures was also voiced.”
The structure is 3,916.7 square metres in size. The grounds cover a 3.2-hectare area.
Mackenzie Elementary School opened in 1966 and closed in 2010. The school’s operat-
ing capacity was 325 students.
A report performed for the Ministry of Education in 2015 rated the facility as being at end of life (generally 40 to 50 years). Five years ago, the cost of upgrading the school to the standards of the day was estimated at almost $5 million. Demolition costs would be partially covered by the Ministry of Education and the rest would have to come from the SD57 budget. According to SD57, if the demolition option is chosen, the project would be put out to public tender. The estimated timeframe for demolition once the contract has been awarded would be two to three months.
Missing man found
A man reported missing has been found and is safe, RCMP said Tuesday. Marlon Hugh Arscott had been reported missing on Monday.
“Investigators would like to thank the members of the public that assisted with this investigation,” Prince George RCMP said.
— Citizen staff
Fire destroys garage and travel trailer
A fire destroyed the garage of a 1000-block Parsnip Crescent home on Monday evening. A travel trailer inside the garage was also a total loss, but the house was left with minimal damage, Prince George Fire Rescue Asst. Chief Kein Scobie said. In all 15 firefighters from three halls were called to the blaze shortly before 6 p.m. Total damage was estimated at $100,000.
One occupant of the home was taken to hospital after suffering from smoke inhalation, while the other was unharmed. — Citizen staff
Feds take action on dangerous rail crossings
MONCTON, N.B. (CP) — Ottawa says it will close particularly dangerous rail crossings and upgrade many others as it moves to improve rail safety. Federal Transport Minister Marc Garneau announced Tuesday that Transport Canada will provide $16.5 million for 136 new projects. That will include improvements to 104 grade crossings and other rail infrastructure across the country.
‘People are dying’
— from page 1
A safe supply, meanwhile, “would likely end this crisis.”
“People are dying because of the unpredictability of the supply because the illicit market is so contaminated with fentanyl and other opioid analogs that are just so potent and toxic, so if we had a regulated and safe supply, people wouldn’t be dying.
“We’ve seen it with the prohibition of alcohol – when a substance isn’t regulated, it inevitably becomes toxic and highly dangerous. And if we regulate it and make it safe, nobody has to die.”
The rally is also being held to call for a national state of emergency. Harris said B.C. is the only province to declare a public health emergency, “but it’s happening all across the country.”
POUNDS stands for Preventing Overdose, UNDoing Stigma and the group holds a contract from the provincial government to provide harm reduction services around the city.
Harris declined to say who put the hand prints on the steps.
“I’m not going to answer that right now,” she said.
Prince George RCMP Cpl. Craig Douglass said an investigation has been opened on the act.
“Whether the paint washes off or not, without permission of the property owner, which would be the provincial government essentially, it could be mischief,” he said.
“And obviously, we want to determine who is responsible and put a package together for Crown counsel and they can decide whether or not they want to proceed with charges.”
LARP in the park
Brenda Morgan, foreground, battles with Monique Gendron on Saturday afternoon at Lheidli T’enneh Memorial Park. The pair were part of a handful of members of the North Grove chapter of AMTGARD practicing their live-action roleplaying (LARP) skills.
B.C. expands mental-health access
VICTORIA (CP) — Emergency dispatchers, nurses and care aides in British Columbia will soon have easier access to workers’ compensation for mental-health disorders associated to their work.
Labour Minister Harry Bains says the regulatory changes are about fairness and support for workers who experience mental harm because of their jobs. Bains says people in certain professions are more likely to encounter trauma on the job that can lead to mental illness. The government changed the Workers Compensation Act last year to add a list of mental-health disorders associated with jobs like police and firefighters.
Slight decline in local real estate
Citizen staff
The average price and the number of single-family homes sold in the city during the first three months of this year was down slightly from the same period last year, according to B.C. Northern Real Estate numbers released this week.
The average price was $354,860, down $779, and there were 154 sales, down 17, with most of the decline occurring in the city’s southwest.
However, the median price – or the price at the midpoint of the number of homes sold – in each part of the city rose.
In the western part of the city, it stood at $327,500, up from $299,000 while, at 46, there were two fewer sales in that
region than last year. East of the bypass, it was $309,000, up from $247,000, while there were 34 sales, one fewer than at the same point last year.
North of the Nechako, it was $370,000, up from $360,000, on 32 sales, up by three. And in the southwest, it was $429,500, up from $420,000 on 42 sales, down by 16.
Looking at properties of all types, 257 worth $90 million changed hands, compared to 267 worth $82.2 million by the same point last year. At the end of March, there were 534 properties of all types available on the Multiple Listing Service within city limits, up by 10. The full report is posted with this story at www.pgcitizen.ca
Inuit Heritage Trust, Parks Canada ink deal on fate of Franklin artifacts
The Canadian Press OTTAWA — Parks Canada and the Inuit Heritage Trust have come to an agreement on how the artifacts from the ill-fated Franklin expedition will be preserved and studied.
All artifacts from the wrecks of HMS Erebus and HMS Terror will be protected based on traditional Inuit knowledge and presented publicly from an Inuit perspective.
Every effort will be made to have the artifacts displayed in Nunavut under the agreement signed Monday.
Any museums or cultural institutions that want to study or exhibit the artifacts plucked from the sunken shipwrecks will only be able to do so on a temporary basis.
Sir John Franklin and 129 men left England on the two ships in 1845 on a search for a northern passage connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
The ships, however, became ice-bound and were abandoned by the crew, none of whom returned to England.
The final resting place of both ships and the full story of what
happened to them was one of the world’s most enduring mysteries. Canada launched a new effort to locate the ships in 2007.
Inuit guides helped Parks Canada officials find the Erebus in shallow waters off the coast of King William Island in 2014.
The Terror was found two years later about 100 kilometres away.
The two ships make up a massive and complex underwater archeological site that still contains thousands of artifacts, which the United Kingdom gifted to Canada last year.
Parks Canada and the Inuit Heritage Trust became joint owners of the artifacts.
Sixty-five artifacts already recovered from Erebus – including parts of clothing, boots, plates and the ship’s bell – remain British property.
Last September, the first of the jointly-owned artifacts were recovered from the Erebus. Archaeologists hope to find artifacts on the ships which can help explain what happened to the ill-fated expedition.
The two shipwrecks are national historic sites that are off-limits to the public.
CITIZEN STAFF PHOTO
A worker uses a power washer to hose off red handprints painted on the steps of the Prince George courthouse on Tuesday.
CITIZEN STAFF PHOTO A rally to raise awareness about the opioid crisis was planned for Tuesday evening at the courthouse.
CITIZEN PHOTO BY JAMES DOYLE
Officer found murdered girl’s body on Christmas Day, court told
Laura KANE The Canadian Press
VANCOUVER — A police officer choked up Tuesday as he recalled finding the body of a little girl, her blonde hair matted with blood, inside a “chaotic” Vancouver Island apartment on Christmas Day in 2017.
Const. Piotr Ulanowski testified at the start of the trial for Andrew Berry, who has pleaded not guilty to the seconddegree murder of his daughters Chloe Berry, 6, and Aubrey Berry, 4.
Ulanowski told a British Columbia Supreme Court jury that he was the first officer to enter Berry’s apartment, which was strewn with clothing and had blood smeared on the walls. After he discovered the girl’s body on a bed, he left the suite and called for backup, he said.
“I remember my adrenaline pumping,” he said. “I wanted to go in. At the same time, I didn’t want to go in. I didn’t want to believe what I’d found.”
The defence has not yet had an opportunity to cross-examine Ulanowski or make arguments.
The officer said he went to the apartment on the afternoon of Dec. 25, 2017, after the girls’ mother, Sarah Cotton, visited the Oak Bay police detachment to say the girls had not been returned on time, as required by a court order.
The officer said he knocked on the door but no one answered. He also tried calling Berry’s phone, which he could hear ringing inside the suite but it went to voice mail. Eventually, a property manager provided a key to the apartment and Ulanowski entered just before 6 p.m.
A sergeant joined him about five minutes after he made the grisly discovery inside the suite, he said. The pair re-entered together, using flashlights because the power had been shut off, he said.
Ulanowski said he headed down a hallway on his own and entered a bathroom, which was “in complete disarray” like the rest of the home.
“That’s where I located a nude male in the tub,” he said.
Andrew Berry was submerged in water up to his shoulders and he had lacerations on the left side of his chest, blood on his neck and his right eye was swollen shut, Ulanowski testified.
The constable testified he called out, “Andrew, Andrew, can you hear me?”
“There was very little response but there was a gasp for air,” Ulanowski said.
Earlier Tuesday, Crown lawyer Clare Jennings said in her opening statement that Berry stabbed his young daughters dozens of times each before attempting to kill himself.
Jennings said when paramedics and firefighters responded to Berry in the bathtub, he told them, “kill me,” and “leave me alone.”
Another paramedic assessed the two young girls, who were found dead in bloody pyjamas lying on beds in separate bedrooms, she said, adding they were stiff and cold.
“They had been deceased for some time.”
She said an autopsy found Chloe Berry was also struck in the head at least once, hard enough to fracture her skull.
Andrew Berry was treated in hospital and underwent surgery to repair a serious injury to his throat or neck, she said.
While in hospital, he never once mentioned his daughters or asked how they were doing, and instead he had a series of complaints about the way his parents and the girls’ mother had treated him, she said.
Forensic identification officers went to his apartment and photographed a knife on the floor near the bed where Chloe Berry was found, Jennings said.
They also found a note on Berry’s living room table addressed to his sister, in which he also sets out a number of complaints about his parents and Cotton, she added.
Jennings told the jury a neighbour will testify about hearing loud noises from Berry’s apartment around 8 a.m. on Christmas Day.
Marge Anderson, right, president of the BC Association of Healthcare Auxiliaries, presents Lindy Steele, president of the Auxiliary to UHNBC, with a certificate in honour of the 100th anniversary of the auxiliary at University Hospital of Northern BC on Sunday evening at the Coast Inn of the North.
Judge reserves decision in child bride case
Trevor CRAWLEY The Canadian Press CRANBROOK — A four-day gap in the whereabouts of a 15-year-old girl is enough to dispute whether she was removed from Canada in 2004 to marry a member of a fundamentalist sect in the United States, a lawyer argued Tuesday at the trial of a former member of the church.
Joe Doyle, who is serving as an amicus curiae or friend of the court to ensure a fair trial, said Crown prosecutors haven’t proven that the girl was in Canada when the leader of the sect called James Oler and allegedly ordered him to bring the child to the United States to get married. Oler is charged with removing the girl from Canada to marry a member of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which practises polygamy in Bountiful, B.C., and the United States.
He was acquitted in 2017 by a judge who was not convinced Oler did anything within Canada’s borders to arrange the girl’s transfer to the U.S. But the B.C. Court of Appeal agreed with the Crown that proof of wrongdoing in Canada was not necessary and ordered a new trial.
Oler is self-represented and did not call any witnesses or make a case in his defence.
In his closing argument, Doyle argued prosecutors hadn’t accounted for the window when the girl was last seen in Bountiful but then identified by a witness four days later in northern Idaho at a highway rest stop on June 24, 2004.
Doyle raised the possibility that the accused and the girl were potentially already in the United States visiting other communities associated with the fundamentalist sect when Warren Jeffs allegedly called Oler.
Special prosecutor Peter Wilson questioned Doyle’s suggestion that Oler and the girl may have already been in the United States in the four-day window, describing his argument on their movements as “fanciful.”
“Maybe it did – anything can happen,” he added.
Doyle also questioned the credibility of church records seized by U.S. law enforcement officials a decade ago at the Yearning for Zion Ranch in Texas. The court has heard the girl’s marriage was documented by priesthood records kept by Jeffs, the church’s president and prophet. One priesthood record describes the phone call that Jeffs made to Oler.
Some of the documentation was incomplete and uncertified, which is contrary to the church’s doctrine, Doyle said.
Andrew Berry, centre, appears in B.C. Supreme Court in Vancouver on Tuesday. A Crown lawyer says a Vancouver Island father stabbed his young daughters dozens of times before attempting to kill himself on Christmas Day in 2017.
Kenny, Conservatives win majority in Alberta
Dean BENNETT
The Canadian Press
EDMONTON — Jason Kenney and his United Conservatives channelled the angst of an angry electorate to soar to a majority government in Alberta’s election Tuesday and relegate Rachel Notley’s NDP to the history books as a one-and-done government.
The UCP, formed two years ago by a merger of the Progressive Conservatives and Wildrose parties, held its rural and Calgary seats and took back many of the breakthrough NDP wins in those regions in 2015.
About 1,000 jubilant UCP supporters jammed an event centre at Calgary’s Stampede Ground chanting, “Na, na, na, na. Hey, hey goodbye.”
Notley’s NDP held on to much of its traditional base in Edmonton, which it swept four years ago. But cabinet ministers and backbenchers went down elsewhere, Danielle Larivee in Children’s Services, Energy Minister Marg McCuaigBoyd and Culture Minister Ricardo Miranda.
Kenney, who won his riding in Calgary-Lougheed, is a former federal Conservative cabinet minister under Stephen Harper.
He will take the top job after winning on a jobs, jobs, jobs message and a promise to wage war on all who oppose its oil and gas industry, particularly Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Kenney has derisively called it “the Trudeau-Notley alliance” – a partnership he says has turned Alberta into a doormat for Trudeau and other oil industry foes in return for no more than a faint and as yet unrealized promise of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion to the west coast.
Kenney has promised to kill Alberta’s homegrown carbon tax, fight the federal carbon tax in court, and do what he can to help the federal Conservatives defeat Trudeau in the federal October vote.
Trudeau was asked in Kitchener, Ont., earlier Tuesday whether he was concerned about his climate plan should Kenney win.
“We have chosen to put a price on pollution right across the country and there are conservative politicians who are using taxpayer money to fight a price on pollution in court,” he responded.
“They are using your dollars to try to make pollution free again, which makes no sense.”
Trudeau said the federal government would continue to work on growing the economy while tackling climate change in a smart way.
Once Kenney is sworn in, Canada will be back to having zero female premiers.
Notley’s NDP was trying to win a second mandate after toppling the wheezing, scandal-scarred 44-year Progressive Conservative dynasty in 2015 by winning 54 seats in the 87 legislature.
In the previous two decades, the NDP had never been able to elect more than four MLAs, and had been shut out of Calgary since the 1980s.
Interest in the election was high as leaders launched personal attacks while promoting their platforms as the best blueprint for Alberta’s fragile economy.
Almost 700,000 people voted in advance polls, well above the record 235,000 who did in 2015.
The province, once a moneymaking dynamo thanks to skyhigh oil prices, has been struggling for years with sluggish returns on royalties, reduced drilling activity and unemployment levels stubbornly above seven per cent in
Roadside tests for cannabis impairment remain in question
SMART The Canadian Press
Michelle Gray says she’s afraid to get behind the wheel again after having her licence suspended for failing a cannabis saliva test in Nova Scotia, even though she passed a police administered sobriety test the same night. Gray has been using medical marijuana for almost eight years to treat multiple sclerosis and she plans to launch a constitutional challenge to the law and roadside test.
“They should not be on the streets and used for testing cannabis impairment,” said Gray, who lives in Sackville.
“I think the government legalized cannabis way too fast. I don’t think it was a well thought out plan.”
Six months after legalization, her case illustrates some of the challenges with enforcement facing both police and cannabis users, and highlights the questions that continue to surround the use of technology in roadside tests.
The Drager DrugTest 5000 remains the only technology approved by Ottawa to test a driver’s saliva for concentration of THC, the psychoactive ingredient in cannabis.
Einat Velichover, who manages drug and alcohol detection in Canada for Drager, said the saliva test was never designed to test for impairment.
“Our device is there to really just identify whether there’s a presence of THC. It’s not meant to measure impairment and we never claimed that it does,” she said. “So really it’s just one tool of many that law enforcement utilize in order to assess impairment and road safety.”
Velichover said that while she appreciates the concerns that have arisen, law enforcement needs to balance cannabis users’ rights with the importance of keeping roads safe.
Justice Department spokeswoman Angela Savard said the Canadian Society of Forensic Science tests and evaluates technology then recommends it to the attorney general for consideration.
If a driver fails the roadside test, the result can be used in developing “reasonable grounds” to believe that a drug-impaired driving offence has occurred and also give the officer grounds to investigate further, she said.
“For the most part, in British Columbia, police departments have not deployed it,” said Chief Const. Mike Serr of the Abbotsford Police Department.
Calgary and Edmonton.
Kenney argued that Notley’s government made a bad situation worse with higher taxes, more regulations and increases in minimum wage.
Notley, in turn, said Kenney’s plan to freeze spending and pursue more private-care options in health care would have a
profound impact on students and patients.
Notley also tried to make Kenney’s character an issue. A number of his candidates either quit or apologized for past comments that were anti-LGBTQ, anti-Islamic or sympathetic to white nationalism.
On the margins of the campaign were the centrist Alberta and Liberal parties. Both elected single members to the 87-seat legislature last time around but were losing across the board in early returns.
Alberta Party Leader Stephen Mandel lost in Edmonton-McClung.
Kenney now turns his attention to a spring-summer sitting and a platform that includes undoing most of the signature elements of the last four years of changes under the NDP, starting with the provincial carbon tax on fossil-fuelled heating and gas at the pumps.
He has promised to repeal the NDP increase on corporate income tax and drop it to eight per cent. The minimum wage for youth is
to be cut. Farm safety and injury compensation plans for farm workers is to be abolished and replaced. A $3.7-billion plan to lease rail cars to ship more oil is to be cancelled.
The climate change program is to be dismantled in favour of a plan to tax the emissionsintensity of major greenhouse gas operations. A large medical lab in Edmonton, part of a plan to consolidate tests, won’t proceed. Changes to overtime pay are to be rolled back.
A sweeping overhaul of school curriculums is also expected to be on hold.
Kenney also plans to fire a shot across the bow of the B.C. government on his first day in office. He has said he will proclaim a law passed by Notley’s government but never proclaimed.
The bill gives Alberta the power to reduce oil flows to B.C. in retaliation for its opposition to the expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline.
Amy
United Conservative Party supporters celebrate in Calgary on Tuesday after the party won a majority government.
KENNEY
A prayer of thanks for Our Lady
In my living room hangs a large photo of central Paris taken at night that I bought at IKEA years ago.
The City of Light is gorgeous in the image, with its many bridges crossing the Seine; the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower and other famous Parisian landmarks are clearly visible and in the distance, a few lights on a hillside where Sacré-Coeur Basilica overlooks her city.
After I first hung it up and stepped back, I was suddenly confused and disoriented. Where was Our Lady? Where was Notre Dame?
In the late winter of 1991, a young Canadian university graduate, unwilling to start his journalism career quite yet, boarded a night train at King’s Cross in Central London for Dover. From there, a midnight shuttle bus to the ferry, the port lights casting sinister shadows on those famous white cliffs as Chris Isaak’s Wicked Game played quietly on the radio next to the driver.
After a 90-minute English Channel crossing through the inky darkness to Calais, another train awaited to take me and other sleepy travellers south to Gare du Nord, one of the largest and busiest train stations in Europe.
Walking out alone onto the streets of Paris at 8 a.m. on a cool March morning was dreamlike. For the next two days, I wandered her streets and rode the Metro, paying my respects to Jim Morrison at Pere Lachaise, a gorgeous, sprawling cemetery fitting for a gorgeous, sprawling city,
strolling the length of the Champs Élysées from the Place de la Concorde to the Arc de Triomphe, sitting on a bench in Champ de Mars Park, Eiffel’s Tower peering over my shoulder as I wrote a postcard in sloppy French to my dear mémère Yvette back in Canada.
A night visit to the top of the tower and an evening pilgrimage to see Mona Lisa and the rest of the Louvre’s treasures were spectacular but they paled in comparison to Our Lady, to Notre Dame.
I arrived early and basked in her beauty.
The winter sunlight made the gargoyles playful and the spires sparkle. I circled her twice, admiring her enduring permanence, that she had been built three centuries before the first Godbout left France for Quebec in 1651, that she was half a millennium old at Napoleon’s coronation as emperor, that she survived two world wars and a Nazi occupation.
Finally, I entered with the adoring crowd. To a rebellious youth who had turned his back on his Catholic upbringing years earlier, Notre Dame was a revelation. She reminded me that the divine is nowhere near as remote and unattainable as it seems to those who have misplaced their faith.
Suddenly a boy once more, certain in the magnificence of his saviour, I dipped my fingers into the water of the font and made the sign of the cross. I briefly admired the organ, the stained glass, the architecture and the art in the areas open to the public but felt like a shallow tourist.
Notre Dame is a world treasure, the beat-
ing heart of the French people, second only to The Vatican in its significance to Catholics. Yet she is first and foremost a church, a place of worship.
So I genuflected and knelt in one of her pews, a short distance from a gaggle of nuns, heads bowed over their rosaries, offering their penance. The altar boy bubbled to the surface, moving my lips in time with them: “holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners now...”
I sat quietly for a time. The cathedral filled up with tourists, their harsh voices loudly violating the sanctity of the worshippers.
“Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do,” I smirked as I stood.
Before leaving, I lit a votive candle for my mémère and my equally devout mother.
Then, a gift.
A group of children had assembled in an area near the front altar, shepherded by several adults. I mistook them for a class trip.
Until they began to sing.
Their high, clear voices leapt from their throats, bouncing off the walls and domed ceiling, amplified by the stone and wood and glass, overwhelming and silencing the unfaithful intruders in her house.
The song ended, the choir master spoke briefly to his pupils in French and then they sang once more, in Latin this time. I let their harmonies carry my feet away, out into the noonday light.
A lifetime later and a world away, I could not find this holy place in the night Paris picture on my living room wall. It bothered
YOUR LETTERS
Climate change denier not impressed by headlines
On April 2, Environment and Climate Change Canada released Canada’s Changing Climate Report 2019, warning that we are warming twice as fast as the rest of the globe.
Todd Whitcombe says this a wake-up call. Somehow I find it more of a yawn. Maybe it’s because there have been so many similar headlines over the years. Here are some of them:
• Global warming to impact Switzerland at twice average speed, researcher warns.
• Adirondacks warming faster than the global average, study shows.
• Britain warming faster than average, according to experts.
• Russian climate gets warmer 2.5 times faster than world average.
• Nova Scotia, Gulf of Maine warming faster than 99 per cent of world’s oceans.
• Japanese waters warming faster than world average.
• Pacific Ocean warming 15 times faster than before.
• Indian Ocean warming faster than others, says NCAOR.
• Korean peninsula is warming at a speed faster than global average.
• Singapore warming faster than average.
• Himalayan meltdown: Hindu Kush Himalayan region warming faster than global average.
• Finland is heating up twice as fast as any other country in the world.
• IPCC: Europe has been warming faster than the global average.
• Global warming stretches subtropical boundaries.
• The atmosphere is warming faster in sub-tropical areas than anywhere else in the world.
• Northeast is warming faster than the global average: New York Post.
• Spain warming faster than the rest of northern hemisphere: study.
• Red Sea warming more than global average.
• Weather service: South Africa warming faster than the global average trend.
• Australia temperatures rising faster than the rest of the world: official report.
• China warming faster than Global average.
• China’s heating up twice as fast as the rest of the world.
• Floods first, then drought: Tibet warming four times faster than China.
• Parts of United States are heating faster than globe as a whole.
I could go on.
It seems everywhere in the world is warming up faster than everywhere else.
After 30 years of such headlines, they get a little stale and lose their ability to scare us.
Art Betke
Prince George
Dale’s reply unwarranted
I would like to applaud Helen Sarrazin for taking a stand defending her right to speak, ask a question and to receive a civil answer, not a degrading reply from Norman Dale.
I too have been placed in the same position by Mr. Dale, who deemed me a racist and a bigot, for saying anything untoward about Aboriginal people. Because I stated I was not a racist, Mr. Dale has determined that anyone expressing they are not a racist is undoubtedly a racist and a bigot. In this politically correct era, no matter what is said or done, some will find a way to interpret it as being offensive or racist, using political correctness as a platform to malign, degrade and censor those such as Helen Sarrazin.
Larry Barnes, Prince George
LETTERS WELCOME: The Prince George Citizen welcomes letters to the editor from our readers. Submissions should be sent by email to: letters@pgcitizen.ca. No attachments, please. They can also be faxed to 250-960-2766, or mailed to 201-1777 Third Ave., Prince George, B.C. V2L 3G7.
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me every time I looked at it. Paris without Notre Dame seemed as frigid and bare as childhood without a mother’s embrace. My sister lived for a month in Paris so I took a picture of Paris on my living room wall and sent it to her, hoping she could find Notre Dame for me. Her reply perfectly summarized both her female wisdom and the ignorance of her older brother. You can’t see Notre Dame, she patiently wrote, because the picture is taken from Notre Dame, probably from the top of the north tower overlooking the cathedral’s front entrance. Then and now, that knowledge brings me peace. Some feel a fire gutting her at the start of the holiest week on the Christian calendar was cruel but the opposite is true. It was a poetic reminder. Easter brings the faithful together to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus, whose death shone light on a path to everlasting life. Monday’s fire was a breath of wind to the burning love many feel for Notre Dame, believers and non-believers alike. She will be lovingly and joyfully restored to her previous glory.
On my living room wall rests a depiction of a beautiful, shining city as seen from the eyes of a holy sanctuary, a testament to what flawed sinners can do together when they lift their eyes beyond their shallow, worldly concerns.
No fire can extinguish that spirit or Our Lady who embodies it.
— Editor-in-chief
Neil Godbout
Of rats big and small
News item one: Jason (Dr. Strangelove) Kenney says he’ll choke off B.C.’s fuel supply on Day One if elected Alberta premier. News item two: Victoria is the second most rat-infested city in B.C.
Some people would take item two as bad news. It’s not as though the second-rattiest designation is a surprise – after all, Greater Victoria is the province’s third-largest city, and a coastal one at that. Still, rodent ratings aren’t something we’re likely to crow about in the tourist brochures.
On the other hand, rats could prove useful should Alberta, as threatened, turn off the taps.
That is, if Kenney can weaponize oil, we can weaponize Ratatouille.
Imagine, if you will, the effect of threatening to relocate our rodents to Alberta, which proudly boasts of not having seen a rat since Ken Linseman played for the Oilers.
“Nice province you got ’ere,” we could tell them in our best extortion-racket Cockney. “Be sad if somefink bad ’appened to it.”
Honestly, this could be the most devastating blow since the 1970s B.C. Ferries promotional stunt in which daffodils were scattered over downtown Calgary from a plane, which seemed like a swell idea until the flowers froze in mid-air and came screaming down like icy spears, shattering on the pavement and scattering panicked pedestrians.
Or – and here’s an even better idea – we could all turn down the volume and stop snarling like belly-bumping bar room drunks. It would hurt B.C. consumers (not to mention Alberta oil companies) if Alberta does enact Bill 12, which was introduced but never implemented by Premier Rachel Notley’s NDP government in response to B.C.’s attempts to block pipelines to the coast. The law would allow Alberta to use export licences to restrict the flow of oil and refined product.
B.C., particularly the Interior –the Land Beyond Hope – relies on gas from Alberta. This province consumes about 200,000 barrels of refined product – gas, diesel, jet fuel – a day. About half of that comes directly from Alberta via truck, train and pipeline.
About a quarter of B.C.’s gas comes from the Parkland refinery in Burnaby, but even that facility is supplied with oil piped from Alberta.
B.C. also gets petro products from Washington’s five refineries.
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They’re supplied mainly by the tankers from Alaska, Russia and elsewhere that slide past Victoria each day, but also by Alberta oil; on average, 150,000 barrels a day, half of the Trans Mountain pipeline’s total capacity, is diverted to Washington via a spur line at Sumas. So, yes, Alberta has Joe and Jane British Columbian over an oil barrel.
The B.C. government shrugs at the turn-off-the-taps threat, though, confident that the courts would chuck out the Alberta law as unconstitutional. That confidence is bolstered by a 2018 ruling in which the Supreme Court of Canada, while dealing with a case involving inter-provincial liquor sales, made it clear that one province may not use trade restrictions to punish another.
To those who indignantly splutter that B.C.’s pipeline opposition punishes Alberta, the reply is that while peeling the petals off Wild Rose Country’s prosperity might be the byproduct of B.C.’s stance, it’s not the intent. Rather, B.C.’s purpose – whether or not you feel the concern is warranted – is to safeguard its coast.
By contrast, Alberta’s law was introduced with the sole purpose of bludgeoning B.C. into submission. Alberta lawyers might argue, perhaps even with a straight face, that their law does not target B.C. in particular, and that its purpose is merely to maximize the amount of money their province gets for oil, but unless it also restricts exports to other jurisdictions, that shouldn’t fool an impartial observer. It would take a monumental act of wilful ignorance to read Bill 12 as anything other than an attempt to starve B.C. into surrendering.
Albertans are angry, so angry that they are willing to hurt themselves to hurt us. We get that. Many British Columbians –probably most, according to the polls – also believe the Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion should go ahead.
But while threatening economic warfare on other Canadians might have won Kenney the mad-as-hell vote, turning off the taps won’t solve anything. Bullying doesn’t change people’s minds.
Shawn Cornell, director of advertising: 250-960-2757 scornell@pgcitizen.ca Reader sales and services: 250-562-3301 rss@pgcitizen.ca Letters to the editor: letters@pgcitizen.ca
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GUEST COLUMN JACK KNOX
Man faces murder charges for killing two men, two women in Penticton
Amy SMART The Canadian Press PENTICTON
— A retired city employee has been charged with four counts of murder after a series of shootings in Penticton closed a large swath of the community Monday during a police response involving dozens of officers.
Dan McLaughlin of the B.C. prosecution service said Tuesday that three counts of first-degree murder and one count of seconddegree murder have been laid against John Brittain, 68.
Mayor John Vassilaki said Brittain was an employee of the city’s engineering department for several years before he retired and he was “very saddened” when he learned of the charges.
“He was a gentleman. He did his job well,” Vassilaki told a news conference. “He was very in favour of what our community was doing, was always involved in community matters, him and his wife.”
Brittain appeared in court on Tuesday morning and at one point during the proceedings he took off his glasses and looked into the public gallery. He is expected to make his next court appearance May 8.
None of the allegations against him have been tested in court.
RCMP Supt. Ted De Jager said the two men and two women who were killed in the shootings were in their 60s and 70s, but police are not releasing any further information about the victims.
He said police are trying to determine a motive as part of their investigation, but the shootings were targeted. The accused and the victims knew each other, he added.
“Unfortunately, I can’t speak up to the actual events that led up to this and that is part of the investigation,” said De Jager, who wouldn’t elaborate on the relationship between the victims and the accused.
De Jager said police received a call about a possible shooting at about 10:30 a.m. on Monday.
Police say after the first shooting on Heales Avenue, the suspect drove about five kilometres to a second location on Cornwall Drive where the other three people were attacked.
De Jager said a man was killed on Heales and the other three victims were found at neighbouring homes on Cornwall.
A man and a woman were found in one home on Cornwall and a man in the other.
De Jager said an unarmed suspect walked into the RCMP detachment about an hour after they received the report of the first possible shooting and surrendered to police.
Rudi Winter, 71, was identified by his wife Renate as one of the victims.
She told the Penticton Herald he was shot around 10:30 a.m. outside a duplex where he was doing maintenance work for a friend.
Shelley Halvorson was in her office at J&E Automotive Services
Ltd. in the north end of the city at around 10:30 a.m. when she said she heard “pop, pop, pop, pop.”
She saw a man on the lawn outside a home and police descended on the area including three or four carrying rifles.
“It was kind of scary,” she said. “It’s a very quiet area, so it’s a little alarming for this to be happening.”
De Jager said police are continuing to offer support to residents of the community who need it.
“I recognize that these heartbreaking events have deeply impacted our community and will continue to do so for some time,” he said.
Notre Dame fire highlights need for documentation
Sidhartha BANERJEE
The Canadian Press
MONTREAL — The fire that swept through Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris on Monday should serve as a reminder that having proper plans and documentation of valued Canadian buildings is crucial, heritage advocates say.
The blaze, which destroyed the cathedral’s roof and spire, has triggered an outpouring of unity and financial support as well as a promise from French President Emmanuel Macron to rebuild within five years. When they do, they’ll have a wealth of information to rely on, said Martin Bressani, director of the Peter Fu School of Architecture at McGill University.
“Notre Dame is obviously the greatest historical monument in France,” he said. “It’s completely documented, every square inch.”
Bressani said most major Canadian landmark buildings and structures likely have detailed plans and documentation.
“I would say yes, every major prestigious building in Canada, which is often not much older than 19th Century, is documented,” he said.
Jerry Dick, executive director of the Heritage Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador, said the Basilica of St. John the Baptist in the province’s capital underwent a digital scan two years ago that would be of great value if the building were ever damaged. Such detailed plans are important for two reasons – restoration and reproduction but also for a historical record if rebuilding is impossible.
“Every square inch of that building, inside and outside, was scanned to a very high degree, so they have the type of documentation right now that, heaven forbid, should something like that happen, they would have the information to restore or reproduce elements,” Dick said.
Other heritage buildings, often in smaller communities, may slip through the cracks when it comes to having proper files, said Ali Piwowar of the National Trust of Canada, a not-for-profit organization that advocates for
heritage sites.
“Obviously there’s a benefit of having a record like that if you were to capture the exact condition of the building in order to reconstruct it,” Piwowar said.
“But when you’re looking at something in a small town... it’s probably pretty unlikely they’ve had recording done, so being able get a hold of the original construction drawings is always recommended for the owners to have something on file.”
In terms of protecting heritage, many properties have seen sprinkler and fire-safety systems installed in recent years, Piwowar added.
Stephane Corriveau, operations chief for the Montreal fire department, noted that Montreal’s Notre-Dame Basilica was hit by fire in 1978 and reopened in 1983 with fire protection, alarms, interior sprinklers and a dry-pipe sprinkler system for the exterior of the building.
“From our perspective, we can’t have any better than that,” said Corriveau, calling it one of the safest churches in Canada.
“But for most churches, putting them up to code is very expensive.”
Montreal Archbishop Christian Lepine, who conducted a special midday mass at the basilica Tuesday in honour of its Paris namesake, told reporters that Montreal churches are equipped with alarms connected to the fire service and some of the bigger venues have video surveillance.
As for rebuilding Notre Dame Cathedral, Bressani noted the spire that was felled by the flames was actually a more recent edition from the mid-19th century, the work of EugeneEmmanuel Viollet-le-Duc.
“When he created this in the mid-19th century, the spire had been destroyed for centuries and there was no documentation coming from the Middle Ages as to what the original spire looked like,” Bressani noted.
But current restoration officials will have access to Viollet-leDuc’s drawings in the archives as they rebuild. The questions will centre on design and materials.
“To do something like the spire is an incredible challenge, so that will be interesting to see,” he said.
Fisheries announces conservation measures to protect chinook salmon
The Canadian Press
VANCOUVER — The federal government has announced commercial and recreational fishing restrictions in British Columbia as a way to conserve chinook salmon returning to the Fraser River this season.
The Fisheries Department’s regional director general Rebecca Reid says urgent protection measures include the closure of a commercial fishery involving seven endangered stocks.
Reid says an independent committee of wildlife experts and scientists conducted an assessment last November and determined seven chinook populations in the Fraser River system are endangered, four are threatened and one is of special concern.
One area salmon was considered not at risk while three others were not assessed by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada.
Reid says harvest management measures
alone won’t deal with declining numbers of chinook in recent years due to multiple factors including warming waters because of climate change and destruction of habitat that must be rebuilt.
She says last year’s catch reduction by one-third to limit pressure on the stocks was not enough and the decrease in chinook also affects southern resident killer whales that depend on the salmon as their preferred prey.
Reid told reporters during a conference call on Tuesday that Fisheries and Oceans Canada has a five-year plan to manage chinook and is committed to working with the B.C. government.
“Collaboration with the B.C. government, Indigenous groups and stakeholders is a cornerstone of the implementation plan,” she says, adding the department will also consult with the province on land and water-use policies that impact critical habitat.
“Community advisers and DFO work alongside the stewardship community,
building partnerships with the community to support salmon and salmon protection and education activities at the local level across British Columbia.”
Regional resource manager Jeff Grout says protection measures for the commercial sector in the northern community of Haida Gwaii mean no retention of chinook until August 20, a delay of about two months from the normal start of that fishery.
Nicole Gallant, chief of enforcement operations for the department’s Pacific region, says 140 fisheries officers will be conducting patrols by land, air and water in order to monitor compliance.
She urges the public to report poachers.
The department says it will work with recreational and fish harvesters to look for additional fishing opportunities for stocks such as coho and halibut.
Other limitations include:
• On the west coast of Vancouver Island, the troll fishery that typically starts in May has been closed until August 1 to allow
stocks of high concern to migrate there.
• A small fishery that harvests chinook for sale in Kamloops Lake has been closed for the season.
• A mix of management measures in the recreational sector on the west coast of Vancouver Island mean chinook can be retained starting this week and until July 14, after which there will be a return to the normal limit of two chinook a day.
• In the southern Strait of Georgia and the Strait of Juan de Fuca, measures to protect chinook stocks of concern will include no retention of the salmon until July 31 before one chinook a day will be allowed in August, followed by an increase to two chinook daily.
• For the recreational fishery in the Fraser River, no fishing for chinook will be allowed until late August and then no chinook can be retained for the season.
• No new measures have been announced for the northern B.C. recreational sector, where the normal limit is two chinook per day.
CP PHOTO John Brittain is escorted from the RCMP detachment in Penticton on Tuesday in this image made from video. Brittain has been charged with four counts of murder in two separate shootings on Monday.
Battle brewing
Susan DECKER Bloomberg
As consumers seek quality over quantity in their beer, the world’s two biggest brewers are locked in a legal battle over the quest to serve a fresh-tapped taste in every mug.
Anheuser-Busch InBev and Heineken are fighting over who invented key parts of a new way to deliver draft beer that allows for smaller batches and eliminates the need for traditional steel kegs, which use compressed air and can degrade flavour over time.
The companies started the first of two patent-infringement trials on Tuesday over the technology at the U.S. International Trade Commission in Washington. AB InBev says it developed the beer canisters, while Heineken – whose case goes first – says it invented the dispenser equipment. Each is trying to keep the other out of the U.S. market to provide draft beer to smaller pubs and homes.
“The bars used to put in big kegs of Bud Light and Coors Light, and they would sell so much of it that freshness was not an issue,” Sanford Bernstein analyst Trevor Stirling said.
“Each individual brand is selling less. Now you need technology to protect the freshness longer even as you’re selling less.”
Analysts say the $120 billion beer industry is getting more fragmented. Americans are drinking less beer, but they are willing to pay for better quality.
The big brewers are struggling to maintain their market share as even craft brews are losing ground to wine and other spirits.
The overall volume of beer sales has been declining over the past decade, though dollar sales have increased, according to market researcher Euromonitor International.
“Consumer interest is in the higher end of the product,” said Lester Jones, chief economist for the National Beer Wholesalers Association.
“The way to package beer is to make it appear higher end.”
AB InBev – maker of Budweiser and Stella Artois – and Dutch brewer Heineken are looking for new markets in smaller bars or restaurants that don’t want to install big tap systems or by selling
Dispute over beer keg technology prompts court battle between world’s largest brewing companies
home machines that can serve draft beer. That’s led to the legal fights.
The companies had discussed licensing each other’s patents until AB InBev filed its patent case at the trade agency, Heineken lawyer Paul Brinkman of Kirkland & Ellis told trade Judge MaryJoan McNamara in opening arguments Tuesday. AB InBev lawyer Peter Moll of Cadwalader Wickersham & Taft said they were “settlement discussions initiated by Heineken.”
The complaint filed by AB InBev was “not well-received by Heineken” which “pulled a single patent out of its quiver” in retaliation, Brinkman told the judge.
He spent much of his opening arguments explaining the history of keg dispenser developments and rebutting AB InBev’s arguments that the patent is invalid.
Moll presented his opening arguments outside of the public record because it involved AB InBev’s confidential business information.
Beer is usually served in bottles, cans or the large steel kegs that aficionados say provide the freshest flavor. On the downside, the kegs take up a lot of room and require gas to force the beer out,
which can affect the taste over time.
The new “kegs” are slimmer, sealed canisters in which the beer is kept in a bag and air is forced between the outer canister and inner bag, compressing the bag and pushing the beer up from the bottom. Since no air touches the beer, there’s no change in the flavour, and there’s no leftover beer in the keg.
Heineken sells its namesake beer in a stand-alone keg called the Blade while AB InBev sells Stella Artois in its Nova system. Smaller versions of the canisters, holding four pints, are sold for home use.
Heineken has a machine it calls Sub that’s sold under an agreement with closely held Hopsy.
AB InBev, the world’s largest beer-maker, says it owns patents on those canisters, and is seeking to block imports of Heineken’s Sub and Blade systems. Brinkman told the judge that Heineken has suspended plans to import the Blade into the U.S. and that the Subs shouldn’t be subject to an import ban, though that case is before a different trade judge.
Heineken says it invented the machinery used in the AB InBev Nova system, particularly the
dispensing line that’s designed to be more sanitary and require less maintenance than those in traditional keg systems.
AB InBev promotes Nova as something for “more intimate bars and restaurants that wish to serve proper draught beer without investing in full-scale tap systems.”
Heineken says the Blade system has a “small footprint and innovative compression system” that “allows you to serve premium draught beer from any counter top.”
Restaurants and bars are the biggest source of beer sales, according to the Beer Institute, so the countertop systems could open new draft markets to the brand companies.
The U.S. patent battle is a new wave after a decade-old dispute in Europe. In 2007, Heineken and InBev settled a European patent battle over InBev’s PerfectDraft home systems. Meanwhile, Danish brewer Carlsberg unsuccessfully sought to have Heineken’s European patent canceled in 2010.
The battle will be decided at the ITC, a quasijudicial agency set up to protect U.S. markets from unfair trade practices, including the infringement of patents.
Canada Post forecasts sector losses
Dan HEALING The Canadian Press
OTTAWA — Parcel delivery is booming, but Canada Post says it will struggle to meet its government-mandated goal of self-sustainability in coming years due to an ongoing decline in letter mail, higher employee costs and billions in needed capital spending.
In a corporate forecast quietly tabled in Parliament, the Crown corporation says it is expecting to achieve “modest” profits of between $10 million and $125 million from 2019 through to 2023 – but those will be driven primarily by its Purolator subsidiary, while the base Canada Post segment will post losses.
“Although Canada Post is in a financially viable position today, the forecasted growth in parcels revenue will not be enough for the Canada Post segment to achieve profitability throughout this plan’s period, nor will it be enough to make Canada Post financially self-sustaining in the long term,” the document says.
The “key strategic issue” for Canada Post is to chart a course to achieve sustainability goals the Liberal government identified in early 2018 after a review of Canada Post’s mandate, it says, adding it will require government attention to do so.
The plan addresses several priorities from government, including the order to end the Harper-era program (suspended during the
review) to replace door-to-door deliveries with community mailboxes.
The document says Canada Post has spent about $4.7 million since last summer to dismantle 2,280 community mailbox sites in 12 municipalities where it had begun but didn’t complete the conversion, including removing modules, pads and retaining walls and replacing curbs which had been cut to allow access.
The five-year plan estimates Canada Post will need to invest $3.6 billion to keep up with the growth of e-commerce shipping while modernizing to meet shipper and customer expectations and stay ahead of competitors.
Meanwhile, employee costs are rising, in part due to a rural pay equity ruling last fall identified as the main cause of an estimated $264 million loss in 2018.
The ruling is expected to add $140 million in annual costs going forward.
Canada Post says it expects to have to increase borrowing by about $500 million by 2023 to cover capital needs and to make special employee pension plan solvency payments, expected to start at over $500 million in 2020 and total over $1.8 billion by 2023. It forecasts a post office sector loss of $22 million for 2019 as total revenue grows 3.5 per cent or $234 million to about $7 billion. It says a 13 per cent increase in domestic parcel volume will be offset by a drop in letter mail activity of five per cent.
2019 low. The S&P/TSX composite index closed down 13.26 points to 16,502.20, after hitting an intraday high of 16,553.39, just 14 points off the all-time high set last July. The Toronto market had been up most of the day as investors appeared to be showing more confidence that forecasts of economic doom were overblown due to a stronger-than-expected Chinese economy and a U.S. economy that continues to perform, says Natalie Taylor, portfolio manager at CIBC.
“So we’re seeing investors cycling away from defensive stocks, which have really led the rally since December, into less defensive sectors and this is particularly evident if you look at interest-sensitive sectors,” she said in an interview. Taylor said setting a new high appears to be just around the corner, but moving meaningfully through that level depends on whether an acceleration of corporate growth can be a catalyst.
“I think you need to see upwards earnings revisions because the valuations can only expand for so long without the help from fundamentals.”
The influential financials sector rose 0.56 per cent on better yields, with Toronto-Dominion Bank and the Bank of Nova Scotia leading. Health care was up more than one per cent, recovering from a couple of down days, as Aurora Cannabis Inc. and Canopy Growth Corp. rose about 3.96 and 2.38 per cent respectively. Real estate and materials were the biggest losers on the day. Materials fell 1.4 per cent as gold prices dropped to the lowest level since Dec. 24. The June gold contract was down US$14.10 at US$1,277.20 an ounce and the May copper contract was up 0.45 of a cent at US$2.93 a pound.
In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average was up 67.89 points at 26,452.66. The S&P 500 index was up 1.48 points at 2,907.06, while the Nasdaq
AP FILE PHOTO
People pour beers from a keg during the opening day of The Bavarian Festival at Harvey Kern Pavilion in Frankenmuth, Mich., on June 11, 2015. A dispute over beer keg technology has the world’s two largest brewers, Anheuser-Busch InBev and Heineken, heading to court.
Sports
Spruce Kings win in overtime
Ted CLARKE Citizen staff
Just one more win.
That’s all the Prince George Spruce Kings need to put their stamp on the Fred Page Cup as champions of the B.C. Hockey League. Ben Poisson made sure of that when he scored 12:07 into overtime to finish off a 4-3 victory Tuesday night in Game 3 in Vernon.
Chong Min Lee dug the puck out of the corner to Nick Poisson, whose shot was stopped, but his older brother Ben was there to pop in the rebound on his backhand side for the winner.
The best-of-seven B.C. Hockey League Fred Page Cup championship series resumes with Game 4 tonight at Kal Tire Place in Vernon. The Spruce Kings will have a chance to wrap up the first BCHL championship of their 23-year history.
The win was the 12th straight in the playoffs for the Kings, who improved their post season record to 15-1. They’ve won 23 of their last 25 games dating back to Jan. 25. Facing the possibility of falling behind 3-0 in the best-of-seven series and trailing by a goal with less than three minutes to play in regulation time the Vipers found a way to tie it. Lane Zablocki circled with the puck out of the corner and from middle of the Kings’ zone he took advantage of a screen in front of Logan Neaton and unleashed a wrist shot to score his second of the game on a wristshot. That came with just 2:20 left in regulation time.
Nick Poisson had given the Kings a 3-2 lead, 2:47 into the third period.
He followed up on a point shot from Nick Bochen that changed direction and left a big rebound in front of goalie Aidan Porter. The younger Poisson pounced on the loose puck and lifted a high backhander in over Porter’s shoulder.
The Vipers came within a whisker of tying it up seven minutes into the period on an odd-man rush. Josh Latta sent a cross-crease feed over to linemate Matt Kowal-
ski, who got a hard shot way from close range but couldn’t get the puck past a diving Neaton, his best save of the game. Vernon outshot the Kings 40-24 through three periods.
Neaton made 43 saves in the Spruce Kings nets to improve his playoff record to 15-1.
Porter blocked 26 shots as his team outshot the Kings 46-30. Shots were even at six apiece in overtime.
BCHL player of the week Corey Cunningham and Max Coyle also scored for the Spruce Kings. Teddy Wooding and Zablocki each scored in the second period for Vernon.
The Kings were outshot 18-8 in the first period but just like they did Saturday in their 4-1 win in Game 2 in Prince George, they came out of it unscathed with a 1-0 lead. Cunningham, a 17-yearold Prince George native, showed
his soft hands when he took a long pass behind enemy lines from defenceman Layton Ahac and finished with a backhand-forehand deke on Porter. That came right after Lucas Vanroboys won the draw in the Vernon end and Nolan Welsh tapped the puck back for Ahac.
For Cunningham it was his fifth of the playoffs. He showed a similar scoring touch with slick moves around the net which netted him a pair of goals in Game 2 of the Coastal Conference championship against the Victoria Grizzlies.
Ahac was listed by NHL Central Scouting this week as the 62ndranked North American skater.
The 17-year-old’s stock has risen dramatically from the mid-season rankings in January, in which he was ranked 114th.
In the second period the Vipers caught a break when a dump-in puck shot by defenceman Carver
Watson hit one of the linesmen and stopped along the right-wing wall for Ben Sanderson, who spotted Vipers centre Wooding breaking for the net and fed a pass over to the Yale recruit, who was a step ahead of his check when he deflected the puck in behind Neaton.
The Kings cashed in their first power play of the game to grab the lead again late in the period. Coyle carried the puck in from the point and double-clutched before letting go a wristshot that found seam into the net.
The Vipers got that one back with 1:31 left in the second period. The Vipers were on the power play when captain Jagger Williamson set up Zablocki for a one-timer from the face-off circle for his third of the playoffs and the teams went into the second intermission tied 2-2.
LOOSE PUCKS: The BCHL win-
ner will play the Alberta Junior Hockey League champion Brooks Bandits in a best-of-seven Doyle Cup series that starts April 29 in Brooks. The Bandits finished off the Saints with a 2-0 victory Tuesday in Spruce Grove to sweep the series 4-0… Brooks will host the national junior A hockey championship, May 11-19… Victoria Grizzlies centre and league MVP Alex Newhook is the highestranked draft-eligible BCHL player, listed 13th on the list of North American skaters. Grizzlies winger Alexander Campbell, the BCHL’s rookie of the year, is ranked 43rd. Other NHL-listed BCHL players are: Chilliwack Chiefs F Harrison Blaisdell (80th), Penticton Vees F Massimo Rizzo (84th), Grizzlies D Jeremie Bucheler (114th), Chiefs F Kevin Wall (124th), Grizzlies D Carter Berger (157th), Langley Rivermen F Ethan Leyh (167th) and Vees D Mason Snell (212th).
Supercross-savvy Pettis finds higher plain
Ted CLARKE Citizen staff
Motocross racers and bull riders play a dangerous game. It’s only a matter of time before they get bucked off.
Sometimes they get lucky and walk away unscathed. But all too often those rubber bones and elastic ligaments can’t take the strain of an ejector-seat landing and break before they bend.
Jess Pettis was reminded of that Feb. 19 in Pala, Calif., while practicing for the Monster Energy AMA Supercross West series.
He hit a soft patch in a muddy track and was catapulted headfirst over the handlebars, suffering a broken collarbone, partially collapsed lung and mild concussion.
After a spectacular debut that resulted in five 250cc top-12 finishes on the pro supercross circuit – the NHL of motocross – that crash in training was a major setback for the 21-year-old KTM Thor Factory team rider from Prince George.
A doctor in California plated and pinned the broken collarbone in surgery the next day and the wreck dashed Pettis’s hopes of racing the next five events in the supercross series.
But he healed quickly and he’s been back riding for more than a month already.
“It was pretty painful for a week or so but I did everything I could and went to physiotherapy to get back to riding as soon as I could,” said Pettis, from his training base in Tallahasee, Fla., home of his sister Katelyn and brother-in-law Jesse Wentland.
“I’ve been racing all year round, doing the supercross in the winter and the nationals in the summer, full-time training 12 months of the year and I’m in good shape. It’s nice to be back healthy again. Obviously injuries come with the sport but I’m back at it.” Pettis was the only Canadian racing the supercross series and in his first main event Jan. 2 in Anaheim he placed 10th. His other supercross results were 12th (Glendale, Ariz., Jan 12), 11th (Anaheim, Jan. 19) and 11th (Oakland, Jan 26). In Oakland he crashed on the first lap of the main and worked his way back through the 40-rider field to finish 11th.
The best was yet to come. On a muddy track in San Diego, Feb. 2 he finished fifth. That day, he qualified ninth, was fourth in the heat race and ran with the top-five for
the duration of the main event.
“I got off to a really good start and put in my career-best finish with a fifth place in the main event so that was amazing,” said Pettis. “It’s the best riders in the world and the biggest stage. Fifth place was something that I never dreamed of back when I was a little kid. It’s the highest level and it’s cool to look back and see how far I’ve come in the last year.
“I guess the odds are stacked against me in a way, just being from where I’m from. Prince George is pretty far north for a supercross racer. It’s just lot of sacrificing and traveling and doing whatever you can to make it happen. I’m really happy with the progress I’m making and I’ve still got goals I want to hit – just keep getting better and better.”
The San Diego race was plagued by rain and track officials dumped lime on the wettest parts to try to dry the track.
But a late afternoon downpour kept the lime from mixing with the dirt and it created a caustic mixture which soaked through the gear the riders wore.
“I had quite a few burns on my body,” said Pettis. “I don’t like the mud and never really enjoy it but I seem to do pretty decent in it. I think just being from the north and from
Canada we ride in the mud more than the riders from California or the hotter states.”
Pettis admits getting chills down his spine when he hears the roar of the supercross crowd above the growl of 40 revving motorbike engines.
“When you’re on the starting line I kind of take a peek up and look around the stadium and it’s kind of crazy when you’re the centre of attention with sixty or seventy thousand fans staring down at us,” he said.
“The bright lights are on us and you just tell yourself, ‘this is pretty cool.’ It’s almost like you’ve made it.”
Pettis had a dominant summer in 2018 on the Rockstar Energy MX Tour and won the 250cc class. That gives him the No. 1 plate to mount on his bike this season and he’ll get the chance to race at home. Prince George will host the second of the eightevent 2019 MX Tour on June 8 at Blackwater Motocross Park, which follows the season-opener in Calgary June 1.
“Winning that series last year was amazing, a dream come true, and I still don’t take that for granted,” he said. “It was an amazing thing to check off the bucket list and at the same time I have to put my keep head down and work and try to do the same thing this year. That’s what I’m getting
ready for now down in Florida, getting myself in shape for the outdoor nationals.” The series also stops in Minnedosa, Man (June 15), Courtland, Ont. (July 13), Ottawa (July 20), Moncton, N.B. (July 27), Deschambault, Que. (Aug. 3) and Walton, Ont. (Aug. 17).
“We’re honestly really lucky to have a national race in Prince George, they’ve cut back quite a few of the tracks for nationals this year,” he said. “I’ve heard nothing but good things about Prince George from the riders and all the team perspectives and it’s cool to have that back on the schedule this year. Being only 15 or 20 minutes away from the house, I can’t complain.” Pettis had a stroke of bad luck last year at Backwater when he bike quit running one corner away from winning the first moto. He ended up second in the second moto.
Winning the Canadian series wasn’t the only highlight of 2018. He was one of three riders picked for Team Canada to take on the world’s best riders in the Motocross of Nations event in Buchanan, Mich. Conditions were soggy for the two-day event, Oct. 6-7, and despite crashes both days for Pettis he teamed up with Colton Facciotti and Tyler Medaglia to finish 10th out of 29 teams. Canada was bumped up to 10th from 11th in January when Italy was disqualified for using illegal fuel.
“Being chosen for that was the dream of a lifetime,” Pettis said. “It just added to the list of great things last year and that was right at the top. Our team all rode as hard as we could and got a really good result.”
As a KTM Factory rider, Pettis is no longer dependent on the bank of mom and dad. He made enough money last year to pay his own travel costs and is now drawing steady paycheques from his main sponsor. That financial freedom comes after about 15 years of his parents, Betty and Doug, footing the bill.
“My mom and dad have sacrificed a lot,” said Pettis. “They always wanted to support me to get to my goal as long as I’m willing to work hard and make it all worth it. I feel like that’s part of my success nowadays, having that family support and all the hometown sponsors. It hasn’t been easy and a lot of businesses and companies in Prince George have stuck behind me and they got me to where I am.”
KELOWNA DAILY COURIER PHOTO BY WAYNE EMDE
Prince George Spruce Kings goalie Logan Neaton denies Vernon Vipers winger Ben Sanderson on a breakaway in the second period while Kings defenceman Max Coyle gives chase during Game 3 action Tuesday in the BCHL Fred Page Cup championship series in Vernon.
Islanders best Penguins 3-1 in playoff sweep
Will GRAVES
The Associated Press
PITTSBURGH — The New York Islanders’ turnaround season is heading to the second round of the playoffs.
Jordan Eberle scored for the fourth straight game, Robin Lehner stopped 32 shots and the Islanders finished off Sidney Crosby and the Pittsburgh Penguins with a clinical 3-1 win in Game 4 on Tuesday night to pull off a stunning sweep.
Josh Bailey set up Brock Nelson’s go-ahead goal late in the first period and added an empty-net score with 38 seconds remaining as the Islanders easily captured the franchise’s second playoff series
victory in 26 years.
The Islanders trailed for less than five minutes across four games against the Penguins, whose 13th straight post-season appearance ended quietly. Pittsburgh managed just six goals in the series, including Jake Guentzel’s first of the post-season 35 seconds into the game.
It wasn’t nearly enough to stop the Islanders. New York allowed the fewest goals in the league during the regular season, and then backed it up with 12-plus periods of sound hockey that’s quickly become their calling card under first-year coach Barry Trotz, who led the Washington Capitals to the Stanley Cup last season.
The Penguins did their best to
stay loose while trying to avoid getting swept in the first round for the second time in franchise history.
The team that began the playoffs with hopes of capturing its third Stanley Cup in four years looked ready to bounce back. For a couple of minutes anyway.
Guentzel found space in the slot and ripped a shot past Lehner 35 seconds into the game for the first goal of the series by Pittsburgh’s top line. The 574th consecutive home sellout crowd buzzed. The Penguins had the momentum and the lead.
Just as they did at every critical point during what became a lopsided series, the Islanders responded almost immediately.
Penguins defenceman Kris Letang whiffed while trying to pinch into the New York zone, creating a 2-on-1 the other way that Eberle finished to even it at 1 just 1:34 after Guentzel had put Pittsburgh in front.
The goal seemed to steady the Islanders, who settled in and kept it simple. New York posted the franchise’s best regular-season record in 35 years by limiting chances and relying heavily on Trotz’s system that preaches pragmatism and patience.
The Islanders weathered Pittsburgh’s early push and went ahead with 1:54 to go in the first period when Nelson slipped behind Penguins forward Garrett Wilson and darted to the net. Bailey’s
pass from the below the goal line arrived right as Nelson flashed in front of Pittsburgh goaltender Matt Murray. Nelson flicked a shot over Murray’s right pad, and New York was back in control.
Another stellar defensive effort and a little bit of puck luck helped. Crosby hit the inside of the left post in the middle of the second period, and Islanders defenceman Scott Mayfield bailed out Lehner by making a save with his left leg on a point-blank shot by Phil Kessel early in the third. And that was it. When Bailey’s flip went the length of the ice and into the empty net, the Islanders’ bench erupted and the Penguins trudged toward an off-season that could lead to significant changes.
Lightning ousted in record speed by Columbus
Mitch STACY
The Associated Press
COLUMBUS, Ohio — The Tampa Bay Lightning ended up on the wrong side of NHL history, getting swept in the first round of the playoffs after one of the best regular seasons ever.
The Columbus Blue Jackets capped a stunning sweep of the Presidents Trophy winners with a 7-3 victory Tuesday night. Tampa
Bay became the first team in the expansion era, which began in 1967-68, to go winless in the first round of the playoffs after leading the league in points during the regular season.
And what a season it was.
Tampa Bay tied the NHL record for wins with 62 and amassed 128 points, fourth in NHL history.
The Blue Jackets, meanwhile, didn’t clinch the second Eastern Conference wild-card spot until
the 81st game. But they outplayed the Lightning with a smothering forecheck and stellar goaltending by Sergei Bobrovsky.
Columbus won its first-ever playoff series in its fifth try and advances to play the winner of the Boston-Toronto series, which the Maple Leafs lead 2-1. Bobrovsky carried the day again for the Blue Jackets, finishing with 30 saves.
With Columbus clinging to a 4-3
lead in the third period, Tampa Bay had wrested the momentum from the Blue Jackets but still couldn’t solve Bobrovsky. The Blue Jackets’ final three goals came late in the period after the Lightning had pulled goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy for an extra skater.
Rookie Alexandre Texier, who was brought over after his season ended in the Finnish league, scored his first NHL goal and later added one of the empty-netters.
Pierre Luc-Dubois had a goal and a pair of assists.
A dozen different players scored for Columbus in the series.
Steven Stamkos, Cedric Paquette and Brayden Point scored for Tampa Bay, which never led in this elimination game. The Lightning tied it at 3 on Point’s goal late in the second period, but Oliver Bjorkstrand scored 54 seconds later to put Columbus ahead for good.
New York Islanders’ Josh Bailey (12) takes a shot to the other end of the ice for an empty-net goal during the third period in Game 4 of an NHL first-round hockey playoff series against the Pittsburgh Penguins in Pittsburgh on Tuesday. The Islanders won 3-1, and swept the series.
Game of Thrones premiere sets viewership record for HBO
David BAUDER
The Associated Press
NEW YORK — HBO’s Game of Thrones lived up to the hype. This past weekend’s season premiere stands as the most-watched oneday event in the history of the cable network that began in 1978.
The Nielsen company said 17.4 million people watched the Sunday opener to the show’s final season, either live on the network at 9 p.m., streamed, through HBO’s on-demand service or during two reruns that aired later that night.
Nielsen can’t account for people who watched more than once.
HBO’s previous high-water mark was last season’s finale of Game of
Thrones, making it likely that this new HBO record will be eclipsed when the series ends on May 19.
Nielsen said that 11.8 million people watched the season premiere traditionally, meaning when it first aired on the network at 9 p.m.
The numbers are likely to keep going up; HBO estimates that 32.8 million people watched each episode of the show last season. That includes people who watched weeks after it first aired and repeat viewers.
Viewership for the show is more impressive when you consider that HBO is a service that people have to specifically pay for. It is available in around 35 million
households in the United States, or roughly a third of the number of homes that can see CBS, NBC and ABC.
Tiger Woods’ stirring comeback in the Masters gave CBS its biggest audience for that marquee golf tournament in six years, Nielsen said. Sunday’s final round, which was moved up several hours due to the threat of bad weather in Georgia, averaged 10.8 million viewers.
The broadcast’s peak came when Woods won shortly after 2 p.m. ET, with 18.3 million viewers.
CBS easily won the week in prime-time, averaging 7.1 million viewers. ABC had 4.5 million viewers, NBC had 3.7 million, Fox
Cosby’s insurer settles accuser’s suit
PHILADELPHIA — Bill Cosby’s insurance company has settled another lawsuit filed by a female accuser a week before the imprisoned comedian was set to give a deposition in the case, prompting Cosby to call the insurer “complicit” in a scheme to destroy him.
Former model Chloe Goins had accused Cosby of drugging and molesting her at a party at the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles in 2008, when she was about 18.
Cosby in a statement Tuesday accused American International Group Inc. of “egregious behaviour” in settling what he called a “frivolous” suit, and said he could prove he was in New York at the time. Goins’ lawsuit was filed in state court in Los Angeles. Goins’ lawyers, Craig Goldenfarb and Spencer Kuvin, said their client was pleased with the confidential settlement. An AIG spokesman said the insurer had no comment.
“Mr. Cosby’s legal team provided medical records, which showed that Mr. Cosby had undergone eye surgery and was in New York, recuperating at his home, at the time of the alleged events,” he said
in the statement, issued by spokesman Andrew Wyatt. Cosby, 81 is serving a three- to 10-year prison term after a Pennsylvania jury last year found he drugged and molested a woman who worked at his alma mater, Temple University, in 2004.
Earlier this month, AIG settled defamation lawsuits filed by seven other Cosby accusers in Massachusetts, after losing a legal battle over their duty to defend Cosby in those cases.
Cosby had at least $37 million in insurance coverage through AIG, including two $1 million homeowner’s policies and a $35 million umbrella policy protecting him from personal injury or property damage claims. AIG argued that the policies did not cover sexual misconduct claims.
However, a federal appeals court, in a 2018 decision written by former Supreme Court Justice David Souter, who was filling in on the court, said the defamation claims were distinct from the sexual misconduct claims underlying them, and must be covered.
The Massachusetts plaintiffs said Cosby and his agents had labeled them liars in public comments denying their accusations. AIG declined to comment Tuesday on its decision to settle the lawsuits
or on Cosby’s ire. Cosby, in the statement, called AIG “complicit in this scheme to destroy me and my family.”
“I can only imagine how terribly they’re treating their policyholders, who don’t have my means and my resource,” Cosby said in the statement.
The settlements largely bring a close to what was once a dizzying spate of litigation involving sexual misconduct and defamation accusations lodged against Cosby around the country. There are now two claims remaining in California filed by accusers Judith Huth and Janice Dickinson. Cosby is appealing his conviction in the Pennsylvania criminal case, insisting the encounter with Andrea Constand was consensual. He had settled a civil lawsuit she filed in 2006, and was arrested nearly a decade later, after a deposition he gave in the case was unsealed, prompting prosecutors to reopen the criminal case.
Los Angeles police investigated Goins’ claims, but said she had come forward months after the six-year statute of limitations ran out. She initially filed the lawsuit against both Cosby and Playboy Mansion owner Hugh Hefner, but Hefner was dismissed from the case before he died in 2017.
had 2.3 million, Univision had 1.3 million, ION Television had 1.2 million, Telemundo had 1.1 million and the CW had 700,000. Fox News Channel was the week’s most popular cable network, averaging 2.38 million viewers in prime time. MSNBC had 1.56 million, HGTV had 1.182 million, USA had 1.177 million and TNT had 1.11 million.
ABC’s World News Tonight topped the evening newscasts with an average of 7.9 million viewers. NBC’s Nightly News was second with 7.5 million and the CBS Evening News had 5.5 million viewers.
For the week of April 8-14, the top 10 shows, their networks and
viewerships: NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship: Virginia vs. Texas Tech, CBS, 19.72 million; NCIS, CBS, 11.82 million; Game of Thrones, HBO, 11.76 million; 60 Minutes, CBS, 8.72 million; The Code, CBS, 8.14 million; Blue Bloods, CBS, 8.09 million; The Voice (Monday), NBC, 7.62 million; Survivor, CBS, 7.6 million; NCAA Basketball Pre-Game Show, CBS, 7.47 million; The Voice (Tuesday), NBC, 7.32 million. ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Co. CBS is owned by CBS Corp. CW is a joint venture of Warner Bros. Entertainment and CBS Corp. Fox is owned by 21st Century Fox. NBC and Telemundo are owned by Comcast Corp.
This photo released by HBO shows Kit Harington as Jon Snow, and Emilia Clarke as Daenerys Targaryen in a scene from Game of Thrones, which premiered its eighth season on Sunday.
Maryclaire DALE
The Associated Press
AP PHOTO
In this fall of 2018 file photo Bill Cosby arrives for his sentencing hearing at the Montgomery County Courthouse in Norristown, Pa.
Barbara Joan Snow
May 27, 1953 - Apr 7, 2019
Passed away peacefully surrounded by her family and friends. Celebration of Life to be held at Spruceland Baptist Church Spruce
Reta Pauline Hutchinson
Born March 5, 1929, passed at the age of 90, April 5, 2019. She is survived by her daughters Lindy (Doc), Leona (Denny),Cheryl (Cory), Crystal (Lee), Linda (Kevin), and stepsons David (Annette), Scott (Jackie), and Alex. She will be dearly missed by her 13 grandchildren and 26 great grandchildren. She as born in Colsay Saskatchewan March 5,1929 to the late Chester and Jenny Christopherson. She was predeceased by her husband Jim Hutchinson of many years. Pauline was a long-time resident of Prince George, and active member of the Royal Canadian Legion and a retired employee of Pepsi and McDonalds. She will be missed by many friends and family who have enjoyed her spunk, sassy humour and determination of independence. Her life was marked by many experiences from travel, dancing late into the night, and love of lakeside living. “Our memories will linger long after our footprints in the sand are gone.” Celebration of life will take place Saturday May 11, 2019 1:00p.m. Royal Canadian Legion-Prince George. In lieu of flowers donations may be made to Royal Canadian Legion.
CARL ZAZULAK
August 24, 1935 April 12, 2019
Carl passed away peacefully at the Prince George Hospice House with his loving family by his side. He is predeceased by his parents Michael Zazulak and Antonia Zazulak (nee Shipowski), son Stephen Zazulak (Lisa), siblings Peter, Bob, Ted, Fran Leudtke (Art), Mary Ewanyshyn, and Tony (Gladys). Carl is survived and will be greatly missed by his wife Natalie Zazulak, son Paul, daughters Theresa and Caroline Mackenzie (Scott). Grandchildren include Matthew, Devon, Lennet, Tiffany, Carl, Eric, Carter, Parker, and Tanner. Siblings are Sandra Seymour (Ron), Michael (Carla), Martha Hyrchuk (John), and numerous other extended family and good friends. A prayer service will be held on Wednesday, April 17, 2019 at 6:00pm at St. George’s Ukrainian Catholic Church, 2414 Vanier Drive, Prince George, BC. The funeral service will be held on Thursday, April 18, 2019 at 11:00am at St. George’s Ukrainian Catholic Church with Father Iurii Tychenok officiating. Interment to follow in the Prince George Memorial Park Cemetery. Lakewood Funeral Home in care of the arrangements.
