Master builder
Iona Silvestre, a professional cooking student at the College of New Caledonia, puts the final
will be on display in the CNC library between Dec. 7 and Dec. 21.
Turnout low on last day of referendum
Amy SMART Citizen news service
VANCOUVER — An advocate for maintaining British Columbia’s electoral system as it is questions whether residents really care about reform, given voter turnout figures released on the final day of the referendum campaign.
Elections BC said it had received 41 per cent of eligible ballots by Friday morning in the referendum, which asks voters whether they would prefer to keep the existing first-past-the-post system or move to a form of proportional representation.
Ballots could be returned by mail or in person and those received before the 4:30 p.m. deadline on Friday will be counted.
“Forty-one per cent indicates to me that most British Columbians really don’t find proportional representation or our electoral system an extremely important topic,” said Bill Tieleman, Vote No spokesman, adding it’s likely that the turnout will remain lower than two previous referendums in 2005 and 2009.
“It kind of indicates what we’ve said all along, that this referendum wasn’t necessary.”
In 2005, voter turnout was 61 per cent. About 57 per cent of ballots were cast in favour of proportional representation, which did not meet the threshold of 60 per cent to make it binding on the government.
Four years later, voter turnout
CP FILE PHOTO
Premier John Horgan and B.C. Green Party leader Andrew Weaver cheer following their speeches at a rally in support of proportional representation in Victoria on Oct. 23. Friday was the last day of the mail-in referendum on electoral reform.
was 55 per cent and 61 per cent voted in favour of first past the post.
The latest referendum is binding and the winner will be declared by a simple majority of votes cast.
Tieleman said if the vote favours proportional representation, he’d question whether the electorate really supports the shift.
If turnout remains in the range of 40 per cent and just over half of those votes are for change, that would mean only about 20 per cent of the electorate voted for proportional representation, while 80 per cent either voted against it
or didn’t vote at all, he said.
But Green party leader Andrew Weaver, who supports proportional representation, said the results should be accepted whatever they may be.
If civic election results are accepted when turnout is lower than 41 per cent, then so should the referendum results, he said.
“The reality is, this is our democratic system. We are entitled to vote, we can vote if we wish and if we choose not to vote, we make that choice accordingly,” Weaver said.
— see ‘IT’S AN EXCITING, page 3
RCMP against exempting trading cards from second-hand dealers bylaw
Mark NIELSEN Citizen staff mnielsen@pgcitizen.ca
Prince George RCMP is raising concerns about a proposal to exempt trading and collectible cards from a requirement under the city’s second-hand dealers and pawnbrokers bylaw that they be held for 30 days before they can be put up for sale.
City council will consider the idea during its regular meeting on Monday in response to a request from Kelsy Polnik of Game Quest for the exemption, similar to one made in 2014 for video games. In preparing an amendment to the bylaw, city staff consulted with RCMP. Insp. Shaun Wright, who differed with the view that trading cards are the same as video games.
“The concerns are that collectible and trading cards can be quite valuable and can also be quite rare or unique, allowing for identification and return to the rightful owner,” city planning and development manager Ian Wells said in a report to council.
“They may also come with authentication paperwork that adds to the ability of the RCMP to positively identify those items. As such, it is useful for the police to have those items held
for the 30-day waiting period, similar to other identifiable items such as electronics with serial numbers.”
Wells advised council to take Wright’s position into account but, for the time being at least, pass the amendment through first and second reading. Once that is done, a public hearing on the issue will be held.
Also on the agenda
• A formal public hearing will be held for a proposal to rezone 4585 Martin Rd. to single residential (RS2m) from suburban residential (RS1m) to create an additional lot in a subdivision proposed for the area.
• A formal public hearing will be held for a proposal to close a portion of road at the corner of Marleau and O’Grady to consolidate the site with an adjacent property.
• An informal public hearing will be held for a variance permit to allow construction of a pole barn and a greenhouse at 9644 Birchill Cres.
• CNC president Henry Reiser and acting vice president academic Chad Thompson will provide an update on the college’s activities.
The meeting starts at 6 p.m. and the public hearings at 7 p.m.
Tyler Fillion helps unload a cube van full of groceries collected by RCMP members during a Pack-A-Police-Car event in 2016. They will be back at it this Sunday at all four Save On Foods, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
RCMP Pack-A-Police-Car event to benefit seniors
Citizen staff
Prince George RCMP will be out at all four Save On Foods stores this Sunday asking for the public’s help to pack a police car with nonperishable food that will go to the Prince George Council of Seniors. Officers, detachment staff and volunteers will be at the locations from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
“It is our hope that the generous citizens of Prince George and sur-
rounding areas purchase an extra item or two while shopping and help load the police vehicle on the way out of the store,” RCMP said.
Items suggested for donation include canned vegetables, canned fruits packed in water, 100-per-cent unsweetened fruit juice or fruit sauce, oatmeal or other hot cereals, rice or barley, pastas, canned fish, chicken, ham or corned beef, peanut butter, canned or dry beans and lentils,
canned evaporated milk, milk powder or shelf-stable UHT milk, fortified plant-based beverages (soy, rice or coconut), canned soups or stews (low in sodium preferred), facial tissue, toilet tissue, paper towel (individuallywrapped packages appreciated).
Cash and grocery store gift cards will also be accepted.
Last year, the event filled over 22 police cars and raised over $4,000 for the Council of Seniors.
NEWS IN BRIEF
ORN hit the streets
Operation Red Nose Prince George will have 18 teams on the road tonight to provide safe rides home to party-goers. To get one, call 250-962-7433 between 9 p.m. and 3 a.m.
Clients must have a vehicle with valid B.C. license plates. All donations go towards youth and amateur sport organizations in Prince George. As for volunteers, 214 people have signed up, including 47 who are helping out for the first time.
Another 36 volunteers are required for New Year’s Eve. Those interested in helping out can apply online at www.ornpg.ca
The process includes a criminal record check. Operation Red Nose is organized by the Rotary Club of Prince George-Nechako in partnership with ICBC and the Prince George RCMP.
City’s unemployment rate 5.2 per cent
The city’s unemployment rate stood at 5.2 per cent in November, according to a Statistics Canada labour market survey issued Friday. In all 46,100 people were working, 2,500 looking for work and 24,300 of working age not participating.
For the same month last year, the unemployment rate was 5.3 per cent with 49,800 working, 2,800 seeking employment and 19,900 not participating. Accuracy of the November 2018 unemployment rate was plus or minus 0.9 percentage points, 68 per cent of the time and for the November 2017 unemployment rate, it was 0.8 percentage points, 68 per cent of the time. The unemployment rate for the province as a whole was 4.4 per cent, the lowest in the country.
Call out for Christmas light displays
The Citizen is once again seeking out those beacons of light and Christmas cheer as the city embraces the tradition of lighting up houses. Christmas cruisers can travel along Candy Cane Lane, which is part of Prince George residents’ tradition. The event starts on McKenzie Avenue, just off Upland Street, where the entire neighbourhood lights up and offers many different themes, ranging from the reason-for-the-seasontraditional to super heroes and classic tales like Charlie Brown’s tree and the Grinch who stole Christmas. Send addresses of particularly spectacular displays to news@pgcitizen.ca, with the subject line of Christmas lights and we’ll compile a touring list to put in the newspaper the week before Christmas.
Plans for CNC’s Vanderhoof campus shown to public
Citizen staff
CNC gathered reaction to its plans for the new Vanderhoof campus during a public meeting in the community on Thursday night.
The event began with a presentation showing a conceptual design of the first and second floor of the new campus, as well as the trades shop.
The room was then divided into breakout sessions where group feedback was collected. It was followed by a question and answer period.
The design includes a 357-square-metre shop meant to diversify the trades training opportunities and two classrooms with cameras and microphones to create an “interactive digital
classroom.”
Currently, students in Vanderhoof can enroll in 28 courses using the technology, including bookkeeping, English and early childhood care and learning for the spring 2018 semester.
Feedback gathered from the community during the evening’s breakout sessions will be taken into consideration as the renovation project moves forward.
“CNC greatly values the communities it serves,” said CNC president Henry Reiser.
“Through this project, we wanted to create a campus with modern up-to-date classrooms and support spaces to enhance the teaching and learning environment in Vanderhoof. It is important the community is involved in defining what that is.”
‘It’s an exciting opportunity for people to get engaged’
— from page 1
“We have all along said that we will support whatever outcome there is. It’s an exciting opportunity for people to get engaged in discussions about our democratic institutions and the people are ultimately right,” Weaver added.
“Whatever they choose is what we’ll move forward with.”
Maria Dobrinskaya, an advocate with the Vote PR BC campaign, said low voter turnout is a symptom of the public’s disengagement with the current political system and that’s one of the things the Yes side hopes electoral reform will change.
If less than a quarter of the public chooses to change to proportional representation, and then a fraction of them choose one of the NDP-selected systems, I think there’s going to be a real problem.
“I would like to see voter turnout be a lot higher and citizen participation in our democratic processes a lot more engaged.
I’m hoping that bringing in a new way of voting will be one part of starting to address that,” she said.
Given that the vote could change the fundamentals of British Columbia’s democracy, B.C. Liberal Leader Andrew Wilkinson said he’d prefer to see a strong majority vote one way or the other. But he said passing the 40 per cent turnout mark is impressive, because it is a complicated topic.
— Andrew Wilkinson, B.C. Liberal leader
“This was such a confusing ballot that it’s actually comforting to see that many people took the time to sort it out and cast their vote, so we’re all going to be watching with interest to see what people decide,” Wilkinson said.
He expressed concern, however, that if proportional representation passes, an even smaller portion of the electorate will have voted in favour of the particular form it takes.
A second question on the ballot asked voters to rank one of three forms of proportional representation, which has the support of the province’s NDP government.
“If less than a quarter of the public chooses to change to proportional representation, and then a fraction of them choose one of the NDP-selected systems, I think there’s going to be a real problem,” Wilkinson said.
Elections BC spokeswoman Rebecca Penz said final turnout numbers will continue to be reported into early next week. She said the elections authority is hoping to release results by Christmas.
Other provinces, including Prince Edward Island and Ontario, have also held referendums on their electoral systems but neither made any changes.
In Prince Edward Island in 2016, the Liberal government decided not to honour a provincial plebiscite on electoral reform, in which only 36 per cent of eligible voters took part.
During the Prince George Citizen’s next prime minister poll we asked “with the federal election less than a year away, who would you like to see as prime minister?”
Taking a convincing lead was Andrew Scheer with 1,015 votes or 51 per cent of the vote, trailing was Justin Trudeau with 744 votes or 37 per cent, lagging significantly was Elizabeth May with 158 votes or eight per cent and dead last was Jagmeet Singh with 87 votes, which was four per cent of the votes cast. There were 2,004 votes cast. Remember, this is not
An estimated timeline for the campus was also presented.
• December 2018-January 2019: Hire design consultant and construction manager via public procurement process;
• Winter 2019: Demolition, prepare site and building for new construction and apply for permits;
• Spring 2019: Structural work, preliminary electrical and mechanical rough-in work
• Summer 2019: Detailed electrical and mechanical finishing work, interior finishes, grounds improvements;
• Fall 2019: Final interior finishing work, systems commissioning, deficiency completion, operational readiness and owner move in;
• January 2020: Classes begin.
HANDOUT PHOTO
The College of New Caledonia presented its plans for its proposed Vanderhoof campus to the public on Thursday night.
NEWS IN BRIEF
Couple suspected of selling fake jewelry in Fraser Lake
A pair of fraud artists may have struck Fraser Lake.
RCMP in the community said Friday they have received several complaints of a couple claiming to be from out of town approaching people on the street asking for cash to pay for food and gas and offering to sell them jewelry in return.
“The jewelry had no markings except for the rings which have a number signifying the karat of gold. It is after the purchase that the victims discover the jewelry to be fake,” RCMP said. It is believed the man and woman are travelling in a black Kia SUV but the licence plate number is unknown.
“The suspects did state that they needed money to return home to Ontario,” RCMP said.
Anyone with information on who they may be and where they can be found is asked to call the Fraser Lake RCMP at 250-699-7777 or Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477.
Suspected thief causes three-car crash
Prince George RCMP say the driver of a stolen pickup was at the centre of a multi-vehicle collision midday Friday near Ewert Street and 15th Avenue near the hospital. Alerted to a theft from
the parking lot of a local business shortly before noon, RCMP said they located the suspect in the College Heights area a short time later, only to see him speed away. With the help of a police helicopter, police said they followed from a safe distance as he headed north on Ospika. Several minutes later, plainclothes police officers attempted to box the truck in and, in an attempt to evade his captors, RCMP said he subsequently collided with a civilian vehicle and an unmarked police truck. The drivers of both those vehicles suffered minor injuries, police said. A 34-yearold local man, who RCMP said is well known to the police, was arrested and taken into custody. His name was not released.
— Citizen staff
Suspended B.C. professor to return to teaching
KAMLOOPS (CP) — A professor who was suspended from a B.C. university after speaking out against the publication of research in journals that are not peer reviewed will be resuming his job next month.
Prof. Derek Pyne of Thompson Rivers University questioned the practice followed by some professors who publish their work in so-called predatory journals, arguing they get ahead despite inadequate research. Pyne was banned from campus in May and has been on an unpaid suspension for his feedback on a colleague who was being considered for a position at the university in Kamloops.
Little
results from first ministers meeting, but at least nobody stormed out
Joan BRYDEN Citizen news service
MONTREAL — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau managed to keep the peace at what began as a tension-filled first ministers meeting Friday but had few concrete achievements to show for the day-long gathering.
The one sour note was sounded by Ontario’s Progressive Conservative premier, Doug Ford, who accused Trudeau of moving the goalposts on Canada’s climate-change plans, requiring Ontario to cut its greenhouse-gas emissions more than Ford had expected.
But other premiers, including fellow Conservative Brian Pallister from Manitoba, disputed Ford’s interpretation of what the prime minister said behind closed doors in Montreal and Trudeau himself dismissed the charge.
Ford at least did not follow through on a threat to walk out of the meeting, which he had criticized for being too narrowly focused on Trudeau’s priority – reducing interprovincial trade barriers – and not enough on the priorities of provinces and territories. Trudeau managed to mollify the premiers by letting them talk about whatever they wanted.
“Everything was discussed,” said Blaine Higgs, New Brunswick’s Conservative premier and the chair of the meeting from the premiers’ side. “I was encouraged by the kind of no-holds-barred discussion. That’s what we wanted and that’s what we got.”
Higgs, who had never attended a first ministers meeting before, said many of the others “said this was one of the most productive meetings they’ve been in for a long time.”
Trudeau and all the premiers, including Ford, signed onto a final communique that was long on general statements about working collaboratively to create jobs, grow the economy, protect the environment, reduce red tape and knock down barriers to trade between provinces.
After spending the biggest chunk of time discussing the oil-price crisis that is devastating Alberta’s energy industry, everyone agreed in the communique with Alberta Premier Rachel Notley’s call for federal investments in short-, medium- and long-term help to get her province’s oil and gas to ports for shipment overseas.
Alberta has been suffering from a glut of oil that has been trapped inland, away from buyers, because there hasn’t been enough transportation capacity to get it out. Customers have only been willing to take it at a steep discount to world prices.
The communique says all agreed the federal government should invest in short-term support for energy businesses hammered by the price differential for Alberta’s oil.
The federal government should also invest in medium-term efforts to get energy products to market – which Notley took as supporting her plan to buy tanker cars to move oil by rail – as well as long-term efforts to build the infrastructure, presumably pipelines, needed to get oil and gas to tidewater.
“I am pleased to say that the vast majority, if not all, supported what I had to say,” Notley said. “I am pleased that we were able to spend more time on the agenda talking about something that I think everyone understands is fundamentally important to the economic well-being of every Canadian.”
The communique acknowledged that while all first ministers agree on reducing carbon emissions, they disagree on how to go about it. Four conservative premiers – Ford, Saskatchewan’s Scott Moe, Higgs and Pallister – are going to court to challenge the federal plan to impose a price on carbon in their provinces starting in the new year.
Under the Paris agreement, the Trudeau government has agreed to reduce Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions by 30 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030. Ford said his plan will achieve emission reductions of 30 per cent in Ontario – without a carbon tax – but that the prime minister told premiers some provinces will have to do better than that.
“All of sudden, we have a little surprise in the room. The goalposts got changed,” he said.
Moe backed Ford’s version of events but Pallister said there was “nothing new” in what Trudeau said. Federal officials pointed out that 30 per cent is a national target and that under the pan-Canadian climate change accord, provinces agreed to varying reductions to reach that goal. In any event, Nova Scotia Liberal Premier Stephen McNeil said all Trudeau said during the meeting was that some provinces will cut emissions more than others, not that they will be required to do so.
B.C. court orders access to public lake through cattle company lands
Citizen news service
VANCOUVER — A British Columbia judge has prodded the provincial government for its inaction while he granted public access to two lakes in the Interior nearly three decades after the route was blocked.
The Nicola Valley Fish and Game Club took the Douglas Lake Cattle Company to court after the company blocked access to Stoney and Minnie lakes near Merritt. The firm, one of the world’s biggest cattle companies, decommissioned a road leading to the lakes in the early 1990, locking out access to members of the club.
In a ruling issued Friday, Justice Joel Groves says the provincial government retained rights to the lake making the fish in the lakes public property, meaning the public would need to access the lakes. Groves concluded that province breached its
obligations to the citizens of B.C. when the cattle company unilaterally closed a public road and “no government official had the wherewithal to insist that the lock on the gate be removed.”
Nicola Valley Fish and Game Club director Rick McGowan said the decision is precedent setting and will mean the people of B.C. have a right to access all public places in the province.
Groves said in his ruling that the province has a duty to maintain the ownership of public lands and roads and to prohibit those who – for their economic or personal benefit – choose to occupy those public lands.
“As such, I am not pointing a finger at any particular government individual but, again, it is most unfortunate that all governments holding the obligation of the public trust have failed to take any actions to prohibit what was an illegal obstruction of a public road by a corporate entity, for its own benefit.”
CP PHOTO
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, second from left, speaks during the closing news conference of the First Ministers meeting. He is joined by New Brunswick Premier Blaine Higgs, left, Quebec Premier Francois Legault and B.C. Premier John Horgan.
Executive facing U.S. extradition appears in court
Jim MORRIS, Rob GILLIES, Paul WISEMAN Citizen news service
VANCOUVER
— A Canadian prosecutor urged a Vancouver court to deny bail to a Chinese executive at the heart of a case that is shaking up U.S.-China relations and worrying global financial markets.
Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of telecommunications giant Huawei and daughter of its founder, was detained at the request of the U.S. during a layover at the Vancouver airport last Saturday – the same day that Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping of China agreed over dinner to a 90-day ceasefire in a trade dispute that threatens to disrupt global commerce.
The U.S. alleges that Huawei used a Hong Kong shell company to sell equipment in Iran in violation of U.S. sanctions. It also says that Meng and Huawei misled American banks about its business dealings in Iran.
The surprise arrest, already denounced by Beijing, raises doubts about whether the trade truce will hold and whether the world’s two biggest economies can resolve the complicated issues that divide them.
“I think it will have a distinctively negative effect on the U.S.-China talks,” said Philip Levy, senior fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and an economic adviser in President George W. Bush’s White House.
“There’s the humiliating way this happened right before the dinner, with Xi unaware. Very hard to save face on this one. And we may see (Chinese retaliation), which will embitter relations.”
Canadian prosecutor John GibbCarsley said in a court hearing Friday that a warrant had been issued for Meng’s arrest in New York Aug. 22.
He said Meng, arrested en route to Mexico from Hong Kong, was aware of the investigation and had been avoiding the United States for months, even though her teenage son goes to school in Boston.
Gibb-Carsley alleged that Huawei had done business in Iran through a Hong Kong company
called Skycom. Meng, he said, had misled U.S. banks into thinking that Huawei and Skycom were separate when, in fact, “Skycom was Huawei.”
Meng has contended that Huawei sold Skycom in 2009.
In urging the court to reject Meng’s bail request, Gibb-Carsley said the Huawei executive had vast resources and a strong incentive to bolt: She’s facing fraud charges in the United States that could put her in prison for 30 years.
Meng’s lawyer, David Martin, argued that it would be unfair to deny her bail just because she “has worked hard and has extraordinary resources.”
He told the court that her personal integrity and respect for her father, Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei, would prevent her
violating a court order. Meng, who owns two homes in Vancouver, was willing to wear an ankle bracelet and put the houses up as collateral, he said.
Huawei is the world’s biggest supplier of network gear used by phone and internet companies and long has been seen as a front for spying by the Chinese military or security services.
“What’s getting lost in the initial frenzy here is that Huawei has been in the crosshairs of U.S. regulators for some time,” said Gregory Jaeger, special counsel at the Stroock law firm and a former Justice Department trial attorney.
“This is the culmination of what is likely to be a fairly lengthy investigation.”
Meng’s arrest came as a jarring surprise after the Trump-Xi trade cease-fire in Argentina.
Exact details of the agreement are elusive.
But the White House said Trump suspended for 90 days an import tax hike on $200 billion in Chinese goods that was set to take effect Jan. 1; in return, the White House said, the Chinese agreed to buy a “very substantial amount of agricultural, energy, industrial” and other products from the United States.
The delay was meant to buy time for the two countries to resolve a trade conflict that has been raging for months.
The U.S. charges that China is using predatory tactics in its drive to overtake America’s dominance in technology and global economic leadership.
These allegedly include forcing American and other foreign companies to hand over trade
She’s facing fraud charges in the United States that could put her in prison for 30 years.
secrets in exchange for access to the Chinese market and engaging in cyber theft.
Washington also regards Beijing’s ambitious long-term development plan, “Made in China 2025,” as a scheme to dominate such fields as robotics and electric vehicles by unfairly subsidizing Chinese companies and discriminating against foreign competitors.
The United States has imposed tariffs on $250 billion in Chinese goods to pressure Beijing to change its ways. Trump has threatened to expand the tariffs to include just about everything China ships to the United States. Beijing has lashed back with tariffs on about $110 billion in American exports.
Fears the Huawei case might spark renewed U.S.-China trade hostilities have rattled global financial markets.
On Friday, the Dow Jones industrial average plunged nearly 560 points.
But in a sign the case might not derail the Trump-Xi truce, Beijing protested Meng’s arrest but said talks with the Trump administration would go ahead. Chinese Commerce Ministry spokesman Gao Feng said China is confident it can reach a deal during the 90-day timeout.
Still, Cornell University economist Eswar Prasad warned that “this incident highlights the huge gap in trust between the two sides, casting a pall over the tough negotiations that still lie ahead. It will clearly take more than one convivial dinner between the leaders of the two countries to start bridging that gap.” Gillies reported from Toronto and Wiseman reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Frank Bajak in Boston, Joe McDonald in Beijing and Yuri Kageyama in Tokyo contributed to this report.
CP/JANE WOLSAK
In this courtroom sketch, Meng Wanzhou, chief financial officer of Huawei Technologies, back right, sits beside a translator during a bail hearing at B.C. Supreme Court in Vancouver, on Friday.
Future of cannabis is now
For a glimpse into the not-toodistant future of how cannabis will become part of Canadian culture and how entrepreneurs will come up with increasingly creative ways to attract customers, look no further than what’s happening in the states down south that have legalized or decriminalized pot.
A story in the Washington Post this week showed how quickly pot has gone mainstream.
In Northampton, Mass., the city’s mayor – a 52-year-old Air Force veteran – was the first customer of that state’s legal recreational pot, putting his money down for a chocolate bar infused with THC.
On Fifth Avenue in New York City, a dispensary has opened, marketing itself to its upscale clientele as “the Barneys of weed.”
In San Fransciso, one dispensary there looks like an elite hotel bar. In Washington, D.C., adventurous foodies are gathering for chefprepared four-course meals where THC and CBC-infused dishes are on the menu.
These products and consumer experiences aren’t to attract the kids but for discriminating adults with money to spend.
These aren’t everyday indulgers of the devil’s lettuce but rather for those who
wouldn’t be caught dead smoking the stuff and want to partake in a classy and controlled way, much as they would over wine or a fine dram of Scotch.
And that’s just the recreational side. Droves of new customers are trying cannabis candies to help them get a deeper, most restful night’s sleep. Others are scooping up low-dose edibles to help with stress.
Balms, salves and bath soaks that soothe everything from the ache of arthritis to the suffering of PMS cramps are finding eager buyers.
Seniors are a rapidly increasing segment of the market.
According to several sources, who’d rather not fess up in public, the hot topic at Prince George’s seniors centres is the growing number of glowing testimonials from members who tried a topical CBD product to help various pains and were thrilled with the results.
“How do we get some?” someone asks each time.
In the same way that groups of seniors often sit around swapping notes about their prescriptions medications and what’s working (or not) for them, they are now openly and cheerfully offering each other word-of-mouth reviews about THC and
CBD products.
Most of these products actually remain –wink, wink, nudge, nudge – illegal. Edibles won’t be legal until next year, as various levels of governments work on regulations around the production and selling of these products.
As usual, the politicians are behind the people. Americans and Canadians are embracing the opportunity to try cannabis for a variety of different reasons and in a variety of different ways, particularly ones that don’t involve stinky smoke or the grossness of passing around a communal joint.
Not everyone is happy, of course.
The RCMP is rightly concerned about stoned drivers and kids and pets eating pot candy and chocolate left out by absentminded adults. Although THC overdoses can’t directly lead to death, taking too much can produce side effects, from panic attacks and paranoia to confusion and hallucinations, that could lead to deadly accidents, such as falls or strolls out onto busy roadways. And that’s not including nausea, vomiting, seizures, accelerated heart rates and chest pain that can accompany excessive consumption. Edibles is a particular concern because there’s a delay before the full effects are felt – unlike when it’s smoked or vaped – leading to a greater propensity
YOUR LETTERS
Pay for your own EV
We just had a short visit to Victoria and to Europe where politicians are promising a real rosy outlook for the future. By 2030-2040 we will not import any diesel or gasoline vehicles because we will be all electric. Yes, they are all wet in the pants over this announcement.
I assume that these politicians can just pull magic right out of the wires and transformers already in place all over these areas where they want electric vehicles? In our area, if one half of the cars were now electric, our server cannot send enough new electricity to our neighbours to give them 70-80 amperes of power to plug in each vehicle.
This is the reality, not a new dream.
First, politicians cannot promise such wide new changes without doing their homework. Where are the funds to upgrade our grids to be ready for the electric vehicles? Then, our politicians want to give new purchasers of electric vehicles incentive dollars from me, to help them purchase a new electric vehicle. Where will these funds come from?
You may have heard about the sewage surges that occur at 7 a.m., 6 p.m. and 9 p.m., when everyone is using water so sewer flows are larger. Well, we will see electric surges at some times, especially when mom and dad come home from work and plug their new electric vehicle in at the same time. Will the system be able to cope with this?
Politicians should allow the public and the market to make these changes, especially if electric vehicles become more popular and affordable and are able to drive from Vancouver to Kelowna on one charge in winter time. Let politicians worry more about BC Hydro and ICBC and provincial long term debts and attempt to be honest with the voters.
There is nothing wrong with thinking about electric vehicles, especially when they are able to perform the job. I don’t want to purchase an electric vehicle for my neighbour.
Jorgen Hansen Kelowna
A simple fix
After reading about the city
having a trial in certain areas of town for a new bear proof can, my first thought was that’s great, but after thinking about it I thought this would be a big cost to the taxpayer. Here is what I did to solve the bear problem I used to have. I decided to build a bear proof container out of 3/4 inch plywood, knowing that the strongest sense that bears have is smell. I built a wooden container big enough to put the city garbage can inside.
I put it together with screws and high quality construction adhesive, fastened it solidly to the ground, constructed the door so that it seals when closed.
I live in the Hart Highway area and there are a lot of bears in my area every year. I built this container seven years ago at a cost of around $200.
I have had absolutely no issues with bears since. On garbage day, I open it and wheel the can to the curb and put it back. Zero problems with bears because of my garbage anymore.
B. Rosin 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. Maximum length is 750 words and writers are limited to one submission every week. We will edit letters only to ensure clarity, good taste, for legal reasons, and occasionally for length. Although we will not include your address and telephone number in the paper, we need both for verification purposes. Unsigned or handwritten letters will not be published. The Prince George Citizen is a member of the National Newsmedia Council, which is an independent organization established to deal with acceptable journalistic practices and ethical behaviour. If you have concerns about editorial content, please contact Neil Godbout (ngodbout@pgcitizen. ca or 250-960-2759).
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for overdoses. Doctors are worried about long-term effects, citing the shockingly little amount of research on long-term effects, especially for cannabis consumed orally or topically. Up until very recently, it was difficult to impossible for researchers to secure funding for extensive studies with large sample groups over extended periods of time. Now, as various news reports have noted, colleges and universities across North America are investing heavily in both research and specialized industry training. Kwantlen Polytechnic University in Vancouver now offers various workshops and certificates in cannabis production and selling. Mayor and council in Fort St. John will consider granting a permit for the first legal cannabis store in their community Monday. Prince George city council will have similar applications before them for approval early in the new year. It’s unlikely we’ll see Lori Ackerman at the front of the line opening day in Fort St. John or Lyn Hall as the first customer when a legal Prince George store opens for business sometime in 2019 but it doesn’t really matter. Their blessing is unnecessary. Their constituents and the broader marketplace have already spoken.
Editor-in-chief
Neil Godbout
Man of deeds trumps man of boasts
Like the semi-mythical Christmas truce between the British and the Germans on the front lines during the First World War, Wednesday’s state funeral for former President George H.W. Bush showed two Washingtons and two Republican parties – in one sense, two Americas – taking a momentary step back from the bonfire that is now our American politics. The day, unlike almost anything involving President Donald Trump, was subdued and respectful. For that, we can thank the late former president, no fan of Trump. By insisting on his successor’s inclusion in the proceedings, Bush forced the current White House occupant to abandon briefly his unfrozen cave-man act, denying him the chance to debase further the office of president by siphoning the dignity out of 41’s final hours in D.C. – something 45 likely would have relished, given the opportunity.
Recall that Trump skipped former first lady Barbara Bush’s funeral earlier this year to “avoid disruptions due to added security” (read: to avoid a scene) and “out of respect” for the Bushes, with first lady Melania Trump attending solo.
A few months later, Trump was relegated to golfing and tweeting, miles away, after being asked to stay away from Sen. John McCain’s, R-Ariz., funeral (read: given the finger). During the funeral, Trump was rebuffed by Meghan McCain who affirmed “America was always great,” turning the president’s shallow campaign slogan on its head while her father was eulogized by former presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama.
You could hardly have blamed the Bush family, then, if they had asked Trump to keep his distance from the elder Bush’s memorial, considering Trump’s attacks on president George W. Bush’s record, Trump’s swipes at former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, and the reality that Trump’s gimcrack persona is an affront to Bush père’s evident character. Bush personified noblesse oblige; Trump is an avatar of the lowest common denominator. And Trump might have half-expected, if not outright welcomed, such a rejection, as it would have given him an opening to tweet abrasively about the Bush legacy, employing Trump’s patented Twitter formula: insulting nickname, distracting punctuation, malapropism, logical fallacy, self-own, hit send.
But in his final wishes, the late former president put the dignity of the office and, by extension,
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the nation’s dignity, above all. He knew the passing of a president is a rare occasion and, even in passing, any chance to demonstrate honor and decorum would provide a welcome contrast to this divided political moment. As Rice University historian Douglas Brinkley told People magazine, Bush “does not want to stiff a sitting president.” Lacking a snub from which to pivot, Trump did the only thing he could do as a member of the nowfive-member living president’s club: he issued an appropriate official statement on Bush’s passing, largely steered clear of the week’s Bush remembrances and showed up for the funeral at which he had no speaking role. Even his scowling abstention from the Apostles’ Creed – which all the other presidents recited – couldn’t detract from a solemn ceremony. It was a brief political win-win. Bush, the last president to serve in combat, a former congressman, ambassador, CIA director and vice president, could be laid to rest with decorum, and Trump – Cadet Bone Spurs, decorated veteran of Studio 54 – was mostly spared another unflattering comparison to an American hero. But not completely spared. Trump saw himself eclipsed by the memory of a superior man and his anti-statesmanship outshined by the disdained values of a presently defunct GOP, whose passing we collectively view with increasing regret.
A president who nurtures only his ego saw people from both parties turn out to honour a president who understood the line between partisanship and pragmatism. Trump, a man who exists in a purely transactional bubble, had to sit and listen to stories of friendships that spanned decades, a loving marriage that began before Trump was born, Bush’s commitment to family and his total comfort with the person he was. As to this contrast, the record doesn’t whisper; it screams.
Bush was a man of deeds, not boasts. His example wasn’t meant for Trump alone. As he was laid to rest, Bush reminded us that when the studio audience tires of the reality show, a better, kinder, more American style of leadership might one day return.
– Rick Wilson is a Republican political consultant and author of Everything Trump Touches Dies:
A Republican Strategist Gets Real About the Worst President Ever.
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RICK WILSON Special to The Citizen
Guest Column
Pot going upscale across U.S.
Citizen news service
Emilia Montalvo tried marijuana in high school like so many others, back when sneaking bong hits behind your parents’ backs was half of its allure.
But she had put it far behind her. She started a family and launched a career as a doula in the Washington, D.C., area.
Then, three years ago, the District decriminalized marijuana, and suddenly, what had once been illicit seemed ubiquitous, even in her suburb of Springfield, Va. So at 27, Montalvo decided that she’d try pot again – not to get high or rebel, this time, but maybe just to ease the hum of anxiety. She opted for a vape pen, with its discreet, near-scentless oils.
“It’s getting more comfortable for me as I go out and see more people doing it,” she says. “I don’t feel like I’m doing something wrong or illegal.”
A nationwide legalization movement is chipping away at old stigmas – last month, Massachusetts opened the floodgates to recreational marijuana sales, joining California, Nevada, Colorado, Oregon and Washington state, with the District of Columbia perhaps headed the same way. And suddenly, the kind of people who had never tried pot or, like Montalvo, hadn’t touched the stuff in a decade or more, are lining up to try it, even well into adulthood.
The ranks of marijuana users are growing among all adults, but particularly those who are settling into their child-raising, pensioncontributing years. The National Survey on Drug Use and Health found that in 2017, the number of people older than 26 occasionally using marijuana had grown by 3.2 million in three years.
“We see stay-at-home moms, lawyers, chefs, construction workers and baby boomers,” says Case Van Dorne, a co-founder of the Oregon dispensary chain Five Zero Trees.
And as with every other yuppie craze, an industry has grown up to support it, with crafty appeal to upscale and middle-aged tastes. There are gourmet “infused” dinners, dispensaries with the sleek aesthetic of an Apple store, and artisanal treats (mints! chocolate truffles!) that look as if they were bound for the shelves of Whole Foods.
Even as thousands of people languish in prison or carry arrest records for marijuana-related crimes, pot has suddenly been defanged and de-mystified for a risk-averse and well-heeled new clientele. It was oddly symbolic that in Northampton, Mass., it was David Narkewicz – a 52-yearold Air Force veteran and the city mayor – who bought the state’s first legal recreational pot. As the cameras furiously clicked, Narkewicz, in suit and tie, ponied up the cash for a chocolate bar spiked with THC, pot’s psychoactive compound. “Can I get a receipt?” he whispered. Old pals emailed him that they saw the news, he says, and found themselves a little curious: I hope you saved some chocolate to share with your friends.
It was clear something was afoot with the typical marijuana customer when vaporizers packaged like iPhones in gleaming gold hit the market, and MedMen, a marijuana-dispensing chain claiming the mantle of “the Barneys of weed,” opened this spring on New York’s Fifth Avenue. One San Francisco dispensary resembles a swank hotel bar.
“If you can walk down to a nice retail storefront, and you’ve
got really clever marketing and packaging... there’s some allure to that,” says Ryan Vandrey, a cannabis expert in the Behavioral Pharmacology Research Unit at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
A survey this summer of 5,000 marijuana users in legal states by cannabis market-research firm Brightfield Group found that nearly 20 per cent had taken it up only in the past two years. More than 60 per cent of those new users were women.
The industry is doing its best to welcome newbies by churning out appealing new ways to get high, says Bethany Gomez, Brightfield’s research director – chocolates with just enough THC to help a weary soul get some sleep, elegant salves to rub onto aching backs, lip balms that soften not only pouts but also life’s hard edges. Whoopi Goldberg is marketing her own line of laced balms and soaks, aimed at PMS sufferers.
Gomez says that products such as these are on a fast track to becoming acceptable to use socially. “They can just swap (them) out for their glass of wine at night.” (Without the hangover or the calories, which is part of their appeal.)
Call centre closure leaves hundreds jobless
Citizen news service
SYDNEY, N.S. — Politicians offered a glimmer of hope Friday to hundreds of Cape Breton call centre workers grappling with layoffs less than three weeks before Christmas, saying the operation has a “bright future” and could be up and running again soon.
ServiCom Canada announced the closure of its Sydney operation Thursday, handing pink slips to almost 700 workers in a region already struggling with a stubbornly high unemployment rate.
The shutdown followed a bankruptcy protection filing by ServiCom’s U.S. parent, weeks of pay delays and promises of bonuses and pay incentives for workers who stayed.
In the aftermath of the layoffs, many workers spent Friday filing employment insurance claims and seeking help from local charities.
“I am devastated, to say the very least. It was definitely not what I expected,” 26-year-old Kayla Williams, who worked at the office for five years, said from her home in Sydney.
“I want to be able to put (heating) oil in my tank. I want to be able to put
groceries in my cupboard. I have two children here.”
Nova Scotia Business Minister Geoff MacLellan said it was a “devastating time for Cape Bretoners.”
However, the Cape Breton politician also said he was confident the centre had a “bright future” after speaking with a prospective buyer Friday morning.
“There is a potential buyer that is very interested and will do whatever they can to make sure this centre is part of their complement in the very near future,” MacLellan said, adding that the potential buyer was looking forward to “opening it early in the new year.”
The minister said he couldn’t offer more details, citing court proceedings in the United States. He said a deal was pending when the bankruptcy issues caused a snafu.
“We’re working with that entity along with the federal government to make sure we do what we can to re-engage this call centre as soon as possible,” he said.
Cecil Clarke, mayor of the Cape Breton Regional Municipality, said the closure “came as a shock,” despite the company’s ongoing financial troubles.
“It’s never good to lose your job, but
National unemployment rate at a low
OTTAWA (CP) — A blast of new jobs last month knocked the country’s unemployment rate down to its lowest level since Statistics Canada started measuring comparable data more than 40 years ago – but despite eye-catching progress, Friday’s numbers also delivered disappointment.
Canada added 94,100 net jobs for its largest monthly increase since March 2012 when there was a gain of 94,000 jobs, Statistics Canada said in its the labour force survey. The November surge was fuelled by other positives: 89,900 new full-time positions and 78,600 employee jobs in the private sector.
The jobless rate fell to 5.6 per cent last month from October’s reading of 5.8 per cent, which had been the previous low mark since comparable data first became available in 1976. The old statistical approach – prior to 1976 –registered an unemployment rate reading of 5.4 per cent in 1974. The improvements, however, obscured a key piece of data: weakening wage growth. Year-over-year average hourly wage growth for permanent
employees continued its decline in November to 1.46 per cent – its lowest reading since July 2017.
“There’s no question that the headline job growth is gangbusters strong,” said Frances Donald of Manulife Asset Management.
“I would caution us against celebrating too quickly, however, because wage growth is decelerating sharply.”
Experts have been expecting wage growth to pick up its pace, thanks to the tightened labour market. But growth has actually dropped every month since its May peak of 3.9 per cent and now sits well below inflation.
“You get people who come and they’re like, ‘I’m from Idaho, I’m with my wife, and I just want to check it out,’ “ says Jesse Henry, executive director of Barbary Coast, a San Francisco dispensary that has its own handsomely appointed “smoking lounge.”
“There’s the soccer mom,” Henry says – using what has become an industry-standard cliche for the new-era marijuana user – “a person who has a very active and busy life. She doesn’t want to smell like smoke.”
He might as well be describing Susana Sanchez-Young, a northern California-based art director and entrepreneur who insisted for years that she’d never touch drugs.
“The DARE program worked on me!” she recalls, laughing. But a knee injury that kept her from her dancing changed her mind. When a merchant at a San Francisco market suggested a cannabis-laced “muscle-relaxing oil,” Sanchez-Young relented. She was glad she didn’t have to smoke it.
“I only smoke a little bit,” Montalvo says. “I just take one hit, and I’ll be good for like six hours.”
A cannabis-infused mint or two is all one 30-year-old tech worker from New York says he needs, too, and he typically only indulges once every couple of weeks.
“It’s much less about stoner culture than an alternative to drinking on, like, a weekday,” says the millennial, who first tried pot a couple of years ago and doesn’t want to be named because marijuana is not legal where he lives.
“I’d always associated it with people I really, really didn’t want to be like: people who weren’t doing well in school.”
But then all his grown-up friends picked it up.
“The people around me that were doing it were really normal people. They... had jobs and were doing really well. It wasn’t a big part of their lives, it was a recreational thing – the same way I treat alcohol.”
We’ve come a long way since Bill Clinton held a joint to his lips and absolutely did not inhale. Boomers make up a large slice of the industry’s newer clientele: at least 20 per cent of new recreational users were older than 55.
during the winter and Christmas season, it’s devastating,” he said. Still, Clarke said company representatives have indicated to him they intend “to have this situation resolved in the next couple of days.”
He said even though the call centre’s U.S. parent is in financial trouble, the centre itself was turning a profit.
Meanwhile, Clarke said the immediate focus is on providing temporary transition assistance to workers.
The Sydney operation first opened under different ownership nearly two decades ago during a wave of call centre openings across the Maritimes.
Businesses were attracted by the region’s lower payroll costs and often received government incentives.
A Nova Scotia Business Inc. media release from March 2009 said the Crown-owned business agency provided ServiCom, a subsidiary of JNET Communications LLC, with a payroll rebate worth up to $914,400 over five years. Since 2010, ServiCom has received $638,360 in loans from the federal Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency and Enterprise Cape Breton Corporation, part of ACOA since 2014.
“I put it on that night, and let me tell you...” Sanchez-Young, who once worked for The Washington Post, marvels. “I was like, I’m going to need to buy this in, like, Costco bulk.... I use it on my neck. I use it behind my ears. Now, if it smells like marijuana, I tell people it’s me.”
The learning curve for new users is daunting. Selling to them, Henry says, often means explaining the difference between the sativa strains – the energizing, head-clearing Red Bull of pot –and the chill, soporific indicas, famed for putting their fans “in da couch.”
At one D.C. shop that operates in a gray area of legality – while recreational marijuana is legal to use in the District, it can’t be bought or sold – the options include infused cereal treats, oils for vaping, grams of green nuggets of “flower” and candies in various strains.
States where marijuana has been legalized have reported slight increases in pot-related DUIs and calls to poison control – most involving people who simply got uncomfortably high. Vandrey, the Johns Hopkins researcher, thinks everyone needs to proceed more carefully. We’ve understated the likelihood of addiction, he says, and we don’t truly understand dosing.
PHOTO COURTESY OF NICK WADLER PHOTOGRAPHY
Barbary Coast, a San Francisco marijuana dispensary that resembles a hotel bar and attracts mainstream customers, is part of an industry increasingly appealing to lavish and middle-aged tastes.
Nevis an affordable, friendly retreat
Erinne MAGEE
Special to The Citizen
One of my favourite moments in traveling to tropical islands is crossing the threshold from plane to stairway down to the tarmac. Usually, no matter the time of day, the warmth of that first step brings forth the sort of giddiness concomitant to anything you love.
For me, that thing has always been small pieces of land in the middle of a temperate ocean. But as I get older and more focused on the “trend” (and by trend, I mean necessity) of self-care, my pursuits go beyond plopping down on the nearest beach and not leaving until my plane does. Now, I need to factor in opportunities for exercise, healthy eating, contemplation and rejuvenation. Yoga retreats and similar wellness vacations are not in my budget, and in any case, I wouldn’t want the already mapped out itinerary that comes with group travel. So, I sought to design my own getaway, complete with all of the Zen this mid-30s mom desires, on the Caribbean island of Nevis.
Nevis is the ideal locale for a self-guided wellness trip because it offers the perfect balance of solitude and social interaction. Luxury is all around Nevis if that’s what you’re looking for, but it’s accompanied by genuine friendliness and affordability. In five days, I came back refreshed, but with my bank account still intact.
Nevis is part of a two-island federation in the West Indies. There are no direct flights; visitors must stop in St. Kitts, the “big sister” island, then take a five-kilometre, 10-minute trip by water taxi across the channel. Once on Nevis, options for traversing the island’s 93 square kilometres include rental car, taxi or the “bus,” small passenger vans that are accessible along the 32-kilometre main loop around the island. I had no problem using these options to get to the elements of my stay, traveling easily between my hotel, restaurants and locations that offered relaxation or recreation. Walking is an option too, if you don’t mind sharing the road with the occasional donkey. My home base was the Golden Rock Inn, which was chosen with serenity in mind. With its soundtrack of jungle animals and rustling bamboo, lush landscape and tranquil views, it didn’t disappoint. And there are so many nooks and crannies around the 100-acre property that you could spend days without leaving, immersed in your own self-led yoga practice and meditation and fragrant walks through the care-
fully planned gardens. I also took a tour with the master gardener that taught me to identify flowers, trees, some medicinal plants and highlight some for overall aesthetics. The on-site restaurant became my chosen breakfast spot; it serves a bowl of local mixed fruit and fresh squeezed orange juice with every menu item.
Nevis, in general, has easy access to healthy food, one of the essentials of a wellness vacation, with tropical fruits such as mango and star fruit readily available and restaurants that really take pride in cooking with ingredients from their land. As I traveled around the island, I passed many roadside stands selling fresh produce – or sometimes even barbecue (comfort food has its place, especially when traveling).
The Tastee Jamaican Bakery, near the public ferry terminal, makes fresh juice using ingredients such as ginger, lemon grass,
dragonfruit and soursop. (Nevisians swear the leaves of the soursop tree are a natural sleep aid.)
Montpelier, a boutique hotel built around an old sugar plantation, offers two on-site restaurants, one with a more poolside, casual vibe and healthy menu options: the chef offers fresh, organic foods including mahi-mahi, spiny lobster, gazpacho, cauliflower gnocchi and curried conch stew.
I tried the spiny lobster at the museum-like Riviere House, a restaurant, art gallery and “cinema” where diners can eat on an openair porch in the back. Although I definitely prefer cold-water lobster, having the ability to see the work of Nevisian artists was an unexpected delight.
In addition to healthy food, relaxation and contemplation are easy to find on Nevis. I found a gem for such pursuits within walking distance of the Montpelier hotel. The Botanical Gardens of
Nevis, with 100 species of palms, a couple dozen Buddha statues, orchids, fountains, fruit trees and a Rainforest Conservatory complete with comical parrots, is a place where the Zen just finds you.
I also stopped in Bath Hot Springs, an easy pull-off from the main road, just outside the downtown area of Charleston. Its volcanic thermal baths have been known for their therapeutic properties for centuries. Next to the springs, a brightly coloured shop called Bare Necessities sells local essential oils and other holistic products.
I wouldn’t say the heart of Charleston, the main town, lends itself to a meditative state, but the hustle and bustle is at more of a relaxed pace than many tourist destinations. As I wandered in and out of shops, I experienced firsthand the island slogan of “You’re only a stranger once.”
One of my favourite things about
Nevis was the hospitality. I never felt like the people I encountered were just giving me a sales pitch. Instead, I felt that they take so much pride in their home that they want newcomers to feel the same way about visiting it that they feel about living there. I knew I needed to do more than eat and relax, however, I also had to move. One of the best places to get some exercise is Pinney’s Beach, the island’s largest. which is about a 10-minute trek from Charleston. If you want to do more than walk and swim, the beach is home to Pinney’s Beach Resort and the Four Seasons, where you can rent paddleboards or snorkel gear. All beaches on Nevis are free and public – and, to my surprise, quiet. Pinney’s delights the senses with sugar-soft sand and music from the beach bars and cafes. As I walked along its three-mile stretch, I took in the striking Caribbean blue water with St. Kitts in the distance and the verdant green of Nevis Peak, a 3,232-foot-high dormant volcano visible from all points. It’s possible to hike to the summit, which I’m told is a strenuous, challenging, muddy ascent full of exposed roots. Hiring a guide, which is highly recommended, costs about $40 per person. Next time I visit, I’m going to opt for a less rigorous pace and sign up for the early morning eightkilometre hike led by the general managers of Nisbet Plantation Beach Club, a hotel on the island’s north side. I found out about the hike while enjoying a rum punch at the beach bar and chatting with general manager Tim Thuell, who told me that part of the reason he and his wife, Tina, keep the walks going are the conversations they have with guests along the way. This, I could relate to. One of the highlights of doing a self-guided wellness trip is that you have more opportunity to interact with locals – by hailing a cab, ordering food, asking for advice. During my first cab ride on Nevis, the driver told me he’d traveled all over the world with the U.S. military but now has no desire to leave the islands. By the end of the trip, I understood why he felt this way. When I set off to satisfy my overall well-being, I wasn’t sure which aspect of my visit to Nevis would resonate with me the most –would it be the food, the serenity, the physical activity? But it turned out to be how comfortable and accepted I felt there. This too, I have realized, is an important part of a wellness vacation. And, on Nevis, it’s something that doesn’t need to come with a hefty price tag or fancy itinerary.
Pinney’s Beach in Nevis with St. Kitts in the distance.
CITIZEN NEWS SERVICE PHOTO
A view from one of the private cottages at Golden Rock Inn in Nevis.
CITIZEN NEWS SERVICE PHOTO
The Rainforest Conservatory at Botanical Gardens.
Managing editor Neil Godbout puts the news in perspective every day, only in The Citizen
Manz the man for Spruce Kings
Ted CLARKE Citizen staff tclarke@pgcitizen.ca
Dustin Manz scored three but should have had four. His own generosity was all that prevented it.
It didn’t really matter in the end that Manz elected to pass to his good buddy Ben Brar while facing an empty Nanaimo Clipper net in the dying seconds Friday night at Rolling Mix Concrete Arena. By that time he already had his second hat trick of the season and his team had the game in the bag – a 5-3 win that was a bit too close for comfort for the leagueleading Kings in front of a crowd of 1,024 at Rolling Mix Concrete Arena.
Manz completed a perfect trifecta. He scored at even strength, on the power play and, with time running out, went the length of the rink to ice it with a shorthanded goal. He also drew an assist to complete a four-point night.
“It just felt like things were clicking tonight, our line was playing really good, both Brar and (Patrick Cozzi) were helping me out and out power play was doing well too so that played a lot into it,” said Manz.
“We made a couple mistakes, we were missing guys so you have to be a little more disciplined with the puck, but we battled through and found a way to win, which is all that matters. We’re kind of getting rewarded for our hard work and we’re first in the league, which is a huge accomplishment.”
The Kings took a 2-1 lead into the third period and went to their most likely source to add to the count. Brar took a pass from Cozzi and toe-dragged the puck to change the shooting angle just enough to fool goalie Jordan Naylor with his hard low shot. For Brar, a 20-year-old coveted by several NCAA teams, it was his team-leading 22nd goal this season. Brar finished with a goal and two assists and Cozzi ended up with four assists.
The Clippers answered Brar’s goal a few minutes later on the power play. Daniel Gatenby, a three-year WHL veteran in his final season of junior hockey,
made it a 3-2 count with a low shot from the point that Kings goalie Keenan Rancier did not see coming through a screen of bodies in front of him. But the Clippers took a penalty shortly after that and Kings captain Ben Poisson made them pay, scoring what turned out the game-winner with a hard wrister with four minutes left.
The win left the Spruce Kings (23-8-1-2) with the best record in the BCHL as they moved three points ahead of the idle secondoverall Chilliwack Chiefs. Nanaimo (12-17-0-0) remained third in the Island Division.
Rancier picked up his second BCHL career victory, drawing his first game action in goal for the Spruce Kings.
Rancier, a former Victoria Grizzly, joined the Spruce Kings last week from the junior B Nanaimo Buccaneers to replace Bradley
Budding superstar
Cooper, who was traded to Vernon. The 18-year-old Rancier didn’t get much work in the first period, facing just four shots, but one of them, a shorthanded breakaway shot from University of Connecticut recruit Thomas Samuelsen, beat him through the legs to give the Clippers the early lead. Samuelsen chipped the puck
The Elias Pettersson you don’t know, according to his teammates
Patrick JOHNSTON Vancouver Sun
Elias Pettersson’s on-ice personality glowed from the moment he stepped on the ice for his first pre-season game with the Vancouver Canucks.
He didn’t score in that mid-September game, but that didn’t matter. He did everything else. He dazzled with puck skills. He stood out as the best player on the ice.
And then there was the season opener, where he scored one of the finest goals Vancouver has ever seen.
Two months later, the buzz when he collects the puck still picks up.
But off the ice, he’s an athlete Vancouver is still getting to know.
There are plenty of sports personalities who’ve made their mark on Rain City over the years: the Sedins, Kesler, Naslund, Bertuzzi, Bure, Linden, Passaglia, Buono, Reeves, Sinclair and Nash to name but a few.
Pettersson will no doubt join that group one day.
And though he finds himself in front of cameras and reporters most days, where there have been moments in which his steely glare has drawn attention, or where a dry joke has cracked up his interlocutors, he mostly remains a quiet soul according to those who have come to know him best.
Brock Boeser, still a relatively fresh face in Van-
couver himself, is Pettersson’s roommate on the road. He also lives near the 20-year-old centre and sees the young Swede often away from the rink.
“He’s a quiet kid at first,” Boeser said when queried about Pettersson, who is just 17 months younger than the Minnesota native. “I think he’s kind of like me, quiet at first until he gets to know people around him. Then he opens up.”
Being roommates means there’s plenty of time to chat on the road. “We’ll talk about the game. We’ve talked about our families, what they do, his friends back home,” Boeser said.
— see ‘YOU CAN TELL, page 10
We’re kind of getting rewarded for our hard work and we’re first in the league, which is a huge accomplishment.
Dustin Manz
forward and took off on the left side facing defenceman Nick Bochen, who fell as Samuelsen went around him at the Kings blueline, setting up the breakaway. The Kings outshot the Clippers 11-4 in the period.
The Spruce Kings got that one back 3:57 into the second period, cashing n their first power play of the game. Manz got his stick
on a low snapshot fired through the slot from Brar. Those two connected again at even strength and Manz was the man in front with another tipped-in goal for a 2-1 Kings’ lead 8:54 into the second.
The Clippers found their skating legs in the second period and had their chances while generating nine shots. The Kings and their quick feet drew back-to-back penalties a minute apart near the end of the period but failed to score on the 5-on-3 opportunity.
LOOSE PUCKS: It was Citizen Night at the RMCA and the Citizen distributed 200 tickets to its newspaper carriers for a free night at the rink…. The Spruce Kings wrap up their seven-game home-stand next weekend against the Surrey Eagles, then take to the road for games Dec. 20-21, their last of the 2018 calendar year.
Cougars fall to Hawks
Citizen staff
Play with fire and you’re liable to get burned.
The Prince George Cougars learned that the hard way Friday night in Portland.
They knew the Portland Winterhawks came in armed with the second-best power play in the Western Hockey League and didn’t get caught taking penalties, with one exception. All it took was one infraction – the only power play the Cougars gave up all game – for the Hawks to demonstrate their offensive might with the extra skater.
They scored two goals with Cougars defenceman Ryan Schoettler serving a four-minute sentence for slewfooting Portland blueliner Brendan De Jong, then added three more at even strength in the second period to cruise to a 5-2 victory with a crowd of 5,183 watching at the Moda Center.
Joachim Blichfeld, the Hawks big gun, scored his team-leading 26th of the season on a one-timer just 28 seconds into the penalty with the teams skating 4-on-3. Seth Jarvis added to the count with just one second left in Schoet-
tler’s double-minor, firing in a backhander after Jake Gricius won the face-off in the P.G. end. Down 3-0, after an early secondperiod goal from Robbie FrommDelorme, the Cougars finally solved goalie Shane Farkus when Josh Maser tipped in Schoettler’s point shot during a Cougar power play. The Cats then went on a twoman power play for nearly two minutes, but Cody Glass countered with a backbreaking shorthanded goal. Glass stripped the puck at the far blueline and after his initial shot was stopped by goalie Taylor Gauthier, the Portland centre banged in the rebound.
John Ludvig also scored for Portland. Vladislav Mikhalchuk scored a late-game power-play goal for the Cougars. The Cats ended up 2-for-8 on the power play.
The Winterhawks (18-10-0-2) improved their grip on second place in the U.S. Division. The Cougars (11-16-1-2) remained fifth in the B.C. Division. They are just two points behind Victoria and Kamloops but have played four more games than both those two teams.
Prince George Spruce Kings forward Chong Min Lee tries a wraparound on Nanaimo Clippers goaltender Jordan Naylor while being chased by Kyler Kovich on Friday night at Rolling Mix Concrete Arena.
PETTERSSON
‘You can tell that he’s very serious’
from page 9
“He’s a funny kid, got a dry sense of humour. He’s always in a good mood.”
Nikolay Goldobin is another teammate who’s made a connection and is proving to be a regular companion. And while the Russian is three years Pettersson’s senior, that hasn’t been a barrier. The two dressed up as Minions at Halloween, for example.
“Both young guys, we like similar things,” Goldobin said about their quick off-ice connection, which in many ways mimics their on-ice chemistry. “And I still feel a little like I’m new to the team too.
“Both Europeans,” he added, suggesting their status as cultural outsiders overlapped.
The duo are two of a half-dozen Canucks forwards who hail from outside of North America.
In similar terms, Boeser noted, Pettersson also has the “Swedish guys.”
Veteran teammates Alex Edler and Loui Eriksson, along with goalies Jacob Markstrom and Anders Nilsson all bring a touch of home.
Eriksson, who has known Pettersson’s junior teammate Jonathan Dahlen for years, took the two young Swedes out for dinner on the eve of training camp. Dahlen, who played with Pettersson in Timra, is now with the Canucks’ American Hockey League affiliate in Utica.
Eriksson remembers his own transition to North American life 13 years ago with the Dallas Stars and figured he should extend to his new young teammates a welcoming hand with a familiar cultural bent.
Edler, now the second-eldest player on the squad at 32, thinks back to how the older players on the team helped him along when he was a rookie finding his way in the NHL, a dozen seasons ago.
It’s only natural that he’d look to do the same for Pettersson.
“He’s a pretty quiet guy, like a lot of Swedes,” Edler said. “You can tell that he’s very serious. He wants to get better. He cares. He wants to learn. He’s a good guy.”
Underneath that quiet shell is immense focus, said Edler.
“I think like everyone else… he likes to compete, to play in every situation. I think him, and maybe myself too, you might not see it on the outside, but it’s there on the inside.”
In conversations with the media, Pettersson will sometimes pause, looking for the word he hopes will best suit his meaning.
That’s something he does away from the rink, too.
“He asks me about English, sometimes he doesn’t know words,” Boeser said.
The team’s other rookie, Adam Gaudette, echoes the “quiet kid” observation.
But that doesn’t mean he’s lonely. Gaudette and Pettersson may be among the team’s young players, but there are plenty of others within a year or two in age. And that’s helped Pettersson find moments to lift the lid a touch.
“(Having) a lot of young guys in the room makes it easier to connect,” Gaudette said.
“Once you get to know (Pettersson) he opens up a little. He’s a funny kid. ”
NEW YORK (AP) — Kawhi Leonard’s short shot went in and out. Fred VanVleet’s three-pointer went around the rim and spun out. For three and a half years, the Toronto Raptors had always found a way to beat the Brooklyn Nets. This time, not one, but two chances just wouldn’t fall.
Boeser figured some of this quietness is about Pettersson feeling his place in the social hierarchy of a group he just joined.
“He’s a super nice kid. I think it’s just his personality, he’s kind of a shy kid,” he said.
“(But) also as a young guy, you look to see what the older guys are doing. You don’t want to push any boundaries.”
Ben Brown, the team’s director of media relations, has noted that the high standard Pettersson sets for himself extends from the ice into the dressing room and out towards the media and the broader public.
“I think he sets a pretty high standard,” he said. “He’s thinking about what he wants to say, before he’s asked a question. For a
That allowed the Nets (9-18) to snap an eight-game losing streak overall and a 12-game skid against the Raptors with a 106-105 victory in overtime on Friday night. D’Angelo Russell scored 29 points, including six in overtime, and the Nets beat the Raptors (21-6) for the first time since April 3, 2015.
(teenage rookie) to be aware of that, of the power of what his message is, puts him in a class all his own.
“He has a good sense for what others are going through and an ability to relate to that and he doesn’t let that go to his head.” Brown said a conversation the Canucks’ official media team filmed early in the season with Pettersson’s parents, Torbjörn and Irene, still stands out.
Irene said her son was “still the same as he (was) before all the fame and all the prizes last year.” Brown noted Irene’s pride in her son’s even keel.
“I thought that was a pretty powerful thing,” he said.
Canucks see rivals, partners in new Seattle NHL franchise
Tim BOOTH Citizen news service
VANCOUVER — Sitting high above the ice of Rogers Arena, Vancouver Canucks general manager Jim Benning is recalling fond memories of his time playing junior hockey for the Portland Winterhawks of the Western Hockey League and their trips up Interstate 5 to play at the old Mercer Arena against the Seattle Thunderbirds.
Well, how fond he is depends on the perspective.
“They had chicken wire (instead of glass), and the fans were rowdy,” Benning recalled recently.
“The thing with the chicken wire is like you’d line up for a faceoff and they could spit right through it.”
While Benning’s memories of playing against Seattle remain, he’s also thinking ahead. Looking out at an empty arena a couple of hours before a Canucks faceoff, he can envision fans of Seattle’s new NHL franchise making the trek north on I-5, through the border crossing and into downtown Vancouver to watch their team play the Canucks.
He has no doubt it will be a healthy rivalry and great for the sport in this corner of North America. But the Canucks see the addition of Seattle as more than adding a rival two and a half hours away by car. Seattle will be a critical partner for the future success of both franchises.
The approval of Seattle as the 32nd NHL franchise earlier this week has thrilled hockey fans who for years made their way north to Vancouver to see the game played at its highest level. But there’s an almost equally excited group just north of the 49th parallel who can’t wait for 2021 when the Seattle franchise begins play.
“Vancouver is already a partner. They were the most enthusiastic team in the league about this. They love the idea of this rivalry,” Seattle team president Tod Leiweke said. “I think for the two cities to connect like this, the two cities are (210 kilometres) away but now they’re going to connect in a whole different way and I think that’s one of the great things that is going to come out of all this is a deep, deep visceral connection between Vancouver and Seattle and we’re going to play some great games.”
Adding Seattle to the league helps the Canucks in various ways, from marketing to travel and interest in the game. The team is already planning ways it can sell
Seattle’s addition, even if it’s three years away.
Canucks chief operating officer
Jeff Stipec noted that even as Vancouver’s on-ice product is improving around a core of young stars and rejuvenating interest in the city after a few down seasons, the fans flocking back to the games are seeking different opportunities. They want special events, like being able to hop on a bus for a road trip to Seattle.
While it would seem the proximity of the two cities might create issues in competing for dollars on the business side, it doesn’t appear that will be the case largely because of the border. The border creates a natural break between the teams, both in their attempts to gain market share, but also in seeking corporate dollars and the acquisition of talent.
“It’s not that we just have somebody that’s two and a half hours away, we have that international border between us,” Stipec said. “So that protects us a lot from corporate partnerships, broadcast rights, a whole bunch of things. It’s not like a Pittsburgh-Philadelphia situation. So it’s great that way, that we have our own protected markets in a sense.”
The Canucks have not sought to promote themselves in the Seattle area, though playoff games have been broadcast on Seattle sports radio at times through the years. Still, hockey fans in the area have made the Canucks their team.
Alym Rayani lives just outside Seattle and has gone in with friends on season tickets for the Canucks for about a decade. After spending part of his childhood in Vancouver, Rayani drove back for games after settling in Seattle during the Canucks’ run as one of the Western Conference’s elite teams earlier this decade.
But like others from the Seattle area who regularly attend Canucks games, they’re hockey fans more than Vancouver fans. For Rayani, his loyalty and his dollars will belong to Seattle when it comes on board. He’s No. 16 on the seasonticket deposit list.
“I definitely feel loyalty to the Canucks being born there and having lived there, but I think it will be interesting how I’m going to feel 10 years from now,” Rayani said. “My kids, they watch the Canucks now, they’re going to be huge Seattle fans I’m sure. I think over time I will morph to Seattle. I like the idea of being a fan or part of something from day one.”
PHOTO COURTESY OF JEFF VINNICK /VANCOUVER CANUCKS
Elias Pettersson, left, and Brock Boeser are roommates on the road.
Lowly Nets edge Raptors
Fleury in
good spot at curling World Cup
OMAHA (CP) — Canadian skip Tracy Fleury sits tied for the top spot in Group A of the women’s draw at the second World Cup of the season after round-robin action Friday.
Fleury’s Winnipeg rink slipped by Alina Kovaleva of Russia for a 7-6 victory in the late match.
Earlier Friday, Fleury beat American Jamie Sinclair 7-5 in the morning draw.
The Canadians are tied with Min Jim Kim of Korea at nine points apiece heading into play this morning when the Group-A leaders will face off.
In mixed doubles action, Ottawa native John Morris and Kalynn Park of Edmonton fell 9-6 to Malin Wendel and Fabian Wingfors of Sweden. The Canadian squad is second-last in Group A with four points.
In the Friday morning draw, Morris and Park lost 7-4 to Jenny Perret and Martin Rios of Switzerland.
In men’s play earlier Friday, Winnipeg’s Jason Gunnlaugson dropped to 1-3 with a 7-5 loss against Bruce Mouat of Scotland. The Winnipeg squad will take on China in the early draw today.
The preliminary round concludes today with finals in all three divisions going on Sunday.
Dellavedova back with Cavaliers
CLEVELAND (AP) — Matthew Dellavedova is coming back to the Cavaliers. He won’t recognize them.
Cleveland re-acquired the popular, scrappy guard on Friday in a three-team trade with the Milwaukee Bucks and Washington Wizards.
The Cavaliers also received forward John Henson and 2021 first- and second-round picks from Milwaukee, and a 2022 secondrounder from Washington. The Cavs sent guard George Hill and a 2021 second-round selection to the Bucks, and forward Sam Dekker to the Wizards. Milwaukee also got forward Jason Smith from Washington. Affectionately known to Cleveland fans as “Delly,” Dellavedova was a key member of the Cavs’ 2016 title team before he signed with the Bucks later that summer. He’s not the same player, and the Cavs are far from being the same team, but his return will soften what has been a difficult season.
Cleveland is just 5-20 and rebuilding in the wake of LeBron James’ departure last summer.
“I’m glad my Aussie brother is back,” Cavs centre Tristan Thompson said following a 129-110 loss to Sacramento. “Brings us veteran leadership, a guy that’s won before, a guy that’s going to push Collin (Sexton), control the game for the second unit and he’ll make shots. He’s good at throwing lobs to me, so I’m really happy about that.
“I think it will be good for our team, not just for myself, but for our team.”
Walker, Snith leaders of Canadian luge
Citizen news service
CALGARY — If luge teams had captains, Tristan Walker and Justin Snith inherited the “C” for Canada.
The retirements of Alex Gough and Sam Edney made the doubles duo of Walker and Snith the most veteran sliders on Canada’s senior team with a combined 20 years on the squad.
“It’s definitely different, but we kind of planned on it,” Walker said Friday at a World Cup in Calgary.
“We knew Alex and Sam were retiring and we knew we were going to have to step into that role as the de facto in-team leaders. It’s definitely something we’re willing to take on.”
The 27-year-old Calgarians, along with Gough and Edney, won Olympic relay silver in Pyeongchang, South Korea, in February.
The only other slider on the Canadian team over the age of 21 is Kim McRae, an eight-year veteran racing a partial schedule this season in order to pursue nursing studies.
The next generation of Canadian sliders racing and training alongside Snith and Walker –who have stood on World Cup, world championship and Olympic podiums – is crucial to developing young talent, said head coach Wolfgang Staudinger.
“Very important. You need leaders in the team for others to look up to and show that others can do well,” he said.
But Walker and Snith didn’t get the results they wanted Friday, placing ninth in doubles.
Reigning Olympic champions
Tobias Wendl and Tobias Arlt of Germany won their first gold of the season ahead of teammates Toni Eggert and Sascha Benecken
in second.
World Cup leaders and Olympic bronze medallists Thomas Steu and Lorenz Koller of Austria placed third.
“The first run was not that good, but the second run was much better,” Wendl said. “We had the bonus at the start where we were really fast.”
In men’s singles, Austria’s Wolfgang Kindl won his second straight gold in Canada after a victory in Whistler last week.
“On the start, it was not my day today, but in the track I knew I was really fast,” Kindl said. “I was fast throughout the week in training. Very happy I was the fastest today too.”
Russia’s Roman Repilov was
second and reigning Olympic champion David Gleirscher of Austria finished third. Reid Watts of Whistler was the top Canadian in 15th.
Women’s singles and the team relay are today. Gough will have a retirement slide prior to the women’s competition.
The 31-year-old Calgarian was the first Canadian to win an Olympic medal in luge when she won bronze in women’s singles in Pyeongchang. The relay team earned silver two days later.
Walker and Snith recovered from a major mistake in their opening run Friday to post the sixth-fastest time in their second.
“The second run was a little bit better, but we still had some
pretty big mistakes on the bottom,” Snith said.
“Not totally happy with it, but like Tristan said, it’s a racing sport and we need to build on it. Take it as a training run for tomorrow in the relay and hopefully throw a good one down in the relay.” Watts, 19, felt he made gains in Calgary after placing 22nd at the Whistler Sliding Centre last week.
“Whistler was a little messy for me, especially on the second run when I made a huge mistake up at the start,” Watts said. “Today, definitely a lot more solid.” Colton Clarke of Airdrie, Alta., who is a 17-year-old rookie, was 22nd on Friday. Matt Riddle of Calgary placed 23rd.
Yes, Gurley would like to win NFL rushing title
THOUSAND OAKS, Calif. (AP) — Todd Gur-
ley probably would have won his first NFL rushing title last year if the Los Angeles Rams hadn’t rested every key starter in their season finale. Gurley was sanguine about the decision at the time, saying all the right things about the bigger picture and the Rams’ playoff goals.
With Gurley in the NFL rushing lead again as the regular season heads into its final weeks, the superstar running back is telling
the real story about the end of 2017.
“Yeah, I was lying,” Gurley said with a laugh. “I really did care about the title. I couldn’t say nothing. No one really plays for regular (season) goals, but that would be a pretty cool thing to get. I tell people that all the time: ‘You play for team goals, but who wouldn’t want to be the NFL sack leader? Who wouldn’t want to be the NFL passing or rushing leader? It’s hard to get it.”’
This time, Gurley is hoping he can get the first rushing title since 1987 for the Rams (11-1), and their race for the NFL’s best record might work in his favour. With Los Angeles in a race with New Orleans (10-2) for the NFC’s top seed, the Rams might not be able to keep Gurley off the field in December. He heads into Sunday’s game at Chicago (8-4) with an NFL-best 1,175 yards, 26 more than Dallas’ Ezekiel Elliott, the 2016 rushing champ.
Eagle on No. 17 pushes Schwartzel to lead
Citizen news service
JOHANNESBURG — Charl Schwartzel
holed out from the fairway for an eagle on the 17th on his way to an 8-under 63 and a oneshot lead after the second round of the South African Open on Friday.
The 2011 Masters champion moved to 12-under overall and replaced overnight leader Louis Oosthuizen at the top of the leaderboard at Randpark Golf Club.
Schwartzel had six birdies but took the lead with the eagle on his second-to-last hole when his approach bounced on the green and landed on the far fringe before backspin kicked in.
2 First Period 1. Portland, Blichfeld 26 (Hughes, Glass) 14:52 (pp). 2. Portland, Jarvis 5 (Gricius) 16:51 (pp). Penalties - Schoettler Pg () 14:24; Crossley Pg, Gricius Por (roughing) 14:06. Second Period
3. Portland, Fromm-Delorme 2 (Gilliss) 2:58.
4. Prince George, Maser 9 (Schoettler, Mikhalchuk) 8:54 (pp).
5. Portland, Glass 12 (Gricius) 11:06 (sh).
6. Portland, Ludvig 2 (Hanas, Gricius) 17:34. Penalties - Dureau Por (hooking) 3:44; Hanas Por (delay of game) 8:29; Blichfeld Por (charging) 10:23; De Jong Por (tripping) 10:36. Third Period
7. Prince George, Mikhalchuk 9 (Browne, Moberg) 18:09 (pp). Penalties - Hughes Por (double minor, high sticking) 15:09; Crossley Pg, MacLean Pg, Blichfeld Por, Glass Por, Hanus Por (roughing) 4:55; Cicek Por (cross checking) 19:36.
Madalitso Muthiya (68) is second at 11 under.
Oosthuizen, ahead by a shot after the first round, dropped into a tie for third at 10 under with Kurt Kitayama (69) and Zander Lombard (68). Kitayama has made a fabulous start to his time on the European Tour, winning last weekend at the Mauritius Open after only just coming through qualifying school. He’s in contention for a second straight win.
Schwartzel made four birdies and his eagle on the back nine and was especially good on the three par 5s – he birdied two of them and eagled the other.
at Surrey, 7 p.m. Powell River at Chilliwack, 7 p.m. Nanaimo at Merritt, 7 p.m. Salmon Arm at Victoria, 7 p.m. Trail at Langley, 7:15 p.m. SUNDAY’S GAMES Trail at Chilliwack, 2 p.m. Nanaimo at Langley, 2 p.m. Salmon Arm at Surrey, 4 p.m. FRIDAY’S SUMMARY CLIPPERS 3 AT SPRUCE KINGS 5 First Period 1. Nanaimo, Samuelsen 3 (Mussio) 14:47 (sh) Penalties – Williams NA (tripping) 9:08, Torzsok NA (slashing) 14:03. Second Period 2. Prince George, Manz 16 (Brar, Cozzi) 3:57 (pp) 3. Prince George, Manz 17 (Brar, Cozzi) 9:25 Penalties – Mitchell NA (interference) 3:00, B.Poisson PG (check to the head, misconduct) 9:36, Gatenby NA (cross-checking) 17:34, Dawson NA (hooking) 18:24. Third Period 4. Prince George, Brar 22 (Cozzi, Keranen) 2:52 5. Nanaimo, Gatenby 1 (Wegleitner) 5:38 (pp) 6. Nanaimo, Bourne 7 (Stein, Mitchell) 15:54 7. Prince George B.Poisson 15 (Cozzi, Manz) 15:54 (pp) 8. Prince George, Manz 18, 18:03 (sh) Penalties – Watson-Brawn PG (tripping) 5:15, Bourne NA (slashing) 15:21, Keranen PG (interference) 16:42. Shots on goal by Nanaimo 4 9 8 -21 Prince George 11 11 11 -33 Goal – Nanaimo, Naylor (L,8-11-0); Prince George, Rancier (W,2-1-1). Power plays – NA: 1-3; PG: 2-6. Referees – Ward Pateman, Anthony Maletta; Linesmen – Braiden Epp, Scott Walters. Scratches – Nanaimo: D Liam Visran (healthy), D Carter Stephenson (injured), F Zach Dallazanna (healthy), F Connor Wetch (healthy); Prince George: D Layton Ahac (Team Canada West, World Junior A Hockey Challenge), D Dylan Anhorn (concussion, daytoday), F Cory Cunningham (shoulder,
“I’ve driven the ball well,” the 34-year-old
South African said. “It’s probably the most consistent I’ve driven the ball and I’ve felt it in practice, I’ve been doing the same. It’s just nice to do it in a tournament now.” Schwartzel last won a tournament in 2016 but said he feels he’s recently been playing better than he has in years, only the results haven’t been there.
“It’s just this little thing called golf,” he said. “Trying to figure it out still.”
The tournament is being played on two layouts at Randpark: the Firethorn Course and the Bushwillow Course. Players had a round on each with the final 36 holes now at Firethorn.
Canadians Tristan Walker, front, and Justin Snith race down the track during the doubles World Cup luge competition in Calgary on Friday.
The biggest movie surprises of 2018
Michael
O’SULLIVAN Citizen news service
In an art form that thrives on sequels – and that might as well market its products as “the predictable meets the formulaic” – any film, any actor, any director that still retains the capacity to surprise is an anomaly. Here are some of this year’s movies about which I can honestly say, “I did not see that coming.”
Can You Ever Forgive Me?
Melissa McCarthy’s performance in this acerbic little gem of a movie -– directed by Marielle Heller (The Diary of a Teenage Girl) and co-written by Nicole Holofcener (Enough Said) – comes on the heels of The Happytime Murders and Life of the Party, which are only the latest two crushing disappointments in a string of lousy movies starring the actress. Playing the real-life Lee Israel, a celebrity biographer who turned to forgery when her writing career dried up, the actress delivers the performance we’ve been waiting for, a low-key, Oscar-worthy turn as a bitter and unvarnished misanthrope. McCarthy isn’t back. She goes someplace she’s never been before.
Science Fair
In a year when the highestgrossing documentary was the uplifting profile of Fred Rogers, Won’t You Be My Neighbor? –outperforming even Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 11/9– it may be that viewers have grown tired of polemical nonfiction. Science Fair, an absolute charmer along the lines of the 2011 spelling-bee doc Spellbound, profiles a group
of teenage contestants at the 2017 International Science and Engineering Fair. A prizewinner at festivals from Sundance to SXSW, the film includes traditional surprises (including the identity of the ISEF winner, which is unexpected for at least two reasons). But the most surprising thing is that the film – with its implicit critique of an anti-science White House – is actually political. Or rather, that it’s both political and the feel-good film of the year.
Tully
The year’s best plot twist, hands down, is best not described, even with a spoiler alert. But this perfectly constructed magic trick of a movie – the third collaboration between director Jason Reitman and writer Diablo Cody – introduces a story about the relationship between a frazzled new mother (Charlize Theron) and the hyper-confident “night nanny” she hires to help out (Mackenzie Davis, in the title role), only to pull the rug out from underneath the whole thing. That it does so without disturbing a single piece of plot “furniture” makes for an impressive feat of writing, directing and acting – as well as one heck of a good movie.
First Reformed
Paul Schrader, whose résumé includes the screenplays for Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and The Last Temptation of Christ, has a spottier track record behind the camera than in front of the keyboard. (Have anyone seen Forever Mine or The Canyons? Ugh.)
But the writer-director’s latest film, a somber and at times surreal drama about a pastor (Ethan Hawke) who experiences a spiritual crisis after the death of a man he was counseling, is a return to peak form – and early Oscar buzz – for the filmmaker. (Both the screenplay and Hawke’s performance just received prizes at the Gotham Awards.) You wouldn’t be alone if you had written off Schrader as a contender. But you would be wrong.
Bad Times at the El Royale
The premise of seven random strangers who meet at a Nevada motel on a stormy night, including a priest (Jeff Bridges), a traveling salesman (Jon Hamm) and a soul singer (Tony winner Cynthia Erivo, in an astonishing turn), sounds like a recipe for cliche. But this noirish lark from writer-
director Drew Goddard never goes where you expect. Maybe that’s to be expected from the Oscar-nominated writer of The Martian, the writer-director of the meta-horror flick The Cabin in the Woods, and an acolyte of Joss Whedon and J.J. Abrams who got his start writing for Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer before graduating to Abrams’ Lost.
Suspira
Filmmaker Luca Guadagnino has called this remake of the 1977 giallo-horror cult classic the polar opposite of his multi-Oscarnominated gay love story from last year, Call Me by Your Name. In an interview with The Washington Post, Guadagnino described that 2017 film as a look at the importance of family and Suspiria as an investigation of the “terminal consequences of a terrible mother.” In the space of 12 months, no other director has made such an extreme about-face. Guadagnino’s latest film is the stuff of Freudian nightmares –and enough to erase every warm memory of Name.
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
There are many surprises delivered in the Coen brothers’ existential Western anthology, whose six separate stories – unrelated except for a shared theme of human mortality – include two with twist endings worthy of O. Henry. The fact that its chapters were gathered from material written (and shelved) by the Coens over the course of 25 years suggests it’s a wonder the film ever got made. And finding a home on Netflix is, for filmmakers of their caliber, something new. But it’s the performance of Bill Heck – who? – in the installment titled The Gal Who Got Rattled that feels like the biggest revelation. The actor, who’s been making movies for a while but is probably better known in the New York theater world, is absolutely sensational, in the role of a lovestruck but laconic cowboy, opposite Zoe Kazan.
Border
I defy you to watch the trailer for this strange – and strangely haunting – film (Sweden’s official submission in the 2018 Oscar competition) and tell me what it’s about. The story, which takes on ancient Scandinavian myth as a metaphor for immigration and the sense of being an outsider, will be less mysterious once you actually sit down and watch the thing. But it’s still an original experience: part fairy tale and part gritty contemporary police drama. It includes two things you couldn’t possibly see coming: a sex scene that springs something startling and a love story that is stunning in its power to move.
Hereditary
What’s the big deal? That the feature debut of writer-director Ari Aster, with an 89 percent “fresh” rating on Rotten Tomatoes, is as good as it is? Or that the art-house horror film – which mixes family drama and frights better than The Haunting of Hill House – includes a character whose fate is even more disturbing than that featured in the Netflix hit? Neither.
It’s the fact that Hereditary’s central performance (by Toni Collette, as an artist and mother who is losing her grip on her loved ones and her sanity) is being talked about (and rightly so) as Oscar worthy.
CITIZEN NEWS SERVICE PHOTO BY MARY CYBULSKI, FOX SEARCHLIGHT
Richard E. Grant and Melissa McCarthy in Can You Ever Forgive Me?
In this file photo from 2017, Kevin Hart arrives at the Los Angeles premiere of Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle in Los Angeles. Hart stepped down from hosting the 2019 Academy Awards, which he considered fulfilling a lifelong dream.
Hart steps down as Oscar host over anti-gay tweets
Jake COYLE Citizen news service
NEW YORK — Just two days after being named host of the Academy Awards, Kevin Hart stepped down following an outcry over past homophobic tweets by the comedian.
Capping a swift and dramatic fallout, Hart wrote on Twitter just after midnight Friday that he was withdrawing as Oscars host because he didn’t want to be a distraction.
“I sincerely apologize to the LGBTQ community for my insensitive words from my past,” wrote Hart. Hart, who is in Australia for a comedy tour, also tweeted Friday morning: “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy. Martin Luther King, Jr.”
Earlier Thursday evening, the comedian had refused to apologize for tweets that resurfaced after he was announced as Oscars host on Tuesday. In a video on Instagram, Hart said the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences gave him an ultimatum: apologize or “we’re going to have to move on and find another host.”
“I chose to pass on the apology,” Hart said. “The reason why I passed is because I’ve addressed this several times.”
The film academy didn’t respond to messages Thursday evening.
Hart has since deleted some of the anti-gay tweets, mostly dated from 2009-2011. But they had already been screen-captured and been shared online.
In 2011, he wrote in a since-deleted tweet: “Yo if my son comes home & try’s 2 play with my daughters doll house I’m going 2 break it over his head & say n my voice ‘stop that’s gay.”’
In an earlier post Thursday, Hart wrote on Instagram that critics should “stop being negative” about his earlier anti-gay remarks.
“I’m almost 40 years old. If you don’t believe that people change, grow, evolve? I don’t know what to tell you,” said Hart, who added, in all-caps: “I love everybody.”
Hart’s attitudes about homosexuality were also a well-known part of his stand-up act.
In the 2010 special Seriously Funny, he said “one of my biggest fears is my son growing up and being gay.”
“Keep in mind, I’m not homophobic, I have nothing against gay people, do what you want to do, but me, being a heterosexual male, if I can prevent my son from being gay, I will,” Hart said.
GLAAD, the advocacy group for LGBTQ rights, said Thursday that it reached out to Oscars broadcaster ABC, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, and Hart’s management to “discuss Kevin’s anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and record.”
Comedian and actor Billy Eichner said “a simple, authentic apology showing any bit of understanding or remorse would have been so simple.”
It’s not the first time an Oscars host has been derailed by anti-gay remarks.
Ahead of the 2012 Academy Awards, producer Brett Ratner, who had been paired with host Eddie Murphy, resigned days after using a gay slur at a film screening. Murphy soon after exited, as well.
That year, a tried-and-true Oscars veteran – Billy Crystal – jumped in to save the show, hosting for his eighth time. This time, speculation has already been rampant that few in Hollywood want the gig, for which few win glowing reviews.
The film academy moved up this year’s ceremony to Feb. 24, giving producers little time to find a replacement.
At a Hollywood event Thursday night, comedian Kathy Griffin, whose career suffered last year when she posted a photo on social media that looked like a beheaded President Donald Trump, said Hart messed up, yet had empathy for the situation.
“He wrote that tweet eight years ago when gay marriage wasn’t even legal yet, so we all do things. God knows in my 23 specials I’ve said heinously inappropriate things,” she said.
Griffin hoped Hart’s departure would open the door for a woman comedian to host the show.
“I want more women to host the Oscars and in the entire history of the Oscars, they’ve only been hosted by three women, three times and so we haven’t levelled the playing field yet,” she said.
Terry Crews, who described Hart as a “brother,” said he respected Hart’s decision to walk away from the show.
“I’m thankful that he acknowledged things that maybe weren’t right, and he’ll come back from this,” Crews said. “We do have to admit our guilt and say, ‘Hey I messed up and let’s fix this thing.’ I think that he will do that, and he has always done that.” CITIZEN
John Krasinski turned
A Quiet Place into a hit
Ann HORNADAY Citizen news service
WASHINGTON — John Krasinski knew he had a potential hit on his hands when he attended a test screening for A Quiet Place. A horror movie about a family battling largely unseen creatures who attack at the slightest noise, the film transpires with no verbal dialogue: The characters communicate with American Sign Language, or through meaningful glances and gestures.
This wasn’t Krasinski’s first effort as a director; still, he and his wife, Emily Blunt – who play the parents in A Quiet Place – weren’t sure audiences would accept a genre picture that harked back to cinema’s silent roots more than its special effects-driven present.
But at that test screening, toward the end of the feedback session, an executive asked the audience if there was anything the creative or marketing teams “needed to know” about the movie.
“And this guy raised his hand, and he was shaking,” Krasinski recalled earlier this week. “And he goes, ‘What you need to know about this movie is that I snuck in a bag of Skittles and for 90 minutes I held it up like this” – Krasinski held up two hands with pursed fingers – “and never passed rip.”
Millions of people were similarly rapt by A Quiet Place, which became one of the first bona fide phenoms of 2018, a $17 million passion project that went on to earn more than $340 million, making it not just a hit with audiences but an unexpected commercial bonanza. In an era when studios are putting their chips on remakes and sequels, madly mining their archives for intellectual property they can exploit, this bold exercise in pure cinema proves that an original movie, with no “presold” audience or built-in franchising potential, can still lure filmgoers into theaters. And now, Krasinski, 39, is hoping that A Quiet Place can prove another concept, namely that a genre film can still be awards-worthy. He came to Washington on Wednesday to accept the Smithsonian magazine’s 2018 American Ingenuity Award for visual arts. The stop is part of a strategy to overcome an obstacle faced by movies released early in the year. With the awards race unofficially beginning at film festivals in August and September, studios habitually hold their prestige pictures for the end of the year, capitalizing on the free publicity of red carpets and best-of lists, and swamping filmgoers with a fire hose full of great films after nine months of drought. The reminder tour just might be working: On Tuesday, the American Film Institute announced that A Quiet Place was among its 10 finest films of 2018; on Thursday, the film was nominated for a Golden Globe for best musical score. It’s already showing up on several movie critics’ best-of lists. Each mention helps put A Quiet Place top of mind with Academy Awards voters who will be sending in their nominations in January.
Obviously, an Oscar nomination, much less a win, won’t help A Quiet Place at the box office. But Krasinski is invested if only to prove that the artistic sophistication, technical excellence and emotional intimacy we usually associate with “awards movies” can apply to a horror or action film just as much as a literary chamber piece or highly polished studio drama. A few weeks ago, he said, he was misquoted as saying he “hated” the idea of a new Oscar for best popular film. “I don’t hate it,” he insisted. “It just seems like a slippery slope for me. Then what’s it going to be, the best movie with a woman cast?”
As far as A Quiet Place is concerned, he added, awards consideration would mean that his film could be considered great regardless of genre, “that movies can actually supersede all versions of compartmentalizing. It was the same with Get Out, and also Bridesmaids’... You can’t tell people, ‘Well, this is a good movie except with an asterisk that it’s also this.’”
The gatekeeping, he observed, is fundamentally about what counts as canon. “Why did we change what a good movie is?” he asks. “A good movie is a good movie. An achievement’s an achievement... To me, storytelling can come from anywhere. It doesn’t have to be a really small movie about someone committing suicide. It can be a really big, huge movie. I was extremely moved by Black Panther. There was something there that was much bigger than anything one movie was supposed to be able to do.” Oscar or not, Krasinski said that A Quiet Place changed his life, not only because he got to work with Blunt, but because it fulfilled a sense of deeply personal mission that he didn’t know he had when he went into the project. Originally approached to act in the film, he agreed only if he could rewrite it; when he shared his ideas with Blunt – who was holding their three-week-old daughter at the time – she told him he had to direct. The resulting film wound up expressing all the anxieties he had been trying to process as a husband and a father grappling with issues of fear, vulnerability, powerlessness and the fierce determination to protect the ones you love. He said that when he prepared to direct the movie, “if I’d said, ‘I’m gonna make the best scary movie you’ve ever seen,’ I not only wouldn’t have been able to do it, but I would have made a horrible movie.” Instead, he thought, “If your take on this is family, then commit to that and that wholly... Don’t write scary. Write what you know. Write what people believe.” Krasinski insists it’s that emotional core – rather than the jump scares or the explosive climactic showdown – that explains why audiences responded to A Quiet Place so strongly. And it’s why Blunt, who was just nominated for a Golden Globe for her performance in Mary Poppins Returns, has insisted that time and space be made available for her to talk about A Quiet Place while she’s on the hustings for the Disney musical. “To this day, it’s her favourite movie she’s ever done,” Krasinski said. As for the awards themselves, he’s philosophical. “No one’s going to tell you that if you don’t win an Oscar you’ve lost something,” he said. “But you can certainly gain something in the conversation of what movies are.”
CITIZEN NEWS SERVICE PHOTO BY ANDRÉ CHUNG
The Quiet Place actor, writer and director John Krasinski was in Washington, D.C., this week for the American Ingenuity Awards.
The communion of presidents
Every president at the Bush funeral recited the Apostles’ Creed - except for one
The Apostles’ Creed is one of the prayers most core to Christianity. It states in a few lines the basic narrative of Jesus’ life, is the statement of faith in one God, and is said daily by Christians across the globe.
On Wednesday, one Christian didn’t say it. And Twitter noticed. Video from the funeral of former President George H.W. Bush showed a front row of presidents at the Washington National Cathedral, standing and reciting it along with the program, as the voice of Episcopal Bishop Michael Curry boomed through the speakers to the thousands of mourners. Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and their wives glanced up and down from the programs they held in front of them and spoke the prayer, along with everyone else visible in the video. The program, as is typical, calls for the prayer to be said in unison.
President Donald Trump stood, with his hands folded in front of
him, waist-high, the program in his left hand, his lips not moving. Melania Trump also did not speak, nor did she hold a program.
Social media, left to right, pounced. The faith and values of Trump have been a source of debate, division, anger and mystery since his run for the presidency began – and especially since many religious conservatives embraced him, despite what critics say is his dishonesty, philandering, crudeness and policies many see as anti-Christian.
Theories (primarily of the snarky variety) poured forth on Twitter.
But mixed in within disgust was a small voice raising a controversial question: Maybe Trump doesn’t believe the Creed, and therefore shouldn’t say it? This was quickly answered by others noting that Trump says he is a Christian, often praises faith in God and characterizes himself as a friend of the faithful.
The Creed came about twothirds through the service, shortly after the homily.
Most Christians (or those who have been to church, especially a baptism or funeral) have heard the Apostles’ Creed. There are varying translations, but its few lines include something like: “I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth. I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord... I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.
Amen.”
That is the version used by the Episcopal Church, of which Bush was a member. The funeral was held at Washington National Cathedral. The Cathedral is the seat of the Episcopal Church’s presiding bishop, or the closest thing the denomination has to a national church. However it was founded as a place for national spiritual events, and hosts everything from presidential funerals to interfaith and secular events.
The Creed comes from Christianity’s earliest centuries, and is
an affirmation of faith, said Ruth Meyers, a professor of liturgics at Church Divinity School of the Pacific in Berkeley, Calif. In the Episcopal Church, among other Protestant communities, it is used in daily prayer, as well as in baptisms and burials. It is also a core prayer of Catholicism. It’s not a core part of all Christian services, including some evangelical groups, Meyers said.
The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association calls it “the basis” of other creeds, or faith statements.
“It is not Scripture, but it is a simple list of the great doctrines of the faith.”
“It is as bedrock doctrine as you can get,” she said.
It is said by Presbyterians. Trump has said he attended a Presbyterian church growing up and has identified himself in recent years with the denomination. He does not appear to belong to or attend any church regularly since becoming president, though he has worshipped at St. John’s Episcopal, across from the White
House, several times.
That said, there is nothing in scripture that says you must state the Creed. And it’s clear that Christians hold a vast range of views about lines within it, such as whether they take as literal that Jesus was born of a virgin, or was resurrected from the dead, as well as what it means to say God is “creator of heaven and earth.”
While many saw the Trumps’ silence during the Bush funeral prayer as disrespectful, a symbol of his instinct to hit back on critics, including the Bush family – perhaps even at a funeral – there was also a small current who saw themselves at church, sometimes zoning out.
Whether any of these ideas are relevant to the Trumps’ motivation was not immediately clear.
“I think it is normal for a lot of people to choose what they say or don’t say in church,” Meyers said. “I can’t presume to guess why President Trump chose not to say the Creed in this context. I can’t speak for him.”
Let your love light shine this holiday season
The Bible says “You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven. –Matthew 5:14-16 NIV
The other day I went in to wake my daughter at 7:30 a.m. for school.
I opened her curtains and she looked up and said “Dad, it’s not time to get up, it’s still dark outside.” She was not wrong.
I told her that is just the reality of December in the north.
My daughter isn’t the only one who has a hard time getting up in the darkest days of winter.
It can be hard to get motivated with so little sunlight this time of year. What is striking, however, is how bright the stars shine on these dark winter nights or how brilliant
the lights that adorn many of our homes are.
A light, no matter how small, brings light into the darkest season.
The reason for this season, no matter how hard some voices try to drown it out, is because Jesus Christ came to earth as a baby. He came into a world that was lost in darkness. He tells us who follow Him that we are now to be the light of the
world and we are to let our light shine before others, that they may see our good deeds and glorify our Father in heaven. There’s an important nugget in there, we shine our light by doing good but not for our glory but for God’s.
This Christmas season I encourage you to ponder how brightly your light is shining and consider if it’s shining for your glory or for God’s.
PASTOR MICHAEL DAYKIN Central Fellowship Baptist Church
Clergy Comment
Citizen news service
From left, U.S. President Donald Trump, first lady Melania Trump, former President Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, and former President Bill Clinton listen during a state funeral at the National Cathedral on Wednesday for former President George H.W. Bush.
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Fix drafty windows for comfort, savings
Citizen news service
There are plenty of reasons to fix or replace windows, but wintry temperatures push many homeowners to get the job done.
Besides the discomfort they cause, drafty windows can add hundreds of dollars to your energy bill over the course of a winter.
“A great test is to hold a lighted match, or even better a stick of old-fashioned incense, near the window and watch the flame,” said Danny Lipford, a home improvement expert and host of the syndicated TV and radio show Today’s Homeowner with Danny Lipford. “If it flickers, then you know your window does not have a tight seal and is allowing cold air to creep in.”
You have a few options for fixing those drafty windows.
Some are inexpensive, easy steps that any homeowner can do to improve the efficiency of windows, Lipford said.
For instance, there are roll-on window insulation kits that include durable plastic sheets that attach to window casings and create a barrier of trapped air.
These products, which cost about $5 to $7 per window, keep out drafts. An added benefit is that you can remove them at the end of the season.
Another option is sealing cracks or crevices with latex caulking, which will handle the window’s expansion and contraction with changing temperatures. If you have larger cracks, you may need to opt for expandable foam.
If you enlist a contractor, get two to three estimates, said Steve Walowitz, owner of Nu-Concepts, a window repair and reconstruction business in the Chicago suburb of Northbrook.
Consider not just your budget but the climate where you live, your home value and the age of the house, among other things. Walowitz said a window’s installation is just as important as the product, if not
homeowners to get the job done. Besides the discomfort they cause, drafty windows can add hundreds of dollars to the energy bill over the course of a winter.
“A window replacement has a life span of 10 to 20 years,” said Chris Fullan, a historic window restoration expert and owner of Forever Hung Windows in Philadelphia.
“Historic windows are a superior product. They’ve stood the test of time.”
A window restoration, Fullan said, is often a bit more expensive than replacement windows. With restoration, regular maintenance is required.
And since the original glass is single-pane, a storm window is needed to help keep frigid temperatures out.
When Aaron and Tracy Cahall moved into their Bel Air, Maryland, home in 2013, they knew that replacing the original windows –17 in total – was a priority.
The colonial home, built in 1968, had endured decades of East Coast winters with single-pane glass, and were not only drafty but flaking paint.
“They were drafty in the winter, and let in heat during the summer,” said Aaron Cahall, 36.
The couple started last month by replacing four of the windows, in their children’s bedrooms. The cost totalled roughly $2,000 US for four middle-grade windows.
“We’ve only had the windows in for a few days, but I think there’s a difference,” Aaron said. “The room temperatures seem a bit more comfortable, though we won’t know whether we’re saving any money from increased efficiency for a while.”
One immediate improvement is a reduction of noise from passing cars and occasional loud sounds from the street.
Fixing your home’s windows can also add money to a home’s value.
Yet nothing seems to motivate homeowners like cold.
“We get a lot of inquiries for windows in the spring,” said Jody Finglas, a windows restoration expert and owner of NYC Fine Finishes, Inc., in Croton-on-Hudson, New York. “People go through a rough winter and by spring they’re sick of it.”
Cozy comfort the home trend for 2019
Citizen news service
What trends will dominate home decorating in 2019?
When we asked interior designers about the colours, fabrics and styles likely to be popular this year, one message came through loud and clear: people are seeking comfort at home.
But rather than casual, farmhouse-style comfort, these designers are seeing a trend toward a sophisticated, elegant comfort achieved through things like warm wall colours, antique wooden items with a patina of age and rounded corners on furniture. Along with the physical coziness these items bring, many folks seem to be seeking a degree of emotional comfort in their home decor.
“Someone just asked us if we would do an ombre carpet up their stairs, working with the ombre wallpaper up the wall,” says New York-based furniture and wallcovering designer Brett Beldock. “They want this cocoon feeling. Our surroundings have to be really warm and comforting now... everything is crazy and we’re all up in the air.”
We’ve asked Beldock and two other interior designers – Washington D.C.-based Marika Meyer and New Yorker Dan Mazzarini
– for details on what we’ll see in home design in the coming year.
Comforting spaces
For years, home owners were in love with open floor plans and large furniture. Now, “people want more intimately scaled spaces,” says Mazzarini. “Not Victorian-small, but not this kind of ‘everything open’ living.”
In response, we’re seeing “a temporary pause on oversized things,” he says, as people feel like nesting. Along the way, the colour
palette is becoming equally cozy. Popular neutral colours have “been so cool for a number of years,” Meyer says. As 2019 approaches, “we’re coming back into more warm neutrals.” And Beldock sees furniture shapes changing: we’re seeing a return to rounded edges and pieces of furniture with big, soft, rounded arms.
Patterns and papers
Expect to see lots of paper and fabric coverings on walls and ceil-
ings in 2019. Beldock says murals are popular, as are patterns that can be mixed to create a vibrant space and give walls an appearance of depth. Meyer agrees that patterns are increasingly important. As part of a “return to traditionalism” in home design, she sees many people opting for “heavy layering of very traditional patterns.”
Although many patterns incorporate a mix of colours, expect to see plenty of rich shades of green in fabric and wallpaper patterns. While blues and indigos have been
huge in recent years, Meyer says that in 2019 “green is the new blue.” It’s likely to be used in everything from upholstery patterns to kitchen furnishings.
Warm woods and traditional styles
Antiques and second-hand items are also having a moment.
“There have always been the antique lovers that we’ve worked with,” says Mazzarini. But now, a growing number of people “are
responding more positively to things that have an actual sense of history.”
Meyer agrees: “More and more clients say to me they’re interested in a beautiful wood antique chest,” she says.
These designers are seeing a trend toward a sophisticated, elegant comfort achieved through things like warm wall colours, antique wooden items ...
This trend is quite practical in the smaller-scale homes and condos favoured these days, Meyer says, because people have a real need for storage space. If a client chooses an antique wooden chest instead of a Parsons table, “it’s concealed storage.”
Traditional skirted tables are becoming popular again for the same reason: under the soft folds of a fabric table cloth that reach to the floor, you can store items out of sight.
Even for homeowners who prefer a more modern style, warm wood tones are increasingly popular, Beldock says.
“Everyone’s using warm woods and walnuts,” she says, or “actually doing a fireplace, and around the fireplace having your extra wood in a niche on each side that’s the height of the whole wall.”
Some clients continue asking for lighter wood tones, Mazzarini says.
But even when paired with white items for a very clean look, the wood grain brings a degree of warmth to a room.
drafty windows.
CITIZEN NEWS SERVICE PHOTO
Chris Fullan, owner of Forever Hung Windows in Philadelphia, restores the windows on a Langhorne Borough, Pa., building. There are plenty of reasons to fix or replace windows, but wintry temperatures push many
CITIZEN NEWS SERVICE PHOTO
This photo provided by Marika Meyer Interiors shows a living room in McLean, Va. that demonstrates the 2019 trend toward warm neutral colours and antique furniture in warm wood tones.
Scented candles capture Christmas essence
Jura KONCIUS
Special to The Citizen
Many people have a special smell they associate with the holidays.
Warm gingerbread. Crushed peppermint. Frosty martinis. Freshly cut pine.
Chances are there is a scented candle out there that re-creates your Christmas memory, although we are sorry to report that if your remembrance is the cocktail, Yankee Candle’s Alpine Martini has been discontinued.
“During the holidays, people spend more time indoors, and lighting candles is a cozy, nesting thing,” says Larissa Jensen, beauty industry analyst for the market research firm NPD Group. “It’s all about emotion.”
This time of year, candles seem to be everywhere. The candle business (which had sales of $3.2 billion in 2015, according to the market research firm Mintel) is booming, with most sales in the final three months of the year.
“Our sense of smell is one of the most important senses we have,” says Laura Slatkin, founder and executive chairwoman of Nest Fragrances, who has been in the candle business for 26 years. “At the holidays, candles are a festive tradition, like your family’s favorite stuffing.”
Candles in fancy packaging are stacked up as gift suggestions and impulse items in department stores, supermarkets, fancy boutiques and artsy craft fairs, costing from five bucks to hundreds of dollars.
“Candle pricing is based on ingredients, just like wine,” says Linda G. Levy, president of the Fragrance Foundation. The higher the price, the choicer and finer the ingredients. (There are endless sources for them online as well.)
Artisan candles have become a thing. One of these makers is Otherland, whose 2018 limitededition holiday scent is a “woodsy and warm” Fallen Fir. The company, based in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, sells its candles poured in artful glass tumblers that it suggests repurposing for scrunchie
storage. The candles come with a tiny box of matching matches, a disappearing yet necessary home accessory.
Scented candles, like perfume, are not for everyone. A few weeks ago, we held an informal sniff test of 14 holiday-scented candles. The testers’ comments brought a few truths to light: everyone smells differently, and our parents play heavily into our memories of Christmas.
The Thymes Frasier Fir candle, with its notes of Siberian fir needles, sandalwood and cedar brought back these memories for one tester: “It smells like my dad cussing because the new tree is getting sap all over the carpet.”
Another tester said the soapy, musk smell of Innisfree’s Dreaming of Santa candle made the tester think it could “clean my house”; another described it as “fresh laundry.” T he Diptyque Baume D’Ambre, which smells like vanilla, ben-
zoin and lavender reminded one tester of “myrrh or frankincense and reminds me of being in the Lutheran Nativity play”; another said “ginger mixed with cleaning solutions.”
Two testers mentioned that Aromatique’s the Smell of Christmas conjured up thoughts of cooking with their moms.
Home fragrance became popular in the 1980s when potpourri burst onto the nation’s coffee tables, according to LaVanier.
In 1982, Arkansas entrepreneur Patti Upton created the Smell of Christmas, a bag of wood shavings, pine cones and berries laced with fragrant spices and oils that became a national sensation.
Ten years later, she was selling a million of the $10 cellophane bags of holiday “decorative home fragrance.”
Upton died last year at age 79. But her company, Aromatique, actually holds the registered trademark for “The Smell of Christmas.”
And 36 years after the seasonal scent was introduced, its most popular form is a candle.
Why has it lasted?
“It’s the smell that many remember from their grandmother’s house: cinnamon, oranges and spices,” says Chad Evans, Aromatique’s president.
Scent can transport you back: to a snowy Christmas tree farm in Minnesota, or to Greenwich Village when tree sellers set up on the sidewalks. Your memory of that first whoosh of evergreen scent stays with you forever. For those who have gone faux with plastic trees, candles that smell like just-cut firs can help them pretend they haven’t gone to the fake side. One of these is Thymes Frasier Fir. When introduced in 2004, it promptly sold out. Today, it is used by some fans year-round, says Amy Banks, brand director for Thymes. There are now 56 products in the Frasier Fir scent, including a pomander balland
dishwashing liquid. At Yankee Candle, the largest candle company in the United States, more than 30 out of 200 fragrances are holiday-oriented. Two of its most popular wintry candles are Balsam and Cedar and the buttery, vanilla Christmas Cookie, according to Jennifer Genson, Yankee Candle’s senior fragrance manager. She says holiday candles sell to all age groups, and millennials have become faithful candle consumers.
“They may be renting a house or apartment, and they want to find a fragrance that represents their personality and creates a sense of place,” Genson says.
Internationally, Genson says, tastes in holiday scents vary. Genson grew up in France.
“In Paris, we like orange with a bit of clove; that is my smell of Christmas,” she says. “The scent I remember from living in Italy is panettone, the candied fruit brioche.” No, there is no Yankee panettone candle as of yet.
Of course, there are candle fanatics and there are candle haters. For some, the perfect way to relax after work is to pour a beverage, click on Netflix and light a soothing candle.
For others, any candle they receive as a gift goes directly into the regifting closet – the subject of a hilarious Saturday Night Live skit. Some simply are sensitive to smells and find fragrances irritating.
So what should you do if you love to burn them and are having friends over? James Farmer, an interior designer and author from Perry, Georgia, says that in most instances, if you’re having a big party in your house and you love scented candles, you should burn what you like. If guests don’t like them, they can discreetly ask you to snuff them out.
Personally, he loves candles with a scent, his favou0rite holiday version being Jo Malone’s White Moss & Snowdrop. But not while food is being served.
“If I have a buffet, the food should be the scent,” he says. “I don’t want to smell a snickerdoodle candle when I’m serving roast beef.”
Scented candles can transport you back, especially during the holidays.
Kostas “Gus” Pajimopolos
It’s with great sadness and heavy hearts we announce the passing of Kostas Pajimopolos at the age of 74. He was born in Diava, Kalambaka, Greece October 15, 1945 and passed on December 4, 2018. Kostas will be deeply missed by his wife of 50 years Katirina and 2 sons Vasilios “Bill” and Haralabos “Bob”. Kostas many family and friends in Greece and Canada will deeply miss him. Kostas had a great sense of humor and a big heart, he loved to make a joke and take a joke. Kostas life motto was “to live you need to laugh, eat and drink!” May he rest in Peace.
Prayer service at Assman’s Funeral Chapel on December 10 at 7:00pm & Funeral at The Greek Orthodox Church on December 11 at 12:00pm. In lieu of flowers, please make donations to the Greek Orthodox Church.
It is with a heavy heart that I have to say goodbye to my Mother VIOLA ELIZABETH PFEFFERLE, she passed away @ 5:55pm on December 1, 2018. Her daughter Debra is her only survivor. Mom was born in Lake Lenore, Saskatchewan on May 29th, 1925 on the farm of Pankratz & Emma Voelk (nee Schreiner) the 2nd oldest child of five siblings. Her oldest sister Isabel, Iris and brother Butch (Irvin) Voelk also survive her. Viola was predeceased by her husband Clarence Pfefferle and her sister Rosella (Sally) Denis and her parents. There will be a memorial for Mom at the Hart Pioneer Centre, 6986 Hart Highway on Saturday December 8, 2018 from 12:00pm4:00pm. All who knew her and bowled with her over the years are welcome to come by and share your stories and memories of being with her. You can enjoy checking out her life pictures that I have prepared of her long 93.5 years young journey.
John Alex Campbell
John passed away peacefully on December 5th, 2018 after a long battle with COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease). He was born February 28th, 1938 in Port Hood, Cape Breton Nova Scotia, one of ten children. He was predeceased by his parents John Martin and Mary Jessie Campbell; three brothers Buddy, Duncan and Donald and two sisters Florence Fecteau and Marie McLellan. He is survived by one brother Anthony and four sisters: Theresa Hogan, Josephine MacDonald, Tena Murphy and Betty Ann Campbell. He is also survived by Mary, his loving wife of 47+ years, his only son Jason and grandchild Caden. There are many nieces and nephews, as well as grand nieces and nephews that know him as Uncle. After attending Univ. of St. Francis Xavier he worked in a pulp mill in Port Hawkesbury for a while but one weekend he and a buddy decided to go to B.C. After arriving in B.C. he got a job logging around Gibsons Landing later leaving for Prince George where he went to work for Northwood Pulp Mill. Later he did construction jobs and eventually worked for Hydro as a general tradesman and did Power Smart before retiring. John will be remembered for his sense of humour and good times with friends and family. He had a creative side and enjoyed building different things like my tea wagon and making special things like the metal sculpted owl that sits on our mantle. He was a lot of fun to be around. Funeral services for John will be held on Saturday December 15th, 2018 at 1:00pm from St. Mary’s Catholic Church on 1088 Gillette St. Prince George, B.C. with Father Gilbert and Father Ken officiating. Assman’s Funeral Chapel in charge of arrangements.
“John Will Be Greatly Missed and Forever Loved”
Wayne Macpherson
April 20, 1943November 29, 2018
It is with sadness we announce Wayne’s passing after a lengthy battle with cancer. Wayne hauled logs in Prince George for years and has many friends in the forest industry.
He is survived by his wife Dorothy, sons Garry and Rick (Kara, Logan & Deacon), daughter Treena Sierens (Jim, Cole & Jordyn), sister Christine Phillips (Don), brother Allan, numerous nieces & nephews and many friends. There will be no service at Wayne’s request. In lieu of flowers, donations to the Canadian Cancer Society or Canadian Diabetes Association would be appreciated. Special thanks to Dr. Linda Wilson and all the nurses at BC Cancer Agency.
Earthquakes bring halt to fracking in northeast B.C.
HEALING Citizen news service
Dan
The BC Oil and Gas Commission is shutting down oilfield fracking operations in a 72-square-kilometre area in the northeast part of the province for at least 30 days while it investigates earthquakes that occurred there on Nov. 29.
The seismic events measuring between 3.4 and 4.5 magnitude took place near hydraulic fracturing operations being conducted about 20 kilometres southeast of Fort St. John by Canadian Natural Resources Ltd.
The Calgary-based company was the only operator working in the area at the time and it immediately suspended operations, said
commission spokeswoman Lannea Parfitt, adding the company has shut down its two wells there.
“We don’t want to speculate as we are continuing to investigate,” she said when asked what the commission will do if fracking is found to have caused the earthquakes.
Work won’t be allowed to resume without its written consent, the commission said.
“It is too early to determine whether the seismic activity detected and felt in the region was a natural occurrence or related to any of our activities,” said Canadian Natural spokeswoman Julie Woo in an email.
“Canadian Natural is working together with the BC Oil and Gas Commission to provide all available data and information for their
assessment of the event.”
According to Natural Resources Canada, a 4.5 magnitude earthquake on Nov. 29 was felt in Fort St. John, Taylor, Chetwynd and Dawson Creek but did no damage. It was followed by two smaller aftershocks.
Hydraulic fracturing involves injecting large amounts of water, sand and chemicals into a well to break up tight rock underground and allow trapped oil and gas to flow.
The B.C. commission has linked fracking and the oilfield practice of injecting waste liquids into disposal wells to previous incidents of “induced seismicity,” although it notes on its website none of the events in B.C. have resulted in hazards to safety or the environment or property damage.
Steel tariff talks sidelined by U.S.-China trade war: Morneau
Christopher REYNOLDS Citizen news service
MONTREAL — Finance Minister Bill Morneau says the ongoing U.S.-China trade dispute is distracting from talks aimed at solving the steel tariffs issue between Canada and its largest trading partner.
At an event in Montreal Friday, Morneau said the Americans’ Pacific trade row puts “multiple challenges on their plate.”
“That means we’ve got a challenge in getting this focused on in the near term,” he said.
Morneau said his office is in contact daily
with U.S. officials as well as metal producers and purchasers, but could not offer a timeline for an end to the tariffs.
U.S. President Donald Trump slapped tariffs of 25 per cent and 10 per cent on steel and aluminum imports, respectively, from Canada in May, prompting retaliatory tariffs by Canada on $16.6 billion worth of U.S. goods. Meanwhile, American tariffs against China have triggered a tit-for-tat trade war affecting hundreds of billions of dollars in goods over the past year.
Despite a 90-day ceasefire announced Thursday in which the two countries agreed
to suspend tariff hikes and work toward a resolution, the Dec. 1 arrest of Chinese telecom Huawei Technologies’ chief financial officer by Canadian authorities at the request of the U.S. Justice Department threatens to sour negotiations with Beijing.
Morneau’s remarks came hours after the first ministers’ conference kicked off two blocks away in downtown Montreal Friday morning. Premiers Doug Ford and Francois Legault of Ontario and Quebec have said they plan to bring up concerns over tariffs, particularly in relation to the automotive and aerospace industries.
TORONTO (CP) — Major North American markets experienced steep drops Friday following weeks of declines and volatility. This week is “one for the history books,” said James Robertson, senior portfolio manager at Manulife Asset Management Ltd. “Intra-day volatility has been so extreme.”
The S&P/TSX composite index retreated 141.87 points to 14,795.13 despite being in positive territory earlier in the day. The index opened on positive employment data, he said. Canada’s unemployment rate last month was the lowest since Statistics Canada started measuring comparable data more than 40 years ago as the jobless rate fell to 5.6 per cent for November, according to the agency. The country also added 94,100 net jobs, which is the largest monthly increase since March 2012. Energy stocks also helped boost the index early on as oil prices rose. The January crude contract rose US$1.12 to US$52.61 per barrel.
The commodity price increased on news that OPEC countries reached an agreement to reduce global oil production by 1.2 million barrels a day – 800,000 by OPEC countries and 400,000 by Russia and other non-OPEC members – for six months starting in January.
The energy sector finished the day on a positive note, but it wasn’t enough to lift the TSX as the market tone deteriorated over the course of the day. In New York, markets also ended the day in the red. The Dow Jones industrial average plunged 558.72 points to 24,388.95. The S&P 500 index shed 62.87 points to 2,633.08 while the Nasdaq composite fell 219.01 points to 6,969.25.
The February gold contract gained US$9.00 to US$1,252.60.
A worker helps monitor water pumping pressure and temperature at a hydraulic fracturing and extraction site in western Colorado in March 2013.