Kyle Smith plays Maple Leaf Rag in the Popular Concert Group category during the 68th annual Prince George and District Music Festival on Friday morning at the Evangelical Free Church. The music festival continues through Monday and wraps up with the Festival Gala on March 2 at Vanier Hall.
Frank PEEBLES Citizen staff fpeebles@pgcitizen.ca
If you’ve heard the faint strains of singing and instruments this week, you aren’t imagining things. If you want to hear that music more clearly, come inside to hear the best in young and aspiring amateur musicians.
If strings are your pleasure, Our Saviour’s Lutheran Church is the place on Sunday and Monday, and if piano is your druthers the site is the Evangelical Free Church up to the end of today.
The singing components are finished the competitive phase and the highest achievers will be called to perform at the final showcases that complete the event each year.
The Prince George and District Music Festival has been showcasing local musicians, offering them competition to motivate creativity, since 1951.
“The festival has seen many changes without losing its original mandate of supporting youth in their pursuit of musical excellence,” said organizing committee president Rose Loewen.
“This community organization is northern B.C.’s premier music competition for young performers and amateurs. The festival is an important vehicle for performers to showcase their talents while gaining experience and obtaining valuable feedback from adjudicators.”
Those adjudicators this year are a trio of highly experienced music professionals, one of whom is having a homecom-
ing of this experience.
The choral and orchestral classes were presided over by Sheila Christie, an operatically trained dramatic soprano who performs regularly with Vancouver Opera and the Vancouver Symphony, while maintaining a passion for teaching.
The piano categories were led by Vancouver’s Barbara M. Siemens, an award-winning 30-year veteran of the genre. She has also written for The Piano Workbook Series, including five Sight Reading Drill Books, four Rhythm Drill Books, as well as graded assignment books, and she has recently released a children’s picture book called Carnival of the Animals.
Finally, in the position of strings adjudicator is a well known and favourite name in the local music scene. Joel Stobbe may be based now in the Lower Mainland but he is an outspoken ambassador of Prince George and competed himself in this festival over his early years.
Since then, he has received his Artistic Diploma of Music Performance from the Augsburg Conservatory of Music in Germany, regularly performing as soloist with chamber groups in Germany, France and Italy. Upon his return to Canada, Joel was a founding member of the Borealis String Quartet (2000-2005). He toured with the quartet, giving performances throughout Canada and the United States, with frequent broadcasts on radio and television.
Stobbe was the principal cellist of
the Vancouver Island Symphony from 2006-2014 and artistic director of its Noteworthy Kids program from 20122014. During this time he continued to be active as both a soloist and chamber musician in regular recitals and concerts.
Stobbe is currently a cello teacher at the Langley Community Music School where he holds a substantial class of private cello students and serves as coordinator for the school’s advanced programs. Stobbe and equally accomplished brother Karl were special guests of the Prince George Symphony Orchestra in April 2018.
These three adjudicators will offer constructive judgment to the musicians competing in their respective categories. The cream of this year’s performers will earn trophies and other honours including a select few to represent the city at the provincials in May.
A set of the best will be invited to perform live at the close of the festival without the pressure of competition.
“You will want to attend our two great closing concerts at Vanier Hall on March 2,” said Loewen. “These concerts will feature memorable performances selected during the festival by our adjudicators. The Showcase Recital at 5:30 p.m. will feature our junior performers. Admission is free. The gala concert at 8 p.m. will include outstanding performances from all levels and disciplines.”
Gala tickets are $20 adult, $10 seniors and students. They are available now at Books & Company or at the door.
Mark NIELSEN Citizen staff mnielsen@pgcitizen.ca
The first step towards seeking taxpayers’ consent to borrow $32.2 million to pay for 11 capital projects will be taken during Monday night’s city council meeting.
That’s when loan authorization bylaws will be up for three readings with final readings remaining subject to the outcome of alternative approval processes for each of the proposals. Those that draw 5,546 signatures in opposition by May 30 will either be nixed or taken to a fullblown referendum.
At $10.2 million, work on the Prince George Aquatic Centre is the biggest project.
At $10.2 million, work on the Prince George Aquatic Centre is the biggest project. Of that total, $8.6 million would go to replacing the building envelope including roof, stucco, reconstructing the parapet and adding mechanical equipment to dehumidify air. Slightly less than $1.4 million would go to replacing a list of building components including the three-metre and one-metre diving boards and tiling the wave pool flooring and walls.
Another $140,000 would go to replacing the existing 20-year-old starting blocks and touch pads with those that satisfy provincial swim meet standards and $100,000 would go to repaving the parking lot.
The work is to be carried out in advance of the 2022 B.C. Summer Games.
Here’s a look at the other projects:
• Critical street light and traffic signal replacement, $5 million: “Many of the city’s street lights and traffic signals were installed in the 1970s and are past the end of their service life,” the city says in the elector response form for the proposal. The work is to target about 600 of the most critical of the 2,500 street lights and traffic signals currently past their expected life.
• Civic facility roof replacements, $4.7 million: Would go to replacing roofs on various civic facilities including SPCA, Search and Rescue, Sport Centre lower roof, 1310 Third Ave., City Yard mechanical bay, Kin 2, Kin 3, Two Rivers Gallery, Agriplex, Civic Centre, Senior’s Activity Centre, and CN Centre.
• Equipment purchases, $2.9 million: $2 million would go to annual replacement of vehicles currently part of the city fleet and $671,00 would pay for replacing firefighters’ breathing apparatus. The remainder would be for two road foreman fleet trucks ($115,000), janitorial floor scrubbers ($99,750), and a bylaw compliance officer truck ($55,000).
• Masich Place amenities refurbishment, $2.7 million: Also in preparation for the 2022 Games, the work would include upgraded field lighting, a replacement of the score clock and PA system, and new pathway lighting, electrical kiosks, fibre optic connection, irrigation, bleachers, and site furnishings to support visitor services at the stadium. It would follow on the $4.5 million worth of work, completed in 2018, that brought in a new synthetic turf infield, resurfaced track, and new track and field infrastructure, as well as upgrades to the grandstand with exterior painting, lighting, and accessible infrastructure. — see ‘THESE IMPROVEMENTS, page 3
Frank PEEBLES Citizen staff
A name has been announced for this year’s Northern FanCon that sets a bright new star in the event’s all-time constellation of celebrity guests.
Edward James Olmos is a generational talent, known as much for his rich acting abilities as for his box office cache.
In the Latino-American world, he is an unparalleled icon. Around the world he is celebrated as one of the truly great names of the acting profession.
In terms of fame, Olmos was a leading part of the pop-culture quake that was Miami Vice in the 1980s.
He was also memorable back then as Gaff in the original Blade Runner movie opposite Harrison Ford.
He held a key short-term role in The West Wing, the presidential
series that dominated the airwaves in the 2000s.
In terms of artistry, he directed and starred in classic cinematic storytelling triumph American Me, a film so effective at exposing the Mexican mob that Olmos’s life was threatened as a result.
For his biopic performance in Stand And Deliver, Olmos was nominated for Best Actor at the 61st Academy Awards.
He played another real-life character as the father in the celebrated biography film Selena opposite Jennifer Lopez.
Another role earned rave reviews as a leading part of the ensemble cast of The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit.
He was also cast in such popular projects as The Green Hornet, Dexter, Marvel’s Agents of Shield, 12 Angry Men, Hollywood Confidential, his voice was in the all-star ensemble of The Road To
El Dorado and the Disney comedy
Beverly Hills Chihuahua, recent audiences heard his voice in the animated hit Coco, and he was the central father-figure in the series American Family. Sci-fi fans the world over cele-
brated his role as Commander Bill Adama in 73 episodes of Battlestar Galactica, work for which he earned six major industry acting award nominations (winning four of them).
In addition to his Oscar nomination, he was nominated for three Golden Globes (winning twice for Miami Vice and The Burning Season), three Saturn Awards (winning for Battlestar Galactica), three Primetime Emmies (winning once for Miami Vice), he won an Independent Spirit Award (Stand And Deliver), nominated for a Screen Actors Guild Award, and he has so far been nominated for seven American Latino Media Arts Awards (winning four between Battlestar Galactica and Selena). Most recently he was bestowed the Mary Pickford Award in 2016 for outstanding lifetime achievement in the entertainment industry as selected by the International
Press Academy.
Since his celebrated breakthrough role in 1981’s Zoot Suit (first the stage play and then the film), his career has had consistent and sustained peaks. He has coupled that with incessant advocacy and charity work on a number of fronts, and has flirted with success in music as well.
Northern FanCon always has celebrities and special performers come to the stage, but few could compare to the power and legacy of a true household name – Edward James Olmos.
He will be available for autographs and photos, a public interview on the mainstage and three days of interactions with Prince George.
Almos is one of a collection of VIP guests and pop-culture features coming to the Northern FanCon extravaganza from May 3-5 at CN Centre.
Mark NIELSEN Citizen staff
mnielsen@pgcitizen.ca
A Prince George man was sentenced Friday to two years in jail followed by one year probation for sexually interfering with a young girl. It was the same sentence Paul Veeken, now 46, received in November 2015 after a jury found him guilty of the charge. In the aftermath, Veeken won a new trial, this time before a judge alone. But in December, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Lance Bernard also found him guilty.
During a subsequent sentencing hearing this week, Crown prosecutor Marie Louise Ahrens emphasized the fact that while out on bail, Veeken moved into a home next door to a family with two young girls. But while Veeken had breached a condition to stay away from minors, Bernard found no evidence of inappropriate behaviour or touching.
Upon release from custody, Veeken will be prohibited for two years from having any contact with anyone under 16 years old and frequenting areas where they tend to congregate. He will also be on the national sex offender registry for 20 years and will be prohibited from owning a firearm for 10 years.
In finding him guilty of the offence in December, Bernard found Veeken had befriended and groomed, then, for about two years, groped the girl starting when she was 10 years old, often under the guise of pulling her onto his lap and tickling her. When testifying, Veeken had admitted to hosting get-togethers for groups of children at a cabin in the region where they would use a hot tub and watch movies on a television he had installed. He also admitted to stocking the cabin with candy and ice cream, along with toys and childrenfriendly movies but maintained it was only because he liked such things.
Veeken also stressed he maintained a “two-kid rule” to avoid being unfairly accused of inappropriate behaviour. But Bernard found that troubling given his admitted behaviour, which included joining girls in the hot tub when no adults were present.
The matter came to a head when the girl took a course on babysitting and was warned about fathers who might try to touch a babysitter in the car on the way home. She brought Veeken’s behaviour up with her parents and eventually it was taken to the police.
A psychiatrist diagnosed Veeken as a pedophile who presented a moderate risk to reoffend.
Mark NIELSEN Citizen staff
Public hearings will be held during Monday night’s city council meeting for two cannabis-related rezoning applications.
One is to rezone a portion of the old Sears department store in Pine Centre Mall to make way for a B.C. Cannabis Store.
The other is to amend the city’s zoning bylaw to allow cannabis production on land zoned heavy industrial, subject to a public hearing for each specific application.
That rezoning will make way for an application to rezone sites at 7250 and 7574 Willow Cale Rd. measuring 14.9 hectares for a cannabis production facility.
Also up for hearings:
• A proposal to establish a commercial kitchen and catering service at the Aboriginal Housing Society of Prince George’s headquarters at 1919-17th Avenue (at Winnipeg Street).
The Canadian Mental Health Association would run the kitchen.
• To vary three requirements related to a 28-home development at 5567 Chief Lake Road.
The variances include replacing curb and gutter with open channel drainage for the road system, replacing cement
sidewalk with trail-grade pathways, and replacing a storm runoff collection system with an open channel drainage system.
• An application to allow a duplex to be constructed at 3840 Westwood Drive.
Hearings start at 7 p.m.
Also on the agenda:
• Council will consider a $2,000 increase to their annual expense allowance. If approved, it will boost the allowance to $8,000 which is used to cover the cost of attending the annual conferences for the North Central Local Government Association, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities and the Union of British Columbia Municipalities.
Attending all three is projected to cost a council member $7,775, according to a staff report.
• Council will be asked to provide up to $38,000 in support of a bid to host the 2021 Esso Cup national girls midget hockey championship.
The tournament is considered the equivalent of the Telus Cup national boys midget hockey championship for which council provided $58,000 of in-kind support when it was held in Prince George in 2017. The Telus Cup generated about $1.82 million in economic impact, and the Esso Cup is expected to give a $1.17-million boost, according to a staff report.
Kristine Madelo, Priyanks Balley and Manmeet Kaur make a practice presentation at CNC on Friday before heading to Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops to compete in the Human Resource Competition West (HRC West) against 16 other teams.
‘These improvements will facilitate development’
— from page 1
“This project’s improvements to existing site infrastructure and addition of new amenities and site services are required to support Masich Place Stadium’s use as a premier venue for regional training and competitions, in addition to providing ongoing public use through the popular daily walking/exercise program,” the city says in the elector response form for the proposal.
• Ron Brent Park redevelopment, $1.7 million: The project would continue a redevelopment that includes four pickleball courts, seniors fitness equipment, 10 horseshoe pits, community garden plots, lighting, a toboggan hill launch, irrigated lawns, paved trails, trees, and a washroomstorage building.
Phase one of the redevelopment occurred in 2017 and included a playground and sport field at the adjacent Ron Brent Elementary School. Phase two includes all below-ground and at-grade works in the park in 2019, while phase three sees the completion of the park with development of structures in 2020.
• Mausoleum expansion, phase two, $1.4 million: Would add 1,030 glass-front niches. The mausoleum is over 93 per cent full and, as of mid-September, all of the glass-front niches have been sold as have 94 per cent of the marble-front niches, according to the city.
• Upgrades along 14th Avenue from Irwin to Freeman streets, $1.2 million: To rebuild about 280 metres of 14th, the work includes
replacing and extending the existing water main with size to accommodate future multi-family residential development, as well as extending the existing sanitary sewer main, the existing storm sewer and catch basins, curb and gutter on both sides of 14th Avenue, sidewalk on one side of 14th Avenue, and street lights along 14th Avenue.
• Culvert replacement along Goose Country Road, $1.1 million: To replace two extensively-corroded 70-centimetre culverts that provide a road crossing for the fish-bearing McMillan Creek.
• Upgrades to Highway 16 West frontage from Heyer to Henry roads, $800,000: Would pay for a sidewalk, storm drainage, and street lighting along Henry Road.
“The sidewalk will connect to the pedestrian passage under Highway 16 to Vanway Elementary School and is a continuation of the work completed by the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure in 2018,” the city says.
• Signalize and reconfigure intersection at Domano Boulevard and St. Lawrence Avenue/Gladstone Drive, $500,000: It is one of two intersections that allow traffic to travel between upper and lower College Heights.
“These improvements will facilitate development at the extents of St. Lawrence Avenue and Southridge Avenue, improve network access for the surrounding residential and recreational areas, and improve intersection road safety,” the city said, adding it may be eligible for funding from ICBC.
Citizen staff
Police arrested a man and a woman following an armed robbery Thursday morning.
Called at 9:40 a.m. to a business near Eighth Avenue and Ahbau Street, RCMP were told a masked man entered the store brandishing a knife and that a woman was also involved.
A 35-year-old woman was arrested near the scene and within an hour, a 34-year-old man was apprehended in the 2600 block of Upland Street.
Kyle Thomas Howden has been charged with robbery, disguising his face to commit an offence, wilfully resisting or obstructing a peace officer, fraudulently obtaining transportation, possessing stolen property and five counts of breaching probation.
Beverly Candice Cunningham
has been charged with robbery and possession of stolen property. Howden remained in custody as of Friday while Cunningham was released on an undertaking.
Ted CLARKE Citizen staff tclarke@pgcitizen.ca
After 20 years on the national team in a swimming career that produced 16 Paralympic podium visits and 32 world championship medals, Benoit Huot announced in January he’s retiring.
The 35-year-old Order of Canada recipient from Longueuil, Que., sensed the end was near when he finished his last race at the 2016 Paralympics in Rio de Janeiro but decided then he’d try to see it through to the his sixth Paralympics next year in Tokyo. But he knew he no longer had what it would take to improve on his record as a nine-time Paralympic champion.
“I didn’t want to go there just to participate, I wanted to be competitive, the same way I was for my whole career and that wasn’t going to be the case, so I decided to step back,” said Huot, in Prince George this week for the World Para Nordic Skiing Championships as part of the Canadian Paralympic Committee broadcast crew.
“I realized all my sporting objectives and dreams were accomplished and it was time to move on.”
The next phase of Huot’s career as an ambassador for para sports is just beginning. Throughout his competitive career he’s remained an outspoken advocate and his success as an athlete has encouraged the government to continue funding national team programs and help Canada become a world leader in promoting programs which encourage athletes with physical impairments to stick with their sports.
“Being outside of the athlete position I’ll be in a good place to help grow the movement and visibility and awareness,” said Huot, who was just 14 when he made his first national team.
“It’s day and night compared to 20 years ago in terms of visibility, awareness, credibility. We were able over the last 20 years to educate Canadians and people around the world on what para sport is all about. There’s still a lot of work to be done but I think we are aiming towards that dream of seeing the Paralympic gold worth the same in everyone’s eyes around the world as the Olympic gold.
“People understand now that para sport is high performance, it’s not just participation.”
Born with a club foot which lim-
its his mobility, Huot won three gold medals and three silver at his first Paralympic Games in Sydney in 2000.
Four years later in Athens he won five gold and a silver. In London in 2012 he set a world record in the 200m individual medley and won three more medals as Canada’s flagbearer for the closing ceremony. He was awarded the Order of Canada in December 2016.
Huot always felt his country’s support while he was training for competitions and he had the same resources made available to able-bodied national team members. That recognition for people with physical challenges extended into the everyday world of building codes and creating a world more friendly to people with disabilities. In the early days of Huot’s career especially, Canada was more of an exception to that rule.
“We were quite lucky, us athletes from Canada being in country where we focus on inclusion and accessibility and making diversity a priority,” he said. “This definitely was a big trend that helped grow the movement and become a pioneer as a country around the world. It’s not a coincidence why we had for many years success internationally in para sport, because our government invests as much as they do, whether it’s Olympic or para sports.
“Now the rest of the world is catching up and we need to make sure to maintain this level of quality and focus on those investments and making sure the development is being done in the proper way.”
Canada’s role as a host country for events such as the 2010 Paralympics and this week’s World Para Nordic Skiing Championships at Otway Nordic Centre are
essential to bring communities together, giving people a chance to see firsthand what can be accomplished at the highest level. Huot was impressed with the busloads of elementary school students who came to the races at Otway and he says that will help the para movement grow at the grassroots level.
“It’s probably the first time in their lives they’ve seen para sport and they’re going to go back home and share with their friends and families what they saw,” said Huot.
“This is to me a gift because over 20 years it’s rare that we get a world championship. It’s quite neat and we’re going in the right direction. The Canadian Paralympic Committee is doing a great job to promote it and making sure that the athletes come first.”
Huot says he will miss the thrill of racing with the maple leaf on his Speedos and seeing parts of the world he’s never been. The medals and championships he’s won are an important legacy for him and his family but it’s what he’s done to inspire others to follow in his wake that has the most lasting effect on him.
“The medals are good but what makes me most proud today in leaving the sport is to see where the movement has been and where it is now,” Huot said.
“I remember being in Sydney and we did well as a country with lots of medals and Australians were happy but we got back home and no Canadians had any idea what had happened. There was no media, no television coverage, there was nothing.
“Today, just being here on the broadcast team and sharing the athletes’ stories, 19 years later, this is what makes me the most proud, to see where the movement has gone and where we are going forward. Because we didn’t have that when we started.” Huot will continue his work with the Canadian Paralympic Committee and Radio-Canada covering the para sport Super Series, which will include the world sledge hockey championships, para world athletics championships and Para Pan Am Games, leading up to the 2020 Paralympics in Tokyo.
“With this new initiative we will try to do as much as we can from sport to sport so Canadians can witness the athletes perform and I think it will help the Paralympic brand grow and inspire those Canadians living with a disability to become more active,” he said.
Dan HEALING Citizen news service
CALGARY — Battle lines over the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion were already being redrawn Friday after the National Energy Board gave its conditional endorsement to the project.
The federal energy regulator said an increase in tanker traffic from a bigger pipeline could cause “significant adverse environmental affects” on southern resident killer whales, hurt related Indigenous culture and increase greenhouse gas emissions. It also conceded that the environment would be significantly harmed in the “unlikely” event of an oil spill from a tanker.
“While these effects weighed heavily in the NEB’s reconsideration of project-related marine shipping, the NEB recommends that the government of Canada find that they can be justified in the circumstances in light of the considerable benefits of the project and measures to mitigate the effects,” Robert Steedman, the energy board’s chief environment officer, said as the decision was announced in Calgary.
He said the benefits include new markets for Canadian oil, job creation, direct spending on pipeline materials and “considerable revenue” to various levels of government.
Alberta has been fighting hard for the expansion which would allow more oil to be shipped to coastal ports and from there to more lucrative overseas markets.
“Despite the obstacles and knowing that we have a great deal of work to do ahead, I am still optimistic today,” Premier Rachel Notley said.
“A lot of work had already been underway with respect to the project itself,” she said. “If the federal government approves the project in a reasonable time, there should be very little delay between that and when shovels get back in the ground.”
Indigenous and environmental groups criticized the decision they said came out of a flawed and fasttracked reconsideration ordered by the Federal Appeal Court last summer. They said they will continue to fight the project in the courts and on the streets.
The Appeal Court said in its August ruling that the NEB had not properly considered an expanded pipeline’s impact on marine life nor had the federal government meaningfully consulted with Indigenous groups.
The energy regulator included 156 conditions in its go-ahead and made 16 new recommendations to the federal government. They are outside the board’s power to enact, but could be put in place by Ottawa, Steedman said.
The suggestions include measures to offset increased underwater noise and increased risks that a ship could hit a whale, to improve spill response and to reduce emissions from tankers.
In Ottawa, Natural Resources
Minister Amarjeet Sohi called the report an “important milestone for... getting this project built the right way.”
He said he is hopeful remaining Indigenous consultations – there are 32 communities still waiting for meetings – can wrap up in time for the federal cabinet to make a decision before the end of May. It has 90 days to do so, but can decide to extend that if it needs more time.
Trans Mountain CEO Ian Anderson also characterized the decision as a step forward.
“It provides specific and achievable conditions under which we must operate to ensure, if approved, the project will protect the marine and terrestrial environment and communities,” he said in a statement.
Anderson stayed with Trans Mountain after Kinder Morgan sold the pipeline to the federal government for $4.5 billion last year.
At a Vancouver news conference, Grand Chief Stewart Phillip of the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs said it appears that “jobs are worth more than justice” in Canada.
He said there will be further lawsuits and demonstrations against the project and opponents will be speaking with their legal advisers about next steps.
Lawsuits may not be filed until after the cabinet makes its final decision, said Eugene Kung, a lawyer with West Coast Environmental Law.
The energy board made many of the same mistakes in its reconsideration that it made the first time, he added.
“The fix was in on this from the start,” said Kung, who cited the review’s limited scope and failure to consider salmon-spawning streams that provide food for killer whales.
“If it’s a vote between the tankers and the orcas, I vote for the orcas,” said Chief Judy Wilson of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs.
Leaders of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers and the Canadian Energy Pipeline Association urged Ottawa to quickly approve the expansion, which would triple the capacity of an existing line between Edmonton and Burnaby, B.C., to 890,000 barrels a day.
“It’s absolutely critical this project gets under construction as soon as is practicable,” said CEO Tim McMillan of the petroleum producers.
Pipeline association CEO Chris Bloomer said the NEB’s recognition of the pipelines benefits should weigh in favour of its acceptance.
Oilsands producer Cenovus Energy was pleased with the decision. Spokesman Brett Harris said lack of export pipeline capacity means Canadian companies are missing out of billions of dollars in revenue.
— With files from Lauren Krugel in Calgary, Laura Kane in Vancouver and Mia Rabson in Ottawa.
VANCOUVER (CP) — Two new cases of measles have been diagnosed in the Vancouver area for a total of 10 illnesses as health officials say they’re concerned they can’t find the source of one of the infections.
Vancouver Coastal medical health officer Dr. Althea Hayden says nine of the cases are clearly associated with schools that were at the centre of the original outbreak this month, but they don’t know where the other per-
son contracted the disease.
The health authority has also released a list of locations where one of the infected people travelled over three days from Feb. 15 to Feb. 18, including restaurants, on a Canada Line commuter train and Langara College. Hayden says the health authority is doing its best to find the source of measles in the 10th person in an effort to prevent more people from being exposed.
Mia RABSON, Joan BRYDEN Citizen news service
OTTAWA — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will be pressured Monday to testify at a House of Commons committee looking into allegations the prime minister and his staff pressured former attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould to stop a criminal prosecution of Montreal-based engineering giant SNC-Lavalin.
The Conservative party will introduce a motion arguing that since Trudeau keeps saying the Commons justice committee is well placed to investigate the allegations, he should have no problem showing up there himself to answer questions about his role in the matter. The motion will ask all MPs to vote to call Trudeau before the committee for at least two hours, by March 15.
Motions in the House of Commons are not binding and regardless of the outcome, the committee itself would still have to decide whether to invite Trudeau. Besides that, MPs, including the prime minister, cannot be forced to appear before committees.
Conservative leader Andrew Scheer said Friday the committee has already heard from the clerk of the Privy Council, Michael Wernick, that “Justin Trudeau had his fingerprints all over this.”
Wernick told the committee Thursday that no improper pressure was applied to Wilson-Raybould, who quit the cabinet last week, and that Trudeau’s staff have conducted themselves with “the highest standards of integrity.”
He said that Trudeau was worried a prosecution might result in SNC-Lavalin’s moving its operations overseas or closing up shop, hurting innocent employees, shareholders, pensioners, third-party suppliers and communities in which the company operates. Wernick said he told Wilson-Raybould about those concerns during a conversation in December but that his intention was to provide “context,” not pressure.
He also said the prime minister assured WilsonRaybould at every opportunity that a decision on whether to halt the prosecution was hers alone.
Trudeau said Wernick’s words should carry weight with Canadians.
“The clerk of the privy council, Michael Wernick, is an extraordinary public servant who has served this country and continues to serve this country under governments of different political stripes, with integrity and brilliance,” said Trudeau.
“He is someone we need to heed very carefully when he chooses to express himself publicly and I’m sure everyone is taking a careful look at his words yesterday.”
But Scheer said Wernick’s testimony laid bare just how many times Trudeau, members of his political staff, and Wernick spoke to Wilson-Raybould in an attempt to change her mind and allow SNC-Lavalin to enter into a remediation agreement rather than go on trial for fraud and bribery related to the firm’s work in Libya.
Scheer dismissed Wernick’s assertion that those conversations were within bounds.
“It’s all well and good for someone who is trying to defend his own actions and defend the actions of the government to come to that conclusion,” said Scheer. Some opposition MPs and pundits have suggested Wernick crossed into partisanship by defending the government. Scheer wouldn’t go that far but he did seem surprised by what Wernick said.
“I had certainly not seen a performance like that in the past,” said Scheer.
Trudeau’s government has been rocked by the anonymous allegations that Wilson-Raybould was under pressure from the Prime Minister’s Office to instruct the director of public prosecutions to negotiate a remediation agreement with SNC-Lavalin – a kind of plea bargain that would force the company to pay restitution but would spare it a criminal conviction that could cripple it by barring it from bidding on government contracts for up to 10 years.
Also on Friday, SNC-Lavalin chief executive Neil Bruce lashed out over the pummelling the company is taking from politicians.
“Frankly, we’ve had enough of all that, and we’re just going to vigorously defend ourselves in court, and that’s our strategy,” he said.
Bruce said the Public Prosecution Service of Canada can still invite SNC-Lavalin to negotiate a remediation agreement and the company would be willing to do so.
“But frankly, it doesn’t look like that today,” he said.
Trudeau was not as eager to heed Wernick’s opinion on solicitor-client privilege, the principle WilsonRaybould has repeatedly cited to refuse comment on the allegations that she was improperly pressured.
The clerk told the committee he doesn’t think solicitor-client privilege applies in this instance and it’s up to Wilson-Raybould to choose how much she wants to say on the matter when she appears before the committee next week.
Trudeau said he is still receiving advice on whether to waive the bond of secrecy between lawyer and client because there are potential consequences for two ongoing court cases against the company.
Scheer accused Trudeau of “cherry picking” which parts of Wernick’s testimony he wants to listen to.
Trudeau is seeking advice on the privilege matter from David Lametti, whom he appointed justice minister and attorney general in an early January cabinet shuffle in which he moved Wilson-Raybould to the veterans-affairs post.
Under opposition demands Friday to explain why solicitor-client privilege has not been waived, Lametti told the Commons it’s an exceptionally complex issue but he’s doing his “level best” to find a way “such that the former attorney general can, in fact, speak.” — with files from Christopher Reynolds
Citizen news service
CALGARY — A reconsidered National Energy Board report endorsing the expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline (see story, page 4) suggests potential limits on whale-watching boats and noise reduction efforts for ferries that ply British Columbia’s Salish Sea.
The shipping route that is a critical habitat for southern resident killer whales would see a seven-fold increase in tankers carrying diluted bitumen to offshore markets if the federal government approves the project.
The board’s latest report, released Friday, makes 16 new recommendations for the government, including reducing noise of ferries and incentives and requirements for quiet vessel design.
Robert Steedman, chief environmental officer with the National Energy Board, told a news conference the recommendations are broad and “not necessarily prescriptive.”
The solutions the government will want to examine are complex and all activities on the Salish Sea would have
to be considered, he said.
The board has already made 156 recommendations on the controversial project, and Steedman said some of the latest ones relate to underwater noise generated by marine vessels and the possibility ships could strike marine species or disrupt their communication and behaviour.
“The recommendations relate to the entire system of marine navigation and marine traffic in the area and the panel feels strongly that as the recommendations are implemented they will offset the relatively minor effects of the project-related marine traffic and in fact will benefit the entire Salish Sea ecosystem,” he said.
BC Ferries spokeswoman Deborah Marshall said underwater noise has been reduced in the most recently built class of vessels to protect whales.
“As naval architecture gets more refined and we have an understanding of these different issues, our vessels are getting quieter,” she said.
Last summer, the company released a report saying it has reduced underwater
noise on its vessels through improvements in hull design and by using alternate propeller styles.
“This is going to be a long process,” the report says.
“We build our ships to operate for decades, more than 50 years in some cases.
“New, quieter ships will therefore arrive gradually in the Salish Sea.”
The report says replacements for BC Ferries’ older C-Class vessels will be built between 2022 and 2030.
“BC Ferries will do all it can to make those the quietest large vessels we have ever built.”
Last week, the company and the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority launched on online tutorial to educate mariners about interactions between ships and whales in B.C. waters to protect the animals.
The Whales in Our Waters tutorial is aimed at operators of large vessels including ferries, cargo ships or tug boats, and offers tips to identify and report whales and best practices in navigating around them.
It may be difficult to imagine now, but there was a time in the 1960s when a pop band, in a single year, outsold the Beatles and the Rolling Stones combined – and not even a real band at that. Really, the group was four strangers thrown together on a TV show about a band all living in an imaginary group house. Both the band and the show – The Monkees – were instantly and wildly popular among a certain set of American kids.
Those kids are now in late middle age (or older), and that band is finally going home. In 2012, lead singer Davy Jones, at 66 years old,was the first to pass away; on Thursday, 77-year-old Peter Tork died from a rare form of cancer. Along with Mike Nesmith, Tork was one of the two real musicians in the quartet. (Stephen Stills had recommended Tork for the role after being passed over for being too snaggle-toothed.) The other two Monkees – Jones and drummer Micky Dolenz – were actors.
The most technically skilled in the group, Tork had trained classically and played guitar, banjo, French horn and was particularly talented on keyboards, though he was best known on the TV show as the band’s bassist. Nesmith has been quoted as saying that Tork, not himself, should have been the band’s main guitarist.
To me, the Monkees were the zenith – the vibe, the songs, the zany humour, everything about them made me and everyone I knew the target demographic of the era.
When it was revealed that the Monkees sang their songs but did not play the instruments on their first album, there were understandable catcalls of Prefab Four, a reference to the Beatles’ nickname The Fab Four. The session players behind the scenes who did the musical lifting were some of the industry’s best; so was the group of songwriters, which included Carole King, Gerry Goffin, Neil Diamond and Harry Nilsson. On the show, Tork played the role of lovable dunce, a foil for Nesmith’s common sense, Dolenz’s antics and Jones’ endless wooing of (and by) young women.
The Monkees managed to gain control of their musical direction after their second album, More of the Monkees, and began eschewing the session musicians previously foisted upon them.
The band finally sang and played on their third album, Headquarters, which produced no hits but began to showcase the group’s talents. (Headquarters, like all of the band’s
first four albums, went double platinum.) Tork’s many skills then came quite in handy in the recording studio: That’s Tork on the iconic piano intro to Daydream Believer, he is at the harpsichord on The Girl I Knew Somewhere, and his riffing on You Told Me would still test many banjoists today.
After he left the group in 1968, Tork engaged in various endeavours – a friend recalls working with him as a singing waiter in Los Angeles. Tork got as far as London where he played banjo for George Harrison’s Wonderwall film, but in the early 1970s, he returned to California where he taught music and other subjects at a host of local schools. In the 1980s, when MTV began re-airing the Monkees series, a new audience emerged and reunion tours were held. Tork performed in these until as recently as 2016.
My own fascination with the band dates to 1966 when, at age nine, I was hit amidships by the TV show. Like many kids my age (some of whom might not admit
The wildfire burden to B.C.’s society, economy and environment over the past decade can be measured in the tens of billions of dollars. And yet, successive provincial governments have significantly underfunded programs that would mitigate the destruction.
Under the previous B.C. Liberal government, the 12-year period after the wildfire review by Gary Filmon saw a little over $100 million spent on wildfire hazard mitigation close to communities – a ratio of approximately $1 spent on mitigation for every $100 spent on response and recovery.
This, unfortunately, is an alltoo-frequent pattern: a minuscule, up-front investment in mitigation and prevention, but a massive expenditure in response and recovery during and after the fire. Recently, the UN’s International Strategy for Disaster Reduction pointed out that 87 per cent of investments associated with natural disasters goes into response and post-disaster recovery and only 13 per cent is invested up front in mitigation.
The current NDP government has rolled out a new program – Community Resiliency Initiative – that has budgeted only $50 million over three years to mitigation. The current government also inherited the Forest Enhancement Society grant program, which provides funding for landscape fuel treatments, but that program has only $60 million remaining and is due to ex-
ROBERT W. GRAY GLACIER MEDIA
pire at the end of 2019 (with no word of a replacement program). And this fund is not all earmarked for wildfire hazard mitigation; funds are also provided for wildlife habitat enhancement, as well as carbon-storage strategies (i.e., tree planting), and better fibre utilization.
Disconcertingly, this current approach from the provincial government places less emphasis on treating the fuels that give energy to wildfires and more on the FireSmart program, which focuses on public education, planning, etc. (the highest risk communities can receive a maximum of $100,000 per year –which is enough to treat about 17 hectares of hazardous fuels).
Promoting individual responsibility for mitigating natural disturbance risks on homeowners’ property is never a bad thing. And programs such as FireSmart have a role to play in a comprehensive approach to community-level awareness of wildfire threat and how to mitigate it. But a program such as FireSmart isn’t the sole solution.
Uptake in the program among homeowners is low, and in many cases, unless your neighbours also make the initial and continued investment, you can still lose your home to a wildfire. Research carried out since the Fort McMurray fire suggests that mitigation
costs could range from $18 to $26 a square foot to bring an existing structure up to code. For a typical 2,000-square-foot home, the cost would be between $36,000 and $52,000, and that includes only roofing, siding, decks and fencing (it doesn’t include gutters, eaves, windows and vents).
If we focus only on promoting FireSmart as the solution, as some suggest, and don’t make the big investment in landscape hazard mitigation, we have to accept a wildfire threatening a community or even worse, burning into a community. The threat of a wildfire triggers an evacuation, which is not only costly but also highly traumatic.
This same wildfire burns the landscape around the community, with all of the social, ecological and economic implications – which are made even worse by the inevitable post-fire flood. And then it burns all or parts of the community that didn’t meet the FireSmart standard or maintain the standard. A different strategy would see significant investment in treating the fuels on the landscape adjacent to the community so that in the event of a wildfire, fire behaviour would be mitigated, suppression would be more effective and potential damage would be significantly reduced. With this strategy, even if few homes met the FireSmart standard, many would survive due to greatly reduced fire behaviour and a higher likelihood of initial attack success.
— Robert W. Gray is a certified wildland fire ecologist
SHAWN CORNELL DIRECTOR OF ADVERTISING
it now), Meet the Monkees was my first album. To me, the Monkees were the zenith – the vibe, the songs, the zany humour, everything about them made me and everyone I knew the target demographic of the era. I ended up following a musical path and have, for the past 20 years, been a part of Beach Boy Brian Wilson’s band. How to explain the Monkees’ unlikely staying power, their stalwart presence on oldies radio? I think many baby boomers, obviously, found them accessible and relatable, certainly unthreatening. But more importantly, Tork once said the band had real chemistry – not just any four young men could have done what they did. I think there was a sense of vindication they shared among themselves that critics had turned up their noses at the supposed ineptitude of the Prefab Four and were proved wrong – in which case, all among us who are judged and found to have come up short still have a chance.
Most of all, there are the sounds of those hits, pristine in their peculiar moment, which when matched to those particular voices, still succeed.
They form a part of the soundtrack of many baby boomers’ lives, a validation of their memories, making believers of us all.
— Probyn Gregory is a veteran freelance musician who lives in Tujunga, Calif.
o twist a term: Febru-
Tary has turned out to be a monthis horribilis for Justin Trudeau.
The 28 days cannot end soon enough.
The election looms and the Liberals are a tragic comedy. Most polls have his party trailing and falling behind the Conservatives.
His handling of the SNC-Lavalin controversy has possessed the subtlety of a middle linebacker conducting neurosurgery. His BFF has resigned as principal secretary of his office and the ship is looking for spare parts to fashion a rudder. His clerk of the Privy Council hurt more than he helped in partisan parliamentary testimony this week.
His problems have deepened since he last spent any public time on the issue...
His former justice minister could next week deepen the misery. He has been served with a surprise subpoena concerning the dismissal of a top military officer.
And now, this.
The National Energy Board (NEB) recommendation Friday that the Trans Mountain pipeline proceed with an additional 16 conditions – that brings the tally to 172 – might seem like good news, and in the context of this miserable month, it offers a slight ray of those old sunny ways.
But its report on a tight deadline walks a tightrope. The NEB could not – nor can anyone – instil terribly much more confidence that the project’s considerable economic value does not come without a considerable environmental footprint.
This iteration of the NEB process and result does not deeply digress from the one conducted under the Stephen Harper government. It arrives at the same overall conclusion but requires improvements to mitigate noise, prepare for spills, and reduce emissions, among other things.
The most controversial of its findings arise from an expansion of the NEB’s exploration in its review. There will be a “significant adverse impact” from the increased traffic on the endangered southern resident killer whale species – and, of course, the Indigenous cultural use related to it.
The NEB offers some proposals to mitigate: whale watching vessels, better coordination of traffic to amortize the impact, and the creation of a marine conservation area.
The report now puts this back in Trudeau’s laden lap. If he can be
Mailing address: 201-1777 Third Ave. Prince George, B.C. V2L 3G7
Office hours: 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday to Friday
General switchboard: 250-562-2441 info@pgcitizen.ca
General news: news@pgcitizen.ca
Sports inquiries: 250-960-2764 sports@pgcitizen.ca Classifieds advertising: 250-562-6666 cls@pgcitizen.ca
accused of ambiguity on certain matters, on the matter of expanding Trans Mountain he has been nothing if not clear-spoken: It will be built, Canada needs to find the best world market for its energy, and every piece of science and technology will be employed to deliver the safest possible system. Still, his problems have deepened since he last spent any public time on the issue, and when principal secretary Gerald Butts left his office this week to protect the boss on SNCLavalin’s fallout, he left a note about the importance of tackling climate change. Trudeau might have wished his longtime friend left that paragraph out.
The resignation of Jody WilsonRaybould was also a blow to Trudeau’s mantra of seeking reconciliation with First Nations.
The NEB review heard extensively from Indigenous leaders and groups, but the work is not done for the Trudeau government in appropriately consulting before constructing.
And yes, let’s not forget this is a government construction job because the government owns the $7.4 billion project, purchased last spring from Kinder Morgan Canada. It must address the NEB report, satisfy the legal conditions for consultation, and approve the expansion.
In the context of pre-election troubles, the timing is what the Los Angeles weather broadcasters call the air conditions created by the combination of geography and gridlock: unhelpful.
The project is not likely to help politically. It is unlikely to get Rachel Notley reelected premier of Alberta, so it is likely to set upon Trudeau the more combative presence of Jason Kenney following a May election. It is unlikely to help the federal Liberals elect anyone in Alberta and may help them unelect an MP or two in the Lower Mainland.
A February to forget is unfortunately for Trudeau one he will long remember.
— Kirk LaPointe is editor-inchief of Business in Vancouver and vice-president, editorial, of Glacier Media
Shawn Cornell, director of advertising: 250-960-2757 scornell@pgcitizen.ca Reader sales and services: 250-562-3301 rss@pgcitizen.ca Letters to the editor: letters@pgcitizen.ca
Website: www.pgcitizen.ca
Website feedback: digital@glaciermedia.ca
Member of the National Newsmedia Council A division of Glacier Media
WASHINGTON — William Barr has been attorney general for just one week but is on the cusp of staring down what will almost certainly be the most consequential decision of his long career: how much of the special counsel’s findings to make public.
The position catapults him from Justice Department outsider free to theorize and speculate on special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation to the man at the centre of the legal and political firestorm that will accompany its looming conclusion.
With Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein preparing to exit after supervising the day-to-day investigation for nearly two years, and with Trump loyalist Matthew Whitaker now replaced in the top job, Barr is in the hot seat: he is responsible for navigating the department through congressional and public demands for details of Mueller’s findings while dealing with a White House that may challenge, or even stifle, the conclusions.
Barr is already facing pressure from House Democrats who say they might subpoena Mueller’s findings if they are not fully released. Six House Democratic committee chairmen wrote Barr on Friday and demanded that he make Mueller’s report public, including any “evidence of misconduct” by President Donald Trump.
Friends say Barr is accustomed to pressure-cooker situations by virtue of his experience as attorney general from 1991 to 1993 under former president George H.W. Bush and other senior Justice Department jobs. He oversaw the department’s response when Los Angeles erupted in riots after the Rodney King verdict and when Cuban inmates took hostages at a federal prison in Alabama. He blessed Bush administration pardons in the Iran-Contra scandal and offered legal advice on the White House’s ability to invade Panama.
In this case, though, no less than the fate of Trump’s presidency may hang in the balance of whatever Barr decides.
“I’m sure it’s going to be a tough set of decisions and circumstances, but Bill doesn’t shy away from tough situations,” said former Justice Department colleague Timothy
Trump vows veto as Democrats try to block emergency order
Flanigan. “He’s not likely to sit there fretting over what does this mean for his legacy or his long-term political viability.”
Although Barr carefully weighs difficult decisions and consults others before making them, once he’s made them, “he doesn’t kind of circle and fret,” Flanigan said.
Key decisions are expected soon as Mueller shows signs of concluding his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and possible coordination with the Trump campaign.
Mueller is required to produce a confidential report to Barr that explains his decisions to pursue or decline prosecutions. That could be as simple as a bullet point list or as fulsome as a report running hundreds of pages. Barr will then have to decide how much of Mueller’s findings should be disclosed to the public.
At his confirmation hearing last month, Barr was noncommittal about what he would do, though he said repeatedly that he supported making as much public as possible, “consistent with the law.” He said in his congressional testimony that he will
WASHINGTON (AP) — Democrats controlling the House have teed up a vote next week to block U.S. President Donald Trump from using a national emergency declaration to fund a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, accelerating a showdown in Congress that could divide Republicans and lead to Trump’s first veto. The Democrats introduced a resolution
write his own report summarizing Mueller’s findings for Congress and the public.
“I can assure you that, where judgments are to be made by me, I will make those judgments based solely on the law and will let no personal, political or other improper interests influence my decisions,” he said.
Barr has noted that department protocol says internal memos explaining charging decisions should not be released. The attorney general is required only to say the investigation has concluded and describe or explain any times when he or Rosenstein decided an action Mueller proposed “was so inappropriate or unwarranted” that it should not be pursued.
Democrats could use Mueller’s findings as the basis of impeachment proceedings and have threatened to subpoena them if they are withheld from Congress. In the letter Friday, the Democrats warned against withholding information on Trump because of Justice Department opinions that the president can’t be indicted.
“To maintain that a sitting president cannot be indicted, and then to withhold
Friday to block Trump’s declaration, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the House would vote on the measure Tuesday. It is sure to pass, and the GOP-run Senate may adopt it as well. Trump quickly promised a veto.
“Will I veto it? 100 per cent,” Trump told reporters at the White House.
Any Trump veto would likely be sustained, but
evidence of wrongdoing from Congress because the president will not be charged, is to convert Department policy into the means for a coverup,” the Democrats wrote.
“The president is not above the law.”
It’s not clear what the White House or Trump’s lawyers may do to learn details of Mueller’s findings. But they may try to block the public release of any report that they believe could expose private conversations between the president and his staff.
Hovering in the background is the 2016 decision by then-FBI Director James Comey to break Justice Department norms in the Hillary Clinton email investigation by publicly criticizing the Democratic presidential candidate even while saying she wouldn’t be charged. Barr has said repeatedly that he disagrees with Comey’s decision and considers it a mistake.
It’s unclear what Mueller will place in his report and how far it will go in answering the central question of the investigation – whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia – or how much he will reveal about whether the president sought to obstruct justice through firing Comey and other actions.
Barr made clear at his confirmation hearing that he agreed Russia had meddled in the 2016 election and that Mueller’s investigation, contrary to Trump’s claims, is not a “witch hunt.”
But his view on the obstruction question is more nuanced. As a private citizen, he sent the Justice Department a memo last June arguing that Trump couldn’t be investigated for firing Comey because a president has discretion to hire and fire subordinates. He has since sought to make clear that he believes that a president can be guilty of obstructing justice in other ways, such as by destroying evidence or instructing witnesses to lie.
It’s not clear if Mueller will make recommendations about the president, though Barr has said he sees no reason to revisit the department legal opinions that say a sitting president cannot be indicted.
Barr, who friends say was reluctant to return as attorney general, has made clear that at age 68, he feels empowered to do the right thing and not care about the consequences. But that doesn’t mean it will be easy.
the upcoming battle will test Republican support for the president’s move, which even some of his allies view as a stretch – and a slap at lawmakers’ control over the power of the federal purse. Pelosi, D-Calif., said she’d honour her oath of office and uphold the Constitution, adding, “I wish he would have the same dedication to that oath of office himself.”
Remote islands near San Francisco haven for marine life
Erin E. WILLIAMS Citizen news service
The boat rose and fell relentlessly, one ocean swell after another. I leaned over its stern, fixing my eyes on the decoy floating a few yards away. I had watched it for hours, barely glancing at the elephant seals hauled out on the nearby island.
In my eagerness to see who might nibble on the bobbing object, I was reluctant to look away for even a moment.
I was on a day-long expedition to the Farallon Islands, about 50 kilometres west of San Francisco. The craggy islands are a familiar sight for Bay Area beachgoers on a clear day, but most people don’t know that they support vast seabird colonies and mammals such as sea lions, dolphins, elephant seals and humpback, blue and gray whales.
The Farallones are also home to some of the largest great white sharks on the planet. My husband Andrew, our friend Neil and I joined a dozen biologists, volunteers and wildlife watchers for the trip – part of Sharktober, an annual Bay Area celebration of the great whites’ return from their oceanic migration each September through November. Along with land-based educational events, the excursions immerse aspiring seafarers in the Farallon Islands’ natural history and marine ecosystem.
Shark Stewards, a nonprofit group that promotes sound stewardship for sharks and all marine life, organizes the events and tours. Its director, marine biologist David McGuire, led our expedition as one of several weekend day trips during Sharktober. We boarded the Silver Fox, a chartered 50-foot fishing boat, at Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco. Although thick November fog dulled the sunrise, the forecast was less volatile than usual.
The Farallones are fierce. Because of savage weather, perilous currents and ragged rocks, the Greater Farallones National Marine Sanctuary estimates that more than 400 shipwrecks might surround the isolated islands. Local Miwok referred to them as the “Islands of the Dead,” and mariners called them the “Devil’s Teeth.” Compounding the sense of danger is the sharks’ fearsome reputation, which only now is beginning to recover from decades of misperception and demonization.
The Farallones are a marine sanctuary protected by a number of state and federal designations. As a result, they’re a haven for at least 25 endangered and threatened species, more than a dozen nesting seabird species and 36 marine mammal species. And, of course, the sharks.
We puttered into San Francisco Bay. Fog and water congealed into an indistinct smudge, dampening visibility and sound. A container ship lurked in the mist, occasionally breaking the eerie stillness with a horn blast. We were already in another world.
As if to emphasize the transition, harbour porpoises leaped out of the water before we even saw the Golden Gate Bridge. Eventual-
ly, its pylons rose beside us and disappeared into the gloom. We passed Point Bonita lighthouse at the bay’s entrance. Periscoping sea lions eyed the boat, and brown pelicans flew overhead.
We were surprisingly close to Marin County’s Muir Beach when we saw our first humpback. It exhaled, and the breeze wafted a comically sour plume from its blowhole into our faces.
A tail rose from the water: a California gray whale heading south on one of the world’s longest migrations. We turned west into the Gulf of the Farallones, riding against 10-foot swells through the clearing fog. I silently prayed to the motion-sickness patch stuck behind my ear.
We rolled up and down the swells and rubbernecked at whales for 2½ hours until we reached the Farallones’ granite island ridge, once part of a Southern California mountain range. Ocean waves thundered into jagged, sky-scraping spires.
Around Southeast Farallon Island, thousands of common murres circled in the air.
“This is North America’s largest seabird colony,” McGuire explained. “In springtime, more than 300,000 seabirds nest here.”
The boat idled in a cove. Although the islands are off-limits to the public, two strikingly desolate houses sit below a lighthouse-topped summit. For years, hardy scientists have taken shifts researching and living on the island. I smelled the elephant seals before I saw them squabbling with each other under the cliffs. They are one of the sharks’ key food sources. Each fall, between 15 and 50 sharks arrive – most of them large and all of them hungry. They’re part of a population of several hundred that scientists have identified from Mexico to British Columbia.
A couple of months later, fattened on elephant seals and sea lions, the sharks depart the Farallones. Some travel to the “white shark cafe” in the mid-Pacific, a gathering place where scientists suspect that they feed and breed. Others swim to Mexico. Their round-trip migration can be 8,000 km.
On the deck, a graduate student named Nikki prepared a decoy: a child’s stuffed black wet suit with dive fins extending from its legs. Although attracting sharks is forbidden in the protected waters, Shark Stewards holds a permit for the lure.
Nikki chucked it over the side of the boat, where it made a fair impersonation of an injured seal. But would a shark fall for the ruse?
“We need something that looks like a food source, since sharks aren’t interested in humans,” McGuire said. “That said, sharks are pretty smart. If they see it once, they probably won’t investigate it twice.”
During the trips, McGuire and his team employ a toaster-size, remotely operated vehicle to observe sharks underwater without disturbing them or altering their behavior. The team records and shares data – including with the public through educational outreach and as part of National Geographic’s Open Explorer program.
“These are everyone’s sanctuaries,” he said. “If people don’t experience them, it’s harder to appreciate them and understand the importance of protection.”
An intern dropped the little robot overboard. It scooted away and disappeared while McGuire operated it from a tablet.
The decoy was getting too close to the boat. I followed McGuire’s request to pull its line as we turned, jerking it to mimic a panicked seal.
“Yeah, that’s definitely going to attract a shark,” said Neil, rolling his eyes.
The motion-sickness medication was losing its battle with the swells and the elephant seals’ spectacular stink. Andrew and I felt seasick.
The three of us watched the decoy from the stern. Every once in a while, I fixed my eyes on the island to quell nausea.
We lingered while McGuire and his team operated the robot. Whales breached off the bow and seabird after seabird buzzed the boat. After a couple of hours, Andrew had to take a break. He disappeared into the cabin.
Some people say that we have an innate sixth sense when it comes to sharks, that our hair stands on end and our skin tingles. I had no such premonition. I didn’t feel like a shark encounter was imminent. All I felt were nausea and dimming hope.
Maybe that’s why I was dumbstruck when I heard a splash. It was over before I understood what was happening. I turned to the sound. A gigantic shape broke the water just 10 feet from the boat.
A great white shark.
Clearly not fooled by the decoy, it bumped it with its nose and cruised by. The skin on its back was a beautiful smooth, liquid, metallic gray. After a few seconds, it slid back underwater.
Overcome with excitement, Neil and I shouted expletives while pointing at the disappearing eddies.
McGuire confirmed the sighting, and everyone cheered. This was the moment that Andrew emerged from below deck. He had only been gone for a minute or two.
“No,” he said. “You didn’t see a shark.” I nodded. Now it was his turn to curse. I’d like to think that I saw the iconic shape of its dorsal fin slice through the water. It happened so quickly, it’s tough to be certain. The shark appeared colossal to my inexperienced eye, but McGuire later confirmed that it was somewhat small compared with the Farallones’ largest great whites.
“Most sharks here are at least 14 feet long, and they can reach 20 feet,” he said. “It was maybe 12 feet.”
Daylight was waning. It was time for a final errand: a search for a friend’s camera. Commercial diver and documentary filmmaker Ron Elliott lost it when a shark bit him on the hand while he was filming a month before. This was the only bite Ron has suffered in 400 shark encounters during decades of diving the Farallones.
The remotely operated vehicle poked around in underwater nooks and crannies but did not locate the camera. We turned back to the coast.
We sat on the bow during the return trip. Hundreds of maroon sea nettle jellyfish drifted under the boat, and dolphin pods followed our wake. I lost track of the day’s whale count after a dozen. Neil occasionally leaned across Andrew and asked me, “Do you remember when we saw that shark and Andrew missed it?”
My head bobbed up and down like a decoy.
If you go
Shark Stewards
415-350-3790 sharkstewards.org
Educational wildlife expeditions open to the public. Trips emphasize natural history and conservation of marine wildlife, including sharks. Open to adults and children 11 years old and older. Day trips run from 7 a.m. until approximately 4:30 p.m. from September through November. From $150.
Information
farallones.noaa.gov
COUGARS STOP LOSING STREAK IN DRAMATIC FASHION
11
Ted CLARKE Citizen staff tclarke@pgcitizen.ca
Needing just a point to clinch second place overall in the B.C. Hockey League, the Prince George Spruce Kings outshot and outplayed the Chiliwack Chiefs by a wide margin Friday night at Rolling Mix Concrete Arena but couldn’t seem to put them away. Coming off a 2-1 win over the Spruce Kings Sunday in Chilliwack which gave them home-ice advantage throughout the playoffs as regular-season champions, the Chiefs had nothing riding on Friday’s game as far as the standings are concerned.
It didn’t go quite as planned but in the end they found a way to get it done.
— Mike Hawes
They chose to scratch two veteran defencemen and six everyday forwards to rest them up for the playoffs. The Spruce Kings iced a full lineup, knowing what was at stake.
But their plans for a victory celebration started to fray when Chiefs’ defenceman Colton Kitchen, a Prince George minor hockey product, let go a wrist shot on the power play that found the net through a screen to give the Chiefs a 3-2 lead, 6:37 into the third period.
Willpower took over, and the Kings responded with three unanswered goals to cinch a 5-3 victory. Captain Ben Poisson tied it with a shot from the point, Ben Brar popped in his second of the night and team-leading 35th of the season on a rebound for the gamewinner at 17:33 and defenceman Dylan Anhorn joined the rush to score late in the game on a Kings’ power play.
The win moved the Spruce Kings (38-13-1-5) within three points of the Chiefs (42-14-1-0) but with just one regular-season game left for both teams it’s too late for Prince George to catch up.
“It’s important to have home ice through a large portion of the playoffs and it’s nice to clinch second throughout the league,” said Kings general manager Mike Hawes. “It didn’t go quite as planned but in the end they found a way to get it done.
“It was a tough one for us last weekend in Chilliwack. I thought we outchanced them and outplayed them and did everything but win the game, which was probably the biggest game of the year. It was letdown, no doubt, and it was nice to see them bounce back with the effort tonight. The effort was good throughout, we just struggled to score some goals and credit to Chilliwack, they battled hard with a young lineup tonight.”
The Kings’ veteran element was readily apparent in the first period and they were all over the Chiefs from the opening puck-drop and came out of the opening 20 minutes leading 2-0.
Lucas Vanroboys, a tradedeadline acquisition from the Cowichan Valley Capitals, opened the scoring with a shot from the slot on a 1-on-2 opportunity, using the Chiefs defenceman as a screen to sneak his shot past Nolan Hildebrand. Brar scored his 34th of the season 12 minutes into the game, going wide across the crease as he
tucked it in the open side.
The Chiefs and their affiliated players came back to tie it in the second period. Dawson Good, called up from the Fraser Valley Thunderbirds midget team, stole the puck in the neutral zone and fed it over to Jacques Bouquot, who completed the 2-on-1 rush with a tap-in behind Logan Neaton.
The tying goal came with eight minutes gone in the period. After a
foiled wraparound from linemate Alexander Marrocco the puck was left in the crease for Cade Cavallini and the West Vancouver Academy prep team call-up banged it in past Neaton for his first BCHL goal.
The Kings outshot the Chiefs 47-14.
The Spruce Kings will finish second in the Mainland Division and will face the Coquitlam Express in a best-of-seven division semifinal series that starts next Friday. Tickets for that series are on sale at the Kings’ office at RMCA.
The Chiefs, last year’s junior A national champions, will take on the Langley Rivermen in their firstround matchup starting Friday in Chilliwack.
A season-high crowd of 1,572, which included the College Heights Secondary School drum line, turned out on fan appreciation night. The same teams meet again tonight to end the regular season.
Ted CLARKE Citizen staff
If you’ve yet to check out the action at the World Para Nordic Skiing Championships there are still two days of racing ahead with the team relays today and the long-distance cross-country races on Sunday. Prince George has been treated the past week to five days of intense cross-country and biathlon racing at Otway Nordic Centre in the first world championships the city has ever hosted. Those who have seen it live have witnessed some amazing achievements from a group of highly-trained athletes who have dedicated their lives to achieving their own goals while being challenged with the highest possible level of competition.
Best of all, the world is watching. The races are streamed live daily on the www.paralympic.org website. All the races are recorded and packaged for public consumption over the internet, to be played and replayed any time of the day, anywhere in the world. For the entire week, the broadcast team of play-by-play commentator Alan March and interviewer Steven Matheson has been on the scene at Otway supplying insights about the athletes and their race strategies. March and Matheson have done their homework and their knowledge of the para nordic scene is providing viewers a better understanding of how the athletes have
triumphed over adversity to become the best of the best. The morning and early-afternoon race
schedule at Otway is perfect for prime-time viewing in most European countries, where fan interest in nordic sports is highest.
Webcasts of the 2017 World Para Nordic Championships in Finsterau, Germany, drew audiences in the millions.
“It purely depends on who wants to tune in, if you’re a fan of nordic action, whether it be able-bodied or para athletes the standard here is exceptionally high,” said March. “Hopefully the broadcast can push that message that whilst we have FIS events in alpine and snowboard, the para guys are doing some great things.
“Some of the impairments they have, to be able to ski completely blind or with one arm, and we’ve got (Canadian) Kyle Barber going out without any ski poles and the effort that requires is stunning. I think it’s great we’re able to share that.”
The courses at Otway have 17 camera positions linked by more than three kilometres of cable and the professionalism of the production crew from Playo.tv gathering the video feeds makes March’s job in the booth calling each race that much easier. Based out of the Czech Republic, Playo covers every major alpine event sanctioned by the International Paralympic Committee.
March and Matheson travel the globe covering world championships and other high-profile sporting events for able-bodied and physically impaired athletes and cross paths with some amazing people who are willing to share their sometimes humbling stories of how they became para athletes. see PARA ATHLETES, page 10
from page 9
“Never did I think I’d come across an alpine skier whose history was he lost a leg to shark attack – you don’t think about that,” said March. “There’s an American swimmer who won the 200-metre freestyle in London who had lost his eyesight to an IED in Afghanistan and a year to the day after that happened, there he was at the Paralympics winning a 200-metre freestyle race. There are thousands of those stories across para sports and that’s what hits me the hardest.”
Matheson says para athletes, as a whole, seem more appreciative of the coverage they receive and are more approachable than elite able-bodied athletes and that makes his job asking them questions more satisfying.
“The thing I love most about para sport is athletes are almost a lot more human. When you get to the elite level of mainstream sports like athletics and football, they’re so media-trained and they constantly have their guard up,” said Matheson. “When you get to para sport they’re grateful for the fact their sport’s getting coverage and they’re much more liable to open up. They’re just a lot more real. That’s my favourite thing.”
Matheson lives in Nottingham, England. March was born and raised in England but now lives in Bulgaria. They both admit they’ve never felt colder than when they stepped off the plane last week at the airport and it was -30 C. March admits guilty pleasure watching Matheson talk to the athletes after each race while he stays toasty in his heated room overlooking the stadium.
March says the local organizing committee, chaired by Kevin Pettersen, and the crew of volunteers rounded up by the host Caledonia Nordic Ski Club and the Otway venue have gone well beyond expectations and those sentiments are echoed by the athletes and coaches.
“It’s been absolutely phenomenal – I’ve
traveled the world for the last eight or nine years doing various events and the levels of organization here are off the scale,” said March. “I’ve done two Olympics and Paralympics and other major world events and everything has been top-drawer.
“I’m not just looking out my windows at the athletes, I can see the volunteers in their
coats and they are nonstop, every job gets done and they’re smiling. To be fair, when it was minus-21 I didn’t see as many smiling, but they didn’t shirk their responsibilities.”
From Prince George, they’ll travel to Spain and France for the end of the alpine season before the summer sports season begins. Both would love to return to Prince
Citizen news service
TORONTO — Kawhi Leonard played spoiler on DeMar DeRozan’s emotional return to Toronto on Friday.
And exacted a measure a revenge against his former team a few weeks after he was furiously jeered on his former home floor.
Leonard, who was acquired in the blockbuster trade last summer that sent DeRozan to the Spurs, scored 25 points, including the breakaway goahead dunk after a steal off DeRozan with 15 seconds on the clock, and the Raptors held on to beat San Antonio 120-117.
“It was very important. I mean that put us up one point with about (15.1) seconds left or so. That’s how games are,” Leonard said. “It was (like) a playoff win for us. Everybody contributed. With me missing shots, everybody stepped up and made their shots on the double teams, and we got the win. We grinded it out.”
Six players scored in double figures for the Rap-
tors (44-16). Pascal Siakam had 22 points, Kyle Lowry and Danny Green had 17 apiece, Serge Ibaka finished with 13 and newcomer Jeremy Lin chipped in with 11 on a night that saw Raptors coach Nick Nurse ejected in the third quarter for vigorously arguing a call.
DeRozan finished with 23 points on 7-of-12 shooting for the Spurs.
The season’s first meeting between the two teams had been ugly: a 125-107 Spurs rout on Jan. 3 in San Antonio where the Raptors let their emotions get the better of them, and Leonard was verbally bashed all night long by chants of “Traitor! Traitor!” Leonard struggled early Friday, scoring 19 of his points in the second half.
Friday was more about the much-anticipated return of DeRozan, who was honoured by the team he played nine years with in an emotional video tribute during the game’s first timeout.
“It made it exciting,” DeRozan said. “It made it fun to go out there and play and compete. It was a heck of a game. It came down to a couple of plays.”
George in the summer, when can leave their parkas, tuques and mitts at home.
“The people here have been so welcoming and friendly, it’s been crazy. It’s been so nice to be a part of,” said Matheson. “We’ve done so many events already this year and the level of accommodation and hospitality we’ve been given has been amazing.”
Ted CLARKE Citizen staff
The U Sports Canada West conference basketball all-star teams were announced Thursday and UNBC Timberwolves figured prominently on the lists.
T-wolves’ fifth-year post Vasiliki Louka was named to the women’s first team, fourth-year guard Maria Mongomo was a third-team selection and T-wolves men’s team fifth-year guard Jovan Leamy was picked for the third team.
For Louka, a second-team allstar in 2018, her last season of university basketball was her best. The native of Athens, Greece, led Canada West in rebounding with a 12.7 average and put up 18 double-doubles in a 20-game season, while finishing eighth in scoring with a 17.3 point-per-game average. She also cracked the Canada West top-five in blocks, offensive rebounds and free-throw percentage. Louka completed her career as the T-wolves’ all-time leader in points, rebounds, blocks, doubledoubles and minutes played.
She’s the first UNBC athlete to earn a first-team all-star nod since UNBC joined Canada West in 2012.
Mongomo, a native of Las Palmas, Spain, finished in the top five in the conference in scoring average (19.9 points) and steals
(2.5 per game). She averaged 8.7 rebounds and 1.7 assists and her 29-point game in the first playoff round led UNBC to its first-ever playoff win. Mongomo was a second-team all-star in 2018. In his second and final season with the T-wolves since moving west from Toronto, Leamy broke the UNBC single-season record for points with 362 and his 18.1 average ranked ninth in Canada West. He led the conference and the country in steals with 61 and finished in the Canada West top 20 in rebounds. He racked up 23 blocks to put himself in the top five in that category.
He helped the T-wolves make the playoffs for the second consecutive season.
Leamy becomes the second T-wolves player to make a men’s all-star team, following in the footsteps of Franco Kouagnia in 2015.
Citizen news service
When Ryan Borucki steps on the mound for the Blue Jays’ pre-season opener this afternoon, it will mark the beginning of his audition for Toronto’s fifth rotation spot.
He knows it. And he’s fine with it.
“I didn’t come in here thinking I had a pencilled in spot or anything like that,” the 24-yearold left-hander said at Toronto’s spring training facility in Florida last week. “I feel like I still have to prove myself and prove that I can pitch in the big leagues this year and help this team win.
“That’s my mindset.”
Borucki demonstrated his potential in his rookie season last year, pitching to a 4-6 record and a 3.87 earned-run average over 17 starts after making his MLB debut in late June. Despite the solid performance – and despite Toronto’s perceived lack of pitching depth at the major league level – general manager Ross Atkins told reporters in his first spring training media session last week that Borucki was not guaranteed a spot in the Blue Jays’ 2019 rotation. Atkins listed Marcus Stroman, Aaron Sanchez and newcomers
Clayton Richard and Matt Shoemaker as the “likely” members of the starting five, providing they stay healthy, and noted that the young Borucki would be competing for the open fifth spot. Borucki wasn’t fazed by that revelation.
“I’m not going in feeling comfortable with my spot whatsoever, and I’m OK with that,” he said. “I love competing and I’m excited to get started and show off what I can do.”
Borucki is scheduled to start Toronto’s exhibition opener against the Detroit Tigers at Dunedin Stadium.
New manager Charlie Montoyo told reporters in Florida this week that he had been impressed with what he’d seen from Borucki – and some of his other young pitchers –so far in camp.
“He looked good,” Montoyo said after watching Borucki’s throwing session Wednesday. “(Elvis) Luciano looked good, (Thomas) Pannone looked good. Everybody was throwing strikes. ... It’s a lot of competition, it’s a lot of guys, so it’s going to be tough.” Borucki lost his MLB debut last June against the Houston Astros, despite a six-inning start in which he allowed just two runs.
Citizen staff
The losing streak is over.
After tasting the agony of defeat a team-record 17 consecutive games and enduring the misery of 41 days without a victory, the Prince George Cougars finally ended up on the winning side of the ledger Friday night in Kamloops, where they beat the Blazers 2-1 in a shootout.
Ethan Browne and Vladislav Mikhalchuk both scored on Blazers goalie Dylan Ferguson, after five minutes of overtime decided nothing. At the other end of the shootout ice, Taylor Gauthier stoned Connor Zary and Zane Franklin. Mikhakchuk’s deke ended the game.
Josh Maser put the Cougars ahead early in the game when he cashed in on a power-play chance 8:13 into the first period. Maser took a centring pass from Browne just outside the crease and was stopped on his original shot but scored on the rebound.
The Blazers tied it up late when Franklin picked the corner high just inside the post with a shot from close range. That came 13:16 into the third period.
The Blazers outshot the Cougars 42-32
The Cougars hadn’t won since Jan. 12, when they beat Kelowna 4-0 at CN Centre and their win Friday was the first this season against the Blazers after six losses.
The Cougars (17-35-4-3, fifth in B.C. Division) are now nine points behind the Blazers (22-28-42, fourth in B.C. Division). Prince George has nine games left, while Kamloops still has 12 to play.
Cougars defenceman Cole Moberg left the game with an apparent concussion late in the second period when Blazers forward Jeff Faith caught him with a late hit in the Cougars’ end. Moberg, the Cougars’ second-leading scorer with 11 goals and 34 points, did not return. Faith was assessed a charging penalty on the play and will likely face supplementary discipline.
The Cougars move on to Everett, where they’ll face the Western Conference-leading Silvertips (41-14-1-2) tonight.
Citizen news service
LIVERPOOL, N.S. — Canada’s Tyler Tardi is one win away from repeating as junior world curling champion.
Tardi and his B.C. rink downed Norway 7-5 on Friday in the semifinals at the world junior curling championship.
He will face Switzerland looking to win the tournament for the second year in a row.
Meanwhile, Selena Sturmay’s Edmonton-based rink will also go for gold after downing Switzerland 8-2 in the women’s semifinals. Sturmay will play Russia for gold. Both finals go today.
Gregory STRONG Citizen news service
SYDNEY, N.S.
— There will be a new champion at the Scotties Tournament of Hearts as the playoff picture finally became clear Friday night with the completion of the championship round.
Chelsea Carey leads the four-team pack that advanced to today’s Page Playoffs. She’ll have hammer in the 1-2 game against Saskatchewan’s Robyn Silvernagle, who took the second seed after a 6-3 win over Ontario’s Rachel Homan.
Homan will have hammer in the 3-4 game against Northern Ontario’s Krista McCarville, who edged Prince Edward Island’s Suzanne Birt 7-6.
Carey, who bounced back nicely after a two-loss day Thursday, finished at 9-2.
“We’ve felt all week like we’ve had it dialled in,” she said. “Today was back to normal and that’s all you can ask for.”
The other playoff teams were 8-3.
Silvernagle took the second seed with the best head-to-head record among the three rinks.
“A lot of hard work and dedication, no sleep, and blood, sweat and tears went into it,” Silvernagle said. “We’ve put in a ton of work this year. So there was no
OTTAWA (CP) — Matt Duchene was appreciative of how short the walk was to join his new team Friday afternoon.
Sergei Bobrovsky made 22 saves as the Blue Jackets blanked the Senators 3-0 in the nation’s capital Friday night, just hours after Duchene was dealt to Columbus in a trade with Ottawa. Duchene was held pointless in his Blue Jackets debut, but found it fitting to be playing his first game with his new club at Ottawa’s
reason why we couldn’t believe that we could be in the 1-2 game.”
Team Wild Card’s Casey Scheidegger (7-4) had a chance to force a tiebreaker, but she dropped a 9-8 decision to Carey in an extra end.
Also missing the cut was Team Canada’s Jennifer Jones (6-5), who did not reach the playoffs for the first time in 14 trips to the national championship.
Jones stunningly came up short on a draw to the 12-foot ring that would have forced an extra end in her 8-6 afternoon loss to McCarville. The Winnipeg skip said the rock felt good out of her hand, but she knew it was going to find the slide path.
“It’s about an eight- to 10-foot difference than the middle,” Jones said. “So if you get to the slide path, it does what it did. If I was out wider, that’s probably T-line.”
The crowd gasped when the stone stopped about a foot short of the rings, despite a furious sweeping effort from Jones’s teammates.
“I’ve had some worse losses than this for sure,” Jones said. “We’ve played in I don’t know how many Scotties and had a good run, had some fun, made some big shots and at the end of the day, it wasn’t our week.
“But I’m OK with it. Losing a final is way worse.”
Jones – a six-time champion – later defeated British Columbia’s Sarah Wark
Canadian Tire Centre.
“I enjoyed myself out there. It was kind of a good way to end my time as a Sen and I probably felt more comfortable because I was in this building (rather) than had we gone somewhere else,” said Duchene. “It was a big win for us and (Craig Anderson) played really well over there and kept them in it for a long time.”
Josh Anderson, Cam Atkinson and Oliver Bjorkstrand scored for the Blue Jackets (34-23-
10 (Cunningham, Anhorn) 4:45 2. Prince George, Brar 34 (Chu) 12:46 Penalties – Anhorn PG (tripping) 8:15, Bowen CH (slashing) 17:18. Second Period 3. Chilliwack, Bouquot 10 (Good) 4:57 4. Chilliwack, Cavallini 1 (Marrocco, Frank) 8:33 Penalties – Slipec CH (roughing) 5:17, Ahac PG (highsticking) 6:00. Third Period 5. Chilliwack, Kitchen 3 (Marrocco, Slipec) 6:37 (pp) 6. Prince George, B.Poisson 20 (Ahac, N.Poisson) 10:46 7. Prince George, Brar 35 (B.Poisson, Manz) 17:33 8. Prince George, Anhorn 5 (B.Poisson, Manz) 19:33 Penalties – Wutzke CH (hooking) 4:37, Vanroboys PG (kneeing) 5:50, Marrocco CH (roughing) 18:14. Shots on goal by
5-4 in a game without playoff ramifications. Wark’s rink features Prince George sisters Kristen Pilote and Jen Rusnell and is coached by their father, Rick Fewster. The victory gave Jones the all-time record of 141 career Scotties wins as a skip, one more than Colleen Jones.
“Obviously a hugely disappointing week,” Jones said, her voice cracking at times. “But it feels pretty good to have that record with all these amazing players out there.”
Earlier in the day, Team Wild Card defeated British Columbia 11-6 and Alberta dumped Saskatchewan 10-3. Ontario needed an extra end to get by Prince Edward Island 7-6 as Homan hit a draw to the four-foot ring to win.
A five-way tie at 8-3 was a possibility entering the night draw, but Alberta and Ontario knew they would advance regardless due to head-to-head records.
The winner of the Page 1-2 game will advance directly to the final Sunday evening. The 3-4 game winner will play the 1-2 loser in the semifinal Sunday afternoon.
P.E.I. finished at 6-5 and B.C. was 5-6. The eight other teams in the 16-team competition did not make it out of the preliminary round.
The Scotties winner will represent Canada at the March 16-24 world women’s curling championship in Silkeborg, Denmark.
3), who halted a two-game losing skid to take over third in the Metropolitan Division. Duchene says he’s feeling good about joining a team with a realistic shot at the playoffs after playing for a franchise with its focus on a rebuild rather than winning.
“I’ve been fortunate to be on a lot of good international teams and win some big tournaments, but I’ve never had a chance to play in the playoffs consistently,” said Duchene.
Sara BURNETT, Michael TARM Citizen news service
CHICAGO — R. Kelly, the R&B star who has been trailed for decades by allegations that he violated underage girls and women and held some as virtual slaves, was charged Friday with aggravated sexual abuse involving four victims, including at least three between the ages of 13 and 17.
In a brief appearance before reporters, Cook County State’s Attorney’s Kim Foxx announced the 10 counts against the 52-yearold Grammy winner. She said the abuse dated back as far as 1998 and spanned more than a decade. She did not comment on the charges or take questions.
The singer, who has consistently denied any sexual misconduct, was to appear in court today. His attorney, Steve Greenberg, said Kelly planned to turn himself in Friday night.
“He is extraordinarily disappointed and depressed. He is shellshocked by this,” Greenberg told The Associated Press.
The arrest sets the stage for another #MeToo-era celebrity trial. Bill Cosby went to prison last year, and former Hollywood studio boss Harvey Weinstein is awaiting trial. Best known for his hit I Believe I Can Fly, Kelly was charged a week
after Michael Avenatti, the attorney whose clients have included porn star Stormy Daniels, said he gave prosecutors new video evidence of the singer with an underage girl. It was not immediately clear if the charges were connected to that video, which Avenatti said included audio in which Kelly and the girl say several times that she is 14 years old.
Avenatti said the charges marked “a watershed moment in the 25 years of abuse” by Kelly and that he believes more than 10 other people associated with Kelly should be charged as “enablers” for helping with the assaults, transporting minors and covering up evidence.
The video surfaced during a 10-month investigation. Avenatti told the AP that the person who provided the VHS tape knew both Kelly and the female in the video.
In 2008, a jury acquitted Kelly of child pornography charges over a graphic video that prosecutors said showed him having sex with a girl as young as 13. He and the young woman allegedly depicted with him denied they were in the 27-minute video, even though the picture quality was good and witnesses testified it was them, and she did not take the stand. Kelly could have gotten 15 years in prison.
Charging Kelly now for actions
that occurred in the same time frame as the allegations from the 2008 trial suggests the accusers are cooperating this time and willing to testify.
Because the alleged victim 10 years ago denied that she was on the video and did not testify, the state’s attorney office had little recourse except to charge the lesser offence under Illinois law, child pornography, which required a lower standard of evidence.
Each count carries up to seven years in prison. If Kelly is convicted on all 10 counts, a judge could decide that the sentences run one after the other – making it possible for him to receive up to 70 years behind bars. Probation is also an option under the statute.
Greenberg said he offered to sit down with prosecutors before charges were filed to discuss why the allegations were “baseless.” But they refused, he said.
“Unfortunately, they have succumbed to the court of public opinion, who’ve convicted him,” he said.
Legally and professionally, the walls began closing in on Kelly after the release of a BBC documentary about him last year and the multipart Lifetime documentary Surviving R. Kelly, which aired last month. Together they detailed allegations he was holding women against their will and running a “sex cult.”
After the latest documentary, Foxx said she was “sickened” by the allegations and asked potential victims to come forward.
#MeToo activists and a social media movement using the hashtag #MuteRKelly called on streaming services to drop Kelly’s music and promoters not to book
any more concerts. Protesters demonstrated outside Kelly’s Chicago studio. As recently as Thursday, two women held a news conference in New York to describe how Kelly picked them out of a crowd at a Baltimore after-party in the mid1990s when they were underage. They said Kelly had sex with one of the teens when she was under the influence of marijuana and alcohol and could not consent.
Latresa Scaff and Rochelle Washington were joined by lawyer Gloria Allred when they told their story publicly for the first time.
In the indictment, the prosecution addresses the question of the statute of limitations, saying that even abuse that happened more than two decades ago falls within the charging window allowed under Illinois law. Victims have 20 years to report abuse, beginning after they turn 18.
The singer and songwriter, whose legal name is Robert Kelly, rose from poverty on Chicago’s South Side and has retained a sizable following, despite the accusations. He has written numerous hits for himself and other artists, including Celine Dion, Michael Jackson and Lady Gaga. His collaborators have included Jay-Z and Usher.
Kelly broke into the R&B scene in 1993 with his first solo album, 12 Play, which produced such popular sex-themed songs as Bump N’ Grind and Your Body’s Callin’.
Months after those successes, the then-27-year-old Kelly faced allegations he married 15-year-old Aaliyah, the R&B star who later died in a plane crash in the Bahamas. Kelly was the lead songwriter and producer of Aaliyah’s 1994 debut album.
Jim DeRogatis, a longtime music critic for the Chicago Sun-Times, played a key role in drawing the attention of law enforcement to Kelly. In 2002, he received the sex tape in the mail that was central to Kelly’s 2008 trial. He turned it over to prosecutors.
In 2017, DeRogatis wrote a story for BuzzFeed about the allegations Kelly was holding women against their will in Georgia.
CHICAGO (AP) — Actor Jussie Smollett’s character on Empire will be removed from the final two episodes of this season in the wake of his arrest on charges that he staged a racist, anti-gay attack on himself last month in downtown Chicago, producers of the Fox TV show announced Friday.
The announcement came a day after Smollett turned himself in to police, appeared in court on a felony charge of disorderly conduct for allegedly filing a false police report, and left jail after posting bond.
“While these allegations are very disturbing, we are placing our trust in the legal system as the process plays,” Empire executive producers Lee Daniels, Danny Strong, Brett Mahoney, Brian Grazer, Sanaa Hamri, Francie Calfo and Dennis Hammer said in a written statement. ”We are also aware of the effects of this process on the cast and crew members who work on our show and to avoid further disruption on set, we have decided to remove the role of Jamal from the final two episodes of the season.” The series is on a mid-season break and returns March 13 with nine episodes. The last two episodes of the fifth season were still being made when Smollett was charged. At this point, Smollett is part of the seven already completed episodes.
Smollett, who is black and gay, plays a gay character on the show that follows a black family as they navigate the ups and downs of the recording industry.
Police said Smollett planned the hoax because he was unhappy with his salary and wanted to promote his career. Before the attack, he also sent a letter that threatened him to the Chicago studio where Empire is shot, police said. As authorities laid out their case against Smollett, the narrative that emerged Thursday sounded like that of a filmmaker who wrote, cast, directed and starred in a short movie.
Prosecutors said Smollett gave detailed instructions to the accomplices who helped him stage the attack in January, including telling them specific slurs to yell, urging them to shout “MAGA country” and even pointing out a surveillance camera that he thought would record the beating.
“I believe Mr. Smollett wanted it on camera,” police superintendent Eddie Johnson told reporters at a Thursday morning news conference. “But unfortunately that particular camera wasn’t pointed in that direction.”
Smollett’s legal team issued a statement Thursday night, calling the actor a “man of impeccable character and integrity who fiercely and solemnly maintains his innocence.” The statement called Johnson’s news conference “an organized law enforcement spectacle.”
“The presumption of innocence, a bedrock in the search for justice, was trampled upon at the expense of Mr. Smollett,” the statement read.
Smollett is earning more than $100,000 per episode, according to a person familiar with the situation.
As is customary with a successful TV series, regular cast members on Empire received a boost in pay as part of contract extensions that followed the drama’s renewal for a second season, the person said. Smollett is counted among the series regulars.
Long before Yalitza Aparicio became the first Indigenous woman nominated for best actress at the Oscars, she applied for a retail position at a clothing store in her hometown of Tlaxiaco, Oaxaca.
She didn’t get the job. Aparicio, now in the same conversations as Glenn Close and Lady Gaga, recalls the store manager’s exact words: “It’s your skin colour.”
She wasn’t surprised. It isn’t unusual for people with Indigenous features to face discrimination in Mexico. But now Aparicio, who had never acted before landing the lead role in the critically lauded Roma, has gone from aspiring public school teacher in a city of less than 18,000 to the first Indigenous woman on Vogue Mexico’s cover. Fans tout her as the face of Indigenous Mexico. Trolls leave racist comments on her social media. And at just 25 years old, she’s wrestling with the rewards and burdens of fame.
Soft-spoken and quick to smile, she says she doesn’t consider herself an Indigenous activist and hopes to better express herself publicly about these issues in the future. Yet when the camera turns on, she gazes straight ahead, exuding the confidence that made her on-screen character, Cleo, so effortlessly realistic.
“I never liked being in front of a camera. I was a scaredy-cat, very reserved and not very social,” Aparicio said in Spanish of her life before Roma. “I never thought I would leave my hometown, but here I am.”
Since its release by Netflix in December, Roma has racked up accolades around the world, including 10 Academy Award nominations. It has also inspired innumerable features focused on Aparicio’s character, Cleo, a domestic worker from Oaxaca inspired by writerdirector Alfonso Cuarón’s real-life childhood nanny. Cleo, who speaks a combination of Spanish and Mixtec on screen, represents the more than 2.4 million domestic workers across present-day Mexico, more than 95 per cent of whom are female and from Indigenous areas. The black-and-white film, set in the early 1970s, depicts the dynamic between Cleo and her employers with startling intimacy, presenting her inside and outside of the home where she lives and works.
Luis Rosales, the casting director for Roma, said Cuarón gave him only two directives as Rosales searched for their star. The first: Whoever got the role needed to physically look like the person on whom Cleo is based. Second, he said in an email, “she had to feel like her, too.”
“We interviewed over 3,000 women for the role of Cleo,” Rosales said. “Yalitza got our attention since her very first audition.”
Aparicio, who auditioned at the urging of her older sister, was familiar with the role. Her mother is a domestic worker, so she easily identified with Cleo.
“For some scenes, I interpreted the memories I have of my mom,” she said.
Aparicio had never heard of Cuarón or seen any of his films before Roma – let alone watched many movies growing up. The only film memories she has are kung fu scenes from the Bruce Lee movies her father loved. The only TV she remembers seeing as a kid was Inuyasha, a Japanese anime about a schoolgirl who’s transported to the social and political upheaval of the Sengoku era.
“I never watched much TV as a kid because no one else looked like me on the screen,” she said. Instead, like other kids in Oaxaca, one of the poorest states in Mexico, she took on the responsibility of financially contributing to her family from an early age. While she was in elementary school, she sold toys and clothes in the streets with her family. Growing up, she empowered herself by talking openly about the colour of her skin, taking it as a point of pride when people on the street said, “Hola morenita!” – a common greeting that’s meant to be endearing, although it translates to the brash-sounding, “Hi, dark-skinned one.”
“In my family, I’ve always had the darkest skin,” she said. “I always joked with my siblings that it was because I was made of chocolate.”
That perseverance comes through on Aparicio’s magazine covers, fan selfies and black-and-white billboards plastered on the streets of West Hollywood. On her Instagram account, where she has 1 million followers, she posts powerful handwritten letters from her fans, many of whom also have Indigenous backgrounds. A few weeks before the Oscars, she posted a note written on a torn-out piece of composition paper: “Dear, Yalitza. Thank you for giving us a voice in a world where they want to silence us and make us disappear. Wishing you all the luck.”
Her success has brought increased attention to the 68 Indigenous nations in Mexico, where up to 14 per cent of the population is Indigenous.
“If Yalitza wins the Oscar, it will be a reminder to the entire world that Indigenous people are alive and very much still existing in the world in the 21st century,” says Odilia Romero, the national coordinator for Frente Indígena de Organizaciones Binacionales, an association that oversees indigenous affairs in the United States and Mexico.
Ryan PEARSON Citizen news service
PARK CITY, Utah — Believe it or not, Hollywood executives told Dwayne Johnson “no thanks” when he pitched his latest movie.
It was an unusual rejection for the industry’s reigning box office champion, whose Jumanji reboot in 2017 made nearly $1 billion worldwide. And so before he trades insults with Jason Statham in Hobbs & Shaw or straps in for the Disney’s Jungle Cruise, the artist forever known as The Rock put on his independent film producer hat and went outside the traditional studio system to make Fighting With My Family.
His Seven Bucks Productions found financing through WWE Studios and Britain’s Film4 to make the scrappy, relatively low-budget comedy inspired by WWE wrestler Paige’s life story. Johnson makes a cameo appearance, as he did in Paige’s real-life rise from a small English town to the top of pro wrestling.
“Every studio passed on this, regardless of if I was attached,” Johnson said in an interview. “They were like, ‘No, no. The subject matter.’ And, and also too, you know, generally the tapestry of pro wrestling as it’s been shown in film hasn’t always been done in the greatest of ways certainly that would make us proud, coming from that world. (Darren) Aronofsky did it beautifully in The Wrestler, but before that and since then, it hasn’t really been shown. So there was a lot of challenges with this.”
Johnson, 46, says that while he knew Paige through WWE, he didn’t know her back-story –including a brother and parents who shared her passion for pro wrestling – until a serendipitous night filming Fast & Furious 6 in London. Unable to sleep, he was flipping channels and came across a documentary about the performer (real name: SarayaJade Bevis).
“I immediately identified with this crazy wrestling family who was very loving, loved the world of pro wrestling,” he said. “And I come from a crazy, attimes-dysfunctional wrestling family – my dad, my grandmother and grandfather, uncles, cousins, you name it.”
Johnson’s Tooth Fairy co-star Stephen Merchant was hired to write and direct. Florence Pugh signed on to play Paige, with Nick Frost and Lena Headey as her parents. The film got a warm reception at its Sundance Film Festival premiere, which Johnson attended alongside his producing partners Dany and Hiram Garcia.
Sitting alongside each other at a Park City, Utah condo, the three finished each other’s sentences and were quick to laugh together. Dany Garcia, a former bodybuilder and investment banker, was married to Johnson from 1997 to 2007 and they have a teenage daughter. When talking about Johnson, she sometimes reaches out to touch his forearm or thigh. They have other life partners now, but have flourished as business partners, founding Seven Bucks Productions together in 2012. Hiram Garcia, Dany’s younger brother, has long consulted with Johnson on his career. He was named the company’s president of film production in 2017.
They offered a preview of four of Seven Bucks’ many upcoming film projects, all starring Johnson. Hobbs & Shaw
Johnson won’t appear in the next Fast and Furious movie set for 2020 but hopes this spin-off with Jason Statham and a villain played by Idris Elba becomes its own franchise. They tried to also bring Aquaman star Jason Momoa on-board, but it didn’t work out.
“Maybe on the next one,” Johnson says, while promising “belly laughs” alongside the explosions and shootouts. It’s set for release in August.
Jungle Cruise
Based on the Disney theme park ride, Johnson says the Jaume Collet Serra-directed adventure film, also set for 2020, is “African Queen meets Romancing the Stone.” Hiram Garcia says Emily Blunt plays “a young Indiana Jones type female ahead of her time... looking for an unbelievable artifact (who) has to go to the river and needs the best captain there is... Hijinks ensues and romance ensues.”
The King
“Sacred, epic, thoughtful,” is how Dany Garcia describes the planned biopic of Hawaiian King Kamehameha. Johnson told an interviewer at age 29 that it was his “dream role” in Hollywood. “I didn’t have life experience to play it then. So the time is right... It’s a special one,” he said. Johnson’s wrestler father Rocky Johnson used to sing the folk song about the “steeldriving man” to him before bed, on the rare occasion he was home. “It was very personal to me... So that would always be a very special time for us.”
The movie is set for release on Netflix.
Adam GRANT Citizen news service
Another day, another leader seems to fall from a seat of power. The #MeToo movement has shown us devastating evidence of how male superiors have abused their power over female subordinates. The Catholic Church has offered demoralizing revelations of how priests have abused their power over nuns and children.
When leaders cross the line, we often blame power. As Lord Acton famously expressed it, “power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
But it’s not entirely true.
Last year at the World Economic Forum in Davos, I wanted to understand the impact of power on people. I sat down with two dozen leaders, including the current or former CEOs of Microsoft, Google, General Motors, Goldman Sachs and the Gates Foundation. Over and over again, I heard that power doesn’t change people as much as it accentuates their preexisting traits.
As Slack founder and CEO Stewart Butterfield quipped, “it doesn’t make you an asshole. It just makes you more of who you already were.”
That’s actually a good summary of the new line of thinking in psychology: Power is like an amplifier. Whoever we were before just gets louder.
In one experiment, psychologists set up an annoying fan so that it would blow in people’s faces. The participants’ odds of moving it away, turning it off, or unplugging it spiked from 42 per cent to 69 per cent if they had just written about a time when they had power.
In other experiments, when people were reminded of feeling powerful, they were more likely to express their own opinions and ideas instead of conforming to others. And when they were assigned the role of manager rather than subordinate before a negotiation, they were more likely to bargain their own way instead of adapting to an opponent’s style.
Power disinhibits us. It releases us from the shackles of social pressure. Gaining influence and authority frees us up to act on our real wishes and show our true colors. Few would argue that we need look any further than the current White House occupant to see the ultimate example of how power can magnify a person’s personality.
For decades, psychologists were convinced instead that power corrupts. One of the key demonstrations was the classic Stanford prison simulation, where students were randomly assigned to play the role of prisoners or prison guards. The guards ended up taking away the prisoners’ clothes and forcing them to sleep on concrete floors.
“In only a few days, our guards became sadistic,” psychologist Philip Zimbardo said. The “power of a host of situational variables can dominate an individual’s will to resist.”
The results were so shocking that a critical detail was overlooked: the students who showed up had been recruited to participate in a “study of prison life.” When psychologists ran an experiment to figure out what kinds of people are drawn to that kind of study, they found that volunteers for a prison study scored about 26 percent higher on aggression and belief in social dominance, 12 percent higher on narcissism and 10 percent higher on authoritarianism and Machiavellianism than people who signed up for psychological studies in general.
Power didn’t corrupt ordinary people. It corrupted people who already leaned toward corruption. And it wasn’t the first time.
Back in the late 1930s, a man fresh out of law school was trying his first case when the judge threatened to disbar him: “I have serious doubts whether you have the ethical qualifications to practice law, “ the judge said.
The lawyer’s name was Richard Nixon.
At the time, Nixon admitted to taking questionable actions without his client’s authority. Power didn’t corrupt him; he corrupted power. Being president revealed to the outside world who he was all along.
Consider another lawyer, who was run-
VANCOUVER (AP) — City councillors in Vancouver have approved rezoning for what is described as a state-of-the-art social housing and withdrawal management centre. In two days of public hearings, more than 50 people spoke for and against the development that combines 90 social housing units, the withdrawal centre and a social enterprise space. The project now moves to the development permit phase. If approved, construction could begin as early as 2020.
ning for Senate but withdrew from the election because he was afraid that if he ran, he would split the vote and cause a corrupt candidate to win. After he was later elected president, he used his authority a little differently. On a weekly basis, he held open office hours to hear the concerns of ordinary citizens, often for more than four hours a day.
That lawyer’s name? Abraham Lincoln. If you believe power corrupts, it’s hard to explain Lincoln. Being president didn’t just fail to bring out the worst in him; it brought out the best. As Lincoln’s biographer Robert Green Ingersoll put it: “Nothing discloses real character like the use of power. . . If you wish to know what a man really is, give him power.”
To predict how people will use power, you need to figure out what their motives, values and identities are before they have it. Are they generous givers or selfish takers?
In another experiment, psychologists assigned people a set of tasks and let them delegate some to a colleague. People who tend to be “givers” claimed the long, boring ones for themselves and gave away the short, interesting tasks. So did more selfish people - when they lacked power.
But when they were put in a position of
influence, the selfish “takers” stopped being fakers. They hogged the quick, exciting work and dumped the long, dull responsibilities on a colleague. You can even get this effect by just letting selfish people sit in the large desk chair in an office instead of the guest chair: They abused their assumed power and kept the easy, interesting work for themselves.
That’s what happened to Nixon: sitting in the ultimate seat of power amplified his unethical tendencies. “Power doesn’t always corrupt,” author Robert Caro has said, reflecting on Lyndon B. Johnson. “Power always reveals. When you have enough power to do what you always wanted to do, then you see what the guy always wanted to do.”
When we claim that power corrupts, we let powerful people off the hook. How you use authority reveals your character: Selfish leaders hoard power for personal gain. Servant leaders share power for social good. And the ultimate test of character for people in power is how they treat people who lack it.
Grant, an organizational psychologist, is the author of Originals and the host of the TED podcast WorkLife. This op-ed is based on his Audible Original, Power Moves.
Q: I’m a midcareer public servant.
Last summer, the funding that supported my position ended. My supervisor did everything possible to retain me, and I remain employed at the same salary but in a different capacity. Shortly after this, I applied for a management position, but my supervisor passed me over for someone less experienced. So I am both grateful to remain employed and stung that I wasn’t chosen for promotion.
Now I hate my work. I’m responsible for a handful of “special projects” that need doing but nobody else has time for. I feel irrelevant and sidetracked, and I dread coming to work, a huge change from the job I once loved. My annual evaluation is coming up. Do I tell this kind boss who worked so hard to keep me but passed me over for promotion how much I hate my life now?
I have been applying for other jobs, which feels disloyal.
A: My guess, I’m sorry to say, is that your boss has taken you as far as he can.
Complaining that the shelter he’s provided is drafty and lacks amenities will sound entitled –and won’t leave him inclined to protect you further if a higher-up
But if you approach your boss with an emphasis on gratitude for what he’s already done and eagerness to try new things, he may come up with more strategies to enhance your value...
looking to cut costs questions why someone as experienced as you is being paid to handle projects that even you don’t seem to value.
But if you approach your boss with an emphasis on gratitude for what he’s already done and eagerness to try new things, he may come up with more strategies to enhance your value and make a more secure place for yourself.
And finding a better job elsewhere may temporarily inconvenience your boss – but it’s not “disloyal.” All you owe him is adequate notice and maybe an extra word of thanks for having your back.
Q: I have held three jobs since graduating from college 15 years ago. I have worked in the U.S. federal
government for the past six years, and for most of it I was content and had top ratings. However, there are no opportunities to advance, as a staggering number of senior and executive employees in my division have recently begun to “retire in place.”
Many are in their 50s and have decided to “check out” at work. My manager tells me this is unlikely to change anytime soon. I really like my work and do not want to start over, but I do not think it is reasonable to endure another five or 10 years without advancement. Should I stick with it or start looking to leave?
A: I can’t help feeling a pang of sympathy for the older workers you see as obstacles to your ascent. Maybe they want to retire or change fields but are hobbled by economic constraints and age discrimination. They may be just as frustrated as you.
So you have the choice of resigning yourself to resentment, or letting your discontent and ambition spur you to explore opportunities elsewhere.
For whatever public agency you’re currently serving is there is a parallel private-sector entity – contractor? Lobbying firm? Publisher? Educational institution? – that would welcome your expertise.
Lindsey M. ROBERTS Citizen news service
Who hasn’t stared at their kitchen and wished HGTV could sweep in and update it? Short a television show’s budget and ability to bring in contractors, the next best thing might be talking to people who have decorated for TV: Orlando Soria, who is launching his own HGTV show in the fall called Unspouse My House, and Karin Bennett, who was a lead designer for a season of Property Brothers. But first take some advice from professional organizer Jeanie Engelbach, founder and owner of Apartmentjeanie in New York.
“Organization of any space in the home is the foundation,” she said. “The kitchen should be the cleanest room in the home; however, it is often the most highly trafficked, congested and forgotten space.”
Clear out the clutter, put things back purposefully, pick a project or two, and you could have a new kitchen in a weekend:
Get rid of excess
Go through everything in your kitchen and set aside tools or appliances you don’t use.
“If you’re not making fantasticlooking fruit salads all the time, you can let go of the melon baller,” Engelbach said. If you find later that you do use the waffle maker quite often, you can put it back on the counter. Toss that collection of mismatched glassware, too.
“Being an adult means letting go of free pint glasses from college,” she adds.
When you put things back onto your shelves and into your drawers, organize for the way you use your kitchen. Put knives near cutting boards close to the sink. Gather coffee supplies together on a tray. For one of her clients, Engelbach made a station for the school-age kids to put their lunches together, with drawers for snacks and containers.
If you can’t stomach the work or don’t have time to paint cabinets, paint some walls. One bold accent wall might require only a halfgallon of paint and an afternoon of work, said Bennett, who lives outside Toronto. Or paint your floor.
“If you have a wood floor but you hate the wood’s colour, you can paint it white,” she adds.
With the right paint, you can also paint tile flooring or a backsplash – Benjamin Moore and Sherwin-Williams have good options, she said.
Both Bennett and Soria suggest installing new cabinet hardware.
“One of the most common questions clients ask is whether all of
the metals have to match,” said Soria, who is based in Los Angeles.
“But I think you can really mix it up.” He said that black finish looks good with brass finish, or even with nickel zinc. Mix up shapes, too. Try knobs on the upper cabinets and pulls on the lowers, a strategy Bennett employed for her own kitchen. For even less money, you can spray-paint your existing hardware.
“I am a spray-paint queen,” Bennett said. “Unscrew those knobs and take them out to your garage.”
She suggests matte or brushed gold.
Updating fixtures may seem like a project only for homeowners, but Soria was able to change out the lights in his rental with his landlord’s approval. When choosing a new fixture, consider how much light you want. In a dark kitchen, Bennett said, the lampshades should be translucent or glass.
“Then you’ll get a lot more light and not just directional light” shining downward. She finds inexpensive pendants and more at Target, HomeSense and HomeGoods.
“Even just the type or amount of accessories you have in your kitchen can completely change the look,” Bennett said. With a classic white kitchen and black countertops, she’d add natu-
ral wood in cutting boards leaning against a backsplash or wooden bowls on a shelf.
“A copper or terra-cotta plant pot looks amazing,” she adds. If you’re looking for more vibrantly colored accessories, Bennett said to use the color in no more than three accessories. Think, too, of how those appliances on your countertop can be accessories in their own right. Engelbach said Smeg’s appliances in particular are attractive, and adds that even a new kettle and toaster can reenergize a kitchen.
“They’re making some really good washable rugs for the kitchen now,” Soria said, pointing to Hook & Loom as an example.
Try a 2-by-3-foot rug in front of the sink or a 2-by-8-foot runner down a long kitchen. It adds “softness and colour,” he said.
“And you want a washable rug because, in a kitchen, there are sauces flying everywhere.”
“Something you don’t see all the time is putting up art,” Soria said.
“I’ve put up art on my backsplash using self-adhesive foam tape.” He said it can help anchor those organized stations, making them look visually united.
Engelbach agrees.
“I think it’s nice to have fabulous
artwork,” she said. “For people who have open floor plans and open kitchens, they need to be cognizant of the fact that the kitchen is part of the living space.”
If you can see a kitchen wall while you’re sitting on your living room sofa, you’ll want it to be aesthetically pleasing.
For renters and non-renters alike, Engelbach recommends temporary wallpaper. Many companies make these, including Tempaper Designs and Chasing Paper. Engelbach said that while many of her New York clients are in rented apartments, even those who aren’t don’t know if they want to commit to the expense of fully adhesive wallpaper. For a “verybudget update” for a backsplash, Soria suggests self-adhesive penny tile, easy enough to find on Amazon, at Home Depot or at Bed Bath & Beyond.
“If you don’t have the time or the money to actually tile, you can actually use this wall detail.”
Soria just finished his parents’ kitchen remodel and added a patterned Roman shade. “It’s a small update that you can do,” he said. To save more, Bennett suggests, sew the shade yourself with remnants or going-out-of-stock fabric.
Elizabeth MAYHEW Citizen news service
When you first enter the foyer of designer Katie Ridder and her architect husband Peter Pennoyer’s house in New York’s Dutchess County, you can’t help but be surprised by the durable lavender ceramic hexagonal tiles that cover the floor. But take a quick turn into their kitchen and the floor changes into mellow wood planks. “I only like wood floors in kitchens,” said Ridder. “They are soft underfoot, the upkeep is easy... I really don’t think there are any drawbacks.”
Just about any image of a kitchen you see these days on decorating blogs, social media or television makeover shows displays a wood floor. Of course, there are many who have tile or stone kitchen floors, but the current popularity of wood in kitchens cannot be denied. Chalk it up to the kitchen design crush of the moment –the modern farmhouse style – or the overwhelming belief that wood floors are more forgiving, warmer (tile can feel cold to the touch) and more comfortable to stand on for prolonged periods of time.
D.C. architect Donald Lococo of Donald Lococo Architects said the preference for wood kitchen floors is also due in part to today’s more open house plans.
“Rooms that flow into one another, like a kitchen and family room, make it harder to transition from one floor material to another, so the seams between stone and wood are more difficult to implement.”
Debbie Gartner, a Westchester, New York, flooring expert and founder of the Flooring Girl (theflooringgirl.com) said her clients overwhelmingly choose solid wood kitchen flooring for the look and comfort, but also because they feel wood floors are a better investment.
“Tile is taste-specific and easily dates itself,” Gartner said. “Hardwood floors, while often more expensive to install, have lasting power and in the long run will be a better return on your investment.”
Some may shy away from using wood flooring in their kitchens because of the required long-term maintenance of wood flooring or the worry of having wood floors near so much water. Gartner said the presence of water should be a minor concern.
“People don’t actually get that much water on their kitchen floors, and if an appliance were to break, insurance would typically cover any warping or other damage,” she said.
To best preserve the life of wood flooring, Gartner advises first and foremost to always remove your shoes when you come in your house.
“My clients often blame their pets for scratches on their wood floors, but it’s people who do more damage,” she said.
The biggest culprit: dirt and pebbles that get caught in shoes and then get dragged over the wood.
Gartner also recommends putting felt pads under furniture legs, particularly on chairs and other pieces that get moved frequently. And she said to avoid furniture that is on wheels; dirt can get caught in the wheels and then scratch your floor.
Like any flooring, wood should be cleaned regularly. Gartner uses Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner, which is a fast-drying, water-based spray-and-mop formula, and a microfiber mop. And never use wax, oils or any product that promises to restore the
sheen of your floors.
“Such products quickly degrade your floor’s finish, so you will need to sand and refinish them sooner than would typically be necessary,” Gartner said.
In kitchens, Lococo said, the highest-traffic area is in front of the sink, so over time that area of the floor will likely show the most damage, but getting a protective mat like those from GelPro can help protect the wood (they also make doing dishes more comfortable because the mats are cushy to stand on).
Nicks and scratches in your wood floor are inevitable. For a short-term solution, Gartner recommends using Minwax’s Wood Finish Stain Markers to camouflage the damage. The markers come in eight colours including golden oak and ebony; she said to buy two similar colors as most woods have colour variations in the grain. Eventually, your wood floor will require a more drastic fix, but Lococo said his clients typically rescreen their floors before they completely refinish them. Rescreening entails buffing off the thin protective layer of polyurethane then reapplying it.
Darryle Cameron Plato
July 24th, 1967 - February 10th, 2019
It is with sad hearts the family announces
Darryle passed away peacefully but unexpectedly at the Hospice House after a year long battle with cancer. He will be greatly missed by his wife of 23 years Lisa, his daughters Paige and Jaycee, parents Vern and Dorothy Plato, brothers Rod(Nola) and Mike (Lorena)and cousin Vern(Kim), with whom he had a special friendship. He had many other extended family members and close friends who will miss him. Darryle was a loving husband, Dad, son, brother, uncle and friend. He loved to quad, fish, camp, and was happiest around a fire in his back yard listening to music, or on a beach in Mexico. He was always thinking of his family and worked hard to provide a good life for them. His greatest accomplishment in life was being a good Dad to his daughters, he was so very proud of them both.
Taken far too soon, loved by so many.
A celebration of life will be held in May.
In lieu of flowers, we kindly request donations be made to the Hospice Society of Prince George. With profound sadness, we announce the passing of Daphane May Switzer, surrounded by her family on February 15, 2019. Daphane was born in The Pas, Manitoba on may 9, 1947. She is survived by her devoted husband John, and loving children Lynn (Arnold); Colleen (Jason); Steve (Ruth). She is the proud grandmother of Travis, Koral, Kevin and Steven and cherished her great grandchildren Zoe; Keegan and Colson. She also leaves behind her sisters, Marian and Karen and many other family members and friends who will sadly miss her. She was predeceased by her mother Coral Holdner; father Alfred Holdner and brother, Larry Holdner. A Celebration of Life will be held at her daughter’s home at 2284 Springall Place in Prince George, BC on Saturday May 11, 2019. Drop in between 1:00 - 4:00pm. The family would like to thank all of the staff and volunteers at Hospice for their compassionate care during Mom’s last days. In lieu of flowers, donations to Prince George Hospice Society would be gratefully appreciated. www.hospiceprincegeorge.ca/donate/ or call 250-563-2551
Brentwood snowblower, new motor, 13hp. $650.00 250-6174293
BUSINESS for sale, Sewing Shop, next to Nelly’s Pub,
Peter George Vranjes
It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of Peter George Vranjes at the age of 63. Peter passed away on February 16th, 2019 surrounded by his wife Carmela and son Michael by his side. He was predeceased by his father Duro. Peter is survived by his wife Carmela, son Michael (Terri), grandchildren Evelyn, Natalie, Owen, mother Margaret, brother David, sisters Anica and Margaret, brother-in-laws Paolo, Rocco (Marilyn), Domenic (Karen), sister-in-law Mecolata (Allan) and numerous nieces and nephews. A celebration of Peter’s life will be held March 2nd, 2019 at 1:00 PM at Super 8 Inn (Formerly Esther’s Inn) 1151 Commercial Cres. Prince George BC. All family and friends are welcome.
(Geeltje) Gene Feddema (vanden Brink)--Oma to all who knew and loved her, passed away February 17, 2019 at the age of 73. She was a loving sister, mother and grandmother to her family. She is greatly missed by her children: Bert vanden Brink (Chris), Caroline Parker (Rick) and Jessy vanden Brink as well as her grandchildren: Robert, Kyle, Daniel and Jenny Parker, and Katelynn Alexandria, Ashley-Anne Churchill. She is survived by her sisters Margret Feddema, Lyla Swathwood and brother Cees Feddema as well as family residing in the Netherlands. A Celebration of Life will be held in the Spring.
It is with broken hearts and profound sadness that we announce the peaceful passing of our beloved wife and mother, Marjorie Lily Doknick, on February 18, 2019. She is survived by her husband of 70 years, Sam, son Robert and daughters Sharron, Janet and Shannon. One of Marjorie’s greatest joy’s was family, especially her five granddaughters who will have cherished memories that will endure. She was an amazingly giving woman who touched the lives of many and will be missed dearly by all.
TORONTO (CP) — Major North American indices rebounded at the end of the week as investors regained confidence after closing in the red the day before.
The S&P/TSX composite index gained 12.15 points to 16,031.01. In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average moved up 181.18 points to 26,031.81. The S&P 500 index rose 17.79 points to 2,792.67, while the Nasdaq composite advanced 67.84 points to 7,527.54. “Looks like some optimism is starting to creep into the market again with the Chinese and U.S. trade negotiations,” said Kathryn Del Greco, vice president and investment advisor at TD Wealth.
U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese Vice Premier Liu He met in the White House Friday afternoon. Trump has also indicated the March 1 deadline to reach a deal is not a hard deadline, but one that could be extended.
“I think the market is just starting to gain comfort that this is not just PR talk trying to talk us into a position of confidence, but is actually, it looks like there’s material steps that are developing,” said Del Greco. The Toronto market also saw a lift from the basic materials sector, which rose 0.2 per cent. Barrick Gold Corp. announced it has “reviewed the opportunity” to merge with rival Colorado-based Newmont Mining Corp. but that no decision has been made. Whenever there is major merger and acquisition activity, it starts to awaken the sector and people begin to speculate what the next potential target may be, said Del Greco. It sparks trading activity and a little bit of optimism, she said. The promise of a resolution to the trade negotiations between the two countries also helped boost oil prices. The April crude contract rose 30 cents to US$57.26 per barrel.
A resolution would have a very positive spillover effect to the global economy and the consumption of commodities, said Del Greco.
Elsewhere in commodities, the April natural gas contract gained about two cents to roughly US$2.74 per mmBTU.
The April gold contract advanced US$5.00 to US$1,332.80 an ounce and the March copper contract was ahead about six cents to US$2.95 a pound.
The Canadian dollar averaged 75.91 cents US, up 0.13 of a US cent from Thursday.
OTTAWA — In the lead up to his pre-election budget, federal Finance Minister Bill Morneau has been alerted by his department that Canadians’ heavy debts have made abrupt shocks to incomes, house prices or interest rates a “significant concern,” according to internal documents.
On March 19, Morneau will release the Liberal government’s final budget before the October federal election. He’s underlined several issues expected to be addressed in the document, including prescription-drug costs, skills training for workers and support for seniors.
Morneau’s also hinted changes are on the way to help make home-buying more accessible for millennials, a generation of people now in their mid-20s to late 30s.
But with concerns about Canadians’ debt levels, it’s unclear how far the government will go.
Internally, briefing documents show Morneau’s been told “the high level of debt of Canadian households remains a key domestic risk,” even though rising interest rates have helped slow private borrowing and stricter policies have made mortgages less risky for lenders.
Last November, when budget preparations were likely well underway, a Finance Department briefing addressed to Morneau warned of “dynamics” that could have important implications for the economy in late 2018 and into 2019.
Among the issues, officials urged him to be mindful of Canadians’ stretched finances.
“How households would respond if the Canadian economy were suddenly hit with a shock
to incomes, house prices or interest rates, given higher debt levels, is a significant concern,” said the Nov. 16 note, obtained by The Canadian Press under the Access to Information Act.
Industry has pressed Ottawa to ease stress tests that have tightened mortgage qualification rules and, as a result, cooled housing markets.
The federal changes, combined with provincial and municipal guidelines, were brought in to improve the quality of mortgage debt and to lower risks to the broader economy.
Asked Friday about pressure to loosen the stress tests, Morneau said he had nothing new to announce about them and that they were needed for a reason.
“We wanted to make sure that the market was stable, we wanted to make sure that prices were not escalating in some markets at a pace that was unsustainable,” Morneau told reporters in Toronto following his pre-budget meeting with private-sector economists.
When it comes to helping more young people buy property, Paul Taylor, CEO of Mortgage Professionals Canada, has said he’s made recommendations to federal officials that they reintroduce insurance on 30-year mortgages as a targeted way to help people at the lower end. Taylor has also argued the stress tests have succeeded in taking some of the froth out of the market and he believes Ottawa should loosen them now.
The stronger economy has encouraged the Bank of Canada to hike interest rates five times since 2017 to its current level of 1.75 per cent.
Governor Stephen Poloz said Thursday that the rate will keep rising – or normalizing – over time to somewhere between 2.5 per cent and
James McCARTEN Citizen news service
WASHINGTON — Three of Canada’s premiers brought an earnest, brass-tacks message to the U.S. national capital Friday: hit the reset button on one of the most important cross-border relationships in the world by ending American tariffs on steel and aluminum imports.
Despite their conservative sensibilities, Ontario Premier Doug Ford, Saskatchewan’s Scott Moe and Blaine Higgs from New Brunswick may seem a disparate trio. But their styles – Moe’s analytical approach, the folksy charm of Higgs and Ford’s bluntness – proved surprisingly compatible.
Higgs, who hails from the New Brunswick border town of Woodstock, told a panel discussion about growing up right next to Maine, watching lumber-laden big rigs carry Canadian logs to U.S. mills over a boundary that almost seemed an afterthought.
“I could throw a rock across the border; my best friend lived across the border,” said Higgs, who traces the problems between Canada and the United States back to the 9/11 terrorist attacks in Washington and New York in 2001.
Nowadays, “you’re thinking, ‘Wow, what happened? What happened to our relationship?’ We’ve got to get that back if we’re going to be strong and continue to be dominant together in the world we live in.”
The three premiers are in Washington to
attend the winter meeting of the National Governors Association, which bills itself as a non-partisan, policy-over-politics gathering of state leaders. But their primary mission is to appeal to anyone who will listen for relief from the tariffs, which have been in place since last May and are taking their toll on the premiers’ respective provincial economies.
Ford, the for-the-people leader who relishes giving out his personal cellphone number in public, raised eyebrows in Ottawa earlier this month when his government called on the federal Liberals to show goodwill by lifting its retaliatory tariffs, which have targeted some $16.6 billion in U.S. imports since June.
He appeared to be backing down from that “olive-branch” approach Friday, even if he wouldn’t say so.
“I’m a businessman; I want to get the deal done,” said Ford, conceding that the idea of blinking first in the tariff standoff has not gone over well with the steel industry.
“Let’s make this thing happen. This is dragging out, and as it’s dragging out, there’s that magical word that companies hate: uncertainty. There’s uncertainty on both sides of the border right now, while there’s millions of dollars being traded.”
U.S. Ambassador David MacNaughton clouded the waters further Thursday when he declared that an end to the U.S. tariffs would be in a matter of weeks, although he refused to say why he believes that.
3.5 per cent. But he noted the path is “highly uncertain” because of unknowns related to global trade, business investment and household debt.
Poloz was asked by reporters in Montreal whether the time had come to dial back the stress tests to help more people, including millennials, enter the market.
He said that before the tests were brought in house prices were rising 10 or 15 per cent per year in some markets, which represents a much faster pace than rate increases. The central bank, he added, has been closely watching the data, but it’s still early since the latest rule change has barely been in force for a year.
“I can tell you that underwriting of mortgages, the quality, has improved significantly and that matters a lot because the vulnerability of the economy to a normalization of interest rates was becoming extremely high,” he said. When it comes to government debt, a preliminary analysis released Friday by Morneau’s department said Ottawa ran a surplus of $300 million through the first nine months of 201819. In comparison, Ottawa posted a deficit of $8.9 billion between April and December in 2017-18.
The Liberals have predicted the government will post a shortfall this fiscal year of $18.1 billion. With just three months left in 2018-19, the final federal balance sheet will likely look far different.
Pierre-Olivier Herbert, a spokesman for Morneau, said in an email Friday that the fiscal monitor’s results can be volatile and tend to be revised. He stressed it’s not uncommon to see movements in the budgetary balance in any given month.
Nicole WINFIELD Citizen news service
VATICAN CITY — Cardinals
attending Pope Francis’ summit on preventing clergy sex abuse called Friday for a new culture of accountability in the Catholic Church to punish bishops and religious superiors when they fail to protect their flocks from predator priests.
On the second day of Francis’ extraordinary gathering of Catholic leaders, the debate shifted to how church leaders must acknowledge that decades of their own coverups, secrecy and fear of scandal had only worsened the sex abuse crisis.
“We must repent, and do so together, collegially, because along the way we have failed,” said Mumbai Cardinal Oswald Gracias. “We need to seek pardon.”
Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich told the 190 bishops and religious superiors that new legal procedures were needed to both report and investigate Catholic superiors when they are accused of misconduct themselves or of negligence in handling other abuse cases. He said lay experts must be involved at every step of the process, since rank-and-file Catholics often know far better than priests what trauma the clergy sex abuse and its coverup has caused.
“It is the witness of the laity, especially mothers and fathers with great love for the church, who have pointed out movingly and forcefully how gravely incompatible the commission, coverup and toleration of clergy sexual abuse is with the very meaning and essence of the church,” Cupich said.
“Mothers and fathers have called us to account, for they simply cannot comprehend how we as bishops and religious superiors have often been blinded to the scope and damage of sexual abuse of minors,” he said.
Francis summoned the bishops for the four-day tutorial on preventing sex abuse and protecting children after the scandal erupted again last year in Chile and the U.S. While the Vatican for two decades has tried to crack down on the abusers themselves, it has largely given a pass to the bishops and superiors who moved the predators around from parish to parish.
Cupich called for transparent new structures to report allegations against superiors, investigate them and establish clear procedures to remove them from office if they are guilty of grave negligence in handling abuse cases.
He proposed that metropolitan bishops – who are responsible
for other bishops in their area –should conduct the investigations into suspected abuse with the help of lay experts, then forward the results to the Vatican.
Cupich acknowledged his proposal differed from that prepared by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops at large last year.
Those procedures, which called for a code of conduct for bishops and a third-party confidential reporting system, ran into legal snags at the Vatican, which blocked U.S. bishops from voting
on them in November.
At the time of the blocked vote, Cupich proposed his “metropolitan model,” which he articulated further Friday from the privileged position as an organizer of Francis’ summit.
Cupich told reporters that his proposal differed from the U.S. conference in that it was “anchored” in existing U.S. church structures for accountability and would therefore be obligatory for all bishops. The U.S. conference proposal would have been
The Bible is full of stories that seem impossible to understand, let alone to explain. It seems backwards that this book that is supposed to draw us nearer to God has chapters and books that seem to set up road blocks to faith.
One such story happens in Genesis 22 when God tests Abraham to take his son Isaac, his only son, the son he loves, and go to a hill top and sacrifice him as a burnt offering.
How does this work?
If Isaac is killed then how will God fulfill his promise of a great nation of descendants to a 100-year-old Abraham?
And how will this make God someone people will joyfully and gladly call their own?
It is this kind of story that feeds the perception that God is cruel,
REV. ANDREW AUKEMA CHRISTIAN REFORMED
greedy, insecure and therefore we should not believe in him. So what do we do with this kind of story?
There are two options that people have routinely taken.
One option is to just brush over the story, essentially wiping it out. My wife and I have watched a few episodes of the Netflix show Tidying Up with Marie Kondo. She is the advocate of a decluttering and organizing method where you go through all your stuff and keep only the things that “spark joy.”
There is a temptation to do the same thing with the Bible: picking and choosing which verses and
stories we will quote and live by because they spark joy and then ignore the rest.
But the other option is to dig deeper and to keep digging until we find the deep down gold of the Christian faith.
As Krish Kandiah writes in his book Paradoxology, “What if this ancient faith we call Christianity has survived so long not in spite of but precisely because of its apparent contradictions?
What if we have settled for neatly packaged, simplistic answers, instead of seeking out the deep and rich realities of our faith?
What if Christianity was never meant to be simple?”
If we are willing to dig deeper into the complex stories of the Bible, like God testing Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, we start to see some of these rich realities of our faith.
voluntary.
In addition, he said involving the regional metropolitan in the procedure would allow for pastoral follow-up to care for the victims.
More than 30 years after the scandal first erupted in Ireland and Australia, and 20 years after it hit the U.S., bishops and Catholic officials in many parts of Europe, Latin America, Africa and Asia still either deny that clergy sex abuse exists in their regions or play down the problem.
We start to see that it was not unreasonable for Abraham to trust God in his seemingly impossible request. Abraham has plenty of evidence that God has always been good to him when he follows his commands. Abraham has also learned that when he doesn’t obey God and tries taking things into his own hands that it does not work out that well. So it is no wonder the New Testament says that “Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead.”
When we look at the purpose of this test we also see that God was trying to realign Abraham’s greatest love. Abraham loved Isaac. And Abraham had gotten to a point where he thought that the promise of a great nation of descendants was totally dependent on the survival of Isaac. But God wanted to show him that the fulfillment of God’s promise was not dependent
Francis, the first Latin American pope, called the summit after he himself botched a well-known sex abuse coverup case in Chile last year.
Gracias, the Indian cardinal, opened the session by saying bishops must work together to address the problem because it was erroneous to say “it’s just a problem for the USA or Europe or Australia.”
“This, brothers and sisters, is just not true. I dare say there are cases all over the world, also in Asia, also in Africa,” Gracias said.
But Gracias’ prime-time speaking slot drew some criticism, since the Indian church isn’t known for being proactive in combating clergy sex abuse. Gracias himself has been publicly criticized for his record.
“Why was Gracias allowed to speak at the papal summit? He is a poster boy for the lack of accountability of church leaders, especially in developing countries,” said Anne Barrett Doyle of the online group BishopAccountability, which tracks the abuse scandal.
But it appeared the Vatican may have chosen as speakers precisely those cardinals whose own national churches have not confronted the scandal openly. On the summit’s opening day, for example, the keynote speaker was Filipino Cardinal Luis Tagle.
Based on public reporting and criminal prosecutions, BishopAccountability says it appears that no priests sexually abuse children in the Philippines, a scenario Barrett Doyle calls patently unrealistic. Tagle has said that cultural taboos in the Philippines often prevent victims from coming forward.
Victims have turned out in droves on the sidelines of the summit to demand greater accountability from the church, saying it has for decades put its own interests over those of who were harmed.
“They have this systematic process of covering up, moving along, transferring and not reporting,” said Tim Lennon, president of the U.S.-based survivor group SNAP. German survivor Matthias Katsch said victims are beyond angry.
“We are really fighting for truth and justice for the survivors,” he said.
Irish Archbishop Eamon Martin said the summit had given many pause for thought.
“We are beginning to realize that perhaps there is something about the way we did things as Church, about the way we are as Church, that this issue really throws up for us. It really makes us ask questions about ‘who are we?’ ” Martin said.
on Isaac, but on God himself. God fulfills God’s promises. This reminds us that when God asks us to do what we think is impossible that he is the one who does for us what was impossible for us to do in order to bring us closer to him.
As Paul wrote to the Romans: “What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?”
So often it seems that God is killing us, when in fact is saving us. As people have said before, once we realize that God is all we have, we realize that God is all we need. And if we are willing to do the digging then we will find these deep down golden truths of the Christian faith.
