Prince George Citizen February 28, 2019

Lheidli T’enneh demands pipelines removed

First Nation seeks court injunction against Enbridge following October gas explosion

Frank PEEBLES Citizen staff fpeebles@pgcitizen.ca

Enbridge must turn off the natural gas flowing through Prince George and must remove the two pipelines it runs through the area, the Lheidli T’enneh First Nation is demanding in a court injunction filed Wednesday against the giant energy company. “First and foremost, the lawsuit is about protecting human lives,” said Chief Dominic Frederick. “We are not opposed to industrial activity and the energy sector, but we are opposed to the unsafe transportation of hydrocarbons.”

The Lheidli T’enneh’s contention is that Enbridge has not behaved responsibly since the explosion of their natural gas pipeline on Oct. 9 about 15 kilometres north of Prince George, but only about 500 metres from the residential reserve where about 80 Lheidli people had to flee.

Their only path of escape was past the very fireball that threatened them. The mood was one of panic, exacerbated by the fear that one explosion would be followed by others.

Since the fire was put out, said Frederick, Enbridge went ahead without LTFN permission or consultation and started up the pipeline again. When the company was asked what caused the blast, the First Nation was told that was not known.

“Our other core message is our lives should not come as afterthoughts (to profits and shareholders),” Frederick said, flanked by dozens of LTFN members, including elders, elected leaders like himself, First Nations staff and their lawyer on this matter, Malcolm Macpherson. Frederick explained that some Lheidli people still experience

Shutting down pipelines ‘not

nightmares and anxieties over memories of that violent night, and unabated fear that it will happen again, without warning, at any moment’s notice.

“It is not business as usual for us,” he said, “yet Enbridge has acted towards us like it is still pre-1982 (the year Aboriginal rights were enshrined in the Canadian Constitution). It would appear that Enbridge didn’t learn any lessons in dealing with Indigenous communities during its failed attempt to build the Northern Gateway (oil pipeline) project. It had over 10 years to become an industry leader on how to properly commu-

in the public interest,’

Enbridge’s senior corporate communications advisor issued a written respsonse to the Lheidli T’enneh’s lawsuit.

Here it is in full:

“Enbridge’s natural gas pipeline system has been operating in B.C. for more than 60 years. Throughout that time, we have had strong relationships with many Indigenous communities near our pipeline system, including the Lheidli T’enneh First Nation.

“The natural gas transported by our pipeline system is a critical piece of energy infrastructure, the operation of which was determined by the National Energy Board to be in the public interest.

“The gas transported by this system is used to heat homes, hospitals, businesses and schools. It is also used as a fuel for electric power generation and is a staple in a number of industrial and manufactur-

nicate with and engage with First Nations communities and leadership. Enbridge has been very disrespectful in dealing with us in the time since the explosion.” It is the First Nation’s perspective that they can instruct Enbridge to remove the threat they are perceived to pose. That, said Frederick, goes for all the other pipelines and other infrastructure businesses and unpartnered governments have placed on their sprawling territory in the middle of the province.

“We’ve watched too long as companies in the energy, forestry, mining, and transportation sectors make billions doing business on our traditional territory, at our expense,” he said.

“It is a new day for doing business in Lheidli T’enneh traditional territory. We are the rightful owners of our land, and we will be treated with the respect and recognition that landowners deserve. It is our aspiration to become true partners in all aspects of industry and business development on our lands, including safety and emergency response. We will reclaim our position as the rightful stewards of our lands and resources. Our message to business is this: include us true partners. Share the benefits and opportunities that come from responsible resource and project development, and together we can achieve a vibrant, safe, and sustainable future. If you choose to ignore us, as Enbridge has in the time since the explosion, we will see you in court and use every means available to challenge you.”

Enbridge says

ing processes that produce products that improve our lives.

“It is not in the public interest to stop operating a critical piece of energy infrastructure that millions of people in B.C. and the U.S. Pacific Northwest rely on every day.

“At Enbridge, safety is our number one priority.

“Following the incident on our natural gas pipeline north of Prince George, B.C. on Oct. 9, 2018, Enbridge has been advancing a comprehensive safety and integrity review of our natural gas pipeline system in B.C.

“This involves undertaking a rigorous inspection of every section of pipeline using sophisticated tools that detect potential problems. This comprehensive program also involves integrity digs and maintenance where necessary.”

— see ‘ENBRIDGE IS, page 3

CITIZEN PHOTO BY BRENT BRAATEN

The Lheidli T’enneh First Nation announced Wednesday morning that it is seeking a court injunction against Enbridge over a pipeline explosion on Oct. 9, 2018 on their traditional territory.

FREDERICK MACPHERSON

CITIZEN FILE PHOTO

Enbridge crews work to repair a natural gas pipeline following an explosion 15 kilometres north of Prince George in October.

Bid conditions worry contractors

Citizen staff

The British Columbia Construction Association says B.C. Housing is imposing “onerous bidding conditions” on two projects in Prince George.

The BCCA issued alerts this week for work on Westwood Court and Hart Haven in which it “strongly advises” contractors to consider the risks associated with the terms.

B.C. Housing, which manages social housing on behalf of the provincial government, is seeking bids on remediating the exterior of Westwood Court and on renovations at Hart Haven.

Among its concerns, the BCCA claims that while B.C. Housing has issued a request for proposals for the Westwood Court project, it is actually a tender and that wording regarding the pricing of materials for that project is vague.

As for Hart Haven, concerns raised in-

clude that while the document refers to the scoring of the price submitted, it does not provide weightings and that B.C. Housing says it will undertake an economic analysis of alternative bid prices.

“This indicates that alternative prices would be considered in the evaluation of the bids, which is nor fair or transparent,” the BCCA says. “A preference could be for the selection of one favoured bidder.”

In a response, B.C. Housing spokesperson Rajvir Rao said the agency is committed to fair, open and transparent processes and takes the BCCA’s notification “very seriously.”

“We have regular quarterly meetings with the B.C. Construction Association where procurement practices are discussed with an objective of understanding both sides concerns,” Rao added. “The identified concerns from the BCCA have been part of our regular discussions.”

Active Living Guide released, Active Living Market this weekend

Citizen staff

Looking to get active, meet new people, or find a hobby?

Well, there is a guide – and a market –for that.

The city is releasing the 2019 Spring and Summer Community Active Living Guide this week. It’s now available online at www.princegeorge.ca and the printed version is being distributed through this week’s issue of the 97/16 weekly newspaper, which comes out today.

Copies of the guide will also be available at the Active Living Market at Pine Centre Mall this Saturday, from 9:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Sunday, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. as well as at civic facilities including

city hall, the civic centre and the aquatic centre starting Friday. The guide includes programming and events in city facilities and programs delivered by community associations in Prince George. It also provides contact information for hundreds of local organizations in Prince George and area, and provides seasonal information for “anyone interested in getting active, meeting new people, and having fun,” the city says.

The Active Living Market will feature 28 booths and showcase the many recreation groups and clubs in Prince George: yoga and fitness classes, swimming, T-ball, softball, baseball, soccer, basketball, seniors activities, lacrosse, pickleball, arts and culture.

Ambulance response times well below targets

Dirk MEISSNER Citizen news service

VICTORIA — British Columbia’s ambulances only made their target on life-threatening calls in urban areas half the time they were dispatched, the provincial auditor general said in a report released Wednesday.

Carol Bellringer said the first aid response is well below the BC Emergency Health Services’ target times and could impact patient care.

The missed response targets, almost one hour in some cases, are significant because urban areas account for 86 per cent of B.C.’s life-threatening 911 calls, said Bellringer.

The audit, which examined the period from April 2016 to December 2017, found ambulances in urban areas reached their nine-minute response time target on 50 per cent of life-threatening calls, while responses in rural and remote areas achieved and exceeded the time targets, she said.

“This increases the risk that some patients do not receive the care they need when they need it,” Bellringer said in news conference on Wednesday.

Bellringer said the audit found ambulances are getting to rural emergencies within the target time of 15 minutes 79 per cent of the time and to remote calls within the 30-minute limit 77 per cent of the time.

A spokeswoman for BC Emergency Health Services said its urban target times are improving and that gap is closing rapidly.

Linda Lupini, BCEHS vice-president, said the agency is implementing a three-

A man is loaded into an ambulance after a shooting incident in Surrey on Dec. 28, 2014. B.C. ambulances only make it to their destination by their targeted deadline half the time, according to the provincial auditor general.

year plan that includes measures to meet the emergency response targets by next year. She said the measures, which include a new dispatch process to prioritize emergency calls, is already showing improved results.

“Since we implemented our changes, including a new deployment, we are actually meeting our 2020 targets already on immediately life-threatening calls,” said Lupini in an interview.

“Yes, we absolutely believe we will hit our targets by 2020 and we are hitting our targets right now for immediately

life-threatening calls.”

Lupini said the service has increased its contingent of paramedics, dispatchers and ambulances, including 119 regular paramedics, more than 100 specialized paramedics, 20 emergency dispatchers and six nurses to help with less urgent calls. Bellringer said initial data from 2018 indicates only a slight improvement, 51 per cent, in urban response times on calls, but Lupini said the auditor only has results from the first few months of last year and the most up-todate data show huge improvements.

Coastal GasLink sidestepped hereditary chiefs authority, pipeline opponents say

Mark NIELSEN Citizen staff mnielsen@pgcitizen.ca

Coastal GasLink is being accused of sidestepping the rightful hereditary chiefs of the West’suwet’en First Nation in its effort to win support for its plan to build a natural gas pipeline through its territory.

In a response filed last week to an application seeking an injunction against impeding the project, defendants say that after encountering opposition, the company “funded and engaged with the representatives of an extraprovincial non-profit society” called the Wet’wuwet’en Matrilineal Coalition.

“WMC includes individuals who have improperly represented themselves as hereditary chiefs and who in consequence have been reprimanded using a hereditary chiefly title or formally stripped of the claimed chiefly title,” the defendants say.

Coastal GasLink has secured a temporary injunction prohibiting opponents from impeding pre-construction work on the pipeline to deliver natural gas from the B.C. Peace to the LNG Canada liquified natural gas facility planned for a site

near Kitimat. Combined, the projects are worth about $40 billion.

Whether the injunction should be made permanent is to be decided at a later date. Defendants had until Feb. 20 to file a response to CGL’s civil claim and application. In turn, CGL has until May 31 to file a rebuttal.

All five elected band councils within the Wet’suwet’en’s traditional territory have reached benefit agreements with CGL and are in support of the project.

However, the Office of the Wet’suwet’en, which represents the hereditary chiefs, say the elected council’s authority stops at the edges of their respective reserves and that they have authority over the rest of the 22,000-square-kilometre territory.

Since 2010, a checkpoint has been in place at the Morice River Bridge south of Houston. It’s run by the Unist’ot’en, which is affiliated with Dark House, one of three houses that make up the Gil_ seyhu or Big Frog clan, one of five that make up the Office of the Wet’suwet’en.

“By funding and engaging with the WMC, CGL has attempted to sidestep Dark House, the Office of the Wet’suwet’en and the Wet’suwet’en legal process,” the defendants continue and

go on to say the WMC is not accountable to Wet’suwet’en governance.

The defendants also say that after encountering opposition from Dark House and other houses through the Office of the Wet’suwet’en, CGL turned to seeking information from individual Wet’suwet’en members through what it called the Intergenerational Transfer of Knowledge program rather than through the hereditary system.

In doing so, CGL attempted to subvert the authority of the hereditary chiefs, the defendants say.

Defendants also say the court must take Indigenous law into account alongside common law and that the checkpoint and use of protocol questions to govern entry into the territory where pipeline construction is at particular dispute has been in compliance with Wet’suwet’en law.

“One of the firmest Wet’suwet’en laws hold that entry into any territory of any of the houses requires the permission of the head chief of that house,” defendants say. “To go onto territory where permission has neither been sought nor granted is considered a serious offence.”

None of the allegations have yet been tested in court.

Mandatory vaccination reporting

‘a goal’ in B.C. public

Citizen news service

VICTORIA — British Columbia Health Minister Adrian Dix says mandatory vaccination status reporting could be in place in the province by September.

Dix told reporters Tuesday that mandatory reporting is a goal of his ministry. He says the requirement has been under consideration since it was recommended five years ago by B.C.’s chief medical health officer.

B.C. Teachers Federation President Glen Hansman welcomes the initiative but wonders how schools will be prepared to handle the information.

He says it is crucial for the province to be able to track who is vaccinated and who is not, and be able to intervene if necessary.

Public health officials are warning of a significant outbreak of measles with

schools

15 cases of the highly infectious disease recorded in Metro Vancouver.

Two new cases were reported Wednesday and most of the illnesses are linked to two French-language schools in Vancouver after an unvaccinated child contracted the disease during a trip to Vietnam.

Unlike Ontario, New Brunswick and Manitoba, B.C. does not have a law requiring mandatory vaccinations for measles.

While the reporting of vaccination status will be mandatory, Dix says the province intends to continue with voluntary immunizations for childhood diseases.

Considering many parents still choose to opt out of vaccination programs, Hansman says the province must now decide who has the power to intervene when unvaccinated children are at school and an outbreak occurs.

‘Enbridge is committed to fostering a strengthened relationship with Indigenous communities’

— from page 1

“This is an intensive effort intended to validate the safety and reliability of the entire B.C. system,” the Enbridge statement continued.

“Enbridge is cooperating with the Transportation Safety Board, which is the lead investigator for this incident. The Lheidli T’enneh First Nation has been involved in the post-incident review process. A post-incident debriefing session on the emergency response on Nov. 21 involved multiple agencies, including the National Energy Board, emergency response services, Enbridge and leadership of the Lheidli T’enneh First Nation.

“Enbridge is committed to fostering a strengthened relationship with Indigenous communities, including the Lheidli T’enneh First Nation, built upon openness, respect and mutual trust. We notified the Lheidli T’enneh First Nation of the pipeline incident within nine minutes and immediately began to provide the community with support. The next day, Enbridge representatives participated at a community meeting to provide additional information. We have included members of the First Nation on a flyover of the incident site, participated in two council meetings, and provided numerous updates to the community.

“Our CEO Al Monaco has been in personal contact with Chief Dominic Frederick for a one-on-one meeting to strengthen and improve our relationship, and committed a team involving senior executives to negotiate a settlement and an agreement to frame our relationship going forward.

“We value our relationship with Lheidli T’enneh First Nation and are committed to continuing to work with leadership and the community on strengthening that relationship.”

Source: Enbridge Inc.

Company fined for dumping chlorine in Fraser River

VANCOUVER (CP) — Environment and Climate Change Canada says a dredging company has been fined $350,000 for depositing a damaging substance into water frequented by fish in B.C.

The department says in a news release that Fraser River Pile and Dredge (GP) Inc. pleaded guilty to the Fisheries Act violation and a B.C. provincial court imposed the fine last week.

The release says the company was dredging in Deas Slough in the Fraser River in February 2014 when its vessel punctured a submerged water main carrying chlorinated water to the City of Delta.

Enforcement officers investigated the incident and the department says they determined that chlorinated water was released through the pipe into the waterway.

It says Deas Slough is an important fish-bearing body of water and the concentration of chlorine that was released was damaging to fish.

“Certainly nobody at the school level is necessarily qualified to be making those sorts of determinations. If the health authority was involved or the school district had a clear legislative tool that they were able to use, not to be punitive, but to be able to make sure that the student body as a whole is safe,” Hansman says.

The BC Centre for Disease Control website shows that, on average, 88.4 per cent of youngsters in the province have had their second dose of measles vaccine, but coverage levels fall as low as 70.8 per cent in the Kootenay Boundary region. Experts say 90 to 95 per cent of the population must be immunized against measles in order to guarantee so-called herd immunity, which is the resistance to the disease that results when a sufficiently high proportion of the population is immune through vaccination.

Death in highway collision accidental, coroner says

about 20 kilometres east of the community. The road was in good condition and during daylight hours and with good visibility, Currie says. An RCMP traffic reconstructionist found the pickup truck was travelling 111 to 120 km/h and the SUV 97 to 106 km/h. Why the pickup truck driver swerved into the eastbound lane was not stated. The woman was wearing a seatbelt and the side airbags deployed. The SUV was pushed back into the westbound ditch with “severe impact intrusion” on the passenger side. “I classify this death as accidental and make no recommendations,” Currie said. The woman was 57 years old.

CP FILE PHOTO

CP PHOTO Liberal MP

Jody WilsonRaybould appears at the House of Commons Justice Committee on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Wednesday.

Wilson-Raybould faced pressure, threats

OTTAWA — Former justice minister Jody Wilson-Raybould says she came under “consistent and sustained” pressure – including veiled threats – from the Prime Minister’s Office, the Privy Council Office and the finance minister’s office to halt a criminal prosecution of Montreal engineering giant SNC-Lavalin.

Testifying Wednesday to the House of Commons justice committee, Wilson-Raybould said she believes she was shuffled out of the justice portfolio because she refused to give in.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, his senior staff, the clerk of the Privy Council and others repeatedly “hounded” her to end the prosecution, she said, and this went on for months after the director of public prosecutions, Kathleen Roussel, rejected the idea of nego-

tiating a remediation agreement with SNC-Lavalin – and long after Wilson-Raybould unequivocally told them she would not intervene to override Roussel’s decision.

Wilson-Raybould was shuffled out of the justice portfolio in January and resigned from cabinet earlier this month after a story broke that she had been pressured inappropriately to arrange a remediation agreement that would have headed off the prosecution.

“For a period of approximately four months, between September and December of 2018, I experienced a consistent and sustained effort by many people within the government to seek to politically interfere in the exercise of prosecutorial discretion in my role as the attorney general of Canada,” she told the committee.

She said the pressure was exerted on her or her staff by 11 individuals in the Prime Minister’s

Office, the Privy Council Office and the Finance Minister Bill Morneau’s office through approximately 10 phone calls, 10 meetings and numerous emails and text messages. They repeatedly raised concerns about the risks to the company if it were convicted of corruption and fraud in relation to work it sought in Libya.

And she said the fact there was a provincial election in Quebec was a major concern for the Liberal government. A conviction could mean a 10-year ban on federal work for the company, which specializes in civil engineering and construction, and Wilson-Raybould said the government was worried the SNC-Lavalin would move its headquarters from Montreal to London if that happened.

In her testimony, Wilson-Raybould said the decision not to pursue such an agreement was made in September, but she and her staff

heard repeatedly from Trudeau’s office and Morneau’s office after that, trying to find ways to help SNC-Lavalin.

She said she was told repeatedly the decision was up to her, but attempts to talk her into a remediation agreement were relentless.

Trudeau has said Wilson-Raybould was not directed or improperly pressured to do anything for the company. Last week, though, his principal secretary and longtime friend Gerald Butts resigned, saying that he and his role in the affair had become a distraction.

Wilson-Raybould’s account of the campaign to change her mind on SNC-Lavalin included approaches from Trudeau, Butts, Morneau’s chief of staff Ben Chin, and the clerk of the Privy Council Michael Wernick that were directed at her, her chief of staff Jessica Prince, and her deputy minister in the Department of Justice.

B.C. woman detained in hospital for nearly a year

Citizen news service

VANCOUVER — The Supreme Court of British Columbia says a woman’s rights were violated when she was held in hospital for almost one year without being provided with any written reasons for the detention or an opportunity for legal advice.

In a ruling released this week, Justice Lisa Warren describes the 39-year-old woman as “highly vulnerable” and says she suffers from cognitive impairments, mental health issues and fetal alcohol spectrum disorder.

The ruling says staff at the Fraser Health Authority had good reason to believe the woman, identified as A.H. in a court document, had been abused and was at risk of serious harm when she was taken into care on Oct. 6, 2016. But it says there is also no doubt the health authority could have promptly applied for a provincial court order authorizing the provision of support and services for her.

The decision says A.H. was held in conditions that violated her residual liberty, including being placed in mechanical restraints, not allowed out of a facility to get fresh air and restrictions were placed on visitor, phone and Internet access.

A provincial court judge granted the required order to the health authority on Sept. 22, 2017, on the grounds the woman was abused or neglected, was incapable of deciding not to accept the services proposed and would benefit from the support.

Trump knew about WikiLeaks plan ahead of time, Cohen says

Matt ZAPOTOSKY, Karoun DEMIRJIAN, Rosalind S. HELDERMAN and Rachael BADE

Citizen news service

WASHINGTON — Michael Cohen, U.S. President Donald Trump’s former fixer and personal lawyer, returned to Capitol Hill on Wednesday for a House Oversight Committee hearing. Here are the highlights of his testimony so far:

• Cohen has alleged that Trump knew in advance that the anti-secrecy organization WikiLeaks planned to publish hacked Democratic National Committee emails.

• He has sparred aggressively with GOP lawmakers, who have questioned his credibility and motives for coming forward.

• He detailed how deeply and personally involved Trump was in the scheme to pay off an adult-film actress who alleged that she had an affair with Trump.

• He described how he, like many in Trump’s orbit, had long sought to protect the president, but made clear: “I am not protecting Mr. Trump anymore.”

• He has suggested that federal prosecutors are investigating unspecified criminal allegations involving the president that have not been made public.

After a lengthy afternoon break, Cohen resumed his blockbuster testimony to the House Oversight Committee.

The committee began with an issue that Republicans had pressed earlier in the day – whether Cohen had properly disclosed to the committee contracts he has held with foreign companies.

After consulting with his lawyers, Cohen told the committee that he did not believe he was required to disclose his contracts with any foreign businesses, because a disclosure form he received asked for money from foreign governments. Cohen said he was willing to disclose his contact with a bank in Kazakhstan, which he argued was not a government entity though it is majority-owned by the Kazakh government.

Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, the ranking Republican, said Cohen should also disclose his work for a Korean entity. Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings, D-Md., said he would work with Cohen on making the disclosures and that they were not “an unreasonable request.”

Trump remains in Vietnam and hasn’t responded to Cohen’s testimony aside from a morning tweet. His 2020 campaign spokeswoman, though, blasted Cohen’s credibility in a statement Wednesday afternoon.

“Michael Cohen is a felon, a disbarred lawyer, and a convicted perjurer, who lied to both Congress and the Special Counsel in a ‘deliberate and premeditated’ fashion according to the Special Counsel’s Office,” the spokeswoman, Kayleigh McEnany, wrote.

“Now he offers what he says is evidence, but the only support for that is his own testimony, which has proved before to be worthless. As noted by the Southern District of New York, Cohen’s wide array of crimes were ‘marked by a pattern of deception that permeated his professional life’ and his ‘instinct to blame others is strong.’ Prosecutors said his actions were to ensure that he would ‘profit personally, build his own

power, and enhance his level of influence.’

This is the same Michael Cohen who has admitted that he lied to Congress previously. Why did they even bother to swear him in this time?”

Cohen alleged in his opening statement that he listened in on a call in July 2016 in which Roger Stone claimed to Trump he had talked with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, and he thus knew the organization was about to release a batch of emails.

Barry Pollack, a lawyer for Assange, denied that Stone had such a call with Assange.

“Roger Stone did not have the telephone call Michael Cohen described Stone claiming to have had with Julian Assange,” Pollack said.

“It is ironic that while Stone and Cohen have both been charged with lying, and the public tries to untangle those lies, Mr. Assange apparently faces criminal charges in the Eastern District of Virginia for his role in publishing truthful information.”

Earlier in the day during Cohen’s testimony, Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who chaired the Democratic National Committee when it was hacked by the Russians during the 2016 election, pressed Cohen on whether Trump was capable of “colluding” with Russia to win the 2016 election.

Cohen said, “yes” – though he initially hesitated, noting that answering such a question would be pure speculation on his part. “I’d rather not answer that question,” he initially said, but later agreed: “Trump’s desire to win would have him work with anyone.”

He continued: “I wouldn’t use the word ‘colluding.’ Was there something odd about the back-and-forth praise with President (Vladimir) Putin? Yes. But I’m not really

sure that I can answer that question in terms of collusion. I was not part of the campaign. I don’t know the other conversations Trump had with other individuals.”

Cohen has alleged – amid a stream of potentially damaging revelations about the president – that Trump knew in advance that the anti-secrecy organization WikiLeaks planned to publish hacked Democratic National Committee emails, and he will describe the president as a “racist,” a “conman” and a “cheat,” according to a copy of his written testimony.

The WikiLeaks allegation is perhaps the most explosive in the written testimony, speaking to the core of special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into whether the Trump campaign coordinated with Russia to influence the election. Mueller already has alleged that Russian military officials hacked the emails before they were published online by groups including WikiLeaks.

Cohen was unable to answer the Florida Democrat’s question about whether Trump knew about the DNC hacking before it happened. But he confirmed that Trump’s children likely also knew about the Trump Organization’s attempt to build a Trump tower in Moscow during the 2016 election.

“The company was involved... which meant the family was involved,” he said.

Wasserman Schultz continued: “Is it possible the whole family is conflicted or compromised with a foreign adversary in the months before the election?”

Cohen answered yes.

In other morning testimony, Cohen provided to Congress three documents called “statements of financial condition,” which he said Trump had prepared to show potential lenders that he was worthy of a loan. Cohen said that these three statementsfrom 2011, 2012 and 2013 – were shown to Deutsche Bank, as Trump sought a loan

to purchase the Buffalo Bills football team. Trump, in the end, did not buy the team. These statements were not rigorously audited financial documents. Instead, they amounted to Trump’s own estimates about what he was worth and what he owed. Trump himself was the main source of the data.

But the 2013 statement showed something remarkable. That year, Trump rapidly increased his own estimate of his net worth - from $4.6 billion to $8.6 billion.

The reason was not a new building or a big business success by Trump. Instead, Trump simply assigned a massive dollar value – $4 billion – to his own brand, and then counted that brand among his assets, as if it was a building or a golf course. The result was that his net worth nearly doubled. In his statement, Cohen said that these statements were part of a pattern of Trump exaggerating his net worth, when it benefitted him.

“It was my experience that Mr. Trump inflated his total assets when it served his purposes,” Cohen said.

Rep. Jim Jordan, an Ohio Republican and the panel’s ranking Republican, made clear in his first exchange with Cohen what Republicans line of attack will be at the hearing: Cohen is a disgruntled employee, upset that he couldn’t get a job in the Trump White House.

“You worked for (Trump) for 10 years, Mr. Cohen. How long did you work in the White House?” Jordan asked.

“I never worked in the White House,” Cohen responded.

“That’s the point, Mr. Cohen, isn’t it?” Jordan asked. “You wanted to work in the White House. You didn’t get brought to the dance.”

Cohen insisted he was offered White House jobs and said he could tell a story of Trump “reaming out” chief of staff Reince Priebus because Trump wanted him to work in the White House counsel’s office.

“Mr. Jordan, all I wanted was what I got, to be personal attorney to the president,” Cohen said. Also in earlier testimony, Cohen said “there is no doubt” in his mind that Trump was acutely aware that Stormy Daniels, an adult-film actress, was being paid to keep silent about an alleged affair she had with the president, with the payments orchestrated through Cohen. He brought a series of check images with him to show how and when Trump incrementally reimbursed him for the $130,000 payment to Daniels –showing that Trump was involved with the scheme, even while president.

One check for $35,000, dated March 17, 2017, was issued from a trust account belonging to Trump, and signed by his son, Donald Trump Jr. Another check, dated Aug. 1, 2017, was from Trump’s personal account – and signed by the president himself. Cohen said the payments were made directly because they were “declaratively a retainer for services that would be provided for the year of 2017.” But “there is no retainer agreement,” he noted.

WASHINGTON POST PHOTO BY MELINA MARA

Michael Cohen, former aide and lawyer to U.S. President Donald Trump, testifies before the House Oversight and Reform Committee on Capitol Hill on Wednesday.

B.C. school board votes to provide students free tampons, pads

Citizen news service

NEW WESTMINSTER — A

British Columbia school board believes it is one of the first in the country to provide free feminine hygiene products in washrooms. Members of the New Westminster school board unanimously passed the motion Tuesday night. Starting in September, tampons and pads will be available in women’s and universal washrooms in elementary, middle and

high schools in New Westminster. Douglas College Prof. Selina Tribe proposed the motion, calling it an issue of equality because access to tampons and pads “is as essential as toilet paper for a normal bodily function that affects half the population.”

She said most schools have dispensers for menstrual products, but charge for the items. The cost of installing the free dispensers is estimated at $10,000, while district staff say stocking them will

cost about $7,000 annually. Tribe expects the overall cost will amount to less than $1 per student by the second year of the program. New Westminster School Board chairman Mark Gifford said the issue received little attention until it was brought to trustees.

“I think that’s a little bit of a reflection of some of the stigma that can be around having conversations about periods and menstruation and it was a common sense

step for the board to take,” he said. Tribe believes free and readily available pads and tampons could dramatically improve the school experience for some students.

“We know that girls, if they can’t manage their periods properly, they will remove themselves from activities, from extracurricular or athletic activities, also social activities, and in the worst case, they will actually miss school if they cannot manage their period,” Tribe said.

Tomorrow’s archives today

Merriam-Webster defines archive as:

1. a place in which public records or historical materials (such as documents) are preserved and; 2. a repository or collection especially of information.

That definition generally agrees with my own understanding of the core work that we do here at The Exploration Place Museum + Science Centre; work that began in 1958.

Today, this award-winning, Class A, institution holds over 1,000,000 archival items, some 1,062 linear feet, with over 100,000 archival entries in our publicly searchable, online database alone, (if you factor in the artifact collection, we are responsible for over ten times that figure).

This collection is used daily by researchers for books, news stories, articles, presentations, films, economic development, scientific studies and genealogical research. Under the category of “Huh, who’d have thought…” the Model Forest movement of the late 1990s utilized our forestry maps to extend the accuracy of their digital land use modeling technology by looking back before they looked forward.

Countless local historians and authors have availed themselves of our archives as they have set down, for posterity, the his-

tory of our city and region. There are 108 linear feet of books, journals and periodicals in the Ted Williams Research Library, along with a treasure trove of local research, writing and scientific studies.

Arguably the most valuable community asset in our vault is, however, the curatorial team. These young professionals know our collective history better than anyone and can connect the novice or professional researcher to documents and images in our holdings that they would likely never find, or even know to look for. In 2018 we averaged 40 individual research requests (some taking days to complete) per month, not including the mountain of work we do on social media feeds answering questions about images, ideas and properties.

images, updating research and upgrading database systems is only the beginning of what goes into making these public collections truly public.

We spent almost $100,000 in heat and hydro alone in 2018 and that does not include any capital, depreciation or consumable expenses.

Arguably the most valuable community asset in our vault is, however, the curatorial team.

You will often see answers in the comments sections from this team late at night and on weekends; work they are doing because they love it, not because they are being paid for it.

The expense associated with operating an archive is significant. Maintaining the appropriate climate control, purchasing the necessary acid-free storage materials, cataloguing and digitizing the documents and

Attracting and retaining talented staff, individuals who not only are passionate about the work and the region, but who are patient and personable with the people who are either donating/ accessing the collection is of paramount importance and no cheap undertaking either. Because The Exploration Place is an independent charity, not a municipal department, we must raise some $2,400 per day over and above any government grants just to keep our doors open.

One way we are working to maximize our community’s two Class A archives is by working to find an efficient use of vault spaces in partnership with the UNBC Archives, another incredibly important institution in our community. The museum board recently approved the transfer of the Northwood Forestry Collection to UNBC to make access to it easier for students there

YOUR LETTERS

Medical profession not infallible

This letter is neither a confirmation nor an approval of the latest controversy, that being to vaccinate or not.

But I have to wonder why the medical profession thinks that all the answers are at their fingertips. Fore example, back in the early day up until the 1920s I believe, the medical profession had come across this new medical wonder drug (element) that was radium, it was professed to be the new wonder material of the day, prescribed and used by doctors to cure just about all that could ail anyone. Many people in the following years died of cancer, radium poisoning and other maladies as a result. Then even more recently, I am sure all remember the thalidomide farce, where pregnant women were prescribed it for the issues of morning sickness, that was also a major faux pas.

I am not saying his particular vaccine (MMR) is bad, wrong or whatever, but at this point who really knows. I am sure the profession does not in any way want the possible effects to be bad, hurtful, whatever.

There is so many things in the past – in the 1950s Health Canada stated food should be fried in grease, butter, whatever,

but changed course a little later.

The housing industry had it on good information, in the ’60’s and ’70’s that fermicular was the insulation of the century to insulate your houses, only to find several years later, it was not so good, and created a lot of grief all over Canada.

Tobacco was another that could do no harm but just look today.

I think if as it stands now, where the government at school registration time denies your child to register if you cannot prove vaccination, what do you do? Under B.C. law, your child must attend school.

Unfortunately I do not have the answers but one just has to look at the past bungling, quick actions of government, to see it might not be the answers.

Good luck with very hard decisions.

Bill Manders Prince George

Citizen missed meeting on Caribou

I’m wondering where The Citizen gets its news from and how little local news ever makes the newsprint locally. You reported on Tuesday that Elizabeth May will be hosting a town hall meeting on Saturday. Election time of course is just around the corner. What the local newspaper missed was the town hall meeting

held last Saturday on the mountain caribou closures. This closure is a Y2Y closure from the Yukon border to Yellowstone Park. It was hosted by our local MP Bob Zimmer and in attendance was MP Todd Doherty. There were three local MLAs in attendance as well as three local mayors. In attendance also was Concerned Citizens for Caribou Recovery, the B.C. Wildlife Federation, the B.C. Trappers Association, the Guide Outfitters Association of B.C. as well as businesses that are and will be affected by the closures.

This closure will curtail new roads and affect the mining and logging industries as well as the use of Crown land for ORV (over the road vehicles) riding.

What was missing, to my knowledge, was the 12 indigenous chiefs who were invited to voice their opinion on these matters.

On Wednesday, The Citizen reported the province is working with First Nations in regards to the Site C lawsuit. The First Nations argued that the impact of the dams on the Peace River have displaced hunters, trappers and fishers. Are these not the same people who say they are not consulted with changes to their lifestyles and who don’t show up to voice their opinion?

Lyndon Burgess Prince George

LETTERS WELCOME: The Prince George Citizen welcomes letters to the editor from our readers. Submissions should be sent by email to: letters@pgcitizen.ca. No attachments, please. They can also be faxed to 250-960-2766, or mailed to 201-1777 Third Ave., Prince George, B.C. V2L 3G7. Unsigned or handwritten letters will not be published. The Prince George Citizen is a member of the National Newsmedia Council.

SHAWN CORNELL DIRECTOR OF ADVERTISING

and we are exploring collections at both institutions, to determine the best place for them to reside.

Many other Prince George organizations, like the Sports Hall of Fame, Rotary clubs, the Arts Council, the Citizen and the Free Press have entrusted their own archives and collections to the museum’s care. Whether we are talking about the pre-emption maps of the central interior or the property assessment roles and bylaws from the City of Prince George between 1915 and 1976; the Simonsen, Swanky, Maximus, Milne, Corliss, Ted Williams, Hans Roine, Citizen, Free Press or Wally West photo collections, the Archives at Exploration Place Museum + Science Centre is an important resource for this and future generations. It is imperative that the general public recognize the archival work we do here at the museum, as well as the genuine need for financial support that this vital community charity faces as it goes about that work.

We are about to embark on a campaign to raise some $200,000 to fund the purchase of a new database to take our archives more deeply onto the web and into the future and it can be a difficult argument to make if there is confusion about the roles that we play in the community.

Tracy Calogheros is the CEO of The Exploration Place Museum + Science Centre in Prince George.

Affordable child care needed, but costly

Journalism sometimes fails to deal properly or proportionately with differing perspectives. The most extreme example these days is how some media continue to include a denier in a climate change story. This false-balance trait of onthe-one-hand, on-the-other-hand reportage creates what is called The View From Nowhere.

Still, the B.C. NDP government’s mixed-bag third budget is deserving of precisely that. It is on one hand reassuring and stable and on the other hand troubling and rickety.

On the one hand, there are heartening economic signs that B.C. remains at the forefront of the Canadian economy.

Predictions of 2.4 per cent and 2.3 per cent growth in 2019 and 2020 are hardly the stuff of street celebrations, but given the national context, neither are they distressing – so yes, on the one hand…

On the other hand, the province appears content to effortlessly spend without much effort to save. Its operational expenses in its first mandate are projected to grow 22.7 per cent or more than $10 billion, and its $20.1 billion in planned capital spending over the next three years is 25 per cent larger than even last year it said it would be.

Revenue estimates suggest a much more modest path is needed in years ahead to align with what the province will take in. Which also suggests worryingly there will need to be a review of available sources of government income, maybe even more new taxes, in part because there is an important factor it has not yet costed: a program to make affordable child care a reality for British Columbians, something it will now find difficult to launch before the next election.

We have long needed this program. As an emancipator and an engine of economic growth, it deserved to be at the top and not in the pursuing pack of priorities. Executed properly, it ought to generate impressive income and corporate tax revenue when more women have greater agency over work-life choices and safety for the care of our children. But it will require a hefty early investment or it will be largely symbolic and ineffective.

No wonder the government is taking its time before articulating the details. Child care at federal and provincial levels has been

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

shelved before, and any economic storm would make it easier to sideline it again.

And yes, swirling storms are in the forecast. On the one hand, the government is heralding the possibility of any number of them: global economic slumbers, the shambles of Brexit, commodity crashes, consumer indebtedness and housing market slumps. On the other hand, the budget does not provide any clues on how it will put the brakes on any of its ambitious plans if any of these storms hit land.

Theirs is a typical dilemma for any new government that wishes to change the course of who it helps and who it doesn’t, and on the one hand, there is evident capital investment in housing and hospitals and the widened child benefit coming in 2020 to assist those in need.

On the other hand, we are well behind on two other social requirements: an anti-poverty plan and the need for a definitive strategy for our aging population, a monumental task no one seems eager to discuss. Make no mistake, both are big-ticket challenges, as is the balance of needs still to be identified in the CleanBC climate change plan.

And this is where we get to a View From Somewhere, in that the NDP recipe for economic stewardship lacks one essential ingredient: an innovative strategy to stimulate growth.

The government is more adept at looking after needs than looking to engender a province to yield fewer of them, more focused on furnishing benefits than on furnishing an environment to reduce the need for them. Its virtue signalling often carries a divisive tone of class hostility, particularly its protracted and unsupported claim that its predecessors focused only on dividends for a choice few rather than us all.

On the one hand, the budget will mean many British Columbians will find themselves better taken care of in a couple of years. On the other hand, the government will do little to help the economy, and not the taxpayer, provide this care.

Kirk LaPointe is the 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

TO THE POINT

KIRK LAPOINTE

MONEY IN BRIEF

Currencies

OTTAWA

Air Canada suspends service to Delhi

Christopher REYNOLDS Citizen news service

MONTREAL — More than a thousand passengers were affected after Air Canada partially suspended service to India due to the closure of Pakistani airspace as tensions mount between the two nuclear powers.

A flight en route to Delhi Tuesday night turned back over the Atlantic Ocean and returned to Toronto on Wednesday, the airline said.

A second Air Canada flight from Vancouver to Delhi slated for takeoff Tuesday night was also cancelled, said spokeswoman Isabelle Arthur.

Wednesday night flights on the same two same routes were cancelled “as there currently are no suitable alternate routings,” she said in an email.

On both routes, Air Canada flies Boeing 7879 Dreamliner jets that contain more than 280 seats, meaning up to 1,100 people are likely impacted by the cancellations so far.

“We continue to monitor this situation closely and flights to Delhi will operate as soon as operationally feasible,” Arthur said.

On Wednesday, Pakistan’s military said it shot down two Indian warplanes in the disputed region of Kashmir and captured a pilot, responding to an airstrike a day earlier by Indian aircraft inside Pakistan and raising tensions between the nuclear-armed rivals to a level unseen in the last two decades.

The markets today

TORONTO (CP) — Canada’s main stock index posted another flat day even though the key energy sector gained on a rise in the price of oil.

The S&P/TSX composite index closed up 6.39 points to 16,074.30.

In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average was down 72.82 points at 25,985.16. The S&P 500 index was down 1.52 points at 2,792.38, while the Nasdaq composite rose 5.21 points at 7,554.51.

The Canadian dollar traded at an average of 76.07 cents US compared with an average of 75.79 cents US on Tuesday.

The April crude contract was up US$1.44 at US$56.94 per barrel and the April natural gas contract was up 0.3 of a cent at US$2.80 per mmBTU.

The April gold contract was down US$7.30 at US$1,321.20 an ounce and the May copper contract was up 1.2 cents at US$2.96 a pound. Stock indexes were little changed in afternoon trading Wednesday after wavering for much of the day between small gains and losses. Health care, communications and technology companies took the heaviest losses, while financial, industrial and energy stocks notched gains. The market had veered lower early in the day after comments from a key U.S. trade negotiator stoked doubt over how much progress was being made on resolving the trade war between the U.S. and China.

Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer told a panel of lawmakers that “much still needs to be done” before the U.S. and China can reach an agreement. China has offered to make major purchases of U.S. goods, such as soybeans and natural gas, in a bid to resolve the conflict, but Lighthizer said such steps wouldn’t be enough. “The issues on the table are too serious to be resolved with promises of additional purchases,” he said. “We need new rules.”

The downing of the Indian aircraft came on a chaotic day that also saw mortar shells fired by Indian troops from across the frontier dividing the two sectors of Kashmir kill six civilians and wound several others.

The closure of Pakistani airspace interrupted flights around the globe, as airlines scrambled to arrange refuelling stops.

Emergencies – military, political and natural – ground flights periodically, said Kamran Bokhari, director for strategy and programs at the Centre for Global Policy in Washington.

“Recall the Malaysian flight shot down by Ukrainian rebels,” he said, referring to a deadly incident near the Russian border in July 2014.

“They used one of those anti-aircraft systems and they locked onto it and the entire aircraft perished,” he said.

Days later, the U.S. Federal Aviation Author-

ity imposed a ban on American flights to Israel amidst Israeli airstrikes in the Gaza Strip. Air Canada resumed flights between Toronto and Tel Aviv after two days.

While flight bans are typical in times of escalating conflict – in Syria in 2015, and across the U.S. after the 9/11 terror attacks, for example – “this is a game-changer to the historical policy of restraint by India,” Bokhari said.

“Both sides are in undiscovered country.”

In 2017, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain banned Qatari aircraft from flying through their airspace amid a diplomatic crisis precipitated by a blockade by five Middle Eastern states against the Qatar, choking Qatar Airways.

In 2010, plumes of volcanic ash prompted the cancellation of thousands of flights when

officials closed European airspace for five days, leaving tens of thousands of passengers stranded in one of the largest flight disruptions since the Sept. 11 attacks.

Air Canada has implemented a “goodwill policy” for affected customers and is monitoring the situation in order to resume service once it “normalizes,” Arthur said.

Canada’s largest airline operates daily service from Toronto and Vancouver to Delhi and four times weekly between Toronto and Mumbai. It has no aircraft on the ground in India and all flights from India to Canada have returned as scheduled, she said.

A flight from Toronto to Mumbai was on track for takeoff Wednesday night, as the route avoids Pakistani airspace.

Scammers getting more sophisticated

It was no Nigerian prince. No long-lost relative wanting to share a “gi-gongous inheritance” with me. This email was current, well-written, and included credible personal details from a good friend.

“I’m really sorry to ask this, but I have no choice. On my way back from Columbia today my purse was stolen, and I am now stranded in the Mexico City airport with no means to carry on home!” the email said.

“I checked with American Airlines here, and they said they would allow me to buy a ticket to Dallas using cash, even without ID, on an exception basis. Once I’m in Dallas, my daughter can meet me and we will take it from there. I’ll pay you back within a couple of days, but I need $1,000 to get moving again. This is crazy! I’m stuck! Thanks so much for this (in advance)! Here are the wire transfer details…”

This is a paraphrased email I received from an old friend a few short years ago. She had been on a volunteer assignment in Bogota, and was on her way home when the email arrived in my basket.

She had been sending regular weekly emails during her time in Columbia, all of which I read and responded to eagerly. The details of the email were plausible enough, but something in the tone of that day’s email was uncharacteristic of her.

It was subtle, but clear enough to me. Also the fact that I am cheap-cheap-cheapo-cheapercheapest, edged me toward stalling, doubting.

Sure enough, within a few

hours, I received another email from her, this time from a new email address, saying that her other email address had been hacked, and that she was NOT stranded, and that anyone who received the bogus email should NOT send any money.

All of this happened while she was actually in transit home, but the crook never got paid, thank goodness. The point here is, the bad guys are getting more convincing.

“Vigilance! Constant vigilance!”

So goes the battle cry of J.K. Rowling’s Prof. Mad-Eye Moody, who had a magical eye that could rotate 360 degrees, making him a useful ally in combat. My wife has one of those, but she mostly uses it against the children.

I said mostly.

Some financial industry protocols we use will probably have application in your personal finances as well:

• Never transfer money on the basis of emailed instructions. In my world, this can be grounds for dismissal. Always obtain at least vocal confirmation of the details.

• Never email or text sensitive personal or financial records. Any crook with a pinch of ambition can breach standard email or SMS conversations, as noted above.

• Protect your identity as you would your home. Use extreme caution when discarding any

paperwork with personal information on it. Bank account records, credit card bills, tax records, etc. Many of us recycle paper, meaning a bad guy could sift through our papers in a nice clean and dry environment, without worrying about slogging through dirty diapers soaked in bacon grease and rotten turnips. Thus, paper recycling is now strictly a dual project. No exceptions. Any and all sensitive paperwork must be recycled separately in a secure manner, shredded or burned.

• Don’t write cheques to sketchy businesses.

I’ve personally seen them remanufactured in to fakes, and distributed nation-wide, with potential losses in the hundreds of thousands for a local mediumsized entrepreneur. (We got out of it without losing even a penny, thank goodness!)

• In the financial industry, we are required to take some fairly extreme measures to ensure that the people we are dealing with are legitimate. This is probably less of an issue for your garage sale transaction, but for larger transactions, such as real estate, the sale of a business and so on, let the lawyers do their work.

• If you keep a safe, and its contents are extremely precious, make sure it is fireproof. You might even consider a dual, or triple-custody locking system. Speaking of which…

A sock under the mattress

Investors were also keeping an eye on escalating international tensions. Pakistan said it shot down two Indian warplanes in the disputed region of Kashmir and captured a pilot. The incident worsened relations between the nuclear-armed rivals to a point not seen in the last 20 years. The news overshadowed a mix of corporate earnings reports. Weight Watchers plunged to its lowest point in nearly two years after issuing a dismal forecast. Best Buy surged on surprisingly good holiday sales. “Many

If Peter Pocket-Picker picked a

pack of principled preppers, how many packs of principled preppers could Peter Pocket-Picker pick?

Do you know any preppers?

Preppers go way beyond standard family emergency plans. These are people who are convinced that someday soon the entire Western industrial complex will come tumbling down in to ruins, and their four-year supply of dried moose liver soup will finally prove to be the treasure they always knew it to be.

One way preppers prepare for the worst is to store wealth (such as gold or U.S. cash) in some hidden place only they know.

It doesn’t take a risk management diploma to see the potential peril of this pumped-up paranoia.

One bad day, one flood, one fire, or even one forgetful fool, and a lifetime of hard work walks out the door along with that old wheel barrow you were thinking of turning in to a tulip planter.

If you think it’s prudent to store some cash off-bank, that’s maybe not a terrible idea (I don’t do it), but limit it to roughly the same amount you would invest in Venezuelan oil stocks right now – that is, only as much as you are willing to lose.

Be careful out there.

Mark Ryan is an investment advisor with RBC Dominion Securities Inc. (member – Canadian Investor Protection Fund), and these are his views, and not those of RBC Dominion Securities. This article is for information purposes only. Please consult with a professional advisor before taking any action based on information in this article. See Ryan’s website at: http://dir. rbcinvestments.com/mark.ryan

AP PHOTO

An Indian Air Force officer, along with others, inspects the wreckage of an Indian helicopter after it crashed in Budgam in Indian-controlled Kashmir on Wednesday. The crash killed six Indian air force officials and a civilian on the ground.

Bees can’t spell, but can do math, study finds

Isaac STANLEY-BECKER Citizen news service

The oval-shaped brain of a honeybee is roughly the size of a single sesame seed. It contains fewer than one million neurons, while the human brain contains 100 billion.

A team of entomologists is asking what all those extra nerve cells are good for after finding that bees can do the kind of vital math once thought to distinguish humans and the primate animals they most closely resemble.

Many animals display some degree of quantitative understanding as they forage and fight, hoard and hide and find their way back home. Counting, for instance, is pervasive. But bees can do something more, according to a paper published earlier this month in the peer-reviewed Science Advances journal. They can add and subtract, placing one of the world’s leading pollinators in the venerable company of monkeys, parrots and, yes, spiders – the cognitive A-list of the animal kingdom.

The findings contribute to a growing body of evidence that the brains of insects are more powerful than once thought – capable not just of a vague numerical sense but of the sort of learning and complex memory tasks that make arithmetic possible.

It also sheds light on the evolution of quantitative abilities in other species, decoupling numerical understanding from human language.

“A small biological processing system can perform quite complex things,” said Scarlett Howard, the paper’s lead author and a postdoctoral fellow at the French National

MAP PHOTO

A bee forages around some flowers on a warm winter day in Bern, Switzerland on Wednesday.

Center for Scientific Research.

The small neural network employed by bees, she said, points to a possible alternative to high-energy computing, suggesting that artificial intelligence should seek to model natural systems “that have evolved in complex and challenging environments.”

The research builds on the discovery of the same researchers last year that bees understand nothing. That is, the concept of nothing. The authors reported that bees trained to perceive notions of “greater than” and “less than” were also able to order zero

at the beginning of a numerical continuum – a capacity that put them on the same plane as the African gray parrot, notable for its ability to copy human speech, as well as nonhuman primates and even preschool children.

In the new study, conducted last year at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in southeastern Australia, the researchers devised a Y-shaped maze to train 14 bees to add and subtract.

The first sight encountered by the insects was a sample set of one, two, four or five

Science fair to showcase inventors of tomorrow RELATIVITY

ost of us think nothing of going to the kitchen, turning on the stove, and making food – be it scrambled eggs or a soufflé. We owe the fact we can do this to Canadian Thomas Ahearn, inventor of the electric stove.

Ahearn was an electrical engineer by training, but he also had a career as a business man, telegraph operator and Ottawa branch manager of the telegraph and telephone companies in the late 1800s. He started an electrical contracting business which eventually grew into a network of companies controlling electricity supply, streetcars and streetlights in Ottawa. Needless to say, his inventions and his business acumen eventually made him rich.

This coming Saturday, UNBC and the School District will host the Central Interior Science Exhibition at the Bentley Science Centre. It is a celebration of some of our best and brightest young minds from around the north as they explore the world of science and dabble in some of the latest technology.

It’s a chance for a future Ahearn to strut his or her stuff.

Many of us are not aware of our science and technology history,

but Canadians have made important contributions in a number of areas, not just household appliances. Canadians scientists invented Plexiglas, AM radio, Pablum, the snowmobile, the zipper, discovered insulin and a whole host of other breakthroughs.

The Government of Canada, through Industry Canada, has a great deal of information about Canadian inventions on their website while Wikipedia has a long list with hyperlinks. Canadians have definitely left their mark on the world.

Take Plexiglas as an example. It’s actually a compound called poly-methyl methacrylate – a name only a chemist could love. It is an organic polymer. It is tough and transparent. It is ideal for the glass in an ice hockey rink or the windows of a jet. It was invented by a McGill chemist William Chalmers.

Indeed, McGill University in Montreal has generated a number of famous polymer chemists, including James Guillet who has invented biodegradable plastic

garbage bags and might have solved a major environmental problem. Chemists are working there now on all sorts of new degradable polymers to help solve the global polymer problem.

As another example, AM radio was devised by Reginald Fessenden back in 1905. In his day, he was called the “father of radio.” His invention allowed the transmission of human speech by modulating the amplitude of the radio waves. Without Fessenden’s breakthrough our lives would be significantly different.

I doubt television as we know it would have been invented without radio as a precursor.

The world of technology is highly interwoven with one invention kick-starting others. Radios led to the invention of television which facilitated computers which allowed for the creation of smart phones and so on.

Who know where it will lead? Wearable tech? Digital implants?

Certainly one of the earliest uses of a television screen was the invention of the electron microscope. While early microscopes were first invented in Germany, Canadian Eli Burton and his students Cecil Hall, James Hillier and Albert Prebus designed and built the first North American electron microscope in 1938 at the University of Toronto. As with radio, electron microscopy opened up whole new worlds to scientific inquiry and has led to many modern inventions. It is unlikely we would have modern microchips or our understanding of viruses and bacteria without

shapes – never three. The shapes, rendered in either blue or yellow, were squares, diamonds, circles or triangles. Then, they flew into a “decision chamber,” were they came face-to-face with two new sets of shapes. If the shapes were blue, the correct choice in the decision chamber was the option with one element greater than the original sample. If the shapes were yellow, however, the right move for the bee would be to fly in the direction of the option with one element less than the sample. They were rewarded with a sugary solution for correct answers and punished with a bitter-tasting substance for misfires. At first, the insects made random decisions. But across 100 trials each, the bees came to understand when they were supposed to choose the +1 or the -1 option. The task required two cognitive feats at once: long-term recollection of the colour rule and shorter-term analysis of an unfamiliar number of shapes.

Though each bee appeared to learn differently, the population showed signs of mastery somewhere between the 40th and 70th test, Howard said. Over time, they took to slowing down when presented with the initial sample, before racing into the decision chamber.

Then, the bees were put to the test, faced with a shape they had never seen before, as well as a novel number of sample elements: three. Each bee performed four tests, each consisting of 10 trips through the maze. In each test, conducted without punishments or rewards, the bees performed significantly better than chance.

Odd rules govern naming stuff in space

being able to look at their world in such fine detail.

Pablum was invented by paediatricians T.G.H. Drake, A. Brown, and T.F. Tisdall. The snowmobile by Armand Bombardier. The zipper by Gideon Sundback. Canadians all. Yes, we have made the world a better place.

Growing up in Vancouver, none of the schools I attended featured a science fair. To the best of my knowledge, there wasn’t one held in all of Vancouver. I can’t speak from personal experience about the benefits, but I have been involved in science fairs for all of my adult life. I have seen some pretty amazing projects and some very talented students over the years.

Some have even presented inventions such as Ashley Anderson and Forrest Tower who went on to compete at the Taiwan International Science Fair in Taipei, Taiwan, and earned third place in the environmental category for their project Application of Biofuel Technologies for Third World Countries.

This Saturday, the Central Interior Science Exhibition in the Bentley Science Centre at UNBC will allow our young scientists and inventors to show us what they can do. It is sure to amaze as there are always some amazing students. And there are always interesting inventions and explorations of science and technology at the event.

So please come out and have a look. The CISE is for everyone and you might get to meet the next great Canadian scientist or inventor.

Sarah KAPLAN Citizen news service

Aspiring lunar explorers, take heed – any newly-discovered ridges on the Moon must be named for a geoscientist. If you want to name a landform on Saturn’s satellite Titan, you’d better be a fantasy or science fiction fan: mountains and plains on the lake-covered moon are styled after places in Tolkien’s Middle Earth and Frank Herbert’s Dune series. And almost everything on Jupiter’s moon Io must have a name associated with fire, volcanoes, or Dante’s Inferno. So decrees the International Astronomical Union, the official arbiter of planetary and satellite nomenclature since 1919. As ever more powerful telescopes and ambitious new robotic missions add to the identified real estate of the solar system, the IAU’s brilliant, Byzantine and sometimes marvelously nerdy naming guidelines help bring order to our crowded skies. The IAU’s rules are in the news this month after the Carnegie Institution for Science announced it needed help naming several moons of Jupiter discovered last year. Carnegie astronomer Scott Sheppard said suggestions should be tweeted to the handle @JupiterLunacy using the hashtag #NameJupitersMoons. But, protocols for planetary nomenclature being what they are, Sheppard can only consider names that meet a few key criteria: It must come from a character in Greek or Roman mythology who was either a descendant or lover of the god known as Zeus (in Greek) or Jupiter (Latin). It must be 16 characters or fewer, preferably one word. It can’t be offensive, too commercial, or closely tied to any political, military or religious activities of the past 100 years. It can’t belong to a living person and can’t be too similar to the name of any existing moons or asteroids. If the moon in question is prograde (it circles in the same direction as its planet rotates) the name must end in an “a.” If it is retrograde (circling in the opposite direction), the name must end in an “e.” Even though the king of the gods was quite the philanderer, there is a limit to the number of mythological characters who meet the IAU criteria.

Editor-in-chief Neil Godbout puts the news in perspective every day, only in The Citizen

P.G. athletes win Canada Games medals

Ted CLARKE Citizen staff

tclarke@pgcitizen.ca

Following on the silver-medal success of his Hart Judo Academy clubmate Kimiko Kamstra on Tuesday, Lochlan Young of Prince George climbed the medal podium Wednesday at the Canada Winter Games judo tournament in Red Deer.

Young, 16, defeated Kristopher Lafrance of Prince Edward Island 1-0 in their bronze-medal match. Young went 2-0 in the preliminary round and his only loss was in the semifinals to Victor Gougeon-Gaze of Quebec, the eventual gold medalist.

On Tuesday, the 17-year-old Kamstra also got off to a 2-0 start, then topped Angelina McCristall of Alberta 1-0 in a semifinal

match. In the grapple for gold, Kamstra lost 1-0 to Evelyn Beaton of Alberta. Kamstra and Young will be back on the mats representing B.C. in the team event on Friday.

On Monday, snowboardcross racer Kolby Graham of Prince George made his debut at Canada Games an impressive one. The 17-year-old Graham qualified second, then

won his quarterfinal and semifinal heats. In the big final he lost a close duel with Anthony Gervais-Marcoux of Quebec.

One other Prince George connection at the games, hockey referee Danika Kroeker, is on the ice this week in the eight-team women’s tournament. That wraps up with the medal games on Saturday.

BCHL awards elude Spruce Kings

Ted CLARKE Citizen staff

No Prince George Spruce Kings were picked for B.C. Hockey League individual awards and Spruce Kings general manager Mike Hawes is OK with that.

Hawes was hoping Layton Ahac would win the top defenceman award (it went to James Miller of the Penticton Vees) and thought Logan Neaton might get the nod as top goaltender (Penticton’s Jack LaFontaine won the award).

Hawes acknowledges there was some disappointment among the team but it’s the big prize that matters most to the Spruce Kings.

Last year’s league finalists are after their very first BCHL championship and nobody can outvote them on that one. Their play on the ice will dictate their playoff destiny in their quest to win four best-ofseven series.

“It’s nice to get those accolades but it’s also nice that those guys were in the running for it,” said

Hawes. “It’s hard to complain about it, a pretty good goalie won the goalie of the year and a pretty good d-man won the d-man of the year. It’s hard to argue with either one.

“I know while they’re probably upset a bit, both Logan and Layton are more interested in having team success. Mags (Kings head coach Adam Maglio) certainly could have been in the running for coach of the year but you can only nominate one guy in each division for the finalists and it’s hard to argue what Chilliwack did this year with having to essentially rebuild their whole roster after the Royal Bank Cup. Brian (Mainland Division finalist Maloney) did a tremendous job.”

Merritt Centennials head coach Joe Martin won the Joe Tennant Memorial Trophy as the BCHL’s coach of the year.

The real season begins Friday at Rolling Mix Concrete Arena for the Spruce Kings, who host the

Coquitlam Express in Game 1 of the Mainland Division semifinal.

The Spruce Kings (39-13-1-5, second in Mainland Division, second overall in BCHL) won six of the eight games over Coquitlam head-to-head in the regular-season series and finished 22 points ahead of the Express (28-24-3-3, third place Mainland).

Coquitlam scored more goals (209) than the Spruce Kings (181) but Prince George was tighter defensively, allowing 120 goals in the season as compared with the 198 goals the Express gave up in a 58-game schedule.

“Coquitlam is a skilled group, they’ve got a really good group of forwards, they can score and they proved that this year,” said Hawes.

“I don’t think they defend as well, obviously, but they have a group of d-men who like to chip in offensively. Our defensive game will have to at its top level again for us to have success against them and they’ve got two pretty good

goalies (Kolby Matthews, Clay Stevenson) to rely on who have had pretty good years. It’s going to take a lot of hard work for us to knock them off in the first round.”

The teams haven’t met in the playoffs since 2014, when Coquitlam won a six-game openinground series.

The Spruce Kings host openinground games Friday and Saturday at Rolling Mix Concrete Arena, then the series switches to Coquitlam for Games 3 and 4 Monday and Tuesday. If Game 5 is needed that would be played next Thursday in Prince George. Game 6 (if needed) would be the following Saturday in Coquitlam, with Game 7 (if necessary) Monday, March 11 in Prince George.

Hawes says reserved-seating tickets are selling quickly and he expects near-sellouts for the first two games this weekend. All Spruce Kings playoff games will be broadcast on CFIS 93.1 FM.

Brendan Pawliw will call the play-

Manziel experiment in CFL over

Dan RALPH Citizen news service

He entered the CFL with much fanfare and intrigue, but Johnny Football has made a mysterious exit.

The Johnny Manziel experiment ended less than a year after it began Wednesday with the CFL terminating the quarterback’s contract with the Montreal Alouettes. The league also informed the eight other clubs it wouldn’t register a deal for the former Heisman Trophy winner if any tried to sign him.

CFL commissioner Randy Ambrosie said Manziel had contravened an agreement that made the Texan eligible to play in the league.

“We advised Montreal that Johnny had violated one of the conditions we had set for him to be in our league. And Montreal announced his release today,” Ambrosie said Wednesday in Vancouver. “We didn’t release the terms of those conditions then and we’re not going to do that now.

“We’re trying to do what we believe is in the best interests of the entire league. The conditions we set, we thought were the right ones. Those conditions have been violated and we feel it’s best, and Montreal feels it’s best, to let Johnny move on. And we think it’s best for our league that he do the same. And we wish him well.”

A posting to Manziel’s Twitter feed indicated he was already looking for other opportunities south of the border.

“I want to thank (Alouettes coach Mike Sherman), my teammates, and the CFL fans,” Manziel tweeted. “My time there re-established my love for the game of football and the work that goes into it. I look forward to exploring new options within the United States.”

One option could be Alliance of American Football, which kicked off its inaugural

season earlier this month. And Manziel said he was intrigued by the prospect of playing in either the AAF or Xtreme Football League, which is scheduled to resume play next year.

“It’s great for football, it’s great for the guys who need more opportunity, need more film and time to play,” Manziel said on the Barstool Sports Comeback SZN podcast. “I don’t know exactly what my exact steps will be for the next years coming up, but at least there’s a lot of options.

“Me and E.B. (agent Erik Burkhardt) are fully committed to playing ball and trying to get into the best situation possible and that’s what it’s all about.”

Ambrosie announced in December 2017 the league would approve a contract for the former Cleveland Browns first-round pick, who was on the Hamilton Tiger-Cats negotiation list at the time. But Manziel had to fulfil certain requirements to join the league.

The CFL’s due diligence included an assessment by an independent expert on domestic violence and a head-to-head meeting between Manziel and Ambrosie. Manziel had sought treatment for anger management and alcohol abuse as part of his acquittal on a 2016 charge of domestic violence. Manziel eventually ended up sign-

by-play for home games and Kyle Anderson will be behind the mic on the road.

• The other award winners announced by the league were: Vern Dye Memorial Trophy (most valuable player) – Victoria Grizzlies forward Alex Newhook; Bruce Allison Memorial Trophy (rookie of the year) – Victoria Grizzlies forward Alexander Campbell; Bob Fenton Trophy (most sportsmanlike player) – West Kelowna Warriors forward Mike Hardman. The league also handed out three non-voting awards: Brett Hull Trophy (top scorer) – Alex Newhook – Victoria Grizzlies – 38 goals, 64 assists, 102 points; Wally Forslund Trophy – top goalie tandem(lowest combined goalsagainst average) – Jack LaFontaine and Derek Krall, Penticton Vees, combined 2.33 GAA; Ron Boileau Memorial Trophy – regular-season champions – Chilliwack Chiefs 42-15-1-0 record, 85 points.

ing with Hamilton in May 2018 but was unable to get on the field with Jeremiah Masoli taking starting reps. The Ticats dealt Manziel and offensive linemen Tony Washington and Landon Rice in a blockbuster trade with Montreal on July 23 for receiver Chris Williams, defensive end Jamaal Westerman and two first-round draft picks (2020, ‘21).

The move reunited Manziel with Sherman, who also recruited Manziel to Texas A&M. Acquired to be Montreal’s No. 1 quarterback, the 26-year-old was 2-6 as a starter, completing 106-of-165 passes (64.2 per cent) for 1,290 yards with five TDs and seven interceptions. He also ran for 215 yards on 29 carries (7.41-yard average) as Montreal (5-13) finished third in the East Division, but missed the CFL playoffs.

Alouettes GM Kavis Reed said he had no regrets acquiring Manziel.

“When we made the decision to make the trade for Mr. Manziel, we knew the risks that went with it,” Reed told reporters in Montreal.

“We took a chance, we took a risk, an educated risk and it didn’t work out.

“That’s the situation. We have a stable plan that will allow our football team to advance.”

Manziel was due a $75,000 bonus March 1 and scheduled to earn a $202,000 base salary in 2019. Manziel’s departure leaves Montreal with five quarterbacks on its roster (Vernon Adams Jr., Jeff Mathews, Antonio Pipkin, Matthew Shiltz and Canadian rookie Hugo Richard).

Reed feels Montreal has its ‘19 starter in that group. The Alouettes have struggled, both at quarterback and on the field generally, since Hall of Famer Anthony Calvillo –now a coach at the University of Montreal – retired after the 2013 season.

CP PHOTO

Montreal Alouettes quarterback Johnny Manziel, right, leaves the field with Tony Washington after the team’s practice at Olympic Stadium in Montreal on July 23.

Maple Leafs thump Oilers

TORONTO — John Tavares answered three questions about a resounding Toronto Maple Leafs’ victory before attention turned to what was already on everyone’s mind – the star centre’s return to Long Island.

Andreas Johnsson scored twice as part of Toronto’s four-goal outburst in a seven-minute stretch to open the second period Wednesday in the Leafs’ 6-2 dismantling of the Edmonton Oilers. Mitch Marner added a goal and two assists, while Tavares, William Nylander and Patrick Marleau

had two-point nights to provide the rest of the offence for Toronto (39-20-4).

“Every line’s playing, being hard to play against,” Tavares said.

“It makes us tough to match up against.”

Frederik Andersen made 34 saves for the Leafs, who announced before the game Jake Gardiner is week to week with a sore back before fellow defenceman Travis Dermott suffered a left shoulder injury in the third period. He’s also listed as week to week.

Tavares spent nine seasons on Long Island, including six as captain, before bolting for the team he supported growing up in the

suburbs west of Toronto in free

agency on July 1.

“I fully embraced being an Islander,” Tavares said. “I loved it and I gave it everything I had.”

Fan reaction, however, has been visceral since his departure, and the No. 1 pick in 2009 is likely in for a nasty reception at Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum.

“I had every right to go through the process that I went through (in free agency),” Tavares continued.

“I tried to be open and honest when I made my decision. I had no idea what I was going to do until I made my decision.

“People can take it any way they want. All I can do is control what I can control.”

Leafs head coach Mike Babcock, whose team crept back within a point of Boston for second in the Atlantic Division, suggested Thursday’s return is something Tavares needs to “put to bed.”

“The great thing about fans is they pay their money and get to say whatever they want,” Babcock said. “He’s a good man. He was good for their franchise, he’s great for our franchise.

“He made a decision to come home. I don’t know if anyone can fault you for that.”

Leon Draisaitl and Ryan NugentHopkins replied for Edmonton (26-30-7), which actually jumped

shootout.

out to a 1-0 lead and played a spirited opening 20 minutes Wednesday.

Mikko Koskinen allowed four goals on 16 shots before getting the hook in favour of Anthony Stolarz, who finished with 18 saves. Darnell Nurse had two assists for the Oilers, whose fading hopes for a wild-card spot in the Western Conference took another hit. “Too many little mistakes,” said Draisaitl, who scored his 39th goal of the season, and 15th in the last 15 games, in the first period. “If you have too many little mistakes against this team, clearly, they’ll take full advantage of that. That’s what they did.”

Anderson-Dolan, Chiefs dominate Cougars

Ted CLARKE Citizen staff

tclarke@pgcitizen.ca

If all goes according to plan, Jaret Anderson-Dolan will be resuming his NHL career next season as a rookie centre with the Los Angeles Kings. He already has his first NHL point, which came during a five-game audition with the Kings before they returned him to the junior hockey in the WHL.

The big bucks and bright lights of pro hockey are beckoning the 19-year-old from Calgary but not before he completes a little unfinished business leading the Spokane Chiefs into the playoffs.

If he keeps playing like he did in a twogame sweep of the Prince George Cougars this week at CN Centre the Chiefs could very well have an extended postseason. Anderson-Dolan dominated both games on back-to-back nights, picking up where he left off Tuesday with a two-goal, threeassist performance in the rematch Wednesday – a 7-1 Chiefs’ win. The puck just seemed to follow him all

night and the Chiefs reaped the rewards, handing the short-staffed Cougars their 12th straight loss on home ice in front of 2,182 witnesses.

Both Anderson-Dolan goals were scored on Chiefs’ power plays – both rocket wristers from the face-off circle.

He possesses a big-league shot and made that readily apparent to Cougar goaltenders Taylor Gauthier and Isaiah DiLaura.

His first of the night, 2:14 into the second period, made it 5-1 and chased Gauthier from the game after he’d allowed five goals on 15 shots. DiLaura came in to replace him and played well in relief but was at Anderson-Dolan’s mercy when he rifled in his 11th of the season with 4:08 gone in the third period.

Anderson-Dolan, picked in the second round, 41st overall by the Kings in 2017, has been limited to just 24 games with the Chiefs this season. He broke a bone in his wrist in early November, then joined Team Canada over Christmas at the world junior tournament.

On Tuesday the Chiefs beat the Cougars 2-1 in overtime. Anderson-Dolan notched

the winner 3:58 into OT to give Spokane its first road win since Feb. 6. He also assisted on the first goal and was picked the first star in that one.

The Cougars, who held the league’s second-best power play without a goal on five chances in what turned out to be a barnburner on Tuesday, certainly took their lumps in the rematch.

They couldn’t seem to catch a break in a rough opening period that dropped them into a 4-0 hole. Just 18 seconds into the game, Luke Toporowski popped in a loose puck in the crease that Anderson-Dolan jammed through the feet of Gauthier.

Bobby Russell made it 2-0 on a point shot that got through a maze of bodies and Connor Gabruch added to the count late in the period when he shot wide and the carom off the end boards went in off Gauthier’s skate.

The Chiefs’ fourth goal came on a 2-on-1 while shorthanded that Nolan Reid finished with a shot over Gauthier’s glove.

The Cougars finally made a dent 24 seconds into the second period on a 5-on-3 power play. Tyson Upper’s hard pass into

the crease deflected in off Josh Maser’s stick. For Maser it was his team-leading 26th of the season, just two shy of his season total last year. The win left the Chiefs (33-19-2-5) four points ahead of the Tri-City Americans (who lost 2-1 Wednesday in Kamloops) in the chase for the third U.S. Division playoff spot. The Cougars (17-37-5-3) remain last in the Western Conference. LOOSE PUCKS: The Cougars dressed just five defencemen and 11 forwards. D Ryan Schoettler was sick to his stomach, C Ethan Browne went down with an upper-body injury in the first period of Tuesday’s game and D Cole Moberg missed his third game after sustaining an upper-body injury. They were also missing C Ilijah Colina, who returned home for personal reasons and hasn’t played since Jan. 22… The Cougars boarded the bus after the game heading for Victoria, where they’ll face the Royals Friday and Saturday. The Cats will be back home next weekend for games against the high-scoring Portland Winterhawks.

Joshua CLIPPERTON Citizen news service

Greta not great

Ann HORNADAY Citizen news service

The psychological thriller Greta gets off to a promising start: as a camera discreetly follows Isabelle Huppert and Chloë Grace Moretz through a New York City subway, Julie London sings a silky version of Where Are You? and director Neil Jordan’s name appears on screen.

Viewers familiar with Jordan’s previous work – from his script for Mona Lisa to the gamechanging The Crying Game – will understandably feel prepared to encounter the kind of twisty but sophisticated puzzlers he’s best known for.

Er, not so fast.

As an exercise in style, Greta turns out to be a maddeningly mixed bag. Its New York setting (which should be another character in this tale of modern urban manners) is continually undercut by obviously foreign filming locations – Dublin and Toronto did the honours here – and its themes of vulnerability, obsession and ritualized violence are no less drearily familiar for being given a pseudofeminist patina. An intriguing twohander bursting with potential instead becomes something we’ve seen before – up to and including bizarre pivots into sadism and body horror.

Moretz plays Frances, a recent Smith College graduate who has moved to Tribeca with her best

friend Erica (Maika Monroe), a wealthy fellow Smithie with no discernible job other than practicing yoga and tossing off cynical bon mots about crystal meth, colonics and how the Big (rotten) Apple is going to eat Frances alive.

When the quiet, polite Frances finds an abandoned purse on the subway, she takes pains to find the owner, who turns out to be a French woman named Greta (Huppert), an eccentric but kind piano teacher who invites Frances for tea and conversation.

Their relationship blooms, in part because Frances recognizes a nurturing figure she’s been missing since her own mother died, and soon the two are spending more and more time together, to the increasing consternation of the possessive Erica.

Alert readers will see the words “Huppert” and “piano teacher” in the same sentence and immediately sense impending doom.

While Greta has none of the torturous rigour of Michael Haneke’s 2001 film The Piano Teacher, Jordan and co-screenwriter Ray Wright borrow heavily from other movies, especially classics from the paranoid canon of the late 1980s and early 1990s. With a nod to Fatal Attraction here and one toward Single White Female there – not to mention brief homages to Brian De Palma all the way through – Greta feels as time-warped as its title character’s cozy but slightly confining

apartment. Despite some clever work with cellphones and text messages, the story and atmosphere feel impossibly forced, shoehorned into a milieu that never feels authentic enough to elicit real dread.

The artificiality isn’t helped by an intrusive and cliched score, which prods the audience toward jump scares and creepy reveals with the uninvited pushiness of a musical mansplainer, and which returns time and again to a tiresome motif from Liszt’s maudlin Liebestraum.

When Greta and Frances adopt a sweetly decrepit mutt named Morton, the foreshadowing couldn’t be clearer, and his fate hangs over the proceedings like a soulful, sadeyed threat.

As those proceedings ratchet up, logic and intelligence give way to plot mechanics and pulp thrills.

On behalf of Smithies everywhere, this one is here to tell you they’re brave but not this stupid.

Greta might pretend to turn the tables by presenting the sexualized predation of a young woman at the hands of a female malefactor instead of a male one. But the fetishistic leer is just as troubling and offensive.

Disturbance eventually gives way to derangement in a story that grows exponentially more irritating the more preposterous it gets.

As Morton might say: When it rains, it pours.

— One star out of four

Kelly’s inside circle may have enabled sex abuse

CHICAGO — After R. Kelly met a girl celebrating her 16th birthday at a restaurant, it was his manager who handed her Kelly’s business card with the R&B star’s personal phone number on it, telling the teen that Kelly wanted her to give him a call, according to prosecutors.

The 52-year-old singer-songwriter was charged last week with sexually abusing the girl once a month for a year after she retrieved the card from her mom’s purse and phoned Kelly. In all, prosecutors accuse him of abusing four females, three of whom were between 13 and 17.

Kelly is looking at the possibility of decades in prison if convicted, but there’s no official word on whether the manager or anyone else in his inner circle might face charges for complicity in any abuse or for failing to report abuse if they suspected it.

Legal experts say it’s not obvious what laws could be invoked.

All 50 states require that certain professionals, including doctors and teachers, report any suspicions of child abuse, but only around a third mandate that all adults do. Kelly’s home state of Illinois is not among them.

More than 10 Kelly associates, such as agents and security guards, could be exposed to criminal liability in the Chicago case for staying silent about abuse or actively assisting Kelly, said Michael Avenatti, a lawyer for two Kelly accusers.

In a phone interview, he said Kelly depended heavily on others to target underage girls, to transport them and to pay them off to keep quiet over the years he ascended from busking on Chicago subway platforms to become a bestselling music artist.

Jimmie Allen a reflection of a new country music world

Kristin M. HALL Citizen news service

NASHVILLE — Country singer Jimmie Allen likes to tell a story about the first time he met songwriter J.P. Williams, who is blind, before they came up with Allen’s No. 1 hit single Best Shot.

“I said, ‘I don’t know if anyone told you, but I’m black,”’ Allen said. “‘So keep the black jokes to a minimum.”’

Allen, who made history last year for being the first black artist to launch his career with a No. 1 single on the Billboard Country Airplay chart, isn’t afraid of joking about the elephant in the room: he’s usually the only black man in the country song writers’ room.

He and artists like Kane Brown, 25, who is biracial, are appealing to millennial and Gen Z listeners who aren’t traditional country fans but are discovering country music in different platforms, such as streaming, YouTube and social media. That has allowed these black artists to succeed in a predominantly white musical landscape.

“The folks that listen to Kane Brown and the folks that have started to listen to Jimmie Allen, many of them would not call themselves country fans,” said Nadine Hubbs, professor of women’s studies and music at the University of Michigan and the author of Rednecks, Queers and Country Music.

Certainly, there’s not a sea change, but there is incremental change even as the genre is shrinking its gender diversity.

Last year, three artists who are minorities, Allen, Brown and Darius Rucker, scored No. 1 country airplay hits, which is only slightly less than the four female artists who reached the top spot with their own songs or as a duet partner.

Both Brown and Allen are skilled at reaching new audiences through social media, with Brown even scoring a record deal because of his country covers on Facebook. Allen, who has the charisma of a seasoned TV pro, posts a lot of pictures on Instagram of his adorable fouryear-old son or his trips to Disney World.

Brown has had a lot of cross-

Kelly “could not have accomplished this for 28 years without the assistance of others who looked the other way because they didn’t want the R. Kelly gravy train to end,” Avenatti said Tuesday.

The question isn’t limited to Kelly insiders. Critics have blasted law enforcement for not pursuing the Grammy winner more aggressively.

“Every system in this city – police, courts, the South and West sides, the churches, everybody – has failed these young black female victims,” argued Jim DeRogatis, who as a Chicago Sun-Times reporter played the central role in revealing the sex-abuse accusations. He told television station WTTW’s Chicago Tonight on Monday that 48 women have shared with him their stories of abuse by Kelly since 1991.

Kelly’s attorney, Steve Greenberg, declined to comment on any possible criminal exposure involving people around Kelly. He said he is “constrained by the canons of ethics” from addressing anything other than allegations directed at his client.

Music industry stalwarts seemed to look the other way when whispers began 25 years ago and grew

louder.

Fans didn’t back away either.

In 2013, after allegations of abuse were widely known, concert venues sold out for the tour promoting his album Black Panties.

The album peaked at No. 2 on Billboard’s R&B chart and sold 500,000 copies by 2015. His next album, The Buffet, went to No. 1 in 2016.

If prosecutors do go after Kelly’s confidantes, Avenatti expects many to turn on him.

“His handlers and enablers are going to look to save their own butts as opposed to R. Kelly,” he said.

In practice, charges against someone other than the abuser are rare.

At Penn State University, three administrators were convicted of child endangerment in the case of former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky, who was convicted in 2012 of raping and sexually abusing multiple boys.

In sentencing former university President Graham Spanier, Senior Vice-President Gary Schultz and Athletic Director Tim Curley in 2017, a judge said it should have been easy to pick up the phone to report what they suspected about Sandusky.

“They ignored the opportunity to put an end to his crimes when they had a chance to do so,” Judge John Boccabella said.

Texas has one of the toughest state reporting requirements, mandating that all adults report suspected child abuse. Violators can be imprisoned for up to a year and fined $4,000.

Of just 117 people charged between 2008 and 2012 under the Texas law, fewer than a quarter were eventually convicted, in part because of the challenges of proving that someone did not do something, according to a 2013 report by the Houston Chronicle.

over opportunities, singing with artists like Camila Cabello and Khalid, while Allen, who is newer to the genre and has had less collaborations, has pop and rock influences in his music.

But both still hold tightly to their country roots and their country vocals and they are well-versed in country music history, Hubbs said. Like Charley Pride and Rucker, Allen sings about traditional country music themes of small towns, rural life, love and romance and the simple pleasures of life.

At the same time, both Allen and Brown aren’t afraid to address race in their songs, which previously generations of black country artists weren’t always able to do.

Allen is nominated for new male artist of the year at the Academy of Country Music Awards in April, and if he wins, he will be the first black artist to win that award.

On his 2018 debut record on Stoney Creek called Mercury Lane, Allen co-wrote a song called All Tractors Ain’t Green, directly challenging stereotypes about being black, being rural and being able to sing about those things even though he’s not a white man from the South.

“People always used to say, ‘You can grow up and be anything you want. You can be president,”’ Allen said.

“But until Obama became president, you couldn’t really tell a black kid that you could be president because there wasn’t one. So I feel like representation is very important.”

FOCUS FEATURES HANDOUT IMAGE BY SHANE MAHOOD

Maika Monroe and Chloë Grace Moretz play recent college graduates who have moved to New York City in the psychological thriller Greta.

ALLEN

KELLY

Cade Timothy Belanger

It is with heavy hearts and great sadness that the family of Cade Timothy Belanger, announce his passing. Cade was born in Prince George BC in 1966 and passed unexpectedly in Victoria, BC, 2019. Cade is survived by his parents Allen and Rita, his two sisters Alana and Celynne, his niece Kailah and nephew Lucas. Cade is fondly remembered by many friends and relatives who will deeply miss his infectious smile and kind heart.

A limb has fallen from the family tree. I keep hearing a voice, “Grieve not for me”. Remember the best times, the laughter, the song. The good life I lived while I was strong. Continue my heritage, I’m counting on you Keep smiling and surely the light will shine through. My mind is at ease, my soul is at rest. Remembering all, I truly was blessed. Continue traditions, no matter how small. Go on with your life, don’t worry at all. I will miss you all dearly, so keep up your chin. Until the day comes when we’re together again.

Sunday, February 17th, 2019 at 4:30am Vernon Harvey Norbraten stepped up to the tee in the sky!

Vern was born August 17th, 1932 in Southey, SK. After a number of years later his family moved to Nipawin, SK where his family farmed. In the fall of 1949 Vern came to PG to work in the logging industry with his 2 brothers. The next spring he returned home to Nipawin to help his father farm. It was in 1951 when he met the love of his life, Marlene. They were married in 1954 and moved to Prince George, BC. Vern and his brothers worked in the logging industry and soon decided to build a portable sawmill and “Norbraten Brothers Lumber LTD” was created. They were successful because of their hard work over many years. In 1959 Vern had a new home built and moved his family into town. By then they had three children and a fourth on the way. In the early 1960’s Vern had purchased some land with 2 other men. It wasn’t long before he was the sole owner. “What to do with it?” He decided to build a Golf Course for the average golfer to enjoy! His brothers had bought him out of the mill and he went right to work clearing the 105 acres of solid Aspen trees. Vern kept busy in the winters with jobs and coached Minor Hockey for many years. He was so proud of his teams! Many of his hockey teams spent numerous hours picking roots on what would soon be open fairways. Finally in 1971 Vern opened his 9 hole course, Aspen Grove Golf Course. Some may say a bit to early... as it was in pretty bad shape. The family knew nothing about the golf business but he learned in a hurry! Vern and his sons struggled to build the 2nd 9 holes and in 1986 Aspen Grove became 18 holes. Vern was forever grateful for the encouragement and help from his friend George as well as all our loyal golfers. The years went on and Aspen was open. Over those years Vern’s family joined him working at the course. You could find Vern either golfing, working, walking with Josie or napping on the course somewhere! He always had a great hiding spot! Vern looked forward to his golfing trips with 15 other buddies and always looking for the next “Hole in 1” - 3 wasn’t enough!

Vern was a Family man and was loved and respected by many. His laugh and sense of humor had been missed for a long time. Vern is survived by his wife of 64 years Marlene, Father to Lyn (John), Greg, Gary (Cheryl) and Ken (Amie). Papa to Jennifer (Neal), Jesse, Cordell, Kyle (Olivia), Kirk (Jen), Jennifer (Matt) and Laura. Great Papa to Kaylyn, Nicholas, Dyllan, Audrey, Emma and Lachlan. Uncle to Judy (Jim) and Vern and Great Uncle to many more.

A Celebration of Vern’s life will be held at Aspen Grove Golf Course at a later date. Our family would like to give very special thanks to the amazing staff at Simon Fraser Lodge. Vern was so well cared for over the last 5 years. He has joined his brothers Orville and Glenn once again.

IVAN BRATTON

January 29, 1951 - February 21, 2019

It is with heartbreaking sadness we have to announce we lost our beloved brother and uncle to cancer on February 21, 2019. Ivan was predeceased by his father, Frank, mother Florence, brothers Walter and Glen, sister Lorraine, and nephew Leland. He is survived by brothers Elbert (Red), Harley, and sister Fay (Larry). Ivan is also survived by many nieces, nephews, and friends who all loved him. There will be no service as per Ivan’s request.

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.

BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY

Established Franchise Photography Business Serving Northern B.C for over 35 years

Gross Revenues of $150.000 plus annually from seasonal work Lots of opportunity to expand the business.

BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY

Established Franchise Tax Preparation BusinessMackenzieservicing and McLeod Lake area for over 30 years.

Gross Revenues of $85,000 to $90,000

Annually and Potential to expand revenues in a growing economy.

Transition support available for the right buyer. Serious Inquires Only Office (250)997-9003 Home (250)997-5538 Cell (250)990-0152

Page 4

Two Rivers Gallery

what it takes to make it a successful community accessible facility

Thursday, february 28, 2019

nasTi weaTher blows ThrouGh P.G.

The region is in for some Nasti Weather. Isn’t that great?

A musical front is forecast to blow in from the Lower Mainland and cover a lot of the Prince George region next month. Nasti Weather can’t be predicted by meteorologists or television weather anchors. It’s the creative outlet of Anastasia Schlechtleitner, a self-described “garage jazz” chanteuse who is as unique as she is new to the B.C. music scene.

To be clear, she has for many years been a promoter of music shows. She has collaborated with names like Blackberry Wood, Red Haven, High Society, and Noah Walker, but it was only about five years ago that she forced herself out into the spotlight as her own act.

Now she is earning praise and rave reviews for her husky vocal purr and the comely clang of her banjo. There’s a gypsy wind to her compositions, and an intimate speakeasy air as well. There’s a fragile elegance, a shy beauty to it. It’s the sound of someone enjoying the way people can stand in a close circle, each with a different instrument in their hands, and work together on a single purpose made up of all their individual parts.

She has a multitude of artistic interests, and for years they wrestled with each other for primacy. The inner singer-songwriter finally won out, but that active mind is still evident in what comes out on stage.

“I like to play with my hands, I like to create,” she said. “I found a word for it: multi-potentialize. I have always dabbled in things. That is part of why it was so hard for me to commit to music, and I feel like I have. It’s an exciting move for me to feel like I’m actually sticking with something.”

With some of northern B.C.’s favourite musicians like Saltwater Hank and Danny Bell, Nasti Weather has a whole tour of the region set to go in March. Bell, in fact, reached out to her based on some

live performances he’d seen. He offered to arrange the bookings and also arrange the musicians she would need, which is

still a surreal feeling for the old soul with the new musicianship.

“It took me quite a few shows before

they (the other players who agreed to collaborate with her at the start of her career) were like ‘Ana, we don’t play with you out of pity, we play with you because we love your music’ and it took me a long time to believe I was worthy of the musicians who were choosing to play with me. I’m still not a great banjo player, but it’s not necessarily about that,” she said. Music – amongst musicians and also for fans – is about connection. The players who share a stage are looking for a mechanical synergy that feeds the spirit, and the fans in the audience are looking for a sharing and emotional spark that again feeds the spirit.

Schlechtleitner took the fan chemistry seriously, since she was one of those herself for so long before committing to learning an instrument and opening her voice. She was having a hard enough time with confidence, so she pored over old poetry she’d written, journals she had kept, pulling years worth of material to shape and glaze with new thoughts and concepts fresh in her mind.

“We make songs (we hear) about ourselves, and I love that,” she said. “You don’t know my story behind that song, sometimes I don’t necessarily know exactly what I’ve written a song about, but I know that it’s true, and it reveals itself to me over time, but I can see the look (in fans’) eyes and I know they get the feeling of what the song is about. It’s not about the story, it is about the feeling. It’s how we relate.”

If Nasti Weather songs could only relate one thing, it would be the resonance of mental health. The songs are not odes to afflictions of the mind, but they all have electrical cords that wind back into the chords they strike in Schlechtleitner’s creative process. Art is about conveying bigger concepts, she said, and few concepts are more important than the stigmas and misconceptions that cost opportunities and life itself for the many who catch those sorts of maladies. She is one of them.

Continued on page 2

Prince GeorGe’s weekly news

frank peebles

97/16 staff

97/16 handout photo

Anastasia Schlechtleitner, whose stage name is Nasti Weather, will perform throughout the Central Interior beginning in March.

Her music is more tHan pretty melodies

Continued from page 1

“I know I’ve struggled with depression and anxiety on and off for most of my life, although I didn’t know that’s what was happening,” she said. She even visited dentists thinking the pain in her jaws were due to incoming wisdom teeth, or respiratory specialists because her breathing was so laboured. It turned out, these were physical reactions to the signals of her brain.

“For the longest time I kept trying to figure out the solution to the problem, and that was a problem in itself,” she explained. “I still experience anxiety and I made the choice to medicate and that has helped a lot.”

She does not recommend people suffering with mental health issues ignore their dark emotions, or pretend these super-strength emotions aren’t real, but she does urge an enjoyment of life. That might well mean seeking medical help,

and it certainly means letting yourself feel good sometimes.

“The more I’ve reached out and the more I’ve continued with this project of sharing these feelings openly, the more people have come to me saying ‘yes, I’ve been feeling that too’,” she said. “I was feeling alone, and it is very healing for me to know that I am not alone and for me and other people to see that where I always thought I’d be a burden for sharing the pain I was going through, I’m finding I’m able to help other people move through that sense of alienation. When we all do that together, that can be so powerful.”

The power of musical sharing whips up some Nasti Weather on March 20 (Williams Lake at the Central Cariboo Arts Centre), March 21 (Quesnel at The Occidental), March 22 (Wells at the Wells Hotel) and March 23 in Prince George at The Legion. Tickets are $10 at the door, with showtime at 9 p.m.

97/16 photo by anastasia schlechtleitner

Nasti Weather, also known as anastasia schletchtleitner, will perform in Prince George at the Legion at 9 p.m. on March 23.

One man’s visiOn turns intO Camp trapping

BseNiors’ sceNe

Kathy nadalin

ruce Hawkenson was inducted into the Prince George Sports Hall of Fame in 2001. Over the years he won medals at almost every level of canoe racing including a gold medal at the first ever Senior World Championship in 1985.

Bruce was born in Regina, Sask. in 1941. The family moved many times over the years and when Bruce was nine years old his mother worked as a substitute teacher in Prince George.

He eventually returned to Caronport, Sask. where he graduated from Briercrest high school.

He went to college in Vancouver where he met his future wife Jeanette Kline.

Jeanette was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1941. Her father, a Baptist minister in Everett, Wa., agreed to send her to a Bible school in Vancouver.

Jeanette said, “I met this handsome Canadian in 1959. We were like minded, we fell in love and we got married in 1962. I was happy to become a Canadian.”

They moved to St. Paul, Minnesota where Bruce earned his bachelor of theology degree in 1961 and his bachelor of arts degree from the Bethel College and Seminary of Minnesota in 1965.

Over the years he returned to Prince George and worked for the Fichtner Lumber company to help pay for his education.

It was through this work relationship that Bruce got a temporary interim pastor’s position at the Fort George Baptist Church.

Bruce said, “I enjoyed serving as the minister but eventually I came to realize that it wasn’t a good fit for me. I wanted to emphasize principles over religion. I successfully applied for a job with the attorney general’s department as a probation officer. I took the four-month training program and for the next three years I worked as a probation officer.

“I met a lot of basically good kids that were in trouble because of a lack of a support foundation. Jeanette and I first took them in as foster children hoping to stabilize their lives.

“By this time, I was in my late 20s and I envisioned a program based on therapeutic principles. We then decided to set up a training program at Trapping Lake similar to an outward-bound program that I was familiar with. I felt the need to work with these unique juveniles by keeping them busy doing something constructive. I started out with eight teenagers who had been in trouble with the law.

“In order to attend they had to choose to change the direction of their personal

lives and Camp Trapping was going to help them do this. They would live in a tent, attend inspirational sessions and enter a rigorous physical training program which included learning to master a canoe on the lake.

“As the program developed my boys proudly became the Canadian Junior Canoe Racing Champions back in the early 70s. Through this and many other successful achievements during their stay in the program, they learned that they were somebody.

“The program was a success and soon I had from eight to 10 boys in the program. I believed in the program. Jeanette supported the program all the way from being camp cook (on a wood stove) to being the bookkeeper.

“We needed seed money so we agreed that I would cash in my superannuation of $1,000 and use $500 to buy an old truck and the 12x20 foot cabin on the property at Trapping Lake.

“The attendees had to rough it and they had to work. We had little funding and government assistance was minimal; regardless the program was working. We taught them how to work and when goals were met more goals were set and they succeeded again and again.

“The Forest service gave us tree planting contracts to facilitate our work program. We measured the youths’ growth as they improved their bodies and minds and they became proud individuals.

“Based upon my former planting experience I partnered up with two others to form a reforestation company, Tawa Enterprises. The company grew to the point where we had up to 500 employees during a season. Most were university students and very hard-working people.

“A legal society was formed under the name of Cariboo Action Society (CATS) and Camp Trapping officially came into being. It was not long before we had as many as 20 boys in the camp at any one time. Sadly, some of the boys had nothing to go home to so some stayed on as junior counselors’ in order to hang on to their new life at the camp.

“Human resources now funded the program, Prince George businesses committed to help out and the community was in favour of it.

“Students throughout British Columbia attended Camp Trapping as a means of fulfilling their court obligations while simultaneously developing the skills necessary to create a positive life when they returned to their community or

re-entered the public-school system upon their graduation from Camp Trapping.

“After many years I found that I was worn out from the long hours. The camp was well established and I knew it was time to move on.

“We formed Folklore Contracting Ltd. and during that time I invented and patented the Hawk Power Scalper which is a hand-held machine powered by a chain saw motor. To this day it is used for cross country trail making, fire suppression and site preparation for planting trees.

“In 1994 our son took over ownership of the company and I retired at the age of 55. Now I could go back to my love for canoeing, I could build a home on the Fraser River, travel and enjoy my master’s basketball team the Silver Bullets.”

Bruce and Jeanette have two sons; Kurt and Lonnie (Caroline) who in turn gave them five grandchildren.

Jeannette’s joy is her music. She volunteered as a ten-year director for the Sweet Adeline’s. The group grew to a membership of 42 and did consistently well in many competitions and local productions.

Her new music love is strumming and singing along with the ukulele group at the Elder Citizens’ Recreation Centre.

97/16 photo by Brent Braaten Jeanette and bruce hawkenson are seen here in their home on the Fraser river. bruce is the creator of Camp Trapping that helped countless youth get on the right track in life.

Accessibility is key for two rivers GAllery

christiNe hiNzmaNN 97/16 staff

Two Rivers Gallery wants to showcase their accessibility and barrier-free facility.

“For me the gallery is not so much about the building but it’s about engaging with art, creativity and expressing yourself,” Carolyn Holmes, managing director, said. “Sometimes this place can be the gateway to those experiences. I want people to know that we’re a really welcoming place, that everybody can come here. Sometimes there are barriers associated with galleries and we want to erase all that and encourage people to come and try us out.”

Holmes, who’s been working at the gallery for the last 20 years, said staff often support other events in the community and work with other organizations so that they can reach people that way.

George Harris, curator and artistic director, has been with the gallery for 18 years but first he was with the Prince George Art Gallery for two and a half years, then spent five years with the Yukon Art Centre in Whitehorse before he returned to Prince George to join the team at the current gallery.

“One of the things I love about the gallery and what it is that we do here is that it provides a window on so many different experiences, so many different worlds, so many different ways of seeing yourself in relationship to the world in relationship to other people,” Harris said. “As we move forward and address the changing world, the one thing that’s going to be a tremendous boon to us is our ability to respond creatively to the challenges that are put in front of us.”

Twyla Exner, director of public programs, has been at the gallery for the last two years. She has a strong background in education and is also a visual artist who actually participated in a group show at Two Rivers many years ago and then in 2012 she had a solo show in the gallery. So there’s a long history here.

“I believe galleries are public institutions and are here to serve the public as well as serve artists,” Exner said. “We are a means to share artists and artwork with the community.”

It takes the management team of three to make the Two Rivers Gallery a success. “We work as a management team,” said Holmes. They oversee the public programs and the art exhibits.

“So Twyla, as well as interpreting the exhibitions her department puts on the

events like Kids Art Days, all the studio programs, maker lab and those are the ways we connect with our local community,” Holmes said. “As a working artist I think Twyla understands both what happens in the exhibition spaces and what the artists are trying to say and also she can really relate to the people - she has an education background so she knows how galleries work. She fits in well with our team. And I think, like George and I, she cares about this place, art and the things that really drive us.”

Carolyn has held other positions at the gallery and comes from an educational programming background.

“Carolyn has been here a while and seen the gallery change and been an integral part of the evolution of this place,” Harris said. “Carolyn is a passionate believer in making connections between people and the arts and it’s definitely an idea we all share. I think it’s

fantastic to have somebody who has that sense of commitment, enthusiasm and a strong sense of belief in this institution and helping make it into the best possible place it can conceivably be.”

Exner has an interesting perspective on Harris and his role at the gallery as she sees him through not only a coworker’s eyes but from that of an experienced artist.

“George is a well-respected curator in the arts community,” Exner said. “He’s been in this position for a long time and he’s made really meaningful connections with a lot of artists. Artists that I know talk really positively about their experiences here and how much they enjoyed working with George. He’s a great story teller so he’s always paying great attention to every little detail in the exhibitions and the work that he does at the gallery.”

Altogether there is eight full-time staff at the Two Rivers, eight part-time staff and five summer students. There are also 121 volunteers who are a big part of its success.

“It’s a huge team and we get along well because we care about the team, we care about the gallery and we all enjoy what we do,” Holmes said.

The Two Rivers most notable accomplishments include making entry into the gallery free for anyone who self-identifies as Indigenous to make it more accessible and further remove barriers.

The gallery is in the process of developing an exhibition exploring the theme of reconciliation.

“We’re looking forward to having an exhibition that presents a diverse range of experiences and voices,” Harris said. He included artists from B.C. who are survivors of residential schools, affected by the consequences of the Indian Act, and those healing who have found a

way to resolve the injustices of the past. The art exhibit will take place July 18 to Oct. 6.

The increasingly popular MakerLab has been at the gallery for the last five years. MakerLab is a multi-disciplinary community space stocked with tools, technology, materials and has mentors there to guide participants. Tools include a Tinkerine 3D printer, Epilog laser cutter/engraver, silversmithing tools, sewing machine, as well as an ever-growing variety of general purpose tools.

“It is an uncommon pairing (between MakerLab and gallery) and in the last few years I feel like we’ve really been defining how the MakerLab fits into the gallery and how it connects with artists and the community and how it is integrated into our programs,” Exner said.

The program was recognized with awards from the B.C. Museum Association and the Canadian Museum Association and for the past couple of years

Two Rivers has presented the MakerLab at conferences across Canada to show an innovative way to connect with community.

Other programs include Art Heals that has been presented at the University Hospital of Northern B.C. for the last 16 years for those struggling with mental health and addictions issues. Every summer Kidz Art Dayz is a multi-day event presented inside the gallery that spills out into the Canada Games Plaza where thousands of children explore art in unique ways, including a community mural, a splatter paint zone, and there’s even a rocket launcher.

“Our strategic goals have a lot to do with reaching out and engaging the community and inspiring the community, as well,” Holmes said.

For more information about the gallery visit www.tworiversgallery.ca.

97/16 photo by Brent Braaten

The team that runs Two rivers Gallery from left is Carolyn holmes, George harris and Twyla exner. Together they offer something unique to the community through gallery programs, exhibits and events.

Taking accounTabiliTy is global movemenT

TLessoNs iN LearNiNg gerry chidiac

he Dalai Lama recently stated, “I feel optimistic about the future because humanity seems to be growing more mature.”

He specifically mentions the increasing importance of inner values, the study of the mind and emotions, as well as the desire for peace, and concern for the environment.

What signs are there that the Dalai Lama is correct in his observations?

A very important piece of growing in maturity is accepting accountability for one’s actions, especially one’s mistakes, and even the mistakes of one’s ancestors. A mature attitude allows one to look objectively at the world and its problems, and ask, “What can I do to make this situation better?”

It is significant to note that many countries are taking responsibility for the horrendous crimes they committed over the last centuries.

Germany, of course, has taken full responsibility for the Holocaust and has made reparations. They have not stopped there, however. They have also accepted complicity for their role in the Armenian Genocide, which happened with their military advisors present in the Ottoman Empire. Germany is also currently in talks with its former colony of Namibia over the genocide of the Herero and Nama peoples, and it is plausible that

Tibetan spiritual leader the dalai Lama touches to his forehead a book of buddhist text offered to him at Tsuglakhang temple in dharmsala, India last week where people gathered to pray on the 15th day of the Tibetan new year.

Germany will apologize to other victims of its colonial policies in the not-so-distant future.

Denmark has apologized to Ghana for its role in the slave trade and has gone as far as accepting responsibility for the role its Vikings played in pillaging Ireland.

Though this may seem insignificant to many, the Danes have clearly established a global precedent.

Norway, Sweden, Finland and Greenland have taken accountability and begun making reparations for their treatment of Indigenous peoples.

A number of other countries, most notably New Zealand, Australia and Canada, have also apologized to their

Indigenous peoples for their efforts to assimilate and even destroy their populations. Though all have stopped short of referring to their crimes as genocidal, they are clearly moving in the right direction.

There is something to be said about accepting accountability, even though one is not personally responsible for the crimes committed. It lifts a veil of secrecy and allows a space for open and honest dialogue. We move away from finger pointing and welcome transparency. Acknowledging that wrong has been done makes it easier to forgive, and forgiveness is a powerful step in the long walk to healing.

As a Canadian educator in a school with a significant Indigenous population, I play an important role in the healing process. I have never been made to feel blame for the residential school system, but I am deeply saddened by it.

I see the impact of intergenerational trauma every day, knowing that this is the result from years of abuse toward past generations.

A mature attitude does not judge, but tries to understand and asks how things can be improved. One is also able to embrace compassion, have patience, celebrate small victories and acknowledge the need for continual growth in knowledge and wisdom.

It is clear that I must embrace humility and gratitude as I walk forward with and learn from the Indigenous people I live and work with.

Taking a step back from our small piece of the planet, we see that we are not alone and there is indeed reason to be optimistic. There is much to do, and we have so much to learn from each other, but we are moving forward.

The standard has been established. As we become more enlightened, it will become impossible to ignore the crimes of our ancestors, or even the impact of our own negative attitudes. It becomes clear that healing our world and healing ourselves are one in the same.

There truly is reason to feel optimistic about the future of humanity, but that future depends on us.

Gerry Chidiac is a champion for social enlightenment, inspiring others to find their greatness in making the world a better place. For more of his writings, go to www.gerrychidiac.com.

97/16 news service photo by ashwini bhatia

wood, fire flavour aged spirits

m. carrie allaN 97/16 wire service

Carried to this distillery by a hybrid vehicle, having mapped my way here via satellite technology, and holding a device on which I can access vast stores of the world’s wisdom and idiocy, I find myself considering the humble wooden barrel, a piece of old-school tech that’s been connecting the world for centuries.

Barrels tower overhead in the storage area of One Eight Distilling in Washington. Most of them are new white oak, but others are darker with age and use, each labeled to denote what liquid – sherry, muscat wine, rum – it used to hold. What’s quietly happening here and at distilleries around the world is the aging of spirits. For a harsh corn whiskey caterpillar to become a caramelly bourbon butterfly, it has to metamorphose by cocooning up in wood.

The technique likely started by accident. For centuries, the wooden barrel was a chief means for moving goods over distances. Well before forklifts, it allowed people to move massive weights by rolling the barrels, container and wheel all in one.

It’s unclear exactly when people began charring barrel interiors, but they probably did it to get rid of flavours from whatever the barrel last held. At some point, they noticed that wines at the end of their journey tasted better than at the beginning.

Centuries later, barrel aging is an art and a science that wine and spirits makers invest money and time into getting right. The influence of wood is even stronger in spirits, whose higher proof makes them extract more of the botanicals they rub up against. Estimates vary, but anywhere from 40 to 70 per cent of the flavour of an aged spirit is thought to come from the wood.

Globally, several species of European and American white oak remain the preferred material.

“They’re able to breathe, so oxygen can pass in and out of the barrel – which is a key component of maturation – and they taste good,” says Jason Stout, vice president of marketing and business development at Independent Stave, an international cooperage company founded in 1912 and headquartered in Missouri.

The main difference between a barrel the company would create for, say, a bourbon and one for wine is that a bourbon barrel will be charred inside rather than gently toasted.

What happens to a spirit during its years in a barrel is multifold: Unappealing flavours get filtered out by that layer of char. New flavours get put in as the alcohol penetrates into the so-called red layer underneath the char and extracts its chemical components.

As temperature and humidity levels change around the porous barrel, it “breathes,” causing evaporation and oxidation inside: Some of the liquid disappears into thin air while the spirit is maturing (the fabled “angel’s share”), but the interaction between wood, spirit and air also impacts the development of flavours.

“Wood is made of certain building blocks... and heat transforms those big building blocks into smaller compounds that are then extracted,” says Stout. Understanding how to get those flavors out is part of the cooper’s art. You might be trying to get at, for example, an aldehyde called vanillin.

“How do we toast that barrel in order to... get the maximum amount of vanillin?” says Stout. “Or how do we create a little bit of that sweet smoke character, without going a little too far and starting to get into that kind of burnt smoke character?”

Distillers can do plenty of experimenting, but what they can release under particular designations is another story. In the immortal words of Walter Sobchak, there are rules, man.

American “straight bourbon whiskey,” for example, must be stored in charred new oak containers for no less than two years. Irish whiskey regulations specify the length of time in barrel, but not the type of wood. Cognac regulations specify the type of oak and the time the spirit must stay in it.

While those few oak species continue to dominate globally, they aren’t the only ones used. In Brazil, makers of cachaça have experimented with native woods, and their exploration has been influ-

ential. The culture of Scotch whisky is known for its devotion to tradition. When the country’s whisky regulations were rewritten a while back, Bill Lumsden, director of distilling for Glenmorangie, a distillery founded in the Scottish Highlands in 1843, knew he was part of the reason.

Intrigued by the work cachaça makers were doing, “I had some barrels made of Brazilian cherry wood, and somehow the Scotch Whisky Association found out about this and called me into their offices and told me I was a naughty boy,” he recalls.

The regulations at the time were a bit unclear, he says; they were soon tightened to specify that oak, and only oak, could be used in the aging of Scotch.

While Lumsden plans to continue to experiment with other woods, he won’t be allowed to call any of it Scotch. And he’s okay with that.

“I have to say, the results of the cherry wood experiment were truly terrible.”

What a spirit will glean from a barrel isn’t always just from wood. Remember those darker, used barrels in the One Eight warehouse?

A spirit that goes into a barrel that previously held something else will get less from the wood (the first liquid has already sucked some of those flavors out), but will get flavour from the previous contents.

This is one of many differences between bourbon and Scotch: Where bourbon has to be aged in new charred oak, the Scots generally reuse barrels that have held wine or other spirits, so the wood typically has a more subtle impact. (It’s sometimes too subtle for John Glaser, founder of Compass Box Whisky, which focuses on striking blends.

“The quality of the cask is paramount to making great whisky,” he told me via email. Some other Scotch producers, he says, use casks that have been used four or five times.

“They’ll be devoid of much in the way of flavour compounds at that stage.)

In the craft world here in the States, small distillers are doing all sorts of interesting things with cask finishing. Regulations give plenty of flexibility in how you may “finish” a spirit in wood, and if you don’t care about releasing a spirit under a recognizable category (bourbon, for example), you have room to play around from the start.

On Iterations 3 and 4 of its Untitled Whiskey series, each of which is different in blend and barreling, One Eight loaned ex-bourbon barrels to Vigilante Coffee; the company stored roasted and unroasted coffee beans in them; later, One Eight took back the barrels for finishing whiskey. It has done a similar experiment with chocolatier Harper Macaw.

In partnerships with makers, breweries, cideries and rum makers, “we both end up with wonderful products,” says co-founder and head distiller Alex Laufer, because their partners end up making something with the ingredients they’ve stored in One Eight’s barrels.

Even with so much now known about what happens to spirits during the aging process, so much science behind it, some of the pleasure is in the remaining mysteries.

“We did a collaborative whiskey with the Whiskey Library,” says One Eight CEO and co-founder Sandy Wood. “It’s just two small rye barrels. Same mash, same distillation, they were kept side by side and have been for two years. And they are very different both in proof and flavor. It’s all about the differences in the oak.”

Whatever you love in aged spirits – the creativity and surprises that come out of craft barrels, the iconic bottlings from famous distillers, the cocktails you can make from them – wood is part of the pleasure.

Consider it one more reason to hug a tree.

97/16 news service photo by Tadd Myers a barrel being charred at Kentucky Cooperage, a subsidiary of Independent stave in Lebanon, Kentucky.

Society’S rich tapeStry explored in africa

sidebars to history

willow

arune

For decades, the popular conception of Africa has been of a continent populated by primitive natives still living in the Stone Age. Indeed, the scramble for Africa (the colonization of almost all of the continent) was based on this premise.

The theory was that the civilized world had a duty to bring enlightenment to the continent (not to mention too loudly the plundering of Africa’s resources) and its uneducated masses.

Scholarship in the 20th century saw interest in African history grow rapidly. From its discovery by Europeans in the late 1800s, various archeologists explored amazing ruins that dotted the continent. Some advanced the theory that many of these had to be built by unknown Europeans as no Africans could possibly build such remarkable cities and buildings.

That theory was proven wrong.

A growing number of Black historians discovered a rich tapestry of very advanced societies that generations had overlooked or denigrated. At long last, the kingdoms of Africa were recognized for their role in trade and commerce with Europe, India, and China, their arts and crafts, and their sophisticated buildings and cities.

An outstanding example of an ad-

vanced African society is the city of Greater Zimbabwe, located in the country formerly known as Rhodesia and now once again Zimbabwe.

The city covered an area of almost 1,800 acres divided into three districts – the Hill Complex, the Valley Complex and the Great Enclosure. Built of stone,

between 1100 to 1600 AD, the time of construction fits into the Medieval Age in Europe.

As in the Americas, trade routes crisscrossed the continent with products of one kingdom exchanged for those of another. Greater Zimbabwe was known for its cattle and crops but the real source of its power came from the gold trade. Gold found in southern Africa came to the city and was then taken to the nearby coast for trade.

It was the hub of many trading routes.

As with the Mayan cities of America, the reason for the decay and abandonment of Greater Zimbabwe remains a mystery.

Some have suggested a series of droughts caused the residents to seek out new places to live. If so, a further mystery is why these former residents did not use the skills they had to build another stone city.

Perhaps they did and the new city remains undiscovered.

One feature of Zimbabwe art is a number of delicately carved stone birds. While looted in the past, these remarkable creations attest to the skill of Zimbabwe artisans. These carvings have been a national symbol from the days of colonialism to the present.

the city is thought to have had a population of between 10,000 and 18,000. Amazingly, the stone structures, the tallest reaching 22 metres, are built without any use of mortar; the walls reach a height of 10 metres.

The stones are fashioned to fit together without the need for mortar. Built

Greater Zimbabwe is only one of the many marvels left behind by the African kingdoms.

Far from being the primitive savages so long depicted in popular works, these cities attest to the sophisticated and advanced societies that all but disappeared during the colonial period.

97/16 news service photo by Jan Derk

This photo was taken in 1997 inside of the Great enclosure which is part of the Greater Zimbabwe ruins.

CoNdimeNTs as a food group

home

agaiN Megan kuklIs

When my son was around three years old and my daughter was around one, I went to my brother’s house to visit and have lunch. Knowing my brother, I made sure that I brought food for the children because as a bachelor, his fridge rarely had toddlerfriendly food options.

As a parent, you try to make sure that you are feeding your children healthy food choices however, sometimes, you just need something quick that they will eat without complaining. I brought a box of Kraft Dinner and cooked it for the kids only to realize that I forgot something.

“Do you have ketchup?” I ask my brother, hopefully.

“No,” he replied.

The resulting commotion of a threeyear-old having a tantrum about not having ketchup for his “ronis” was memorable enough that my brother now ensures that he always has ketchup, just in case. My son is still suspicious and a little disappointed every time we go to my brother’s house because my son does not understand how you can live with only a jar of sauerkraut and some carrots in your fridge. The resulting ketchup trauma is renewed every time he asks his

uncle for a snack. There are three condiments that are always in fresh supply at our house: ketchup, plum sauce and sour cream. It drives my husband bananas.

Doesn’t work to say ‘trust us’ when it comes to leadership

Voter apathy is frequently cited as a concern for democracy.

Apathy is seen as a concern in many different social or educational organizations, because the leaders know that participant engagement is required for success.

I posit that at least part of the blame lies with the leadership, either elected, appointed or volunteered.

“Because I said so” doesn’t work very well. Parents know this better than anyone, because we have all said it and got unsatisfactory results.

Silence and resentment, blowback and stomping off, or whatever other ways our frustrated children use to express their displeasure at being shut out of the rationale for the decisions that directly affect their lives.

Parents say “because I said so” when we are tired and don’t want to take the time to explain ourselves, or just don’t have the words, or occasionally because there are reasons the child cannot understand due to their limited understanding of the issues surrounding the decision.

However, as adults, it is reasonable and fundamental to our way of life, to expect an explanation and truth from those we elect and hire to run our organizations.

When the public is told to “trust us” or “we can’t tell you because of FOIPPA” someone often did something wrong, poorly, or completely neglected their duty, and they are really hoping the questions will just stop.

ThiNkiNg aloud Trudy klassen

They want to cover for someone’s bad behaviour, or continue building their career and find the pesky media and/or member of the public they are supposed to serve, just too much bother.

Sometimes it seems as if the jobs or careers the organizations provide are the reason for the organization, rather than its stated and public goals.

In the case of our parents, most of us realize later in life that when they couldn’t explain why, at least their hearts were in the right place and there was a valid reason for their decision.

Whether it is the cover-ups for sexual abuse scandals rampant in nearly every organization that caters to minors, decisions that negatively affect children in the school system, abuse-of-power scandals like the ones in our governments that are in the news right now, the stonewalling in nearly every investigation into the actions of those trusted to act in the public interest, or even simply to explain the rationale for a decision, the initial response to a questioning public is nearly always the same: “Trust me, I have your best interests at heart” which is basically saying “because I said so.”

He insists that the food tastes the same whether or not you have the sauce to accompany it but I disagree. Some foods legitimately taste like garbage without the right sauce. Kraft Dinner needs

Some foods legitimately taste like garbage without the right sauce.

ketchup, chicken nuggets need sweet and sour sauce and perogies (and cabbage rolls) need sour cream. There are replacement condiments that will do in a pinch but the meal is far less satisfying. Ranch dressing can substitute for sour cream but I will be grumpy while eating. Plum sauce can stand in for sweet and sour sauce but there is no true substitute for ketchup.

This strange condiment conversation came up again because I came home from work this week to proudly let my husband know that my co-workers had lunch envy over my delicious cabbage roll lunch. I then told my husband that I even ate my cabbage rolls without sour cream. It was a remarkably similar conversation that we would have with our kids when they announce that they finished their whole lunch and ask if they could please have a treat. Sometimes, the weird food issues that you develop as a child can follow you right up until you are a thirtysomething-adult woman. Yes I would like some perogies but only if there is sour cream otherwise I’m not hungry.

Some foods are just a vehicle for sauce and I am okay with that.

97/16 news service photo sometimes there really is no substitute for your favourie condiment.

World para Nordic Games

97/16

The World Para Nordic skiing Championships wrapped up sunday at Otway. The athletes, coaches, organizers and spectators gathered at the lodge for a group photo saturday, top. Canada’s Mark arendz paces himself on an uphill section while competing in the men’s cross-country 20 km standing CT on sunday afternoon, above left. above right, Canada’s brian McKeever, foreground, and dmytro suiarko of the ukraine make their way around the course in the men’s cross-country 20 km Visually Impaired CT on sunday. Vilde Nilsen of Norway competes in the cross-country open relay saturday morning, right. Prince GeorgeMackenzie MLa Mike Morris places the silver medal for the cross-country mixed relay on Team Canada’s Natalie Wilkie during the medal ceremony saturday at the Civic Centre.

photos by James Doyle

GAMING HELPS CENTRE NFL STAR

97/16 wiRe SeRvice

The 23-year-old wearing a sweatshirt and funky jogger pants could almost be mistaken for any other young man engaging in lighthearted banter while playing video games on a Tuesday morning. But after an MVP award in his second NFL season, Patrick Mahomes II tends to stick out, even when engaging in everyday activities like gaming.

Though so much has changed in Mahomes’ life after he laid waste to NFL secondaries with more than 5,000 yards and 50 touchdowns, he still reverts back to a ritual that dates back to his middle school days: hourslong offseason video gaming sessions.

“It’s been something that I’ve taken with me all the day since I was that young,” Mahomes said during a promotional event for new in-game content for Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 at Treyarch’s offices.

Video games, especially shooters like Call of Duty, have served as a way for Mahomes to escape the pressures of his life on the field while still flexing his competitive muscles. The practice has endured from his time as a multisport high school star in Texas, then to Texas Tech, and now as one of the NFL’s youngest MVPs. Gaming has aided him in even more ways than stress relief at the pro level, helping him build chemistry and cohesion with his teammates on the Chiefs.

“I have a great group of guys on my team who are also young and so we all get on, we play, and kinda get lost in it

for a while,” Mahomes said of his teammates, who comprise one of the youngest rosters in the league. Gaming online has also helped him keep in touch with his friends from high school, he said, which

Mahomes prefers shooter games, like Call of Duty and Fortnite even if the latter title presented him with an odd moment in which his character was killed by a player wearing Mahomes’ own jersey in the game.

Mahomes said the team has no issues with his gaming and, while he will bring his PlayStation with him on the road, he’ll only play for an hour or two on Mondays and Fridays during the season, when the Chiefs aren’t playing or practicing. In the offseason, his sessions will stretch closer to three or four hours.

While the Chiefs have no problem with his gaming, and certainly prefer it to him playing basketball, not all parties in Mahomes’ circle are as thrilled.

“My girlfriend gets a little mad at me sometimes because I’m in the game room playing for three or four hours,” he said.

Playing with several journalists at the Treyarch studios, Mahomes demonstrated how his gaming experience can manifest on the field. During matches played with some men more than twice his age, he emerged as the clear leader of the group, barking out commands to his teammates while making split-second decisions. He adapted his strategies based on the game’s maps, called out the locations of opposing players and, just as he did this past fall, displayed a bias for aggressiveness.

helps keeps him grounded as his star continues to rise.

Despite his profession, his habit does not extend to Madden NFL, a game he finds too close to his real world. Instead,

When the game concluded, he had earned player of the game honors. His secret?

“I was getting a lot of kills and not dying a lot,” Mahomes said.

97/16 news service photo Patrick Mahomes and brittany Matthews arrive at shaq’s Fun house at Live! at the battery atlanta on Feb. 1.

Guerrero Jr. must-see iN spriNG traiNiNG

This Blue Jays baseball player will likely be their best hitter

dave sheinin

97/16 wire service

DUNEDIN, Fla. — It is difficult to describe the breathtaking majesty of the blast off the bat of Vladimir Guerrero Jr. just before 1 p.m. Thursday on a backfield at the Toronto Blue Jays’ spring training facility.

But it was into a steady wind, to straightaway center field, seemingly still rising as it struck near the top of the black, mesh “batter’s eye” above the wall, some 30 or so feet off the ground. If 20 people witnessed it, then 20 people simultaneously formed the word “wow” with their mouths.

If that doesn’t do it justice, perhaps this will: A Blue Jays employee happened to be aiming a radar-tracking device toward the plate and holding a monitor displaying exit velocities during this batting practice session. And when the session ended, that employee relayed the speed off the bat of that particular blast: 118 mph.

And if that still doesn’t drive home the point, perhaps this will: In the entire 2018 Major League Baseball regular season, only two home runs, both of them by the New York Yankees’ Giancarlo Stanton, were struck at a higher exit velocity than the ball Guerrero hit Thursday off a batting-practice pitcher lobbing 60-mph fastballs.

The singular talent of Vladimir Guerrero Jr. to hit baseballs harder and more consistently than practically any human being currently walking the earth – with the possible exception of his father and namesake, the Hall of Fame outfielder –is best experienced up close, from behind a batting cage on a warm spring day in Florida.

from having to pitch to him, of course) is through the lens of baseball’s antiquated, repressive service-time rules – which, unfortunately, is how much of the greater baseball community is experiencing Guerrero these days.

As fans in Toronto and far beyond know by now, the Blue Jays failed to bring Guerrero to the majors in 2018, even after he hit .402 with a 1.120 OPS for Class AA New Hampshire, then went to Class AAA Buffalo and hit .336 with a .978 OPS.

And despite the fact he would likely be the Blue Jays’ best hitter from the first day of the 2019 season – Fangraph’s Steamer projection algorithm has him being worth 4.7 wins above replacement (WAR) this year, one spot below Nolan Arenado and one above Aaron Judge – they will almost certainly return him to Buffalo at the end of spring and keep him there for somewhere around 15 days.

At batting practice Thursday, the younger Guerrero wore a semi-permanent smile below his signature blond-tipped hair.

Why 15 days? Because that is how long, by rule, the Blue Jays must keep Guerrero in the minors to delay his free agency by a full year – essentially guaranteeing themselves a seventh year of his big league services. The rule is unfair to Guerrero and every Blue Jays player and fan. It’s also unfair, in a sense, to Ross Atkins, the Blue Jays general manager, who must stand in front of cameras and invent reasons it might be prudent to start Guerrero back in the minors – when Guerrero has already dominated there – while, in truth, given the rules that are in place, it would amount to malpractice, as the top baseball executive of a mid-revenues team, for him to bring Guerrero to the majors on Opening Day and cost the Blue Jays the extra year of his services.

translator, “That’s their decision and my only job is to come here, get better, work hard and be ready.”

The Blue Jays have already built a strong support system around their budding superstar.

His locker this spring sits in a row of older Latin players, anchored by veteran designated hitter Kendrys Morales, who played with Vladimir Sr. in Anaheim.

The Blue Jays’ rookie manager, Charlie Montoyo, mentored the elder Guerrero when they played together in the Montreal Expos’ farm system.

That talent is the reason Guerrero is, less than a month shy of his 20th birthday, the consensus top prospect in baseball – a third baseman with “the ceiling of a perennial MVP candidate,” according to MLB Pipeline.

“The hype,” said Blue Jays shortstop prospect Bo Bichette, another consensus top-20 prospect, who has come through the minor leagues with Guerrero and thus has perhaps seen more of his professional at-bats than anyone, “is real.”

Your first time seeing Guerrero hit typically gets seared into your memory.

“I remember it,” Blue Jays center fielder Kevin Pillar said. “Last spring, he gets brought up for a game in Bradenton (against the Pittsburgh Pirates). He’s probably hitting sixth or seventh in the lineup.

“The pitcher was kind of carving us up. But he hits this low line drive off the left field wall. It was loud. It was just the way he was able to watch the hitters before, kind of diagnose what the pitcher was doing. It just seems like, for his age, he’s a little more mature as far as his approach, and the way he’s able to watch a game and make adjustments from pitch to pitch.”

But if the best way to experience Guerrero is up close, the worst way (aside

“We want to make sure he’s the best possible third baseman [and] best possible hitter he can be,” Atkins told reporters in a news conference at the start of camp.

In the present labour atmosphere –which, owing largely to the stagnation of the last two free agent markets, is as acrimonious as at any point since the 1994-95 players’ strike – the manipulation of service time, to essentially delay a player’s free agency, is just one more flash point. It isn’t only the Blue Jays.

In recent years, the Chicago Cubs did it with Kris Bryant, and the Atlanta Braves with Ronald Acuna Jr.

“Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and other great young talents around baseball have earned the right to play on the field for a major league team,” the union said in a statement. “The decision not to bring him up is a business decision, not a baseball decision. It’s bad for the Blue Jays, it’s bad for fans, it’s bad for players and it’s bad for the industry.”

Atkins acknowledged the tense labour atmosphere “no doubt influences the way fans are thinking about the decisionmaking and how the players are thinking about the decision-making.”

Guerrero has publicly brushed off the concerns, telling reporters through a

When asked who was the best young player, aside from Guerrero Jr., that he’d ever been around, Montoyo, 53, replied, “His dad.”

At batting practice Thursday, the younger Guerrero wore a semi-permanent smile below his signature blondtipped hair. Otherwise, he would not have stood out – he is listed at 6-foot-1, 200 pounds, but a Blue Jays official said he is closer to 240 – until he stepped into the batter’s box.

“What jumps out at you,” Atkins said, “is how consistently he hits the ball square, at just the right point of his swing.”

It was one of those squared-up swings, at just the right point, that produced the line drive off the batter’s eye, the home run that would have been the third-hardest-hit in baseball in 2018.

The Guerrero Era is coming – circle April 12, the 16th day of the major league season, on your calendar – and when it does, it’s going to be something to behold.

97/16 news service photos by Nathan Denette Toronto blue Jays infielder Vladimir Guerrero Jr. hits at batting practice during baseball spring training in dunedin, Fla., last week.

Toronto blue Jays infielder Vladimir Guerrero Jr. (27) makes a throw to first base in a drill during baseball spring training in dunedin, Fla. last week.

A Sobering Story of recovery

alexander rockey fleming 97/16 wire service

In addiction phraseology, it’s often called “rock bottom.”

It’s a state of mind known as the nadir of suffering, an overwhelming feeling of hopelessness. Sometimes it’s a jumpoff point at which misery is traded for normalcy and meaning, where one life ends and another begins.

Ryan Hess’s rock bottom came during a drizzly December in Ohio. He was high yet again on heroin, and he had been that way for more hours than he could remember.

The 33-year-old lay on a filthy sweatshirt beneath a piece – just a small piece – of tent, stolen from a stranger’s garden shed. His socks and shoes were wet, his breath and body reeked.

“I was hungry and very lonely,” he says. “I broke down weeping like a baby. I needed help and 48 hours later I finally accepted it.”

Hess entered rehab and completed four-plus months of inpatient and outpatient treatment, committing himself to sobriety after some 15 years of what he calls “horrible” substance abuse that had included two overdoses.

Eight years into sobriety, he continues to vigorously work the 12-step recovery program with his sponsor, detaching from “anything that creates unmanageability in my life” and regularly meeting with a group of sober men he has dubbed his Fab Five, “who call me on my bull,” he says. “If someone would have told

me that night that I would get my family back, have a job I love, own a home and be a dependable member of society, I would have told that person they were insane,” he says. “But look – I’m doing it. It’s hard work and it takes dedication and sacrifice, but today life is amazing.”

are unique to the individual, so are the methods by which people achieve their sobriety – and then hold on to it.

Some attain it via formal supports and professional interventions, including medications that help manage cravings. Others beat addiction by paving their own road, reaching their goals without structured care, sometimes fortified by an intensified passion based on parenting, spirituality, creativity or activism that lends structure to their lives.

Whatever the route, extended abstinence – meaning at least several years –is predictive of sustained recovery.

“Reaching the three- to five-year mark seems to be a major milestone,” says Robert Ashford, recovery scientist at Philadelphia’s University of the Sciences Substance Use Disorders Institute and a person in recovery for six years.

“That benchmark can signal a reduced risk of returning to substance use because the person with addiction has had the time to develop effective coping skills, social connections and a renewed sense of self, among other healthy attributes. It doesn’t mean your recovery is finished, but it is a reason to breathe a little easier and be proud of yourself.”

Hess is one of about 22 million Americans in recovery from drugs and alcohol, according to a 2017 study from the Recovery Research Institute of Massachusetts General Hospital, an affiliate of Harvard Medical School.

Just as all substance use disorders

What is the first step you took to get sober? What would you suggest for me?

Ashford says access to education, gainful employment and safe housing are important, but that finding an increased sense of purpose and meaning in life can be key.

“For some, this means giving back to others in recovery, such as being a mentor. For others, it may mean just doing the next right thing time and time again.”

Recovery is not ‘a one size fits all’ ask an addict

Good question; unfortunately though, as with any chronic medical disease (such as addiction or diabetes), additional details are required.

The problem with addiction is the (false) belief that one size fits all. Evidence shows that gender, age, length of use, lifestyle, drug of choice and past attempts at recovery, all play a role in management of the disease. With diabetics, we would never say to them, without knowing their history, “just take insulin shots.” However with addiction we do; people often give/try the two word, ‘one size fits all approach’ of “just stop.”

This is misguided, unhelpful and wrong. If we could “just stop” there wouldn’t be a problem. Remember, addiction means we can NOT “just stop.”

As you may or may not recall, I am an addict/alcoholic but also an academic. I work in the field. I have professional relationships with alcoholics, addicts, teenagers, families and mental health clients (comorbidity is common). I draw from vast personal and professional experience, a combination which I think is unique.

I can offer suggestions in a general way but please know I am able to access a wide range of resources and people (addiction professionals and those in recovery). If you need assistance, Prince George has great services. When someone asks for help, quick action is vital. Too much time to think often leads to more time to drink.

If you have a doctor you trust, start there for guidance and support.

Addiction is chronic, progressive, relapsing and remitting. I cannot stress this enough. As mentioned in earlier columns, I believed that if I “just stopped,” all my problems would be solved. They were not. Due to not adequately treating my disease, I frequently relapsed. A good recovery program should be tailored to fit. Many rehabs use confrontational models which for women, often don’t work. Trauma is prevalent, shame is rampant. Beating someone up (in other words, confronting with anger) is often counterproductive.

I also do not believe in cutting all ties but do disagree with enabling. When my entire family left, except for one brother, I then had nothing; my lifeline was gone. My brother did not agree with my use, but he did let me know he was there for me when I chose to change.

There are many options out there. Based on the many questions about help, I will write in my next column about twelve step programs. There are so many misconceptions about 12 steps which I wish to address. In the meantime, if you are looking for help, please email the editor, with specific details about your particular situation. He will keep you anonymous.

97/16 news service photo ryan hess and son eli polish his 1953 Oldsmobile rocket at home in Lawrenceburg, Indiana, on Jan. 26.

HealtH

How to fall and get up again

daphne miller 97/16 wire service

One minute, I was trotting peacefully along a rutted hillside path. The next, I lay in a heap on my left side, so wracked with pain it was hard to breathe. A longtime runner, I traded pavement for trails a couple years ago, and since then I’ve taken a few tumbles. But never had I fallen so fast and so hard. Moaning, I inventoried what might be broken.

Then panic set in as I considered some horrifying statistics: An estimated one in three women will break a hip, and, for patients older than 60, the one-year mortality rate after a hip fracture can be as high as 58 percent. Though still in my early 50s, I thought of hardy patients I’d cared for over the years who had swiftly declined after one bad fall.

I was lucky. I had no major fractures or head trauma, and my bones, on X-ray, seemed reasonably strong. But I hobbled around for weeks, my left side turning from purple to yellow, my arm in a sling. Once I was finally back on the trail, I could not shake the fear that my next fall (and there certainly would be one) could be far worse. This anxiety quickly extended to any sport involving a hard surface, including street jogging, cycling, skating, and skiing. I was suffering from a well-described “syndrome”: fear of falling or FOF, which is especially common in the over-50 crowd. Research shows that people with FOF, regardless of whether they have experienced a bad fall, are more likely to become deconditioned, depressed and socially isolated. At this point, my options seemed clear: confine all sports to a squishy mat, or learn how to fall safely.

But what is the best way to fall, and how do we master this?

I often discuss fall prevention with my older patients, but I feel unequipped to tell them how to fall well. A PubMed search unearthed hundreds of studies evaluating exercise programs, assistive devices and physical environment modifications (shower bars, handrails, rug pads, etc.) to keep people from taking a spill. But there has been very little research about the safest way to fall. One synthesis of 13 small studies (mostly performed on young athletes) suggests that going into a squat when falling backward, flexing elbows when pitching forward, and rolling over one shoulder if headed sideways are all good strategies. But the article gave little information about how to put this information into practice or whether these strategies work if you are no longer in your 20s. I decided to seek out some experts in the art (and science) of falling safely.

On YouTube, I discovered Stephen Jepson, 77, a retired ceramics professor who teaches people how to stay nimble and upright or, should gravity prevail, how to avoid getting hurt. In one video, he runs around doing all sorts of tricks, including tightrope walking and jumping hurdles. Jepson says the key to avoiding fall injuries is to maintain quick hands

and feet by constantly learning new physical skills. At 73, he taught himself to juggle clubs while standing on a balancing board, and, recently, he mastered the one-wheel hoverboard (imagine a skateboard with one large wheel in the middle). For me, he suggested these steps:

Level 1. Balance on one foot. Start by doing it near a doorway or chair so there is something to grab for support.

Level 2. Use your non-dominant hand to stir a pot.

Level 3. Use your non-dominant hand to stir a pot while standing on one foot.

Unsurprisingly, Jepson does his share of falling.

“If you are going to fall, the best way to do it is to bend a knee and roll at an angle over one shoulder to protect your hip and your noggin,” he said.

Next, I contacted a doctor whose patients fall for a living. Ken Akizuki, team orthopedist for the San Francisco Giants, describes sliding into a base as a form of controlled falling. Akizuki can easily list players who fall well and those who don’t. Pitcher Madison Bumgarner is “incredibly athletic,” he said, while with onetime pitcher Shawn Estes, “you just watched and hoped he didn’t get hurt.”

Akizuki echoed Jepson’s advice about the best falling technique: “Tuck your head, use your strength to direct your fall, and roll so that you take most of the impact on your backside, the upper back and/or gluts being the most resistant parts of your body.”

Akizuki said that, rather than keeping me safe, my newfound fear of falling could increase my chances of injury.

“[S]he who hesitates gets hurt,” he cautioned, and recommended I learn

aikido to master this falling business. I signed up for an introductory aikido class. The sensei, a powerful-looking, 50-something woman, explained that this Japanese martial art is about not fighting but converting violent movements from an aggressor into something that is safe and harmonious. After learning to bow and stand, we moved on to ukemi – or the “art of falling.” I began to sweat as I watched her effortlessly tuck one leg under, become a human ball, and roll backward or forward unharmed. I looked around and noticed that some of my youngish classmates seemed to share my terror. Apparently FOF is not necessarily an age-related thing. I took a deep breath and threw myself earthward, glad that there was a thick mat to protect me from my mistakes.

After class, I called Adam Tenforde, sports medicine doctor and assistant professor at Harvard Medical School. Although he studies the biomechanics of running and how to avoid falling, he was open to discussing the art (and science) of falling safely.

Tenforde described how his young children naturally explored their surroundings, using fingers and toes with equal dexterity and moving from upright to rolling and back again.

He thinks we quickly lose this ease because almost everything in our lives, including chairs, desks, beds, cars and even cushioned shoes, is designed to create distance between us and the ground. He recommends we counteract this, especially with our footwear.

According to Tenforde, information we get from the bottoms of our feet (the technical term is plantar neurosensory input) helps us maintain balance. This

input, coupled with muscle strength and agility, is essential for generating a “good correctional movement” should we fall. He refers his fall-prone patients to physical therapists who take an integrated, whole-body approach to rehabilitation and don’t focus on just a couple of muscle groups.

During my conversation with Tenforde, I realized that the same skills that keep me upright could also make me a better faller. Maybe it was not just luck that protected me from major injury that day on the trail! Maybe all that mud sliding and rock hopping over the past couple years had trained me to tumble well. Immediately, my FOF begin to disappear.

The next day, I put on shoes with paper-thin soles and hit the trail. While studies of how these shoes affect balance are contradictory, I appreciated how they improved my gait and made me feel more grounded. (Note: the transition to minimal shoes should be gradual to avoid injury.) Gone was that feeling of impending doom. I welcomed the uneven terrain and slippery stream crossings as a chance to build stability and fall resilience.

I had asked Tenforde if there is a specific age after which he advises patients to stop having an active lifestyle. He answers: “I take your age and subtract it from 100, whatever number I get is the number of years I’m going to help you keep doing what you love to do.”

In my case, that’s 47. So, I will continue to practice ukemi and stir my soup with my left hand while standing on one foot. And once I master this, I’ll try learning some new tricks.

Miller is a family physician and author of Farmacology and The Jungle Effect.

97/16 news service photo Learning how to fall may prevent catastrophic injury and make a person feel more confident.

NeoNatal ICU CaN take a toll oN pareNts

amialya durairaj 97/16 wire service

For the casual visitor, the most striking thing about a hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit is the noise. An orchestra of alarms beeps incessantly. The lights are dim, the shades are drawn, and the air inside the NICU’s sterile environment is thick with parental anxiety.

When babies are born prematurely or sick, they are separated from parents, hooked up to tubes and wires, and cared for in transparent incubators. To understand what is happening to their children, family members must learn a strange new medical vernacular while they await discharge. It is frequently an emotionally exhausting roller-coaster ride and it can have a lasting toll on the families.

“Miracles happen there, and the worst things in the world happen there. And it can go from one of those to the other in a matter of hours,” New York mother Kayleigh Lentz says. After a routine pregnancy and delivery in June 2018, Lentz was shocked to learn that her son had a congenital abnormality that required the removal of his small intestine.

“I was scared every day in the hospital that he was going to die. I was scared to bond with him,” she says.

Parents of newborns who have been hospitalized tend to have higher rates of depression,anxiety and acute or posttraumatic stress disorders. Some studies of parents of preterm babies report postpartum depression rates as high as 40 per cent, well above the 10 to 15 per

cent reported for women generally after childbirth.

In June 2016, Maryland parents Robert Pergament and Emily Turek found themselves in the NICU after Turek’s appendix ruptured, necessitating an emergency Caesarean delivery when she was 30 weeks pregnant. Her recovery was complicated by life-threatening sepsis due to infection from her ruptured appendix, which led to being separated from her newborn for 11 days. When mother and daughter were finally reunited, Turek had difficulties forming an attachment.

“I didn’t feel like I was needed at all.” she says. “When the baby is in the NICU, they don’t rely on you. The nurses were there to keep her alive.”

New father Pergament also found the experience extremely stressful. “Every 30 seconds another alarm is going off. The nurses may grab your baby from you to get her to start breathing,” he says. “It’s just relentless.”

Turek and Pergament’s daughter spent nine weeks in the NICU. After discharge, Turek continued to struggle to bond with her baby and Pergament began to experience anxiety symptoms. Initially, the couple tried to hide their feelings from each other. “He didn’t want to tell me about his anxiety,” Turek says. “And there was so much I couldn’t share with him because I already felt guilty enough that I didn’t have the feelings I was supposed to have.”

“Parents who have any mental health issues, whether they be depression, anxiety or stress may have difficulty interacting with their baby, not only in the

NICU but also after discharge. And the way parents interact during infancy often determines how the baby will do long term,” says Karel O’Brien, a neonatologist at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, and an associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Toronto faculty of medicine.

In addition to the stressors of the NICU and challenges of caring for a medically fragile child at home, parents often experience financial pressures, marital strain and social isolation, all of which can exacerbate mental health issues. A parent’s psychological distress, if unaddressed, may negatively influence a child’s development until their teen years, according to a 2014 series in Lancet.

The disruption in the attachment process can add to the psychological distress of parents, according to Susan Niermeyer, a neonatologist at Children’s Hospital of Colorado and a professor at the University of Colorado.

“If bonding is disrupted, it doesn’t mean parents and babies will never build attachment relationships. It just means that extra work may be required,” says Linda Franck, a professor at the University of California at San Francisco and co-principal investigator of the UCSF California Preterm Birth Initiative, a research project that aims to improve maternal and newborn health outcomes and reduce racial barriers in preterm birth.

“Over time, with close contact and guidance from the health-care team, parents can reestablish a strong emotional connection with their baby,” she says.

One well-studied avenue to aid in attachment is through promoting more physical closeness between parents and newborns.

“There is magic in that touch right at birth,” Niermeyer says. “That contact correlates with much greater attachment and lower depression.” She advocates that perinatal clinicians find creative ways to physically connect newborns with their parents immediately after birth, even after emergency deliveries.

Practicing kangaroo mother care in the NICU did not foster Turek’s attachment to her infant. But several months after discharge, with effort and outside mental health treatment, she was able to bond with her daughter, who is now two-and-a-half years old. Strong evi-

dence shows that engaging parents in the caregiving process during hospitalization can also improve family well-being. In a recently published study, O’Brien and her collaborators found that involving parents by encouraging them to participate in medical rounds involving their child and performing routine tasks, such as bathing and changing diapers, led to improvements in newborn weight gain, higher breast-feeding rates, and lower parental stress and anxiety.

It can be difficult, however, for many parents to spend significant time in the hospital because of work demands and limited parental leave, the need to care for siblings, or transportation problems.

“Our whole societal and family structure in the United States poses challenges to letting families really engage with their babies, who may be hospitalized for a long time. It’s difficult for people to spend six or eight hours a day with their child,” Niermeyer says.

Peer support programs for parents of preterm babies can boost parents’ moods and facilitate a safer home environment by improving their sensitivity to their child’s needs and confidence in caring for a tiny and often medically fragile baby. Interacting with others who are going through the same struggles can curb some of the social isolation parents feel, as well.

In some cases, a parent’s psychological stresses may persist, or even show up, after discharge. “I didn’t start experiencing the physical symptoms of anxiety until a year or more after she was born,” Pergament says. Timely diagnosis and treatment helped curb his anxiety, but he says he still struggles with the urge to be an overprotective father.

In Lentz’s case, her son was discharged from the hospital two months after his birth requiring complex ongoing care. Eight months later, “we’re still reeling with the reality of having a child with a chronic medical condition,” Lentz says. “I am definitely struggling with posttraumatic stress and anxiety issues. My son was readmitted to the hospital last October for several weeks, and it took a really big toll on me.”

Given that parent mental health is so important to a child’s long-term outcomes, many experts say parents of NICU babies should be routinely offered mental-health screening and help.

9716 news service/family handout photo Kayleigh Lentz spends time with her son in the NICu ward.

a new look for retirement

marjorie brimley

97/16 wire service

The other day, I was getting ready to leave work and I ran into a former student of mine. He’s a quieter kid but was always kind and thoughtful in my class. He was with his grandma, whom I also know. I asked him how the year was going for him, and he gave me a brief answer. His grandma added, “you know, he’s been playing a lot of baseball. He’s very good at baseball.”

Her grandson looked away, his cheeks turning red. It was clear that his grandma was very proud of him.

“I know I’m embarrassing him a little bit,” she said with a laugh, touching his shoulder. He looked up at her and smiled. It was clear they were very close.

We talked more about their lives, and then I told them about mine.

“My dad is living with us,” I said, “so I’m doing OK. Now that I’m a single mom, he’s decided to move in.”

“Oh that’s so wonderful!” the grandma said. She knew that my husband had died a year prior and it had been difficult for me. She looked at me kindly. “You know, I live with my grandkids,” she said.

I told her I didn’t realize that.

“Oh yes,” she said, “we moved in when the kids were really little.”

We talked for a while about what it is like to live in a three-generation household. I told her how grateful I am to have my dad around.

“To be honest, it’s wonderful to live with my grandkids,” the grandma told me, “and I bet your father gets a lot out of living with you too.”

At that moment, her grandson looked up.

“You know,” he said, “it’s pretty great for the kids, too.”

The grandma paused. Then she looked at him and said, “well, sometimes I think now that they are all in high school, it’s probably time for us to move out.”

The boy looked at his grandma.

“No, you can’t do that,” he said. He smiled after he said it. He knew she wasn’t moving out.

The grandma turned to me.

“Well, I’m happy to hear your dad is with you,” she said. I told her I am happy about it too. We chatted a bit more and then parted.

I thought about my dad, a 71-year-old widower who had retired a few years earlier to play golf and read all the books he’d set aside during his busy career. But family is family, and when I needed help, he came. Now he is spending his days making breakfasts, organizing backpacks and hearing about the intricacies of second-grade basketball.

I left school and came home to a dozen kids playing tag in my house. My father was in the kitchen, making a snack for my four-year-old as the other kids joyfully screamed all around him. On the table was a piece of paper showing different angles.

“What’s this?” I asked my dad. He told me that my daughter had drawn it for him.

“She’s learning about line segments in school.”

My daughter ran up right then.

“I was showing Grandpa about math!” she said, and then ran off with her friends.

He smiled. “She’s really very good at math,” he said as he showed me what she knew.

We talked a bit more about his day.

He’d taken a walk and read a book about Napoleon. Then he’d picked up the kids at school and walked them home, collecting a few other friends along the way. Everything was chaotic at home, and his book on Napoleon had been flung onto the floor.

We started to cook dinner together. My boys got into a fight in the middle of it, and I heard my dad shout, “hey, cut that out!” at them. The older kids set the table, and I signed all the papers from their school while my dad helped my youngest in the bathroom. Other parents and neighbours came in and out of the house, picking up their children and just stopping by to say hello.

Eventually, we sat down to eat. We all talked about our days, and the kids each had a story about what happened to them at school. After they finished, my daughter said, “What about you, Grandpa?”

“I had a great day,” he said. “I got to read a lot and then I took a walk and then I picked up all of you.”

She smiled at him.

“Sounds good!” she said.

I sat back at that moment and looked at my kids. My daughter was chattering about the details of fourth grade recess and her brother was laughing at something she was saying. My youngest was so close to my dad he was almost in his lap. My father was sitting there, just taking in the moment and listening to my kids with a slight smile on his face.

Just over a year ago, it would have been my husband across the table. He would have comforted my kids and laughed at their jokes and smiled at me across the table. I long every day for a dinner like the ones we had so recently.

But I can’t bring my husband back and I can’t change the fact that my children only have one parent.

So I was surprised at my own emotions that night around the dinner table. When I finally paused to take a breath, I realized that for the first time in many months, I was conscious that I was living in a happy moment. I also realized that the happy moment I was feeling was due, in large part, to the role that my dad now plays in my house.

“Grandpa” is not the same as “Dad,” and my kids know that. But they also

know that their Grandpa loves them so much that he is there for them every day. He makes their lunches and he finds their socks and he laughs at their stories. What he does on a daily basis is not anything special. But neither is anything I do. What we both do is show up for three little kids through the happy times and the sick times and the bike-riding times and the homework times.

Because showing up is everything.

That night, I thought about the grandma I’d run into earlier that day, the one who talked about living with her grandkids.

“To be honest, it’s really great for me,” she had said.

Then I thought about what her grandson had said back.

“It’s pretty great for the kids, too.”

97/16 news service photo by Marjorie Brimley Marjorie brimley’s son Tommy, and father, Tom, are playing with Legos.

HealtHy-crusted cHicken pot pie

ellie Krieger 97/16 wire service

The best thing and the worst thing about chicken pot pie could be the crust. It’s the best because that’s what turns a prosaic chicken stew into a glorious pie, rendering each bite a pastry-adorned indulgence. But from a nutritional point of view, it’s primarily the crust that makes traditional, double-crust potpie unhealthful, adding loads of refined flour and butter or shortening.

This recipe solves that conundrum by rethinking the crust so it offers a tender, flaky pie experience without the downsides. The crust here is made with wholegrain pastry flour, olive oil and just a bit of butter, and it is approached almost like you would a graham cracker crust, so there is no rolling involved.

First, you whisk the oil with milk, which yields an emulsified, thickened mixture. That gets poured into the flour, which has had a little butter worked into it, and the mixture is stirred with a fork until it is moistened and crumbly. Fresh thyme adds a savory, floral element.

At this stage the dough is easily shaped, is hand-flattened and then torn into flakes. They top individual baking dishes filled with the chicken stew, so it resembles a crumble topping. That stew, incidentally, is better for you as well, because it is made with heaps of vegetables and low-fat milk rather than cream.

The result is the best of both worlds – an unexpectedly sumptuous take on chicken pot pie with a fabulous flaky crust.

Chicken pot pies with crumble crust

Servings: 4

You’ll need individual ramekins or baking dishes that can hold 1 1/2 to 2 cups each.

Ingredients

For the filling

3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, plus more as needed

1 pound boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into half-inch chunks

3/4 teaspoon kosher salt

1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1 small onion, diced

2 ribs celery, diced

5 ounces (about 10) small button mushrooms, stemmed and cut into quarters

8 ounces green beans, trimmed and cut into 1/2-inch pieces

2 cloves garlic, minced

2 cups low-sodium chicken broth

1 1/2 cups cold low-fat milk (1 percent)

1/3 cup whole-grain pastry flour

3/4 cup fresh or frozen green peas

2 tablespoons chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley

1 teaspoon chopped fresh thyme (may substitute 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme)

For the crust

2/3 cup whole-grain pastry flour, plus more as needed

1/4 teaspoon kosher salt

1 tablespoon cold low-fat milk (1 percent)

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil (see headnote)

1 tablespoon cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces

1/2 teaspoon chopped fresh thyme (may substitute 1/4 teaspoon dried thyme)

Steps

For the filling: Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Use a little oil to grease the inside of the ramekins or baking dishes and place them on a baking sheet. Season the chicken with 1/4 teaspoon each of the salt and pepper.

Heat one tablespoon of the oil in a large, high-sided skillet over mediumhigh heat. Once the oil shimmers, add the chicken and cook for about five minutes, stirring once or twice, until it is nicely browned. Transfer the chicken to a plate.

Add another tablespoon of oil to the skillet, then add the onion, celery and mushrooms; cook for about 4 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the mushrooms have released their moisture and it has evaporated.

Add the green beans, the garlic, the remaining 1/2 teaspoon salt and the remaining 1/4 teaspoon of pepper; cook for 1 minute more.

Pour in the broth; increase the heat to high. Pour the milk into a liquid measuring cup, then stir in the flour until it has dissolved.

Pour the mixture into the pan; cook, stirring, until the mixture comes just to a boil. Reduce the heat to medium-low;

cook for 2 minutes, stirring occasionally, the return the chicken to the pan along with the peas, parsley and thyme. Stir until evenly distributed. This is your potpie filling; divide it among the ramekins or baking dishes.

For the crust: Whisk together the whole-grain pastry flour and the salt in a medium bowl.

Whisk the milk into the oil in a small bowl until it is well integrated. Add the butter to the flour mixture and work it in with your fingers or with a pastry cutter until the butter is the size of small pebbles.

Drizzle with the oil mixture, then add the thyme. Combine with a fork until crumbly, then use your fingers to bring it together so all the flour is evenly moistened.

Lightly flour a work surface. Shape the dough mixture into four small rounds. Place them on the work surface, then use the heel of your hand to flatten each round as thin as possible. Tear flakelike pieces of the flattened dough, using one round per dish, and arrange on top of each potpie to make a rustic, crumbly topping that covers the filling.

Transfer the baking sheet to the oven; bake (upper rack) for about 20 minutes, or until the mixture is bubbling and the crust is golden brown.

Cool slightly before serving.

Nutrition per serving: 530 calories, 38 g protein, 40 g carbohydrates, 25 g fat, 5 g saturated fat, 95 mg cholesterol, 430 mg sodium, 7 g dietary fiber, 11 g sugar

Snake discovered in woman’s dryer

SAFETY HARBOR, Fla. — A Florida woman says she “about had a near death experience” when she opened her dryer and saw a snake curled up in her laundry.

Tampa’s Fox 13 News reports Amanda Wise was almost finished unloading the dryer in her garage on Sunday when she saw what appeared to be a corn snake.

She described the startling discovery in a Facebook post.

She says her husband used a broom

to coax the snake out of the dryer and outside.

Wise told the TV station the dryer vent cover on the side of the house has fallen off and they believe that’s how it got inside the dryer.

Corn snakes eat rodents and are generally considered harmless.

They are sometimes mistaken for copperheads.

Safety Harbor is near St. Petersburg.

97/16 news service photo by Tom McCorkle Chicken pot pies with crumble crust is a healthier option than the traditional version.

Scene

TheaTre, and Tea, beads and bannock

Miracle Theatre

Until Wednesday, March 20 at 8 p.m. with 2 p.m. matinees on March 3, 10 and 17 at ArtSpace, above Books & Co., 1685 Third Ave., Halfway There is a professional theatre production with actors hired from across Canada. This comedy is about friends for life and the surprises that arise when a new doctor comes to town. This year’s beneficiary is the Community Foundation and all net proceeds will start the new Children of Prince George Fund. Tickets are $33 at Books & Co. or call 250-563-6637.

International Women’s Day Breakfast

Friday from 7 to 9 a.m. at The Ramada Plaza, 444 George St., this year’s theme is Celebrating Women Who Make a Difference during the 2019 International Women’s Day Breakfast & Inspirational Stories.

Hosted by Hon. Shirley Bond, MLA for Prince George-Valemount, in partnership with The Ramada Plaza Prince George. Tickets are $30 and available at The Ramada Plaza sales office. Doors open at 7 a.m. with breakfast starting at 7:30 a.m. sharp.

For more information call The Ramada at 250-561-5685. Proceeds will support community programs.

CNC Film Festival

Friday to Sunday at the PG Playhouse, 2833 Recreation Place, the 23rd annual Cinema CNC Film Festival brings eight great Canadian films to the big screen at the Prince George Playhouse. As well, there will be a bunch of short films, the cheapest snacks in British Columbia, a silent auction, prizes, and a whole lot of fun.

Passes are at Books & Co., CNC Bookstore, and UNBC Bookstore. Single tickets are $8 and available at the door or from www.centralinteriortickets.com in advance.

Festival pass is $48 for all eight films. Friday pass is $14 for two films, Saturday pass is $21 for three films, Sunday pass is $21 for three films.

For details visit the 23rd annual Cinema CNC Film Festival Facebook page.

Roman Kozlowski Live

Friday from 7 to 9 p.m. at the Oakroom Grill, 104-1023 Central St. W., Roman Kozlowski will perform a mix of favourite covers, as well as new original music. Come out for some great food and good live music. For more information call 250-277-1882 or email oakroomgrill@ hotmail.com.

Central Interior Heritage Expo

Saturday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Prince George Public Library, Bob Harkins Branch 888 Canada Games Way, the P.G. Heritage Commission, P.G. Public Library and UNBC Continuing Studies department are coordinating a free Heritage Expo where exhibitors, local history organizations, authors and individuals with a local history story will display their information.

For more information call 250-9605982 or email rob.bryce@unbc.ca.

Indoor Garage Sale

Saturday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Kinsmen Community Complex, 777 Kinsmen Pl., the PG Kinsmen are hosting an indoor garage sale featuring a variety of items. Stop in and enjoy a hot dog or some baking from the concession. For more information call 250-562-8767 or email kinsmenclub@gmail.com.

Taste of India 2019

Saturday at 6 p.m. at the P.G. Civic Centre, 808 Canada Games Way, the Taste of India event features cuisine and entertainment by Delhi 2 Dublin.

For tickets visit www.theatrenorthwest. com/tickets or pick up tickets at Books & Company, 1685 Third Ave.

For more information call 250-5636969 ext. 305 or email gm@theatrenorthwest.com.

Seedy Saturday

Saturday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Knox United Church, 1448 Fifth Ave., there will be a seed swap, seed sale and displays featuring information and presentations, including grow great garlic at 10:30 a.m., winemaking 101 at 11:30 a.m., garden soil at 12:30, and at 1:30 learn how to increase tomato production by 50 per cent.

Lunch concession featuring Sassafras Savouries.

Admission is by donation. For more information call 250-964-2982 or visit dbotgarden.bc.ca.

Open Drum Circle

Sunday from 2 to 4 p.m. at Omineca Arts Centre, 369 Victoria St, there is an Open Drum Circle to build community. This is an inclusive activity exploring drum ceremony as we use it to learn and promote Indigenous and Dakelh

languages, knowledge, cultures and histories.

Everyone is welcome to participate, share, dance, learn or observe. For more information email khastandrummers@gmail.com or visit www. ominecaartscentre.com.

Wheelchair Basketball

Every Monday until April 15 from 7:30 to 9 p.m. at Northern Sports Centre (NSC), 3333 University Way, P.G. LumberJacks wheelchair basketball is a Rec North drop-in program at the Northern Sports Centre.

No experience is necessary and all equipment including sports wheelchairs is available. Everyone welcome. Free for NSC members and youth under 13 yrs or $6 drop-in rate for non-members. Call 250-613-5187 or email pgwheelchairbball@gmail.com.

Wheelchair Rugby

Every Tuesday until May 28 from 7 to 9 p.m. at the College of New Caledonia , 3330 22 Ave., PG Wheelchair Rugby program runs weekly.

No experience is necessary and all equipment including sports wheelchairs are available.

Everyone welcome. BC Wheelchair Sports annual membership is $10. In this full-contact sport, athletes play in tanklike wheelchairs and hit each others’ chairs in an attempt to carry a ball across the line. For more information call 250649-9501 or email Northern@bcwheelchairsports.com.

Tea n’ Beads n’ Bannock

Wednesday from 7 to 10 p.m. at Omineca Arts Centre, 369 Victoria St., there is a community beading circle hosted by Lynette LA Fontaine, a Metis artist who blends traditional art and teachings with contemporary flair in the form of acrylic paintings and beadwork. Learn by watching, asking and doing.

This is not a class, but a place to bring beading projects and sit together to inspire, connect and learn from one another. Anyone with an interest is welcome. Admission is by donation. For more information visit www.ominecaartscentre.com.

97/16 kingsway handout

Colleen rennison, left, Jillian Fargey, Camille sullivan and Gabrielle rose have it out in Kingsway, which will be shown March 3 at the P.G. Playhouse as part of the CNC Film Festival.

Winter classic for a snoWy day

The Worst Journey in the World: Antarctic 1910-1913 by

Apsley Cherry-Garrard

A few years ago, National Geographic magazine compiled a list of the 100 greatest works of nonfiction adventure. Ranked No. 1 – it could really be no other place – was The Worst Journey in the World, Apsley Cherry-Garrard’s memoir of the 1910-1913 Terra Nova expedition to Antarctica under the leadership of Robert Falcon Scott.

Eager to plant the English flag at the South Pole, 8,000 men applied to join Scott’s expedition, with just 33 chosen for the actual land contingent. Partly through friendship with chief scientist Edward Wilson, the 24-year-old CherryGarrard was taken on as “an adaptable helper,” though he had no experience of polar exploration and was extremely nearsighted. Nonetheless, Cherry, as he was called, would end up sledging more than anyone else, some 3,000 miles.

At times he and his comrades endured what few of us can imagine: temperatures close to 70 degrees below zero and hurricane-force winds; sleeping bags and clothes frozen into solid blocks; a diet consisting mainly of biscuits, seal meat and penguin; constant fatigue. At one point, extraordinary cold made Cherry’s teeth crack. Literally. If you inadvertently touched a piece of metal without wearing gloves, your hands immediately developed frostbite blisters. Sled dogs fell into crevasses and Mongolian ponies, trapped on floes of broken ice, had to be killed with a pickax to spare them the agony of being eaten alive by killer whales.

Worse still, good men died. Who doesn’t know the story? Late in 1911 Scott and four companions made a final push for the pole, only to discover that the Norwegian Roald Amundsen had reached it a month before. On the journey back, the weather grew extreme

and nothing went right. Edgar Evans died near the Beardmore Glacier. Soon afterward, Capt. Lawrence Oates found himself limping painfully because of an old Boer War injury, exacerbated by scurvy. Realizing that his rapidly deteriorating condition was endangering the lives of his comrades, Oates simply left the tent one morning and hobbled away into a blizzard. His last words still bring me – and many others – to tears: “I am just going outside and may be some time.”

Alas, his sacrifice came too late. Scott and Cherry’s two closest friends, Wilson and H.R. Bowers, pushed on a bit farther until, exhausted and weak from hunger, they pitched their tent for the last time just 11 miles from the depot where Cherry waited with the supplies that would have saved them. He couldn’t have known that Scott and the others were so close, but in years to come he would suffer unassuageable remorse for not having left his post and gone out searching for them.

In 1922, a full decade later, Cherry brought out The Worst Journey in the World, weaving in numerous extracts from his friends’ letters and diaries. Surprisingly, though, his book’s title doesn’t actually refer to Scott’s ill-fated return from the pole but to an earlier expedition, one with a happier ending.

On his first visit to Antarctica in 19011904, Wilson had discovered that Cape Crozier provided a rookery for emperor penguins. Because of the birds’ mating habits, the only time to acquire their eggs – which Wilson believed might supply important evolutionary information –was during the unending dark of a polar winter (our summer). An extended trek at that season had never been attempted. Cherry dryly remarks “I advise explorers to be content with imagining it in the future.”

On June 27, 1911, Wilson, Bowers and Cherry left their base camp, dragging two nine-foot long sledges loaded with 757 pounds of supplies and equipment.

They would be gone for five weeks. Much of the time they could barely see the ground at their feet. One day they only managed to travel 1 1/2 miles. By the time the trio reached the penguin rookery, Cherry writes that he would have given five years of his life for just one night in a warm bed.

The real ordeal, however, had only begun. The men constructed a hut next to their tent, just before a three-day blizzard struck. Its ferocious winds first blew away the tent and then shredded the hut’s canvas roof. Exposed to the elements, Cherry and his companions

burrowed into their sleeping bags, as the snow piled up on top of them. All three knew that without a tent it would be almost impossible to survive. I won’t say more but, against all odds, they do survive and even bring back three emperor eggs. As they finally reached safety, Wilson thanked Bowers and Cherry for what they had all suffered through, adding “I couldn’t have found two better companions – and what is more I never shall.”

Cherry merely says, “I am proud of that.” A few months later, Scott enlisted Wilson and Bowers for the final assault on the pole.

michael dirda

97/16 wire service

97/16 news service photo by Penguin Classics

The Worst Journey in the World: antarctic 1910-1913 book cover.

This is the front page of the Feb. 26, 1919 edition of the Prince George Citizen. The Citizen archives are available at the Prince George Public Library’s website at pgnewspapers.pgpl.ca/

A shift to cleAn energy gets support

new Car Dealers assoCiation of BC BlAir QuAley

As the president and CEO of the New Car Dealers Association of B.C., I had the opportunity to take part in the B.C. Budget 2019 media and stakeholders lock-up during which the finance minister presented her government’s fiscal plan for the next three years.

The budget was important from the perspective that it includes a host of positive clean energy initiatives and significant investments to support the CEVforBC Program and ongoing development of a fast charging network for electric vehicles and fueling for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.

In total, over $900 million has been earmarked for CleanBC, to reduce air pollution and save families money through the Clean Energy Vehicle for BC Program (CEVforBC) with additional funding for purchases incentives towards clean energy vehicles, incentives for energy-saving home improvements, a net-zero building code, and programs to help communities transition to cleaner energy sources.

Of prime importance to B.C.’s New Car Dealers and consumers is news that the CEVforBC program will be topped up by $42 million for point of sale purchase incentives of up to $6,000 for qualifying EV or hydrogen vehicles. A further $6 million will be available to support light

duty fleets in shifting to clean energy vehicles and $1 million will be invested in program implementation and public outreach.

CEVforBC has been a significant factor in making the transition to EVs more affordable for British Columbians. Since the program was established in April of 2015, almost 11,000 incentives have been paid out to individuals and families – more than have half of those in the last calendar year.

A total of $30 million will also be invested in the infrastructure required to charge an electric vehicle or fuel a hydrogen vehicle including: $20 million to support new public fast-charging and hydrogen fueling stations, $5 million to support home and workplace charging stations and $5 million for charging stations at highway rest areas and B.C. government buildings.

These key investments will help continue B.C.’s nation-leading adoption of

clean energy vehicles in the next three years as we engage with government on the development of a workable system for zero emission vehicle sales quotas across B.C., beginning in 2025. A balanced budget was delivered this year and we are pleased that no new business taxes were introduced in the 2019 budget.

Blair Qualey is president and CEO of the New Car Dealers Association of B.C. Email him at bqualey@newcardealers.ca.

97/16 news service photo by christopher Katsarov

The electric powered Jaguar I-Pace (left) and the Kia stinger were awarded 2019 utility Vehicle and Car of the year by the automobile Journalists association of Canada at the International auto show in Toronto on Valentine’s day.