Distributor for the Province of B.C., works with orthopedic surgeons Dr. Michael Moran and Dr. Paul van Zyl using one of four new Orthopedic Video Operating Room Towers that have arrived at UHNBC. The Spirit of the North Healthcare Foundation funded the purchase through The Copper Falls Project, which wrapped up in November and through public support of the Festival of Trees 2018.
CITIZEN FILE PHOTO
Gas utility company FortisBC is looking to use methane gas collected at the Foothills landfill to meet the provincial requirement for renewable fuel.
FortisBC eyeing Foothills landfill gas
Mark NIELSEN Citizen staff mnielsen@pgcitizen.ca
The Foothills landfill could become a source of fuel for FortisBC.
The natural gas provider is working to reach a provincially-mandated goal of securing 15 per cent of its supply from renewable sources by 2030, Doug Stout, the company’s vice president of market development and external relations, said this week.
The landfill’s methane gas could become one of those sources, Stout said, although he later said tapping into that source will be at least a couple of years
away if all works out.
“It’s in early stages right now of development,” he said and added similar efforts are up and running in Salmon Arm and Kelowna.
The Fraser-Fort George Regional District is in discussions with FortisBC on the possibility, FFGRD spokeswoman Renee McCloskey confirmed, “but at this point that’s all that it is... further information will be coming out through our board.”
Methane gas at the landfill is currently flared off and how to make better use of it has been an ongoing question at the FFGRD. Using it to heat greenhouses was considered at one point but the venture
fell through.
FFGRD board of directors chair Art Kaehn expressed some optimism regarding the FortisBC proposal.
“We’ve looked at a number of things to get some beneficial use out of the landfill gas and this seems promising,” he said.
“We’re burning it off right now and we’d like to stop doing that.”
Stout raised one other possibility when addressing city council on Monday night – harnessing wind power to make hydrogen.
Common in Europe, wind-power turbines are used to generate the electricity needed to split water into hydrogen and oxygen.
Coastal GasLink stops work on pipeline
Citizen news service
HOUSTON — A company building a pipeline has stopped work on the project in northwestern British Columbia where 14 people were arrested earlier this month.
Coastal GasLink said in a notice posted on its website on Thursday that it stopped work in an area south of Houston because traps had been placed inside construction boundaries and people were entering the site, raising safety concerns.
The company said it is working with the RCMP to address the issue.
Earlier this week, the Unist’ot’en Clan of the Wet’suwet’en Nation alleged on social media that pipeline contractors had driven a bulldozer through the heart of one of their traplines south of Houston, which they say violates the Wildlife Act by interfering with lawful trapping.
The company said its work in the area has been fully approved and permitted, and it reminded the public that unauthorized access to an active construction site where heavy equipment is being used can be dangerous.
The pipeline will run through Wet’suwet’en territory to LNG Canada’s $40-billion export facility in Kitimat.
Opponents say Coastal GasLink has no authority to build without consent from Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs.
The company said it has signed agreements with the elected councils of all 20 First Nations along the route, including some Wet’suwet’en elected council members
Those council members say they are independent from the hereditary chief’s authority and inked deals to bring better education, elder care and services to their members.
Hereditary chiefs say they have authority over 22,000 square kilometres of Wet’suwet’en traditional territory while elected band members administer the reserves.
Adam Hughes, left, ConMed
More legislature employees coming forward, Plecas says
Lori CULBERT Vancouver Sun
Over the last several months, “an alarming number” of former legislature employees have contacted Speaker Darryl Plecas to say they were improperly fired after voicing concerns about “corruption” involving taxpayers’ money, says the Speaker’s chief of staff.
“They have described corruption, they have also described being terminated for what is alleged to be asking questions,”
Alan Mullen said. “They allege and quote being instructed: ‘Don’t ask questions. If you do, you’re gone.’ Questions about financial records, expenses, trips… (They were) told to delete documents.”
After conducting a year-long investigation, Plecas on Monday released a report that accused suspended Clerk Craig James and sergeant-at-arms Gary Lenz of “flagrant overspending” that included inappropriate expenses, lavish foreign trips that involved little work, and questionable retirement and pay benefits. The allegations have not been proven in court, and James and Lenz deny any wrongdoing.
During the summer, Mullen said, former employees started contacting the Speaker after hearing about his ongoing investigation. Close to 20 people have come forward, claiming they were fired without cause, most of them within the last five years, and then given severance and forced to sign non-disclosure agreements, he said.
“Some of these employees were in the building for 10 years, 15 years, 28 years, and at some pretty high-level positions in a number of different departments,” he said.
Employees from nearly every legislature department have told similar stories, and without col-
laborating with each other, he added. There was one political staffer mentioned in Plecas’ report who believed he had been fired for raising concerns about alleged improper expense claims by an MLA, but these 20 worked for the legislature – not for politicians – in various departments that could include finance, human resources, the library, and Hansard transcriptions.
“I’ve talked to people who contemplated suicide because of the way they were treated at the legislature. That’s not OK,” said Mullen, a former corrections manager and prosecutor before becoming Plecas’ chief of staff.
“These people need to be made
whole, whether they come back to their jobs or get some sort of compensation or they are given some sort of apology: ‘You know what? That was wrong.’”
After reviewing Plecas’ report, MLAs from all parties voted unanimously for a “workplace review,” which Mullen said could include looking at installing anti-harassment and anti-bullying policies.
When asked how this could happen, Mullen said part of it has to do with the power structure at the legislature, where traditionally the clerk, Speaker and sergeant-inarms control everything – including whether police are allowed into the building and what officers are allowed to see.
“The legislature is essentially the Vatican,” he said, adding employees have jokingly referred to the Speaker, clerk and sergeant-atarms as the Holy Trinity. “Essentially, they can do whatever they want.”
The Speaker’s role in this holy trinity has changed under Plecas, Mullen insisted, because Plecas, unlike his recent predecessors, is not a member of the governing party. In this NDP minority government, which is propped up by the Greens, the NDP had no spare MLAs to appoint to the post, and when Plecas, a Liberal, agreed to take the post, he was expelled from the party. Still, it was challenging to con-
duct this year-long investigation without raising the suspicions of the clerk and the sergeant-at-arms, “and ensuring you are not being caught by folks you are investigating because they would shut it down in a heartbeat,” he said.
Mullen denied this has been a self-serving exercise for him or the Speaker, noting that before the release of this week’s report they had been demonized over the suspension of the long-serving clerk and sergeant-at-arms.
“We have taken the proverbial kicking for two months straight, dragged through the mud.”
Plecas and Mullen were heavily criticized for the spectacle of James and Lenz being escorted out of the legislature on Nov. 20 by armed police in front of media cameras, which was dubbed a “perp walk.” But Mullen defended their actions that day, saying the two permanently appointed officers of the legislature could not be placed on leave without a vote from the legislative assembly, and once that happened, they were offered an option to leave the building quietly.
“Both Mr. Lenz and Mr. James were offered (the opportunity) to go out a side door, go out a back door,” Mullen said.
“They said, ‘We will go down the very public speaker’s corridor.’ That was their choice. We were not interested in any way, shape or form in a public shaming, or ridiculing, or a perp walk.” Nonetheless, Plecas and Mullen became the target of people who thought they had treated James and Lenz too harshly.
“We have received some threats since Nov. 20. The police are aware of them. They are usually from an anonymous source. They can’t really be tracked or traced,” Mullen said.
CP PHOTO
House Speaker Darryl Plecas arrives at the Legislative Assembly Management Committee meeting in the Douglas Fir room of the Legislature in Victoria on Monday.
Relay for Life donation
Crossroads Brewing Company and 99.3 The Drive made a donation of $10,547 to the Canadian Cancer Society’s Relay for Life initiative. The money was presented by 99.3 morning show hosts Carol Gass and Doug Jones, left, and Crossroads Brewing co-owner Bjorn Butow, right, to Aimee Cassie of the Canadian Cancer Society.
CNC signs MOU with Australian university
Citizen staff
The presidents of College of New Caledonia and Western Sydney University signed a memorandum of understanding on Thursday meant to lay the groundwork for an exchange of students and instructors.
“As the world is changing and becoming more global, this gives students and employees at CNC the opportunity for exchanges, joint research and curriculum development,” said CNC presi-
dent Henry Reiser. “CNC has vast experience working with First Nations communities. This MOU is an opportunity to work with WSU on enhancing the educational experience of Indigenous students in both countries.”
The MOU also encourages a joint exploration and development of engagement programs and activities focused on Indigenous students and communities.
Based in Sydney, Australia, WSU is ranked among the top two per cent of universities in the world.
B.C. nurses approve new collective agreement
Citizen news service
VICTORIA — Nurses in British Columbia will get a two per cent annual wage increase in a new three-year collective agreement.
Details of the deal between the Nurses’ Bargaining Association and the Health Employers’ Association of B.C. also include wage premiums if employers don’t meet staffing levels they have agreed to.
Starting on April 1, 2020, nurses will receive an additional $5 an hour if they are working short on a unit, department or program with 10 or fewer scheduled nurses. There are other premiums as well for nurses who work in units that are understaffed and for those who agree to work a shift on short notice.
The agreement takes effect April 1 and expires March 31, 2022.
The BC Nurses’ Union said 54 per cent of the more than 21,000 ballots cast in a ratification vote supported the agreement, which was reached in November.
“I believe we have negotiated an innovative contract that will make a positive impact on the working lives of our members and
Police officer charged after pedestrian hit
the patients in their care,” union president Christine Sorensen said in a statement on Friday.
“However, nurses have sent a clear message to the government that they are skeptical real change will come.”
The union said a provincewide survey in 2017 showed staffing and workload were the biggest concerns for nurses in contract negotiations.
“Unsustainable workload coupled with a systemic nursing shortage has a direct impact on a nurse’s ability to provide safe patient care. Our members have spoken,” Sorensen said.
“While more needs to be done, this contract is a step in the right direction.”
The Nurses’ Bargaining Association represents about 44,000 registered, psychiatric and licensed practical nurses in B.C.
The agreement also provides community nurses with improved mileage expenses.
As well, nurses will be paid for previously unpaid work at the ends of their shifts when they provide information to those replacing them.
Public input sought on sewer bylaw
Citizen staff
The city is seeking public input on a new sanitary sewer use bylaw and will be hosting an open house on the issue. It well be held on Wednesday at the Civic Centre from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Presentations will be given at 12:15 p.m. and 6 p.m. and will be followed by a question and answer session.
Starting on that day, an online survey will also be available on the city’s website, at princegeorge. ca/utilities
A new bylaw is being drafted to improve regulations concerning the material discharged into the system.
“To the city, these substances are not out of sight, out of mind,” public works director Gina Layte Liston said. “Substances in the sanitary sewer system can have serious consequences on public health and safety, municipal infrastructure, and the envi-
ronment. A new bylaw would update the list of prohibited substances, clarify responsibilities and enforcement, and also make provisions for education that would help encourage compliance.”
The system is made up of about 680 kilometres of pipe connecting homes and businesses to the wastewater treatment plant and lagoons. Once treated, wastewater is discharged into the Fraser River and other creeks and streams.
Operating the system costs about $4.5 million a year and $1.9 million of that goes towards running the treatment plant. The city also typically receives 500 calls per year regarding blocked sewers. The annual cost of responding to those calls and removing grease is about $420,000 per year and the city has sunk $1.7 million into the vacuuming and flushing trucks used to do the work.
Saik’uz sign fibre supply deal with Nechako Lumber
Citizen staff
The Saik’uz First Nation have signed an agreement to supply timber to the Nechako Lumber Co.
Under the agreement, 200,000 cubic metres per year of timber will be provided to the Nechako Sawmill just west of Vanderhoof. It adds up to about 3,000 truckloads and represents about 25 per cent of the sawmill’s needs.
The agreement is for 10 years and comes after a 20-year agreement expired with 2018.
“The agreement helps to secure
the livelihood of many Saik’uz members and their families who rely on Nechako Lumber for employment,” Saik’uz First Nation Chief Jackie Thomas said in a press release issued this week. “Equally important for our community is how the agreement respects Saik’uz environmental stewardship over the land and water that our people rely on for food and traditional purposes.” Currently, over 25 Saik’uz members work in Nechako’s operations and the agreement commits to significantly increasing this number.
Registration open for Climb for Cancer
WSU is the first Australian postsecondary institution CNC has signed an MOU with.
“We are very pleased to formalize our relationship with CNC and strengthen our international partnerships in North America,” said WSU president Barney Glover.
“Western Sydney University is looking forward to building student and staff exchange opportunities with the College of New Caledonia, particularly related to First Nations peoples in our two countries.”
Citizen staff
The Climb for Cancer is still some time off, but it’s not too early to register for the event.
A website is up and ready to welcome teams and people who just want to do it on their own and raise money for the Canadian Cancer Society’s Kordyban Lodge. To register, go to bit.ly/ pgclimbforcancer2019
This year’s event is set for
April 27 and will see people once again scaling the cutbanks.
“The event is suitable for every level of fitness,” organizers said. “Newcomers might not want to take part in the timed event, but you can challenge yourself or just get out and enjoy the day. Registration is $5, and the view from the top is so worth it. So is helping fight cancer.” Climb for Cancer has raised over $100,000 in three years.
CITIZEN PHOTO BY BRENT BRAATEN
Doubt about Doods
Man found with 27,500 pills of fentanyl freed because RCMP sniffer dog sat in ambiguous manner
Tyler DAWSON The Province
The question for the judge in the end was simple – did Doods, a German Shepherd police dog, sit or not?
If she did then police had grounds for searching a minivan for drugs – in which they found 27,500 pills of deadly fentanyl. But if Doods didn’t sit, then the stop and search could be considered illegal.
Unfortunately for the police, Doods was seen only to give a “partial” sit which the judge ruled was “highly ambiguous,” and certainly not a clear signal that drugs were present in the minivan.
In the end, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Michael Brundrett found in a pre-trial ruling that the search was illegal and the five 17.5-pound bags of pills were therefore excluded from the evidence. The driver, Sandor Rigo, was acquitted.
The road to trial started from a traffic stop in April 2017. Cpl. Clayton Catellier was doing traffic patrol on Highway 1 near Chilliwack when a brown Ford Windstar minivan ripped up behind him, some 15 kilometres per hour over the speed limit. Catellier –who, earlier in life, played junior hockey with the Prince George Cougars – pulled the van over.
The vehicle reeked of cologne or air freshener and Rigo was “shaking violently” at the wheel. There were multiple cellphones in the vehicle, including BlackBerrys, suspicious, because their encryption capabilities made them popular with drug dealers, the officer figured.
Combine that with Rigo’s story about driving from Calgary to Vancouver and back to buy used tires – “one of the most illogical travel stories that (Catellier) had heard in the hundreds of traffic stops that he has conducted,” wrote the judge – and that the stretch of Highway 1 between Chilliwack and Hope is a known drug corridor, and it was enough for Catellier to bring over his search dog.
Enter Doods, who, according to the ruling, had found drugs 30 to 50 times, and in training sessions,
Prince Rupert downgrades boil water advisory
had only had a false positive –finding drugs where there were none – just one time.
Upon sniffing the car – her tail wagging and nose bouncing off the van – Doods began to signal there were drugs, Catellier said. She went “paws up,” putting her hands up on the side of the vehicle. And then, said Catellier, she tried to sit down, signalling there were drugs.
That’s when something went awry.
“This time, she went to go sit and appeared to be startled by her rear-end hitting the concrete barrier on the passenger side of the van,” said the ruling.
Still, Catellier figured the partial sit was enough: he arrested Rigo on the basis of Doods saying there were drugs present, and the quantity of cash he’d found in Rigo’s wallet during a frisk.
“The dog and the signal that the dog gives, we’re relying on that to give the police officers what they
don’t have, and that is, grounds to make an arrest, detain the person, start the criminal process,” said Ottawa defence lawyer Michael Spratt. “Those are pretty extreme powers.”
A search of the vehicle on the side of the highway turned up no drugs. The police had the van towed into town where a mechanic removed the tires, so they could be searched.
No drugs were found.
Then Catellier noticed a tube of Bondo, an auto-body filler, in the rear console that he hadn’t noticed before and searched again. Inside the interior housing of the right wheel well, he found five plastic bags filled with fentanyl pills. Rigo was charged with possession for the purpose of trafficking.
But had Doods really alerted Catellier that there were drugs? And if she hadn’t, was the search of the van legal?
An American expert witness,
PRINCE RUPERT (CP) — The City of Prince Rupert has lifted a boil water advisory that left 12,000 residents without potable tap water for six weeks and says it’s working on a ‘lessons learned’ report for the future. The city says Northern Health gave it approval to downgrade the notice to a water quality
Andre Falco Jimenez, a former Anaheim County police officer, testified for the defence. After looking at police dash cam video, he said he didn’t believe the dog was giving any sign there were drugs.
“He described the dog as very lackadaisical… He said that dogs that make a find are typically happy, engaged, excited, and more alert because they expect to be able to play with a toy,” said the ruling.
But the judge did find, based on dash cam video and Catellier’s overall credibility, that Doods did partly sit. The key moment is obstructed in the dash cam video.
However, given that the officer had never seen a partial sit before, the judge said it could not be reasonably concluded that it was, in fact, a sign that there were drugs in the car – the sit was “highly ambiguous.”
The judge concluded that even with the subtle signs Doods was
advisory, which means some risk remains for sensitive individuals.
Under a water quality advisory, newborns, the elderly and people with weakened immune systems are still encouraged to boil tap water for one minute before consuming it.
The city says residents who still see milky or
B.C. Supreme Court Justice Michael Brundrett found in a pre-trial ruling that the search was illegal and the five 17.5-pound bags of pills were therefore excluded from the evidence.
showing, such as flaring her nostrils, and the other concerns Catellier had – the aromatic minivan interior and wad of cash – the partial sit was the clinching factor in the arrest.
Since that wasn’t legitimate, the arrest violated Rigo’s Charter rights and he was acquitted.
Court challenges to a sniffer dog’s behaviour aren’t particularly common, said Spratt, and the ruling says counsel were not able to provide any other Canadian cases where a dog had given an ambiguous alert.
“When you’re looking at what the dog actually does, you’re starting from a point when you don’t have grounds to make an arrest or to engage in a search, so the dog has to get you over that hump of reasonable grounds,” said Spratt. “If the dog is equivocal in their behaviour, then it’s, I think, a legitimate argument to say it doesn’t give you that extra evidence you need.”
The Supreme Court of Canada ruled in 2008 and again in 2013 on the constitutionality of sniffer dog searches, saying they’re OK. Sniffer dogs and their competence have been more controversial in the United States. In a 2015 U.S. appeals court ruling, the judges said that the detector dog, Lex, had there been a class ranking at sniffer dog school, “would have been at the bottom of his class.” While the judges still affirmed the conviction, the defendant argued that Lex was sufficiently bad at his job that his alert shouldn’t be relied upon for the next phase of the search.
sediment-filled water should run cold water, preferably through a bathtub or laundry sink taps, until it clears.
The boil water advisory was put in place after a dry summer followed by a storm surge caused a spike in levels of cryptosporidium and giardia, which cause intestinal illnesses.
Mental health rated low in B.C., doctor says
Citizen news service
VANCOUVER — British Columbians rate their mental health as nearly the lowest in the country despite being more physically active, eating more fruits and vegetables, and having generally healthier lifestyles, the province’s top doctor says.
Dr. Bonnie Henry issued a report Friday on the health of British Columbians and said more people are experiencing mental health woes even though the province has the highest life expectancy in the country.
“It’s concerning to me that the percentage of British Columbians who report positive mental health has gone down,” Henry told a news conference. “This is one of the measures where we were are actually falling behind in Canada and the rest of the world.”
ductive age,” she said.
Poverty, lack of early childhood education and low income are indicators of poor health, Henry said, adding early childhood development is an issue in some urban areas.
“This is something we need to understand more. We need to understand how we can support families and support young children.”
We need to understand how we can support families and support young children.
— Dr. Bonnie Henry
Her report is based on performance measures toward seven goals the Health Ministry set in 2013 and are expected to be met by 2023.
Some of the goals are related to environmental and mental health as well as prevention of harm to children from substances including the use of alcohol and cannabis before age 15.
Henry said that while the percentage of youth who started drinking and using pot at that age has dropped, that’s not the case for young adults.
“Hazardous drinking, so binge drinking, has gone up in young women and young men of repro-
Climate change has an impact on health and that has particularly been the case from wildfire smoke during the last couple of years. She said the province must do a better job of assessing other impacts of climate change as well as putting more funding into health promotion programs that should be targeted to reverse worsening trends.
The opioid crisis has affected people from all sectors of society but particularly young men, who make up nearly 80 per cent of overdose deaths in the province, although data in her report is limited to the end of 2015.
Henry said she is writing a report related to the need for a safer supply of drugs, decriminalization and the need for more social supports for people struggling with addiction.
She made seven recommendations, including a greater focus on injury prevention in rural and remote areas, developing a more meaningful public health surveillance system and increasing support for pregnant and postpartum women and families.
Doods, a German Shepherd police dog, is shown while on duty.
Temporary ceasefire in U.S. gov’t shutdown
James McCARTEN Citizen news service
WASHINGTON — U.S. President Donald Trump sounded a full retreat Friday in his border-wall war with Congress, agreeing to a three-week pause in the longest government shutdown in U.S. history just as the impact of the impasse was being felt by air travellers all over North America.
Trump said he has agreed to a continuing resolution that would open the funding taps and allow the government to reopen for three weeks. Government employees who continued to work without pay during the shutdown would receive back pay as soon as possible, including air-traffic controllers, whose escalating absenteeism Friday threw a wrench into airport operations.
Trump made the concession even thought the Democrats have not agreed to approve any funding for his $5.7-billion wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, a refusal that’s been at the heart of the shutdown dispute since it began Dec. 22.
The White House isn’t waving a white flag, Trump insisted, hinting that if the two sides can’t reach an agreement by the Feb. 15 deadline, he will declare a national emergency at the southern border. That is a legally questionable strategy that allows him to do an end-run around Congress and procure the funding through the Department of Defense.
“Let me be clear: we really have no choice but to build a wall or steel barrier,” said Trump.
After expressing his appreciation for the strength and sacrifices made by furloughed and unpaid employees, Trump used the bulk of his Rose Garden news conference to deliver a 15-minute tirade against the evils of illegal immigration and the virtues of a physical border barrier – evidence he’s concerned about how the decision will go over with his supporters.
Right-wing provocateur Ann Coulter wasted no time proving that concern to be well placed, likening Trump on Twitter to “the biggest wimp ever to serve as president of the United States.”
Friday’s climb-down came on a day of body-blow headlines for the president, including the arrest of self-described Trump campaign “dirty trickster” Roger Stone, a key figure in the ongoing Russia investigation, and the news that a shutdown-related shortage of air-traffic controllers had triggered a “ground stop” at one of America’s busiest airports. It was an ominous early-warning of the potential impact on North American air travel.
The airport situation played a role in the president’s decision, a White House official told CNN.
It was also the first evidence of the shutdown having a significant and widespread impact north of the border: several WestJet and Air Canada flights to New York’s LaGuardia Airport and Newark Liberty International in New Jersey were cancelled or delayed by as much as 90 minutes.
The Federal Aviation Administration confirmed a spike in sick calls, forcing it to summon other staff, reroute traffic and allow more space between flight departures.
“We are appreciative of the hard work and dedication of the men and women of the air traffic control system who assist in the safe movement of our aircraft each day,” said WestJet spokeswoman Lauren Stewart.
“This is a most unfortunate situation that our ATC partners find themselves in and it’s our hope that the parties involved can resolve the situation as quickly as possible.”
Approval ratings, too, likely had a part to play.
On Thursday, a new Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs poll found only 34 per cent of respondents approved of Trump’s performance, down from 42 per cent the previous month and nearing the lowest of his presidency.
Liberals’ infrastructure program problems detailed in internal documents
Jordan PRESS Citizen news service
OTTAWA — A large number of small construction transit and water system projects funded through the first phase of the Liberal government’s infrastructure program bogged down the approval process and delayed construction and spending, newly released documents show.
An internal analysis obtained by The Canadian Press under the access-toinformation law says almost one-third of the projects Infrastructure Canada financed needed less than $100,000 in government support, but required the same detailed reviews as much bigger projects.
The high number of what officials called “low value projects” created a bigger workload for officials relative to overall funding, reads a briefing note outlining lessons learned from the first phase of the Liberals’ program.
Problems with provinces and territories recommending projects for federal funding are also listed among the many reasons as to why things didn’t move as quickly as planned.
In the end, getting projects approved in time for the 2016 and 2017 construction seasons “proved difficult,” officials wrote in the March 2018 briefing note to the top official at Infrastructure Canada.
The government has been criticized for the slower-than-anticipated pace of infrastructure dollars leaving the federal treasury.
The parliamentary budget office has questioned whether the government’s expected economic benefits will materialize as a result of delays in spending and rising interest rates.
The Liberals argue tracking federal spending can be misleading because funds only flow once receipts are filed, which causes a lag between when work occurs and money is paid out.
A spokeswoman says Infrastructure Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne is able to approve projects worth up to $50 million, putting the vast majority of projects under the minister’s authority and reducing timelines for approvals.
“Infrastructure Canada’s funding programs are designed to be flexible enough to support the evolving needs of our provincial and territorial partners,”
Ann-Clara Vaillancourt said. She said programs also avoid “undue administrative burdens” on small-scale projects, such as exempting some projects worth less than $10 million from being tested for its potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Planned federal spending on new roads, bridges, rail projects and water systems has risen to $186-billion over 12 years with provinces, territories and cities are expected to put up varying portions of project costs.
The first part of the Liberals’ infrastructure program involved 32 departments handing out $14.4 billion. Infrastructure Canada’s share, about $5.4 billion, targeted repair projects for crumbling transit and water systems that could be done quickly.
At some point early in the process – the exact timing is not listed in the briefing note – the government began granting extensions as it became clear provinces and territories were going to miss the two-year deadline for the work to be completed.
For transit projects in particular, officials said, many cities forecasted work
would wrap in March 2019 – and then experienced delays.
Work was also hampered by natural disasters like forest fires and flooding. Short construction seasons contributed further to the delays.
Projects in the North and in First Nations communities also proved challenging given limited capacity and weather-related delays.
In December 2017, the Liberals granted a blanket extension to March 2020, two years beyond what was planned. It means construction in some cities will continue through the federal election this fall.
Conservative infrastructure critic Matt Jeneroux said the briefing note shows the Liberals fumbled their program by underestimating the number of project applications.
The briefing note, he said, gives “several excuses why projects are not getting done, but not solutions.”
“The fact that Justin Trudeau is into the fourth year of his mandate and is still having these issues gives me zero confidence they will be fixed,” Jeneroux said.
CP FILE PHOTO
Francois-Philippe Champagne, Minister of Infrastructure and Communities, speaks in the House of Commons in Ottawa on Nov. 1, 2018. Newly released documents show the design of Liberals’ infrastructure program contributed to delays in construction and the flow of federal money.
Ugly allegations
You don’t have to be in the building long to know that something is off.”
So said Alan Mullen, the special advisor to B.C. Speaker Darryl Plecas, as he described the culture Monday of the office he joined a year ago, where he would soon launch into a review of its operations that ultimately sent its two top legislative officials packing.
For nearly two months, clerk Craig James and sergeant-at-arms Gary Lenz have been wondering what was behind the investigation in their conduct, why the RCMP had been summoned and why they were marched into the street.
Really, truly, it appears they shouldn’t have. Monday, quite belatedly, they and we got the full meal deal.
A 76-page report chronicles a humiliating spectacle – trips that shouldn’t have taken place, expenses that shouldn’t have occurred, clothes that shouldn’t have been bought, perks that shouldn’t have been soaked up, extra holidays that shouldn’t have been paid out in cash, gifts that
shouldn’t have been procured. Even mustard from England, if you can believe it.
Alcohol carted away.
A wood splitter somehow on the tab.
An Apple Music subscription and as many as nine devices in tow at once.
Online courses for personal education.
Magazines that appear to have no bearing on legislative duties, unless Electric Bike Action is a transportation plan in the district.
company.
The report even says Lenz at one point thought James should be fired and shouldn’t be trusted...
And, most importantly, a culture in which they looked after each other yet oversaw employees who shouldn’t have been demeaned and dismissed.
All in all, a pretty ugly series of allegations attached to a five-inch binder of evidence that suggests millions of dollars did not go where they ought to have.
“A real possibility that crimes may have been committed,” Plecas said in his report.
The report even says Lenz at one point thought James should be fired and shouldn’t be trusted, that he was a Liberal apparatchik – and indeed, the expense claims make it appear he liked Liberal
In turn, though, both walked the plank into paid leave. They will be given an opportunity by the Legislative Assembly Management Committee to respond by month’s end before their fates are determined, but it is difficult to see how they could return unless the report is fabricated from whole cloth. The two stated late Monday that they were shocked by what they read, that the secretive and non-consultative process was unfair, and that they will in due course respond. As for the police investigation, it persists and nothing in Monday’s revelations ought to impinge upon the probe.
Plecas paints a fascinating picture of the Speaker’s office: on day one, a full liquor cabinet that he was told would stock whatever he wished, fresh flowers every couple of weeks, a pitcher of ice water twice daily at the ready. He was stunned to learn that he was signing off on life insurance policies for Lenz and James and that he was repeatedly approving expenditures as part of a culture of entitlement. The officials were
YOUR LETTERS
No snow complaints
I’ve read so many complaints about snow removal this past Christmas.
I had a Mexican family visiting me over the holidays. They had never seen snow before and they loved it.
One morning, they shovelled my driveway and then I backed out my car only to get stuck in the deep snow piled up in my street. The Mexicans happily shovelled the snow from in front of my tires, spread down some sand, we all got back in my car and blasted away at extreme speed, bouncing and swerving down my street. They loved it. They thought it was really exciting. It was like a joy ride for them.
Harry Yates Prince George
Grateful for lights
It is such a treat to travel the corridor of the Hart Highway north between Monterey Road and the Austin Road intersection these past few months, especially on those long, dark and inky, winter nights when the beam from your headlights is eaten by the gloom and the lane lines are covered with snow and somewhat obliterated by wear and tear. Now there is a row on either side of the highway of tall, illuminating light standards glowing beautifully bright to light the way. After some 50-plus years of driving the Hart Highway, it is a pleasure to
now drive that stretch of highway we call the sandhill and be able to see where you are going.
Many thanks to the workers who excavated the sites, installed the wiring, put up the poles, and installed the lights and all the other workers who were involved in the project. Thanks also to YRB and Westcana Electric who did the planning and the work. And, of course, all of the taxpayers who made this project possible. We are truly grateful for all your efforts on our behalf. Now, when can we look forward to the installation of the same illumination lighting our path from the Hart scale north to Monterey?
John and Judith Elmquist
Prince George
essentially unchecked in their determination of how to spend.
That he didn’t stop the train is a question we ought to ask. The best we can infer is that Plecas didn’t want to ruin his relationship with the clerk before he could conclude it was irreparable. Nothing in the report suggests Plecas himself benefited, except on occasion to be dragged along and encouraged to play the game. That all being said, there is some good that appears to emerge from the mess dropped on our door. The committee determined Monday that there are studies that need to be done, including an audit from afar of the workplace. Plecas believes there needs to be a higher degree of transparency of expenses, of practices, and of the appointment process and the committee supported him in that regard.
It is worth considering the critiques of Plecas and Mullen these last few weeks in a different light. They at first appeared to be clumsy, self-interested outsiders undermining and sandbagging respected officers of an institution that served the public interest. Today, that can’t be said, even if we don’t know what will ultimately be done.
YOUR LETTERS
Drug addiction can be beaten
Re: Editorial by Neil Godbout in the Jan. 17 Citizen and the Ask An Addict column in 97/16 on the use of drugs. I would like to offer encouragement to those trying to quit and issue a warning to others using the opioid oxycodone often in conjunction with other drugs –in my case a sleeping pill called zopiclone.
Both Neil and “Ann” say that an addict can’t stop his/her destructive behaviour. “Ann” talks about a woman using valium: “When she tried to stop she was unable.”
Why not?
“...non addicts wonder why addicts can’t just will themselves to stop.”
But of course they can.
There are many people addicted to drugs that have. Were they not addicted in the first place?
As a policeman in Vancouver in the 1960s and ’70s, I knew many addicts on a first-name basis. Most of them, almost all, accepted their lifestyle and had no thoughts of changing it. Others sought help and if they qualified were put on a methadone program. Methadone, an opiod, is addictive and a user could overdose if he/she were to use too much. They had exchanged one drug for another. The methadone, however, was free.
A good way to cut the enormous profits from going to the criminal gangs.
I believe that Neil has some good ideas about helping those addicted but I think that it’s not a medical issue, rather it is a social one.
Can anyone quit one of these addictions? Of course they can. What would be the reason be that they couldn’t?
It probably won’t be easy; some might find it so, others might think that it’s impossible. Impossible is trying to get the toothpaste back in the tube. Ask yourself, “Do I want to quit?” If it’s yes, then ask yourself “Can I quit?”
Mull this one over giving regard to many variables. If there is any doubt, don’t waste your time trying. There has to be a firm resounding positive reply, no equivocation, “Of course I can; think it over now. Mind over brain.”
Then make the commitment, make up your mind, don’t accept defeat, don’t rationalize, just do it.
Ask yourself when you’re about to reach for a cigarette, pill, drink or whatever – “Just a minute, who
If there is any doubt, don’t waste your time trying. There has to be a firm resounding positive reply, no equivocation.
is in charge of the bus here? I don’t need this crap anymore.” Expect relapses, start again. You have the experience of having tried. Don’t give up on yourself. On a personal note, it took me a year to quit smoking, four or five starts and stops. That was 55 years ago. I was a binge drinker but it’s been five years today since I’ve quit. With prescription oxycodone for serious arthritic pain, I was using 1,080 pills a year, plus a prescription for zopiclone. I had problems that were getting worse; one pill was no longer effective. It now took three pills to get the same effect. My short term memory was gone and it was difficult to even hold a thought in my head. On two occasions, I couldn’t remember having taken any pills, I still had pain and so took three more pills. Six pills in five minutes! In a half hour, I crashed to the kitchen floor. Luckily I had help.
Two weeks later, it happened again; I crashed to the floor. I had a problem. I solved it by going cold turkey. This is Day 12 and I still feel quite unwell, however I feel much better than I did the first three to five days. They were difficult – sweats, diarrhea, headache, stomach cramps, nausea. Did I mention the diarrhea? Those are a few of the physical symptoms.
There are also mental problems – chiefly for me, irritability, anger and occasionally a rage. These are emotions that must be controlled. The pain for which I was taking the oxys has returned but it’s safer to put up with it than possibly kill myself.
To the quitters, don’t give up on yourself. The feel good sensation is what you’ll get when you say to someone that offers you a toke or a smoke or a drink “Thanks but I’ve quit.”
You are now the one that’s “in charge of the bus.”
You’ve got your life back. Hang on to it. Good luck!
LETTERS WELCOME: The Prince George Citizen welcomes letters to the editor from our readers. Submissions should be sent by email to: letters@pgcitizen.ca. No attachments, please. They can also be faxed to 250-960-2766, or mailed to 201-1777 Third Ave., Prince George, B.C. V2L 3G7. Maximum length is 750 words and writers are limited to one submission every week. We will edit letters only to ensure clarity, good taste, for legal reasons, and occasionally for length. Although we will not include your address and telephone number in the paper, we need both for verification purposes. Unsigned or handwritten letters will not be published.
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E.G. Johnson Prince George
A grader clears snow along 20th Avenue near Ellison Drive on Jan. 2.
McCallum has more to say about Meng extradition
Citizen news service
VANCOUVER — A media report is quoting Canada’s ambassador to China as saying it would be “great for Canada” if the United States drops an extradition request against a Huawei executive, the day after he apologized for a politically explosive slip of the tongue when discussing the case.
StarMetro Vancouver says John McCallum made the comment Friday to one of its reporters during a charity luncheon in Vancouver.
“From Canada’s point of view, if (the U.S.) drops the extradition request, that would be great for Canada,” McCallum told the Star.
The comment follows a statement McCallum issued Thursday, saying he misspoke earlier in the week when he told a group of Chinese-language journalists in Toronto about Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou, listing several arguments he thought could help her with her case.
Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer has called on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to fire McCallum, saying the remarks raised concerns about the politicization of the Meng case but Trudeau came to McCallum’s defence.
Trudeau said his government’s focus is on getting detained Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor home safely from China and ensuring their rights are respected and firing McCallum wouldn’t achieve that.
McCallum reportedly said Friday that if the U.S. and China were to reach an agree-
ment, it should also lead to the release of the two Canadians.
“We have to make sure that if the U.S. does such a deal, it also includes the release of our two people. And the U.S. is highly aware of that,” he told the Star.
Global Affairs Canada did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
McCallum’s mea-culpa on Thursday about his comments to Chinese-language journalists was the latest development in the saga of Canada’s fallout with China over Meng’s arrest.
“I regret that my comments with respect to the legal proceedings of Ms. Meng have created confusion. I misspoke,” McCallum, a former Liberal cabinet minister, said in the statement.
“These comments do not accurately represent my position on this issue. As the government has consistently made clear, there has been no political involvement in this process.”
McCallum also backtracked on the comments he made listing the arguments he thought could help Meng with her case.
“The Canadian government’s priority – and my priority – is securing the release of the two Canadians arbitrarily detained in China and ensuring that the rights of all of our citizens are protected,” he said Thursday. Meng was arrested Dec. 1 at Vancouver’s airport on an extradition request from the U.S. She was freed on bail by a B.C. Supreme Court judge and is due back in court on Feb. 6.
Officer charged after deadly game with revolver
Jim SALTER Citizen news service
ST. LOUIS — A male St. Louis police officer was charged Friday with involuntary manslaughter in the shooting death of a female officer during what was described as a deadly game with a revolver.
Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner announced the charge against Nathaniel Hendren, 29, in the death of 24-year-old Katlyn Alix, as they allegedly played a game in which a revolver’s cylinder was emptied, one bullet put back and the two colleagues taking turns pointing at each other and pulling the trigger.
Alix was with two male officers at an apartment when she was killed just before 1 a.m. Thursday. A probable cause statement from police, provided by Gardner’s office, offered a chilling account of the dangerous game that led to her death.
The probable cause statement said Alix and Hendren were playing with guns when Hendren produced a revolver.
“The defendant emptied the cylinder of the revolver and then put one cartridge back into the cylinder,” the statement said. He allegedly spun the cylinder, pointed the gun away and pulled the trigger.
The gun did not fire. The statement said Alix took the gun, pointed it at Hendren and pulled the trigger. Again, it didn’t fire.
Hendren “took the gun back and pointed it at the victim (and) pulled the trigger causing the gun to discharge,” the statement said. “The victim was struck in the chest.”
The other male officer told investigators he warned Hendren and Alix not to play with guns and reminded them they were police officers. He was about to leave when he heard the fatal shot, the statement said.
The male officers drove Alix to a hospital where she died. Hendren also is charged
Toddler dies in shooting
(AP) — A three-year-old boy has died after a freeway shooting in Detroit. State police say on Twitter the boy died Friday morning at a hospital.
A bullet pierced the side of the vehicle he was in just before 7:30 p.m. Thursday on the Southfield Freeway near Joy
with armed criminal action.
The two men were on-duty at the time of the shooting. Police Chief John Hayden has declined to answer questions about why the officers had gathered at the apartment, which was home to one of the men.
St. Louis police said the charges were the result of a promise Hayden made to Alix’s family to conduct a “thorough and competent investigation.”
Alix, a military veteran who was married, was not working but met the men at the apartment.
Police immediately launched an internal investigation and placed both officers on paid leave. Gardner also began her own investigation on Thursday and enlisted the Missouri State Highway Patrol to conduct it.
Alix was a patrol officer who had graduated from the St. Louis Police Academy in January 2017.
Road. A woman driving the vehicle is an acquaintance of the boy’s mother and was not wounded. Police initially described her as the boy’s mother. A suspect has not been identified but police released images and surveillance video from a business Friday evening that show what officers describe as the suspect’s vehicle, a silver four-door Mercedes.
CP PHOTO
John McCallum, Canadian Ambassador to China, listens to a question following participation at a federal cabinet meeting in Sherbrooke, Que., on Jan. 16.
Migrating birds a magnet for Florida Keys
Richard MORIN Citizen news service
High in the baby-blue sky above Curry Hammock State Park in the Florida Keys, a very small merlin falcon with a very big attitude repeatedly attacked an osprey five times its size.
“Look, it’s pecking the osprey,” said Luis Gles, binoculars pointed up at a 30-degree angle to the battleground 30 metres above us. “They are scared of nobody, they attack even peregrine falcons.”
The merlin wheeled, darted and dove again on the osprey. Then the two birds broke off hostilities; the merlin to continue its migration to its wintering grounds far to the south and the osprey to hunt for a fish dinner.
“When I arrived, I was in love with peregrine falcons,” said Gles, a native of Colombia who now lives in Miami. “But merlins stole my heart.”
The temperature was fast climbing to 32 C on this shirt-soaking humid day in late September. Gles stood in the sun on the secondfloor observation deck of the building that houses the park’s bathrooms. He searched the skies for migrating raptors – birds of prey, a group that includes falcons, hawks, ospreys, eagles and kites – as they soared, flapped and glided past on their months-long journey to their winter homes in the Caribbean as well as Central and South America.
Gles and two other experienced birders had been hired by the Florida Keys Audubon Society to count raptors as part of the Florida Keys Hawkwatch, an annual census of migrating birds of prey. For the past 12 years, Curry Hammock State Park on Little Crawl Key has hosted this Hawkwatch, one of more than 100 fall ones conducted around the country in collaboration with the Hawk Migration Association of North America.
In the late summer and fall, tens of thousands of raptors fly over the Keys as they journey their way south from their breeding grounds in Canada and the northeastern United States. Because raptors prefer not to fly over large bodies of water, the Keys act as a natural funnel, compressing the migrating raptors into a single concentrated stream of birds that fly over Curry Hammock State Park and on to the Lower Keys, where they muster the courage to cross the Florida Straits to Cuba.
But for some it is here, above
this tiny key halfway between Key Largo and Key West, that they make their move south.
“This is the shortcut,” Gles said.
“It’s 80 miles to Cuba, closer than Key West.”
With the migrating birds come flocks of birders. Curry Hammock in the fall is one of the few places in the world where a birder can expect to see migrating peregrines. “I guarantee it,” Gles said.
His confidence was not misplaced. Counters here logged 1,506 peregrines on Oct. 10, 2015, the highest daily count ever recorded anywhere in the world.
This season, a total of 3,588 peregrines were spotted, including 500 on Oct. 13. When this year’s count ended on Oct. 31, 19,067 raptors of all species had been tallied – an average of 46 birds an hour over the two-month Keys Hawkwatch.
Watchers keep spare pairs of high-power binoculars for visitors to use. If a bird lands, people may use the team’s more powerful spotting scopes.
“Visitors are absolutely welcome at the Hawkwatch,” said Chris Payne, a native of Somerset, N.J., who is a member of the counting team and a lifelong birder. “Engaging guests is a crucial part of our work because increasing public interest is the best way to ensure that the raptors we observe are protected for future generations.”
★★★
“There’s a peregrine,” Gles said.
Above us a fast-moving bird with a fighter-plane profile was making a beeline south for Cuba.
“It’s migrating. You can tell by the height.”
He shifted his binoculars to slightly to the right.
“Looks like another peregrine. Adult. Okay, it’s streaming” –flying fast, a telltale sign that it’s migrating.
Spotters only counted southbound migrating birds. It was sometimes hard to tell migrants from residents. Several ospreys make their permanent home in the Middle Keys. Counters don’t record an osprey until it makes its move south.
A dozen small birds flashed by and headed over the water. “Barn swallows. They’re heading straight to Cuba,” said Lindsey Duval, of Saratoga Springs, N.Y., the third member of the counting team.
Duval entered the barn swallows in a separate notebook that records non-raptor sightings. A glance at its pages revealed a menagerie of birds that could have been named by Dr. Seuss: wormeating warblers, short-billed dowitchers, lesser yellowlegs, northern parulas and yellow-billed cuckoos.
“We count every bird,” Payne said. One team member acts as the official counter, the others as spotters. Every hour, the counter recorded the number and kind of raptors that were seen in the previous hour. At the end of the day, daily totals for each species were uploaded to Hawkcount.org. Nonraptor counts were uploaded to Ebird.org, the website maintained by the Cornell University Lab of Ornithology. The counts help researchers monitor bird populations. Peregrines are the star attraction at the Florida Keys Hawkwatch.
Their name derives from “peregrinus,” which means “wanderer” or “foreigner” in Latin. Falconers prize female peregrines; particularly able hunters can fetch up to $25,000 in the bird bazaars of the Middle East. These crow-size birds cruise at 32-to-80 km/h but can reach more than 320 km/h in a “stoop” – their characteristic hunting dive. (Fun raptor fact: peregrines can ball up their feet into fists when they dive and literally KO a small bird out of the sky.)
“I’ve got another peregrine,” Gles said. “Fingers. Two glasses up. ... No, no, no. It’s a merlin.”
Most sightings were measured in seconds, a test of a birder’s eyesight and identification skills. To meet the challenge, spotters here spoke in a cryptic code passed down from one team of hawkwatchers to the next.
Spotters called out the bird’s altitude in “glasses” – how many viewing planes up from the horizon the bird is flying. A call of two glasses told spotters to lift their binoculars two planes up from the horizon, or roughly 30 degrees. They also called out a landmark over which the bird is flying. In this flat landscape, the reference points were nearby trees and power poles. Two buttonwood trees with crowns that poked above the scrub were “Big Bob” and “Little Bob.” A cluster of dead, leafless trees was “the Fingers.”
Spotting the birds is only the first step. Identifying these fastflying birds is a bigger challenge, even for experienced birders.
“For falcons, the best indicator
It is hard to appreciate the sheer bulk of birds that move through a single area each fall without seeing it yourself, day after day, for a whole season.
— Chris Payne
is their wing shape – they have very pointy wings,” Payne said. By contrast, hawks have broad wings with feathers that extend like fingers from the wingtips.
Size is another tipoff.
“The peregrine is our largest falcon,” Payne said. “They are much larger and chunkier as opposed to the kestrel, the smallest of the three species.”
Spotters scrutinize how the birds flap their wings.
“The peregrine has a big, powerful flap that comes right from the base of the wing,” Payne said. “Merlins are like Energizer bunnies; they just flap like crazy. And kestrels, if you take a banana peel and flap it up and down, it looks like a kestrel flapping – real loose and floppy.”
★★★
It was approaching 4:30 in the afternoon. The counting team had added a half-hour to its regular day to try to spot another osprey, which would bring the total count of the birds to 1,600 for September.
“There, up high,” Jeff Payne, Chris’s father, said as the day’s last osprey angled southward toward Cuba.
The count was over for the day. Chris Payne sat cross-legged in front of a well-used white tally board that listed raptor species. He erased yesterday’s count and enters today’s numbers: 47 peregrine falcons, 37 ospreys, 25 merlins, 11 broad-winged hawks, six northern harriers and a handful of other raptors – a total of 136 birds in all, including the day’s prize, a rare short-tailed hawk.
“It is hard to appreciate the sheer bulk of birds that move through a single area each fall without seeing it yourself, day after day, for a whole season,” Payne said later, marveling at the Florida Keys Hawkwatch experience.
“Personally, the variety of raptor species and number of peregrine falcons are what sets FKH above other hawkwatches for me.”
PHOTO BY RICHARD MORIN FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
ABOVE: A rare short-tailed hawk has spotters Luis Gles, Chris Payne and his father, Jeff Payne, scanning the skies. BELOW: Kiteboarders compete with birds of prey for space in the sky near Curry Hammock State Park.
Kings turn their fortunes in shootout
Ted CLARKE Citizen staff tclarke@pgcitizen.ca
Finally, the Prince George Spruce Kings found a way to win in a shootout.
After five unsuccessful shootout ventures this season in the B.C. Hockey League, as it turned out they needed just one shooter to score and beat the Coquitlam Express 4-3 Friday night at Rolling Mix Concrete Arena.
Nick Bochen answered the call as the first to go in the league’s newly-adopted tiebreaking format and he delivered, going forehandbackhand to beat goalie Kolby Matthews with a high shot.
Logan Neaton did the rest with consecutive saves off Connor Gregga, Chase Danol and Danny Pearson to seal the victory.
The win moved the Spruce Kings (28-12-1-5, second in the Mainland Division) eight points ahead of the Express (25-18-2-2, third in Mainland) and kept the Kings within five points of the leagueleading Chilliwack Chiefs, who beat Merritt 3-2 Friday.
“I feel good for Logan – he’s had it tough in shootouts, as have our players, and it was a great shot by Nick Bochen to score the first one
that put the pressure on Coquitlam to have to score and Logan shut the door,” said Kings general manager Mike Hawes.
“It was a bit unfortunate we gave away a lead in the third period, a bit out of character for us, but good thing we found a way to get the two points.”
The Express scored two unanswered goals in the third period to force overtime.
In the opening minute of 3-on-3 OT, Kings defenceman Layton Ahac had the first chance but Matthews made a standup save and was there to prevent Ahac’s wraparound chance. But the best saves came at the other end of the ice with about two minutes left in the five-minute session. Troy Robillard broke in on the left wing and had two wicked shots on Neaton but was denied each time, first by his leg pad and then by his chest protector with Neaton well out of his crease.
The Kings got off to a great start in the game and had the Express on their heels through much of the opening period. The top scoring line for Prince George, Ben BrarDustin Manz-Patrick Cozzi, was especially dangerous, generating quality chances on their first three shifts, which put Matthews to the test.
The Kings grabbed the lead on the first power play of the game, 7:44 in. Manz got himself in perfect position standing in front of the crease and was there to deflect in Bochen’s point shot.
The Kings built up a 12-2 shot advantage just before Cozzi made it a 2-0 score while shorthanded. Cozzi forced a turnover deep in his own zone, skated the length of the ice and toe-dragged the puck into the middle of the ice as he launched a hard wrister that went in under Matthews’ arm.
Ty Westgard cut the lead in half late in the first period with a shot from the side of the net that beat Neaton on his glove side.
The Spruce Kings’ power play ranks 16th out of 17 teams in the BCHL but it looked quite efficient
on their second chance of the night and Manz made it happen, scoring the only goal of the second period. He was all alone at the top of the face-off circle when the puck slid out to him after linemate Brar was denied on a close-in chance. Manz, while pivoting, connected on a low slapshot that found the back of the net.
Not long after that, trying for his third hat trick of the season, Manz was sprung on a breakaway pass from Brar but mishandled the puck and didn’t get a shot away.
Outshot 25-11 through 40 minutes, the Express made a game of it, scoring those two unanswered goals in the third period, both off face-off wins in the Spruce Kings end. The first came on a Coquitlam power play 3:45 into the period when Dallas Farrell teed off from his point position for his 15th of the year.
Then at the 9:21 mark, Express defenceman Jordan Schulting, denied a few minutes earlier by a big glove save from Neaton, made it a 3-3 game. He let go another long shot that kicked high off Neaton’s stick blade and floated in over his shoulder.
LOOSE PUCKS: The teams meet again at RMCA in the rematch tonight at 7… The game drew 1,307
Timberwolves take bite out of UBC
Ted
CLARKE Citizen staff
The UBC Thunderbirds were formidable foes.
Fortified by a nine-game winning streak, they’d lost just four of 16 of their U Sports Canada West women’s basketball games and still had a shot at taking over first place heading into the second-last weekend of the regular season. Leave it to the UNBC Timberwolves to foil that plan. They didn’t get discouraged when the T-birds took off on a 10-0 run to open the afternoon encounter in front of a schoolday crowd of 572 at War Memorial gym Friday in Vancouver. Instead, the T-wolves used that slow start as incentive to get their act together. By the end of the quarter, thanks to Abby Gibb’s buzzer-beater and a seven-point outburst from Maria Mongomo, UNBC grabbed the lead and never let go, rolling to a 71-60 victory which ended a two-game skid.
“I think today we played as a team, we helped each other and had good energy,” said UNBC head coach Sergey Shchepotkin on canadawest.org. “I was happy with our overall defence and we shot the ball well and of course were a bit lucky with some buzzer beaters that also gave us energy.” In fact, there were three last-second shots to end quarters, all coming out of the hands of the T-wolves.
Alina Shakirova had just finished hitting a pair of free throws with 1.2 seconds left in the half and on the ensuing inbound play Madison Landry picked off Gabrielle Laguerta’s pass attempt and from threepoint range hit the net to give UNBC a 37-25 lead.
“It feels great to see those go in,” said Shakirova. “It gives you energy. You just realize it is your day, and takes the air out of their sails. They don’t always go in, so to have it happen twice was great.
“We knew they would come out with energy. They’re a really good team, so we had to
spectators, the second-biggest crowd of the season at RMCA… Edmonton Oilers defenceman Brandon Manning dropped by the rink to watch the Spruce Kings, his former junior team, play a league game for the first time since he left to join the WHL with the Chilliwack Bruins. Manning, 28, was traded to Edmonton Dec. 30 from the Chicago Blackhawks. He played 58 regular-season and four playoff games for the Spruce Kings in 2007-08.
weather that storm. It was good to see shots fall for us, and we were able to hold on.”
The T-wolves came out firing in the third quarter and had just increased the gap to 49-33 when Julia Gallant came off the bench for her first game action. Gallant made one field goal and hit on all three of her triple attempts, the third swish coming with no time left on the clock after Gibb made a steal. That gave the T-wolves a 6138 lead, which proved too deep of a hole for UBC.
“We just needed to keep shooting,” said Gallant. “It was important to keep that flow. If shots aren’t falling for one player, we need to have the next person step up, keep the energy and keep shooting.”
The T-wolves improved to 10-7, seventh in Canada West. They’re trying to finish at least sixth, which would guarantee they would host a playoff game for the first time in their seven-year Canada West history. Landry shot a game-high 19 points and had six assists. Shakirova finished with 16 points, Mongomo had a 15-point game and Vasiliki Louka picked up 12 points and 13 rebounds.
For the T-birds, Maddison Penn picked up 15 points and Kyla Filewich had a 12-point game. UNBC hit all 12 of its foul shots while the T-birds had their troubles from the charity stripe, going 13-for-25. see MEN’S TEAM, page 10
Prince George Spruce Kings forward Chong Min Lee pursues Ty Westgard of the Coquitlam Express on Friday night at Rolling Mix Concrete Arena.
PHOTO COURTESY OF
UNBC Timberwolves guard Julia Gallant lines up a shot against the UBC Thunderbirds on Friday in Vancouver.
Men’s team falls to T-birds
from page 9
The same teams meet again today at UBC. Game time is 5 p.m.
Later Friday, the UNBC men lost 94-75 to UBC. In the game, the Thunderbirds controlled the first quarter (27-18) and the third quarter (28-12) and rode those stretches to the victory.
Patrick Simon led the hosts with 20 points while Mason Bourcier added 19 and Grant Shephard had 18. For UNBC, Tyrell Laing put up 19 points and Anthony Hokanson connected for 15 off the bench.
The Timberwolves slipped to 8-9 on the season while the Thunderbirds improved to 16-1.
The UNBC and UBC men will square off again today (7 p.m. start).
After today’s rematches, both Twolves teams will have two games left in the season. They’ll wrap it up next weekend when they host the Lethbridge Pronghorns in twogame sets at the Northern Sport Centre.
Estrada agrees on contract with A’s
OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) — The Athletics were still searching for depth in the rotation after all the injuries last season. Marco Estrada figures to be a front-line starter they had sought.
Estrada and Oakland agreed to a $4 million, one-year contract Friday, giving the club a veteran presence.
A double-digit winner in 2015 and 2017 for Toronto, the 35-yearold went 7-14 with a 5.64 ERA in 28 starts and 143 2/3 innings last year for the Blue Jays.
“We’ve known for a while we needed to add at least one more starter and have been talking to Marco’s representatives since around the time of the winter meetings,” general manager David Forst said Friday, a day before the club’s Fan Fest. “He’s a guy who was an all-star in 2016, pitched great a couple years in Toronto and last year pitched through some back and some hip issues and lost a little bit of velocity. But command is outstanding as ever, his changeup has always been one of the best pitches in the league, and a guy we fully expect to bounce back and be near the top of our rotation for 2019.”
Left-hander Sean Manaea pitched a no-hitter against Boston on April 21 in a bright start to a season that ended with the ace undergoing shoulder surgery in September. He is expected to be out until around the all-star break but is in great spirts and making progress.
“My shoulder feels awesome, I pretty much have full range of motion, and the biggest thing is there’s no pain or anything like that,” said Manaea, who has begun to mimic the throwing motion with a ball in his hand without letting the ball go. “Everything is just right on track where I kind of feel normal again. It’s incredible how much better it feels compared to how it was last year.”
McDavid still quickest of the quick
Citizen news service
SAN JOSE, Calif. — Edmonton’s Connor McDavid won the NHL’s fastest skater competition for the third straight year, beating out U.S. women’s hockey star Kendall Coyne Schofield and six other All-Stars.
The other winners in the NHL All-Star skills competition Friday night were Calgary’s Johnny Gaudreau in the puck control contest, the New York Rangers’ Henrik Lundqvist in the save streak competition, Edmonton’s Leon Draisaitl in the premier passer contest, Washington’s John Carlson in the hardest shot, and Boston’s David Pastrnak for accurate shooting. Coyne Schofield became the first woman to compete in the NHL All-Star skills competition. She drew a standing ovation and chants of “USA! USA!” from the crowd before finishing her lap in 14.346 seconds.
She finished seventh out of eight skaters, beating Arizona forward Clayton Keller’s time of 14.526 seconds.
The 26-year-old Coyne Schofield plays for the Minnesota Whitecaps of the National Women’s Hockey League and won an Olympic gold medal for the United States last February.
McDavid skated last and finished his lap in 13.378 seconds, edging Buffalo’s Jack Eichel (13.582) and the New York Islanders’ Mathew Barzal (13.780).
Gaudreau narrowly beat out Chicago’s Patrick Kane in the puck control contest as the two were among the only contestants who made it through the course without a mishap. Gaudreau finished the course in 27.045 seconds, beating out Kane’s time of 28.611 to repeat his title from a year ago.
Lundqvist stopped 12 breakaways in a row to win the save streak competition. He threw
his arms up in celebration after stopping John Tavares for his ninth save in a row, topping Tampa’s Andrei Vasilevskiy for the top spot. Edmonton’s Leon Draisaitl completed the passing contest in 1:09.088, beating out Carolina’s Sebastian Aho.
Carlson beat out local fan favourite Brent Burns for the hardest shot, recording the fastest two times at 102.8 mph and 100.8 mph. Burns missed the net on his first attempt and had the next fastest time on his second try at 100.6 mph. Carlson’s teammate, Alex Ovechkin, won the competition last year. Pastrnak finished the drill in 11.309 seconds to edge out Pittsburgh’s Kris Letang, who had a time of 12.693 seconds. Toronto’s Auston Matthews drew big applause by donning the jersey of teammate Patrick Marleau, a longtime San Jose Shark, but finished last in the competition.
Harden helps get Houston past Raptors
HOUSTON (AP) — James Harden scored 35 points for his 22nd straight game with 30 or more and the Houston Rockets never trailed and held off a late charge for a 121-119 win over the Toronto Raptors on Friday night.
After averaging 52.2 points over the last five games, capped by a franchise-record 61 in Wednesday’s win over the Knicks, Harden’s torrid scoring pace slowed a bit as all of Houston’s starters scored 10 points or more.
Eric Gordon led that group with 24, Kenneth Faried had 21, P.J. Tucker added 18 and Austin Rivers scored 13. Faried also had a season-high 14 rebounds and blocked two shots in his third game since signing with the Rockets to fill in with Clint Capela recovering from thumb surgery.
Houston led by 11 points after two free throws by Harden with 1:14 remaining before
the Raptors made three straight three-pointers to cut the lead to 121-119 with 27.3 remaining. Gordon missed a 3 to give the Raptors a chance, but Kawhi Leonard’s three-point attempt was short.
It’s the 22nd straight game where Harden has led his team and Houston’s opponent in scoring, which moves him past Michael Jordan for the second-longest streak in NBA history behind Wilt Chamberlain, who did it in 40 in a row.
Harden’s stretch of 30-point games is the fourth-longest in league history, behind three streaks by Chamberlain of 25, 31 and 65 games. Harden was 15-for-15 on free throws, but struggled from long-range, shooting just 2-for-13 on three-point attempts. The strong play of Faried gave Harden some much-needed help Friday and The Beard will get another
reinforcement Sunday night when Chris Paul is expected to return after missing 17 games with a strained left hamstring.
The Raptors got 32 points from Leonard as they dropped their second straight.
The Rockets held a seven-point lead to start the fourth and pushed it to 10 before the Raptors scored five straight points, capped by a 3 from Norman Powell to get within 99-94 with about nine minutes left.
Houston then used a 9-0 run to extend the lead to 108-94 about three minutes later. Rivers made a three late in that span before Tucker capped it by grabbing a steal and finishing with a layup.
Toronto got within 10 after scoring four quick points later in the fourth, but a layup by Harden made it 117-105 with about 90 seconds left.
Hitmen take down Cats
Ted CLARKE Citizen staff
Alberta hospitality isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
The Calgary Hitmen were anything but congenial hosts Friday night when the Prince George Cougars came calling for their one and only WHL meeting between the teams this season.
The Hitmen scored four unanswered goals and went home with a 4-1 victory which ended a three-game losing streak for them. That extended the Cougars’ skid to a season-high five games without a victory.
The Cougars (16-25-3-2) started the game 10th in the Western Conference, two points behind the eighth-place Seattle Thunderbirds, who hold the second wildcard playoff spot. The T-birds hosted the Lethbridge Hurricanes Friday night.
The Hitmen (22-19-3-1) solidified their wild-card position and are now four points ahead of the Brandon Wheat Kings, who lost 4-0 Friday in Regina.
Tyson Upper opened the scoring right at the end of a Calgary power play at 18:52 of the first period. The 17-year-old Calgary native forced a turnover in the Cougars’ end and chipped the puck ahead to Jackson Leppard to create a 2-on-1 break. Leppard sent a high pass over to Upper and the puck deflected off his shinpad and into the net for his third goal of the season.
The Hitmen tied it 13 minutes into the second period after a turnover in the Cougars’ end. Dakota Krebs pinched in from the blueline and used his leg to stop a clearing attempt along the boards and Josh Prokop fed the puck to Luke Coleman who scored on a one-timer.
Calgary scored again with 29 seconds left in the period. James Malm carried the puck into the zone and used a Cougar de-
fenceman as a partial screen as he let go a wrist shot that beat goalie Taylor Gauthier. The Hitmen added to the count in the third period, scoring on a 5-on-3 advantage. With Joel Lakusta off for holding and Matej Toman serving an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty, Mark Kastelic converted on a pass into the goalmouth for his 30th of the season at 6:35.
Late in the game the Cougars had a 6-on-4 chance while on the power play with Gauthier on the bench but Cale Zimmerman quashed any hopes of a comeback when he came out of the box and scored into the empty net.
Gauthier, in his first game action since playing for Team Cherry in the CHL-NHL Top Prospects Game Wednesday in Red Deer, made 44 saves in his return to his hometown.
Jack McNaughton blocked 33 shots in between the pipes for Calgary. LOOSE PUCKS: Cougars captain Josh Curtis, 20, played his 200th career WHL game Friday…. The Cougars’ Fan Bus was there in full force with a group of Cougar parents and family members taking up a section of the Scotiabank Saddledome…. The Cougars move on to Red Deer, where they’ll play the Rebels tonight (6 p.m. PT). They finish their three-game trip Sunday in Edmonton (3 p.m. PT) against the division-leading Oil Kings…. The Cougars are on the road next weekend with games in Kamloops and Vancouver. They’ll host the Vancouver Giants in back-to-back games in a midweek set at CN Centre Feb. 5-6…. Cougars LW Josh Maser served the second of a three-game suspension for an illegal hit against Kamloops last Sunday. D Cole Beamin was a healthy scratch. The Hitmen were without D Egor Zamula (suspended), C Jake Kryski (upper-body injury) and LW Riley Fiddler-Schultz (healthy).
Connor McDavid of the Edmonton Oilers takes a corner during Friday’s skills competition, part of the NHL All-Star weekend in San Jose, Calif.
Novak Djokovic makes a forehand return against Lucas Pouille during their semifinal match at the Australian Open on Friday in Melbourne. Djokovic advanced to the final, where he will face Rafael Nadal in a clash of tennis titans.
Djokovic, Nadal bring similar qualities into final
Howard FENDRICH Citizen news service
MELBOURNE, Australia — It was fascinating to hear Novak Djokovic explain what it will be like to face Rafael Nadal in the Australian Open final.
“The intensity that he brings on the court is immense,” Djokovic said. “Without a doubt, probably the most intense tennis player that I have witnessed and played against.”
Hmmm.
“It makes you be alert, so to say, from the very first point,” Djokovic said. “He doesn’t allow you to kind of ease your way into the match.”
All sounds rather similar to the way someone might describe competing against Djokovic.
When the No. 1-ranked Djokovic and No. 2 Nadal meet Sunday night at Rod Laver Arena for the tournament championship, there will be differences, right down to the most obvious: Djokovic is a righty, Nadal a lefty. The similarities are far more compelling, among them an ability to go from suffocating defence to “How did he put the ball there?!” offence by aggressively staking out territory at the baseline, and an unwavering commitment to playing every point
with full effort and desire, as though the ultimate outcome of the match hinged on each racket swing.
This matchup is their 53rd, the most between two men the professional era.
Djokovic leads 27-25.
It is their 26th on a hard court. Djokovic leads 18-7. It is their 15th at a major, equaling the record. Nadal leads 9-5.
It is their eighth in a Grand Slam final. Nadal leads 4-3. It is their second in an Australian Open final. Djokovic won a five-setter in 2012 that lasted five hours, 53 minutes, the longest Slam final ever.
“Nadal has historically, throughout my life and career, been the greatest rival that I ever played against, on all the surfaces. Some matches that we had against each other were a great turning point in my career. I feel they have made me rethink my game,” Djokovic said.
“I had some disappointing moments where I lost to him. ... I won, also, some great matches. Those kind of encounters have also made me the player I am today, without a doubt,” the 31-year-old Serb said.
“These are the kind of matches that you
live for, finals of Slams, playing the greatest rivals at their best. What more can you ask for?”
Djokovic is to collect a record seventh Australian Open title, breaking a tie with Roy Emerson and Roger Federer.
That would lift his Grand Slam haul to 15, pushing Djokovic one ahead of Pete Sampras.
The only men with more? Federer is at 20, Nadal at 17.
For Nadal, this represents a chance to cut into Federer’s lead and become the third man with at least two championships at each major. The 32-year-old Spaniard’s previous title in Australia came in 2009; he’s lost three other finals, while Djokovic is 6-0.
Both were outstanding in the semifinals. Nadal beat 20-year-old Stefanos Tsitsipas 6-2, 6-4, 6-0; Djokovic defeated 24-year-old Lucas Pouille 6-0, 6-2, 6-2.
Tsitsipas on Nadal: “Just has a talent to make you play bad.”
Pouille on Djokovic: “Not so many players can beat him, for sure. Maybe one or two.”
He put Nadal in that category, and it’s easy to see why. A tweaked serve and that lasso of a forehand are making Nadal as
dangerous as ever; he hasn’t dropped a set in Melbourne.
And to think: he is coming off a series of injuries on unforgiving hard courts. Nadal retired from his Australian Open quarterfinal last year because of a right leg problem; stopped again during his U.S. Open semifinal in September with pain in his right knee; had off-season surgery on his right ankle; pulled out of a tuneup tournament this month because of a bothersome thigh.
He was rusty. He acknowledged being a “little bit worried” because of “issue after issue.”
“After four, five months without action at all,” Nadal said, “then, of course, you know that you can come here and anything can happen, no?”
Djokovic dealt with his own health scare: a sore right elbow that cost him the last half of 2017 and contributed to a fourth-round loss in Melbourne a year ago before he had an operation. Like Nadal, Djokovic is once again at the top of his game.
They’re ready to resume their rivalry. “Hopefully,” Djokovic said, “we’re all going to have a good time.”
Canadian falls in junior girls singles championship match
MELBOURNE (CP) — Top-seeded Clara Tauson of Denmark denied Canadian Leylah Fernandez a tournament trophy for the second consecutive week. This time it was a Grand Slam. Tauson beat the fourth-seed from Laval, Que., on Saturday in the Australian Open girls’ singles final 6-4, 6-3.
“It wasn’t the result I wanted, but it was an amazing experience. I’m just happy that I was able to make it to the final, but also disappointed that I couldn’t play my best tennis today,” said Fernandez. Tauson also beat the Canadian 6-2, 6-3 in the final of a warmup event last week about two hours east of Melbourne Park, in
20:00. Second Period 2. Calgary, Coleman 14 (Prokop, Krebs) 13:03.
Traralgon. Saturday’s match was played at the 15,000-seat Rod Laver Arena where, a few hours later, the women’s singles final between Petra Kvitova and Naomi Osaka would be contested.
“I was very comfortable there from the beginning. I was very happy and excited to be able to play in Rod Laver Arena, and
just to be in this big, beautiful stadium,” Fernandez said.
The diminutive Fernandez was dwarfed by the taller, more powerful Tauson. At times, the Canadian lefty was a little overwhelmed by Tauson’s power. And as a result, she had trouble imposing her own game.
AP PHOTO
Disabled actors long for fair treatment
Citizen news service
When Santina Muha appeared on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? in 2007, the producers asked which chair she’d rather use: her own, or the studio’s.
“I asked if anyone else in a wheelchair had ever been on the show,” said the actress, who was paralyzed from the waist down in a car accident when she was six years old. “They said no, so I said, ‘I’ll stay in my wheelchair.’”
Days after the two-part episode aired, a woman told Muha that her young son, who also uses a wheelchair, was so inspired by seeing the actress on television, she let him stay home from school the next day to watch the conclusion.
“I was on TV for, like, 10 minutes, and I got fan mail from other countries,” Muha said. “Disability needs to be normalized.”
As debates rage over what characters should appear on screen, and who should portray them, disabilities have largely remained undiscussed. Meanwhile, conversations concerning on-screen representations involving gender, race and sexual orientation have gained so much traction in recent years, A-listers have abandoned roles in response to online outrage. Scarlett Johansson, for example, exited the upcoming drama Rub and Tug last year, after
(Kevin Hart). Advocates for the disabled say Cranston’s role should have been played by a disabled actor.
being criticized for her plans to portray a transgender character.
But more than a decade after Muha’s game-show appearance, people with disabilities remain the most proportionally underrepresented group on screen.
The disabled are, arguably,
the largest minority in America, its 56.7 million members constituting nearly 20 per cent of the population, according to the 2010 Census. But a study from the University of Southern California Annenberg Inclusion Initiative that combed through 900 popular movies from 2007 to 2016 found that only 2.7 per cent of characters with speaking roles were portrayed as disabled.
Things are slowly changing: Last year, Dwayne Johnson played an amputee in the action flick Skyscraper, and Joaquin Phoenix portrayed the late paralyzed Portland cartoonist John Callahan in Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot. But some advocates and actors with disabilities, such as Maysoon Zayid, an actress with cerebral palsy, have taken issue with this casting: they say only disabled actors should get these roles.
The latest movie to find itself in the center of the debate is The Upside, a remake of the beloved French film The Intouchables, which hit theatres this month. It stars Bryan Cranston as a wealthy but depressed quadriplegic who hires a cocky former convict, now
a caregiver (Kevin Hart), to assist with his daily needs. Cranston’s character is paralyzed throughout the film, meaning there are no flashback or dream sequences.
The role would have been perfect for a paralyzed actor, advocates say. Early in the movie, Hart places Cranston in a wheelchair but forgets to buckle him in. A helpless Cranston begins falling, but is caught at the last second – a scene played entirely for laughs.
The film is filled with such scenes: Hart aggressively feeding Cranston, a cringe-worthy catheter changing scene, Cranston crashing into waiters with his wheelchair. Advocates have admonished the portrayal, saying it’s “dehumanizing.”
“I was disappointed to see The Upside come out, because we, as disability advocates, have been fighting against non-disabled actors playing visibly disabled character for decades now,” Zayid said. “We don’t feel like physical disability can be mimicked, can be played, can be mastered.” Cranston defended his decision to take the role, telling the Brit-
ish Press Association: “As actors, we’re asked to play other people. If I, as a straight, older person, and I’m wealthy, I’m very fortunate, does that mean I can’t play a person who is not wealthy, does that mean I can’t play a homosexual? I don’t know, where does the restriction apply, where is the line for that?”
Studios often cite the need to cast famous actors to make a movie bankable, but there aren’t many well-known disabled actors. Advocates say that’s because disabled actors rarely get the chance to star in a movie (because they aren’t famous).
And, given the awards-bait nature of these roles – Eddie Redmayne, Colin Firth, Daniel Day-Lewis, Dustin Hoffman, Tom Hanks, Al Pacino and Jamie Foxx have all won Oscars in the past two decades by playing visibly disabled characters – such roles are highly competitive.
When conversations about representation flare up and, just as quickly, die down, there are myriad reasons: visible disabilities often make able-bodied people feel uncomfortable, something movie producers try to avoid. And the disabled community doesn’t speak as one voice. As actress Christine Bruno said last year, “We are fragmented as a community because there are all different kinds of disabilities.”
“We are the last civil rights movement of our time. Everything else has sort of been addressed,” said Jenni Gold, a wheelchair-using director who made CinemAbility, a documentary about disability in Hollywood. “In a crowd scene, there often isn’t one person with a disability. If you don’t exist in that world of the film, how do you exist in real life?”
The conversation today feels louder than ever. The controversy surrounding The Upside even reached the ears of The Daily Show host Trevor Noah who addressed it in lengthy monologue this month.
“My first instinct was... we’re going too far now. They’re actors. Actors are gonna act,” he said. But then a wheelchair-using actor, whose name Noah doesn’t mention, “completely opened my eyes” with something the actor wrote: “I understand what an actor is. I too am an actor. But I’m an actor in a wheelchair, and I never see parts that are leading roles for a person in a wheelchair. So the one time I see a role where there’s a person in a wheelchair, I think, ‘This could be it.’ ...Because when you think about it on the flip side, they never call people with wheelchairs in to play able-bodied people.”
That’s what makes the casting of an actor such as Cranston in The Upside so frustrating to many advocates. As Gold said, “It was a perfect role to give someone a big break.”
Progress – however slight – is being made. Muha recently filmed an upcoming episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, in which her wheelchair was never mentioned.
Zayid has two shows in the works. Ryan O’Connell, who has cerebral palsy, created and stars in an upcoming show on Netflix titled Special. The Yale School of Drama recently teamed up with the Ruderman Family Foundation to provide an annual scholarship for a disabled actor. Its inaugural recipient was Jessy Yates, an actor and comedian with cerebral palsy.
“For years, I did not think there was a place for people with visibly disabled bodies as performers and creators, and I discounted myself from the profession,” Yates said in a statement.
“The training necessary for sustained careers in the arts is often not accessible to the disabled community.”
In The Upside, Bryan Cranston stars as a wealthy, but depressed, quadriplegic who hires a convict-turned-caregiver
Mapplethorpe, refocused
NEW YORK — Robert Mapplethorpe, whose photographs of naked African-American men and ritualized scenes of sexual domination and bondage scandalized some Americans in the 1980s and ’90s, died 30 years ago this March at age 42. He is now a historic figure, an essential entry in any history of American art over the past half-century, a regular subject of exhibitions and retrospectives, and an increasingly legendary figure in the annals of the culture wars that still flare to life whenever political demagogues are imperiled by political head winds.
So today not only must we grapple with all the old problems presented by Mapplethorpe’s work – Does it objectify its subjects? Is it pornographic? Does it aestheticize transgressive sexuality for the consumption of elite art collectors? – but also reconsider all this in light of the simple fact that he belonged to a different world, removed from our own and governed by its own values and assumptions.
Audiences in New York can do just that in a powerful, compact survey of his work now at the Guggenheim Museum. Implicit Tensions: Mapplethorpe Now is the first of two Guggenheim exhibitions devoted to the artist this year (the second show, opening this summer, will look at the work of artists who admired Mapplethorpe, and others, such as Glenn Ligon, whose work looked critically at his legacy).
Using material given to the museum in 1993 by the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, curators Lauren Hinkson and Susan Thompson have covered all the essentials. The exhibition includes early collages and Polaroid self-portraits, images of the artist’s friends and colleagues, sculptural nudes, and flower still lifes, seen in sumptuous gelatin silver prints that make skin look like burnished metal and flowers like chiseled marble, capturing every trace of graffiti and abrasion in the plaster walls of an improvised sex dungeon. The show gives a powerful sense of both the ambition and the brevity of Mapplethorpe’s career, how quickly he moved from using the camera to discover sex to using it to construct an erotically charged world in which desire governs our relationship to people and things alike. And it reminds us how technically skilled he was, how his pursuit of perfection was often seen as his greatest provocation, and how he compelled us to look not just at things that made some people uncomfortable, but at a form of beauty that was both innocuous and titillating.
Since Mapplethorpe’s 1978 self-portrait in which he sodomized himself with a bullwhip or his 1982 pristine still life of a disembodied African-American penis, our understanding of sexuality has changed, from a discourse about exploration and liberation to a focus on the way sex is negotiated and the power relations inherent in the act.
Both conversations were going on then and to some extent now. But the urgency has moved, from a sense that sex is an anarchic form of self-discovery to a gathering collective idea that sex needs to be better governed, more equitable and disentangled from old ideas about patriarchy, power and the prerogatives of various kinds of privilege. Toxic masculinity isn’t just an academic concept, but the subject of a Gillette commercial, and intersectionality – the idea that we inhabit multiple identities and may suffer oppression in multiple ways – is part of the zeitgeist, even if most people don’t use the word.
So what will audiences today make of work that, even when it was new, was criticized for objectifying African-American men, disconnecting their selves, their minds, their emotional beings from their bodies, which were presented like ancient sculpture – fragmented, mute and idealized? At a moment when the necessary concern about sex is that it not be used to hurt people, how do we understand Mapplethorpe’s scenes of domination, like the trussed-up figure in the 1979 image Dominick and Elliot, in which one man is suspended upside down, naked, arms spread, like the crucifixion of Saint Peter?
When Mapplethorpe died of complications from AIDS in 1989, he was a successful artist, with commercial and art world cachet, but he wasn’t yet a household name. That would come about shortly after his death, when Washington’s Corcoran Museum cravenly gave in to powerful homophobes and canceled what had been a successful touring Mapplethorpe exhibition titled The Perfect Moment. Over the years, criticism of Mapplethorpe has often focused on ideas of authenticity. Was he an art-world dandy who used sexual imagery to boost his brand? Or was he using his exceptional technical skills to give pornography the sheen of high art? Neither was the case. Rather, Mapplethorpe seemed to see desire as inherently dignified and, as such, nothing to be confined to dark spaces or behind closed doors.
A lovely portrait, from 1982, of Louise Bourgeois shows the great artist holding a large, nubbly phallus, one of her own sculptures.
“I consider the masculine attributes to be very delicate,” Bourgeois once said. And she’s right, a delicacy seen throughout the work of Mapplethorpe.
Philip KENNICOTT Citizen news service
THE ROBERT MAPPLETHORPE FOUNDATION/SOLOMON R. GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM HANDOUT PHOTO
Robert Mapplethorpe is seen in a self portrait from 1980.
Hollywood brightened
Lady
Gaga’s star; Vegas will keep it glowing
Chris RICHARDS Citizen news service
It’s Saturday night in Las Vegas, and Lady Gaga is doing that cataleptic-in-victory thing – an applausebathing pose in which the singer’s freeze-tagged frame sponges up the hot rumble of 10,000 clapping hands while her cold eyes shoot death beams into the middle distance.
Who’s she staring at? For starters: Elvis Presley, Wayne Newton, Cher, Celine Dion, Barry Manilow, Lola Falana, Tom Jones, Charo and the entire Rat Pack. Britney Spears and Mariah Carey. Jennifer Lopez and Gwen Stefani, Siegfried and Roy, and that tiger who suddenly wanted to eat Roy in 2003. Every chorus girl who ever kicked her toes in the direction of heaven. Every bendable homunculus who ever signed up with Cirque du Soleil.
Every stripper, crooner, magician, dancer and jazzbo who ever came to this glowing wonderland, dreaming that beautiful American dream of turning smiles into money. Even the city’s patron saint and haunting spirit, Wladziu Valentino Liberace. The only way for Lady Gaga to honour them is to blow away them all.
So it goes when you’re trying reclaim your spot as the biggest entertainer drawing breath. At 32, she’s just a kid out here, but Gaga knows how to be more famous in more ways than anyone in the lot.
Despite her radical posture, she remains pop’s ace student, a virtuoso competitor and a relentless pleaser who recently spent the first decade of her career seeking head pats from the music industry, high fashion, the art world, Hollywood, Bud Light, Netflix, Tony Bennett and the NFL. Now she’s planting her flag in the Nevada dirt with two separate concert residencies: a future-kitsch pop show called Enigma, performed in sci-fi riot gear; and a standards revue called Jazz and Piano, sung in ball gowns made from pulverized starlight. It’s all going pretty great. So much so, that in the middle of last Saturday night’s pop gig, she roared out to the neon city and all its ghosts: “This is our town now!”
Maybe you came here to play, but Lady Gaga did not. Instead of treating Las Vegas as a retirement bunker where fading talents go to half-sing to the least-skeptical audiences on the planet, she’s out here at the peak of her stardom, hitting all the big notes with every atom of her being. For a control-freaky overachiever, it must feel something like paradise.
The only person she can disappoint within the city limits is herself. What more could she want?
“GIVE HER THE OSCAR!”
That’s what some guy shouted near the big finish of Gaga’s Saturday-night engagement at MGM’s Park Theater – her fifth Enigma date since launching the show last month. She was easing her way into Shallow – the ballad that her character sings to paralyzing effect in the latest Hollywood remake of A Star Is Born – but when that errant Oscar-holler caught Gaga’s ear, her fingers jumped up off the piano as if the keys had become hot to the touch.
“It’s not about the award, it’s about the process of creating,” she said, pivoting toward the anonymous shout.
“If you want to be a star, it better be because you want to change people’s lives, not change yours.”
The words marched out of her mouth with complete authority, as if she’d been practicing in the mirror every morning since the movie premiered at the Venice Film Festival. (She would likely recite them again the following Tuesday, as she officially updated her résumé: Academy Award-nominated actress Lady Gaga.)
But was this the real Gaga talking? Or the fake one? And is there a difference now? There didn’t used to be, back when she presented herself as a sentient, 24-7 artwork, singing about fame as if it were the most priceless metaphysical currency our civilization will ever know. In the process, she earned a devout listenership and Gaga got so good at making them happy, she eventually had to sniff out new worlds to conquer. Hence, the album of jazz duets, the uptick in acting roles, the Super Bowl halftime show.
Through it all, her feelings on fame began to change.
“It ain’t all champagne and roses,” she declared Saturday while warming up Million Reasons, a renunciation-of-omnipresence-slash-falling-out-oflove-song from three years ago. “You pay a price.”
OK, so was that the real Gaga? Why are we even asking tonight? Out in the real world, we might try to organize her swirl of paradoxical personas into some kind of order, but here, deep inside this perfumed labyrinth of coloured light and nonstop sound, all you need to do is sip them up through your bendystraw like so much strawberry milkshake.
To hear Lady Gaga sing Shallow in Vegas is to feel all of her iterations go swoosh in one happy blur – a celluloid dream inside a song dream inside a concert dream inside a Las Vegas dream.
Lady Gaga arrives at the Los Angeles premiere of A Star Is Born on Sept. 24, 2018.
Successful women rely on other women, study finds
Samantha SCHMIDT Citizen news service
Landing an executive leadership role at a major company often requires making connections with the right people. Graduate students seeking high-ranking corporate jobs are encouraged to build a network of diverse and influential contacts, and avoid cliques.
That advice often works – for men. After all, the leaders of corporate America are overwhelmingly men: Women make up fewer than five per cent of Fortune 500 CEOs and fewer than a quarter of Fortune 500 board members, according to the Pew Research Center.
But for women, a new study suggests, networking like a man is simply not enough. For women seeking to break into a leadership position in the corporate world, the key to success may in fact lie in other women.
A study published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that the most successful female job-seekers from a top-ranked graduate school relied not only on a wide network of contacts, but also on a close inner circle of other women who provide support and gender-specific job advice.
“When you talk to students on the ground, many of them think, ‘The way for me to achieve the things I want in life is to emulate the network that men have,’” said Brian Uzzi an author of the study and a leadership professor at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.
“Some women do, and those are the women who do the absolute worst.”
Corporate leaders are increasingly recruited directly from highly competitive graduate schools, so the study’s authors chose to focus on a group of 728 students in their late 20s and early 30s at a top-ranked graduate business program between 2006 and 2007. About three-quarters of the students were men, and about a quarter of them were women.
To examine the link between students’ social networks and their eventual job placements, the authors analyzed 4.55 million emails sent among all the students. Then they collected data about each student’s job placement, including the industry sector, the regional location and the starting salary, to determine the level of leadership authority each student reached.
After controlling for factors such as a student’s work experience and academic performance, the authors found that students’ social networks strongly predicted their placement into leadership positions.
Among the men, the more influential connections a male student had across the school-wide network, the higher his leadership placement would be.
But among women, the authors were surprised by the findings: 77 per cent of the highest-achieving women had strong ties with an inner circle of two to three other women. The lowest-achieving women had a male-dominated network and weaker ties with other women in their network.
Having a tightknit circle of female friends provided women with a support system as they navigated the job market. The women in these circles would share company information specific to women, such as details about a company’s workplace culture for women.
“That kind of support, we hypothesize, helps propel women into leadership positions,” said Nitesh Chawla, a co-author of the study and a computer science and
engineering professor at the University of Notre Dame. “They can apply for jobs that are a better match.”
When studying these close networks of women, the authors “found something else that made us put the brakes on everything,”
Uzzi said. The inner circle itself was made up of women who are connected to one another. In other words, it created a clique, a kind of network that research has shown can create an echo chamber.
“How on Earth can women be benefiting from this network?”
Uzzi said. The key to these cliques was the fact that each of the women in the inner circle had a set of contacts that were independent of the contacts of the other women. In that way, each woman served as a sort of bridge to a vast number of other diverse connections.
But among women, the authors were surprised by the findings: 77 per cent of the highest-achieving women had strong ties with an inner circle of two to three other women. The lowest-achieving women had a male-dominated network and weaker ties with other women in their network.
ent places, our networks are different. Our networks have more degrees of separation,” Ibarra said. In some ways, women who are minorities in their field often develop both close connections with other women and the ability to reach beyond their own circles, she said.
“Women’s disadvantage gives them an advantage,” Ibarra said.
Ibarra brought up a recent study featured in the Harvard Business Review that focused on grape growers in Champagne, France, where female growers are a minority. The researchers found that female growers were able to charge systematically higher prices than male growers for grapes of the same quality.
The main reason? The women often closely interacted with one another for social support.
The female growers were able to leverage their informal social networks to increase the competitiveness of their business, Ibarra said. “Some people think it’s just for socializing, but it’s not.”
It’s important that women recognize the power of the relationships they have traditionally relied on for social support, said Deborah Kolb, a professor emerita for women and leadership at the Simmons College School of Management and author of Negotiating at Work: Turn Small Wins into Big Gains.
“Women’s networks you haven’t necessarily thought of as strategic are strategic,” Kolb said.
Her advice echoed similar strategies that became popular among female White House staffers in the Obama administration who grew frustrated whenever men ignored their ideas in meetings. They created a strategy they called “amplification.”
Women are particularly good at building those bridges across different networks, according to Herminia Ibarra, a professor of organizational behavior at London Business School. For example, Ibarra recalled how, for a long time, she was among the few female full-time professors in her field and developed close relationships with other female professors.
“Because we’re few and we’re in differ-
Unifor
Citizen news service
Canada’s largest private sector union has called for a boycott of General Motors vehicles made in Mexico as part of its campaign to save the GM Oshawa assembly plant.
Unifor president Jerry Dias said at a press conference Friday that the move would put pressure
“These informal relationships frequently led to the women exchanging useful knowledge and market information that the men tended to keep secret,” the researchers, Amandine Ody-Brasier and Isabel FernandezMateo, wrote in the Harvard Business Review. “Those conversations might include information about who does business with whom, to what extent, for what grapes, and at what price.”
Whenever a woman’s idea went unacknowledged in a meeting, another woman would reiterate it and give her credit for it. Kolb also shared a story about a group of women that worked in a financial services firm. Realizing they were falling behind their male colleagues, the women started helping one another get in front of portfolio managers who would evaluate them.
The women sought out opportunities to recommend female colleagues for job openings and shared advice for managing their work and personal lives.
“They really saw each other as a network that could really help and support each other,” Kolb said. “The network existed. It was just trying to understand how to make it strategic.”
General Motors boycott
on the company to stop shifting production to the lower-wage country.
“This is not us attacking Mexican workers, but what we’re disgusted by is how General Motors is using these workers as pawns for corporate profits. The fact that General Motors pays their employees in Mexico two dollars an hour is an absolute disgrace,” said Dias.
“We’re asking Canadians to stand up to corporate greed. We’re asking you to stand up to greedy motors.”
The escalation of the campaign comes almost two months after GM announced it would end production at the Oshawa, Ont. plant by the end of the year at a loss of about 2,600 direct union jobs as part of a larger restructuring.
GM has remained clear in its intent to close the plant despite a sustained campaign from Unifor for the company to reverse the decision.
The company, which has promised retraining and help with job-
pairing for those affected, said the boycott could hit parts suppliers in Ontario.
“The threat of collateral damage for Ontario based auto suppliers, auto dealers and workers is concerning,” said GM Canada vice president David Paterson in a statement.
Dias said there were few auto parts that go from Ontario to Mexico and downplayed the threat to jobs in the province. He said there was, however, a clear threat to Canadian jobs heading south.
“Our members understand where their jobs are going, they’re going to Mexico. So at some time we have to have this fight and it might as well be now,” said Dias.
Consumers can identify the vehicles produced in Mexico by vehicle identification numbers that start with a three, said the union.
It said some GM vehicles, including the Chevrolet Blazer, Trax and GMC Terrain are made only in Mexico, while others such as the Chevy Equinox, Silverado and
Cruize are made throughout North America.
Dias said Unifor would be meeting with the United Automobile Workers in the U.S. in the coming weeks about potentially expanding the boycott to both countries, where combined GM sells about 600,000 vehicles produced in Mexico.
The effect on short-term sales will likely be minimal, said Jay Handelman, an associate professor of marketing at Queen’s University’s Smith School of Business, since the purchase of a vehicle is too big and takes too long to make to be swayed by a last minute plea. There could be a longer-term hit for GM though, he said.
“I think this does have a longerterm effect on the GM brand more generally. It wouldn’t surprise me if in the future there are questions about do you trust this brand, are they committed to Canada, and so on. I think that’s where the brand will suffer.”
He said Unifor has been effective in making the campaign wider than just Oshawa and into a question of loyalty to Canada.
“I think there’s no downside to Unifor on this. Even if the boycott itself is not effective, I think Unifor’s presented itself very well.”
The boycott, however, won’t help fix the problems that led GM to announce the Oshawa closure along with four U.S. plants, said Will Mitchell, professor of strategic management at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management.
“I think it’s counterproductive as hell,” said Mitchell.
“That’s going to damage the company, which in turn will damage the jobs.”
METRO CREATIVE SERVICES PHOTO
A new study has found that successful women rely on a tight circle of women offering gender-specific support and advice.
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How to make the best chili
Becky KRYSTAL Citizen news service
A pot of chili may be one of winter’s ultimate comforts. Hearty, filling, hot and well suited for a long cook time on your stove top, filling your kitchen with warmth and enticing aromas.
It’s also the kind of meal that lends itself to improvisation, at least for the home cook. (As one 1998 Washington Post story said about competition chili, “Cookoff chili has become a rarefied beast, like a well-groomed show dog. Think of it as the NASCAR of the food world. It looks like chili on the outside, but under the hood it’s a whole ’nuther thing.”)
“I think it is pretty flexible and up to the individual,” says Dan Farber, chef de cuisine at the Washington location of Texasinspired restaurant Hill Country, home to an annual chili cook-off.
There are, in fact, many ways to make chili – so many that food writer and restaurateur Robb Walsh wrote a whole book dedicated to the topic, he Chili Cookbook: A History of the One-Pot Classic, with Cook-off Worthy Recipes from Three-Bean to Four-Alarm and Con Carne to Vegetarian.
That’s not to say there aren’t strong opinions, particularly when it comes to regional specialties (Texas, New Mexico, etc.), beans and vegetarian versions.
“People have strong opinions on the right way to make all kinds of provincial dishes,” Walsh says. “Everybody puts some sort of provincial pride into their foods.”
Even if you’re making up your own rendition on the fly, you can make something to be proud of, too. Here’s how to get started:
• Think about the chile peppers, and the chili powder. Despite the many iterations, the one unifying thread among everything calling itself chili is the chili powder, Walsh says. (According to Post style, the whole peppers are chiles, the spice blend and dish are chili.)
The chili powder “is the backbone” of chili, so that’s the first thing to figure out, he says. You can certainly buy chili powders, but what’s in the blends is often not disclosed. If you prefer to have more control, start with your choice of ground chiles, or grind them yourself, and combine them with other typical spices, such as cumin, oregano and garlic or onion powder.
Toast the spices first for extra oomph. Among the types of chiles to consider: Ancho, pasilla, chipotle and New Mexican long red.
If you want even more deep pepper flavour, you can reconstitute and puree dried chiles to incorporate into the chili, even using some of the soaking liquid for additional taste and colour.
• Consider other additional flavours and ingredients. Farber suggests coriander as a complementary spice, as well as smoked paprika (itself a ground pepper). He also likes to incorporate tomato paste, which briefly cooks in the pot after any aromatics have been sauteed in the fat left over from searing the meat. He deglazes (gets up those tasty brown bits) with beer, too. Other possible liquid additions include a little coffee, beef broth and dry red wine. Even chocolate can provide a savory depth that tasters won’t necessarily be able to identify.
Tomatoes – a can of Rotel or just some plain Italian plum tomatoes – can work, too, though Walsh points out that some purists say that’s just making spaghetti sauce. “I tend to err on the light side, on not too much tomato, because you don’t want the tomato to take over,” he advises.
• Pick your meat – or don’t.
Traditional Texas chili, a “bowl of red,” is made with beef. End of
story. At El Real Tex-Mex Cafe, the Houston restaurant that Walsh coowns, the chili features cubed beef chuck. Texas grocery stores even sell a “chili grind” of beef, which is coarse. But for the rest of us, ordinary ground beef is fine, too. It just depends on the texture you’re going for. Walsh does, however, recommend against more tender –and expensive – cuts of beef (say, tenderloin) which will get too mushy after a long cook time. Walsh thinks game-based chili is “fantastic,” so if venison or bison suit you, go for it. Lamb and ground turkey are popular, too, and Walsh’s book features recipes with pot roast from James Beard and short ribs from Tyler Florence. Pork and chicken?
Yes, the latter of which is especially nice in a chili featuring green chiles. “Use what you have or what inspires you,” Walsh writes in his book’s introduction.
Most of the time you’re going to want to brown your meat in the pot first for better flavor and texture. Do it in batches so as not to overcrowd the pot. If a lot of fat is rendered, you don’t have to use all of it, but some makes for an ideal base for sauteing your aromatics.
As to meatless chilies, Walsh
writes, “While much is made about the debate over beans versus no beans, that’s a minor squabble among close friends compared to the vicious dispute over meat versus no meat.” (More on beans below.) That being said, make your chili however you want! Walsh developed recipes with seitan, tempeh and tofu that serve as sort of meat substitutes, but you can also skip those and just go heavy on the beans. Vegetables such as zucchini and sweet potatoes work well in vegetarian versions.
• Add beans – or don’t. Yes, people have strong feelings about beans. But in the grand scheme of things, is it really worth it to get all worked up about beans in chili?
I don’t think so. So if you want beans, add them and don’t apologize. For cooked or canned beans especially, it’s best to add them in the last 20 to 30 minutes of cooking so they don’t disintegrate, Walsh says. If you have the time, though, he recommends looking into starting with dried beans, which gives you a flavorful broth to work with and more interesting heirloom varieties to try.
• Cook it low and slow. “It’s a long, slow cook,” Walsh says. “Within reason, the longer, the
better.” That type of cooking tenderizes meat, melds flavours and ideally creates a luxurious texture.
Farber recommends tasting a bit along the way, adding more salt and pepper as needed. If you’re cooking uncovered, check the pot occasionally to make sure things aren’t looking too dry.
Low heat will prevent the food from scorching. Because of the low and slow approach, Walsh is a big fan of slow-cooker chili. On the other hand, if you own an Instant Pot, you can go the other direction and pressure cook for a faster chili fix.
Knowing when chili is done can be a little tricky. “It’s not like a steak where you’ve got a thermometer in it,” Walsh says.
So taste it and look at it.
Is the meat tender?
Are you happy in general with the flavour?
How’s the consistency?
“Is it coming together or does it look like ground beef soup?” Walsh says.
If you’re happy with it otherwise, a slurry with flour or masa harina (dried corn dough ground to a flour) can help. Combine the thickener with a bit of the liquid from the chili and then add it back
to the pot. You should start to get some thickening as it cooks more and then after the chili comes off the heat and cools.
The long cook time on chili makes it a prime candidate for makeahead status, which is just as well anyway, because some chili cooks swear that a day in the refrigerator actually improves the flavour.
• Garnish to your heart’s content. Farber thinks the garnishes are really where home cooks can go wild with chili. His favourite toppers are red onion, cheddar cheese and sour cream.
But that’s just a start.
Of course, if you’d never cook chili with the beans in it, you can serve them as a topping or side. Put out tortilla chips or Fritos for crunch. Sliced or chopped serrano and jalapeño peppers can add heat, as can hot sauce. Lettuce, scallions and cilantro bring a fresh, green vibe. Or provide tortillas for filling.
In other words, follow your heart and your stomach.
“I’m a Texas chili guy,” Walsh says, but he’s not a stickler for definitions. Even if they’re not hewing to that formula, “People can make stuff that’s ‘chili’ as far as I’m concerned.”
Shown above is smoky Texas chili, which is the kind of meal that lends itself to improvisation. Shown below are garnishes for chili.
JOHNSTON, ROY - It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of Roy Johnston on December 20, 2018. Roy was born in Glenella, Manitoba on December 29, 1936. Roy was predeceased by his twin sister, Shirley and brother-inlaw Harry Howell, and their parents Samuel and Pauline Johnston. He will be deeply missed by his loving wife of 60 years Betty, son Danny (Laura) and daughter Susan Schwab and grandchildren Andrew and Adam Schwab and Samuel and Emily Johnston. A small gathering to remember and celebrate Roy’s life will take place in May.
Jean Marie Davey May 26, 1934January 17, 2019
A good wife, sister, mother, friend. A private, shy, faithful and committed woman.
Jean was born In Clouston, Saskatchewan. After she married her husband Bill in 1951, they moved to Prince George and Built their home on Parent Road where they raised their family.
She is predeceased by her husband Bill and survived by 5 children: Robert (Annette), Charles, Gary, Valerie (Richard), Sheila (Dennis), 7 grandchildren, 10 great grandchildren. She enjoyed being outside, fishing, trapping, hunting, camping, the casino, sports, dancing, gardening, talking, but above all,spending time with her family.
She will be remembered by her physical and inner strength and having a tender heart.
Funeral will be held January 26, 2019 at 1:00pm from Immaculate Conception with Father Chris Lynch officiating. A reception will be held immediately afterwards with snacks and refreshments at 2 pm at the Royal Canadian Legion Local 43 at 1116 6th Ave.
A special thank-you goes to her family, lifetime friends, the many neighbours from Marleau Subdivision and Asher Place. We would like to also thank the amazing doctors, nurses and medical staff at UHNBC, and Bryce the kind, skillful, social worker from ICU.
Don’t think of me as gone away, My journey’s just begun.
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Trump ponders pipeline push
Ari NATTER, Jennifer A. DLOUHY Citizen news service
The Trump administration is considering taking steps to limit the ability of states to block interstate gas pipelines and other energy projects, according to three people familiar with the deliberations.
The effort, possibly done through an executive order, is aimed chiefly at states in the Northeast, where opposition to pipeline projects has helped prevent abundant shale gas in Pennsylvania and Ohio from reaching consumers in New York and other cities.
New York used a Clean Water Act provision to effectively block the construction of a natural gas pipeline being developed by Williams Partners to carry Marcellus shale gas 124 miles to New England. The project got the green light from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission but ran into obstacles in New York, where regulators denied a water quality permit.
While mostly targeted toward boosting
The markets today
TORONTO (CP) — Canada’s main stock index dipped for just the third time in a month as lower crude oil prices hurt the key energy sector.
The S&P/TSX composite index closed down 25.43 points at 15,208.33 on a quiet day of trading after a rough December and 12-day rally in January.
“It seems like today the market’s just taking a breather,” says Anish Chopra, managing director with Portfolio Management Corp.
He said investors are digesting the news of the last few months that saw the worst December since 1931 followed by the best first month of the new year since 1987.
“Just like markets don’t go down in a straight line, they certainly don’t go up in a straight line, so for there to be a bit of a pause and a breather as the market finds its level that would seem appropriate.”
The energy sector was the biggest loser on the day, falling by 1.24 per cent on a further slip in the price of crude. Suncor Energy Inc. lost 1.45 per cent, followed by Royal Bank of Canada and TransCanada Corp.
The March crude contract was down 39 cents at US$52.62 per barrel and the March natural gas contract was down five cents at US$2.92 per mmBTU. Energy prices fell on continued concerns about a slowdown in the global economy and an expected report about record U.S. shale production.
The consumer discretionary sector led the TSX, gaining nearly two per cent, helped by Restaurant Brands International Inc. Its shares rose 9.6 per cent to $83.51 after the parent company of Tim Hortons, Burger King and Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen raised its dividend and announced changes in its executive suite, including the installation of a new CEO.
The Canadian dollar traded at an average of 74.92 cents US compared with an average of 74.96 cents US on Tuesday.
The February gold contract was up 60 cents at US$1,284 an ounce and the March copper contract was down half of a cent at US$2.65 a pound.
In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average was up 171.14 points at 24,575.62. The S&P 500 index was up 5.80 points at 2,638.70, while the Nasdaq composite was up 5.41 points at 7,025.77.
U.S. markets were helped by strong fourth-quarter earnings reports by companies like IBM, Proctor & Gamble, and United Technologies.
limited pipeline capacity in the Northeast, the initiative could help drive permitting and construction of other energy projects, including coal export terminals. For instance, Lighthouse Resources’ proposed coal export terminal in Longview, Washington, was ensnared when the state’s Department of Ecology denied a critical Clean Water Act permit, citing concerns about air quality and increased railroad traffic to serve the site.
The new initiative dovetails with expectations that President Donald Trump would use his State of the Union address to tout efforts to accelerate permitting and construction of oil and gas pipelines, though he’s postponed the speech and the exact timing of any announcement remains unclear.
The potential White House action was earlier reported by Politico. Pipeline advocates who say states are abusing their authority under the Clean Water Act have advanced ideas for reining it in.
“It just never made sense to me that a state could be able to use the Clean Water Act and
effectively veto a federally approved project,” Dena Wiggins, president of the Natural Gas Supply Association, said during an event on Thursday. “There’s got to be something done to address that issue.”
But it’s not clear how much – if at all – an executive order could curtail states’ special powers under the statute. Industry officials said real change may require legislation to alter the statute itself, such as a bill advanced in 2018 by Sen. John Barrasso, a Wyoming Republican.
A previous attempt to use executive power to help TransCanada Corp.’s Keystone XL pipeline and Energy Transfer Partners’ Dakota Access Pipeline didn’t jump-start their construction.
The issue, pipeline advocates say, is especially pronounced in the Northeast, where there isn’t enough capacity to send gas to New York City and other metropolitan areas in times of heavy demand. Energy Secretary Rick Perry has invoked the idea of using national security grounds to justify action on the issue.
Gates promoting nuclear energy
Steven MUFSON Citizen news service
WASHINGTON — Bill Gates thinks he has a key part of the answer for combatting climate change: a return to nuclear power. The Microsoft co-founder is making the rounds on Capitol Hill to persuade Congress to spend billions of dollars over the next decade for pilot projects to test new designs for nuclear power reactors.
Gates, who founded TerraPower in 2006, is telling lawmakers that he personally would invest $1 billion and raise $1 billion more in private capital to go along with federal funds for a pilot of his company’s never-before used technology, according to congressional staffers.
“Nuclear is ideal for dealing with climate change, because it is the only carbon-free, scalable energy source that’s available 24 hours a day,” Gates said in his year-end public letter. “The problems with today’s reactors, such as the risk of accidents, can be solved through innovation.”
Gates’s latest push comes at an important turn in climate politics.
Nuclear power has united both unpopular industry executives and a growing number of peopleincluding some prominent Democrats - alarmed about climate change.
But many nuclear experts say that Gates’s company is pursuing a flawed technology and that any new nuclear design is likely to come at a prohibitive economic cost and take decades to perfect, market and construct in any significant numbers.
Lawmakers are listening to him. Through the Energy Department, Congress approved $221 million to help companies develop advanced reactors and smaller modular reactors in fiscal year 2019, above the budget request. But Gates and TerraPower, which received a $40 million Energy Department research grant in 2016, are looking for more.
With some Democrats reconsidering opposition to nuclear energy dating back to the Three Mile Island accident 40 years ago, Gates met with lawmakers from both parties, including Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., both senior members of the Senate Appropriations Committee. Last month he had dinner with Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and three other senators.
Edwin Lyman, a nuclear expert at the Union of Concerned Scientists, says that TerraPower is one of many companies that is raising
“Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising.”
Mark Twain
spring 2018 meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in Washington, D.C.
the public’s hopes for advanced nuclear reactor designs even though they’re still on the drawing boards and will remain unable to combat climate change for many years.
“We think the vendors of advanced nuclear power designs are saying they can commercially deploy them in a few years and all over the world,” Lyman said. “We think that is counterproductive because it is misleading the public on how fast and effective these could be.”
But Gates speaks often about the need for innovation on the climate front. He has invested heavily in other nascent technologies – much of it related to energy storage – in search of the sort of breakthrough he hopes will slow global warming.
Gates, who declined interview requests, won’t say how much he has invested in TerraPower, but the Bellevue, Washingtonbased company has about 150 employees.
Many nuclear power experts say that the technology Gates is promoting – called a “traveling wave reactor” – does not work as advertised, at least not yet. “These designs... require advances in fuel and materials technology to meet performance objectives,” a Massachusetts Institute of Technology report said last year.
TerraPower has changed key elements of its design and has still not resolved some critical problems, the experts say.
The company appeared to hint at alternatives when asked about the problems.
“Our team in Bellevue continues our design work on the [traveling wave reactor] while we consider alternative commercial paths,” Marcia Burkey, senior vice president at TerraPower, said in an email.
Jonah Goldman, of Gates Ventures, stressed that Gates was not advocating for TerraPower alone. Gates believes the United States has “the best minds, the best lab
systems and entrepreneurs willing to take risk,” Goldman said. “But what we don’t have is a commitment on Congress’ part.”
In his letter, Gates praised TerraPower’s “traveling wave” technology. He said it “is safe, prevents proliferation, and produces very little waste” – important selling points in Congress, which has not settled on the location of a site for long-term waste storage.
Gates has compared the technology to a candle. He said that uranium 235, which is burned in conventional light water reactors, would be used to ignite the rest of the candle, burning up depleted uranium 238 that is currently treated as waste.
And instead of water, it would use liquid sodium to cool the plant, which it said would be more efficient.
Gates has said the reactor could be placed in a vessel underground and left there for 60 years without refueling. That would reduce chances for human error and defuse concerns about long-term spent fuel storage or the theft of nuclear material during refueling or fuel reprocessing, the company said.
But critics say TerraPower has been stumbling over a handful of obstacles.
First, TerraPower has discovered that the traveling wave didn’t travel so well, and that it would not evenly burn the depleted uranium in the “candle.” Second, and partly as a result, it needed to change the design to reshuffle the fuel rods - and do that robotically while keeping the reactor running. Third, it has struggled to find a metal strong enough to protect the fuel rods from a bombardment of neutrons more intense than those commonly used in reactors – and for a much longer period of time.
TerraPower’s Burkey said in an email that the company has been researching new steel alloys. It has sent ingots to a unique Rus-
sian test reactor and brought them back for examination. She said the company had made important advances in that and other areas.
In many ways, TerraPower’s design resembles fast breeder reactors. Fast breeders have faster moving neutrons, the sub-atomic particles that trigger fission.
Allison Macfarlane, former chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said earlier versions of fast breeder reactors have turned in a “dismal performance.”
The United States built two small reactors at a government laboratory in Idaho, Japan built a commercial unit called Monju, and France built two called Phenix and Superphenix – and all of them have been shut down.
TerraPower also suffered a setback last October when the Energy Department effectively killed any chance of building a demonstration reactor in China. The department announced measures to prevent “China’s illegal diversion” of U.S. civilian nuclear technology for military purposes.
TerraPower has been working on “advanced” nuclear technology for a decade, and it remains far from filing a final proposal for review by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
In fact, a small modular reactor design by NuScale Power is the application currently before the NRC. The commission is expected to complete its review by September 2020, NuScale says.
TerraPowerhas also been working with the Energy Department on another reactor.
If it moved ahead, it could obtain federal funds for 60 percent of the cost of a test reactor, Burkey said. That design would rely on molten salt as both coolant and fuel.
TerraPower believes an advanced molten salt reactor could be more efficient and produce less waste than current models. However, that technology was examined in different countries 60 years ago – and abandoned. Lyman said the molten salt was “highly corrosive so you need special materials for the reactor. That’s an engineering problem they still have to confront.”
The political engineering problem still needs work too, though some surprising bipartisanship has taken place over the past year.
In the United States, only one new nuclear reactor has been completed in three decades. Two were shelved in 2017. Two others in Georgia are running wildly behind schedule and over budget with current costs running around $27 billion, more than double the original estimate.
Bill Gates, billionaire and co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, speaks during a panel discussion at the
Bishops apologize for student behaviour
WASHINGTON — Lexington’s Catholic bishop, John Stowe, in a commentary Wednesday night said he is “ashamed” that the actions of Kentucky Catholic school students in the District of Columbia last week are tainting the antiabortion movement and said wearing attire representing President Donald Trump is incongruous with the “pro-life” label.
Stowe’s comments, in the Lexington Herald-Leader, were the third condemnation by a Kentucky Catholic bishop of the teens’ behaviour. There are four dioceses in the state. Comments by Kentucky’s Catholic leaders have been evolving since Saturday, when tense interactions at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington involving the boys, some of whom wore Make America Great Again caps, exploded on social media. Initial condemnations have been supplemented in a few cases with calls for a search for truth and healing.
“I am ashamed that the actions of Kentucky Catholic high school students have become a contradiction of the very reverence for human life that the march is supposed to manifest.
As such, I believe that U.S. Catholics must take a look at how our support of the fundamental right to life has become separated from the even more basic truth of the dignity of each human person,” Stowe wrote. “Without engaging the discussion about the context of the viral video or placing the blame entirely on these adolescents, it astonishes me that any students participating in a pro-life activity on behalf of their school and their Catholic faith could be wearing apparel sporting the slogans of a president who denigrates the lives of immigrants,
refugees and people from countries that he describes with indecent words and haphazardly endangers with life-threatening policies.”
The incident on the memorial’s plaza divided Americans, at lightning-speed, with calls of prejudice by Catholics, AfricanAmericans, Native Americans and Trump’s supporters and critics, among others.
The diocese of Covington on Monday announced it had launched an “independent, third-party investigation” into what happened on the Mall when Covington Catholic students, Native American elder Nathan Phillips and a small group of Black Israelites interacted in the afternoon.
The students were in D.C. for the March for Life, an annual antiabortion rally. Phillips was just finishing the Indigenous Peoples March. At issue is the interaction between Phillips and the teens.
But the incident is especially divisive for U.S. Catholics, who are split down the middle on Trump as well as abortion access, and on the question of whether Trump is a cancer or a hero for people who oppose abortion.
Trump critics who oppose abortion see his treatment of immigrants, refugees and racial minorities, among other things, as disqualifying for an ethical leader. Supporters believe his Supreme Court justice picks and vocal opposition to abortion since 2016 as a historic – even divine – win.
Among Catholics overall, 52 percent went for Trump in 2016, compared with 45 percent for Hillary, according to the Pew Research Center. That split is due to a large racial gap; white Catholics supported Trump by a 23-point margin while Hispanic Catholics backed Clinton over Trump by a 41-point margin, Pew found.
On the question of abortion, Pew found in 2018 that 51 percent of Catholics say abortion should be legal in all or most cases and 42 percent say it should be illegal.
On Saturday, as news and images and videos on the incident spread, the Covington Diocese, led by Bishop Roger Foys, and the boys’ school – Covington Catholic –released a joint statement condemning the actions of the high school students.
“This behaviour is opposed to the Church’s teachings on the dignity and respect of the human person. The matter is being investigated and we will take appropriate action, up to and including expulsion,” it said. “We know this incident also has tainted the entire witness of the March for Life and express our most sincere apologies to all those who attended the March and all those who support the pro-life movement.”
Archbishop Joseph Kurtz of Louisville, the state’s overseeing bishop, tweeted that he condemned the “shameful actions” of the students. The Catholic Conference of Kentucky issued a statement criticizing the teens as well.
However, Kurtz’s tweet has since been removed, and the Covington diocese on Tuesday released a statement saying there would be an independent investigation.
“Concerning the incident in Washington, D.C., between Covington Catholic students, Elder Nathan Phillips and Black Hebrew Israelites the independent, thirdparty investigation is planned to begin this week. This is a very serious matter that has already permanently altered the lives of many people,” the new statement said. “We pray that we may come to the truth and that this unfortunate situation may be resolved peacefully and amicably and ask others
Jesus was a social activist with a smile
While working with a church through its transition between pastors, we’ve spent some time looking at the church’s purpose or sense of vision.
That’s because vision is foundational to what everyday living and organizational efficiency is all about. And from the perspective of one who pastor’s a church, there is nothing more important than a clear sense of purpose. After all, it is vision clarity that should drive every endeavour in the church.
Despite many false-starts and failures, it is self-evident that a key
factor in Christianity’s strength and influence around the world is clarity of purpose.
Vision, which is really an extension of substantive faith, is inspiringly embodied in the lives of many throughout the Bible.
To name a few, one has only to think of such greats as Abraham, Moses, Ruth, David, and Queen Esther.
But in reading the New Testament Gospels, clearly the greatest
visionary of all time was Jesus of Nazareth.
Here are a few examples of Jesus’ sense of purpose: I must work the works of Him that sent me while it is day, for the night is coming when no man can work (John 9:4).
The Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many (Mark 10:45).
My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work (John 4:34).
A quick reading of the Gospels shows that Jesus indeed was a very busy person. Most of the time, he was healing the sick and teaching the gospel of the king-
to join us in this prayer. We will have no further statements until the investigation is complete.”
Kurtz also issued a new statement on his blog, saying his first reaction was primarily motivated by wanting to support the Covington bishop, “who is in a position to have the best information about what transpired,” and emphasizing they were condemning “alleged actions, not people.”
“At this time, I am not going to get ahead of the Diocese of Covington’s independent investigation with additional comments,” Kurtz wrote. “Whatever the investigation reveals, I hope that we can use this as a teachable moment, learn from any mistakes on the part of anyone involved, and begin the process of healing.”
Stowe’s Wednesday editorial didn’t address the disputed interaction between Phillips and the teens but focused on what he described as a distorted antiabortion movement that has become divorced from its roots as a broad effort to honour human dignity. He noted that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops just a few months ago issued a major letter on racism, which “has worked itself into the fabric of our nation. The pastoral letter describes racism as a ‘life’ issue,” he wrote.
“We cannot uncritically ally ourselves with someone with whom we share the policy goal of ending abortion,” Stowe wrote. “The pro-life movement claims that it wants more than the policy change of making abortion illegal, but aims to make it unthinkable. That would require deep changes in society and policies that would support those who find it difficult to afford children. The association of our young people with racist acts and a politics of hate must also become unthinkable.”
dom. But besides that, another important purpose for him was preparing twelve of his disciples to take up his work after he was gone (Mark 3:14).
With all this in mind we might easily conclude, ironically, that Jesus didn’t have a life. We might think that his was an intense and driven kind of personality, never having time to stop and smell the roses, or just to laugh.
It’s true that due to his sense of mission Jesus seemed to work tirelessly. But it would be wrong to think he was driven. Though strongly visionary, he did what he did with a wonderful sense of ease – mostly because, I think, of his close communication with his Fa-
ther in heaven (i.e. John 14:31b). We may not see any instance of Jesus laughing in the Gospels. But what we do see is irony and wit. He used humour to make fun of the religiously self-righteous of his day. He said they were the kind who strained out a gnat but swallowed a camel (Matthew 23:24) or, who looked for a speck in their neighbour’s eye while having a log in their own (Matthew 7:3-5). Though dealing with heavy issues in life, Jesus said that his yoke was easy, and his burden was light (Matthew 11:30). In these heavy social and political times, it’s good to remember that the greatest social activist of all time was beautifully light-hearted.
Michelle BOORSTEIN Citizen news service
This video still shows a teenager wearing a Make America Great Again hat, centre left, standing in front of an elderly Native American who is singing and playing a drum in Washington last weekend.
