Woman’s killer gets day parole
Mark NIELSEN Citizen staff
A Parole Board of Canada panel has granted day parole to a Nadleh man serving an 11-year sentence for the manslaughter death of his common-law spouse, but only so he can attend an addictions treatment program.
Under the terms the panel issued in a July 9 decision, Garrett Steven George, 30, must return to a halfway house in the community where the program is being delivered each night.
George was sentenced in Nov. 16, 2016 for death of Destiny Rae Tom, 21. The badly-beaten body of the mother of a then three-year-old girl was found outside a home on the Nadleh reserve during the early morning of March 13, 2013.
George had been kicked out of a party at a friend’s house but kept coming back and demanded Tom leave with him. She finally relented and left reluctantly, the court was
told during a sentencing hearing.
George initially denied responsibility and later tried to pin the death on the two people who found Tom’s body. But he eventually pleaded guilty to a count of manslaughter.
A history of abuse of Tom at George’s hands was a theme during the sentencing hearing.
In reaching their decision, panel members found George to be “highly overconfident” and made note of poor behaviour including an outburst a week before the hearing when he became angry over the type of food he was being served.
“You did not display a deep knowledge of your risk factors or strategies to reduce them in the community,” panel members said in the decision. “You have demonstrated angry and defensive behaviours very recently and do not appear to understand
the responsibility you own for these issues. You appear to deflect responsibility on others and the system.”
George’s bid for full parole was denied as was a request to be transferred to a work camp upon completing the work program.
“Rather, the Board finds that you ought to take the time to demonstrate change, better anger management and communication skills, and gain insight in the treatment portion of your plan,” panel members said.
“You will return to the institution following that program and prior to any future decisions being made in your case.”
Less credit for time served prior to sentencing, George had a further eight years and four months left to serve upon sentencing in 2016. His sentence ends in late March 2025.
The full decision is posted with this story at www.princegeorgecitizen.com.
Cats in need of homes
Starting today and continuing until next Friday, adult cats are available for adoption at half the usual charge at all 36 B.C. SPCA shelters, including the one in Prince George.
Canfor posts second quarter loss
Canfor Corp. reported Friday a $49.7-million operating loss for its second quarter of 2018.
The outcome was a $20.2-million improvement over its first quarter result and once duties, restructuring costs and reversal of inventory provision, the second-quarter loss was reduced to $5 million.
In a news release, the company attributed
the improvement to “higher lumber segment earnings” that included a full quarter of the Vida Group of Sweden’s results following completion of the acquisition in the first quarter of 2019.
But it left Canfor president and CEO Don Kayne with little to cheer about.
“This was another difficult quarter for our Western SPF business with the ongoing challenging market conditions, combined with high log costs, which have resulted in the
announcement to close of our Vavenby mill and curtail other B.C. operations. We deeply regret the impact these decisions are having on our employees and local communities,” he said.
“Our SYP business delivered solid results in the second quarter and we expect that to continue through the balance of the year. Our European business continued to deliver strong financial results.
— See NET LOSS on page 3
NEB rejects pipeline review
Mark NIELSEN Citizen staff
The National Energy Board will not be reviewing the Coastal GasLink pipeline project, saying Friday that it does not fall within its jurisdiction.
The $6.2-billion project, currently under construction, is to carry natural gas 670 kilometres from the Groundbirch area of the B.C. Peace to LNG Canada’s $40-billion export terminal currently under construction near Kitimat.
The NEB’s decision comes after hearings on an application, submitted a year ago, from environmentalist Mike Sawyer, who argued approval from B.C.’s Environmental Assessment Office is not good enough.
He noted TransCanada Corp., now known at TC Energy, owns both CGL and NOVA Gas Transmission Ltd. system, which gathers and transports natural gas in Alberta and northeastern B.C., and contended that they’re functionally integrated and so, comprise an interprovincial system. But in a statement, the NEB said the project does not form a part of a system and is not vital or integral to it or any other federally regulated pipeline.
“Based on the evidence presented, the NEB found that the Coastal GasLink Pipeline Project is properly regulated by the province of British Columbia,” the agency said. Had the NEB agreed with Sawyer, the project would have been put on hold while it went through a review by the regulator.
The NEB’s hearing on the matter involved 13 participants and included the filing of evidence, and both written and oral arguments. CGL welcomed the decision.
— See WET’SUWET’EN on page 3
First Nations land deal on fisheries
The Canadian Press
The federal government has signed an agreement with seven First Nations on British Columbia’s north and central coast that will give them more access to commercial fishing and a role in fisheries management.
Crown-Indigenous Relations
Minister Carolyn Bennett and Fisheries Minister Jonathan Wilkinson made the announcement along with representatives of the seven nations on Friday.
The government says the agreement means the Coastal First Nations will have better access to existing commercial fishing licences and quota in their own territories and they’ll have a role in fisheries governance, although the Department of Fisheries will have overarching management duties.
Bennett said in a news release that fish are central to the culture and livelihood of many First Nations and increasing access to economic opportunities supports healthy, self-reliant communities.
Chief Marilyn Slett, president of the Coastal First Nations, said the deal will get families back on the water, re-establish a boat fleet and allow communities to fully take part in the fishing economy.
Wilkinson says the historic agreement is the result of years of collaborative work to strengthen relations between the government and Coastal First Nations.
Radar love
Nancy Lopaschuk gets Radar, an American/Canadian Grand Champion papillon, ready to show Friday morning at the Prince
Kennel Club’s annual dog show being held at the Oriental Wellness Centre on North Nechako Road. The public is welcome to watch the action and meet dog owners and handlers this weekend.
CNC Research Forest Society launches legacy fund
Citizen staff
The College of New Caledonia Research Forest Society has launched a legacy fund supporting projects in communities the college serves.
The society is welcoming applications for projects with a focus on environmental improvement, renewable natural resource education and outreach programs, outdoor recreation improvement, or social-environmental commitment to the local communities.
The successful project will receive up to $30,000 per year for three years.
The research forest was founded in 2009 to provide a new revenue source to sustain and revitalize the college’s natural resource and forestry education and provide for new research and learning opportunities for CNC and its students.
The spruce beetle outbreak began to noticeably affect the forest in 2015. The onset resulted in a new management plan and two timber supply reviews in an attempt to reasonably forecast tree mortality and develop a quick management response.
Ultimately, the caretakers had to increase harvest levels to remove
spruce beetle populations and salvage spruce timber prior to significant degradation from drying and decay.
Though the forest industry is currently experiencing difficult circumstances affecting many people in the region, research forest manager Carl Pollard said it is the long-term mandate of the CNCRFS to ensure it provides important benefits to students and local natural resource research for many years to come.
“There is now the opportunity to reinvest a portion of the sale of the timber back into the natural resources and people of the region served by CNC through this new legacy fund,” Pollard said.
The CNCRFS legacy fund is open to individuals, businesses, community groups, First Nations communities, government agencies, as well as secondary and postsecondary schools in and around Prince George, Bear Lake, McLeod Lake, Mackenzie, Quesnel, Fort St. James, Vanderhoof and Burns Lake.
Application packages and instructions can be found online at cnc.bc.ca/research/forest. Deadline for applying is Aug. 16 at 4 p.m.
George
Murder suspects elude police
The Canadian Press Mounties are asking anyone who may have unwittingly helped two teenage homicide suspects give the slip to police in a northern Manitoba area to come forward.
Cpl. Julie Courchaine says police aren’t saying that’s what happened, but they aren’t ruling out any possibilities.
“It is possible that someone may not have been aware of who they were providing assistance to, and may now be hesitant to come forward,” she said at an RCMP update in Winnipeg on Friday.
“I want to reiterate the importance of contacting police immediately.”
Courchaine said Bryer Schmegelsky, 18, and his 19-yearold friend Kam McLeod may have changed their appearance as a way to evade an intense manhunt that includes officers from several jurisdictions searching on foot, with dogs and using drones.
Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale said in a tweet Friday evening that the military has also been called in to give the RCMP air support during their hunt for the teens.
Courchaine urged the public across the country to keep a careful watch out for the pair, who were last seen in northern Manitoba and wanted in the deaths of three people in northern British Columbia.
“It is critical that all Canadians remain vigilant for Kam McLeod and Bryer Schmegelsky,” she said. “If they are spotted, do not approach. Call 911 or your local police immediately.”
Courchaine stressed that there have been no confirmed sightings since one Monday in the Gillam area – an isolated region of bog and bush with one access road –so the search for the two was still focused there.
Schmegelsky and McLeod are charged with second-degree murder in the death of Leonard Dyck, a botany professor at the University of British Columbia, and are suspects in the fatal shootings of Australian Lucas Fowler and his American girlfriend Chynna Deese.
A burned-out RAV4 the teens from Port Alberni were travelling in was found near Gillam this week and police have said there have been no reports of stolen vehicles since.
Courchaine said police were planning to go door to door in Gillam and on the Fox Lake First Nation over the next three days looking for leads.
“We’re going to... try and generate some tips possibly,” she said.
“Maybe there’s something that seemed insignificant to them and maybe it’s something that will really help us in our investigation.”
Police were also requesting that people not post unconfirmed material about the search or the
suspects on social media.
“I want to stress the importance of not creating and sharing online rumours,” Courchaine said. “The spreading of false information in communities across Manitoba has created fear and panic.”
She said police had confirmed that a young man with an uncanny resemblance to McLeod was not who they were looking for. A photo of the man holding a newspaper picture of McLeod next to his face appeared on Twitter Thursday.
Later Friday, RCMP in Cold Lake, Alta., confirmed a sighting of the pair early Sunday morning.
“At approximately 9:30 a.m., a north end resident of Cold Lake observed a vehicle stuck on a trail
Protesters braved -24C weather outside of the Prince
in early January to show solidarity with their fight against the Coast
Wet’suwet’en appeal before courts
— from page 1
“This is a single-line natural gas pipeline located entirely within B.C. Its only purpose is transport of natural gas within the province – from the Dawson Creek area to LNG Canada’s facility in Kitimat,” CGL said in a statement.
One other legal challenge remains in play. CGL and the Wet’suwet’en hereditary clan chiefs are at odds over whether the pipeline should pass through the First Nation’s traditional territory.
They are awaiting a B.C. Supreme Court decision on whether an injunction against blockading the project should be lifted or put in place for the duration of construc-
tion after making submissions at the Prince George courthouse in June.
CGL has emphasized that it has reached benefit agreements amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars with 20 elected bands along the project route including those of the Wet’suwet’en. However, the Wet’suwet’en hereditary clan chiefs are strongly opposed, saying they did not give permission for it to be built. They also say the elected bands’ authority ends at the borders of their respective reserves while they have authority over the Wet’suwet’en’s entire traditional territory.
– with files from The Canadian Press
Net loss $138.1M year to date
— from page 1
“Our pulp business also delivered solid results in the second quarter but in the latter part of the quarter, we began to see significant erosion of NBSK pulp and BCTMP prices, which in combination with the reduced fibre supply in B.C. due to the industry-wide sawmill curtailments, resulted in the decision to curtail operations in the third quarter.
“We expect to see a modest increase in
pulp prices towards the end of 2019 and into 2020 as the global inventory levels come back into balance.”
Year-to-date, Canfor’s net income loss stood at $138.1 million compared to a net income gain of $282 million by the same point last year. The full quarterly reports for both Canfor Corp. and Canfor Pulp Products Inc. are posted with this story at www.princegeorgecitizen.com.
Charging stations added to Mount Robson campsites
Twenty-two campsites at the Robson River campground in Mount Robson Provincial Park are now equipped with charging stations for RVs and electric vehicles.
The connections are a 50-amp service and make the campground the first in northeast B.C. to have the hookups, BC Parks said in a July 20 news release. The sites can be reserved on discovercamping.ca
behind their residence,” police said in a news release. “Two younger males were observed outside of a Toyota RAV4. The resident assisted the pair in getting unstuck and they continued on their way after a short, unremarkable interaction.”
They said the man realized it was Schmegelsky and McLeod when he was on social media later that night. RCMP also released some surveillance footage from Meadow Lake, Sask., showing Schmegelsky in a T-shirt and McLeod in army fatigues walking around a store later Sunday in the hopes it would generate more tips from the public.
A similar intense manhunt happened in the Prairies in July 2006, when it took almost two weeks for Mountie killer Curtis Dagenais to be arrested.
About 250 officers scoured an area around Spiritwood, Sask., for any sign of Dagenais after he shot RCMP constables Robin Cameron and Marc Bourdages during a rural car chase. He remained on the loose until he was found by a couple hiding in their farmyard. They talked to him for several hours in their kitchen and, in the end, Dagenais walked into the Spiritwood RCMP detachment and turned himself in.
He had been hiding well outside the RCMP search perimeter.
CITIZEN FILE PHOTO
Greorge Law Courts
GasLink pipeline.
CP PHOTO
RCMP Cpl. Julie Courchaine speaks to reporters Friday in Winnipeg about the ongoing RCMP search in Gillam, Man., for B.C. murder suspects Bryer Schmegelsky and Kam McLeod.
U.S. demand poses threat to drug supply, groups warn
The Canadian Press
Concern over U.S. legislation that allows Americans to import cheaper medicines from Canada has prompted more than a dozen organizations to urge the federal government to safeguard the Canadian drug supply.
In a letter this week, the 15 groups representing patients, health professionals, hospitals, and pharmacists warn Health Minister Ginette Petitpas Taylor of the potential for increasing drug shortages.
“The Canadian medicine supply is not sufficient to support both Canadian and U.S. consumers,” the letter states. “The supply simply does not, and will not, exist within Canada to meet such demands.”
Faced with voter anger over the steep and rising costs of drugs in the U.S., several states – including Florida with the blessing of President Donald Trump – have passed laws allowing residents to import drugs from Canada.
In the letter to Petitpas Taylor, the groups say the legislation could exacerbate drug shortages that become an increasingly serious concern in the Canadian health care system in recent years.
“Hospital and community pharmacies in Canada are resourced to serve the Canadian public,” they say. “They are not equipped to support to the needs of a country 10 times its size without creating important access or quality issues.”
A spokesman for Petitpas Taylor said in an email Friday the government opposes any initiatives that could adversely affect the supply or cost of prescription drugs.
“We continue our work to lower drug prices for Canadians and ensure they have uninterrupted access to the prescription drugs they need,” Thierry Belair said.
The issue has recently garnered attention on both sides of the border. Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Democrat presidential candidate, has announced plans to accompany diabetics this weekend to Canada to buy life-saving insulin, which costs roughly one-10th the price here than in the States.
Late last month, another group of Type 1 diabetics from Minnesota crossed the border to buy insulin in London, Ont. One of the organizers said soaring prices south of the border had forced some users to ration their doses with potentially serious health consequences.
Drug supplies are already an issue in Canada. In recent years, Canadian drug makers have reported thousands of shortages for various reasons - often because of manufacturing issues but also due to increased demand. U.S. legislative initiatives could make matters much worse, the letter states.
Low and slow
CNC has made changes to the speed limit and traffic patterns on its Prince George campus. Starting Friday, the speed limit in parking lots and the access road was reduced from 30 to 15 km/h. CNC has also installed improved speed signage, added a new four-way stop and changed the flow of traffic in the dental and daycare parking area to one-way traffic only.
Military trials constitutional, top court rules
The Canadian Press Military members accused of serious offences under military law do not have a constitutional right to jury trials, the Supreme Court ruled Friday.
The Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees Canadians a right to a jury trial for serious offences carrying a maximum sentence of five years or more, except in the case of “an offence under military law tried before a military tribunal.”
In a 5-2 decision, the Supreme Court upheld a section of military law that allows Canadian Armed Forces members to be charged in the military system for civilian offences in the Criminal Code, such as sexual assault, or other federal statutes.
The decision says soldiers charged under offences in that section fall under the military exception in the charter, and thus have no right to jury trials.
The decision restores clarity to a militaryjustice system that had been thrown into chaos after a military appeals court ruled last year that soldiers did in fact have a right to jury trials for some serious offences.
Speaking to reporters after the decision was released, Col. Bruce MacGregor, the military’s chief prosecutor, said the ruling “further legitimizes the military justice system” and that the military justice system would be able to return to properly holding members of the military to account.
After the ruling of the military appeals court in 2018, the military was forced to send
multiple cases to provincial civilian courts, MacGregor said, and several of those cases had to be abandoned altogether once they reached civilian jurisdictions.
Earlier this month, The Canadian Press reported 18 court-martial cases, most involving charges of sexual assault, had been referred to civilian courts – and four were subsequently dropped.
The military itself abandoned three cases relating to drug and fraud charges, and reduced or changed the charges in 15 other cases.
The Supreme Court decision released Friday dealt with multiple cases in which military members accused of serious offences like sexual assault and forgery argued that the exception in the charter should apply to only “pure” military offences, like spying.
The soldiers said the section of military law that transforms civilian offences into “service offences” deprived them of their right to a jury trial, in violation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
But the majority on the Supreme Court found that the exception in the charter applies because the transformation of civilian offences into military ones was done through a validly enacted and constitutional section of military law.
That section is “not inconsistent” with the Charter because “it does not deprive a person who is lawfully entitled to a jury of that right,” the court’s majority opinion said.
The opinion, written by Justices Michael Moldaver and Russell Brown, also said the only connection required to pursue a case in
the court martial system was that the person charged is a military member.
The court’s dissenting opinion, written by Justices Andromache Karakatsanis and Malcolm Rowe, argued a military connection should be established for offences in the military system, and a jury trial allowed when the serious offences involve no military connection. They said a test should be created to determine the level of connection between a case and its relevance to the military.
The majority argued that a test to establish a military connection would not be consistent with other aspects of the law. Their opinion said such a test would require courts to undergo an “unwieldy” process, and potentially impair the goals of maintaining discipline, efficiency and morale in the military.
Friday’s ruling does not eliminate the possibility of military members being charged in civilian courts and before civilian juries.
Under the existing system, Canadian Armed Forces members may undergo trials before a judge and a panel of five others in uniform, rather than a jury of 12 of their peers.
But military prosecutors still have the discretion to send cases to civilian courts, weighing criteria such as community interest in the case and the views of victims.
This constitutes something similar to a test of military connection, the majority wrote, but determined military prosecutors retain the jurisdiction given to them by the courtsincluding over serious civilian-turned-service offences – regardless of how they choose to exercise that power in practice.
Regulations sought to prevent OD deaths
The Canadian Press
The chief medical health officer of Vancouver Coastal Health is calling for the urgent regulation of illicit drugs so substances could be sold or provided for free to those at high risk of overdose through a framework similar to policies on marijuana, alcohol and tobacco.
Dr. Patricia Daly said limits on who could access the drugs, with penalties for anyone trying to sell them to minors, would be part of a proposed regime to prevent overdose deaths of people who are accessing street drugs often containing the deadly opioid fentanyl.
“We have the highest overdose death rate of any jurisdiction in Canada and we have also implemented more services to address the crisis than any jurisdiction so we believe we’ve done all the things we can do apart from regulating the illegal drug supply,” she said Friday as she released a report with 21 recommendations on dealing with the overdose crisis.
Users of regulated illicit drugs would need to be assessed by a doctor to determine if they could overdose and to deter people who may want to experiment with drugs, Daly said, adding the Vancouver Coastal region is “cutting edge” with programs aimed at preventing fatal overdoses, such as naloxone distribution programs and overdose prevention sites.
A unique pilot project provides pharmaceutical-grade pills of the opioid hydromorphone to users who ingest them or crush them
to inject under supervision as a substitute for heroin after failing other forms of treatment.
“This is the first pilot of a regulated supply and that’s being funded by our provincial government,” she said. “I think we will see the federal government funding other pilots as we’re making progress with all levels of government.”
Dr. Christy Sutherland, who runs the “very successful” program, said about 60 people are currently using hydromorphone.
“There are no plans for it to end. We are working on ongoing expansion,” she said.
Vancouver Coastal Health will be applying to conduct more pilots on a safer drug supply following a call for proposals by the federal government last month, Daly said. She said decriminalization of possession of drugs for personal use is also a priority but Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has maintained the government is not prepared to take that step.
The Vancouver Police Department has long been supportive of a regulated drug supply and instead of arresting drug users refers them to outreach teams and treatment and the fire department will soon be working with Vancouver Coastal to do the same, Daly said. She said an unregulated drug supply would be recognizing that illicit drug use is not a crime but a health issue that needs to be addressed through innovative approaches because fentanyl is almost always present when drugs are tested for contamination.
Heat, hail slam Europe
The Associated Press
The temperature’s dropping but Europe’s troubles aren’t over: A record-busting heat wave gave way Friday to thunderstorms and hailstorms, bringing the Tour de France to a dramatic halt and causing trouble at British airports and beyond on one of the most hectic travel days of the year.
In addition, travellers at London’s Heathrow and Gatwick airports faced delays because air traffic controllers grounded flights over a technical problem.
It marked the second day of travel disruptions in European capitals after one of the hottest days in memory, when many places in Western Europe saw temperatures soar beyond 40 C. Compounding that, the weekend is a big travel moment across Europe as families head off for their summer holidays now that schools have broken up for the academic year.
After several hours of flight restrictions over U.K. airspace Friday, the national air traffic controller NATS said it had fixed the technical issue and would be able to safely increase traffic flow.
“Weather is continuing to cause significant unrelated disruption across the country and more widely across Europe, which has further complicated today’s operation,” NATS said in a statement.
In France, suffocating heat turned into slippery storms Friday – including a hailstorm on the Tour de France route in the Alps that was so sudden and violent that organizers ordered a stop to the world’s premier cycling event.
As riders careened down hairpin turns after mounting a 2,770-metre peak, a storm lashed the valley below. A snowplow worked desperately to clear the route of slush, but organizers deemed it too dangerous to continue.
Weather almost never stops the three-
week race, and the decision came on a day of high-drama in which race leader Julian Alaphilippe lost his top spot and accompanying yellow jersey just ahead of Sunday’s finale.
British rail commuters were also facing delays after the heat wave prompted Network Rail to impose speed restrictions in case the tracks buckled. Engineers from the company have been working to get the network back to normal after the track temperatures soared up to 20 C more than the air temperature.
“With the railway being made of metal and moving parts, the sustained high tem-
peratures took their toll in places,” said Phil James of Network Rail. “Everything was done to keep trains moving where possible, and last night hundreds of staff were out fixing the damage and repairing the railway ready for today.”
Passengers using Eurostar services to and from Paris were also facing “severe disruption” due to overhead power line problems in the French capital, which on Thursday recorded its hottest day ever with the temperature rising to 42.6 C. Britain, along with much of Western Europe, endured potentially its highest temperature ever on Thursday. The
country’s weather service said a provisional temperature of 38.7 C was recorded at Cambridge University Botanic Garden in eastern England, which if confirmed would be the highest ever recorded in the U.K. The existing record for the U.K. – 38.5 C – was set in August 2003. It said “quality control and analysis over the next few days” will determine whether the reading becomes official.
Authorities across Europe were looking to address the consequences of Thursday’s soaring temperatures, as records that had stood – in some cases for decades – fell.
Europeans and tourists alike jumped into fountains, lakes, rivers or the sea to escape a suffocating heat wave rising up from the Sahara. Britain, France, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands – all places where air conditioning is not typically installed in homes, cafes or stores – strained under the heat.
France faced a spike in fires in forests and farm fields that left a dozen firefighters injured, and a rise in drownings. Interior
Minister Christophe Castaner linked the country’s 60 drowning deaths so far this month indirectly to the current heat wave, noting a rise in people drowning in unguarded bodies of water as they seek relief from high temperatures, some of whom suffer thermal shock when they jump from hot air into cold water.
In Belgium, a 66-year-old woman died near her caravan close to the beach.
The woman was found by a neighbour late Thursday afternoon after she had apparently been basking in the blazing sun. The incident happened in Middelkerke on the Belgian coast as temperatures rose in the region to over 40 C (104 F).
Middelkerke police commissioner Frank Delva told The Associated Press that the death is “very clearly linked to the heat.”
Emergency services rushed to the scene but could not resuscitate the woman.
Tree-eating beetle spreading across U.S. West
The Associated Press
Matt Johnson treks along an Arizona riverbank and picks out a patch of yellow-tinged tamarisks. He sweeps a cloth net across the trees, hoping to scoop up beetles that munch on their evergreen-like leaves.
He counts spiders, ants and leafhoppers among the catch and few beetles or their larvae.
“Their numbers are really low,” the Northern Arizona University researcher said.
That the tiny beetles brought to the U.S. from Asia in an experiment to devour invasive, watersucking tamarisks showed up at the Verde River in central Arizona is no surprise. But it’s further evidence they’re spreading faster than once anticipated and eventually could pervade the Southwest U.S, raising wildfire risks and allowing less time to uproot the tamarisks, also called salt cedars, and replace them with native trees. Without those efforts, an already highly flammable tree will burn more intensely, and an endan-
gered songbird that nests in tamarisk might not have a home.
The federal program to use the beetles to chew up tamarisk trees began as an experiment in rural Nevada in 2001 and was approved for more widespread use in 2005, as long as they were at least 320 kilometres from Southwestern willow flycatcher territory. It ended in 2010 as the beetles intruded on the birds’ habitat. An unintentional release in southern Utah also helped the insects spread into Arizona.
Johnson believes the 6 mm beetles hitchhiked to the Verde River on clothing, a backpack or a boat. Normally, they are wind travellers but would have had to catch quite a gust to get to the river from the closest drainage where they’ve
been recorded, he said. Johnson has sent samples to a geneticist in Colorado to determine if the beetles can be traced to a population north of Arizona or a subtropical one from Texas that multiplies quicker. Arizona once was projected to be too hot for the beetles to survive, but they’ve evolved as they’ve expanded their reach. Dan Bean with the Colorado Department of Agriculture found even more this summer in far southwestern Arizona along the California border, where temperatures regularly top 38 C.
The concern now is the beetles establishing themselves in the Gila, Salt and San Pedro watersheds, which have higher concentrations of flycatcher habitat.
AP PHOTO
People rest on the floor in Terminal 5 at Heathrow airport on Friday.
Time to redefine forest priorities
Are we facing a turning point in how we think about and value B.C.’s forests?
In recent years, B.C. forests have been ravaged by pine and spruce beetle, two years of significant wildfires, renewed environmental campaigns against old growth logging, and now a spate of mill closures. It’s against this backdrop that the B.C. government for the past few months conducted public consultations on the Forest and Range Practices Act (FRPA) with an eye to making changes it says will “support the health and sustainability of B.C.’s public forests and rangelands, while strengthening public confidence in how these vital resources are managed.”
If you don’t work in forestry, you’ve likely never heard of FRPA, yet the law is one of the most important for managing B.C.’s forests and environment. Introduced in 2004, FRPA outlines how all forest and range practices and resource-based activities are to be conducted on Crown forest land in B.C., while ensuring protection of everything in and on them, such as plants, animals, and ecosystems. The act is critical
to forest professionals, who since 1947 have been responsible for protecting the public interest in the use and management of B.C.’s forests. The act has been criticized by a variety of groups, in part because it stipulates that any forest management decisions, including those involving protection for wildlife habitat and water quality, should not unduly reduce the supply of timber. And while FRPA was drafted with an eye to balancing trade-offs between timber supply and other forest uses, subsequent years have seen an increase in demands that forests be protected for wildlife habitat, outdoor recreation, eco-tourism, and more. Increasingly, this leaves forest professionals trying to find ways to accommodate these differing uses while at the same time conforming to the legislation’s stated aim about timber supply. Put simply, forest professionals are trying to balance legal (government-required) and non-legal (locally-desired) priorities that often conflict with each other. Finding “win-win” solutions for objectives that are completely at odds is almost impossible and leaves everyone unhappy. Clearly, it is time to review and update the Forest and
Range Practices Act to clarify how regional communities, Aboriginal peoples, and other special interests want to use and manage the forest today.
In our submission to the government review of FRPA, the Association of B.C. Forest Professionals, which regulates and registers the 5,500 forest professionals working in B.C., called on the government to clearly define the resource values, clarify the desired results, and establish a hierarchy to guide the necessary trade-offs between economic, social, and environmental objectives based on consultation with the public and Aboriginal peoples.
This is not a new request. We made this same point last year in our submission to the government’s review of the professional reliance framework and 10 years ago to the Forestry Roundtable.
With 94 per cent of B.C.’s forested land publicly owned, the government has a responsibility to understand what the public wants from its forests and set priorities for the use and management of that forest land. This is not a small or easy task; there are a multitude of voices clamoring for government to impose their preferred solution.
Add personal finance to high school curriculum
Money is the biggest stress in most people’s lives. Much of the stress stems from a lack of understanding, lack of planning and/or reckless behaviour when it comes to financial management.
Once people graduate from school and enter the workforce they get busy in their lives, while simultaneously the responsibility of balancing income, expenses, saving and investing is thrust upon them.
Many scramble to figure it out, but it often proves to be frustrating learning this critically important skill while juggling other responsibilities, especially for those who never favoured numbers.
People unable to learn the skill may live with a constant struggle when it comes to money and are often those requiring handouts. It’s time our provincial government mandates that personal finance become part of the B.C. high school curriculum. With more financial literacy, British Columbians would better understand their relationship with money and how to budget, save, spend, invest and borrow it.
Ultimately, this would lead to self-sufficiency, less stress and healthier lives as people would have clearer financial plans and an ability to manage their money more responsibly to achieve what they want in life.
Financial literacy would enable people to contribute their energies toward productive activities rather than stressing over financial woes.
GUEST COLUMN LANA MARKS PULVER
Less stress would mean a healthier society, which in turn would impose less strain on our medical system and seniors care. It would create a more tolerant and happy society less dependent on government.
Teaching money skills in high schools would encourage more discussion on the subject.
As it stands, money is treated like a four-letter word; talking about it is deemed inappropriate. However, if conversations began in classrooms, the topic would become less taboo, which would encourage the exchange of ideas, and skill sets all-round would improve.
Money would become less intimidating.
A clearer understanding of debt, for example, would enable people to know what’s good versus bad debt, when it’s appropriate to borrow, the risks (and how best to mitigate them) and how to borrow to pursue opportunities to get ahead.
Further, if British Columbians learn how to budget according to personal values and goal-based priorities, they’ll know how to spend, save and invest their money based on what’s truly most important to them.
Although money is simply a tool and doesn’t bring happiness, if it is used in a manner consistent with personal values and goals, happiness will be achieved. In 1996, as a senior financial
adviser at a national investment firm, I wrote and published the national bestseller First Class: The Original Financial Guide for High School Students. Schools and libraries bought my books for their institutions.
I pursued selling it to the Ministry of Education to incorporate into the B.C. curriculum, but ultimately found the process too challenging.
I’m dismayed that over 33 years since my book’s release, there’s still little financial management taught in high school.
Although math, calculus and economics are offered, schools lack courses on their practical application to personal finance.
A possible reason for its absence is that many government officials and educators lack financial literacy, and therefore could be intimidated and/or unsure how to implement it.
If our province collectively was more financially astute, it would hold our governments more accountable.
No government would be able to pull the wool over our citizens’ eyes, because they would get called out. Government would be forced to be more transparent and financially prudent. Ultimately, if every high schooler in our province received a sound education in financial management, future politicians would be more fiscally responsible while managing the biggest budget in our province.
— Lana Marks Pulver (is a financial expert, author, nonprofit leader and entrepreneur. She is seeking the BC Liberal Party nomination for the riding of Vancouver-Point Grey.
One need only look at the difficulty establishing a strategy to preserve the caribou population in the province’s northeast as an indication of the complexity of determining the relative values of natural resources. And therein lies the challenge. What is the public’s interest in B.C.’s forests? What are the preferred values and uses? A growing number of British Columbians want more say in how our forests are used to reflect their current and future interests. That’s fair. But at some point, decisions need to be made about what is the priority and how we balance the many desires for different uses of our forest land.
Forest professionals are passionate about B.C.’s forests; they have the experience and knowledge to best look after our forests and meet the needs identified by those who own the forests. In order to properly care for our forests, we need clarity on what British Columbians expect from their forests and where priorities lie.
—
Christine Gelowitz, RPF, is a registered forest professional and CEO of the Association of BC Forest Professionals.
When killings lead to theories
Amid the manhunt for two Port Alberni teens alleged to be involved in at least three murders, there are many questions.
“How did we miss this” is the obvious question and it is a question which will trouble friends, relatives, teachers, anybody who was associated in any way with these boys.
There will be disagreement among experts in child growth and development who will insist that early diagnosis of abnormal behaviour, especially in teenagers might have, should have tipped somebody off, somewhere, that trouble was brewing for these boys. Was evidence of depression, anxiety, behavioural disorders, dependence on a fantasy world ignored by the adults around them?
Did the boys shun social activity, skip school a lot, switch quickly between passivity and aggression, like to engage in extremely risky behaviour to the point of selfdestruction and talk about it with other kids?
Was there any evidence or suspicion about the harming or sudden disappearance of family pets?
Those will be the normal questions, the predictable questions but asked too late about abnormal behaviour – and that gets to the core of what went wrong this time and every other time adolescent kids are involved in anything like horrific actions of which these boys are suspected.
Committing murder, if that’s what it was in the case of Bryer Schmegelsky, 18, and Kam McLeod, 19, is not normal. Despite the efforts of movie makers, writers, biographers and after-the-fact psychologists to normalize brutal psychopathic behaviour, murdering someone is not normal.
There will be learned articles about that area of psychopathy which describes a neuro-developmental sub-group of anti-social personality disorder (ASPD).
We will learn more than we want to know about people afflicted by ASPD – that they are characterized by emotional instability, impulsivity and high levels of mood and anxiety disorders. They typically use aggression in a reactive way in response to a perceived threat or sense of frustration.
ASPD people are characterized by a lack of empathy, and tend to use aggression in a planned way to secure what they want whether it be status, money, admiration, enhanced self-concept or just a sense of superiority over others.
No amount of this kind of knowledge will alleviate our shock, bordering on denial, that this kind of thing can explode out of personalities that people
thought were a bit odd in some ways (aren’t we all?) but nothing to worry about.
Such individuals are likely to exhibit “a marked lack of empathy as a hallmark characteristic of individuals with psychopathy,” says the lead author of the study, Jean Decety, the Irving B. Harris Professor in psychology and psychiatry at University of Chicago.
Brain researchers will have their own theories about unusual activity in various areas of the brain compared to people who do not have anti-social personality disorders or other forms of psychopathology, especially as it applies to adolescent behaviours.
But none of that, none of all that after-the-fact wisdom, nothing observable, was any help in anticipating and preventing the actions of 17-year-old U.S. high school student David Biro, who stole a gun, broke into the home of a young couple he did not know and shot them to death.
Nothing in anybody’s previous experience prevented Columbine shooters Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold who, without warning, killed 13 people and wounded 21 others for no reason anybody could understand.
Nobody saw it coming when Cody Legebokoff, one of the youngest serial killers in Canada’s recent history, was convicted in 2014 of murdering three women and one teen girl for no apparent reason.
Now we have more murders and a manhunt, and there will be the inevitable analysis of the unmitigated gratuitous violence which has become the core story line of many easily accessible movies or TV series such as Dexter, the story of a serial killer.
TV programmers kept running that series even though in 2009, 17-year-old Andrew Conley said the show inspired him to strangle his 10-year-old brother. But you can still find Dexter somewhere among the 150 channels.
None of this is easy to know about. None of this really explains why, at least at the time of writing, two “normal” teens from Port Alberni have been charged with second degree – unpremeditated –murder of a 64-year-old stranger.
One thing we knew, as soon as Bryer Schmegelsky and Kam McLeod were considered suspects, was that the search would not have a good ending for anybody. — Geoff Johnson is a former superintendent of schools.
SHAWN CORNELL DIRECTOR OF ADVERTISING
GUEST
COLUMN
GEOFF JOHNSON
Pope’s message inspires solar panels
The Washington Post
Right now, it’s a large, empty field.
But by next year, the five-acre plot in the District of Columbia will sprout about 5,000 solar panels, the largest ground array the nation’s capital has seen – a change wrought by area Catholic groups.
Catholic Energies, a nonprofit organization that helps churches across the country switch to solar energy, partnered with the field’s owner, Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Washington, to build a system sufficient to keep the lights on in 260 homes for one year. The power produced will go back into the D.C. grid, earning Catholic Charities enough energy credits to offset the electricity costs of 12 of its properties across the city.
“I’m just really excited that we’ve been able to do something that I really believe is the right thing to do for the planet,” said Mary Jane Morrow, the CFO of Catholic Charities, a faith-based social services agency.
It is the second energy-saving project Catholic Energies has undertaken in the region to date. The group finished an installation of 440 solar panels on the roof of a Virginia church last month.
The solar panels, slated for completion in early 2020, will cost several million dollars, according to Page Gravely, the executive vice president for client services at Catholic Energies. But Catholic Charities will not pay a cent.
That’s how Catholic Energies works. It negotiates a deal between its client – typically a Catholic church or high school – and an investor, most often a renewable-energy company. The investor agrees to pay a thirdparty contractor to install a solar system in return for a 30 per cent federal tax credit, as well as financial incentives that vary by state.
Catholic Energies then takes a small (less than the industry standard of 15 per cent) developer’s fee, enough to fund its five-person operation based in D.C. on a break-even basis.
The group accepts a lower rate because it wants to fund “as many projects as possible,” said Dan Last, the chief operating officer of Catholic Energies.
Washington is particularly friendly to solar: Its solar credits, worth about $400 each, make it “the hottest solar market” in the United States, Last said. Massachusetts offers the next-highest price at about $300 a credit.
That’s a boon for IGS Solar, the energy company funding the installation in D.C. And Catholic Charities also stands to gain. The solar system will save the agency several hundred thousand dollars per year, according to Last.
But the fiscal benefits are not the entire point, Morrow said. She cited Laudato Si,”a 192-page paper Pope Francis released in 2015 that argues for a partnership between science and religion to combat human-caused climate change.
In the document, whose title translates to Be Praised, Francis demanded an “ecological conversion” for faithful Catholics, exhorting them to embrace recycling, tree planting and carpooling.
“We love being supportive of the pope’s position and believe that it really has helped advance the conversation within the Catholic community about our responsibility to be good stewards of this earth,” Morrow said.
Vladimir Bulovic, a professor of electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who researches solar technology, said the work Catholic Energies is doing is vital and advances environmental goals.
Using publicly available government data, Bulovic estimated that the production of the D.C. solar field will be equivalent to 2.5 percent – about one-fortieth – of all renewable energy currently generated in D.C. each year. That’s “a significant addition,” he said.
“It’s important to be inspired about generating renewable
energy capacity for the planet,” Bulovic said of Catholic Energies. Apart from their faith-driven funding, the solar panels are unusual in another way. They will sit atop a “pollinator meadow” of 650,000 nectar-bearing, flowering plants including black-eyed Susans, orange coneflowers and milkweed. The meadow is meant to reinvigorate local bee and butterfly populations, Last said. It will also become part of ongoing research, conducted by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, into whether placing pollinator-friendly plants beneath solar panels increases their output and lifetime, said Rob Davis, the director of the Center for Pollinators in Energy, who consulted on the project. A University of Arizona study accepted for publication later this summer recently found that tomato plants can cool the area under solar panels, leading to augmented energy production, according to Davis.
This “is a promising emerging trend in solar design and development,” Davis said. The plants were also a concession to locals, some of whom complained that solar panels would be too ugly – typically, they are built atop gravel or dirt. The field is adjacent to a large neighborhood where not all residents are fans of
the project.
The “majority” of people living near the field are concerned about the solar panels for several reasons, said Joyce Chandler, 57, a retired engineer who has lived in the neighbourhood for 30 years. She and her neighbors disliked the fact that the project required felling about 40 trees, which they worry may increase stormwater runoff into private yards.
And Chandler was especially upset by the recent use of an herbicide on weeds ahead of the installation.
“They are impacting what has been a very residential area,” Chandler said. “People walk out with their little children, their dogs and they had no idea they were spraying these chemicals out there.”
Last said Catholic Energies has worked to address residents’ concerns, pointing in part to a study it commissioned that showed the solar panels would not negatively affect the health of those living nearby. He said that the weedkiller used is permitted by the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs, that Catholic Energies followed all of the city’s herbicide protocols, and that the group is planting nearly 100 trees in the field as part of the solar project.
Making life’s work meaningful
Ihave a book in my library entitled Gifted Hands. It ranks among my most valued books. Gifted Hands is the true story of a boy who went from “class dummy” to becoming one of the world’s most “brilliant pediatric neurosurgeons.”
There was a day when eight-year-old Ben Carson and his ten-year-old brother, Curtis, experienced great sorrow. That day began like any other day, but it ended very differently as their father left their mother, and Ben cried out in his hurt and frustration “Please make my father come back!” But that never happened.
When Ben’s father left, he took all of the family’s money.
CLERGY COMMENT
ARLO A. JOHNSON WESTSIDE FAMILY FELLOWSHIP
for reading. So the TV was turned off, and the boys walked to the nearest branch of the Detroit Public Library and checked out a stack of books. This pattern of conduct transformed the learning process in the lives of Ben and Curtis.
Catholic Energies formed three years ago – inspired, in part, by the pope’s 2015 paper.
The group is a subprogram of the nonprofit Catholic Climate Covenant, a national initiative launched in 2006 that seeks to educate and engage U.S. Catholics in caring for the environment.
Dan Misleh, the founder and executive director of Catholic Climate Covenant, said Francis’ arguments were a “driving force” behind Catholic Energies, which he said compels churches to think about the environment by showing them how much money they can save through “smart” energy. Often, though, the churches reach out first. Most clients get in touch by filling out an online interest form on the Catholic Energies website, Last said. After that, Catholic Energies conducts a free feasibility study and comes up with a possible design. Its goal is always to create at least 10 percent savings for Catholic institutions.
If everything works out, Catholic Energies locates a third-party investor, lets the church choose among several solar contractors, and construction begins.
The group received about 40 requests nationwide last year and accepted as many as possible, Last said.
Mrs. Carson had no job skills or work experience, so the only way she could support herself and her sons was by cleaning houses and taking care of other people’s children. It was very hard work, but she was determined to do whatever it took to provide for her boys.
From Ben, being the dummy in his fifth grade class, his mother devised a plan to remedy his learning problem. Their mother’s plan was to turn off the television and only allow the boys to watch three TV shows each week.
Then the boys could use the extra time
There came a day when Ben finally graduated from medical college and Ben received an internship and residency at John Hopkins – one of most famous training hospitals in the world. During his residency at John Hopkins, Ben mastered the basics of neurosurgery. Ultimately, Ben was asked to be the chief of pediatric neurosurgery at John Hopkins –he was only 33 years old.
In the process of his practise, Ben encountered a four-year-old girl that was having as many as one hundred seizures each day.
As Ben studied her health records, he also studied a procedure called a hemispherectomy. It was a surgery in which one half of a patient’s brain is removed. In consultation with fellow physicians, Dr. Carson eventually perfected this practice that had never been successful to that point in time. As a result of the success of that procedure, Dr. Carson became very successful in the process of separating conjoined twins.
In conclusion, I must say that the story of Ben Carson is a vivid illustration of the fact that it is not how one starts, but how one finishes in the journey of life’s work.
Gifted Hands is a must read.
Parents and grandparents ought to pass this significant book on to children and grandchildren.
HANDOUT PHOTO
A solar panel is installed on the Immaculate Conception Catholic Church in Hampton, Virginia. The solar array fully powers the church and was installed with Catholic Energies, a nonprofit program of the Catholic Climate Covenant that helps churches build solar power/ energy efficiency projects.
Where the rich go in private jets
Bloomberg
Heatwaves and protests this month in New York, London and Hong Kong may have left some urbanites dreaming of weekend breaks on isolated beaches.
The fastest route to fulfilling those fantasies is by private jet, an exclusive mode of transport growing increasingly popular among the ranks of the super-rich.
Private jet flights climbed almost 10 per cent last year, according to an analysis of 30 island destinations by real estate broker Knight Frank and aviation adviser WingX. Private jets flew to islands in the Americas almost 30,000 times, making them the world’s top hub for non-commercial aviation, led by the Bahamas, Puerto Rico and the Cayman Islands.
“Private jets are the path of least resistance” for travel, said Knight Frank partner Alasdair Pritchard, who advises billionaire clients. “If you can afford it and then experience it, you wouldn’t go back.”
The data offer insight into the jet-set life-
styles of the fabulously rich. In addition to super-yachts, private jets are one of the ultimate trophy assets of the mega-wealthy, with purchase prices typically ranging from a few million dollars to more than $50 million. With fuel costs and a team usually needed to manage the aircraft, merely maintaining a private jet can be almost as expensive as buying one.
More than two-thirds of arrivals to the Bahamas originated in the U.S., Canada or internally. With Miami less than an hour away, the proximity of private-flight origins in the Bahamas highlights how rich individuals prefer to use jets for short hops. It’s the same in Europe, where aircraft landing in Mallorca, Ibiza and Sardinia – the Continent’s three most popular islands for private plane arrivals –departed from nearby nations including Spain and Germany.
“All the people who fly private tell me they wouldn’t from London to Hong Kong,” Joe Stadler, head of ultra-high-net-worth clients at UBS Group AG, said. “To do that one-day trip, they will go private. Increasing use of private
jets “is a function of how crowded public airports are now. The more crowded they are, the more delays there are, and the more cumbersome it is to fly from A to Z.”
The Philippines, Maldives and Bali were the top destinations in the Asia-Pacific region, which saw private-jet arrivals increase more than 80 per cent, reflecting a wealth boom in which China minted a new billionaire roughly every other day. Asia is now home to about a quarter of the people on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, a ranking of the world’s 500 richest people.
The rich typically own jets for convenience and privacy. Oprah Winfrey told British Vogue magazine last year that she bought one after a fan confronted her at an airport.
For those not willing to buy, the wealthy can own part of a jet or acquire timeshares through companies including VistaJet and NetJets, a unit of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. About a third of private-jet owners are worth more than $500 million, according to a 2018 report by VistaJet and Wealth-X.
Brexit standoff could spark UK election
The Associated Press
With Britain’s departure from the European Union due in less than 100 days, new Prime Minister Boris Johnson is a man in a hurry. But he’s not rushing off to Brussels.
The U.K. leader has no meetings scheduled with EU officials. Instead, he was in central England on Friday, talking about his promise to recruit 20,000 more police officers. In the coming days he’ll speak on other aspects of a packed domestic agenda that looks suspiciously like an election platform. Britain’s next scheduled election is three years away, but signs suggest Johnson may be preparing for a snap poll within weeks or months to break the Brexit impasse that defeated his predecessor, Theresa May. She resigned after failing, three times, to get Parliament’s backing for her divorce deal with the EU. Johnson won a contest to replace her as Conservative leader and prime minister by promising that the U.K. will leave the 28-nation bloc on the scheduled date of Oct. 31, with or without a divorce deal.
But Tim Durrant, senior researcher at the Institute for Government, an independent thinktank, said Johnson “has exactly the same parliamentary arithmetic to deal with as May” – no overall House of Commons majority and a set of lawmakers who so far have rejected all attempts to leave the EU either with or without a divorce deal.
“He is clearly positioning himself as the person to get Brexit done, and the way to change the parliamentary arithmetic is to have an
election,” Durrant said.
Asked Friday if he would rule out calling an election, Johnson said: “Absolutely.” But his predecessor, Theresa May, also insisted she would not hold a snap election – and then did, in 2017.
In the House of Commons on Thursday, Johnson said Britons had had multiple chances to vote recently, with two elections and an EU membership referendum in the past four years.
“The people of this country have voted in 2015, 2016 and 2017, and what they want to see is this Parliament delivering on the mandate that they gave us” to leave the EU, he said.
Laying out his priorities in his first Commons statement as prime minister, Johnson said he wanted Britain to leave the EU with a deal. But he also insisted the EU make major changes to May’s spurned
withdrawal agreement, including scrapping an insurance policy for the Irish border that has been rejected by U.K. lawmakers.
The EU, which has long said it will not change the agreement, called Johnson’s stance combative and unhelpful.
Irish Deputy Prime Minister Simon Coveney said Friday that Johnson was putting himself on a “collision course” with the bloc.
“The approach that the British prime minister seems to now be taking is not going to be the basis of an agreement,” he said. “And that’s worrying for everybody.
“From a Brexit negotiating perspective, it was a very bad day yesterday.”
From a British political perspective, however, there’s a logic to Johnson’s moves. University of Nottingham politics professor Steven Fielding said the prime
minister was preparing to blame Brussels if the Brexit talks fail and Britain faces a disruptive no-deal exit.
“The most likely scenario is Boris goes off to Brussels, Brussels says no, Boris says ‘Brussels is dictating to us . We want to do a deal but they won’t let us do a deal,”’ Fielding said. “Ramping all of that up and then saying, ‘Come and support me on the road to our glorious Brexit’ – and call an election.”
Fielding said “it makes more sense for him to go to the country before Brexit than after” because of the potential upheaval that could follow a no-deal exit.
Economists warn that leaving the bloc without an agreement on terms would disrupt trade by imposing tariffs and customs checks between Britain and the bloc. The British government’s financial watchdog says that could send the value of the pound plummeting and push the U.K. into recession.
British election campaigns last five weeks, so Johnson would have to act in September if he seeks a vote before Oct. 31.
A snap election needs to be backed by two-thirds of lawmakers in the House of Commons – a threshold that would likely be reached, since opposition parties are eager for one. Parliament does not return from summer break until Sept. 3, though lawmakers could be recalled early if needed.
An election could also be triggered if Parliament passes a no-confidence vote in the government, something that needs a simple majority of lawmakers. Johnson’s minority government is vulnerable to such a challenge.
composite index ended up 42.84 points Friday at 16,531.04 to mark a gain of 45.1 points for the week. CannTrust shares spiked as much as 20 per cent before closing up 16.7 per cent at $3.01 following news that the cannabis company’s chief executive officer had been fired amid an ongoing investigation into allegations it was illegally growing marijuana in unauthorized rooms. The company’s board of directors said Thursday night that it has decided to “terminate with cause” chief executive Peter Aceto and demanded company chair Eric Paul resign, which he did. The company’s shares are still well below the $6.50 level it was trading at before the story broke, and the more than $13 it was trading at in March. Shares of other cannabis companies were down Friday, helping push the health care index down 0.21 per cent. The energy index was also down 0.81 per cent as worries about global growth continue, while most other sectors saw gains.
In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average was up 51.47 points at 27,192.45. The S&P 500 index was up 22.19 points at 3,025.86, while the Nasdaq composite was up 91.67 points at 8,330.21. U.S. stocks were up, with record highs for the S&P 500 and Nasdaq after a mixed week of earnings leaned positive, said Ryan Crowther, portfolio manager at Franklin Bissett Investment Management. Google parent company Alphabet Inc. drove gains with a 10.45 per cent climb after beating expectations. U.S. data also showed its economy grew 2.1 per cent in the second quarter, but the expectation is still for the U.S. Federal Reserve to cut its benchmark interest rate next week, said Crowther. The Canadian dollar averaged 75.86 cents US, down from Thursday’s average of 76.07 cents US. The September crude contract ended up 18 cents at US$56.20 per barrel and the September natural
BLOOMBERG PHOTO
Prospective customers and aviation professionals walk past a Gulfstream G500 jet in Orlando, Fla.
AP PHOTO
Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson appears Friday at West Midlands Police Learning and Development Centre in Birmingham, England.
Hammer and nails
Arna Kristian, 85, throws a hammer at Masich Place Stadium during training
more than 30 events.
Summer prep underway for world juniors
The Canadian Press
Shawn Bullock walks into Hockey Canada’s office every day with a lot on his plate. Looking at the game through different lenses in an attempt to stay ahead of the curve is one of those many tasks.
“We’re trying to find ways to continue to be world-leading,” said Bullock, the director of Hockey Canada’s men’s teams. “We’re still the No. 1-ranked federation in the world, but the gap is closing, so what can we do to separate ourselves?
“That’s something we’re challenged with.” Canada has won the world junior hockey championship a record 17 times, including twice in the last five tournaments following a five-year drought, but the days of domination appear to be over.
The United States has a full-time program that brings all its best players together, while European powers like Finland and Sweden have the advantage of international breaks to get more hands-on instruction with athletes.
The same can’t be said for Canada.
While there are plenty of benefits to the Canadian Hockey League, the national body doesn’t get nearly as much time with its elite talent.
And that’s why the World Junior Summer Showcase – an annual event that begins this weekend and runs through Aug. 3 just outside Detroit – is so crucial.
“The amount of touches those other programs get compared to what we do is insurmountable,” Bullock said. “We have to cherish the time with our athletes.” Canada is bringing 33 skaters and five goalies to Plymouth, Mich., for a series of practices and exhibition games against the Americans, Finns and Swedes.
Taking place at the U.S. National Team Development Program’s facilities, it’s an opportunity for Canada’s management group to get an up-close look at many of the hopefuls for the upcoming world juniors, which start Dec. 26 in the Czech Republic.
“This is critical for us to learn about the athletes and for the coaching staff to set some expectations,” Bullock said. “When we’ve been successful, we’ve done a great job of setting the tone. It’s important to get
off on the right foot.”
Canada tipped London Knights head coach Dale Hunter as its bench boss for the 2020 tournament, while his brother Mark, the Ontario Hockey League’s team general manager and a former assistant GM with the Toronto Maple Leafs, is part of the brain trust.
A veteran of nearly 1,600 combined NHL regular-season and playoff games as a hardnosed forward, Dale Hunter is getting his first crack at the world junior team despite being one of the most successful coaches in the CHL since buying the Knights with his brother in 2000.
Bringing in the Hunters is exactly what Bullock was referencing when he talked
about Canada remaining “world-leading.”
“When we get new coaching staffs like Dale’s group here together it’s about, ‘How can we separate ourselves from the competition?”’ he said. “The best part about our nation is we still have the most depth in the world.”
What won’t be happening is Canada implementing a centralized program that practises and plays together like the Americans, who had a USNTDP-record eight players taken in the first round of the 2019 draft, including top pick Jack Hughes.
“It’s not in our plans,” Bullock said. “We have an unbelievable partnership with the CHL, who really develop the majority of our elite hockey players. I always get a kick out
of it – people were so in awe over the U.S. national team’s draft. Well, we still had 13 players drafted in the first round. That was more than what they had. They had the best players in the U.S. on that team. Good for them.
“But we still had more Canadians drafted in the first round.”
Looking forward, Canada could potentially have six players back from the group that was bounced in the quarterfinals on home soil at last winter’s world juniors in Vancouver and Victoria.
But Alexis Lafreniere, a 17-year-old winger expected to be among the top picks at the 2020 draft, and centre Joe Veleno are the only two heading to the summer showcase, with defencemen Noah Dobson, Ty Smith and Jared McIsaac, and forward Barrett Hayton unable to participate.
“It’s exciting to know we have leadership there and the potential to have a real core that’s been through this event,” Bullock said. “It’s like nothing else in junior hockey.” Canada’s most recent NHL draft class was led by Kirby Dach (No. 3 to Chicago), Bowen Byram (No. 4 to Colorado), Dylan Cozens (No. 7 to Buffalo), Alex Newhook (No. 16 to Colorado), Peyton Krebs (No. 17 to Vegas) and Thomas Harley (No. 18 to Dallas), who should all be in the mix for roster spots. Cozens and Krebs, however, will miss out on the event in Plymouth due to injury.
A lot can change between now and December when a trimmed-down crop of players will be invited to Canada’s selection camp.
There’s a chance some of the teenagers management is counting on could be in the NHL or unavailable, while others not yet on the radar might break out this fall and force their way into the conversation.
But there’s no doubting the importance of the upcoming showcase as Canada gets the ball gets rolling toward the 2020 tournament.
“It’s nice to see where our players fall into the mix against high-performance competition, and for our coaches to really get a feel for the uniqueness of the three federations and how they play,” Bullock said. “In combination, it’s a really exciting event for us.”
CITIZEN PHOTO
for the 55+ B.C.
Games, which will be held in Kelowna Sept. 10-14, featuring 5,000 athletes competing in
CP FILE PHOTO
Hockey Canada president and CEO Scott Smith, right, senior manager Shawn Bullock, left, and head scout Brad McEwen, pose with a jersey after announcing the players invited to Canada’s National Junior Team selection camp in 2017.
2019 PAN AMERICAN GAMES
Ten Canadians to watch in Peru
The Canadian Press
The Pan American Games won’t feature all of Canada’s top 2020 Olympians, but some Tokyo medal contenders are sure to be competing in Lima, Peru.
The Games also include some top athletes in non-Olympic sports.
With the first full day of events going Saturday, here is a look at 10 Canadians to watch at the Games:
DAMIAN WARNER
The decathlete from London, Ont., became the third athlete to win five career titles at the prestigious Gotzis Hypo-Meeting earlier this year in Austria. Warner won bronze at the 2016 Rio Olympics, silver at the 2015 world championships and gold at the 2015 Pan Am Games in Toronto.
ALYSHA NEWMAN
The pole vaulter from London has broken her own Canadian record twice in the last two months.
Newman was sidelined for almost the entire 2018 season with a knee injury after capturing gold at the Commonwealth Games in Australia.
EVAN DUNFEE
The native of Richmond, B.C., finished fourth in the 50-kilometre race walk at the 2016 Rio Olympics.
Despite missing the podium, Dunfee’s fourth-place finish was one of Canada’s biggest stories in Rio. He was upgraded to bronze after being jostled by Hirooki Arai of Japan. Arai appealed, bumping Dunfee to fourth, and the Canadian opted not to file a counter-appeal, saying in a statement: “I will never allow myself to be defined by the accolades I receive, rather the integrity I carry through life.”
SHAWN DeLIERRE
The 37-year-old Montreal squash player is competing in his fourth Pan Am Games. He anchored the Canadian men’s team to gold four years ago at home.
DeLierre reached a career-high of No. 35 in the world rankings in 2013.
PHYLICIA GEORGE
The runner from Markham, Ont., has competed in Summer (track) and Winter (bobsled) Olympics. She captured bronze in Pyeongchang in 2018 with Kaillie Humphries.
George, 31, has made the final of the 100-metre hurdles at the past two Summer Games.
MATHEA OLIN
The 16-year-old surfer from Tofino, B.C.,
competes in a sport making its Pan Am debut this year and its Olympic kickoff the following year. Olin won gold and bronze in Lima at the 2017 Pan Am Surf Games, marking Canada’s first international medals in the sport.
CRISPIN DUENAS
The 33-year-old archer from Scarborough, Ont., is a three-time Olympian.
Duenas had his best individual Olympic finish in 2016 in Rio, placing 17th. He has two silver medals from previous Pan Am Games.
ELLIE BLACK
The gymnast from Halifax was the most
decorated Canadian athlete from the Toronto Pan Am Games, winning five medals (three gold, one silver, one bronze).
Black became the first Canadian to win an all-around medal at the world championships in 2017 in Montreal, capturing silver. That came one year after placing fifth at the Olympics, Canada’s best-ever finish in the event.
MICHELLE LI
The badminton player from Markham is the reigning Pan Am singles champion. Li was part of the ‘Bruce Li’ doubles team (with Alexandra Bruce) that finished fourth at the 2012 London Olympics. The team was reinstated when four teams
were expelled from the Games for losing matches on purpose.
The 27-year-old is in the top 20 in the world rankings.
JENNIFER ABEL
The diver from Laval, Que., became the most decorated Canadian athlete in world aquatics championship history when she earned a silver with Melissa Citrini-Beaulieu in the women’s three-metre synchronized event earlier this month in Gwangju, South Korea. Abel, 27, now has nine medals at the worlds.
She’ll be looking to return to the Olympic podium next year after two fourth-place showings in 2016.
Alaphilippe, France, Deceuninck-QuickStep, :48 behind.
3. Geraint Thomas, Britain, Ineos, 1:16.
4. Steven Kruijswijk, Netherlands, Jumbo-Visma, 1:28.
5. Emanuel Buchmann, Germany, Bora-Hansgrohe, 1:55. 6. Mikel Landa, Spain, Movistar, 4:35.
7. Rigoberto Uran, Colombia, EF Education First, 5:14.
8. Nairo Quintana, Colombia, Movistar, 5:17.
9. Alejandro Valverde, Spain, Movistar, 6:25. 10. Richie Porte, Australia, Trek-Segafredo, 6:28.
11. Warren Barguil, France, Arkea-Samsic, 7:03.
12. Guillaume Martin, France, Wanty-Gobert, 16:18. 13. David Gaudu, France, Groupama-FDJ, 20:45. 14. Fabio Aru, Italy, UAE Team Emirates, 23:14.
Roman Kreuziger, Czech Republic, Dimension Data, 26:10.
Sebastien Reichenbach, Switzerland, Groupama-
CP PHOTO
Phylicia George leads the pack during the women’s 100 metre hurdles at the Harry Jerome International Track Classic in Burnaby on June 20.
Gallery in central Mexico displays folk art
Kim CURTIS The Associated Press ATOTONILCO, Mexico — It’s been said that if you’re not an artist when you first visit San Miguel de Allende, you’ll certainly be one by the time you leave. Similarly, if you step into Mayer Shacter’s Galeria Atotonilco as a novice, you’ll walk out an appreciator of fine Mexican folk art.
Shacter, a former ceramics artist from Berkeley, California, who has lived in Mexico since 2003, is much more than a curator. He travels to remote areas of Mexico to meet the artists and learn about their craft, and then he brings their work back to his gallery, where he imparts his knowledge to his customers.
His is now regarded as having one of the finest collections of Mexican folk art anywhere. On TripAdvisor, the gallery, which opened in 2006 in a 600-squarefoot section of his home and now consumes 6,000 square feet, is currently the top-rated “thing to do” in San Miguel de Allende, which is a short 15-minute drive away. Shacter’s passion for his gallery is immediately obvious. His collection, which ranges from textiles and woven baskets to antique ironwork and papier mache masks, is broad, and “a reflection of my many interests.”
“I have a personal relationship with these people. I love helping them preserve these cultural traditions,” he said.
For example, about 15 years ago, he met some artisans from Nayarit, who make Huichol yarn and bead art, after they rearended his car. Shacter said the police threatened to confiscate the family’s pickup truck because it was uninsured.
“We got their information and agreed to pay for our own repairs. They agreed to give us some yarn paintings,” he said, adding that they’ve been doing business ever since.
The Huichol are an indigenous people who mostly live in the mountainous areas of northwestern Mexico. They press brightly colored yarn onto boards coated with a thin layer of special beeswax from Campeche and tree resin. The “paintings” began as ceremonial religious art, and often include representations of deer, corn, peyote and other symbols from Huichol mythology.
Shacter says the artists’ quality of life and sustainability are paramount to him. He rarely buys work on consignment.
“With one or two exceptions, everything in the gallery, we pur-
chase outright,” he said. “When we leave a person’s house, they have money in hand or money in their bank account.” Another highlight of his collection is the lacquered gourds
from Temalacatzingo, Guerrero. Lacquering is one of Mexico’s oldest crafts. During the pre-Hispanic period, oil from chia seeds was mixed with powdered minerals or plant-based dyes to create
protective coatings and decorative designs. The gourds can grow on trees or vines and are dried before using. Those with bottle-like shapes are cut so the top can be used as a lid.
The layers of lacquer must be applied separately, dried and then burnished. Several small pieces can be done in a single day, while a larger decorative piece may take two or three months.
Because Shacter has developed relationships with some of the best artists in Mexico, his gallery is packed with treasures.
Among his current favourites is the pottery from Tonala in Jalisco.
He’s particularly proud of the work by Geronimo Ramos, one of the few artists who still creates petatillo pottery, which is identified by its light, yellow background filled with crosshatching that looks like a woven palm mat or petate.
The tighter the crosshatching, the finer the piece. The style requires a certain type of clay to produce a smooth painting surface.
On top of the crosshatching, the artist usually paints in black, green and cream, and one of the most common images portrayed is the nagual, a mythical halfhuman, half-animal creature. Then, the piece must go through two separate firings to get its highgloss sheen. Shacter and his wife, writer Susan Page, who started the San Miguel Writers’ Conference and Literary Festival in 2005, were drawn to this part of central Mexico in part because of the arts community.
San Miguel de Allende was inhabited by rich arts patrons from its start in the 1500s. And in the 1600s, silver was discovered nearby, making the town an important trade thoroughfare. By the mid-1800s, it hit its stride, and many of its mansions, palaces and churches were built during this time. But San Miguel gained its contemporary reputation as an arts centre after American artist and writer Stirling Dickinson arrived in 1937.
He and Felipe Cossio del Pomar, a Peruvian painter and political activist, established the town’s first art school, which still exists today. In the years after World War II, veterans flocked to the school and others when they realized they could stretch their G.I. Bill money further south of the border.
The city’s architecture, cobblestone streets and rich, saturated colours make it an artist’s – and collector’s – dream.
Some believe it’s built on a bedrock of rose quartz, which channels positive energy and attracts creative types. Whatever the reason, they continue to flock to San Miguel de Allende – and Shacter’s gallery. For more information visit www.galeriaatotonilco.com.
This is a collection of Wounaan woven baskets from Colombia, at Galeria Atotonilco near San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.
Gallery owner Mayer Shacter holds a Huichol yarn painting, at Galeria Atotonilco near San Miguel de Allende, Mexico in June.
Michael DIRDA Special To The Washington Post
Boris Fishman’s Savage Feast: Three Generations, Two Continents, and a Dinner Table tracks, in an expansive, leisurely way, the author’s Jewish Russian family – two grandparents, his parents and himself –as they emigrate from the Soviet Union to Vienna to Rome to the United States in 1988 when the author was nine years old. Throughout the memoir, Fishman’s organizing theme is delicious, well-prepared food as the visible manifestation of love. A natural corollary, not surprisingly, is hunger, both the actual hunger experienced by older members of the family during World War II and the grown-up Fishman’s metaphorical hunger for independence, success as a writer and romantic love. What’s more, each chapter concludes with delicious Slavic recipes you and I can try at home. The result is a work of reminiscence and celebration that should appeal to a wide range of readers. If you like books about affectionate, colourful families, imagine Irving Howe’s World of Our Fathers mixed with Frank B. Gilbreth and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey’s Cheaper by the Dozen. If you’re a fan of food memoirs, you’ll want to shelve Savage Feast near M.F.K. Fisher’s The Art of Eating and A.J. Liebling’s Between Meals. Anyone of Jewish or Slavic ancestry – I’m Russian Slovak – will find the accounts of raucous, argument-filled holiday dinners hilariously familiar: been there, done that. Not least, if you’re a young writer, especially one who comes from a home where the first language isn’t English, you’ll recognize aspects of yourself in Fishman, as he strives to balance love for his family – with its often insular protectiveness – and his need to make his own precarious way as an American novelist.
In a familiar lament about immigrant parents and grandparents, he realizes that “the more I became the person they brought me to America to become, the less we seemed to share, and the harder all of us tried to pretend it wasn’t happening.”
While Fishman, like all of us, sometimes feels ambivalence about his family, there’s no uncertainty about its food. His descriptions of even the simplest meals are mouthwatering: “Grandma Daria... had a furnace the size of a bed. Out of it came crispy, quartered potatoes, dusted with dill before being slathered with sour cream; bowlegged, hand-lumped pork sausages; ‘eye-melets’ – eggs sunny-side up – sizzling and spitting after a quick fry up in the pork fat. Rough hunks of bread filled out the plate, as did chipped enamel mugs of boiling hot black tea with honey. The potatoes were freshly dug up; the sour cream came from the cows in the field, morosely observing the encroachment of winter; the eggs from the chickens prancing around the yard, the sausages from the season’s first hog slaughter (a little early, but there were guests); the honey from the village bees, the bread from its rye. Only the black tea came from the store.”
Note those mentions of pork. Though Jewish, the Fishmans are nonobservant atheists. When the family makes a brief visit to a synagogue, grandfather Arkady watches the ancient rituals for a few minutes, then loudly murmurs “fanatics” as they all leave. It’s quite a family. Boris’ grandmother was a cutthroat cardsharp who played to win even against her little grandson. His mother always dressed to the nines before taking her son to his English lessons. Widowed grandfather Arkady – who, as a child, was expelled from first grade – flirts shamelessly with his 30-years-younger Ukrainian home aide (who turns out to be a fabulous cook). Boris’ father – a barber in Russia, then a doorman in Manhattan – always foresees disaster. When his grown-up son organizes a trip to Florida, he almost bursts with anxiety: “How would we reach the airport? Would we drive or take a taxi? If we drove, where would we park? How much would that cost?... What if we didn’t make the flight?... What if it snowed the night before we were supposed to go?... What if the hotel was no good? Where would we eat?”
Carrying his memoir up to the near present, Fishman closes with chapters about a crushing depression, a gradual recovery and the unusual courtship of the woman he now lives with. In his career he’s done more than all right: His novels, A Replacement Life and Don’t Let My Baby Do Rodeo, were each chosen a New York Times notable book of the year, and Fishman himself is currently teaching in Princeton University’s Creative Writing Program.
In general, Savage Feast struck me as a bit too long: yhe stories tend to be overly drawn out, the often gorgeous prose slightly overwrought. More problematically, I wondered where memory left off and imaginative re-creation began.
Please don’t make too much of my cavils, especially when balanced against Fishman’s smorgasbord of humour, pathos and emotional insight. I very much enjoyed Savage Feast, and so will you.
Boris Fishman’s Savage Feast is a family tale about food and hunger.
Cold war espionage at this thriller’s heart
Patrick ANDERSON Special To The Washington Post
In his fascinating new novel, Defectors, Joseph Kanon uses the tangled ties between two brothers to explore the world of espionage at the height of the Cold War.
Kanon, the author of The Good German and The Prodigal Spy, among others, is a master of the genre, and here delivers a book that will appeal to fans of The Americans’ and Bridge of Spies.
The plot follows the lives of Frank and Simon Weeks.
Born a year apart to a prominent Boston family, they were students at Harvard in the late 1930s when Frank shocked his family and friends by leaving to join the Loyalist army and fight against fascism in the Spanish Civil War.
Wounded there, Frank returned to work in American intelligence during the Second World War. After the war, he joined the newly formed CIA.
The brothers, always close, in those days would meet for lunch at Harvey’s, the most celebrated Washington restaurant of its day, to gossip about girlfriends, politics and their jobs.
Then, in 1949, Frank, a rising star with the CIA suddenly flees to Moscow with his wife, Jo, because he is about to be exposed as a Soviet spy.
Simon becomes the editor of a New York publishing house. In 1961, he receives an offer from the disgraced brother he hasn’t seen in more than a decade. Frank reports that his new masters at the KGB have given him permission to write a book telling why and how he became a spy.
Simon thinks that such a book could be an international success and replies that he will publish Frank’s story if he will tell it honestly. Soon Simon flies to Moscow to work with his brother on the book’s final draft.
Simon is thus reunited with the charming, inscrutable older brother he still loves but doesn’t entirely trust.
He sees that Jo, whom he remembers as young and vibrant – they were briefly lovers before she met and married his brother – is now depressed, drinking too much and close to a breakdown.
The couple live comfortably in Moscow but they and other defectors are trapped in ambiguity.
Officially, they are heroes for their service to communism but in truth they know they’re not trusted.
Simon meets Boris, the Soviet army officer who is Frank’s driver, bodyguard and watchdog.
Even when Boris is not there, Frank and Jo know their home is bugged.
We meet other defectors, both American and British; some are content and others miserable. One plump, genial woman is celebrated because, when she worked at the Los Alamos lab and was searched by a soldier, she successfully “hid the atomic bomb design in her hat.”
Most of these defectors are fictional but real-life figures also appear.
Guy Burgess, a member of the notorious Cambridge Five spy ring, for instance, turns up in a bar, drunk and bloated.
A quarter of the way through Defectors, the real story begins when Frank admits to his brother that he has more in mind than a book.
He intends to defect again – back to the United States, where he hopes to be welcomed for his detailed knowledge of the Soviet espionage service.
He says he will do this for his wife and because of his disillusion not with the theory of communism but with its reality.
Frank knows that if this new betrayal fails he will be shot, and Simon will likely receive a show trial and a long prison sentence.
The recent trial of downed U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers is cited.
Frank’s plan to escape the Soviet Union is immensely complicated, but its unfolding is enhanced by Kanon’s graceful writing. When Simon attends the Bolshoi Ballet (to pass a message to an American spy in the men’s room during intermission) readers receive this unexpected gift: “He had always assumed Swan Lake was kitsch, a ballet for tourists, but here it meant something else. There was a fluttering of white, the entire stage suddenly twirling with white, darting, floating. A quiet gasp went through the audience, a collective pleasure, everything as it should be, the precise toe steps, the graceful leaps, inexplicably beautiful, the dreary city falling away, mad Stalin in his side box, the brutal prison stories, lives with years snatched away, all of that gone now, out of sight, nothing visible but this twirling, what the world would be like if it were lovely.”
Such passages make Defectors as readable and suspenseful as the fine espionage novels of Eric Ambler, Graham Greene, Charles McCarry, Robert Littell, Alan Furst and John Le Carré – and its roller-coaster plot will keep you guessing until the final page.
WASHINGTON POST HANDOUT IMAGE
Joseph Kanon’s new novel pits spy against spy, brother against brother.
A hard rain’s gonna fall
Storms can damage vegetable gardens but they don’t have to Homes
Adrian HIGGINS
The Washington Post
Too much rain has a measurable effect in the garden, not all of it negative.
The vegetable garden is the most dynamic corner of the gardening world – where else can you have three gardens in one year?
– and it is here that the precipitation has formed a jungle of unrestrained lushness.
In my own little plot, all the cucurbits – zucchini, winter squash and cucumbers – have taken on an extraordinary vigor.
The question in wet years is whether the harvest will be insipid because the fruits have had their sugars diluted.
This has been the case with some early tomatoes.
Others have tasted all right. Continued rain will also bring fruit splitting.
I now harvest tomatoes just this side of green and do the final ripening on the kitchen counter.
Rain brings more work for the gardener, in time spent grooming: removing diseased leaves, cutting back wayward growth, and tying up sprawling tomato and squash vines and leaning dahlias and sunflowers.
I find this tidying, like ironing my shirts, curiously satisfying. Less appealing is dealing with the constant onslaught of weeds, made worse by the warmth and the rain. Pokeweed, a thug by summer’s end, is already eight feet tall in untended areas.
Rains that bring flash flooding have the obvious effect of washing things away – new seeds, mulch and the earth itself – but what isn’t as apparent is the way that they beat up the soil.
On unprotected beds, a deluge leads to a crust that must be broken up. Or worse, the rain compacts the vital top layer of the soil.
There are a number of ways of protecting the soil, the easiest with a good layer of mulch – in the vegetable beds not with shredded bark, wood or wood chips but a generous blanket of straw.
That’s my preference, anyway, and it saves the soil from taking a beating.
Mulch also suppresses weeds and conserves soil moisture.
Soil that is made loamy through organic matter is better equipped to handle heavy rain; it acts as a sponge and resists erosion and compaction.
Experts say don’t add sand to clay soil because you’ll create something akin to cement.
But in my raised beds, I have incorporated generous blends of sharp builder’s sand with leaf mold – supplemented with each new planting – and the results have been good.
In a drought, I’d have to water this feverishly.
Another approach is to adopt a no-till method of gardening in which the soil is not seasonally dug and amended, and seeding and planting take place with minimal soil disturbance.
The idea is to keep soil microbes intact and to continually add organic matter to the soil surface, to be taken in and broken down by all the creatures that live in the underground biosphere.
Jon Traunfeld, director of the Maryland Home and Garden Information Center, has been trying this approach in a part of his own garden and says he feels it has helped in preventing weed growth and soil compaction.
He says, however, that planting into uncultivated soil takes more effort. Another approach is to plant cover crops, sometimes called green manures, during
periods between crops.
Common choices include buckwheat, annual rye, hairy vetch and clovers, and they can be used in no-till gardens or in conventional ones.
I’ve thought of these as something to plant in the fall to get your soil through the winter, but at Thomas Jefferson’s Tufton Farm next to Monticello, in Virginia, Keith Nevison likes to sow buckwheat every time a bed is turned over. He recently sowed buckwheat in beds of newly harvested potatoes, garlic and onions.
The plots are earmarked for fall greens in a month or so, when the quick-sprouting buckwheat will be chopped and worked into the soil.
The buckwheat will replenish the phosphorus lost with historical tobacco farming.
“We strive never to have a vacuum,” he said.
The paths around the beds, which would be a sloppy mess this year if left bare, are planted with a tough perennial cover crop named New Zealand white clover.
It has endured the pounding of both raindrops and human feet.
“There’s been very few weeds, and it has allowed us to give numerous tours,” he said.
And speaking of tours, I asked Luis Marmol at Dumbarton Oaks to show me the resplendent vegetable garden at the historic estate and academic centre in Washington.
Where my three lone mature and headed cabbage plants had rotted away in July, Marmol’s potager was brimming with pristine red-leafed and crinkly savoy cabbages, and the unlikely geranium border plants had performed beautifully.
His layout and plant selection this season were inspired by the fancy-schmancy Potager du Roi near the Palace of Versailles.
He attributed the vigor and health of the plants in the summer garden to its location: open and sunny with good air circulation, and a slight tilt to the ground plane that allowed measured drainage. There was, however, one glaring omission: not a single tomato plant.
“Too many diseases,” he said as he handed me a fat, watery cucumber.
The Citizen archives put more than 100 years of history at your fingertips: https://bit.ly/2RsjvA0
Top, cabbages are at home in cool, northern gardens, but an open, sunny location
warm, humid location. Above, there are a number of ways of protecting the soil, the easiest
good layer of mulch – in the vegetable beds not with shredded bark, wood or wood chips but a generous blanket of straw. Below, a wet year coupled with summer’s heat has formed a jungle of
ness in the author’s plot at a community garden in Washington, D.C.
WASHINGTON POST PHOTOS
helps them in a
with a
lush-
It is with deepest sadness that we announce the death of our beautiful soul, Sheila Marian Ponsford. A loving wife, mother, grandmother and friend. Sheila is survived by her loving husband, Len Fraser, and her beautiful children: Jasmine Tunnicliffe (Bryan), Vanessa Reeves, Yvonne Reeves (Max LaPierre), Zale Reeves (Meg Grant) and grandchildren: Claire, Paul, Todd and Elliott. Sheila is predeceased by her sister, Marjorie, her parents Hilda and Raymond. There will be a public viewing from 7 to 8pm, July 31st, at Assman’s Funeral Chapel. The celebration of Sheila’s life will be held at St Michael and All Angels, 1505 5th Ave, Prince George, at 2:00pm August 1st, 2019 with a reception to follow. In lieu of flowers please donate to Literacy Prince George.
William Pitt Alsip July 19th, 1947July 17th, 2019
Our beloved Bill passed away of complications from ALS on the 17th of July. He is survived by his life partner of 30 years Adrian Wilson and his sisters, Marilyn Cooper (husband Terry) of Ottawa and Dr. Janet Alsip of Winnipeg as well as his brothers, Jack Campbell Alsip (wife Janet Ingersoll) of Winnipeg and Stephen Douglas Alsip (wife Dominique Strachan) of Nassau, Bahamas and Richard Andrew Alsip (wife Elizabeth/ Betty) of Winnipeg. He enjoyed eight loving nephews and nieces, namely Dr. Jehn Mihill (Michael Wright) of North Bay, ON and Kathy Mihill of Ottawa, Adam Lamari and Louise Lamari of Winnipeg, Lisa Alsip of Eugene, Oregon and Alarey Alsip (husband Gillett Bradley) of Chicago, and Stephen Alsip and Laura Alsip of Winnipeg. Bill was also survived by Adrian’s children Brendan (Linda) of Terrace B.C., Scott (Rosie) of 100 Mile House B.C. and Adrian’s grandchildren: Ethan and Natalie both of Terrace B.C., and Miguel of the Philippines; all of whom he loved dearly. Bill was a gifted student and won the Gold Medal in Engineering (Electrical Science) in 1969 and obtained a Masters degree in 1972 both from the University of Manitoba. His proud mother Mary Louise (née Trewhitt) wore his Gold Medal for many years. He was extremely close to his dad, William Pitt Alsip Sr. and they all enjoyed hunting fowl and deer in Manitoba and B.C. for many seasons. The family enjoyed a ski chalet at LaRiviere and Bill enjoyed a lifetime of skiing including heli-skiing at which he became expert. He also enjoyed deep sea diving and hiking in the mountains. In the last 20 years of his life Bill became more of a wildlife photographer and conservationist of wildlife and gave up hunting. After obtaining his Masters Bill decided to forego his Ph.D. in favour of a non-academic life and worked for McMillan Bloedel for his entire career designing the operating systems for their billion dollar pulp mills. A wise investor Adrian and he eventually moved to Prince George in 2003 into a beautiful home on the Nechako River. Adrian and he had purchased a large acreage in Vanderhoof on the BC plateau in 1993 and developed same into a farm. Like his pioneering father Alpine at LaRiviere, Bill was among the first to build at Whistler way back in the day so he could ski through the powder in the trees and enjoy his prowess. Bill also relished introducing family and friends to wilderness adventures both on the ocean and in the mountains. In his youth, Bill and his brothers Jack and Steve curled together as Granite juniors and were particularly proud of curling for Dr. McTavish V.C. in the 75th and 76th MCA. Bill and Dick (Richard) were both very able mechanics and loved to bring machines, mostly cars but anything with a motor would do, back to life. A private family service will be held in Winnipeg at a later date. No flowers please. Instead, the family encourages donations to ALS Research. Adrian and the family would like to thank his doctors as well as the nurses and staff at the Prince George Hospital for their kind and professional care in very difficult circumstances.
CARLSON,SherriArlene (neeMacdonald)
September5,1950-May6,2019
Itiswithheavyheartsandgreatsadnessthatwe sharewithyouthatSherrilostherlonghealthbattle onMay6,2019,withherfamilyatherside.Sheis nowatpeacewithherfather,Andrew,andbrother, Garnet.
Sherriwasakindpersonwholovedherfamilywith herwholeheart.Whenherchildrenweresmall,the housewasalwaysfilledwithmorethanherfour childrenandshelovedit.Spendingtimewithher familyandclosefriendsbroughthergreatjoy.Sherri enjoyedcreatingamazingfood,canning,gardening, knitting,andcrocheting;bothforandwithherfamily. BothsheandJimwereactiveleaderswithGuiding andScoutsinPrinceRupertandPrinceGeorge.
Sherrilovedtomakepeoplesmileandlaugh, althoughshepretendedtonotgetourhumour. Sheenjoyedcamping,exploringtheoutdoors,and takingroadtripstovisitwithfamilyandfriends.The timesshespentwithhertwograndsonswas precioustoher.
Sherrileavesbehindherhusbandof46years,Jim; children,James(Lindsay),Melanie(Erik),Judy,and Karin(Jon);mother,Gloria;siblings,Ian(Cathy)and Julie(Hugh);grandsons,CameronandLucas; nephew,Roy(Jeannette);andmanymorenieces, nephews,cousins,andrelativesthatsheloved. Sherrimaynotbewithusnow,butwecarryherwith us,inourhearts,always.
JoinusincelebratingSherri’slifeonAugust4,2019, from3-5pmattheUnitedChurchinPrinceRupert (6366thAvenueWest).
PETER PAUL TURYK
JULY 11TH, 1942JULY 6TH, 2019
It is with great sadness that we announce the sudden and unexpected passing of Pete Turyk (aka; Gramps, “Popsicle Pete!”). He is survived by Judy, his wife of 50 years, his children: Jason, Matt and Anne Turyk, his grandchildren: Brady, Kaitlynn, and Maddison Turyk, Elise and Thomas Ouellette, Cameron Shaw and great grandchild, Amelia Turyk. Pete is also survived by his Mother, Helen Turyk (102 years), sisters: Olive and Terri, and brother Dennis, who he all dearly loved.
Prince George was home to Pete since the late 1960’s. In his younger years, he was known as ‘Coach Holler’, spending many proud years coaching Minor Hockey and Lacrosse. Once he became ‘Gramps’, he rarely missed a hockey game for his grandson, Thomas, often volunteering to take him to his early morning practices in an attempt to liven up the sleep filled change rooms. At 53, Pete retired from BC Tel, excelled in First Aid and eventually progressed to driving part time for BC Ambulance Services. Some of Pete’s most cherished times were spent outdoors camping, hunting and fishing the rivers, lakes and oceans. Pete loved spending time with friends and family, spoiling his grandchildren, cooking, (famously smoking salmon and jerky), telling MANY jokes and sharing stories of his life, music and movies that captivated his heart. He will be missed but the memories of his personality and the passion for the things he loved will always be present with us.
Be at peace, Pete. Enjoy catching all those
fish up there and leave some for the rest of us! Until we meet again, Gramps.
If you knew Pete, please join his Celebration of Life at Assmans Funeral Home; August 3rd at 3PM. In lieu of Flowers, a donation to Aimhi Prince George.
DAVID THOMAS GRIFFIN
July 22, 1945June 27, 2019
Born and raised in Prince George, moved to Terrace in 1965 and started his family with Irene Squires and raised 3 sons: David Jr., Mancel and Roderick and daughter,
(Jack) John Clifford Joynson December 12, 1938July 24, 2019
The strongest and bravest man we have been so lucky to have in our family is finally at peace surrounded by the ones he loved and cherished the most in his life. He will finally join his beloved wife Barbara. Left to carry on his legacy, strength and bravery are his children, grandchildren, great grand children and nephew. Our family will be forever grateful to Lynne for the love and support you have given him throughout the years , you remain so special to us all. Dr Larson and the Home support Nurse Erica we can not thank you enough for everything much love to both of you. No service by request the family with host a open house July 27, 2019 from 2-4pm at 91-6100 O’Grady Road, Prince George for anyone who wishes to stop by share some laughs and memories.
Larry Gene Shiels April 18, 1957July 6, 2019
It is with tremendous sadness that we announce the passing of our beloved Larry on July 6, 2019 at the age of 62. He is survived by his wife, Cynthia, son Jordie (Heather), daughter Samantha-Jo (Ryan) McEvoy, grandchildren Porter, Skylar and Noah, mom Jean Shiels and two brothers, John and Brian. He was predeceased by his dad Earl Shiels. Larry was an amazing family man. He loved his family more than anything and he would do anything for them. He was a hard worker and was willing to help anyone. Larry had an awesome sense of humor and will be missed by all who knew him. A Celebration of Larry’s Life will be held on August 17 and 18 at 2924 Desfosses Road, Sorrento, BC anytime you can get there. Tents, trailers and campers are all welcome! The first drink is on Larry! Condolences may be expressed to the family at www.bowersfuneralservice.com
Clare, Creekside, Stillwater, Avison, Davis, Capella, Speca, Starlane, Bona Dea, Charella, Davis, Polaris, Starlane, Vega.
Moncton, Queens, Peidmont, Rochester, Renison, McMaster, Osgood, Marionopolis.
• Quinson Area
• Lyon, Moffat, Ogilvie, Patterson, Kelly, Hammond, Ruggles, Nicholson
and
