Prince George Citizen June 13, 2019

Playing in the mud

Blockaders

and tests of strength and endurance like a tire pull and a medicine ball carry.

put pipeline behind schedule, court told

Mark NIELSEN Citizen staff

mnielsen@pgcitizen.ca

The Coastal GasLink pipeline project is three months behind schedule, thanks largely to opponents’ efforts to block the work, a lawyer for the company told a B.C. Supreme Court Justice on Wednesday. CGL is applying to have an interim injunction against impeding progress extended until the end of 2021 when the project is scheduled to be completed.

Opponents, largely in the form of Wet’suwet’en heriditary chiefs, claim they have the right to prevent access to an area south of the Morice River under traditional law.

Three days of arguments on the issue began Wednesday before Justice Marguerite Church at the Prince George courthouse. Providing an outline of the company’s position, CGL lawyer Kevin O’Callaghan said the company needs the Morice River Forest Service Road because it is the only way to reach the most difficult area of the project. So-called section eight will go over steep and mountainous terrain in the form of the Coast Mountains and while other sections can be completed more quickly, O’Callaghan said it will take right to the late-2021 deadline to complete that portion of the project.

But he said an overland right of way into the start of section eight is currently only two kilometres long where it should be 12 km by this point in time.

He said blockades had meant reconnaissance and surveying was delayed from November-December to January, adding up to two months.

And once carried out, he said it was determined that five new bridges needed to be put into place, causing further delay.

Moreover, he said a work camp is not yet occupied due to delays...

Moreover, he said a work camp is not yet occupied due to delays, meaning 35 to 45 workers must travel four hours each day to get to the site and are being put up in area hotels. He said it works out to two days of extra travel time each week, adding up to an additional $1 million for CGL.

O’Callaghan also highlight the economic impact. The pipeline is being built to supply natural gas to the LNG Canada liquified natural gas plant in Kitimat.

Together, he said the projects add up to an estimated $40 billion with the pipeline accounting for $6.2 billion. He said benefit agreements have been reached with 20 First Nations along the route, including the five Wet’suwet’en elected bands, adding up to $338 million over 25 years.

Contracts on the project add up to $620 million have also been awarded to First Nations and a further $400 million to other companies.

In terms of consulting with the Wet’suwet’en, O’Callaghan said CGL officials have been working to understand their form of traditional governance by taking in presentations outlining the basis and attending workshops on Wet’suwet’en decision making.

O’Callaghan also noted there is disagreement over who holds various titles in the Wet’suwet’en traditional form of governance and urged Church to avoid getting caught up in that controversy.

“We say that the court should not enter into that fray... this is just not the venue to be deciding those issues,” he said.

Victim of fatal rollover a ‘beautiful soul’

Mark NIELSEN Citizen staff

A Smithers man who was behind the wheel during a rollover that led to the death of a 20-year-old Prince George man was sentenced Tuesday to two years plus a day in jail for drunk driving causing death.

Appearing in provincial court in Smithers, Ashton Michael Lewis, 23, was also prohibited from driving for six years for the June 9, 2018 incident in the community west of Prince George.

In issuing the sentence, Judge Judith Doulis agreed to a joint submission from Crown and defence counsels that also included concurrent terms of six months in jail for fleeing the scene of an accident and driving while prohibited under the Motor Vehicle Act.

Recounting the circumstances, Doulis said it was about 10:45 p.m. when Lewis failed to negotiate a sharp turn where Railway Avenue turns into Pacific Avenue, rolling his car into a ditch.

Taylor Blomquist, who was not wearing a seatbelt, was ejected from the back seat and died at the scene while another man, Keegan Leiterman, who was in the front, escaped without significant injury.

Lewis and Leiterman tried to hide the beer cans that had been in the car. Then Lewis fled the scene while Leiterman remained behind with Blomquist. Police later tracked Lewis to his home and arrested him there.

At the detachment, Lewis provided breath samples that show between 145 and 167 milligrams of alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood.

A RCMP reconstructionist estimated Lewis’ speed at 75 to 86 km/h in a 50 km/h zone while Leiterman estimated he was going 130 km/h.

Victim impact statements from nine of Blomquist’s family members were submitted to the court. Doulis said his mother, Sandra Miller, is crushed by grief and may never move beyond the pain and anger at her loss.

Miller described her son as a “beautiful soul. He was very handsome and kind. He had a great sense of humour, a mischievous grin, sparking eyes and a great love for his family.”

Blomquist’s uncle, Jason Richardson, had brought his nephew along with him to Smithers to help him paint an apartment building. Richardson said he continues to carry guilt because he suspected Lewis was impaired but let Blomquist go with him.

“I’ll never forget getting a text from my sister in the middle of the night: ‘My baby is gone... Taylor is dead.’ I still can’t even think about him or talk about it without breaking down,” Richardson said in his victim impact statement.

Lewis’ driving record includes two 90day immediate roadside prohibitions and, at the time, he had been prohibited from driving due to a conviction for speeding. Lewis pleaded guilty to drunk driving causing death and apologized to Blomquist’s family in court, “which I find showed insight and fortitude given the emotionally-charged atmosphere,” Doulis said.

The full decision is posted with this story at www.pgcitizen.ca.

Students from Nukko Lake Elementary make their way through the mud pit during the Little Mudder Challenge at Otway Nordic Centre on Wednesday. Participants were put to the test on a 5.7-kilometre obstacle course that included climbing walls, balance beams

Art gets weird at TNW this Saturday

Frank PEEBLES Citizen staff

fpeebles@pgcitizen.ca

It isn’t theatre, but it is art for entertainment and provoking thought the way drama does.

Theatre Northwest (TNW) is home to a one-day visual arts event on Saturday that will have performance elements, music elements and tactile elements all at the same time.

Some of Prince George’s most notable cultural creators are involved in this event, a show they are calling Weird: An Exhibition of Alternative Art.

It runs from noon to 7 p.m., and patrons can drop in and out as wished during that course of time, with a two-hour recommended participation cycle.

“Alternative art often struggles to find

an appropriate space in the artistic world because of its nontraditional or outright strange nature,” said a joint statement from the organizers.

“It does not always fit easily within normal artistic parameters. Alternative art is a necessary part of a robust artistic landscape, though it can often be difficult to find its place within the cultural landscape. None of this detracts from its importance as a challenging and open-minded genre.”

This showcase will feature local performers including Jose Delgado-Guevara, Oro Barton, Raghu Lokanathan, and led by Isaak Andal.

“As a young artist I had the opportunity to create and perform experimental art,” Andal said.

“I know it is not for everybody, but it is impossible to overstate how important is

has been for me as an artist.”

Andal went on to say that he has enjoyed learning the other side of the business: arts administration.

“I had no idea how much time and effort it takes to facilitate art,” he said.

Someone who knows better than most in the city how arts administration works is Theatre Northwest general manager Marnie Hamagami.

She readily saw the value of this unorthodox event-art experience and was happy to host, especially since there is no longer a Casse-Tête Festival of Experimental Music that involved many of the same people and was also held on TNW’s stage.

“There was a real hole in the ecology of the city’s arts scene,” said Hamagami of the festival’s demise.

“The commercial value of this kind of art

is not as easily understood as going to a CCR (mainstream popular band Credence Clearwater Revival) concert, but in order to even have a CCR you need to have people trying this innovative stuff.

“That’s how you get there, that’s how art evolves.”

Hamagami said these types of partnerships with community creators are “essential to the continued growth of artists” so TNW was proud to offer up their stage for these purposes.

Some aspects of the show will take place in the lobby, some in the theatre space. It is multidimensional and multi-media, so expect the unexpected or come with no expectations at all.

Tickets are $30, available on the TNW website (click Purchase, click Tickets, click Buy Tickets, click the event’s icon).

City starts consultation on climate action plan

Mark NIELSEN Citizen staff

mnielsen@pgcitizen.ca

City hall has launched a public engagement campaign to determine a strategy for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

It began Wednesday with an open house at the Bob Harkins branch of the Prince George Public Library and will continue until July 31.

Public comments can be submitted at www.princegeorge.ca/environment

Staff will also be on hand at the Prince George Farmers’ Market on June 22, 8:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. and at the Lheidli T’enneh Memorial Park Pavilion on July 11, noon to 8 p.m.

Residents are being asked to assign priorities to 13 actions city staff has identified to carry out the work and will be used to update the city’s last energy and greenhouse gas management plan, produced in 2007, and pursue new targets aligned with provincial and federal commitments.

In turn, the actions are divided into five groups: buildings, transportation, waste and food, land use and renewable energy.

Here’s a closer look:

Buildings

• Build new, energy-efficient buildings: require energy-efficient buildings and help builders transition to the new BC Energy Step Code.

• Use more wood in buildings: wood stores carbon and is less energy-intensive compared to other products like steel.

Using wood in buildings also supports local industry and expertise.

• Retrofit existing buildings: connect people to rebate programs and provide financial incentives and legal advice to reduce energy use in existing buildings.

Transportation

• Support active travel: improve infrastructure to reduce vehicle use and make it easier for people to walk and bike around the city.

• Improve transit: add new routes, improve schedules and make other improvements to increase transit use.

• Encourage electric vehicles: provide more public charging stations, encourage home and work charging options, and consider initiatives that encourage electric vehicle ownership.

Waste and food

• Divert yard, garden and kitchen waste from landfills: provide information and services to help residents reduce waste. Examples include education, organic composting options, curbside collection, and new renewable gas options.

• Support local food production: encourage local food production and continue to support local farmers markets.

Land use

• Encourage connected and

compact urban living: restrict development in the city’s outlying areas. Encourage new housing and building developments in established neighbourhoods (infill development). Encourage compact community growth around hubs like transit, shops, parks, and other amenities.

• Make streets about people, not just vehicles: focus on designing streets for walkers, cyclists, and transit users.

• Plant and grow more trees: protect and grow the city’s urban forest and preserve existing tree canopies.

Renewable energy

• Produce renewable natural gas using organics: explore ways to use organic materials (e.g. yard, garden, and kitchen waste) to produce renewable natural gas. This will also help offset local natural gas consumption.

• Increase connections to the downtown renewable energy system: the DES has significant capacity to heat other buildings in the downtown area. Connecting more buildings to the DES can reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

A walk in the park

Mayor Lyn Hall, Sean Lebrun, manager of parks and solid waste and Coun. Kyle Sampson were part of a group touring the new Nechako Riverside Park along the Nechako River at the Foothills bridge. Construction on the park began in 2018 with a cost of just over $1 million.

Production curtailments will hit B.C. sawmill towns hard

With areas around B.C. already reeling from bad forestry news, 160 employees at 100 Mile House found out Tuesday afternoon that their jobs at the Norbord mill could be gone for good.

“It hurts all the families involved directly, all the loggers and people in the service industry, small business,” Mitch Campsall, mayor of 100 Mile House, said.

“Things will just keep going down, down, down, it will affect everybody.”

Norbord announced its intention to “indefinitely curtail” production at its oriented strandboard (OSB) mill in 100 Mile House, starting in August.

Peter Wijnbergen, president and CEO of Norbord, cited the climate-related phenomena of the mountain pine beetle epidemic and, more recently, the increased number of wildfires that have led to wood-supply shortages and high prices.

“Indefinite curtailment means the company doesn’t know if they will begin operating again or when that might be,” Campsall said.

The 100 Mile House mill has a stated annual production capacity of 440 million square feet of product. Norbord said it will meet current and future customer demand from its 11 other OSB mills in North America, including two in northern Alberta.

“It’s horrendous for our community and it will be an absolute disaster if those workers don’t come back,” Campsall said.

He and others are lobbying to have stumpage fees lowered to make B.C. mills more competitive.

Industry analysts have a gen-

Indefinite curtailment means the company doesn’t know if they will begin operating again or when that might be.

— 100 Miles House Mayor Mitch Campsall

erally gloomy forecast overall, predicting up to a dozen mill closures in the next 10 years. Quesnel was hit in May when Tolko Industries announced it would close its mill there, at the cost of 150 jobs, and West Fraser Timber Co. Ltd. cut a shift at one of its mills.

Canfor will close its Vavenby mill next month, putting 172 people out of work, according to the mayor of Clearwater. That will leave Canfor with 12 Canadian mills, 11 of them in B.C. (and one in Grande Prairie, Alta.), with an annual capacity of about 3.55 billion board feet.

The company will begin curtailing operations in B.C. on June 17 through July 26, reducing production by about 200 million board feet (the unit of measure used in Canada and the U.S. to quantify lumber). The Canfor mill in Mackenzie will be curtailed for six weeks, mills in Houston and Vanderhoof for four weeks, and most of the rest for two weeks, the company said.

It’s keeping a mill outside Creston running at capacity, a mill Canfor bought two-and-ahalf years ago that employs 120 and makes specialty high-grade wood products.

Gordon McINTYRE Vancouver Sun

CITIZEN PHOTO BY BRENT BRAATEN

People take part in the city’s public consultation on a proposed climate action plan on Wednesday at the library.

CITIZEN PHOTO BY BRENT BRAATEN

CITIZEN FILE PHOTO

Melanie Desjardines shows off some pieces at the Groop Gallery in 2013. Desjardines’ show, titled Musings, will open today at the Community Arts Council’s feature gallery at Studio 2880.

Desjardines brings her Musings to CAC’s feature gallery show

Frank PEEBLES Citizen staff fpeebles@pgcitizen.ca

Melanie Desjardines often has the Community Arts Council come to her arts space. This time, the CAC is having Desjardines come to them.

Desjardines, in addition to being one of the region’s most well known artists, is the proprietor of Groop Gallery, a downtown creative storefront near the corner of Third Avenue and George Street. It is a place that has hosted CAC events like Art Battle, affiliated exhibitions and classes. This spring it was where the 6x6 Art Auction was held.

Now, with an opening reception scheduled for today, Desjardines will be the artistic guest of honour at the CAC’s feature gallery at Studio 2880. Her art show entitled Musings will hang there until July 4.

The title comes from the sundry places and mental spaces from which the show’s paintings were sourced.

Some are new, some are our of Desjardines’ archives as a way of exemplifying how her style has moved through time.

“I’m so very impressed with how, over the years, she has changed her art structures so completely,” said Lisa Redpath, the curator of

the Studio 2880 Feature Gallery. “It’s almost something I forget, that she started out as a watercolour artist, moved into abstracts, and now she does this amazing work on metal. Each piece is distinctly different but also distinctly Melanie.”

“It became a retrospective of works that span about a 15-year period, right up to the day before I left for Toronto on Thursday, some finally making it out of my studio for the first time,” said Desjardines, who intensified the exhibition preparation process by jetting off to a family event in Ontario on the cusp of opening. “All the pieces I chose compile a very eclectic mix of materials and substrates ranging from watercolour, acrylic, ink, found objects, collage, copper, metals, you name it, but are all loosely tied together through familial mental or physical process.”

Redpath said she couldn’t wait to see the combinations Desjardines was going to show up with. It was an unpredictable anticipation for her.

“She is the kind of artist who can pull art from just about anything – the lids of paint cans, lint from the drier,” Redpath said. “The word I would have to use for her creation style is ‘clever’ because everything she sees could have a purpose or meaning in a piece of

artwork. She’s one of those artists who cause you to say, often, ‘wow, I never would have thought of that.’ She can find beauty and function in a flakey piece of rust. She has this rare ability to see what it could be inside of what it is.”

Even this show was a rethinking of a previous concept. She had a private exhibition once before that she called Musings but the way the pieces were created and then assembled for this show clung to that word, so it got recycled for Studio 2880.

Others have noticed what Redpath sees in Desjardines’ talent. Desjardines was inducted into the Federation Of Canadian Artists last year, was accepted into this year’s Toni Onley artist project in Wells for nine days in July with artist Peter Von Tiesenhausen as one of the mentors (her third Toni Onley residency), and she has another exhibition coming up in Williams Lake with her aunt.

“Its title is Lost And Found and explores life, loss, and resiliency,” said Desjardines.

First, though, she has some Musings to ponder and present in Prince George.

The public is invited to come to the opening reception of Desjardines’ work at Studio 2880 on Thursday from 5-7 p.m. It is free of charge and refreshments will be available.

Weavers gather in Prince George

Frank PEEBLES Citizen staff

The original industry is making a comeback.

The first articles made repetitively by humans were clothing. Before there was such a luxurious notion as fashion, clothing was personalized shelter, the first layer of defense against the elements.

The Prince George Fibre Arts Guild follows the threads of these ideas at the Association of Northwest Weavers’ Guilds (ANWG) Conference, a convention currently blanketing the city.

In this era of big-box retailers and red carpets, concerns over sweatshops and catwalks, there is still a personal tie to the clothing we wear. Just like there is a 100mile diet movement, there is also an artisan economy.

The body of it is cloaked in hand-made textiles. That can pertain to clothing, towels, blankets, anything made from the fibers of our world.

“The fibre arts has meant so much to our culture,” said Laura Fry, local co-chair of the host committee that brought the ANWG to Prince George.

“It was one of the main thrusts of the industrial revolution. The spinning wheel was one of the first industrial machines. We take fiber arts so for granted in our society that we forget how deep it goes.” The conference is in full sail at the Prince George Civic & Conference Centre, with events also at the Coast Inn and Marriott Courtyard hotels and the Two Rivers Gallery also involved. The Fibre Arts Guild is based at Studio 2880 where they have also gotten help and collaboration from other guilds and associations under the umbrella of the Community Arts Council.

This is the second time the convention has come to Prince George, the last time being 1995. The conference has grown greatly since then, said Fry, who, in that time, has also evolved into one of Prince George’s most successful professional fiber artists.

With an ambitious slate of workshops, design shows, seminars, and guest appearances by star spinners and weavers, this event is drawing hundreds of presenters and enthusiasts of fiber arts from all across Western Canada and U.S.

“Quite a few (of the presenters and workshop leaders) are local, too, so it’s important to point out how much talent we have right here in our own region,” said Fry. The instructors and experts coming in from all over the world will help increase that local knowledge, said she and local co-chair Birthe Miller, another of the city’s veteran fibre artists.

“If you had this,” said Miller, holding out a handful of silky soft wool sheared from a Bluefaced Leicester sheep, “and alongside that you had synthetic fibers made in a factory, which would you most want against your skin?”

The answer needn’t be spoken. Your hand would naturally let go of the sheep’s wool reluctantly. It is a cloudy delight to the touch.

That, said the fiber artists, is why there is a comeback going on in the artisan community. People are rediscovering local, handmade, unique, high-quality products that stand taller when compared to mass-produced clothing and bedding.

“Our conference is not just for spinners and weavers,” said Miller. Interest comes also from those curious about how to run a boutique business, those interested in the hobbies associated to the fiber arts like knitting or dyes, those driven to make things by hand or make tactile art, and many other reasons.

Some of these topics bring the fibre arts back to cottage beginnings as simple as hand-carding the hand-sheared wool then hand-spinning it into long strands of yarn then used to knit, weave or crochet into practical items.

Some of these topics go in the opposite direction, as the fibre arts pushes forward into high technology with tools of the trade scarcely arrived from the pages of science fiction. The advancements in everything from looms to design software make the fiber arts a realm you can pursue in any direction.

“You can make it a business, you can keep it simple or make as complex as you are capable of, or you can just do it for fun,” said Fry.

The keynote speaker of the conference is Abby Franquemont, author of Respect The Spindle and “well known in the spinning and weaving world for her knowledge of Peruvian textiles,” said Fry.

Family haunted by murder of eight-year-old daughter

WESTMINSTER

NEW

— The father of an eight-year-old girl who was killed by her mother says he’s felt the worst pain of his life watching her young brothers suffer profound grief, confusion and shame.

Gabe Batstone told Lisa Batstone’s sentencing hearing on Wednesday that the people his daughter Teagan loved most in the world were her stepbrother and half-brother, who were eight and two when she died.

“The first questions that they asked shortly after her murder and many times since offer a glimpse into their shattered innocence and raw emotional pain,” he told a British Columbia Supreme Court judge.

“‘Why is my sister in the ground when other kids have sisters at school? Is Teagan’s mommy going to kill me too?’”

Lisa Batstone, 46, was found guilty of second-degree murder in March. The court heard she placed a plastic bag over Teagan’s mouth and nose in the early hours of Dec. 10, 2014. She will serve an automatic life sentence but the purpose of Wednesday’s hearing was to determine when she will be eligible for parole. The Crown requested 16 to 18 years, while the defence asked for 10.

Gabe Batstone told the judge that Teagan was robbed of seven decades of her life, including milestones such as graduations, marriage and having children of her own.

“Though what haunts you most days is the far more mundane losses of trips to the park, quiet cuddles, comforting hugs, even grocery shopping and just being with Teagan anywhere, any time,” he added.

“The life of a happy, empathetic, funny, caring, innocent, athletic, sensitive and loving child was taken for no reason.”

The father’s current wife, Stephanie Batstone, said her bond with Teagan was as strong as those with her biological children. She said she will never recover from having to tell her sons their sister was dead.

For weeks after Teagan’s death, her younger son screamed and cried in fear when he was left alone with his mother, she said.

“It finally occurred to us that he thought I killed Teagan, because to him, I was Teagan’s mom,” she said.

Though the boy has no natural memories of Teagan, he hides photos of her in his room and tells people he has five people in his family, not four. He also keeps toy guns under his pillow as protection, she said.

“We live in fear of Lisa Batstone”

Her older son saw Teagan as his best friend and “partner in crime,” she said, adding he had to deal with his own mortality at eight years old and lost his ability to be a kid.

Stephanie Batstone said she used to be a loving mother who put home-cooked meals on the table and played with her sons.

Now she suffers from panic attacks and bouts of depression, she said.

“There are times all I can do is make them a sandwich and crawl into bed at 7 p.m.,” she said.

“Teagan’s murder stole this from me and my children.”

Crown attorney Christopher McPherson told the court Lisa Batstone abused her position of trust to kill a child and continued to attempt to deflect blame for the death onto her husband.

Defence lawyer Rebecca McConchie said Batstone should be

Mia RABSON

Canadian Press

The

OTTAWA – The federal Liberals will accept nearly 100 changes the Senate has made to a bill overhauling the federal environmental-assessment process for major construction projects but are rejecting dozens more, including nearly all of those proposed by Conservative senators.

Conservative Sen. David Tkachuk said he is “appalled” at the government’s decision.

“If you think Saskatchewan and Alberta are going to take this lying down, I think the country’s got another thing coming,” he said.

Environment Minister Catherine McKenna says she thinks some of the Senate’s proposals made the bill much stronger, including those that reduce the authority of the minister of the environment to interfere with timelines or the make-up of review panels, and some that clarify rules to ensure the same project won’t have to go through both a regional and a national review.

eligible for parole in 10 years, the lowest term possible, because the murder lacks certain aggravating factors, including a significant use of force or previous abuse.

Batstone has dealt with depression and anxiety her whole life, attempting suicide multiple times before the murder, and she has since been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, McConchie said.

The court heard that she felt resentment for Gabe Batstone after their divorce in 2010 and in September 2014 she had a falling out with a close friend at church and stopped attending the institution.

The day before Teagan’s murder, Lisa Batstone called her ex-husband and he ended the call because it was not a emergency.

She complained to her counsellor that he was a “bully” and “hung up.”

She smothered her daughter early the next morning. In a fourpage letter, she wrote, “I can’t believe I took my daughter’s life ... I honestly believe that she’s in a better place now with Jesus.”

She placed Teagan’s body in her car and began driving, but got stuck in a ditch.

First responders found her cradling her daughter’s body in the trunk of the hatchback.

She said she is certain the new review process for national-scale resource and transportation projects, like pipelines, mines and highways, will be clear and timely.

She said it will allow for as many as 100 new resource projects worth $500 billion to be proposed and examined over the next 10 years.

“This is a system that will attract investment,” McKenna said.

“This is a system that Canadians, that Canadian businesses should be proud of. We can go

and tell everyone that Canada is open for business.”

McKenna is rejecting 90 per cent of the amendments made by Conservatives, including some which would have allowed a new Impact Assessment Agency to decide not to consider the impacts on Indigenous people or climate change when assessing a project. She also is rejecting changes that would have put strict limits on who can participate in an assessment hearing, as well as make it harder to challenge a project approval in court.

Environment groups hailed the government’s decision as a win for the planet, ensuring climate change in particular is taken into consideration.

Conservatives, however, are warning their fight against Bill C-69, which they say is a threat to national unity, has barely begun.

Alberta Premier Jason Kenney is pondering a constitutional challenge, saying the bill infringes on provinces’ rights to control their own natural resources and that it will kill what is left of Alberta’s oil-and-gas sector.

“Without the Senate’s amendments, this bill will drive away more jobs and investment from Canada,” Kenney said.

“It is not too late for the federal government, the House and the Senate to do the right thing and sustain the Senate’s amendments.”

Kenney led six premiers - five conservative provincial leaders and one non-partisan territorial leader – to write to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau Monday asking him to accept all the amendments in the name of national unity.

Laura KANE The Canadian Press

Teagan Batstone smiles in a family handout photo from 2013. The father of an eight-year-old girl who was smothered by her mother says a happy, empathetic, sensitive and loving child was taken away from the world for no reason.

Outdoor play best for kids

What if there was a simple, inexpensive and fun way to address some of the major challenges facing humanity today. What if it could help improve children’s health, development and well-being?

Imagine a solution that could stem the current epidemics of obesity, anxiety and depression affecting children and youth today. Imagine that this solution could also promote brain health, creativity and academic achievement and prepare our children for the rapidly-changing work force. Along the way it could reduce incidence of allergies, asthma and other immunity challenges and improve eye health. It could foster a culture of environmental stewardship and sustainability and help build the health of cities – promoting neighbourliness and feelings of community connection. Imagine that this intervention could also help countries meet their targets for many of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, such as the goals of Good Health and Well-being, Inclusive and Equitable Quality Education, Decent Work and Economic Growth and Climate Action. This isn’t an expensive intervention, or one that parents have to force their children to do – like homework or eating their veg-

etables. Rather than dreading it, children report being at their happiest when doing it and they seek ways to keep at it for as long as possible. What is this fix-all simple solution? Playing outside. Many of us have fond memories of childhoods spent outside, hanging out with friends in our neighbourhoods, parks and wild places, making up the rules as we went along, with minimal (if any) adult supervision.

We need only reflect on our own play memories to realize how valuable these experiences can be and how they can shape our lifelong health and development. The research is now catching up to our intuitions, recognizing the vast and diverse benefits of outdoor play.

Playing outside is not the same as playing inside. There are unique benefits of being in the outdoors, particularly in nature, that don’t come as readily indoors. When children are allowed to play the way they want to play in stimulating environments, they move more, sit less and play longer.

They get their hands in the dirt and are exposed to microbes that help them build their immunity. They make their own goals and figure out the steps to attain those goals, helping them build executive function skills. They learn, build resilience and develop their social skills, learn how

to manage risks and keep themselves safe. Their eyes get the exercise they need to help combat short-sightedness.

We are rediscovering the magic of outdoor play. Governments see it as a way of getting kids active and averting the obesity crisis.

Schools and early childhood centres see it as a way of promoting academic and socioemotional learning. Corporations see it as a way of preparing children for the jobs of the future that will focus on creativity, empathy and connection with others. Children just see it as a way of having fun and feeling free!

There are three key ingredients to supporting outdoor play: time, space and freedom.

Kids need time to be able to play outside. In schools, that means recess policies that get kids outside every day, finding opportunities to use the outdoors for learning and limiting homework. At home, that means laying aside screens and limiting scheduled structured activities.

Kids also need high-quality outdoor spaces to play in. That doesn’t necessarily mean expensive playground equipment. It means spaces where all children feel welcome, regardless of abilities and backgrounds, that they can make their own and that also have loose parts (for example sticks, stones, water and cardboard boxes) they can use and

My pitch to be an influencer

News item: In a bid to increase the youth vote, Elections Canada will spend $650,000 to enlist the help of 13 “influencers,” including social media stars, YouTubers, Olympians and a gamer, reports CTV.

I turned down the music (KTel’s 20 Power Hits) so that she could hear what I had to say: “I am going to be a youth social media influencer.” She paused. “Mommy blogging not working out for you?”

I shook my head: “Too many duck-face selfies. It hurts my cheeks.”

“You sure you qualify as an influencer?” she asked.

I bridled. “Of course. Just this week Ben Isitt blamed his troubles on ‘conservative political forces and their agents in the corporate media.’ ” She frowned. “I thought you were a pawn of the liberal elites.”

I slapped my forehead. “It’s so hard to keep my media conspiracies straight. Honestly, slip me 50 bucks and I’ll say whatever you want.” This is the heart of influencer marketing: paying for opinion. Get somebody with a soapbox and pay them for their heartfelt endorsement of whatever you’re selling, whether that be dish soap or democracy.

It used to be enough to get celebrities to do so in what was obviously somebody else’s ad (BTW, Jell-O, what happened to those Bill Cosby commercials?) but now it’s subtler, with the endorsement woven into the influencer’s own brand, casually inserted among his or her other social media posts as though the

SLIGHTLY SKEWED JACK KNOX

sentiment were coming from the poster’s innermost soul, not wallet.

Herding your own personal flock of sheep earns good money, too. Last year, a company called Hopper HQ estimated Kylie Jenner can fetch $1 million US for a single sponsored post to her 137 million Instagram followers. Soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo can score $750,000. Justin Bieber gets $650,000.

Note that the amount Biebs fetches for a single post equals Elections Canada’s entire budget for the campaign in which those 13 influencers are meant to prod more young people to vote in October’s federal election. It’s uncertain who you would get for that kind of money. A Maple Leafs star? A Raptors benchwarmer? Somebody from Schitt’s Creek? Rene Simard?

“Put me in, coach,” I said. “I’ll do it.”

“You sure you’re best-positioned to sway Canada’s youth?” she said.

“Yes,” I replied. “I’ll do so by going in the other direction, telling them they need not bother to vote.”

This strategy capitalizes on my special gift: the anti-Midas touch. The hip factor of anything with which I associate myself automatically plunges by a good 40 per cent.

I’m pretty sure it was my adoption of the spiffy golf shirt-andkhakis combo that killed Sears

as a fashion brand. Studio 54 went under after I ducked in to use the washroom. The owner of my bike shop implored me not to wear riding kit bearing its logo; I agreed, for a fee. My form of influencer marketing is more like extortion.

This is the approach I will take with my Leave It to Dad campaign aimed at young Canadians, the idea being to alarm them into action.

“No need to cast a ballot,” will be the message. “We’ll do it for you.”

This will be conveyed through social media posts like:

• “Don’t worry about climate change and the terrifying loss of biodiversity. My generation has got it covered. Look, we banned plastic straws!”

• “Feeling so blessed to have got into the housing market before they pulled up the drawbridge. Imagine paying 7 1/2 times your family income for a home. #gratitude #I’veGotMine”

• “Super-appreciative of the government’s cautious approach to ride-hailing. On the other hand, I own two cars and am in bed by 9 pm LOL!!!”

• “So excited about the plan to bring back compulsory military service! For women, too! #gender equality #BecauseIt’s2019”

Just joking about that last one, junior. Or maybe not. Go look at the party platforms yourself to find out for sure.

As for Elections Canada, maybe it should just stay out of things and leave it to the parties to do their own influencing, to give young people reasons to get involved. That’s the best way to motivate voters: Give them something to vote for, or against.

let their imagination shape the play.

In cities, that means being prepared for and allowing play to happen everywhere, not just parks and playgrounds. We need to design inclusive and child-friendly cities where kids feel welcome everywhere and can easily access nature.

Finally, freedom: the biggest barrier to children’s ability to play the way they want to play is adults. We need to let go of our excessive fears of injuries and kidnapping and realize that the benefits of kids getting out to play far outweigh the risks. My lab developed a risk reframing tool for parents and caregivers to help them on this journey. Helping support children’s outdoor play can be as simple as opening the front door. It doesn’t have to be complicated or expensive. If we all do our bit, we can help bring back this crucial activity that should be part of all children’s daily lives, regardless of age, cultural background, gender or ability. There are lots of tools to help you get started, whether you’re a parent, caregiver, educator, city planner or a neighbour. I would encourage you to consider one simple and attainable thing you are going to do today to help get the child or children in your life get out to play.

—

Mariana Brussoni is an associate professor of pediatrics and population and public health at UBC. This article first appeared in The Conversation.

Cyberscams worry most Canadians

My company’s email address has been active for just over a year. In that span, I have received an extraordinary array of messages that echo the so-called “Nigerian scam.”

Among all of the communications I have received, one stands out from the pack. It came from a person who claimed to be the executive of an African oil-producing nation who was looking for a partner in securing the profits of a deal that had to be finalized in Bitcoin. What set this message apart was the sender’s acknowledgment that “we” would be committing a corrupt act, but he was close to retirement and had to think about his family.

Evidently, I did not reply. But the growing collection of unsolicited offers made me wonder whether I was especially targeted by possible scammers for some reason. It was time to ask a representative sample of Canadians to review if what I experienced was the norm.

Across Canada, 72 per cent of respondents to a Research Co. poll say they have received an email offering them money for their assistance or help. In British Columbia, the proportion grows to 81 per cent. Maybe I am more likely to receive these messages because of my location.

Aside from this type of message, another nuisance that can reach our inbox is “phishing.” This is what transpires when you receive an email where a person masquerades as a trustworthy entity, with logos and pictures from a bank or a store you know. When an unsuspecting person clicks on one of the supplied links (which are designed to look and feel legitimate), they go to a place that is decidedly not official and can end up giving away valuable information and money.

More than three in five Canadians (62 per cent) claim to have received “phishing” emails, with a higher incidence reported by men (68 per cent), millennials (70 per cent) and British Columbians (71 per cent).

Other issues, which are decidedly more problematic than scams and phishing, are thankfully not as prevalent.

Almost two in five Canadians (39 per cent) say their computer became infected with a virus while they were browsing the internet, 20 per cent acknowledge that their email address was hacked and four per cent say that someone

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took over their social media platform without their consent. There is a sizable gender gap on the “infection” question, with 44 per cent of men saying they “caught a virus” compared with just 34 per cent of women. This could lead to all sorts of interesting discussions about the websites that are being visited by male Canadians, especially if the computer is shared among different members of the household.

In spite of these problems, Canada is becoming more accustomed to paying for stuff online.

More than four in five Canadians say they are comfortable accessing banking information (87 per cent), shopping for goods and services (86 per cent) or commenting on forums that require their email address (82 per cent). These are extremely high numbers when compared with the skepticism that met the early years of e-commerce.

One issue finds a slightly lower level of comfort: making a charitable donation online (73 per cent). While we still see a majority of Canadians saying there’s nothing wrong with this way of helping charities, there is a 14-point gap when compared with the banking question. The level of confidence in existing online tools is currently inferior for charities – and this could ultimately end up affecting their bona fide fundraising efforts.

Still, having most Canadians express comfort with the current state of affairs does not mean that specific cyberthreats are not present.

At least seven in 10 Canadians have worried over the past couple of months about having their personal information stolen over the internet (72 per cent) as well as computers and technology being used to invade their privacy (71 per cent).

Slightly fewer residents (64 per cent) are also concerned about somebody hacking into their own computer or smartphone.

The results of this survey outline a Canadian society that is wary about cybertheft but is learning to discern fake emails from real ones. Scams are an irritant that can be dealt with easily, but that does not mean that residents are not worried about their personal information being grasped by the wrong people.

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MARIO CANSECO

Panel urges universal pharmacare

The Canadian Press

Canada’s governments have to work together to transform, rather than tinker with, a patchwork of prescription-drug plans to create a public plan for every Canadian, says the chair of the expert panel the federal Liberals named to advise them how to create a national pharmacare system.

The patchwork should be replaced by a pharmacare system much like the public health-care system, with standards set by the federal government and supported by federal funding, but administered by provincial and territorial governments, the panel said in its final report Wednesday. Individuals should still be able to get supplemental drug insurance, either on their own or through workplace benefits programs.

Dr. Eric Hoskins, Ontario’s health minister under the previous provincial Liberal government, released his council’s findings in Ottawa. The group reported that such a plan will result in savings of an estimated $5 billion annually, an average of $350 per year for each family.

Canadians spent $34 billion on prescription medicines in 2018, the report says, adding drugs are the second-biggest expenditure in health care after hospitals. The cost is growing, as well, as people live longer with chronic conditions that require medication.

“We spend even more on drugs than on doctors,” the panel report says. “On a per-capita basis, only the United States and Switzerland pay more for prescription drugs. Yet for all that spending, there are

Dr. Eric Hoskins, Chair of the Advisory Council on the Implementation of National Pharmacare, speaks during a press conference at the National Press Theatre in Ottawa on Wednesday.

huge gaps in coverage.”

It is a good time to show courage and do some “nation-building,” Hoskins said at a press conference as he put forward his plan, adding the price of doing nothing is too high.

Canada has a variety of drug plans administered by provinces, mainly for children, seniors and people on social assistance. Other plans managed by the federal government

cover other groups, such as Indigenous people and members of the military, while private insurance fills the gaps for some.

Hoskins’ panel recommended Wednesday that a new drug agency be responsible for developing a national list of prescription drugs, known as a formulary, beginning with common or so-called essential medicines by Jan. 1, 2022.

It also suggests the initial formulary ex-

pand to a “fully comprehensive formulary” no later than Jan. 1, 2027. Each government with its own smaller drug-coverage programs now does this for itself.

Speaking outside the House of Commons on Wednesday, Health Minister Ginette Petitpas Taylor said she would review the recommendations and pledged to work with provinces, territories, stakeholders and partners as Ottawa considers next steps.

One of the key questions is money.

The report calls for the federal government to work with the provincial and territorial governments to begin to implement national pharmacare as soon as possible, with a new financing agreement to be developed jointly and with Ottawa paying the additional costs governments would take on.

Hoskins’ report estimated that annual incremental costs will reach $15.3 billion in 2027. The advisory council recognizes the “very significant fiscal implications” but stressed “the issue is too important to ignore.”

The federal government also recognizes funding is going to have to be part of the equation, Petitpas Taylor said Wednesday, and it doesn’t expect provinces to foot the bill.

“If we want to put in place a national pharmacare program, the federal government has to play a leadership role but also we have to make sure that we have all provinces and territories at the table,” she said. “Does that mean it will happen all at once, that all provinces and territories will be at the table at once? Not necessarily.”

First Nations seek Northern B.C. conservation area

The Canadian Press

First Nations in northern British Columbia are calling on the provincial government to endorse an ambitious proposal for a 40,000-square-kilometre conservation area to protect major watersheds and sensitive species.

The proposal would cover the ancestral areas of three Kaska Dena First Nations and would be larger than Vancouver Island, taking up a massive section of northcentral B.C.

Premier John Horgan’s government hasn’t said whether it supports or opposes the idea after seven months of phone calls, letters and meetings with officials from various ministries, say the project’s proponents.

“They’ve never said no, but they’ve never said yes, and they’ve never said they would sit down and negotiate what it would look like. That’s all we’re asking at this point,” said David Crampton of the Dena Kayeh Institute, which is spearheading the project.

“We’re not sure why. We have no idea really what’s going on in the background of all this.”

The First Nations have applied for $4 million in federal government funding for the project, known as the Kaska Indigenous Protected and Conserved Area, and now fear it won’t receive funding because B.C. hasn’t signed on. Federal Environment Minister Catherine McKenna has been supportive, said Crampton.

“But she’s drawing her reins in a little bit because of the complacency of the provincial government, at this point, to make any kind of move at all,” he said.

The provincial and federal governments did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The plan has been more than two decades in the making. Horgan was a staff member in B.C.’s New Democrat government in the 1990s, which worked with the Kaska to create what was then one of the largest protected areas in the world, the Muskwa-Kechika Management Area.

The proposed new conservation area includes part of the MuskwaKechika.

The new area covers a vast, roadless area stretching to the Yukon border in the north, the slopes of the Rockies in the east, the Cassiar Mountains on the west, and to the Rocky Mountain Trench – between the Rockies and the Cassiar – in the south.

Crampton said the proposal was carefully designed to avoid forestry and other resource extraction areas. It lies between natural gas deposits and the Site C dam project in the east, and mining and other resource projects in the west.

In the most recent round of letters sent to various ministers,

the Kaska Dena Council explained why the conservation area would not conflict with natural resource development, said Crampton.

The council wrote to Forests Minister Doug Donaldson on May 3, saying it had come to their attention that “there is a major concern within your ministry regarding possible tensions and conflict around forestry” in the proposed protected area.

“We believe this is based on misinformation and a serious lack of understanding of our proposal in spite of our best efforts to keep both you and your officials wellinformed and well-briefed,” the letter says.

“We are worried that these concerns, never shared with us

directly, are having a negative impact on your perception of our proposal.”

The Kaska controls logging in the forests surrounding the conservation area and there isn’t any opportunity for forestry inside it, Crampton said.

As for mining, Teck Resources holds a permit that covers a southeast corner of the conservation area, but it only actively operates outside the area, Crampton said.

Teck said in a statement that it has not been contacted by the Kaska about a conservation area and would be open to discussions about their proposed plans.

The Kaska have applied for federal help from a $175-million fund designated for projects that help

Canada meet a biodiversity target of protecting 17 per cent of land and inland water by 2020. The institute completed a 78page conservation analysis, which detailed how the area is home to seven herds of northern woodland caribou, 10 major watersheds and 13 distinct ecosystems, said Corrine Porter, executive director of the Dena Kayeh Institute. Supporters also say the conservation area would create jobs for Kaska members, who could work as guides or Indigenous guardians who patrol the land.

“We want to protect it for our cultural well-being,” added Porter. “It’s just a really special area that we’d like to protect for future generations.”

Forests killed by pests, fire need protection: experts

The Canadian Press

Forests that are burned or killed by insects shouldn’t be cleaned of debris and instead need protection, a report from a conservation group says.

Hilary Cooke, a scientist with Wildlife Conservation Society Canada and co-author of the report, said the motivation for the report is the increasing interest in using biomass, or dead trees, to produce cheap energy in Yukon.

While their research focused on Yukon’s forests, it gathered lessons from similar woodlands across the country, she said.

Cooke cautioned that cleaning out such forests should be done carefully.

“There’s this perception that when a fire goes through a boreal forest we lose the trees or when the insects eat the trees that it’s a loss somehow, it’s a waste,” she said. “But in fact boreal forests are naturally evolved with this cycle of wildfire.”

The concept of “salvage” logging suggests taking trees that otherwise have no value, but even dead trees play an important role in the ecosystem and overharvesting can cause damage to habitats that are valuable for species, says the report.

Cooke said the report highlights that fire is a natural part of the life cycle and when it kills trees they become food for beetles, which are eaten by woodpeckers, which create tree cavities used by other species.

“So there’s this whole cycle that happens

with this natural disturbance process.” Yukon saw 67 wildfires covering an area of more than 856 square kilometres last year.

There were 115 wildfires in 2017 that consumed almost 4,000 square kilometres of forest and land. No one from Yukon government returned

a request for comment on the study.

The spruce bark beetle has been the most damaging forest pest in Yukon in recent decades, responsible for killing about 4,000 square kilometres of predominantly mature white spruce, the report says.

The complex relationship between natural disturbances like fire or insect outbreaks means that rather than seeing the areas as “dead zones” or places with “wasted wood,” those forests should be seen as an integral part of the boreal ecosystem that need to be treated with the same care as mature forests, the report says.

However, Cooke said climate change is altering fire regimes and ramping up insect outbreaks, which is something to contend with when thinking about regional forest management.

“We need to recognize that there are values in recently burned and beetle-killed forests just the same way there are in mature forests. And that we can’t just think of them as places to go in and clear throughout,” she said, adding that they should be managed in such a way that allows birds and plants to come back.

The first five years after a fire are the most important and forests should be left undisturbed to regenerate, she said.

“I am recommending 50 per cent of Yukon’s recently disturbed forests be protected so that those species that depend of them, those beetles and trees and woodpeckers and moose and hares so that they have the habitat,” Cooke said.

CP HANDOUT PHOTO COURTESY MAUREEN GARRITY

The Horse Ranch area of Kaska Dena traditional territories in northern British Columbia is shown in this undated photo.

CITIZEN FILE PHOTO Crews removed about 500 beetle-killed lodgepole pine trees from the Prince George Cemetery in 2007.

Blues win club’s first Stanley Cup

Jimmy GOLEN

The Associated Press

BOSTON — St. Louis goalie Jordan Binnington was waiting patiently, as NHL rookies learn to do, while the Stanley Cup was passed from teammate to teammate across the recently conquered ice of the new Boston Garden.

Thirteen Blues took their turn with the iconic trophy, raising it above their heads, lowering it for a kiss, posing for a picture.

Finally, understudy Jake Allen gave the starter a little shove, and the Game 7 star timidly skated forward to receive the Cup and cap off one of the great rookie runs in NHL history.

Binnington stopped 32 shots, and Ryan O’Reilly scored for the fourth straight game Wednesday night to lead the Blues to a 4-1 victory over Boston in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final and their first NHL championship.

Alex Pietrangelo added a goal and an assist and Brayden Schenn and Zach Sanford also scored for St. Louis, which had the worst record in the league in early January but won 30 of their final 49 regular-season games, then soared through the playoffs to reach the final for the first time since 1970.

Binnington, who was pulled from a 7-2 loss in Game 3, took a shutout into the final minutes, and the Blues were never really in danger after scoring twice in the final few minutes of the first period.

“He bounced back. We knew he would,” Pietrangelo said. “Unbelievable first period. His confidence, his swagger, his belief in

himself – unbelievable.”

Coach Craig Berube, who took over when Mike Yeo was fired in November, is the fourth coach in the past 11 years hired in midseason to lead his team to the NHL title.

“Once we pulled it together, we were tough to beat,” Berube said.

Matt Grzelcyk scored the Bruins’ only goal, and Tuukka Rask stopped 16 shots for Boston.

Boston outshot St. Louis 33-20, but the Blues went ahead at the end of the first period on goals from Reilly and Pietrangelo about

three minutes apart. The second period was scoreless, then Schenn put it out of reach with 8:35 to play and Sanford made it 4-0 before the Bruins spoiled Binnington’s bid for a shutout.

St. Louis can stop singing the blues. It’s time to play Gloria.

Returning to the site of their last appearance in the final, which ended when Bobby Orr sailed through the air after scoring the Cup winner, the Blues won for the third time in Boston this series and an NHL record-tying 10th time in

the post-season.

O’Reilly won the Conn Smythe Trophy as the MVP of the postseason. He is the first player since Wayne Gretzky to score in four consecutive Stanley Cup Final games.

Not so surprising with Gretzky, who is the NHL’s leading regularseason and playoff scorer, but O’Reilly had just three goals in his first 22 post-season games.

Boston will have to console itself with the two major sports championships it has already won

in the past year, or the dozen trophies that have been chauffeured through Boston in a parade of the city’s iconic, amphibious Duck Boats. Three of them have come at St. Louis’ expense.

“We were the underdogs the whole series. We knew that,” Pietrangelo said. “We knew people didn’t think we would have a chance but we believed in each other and that’s all that matters.”

The Bruins tried to harness all the local karma they could.

Olympic gold medallist Aly Raisman and Julian Edelman waved a banner before the game while wearing David Ortiz jerseys; the Red Sox slugger is recuperating just a mile or so away from an assassination attempt in his native Dominican Republic.

Retired Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling also was in the crowd, wearing his World Series ring and a Bruins jersey. Portable party Rob Gronkowski also made an appearance on the video board. And the Bruins responded, dominating for long stretches of time except in the way that mattered most.

The Blues had just one shot on goal heading into the final minutes of the first period, but they scored first when O’Reilly deflected a shot from Jay Bouwmeester into the net. Then with just 8 seconds left in the period and Bruins forward Brad Marchand tentative on a line change, Pietrangelo beat Rask to make it 2-0.

Bouwmeester played in 1,184 regular-season games – the third most among active players who had not gotten their names etched on the Stanley Cup.

PHOTO

St. Louis Blues’ David Perron carries the Stanley Cup after the Blues defeated the Boston Bruins in Game 7 of the NHL Stanley Cup Final on Wednesday in Boston.

St. Louis Blues’ Jaden Schwartz and Brayden Schenn mob goaltender Jordan Binnington to celebrate their win over the Boston Bruins in Game 7 of the NHL Stanley Cup Final on Wednesday in Boston.

CFL kicks off new season tonight

The Canadian Press

After an unsettled off-season, the Montreal Alouettes can look forward to the welcomed distraction of actually playing football.

The once-proud franchise is now being run by the CFL, which took over ownership May 31 from American businessman Bob Wetenhall and his son, Andrew.

The league heads into the season opener on Thursday owning one of its nine franchises amidst seemingly endless speculation regarding who’d be the club’s new owner – a group represented by former player Eric Lapointe, businessman Clifford Starke and entrepreneur Anthony Guzzo have been three of the reported candidates.

However, a league source said Monday that Montreal natives Peter and Jeffrey Lenkov head up a partnership that’s currently doing its due diligence on the club.

Peter Lenkov, 55, is a producer in Hollywood while Jeff Lenkov, 53, is a lawyer practising in California.

The source was granted anonymity because he’s not authorized to speak on the deal.

But not all of the off-season drama has come from the boardroom.

Last Saturday – less than a week before their season opener in Edmonton on Friday – the Alouettes parted way with head coach Mike Sherman with offensive co-ordinator Khari Jones assuming the top job on an interim basis.

The CFL season kicks off tonight with the Hamilton Tiger-Cats hosting the Saskatchewan Roughriders. Montreal will play its first two games on the road (Friday night in Edmonton, then June 28 in Hamilton) before facing the Ticats at Molson Stadium on July 4 in its home opener.

The opening week will conclude Saturday with a pair of games – the Ottawa Redblacks visit the defending champion Calgary Stampeders in a Grey Cup rematch while the B.C. Lions host the Winnipeg Blue Bombers.

Whoever takes over the Alouettes faces an uphill battle.

The franchise has reportedly lost $50 million since Bob Wetenhall bought it in 1997, including $25 million the past three years and $12.5 million in 2018.

Montreal last won the Grey Cup in 2010 and hasn’t made the playoffs since going 9-9 in 2014.

The CFL has steadfastly refused to discuss specifics regarding any proposed sale of the Alouettes. Commissioner Randy Ambrosie has said there’s no definite timetable regarding a deal for the Alouettes, adding it’s more important the best agreement be reached and not the fastest.

Here are some other key storylines heading into the season:

Defending champions

It’s said the only constant in pro sports is change, and that certainly applies to the Grey Cup-champion Stampeders and East Division-winning Redblacks.

Calgary’s biggest off-season move was retaining quarterback Bo Levi Mitchell, the CFL’s outstanding player last season. Following numerous NFL workouts and being courted by the Toronto Argonauts in free agency, Mitchell signed a four-year deal with the Stampeders reportedly worth $2.8 million.

Calgary also re-signed the likes of offensive lineman Shane Bergman, receivers Eric Rogers, Kamar Jorden and Juwan Brescacin, defensive back Brandon Smith, linebacker Cory Greenwood and defensive lineman Cordarro Law.

But the Stampeders will shoot for a fourth straight Grey Cup appearance minus a host of familiar faces, including defensive coordinator DeVone Claybrooks (head coach, B.C.), safety Tunde Adeleke and defensive lineman Ja’Gared Davis (both to Hamilton as free agents), receiver DaVaris Daniels (Edmonton, free agent), offensive lineman Spencer Wilson (Montreal, free agent), receiver Lemar Durant (B.C., free agent),

defensive back Ciante Evans (Montreal, free agent), defensive lineman Micah Johnson (Saskatchewan, free agent) and linebacker Alex Singleton (Philadelphia, NFL).

As for Ottawa, the defending East Division champions saw quarterback Trevor Harris (Edmonton), running back William Powell (Saskatchewan), receiver Greg Ellingson (Edmonton), defensive lineman AC Leonard (Saskatchewan), defensive back Rico Murray (Hamilton) and offensive lineman SirVincent Rogers (Edmonton) all depart via free agency.

And on April 1, offensive co-ordinator Jaime Elizondo resigned to reportedly join the XFL’s Tampa Bay franchise.

Since posting a 2-16 record in its inaugural ‘14 season, Ottawa has been to the CFL playoffs four straight years.

It has finished atop the East Division three times and appeared in three Grey Cup games, winning in 2016.

New faces

Four teams will sport new starting quarterback this season. Mike Reilly returned to B.C. this off-season, signing a four-year, $2.9-million deal in free agency following six years with Edmonton.

Reilly began his CFL career with the Lions in 2011.

Edmonton responded by signing Harris through 2020 to a reported average salary of $525,000 in free agency.

Reilly’s return to B.C. spelled the end of Jonathon Jennings’ time with the Lions. He signed as a free agent with Ottawa, where he’ll start the season backing up Dominique Davis.

James Franklin opens as Toronto’s starter after veteran Ricky Ray, who missed most of last season with a neck injury, retired to end his illustrious CFL career.

And in Montreal, Antonio Pipkin has secured the No. 1 job following the off-season departure of Johnny Manziel.

Claybrooks is one of four new CFL head coaches as he replaces the legendary Wally Buono, who retired after the ‘18 season to cap a 46-year tenure as a player, coach and executive.

But Claybooks also has a solid resume. Calgary’s defence allowed the fewest points in the league over his three seasons as defensive co-ordinator and like Buono, he is a former player, having spent 11 seasons as a defensive tackle in the NFL, NFL Europe and CFL.

Claybrooks also earned a Super Bowl ring in ‘03 with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

The Saskatchewan Roughriders promoted veteran special-teams co-ordinator Craig Dickenson to head coach after Chris Jones

left to take a job with the NFL’s Cleveland Browns.

Dickenson’s brother, Dave, is the head coach in Calgary. Corey Chamblin returns to Toronto as its head coach after serving as defensive co-ordinator during the club’s 2017 Grey Cup run. Chamblin has previous CFL headcoaching experience with Saskatchewan, leading the Riders to the 2013 Grey Cup title.

In Hamilton, Orlondo Steinauer begins his first season as the Tiger-Cats’ head coach.

International intrigue

CFL rosters will have an international flavour this year as each team will carry one global player and two in 2020. That will boost game-day rosters to 46.

It’s all part of Ambrosie’s CFL 2.0 initiative to grow the Canadian game internationally. Since November, Ambrosie has secured partnerships with nine football federations (Italy, Mexico, Germany, Austria, France, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland). That has allowed CFL teams to work out their players and conduct separate drafts of Mexican and European talent.

The CFL announced a Mexican television deal on Wednesday.

Suspects arrested in Ortiz shooting

Six suspects, including the alleged gunman, have been detained in the shooting of former Red Sox star David Ortiz, the Dominican Republic’s chief prosecutor said Wednesday.

A seventh suspect was also being pursued in the shooting, which witnesses said was carried out by two men on a motorcycle and two other groups of people in cars, the Dominican Republic’s chief prosecutor, Jean Alain Rodriguez, told a news conference.

Authorities gave the name of the alleged shooter as Rolfy Ferreyra, aka Sandy. Authorities have declined to give a motive for the shooting at a popular Santo Domingo bar Sunday night.

Police Maj. Gen. Ney Aldrin Bautista Almonte said the coordinator of the attack was offered 400,000 Dominican pesos, or about $7,800, to carry out the shooting. He said the alleged coordinator was among the suspects in custody. Prosecutors have said the two men on the motorcycle were seen on security camera footage talk-

ing with other people in a gray Hyundai Accent and in another Hyundai in a nearby street before the shooting.

Meanwhile, in Boston, Ortiz’s wife said in statement that the former Red Sox slugger was able to sit up and take some steps as he recuperates in the intensive care unit at Massachusetts General Hospital.

“His condition is guarded, and he will remain in the ICU for the coming days, but he is making good progress toward recovery,” Tiffany Ortiz said in the statement.

Dominican prosecutors said in a court document that one of the suspects, Oliver Moises Mirabal Acosta, was seen driving the Accent before mounting a motorcycle driven by 25-year-old Eddy Vladimir Feliz Garcia.

“In one of the videos it was possible to observe both the accused and the shooter planning the commission of the incident right on Octavio Mejia Ricard Street, which is parallel to the place where the event took place,” prosecutors said in the court document. The document also revealed ineptitude, saying motorcycle driver, Feliz Garcia, was captured after he

skidded and fell off his bike as the pair tried to flee.

Enraged fans captured Feliz Garcia and beat him bloody before handing him over to police. Mirabal Acosta was captured Tuesday night in the town of Mao in the northern Dominican Republic.

Feliz Garcia’s lawyer said his client, who has been charged with being an accomplice to attempted murder, is an innocent motorcycle taxi driver who had no idea his passenger was going to commit a crime.

“He didn’t know what they were going to do. He’s a fan of David’s,” the attorney, Deivi Solano, said Tuesday.

The 43-year-old Ortiz frequently travels to Santo Domingo, where his father and a sister live. The former Red Sox great was active on the social scene there, hitting nightspots with friends who included TV personalities and Dominican reggaeton musicians.

Beloved in his hometown, Ortiz travelled the dangerous streets of the Dominican capital with little or no security, trusting his fans to protect him, according to friends.

CP PHOTO

B.C. Lions quarterback Mike Reilly attends a media availability at the teams training facility in Surrey on May 14. Mike Reilly may be the biggest name added to the B.C. Lions roster this off-season, but the marquee quarterback is just one piece in a wave of change for the club.

The Associated Press

Tellez slam helps Blue Jays beat Orioles

David GINSBURG The Associated Press

BALTIMORE — Rowdy Tellez hit a grand slam to cap a six-run fifth inning, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. had three hits and the Toronto Blue Jays beat the Baltimore Orioles 8-6 Wednesday night to end a five-game losing streak.

Lourdes Gurriel Jr. had two RBIs for the Blue Jays, who matched their run total from the previous five games combined.

Toronto sent nine batters to the plate in the fifth, scoring on an infield single and a wild pitch before Tellez sent a 2-2 pitch from Miguel Castro over the right-field scoreboard. It was the second grand slam of the season for the rookie, who had gone hitless in his previous 11 at-bats.

Trey Mancini homered for the Orioles, who won the series opener and were trying to put together back-to-back victories for the first time since May 4-6.

Baltimore used a four-run eighth to cut into an 8-2 deficit but could not complete the comeback.

Pitching in his 400th career game, Edwin Jackson (1-4) allowed two runs in five innings of relief for Toronto. The 35-year-old was initially listed as the starter, but manager Charlie Montoyo switched to opener Derek Law so the struggling Jackson could avoid facing the top of the Baltimore batting order at the outset.

Law pitched a scoreless first inning before giving way to Jackson, who came in with an 11.90 ERA over five starts.

Daniel Hudson quelled Baltimore’s uprising in the eighth and earned his first save by getting three straight outs after the Orioles put runners on second and third.

Baltimore starter David Hess (1-9) gave up four runs and five hits in four-plus innings. He’s winless in 12 starts since beating Toronto on April 1.

The game drew 11,153 fans, many of whom departed after it started to rain in the seventh.

Baltimore’s major league-worst home record fell to 9-24. Toronto ended a seven-

game road skid and improved the AL’s second-worst road record to 12-21.

Trainer’s room

Blue Jays: Toronto closer Ken Giles (1-1, 1.08 ERA, 11 saves) was placed on the 10day injured list, retroactive to June 9, with elbow inflammation. Montoyo expects the right-hander’s stint on the IL to be a short one.

Orioles: Manager Brandon Hyde said the

decision to shut down RHP Alex Cobb for season-ending hip surgery did not come abruptly. “I knew it was a possibility. Obviously we want what’s best for Alex, and we want Alex healthy,” said Hyde, who expects Cobb to be ready for spring training.

The Blue Jays filled Giles’ roster spot by purchasing the contract of right-handed reliever Jordan Romano from Triple-A Buffalo. Romano pitched a scoreless seventh inning to become the 28th Canadian-born player in Blue Jays history and 13th to make

his

Up next

Blue Jays: Marcus Stroman (3-8, 3.31 ERA) makes his 15th start of the

is 4-5 lifetime vs. Baltimore.

Orioles: Gabriel Ynoa (0-2, 4.96) resumes his quest to earn his first win since Sept. 21, 2017. The right-hander has never faced Toronto.

McIntosh proves Devils’ difference-maker

Ted CLARKE Citizen staff tclarke@pgcitizen.ca

Jake McIntosh arrived at just the right time for the Westwood Pub Devils. Missing some of their big guns Sunday afternoon when they took on the Northland Nissan Assault Sunday in a Prince George Senior Lacrosse Association game, McIntosh brought his cannon to Kin 1 to make up for it.

In his first PGSLA game in two seasons since he left to play junior A lacrosse in Delta, the 19-yearold McIntosh blasted out seven goals in a 16-4 spanking of the Assault.

A former midget callup for the Devils, McIntosh reintroduced himself to his teammates when he scored their first three goals to erase a 2-1 deficit by the midway mark of the first period. When the shooting finally stopped, the Devils had their 12th win in 12 tries this season, having launched 60 shots on Assault goalie Russill Mills. McIntosh left the floor with seven goals and an assist.

He returned to Prince George last week after choosing to leave the B.C. Junior Lacrosse Associa-

tion, where he was in his second season playing for the Delta Islanders. In 16 games dating back to last season, he scored seven goals and had 14 assists for 21 points. He had three assists in two games this season.

“I just decided I wanted to come home and I want to play lacrosse because I love it,” said McIntosh.

“Hopefully I can keep performing like I did today.

“It was a good group of guys (in Delta) but I just didn’t feel I wanted to play at the next level this year. I want to work and make some money because I’m going to school next year (to study firefighting at the Justice Institute of B.C. in New Westminster).”

McIntosh hopes to return to junior A next year.

“It’s a lot faster in that league and there’s no room for mistakes, he said. “It’s the next level, and if you want to go professional that’s the league you want to play in.”

Assault captain Doug Porter grew up playing minor lacrosse with Jake and he’d much rather see him playing for Northland.

“I’ve played with Jake since we were six and he’s always been a great player, it’s nice to see him back here playing,” said Porter.

“He’s always been a great outside shooter and he can move and create space and he’s a good passer. He’s always dangerous out there. They just took it to us.”

After months of playing or practicing with his junior team six days a week, McIntosh has his six-foot, 180-pound body in great shape and that became all too obvious to the Assault players who could only watch as he used his speed to roll free of his check and lead rushes. His relentless hustle forced turnovers or loose-ball scoops he turned into scoring plays with his hard, quick and accurate shot.

“He’s grown up a lot,” said

teammate James McIntosh, Jake’s cousin. “He’s got a different presence and a different speed to him, just the way he sees the game makes everybody better. It’s going to be great to have him back.” It was natural choice for McIntosh to play for the Devils. His dad Blake was a longtime captain of the team and his uncle Kyle, Blake’s brother, also suited up as a Devil. His grandfather Neil coached and played for the Devils and Jake’s great-uncle Ken is also a former Devil player.

“My whole family played for this team so I want to play for the Devils,” said Jake.

“I’ve known most of these guys since I was three years old, watching them over the years, so I’ve grown pretty close with them.

“We want to win (senior C) provincials this year because it’s here. Hopefully we’ll get more guys out (to play). We’re missing four key guys.”

The Devils were without PGSLA scoring leader Andrew Schwab, who was in Vancouver after getting engaged, and they did not have the services of defencemen Scott Anderson and Jeff Moleski and forward Danton Nicholson.

The Assault was also short-

staffed without leading scorer Dave Jenkins, Clarke Anderson and none of their other righthanded shooters were available. They lost sniper Matt Rochon midway through the game when he suffered a rib injury. James McInstosh finished with two goals and an assist, as did Nolan Bayliss. Luis Enes had a six-point game with a goal and five assists. Porter led his team offensively with two goals and two assists.

Jamie Bellamy and Steven Brizan, who played the third period, combined to make 24 saves in goal for the Devils.

In other PGSLA results Saturday, the Devils beat the RPR Mechanical/JR Construction Bandits 7-5 and the Mackenzie Conifex Power Lumberjacks topped the Assault 14-9. A scheduled Sunday morning game between Mackenzie and the Quesnel Summit Electric Crossfire was forfeited when the Crossfire had only three shooters and a goalie. It was the second game this season Quesnel has been forced to forfeit due to insufficient numbers.

In a game on Wednesday, the Devils won 7-2 after the Assault forfeited after the first period.

MCINTOSH

major league debut with Toronto.

season in the series finale. He

AP PHOTO

Toronto Blue Jays player Rowdy Tellez follows through on a grand slam against the Baltimore Orioles during the fifth inning of a game on Wednesday in Baltimore.

Farm plan targets carbon emissions

The Washington Post

Last month carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere surpassed 415 parts per million, the highest in human history. Environmental experts say the world is increasingly on a path toward a climate crisis.

The most prominent efforts to prevent that crisis involve reducing carbon emissions. But another idea is also starting to gain traction – sucking all that carbon out of the atmosphere and storing it underground.

It sounds like an idea plucked from science fiction, but the reality is that trees and plants already do it, breathing carbon dioxide and then depositing it via roots and decay into the soil. That’s why consumers and companies often “offset” their carbon emissions by planting carbon-sucking trees elsewhere in the world.

But an upstart company, Boston-based Indigo AG, now wants to transform farming practices so that agriculture becomes quite the opposite of what it is today – a major source of greenhouse gas emissions.

By promoting techniques that increase the potential of agricultural land to suck in carbon, the backers of Indigo AG believe they can set the foundation for a major effort to stem climate change. On Wednesday, the company announced a new initiative with the very ambitious goal of removing one trillion tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by paying farmers to modify their practices.

Called the Terraton Initiative (a “teraton” is a trillion tons), the company forecasts that the initiative to sign up 3,000 farmers globally with more than one million acres in 2019.

David Perry, the company’s chief executive, says he has lined up a group of buyers who will purchase carbon credits, from nonprofits to consumer-focused food companies who could claim their products are not merely carbon neutral, but carbon negative. Farmers will be given training and tools to institute what are known as “regenerative” practices. Indigo scientists will test soil samples for carbon content and farmers will be paid accordingly.

“It’s completely outcome-based. We don’t really care how you get there. There’s no requirement to be big or small, organic or conventional.”

At the core is the idea that plants breathe, and through the process of photosynthesis turn carbon dioxide from the atmosphere into sugars that become leaves, stems and roots. When a plant dies, decay brings organic material, a component of which is large carbon-based molecules called humic acids, into the soil and binds them to the soil’s molecules. Thus the carbon is

“captured” underground. The healthier and more fertile the soil, the more carbon it can store.

The Rodale Institute, a major agricultural think tank, predicts that more than 100 per cent of current annual global carbon emissions could be captured with a switch to widely available and inexpensive farming practices – such as not turning the soil over through tilling or plowing; replanting with cover crops after a main crop has been harvested; and rotating through different crops to put a range of nutrients back in the ground.

Merely planting trees won’t get the world very far. Large and slower-growing trees can sequester more carbon than smaller plants, but the world faces dramatic deforestation and has enormous agricultural needs. Farming seems like a practical focus for how to mitigate growing atmospheric carbon.

Whether they can get to one trillion tons of carbon is unknown, Perry says, but this represents one of the largest agricultural experiments lately, with software and satellite tools available to every farmer who signs up. The goal is to find out which crops, practices and geographic locations have the ability to drive more carbon into the soil.

To start, Indigo will pay farmers $15 per ton of carbon, using venture capital raised by the company.

Some farmers have already embraced the techniques. Russell Hedrick, a regenerative grower who farms non-GMO and heirloom corn, soy, barley, oats and triticale in Hickory, N.C. has been measuring the carbon in his 1,000 acres and the best he’s ever done

is 1.5 tons per acre.

He says the Indigo incentives could prove strong, especially at a time when farm bankruptcies are high and crop prices are sagging.

Hedrick says that in 2018, the average American farmer lost about $60 per acre before subsidies, and made just $20 per acre after federal subsidies. So, if a farmer can put a ton and a half of carbon in each acre of soil and get paid by Indigo, they could double their profits.

“For me that would be $22 per acre, and we farm close to 1,000 acres,” he said. “This is $22,000 for doing what I’m already doing. That’s pretty huge to me as a farmer.”

Hedrick, a first-generation farmer, learned these practices from books and online videos from regenerative farmers. He doesn’t till or plow, and he plants a cover crop within 10 days of harvesting a cash crop like corn or soy, mostly small grains with roots that can go down six feet and reduce soil compaction and help retain moisture.

Indigo is not the first organization to encourage farmers to prioritize putting carbon back in the soil. Iowa farmers tried it in the 1990s and the California Healthy Soils Initiative has an incentives program that funds farmers who use practices like compost application, mulching, no-till and cover cropping.

What makes Indigo’s initiative different is the scale of the project and its multipronged approach, according to Mark Bradford, an expert in soil and ecosystem science at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies.

Proteins essential to life

ood.

FIt is fair to say we all think about food sometime during the day. It is essential for life – although not as essential as water or air. You can last a few weeks without food but only a few days without water and only a few minutes without air.

Nutritionally, food consists of five major components – fats, proteins, carbohydrates, vitamins, and minerals.

Carbohydrates include sugars, starch, and cellulose or fibre which are all essential for life. Carbohydrates provide the energy upon which our cells run.

Fats come in several forms and are an abundant source of calories – more than twice as many calories per gram than either carbohydrates or proteins. This is why we and most other organisms are genetically programmed to seek out fatty food. We can get more life sustaining energy out of a single serving.

Vitamins are a very specific and select set of molecules which we need to obtain from our diet. They are vital for good health and

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prevent diseases such as scurvy, pellagra, and beri-beri. Minerals are found in our bones but also in our nerves, cells and intercellular fluid. Minerals include the iron found in hemoglobin which transports oxygen and allows us to exist.

But if you have watched any cooking show over the past few years, you would think food is all about “the proteins.” Gordon Ramsay or one of the other judges on Masterchef will frequently ask “what is the protein?” or make a comment about the protein being the star of the dish.

We do have a bit of an obsession with protein. As a vegetarian, I am frequently asked how I get enough protein in my diet. It is easy as protein is in every living cell. Pretty much every food contains protein – even a banana. Protein is not restricted to meat.

The word protein derives from the Greek word “protos” which means first and “proteios” which means primary. Proteins were considered the essential or primary substance in food during the mid-nineteenth century during the development of nutritional science.

Proteins represent a class of organic polymeric compounds built from a series of amino acids. Depending upon where you look in the tree of life, there are 20, 21, or 22 amino acids in play. In our bodies, we generally recognize 20 amino acids of which nine are essential. (Essential means we must obtain them from our diet as our bodies can’t synthesize them.)

Protein molecules represent one of the most abundant molecules in living systems. Everything from hormones to neurotransmitters to muscle fibres to molecular manufacturing facilities are built from complex arrangements of proteins.

A key feature of proteins is their shape.

It is not so much which amino acids are linked together to form a peptide chain which determines

“In soil science, there are all these initiatives to rebuild carbon in soil. The problem is measurement and verification – how do we make this economically and logistically feasible?” he said. “What I’m impressed by is (Indigo) has data science PhDs and they’re trying to do peer-reviewable, credible science.”

That said, Bradford says the scientific community has far from a consensus on whether this is the right approach. Some wonder if it is feasible to change farmer practices to such an extent and whether herculean efforts will result in meaningful atmospheric carbon reductions. Other scientists worry that a focus on carbon in soil will redirect attention away from minimizing greenhouse gas emissions. And still others think that building up carbon could produce more nitrous oxide gas, which is even more warming than carbon dioxide.

“No one has the models or the data to determine who is right yet,” Bradford said. “We have a lack of measurements. (Indigo is) doing the work on the ground to ask if this is feasible.”

Perry says that while most farmers are sustainability-minded, it’s hard to ask them to make sacrifices to sequester carbon for the good of the planet, especially in the face of so many other financial and climatic challenges. Paying them to make this a priority, he says, is the answer.

“It is the only action we can take today whose impact matches the scale of the problem,” he said. “Instead of reducing the speed at which we approach the climate cliff... this enables us to start backing away from the climate cliff entirely.”

what a protein does as the shape or structure the peptide chain adopts. Of course, the shape is determined by the amino acids in the protein chain so it really is the combination which gives rise to function.

The last few weeks, we have been talking about cellular communication and the role chemical compounds play in conveying information between cells. While some of the neurotransmitters are small protein chains, all of the receptor sites on the receiving neuron are proteins and must have a shape complimentary to the neurotransmitter or hormone to which they bind.

Proteins represent the “lock” in the “lock-and-key” mechanism operation in cell membranes throughout the body but particularly in neurons. And the reason some substances, such as illicit drugs, have such a powerful effect is because their shape almost exactly matches the receptor site’s structure. In effect, drugs are skeleton keys able to activate a receptor.

With 20 amino acids and typically 200 to 300 amino acids in a

protein, any protein chain encodes a lot of information. In the early part of the 20th century, many biologists believed proteins must contain the hereditary factors. It was proteins and not DNA providing the blueprint for cells.

The reasoning went a little further as DNA had only four letters with which to spell instructions (A, C, G, T). How could something so simple spell out the instructions for something so complex as a protein chain?

The answer lay in codons consisting of not one but three DNA nucleotides. With four nucleotides and three in each codon, there are total of 64 (4 x 4 x 4) possibilities. A few codons signal stop but there are 61 which signal for one of the 20 amino acids leading to redundancy. For example, alanine is indicated by the codons GCA, GCC, GCG, and GCT. The important portion is the leading GC. Essentially, DNA codes for proteins.

And proteins make all of the other components essential for life with the exception of minerals. It is no wonder they are considered to be of prime importance.

A crop farmer plants corn for the first time of the season in 2011.

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Vancouver shipyard loses icebreaker job

The Canadian Press

The federal government has quietly taken construction of the coast guard’s next heavy icebreaker away from Vancouver shipyard Seaspan, the latest in a string of upheavals in Canada’s multibillion-dollar shipbuilding strategy.

The government says no decision has been made on where the vessel will be built, but the move has nonetheless left Seaspan Shipbuilding’s bitter rival in Quebec salivating after years of intense lobbying for the project.

Seaspan was tapped in 2011 to build the icebreaker, called the CCGS John G. Diefenbaker, as part of a larger order that also included four science vessels for the coast guard and two navy supply ships.

But Fisheries Minister Jonathan Wilkinson’s office says the icebreaker has been removed from the Vancouver shipyard’s order book and replaced with 16 smaller vessels the government announced it was buying last month.

The government “made the deci-

The markets today

TORONTO (CP) — North American stock markets fell midweek on escalating trade tensions over a trade deal with China and crude oil prices hitting their lowest level in nearly five months.

“The appetite for risky assets remained elusive Wednesday and investors remained on edge as U.S.-China trade tensions came back in full focus,” says Candice Bangsund, portfolio manager for Fiera Capital.

Among the drivers of investor concerns were comments from U.S. President Donald Trump that he won’t make a deal with China unless Beijing agrees to four or five major points. It’s still unclear if negotiations will reconvene at the upcoming G20 Summit in Japan with Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross saying that even if they do a formal accord is unlikely at this event.

The S&P/TSX composite index closed down 21.52 points to 16,227.24.

Eight of the 11 major sectors were up led by materials, technology and telecommunications.

However, the heavyweight energy and financials sectors were lower.

Energy fell 1.3 per cent as the July crude contract was down US$2.13 at US$51.14 per barrel, the lowest level since Jan. 14. The July natural gas contract was down 1.3 cents at US$2.39 per mmBTU.

Crude prices decreased on a jump in U.S. oil inventories and an uncertain demand outlook due to the tenuous trade backdrop. That sent Encana Corp. down 6.6 per cent, followed by Crescent Point Energy Corp.

The Department of Energy said U.S. inventories rose to their highest level since mid-2017 on the back of record production. Domestic crude stockpiles increased last week by 2.2 million barrels. Analysts had forecast a decrease of 481,000 barrels.

Financials fell led by a 2.4 per cent drop by Power Financial Corp. as softer-than-expected U.S. inflation numbers reinforced calls for the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates, which spilled over to Canadian bond markets.

The Canadian dollar was trading at an average of 75.17 cents US compared with an average of 75.37 cents US on Tuesday. Materials was higher as the August gold contract was up US$5.60 at US$1,336.80 an ounce and the July copper contract was down 1.75 cents at US$2.65 a pound.

sion to substitute the one polar icebreaker with a long run of 16 multipurpose vessels,” Wilkinson’s spokeswoman Jocelyn Lubczuk said in an email.

“Given the importance of icebreaking capacity, the government is exploring other options to ensure the (icebreaker) is built in the most efficient manner, but no decisions have been taken.”

Specifically, said Lubczuk, the government is still weighing where the vessel will be built, though she insisted Ottawa is committed to the ship. Its $1.3-billion budget is currently under review as well.

Seaspan officials did not respond to requests for comment.

A spokesman for Davie Shipbuilding, Seaspan’s competitor in Quebec, was practically crowing with excitement on Wednesday, suggesting it was a forgone conclusion where the icebreaker will be built.

“We are the only shipyard that can deliver it,” said Davie spokesman Frederik Boisvert. “I’m just

stating the obvious. We’ve got the capacity, we’ve got a very robust supply chain that can deliver it on time and on budget.”

Getting the deal would be a huge win for the Quebec shipyard.

Davie first started lobbying Ottawa for the icebreaker contract in 2013 and has kept up the pressure even as Seaspan and the federal government have struggled to deliver ships through the shipbuilding plan.

The Diefenbaker was originally supposed to be delivered in 2017, but that was before various scheduling conflicts, technical problems and other issues scuttled that timeline.

The current schedule is now in limbo even though the icebreaker it is expected to replace, the CCGS Louis S. St-Laurent, is already more than 50 years old.

The Louis S. St-Laurent is in drydock at Davie, where it is undergoing a life extension, which Boisvert pointed to as proof of the company’s expertise and ability to build the Diefenbaker.

The shipyard in Levis, Que., just outside Quebec City, is also in the midst of converting three secondhand icebreakers for the coast guard.

A decision on where the Diefenbaker will be built is not expected until the government picks a third shipyard for its national shipbuilding plan, which it has said is necessary to meet the needs of the navy and coast guard in time.

The government has said it plans to hold a “competitive process” to select that yard, but many observers believe the deck is stacked in Davie’s favour.

University of Calgary professor Rob Huebert, an expert on the Arctic and coast guard, said Canada “needed medium and large icebreakers yesterday,” and moving the Diefenbaker project and adding a new yard could help.

But he also expressed concerns about the amount of uncertainty now surrounding the icebreaker and national shipbuilding plan, and questioned whether it would actually deliver icebreakers faster.

Zuckerberg target of fake video

The Associated Press

Three weeks after Facebook refused to remove a doctored video of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi slurring her words, Mark Zuckerberg is getting a taste of his own medicine: fake footage showing him gloating over his oneman domination of the world.

It’s the latest flap over deviously altered “deepfake” videos as Facebook and other social media services struggle to stop the spread of misinformation and “fake news” while also respecting free speech and fending off allegations of censorship.

The somewhat crude video of the Facebook CEO, created as part of an art project and circulated on Facebook-owned Instagram over the past few days, combines news footage of Zuckerberg with phoney audio.

“Imagine this for a second, one man with total control over billions of people’s stolen data, all their secrets, their lives, their futures,” Zuckerberg seemingly intones in a voice that does not sound very much like Zuckerberg’s. “I owe it all to Spectre. Spectre showed me that whoever controls the data controls the future.”

(Spectre is the evil organization in the James Bond movies.)

The video was created by artists Bill Post-

“Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising.” — Mark Twain Call 250-562-2441

ers and Daniel Howe with help from artificial intelligence companies and displayed over the past week or so at an art show in Britain on the influence of technology.

Posters also put the footage on Instagram and Vimeo.

Posters said he targeted Zuckerberg as “one person governing control of 2 billion people’s personal private data. He’s at the centre of the debate that asks questions whether that is a safe place for our data to be.”

When the Pelosi video turned up on Facebook, the social network said it did not violate any of its policies. Pelosi criticized Facebook at the time for leaving the video up. Zuckerberg tried to reach out to her to explain the situation, but she did not take his call, according to a person familiar with the matter who was not authorized to discuss it and spoke on condition of anonymity. Facebook and Pelosi’s office declined to comment Wednesday.

Facebook said the Zuckerberg video likewise doesn’t violate its Instagram policies and will be left up.

“We will treat this content the same way we treat all misinformation on Instagram,” the company said in a statement.

Facebook does not prohibit false information from being shared on Instagram or its main

Facebook service. If third-party fact checkers flag an item on the main service as false, the company “downranks” it to make it more difficult to find. Facebook has been testing a way to extend that approach to Instagram.

The Associated Press is working with Facebook as part of an ongoing effort to fact-check misinformation that is shared widely online.

The Zuckerberg video uses a form of artificial intelligence in which a computer is fed image and audio files of a person to learn how to mimic his or her facial expressions. An actor supplies the voice, and the computer then syncs up the image with the sound.

Last year, in another case of altered footage, the White House tweeted what an expert determined was a speeded-up video of CNN reporter Jim Acosta that made him look more aggressive than he actually was when an intern tried to take his microphone as he was asking U.S. President Donald Trump a question. Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives said that even though the Zuckerberg video is an art piece and not actual disinformation meant to deceive, it highlights the challenges of policing content on Facebook and Instagram.

“It just shows that it is still an uphill battle for the company as they try to rectify these issues that continue to plague the platform,” he said.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies before a joint hearing of the Commerce and Judiciary Committees on Capitol Hill in Washington in April 2018.

Dickerson finds bliss with Yours

The Washington Post

It’s easy to lose track of the days when you’re a country singer who spends most of your time on the road, but Russell Dickerson always knows when it’s Saturday – his Instagram and Twitter notifications inevitably start blowing up as his debut single and biggest hit, Yours, starts playing at weddings for a happy couple’s first dance.

“I get chills just thinking about it,” Dickerson, 32, said during a recent interview in Nashville. “It’s such a common thing now. Wedding season is in full swing, and I’m excited to look every Saturday: ‘Who’s getting married today?!’”

In 2016, the Knot named Yours (which he co-wrote with Parker Welling and Casey Brown) one of the hottest wedding songs of the year. The success of the love-struck ballad, inspired by Dickerson’s relationship with his wife, Kailey, helped make him a breakout star – which is still somewhat surreal to him, as he spent years being turned down by Nashville labels.

When he signed a record deal in late 2016, it became a near-constant grind, especially as he embarked on a radio tour during the week and then opened for other artists on the weekends. He guesses that in 2017, he was home for “about 40 days.”

“My body was so exhausted, but my spirit was so alive because my dreams were coming true,” Dickerson said. “Like, so many years of just no one caring, and then, holy crap, these radio stations playing my song, I finally got signed, I have a whole radio team working to get the entire world to hear this song. And so my spirit – that’s just what kept me going.”

These days, the schedule has become a bit easier. His radio tour paid off big time, as Yours and sophomore single Blue Tacoma both hit No. 1. His third single, Every Little Thing, is currently in the mid-20s on the airplay charts. Between dates opening for Thomas Rhett this summer, he’s headed back in the studio in July to record his second album.

Dickerson was always well-versed in the ups and downs of a country music career; he grew up in Nashville and attended Belmont University, a popular choice for aspiring singer-songwriters. He met two guys a couple years ahead of him in school named Tyler Hubbard and Brian Kelley. The three of them would write songs together, even before Hubbard and Kelley decided to become Florida Georgia Line. FGL’s smashCruise launched their career in 2012, and now, Dickerson is especially grateful to have close friends who know how the industry works.

“We’ve all spent less time together, but this whole journey has definitely brought us closer. Because you just get it,” he said. “As much as you want to tell your best friends from college what you’re going through, no

one understands it like someone who’s been right there doing the same thing you are.”

Dickerson wrote songs and played venues around town while trying to get a record deal, he also self-released his music online. In July 2015, he posted a music video for Yours, directed by Kailey, on YouTube. The song took off on Spotify (it currently has more than 150 million streams) and eventually was noticed by SiriusXM’s The

Highway.

The next year, Dickerson was the first singer signed to Triple Tigers, an independent record label. It wound up being an ideal home, as the staff had lots of time to devote to pushing his single to radio; the label has since signed two more acts, Scotty McCreery and Gone West, a new country quartet with Colbie Caillat.

While Dickerson admits he felt a bit of

pressure as the flagship artist, he tried to “turn that pressure into excitement – just to prove everybody wrong who turned me down for seven years,” he joked.

“I’m never one to be like, ‘Ha ha, told you so,’” he said, adding that executives from labels that rejected him are “super kind” and “very congratulatory” about his recent success. “They weren’t in a place to sign me then. And it’s all good. I found my people.”

Netflix unveils partnerships with Indigenous groups

The Canadian Press

Netflix has announced new partnerships with three Indigenous cultural organizations in Canada to help foster and develop screen talent.

The partnerships with imagineNATIVE, the Indigenous Screen Office, and Wapikoni Mobile were revealed Tuesday night at the Banff World Media Festival.

The initiative is part of a $25-million commitment Netflix made in September 2017 to invest in market development activities aimed at supporting the next generation of Canadian creators over five years.

These new agreements bring to 14 the total number of partnerships that have been inked as part of that commitment, which focuses on underserved communities, including Indigenous, women and francophone creators.

In a phone interview, Netflix’s public policy director for Canada, Stephane Cardin, wouldn’t reveal the financial details of the agreements. He said the company works with each partner to ensure the amount of funding they receive is sufficient for them to accomplish their objectives.

In a statement, imagineNATIVE executive director Jason Ryle said the partnership with Netflix “marks one of the largest sponsorships in imagineNATIVE’s history.” Cardin said while Netflix would want to hear about any projects that might come out of the partnerships, the company doesn’t have anything built into the contracts concerning so-called “firstlook” or “right of first refusal” deals that would give the company an exclusive on productions. The partnerships with the Indigenous organizations complement each other and will support Indigenous creators across Canada, he said.

“For us it really is a testament to two things: One, that we have a long-term view and commitment to Canada and recognizing the strength of its creative commu-

nity. We want to help foster some emerging talent,” Cardin said.

“And the second is really the fact that we believe that not just our company and our workforce, but also our service and our content are better and stronger when they reflect the diversity of our membership, and I think that is reflected in all the partnerships that we’ve signed.”

The agreement with imagineNATIVE – an organization that has its own institute and holds an annual film festival in Toronto – will involve six distinct activities aimed at Indigenous screenwriters, directors and producers. Those activities will include Indigenous producers’ and directors’ labs.

The agreement with the Indigenous Screen Office will provide “second-phase support” for Indigenous projects, including key creative apprenticeships and cultural mentorships for directors, producers, screenwriters and showrunners.

Under the deal with Montrealbased Wapikoni Mobile – an organization that travels to Indigenous communities across Canada to offer filmmaking tools for youthmentoring and coaching will also be provided. Cardin said talent wishing to partake in any of the initiatives under the partnerships should

inquire through the respective organizations.

“Our role in that is to facilitate and to make sure that things are as complementary as possible but our partners are very autonomous and they’re the ones who run the show.”

On Sunday, Netflix announced a partnership with the Alliance of Francophone Producers of Canada as part of the same funding commitment.

That partnership also involves Telefilm Canada and the Canada Media Fund, and includes the launch of a professional development program for francophone producers and creators outside of Quebec.

Other organizations Netflix has partnered with since 2017 under the $25-million market development fund include RIDM (the Montreal International Documentary Festival), Inside Out, Quebec Cinema and the Canadian Film Centre.

The market development fund is an arrangement specific to Canada and is on top of the commitment Netflix made in 2017 to invest $500 million in Canadian productions over five years, a number it recently said it will exceed.

“For us, it reflects the fact that in our culture at Netflix, diversity and inclusion are key to our success,” Cardin said.

The logo of American entertainment company Netflix is pictured at the Paris games week in November 2017.

Russell Dickerson will spend this summer as the opening act for Thomas Rhett.

Urban U.S. seniors working longer

The Associated Press

Seniors in major metropolitan areas, especially in the Northeast and around Washington, D.C., are more likely to continue working past age 65 than those in other areas around the country, according to an analysis of Census data by The Associated PressNORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

“Those are the areas where all of the jobs are, really,” says Anqi Chen, assistant director for savings research at Boston College’s Center for Retirement Research. “The coastal areas recovered well from the recession, while other areas have not.”

But it’s also the types of jobs in those areas – government, finance, law and academia – that keep seniors working longer, analysts say.

Older workers can be a boon to regional economies, increasing tax revenues, stimulating growth with more consumer spending and providing additional talent and expertise at a time of low unemployment, says Paul Irving, chairman of the Milken Institute Center for the Future of Aging.

Among counties with at least 6,000 residents, about 12 per cent have at least 21 per cent of their seniors working or actively looking for jobs, according to an analysis of the Census’ 2017 American Community Survey report.

Of that group, nearly 25 per cent are located within the Northeast or in Maryland or Virginia.

And nearly 15 per cent are within 70 miles (113 kilometres) of New York, Boston, Philadelphia or Washington, D.C.

“I consider myself to be a very fortunate person to still do what I loved at 27 at 74,” says Steve Burghardt, a professor of social work at the City University of New York.

“I feel advantaged being in New York, where you’re exposed to sights and sounds and differences that are always exposing me to new ways to understand myself and to learn from other people.”

Two Washington suburbs, Falls Church, Va., and Alexandria, Va., are among the nation’s leaders in terms of senior labour force participation, with rates of nearly

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37 per cent and nearly 30 per cent, respectively. This area is also home to one of the fastest growing senior labour forces in the country – three of the 11 counties that saw senior participation rates climb the fastest between 2009 and 2017 are located within 113 kilometres of Washington.

But large, populous counties don’t have a monopoly on senior participation in the labour force.

Vermont, one of the least populous states, holds two counties that rank among the top 100 (Windham and Washington counties) and eight among the top 329 in terms of senior participation.

“Despite whatever misnomers might exist, there is a great demand out there for mature workers,” says Mary Branagan, director of program and partner affairs at Associates for Training and Development, a workforce training and development outfit headquartered in Vermont.

Branagan helps oversee the state’s Senior Community Service Employment program, which matches qualifying unemployed state residents at least 55 years of age with paid internships that can help them update their skills and remain in the workplace longer.

She says her company’s offices in Washington and Windham counties are among its largest statewide.

In other areas of the country, Colorado has six of the top 50 counties both in terms of senior labour force participation in 2017

and participation growth between 2009 and 2017.

And rural counties heavy in agricultural employment, especially in Kansas, Nebraska and Iowa, boast a considerable senior labour participation rate.

Though the jobs are often labour intensive, agricultural professions maintain some of the highest median ages in the country, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

That’s due in part to much of U.S. agriculture being concentrated in family farms, the Department of Agriculture says.

People can continue living and working on these operations well into their “retirement” years by scaling things down and renting land to other farmers.

At the other end of the spectrum, senior labour force participation in 2017 was less than 12 per cent in nearly 14 per cent of counties with at least 6,000 residents.

Kentucky, Michigan, Georgia, Alabama, Florida and West Virginia collectively accounted for more than 50 per cent of those bottom-ranking counties in terms of senior labour participation.

Senior participation contracted in more than 24 per cent of counties between 2009 and 2017.

Nearly 33 per cent of those counties are located in Georgia, Texas, Missouri, Kentucky or North Carolina.

Experts say it’s these lowerranking counties that are missing out on the potential benefits of a stronger senior labour force.

These areas also stand to benefit most from targeted skills training investments and other initiatives that would spur seniors off the sidelines.

“It’s good for GDP growth overall and it’s generally just good for the health of the overall economy,” says Andrew Chamberlain, chief economist at employment hub Glassdoor, referring to senior participation in the workforce.

Chen notes manufacturingheavy areas within the Rust Belt and in states including Alabama and Georgia are among those with the lowest senior labour participation.

Manufacturing payrolls have plummeted over recent decades amid automation and globalization challenges.

Labour-intensive jobs that are prominent in those areas often preclude folks from working later into life, and the types of white collar jobs that are more prevalent in larger cities are in shorter supply.

“It’s partly just how grim the job prospects are in a lot of micropolitan, or small city and rural, areas,” says Gary Burtless, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “A lot of them are one-industry towns. And if that industry has been hit hard, that’s going to be a problem for younger workers and older workers.”

Burtless notes elderly labour force participation tends to be higher in urban areas where older workers are better educated, better compensated and less reliant on labour-intensive blue collar industries.

“The thinking as to why highly educated people tend to work longer is that they may enjoy better health. They may enjoy better working conditions,” says Jen Schramm, a strategic policy adviser for the AARP Public Policy Institute.

“They are likely to be paid more, so that’s more of an incentive to keep working.”

Harold Cedric Moore passed away March 7, 2019 at the age of 92. There will be a celebration of life Saturday, June 15th at 1:00pm, at the Elders Recreation Center, 1692 10th Avenue, Prince George. Lunch to be served at my Dad’s request at 1:30pm. No

flowers, no donations.

Lynn Gail Floyd

Jan 14, 1959 - June 8, 2019

Lynn passed peacefully and is predeceased by her father Victor Lalonde. She is survived by her partner Cecil Gower, mother Theresa Lalonde, daughter Danell (Alan), sons Terrence (Mel) and Coleton, brothers Bart (Sue), Mitch (Marie), Trevor (Carol), sister Drinda (Jim) and her 23 beloved grandchildren. Her extended family Wade, Tara, Darwin, Tanya and Gordie. In lieu of flowers, please make donations to the SPCA. Funeral service to be held at Assman’s Funeral Chapel on Saturday June 15, 2019 at 1:00pm.

Jean Welsh Harris

It is with great sadness we announce the passing of Jean Harris on June 8, 2019. She will be dearly missed by her brother Tom (Macaria) and her great nieces and nephews Kelsey, Kyle, Jonathan, Kyrsten, Dylan and Ian. Jean was predeceased by her loving husband Peter, parents James and Jean, sister-in-law Anne, niece Heather and nephew Jimmy.

Jean was born on November 17, 1933 in Braeface, Stirlingshire Scotland and moved to Prince George in 1967. Jean worked at Northern Health for over 30 years and was a long time dedicated member of The Eastern Star and past Worthy Matron.

Jean would always go above and beyond for her family and friends. They meant the world to her and she had no problem expressing that. She was a truly amazing person who was full of love with a beautiful soul. She leaves us with incredible memories and will be dearly missed.

A service will be held on June 17th at 1 pm at

St. Giles Presbyterian Church with a reception to follow. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to The Alzheimer’s Society or to a charity of choice.

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It was hard to get words out through the jags of disbelief, the tears of gratitude and the interruptions of laughter and applause as the roomful of science professionals let Amanda Smedley know just how appreciated she was on a national level.

Smedley had just been surprised.

She and her colleagues in senior management at Exploration Place Museum + Science Centre were sitting at the gala awards event at the 2019 Canadian Association of Science Centres in Halifax (known as The Cascades). They announced the outstanding career achievement category, and after a short preamble about this year’s winner, they called Smedley’s name.

Her stride to the stage was confident but her charming stammering and welling up at the podium let everyone know this was as much a shock as it was a touching honour.

“Science communication and literacy really does mean everything to me,” said Smedley during her speech in response to the sudden news. “I’m passionate about it. I think that together we really can change the world if we keep doing what we’re doing, and I don’t think I’m just being an idealist when I say that. Every year when I get into this room with you guys it reminds me that we can and we will. I’m proud to be a colleague of all of yours.”

It was actually the second award at the 2019 Cascades that had Smedley’s name on it. She was also the one responsible for the science-based speaker series hosted monthly at Exploration Place at which UNBC professionals tell the public about their research and discoveries. This won Exploration Place the Best Program – Small Institution trophy.

Smedley had some advance warning that award was coming their way, so she had a proper speech prepared.

“I was proud of that one, because it’s for something we do here that doesn’t happen often in science facilities like ours – to purely engage an audience with science,” Smedley told The Citizen once her nerves had calmed. “There is some really cool stuff going on in science in this city and UNBC is a big driver of that but they so rarely get

to discuss it out in a public place. People so rarely get to know about this work and think about it in an active way and when it happens it can change people’s behaviour. It can affect real change. This series will add up to things we don’t even know about, so it’s something we really believe in. It was amazing to be recognized for that on a national level.”

It’s innovative thinking like that that earned Smedley the lifetime achievement award and she gave all the credit to Exploration Place CEO Tracy Calegheros and her colleagues in Prince George for enabling the ideas and turning them into reality,

“I feel like we’re standing on the cusp of something big, so to have the award come out as a way of saying yes, we see you, you

are doing great things - that’s meaningful beyond belief,” Smedley said. “This gave us a big platform. It lets us say yes, we really are doing extraordinary things at Exploration Place and you should let us keep doing that.”

“We are very lucky to have the team that we do here at the Exploration Place,” said Calogheros. “Longtime staffers like Amanda have shared their talents and their passions not just with Prince George but with our entire province and indeed, our country. I cannot think of a more deserving recipient.”

Calogheros was partially surprised as well by the lifetime achievement honour. She was not the one who nominated Smedley, that submission was made independently by board members Todd Whitcombe

and Katherine Scouten.

“In particular,” said Whitcombe, “she has been the champion for years of the Community Science Celebrations in Prince George. These have led to the implementation of an MOU with Science World for the development of province-wide education. She was a key actor in developing Symbiosis – the STEAM Ecosystem – and Tech UP programs (based in Prince George) in conjunction with Science World. These programs promise to provide educational possibilities for children and youth which will help to ensure a lifelong interest in science-based disciplines.”

Smedley has been at Exploration Place for 19 years and has no other goal but the future expansion and perfection of science programming there.

Submittedphotos

RUSTADS BUILT GOOD LIFE IN P.G.

KSENIORS’ SCENE KATHYNADALIN

irk Rustad recently introduced me to his parents Laurie (Lawrence) and Molly (Mary) Rustad and shared the fact that his parents had just celebrated 66 years of a good marriage. Laurie, the youngest of three boys, was born to John and Olea Rustad in Rose Valley, Sask. in 1927. When he was only five, his mother passed away unexpectedly and shortly after receiving successful treatment for tuberculosis. Tragically, his father also passed away one year later. Laurie’s oldest brother Chester, who was only a teenager, along with relatives from the community, raised Laurie and maintained the family farm.

Laurie left Rose Valley at the age of 16 and traveled to the Lower Mainland where he worked in logging camps. At the age of 21, he headed north to Prince George where his brother Gil (Gilbert),

along with several other cousins also from Rose Valley, were already heavily involved in the logging and sawmill industry.

It is interesting to note that before Laurie left the farm, he traveled from Rose Valley to Yorkton in response to an advertisement inviting men to apply for work in the B.C. logging industry. He was told that he was too small to do the work and sent home. Undeterred, he wrote to the company in B.C., expressing his desire to work for them and they sent him a railway ticket to come to B.C.

Laurie and Gil worked for their cousins at the Rustad Brothers sawmill site and lived in bunk houses. They saved their money and in 1949 they formed the Gillorn Lumber Company. Their first sawmill was on the Nechako River near the current Cameron Street bridge. They later relocated to Isle Pierre and then moved north to a site near Bear Lake.

Laurie will admit to having more than his share of luck throughout his lifetime, but the luckiest day of them all was when he met his wife to be, Molly MacKirdy.

Continued on page 4

Top photo: The Rustad family gathered for a family photo in 2016. Below: Laurie and Molly Rustad on their wedding day in 1953.

RUSTADS STILL ACTIVE IN THEIR 90S

Molly was born in Great Britain in 1921. Her full history is unclear: she was orphaned at birth, came to Canada as a baby, was raised for a time in a Catholic orphanage and spent a good portion of her childhood on the Olsen farm in Edmonton.

She was later adopted by the MacKirdy family and lived on Bowen Island during her teen years. As a young woman she made her way to Vancouver and worked for a company called Buckerfields. Molly and a girlfriend, Elsa Carlson, heard about the promise of work in Prince George and the pair headed north in 1951. Upon arrival, she went to work for the Prince George Planer Mill. One year later, she met Laurie and they were married in 1953.

The couple built their first house on Fourth Avenue, two blocks from the outdoor swimming pool, near the clay tennis courts, and one block from the old St. Giles Presbyterian Church. A strip of trees bordering the north side of Third Avenue obscured massive lumber yards located below.

Over the next decade, Laurie often worked long hours and found the commute from Bear Lake to Prince George difficult. He and Gil, who married later in life, bought two lots side by side on Summit Lake in the early 60s and built summer cabins. Their families moved to the cabins each summer to facilitate a shorter commute from Bear Lake.

Laurie and Molly have three sons: Kirk, Lorne and John (Kim), who in turn gave them six grandchildren.

Laurie and Molly moved from Fourth Avenue to the Seymour subdivision in 1965 and built their second house; 54 years later, they are still living in the

same house. A unique feature of the house and a nod to the family name are large solid timbers supporting the carport, all cut in a Rustad Brothers sawmill. Laurie and Gil sold their sawmill business in the late 60s, but kept two D-8 Cats. The pair became independent contractors clearing power lines for B.C. Hydro. Laurie later bought Gil’s share of Gillorn Lumber and Gil moved to Kelowna.

Following his work in the sawmill industry, Laurie took his real estate exams in the 70s and worked as a real estate agent for the Buchanan & Benson Real Estate company. Laurie chose to specialize in land and timber sales. With his knowledge and experience regarding quality timber, he sought out property with good timber potential and then brokered the sale of logging rights to local lumber companies.

Although Laurie had only a Grade 8 education, he was a born entrepreneur and became a self-made businessman. He never grew tired of learning new things. He was wholeheartedly committed to his family and to being able to provide for them. Laurie worked hard and earned a good reputation in the community. He and his brother looked after their equipment and did most of their own repairs.

Rang-a-Tangs. Many of the local sawmills had a softball team and they would play each other during the summer months. During his senior years, Laurie distinguished himself in curling, winning the Kelly Cup while playing third for Kevin Smale. He also played on numerous successful senior curling teams in provincial and national competitions. Molly was recognized as the top tennis player in Prince George shortly after her arrival to the city. Laurie took up the sport and they played mixed doubles with Laurie playing the front court while Molly played the back. They would dominate, according to Laurie, because of Molly’s quality ground strokes. The couple also enjoyed curling, bowling and golfing together.

Laurie and Molly played bridge throughout their married life at the curling rink, the local bridge club and at home with friends and their sons. They play bridge twice a week and crib once a week at the Brunswick Senior Citizens Activity Centre.

His D-8 Cat, now owned by another, is reportedly still in good working condition.

At the age of 70, Laurie was working in the bush and broke his ankle. To make matters worse, there was a bear in the area. He kept a close eye on the bear while he crawled to his Cat, drove back to his truck and then to the hospital. Laurie’s fortitude and determination kept him operating his Cat and changing his own car tires well into his 80s. At 92, he still owns Gillorn and has not yet officially retired.

Laurie worked hard, but he played hard too. He had always loved sports and was a good athlete. He used to play hockey on a team known as the Six-Mile Lake

At 97, Molly is in remarkably good physical health. Her family can’t ever recall her having a sick day. Molly’s children and grandchildren remember her as a great cook into her 90s. Now she prefers going out to eat. She still heats up porridge each morning for herself and Laurie, a routine they have followed for most of the last 50 years. At 92, Laurie has survived a massive stroke and congestive heart failure, both occurring in his mid-80s.

With help from their sons and grandchildren, Molly and Laurie still live in their own home. Like other seniors, they are experiencing logistical and mobility problems, age-related hearing and memory loss but they strive to do what they can for themselves. The pioneer spirit brought them and many others to Prince George which motivated much of our community’s early development. That same spirit continues to flicker in the Rustad home.

IDEAL PROTEIN TYPICAL FAD DIET

While January used to be the time of year when fad diets were at their peak, it doesn’t seem as if there’s a season for them anymore. Whether it’s the South Beach diet, the Zone diet, Atkins, Paleo or the raw food diet, some fad diets have come and gone, while others have spawned equally outlandish copycats.

The ketogenic diet is a notable example, birthing the Ideal Protein diet. Although the ketogenic diet has legitimate roots as a treatment for epilepsy, the Ideal Protein diet was created for significantly less therapeutic reasons. The protocol, as it is referred to by its parent company, was founded by an entrepreneur named Olivier Benloulou and a general practitioner and self-described “nutritional expert” named Dr. Tran Tien Chanh. On the company’s website, Benloulou states: “our focus is not and will never be the mere sale of weight loss options and products, but rather the global epidemic that our medically developed protocol addresses.”

The Ideal Protein diet is advertised as a “four-phase ketogenic weight and lifestyle management protocol medically developed and based on validated science for safe weight loss.” Words and phrases like “medically developed,” “validated science” and “safe” can mislead the consumer into believing a diet is backed by strong evidence and it can be difficult to determine the validity of claims when broad descriptors are being used, but there are red flags to look out for in evaluating the legitimacy of this diet and others.

Red flag #1: the diet emphasizes weight loss. While the Ideal Protein diet is adver-

tised as being about “so much more than just losing weight,” the first phase of the diet needs to be followed until 100 per cent of your desired weight loss is achieved. If the diet is about more than just losing weight, why is “losing weight” a step in itself? The diet is also heavily promoted in many weight loss clinics. The promise of weight loss is usually the hook to get consumers to buy into a fad diet.

Red flag #2: food categories are eliminated or vilified. Phase 1 of Ideal Protein allows the “dieter” (as they are referred to) to have eight ounces of protein at dinner, four cups of selected vegetables throughout the day and unlimited raw vegetables and lettuce, along with three Ideal Protein packaged foods. Phases 2 adds in one eight-ounce portion of protein and takes away an Ideal Protein food and phase 3 does the same once again. The “dieter” is limited to only these food categories and cannot consume dairy products in phases 1 and 2, unless of course they are in the form of prepackaged Ideal Protein products. When a diet advises against consuming a major food category or promotes a small number of foods as being the keys to success, those are red flags. No food is inherently good or bad and no single food category, whether grains, dairy or other, is crucial to weight loss.

Red flag #3: your success depends on a financial commitment. Every phase of the four-phase Ideal Protein protocol incorporates Ideal Protein foods, which are produced by the company and peddled by “authorized clinics” across North America. When a company forces you to buy their food or supplements rather that showing you how to make healthy choices, they’re not teaching you to be independent. In fact, the company refers to their meal replacement products as an “amazing way to help you sustain your weight loss results over your life course.” In other words, they’re pushing a lifelong connection to the diet and a never-ending financial commitment on the consumer.

Red flag #4: the diet is rigid and unwavering. Ideal Protein describes the protocol as “an uncompromised personal transformation Protocol” stating that “deviating will only inhibit your results.” The company’s website then refers the participant to a “Value of health” video on YouTube. If a diet advises the participant to override feelings of hunger and fullness and signifies deviation from the diet as a sign of failure or a signal that you’ve “lost your way,” that’s a red flag. Ideal Protein will only continue to make money off a participant if people continue to remain connected to their diet. Shaming the “dieter” into coming back to that rigid regime does not allow them to be empowered and independent in making decisions for themselves.

Red flag #5: advice is based on testimonials. While the Ideal Protein program is very good at claiming to be “medically developed” and based on “validated science” and using words and claims to give an air of validity to their products, they don’t appear to be as good at providing actual evidence and instead rely on personal testimonials. This is a big red flag for a fad diet. The consumer can look at these testimonials and relate to the stories being told, while idealizing the results being promised.

Red flag #6: salespersons are disguised as “counsellors” or “coaches.” Representatives for a fad diet often refer to themselves as “counsellors” or “coaches” to give the consumer the feeling of being cared for and advised by an individual who is qualified to give advice. Anyone providing diet advice should not be making a commission based on your purchases. Unfortunately, in addition to recruiting “passionate partners,” Ideal Protein recruits pharmacists, doctors, chiropractors and physical therapists, among other healthcare professionals, giving their program legitimacy. Although these people may be experts in

their fields, that does not mean they’re experts in diet and nutrition. When fad diets use healthcare professionals to push a product, it can be very difficult for the consumer to know whose advice to trust. Red flag #7: The diet is not supported by registered dietitians. While the Ideal Protein diet touts the expertise of certain healthcare practitioners, you’d be hardpressed to find a dietitian selling these products or promoting the diet in general. This is because in British Columbia registered dietitians are subject to marketing bylaws, standards of practice and a code of ethics. These standards are in place to protect the public from misleading information and product promotion. When promoting services and products, dietitians are expected to ensure the marketing is truthful, accurate, verifiable and evidence-informed, meaning that claims are based on objective and scientifically sound evidence. A dietitian cannot create unjustified expectations about the results that can be achieved with a product or diet and we cannot take actions that result in personal gain, such as accepting fees or other benefits from product or service sponsors based on a client’s purchases. In other words, it would be unethical for a dietitian to promote the Ideal Protein diet. One of the biggest reasons fad diets increase in popularity is because they feed off what people want. When family, friends and even your doctor are recommending a diet it can be extremely difficult to buck the trend and choose your own path. It might even seem as if there is no harm in trying a popularized diet but there is the potential for negative effects, which is a very frustrating aspect of these diets. Not only could you be wasting money and time committing to what’s required for “success” but your metabolism could be affected, you could have nutrient deficiencies, you could lose muscle mass, have decreased immunity, decreased bone density, and the list goes on.

Unfortunately, weight loss programs are not regulated in Canada, so it’s important for a consumer to be able to spot sensationalized claims and other hallmarks of a fad diet. While I’ve only listed a small proportion of the questionable claims and statements made by Ideal Protein, the red flags listed here can help you to identify even more in this and other diets-of-themoment and allow you to make informed decisions.

— Kelsey Leckovic is a registered dietitian with Northern Health working in chronic disease management.

TEAR DOWN THE WALLS

The most significant global event of my lifetime has been the fall of the Berlin Wall. As a teacher, I often bring up this event. It not only changed the geopolitical climate we are living in but it also demonstrated the power of the human spirit.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel recently spoke to the graduates of Harvard University.

We often forget that she looked at a wall every day as a young person in East Berlin. While the atmosphere was foreboding and there was no visible means of escape, nothing could control the thoughts of freedom in her mind or the minds of the people around her.

The global atmosphere was clouded by fear of our ultimate destruction but even that could not eliminate the truth of our oneness. This was particularly true for Germans, many of whom had family members living on the other side of the divide.

There are those who believe walls keep us safe but that is only an illusion. The world is full of once-invincible walls which today are obsolete. Build a wall and people will find a way to conquer it. Treat people with respect and dignity so walls become unnecessary.

I lived behind a “security wall” when I was an aid worker in the Congo during a time of great economic and political instability. I noticed that when people wanted to get into our compound they always found a way. Any security

LESSONS IN LEARNING GERRYCHIDIAC

improvement was simply a temporary solution.

While the wall did not keep me safe, my congenial interactions with the Congolese people got me out of every difficult situation I encountered. Normally someone who would speak up for me, and if no witness was present, the long-established tradition of aid workers and missionaries being different from colonizers and business people virtually eliminated the threat of physical violence to my person.

During the first half of the 20th century, there were many barbed wire fences in Europe. We felt we had to protect ourselves from the “other.”

This resulted in tremendous suffering and genocide. Even after the Second World War ended, we continued to build walls.

Two things happened, however, which eventually brought Europe’s dark century to a triumphant end.

The first was the Marshall Plan. The United States pledged large amounts of money to rebuild Western Europe after the end of the Second World War. This allowed the continent to recover very quickly.

West Germany, in particular, became a peaceful economic powerhouse. They were able to establish strong democratic traditions and become the admiration of much of the world including their neighbours who had their freedoms and opportunities limited on the other side of the Iron Curtain.

The other source of progress in Europe was the establishment of the European Union. Borders within Western Europe gradually became obsolete. Countries which for centuries had invaded each other with hostile armies now had open frontiers. The result has been unprecedented prosperity for all.

Given these forces on the Western side of the Iron Curtain, the walls which divided Germany and the rest of Europe could not withstand the pressure. In 1989, Angela Merkel, along with her family and friends, walked

freely into West Berlin. In 2005, she became the first East German to lead a unified Germany.

There are many walls which remain in the world. There are physical walls and there are walls of racism, sexism and economic injustice. In addition, we face walls created by the climate crisis, political turmoil and world hunger.

Yet when we look at how the world has changed since the middle of the 20th century, especially in Europe, Angela Merkel’s closing words at Harvard do not seem at all unrealistic, “Wir koennen das alles schaffen” (We can do all of that).

Walls have never been able to withstand the oneness of our humanity. — Gerry Chidiac is a champion for social enlightenment, inspiring others to find their greatness in making the world a better place. For more of his writings, go to www.gerrychidiac. com.

ABOUT US

• Colleen Sparrow, publisher and GM

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• Call us at: 250-562-2441 or 250-562-3301

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CANADA DAY VOLUNTEERS NEEDED

Canada Day In The Park is always on the same day. The nation celebrates Canada’s birthday on July 1 and that is always when the city’s premier park comes alive with music and cultural.

“It is a community festival. It is free of charge and family oriented. We will have the fireworks again this year, fired off from Connaught Hill so you can see it all around the city,” said longtime organizer Marlies Greulich, executive director of the Multicultural Heritage Society.

As always, the event is themed on Canada’s national personality – multiculturalism – from ancient First Nations to grassroots subcultures, from international influences rooted all over the world to the homegrown intermingled ethnoblends of tomorrow.

“It is always a celebration of culture, a celebration of everyone, because Canada has that diversity that we all get to share and draw strength from,” said Greulich.

One of the strongest draws for this kaleidoscopic event is the food. From perogies to souvlakies, bannock to samosas, Canada Day In The Park is a culinary uniting of the nations.

“We have a new sushi vendor this year, a new group from the Philippines coming in this year, and all the usual array of international foods, and of course the stage is loaded with all the entertainers, all the activities for little ones to be entertained.”

A special performance is slated for the mainstage this year. Director-choreographer Judy Russell is bringing her cast for a sneak peek at the upcoming production of Beauty & The Beast.

The opening ceremonies happen at noon with the next seven hours full of entertainment, information and food. (Reminder, no alcohol or pets in the park.) The fireworks show goes boom at 11 p.m.

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Reflections on a Legislative Session

The spring Legislative session in Victoria has just ended.  It was a busy session with many critical issues being debated.  As I reflect on the work that was undertaken there are a few things that stand out for me.

I took the opportunity to introduce a Private Members Bill during this sitting of the Legislature.  It builds on the work I have done with Heart and Stroke.  The bill is called the “Defibrillator Public Access Act” and would increase public access to life saving Automated External Defibrillators or AEDs.  Sadly the government chose not to call the bill and that means that technically it “dies” on the order paper.  I can assure you I will be re-introducing it during the fall session.  It has received a great deal of public support both in the province and beyond.  The bill takes a comprehensive approach and could literally mean the difference between life and death for someone experiencing a sudden cardiac arrest.

I also took the opportunity whenever possible to celebrate and recognize great people and achievements with two minute statements and introductions.  For example it was a lot of fun to celebrate the

“We are looking for volunteers,” Greulich said. “We need parking guards, security people, people to hand out flags and pins, hand out souveniers and programs, so please contact us and we will

help you get assigned to something.” Anyone able to join the Canada Day volunteer crew is asked to contact Greulich at 250-563-8525 or mhs.pg@shawcable.com.

REJOICE! END OF SCHOOL IS NEAR!

accomplishments of our Prince George Spruce Kings on their historic playoff run, including some challenges to MLA colleagues and even the Premier.

Of course there were budget debates, the estimates process, question period, committee meetings, the list goes on.  I look forward to sharing more about those in the days ahead.

While the work in the Legislature has ended for the session, an MLAs work is not done.  Now that we don’t have to make the weekly trip to Victoria we can focus on the important day to day work in our local constituencies.  I look forward to full days and weeks, meeting with constituents, participating in local and regional events and continuing the hard work that my constituents expect and deserve from their MLA.

Office: 1350 Fifth Avenue, Prince George, B.C.

Phone: (250) 612-4181 Toll Free: 1(866) 612-7333

It’s June.

We are nearing the end of it all: lunches, Pro-D days, permission forms, agendas, random asks for money in strange amounts (who has $7 just lying around?), presentations, library books, homework, auditions, talent shows, Christmas concerts, 400 Scholastic order forms to recycle while feeling guilty that you missed the deadline again, 8,000 other fundraising forms to recycle that you don’t feel guilty about turfing at all, Pokemon trading fights, meetings with teachers, reports cards – I mean, “Communications of Learning,”– tired days, sad days, happy days, playdates, dance recitals, guitar lessons, birthday parties and more.

The end of ten months of constant, unrelenting “things” that you have to do, or remember, (or don’t) is approaching and I am filled with joy.

Having young children in school is not exactly the easiest thing to manage with working parents. Before we had kids, life felt busy, but fun. We could decide to go out or stay home or have a leisurely day off as we liked. On my days off, I used to tackle various house projects or organize something or learn a craft. Or sometimes, we would just take the dog for a walk and then have a nap after ordering in food.

Now I find myself looking forward to getting a little bit sick (not a lot, just a tiny man-cold) just so I can take it easy and rest.

I love my life.

I love my husband, my kids and my family and friends here.

June is just a bit much and it feels like a wave that is about to break and drown us all in art projects and journals. By June, we have run out of interesting lunch ideas and have taken to cook dinners for the sole purpose of having leftovers to throw in their lunches.

The curriculum has been taught, assessments are complete and the final weeks are an assortment of necessary movie days, sports days, presentations and general non-academic silliness – plus a Pro-D day or two thrown in for fun.

We are all tired.

The parents, the kids and especially the teachers. Maybe if one of us did not work full time, June would feel more manageable but perhaps, like housework, stress and exhaustion expand to fill the time available. But we can see the light approaching and the lazy summer days seems close at hand.

I do wonder, is it a light at the end of the tunnel or an oncoming train?

97/16 file photo

A large friendship circle dances in front of the stage while the Khastan Dummers perform as part of Canada Day celebrations in 2018 at Lheidli T’enneh Memorial Park.

97/16 STAFF

Shirley Bond MLA

Prince George-Valemount

THE HEAVY IMMORTALITY OF DEATH

“Because I could not stop for Death -

He kindly stopped for me.”

So begins the poem by Emily Dickinson, published posthumously in 1890. I apologize in advance to the English majors out there for butchering the meaning of it.

The flowers are beginning to bloom, the grass is green, the leaves out; why write about the gloomy subject of death? In the West, most of us see death’s work only when the very frail who have lived long lives are taken, but not so in my case.

In 2006, my life was full, unmarked by any experience of untimely death. My family was reasonably happy, my grandma with Alzheimer’s still alive, and my joyful identity firm and fulfilling, as a homeschool mom to our six healthy chil-

dren. There was no way I was stopping for anything. Too busy, too full of life. Then death stopped for our oldest daughter just three days shy of her 16th birthday in June. She had plans to fill her passport with stamps from around the world and to celebrate her birthday by camping in the backyard with her friends, telling her tales of our recent travels. Six years later, our nephew and oldest son’s best man, was snatched up at age 21, full of life, and recently engaged.

No warnings.

No consideration.

We were left only memories and the heavy Immortality of death.

“The Carriage held but just OurselvesAnd Immortality.“

Death waits for nothing. Cares nothing for the season or time. I take exception to most online analysis of the poem which interpret Dickinson to say that death is a kind gentleman. He knows he has won the day. Death is gentlemanly because he can afford to be.

The Carriage stole away our daughter, Death took the life of our precious daughter into Immortality, and left ugly grief in its wake. Grief taunts and tears at the soul of the family left behind, the special guest at every family or friend gathering. (In an odd way, it is not an unwelcome guest because grief is the price of love, and if I

cannot have my daughter back, at least I must be able to grieve for her).

When grief was new, 13 years ago this month, the sun was blazing, making everything grow in full vigour of life. I hated the grass for daring to grow. The blooms that had in previous years been picked to make flower crowns for our daughter’s birthday guests, were oblivious to our grief, taunting me with the reminder that they still existed, that evil time marched on, as if nothing had happened.

The poem goes on; it is one of Dickinson’s longest poems. Death is revealed to be not as friendly as he initially pretended to be. Death is cold and uncomfortable, and we are not prepared for him. No one recovers from an encounter unscathed or unchanged.

And that is, somehow, strangely comforting.

GRANDMOTHERSHOLDINGGOLFFUNDRAISER

97/16 STAFF

Grandmas know.

There is no more wise woman in life than a grandmother and if grandma says golf, then it is time to golf.

These particular grandmothers also say there is a deep need for help, so this golf is to raise money and awareness for other grandmas in distress around the world. The local chapter of Grandmothers To Grandmothers holds a charity tournament each year to lift other grandmoth-

ers out of poverty and danger. They are affiliated with the Grandmothers Campaign operated by the Stephen Lewis Foundation.

“In addition to struggling with supporting children who have lost their parents due to the Aids pandemic in sub-Saharan Africa, our partner grandmothers are now also dealing with the devastating impact of cyclone activity in March,” said local participant Saima Fewster. “Sadly, it is once again women and children who are experiencing the brunt of the

damages. Our work to help offer support through the Stephen Lewis Foundation continues to be as important as ever.”

This is the fourth annual local golf tournament for Grandmothers To Grandmothers and it continues to grow as the community learns more about the help the local organization provides.

“We would love to be able to recruit more golfers to join us,” said Fewster. “Our golf tournament is a major fundraiser.”

It happens this year on June 23 at

Alder Hills Golf Course. The event fee is $65, which includes 18 holes of golf and dinner, or you can attend the dinner only for $20. Many prizes are up for grabs, including a hole in one incentive. To provide additional sponsorship or sign up for the tournament, please contact Ruth Meger (250-964-0498 or ruth.meger@gmail.com) or Louise Ewen (250-962-9017 or normewen@telus. net) or Marie Parker (250-964-6265 or parkerandco@telus.net).

CUBAHEADLINESHEATWAVESHOWS

FRANK PEEBLES

97/16 staff

Alex Cuba is coming back to Prince George.

The Grammy darling and northern B.C.’s most prestigious resident music star is the headliner at the Heatwave-Celebrate Cultures summer festival.

This new festival is a combination of several cultural events all celebrating together from June 21-23 at Canada Games Plaza and Lheidli T’enneh Memorial Park.

The music organizers are the same as for the wintertime’s Coldsnap Music Festival and artistic director Sue Judge announced the lineup for this inaugural showcase coming up in only a few weeks.

“They are all interesting,” said Judge. “En

THE 2019 ROSTER:

Fri June 21: Opening Ceremonies, Saltwater Hank, Rivière Rouge, Tonye Aganaba Band

Sat June 22: Navaz, En Karma, George Leach (with special performances by Laura Grizzlypaws)

Sun June 23: Madame Diva & Micah, Kym Gouchie, Shauit, Alex Cuba

Karma, for instance is, North America’s preeminent Bhangra band and their combined musical pedigree traverses experiences with the top bands of the 90s Bhangra movement in the U.K., the oldest folk Bhangra institutions in Canada and a little bit of indie-rock sensibility thrown in for good measure.”

Leach and Grizzlypaws are both from Lillooet, so even the incoming acts have regional connections.

“The other super interesting artist is Shauit,” said Judge, talking about artists she has never seen in Prince George before.

“Do you remember a group called Kashtin in the 1980s and 90s? They had a couple of hit songs that were sung entirely in Innu, a remarkable achievement at the time. Well, Shauit is from the same community and also sings in Innu.”

Judge said the crowd was going to love the Tonye Aganaba Band, whose eponymous leader has visible connections to Africa (born in England to parents of Nigerian and Zimbabwean descent) then moved to Canada as a youth, including some time spent living in Dawson Creek.

Aganaba is gender-fluid and creates music that is genre-fluid, with touches of soul, folk, R&B and more. Think Ani DeFranco or Lauryn Hill for sound siblings. The Paperboys bandleader Tom Landa is a staunch friend and supporter.

Aganaba was recently diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and then was involved in a major car crash. Those physical realities have also played a role in shaping the music and the personal journey this artist has taken on, not just on festival stages and theatres but, said Judge, “also into schools, community centres, hospitals, prisons, and boardroomsplaces where art can heal, start conversation, and maybe even make change.”

The final musical slot at the HeatwaveCelebrating Cultures festival is reserved for Alex Cuba, one of Prince George’s favourites. The Smithers-based but Cubanborn superstar owns a voice with the smooth and intoxicating effect of liqueur, and a songwriting style that sails listeners along no matter what language you speak. He is one of Canada’s national musical treasures, and he

is coming to P.G. with fresh material.

This is a free set of concerts thanks to the support of the Department of Canadian Heritage, City of Prince George and Tourism Prince George.

It is a joint presentation of Immigrant and Multicultural Services Society (IMSS), Lheidli T’enneh First Nation, Le Cercle des Canadiens Français de Prince George, and the Prince George Folkfest Society (the organizers of Coldsnap).

It combines National Indigenous Peoples Day, IMSS’ Day of Cultures, Saint-Jean Baptiste Day and revives the spirit of the Prince George Folkfest events of the early 2000s.

FAMILIARNAMES BEHINDBEAUTY& THEBEAST

FRANK PEEBLES

97/16 staff

An all-star local cast has been announced by director Judy Russell for her upcoming production of Beauty & The Beast.

Leading the list is a comeback performer who became one of the province’s top varsity singers while she was at the University of Victoria and she has been a big part of several Russell productions in the past like Nunsense, Nunsense 2, Hello Dolly and a star turn in the role of Eponine in Les Miserables. Kelsey Jewesson is back in Prince George and will be back in the spotlight as Belle.

Opposite her will be another wellknown local performer who has not been front and centre for some time but has never been far from the action. Jon Russell is known more for his technical skills making everyone else on stage sound good, but he has also established himself as a top-shelf performer with notable roles in plays like Spamalot, The Producers, and he was also in that Les Mis cast with Jewesson.

At the time, Citizen reviewer Christine Hinzmann said “Jon Russell played Enjolras with an incredible stage presence. His

vocal skills and effective body language tell the story of his convictions.”

This time Russell will be The Beast. It should make for some bubbly on-stage chemistry when his brother, Matt Russell, takes him on in the villain role of Gaston. Other notable names on the cast list include Gary Chappel as Maurice, Bradley Charles as LeFou, Nigel McInnis as Lumiere, Franco Celli as Cogsworth, Andrew Lee and Addison Liu sharing the role of Chip, Sharon MacDermott as Madame Le Grande Bouche, Catherine Higgins as Babette, Andrew Russell as Monseur D’Arque, and there is a set of Silly Girls (Emma Forgeron, Kendra Hamelin, Kate McGowan, Sara McGowan).

There is also a sizable ensemble of supporting singers and dancers.

“There is so much talent in Prince George,” said Russell. “Every year it is more and more difficult to choose our cast. We took over 60 people but we could have easily had a cast of 100. I am afraid my costume mistress hates me.”

Russell bids the public to “be our guest” this summer at the Prince George Playhouse for Beauty & The Beast. The show runs most nights between July 11-27 and tickets are already on sale online or in person at Central Interior Tickets.

97/16 file photo

Alex Cuba played the BCLC mainstage at Canada Games Plaza in Prince George during the 2015 Canada Winter Games.

GOOGLEGAMINGKICKSOFFINNOVEMBER

NEW YORK - Google will start its Stadia streaming service to challenge the video game industry in November - but initially only as part of a $130 bundle that includes hardware and a pass for a friend.

Google announced the game service in March with few details. On Thursday, Google said it will start advance sales for the limited “Founder’s Edition” bundles right away, though it isn’t saying how many are available. Google won’t offer stand-alone subscriptions, for $10 a month, until next year.

Stadia is Google’s attempt to make traditional video game consoles such as the Xbox and PlayStation obsolete.

Games are stored online, and players can pick up where they left off on traditional computers with Google’s Chrome browsers and Chromebooks running Chrome OS. Players can also use Google’s Pixel phones, but not other phones with the company’s Android operating system. Unlike traditional games, the streaming service requires a constant internet connection to play.

Much like movies and music, the traditional video game industry has been shifting from physical hardware and games to digital downloads and streaming. The makers of leading consoles have their own subscription services as well, while Apple plans one this fall. The U.S. video game industry raked in revenue of $43.4 billion in 2018, up 18 per cent from 2017, according to research firm NPD Group.

Video game streaming typically

requires a strong connection and more computing power than simply streaming video, since there is real-time interaction between player and game. Google says it is tapping its massive data centres to power the system.

The service will mainly let players play games they buy separately, though some free games will be offered. Stadia will launch with about 30 games to buy, including “Doom Eternal,” ”Assassin’s Creed Odyssey“ and ”Wolfenstein: Youngblood.“

The “Founder’s Edition” package includes three months of Stadia and a three-month buddy pass that someone else can use. It’ll come with a limited edition controller and a Chromecast Ultra streaming video device. Google says the whole package is worth about $300 but costs $130. It will be available in 14 countries at launch, including the U.S., Canada, U.K., France and Germany.

Next year, Google will offer Stadia Pro for $10 a month and a free version, Stadia Base. With the free version, resolution will be lower, and players won’t get discount on games offered through Pro and the bundle. An optional Stadia controller will sell for $69.

The Wi-Fi-enabled controller has a button that lets players tap Google Assistant to ask questions about the games being played. Another button lets users share gameplay directly to Google’s video streaming service, YouTube.

Google said playing video games will be as simple as pressing a “Play Now” button. Players won’t have to download or install anything.

GoogleviaAPphoto

This undated image provided by Google shows the controller for a video-game streaming platform called Stadia. Google will offer its Stadia streaming video game service as part of a $130 package in November. The subscription itself costs $10 a month, but you won’t be able to subscribe without the package deal until 2020.

Sony offers a PlayStation Now streaming service that’s $20 for a one-month subscription or $45 for three months. It offers unlimited access to 750 games for streaming or downloads, which allow for offline play. Microsoft’s $10-a-month Xbox Game Pass offers about 100 games for free download. Microsoft is also working on a streaming service called Project xCloud.

The upcoming Apple Arcade subscription will feature more than 100 games for download, curated by Apple and exclusive to the service. Apple hasn’t announced a price yet. The games can be played on Apple devices only.

Out on the diamond of green, especially in that excruciating moment of stillness and anticipation before the ball shoots from the pitcher’s hand, the man behind the plate can be the most elusive figure on the field.

He squats while others stand, his face hidden by a mask. From that vantage point, at the pointy tip of the field’s perfect geometry, he sees all, but is barely seen.

This was the ideal place for a man like Moe Berg, an eccentric and enigmatic figure from baseball’s yesteryear. Berg’s exploits on the field in the 1920s and 1930s for the Washington Senators and other teams would come to be overshadowed by his cunning as a wartime spy in the infancy of the Office of Strategic Services, the precursor of today’s Central Intelligence Agency. Berg’s life and even the inscrutable circumstances surrounding his death 49 years ago linger as ongoing mysteries, a mélange of fact, myth and opaque clues.

To encounter Moe Berg’s story is to become entranced with it. He spoke as many as 12 languages, became a radio quiz-show sensation, extracted a key Italian aerodynamics expert from behind enemy lines during World War II and was sent to suss out the Nazi bomb-development program and, if necessary, assassinate the German nuclear genius Werner Heisenberg.

For decades, authors, filmmakers, scriptwriters and spy buffs have obsessed over him. In the past two years, Berg’s remarkable saga has flickered onto movie house screens - first in last year’s feature film, “The Catcher was a Spy,” based on Nicholas Dawidoff’s critically acclaimed book “The Catcher was a Spy: The Mysterious Life of Moe Berg,” and now in a deeply researched documentary, “The Spy Behind Home Plate,” by the Washington, D.C.-based filmmaker Aviva Kempner.

“Everyone’s trying to nail it,” Kempner, now 72, says.

Kempner, who is best known for her documentary about Hall-of-Famer Hank Greenberg and for her activism on behalf of D.C. statehood, is a relentless digger. She gathered too many nuggets to fit into a single film, and she shared one curiosity with The Washington Post that didn’t make it into her documentary.

The baseball record books list Berg, the son of Ukrainian immigrants, as being born on March 2, 1902. But Berg’s birth certificate lists another date: May 8, 1902. It gets stranger from there. Moe was only a nickname - his proper name was typically listed as Morris. But the birth certificate shows his actual first name as “Moses.” “Another mystery!” Kempner says. Berg, who was said to have a photographic memory, was practiced in deception from the beginning. When he was a kid, he assumed a fake name so that he could play baseball on a Christian league team - there were no Jewish teams at the time.

For all her sleuthing, Kempner was never able to figure out where Berg lived from 1932 to 1934 while he was playing for the Senators, the Washington Major League team for nearly six decades. But she suspects he spent much of his time at the Mayflower Hotel, one of his favorite haunts.

Even assigning a start date to Berg’s tenure as a spy has become an elusive task. Some think he began his life in the shadows as early as 1934, when he traveled to Japan with an all-star baseball team that featured the greatest players of his day, including Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig.

In Tokyo, Berg donned a men’s kimonoa sartorial flourish included in the documentary - and walked to a hospital under the pretense of visiting the daughter of the U.S. ambassador to Japan, who had just given birth. Instead, he dumped the flowers he’d brought with him and made his way to the roof of the hospital, then the tallest building in the city. He pulled a Bell & Howell camera from beneath his kimono and - in defiance of Japanese orders that no photos or films should be made during the visit - made a panoramic film of the cityscape that later made its way to the U.S. military, possibly for use in bombing raids, according to the documentary.

Berg was recruited to join the nascent OSS by the larger-than-life figure William “Wild Bill” Donovan, the founder of the spy agency. Berg was eventually handed the seemingly impossible task of finding Antonio Ferri, an Italian aerodynamics expert who had gone into hiding and had been privy to the secret workings of German scientists connected to the Nazi nuclear program. Berg found him and - because the former ballplayer spoke passable Italian - helped translate a cache of hidden documents.

But his scariest wartime adventure required Berg’s special talent for fading into the background, like the masked catcher he’d once been. He traveled to neutral Switzerland, posing as a student, to hear a lecture by Heisenberg, the German nuclear scientist. His mission was to assess Heisenberg’s progress, and to kill him if it appeared he was getting close to developing the bomb.

Ever resourceful, Berg managed to take a walk with Heisenberg after a dinner party, a stroll in which he concluded the scientist still had a long way to go in developing the bomb - and therefore he passed up an ideal opportunity to kill him. In the feature film, there’s a shootout during the walk. Kempner doesn’t believe it occurred.

The feature film strongly suggests that Berg was bisexual. Dawidoff’s book says there’s no evidence to support that but briefly cites some rumors and speculation. Kempner also found no evidence, and points to his longtime relationship with a woman who was a piano instructor, and to interviews with former teammates who described Berg as “a ladies’ man” and a “womanizer,” albeit a classy one.

“I think that’s the Hollywood version,” Kempner says. “I’m trying to be very diplomatic. Facts can be more exciting.”

In a New York Times interview last year, Robert Rodat - who adapted Dawidoff’s book for “The Catcher was a Spy” filmsaid: “The standards of veracity I applied in the movie were different.”

Neil Goldstein, a filmmaker who directed interviews with more than a dozen of Berg’s former OSS colleagues and baseball teammates years ago for a film that was never produced, said not one of them “even hinted” that he was bisexual.

“Why does this gossip remain a topic?” said Goldstein, whose interview footage is included in the documentary.

After the war, Berg spent time living in New Jersey with his brother, Sam, a physician, and later with his sister, Ethel. He never married, and he was a frequent presence in libraries, where he indulged his varied interests, and at Major League

ballparks, where he had been given a lifetime pass. He was awarded a presidential Medal of Freedom in 1945 but refused to accept it. He never explained why, adding another layer to his mystique.

Berg died in 1972 at the age of 70 after a fall at his home. His sister gave his remains to a rabbi and asked that they be scattered on Mt. Scopus in Israel.

Kempner has unearthed letters from Sam Berg, first wondering whether the remains were ever actually scattered, then later puzzling over stories he’d been told by a rabbi about his brother’s remains possibly ending up in someone’s backyard in Jerusalem. He wanted his brother’s remains returned to the United States, since his Moe Berg was never particularly religious. But that request was complicated by the fact that no one could tell him the exact location of the ashes.

It appears, according to Kempner, that Sam Berg never found his brother.

TheWashingtonPost Filmmaker Aviva Kempner in her Washington, D.C., home, where she displays hook rug art of baseball players including Washington Senators catcher Moe Berg, the subject of her new documentary, The Spy Behind Home Plate.

GIRLSDESERVETHEIROWNFOOSBALL

NICOLE GRAEV LIPSON

Special to The Washington Post

When my older daughter turned nine, I thought of the perfect gift, one that would combine her love of sports, competition and raucous game-room fun: a mini foosball table.

I searched Amazon and found pages of options. Some were plastic, and some wood. Some modern, some more classic. But every table had one thing in common. The players - solid and ready for action on their steel rods - were all male.

My daughter has been kicking around a soccer ball since she was three. She plays goalie, her ponytail flying as she dives for the ball with grass-stained knees. In summer, she heads to soccer camp in an Alex Morgan Team USA jersey, dribbling down our front path to the car. I can see the subtle lift this identity gives her. Connected to her inner athlete, she feels buoyant, strong and aware of the possibilities of her being.

A table with male figures wouldn’t do. I searched Amazon again, this time for models with female players specifically. When none appeared, I tried Target, Walmart, Dick’s Sporting Goods, Wayfair. Eventually, I discovered one table with women players: a full-sized model manufactured in 2011 by the Spanish design company RS Barcelona. It sold for $4,365. It no longer appears on the company’s website.

A disturbing understanding sank in: I would not be giving my daughter a female foosball table; they don’t exist. On one level, this wasn’t shocking. Here was yet another example of our culture’s

lopsided valuing of male athletes - highlighted recently by the U.S. Women’s National Team’s gender discrimination lawsuit against the U.S. Soccer Federation. Read the sports headlines, and it’s usually men highlighted. Turn on ESPN, and it’s typically men on the screen. But there was something about the nonexistence of female foosball tables that brought home the magnitude of this form of gender bias. Soon, I began to notice the absence of female imagery in all sorts of sports-related toys. I saw that if a figure appeared on the backboard of a basketball net, it was male, typically in silhouette performing a layup. I discovered that if a T-ball bat featured a human, he was male, shown preswing. Why, I wondered, when my two daughters and son head off to play, should only one get to see himself mirrored in the equipment?

Elizabeth Sweet, a San Jose State University sociologist who studies gender and toys, says, “The fact that the default character in these toys is male really speaks to the way sports are still gendered as masculine in our society. Unconscious bias is deeply embedded in their design and marketing.”

Some might argue that toy companies are just responding to their market - that these products skew male because more boys gravitate toward sports. But girls and boys participate in youth sports fairly equally. In 2018, according to the Sports & Fitness Industry Association, 31 percent of girls and 39 percent of boys ages 6 to 12 took part regularly in a team sport C - not enough of a difference to account for the sports-toy discrepancy.

“There’s an assumption on the part of toy makers that these toys are for boys,” says Sweet, who points out that most leadership positions at toy companies are held by men. “They don’t even see the lack of representation.”

Other experts see the omission as more deliberate. “There’s a perception in marketing that girls will partake in things associated with boys, but that the reverse isn’t true,” says sociologist Cheryl Cooky, author of No Slam Dunk: Gender, Sport, and the Unevenness of Social Change. Because of our male-advantaged gender hierarchy, she explains, there can be cultural value in a girl’s playing with “boy” things - she becomes “one of the guys.” But “there’s more at stake when boys transgress gender boundaries,” she says. Toy makers don’t want to drive away boys socialized to avoid “girly” things.

Even before kids are old enough for organized athletics, the gendering of sports toys can have adverse effects. Lisa Dinella, a psychology professor at Monmouth University and co-editor of “Gender Typing of Children’s Toys,” says, “When we make rules about the toys children should or shouldn’t play with, we narrow their opportunities to learn.”

Many male-categorized toys like foosball, Dinella points out, help children develop spatial abilities central to mathematics and physics - STEM fields in which women are underrepresented. They also teach important social skills: “Foosball is a high-speed, intense game typically played with somebody you care about. That social interaction is important, and not just for boys. Girls, too, need

to learn: How do you compete? How do you win graciously? How do you not be a sore loser?”

I sat my daughter down and filled her in. Her first response was outrage over a lost opportunity: You mean to tell me a foosball table could have been mine? But after her own fruitless online search, she was overcome by outrage of a different sort. Awareness of inequity isn’t comfortable, but my daughter learned its galvanizing power. We visited the website of Franklin Sports, a major retailer of athletic games, and she wrote an email asking the company to create a table with girls like her.

Franklin Sports hasn’t, to date, written back, but my daughter isn’t deterred. We’ve made a list of more companies to contact, heartened by the perspective of Richard Gottlieb, founder and CEO of Global Toy Experts, a consulting firm.

“I think you’re onto something here,” he says. “There’s a whole market open to some smart businessperson who wants to secure licensing deals with some of the well-known female athletes out there.” In fact, at the World Cup sendoff party for the women’s national team late last month, the players were gifted a one-ofa-kind custom foosball table featuring replicas of all 23 of them - so it’s possible this idea might gain some traction. Until then, my daughter has plenty to occupy her: playing basketball, reading, drawing comics, roughhousing with her siblings. Or careering down the street on the skateboard we gave her for her ninth birthday, her face flushed with joy and the power of her muscles firing beneath her.

ODESSAANDHERHUMAN SETNEWRECORD

From the time Dan Wehunt wanted a dog, he wanted a German shorthaired pointer. A track and field teammate at the University of Florida had one, and whether it was the breed’s fashionable coat, eagerness to please or irresistibly friendly eyes and smile, Wehunt knew he had to have one.

“I can throw a ball with the Chuckit [a ball-throwing wand] back and forth without stopping, if it’s a cool day, for an almost unlimited time,” Wehunt said. “It just ends up being time to go. Like, it’s been 30 minutes, and you don’t look tired - or at least as much as I thought you would.”

One solution to burn up all that energy: just run.

After graduation, he found Odessa, the quietest in her litter, but the sweetest, too. He took her home and trained her with his twin brother. He didn’t know she’d grow up to be a world champion.

Odessa and Wehunt, 28, won the State Street Mile and Dog Mile World Championship in Santa Barbara, California, last Sunday. Their time, 4:06.2, is the fastest recorded canine and human mile ever run.

“Honestly there’s not many opportunities to run with your dog,” Wehunt said in a phone interview.

By the time Odessa was a couple years old, Wehunt had moved to Bozeman, Montana, to design and build shoes for hiking company Oboz. He was a few years removed from his competitive track and field career in college, and ready to take up the sport again. The temperate climate made training easier than back home in Florida, and Odessa (“Dess,” for short) could be a good running buddy, he thought.

Well, at least not competitively.

He trained her to run beside him off leash, then purchased a harness that attaches to her collar and wraps around his waist. Now, they run 40 miles together a week.

German shorthaired pointers are “gun dogs,” bred over centuries to accompany sportsmen on hunts for water fowl, possum, rabbit, raccoon and deer, according to the American Kennel Club.

“GSPs have a very high energy level and a strong prey drive,” according to the AKC’s breed profile, “and they need an owner with an active lifestyle to guide the dog’s exuberance and intensity into positive outlets.”

For Odessa, who is now four-and-a-half years old, that manifests into a love of sticks and tennis balls.

He found the State Street race two years ago and planned a vacation road trip this year around the it, with a visit to his brother in Portland, Oregon, and camping in Zion National Park in Utah also on the agenda. And when the race began, Wehunt and Odessa broke to the front and left the pack behind.

“She could have ran three [minutes] flat the other day,” Wehunt said. “I was holding her back, to be honest.”

Astronomers are trying to talk to beings who live on other planets, sometimes called aliens. So far, it has been a one way conversation. Scientists on earth sent out messages starting in 1974. However, technology has changed a lot since then. The Arecibo Observatory is now working on a new message and they are asking kids around the world for help!

First Message to Aliens

The first Arecibo message was sent into outer space with the belief that if there were beings out there who had a level of intelligence similar to ours, or better, they would be able to detect the radio signal and figure out how to translate it.

The message was aimed at an area in space called the Great Cluster of Hercules. It is 25,000 light years away. (That means that if you could travel at the speed of light, it would take 25,000 years to get there!)

Scientists know they won’t get a response in their lifetimes, but if and when an answer comes, it would be very interesting!

What is another word for space aliens? Use the math code to nd out:

Zott or Not?

Circle all the aliens from the planet Zott using these clues: Aliens from Zott each have at least three eyes, but no more than six. They have antennas, but never curly or wavy ones. Their clothes have stripes, but only vertical ones.

Use the Kid Scoop Secret Decoder Ring to discover the name of this book by Evonne Blanchard, which is available at the library. To fill in the blanks, find the letter on the outer ring, then replace it with the letter below it on the inner ring.

Send a Message to Aliens!

is the 45th

Amelia opens a present – a present that’s not a present at all. No, it’s a friendly-looking alien called Uglesnoo from Pluto. Uglesnoo needs to leave right away for the Moon. Uglesnoo also desperately needs Amelia’s help. His sister is very sick. Should Amelia venture into outer space?

Invent an Alien

The universe is a vast place, and

Challenge your imagination by using the newspaper to create a “picture” of an alien. Go through the newspaper and select and cut out parts of different animal and human bodies. Put these together to create a new creature. Could this be what an alien looks like? Why or why not?

Kids who don’t read over the summer vacation months can experience what teachers call “the summer slide.”

Find the words in the puzzle. How many of them can you find on this page?

It’s not a fun water slide. The summer slide is actually a slip in your reading and other school skills. That means you’ll start the new school year behind where you left off last year!

Reading Kid Scoop, books, magazines, comic books and more over the summer will keep your reading skills sharp and your mind active. And regular visits to your library are a great way to start!

If you could go anywhere to explore, where would you go? Why would you choose that place? What would you take with you to help you?

© 2019 by Vicki Whiting, Editor Jeff Schinkel, Graphics Vol. 35, No. 27

AROUND TOWN

Sewing Camps

Registration is now open for Sewing For Young Children and for Sewing Camps-Beginners, a pair of fiber art summer programs for youngsters being offered by the costume department at Theatre NorthWest. The Sewing For Young Children classes run July 2-5 with options for morning (9 a.m. start) or afternoon (1:30 p.m. start). This class is designed for young children with an interest in learning to sew, ideal ages 8-10 years old. The class consists of 3 hours per day for 4 days.

The Sewing Camps-Beginners program runs July 22-26 afternoons only starting each day at 1:30. The ideal ages are 1015 years (as young as 8 for experienced kids) with no experience necessary. It runs three hours per day, producing a project each day.

Sign up at the Theatre NorthWest website.

Weavers Convention

The Association of Northwest Weavers’ Guilds holds its annual fiber arts conference on now until June 16 in Prince George. The event features workshops, seminars, a fashion show, exhibits, vendors’ market, awards, and more than 20 high-level instructors all on site at the Prince George Civic & Convention Centre. Go to the anwgconference2019. com website for more info.

Library Sale

Where better to buy books than the PG Public Library’s book sale for the Friends Of The Prince George Public Library organization. This two-part event happens at the Nechako Branch at the Hart Mall. Part 1 is Friday from 4-8 p.m. for “Friends” members only but you can obtain the $5 membership at the door. Part 2 is Saturday, open for all, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. All funds raised at this book sale will support a renovation to the Nechako Branch multi-purpose room. Cash only.

Diamonds And Rust

Judas Priest, one of the crunchiest metal bands of the glam era, roars into CN Centre on Friday along with artful rockers Uriah Heap. Get tickets at the Tickets North website or the CN Centre box office.

Raku

Enhance your grasp of the pottery arts with a two-day workshop Saturday and Sunday at Carlson Pottery (3955 Hart

97/16 file photo

Suzannah Marriott, right, professional seamstress, shows, left to right Asha Schokking, 10, Kimberly Huggett, 12, and Ava Schokking, 10, how to sew pieces for a backpack project during the intermidiate sewing camp at Theatre NorthWest last summer.

Highway). Raku With Ellen Statz showcases this unique firing process. For more information visit www.carlsonpottery. com where you can also register.

Steampunk Railroads

Celebrate the official international day of Steampunk with a weekend of fantasy pop-culture at the Railway & Forestry Museum. Steampunk Days runs June Friday through Sunday at the downtown historical entertainment site. Go back in time and ahead into imagination with the aesthetic that welds together Victorian glamour, Industrial Revolution imagery, and science fiction. There will be Pioneer Blacksmith demonstrations, wood-turners’ activities, crafts, rides on the Cottonwood Minitrain, and much more, all for the nominal cost of regular admission.

Canada Laughs

The Canada Comedy Jam is coming to Prince George on Saturday at Sonar Comedy & Nightclub.

Canada Comedy Jam regulars Andrew Verge, Velina Taskov, and Matt Baker are hitting Sonar Comedy Club for a hilarious showcase event. You’ve got two

chances to get in on the funny before they head east on their Canada wide tour.

Higher Parties

The Prince George Legion hosts two popular dance bands Party On High Street and Flying Machine together for one raucous night of fun on Saturday. The eclectic funk-jazz-folk-rock gumbo celebrates the release of the new Party On High Street album Electric Spinach. Tickets are available at the door.

Homestead Homicide

Historic Huble Homestead holds its annual murder mystery afternoon on Saturday. From 12-4 p.m. come enjoy a free-form dramatic play where the participants are the characters. There are prizes for best costume, performance, most money and identifying the script’s killer. Join the drama game by signing up for one of the show’s characters by emailing programs@hublehomestead.ca or phoning 250-564-7033.

Dance Freely

On Tuesday (also June 25) the Omine-

ca Arts Centre opens their floor up to Just Dance-Conscious Movement Medi Cine Tation, a freeform stretch/dance event where everyone is safe to move like no one is watching. Water bottle and warm socks are recommended. Admission by donation.

Bannock, Beads

Learn beading the community circle way. Enjoy a night (June 19 and again June 26) of Tea, Bannock & Beads from 7-10 p.m. at Omineca Arts Centre where participants can learn the Aboriginal art of beading in a casual setting. “Learn by watching, asking and doing,” said organizers. “This is not a class, but a place to bring beading projects and sit together to inspire, connect and learn from one another. Anyone with an interest is welcome.”

WordPlay Changeup

Erin Bauman, known affectionately as the Panoptical Poet, has been the stalwart host of the semi-regular WordPlay spoken word series held at Books & Company. Her next will be her last. New host Marc Sinclair will be on hand

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AROUND TOWN

Continued from page 17

for introductions. Bauman said Sinclair “will carry on the WordPlay tradition while adding his own wonderful literary flare. Join me, the Panoptical Poet, one more time on Thursday June 20th to help me celebrate the ups, downs, and inbetweens of my time at WordPlay.” The poetry and prose takes voice at 7:30 p.m.

Heatwave

The Heatwave-Celebrate Cultures festival happens outside at Canada Games Plaza and Lheidli T’enneh Memorial Park from June 21-23. Free activities, live music, cultural performances, food vendors, and more make this a premier summer event for the city, brought to you by the organizers of the Coldsnap Music Festival (Prince George Folkfest Society), the organizers of National Indigenous Peoples Day (Lheidli T’enneh First Nation), the organizers of St. Jean Baptiste Day (Le Cercle Des Canadiens Francais), and the Immigrant & Multicultural Services Society. It is a “heatwave” of music and culture.

Aboriginal Callout

The Indigenous focus of Heatwave has its own event June 21 from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Lheidli T’enneh Memorial Park. If you are an Indigenous artist, musician or vendor please email artsandculture@lheidli.ca for information. There are also opportunities to set up

body of Ambrose Cogshall, played by Brendon Brown, is discovered at 2016 Homicide on the Homestead. The 2019 edition goes Saturday.

or perform at the Canada Games Plaza for the other aspects of the three-day Heatwave-Celebrate Cultures festival. For more information on the larger event email jrubadeau@princegeorge.ca

Ribfest

Pacific Western Brewery is hosting Ribfest 2019, a three-day barbecue party (June 21-23) with world-class rib cooks from across Canada to tempt the city’s

taste buds. They will be joined by complementary local food vendors, talented music acts performing live on-site, and the full power of PWB beer. It’s all free to attend the all-ages daytime portion (pay for the vendor wares you desire), with $5 cover charge for the +19 nighttime portions. All money raised goes to the many charitable causes of the Nechako Rotary Club.

Try-It Tuesday

Live music, dancing, ethnic costume, a cultural food festival, community booths, kids’ activities and much more come to vivid life at Lheidli T’enneh Memorial Park and it finishes with a fireworks display at 11 p.m. – all for families, all for free.

Homemade Funny

Prince George’s Funniest Person With A Day-Job comes back to the Sonar Comedy & Nightclub stage on July 5. If you have the material, come out for the big reveal. Limited number of spots available. Contact Sonar to sign up.

KidzArt Dayz

A big happy mess gets made downtown each summer. It’s time again for BMO KidzArt Dayz on July 5 & 6 inside and out front of the Two Rivers Gallery. This creative blast brings art, music, movement and family fellowship into Canada Games Plaza where everything is hands on and high fun, all for free. It runs 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. both days, and gallery memberships will be for sale for half-price to get families connected to year-round creativity at the region’s top visual arts facility.

Monster Trucks

Take part in an Acrylic Paint Pour With Yvonne Sawkins on June 25 at 7 p.m. Two Rivers Gallery hosts this opportunity to try out a new art medium. Cost is $45 to watch the colours flow across your canvas, creating intriguing swirls and designs, under the helpful supervision of artist Yvonne Sawkins. Learn a variety of acrylic pour techniques as each participant complete three projects. Register online at the Two Rivers Gallery website.

Rock Hattrick

Three bands are revving up the Omineca Arts Centre on June 28. Chiliocosm is the headliner, Cvstles is the support show, and local band The Handlebars is the opener.

Chiliocosm from Grande Prairie is described as “combining soothing alternative grooves with energetic melodic punk rock creating a unique blend of emotional fueled fire.”

Sherwood Park’s Cvstles is called “pop punk as interpreted by four metalheads and one sadboi.”

The Handlebars will bring the “PG mayhem” based on “their own brand of rock/punk. The Handlebars bring you high energy, juicy riffage.”

Tickets are $10 at the door. Showtime is 8 p.m. for this licensed all-ages show.

Canada Day

Canada Day In The Park is the city’s beloved annual birthday bash for Canada.

On July 6-7 the PGARA Speedway is truly the playground of power. The Malicious Monster Truck Insanity Tour comes to Prince George for a pair of shows (6 p.m. Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday) with a wild herd of mega-machines, unique vehicle entertainment, and a pit party. Get tickets at all TicketsNorth platforms.

Beastly Beauty

Judy Russell Presents brings incredibly popular musical theatre show Beauty & The Beast to the Prince George Playhouse stage for 15 shows running between July 11 and 27. See the best of the city’s homegrown stage talent and the storytelling power of Disney in a live summer blockbuster. Get tickets at all Central Interior Tickets platforms.

Summerfest

Downtown Prince George’s signature event in the summertime is a celebration of food, entertainment and activities for the whole family. Live music, merchant booths, arts and culture displays and much more make this a day to circle on the calendar, headlined by the popular food pavilion. This year the extravaganza is July 14 from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Canada Games Plaza over to 6th Avenue.

Red Green

He’s colourful in name and deed. Red Green is the bumbling but pleasantly practical TV fix-it man, the clown prince of duct tape, the sage of the man-shed.

AROUND TOWN

This Canadian comedy icon is coming to Vanier Hall on Sept. 26 on his Red GreenThis Could Be It Tour. His PG shows are always a sell-out. Get tickets at the TicketsNorth website/box office.

Patrick, Scott & Tessa

During last year’s sold out Thank You Canada tour, it was clear to figure skating superstars, Tessa Virtue, Scott Moir and Patrick Chan, that they were far from done creating and developing a new style of skating entertainment.On Oct. 12 they and some special guest performers come back to CN Centre to show the Prince George fans what they’ve come up with next.

Rock The Rink is the first edition of an annual tour that focuses on being more than a figure skating show. Combining the highest level of on-ice superstar talent with an ever-evolving touring production, Rock The Rink will produce the highest value of entertainment in the figure skating realm. This year – along with upgrades to lighting, video and interactive technology – live music will be introduced to the show, with featured special musical guest, Birds of Bellwoods.

Burton, Live

Canada’s piano man, the Guess Who’s epic vocalist, the only artist inducted into the nation’s music Hall of Fame for both

his band and his solo career, the incomparable Burton Cummings is coming to PG. He was the power voice propelling American Woman, These Eyes, No Time, Clap For The Wolfman and many other hits of the groundbreaking band The Guess Who, but then when he went solo he continued the multi-platinum success with I Will Sing A Rhapsody, Stand Tall, My Own Way To Rock, Fine State Of Affairs, You Saved My Soul, Break It To Them Gently, and more besides.

Cummings will be solo at the piano at Vanier Hall on Oct. 18. Tickets are on sale now through all TicketsNorth platforms.

World Curling

Don’t let the date fool you. The event may be in 2020 but the plans are underway now and the tickets are on sale for this Prince George groundbreaker. P.G. goes global as the host of the World Women’s Curling Championships starting March 14. Get your tickets now, and spread the word to friends and family everywhere that this is the time to come spend some Prince George time, and get a close, personal view of the worldclass action the rest of the winter sports community will only get to see on TV. Oh yeah, and there’s also the great social side of curling – there’ll be no bigger party in Canada. Contact Tickets North for tickets and info.