Prince George Citizen June 1, 2019

Tracking tags being attached to garbage carts

Mark NIELSEN Citizen staff

City workers have begun the process of attaching special tags to keep better track of household garbage carts via a radio frequency identification system. By July 15, more than 23,000 carts will have been outfitted with the items, each of which is about 10 cm long and are also used on airline luggage, tickets and retail goods.

The technology, combined with the onboard cameras already installed on the collection trucks, will improve the city’s ability to keep an eye out for broken, overflowing or missing carts –issues that generate about 750 calls to city hall per year, city spokesperson Mike

Kellett said.

“To give you an example, if a driver is going down the street and sees an overflowing garbage cart, which we can’t pick up, it will register that cart so that if that homeowner later calls and asks ‘why wasn’t my garbage picked up,’ that’ll enable us to cross reference using the radio frequency tags to say we have a photo of it, your garbage was overflowing, this is why it wasn’t picked up.

“And that saves a lot of staff time and fuel because the driver won’t have to go back to that residence and investigate. He can just quickly reference it on the computer.”

The collection system, with pickup scheduled according to the zone where

a household is located, will remain unchanged.

Kellett said it will also help a crew plan before drivers go out on a route “because they can see where everything is and not have to double back. Generally, everything is more streamlined.”

The tags and the cameras will also help keep recyclables out of landfills by allowing drivers to pinpoint households that are disposing of improper products, he added.

Information collected through the tags will be stored on a secure server by the city with personal information like people or vehicles blurred out to protect privacy.

The work costs about $10 per cart.

Man sentenced for break and enter

A Quesnel man caught by a homeowner trying to break into a Valleyview house was sentenced Thursday to 378 days in jail.

Clayton Michael Hohmann, 32, was also issued a lifetime firearms prohibition and ordered to provide a DNA sample for the Jan. 4, 2017 incident. When the homeowner came across

him, Hohmann took off in a truck, police said at the time. With RCMP following but not chasing, Hohmann lost control, striking a postal box and driving into a ditch near the corner of Sloan and Shamrock roads. He tried to flee on foot but, with the help of a police service dog, he was found hiding in a nearby yard.

Police said a loaded SKS semi-automatic rifle, stolen from a Hart-area home the previous month, was later found in the truck. Hohmann was issued the term on one count of breaking and entering to commit an indictable offence. He was also convicted of possessing a firearm without a licence or registration, fleeing police and a separate count of breaking and entering. Hohmann spent a total of 485 days in custody on the counts prior to sentencing.

Brink to be named to Order of B.C.

Mark NIELSEN Citizen staff mnielsnen@pgcitizen.ca

Prince George lumber manufacturer and philanthropist John Brink will be named to the Order of British Columbia.

He is one of 15 upon who Lt. Gov. Janet Austin will bestow the honour at Government House in Victoria on June 28. Established 30 years ago, the OBC is the highest form of recognition the Province can extend to its citizens.

Known as lumber industry leader and innovator, Brinks moved to Canada from the Netherlands in 1965 and, a decade later, started Brink Forest Products. Since then, he has grown the business into the largest secondary wood manufacturer in North America. Over that time, he pioneered finger-jointing in Canada, a process of gluing together shorter pieces of lumber, which were considered waste products.

Unwilling to use glue that was potentially toxic, Brink created an environmentally conscious adhesive. Thirty years later, this glue survived a regulatory challenge and finger-jointing and lamination were solidified as an industry in North America.

In the 1980s, Brink went to B.C. Supreme Court and successfully argued that lumber grading rules were not being applied fairly across North America. The fight came at a cost, as some of his raw material suppliers canceled supply contracts in light of the litigation. In the end, the court decision leveled the playing field across the continent.

Brink is the longest serving director on the B.C. Council of Forest Industries. He was involved in all five of Canada’s softwood lumber disputes with the United States, representing the secondary re-manufacturing industry.

In 2001, he was the founding president of the B.C. Council of Value Added Wood Processors, an organization that represented eight associations and up to 800 members.

On the philanthropy side, Brink and the College of New Caledonia jointly purchased a building for a trades and technology program that, in 2002, officially opened as the John A. Brink Trades and Technology Centre.

On Friday, Brink received an honorary doctorate of law degree from the University of Northern British Columbia in recognition of his more than 50 years of commerce, philanthropy and community involvement.

The Rotaract Spray Park in Lheidli T’enneh Memorial Park was a popular location to cool down on Friday afternoon.

City staff are attaching tracking tags to household garbage cans.

BRINK

Citizen staff

Sci-fi author has Prince George roots

Frank PEEBLES Citizen staff fpeebles@pgcitizen.ca

If you’ve read the Mitch Mythic sci-fi novels, you will know that the protagonist of the stories comes from the town of Kingsford. He was playing hockey against the neighbouring town of Vanderton when he suffers an embarrassing accident caught on camera that quickly goes viral. From there it is a series of spiraling supernatural adventures.

It all started with Welcome To The Hive Mind, the first book, where readers met the supporting cast: Drak, a traveller from beyond the stars; Moon SoHee, a teenage girl with incredible scientific abilities; Robert Chapman, the enigmatic CEO of MindHIve. They engage in inter-dimensional espionage, strange technologies, and psychological battles that carried on into book two, The Other Side Of Beyond, that was just released this spring into the earthly dimension.

Fans of the Mitch Mythic set will be excited to know a third book is already underway.

Local fans might also be interested to know that those niggling familiarities have some truth to them. Author Paul Ormond may have spent the past 10-plus years in South Korea, but he disclosed to The Citizen that he was born and raised in Prince George and the books are tattooed with his upbringing.

“The backdrop of the entire story is Prince George as I remember it,” Ormond said.

“The first chapter takes place in the old Coliseum downtown. And a lot of scenes take place in and around College Heights where I grew up, with the big finale happening in what would be the exhibition grounds.”

Ormond was the son of teachers and he attended College Heights Elementary and then graduated in 1997 from College Heights Secondary. He was a sporty kid, and was also a passionate reader. His family travelled a lot to see the sights, attractions and natural endowments of the region.

“I didn’t really appreciate my upbringing in Prince George until I began to miss it,” said Ormond, who moved away to attend the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology (the Cinema Television Stage and Radio Program) and then graduated in 2005 from the University of Calgary. He came back to become a camera operator for CKPG-TV, but had a restlessness that drew him to international travel, and teaching English in South Korea took him across the Pacific where he has lived ever since.

“I think a lot of kids who grew up (in Prince George), myself included, feel like it’s a dumpy old logging town and that all the good stuff is happening elsewhere,” he said, thinking back to the mentality of his youth. “But it’s not until you go away that you realize just how good you had it. It

HANDOUT PHOTO

Prince George-born author Paul Ormond is working on book three of his sci-fi series

Mitch Mythic. The series started with Welcome to the Hive Mind, pictured above.

really is a town with a lot going for it. Easy access to the outdoors and plenty of different pastimes to pursue. Lots of different activities for kids to get involved in and a great small-town vibe.”

In South Korea, he met a woman who became his wife and they went into business together running English lessons and other tutoring out of their home. They have two small children. On the side, Ormond was also an enthusiast of board games. He has a large

collection, uses them as teaching aids in his English lessons, and was developing original ones as well.

It was that that led to the novels.

He was a hungry reader ever since he was a child. His school library’s biggest tome was a huge compendium of the stars and planets, and he used to turn those pages in fascination.

When he was about 15 he read the Jack Kerouac modern classic On The Road and that was a breakthrough for him. It was a

novel in name, but in fact was a breakneck autobiographic travelogue – raw, rebellious and unfiltered.

It got Ormond journalling and into the habit of writing. As he was developing characters for one of the games he was designing, he became particularly interested in one.

As he picked away at backstory and colour, it tumbled to Ormond that this was no game character, it was a literary character. Mitch Mythic was conceived.

“Without anything standing in my way, I jumped into this story and didn’t look back,” he said. “Writing a novel is a challenge and a half. But there are well worn pathways to success – the number one thing being consistent effort. If you write a little bit everyday, after a short time you’ve got a decent first draft. I found myself really enjoying the process. It felt like all of the past restraints were thrown off and I was finally in my element.

“I tried a lot of different writing projects over the years and they all fizzled out some way or another,” he added. “But I look back now at all of the things I’ve tried and realize that there is no such thing as failure, it’s all just practice. Just keep trying until you get it right.”

Travelling on those long, ambitious family camping trips was definitely real-life inroads into the inter-dimensional travelling done in his stories. His childhood and his own personality are impossibly intertwined in the fiction in the same way, if not as overtly, as Kerouac’s creative fictionalizations of actual life.

“Having lived in Asia for a decade I have really begun to appreciate all of the things I was able to experience as a kid,” he said. “White Christmases and camping in the great outdoors, these are things people in Korea could really only dream of. So when it came time for me to choose a setting for my story, there was no question I was going to set it in Prince George. It certainly is the old adage, you’ve got to write what you know.”

His family has moved away from Prince George, so it has been many years since he’s been back. He still has many friends here, though, and a hometown visit is still on his wish list. There’s another reason, too. He has fond and vivid memories of the Bob Harkins Branch of the Prince George Public Library. He knows his books have been submitted for inclusion in their stacks. It would be a thrill, he said, to walk those aisles once again and find his own work tucked on those beloved shelves.

“There is so much about Prince George that defined me as a person,” he said. “I’m well aware that I had a privileged upbringing and I am lucky to have had a family that could go and do those things (reading, sports, travel, etc.), but I don’t think I would be the person I am now if I didn’t grow up in Prince George.”

Caribou deals vulnerable to court challenge, First Nation

Alaska Highway News

Draft agreements to protect and recover endangered caribou populations in the South Peace carry an “offensive tone” and are “highly vulnerable” to a court challenge, a Northern B.C. First Nation says.

The McLeod Lake Indian Band says both B.C. and Canada have failed to engage them in talks about two agreements drafted between the two governments, and the West Moberly and Saulteau First Nations. The agreements could potentially impact the band’s treaty rights, Chief Harley Chingee wrote in a May 23 letter.

“Should the agreements be executed without the requisite engagement with MLIB, they will be highly vulnerable to legal challenge and termination,” Chingee wrote.

The band met earlier this month with Blair Lekstrom, who was appointed by Premier John Horgan to be a community liaison after public outcry over the lack of transparency and public accountability surrounding the negotiations.

West Moberly and Saulteau have been negotiating agreements with the provincial and federal governments that will curb industrial and backcountry access in areas around Chetwynd and Tumbler Ridge to save half a dozen endangered herds from extirpation. The agreements also call for financing for maternal penning, habitat restoration, predator control programs, as well as a new indigenous-led environmental stewardship program.

But by excluding McLeod Lake from the process, the agreements will likely have “widespread” effects on the band’s treaty rights and socio-economic interests, particularly in forestry, if they aren’t amended, Chingee wrote.

The agreements exclude the band from consensus based decision-making between indigenous nations, lack significant detail, and “have a generally offensive tone,” he wrote.

The band should either be party to the

agreement with West Moberly and Saulteau, and take part in determining population estimates, recovery targets, and conservation measures. Or, the two governments must draft a separate partnership agreement with McLeod Lake, Chingee said.

“In-depth and meaningful engagement with MLIB – before the Partnership Agreement is executed – is critical to ensure such adverse impacts are avoided to the maximum extent possible, and minimized or accommodated where not avoidable,”

Chingee wrote.

Negotiations with West Moberly and Saulteau have continued for more than a year despite repeated calls by local governments, MLAs, and industry in the Peace River region to be included. More than 30,000 people signed a petition that was delivered to the legislature calling for a halt to the negotiations until all parties were included.

The province has said it has a constitutional obligation to work with the two First Nations under Treaty 8 to draft the deals, prompted last year after the federal government declared the herds in the South Peace to be facing an imminent threat to their survival and recovery.

Numbers in the central group of the southern mountain caribou herds around Chetwynd and Tumbler Ridge have dropped from between 800 to 1,000 in the 1990s, to around 230 today.

McLeod Lake is a signatory to Treaty 8.

In a statement, the ministry of foresty and lands said it did reach out to McLeod Lake, and acknowledged its meeting with special liaison Blair Lekstrom.

“The B.C. government appreciates their concerns and will be considering the issues they raise,” the ministry said.

“The government will also be considering Blair Lekstrom’s report, the economic impact analysis and feedback from the public engagement process before making final decisions on the draft partnership agreement.”

Colourful cap

Mariah Snih had a colourful cap Friday morning during the first ceremony representing College of Arts, Social & Health Sciences at UNBC. The second ceremony in the afternoon was for College of Science and Management. The University of Northern British Columbia will grant more than 700 credentials during the 2019 Convocation.

B.C. sets requirements for orphaned wells

The Canadian Press

VICTORIA BEACH, Man. — British Columbia’s Oil and Gas Commission says the province is the first in Western Canada to impose legal timelines for the restoration of oil and gas wells.

The commission says the regulation is part of a new liability management plan that ensures all the costs of reclaiming oil and gas sites continues to be paid by industry.

Energy Minister Michelle Mungall says the changes address long-standing concerns raised by the public about orphaned wells. The regulation enhances the commission’s checks of a company’s financial health and history to ease pressure on a fund that supports the reclamation of orphaned wells.

It says the regulation will also more quickly return inactive wells to their previous state, set a clean-up timeline and impose

just four minutes after it was put out. The sentence also applies to a count of theft, $5,000 or under from an offence committed on the same day. Bait

Frank PEEBLES Citizen staff fpeebles@pgcitizen.ca

You’ll get a bigger charge out of the Prince George Farmers’ Market today.

The same produce, preserves and artisan craftsmanship will be available at the downtown farming festival, but there will also be an extra buzz. It is the second time in the past year that the city’s owners of electric vehicles (EV) have assembled at the market to show the public how the local fleet has grown.

“This is the kickoff event for the Emotive campaign in Prince George,” said Doug Beckett, one of the area’s first owneroperators of an electric vehicle. “Emotive (a multi-agency information campaign for B.C.’s growing electric vehicle movement) raises awareness of plug-in electric vehicles in B.C. The campaign’s goal is to share with British Columbians how much fun it is to drive an EV.”

This electric vehicle gathering also aligns with Clean Air Day which falls on June 5.

“Many new EVs have arrived in Prince George since last fall’s EV gathering at the Farmers’ Market. As such, we are hoping this event will have more EVs than we had last year,” Beckett said.

Last fall the owners of the following vehicles rolled to the market for a public show-and-tell:

• 1991 GMC Sonoma converted pick-up truck (electric since 2009)

• 2005 GMC Canyon converted pick-up truck (electric since 2012)

• 2012 Nissan Leaf

• 2013 Nissan Leaf S Model

• 2015 Volt

• 2017 Tesla Model S

• 2018 Nissan Leaf

• 2018 Chevrolet Bolt

• 2018 Tesla Model X

• 2018 Tesla Model 3 Long Range Single Motor

A more diverse crowd of cars and trucks is expected today.

There is an active Prince George Electric Vehicle Association (PG EVA) to which Beckett and many other EV owners belong. Many of the drivers of the vehicles

coming to today’s farmers’ market are members, and they are happy to let the public have a look at their vehicles and talk about the upsides and downsides of owning what is on track to become the most common form of vehicle on the nation’s roads within the next couple of decades.

“The Zero-Emission Vehicles Act (ZEVA), passed on May 29, 2019, means all new light-duty cars and trucks sold in the province will be clean energy vehicles by 2040, delivering on a key commitment the government made in its CleanBC plan,” said Michelle Mungall, Minister of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources this week. She added that “British Columbians are already buying the most zero-emission vehicles per capita in Canada. In the first quarter of 2019, they made up over six per cent of new light-duty vehicle sales in B.C. Due to the popularity of its CEVforBC rebate program, the government recently topped up the incentives with another $10 million, part of the $42 million that was committed in Budget 2019. With federal and provincial rebates now in place, switching to an electric vehicle is more affordable than ever. ZEVA will make sure British Columbia continues to be on the forefront of the clean energy revolution.” ZEVA will require all new light-duty vehicles sold in the province to be zeroemission vehicles by 2040.

This target will be met, said Mungall, using a phased-in approach: 10 per cent of new light-duty vehicle sales by 2025, 30 per cent by 2030 and 100 per cent by 2040.

“By requiring that a percentage of vehicle sales in B.C. be zero-emission models, automakers will respond to the demand by offering consumers more choices,” said George Heyman, Minister of Environment and Climate Change Strategy. “Along with greener options like transit, the increased adoption of zero-emission vehicles will help lower emissions in our transportation sector.”

The EV display at the Prince George Farmers’ Market will be available from 8:30 a.m. to 2 p.m.

requirements for decommissioning wells.

The commission says about one per cent of some 25,000 oil and gas wells in B.C. are orphans that are restored through the industry-funded levy.

The commission says in a news release that a new liability levy to fund site restorations will be phased in over three years to ensure the commission has adequate funds to restore all orphan sites.

B.C. auditor general Carol Bellringer warned in March that the number of inactive oil and gas wells that have not been properly decommissioned was rising, despite legislation that gave the commission more powers to speed the process.

Bellringer’s report said contamination from oil and gas activity can affect human health, ecosystems, and water and air quality.

It said there were almost 7,500 inactive oil and gas wells in B.C. that hadn’t been property decommissioned.

Citizen staff

Canfor Corporation is halfway towards purchase of an American sawmiller. In a news release issued Friday, the company said it now owns 49 per cent of Elliott Sawmilling Co. Inc., based in Estill, South Carolina, with the remaining 51

Citizen staff

A man caught trying to steal a bait bike was sentenced Thursday to 12 days in jail for the crime.

Orlando James Egnell, 31, was also sentenced to one year probation during a hearing in Prince George provincial court. RCMP said he attempted to make off with the bike

CITIZEN PHOTO BY BRENT BRAATEN

CITIZEN FILE PHOTO

A Tesla Model S is one of the electric vehicles which will be on display at the Prince George Farmers’ Market today.

NEWS IN BRIEF

Court orders illegal pot shops to close

VANCOUVER (CP) — The City of Vancouver says nine illegal marijuana dispensaries must close down while they wait for the outcome of a legal challenge at the B.C. Court of Appeal.

The city says the Appeal Court denied a stay of a B.C. Supreme Court decision that ordered the dispensaries named in a lawsuit to close.

In 2016 and 2017, the city filed petitions against 53 marijuanarelated businesses operating outside municipal regulations, most of which agreed to a test case in the B.C. Supreme Court. Some of the dispensaries closed before the Supreme Court sided with the city in December.

In a statement on Friday, the city says it expects the nine stores to obey the court order. If they do not comply, the city says it will seek to have them found in contempt of court. So far, the city has issued six cannabis retail licenses to businesses throughout Vancouver.

Newborn whale calf spotted in B.C.

VANCOUVER (CP) — A newborn calf in a southern resident killer whale pod has been spotted in the waters around Tofino. Department of Fisheries and Oceans marine mammal co-ordinator Paul Cottrell called the birth wonderful news. He says the southern resident killer whales are currently an endangered population, numbering just 75, so any births are significant. He says the first year is tough for orca calves, with a 50 per cent mortality rate, but another calf born in January still appears to be doing well.

The first calf born in three years to the endangered orcas died shortly after birth last August and its mother pushed the baby’s body through the water for weeks.

Canadian in river boat collision

BUDAPEST, Hungary (CP) — A Canadian tourist who was on the Danube River in Budapest when two boats collided on Wednesday said the experience was “surreal and ”sobering.“

Ken Hoffer, of Halifax, says he was on a cruise boat about two bridges down from where the crash occurred, when he saw a man in a life ring float by in the chilly and fast moving water. Hoffer, who was standing on the upper deck near the wheelhouse of the Avalon Illumination, says he immediately shouted “man overboard” and alerted the crew, who called in a police boat. The retired naval officer says seconds later he saw a second man, who was also in a life ring and was waving his arm, before at least three bodies passed by that were face down in the water. However, Hoffer says it wasn’t until Thursday morning that he and other passengers learned the extent of the tragedy, with seven people confirmed dead, seven rescued, and 21 missing.

B.C. Wildfire Service sets up camp as northwest fire risk soars

The Canadian Press

SMITHERS — Wildfire crews are arriving in northwestern British Columbia as drought grips the region and the fire danger soars along with the temperature.

The B.C. Wildfire Service is setting up a 150-person camp in the Dease Lake area, not in response to any specific blaze, but because the service expects potential new wildfire activity with the parched conditions.

A statement from the service says the camp will house firefighters ready to respond to any incident, while a team that specializes in overseeing wildfire management, has also been sent to Dease Lake.

The fire danger rating is listed as high to extreme across most of the Northwest and Prince George fire centres, while large sections of the Coastal Fire Centre are also rated at a high risk for a blaze.

Wildfire service maps show the

most drought-stricken area is in the extreme northwestern corner of the province, covered by the Cassiar fire zone, where a campfire ban and other open burning bans are already in effect. Three new wildfires were sparked in that zone this week and crews also continue to work on two blazes that burned intensely last year and smouldered underground through the winter before resurfacing as hot spots in the spring.

“The Northwest Fire Centre anticipates more holdover fires associated with the 2018 Alkali Lake fire,” says the wildfire service statement, referring to the blaze that charred more than 1,200-square kilometres of bush and destroyed more than 20 homes in Telegraph Creek.

“Firefighters will work out of the Dease Lake fire camp on a rotational basis throughout the summer. This will allow for quicker response times to new fire starts,” the statement says.

An extreme fire rating is applied to conditions where the wildfire service says fires will “start easily, spread rapidly, and challenge fire suppression efforts.”

The service’s website says 235 blazes have been recorded since the fire season began on April 1, and of the 42 fires currently burning, nearly 65 per cent were caused by humans.

Man sings gospel as he watches his home burn in Alberta

Bob WEBER The Canadian Press

Pudgin Wanuch knew there was nothing he could do as he watched the out-of-control wildfire consume the only home he’d ever known.

So he parked his truck outside the church in the evacuated northern Alberta settlement of Paddle Prairie, pulled out his guitar, sat on the tailgate and sang.

“I knew exactly where my house was,” Wanuch said from a hotel room in Grande Prairie. “I knew my house was gone.

“So I sang some spiritual gospel songs.

“I was praying to God, to give my family and community... to put more faith in ’em.”

Wanuch’s home – built by his father and brother, flanked by the homemade hockey rink and baseball backstop he’d put up for his kids – was one of several homes in the Metis community destroyed by fire this week.

Fires have forced more than 10,000 people out of their homes in the northern part of the province, with Trout Lake being the latest of more than a dozen communities to stand empty Friday.

The flames are also affecting oil production. Canadian Natural Resources Limited announced it has evacuated 240 staff from facilities at Pelican Lake and Woodenhouse as a precaution.

“Accordingly, Canadian Natural has completed the safe, temporary shut-in of approximately 65,000 bbl/d (barrels per day) of crude oil production,” the company said in a release.

Federal Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale said Ottawa has granted Alberta’s request for help from the Canadian Forces. The

military will help airlift evacuees, transport supplies and provide medical assistance.

The first reports of destruction came from Paddle Prairie, about 70 kilometres south of High Level.

“It’s like a burnt piece of toast up there,” said Blake Desjarlais of the Metis Settlements General Council.

“The whole land has been scorched – traplines destroyed, waterways destroyed, people’s hunting cabins, fishing cabins, livestock assets.”

Desjarlais said that although the community itself was safe as of Friday morning, at least 15 houses on the outskirts and two community structures burned. Bison and cattle ranchers had to turn their animals loose.

Wanuch, 52, fled Paddle Prairie early Thursday morning. The previous day, he’d been checking on things in town with a few neighbours.

“We were right up to the fire, getting horses out of corrals,

releasing them, let them be free. Nobody was allowed in, so you couldn’t get horse trailers. All we could do is try to get the horses in the open fields.

“The fire was creating its own weather pattern. You could hear the fire roaring and the winds were circling and blowing and the clouds, you could see them billowing purple, red, white, black.

“I could see my neighbour’s house ignite. It was like hell.”

Across Alberta, there were 29 active fires and 10 were considered out-of-control Friday.

The largest wildfire in the province, the Chuckegg Creek fire – the one that claimed Wanuch’s home – had grown to 2,600 square kilometres as of Friday. The same fire forced 4,000 High Level residents out of their homes more than a week ago, and they’re still waiting to return.

People in Slave Lake, a town of 6,500 that was partially destroyed in a 2011 blaze, were told to be prepared to leave with eight hours

notice because of a different fire that the mayor said was burning about 30 km away as of Thursday. That fire had grown to 1,800 sq. km Friday.

Smoke from the fires enveloped points south in a thick, acrid, haze that limited visibility and made it difficult to breathe. It even drifted into five U.S. states – Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Washington and Wyoming. Air quality in three Montana cities was rated unhealthy Friday morning.

The Alberta government has warned weather forecasts for the next two weeks suggest fighting the fires could be difficult. Firefighters were in the province from across Canada doing their best to corral the flames.

The province was slightly under the five-year average for number of fires. But the amount of land burned is more than 3.5 times higher.

Alberta Premier Jason Kenney acknowledged Friday that climate change plays a role in wildfires. But Kenney, who repealed the province’s carbon tax this week, shrugged off criticism that Alberta is doing less to fight climate change.

“They’ve had a carbon tax in British Columbia for 10 years. It hasn’t made a difference to the pattern of forest fires there... or in Alberta,” Kenney said.

“We’ve always had forest fires, we always will.”

Back in his hotel in Grande Prairie, Wanuch couldn’t help but reflect on his home, now little more than ash.

“I spent 52 years of my life there. I was born and raised there,” he said. “I laid back and thought of all that had happened in my life. I never thought I’d see that day.”

CHIEF RICK MCLEAN HANDOUT PHOTO Damage from a wildfire that ripped through Tahltan Nation territory in Telegraph Creek is seen in this 2018 handout photo. The BC Wildfire Service is setting up a 150-person camp in the Dease Lake area.

PUDGIN WANUCH HANDOUT PHOTO

Smoke from wildfires are shown near Paddle Prairie, Alta. in a handout photo provided by Pudgin Wanuch.

‘Hold China accountable’ for fentanyl, Scheer says

David REEVELY

The Canadian Press

OTTAWA — Conservative

Leader Andrew Scheer says the federal government needs to “hold China accountable” for the illicit fentanyl that has fuelled Canada’s opioid crisis.

Speaking to municipal leaders at a convention in Quebec City, the opposition leader said opioid addiction and overdoses are both a health problem and a public-safety problem, and part of the solution is to restrict the supply.

“The main source of illicit fentanyl coming into Canada is from China by containers and through the mail and the majority of it is destined to B.C.,” Scheer said. “Now, obviously Canada must stop this flow of fentanyl into Canada. This is all the more urgent since sources have clearly indicated that the issue of imported fentanyl from China will get worse before it gets better. So the government must take real action to hold China accountable for this phenomenon.”

Fentanyl is more powerful than morphine or heroin and can be transported, cut with other substances, and sold as supposedly less potent than its drug cousins. But because it’s so strong, a very little extra can mean a lethal overdose.

At the beginning of May, under pressure from the United States, China designated all varieties of fentanyl as controlled substances,

adding some slight chemical variants of the drug to its existing regulations.

Conservative party spokespeople did not immediately respond when asked Friday just how Canada should hold China accountable.

The two countries’ relationship is just about the worst it’s ever been, with two Canadians in custody there on charges of undermining Chinese national security, in apparent retaliation for Canada’s arrest of Huawei Technologies executive Meng Wanzhou on a U.S. extradition warrant for alleged bank fraud.

China has been obstructing Canadian agriculture products and Canada’s government is wrestling with whether to allow Huawei products to be used in next-generation wireless networks, fearing that they might enable Chinese espionage.

Canada is working on the issue of Chinese fentanyl, Global Affairs Canada said, without details.

“Fentanyl is an issue that is raised regularly with Chinese officials through our embassy of Canada to China,” said spokesman Guillaume Berube.

“Canada is committed to working constructively with Chinese counterparts to address the flow of synthetic opioids from China into Canada, in particular, fentanyl. ”

A spokesman for Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale said the RCMP works with Chinese authorities to disrupt fentanyl exports, under an agreement renewed in

2016.

“The force continues to work together to combat the flow of illicit fentanyl and other opioids into Canada, including exchanging information and investigative leads,” Scott Bardsley said in an email.

He pointed out a legal change in 2017 that tightened controls on pill presses – used to make counterfeit pills that look like ones with reliable dosages, manufactured by real pharmaceutical companies –and gave border-security agents the authority to open international mail if they suspect it includes drugs. And he noted $350 million the Liberals have spent on publichealth responses to drug use.

Besides calling for a tough attitude toward China, Scheer promised the Conservatives will have “a comprehensive recovery oriented plan to tackle Canada’s addictions crisis,” which drew applause from the mayors and councillors. Municipal-level police, paramedics and public-health units do much of the front-line work responding to drug use and overdoses.

Health Canada says 10,300 people died in Canada of apparent opioid overdoses between January 2016 and September 2018, when the most recent figures end.

A Statistics Canada report released Thursday said life expectancies in the country failed to rise for the first time in four decades in 2017, with opioid deaths that killed younger people the primary culprit.

Saskatchewan takes carbon tax fight to Supreme Court

SASKATOON — The Saskatchewan government has filed notice that it is taking its challenge of the federal carbon tax to the Supreme Court of Canada.

Justice Minister Don Morgan says the province will ask the high court to rule on whether the tax is constitutional and whether Ottawa has the jurisdiction to impose it.

Saskatchewan’s Court of Appeal ruled in a split decision earlier this month that the tax is constitutional. It also said that establishing minimum national standards for a price on greenhouse gas emissions falls under federal jurisdiction.

Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe, who has said the tax hurts his province economically, promised there would be an appeal. Morgan said the province has two months to file a factum to the Supreme Court.

“Our government will continue to stand up for Saskatchewan people against what we believe is an unconstitutional tax on their families, communities, and businesses,” Morgan said. He added that if the Liberals lose the federal election in October, there may be no federal tax left to fight. The Conservatives have promised to scrap the tax.

“The Supreme Court could say it’s moot, it’s not worth hearing because the government has changed the law,” said Morgan. “Or they could say, ‘No, this is a matter of import. We want to create a precedent.”’

A government spokesperson said in an email that the province does not have to ask for a leave to appeal in this case.

The federal tax has been imposed on provinces without their own carbon levies: Ontario, New Brunswick, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.

Experts call for ban on waste exports after Philippine garbage fiasco

Mia RABSON The Canadian Press

OTTAWA — There is no treasure in Canada’s trash and we need to stop heaping it onto the rest of the world, environment advocates say.

The spotlight on the global shipping of garbage grew bright in recent weeks as the diplomatic fight over garbage between Canada and the Philippines gained international attention. That garbage is now on a ship headed back for Canada, but environment advocates hope the result will be more than just a rebuilding of our relationship with the Philippines. They want Canada to stop allowing the export of waste and to cut the production and consumption of most plastic packaging.

Myra Hird, a Queen’s University environmental-studies professor who runs a research group looking at the impact of Canada’s waste and how waste is managed, said the only way Canada can prevent another embarrassment like the Philippines garbage shipments, is to simply ban the export of waste altogether.

“I’m not sure what the rationale for transporting our waste around the globe is because it’s certainly not good for the environment,” said Hird.

More than 85 per cent of plastic waste produced in Canada ends up in landfills, and about nine per cent is destined for recycling facilities. Hird says even recycling plastics comes with a significant environmental cost, with the distances they are shipped and the pollution pro-

duced in melting them down.

“Recycling has become sort of emblematic of being a good environmental citizen,” she said.

“The problem is it doesn’t do what people think it does. It’s not a solution to the generation of waste.”

Canadians are among the biggest producers of waste in the world, churning out as much as two kilograms per person every day. It is one of the highest percapita rates among developed countries. Almost half the plastic waste produced in Canada is from packaging, everything from water bottles and take-out containers to plastic wrap and clamshells for cheap electronics.

Jamie Kaminski, a board member at Zero Waste Canada, said Canada needs to make a massive shift away from single-use packaging to refillables.

“Everything we’re doing has to be shifted to reusable packaging,” he said.

He said it won’t be a simple change, since our supply chains are so dominated by single-use plastic containers, but it’s doable.

“We put a man on the moon,” said Kaminski.

Environment Minister Catherine McKenna is planning to unveil a national strategy to curb plastic use next month but earlier this year her office indicated a reluctance to enact any limits on exports of plastic waste. Cracking down on plastic production is not without its critics.

Conservative MP Marilyn Gladu said in question period Friday that the government attacked the oil industry and “now they are threatening a war on plastics.”

CP PHOTO

Conservative Party of Canada leader Andrew Scheer speaks at an event on Tuesday in Toronto. Scheer says Canada needs to hold China accountable for illicit fentanyl entering Canada from China.

The Canadian Press

Pipeline debate may still have surprises

After B.C.’s top court ruled that the provincial government cannot interfere with oil shipments across its borders, it seemed the matter was settled.

The ruling came about because the province wished to halt expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline from Edmonton to Vancouver. Uncertain whether this would be constitutional, the government asked the B.C. Court of Appeal to pronounce on the issue.

Since all five judges on the bench found that any such attempt would intrude on the exclusive jurisdiction of the federal government, most legal experts took that as final.

Yet B.C. Attorney General, David Eby says the government will appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada. Isn’t this a waste of taxpayers’ money?

At first glance, it might appear so. The Constitution Act gives sole authority to the federal government in matters of interprovincial trade.

Specifically, section 121 of the Act states:

“All articles of the growth, produce or manufacture of any one of the provinces shall, from and after the union, be admitted free into each of the other provinces.”

That seems definitive.

Yet in an unrelated decision last year, the Supreme Court ruled that provinces do have the right to halt the transportation of goods and services across their borders, so long as the primary objective is not to impede trade.

That ruling left many in the legal community baffled. It had been understood since Confederation that only Ottawa can regulate interprovincial trade.

The reasons behind that understanding were clear.

When the decision was made to establish Canada as a federation of provinces, there were concerns that isolationism might set in. It appeared possible, even probable, that local politicians would play beggar thy neighbour if it appealed to the voters back home.

The Constitution Act was written with an eye to preventing such behaviour.

But in its ruling last year (the case

involved importation of cheap beer from Quebec to New Brunswick), the country’s top court introduced some important exceptions.

While the justices agreed that provinces do not have the right to restrict cross-border trade if that is their primary purpose, the court listed certain public policy interests that could create an exception.

These include “agricultural supply management, public-health prohibitions, environmental controls and similar schemes.”

The court’s concern was that our founding legislation, as it stands, is too restrictive. It fails to take account of legitimate concerns.

For example, if an outbreak of meningitis occurred on one side of the B.C./Alberta border, might not some form of quarantine be justified, even if it interfered with crossborder movement.

And here is where the court’s ruling has relevance in the Trans Mountain case. The argument put forward by the B.C. government is that it wished to limit the risk of harm to the environment.

But environmental controls are one of the

Lack of charging stations a speed bump for electric vehicles

As gas prices continue to climb in British Columbia, some drivers in the province are taking advantage of existing programs to acquire a “zero emission” vehicle. By combining provincial and federal rebates, British Columbians can be eligible for up to $16,000 to assist in the purchase an electric car.

This month, Research Co. asked British Columbians about the provincial government’s decision to pass legislation to ensure that, by the year 2040, all light-duty cars and trucks sold in the province will be zero emission, as well as their views on becoming owners of an electric vehicle and what – if anything – is stopping them from taking this step.

Across the province, seven in 10 residents (70 per cent) agree with the course of action designed by the provincial government. Support for the new regulations is highest among women (74 per cent), residents aged 18 to 34 (also 74 per cent) and Metro Vancouverites (also 74 per cent).

British Columbians who voted for the BC Green Party in the 2017 provincial election are overwhelmingly in favour of the government’s plan (87 per cent), along with 76 per cent of those who supported the BC NDP and 60 per cent of those who cast a ballot for the BC Liberals.

The results are a bit more contentious when residents are asked to look into the future. Practically half of British Columbians (49 per cent) say the goal that has been established by the provincial government is “definitely” or “probably” achievable. This leaves 42 per cent of residents who do not

BY THE NUMBERS

MARIO CANSECO

foresee all light-duty cars and trucks sold in the province being zero emission by 2040.

Skepticism towards the feasibility of the government’s pledge is highest among men (46 per cent), residents aged 55 and over (49 per cent) and those who live in the Southern Interior (61 per cent).

A theme develops quickly when looking at these numbers. The core constituencies of the governing BC NDP (women, young voters, Metro Vancouverites) are more likely to endorse the proposal and to think it will come to fruition. Conversely, groups that have traditionally supported the BC Liberals in this century (men, older voters, residents of the Southern Interior) are not particularly fond of the idea or its viability.

Setting aside the political divide, the views of drivers suggest that change may be in the air. More than half of British Columbians who rely on their own vehicle for transportation (51 per cent) say the next car they acquire for themselves or their household is “very likely” or “moderately likely” to be electric. In this future purchase consideration question, men who drive are more likely to be ready for a switch than their female counterparts (53 per cent to 48 per cent).

In addition, Those in the 18-to34 age group are significantly more likely to think of their next vehicle as a plug-in (59 per cent) than those 35 to 54 (52 per cent) or 55 and over (43 per cent).

Metro Vancouver, which has tackled endless discussions about fuel taxes, leads all regions with 55 per cent of drivers saying they would eventually trade in their current car for an electric one.

In other areas of the province, the situation is more complex. Only 40 per cent of drivers in the Southern Interior are “likely” to purchase an electric car next. The proportion in Northern B.C. is 37 per cent, with no respondents choosing the “very likely” option.

When drivers were asked the main preoccupation that would make them less likely to switch to electric, 24 per cent mention price, 24 per cent are fearful of becoming stranded if they cannot find a charging station and 23 per cent say they do not have enough places to charge the vehicle in the areas where they usually drive.

The perception that electric vehicles are too expensive compared to non-electric ones does not go through any substantial fluctuations across the province. But outside of Lower Mainland, the issue that seems to stop drivers from going electric is infrastructure.

While only 23 per cent of drivers in B.C. say their main hindrance in acquiring an electric vehicle is not having enough charging spots, the proportion jumps to 35 per cebt in the Southern Interior and 45 per cent in the North.

Most British Columbians back making all light-duty cars and trucks sold in British Columbia zero emission by 2040. However, to ensure this initiative is fully embraced, it will be imperative to inform the public about existing and future infrastructure related to electric vehicles.

Mario Canseco is president of Research Co.

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permissible schemes specified by the court. No doubt this is the case Eby will make. Will he succeed?

Only time will tell. But there is language in the B.C. Court of Appeal’s ruling that suggests he might not.

The court found that, while environmental concerns were central to the province’s stated argument, the unmistakable intent was much narrower – to halt the Trans Mountain project.

As Justice Mary Newbury wrote: “It (the legislation) is not of general application, but is targeted at one substance in one interprovincial pipeline.”

In the court’s view, that undermined the province’s claim to be concerned principally with the environment.

Had that indeed been the case, the legislation should have been drafted more broadly to combat other threats as well.

In effect, Newbury concluded that by zeroing in on one specific project, the government’s primary purpose was to impede trade. And that, as the Supreme Court ruled, is not permitted.

Victoria Times Colonist

—

Access is the issue with food distribution, not scarcity

Hunger is horrid, an undesirable state few deliberately choose.

We know that over 800 million suffer from hunger around the globe.

In the western world, hunger surrounds us without knowing that it’s there

It’s estimated that four million Canadians experience food insecurity regularly.

Hunger is cruelly invisible and unfairly discriminatory. Women, the disabled, Indigenous and people living in northern communities are disproportionally hungry compared with the average Canadian.

Despite having access to one of the more affordable food baskets in the world, relative to household income, vulnerable populations in Canada are severely affected by hunger.

But while hunger is a real issue, there’s little evidence that food is becoming increasingly scarce in the world. In fact, never in history has the supply of food per capita been greater than in the past three decades.

Agriculture is serving the world and Canadians quite well, but the number of food-insecure Canadians is unacceptably high. It’s been estimated that more than 850,000 Canadians visit a food bank every month and a third of them are children.

Food banks can make the imperceptible nature of hunger more noticeable.

Food banks are a powerful mechanism to redistribute food to those in need. Grocers, companies, farmers and most organizations in the food system participate to realign resources and support Canadians with less means, for the short and longer term.

Food banks can quickly provide distribution improvements and foster ideas for programs and improved linkages between food banks and other social agencies.

They also offer long-term solutions in redesigning societal approaches to reducing food insecurity and poverty by using volunteers and, most importantly, compassion.

Food banks are truly a miracle of the human spirit.

Food banks ought to be used as portals to a community in which wealth is exchanged, redistributed for the sake of equality, democracy and welfare for all. Food banks should be demystified and more attention given to them as we try to figure out how to alleviate hunger. Beyond the reality of hunger and food banks is our relationship with food itself. For most of us, that’s changing.

Consumers appear to be more engaged, wanting to understand how food is produced, processed, distributed and sold. Some want

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industry to be more transparent and comply with expectations that are often different than rules set by regulators.

But Canadians are also largely food-illiterate. Most have never lived on a farm, so they see food through the lens of an urbancentric lifestyle, without appreciating the complexities of both ends of the food continuum.

As we sought more convenience in feeding ourselves, we cooked less and became complacent about food while expecting more. This is the unfortunate legacy of schools not looking at food as an important piece of society. Food education was marginalized for decades, but the younger generations expect something different.

To change this, Canadian schools need to become knowledge nucleuses for agriculture and food. Breakfast programs, gardens in classes and school yards, a curriculum with a greater focus on food systems and cooking would make significant differences in children’s lives –and for educators.

As this greater emphasis on food gets more institutionalized, Canadians should become healthier. And as more of us know what’s good, bad and utterly objectionable, the chances of anyone suffering from hunger should be greatly reduced.

Education is likely the most powerful tool we have to deal with hunger as a nation, especially among youth.

Self-efficacy in the kitchen and adequate knowledge of dietary recommendations can go a long way when budgets are constrained. Some people suggest food should be a right in Canada. It’s much more than that. It’s a necessity of life, like air and water. Anyone claiming food is a right undermines the intricacies of food systems and how food connects us all.

With hunger, the big picture is quite simple but solutions are far less simple. People will be left behind, no matter how much food we produce. The world population is expected to rise to 9.2 billion by 2050. Food production must in turn double by 2050. But with more efficient technologies and better knowledge, agriculture is up to the challenge, particularly if we encourage youth to connect with food systems. Dr. Sylvain Charlebois is senior director of the agri-food analytics lab and a professor in food distribution and policy at Dalhousie University, and a senior fellow with the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies.

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Trump’s new tariff threats threatens USCMA trade deal

James McCARTEN

The Canadian Press

OTTAWA — Just as the fog of uncertainty shrouding North America’s new trade deal was starting to lift, Canada found itself socked in again Friday after U.S. President Donald Trump abruptly threatened Mexico with fresh tariffs tied to the influx of migrants at the southern border.

Vice-President Mike Pence had barely left Canadian airspace following a friendly, olive-branch visit to promote the trilateral agreement in Ottawa when Trump suddenly delivered his latest Twitter ultimatum to Mexico: stop the flow of immigrants or face more levies on your goods “Mexico has taken advantage of the United States for decades,” the president said in a followup tweet Friday. “Because of the (Democrats), our Immigration Laws are BAD. Mexico makes a FORTUNE from the U.S., have for decades, they can easily fix this problem. Time for them to finally do what must be done!”

Unlike Trump’s steel and aluminum tariffs, which were ostensibly a national-security measure, the newest ones – five per cent on all Mexican exports beginning June 10, increasing by five per cent a month to a maximum of 25 per cent by October – would fall under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which the president invoked Thursday.

In a memo to clients, Ohio-based trade lawyer Dan Ujczo was unequivocal in describing the likely impact of Trump’s move on the effort to ratify the trade deal, known stateside as the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USCMA.

“It is difficult to envision a scenario where Mexico or the U.S. Congress will advance USMCA legislation with IEEPA tariffs in place,” wrote Ujczo, a cross-border expert with the firm Dickinson Wright. “The likely delays that will follow in the wake of IEEPA tariffs will require Avengers-like ability to transcend space and time. ‘End Game USMCA’ may be on hold until this issue is resolved.”

It has been less than two weeks since the U.S. lifted the steel and aluminum tariffs, which both Canada and Mexico had said were standing in the way of ratifying the agreement – relabelled CUSMA by Ottawa, but known colloquially to most Canadians as the “new NAFTA.”

On Thursday, Pence was all smiles as he promised multiple times a concerted effort in Wash-

ington to get Congress to ratify the agreement, possibly by as early as late July. That optimism had all but evaporated Friday as the doubts that have permeated the effort to update NAFTA virtually from the outset settled back inpossibly for the long haul.

Trump and Trudeau spoke by phone Friday, but a description of the conversation released by the Prime Minister’s Office made no mention of the latest developments, noting only that the pair “reiterated their commitment to the new North American Free Trade Agreement and welcomed progress towards its ratification.”

Bruce Heyman, who was the U.S. ambassador to Canada under Barack Obama, expects the new agreement to be ratified eventually, but it might not happen before the 2020 elections, he told a gathering Friday to promote his new book, The Art of Diplomacy, an account written with wife Vicki of the couple’s tenure in the national capital. The potential impact of Trump’s latest tariff tactic remains to be seen, he said.

“We don’t know if it’s actually going to happen – remember, this is the arsonist who then goes to put the fire out and says, ‘You’re welcome,’” Heyman said. “This is raw, this is new, this is hostile. But this is the way he plays.”

The former ambassador also laid out a scenario in which Trump, who has never made a secret of his hatred for NAFTA, makes good on his threat to begin pulling out of the original agreement in an effort to prod Congress and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi into approving the new one – a move that would give him helpful fodder on the 2020 campaign trail.

“The president will be blaming the Democrats for blowing up this great trade deal – ‘I told you I’d get rid of NAFTA.’ I can see this thing for his election: ‘I told you I’d blow up NAFTA, I told you I’d get rid of

it. I did that for you. And I got you this really great deal, and it’s going to be amazing. And you know who threw that out? That was Nancy Pelosi and those Democrats. They ruined this.’ And that’s what I think is going to happen.”

For her part, Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland, a central player in the federal Liberal government’s renegotiation efforts, refused to be drawn on the potential fallout.

“The question today is really a bilateral question, a bilateral issue between the United States and Mexico,” she said outside the House of Commons. “It deals with the border between the United States and Mexico. It is important to respect the sovereignty of our two neighbours, the United States and Mexico.”

But at the same time, Freeland said, Canada will move forward on ratifying the deal as the other two countries do – by implication, if one or both of them holds the agreement up, Canada won’t charge ahead.

The new continental trade agreement doesn’t kick in until it’s approved by lawmakers in all three countries.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau introduced the bill that would do it in Canada earlier this week. The clock is ticking loudly, with just a few weeks before the House of Commons is to break for the summer. It’s not expected to sit again before the fall election. In Mexico, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador had just sent the new agreement to the Mexican Senate for approval later this year.

In Washington, Democrats on Capitol Hill say they want to see stronger enforcement measures for the agreement’s provisions on environmental and labour standards, with some even calling for the deal to be reopened.

— With files from The Associated Press

Whale deaths under investigation

Hina ALAM The Canadian Press

VANCOUVER — Canadian and American scientists will study why an unusually high number of dead grey whales are washing ashore on the west coast.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says 70 whales have been found on U.S. territory from California to Alaska, and five more have washed up in British Columbia. It has declared the deaths an “unusual mortality event,” prompting an investigation and additional resources to respond to the deaths.

NOAA spokesman Michael Milstein said many of the whales have been malnourished, and that suggests they may not have gotten enough to eat during their last feeding season in the Arctic.

John Calambokidis, a research biologist with the Cascadia Research Collective in Washington state, said it is early in the migration and the dead whales represent a fraction of those that die in the ocean.

“Most whales especially emaciated whales will tend to sink when dead. So the numbers that actually wash up do represent a fraction of the true numbers,” he said on a conference call with reporters on Friday.

“A vast majority go unreported.”

The population of grey whales was reduced by commercial whaling, but now they number around 27,000. They are still listed as a special concern under

Canada’s Species At Risk Act. Sue Moore, a biological oceanographer with the University of Washington, said the whales might have died because waters are warming and there is not enough food.

“The Arctic is changing very, very quickly and whales are going to have to adjust to that,” she said, adding that although they eat a variety of food they might not be finding the fat-rich food they need.

Calambokidis said live grey whales are also ending up in unusual areas, some of them emaciated and trying to feed, which makes them vulnerable to ship strikes and fishing activities.

“Along the west coast we’ve seen more grey whales come into a number of protected bays and harbours,” he said.

The scientists said they want to learn a number of things from their study of the grey whales including their body condition and ages.

“We know from past data that this population is capable of rebounding,” said Weller.

“We know they can recover given that other parameters remain the same and there’s enough food.”

Deborah Fauquier, a veterinary medical officer with the Office of Protected Resources in the U.S., said it can take several months to a year, “if not longer,” to identify the cause of death for the whales.

“And there may be multiple causes. There may be contributory causes,” she said.

CASCADIA RESEARCH HANDOUT PHOTO

A dead grey whale washed up on a beach is shown in a handout photo from Cascadia Research.

TRUMP TRUDEAU

Grave, crypts and tombs offer history lessons in Ottawa

OTTAWA — Away from the busiest tourist draws of the nation’s capital lies a tranquil area of comparable historical importance – without the lineups.

But despite the peacefulness of Ottawa’s Beechwood Cemetery, one is never truly alone.

More than 82,000 people, including dozens of people who have changed Canada’s story, have been buried in the graveyard east of Rideau Hall since its opening in 1873.

A stroll along its twisting pathways, under its mature trees and over its rolling hills, offers a range of lessons for visitors, especially those with an eye for detail.

Beechwood’s monuments mark the eternal resting places of a prime minister, a governor-general, the founder of medicare, a wartime general, military personnel and a pioneer who helped create the game of hockey.

Graves are also occupied by well-known poets, performers and artists.

A closer look at the more obscure tombstones, of those who lived outside the public eye, tell more stories about Canada’s past, including its religion, immigration and architecture.

In 2017, representatives of multiple Christian sects attended the reburials at Beechwood of the remains of 79 people found in a forgotten burial ground from Ottawa’s earliest days. Their bones were uncovered by a city construction project metres from Parliament in 2013, apparently left behind long ago when no descendants would pay to move them –many were children when they died. Now they share Plot 106, marked by a plaque.

Beechwood also holds several prominent titles to further satisfy history buffs – Parliament declared it the National Cemetery of Canada about a decade ago and it’s home to the country’s National Military Cemetery.

At Beechwood, notable grave sites include those of prime minister Sir Robert Borden; governor general Ramon Hnatyshyn; and Gen. Andrew McNaughton, who commanded the Canadian force in Europe in the Second World War and served briefly as defence minister.

Saskatchewan premier, NDP leader and medicare founder Tommy Douglas has a tomb near the cemetery’s southwest corner, whose view of Parliament in the distance is protected by law.

James George Aylwin Creighton, a founding figure of hockey, is also buried at Beechwood, as is Sir Sandford Fleming, the Canadian railway engineer who came up with the concept of global time zones. So is Thomas Ahearn, who is famous in Ottawa for pioneering local streetcar service and incidentally lays claim to inventing the electric oven.

Beechwood’s sweeping military cemeteries are the final resting places for personnel who served overseas during the world wars

and in Korea, as well as 28 of the Canadians killed in Afghanistan. Until the 1970s, Canadian soldiers killed

abroad were buried where they died – now Canada brings its war dead home.

Capt. Nichola Goddard, the first female Canadian soldier killed in combat, is buried there.

Beechwood also has a section for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and another for spies who worked for Canadian Security Intelligence Service.

Together, Beechwood says there are more than 400 famous burials on its grounds.

Bruce Elliott, a history professor at Ottawa’s Carleton University, said cemeteries are becoming more popular tourist attractions around the world as people realize they can be beautiful rural oases in urban spaces.

“These big, garden-like cemeteries were high on the list of tourist attraction back in the late Victorian period,” said Elliott, an expert on cemeteries.

“Our 20th-century sensibilities shifted away from that, and graveyards became associated with spookiness and morbidity. I guess as we became less comfortable with death, we became less comfortable with cemeteries.”

Elliott said death became less a part of life as society began to conquer childhood illnesses, people started living longer and the importance of religion faded away.

Visitors who head to Beechwood will see an excellent Canadian example of the “rural cemetery” movement of the 19th century, Elliott said.

The style became popular in part because of public concerns that crowded burial grounds in downtown areas were sources of disease, he said, but also because of their pleasant designs with meandering paths, small ponds and different elevations.

A neo-gothic mausoleum, opened in 1930, is a key fixture in the cemetery atop a hill near the main entrance. Inside, there are 546 crypts, including that of Father of Confederation William McDougall.

“I think we take for granted that we have 150 years of history buried at Beechwood,” said Nick McCarthy, Beechwood’s director of marketing and public outreach.

“Even if you’re not related to them, you can connect to the people who are buried here... It’s a place where you can see art and culture and see how the human condition has evolved over time.”

Beechwood is not-for-profit and entrance is free, just like most of its events.

The cemetery holds dozens of public events each year – for example, this summer it will host three outdoor movie nights, organized by Capital Pop-Up Cinema, near the mausoleum.

Visitors can explore the grounds on their own – with help from historical plaques around the cemetery – or they can take 90-minute, free guided tours, which are offered monthly.

Beechwood also offers private tours for groups of four or more.

Andy BLATCHFORD The Canadian Press

CP PHOTO BY SEAN KILPATRICK

This pillar tombstone carries many meanings at Beechwood Cemetery in Ottawa. The hole in the pillar’s side signifies a period of sorrow from the loss of a child or children.

CP PHOTO BY SEAN KILPATRICK

Beechwood Cemetery is shown in Ottawa on Thursday. More than 82,000 people have been buried in the graveyard east of Rideau Hall since its opening in 1873.

Sports

WESCAR late-model series racing tonight at PGARA

Ted CLARKE Citizen staff tclarke@pgcitizen.ca

There’s good news in the forecast for drivers entered tonight in the season-opening WESCAR late model touring series 100-lap race at PGARA Speedway.

The heat wave that’s descended upon the city the past couple weeks is loosening its grip and by the time they get behind the wheel to let loose all that horsepower a racetime temperature of 22 C is expected.

That comes as a relief for WESCAR president/racer Sheldon Mayert, who knows he’s in for a few hours in the pressure-cooker, from qualifying to the finish of the main event, trying to get the better of an expected 12-car field. As one of the most seasoned WESCAR veterans, the 51-year-old Mayert knows better than anyone how hot it can get inside his car when he has his gas pedal plastered onto the floor. The warm weather’s good for the fans but not the drivers.

“I jumped into the truck this afternoon and it said it was 34 degrees – that’s a little too good,” said Mayert.

“It gets pretty hot in those cars. It’s always either scorching hot or we’re standing around in the rain, so this is definitely better than rain.”

WESCAR points champion Kendall Thomas of Kelowna and runner-up Chris Babcock are back for more this year along with Mayert, who finished third in the 2018 standings.

This year’s WESCAR lineup features three rookies, two of whom – Darrell Horwath and Grant Powers – are veterans of the Prince George Auto Racing Association. Horwath, the Tri-City Street Stock Series champion last year, won the PGARA street stock points title in 2018 and 2017 and was runner-up to points champion Lyall McComber last year. Pow-

ers did not race last year but has a long resume as a PGARA street stock driver and like Horwath he knows all the shortcuts to victory lane on the three-eighths-mile oval.

“They both bought good cars and I’’m sure both of them will be running up towards the front on their hometown track,” said Mayert.

“First time out, they’ll have some bugs but I expect a good result out of both of them.”

Mayert wasn’t entirely sure but said there’s a good chance 73-year-old Warren Bergman will be back racing tonight, bringing the number to four Prince George drivers entered in the WESCAR race.

Last year at the second Prince George WESCAR race in June, Mayert just managed to edge out Bergman for fourth place in the

main event and he knows how hard it is to hold off a guy with 49 years of stock car racing experience. Drivers are not allowed to hotlap within seven days of a race and Mayert did take his car out for a spin last week at PGARA Speedway. He got eight laps in and ran over some debris which put a big hole in a new $280 tire.

The same thing happened to him 12 laps into hot-lapping last year. But he left the track confident his car will be running well for the race tonight.

This is the first of six points meets in the WESCAR series.

Prince George will host another WESCAR race on July 21, the back half of a doubleheader that starts the previous night in Quesnel.

Having back-to-back races helps convince the out-of-towners from the Okanagan and the Lower

Mainland/Vancouver Island to make the haul north.

The other series stops are in Williams Lake, June 15; Agassiz, July 27; and Quesnel, Sept. 14. Nonseries meets are scheduled for Penticton, July 6-7; and Victoria, Aug. 31-Sept. 1. A late model nonpoints race in Hythe, Alta., June 8 has been canceled.

Now in his third year as WESCAR president, Mayert figures car counts are on the way up as more drivers make the jump to the province’s top touring stock car class.

“I think it’s gone through the bottom and it’s starting to climb back up,” he said.

“We’ve got three rookies racing for rookie of the year this year and I can’t remember there ever being more than two rookies competing at any one time and we have three this year.

“The energy and excitement are building back up.”

Donny Kunka of Williams Lake, son of longtime WESCAR racer Arnie, is also new to the series this year.

PGARA’s four racing classes –Ron’s Towing hornets, Chieftain Auto Parts ministocks, Northern Outlaw 4s and the street stocks – will share the spotlight with WESCAR tonight.

Time trials start at 6 p.m. and racing begins at 7.

PGARA Speedway is known for its uninvited bug population but Mayert said there’s a chance race fans won’t have that worry tonight.

“I heard this from Jamie (PGARA president Crawford) but the mosquitoes weren’t bad out there, but that was last week,” said Mayert.

“Make sure you bring a hoodie.”

Three-on-three hoops gaining in popularity

Ted CLARKE Citizen staff

tclarke@pgcitizen.ca

Raptors fever has helped push registration in today’s fifth annual Mann Dental/P.G. Summer Hoops Classic three-on-three basketball tournament to an all-time high.

But more than anything, it’s the fun factor that’s convinced 150 high-school aged kids to lace up their high-top sneakers and put on their best moves in a day of intense action on the courts at Duchess Park gymnasium.

Thanks to social media campaign kickstarted by one of the 24 sponsors, marketing agency BLVD PG, the tournament is more prominent than ever in the minds of the kids and their families who will fill the stands and surround the courts in the all-day event.

“The buzz this year is unlike any other year,” said tournament organizer Nav Parmar.

“We’ve got a record number of sponsors and a record number of participants – 150 is the most we’ve ever had, we had 132 last year.

“Of course, the Raptors being in the NBA final doesn’t hurt.”

Parmar patterned the event after existing outdoor three-on-three tournaments in Vancouver and New York City.

He’s got the word out to the surrounding region and teams from Terrace, McBride and Quesnel are entered, broadening the horizons throughout northern B.C., and that’s helped convince more sponsors to jump on board with prizes

and offers to help run the tournament.

For graduating Grade 12 students, the Hoops Classic is their last chance to renew old rivalries.

“The kids look forward to it every year,” Parmar said.

“At the high school zone championships you hear them talking about it – We’ll see you at the three-on-three tournament’ – and that’s why it’s so competitive.

“In the last five years it’s become part of Prince George basketball and every year we’re looking for ways to make it better. When you walk in the gym with the music on and you see them playing on all six courts, it’s a fun atmosphere you don’t see very often.”

Geared to students in Grades 8-12, the tournament branches into three divisions with eight teams of girls, 14 of senior boys and 10 in the junior boys category.

After the opening ceremony at 8:30 a.m., games start at 9 and will continue on six courts leading up to the finals at about 6 p.m. Each team is guaranteed three round-robin games with the top eight teams advancing to the playoff round.

The event is a fundraiser for the Heart and Stroke Foundation with each player paying a $25 entry fee.

Parmar says this year’s tournament will push the five-year total raised to more than $50,000.

“For five years we’ve been able to give back to the community and that’s what makes this better,” said Parmar.

“It goes beyond basketball.”

CITIZEN PHOTO BY JAMES DOYLE

Jeremy Floer races around PGARA Speedway Park last week during a time trial lap at the Turgeon Memorial. Tonight the street stocks will be back in action as part of the WESCAR season opener.

CITIZEN

Soren Erricson drives to the net around Colburn Pearce at Duchess Park gymnasium last year during Mann Dental Summer Hoops Classic 3-on-3 basketball tournament. This year’s tournament goes today.

Prince George Mets batter Hunter Liard takes a swing against the Prince George Diamondbacks on Friday evening at Gyro Park. The Mets took on the Diamondbacks during the PG Youth Baseball tadpole icebreaker tournament.

Cougars drop ticket prices for seniors, youths

Ted CLARKE Citizen staff

tclarke@pgcitizen.ca

In response to popular demand, the Prince George Cougars have brought back age-based pricing to their ticket pricing strategy.

Kids aged two to 18 and seniors 65 and older will pay less for season subscriptions for games at CN Centre if they choose to sit in either main grandstand section (Red Zone) between the two goal lines or the end zone behind the goal line (Blue Zone) in which the Cougars are the attacking team for the first and third periods.

A season membership in the Red Zone including all fees will cost each adult $650 ($19.11 per game, based on 34-game home schedule), while the Red Zone price for seniors and youths drops to $495 ($14.56 per game). In the Blue Zone an adult season membership is $550 ($16.18 per game), and $495 for seniors/ youth ($14.56 per game).

The discounted rate does not apply to the White Zone (Cougars’ end zone), Green Zone (glass seats in the attacking zone) or Purple Zone (glass seats in the Cougars’ end). White Zone season member-

ships will cost $430 ($12.64 per game). A Green Zone season ticket is $285 ($8.38 per game) and a Purple Zone membership costs $262 ($7.70 per game).

“We continue to listen closely to our customers because a major part of our job is to give customers what they want and we feel as if we’ve had some very good feedback about our choices for pricing these days,” said Andy Beesley, the Cougars vice-president business.

“We wanted to acknowledge the fact there are still some people, especially in our most expensive seats, who want to come to our games and sit in sections they used to sit in but they need some sort of a (price) break and we’re quite happy to do it.”

In May 2017 the club announced it was dropping age-based ticket pricing, choosing instead to sell tickets based on where the seats are located in the arena. The initial four-tiered system dropped the price of tickets in the first four rows of seats behind the nets to $7 per game. But it also raised the price of a season ticket as much as 60 per cent for seniors in the most expensive seats. In response, several hundred longtime subscribers

decided not to renew their ticket subscriptions.

“I think we’re way past that,” said Beesley.

“For sure some people were happy and some people were unhappy about our prices. What we never talk about is the fact we’ve also gained a great deal of new customers that are very happy with our prices. We now have families with young kids who buy full-blown season memberships who never in a million years would have come to us before, with our old pricing structure.

“The last thing the Prince George Cougars want to do in this community is to be unwelcoming or unresponsive to customers and we’ve heard enough comments that we’ve thought we’re totally willing to adjust even further to try and make this so we’re as flexible as possible with our prices.”

Beesley said the Cougars compare favourably with other teams in the league and in other major junior leagues across Canada.

“I don’t think there’s any other teams in the league that do $7.70 games,” said Beesley.

“Our Red Zone prices, which are our most expensive season memberships, are very competitive

(compared) to other B.C. teams. Now that we’re offering breaks to seniors and youth if they choose to sit in those most expensive zones we’re limiting what they have to pay to what we think is a very reasonable price.” The team will announce in the fall the prices for its walk-up tickets, which will give fans five zone ticket choices as well as senior/ youth discounts. In 2013-14, the season before the team was sold to EDGEPRo Sports & Entertainment Ltd., the Cougars averaged a league-low 1,693 fans per game. The change in ownership resulted in a surge in attendance, averaging 2,852 in 2014-15, 3,122 in 2015-16 and 3,626 in 2016-17. After three consecutive seasons of attendance increases crowds at Cougar games have declined in each of the past two seasons, from 3,024 in 201718 (when age-based pricing was dropped) to 2,707 in 2018-19. It didn’t help that the team stumbled on the ice, finishing last in the Western Conference this past season with a 19-41-5-3 record.

According to hockeydb.com, that 2,707 average last season ranked the Cougars 19th in attendance

in the 22-team WHL, ahead of only Prince Albert (2,615), Swift Current (2,398) and Kootenay (2,214). Of the B.C.-based teams, Kelowna led the way with a 4,838 average (seventh-best), followed by Victoria (4,818, eighth), Kamloops (4,007, 11th) and Vancouver (3,826, 14th). Edmonton led the league in attendance (7,661) followed by Calgary (7,363) and Spokane (5,959).

“I don’t see us suffering at all,” said Beesley.

“On the worst night, at minus-30 on a Tuesday on a doubleheader we still had over 2,000 legitimate tickets out there. On our best night, the last night of the season in a mean-nothing game, we had 5,200 people in the building. We had close to 100,000 legitimate tickets out there this year for our games. Would we like another 1,000 people per game, of course we would, and we are certainly hoping we can build our numbers this season.

“We understand that winning is part of the equation but we also know that even when our team is in a rebuilding phase we have great entertainment here every night and unbelievable ticket prices.”

Blues must balance emotion, discipline at home in Cup Final

Stephen WHYNO

The Associated Press

ST. LOUIS — Tyler Bozak witnessed the first NHL playoff game in Toronto after a seven-year drought. David Perron experienced the first Stanley Cup Final game in Las Vegas. They ain’t seen nothin’ yet. When the St. Louis Blues host the Boston Bruins in Game 3 on Saturday night, it’ll mark the first Stanley Cup Final game in the city in 49 years. That was May 5, 1970, a 6-2 loss to the Bruins in Game 2 of the series that Bobby Orr ended in four games with an overtime goal. After winning a final game for the first time in franchise history to tie the series at 1-all, the Blues are trying to make their own history at home. To do so, the leastpenalized team in the playoffs that went to the box 10 times in the two games in Boston will need to balance feeding off a raucous crowd and getting too overemo-

tional in that charged atmosphere.

“It’s going to be extremely special, for sure, to play in front of the Blues fans that have been waiting for it for a long time,” Perron said Friday. “You’re trying to keep your sticks close to you so you don’t trip guys, you don’t high-stick guys and sometimes it’s just going to happen. It’s not a penalty you’re trying to take. It happened to me in the first game, and it’s very difficult to take. But you’ve got to be composed with the puck, you’ve got to be composed with your stick.”

Composure is the Blues’ calling card after rallying from the basement of the NHL standings in early January to within three victories of the first championship in franchise history. Their home arena was full for viewing parties for Games 1 and 2, so it’s tough for players not to get caught up in the excitement after watching videos of those scenes.

“We’re not even here and it’s sold out and it’s loud,” Bozak said.

“We’re excited.”

Fans are certainly excited. NBC Sports reported the highest local rating on cable for a playoff game, StubHub said the price to get in is $725, the average ticket costs $1,068 and demand is outpacing Game 1 in Las Vegas from a year ago.

“This is a hockey town and they’ve been with us through the ups and downs,” centre Ryan O’Reilly said.

“I don’t think I’ll be able to describe what it’s going to be like. But from what I’ve seen I’ve been very impressed, and we’re excited to get home to show what this town’s about.”

To show them good hockey, the Blues must try to avoid the penalty problems that plagued them in Boston. They were whistled for high-sticking, hooking, crosschecking, interference and slashing and twice for tripping and goaltender.

Coach Craig Berube, seventh in NHL history with 3,149 penalty

minutes mostly for fighting during his playing career, is not happy about his team’s lack of discipline so far in the series.

St. Louis got here in part because it only took 55 penalties in the first 19 playoff games, and Berube chalks the difference up to too much emotion and harps on it with players because he knows what Saturday night will be like.

“We talk about that a lot,” Berube said.

“You have to keep your emotions in check.”

That won’t be a problem for Bruins agitator extraordinaire Brad Marchand, who days ago made it clear he doesn’t care what Blues fans think of him. And that works in reverse, too.

“Every arena has roughly the same amount of people in it, so regardless of where you are in the NHL in the playoffs, you expect it to be loud,” Marchand said. “I expect the same tomorrow but not overly concerned about the fans.

More concerned about the game.” What can happen in the game when Boston’s playoff-leading power play goes to work is the main reason the Blues want to avoid penalties.

The Bruins have only scored on two of their 10 power plays so far, but they’ve also used that time to generate momentum.

On the flipside, so much time down 5-on-4 also puts wear and tear on the Blues’ penalty killers and wreaks havoc on the flow of the game. They’d like to avoid that this time and give their long suffering fans something to cheer about.

“You try not to let the disruption of penalties and power plays affect you whether you’re short-handed or on the power play,” defenceman Robert Bortuzzo said.

“As a player, you just go out and you may be skipped over five shifts because of the disruption or whatnot, but it’s easy to get emotionally invested and right back into it when that is the case.”

Back on tour in Paris, Federer keeping an eye on the present

Howard FENDRICH

The Associate Press

PARIS — Roger Federer’s return to Roland Garros feels a bit like what happens when a wildly popular rock star goes back on tour after years away.

He plays his greatest hits: the no-look, back-to-the-net, overthe-shoulder volley winner; the sliced backhand returns; the aces to erase break points. He elicits “oohs” and “aahs” and raucous applause. His audience includes parents, familiar with his work in his younger days, bringing their kids to the show.

In Federer’s case, one fatherchild duo had the best seats in the house Friday at Court Suzanne Lenglen. That’s because Christian Ruud, a guy who happened to be in the French Open field himself when Federer made his Grand Slam debut all the way back in 1999, was in the front row, watching his 20-year-old son, Casper, lose to the 37-year-old Federer 6-3, 6-1, 7-6 (8) in the third round in 2019.

“That’s how unbelievable a champion he is, being to play on a high level for 20 years. I’ve been impressed with him my whole life – and I still (am),” said Christian Ruud, who coaches Casper. Federer, the elder Ruud said, “cannot play forever, but he’s still playing at an amazing level.”

Certainly good enough to reach the fourth round in Paris for the record 14th time, a mark that was equaled a few hours later when Federer’s longtime rival, Rafael Nadal, equaled it with his own victory.

While Federer raced through nine consecutive games in one stretch – “The first two sets went pretty quick,” Casper Ruud acknowledged – and hasn’t dropped

a set this week, Nadal was pushed a bit by 27th-seeded David Goffin. Still, Nadal recovered quickly after ceding a set, the first he’d lost to Goffin in their four matches on clay, before emerging to win 6-1, 6-3, 4-6, 6-3. Pursuing a 12th championship at the French Open, Nadal improved to 89-2 at the clay-court tournament; Friday marked exactly 10 years since his first defeat, against Robin Soderling in the fourth round in 2009 (the only year Federer won the title).

That setback came on a gray, rainy day. This victory was bathed in sunshine, which is far more to Nadal’s liking. He and Federer are moving

closer to a semifinal showdown. First they’ll need to get to the quarterfinals with victories Sunday, when each faces an Argentine opponent: Federer plays 68th-ranked Leonardo Mayer, and Nadal takes on 78th-ranked Juan Ignacio Londero, who is making his major tournament debut.

Another men’s fourth-round matchup was set when No. 7 Kei Nishikori and Benoit Paire advanced.

In the women’s draw, 2018 runner-up Sloane Stephens meets 2016 champion Garbine Muguruza in the fourth round, when other matches will include 12th-seeded Anastasija Sevastova against 19-year-old Marketa Vondrouso-

va; and No. 31 Petra Martic – who upset No. 2 Karolina Pliskova –against Kaia Kanepi. Federer hadn’t entered the French Open since 2015; he was injured the next year, then decided to skip the clay circuit in 2016-17 to focus on preparing for grass and hard courts. The owner of a men’s-record 20 Grand Slam titles and considered the Greatest of All Time by many already is popular, of course; his absence apparently made Parisian hearts grow fonder. His matches have been packed. Practice sessions, too. Just walking across the grounds Friday was an adventure as a line of fans five people deep waved hats and

tennis balls and other items at Federer in hopes of an autograph, while others filmed the scene with their camera phones.

And, yes, he is enjoying the nostalgia as much as they are.

“I feel that my 20 years on the tour went too fast, almost,” he said Friday.

But he also means business.

That’s why, as reporters asked questions about becoming the first man to appear in 400 Grand Slam matches (his record is 345-55, an .863 winning percentage) or what he predicts for Casper Ruud, Federer peeked to his right at a screen showing the scores of matches in progress. He was keeping tabs on Mayer’s third-round match.

“I’m still in the present,” Federer noted.

There was no way he could know how this comeback of sorts would go, whether he’d still be able to hit all the notes required for success on red clay.

So far, so good.

“He has all the shots in the book,” Casper Ruud said, “so it’s tough to know what kind of shot he will hit.”

On Friday, Federer had nearly twice as many winners, 52-28. Won 21 of 27 points when he went to the net. Saved four of five break points. And, most important to him, came through when things momentarily got tight in the tiebreaker, saving one set point with a serve-and-volley winner and converting his fourth match point with an overhead.

“A few months ago I didn’t know what to expect with anything, really,” Federer said.

“At this point, now I know where my level’s at. I still don’t know exactly where my absolute best is, but I feel like it could be there. Maybe not. I’m happy to find out, either way.”

Winnipeg native Schrot lifts Blue Bombers over Eskimos 20-3 in pre-season game

Judy OWEN The Canadian Press

Winnipeg native Dylan Schrot caught a late 48-yard touchdown pass from Bryan Bennett to seal a Blue Bombers’ 20-3 exhibition victory over the Edmonton Eskimos on Friday.

Justin Medlock booted a pair of field goals and Edmonton conceded two safeties in front of 19,273 fans at the renamed IG Field.

It was a showcase of backup quarterbacks as the Bombers sat starter Matt Nichols and Edmonton’s Trevor Harris didn’t play after leading his team to a 22-7 pre-season win over B.C. last weekend.

Chris Streveler started for Winnipeg and played the first quarter and a bit into the second, completing 2-of-6 pass attempts for 15 yards and adding two runs for 34 yards.

Logan Kilgore was behind centre in the first half for Edmonton, going 10-of-19 for 109 yards.

Medlock made field goals from 46 and 45 yards and then turned the field goal and punting duties over to Gabriel Amavizca Ortiz from Mexico, who connected on a 36yard field goal.

Schrot, a University of Manitoba Bisons product, hauled in his TD reception at 12:29 of the fourth quarter. Bennett was 8-of-15 for 122 yards.

Edmonton kicker Sean Whyte booted a

19-yard field goal.

Winnipeg led 3-0 after the first quarter, 8-3 at the half and 13-3 after the third.

Streveler had a 26-yard run, including a

spin move to gain more yards, that highlighted a first-quarter drive ending with Medlock’s 46-yarder at 5:58.

Kilgore got to Winnipeg’s one-yard line,

6:10 p.m.

but he fumbled on a sneak. Bombers’ free-agent prize defensive lineman Willie Jefferson scooped up the loose ball as the quarter expired, but the home team couldn’t capitalize.

Edmonton’s offence took a quick hit early in the second quarter. New receiver Anthony Parker left the field without putting weight on his right foot two minutes into the quarter and was then carted to the dressing room.

Bennett took the reins from Streveler and Winnipeg put up a five-play, 16-yard drive Medlock capped off with a 45-yard field goal to up 6-0. Bennett was replaced by Sean McGuire for the final few minutes until halftime.

Edmonton got pinned in its own end and Kilgore conceded a safety at 12:28, but the Eskimos recovered a Winnipeg punt fumble and Whyte booted a 19-yarder with four seconds left to make the score 8-3 at the break.

Eskimos quarterback Danny O’Brien boosted Winnipeg’s lead when he conceded a safety at 8:54 of the third after being sacked by Bombers defensive end Alex McCalister.

After Ortiz made it 13-3 with his 36-yarder at 11:21 of the third, the Eskimos turned over the ball when tight Winnipeg coverage made a pair of O’Brien passes into the end zone go incomplete.

FRENCH

FRIDAY’S RESULTS At Paris Stade Roland Garros (seedings in

Singles - Second Round

Klizan, Slovakia, def. Lucas Pouille (22), France, 7-6 (4), 2-6, 6-3, 3-6, 9-7. Third Round Rafael Nadal (2), Spain, def. David Goffin (27), Belgium, 6-1, 6-3, 4-6, 6-3. Roger Federer (3), Switzerland, def. Casper Ruud, Norway, 6-3, 6-1, 7-6 (8). Kei Nishikori (7), Japan, def. Laslo Djere (31), Serbia, 6-4, 6-7 (6), 6-3, 4-6, 8-6. Stefanos Tsitsipas (6), Greece, vs. Filip Krajinovic, Serbia, 7-5, 6-3, 5-5, susp. Stan Wawrinka (24), Switzerland, vs. Grigor Dimitrov, Bulgaria, 7-6 (5), 7-6 (4), 0-0, susp. Benoit Paire, France, def. Pablo Carreno-Busta, Spain, 6-2, 4-6, 7-6 (1), ret. Juan Ignacio Londero, Argentina, def. Corentin Moutet, France, 2-6, 6-3, 6-4, 5-7, 6-4. Leonardo Mayer, Argentina, def. Nicolas Mahut, France, 3-6, 7-6 (3), 6-4, 7-6 (3). WOMEN Singles - Second Round Madison Keys (14), United States, def. Priscilla Hon, Australia, 7-5, 5-7, 6-3. Sofia Kenin, United States, def. Bianca Vanessa Andreescu (22), Canada, walkover. Lesia Tsurenko (27), Ukraine, def. Aleksandra Krunic, Serbia, 5-7, 7-5, 11-9. Third Round Petra Martic (31), Croatia, def. Karolina Pliskova (2), Czech Republic, 6-3, 6-3. Sloane Stephens (7), United States, def. Polona Hercog, Slovenia, 6-3, 5-7, 6-4. Garbine Muguruza (19), Spain, def. Elina Svitolina (9), Ukraine,

Igor Zelenay, Slovakia and Denys Molchanov, Ukraine, 7-5, 7-6 (5). Guido Pella, Argentina and Diego Schwartzman, Argentina, def. Lorenzo Sonego, Italy and Matteo Berrettini, Italy, 6-1, 6-3.

AP PHOTO BY PAVEL GOLOVKIN

Switzerland’s Roger Federer celebrates winning his third round match of the French Open tennis tournament against Norway’s Casper Ruud at the Roland Garros stadium in Paris on Friday.

CP PHOTO BY JOHN WOODS

Winnipeg Blue Bombers

quarterback Bryan Bennett (18) with pressure from Edmonton Eskimos’ Kelcy Quarles (77) during CFL action in Winnipeg on Friday.

Burning Man waits for decision on big changes at festival

The Associated Press

RENO, Nev. — With Burning Man three months away, organizers are still waiting for permits and decisions by U.S. land managers that could reshape the counterculture festival in northern Nevada.

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management is reviewing more than 2,000 public comments about a document released in April that assessed the risk of terror attack and included proposals to conduct drug searches and add trash bins and concrete barriers at the festival in the vast and remote Black Rock Desert.

The environmental impact statement aims to detail how the more than weeklong event affects the surrounding land and communities, from the playa surface to air quality and traffic flow.

The festival, dubbed the largest outdoor arts festival in North America, culminates with the burning of a towering wooden effigy.

A final report is expected to say whether Burning Man can increase from 80,000 attendees to 100,000.

It is expected June 14, bureau spokesman Rudy Evenson told the Reno Gazette Journal this week, meaning that permits for this festival could come in late July after a

public review and other steps.

The event begins Aug. 25.

Burning Man is “moving forward with planning this year’s event with the assurance (from the BLM) that there won’t be any significant changes,” CEO Marian Goodell told the newspaper.

“The BLM has to do their job,” Goodell said, “but we’re disappointed that we saw such extreme

options, and the draft didn’t recognize the 30 years of work, the 30 years of history we have.”

Organizers say the bureau’s proposed changes would add $10 million to annual costs, and supporters say that mandating trash containers would attract an accumulation of garbage at a place where most festivalgoers pack out their own trash and “leave no

trace” is a mantra.

The federal proposals are part of the consideration of a new 10-year special use permit for the temporary community known as Black Rock City that emerges in the desert 160 kilometres north of Reno during the nine-day event.

The festival, which moved from San Francisco’s Baker Beach in

1990, celebrates creativity and free expression, with drum circles, decorated art cars, guerrilla theatrics and colourful theme camps. Clothing is optional.

Measures detailed in the final environmental report may not go into effect immediately or might be phased in over time when certain conditions are met, such as when the population hits a certain figure, said Evenson, the Bureau of Land Management spokesman. The public and others could appeal the report to the Interior Department, where Evenson said there is currently a five-year backlog of cases. Appeals also can go to federal court.

Goodell, the CEO, said festivalgoers need to be diligent about properly disposing of trash during and after the event and said organizers hope the final report reflects the views of Burning Man’s masses of followers.

She noted that she was involved in helping designate the Black Rock Desert as a national conservation area and that U.S. officials have a huge task in managing public land for many uses.

“I don’t think they’re trying to prevent us from happening,” she said.

“We’re an anomaly; it takes courage and perspective to want to let us flourish.”

Police were told deal was in works with Jussie Smollett

Herbert G. MCCANN

The Associated Press

CHICAGO — New documents on the Jussie Smollett case released Thursday show that prosecutors told Chicago police detectives that a possible deal with the Empire actor was in the works a month before charges against him were dropped. The approximately 460-pages of new documents show detectives investigating Smollett’s claim he was the victim of a hate crime were told by Cook County prosecutors a deal with Smollett could include a $10,000 fine and community service. The detectives

did not pass the information to superiors.

“They didn’t pass it on because they didn’t know it (the case) was going to be handled the way it was,” said Chicago police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi. Smollett was charged with 16 counts alleging he lied to police when reporting he’d been the victim of a racist, anti-gay attack in January. Police contend the black and openly gay actor staged the attack because he was unhappy with his salary and wanted publicity.

Prosecutors dropped charges on March 26 without Smollett admitting guilt. Then Chicago Mayor Rahm

Emanuel and police Superintendent Eddie Johnson expressed outrage over the prosecutors’ decision.

In the documents released Thursday, detectives note the Chicago Police Department was informed by the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office on Feb. 28 that they could no longer investigate the crime. Smollett was indicted on March 7.

The lead investigators in the case met with assistant State’s Attorney Risa Lanier, who informed detectives “that she felt the case would be settled with Smollett paying the city of Chicago $10,000 in restitution and doing community service.”

The detectives closed the case at that point because an arrest was made and the alleged offender was being prosecuted, according to Guglielmi.

Telephone calls to the Cook County state’s attorney’s office weren’t immediately returned Thursday.

It was the attorneys for Smollett who announced charges alleging he lied to police about attack had been dropped.

At the time, Johnson said he learned of the deal prosecutors made with Smollett when the deal was announced by lawyers, adding he didn’t think justice was being served.

However, he didn’t directly criticize prosecutors.

“My job as a police officer is to investigate an incident, gather evidence, gather the facts and present them to the state’s attorney,” Johnson said.

“That’s what we did. I stand behind the detectives’ investigation.”

The Illinois Prosecutors Bar Association said the dismissal of the charges was “an affront to prosecutors across the state” as well as police, victims of hate crimes and the county as a whole.

The city of Chicago is seeking $130,000 from Smollett to cover the costs of the investigation into his reported beating.

The city claims about two dozen detectives and officers investigated the entertainer’s report that he was attacked, resulting in a “substantial number of overtime hours.”

AP FILE PHOTO

This photo shows the “man” burning on the Black Rock Desert at Burning Man near Gerlach, Nev., in 2013.

California show explores Warhol’s social, tech foreshadowing

Katie OYAN The Associated Press

SAN FRANCISCO — Before Instagram and Facebook, before selfies and filters that perfect selfies, there was Andy Warhol, using his art to imbue friends, family, celebrities – even himself – with a certain mystique.

A retrospective of Warhol’s work on display in San Francisco captures the artist’s ability to use paintings, drawings, photographs and other mediums to create buzz-worthy personas the way people do now using social media.

The idea of personal branding, “of how we can be who we want to be,” was something Warhol was trading on more than a half-century ago, said Donna De Salvo, deputy director for international initiatives and senior curator at New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art, where the exhibit originated.

“He had a real understanding of something about American culture, which is now more global.”

Andy Warhol – From A to B and Back Again opened this week at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and runs through Sept. 2. It includes more than 300 works spanning Warhol’s 40-year career.

The show features some of the artist’s most iconic creations – depictions of Campbell’s soup cans and Brillo boxes, for instance, and silkscreen portraits of Elizabeth Taylor, Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley and others – along with lesser-known pieces from his early and later years. It next travels to the Art Institute of Chicago.

“Warhol is constantly labeled a pop artist, but all that happened within three or four years, and then he moved on and the work goes quite dark and explores questions of gender and sexual identity, fame, subcultures,” said Gary Garrels, Elise S. Haas senior curator of painting and sculpture for the San Francisco museum.

The show’s title comes from Warhol’s 1975 memoir in which he touches on key themes from his work, such as celebrity, money and love. The artist died in 1987 at age 58.

De Salvo said the San Francisco museum’s team “really enlightened me in terms of thinking about Warhol through the lens of social media.”

It’s a common thread throughout the show.

“When you see some of the rooms, particularly the portraits, we really conceptualized it in a way of thinking about Facebook,” she said.

Warhol’s understanding of the power of images to create identity and aura can be traced to his early years, after he moved to New York in 1949 and got a job as a commercial illustrator. He did work for publications such as Mademoiselle and Glamour magazine.

“That idea of marketing and all the things we take for granted was just something Warhol was immersed in,” De Salvo said. “And he was just such a sponge in his capacity to absorb things.”

In 1963, he was commissioned to do his first portrait, of modern-art collector Ethel Redner Scull.

The artist took Scull to a photo booth in New York, gave her a stack of coins and said, “Pose,” Garrels said. She took 300 pictures, looking playful, pensive and everything in between.

“From that, he makes this painting,” De Salvo said: “Ethel Scull 36 Times,” a brightly coloured montage of images that anticipated modern-day selfies and Instagram posts.

“You feel each moment,” De Salvo said.

“I think it’s really one of Warhol’s great commissioned portraits.”

Warhol went on to do hundreds of portraits. They provide a window into his social network, which included friends, family members, lovers, musicians, actors, athletes and world leaders.

De Salvo also notes the “multiplicity of images” in Warhol’s work.

“This is where he’s such a genius of permutationthat he could create so many iterations of an image in an analog way, where now there’s a software program to do that,” she said.

“There’s so many different ways. There’s a ‘Warholizer.’ He so anticipated what technology would bring about.”

AP PHOTO BY ERIC RISBERG

In this photo taken earlier this month, the 1963 piece Triple Elvis at the exhibition, Andy Warhol

– From A to B and Back Again in San Francisco.

Celebrities branch out with podcasts of their own

Alicia RANCILIO The Associated Press

NEW YORK — Topher Grace has added a lot of skills to his portfolio over the last few weeks.

He learned to beatbox. He officiated a wedding with Shazam! star Zachary Levi, and even tried telemarketing.

He’s doing it all for a new role, but it has nothing to do with acting: Instead, he’s trying different things in his recently launched podcast called Minor Adventures with Topher Grace.

“It really is more fun for me than anyone else,” said Grace.

“Tig Notaro came on and we did livestock auctioneering,” he recalled.

“I was so bad at it. But, upon listening back I realized, ‘It really doesn’t matter if I’m good or not. In fact, it’s kind of better if (the adventure) is outside of everyone’s comfort zone.”’ Grace is among the growing number of celebrities who are branching out to host their own podcasts. Notables including Lena Dunham, Chelsea Handler, Alyssa Milano, Power’s Omari Hardwick and Queer Eye star Karamo Brown are among those who’ve launched their own approximately hour-long, weekly shows this year.

And Katharine Schwarzenegger hosts a podcast about rescuing pets.

For some, it’s a way to be creative outside of the medium where they are traditionally known. Hardwick’s podcast, on the subscription-based Luminary Network, is called Poetics. It’s dedicated to poetry, which is one of his passions. At the end of each episode, Hardwick’s guests must create original prose inspired by their conversation. It requires guests to dig below the surface and come up with prose based on their emotions and experiences.

“We just kind of talk about their journey, their life and when they found a pen... and where they see themselves going from that point on,” said Hardwick. Guests have included Method Man, Big Daddy Kane, producer Rodney Jerkins and Dave East.

Others are using podcasts to call attention to things they care about.

Milano was looking for a way to bring attention to people who dedicate their lives to making change, but who aren’t famous.

“There are so many people on the ground that fight every single day... and the only reason why I get (media) interested is because I’m an actress, and that’s great,” said Milano.

But, she wondered, “How can I use that platform to empower others to make a difference?”

Milano’s new podcast, Sorry Not Sorry, attempts to highlight those change seekers. She speaks to activists including Manuel Olivier, a father who lost son Joaquin in the 2018 school shooting at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas high school, and #MeToo activist Tarana Burke.

Lauren Conrad, who gained fame as an MTV reality star but later branched out to write books, design clothes and take on other projects, has added podcast host to her list with Asking for a Friend, which features experts in various fields dishing on their work. Most guests are people she’s worked with in the past.

“I felt like this was a very cool opportunity to sit down and talk with each of these people about all the things they’ve taught me,” she said.

Grace also appreciates how a podcast allows for a space to share more of himself, but still in a controlled environment. He’s rarely appeared in tabloids and was never a paparazzi favourite.

“I started to realize, ‘Oh this is a way that I can share something that I love doing in my free time, but still I don’t have to talk about anything I don’t want to talk about, like family stuff.” (For the record, Grace does mention his wife and baby on the show, but everything is on his terms.) Others like to use podcasts as a way to share their talent of getting others to open up.

Karamo Brown of Queer Eye, says the success of the show has made people reach out to him for advice. His expertise on the series is culture, where he specializes in making people feel better about themselves. With his new podcast, Brown, who used to work as a social worker and psychotherapist, takes questions from real people looking for advice.

Brown says helping people find closure or to feel better, helps him: “I literally feel better about myself, it’s contagious.”

He believes people feel comfortable opening up to him because he’s honest about his own past struggles.

“I live my live very honestly and I talk about own challenges with drugs, alcohol, depression, relationship problems, parenting and dating. I’ve been through so many issues and so when I talk to people I can relate to them.”

Doctor Who star David Tennant uses his podcast, David Tennant Does a Podcast, to interview celebrity pals including Olivia Colman, Jennifer Garner and Michael Sheen.

“I love being in a room and just talking to people and seeing where it goes and then that’s the finished product,” said Tennant. AP Writer Gary Gerard Hamilton and Jill Dobson in New York contributed to this report.

Liberals roll out new measures to protect migrant workers, newcomers

Teresa WRIGHT

The Canadian Press

OTTAWA — The Liberal government is rolling out several new measures to protect vulnerable migrant workers and immigrants living in Canada.

Starting next week, temporary foreign workers who find themselves in abusive job situations in Canada will be able to apply for open work permits, which will allow them to find other work in Canada.

This is meant to address a number of documented cases across the country of migrant workers facing labour exploitation, humanrights abuses and squalid housing situations.

Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen said Friday that no worker should fear losing any chance at employment when they are being mistreated.

The Migrant Workers Alliance for Change issued a policy document earlier this month calling for open work permits to be granted to all migrant workers in Canada. Closed work permits that tie workers to a single employer are a modern form of indentured labour, the alliance said, which bars migrant workers from the same rights to labour mobility as other newcomers in Canada.

It also ensures only the needs of employers are met, at the expense

of the workers’ rights.

Syed Hussan, co-ordinator of the alliance, said while he is pleased to see the government offering open work permits for migrant workers who are being abused, many ques-

tions remain about how this policy will work in practice.

“Who defines abuse? Immigration officers are not trained in labour law, so will they be trained?” he said.

He also noted this will only apply to a certain segment of migrant workers – not all. Ultimately, he believes it’s a step in the right direction, but is calling for greater protections and rights

for migrant workers.

“The solution must be permanent-resident status on arrival for all workers, not just open work permits for some after they have been abused.”

Another new policy, which kicks in July 26, will allow newcomers experiencing family violence to apply for fee-exempt temporaryresident permits that will give them legal immigration status in Canada, which includes work permits and health-care coverage. Hussen said this is being done to address safety concerns facing some newcomers who fear jeopardizing their immigration status more than they fear abusive spouses or partners.

In addition, the government is speeding up the process for newcomers who are victims of family violence to apply for permanent residency on humanitarian and compassionate grounds.

A third initiative will see a new two-year pilot that will allow anyone who failed to declare all family members when they first emigrated to Canada to sponsor those undeclared immediate-family members. Currently, when a person applies to immigrate to Canada, they are required to declare all of their family members. It they don’t, that person cannot sponsor that family member in the future.

The new rules for this pilot come into force Sept. 9.

Unions launch hotline for harrassed performers

TORONTO — The unions representing Canada’s performers and directors are launching a hotline for reporting incidents of sexual harassment, violence and other types of inappropriate workplace behaviour.

ACTRA and the Directors Guild of Canada say the line will offer support from human resources company Morneau Shepell.

The organizations say members can call 24-7 to access confidential resources that may range from counselling, to guidance on how to navigate the process of filing a complaint.

“Ultimately what we’re trying to do, and by we I mean the industry, is change the culture,” says Dave Forget, national execu-

tive director of the DGC.

He says recent consultations with members and leadership within the guild revealed a reluctance by some workers to report misbehaviour.

“Keeping in mind that our members don’t work in continuous employment situations – they’re freelancers, it’s precarious work – and there’s often a legitimate concern that ‘I’m not going to be hired for the next contract, I’m not going to be hired for the next gig,”’ he said.

The confidential nature of the hotline aims to address some of those concerns, Forget said.

“I think a robust process that’s in place would both provide integrity and due process for the person who is accused, but also provide support for the person making the

complaint and that should include a range of sanctions as appropriate.”

The potential outcome of someone calling the “HAVEN Helpline,” which can be accessed by app, web chat or phone, depends on the case. It may serve as a confidential record of an incident to be used in the future at the discretion of the caller, or the case might be referred to the union or the employer as a workplace complaint, Forget explained.

ACTRA and DGC have a combined membership of about 25,000 people. If someone who is not a member reaches out, Morneau Shepell has been instructed “they’re not to be turned away.”

While the initiative aims to help the unions support membership more effectively, Forget says it’s an employer’s

responsibility to ensure a safe and respectful work environment, and that there’s a growing awareness of these issues in the industry.

“The ultimate responsibility for workplace safety is with the employer, let’s just be clear,” he said. “When something happens, the employer is required to both have a policy in place for dealing with these things and to make sure that that policy has integrity, that there’s due process and that it’s effective.”

In March, ACTRA and the directors guild were among several organizations who signed on to Canadian Creative Industries Code of Conduct. The code calls on signatories to “encourage good-faith reporting and timely investigation.”

Duke University to pay $54M to end lawsuit over hiring limit

Emery P. DALESIO

The Associated Press

RALEIGH, N.C. — Duke University is agreeing to pay

$54.5 million to settle claims that it and nearby University of North Carolina conspired to hold down salaries of medical professors by agreeing not to hire staff away from each other.

Lawyers for the former Duke

radiology professor who filed the class-action lawsuit called the average $10,000 projected for more than 5,400 current and former workers one of the largest for employees claiming violations of federal anti-trust laws.

A similar lawsuit against eBay Inc. accusing the company of agreeing with the Intuit software company not to recruit each other’s employees was settled by eBay paying $134 per injured

worker, attorneys for former Duke physician Dr. Danielle Seaman said in a court filing.

Seaman’s attorneys now must persuade the federal judge in charge of the case that the settlement terms are fair, reasonable, and adequate to the faculty at Duke and UNC’s Chapel Hill campus who taught at either school since 2012. Seaman could get up to $125,000 under the agreement.

Duke and UNC have denied that top administrators had a deal not to hire away staff for similar roles, but allowing doctors and nurses to move for promotions.

Duke said last week the university decided to settle to avoid the cost and trouble of prolonged litigation.

University spokesman Michael Schoenfeld said Friday the money will not come from tuition, gifts or research grants,“ but otherwise declined to specify the source of the funds.

UNC was dropped as a defendant last year after the public university’s hospital, medical school and administrators agreed to provide documents Seaman’s

lawyers could use in their case against Duke, a private school about 16 kilometres away.

Seaman’s lawyers made the deal in part because UNC, as a public institution, could invoke constitutional limits on federal lawsuits against states.

“The result is remarkable considering that the alleged conspiracy involved non-profit defendants, only half of which (Duke) could be held liable for money damages,”

Seaman’s lawyers said.

Duke, like UNC, agreed in its settlement that it would not participate in any unlawful restraints on competition.

The U.S. Justice Department said last week it would oversee the settlement as it enforces federal antitrust laws barring anti-competitive agreements.

Evidence produced in the case showed the heads of the two medical schools discussed the agreement not to poach each other’s medical professors at two meetings in 2004, but the agreement may have dated to the 1990s, Seaman’s attorneys said.

The case sprang from Seaman’s thwarted effort to move from her po-

sition at Duke to a similar job at UNC.

“I agree that you would be a great fit for our cardiothoracic imaging division. Unfortunately, I just received confirmation today from the Dean’s office that lateral moves of faculty between Duke and UNC are not permitted. There is reasoning for this ‘guideline’ which was agreed upon between the deans of UNC and Duke a few years back. I hope you understand,” UNC cardiothoracic imaging chief Dr. Paul Molina wrote in a 2015 email.

Disappointed, Seaman wrote that “there are only two academic centres in this area where I could work, and I am already at one of them.”

Molina then said the agreement was reached to reduce competition and costs after a previous effort by Duke to recruit UNC faculty.

Molina and every other witness interviewed under oath denied there was any conspiracy, and there were few documentary sources of evidence describing a no-poaching agreement between the medical schools, Seaman’s attorneys said.

Honduran protesters set fire at entrance to U.S. embassy

The Associated Press

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras — Masked men set fire to a pile of tires placed at the front door of the U.S. Embassy in the Honduran capital on Friday amid three weeks of street protests. At least a half-dozen burning tires sent up a large plume of dark smoke at the embassy before Hondu-

ran soldiers moved in with fire extinguishers. Thousands of teachers and medical workers have been protesting against recent presidential decrees that they fear could lead to massive layoffs in schools and hospitals. On Thursday, at least 25 people were injured when police broke up a protest march; many of them suffered the effects of tear gas.

Protest leader Suyapa Figueroa, who also heads the country’s health workers association, blamed the Friday fire on “infiltrators from this country’s dictatorial government.”

While a local television station had filmed footage of the men setting the fire, it wasn’t clear who they were, nor why they weren’t stopped by guards outside the embassy. A store was also attacked by masked looters.

The incident occurred a day after the U.S. Embassy urged protesters to avoid violence in the protests.

Minister of Immigration Ahmed Hussen makes an announcement of support for pre-arrival services at the YMCA in Toronto in January.

The Canadian Press

At Home

Save the bees by creating a bee lawn

Dean FOSDICK

The Associated Press

Flowering “bee lawns” that attract pollinators are a compromise between fastidious turf management and the more casual yard approach. They add biodiversity to the landscape and need less maintenance. That makes them cost-effective, too.

Bee lawns are turf grasses blended with low-growing perennials that bloom again after mowing. They’re cared for like typical lawns, making them comfortable for playing and lounging. But they also contain protein-rich ingredients providing vital nutrients for foraging pollinators.

Their natural diversity – they might contain fine fescues mixed with such spontaneous plants as white clover, dandelions (that bloom early when little else is flowering), creeping thyme, daisies and shade-tolerant lamium – make them less demanding and more resilient than Kentucky bluegrass. Bee lawns require minimal watering and little fertilizing, encourage deeper roots and build healthier soil – especially when their clippings are returned to the turf.

James Wolfin, a graduate research assistant working on the University of Minnesota’s bee lawn project, suggests using the fescue Festuca brevipila.

“This grass has a thin leaf blade and a slow rate of growth,” Wolfin said.

“The slow rate of growth is essential in making sure the grass blades do not create a canopy over the flowers.”

Hand weeding is recommended.

For people who feel they don’t have the time, money or talent for gardening, bee lawns mean “we can mow our lawns less frequently, let the lawn flowers grow and provide habitat for bees,” said Susannah Lerman, a research ecologist with the U.S. Forest Service Northern Research Station in Amherst, Massachusetts. “Everyone can contribute to this simple solution for advancing bee conservation.”

Bee populations have been crashing for the past couple of decades because of habitat loss, chemical use and parasitic mites. These collapses are particularly worrisome since pollinators are instrumental in the growth of more than a third of the food making it to our tables.

Every pollinator plant helps rebuild those insect stocks, even if it’s just part of a colourful arrange-

ment on a corner of the property. Sunny slopes, rocky ground, boulevards, athletic fields and golf courses are optimal locations.

“Also, office parks could benefit from bee lawns, particularly since they have very low human traffic,” Lerman said.

Check, though, with your neighbours and city hall before doing any lawn-alternative landscaping.

“It shouldn’t be too much of a hassle to get your community on board with bee lawns,” Wolfin said. “In terms of dealing with neighbours, sometimes it can be useful to install a row or strip of rocks or wood chips along your fence line to hinder the ability of flowers to spread to your neighbour’s lawn.” Signage also helps, he said.

Monitor growth regularly to ensure you’re not introducing invasive weeds or creating a tall, unsightly yard. Mowing to about 3 inches is a good rule to follow.

“The two-week mowing regime supported the highest abundance of bees,” Lerman said, citing data from a recent turf study in Springfield, Massachusetts.

“We documented 111 species of

bee (mostly native species and the majority wild bees) using the lawn flowers in western Massachusetts suburban yards,” she said. Bee lawns are compatible with family activities unless you run into aggressive colonies of ground-dwelling yellow jackets. Honeybees, wild bees and bumblebees usually are docile unless provoked.

AP PHOTO BY DEAN FOSDICK

This May photo shows a pollen-laden Italian honeybee in a bee lawn near Langley, Wash.

AP PHOTOS

White clover, above, in a bee lawn near Langley, Wash. A honeybee, left, is shown resting on a finger of a beekeeper.

John James McMaster

Born October 10th 1941 in Prince Rupert BC has passed away in Prince George on May 20th 2019. He lived 77 very busy years, and overcame many challenges in his life. Predeceased by his very loving Mother Virginia, Father Bernard, Sister Patricia and Grandparents John Arthur McMaster and Louise McMaster. Survived by sisters Marie and Cora, he had fond memories of nieces Deborah, Lisa, Patricia and Stacey and nephews Steve, John (Gordo) ... they were the ones he was able to see most often; many others living too far away he often asked of them as well as a large extended family and dear friends Jane, Guy and Lilly. Howard and Myrna. He worked for many years at Hastings Park Racetrack and BC Jockey Club in Vancouver. John was a very gentle, kind and loving person who gave his time here to the Legion (#6 & #43) and The BC Railway Museum. Volunteering at every opportunity when needed; he took great pleasure showing the Children and their parents about the grounds and relating his wealth of information about the trains and equipment. He is lovingly and fondly remembered and dearly missed. Donations to a Legion Poppy Fund or charity of your choice will be greatfully accepted. Please join us to celebrate and Remember John at the Prince George Legion #43 1116 6th Ave on June 3rd at 1 pm.

Douglas Charles Framst

Dec 6, 1967-May 24, 2019

It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of Douglas Framst, of Prince George, BC. He is survived by his wife Pam Flagel; his children Katrina and Alexander Framst and their mother Wendy Framst; his mother Louise (Etzerza) Framst; his sister Cyndi Framst and her husband Dale Lamberton; his sister Kathryn Owen and her husband Tyler Owen and their two children Ellie and Oliver Owen; and his many aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends. A celebration of Douglas’s life will take place on Saturday, June 15th from 12:00 pm to 2:00 pm at the Lheidli T’enneh Uda dune Baiyoh (House of Ancestors) at 355 Vancouver Street, Prince George, BC. In lieu of flowers a memorial fund will be created. Details to be available at a later time.

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The heavens rejoiced on Saturday morning, May 25, 2019, when Harold Joseph Anderson (Corky), born May 10, 1934, made the transition from earthly realm to heavenly realm. He has gone ahead of his beloved wife, Rosemary Eleanor, son Larry (Marilyn), daughter Laura (Gary Giese), grandchildren: Ryan (Nastasjja) Dahl, Cassidy (Crystal) Dahl, Kirsten (Dwain Funk), Lars Anderson, great granddaughters: Tyler, Charlotte, Navy Dahl, and great grandson Azlan Dahl. Corky was born in Dryden where he met and married Eleanor, April 22, 1957. He worked as a millwright at Dryden Pulp and Paper until 1968 when he packed up his family and horses to move to Olds, Alberta to manage an Arabian Ranch. That didn’t work out well so they had a family vote to move to Prince George in 1972. He and Eleanor found their dream property and they pursued their dream of an Arabian stallion farm. That transitioned and downsized overtime. Corky retired from Northwood in 1997 after being there since 1972. Corky was so full of life right up to the end. He was always so positive and full of fun. He had a smile that could melt your heart. His love for the outdoors was evident in the many pictures of hunting, fishing, and riding horses. When he wasn’t doing those activities he could be found working on a project around his place. He loved to bowl and he loved to dance. Every morning he would put in his earbuds and dance around the floor for exercise and he couldn’t help but to be positive after that. He loved to celebrate with his family as often as possible with good food, good music, and dancing. We know that he is waltzing around Heaven right now with joy overflowing.

We love you Corky, Dad, Grandpa, Great Grandpa. Till we meet again.

We are having a celebration of life for Corky on Saturday, June 1, 2019 at 2 o’clock at the Heartland Baptist Church, luncheon to follow. In lieu of flowers, please donate to the Prince George Hospice House. The people that work at that organization are absolutely

Svend Aage Andersen Mar 25, 1931 - May 23, 2019

Svend Andersen passed away peacefully on May 23, 2019, at the age of 88. At his side were his wife, Patricia, and his son and two daughters. Svend was born in Denmark, and in 1959 came to Canada with his first wife, Edith, a son, and a daughter, to pursue a career in forestry. In 1968, Svend and his family, which now included a second daughter, moved from Victoria to Prince George. Here, Svend helped establish the nursery at the Red Rock Research Station. He spent 20 rewarding years at Red Rock, enjoying his work outdoors, and taking pride in his contributions to the tree improvement program. He was recognized as the BC Forest Service expert in tree grafting. Svend was an avid rock-hound, prospector, fly fisherman, weather-watcher, gardener, and blueberrypicker, sharing many of these passions with his children and grandchildren. He was kind, easy-going, patient, and had a wry sense of humour; qualities that were admired and appreciated by all. Svend met Patricia Frank in 1979, and they married in 1982. Together they built a new home and a happy life sharing many trips near and far, and hosting numerous family gatherings full of laughter, and endless games of cards. Despite the many years since he left Denmark, Svend stayed closely connected with family through correspondence, travel and memories. Svend is survived by his wife, Patricia; his children, Torben (Sheila), Jane (Drew), Marianne (Robert); his very special friend, Rick; eight grandchildren, seven great grandchildren, and many other dear family members in Denmark and Canada. He is pre-deceased by his first wife, Edith, his infant son, John, his parents, Anna and Viggo, his sister, Anny, and his brother, Arne. Svend was an integral part of many lives, and will be sorely missed. There will be no formal service. A gathering for family and friends will be announced at a later date. The family is grateful to the staff of Simon Fraser Lodge for taking such good care of Svend for the last year. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made in his memory to the Kidney Foundation of Canada or the Canadian Mental Health Association.

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Union warns Disney World fire department is understaffed

Mike SCHNEIDER The Associated Press

LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. — Firefighters for Walt Disney World’s private government say they’re understaffed and that poses a safety risk as the Florida theme park resort grows even bigger with this year’s openings of a new Star Wars land and air gondolas.

“We just don’t have enough firefighters on property to make these families and visitors safe,” said Timothy Stromsnes, president of the Reedy Creek Professional Firefighters, Local 2117, which represents the firefighters working for Disney’s private government.

The administrator for that local government, the Reedy Creek Improvement District, disagrees and accused the union of airing concerns in the media to increase pressure as it negotiates a new contract. The firefighter’s contract expired at the end of last year.

“Safety is of utmost importance, which is why we are always focused on the district being a safe place and are confident we provide appropriate levels of fire and medical services,” Reedy Creek Improvement District administrator John Classe said in an email Wednesday.

He wouldn’t comment further.

research report there is no defined standard for a proper ratio between firefighters and residents. The median reported ratio for communities between 250,000 and 500,000 residents was 1.14 firefighters per 1,000 people, according to the report. Reedy Creek’s ratio would be 0.67 firefighters per 1,000 people if there were at least 215,000 people on the property on any given day. The actual daily number fluctuates, given the transient nature of tourists.

The markets today

TORONTO (CP) — Canada’s main stock index ended its worst month of the year by falling on growing concerns about an economic slowdown amid U.S. plans to impose tariffs on Mexican imports.

The S&P/TSX composite index closed down 51.75 points on Friday to 16,037.49. That’s 1.2 per cent down from a week ago and 3.4 per cent lower in the month of May.

Still, the Toronto market is 12 per cent higher so far in 2019 after a very strong start to the year. The majority of market watchers would be happy with the year-to-date gain after withstanding December’s collapse, says Kevin Headland, senior investment Strategist at Manulife Investments.

Ongoing weak data could also prompt the Federal Reserve and the Bank of Canada to cut interest rates.

“It’s very rare to see rate cuts before recession and perhaps this is a new environment or a less normal environment where perhaps we see rate cuts and we avoid the actual proverbial recession.”

Eight of the 11 major sectors of the TSX decreased on Friday, led by health care, energy and financials.

Energy fell 1.14 per cent as the price of crude dropped to its lowest level since February on worries about reduced global demand and higher supplies.

The July crude contract was down US$3.09 at US$53.50 per barrel and the July natural gas contract was down 9.3 cents at US$2.45 per mmBTU. That’s bad for Alberta’s oil patch, where Encana Corp. shares lost 4.4 per cent.

The heavyweight financials sector lost more than one per cent with Manulife Financial losing two per cent and Great-West Lifeco Inc. off 1.8 per cent. Materials led the three sectors that rose, helped by higher metals prices. Barrick Gold shares gained 5.6 per cent.

The August gold contract was up US$18.70 at US$1,311.10 an ounce and the July copper contract was down 1.4 cents at US$2.64 a pound.

The Canadian dollar traded at an average of 73.93 cents US compared with an average of 74.07 cents US on Thursday.

In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average was down 354.84 points at 24,815.04. The S&P 500 index was down 36.80 points at 2,752.06, while the Nasdaq composite was down 114.57 points at 7,453.15.

Disney World spokeswoman Andrea Finger said the safety of guests and employees is a core focus of the resort.

At any given moment, 32 Reedy Creek firefighters are working a shift on the 25,000-acre

(10,117-hectare) Disney World property. With three shifts a day, around 96 firefighters work daily and another 50 firefighters fill in for vacations or other staffing needs. But that’s not enough for the number of people who visit the theme park resort, said Stromsnes, adding that there should be an additional 16 firefighters on a shift, at a minimum. By next year, Disney World is forecast to have as many as 143,000 guests each night at its more than two dozen hotels and up to 153,000 daily visitors at its four theme parks and two water parks. Add a workforce of more than 70,000 employees, and the resort, which is the geographic size of the city of San

Francisco, could host anywhere from 215,000 to almost 360,000 people on any given day, according to planning documents from the Reedy Creek Improvement District.

That’s roughly on par with the residential population of Pittsburgh, St. Louis or Cincinnati. But the Reedy Creek firefighters face challenges different from fire departments in those cities. While they help patrons with heat-related illnesses, rescue passengers from car accidents and respond to hotel fire alarms, they also help put out the periodic dragon fire, and they are summoned when the occasional vacation turns tragic.

The National Fire Protection Association says in a March 2019

The Reedy Creek Improvement District, a quasi-private, specialpurpose government, is controlled by Disney. It was created in 1967 when then-Florida Gov. Claude Kirk signed legislation authorizing it to regulate land use, enforce building codes, treat wastewater, control drainage, maintain utilities and provide fire protection at Disney World.

Such private governments aren’t uncommon in fast-growing Florida, which has more than 600 community development districts that manage and pay for infrastructure in new communities.

Walt Disney had originally envisioned building a futuristic, planned city on the Florida property, but those plans were abandoned after his death in 1966.

A lack of a built-in constituency in the district puts the firefighters at a disadvantage since there are no residents putting political pressure on the government to increase staffing, said Sean Pierce, vice-president of the firefighters’ local union.

Why measuring is important in business

Iam getting slower, there is no doubt about it. I have been keeping track of my cycling times for the same routes for over five years and each year my times are slower. Since I turned 50, five seasons ago, my climbing is noticeably slower by a minute or two for the same hills, and my times on the longer distances is measurably more sluggish.

However, there are other areas in my life where improvements are happening. I am taking more days off to spend with my family, I am exercising more, and I am connecting with more clients.

This week I was working with several clients, who are not measuring as much as they should be. Their idea of business measurement was how much money they have in their bank account. While this is important, it’s like measuring how many cookies are left in the cookie jar without having a clear understanding of what it takes to make a cookie, how many are in a batch, and when the next batch is going to be made.

Measuring is important for a number of reasons.

1. It gives us perspective about our progress compared to a similar previous period.

2. It allows us to use targets to motivate and educate our employees.

3. We have something to celebrate if our numbers improve.

4. Measuring helps us determine when we need to change our strategies.

So, what should we be measuring?

Every industry differs, but there are certain key measurements that every management team would benefit from measuring.

How are we doing compared to the same period last year?

Whether we are measuring our production, our sales, the number of people we have reached, or our donations if we are a non-profit, must be compared with the same period last year. This gives us a clear idea about our business trend.

Is our performance acceptable considering the economy, trends and changes in our industry?

What is our average sale?

In retail this is a common Key Performance Indicator (KPI) however, we should all be looking at the average sale of our business in every industry. Comparing our

BUSINESS COACH

DAVE FULLER

previous year, and industry benchmarks, gives us an idea of our potential for growth with our current customer base, and indicates the trend for our business year over year with our customers.

If you don’t know your industry benchmark, ask the owners of similar businesses in other communities. Not only will you get a better understanding of your own business but you might be surprised about how you compare with other similar businesses.

Gross margin: Our gross margin is the difference between our selling price and the cost of our goods or services. Every industry has its own standards but getting clarity on what yours is and knowing what it should be will allow you to make the changes needed to ensure profitability.

Net Profit: How much money are you making at the end of each month, quarter and year?

If you are running a business you will want to measure this compared to your previous years but also have a clear understanding of what is the expected rate of return for your particular type of business. Without making a profit, you will be unable to hire and pay your employees, pay back your loans on investment, and create a profitable business that you can sell when you retire.

Other key measurements might include, your return on your marketing investments, the number of referrals you are getting on a regular basis, your bid success rate, your production per employee hour, your basket size, percentage of vacancies, or whatever is going to be significant and meaningful to you and your staff.

Unless we measure, we don’t honestly know how we are doing or what is changing as a result of our efforts.

Most small organizations don’t measure enough while many large organizations probably measure too much. Measurement can make a difference although while I might measure my cycling times, I am not

measuring my weight or my consumption of chocolate, which I believe has possibly increased. However, like different aspects of business, some things are better left unmeasured.

Dave Fuller, MBA, is an aging cyclist and award-winning business coach. He is the author of the book Profit Yourself Health and measures the success of his articles by how many people comment at dave@profityourselfhealthy.com

AP PHOTO BY JOHN RAOUX

Timothy Stromsnes, president of the Reedy Creek Professional Firefighters Local 2117, stands next to one of the trucks earlier this week at Station 2 at Walt Disney World in Lake Buena Vista, Fla.

Consequences for women who had relationships with priests

Marisa

IATI The Washington Post

He was a 24-year-old seminarian from a blue-collar family. She was an idealistic 19-year-old psychology student. He wanted to teach. She wanted to be a missionary. They hung out at the Rathskeller, a nowdefunct bar at Mount St. Mary’s College, to drink draft beer and eat soft pretzels.

When Theresa Engelhardt became pregnant with their son 15 years later, she ended her relationship with the Rev. Robert Dreisbach for the seventh – or was it the eighth? – and final time.

During the years that followed, the Diocese of Allentown in Pennsylvania offered her regular child-support payments, she said, in exchange for her silence and a promise that neither she nor her son, John, would contact Dreisbach.

Now 62, Engelhardt said she has a different perspective on her relationship with Dreisbach than she did as a love-struck student. Although she realizes that she was an adult who made her own decisions in the relationship, she says Dreisbach emotionally abused her by pressuring her to stay silent about their relationship to protect his career. And Engelhardt feels even more abused by the church, which she said treated her as unworthy when she became pregnant.

“The priest can keep going; the woman has some explaining to do,” she said.

Meanwhile, John Dreisbach, 28, has also struggled with the circumstances of his birth, and he blames the church for his estrangement from his father.

“You’re called a father already,” he said. “It’s not that much of a stretch to add one more to your flock.”

The Diocese of Allentown declined to comment on its actions toward Theresa Engelhardt or the harm they may have caused her and her son. In an emailed statement, a diocesan spokesman said Robert Dreisbach’s behaviour had “caused great pain for all those affected.”

Several efforts to reach Dreisbach for an interview were unsuccessful.

As the church is once again embroiled in sexual abuse scandals, some women who years ago were romantically involved with priests and the children born of those relationships are reflecting anew on whether they also suffered abuses of power from the priests, the institutional church or both.

“That situation was definitely abusive, without any question,” said Pat Bond, 63, who gave birth in 1986 to the son of a Franciscan priest, whom she had gone to for counselling to try to save her marriage. The encounter led to a five-year relationship that she now considers nonconsensual because of the power differential in their relationship.

“I take accountability for my own errors,” said Bond, who lives in St. Louis now.

“I should have been strong enough to not get myself into this situation, but I wasn’t at a strong place in my life.”

It’s unclear how many priests engage in sexual relationships with women or how often those partnerships result in children. Richard Sipe, who researched Catholic priests in the United States, estimated in 1990 that 40 per cent of priests are practicing celibacy at any given time. Vincent Doyle of Coping International, an organiza-

tion that supports children of priests, said 65,000 people use his website.

Canon law, the church’s legal system, is silent on the issue of priests becoming fathers. The Vatican confirmed a report by The New York Times in February that it has guidelines for how to proceed when a priest becomes a father, but the details remain unknown.

The church now deals more sensitively with priests who have children than it did before the Boston Globe’s investigation of clergy abuse in 2002 sparked dialogue about priestly celibacy, said Thomas Plante, a psychology professor at Santa Clara University who has studied clergy abuse. Dioceses now consult with attorneys, police and human resources professionals to address situations that arise.

“There is much more transparency, much more accountability, much more willingness for bishops and religious leaders to use the expertise that’s around them to help them figure this out and to do the right thing,” Plante said.

Priests who father children also appear slightly more apt to come forward than in the past, due to more awareness about the risks of social media exposure and lawsuits, Plante said. Some of them voluntarily leave the priesthood.

But other priests still try to keep their children and their relationships with the mothers a secret. As a result, these women can find themselves caught in a struggle between the desire to live freely and vows of celibacy that are not their own.

This is what Engelhardt said happened to her.

She met Dreisbach in 1975 while attending Mount St. Mary’s, a Catholic college –now a university – in Emmitsburg, Md. The pair socialized in the same circles and ran into each other at campus sports games. He would sardonically call her “the prophet” in a nod to her fascination with philosophy. She said she invited him into her dorm room only once. Their relationship endured after gradu-

ation, when Engelhardt returned home to Bethesda. Engelhardt eventually moved to eastern Pennsylvania, where Dreisbach was serving as a priest at Our Lady of Hungary Church in the Allentown diocese.

In 1989, Engelhardt was about to leave for nursing school in Rhode Island when she realized she was pregnant.

When Engelhardt told Dreisbach about her pregnancy, she said he asked whether she was sure the child was his and told her she could have an abortion or relinquish the child for adoption.

She said she refused.

“He was quite upset and had said that he would offer to send me money every once in a while, but he didn’t want to leave the priesthood,” Engelhardt said.

“And I didn’t want someone to marry me that I didn’t feel was vested in me and the life of our child.”

Engelhardt had kept her relationship with Dreisbach quiet for more than a decade by the time she revealed the news of her pregnancy to the Allentown diocese.

She recalled that then-Bishop Thomas Welsh, who died in 2009, told her she was a sinner who was bringing shame to her family and that the child deserved to be raised by a husband and wife.

He offered to help her move out of the area, she said. She asked the diocese to provide her with a psychologist or a social worker to help her figure out what to do, she said, but the diocese declined.

She was asked to sign a confidentiality agreement.

“For me,” she said, “it was more of a psychological trauma – what I had to deal with with the church.”

Her story became public when instead of signing the agreement with the diocese, Engelhardt sued for, and later won, child support in state court.

Soon after she spoke to a local newspaper at the end of the court battle in 1993, she said, her parish priest told her she could no longer serve as a Eucharistic minister because the publicity was a distraction.

The diocesan spokesman said the pastor remembered leaving the final decision to Engelhardt.

Welsh removed Dreisbach from ministry after Engelhardt spoke publicly, the diocese said, and began the process to defrock Dreisbach. Only the Vatican can remove a priest’s clerical status, and the diocese said that action is pending.

Since Dreisbach left priestly ministry, Engelhardt said, he has worked as a migrant labourer, a bartender and a prison guard. He is retired and married to another woman.

Engelhardt, who went on to get a nursing degree at Cedar Crest College in Allentown, said she initially viewed herself as a foolish college student who got in over her head. But as an advocate for domestic violence victims in her 20s, she said, she felt an uneasy kinship with the women she served. Her discomfort grew when she found herself also identifying with the abused women she worked with in Pennsylvania years later. Her son is now a father himself. John Dreisbach lives near Buffalo, with his wife, their six-year-old son and their four-yearold daughter. He said he has fought depression throughout his life, a fact that he attributes in part to his complicated relationship with his father.

“One of the big things that I had to go through with therapy was my rationale that if I hadn’t been born, my mom wouldn’t have had to get wrapped up with the church as an issue and my dad would have been able to keep being a priest,” John Dreisbach said.

John’s earliest memory of his father is going out for ice cream together when he was four or five years old. He said he did not know his father was a priest until Grade 5, when Engelhardt told him while they drove to the Lutheran church where she had started to worship.

John and Robert Dreisbach saw each other on and off over the years but now communicate infrequently. John said he feels that the church’s sexual abuse crisis and its handling of priests having children are two sides of the same coin.

The church has reacted to both problems by trying to preserve its power, rather than consider the needs of parishioners, he said.

Cait Finnegan Grenier, a longtime advocate for women who become involved with priests, said whether a relationship between a priest and a woman is abusive depends on how it begins.

A partnership that arises from a situation with a power differential, like a counselling relationship, is exploitative, Grenier said, while friends falling in love is not.

The priests in those cases should seek to be laicized, or removed from ordained ministry, to be with their partners, Grenier said.

Her own husband, who was a Catholic priest and is now deceased, left the priesthood to marry her when they realized they were in love.

For those who never get that relief, like Engelhardt and her son, the emotional pain they said the church caused them can reverberate for decades.

“It made me feel as a teenager, and still makes me feel as an adult, that I just didn’t matter at all to them,” John Dreisbach said.

“I was a cancer that needed to be treated.”

Bible, religious texts have a place in public education

States bringing scripture back to public schools headlined the religion page recently. Kentucky has passed legislation to encourage high schools to teach the Bible. In response was a letter to the editor, entitled Keep religion out of public schools. The letter writer wrote, “Teaching Christianity in multicultural public schools is wrong and contrary to the American separation of church and state doctrine and our own Canadian Rights and Freedoms.”

When I began teaching, the day began with Scripture followed by the Lord’s Prayer. That practice has been long discarded, but to ban the Bible or other religious texts from our education system entirely leaves a huge gap

in historical, cultural and moral knowledge.

Our founding fathers were not against religion, but forced adherence to a particular religious system. Many had escaped oppressive religious regimes, and political regimes have an abysmal track record in encouraging freedom, whether Protestant, Catholic, Muslim or atheistic. Most founding fathers were deeply religious; they just did not want to be told what to believe. They had a deep

respect for Scripture, and banning the Bible from schools would have been abhorrent. The Bible is the foundation of most of our laws and much of culture. It teaches not just about God, but about life and relationships. It is wisdom literature that will enrich anyone who reads it.

For example, the ten commandments were given to Israel after their liberation from slavery in Egypt, given to teach the nation how to relate to God and one another.

The first commands relate to God: they were to have no others gods; when we fail to give our Creator first priority, we worship lesser things, things that are empty and worthless.

When Israel was exiled we read,

“They followed worthless idols and themselves became worthless.”

They were to respect God’s name and observe a day of rest.

The Sabbath provided physical rest for everyone and a day to reflect on the Creator, his creation and all he had done for them.

The last six commands address relationships with one another.

Honouring parents is a key to longevity of society. Prohibitions against murder, adultery, theft, false testimony and coveting provide the context for healthy community life.

Jesus includes anger and hatred with murder, evil thoughts, which lead to acts of violence. Adultery is a major contributor to marriage breakdown, colossal heartbreak and misery and poverty especially of women and children.

God calls for integrity in financial dealing and communication, and a curb on our wants. Jesus summarized these commands, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart… and love your neighbour as yourself.”

When we ignore these divine commands, our whole society suffers. Like Israel, when we follow wrong priorities, we fall into a moral slide of family breakdown, dishonesty and deception in business and political life, and growing violence and oppression of the poor and defenceless in society.

The psalmist says, “Your Word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path.”

We need more light in our schools and throughout society.

WASHINGTON POST PHOTO BY BILL O’LEARY

Theresa Engelhardt, pictured in a chapel at the National Shrine Grotto, had a 15-year relationship and a child with a priest.