Bridget Nagasaka, 5, works on a collaborative drawing Friday morning during the Two Rivers Gallery Spring Break Art Camp. Children
during the week long “Art of Imagineering.”
Engineer Frank Vanderlans drives the Little Prince train in Lheidli T’enneh Memorial Park in 2018. The Exploration Place is looking for people willing to train and work as engineers for the tiny steam engine.
Frank PEEBLES Citizen staff fpeebles@pgcitizen.ca
The Exploration Place would like to engineer a solution to a problem they have been tracking.
The Little Prince needs some royal attendants so there can be public attendance. The small locomotive might look like a character out of The Little Engine That Could, but it is indeed a very real steam train and needs equally real drivers. This summer’s schedule for The Little Prince is so far set at a part-time rate because there are too few licensed engineers for this unique vehicle. It is one of the most popular attractions in the city, each summer.
Families, tourists, teenagers, seniors, it doesn’t matter who you’re talking about, going for a ride around Lheidli T’enneh Memorial Park is enjoyed by all walks of life. If more engineers could be sourced, more hours of operation could be scheduled.
“It’s a lot of fun,” said John Calogheros, facilities manager at Exploration Place and one of only three certified drivers for The Little Prince.
“You get to drive a 1912 steam train. Do you know who can say they have a license like that? Only me, Frank (Van Der Lans) and Nick (Chapman). It’s a pretty exclusive group.”
Calogheros would like to add at least two and maybe four more who can commit to a shift rotation up in the vintage driver’s seat. The job favours those who are friendly with the public and being a good ambassador of local history.
The training involves a one-day class, some followup course work, the standard criminal record check for those working with the public, a couple of skill reviews (partly written, partly practical), and then 160 hours of riding along with a certified driver.
The training is free of charge for those who can volunteer the time to get the certification but the work after that is paid by the hour.
Anyone wanting information about
getting Little Prince certified is asked to contact Calogheros by email at john.calogheros@theexplorationplace.com or call The Exploration Place at 250-562-1612.
The train is scheduled to run full-time in June as the summer gets rolling, then The Little Prince will operate on weekends and holidays unless more drivers can allow for more openings.
The Exploration Place is also offering all of last year’s Little Prince membership holders another summer of riding the rails for no additional charge.
The wildfire conditions of 2018 caused the train to be closed more than expected so those pass-holders can have their free access renewed for this coming season. Contact operations and marketing manager Lisa Connor (lisa.connor@ theexplorationplace.com) for that free renewal.
Those wishing to buy rides in bulk can purchase this year’s punch-card for train trips around the park.
The Little Prince will be free of charge for all on Canada Day and National Aboriginal Day.
Frank PEEBLES Citizen staff
The city’s arts scene will soon have a higher profile on television.
Local artist Michael Kast has been tapped to host a new show called Arts North that will be seen on Shaw TV’s all-local Spotlight series. Kast is well positioned to host a series of this nature, being one of the Community Arts Council’s recent artists-inresidence, one of the managers at arts and office supply store Mills and a host at community radio station CFIS. He is a multimedia artist who incorporates painting, photography and digital elements to his work.
“It’s not going to focus just on visual arts, it will also conclude things like spoken word, music, theatre, and it will look at the people and the events in the local arts scene,” he said, then clarified, “regional – regional arts scene. We aren’t restricting ourselves just to the main city of Prince George. There are many artists in the wider area who are involved in our arts scene and they aren’t as known, so this will help raise those profiles.”
The inaugural show will focus on a well known painter with an arts show underway now at the Community Arts Council feature gallery. Cliff Mann is the first special guest. As host, Kast will interview him and intersperse the discussion with scenes of Mann’s paintings and artistic process. Kast can do the editing work himself with the digital splicing and effects software (Adobe Premiere) he already has for his other artistic endeavours. He has the connections, he has the background, he has the equipment, but it was nonetheless a surprise to get the invitation to think about hosting the segment.
— see ‘THIS WAS, page 3
Despite the warmer weather, the snow dump on 18th Avenue seems to keep growing.
Mark NIELSEN Citizen staff mnielsen@pgcitizen.ca
A man who stabbed and nearly killed his boyfriend during an argument while the two were driving to Prince George was sentenced Friday to three years and nine months in jail.
Less credit for time served prior to sentencing, Jesse Cote has a further two years and two months to serve for the March 1, 2018 incident on Highway 97 at Salmon Valley.
Because the remainder of the sentence is greater than two years, it will be served in a federal prison.
If the victim had not waved down a passing vehicle and got the
occupants to call for help, he likely would have died. It first appeared he had been stabbed behind his ear but after arrival at University Hospital of Northern B.C., the cartoroid artery in the side of his neck burst, sparking emergency surgery.
Even before he had arrived at the hospital, it was touch and go. Because his blood pressure was so low, paramedics had to drill a hole in a leg bone to administer medication and by the time they had reached Prince George, he had lost about two litres of blood.
The victim told police he and Cote had been arguing while driving to Prince George. Things escalated after they had switched seats and the man was stabbed after he
had got behind the wheel.
The two had been using drugs in the days before. Cote said he had been using heroin regularly and was in a poor mood that morning after he had consumed methamphetamine and alcohol the night before.
In sentencing Cote, provincial court judge Michael Gray told Cote that while an argument had preceded the stabbing, the attack was unprovoked.
Gray also noted that Cote has been diagnosed with a form of psychosis yet failed to take steps to get help, despite that being a condition of his bail from a prior incident.
“You were responsible for your conduct,” Gray told Cote.
Citizen staff
A University of Northern British Columbia political science class wants your opinions on the
Insurance Corporation of British Columbia.
The students are taking a third year research methods course and are conducting a online survey
pertaining to the privatization of the Crown corporation.
The survey is found at www. surveymonkey.ca/r/pols320 and it will be live until March 27.
Citizen staff
A plan to build student housing downtown next to the Courtyard by Marriott will go to a public hearing during Monday night’s city council meeting.
Faction Projects Inc. has submitted the application on behalf of River City Ventures Inc., the same group that backed the Marriott project, as well as a numbered company.
The proponents are seeking to rezone the site to a tailor-made designation – called Patricia Residential – created specifically for the project. It also appears the number of units that will be allowed on the site is under negotiation – no figure is provided in a staff report to council although it does say the totals allowed on properties to the north and east stand at 280 per hectare.
The six-storey Marriott contains 174 rooms.
Also up for hearings are:
• A proposal to subdivide a 0.45 hectare site at 8191 Sabyam Rd. into as many as three new lots.
A letter of opposition to the proposal is included in the agenda.
• A proposal to decrease the
minimum lot area at 9018 Inglewood Rd. so the existing house complies with the minimum interior yard setback.
• A request for a three-year temporary use permit to allow a vehicle repair business in a detached garage at 5532 Cook Cres.
Staff is recommending the request be denied.
• A proposal to decrease the rear yard setback from 4.5 metres to three metres and to reduce the required number of parking spaces from 96 to 60 for a 32unit apartment building at 1340 15th Ave.
The building would include a commercial space on the first floor, intended for a salon, and there is a 38-unit apartment building on the property which would remain.
Two letters noting concerns with the proposal are included in the agenda.
Also on the agenda:
• Council will consider changes to the fare structure for the city’s transit system that would see modest increases to monthly and semester passes.
• An update on a climate change mitigation plan will be presented.
CP FILE PHOTO
The British Columbia Court of Appeal will rule on a proposed provincial law which would effect the expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline. The Trans Mountain marine terminal in Burnaby in 2018.
Laura KANE Citizen news service
VANCOUVER — A British Columbia Court of Appeal hearing on proposed provincial legislation that would impact the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion has concluded and a panel of five judges has reserved its decision.
B.C. filed the reference case to ask the court whether it can create a permitting system for companies that wish to increase the amount of heavy oil they are transporting through the province.
The system would allow a provincial public servant to impose conditions on permits, which B.C. says would help it protect its environment and ensure that companies agree to pay for accident cleanup.
Canada says the proposed amendments to B.C.’s Environmental Management Act are unconstitutional because Ottawa – not the provinces – has jurisdiction over inter-provincial infrastructure.
Federal government lawyer Jan Brongers told court the amendments are clearly intended to impede additional oil shipments through B.C. because they only target heavy-oil transporters that want to increase capacity.
Joseph Arvay, lawyer for B.C., said in his reply on Friday that the goal of the legislation is not to block Trans Mountain and the court should not presume the law would be used inappropriately in the future.
“There’s no evidence to support that theory at all,” he said.
Arvay added B.C. already has environmental assessment legislation that applies to inter-
provincial projects, and a ruling that found the proposed amendments interfere with federal jurisdiction would also mean that law doesn’t apply.
The Canadian government has purchased the Trans Mountain pipeline and related assets for $4.5 billion. The expansion would triple the capacity of the line that runs from the Edmonton area to Metro Vancouver and increase tanker traffic in Burrard Inlet seven-fold.
B.C. Premier John Horgan campaigned in 2017, while in opposition, on a promise to use “every tool in the toolbox” to stop the expansion. But after his minority NDP government took power, it received legal advice that it cannot stop the project but it could impose conditions upon it, court heard.
This is a “distinction without a difference,” given that the proposed legislation is unconstitutional, said William Kaplan, representing a consortium of energy producers including Suncor Energy Inc., Imperial Oil Ltd., Husky Oil Operations Ltd. and Cenovus Energy Inc.
When Horgan announced the proposed permitting regime last year, Alberta Premier Rachel Notley accused him of breaking the rules of Confederation and announced a ban on B.C. wines, which she later reversed.
A lawyer for Alberta told the Appeal Court that the permitting scheme is a “vague, amorphous” process that gives wide-ranging discretionary powers to a government official. Peter Gall said B.C. believes the only way to protect its environment is to stop the pipeline expansion.
Trans Mountain ULC also said the legislation
is targeting the project and will “directly and significantly” impact it.
Justice Harvey Groberman questioned lawyers who argued the goal of the legislation was to stop the project, asking why such a declaration was necessary if the argument that it impedes federal jurisdiction holds up.
The National Energy Board conducted a years-long review involving dozens of interveners before recommending the federal government approve the project with 157 conditions.
After the Federal Court of Appeal quashed the approval last summer because the board failed to consider marine shipping impacts, the board recently looked at the topic and added another 16 conditions.
However, Arvay said the energy board has been found to do inadequate followup with companies to ensure that conditions are being met. He added that B.C.’s proposed regime and that of the NEB are “complementary and interlocking” and can be harmonious.
The government of Saskatchewan, several First Nations, Enbridge Inc., the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers and the Railway Association of Canada also delivered arguments opposing B.C.’s proposed rules at the five-day hearing this week.
The cities of Vancouver and Burnaby, environmental group Ecojustice, the Assembly of First Nations and the Heiltsuk Nation presented cases in support of B.C., with the Indigenous groups asserting that First Nations governments have the right to make these types of rules in their communities as well.
SABBE
Mark NIELSEN Citizen staff mnielsen@pgcitizen.ca
Canada’s Governor General will present a medal of bravery to a Prince George woman for her quick action when a man attempted to kidnap a child at a local playground.
Chelsi Sabbe is to receive the award on Tuesday in Ottawa.
The owner of a licenced daycare put her martial arts training to use on Aug. 15, 2017 when she noticed a man approaching two of the children in her care.
When he snatched one of the children and attempted to flee, Sabbe tackled him to the ground.
Grabbing the child, she ran back to the park, ordering the other children to climb to the top of the play structure.
The suspect returned and Sabbe wrestled him to the ground and put him in a choke hold, while the children ran to a neighbour’s house for safety.
Kenneth Jim Louis John of Fort St. James was arrested. He was later found not criminally responsible for the act, as well as for a similar incident earlier the same day, due to a mental disorder.
He remains under the supervision of the Forensic Psychiatric Hospital in Coquitlam as of Jan. 30.
— with files from The Canadian Press
Several people complimented me on my attempt at “theodicy” last week. The consensus seemed my description of the Christian God, in the person of Christ Crucified, was compelling. But how to reconcile so innocent a head with so concupiscent a body, the church? Defending religion today is a fool’s errand, yet I am compelled to do it. For Mother Church, bruised, broken, and often ugly, is still at all times my superior, my ward, and my bark on the voyage to heaven.
Again, churches are not clubs of dogoodery run by earnest or prudish types. Particularly in the case of Roman Catholicism, the word cult is more appropriate, for we are overly devoted to particular persons, God and the saints, as well as willing to partake in things that will earn us scorn or death, sacraments and public acts of faith. Indeed, papist belief rests on these two realities at all times: the persons who imitate Christ and the conduits that deliver His grace.
The underlying theme throughout the Roman Church is that of a journey – we
walk with Jesus in His ministry, up Calvary, and finally to His Ascension. Mary and the Apostles then lead the procession, along with all the clergy and saints down through the ages, whose words and deeds, both in life and long after death, provide illumination on this perilous path. Finally, respite, as well as the food for the journey, is found within Mother Church’s seven sacraments.
Many mistakenly believe the saints or papacy separate Catholics from other Christians but truly it is the idea of sacrament – a powerful, guaranteed connection to God’s grace. This is our pearl of great price, both the theological and personal reason to rouse ourselves for Mass.
For the Roman church, the sacraments come from imitating Christ’s words and deeds: Jesus was baptized, confirmed
‘This was what we came up with together’
— from page 1
The suggestion came from Shaw Cable program director Jonathan Valoroso.
“I was approached about doing a documentary of my journey through the arts, and I said yes, let’s do that, and through that process I saw some opportunities to volunteer for Shaw Spotlight, which I want to do because I am interested in supporting the arts in any way I can, so I talked to Jonathan Valoroso who is amazing to work with, and this was what we came up with together,” said Kast.
He encouraged anyone interested in volunteering for local community television to contact Valoroso for any potential opportunities.
New segments will be released on a monthly basis, to begin with. They will air on Shaw’s Prince George home channel at times still to be determined and also on YouTube and Kast’s own Take 5 Media website.
Kast is also busy with his many other ongoing arts endeavours. Hosting a TV program is “just another stop in the long strange trip, man,” he said. “I’m already gearing up for Art Battle in September, I have some commissions to do, I’m doing some digital stuff, I’m getting ready for an
exhibition down in Quesnel – some abstract art for the Quesnel Art Gallery – and it seems everything you do leads to more, so I know I’m not going to be bored.” Mills Office Productivity’s window art display, a public display Kast curates, is currently showing the works of Bonnie Tremblay, Sharon Nicolas and Ester Finch up until end of the month.
young and old, blessed a wedding with far too much wine, appointed a successor in Peter and the Apostles, heard confessions, anointed the sick using His spit mixed with dirt, and gave us His body and blood at the last supper on Holy Thursday. It might occur to many reading this list that “cult” was actually too weak a word for this barbarity.
But if one can grasp the Catholic idea of sacrament, at least in part, then the mystery of why we remain in a belief system with more sins and baggage than perhaps any other begins to unravel.
Our mother church has the audacity to claim it was founded by God Himself; that it is His bride, despite its many infidelities and that it remains the arbiter for the economy of grace on earth, the sole provider of God’s real flesh and presence in the Holy Eucharist.
I’ll pause here to freely admit “this is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?
Many people turned from Christ based on these same claims – how much more so a scandalized church?
The issue of corruption must be given proper attention in its own column. For
now, I will only posit my own understanding of the sacraments: I truly believe they are bigger than we are; indeed, these conduits to God don’t require us, but we desperately need them for our sick souls. It also seems clear from scripture and tradition that we are judged on our conformity to the sacraments and our forbearance in the very trials they may cause, even if they lead to our suffering and death. In The Lord of the Rings by Catholic author J.R.R. Tolkien, Frodo speaks for all of us, wishing he did not have to carry the One Ring. Gandalf sympathizes, but says, “all we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
All believers face this dilemma.
Every mass is a journey, from the history of faith to the climax of the consecration.
Each season is marked by the heroes and origins of our beliefs.
All of us one billion Catholics are on a particular journey, asking “Mary, all the Saints, and you my brothers and sisters to pray for me to the Lord Our God.”
Thus, I abide in mother church and it in me. How can I abandon it?
BARRETT, Matt ZAPOTOSKY and Josh DAWSEY Citizen news service
WASHINGTON — Special counsel Robert Mueller submitted a long-awaited report to U.S. Attorney General William Barr on Friday, marking the end of his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible obstruction of justice by U.S. President Donald Trump.
The submission of Mueller’s report ends his closely watched inquiry – a case that has engulfed the Trump administration since its inception, leading to criminal charges against 34 people, including six former Trump associates and advisers.
A senior Justice Department official said the special counsel has not recommended any further indictments – a revelation that buoyed Trump’s supporters, even as other Trump-related investigations continue in other parts of the Justice Department. It is also unclear whether a Mueller report that does not result in additional charges could still hurt the president politically.
Justice Department officials notified Congress late Friday that they had received Mueller’s report, but they did not describe its contents. Barr is expected to summarize the findings for lawmakers as early as this weekend.
Only a small number of people inside the Justice Department know the document’s contents, but it immediately sparked a furious political reaction, with Democrats vying for the presidential nomination in 2020 demanding a public release of the findings and the two top Democrats in Congress, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., calling for the full report and its “underlying documentation” to be provided to Congress.
Trump’s supporters viewed the news as an optimistic indication that he was on the cusp of being vindicated.
“The fact that there are no more indictments is a big deal,” said David Bossie, a Trump ally.
“This president has had his entire two-year presidency under a cloud of this fake, made-up Russian collusion story.”
Trump flew to his Florida resort Friday, accompanied by senior aides and White House lawyers. Trump did not immediately speak or tweet about the report’s delivery. Privately, some Trump advisers expressed relief that the report had been filed, but the president’s spokeswoman and lawyers were more guarded in their initial reaction.
White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said the next steps “are up to Attorney General Barr, and we look forward to the process taking its course. The White House has not received or been briefed on the Special Counsel’s report.”
In a letter to the leaders of the House and Senate judiciary committees, Barr wrote that Mueller “has concluded his investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election and related matters.”
Barr wrote that Mueller submitted a report to him explaining his prosecution decisions. The attorney general told lawmakers he was reviewing the report and anticipated that “I may be in a position to advise you of the Special Counsel’s principal conclusions as soon as this weekend.”
The attorney general wrote he would consult with Mueller and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein “to determine what other information from the report can be released to Congress and the public consistent with the law, including the Special Counsel regulations, and the Department’s long-standing practices and policies.”
Barr said there were no instances in the course of the investigation in which any of Mueller’s decisions were vetoed by his superiors at the Justice Department.
“I remain committed to as much transparency as possible, and I will keep you informed as to the status of my review,” Barr wrote.
After a week of growing expectation that Mueller’s report would soon arrive, a security officer from Mueller’s office delivered it Friday afternoon to Rosenstein’s office at Justice Department headquarters, according to spokeswoman Kerri Kupec. Within minutes of that delivery, the report was transmitted upstairs to Barr.
Around 4:35 p.m., White House lawyer Emmet Flood was notified that the Justice Department had received the report. Around that same time, Rosenstein called
Mueller to personally thank him for his work, according to a Justice Department official.
About a half-hour after the White House was notified, a department official delivered Barr’s letter to the relevant House and Senate committees and senior congressional leaders, officials said.
One official described the report as “comprehensive” but added that very few people have seen it.
Even with the report’s filing, Mueller is expected to retain his role as special counsel for a winddown period, though it is unclear how long that may last, officials said. A small number of his staffers will remain in the office to help shut down the operations.
“The investigation is complete,” said Kupec.
Two of the president’s lawyers, Rudy Giuliani and Jay Sekulow, said in a joint statement: “We’re pleased that the Office of Special Counsel has delivered its report to the Attorney General pursuant to the regulations. Attorney General Barr will determine the appropriate next steps.”
Giuliani said he did not know if he would get a briefing this weekend on the report’s contents.
Well before its completion, Mueller’s report was a hotly debated issue. Lawmakers sought to wrest guarantees from the Justice Department that the special counsel would give a complete public accounting of what he found during the two-year inquiry.
According to Justice Department regulations, the special counsel’s report should explain Mueller’s decisions – who was charged, who was investigated but not charged,
and why. Mueller’s work has consumed Washington and at times the country, as the special counsel and his team investigated whether any Trump associates conspired with Russian officials to interfere in the election.
It is unclear how much of what Mueller found will be disclosed in Barr’s summary for Congress. Congressional Democrats, anticipating an incomplete accounting, have already sent extensive requests to the Justice Department for documents that would spell out what Mueller discovered.
Five people close to the president have pleaded guilty: Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort; former deputy campaign manager Rick Gates; former national security adviser Michael Flynn; former personal attorney Michael Cohen; and former campaign adviser George Papadopoulos.
A sixth, Trump’s longtime friend Roger Stone, was indicted in January and accused of lying to Congress. He has pleaded not guilty.
More than two dozen of the people charged by Mueller are Russians, and because the United States does not have an extradition treaty with Russia, they are unlikely ever to see the inside of a U.S. courtroom.
None of the Americans charged by Mueller is accused of conspiring with Russia to interfere in the election – the central question of Mueller’s work. Instead, they pleaded guilty to various crimes including lying to the FBI.
The investigation ended without charges for a number of key figures who had long been under Mueller’s scrutiny, including conservative writer Jerome Corsi, who said Friday that he felt “vindicated” by the development.
Corsi met with prosecutors repeatedly about communications he had before the November 2016 election with Stone about the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks. In November, Corsi took the unorthodox step of publishing draft court documents Mueller’s team had provided to him, as they urged him to plead guilty to lying in an October 2018 debriefing. He said his memory had been faulty but he had not intentionally lied and refused to take the deal.
“They lost. They tried to give me a plea deal that was a lie and I ex-
posed it,” he said. “They wisely left me alone. Seven months through absolute hell when all I did was try to cooperate.”
The special counsel’s investigation was launched May 17, 2017, in a moment of crisis for the FBI, the Justice Department and the country.
Days earlier, Trump had fired FBI Director James Comey. The purported reason was Comey’s handling of the 2016 investigation of former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, but Trump said in an interview with NBC News shortly after the firing that he was thinking about the Russia inquiry when he decided to remove Comey. Comey’s firing set off alarms in the Justice Department and in Congress, where lawmakers feared the president was determined to end the Russia investigation before it was completed. After then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from the Russia investigation, Rosenstein chose Mueller as special counsel in part to quell the burgeoning political crisis.
The Mueller investigation pursued a number of investigative tracks, including whether the president’s behavior leading up to and after Comey’s firing amounted to an attempt to obstruct justice.
As the investigation proceeded, Republican opposition to Mueller’s work grew, encouraged in part by the president’s repeated declarations that the investigation was a “witch hunt.”
While those fights raged on, Mueller said virtually nothing. In part because of this silence, political factions tended to say almost anything they wanted about his work. Republicans in the House Freedom Caucus called it a money-wasting farce; Democrats touted every new investigative step as further evidence that the probe was so serious that Trump’s days as president could be numbered.
In 2018, Mueller’s office took direct aim at Moscow. Thirteen Russians were charged as part of an online “troll farm” accused of sowing political division and distrust among Americans via social media. Five months later, Mueller’s office indicted a dozen Russian military intelligence officials, saying they conspired to hack into Democrats’ computer accounts and publicize the stolen files.
Bill GRAVELAND, Stephanie TAYLOR Citizen news service
MELFORT, Sask. — A truck driver who caused the deadly Humboldt Broncos bus crash was sentenced Friday to eight years in prison by a judge who said she believed his remorse was sincere, but she had to consider the serious consequences for so many people.
Tears began to flow almost as soon as Judge Inez Cardinal began her decision and continued afterwards as families sombrely gathered outside court.
Jaskirat Singh Sidhu of Calgary had pleaded guilty in January to 29 counts of dangerous driving for killing 16 people and injuring 13 others on the junior hockey team’s bus.
The 30-year-old stood quietly and looked at the judge as he was sentenced. His punishment includes a 10-year driving ban. He also faces deportation to his home country of India after he serves time.
“Families have been torn apart because of the loss,” Cardinal told court in Melfort, Sask. “They are prone to depression, anxiety or outbursts.”
She also spoke of the survivors, who she suggested “are putting on a brave face in an attempt to be strong.”
Marilyn Cross, whose son Mark was an assistant coach with the team, said seeing Sidhu go to prison for his death brings no comfort.
“The sentence is neither here nor there for me. Our son isn’t coming back. Nobody wins in this,” she said.
Raylene Herold and her husband, Russell, were among some family members wearing Broncos jerseys in court.
“For us, our life doesn’t change. Adam doesn’t come back,” she said as she broke into tears. “We have a lifetime sentence.”
The 16-year-old, the youngest Bronco on the bus, was to take over the family farm one day. His father said the upcoming one-year anniversary of the April 6 crash will be another painful reminder of what they’ve lost.
“We have emptiness, devastation ... There’s an empty future there,” he said.
Cardinal said the loss expressed in nearly 100 victim impact statements was staggering and she approached the sentence knowing “nothing can turn back the clock.”
She went on to note that Sidhu barrelled through a stop sign as he drove a “huge, heavy, deadly” semi and the accident could have been avoided.
“Mr. Sidhu had ample time to react ...
CP PHOTO
Jaskirat Singh Sidhu arrives for his sentencing hearing in Melfort, Sask., on Friday. Sidhu was sentenced to eight years in prison for his role in the deadly truck-bus crash which killed 16 people and injured 13 others.
had he been paying attention,” she said.
The Crown wanted Sidhu to be sent to prison for 10 years, while the defence said other cases suggested a range of 18 months to 4.5 years.
“We’re disappointed. We knew we were going to be disappointed,” said former NHL player Chris Joseph, whose son Jaxon was killed. “There’s no number that would have made me happy.”
Mark Dahlgren, whose son Kaleb suffered a brain injury, said the sentence was “one more step in the process.”
“We have an anniversary coming up that is going to be very, very tough. And I hope after that maybe we can get back to whatever our new normal is for everybody.”
Sidhu said nothing as he was taken into custody, handcuffed and escorted by officers to a waiting SUV. His uncle from London, England, later gave a statement to reporters.
“On behalf of my family, I would like to express my sincere sympathy to the 29 families,” Chanan Singh Sidhu read.
“We also feel indebted to the families and the Canadian public at large for the support, sympathy and understanding they have shown... for my nephew and our families.”
Cardinal began her decision by reading aloud each victim’s name. “They were gifted athletes, community leaders, and team builders with hopes and dreams for the future ... Some were dreaming
of having a family, while others were already raising their families.”
Cardinal said several factors, including his remorse and guilty plea, saved Sidhu from a maximum sentence of 14 years.
But she pointed out he had missed several signs about the upcoming rural intersection and his lapse of attention had been prolonged.
“This was not a momentary loss of attention. He had ample time to stop his unit. Mr. Sidhu wasn’t speeding but his speed was excessive.”
Court previously had heard that Sidhu was going between 86 and 96 km/h when he passed four signs warning him about the crossroads before he came up to an oversized stop sign with a flashing light.
Defence lawyer Mark Brayford had told court Sidhu was distracted by a flapping tarp on the back of his load of peat moss. Sidhu had been hired by a small Calgary trucking company three weeks before the crash. He spent two weeks with another trucker before heading out on his own for the first time just days before the crash.
The Humboldt Broncos hockey team issued a statement soon after the sentence.
“Having... the sentencing complete is a big step in the healing process for the survivors, grieving families, our organization and the community of Humboldt and surrounding area,” said president Jamie Brockman.
VANCOUVER (CP) — Record-breaking warmth that ushered spring into British Columbia is slowly moving east, but continues to bring sunny skies and high temperatures to the Interior, along with mounting concerns about avalanches. Environment Canada says 18 temperature records were shattered Thursday, mainly in northern and central B.C., unlike earlier in the week when areas of Victoria and Greater Vancouver were among the hot spots in Canada. At 13.3 degrees, the Masset area of Haida Gwaii tied a record set in 1906 while Prince Rupert reached 18 degrees, just edging the previous record from 1915. The southeastern community of Sparwood was among the hottest in the province at 19.8 degrees, underscoring Avalanche Canada’s concern about slide conditions in southeastern B.C. , southwestern Alberta and elsewhere
The risk of human-triggered avalanches in regions from Glacier, Yoho and Kootenay national parks, south through Kananaskis Country, the Purcells, south Rockies and Waterton Lakes is listed as high at all levels of the mountains.
The Avalanche Canada warning, issued earlier this week as more people were expected to head into the backcountry during spring break, says the likelihood of avalanches is raised by dramatic temperature increases, coupled with limited nighttime cooling.
The Avalanche Canada website said travel in avalanche terrain is not recommended.
VANCOUVER (CP) — A judge has ordered the RCMP to provide copies of the content on seven electronic devices to an executive of Chinese tech giant Huawei Technologies after they were seized when she was arrested at Vancouver’s airport.
Justice Heather Holmes of the British Columbia Supreme Court says the RCMP must make copies for Meng Wanzhou of data on an iPhone, an iPad, a Macbook Air, a Huawei phone, two SIM cards and a flash drive.
In the order issued today after a brief hearing in court, Holmes says that within three days a representative of the Mounties must provide the electronics to the force’s technical crime unit so content can be extracted onto devices provided by Meng. Two sealed copies of the data are to be transferred onto devices provided by the RCMP, which must keep them in a secure exhibit locker until they are provided to the court, along with the seized electronics. The items were confiscated on Dec. 1 when Meng was taken into custody at the request of the United States.
Borrowing, borrowing, everywhere and me without a dollar to spare.
The present situation where the city wants to borrow $32 million dollars for various and sundry projects leaves one flabbergasted. In fact to try and figure out what is being borrowed, whether or not it is “critical” as outlined in some correspondence, and the cost attached for interest over the 20-year borrowing period is beyond comprehension.
The interest on borrowing $32 million over 20 years would be in the area of $18 million. If that doesn’t get your attention, then read on.
In October 2017, the citizens of Prince George approved borrowing of $35 million for a new pool and $15 million for a new fire hall, so $50 million in total. Interest on this $50 million would be in the area of $22 million. So if we approve the new $32 million borrowing request, we are looking at roughly $40 million in interest over 20 years.
Normally a city would borrow these substantial amounts of money for major capital projects. The new police station borrowing of roughly $38 million and the new pool and fire hall would fall under the category of major capital projects. So would CN Centre and the Aquatic Centre when they were built. However, the projects that the city now want to borrow for are far from being major and we should not be borrowing money for these projects over a 20-year period.
In fact for a number of them we should not be borrowing at all. Some examples of
non major projects in my opinion would be:
1. Mausoleum expansion phase 2 – $1.4 million.
2. Masich Stadium amenities refurbish –$2.7 million.
3. 14th Avenue upgrades – $1.2 million.
4. Goose Country Road culvert replacement – $1.1 million.
5. Street light and traffic signal replacement – $5 million.
There are more but you get my drift. These and other projects should be paid for out of our regular budget monies as has been done in the past.
To group all these projects under one borrowing umbrella and calling them major projects, or deeming them to be “critical” might be pushing the envelope.
To further muddy the water, the city has issued an alternative approval process for all eleven projects that it wishes to borrow money for.
This means that citizens will have to fill in and sign eleven forms if they do not want the city to borrow the money.
To make things even more confusing, the city has applied for grants from other levels of governments for some of these projects, i.e. $6.3 million for the Aquatic Centre. If the grant is approved, then somehow they will apply this money to the initial loan of $10.2 million.
I am not sure how they can apply this money when they are not allowed to make a payment on the principal of a 20-year loan in the first 10 years.
In any event, it is moot, because what they should do is not borrow the money for the Aquatic Centre until they know what the status of the grant is and by then there
may be a way to pay for it without borrowing.
They want to borrow $6.8 million (short term borrowing that does not require approval from taxpayers) to cover the costs of the Haggith Creek bridge and return $3.1 million of the original money for this project to the respective reserves that it came from. Wouldn’t it make more sense to apply this $3-plus million to a couple of the 11 projects and thereby reduce the need to borrow? That $3 million would go a long way to pay for the 12 roofing projects they have planned for a cost of $4.67 million.
I could go on and on but I won’t.
I will, however, give a quick outline of the responsibilities of the taxpayers when it comes to major borrowing that extends beyond five years.
In order for the city to borrow this money, they need the approval of the electors but if 10 per cent of the eligible voters, which has been determined to be 5,546, sign 5,546 or more alternative approval forms then the city cannot borrow the money.
They would then have to go to a referendum where a majority of the voters in Prince George will decide whether or not they can borrow the money or they can discontinue the process and go back to the beginning.
They cannot try and borrow money for the same projects for a significant period of time and must have approval from Victoria if they wish to do so.
The B.C. Government has issued some guidelines and recommendations when it comes to the alternative approval process and referendum process some of which I find quite interesting.
Open letter to Premier John Horgan:
I applaud your desire to stop the time changes between standard time and daylight savings time. I disagree with the idea I have heard of switching to continuous daylight savings time for some simple reasons. Children going to school in the dark is the main one.
The northern half of the province receives very little benefit, if any, from daylight savings time.
In June in Prince George, we have 17 hours of full daylight and 45 minutes of dawn twilight and 45 minutes of dusk twilight.
Staying on daylight savings time in the winter would result in our children going to school in the dark for two months. That is just too unsafe. Sunrise in Prince George on Dec. 20 is 8:27 a.m. on Pacific standard time.
Victoria doesn’t do that much better. Sunrise for the depth of winter in Victoria is a few minutes after 8 a.m. on Pacific standard time. On Pacific daylight savings time, sunrise in Victoria would be after 9 a.m. in the same winter period.
Therefore we need to scrap daylight savings time and stay with standard time.
The argument that we need to be on the same time as our American neighbours just doesn’t work. If we can cope with the self appointed centre of the universe being three hours different, we can certainly cope with one hour difference to our neighbors.
To summarize Mr. Premier, I support doing away with the time change. However we need to stay on standard time, not daylight savings time.
Neil Robertson, Prince George
As of March 21, at 9:40 p.m., the price of a barrel of oil in Canada was $35 and gas is running from 118.9 up to 129.9 at the pumps, so why is the price
of gas so high when the price of a barrel of oil is so low? Who is getting rich?
Gail Beeton, Prince George
It’s embarrassing how the city continues to plunge us into debt . First, it’s a referendum for a new pool and fire hall and now $32 million more. These socalled capital projects seem to be more neglected maintenance than capital. We have to borrow money to replace lights and roofs? Where is our tax money going if no money is put aside for this?
Putting $7 million into Masich Stadium, which is used no more than six months, won’t make it B.C. Place. The 2022 B.C. Summer Games and its economic input will not lower my taxes and will only add more facilities to maintain and staff.
There needs to be more talk by city council, city staff and the unions on saving money, not spending it. In the last six years, my tax bill has increased $1,000. Can I afford this and for how long?
Robert Anderson, Prince George
As a political junkie I’m concerned that our news media has jumped back to the Conservatives once again. The wealthy own the media in this country so we hear and read what they want. They support the both the Liberals and Conservatives.
During the last election with a week to go, MacLeans came out and supported the Liberals. After the election was over they went and searched for groups who were upset with the NDP. They did not air any opposing view to this.
Our news media in Canada has become accuser, judge and executioner. Here is one thing that I’m surprised we have not heard from the press. The Liberals have released their senators but Conservatives have not as yet.
Stan New, Prince George
If the proposal is contentious, or it seems likely that 10 per cent or more of the electorate may sign response forms, local governments may decide to proceed directly to assent voting (referendum) to reduce the overall time and costs involved in securing elector approval.
How the AAP will be received by the electors is another consideration for local governments.
There is more but suffice to say that this is probably the most contentious issue facing our local government for many years and it would be fair to say that the AAP is not being very well received by electors.
I believe that there will be many more than 5,546 signed AAP forms turned into city hall by May 30. In addition, I also believe that if the issue of borrowing this huge amount of money goes to a referendum, it will fail. If that happens, then six months from now we could be right where we are today.
So really what is the point of the whole exercise?
I believe that it is time for the mayor, city council and administration to revisit this situation with a view to stop this borrowing of $32 million and to come up with a solution to the financial situation they find themselves in without borrowing and raising taxes. They can do it now on their own initiative on we can force them to do it by not allowing the borrowing.
It’s time for a change in direction and some fiscal responsibility. We can no longer afford a cavalier attitude to borrowing as a solution to all problems.
— Eric Allen, Prince George
The music industry has undergone one of the biggest revolutions over the past three decades. A countrywide survey by Research Co. provides a fresh look at how Canadians are listening to music, their willingness to spend money on it and their views on what artists are earning.
When it comes to music, it is safe to report that video didn’t kill the radio star, contrary to what the Buggles predicted in 1979. More than two-thirds of Canadians (69 per cent) listened to music on the radio last week. There are some subtle differences in age, with those aged 55 and over tuning in to their radios more often than their younger counterparts (74 per cent, compared to 67 per cent for those aged 35 to 54 and 62 per cent for those aged 18 to 34).
A third of Canadians (32 per cent) listened to music streaming services over the past week. Women are more likely to be doing this than men (37 per cent to 27 per cent), and those aged 18 to 34 are definitely embracing this concept. More than half of Canadians in that age group (54 per cent) are streaming, while fewer members of Generation X (35 per cent) and baby boomers (17 per cent) partake.
There are no big changes among generations when it comes to listening to music files stored in a device (31 per cent across the country). There is, however, nostalgia for Canadians who listened to music on LPs, cassettes or compact discs last week. From a high of 31 per cent among baby boomers, the proportion drops to 16 per cent for Generation X and 12 per cent for the younger group.
For 15 per cent of Canadians, satellite radio is one of the options for music listening. This service allows subscribers to have absolute control over specific genres, decades and artists.
In spite of the seemingly open domain of music listening, Canadians are not particularly happy to part with cash in order to hear their favourite artists. In the last month, only 19 per cent of Canadians said they paid to access a music streaming service. The proportion of paid streaming subscribers climbs to 36 per cent among Canadians aged 18 to 34 and to 25 per cent for those in the
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highest income bracket. Even fewer Canadians (12 per cent) paid for and downloaded a song online in the past month. Once again, those in the younger age group are more likely to have done this (22 per cent) than members of the middle group (15 per cent) and baby boomers (five per cent).
Lastly, fewer than one in 10 Canadians (nine per cent) bought a compact disc or LP record in the last month. The days of waiting outside the store for the latest release by a favourite artist are gone. Musicians are now showcasing albums entirely online.
Across the country, a majority of residents (51 per cent) say music creators are fairly compensated for their work, while one-third (33 per cent) disagree with this assessment and 16 per cent are undecided.
Canadians aged 18 to 34, who are spending more on downloaded songs and streaming services than their older counterparts, are more likely to feel that the artists are making what they should be making (68 per cent). Canadians over the age of 35, who are stingier when it comes to spending on music, are not as convinced (46 per cent for Generation X and 45 per cent for baby boomers). As the survey has shown, the 18-to-34 age group are more likely to already be spending money on downloads and streaming services than older Canadians. This is a group that is better prepared for today’s technology than baby boomers and that did not experience Napster. Canada’s youngest adults are willing to part with their cash to access the artists they like. The battle for their ears will define the future of the music industry. Results are based on an online study conducted from February 21 to February 24, 2019, among 1,000 adults in Canada. The data has been statistically weighted according to Canadian census figures for age, gender and region. The margin of error – which measures sample variability – is +/- 3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.
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Amy SMART Citizen news service
VANCOUVER — An advocacy organization says it wants to map hatred and discrimination across Canada in a move that is prompting warnings of caution from one civil liberties group.
The Vancouver-based Morgane Oger Foundation has issued a call for volunteers to help build the Canadian Atlas of Populist Extremism, to be known as CAPE.
Founder Morgane Oger said the mapping tool would tie together extremist groups and people regularly associated with them, and also map incidents involving hate across Canada.
The idea is to shed light on how hatred is propagated, she said, while being mindful that allegations can’t be tossed out willynilly.
“We can’t say someone is a murderer unless they are in fact a murderer, but maybe it would be interesting to see it’s always the same dozen people who are doing antitrans advocacy in the (B.C.) Interior or the white supremacy groups are working with each other,” said Oger, a former provincial NDP candidate and a member of the party’s executive.
Oger said the project is in its infancy and the foundation has not yet determined exactly what types of actions, groups or individuals would be documented, but it believes the data could be useful to academics, law enforcement and others.
It could include a rating system to categorize incidents by severity, she said, giving hate-motivated murders and discriminatory graffiti as examples that would receive different grades.
Other groups have tackled similar projects. The Canadian Anti-Hate Network, based in Toronto, says its mandate is to monitor, research and counter hate groups by providing education and information on them to the public, media, researchers, courts, law enforcement and community groups.
The Southern Poverty Law Center in the United States has a “hate map,” which lists 1,020 groups. They include 51 Ku Klux Klan chapters, 49 anti-LGBT groups, 11 radical traditional Catholic groups and a combined 412 black and white nationalist groups.
The centre doesn’t list individuals, only organizations, and uses a similar definition to the FBI for them. The law centre defines a hate group as “an organization that – based on its official statements or principles, the statements of its leaders, or its activities –has beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their
immutable characteristics.”
Micheal Vonn of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association said the CAPE project may be helpful, legal and serve as a positive research tool.
But she warned that there could be privacy issues involved in posting individuals’ information online and said it’s important to distinguish between actual hate from differing opinions on certain topics.
“All kinds of things that people think are hateful constitute genuine political speech,” she said, adding that knowing if someone is against an immigration policy isn’t enough information to conclude they are racist, for example.
Until the foundation lands on a specific model, it’s unclear if there would be any issues around rights, she said.
But she said it’s also worth asking if a map would contribute to healthy political
Joan BRYDEN Citizen news service
OTTAWA — Liberals are urging former attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould to use her parliamentary privilege to tell the House of Commons whatever she wants about the SNC-Lavalin affair.
But they want her and her former cabinet ally Jane Philpott to tell their stories in full all at once, rather than dragging out the controversy with partial statements and hints of more to come, which have overshadowed all other aspects of the government’s agenda.
“That should happen right away,” Environment Minister Catherine McKenna said Friday.
“If there are serious concerns, we should all be concerned, but we’ve also got to continue delivering what we’re delivering for Canadians.”
McKenna made the comment shortly after WilsonRaybould informed the House of Commons justice committee that she intends to make a written submission revealing more about her accusation that she faced improper pressure last fall to avert a criminal prosecution of Montreal engineering giant SNC-Lavalin.
In a letter to the committee, Wilson-Raybould said she will provide “copies of text messages and emails” that she referred to last month when she testified for nearly four hours before the committee. She will also make a written submission, based on “relevant facts and evidence in my possession that further clarify statements I made and elucidate the accuracy and nature of statements by witnesses in testimony that came after my committee appearance.”
Her written statement will be “within the confines of the waiver of cabinet confidence and solicitorclient privilege” she was granted before testifying orally, she said. That waiver covers up until Jan. 14, when she was shuffled out of her dual role as justice minister and attorney general.
When she testified in person, Wilson-Raybould said she’d suffered a months-long campaign, pushed by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s office, to get her to order a “deferred prosecution agreement” be offered to SNC-Lavalin over its allegedly corrupt dealings in Libya.
She was followed by former prime ministerial aide Gerald Butts, who said there were miscommunications but no improper pressure, and then-Privy Council clerk Michael Wernick, who denied WilsonRaybould’s allegation that he’d issued veiled threats about her place in cabinet on the prime minister’s behalf.
Wilson-Raybould’s letter came the day after former cabinet ally Jane Philpott fanned the SNC-Lavalin fire in an interview with Maclean’s magazine, saying there is “much more to the story” – a report that landed in the midst of a 31-hour, Conservative-orchestrated filibuster over the controversy.
The filibuster, which continued until almost 1 a.m. Friday, was intended to protest Trudeau’s refusal to offer a blanket waiver of privilege and confidentiality that Wilson-Raybould has claimed is necessary if she is to fully tell her side of the story – including things that occurred after her move to Veterans Affairs until her resignation from cabinet a month later.
discourse and warned against too loose of a definition of “association.” In a healthy democracy, groups with opposing views should be able to attend one another’s events without being painted with the same brush because it could help build dialogue and understanding.
While governments and governing players are expected to be transparent, we have different standards for individual citizens, she said.
“We don’t ask citizens to be transparent because we’re sovereign. It’s the state that is supposed to be transparent to us,” she said.
Oger said the mapping project is still in its infancy and the organization has not yet decided how much information to make public but it does not want to encourage violence in any form.
She pointed to Statistics Canada figures that show a rise in police-reported hate
crimes. After steady but relatively small increases since 2014, hate crime reported by police rose sharply in 2017 to 2,073, up 47 per cent over the previous year and largely due to an increase in hate-related property crimes, StatCan says.
Higher numbers were seen across most types of hate crime, with incidents targeting the Muslim, Jewish and black populations accounting for most of the national increase. The increases were seen largely in Ontario and Quebec.
Police-reported hate crimes refer to criminal incidents that police investigations conclude were motivated by hatred toward an identifiable group.
According to a 2014 StatCan survey, Canadians self-reported being the victim of more than 330,000 criminal incidents that they perceived as being motivated by hate but two thirds were not reported to police.
Mary Winston NICKLIN Citizen news service
Somewhere along the precipitous gravel road that leads to the Cataloochee Valley, a sign looms large.
“No cellphone service.”
For hyper-connected, newsaddicted individuals such as ourselves, this could have caused panic.
But on this humid summer day, we tried not to bat an eye.
Our mission?
Escape Parisian civilization for a few days... on the densely populated East Coast of the United States.
We planned a summer trip to Great Smoky Mountains National Park to introduce our young daughters to camping.
Not that we urbanites didn’t try to immerse ourselves in nature at home.
In Paris, where we live, we look for nests, collect odd pebbles and gather autumn leaves.
We even keep composting worms on our apartment’s balcony.
But our younger daughter usually ends up admiring snails and pigeons for lack of other critters.
Like many Europeans obsessed with American national parks, my French husband was intrigued by the idea of exploring one such wild space.
But was it possible?
Could we find one close to the Virginia family we visit every summer?
Was there even a vestige of untouched American wilderness left on the East Coast?
The Great Smokies seemed to provide the answer.
Veering off Highway 276 north of Waynesville in North Carolina, the access road to the remote Cataloochee Valley was empty of cars.
Riddled with blind curves, the unpaved track ascends without guard rails, edged by steep drops.
We didn’t pass a single vehicle.
A fawn leaped out from the greenery, sunlight piercing the lush tree canopy in dramatic shafts of light.
And when we finally reached an overlook, we were treated to panoramic vistas of what the Cherokees called the “land of the blue smoke.”
Wave upon wave of mountains stretched to the horizon, mist coiling in threads above the valleys.
When we pulled up at the campground, a tarp served as a lean-to protecting the friendly park ranger Buck and his wife from the drizzle.
Here in the backcountry there are only 27 campsites, compared with the 200 sites that can be found at other Great Smokies campgrounds.
We were surprised to see that a few RVs had braved the road, but rules regulate the timing of the generators.
They must be shut off by 8 p.m. to combat noise pollution. In fact, Buck told us that one family had fled the park when their kids couldn’t watch movies at night.
There’s no concession stand, nor gas station, nor motor lodge.
The closest shower would be in Waynesville, almost 65 km away.
(Although the stream looked inviting.)
Formed between 200 and 300 million years ago, the Great Smokies are some of the oldest mountains in the world.
The park’s 522,000 acres are dense with forest, fostering tremendous biodiversity beneath the canopies of ancient giants.
The fertile land also bears witness to the generations of humans who have sought, since prehistoric times, to reap its bounty.
The Cherokee hunted the woods and fished the streams, followed by European settlers in the 19th century, who pursued their trails as they pushed into the valleys. Preserved barns and homesteads showcase the Appalachian pioneer mountain culture.
Great Smoky Mountains National Park was established in 1934 as the result of a local conservation movement.
Unlike national parks in the West, developed on public lands, the territory that became the park had been in private ownership. It was a herculean effort to buy up private parcels with funding allocated by the states of North Carolina and Tennessee matched by private donations and the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial Fund.
A total of 6,600 tracts were purchased. The states later transferred deeds of ownership to the federal government, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt officially inaugurated the national park in September 1940. To this day, there is no entrance fee.
It is a reflection of New Deal initiatives developed during the Great Depression. Starting in 1933, the Civilian Conservation Corps provided work for unemployed men to construct roads, trails, and fire towers throughout the park.
The zeitgeist was as much about land enjoyment as conservation, democratizing the nature experience for the benefit of the American people. The resulting ribbons of roads allow motorists to take in the scenery from the comfort of their cars.
Great Smoky Mountains National Park is the most popular one in the United States, having welcomed 11 million visitors in 2017.
In comparison, the Grand Canyon attracted 6.2 million visitors.
Areas such as Cades Cove in Tennessee and its Loop Road are notoriously clogged with cars and swarming with people.
But a twist of fate preserved the Cataloochee Valley in its isolated splendor.
In the 1970s, the National Park Service planned to pave Cove Creek Road to transform the area into a tourism hub. Local opposition, then budget cuts, ultimately prevented this from happening. So the gravel link to the outside world has kept the valley blissfully remote.
As we made camp, our daughters didn’t see the tasks – collect-
ing kindling wood for the fire, pumping water, setting up the tent, unrolling sleeping bags – as chores.
Instead, there was a satisfied sense of accomplishment. (Plus, visions of first-ever s’mores as rewards danced in their heads.) We gathered around the fire, drawn to the eternal, primitive appeal of flame.
The evening calls of whippoorwills faded into the night, replaced by the sonorous stream crashing at the edge of the campsite.
We breathed in the chilly mountain air, redolent with damp leaves and earthiness, then hit the hay.
The delight of breakfast in the great outdoors: pancakes sizzled in the pan and coffee brewed on the camp stove. Along with a rising mist, the morning brought a mission. Buck the ranger told us about black bear cub sightings, and we were going to make our own attempt.
The cubs love climbing the gnarled apple trees, vestiges of the pioneers’ old orchards, next to the road that runs through the Cataloochee Valley.
Derived from a Cherokee word thought to mean “standing up in ranks,” Cataloochee is in fact composed of three parallel valleys. We set out on a road flanked by flower-filled meadows where a herd of elk grazed in the sunshine. Scientists successfully reintroduced a herd to the Great Smokies in 2001, and the population draws leaf-peeping visitors during autumn rutting season. We craned our necks to look for the bears, but with no luck. Our daughters were more interested in
the brilliantly colored butterflies known as pipevine swallowtails.
There were so many of them – fluttering clouds of wings poised on plants – that we lost track of time doing nothing but watching them.
The Cataloochee is threaded with excellent hiking trails like the Boogerman Loop, named for Robert Palmer (the “Boogerman”) who once owned the land and refused to allow logging companies to timber the property. The result is an old-growth forest with majestic towering trees.
Below, the woods are damp and lush with rhododendrons. Log footbridges cross trout-stocked streams, and the ruins of old homesteads peek out from the vegetation.
These Cataloochee dwellings are haunting.
We entered unlocked houses like trespassing time travelers, half expecting to walk in on a scene from the early 20th century. At that time, the Cataloochee harbored the largest community in the Smokies, numbering 1,251 people.
The Caldwell House, built in 1903, is a proud vision in white clapboard and blue trim. Across the footbridge over a rushing creek, an old barn stands sentry over fallow meadows. In the Beech Grove schoolhouse, initials are carved on the desks.
The Bible on the Palmer Chapel’s pulpit is left open to the last page of the Old Testament.
Hiking a wooded hilltop, we discovered an old cemetery guarded by giant, moss-covered trees – a mystical place. Inside the Palmer House, an
exhibition shows vintage photos of the valley before it was absorbed into Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Settlers had razed the land and denuded the mountaintops of trees. So when the park was created, efforts were made to rewild the region, returning it to its natural condition, ridding it of human influence. Most buildings and farms were destroyed, but some were kept in homage to the culture and customs of the settlers. Descendants of these Cataloochee families still gather for reunions every August.
On the road, we spotted an excited Buck the ranger waving for us to stop. He pointed into the meadows.
Two black bear cubs were making their way through the high grasses. We stood in a trance, watching rippling paths advance toward the tree line. And then we counted a third!
The girls had been keeping a running tally of all the animals we had seen – skittering chipmunks, snoozing elk – and the baby bears were a triumphant addition to the list.
Returning toward camp, we were startled by rumbles. Clouds rolled into the valley. The air was electric.
We could feel the energy: booming cracks of thunder seemed to split the mountains. Thunder bounced off ridges, resounding back and forth in the valley. Mesmerized, we watched the dancing lightning illuminate the grandeur of the Great Smokies. Nature’s spectacular show was more riveting than anything on a screen.
Ted CLARKE Citizen staff
tclarke@pgcitizen.ca
After a month-long layoff, it took the North Central Bobcats a few periods to come out of hockey hibernation.
Champions in three of the five tournaments they played leading up to the Tier 1 bantam provincial championship, they saved their best for last.
The Bobcats capped a dream season with 6-1 victory over the North Vancouver Storm Thursday night in front of a crowd of about 600 that packed into the stands at Kin 1. It was a sweet celebration for the Bobcats, a team of 13- and 14-year-olds who invited their parents to surround them on the ice for a triumphant photo session.
The significance of what they accomplished was still sinking in for Bobcats captain Nico Myatovic as his teammates took their turns parading the B.C. banner around the ice. The 14-year-old centre knows his team put down one for the ages, living up to the pressure of playing at home and winning the biggest tournament of their lives.
“It’s unbelievable, to do it in front of a home crowd in this fashion is something I’ll never forget, for sure,” said Myatovic.
“All season our power play’s been good and to get three power-play goals that obviously boosted our team. As well, our five-on-five play has been stellar and out defensive zone’s been good also.
“We’ve had a lot of experience in championship games and I knew coming in that we’d have no problem closing this one out. We just knew we had to play our game and
everything would go our way.”
After a scoreless opening period, the Bobcats scratched out a 4-0 lead in the second period, scoring three straight power-play goals to take control. Defenceman Matyas Mocilac was the first to find a way through the armour of Storm goalie Shayan Kermany. That even-strength goal came just 22 seconds in to the second period.
The next three goals came with the Storm on the penalty kill. Defenceman Tye Peters made it 2-0 when he shoveled in a shot from the side of the net, 3:47 in. Myatovic scored the next two, the first off a rebound in front and the second on a give-and-go play with Decker Mujcin.
Chase Pacheco made it 5-0 with 5:38 gone in the third period, batting in a lose puck left unguarded at the side of net. The Storm connected near the end of a power play midway through the period when David Fay’s shot from the side deflected in off the skate of Mitchell Lennox. But any hopes of a comeback were spiked when Leighton Pillipow raced in to get to a loose puck and blasted it in behind Kermany with about six minutes left.
Bobcats goalie Tysen Smith was solid throughout, blocking 25 of 26 shots. His team was outshot 26-21.
“This is special, it doesn’t happen very often,” said Bobcats centre Scott Cousins.
“When we got the opportunity to win it at home we had to take advantage of it. It was a good performance by everyone on this team, just an all-around good effort.
“The boys really got it done on the power play. Emotions were running high and just
for them to be so poised with the puck and be able to function and put it in the back of the net, it worked really well. Tysen is a strong goaltender and I can’t say enough good things about both of our goalies, Tysen and Jasper (Tait), they’ve both been lights-out for us this year.”
The final was a rematch of their tournament opener against the Storm on Monday, which ended in a 1-1 tie. Bobcats head coach Mirsad Mujcin knew it would take a few periods for his players to find their skating legs and regain their timing around the net after nearly a full month between games.
“Winning is always the ultimate goal but just watching these guys develop into young men and show composure and fight adversity, this is a special group for that and once again they proved it,” said Mujcin.
“This is the fourth tournament win for them out of six. We’re a proud team and they just have a lot of respect for each other and respect for the game and it’s a pleasure to work with them. When we found our groove, we knew it – everyone felt it and you could see it in the kids’ eyes and it kept spiraling in what we did today.”
North Central played two games Monday, winning the nightcap 7-5 over Victoria Racquet Club, and followed that up with 6-4 win Tuesday over North Okanagan, a 10-1 triumph over Cloverdale on Wednesday, and a 6-1 defeat of the North East Trackers Thursday afternoon.
“This feels pretty good, we deserved it, we’ve been working hard all year,” said Bobcats defenceman Zach Leslie. “We were
gone almost every weekend. We didn’t have many home games. We had good success with the team.
“We all bond well, the chemistry is there. Mirsad (Mujcin) is a good coach and the same with (assistants) Jake (LeBrun), Stephen (Penner) and Mike (Burgess). They’re all pretty good coaches and I enjoyed having them.”
The Bobcats represented the North Central zone for the first time in BC Hockey’s double-A regional team program, formed two years ago in the Okanagan. North Central and North East joined this season to form an eight-team bantam league and a six-team midget league.
Each team played a 20-game schedule in the Okanagan Mainline Amateur Hockey Association. The regional concept allows players from smaller centres not large enough to form their own Tier 1 teams to play at the highest level.
All but four Bobcats are second-year bantams. The team has 17 Prince George players and three out-of-towners - Max Sanford (Williams Lake), Dawson Davis (Fort St. James) and Chase Pacheco (Kitimat) - who were billeted during the hockey season. The provincial tournament was a chance for players on all six teams to audition for a pack of Western Hockey League scouts preparing their lists for the annual bantam draft, May 2 in Red Deer.
Several Bobcats have been invited to the local U-16 high performance tryouts at the Kin Centre April 5-7, vying for spots in the U-16 BC Cup tournament in Salmon Arm, April 18-21.
Citizen news service
SILKEBORG, Denmark — Canada has missed the playoffs for the first time in 20 years at the world women’s curling championship.
Chelsea Carey’s Calgary-based rink was officially eliminated in the penultimate round-robin draw on Friday when Japan beat China and Germany lost to Finland. Those results put an end to Canada’s faint hope of earning the sixth and final playoff spot in the 13-team event before Carey’s final round-robin game against Denmark on Friday afternoon.
Canada finished the event with a 5-3 win over Denmark’s Madeleine Dupont later Friday. Canada, the U.S. and Japan all had 6-6 records, but the Japanese went through on tiebreakers.
“Obviously, we’re gutted with the results and not making the playoffs here,” said Carey, who also skipped Canada in 2016 with
a different crew. “But we did a lot of good things and it just didn’t go our way. I’m proud of the girls, it was all their first time at this
event, and they were incredibly composed.
“Everybody was calm, we supported each other, we did a lot of
good things – it just didn’t work out for us. So we wanted to come out strong tonight and finish on a positive note.”
Canada had won the last two world championships, with Ottawa’s Rachel Homan in 2017 and Winnipeg’s Jennifer Jones in 2018 running the table en route to a gold medal.
Carey’s chances to advance were all but done after a 5-3 loss to reigning Olympic champion Anna Hasselborg of Sweden in the morning draw.
Two misses loomed large for Carey, third Sarah Wilkes, second Dana Ferguson and lead Rachel Brown.
In the seventh, Ferguson’s takeout just rubbed on a guard, leading to a go-ahead deuce for Sweden.
In the eighth, Carey’s hit-androll went inches too far and was second shot, forcing her to draw for one instead of scoring a pos-
sible deuce.
“We learned a lot of things, for sure,” Wilkes said. “It’s a very long week – a similar number of games to the Scotties, but it’s so different. Wearing the Maple Leaf is such an honour but it’s heavy, too.”
The last time Canada missed the playoffs was 1999 when Colleen Jones (4-5) finished in a three-way tie for fifth place in Saint John, N.B.
The playoffs in Silkeborg will kick off Saturday at with Russia’s Alena Kovaleva (9-3) playing Japan, and Switzerland’s Silvana Tirinzoni (8-4) playing China’s Jie Mei (7-5) in the first round.
Later Saturday, Sweden’s Anna Hasselborg (11-1), who topped the round-robin standings, will play the lowest-ranked winner of the first-round games in one semifinal, while second-place Minji Kim of South Korea (9-3) will play the higher-ranked winner in the other semi. The medal games will be held Sunday.
The NHL is enjoying a scoring surge, one that should see the regular season end with its highest scoring output per game since 2005-06. That’s obviously had a trickledown effect to the players, some of whom are enjoying historic campaigns.
Tampa Bay Lightning forward Nikita Kucherov became the quickest player to reach the 100-point plateau in 22 years, earning his milestone tally in his team’s 62nd game of the season. Edmonton Oilers center and captain Connor McDavid earned his 100th point in his 66th game of the season, making this the first season since 200506 the league boasted two 100-point scorers before each one played his 70th game. Chicago Blackhawks winger Patrick Kane assisted on Jonathan Toews’ goal in the first period against the Vancouver Canucks on Monday to also reach the 100-point mark this season.
But wait, there’s more!
Four other players – Sidney Crosby, Johnny Gaudreau, Leon Draisaitl and Nathan MacKinnon – are each on pace to eclipse 100 points this season and four others - Blake Wheeler, Brad Marchand, Mikko Rantanen and Brayden Point – could also get there with a big game or two. That’s a lot.
There have only been 15 100-point sea-
sons over the past decade and the 2017-18 campaign featured three 100-point scorers; we haven’t seen four or more since 2009-10 and there haven’t been seven such scorers since 2006-07.
So what’s fueling the scoring rise?
We can rule out an increased number of power plays for the surge. Teams are averaging less than three (2.97) power play opportunities per game, the fewest opportunities since 1963-64, the earliest data is available on Hockey-Reference. Power-play efficiency is also down from a year ago.
Improved shot quality at even strength, on the other hand, is on the rise.
Due in part to rule changes emphasizing slashing penalties in 2017, players can more easily get the puck into the slot or crease, resulting in more high-danger chances to defend.
Those, in turn, have a higher tendency to result in a goal scored. In 2007-08, the first year advanced data like this is widely available, teams generated 7.1 high-danger shots at even strength; this year that has jumped to 8.3.
An extra high-danger chance per 60 minutes might not sound like much but consider teams convert these to goals 18 per cent of the time compared to 5.5 per cent from all other areas.
Rush attempts and rebound opportunities are on the rise, too. Teams managed 0.3
rush attempts per 60 even-strength minutes in 2007-08 and have produced 0.33 per 60 minutes in 2018-19; rebound attempts have jumped from 0.51 to 0.68 per 60 minutes in those same years.
Among those close to a 100-point season in 2018-19, Crosby, a five-time 100-point scorer already in his career, looks to be the next one to reach the venerable milestone.
His 29 primary assists at even strength this year are a career high and he is generating the most high-danger chances for himself (5.1 per 60 minutes) since 2012-13, when he was on a 128-point pace in a season cut short by injury. Wheeler projects to just miss despite ranking eighth in the NHL with 88 points, scoring 20 goals in addition to 68 assists.
Citizen news service
Canadian goaltender Braden Holtby said he will not visit the White House with his Capitals teammates, joining forwards Brett Connolly and Devante Smith-Pelly as players who have declined the invitation there to honor the team’s Stanley Cup on Monday.
“I’ve got to stay true to my values, and I’m going respectfully decline the offer,” Holtby said Friday morning. “In saying that, it’s a tough situation for everyone to be in, to be forced to make a decision
of that standing. You’re a team and you want to stick together no matter what, so I hope everyone kind of blows it away and that we don’t worry about who goes and who doesn’t.
“For me, it’s just a personal thing. I believe in what I believe in, and in order to stick to those values, I think I have to do what I feel is right, but that doesn’t make a difference on everyone else’s decision. We stick by every single teammate we have and their decision. That’s about it.” Holtby has marched in D.C.’s
Pride Parade and served as the Capitals’ designated “You Can Play” ambassador, and in September, he spoke at the Human Rights Campaign national dinner. Asked about his involvement with the LGBTQ community, Holtby said it factored into his decision.
“My family and myself, we believe in a world where humans are treated with respect regardless of your stature, what you’re born into,” Holtby said. “You’re asked to choose what side you’re on, and I think it’s pretty clear what side I’m on. I believe that this is the
right decision for myself and my family.”
The Capitals announced on Thursday that there will be no official ceremony or media availability while they are in the White House. The team will take part in a private tour and will meet U.S. President Donald Trump in the Oval Office.
Connolly joined Smith-Pelly last year in saying he would skip a White House visit, and he stood by that decision when asked Tuesday night, referencing his support for Smith-Pelly.
“I respectfully decline,” said Connolly, who is from Prince George and is a former captain of the Cougars. “That’s all I’ll say about it. Everyone is entitled to their opinion. It’s obviously a big deal, and it gains a lot of attention. I’ve been in full support of an old teammate that I’m really good friends with who I agreed with and a guy who will be back here, I’m sure, at the end of the year. That’s all I’ll say.”
Most Capitals, including Russian captain Alex Ovechkin, have said they will participate in the visit.
When they beat the Richmond Ravens 6-1 Friday afternoon at the provincial hockey championship in Coquitlam, the Prince George bantam female Cougars did all that was within their power to advance to today’s gold-medal game.
The rest was out of their hands.
Their win Friday temporarily moved the Cougars into second place in the six-team tournament with a 2-1-2 record. To clinch second and move on to the championship game the Cougars needed help from undefeated Tri-Cities in the final round-robin game Friday night.
Tri-Cities (3-0-1) sat first in the standings and needed at least a point in the final game against fourth-place Surrey (2-1-1) to clinch a berth in today’s 1:30 p.m. final. They got their point, but it wasn’t enough to salvage
the Cougars’ season. That game ended in a 4-4 tie, which bumped Surrey into second place and dropped Prince George into third. They finished as the bronze medalists.
In the Richmond-Prince George game, Brooke Norkus and Avery Bautista each had two goals to lead the Cougar cause.
Cricket Colebank and Nancy Moore also scored. Karsyn Niven backstopped the victory in net.
Meanwhile, at the peewee female provincial championship in Trail, the Prince George Cougars dropped to 0-2 on Day 2 of the six-team tournament Friday, losing 6-2 to North Shore. Prince George opened with an 11-0 loss to Surrey on Thursday.
The Cougars are back on the ice today at 8 a.m. to face Kelowna, then have a 3:45 p.m. game against South Island.
Ted CLARKE Citizen staff tclarke@pgcitizen.ca
The Vancouver North East Chiefs have the Cariboo Cougars right where they want them.
On the brink of elimination.
The visitors from Burnaby beat the Cougars in their own spacious barn Friday night, winning 4-2 at Kin 1 to take a 1-0 lead in their best-of-three BC. Hockey Major Midget League semifinal series.
The Chiefs will have a chance to wrap it up this afternoon when the series resumes at 4:15 p.m.
The game took on an ominous tone for the Cougars 3:15 in when Chiefs defenceman Cody Hough let go a shot from between the players’ benches at centre ice and the puck skipped off the ice and bounced high into the net behind Xavier Cannon.
The Cougars got that one back 30 seconds later when Brett Fudger hooked up with linemates Curtis Hammond and Lane Goodwin on a back-door play to beat goalie Logan Terness.
That didn’t faze the Chiefs one bit.
They continued to be the aggressors, outhitting, outhustling and outchancing their opponents on the Olympic-sized rink and were rewarded with a couple more goals before the period ended.
Logan Kurki found a loose puck in front of the net and buried his chance from a couple metres out to make it a 2-1 game at the 17:17 mark.
Less than a minute later, Dante Berrettoni stripped the puck off the stick of Cougars John Herrington deep in Cougar territory and had a clear path to the net, finishing with a high shot in behind Cannon.
“You’ve got to work for your bounces and I didn’t think we did that tonight,” said Cougars head coach Tyler Brough.
“We got outworked in all three zones, chasing the game a little bit and when you’re down 3-1 after the first it’s tough to come back against a good structured team.”
The Cougars had a better second period while outshooting the Chiefs 11-8 and they forced goalie Terness out of his comfort zone a few times, generating several close chances but no goals.
Terness, a 16-year-old Trail Smoke Eaters prospect came up with his best save late in the second period when Brennan Bott sprung Lane Goodwin with a breakaway pass just after Goodwin jumped out of the penalty box.
The Chiefs goalie came out to cut down the angle and made a blocker save to
keep the two-goal lead intact. Herrington atoned for his mistake with 13 minutes gone in the third period when he swatted in a backhanded rebound that kicked into the slot after Max Arnold hit Terness with a hot shot from the point while the Cougars were on a power play. But that’s as close as it got for Cariboo. They called a timeout with about a minute left but the Chiefs won the draw and Quinton Hill scored into an empty net.
The teams finished just two points apart in the standings and that gave the Cougars home ice advantage for the series. It was the first win for the Chiefs in Prince George since the 2015 league championship series, when they swept Cariboo in two straight.
“We’ve got to regroup, it’s a best-ofthree, the series isn’t over,” said Brough.
“We’ll wash that one out and come back better tomorrow and ready to go because they haven’t seen our best. We have to have some pride in that and show up and try and steal Game 2 and make a push for Game 3.
“We expected a battle. There’s a lot of respect between the two coaching staffs, they’re a well-coached, very structured hockey team that finished right below us in the standings and it could have gone either way.
“We’ve bounced back all year, we have a pretty resilient group in there and I’m expecting a bounce-back from us. Nobody wants the season to end and we’re going to play hungry and give them our best effort.”
The Cougars edged the Chiefs in a close regular-season series, winning one and tying three. They last faced each other on the outdoor ice at Ernie Sam Memorial Arena in Fort St. James, Jan. 20. That game ended in a 2-2 tie and was unofficially decided when Cougar forward Alex Ochitwa scored the only goal of the shootout.
Both teams swept their best-of-three quarterfinal series. The Chiefs eliminated the Vancouver Northwest Hawks last weekend in Burnaby, while the Cougars dispatched the Greater Vancouver Canadians, winning both games at Kin 1. If Game 3 is needed it would be played Sunday (10 a.m. start). All games are at Kin 1.
The winner advances to the league championship against either the Fraser Valley Thunderbirds or Okanagan Rockets. They started their best-of-three semifinal Friday in Abbotsford, home of the defending-champion T-birds. That game was tied 2-2 heading into the second overtime period.
(PDT)
TUESDAY, MAR. 26 Vancouver at Seattle, 7:05 p.m. (PDT) WEDNESDAY, MAR. 27 Vancouver at Seattle, 7:05 p.m. (PDT)
FRIDAY, MAR. 29
x-Seattle at Vancouver, 7:05 p.m. (PDT) SATURDAY, MAR. 30 x-Vancouver at Seattle, 6:05 p.m. (PDT) TUESDAY, APR. 2 x-Seattle at Vancouver, 7 p.m. (PDT) Victoria (2) vs. Kamloops (3) FRIDAY’S RESULT
at Victoria
GAME Kamloops at Victoria, 7:05 p.m. (PDT) TUESDAY, MAR. 26 Victoria at Kamloops, 7 p.m. (PDT)
APR. 1
at Kamloops, 7 p.m. (PDT) WEDNESDAY, APR. 3
at Victoria, 7:05 p.m. (PDT) U.S. DIVISION Everett (1) vs. Tri-City (WC1)
Gary Clark Jr. has created a lot of conversation with This Land, the provocative first song off his latest album that shares the same name.
In the angry blues-rock song, he recounts racial epithets hurled his way and other racist taunts before he defiantly asserts that he too is “America’s son.” In the accompanying video, young black children confront racist imagery, including a noose, among other disturbing things.
Clark says the song was sparked after he sensed a change in his Austin, Texas neighbourhood during the 2016 presidential election campaign between Hillary Clinton and eventual victor Donald Trump, and then a confrontation with a neighbour prompted him to write it.
“I would be driving home and I would see a lot more Trump signs than Clinton. Things in the news, there started to be conversation about – something shifted. I don’t know all of it. I’m not going to try and explain all of it, but you could see it in the news and what the narrative was. Having two young ones, it kind of made me concerned about what we were getting into,” said the 35-year-old musician.
Clark Jr. says a neighbour met him outside the home he’d recently purchased and told him there was no way he – a black man – could be its owner.
“I had to deal with something out in front of my house – I’m going to check the mail and I’m with my kid and I’m confronted by
racism at my front door. And I’m like man, what time is it? What day is it? Where are we?” he said.
“I think it was something I was just sitting on for a while. I was taught to just be quiet
and let things pass. And I was just tired of it.
It’s like, I’m here, we are here. Strong, confident, we’re not going anywhere,” he added.
“So you’re not going to tell me that I’m not worth it. You’re not going to tell anyone
Gary Clark Jr. performs at the Summit LA17 in Los Angeles in 2017. His new release, This Land, channels a diverse blend of styles while tackling racism and politics.
else that they’re not worth it. Because we all are.”
Clark Jr. now has two children with his wife Nicole Trunfio, a white Australian model. So he laughs at Twitter trolls who have called his latest song “reverse racism” online.
“How? Do you see my wife and my children? You know what I mean? Look at my band. We look like the Village People. There’s somebody from everywhere. Out of darkness comes the light. So with the rest of the album, there are brighter notes. And the idea is hope and love and just showing love to people,” Clark said.
The genre-hopping artist says he crafted the rest of his album with a hip-hop producer’s mindset, sampling from a wide range of musical styles, crafting lyrics about politics and his personal life, then laying down his trademark guitar riffs.
“In my mind, I’m trying to be like Dr. Dre, Dilla, DJ Premier, RZA, the Wu-Tang Clan. I love that stuff. So that’s kind of what I do if I’m not playing guitar,” he said. “In the studio, there’s so many options... It’s like man, let’s just have fun with it all. So that’s how I approached it. I just didn’t care. I just want to make what I feel. You can call it what you want but I call it music.”
Mock ‘how to’ videos poke fun at being better
Citizen news service
Type “how to” anything in your browser and it’s clear we’re suffering from a bit of life-hack mania. How to cook a chicken. How to save more money. How to ask for a raise. We search the term “how to” hundreds of thousands of times a year, fueled in part by brands trying to sell us solutions and publications that know how often we search for it.
The pressure to improve can be overwhelming, which is why this selection of parodies is so refreshing. These mock “how to” videos are a break from DIY enlightenment and, even better, encourage us to laugh at our failures.
You Suck at Cooking is delightful, because watching the videos feels like you’re giving up the desire to do everything right. In each video, an unknown narrator walks you through how to make common recipes, such as an easy breakfast or ramen.
The instructions are delivered in a dry, flat tone and are often nonsensical – like pouring boiled spaghetti over unpeeled lime to infuse it with vitamin C – and are interrupted by frequent comedic interludes.
In this episode, you learn to make the ramen with a poached egg, but not without helpful tips such as taping your eggs to the roof on the inside of your fridge so your roommates can’t find them.
For two years, Rachel Ballinger posted a weekly video attempting to teach a random skill as part of her Learning Sunday” series. She canceled the series in November, but you can still watch the 30-plus videos that highlight Ballinger’s knack for goofing off, including her struggle to shave her legs properly or fold a fitted bedsheet. With more than 2.4 million subscribers, her channel is a testament to why laughing at being an adult, rather than being one, is always more fun.
You Suck at Cooking youtu.be/JsB57FtaxXQ Rachel Ballinger youtu.be/d5FgCd8vToM
In May last year, the blood-soaked Basque separatist group, ETA, announced to the relief of millions that it finally had disbanded.
The decision – which came seven years after the group committed to a cease fire – ended a long, dark episode in Spanish history, a decades-long terror campaign punctuated by brazen daytime machinegun attacks and the concussive effects of huge car bombs that cost more than 800 lives.
A legacy of such murderous infamy demands a historical reckoning, especially in a country so recently gripped by another, though nowhere near as violent, separatist drama in Catalonia.
In his new novel, Homeland, Fernando Aramburu – a celebrated and supremely talented Spanish writer who lives in Germany – conjures a grim and claustrophobic image of the years when ETA held sway in the northern region known as “el Pais Vasco,” the Basque Country.
Aramburu’s complex and challenging work – his first translated into English – revolves around the lives of two couples in a village outside San Sebastian, a picturesque city on the Bay of Biscay.
The wives, Bittori and Miren, are dear friends, as are their husbands, Txato and Joxian.
ETA, which stands for Euskadi Ta Askatasuna – a phrase that means “Homeland and Liberty” in the Basque language – looms heavy in village life. Through threats, extortion and public shaming, the group attempts to enforce political, ideological and linguistic purity.
Inevitably, ETA drives apart the couples. Txato, a well-to-do shipping company owner, becomes the object of a shakedown by ETA thugs who send him menacing letters demanding payments to fund their operations.
The letters are marked with an image of a serpent wrapped around an axe, a symbol of “bietan jarrai,” or the two paths of ETA, with the axe representing military force and the serpent suggesting political cunning.
When Txato resists, threats and smears about him start appearing in graffiti around town,turning him into a pariah.
He is shunned by the cycling and gastronomy clubs that once brought him such pleasure.
Even his good friend, Joxian – a foundry worker who lives in much humbler circumstances – barely acknowledges him when they pass each other in the street.
Their wives, once as close as sisters, find their relationship straining as Miren becomes more of an “abertzale” – a Basque patriot.
Once, Miren and Bittori had spent Saturdays at cafes in San Sebastian, sometimes referring to the city by its Spanish name, and other times by its name in the Basque language: Donostia.
Basque is generally thought to be a “language isolate” – a language with no relation to other languages, and Homeland helpfully includes a lengthy glossary to explain the Basque terms sprinkled throughout the book.
A family tree would have been helpful, too. Keeping straight all the names and central relationships – as well as a galaxy of supporting characters – can be a difficult task made more challenging by Aramburu’s sometimes maddeningly nonlinear storytelling style.
I found myself having to reread several early chapters, and finally succumbed to building a chart of the dramatis personae.
Homeland is no beach read.
But once I caught the rhythm, I came to think of it as exhibiting a kind of sophisticated tidal pattern, with each ebb and flow – present to past, past to present, splayed over 125 chapters and nearly 600 pages – leaving behind new clues in the sand.
Readers looking for a deeper comprehension – or even a justification – for ETA’s armed campaign will surely be disappointed.
Miren’s passion for the Basque separatist cause is amplified by the decision of her son, Joxe Mari, to join the armed struggle of ETA.
When Joxe Mari is named as a “dangerous terrorist” in a television report, his sister – Arantxa – gets a phone call from an old friend: to congratulate her. Still, Miren, for all her passion, can barely articulate a passable raison d’etre for her son’s terroristic activities beyond bromides about the rich exploiting Basque workers.
“She understands nothing about politics, has never read a book in her life, but she shouts slogans the way others set off firecrackers,” Arantxa says of her mother. “I get the idea that she walks through town memorizing what she sees on posters.”
“ETA has to keep acting without interruption,” Xabier says.
“A long time ago they became automatons. If they aren’t causing damage, they don’t exist.”
At a party at her Arizona home in 1981, a middleaged Sandra Day O’Connor, ever the consummate hostess, served enchiladas poolside with good cheer. But when she greeted a friend of her son who was soon to begin a clerkship for Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist, her mood shifted. As Evan Thomas describes the scene in First, his illuminating and eminently readable biography of the Supreme Court’s first female justice, O’Connor “conveyed an almost palpable sense of longing” for past opportunities denied her because of gender. With her appointment to the court weeks away, she launched into a stream-of-consciousness monologue about her envy decades earlier when Rehnquist, her Stanford Law School classmate (and former beau), had started his clerkship at the court, a steppingstone at that time reserved almost exclusively for men.
Intelligent, ambitious women of O’Connor’s vintage were thwarted at every turn. A Stanford Law Review editor in the top 10 per cent of her class, she couldn’t even get an interview with the big firms that recruited on campus in the 1950s. When she wangled a meeting in the Los Angeles offices of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, Thomas writes, a partner told her “our clients won’t stand for” being represented by a woman and suggested a secretarial job instead. Sexism stings. And it stung just as harshly for a Phoenix country club Republican like O’Connor as it did for a liberal Brooklynite like Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Only a few weeks after that pool party, U.S. President Ronald Reagan made good on a campaign promise to appoint a woman to the Supreme Court. O’Connor got the call and breezed through her confirmation with a 99-to-0 vote.
That O’Connor found herself the highest-ranking woman ever in American government was no accident. Thomas vividly sketches the attributes she used to clear the high barriers to female ascendancy: a knack for brushing past insults, relentlessness belied by a pretty smile, an almost superhuman level of energy and, not least, a heroically supportive husband. John O’Connor was a successful lawyer in his own right but willing to take a back seat if it meant helping his wife achieve her lofty goals. While Ginsburg in her pre-justice days distinguished herself by fighting to secure gender equality under the Constitution, O’Connor was no flaming feminist. If she had been, the Reaganites surely would have looked elsewhere. As a politician anxious to distance herself from women’s libbers, she addressed a Rotary Club with the evocative line: “I come to you with my bra and my wedding ring on.” In the state Senate, O’Connor played a key role in striking down hundreds of Arizona laws discriminating against women, but she didn’t put her political weight behind passage of the Equal Rights Amendment. After the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade opinion, she voted against a resolution calling for an antiabortion constitutional amendment but supported key measures restricting women’s access to abortions.
It was the same style of compromise – some might say fence-straddling – that O’Connor would employ as a Supreme Court justice. Some legal scholars have criticized her for seeking to decide cases on narrow grounds, leaving larger constitutional issues unresolved. In Thomas’s more generous interpretation, O’Connor’s judicial “minimalism” flowed naturally from a realpolitik she’d honed as a real politician. Interspersed with the legal analysis in First is lighter fare: camaraderie and sniping among the justices, even a scene where two clerks come to fisticuffs in a Supreme Court fountain over an abortion rights case. But with an institution as insulated as the Supreme Court and a protagonist as discreet as O’Connor, there’s a limit to how far inside one can get. As much as we’d love to hear what the first female justice was thinking as allegations of sexual harassment surfaced during Clarence Thomas’s confirmation hearings, the author can only speculate.
First gives us a real sense of Sandra Day O’Connor the human being. Cinematic scenes from her upbringing on the family ranch find young Sandra changing a tire all by herself as she struggles to get the chuck wagon to the cowboys before cattlebranding time. Thomas shows how well her flintiness served O’Connor in adulthood. She faces down Stage 2 cancer and a mastectomy with minimal self-pity, doing chemo on Fridays so she could be back on the bench for Monday oral arguments (a regimen passed on to the equally flinty Ginsburg when she too got cancer).
A major biography like First draws its power not only from the people and events it depicts but also from the culture into which it’s launched. The white-hot polarization in the age of Trump makes O’Connor’s preference for cool civility and compromise seem especially appealing.
In the food industry, it seems, the robot revolution is well underway, with machines mastering skilled tasks that have always been performed by people.
In Boston, robots have replaced chefs and are creating complex bowls of food for customers. In Prague, machines are displacing bartenders and servers using an app. In Denver, they’re taking orders at a fast food drive through.
Robots are even making the perfect loaf of bread these days, taking charge of an art that has remained in human hands for thousands of years.
Now comes Briggo, a company that has created a fully automated, robotic brewing machine that that can push out 100 cups of coffee in a single hour – equaling the output of three to four baristas, according to the company.
Using a blend of Latin American beans, the machine – known as a “coffee haus” – creates customized cups of gourmet coffee that can be ordered via an app, giving customers control over ingredients, espresso shots, flavorings and temperature without any human
interaction.
The company says no other business in the world has applied as much technology to “specialty coffee.” Removing the human element from ordering a cup of coffee is one of the company’s primary selling points.
“No more lines, no more counter confusion, no more misspelled names,” Briggo’s website says, flicking at human failings.
Briggo said all eight of its machines are owned by the company, but they’ve recently begun offering a licensed business model to prospective operators. The company didn’t reveal how much that business model costs, but noted that rent and revenue-sharing arrangements are typical when a machine is placed in a public location, such as an airport.
Kevin Nater, Briggo’s president and chief executive, said the machine would thrive in locations in which convenience is highly valued, like airports and office buildings, where several of the three metre by 1.5 m machines currently operate.
“Imagine you’re coming into the security line at the airport, your flight is coming up, and you know
that if you want a coffee you’re gong to stand in a long line,” said Nater. “From the security line, you can simply order your cup of coffee and pick it up at the coffee haus and make it to your flight on time.”
“I’ve never found anyone who wants to stand in line a long time,” he added. “We’ve just changed the game.”
It seems others agree. This year, Fast Company named the Austin,
Texas-based company one of the 10 Most Innovative companies in the world. Assuming both companies grow, Briggo may someday compete with Cafe X, an automated coffee bar from San Francisco that uses assembly linestyle machines that promise your cup of joe will be engineered with “robotic precision.”
The machines arrive at a time when ready-to-drink coffee, such as bottled drinks found in supermarkets and convenience stores, continues to explode in popularity, according to CNBC.
Nater said he has no doubt his machine makes cups of coffee as well, if not better, than a human barista. Referring to the robot as a “high speed, totally controlled food factory,” he said that unlike human workers a machine doesn’t get flustered when business gets busy. By looking at analytics, he said, he can ensure that the robot is hitting “all of it’s quality marks.”
But Oliver Geib, a 24-year-old barista at Ceremony Coffee Roasters in Annapolis, Md., remained skeptical. As coffee is being made by a barista, he said, subtly gauging the ratio of water to grind as flavour develops through refined taste tests, is crucial.
“All the numbers and data in the world can’t actually tell you how the coffee tastes,” Geib said. “A big part of what a human brings is being able to taste the coffee during the process of dialing in the flavour.”
Fast-food restaurants like Starbucks, Wendy’s, Panera and
McDonald’s encourage customers to order using self-service kiosks or a mobile app.
Asked how Briggo would impact employment, Nater said food service companies have a hard time retaining workers and are often short on staff, especially in airports where turnover is high.
“We don’t think we’re replacing people,” he said. “We are creating a high tech retail and marketing business and developing jobs in the process. We just hired two people in the Bay Area, where we are opening a new location in the spring.”
But automation critics claim that machines ultimately harm more workers than they help. Last month, Erikka Knuti – communications director for the United Food and Commercial Workers Union – said too many businesses treat customer service as a lineitem cost instead of an investment. In addition to eliminating jobs, she said, removing people from transactions degrades the product that businesses are selling.
“Retailers and businesses underestimate the importance of the customer service interaction – that point when a customer hands over their money and they get a warm smile in return that tells them they’re valued,” she said.
Adrian HIGGINS Citizen news service
Spring and the garden beckon, but there is one last task for the indoor gardener.
Houseplants, which are trendy again, need re-potting every year or two to remain vigorous and healthy.
Many of these plants grow naturally in the gloomy floor of the rain forest, and although they have adapted to put up with a lot of root competition, the confines of a pot will eventually become too constraining. Certain common houseplants like to be a little potbound – clivias, scheffleras, peace lilies and ficus among them – but even they will need re-potting in time. Now, at the start of their annual growth cycle, is the time to do it.
Apart from dealing with root congestion, plants that are too long in a pot sit in soil that has become compacted and depleted and may have a harmful accumulation of fertilizer salts.
How do you tell whether a plant needs repotting?
Turn the pot over.
The most obvious sign of a potbound plant is roots are growing out of the drainage holes.
Hold the lower stem of the plant firmly and pull off the pot.
If you see a thicket of pale roots in the shape of the pot, it’s time for action.
If the pot won’t slip off, it’s probably gripped by congested roots. If the pot is plastic, you can cut the container away – use pruners, but mind your fingers. If it’s clay, you may have to break it with a hammer.
Another sign of a problem is if the plant seems continually thirsty – that is, wilting – despite diligent watering.
This is because the ratio of roots to soil has become too great.
The same problem can also lead to an obvious drop in plant vigor.
Water the plant thoroughly the day before re-potting to reduce the stress of the ordeal and make the roots more workable.
Once you’ve got the plant out of the pot, you have to tease the roots into a more natural state. The degree of effort depends on their level of overcrowding.
I asked Nate Roehrich, greenhouse production manager at Brookside Gardens in Wheaton, Maryland, how he deals with the task.
We went in search of a plant begging to be re-potted and found a cordyline suffering in a onegallon pot.
As we tackled the job I noticed that he is more gentle with the roots than I tend to be.
This may be because, a week before, I had to take a large knife to the most congested root system I had seen – on an indoor palm I had purchased just a month earlier.
This leads to another point. Just because a houseplant is new to you doesn’t mean it is happily potted.
Houseplants purchased late in the growing season or in winter have had months to grow thick roots.
Buy them – especially if they’re on sale – but be prepared to ready them for the season ahead.
The finer the roots, the more gentle you should be.
One way to work them loose with minimum harm is to wash away the old soil with a light stream of water, preferably not ice cold. On roots that are fine but stringy, trim them back with scissors. If they are thick and compacted,
House plants need to be in the right size of pot to reach their full potential.
you can use a knife to score the sides.
On really congested roots, such as my palm, you could use a sharp knife or even pruning saw to remove the bottom inch or so, and then take a three-pronged soil cultivator to liberate roots from one another and the old soil.
Roehrich used no tools on the cordyline other than his hands. As a rule, he doesn’t remove more than one-quarter of the root mass when re-potting.
A root-pruned plant can be returned to the same pot, but it is better to give it a slightly larger home – a pot that is one or two inches more in top diameter. Any bigger and you run the risk of root rot because of increased soil moisture.
Some pots are set in a decorative outer or cache pot and others have an integral saucer at the base, but in any event the new pot must drain.
There is a confusing array of soil and compost products for sale, but the one you want for most houseplants is potting soil (or potting mix).
This is typically a peat-based concoction lightened with perlite. Some gardeners think potting soil is still too prone to waterlogging and like to add additional perlite. Orchids and succulents need their own special mixes.
Keep the plant at the same soil level as before – deeper and you run the risk of the crown rotting –but the soil line should be below the lip of the pot to allow for efficient watering. Hold the plant at the correct level with one hand while backfilling fresh soil with the other.
Roehrich then taps the pot a couple of times to get rid of any air pockets.
I like to water the plant to encourage the soil to sink, and then
re-pack as needed. After final watering, let the plant rest - away from direct sunlight even if it’s a bright-light plant. Water again when the top of the soil feels dry. Don’t fertilize for a while; wait until you see new growth, which may take two to four weeks.
The plant will first put its energy into repairing its roots before converting energy to top growth,
said. After the plant is re-potted, groom the foliage by removing dead, diseased or damaged leaves. The project generates a fair amount of mess.
If your deluxe, fully plumbed potting shed is being renovated, you can undertake the task on the patio or balcony on a mild day or indoors in a large plastic tub. A storage container will do the trick. Reviving a plant in this way has a way of restoring the spirits of the indoor gardener as well.
Tex Cyril Enemark, 78, passed away in Richmond, BC on March 12, 2019 surrounded by family, after struggling with cancer. Tex was born in Wells to Spike and Margaret Enemark, and was raised in Prince George, graduating from Duchess Park High School in 1958. He was a true “local boy makes good” story, and ran as the provincial Liberal candidate in the riding of Fort George in 1969. After graduating from UBC law school he became an assistant to a cabinet minister in Pierre Trudeau’s government and was instrumental in the development of Granville Island. In 1976, he became Deputy Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs in BC headed by Rafe Mair. In close partnership they sponsored 22 new laws to create a fairer marketplace. He became the first president of the Mining Association of BC in 1982. Always with appetite for politics, Tex later ran as the 1988 federal Liberal candidate in Vancouver Centre. Afterwards he established his own public policy consultancy on a wide range of public issues including housing, mining, port authority taxation and liquor policy. Tex was a founder of the B.C. Artificial Reef Society and dived the ships they sank. He will be missed by his wife of 54 years, Sandra, and children Kiersten (Fred Mullie), Tasha (Peter Chalk), Ashleigh, grandchildren, and brother Gordon (Peggy). He is predeceased by brother Brett (Candace Parker). Tex always remembered Prince George fondly, including summers spent surveying in the area during his university years. Tex recently wrote a family history that chronicles much his family’s time in Prince George after his grandfather, the first butcher in Fort George, settled here in 1910. A Celebration of Life will be held at the Croatian Cultural Centre in Vancouver on June 11 at 3:30 pm. Tex may be remembered by donating to the Cancer Society or Canadian Blood Services.
GOUDY - Frederick Gerald (Fred) passed away peacefully at Victoria General Hospital on March 8, 2019 with family by his side. Born July 6th, 1927 in Saskatoon, SK, Fred was the loving husband of Connie Goudy for 58 years, who is waiting to see him again; a wonderful father to his two sons Grant (Denise) and Glen (Leah); and, took special pride and joy in his four grandchildren, Devon, Victoria, Courtni (Sunil) and Dalton, and his greatgranddaughter, Emersyn. Fred was predeceased by his parents and his sister Shirley, and is survived by his brothers Gordon and Bill. Fred spent most of his first 30 years in Vancouver, where he graduated from Burnaby South High School and earned a Bachelor of Pharmacy degree from the University of British Columbia. On a truly blessed day in the 1940s, Fred met Constance Olive Hughes, and the two were eventually married on October 12, 1951. They moved to Prince George in 1959 where both of their sons were born, and Fred kept busy operating Monarch Pharmacy and being one of the very early members of the Prince George Golf Club. After spending 28 years in Prince George, Fred and Connie retired to Victoria in 1987 where Fred worked part time for a few years, while continuing to be a very active member of the local golfing community. The two of them enjoyed many vacations to numerous sun destinations, but loved Hawaii above all, and made innumerable trips to Oahu, and maintained several dear friendships with those that they met there. There will not be a memorial service, but instead will be an open house after a quiet interment, later in the spring. In lieu of flowers we ask that any donations be made to the Canadian Diabetes Association in Fred’s name.
Nora Marie Harmider Sept. 6, 1925 - March 15, 2019
Nora passed away peacefully in her home in Langley B.C. on March 15 with family by her side. Nora was a long term resident of Prince George. She was instrumental in starting the Phoenix Transition House, which she managed from 1974 until retirement in 1989. She travelled the world and experienced life to its fullest. Nora was always there for those who needed her and ready to help in any way she could. The door was always open and the coffee pot was always on. Predeceased by Husband: Bernie Harmider 1969 and Son: Bob Snodgrass 2006. Leaves behind Son: Lon (Candauce) Harmider, Daughters: Noreen (John) Shomody, Janet (Ken) Corrigan, Cheryle (Michael) Watson , Waneta Averill and Daughter-in law Karen Snodgrass. 15 grandchildren, 24 great-grandchildren and 2 Great-Great Grandchildren.
The Celebration of Life to held at Evergreen Timbers Hall, 5464 203st. Langley B. C. March 29th 1:00 pm. In lieu of flowers, please donate to the Charity of your choice. Released With Love
BUD NIELSEN
June 14, 1949March 6, 2019
Bud was born in Prince George and passed away peacefully in Fort St James after a long battle with heart failure. Bud had his wife Sherry and children - Ken, Linda,and James with him. He is survived by his brother Peter. There will be no funeral at his request, but a Celebration of Life will be held Saturday March 30.2019 at the Nak’albun Elementary School at 1180 Lakeshore Drive, in Fort St. James BC. In lieu of flowers donations can be made to the Heart & Stroke Foundation of BC/BC Children’s Hospital - Cardiology Research.
EARL (Al) McPHERSON
July 28, 1931March 18, 2019
Predeceased by wife Sheila and son Jim. Survived by daughter Lynn (Gys), son John (Rachel), grandchildren Marianne, Jeff (Jenn), great granddaughter Sandy. No service by request.
“You were the wind beneath our wings”
RHODA SMALL 1915 - 2019
Passed away March 2, 2019, just shy of her 104th birthday. In 1952, Rhoda moved to Fraser Lake where she raised cows and sold milk to Vanderhoof. In 1962 the farm was sold and she moved to Gympie Quld, Australia. Survived by Gloria (Steve) Sintich, David Small, Dale Small, grandchildren, brother Wayne Fleming (Marge), predeceased by husband Roy in 1991.
In Loving Memory Of
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These are indicative wholesale rates for foreign currency provided by the Bank of Canada on Friday. Quotations in Canadian funds.
Canada’s main stock index endured its worst day of 2019 Friday on signs of a global economic slowdown and potential for a recession.
Weak manufacturing data from Europe and then in the United States had investors nervous on both sides of the Atlantic. Concerns heightened after the yield curve, or spread between the U.S. three-month and 10-year notes, inverted for the first time since 2007.
That’s a much-watched signal that’s often viewed as a predictor of a recession, said Ian Scott, an equity analyst at Manulife Asset Management.
“It’s not that the Fed is calling for a recession this year, but there are investors who are starting to wonder if it could happen at some point this year, even accidentally,” he said.
U.S. manufacturing PMI data that slid to a 21-month low in March, coupled with weakness in Europe, are reminders that central banks are pausing interest rate hikes for a reason, Scott said.
The S&P/TSX composite index closed down almost one per cent, losing 155.26 points to 16,089.33 after hitting an intraday low of 16,043.86. That follows Thursday’s gain of 77 points. Defensive sectors such as utilities, real estate and telecommunications led the market while health care, energy, technology and financials were down.
The risk-off sentiment was expressed in companies like recreational products maker BRP Inc., which saw its shares fall 7.5 per cent despite strong fourthquarter results that beat analyst expectations. In New York, markets fell by as much as 2.5 per cent.
The Dow Jones industrial average was down 460.19 points at 25,502.32.
The S&P 500 index was down 54.17 points at 2,800.71, while the Nasdaq composite was down 196.29 points at 7,642.67.
The Canadian dollar traded at an average of 74.57 cents US, compared with an average of 74.82 cents US on Thursday.
The May crude contract was down 94 cents at US$59.04 per barrel and the May natural gas contract was down six cents at US$2.77 per mmBTU on concerns about slowing demand.
The April gold contract was up $5 at US$1,312.30 an ounce and the May copper contract was down 6.35 cents at US$2.84 a pound. With most corporate earnings results completed for the quarter, markets are at the mercy of headlines related to the ongoing trade dispute between the U.S. and China, Brexit negotiations and any economic data, said Scott.
Citizen news service
General Motors Co. committed to investing $1.8 billion at plants in six states and to creating 700 new jobs, as the largest U.S. automaker looks to ward off months of criticism by U.S. President Donald Trump.
The bulk of the new jobs will go to a factory in Michigan where GM plans to add production of another fully electric vehicle. The carmaker will spend $300 million and add 400 workers at the plant in Orion Township, north of Detroit, where the Chevrolet EV will be built alongside the Bolt model.
Factories in states including Kentucky, Ohio, Tennessee and Texas will also boost their workforce.
“This is an industry that is under just dramatic transformation,” chief executive officer Mary Barra
said. “So we’re taking the steps and being responsible to make sure that we can continue to grow in these areas, and continue to have a strong U.S. manufacturing base that creates a lot of good paying jobs.”
The moves may help assuage Trump, who’s attacked GM over its decisions announced in November to idle an Ohio plant and four other underutilized factories in the U.S. and Canada. As part of a broader restructuring that’s also affecting salaried employees, the company is cutting or displacing upwards of 14,000 jobs.
“No one wants Trump tweeting negatively about them, but General Motors has demonstrated that it is going to run its business,” said Michelle Krebs, a senior analyst at car-shopping researcher AutoTrader. “This is a significant
investment in GM’s electrification future.” Barra addressed Trump’s barbs about GM ending production in Lordstown, Ohio, by talking about how many people continue to work for the company outside of that plant.
“We still have 4,000 jobs and 4,000 employees in four additional Ohio plants,” Barra told reporters. “We spend more than $6 billion in Ohio every year. GM is committed to supporting manufacturing, including in Michigan and Ohio.”
The United Auto Workers won’t be pacified easily. Terry Dittes, the vice president who oversees the union’s GM department, said he will still fight to save factories in Ohio, Michigan and Maryland that face uncertain futures due to a lack of future product to build.
“There is hardship among four of our locations and we’ve made it clear that we disagree with that,” Dittes said when he took the podium after Barra spoke. “These four plants will not be forgotten.” Dittes said that even the sedan plant in Detroit-Hamtramck that GM has committed to keep open only until the end of 2019 has a shaky future. The challenge for the UAW is that even if the automaker closes all four of the plants that have no product allocated for the future, several other plants aren’t busy enough right now to warrant adding more workers.
“We’re still waiting to see what’s going to happen with other GM plants, like Detroit-Hamtramck,” AutoTrader’s Krebs said. “There are still some plants that are underutilized. What will they do with those?”
The annual pace of inflation edged higher in February as gains in most spending categories offset lower gasoline prices, Statistics Canada said Friday.
The agency reported the consumer price index in February climbed 1.5 per cent compared with a year ago. The move compared with a year-over-over increase of 1.4 per cent in January.
Economists had expected a reading of 1.4 per cent for February.
Josh Nye, senior economist at the Royal Bank, said the slow pace of inflation will mean the Bank of Canada will likely remain patient when it comes to raising interest rates.
“With inflation remaining below two per cent now we think that’s going to mean a pause from the Bank of Canada,” Nye said.
“So, households won’t be seeing the same increase in borrowing costs in 2019 that they did in 2018. Still though, they are going to be making higher debt payments than they have in years past when interest rates were even lower, so still a bit of a headwind for consumer spending.”
Helping push costs higher was a 8.1 per cent increase in mortgage interest costs and a 14.3 per cent rise compared with a year ago in the cost of fresh vegetables. The cost of passenger
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vehicle insurance premiums also rose 6.3 per cent. The cost of gasoline was down 11.9 per cent compared with the same month last year as overall energy prices slipped 5.7 per cent.
However, Statistics Canada said tighter oil supplies and the temporary closure of several refineries for seasonal maintenance helped boost gasoline prices 1.9 per cent compared with January, the first month-over-month increase in gasoline since July 2018.
Excluding gasoline, the annual pace of inflation held steady at 2.1 per cent, the same as January.
The report also said the average of the Bank of Canada’s three core inflation readings, which omit more-volatile items like gas, edged down to 1.8 per cent compared with a reading of 1.9 per cent in January.
The central bank, which aims to keep inflation between one and three per cent, sets its benchmark interest rate target as a way to manage the pace of inflation.
The Bank of Canada held its key rate target at 1.75 per cent at its rate announcement earlier this month when it also raised concerns about the strength of economic growth to start the year.
“The main message for the Bank of Canada is that with core inflation holding steady just below the two per cent target and the broader
economy struggling for any growth in the opening quarter, rates are in lock-down mode for the foreseeable future – not unlike the Fed,” said Doug Porter, chief economist at the Bank of Montreal.
In a separate report, Statistics Canada reported Friday that retail sales fell 0.3 per cent to $50.1 billion in January, the third consecutive move lower as falling sales at motor vehicle and parts dealers weighed on the results.
Analysts had estimated a month-overmonth increase of 0.4 per cent, according to Thomson Reuters Eikon.
“Not only did retail sales stumble out of the gate, we also received revisions pointing to less strength than originally reported to close out last year,” said Brian DePratto, senior economist at TD Bank.
“The culprit again seems to be elevated borrowing costs, with rate sensitive sectors such as auto dealers and furniture stores down on the month.”
Sales at motor vehicle and parts dealers fell 1.5 per cent in January due to a 2.4 per cent drop in sales at new car dealers and a 2.7 per cent drop at used car dealers.
Excluding the subsector, retail sales increased 0.1 per cent.
Retail sales in volume terms were essentially unchanged in January.
West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey sued the Catholic diocese of Wheeling-Charleston and its former bishop Michael Bransfield on Tuesday, charging that they “knowingly employed pedophiles and failed to conduct adequate background checks” for people working in Catholic schools and camps, a news release from Morrisey’s office says.
The lawsuit, the latest dramatic civil action against the American church in the past year, alleges violations of the state’s consumer protection laws. It accuses the diocese of advertising safe environments for children while at the same time, the complaint says, choosing “to cover up and conceal arguably criminal behavior of child sexual abuse.”
Some child abuse experts said the move was precedent-setting, both in terms of targeting an entire diocese rather than individual priests, and by using consumer law to launch a civil lawsuit which could unlock the church’s files through legal discovery. The West Virginia attorney general used the consumer fraud strategy because, as with attorneys general in other states, he is not empowered to launch a criminal grand jury investigation.
“This is the most that we’ve seen so far in terms of prosecution, in terms of someone in the higher levels of the hierarchy. This is the first time we’ve seen a comprehensive claim against a whole diocese and a bishop,” said Marci Hamilton, a law scholar and head of Child USA, a nonprofit organization focused on child abuse.
The Wheeling-Charleston Diocese, which covers the entire state, issued a statement Tuesday which said it “strongly and unconditionally rejects the Complaint’s assertion that the Diocese is not wholly committed to the protection of children.” The statement said the lawsuit was based in part on information provided by the church both publicly and to the attorney general in recent months, that some allegations “occurred more than 50 years ago and some are not accurately described.”
Bransfield, the only bishop named as a defendant in the suit, could not be reached for comment.
Although Catholic officials and leaders have conceded that the Church failed in the past, some consider the recent criticism unfair for an institution that has invested many millions in child protection efforts. One church official who spoke on the condition of anonymity so as not to appear to be defending past behavior, called the new suit a “publicity stunt,” noting that policies have changed significantly in recent decades. Civil authorities in the past year have
initiated several actions against the Catholic Church on sex abuse that are new in the United States, where the church is the largest single faith group and, survivor advocates say, has been shielded for many years by insufficiently critical law enforcement, prosecutors and the news media. Last summer, Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro released an extensive, damning grand jury report describing abuse and cover-ups across the state in past decades. Last fall, the Justice Department opened an investigation of alleged sexual abuse of children by Catholic clergy members across the state.
West Virginia launched its investigation last fall after Pennsylvania’s report disclosed that some of the priests there also had worked in West Virginia, the new lawsuit states, and filed subpoenas to the diocese which did not result in full disclosure. Morrisey said in an interview that he has been communicating with people working on the sex abuse issue in other states since priests have crossed state lines, and he decided it was best to file the lawsuit under consumer protection laws. Pennsylvania officials said 16 attorneys general have publicly revealed investigations of the Catholic church since the Pennsylvania grand jury report was issued.
“If we didn’t engage in this action, there would be no statewide review that would
occur,” he said. “The state doesn’t have the structure to do what Pennsylvania did because it doesn’t have the criminal jurisdiction.”
The lawsuit is seeking a permanent court order “blocking the diocese from continuation of any such conduct,” as well as possible restitution and civil penalties. Morrisey said he is hopeful that more people will come forward and that the lawsuit could be amended to include more examples.
“I’m pleased to see Attorney General Morrisey taking such an innovative approach to protecting children in West Virginia,” Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro said.
Advocates for the abused have cheered what they consider a late entry of top civil officials, as other countries – including Australia, Canada and Germany – have run nationwide investigations of clergy sex abuse and coverups. Many Catholic leaders have been apologetic and said they were cooperating with needed investigations; others have painted the push as anti-Catholic and unfairly targeting one community for the societal problem of child sexual abuse.
The West Virginia news comes a week after Baltimore Archbishop William Lori – whom the pope appointed last fall to investigate allegations including that Bransfield had sexually harassed adults – barred Bransfield from any priestly duties. Lori said
on March 11 that his preliminary investigation, which involved five lay experts, was being forwarded to the Vatican for a final judgment.
That inquiry was looking into allegations of sexual harassment of adults and financial improprieties.
Morrisey said the U.S. church’s investigation into Bransfield was sent to the Vatican without the state being allowed to review any files. By filing this lawsuit, he said, he wants the church to become more transparent.
“There’s still a culture of secrecy,” he said.
“The church needs to come clean.”
Morrisey also wants the diocese to have abuse allegations reviewed by third parties, not just a diocese lawyer. And, he said, he wants background checks done by independent services.
“We have reason to believe the systems in place are still inadequate,” he said.
The two counts of the lawsuit are filed under West Virginia’s consumer protection law. The first count alleges the church failed to deliver the advertised service of “providing a safe learning environment” and the second count claims the church failed to “warn of dangerous services,” by employing priests the diocese knew had been credibly accused of abuse “and intentionally failed to warn the purchasers of educational and recreational services.”
It has been a little over a week since the shooting in Christchurch New Zealand. In that time there has been a huge outpouring of support for our Muslim sisters and brothers around the world. There has also been swift public policy decisions including banning semiautomatic weapons and large capacity clips to covering funeral costs and long term benefits. That is what decisive public leadership looks like, yet as families gather to bury their massacred loved ones, deep theological questions remain.
One of these questions focuses around the role of the Christian Church is supporting, even encouraging, the white supremacist ideology that fuels a hate crime like these shootings. The sin I believe the Church is guilty of is not so much outright support of islamophobia, although in certain fundamentalist Christian churches you will hear anti-Muslim rhetoric from the pulpit, it is the soft ways, the seemingly insignificant ways, in which Christian doctrine and theology has been subverted to espouse a white is right and deserving of privilege attitude. Too easily Christians can forget that Jesus was a Palestinian Jew.
He lived in an occupied land. He wasn’t white. He loved the Torah. He worshiped Yahweh. He followed the teachings of the prophets. He was brown. When asked what is the greatest commandment his response was: to love God with all your heart, mind, and ability; and to love your neighbour as yourself.
For Christ-followers these two statements are foundational and you can’t have one without the other. In his epistles, Paul expands on this notion of loving neighbour as self when he states that, in Christ, we are neither slave nor free, Jew nor Gentile, male nor female.
The killings in Christchurch have cast a spotlight on the ways in which a gospel of love, mutuality, and tolerance have been co-opted by fundamentalist factions to spread a gospel of hate, intolerance and superiority. That gospel is not Christian and it isn’t the teaching of Jesus that I follow.
The challenge is that it is rarely that blatant, instead it manifests itself in the prosperity gospel movement. It’s preached as God’s plan and judgment. It’s embodied in the horror experienced by otherwise faithful people at the notion that Jesus was not a white, blond haired, European looking person. It is taught when the other is radicalized and depersonalized, even animalized to the point where our common humanness is not recognizable anymore and that is one of our biggest problems because hate is taught and learnt. I have never met a child who was born racist or a bigot, a homophobe or an Islamophobe. Nelson Mandela wrote, “no one is born hating another person because of the colour of their skin, or their background, or their religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart that its opposite.”
These attitudes of hate that are taught are often rooted in fear and ignorance. Nathan Rutstein once observed that, “prejudice is an emotional commitment to ignorance.” I believe that to be true. You cannot love your neighbour as yourself and claim that you are
part of God’s wondrous creation and then say the people who were murdered in the mosques of Christchurch deserved it. You can if you are ignorant. You can if you have been taught that Christianity is superior. You can if you believe that the mystery of God is only revealed in the teaching of Jesus. You can if you think that somehow being white makes you morally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually better than everyone who is not white.
At the halfway point of the Lenten season, it would seem appropriate to spend some time examining the role we all play in the quiet acts of racism and Islamophobia that can, when stoked, encourage, and supported, lead to acts like the shooting in Christchurch. Maybe the Lenten season gives us permission to ask questions of our leaders and demand a better community. Maybe the Lenten season affords us the opportunity to distance ourselves from some of our most treasured beliefs so that we can examine them and prayerfully discern if they are really serving the Gospel of Christ or the gospel of people. Maybe we can distance ourselves from the nice Canada, the land of “I’m sorry” and “excuse me” and come to terms with the
reality that the seeds of white supremacy have already been planted here. With crimes against Muslims in Canada up 151 per cent in 2017 and crimes against black and Jewish communities increased by 50 per cent and 63 per cent, the lie that white supremacy is not a Canadian issue cannot be supported anymore.
The time to resist fear, isolationism, populism and nationalism is now. Otherwise we risk enshrining our ignorance of one another in an experience that will cause irreparable harm and is the furthest from Christ’s Gospel we can possible go.
I am still processing how this massacre could happen in a Christian country. I am still wrestling with how I can help change the narrative. I am still deep in the journey of Lent and maybe that is a good thing, because without this journey the wonder of Easter and the power of Christ loses their awesomeness and brilliance. Without the Lenten journey, I might not otherwise take the time to ask the deep hard questions and prayerfully discern a different path forward.
The one thing I am certain of if that Islamophobia is not Christian.
