Bach, 12, does a
whip up a quarter pipe on Wednesday at the Rotary Skatepark.
Bus company aims to launch Prince George-Surrey service
Mark NIELSEN Citizen staff mnielsen@pgcitizen.ca
A Williams Lake bus company is seeking the Passenger Transportation Board’s permission to provide a twice-a-week service between Prince George and Surrey. If all works out, Adventure Charter and Rentals will have it up and running by early June, operations manager Randy Gertzen said Wednesday, filling a void created when Greyhound Canada withdrew from Western Canada in October 2018. The company submitted an application to the PTB in February. By then, an attempt by another venture, Merritt Shuttle Bus Ltd., to get a similar service on the road was looking doubtful and the last of its deadline extensions expired in early March. In contrast, Adventure Charters
The plan is to provide a twiceweekly service that takes clients to the Skytrain station in Surrey...
has years of experience in the business. It provides a daily run to the Mount Polley mine and a charter service for schools, teams, First Nations and other groups.
“We do any kind of charter service that you require,” Gertzen said. “If you want to go from here to Seattle, to Edmonton, to wherever you want to go, we are licenced to go anywhere in B.C. or the States.” Moreover, Gertzen said the company used to do emergency runs for Greyhound.
“So we got a pretty good idea of what they did and how they did it,” he said.
The plan is to provide a twiceweekly service that takes clients to the Skytrain station in Surrey and scheduled to connect with the BC Bus North service in Prince George, with 11 stops in between those two.
The application also calls for a second twice-a-week service between Williams Lake and Kamloops. On the Prince George-Surrey route, it will run a 36-passenger bus, significantly smaller than the buses Greyhound used. Hiring additional drivers, setting an exact schedule and establishing a method to book rides will be among the next steps pending approval of a licence by the PTB. Details will be posted on the company website, www.adventurecharters.ca.
Coroner releases map of unidentified human remains
The BC Coroners Service has launched a new interactive tool displaying key information on active unidentified human remains cases in British Columbia, with an aim to generate new leads that will assist in closing these investigations. The unidentified human remains (UHR) interactive viewer is a web-mapping application containing spatial, temporal and statistical information on every active, unsolved investigation in the province.
There are currently just under 200 unsolved and active cases involving unidentified human remains in B.C. Most of these involve cold cases, with the earliest dating back to 1953.
The map shows two such spots in the Prince George area – one for the body of a man, 40-60 years, found in the Pidherny area in October 2013 and another for a man, 30 to 55 years old, found southeast of the city. The UHR interactive viewer
was developed by Ian Charlton, a spatial information analyst with the B.C. Coroners Service’s Special Investigations Unit. It is hosted on B.C.’s map hub and can be found at bit. ly/2MWfIui
The viewer provides a visual overview of the approximate location where the remains were found, case numbers for contact purposes and a summary of the key information related to each unresolved case in B.C.
“By reaching out and engaging members of the public with the launch of this innovative tool, it’s our hope to gain new investigative leads that will lead to the identification of these unidentified individuals and bring closure to their families,” said chief coroner Lisa Lapointe.
Anyone with information or questions about any of the investigations displayed on the UHR interactive viewer should contact the Special Investigations Unit using the case number provided in the viewer at BCCS.SIU@gov. bc.ca.
City gets $11.3M for infrastructure
Citizen staff
The city will have an additional $11.3 million to spend on infrastructure. Of that, $8.1 million will come from the provincial government through its $100-million northern capital and planning grant program while $3.2 comes as a result of a doubling of the share the city will get from the federal government’s excise tax on gasoline. Both amounts will be added to the budget city council approved last month and put into reserves for the time being. No specific projects have been earmarked for the money. The province announced its grant on Tuesday and the fed-
eral contribution was part of the budget unveiled last week.
Both Mayor Lyn Hall and Coun. Garth Frizzell, the city’s representative at the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, welcomed the money.
“Prince George, like local governments across Canada, is grappling with the costs associated with aging infrastructure,” Hall said. “Roads, bridges, above and below ground infrastructure, and our recreational facilities, are all aging and in need of maintenance and enhancement.”
Also on the province’s receiving end, Fraser-Fort George Regional District will get $4.2 million, Mackenzie will get $4.7 million, Valemount $2.9 million and McBride $2.4 million.
HANDOUT PHOTO
Williams Lake-based Adventure Charter and Rentals is looking to bring regular bus service between Prince George and Surrey.
Citizen staff
Autism-friendly Easter event set for April 5
Citizen staff
Autism B.C. and the Pacific Autism Family Network will be hosting an autism-friendly Easter event.
It is set for April 5 at Pacific Autism Family Network – Prince George at 1811 Victoria St., from 6 to 7 p.m.
It is open to kids of all ages and will feature Easter-themed crafts, cookie decorating and a special visit from the Easter Bunny.
The event will also be free of loud noises, strong smells and other sensory triggers that are frequently bothersome to people
with autism.
“To help keep the event sensory friendly, parents are asked to avoid wearing any scented products while attending the event, as it may irritate some of the kids attending,” organizers said.
“Also, parents are asked to remain with their kids during the event, to ensure their kids have the best experience possible.”
The event is free to attend, but parents and guardians are asked contact Heather Kwitkoski at heatherk@pacificautismfamily. com in advance to advise her of how many kids are coming and provide an idea of how much in supplies are needed.
Beauty and the Beast seeks cast
Frank PEEBLES Citizen staff fpeebles@pgcitizen.ca
A final round of auditions has been set for local musical theatre performers interested in being cast in a local production of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast.
The classic tale comes back to Prince George thanks to Judy Russell Presents. The show is set to run at the Prince George Playhouse for 15 performances from July 11-27.
Russell has already been auditioning talent for this upcoming show and has two final sessions on the schedule.
The first is Monday from 7:30-9:30 p.m. at Judy Russell’s Enchainement Dance
Centre (3540 Opie Crescent). The second is April 13 from 3:30-5:30 p.m. at the same location. No appointment is necessary, but each of these sessions is targeted at a different aspect of the show.
“The April 1st auditions are for those age 16 and over, April 13 is for children’s auditions six to 16 years of age,” said Russell. “Please be prepared to sing 16 bars of a song and dress comfortably for movement.”
For any questions you may have, email judyrussellpresents@gmail.com
Those who attend are asked to check in at the lobby and wait to be called.
100 Heroes launching in city
Citizen staff
A new way to give back to the community is in the process of being launched.
The 100 Heroes initiative is aimed at people who want to help but are limited in time or money, Colin Breadner said in a press release.
He’s looking for another 99 people to join him and pitch in $100 each, adding up to $10,000 and then find a charity to give the money to. On that matter, they will put a list of nominated Prince George charities into a hat and pull three of them out.
A small space will be rented out on a weeknight – Breadner will cover the cost – and each of the three charities will be invited to make a five-minute pitch.
The heroes vote anonymously for which one should receive the money and the charity that draws the most vote is handed the cheque.
“The great thing about 100 Heroes is no one individual has to come up with $10,000 or more,” Breadner said.
“We take small donations and turn them into a big impact. This amount of money could transform a charity’s entire year. “
The plan is to hold the event four times a year, “so before too long, this initiative will really make a difference.”
A video Introduction has been posted at youtu.be/vyLE9LnCJas and the first event is set for April 29, at Trench Brewing and Distilling, 399 2nd Ave, starting at 6:30 p.m. To join, go to 100heroespg.com/join/.
Shed fire damages mobile home
Citizen staff
A mobile home in the 8500 block of Peterson Road suffered minor damage, Prince George Fire Rescue said, when a fire erupted in a nearby shed on Tuesday evening.
A total of 15 firefighters from three hall responded to the call at 7 p.m. and arrived to fine the 10 foot-by-10-foot shed engulfed in flames. The fire was quickly extinguished and the home’s lone occupant wasn’t hurt. Damage is estimated at $10,000 and cause of the fire remains undetermined.
Senate committee to study extent of forced sterilization across Canada
Citizen news service
OTTAWA — The Senate’s human rights committee is launching a study about the coerced sterilization of Indigenous women. Senators on the committee say they want to hold meetings and hear from victims to ensure their experiences are shared “so that nobody else is forced into abandoning all hope of having a child.”
The study is intended to determine the scope of the problem and identify people who may have been affected.
The Senate’s time for a study is short with only a few months before Parliament’s work comes to a halt for the federal election. Still senators expect to be able to deliver a short report before the summer and make recommendations for further areas to investigate.
It is at least the third federal probe of
the problem, with a House of Commons committee also studying it, and the federal government working with the provinces and territories to discuss how women, particularly Indigenous women, are being pressured or forced into the surgery.
The Saskatoon Health Authority publicly apologized in 2017 after Indigenous women came forward to say they were coerced into tubal ligations. A proposed class-action lawsuit was subsequently filed against the province of Saskatchewan, the federal government, regional health authorities, and individual doctors.
Last fall, the firm leading the case said 100 women have come forward to report they have been forcibly sterilized, including about 40 after The Canadian Press published a story in November detailing a push from Ontario Sen. Yvonne Boyer to study the issue nationally.
afternoon at the park
Cottonwood Island park was a popular place for walking and bird watching on Wednesday afternoon.
Owner of truck in Broncos crash admits to safety offences
CALGARY — The owner of the transport truck involved in the deadly Humboldt Broncos bus crash has admitted he did not follow provincial and federal safety rules in the months leading up to the collision.
Sukhmander Singh of Adesh Deol Trucking was not in court Wednesday when his lawyer pleaded guilty on his behalf to five charges.
Singh, 37, was fined a total of $5,000.
The Calgary-based trucking company is no longer in business.
The convictions include failing to keep a daily drivers log, neglecting to ensure his drivers complied with safety regulations, and having more than one daily logbook.
Singh also pleaded guilty to not having or following a written safety program.
Court documents showed the offences occurred between Jan. 1 and March 31, 2018 – prior to the fatal crash on April 6.
“This should serve as a warning to other owners of truck companies,” said Judge Sean Dunnigan. “This is a serious business, and we see why with tragic results. I’m
satisfied that .. (this) meets the objectives of the sentencing particularly as a general deterrent.
“This is the end of a very, very sad tale.”
Sixteen people were killed and 13 were injured when the Broncos junior hockey team bus and a semi owned by Singh collided at an intersection in rural Saskatchewan.
Michelle Straschnitzki, whose son Ryan survived but is paralyzed, said the fine isn’t much of a disincentive.
“It’s good but not exactly a hard-stance deterrent,” she said. “However, the limitations to our legal system are what they are. Maybe the actual laws and lawmakers need to be revisited.”
Crown prosecutor Deanna Smyth told court that the fines are much lower than the maximum allowed, but noted Singh had no previous record and his offences weren’t criminal.
“I understand that there’s a lot of attention with this being related to the Humboldt crash accident. In fact, these charges are not actually related to that offence,” Smyth said.
Bill GRAVELAND Citizen news service
Deadly bear attack wasn’t
preventable, coroner rules
Citizen news service
WHITEHORSE — There was nothing a woman could have done to prevent a predatory attack by a starving grizzly bear that killed her and her 10-monthold daughter, the Yukon Coroner’s Service has concluded.
The service has released the results of its investigation into the deaths of 37-year-old Valerie Theoret and her baby Adele Roesholt outside their cabin near Einarson Lake on Nov. 26.
Theoret and her partner were experienced backcountry users who kept a clean camp and made sure there was nothing on the site to attract bears, said Yukon chief conservation officer Gordon Hitchcock.
“What makes this incident especially tragic is that the family took proper precautions to prevent something like this from happening,” he told a news conference Wednesday.
“To say the victims were at the wrong place at the wrong time sounds trite, but our investigation shows that more than anything else, this was an unfortunate tragedy and that little could have been done to prevent it.”
The investigation found Gjermund Roesholt – Theoret’s partner and the baby’s father – left the cabin that morning to check one of their traplines. On his way back in the afternoon, he noticed bear tracks starting about one kilometre away from the cabin.
However, the tracks veered away from his snowmobile trail and he returned to the cabin to find it empty. He started to run a trapline nearby and about 240 metres from the cabin he heard a growl before a grizzly came out of the bush and charged at him.
He fired four shots, killing the bear, before discovering the bodies of his partner and baby daughter, the coroner’s report says.
Roesholt covered the bodies and activated an emergency beacon. The RCMP and Conservation Officer Services arrived the next morning and began gathering evidence.
The evidence showed that the bear found the trapline near the cabin and hid behind the trees
before attacking Theoret and the baby, who was in a carrier on her mother’s back, Hitchcock said.
“The attack appeared sudden. All evidence suggests Valerie did not have time to react. This was clear evidence of predatory behaviour,” he said.
A predatory attack is when an animal preys upon another for food and approaches them silently, said Hitchcock. Bears do not normally seek humans as prey and these types of attacks are extremely rare, he said.
A necropsy showed the 18-year old male grizzly was too emaciated to hibernate and in pain because it had eaten a porcupine to avoid starving to death and the quills were penetrating its digestive tract.
Theoret was not armed and the couple had stopped wearing bear spray once the weather turned cold, but she wouldn’t have had time to react and use a weapon,
Hitchcock said.
“This was a tragic chance occurrence,” he said.
The attack happened in a remote area with dense wilderness and extensive bear habitat. The investigation did not examine the broader area to find any explanation for why the bear was in such a desperate state, Hitchcock added.
“This is a case of an individual bear’s health issues, not a population issue,” he said.
The conservation officer service has accepted all the coroner’s recommendations and it’s continuing to provide education about bear safety, including increasing awareness that bear encounters can happen all year round, Hitchcock said.
Generally, bears hibernate from November through spring, but there have been sightings in December and January in the past, he said.
Hitchcock said this is the first double fatal grizzly bear mauling in Yukon to his knowledge.
Fatal bear attacks are rare overall in the territory, with only three in more than 20 years – in 2014, 2006 and 1996, he added.
Chief coroner Heather Jones told the news conference that the family is suffering from “unimaginable grief.”
Former Taliban hostage says husband abused her
Jim BRONSKILL Citizen news service
OTTAWA — Caitlan Coleman, who was backpacking in Afghanistan with husband Joshua Boyle when the pair were seized by extremists in 2012, told a judge Wednesday her spouse regularly punished her with spankings for arguing with him or disobeying his wishes.
Coleman, 33, recounted in court how the two met online when she was 16 and began a complicated on-and-off relationship before marrying in 2011 in Costa Rica and travelling the following year to central Asia.
She said that in the early days of their rollercoaster courtship, her future spouse would often belittle and demean her. Over time, he became controlling, telling her how to behave and what to wear. Emotional and verbal abuse later became punches and slaps to the face, Coleman said.
In Ontario court, Boyle, 35, has pleaded not guilty to several offences against Coleman, including assault, sexual assault and unlawful confinement, that allegedly took place after the couple were freed by Pakistani forces and had returned to Canada in late 2017. Coleman testified via closedcircuit television from a separate room Wednesday to avoid being in the main courtroom with her estranged husband.
The Pennsylvania-raised Coleman said that early on in the relationship, Boyle insulted her, told her she wasn’t good enough and made her question her self-worth.
She said he became agitated
when she suggested in 2008 they go their separate ways, calling her repeatedly and even threatening to kill himself.
“I did still love him, so I felt very sad,” Coleman told the court.
In 2009, Boyle married Zaynab Khadr, sister of Toronto-born Omar Khadr, who spent years in a U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, after he was captured in Afghanistan.
Coleman resumed contact with Boyle and met the newlywed couple for lunch during a visit to Toronto that summer. While walking Coleman to her hotel, Boyle told her she was the love of his life and that they would be together, she testified.
Boyle moved to New Brunswick and Coleman joined him, though she was not keen on the move. She said Boyle shocked her by saying Khadr, to whom he was still married, would come live with them.
However, Boyle did divorce his wife and he and Coleman wed during a lengthy trip to Central America in July 2011. Boyle loathed North America and pressed Coleman to go to central Asia, she said. She learned she was pregnant in June 2012, and the couple headed to Asia soon after. After a few months, Boyle insisted they visit Afghanistan despite Coleman’s vehement objections. They were there just a week when they were captured by a Taliban-linked group.
Coleman gave birth to three children while in captivity. The couple were physically abused by their captors, Coleman told the court. But she said she also suffered violence at the hands of her husband, including spankings on her buttocks as often as three times a week, punches and slaps to the face, choking and biting.
Women still face earnings losses for having a family
One leisurely Sunday afternoon before I was married, a girlfriend of mine got the flu and vomited all over her bathroom floor, then left it there, too sick to clean it up.
Taking my cue to let her get some rest, I was about to leave when the thin line between hero and schmuck dangled in front of me like a strip of overused fly paper. I could slip quietly away from the cream corn pancake on her bathroom floor or I could be a good boyfriend and clean it up. It occurred to me that the low expectations placed on the young adult male in such matters might have been in my favour. I could have pretended not to notice the outed innards at all.
Moderately gallant – that’s what I was going for. I cleaned it up with one hand while mentally patting myself on the back with the other.
Certain they’d write songs about me, I went over to the couch to mention in passing to the sleeping beauty that I was good to have around in a pinch. But she had slipped in to a deep sleep and never even mentioned my princely act.
This same white-horse mentality danced just above my head during the nurturing of each of my seven offspring toward pottyhood. The average child uses around 7,000 diapers before finally taking over their own doo-doo duty at around 30 months. I’m fond of weird stats, and yes, I have done the math, and yes, I changed 10,000 of those nasty skunks. But this is nothing compared to my wife’s 40,000. So once again, no hero cookie for me.
If my dad had changed a tenth
of those diapers, he’d have been on the six o’clock news.
Although not once in 30 years of mothering has my wife complained about the opportunity cost of caring for our children, the following facts, borrowed from RBC Economics, offer details on the last half century as Canada strove to reduce the gender wage gap. Since 2011, women have earned about 14 per cent less than men, largely due to the time they sacrifice for their families. While baby boomers have been able to chip away at this gap later in their careers, and younger generations of women are entering the labour market at a wage more equal to men, the mommy gap is a thing.
Women tend to balance the demands of work and family to a greater degree than men, spending substantially more time doing unpaid work, especially childcare.
More than 33 per cent of women aged 25 to 34 have a child under the age of six. This period is a key career development phase, which exacerbates the gap.
According to the 2016 census, new moms aged 25 to 34 experience a reduction in earnings of about 48 per cent. Many women withdraw from the labour force on parental leave, but continue to experience an earnings penalty spanning the five years after the birth of a child.
New fathers tend to receive a pay increase during this same period (as noted above, this is a
rapid advancement period).
It’s possible that some employers are considering young dads and the lost wages of their wives, but this will need to be the subject of further study.
It also follows that single mothers bare a disproportionate burden, financially and in other ways. Women are also much more likely to work part-time in order to care for their children, especially when the children are very young.
A woman working part-time earns 74 cents for every dollar a full-time female worker earns. Additionally, working part-time may make it more difficult to be considered for promotion into higher-paying management roles, contributing further to the effect. Yet another impact on women is their caregiver status for aging parents, where they continue to shoulder a larger burden than their brothers and husbands.
Whether by design or circumstance, women may already be these data by delaying having children. Since the beginning of this century, the average age of women at first birth has increased 1.9 years.
While there are a number of theories to explain this, statistics suggest women are waiting until their career is more established before starting a family.
This is especially true as more women enter professional programs such as law, medicine or business. For example, 54 per cent of those who have been members of a law society for less than five years are now women. These fields often tend to expect long hours and aggressive pursuit of advancement, working against those women who want to start a family.
Delaying having children is also associated with smaller family sizes and less time away on parental leave. Declining fertility rates and smaller family sizes are a growing concern as our population ages. Policies that better address career and family challenges can benefit not only women’s wages but families, and society as a whole.
Mark Ryan is an investment advi-
Caitlan Coleman leaves court in Ottawa on Wednesday.
Tories seek investigation into leak of confidential info
Joan BRYDEN Citizen news service
OTTAWA — The Conservatives are asking for an investigation into leaks of confidential information about Jody Wilson-Raybould’s controversial choice for chief justice of the Supreme Court of Canada – and the former justice minister is echoing their call for an inquiry.
“This has to stop,” Wilson-Raybould said of the leaks in an emailed statement. “And given the seriousness of this matter, I feel that there should be consideration of having some sort of investigation as to the source of this information.”
Conservative justice critic Lisa Raitt sent a letter Wednesday to federal judicial affairs commissioner Marc Giroux asking that he investigate the matter. She argued that it appears “political actors” leaked information about an appointment to the country’s highest court.
If so, Raitt said, it would be “an egregious case of political interference... that severely injures the independence of the judiciary.” Giroux later responded that he does not have investigatory powers and cannot, therefore, accede to her request. Nevertheless, he took the opportunity to denounce the leaks as “wholly inappropriate.”
“I am deeply concerned and troubled about the release to the media of any confidential information, be it accurate or not, that pertains to judicial appointments to the Supreme Court of Canada, and to some of the finest jurists in our country,” he wrote. Raitt’s request for an investigation came two days after The Canadian Press and CTV reported that Wilson-Raybould and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau clashed over whom to appoint to the top court upon the retirement of Beverley McLachlin as chief justice in 2017.
Sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss details of the normally confidential process, said WilsonRaybould urged Trudeau to name Glenn Joyal, chief justice of Manitoba’s Court of Queen’s Bench, to fill both McLachlin’s spot on the bench as a justice from western Canada but also the chief justice role. They said Trudeau was disturbed to discover that Joyal took a restrictive view of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and had criticized the top court for liberally interpreting it to include “new rights” not explicitly mentioned in the charter. The court’s broad interpretation has led to things like legalization of same-sex marriage and the striking down of Canada’s abortion law and prohibition on medically assisted dying.
Trudeau ultimately appointed Alberta judge Sheilah Martin to fill the western slot on the Supreme Court and elevated sitting Justice Richard Wagner to the role of chief justice.
Wilson-Raybould said Monday there was “no conflict” with Trudeau on the matter but otherwise declined to comment, saying the selection process for Supreme Court justices is confidential and any disclosure
“could compromise the integrity of the appointments process and potentially sitting justices.”
However, on Wednesday, citing an anonymous source, the Globe and Mail reported that Wilson-Raybould recommended Joyal as part of a broader plan to appoint an Indigenous judge to the role of chief justice of Manitoba’s Court of Queen’s Bench – which would have been a first for a superior court in Canada. The newspaper also said WilsonRaybould believed Joyal held a more liberal view on the charter of rights than Wagner, although the report cited evidence to the contrary.
In her statement Wednesday, Wilson-Raybould said she’s not at liberty to comment on the veracity of reports based on “the leaking of highly confidential information” about the Supreme Court appointment process.
However, she added: “I do feel compelled to say that I have not – as some have suggested – been the source of any of these stories, nor have I ever authorized any person to speak on my behalf. I strongly condemn anyone who would speak about or provide information on such sensitive matters.”
The Prime Minister’s Office issued a similar disclaimer.
“We take the integrity of our institutions seriously. The PMO would never leak who would be considered for a judicial appointment,” Trudeau’s office said.
The Canadian Bar Association and the Manitoba Bar Association have also criticized the disclosure of information about the appointment process.
The leaks suggest Trudeau may have had reasons unrelated to the SNC-Lavalin affair to move Wilson-Raybould out of the prestigious justice portfolio, which he did in a cabinet shuffle in January. She was moved to Veterans Affairs but resigned from cabinet a month later amid allegations that she had been improperly pressured last fall by the Prime Minister’s Office to intervene to stop a criminal prosecution of the Montreal engineering giant.
Wilson-Raybould has since said she believes the move was punishment for her refusal to instruct the director of public prosecutions to negotiate a remediation agreement with SNC-Lavalin, which faces charges of bribery related to contracts in Libya. Such an agreement would have forced the company to pay stiff restitution but saved it from the risk of a criminal conviction, which could threaten the viability of the company.
Raitt said Wednesday that the initial leak about Wilson-Raybould’s choice for chief justice is more proof of Trudeau’s disrespect for the rule of law.
“The SNC-Lavalin affair has raised serious questions about the rule of law in Canada and the degree to which the Prime Minister’s Office has interfered in it,” she said.
“This most recent episode of potential political interference from the PMO only further damages our democratic institutions and values and requires immediate attention.”
Shrinking sea ice means less rain in North America
Bob
Research has uncovered powerful evidence linking shrinking sea ice in the Arctic to snow and rain in central North America.
A study published Wednesday in the journal Nature suggests that a long dry period about 8,000 years ago through the centre of the continent was influenced by disappearing sea ice - the same mechanism that many climatologists believe is behind today’s increasingly extreme weather.
“We have really strong evidence there is a connection,” said Cody Routson of Northern Arizona University. “Moving forward, this mechanism should be really important.”
Routson and his colleagues looked at a period between 2,000 and 10,000 years ago. Routson had long been interested in the fluctuations of local ancient climates and thought it was time to widen the scope.
“I had this sense that there were other factors that were bigger.” He decided to look at the temperature
difference between the Arctic and the equator. That gap powers the jet stream, a high-altitude river of air that strongly influences the air, temperature and moisture circulation around the world.
The team combined data from 219 sites around the world and used lake sediments and ice cores to develop large-scale temperature records going back millennia for the Arctic and mid-latitudes. They used materials such as fossilized tree pollen to do the same for precipitation. Researchers found the difference in temperature between the Arctic and the equator shrank sharply about 8,000 years ago, a change caused by the regular rotation of the Earth’s orientation to the sun.
The shrinkage corresponded to a significant drop in precipitation over an enormous section of the globe between 30 and 50 degrees latitude, which includes southern Canada. Rain and snowfall dropped between 11 and 29 per cent, the paper says. The only model that explained the mid-latitude drought was one that factored in the shrinking temperature difference between the Arctic and equator.
CP FILE PHOTO
Lisa Raitt, deputy leader and justice critic of the Conservative Party, talks to reporters during a break of the Conservative caucus on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Jan. 25. Raitt called on the federal judicial affairs commissioner to investigate the leak of confidential information.
WEBER Citizen news service
Sunny ways gone stale
Granted, the Business Council of B.C. crowd is not your basic cross-section of provincial society. Its expectations and evaluations of the federal government’s economic strategy are bound to be more testing and testy. With that lens upon him, though, it would have been difficult to miss the disconnection Tuesday in the hotel conference room as Finance Minister Bill Morneau talked through last week’s budget and the wider scenery of national and global business. Morneau is certainly a disciple, perhaps a high priest, of the Sunny Ways School of Thought. But at some point the inherent optimism gives offence. Yes, true, fair enough, we have low unemployment, but the great news ends there for many in the audience, even though it only begins there for the minister.
His remarks and his subsequent discus-
sion onstage revealed much about why the business community – and it’s a diverse one, so a difficult one to generalize – doesn’t much feel the love and doesn’t much sense the empathy.
Where other jurisdictions appear to be buying plywood and sandbags for the coming storm, Morneau placidly talks of unworrisome deficits and debt, perceived progress on crucial U.S.-China trade talks and U.S.-Canada tariff talks, and the nuisance of quarterly Canadian economic results that will spring back when the good weather shortly hits.
“We will turn to growth,” the minister pledges, placing the blame for any problem on international and not domestic factors.
He points to other countries – the United Kingdom “literally tearing itself apart” with Brexit, France and the yellow vest violence, America and “divisive politics” where it “is difficult to get things done” – and tries to convince the crowd that in that context we
are not at all bad off.
Heads do not nod.
These socio-economic conditions could be seen in 2015 as the Liberals campaigned, he said, thus providing a clue on his government’s obsession with broadening the middle class and transferring wealth.
As for getting things done in Canada, the problem for the minister was a roomful of people whose feel their initiatives and enterprises are stymied by regulatory burden, permitting delays, and excessive costs of doing business.
They do not see progress on the capital cost allowance issue as more than an asterisk on the scorecard. They see an astounding uncompetitiveness in the landscape and can correctly trade his assertion about low unemployment for their assertion about low supply of talent due to the unaffordability and inertia of Vancouver. They can pile on the larger questions internationally about Canada’s ability to get projects done, about
Gun violence inflicts more than bullet wounds
The news that two survivors of the school shooting in Parkland, Fl., have taken their own lives, one year after a normal day turned into a violent massacre, is staggering. So, too, is the news that Jeremy Richman, father of one of the first-graders killed in the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School, died by apparent suicide.
We will never know the extent to which the unimaginable trauma of the school shootings contributed to these suicides. But stories such as these remind us that trauma has far-reaching and devastating effects. It reminds us that the victims are not only the deceased but also the survivors. And not only the deceased and the survivors, but also each member of their families. And not only each member of their families, but also every person who loves each member of their families. And so on.
In children, the effects of trauma are magnified. As a pediatrician, I care for countless children who have come face-to-face with life-threatening violence. Many have witnessed domestic abuse. Many have witnessed shootings in their communities.
Many have lost loved ones. As I care for them, I bear witness to their penetrating wounds. I see the profound ways that trauma affects them over the course of their lives.
Groundbreaking neuro-biologic research over the past two decades has detailed the unique ways that trauma affects the developing child. Studies show that the “fight or flight” response, while protective in certain situations, can be toxic to children if intense or prolonged. It can lead to alterations in the immune and endocrine systems and in the architecture of the developing brain. These changes are strongly
DOROTHY R. NOVICK
associated with long-term psychological problems such as depression, anxiety and addiction. And with suicidal ideation. Not surprisingly, there is a dose-response curve: the more intense or prolonged the traumatic experience, the more significant the effects.
And to make matters worse, the stress response itself often becomes overactive, creating a self-perpetuating cycle.
This is how unadulterated fear and helplessness can permanently scar children. When one moment they are sitting in class, focusing on everyday questions such as homework and whether basketball practice will be cancelled, and the next moment they are witnessing bloody carnage and their best friends are being torn to shreds, they are forever changed.
According to an in-depth investigation by The Washington Post, more than 187,000 American children have been present at school during a shooting since 1999. This includes not only mass shootings but the far more common targeted, individual attacks. Some refer to children who have witnessed school shootings as the “silent victims.” Their pain can be intense and severe. For each child who takes his or her own life, countless others are suffering.
Therapies help enormously. Support from loved ones, grief counseling and teen support groups help enormously. But nothing can take away what has been seen, heard and lost.
Nothing can return a child’s mind, heart and body to their original states.
And this is why we must focus on prevention. Many have promoted arming teachers and other school personnel to protect students from mass shootings.
But teachers are not trained law-enforcement officers. And even if we did believe that armed teachers could interrupt mass shootings, would we believe that losing half as many classmates to a bloody massacre would have reduced anyone’s trauma at Parkland that day? Or would have saved Parkland parents from losing their babies last week?
We must focus on gun-violence prevention.
Laws that make schools “gunfree” zones have been shown to significantly reduce gun violence in schools.
Conversely, 90 per cent of highfatality gun massacres on college campuses have occurred where civilian guns were allowed or where there were armed personnel present.
The effects of trauma ripple out from each individual in everexpanding concentric circles - out across towns and cities and states and countries, and down through generations. New Zealand has banned military-style semiautomatic weapons to protect citizens from a permanent state of irreparable trauma.
The time has long passed for the United States to do the same.
We must protect our children not only from dying violent deaths but also from witnessing violent deaths.
We must save not just their generation and all those who love them but the next generation and the one after that.
We must prevent the next Columbine, the next Sandy Hook, the next Parkland.
We must have common sense gun control laws before the traumatic effects of gun violence on our children ripple any further.
the disastrous state of foreign investment, and the trade uncertainty with our two largest partners. It didn’t help anyone in the room that Morneau deflected to the point of dismissing questions about the need for tax cuts (“a continuing question”) or to reconsider the stress test to determine mortgage eligibility (“I can’t tell you that we have any plans.”) He is so polite in doing so, by the way, that it can outrage. To wit, his strongest statement on the economic record: “We think we’re broadly getting it right.” By the end of the luncheon, you could easily sense many left without feeling like the tide had turned and business was back in the front seat for the Liberal government as it seeks re-election. Which is probably the way the minister wants it, maybe even the way he feels he needs it. Little comfort for those in his audience, but they aren’t necessarily where the votes are. — Kirk LaPointe, Glacier Media
Vancouver Island’s island problem
Here’s why a bridge linking Vancouver Island to the mainland is a nonstarter:
• Why would we build a bridge? We just made our last payment on the moat.
• Moving to an island and complaining about the lack of a bridge is like moving next to a farm and moaning about the smell of manure.
• The engineers say it won’t work – not that we’ll believe them if we don’t want to, as is so often the case when it come to answers we don’t like. We prefer the truth as we would like it to be.
The bridge question is like measles, the Klan, ISIS or Boris Johnson. Just when you think it’s eradicated, back it comes.
That’s why the Transportation Ministry keeps dragging out a document explaining why the various options for spanning the strait wouldn’t work.
Why not a West Coast version of the Confederation Bridge?
Because where the P.E.I.-New Brunswick link is 13 kilometres long, ours would be up to twice that long. More importantly, the supports for their bridge rest on solid rock just 35 metres below the surface. Out here, the bottom is softer than Trump’s and is up to 365 metres deep.
A tunnel like the one between Britain and France?
No, the chunnel goes no deeper than 75 metres.
“A better example might be Japan’s Seikan Tunnel, which, at about 50 kilometres long and 240 metres deep, is the longest and deepest operational rail tunnel in the world,” the ministry says.
“There’s also the Eiksund Tunnel in Norway. At nearly 300 metres down, it’s the deepest undersea road tunnel in the world, but it’s not even eight kilometres long.
There really is no comparison out there for a tunnel on the scale that we’d have to build.”
A floating bridge? As of 2015, there were 11 floating highway bridges in the world but none longer than 2.3 km or in water deeper than 100 metres. Ours couldn’t be anchored safely.
The cost of a fixed link? Roughly $15 billion, too much for the province to take on alone – but bringing in the private sector would mean tolls, estimated several years ago at somewhere between $180 and $800 one way.
There’s also the question of where to locate a crossing. The most likely options would involve island-hopping to somewhere between Duncan and Nanaimo,
meaning a drive over the Malahat, which has its own issues – not that everyone likes the engineers’ answers there, either.
The Malahat faces three problems: safety, capacity (the highway’s ability to handle up to 30,000 vehicles a day) and reliability (the frequency with which crashes close the only artery connecting Greater Victoria to the rest of the Island).
All three problems have been studied to death by the Transportation Ministry, most comprehensively in the 2007 Malahat Corridor Study (you can Google it), which methodically dismantled all the proposed solutions (trains, ferries, bridges, widening or doubledecking the highway through Goldstream Park) and left the impression that the most realistic answer to the reliability question would involve a route (including one option along the E&N corridor) west of the existing highway – an idea that alarms those who fought so hard to protect the watershed for its ecological values.
With the ministry looking at the alternative-route question (and having begun yet another south Island transportation study) the CRD board went on record this month as opposing any public road through the watershed or the Sooke Hills parkland. Instead, water and parks board directors have suggested the ministry look at things like bus lanes, speed cameras, trains (again), ferries (again) and medians. Those might address the capacity and safety issues, but have nothing to do with figuring out where to divert traffic when the highway is severed. Trying to solve the reliability problem with bus lanes and trains would be like trying to cure appendicitis with a leg splint.
It’s fine for politicians to choose the environmental integrity of the watershed over the needs of travellers stranded when the Malahat is severed (which doesn’t happen as often as we think). It’s one of those value judgments politicians are elected to make. And hey, if they have a preferred idea, like a $1.2-billion bridge to North Saanich, push it. But don’t keep throwing the same questions back to the engineers in the hope they’ll give you an answer more palatable than the one they already gave you.
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GUEST COLUMN JACK KNOX
MONEY IN BRIEF
Currencies
These are indicative wholesale rates for foreign currency provided by the Bank of Canada on Wednesday. Quotations in Canadian funds.
The markets today
Canada’s main stock index fell again Wednesday as it continued to bob up and down on investor angst about the global economy and the outcome of Brexit.
The Toronto market bounced back Tuesday from two days of decreases sparked by fears that an inversion of the yield curve signalled a possible impending recession.
The S&P/TSX composite index closed down 22.63 points to 16,132.53 midweek as investor concerns we unabated, said Colin Cieszynski, chief market strategist at SIA Wealth Management.
“I think what we’re basically seeing today is people are kind of watching to see what happens with the broader economy globally,” he said.
The focus on Brexit accelerated as Prime Minister Theresa May vowed to move out of 10 Downing Street if her breakup plan is approved.
Investors initially considered Brexit a British risk, but they recently began to consider the impact on Germany and other European economies, he said.
The Toronto market sank to an intraday low of 16,079.07. It was dragged down by the health care sector that lost 2.64 per cent as shares of cannabis companies fell in the aftermath of an analyst downgrade of Cronos Group Inc.
The influential energy sector was down 1.7 per cent as oil prices retreated on a U.S. report that commercial crude inventories were higher than expected, increasing by 2.8 million barrels from the previous week’s large decrease.
The May crude contract was down 53 cents at US$59.41 per barrel and the May natural gas contract was down 3.2 cents at US$2.72 per mmBTU. Materials and financials were also down, with several banks decreasing led by Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce.
The April gold contract was down US$4.60 at US$1,310.40 an ounce and the May copper contract was up 0.9 of a cent at US$2.86 a pound.
The Canadian dollar traded at an average of 74.55 cents US compared with an average of 74.70 cents US on Tuesday.
In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average was down 32.14 points at 25,625.59. The S&P 500 index was down 13.09 points at 2,805.37, while the Nasdaq composite was down 48.15 points at 7,643.38. With a dearth of corporate earnings or economic news heading into the end of the first quarter, Cieszynski said investors are looking to economic reports next week including employment data for a market catalyst.
U.K. PM May offers her resignation if Parliament approves Brexit deal
Citizen news service
British Prime Minister Theresa May offered up her job in exchange for her Brexit deal Wednesday, telling colleagues she would quit within weeks if the agreement was passed and Britain left the European Union.
May’s dramatic concession that “there is a desire for a new approach – and new leadership” was a last-ditch effort to bring enough reluctant colleagues on board to push her twice-rejected EU divorce deal over the line.
It looked like it might not be enough, as a key Northern Ireland party said it would not be supporting the deal.
May’s announcement came as lawmakers held an inconclusive series of votes on alternatives to her unpopular deal.
It was the first step in an attempt by Parliament to break the Brexit deadlock and stop the country from tumbling out of the bloc within weeks with no exit plan in place. May has been under mounting pressure from pro-Brexit members of her Conservative Party to quit.
Many Brexiteers accuse her of negotiating a bad divorce deal that leaves Britain too closely tied to the bloc after it leaves.
Several have said they would support the withdrawal deal if another leader took charge of the next stage of negotiations, which will determine Britain’s future relations with the EU.
In a packed meeting of Conservative legislators described by participants as “sombre,” May finally conceded she would have to go, although she did not set a departure date.
“I am prepared to leave this job earlier than I intended in order to do what is right for our country and our party,” she said, according to a transcript released by her office.
Anti-EU lawmaker Jacob ReesMogg, who has clashed with May throughout the Brexit process, said she had been “very clear” that if Britain leaves the EU as foreseen on May 22, she will quit soon after.
He said the prime minister had
“Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising.”
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been “very dignified.”
“She put her case well, and reiterated that she had done her duty,” he said.
It was unclear whether May’s offer to resign would be enough to win backing for her deal, which was defeated by 230 votes in January and by 149 votes earlier this month.
High-profile Brexiteer Boris Johnson announced soon after May’s statement that he would support the agreement, which he has previously called a “humiliation.”
Johnson is a likely contender to replace May as prime minister.
But other hard-liners said they would continue to reject the deal, and Northern Ireland’s small but influential Democratic Unionist Party refused to budge in its opposition to the deal.
The DUP’s support was seen as key to persuading other Brexiteers to back the deal.
But the staunchly pro-British party fears a provision designed keep an open border between EU member Ireland and the U.K.’s Northern Ireland after Brexit
would weaken the bonds between Northern Ireland and the rest of the U.K.
“We cannot sign up to something that would damage the Union,” DUP leader Arlene Foster told Sky News.
Asked if the party might abstain instead, DUP lawmaker Nigel Dodds tweeted: “The DUP do not abstain on the Union.”
Two years ago, Britain triggered a countdown to departure from the EU that ended Friday, March 29, 2019. With that date approaching and no Brexit deal approved by Britain, the EU last week granted a delay. It said that if Parliament approves the proposed divorce deal this week, the U.K. will leave the EU on May 22. If not, the government has until April 12 to tell the 27 remaining EU countries what it plans to do: leave without a deal, cancel Brexit or propose a radically new path.
With May clinging to her Plan A – getting her deal approved – lawmakers this week seized control of the parliamentary timetable for debate and votes Wednesday on a range of Brexit alternatives.
The results underscored the divisions in Parliament, and the country, over Brexit. None of the eight plans received a majority of votes. The most popular were a proposal to remain in a customs union with the bloc, which was defeated 272-264, and a call to hold a public referendum on any divorce deal, which fell by 295 votes to 268. Both ideas got more support than the 242 votes secured by May’s deal earlier this month.
A call to leave the EU without a deal was supported by 160 lawmakers and opposed by 400.
The plan is for the most popular ideas to move to a second vote Monday to find an option that can command a majority. Parliament would then instruct the government to negotiate it with the EU. May has said she will consider the outcome of the votes, although she has refused to be bound by the result.
Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay urged lawmakers to back May’s deal, saying the ambiguous result “demonstrates that there are no easy options here.”
U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May departs number 10 Downing Street on her way to a weekly questions and answers session in Parliament in London on Wednesday.
CITIZEN NEWS SERVICE PHOTO
U.K. opposition Labour Party supporters hold placards showing their support for Brexit in London on Wednesday.
Don’t hate the snow too much
Despite the smattering of snow earlier this week, it appears winter is finally losing its grip on the north.
Snow is melting fast and as long as overnight temperatures stay above zero, it should be gone relatively quickly. But a rapid melt is not necessarily a good thing from an ecological perspective. Snow is a critical component in the hydrological cycle.
We all learned about the water cycle in school. We are taught ocean water evaporates into the air to form clouds, which move over land where they come down as rain, and the rainwater forms lakes and streams which feed rivers returning the water to the oceans.
The cycle is actually way more complex. For example, some of the rain falls directly back into the ocean. Water in the atmosphere can remain as humidity and not nucleate into clouds. Fog and mist can shift water into trees and forests without forming rain. Plants take up water and release it through their leaves returning some rainwater directly to the atmosphere. And so on.
Indeed, there are components to the cycle we are still trying to understand. For example, a recent article in Nature Geoscience presented research into the role of low-lying clouds and their cooling effect on coastal regions. The research examined the effects of carbon dioxide
concentration on the formation of these clouds and showed increasing concentrations would suppress cloud formation leading to elevated temperatures. This is another driver which hadn’t been taken into account previously, a feedback loop accelerating warming.
There are parts of the hydrological cycle for which we have a good understanding. Consider the simplistic notion of rain flowing back into the oceans. It will eventually. That is, if you were to follow a single molecule of water for the next 10,000 years, there is a high likelihood it would spend some time as part of one of the oceans.
But it could also be trapped in a glacier for an extended period of time. Indeed, 10,000 years in a glacier isn’t really a very long time. An international team of scientists is about to drill the deepest – and oldest – ice core yet from Antarctica. The core will extend 2.75 kilometres into the ice and it is estimated the bottom will be 1.5 million years old. Trapped inside every centimeter of the core will be a record of the Earth’s meteorological history – water from hundreds of thousands of years ago.
tion of isotopic analysis and direct gas sampling. Their work will extend our understanding of Earth’s climate. A more immediate concern is the delayed release of water vapour from snow. B.C. is home to an impressive amount of the world’s freshwater (approximately four per cent). A significant portion is tied up every year in the snowfall. The depth of the snowpack determines how much will end up flowing through the landscape and eventually through the streams and rivers. Despite the amount of snow still around town, the snowpack in the central interior is only at “normal levels” (somewhere between 90 and 110 per cent of yearly averages). Further north, in the Liard region, it is only at 76 per cent. In the Stikine and Skeena-Nass the snow loads are at 59 and 82 per cent, respectively. Similar low values are seen all along the coast and in the south Thompson and Kootenays. What this means is we are likely in for another hot, dry summer replete with forest fires.
Furthermore, the rate of the melt in some of the alpine regions has been more rapid than usual resulting in water coursing over the landscape and not replenishing the water table. This will exacerbate the dry conditions leading to a higher likelihood of fire.
The next hundred years will see a significant shift in the flow and abundance of water through the hydrological cycle in British Columbia.
The scientists will be able to decipher temperature and atmospheric conditions through a combina-
While we will likely maintain a large supply of freshwater, the landscape will dry out and forest fires will continue to be a summer event.
Sports
What’s new with the Cougars? Get the latest on trades, injuries, post-game analysis and more in The Citizen
Wrestlers honour Dyck with medal moment
Ted CLARKE Citizen staff tclarke@pgcitizen.ca
Dyck was disqualified from the tournament after he got injured and was initially left out of the medal ceremony but the other wrestlers in his 92 kg weight class determined he deserved the silver medal.
Ben Dyck made quick work of his first two opponents while winning his first two matches at the Canadian senior national wrestling championships Saturday in Saskatoon. Wrestling in the 92 kilogram weight class in his first bout it took Dyck less than a minute to pin Jackson Browning of London, Ont. His second match of the day against Liam Graham of Saskatoon didn’t last much longer than the first before he got the pin, but it was much more painful process for Dyck, a 28-year-old from Prince George, to finish it off.
While he grappled with Graham, Dyck felt something pop near his ribcage, but proceeded with the match, knowing he was close to a victory. A visit to the first aid station after he scored the pin confirmed Dyck had suffered torn rib cartilage, which left him unable to continue in the five-man tournament.
Dyck showed up for his match against Jeremy Poirier of Montreal, the eventual gold medalist, but due to his injury he told the referee he was unable to proceed before the match began.
Dyck’s last match of the day was against Harbans Gill of Burnaby Mountain Wrestling Club and Gill failed to appear so Dyck won in a walkover to finish the tournament with a 3-1 record, thinking he had accumulated 15 points (five for each of his pins and five for the walkover) which would have been enough for second place and a silver medal.
Unfortunately for Dyck, tournament officials saw it differently. They ruled that due to his injury he was ineligible for the rest of the tournament and he was left out of the medal ceremony.
“They said he was supposed to fill out a form to let them know he was injured but nowhere in the rule book does it say that you have to do that, it’s up to the first aid team to make that determination,” said Clayton Dyck, Ben’s father/coach and a national-level wrestling referee.
“The drawmaster said he (or his coach) had to bring that form. I talked to the head of Wrestling Canada, who was new to that position, and he did not know that rule at all.” What happened next after the medals were presented was the epitome of sportsmanship. Browning walked up to Dyck, took off his bronze medal and gave it to Dyck, saying, “You pinned me.”
Then Graham went over to Dyck, grabbed the silver medal he was wearing and hung it around Dyck’s neck, taking the bronze medal instead as he reminded Ben that he also had pinned him.
“The integrity of these young men, by recognizing that Ben actually beat them, showed incredible citizenship and honour,” said Clayton Dyck. “Their integrity outdid the unwritten rules.”
“This was all about integrity,” said Gary Godwin, who co-coaches with Clayton Dyck at the Gold Rush Wrestling Club in Prince
George. “The wrestlers all knew who won, so they stepped up to do something about it. They did the right thing.
“It was something to witness.”
Clayton Dyck has sent an email to Wrestling Canada to formally appeal the decision to disqualify his son in hopes that will legitimize his silver-medal finish. Ben Dyck is hoping to heal his injury in time for the next big meet, the Canada Cup event
Melinda Kobasiuk has shown a voracious appetite lately for going fast when the alpine ski racing clock starts ticking and she feasted on the slalom course at the Teck Under-16 provincial championships at Apex Mountain near Penticton.
The 15-year-old Prince George Ski Club veteran won the first day of slalom racing Saturday by 1.06 seconds and finished second overall in Sunday’s slalom event.
“The slalom was what I was really looking forward to because I’m not the best in GS –it felt really nice in (Saturday’s) slalom but it was really stressful,” said Kobasiuk.
“Going into the second run knowing I was in first, oh man that was a fun time. That was a surprise.”
Based on her results at Apex and at two other provincial-level competitions at Sun Peaks and in Kimberley, Kobasiuk has qualified for the Whistler Cup races, April 11-14. This will be the third year she will have competed in the international event.
Kobasiuk finished 53/100ths of a second behind Noa Rogers of Apex in Sunday’s slalom. Kobasiuk also raced the two giant slalom events that began the U-16 provincials and finished 14th on Thursday and 11th on Friday.
“She skied the way she has been all year, it’s not really a surprise,” said Prince George Ski Club coach Phil Soicher, who has coached Kobasiuk the past three seasons.
“She just performed when she had to. We tend to try to keep the focus away from results and keep the focus on skiing well.” Now in her seventh year with the Prince
George team, Kobasiuk said she feels stronger on her skis than ever and attributes that to her dryland training program at the Engage Sport North – Canadian Sport School. She attends morning classes at Duchess Park secondary school then goes to the sport school to train with other student athletes, and it’s making a difference.
“I’m feeling more confident with all the training I’m getting, I feel that does a lot.” she said.
Kobasiuk was named as an alternate as the fifth female member of the B.C. team for the Canada Winter Games last month in Red Deer but did not get to attend the event.
Erica McCallum of Prince George also raced at Apex. Her top finish was 37th out of 53 in Sunday’s slalom and she was 40th on Saturday. In the GS events she placed 47th and 48th.
“Every race is getting better for her, even though the results might not be showing it,” said Soicher. “The whole U-16 group has been working pretty hard the last couple years and it’s kind of nice to see everybody get results and things start to pay off.”
McCallum and Kobasiuk will compete at the Teck north zone finals at Smithers, April 5-7, with GS, dual slalom and ski cross events scheduled.
in Calgary on June 30. That is a qualifying event to help select the senior national team which will compete at the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo.
Dyck, a security supervisor at Treasure Cove Casino and part-time personal trainer, is returning to the wrestling scene after a lengthy hiatus from the sport. Saturday’s tournament was only his third in eight years.
In other local wrestling news, Haley Florell of Prince George competed up an age class and won the silver medal in the women’s 82 kg division at the junior national championships, also held in Saskatoon, two weekends ago. Florell, a Prince George secondary school student, is entered in the juvenile national championships in Fredericton, N.B., April 5-7.
Ted CLARKE Citizen staff
HANDOUT PHOTO
Ben Dyck of the Prince George Gold Rush Wrestling Club, left, poses with gold medalist Jeremy Poirier of Montreal, centre, and bronze medalist Liam Graham of Saskatoon at the Canadian senior national wrestling championships Saturday in Saskatoon.
Spruce Kings ready for Grizzlies
Ted CLARKE Citizen staff tclarke@pgcitizen.ca
Last year it took the Prince George Spruce Kings 14 playoff games to get to where they are now, about to host the first two games of the BCHL’s Coastal Conference championship.
This year the Spruce Kings took a much more direct route to the third round, needing just nine games to gain eight victories and eliminate their first two postseason opponents.
Now they await the arrival Friday of the Victoria Grizzlies, who just endured a tough seven-game series victory over the Powell River Kings the Grizzlies capped off Monday with a 6-1 win in Victoria.
Nobody in their right mind would have predicted the Spruce Kings would sweep the regular-season champion Chilliwack Chiefs in a four-game series but that’s exactly what they did, finishing off Chilliwack a week ago Tuesday to claim home ice advantage for the rest of the playoffs as the league’s highest remaining seed.
“It feels awesome, especially against Chilliwack, a team we lost the regularseason title to (by one point) and it was really good to sweep them,” said Spruce Kings captain Ben Poisson.
“We were fortunate enough to end the Coquitlam series in five so we had some rest there and (the Chiefs, in the first round) had Langley, which is a bigger more physical team. Going to seven, they were pretty worn down coming to us. We prepared well for them, had more time, and we executed our gameplan well.”
Did they ever. The Spruce Kings outscored the Chiefs 21-3 in the series and aside from brief stretches in the second and fourth games their leads were never threatened. They had three lines scoring, including Poisson, who has a teamleading eight goals and 13 points in nine games.
“Every single guy in there is making a contribution – all of our d-men are playing well, our forwards are scoring, so everything’s clicking for us,” said Poisson. “Obviously you don’t expect in the second round of playoffs against a Number 1 team to win 7-0 or 8-0 but with the group of guys in there and all the prep we do, we knew we were going to win that one. We’re confident after knocking off the Number 1 seed but we don’t want to get too high or too low, we just want to stay level and do the job.”
Home ice and having a few extra days off no doubt helped the Spruce Kings in Round 2 and they have that in their
favour hosting Victoria in the first two games of the next round at Rolling Mix Concrete Arena, where they’ve been tough to beat, winning 13 straight and 20 of their last 22.
Half the current Kings roster went 24 games deep into the playoffs last year all the way to the BCHL final and the Chiefs, one of the youngest teams in the league, could not contend with their depth and experience.
“Certainly the leadership group has a good understanding what it takes to win in the playoffs and that showed from our first game on the road (in Chilliwack), in a real hard rink to play in,” said Maglio. “We certainly took advantage of our experience through the playoffs last year.”
Poisson, who centres a line with his brother Nick and Chong Min Lee, has raised his game to a new level in the playoffs. The 19-year-old University of Maine recruit was limited to just two playoffs games last year when he suffered a ruptured spleen late in the season and he’s taken the Spruce Kings on his shoulders, setting the example by being hard on opponents with his checks when he doesn’t have the puck and when he does he doesn’t waste time unloading his big shot or feeding his teammates to create scoring chances.
“He wasn’t even traveling with us in the playoffs last year and he prepared for this, you could tell deep down he was waiting for the playoffs to start and his play has been unbelievable, he’s certain-
ly a big part of our success,” said Maglio.
That veteran leadership is also coming from the goal crease and the blueline. Goalie Logan Neaton and defenceman Max Coyle came to the BCHL this season from winning programs – Neaton with the Fairbanks Ice Dogs of the NAHL and Coyle from the junior B Listowel Cyclones – and they provide the backbone that has solidified the league’s best defensive team.
“Before they came to us they had team success and individual success and as first-year players in this league they don’t look like it and it comes down to character, they’re great character kids and they were both big parts of both series wins,” said Maglio.
The Grizzlies began the playoffs with a four-game sweep of the Alberni Valley Bulldogs. Victoria will host Game 3 and 4 on Monday and Tuesday, with the ‘if necessary’ games the following Thursday in Prince George, Saturday, April 6 in Victoria and Monday, April 8 in Prince George. That’s a lot of travel if it goes the distance.
The Spruce Kings-Grizzlies matchup is intriguing to say the least, pitting the league’s most productive offence (Victoria) against the stingiest defence (Prince George). The Grizzlies lead the playoffs with 50 goals in 11 games and have allowed 27 goals for a plus-23 goals differential, same as the Spruce Kings. Through nine games they’ve scored 36 times and have given up a league-low 13 goals.
Cougars will play in Dawson Creek
Ted CLARKE Citizen staff
The Prince George Cougars are going to D.C. – not Washington, Dawson Creek.
The Cougars will make the four-hour trek northeast to play preseason games Sept. 12th and 14th at the Encana Events Centre against the Edmonton Oil Kings.
“We love the opportunity to head to Dawson Creek and showcase the Prince George Cougars to a new crowd,” said Andy Beesley, the Cougars vice-president – business. “The Peace Region is
home to many incredible athletes and even our recent roster showcases that with both (winger) Connor Bowie and (defenceman) Austin Crossley from Fort St. John in our ranks.”
Proceeds from ticket sales will go to the Dawson Creek & District Hospital Foundation. One of the returning Oil Kings is defenceman Wyatt McLeod, 19, a native of Dawson Creek now in his third WHL season.
“When the City of Dawson Creek asked Spectra to shift some focus to Sports and Events Tourism last year, we began to work hard to support both the local level
sports and up to the provincial and national levels and we are excited with this announcement of the Western Hockey League exhibition series featuring the Oil Kings and Cougars,” said Spectra’s Ryan MacIvor, general manager of the Encana Events Centre and Tourism Dawson Creek, in a prepared release, “This is another example of us working with our partners and creating an event that is not seen in any other market. Moreover, this work is a continuation of the relationships that were fostered from hosting the World U17 Hockey Challenge in 2015 and 2017.”
Blue Jays prepared to be underestimated for upcoming season
Julian McKENZIE Citizen news service
MONTREAL — Randal Grichuk is OK with the experts and pundits who’ve counted out the Toronto Blue Jays this season.
“It’s one of those (teams) where people are underestimating the talent that we have and the way we can go out there and play,” said the Blue Jays outfielder.
Toronto has a tough road ahead of it this season in a division with the reigning World Series champion Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees also expected to return to the playoffs. The Tampa Bay Rays were also a 90-win team in 2018, leaving the Blue Jays and the Baltimore Orioles in the American League East’s basement.
“I think if you just look at some of the teams we are competing against, on paper, it seems like a longshot,” said Blue Jays centre-fielder Kevin Pillar. “But, our job as professionals is to go out there and play every single game. Sometimes when you take that underdog mentality, you’re really playing with nothing to lose.”
Toronto mustered just 73 wins last season and battled injuries to Josh Donaldson, Steve Pearce, Troy Tulowitzki and Devon Travis. Once their season was on the verge of being lost, they cut loose Donaldson, Pearce, and veteran pitcher J.A. Happ for rebuilding pieces. Catcher Russell Martin, regarded as a leader, is also gone from last year’s squad.
“There’s so many intangibles that Russ brought,” Pillar said. “(When) we were doing well, he just motivated us to keep going. When things slid, he would just sit in the front of the bus and just, very confidently, believe in this team. He made people believe we were playoff team before we even got there.”
This year, Toronto trot out a pitching rotation with Marcus Stroman and Aaron Sanchez returning as familiar faces. Newcomers Matt Shoemaker, Clayton Richard, and rookie Trent Thornton will round it out. Out in the field, veterans like Justin Smoak and Pillar will be counted on to pick up the slack.
However, most eyes will be on Vladimir Guerrero Jr., the leader of the Blue Jays impending youth movement. Rookie studs Bo Bichette and Cavan Biggio have also impressed during spring training, but the hype train is full steam ahead on Guerrero, the team’s No. 1 prospect.
Guerrero Jr. suffered an oblique strain during spring training, which saved the Blue Jays from having to decide if he would start with Toronto or triple-A Buffalo at the beginning of the season. But Montoyo says he is ahead of schedule on his return from injury.
Pillar sees that Guerrero Jr. has the potential to become a once-in-a-lifetime generational talent, but is also wary of the monstrous predictions set for him.
“You feel for the kid a little bit,” Pillar said. “You wish people would just allow him to go out and be a 20-year old kid and play, and not put those unfair expectations on him.”
The most ready of their young prospects at the moment is Danny Jansen, who is slotted in as the starting catcher for this season. Jansen was ranked as the team’s third-best prospect per MLB Pipeline in 2018.
“He had a great training camp,” Montoyo said. “He’s been throwing to the bases. His times to second bases are also very good. Offensively, swinging the bat good.”
Montoyo is also a rookie of sorts, making his debut as a MLB manager on Thursday when Toronto hosts the Detroit Tigers. Montoyo spent the last four seasons as a bench coach for the Tampa Bay Rays.
“We’re ready to compete every day,” he said.
CITIZEN FILE PHOTO
Prince George Spruce Kings forward Ben Poisson goes in on a breakaway against the Langley Rivermen in 2018 at Rolling Mix Concrete Arena. Poisson said the team is ready to take on the Victoria Grizzlies.
Tim Burton’s Dumbo deliciously dark
Citizen news service
Tim Burton’s remake of Dumbo – a live-action and CGI version of Disney’s 1941 classic about a flying baby elephant – is more an expansion of the original than simply a souped-up retread. For one thing, it’s nearly twice as long as the earlier, sweet-but-slight film, which was itself inspired by a mere handful of unpublished sketches made for a scrolling picture-book series called “roll-a-books.”
For another, the new story is decidedly, deliciously dark, veined with thin layers of Burton’s trademark macabre sensibility, which adds texture and tartness to the inherent charm of the story (at heart, one about the parentchild bond and the possibility of the impossible). Working from a new screenplay by Ehren Kruger, who wrote the first two American Ring films and other creepy tales, Burton has made a movie that does Disney proud, honoring the simple appeal of the source material while finding new emotional resonance in the narrative.
Dumbo doesn’t waste any time drawing our attention to the shadows, opening in 1919 in Sarasota, Fl., where the ragtag circus at the center of the film spends its winters. Holt Farrier (Colin Farrell) is a returning veteran who has not only just lost an arm (in the Great War) and his wife (to influenza), but his old job as well. No longer able to work as the circus’s trick Western rider, Holt is reassigned by the owner/ringmaster (Danny DeVito) to take care of the elephants, a demotion that involves shoveling, well, you know what. But soon, real trouble arrives: the female Indian elephant Jumbo, who has just given birth to a calf with comically oversize ears, accidentally kills – yes, kills – a sadistic animal trainer (Phil Zimmerman), and mom is sold off as a “mad” animal, leaving Dumbo, as her son has been nicknamed, disconsolate.
Kudos to the team of digital animators. Dumbo is as expressively adorable as any human actor in the film, which includes many nearly wordless turns by supporting characters as circus performers (especially Sharon Rooney as the maternal mermaid, Miss Atlantis, who covers the classic tune Baby Mine). The digital pachyderm is a fully formed character, even though, as in the original film,
CITIZEN NEWS SERVICE HANDOUT IMAGES
Above, a newborn elephant with giant ears discovers he can fly in Tim Burton’s liveaction and CGI remake of a 1941
care of the baby elephant.
he never speaks a single word of dialogue. None of the animals do, even the tiny, uniformed circus mouse who replaces the first film’s chatty sidekick Timothy Q. Mouse. Timothy’s duties as the title character’s mentor fall to Holt’s children (Nico Parker and Finley Hobbins), whose discovery that Dumbo can fly eventually lands him a role as the star attraction in a new, much larger circus called Dreamland. But Dreamland, true to Burton’s form, is run by a shady character (Michael Keaton), whose amusement-park-like complex includes a scary house-of-animal-horrors called, appropriately enough, Nightmare Island.
Parents, take heed: Dumbo is a beautiful movie, but it’s not for every youngster.
Tender hearts may flutter at some of the film’s scarier moments, which include the threat of flames and a sinister character who wears elephant-skin boots. The implications are morbid, espe-
Seth Rogen launches Canadian pot brand
Citizen news service
Pineapple Express star Seth Rogen and screenwriter Evan Goldberg have teamed up with Canopy Growth Corp. to launch a Toronto-based Canadian cannabis brand called Houseplant.
The Vancouver-born actor and the Canadian screenwriter with whom Rogen collaborated on the stoner film co-founded the Toronto-based company along with “other great friends and colleagues.”
“We have been working on this quietly for years and seeing everything come together is a dream come true,” Rogen said in an emailed statement.
“We could not be more passionate about this company and are dedicated to doing everything the right way. It is extremely important to us to treat cannabis with the reverence it deserves. What a time!”
Houseplant said Canopy acquired 25 per cent of the business, and invested working capital, but would not disclose any further financial information. Rogen and Goldberg are the business leads of the company, while Canopy in its role as venture partner is providing the facilities, expertise and infrastructure to grow cannabis.
“We have been getting to know the Houseplant team for quite a while now and continue to be impressed by their understanding of the cannabis consumer, attention to detail, and drive towards their vision,” Canopy president and co-chief executive Mark Zekulin said in a statement.
Rogen, who has also portrayed pothead characters in films such as Knocked Up and the 40-Year-Old-Virgin, is not the first celebrity associated with cannabis to dabble in the pot industry.
Tommy Chong, one half of the Cheech & Chong comedy duo, has a line of medicinal cannabis products called Chong’s Choice, available in certain states where legal. In late 2017, director and actor Kevin Smith and actor Jason Mewes – better known as their stoner movie characters Jay and Silent Bob – entered into a brand licensing agreement with Hamilton, Ont.-based cannabis company Beleave Inc. to develop strains. And in 2016, rapper Snoop Dogg struck a deal with Canopy to grant the licensed producer the exclusive right to use certain content and brands such as Leafs By Snoop.
However, since Canada legalized recreational cannabis last October, these companies are subject to strict rules governing promotion of the products. The Cannabis Act prohibits the promotion of cannabis, cannabis accessories or any service related to cannabis by means of a testimonial or endorsement or by means of the depiction of a person, character or animal, whether real or fictional.
It is also prohibited to present cannabis or any of its brand elements in a manner that “evokes a positive or negative emotion” about a “way of life such as one that includes glamour, recreation, excitement, vitality, risk or daring.”
Any promotion that could be seen as appealing to young people is also forbidden.
cially for a Disney film.
Because this is Disney, there are a few moments that strain to deliver a message of self-conscious positivity and possibility, no matter how anachronistic.
Holt’s daughter, for instance, is an aspiring scientist who earns eye-rolls from her father for her unladylike ambitions, which she articulates at the drop of a hat.
Nothing wrong with girl power, of course, but Dreamland also includes a “world of tomorrow” display that features – in 1919 – a working mother and a stay-athome dad.
It’s cute and, in context, meant to be funny. And it is. Dumbo”is by no means a downer.
As cartoonish as they are, the
film’s Burtonesque touches lend the magic and the fantasy of the story a quality of paradoxical verisimilitude.
You’ll need to believe that an elephant can fly. And for an hour or two, you will.
To paraphrase Keaton’s V.A. Vandevere, upon witnessing an elephant take flight, Dumbo will make you a child again.
Disney classic. Right, Colin Farrell, Nico Parker and Finley Hobbins star as a family who takes
Robin Gelsinger passed away March 25, after a brief battle with Pancreatic Cancer. Predeceased by both parents, Edwin & Helen Luce of Mafeking, MB. and eldest son Curt, she is survived by husband Larry, son Myron (Crystal) and two grandchildren Chelsa and Kevin, all of Prince George. Private family
Tominac Petar
March 10, 1940
Stajnica, Lika, Croatia
March 20, 2019 Calgary, Alberta
Peacefully with his family by his side, Petar
Vautour, Joseph Alyre “Al” - Age 79 of Tatamagouche, N.S. and formerly of Prince George and Quesnel, passed away March 22, 2019 at home. Born in Blacks Harbour, N.B., June 18, 1939, he was a son of the late William J. and Madeline M. (Robichaud) Vautour. Al led an adventurous life, starting when leaving home at age 13 to join a circus and eventually riding the trains west until he reached British Columbia. He worked mostly in construction and eventually spending more than 30 years with Hydro Mechanical Ltd. In Prince George until his retirement. He was a hardworking man who started his day at 5 a.m. and got home in the early evening, never refusing when called in after hours or working away from home. Al and Pearl moved to Nova Scotia shortly after retiring and liked going for long drives to find a new restaurant on Friday “date night”, take pictures or visit with family in Cape Breton. Al liked good food, especially Pea Soup and was a devoted Vancouver Canucks fan. Al is survived by his wife, Pearl (Matheson); son, Herb (Sianne) and their daughter, Alencia; daughters, Collette Vautour and her children, Jesse, Monica, Shannon and Catlin; Madeline Crane and her children, Haley and Sonia; Roxanne Baker, and her children; step-daughters, Paulette (Wade) Jackson and daughters, Kathleen and Alicia (Kirsten); Laura (Thane) Patriquin and children, Sarah, Thomas (Courtney) and Mark; 11 great grandchildren; sister, Gladys Sweet; nieces and nephews and many, many friends. Besides his parents, he was predeceased by son, Raymond; brothers, Wilfred, Raymond, Louis, Arthur and Eldric; sister, Eileen Bonnell. A time to celebrate Al’s life will be held from 3 to 6 p.m. on Saturday, March 30th in Coulter’s Funeral Home, 48 Riverside Drive, Tatamagouche. No funeral service to be held. Interment will be at a later date. Memorial donations to Lillian Fraser Memorial Hospital Foundation or a charity of one’s choice would be appreciated. Online condolences can be sent to the family by visiting the funeral home website at: www.mmcfunerals.com
NICK VITALIANO
November 22, 1955March 16, 2019
With heavy hearts, the family of Nick Vitaliano announce his passing on March 16, 2019 in Williams Lake. Nick is survived by his loving wife of 27 years, Tamara and his children Amber (Rory), Leah (Todd) and Tyler (Chris). Also left to mourn his passing are his favorite and only granddaughter Jenna, his sister Marie, and his brother Peter (Winnie). He is predeceased by his mother, Assunta, father Emilio and his sister Lena. Nick was the youngest of the family and was born in Prince George, where he lived until 1984 before moving to Williams Lake. Spending his career in the lumber industry with Tolko, he was passionate about his work and advocated for his colleagues. Until his decline in health, Nick was an avid fisherman who loved his many fishing trips with his friends and his children.
At heart, he was a family man. His wife, children and granddaughter were his highest priorities and he was incredibly proud of them all. He was loved by many in the community and will be sorely missed by those who knew and loved him. Nick was a strong and determined man which showed until his final days. His family would like to thank the many friends who came and visited with him before his passing. Nick’s family would also like to thank Doctor Werner Engelbrecht, the staff of the Deni House, and the paramedics of the BC Ambulance Service for their help in caring for him. We are forever grateful.
~You will always be in our hearts a loving husband, father, brother, uncle and grandfather~
Please join us on March 30th, 2019 from 1:00pm - 4:00pm, where a Celebration of Life will be held for Nick at the Elks Hall in Williams Lake. A graveside service in Prince George will also be announced at a later date. In lieu of flowers, the family asks that a donation be made to the Cariboo Foundation Hospital Trust in his name.
Tominac passed from this life at Foothills Medical Center on March 20, 2019 after a brief illness. Relatives and friends are invited to Prayers at McINNIS & HOLLOWAY Chapel, 2720 Centre St. North Calgary on Friday March 29, at 7pm Funeral Mass will be celebrated at Catholic Church Majka Bozja Bistricka 14675 Deer Ridge Dr. SE Calgary on Saturday March 30, at 11am
Graveside Service to follow at Queens Park
Mausoleum Reception to follow at Croatian Cultural Centre 3010, 12 St NE Calgary Condolences may be forwarded through www.mcinnisandholloway.com
BURECHAILO, Zenon (Zen), born March 29, 1935 in Wakaw SK, departed this life on December 20, 2018 at the age of 83. Survived by his loving wife Evelyn and children: Gudrun Pattison; Don (Debbie) Pattison; Elsie (Frank) Kendall, Gerald Pattison; Ken Pattison & Kristine Gronning, sister: Clara (Ken) Bachman, grandchildren: Vince, Tara, Dean, Jennifer, Clint, Ginger, Candice, Nicole, Damon, Dawson, Dana & Daphne.
Predeceased by parents Mary and William (Bill) Burechailo, brothers Ron and Dave, Burechailo, son Roy Pattison and niece Michelle. Memorial Service to be held on Saturday March 30th, 2:00pm at the Evangelical Free Church of Prince George (5th and Foothills) Pastor Dan Carlaw officiating. Refreshments after the service.
Richard Edward Steinke Nov 7, 1934 Jawor Poland, March 20, 2019 Prince George BC.
Predeceased by his wife Gertrude “Gertie” Mary Steinke, his son Richard Teofil Steinke. Survived by his son Robert Martin Steinke, daughter Lorna Lynn Steinke (Andy), stepson Bill McGillvary (Bernadette), step daughter Lorraine Auger (Joe), and many grandchildren. Richard came to Canada on Aug 8, 1957, from there he attended school for a year and learned English, being top of his class. He worked on farms, oil rigs, and many other jobs before starting at Rustad Bros in the 1970’s. He was head saw filer/millright for over 20 years, until he retired at the age of 62. Dad loved the Toronto Maple Leafs since the first hockey game he watched of them. He will be remembered as the most caring, generous man, his quick wit and sparkling eyes, sitting in his favorite lazy boy chair. I was truly blessed to have him as my father, and I will miss you terribly. You were truly one in a million. I feel better knowing you are back in Mom’s loving arms. No funeral by request. Cremation to take place on Friday at Fraserview Crematorium. Love you Dad from your “Princess Lorna”, and your family and friends
LEA,BrendaEleanora September15,1956-March26,2019 BrendawasbornSeptember15th,1956,andpassed awaypeacefullyinhersleeponMarch26,2019. BrendahadalongbattlewithAlzheimer’sthatshe foughtalongsideherbestfriend/husband,David (Dave),andwassobravelyfought. WithBrenda’sundyingfaithinGod,shehasgoneto meetourLordandSaviorinHeaven.Weknowshe wasgreetedatthegatebyallthosewhohavegone beforeher.Weweresoblessedtohaveherinour livesforthetimeshewashereonearth. Inherpassing,sheleavesbehindherhusband,David S.Lea;daughters,AmandaLeaandTriniaLea;and heronlyson,DavidS.T.Lea.Brendawas predeceasedbyherfather,AdolfWronski,andher adoringmother,NellieWronski,aswellasherloving parents-in-law,TedandMargaretLea. "I’llseeyouagain,thisisnotwhereitends.I’llcarry youwithme." ACelebrationofLifewillbeplannedatalaterdate. AnydonationsshouldbesenttotheSPCA,asBrenda lovedallanimals.
Robert (Bob) Sellwood passed away March 14th, 2019, at age 71. He is survived by his devoted partner Sue, son Nik (Krysta) and “favourite” grandson Evan. Bob loved a good discussion; on books read, movies seen, politics, gardening and, of course, woodworking. He loved to share his joy of woodcraft, especially with children. Bob lived his life to the fullest through simple pleasures; meals enjoyed with family and friends, helping others in need, listening to music and exploring and sharing new projects. He will be greatly missed by his family and friends.
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.
SALLY ADOLPH was reunited with her son Gordon Adolph Sr. on March 25th 2019 at the age of 73 years. Sally is survived by her daughter; Nicole (Gord) Jobson and son Gordon Adolph Jr. She will be remembered by her 13 grandchildren, 13 great grandchildren, 5 brothers and 3 sisters. Sally was predeceased by her parents Sam & Euphrasia George and 4 brothers. Funeral services will be held on Saturday March 30 2019 at 2:00pm at Assman’s Funeral Chapel with Eleanor Nooski officiating. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Family Resource Centre.
AMELIA PETERSON - passed away peacefully in her home on Monday March 25, 2019. Amelia was born and raised in Prince George the daughter of the late Louis and Teresina Zimmaro. She is predeceased by her parents, sister Mary and brother Jim. Amelia is survived by her loving husband Neil and several nieces and nephews. Prayers will be said on Thursday March 28th 2019 at 7:00pm at Assman’s Funeral Chapel. Funeral Mass will be held on Friday March 29th 2019 at 11:00am at St. Mary’s Catholic Church. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Rotary Hospice House.
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SARA SHAAK COMING HOME FOR FANCON
First, Hollywood came to Sara Shaak, then Sara Shaak went to Hollywood, and now Sara Shaak is coming back to explain how it works.
The latest announcement from Northern FanCon is an all local one. One of the special guests anchoring the Creative Corner aspect of the convention was born and raised in Prince George and some say it was Shaak who pushed over the first dominoes that got a film industry underway in this region. Shaak was the city’s inaugural film commissioner and scored the three largest film projects that to this day have ever come to the city to film: Reindeer Games, Dreamcatcher and Double Jeopardy.
Following Prince George, she took on the role of film commissioner in the Okanagan, with more success attracting the outside screen arts industry into that part of the B.C. interior.
Shaak used that experience to launch a career in film production. She has been involved with a number of companies - Trilight Entertainment, Arrowleaf Entertainment Properties, Anamorphic Media Inc. – that specialize in the business side of the screen arts industry.
Her recent credits are numerous and high profile, like the robotic dog comedy ARCHIE and its sequel starring Michael J. Fox voicing the title dog character, Robin Dunne, Farrah Aviva, and more; Welcome To Nowhere with talent like Sara Canning and Chantal Kreviazuk; Cold Brook with its critically acclaimed cast of William Fichtner, Kim Coates, Harold Perrineau and Robin Weigert; the innovative satire series Gamer’s Paradise; the highly anticipated action movie Doorman starring Ruby Rose (Katie Holmes was attached to the project but had to withdraw) and Jean Reno, directed by Ryuhei Kitamura; and the MMA-themed fight flick Cagefighter starring Gina Gershon, Michael Jai White, Michelle Ryan and others.
“The focus of what I’ll bring to FanCon will be on the business side of the film industry,” she said. “The creative elements are covered by a lot of other people, but no project gets to go ahead without financing, and you won’t get a second shot at financing unless your project has a viable business plan and that plan is executed. Business fundamentals in the film and television industry is really what I’ll be there to talk about.”
She could be an aspiring filmmaker’s cold reality check or explosion of inspiration, depending on how practically prepared they are with their hopes and dreams. It is fine to fantasize about being a star, she said, but actually achieving it requires plans and more plans written down and costed out.
solid business model,” she said. “It’s very much a relationship-driven business but you have to be legit, you have to be resilient, and you have to have the plans in place that make sense to investors. Have a very realistic idea of what a budget is going to be. If you don’t have the rich uncle or a golden credit card, can you secure in-kind or cash-equivalent contributions to your project? Can you talk to actors and tradespeople you know about taking part at lower rates for your independent project? And most importantly of all, what’s your plan for distribution? You have to find a mentor to help you cross that gap. And you have to open those conversations with more than just ‘I have a good story’ or ‘I have a good idea for a project.’ It’s a hard road, but like any industry, if you want to get past a certain point you have to think with innovation, you have to work at standing out, and you have to do a lot of homework before you go asking for
“A lot of people have good intentions but don’t have the
The projects to which she is associated have reached across the globe in the “making of” process. Cold Brook did a lot of its filming in Buffalo with some work in Los Angeles.
Doorman is filming in Romania. Cagefighter is shooting in England. Her office is in Calgary, but her projects could have pins anywhere in the global map.
She even attempted to use Prince George with a recent project. She made a pitch to city hall for some support to have a TV series come here for some filming in 2015 but the officials turned her down.
She was not at liberty then to disclose what the project was but now she can say that it was Between, the teen sci-fi drama starring iCarly celebrity Jennette McCurdy and Jesse Carere from the teen dramas Skins and Finding Carter. A town in Ontario agreed to the request and the two miniseasons of Between were filmed there instead.
Prince George has another element beginning to boil within its arts community, Shaak said, and that is why she is all too happy to come back to her beloved home town for Northern FanCon. The success of The Doctor’s Case feature film and Geoff & The Ninja television series are the first
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KAMERLINGH STILL
BLAZING HIS OWN TRAIL
KATHY NADALIN
French Canadian Walter Kamerlingh was born in 1929, in Sainte-Justine, Que., an area about 100 km south east of Quebec City. One of nine children, he was born and raised on a dairy farm.
Walter said, “I was born the same year that the stock market crashed. I always say that it happened that way so that I could show how much trouble I created. All my life, I was determined to change the way of the world. I feel that I did just that in my own way and I am still doing it. All of that is complicated and I could write a book about my life – but I won’t.
“My father battled cancer for three years and during that time my mother took over as the head of the family. She was a strong woman and supported the family through all of this. She was the first one up in the morning tending to all the chores and household duties and she was the last one to go to bed at night. Most times she was still up at midnight. I believed that she was a happy woman because she was singing all the time. I respected her 100 per cent.
“I left home at the age of 15 to work in a very remote – and I mean a remote – logging camp. I was at the camp for six months and we had nothing when it came to conveniences. I returned to the farm and one year later I tried another logging camp in Ontario. I returned to the farm again and later left for Montreal in search of something I could not identify. This is hard to explain – I don’t really know what I was searching for but I spent a good amount of time reading various Bibles, the Koran and the Talmud – the primary source of Jewish religious law which serves as the guide for the daily life of the Jewish people.
“I did not like Montreal so a couple of buddies and I went as far west as Alberta. We found work with a thrashing crew. That was going okay until the end of September when we got 18 inches of snow and that ended the threshing season so we moved on and went to Vancouver.
“I arrived in Vancouver in 1950 at the age of 20. I liked the beauty of downtown Vancouver and especially Stanley Park and the ocean. I spent many hours in the Granville and Robson Street area and I could not believe that there was no one open for business on a Sunday. To me that was strange because in Montreal businesses were open and busy every day of the week.
“I worked five days a week in a lumber yard piling everything as needed. At the time they were sawing trees from Brazil. The wood was heavy and so hard that it took all day to saw it up so that they could sell it by the pound. The main market for this kind of wood was the shipbuilders; they used it as bearings on the propeller shaft. It was said that this
particular ship bearing cut down on the noise and that it was self-lubricating.
“I worked in the lumber yard for nearly two years and I started wandering. I quit the job and I took dance lessons from the Arthur Murray Dance Studio.
“I applied for a job at the Canadian Pacific Railway in the telegraph department. I took the Morse Code training course and passed with 50 words per minute on the key and 100 words per minute on the bug key which is a semiautomatic mechanical keyer; all of this is now obsolete.
“They hired me and sent me to Trail and later sent me to Spences Bridge as the assistant agent. My job was to make up trains from the cars that arrived from Kamloops. Once I made up the trains the steam engine would arrive and pick up the train.
“I missed Vancouver so I quit the job and started wandering again. I joined a gym and spent one day after the other in the gym. I took boxing training on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, basketball on Tuesday, lessons on how to shot a revolver on the gun range on Thursday and fencing on Saturday.
“I skied Grouse Mountain all day long (I only stopped long enough to eat lunch) and went dancing all night and all the while I was popular with the girls.”
Walter worked as a landscaper in Vancouver and then moved to Prince George in 1967. He worked for the Common Wealth mobile home company as a service man and made $150 a month. He said he had to work long days so he quit the job and went to the Okanagan to pick apples.
He moved back to Prince George and started Eagle Mobile Home Service and specialized in heating and air conditioning. His was the only company in Prince George that carried the parts that were needed for the work he did on mobile homes and motorhomes. After five years, he sold the company because of all the pressure involved with the business. He was self-employed and worked on the air conditioning system for Ron Newsom in his building on the corner of Second and Victoria. He also worked for the Novak Brothers as needed.
Walter said, “For the next two years I just lived off the money from the sale of the business. I spent most of my time in the gym at the Inn of the North. Now I just go dancing as much as possible.”
97/16 submitted photo Walter Kamerlingh and a four-legged friend spend time together at his Prince George home.
THE PERILS OF SPRING DRIVING
HOME AGAIN
MEGAN KUKLIS
The snow on my driveway has nearly melted and, as is traditional, I have backed into the snowbank and gotten stuck more than once.
I manage to avoid getting stuck in the snow for the entire winter but once spring hits, I stop paying attention and things happen. At least one side of my van is clean(er) than the other because of various close encounters with the snowbank beside my driveway. This was particularly evident on our trip to Vancouver.
In a city that does not have much of a snowfall, melting slushy dirty snow is not much of a problem. They get a lot of rain and all of the cars look shiny and new. They are all clean. Like, really clean. Some might say, abnormally clean. Our van was/is not clean. We washed the van, as do most people, at the beginning of a trip. By the time we hit the old Art Knapps outside of town, it was already filthy and it stayed that way for our Lower Mainland vacation. The untidy state could have been em-
barrassing if not for a few facts:
1. We could always find the van in a parking lot because we would be the only grime-covered, silver Caravan rather than the other thousand, clean silver Caravans.
2. We are saving water by not washing the van which is environmentally friendly.
3. The dirt hides the dent that appeared when I opened the passenger door into a rather large rock.
Other than the dent, we escaped our vacation relatively cleanly and had fun playing in the sand and admiring the spring crocuses and hyacinths. Because we drive around so much when we are down there, we were in a hurry to get home and out of the filthy van which may explain the speeding ticket that we received just outside of McLeese Lake (my husband was driving).
At the time of the ticket, my husband actually was not speeding. He had been speeding earlier in the day so it not worth driving to Williams Lake to contest the ticket and we will call it karma. I respect and value our police officers, yet it is hard to take a 20-year old swaggering, puffed-up young man, drunk on power, seriously.
I may have just kept knitting and not shown the appropriate amount of deference as he was peacocking around letting us know that he can give us a ticket based on what he assumed has happened (i.e. we caught up to the car behind him therefore we were speeding). Obviously it is important to not speed, however I have yet to meet one person who does not, on occasion, zip around on the highway when the roads are dry, the sun is shining and no one is around.
For the rest of the drive home, I may have ranted about the injustice of it all and how Highway 97 was turning into a police state.
I wish everyone a safe spring break and remember to slow down – there is a section of highway around McLeese Lake that has turned into the Minority Report and the Thought Police are patrolling.
Officer Swaggerpants is on the case.
If you are even thinking about speeding, don’t.
NOW WE’RE PAYING FOR THAT VANILLA CIVIC ELECTION
THINKING ALOUD
TRUDY KLASSEN
A mere five months after our civic election and already residents are up in arms about an issue that didn’t even come up during the campaign or even during the recent budget approval process. City hall has made the decision to borrow an additional $32 million for repairs, which comes with a very possible 10 per cent tax increase.
Why do the good citizens of Prince George, so quickly after an election, have to pursue options to bring accountability to the management of the city? Can’t the citizenry expect that the budget process will actually include known expenses like repairs to various buildings and roads?
Just who is guarding the interests of the residents already being taxed at rates among the highest in similar jurisdictions? Isn’t that what our elected officials are elected to do? When they don’t do this, shouldn’t they be held accountable?
So why wasn’t borrowing $32 million for repairs an election issue?
To the casual observer, there were no real issues facing the city. Everything seemed roses. The only interesting thing that came up was a last-minute candidate for mayor. Other than that, the whole thing was pretty vanilla.
I think the voter was cheated.
Cheated, in part, because too many candidates endorsed each other. We lost the essential purpose of a campaign, which is the discussion and actual debate of issues of concern. Instead the campaign was too frequently a rather boring display of “vote for me because I Love PG the most-est… but so does incumbent councillor… so vote for both of us” and “I am endorsed by Councillor Fred… and you like Fred so we will all sing kumbaya together!”
We were cheated because when candidates endorse each other nobody pursues issues that may expose flaws.
“If I say something that might make Fred look bad, his people may not vote for me” or “Sophia will be embarrassed if I mention what the city has been doing wrong over the last four years, so I won’t address it.”
The most common concern I heard during the campaign was voters knew very little about the candidates. They didn’t know what one candidate would do differently from another. They felt the election was pretty much a popularity contest, sort of like electing a high school student president.
I realize we have to work and live together, and respectful dialogue is right, but this lack of real accountability and introspection is embarrassing.
Voter apathy comes not just from lazy voters. It also comes from lazy candidates who endorse each other thereby avoiding the nasty issue of accountability for the past or future. And that is not the fault of the voter.
SARA SHAAK AT FANCON
Continued from page 1
examples of national and even international eyes tuning in to watch entertainment projects made by P.G. people in their home region using local resources.
When Hollywood projects first came to Canada in significant numbers, it was just to use this country’s favourable tax structures and lower currency rate to make their shows more cheaply. Over time, the investments of money, studio facilities, and human resources grew to the point there was allCanadian capacity to make all-Canadian films like never before (Canada has always had a domestic film and television industry, but it was very do-it-yourself and had many practical limitations).
Prince George is now developing an inhouse screen arts industry in much the same manner.
“I know the guys behind those projects, and they are champions. That’s how the industry gets started, and those initiatives are trailblazers,” she said. “I have a huge soft spot for Prince George, I have a lot of reasons for helping promote the industry there, and I am seeing people expanding to that next level building from within and that is exciting, and it has to have that grassroots effort coming from within the community.”
She noted that in her junior high school, Lakewood (now Ecole Lac Des Bois), she went to class with well known actor Demitri
Goritsas and producer Nolan Pielak of Electric Entertainment, all three of them still in touch today because of their involvement in the international film industry. If one neighbourhood school in Prince George in the pre-2000s could stimulate that much screen arts involvement, she said, imagine what could happen when an event like Northern FanCon does its part to deliberately initiate hands-on knowledge about how movies and TV gets made.
Her main message of advice for aspiring filmmakers, and she will go into it in much more detail at the event May 3-5 at CN Centre, is know where its going before you attempt to go there.
“Your project is not complete unless someone wants to buy it, so who is that going to be? People think too much about the ‘getting it made’ part and don’t complete the thought about ‘who’s going to watch it?’,” she said. “Canada is producing great material. The infrastructure in Canada on the public sector financing side is favourable to made-in-Canada material, and there are a lot of grants available out there, but don’t fall into the Catch-22 trap of aiming your project’s content at satisfying the grants’ criteria if it compromises the project’s ability to actually make money out in the world of the audiences. You have to really think through the business elements, including the distribution plan.”
EVALUATION CAN HELP SENIORS WITH CANCER
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Before she could start breast cancer treatment, Nancy Simpson had to walk in a straight line, count backward from 20 and repeat a silly phrase.
It was all part of a special kind of medical fitness test for older patients that’s starting to catch on among cancer doctors. Instead of assuming that elderly patients are too frail for treatment or recommending harsh drugs tested only in younger patients, they are taking a broader look.
Specialists call these tests geriatric assessments, and they require doctors to take the time to evaluate physical and mental fitness, along with emotional and social well-being. They also take into account the patient’s desires for lifeprolonging treatment regardless of how much time might be left.
An avid walker with a strong network of nearby family and friends, Simpson, now 80, says she “wanted to do the maximum I could handle” to fight her disease. She scored high enough in her 2017 evaluation to proceed with recommended surgery and chemotherapy.
“It gave me encouragement. Then I felt like I am OK and I can get through this and will get through this,” said Simpson, who lives in Fairport, New York, near Rochester.
These tests are sometimes done with other illnesses but only recently have been recommended for cancer. In new guidelines , the American Society of Clinical Oncology recommends the evaluations for patients aged 65 and up, particularly before making decisions about chemotherapy. The idea is to find ways to help patients tolerate treatment, not rule it out.
For example, if walking tests show balance problems that chemotherapy might worsen, patients might be offered physical therapy first. Relatives or friends might be called on to help cook for seniors who live alone and would become too weak to prepare meals during chemo. And for those who want to avoid the hospital no matter what, treatment that could put them there would be avoided.
Almost one million U.S. adults aged 65 and older will be diagnosed with cancer this year, the American Cancer Society estimates. Nearly two-thirds of all cancer patients are in that age group. And yet, most cancer treatments stem from studies on younger, often healthier patients. That leaves doctors with limited information on how treatments will affect elderly patients. Geriatric assessments can help bridge that gap, said Dr. Supriya Mohile,
a specialist in geriatric cancer at the University of Rochester Medical Center.
These tests may require 15 to 30 minutes or more and recent research has shown they can accurately predict how patients will fare during and after cancer treatment, Mohile said. Older patients who get chemo and have other health problems are more vulnerable to falls and delirium and at risk for losing independence.
“We hear all the time about ‘decision regret,”’ she said, meaning patients who got harsh treatment but weren’t unaware of risks and other options and who say, “I wish someone had told me this could happen.”
Mohile co-authored a recent study that found just one in four U.S. cancer specialists did the assessments. She said doctors say it takes too long and that patients don’t want it. But she hears from patients and caregivers: “I’m so happy you’re asking me about these things. Nobody ever asked me.”’
One of Mohile’s colleagues did Simpson’s evaluation, which showed she was strong enough to endure a standard, aggressive three-drug chemotherapy combo for breast cancer. She chose a variation that was gentler but extended
the treatment by several weeks.
The evaluation showed “I wasn’t in as that bad of shape as my age would indicate,” Simpson said.
Her walking buddy and four attentive children gave her strong social support, and she lived independently, doing her own cooking and cleaning.
Treatment left Simpson with hair loss, fatigue and excruciating mouth sores. She knew about the risks but has no regrets.
Cancer “gave me a different perspective on what is important in life and what isn’t and I’m still adjusting to that,” Simpson said.
Dr. Hyman Muss, a geriatrics specialist at the University of North Carolina’s Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center says there’s no question the evaluations are important but insurance coverage is sometimes a problem. Medicare will pay for yearly physical exams but not geriatric assessments, he said. Doctors can sometimes squeeze the tests into other office visits, but there is no billing code for the exams, he said.
Advocates note that the evaluations can include questionnaires that patients can fill out at home to shorten time in the doctor’s office.
Beverly Canin, 84, of Rhinebeck, New York, became an advocate after declining chemotherapy following surgery for early breast cancer 20 years ago. She didn’t have an assessment, and says her doctor dismissed her concerns about harsh side effects and refused to consider other options.
A 2015 medical report Canin coauthored told of a patient who had the opposite experience. The 92-year-old man with rectal cancer entered hospice care after he declined surgery, the only treatment his primary care doctor recommended. The doctor determined the man would not tolerate rigorous chemotherapy and radiation because of his advanced age. A specialist approved the treatments after the man had a geriatric evaluation and declared he wanted care that would control his symptoms and prolong his life.
The patient managed well and was cancer-free two years later. Canin said his stress and treatment delay could have been avoided if a geriatric evaluation had been done first.
“The risks with older adults traditionally are overtreatment and undertreatment. What we need is more precision treatment,” she said.
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Dr. Allison Magnuson speaks with patient Nancy Simpson at the Pluta Cancer Center in Rochester, N.Y.
I have to admit I am only beginning to understand the concept of forgiveness. It is noticeable, however, that it is a common thread in the lives of the people whom I most deeply admire.
I can imagine Nelson Mandela sitting in his tiny prison cell fighting an internal battle to keep from losing hope. Somehow, he came to the realization that hate was futile, that he had to see supporters of apartheid as struggling human beings. He came to the realization that he could understand them and love them if he chose to do so, and he was thus able to forgive them. After these ideas permeated his spirit, prison walls were no longer able to hold him. Mohandas Gandhi also understood that forgiveness is not a sign of weakness, of compromising or being conquered by another. Forgiveness actually releases us from the bondage of cruelty imposed upon us. Forgiveness allowed the people of India to say to their British colonizers, “we are not like you, we refuse to embrace hatred and anger, we choose to forgive, and thus we are free of your control.”
Of course, Mandela and Gandhi had their faults, as did their followers. Perfect humans do not exist, but great humans model ideals which are within the reach of all of us.
After losing most of her family in the Rwandan Genocide, Immaculee Ilibagiza met the man who had killed her mother and brother. When this disheveled man was dragged out of his prison cell and brought before her all that she could say was “I forgive you.” What purpose would hatred and vengeance serve her? They would not bring back her family, they would only prevent her from fully living her own life.
Filmmaker Tyler Perry stated in an interview how difficult it was for him to forgive his abusive father. When he did so, however, his struggling career as an actor and playwright turned a page. It was as if a cloud lifted and he was finally able to live the life he dreamed of and reach millions of people with his art.
Forgiveness, however, is very countercultural. We have a justice system designed to extract an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. This is not to say that a government is not obliged to protect its citizens from unscrupulous corporations and individuals. Laws are necessary and some people are dangerous and need to be kept away from the rest of society, at least for a time. This does not mean they cannot be forgiven, however.
What Mandela, Gandhi, Ilibagiza and Perry realized is that those who hurt others live in their own bondage of fear and guilt. Supporters of apartheid in South Africa, for example, lived behind fences; they literally created their own prisons in their efforts to oppress the rest of the population.
We have all been hurt. We often carry resentments and even hatred for others.
Ultimately, however, we need to ask ourselves if this attitude is serving us. What would our homes be like if we could look upon our family members as the frail human beings they are? What would our workplaces be like if we could see our bosses and coworkers as people with worries and fears? What would our societies be like if we saw corporatists as individuals living in terror of losing their material wealth? What would our governments be like if we saw those with different political views as people who may actually have some
good ideas? What if we could even look upon ourselves with the same compassion?
Forgiveness is not easy, but it does set us free and allow us to live to our true potential. Great people are great because they model what we can all achieve and forgiveness is a common denominator among them.
Gerry Chidiac is a champion for social enlightenment, inspiring others to find their greatness in making the world a better place. For more of his writings, go to www.gerrychidiac.com
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Tyler Perry arrives at the 2019 Oscars at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. Perry says being able to forgive his abusive father helped him succeed in his career.
POLE-VAULTING SENIOR SMASHING RECORDS
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An 84-year-old pole vaulter isn’t putting her pole down anytime soon.
Flo Filion Meiler is in Poland for the World Masters Athletics Championship Indoor, where she’ll compete in events including the long jump, 60-meter hurdles, 800-metre run, pentathlon and pole vault, for which she’s the shoo-in.
The petite, energetic woman from Shelburne, Vermont, said she feels more like 70 than nearly 85.
“But you know, I do train five days a week. And when I found out I was going to compete at the worlds, I’ve been training six days a week because I knew I would really get my body in shape,” she said last week, after track and field training at the University of Vermont.
But she literally won’t have any competition in the pole vault in the championships, which runs through Sunday in Torun, Poland. She is the only one registered in her age group, 80-84, for the sport, for which she set a world record at age 80. In the men’s pole vault, nine men are listed as competing in that age group.
Meiler said she the events she likes the best are the hurdles and the pole vault — one of the more daring track and field events, in which competitors run while carrying a fiberglass or composite pole, brace it against the ground to launch themselves over a high bar, and land on a mat.
“You really have to work at that,” she said. “You have to have the upper core and you have to have timing, and I just love it because it’s challenging.”
Meiler is used to hard work. She grew up on a dairy farm, where she helped her father with the chores, feeding the cattle and raking hay. In school, she did well at basketball, took tap and ballroom dancing, and, living near Lake Champlain, she water skied.
Meiler, who worked for 30 years as a sales representative for Herbalife nutritional supplements, and her husband, Eugene, who was a military pilot and then became a financial analyst, together competed in water skiing.
“Many times when I did water ski competition I was the only gal in my age group,” she said.
She’s a relative newcomer to pole vaulting and track and field, overall. At age 60, she was competing in doubles tennis with her husband in a qualifying year at the Vermont Senior Games
when a friend encouraged her to try the long jump because competitors were needed.
“That was the beginning of my track career,” she said, standing in a room of her home, surrounded by hundreds of hanging medals. She took up pole vaulting at 65.
Athletics has helped her though some hard times, she said. She and her husband adopted three children after losing two premature biological babies and a three-year-old. Two years ago, their son died at age 51.
And she desperately misses her training partner, a woman who started having health problems about five years ago and can no longer train. It’s tough to train alone, she said, and she hopes to find a new partner.
“She’s incredibly serious about what she does,” said Meiler’s coach, Emma-
line Berg. “She comes in early to make sure she’s warmed up enough. She goes home and stretches a lot. So she pretty much structures her entire life around being a fantastic athlete, which is remarkable at any age, let alone hers.”
And it has paid off, said Berg, an assistant track coach at Vermont.
Berg herself first started following Meiler 10 years ago while she was a student at New Hampshire’s Dartmouth College, watching her at the annual Dartmouth Relays.
“She was like a local celebrity,” she said.
Setting a record at age 80 with a 1.8-metre pole vault at the USA Track and Field Adirondack Championships in Albany, New York, while her husband watched, Meiler said, was one of her happiest days.
“I was screaming, I was so happy,” she said.
The overall world record for women’s pole vaulting is 5.6 metres, according to the International Association of Athletics Federations.
Meiler turns 85 in June, when she’ll head to the National Senior Games in New Mexico.
That will put her in a new age group, in which she hopes to set even more records.
Meiler’s athletic achievements are remarkable and something to be celebrated, said Dr. Michael LaMantia, director of the University of Vermont Center on Aging.
Pole vaulting clearly isn’t for everyone of her age, but in general, activity should be, LaMantia said.
“She can serve as a role model for other seniors,” he said.
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Florence “Flo” Filion Meiler, an 84-year-old record-setting pole vaulter, poses while training at the University of Vermont indoor track in Burlington, Vt. She’s in Poland this week at the indoor world championships.
Page 4 of the April 2, 1919, edition of The Citizen featured Northern Hardware’s first ad, middle right. Congratulations to the Moffat family and the former and current staff of The Northern on your centennial from all of us at The Citizen. We’re proud to have been with you every step of the
HOLMES HELPING WITH HURT BRONCO’S RENO
One of Canada’s most recognizable home renovators has acted as a fly on the wall during renovations to the family home of an injured Humboldt Broncos player.
Mike Holmes is known for his TV shows in which he rescues property owners from house makeovers gone wrong.
He has been overseeing remodelling at the home of Ryan Straschnitzki in Airdrie, Alta., just north of Calgary, where Holmes met the family and did a tour of the work last Friday.
“He’s been involved since about two weeks after the accident. He didn’t want any attention,” said the 19-year-old’s father, Tom Straschnitzki.
“He said, ‘I’m just here to help you guys.”’
Ryan Straschnitzki was one of two junior hockey players paralyzed in the crash last April that killed 16 people on the team’s bus. Eleven other players were also injured.
The team had been on the way to a playoff game when a semi truck blew through a stop sign and into the path of the bus at an intersection in rural Saskatchewan. News of the crash made headlines around the world.
“My team was contacted after the tragic accident by a close friend of the Straschnitzki family. We just knew we had to help,” Holmes said in an email in the days before his visit.
“This is not about publicity and media. This is about doing what’s right for the
family. We were fortunate that so many trades and product suppliers stepped up and contributed products and their services.”
The renovation is months behind schedule, largely due to a number of structural problems in the original home.
The garage floor sunk 50 centimetres and had to be repoured. There have been problems with wiring. The hardwood floors, which were glued down, had to be ripped up.
“With every construction job, there are bound to be some delays,” Holmes said.
“This isn’t your typical renovation. This job requires extensive changes.”
The biggest parts of the renovation include installing a separate heating unit for Straschnitzki’s bedroom - he’s unable to sense when his body is too hot or too cold - and building an elevator from the garage to what will be his basement apartment.
“Everything is going to be accessible to me,” said Straschnitzki, who added he is looking forward to having some independence.
As for Holmes’s shows?
“I haven’t watched, but I’ve heard nothing but good things. I hear he’s a good guy.”
Michelle Straschnitzki said she was surprised when Holmes’s representatives contacted them shortly after the crash.
“We were absolutely stunned and appreciative and grateful that they decided to help out. Even though everything hasn’t gone as smoothly as we hoped, that’s not on them,” she said.
“We know everything is done right.” Holmes won’t be back for a final inspection once the renos are completed. The family has been staying at hotels and is planning to move in next month.
“My inspector in the area will be inspecting the house,” said Holmes. “That’s just an extra set of eyes for the peace of mind for the Straschnitzki family.”
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Ryan Straschnitzki, right, and his father Tom, top right, meet Mike Holmes following remodelling at their home in Airdrie, Alta., last Friday.
WARBLERS
On a mid-September day, scientists Chris Rimmer and Bill DeLuca drive to the top of the highest mountain in Vermont. They sling bags over their shoulders, lower themselves down a steep rocky path and hike through a balsam fir forest until they find a good spot. Then they pull out nets and old ski racing poles.
They untangle the nets and string them from pole to pole, stopping to point out a falcon gliding overhead. They work on the east slope of the mountain. The wind blows from the west.
As kids, DeLuca and Rimmer loved being outside. They grew up to become wildlife biologists. Rimmer is the executive director of the Vermont Center for Ecostudies, and DeLuca is an ecologist at the University of Massachusetts. They have dedicated themselves to saving a bird - a special songbird called the blackpoll warbler.
The blackpoll warbler is a fist-size bird with an unusually high-pitched song. The male has white cheeks and a black mark on its head like a snow hat; the female is mostly gray with darker cheeks and no head marking. But what makes the bird special is the remarkable way it flies south for the winter.
In the fall, millions of these songbirds travel from their mountaintop summer homes in Canada, Alaska and New
England to the northeast coast of the United States to prepare for a dangerous journey. For weeks, they eat. They fill their bellies with caterpillars, spiders and beetles until their bodies can hold no more.
And one fall day, when the sky is clear and the wind is calm, they begin to fly. They fly east to catch the tail winds, then swoop south. The most athletic of the blackpolls fly for three days without
stopping.
As they fly, their fat converts to energy. They follow stars in the night sky and light patterns in the day sky. Most migrating birds land often to eat and rest; the blackpoll keeps flying.
Recently, DeLuca and a team of scientists strapped dime-size backpacks called geolocators onto some of the birds to track their flight path. The birds, they learned, had flown from the U.S. East
Coast all the way to Venezuela or Colombia. They had traveled as far as 4,000 km without stopping - more than 20,000 km round trip. It was one of the most incredible migrations on the planet.
Sadly, the blackpolls are in danger. Each year, there are fewer birds, and the scientists want to know why. It could be worsening storms, or tropical forests shrinking as trees are cut down, or other animals competing for the blackpolls’ food as the climate warms.
DeLuca and Rimmer work until dark placing nets and then sleep on the floor of a nearby hut. They return before sunrise and find birds in the nets: a Lincoln’s sparrow, a Tennessee warbler and dozens of blackpolls.
In a small forest clearing, Rimmer holds one of the blackpolls, cradling the bird’s head between his pointer and middle fingers. He gently blows the feathers aside, measures its wingspan and tail and weighs it. Then delicately, using pliers, he closes a tiny aluminum band around its leg. Each band has a nine-digit number for tracking. They need to understand what’s hurting them to protect them. Maybe they’ll meet the bird in Vermont next fall.
When Rimmer is done, he opens his hand, and the songbird flies farther up the mountain and lands on a branch, facing south.
Clouds are gathering; rain is coming. This blackpoll’s long journey will begin soon but not today.
THE HOW OF RECOVERY STARTS WITH YOU
which strengthen with use. My thinking, my perception of the world becomes distorted. Addiction requires explanations, excuses and justifications to stay alive. It needs me, to lie to myself.
Asking for help is a tremendous first step.
For me, I didn’t know I had a problem until I tried to stop. I did not know addiction was a chronic, relapsing, remitting disease. I also mistakenly believed that just stopping was the only thing I needed to do. How incredibly wrong that thinking was.
Recovery is more than just not using. My whole life needed to change. I had to challenge and become aware of my thinking. I thought about my thoughts.
This can sound overwhelming, so I suggest doing only what is in front of you right now. Recovery is possible; it is amazing and you will be blown away by what can happen for you. Take small baby steps, one action, one thought, one day at a time.
Stopping is a major first step. Too many live in denial. I thought I could do it alone and even worse, believed I didn’t have a problem. In active addiction, I often blamed others – you, the world, my upbringing or parents – you name it, I blame it. Even when not using, if I find myself in resentment, anger, self pity or remorse, I know my addiction is talking to me.
Addiction is cunning, baffling and powerful. It outsmarts the smartest. It lies and deceives. Addiction changes neurochemistry. It creates new neuronal pathways
I am constantly aware of my thinking, of how my disease is trying to trick me back into use. It’s like a snake is inside my brain, pretending to be asleep, but it’s eyes are wide open, constantly seeking, searching for something, anything it can use as an excuse, to go back into hell. Asking for help, being honest, open minded and willing are the three main components of getting well. This is the how of recovery. Honesty requires telling the truth – to someone. Find someone you can trust. Someone who loves you. Someone who will help navigate the way. Then call someone less involved with you and your life, an outsider who has gone the same path but further along. If I want to learn welding, I do not ask my mother to teach me, nor my spouse or my friend. I seek an expert. This means someone who knows something about welding. Not a taxi driver. Too often we go to a doctor, who despite all best intentions, does not “really” know what to do when an addict is asking which way to go.
Go to a meeting, be brave, put up your hand, say your name, own your life, claim your right to recovery. You are not a bad person wanting to get better, only a sick person trying to get well. You will be amazed before you are halfway through.
Send your questions to letters@pgcitizen.ca. We’ll forward them to “Ann” and keep your identity anonymous.
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A blackpoll warbler is examined by Chris Rimmer in Mount Mansfield, Vt.
The Northern Hardware a unique shopping experience
by Valerie Giles
Just walk through the doors and you know you’re in a special place. It’s where our city’s history and contemporary modern living comfortably accommodate past and present. Knowing that this business has grown along with the city from its earliest years makes it even more intriguing and familiar. It feels like it’s always been there…and, indeed, for 79 of the company’s 100 years in business the building has anchored the corner of Third Avenue and Brunswick Street.
Another reason the store feels famil-
iar is the staff, many of whom have worked there for decades. They know the stock, how to use the products and tools sold and genuinely help by taking customers right to the item being sought. Longstanding customers appreciate that they’re greeted by name and they, in turn, know the
names of most employees. Although affiliated with a national hardware chain – Home Hardware –The Northern stands apart from the other outlets because it continues to carry products which people have purchased there for decades. Customers new to Prince George can find
Longstanding customers appreciate that they’re greeted by name and they, in turn, know the names of most employees.
those items mixed in with modernday products throughout the store. People looking to buy something new can have the item’s use explained. Those hoping to make repairs frequently can find out exactly how to go about doing that. Any tool or small appliance you might ever need is in the store. There is never any high-pressure pitch to buy anything. Likely, the opposite will happen where the staff will inquire about how you intend to use that item and sometimes recommend a less expensive model which can do the job. This approach might appear counterintuitive as a sales strategy
in a retail environment. But, it’s one of the reasons customers trust The Northern and appreciate that they’re given good, useful advice.
The upstairs furniture department reflects the same level of careful attention to customers. Through the years, only top quality furniture ever got sourced for sale in this store. It’s the kind of furniture which is made to last a lifetime and then be passed on to children and grandchildren.
Many pieces can be custom upholstered to suit one’s home décor and taste. Traditional and modern styles are attractively displayed throughout the entire top floor and knowledgeable staff can advise on care and availability. There’s a large area devoted to special ergonomic Stressless brand chairs from Norway. If you’re out shopping for the day with your children or your dog, know that The Northern staff are always delighted that you come in with them. A highlight for children is a chance to ride the mechanical horse named Champion, located on the mezzanine on steps to the basement level. Champion was installed in the store by founder A.B. Moffat in the 1950s. He got it from Isabel Electric, not for cash but by bartering. He traded a 16 foot long aluminum boat, trailer and 40 horsepower motor for it. People who rode Champion as children bring in their children and grandchildren to relive the fun. It still costs 10 cents a ride! Dogs love to visit the pet department at the back of the store…right
next to
the horse and farm supplies. Whenever looking for a unique and useful gift, the giftware on display in and around the kitchenware area is a good place to start. There are present possibilities there which aren’t sold anywhere else. The store’s buyers choose to bring in only a few of each item, so presents found there are sure to be different. Displays change quickly to replace merchandise as it gets sold. Should you be coping with a plumbing or electrical issue and want to try fixing it yourself – the required parts are in that department along
At one time, every department store had a bargain basement. The fun of finding a special treasure there still awaits you in one corner.
with nails, screws and fasteners. The knowledgeable staff can even sell you the right tools to accomplish the job. Be prepared to get talked out of a tool purchase if someone is hesitant about your ability to use it safely! Planning to do some painting? If you find you can’t remember whether latex can go over oil paint or whether oil paint can go over latex (it’s the first!) staff specially trained in paint technology will always know. Also, if you describe your project, the right paint can be recommended which takes all the guesswork out of it and eliminates the possibility of making a mistake.
At one time, every department store had a bargain basement. The
fun
of finding a special treasure there still awaits you in one corner. That’s where items from regular stock overlooked on the upper sales floors will be taken for markdown and sale. The rest of the floor is the area which houses furnishings and décor for patios and lawn furniture. Gardeners will find bulkier equipment like wheelbarrows, composters and spreaders for grass seed and lawn fertilizers. .
One of the indicators that you really are a Prince Georgian is having an account at The Northern. The founder’s insistence that customers should be able to make monthly payments on items they need and want still applies with the 90-day interest free credit. A.B. Moffat established that as a good customer relations policy. Bills are mailed out to account holders every month, always with a little blue pre-addressed envelope to return payment by mail. But, many customers find it much more enjoyable to come up to the office to make their payments. That way, they get to see what’s new in the furniture department and say hello to the sales staff.
Any time customers come in to The Northern, they sense and know the comfort of the familiar. Something interesting awaits inspection on all three floors. It is almost impossible to visit there without finding out something about new products, reacquainting with a friend you haven’t seen in a while or discovering that perfect thing which you didn’t realize you need! After all, isn’t that the whole point of going shopping?
Fondly Remembering
The Moffat Legacy
by Valerie Giles
The Moffat sons were raised to be highly principled, devoted to community service and imbued with a strong work ethic. Those values were passed by example from father to son through the generations.
The patriarch, Harry Henry Moffat, settled in this region in 1876. He operated a transportation service running a horse-drawn stage coach between Quesnel and Ashcroft. Later on in his business life, he expanded into the freighting business, carrying goods to markets. There was a family farm to maintain, and the farm chores were handled in his absence by his wife and their nine children.
One of the sons, Alexander Bohannon Moffat, had ambition to achieve
a high school education. Not many people went that far in school during the yearly years of the 20th Century. He had to move away to attend high school travelling first on horseback (to save money) to Ashcroft and then by train to Vancouver. There, he balked at having to learn algebra, French, Greek and Latin. Deciding it would be more practical to attend the business college he enrolled there instead. He studied arithmetic, bookkeeping, correspondence, English, rapid calculation, telegraphy and typewriting. That proved to be the right decision because his future was in business. Eventually he formed a partnership with Frank D. Whitmore and together they started The Northern Hardware. As soon as his children got old enough to work, he brought each one to the
Photo Left: Ted Moffat outside Northern Hardware’s current location on 3rd avenue. Citizen file photo.
store and introduced them to every job.
Through the years of the Depression, money was scarce in most households. A.B. Moffat proved an empathetic businessman. He allowed his customers to make monthly payments. They were given a 90-day interest free period and could take up to a year to pay for purchases made at the store. For those with no cash, he allowed people to buck up wood and deliver it to an adjacent lot in exchange for the goods they needed.
In addition to his business leadership, A.B. Moffat also focussed on community service. He served as a school trustee in 1922 and 1923. He was elected as an alderman for the years 1926 through to1929 and then again from 1940 to 1943. In 1943, son Harold was elected as a school trustee for the first time. A.B. Moffat took an active role in the Chamber of Commerce and in Rotary, becoming president for 1944-45.
Harold Alexander Moffat was born September 24, 1915, just six months after Prince George became a city. He grew up working in the store as needed and spending summers on his grandfather’s farm. Knowing his future was secure in the family hardware business, he commenced working there full time in 1934 when he was 19. He became company president of the Northern Hardware when his father retired in 1955. Following in the family tradition to serve the community, Harold served nearly a quarter century as an elected school trustee in addition to taking leadership roles in local business.
In 1967, forward-thinking Harold Moffat decided that a study should be made concerning development of the downtown core. On behalf of the Downtown Businessmen’s Association, he raised $30,000 in one afternoon from downtown merchants to fund the study and commission architectural drawings. Called the Centrum Plan, it contained futuristic ideas: high rise parkades close to shopping streets, roofs over Third Avenue, Quebec and George streets, downtown apartment blocks and a monorail – similar to that built in Seattle for the 1962 World’s Fair.
Harold was elected mayor in 1970. At that time, and during the next decade continued championing downtown development. He encouraged extending canopies down Third Avenue from the ones already in place at Third and Victoria. In front of his own store, he had the canopies built from steel. They were structurally strong enough to support a second story, a bridge across the street or to become a monorail platform. The Centrum Plan got abandoned with the deci-
sion to develop the Pine Centre Mall. Following his mayoral service, Harold continued managing The Northern until transferring that job to his son, Ted, on February 1, 1993. Harold continued working at the store every day until well past 80 years of age.
When Edward Alexander Moffat became president it signalled a shift towards modern retail management systems. Ted adopted computerized inventory software and accounting/ cash control systems. He renovated the appliance centre at First Avenue and Queensway installing gleaming ultra-modern high-tech appliances in a live kitchen. The main store got new carpeting and gondolas along with other display equipment. It literally got a facelift when Ted contracted local architect Trelle Morrow to redesign the entrance. More display space was created by moving the front windows forward.
Ted Moffat could always be found at the store because that’s where he worked, held all his business meetings (on couches in the furniture department) and socialized with friends and customers. He was quick to support many good causes with donations for fundraisers. In this city, he was sought out as a board member for the Downtown Business Association, Child Development Centre, the Golf & Curling Club, Junior Chamber of Commerce, the Old Time Fiddlers, the Railway and Forestry Museum and Theatre North West.
Beyond Prince George, Ted served on the boards for BC Rail, the BC Forest Alliance and engaged with the Home Hardware network across Canada.
Nothing animated Ted Moffat more than spirited discussions about civic, provincial or national political issues. He enjoyed that as much as his work. For many, a trip to the Northern Hardware to get something was just an excuse to engage with Ted!
It is fair to say that the line of descent from Harry to Alex to Harold to Ted formed a direct transfer of solid values and character formation. The Moffats were true to the values with which they were raised. Always forthright in their opinions, they became business and community leaders with particular dedication to community service. The Northern Hardware’s success as a business has become an important legacy. The Northern Hardware is closely bound to the image and identity of the City of Prince George.
Hilliard Clare’s Northern Devotion
by FRANK PEEbLES
Only four people in 100 years have been the boss at The Northern, and Hilliard Clare has worked for them all.
The winds of change never stopped blowing during his decades at the business, making Mr. Clare as much an asset in operational planning as he is in the accounting chair he has occupied since the days of dirt streets outside. There aren’t many business trends or entrepreneurial innovations he hasn’t overseen in his role of Secretary-Treasurer of The Northern.
It all started back in the warm days of spring in 1945. Mr. Clare was 15 years old and like almost everyone in Prince George, his family did regular business with The Northern.
“One day Harold [Moffat, then the incoming second generation manager of the store] said to my dad, ‘hey, what’s that young buck of yours doing?’ because he had a job that needed to be done.
He put me to work repairing bicycles after I was done at school,” Mr. Clare remembers. “A job was a good thing to have back then, so I was happy to be here.”
The feeling lasted. He was such a good fit with the Moffat clan that he was promoted to the business office
I really think the era of the ‘big box’ store is going to come to an end someday. I think they have grown too large for people to enjoy the shopping experience.
– HiLLiARd CLARE
in 1948 before he was even 20 years old. “I worked with some great people over the years, and some are still very good friends of mine,” he said.
“Went through four presidents of the company. Alex was more of a relaxed man, and Harold was an entirely different man. Harold had an opinion all his own and if you couldn’t somehow convince him otherwise, well that was it. Then Ted, he was different again. He was sociable and easy to get along with but he didn’t deviate from the principles of running a business.”
Mr. Clare paused and a fatherly smile broke across his face. “Now, Kelly, I’ve watched her grow up since she was in diapers. Kelly has her own personality, of course, and her own views on how things should be done, but she knows how to treat people and treat a business.”
Somehow, through 100 years of hard work and innovation, a few simple values were passed down to Kelly, and it is no secret around the store that Mr.
Clare is one of the main reasons. He was a bridge through those times, and has a nurturing personality to convey those values. Just remembering out loud how things used to be can pass on lessons about integrating with community, responding to people’s needs as they change over time, and putting in effort.
“We used to have to burn firewood in the furnaces. In early fall you’d have to starting piling it in. The whole back lot was just about full,” he said. “We used to have to supply oil to people, but it only came in bulk drums, 45-gallon barrels. We would have to pour it into individual containers and label them ourselves. We used to sell dynamite. That was really important for land clearing and construction. We had 400 sawmills in this area at one time and they all needed products and services that we provided.”
Despite the vastly different economic profile of the region, Northern Hardware trimmed the sails each time the
wind changed direction. Mr. Clare was the living example that the only thing that ever stays the same is change, so if you keep your focus on solid human values and respect the challenges the customers bring through the doors, you will thrive over time. Not every business, he said, is built for agility. When he was young, there were major lumber yards in downtown Prince George, but both are now gone or drastically different. McInnis Lighting, for example, is one of those.
“I really think the era of the ‘big box’
store is going to come to an end someday,” he said. “I think they have grown too large for people to enjoy the shopping experience. People expect good service from a knowledgeable staff. That is missing at the big boxes.” They also lack decades of mentorship, experience and personality all under the same hat. The Northern had that irreplaceable quality in Hilliard Clare.
Since 1919… If you can’t find it, The Northern will have it
by Valerie Giles
Strolling through the aisles of The Northern is an interesting adventure. Products familiar to people who are now grandparents or even greatgrandparents can still be found on the shelves.
Here are some examples, with explanations for contemporary customers whose memories may not extend back quite that far:
Oil cloth – This is tightly woven linen fabric which has been treated with a coating of linseed oil to make it waterproof. It was used to cover many a kitchen table.
Horse tack – The gear needed to ride a horse. Examples are saddles, stirrups, bits, reins and halters.
Horseshoes – If you know your horse’s hoof size, you can pick up a set. They’re near the back counter on the main floor.
Clock parts – All the pieces needed to build or repair a clock. There are very few clockmakers left and most old clocks get tossed aside when they no longer work. Many can be restored with the right parts.
Oil lamps – Before electricity was available in homes, the only way to read at night was by the light of an oil lamp.
Wash boards – These are primitive contraptions to modern eyes, but once were the way clothes got cleaned. They come in a range of sizes and, of course, still work! Today, these items are more likely to be used as wall decorations in a laundry room.
Bag balm – Meant to keep a cow’s teats and udder from becoming chapped or chafed in the cold, this product is actually bought by many customers to use on human hands and feet! The emollients protect the skin around fingernails from cracking and keep skin smooth over the dry winter months.
Egg incubators – Just in case you have a need to hatch a batch of chicks!
Cabbage cutters – Lovers of sauerkraut and coleslaw know that this is an important tool if those are foods regularly made.
Crocks – Once common in any kitchen, the old crocks ranged in size by gallon capacity. They’re used for fermenting (like in making batches of root beer) or for storing and foodstuff meant to be kept cool or in the dark.
Huckleberry pickers – The labour of picking one tiny berry at a time would make it almost impossible to harvest enough for a pie or batch of jam. These contraptions are designed as a rake-like collector which takes away the drudgery.
Anthracite coal – Once a common furnace fuel in homes, anthracite is sold by the bag at The Northern. It is used in heating systems with boilers and in blacksmiths’ forges.
Of course, there are many more unusual but useful items –like horse linaments and life jackets . Part of the fun is coming across them yourself. Be sure to ask a staff member what any unfamiliar things are and what they do. It can turn a shopping trip into a learning experience.
The Northern’s Four Locations
by Valerie Giles
An existing company, the Northern Mercantile and Lumber Co. was purchased by A.B. Moffat and Frank Whitmore in January 1919. The business partners took out an ad in the March 19th, 1919 edition of the Prince George Citizen entitled “To the Buying Public.” It read:
We wish to announce that we have purchased the hardware business of the Northern Lumber and Mercantile Co. Ltd. Of this city. We carry a full line of Stoves, Ranges, Automobile Accessories, Builders’, Trappers’, and Prospectors’ Supplies, etc. and beg to take this opportunity of soliciting your patronage.
Yours in anticipation,
The Northern Hardware Co.
A.B. Moffat
F.W. Whitmore
The Northern Hardware ‘s first location was the building which had been owned by the Northern Mercantile and Lumber Co. on George Street. At the beginning, the business concentrated on hardware, furniture and appliances. Within a year, business had grown so much that a warehouse space was required. They had contrac-
tor A.P. Anderson build a 20 foot by 70 foot building on Third Avenue East.
The core customers were the prospectors, loggers and farmers of the region. In 1921, The Northern became regional agent for John Deere farm implements. By 1928, the business responded to a growing demand for furniture. That year, the business became The Northern Hardware & Furniture Co. Ltd.
The second location was at 345 George Street at Third Avenue – then considered the centre of town. The company leased a building at the north-west corner of Third Avenue and George Street. After renovations were completed, the store moved in to that location in the fall of 1934. A continent-wide economic depression had settled in and that had an impact on the operation of the business. Management salaries were cut in half and the store extended credit to its customers. As needed, The Northern operated on a barter system trading goods like farm produce or firewood for the supplies their customers needed. It was during the early Depression years that A.B. Moffat’s oldest son, Harold, began working for the store full time at that location. Harold Moffat started working in the store as a child of twelve in 1927. He began working for the business fulltime in 1933 and continued well into his eighties.
The third location was at 1303 Third Avenue (at Quebec Street). Large ads in the Prince George Citizen announced the official opening held October 30, 1937. There was a main floor with long display tables for
hardware and building supplies. It was there where customers could also find large appliances, bicycles and sporting goods. Smaller electrical appliances and radios were displayed on the mezzanine level. The building had a full basement underneath for storage. At that location, Norm Radley was store manager and Harold Moffat and Frank Milburn served as the sales staff.
It was common during the 1930s that The Northern Hardware stayed open late on Saturday nights until the last customer left. This was to accommodate those who had come from out of town.
The move to the present location at 1386 Third Avenue (at Brunswick) came in the spring of 1940 on May 9th. The Northern occupied only part of the building at the start. The upstairs was rented apartments and the main floor level also had a post office and a customs office. Renovations were completed within five years to put the furniture department upstairs and to expand the appliances and giftware into the space which had formerly been used by the other offices. Plate glass windows installed in the walls facing Third Avenue and Brunswick opened up the store and provided attractive display space.
A large addition to the premises of 40 feet by 110 feet was added by J.N. Dezell and Son contractors was planned in 1947. After it was completed, there was space to accommodate all the stock from the leased premises down the street. Altogether, it took a week to move the goods up the street. Consolidation of the two locations was completed in the last week of July 1948.
still only Champ rides 10¢
all in the family
by Valerie Giles
Four generations of the Moffat family have run The Northern. That, in itself, is a remarkable phenomenon. Very few family businesses can claim that. The statistics are stacked against that possibility. In North America, extensive research has been conducted on succession in family businesses. Researchers Beckhard and Dyer published their results in the mid-1980s. They found that only 30% of family firms survive the transition to the second generation and only ten percent make it to the third generation. The Moffats had the magic!
The reason that the business ever came about was the result of government cutbacks. The founder, Alexander Bohannon Moffat, was personally affected by the outcome of the 1916 provincial election. His job as a timekeeper for the Department of Public Works was eliminated by the new government. After that, he obtained a pre-emption on a quarter section of land at Fraser Lake and used that as collateral to borrow $500.00. That money represented the cash he needed to establish his business venture with partner Frank Whitmore. They purchased the Northern Mercantile and Lumber Co. in January of 1919.
The business grew steadily and managed to expand even during the Depression of the 1930s. In 1933, the partners opened a store in Quesnel and Frank Whitmore went
to manage that location. He continued working there for 27 years and then decided he wanted to move to California. The Quesnel store was sold and on April 8th, 1946 A.B. Moffat paid out Frank Whitmore as his partner and became the sole owner. At that time, he had his son, Harold Moffat, made a shareholder. Later that year, on October 1, 1946, ownership of the store was shared among A.B. Moffat, Harold Moffat and the company’s secretary-treasurer, Thompson Ogg.
Ownership was further shared in 1949 when the Moffat sons (Donn, Earl, Gilbert (Corky), John and Keith) were all brought into the business. A few months later, long-time employee, Hilliard Clare, also became a shareholder and business partner. In 1951, A.B. Moffat brought his daughters into the business. Betty, Alice and Joyce were made equal partners.
A.B. Moffat decided to retire four years later in 1955. That decision put his oldest son, Harold, in position as C.E.O. of the company. Within five years Harold’s son, Ted, began working full time in the store’s office in 1960. For the decade of the 1970s, Harold also served as the Mayor of Prince George. The job was not then a fulltime position, so he spent mornings at the store and afternoons at city hall.
Harold’s own decision to retire came in the early 1990s. He made his son, Ted, President on February 1, 1993. At that
time, Ted and his two cousins (Blair Moffat and Ian Moffat) bought out the five brothers of the previous generation (Keith, Donn, the estate of Earl, John and Gilbert (Corky). They also purchased the shares of the sisters (Joyce, Betty and Alice).
That meant Ted Moffat, Blair Moffat and Ian Moffat were the remaining partners. At the same time, the Moffat Family Trust was established for all of Harold’s grandchildren as the fourth owner. Those changes were dramatic. With the retirement of the previous generation, their collective expertise went with them. It became necessary to choose a computerized system to manage point-of-sale transactions and track inventory. The system developed and marketed by ProfitMaster was installed and linked to the store, the warehouse and appliance centre and the AMCO wholesale outlet.
Ted Moffat became ill in 2012 but was optimistic about his treatment and, of course, hoped he could recover. He hadn’t planned on leaving. But, as his health went into decline, he had to face the fact that someone else would need to carry on. There was uncertainty until it became known that his daughter, Kelly Green, was learning what she would need to know in taking over. Having grown up with the business, she was better prepared than anyone else ever could be. But, having to ask the questions
which needed to be asked must have been painful and difficult. The unspoken finish to every question she needed to ask her father was “when you aren’t here.”
There will always be the need to maintain in-person customer contact and to deliver that famous Northern Hardware service
Kelly Green became President and C.E.O. in the month before her father died. She has remained in that position since and is proud to be part of the fourth generation of the family to carry on. She inherited a wellmanaged business and has the benefit of an outstanding and exceptionally
loyal staff working with her.
Focussing on the future involves embracing the technology available to modern retailers – particularly engaging with social media and developing inventory for online shopping. The demand for that convenience keeps growing exponentially. Despite that, there will always be the need to maintain in-person customer contact and to deliver that famous Northern Hardware service!
DEVICE HELPS NEWBORNS COPE WITH PAIN
B.C. researchers have designed a “robot” that helps reduce pain for premature babies by simulating skin-toskin contact with a parent who may not be available during around-the-clock procedures in a neonatal intensive care unit.
Lead inventor and occupational therapist Liisa Holsti said the Calmer device is a rectangular platform that replaces a mattress inside an incubator and is programmed with information on a parent’s heartbeat and breathing motion.
The robotic part of Calmer is that the platform rises up and down to mimic breathing, and a heartbeat sound is audible through a microphone outside the device, said Holsti, adding a pad on top resembles a skin-like surface.
The aim is to help babies cope with pain through touch instead of medication as much as possible while they’re exposed to multiple procedures, such as the drawing of blood, which can be done multiple times a day over several months.
A randomized clinical trial involving 49 infants born prematurely between 27 and 36 weeks of pregnancy at BC Women’s Hospital and Health Centre concluded Calmer provides similar benefits to human touch in reducing pain when the babies had their blood drawn.
The findings of the study, completed between October 2014 and February 2018, were published this week in the journal Pain Reports.
A parent’s or caregiver’s touch is the most healing and the Calmer isn’t intended to replace that, said Holsti, the Canada research chair in neonatal health and development. She worked with four other researchers on the project that involved a prototype built by engineering students at the British Columbia Institute of Technology.
“We purposely did not design it to look anything like a human being,” she said, adding her work since 1985 in
neonatal intensive care units, where she taught parents how to support their babies at home after leaving the hospital, sparked an interest in assessing infant pain and trying to relieve it.
“We have about 30,000 babies born prematurely in Canada alone every year so my hope would be that we would be helping all of those babies with Calmer.”
Holsti said nurses often provide socalled hand hugging by placing their hands around an infant’s head, arms and legs in a curled position during blood collection, but the study suggests the device would save almost half a million dollars in staffing costs every year at just the neonatal intensive care unit where the study was done.
Lauren Mathany, whose twin daughters Hazel and Isla were born 24 weeks into her pregnancy last April and weighed less than two pounds each, said that while the Calmer research had been completed by then, it would have been a reassuring tool for her and her spouse when they went home to sleep or take a shower after doing plenty of hand hugging and skin-to-skin touching.
“The NICU is the most difficult place to be. It challenges you in every single way,” she said.
Methany’s children spent over four months at the hospital and were medically fragile when they were bought home but are now thriving at almost a year old.
Dr. Ran Goldman, who has been a pain researcher at the B.C. Children’s Hospital Research Institute for 20 years but wasn’t involved with the Calmer study, said the device shows promise because there’s a greater understanding that healing is delayed when pain is part of an infant’s treatment.
Scientists in the late 1960s believed babies didn’t feel pain but there’s now an increasing understanding that they’re more sensitive to it than older children or adults because their paininhibiting mechanisms haven’t fully
developed, said Goldman, who is also an emergency room physician at BC Children’s Hospital.
“Research has shown that babies who
suffered pain as neonates do keep this memory later on and respond differently when they get pain experiences later in life,” he said.
BOOK CHRONICLES ISRAEL’S EARLY SPIES
97/16 WIRE SERVICE
Shortly after the creation of Israel in May 1948, a small band of Jewish spies set up shop in Beirut - literally a kiosk - as part of the country’s first intelligence station in an Arab nation. To Lebanese citizens, the men inside the refreshment stand by the Three Moons elementary school couldn’t have looked suspicious. Every morning, they hawked pencils, candy and sandwiches. Equally as crucial, if not more so, the Jewish shopkeepers/spies looked and sounded just like their customers, many of whom were connected to the government or the army. These Jews hailed from the Arab world - Syria or Yemen - and, as Israeli agents, had studied the Islamic and Christian worlds so they could blend in, obtain intelligence and relay it back to headquarters.
“The spies were not... navigating candlesticks and crystal at dinner parties, or insinuating themselves into the corridors of power,” writes Matti Friedman in his new book, Spies of No Country: Secret Lives at the Birth of Israel. “Their position was like that of Russian agents tasked with gleaning intelligence not from Capitol Hill or Wall Street but from the sidewalk outside a public school in Queens.”
But the spies hated labeling themselves with such a sinister term. They preferred the Hebrew word “mista’arvim,” which, translated into English, means: “ones who become like Arabs.”
Like most anything written about Israel and Palestine, Spies of No Country will either repel or attract you, depending on your political perspective. If you’re proIsrael, Friedman’s book offers a cast of humble, hardworking and brave characters who overcame prejudices in their old and new homelands for the greater cause of Judaism. But if you think of Israel less as a victim and more of a victimizer, then Friedman’s book might feel like hagiography, yet another work that idealizes the history of the Israeli military and intelligence apparatus.
It’s also impossible to read Spies of No Country without taking into account the background of its author. Friedman, a former Associated Press journalist who lives in Jerusalem, caused a dustup five years ago when he publicly blamed the “global mania about Israeli actions” on the media, including his former employer, needling the press for its aggressive coverage of the Israeli military and for portraying Palestinians as “passive victims.” (Friedman’s articles caused such an uproar that the AP issued a lengthy statement blasting his arguments for their “distortions, half-truths and inaccuracies.”)
But in his newest book, Friedman, a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times, focuses just as much on Israel’s earliest conflicts with Muslims as on Israel’s problems with itself. Spies of No Country is the story of four men who fled their Arab homelands to join a new country whose Jews initially hailed mostly from Europe and, more often than not, looked down on Jews from the Islamic world. Friedman’s four spies are Gamliel Cohen and Isaac Shoshan, both born in Syria; Havakuk Cohen, from Yemen; and Yakuba Cohen, a native of British Palestine. (The Cohens aren’t related.) Yes, we learn about the quartet’s dar-
97/16 news service handout image
Matti Friedman tells the story of the Arab Jews who spied for the new state of Israel in his new book Spies of No Country.
ing exploits, such as the time Shoshan and others in the Jewish military tried assassinating a popular sheikh in the port city of Haifa, or another time when some of them helped a fifth comrade, Eliyahu Rika, blow up a 120-metre yacht that once belonged to Adolf Hitler off Beirut in late 1948. But, admirably, Friedman seems to be telling this story for larger purposes. He wants to shine a light on a band of Arab-born operatives often overlooked in the stories of Israel’s founding as a Holocaust refuge led by Europeans in the Zionist movement.
More broadly, though, Friedman also wants to help Westerners understand that Israel’s demographics have massively shifted over time. He writes that about half of the Jewish population has “roots in the Islamic world.” In his telling, Israel’s early leaders didn’t see or appreciate the rising tide of men like the spies featured in this tale.
Although many may not realize it, Jews had lived for centuries, and quite peacefully, in the Islamic world, from North Africa to Iraq. But when Israel was established, Jews in those countries were threatened, their bank assets frozen or, worse, their lives taken. So they fled en masse to Israel, often, as Friedman notes, with the help of “covert immigration agents” shepherding them onto ships or planes. In the Israeli immigration camps, the sounds of Arabic drowned out the Yiddish of other Jews. The Arab Jews helped build the country and now significantly influence Israeli culture. Mainstream musicians in Israel, Friedman points out, “are now singing in Arabic, Persian and Ladino.”
The Jews who founded Israel tend to be mythologized as those who hailed from Europe and worked as pioneers on kibbutzes. As Friedman tells it, the country’s earliest founders largely ignored or dismissed contributions from Jews of the Arab world. “People trying to forge a Jewish state in the Middle East should have seen that Jews from the Middle East could be helpful,” he writes. “The newcomers might have been invited to serve as equal partners in the creation of this new society, but they weren’t.”
HOW WIMPS SHOULD WATCH HORROR MOVIES
My anxiety began eight days before the advanced screening of Us, Jordan Peele’s latest horror movie.
Willingly sitting in a dark movie theatre so that horrifying surprises can mentally and emotionally terrorize me? Not my idea of a relaxing time! While it’s very cool that I get to watch movies as part of my job, when that involves watching scary ones - well, I think I deserve some hazard pay, is what I’m saying.
Avoiding the horror genre has become increasingly difficult for anyone into movies and pop culture. In recent years, several films classified as horror have topped critics’ lists and won Oscars, sparking talk of it as the new prestige genre. The films have inspired ubiquitous memes, turned into think-piece fodder and received the Saturday Night Live treatment.
Between Get Out, A Quiet Place, Hereditary, Bird Box and the forthcoming Midsommar, Ma and now Us, horror has once again gone mainstream.
“As a horror fan and creator, all of us are singing in the streets,” says author and university lecturer Tananarive Due. Meanwhile, us wusses are cowering under our sheets.
“Why am I creating more anxiety when I have enough just getting in my car and driving to work?” wonders Aisha DeBerry, 39. “And then to pay for that? It doesn’t make sense.”
Amen. Have you even looked at Twitter today? (It doesn’t matter which day you’re reading this.)
“The world is kind of a trash fire,” says Kelsey Cooper, 26, a John Krasinski and Emily Blunt fan who can’t bring herself to watch A Quiet Place.
“I personally struggle a lot with anxiety,” she says. “My brain is constantly telling me to be scared, so seeing a movie where people are dying in horrible ways? My brain is already doing that to me.”
“There’s plenty of scary things in the world,” says Lev Rickards, 37. “Black people get shot by the cops, climate change - why deliberately go out and seek it?”
People have sought out these thrills for decades, and the genre has had a star turn before, with celebrated films such as 1968’s Rosemary’s Baby and 1980’s The Shining. But this time around, the intensity and rapidity of the discussion has been amplified because of the internet, says James Kendrick, a Baylor University professor who teaches a class on horror.
The conversation also includes how to classify these movies. When Get Out earned Golden Globe nominations under the comedy category, Peele subversively declared that the movie was actually a documentary. “Us is a horror movie,” Peele tweeted Sunday, a message that star Lupita Nyong’o reiterated.
“There’s become an effort to redefine horror films that are actually critically acclaimed,” Kendrick says. “(As though) if they’re that good or well-made or thematically prescient they can’t be horror,
they must be something else.”
Horror is more than gore and slasher films, says Due, who executive-produced the documentary Horror Noire and teaches a course on “the Sunken Place” (from Get Out) at the University of California at Los Angeles. “This is a genre that can really help us as a society confront anxieties, fears, transitions, obstacles.”
Due loved horror as a child, when watching it was a fun way to be scared within a safe context; with age, it became a therapeutic method to deal with heavier anxieties. It’s a lesson she gleaned from her mother, the late civil rights activist Patricia Stephens Due, who was a horror fan; the genre served as an outlet for the racial trauma she endured.
“Headlines scare me. True crime stories scare me... Real, human monstrosity is not fun for me to watch,” Due says. “When those people are supernatural or when there’s a fantasy element, when there’s a monster, now I’m ready to watch because the monster in a horror movie can be a stand-in for real-life monstrosity that lets me engage with it from a distance, but also leech out that trauma and expel it in a way that can feel fun.”
Fun, you know, like how a roller coaster is supposed to be fun. “You’re putting yourself in a situation where your mind and body feels it is in constant danger,” Kendrick says. “You’re out of control and you’re at the mercy of this machine that you strapped yourself into... For those who like it, it’s the relief at the end that you got through it.”
But some of us are roller coaster people, and some of us (myself included) are not.
And it’s great that filmmakers are excited about their craft and igniting deeper cultural conversations through horror movies. But it can be a little frustrating for us wimps. “People are saying really interesting and important thingsmaybe making important social commentary - that’s hard to watch because I’m a wuss,” Rickards says.
Many self-described scaredy-cats will face their fears, particularly with Peele’s films, because of the critical buzz and the cultural importance of a black filmmaker creating horror movies starring black people and tackling weighty issues.
“I have this conflict because I want to support Jordan, but I’m completely scared of this genre,” says DeBerry, who has been nervous about Us for three months but plans to go on opening night with her girlfriends anyway. “Even though I don’t know the industry well, I want to send the message that we appreciate you, and that you’re breaking barriers and blazing a trail in your own right.”
Plus, “so many of my friends are talking about it, and because we’re all followers of him, I feel like I’m going to be left out if I don’t see it.”
That’s one way to get through it. Another popular strategy among those with delicate constitutions: reading the entire plot on Wikipedia before stepping foot into a theatre. Some of us don’t want any spoilers, though —º Hopper wants a website that warns of the sever-
ity and nature of the horror within a particular film without giving anything away.
The setting is key, too. Some insist that the movie theatre, far from home and among a crowd, feels like the best place to watch a movie. Others say your living room, where you can walk out or hit pause or blast the lights, is the ideal setting for cowards.
Due has her own tips: Constantly tell yourself, “It’s only a movie,” employ the “tried-and-true trick of covering your eyes at key moments” and binge on scary, real-life news on the day of viewing.
I gave it a go: Driving to see Us, I listened to NPR stories about Venezuelan sanctions and economists’ efforts to place a statistical value on a human life. During the movie’s many frights, I looked away, covered my face with a scarf as needed and burrowed my face into my co-worker’s shoulder (sorry!).
Two hours later, my nerves slowly settled as I got back into my car. I didn’t have to warn anyone about the creepy doppelgangers and scissor-wielding weirdos in Us because there were none around. This is real life and that was just a movie.
I turned the car back on and the radio played headlines about a cyclone’s death toll and an obscenely expensive sports deal.
The feeling of dread I had while watching Us returned, but now it was about the world — the actual one where I have to live. Are we those blinkered dummies, who don’t see the monsters until it’s too late?
97/16 news service photo Evan Alex, Lupita Nyong’o and Shahadi Wright Joseph in a scene from Jordan Peele’s new horror movie, Us.
ELAHE IZADI
97/16 wire service
INSIDE THE TWEET THAT RUINED ROSEANNE
Two questions into Roseanne Barr’s packed appearance at the Menachem Begin Heritage Center in late January, it happens. A reporter goes right for the Valerie Jarrett.
Last May, Roseanne tweeted 11 words that managed to reference the Obama adviser, the science-fiction film Planet of the Apes and the Muslim Brotherhood. Within hours, ABC killed the most popular show of 2018. And Barr went from beloved sitcom star to spreader of hate.
“You are a sorry excuse for a human being,” actress Rita Moreno tweeted at the time.
“Roseanne made a choice. A racist one,” added Grey’s Anatomy creator Shonda Rhimes.
“There is not any room in our society for racism or bigotry,” tweeted civil rights icon and congressman John Lewis.
Now, from the third row of the auditorium, Sagi Bin Nun of the news website Walla takes his own shot.
“Israel is the place where people ask to be forgiven by God,” he says. “Would you like to take this opportunity to apologize for your racist tweet?”
Boos rain down on Bin Nun, and some guy yells, “You’re a jerk.” For two days, Barr has been telling anybody in Israel with a camera that she’s a “Jewy Jew,” a warrior for their homeland and disgusted with “repulsive” Natalie Portman and other so-called Hollywood hypocrites.
During her two-week excursion to the Holy Land, she will pray at the Western Wall, tour the West Bank, huddle with government officials, serve on a panel
with spoon-bending illusionist Uri Geller and, when she’s worn out, crash back at her suite at the Inbal Hotel.
But right now, she can’t let Bin Nun go.
“You’re a mean person who just wants to insult people for no reason whatsoever,” Barr says in front of everyone. “I pray to God to raise the sparks in you so that you’ll become a decent person.”
What to make of this?
It’s uncomfortable and entertaining and weird, particularly with Barr sitting between an Orthodox rabbi and the deputy speaker of the Israeli Knesset. Last March, Barr was on the cusp of one of the great comebacks in television history. Twenty years after wrapping her groundbreaking sitcom Roseanne, Barr, 66, had signed to return with the entire cast. The reboot premiere reached more than 27 million viewers. Three days later, ABC renewed the revived Roseanne for another season.
There was a problem, though: Barr had Twitter and she wasn’t afraid to use it.
Just after Christmas 2017, a few months before the reboot’s premiere, she tweeted: “i won’t be censored or silence chided or corrected and continue to work. I retire right now. I’ve had enough. bye!”
The tweet did not slip by network brass.
“Sorry to bother you with this at the holiday, but wondering if you know what spurred this tweet from Roseanne,” Channing Dungey, then ABC Entertainment Group president, wrote in an email to the show’s executive producer, Tom Werner, on Dec. 29.
Thus began an unusual, behind-thescenes battle, as ABC and Barr’s producers tried to protect their TV property, and
Barr continued to speak out on Twitter, her preferred medium for pushing tales of Pizzagate and George Soros as well as profane blasts at TV personalities such as Stephen Colbert and Rachel Maddow. The network didn’t propose a no-tweet clause in Barr’s contract. Instead, they spent months nudging her to stop while also trying not to offend her.
“It was always this back and forth of ABC not wanting to appear they were censoring Roseanne but also not quite pulling out the big guns,” says James Moore, Barr’s longtime publicist.
Despite repeated warnings — and even after her youngest son briefly hid her Twitter password — Barr stayed online.
“I admit it,” she says, in her hotel room.
“I’m a troll.”
By all counts, Barr, whose 1990s network go-round had been surrounded by chaos - whether it was firings on the set, the Star Spangled Banner debacle or that whole Tom Arnold thing — was a model citizen during the reboot, hugging audience members after tapings, hustling to news conferences and baking chocolate chip cookies for a get-to-know-you-again lunch with Disney Chairman Bob Iger. Online, though, she remained as polarizing as ever.
This shouldn’t surprise anyone. Comedy is full of misfits and oddballs obsessed with disruption. They roam stages, television sets and the Internet, teetering between the sort of shock that sparks deep reflection and that other kind, which leads to groans, backlash or, at worst, a public retraction.
Wasn’t that President Donald Trump’s bloody, rubber head that Kathy Griffin offered to the masses? Didn’t Samantha Bee call Ivanka a “feckless” four-letter word that rhymes with bunt? And why did Trevor Noah make that joke about Aboriginal women? Of course, they apologized — or, in Griffin’s case, apologized and then retracted the apology — and
were forgiven.
Barr and her family contend there’s a simple reason she has been treated differently: her support of Trump.
“I’m not saying any of the others should be fired,” says Jake Pentland, Barr’s 40-year-old son who runs her studio and voted for Bernie Sanders in 2016. “I’m a free speech absolutist. But you can pretty much say whatever you want as long as you supported Hillary Clinton. Soon as Mom donned that MAGA hat, she was an enemy.”
As a comic, Barr has always ignored the typical standards of subversion. Her freewheeling attacks seem almost designed to score her enemies in high places. It’s as if she’s not just playing for laughs, she’s trying to blow up the entire system — even if that means blowing up herself.
After the Jarrett tweet, daughter Jenny Pentland’s first words to her mother were to accuse her of self-sabotage.
“You did this on purpose,” she told her. In 2012, she tweeted the home address of George Zimmerman’s parents after the Trayvon Martin shooting. The Zimmermans sued, but the case was dismissed. As the 2016 election heated up, and she completed her shift from lefty agitator to Trump booster, Barr was distributing deep-state conspiracy theories like a UPS driver on Christmas Eve.
Sara Gilbert, who was 13 when she starred in the first Roseanne and was a driving force with Werner in reviving the series, felt reassured about the reboot after talking with Barr. “I knew that Roseanne, the person, was unpredictable at times, but she told me this was her redemption,” says Gilbert, now 44. “I chose to believe her.”
It didn’t take long for Barr’s tweets to create tension within the show’s production team. In August 2017, Barr tweeted to defend Trump’s handling of
Continued on page 27
97/16 news service photo
Actress, comedian, writer, and television producer Roseanne Barr took a twoweek trip to Israel in January. Barr had big aspirations for the Roseanne reboot until an explosive tweet ended it all.
TWEETS WERE A PROBLEM BEFORE THE REBOOT
Continued from page 26
conflict in Charlottesville, Virginia, and attack the Antifa movement. Gilbert and Werner called Moore to set up a conference call. “I don’t want to talk about it — it will be gone,” Barr emailed Moore, before deleting the tweet.
A month later, Barr questioned whether the Parkland, Florida, shooting survivors were actors. Co-showrunner and executive producer Bruce Helford texted Barr, suggesting she take her tweets down before ABC saw them.
“I’m really sorry to ever ask you to hold your voice,” he wrote, “but I think there are even more powerful ways to put ideas out there through the show itself, which I hope we have the opportunity to do many, many more episodes of together.”
Barr had high hopes for the reboot when she signed on in early 2017. Her politics had shifted hard to Trump. But the country was deeply divided. The reboot would show that American families, like her own, could disagree politically without hating each other.
“She really wanted to bring people together and get them talking about it,” Goodman says.
The first episode, which premiered March 27, found Roseanne, a Trump supporter, re-connecting with Jackie, who wore a pink pussy hat and “Nasty Woman” T-shirt to dinner.
It also tackled racial issues. Roseanne had a black granddaughter, and there was the Muslim couple moving onto the street. At first, Roseanne snickered that they were “a sleeper cell getting ready to blow up our neighborhood” — until she met them and realized that she had been unfair.
Off screen, Barr’s politics were harder to resolve.
For Barr, already a conspiracy theorist, the message was clear. Everybody was in on it: ABC, the producers, even the press. They couldn’t sit idly as a Trump crazy took over their television sets.
She felt betrayed in May when the ABC entertainment president, Dungey, in a conference call with reporters, said the next season of Roseanne would move away from politics.
Who told her that? Barr had been planning to cast Luenell Campbell, a comedian and a good friend, and dig deeper into race.
Helford, the co-showrunner and executive producer, was as baffled as Barr when Dungey talked about the show’s new direction. During Roseanne’s first run, Barr had considerable clout, forcing
out the show’s co-creator, Matt Williams, only 13 episodes in. This time, she began to feel powerless. When she learned the writers were starting work on the reboot’s second season without her involvement, she thought, “Oh, they took my show.”
Barr and ABC cut a deal — neither party will say for how much — so the network could launch a spinoff. When the network announced The Conners on June 21, the release made sure to note that Barr would have “no financial or creative involvement.”
That deal now infuriates Barr. She says she hoped she would be redeemed for having saved so many jobs. She had even hoped to perhaps return to the show. Instead, The Conners”killed off Roseanne with an opioid overdose in the first episode.
She also can’t forgive Gilbert. On May 29, 27 minutes before ABC announced the cancellation, Gilbert tweeted that Barr’s comments were “abhorrent and do not reflect the beliefs of our cast and crew or anyone associated with our show.”
“She destroyed the show and my life
with that tweet,” Barr says. “She will never get enough until she consumes my liver with a fine Chianti.”
Gilbert said that “while I’m extremely
disappointed and heartbroken over the dissolution of the original show, she will always be family, and I will always love Roseanne.”
97/16 news service photo
Roseanne Barr visits Yad Vashem, Israel’s official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust.
Is it a dog or a cat?
Look at the fox. Do you think it is part of the dog family or the cat family? Write your guess here.
How does the fox look like a cat?
Fastest Fox
Race against a parent to see who can get their fox to the mouse first. Winner gets to decide what’s for dinner tonight!
How does it look like a dog?
Where do foxes live?
Foxes are found all over the world except in Antarctica. Even in deserts and in the Arctic! They also adapt well to human environments such as farms, suburban areas, and even large communities.
How many foxes?
Add up the numbers next to the foxes that look exactly alike to discover how many different kind of foxes there are in the world.
ANSWER:
The fennec fox is the smallest of the foxes. It has enormous ears, measuring 6 inches (15 cm). They live in desert zones of North Africa and the Sinai and Arabian peninsulas.
The red fox can be found in North and Central America, Northern Africa, Asia and Australia. It is at home in the wild and in urban areas.
in Canada, Alaska, Russia, Greenland, and Scandinavia. The
Gray foxes live in forests and woodland areas of North and Central America. Gray foxes are the only members of the dog family that can climb
A Fox by Another Name
Do the math to fill in
female fox is called
A baby fox is called a _________ or a
A group of foxes is called a _____________.
Amazing Hearing
A fox can hear a mouse squeak 300 feet away. That’s as far as a football eld!
Clever as a Fox Member of the Dog Family
While a fox is a member of the dog family, it has some traits that are very cat-like. Foxes are nocturnal (active at night). Fox eyes are like a cat with vertical pupils that allow it to see in dim light. And like the cat, the fox has sensitive whiskers and spines on its tongue. It has retractable claws, just like a cat. It walks on its toes in a graceful, cat-like tread. The gray fox can climb trees and has, on occasion, taken naps in owl and hawk nests!
Find the words in the puzzle. How many of them can you find on this page?
of your five senses to describe your favorite
© 2019 by Vicki Whiting, Editor Jeff Schinkel, Graphics Vol. 35, No. 16
The Arctic fox is found
Arctic fox is the only native land mammal found in Iceland.
trees.
MYSTERY OF PRINCE REMAINS
Music came so easily to Prince, one of the most difficult things in his purple life was convincing others that he was real. From the start, too. Go back and read a clip from 1977, when a scribe from Minnesota Daily was sent to investigate the local 18-year-old wunderkind, and you can practically hear the reporter sigh with relief when Prince pulls a prank at a restaurant - proof-positive that this super-freaky prodigy was “a real live kid, packed with talent, but basically normal and mischievous.”
Nearly four decades later, in the pages of Rolling Stone, an eyewitness describes how bizarre it was to see a deity performing the mundane tasks that fill most everyday lives: “Prince being Prince, it’s fascinating to watch him do just about anything. The more ordinary the activity - clicking a mouse, say - the weirder it feels.”
Prince was human, though. We confirmed it in the worst way on April 21, 2016 when he was found dead inside an elevator at Paisley Park, the suburban Minnesota recording studio that he treated as a laboratory, a bunker and a vault. Since then, we’ve been bombarded with books about the reclusive virtuosoby journalists, by critics, by anecdote-collectors, by his ex-wife - all of which seem to prove how unknowable he ultimately was.
For those hoping to not-know him a little better, there’s Prince: The Last Interview and Other Conversations, a new compilation of profiles and Q&As
previously published in a delightfully disparate array of outlets, including Minnesota Daily, Rolling Stone, Vegetarian Times, Yahoo! Internet Life and Prince’s high school newspaper.
In the book’s introduction, the poet and critic Hanif Abdurraqib hypothesizes that, despite his enigmatic ways, Prince came to each of these conversations hoping that his inquisitors might “understand him beyond his superhuman capabilities.” For fans, that’s always been hard. And for mourners, it’ll always be. How do you grieve a sphinx? Can we assemble the meaning of Prince’s life based on all of the things he didn’t say? It feels like there must be some elusive truth waiting for us in the negative space, lest all of that lavender-scented mystique have been for naught.
Unsurprisingly, these 10 interviews uphold Prince’s reputation for being tight-lipped with his interrogators - not always down to play ball, but occasionally playful. When Ben Greenman asks him about “cybersex” in 1997, Prince winks back with six words: “Ain’t nothin’ like the real thang.” But he also knew how to deflate a discussion. In a 1985 interview with MTV, when asked whether he could have ever foreseen the success of Purple Rain, he flatly replies, “I don’t know.”
The only thing more vexing than the questions that go unanswered are the questions that go unasked. Prince cites The Matrix in interviews with the New Yorker and Rolling Stone. Did he ever read Jean Baudrillard? During the book’s titular 2015 interview - an awkward
group-chat at Paisley Park in 2015 with the Guardian’s Alexis Petridis and other European journalists - Prince explains how the internet has forced his critics to be more honest, and concludes that “it gets embarrassing to say something untrue, because you put it online and everyone knows about it, so it’s better to tell the truth.” So what did a pop utopian of his stature make of all the trolling and disinformation that had begun to foment on social media around that time?
And when the New Yorker’s Claire Hoffman asks him about his stance on gay rights and abortion in 2008, Prince taps his fingers on a nearby Bible and replies, “God came to earth and saw people sticking it wherever and doing it with whatever, and he just cleared it all out. He was, like, ‘Enough.’” Prince had become a Jehovah’s Witness by this point, but his position still baffles. How could a writer of visionary songs about radical acceptance believe anything even close to that?
To be fair to the journalists, Prince didn’t dig follow-up questions. He didn’t really like answering questions at all. Starting in the ‘90s, he famously asked that his interviewers no longer use recording devices or notebooks - and according to a 1994 profile in Q Magazine, his handlers added a third demand: “that no questions be asked.”
97/16 news service handout image
A diverse collection of interviews in Prince: The Last Interview comes no closer to revealing either the man or the artist.
By most accounts, he was difficult and defiant with the press. But Prince probably didn’t spend all of those decades being evasive for the mere fun of it - at least not entirely. Maybe the commitment to his mystique was just Prince’s way of protecting our idea of him. To be known is to become static, stiff, frozen in time. To be unknown is to remain flexible and free. Now, even though he’s gone, our understanding of him can still change shape.
