Prince George Citizen March 6, 2019 by Prince George Citizen

Decorated veteran dies at 96

Citizen staff

Decorated Second World War

veteran Sir Armand James Denicola died Friday at the age of 96.

Denicola earned many medals of honour and was awarded the National Order of the Legion of Honour from France for his part in the liberation of France.

At three years old, Denicola and his family came to Prince George from Italy in 1925. He was raised on the family homestead on Foreman Road and enlisted in the Canadian Scottish Regiment when he was 20 years old.

Prior to enlisting, he worked as a cowboy in the Chilcotin area for the C1 Ranch and the Chilko Ranch near Alexis Creek, west of Williams Lake.

After nearly three years in the armed forces he returned to the Chilcotin for a short time.

In 1947, and after his dad passed away, Denicola moved back to Foreman Road and took up farming to help his mother. He spent the rest of his life living on the farm.

Denicola went into partnership operating a saw mill on Foreman Road. At the same time he farmed potatoes and eggs commercially which he sold to Roy Yip’s chain of seven grocery stores.

Denicola met his wife-to-be Doreen in 1960 and they married in 1964.

Armand worked in the logging industry and later at the Dominion Experimental Farm.

Some time later he went to work at the Ministry of Transport as the supervisor of runway maintenance at the airport until his retirement in 1984. After his retirement Denicola worked for the ministry on a part-time basis during the winter keeping the runways clear.

Decorated Second World War veteran Armand

in 2008. Denicola died on Friday at the age

Armand and Doreen raised three children who grew up and still reside in Prince George, including Drew and wife Kelly, Sanna, Neal and wife Brenda, his grandchildren Ashleigh, Natasha, Scott, Shailen, Alisha, Simon, Chris and Amy, and great grandchildren Ciaran, Abigail and Lucia. He is pre-deceased by his parents An-

tonio and Maria, his brother Joe and sister Lucy, nephew Tony and granddaughter Kira. The family asks in lieu of flowers that donations be made in his name to the Prince George Legion Branch 43 or the Prince George Hospice Society. A memorial will be held at Blackburn Community Hall on March 21 at 1 p.m.

Auction Mall full of bargains

Christine HINZMANN Citizen staff

chinzmann@pgcitizen.ca

Calling all bargain hunters.

It’s time for the Prince George Citizen’s spring Auction Mall that goes live Thursday with closing bids on the last items up for grabs ending March 20. There is a variety of merchandise, services and gift certificates from many local businesses.

Bargains can be as much as 85 per cent off list price and items are added daily.

“The auction process creates an atmosphere of

excitement, competition and community,” Shawn Cornell, The Citizen’s director of advertising, said.

“The auction provides an opportunity to purchase items at fair market value, based on selling price and not asking price.”

There’s getaways, houseboat vacations, a tent trailer, restaurant gift certificates, furniture and tires, home renovation items, local clothing retailers, continuing education, escape room game play and for those health-conscious thrifty shoppers there are even gym memberships available. — see AUCTION MALL, page 3

The crew at CN Centre – Rafael Trujillo, Dan Chipchase, Terry Baratta and Glen Mikkelsen – tried on some tall boots to get ready for the Kinky Boots show on March 22 at CN Centre. There are still tickets available for the show and thay are available through Tickets North.

Forest policy review slated for Interior, minister says

NIELSEN Citizen staff mnielsen@pgcitizen.ca

The provincial government will conduct a review of forest policy as it relates to the Interior, Doug Donaldson, the minister of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development, said Tuesday. Slated to begin by the end of April and be completed by the end of this year, Donaldson said it will follow on one for the Coastal forest sector that was completed in January following six months of consultation with various stakeholders.

That review generated a series of policy initiatives to encourage more domestic processing of logs and fibre and reduce the amount of waste left behind in harvest areas. Donaldson called the outcome “very successful” and said some of the initiatives regarding the increased use of fibre will impact the Interior.

However, while he said the fact that wood was being exported rather than being manufactured domestically was a prime issue in the Coastal sector, “it’s really about curtailment and a lack of wood in the Interior.”

The review is among a handful of steps Donaldson noted in response to criticism B.C. Liberal leader Andrew Wilkinson leveled in an interview on Monday that the NDP has done little to ease the pain area sawmills and their workers are feeling.

Canfor, West Fraser and Conifex have all invoked production curtailments in answer to declining lumber prices combined with rising log costs and lack of fibre supply.

Donaldson also raised a forestry-related trade mission to Asia in December as an example of the steps that have been taken.

Donaldson was part of the entourage that went to Japan and South Korea while government officials chose to skip the China leg of the trip due to tense diplomatic relations over the arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou.

As well, he said cutting permits

have been expedited for more than 2.4 million cubic metres of fire damaged timber over the last two years.

And he made note of the Forest Enhancement Society of B.C. Established in 2016 with $85 million from the provincial government, in part it funds projects designed to improve damaged or low-value forests and encourage the use of fire from those forests.

“Through that organization, we’ve invested $173 million in reforestation, wildfire risk reduction and habitat restoration,” Donaldson said.

“And that again allows us to address forest health, allows us to find more creative and economic ways of bringing fibre out that was seen as uneconomical.” Wilkinson contended more can be done to ensure sawmills have access to a reliable supply of timber.

However, Donaldson said it was inevitable that the annual allowable cut was going to be reduced to levels seen prior to the pine beetle epidemic.

To reduce waste on the Coast, policy initiatives include creating “fibre recovery zones” where failure to reach new lower benchmarks will lead to penalties. Prior to 2003, “avoidable waste fibre” on the Coast was less than five per cent of the harvest volume but by 2017, the proportion had grown to 16 per cent, according to a ministry report and, in some cutblocks, wasted fibre volumes are greater than the timber volume harvested. — see WORKERS, page 3

Mark

CITIZEN FILE PHOTO

Denicola is seen

of 96. DONALDSON

‘Romance scams’ top CRA list of frauds, rip-offs and hoaxes

Andrew DUFFY Citizen news service

The scams may not have changed much, but the scammers behind them – idling in cyberspace or across phonelines – have become more sophisticated and aggressive resulting in massive losses for the Canadian public.

With the release of its annual top 10 scams list, the Better Business Bureau of Vancouver Island revealed last year Canadians lost more than $121 million to scammers. That’s an increase from the $95 million reported in 2017.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg, according to Rosalind Scott, chief executive of the BBBVI, who noted only a small fraction of people actually report being scammed.

“So mulitply (the losses), these are huge sums,” she said. “People are really embarrassed to report it. They just feel so silly and that they should have known better.” Scott said that may be the case but those people are not alone, as many have clicked on the wrong link online, been taken in by promises of easy wins or been duped by a would-be companion.

According to the bureau, the percentage of victims that actually come forward to report the crime is less than 10 per cent and the BBB suggests actual losses could be in excess of $3 billion a year.

Scott said the scams vary but there are some common threads – they feed into either the fear factor in the case of email extortion scams, or greed in the case of sweepstakes scams.

And always, the scammers stress that acting immediately is vital.

Scott said the scammers are hoping they can get you to act rather than think.

“I always tell people that unless the house is on fire or there’s a medical emergency nothing has to be done that second,” she said.

Topping this year’s top 10 list were “romance scams,” which accounted for losses in excess of $22.5 million.

According to the BBB, this kind of scam can be carried out over online dating sites and carries the additional shot of emotional and psychological pain on top of the financial loss.

“Not only do you lose money, but you go through supreme humiliation, lose your

self-respect and your self-worth – those are enormous losses,” she said.

The bureau’s tips to avoid falling victim to a romantic robber include never transferring money to people you have never met, be wary of tales of hardship or family emergencies from people you are starting to get to know and it’s a red flag when those people say they are unable to meet in person.

An old favourite was No. 2 on this year’s list. Income tax extortion scams cost Canadians $6 million last year.

It can come via email, text or phone call and usually says the Canada Revenue Agency is demanding money and wants immediate payment, sometimes in Bitcoin or through gift cards.

The BBB notes that the CRA does not make threatening phone calls or request personal information over the phone or by email, and it suggests deleting texts and emails claiming to be from the CRA.

Danielle Primrose, chief executive of the BBB on the Lower Mainland, pointed out there’s a scam for everyone.

“Scams are evolving. They are more ag-

gressive, devastating, convincing.

“Scammers are bolder than ever, which is why we need to keep informed and take proactive steps to protect our information and finances,” she said.

The rest of the list includes online purchase scams that use fake websites, employment scams, a variety of phishing scams that use fake invoices, subscription scams that go from free trial to large monthly charges with no notice, advance fee loans, tech support scams that remotely take control of your computer, cut-rate home improvement scams and banking scams that suggest there has been fraudulent activity on your account.

Scott said phishing and blackmail scams seem to be in vogue in the Greater Victoria region right now, though they have also seen letter campaigns using very real looking TD Canada Trust letterhead requesting information and emails claiming to be from Netflix saying payment has not been received. She advises people should read these things carefully, often the small print will give away the scam, and always report the scams you come across.

Lheidli T’enneh Memorial Park.

Early morning pruning

Search continues for suspect after officers hit by car

Citizen news service

BURNABY — One of two Vancouver-area police officers injured in a hit-and-run crash has been released from hospital, but RCMP say the second faces a long recovery.

Burnaby RCMP Cpl. Mike Kalanj provided an update on the case Tuesday, a day after the men were injured and a search began for the driver who ran them down.

“I don’t actually have a man or woman for you,” said Kalanj when asked if investigators knew any details about the driver of a Toyota Camry that has been recovered and confirmed stolen.

Kalanj repeated an appeal for surveillance video from the many businesses in the south Burnaby area where the hit-and-run occurred. Officers also want dashboard camera video from anyone who many have been driving near the scene Monday between 11:30 a.m. and 1 p.m.

“The side and back windows (of the car) are so tinted that at a quick glance, you can’t even see if there’s one or three people in there, man, woman, you can’t tell,” he said. “We are looking for footage that will give us a distinct look in the windshield so we can at least get a photo to send out.”

The most seriously injured officer is from the RCMP, while the other is from Abbotsford police. Both were training with the Lower Mainland Integrated Police Dog Service when they were hit.

Kalanj would not say where the RCMP officer is based.

The Abbotsford officer has been identified as Cpl. Aaron Courtney, a 15-year member who has spent the last decade with the dog service unit.

Courtney was recovering at home Tuesday, Abbotsford police said in a news release.

“We are relieved that the prognosis for both officers appears to be positive,” the release said. “This incident has shaken the police community, and we are grateful for the public’s overwhelming support.”

Abbotsford officials confirmed that no service dogs, including Courtney’s dog, Koda, were hurt in the hit and run.

Kalanj said the Mounties were responding to reports of a possible impaired driver when the latemodel Camry entered oncoming traffic.

It squeezed between a transport truck and parked cars before side-swiping the truck carrying the police dogs and hitting the officers who were standing beside it.

There was no information to suggest the suspect targeted the officers, police said.

“This literally could have been someone’s kid, could have been someone’s grandparent,” said Kalanj. He urged the driver to come forward.

Workers ‘overwhelmingly wanted to see a resolution’

— from page 1

While some waste is inevitable and can be good for the environment, some, referred to as “avoidable waste fibre,” is also left behind because it is costly to remove and has limited economic value.

Wilkinson also accused Donaldson of taking the side of Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs in the controversy over the Coastal GasLink pipeline when he showed up at a blockade against the project.

Donaldson, the MLA for Stikine, said it’s his job to listen to his constituents’ concerns and countered that the B.C. Liberals failed to listen when forest industry workers “overwhelmingly wanted to see a resolution to the softwood lumber disagreement with the United States.”

Despite having two years to reach a deal, Donaldson said the previous government never did, and “we’re left cleaning up the mess.”

UNBC talk on Peruvian armed conflict this Thursday

Citizen staff

Memories of Peru’s internal armed conflict will be topic of next talk in the University of Northern British Columbia Anthropology in Our Backyard Series.

Between 1980 and 2000, some 70,000 people were killed in the South American country and the majority were indigenous Quechua speakers.

In 2013, Kirk Walker spent two weeks in the country while doing research in the field for a UNBC Master of Arts degree.

He collaborated with 10 individuals in the Humananquiqua community of Ayacucho who used digital cameras to illustrate their memories of the conflict through participatory photography.

Walker will talk about his research during a special presentation entitled Landscape and Collective Memory in

Post-Conflict Ayacucho, Peru: Narratives and Photography of Survivors this Thursday at Exploration Place at 7 p.m.

The presentation is free and open to the public.

Walker’s research explores the pivotal role of memory in reconciliation and transitional justice in Ayacucho, a former epicentre of violence.

The resulting conversations during Walker’s fieldwork reveal not only places of violence, hiding and escape, but also of community resilience and empowerment through storytelling.

“For me, the two primary takeaways of this research were the collective memory of traumatic experience is more than a monument on the landscape, it’s a transformation of identity and that narrative storytelling through photography has an incredible power to heal,” said Walker.

Auction Mall offers options for bidders

— from page 1

The Auction Mall not only allows participants to get a great bargain but it’s also beneficial to local businesses to showcase their products to people who many not ordinarily cross their thresholds otherwise.

“This is an ideal opportunity for small businesses that have a small advertising budget but need the exposure to grow their business,” Cornell said. There’s a couple of options on how to approach the auction.

Some people might prefer the live bidding process where it’s not over until the last bid has not been bested for five minutes. Others can input their best price as a reserve bid, which will automatically counter other bids until their maximum bid as been reached.

Registration for the Auction Mall only requires your name, phone number and email address.

No need to give out your credit card number until it’s time to pay for the deals.

Winning bidders can pay a visit to the Prince George Citizen office, #201-1777 Third Ave., once the auction is complete.

For more information and to register visit auctionmall.ca. You’ll be glad you bid.

Experts say popular Yukon ice cave close to collapse

Tim KUCHARUK Citizen news service

WHITEHORSE — Experts say a unique, cave-like tunnel formed by a retreating Yukon glacier remains a popular tourist attraction but is no longer safe to enter and may collapse soon.

The Kluane ice cave, about 170 kilometres west of Whitehorse, has been attracting visitors for years, but the Yukon Geological Survey is now warning adventurers not to walk under the huge, bluish ice arch.

Geologist Jeff Bond says the cave has shown serious instability in recent years and has become a hazard.

Slabs of ice weighing hundreds of kilograms routinely crash from the roof and Bond says that could be an indication of a structural shift caused by subterranean motion.

Experts believe the cave was carved by water flowing under the once massive glacier, but the arch remained as the ice receded toward Mount Archibald and the Kluane ice fields leading to Mount Logan, Canada’s highest peak.

Skiers and snowshoers were able to wander the length of the ice cave, especially in winter, but Bond says it will never be safe again.

“It will only become stable, I think, when it collapses and there is no more tunnel left,” he said.

“When we visited it last year it was pretty apparent that there was ongoing ice collapsing off the ceiling within the tunnel throughout the winter and the summer.”

The site spans a creek bed about 13 kilometres outside Haines Junction.

CITIZEN

City of Prince George arborist Ian Hoag prunes an elm tree on Cedar Street early on Tuesday morning.

WALKER

Obama urges action on climate change, inequality

Lauren KRUGEL Citizen news service

— Former United States

CALGARY

president Barack Obama called on global leaders to pay attention to the ways the world is rapidly transforming, urging action on climate change and wealth inequality in speeches in Western Canada on Tuesday.

Obama spoke first to a near-full arena in Calgary, home to several oil and gas company headquarters that are replete with empty office space due to a years-long industry downturn.

“All of us are going to have to recognize that there are trade-offs involved with how we live, how our economy is structured and the world that we’re going to be passing on to our kids and grandkids,” Obama said. “Nobody is exempt from that conversation.”

He said fossil fuels have provided a cheap and plentiful source of energy since the Industrial Revolution. The remark drew a loud whistle and applause from the audience.

The crowd also clapped when Obama said there is indisputable science that the planet is getting warmer.

“At the current pace that we are on, the scale of tragedy that will consume humanity is something we have not seen in perhaps recorded history if we don’t do something about it.”

Rising oceans will displace populations from coastal areas and climate change is also having an effect on the prevalence of insect-borne diseases, he said.

“Moose right now (have) to deal with tick-borne diseases that they didn’t have to do 10, 15 years ago,” Obama said.

“I really like moose. I assume Canadians, you, do too.”

He said the question becomes how to build recognition, not just generally, but in places such as Alberta, that newer energy sources need to be developed and older ones have to be cleaned up.

Obama said the chaos wrought by global climate change will make politics more toxic.

“Imagine when you have not a few hundred thousand migrants who are escaping poverty or violence or disease, but you now have millions,” he said. “Imagine if you start seeing monsoon patterns in the Indian subcontinent changing so that half a billion people can’t grow food and are displaced.” The same engineering prowess that’s been used to tap tough-to-access oil can be directed toward finding cleaner sources, Obama suggested.

“You guys can figure it out, but you’ve got to be open to it.”

Obama rejected the Keystone XL pipeline in 2015 after years in regulatory limbo.

The proposed project, which would allow more oilsands crude to flow to refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast, has the support of his successor, President Donald Trump, but the pipeline remains mired in state-level legal wrangling.

Obama recalled with a mixture of amusement and frustration how in 2015 Republican Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe, then chairman of the environment committee, brandished a snowball on the senate floor to dispute climate science.

“You laugh. This happened,” he said.

“That’s not a good way of approaching problems.”

Obama later spoke to a sold-out crowd of thousands at a Greater Vancouver Board of Trade event, where he said being president gave him insight into how quickly the world is changing.

Globalization, automation, the internet and social media have accelerated the ability of some businesses, such as those in Silicon Valley, to rapidly expand, he said. But at the same time, these innovations have displaced some workers who used to lead secure middle-class lives and led to culture

Feds offer energy efficiency rebates for small businesses

Mia RABSON, Joan BRYDEN Citizen news service

OTTAWA — The federal government’s plan to ease the carbon-price burden on small businesses will include rebate payments to cover some of the cost of making energy-efficiency upgrades.

Environment Minister Catherine McKenna – who kicked off a month-long carbon-price tour at a Canadian Tire store in her Ottawa Centre riding Monday morning – said the final details of the plan are being worked out with business associations.

“I want it to be a program that isn’t highly bureaucratic, where you can make investments and get the money back right away,” she said.

An official confirmed afterwards the plan will include rebate payments.

The federal carbon price of $20 per tonne of carbon dioxide will start being charged April 1 on fossil-fuel inputs in Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and New Brunswick – the four provinces without an equivalent provincial carbon price.

The price goes up by $10 each year until it hits $50 a tonne in 2022, when the Liberals, should they be re-elected in the fall, have promised to review the program to determine where the price goes after that.

The Liberals expect to bring in about $2.3 billion over the next 12 months in the four provinces having the levy imposed on them, and McKenna says every cent will be returned to the provinces where it was raised.

About 90 per cent of the money will go to individuals when they file their income taxes in the coming weeks.

The remaining 10 per cent is earmarked for small businesses, municipalities, hospitals, universities and Indigenous communities to cover what they can’t pass on to consumers or their own taxpayers through higher prices.

The government expects to provide at least $1.46 billion over five years to small and mediumsized businesses, including $155 million in the fiscal year starting April 1. Hospitals, municipalities and other community organizations will share at least $727 million over five years, starting with $73 million in 2019-2020 fiscal year.

Monique Moreau, vice-president of national affairs for the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, said rebates for energy efficiencies might help companies that haven’t done much on that front already. But she also said that fewer than onefifth of the CFIB’s members fall into that category.

Energy-efficiency rebates, she said, can also be quite complicated and have in the past required spending on an energy audit up front. Banks also don’t want to lend money for these projects, she said, making it hard to finance the work before getting the rebate.

The CFIB doesn’t want a carbon tax at all, but Moreau said if the government is moving on it, there should be other measures to offset the financial hit for business, such as cutting payroll taxes like Canada Pension Plan contributions.

clashes, he said.

Current U.S. politics, Brexit and the rise of far-right nationalism in Europe can all be seen as responses to these forces, he said.

He said he worries about the sustainability of an economic order with such a vast wealth gap.

“You start getting extreme political movements in reaction,” he said, adding: “These changes are just beginning.”

Obama said he expects artificial intelligence to revolutionize the job market over the next 25 to 50 years, pushing out many high-skilled workers.

He expressed concern that countries are not well-prepared for the shift, although he said Canada is likely better positioned than the United States because it has a more robust social welfare system.

He also criticized the Republican party for embracing right-wing populism, and he traced it back to the late senator John McCain’s decision to select then-Alaska governor Sarah Palin as his running mate in the 2008 presidential race.

“That was the moment when the Republican party changed,” he said.

There has always been a strain of nativism and suspicion of elites in the party, he said, but Palin brought those attitudes to the fore and laid the groundwork for Trump’s presidency.

Obama’s talk in Vancouver had its lighter moments, too. Asked about the AmericanCanadian relationship, he said the two countries will always be friends and the tensions between them can often feel “incidental” on the scale of global politics.

He recalled his final meeting with Justin Trudeau, when the prime minister only wanted to talk about timber agreements. Obama stressed that he understood forestry was important to Canada, but he joked that it was of slightly less consequence than other issues he was grappling with.

“I’m like, ‘Dude, I got Syria,”’ Obama recalled, to laughs from the crowd.

“The Paris Accord. The Iran nuclear deal. And this is how you want to spend our time? Timber?”

“Again, I understand (timber agreements) are important here, but it’s not India and Pakistan.” — With files from Laura Kane

How Trump’s school hid his transcript

news service

Marc FISHER Citizen

In 2011, days after Donald Trump challenged President Barack Obama to “show his records” to prove that he hadn’t been a “terrible student,” the headmaster at New York Military Academy got an order from his boss: find Trump’s academic records and help bury them.

The superintendent of the private school “came to me in a panic because he had been accosted by prominent, wealthy alumni of the school who were Mr. Trump’s friends” and who wanted to keep his records secret, recalled Evan Jones, the headmaster at the time.

“He said, ‘You need to go grab that record and deliver it to me because I need to deliver it to them.’”

The superintendent, Jeffrey Coverdale, confirmed Monday that members of the school’s board of trustees initially wanted him to hand over President Trump’s records to them, but Coverdale said he refused.

“I was given directives, part of which I could follow but part of which I could not, and that was handing them over to the trustees,” he said. “I moved them elsewhere on campus, where they could not be released. It’s the only time I ever moved an alumnus’s records.”

The former NYMA officials’ recollections add new details to one of the allegations that Michael Cohen, the president’s longtime personal lawyer and fixer, made before Congress last week. Cohen, who told the House Oversight and Reform Committee that part of his job was to attack Trump’s critics and defend his reputation, said Trump ordered him “to threaten his high school, his colleges and the College Board to never release his grades or SAT scores.”

Trump has frequently boasted that he was a stellar student, but he declined throughout the 2016 campaign to release any of his academic records, telling The Washington Post then, “I’m not letting you look at anything.”

Last year, he said he

“heard I was first in my class” at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton business program, where he finished his undergraduate degree, but Trump’s name does not appear on the school’s dean’s list or on the list of students who received academic honors in his class of 1968.

I moved them elsewhere on campus, where they could not be released. It’s the only time I ever moved an alumnus’s records.

— Jeffrey Coverdale,

superintendent

Trump spent five years at the military academy, starting in fall 1959, after his father – having concluded that his son, then in seventh grade, needed a more discipline-focused setting – removed him from his Queens private school and sent him upstate to NYMA.

At the academy, which modeled its strict code of conduct after the nearby U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Trump loved competing to win contests for cleanest room or best-made bed. Although not known as an academic standout, he was a prominent baseball player and was well-known on campus for bringing women there and showing them around.

Despite getting a series of Vietnam War medical deferments for bone spurs in his feet, Trump has said his military academy background provided “more training militarily than a lot of the guys that go into the military.”

Trump told The Post during the 2016 campaign that he “did very well under the military system. I became one of the top guys at the whole school.”

He said his parents originally sent him there because “I was a wise guy, and they wanted to get me in line.” Jones and Coverdale declined to disclose the contents of his transcript.

Those who were aware of the 2011 effort to conceal Trump’s records said the request set off a frenzy at the military academy.

“I know for a fact that in 2011, the decision was made by the superintendent to remove those records and secure them so no one on the staff could get to them,” said Richard Pezzullo, a graduate who worked closely with school officials in a drive to save the

school, which was then in financial distress. “People had been making inquiries, and there was a paramount interest in securing those records.”

The boarding school had no formal archive at the time. Jones said he combed through the basement of Scarborough Hall on the academy’s sprawling campus 60 miles north of New York and found the real estate mogul’s transcript in file cabinets containing student records.

“I don’t know if we should be doing this,” Jones recalled telling his boss. “He told me that several wealthy alumni, including a close friend of Mr. Trump, were putting a lot of pressure on the administration to put the record in their custody for safekeeping.”

Jones said he did not know whether the original request to remove Trump’s records from the files came from Cohen.

Coverdale declined to say where he hid Trump’s records or to identify the people who ordered him to pull them out of the school’s files. “I don’t want to get into anything with these guys,” he said. “You have to understand, these were millionaires and multimillionaires on the board, and the school was going through some troubles. But to hear, ‘You will deliver them to us’? That doesn’t happen. This was highly unusual.”

The White House did not provide a response to The Post’s request for comment Monday. Leaders of the academy’s board from that time also did not respond to requests for comment. Nor did Cohen or the school’s current superintendent, Jie Zhang. The academy closed in 2015 after filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, but it quickly reopened after a nonprofit entity led by a Chinese investor, Vincent Mo, bought it at a bankruptcy auction and said it would pay off the school’s $16 million debt.

Cohen said last week that he sent threatening letters to Trump’s schools, warning that “we will hold your institution liable” if any of his records are released. In his letter to the president of Fordham University, where Trump spent his first two years of college, studying business administration, Cohen demanded that the records be “permanently sealed” and said any release was “criminality,” which “will lead to jail time.”

Former U.S. president Barack Obama listens to a question from moderator Sophie Brochu following a speech before the Montreal Board of Trade on Tuesday in Montreal.

NEWS IN BRIEF

Mountie charged with assault causing bodily harm

NEW HAZELTON (CP) — A Mountie in northwestern British Columbia has been charged with assault causing bodily harm.

The charge follows something that happened at the New Hazelton detachment on Sept. 4.

Const. Eric Andrew Unrau was on duty at the time. He is to appear in court on March 22. No further details about the alleged assault were released.

Seniors with unrentable homes face speculation tax bills

VICTORIA (CP) — Seniors who own rustic cabins in a remote area near Vancouver say they face thousands of dollars in speculation taxes even though their properties are not suitable rental homes.

Retired school teacher Charline Robson says she lives in a basement suite in Burnaby but now faces a $6,000 speculation tax bill this year because the rustic cabin she inherited in the village of Belcarra is empty much of the year and not up for rent.

Robson, who says she already pays annual property taxes for the cabin of about $12,000, was at the legislature today, calling the tax ridiculous because her cabin is not insulated and does not have water, sewer or street service.

Opposition Liberal Leader Andrew Wilkinson says the Belcarra seniors are not property speculators, but they face the tax because their roughly finished cabins are not on the rental market.

Belcarra Mayor Neil Belenkie says efforts to exempt his community from the tax have been rejected by Finance Minister Carole James. The NDP government introduced the speculation and vacancy tax to reduce the number of empty homes in most B.C. urban areas.

Harbour seal shot with birdshot

VANCOUVER (CP) — A harbour seal that was shot in the face and injured by birdshot is being treated at the Vancouver Aquarium Marine Mammal Rescue Centre.

The aquarium says 23 pellets were embedded in the female seal’s face when she was found, emaciated and lethargic, on Vancouver’s Kitsilano Beach just over two week ago.

The wounds were beginning to heal, which leads veterinarians who treated the seal to believe she was shot many weeks ago.

The animal has been named Jessica Seal by the rescue centre, which doesn’t know yet whether she will regain enough eyesight to be released into the wild.

She is the fifth animal injured by gunshot that the aquarium has helped in recent years.

Last month, veterinarians from the aquarium performed surgery in Washington state on a pregnant seal that was shot in the head during a fishing derby. Dr. Martin Haulena, head veterinarian at the aquarium, says he fears conflicts between people and seals could increase because of suggestions that seals and sea lions are damaging salmon stocks, which are not supported by scientific evidence.

“The person who did this would have known they wouldn’t kill her with birdshot. It was intended to hurt her, and it did,” Haulena said in a news release. “The conflict on the water between humans and seals is not new – they want some of the same fish. I do worry people now feel more comfortable taking aim because they’ve been hearing seals are the bad guys, and they’re not.” Veterinary specialists assessed the seal on Friday to quantify her remaining vision and to remove some damaged teeth.

B.C. tightening civil forfeiture law to target organized crime

VICTORIA (CP) — The British Columbia government plans to strengthen its civil forfeiture law to better target drug crime and hidden assets.

Solicitor General Mike Farnworth says amendments to the civil forfeiture law introduced today in the legislature would expand the reach of the legal tools used to fight gangs and organized crime. He says the proposed amendments will require people accused of criminal behaviour to prove an asset involved in a civil forfeiture proceeding is not an instrument or proceed of crime. Farnworth says under the proposed amendments the onus will be on defendants to prove items seized in civil forfeiture cases came from legitimate sources.

He says the amendments will make the process more efficient and cost-effective, and ensure maximum amounts of forfeited funds are available to invest in community safety programs. Farnworth says the amendments are the first significant revisions of the civil forfeiture law in 13 years.

Highway 97 reopens after rock slide near Summerland

SUMMERLAND (CP) — About a month after a rock slide in British Columbia closed Highway 97 near Summerland, traffic is moving again on the only route along the west side of Okanagan Lake. The Ministry of Transportation says the road reopened Tuesday, two kilometres north of Summerland. The rock slide happened on Jan. 31, but crews kept the busy highway at least partially open until Feb. 2, when another rock fall forced a complete closure.

Ministry staff say the southbound slow lane, which is closest to the slope, remains closed to allow engineers to monitor the hillside for any additional movement as temperatures warm. A 90 km/h speed limit is also in place until further notice. More than 20,000 cubic metres of rock and debris were removed from the slope.

Trudeau hunkers down in Ottawa after second minister resigns over SNC-Lavalin

Joan BRYDEN Citizen news service

OTTAWA — Justin Trudeau hunkered down in the Prime Minister’s Office

Wednesday as he awaited what Liberals hope will be pivotal testimony today from his former principal secretary.

Liberals hope Gerald Butts will give them ammunition to fight back against accusations of political interference in the justice system.

One day after losing a second cabinet minister in less than a month over the government’s handling of the SNC-Lavalin affair, Trudeau cancelled planned events Tuesday in Regina to return to Ottawa for what his office called “private meetings” – including with Canada’s ambassador to Washington, David MacNaughton, a longtime political operative and adviser.

He’ll be huddled in private meetings again Wednesday when his longtime friend and most trusted aide gives his side of the SNC-Lavalin story to the House of Commons justice committee.

The committee is also scheduled to hear a second time from the top public servant, Michael Wernick, and the deputy minister of justice, Nathalie Drouin, both of whom figured prominently in former attorney general Jody WilsonRaybould’s explosive testimony last week. She accused Trudeau, his senior staff, Wernick and Finance Minister Bill Morneau’s office of inappropriately pressuring her to halt a criminal prosecution of SNC-Lavalin.

Trudeau’s urge to stay close to home came one day after Treasury Board president Jane Philpott quit cabinet, saying she no longer had confidence in the government’s handling of the SNCLavalin affair. Her departure followed that of her close friend Wilson-Raybould a month earlier.

After Wednesday’s testimony, a spokesman for the prime minister said Trudeau and his team will reflect on “next steps.” That is expected to include a statement from Trudeau – possibly as early as Wednesday but more likely not until Friday or early next week – offering his most comprehensive account yet of how the government handled the SNCLavalin matter and why.

“We’ll be listening carefully to the voices, testimonies, and opinions expressed,” Cameron Ahmad said.

“There will be more to say in the coming days and weeks as we continue to reflect on next steps.”

Since the furor erupted a month ago, Trudeau has offered only general deni-

als of any wrongdoing. He has said he totally disagrees with Wilson-Raybould’s characterization of events. He has insisted his government balanced the need to respect the independence of the judicial system with its concern about the potential loss of 9,000 jobs if the prosecution of the Montreal engineering giant went ahead. If it’s convicted, SNCLavalin could be banned from federal contracts for 10 years.

It appears Trudeau has been waiting for Butts to do the heavy lifting of directly contradicting Wilson-Raybould’s version of events before weighing in more fully himself.

Butts resigned from Trudeau’s office last month, insisting neither he nor anyone else in the Prime Minister’s Office had done anything wrong but saying he didn’t want to be a distraction from the government’s work. His letter of resignation suggested that he’d be freer to defend his reputation – and presumably that of Trudeau himself and his other senior staff – from outside the Prime Minister’s Office.

After Wilson-Raybould’s testimony last week, Butts asked to appear before the justice committee, where he said he would “produce relevant documents.”

He is expected to back up his version of events with emails, text messages and other documentation, much as WilsonRaybould did in her testimony.

Wilson-Raybould testified last week that she was relentlessly pressured last

Official charged in shipbuilding leak to plead not guilty, lawyer says

Lee BERTHIAUME Citizen news service

OTTAWA — The second public official accused of leaking cabinet secrets about a $700-million naval contract intends to fight the charge, according to his lawyer.

The assertion by Matthew Matchett’s lawyer was made on Tuesday during a brief court hearing, the first since the suspended Public Service and Procurement Canada official was charged with one count of breach of trust last month. Lawyer Matthew Day told the court that his client, who did not appear in person, plans to plead not guilty and seek a jury trial as the case, which is expected to have many parallels to Norman’s, moves through the judicial system.

Matchett is the second person after Vice-Admiral Mark Norman, the military’s former second-incommand, accused of leaking information about the contract between the federal government and Davie Shipbuilding in Quebec.

The contract, negotiated by Stephen Harper’s government and finalized by Justin Trudeau’s new government in 2015, involved leasing a converted civilian ship to the navy as a temporary support vessel.

Norman has denied any wrongdoing. The court has so far heard several days of pre-trial arguments as Norman’s lawyers fight for access to thousands of government documents related to the case.

A formal trial is scheduled to begin in August. Day told the court he received a “voluminous” amount of documents from the Crown that would need to be reviewed.

fall to intervene with the director of public prosecutions to ensure a remediation agreement was negotiated with SNC-Lavalin. A remediation agreement is a kind of plea bargain that would force the company to pay stiff penalties but avoid a criminal conviction that could financially cripple it.

As attorney general, Wilson-Raybould could legally have instructed the director of public prosecutions to negotiate one with SNC-Lavalin.

Much of the controversy hinges on Wilson-Raybould’s dual roles as attorney general (nominally a legal official with a responsibility only to the law) and as justice minister (a political executive who answered to the prime minister).

She told the committee that she believes the pressure she faced was inappropriate but not illegal.

Wilson-Raybould also accused Wernick, the country’s top public servant with a duty to remain non-partisan, of issuing “veiled threats” in mid-December that she could lose her post as justice minister and attorney general if she didn’t acquiesce.

She was moved to the veterans-affairs portfolio in a small cabinet shuffle a month later – a move she believed was punishment for her refusal to intervene in the SNC-Lavalin case.

Wernick, who previously testified that he believes no one improperly pressured Wilson-Raybould, is expected to address that accusation Wednesday.

CP PHOTO

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau participates in an discussion at the Prospectors & Developers Association of Canada Convention in Toronto on Tuesday.

Trudeau’s brand forever tarnished

So many twists and turns already in the SNC-Lavalin scandal threatening to sink the Good Ship Trudeau in this October’s federal election.

A month ago, Justin Trudeau and the Liberals looked like a lock to win a second majority. Now that’s looking increasingly unlikely.

Jody Wilson-Raybould’s damning testimony before the justice committee last week, supported with texts, emails and meeting notes, showed Trudeau and his inner circle of bureaucrats and cabinet ministers leaning hard on Wilson-Raybould in her role as justice minister and attorneygeneral to make the criminal proceedings against the Quebec engineering giant go away. Instead of a criminal conviction that could ruin the company and put thousands out of work, Trudeau wanted WilsonRaybould to overrule her legal bureaucrats in favour of an out-of-court settlement for corporations called a deferred prosecution agreement.

Wilson-Raybould refused and felt she was pressured for months to change her mind before being demoted to veterans affairs in a cabinet shuffle.

On Monday, Jane Philpott, the head of the Treasury Board and another powerful woman in Trudeau’s cabinet, tendered her resignation, citing a lack of confidence in how Trudeau and his government have

dealt with the SNC-Lavalin matter.

Trudeau and his supporters have shot themselves in the feet so many times over the last few weeks that it’s a miracle they’re still walking. It continued Monday in the wake of Philpott’s resignation, with finance minister Bill Morneau suggesting Philpott only quit because she and Wilson-Raybould are friends, not because of morals, legal propriety or anything important, and another Liberal MP insisted SNC-Lavalin is “entitled” to that deferred prosecution agreement.

Meanwhile, Trudeau held a Donald Trump-like egoboosting rally in Toronto on Monday night that was as weird, shallow and removed from reality as Trump’s stage rants.

Meanwhile, Trudeau held a Donald Trump-like ego-boosting rally in Toronto on Monday night that was as weird, shallow and removed from reality as Trump’s stage rants.

These self-inflicted wounds could have been completely avoided if, in the wake of the first Globe and Mail story about the Prime Minister’s Office pressuring WilsonRaybould, Trudeau had owned it with some sunny ways straight talk.

He should have fessed up to pressuring Wilson-Raybould on this legal matter but stressed that finding a political solution to

a legal matter when thousands of jobs hang in the balance is responsible governing, not some underhanded effort to overturn the rule of law. The justice minister’s job is to deliver political solutions to legal matters when instructed to do so by the prime minister and WilsonRaybould did that during her term, from legalizing recreational cannabis to the assisted dying law. If she wasn’t up to working with him to find a political solution to this legal matter in her role as justice minister, then a new justice minister was needed.

I heard Minister WilsonRaybould loud and clear when she told me the criminal proceedings against SNC-Lavalin would proceed, Trudeau should have said, but that doesn’t exempt me from my duty and the duty of my government, including Minister Wilson-Raybould, to find a solution that still respects the legal process while protecting jobs. In the same way that we can protect the environment while growing the economy, we can protect the sanctity of the law and help workers.

Far too late to say that now.

Today, Trudeau’s longtime friend and

The real emptiness problem

Iam unconvinced we have an empty homes problem in Vancouver, but I know we have an empty stomachs problem.

In a city of such affluence and conspicuous consumption, do we even need to have a discussion on child hunger? Seems sadly so, because our elected representatives at the local, provincial and federal levels can’t resolve their petty jurisdictional issues or biases on how to deliver basic sustenance to those unable to look after themselves. We spend ridiculous sums on ridiculous things by comparison. The bickering and buck-passing are disgraceful emblems of bureaucracy gone mad.

The child headed into the day without food is the child who will run low on energy, lose focus on schoolwork, eat the most available food for immediacy and largely fall further and further behind in the mercenary landscape that sorts winners and losers all too early in life. Health and wealth outcomes are… well, we know what they are. Enough said. I was lucky beyond belief to dodge the worst of that plight. My single mother was at work when I awoke – besides, we had little food in our fridge and cupboard – and from the outset I got off to school hungry most mornings and was the scrawny kid in class. But by many middays as a kid I had reconstituted my system thanks to Mrs. Ota, Mrs. Scherbaty, Mrs. Dupuis, Mrs. Bertucci or Mrs. Ringbauer. Schoolmates would share a sandwich or fruit, and I could name a dozen of them

TO THE POINT

KIRK LAPOINTE

without pressing my memory.

You remember these people all your life.

But that informal community doesn’t exist as much in this age of children not routinely walking to and from school, playing out front or in a backyard until the sun sets and knowing the families on the street or in the building. We need to deal with the issues differently than to expect our neighbourhoods to look after their own.

I’ve learned that child hunger in this city is not as clearly tied as one might think to income levels. So many households are stretched, holding down long workdays to meet the expensive demands on their lives – even in neighbourhoods we might think are fine, there will be hunger, albeit less evident. I know, because I’ve asked the experts in this city about it and I’ve seen the children in question.

When I ran for office in 2014, I was invited by many wonderful people into their houses to talk to 20 or 30 people and tell them my story and how I wanted to do something about this awful symptom of our city. Many saw the need but, not wrongly, wondered if this was the city’s job. I agree it may not be, but until we have a solution, the city is the last line

of defence; while the politicians write letters and point fingers elsewhere, children aren’t fed. Enough already.

I mentioned the issue enough in those houses that my opponents learned about my plan, one morning sprang a funding announcement for school lunch funds, and caught our team off guard without a policy proposal in hand. In hindsight, just getting word around had some effect, because those dollars are still in the system through our schools. The school delivery method is a weak one: on weekdays, on school days, through relatively expensive amenities of a school kitchen. As the city reviews the cost of these programs, it needs to look at deficiencies of the delivery schedule: weekends, lengthy school breaks, professional development days, even snow days. Hunger never takes a day off.

There also has to be something to recognize the stigma of poverty prevents many from asking for help. Some offer hungry kids vouchers to discreetly use at stores in the morning or at midday. Morning and midday food trucks some distance from school could be an option.

Vancouver city council will hear shortly about options for more efficiency. Councillors recently gave themselves $30,000 in research funds, so they’d better not cut the food money for children until there is a bigger, better plan – perhaps the arrival of the province’s anti-poverty strategy –or I will be among many howling, full-throat, full-stomach.

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former top advisor in the Prime Minister’s Office, Gerald Butts, will testify before the justice committee, meaning this situation is going to get worse before it gets better for the Liberals.

Looking forward, Trudeau’s tenure as leader and prime minister is shaky at best. A different prime minister, whether Liberal or Conservative, Jean Chretien or Stephen Harper, would have wielded their power by fearlessly firing Wilson-Raybould and booting her out of caucus long before it got to this point.

The team has lots of players and but only one gets to call the plays. Don’t like it? The door is right there. Not to condone that way of running government but that’s the way Canadian politics at the federal and provincial level has traditionally been done, regardless of the party in power.

Trudeau wrote his own ticket that he was better than his predecessors, better than his own father, and that his politics were kinder and gentler. It worked for nearly four years but now he’s being held to that higher standard and he’s being found lacking. The only question now is whether it will spell the end of his political career or whether he’s got the political skill to climb out of this hot mess.

Either way, sunny ways will never be as bright and warm as it once was.

— Neil Godbout,

Editor-in-chief

‘A difficult time’

Two federal cabinet ministers and a key B.C. MP parried questions Monday morning in Victoria about the scandal surrounding their government. It’s all in hand.

Former attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould is a respected colleague. She’s going through a difficult time.

So are we. Official processes are in the works.

So let’s talk about what we’re here for (delivering $5.23 million to fight gun and gang violence).

A few minutes later, things got much worse. It is emphatically not in hand.

A “difficult time” doesn’t begin to describe the situation.

The official processes can’t keep up with the fallout.

So let’s keep talking about a scandal that is riveting the country even more this week than when it transfixed the nation last week.

Jane Philpott’s resignation as head of treasury board on several points of principle over WilsonRaybould’s treatment turns the dial well past the boiling point on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government. The “we’re doing business as usual” approach just doesn’t cut it.

Border Security and Organized Crime Reduction Minister Bill Blair and National Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan did the best they could with that line at a legislature news conference a few minutes before Philpott quit.

Asked about Wilson-Raybould’s future in the federal Liberal caucus, Blair said he had the privilege of working with her for several years and had “enormous respect for her and the work she has done.” He said there would be full consideration of all matters before any decisions are made.

Sajjan said it was important that Wilson-Raybould be allowed to speak (which she did emphatically to the justice committee last week), and more chances will come.

He made the mildest attempt possible to counter her stance. Wilson-Raybould is standing on the position that she was inappropriately pressured to make a prosecution decision about SNC-Lavalin for political reasons relating to potential job losses.

Sajjan said it was important to note that the federal Liberal government “will always stand up for jobs across the country,” while at the same time respecting due process. Then he started deflecting away from the drama, just moments

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before it got even more dramatic.

“People elected us to focus on issues. We’re here to continue to work for our constituents… Today’s announcement is just another example of that.”

Federal Liberal MP Gordon Hogg was also on hand. Interviewed after Philpott’s resignation landed, he stressed the processes in place to get the government through this crisis.

He is much closer to WilsonRaybould than the two cabinet ministers are. Unlike cabinet meetings, she still attends meetings of the B.C. caucus, which Hogg chairs.

He said she contributes and is “bright, talented and engaging.”

“She’s going through a difficult time now, as we all are, trying to get to the information we all need. There are so much subjective assumptions going around now, so many things that are not based on facts.”

He said there is still lots of due process to go through.

The ethics commissioner has launched an investigation into the matter and the justice committee that heard the former attorney general still has to report.

“There’s certainly a lot of uncertainty at this point, but I expect that going through that process we’ll have complete information we need and the information the prime minister needs to make a good, well-informed decision.”

Hogg said the processes now in play that weren’t there in the beginning will produce good results.

Speaking for 18 Liberal MPs from B.C. — including the woman at the centre of the storm — Hogg said: “We’ve had meetings and the message I’m giving you is the message that we have — we want to make sure we have — all the information necessary to make a good decision on this, and we don’t have that information yet.”

But Philpott was in exactly that position, as well.

And she decided the processes weren’t going to produce anything that would ease her profound ethical concerns about how WilsonRaybould was treated.

So she quit.

Every Liberal MP today is nervously wondering how many of their respected, talented and engaging colleagues are on the verge of reaching the same conclusion.

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IN THE FAST LEYNE LES LEYNE

Avoid relying on ‘Dr. Google’

Christopher KELLY, Marc EISENBERG Citizen news service

Everyone occasionally experiences new symptoms that can’t be readily explained or ignored. In most cases, people seek initial medical guidance from the one source they consider authoritative, available, trustworthy and nonjudgmental.

We are, of course, talking about Google – which, for many adults, has become a de facto primary care doctor.

Who can blame them? Seeing a real doctor is often too inconvenient, timeconsuming and, for Americans, expensive to justify unless you believe your health is in serious danger. The need for free and reliable health information has become especially urgent. But is the advice available online actually practical – or even accurate? And how well do people without medical degrees navigate the seemingly endless, often contradictory stream of online health information?

In our experience, the answer is: not so well. By the time they reach our offices, most patients have already researched their symptoms online and reached some conclusions about the likely cause. They’re often completely wrong.

A quick trip to your favorite search engine illustrates how easily the process of selfdiagnosis can go off the rails. Most people seeking information about their symptoms aren’t trying to become experts but just want practical guidance and advice. A top Google search result for “headache,” however, begins with the unhelpful (and questionable) assertion that there are “over 150 types of headaches” – then attempts to catalogue many of them.

Medicine is also complicated, and online articles often can’t account for the unique context in which each symptom occurs. Are you a healthy 25-year-old experiencing a cough after travelling abroad? Or a 65-year-old smoker with a cough who just started a new blood pressure medication? The evaluations are completely different for these two patients – though the search results may be the same. Some popular sites are even more misdirected. A Top 10 search result for “cough” offers lung cancer and cystic fibrosis as the first two explanations. Though one should always consider these possibilities, they’re almost always much further down the list.

People also don’t always know the exact symptom or keyword they should be searching for. A simple web search for “bloating,” for example, yields plenty of articles that recommend eating more slowly and avoiding milk-based foods. This advice is helpful if your bloating is from too much air in your guts, as it often is, but much less so if it’s from fluid in your abdomen, which can be a sign of liver disease or ovarian cancer. Only after seeing a doctor and undergoing a physical examination would you know that what you’re experiencing is actually called “ascites.”

Most alarmingly, we’ve noted a growing amount of medical misinformation online. Many articles are written not to inform and guide readers but rather to generate revenue or promote certain causes. Unfortunately, it’s not always easy to discern a website’s intentions.

Numerous health-care-based websites appear to exist primarily to attract clicks and then show ads for medications or supplements. Since these platforms depend on advertising revenue, they’ve been carefully optimized to obtain high rankings in search engines – but not necessarily to provide good information.

For example, the top search result for “headache” currently features multiple banner and video advertisements for Emgality, a new medication for migraine that is recommended only for those who have not improved with other treatments. It also costs nearly $7,000 a year. Of course, there is no equivalent ad campaign for rest and hydration, which are more likely to alleviate a typical headache.

Major brands avoid Trump

Citizen new service

In a scene likely worth millions of dollars in free advertising, President Donald Trump displayed a spread of burgers from some of the country’s biggest fast-food chains inside the State Dining Room of the White House on Monday as hungry football players looked on.

With cameras rolling, he offered a presidential endorsement of “all-American” restaurants including McDonald’s, Chick-fil-a and Wendy’s.

“We like American companies, OK?” Trump said, standing before hundreds of Big Macs and chicken sandwiches alongside the North Dakota State football team. “Go eat up. Enjoy yourselves, everybody.”

But the companies haven’t been quick to return the affection or attempt to cash in on the presidential product placement, with McDonald’s, Chick-fil-A and Wendy’s all remaining silent about Trump’s endorsements. When Trump held a similar event in January, Burger King was the only company to reference it on social media - by mocking Trump for misspelling the word hamburger in a tweet.

“[D]ue to a large order placed yesterday, we’re all out of hamberders,” Burger King tweeted on Jan. 15, a day after Trump honored the Clemson football team with Whoppers and Big Macs, adding that it was “just serving hamburgers today.”

The corporate reticence underscores the tense relationship between a polarizing president and top U.S. consumer brands. From Sharpies to Big Macs to Diet Cokes, companies behind some of the president’s favorite products have kept him at arm’s length even as he has lavished them with public praise and highlighted their products in the White House.

“It used to be that brands would love to get an endorsement from the president,” said Tim Calkins, who teaches marketing at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. “Now, if anything, I think these companies probably squirm a bit.”

Trump’s own divisive brand makes him a lessthan-ideal endorser for companies seeking to avoid the partisan fray, Calkins said.

Representatives of McDonald’s, Burger King and Chick-fil-a did not respond to multiple requests asking if they welcomed Trump’s endorsement. Newell Brands Inc., which produces the Sharpie pens Trump has praised while signing executive orders, also did not respond to multiple requests. White House officials also did not respond to requests for comment.

In the past, consumer brands have been eager to highlight their proximity to presidents, whose endorsements are especially significant because they are presumed to have access to the best products, said Nick Powills, CEO and chief brand strategist of Chicago-based No Limit

Agency.

When then-President Barack Obama visited restaurants in Washington, D.C., and abroad, the companies regularly highlighted the visits on social media and some still have menu items named after him.

“It was almost like winning a Michelin star,” Powills said of the presidential visits.

During a White House visit by the Boston Red Sox in 2014, slugger David Ortiz took a selfie with Obama on a Samsung smartphone. Samsung, which had an endorsement deal with Ortiz, tweeted out a photo of the “historic” moment, noting that it was “captured with his Galaxy Note 3.”

Presidents John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter each invited instructors from Evelyn Wood Reading Dynamics to give speed-reading courses to staff in the White House, a marketing coup for the company.

Consumers increasingly want companies to take action on political and social issues, according to a study published last week by Global Strategy Group. The survey found that eight in 10 consumers want companies to take a stand, and almost half said it would be appropriate for corporations to take a position against Trump.

On the other hand, there are a number of brands that have actively played up their closeness with Trump, including U.S. Steel, Boeing, Fox News and Foxconn. Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference last week, MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell said Trump was “chosen by God.”

And Trump is certainly not toxic to the thousands of supporters who have purchased his “Make America Great Again” hats and other campaign merchandise. Writers of pro-Trump books have lobbied White House aides to secure a presidential tweet, and the president’s shout-outs have helped propel several tomes to bestseller status.

But companies also have discovered the dangers of associating with a mercurial

president.

In early 2017, Harley-Davidson’s top executives visited the White House and showed off several motorcycles to Trump, who praised the company for making products in America. By 2018, Trump was publicly advocating for a boycott against Harley after the company announced it was shifting some of its production to Asia.

The company blamed tariffs resulting from Trump’s trade war with China and Europe. In January, Harley Chief Financial Officer John Olin told investors the tariffs would cost the company as much as $120 million in 2019.

“Many @harleydavidson owners plan to boycott the company if manufacturing moves overseas,” Trump tweeted in August. “Great!”

A company spokeswoman declined to comment beyond saying that “there was no boycott.”

Trump has also publicly attacked other private corporations, including Ford, General Motors, and the NFL. The president regularly attacks Amazon and CEO Jeff Bezos.

During his presidency, Obama’s impromptu stops at local establishments would often spark celebratory tweets from the businesses: “#presidentialswag” Taylor Gourmet tweeted in 2014; “delighted” said Politics & Prose in 2014; “Super honored!” Shake Shack said in 2015.

Trump has largely avoided Washington, D.C.’s restaurants and small businesses, opting instead for restaurants inside the Trump International Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue.

Powills said the lack of response from the fast-food companies highlighted by Trump in recent weeks striking.

“It’s unfortunate that that’s what we’ve come to,” said Powills. “No matter what, you’re at a celebration at the White House and it should be something you (promote). It’s too bad that silence is the answer.”

CITIZEN NEWS SERVICE PHOTO

A platter of fast food sandwiches awaits guests as President Trump welcomed the 2018 FCS Division I Football National Champions to the White House on Monday.

CITIZEN NEWS SERVICE PHOTO

President Donald Trump welcomed the 2018 FCS Division I Football National Champions the North Dakota State Bison to the White House on Monday.

Spruce

Kings look for Express ride to Round 2 of playoffs

PAGE 10

Skiers take to the slopes in Purden TECK North Zone event

Frank PEEBLES Citizen staff fpeebles@pgcitizen.ca

The temperatures dropped this past weekend and the ski racers also shot to the bottom as alpine action took the sunshine spotlight at Purden Mountain.

Two days of slalom and giant slalom events put a contingent of Prince George skiers on the podium. There was also plenty of room in the medals for their counterparts from the Cariboo and Bulkley Valley, as the Prince George Ski Club welcomed the Lightning Creek and Smithers ski clubs respectively.

The racer who took home the most gold was a local skier who calls Purden Mountain her home hill. Adree Brulotte took home four golds, winning all events in which she competed in the Under 14 (U14) Female division – two slalom competitions and two giant slalom competitions.

Other Prince George Ski Club teammates who climbed to the top of the podium included Isaac Hausot (three gold, U14 Male), Melinda Kobasiuk (three gold, U16 Female), Jacob Hoskins (three gold, U16 Male), and one gold each for Ella Francis (U16 Female), Jack Logan (U16 Male) and Connor Hausot (U12 Male) plus other colours of metal they earned

for their efforts. Picking up silver and bronze medals for the PGSC were Zoe Pohl (U14 Female), Ben Cook (U16 Male), Jamey Bachand (U14 Male), Sophie McCallum (U12 Female), Liam Kobasiuk (U14 Male), Smithers made it to the podium thanks to gold medal speeds from Cassidy Collingwood (U12 Female, two), Mary Grace Fitzmaurice (U12 Female), Sam Weinstein (U12 Male), and Liam Huxtable (U19, two).

Smithers picked up other colours from Chloe Collingwood (U14 Female), Dylan Hikisch (U12 Male), Ava MacDougall (U14 Female), and Chloe Sear (U12 Female).

Canadian skater Gogolev ‘a

Citizen news service

Stephen Gogolev of Toronto is barely 14 years old, but there is no childhood naivete to his skating.

The 2015 Canada Winter Games pre-novice figure skating champion has a keen sense of body awareness that belies his age, says Elvis Stojko, and will be one of his biggest strengths in years to come.

“I can tell when he’s skating, it’s not just a sense of ‘Oh, I can jump. Wee!’ and he’s just doing it,” Stojko, a former Canadian figure skating star, said. “I can tell he’s actually very connected with his body. He jumps like a little man, because his co-ordination is beyond his years, so he has the feel for it, which is going to help him later on.”

This week in Zagreb, Croatia, Gogolev is looking to become the first Canadian to climb the podium at the world junior figure skating championships since Nicolas Nadeau captured silver in 2016.

In his first season eligible to compete as a junior, Gogolev won the Junior Grand Prix Final in Vancouver in December. Not only was he the youngest champion in the history of the event – then 13 – he also broke the world junior records for both the free skate and the combined scores.

He followed that up with a silver medal at the Canadian senior championships in January in Saint John, N.B.

Gogolev had been on Stojko’s radar since he was landing triple Axels at age 10.

“Then just seeing him progress from there... he’s a phenom,” Stojko said.

The three-time world champion watched Gogolev with a keen eye

The Lightning Creek Ski Club, with its Williams Lake and Quesnel athletes, took gold thanks to Gareth Scrooby (U12 Male, three), Maggie Beaudoin (U12 Female), and Elliott Jarrett (U14 Male), plus other medal colours from Freya Jarrett (U16 Female), Emma Klapatiuk (U16 Female), and Adrian Scrooby (U14 Male).

Two Smithers skiers came out of the adult ranks to show the kids the lifelong opportunities of the sport. Cormac Hikisch took four gold and Jim D’Andrea took four silver as mentor racers in the Masters Division.

The only sweep of the weekend was when a trio of Prince George U16 Male skiers took all three

in Saint John, and said the body awareness he showed even in practice and warmup said plenty about the young star.

“I saw him miss a quad Salchow in his warmup, and I could tell it caught him off-guard, his shoulder went a little early before his foot fired,” Stojko said. “Then he reset himself (and landed it on the next attempt).

“I thought ‘He knows exactly what he’s doing, he knows exactly where he is.’ He’s a phenom. He

knows it all at a very early age.” Gogolev, who is coached by Lee Barkell at the Toronto Cricket, Skating and Curling Club, won’t be eligible to compete at the senior world championships until 2021, less than a year before the 2022 Olympics. But he’s already rewriting history. At 13, he became the youngest skater to land a quad Lutz, a quad Salchow and a quad toe loop in competition. And he did all three in the same program, winning the

junior Grand Prix in Slovakia last fall. He was also the first Canadian – at any age – to land a quad Lutz in competition. Gogolev reminds Stojko of a young Evgeni Plushenko, and not because of his blond hair and Russian roots.

“When I saw (Plushenko) for the first time when he 15, 16, he had that body awareness, on his triple Axel especially,” Stojko said. The one factor that could trip up the young skater is his inevitable

medals in the Sunday second run of the giant slalom, with Hoskins getting the gold, Logan taking silver and Cook earning the bronze.

For the coaches, officials and organizers of the PGSC, the extra benefit of hosting this event was the rehearsal it provided.

Purden Mountain will be the site of the U14 Provincial Championships less than two weeks from now.

The best skiers in the province from that age bracket will converge on the Prince George hill from March 15-17 and fans are encouraged to make the trip to cheer on the home racers, and get an early viewing of the national team members of the future.

growth spurt. At about 90 pounds, Gogolev was dwarfed by winner Nam Nguyen in Saint John. Nguyen had his own growth spurt struggles. He shot up soon after winning gold at the 2014 world junior championships. It took him a couple of seasons to adapt to his bigger and stronger body.

“I remember when I was 16, I was working up to triple Axel, and then in one summer I lost everything, I was down to double Axel, I could barely do it,” Stojko said.

“Because my timing completely changed. I had to work myself back up to it again.

“There is the growth spurt, but it’s the power change,” he added.

“You’ll gain weight, because the muscle will pack on, and you’ll gain power, so your timing... you’ll end up being a bit like popcorn, and it throws that gauge off.”

Gogolev’s body awareness should smooth the transition, Stojko said.

Canada has seven entries competing this week, two each in men, pairs and ice dance, and one in women.

Joseph Phan of Laval, Que., is the other men’s entry, while Alison Schumacher of Toronto is the lone entry in women’s singles.

Canada’s pairs teams are Brooke McIntosh of Toronto and Brandon Toste of Mississauga, Ont., and Gabrielle Levesque of Bridgewater, N.S., and Pier-Alexandre Hudon of Saint-Roc-Des-Aulnaires, Que.

The ice dance teams are Marjorie Lajoie of Boucherville, Que., and Zachary Lagha of St-Hubert, Que., and Alicia Fabbri of Terrbonne, Que., and Paul Ayer of Brossard, Que.

Stephen Gogolev celebrates his gold medal win following the junior men’s free skating program at the Grand Prix finals in Vancouver on Dec. 7.

Adree Brulotte of Prince George, centre, won gold in all four of her events in the U14 female division at the Purden TECK North Zone event over the weekend. Joining her on the podium were Ava MacDougall of Smithers in second and Zoe Pohl of Prince George in third.

Forget keeps it old-school for Team Ontario at Brier

Donna SPENCER Citizen news service

BRANDON, Man. — Wes Forget’s old-school backswing is part homage to his curling idols, but part practical too.

Swinging the 18-kg stone behind the body like a pendulum before sliding out of the hack may be circa 1980, but it hasn’t completely gone out of fashion.

A few men still do a variation of the wind-up, but Ontario’s second adds style to it.

Like the majority of curlers at the Canadian men’s championship, Forget uses the modern nolift delivery most of the time.

But Forget (pronounced FOURzhay) breaks out the backswing to peel guards from the front of the rings.

The 27-year-old from Kingston, Ont., tweeted on opening day of the Tim Hortons Brier “I throw with the backswing because of four people named Russ, Glenn, Wayne and Richard.”

“When you come from Ontario, if you were to name the top 10 curlers in the world to have ever played, you’re probably naming Wayne Middaugh, Glenn Howard, Russ Howard and Richard Hart, so why wouldn’t I throw the backswing?” Forget told The Canadian Press.

“It is old school. It is a bit of an homage to throw back to some of those older names and the way the game used to be played. Honestly, I think it’s a little bit easier to make peels with it.”

Canadian, world and Olympic champion Russ Howard did a double take in the broadcast booth in Brandon, Man., the first time he saw Forget getting air under his backswing.

“It was just so elegant and smooth,” the 63-year-old said. “He goes back farther than I ever did.”

Ontario won a third straight game to get to 3-2 in Pool B and put Scott McDonald’s foursome in better position to play in the championship round Thursday and Friday.

The top four teams in each pool at the conclusion of the round robin Wednesday night carry their records into the championship round, from which the four Page playoff teams emerge. Northern Ontario’s Brad Jacobs (6-0) and Brendan Bottcher’s wild-card team from Edmonton

(5-1) secured berths in the championship round from Pool A on Tuesday. Saskatchewan’s Kirk Muyres (4-2) was assured at least a tiebreaker. Manitoba’s Mike McEwen and Yukon’s Jon Solberg (3-3) were jockeying for the final berth in the pool.

Alberta’s Kevin Koe topped Pool B at 5-0 to secure a berth in the championship round. Defending champion Brad Gushue was 4-1 followed by Ontario, Nova Scotia’s Stuart Thompson and B.C.’s Jim Cotter all in the mix at 3-2. Done properly, the backswing

delivery requires less leg drive than the no-lift and more power is generated. Howard recommends the technique in his book “Curl To Win,” which Forget owns.

“That kind of affirmed my reasoning. I’m doing it. Russ Howard said so,” Forget said.

“When Wayne Middaugh picked up on my tweet and re-tweeted it, I was like ‘Yup.”’

Timing and mechanics have to be smooth and in sync, lest pieces of curling ice go flying at the bottom of the swing or Forget gets pulled off target sliding out of the hack by momentum gone awry.

“If you kick out before the rock gets there you’re in trouble,” Howard said.

“If the rocks gets there before you get there you’re in trouble. He’s very seamless with it.” Said Forget: “I wouldn’t say I wrecked any hacks, but you leave smaller and smaller divots in the ice as you practise it.

“When I was younger and trying to practise it, I would walk around and do this,” he added, gently swinging his right arm.

The main reason the backswing is considered vintage is curlers are now taught the sport at a younger age and don’t have the strength to heave 18 kg of granite behind them and control it, Howard pointed out.

“I recommended it because you can just throw it harder,” he said. Forget said he got the yips and parked the backswing for a time last year before Adam Kingsbury, who currently coaches the Brad Jacobs team, helped get it back.

“I just forgot, excuse the pun, how to do it,” Forget quipped. “He found some things in my delivery and squared it up and evened it out and it fixed everything.”

Forget’s skip is fine with his second’s wind-up as long as he makes the shot.

“I know it’s been inspired by some great Ontario curlers that Wes idolized when he was young,” McDonald said. “When Wes is throwing it well, it’s pretty effortless. It just comes down the ice at you like an arrow.”

Express shut out Kings, get first win in series

Ted CLARKE Citizen staff

tclarke@pgcitzen.ca

The Coquitlam Express is back on track in the BC. Hockey League playoffs. After hitting a three-game roadblock put up by the Prince George Spruce Kings that pushed Coquitlam to the cliff of no return, the Express fought off elimination with a 3-0 victory on home ice Tuesday night.

Chase Danol scored all three goals to give the Express its first win in the best-of-seven Mainland Division semifinal series, ending a 13-game playoff losing streak in the playoffs which dated back to 2015.

The Kings will get another chance to finish off the series in Game 5 Thursday night at Rolling Mix Concrete Arena. If Game 6 is needed, that would be played Saturday in Coquitlam, with Game 7 set for Prince George on Monday.

Clay Stevenson made 31 saves to earn his first career BCHL shutout. The Kings outshot the Express 31-25.

After an evenly-played scoreless first period, Danol got the Express offence stoked. The 20-year-old Bowling Green University recruit accepted a pass in the Kings’ zone, after Coquitlam defenceman Troy Robillard held the puck

in at the blueline with an extraordinary effort, and Danol finished with a toe-drag move in the slot that gave him an open shooting lane and he tucked a backhander in behind goalie Logan Neaton. The goal came 10:27 into the second period. Both goalies had to make key saves to keep it a one-goal game. Stevenson faced 17 shots in the second period and a majority of those came in the latter half of the period when the Kings were pressing for the equalizer.

Just before the buzzer, after some aggressive forechecking by the Nick Poisson-Ben PoissonChong Min Lee line, the rebound of a shot from Kings defenceman

THURSDAY’S GAME x-Langley at Chilliwack, 7 p.m. FRIDAY’S GAME x-Chilliwack at Langley, 7:15 p.m. SUNDAY, MAR. 10 x-Langley at Chilliwack, 7 p.m. Prince George (2) vs. Coquitlam (3) (Prince George leads series 3-0)

MONDAY’S RESULT Prince George 5 Coquitlam 2

SATURDAY’S RESULT Prince George 3 Coquitlam 2 (OT)

TUESDAY’S GAME Prince George at Coquitlam, 7:15 p.m.

THURSDAY’S GAME x-Coquitlam at Prince George, 7 p.m.

SATURDAY, MAR. 9 x-Prince George at Coquitlam, 3 p.m.

MONDAY, MAR. 11 x-Coquitlam at Prince George, 7 p.m. INTERIOR DIVISION Penticton (1) vs. Cowichan Valley (WC) (Series tied 1-1)

SATURDAY’S RESULT Penticton 4 Cowichan Valley 1

THURSDAY’S RESULT Cowichan Valley 4 Penticton 1 TUESDAY’S GAME Penticton at Cowichan Valley, 7 p.m.

WEDNESDAY’S GAME Penticton at Cowichan Valley, 7 p.m.

SATURDAY, MAR. 9 Cowichan Valley at Penticton, 6 p.m. MONDAY, MAR. 11 x-Penticton at Cowichan Valley, 7 p.m.

MAR. 13 x-Cowichan Valley at

Liam Watson-Brawn kicked high into the air and was about to drop into the crease with Lee in close proximity staring at an empty net. But before the Prince George winger could get his stick on the puck, Express defenceman Pito Walton batted it away.

The Express doubled the lead 4:37 into the third period with Lee in the penalty box serving a high-sticking call. Danol was standing behind the goal line when he chipped a shot that went in off the Neaton for his second goal of the game.

The Kings generated sustained pressure on their third powerplay chance and Stevenson came up with his best save of the night,

getting his blocker in the way of a Ben Brar shot after Brar was left alone in the deep slot with about eight minutes left.

Danol completed his hat trick with 44 seconds left and the Prince George net empty when he chased down Nick Bochen and forced him to overskate the puck deep in the Kings’ end.

Chilliwack, the regular-season champions, staved off elimination Tuesday in Langley with a 2-1 victory over the Rivermen. Langley leads that series 3-1 and will try to end the Chiefs’ season Thursday in Chilliwack. The winner of that series will face the Prince George-Coquitlam winner.

CP PHOTO

Team Ontario second Wes Forget prepares to throw the rock during a practice session at the Brier in Brandon, Man. on Tuesday.

Riverdale diner creating milkshake to honour Perry

MISSION, B.C. — The manager of a diner where Luke Perry filmed the television show Riverdale in Mission, B.C., says fans have been trickling in to reminisce about the actor since his death Monday.

Kelly Sullivan says the CW program based on the Archie comics filmed part of its first season at Rocko’s 24-Hour Diner before a replica set was built.

Perry, who played the role of Archie Andrews’ father Fred Andrews, died at age 52 after suffering a stroke.

Sullivan says the diner is thinking of creating a milkshake in Perry’s name but hasn’t settled on a flavour.

It already serves 46 flavours of milkshakes, with four named for Archie characters including a strawberry-apple pie Archie shake and cherry cola Veronica shake.

Perry had a prolific career but is best known for his role as wealthy teen rebel Dylan McKay on Beverly Hills, 90210, which ran from 1990 to 2000.

Sullivan says Riverdale fans have visited the diner since the show first aired but a few told her Monday they’d come sooner than planned because of the actor’s death.

“It’s a nice place to come and reminisce about him. He was a great actor and a lot of people followed him so it’s nice to come to a place that he actually came to and filmed at,” she said.

Perry had roles in a handful of films, including The Fifth Element, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, 8 Seconds and American Strays, appeared in HBO’s prison drama

This is the logo of Rocko’s Diner. The restaurant is used during the filming of Riverdale, a television show Perry appeared in most recently.

Oz as a televangelist convicted of fraud, and voiced cartoons including The Incredible Hulk and Mortal Kombat. He made his Broadway musical debut as Brad in the The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and starred on London’s West End in another stage adaptation of a film, When Harry Met Sally. In recent years he starred in the series Ties That Bind and Body of Proof.

The day he was hospitalized, Fox TV announced that it would be running a six-episode return of

90210 featuring most of the original cast, but Perry was not among those announced. On the original series, Perry’s character went from loner to part of a close-knit circle that included twins Brenda and Brandon Walsh (Shannen Doherty, Jason Priestley), but also endured a string of romantic, family and other setbacks, including drug addiction. Perry left the series in 1995 to pursue other roles, returning in 1998 for the rest of the show’s run as a guest star.

X-ray reveals hidden Baroque master’s art

Citizen news service

ROME — The Uffizi Galleries in Florence say an X-ray examination of a painting by Artemisia Gentileschi has revealed hidden artwork by the Baroque master. Infrared, ultraviolet and X-ray analyses of the painting, which depicts St. Catherine of Alexandria, have discovered a partial self-portrait underneath that’s “virtually identical” to another Gentileschi painting recently acquired by London’s National Gallery. The Uffizi, which owns five Gentileschi paintings, said the

analyses strongly indicate that in depicting the saint, Gentileschi combined self-portrait details with a portrait of a noblewoman. An admirer of Caravaggio, Gentileschi won rare success as a woman in the male-dominated 17th-century art world. She frequently depicted strong female heroines.

CITIZEN NEWS SERVICE OPIFICIO DELLE PIETRE DURE

This image shows an X-ray of the painting Santa Caterina d’Alessandria by Italian 17th century artist Artemisia Gentileschi, in Florence, that shows another image beneath.

Citizen news service

TORONTO — A documentary that aims to clear the name of a Quebecois flight attendant who was known as “patient zero” in the 1980s AIDS epidemic will make its world premiere at this year’s Hot Docs festival.

Killing Patient Zero is among 15 newly announced special presentations set for the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival, which runs April 25 to May 5 in Toronto.

Laurie Lynd directed the Canadian film, which looks at “the homophobia behind the headlines” of the epidemic.

Also making its world premiere at the festival is the Canadian doc Toxic Beauty by Phyllis Ellis, which looks at “the cosmetics industry’s ugly secrets.”

The other special presentations are either Canadian, international or North American premieres.

Other titles include Push by

Fredrik Gertten, in which a newly appointed UN specialist from Ottawa travels from Toronto to cities around the world to look at the issue of affordable housing.

The Corporate Coup D’Etat by Fred Peabody is a Canadian doc about democracy in the U.S., while Knock Down the House by Rachel Lears follows four women during the 2018 U.S. midterms, including rising Democrat star and New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

In Buddy, director Heddy Honigmann looks at the complex relationships between service dogs and their owners.

Director Jacqueline Olive “examines the lingering trauma of more than a century of lynching and continued racial violence” in Always in Season.

And Nothing Fancy: Diana Kennedy by Elizabeth Carroll is about a 96-year-old chef who’s been dubbed “the Mick Jagger of Mexican cooking.”

CITIZEN NEWS SERVICE PHOTO BY WILLY

Martin Cummins, from back row left, Skeet Ulrich, Luke Perry, Mark Consuelos, Lochlyn Munro, executive producer Jon Goldwater, and from front row left, executive producer Sarah Schechter, Robin Givens, Marisol Nichols, Madchen Amick, Nathalie Boltt and executive producer Roberto AguirreSacasa participate in the Riverdale panel during the CW Television Critics Association Summer Press Tour at The Beverly Hilton hotel last August. Perry died of a massive stroke Monday.

CITIZEN HANDOUT PHOTO

NORMAN LAWRENCE WRIGHT

June 30, 1956February 23, 2019

It is with great sadness the family of Norm Wright announces his passing on February 23, 2019. He will be deeply missed by his family and friends. He is survived by his wife Corrine, his daughter Michelle and his sons Adrian & Brandon. Norm’s greatest joy was spending time with his family. The long walks and debates on every topic.

LEN WALLINGTON

We announce the peaceful passing of Len Wallington in Prince George on February 26, 2019 at the age of 90. Survived by daughter & sonin-law Nancy Condon & Guy Kiland, and son Gerry Wallington, brother Gerry Wallington, brother-in-law Farrell (Audrey) Hannah and grandsons Jim (Emma) Condon & Kristian Kiland, great grandson James Condon and nieces & nephews in BC & Alberta. Predeceased by wife Doreen and granddaughter Laura Condon. Born and raised in Saskatchewan where he began his hockey career, Len was well-known in Vernon, BC for excellence in many sports including golf, (where he had 3 holes in one), baseball and hockey (especially the game in November of 1949 where he stunned the old Vernon arena crowd with 3 goals in 33 seconds playing for the Vernon Canadians). Late in life, he began cross-country skiing and was able to leave us all behind on the trails of Silver Star. He spent many happy years with wife Doreen on the fairways (& hazards!) of the Vernon Golf Club where they were life time members, and they also enjoyed walks with their dog Yogi. Len was a long time employee of BA Oil/Gulf Oil/Petrocanada, and also spent his hockey off-seasons working for the BC Forestry Service as an entomologist where he honed his Latin skills learning the names of insects & plants. Len’s family will miss our whistling “Will ‘o the Wisp” Wallington and his incisive brand of humour that he had right til the end. Many thanks to Dr Inban Reddy & Simone and the great staff at UHNBC, Nurse Next Door and the Prince George Chateau. Arrangements by Lakewood Funeral Home. No service by request, but donations appreciated to BC Heart & Stroke Foundation or the SPCA.

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