Prince George Citizen March 7, 2019 by Prince George Citizen

New trial ordered in shooting death

Mark

NIELSEN Citizen staff mnielsen@pgcitizen.ca

The B.C. Court of Appeal has ordered a new trial for a Vanderhoof man who was sentenced to four years in prison for the shooting death of his fiancee.

In a decision issued Wednesday, the court found B.C. Supreme Court Justice Paul Pearlman’s charge to the jury was “inconsistent and confusing” with regard to the elements of the two charges Kayne Sabbe Penner was facing.

As well as finding him guilty of careless use of the firearm, the jury also found him guilty of the more serious count of manslaughter – and it was on that charge that Penner was sentenced.

Penner, who was sentenced in September 2017, had been out on bail for much of the time since then, pending the outcome of the appeal. He will remain out on bail while waiting for a new trial.

He had been issued the term for the Dec. 20, 2012 shooting death of April Johnson, 18. Penner was handling a .22-calibre semiautomatic rifle within the confines of his cousin’s trailer home in the community west of Prince George when it went off. The bullet struck Johnson in the stomach and she later died in hospital.

Shortly after beginning to deliberate, the jury returned with two questions, the second being whether Penner could be found guilty of one charge without the other.

The Court of Appeal found the jury could have found Penner guilty of man-

slaughter solely on the essential elements for proving careless use and without considering whether there was a foreseeable risk of bodily harm which is “neither trivial nor transitory.”

Pearlman had conflated elements of the two offences when he gave his charge and then failed to take steps to determine the source of the jury members’ uncertainty.

“Had the judge done so, he would have been able to dispel that uncertainty and, perhaps, correct his charge,” the Court of Appeal said in the decision, written by Justice David Frankel and concurred by Justice Sunni Stromberg-Stein and Justice John Savage.

And that both Crown and defence counsels failed to raise that point when discussing with Pearlman how to best address the jury’s question was attributed to oversight rather than tactical reasons.

During the trial, the court heard that the rifle had been leaning against the home’s kitchen counter with the safety off when Penner picked it up. Although told it was unloaded, Penner later told police he was “checking it” and, in a video of the interview, he was seen motioning as if he was pulling back the rifle’s slide to check the chamber.

Penner said he did not see a bullet in the chamber but, as he was holding it horizontally, it went off. Johnson, who was getting ready to go target shooting, was standing by the home’s door a short distance away.

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

Deadline looms for bus service

Mark NIELSEN Citizen staff

The chances are dimming for realization of a privately-run bus service connecting Prince George to the Lower Mainland.

Gene Field of Merritt Shuttle Bus Service Ltd. said the Passenger Transportation Board has given him until Friday to get at least two buses licenced and insured or relinquish a permit to provide the service.

“I don’t think it’s going to happen,” Field said Wednesday.

MSBS was among a half-dozen applicants that won PTB permission in November to run long-haul services across B.C. It was granted through an expedited process in advance of Greyhound Canada pulling out of Western Canada.

The plan was to run eight 22-passenger shuttle-sized buses along four routes centred on Merritt but also serving Prince

George, Langley, Kamloops and Kelowna. Frequency of service along those routes would been at least three round trips a week.

MSBS had also won permission to run four 48-passenger buses twice a day between the Highland Valley Copper Mine and Merritt and Kamloops.

But since then, Field has had trouble securing investors and a bid to getting funding from various public bodies has fallen through.

Added to his woes, his partner in the venture suddenly died last week.

Field said he had asked for an extension to the start of May to give him time to restructure the business following his partner’s death but was turned down.

“A miracle could happen between now and Friday but that’s two days, so I don’t know,” Field said.

IIO investigating after man’s arm broken while fleeing police

Citizen staff

B.C.’s civilian-based police watchdog is investigating an incident in Prince George.

The Independent Investigations Office said Thursday it has been notified that a male arrested on Feb. 28 after trying to flee police suffered a broken arm and the agency is working to determine if there is a connection between the injury and the arresting officer’s actions.

Shortly before noon on that day, the officer was attempting to perform a traffic stop on Fifth Avenue near Ruggles Street.

“According to the RCMP, the male’s vehicle was involved in a collision with the marked police vehicle and the male driver attempted to flee on foot,” the IIO said.

“The officer was able to apprehend the male and arrest him.

“Shortly after the arrest, the male complained of pain and following a hospital visit, it was reported that the male had a fractured arm.”

The IIO investigates all officer-related incidents that result in serious harm or death, whether or not there is any allegation of wrongdoing.

District music festival winners honoured

Frank PEEBLES Citizen staff

fpeebles@pgcitizen.ca

The Prince George and District Music Festival has faded into history, leaving behind a list of medalists from its many disciplines and genres.

The winners from the Strings categories (please note, not all levels had competitors or those who attained medal-level scores) are as follows:

Community Orchestra

Drivers misusing disabled parking spots

Frank PEEBLES Citizen staff

fpeebles@pgcitizen.ca

Karl Contreras is one of many Prince George drivers with mobility challenges such that he has a placard allowing him to park in the spots designated by law for certain people – and only certain people – to use.

A small segment of the local population has been choosing to park in those stalls despite not having the enabling placard. Contreras can’t help but notice them, because they oust him from those spots. When he calls them on it, they are almost always – and this surprised him at first, but not anymore – rude and selfrighteous about it.

“When I go to other cities, I never run into this problem, but here in Prince George it is constant and widespread and there is this air of entitlement about it,” he said.

One driver he confronted turned the music up loud in the cab of the vehicle to drown out his protests.

Others have simply said “it’s cold out” or “I’m tired today” to excuse their use of the designated spots.

The most frequent dismissal he hears is “I’m just going to be a couple of minutes.”

He said one elderly couple called over their shoulder as they walked away that “we’re old, we are entitled” so he shouted back “age is not a disability.”

Contreras has even gotten to know some repeat offenders, the regulars, if you will, and they take even less kindly to his protests.

“I got spat at by one of them,” he said.

“He rolled his window down, spat at me, and rolled his window back up. One guy wanted to fight me; he actually offered me a fight over it.

“And not once, not a single time, have I ever heard anyone say sorry for doing it, or vacate the spot for me.”

The authorities should also be apologizing, he said, because there is no effort to enforce the rules.

The problem occurs frequently at the school when he’s transporting his child to kindergarten. He has gotten only what he describes as empty platitudes from the principal about mounting a response to these drivers.

Once, he and another with a placard were both shut out of their rightful parking stalls at the same time by drivers at the school who did not return in a timely manner. Kindergarten students cannot be released from school except into the care of a pre-approved adult, so neither Contreras nor the other parent could access the school to retrieve their

Don’t

TKarl Contreras shows his Disabled Persons’ Parking Permit. He is concerned about how many able bodied drivers park in the

He rolled his window down, spat at me, and rolled his window back up. One guy wanted to fight me...

— Karl Contreras

children. Eventually Contreras got the aid of another parent to hold him steady and slowly over the icy conditions to the door and got to the classroom but the other driver’s limited mobility was such that other arrangements had to be made, once Contreras alerted the teacher to the impasse outside. It also happens frequently at shopping centres and grocery stores, he said, and when a store manager has to consider losing a customer – even one who openly flouts the parking laws and common morality – they all too often turn a blind eye.

The City of Prince George reported some good news, though. Contrary to Contreras’s belief, the disability parking stalls at shopping centres can absolutely be enforced by the city’s bylaw officers.

“Parking control looks for these types of offenses regularly on their patrols of streets and City lots and parkades,” said city hall spokesperson Michael Kellett.

“There were 56 tickets issued in 2018.

There is no legal difference whether it occurs on a private lot or city lot, however city staff only respond to concerns on private property when requested to do so, due to the availability of resources. All types of parking complaints can be registered by the calling the City at 311 or by phoning Bylaw Services during regular business hours at 250-5617622.”

Contreras knows that when ineligible drivers impose themselves on these special parking spots, they often take much more than the minute they claim they are going to be but they are often long gone by the time an officer can respond.

But, he said, it is such a chronic issue that he felt it would be well worth a city bylaw officer’s enforcement time to simply pick random shopping centres and wait for offenders.

Perhaps an enforcement blitz might dissuade such able-bodied drivers from taking advantage of spots for those certified to be in long-term pain and/or unable to move as easily.

“Nobody asks to be disabled,” Contreras said, adding that an application to the People In Motion agency, with a detailed doctor’s explanation, has to be made to get the placard and a fee must also be paid to have one.

“This is people’s lives, we’re talking about. Being in pain two-thirds of my day, and then having to confront jerk drivers over this, well, it’s frustrating to say the least, it has even been a threat to me, and it just makes it all worse.”

get hooked by phishers

he train ran a few times each day behind our townhouse in Burnaby.

Angry, slow-rolling thunder carried loads of freight to and from nearby industry. Iron giants screeched and hammered along, about an egg-toss from our living room – should a person be so inclined. I walked the tracks daily on my way to and from the bus, my schoolbooks in arms, and again on the weekends with my fishing rod.

The backwoods beauty of the central B.C.’s Dean River system splashed through my memory, but now it was the gurgling putridity of the sooty, black Brunette River. It was accessible via an urban labyrinth of under-freeway culverts, train bridges and the occasional shopping cart filled with old car batteries. The river oozed brown bubbly goop, but I still managed to catch a few trout out of its root beer spillways, but didn’t dare eat them.

As I unhooked one of them, he smiled insidiously, as if the joke was on me. He was freed from the filth of the city. In 1975 not everyone was as fond of fishing as we were, but nobody had ever heard of phishing – a term yet to be conjured. Nearly always attempted by email, phishing is the deliberate, fraudulent effort to trick a reader in to thinking that the sender is a legitimate, trustworthy entity. Once the trust is garnered, the sender directs the reader to a bogus website and draws sensitive information out of them, such as usernames, passwords and credit card details.

With this in hand, well, Bob’s not your

IT’S ONLY MONEY

MARK RYAN

uncle, but he’s bobbing for your money.

Initially these phishing expeditions came with giveaway calling cards, fairly easy to detect to the careful eye. A fuzzy logo, a bad English translation or a ridiculous signature line, such as: “Sincerely, The Internet Department.”

These telltale bogusness indicators were a reflection of the fact that most of the scams originated from overseas locales, where budding language skills mixed gingerly with organized crime cells in poorly-regulated regions. But these scams are getting more and more sophisticated.

More than one billion people had their data compromised worldwide last year.

Just in case I haven’t shook the warm fuzzies off you yet, George Orwell turned out to be prophetic after all. It wasn’t 1984, but just a few decades later when his vision of an interactive screen in every room came true. The devices are monitored 24/7 by an all-knowing, ruthless big brothers, bent upon harvesting our thoughts, and using fine-tuned Pavlovian rigour to then puppet-string our activities.

The big brother envisioned in the famous 1984 Superbowl ad for Apple, is here. But rather than the ominous, scratchy black and white screen and grey-toned orcs we are in fact being

Special forces looks to change recruiting strategy

news service

Lee BERTHIAUME Citizen

OTTAWA — The Canadian Forces are considering whether to recruit elite special-forces soldiers straight off the street rather than forcing them to follow the traditional route of first spending several years in the military.

The idea, which is still being debated, comes as Canada’s special forces – and the military as a whole – look at radical new ways to attract and retain people with the skills and experience needed to fight tomorrow’s wars.

That includes not just computer experts, for example, but also those with different ethnic and cultural backgrounds and language skills, as the special forces aim to operate more effectively in different parts of the world.

“This is not about achieving set quotas or anything else,” Maj.-Gen. Peter Dawe, commander of the Canadian Special Operations Forces Command, told The Canadian Press in an exclusive interview. “From a hard-operational perspective, do we have the right mix of people with the right sort of background, education, language, ethnicity, gender... that will allow us to do what our government expects us to do and will expect us to do in the future?”

Canada has about 2,000 special-forces members whose units include Joint Task Force 2, the Canadian Special Forces Regiment, a special helicopter detachment and a unit that specializes in responding to biological, chemical and nuclear incidents.

The government’s defence policy calls for an additional 600 special-forces members amid a realization of the growing importance of special forces to modern militaries.

Canada currently has about 120 special forces soldiers in Iraq and smaller teams working with counterparts in several other countries, including Belize, Jamaica, Niger and Malaysia.

More diverse special forces would make it easier to make connections in different parts of world, understand the environment, interact with power brokers and figure out a way to respond to changing circumstances, Dawe said.

At the same time, he said expectations within society are changing as young people look at different opportunities available to them, which requires the Forces to make it as attractive as possible to join.

Anyone who wants to join the special forces is required to have at least two years in uniform, though they are often required to attain other qualifications that require more time.

Dawe said some “really hard-charging, highachieving individuals like varsity athletes and super-talented folks out there on civilian street” are interested in the special forces, but they don’t want to spend several years in the regular military before applying.

“So one of the things we would like to look at is whether there is scope to accelerate that, because there is a qualitative dimension that we might not be exploiting or tapping into as well as we could.”

monitored by cutesy little social media apps. And the biggest of big brothers, is a dorky-looking computer nerd, who looks like the millennial next door.

Our internal security systems at RBC regularly test us with mystery phishers, and I must admit to having been fooled by them recently on what appeared to be a delivery notice from a well-known internet retailer.

More and more our security teams, and all staff, are required to exercise something beyond everyday vigilance.

Our chief privacy officer (yeah, we have that) recently sent out a firm-wide training video instructing us to “always read the terms and conditions” before agreeing to any website exchange. Ugh.

And also, this Thursday, War & Peace, and then Les Miserables after lunch on Sunday.

Another tip, this one quite doable, and very important. Always take advantage of the latest software updates on your computer. This can be a bit timeconsuming, but the updates are often security-driven. Hackers find holes in the systems, and the software updates patch them and keep your private data from leaking out, along with the money attached to it.

Mark Ryan is an investment advisor with RBC Dominion Securities Inc. (member – Canadian Investor Protection Fund), and these are his views, and not those of RBC Dominion Securities. This article is for information purposes only. Please consult with a professional advisor before taking any action based on information in this article. See Ryan’s website at: http:// dir.rbcinvestments.com/mark.ryan.

CITIZEN PHOTO BY BRENT BRAATEN

spots.

Canola prices take hit after China blocks Canadian imports

Aleksandra SAGAN Citizen news service

Canola prices have taken a hit in the wake of China’s decision to block certain Canadian imports, a move that has created a logistical headache for exporters reliant on the key overseas market.

China’s foreign ministry said Wednesday that it is blocking imports from Richardson International Ltd. – one of Canada’s largest grain producers – due to fears of insect infestation, a day after the company confirmed its import permit had been revoked.

Some have suggested the block may be the latest swipe against the Canadian government for arresting a top Chinese tech executive.

“We’ve seen a huge drop off in canola prices, especially over the past couple of weeks,” said Bruce Burnett, director of weather and markets at Glacier FarmMedia.

He called it a major drop for the commodity, which likely wouldn’t have happened without the backdrop of a deteriorating relationship between China and Canada. The fallout follows the arrest of Chinese tech giant Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou in Vancouver on Dec. 1, 2018. On Dec. 3, the May futures contract, which he noted was not the most actively traded at the time, closed at $496 per tonne. Wednesday afternoon, it was trading at about $456 – a roughly eight per cent drop. Exports to China had previously been expected to remain strong through most of the crop year, he said, with fairly solid prices.

Canada supplies about 40 per cent of China’s canola imports. Canada exported about $3.6 billion worth of canola seed, oil and meal to China in 2017, according to the Canola Council of Canada’s most recent figures.

The two countries have generally had a good relationship, said Brian Innes, vicepresident of public affairs for the council, with Canada sending a stable supply of a high-quality product to feed growing Chinese demand, in part to feed its livestock. But issues like this latest permit revocation arise from time to time, he said.

“It’s a concern for the whole industry because it injects uncertainty into the market,” said Innes.

That sentiment makes it difficult for everyone in the supply chain and industry to make decisions as they’re thinking about the future, he said. Farmers, for example, would be concerned about when they’ll sell their current canola stores and what they’ll grow in the upcoming season.

“So, all members of the canola value

Canada exported about $3.6 billion worth of canola seed, oil and meal to China in 2017, according to the Canola Council of Canada’s most recent figures.

chain are paying very close attention because China’s a very important market for Canada.”

Now that China has blocked Richardson’s shipments, the question becomes: what will happen to other companies, Burnett said.

It’s possible others could have their permits revoked. But, unlike Winnipegbased Richardson, other players in Canada tend to be part of large multinational organizations. Regina-based Viterra Inc., for example, is part of Switzerland-based Glencore International.

While it’s hard to gauge what the Chinese government is thinking, it’s likely these companies will be very cautious, he said.

“There’s large amounts of money involved here that the companies will be very wary of shipping cargoes that could be rejected or that type of thing.”

They could try to turn to other markets that import Canadian canola, said Burnett, such as parts of Southeast Asia.

“Can they wholly replace the demand that China represents?” he said. “That’s probably a hard thing to happen.”

Al Mussel, research lead and founder of Agri-Food Economic Systems Inc., said it’s a convenient time for China to decrease the amount of canola it imports because the country is grappling with an outbreak of African Swine Fever, a fatal disease that targets pigs.

That means China doesn’t need as much canola to feed its pig herd, said Mussell, adding that some estimate the country will drop its pork production by up to 20 per cent this year.

Rick White, CEO of the Canadian Canola Growers Association, said the lower commodity price and blockage of some exports could have a detrimental impact on farmers.

He was hopeful the two countries will work out a solution within a month or so, before the situation creates long-term effects such as farmers growing less canola or locking in this year’s crop at the current low price.

Meng extradition case raises ‘serious concerns,’ defence lawyer says

VANCOUVER — A request by the United States to extradite the chief financial officer of China’s Huawei Technologies raises serious concerns about political motivations and will take time to unfold, a defence lawyer says.

Meng Wanzhou was arrested in December at Vancouver’s airport at the request of U.S. authorities, sparking outrage from China. Canada announced last week it intends to proceed with the extradition case.

“This is a rare case in the extradition context, if not unique,” Richard Peck told a judge in British Columbia Supreme Court on Wednesday. “There are serious concerns of a legal and factual nature that arise, concerns not common in the extradition jurisprudence

“There are concerns involving the political character of the motivations, comments by the U.S. president... There are issues arising out of the treatment of Ms. Meng on her arrival at the Vancouver International Airport and her detention and subsequent arrest.”

U.S. President Donald Trump has said he’d intervene in the case if it would help secure a trade deal with Beijing. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has maintained Canada is following the rule of law.

Meng’s defence team has also filed a lawsuit against members of the Canada Border Services Agency, the federal government and the RCMP, accusing officers of violating her rights by detaining and questioning her for three hours before she was notified of her arrest. No statements of defence have been filed in the lawsuit and none of the allegations has been tested in court.

Peck told the judge it will take time to properly develop all the issues involved in the “complex” case.

The defence and Crown agreed to put it over until May 8 to fix dates for upcoming hearings.

Abuse of process motions will likely be brought and the defence has also filed access to information requests with the border services agency and the RCMP, Peck said. Both agencies have missed deadlines to provide information, and the defence team is now pursuing complaints with the privacy commissioner, he added.

John Gibb-Carsley, the prosecutor representing the Attorney General of Canada, said over the coming weeks the Crown and the defence will discuss the scheduling of the applications that need to be brought

forward.

The U.S. Department of Justice has laid out 13 criminal counts of conspiracy, fraud and obstruction against Huawei and Meng, who is the daughter of company founder Ren Zhengfei. The indictment accuses Huawei and Meng of misrepresenting their ownership of a Hong Kong-based subsidiary between 2007 and 2017 in an effort to circumvent U.S. sanctions against Iran. Both Meng and the company have denied any wrongdoing and the case has set off a diplomatic furor, with China’s embassy calling it a “political persecution.”

After Meng’s arrest, two Canadians were detained by Beijing and Chinese state media said this week they face allegations of spying.

One of Canada’s largest grain processors has also been blocked from exporting canola to China due to fears of insect infestation, although some analysts tie the decision to the Meng case and Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland is following up with the Chinese government.

Meng has been under house arrest since mid-December at one of her two multimillion-dollar Vancouver homes. As she waited for her brief hearing to begin Wednesday, she chatted and laughed with her lawyer and interpreter. Outside the courthouse, protesters gathered to support Meng while others criticized the Chinese government and called for the release of the two detained Canadians, entrepreneur Michael Spavor and former diplomat Michael Kovrig.

Kuang Yang burned a small Chinese flag and said through a translator that he opposes the Communist government using the two detained Canadians as “political pawns.”

“The Chinese government is prosecuting... the two Canadians as retaliation to Canada, but Canada is just doing its due process to extradite Meng to the U.S. to get a fair trial,” he said.

Richard Kurland, a Vancouver immigration lawyer who attended the hearing on Wednesday, said outside court he expects the litigation to take five to eight years. It’s also possible the case will disappear if Trump gets a satisfactory trade deal with Beijing, he said.

“This is a highly politicized case. The president has made no secret of using the extradition case as a trade negotiation case, which poisons the extradition process from my view.”

New agency needed to oversee pharmacare, panel says

TORONTO — Ottawa should create a new agency to oversee the rollout of a national drug plan, a federally struck expert panel said Wednesday in laying out what it called the “building blocks” of the program.

In its newly released interim report, the panel said the federal government should also develop a national list of drugs to ensure consistent coverage across the country and allocate funding to gather better data on prescription medications.

The report does not, however, say whether the pharmacare program should follow a single-payer model in the style of the country’s universal health care system or adopt another format.

Eric Hoskins, the former Ontario health minister chairing the panel, said a “detailed blueprint” will be presented in the final report due this spring.

“If there’s one sort of absolutely consistent point among everyone that we’ve engaged, it’s that too many people are falling through the cracks, that the current system is inadequate, that it’s not effectively meeting the needs of many, many millions of Canadians,” he said in a Toronto news conference announcing the interim recommendations.

Hoskins said the panel has spent the last few months parsing through submissions made by medical professionals,

stakeholders and patients through public meetings and online questionnaires.

The government said it will consider the panel’s interim recommendations while it awaits the final report.

“Canadians should not have to choose between paying for prescriptions and putting food on their table,” said Health Minister Ginette Petitpas Taylor, calling pharmacare the “missing piece” in Canada’s health-care system.

The issue is likely to loom large in the run up to this fall’s federl election, with the New Democrats already promising a universal, public program if elected. The Liberals are widely expected to make a similar pledge.

NDP Health Critic Don Davies expressed disappointment at the interim report, saying the government had missed an opportunity to commit to real change in national drug coverage.

“Today’s report leaves the door open to a private, U.S.-style patchwork system of coverage, and it fails to recommend the system that delivers the best results for patients: a public, single-payer delivery model,” he said in a statement.

Others said they were pleased with the panel’s interim recommendations.

“This is a positive first step towards developing our universal pharmacare program,” said Melanie Benard, the national director of policy and advocacy at the Canadian Health Coalition.

Laura KANE Citizen news service

CP PHOTO

Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou, centre, is accompanied by a private security detail as she leaves her home to attend a court appearance in Vancouver on Wednesday.

Paola LORIGGIO Citizen news service

PMO tried to persuade, not intimidate, Wilson-Raybould: Butts

Joan BRYDEN, Mia RABSON Citizen news service

OTTAWA — Jody Wilson-Raybould never complained about improper pressure to halt the criminal prosecution of SNC-Lavalin until Prime Minister Justin Trudeau decided to move her out of her coveted cabinet role as justice minister and attorney general, the prime minister’s former principal secretary says.

Gerald Butts testified before the House of Commons justice committee Wednesday, offering a very different version of events from those described last week in explosive testimony from Wilson-Raybould. In doing so, he gave beleaguered Liberals what they’ve been praying for: some ammunition to fight accusations of political interference in the justice system that have cost Trudeau two cabinet ministers and his most trusted adviser in the past month.

Now that both sides of the story have been aired, Trudeau is to issue his own statement on the affair Thursday morning in a much more comprehensive fashion than he’s done before.

Butts repeatedly said he believes nobody from the Prime Minister’s Office did anything wrong and if Wilson-Raybould felt she’d been inappropriately pressured to intervene in the SNC-Lavalin case, she had an obligation to let Trudeau know as it was happening.

“If this was wrong in the way that is alleged, why are we having this conversation now and not in September or October or November?” he said.

He said Wilson-Raybould didn’t raise any concerns about what was happening until the prime minister told her on Jan. 7 that he was shuffling her out of what she called her “dream job” as justice minister and attorney general.

Last week, Wilson-Raybould told the committee she was subjected last fall to relentless, inappropriate pressure – and even veiled threats about being removed as justice minister – to stop the trial of SNC-Lavalin on bribery and fraud charges related to contracts in Libya.

Wilson-Raybould testified that the pressure to interfere in the case came from Trudeau himself, Butts and other senior staff, the top federal public servant and Finance Minister Bill Morneau’s staff – all of whom wanted her to order the director of public prosecutions to negotiate a remediation agreement with the Montreal engineering giant. Such an agreement would have forced the company to pay stiff penalties while avoiding a criminal conviction that could financially cripple it.

However, Butts said he and others in the Prime Minister’s Office only wanted WilsonRaybould to seek independent legal advice on the matter, given the potential impact on the company’s 9,000 employees and the fact that remediation agreements are a new feature in Canadian law.

“When you boil it all down, all we ever asked the attorney general to consider was a second opinion,” Butts said in a long written statement accompanying his live testimony. “When 9,000 people’s jobs are at stake, it is a public-policy problem of the highest order. It was our obligation to exhaustively consider options the law allows.” Butts, a longtime friend who resigned as Trudeau’s most trusted adviser last month, insisted that staff in the Prime Minister’s Office always respected the fact that, as attorney general, it was up to Wilson-Raybould alone to decide whether to intervene in the SNC-Lavalin case.

Wilson-Raybould has said everyone should have backed off once she informed Trudeau on Sept. 17 that she’d made a final decision not to intervene. But Butts – backed up later by testimony from Privy Council clerk Michael Wernick and deputy justice minister Nathalie Drouin – said that under the law the decision could not be considered final until a trial ended with a verdict and that Wilson-Raybould had an obligation to re-evaluate the matter as new information surfaced.

In one exchange with Conservative deputy leader Lisa Raitt, he suggested WilsonRaybould, who testified she made her own final decision within 12 days of the director of public prosecutions’ decision not to seek a remediation agreement, didn’t take sufficient time to consider her options.

“We know what it’s like to see a company or a community collapse,” Butts told Raitt, who, like him, is from Cape Breton. “And can you imagine if when we were kids and the coal mines closed or the steel mill closed, the best explanation someone could give us was that someone thought about it for 12 days in Ottawa?”

In fact, Drouin later said Wilson-Raybould

signalled she was not keen to intervene just two days after the director of public prosecutions, Kathleen Roussel, sent her a note on Sept. 4 outlining her reasons for not pursuing a remediation agreement. Drouin said she was told on Sept. 11 that WilsonRaybould would not intervene.

Drouin and her departmental officials drafted a memo laying out WilsonRaybould’s legal options after Roussel’s decision. Drouin said the options included directing Roussel to reverse her decision, taking over the prosecution outright and seeking an external legal opinion. WilsonRaybould testified last week that she had unspecified concerns with the options.

The department also drafted, at the request of the Privy Council Office, a report on the potential impacts of a criminal conviction on SNC-Lavalin. Drouin said she was ordered by Wilson-Raybould’s office not to give the report to the Privy Council Office.

Butts said he reviewed all the emails and texts he received from Wilson-Raybould going back to the summer of 2013.

“There is not a single mention of this file or anyone’s conduct on this file until during the cabinet shuffle,” he said.

The first he or Trudeau heard about it was when the prime minister told WilsonRaybould’s close friend and fellow cabinet minister Jane Philpott he was moving Philpott from Indigenous Services to Treasury Board, filling a gap left by Scott Brison’s surprise retirement from politics, he said.

(Philpott ultimately resigned from cabinet last Monday, saying she’d lost confidence in the government’s handling of the SNC-Lavalin case. Her departure followed WilsonRaybould’s resignation a month earlier.)

According to Butts, Trudeau told Philpott on Jan. 6 that he had decided to move Wilson-Raybould into the Indigenous Services slot because he wanted to “send a strong signal” that he remained personally committed to his reconciliation agenda. Philpott worried that Wilson-Raybould would view the move as a demotion and might wonder if it was “connected to the ‘DPA’ issue” – a reference to deferred-prosecution agreements, as remediation agreements are also known.

Wilson-Raybould refused the job, saying she had opposed the Indian Act her entire life and wouldn’t administer it. Butts said he advised Trudeau that he couldn’t set a precedent by allowing a minister to refuse a move. Wilson-Raybould was ultimately shuffled to Veterans Affairs on Jan. 14.

Wilson-Raybould characterized 20 meetings or phone calls with 11 different people over four months as relentless, “inappropriate” pressure to get her to change her mind on a remediation agreement with SNCLavalin. However, Butts said that’s nothing compared to at least 100 meetings or calls on the Trans Mountain pipeline purchase – a number that “would have been a week” when they were dealing with NAFTA.

“It did not seem to me then, and does not now, that what we did was anything other than what those 9,000 people would have every right to expect of their prime minister.”

Wernick and Drouin followed Butts, both appearing before the committee for a second time to answer additional questions that came up after Wilson-Raybould’s testimony last week.

Wernick said he still believes no unacceptable pressure was applied to WilsonRaybould by him or anyone else. He denied Wilson-Raybould’s allegation that he made “veiled threats” that her job was in jeopardy if she didn’t agree to a remediation agreement.

Opposition MPs accused Wernick of being too partisan during his first appearance at committee and he prefaced his remarks by saying people have used social media to try to intimidate him as a witness. He got into several testy exchanges with opposition committee members, who have called for his resignation.

After Butts’s testimony, Liberal MPs seemed satisfied that there was no wrongdoing.

“What we heard clearly today is there was not any inappropriate pressure,” said Edmonton MP Randy Boissonnault.

Liberals used their majority on the committee to reject an opposition proposal to recall Wilson-Raybould to respond to Butts’s comments. She issued a statement saying she’d be happy to return to the committee if invited.

Raitt said that “Canadians are going to be pretty ticked off” if Wilson-Raybould doesn’t get a chance to respond.

“There are stark contradictions and one of them isn’t telling the full story and we need to find out which one it is,” she said, adding that Wilson-Raybould seems “far more credible” to her than Butts.

Gerald Butts, former principal secretary to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, prepares to appear before the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Wednesday.

Power politics collides with principles

The rule of law is applied when it suits.

What jaded sage said this?

Well, this one. Last month.

I was quibbling, then, with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s defiant declaration that our country and his government, in deciding whether to send a Chinese national to the U.S. to face U.S. music, are bound by the rule of law.

And the unfolding, on Parliament Hill, of L’affaire SNC-Lavalin shows I was right so to quibble.

Our prime minister and his minions have been harassing the country’s guardian of the rule of law to break it.

Why? Because it would benefit, politically, our prime minister and the fortunes of his party if Canada’s engineering megasporange, caught in flagrante again, were let off lightly.

And after then-attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould refused to interfere in the criminal prosecution, she was removed.

That won’t help Trudeau’s political fortunes at all, as all the commentators who regard politics as a horse-race are pointing out.

Wilson-Raybould was a catch for a prime minister wooing what used to be called the women’s vote. Puglaas (her Kwak’wala name) was a catch for a prime minister poised to right the historic, if not continuing, wrongs suffered by First Nations.

Her appointment was not merely symbolic: she was well and truly qualified as a practitioner in the white man’s law and as leader and advocate in B.C. First Nations’ rights and governance.

A matriarch and truth-teller, she is proud, and with good reason. She has her own agenda, and whatever happens in this disgraceful affair, will hold to it.

But what about the other players caught in it?

The Liberals, as would any other political party, will continue on the age-old agenda of seeking power and holding on to it by any means.

They will cultivate Quebec, where its distinctiveness masks the social and economic differences so exposed in other parts of the country, with zealous concern.

They will continue to nourish the fragile corporate elites in that province with money to keep them strong enough to compete in the world because that’s good for Canada, too.

And those corporations that break Canadian laws operating in countries where breaking the law is a business practice will continue to seek ways to avoid the tribulations of trial. They will gladly pay fines with the monies that the Canadian taxpayer has given them as subsidies and incentives.

But they will ask to continue to play the law and escape those who are merely practising it.

But what about the public service of Canada, the engine that keeps the country running smoothly, with fine impartiality, no matter who’s at the political wheel?

Well, the impartiality of those we used to call the mandarins has certainly improved

Maryland governor mulls run against Trump

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan was in Iowa this week ostensibly on National Governors Association business. Hogan reiterated the message about his presidential prospects that he has been using for a couple of months.

‘It currently makes no sense, with a president that has the kind of approval rating that he does in his own party,” Hogan said. “Having said that, I’ve said things can change, and we don’t know what it might look like a few months from now.

Variables such as the outcome of special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe, Democratic talk of impeachment and the president’s fluctuating political standing are all potential factors in his decision, Hogan acknowledged. In the meantime, he’s taking things slowly.

It’s not clear how far in polls of Republicans that Donald Trump would have to fall to induce Hogan to declare. It might be that the Mueller report or some other revelation pushes a significant number of Republicans over the edge, giving Hogan an obvious opening to declare.

But there is a chicken-and-egg problem here: until Hogan gets into the race and starts hammering away at Trump, he won’t know how fragile Trump’s support really is.

When Republicans tell pollsters

RUBIN

they approve of Trump’s performance, are they really saying, “I’m not giving Democrats and the media the satisfaction of saying I don’t approve?” It might be more revealing to look at the “strongly approve” number, which separates the defensive Republicans (Don’t tell me I was wrong!) from the ones who actually think he’s swell. In the newest Quinnipiac poll, the “strongly approve” number among Republicans goes down to 67 per cent. That roughly correlates to other polling showing that a substantial percentage of Republicans (43 per cent in the recent Monmouth poll) would like Trump to face a primary challenger. In other words, unless and until Hogan is in there pounding away every day, Trump’s numbers might remain high but “soft.”

There could be other reasons for Hogan to wait awhile before announcing (e.g. avoid intense media scrutiny, attend to state and National Governors Association business, take time to put together a team), but he shouldn’t wait all that long. It’s not until Hogan gets in, has his cable TV town halls and starts appearing on cable TV shows that he’s going to be taken seriously –

and Republican voters might start thinking about changing horses.

Remember that Hogan would not only be bemoaning Trump’s dysfunction, racism and meanness and offering a drama-free and scandal-free alternative to the besieged president; he also would attack from the right. Hogan will argue Trump has run up the debt. Trump is getting taken to the cleaners by foreign powers, Hogan can accurately say. Trump screwed up trade with a tariff war. And Hogan can point out that since the tax cut (which generated the huge deficits), Trump hasn’t gotten much of anything done. In short, Hogan might be right that the cumulative weight of investigations, a fading economy or the Mueller report will move Trump’s numbers dramatically. He shouldn’t bet on it, however. Trump’s support might slowly bleed away, but Trump could very well remain on life support with his party until voters are given an alternative. Finally, Hogan and Republicans should check out other numbers – the general-election polling figures. Trump currently loses to a whole bunch of Democratic candidates, and if and when former vice president Joe Biden gets in, Trump might look even worse in a head-to-head match-up. As Republicans come to worry that Trump cannot win, there’s a much better chance they will shop around – even if they tell pollsters Trump is doing fine.

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since the 1950s. When the Conservatives under John Diefenbaker were elected, the clerk of the Privy Council and other senior public servants met in secret with Lester Pearson, the Liberal Opposition leader, and arranged to hold hands under the table. By the time public servants were embroiled in political skulduggery in the sponsorship scandal in Quebec, which erupted when Paul Martin was PM, senior bureaucrats were deeply upset. It was a betrayal of a high calling. Now we’ve learned that Michael Wernick, clerk of the Privy Council and head of the public service, seems to have jeopardized it all by appearing to join in the pressuring of Wilson-Raybould to bend.

Whatever his motives, the then-AG took Wernick’s intervention as a “veiled threat” from Trudeau. It must have been a betrayal of her belief in a high calling. It was certainly an evisceration of values in our national core.

— Iain Hunter, Victoria Times Colonist

Long may she reign

As 1992 came to an end, Queen Elizabeth referred to the previous 12 months as an “annus horribilis” – a horrible year.

There were plenty of reasons for the monarch to feel that way, ranging from a destructive fire at Windsor Castle to the official announcement of the separation of her son Charles and Diana, Princess of Wales.

Almost three decades later, there are lingering questions about another separation, this time featuring the United Kingdom and the European Union. Through it all, the Queen has remained one of the most beloved royals in Canada. But when Canadians are asked what should happen when she no longer reigns over us, the situation becomes a bit more confusing.

Research Co. asked Canadians about the monarchy. As has been the case since I first reviewed these sentiments more than a decade ago, Canadians can be assembled in three groups of a similar size.

One-third of Canadians (33 per cent) say they would prefer an elected head of state and a similar proportion (31 per cent) want Canada to stay a monarchy. The remaining respondents either do not care either way (19 per cent) or are undecided (17 per cent).

Support for the continuation of the monarchy is strongest in Atlantic Canada (42 per cent) and Alberta (40 per cent), while the idea of an elected head of state is particularly appealing for Quebecers (53 per cent).

While roughly the same proportion of men and women want Canada to remain a monarchy (30 per cent and 32 per cent, respectively), men react more positively to the notion of having a Canadian as our head of state (39 per cent, compared with 26 per cent of women).

Queen Elizabeth maintains an extraordinary favourability rating of 71 per cent across the country. Exactly the same proportion (71 per cent) also hold positive views of Prince William, while 70 per cent feel the same way about his younger brother, Prince Harry.

The favourability numbers are also high for Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge (68 per cent) and the newest addition to the Royal Family: Meghan, Duchess of Sussex (60 per cent). Prince Philip checks in at a very decent 54 per cent.

Still, a problem that I have consistently witnessed over the past 11 years remains in place today: fewer Canadians have a positive view of the person who will eventually be featured on our coins and bills. Only 43 per cent of residents have a favourable view of Prince Charles, and even fewer (32 per cent) feel similarly about Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall. The differences between Canadians’ perception of Charles and their view of William are striking. In monarchy-friendly Alberta, 69 per

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cent of residents have a favourable view of William, but only 37 per cent feel the same way about his father. A similar situation ensues in British Columbia, where William’s rating (76 per cent) towers over that of Charles (42 per cent). Even in Quebec, where residents are not shy to call for the end of the monarchy, the heir to the throne is clearly outranked by his oldest child (41 per cent to 67 per cent). Among Canadians aged 18 to 34, supposedly unconcerned about all matters royal, William also has a higher favourability rating (51 per cent) than Charles (37 per cent).

When Canadians are provided with a choice as to who their next monarch should be, the firstborn son fares better than his father. We find that 41 per cent of Canadians would prefer to have Prince William as king, while only 20 per cent express a preference for Prince Charles. In fact, no demographic in the survey selects Charles over William when given the opportunity. The father does a little bit better among those who voted for the Conservative party in the 2015 federal election (27 per cent, with William at 41 per cent) and Ontarians (25 per cent, with William at 39 per cent).

Though one-third of those surveyed would like to have an elected head of state, the views on a possible republic become more realistic when Canadians are asked to look 20 years down the road. A majority of Canadians (56 per cent) believe Canada will still be a monarchy in 2039, while 23 per cent – including 30 per cent of Quebecers – expect the country to have an elected head of state.

Much has changed since I started tracking Canadian perceptions of the Royal Family, particularly the explosion of social media, the different ways in which generations are communicating with each other and the difficulty of glossy magazines to command an audience in a landscape that has shifted its focus to actors, athletes and team owners at their worst. In this new world, only the Queen and her two male grandchildren are viewed favourably by seven in 10 Canadians. The Queen’s granddaughters-in-law are also viewed approvingly by a comfortable majority.

The heir apparent continues to struggle. Just over two in five Canadians view Charles favourably, and only a third feel the same way about his wife. If Canadians – by a two-to-one majority – currently prefer to have Prince William as their next monarch, the ascension of Charles, regardless of which of his four names he ultimately selects as king, may not be as joyous as originally envisioned.

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BY THE NUMBERS

MARIO CANSECO

Curling works at atomic level

Curling wasn’t invented in Canada despite the commercials on TSN proclaiming it as a “Canadian game.”

But it is a sport we are very good at. Some of the best curlers in the world come from Canada and the best Canadian women’s skip of all time, Jennifer Jones, was in Prince George this week giving a talk at UNBC.

One could make a very strong argument she is one of the top ten all-time Canadian skips, period.

The game, however, originated in Scotland. The granite used for the stones is still supplied from a single quarry on a Scottish isle. There is a well-documented history of the game in Scotland dating back to the 16th century.

Canadians, though, spend much of the year experiencing the joys and hazards of trying to negotiate their way around our winter wonderland. Sometimes even driving feels like a game of curling with cars doing a slow turn before knocking one another out of the house. We have ice in our blood – although not literally.

Curling is a mixture of sport, science and everyday life. The behaviour of curling rocks has inspired researchers to think about the interactions on an icy surface.

For example, materials scientist Jane Blackford and her team at Edinburgh University were interested in helping the British Olympic curling team.

In 2000, they developed the sweep ergometer, a high tech broom designed to measure how the brush is moving and how hard it is pushing against the ice.

In essence, scientists believe sweeping helps to melt the ice in front of the rock providing a very thin surface of liquid water for the rock to travel across. As anyone who has ever walked on wet ice will attest, it is a very slippery surface.

Indeed, just standing still on wet ice can be a challenge – let alone moving!

Optimizing the power of the brush to generate a sliding surface provides better results in theory. By using their sweep ergometer, the scientists have been able to help curlers perfect their sweeping.

Over the past decade, much more progress has been made in ensuring that the ice created for games is much better.

Researchers interested in cryotribology or the study of ice friction have been able to improve the curl.

To learn more about how ice melts under pressure and with friction, Blackford’s team designed and built an instrument to study the process in detail. It is fairly simple, consisting of a stylus dragged across a rotating disk of ice.

Different substances can be used for the stylus –such as metal or granite (like a curling rock), and even rubber – while conditions such as temperature and velocity can be altered.

The path on the disk is then examined using a scanning electron microscope.

Doing this gives a very detailed picture of how the different forces or pressures can affect the microscopic properties of ice along with the effects generated by different materials and temperatures. Amazingly, despite the fact we have been dealing with ice for hundreds of thousands of years, there is still a lot that isn’t known about what exactly is happening at the surface.

Refining the experiment and upping the magnification using an atomic force microscopic – which is capable of “seeing” the surface at the atomic level – has ultimately answered some of these questions science has about ice.

Is the surface of ice really a liquid? (Yes, for a couple of molecules deep.)

Is it the mobility of the surface layer allows an object to slide? (Sort of.)

Is pressure really necessary to create a liquid layer? (No. But it helps.)

There are all sorts of arguments and opinions in the research literature about ice and what is occurring at the surface.

The best understanding is it is a solid with a very mobile monolayer of water molecules adhering to the surface acting as a liquid. It is on these mobile molecules curling rocks slide.

But broom design has benefited from this research and sweepers are now almost able to steer a rock down a sheet of ice.

Modern brushes can “scratch” this surface effectively creating micro-ruts which help to push the rock in one direction or the other. This is why you often see only one sweeper sweeping.

Still it is the ice which matters. For example, deionized and de-aerated water generates ice which is more reliable and uniform.

Gone are small pockets of air and mineralization which could potentially affect a stone. And

temperature control across the surface allows icemakers to fine tune the running line. Making good curling ice is much more than simply pouring water over a cold surface. Ultimately, a better scientific understanding of the science of ice allows all curlers to play a better game. And world champions, like Jennifer Jones, to shine.

Jennifer Jones, an Olympic gold medallist and two-time world curling champion, was the headline speaker at the fifth annual UNBC Timberwolves Legacy Breakfast on Wednesday at the Northern Sport Centre.

Zuckerberg makes Facebook privacy vow

Mark Zuckerberg said Facebook will start to emphasize new privacy-shielding messaging services, a shift apparently intended to blunt both criticism of the company’s data handling and potential antitrust action.

In effect, the Facebook cofounder and CEO promised to transform a service known for devouring the personal information shared by its users. Going forward, he said, it will emphasize giving people more ways to communicate in truly private fashion, with their intimate thoughts and pictures shielded by encryption in ways that Facebook itself can’t read.

But Zuckerberg didn’t suggest any changes to Facebook’s core newsfeed-and-groups-based service, or to Instagram’s social network, currently the fastest growing part of the company. Facebook pulls in gargantuan profits by selling ads targeted with the information it amasses on its users and others they know.

“It’s not that I think the more public tools will go away,” Zuckerberg said in an interview Wednesday. “All indications that Facebook and Instagram will continue growing and be increasingly important.”

Critics aren’t convinced Zuckerberg is truly committed to meaningful change.

“This does nothing to address the ad targeting and information collection about individuals,” said Jen King, director of consumer privacy at Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society. “It’s great for your relationship with other people. It doesn’t do anything for your relationship with Facebook itself.”

Zuckerberg laid out his vision in a Wednesday blog post , following a rocky two-year battering over revelations about its leaky privacy controls.

That included the sharing of personal information from as many as 87 million users with a political data-mining firm that worked for the 2016 Trump campaign. Since the 2016 election, Facebook has also taken flak for the way Russian agents used its service to target U.S. voters with divisive messages and being a conduit for political misinformation.

Zuckerberg faced two days of congressional interrogation

over these and other subjects last April; he acknowledged and apologized for Facebook’s privacy breakdowns in the past.

Since then, Facebook has suffered other privacy lapses that have amplified the calls for regulations that would hold companies more accountable when they improperly expose their users’ information.

As part of his effort to make amends, Zuckerberg plans to stitch together its Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram messaging services so users will be able to contact each other across all of the apps.

The multiyear plan calls for all of these apps to be encrypted so

no one but senders and recipients can see the contents of messages. WhatsApp already has that security feature, but Facebook’s other messaging apps don’t.

Zuckerberg likened it to being able to be in a living room behind a closed front door, and not having to worry about anyone eavesdropping.

Meanwhile, Facebook and the Instagram photo app would still operate more like a town square where people can openly share whatever they want.

While Zuckerberg positions the messaging integration as a privacy move, Facebook also sees commercial opportunity in the shift. “If you think about your life,

you probably spend more time communicating privately than publicly,” he told the AP. “The overall opportunity here is a lot larger than what we have built in terms of Facebook and Instagram.”

Critics have raised another possible motive – the threat of antitrust crackdowns. Integration could make it much more difficult, if not impossible, to later separate out and spin off Instagram and WhatsApp as separate companies.

“I see that as the goal of this entire thing,” said Blake Reid, a University of Colorado law professor who specializes in technology and policy. He said Facebook could tell antitrust authorities that WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook Messenger are tied so tightly together that it couldn’t unwind them.

Combining the three services also lets Facebook build more complete data profiles on all of its users. Already, businesses can already target Facebook and Instagram users with the same ad campaign, and ads are likely coming to WhatsApp eventually.

And users are more likely to stay within Facebook’s properties if they can easily message their friends across different services, rather than having to switch between Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram. That could help Facebook compete with messaging services from Apple, Google and others.

As part of the process, Zuckerberg said Facebook will meet with privacy experts, law enforcement officials concerned about the new encryption making it impossible to uncover illegal activity being discussed on the messaging service and government officials.

Creating more ways for Facebook’s more than two billion users to keep things private could undermine the company’s business model, which depends on the ability to learn about the things people like and then sell ads tied to those interests.

In his interview, Zuckerberg said he isn’t currently worried about denting Facebook’s profits with the increased emphasis on privacy.

“How this affects the business down the line, we’ll see,” Zuckerberg said. “But if we do a good job in serving the need that people have, then there will certainly be an opportunity” to make even money.

“Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising.”

The S&P/TSX composite index closed up 5.53 points to 16,092.07 after hitting an intraday peak of 16,145.80, a high for the year.

The market was led by the utilities and telecommunications sectors, which each gained nearly one percentage point.

A benign interest rate environment in light of the central bank’s decision Wednesday is supportive for those sectors, says Anish Chopra, managing director with Portfolio Management Corp. “If you’re an investor in utilities, those are safety areas which generally trade along with rates. So the fact that rates are going to stay stable is positive for utilities.”

The REITs sector also rose as is typically the case.

These sectors would be expected to decrease had the central bank unexpectedly increased rates.

The Canadian dollar decreased by nearly half a cent. It traded at an average of 74.52 compared with an average of 74.93 cents US on Tuesday.

The move was propelled by the interest rate path along with the weak economic environment that, in part, prompted the bank’s decision, said Chopra.

Seven of the 11 sectors of the TSX rose. Health care led on the downside, falling 1.9 per cent, followed by energy and materials.

The April crude contract was down 34 cents at US$56.22 per barrel and the April natural gas contract was down 4.3 cents at US$2.84 per mmBTU.

The price of West Texas Intermediate fell slightly as U.S. fuel stockpiles dropped during the week to offset an increase of 7.1 million barrels of crude inventories.

The April gold contract was up US$2.90 at US$1,287.60 an ounce and the May copper contract was down 1.5 cents at US$2.92 a pound.

“So those sectors are actually just following the underlying commodities that are related to them,” added Chopra.

In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average was down 133.17 points at 25,673.46. The S&P 500 index was down 18.20 points at 2,771.45, while the Nasdaq composite was down 70.44 points at 7,505.92.

The U.S. markets fell on a quiet day amid restlessness about a trade deal being reached with China.

“It’s just one of those quiet days where it’s a bit flat and there’s no real one driver doing anything.”

CITIZEN NEWS SERVICE PHOTO

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg delivers the keynote speech at F8, Facebook’s developer conference in San Jose, Calif. in May 2018

Citizen news service

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A man goes to the social media apps Facebook and WhatsApp on his iPhone.

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Jones has left indelible mark on curling world

Ted CLARKE Citizen staff tclarke@pgcitizen.ca

Jennifer Jones wasn’t always Canada’s greatest female curler. She didn’t always know her way around a courtroom as a corporate lawyer.

And it took 10 years of trying before she became pregnant and took on another full-time job as a mother.

Long before she became a household name in the sporting world, Jones was a painfully shy little girl who used to sneak out of the daycare at St. Vital Curling Club in Winnipeg to watch her mom curl. She caught on quickly and by the time she was 11 she was ready for the ice and starting tuning up her game two years before most kids were allowed to join.

Curling gave Jones confidence and a sense of belonging and the rest, as they say, is history. She climbed the junior ranks and won three Manitoba provincial titles and one national championship before she broke through as an adult and won six national titles, two world championships and Olympic gold in 2014.

On her way to curling immortality, Jones qualified for her first of 14 Canadian women’s championship in 2002. Three years later she made the shot heard around the curling world.

Speaking Wednesday morning

at the fifth annual UNBC Timberwolves Legacy Breakfast at the Northern Sport Centre, Jones showed the clip of her final shot in the 2005 Scott Tournament of Hearts, a hit-and-roll from outside the house that required the inside roll to clear out the button-nudging shot rock of Ontario skip Jenn Hanna.

Jones apologized for the graininess of the video but it was clear to the crowd of 400 gathered in the NSC gym what Jones did to make the shot of the century under immense pressure to score four and beat Hanna 8-6.

“That was the biggest game of my entire life, this was my dream sitting on a platter, and I didn’t play very well that game, I was very disappointed,” Jones said.

“And then, all of sudden I had this opportunity, a shot to win. At that point in time there was probably only three or four women in the entire world who could throw enough weight to make that shot. It wasn’t a shot that would be made often, but I felt so thankful I had an opportunity to win the game and make it up to my team for not playing well.

“The last thing I tell myself before a big shot is, ‘well here goes nothing.’ I wasn’t scared to miss this, I want to make it so bad, but life will go on tomorrow. This is what we play for, you can’t be scared to miss it. It’s not the afterthe-shot moment, it’s the actual

Women’s curling has come a long ways since I started. For us, when we first started it was always about trying to be more like the men and push our limits and I feel that gap has closed.

— Jennifer Jones

performing that we train for, and it worked out.”

Jones talked about the Sochi Olympics and the security and health concerns for athletes in Russia before the Games and how she came to the decision to leave her 13-month-old daughter at home and the criticism back home that drew. Jones and her team of third Kaitlyn Lawes, second Jill Officer and lead Dawn McEwen went undefeated at 11-0 and won the gold medal.

Two weeks ago at the Scotties Tournament of Hearts in Sydney, N.S., it was announced that Jones topped a poll of reporters, broadcasters and national-level curlers as the greatest Canadian woman curler of all time. Jones was play-

ing in the tournament as the Team Canada skip and she thought the late Sandra Schmirler would get the honour.

“It was very humbling, but what I attribute that to is always surrounding myself with great people, great teammates, great coaches,” she said.

“More importantly, never being scared to lose or scared of the outcome or the fear of failure but living in the moment and wanting to win and trying to set an example for the young people who come after us.

“Women’s curling has come a long ways since I started. For us, when we first started it was always about trying to be more like the men and push our limits and I feel that gap has closed.”

Jones talked about the day she thought her curling career might be over when she slipped on the ice in Switzerland and suffered a knee injury. The injury happened a year before the 2014 Olympic trials. She had her surgery to repair a torn ACL and MCL and meniscus in June 2012. During the pre-operation tests she leaned she was pregnant after a decade of trying to become a mother which meant she had to be awake for the surgery and could take no pain medication after it.

“It was honestly the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do,” Jones said. “It was way harder than labour for me.”

By the end of August that year she was back curling and in November she gave birth to her oldest daughter. Jones’s husband is Brent Laing, a 12-time Brier veteran who plays second for John Epping, whose Ontario rink represented Canada at the 2018 Olympics. They have two daughters, six-year-old Isabella and two-yearold Skyla, and live in Shanty Bay, Ont., near Barrie. It’s a busy life, especially during curling season, and juggling her two careers with family commitments is always a challenge.

“Everybody told me I could never be a lawyer and a successful curler, except for my mom, and I stand here today as a lawyer and an Olympic champion,” Jones said. “Then when I was going to become a mom, most people wrote me off, and we won the Olympics and world championships after that. Anything is possible, and if people knock you down, don’t hang out with them, just move on.”

The Legacy Breakfast is UNBC’s annual fundraiser to support the four Timberwolves varsity teams in soccer and basketball. Over the past five years the breakfast has brought in more than $250,000 which is used to pay tuition scholarships for the student athletes, all of whom were on hand Thursday morning to mingle with the breakfast guests as ambassadors for their respective programs.

Spruce Kings-Express set for Game 5 clash tonight

Ted CLARKE Citizen staff

In a playoff matchup that’s been close pretty much all the way, except for the fact the Prince George Spruce Kings hold a 3-1 series lead, nobody should be surprised the Express lived to see another day. Coquitlam made the most of its opportunities in Tuesday’s 3-0 victory and was deserving of the win. It needs to find a way to do it again tonight (7 p.m.) when the Express meet the Spruce Kings again at Rolling Mix Concrete Arena in Game 5 of the best-of-seven BCHL Mainland Division semifinal series. While they failed to get any of their 31 shots behind Coquitlam goalie Clay Stevenson, the Spruce Kings could not be faulted for their effort and all the positive things they orchestrated on the ice in Game 4. Just as they did in the first two games of the series in Prince George, they got stronger as the game grew older. But they didn’t have an answer for 19-year-old Express forward Chase Danol, who scored all three goals, including an empty-netter in the final minute.

The 22-point gap between the secondplace Spruce Kings and the third-place Express in the regular season standings and

the fact Prince George won six of the eight head-to-head games has meant diddlysquat in the playoffs, where everyone is starting with a clean slate. The first game ended up a 3-1 Kings’ win. In Game 2, the Kings tied it late and won 3-2 in overtime. Game 3 was a more convincing 5-2 victory for Prince George.

“I thought (Tuesday’s) game was very similar to the first two, obviously we couldn’t put the puck in the net,” said Kings head coach Adam Maglio. “Lots of our Grade-A chances ended up late in the game and being down two goals, we would’ve liked to have seen those a little bit earlier. We didn’t play poor by any means, it’s just a tight series.

“There’s not a lot of teams that are going to win series in four games. It would have been nice, but at the end of the day we’re coming back home leading 3-1 and we get another chance (tonight).”

A crowd of about 1,500 is expected as playoff fever builds for the Spruce Kings and that fan support in the close confines of RMCA has given them an added edge. In a building with a capacity of about 2,100, attendance at the first two games in Prince George was 1,267 for Game 1 and 1,241 for Game 2, as compared with

crowds of 571 and 493 for the two games at the Poirier Sports and Leisure Centre in Coquitlam.

“We’re fortunate in Prince George for the fan base we have here, said Maglio.

“It’s easy to get up for games with the support we have.

“We worked hard to get home ice this year and regardless of what happens we have home-ice (advantage) in this series. We need to understand we’re playing a team whose life is on the line here, they don’t get another chance so we have to make sure we match that intensity and that’s not going to come by easily.”

Maglio has been rolling mostly three lines and the forward trio centred by Ben Poisson, with his brother Nicholas on the left side and Chong Min Lee on the right, has proven especially effective. In his last junior season before he moves on to the University of Maine, Ben Poisson is making up for lost time.

He got cheated out of the Spruce Kings’ playoff run to the league final last year and played just two playoff games while he recovered from a ruptured spleen. Through four games, he leads the Kings in scoring with a goal and four assists.

“Benny is really inspired right now and

it might be due to him not participating in the playoffs last year due to injury until the final two games, and Nick and Chong have fed off that for sure” said Maglio. “They play a good heavy, playoff-style game. It’s tighter hockey and they understand that and they make their own breaks through being heavy over pucks, forechecking hard and creating lots of turnovers.

“We certainly need some guys to step up in that same capacity and hopefully there’s more offence from some other guys.” Special teams play has been pretty much even. Both teams are firing with 25 per cent efficiency on the power play. The Kings are 3-for-12, while Coquitlam is 4-for-16. Playing 16 times shorthanded is uncharacteristically high for Prince George, the least-penalized team in the regular season.

“There has been more penalties, that’s been the biggest adjustment for us,” said Maglio. “We just have to make sure we focus on our game and understand we’re going have to kill some penalties and we’ll also be on the power play too.” If Game 6 is needed it would be played Saturday in Coquitlam. Game 7, if necessary, is scheduled for Monday night at RMCA.

CITIZEN PHOTO BY BRENT BRAATEN

Jennifer Jones, an Olympic gold medallist and two-time world curling champion, was the headline speaker at the fifth annual University of Northern British Columbia Timberwolves Legacy Breakfast on Wednesday.

CP PHOTO

during a game in Vancouver on Wednesday.

Edler scores for Canucks in OT

Citizen news service

VANCOUVER — Alex Edler

scored 3:11 into overtime as the Vancouver Canucks rallied past the Toronto Maple Leafs 3-2 on Wednesday night.

Vancouver was down 2-0 heading into the third period but battled back to force the extra time. It was the first time this season that Toronto has lost when leading after two periods.

Loui Eriksson and Josh Leivo scored for the Canucks (28-30-9) in regulation, and Adam Gaudette had a pair of assists. Morgan Rielly and Ron Hainsey both had goals for the Leafs (41-21-5).

Vancouver goalie Jacob Markstrom made 28 saves and Frederik Anderston stopped 29 for Toronto.

The Leafs went into the contest having scored at least five goals in five of their last six games, all wins.

The victory snaps a three-game losing skid for the Canucks, who are fighting to keep their dim playoff hopes alive.

Toronto’s first of the night was

a short-handed goal midway through the second period after Patrick Marleau was called for hooking.

Canucks centre Markus Granlund turned over the puck high in Leafs territory, resulting in a two-on-one for Mitch Marner and Hainsey.

Marner stayed patient as he streaked into the Canucks zone, waiting for the perfect opportunity to slide the puck underneath the out-stretched stick of Vancouver defenceman Troy Stecher.

Hainsey took the pass on his tape and popped it behind Markstrom. Just 34 seconds later, Rielly added to Toronto’s lead.

Defenceman Derrick Pouliout couldn’t clear the puck from behind the Vancouver net and John Tavares picked it off.

He slid it up to Rielly at the faceoff dot and sent a snapshot flying through Markstrom’s five-hole.

The Canucks roared back early in the third, starting with a goal from Eriksson 1:21 into the period. It was the left-winger’s 10th goal of the season and his first

point in 15 games.

Two minutes later, the Leafs were called for having too many men on the ice, sending the Canucks to their third power play of the night.

Nikolay Goldobin fed Leivo a cross-ice pass and the former Leaf put the puck past Andersen to tie the score at two.

Vancouver has struggled with the man advantage recently, capitalizing on just 7.5 per cent of chances in their last 19 games.

The Canucks are now off to Edmonton, where they’ll face the Oilers on Thursday. The Leafs will visit the Oilers on Saturday NOTES: Vancouver defenceman Ben Hutton missed the game after injuring his foot by blocking a shot against the Vegas Golden Knights on Sunday. Canucks centre Ryan Spooner was out of the lineup with a groin injury. ...Luke Schenn got his first point in a Canucks jersey, assisting on Eriksson’s goal. ... Toronto’s Patrick Marleau has now played a full season’s worth of games – 82 – against the Canucks over his career.

Jacobs in control at Brier

Donna SPENER Citizen news service

BRANDON, Man. — The freshest team heading into the championship pool at the Canadian men’s curling championship is Northern Ontario.

Skip Brad Jacobs, third Ryan Fry and front-end brothers E.J. and Ryan Harnden from Sault Ste. Marie were ruthlessly efficient en route to a 7-0 record in the preliminary round.

The opposition shook hands after eight ends in five of those wins. Jacobs hasn’t had to throw his last stone for a win in the 10th yet.

“That just goes to show how well we’re playing and how well the guys are playing in front of me,” Jacobs said Wednesday.

“Probably as fresh as we can be. I don’t think we can feel any better.”

The top four teams from each pool carry their records into the championship round Thursday and Friday, from which the four Page playoff teams emerge.

Each team in the championship pool faces the four teams from the other pool.

The Page playoff begins Saturday followed by Sunday’s final.

Jacobs, Brendan Bottcher’s wild-card team (6-1) and Manitoba’s Mike McEwen and Saskatchewan’s Kirk Muyres (43) advanced out of Pool A. Alberta’s Kevin Koe (7-0), defending champion Brad Gushue (6-1) and Ontario’s Scott McDonald and B.C.’s Jim Cotter (4-3) qualified out of Pool B.

Jacobs and company won the 2013 Brier and Olympic trials followed by an Olympic gold medal in Sochi, Russia, in 2014. When asked this week if his rink is in the zoniest zone a Brad Jacobs team can be, the skip replied “Probably.”

In pre-game draws to the button to determine which team gets hammer in the first end, Northern Ontario won all seven games to have control from the outset. They made the most of it scoring two or more points in the first end, or the second after a blank, every game.

“We’re going to be up against

some really tough opponents going forward here,” Jacobs said.

“It would be nice to continue to win the hammer, but it’s not a priority that’s for sure.

“If we don’t win hammer in some games moving forward, it’s still a 10-end game and there’s lots of shots to be made.”

The skip says he’s ready to produce a game-winning throw at the Brier when required.

“I think that time is right around the corner,” Jacobs said.

“I welcome it in all honesty.

“Although it’s my job to deliver the last stone, it’s always a team effort and we welcome those moments of pressure all day long.”

Jacobs leads all skips in shooting accuracy at 92 per cent, which matches his team’s tournament-leading percentage.

“Brad kind of has that look in his eye right now and he had that look in his eye and the tone in his voice before we came here,” E.J. Harnden said.

“It’s one of those things playing with Brad for so many years now, you can kind of just sense it.” While Koe also had his share of games ending early, he went the distance in three. Alberta wasn’t as relentless as Northern Ontario with 86 per cent shooting accuracy.

When they won the Brier and Olympic gold, the Jacobs team persona was that of brash gym rats who, upon executing in biggame moments, released tension with boisterous yells and broomshaking.

Those emotional swings can be draining over the long haul, however.

Jacobs was the top playoff seed in the 2015 and 2016 Briers, but his team did not claim another title.

“We really used our emotions well in the great moments and not very well in the down moments,” Jacobs said.

“I certainly think when you’re controlling your emotions well and staying calm, it makes life a whole lot easier out there as opposed to riding the roller-coaster like we used to in the past.

“We’ve been working at this type of Zen-like calmness for this entire season.

“It’s nice to be just continually evolving.”

Local teams win at provincial championships

Ted CLARKE Citizen staff tclarke@pgcitizen.ca

The Cedars Christian Eagles, D.P. Todd Trojans and Duchess Park Condors all found the win column on opening day Wednesday at their respective B.C. provincial boys basketball championships in Langley. At the single-A tournament, the No. 7-ranked Eagles defeated No. 10 Pemberton 62-44 to advance to the quarterfinal round Thursday against Kelowna Christian.

Two other North Central zone teams are in action at the single-A championships. The No. 9 Northside Northstars of Vanderhoof lost 80-76 to No. 8 King David of Vancouver. The No. 14 McBride Mustangs took on No. 3 Highroad Academy of Chilliwack in a late game Wednesday and lost 88-55.

Meanwhile, at the triple-A boys championship, Caleb Lyons shot a game-high 25 points and also had seven rebounds and forced five turnovers to lead the No. 4-ranked Duchess Park Condors to a 72-49 win over

No. 13 Caledonia of Terrace.

Dan Zimmerman collected 11 points and six rebounds for the Condors, while Connor Lewis finished with 10. Emir Zejnulahovic contributed eight rebounds and had six points. Duchess Park led 14-13 after the first quarter and 42-27 at the half.

The Condors advance to a quarterfinal playoff against Thursday at 8:15 p.m. against G.W. Graham of Chilliwack.

At the double-A boys tournament, the No. 2-ranked D.P. Todd Trojans won their

opener, defeating No. 15 Pacific Academy of Surrey 82-68. Saagar Shergill had a 24-point game for the Trojans. Cameron Sale chipped in with 14 points and eight rebounds and Shane Sandhu picked up 13 points. Holden Black had seven rebound and six assists, while Randy Sandhu finished with seven rebounds, seven assists and five points. The Trojans will face Wednesday’s Seacove-George Elliot winner in the quarterfinal Thursday at 8:15 p.m.

RESULT Trail 5 Merritt 2

WEDNESDAY’S GAME Merritt at Trail, 7 p.m. FRIDAY’S GAME Trail at Merritt, 7 p.m.

SATURDAY, MAR. 9 x-Merritt at Trail,

Vancouver Canucks’ Alexander Edler checks Toronto Maple Leafs’ Zach Hyman

Trebek diagnosed with pancreatic cancer

Citizen news service

Canadian Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek announced he’s been diagnosed with advanced pancreatic cancer in a YouTube video on Wednesday that had a positive tone despite the grim prognosis.

“Just like 50,000 other people in the United States each year, this week I was diagnosed with Stage 4 pancreatic cancer,” Trebek said in the message posted on the Jeopardy! YouTube channel.

“Now, normally the prognosis for this is not very encouraging. But, I’m going to fight this and I’m going to keep working. And with the love and support of my family and friends, and with the help of your prayers also, I plan to beat the low survival rate statistics for this disease.

“Truth told – I have to, because under the terms of my contract, I have to host Jeopardy! for three more years,” the 78-year-old continued, wearing a signature suit on the Jeopardy! set and employing the wry wit he has brought to the hit quiz show for decades.

“So help me: keep the faith and we’ll win. We’ll get it done. Thank you.”

Born in Sudbury, Ont., Trebek attended the University of Ottawa and hosted a number of CBC TV programs early in his career, including the high school quiz show Reach

for the Top. He moved to the United States in the 1970s and became an American citizen in 1998. He and his wife, Jean Currivan, have two children.

Trebek has won several Emmy Awards for hosting Jeopardy! since 1984. With a matter-of-fact delivery style and genial personality, the role has made him a worldwide star and the subject of spoofs on Saturday Night Live.

Trebek received the Order of Canada medal in 2017 in recognition of his “iconic television work” and commitment to edu-

cational, environmental and humanitarian causes.

In late 2017, Jeopardy! went on hiatus after Trebek underwent surgery for blood clots on his brain caused by a fall.

Several months after the surgery, he appeared in a video on the show’s Facebook page, wearing a Jeopardy! baseball cap. Using the same tone he employs to explain difficult subjects on the show, the unflappable Trebek said: “I had a slight medical problem, subdural hematoma, blood clots on the brain caused by a fall I endured about two months ago.”

In 2007, he was hospitalized for about a

Historical novel reimagines Dionne quintuplets’ childhood

Citizen news service photo

It was a story stranger than fiction: five identical girls, made famous by dint of their againstall-odds existence, separated from their family to become one of Canada’s biggest tourist attractions at a profit to many, including the Ontario government.

Despite the incalculable ink that’s been spilled over the Dionne quintuplets, author Shelley Wood says the full truth may never be known about the girls’ cloistered childhood inside Quintland, the compound near North Bay, Ont., where the girls were raised on public display.

That’s in part why Wood said she turned to historical fiction in her new novel, The Quintland Sisters, to wrestle with the ways in which a host of outside actors, of varying intentions, capitalized on the sensation surrounding the quintuplets – and to some extent, the Kelowna-based writer admits, she’s also complicit.

“A lot of people have really, really entrenched beliefs about what happened way back when,” Wood said. “My hope, most of all, is that people would come away not angry at me for the fictional choices I made, but rather, inspired to rethink some of the things they thought about prior.”

At the height of their Depression-era fame, the Dionne quintuplets were household names in Canada, with fans across the globe following their every childhood milestone in the news. But today, the two surviving sisters, Annette and Cecile Dionne, lead largely private lives.

Fearing what she sees as a dark chapter in Canadian history was on the verge of being forgotten, Wood said she gave herself the “fictional licence” to reimagine the quintuplets’ early years, using the sisters’ own accounts in their autobiographies to anchor the historical elements of her tale.

“These women have been through so much, and even just daring to imagine what a small portion of that was like is a little

bit of arrogance on my part,” said Wood, who is donating a share of the novel’s proceeds to the Canadian Centre for Child Protection.

“I hope that they understand my motives for doing this, and I hope to meet them in person one day if that’s something they want.”

Wood said she sent the 84-yearold sisters an advance copy of the novel, which they were unable to read due to vision loss, a family spokesman said in an email.

“This book is clearly and unambiguously presented as a fictional version of a major chapter of worldwide media history,” said Carlo Tarini, a communications consultant who works with the sisters.

“Sadly, the true and tragic story of the Dionne quintuplets never needed enhancement to demonstrate the incredibly high cost of unwanted celebrity.”

The Quintland Sisters is told from the perspective of invented characters on the periphery of the quintuplets phenomenon, beginning the day of their premature birth on May 28, 1934 in a farmhouse near Corbeil, Ont., to francophone parents already struggling to care for their five older children.

With the Ontario government’s

intervention, Annette, Cecile, Emilie, Marie and Yvonne Dionne were installed in a custom-built hospital/nursery across the road from their family homestead, where they were tended to by a team of nurses and teachers. At its peak, Quintland brought an estimated $500 million to the northern Ontario economy, when more than five million tourists observed the girls through one-way glass.

By alternating between fictionalized journal entries and correspondence and archival news clippings, Wood sought to juxtapose the “fairy tale” public narrative against the tensions simmering within Quintland over the toddlers’ care and commercial success. Many of these clashes played out along Canada’s dividing lines, she said, pitting anglophones against francophones, Protestants against Catholics, and monied medical professionals against the impoverished Dionnes.

“I think that we as a society need to look at how much we enjoy the spectacle of watching people squirm in the public eye, and what the long-term impact of that is,” Wood said.

The Quintland Sisters, published by William Morrow, hits bookstores Tuesday.

week after suffering what was described as a minor heart attack. Sharing his cancer diagnosis was “in keeping with my longtime policy of being open and transparent with our Jeopardy! fanbase,” Trebek said.

“I also wanted to prevent you from reading or hearing some overblown or inaccurate reports regarding my health. So therefore, I wanted to be the one to pass along this information.”

Social media was flooded with tributes for Trebek after his announcement.

Former Ontario premier Bob Rae shared his sympathies on Twitter, calling Trebek a “very fine man.”

Ken Jennings, who holds the record for the longest winning streak on Jeopardy!, tweeted that he hopes Trebek finds comfort in the millions of fans who are rooting for him, warning L.A. oncologists that they better prepare themselves to have their pronunciations corrected.

“Alex Trebek is in a way the last (Walter) Cronkite: authoritative, reassuring TV voice you hear every night, almost to the point of ritual,” he tweeted, referring to the late broadcaster known as the “most trusted man in America.”

Singer-songwriter Ron Sexsmith also sent his positive thoughts to the “great Canadian” via social media.

CITIZEN NEWS SERVICE PHOTO

Alex Trebek speaks at the 44th annual Daytime Emmy Awards in April 2017.

CITIZEN NEWS SERVICE PHOTO

The Dionne quintuplets are shown in this 1952 photo. Front, left to right, Cecile and Yvonne, and back Marie, Emilie and Annette.

SANDRA JEAN

WESTRE CHOW

December 20, 1942February 27, 2019

Sandra passed away peacefully at home in the presence of her family. She was diagnosed with ovarian cancer just over one year ago. During that time she lived her life as usual, putting energy into everything she did. However, disease got the better of her the past several months.

Sandra was born in Havre, Montana and grew up in Columbia Falls, Montana in her beloved Flathead Valley and Glacier National Park. She trained as a Registered Nurse at Deaconess Hospital followed by a BSc Ed degree from Whitworth College, both in Spokane, Washington. Here she met and married Bill Chow who was doing his medical internship at Deaconess. They lived in Port Hardy, BC for two years where Bill began his medical practice and they had their ﬁrst child. They relocated to Prince George and had two more children, completing their family.

Sandra nursed at Prince George Regional Hospital, eventually becoming a Diabetes Nurse Educator for 18 years. Sandra helped make the Diabetes Clinic a formidable unit and retired in 1998 for health reasons. She loved her work, her patients, their families and they loved her back for her help and her caring. Her life has been ﬁlled with music, especially voice. Sandra sang solo with her high school Big Band orchestra, the Columbians. She also started the Port Hardy Tsusquana Singers and was a founding member of Cantata Singers-both groups now into their 50th year! She formed choirs at St. Andrews United and St. Giles Presbyterian Churches. Only months before she passed, Sandra co-produced a CD of quiet worship music utilizing the musical talent within St. Giles; a remarkable accomplishment.

Artistically, Sandra excelled in watercolour paintings and as a member of Artists’ Workshop dabbled in other mediums. This past year, devising her own technique, she produced a dirt painting of the Red Rocks of Sedona, Arizona, earning her a showing with Artists’ Workshop in the Galleria of Two Rivers Gallery.

Her many interests have included gardening, photography, travelling, dog training, and cooking authentic Chinese meals.

Sandra grew up with a strong Christian faith and has been a strong presence at St. Giles Presbyterian, always looking more towards the needs and welfare of others than to herself!

Sandra is survived by her husband Bill of 51 years, daughter Michelle (Kevin) Niebergall, sons Kevin (Michelle Harrison), Jason (Kim), brother Willard (Sheela) Westre, grandchildren Dayton, Olivia and Ella. She is pre-deceased by her parents George and Mildred Westre.

A private family interment took place March 5, 2019.

Celebration of Life at St. Giles Presbyterian Church on Saturday, March 23, 2019 at 2 pm. In lieu of ﬂowers, donate in Sandra’s memory to Canadian Cancer Society, Canadian Diabetes Association, or Sierra Club.

The family wish to thank Drs. Turski, Winwood, Tinker, Linda Wilson, Taya O’Neill; the very empathetic Chemotherapy Unit, and the Home Care/Palliative Care Team of Ericka, Karen, Adrienne and Jennifer for their kind and dedicated care and support.

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unique ProjecTs offered aT science fair

Hannah Gibson, a Grade 7 Heather Park student, thinks her idea to put opposing magnets on wind turbines will offer perpetual motion essentially saving the world, while Madison Brasson and Kyra Wiebe, Grade 9 Westside Academy students, partnered to prove dogs will help keep your blood pressure in check while cats can help alleviate anxiety.

These intrepid students were among 150 who came from 23 schools across three school districts to showcase 123 projects during Saturday’s 43rd annual Central Interior Science Exhibition in the Bentley Science Centre at UNBC.

Students between Grades 4 to 12 came from Quesnel School District (28), Nechako Lakes School District (91) and the Prince George School District (57). Five projects will be chosen to represent the Central Interior at the Canada-Wide Science Fair that will be held at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton from May 15 to 17 where representatives from 13 regions in B.C. and 107 from across the nation will gather.

Grades 4 to 6 compete in one category, while Grade 7 to 12 compete in another and it’s only the latter that are eligible to go to the national competition.

To get to the Central Interior Science Exhibition some students participated in a school fair and a district fair, while others could just register and participate. Each project could be a study, an innovation or an experiment.

“We tend to get more experiments,” Anjula Corbin, chair of the exhibition, said.

Students take from the experience so much more than just the science, Corbin said.

“They get experience in public speaking and gain confidence in presenting their own ideas,” she added.

There’s nothing like a 10-year-old talking to a university professor about their science projects to get out-in-the-real-

world experience.

“There’s also the creativity piece because the children have to make a backboard to exhibit their ideas,” Corbin said. And it’s really good for students to be around like-minded students, she added.

Some of the titles of projects included Go Away Stains, What are Geodes?, Cannabis and Pregnancy and Hot & Spicy, which was about the levels of heat in hot sauces.

Another took on the question of what kind of ice melt works the fastest in the north. Corbin said most of the students are inspired by their passion so one student did a study on which type of horse blanket would provide the best warmth, while another did a study on the best dog treat.

Corbin said UNBC further supports the children interested in science by inviting everyone to return to the university for a day of science.

Hannah got her idea to magnetize

wind turbines by talking with her family. They brainstormed a solution to the problem of how to keep the turbine in motion when there’s no wind and because Hannah likes magnets, it was a natural fit. Hannah made mini turbines to demonstrate her theory. One had no magnets, another had one and the third had two. Hannah earned two awards for her efforts, (see page 19 for details).

Continued on page 8

celebrates hart ski hill’s 50th

christine hinzmann 97/16 staff

97/16 photo by james doyle

Hannah Gibson shows off her exhibit on Saturday morning at the 43rd annual Central Interior Science Exhibition that was held in the Bentley Science Centre at UNBC. The Grade 7 Heather Park student was one of 150 students from 23 schools that participated in the event.

Hart Ski Hill celebrateS 50 yearS

In honour of its 50th anniversary the Hart Ski Hll invited Nancy Greene Raine, 1968 slalom Olympic gold medalist and Canada’s Female Athlete of the Century, to help celebrate.

“To think that it’s been going for 50 years and to think of the thousands and thousands of people who have learned to ski and snowboard on this hill is just amazing,” Greene Raine said. “I was really pleased to come. It’s been fun. There are not very many places in Canada where a major city like Prince George has a ski hill inside the city limits.”

Greene Raine said she appreciates how accessible the hill is and how affordable it is, too. “They’ve got a good ski school here,” Greene Raine said. “I think this year they’ll teach over 2,000 kids how to ski and that’s a life long gift to them.”

Greene Raine said she feels very fortunate to have grown up in a town where there was a community ski hill run by volunteers, just like the Hart Ski Hill. “I have been blessed to be associated with such a great sport,” Greene Raine said.

Bernadette Kipping, president of the Hart Highlands Winter Club which operates the Hart Ski Hill, wanted to offer

a brief history of it before slices of cake were shared with those who attended the celebration.

The ski hill started out in 1968 as a recreation area designated for a ski hill with a rope tow, tobaggan run and little league baseball diamond.

Kipping said the rope toe is in the same spot now as it was then and night skiing was made available by having placed

lights in the trees.

In 1971 the Hart Highlands Winter Club society was formed. The facility has been volunteer run for its entire history.

In the same year the Nancy Greene Ski Club was formed and it still part of the society today.

In 1983 the lodge was built allowing for a gathering place for those who attend the Hart Ski Hill.

The most recent development was to bring in equipment to make snow in 2017.

“This has been a huge undertaking but with so many great people we were able to bring in water, build a pump house, install the pump, lay pipe and purchase the snow gun and the work continues as we are not finished yet,” Kipping said. “This step was taken to ensure the Hart Ski Hill can run at full capacity day and night. We are very proud of the Hart Ski Hill.” The hill was open for 100 days last season largely in part to the ability to make snow and the society will soon be expanding the capacity to ensure future successful seasons.

Kyle Sampson, acting mayor, MLA Shirley Bond and MLA Mike Morris were on hand to offer congratulations to the Hart Ski Hill for their 50-year service to the community.

“If you look around this is what the Hart Ski Hill is all about - families come out to ski with one another on beautiful days like this and it really is a testament to the community we live in - all of the hard work for 50 years to make sure that this place continues to grow and develop so families like mine can come here and enjoy themselves,” Bond said.

97/16 photo by Christine Hinzmann

Nancy Greene raine, canadian Olympic downhill skier, centre in the red jacket, helps serve cake to guests at the hart ski hill who all helped celebrate its 50th anniversary. cutting the cake is Bernadette Kipping, president of the hart highlands Winter club which operates the hart ski hill.

christine hinzmann 97/16 staff

97/16 photo by James Doyle

Nancy Greene raine poses for a photo at hart ski hill on saturday afternoon as part of the hills’ 50th anniversary celebrations.

career big part of local nurse’s life

JSeniorS’ Scene

Kathy nadalin

oan (Dempsey) Lemky was born and raised in Hythe Kent, England in 1929. When she turned 15, she volunteered at her church social functions for the young men of the allied forces waiting to be deployed for D-Day in 1944. This is where she met her future husband Pete Lemky who was 20 years old and heading off to war.

Second World War veteran Pete Lemky was born in Edenbridge, Sask. Pete had three sisters who were also in Europe with the Canadian armed forces. Joan became a pen pal with his sister Sue for the next 15 years. She would not actually really get to know Pete until 1958.

Life went on and Joan took her nurses training in Eastbourne, England, and her midwifery in Edinburgh, Scotland. She worked as a nurse until she got itchy feet and wanted to travel and in particular, she wanted to explore the United States. From 1954-58, she nursed at Beth Israel Hospital in Newark, New Jersey, Tampa General in Tampa, Florida, St. Joseph Hospital in Denver, Colorado and the Roosevelt Hospital in Manhattan, New York.

Pete came from Nipawin, Sask. to Prince George in 1954.

His early years were spent as a welder, heavy duty mechanic and equipment operator. He worked in Prince George during the winter and went back to Saskatchewan to work on the farm during the summer.

Joan and Pete met up again in Sarnia, Ont. in 1958. Pete returned to Prince George in October of 1958 and Joan followed in December; they were married in February of 1959.

Pete sold the farm in Saskatchewan in 1961. He worked for the John Deere dealership and then taught welding at the Prince George Vocational School (now CNC) until he started P&W Logging. He retired at the age of 60 and went gold mining.

He always loved the wildness and the quiet of the bush. Sadly, he passed away in 2011 at the age of 88 and after 54 years of marriage.

When the babies started to arrive, Joan became a stay-at-home mom. They had five children – Janis, Patricia, Lyn, Peter and Barbara – who in turn gave them 10 grandchildren and five great grandchildren.

Joan said, “In 1962, I worked Friday and Saturday nights in the operating and emergency rooms to stay current in my profession. The children didn’t even know I was gone.

“When the children were all in school, I worked week nights and spent the weekends at home. There was no TV until 1974 so we did many things together as a family.”

Joan said, “Memorable events in my career are as follows: Dr. Edwin Henry a progressive internist started the first coronary care unit. We started out with three beds and I started learning all over again. We progressed and added another three beds in 1964 and became a coronary and intensive care unit. Those of us that worked in the unit went through a steep and stimulating learning curve.

“In 1972 we moved to a 10-bed unit in the new west-wing of the Prince George Regional Hospital. This created the need for a program for registered nurses wanting to work in the intensive care unit and the coronary care unit. I researched most of it, put the training modules together and then I was invited to teach the program. I loved teaching and it turned out to be an excellent choice for me.

“The volunteers at the hospital auxiliary funded some of the new equipment and the courses I attended to try to keep up with all that was evolving in coronary and critical care at the time. I am grateful to the auxiliary ladies for those invaluable learning opportunities.

“In 1973, Dr. Steve Lowe initiated the start of the cardiac lab and asked for my assistance. This began a string of firsts for the P.G.R.H. Modern equipment enabled us to do automated cardiac stress testing. Once this was up and running, we com-

menced doing 24-hour remote cardiac monitoring using the Holter device, which was actually a heavy reel to reel tape recorder worn around the waist.

“Next we opened the pacemaker clinic to regularly assess the patient and the device for any problems including approaching end of battery life. The first pacemakers were large and heavy and the zinc-mercury batteries lasted about two years.

“Today, all of these devices have been upgraded and improved due to modern technology. It was an exciting challenge to be at the beginning of all of this.

“Dr. Donald MacRitchie established the cardiac rehabilitation program at the YMCA gymnasium in 1975 with the approval of the YMCA CEO Colin Reid. The program was run by volunteers with Dr.

MacRitchie providing medical guidance and advice and I monitored the patients.

Trish Ouilette was our fitness leader and she ran the program three days a week from 7 to 8:30 a.m. The program ended in 2014.

“In 1982 I became the full-time critical care instructor at the hospital until I retired in 1992.

“In 1987 I seconded to the Justice Institute to lead the first group of Prince George paramedics through their practicum and later upgraded them to advanced cardiac life support.”

Joan volunteered for the Canadian Red Cross and the Heart and Stroke Foundation until the age of 70 and then retired.

She served on the board of the Registered Nursing Association of B.C. from 1992-1996.

She has been a member of the Sons of Norway since 1959 and says that she is an honorary Viking.

She continued to volunteer as team leader for the cardiac rehabilitation program exercising with the patients three times a week.

She provided support and counsel to the group from 1994 to 2014.

When Joan needed heart surgery, at the age of 85, she knew it was time to retire.

Joan concluded and said, “I have proud and satisfying memories of my nursing career in Prince George and all the exceptional people that I worked with over the years.

“I am enjoying my retirement. I am almost 90 and I can still get down on my knees to give thanks for all that I have, my good health, my energy, my good friends and a remarkable family. What else is there?”

97/16 photo by brent braaten Joan Lemky had a ground-breaking nursing career. In the top photo she is seen currently in her home and below she is pictured during the time she worked in the united states in the 50s.

Reconciliation needs to include afRican-canadians

Nlessons in learning

GeRRy chidiac

ewly elected American Congressional Representative Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez recently stated, “Until America tells the truth about itself, we’re not going to heal.”

There is reason to hope that America will heal. It is very encouraging to see several Democratic presidential hopefuls include recognition of the impact of the slave trade and subsequent racist policies against the African-American community as part of their platforms.

It is very easy for Canadians to look self-righteously at these developments and say, “Yes, America. Get your act together. We told the truth about ourselves when Stephen Harper stood up in Parliament and apologized for the residential schools way back in 2008.”

While there is some truth to this, we still not only have a long way to go in following the recommendations of the 2015 Truth and Reconciliation Commission. There is another very ugly chapter of Canadian history which is rarely discussed. Canada has rightly made reparations to Japanese Canadians and many others, but we have largely ignored the sufferings endured in New France and British North America by Africans and their descendants. We also largely ignore the history of racist laws that existed in our country. The fact is, the United Nations Human Rights Council, upon studying the issue,

97/16 photo by Bank of canada

This image shows the new vertical $10 bill, which features Viola Diamond, who refused to leave a whites-only section of a movie theatre in 1946. Her court case was a demand for racial equality in Canada and her story is part of the permanent collection at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights.

has recommended that we create a federal department of African-Canadian affairs. We speak proudly about the Underground Railroad and the Book of Negroes, but these only tell part of our story.

The Underground Railroad did exist, and tens of thousands of slaves escaped to British North America after slavery was abolished in the British Empire. It is also true that thousands of black people in the American colonies who were loyal to Great Britain were granted freedom in the British Empire after the American

War of Independence. Ironically however, loyalist slave owners who immigrated to Canada at the same time were allowed to bring their slaves with them.

We cannot forget that slavery was legal in New France and that it was legal in British North America until 1834. While there were no cotton fields or sugar plantations in Canada, the treatment of slaves was no better than elsewhere. Their life expectancy was very low and Canadian slave owners were just as apt to be cruel as their counterparts in the United States and the

Caribbean. There was even a time when slavery was abolished in certain northern states and slaves would try to escape from Canada in order to be free.

We would also be doing the discussion of slavery in Canada a great disservice if we did not acknowledge that slaves were not only of African descent, many of them were Indigenous Canadians.

What has been the legacy of slavery in Canada? The CBC radio program Ideas recently did a thorough investigation on this topic. As with our Indigenous population, social statistics reveal that there is a problem. Black Canadians are more likely to be stopped and searched by police, their children are more likely to be in foster care, and despite higher levels of education, black women in Ontario are more likely to be unemployed than the rest of the population.

While it is disturbing to look on past policies which would consider Viola Desmond (featured on the new $10 bill) as “less than” simply because of the colour of her skin, we need not fear looking honestly at history. The truth allows us to see who the real heroes are. It is not the slave owners and those who supported racist laws, but those who responded to them with true courage.

We also need to remember that we not only study history, we are in the process of making the history which our descendants will study. Let’s make them proud of the generation that told the truth about the past, thus allowing Canada to heal. Gerry Chidiac is a champion for social enlightenment, inspiring others to find their greatness in making the world a better place. For more of his writing go to www.gerrychidiac.com.

Revenge is neveR Really sweet

None of us can truly share the misery and horror of Auschwitz and the other Nazi death camps. So vile were the Nazi programs that the idea of seeking some form of revenge against Germany seems natural. NAKAM was a small organization formed in the aftermath of the Second World War that sought revenge against Germany in an attempt to kill six million Germans as reprisal.

The organization was started by Abba Kovner.

He had escaped the Vilna ghetto to join the Soviet partisans. He fought the Nazis with them. After the war, he visited with survivors of the death camps and determined that the Germans and Nazis must pay for what they had done. He formed NAKAM to extract revenge from Germany. As the Nazis had killed over six million Jews, NAKAM proposed to kill six million Germans in retaliation.

Guest column willow arune

With the support of some very influential Jews in Palestine, the plot was simple. NATAM’s Plan A was to poison the water supplies of four major German cities - Hamburg, Frankfurt, Munich, and Nuremberg. Members were sent to Germany to obtain details of the water supplies of these cities, the sources and distribution methods.

In Palestine, a chemist prepared a poison that could be easily added to any water supply in small amounts and which would affect the whole system and be fatal to any that ingested it. NAKAM thought that this would kill at least six million Germans.

Just as the Nazis had not cared about which Jews they killed, the indiscriminant death of men, women, and children was of no concern. Nor did it matter if those opposed to the Nazis or even foreigners were killed by the poison. The potential victims were Germans or in Germany. That was enough.

When the poison was ready, it was placed in safe containers and picked up by Kovner to be taken from Palestine to Germany on a British ship. Aware of the plot, the British arrested Kovner on board. His accomplice threw the poison containers overboard; Kovner was jailed in Cairo for a few months.

Plan A was cancelled but Plan B could now go forward.

After the war, German soldiers were held in large concentration camps by the victorious Allies. Plan B was to poison the bread made in one of the camps near Nuremburg with arsenic. Only partially

successful, several thousand prisoners became ill but no deaths were recorded. Kovner joined a Jewish resistance movement prior to Israel’s independence and then the Israeli army. A well-respected poet, he spent his final years in an Israeli kibbutz.

Violence begets violence.

Revenge for a wrong is a natural instinct in our species. In our modern world, personal revenge has been replaced by our system of laws and justice. Society takes revenge for those wrongs, not the victims personally. Vigilante justice by private people or groups is illegal. Many would say the attempt by NAKAM was justified – an eye for an eye. Had it been successful, the result would have been further “tit for tat” actions that would never end. No doubt others would have been drawn into the conflict. Instead, those most culpable had the Nuremburg trials.

Panic at the pool confi rms need for swimming lessons

After successfully enrolling my kids into swim lessons, (which was harder than it should have been), we have been spending two evenings a week at the Four Seasons Leisure Pool. On weekend day evenings, it is fairly quiet and largely filled with kids in lessons and moms and dads, in bare feet with their pants rolled up, sitting on the wooden bench relegated to holding

Home aGain

Megan kuklis

jackets and towels. Last week was the parent observation lesson. My son’s instructor said that he

was doing well but he lacked confidence in the water and needed some practice. He is turning eight this year and he has been pushing for a little more independence which coincided with these remarks.

For these reasons, and a general need to learn to let go a little, I agreed to let him swim in the pool while my daughter’s lesson was going on. I was rubbernecking between the baby pool and the waterslide pool making sure that I could see him and watch her lesson.

When it came time to talk with her teacher, I watched her and her little friends glide enthusiastically into one another as they were showing off their skills they have been working on. I turned to see where my son was and I couldn’t see him.

I looked again. Not there.

I ran over to the pool and he was nowhere to be found. I looked at the other pool, not there. He had gone to the bathroom less than five minutes before he was in the water so the only place he could have been was in the pool.

I was in a full-blown panic and I believed I was repeating incessantly, “I can’t find my son.” I ran to one lifeguard who said I needed to tell the other lifeguard and I ran up to the lifeguard who I had seen my son talking to earlier.

The lifeguard asked me how old my

son was and if he could swim. I said that he couldn’t swim very well and I don’t remember if I ever told the young lifeguard how old he was.

I am pretty sure that all I was saying was that I couldn’t find my son. Then the whistles started blowing and I died a little inside.

The mom who I was chatting with at my daughter’s lesson said check the bathroom and the lifeguard ran in to the men’s room and yelled out that he had him. My son came out and I grabbed him in a half-wet hug while I shudder-sobbed.

Wondering why all of the people in the pool were staring at us, he told me that he had to go pee and he thought I knew he was in the bathroom. I asked him gently how would I know if he was in the bathroom when he didn’t tell me? He sort of shrugged, apologized and asked if he could go back in. I let him once he had a thorough understanding that he must stay in the pool area and actually speak to me if he had to leave.

Then I lost my coat in the family locker room.

It was a hard evening and I am so grateful to the lifeguards and for the other parents who were there with me when I had lost my mind. Now we have signed up for more lessons and, if nothing else, they will become better swimmers and have more confidence in the water.

Coming events for this week

Miracle Theatre

Until Wednesday, March 20 at 8 p.m. with 2 p.m. matinees on March 10 and 17 at ArtSpace, above Books & Co., 1685 Third Ave., Halfway There is a professional theatre production with actors hired from across Canada. This comedy is about friends for life and the surprises that arise when a new doctor comes to town. This year’s beneficiary is the Community Foundation and all net proceeds will start the new Children of Prince George Fund. Tickets are $33 at Books & Co. or call 250-563-6637.

A Maker Night for Adults

Friday at 7 p.m. at the Two Rivers Gallery, 725 Canada Games Way, Booze & Build: A Maker Night for Adults sees guests make, build, drink and create at this entertaining evening just for adults. Sip on some wine or craft beer while you try your hand at 3D doodling. Explore the exhibitions, laser tattoo some bananas and other one-of-a kind activities. It’s a night like no other. Tickets are $42. For more information 250-614-7800 | visitorservices@tworiversgallery.ca.

BC Ringette Provincials

Friday to Sunday at the Kin Centre Arenas, 2187 Ospika Blvd. S and Elksentre, 4833 Heather Rd., watch the fastest game on ice. Prince George hosts 39 of the top A and B-Level qualifying ringette teams from each of the four regional leagues across B.C. More than 600 athletes and 145 coaches and officials from the Lower Mainland, Thompson Okanagan, Vancouver Island and Northern Leagues will participate in showcasing the speed, skills, finesse and sportsmanship of BC U14, U16, U19 and 18+ ringette players. For more information 250-277-2116 | info@pgringette.ca.

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels

Friday until Saturday, March 16 at Theatre NorthWest, 556 North Nechako Rd., see musical comedy Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. Based on the 1988 slap-stick comedy starring Michael Caine and Steve Martin, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels follows the story of two men who con their way through a series of beautiful women on the French Riviera. This show features catchy songs, farcical humor and a plot twist that will leave you saying “Sacré Bleu!” Tickets are $10 for UNBC and CNC students with valid ID, and $15 for nonstudents at tickets.theatrenorthwest.com.

International Womxn’s Day Punk Show

Friday at 8 p.m. at Omineca Arts Centre, 369 Victoria St., there’s an all ages

punk show in support of International Womxn’s Day. Tickets are $10 to $20, pay what you can. There are a variety of entertainers including Hujune, Native folk metal; Rupture, hardcore punk/doom metal; Rat Trapper, crust punk/fast rock; Karen M, solo punk/garage; Britt AM, rock/gritty loops. For more information 250-552-0826 | info@ominecaartscentre.com.

Dining In the Dark

Saturday at 7 p.m. at the Coast Inn of the North, 770 Brunswick St., ignite your senses and explore the different flavours and aromas of an exquisite selection of food chosen by the executive chef at Coast Inn of the North, while wearing a blind fold. This is a fundraiser to support CNIB programs. Tickets at 100-490 Quebec St.. For more information 250-5631702 | shalon.morrison@cnib.ca.

Sea Stories

Saturday at 7:30 p.m. at the Prince George Playhouse, 2833 Recreation Pl., the Prince George Symphony Orchestra presents St. Roch Suite, composed by

Vancouverite Thomas Beckman who plays regularly with the PGSO. The St. Roch Overture was written in celebration of the 90th anniversary of the launching of the RCMP schooner that traveled the waters of the North West Passage. For more information 250-981-8456 | marketing@pgso.com.

Wheelchair Basketball

Every Monday until April 15 from 7:30 to 9 p.m. at Northern Sports Centre (NSC), 3333 University Way, P.G. LumberJacks wheelchair basketball is a Rec North drop-in program at the Northern Sports Centre. No experience necessary and all equipment including sports wheelchairs is available. Everyone welcome. Free for NSC members and youth under 13 years or $6 drop-in rate for non-members. For more information 250-613-5187 | pgwheelchairbball@ gmail.com.

Wheelchair Rugby

Every Tuesday until May 28 from 7 to 9 p.m. at the College of New Caledonia, 3330 22 Ave., PG Wheelchair Rugby pro-

gram runs weekly. No experience necessary and all equipment including sports wheelchairs are available. Everyone welcome. BC Wheelchair Sports annual membership is $10. In this full-contact sport, athletes play in tank-like wheelchairs and hit each others’ chairs in an attempt to carry a ball across the line. For more information 250-649-9501 | Northern@bcwheelchairsports.com.

Tea n’ Beads n’ Bannock

Wednesday from 7 to 10 p.m. at Omineca Arts Centre, 369 Victoria St., there is a community beading circle hosted by Lynette La Fontaine, a Metis artist who blends traditional art and teachings with contemporary flair in the form of acrylic paintings and beadwork. Learn by watching, asking and doing.

This is not a class, but a place to bring beading projects and sit together to inspire, connect and learn from one another. Anyone with an interest is welcome.

Admission is by donation. For more information visit www.ominecaartscentre. com.

Citizen photo by Brent Braaten Miracle Theatre production of halfway There was in rehearsal last week. abraham asto, left, as sean Merrit, Melissa Oei as Janine, dolores drake as rita, Linda carson as Mary Ellen and sheery smith as Vi. The play can be seen until March 20.

Anxiety levels, blood pressure tested during experiment for Science Fair project

continued from page 1

Her experiment explored the theory of perpetual motion being sustained with the use of repelling magnets when there was no wind to keep the turbine in motion.

“This could help us save more energy and save the planet, kinda, really,” Hannah explained.

Madison and Kyra had followed current news that reported how the survivors of the Humbolt bus accident were coping. One of the players received a therapy dog to offer support and comfort.

“We wanted to find out if that was actually the right animal for him,” Madison said. “What if he was given a horse or cat?”

Kyra and Madison wanted to see for themselves if having a dog was best for the survivor’s needs.

Madison and Kyra wanted to know if having a dog, cat, or horse for a pet helped lower blood pressure and diminish anxiety. They conducted their study on a group of 14 people to test each theory and included those without pets as well. Participants filled out a questionnaire about their lives and their pets and each was monitored for an extended period. The experiment took months.

The two Grade 9 students were able to conclude that dogs were best at lowering blood pressure while cats were best at alleviating anxiety and all animals were better for you than no animals.

From personal experience the girls had their own opinions to share.

Kyra found her cat Kuta abandoned on the side of the road not quite a year ago. He was just a baby.

“When I come home from school and it’s been a hard day Kuta will always come running to me meowing and ask for hugs and cuddles,” Kyra said. “So I’ll pick him up and we’ll cuddle for about five minutes and I just get so calm and relaxed when he’s around.”

Madison has a three-year-old Maltese Shih-tzu named Gracie.

“A dog is always there for you, you can always trust them to keep your secrets – you know they can’t really talk so they won’t say anything,” Madison laughed. “You can pet them and hang out with them all the time. They’re really just awesome pets.”

Judging at the Central Interior Science Exhibition took place Saturday.

97/16 photo by James Doyle Kyra Wiebe, left, and Madison Brasson show off their exhibit on saturday morning at the 43rd annual central Interior science Exhibition that was held in the Bentley science centre at uNBc

SportS

Canada Games a hiGhliGht for hanson

ted clarke 97/16 staff

Kieran Hanson knew he wanted to give speed skating a try the day he watched Charles Hamelin win Olympic gold for Canada in the 500-metre event in Vancouver.

Hanson was eight at the time and the following season he joined the Vanderhoof Clippers Speed Skating Club, where coaches Nicole Ebert and Calvin Desmarais began teaching him the fast way around the ice.

By the time he was 12, Hanson was hooked on the sport, short track and long track, and during the 2015 Canada Winter Games he was riveted to the action on the ice at Kin 1 arena watching Canada’s future Olympians hot-lapping each other.

It wasn’t until two years ago, when he found out he was the No. 6-ranked skater in the province, that Hanson started to realize he was good enough to take a run at locking up one of the four spots for the B.C. long track team in the 2019 Canada Winter Games in Red Deer.

Well Hanson made it, and in his first race on the outdoor oval in Red Deer two weeks ago, competing against skaters as much as four years his senior, the 16-year-old Prince George Blizzard Speed Skating Club member shredded his own personal record in the 1,500-metre race. In his first race he finished 11th out of 33 in that race and took 14 seconds off his previous best time.

“The first race it was windy and it was snowing and it was cold as hell, like minus-25, and it went really well,” said Hanson. “I had some mess-ups but dealt with them and then had some pretty good racing after that.

“The guy who won gold, he’s 20 and he just got back from international traces and he did it 1:55 and I was 2:07. He did my indoor PB, outdoor.”

Hanson was the youngest racer in the long track event and he said he wasn’t at all intimidated racing older athletes. He’s been doing that for years at provincial and regional meets.

“Everybody knew I was the youngest one and that didn’t change anything. Everybody was really on the same playing field there and I was happy with it,” he said.

Right from the opening ceremonies, Hanson felt privileged to be part of the

George leads the pack around Kin 1 on saturday during a T2T 15 Male Mixed Gender 1500m heat during the first day of competition of the 2019 B.c. short track speed skating championships.

Games.

almost

“It’s completely different, I had an allaccess pass so you can go watch what you want when you want, you can eat what you want, when you want, it’s amazing,” he said. “It’s really neat going to see different sports, you get to see what kids like me who have worked towards in their particular sport. It’s interesting.”

everybody there has the potential to be a future olympian, it’s really cool.

Kieran hanson

Cutting the ice with Canada’s best and soaking up the multi-sport atmosphere that defines the country’s mini-Olympics every four years makes him strive to be there again in 2023 with Team B.C. when the Games come to Prince Edward Island. Having just turned 16 in January, Hanson will still meet the age criteria in four years.

coached Hanson at the Games in Red Deer and has known him since he was kid.

“He’s never satisfied, he always wants more and that’s one of the things you want in an athlete. He’s very committed and works really hard. He really likes the shorter stuff but he’s very good at the 1,000 and 1,500 and he did a ton of work on the 5,000 and that’s what got him on the team.”

Hanson was one of four male speed skaters from the Blizzard club who made Team B.C. Eric Orlowsky, 18, also competed in long track, while 17-year-olds Keenan St. Rose and Craig Miller were part of the short track team. Ingel said Hanson was very close to making the short track team as well.

“Kieran is one of the few who is doing short track and long track, it’s so strongly encouraged,” said Ingel. “If you’re going into short track you are gaining some agility and acceleration and tactics and you go into in long track you balance out your skating. A lot of short trackers are weak with a left-leg push on a straightaway and you can’t do that on a long track. It develops endurance and gives you more power and we encourage them do both as long as possible.”

Hanson was back on home turf over the weekend, one of 11 Blizzard skaters who took part in the two-day B.C. short track provincial championships at Kin 1 in the first major meet on the Olympic-sized rink since the 2015 Canada Games.

“Stuff like this is fun, there’s no pressure and you get to skate without any stress whatsoever,” he said.

Hanson was using the provincial meet as a tune-up for the Western Canadian short track championships in Grande Prairie, Alta., March 22-24.

It’s part of busy month of racing ahead of him. He plans to be in Calgary for a Grand Prix meet next weekend and the Oval Finale in two weeks, both long track events.

You can’t really wrap your head around it until you see everybody leaving then it clicks in, ‘this is what I competed at.’

Almost everybody there has the potential to be a future Olympian, it’s really cool.”

“Most skaters are unable to make a team at 15 years old so they didn’t get two shots and he did and that’s a pretty big achievement for Kieran,” said former Blizzard head coach Adam Ingel, who

Hanson has missed 40 school days since September but his marks haven’t suffered and he’s been a perennial name on the principal’s list as a Grade 10 student at College Heights secondary school.

He needs to maintain his grades so he can go on to study kinesiology at the University of Calgary in a couple years.

97/16 photo by James Doyle Kieran hanson of Prince

No bribes to be paid

Most of us have sat down to watch a movie or documentary and wondered “why is it always an African country struggling with civil war and starvation?”

I realize that there is no easy or simple answer, and I also realize that many people have done a great deal of work to find even a partial answer.

Perhaps our current federal political scandal provides a clue. Perhaps it’s partly our fault. Let’s indulge in a bit of navel-gazing.

SNC-Lavalin is charged with bribery and now shareholders are risking their pension cheques to pursue company wrongdoing and politicians are enjoying the excitement infused into the doldrums of a long winter.

Perhaps the unassuming, apologetic, Canadian has something to apologize for

Thinking aloud Trudy klassen

after all?

Here we are, hiding behind our beautiful constitution and rule of law, (which has taken quite a beating this week, but nevertheless;) on our comfortable couches, in our comfortable homes settling in to watch the next episode of whatever crime, drama, or thriller set in a war torn African country Netflix has to offer, “cluck-clucking” at why those Africans can’t get their act together. Please allow me to take a few liberties to make a point: In a nearby comfortable

Canadian city, even in our capital, we have politicians and staffers desperately trying to get a Canadian company off the hook for bribing foreign officials.

Let’s unpack that, just a bit: Canadian company (originating from the land of “good government”) goes to Libya and bribes officials with money that comes out of the mouths of hungry Libyan babies.

How does the hungry baby pay this bribe?

By the corruption this bribery supports, and the increased cost of projects. We all know that costs are passed on to the customer or taxpayer.

My allegory is certainly not perfect, Libya is one of the countries doing a bit better than many, but I really think that we need to consider how our Canadian companies who are working or bidding

YouTube suspends comments on videos of kids

rachel lerman

97/16 wire service

SAN FRANCISCO — YouTube said it will turn off comments on nearly all videos featuring kids – potentially affecting millions of posts on the site – after reports last week that pedophiles were leaving inappropriate comments on innocuous videos of children.

The change comes as YouTube grapples with moderating content across its platform as concerns about hate speech, vio-

lence and conspiracy theories continue to plague it.

It will take YouTube several months to disable comments on all videos featuring minors, the company said. It already started the process last week when it turned off comments from tens of millions of videos.

Advertisers including Nestle, AT&T and Fortnite-maker Epic Games pulled ads from YouTube last week after the inappropriate comments about children were unearthed by a popular YouTuber and

media reports.

At least one company, Nestle, was satisfied with YouTube’s response and reinstated ads late last week.

A small number of channels which have videos featuring kids will be allowed to keep comments turned on.

But they must be known to YouTube and must actively monitor the comments beyond the standard monitoring tools YouTube provides.

Turning off comments on such a large number of videos seems an “extreme

on contracts abroad are complicit in keeping some of these countries in near failed-state status.

I am not sure what the solution is, because bribery is a way of life in many developing or undeveloped nations, but perhaps we could begin by not contributing to the problem.

By meaning it when we make laws saying that if they want our companies to bid on their infrastructure projects, then no bribes can be paid.

This is essentially what our law states and the application of our law is precisely what Jody Wilson-Raybould was NOT interfering in.

How seriously we take rule of law, and I would say how seriously we care about our real impact in our world, not just our photo ops and feel-good donations, remains to be seen.

reaction,” said eMarketer analyst Paul Verna. But the issue involves the safety of children, so it makes sense YouTube would want to act quickly, he said.

Comments aren’t the main focus of the video-publishing site, but turning them off will likely diminish the experience for many users and video creators, he said.

YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki acknowledged the concerns, tweeting, “Nothing is more important to us than ensuring the safety of young people on the platform.”

SenSory experience featured during cniB fundraiSer

The local CNIB branch is hosting the second annual Dining in the Dark event Saturday at the Coast Inn of the North where blindfolded guests have an opportunity to explore different flavours and aromas of a variety of foods specifically chosen for the event by the executive chef.

The event has been designed to offer people a better understanding of the impact of vision loss, while raising funds for programs and services provided to those in need in Prince George and across the province.

Celebrating its 100th year, CNIB, a non-profit organization, is hosting the unique local event, which is the only one of its kind in the province.

“Folks can expect to enjoy the lovely venue of the Coast Inn of the North during the fundraiser,” Shalon Morrison, coordinator, philanthropy for CNIB, said. “Besides the dining experience we’ll have a silent auction, live music and we just want folks to know that it’s a great event to come out to because it’s a unique experience. We also have a guest speaker who will share her personal story about her connection with CNIB.”

Decades ago, Laura Ferguson used to volunteer with CNIB, then in 2001 she was employed by the non-profit organization and now uses their services here in Prince George.

“I’ve come full circle with CNIB,” she said. Ferguson first started noticing problems with her eyes about 10 years ago

and after 10 surgeries and many other treatments she ultimately lost her vision completely which was caused by diabetic retinopathy.

“CNIB got me set up with a cane and did some mobility training and I was taught how to do things for myself,” Ferguson said. “I come for the support group meeting every Tuesday because it’s nice to have that connection. It’s nice to have people you can speak with.”

CNIB got me set up with a cane and did some mobility training and I was taught how to do things

days when it stands in my way and then I fight with very deep depression from it. So for me I am fairly upbeat and get along with people and then there are days that I just kind of crash with it. I tend now to be on quite an emotional roller coaster. It’s been six years that I have been completely blind. There’s not even a glimmer of sight.”

her cane. She recently switched from a smaller tip of the cane to a larger one because she was getting caught up by the many cracks in the sidewalks she navigates around town.

“I call it my clown nose, because it’s bright red and it makes moving along the sidewalks much easier,” Ferguson said, who is currently living with her daughter, Shawna, 21. Ferguson also has two sons, Tyler, 29 and Bryce, 26 and gets lots of support from her family.

One of the many programs offered by CNIB offers home visits as part of rehabilitation where the person affected can learn new ways to cook, shop and manage the home, connect to devices and apps that make life a bit easier, training on how to use a white cane and even how to navigate within the community and use public transportation.

Ferguson was offered many little tips to help make every day tasks less daunting as an unsighted person. For example, Ferguson’s shampoo and conditioner are in identical bottles so she puts an elastic band on her conditioner so there are no surprises.

Ferguson said she is very grateful to the local branch of the CNIB for all their support.

The last decade has been about adapting to the loss of vision and all that it means to Ferguson.

“You just have to keep moving forward,” Ferguson said about her blindness. “At this point there are days that I really do quite well and then there are

CNIB, a non-profit organization, provides physical aids to those who have a visual impairment, along with programs to support and advocate. Ferguson was provided with the white cane, which is not only functional but also is a symbol to let others know she is blind.

“It’s my lifeline,” Ferguson said about

“They are who you turn to when your sight goes,” Ferguson said. “It’s a comfort to have a place to go for help.”

Tickets to Dining in the Dark, where proceeds will go towards CNIB programs, are available at the CNIB office, 100-490 Quebec St. or by calling 250-563-1702. To start the 19+ event doors open at 6, dinner is at 7 p.m. at the Coast Inn of the North.

Solution to Show Tunes

christine hinzman

97/16 staff

97/16 handout photo

The local branch of cNIB is hosting the only dining in the dark event in the province at the coast Inn on March 9 as a fundraiser for those who are visually impaired.

for myself.

Laura Ferguson

HealtH

When antibiotics fail

Bacteria lodged deep in Ella Balasa’s lungs were impervious to most antibiotics. At 26, gasping for breath, she sought out a dramatic experiment – deliberately inhaling a virus culled from sewage to attack her superbug.

“I’m really running out of options,” said Balasa, who travelled from her Richmond, Virginia, home to Yale University for the last-resort treatment. “I know it might not have an effect. But I am very hopeful.”

Pitting one germ against another may sound radical, but it’s a sign of a growing global crisis. Increasingly people are dying of infections that once were easy to treat because many common bugs have evolved to withstand multiple antibiotics. Some, dubbed “nightmare bacteria,” are untreatable. Now scientists are racing to find novel alternatives to traditional antibiotics, a hunt that is uncovering unusual ways to counter infection, in unusual places.

One possible treatment tricks bacteria out of a nutrient they need to survive. Others rev up the immune system to better fend off germs.

And viruses called bacteriophages – discovered a century ago but largely shelved in the West when easier-to-use antibiotics came along – are being tried in a handful of emergency cases.

“People’s frustration with antibiotic resistance boiled over,” said Yale biologist Benjamin Chan, who travels the world collecting phages and receives calls from desperate patients asking to try them. “We’re more appreciative of the fact that we need alternatives.”

Nature’s bacterial predator, each phage variety targets a different bacterial strain. Originally used to treat dysentery in the early 20th century, today Chan looks in places like ditches, ponds, and, yes, sewage treatment plants for types that attack a variety of human infections.

“The best places are often really dirty places, because we’re dirty animals,” he said.

Chan saw hope for Balasa in a lab dish covered in brownish bacterial goo.

Balasa has a genetic disease called cystic fibrosis that scars her lungs and traps bacteria inside, including a superbug named pseudomonas aeruginosa. A daily dose of inhaled antibiotics kept the infection in check until last fall, when the drugs quit working. A last-ditch IV antibiotic wasn’t helping much either.

Chan grew a sample of Balasa’s bacteria from her phlegm. Then came the key test: He dripped several pseudomonastargeting phages into the grimy dish –and clear circles began appearing as the viruses consumed the bugs around them. While there are no good counts in much of the world, one often-cited British report said unless solutions are found, by 2050 up to 10 million people globally could be dying from drug-resistant infections, slightly more than die from cancer today.

97/16 news service photo by Richard Drew Ella Balasa, 26, of richmond, Va., who has cystic fibrosis, and antibiotic-resistant bacteria lodged inside her cF-damaged lungs, watches as yale university researcher Benjamin chan, pours a bacteriophagen he developed for her to inhale, at the Winchester chest clinic, in New haven, conn., in January.

Yet few new antibiotics make it to market, and many major drug companies have ended antibiotic research, seeing little profit in medicines that germs will soon outsmart. A recent report found just 11 traditional antibiotics being studied to treat any of the World Health Organization’s list of worst bugs, with no guarantee they’ll work.

And while some people are more at risk – those getting surgery, or cancer chemotherapy, for example – “antibiotic resistance is a problem essentially for everyone,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, infectious diseases chief at the National Institutes of Health.

“Over the next several years, all indicators seem to point to the fact that this is going to get worse and worse,” he added. Finding alternatives means “figuring out what the vulnerabilities of infecting bacteria are. What do they need to cause an infection?” said Dr. Pradeep Singh of the University of Washington.

Singh and fellow UW lung specialist Dr. Christopher Goss zeroed in on iron, a nutrient vital for bacterial growth. It turns out that bugs can’t always tell the difference between iron and a chemically similar metal named gallium. Gallium doesn’t nourish and knocks other systems out of whack, Goss said.

For two small studies, the researchers recruited cystic fibrosis patients who had antibiotic-resistant pseudomonas in

experiments and asked to try, hoping to postpone the last option for CF, a lung transplant.

Phages work very differently than traditional antibiotics. Like a parasite, the virus infiltrates bacterial cells and uses them to copy itself, killing the bug as those copies pop out and search for more bacteria. Once the infection’s gone, the virus dies out. Because each phage only recognizes certain bacteria, it shouldn’t kill off “good bugs” in the digestive tract like antibiotics do.

Bacteria evolve to escape phages just like they escape antibiotics, but they generally make trade-offs to do so – such as losing some of their antibiotic resistance, said Yale evolutionary biologist Paul Turner.

For example, some phages recognize bacteria by a pump on their surface that deflects antibiotics. As the phages kill those bugs, the bacteria rapidly evolve to get rid of that surface pump – meaning survivors should be susceptible to antibiotics again.

“It’s reviving an arsenal of drugs that are no longer useful,” Turner said.

Yale’s first test case was an 82-year-old man near death from a heart implant teeming with untreatable pseudomonas. Chan purified a phage from a Connecticut lake that he’d matched to the patient’s germs, and with emergency permission from the Food and Drug Administration, doctors squirted it into the wound. The man’s infection disappeared.

their lungs but weren’t openly sick. The patients received a five-day infusion of a gallium-based drug. Over the next few weeks, their lung function improved, enough that next-step studies are being planned.

“It just seems like a proactive way of destroying bacteria,” said study participant Tre LaRosa, 24, of Cincinnati. His sister died of cystic fibrosis and while his own CF is under control, he worries that one day a resistant infection will flare. “I can’t do anything to prevent that. Antibiotic resistance I think is one of the least talked about and most significant concerns.”

Fauci envisions doctors one day vaccinating people a few weeks before, say, a planned knee replacement to guard against catching a staph infection in the hospital.

Sixteen experimental vaccines are in development to target various infections, according to a recent presentation to a presidential advisory council on resistant germs.

Particularly promising, Fauci says, are lab-engineered “monoclonal antibodies” designed to home in on specific bugs. In one set of studies, researchers are giving experimental antibodies to ventilator patients who have bacteria building up that could trigger pneumonia.

Balasa learned of another cystic fibrosis patient helped by Yale’s phage

Then doctors at the University of California, San Diego, saved a colleague who’d been in a months-long coma, using an IV mixture of several phages that target a superbug named Acinetobacter baumannii.

Doctors and families began calling both centres seeking emergency care, even as formal studies are being planned to try to prove phages’ value.

“There’s an incredible opportunity here,” said Yale pulmonologist Dr. Jon Koff. “But with that you have to have the appropriate amount of skepticism,” with careful testing to tell when it might help.

Last month, Balasa became Yale’s eighth patient, inhaling billions of phages over seven days.

Almost immediately, she was coughing up fewer bacteria. It took a few weeks for her to feel better, though, and during that time she switched briefly to some antibiotics she’d previously given up. Without a formal study it’s hard to know, but Chan’s tests suggest phages killed much of her predominant pseudomonas strain and made the survivors sensitive again to a course of those antibiotics. Balasa called that “a very big success for me,” and was able to quit her antibiotics. She didn’t notice additional improvement after a second round of phages, aimed at different strains.

“The true test,” Balasa said, “is how long I can go without using any antibiotics again.”

Malnutrition risk high in seniors

AFood For thought

dvancing age can bring with it experience, wisdom and unfortunately, a higher risk of malnutrition.

Almost a million Canadians aged 65 and older are at nutritional risk, with women being at a higher risk than men. This means that almost one million Canadians have one or more of the risk factors that contribute to poor dietary intake, some of which are preventable.

Impaired mobility and dexterity, declining health and lack of transportation can all be barriers to purchasing and preparing meals. The loss of a spouse can also lead to a decline in dietary intake, especially if that spouse was responsible for preparing all meals.

Chronic conditions and the medications many seniors take to treat them can inhibit appetite, the absorption of nutrients and the taste and enjoyment of food. Poorly-fitting dentures, poor dentition or difficulty swallowing may also lead to decreased intake due to the avoidance of certain foods for a fear of choking. It can be difficult for many seniors to meet their dietary requirements when multiple barriers present themselves.

Without intervention, seniors at risk of malnutrition may become frail and more likely to develop functional limitations,

skin breakdown, poorer quality of life, longer hospital stays and readmissions, and earlier death. It’s important to be able to identify the risk factors for malnutrition later in life to help prevent or prolong the onset of these issues. In hospital, I visit with many elderly patients whose level of malnutrition is affecting their mobility, overall health and length of admission. Unfortunately, many of these patients have deteriorated

because multiple risk factors have either gone unnoticed or were disregarded as being a “normal part of aging.” It’s up to loved ones and care providers to recognize the signs of malnutrition, especially when a senior does not have as much insight into their own health and behaviours, such as in those individuals with dementia.

Signs of malnutrition in the elderly can include being underweight, weight loss,

loose fitting dentures or clothes, a lack of body fat, slow healing wounds, significant weakness and frequently getting sick.

Malnutrition can go unnoticed when an individual appears to be a normal body weight or overweight. It’s not just a lack of calories or protein that can lead to malnutrition but a lack of vital micronutrients.

A deficiency of calcium and Vitamin D can have a detrimental effect on bone health, and a zinc deficiency can lower immune function in older adults. A poor quality diet can contribute to cognitive impairment, functional limitations, anemia and a lower ability to recover from illness or surgery.

Malnutrition of important micronutrients can lead to a ripple effect in the overall health of a senior.

Although caloric requirements decrease with advanced age, the importance of eating a nutritious diet does not diminish. Unfortunately, an inadequate diet can lead to chronic conditions, while existing conditions, and the associated treatments, can affect or impair the adequacy of the current diet.

If you’re aged 65 or older, or have a senior in your life, and notice any of the risk factors or signs of malnutrition call HealthLink BC at 8-1-1 to speak with a dietitian or go to www2.gov.bc.ca/gov and search Healthy Eating for Seniors Handbook for more information. Kelsey Leckovic is a registered dietitian with Northern Health working in chronic disease management.

Kelsey lecKovic

97/16 news service file photo seniors are shown making healthy food choices. along with making good choices seniors need to be mindful of getting enough nutritional food for optimal health.

Witnessing the handmaid’s tale

The handmaids had been sent good weather.

Dozens of them stood in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., on an unseasonably warm mid-February morning, wearing deep red cloaks and pristine white bonnets. A handful stretched out on the ground because it was almost noon and they had been there since 4:30 a.m. In the memorial’s central chamber, cameramen prepared to shoot a scene of the dystopian series The Handmaid’s Tale.

“No problem with sitting down,” an assistant director said over a speaker to the extras on the National Mall. “Just make sure you’re not sitting on your capes.”

As the handmaids loitered, Washington residents and eager tourists went about their days. A woman wove through the sea of red and up to the eternized president, accompanied by a pair of panting golden retrievers.

A jogger rushed past armed men playing members of the show’s secret police force and yelled to her friends, “Did you not take a picture of me with the Eyes?”

A few young children left their mother’s side and wandered toward the handmaids, mesmerized by the unusual garments.

Security guards shielded star-struck visitors from getting too close but kept a nearby path open to avoid the wrath of the National Park Service.

It was a darkly comical sight, given the gravitas of the handmaids’ fictional existence. The characters originated in Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel, in which a totalitarian, Christian fundamentalist society called Gilead seizes control of the United States and forces fertile women into childbearing enslavement.

The adaptation burst onto the scene a few years ago and the red clothing has since become a symbol of political resistance.

Handmaids and regular folks have commingled in the nation’s capital before – it generally just means there’s some sort of protest going on, whether at the Women’s March or outside the Senate hearing of a soon-to-be Supreme Court justice. But these handmaids were the real deal, as confirmed by the presence of Emmy-winning lead actress Elisabeth Moss, seen sitting next to executive producer Warren Littlefield in a shady corner.

Moss and co-stars Joseph Fiennes and Yvonne Strahovski usually shoot in Toronto but came to Washington for two pivotal scenes from the show’s upcoming third season, set to premiere in June. Gilead’s capital remains in Washington, and the visual drama of the Mall, especially when gazing across the reflecting pool and up at the Washington Monument, lends itself to the show’s bleakness.

In the show, according to producers,

the monument will appear as a cross, Lincoln will literally be blasted out of his chair and hundreds of CGI handmaids will be stationed down the memorial’s steps and along the reflecting pool.

Fiennes found it “somewhat strange and ugly” to preach Gilead’s oppressive ideology in front of a memorial representing the “high ideals of American values.”

Strahovski, who had also filmed another scene with Moss earlier that morning, said in a separate phone call that she felt like she was “really on the wrong side” while standing on the steps in rich teal garments, the colour worn by Gilead commanders’ complicit wives.

“I kept looking at Lizzie (Moss) in her handmaid outfit feeling, like, ‘Oh, if you stood here in a red handmaid’s outfit, you’d feel better about it,’ because it’s a symbol of resistance, really,” Strahovski said. “It’s really incredible to have people feel inspired by that image.”

But those who don’t watch The Handmaid’s Tale probably felt confused that day on the Mall. Among the local actresses who played the handmaids were two women who had previously worked together on the Amazon series Jack Ryan. Asked how they wound up in Gilead, one of them responded that she had submitted her information to a casting call she found on Facebook, and “they got back to me and asked if we wanted to be – what are we? Not bridesmaids. We’re...”

“...handmaids,” the other answered. They both laughed, hurrying back to their assigned spots after an assistant director instructed all the extras to do so.

“Hands clasped, as you do,” he said. “Heads down. If you’re looking at the person’s feet in front of you, that’s probably a good lineup, so we don’t see your eyes.”

As the handmaids got in formation, Park Service employees held tourists back from climbing the stairs.

It was especially tricky to shoot on location, producer Kim Todd said, as they were allowed to film for only about 10 uninterrupted minutes before having to let people in again: “They wouldn’t let us

move the Lincoln Memorial or reroute the planes” overhead, she joked.

Todd, who handles the day-to-day business on set, stood in the corner and watched the live camera footage on a trio of monitors.

The screens showed Moss from the back, descending the memorial’s steps to stand, and then kneel, between Fiennes and Strahovski. As Fiennes began to speak to the dozens of handmaids before him, a police siren went off. Todd smiled.

“Planes give us the same problem,” she said. “But nothing can roll off a siren. It pierces. They’re made to do that, right? So you can’t ignore them.”

97/16 news service

The handmaid’s Tale extras are seen in costume milling about in the above photo at the National Mall in Washington, d c. before gathering in place, below, for their shot.

How a judge becomes a doctor

How did the removal of cabooses from Canadian trains end up benefitting the Provincial Court of BC?

And how did it lead to a judge becoming a doctor?

As a member of the Wet’suwet’en First Nation, Judge Karen Whonnock grew up on a farm near Smithers, BC. After finishing high school, Judge Whonnock went to work for the Canadian National Railway – at the age of 19 she was working as a brakeman and train conductor/yard foreman. When the company retired its cabooses and laid off staff, she decided to use the severance package they offered to attend university, becoming the first in her family to do so and beginning a life-long practice of setting and achieving goals.

After obtaining a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology in 1996, Judge Whonnock went on to obtain a law degree from the University of Toronto in 1999. She was admitted to the Law Society of BC in 2000.

Always passionate about education, Judge Whonnock worked for the BC government in post-secondary education in 2001 to support Aboriginal communities and their members in pursuing postsecondary training and education opportunities. She then served a four year term as an Associate Judge of the Colville Tribal Court in Washington State, where she presided over civil, family and criminal matters including criminal jury trials. Continuing her education at the same time, Judge Whonnock completed a Master of Laws in Alternative Dispute Resolution at York University’s Osgoode Hall Law School in 2003, focusing on indigenous dispute resolution systems and domestic violence. In addition, she taught courses at Northwest Indian College in Bellingham, Washington on the Lummi reserve, including courses on Indigenous Women and Leadership and Lummi Constitutional Law. Judge Whonnock also taught Gladue Report Writing at the Justice Institute of British Columbia.

Judge Whonnock also worked as a treaty negotiator, a lawyer for the BC Legal Services Society, and practised criminal law and family law in northern BC, receiving the Queen’s Counsel designation in 2014. In 2016 she was appointed a judge of the Provincial Court of BC. However, in 2009 she had started the

new Doctor of Social Sciences program at Royal Roads University. There she researched Aboriginal youth incarceration rates in Canada. The doctoral program involved two years of online course work and a month on campus in each of 2010 and 2011, followed by writing and defending a dissertation. Judge Whonnock demonstrated characteristic dedication and persistence in continuing with the program when the demands of work and family slowed her progress. In November 2018 she was awarded a Doctor of Social Sciences degree by Royal Roads University.

“I found it tremendously rewarding,” she says. “I enjoyed the time on campus even though living in student dorms and staying up late to complete assignments was hard. Program participants were intentionally selected with a variety of experience, so we learned from each other, and both students and faculty gave me great support. The program lived up to its motto – ‘living our learning’. Dr. John Borrows, my doctoral supervisor, was very supportive and inspirational. I am extremely grateful to him and my entire doctoral committee, Dr. Bernard Schissel and Dr. Mary Bernard, for their unfailing and thoughtful guidance.” What lies next? Judge Whonnock mentions an interest in photography, and reading for pleasure (which she hasn’t had time for in the last decade), as well as unpacking boxes from her last move. Although we cannot call her Doctor Whonnock (as titles bestowed upon lawyers before they are appointed a Provincial Court judge, including Queen’s Counsel and degrees, are superseded by the appointment and not used until the judge retires), Judge Whonnock says she is both honoured and humbled to preside in court in the beautiful Williams Lake and surrounding Cariboo communities. She adds, “As for education, I encourage everyone to pursue their educational dreams – whether it be a shorter program or a doctoral degree. You never know where your education will take you.”

97/16 handout photo

Judge Karean Whonnock and dr. John Burrows are seen in this handout photo.

Scene

Central InterIor SCIenCe exhbItIon awardS

2019 Special Awards

2019 – The Al Appleton Worksafe Award – Worker’s Compensation Board of British Columbia

1307 – Turf War

2019 – Association of Professional Engineers & Geoscientists of BC, Central Interior Branch Award, Perpetual Trophy and $50

2204 – DIY HDPE Pipe

2019 – BC Agriculture in the Classroom Award

1508 – DUNG DUNG DUNNGG!!

2019 – BC Hydro Power Pioneers Award, Perpetual Trophy, Certificate, $100 1301 – Perpetual Motion?

2019 – BC Institute of Agrologists–Cariboo Central Interior Award

Perpetual Trophy $100 (For all cash awards, if the project is completed by two students, the money will be shared.)

1204 – The Effect of Smoke on Vegetable

2019 – BC Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy – Environmental Award, Perpetual trophy and gift certificate.

2215 – On Thin Ice, Global Warming 2019 – BC Nature Award (Federation of BC Naturalists)

One prize of $75 for a project in Grades 6 to 8, and one for a project in Grades 9 to 12.

1203 – Algae–mania. Fun with Green Scum

1503 – Factors Influencing Ungulate Visitation Rates at a Mineral Lick

2019 – BC Science Teachers’ Award, $100 1301 – Perpetual Motion?

2019 – Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society–Interior BC/Yukon Chapter Award, $250 cash 1204 – The Effect of Smoke on Vegetable

2019 – CANFOR Forestry Award

Perpetual Trophy and Plaque

2217 – Trees in 800 Degrees

2019 – Cercle des Canadiens Francais Prix Pour La Maitrise de la Langue Francaise, Perpetual trophy

2403 – Les Empreintes Digitals Intrafamillials

2519 – Comment est–ce que la coeur pompe le sang

2019 – Darrell W. Dimler Judges Choice Award

Perpetual Trophy and 2 adult and 2

child passes to Science World Valued at $85.50

1101 – Plastination: Preserving History

2019 – Genome British Columbia Award

1504 – Raising Queens

2524 – Do Pea Seeds Sprout After Being Irradiated?

2019 – Innovate BC Young Innovator Scholarship, $2000 scholarship to be awarded at the fair. If partners, each partner receives $2000

1101 – Plastination: Preserving History

2019 – Integris Community Enhancement Award, Perpetual trophy, plaque, $250 each project

1307 – Turf War

2509 – Temptation Station

2019 – The Mackenzie Secondary Automotive Innovation Award, Perpetual trophy

2302 – Zoom zoom

2019 – The Michael Crooks Physics Prize (BC Association of Physics Teachers)

2304 – Does temperature affect energy output of a solar cell

2019 – Northern Health Sciences Award, Perpetual trophy

2503 – Operation Smile

2019 – R.E.A.P.S. Award, $50 and Plaque

1206 – Worms

2019 – Royal Astronomical Society of Canada–Prince George Centre Award

One year youth membership in the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada–Prince George Centre

1202 – Earth Against the Sun!

2019 – Science Alliance Award Gift and Family Day Pass for The Exploration Place 2214 – Ruffed Grouse

2019 – SCWIST Award (Society for Canadian Women in Science and Technology), Certificate, Perpetual Trophy, $100 1307 – Turf War

2019 – SHAW Multimedia Award 1602 – Cell Phones & Children: A Cautionary Tale

2019 – UNBC Active Minds Award

One week registration fee for UNBC Active Minds Summer Camp 2606 – Cookie Crunch

2019 – UNBC Mathematics and Statistics Award, Perpetual Trophy and Plaque (keeper)

1503 – Factors Influencing Ungulate Visitation Rates at a Mineral Lick

2019 – W. E. Coates Nomination Award Nomination

1203 – Algae–mania. Fun with Green Scum

2019 Grand Awards

2019 – Best in Category, Biotechnology & Pharmaceutical Sciences, Level II

2521 – Yeast and Sugar: A Growing Relationship

2019 – Best in Category Computing and Information Technology, Level II

2301 – iGecko: A cloud connected reptile habitat monitoring system

2019 – Best in Category, Earth & Environmental Sciences, Level II 2218 – Packing In The Heat 2019 – Best in Category,Engineering Level II

2304 – Does temperature affect energy output of a solar cell

2019 – Best in Category, Health Sciences, Level II

2509 – Temptation Station

2019 – Best in Category, Life Sciences, Level II

2502 – Cryobiology: Warm, Cold, Colder...

2019 – Best in Category, Physical & Mathematical Sciences, Level II

2513 – Loaded to the Max 2019 – Best in Category, Biotechnology & Pharmaceutical Sciences, Level I 1101 – Plastination: Preserving History

2019 – Best in Category, Earth & Environmental Sciences, Level I 1203 – Algae–mania. Fun with Green Scum

2019 – Best in Category, Engineering, Level I

1307 – Turf War

2019 – Best in Category, Health Sciences, Level I 1602 – Cell Phones & Children: A Cautionary Tale

2019 – Best in Category, Life Sciences, Level I

1503 – Factors Influencing Ungulate Visitation Rates at a Mineral Lick

2019 – Best in Category, Physical & Mathematical Sciences, Level I 1604 – Food Fit for Fairies

2019 – Best in Exhibition, Level II 2509 – Temptation Station

2019 – UNBC Award, supported by S. M. Blair Family Foundation, Best in Exhibition, Level I 1602 – Cell Phones & Children: A Cautionary Tale

2019 – CWSF Student for Science Fair Foundation of BC 1203 – Algae–mania. Fun with Green Scum

1307 – Turf War

1503 – Factors Influencing Ungulate Visitation Rates at a Mineral Lick 1602 – Cell Phones & Children: A Cautionary Tale 1604 – Food Fit for Fairies

97/16 photo by James doyle The 43rd annual central Interior science Exhibition was held in the Bentley science centre at uNBc on satruday. roughly 150 students from 23 schools that participated in the event.

Music festival results

97/16 staff

Prince George & District Music Festival results for vocal, choral, strings, instrumental and piano.

Vocal and Choral Medals

Junior Musical Theatre Solos

Olivia Yu – Level 1

Freya Boyle – Level 3

Claire Westerlaken – Level 4

Heather Lamb – Level 5

Grace Bowler – Level 6

Intermediate Musical Theatre Solos

Teva MacDowell – Level 4

Sean Robinson – Level 7

Junior Musical Theatre Concert

Groups

Asha Schokking – Level 1

Linnea Helfrich, Lily Hilder, Tyler Meaney – Level 5

Sofie McCarthy – Level 6

Olivia Forgeron, Nakeisha Graham, Erika LeBlanc – Level 7

Grace Li – Level 8

Intermediate Musical Theatre Concert Groups

Laura Buchanan, Sarah Dereshkevich, Skyler Fitzpatrick, Kendra Hamelin, Emmanuelle Jacob, Victoria Van Delft –Level 8

Senior Musical Theatre Concert

Groups

Emily Rachel Siakaluk – Level 9

Jennifer Bourque – Level 10

Courtney Hayhurst – ARCT

Adult Musical Theatre

Sue Chester, Jasmine Eadie, Anthony Gagne, Mark Johnson, Marian Roesch Ensembles

Emmanuelle Jacob and Victoria van Delft, Laura Buchanan, Sarah Dereshkevich and Nyah LaMarre, The Magnificent 7 – Level 8

Anthony Gagne and Mark Johnson, Nove Voce – Adult

Junior Classical Solos

Sophia Yu, Olivia Yu – Level 1

Freya Boyle – Level 3

Claire Westerlaken – Level 4

Grace Bowler, Linnea Helfrich – Level 5

Erika LeBlanc – Level 7

Intermediate Classical Solos 7

Sean Robinson – Level 7

Mateya Tomasino , Emmanuelle Jacob, Kendra Hamelin, Nyah LaMarre – Level 8

Brenna Jacobson, Brenna Jacobson –Level 10

Junior Classical Concert Groups

Jorja Simmons – Level 2

Freya Boyle – Level 3

Abigail Vienna Clark–Chretien – Level 4

Lily Hilder, Heather Lamb – Level 5

Sofie McCarthy – Level 6

Erika LeBlanc, Olivia Forgeron, Nakeisha Graham – Level 7

Grace Li – Level 8

Intermediate Classical Concert Groups

Laura Buchanan, Sarah Dereshkevich, Skyler Fitzpatrick, Emmanuelle Jacob, Victoria Van Delft – Level 8

Brenna Jacobson – Level 10

Senior Classical Concert Groups

Jennifer Bourque – Level 10

Courtney Hayhurst – ARCT

Intermediate Sight Singing

Emmanuelle Jacob – Level 8

Diverse Styles Duets

Olivia Yu and Sophia Yu – Level 1

Musical Theatre Club 12 & Under

Immaculate Conception Musical Theatre Club

Own Choice Solos

Sophia Yu – Level 1

Emily Rachel Siakaluk – Level 9

Contemporary 20th or 21st Century

Level 2 – Jaime Peterson

Level 3 – Sergio Tereshchak

Level 4 – Breanna Hunter–O’Neill, Matteo Toyata

Level 5 – Cassy Clark–Chretien,

Hannah Yin

Level 6 – Mycah Jolley–Shul

Level 9 – Max Whitehouse

Level 10 – Kristi Corbett, Elizabeth Klassen, Grace Li, Olivia Wankling

ARCT – Zakery Simpson

Etude

Level 6 – Jai Singh

Level 8 – Daniel Chui, Nakeisha

Graham

Level 9 – Erica Byers, Sabrina Gyllich

Level 10 – Ryder Anderson, Kristi Corbett, Tadd Mao

ARCT – Zakery Simpson

Original Composition

13 years – Elizabeth Hillhouse

Senior – Sage Bialuski

Own Choice

Level 2 – Jaime Peterson

Level 5 – Abigail Clark–Chretien

Level 7 – Chloe Bialuski

Level 8 – Nakeisha Graham

Post Romantic / Impressionist

Level 8 – Daniel Chui

Level 9 – Luke Chen

Level 10 – Sadie Bialuski

Pop / TV / Movie / Gospel

Level 3 – Chloe Krahn

Level 5 – Caleb Krahn

Level 6 – Jai Singh

Level 7 – Chloe Bialuski

Repertoire

Level 3 – Andrew Lee, Sergio Tereshchak

Level 10 – Grace Li

Diverse Styles Solos

Sean Robinson – Level 7

Amy Chester – Level 9

Senior Classical Solos

Amy Chester, Marian Roesch – Level 9

Choral Medal Winners

School Choirs

Heritage Elementary Primary Choir –10 and Under

Heritage Elementary Intermediate Choir – 12 and Under

District 57 Tapestry Singers – Junior TBD

Own Composition Adult

Kathy Pereira

Choral Ensembles

Bel Canto Youth Choir, Westwood Mennonite Men’s Ensemble, Cantora Alegre

District 57 Tapestry Singers (Senior) –

Youth Community Choir 18 and Under

Adult Community Choirs Adult –Northern Voices, The Prince George Cantata Singers, Nove Voce

Piano

Baroque

Level 4 – Nathan Hunter, Olivia Masich

Level 7 – Alysha Krell

Level 10 – Sadie Bialuski, Kristi

Corbett, Grace Li, Tadd Mao

Canadian

Level 1 – Doyle Roberts

Level 3 – Sergio Tereshchak

Level 5 – Elizabeth Hillhouse

Level 8 – Abigail Smith

Level 9 – Luke Chen

Level 10 – Grace Li, Tadd Mao

Classical

Level 1 – Madelyn Bauman

Level 4 – Olivia Masich

Level 7 – Chloe Bialuski

Level 10 – Sadie Bialuski

Romantic

Level 4 – Breanna Hunter–O’Neill

Level 10 – Sadie Bialuski, Grace Li

Sight Reading

Level 4 – Emma Grasley

Level 10 – Sadie Bialuski

ARCT – Sage Bialuski

Concerto

Level 3 – Andrew Lee

Level 5 – Elizabeth Hillhouse

Level 7 – Anthony Lee

Level 9 – Luke Chen

Level 10 – Grace Li, Tadd Mao

Classical Concert Group

Level 1 – Sophia Deni Brkich, Evelynne Pennington, Ethan Taite, Makenna Wankel

Level 2 – Sebastian Botten, Jenna Hamel, Kairi Reiffarth, Meera Singh

Level 3 – Andrew Lee, Hina Reiffarth

Level 4 – Callie Peterson

Level 5 – Hannah Corbett

Level 7 – Chloe Bialuski, Anthony Lee

Level 6 – Anika Hollybow, Erin Rushton

Duet Junior

Raiya Hamel / Doyle Roberts, Ainsley Harris / Meera Singh, Josie Sekulic / Malia Sekulic, Lillianna Botten / Sebastian Botten, Felicity Bleecker / Victoria Bleecker, Sara Cote / Makenna Nelless, Breanna Hunter–O’Neill / Abigail Zhao, Abigail Clark–Chretien / Cassy Clark–Chretien

Duet Intermediate

Alencia Graham / Jai Singh, Kimberlyn Chow / Joseph Roberts, Chloe Bialuski / Daniel Chui, Erin Rushton / Abigail Smith, Nakeisha Graham / Daniel Ly

Duet Senior

Justin Corbett / Kristi Corbett Trio Junior

Madelyn Bauman / Eva Maloney / Belinda Mou, Alysha Cheang / Hina Reiffarth / Kairi Reiffarth

97/16 photo by Brent Braaten Piano adjudicator Barbara siemens works with chloe Krahn during the 68th annual Prince George and district Music Festival at Evangelical Free church.

This is the front page of the Wednesday, March 5, 1919 edition of the Prince George Citizen. The Citizen archives are available at the Prince George Library’s website at pgnewspapers.pgpl.ca

For beautiFully cooked steak, take it low and slow in the oven

As with almost any other endeavor, a healthy amount of self-awareness is crucial when it comes to cooking. My blind spot has been, and I suspect will always be, meat.

If I could tell you exactly why, I wouldn’t be making this confession in the first place, but I suspect it mostly boils down to inexperience and, therefore, lack of confidence. When you’ve had everything from flaming chickens (grill and oven!) and fat splatters to unpleasantly overcooked and questionably undercooked food, it can kind of mess with your head.

So it was with a certain amount of trepidation that I began a foray into steak. My first attempt at pan-frying a large sirloin steak was messy, to say the least. And thanks to the massive size of the cut (enough for four, according to the recipe) and the inevitable hot (and not so hot) spots you find in cast iron, the cook was very uneven – completely gray in some places and practically raw in others.

I’m not one to admit defeat that easily, so I immediately jumped into my next recipe, a low and slow steak we previously published from Modernist Cuisine at Home in 2012. On paper, it seemed to allay all my fears.

To keep the meat from overcooking while you sear it, freeze it for half an hour first. To prevent an uneven finish, cook it at a low temperature for almost an hour in the oven.

So, yes, there’s a trade-off. If time is of the essence when you’re cooking steak, then this probably isn’t the recipe for you. If, however, you’re okay with that commitment of mostly inactive time to get perfectly cooked meat without the hand-wringing anxiety of managing a pan-fried steak (I’m sure I’ll master it at some point, and then I’ll share that recipe, too), then come along with me.

Tasters marveled at the superior texture of the steak I got in this two-prong approach, with the rosy medium-rare reaching from beautifully seared edge to edge. It was fantastic out of the oven, and leftovers would make an excellent sandwich.

The original recipe called for a brush of melted butter on the steaks after cooking, which you can still do if you prefer the simplicity of flavour and fewer dishes to wash. But for extra oomph, I cribbed a rosemary-flavoured olive oil from another archive recipe to replace the melted butter. And since I had a hot

skillet with a slick of oil in it anyway, I threw a couple of lemon halves in to sear (if your cast-iron skillet is well-seasoned, a few minutes of the acid should be okay, although I preferred using a small nonstick pan). The pairing channels Italian Florentine steak, and the combined pop of the herb oil and citrus juice complemented the meat extraordinarily well.

As long as you have a trusty instantread thermometer – one with a probe that you can leave in the meat while it cooks is especially helpful – this is a recipe you can easily conquer. If I can do it, then you definitely can, too.

Recipe notes: If your oven temperature does not go as low as 160 degrees, use the lowest setting it has and be vigilant about monitoring the internal temperature of the meat. We tested this only with New York strip steaks.

The steaks need to chill in the freezer for 30 minutes before cooking.

Seared, slow-roasted

Servings: 4

Ingredients

steak

Two 1-pound New York strip steaks, at least 1 inch thick 1 tablespoon vegetable oil

Kosher salt

Freshly ground black pepper

1⁄4 cup extra-virgin olive oil

2 or 3 stems rosemary, 2-inch pieces 1 or 2 lemons, halved Flaky salt, for serving

Steps

Line a small-rimmed baking sheet with aluminum foil or parchment paper; place the steaks on it and freeze (uncovered) for 30 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 160 degrees, or its lowest temperature (see above). Brush both sides of the chilled steaks with the vegetable oil, then generously season with the kosher salt and black pepper.

Heat a heavy skillet, preferably castiron, over high heat. Add the steaks and sear for 60 seconds on each side, or until they reach your desired level of char. Briefly sear the fat on the side of each steak until it is lightly browned (use tongs to hold the meat upright).

Discard the foil or parchment from the baking sheet, then place the steaks directly on the baking sheet. Insert the probe of an oven-safe digital thermometer into the thickest part of one steak. Transfer to the oven; slow-roast until the meat registers an internal temperature of 133 degrees. The time may vary depending on the thickness of the steak

and your oven temperature, but figure on at least 50 minutes to 1 hour. The meat will be an even medium-rare, lightly pink throughout.

Meanwhile, combine the olive oil and rosemary in a small skillet over mediumlow heat; cook for 5 to 10 minutes, stirring occasionally, until fragrant. Remove from the heat; scrape the rosemary and all but about a teaspoon of the oil into a small bowl.

Return the skillet to the stove top, over medium-high heat; add the lemon halves, cut sides down. Cook until the cut sides are well browned and charred in spots. Use tongs to transfer them to a plate, cut sides up.

Brush the finished steaks lightly with the rosemary-infused oil, and season lightly with the flaky salt. Let the meat rest for a few minutes, then slice and serve, with the remaining infused oil and the charred lemon halves, for squeezing.

Adapted from Modernist Cuisine at Home, by Nathan Myhrvold and Maxime Bilet (The Cooking Lab, 2012) and a 2003 Food section recipe.

Nutrition

Calories: 580; Total Fat: 42 g; Saturated Fat: 15 g; Sodium: 190 mg; Carbohydrates: 0 g; Dietary Fiber: 0 g; Sugars: 0 g; Protein: 47 g.

becky krystal

97/16 wire service

97/16 new service photo by tom Mccorkle seared, slow-roasted steak.