Prince George Citizen May 15, 2019

City OKs changes to budget oversight process

Mark NIELSEN Citizen staff

mnielsen@pgcitizen.ca

City staff will be subject to what is being described as increased oversight when it comes to cost overruns.

Council voted unanimously in favour on Monday night of a revised policy that will require staff to seek council’s permission to amend the operating budget once the cumulative total of differences from the original budget surpasses

five per cent of the total.

The city’s operating budget sits at about $150 million, which would give staff $7.5 million worth of discretion. Once capital spending is include, the city’s budget for this year adds up to about $200 million.

Previously, staff had up to $1 million of leeway per project provided they could find the money within the city’s reserves.

Coun. Garth Frizzell, who chairs the finance and audit committee,

said during council discussion on he item that it left open the potential of giving staff discretion of up to $1 million “as many times as are needed.”

Frizzell added that while staff would still likely have come back to council before that threshold is met, the new guideline will “set an exact rate where staff must come back to council.”

“So if there is a need to spend $8 million right now in eight chunks, that could happen theoretically,

RCMP warn of hefty fines for illegal dirt biking

Citizen staff

Those caught riding dirt bikes in places where they are not supposed to risk up to $1,000 in fines and then some, Prince George RCMP said Tuesday in response to a recent wave of complaints.

RCMP said the detachment has received an increased number of reports from around the city over the last week about unregistered dirt bikes being ridden on streets and highways and being ridden aggressively on local walking trails.

City bylaws prohibit motorized vehicles in city parks or on city trails and provincial legislation allows “incidental travel” across roads at controlled intersections for motorized off-road vehicles

Fines for violators can easily add up to over $1,000 and the motorized vehicle can be seized.

RCMP statement

such as dirt bikes, all-terrain vehicles and side-by-sides but only if they are registered and insured.

According to ICBC, to ride an off-road vehicle on or across highways, you must have basic insurance.

To ride one on forest service roads, you must have $200,000 in third party liability insurance.

On all other Crown land, liability insurance is voluntary but recommended.

“From experience, the majority of riders that violate these laws, are youth that appear to be under the age of 18,” RCMP said and added parents and guardians are urged to speak to their sons and daughters about proper use.

“Fines for violators can easily add up to over $1,000 and the motorized vehicle can be seized,” RCMP said.

“In addition, operators and their guardians could be subject to criminal and civil action should an incident take place. Failing to stop for police is a criminal offence.”

but once these new guidelines come into place, at $7.5 million we will be getting a report back.”

In an interview, Frizzell said requiring staff to come back to council every time a specific expenditure was five per cent over budget would be impractical because of the number of projects the city pursues in a year.

“Some of them are quite large but some of them are quite tiny so if you go through on a caseby-case basis for a five-per-cent

variance on each of them, a small change in the price of rebar could mean us revisiting many, many different little projects,” he said.

“By doing it on the basis of a full operating budget, it still keeps a cap where we’ve never had one before and brings it to council’s attention by guideline.”

It was one of a number of changes to the city’s guidelines for managing its finances that council approved on Monday night. — see ‘WE’RE WELL, page 3

Council approves property tax rates

Citizen staff

City council passed a bylaw Monday night setting the rates households and businesses will pay for property taxes this year.

Owners of residential property will pay $7.34 per $1,000 of assessed value.

Although down from $7.60 last year, the owner of a typical home, valued at $300,680, will pay an extra $91 – pushing the bill up to $2,207 – to reflect the 4.3-per-cent increase in the tax levy.

For the city’s share of the levy for the Fraser-Fort George Regional District, homeowners will pay $1.06 per $1,000.

For the typical home, the bill will be $318, compared to $300 last year.

Those with homes valued below that level will see a smaller increase while those with homes above that level will see larger increases.

Businesses will pay $17.17 to the city and $2.59 to the FFGRD, major industry $53.32 and $3.59, and light industry would pay $27.62 and $3.59, with them accounting for 28.67, 2.82 and 13.2 per cent of the levy respectively. Residential properties account for 67.3 per cent of the city’s total assessed value. Business makes up 26.6, major industry 2.46 and light industry 0.97 per cent.

The total levy stands at just under $110 million.

CITIZEN PHOTO BY JAMES DOYLE

up

A backhoe loads fill into a dumptruck at the construction site for a new Fire Hall No. 1 on Tuesday morning.

McKellar bringing art to the street

Frank PEEBLES Citizen staff fpeebles@pgcitizen.ca

With his brand new book and his long local history, street artist Keith McKellar is making a colourful return to Prince George.

The well-travelled painter will set up his telltale umbrella on the patio of Books & Company on Friday, Saturday and Sunday where he will sell his drawings, prints and copies of his recently released eye-popping book Revolving W & Flying Pigs: A Neon Journal.

The book focuses on vintage Vancouver cafes and theatres, especially the ones on the downtown eastside of the city.

“I’ve done a couple of books before, but not like this one,” he told The Citizen, a paper at which he was once employed before moving to the Lower Mainland. He also worked for Ben Ginter’s foray into the media industry, the short-lived paper The Prince George Progress.

“Now I have a vernacular,” for composing an art-based book, McKellar said. “It means I can produce all these versions of my artwork, so it proliferates like the loaves and fishes (biblical fable), so I don’t have to worry so much about the value of the original.”

Proliferating his art is a trusty business model for McKellar, who is also known by his street artist moniker of laughinghand. He routinely vends his arts wares by freely dealing in prints and other small-scale creative products.

“I’ve been averaging 100 street shows a year, primarily on Commercial Drive,” he said. “I’ve always had the eternal bowl of soup. I have to be incredibly prepared because anything can happen. The drawings talk and sell themselves. I just have to be quiet and let my family talk to people in their own way – my drawings are my family.”

The easygoing attitude about making a living from art roots back to a time he was travelling in North Africa. It was 1971 and he was the victim of a robbery, where his cash and passport got taken. He was sitting in despair, not knowing where his next meal was going to come from or how to get to a safe place. A melon literally rolled between his feet into his limp hands. It was an epiphany, a sign, in his mind, that if he just lived a life of open, creative positivity, life would provide at least the essentials.

That is why he will now invest 40 hours for a single image, and do up to 50 of those images in a series he might be working on (as with the cafes and theatres of the new book).

“If you do anything to chase the money, the money will kick you in the teeth, especially today when money is always looking for a victim,” he said. “I use anti-marketing. The book is already a big success, because the drawings and the book’s concepts do the work all by themselves. I just have to do what I do, do it honestly and to the best of my abilities, and let that be.”

One of his most successful artistic abilities, he said, is perspective. He calls it levitating. Imagine a drone camera hovering 30 feet in the air, looking at an interesting building or tree or mountainside. That’s the viewpoint McKellar often takes to base his artwork, rather than looking up from the actual place on the ground at which he is positioned.

He doesn’t merely guess at the view, either. He will work from physical reference points on the surface, then use that scalepoint to extrapolate upwards for accurate vertical distances.

He will happily discuss his techniques with anyone who wants to apply to their own art. The element of street art he likes best is the human interaction. When art pieces are hanging from string all around the working artist under an umbrella in a public setting, it’s an invitation to come take a look, he said.

“First of all, there is a desire, it starts there,” he said, describing the compulsion to do and share his artwork. “The feeling that follows is a delight, allowing yourself to pursue the joy of the process. I’m unstoppable at that point. The art becomes everything you want to do, and it feels great, and that gets added into the art.”

He encouraged artists to take up an alternative persona when they do their

creations. He chose to become laughinghand as a technique for disconnecting his own Keith McKellar personality and history, to get himself out of the way of the artistic process. It’s not a slit personality, he said, just a mental technique for focusing in a different way.

“You have to develop your own politic,” he said. He has several books in various stages of growth, he said. The frontrunner has the working title Train Dispatcher based on the life of Prince George social figure Alf Nunweiler, the MLA for Fort George in the 1970s, an active local farmer, and a veteran of the railroad industry that brought him all over western Canada before he settled in the Prince George area. He is also McKellar’s father-in-law.

To see the art and the artist up close and at vivid street level, drop by McKellar’s umbrella outside Books & Company FridaySunday starting each day at 9 a.m.

Artist Keith McKellar shows off one of the pieces that he will have on display during his outdoor art show.

Goodsir Nature Park marking 30th anniversary on summer solstice

Frank PEEBLES Citizen staff

fpeebles@pgcitizen.ca

The days are getting longer and as they do, the time grows shorter to the anniversary of Goodsir Nature Park.

The botanical treasure at Salmon Valley is nearing its 30th anniversary. It strikes that mark on the occasion of the summer solstice, June 21. A celebration will be held that day, but sole proprietor and grassroots botanist Jim Good invites one and all to come see his handmade feature forest anytime.

“It’s open and really greening up,” said Good. “I’ve got a new signpost display, completely replacing the old one. I have new signs for the trails so they look like street signs; they look beautiful.”

All this extra work and park readiness is despite some grave health concerns that slowed Good down but did not nip his plant affections in the bud. He has been welcoming guests since the break of spring and is focused on his pearl anniversary.

“I deliberately chose the summer solstice to open, and kick off the dream of my park in my own special way,” he said, thinking back to that momentus day. “It was 7:30 p.m. and I had a little ceremony with some close family and friends. I felt so stupid, unexpectedly, to be honest, like what was I doing? But it all turned out. I couldn’t have imagined.”

That date, June 21, gets a circle around it on this year’s calendar so the public can come out and renew those park vows with cake and refreshments. The mic will be open for people to express their feelings and memories of the walks on the Goodsir Nature Park trails, campfires by the beaver pond, catching sight of strange trees and shrubs transplanted there from all across Canada, and the people you’ve perhaps shared those times with.

“It has always been my special place, but it has been a special place for many other people, now, too, and I would love to hear about that,” he said. “We will gather there, 30 years later, same spot, almost to the second.”

This is a year of growth for the handhewn natural feature where so many plants are growing in one place that do not grow together anywhere else in Canada. It is a full provincial and territorial microcosm of nature on 160 easygoing acres.

There is also a densely interesting interpretive centre full of carefully curated photos and plant-life displays, plus an on-site record museum that gives a whole other kind of musical entertainment option for the public. Goodsir Nature Park even has its own closedcircuit radio station, CGNP, playing stories and songs inspired by this unique greenspace.

For the first time in its 29 years and 11 months, it has a website. Thanks to a contribution by Brink Group of Companies, Goodsir Nature Park has a professional poster, pamphlet and online information campaign (the visuals were led by noted Prince George artist Denise Godeau). Proprietor John Brink was inspired by the place when he took a personal tour, and he wanted to contribute to its longevity. It was, said Good, the first corporate donation the park had ever received.

Volunteers and sponsors are welcome, especially to spruce up the park for the anniversary celebrations, and to help out with things like serving free refreshments during the long weekends of the summer.

The park is located at 22825 Old Summit Lake Road North. The turnoff is 32 kms north of Prince George (7 kms north of the Salmon River Bridge) marked by a prominent highway sign. It is then 2.4 kms down the turnoff road.

Call Good at 250-971-2337 for any information or to book a guided tour of the park (self-guided walks are welcome, no appointment necessary). Information is also available on the Tourism Prince George website. Admission to the park is by donation, and overnight camping/RV options are available. It is open year-round.

‘We’re well below the halfway mark as to what we’re allowed to borrow right now’

— from page 1

Other changes to city guidelines include:

• Remove a requirement that the tax rate for major industry be compared to the provincial average and cap the property tax rate for business at 2.5 times that for the residential rate.

City finance director Kris Dalio said it’s the only tax class where values depreciate, “so unless you have a massive influx of new development in major industry, your rate will increase per $1,000.

“If you’re trying to hold it down... that means the other classes are paying for the depreciation of the major industry rate. This has been around for some

Potters holding mug month

Frank PEEBLES Citizen staff

This is the month to get mugged, if you’re a pottery fan.

The Prince George Potters’ Guild coordinates an annual sale on some of their most popular wares, each May. It’s The Month of Mugs at the Studio 2880 Gift Shoppe, the headquarters for the region’s premier group of claywrights. All the mugs by PGPG members are on sale.

“Mugs is one of those things that just about every potter does, starting right at the beginning of learning how to use the wheel,” said Kate Cooke, past-president of the PGPG. “You make mugs and bowls and mugs and bowls, so even when you’ve become experienced at it, mugs are still something you go to, it’s something we’re used to.”

One cannot place their wares in the Studio 2880 Gift Shoppe without passing through a jury process to ensure high quality. That means the vessels on offer during the Month of Mugs are among the best of their kind in the city.

“We advertise the Month of Mugs within the guild, so our members know it’s there, and some will do extra work to have extra. Some will stock up,” Cooke said. She estimated the time to make a single mug, for the experienced potter, to be 45-60 minutes. For the beginner, she said, it can take a whole three-hour class just to learn how to shape a handle onto the cylinder. But once you get the hang of it, it is one of the most rewarding things to make, with no end to the creativity an artisan can put into it. Shapes and colours are without limit.

May is a particularly good time of year for a mug sale, Cooke explained, because of events like Mothers’ Day and Fathers’ Day, but people commonly buy them for teachers as well.

“Did you ever see a teacher in the hallways who didn’t have a stack of papers and a mug?” Cooke said. “This is a great end-of-year present for your teacher which also supports local artisans and the same time you’re also supporting the Community Arts Council. We need to support the CAC because they make art affordable and accessible in this community. Their work opens a lot of doors for local artisans like ourselves.”

The discounted mugs are on shelves and in nooks throughout the Studio 2880 Gift Shoppe. It is open 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday.

time and we felt that at this point in time in the city’s history, it may be better to focus more on the business tax rate.”

• Consider borrowing to fund ongoing capital programs rather than limit the move to one-time projects. While an annual levy specifically for road rehabilitation is now in place, Dalio said there are others where “we do need to rely on debt now and then,” and pointed to the city’s storm sewer system as an example.

• Allow the city to have greater debt from one year to the next.

The previous guidelines, last approved in 2013, directed the city to have the same level of debt or lower than in previous years.

“Inflation alone, makes that goal unachievable,” Frizzell said in a report to council.

“It also indirectly restricts the city from investing in new capital that will promote growth.”

There is also a provincially-mandated limit on the amount of debt servicing the city can take on in a given year.

Dalio said it works out to 25 per cent of “controllable” revenue – property taxes, utility fees and reliable grants – which currently allows the city to borrow as much as $250 million in principal.

“We’re well below the halfway mark as to what we’re allowed to borrow right now,” he said.

IIO notified of injury during arrest

Citizen staff

B.C.’s civilian-based police watchdog has been notified of a police-involved injury in Prince George, the B.C. RCMP said Tuesday. RCMP said an officer from the local detachment noticed a man riding a bicycle, allegedly weaving in and out of traffic and not wearing a helmet, near Fifth Avenue and Ewart Street, on Saturday at about 8:30 p.m.

sisted, RCMP said, and backup officers were called in.

The officer stopped the man to issue a violation ticket and when a check revealed the man was wanted for an unrelated offences, the officer put him under arrest and took the man into custody. But in the process of trying to put handcuffs on him, the man allegedly re-

The following morning the man complained of pain and he was taken to hospital for treatment.

RCMP said the Independent Investigations Office has since been notified.

The IIO investigates incidents of police-involved deaths and serious injury for evidence of criminal wrongdoing.

CITIZEN FILE PHOTO

One of the well-maintained gravelled trails in the Goodsir Nature Park north of Prince George.

Trash beat sub to the bottom of Mariana Trench

The Washington Post

When Victor Vescovo’s submarine hit the floor of the Mariana Trench, it sent the sediment swirling.

“At bottom,” the Texas businessman-turned-extreme-explorer said into his headset. “Repeat: At bottom.”

In a control room some 35,853 feet above, Vescovo’s dive team clapped and cheered. Congratulations were in order: they had just set a record. The American had descended deeper into the ocean than any person before him. An upturned Mount Everest would still be a mile from where his vessel then sat.

Vescovo spent four hours down there, he told The Washington Post. The crevice in the western Pacific Ocean is one of the most remote places on Earth, where the sun doesn’t shine and the pressure is crushing. He was literally charting new territory, mapping his route for future researchers, when he noticed something familiar among the otherworldly terrain.

Trash.

Some sort of plastic waste.

Initial reports indicated it was a bag, or maybe a candy wrapper. But those theories weren’t quite right, officials now say. Whether it was flotsam or jetsam is secondary. The find is, no matter what, the imprint of a species that has polluted the planet like none other. A people whose detritus precedes them.

Vescovo spotted it from his titanium cocoon. He was looking out over the Challenger Deep, Earth’s deepest known point, in the trench’s hadal zone, a region of the ocean named after the underworld god of Greek mythology, Hades. What he saw was sublime and serene.

Translucent creatures undulated around his craft, Vescovo said. He was struck at how alive his surroundings were.

“There was definitely life at the very bottom of the ocean,” he said.

“It was not dead by any means... I felt very excited, privileged to get to see it, but also very much at peace because it really is a quiet, peaceful, place.”

The expedition identified at least three new species of marine animals, its scientists said, including a kind of amphipod, a crustacean that resembles a shrimp. Yet, even as the team discovered new life, it could not escape signs of the man-made havoc that will likely kill off many more species faster than humans can discover them.

“I was disappointed to see human contamination in the deepest point in the ocean,” Vescovo said.

“With over seven billion people on the Earth, the oceans are going to be impacted negatively by mankind, but I hope we can at least minimize it in the future.”

Reports of Vescovo’s findings prompted Chelsea Clinton, vice chair of the Clinton Foundation, which advocates for ocean cleanup projects, to pose a dire question

Wildfire scorches woodland in southern B.C.

The Canadian Press

OSOYOOS — An aggressive wildfire burning west of Osoyoos near Highway 3 has charred more than 2.5-square kilometres of bush in barely 12 hours.

The BC Wildfire Service says the fire broke out Monday and is classed as “out of control.”

on Twitter: “A sub dive 7 miles deep in the ocean at the Mariana Trench finds possible new species of shrimp and a plastic bag. How long will the former survive if there’s more of the latter?”

An alarming, landmark United Nations report released this month illustrated a version of Clinton’s point: as the population of humans has rapidly increased, the population of everything else has steadily declined.

“How long can the two trend lines continue to head in opposite directions?” asked the author Elizabeth Kolbert in an essay for the New Yorker.

“This is the key question raised by the report, and it may turn out to be the key question of the century.”

A summary of the report warned that, “Nature is declining globally

at rates unprecedented in human history – and the rate of species extinctions is accelerating.”

The report’s nearly 150 authors found that human actions have “severely altered” 66 per cent of the world’s marine environments, threatening a third of all marine mammals with extinction.

The lone piece of waste Vescovo sighted isn’t going to single-handedly kill off an entire species. But its very presence is yet another reminder of humanity’s far-reaching impact.

In a study published earlier this year, British researchers analyzed amphipods – similar to the ones Vescovo identified – captured in six of the ocean’s deepest trenches, including Mariana. They found plastic particles in more than 70 per cent of the creatures they tested and in all of the amphipods from the Mariana Trench.

The study’s implications are striking: before we even discover some of these underwater species, they’re already all too familiar with one of man’s most prolific creations. Before they even enter the taxonomy, they have plastic coursing through them.

“We can now say with confidence that plastic is everywhere,” the study’s lead author Alan Jamieson told National Geographic.

The Deep-sea Debris Database, maintained by the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, allows for an up-close examination of some of this trash, including a few pieces found on dives into the Mariana Trench.

Vescovo’s find would be the deepest piece of debris in the database. Vescovo’s expedition was the third time a team had dived to the bottom of Challenger Deep. Before him, the filmmaker James Cameron made the trek in 2012. U.S. Navy Lt. Don Walsh and the Swiss scientist Jacques Piccard were the first to do it in 1960. But neither team dove as deep as Vescovo, who also became the first person to repeat the feat, over a week in late April and early May. The journeys were part of his Five Deeps Expedition, which is being filmed for the Discovery Channel.

The submarine technology has improved so much, Vescovo said, that he sees this as the beginning of a golden age of underwater exploration. His vessel, made by a company called Triton, recently gained commercial certification, which means more could soon be made.

“Such a thing has never existed before,” Vescovo said. “...We can make more of them, to really open up the 90 per cent of the ocean that has heretofore remained unexplored.”

If and when that happens, a legion of scientists and adventurers could follow Vescovo to depths never-before explored, destined to make countless crucial discoveries. But when those subs ascend back toward the waves, and the silt settles in their wake, they’ll leave behind the trash that beat them there, the unmistakable trace of humanity.

Freeland to push for tariff removal

Mike BLANCHFIELD

The latest Environment Canada forecast for the region predicts winds of up to 30 km/h, along with lightning and possible showers. The area is sparsely populated but the Regional District of Okanagan-Similkameen has issued an evacuation alert to one property 12 kilometres west of Osoyoos.

Spokesman Kevin Skrepnek calls it “the fire of most concern” for the wildfire service, as flames burn uphill in steep and rugged terrain.

The Canadian Press

OTTAWA — Foreign Affairs

Minister Chrystia Freeland played down expectations as she prepared to meet in Washington with Trump trade czar Robert Lighthizer in a renewed push to get punitive steel and aluminum tariffs lifted.

“It is never wise to predict how long any negotiation will take,” Freeland told reporters in Toronto on Tuesday, ahead of her Wednesday meeting at the Office of the United States Trade Representative in Washington.

Freeland will also venture to Capitol Hill for a meeting with the influential Republican chair of the Senate finance committee, Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, who expressed optimism earlier Tuesday that the tariffs that he, too, opposes might soon be lifted.

Freeland reiterated that since Canada, the U.S. and Mexico have successfully renegotiated a new continental trade pact – one that still needs to be ratified in all three countries – it is time for the tariffs to be lifted “for the competitiveness of our entire continent.”

“We believe it is important now more than ever to re-establish

free trade in steel and aluminum between Canada and the United States,” she said.

A senior government source said Tuesday, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the ongoing dispute, that the government will continue to lobby very assertively for the lifting of the tariffs.

“We’re at a point where we need to do everything we can and talk to everyone we can about why we see these as unjust,” said the source. The meetings come after a pair

of telephone calls on consecutive days late last week between U.S. President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, in which the controversial 25-percent duty on Canadian steel and 10-per-cent levy on aluminum was a major subject of conversation. Trudeau also talked to U.S. VicePresident Mike Pence about them on Tuesday.

“The prime minister raised the issue of U.S. steel and aluminum tariffs and stressed the importance of their removal,” said a summary of that call from Trudeau’s office. He and Pence “also exchanged views on the ratification of the new North American Free Trade Agreement.”

Grassley suggested to reporters in a conference call that an end to the tariffs might be close. Last month, Grassley tweeted that Trump must remove the tariffs before the new North American trade deal can be ratified.

Trump imposed them in the first place using a section of U.S. trade law that gives the president powers to put duties on imports on national-security grounds. Freeland, Trudeau and others in Canadian government have derided the tariffs as absurd, illegal and insulting. But Freeland has said she’s heartened by the recent comments of both Republican and Democratic American lawmakers who say the new North American trade agreement that includes Mexico can’t be ratified with the “Section 232” tariffs in place.

“Comments like Grassley’s are indicative of a broader view held by many in Congress about the need to lift the tariffs before the new NAFTA ratifying legislation can move forward, particularly in the U.S.,” the source said Tuesday.

Reis THEBAULT

In this photo provided by Atlantic Productions for the Discovery Channel, arthropods swim near the Limiting Factor submersible as it dives to the deepest known point in the Mariana Trench on May 1.

VESCOVO

Money laundering inquiry needs clear goals, Oppal says

Laura KANE The Canadian Press

VANCOUVER — The British Columbia government needs to set clear goals and a firm timeline if it launches a public inquiry into money laundering, says a former provincial attorney general who led an exhaustive probe of missing and murdered women.

Wally Oppal said he believes his inquiry had an impact after it wrapped in 2012. Police now investigate these cases far differently than they did when serial killer Robert Pickton was preying on vulnerable women, he said.

“A lot of good things can come of them, but before governments establish inquiries, they should first of all ask themselves: What questions need to be answered? Did something go wrong? And what are the powers that we’re going to give to an inquiry commissioner?” Oppal said.

“The other thing is you have to have a definite end line, otherwise it can go on forever.”

Calls for an inquiry have been mounting since the provincial government released two reports on money laundering last week. One report estimated $7.4 billion was laundered in B.C. last year, of which $5 billion was funnelled through real estate and drove up home prices five per cent.

Premier John Horgan has said his government will decide whether to call a public inquiry into money laundering following a cabinet meeting on Wednesday.

Oppal also led a public inquiry into municipal policing in B.C. in the 1990s and, while attorney general, called an inquiry into the death of a Polish immigrant at Vancouver’s airport. He said most inquiries take longer than planned and costs can spiral out of control, as witnesses get “lawyered up.”

“In the Pickton inquiry, we had 19, 20 lawyers in the room at any given time,” he said. “But in that inquiry, we needed to find out why so many women were murdered. ... It was important that we got answers as to what mistakes were made.”

Before calling an inquiry into money laundering, the province should also consider whether it would compromise any ongoing police investigations, he added. People who are subpoenaed to give testimony in an inquiry may not be able to give evidence if they’re subject to a criminal investigation.

The missing-women inquiry cost about $10 million and the province reported in February that it had made “significant progress” on the recommendations.

Progress hasn’t always been swift. In his 2012 report, Oppal urged the province to immediately commit to providing public transit along the so-called Highway of Tears, but it didn’t unveil a bus-service plan until 2015.

Several politicians calling for a money laundering inquiry said it should be mod-

Missing Women’s Inquiry Commissioner Wally Oppal pauses as he speaks to reporters after the public inquiry

than seven months of hearings in Vancouver on June 6, 2012. Oppal says any public inquiry into money laundering

clear set of goals and timeline.

elled on Quebec’s Charbonneau Commission into corruption in the construction industry, which led to arrests, convictions and the recovery of $95 million in public funds.

Brad West, mayor of Port Coquitlam in Metro Vancouver, said he’s offended that criminals profiting from the deadly opioid crisis are funnelling their “blood money” through real estate, inflating prices for residents who work hard and pay taxes.

“If this doesn’t call for a public inquiry modelled after the Charbonneau Commission, then I don’t know what does,” he said.

“We should just stop pretending that we’re ever going to have public inquiries, if we don’t have one into something that is as important and as consequential to the future of our province as this.”

Green Leader Andrew Weaver has also been calling for an inquiry. He said it would ensure that names are named, people are compelled to testify, recommendations can be put forward and more information that is otherwise kept confidential comes to light.

Despite a common perception that B.C. is the dirty-money “capital” of Canada, one of the reports released last week painted a different picture.

It said the province ranked fourth for money laundering among a division of six regions in Canada, behind Alberta, Ontario and the Prairies - collectively Saskatchewan and Manitoba - at least for the years 2011 to 2015. It also said B.C. only accounted for 15 per cent of the $47 billion laundered across Canada last year. Weaver said the report’s finding about

Liberals, NDP pushing climate change motions

Mia RABSON The Canadian Press

OTTAWA — In a battle to see who can prove they care more about the environment, both the Liberals and the federal New Democrats are pushing motions this week to declare climate change a national emergency.

With the flooding waters of the Ottawa River at the base of Parliament Hill as a backdrop, the competing motions both appeared on the House of Commons notice paper Monday. Both come a week after the Green Party won a byelection in B.C., which even Prime Minister Justin Trudeau took as voters signalling growing concern with climate change.

The Liberal motion, which is to be debated Thursday, asks MPs to recommit to the Paris climate-change accord by meeting the existing targets for cutting greenhouse-gas emissions and toughening them as is required to meet the accord’s stated objective of keeping global warming as close to 1.5 C as possible.

The NDP motion, which is to be debated first on Wednesday, also seeks to hit those targets and calls for the government to bail on the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion and end fossil-fuel subsidies. NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh says pipelines and fossil-fuel subsidies are not congruent with climatechange action.

David Coletto, CEO of Abacus Data, said the motions are an indication the parties acknowledge public concern about climate change has sharpened, particularly this spring as parts of Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick have dealt with once-a-century floods for the second time in two or three years.

“We are seeing a rise in the intensity of concern,” said Coletto.

Environment Minister Catherine McKenna was not hiding the strategy behind the Liberal motion: pushing the Conservatives to declare their support for the Paris agreement targets or tip their hand on leader Andrew Scheer’s yet-unreleased climate-change plan by voting against them.

“I think it’s really important to have this debate and I’m really interested in seeing what other parties will say, in particular the

Conservative party,” McKenna said Tuesday. “We’ve seen Andrew Scheer (have) no climate plan for over a year, and having secret meetings with oil lobbyists. I assume that’s how they’re going to develop their climate plan.”

“Canadians have come to expect these kinds empty gestures from the Liberals when it comes to climate change,” shot back Brock Harrison, Scheer’s spokesman.

“Heavy on rhetoric, light on results. Under Justin Trudeau, Canada is falling further and further away from hitting its emissions targets.”

The Tories have “a real plan that recognizes Canada’s role in lowering global emissions,” he said.

Canada’s greenhouse-gas emissions targets now are the same as the ones the former Conservative government brought forward in 2015, six months before the last election, but Scheer has been less than certain about meeting them in recent months. He told CTV’s Question Period Sunday the Conservative plan - expected

next month - will “give Canada the best possible shot” at meeting its targets without a carbon tax.

The Liberals have brought climate-change motions at least twice before. The Conservatives voted en masse against supporting the Paris Agreement in October 2016, but eight months later, all but one Conservative MP voted in favour of reiterating Canada’s support for the agreement after the United States signalled it was going to pull out of it.

Scientists say the planet has already warmed up about 1 C compared to the pre-industrial era, and without drastic action by governments around the world to curb emissions, the earth is going to blow past the 1.5 C mark by 2040. An Environment Canada report released in April shows Canada is warming up twice as fast as the global average.

The United Nations last fall said countries like Canada needed to cut emissions a lot more than currently planned to achieve the 1.5 C goal.

the scale of the issue in B.C. compared with other provinces didn’t change his mind. It’s not surprising that more dirty cash was washed clean in a larger province such as Ontario, he said, adding that money laundering has affected B.C. differently than Prairie provinces.

“If you’re not having pressures on your real estate like we’ve had here, a five per cent push or a seven per cent push in one year on prices from laundering money may not have had the same effect as it did here. Our affordability issue is second to none in the country.

“That, in and of itself, is the reason why we need to show leadership, and frankly, I think it’s good on government to show leadership. We don’t have to wait for others to follow.”

P.G. well-placed in tech sector

British Columbia’s tech sector is growing. It’s not just growing in Vancouver, where the province’s biggest companies and organizations currently reside. It’s not just growing in Victoria, where they expect the local tech sector to become a $10 billion economic contributor by 2030. And it’s not just growing in my old hometown of Kelowna, where the Okanagan has emerged as one of the province’s premier tech hubs.

No, B.C.’s tech sector is growing everywhere – and that means huge opportunity for regional communities all over the province.

That includes communities that have historically been driven by traditional industries, like mining and forestry. That includes communities who have direct access to high-quality talent from a local university. That includes communities who benefit from a strategic geographic location and an emerging pool of entrepreneurs.

In other words, that includes communities just like Prince George. At Innovate BC, it’s our mandate to ensure that the benefits of our thriving tech sector

are felt by everyone throughout the province. To effectively achieve this goal, we financially support tech accelerators across British Columbia, including Innovation Central Society (ICS) in Prince George. Our partnership with ICS has given us a firsthand look at the local tech and the exciting opportunities that are stemming from this new wave of industrial innovation.

Organizations like ICS, Northern Development Initiative Trust and the City of Prince George have played a critical role in diversifying, supporting and growing the city’s tech sector. Companies like SparkGeo, Ascentech, and Volcanic Gaming are prime examples of tech companies who have benefitted greatly from both industry and government support and are now driving innovation across northern B.C.

As communities across B.C. embrace the benefits of a growing innovation economy – an economic model centred around knowledge, technology, entrepreneurship, and innovation – I see Prince George having the potential to become a provincial leader in two key areas:

• Cleantech As one of the founding members of the

Emerging Economy Task Force – a gov-

ernment-led initiative that forecasts how global trends and emerging technological advancements will shape the future of B.C.’s economy – it’s very clear to me that clean technology will be at the centre of every major government, industry and academicled initiative in the coming years.

The B.C. Government is placing an added emphasis on cleantech, as highlighted by their new CleanBC initiative. With the emergence of a local cleantech cluster, a thriving and nationally recognized bioeconomy and the presence of 70 clean technology firms already established in the region, Prince George has an incredible opportunity to lead the province into a new era of sustainability.

Furthermore, the R&D coming out of UNBC, as well as the access to the largest amount of harvestable wood biomass in Canada, are key factors that can position P.G. at the forefront of cleantech research and innovation in B.C.

• Industrial innovation

Tech adoption is helping traditional industries like mining, forestry and construction become more efficient, competitive,

Anti-fat bias in health care endangers lives

When Ellen Maud Bennett died a year ago, her obituary published in the local newspaper gained national media attention in Canada, though she wasn’t a celebrity.

Bennett’s obituary revealed she died from cancer days after finally being diagnosed – after years of seeking help.

Her diagnosis came so late, beyond the point where treatments were possible, because the 64-year-old woman was repeatedly told her health problems were caused by her weight – or more specifically, by the amount of fat on her body.

She died because of bad assumptions that caused poor quality care. And she used her own obituary to share her views:

“Ellen’s dying wish was that women of size make her death matter by advocating strongly for their health and not accepting that fat is the only relevant health issue.”

How to know if this might be happening to you? When do you need to advocate for yourself? I studied the phenomenon of anti-fat stigma in Canadian primary care clinics for my PhD. Knowing how it happens might help.

Within any given culture, some characteristics or histories are assumed to reflect a character flaw. The characteristic is treated as a sign of inferiority. The result is loss of social status and widespread societal discrimination.

With bodily fatness, the assumed character flaws are laziness, ignorance or weak willpower.

In a comprehensive review published 10 years ago, there was strong evidence of fatness-related discrimination in employment, while other sectors were less researched. Studies carried out since that time confirm the pattern – including within health care.

Poor quality clinical care due to anti-fat stigma occurs when doctors or nurses assume the stereotype holds true.

One common way this happens:

GUEST COLUMN PATTY THILLE

a clinician simply tells you to “lose weight,” as Bennett heard many times when seeking help. That’s like telling patients to “lose blood sugar.” Telling people to produce an outcome is not good quality clinical care.

This is especially awful when weight is not related to the topic at hand – an ear infection, for example. Sometimes, clinicians do this as “opportunistic counselling.” It’s done assuming the benefits outweigh harms – except we know that doing this for weight reduces trust in health-care providers. And reduced trust can lead to avoidance, for obvious reasons –needs aren’t met.

Unfortunately, some clinicians give very simplistic weight loss advice, such as “eat more salads,” without any assessment of what the patient already knows, does, has tried or can afford and fit into their lives.

Simplistic advice is patronizing at best; it assumes patients are ignorant, as per the stereotype. This approach vastly underestimates the knowledge of a patient, gained in part through repeated past attempts to change body composition. One Canadian study found that half of those classified as overweight, and 71 per cent of those categorized as obese, had attempted to reduce their body weight in the last year.

Simplistic messages – “lose weight” or “exercise more” – assume thinness is easy and simply involves some lifestyle tweaks. When such advice is given without assessment of health concerns – for instance, headaches – anti-fat biases can endanger lives.

Clinicians should, at minimum, recommend actions that have a chance at producing an outcome. Lifestyle changes only produce modest effects for most, yet many clinicians assume much bigger impacts.

Obesity Canada, an organization that uses evidence-based action to better prevent and manage obesity,

reminds health-care providers that the typical body weight reduction from sustained lifestyle changes is five per cent of body weight. Dramatic life changes, such as those of participants on the TV show The Biggest Loser, can slow the body’s resting metabolic rate, triggering weight regain.

Science also tells us that factors beyond lifestyle are influencing population shifts around body weight and fatness.

But these scientific findings are still not routinely integrated into healthcare professionals’ understandings of weight. As a result, many still emphasize poor willpower as the core problem.

You shouldn’t have to advocate for yourself to get adequate health care. You should be able to trust your health-care professionals.

There are many people working to ensure access to good quality health care. But tackling discrimination is complex.

You can help. When clinicians make one of these common mistakes or in some other way block you being diagnosed or treated, you are on good grounds to challenge them. Say something like: “What would you do if someone with a thin body had this problem?” Then encourage them to treat you in the same way. Send them this or other articles. Write your story and give it to them. Find a Health-At-Every-Size® practitioner, and check for local resources (such as the Good Fat Care website in Winnipeg).

After receiving poor quality care, register a complaint with the provider’s professional licensing body. They may not investigate your individual complaint but do track trends. Patient advocates are also available in some hospitals to help you get the care you need.

News stories come and go. But the issues Ellen Maud Bennett raised in her obituary should not disappear from our consciousness so quickly. You deserve good care, just as she did.

— Patty Thille is an assistant professor in physical therapy at the University of Manitoba. This article first appeared at theconservation.com.

SHAWN CORNELL DIRECTOR OF

and profitable. This is particularly important in Prince George, where some of the biggest resource companies in the region –like Canfor, Carrier Lumber, and Spectrum Resource Group just to name a few – are continually investing in new technologies. When you consider that northern British Columbia has one of the province’s strongest natural resource sectors, Prince George tech companies have a unique opportunity to sell their services back into the local market and use their innovation to solve real business challenges that can spur both the local and provincial economies. With more than 10,000 tech companies employing more than 114,000 people, B.C.’s tech sector continues to be a driving economic force for all regions of the province. With the existing infrastructure, support, and talent already in place, Prince George is primed to usher our province into a new age of industrial innovation and dramatically change the way all regions of B.C. work, live, and play.

— Raghwa Gopal is the president and CEO of Innovate BC, the provincial crown agency that connects B.C. innovators to funding, resources and support.

Monarchy has served us well

With Victoria Day on the horizon, the monarchy ought to be our theme. Republicans scoff at such notions but won’t explain why when unrest is growing everywhere citizens vote for their king. Whatever our ancient system’s failings, instability is not one of them. Rather than trusting legal abstractions, we ask a person to guarantee our peace and order with integrity and authority. Her Royal Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second has excelled at this duty of care for over 67 years.

Of course, the Royal Family today, and the British monarchy throughout history, are not without sin. But from Cromwell to Corbyn, anti-monarchists always mistakenly blame the institution for corruption, rather than bad characters at the helm. None of the revolutions in Europe liberated the suffering serfs, no matter how many regal heads rolled. And as the 20th century proved, “people’s republics” can be far more brutal than the most wicked kingdoms. The monarchy serves as a human backstop to our technocratic and legalistic times. As state and market actors become ever more distant from their dependents, the fact that a real person, outside the melee, has interests like our own and the power to enact them is reassuring.

In Canada, this preeminence of the monarchy is clearest in the relationship with First Nations. The Royal Proclamation was made by King George III to protect his Indian subjects from the wanton expansion of the American colonists. While our relationship with government is full of problems, we owe our status within the Dominion of Canada to the fiduciary relationship strongly felt by our rulers, all the way down to the current “great grandmother across the sea.”

Indeed, the word “indigenous” grates my ears because I no longer stand in solidarity with the various tribes across the globe that were once united by an Imperial majesty.

From Victoria to Edinburgh, from Johannesburg to Sydney, all of us defended Crown and country not by compulsion, but because the Empire was better than the alternative due to who was in charge.

I often wonder what was gained from decolonization –besides savage civil wars or evil autocrats.

Our current obsession with “privilege” has given vulgar jacobins a new wedge to drive into the populace when it comes to the monarchy. In Canada, this discussion dates back to the King-Byng Affair, which tried to answer who had the final say in politics: the selected or elected?

To put it bluntly, history has vindicated those of us who were on the Governor General’s side in that contest; our monarchs and their representatives have learned the lesson of Charles I ruling by entitlement rather than parliament. The same cannot be said of elected officials, who are caught daily with their hands in government coffers or using the justice department for a political purpose. Ruling like an absolute monarch clearly does not require a drop of royal blood.

Perhaps that’s the greatest justification for the monarchy: human nature is constant, and given the willfulness that can result from voting for everything, what was good enough for our ancestors, with some adjustments based on empirical data, ought to be good enough for us.

Canada owes its existence and historical endurance to its royal leanings. From chartering the Hudson’s Bay Company to ensuring tolerance for Catholic Quebec, from the first legislature in Nova Scotia to constitutional repatriation, we have evolved in step with the monarchy for over 300 years. It has been unbearably slow at times, but our “peace, order, and good government” is inseparable from the devolution of power over centuries. We are fortunate to be the Dominion of Canada.

The debate over the monarchy will continue to simmer in this country, but my bet is that independence will never occur.

Far from just keeping tradition or convention, who wants to argue sovereigns when we have a home, several IPAs and a long-weekend in their name to enjoy?

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NATHAN GIEDE

Photos capture children’s cancer battles

The Washington Post

Lora Scantling is a professional photographer who has long documented happy moments of birth, graduations and weddings. Then several years ago, her stepfather was dying of lung cancer, and her close friend’s one-year-old son died of cancer.

She tried to be supportive but felt helpless. Then she realized she had a skill she could put to use in the sadness. Which is why Scantling sent out a call on Facebook five years ago, offering to do a free photo shoot in her Oklahoma studio for children with cancer.

She would dress up the children and make them feel beautiful. Then turn her lens to their sweet faces while they were still on Earth.

“I wanted to do something powerful and emotional,” Scantling said.

Three families from nearby Oklahoma towns responded. On the appointed afternoon, the girls showed up at Scantling’s studio in Yukon, Okla., accompanied by their mothers. They were Rheann Franklin, then six, who had a rare form of brain cancer; Ainsley Peters, then four, who was being treated for leukemia; and Rylie Hughey, who was three and suffering from kidney cancer. Each of the girls had spent years in and out of hospitals and had lost their hair to chemotherapy treatments.

The girls had never met before, but they quickly became friends and were soon giggling and posing for photos. They enjoyed a fun day in the studio being in the spotlight for something other than their illnesses.

“Watching them interact was so sweet and inspiring,” Scantling said. “They stole my heart.”

That spring the girls began stealing thousands of other hearts as well.

Scantling gave the families the photos and also posted one on Facebook, saying, “let me tell you about these three amazing little fighters!” It showed the girls closely hugging each other in pearls and lacy dresses, eyes closed, their bald heads adorned in frilly headbands.

The photos touched a nerve as people who did not know them became concerned for their health and in awe of their strength and beauty. In the first days the photo was posted, it received thousands of likes and comments.

Then there was much social media celebration later that year when all three girls miraculously were declared cancer-free. People wanted more of these lovely girls who had beaten the odds. And the girls and their families were game for it.

So Scantling has made the photo shoot of the trio an annual event.

Last month, for the fifth anniversary of that inspirational photo, the girls gathered to pose with a new friend who has joined them the last two years: Connor Lloyd, four, who is currently being treated for acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

“I added Connor, because it’s important to remind people that even though the three girls are now cancer-free, there are still kids being diagnosed every day,” said Scantling, 35.

In the aftermath of the first photo, as it was shared widely on social media, Scantling began hearing from other parents in Oklahoma whose children had also been diagnosed with cancer. She offered to photograph them as well. Since then, dozens of children with cancer have posed in

her studio.

“It’s important to their parents – nobody wants their child to be forgotten,” she said.

She did not realize the power of such photos, in fact, until she posted the original one five years ago.

“I had no idea about the impact it would have,” she said. “I still get heartwarming messages from people who come across the photo online. They tell me it’s helped

them or someone they know through a dark time in their lives.”

Children and adults with cancer write to her to say her annual photos of the girls (and now Connor) give them hope to keep fighting, said Scantling, a professional photographer for 11 years with two daughters, both healthy.

“They say, “If these kids can fight cancer, then so can I,’” she said.

“I’m asked every spring, ‘When will the new photo be ready?’”

Zombie cells contribute to aging

The Associated Press

Call them zombie cells – they refuse to die. As they build up in your body, studies suggest, they promote aging and the conditions that come with it like osteoporosis and Alzheimer’s disease. Researchers are studying drugs that can kill zombie cells and possibly treat the problems they bring.

Basically the goal is to fight aging itself, which hopefully will in turn delay age-related disease and disabilities as a group, says geriatrics specialist Dr. James Kirkland of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. That’s in contrast to playing a “whack-a-mole game” of treating one disease only to see another spring up, he said.

The research has been done chiefly in mice. Earlier this year, the first test in people was published and provided some tantalizing results.

Zombie cells are actually called senescent cells. They start out normal but then encounter a stress, like damage to their DNA or viral infection. At that point, a cell can choose to die or become a zombie, basically entering a state of suspended animation. The problem is that zombie cells release chemicals that can harm nearby normal cells. That’s where the trouble starts.

What kind of trouble? In mouse studies, drugs that eliminate zombie cells – so-called senolytics – have been shown to improve an impressive list of conditions, such as cataracts, diabetes, osteoporosis, Alzheimer’s disease, enlargement of the heart, kidney problems, clogged arteries and age-related loss of muscle.

Mouse studies have also shown a more direct tie between zombie cells and aging. When drugs targeting those cells were given to aged mice, the animals showed better walking speed, grip strength and endurance on a treadmill. Even when the treatment was applied to very old mice, the equivalent of people ages 75 to 90, it extended lifespan by an average of 36 per cent.

Researchers have also shown that transplanting zombie cells into young mice basically made them act older: their maximum walking speed slowed down, and their muscle strength and endurance decreased. Tests showed the implanted cells converted other cells to zombie status.

Overall, the results are encouraging and “it really raises enthusiasm to proceed with the more rigorous studies,” said Dr. Gregory Cosgrove, chief medical officer of the Pulmonary Fibrosis Foundation, who played no role in the study.

Her photo subjects and their parents are always eager to participate in the annual ritual.

“Lora’s images capture a quick image of peaceful children who have battled like warriors,” said Andrea Peters, Ainsley’s mother, who lives in Stillwater, Okla. “It’s an honor to be a small part of spreading awareness to help other families.”

This year, to honour nine of those children who have died –

“fallen fighters,” she calls them – Scantling photographed Connor and the three girls holding portraits of the children, in addition to their usual poses.

“I may not have a child with cancer, but if I did, I would want somebody to fight for them,” she said. “That’s why I do this. I absolutely love doing it. It warms my heart, and I fall in love with the kids and their parents.”

The feeling is mutual, said Bridget Hughey, Riley’s mom, of Chandler, Okla.

“Lora has earned many jewels in her crown for the hope and happiness she has brought everyone,” Hughey said. “Even though Riley won her battle with cancer, there are parents all over the world going through the same thing with their child.”

Valerie Franklin, mother of Rheann from the original photo shoot, said she wants to help prevent other families from going through what hers has.

“Our hope with the pictures is that they’ll help people to start talking about cancer and find a cure for all children,” said Franklin, of Norman, Okla.

Although Franklin’s daughter is now cancer-free, she will never grow hair because of the intense radiation she needed on her skull to shrink her brain tumor, her mom said.

“Even so, Rheann is always happy and smiling, and for every photo shoot, she shows up with goodies to share with her friends,” Scantling said.

Even Connor, who will need chemotherapy for his leukemia until 2021, is responding positively to treatment, said his father, Neil Lloyd, of Oklahoma City.

“So far, he’s had 49 rounds of chemo, along with countless oral chemo treatments and other drugs at home,” Lloyd said. “We felt that Connor joining the shoot last year (and this year) would help show that childhood cancer is not as rare as people may believe.”

For Scantling, that realization is what motivates her to gather Connor and the girls together year after year to hold hands as she captures their smiles.

“My hope is for them to grow up healthy and happy,” she said. “I’d like to take photos of them for the rest of their lives.”

WASHINGTON POST/LORA SCANTLING

Above left, the photo Lora Scantling posted on Facebook in 2014 of, from left, Rylie Hughey, Rheann Franklin and Ainsley Peter, who were battling cancer. Above right, the three girls reunited last month for a fifth anniversary photo. Left, Ainsley Peters, Rylie Hughey, Connor Lloyd and Rheann Franklin.

Consumers to feel brunt of trade war

The Associated Press

For many Americans, U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade war may soon get very real.

His administration is preparing to extend 25 per cent tariffs to practically all Chinese imports not already hit with duties, including toys, sneakers, shirts, alarm clocks, toasters and coffeemakers. That’s roughly $300 billion worth of products on top of the $250 billion targeted earlier.

“The administration’s decision to announce a tax on every product coming from China puts America’s entire economy at risk,” the Retail Industry Leaders Association said in a statement. “Americans’ entire shopping cart will get more expensive.”

Trump’s tariffs are meant to put pressure on China in trade negotiations. The two countries have held 11 rounds of talks over American allegations that China steals technology, forces foreign companies to hand over trade secrets and unfairly subsidizes its own companies in a push to challenge U.S. technological dominance.

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative on Monday published a list of 3,805 products that could be hit for the first time with 25 per cent tariffs.

The list includes things like tuna, pacifiers, saw blades, flashlights, door chimes, billiard balls and golf carts.

It excludes pharmaceuticals and rare-earth minerals used in electronics and batteries.

The agency will take public comments and hold a hearing on the proposed tariffs June 17.

In its earlier rounds of tariffs on Chinese products, the administration tried to limit the effect on American consumers by focusing on so-called intermediate goods – imported components that U.S. companies use to make finished products.

That is about to change. Companies are already bracing for the fallout.

E-Blox, an educational toy company in Buffalo Grove, Ill., imports toys from China and assembles and packages them in the U.S.

“We are keeping a close eye on this next round,” said E-Blox Chief Operating Officer Joe Seymour.

“That would be devastating.” If he tries to pass along the higher costs from the new tariff on toys to customers, he said, he will lose sales. And the company’s profit margins aren’t big enough for it to simply absorb the tariffs, he said.

Could E-Blox move manufacturing back to the U.S. – as Trump has suggested – to dodge the taxes on imports?

Seymour said that would be hard because the Trump administration has slapped import taxes on the Chinese plastic injection moulding machines he would need to produce toys in this country.

China, for its part, has punched back by imposing tariffs on $110 billion in U.S. products.

Trump on Tuesday shrugged off the tariff war. “We’re having a little squabble with China,” he said at the White House.

Mary Lovely, an economist at Syracuse University, said it is unclear whether the expanded tariffs

will pressure Beijing to give in to U.S. demands.

Chinese leaders have been trying to shift their economy away from the low-margin consumer goods that make up a big share of the new $300 billion hit list and toward more expensive high-tech products.

They might not want to sacrifice their technological aspirations to save jobs in industries that aren’t part of their plan, Lovely said.

Some U.S. importers might try to switch to suppliers outside China, in countries like Vietnam and Indonesia.

But the transition won’t be easy. Costs could rise and quality slip as new suppliers replace experienced Chinese contractors.

“We’ve all worked for more than 20 years to get the manufacturing safety standards to the highest levels ever from vendors from China,” said Jay Foreman, CEO of Basic Fun!, a toy company in Boca Raton, Florida, that imports from China.

He said the company cannot simply switch to suppliers in India or Indonesia and can’t move manufacturing to the U.S. either.

“For crying out loud, unemployment is 3.6 per cent. Who is going to want to paint the eyeballs onto a Marvel action figure or Barbie doll here?” he said. “It’s just not going to happen.”

Some businesses are still reeling from the earlier tariffs.

At the Luggage Shop of Lubbock in Texas, business is down six per cent from the same period last year.

“People are still travelling and buying, but they’re just not buying as much of the upper mid-price points and higher price points, which is our bread and butter,” owner Tiffany Zarfas Williams said.

She had to drop plans to hire an extra person for the holidays.

As the trade war goes on, she said, “I don’t know whether we’d be able to add any additional people.”

May to pitch new Brexit deal

The Associated Press

British Prime Minister Theresa May will try again next month to secure Parliament’s backing for a Brexit deal so that the U.K. can leave the European Union this summer, May’s office said Tuesday.

Downing Street said May intends to ask lawmakers to vote on a withdrawal agreement bill starting the week of June 3.

Parliament has three times rejected the divorce deal May and the EU struck late last year, laying out the terms of Britain’s departure from the bloc. Brexit, long set for March 29, has been delayed until Oct. 31 while Britain’s politicians try to break the deadlock.

May’s office said in a statement that if lawmakers passed the bill, the U.K. could still leave the EU “before the summer Parliamentary recess,” which is likely to start in late July.

But it is far from clear how the government plans to persuade a majority of lawmakers to back May’s EU divorce terms, since few legislators on either side of the Brexit divide seem prepared to change their positions. And approving the bill, which implements the terms of Britain’s departure, does not remove the need for Parliament to separately ratify the thrice-rejected EU withdrawal deal.

The government calculates that if a majority of lawmakers can be persuaded

to approve the legislation on Brexit terms, they will then back the deal as well.

Ministers also hope that the process of debating - and potentially amending – the bill will help lawmakers reach a form of Brexit a majority can support.

But that looks like a longshot. May’s Conservative government has held weeks of talks with the opposition Labour Party in an attempt to reach a compromise on some of the major sticking points, but so far without signs of much progress.

The two sides do not agree on how close an economic relationship the U.K. should have with the EU after Brexit. Both May and Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn are under strong pressure from their party members not to make concessions to their rivals.

However, neither side wants to be the one to pull the plug on negotiations.

May and Corbyn met for face-to-face talks Tuesday. Downing Street said the meeting was “useful and constructive.” Their representatives are set to continue the talks Wednesday.

But Labour sounded pessimistic about the chances of a breakthrough. The party said Tuesday that Corbyn expressed concerns to May “about the prime minister’s ability to deliver on any compromise agreement.”

Labour said Corbyn “raised doubts over the credibility of government commitments.” The party fears any promises from May could be undone by her successor.

Trump in which he said the U.S. was in a “much better position” to strike a deal. “As soon as he sent out the tweet that he’s not that concerned about the dispute at this point gave the market an element of relief rally,” said Sid Mokhtari, executive director of institutional equity research at CIBC. Algorithms that are used to influence trading by following social media feeds accentuated the rebound, he said. But Mokhtari said it’s premature to say if there is “conviction” behind the rally that will make it hold since trading volumes were very light. The S&P/TSX composite index closed up 91.12 points to 16,284.53 after hitting an intraday low of 16,206.22. The gain almost compensated for the 104-point drop Monday.

Eight out the top 11 major sectors increased, led by health care, which grew 3.07 per cent on rebounds from several cannabis companies, including Cronos Group Inc., Aurora Cannabis Inc. and Hexo Corp. Energy gained 2.08 per cent as Encana rose 4.41 per cent followed by Crescent Point Energy. The increases came as crude oil prices increased further above the key threshold of US$60.50 per barrel.

The June crude contract was up 74 cents at US$61.78 per barrel and the June natural gas contract was up 3.8 cents at US$2.66 per mmBTU.

The losing sectors on the day were telecommunications, real estate and materials.

Higher gold prices, which helped to soften the blow during Monday’s losses, kept the TSX from gaining more on Tuesday when prices dropped.

The June gold contract was down US$5.50 at US$1,296.30 an ounce and the July copper contract was up 0.6 of a cent at US$2.72 a pound.

The Canadian dollar traded at an average of 74.24 cents US compared with an average of 74.33 cents US on Monday. U.S. markets were up, but recovered about one third of Monday’s losses.

In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average was up 207.06 points at 25,532.05, a day after losing 617.38

AP PHOTO

A Cosco Shipping container ship passes the Golden Gate Bridge Tuesday in San Francisco bound for the Port of Oakland.

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GM Mike Hawes reflects on what it took to build a winning team

Ted CLARKE Citizen staff tclarke@pgcitizen.ca

It really started to sink in what his hockey team has accomplished this season when Prince George Spruce Kings general manager Mike Hawes sat alone in his office one day last week staring at the fruits of his team’s labour.

There on the table sat the Fred Page Cup, presented annually to the champions of the B.C. Hockey League and beside that trophy was the Doyle Cup, which his Kings won a week ago on home ice when they beat the Brooks Bandits with an unforgettable Game 6 comeback at Rolling Mix Concrete Arena.

“It was just me and the two trophies and I just said to myself, ‘who would have thunk it?’” said the 49-year-old Hawes. “All the work and all the effort that’s gone in by so many people to get the organization to where it is, we have earned these two trophies sitting in my office and it’s a good feeling for sure.”

Those two unprecedented cup wins exorcized the playoff demons that haunted the Spruce Kings the previous 22 years of their BCHL existence when they were always one of the teams packing away their gear in March, watching from afar while teams from Penticton, Vernon, Nanaimo, Coquitlam, Chilliwack, Kelowna, Surrey and Wenatchee hoisted the trophies over their heads.

There’s room on Hawes’s shelf for another trophy, the National Junior A Cup, formerly known as the RBC/Royal Bank/Centennial Cup, and the Spruce Kings are among five teams now trying to bring that one home from Brooks, Alta.

Winning the Doyle Cup at home in their final home game of the season in front of a sellout crowd of 2,112 was the perfect way of saying thank you from the Kings players to their fans who stuck by their team through a 58-game

regular season and sent them on their way to remarkable 20-3 run in the playoffs which included a perfect 12-0 streak at Rolling Mix Concrete Arena.

The old adage “you have to learn how to lose before you can win” certainly applies to Hawes, who finally, in his ninth season as GM, found a way to take the Spruce Kings to the top of the heap.

“It was a lot of years of a lot of work,” said Hawes. “If you go back to what people would call the lean years when we weren’t having as much success as we would like, I used those as learning experiences and figured out what did we do right and what can we change to affect a different outcome with our team.

“In the last few years we’ve been

able to put it together and had a few good seasons in a row and it culminated with the roster that we have today that is a pretty special roster to say the least.”

The Spruce Kings’ fortunes started to change in the 2017 playoffs when they fell behind 3-0 in an opening round series to the Wenatchee Wild and came back to nearly tie the series. A last-minute collapse in Game 6 in Wenatchee prevented that when the Wild scored two goals in the final minute, including the series-clincher with six seconds left.

But that playoff memory hung over the returning players that summer and the Kings came back the following season and won their division for the first time, then won three straight playoff se-

ries to qualify for their first BCHL final. It ended in a five-game loss to the Wild but the winning habit was well-entrenched when the 2018-19 season began.

After years of NCAA-bound recruits and top prospects bypassing Prince George like it was the Chernobyl of the B.C Hockey League, the Spruce Kings have completely reversed the trend. Their winning ways and progressive tactics preached by coaches Adam Maglio and Alex Evin have made the team and the city a desirable destination. Word has spread throughout the hockey circles in Canada and the United States that this team treats its players like kings and college teams are lining up to try convince Hawes to sign their hottest prospects.

“The building of this roster started about three years ago, when we turned a corner in recruiting and the type of kids we recruited,” said Hawes. “We started to see a change in the culture of what type of players we brought in to the organization and once we started to see the benefits of doing that we started to see better results.”

For the past four years, through Maglio’s ties to Burnaby Winter Club academy director Maco Balkovec, the Kings have landed some of the best players in the league. That talent pipeline from Burnaby brought nine of the 25 players on the current roster to Prince George, including highlytouted centre Fin Williams, who just turned 16 and has been playing with the Kings since his midget prep team’s season ended in midMarch. The tradition started with BWC alumni Ethan de Jong and Kyle Johnson, who used their time as Spruce Kings as a springboard to the NCAA.

“The job they do with their players and their program is right in line with what we like to do and more importantly the young men we like to have in our program seems to coincide with the young men they have in theirs,” said Hawes. “Then you factor the hockey ability and the approach they use to develop their players is in line with how we develop in ours. It seems to be a good match with the amount of players we pull out of their program.”

The Kings’ success on the ice is drawing interest from NCAA schools who have players already committed to college hockey and want them to play a season or two in what is widely considered the top junior A league in Canada. Evin, the Kings assistant coach and director of player personnel, has worked with Hawes and head coach Maglio to establish contacts within the U.S. college ranks and that helped convince Americanborn players like goalie Logan Neaton, defenceman Jay Keranen and forwards Patrick Cozzi and Dustin Manz – all key ingredients on the team this season – to further their hockey careers in Prince George.

“We get calls now from NCAA teams that like the way we run our program and the way we develop our players, and those are great calls to get,” said Hawes. — see ‘THEY’VE, page 10

Midget Knights get hot in icebreaker

The Prince George Surg Med Knights get a kick out of playing under the bright lights at Citizen Field. It makes them feel like they belong playing on the same field with a bunch of adults who were taking their cuts in the Prince George Senior Men’s Baseball League long before most of the Knights were born.

They respect their elders and all they do to help them tune up for midget tournaments in league games during the spring and summer. But given the chance to stomp those guys last weekend in the league’s icebreaker tournament, the Knights took no prisoners.

They did nothing but win. It started on Friday night when they turned a 2-1 deficit into 3-2 triumph over the Queensway Auto World Red Sox, which ended when Kolby Lukinchuk crushed a two-out, two-run double.

That win put the Knights into the semifinal round Saturday afternoon against the JRJ Construction Orioles and the midgets rode the arm of 15-year-old pitcher Jacob Ross to a 7-2 complete-game victory to advance to the final that evening against the Red Sox. They built a 4-0 lead in the first inning and rode the pitching of Nolan Hull the rest of the way to win the five-inning game 4-1.

Hull pitched himself out of jam when the Red Sox threatened in the first inning after back-to-back singles from Brandon Hunter and Chris Clark and when it was their turn to bat the Knights showed the damage they’re capable of causing.

Hull doubled off Red Sox starter Tyler Clement in the bottom of the first and scored Zach Fillion with the first run, then Ross brought Hull home with a sacrifice fly. Jacob Fillion followed with an RBI single to plate Derian Potskin and Jake Anker’s base hit scored Fillion with the fourth run.

“We all played good, we were short

guys because of grad (ceremonies) but we all played really well and I’m excited for the rest of the year,” said the 16-year-old Hull. “Ross threw a really good game in the semifinal and we couldn’t have done it without our pitching and we have lots of arms this year, it’s going to be good. It was good to start the year in the men’s league and see what we’ve got now.” Curtis Sawchuk took over from Clement in the second inning and pitched four scoreless innings the rest of the game, but his team was unable to erase the deficit.

“Every game that’s our goal to get that lead, it just pushes the other team so much harder and they make their own mistakes,” said Knights head coach Murray Lukinchuk.

“That’s great competition and that’s what we’re looking for from these guys. It was a great job by Nolan, he’s developed so much this year through the winter programs and his attitude is wonderful.”

Lukinchuk said even with his son Kolby and Hunter Fanshaw attending the Duchess Park prom and Richard French injured he still had several pitching options in case Hull faltered, with Potskin, Brady Pratt and Kaelon Gibbs available.

“We’re deep in the pitching and it’s really good, we have six legitimate starters here,” said coach Lukinchuk.

Ross is making the jump to midget baseball after a couple successful seasons with the bantam squad and can’t wait for the midget Knights’ first test against their age-

group peers at the Sherwood Park tournament, May 30-June 1. Three wins against men’s teams provides a timely confidence boost.

“It’s a great way to start the year, the boys did a good job and we were good on the bats and decent in the field,” said Ross.

“We’ve got some work to do in practice but it seems to be a really good team this year.”

In the third inning, Hunter scored Justin Fillion from second base with a two-out double but that’s as close as the Red Sox got. Pratt, the Knights’ centre fielder, caught a piece of Hunter’s long bomb and that prevented two more runs from scoring.

“They played well all weekend,” said Sawchuk, referring to the midgets.

“They’ve been putting in the work in practice and it showed this weekend.”

The Red Sox’ loss to the Knights Friday meant they had to play an extra game to qualify for the final and they ran short of pitching. Justin Fillion pitched two complete five-inning games, back-to-back. Sawchuk, a 27-year-old lefthander, admitted his pitching arm was not quite up to mid-season standards.

“Age is catching up to me a little bit,” he said.

Sawchuk is head coach of the LTN Contracting bantam Knights and had four of his bantams (Brendan Gaboury, James Yandeau, Preston Weightman and Logan Dreher) playing on the men’s teams in the icebreaker to help them tune up for a tournament in Kamloops this weekend.

“That’s ultimately what we want with the (Prince George Youth Baseball) Association,” said Sawchuk.

“We want them to play at the next level and compete and to play against the men is the best practice they can have. It’s the best competition they’ll see, compared to their age group. It’s only going to better them in the long run.”

The five-team Century 21 Prince George Senior Men’s League begins its schedule on May 22.

Ted CLARKE Citizen staff

CITIZEN PHOTO BY JAMES DOYLE

Prince George Surg Med Midget Knights pitcher Nolan Hall hurls the ball towards homeplate against the Red Sox on Saturday evening at Citizen Field in the championship game of the PGSBL Bud Light Classic baseball tournament.

Spruce Kings general manager Mike Hawes holds the Fred Page Cup in Vernon.

Bruins take 3-0 series lead

Associated Press

The

Joedy McCREARY

RALEIGH, N.C. — Tuukka Rask and the Boston Bruins stood tall during an early deluge of shots and penalties, patiently waiting for their chance to take over the game. Then one big burst put them on the brink of another trip to the Stanley Cup Final.

The Bruins beat the Carolina Hurricanes 2-1 on Tuesday night, taking a 3-0 lead in the Eastern Conference final after Chris Wagner and Brad Marchand scored 5:07 apart in the second period.

“The moral of the story is, we got through the first period – however you want to describe it – and off we went after that,” coach Bruce Cassidy said.

Rask stopped 35 shots for the Bruins, who have won six straight post-season games for the first time since 1978. They are one victory away from their third Stanley Cup appearance in nine years. Boston will go for the sweep on Thursday night.

“This year, I feel like we really have each other’s backs,” Rask said. “We’ve been in some tight games, and then our depth comes in, and we score some goals and we take over the games.”

Calvin de Haan scored and Curtis McElhinney made 29 saves for the Hurricanes while starting in place of Petr Mrazek, who allowed 10 goals in the first two games of the series.

This one was closer, but it still wasn’t enough to keep alive Carolina’s post-season perfection at home – where a pig named Hamilton looks on from behind the corner boards.

“There’s no way around it. There’s no way to sugarcoat it,” Carolina coach Rod Brind’Amour said. We got kicked in the youknow-where.“

And now they’re in an unenviable spot. Only four teams in NHL history have ever rallied to win a series they trailed 3-0, and none since Los Angeles in 2014 – though Carolina captain Justin Williams was on that Kings team that rallied to beat San Jose

in the first round.

“I’m probably going to give you... the cliches that are going to be thrown to you and everything,” Williams said.

This one got away from them in the first 7 1/2 minutes of the second, when the Bruins claimed control with their fourth line turning a turnover by Carolina’s Brock McGinn into a 1-0 lead at 1:21.

Sean Kuraly collected the puck and passed low to Joakim Nordstrom, with the former Hurricane then finding Wagner alone in front for a tap-in.

“That line scored a goal by playing the right way, pursuing pucks,” Cassidy said.

“They’re fourth-liners. You don’t expect them to make a tic-tac-toe play, but they did, and good for them.”

The Bruins entered with the NHL’s best post-season power-play unit – converting on a full third of their chances in the playoffs – and they were 1 of 5 in this one with the man advantage against a Carolina penalty kill that began with a sub-50 per cent success rate in this series.

But that one goal was a significant one.

With 19 seconds left on a high-sticking minor on Nino Niederreiter, Marchand put Boston up 2-0 when his shot from between the circles trickled past McElhinney.

It loomed large because the Hurricanes pulled within a goal when de Haan’s slap shot off a draw got through Rask’s pads for the defenceman’s first goal since Nov. 8.

The Bruins thought Torey Krug had an insurance goal with 15:45 left, but the officials ruled Jake DeBrusk interfered with McElhinney – a decision that was confirmed after Boston’s challenge led to a review in Toronto.

That seemed like a significant development.

Rask made sure it ultimately wasn’t.

After stopping 20 shots in the first period alone – and becoming the first Boston goaltender since Tim Thomas in 2011 with that many in a post-season period – he remained difficult for the Hurricanes to figure out.

‘They’ve bonded and become real close’

— from page 9

“It’s taken the program a long time to get there but the fact we’re there now is very rewarding for all of us,” Hawes added.

A winning program is an irresistible drawing card for players intent on attracting college scholarships and the Kings’ record the past two seasons speaks for itself.

Players talk with future prospects about how well they are treated, especially during the time the team is on the road staying in quality hotels and eating in good restaurants.

The Kings spent a league-high 31 nights in hotels in a 58-game season, compared to some Okanagan-based teams which had just six or eight nights in hotel rooms.

“My thought process since I took over as GM is to find a way to overcome our challenges when it comes to recruiting –geography is the first and the amount of time we spend on the bus,” said Hawes.

“We overcame those by running one of the best programs in the league and doing the little things we can control extremely well.

“We become road warriors and there’s so much value in it. We always thought that was a challenge for us in recruiting and now we use that as a benefit.

“We explain to the players and the parents that being on the bus that long is a good thing and it brings the players together. To have the success we’ve had this year, and anyone who has had a championship team in any sport, they need to be a tight-knit group and we’ve got that this year and a lot of that is because they’ve spent so much time together.

“They’ve bonded and become real close and they battle for each other because of it.”

Attendance figures in Prince George have been healthy throughout the season and crowds have been close to sellouts throughout the extended playoff run. The willingness of the Kings supporters to buy tickets on the annual show home lottery and the mega 50-50 draws raised enough to cover the team’s operating costs for next season.

The Spruce Kings – the only communityowned team to ever win the BCHL championship – are now considered a model franchise.

It wasn’t always that way.

Three or four years ago, the Kings organization was drowning in red ink to start the season and it wasn’t until two years ago when the team raised ticket prices for the show home lottery from $100 per ticket to $125 that the tide changed.

“The costs of running a junior team properly were going up every year and we were stagnant in our revenue generation and credit to Rick (team president Turgeon) and the board for what they did on the business side,” said Hawes.

“They were not only able to get us out of debt and get us square with everybody but we’re one of the teams in the league that makes money now and we’re probably the most financially-viable team in the league. I told them I will take care hockey side and you take care of the business side and together we’ll make this thing happen.

“I understand where some teams are at with their financial situation because it wasn’t long ago we were there, but for me it’s a revenue issue.

“We found a way within our organization to bail ourselves out and I think what’s what these other teams need to do. Their expenses are going up but they just need to work harder to find that revenue.”

Tributes pour in for comic Conway

The Associated Press

Tim Conway, the impish second banana to Carol Burnett who won four Emmy Awards on her TV variety show, starred aboard McHale’s Navy and later voiced the role of Barnacle Boy for Spongebob Squarepants, has died. He was 85.

Conway died Tuesday morning in a Los Angeles care facility, according to Howard Bragman, who heads LaBrea Media. Conway’s wife, Charlene Fusco, and a daughter, Jackie, were at his side. The cause was a disorder in which there is an excess of fluid on the brain, Bragman said.

Tributes came from across the comedy world, including from Conan O’Brien, who said as a kid “no one made me laugh harder than Tim Conway.” Larry Wilmore called Conway “always always always funny” and Kathy Griffin called him “a wildly talented, comedy giant.” Al Roker tweeted out a link to Conway playing a hysterically incompetent dentist.

A native of Ohio, Conway credited his Midwestern roots for putting him on the right path to laughs, with his deadpan expression and innocent, simple-minded demeanour.

“I think the Midwest is the heart of comedy in this country, and a little bit of the South, too,” he told the Wisconsin State Journal in 2005. “For some reason, we’re just more laid-back, more understanding... And Midwesterners have a kinder sense of humour.”

Those qualities probably contributed to his wide popularity on The Carol Burnett Show, which he joined in 1975 after years as a frequent guest. The show aired on CBS from 1967 to 1978 and had a short summer stint on ABC in 1979.

“We really didn’t attack people or politics

or religion or whatever. We just made fun of, basically, ourselves,” he said.

The show operated with just five writers, one producer, one director and without network interference. The ensemble cast surrounding the redheaded star included Vicki Lawrence and Lyle Waggoner.

“I don’t think the network would allow a show like The Carol Burnett Show now because we had such freedom,” Conway said in his interview with the State Journal.

While America was laughing at Conway, so were his co-stars: Burnett and Harvey Korman were often caught by the camera trying not to crack up during his performances.

The short, nondescript Conway and the

tall, imposing Korman were a physical mismatch made in comedy heaven. They toured the country for years with a sketch show called Together Again, which drew on characters from Burnett’s show.

Besides the four Emmys he won with Burnett (three as a performer, one as a writer), he won Emmys for guest appearances in 1996 for Coach and in 2008 for 30 Rock.

Conway also had a modest but steady movie career, appearing in such films as The Apple Dumpling Gang (1975), The Shaggy D.A. (1976), Cannonball Run II (1984), Dear God (1996) and Air Bud 2 (1998).

The Apple Dumpling Gang and Cannonball Run II allowed him to work with his co-

Doc undresses Dr. Ruth

As the only child of Jewish parents who died during the Second World War, Dr. Ruth Westheimer says she grew up feeling like she had to “stand up and be counted.”

“Because I am a survivor, an orphan of the Holocaust, I had to make a dent in society,” the 90-year-old celebrity sex therapist said during a recent interview in Toronto.

“I didn’t know I would be talking about orgasms and erections.”

The frank-talking media personality – who’s charmed audiences for decades with her four-footseven frame, German accent and squeaky-voiced “Grandma Freud” personality – opens up about her life, career and childhood in the new documentary Ask Dr. Ruth.

Opening Friday in Toronto and Vancouver, the film is a look at not only her smash success spearheading candid conversations around sexuality on TV and radio, but also the loneliness and challenges she faced growing up.

At age 10, she was sent to an orphanage in Switzerland to escape the Holocaust back home. Her parents stayed behind and did not survive. Records show her father was killed at the Auschwitz concentration camp and her mother disappeared.

Westheimer found herself having to take charge of her own life early on, which she says helped her realize women “have the responsibility for themselves and for their own sexuality.”

With headlines swirling over migrant children being separated from their parents in the U.S. – as well as changes to abortion laws, Planned Parenthood and Ontario’s sex-ed curriculum – Westheimer feels “the timing is right” and that “the film is just perfect for this year.”

“It will make a real stand for sexual literacy, for the importance of having the guts to do something that wasn’t done before, and for being concerned about what happens in society,” she said.

“While I’m not a politician, while I never talk about politics – I’m upset when I see children being separated and I’m upset about the issue

of abortion being on the carpet again, and that there’s not enough funding, in Canada and the United States, for Planned Parenthood. So if people can show... my film at events to raise money for Planned Parenthood, I’d be very happy.”

Los Angeles-based Ryan White directed the doc, which opens May 24 in Montreal and throughout the spring in other cities.

It’s the “story of the American dream,” he said.

“I think it’s very easy in the U.S. right now to demonize refugees and I think Dr. Ruth’s story stands for how special America is when we can embrace refugees and give them that opportunity.”

Cameras follow Westheimer in the New York apartment she’s lived in for over 50 years and going about her career, which is still thriving with various appearances and more books on the horizon.

“I have no time to retire; I have to rewire,” she said.

Westheimer plans to publish two new books this year, including a children’s book on diversity called Crocodile, You’re Beautiful!

The other is a new edition of Sex for Dummies, in which she addresses issues for millennials –particularly their attitude towards relationships and how they’re “losing the art of conversation,” as well as the often-reported claim that they’re not making enough time for sex.

“I don’t know if that’s true but the newspapers say so,” she said, “and I say, ‘Hold it, watch out. If that’s true, you are stupid. Here is an activity that doesn’t cost

money, here is an activity that enhances your relationship – don’t put it on the back burner.”’

Young adults also need to “be savvy and to know what is trash, what is unrealistic” when it comes to incorporating sexting and other forms of technology into their sex lives, she added.

“In pornography they’re showing things that are unrealistic –nobody has an erection from the floor to the ceiling every minute,” Westheimer said.

Talking so candidly about sex is something Westheimer chalks up to her cultural background and work as a postdoctoral researcher at New York-Presbyterian Hospital for Helen Singer Kaplan, a doctor known for her leadership in the field of sex therapy.

“In the Jewish tradition, sex has never been a sin. It always has been an obligation for a husband to engage in sex, especially on Friday nights when they cannot do anything else, so it’s a good time to make babies,” she said with a chuckle. “So part of it has to do with my being Jewish, part of it has to do with that I’ve been very well trained. Helen Singer, I was very fortunate to be on her staff. And I have the chutzpah – chutzpah in Hebrew means ‘the nerve’ – to state what I believe in.”

The film also sees Westheimer with her friends and family, including her son Joel Westheimer, who has American and Canadian citizenship and is an author and professor at the University of Ottawa. She said she often visits him and his family in Ottawa.

At one point in the film, Westheimer’s granddaughter asks if she’s a feminist, to which she says she’s not.

Looking back on that scene, Westheimer clarified: “I don’t consider myself a feminist; I consider myself equal rights for equal work.”

“I certainly was a single mother when it was not so accepted but I don’t have that (feminist) label on me,” added Westheimer, who was married three times.

“So we finally agreed with my daughter Miriam and my granddaughter Leora that I’m a feminist but not a radical feminist.”

medic hero, Don Knotts, who died in 2006.

“If there’s any reason at all I’m in the business, I think it’s Don,” Conway once said. “He’s an icon in this business. He’s an icon that’s never going to be duplicated.”

More recently Conway voiced the role of Barnacle Boy for the hugely popular children’s series SpongeBob SquarePants. He was born Thomas Conway in 1933 in the Cleveland suburb of Willoughby. He attended Bowling Green State University and served in the U.S. Army. He got his career start on local TV in Cleveland in the 1950s, where his duties included comedy spots on a late-night movie show.

He was spotted by Rose Marie of The Dick Van Dyke Show, who got him an audition for The Steve Allen Show. He became a regular on the show in the early 1960s. It was Allen who had advised him to change his name from Tom to Tim to avoid being confused with a British actor.

Following the Allen show, Conway gained attention as the incompetent Ensign Charles Parker on the Ernest Borgnine sitcom McHale’s Navy from 1962-66. That led to series of his own, including Rango and The Tim Conway Show, but they were shortlived.

McHale’s Navy fans loved watching Ensign Parker infuriate the ever-flammable Captain Binghamton (played by Joe Flynn), but it was Conway’s work on Burnett’s show that would bring him lasting fame. Conway and his wife, Mary Anne Dalton, married in 1961 and had six children. The marriage ended in divorce. He later married Charlene Fusco.

In addition to his wife and daughter Jackie, Conway is survived by children Tim Jr., Patrick, Jamie, Kelly, Corey and Seann, as well as two grandchildren, Courtney and Sophia.

Carol Burnett, left, and veteran comrade in comedy Tim Conway laugh during a gala birthday party for Burnett in Los Angeles in April 1986.

The Canadian Press

WESTHEIMER

It is with heavy hearts that we announce the passing of Royden Pearson Priest on May 10, 2019. Surrounded by family, he went to reunite with his wife, Virginia Lena Priest. Royden was born in Diligent River, Cumberland Co., NS. His kind and gentle presence will be missed by his family, friends and church members.

A Service to celebrate Royden’s life will be held Saturday, May 18, 2019 @ 1:00pm at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. 4180 5th Ave., Prince George, BC. Tea to follow at 3:00pm at the church.

Patricia (Patty) Irvine Apr 26, 1951 to May 9, 2019

We are sad to announce that, after a long struggle with MS and mental illness, Patty passed away peacefully in the Prince George hospital with family by her side. It is Patty’s wish that her decision to end her struggle with her health issues will be understood and accepted by all of her family and friends. Patty was an avid horse lover and as a teenager competed in the local gymkhana events. Patty lived her life on her own terms, and her free spirit will be remembered fondly by everyone who knew her. There will be a memorial out at the river later this summer.

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