RCMP’s ERT deployed to Nation Crescent home
Horgan defends veto of closed lists
Rob SHAW Vancouver Sun
VICTORIA — Premier John Horgan denies he’s trying to manipulate the outcome of the referendum on proportional representation by altering one of the options in the middle of the campaign.
“I don’t believe I’ve amended anything, other than to put forward what is self-evident: Closed lists aren’t in the interests of British Columbians,” Horgan told reporters on Thursday.
Horgan told Postmedia News this week that if the mixed member proportional model wins support in this month’s mail-in referendum, he will make sure NDP MLAs on a post-referendum legislature committee block the so-called closed list version – the model in which voters don’t cast ballots to rank individual candidates on party lists.
The premier defended his comments Thursday at a press event.
“It seems to me we could give that one a pass,” Horgan said of the closed list approach. “There’s no one in the legislature that thinks it’s a good idea, so why would we proceed with it?”
The NDP and Greens both oppose closed lists, preferring instead the open list model in which voters vote for individual candidates on party lists. That means that when additional seats are
allocated based on popular vote, the candidate on a party’s list with the most votes is chosen first.
The NDP and Greens have a majority on the legislature committee charged with setting the details for whatever option wins after the referendum.
Horgan said the Liberals also support his position. But Liberal leader Andrew Wilkinson blasted Horgan’s move.
“Horgan and the NDP have no mandate to dictate the choices for our voting system,” he said. “Who appointed him to tell us what’s
good for us?”
The Liberals have said there are almost two dozen key details about the voting systems left unresolved until after the referendum.
“The NDP can’t change the rules halfway through the game to try and encourage people to vote,” said Wilkinson.
The declaration that one version of mixed-member is effectively off the table comes after Elections B.C. has already received more than 243,969 ballots, or 7.4 per cent of all registered voters.
— see ‘I THINK, page 3
Pro-rep opponents seek voting extension
Randy SHORE Vancouver Sun
The campaign against proportional representation is calling for an extension to the Nov. 30 referendum voting deadline, citing “abysmal” return numbers.
About 7.4 per cent of eligible voters have returned a ballot on electoral reform with some regions returning only two to three per cent so far, according to Elections B.C., which is considering an extension.
“The postal service hasn’t been completely disrupted, but it’s possible some people are holding back their ballots,” said Bill Tieleman, campaign director for the No Proportional Representation Society.
Tieleman worries that a ballot return of just 20 per cent could trigger changes in the electoral system based on the votes of as few as 10 per cent of British Columbians.
“The bottom line is this is a completely abysmal turnout and it’s not getting better,” he said.
If the voting period is extended, the No campaign will also seek permission to raise and spend additional money to energize their vote.
“Our advertising budgets are all set to run out by the last week of November, because after that,
it’s of no use,” he said.
Elections B.C. is also concerned about the rate of returns to date, in light of labour disruptions that have affected Canada Post’s mail processing and delivery since Oct. 26.
Elections B.C. return data shows that communities on Vancouver Island and in the Interior were scheduled to receive ballots by Oct. 29, while Metro Vancouver, excluding the City of Vancouver, would have received ballots as late as Nov. 2, even without labour disruptions at Canada Post.
“We are monitoring this situation and will communicate any changes with the public,” said Elections B.C. in a tweet Thursday. “The voting period may be extended depending on how the labour situation with Canada Post affects mail distribution.” It’s probably too early to tell if returns are unusually low just 10 days into the return period. In the 2011 HST referendum, mail-in returns were very slow at first, then accelerated steeply after about two weeks.
Elections B.C.’s riding-byriding counts show that ballot returns are increasing each day, but the referendum has just two weeks to go. — see ‘WE ARE, page 3
CP PHOTO
Premier John Horgan speaks at a rally in support of proportional representation at the Victoria Conference Centre on Tuesday.
Local actor relishes Million Dollar Quartet role
Frank PEEBLES Citizen staff fpeebles@pgcitizen.ca
Curtis Abriel is rolling through the golden years of rock ‘n’ roll, and it feels like especially familiar territory.
The seminal Prince George multi-instrumentalist, ubiquitous in the local live music scene, is one of the local cast members in the Theatre Northwest (TNW) production of Million Dollar Quartet, set to open on Nov. 22 (it runs to Dec. 12). Abriel is the one slappin’ da bass as Brother Jay who, in real life, was Carl Perkins’ brother and a fixture in the 1950s studio sessions and radio broadcasts around the JacksonMemphis scene.
It is a position not alien to Abriel, who was also on stage portraying a member of The Crickets, the real-life band of that same rockabilly era, in the TNW production of The Buddy Holly Story. That show was the toast of 2013 and broke all box office records for TNW.
Now, as Jay Perkins, Abriel gets to travel back through that same golden window to the time when rock ‘n’ roll was being born.
“I feel I might be playing the exact same bass from Long & McQuade,” said Abriel, “and this time I’m sensing the audience is going to exceed those numbers we achieved with Buddy Holly. There’s something about this music, and these people we get to portray. They are fascinating, and I’m speaking as a musician, but I know they have a very special place in culture even if you don’t sing or play an instrument.”
Ferris Vasko had some catching up to do. The aspiring Prince George actor has been studying
the 1950s music age through books, recordings and video as she prepares for the part of Dyanne, a fictitious backup singer modelled on actual dancer/vocalist Marilyn Evans who was the girlfriend of Elvis Presley at that point.
In the famous photo of Presley, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis and Johnny Cash that sparked the writing of the play The Million Dollar Quartet, the picture also includes Evans. She was usually cropped out by the publishers of history, but she and another female voice are captured in the background of the actual tapes from that fateful night’s recordings. Dyanne represents them both, in the “what if” of this play’s script.
“I’ve been getting a playlist together of music from that era, especially female singers. Fifties jazz is really cool,” said Vasko who is making her TNW debut. Sort of.
“This is my fourth year with TNW,” she said, but none of it was on stage. “Technically I was called the front-of-house assistant but, yes, I was an usher. I’ve done props a couple of times, I’m the box office manager, and now I’m actually in the show which is super exciting.”
She has done other stage work in the past, especially for the UNBC Musical Productions club. She is running lights for their upcoming production of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, while maintaining a full-time course load studying English and Anthropology.
Abriel is the music director for Million Dollar Quartet, as well as playing bass, and that busy workload is typical of his schedule. He was similarly cast in Judy Russell’s recent production of Cabaret, he was also with her for Legally Blonde, and he plays at Winston’s
Resto-Bar each Friday in addition to the other bands and events that call on his talents. He has even been the music director for the Prince George Cougars, in the past.
Holding down the rhythm in the Million Dollar Quartet band is another local talent who seems to be everywhere on local stages. Danny Bell, is the drummer named Fluke, based on actual rockabilly drummer W.S. Fluke Holland, who rattled the skins for a who’s who of early stars of rock ‘n’ roll.
“It’s fun music to play, a hard shuffle,” said Bell who is well known for his band work and concert promotion around the city. He recently released an album under the moniker Danny Bell & His Disappointments. He said his workload prevented him from taking part in the Legally Blonde orchestra this summer, so this show comes as a welcome development.
“I did some of this work in high school, and I’ve been wanting to get back into pit bands and live theatre stuff,” he said.
“I just love the setting, the atmosphere, the connection with the actors and the audience. This show was a lot more challenging than I first expected, so that’s a real treat. And just working with Curits is exciting. He’s so serious about the craft and so talented, so it’s an honour to be in a band with him.”
Rounding out the ensemble is Frankie Cottrell as Presley, Montgomery Bjornson as Lewis, Kenton Klassen as Cash, Edward Murphy as Perkins and David Sklar as Sam Phillips, the record executive who owned Sun Records and wisely pushed the Record button when they all gathered on Dec. 5, 1956 for this one night of rock ‘n’ roll history.
Teen art workshop coming
Frank PEEBLES Citizen staff
Teenagers can make amazing art, and teenagers also possess the ability to create future amazing art.
Youth is a time when the creative mind has its initial sparks, and the Community Arts Council (CAC) intends to fan those flames with an event on Nov. 24.
“The teens come and meet veteran artists face to face,” said CAC program manager Lisa Redpath. “They move from station to station meeting different high-caliber local artists at each station.”
The rotation provides the young artists with personal contacts, networking opportunities, a chance to gather information or ask certain questions that only veteran artists can pass on to up-andcomers.
The CAC is making this more than just conversational speed-learning. Redpath said it was an opportunity for the young artists to actually show their stuff and get constructive feedback.
“It’s not required, but they can, if they want, bring their own artwork for critique,” she said. “Some will come and just do the research part of the event to find new inspiration, new engagement, maybe make some friends with some of our established artists, but some will get into some practical conversations about techniques and details about the way they might make art.”
Some of the topics that will be covered for all participants is how to display art for exhibition and how to think about fixing a price for your art. It is for their general knowledge, but is also a strategic lead-in to the annual Teen Art Showcase coming up in February.
This is the second and final workshop in the series this year. The free event takes place 1-3 p.m. at the Prince George Public Library’s Bob Harkins Branch downtown.
CITIZEN PHOTO BY BRENT BRAATEN
David Sklar, Montgomery Bjornson, Edward Murphy, Frankie Cottrell, Kenton Klassen, bassist and local actor Curtis Abriel and drummer Daniel Bell rehearse a scene from Theatre Northwest’s production of Million Dollar Quartet.
‘I think it’s going to be too little, too late’
— from page 1
“He’s trying to sort of fill in some of the blanks at the late stage,” said Hamish Telford, a politicalscience professor at the University of the Fraser Valley. “This is not changing the rules, but it is sort of pre-determining what was presumably supposed to be an open and impartial committee.”
The technical clarification might have helped the Yes side mobilize voters toward mixed-member if it was made earlier, said Telford.
“I think it’s going to be too little, too late,” he said. “The announcement by the premier is relatively technical, I don’t think that will sway a lot of ordinary voters.”
If voter turnout remains low, Telford suggested government should take the most supported pro-rep option, study it for two years, produce detailed information on how it would work in B.C., and then present it to voters as another referendum question during the 2021 provincial election.
“My advice to the government would be if this adopted by a slim margin with a low voter turnout, then perhaps we should take this referendum as indicative rather than binding, draft up the new system which was endorsed, fully flesh it out, and then put it to voters again at the time of the next provincial election and try and get better public engagement on a single completely-worked-out option.”
The main criticism of closed list systems is they allow parties to stack their lists full of patronage candidates that become MLAs, not because voters endorsed them, but simply by virtue of being chosen by a party for a list.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing, said University of B.C. political science professor Max Cameron. Allowing the parties to set closed lists could increase the diversity and type of people who become MLAs that might otherwise fail to get elected by the general population, he said.
“Closed lists allow parties to construct lists of candidates to achieve goals like improving diversity in the legislature,” said Cameron.
“Affluent white men, and to a lessor extent affluent white women, are still heavily over-rep-
resented in our legislature. Parties can increase the representation of women and minorities by placing them at the top of their lists. New Zealand has seen a big increase in Maori representation since they adopted (mixed member) with closed lists.”
The mail-in referendum ballot asks voters whether they want to keep the current first-past-thepost system or change to one of three proportional representation options. In addition to mixed member, the other two options include dual member and rural urban proportional.
The deadline for Elections B.C. to receive the ballots is Nov. 30, requiring voters to put the ballots in the mail several days earlier to ensure they arrive on time.
The changes to mixed member, lack of basic details about the three models, lack of a requirement for a minimum voter turnout, and overall confusion about the process continue to point to major problems in the referendum, said Telford. The NDP government set the rules, including a tight timeline to bring in the system by 2021, and a promise of a referendum after two elections to decide whether to keep any changes.
“I think this speaks to the basic problem here, which is the government adopted a highly flawed process from the get-go and they’ve put themselves in a bad situation,” said Telford.
“I think the fundamental problem was based on experience that it’s impossible to enact electoral reform within one election cycle. You really need to do four years of ground work and then give people the option to vote if it is adopted, you then put in place for the following election presumably another four years down the road.
“But they tried to rush this through in four years which meant they had to have the referendum now… They came out with three half-baked ideas, which makes it very difficult to campaign in favour of them, because all of the Yes campaigners are campaigning on P.R. in principle and voters are telling me, ‘How are these systems going work in particular?’ And they are not getting the answers.”
OverHang climbing centre holding open house today
Frank PEEBLES Citizen staff
fpeebles@pgcitizen.ca
Kids of all ages and families of any size and shape can try out rock climbing today at OverHang. The city’s climbing gym located at the Prince George Golf & Curling Club is holding an open house to celebrate their fifth year in operation. Admission is $5 for anyone to give the indoor rocks and ropes a try.
“We’ve had a huge learning curve,” said proprietor Lauren Phillips. “The first couple of years we hardly got any sleep, but we started to smooth things out, and now we in a place where we have a strong staff, we are doing things to improve the climbing culture of Prince
George, and we have a community built up around us.”
OverHang was an extension of the outdoor/wilderness safety courses Phillips ran with partner Dean Price. They still do, and support critical not-for-profit organizations like Search & Rescue in the process.
About a year ago this collection of interests grew to include occupational safety and first aid when they acquired PriMed Emergency Training Services as well, adding another link in the safety education chain.
OverHang is where all these themes meet in the middle for fun. To come enjoy the climbing complex and try your hand at some of the activities, come down between 11:30 a.m. and 7 p.m. and enjoy cupcakes, face painting, games and more.
Turban Up Day
‘We are telling people not to bother with the second part of the ballot’
— from page 1
HST voters had two weeks longer to respond in 2011.
The fear for campaigners is that voters – on the heels of a municipal election – are suffering fatigue or they simply aren’t that engaged with the idea of electoral reform in the first place, said Tieleman.
The anti-pro-rep campaign has adjusted its message in a bid to engage older voters, who they believe are more likely to favour keeping the current first-past-thepost electoral system.
“We are telling people not to bother with the second part of the ballot,” he said.
“It’s not fair to ask voters to choose between three systems that are not fully explained. So, it’s ‘one and done.’ Vote first-pastthe-post and send it in.”
The campaign for proportional representation is doubling down on the youth vote, convinced that desire for electoral reform is more a matter of age than political af-
filiation.
The Vote PR B.C. spokeswoman, Maria Dobrinskaya, said there are pockets of first-past-thepost support among “old guard New Democrats” and support for pro-rep from “shy Tories” among small-c conservatives.
“But we know the support for reform is there among young voters, so we really need to get ballots into their hands,” she said.
“With only two weeks left, there’s a really short runway.”
Vote PR B.C. is using collegeaged campaigners to engage young voters on every major campus in the province, leafleting and pitching pro-rep to kids waiting for classes to start.
Because students are highly transient, they may not have received ballots, or their ballots have been sent to their parents’ homes.
Their message is changing as the time left to vote winds down.
Voters have until midnight on
Nov. 23 to request a voting package. But rather than requesting a ballot to respond by mail, pro-rep campaigners are now urging students to visit Referendum Service Office locations and vote on the spot.
Referendum ballot returns from Vancouver Island and the Okanagan are running about double that of B.C. as a whole.
Courtenay-Comox voters have returned more than more than 16 per cent of ballots compared with just 7.4 per cent of all British Columbians.
North Island and Nanaimo-area ridings have returned about 12 per cent of their ballots, while Parksville-Qualicum has returned more than 15 per cent. Returns in Kelowna, Kamloops and the Kootenays are also running well above average, between 12 and 15 per cent, while only two to three per cent of ballots sent to Surrey and Abbotsford have been returned.
Gurdhian Singh ties a turban on Matthew Dykes Friday afternoon during Turban Up Day, part of the 2018
International Education Week celebrations at the College of New Caledonia.
Fuel Good Day
for $1,176.98.
Frank PEEBLES Citizen staff fpeebles@pgcitizen.ca
Denise Godeau was dreaming of mountains and her paintbrush let us see what those dreams looked like.
The Prince George artist had been living away from the Omineca-Cariboo but came back and put about two years of effort into the exhibition that is on now at the Two Rivers Gallery. She called it I Dream Of Mountains and it shows off the core of Godeau’s inspiration: nature.
The images speak for themselves in that regard –animals, northern lights, trees – but there’s another level as well. The backing is often wood, sometimes birch panels or other boards but also sometimes raw fibre like driftwood, and she’s even worked with antlers and bone.
“There’s a woodpile in our basement,” she said, laughing about these unconventional tools in her home studio. “We have fun collecting the found material and coming up with ways that it will work with the art.”
She has worked in the past with a wide variety of palette media but lately has settled on oils as her preferred colour vehicle.
“I found it’s more alive,” she said. “You can add to it differently because it interacts strongly, and you can leave your palette out for days and it still has vibrancy. I love the vibrancy. The colours are always vibrant even after they dry.”
She has artist family members with experience using oils and that piqued her curiosity. She has also been a lifelong scientist in the art lab, teaching herself the skills that are now self evident. She practiced heavily, and still relishes her studio time.
“I still feel like I have a long way to go, and I hope I always feel that way,” she said.
“It’s a wonderful journey. You’re always a student of art. I just love practicing and making discoveries and improving my skills. I love the opportunity of having a show to work towards, but nothing is better for me than just immersing yourself in the process in my studio.”
It was another artist and close friend, Amanda Jean (proprietor of Orange U Creative and a multidisciplinary creative), who suggested that Godeau turn her substantial talent at the easel towards the computer. It was a providential idea. After taking the New Media Technologies program at CNC, Godeau is now a veteran professional in the genre of graphic arts and web design. She has worked in the past for Printwerx, SpeeDee (now Mills), UNBC and currently for Boardwalk Properties/Brink Group.
“I feel pretty lucky,” she said.
“Obviously I would love to paint full-time but I consider it a gift that I get to be an artist for my job, to have a creative career.”
I Dream Of Mountains is a thick slice of her latest creativity. The exhibition is up in the Rustad Galleria inside the Two Rivers Gallery until Nov. 25.
Citizen staff
In the neighbourhood of $1,400 was raised Wednesday evening when Prince George RCMP and local Special Olympic athletes at Boston Pizza,
Patrons donated up to $100 each in support of the cause during the event, dubbed Cops, Pops and Pizza.
“The RCMP are always proud and honoured to be recognized by Special Olympics BC to participate in events like this, where through fund raising efforts, we are able to contribute to our local Special Olympic athletes and support them in their endeavours” said Prince George RCMP Supt. Warren Brown. At the event, athletes spoke to patrons about the Special Olympics and their many successes they have achieved through sport.
The athletes also provided facts and a history about Special Olympics, since it began 50 years ago.
Bill Glasgow of the Salvation Army, centre, receives a cheque from Four Rivers Co-op general manager Allan Bieganski and staff
The money
HANDOUT PHOTO BY DESTINEE KLYNE
Paul Klyne of Penticton helps with an impromptu kitchen for wildfire evacuees in Chico, Calif., in this recent handout photo. It was supposed to be a vacation in Paradise, but instead a British Columbia couple’s getaway to northern California has turned into a mission to help people fleeing deadly and destructive wildfires.
B.C. couple turns California vacation into volunteer effort
CHICO, Calif. — A British Columbia couple’s getaway to northern California has turned into a mission to help people fleeing deadly and destructive wildfires.
Destinee and Paul Klyne of Penticton had planned a peaceful holiday in Paradise, Calif., but flames destroyed their Airbnb and much of the community before their arrival. They decided to go ahead with the trip anyway, channelling their vacation funds into relief for exhausted evacuees.
“The funds we had allocated for our fun, we just thought, OK, why can’t we help some people with that? So we went to Walmart and bought a bunch of $25 gift certificates and handed them out to people as we saw fit,” said Paul.
The couple set up in the store’s parking lot in Chico, where they joined forces with a food truck operator and worked with him to feed evacuees until he ran out of meals. The next day, someone donated $2,000 to replenish the truck.
Donations kept pouring in and more food vendors offered to help, turning the parking lot into a hub of activity where the couple estimates they served 1,200 to 1,500 people on Thursday. They’ve also been using donated money to buy more gift cards, fill gas tanks and buy groceries.
“It is so nice to be able to bring
forth the Canadian spirit of giving, of compassion and generosity,” said Destinee. “Especially in the times that we’re in now, with the political (climate), it’s kind of nice to say, ‘You are our American neighbours and we love you.’ ”
The wildfires are among the deadliest in United States history with more than 600 people reported missing. Paradise has been decimated, with nearly 10,000 homes, hundreds of shops and other buildings going up in smoke.
The couple said they’ve heard terrible, heart-wrenching stories from people seeking emotional support.
“We talked to one guy who said he ran back in the fire to try and get his mom,” said Destinee. “He couldn’t get his mom and he had to run for his life. His mom and his dog perished in the fire.”
Both Destinee and Paul said they remember the names and faces of many of the people they’ve helped.
One man told them he drove his Volvo through a wall of flames because it was either that or die, while another man begged them to make a video and post it to Facebook because he couldn’t find his girlfriend.
“I have had more hugs from strangers than I have had in my entire life,” Destinee said.
“We have seen melted cars, like the doors of cars melted off. We saw a Dodge Charger with the lights all melted and back end all melted. ... You see people literally walking around just in a daze.”
Firearms licence screening backlogs pose safety risks: RCMP audit
Jim BRONSKILL
Citizen news service
OTTAWA — Investigations into whether gun licences should be revoked due to violent incidents or mental illness have faced “significant delays” that could endanger public safety, says an internal RCMP review.
A lack of timely access to certain police and medical information has contributed to processing backlogs for firearms officers reviewing licence eligibility, warns the newly released audit report.
“Information which needs to be requested from third parties may experience delays, thereby delaying the conduct of eligibility investigations,” says the report. “This increases the
Northern Medical Program professor wins research prize
Citizen staff
A Northern Medical Program associate professor has earned a second international research prize.
Dr. Jacqueline Pettersen received the Dr. Wolfgang Hevert Prize in Baden-Baden, Germany on Nov. 3 for a proposed study on vitamins D and K2 in relation to cognition.
The prize, which includes an endowment worth $15,000 is awarded for a planned scientific study which seeks to clarify questions in the field of natural medicine and associated therapies.
“This will be the first study to directly assess the effects of vitamin K2 supplementation in conjunction with vitamin D on cognition,” said Pettersen, a cognitive-behavioural neurologist.
“This project will build upon my previous research on vitamin D and cognition. It is certainly validating that internationally recognized experts in the field feel that the study is very worthwhile.”
She is the first researcher from North America to receive the prize since its inception in 2006.
In May, she received the Fritz Wörwag research prize in Berlin.
Her proposed trial will look at evaluating the effects on cognition of vitamin D alone, and vitamin D combined with vitamin K2, as compared to a placebo control, in normal healthy adults.
“Vitamin D and Vitamin K2 are known to work in a complementary fashion in terms of bone
mineralization and prevention of arterial calcification and related atherosclerosis,” she said.
“There is some suggestion that K2 may also have beneficial effects in the brain and on cognition and these effects may possibly be increased by vitamin D. Thus, vitamin D and K2 together might be even more effective than just vitamin D by itself. Insufficien-
cies of both vitamins are thought to be common worldwide and associated with cognitive decline and dementia. There have been no prior studies assessing the effects of K2 supplementation on cognition, either with or without vitamin D.”
The prize is awarded every two years and is dedicated to the work of Dr. Wolfgang Hevert.
potential risk to public safety.”
The audit results come as the Liberal government studies options – including a possible ban on handguns and assault weapons – to deal with growing firearm-related violence.
The RCMP is responsible for the Canadian Firearms Program, which works with provinces and territories through the offices of chief firearms officers to manage firearms licensing. The audit examined activities in B.C., Alberta, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Newfoundland and Labrador, Yukon, Northwest Territories and Nunavut, whose chief firearms officers are RCMP employees. Firearms officers can refuse an application for a licence or revoke one based on a potential risk to public safety.
Dr. Jacqueline Pettersen, second from left, is presented the Dr. Wolfgang Hevert Prize on Nov. 3 in Baden-Baden, Germany by Mathias, Sarah and Marcus Hevert.
Beth LEIGHTON, Laura KANE Citizen news service
Mourning Stan the Man
By the time I started reading comic books in the mid-1970s, Stan Lee wasn’t even the editor-inchief at Marvel anymore, but he still contributed a regular column called Stan’s Soapbox.
After I was done poring over my latest issue of the Amazing SpiderMan or Marvel Team-Up, I’d read Stan’s latest missive. His chatty, breathless and wildly enthusiastic words made me an eight-year-old kid growing up in the Northwest Territories feel like he was being personally spoken to by a guy in New York City.
From there, it didn’t take long to learn that Stan was the creative genius (along with artists Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko) of the modern Marvel universe, from my beloved Spidey through to the Hulk and the X-Men.
Two things attracted me to Marvel in general and my friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man in particular.
First, the characters seemed real to me. Peter Parker was an insecure science geek trying to finish his science degree at university, spend time with his doting Aunt May and his fierce and gorgeous redhead girlfriend Mary Jane Watson, make a living taking pictures for the Daily Bugle newspaper and then save the world while in costume. Batman’s Bruce Wayne and Superman’s Clark Kent seemed old, boring and stiff while Peter seemed like an older brother and his personal problems (school, family, friends, girlfriends) were exciting, especially to an eightyear-old.
Second, the place was real to me. The Marvel universe didn’t take place in Batman’s Gotham or Superman’s Metropolis. Peter Parker had an apartment in Chel-
sea and Aunt May lived in Queens, both real neighbourhoods in New York City.
The writers who took over from Stan – Len Wein, Marv Wolfman, Chris Claremont were my favourites – not only kept that spirit alive but expanded it.
In Amazing Spider-Man 161, two future icons of the Marvel Universe – The Punisher and Wolverine – both make cameos but the real star of this two-issue story line with Spidey and the X-Men’s Nightcrawler was New York City itself. Peter goes on a date with M.J. to Nathan’s, the famous hot dog stand at Coney Island. There’s a great fight scene at the Queensboro (59th Street) Bridge
and Roosevelt Island.
Over the coming years, New York came alive for me. Rockefeller Plaza, Times Square, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Statue of Liberty, Radio City Music Hall and the World Trade Center all figured prominently as Spidey battled a variety of mighty foes before returning home to Chelsea to have a bucket of ammonia water inadvertently tossed into his face by his landlady Mrs. Muggins while trying to sneak into his apartment. Our hero can dodge the Punisher’s bullets and the Green Goblin’s bombs but gets the bucket of soapy water in the kisser. Some thanks for saving the city once more.
Lee’s heroes were vulnerable people, burdened with powers they didn’t want and often couldn’t control. Discrimination was a real thing under his wing at Marvel, from the bigotry against mutants experienced by the XMen to the ongoing efforts to have Spider-Man and the Hulk thrown in jail for the mess they left behind stopping the villain of the day. Yet they fought on. Even the supporting characters were significant. The first black person I ever met was Joe “Robbie” Robertson. In 1967, a year after Lee introduced the world to the Black Panther in the pages of the Fantastic Four, Lee added Robertson as the edi-
tor of the Daily Bugle (the more infamous J. Jonah Jameson is the owner and publisher of the newspaper). Robertson was one of the first depictions of a black man in a management position in comic book history, portraying a calm and level-headed leader in contrast to both his boss and to the stereotype of the day where black male characters were introduced into storylines for comic relief. By the time I started reading, Robbie was a regular, holding the fort down at the Bugle while Jameson spent more and more time and money trying to destroy Spider-Man. Robbie constantly argued with his boss over SpiderMan, insisting that the Bugle report the news, rather than be used for a political and personal agenda like discrediting a superhero.
And he fought on. Lee introduced himself to a whole new generation through his regular cameos in the Marvel movies but he was far more than that crazy old slapstick clown. His written work in the 1960s, with insecure heroes operating in a familiar universe where nuclear holocaust, drug addiction, urban decay and discrimination were real issues, helped counter the white-washed blandness of the 1950s.
And he fought on, against the censorship of the Comics Code Authority, to define not only the Silver Age and Bronze Age of comics but a modern time where ordinary people can be heroes and overcome their personal shortcomings to do the right thing is the truest act of heroism.
Lee signed off his comic columns with “Excelsior!,” a Latin word for “ever upward.”
He lived his motto and inspired multiple generations to find their inner hero and do the same.
— Editor-in-chief Neil Godbout
Kids with disabilities face barriers, even at church
The children’s ministry director asked if she could talk with me and my spouse after the service, and I felt a knot form in the pit of my stomach. I knew what was coming. Sure enough, she explained that this congregation wouldn’t be able to provide us any care for our son, who is nonverbal and on the autism spectrum.
If we were going to attend this church, my son would be unable to join the other kids in children’s church. My spouse or I would have to sit apart from the rest of the congregation in a “family room” with him.
As I feared, our search for a community of faith would have to start again.
The next week, we just stayed home. We were tired, discouraged and longing for community. A place of rest and refreshment always seemed out of reach for our family’s special needs.
At one point, we didn’t attend church for a year. What was the point if we were going to be quarantined in a “family room” to care for our boys – we now have two sons who are nonverbal and on the autism spectrum – with little to no interaction with anyone else? It was easier to look after them at home.
Our periodic disengagement from organized religion is not unique. Across North America, children with developmental or intellectual disabilities are much more likely to never attend religious services than are children with no health conditions.
In a new study, as part of my work as a sociologist of religion, I analyzed three waves of nationally representative data on children in the United States. I found that the odds of children on the autism spectrum never attending religious services are almost double (1.84 times greater) than they are for children without a chronic health condition. The odds of never attending religious services for children with depression, or a developmental delay or learning disability, are also higher (1.73 and 1.36 times greater, respectively).
This is not true of children with chronic health conditions that are more physical in nature – asthma, diabetes, or hearing or vision problems. Those children are no more or less likely to attend than children without a health condition.
My work also shows that these findings are stable over time. From 2003 to 2012, children with chronic health conditions that primarily influenced communication
Special to The Citizen
and social interaction were consistently less likely to attend religious services.
These children may not be able to act like everyone else around them. They may have a hard time sitting still or listening quietly. They may not be able to tolerate loud music or boisterous games. They may stand up when the rest of the children are seated or call out when everyone else is quiet.
As parents, it’s difficult to have to continually explain, apologize and advocate for your child, especially in a faith community that might not see including them as important (and might be annoyed when moments of silent prayer are interrupted). Congregations themselves are a pivotal reason children with chronic health conditions attend at much lower rates.
Faith communities often create barriers to inclusion with their physical architecture (when there are no wheelchair ramps), liturgy (when rituals or sacraments are not adapted to meet individual needs), communication (when lights, sounds or visuals limit participation), programming (when activities present obstacles for children with different needs) and attitudes, according to research by Erik Carter, the Cornelius Vanderbilt professor of special education at Vanderbilt University.
us, more than half reported that they were expected to stay with their children during worship services.
We know how isolating that is. For a year, we spent every Sunday morning at our current church alongside nursing mothers and sick children; we watched the service on a television in the “family room.” Occasionally, my wife or I would sit in the sanctuary, alone or with friends, while the other stayed with our boys. We knew that cultivating support for our children would take time, so we stuck it out. But many families like ours may not be able to make that commitment. Requiring that parents provide care for their children every Sunday morning negates the whole reason for attending religious services: connecting with others of the same faith.
We have had people tell us that a child who is a disruption in church probably shouldn’t attend. Others have asked whether children with certain health conditions “really get anything out of participating.”
In a survey of more than 400 parents of children with special needs, researchers found that one-third of them had changed faith communities because they felt their child was not included. Finding a new faith community, though, is a significant challenge. In another study of that survey, a mother was quoted as saying, “We wish we had a community to belong to, however... we have not had the time or energy to seek-out and prepare (educate) a new spiritual home for ourselves.”
of many, but we act as though he won’t help us meet the needs of others; when we claim that our faith is for all people but tolerate the exclusion of those with various physical, mental or emotional needs, we fail. A first step for faith communities is to make a theological and ethical commitment to welcome and value children with chronic health conditions. This means moving beyond compassion, which is usually in broad supply in faith communities, to actionable steps. Have a plan in place when a child with a disability walks through your doors. Cultivate connections to members of your congregation who have a heart for children with special needs. Perhaps there are congregants who have expertise in this area. Congregations could also consider providing a safe place for children with special needs, like a sensory room – a therapeutic space filled with toys and apparatuses that help soothe kids experiencing stress. Creating a whole room might not seem feasible for many places of worship, and indeed for some, it is not. But many congregations build nurseries to care for infants. Faith communities value babies, and making space for them signals that commitment. Children with special needs should be equally valued. Our current faith community happens to be opening its own sensory room this weekend.
And sometimes, the attitudes from congregants can be absolutely devastating. These include degrading comments or behaviors signaling that a child with a health condition is not welcome. We have had people tell us that a child who is a disruption in church probably shouldn’t attend. Others have asked whether children with certain health conditions “really get anything out of participating.”
Many parents report that their children with disabilities have been unable to participate because of lack of support and said their congregations had never asked how to best include their children. And like
Congregations also pay a price for excluding families like ours. They miss out on our service – we want to serve as much as we need to be served. We want to greet people as they arrive, play an instrument during worship, serve coffee during social hour, care for other children while their parents worship.
And faith communities compromise their credibility when they do not work to integrate families with children with chronic health conditions. As a practicing Christian, I speak directly to my faith tradition here: When we claim that Jesus said to let the children come to him, but we do little to make that possible for every child, our rationalizations about a lack of resources, space, volunteers or expertise ring hollow. When we claim that Jesus once took a little (five loaves and two fish) and met the needs
Today, our two boys enjoy Sunday mornings. Each has an adult “buddy” who spends time with him and provides support when needed. These buddies are not trained professionals but are generously volunteering their time to help our sons, who benefit from a familiar face on Sundays and sometimes need help knowing when to sit or when to play. These volunteers came forward on their own after learning of our needs. Now both our sons have fewer struggles – fewer tears and anxiety attacks –which brings us so much joy. Our boys’ disabilities often isolate us from others. Some days, taking a trip to the store can feel like too much. This doesn’t mean we don’t want connections with others. We just need help in cultivating and maintaining them. When we make it through a Sunday morning, we feel an intense sense of hope, gratitude and even achievement. For a moment, our sons’ disabilities do not define our family’s existence.
Whitehead is an assistant professor of sociology at Clemson University and studies religion, disability and Christian nationalism.
ANDREW WHITEHEAD Washington Post
Lying online to sleep with people should be a crime
Anyone who uses an online dating site – Tinder, Bumble and the rest – quickly learns that people don’t always look like their photos, they sometimes add an inch or two to their height, and maybe they fudge their weight.
One study found that 80 per cent of people lie in their profiles. Many falsehoods are mild, easy to see through within seconds of meeting someone in person, and do little harm.
But other lies are more dangerous: They become instruments of sexual fraud. A 44-year-old woman from Canterbury, in Britain, for example, fell in love with a man who told her he was a single businessman who often traveled for work. A year later, she learned that he was a married London lawyer using a fake name, who was also sleeping with several other women whom he had apparently tricked in the same way.
There have always been people who tell lies to get sex, but apps make it easy to deceive victims on an unprecedented scale, and in relative anonymity, well outside the perpetrators’ social circles.
Yet we punish low-level shoplifting, or false claims in commercial advertising, more harshly than we punish most forms of sexual deception, despite the suffering and harm to one’s dignity the latter brings. For a woman in her late 30s or early 40s who wants to marry and have children, the “opportunity cost” of a fraudulent relationship can add another dimension to the pain in the form of diminished fertility.
Legislators have been wary of wading into this terrain, for reasons both reasonable (it can be difficult to document deception or measure the harm it causes) and less so (nonmarital sex is a risky business, and people who are duped supposedly deserve what they get). In a forthcoming law-review, I propose that state lawmakers confront this issue with statutes that would punish, with relatively modest sanctions, material lies that deceived someone into having sexual relations. Confining the cases to small-claims court would deter individual liars, and the cost would add up fast for serial fraudsters.
One way to measure dating-app fraud would be to look for information that (1) was misleading and (2) involved one or more material facts about a person that (3) a reasonable person could have used to decide whether to engage in sexual intercourse. While such legal intervention wouldn’t capture every possible form of sexual fraud (think of lies that originated in a bar rather than on an app), these measures would make a real dent in addressing some of the large-scale problems in today’s dating marketplace.
Special to The Citizen
IRINA D. MANTA Washington Post
This legal standard is modeled on how we treat misleading commercial branding through statutes like the Lanham Act. In both the world of brands and the world of dating, there’s an incentive for sellers to misrepresent what they are peddling to gain an advantage. Yet the law recognizes that outright deception about important facts that shape the decision to buy a product not only inflicts real harm on individuals, it also causes markets to break down, because “search costs” balloon. If people can’t trust sellers, they will be forced to undertake expensive or time-consuming investigations of products, or they will simply hold on to their money.
Such concerns led the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, in an important 1988 case, to reject trademark registration for the name “Lovee Lamb” for synthetic car-seat covers: The products were not made with real lamb’s wool, and a mistaken impression that they were might have swayed purchasing decisions. We can use a similar standard to deal with wolves in sheep’s clothing in the dating arena.
Currently, the law only haphazardly penalizes misrepresentations in the context of sex. Some states make it illegal for people to lie about their sexually-transmitted-disease status (such as HIV positivity), although prosecutions are rare. In other situations, the legal landscape shields victims from some harms and not others without much rhyme or reason, largely driven by historical happenstance or high-profile stories of abuse that drove narrow legislation.
One case that resulted in legal punishment involved a Tennessee defendant who telephoned women and duped them into believing that he was a current sexual partner or friend. He then asked to have sex with the women after they’d blindfolded themselves, supposedly to fulfill a fantasy – and either entirely or partly succeeded in the ruse with three victims. He was convicted of two counts of rape by fraud and one count of attempted rape by fraud, which resulted in a 15-year sentence.
The impact of dating apps, and the associated lying, is only going to grow. By 2013, one-third of married Americans had met their spouses online, and it is estimated that by 2040, more than two-thirds of people will have met their significant others that way. (I found my own husband on Bumble.)
But even as apps amplify the harms caused by lies, they make documenting lies easier, because people’s misleading profiles
can be reviewed, and text messages repeating the lies can be saved.
Perhaps all seduction involves embellishment – after all, isn’t makeup or a pushup bra trickery, when the truth might be disappointing? But lies exist on a spectrum, as the law around false advertising already recognizes.
You are allowed to boast that a product is “the best in the world,” whether or not that is accurate in the eye of the buyer, and dating-profile claims of being “witty” or “the most amazing cook you’ll ever meet” should be treated similarly.
New laws in the dating area should focus
on lies that are clearly false, are not easily discoverable before sex takes place, and have a potentially large dignitary or emotional impact. Lies related to physical appearance would thus typically not be punishable, while ones about marital status, fertility circumstances (say, existing children or the ability to have future children) or employment should lead to sanctions.
Manta is a professor at the Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University, its associate dean for research and faculty development, and the founding director of its Center for Intellectual Property Law.
A weeklong hunt for Portugal’s best egg tarts
Special to The Citizen
Portuguese egg tarts, or pastéis de nata, have been an obsession of mine since I first discovered them in Macau.
When my husband and I lived in Beijing from 2011 to 2014, we were quickly severed from the American world of sweet desserts. Instead, we found ourselves living in the land of red-bean filling. Bite into a dessert, see the dark center and think, mmmm, chocolate. But nope – without fail, the filling was actually bean puree. And don’t get me started on dry, flavourless mooncakes, served during the Mid-Autumn Festival.
Then we visited Macau. The Portuguese colonized Macau in 1557, and although China now runs this region near Hong Kong on the southern edge of China, the place retains its Portuguese character. It was love at first taste for the pastel de nata – a custard tart in a puff pastry, small enough to hold in the palm of your hand but satisfying enough to serve as a breakfast treat, afternoon snack or dessert. Not too sweet, but sweet enough, pastéis de nata (the plural form) feature egg-yolk custard filling with a lightly broiled top. When it’s fresh, you take a bite, and you have A Moment. More recently, my husband and I decided to visit Portugal, home of pastéis de nata. I’m not saying we went to Portugal expressly to eat them, but I wouldn’t deny it either. I also wouldn’t deny that to make it more interesting, I announced that we were on a one-week quest to find the best.
Day 1
Jet-lagged, grungy and edgy after an overnight flight into Lisbon, we dumped our bags at our hotel and headed straight to the Tagus River waterfront. There, in the Time Out Market, inside the refurbished Mercado de Ribeira, we found a branch of Manteigaria, considered by many to be the best source of pastéis de nata in Lisbon. The little shop certainly had nothing else to offer in its glass case, just row after row of the doll-size pies with a gently browned top. It could have been the loopy sleeplessness mixed with happiness to be off the plane, it could have been the warm breezes on a sunny Saturday morning, or
it could have been the quality, but those inaugural egg tarts were so good. I took a bite. I closed my eyes, and the warm custard filled my mouth with hints of lemon and cinnamon. The flaky puff pastry crunched just enough. There it was again: A Moment.
Day 2
We headed to Belem, about 10 kilometres west of downtown Lisbon. We skipped for the moment the famous Jeronimos Monastery – the navigator Vasco da Gama rests inside, but he wasn’t going anywhere. Instead, we headed straight to the cafe that claims it is the home of the egg tart. At Casa Pasteis de Belem, the products seem to be identical to pastéis de nata. The casual restaurant, which also serves sandwiches, coffee and other pastries, turns out 20,000 egg tarts a day.
Two long lines for takeout stretched down the block. But following a tip from our Uber driver, we slipped inside, where a much shorter queue waited for a place at one of the cafe’s 400 seats. Yes, the cafe is a tourist hot spot, but it’s been a tourist hot spot since 1837, so it must be doing something right.
Before very long, we were seated and ordering one – no, make it two; no, make it three – egg tarts, along with a strong cup of cafe com leite (coffee with milk). The menu described a sugar-cane refinery and small store originally on this spot. When Portugal closed down its convents
and monasteries after an early 19th-century revolution, a worker from the monastery came up with the pastry as a means of survival, following “an ancient secret recipe from the monastery.” That secret recipe, cooked up in a “secret room” inside the cafe, is still used today. Within minutes, we had our prize – three plump egg tarts. The crust was a degree crunchier. The custard filling was warmer and more soufflé-like, so they were most likely whisked from the oven minutes before. On the table were shakers with cinnamon and confectioner’s sugar, which some diners added to their tarts. I sprinkled one with cinnamon. But to be honest, I think I preferred the plain version. They were good. But were they the best? I wasn’t ready to declare a winner.
Day 3
We hopped on a train to Evora, about 137 km from Lisbon in the Alentejo region, which is known for its hearty cuisine. In this charming medieval city, we were presented with a new dilemma. Yes, there was pastel de nata, but there was also a new specialty, the queijada de Evora. We stopped at Cafe Arcada, a no-frills place right on Praca de Giraldo square in the center of the city. We needed to try the Evora specialty. Purists would say that we were comparing apples and oranges. Or queijada and pastéis. Purists would be right. In my defense, this was a tart exactly the size of pastéis de nata, and
the same golden colour. But the queijada de Evora was filled with dense cheese custard, more like an Italian ricotta cheesecake than a soufflé. It was good. Really good. Even so, I wasn’t ready to drop my pastel de nata allegiance.
Day 4
I faced a new dilemma: My husband, Bob, the consummate sweet tooth, withdrew as a judge. In other words, he refused to eat another pastel de nata, let alone any other tart. Even though these sweets are generally less sugary than the average pastry, he had reached his limit.
There we were in Sintra, about 32 km west of Lisbon. I needed to think fast.
“Oh, look,” I said to him. “These pastries are a specialty of Sintra!”
Outside of Fabrica das Verdadeiras Queijadas da Sapa, I pointed to the sign that said the shop had been making queijadas since 1756. He took one for the team, although I don’t think it really took much to convince him.
We plopped our euros on the counter. These queijadas were made with a very thin, firm crust, and the filling was lighter and sweeter than the queijadas in Evora. They were good, but not lifechanging, although that judgment could have been clouded by our exhaustion from fighting Sintra’s enormous crowds that day, coupled with unseasonable heat and – okay, I’ll admit it – a certain tart fatigue.
Day 5
In search of breakfast, we stumbled across a little cafe in the Lisbon neighborhood of Graca selling something we ate often in China and loved: jidan guanbing. These treats are freshly cooked crepes filled with egg, a spicy sauce, meats and greens. Here was our chance to wax nostalgic about China and take a savory break from the pastel de nata immersion. Sitting next to us was a Chinese couple, visiting Portugal with their daughter who had just finished university in Scotland. They shared a truly global breakfast of jidan guangbing with a side of pastéis de nata. They offered us a pastry. We stuck with the jidan guanbing.
Day 6
We visited the beach town of Cascais, about 32 km from Lisbon. It was a brutally hot day, and we strolled along the town’s pretty beach. Walking through town, we glanced across the street and saw a shop named The World Needs Nata. But does it? We were momentarily tempted but trudged on. The tart fatigue was real.
Day 7
As we prepared to leave Lisbon, we realized we had time for breakfast in the airport. Suddenly, the prospect of leaving Portugal made us regret those tart-abstinent days. How fair was this competition? What kind of judges were we? Then, just before the security check, we turned a corner and saw redemption: Confeitaria Nacional por Baltazaar Castanheiro, considered the oldest and most traditional confectionary of Lisbon. “Since 1829,” the sign said. This time, Bob needed no lobbying. With a sense of relief, we bought our last couple of pastéis de nata. The tops were a little over-broiled and the flaky crust a little too flaky. Even so, a mediocre pastel de nata is better than none. We bid a tchau to Portugal, with plans to return soon. The winner? The pastel de nata of Day 1, made by Manteigaria. Sticklers will argue that our research was capricious and inaccurate. They might be right. But now that we’re home from Lisbon, I regret every single day without pastry in Portugal. I’m going to try to make those little beauties myself.
Debra BRUNO
CITIZEN NEWS SERVICE HANDOUT PHOTO
Confeitaria Nacional inside Lisbon’s airport gives travelers one last chance to sample, or even take home, Portugal’s famous dessert.
CITIZEN NEWS SERVICE HANDOUT PHOTO
Pasteis de nata (egg tarts) are the only food item offered at the Manteigaria cafe in the Time Out market at the Mercado da Ribeira near the Lisbon waterfront.
COUGARS SET FOR BATTLE AGAINST BLAZERS
Page 10
Home-court thriller
UNBC
women still
unbeaten after slim victory over TWU
Ted CLARKE Citizen staff tclarke@pgcitizen.ca
In a battle of the undefeated in Canada West women’s basketball somebody had to fall and the UNBC Timberwolves found a way to spoon-feed the Trinity Western Spartans the bitter taste of defeat Friday night at the Northern Sport Centre.
Madison Landry cooked up a 25-point concoction that proved especially difficult for the Spartans to swallow in a game decided by the narrowest of margins. The 20-year-old Twolves guard got into foul trouble when she drew her fourth of the game with a full quarter still to play but managed to hang around the rest of the game to direct traffic and lead UNBC to its biggest win of the season so far – a 78-77 squeaker.
known T-wolves to pull this one out of the fire. Abby Gibb took over for Mongomo and hit a huge three which put UNBC ahead 7674 with 1:28 left and after a timely stop at the other end of the court Alina Shakirova drove her fivefoot-seven frame straight to the hoop for a lay-up and a four-point lead.
But the Spartans were far from finished and Sarah Buckingham delivered a three-point jumper that reduced the lead to one again with 30 ticks remaining. The T-wolves tried to run out as much of the clock as possible and Landry had it down to 14 seconds when she coughed up the ball under relentless pressure from Kianna Wiens.
The win kept the T-wolves a perfect 5-0 to start the season, after an 8-0 preseason. The Langleybased Spartans dropped to 6-1 with a chance to gain the split in a rematch tonight at the NSC.
Down 40-34 at the half, the T-wolves got their act together in the dressing room and after a brief stumble to start the third quarter, slowly took control.
“At halftime we got together and we were like, OK, let’s start bringing up the energy and intensity and we really brought it together,” said Landry. “We all wanted to win and we all cohesively worked together and kept pushing and didn’t give up. It took us awhile to get going but we actually came back really strong and bridged that gap
“It feels good – it was a stressful game but we’re happy we came out on top. It was a bit too close for my liking. It’s a team effort and everyone stepped up today. We know who their scorers are now and we’re really going to key on them (in the rematch tonight) and just keep up the intensity from the start of the game.”
UNBC led the game for only about six minutes but all of that was in the fourth quarter when the game hung in the balance. Landry wasn’t the only T-wolf offensive star worried about being a rulebreaker. Guard Maria Mongomo also got herself in trouble and fouled out with 1:52 left, with TWU nursing a 74-73 lead. That left it up to the lesser-
After their final time-out the Spartans worked the ball down low to Jessie Brown and her baseline buzzer-beater hit off the rim and into the waiting arms of Vasiliki Louka, who hung on as time expired.
Big wins against tough teams are nothing new for the T-wolves. Last season they knocked off Regina when the Cougars were ranked No. 1 in the country. But still, it had to feel good to hand the Spartans their first loss of the season.
But it sure wasn’t easy and the Twolves suffered in the early going from their inactivity last weekend when they drew a bye. They were attacked right away from Buckingham and forward Nicole Fransson and fell behind 23-15 after one quarter. The T-wolves had difficulty matching their own intensity and finish around the net which had them averaging a league-high 90 points in their first four wins.
“I’m happy that we are pretty high now in our ranks and that other teams recognize us (but) I’m not really happy with the game because I believe we can play much better,” said UNBC head coach Sergey Shchepotkin.
“It’s always difficult to play after a bye. I don’t like these byes. Usually we have more energy and play more intense and we’re more focused and we missed a little bit in the beginning of the game but I’m happy we didn’t give up and got better.”
Gibb gave UNBC its first lead of the night with three-pointer with 7:20 left on the clock. That came after Louka sank three buckets to start the final quarter and shrink an eight-point deficit down to one. The lead changed hands three more times before it was all said
and done. Louka was her usual dominant self, contributing 14 points and 18 rebounds, while Mongomo had 17 points and nine rebounds. Buckingham was the hottest Spartan with 23 points, including four threes. Fransson had a strong 21-point, nine-rebound outing replacing Spartans leading scorer Tessa Ratzlaff, who is out with a concussion. Wiens finished with 14 points.
“Obviously, playing without Tessa Ratzlaff we knew we’d have to make some adjustments and there would be the element of surprise there that UNBC wasn’t going to be ready for and I thought we played that to the best of our advantage,” said Spartans head coach Cheryl Jean-Paul.
“We had some younger ones who came out huge for us. But at the end of the day you still have some all-stars on the other team and they’re (5-0) for a reason –
they haven’t lost a game yet this season for a reason. They had some big plays and hit some big shots and we couldn’t respond to that. But I’m very proud of our effort. To lose by one when you’re missing a 20-point scorer, that says a lot about everyone else.”
In the men’s game that followed, the T-wolves did the expected and rolled to a 101-58 victory over the Spartans. UNBC improved to 4-1, handing TWU (1-6) its sixth loss of the season.
Seven T-wolves reached double figures in points. Saje Gosal finished with 16, while Tyrell Laing, Jovan Leamy, Vaggelis Loukas and Chris Ross each hit for 12. Anthony Hokanson and Austin Chandler shot for 11 points.
UNBC jumped out to a 31-13 lead after 10 minutes and increased the gap to 47-23 at the half. The T-wolves didn’t let off the throttle in the third quarter and hit seven of their 10 shots from the
field to make it a 71-38 game after three quarters.
“For the most part I thought our guys did a good job keeping their focus,” said T-wolves head coach Todd Jordan. “Sometimes when the game gets out of hand one way or another you tend to get sloppy and we stayed reasonably sharp for the majority of the game.”
The rookie Ross, recruited this year from Seacove secondary in North Vancouver, was the story of the fourth quarter, sinking four of seven from three-point range.
“Anytime we can play our young guys those are super-valuable minutes, “ said Jordan. “We ran him off a few screens and he made some shots and he can do that, that’s why we recruited him.” Spartans guard Vartan Tanielian collected a game-high 21 points.
The same teams will return to the NSC court tonight at 7 p.m., preceded by the women’s game at 5.
Spruce Kings blank Powell River to start road trip
The Prince George Spruce Kings certainly showed Powell River who’s king Friday night. They crowned the other Kings of the B.C. Hockey League 3-0 in
Kings down Hawks in shootout
front of 1,192 spectators at Hap Parker Arena in Powell River. It was a memorable game for Spruce Kings goalie Logan Neaton.
The Michigan native made 16 saves to record his first career BCHL shutout. Mitch Adamyk took
the loss in the Powell River nets, making 22 saves. Ben Brar had a big night with two goals and an assist. He continues to lead Prince George in scoring with 17 goals and 28 points in 24 games. Both his goals came in
CHICAGO (AP) — Cal Petersen made 34 saves in his first NHL start and stopped Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane in a shootout, leading the Los Angeles Kings to a 2-1 victory over the Chicago Blackhawks on Friday night.
Ilya Kovalchuk and Anze Kopitar converted
the first four minutes of the game. Ben Poisson also scored for the Spruce Kings. Patrick Cozzi and Dustin Manz each collected a pair of assists. The win improved the Spruce Kings’ record to 16-7-0-1. Powell
the Kings’ first two attempts in the tiebreaker against Corey Crawford as Los Angeles ended a three-game losing streak. Tyler Toffoli scored his fifth goal in the second period for the Kings, who have the worst record in the league (6-11-1) and had been
River dropped to 13-11-0-0.
The Spruce Kings continue their weekend trip tonight against the Alberni Valley Bulldogs, followed by a Sunday afternoon encounter with the Nanaimo Clippers.
outscored 9-2 during their three-game skid. Brandon Saad was the only Blackhawks player to beat Petersen, scoring his fifth goal early in the third period to tie the score at 1-1. The struggling Hawks lost for the ninth time in their last 10 games (1-6-3).
CITIZEN PHOTO BY JAMES DOYLE
Vasiliki Louka, a fifth-year forward for the UNBC Timberwolves, goes high for a layup against a pair of Trinity Western University Spartans defenders on Friday night at the Northern Sport Centre.
Citizen staff
Cougars on the rise as they take on Blazers
Ted CLARKE Citizen staff tclarke@pgcitizen.ca
In case Prince George Cougars goalie Taylor Gauthier was wondering whether his teammates are prepared to break through walls to help him succeed, those doubts were laid to rest Wednesday night at CN Centre.
The Kelowna Rockets caught the 17-yearold Gauthier in an awkward moment with just eight minutes left in the third period when he tried to clear a loose puck from behind the net and put it off his own goalpost, allowing Rockets forward Kyle Topping to score shorthanded into an open net for a 3-2 lead.
The tension built until the final minute of regulation time when, with 16.3 seconds left and Gauthier on the bench for the extra skater, Vladislav Mikhalchuk knocked in the rebound of Cole Moberg’s shot from the point to tie the game.
That sent it to 3-on-3 overtime and with a shootout looming, Jackson Leppard stole the puck in his own end, skated the length of the ice and dragged the puck back on his stick to avoid two Kelowna checkers. He got a pass through to Josh Maser, who deflected it up and into the Kelowna net with six seconds left in OT for a dramatic 4-3 victory.
“We hit some unlucky bounces but we like to battle for (Gauthier), he’s played pretty well as of late and we know we all make mistakes and it’s hard when you’re the goalie,” said Moberg. “Not everything’s his fault. He’s still young, still learning in this league and he’s been really good for us.
“We’re all staying positive in the room and building a winning culture and not expecting any less than a win.”
It was a team-builder of epic proportions for a Cougar team on a roll, winners of four of their last five games, as they prepare to host the Kamloops Blazers tonight and Sunday afternoon at CN Centre.
“We could have shut down after that mishap in the third, and even Gauthier could have collapsed but he made some really big saves in overtime that kept it where it was at,” said Cougars head coach Richard Matvichuk. “It’s great to see that young group
Zverev to face Federer in ATP Finals
LONDON (AP) — After reaching the last four at the ATP Finals for the first time, Alexander Zverev isn’t satisfied.
He set up a semifinal with sixtime champion Roger Federer by defeating John Isner 7-6 (5), 6-3 on Friday.
Zverev is the youngest player at 21 to reach the semifinals since 2009 and the first from Germany since 2003.
“The tournament isn’t over,” Zverev said. “I don’t want to really be thinking ‘I’m in the semifinals now, I’m satisfied.’ That’s not how I work.”
Isner and Marin Cilic, who later lost 7-6 (7), 6-2 in a dead rubber against group winner Novak Djokovic, were eliminated by the result.
Five-time champion Djokovic will face debutant Kevin Anderson in the other semifinal today. Isner needed to win in straight sets to have any chance of advancing and almost took the lead when he held a set point in the 12th game of the opener. Zverev saved it with an ace and played a faultless tiebreaker to eliminate the American.
“You make this tournament, you want to do a little bit better,” said Isner, who lost all three of his matches. “But at the same time this is no normal event. You’re up against the absolute best in the world.”
that we have just keeps developing and the maturity keeps getting better and they don’t take no for an answer. We could have just quit by we didn’t.
“Our goal for the group is to keep getting better every day and we feel we’re doing that.”
It’s not the first time the Cougars have shown they are a resilient bunch but it was by far the most exciting finish they’ve provided their fans this season.
“I thought we played pretty well for the first 40 minutes and it was a tough goal to give up at the end there but we made it back up and thankfully we got the win,” said Maser.
“It was a real nice feed from Jackson there, and I just tapped it in, kind of where I score most of my goals. I don’t know how he got that puck through. I kind of saw two guys on him and kind of thought he lost it. It was a great pass by him.”
The Cougars pulled Gauthier with 2:10 left in the third period and a lot of the credit for the comeback has to go to the defence-
men who did their jobs holding the puck in the offensive zone and not allowing the Rockets a shot at the empty net.
The 17-year-old Moberg excelled all game with his puck movement, stick positioning and awareness of where the play was heading. He tied the game in the second period with his sixth goal and his assist on Mikhalchuk’s tying goal left the second-year defenceman second in team scoring 14 points. He leads the team with 51 shots on goal.
“He skates so well, he sees the ice so well and he has his defence-first mentality and he’s getting the opportunity,” said Matvichuk. “The way he reads rushes is amazing and the future’s so bright for him.”
Gauthier was a bit of a surprise starter in net Wednesday after Isaiah DiLaura posted his first-ever WHL shutout in the previous game Sunday in Vancouver. With both playing well lately (Gauthier blanked the Seattle T-birds two weekends ago for his first career shutout), Matvichuk and the Cougars have confidence in whichever goalie stands
in the crease.
“It’s a great problem to have that you know both can go in there and win a hockey game,” said Matvichuk.
Wednesday’s win moved the Cats (9-81-2) into second place in the B.C. Division, one point ahead of the Victoria Royals (10-6-0-0). The Royals have four games in hand over the Cougars. This will be the first time this season they’ve played the Blazers (6-9-1-1), who rank last in the Western Conference.
The Cougars are in the midst of a fivegame homestand that also includes games next weekend against Regina and Saskatoon. After that they’ll become road warriors, playing just two of their next 15 games at CN Centre. Factoring in the Christmas break, that’s a home-game famine that will run from Nov. 25 to Jan. 10.
“The more time you can make hay at home you have to be able, especially at this time of year when guys start thinking about Christmas and it’s our job to keep them focused,” said Matvichuk.
Polars at B.C. Place for playoff game
Citizen staff
November weather in Vancouver usually means wet and gloomy, but today nothing but clear sky, sunshine and warm temperatures are expected.
Not that the Prince George Polars really care.
They’ll be playing in the weatherproof confines of B.C. Place Stadium – the first-ever indoor game in the team’s history.
PGSS will take on the Holy Cross Crusaders of Surrey today at noon in a sudden-death B.C. Secondary School Football Association doubleA varsity quarterfinal playoff.
The Polars earned that right last weekend at Masich Place Stadium with their 42-14 wild-card win over the South Kamloops Ti-
tans. Their third playoff victory improved the Northern Conference-champion Polars’ season record to 6-0.
They’ll have their hands full taking on the Crusaders, who wrapped up second place in the Western Conference with a 4-1 record.
Holy Cross drew an opening-round playoff bye.
In their five regular-season games the Crusaders outscored their opponents a combined 101-47 – a 54-point differential. The Polars were even more dominant in their three Northern Conference regular-season games, winning by a combined 117-20, a 97-point differential.
In today’s other double-A quarterfinals, Windsor of North Vancouver meets Robert Bateman of Abbotsford at 9:30 at B.C. Place Stadium. Ballenas of Parksville plays Vernon
Secondary at noon in Vernon, while in Nanaimo at noon, John Barsby faces G.W. Graham of Chilliwack.
Meanwhile in junior varsity action, the North Division-champion College Heights Cougars will play Windsor of North Vancouver Wednesday at 2 p.m. in Kamloops in a provincial semifinal.
The winner will advance to the junior varsity Subway Bowl at B.C. Place Stadium, Dec. 2 against either John Barsby or Ballenas, who play each other Wednesday at 3 p.m. in Burnaby.
College Heights defeated South Kamloops 33-19 last Saturday in Prince George. Windsor advanced with a 33-27 win over Clarence Fulton of Vernon.
Sabres beat Jets in long shootout
Citizen news service
WINNIPEG — Conor Sheary scored in the seventh round of the shootout as the Buffalo Sabres edged the Winnipeg Jets 2-1 on Friday for their fourth straight victory.
Sheary beat Jets netminder Laurent Brossoit with a high shot over his glove.
Kyle Connor scored his ninth goal for the Jets (115-2) in the second period. He has three goals and two assists in his past four games.
Jeff Skinner tied the game 1-1 early in the third period on the power play for the Sabres (11-6-2), extending his goal-scoring streak to four games with his 14th of the season. He has five goals in that span.
Carter Hutton stopped 25 shots for Buffalo as Brossoit made 31 saves in his fourth start of the season.
The Jets outshot the visitors 12-4 in the first period.
After the Jets applied a stretch of pressure in Buffalo’s end that included Dustin Byfuglien ringing a shot off the post, Connor scored on a 2-on-1 with Patrik Laine at 7:10 of the second. Laine later forced a turnover near Buffalo’s net, but his shot went off the post.
Later in the period, Brossoit made a near-costly move when he came out to play a loose puck and swiped it into the outside of his goal post.
The Sabres went on a power play with 19 seconds left in the second period after Jets forward Brandon Tanev was called for holding. They capitalized 53 seconds in the third when a rebound bounced around a scramble in the crease and Skinner shovelled in a backhand past Brossoit.
Hutton stopped a Laine wrist shot with five minutes remaining in regulation and a puck that went behind him in the dying seconds didn’t cross the line.
Connor challenged Hutton with a close shot in overtime, but the netminder denied him. Jack Eichel went in alone on Brossoit, but Brossoit turned aside the shot.
Winnipeg captain Blake Wheeler had his point streak end at 11 games (two goals, 18 assists).
The Jets begin a four-game road trip Monday in Vancouver. Buffalo finishes a back-to-back set tonight in Minnesota.
Backstrom scores in OT for Caps
DENVER (AP) — Nicklas Backstrom scored a power-play goal 22 seconds into overtime and the Washington Capitals beat the Colorado Avalanche 3-2 on Friday night.
Alex Ovechkin and Devante Smith-Pelly also scored for the Capitals, and Pheonix Copley stopped 24 shots. Colin Wilson and Carl Soderberg scored for the Avalanche.
With 2:44 left in the third period, Ian Cole fired a shot from between the circles that glanced off Copley’s pads. The puck trickled out to the right side of the net, where Wilson tied it 2-2.
The Capitals ended it on a 4-on-3 power play. Backstrom was left uncovered for a clean shot in the high slot that beat former Capital goalie Philipp Grubauer on his stick side. Backstrom also had an assist.
With the score tied 1-1, Tom Wilson started a rush and passed the puck ahead to Backstrom, who dished off to the streaking Ovechkin. He split defenders and let loose a wrist shot from the top of the right circle that sailed over Grubauer’s glove at 18:29 of the second.
Smith-Pelly pulled Washington Even 8:55 into the second off a cross-ice pass from Chandler Stephenson. Colorado just missed adding a goal from Mark Barberio when his shot glanced off the right post at 11:01 of the second.
T.J. Oshie, Evgeny Kuznetsov and Braden Holtby were ruled out for the game against the Avalanche because of upper body injuries. They are all listed as day to day.
Oilers trade Strome to Rangers
EDMONTON (CP) — The Edmonton Oilers have traded forward Ryan Strome to the New York Rangers in exchange for forward Ryan Spooner. Strome, a fifth-overall pick of the New York Islanders in 2011, has a goal and an assist in 18 games with Edmonton this season.
The 25-year-old native of Mississauga, Ont., has 59 goals, 103 assists and 170 penalty minutes over 358 career NHL games with the Islanders and Oilers. Spooner, 26, has a goal and an assist in 16 games this season with the Rangers. He has 46 goals and 114 assists in 289 games with Boston and New York.
Neymar keeps Brazil on win streak
Citizen news service
LONDON — Brazil extended its winning streak since the World Cup to five after Neymar scored a controversial penalty to beat Uruguay 1-0 in a friendly at Emirates Stadium on Friday. After defender Danilo fouled Uruguay defender Diego Laxalt, Neymar calmly placed his 76th-minute spot kick to the right side of the Uruguay goal as goalkeeper Martin Campana dived the wrong way. The Uruguay players were furious at the decision and accused Danilo of diving. Referee Craig Pawson took a while before pointing to the spot and did so only on the advice of one of his linesman.
“It’s a shame that it comes down to a bit of a controversial situation,” Uruguay coach Oscar Tabarez said. “It was the linesman that flagged for it.”
Though the five-time world champion enjoyed a lot of possession, Brazil failed to create many chances after Neymar had a close-range goal disallowed as early as the 11th minute.
Uruguay, which has lost three games in a row, went closest to scoring before Neymar’s winning penalty.
Striker Luis Suarez took advantage of a loose ball on the edge of the Brazil penalty area but his shot was flicked over the bar by goalkeeper Alisson. Brazil plays Cameroon next in Milton Keynes, north of London, while Uruguay takes on France at the Stade de France. Both matches are Tuesday.
CITIZEN FILE PHOTO
Matej Toman of the Prince George Cougars breaks out of his zone, with Kamloops Blazers forward Brodi Stuart hot on his heels during a September preseason game at CN Centre. The Cougars will host the Blazers tonight and Sunday afternoon.
GAUTHIER
Busch leads contenders in finale qualifying
Jenna FRYER Citizen news service
HOMESTEAD, Fla. — Kyle Busch
thought he got the jump on the competition with a pole-winning run at Homestead-Miami Speedway. Then he was bumped by teammate Denny Hamlin and the politics began.
Hamlin gets the first pick of pit stalls for winning the pole, but Busch wants that spot. Busch is one of four drivers racing Sunday for the championship and Hamlin is not one of them.
“It’s a discussion,” Hamlin said about the strategy the Joe Gibbs Racing camp will use. “I mean, my pit crew is a second slower than Kyle’s. Everything is earned, nothing is given. We’ll have the discussion.”
Reigning series champion Martin Truex Jr. was in a similar position last year and asked Hamlin, a fellow Toyota driver, to give him the first pit stall but Hamlin declined. Busch didn’t think his luck would be any better.
“That’s probably too far, but it would sure be nice,” Busch said.
Hamlin turned a lap at 173.863 mph in the closing seconds of Friday qualifying to bump Busch from the top starting spot. Busch thought his lap at 173.622 was enough for the pole, but it only put him ahead of the other three title contenders. Truex qualified third to put three Toyotas at the front of the field. It’s his final race with Furniture Row Racing because a loss of sponsorship is forcing the team to close following the finale.
Joey Logano qualified fifth for Team Penske. Kevin Harvick was 12th, lowest of the title contenders, but not overly concerned about where he’s starting.
“I mean, we qualified 12th, not last,” Harvick said. “I think it’s not that big a deal if we can get our car driving right for Sunday.”
Logano also cautioned against making predictions off of the qualifying results.
“I don’t think a whole bunch transfers over. I think everyone was just tuned in for
one (qualifying) lap,” Logano said. Hamlin, meanwhile, won the pole for the second consecutive year and in a meaningful race for his team. He announced earlier Friday that he and crew chief Mike Wheeler are parting ways at the end of this season and Hamlin seemed emotional about the split.
He and Wheeler won their very first race together, the Daytona 500 in 2016, and Hamlin wants to bookend their time together with a victory in their finale. A win would also extend Hamlin’s streak of winning at least one race every season since his 2006 debut.
Hamlin had to win at Homestead in 2013
Seahawks get crucial win to stay in playoff conversation
Citizen news service
RENTON, Wash. — For the Seattle Seahawks
to have a say in the NFC playoff picture, they had to get past Green Bay. A loss would have likely proved too much to overcome with games remaining against Carolina, Minnesota and Kansas City.
So Pete Carroll celebrated Thursday’s win in the way everyone would have expected. He rode Seattle’s waterfront Ferris wheel.
“It’s a wonderful ride. Everyone should do it,” Carroll said Friday.
The Seahawks’ 27-24 win over Green Bay snapped a two-game losing streak and created a path to where the post-season is now at least a realistic opportunity for Seattle. There are still challenges ahead, but Seattle is now in the conversation.
“To be in it right now, we’re not where we want to be record-wise, but we’re fighting,” said tight end Ed Dickson, who caught the winning touchdown pass from Russell Wilson with 5:08 remaining.
Seattle’s path to the post-season is relatively straightforward because of the way its schedule is structured. Five of the Seahawks’ final six games are against NFC teams. Three of those are against San Francisco, twice, and Arizona, who have combined records of 4-15 going into this week. The other two NFC opponents are Carolina next week and Minnesota in Week 14,
To be in it right now, we’re not where we want to be record-wise, but we’re fighting.
— Ed Dickson
the two teams directly in front of the Seahawks in the wild-card race.
So while Seattle doesn’t have complete control of its playoff fortunes, it will have a say in whether it can stay in the race into the final weeks of the regular season. And it’s why knocking off the Packers was so crucial.
“Doug (Baldwin) and I were talking about going back to 2015. We were 4-5, I think it was, and we got on a hot streak,” Wilson said.
“This is one game, we have a lot of games to go. We have a tough game ahead of us. Just a reminder of where we’ve been and where we’ve gone and how we’ve done it before.”
That run Wilson referenced from 2015 was based largely on a passing offence that erupted in the final two months of the season. Seattle won six of its final seven games that season, scoring 29 or more points in each victory with Wilson throwing 24 touchdown passes and one interception during the seven-game span.
to keep his streak active.
“We definitely want to end on a high note and try to win. In 2013 we were in the same predicament where we hadn’t won a race until the final race and we got it done, so hopefully it’s our time to do it,” Hamlin said.
“We’re going to keep digging. Hats off to this team.”
Reilly makes OT breakaway count
A passing explosion like that isn’t likely to happen this time. But something could happen on the ground as Seattle continued to show it can run the ball with any of its three running backs.
The Seahawks rushed for 173 yards against the Packers, their eighth straight game running for at least 100 yards as a team and the seventh straight game topping 150 yards. Last week against the Rams, Seattle used a healthy dose of Wilson’s legs when he rushed for a seasonhigh 92 yards to complement the first 100-yard game of Rashaad Penny’s rookie season. Against the Packers, it was a combo of Penny, Chris Carson and Mike Davis as the closer. Carson had 83 yards on 17 carries; Penny had 46 yards, including a highlight 30-yard run in the first half; and Davis had just one carry until Seattle’s final drive when he had three carries for 16 yards as Seattle picked up two first downs to close out the game.
“It might frustrate some people like we can’t make up our mind but I feel really comfortable with how we’re doing this,” Carroll said. “Some games it will go in a different direction like we’ve seen, but it’s great to have that kind of flexibility. They all have characteristics and attributes that help us.”
Carroll was unclear about the status of LB K.J. Wright and his lingering knee problems. Wright couldn’t finish last week’s game against the Rams due to issues stemming from surgery he had in August. He was inactive Thursday.
ANAHEIM, Calif. (AP) — Morgan Reilly scored on a breakaway with 1:43 remaining in overtime and the Toronto Maple Leafs swept the California portion of their trip with a 2-1 victory over the Anaheim Ducks on Friday night. The Maple Leafs have won six of seven and are unbeaten in three overtime games this season. Reilly got his ninth goal and 26th point, which puts him among the league leaders.
Patrick Marleau also scored for Toronto and Garret Sparks made 38 saves.
Pontus Aberg scored Anaheim’s goal and John Gibson stopped 33 shots. The Ducks have dropped three of four. Marleau opened the scoring less than seven minutes into the game when he positioned himself in front of the net and redirected Jake Gardiner’s pass with his left skate. It was the 539th goal of Marleau’s career, giving him sole possession of 32nd place on the NHL’s career list.
AP PHOTO
Kyle Busch prepares to get behind the wheel during qualifying for the NASCAR Cup Series race at Homestead-Miami Speedway on Friday in Homestead, Fla.
Stamps, Redblacks gunning for home playoff wins
Dan RALPH Citizen news service
Forgive the Winnipeg Blue Bombers if they’d rather forget about the last time they faced Bo Levi Mitchell at McMahon Stadium.
On Aug. 25, Mitchell threw for 452 yards and three touchdowns in a 39-26 home win. The two teams return to McMahon Stadium on Sunday in the West Division final.
To be fair, much has happened since then. Most notably, Winnipeg clinched a playoff berth Oct. 26 with a 29-21 home victory over Calgary, its first victory over the Stampeders in nine tries.
The Bombers also handed Mitchell a career-first third straight loss, but the Stamps ended that dubious streak with a season-ending 26-9 road victory over B.C. to finish atop the West Division.
Kamar Jorden played a big role in Calgary’s home victory over Winnipeg. He had 10 catches for a club-record 249 yards and a TD before suffering a season-ending knee injury later in the year.
Then again, former Bomber Chris Matthews had five catches for 113 yards in last month’s loss to Winnipeg. Over the two games, Mitchell has completed 47-of-77 passes for 726 yards with four TDs and no interceptions as Calgary chases a third straight Grey Cup appearance and its first championship since 2014.
But Winnipeg starter Matt Nichols has won his last six straight starts with eight TDs and just one interception over that span. Nichols had a season-high 358 yards and two TDs in the home win over Calgary.
Winnipeg comes in off its 23-18 road win over Saskatchewan in the West Division semifinal, its first playoff victory since beating Hamilton in 2011 East Division final. The Bombers, who haven’t won a CFL title since 1990, went on to lose 34-23 in the Grey Cup to the Lions at B.C. Place Stadium.
A big key to the Bombers ending their title drought could be run-
ning back Andrew Harris. For the second straight year the Winnipeg native was the CFL’s rushing leader (1,390 yards) and was named a finalist for the league’s top Canadian award (he won it in 2017).
Harris ran for 123 second-half yards against Saskatchewan and is more than capable of carrying the Bombers’ offence by himself. However, Harris does get a lot of help from Winnipeg’s solid offensive line.
That unit helped Winnipeg lead the CFL in rushing (134.9 yards per game) and rushing TDs (23) and finish tied in average rushing gain (5.7 yards).
Although Winnipeg’s passing attack ranked sixth overall (244.9 yards per game), the Bombers led the CFL in offensive points per game (28.2) and offensive TDs (53) and were tied for third in fewest sacks allowed (36).
Winnipeg’s defence finished tied with Calgary for most forced turnovers (49) and second to the Stampeders in fewest offensive points allowed (20.8), offensive
Over the two games, Mitchell has completed 47-of-77 passes for 726 yards with four TDs and no interceptions...
touchdowns (35) and passing touchdowns (15). Linebacker Adam Bighill anchors the unit and will play Sunday despite suffering an undisclosed injury against Saskatchewan. However, questions exist about the status of linebacker Jovan Santos-Knox, who had a teamhigh eight tackles and a forced fumble in the win over Calgary. Calgary boasts a 34-20 (.630) home playoff record and was 7-2 this season at McMahon. The Stampeders’ last home playoff loss was in 2013 to Saskatchewan. Since 1972, the home team in the West Division final is 27-19 (.587). Winnipeg counters with a 22-32
Medlock hopes to give Bombers a boost
Judy OWEN Citizen news service
WINNIPEG — Justin Medlock is glad he’s not watching the CFL playoffs from his couch.
The Blue Bombers kicker had contemplated retiring after last season, but he instead signed a one-year contract with Winnipeg after a chat with head coach Mike O’Shea reinforced his desire to continue playing. Now the eight-year veteran will try to give the Bombers points and great field position in Sunday’s West Division final in Calgary.
“It’s good. I put the hard work in in the off-season,” Medlock said this week. “Once I decided to come back, I was 100 per cent committed.
“It looks like I’ve had a really solid season. That was kind of my whole goal. I’ll try to keep it up the rest of the way.”
Winnipeg defeated Saskatchewan 23-18 in last weekend’s semifinal, the club’s first playoff victory since the East Division final in
2011. That was also the last year the Bombers made it to the Grey Cup, losing to B.C. Winnipeg hasn’t won the championship since 1990.
“It was good to get a win for the team and city. Now we’re on to the next one,” said Medlock, who made three field goals against the Roughriders and missed a 54yard attempt.
“Obviously we’ve got to beat the big dogs, and Calgary’s the big dogs.”
Medlock shed about 15 pounds before his third season with the Bombers by having a more-structured workout routine and better eating habits.
The 35-year-old connected on 42 of 47 field-goal attempts (89.4 per cent), the longest from 50 yards out. It tied his careerhigh percentage from 2015 when he was with Hamilton. Last year, he was good on 80 per cent of his field-goal tries (56 of 70).
Medlock was the league’s only regular kicker to make every one of his 52 converts. He also worked on improving his punting and finished with a career-best
league’s top Canadian honour for a second straight year. In the 2015 East final, it was Ellingson’s late 93-yard TD grab that earned Ottawa a thrilling 35-28 home win over Hamilton.
However, Ottawa isn’t a passonly offence as running back William Powell was the CFL’s second-leading rusher with 1,362 yards and six TDs. The five-footnine, 207-pound Powell averaged a solid 5.43 yards per carry and added 39 catches for 219 yards and two touchdowns.
Hamilton heads to TD Place off a convincing 48-8 East Division semifinal win over B.C. Jeremiah Masoli, the East Division nominee for the CFL’s top player award, threw for 259 yards and three TDs while averaging a season-best 13.6 yards per attempt.
(407) road playoff record and was 4-5 this season away from Investors Group Field.
Prediction: Calgary East Division Final
Hamilton Tiger-Cats at Ottawa Redblacks (Sunday afternoon)
The Redblacks swept the season series 3-0. That included winning back-to-back games last month to clinch top spot in the East Division.
Quarterback Trevor Harris completed 70-of-97 passes (72.2 per cent) for 836 yards with four TDs and no interceptions over that span. In his last six starts, Harris has amassed 1,895 passing yards with 11 TDs and two interceptions.
Harris has no shortage of capable receivers. Brad Sinopoli (116 catches, 1,376 yards four TDs) anchors a receiving corps that also includes Greg Ellingson (91 catches, 1,086 yards, five TDs) and Diontae Spencer (81 catches, 1,007 yards, seven TDs).
Sinopoli’s receptions total was a CFL single-season record for a Canuck and he’s a finalist for the
average of 44.5 yards while his net went up about a yard to 36.7 yards. Many of his punts pinned the opposition deep in their own territory.
“I was able to lead the league in inside 10-yard punts so I helped in different ways,” Medlock said. “I’m just trying to hit balls that we can cover.”
The way Calgary and Winnipeg rolled into the playoffs has set the stage for a close match.
The Stampeders, who lost the past two Grey Cup games, led the league with a 13-5 regular-season record, but lost three straight before winning their season finale against B.C. that clinched first place. Winnipeg won five in a row and then lost to Edmonton to finish with a 10-8 record.
Calgary beat the Bombers 39-26 in late August, but Winnipeg secured its third straight playoff berth with a 29-21 victory over the Stamps at home on Oct. 26.
Medlock doesn’t put a lot of stock in that win, nor the theory that Calgary has shown some cracks and may be vulnerable.
Masoli was the CFL’s secondleading passer with 5,209 yards this season, his first full campaign as a starter. He completed 74of-120 passes (58.3 per cent) for 937 yards with four TDs and four interceptions versus Ottawa. Luke Tasker had two of Masoli’s three TD strikes against B.C. but it was youngster Bralon Addison who impressed, registering five catches for 124 yards. Hamilton’s receiving corps has lost Shamawd Chambers, Chris Williams, Jalen Saunders and Terence Tolliver to injury this season. Ottawa rookie Lewis Ward will appear in his first CFL playoff game. The Redblacks kicker has converted a pro football record 48 straight field goals and 51 of 52 this season (league mark 98.1 per cent), including 16 from beyond 40 yards.
Hamilton veteran Lirim Hajrullahu made 45-of-54 attempts (85.2 per cent) and is seven-ofseven from 50-plus yards. Ottawa has a 33-14 (.702) home playoff record and East Division final host is 31-13 (.705) since 1973. The Ticats boast a 15-29 (.344) road playoff record. Prediction: Ottawa Last week: 1-1. Overall: 54-29.
“I don’t even look at it like that,” he said. “We’re the underdogs.” Bombers offensive co-ordinator Paul LaPolice also dismissed that assumption. “They’re still statistically the best team in the Canadian Football League over 18 games and play hard,” LaPolice said. “So cracks, every team’s going to have cracks at times throughout the course of the season but we know this is an outstanding group. We’ve got to be ready to play.” Bombers quarterback Matt Nichols appears to be ready. He’s been confident and careful down the stretch, throwing his last interception on Sept. 29.
History suggests he’ll protect the ball well on Sunday. He’s now 2-2 as a playoff starter, and over those four games he hasn’t thrown a pick in 133 pass attempts. Calgary pivot Bo Levi Mitchell, the West Division finalist for most outstanding player, is 5-3 in eight playoff starts, including a win in the 2014 Grey Cup final. He has 16 touchdowns and seven interceptions in those games.
Irving too much for Raptors to handle
Citizen news service
BOSTON — Kyrie Irving had a seasonhigh 43 points, scoring 17 in the last 8:06 of the fourth quarter to force overtime and then making or recording an assist on every basket in the extra period Friday night to lead the Boston Celtics to a 123-116 victory over the Toronto Raptors. Irving had 11 assists, and Jayson Tatum scored 21 with seven rebounds for the Celtics. Boston evened the season series at one game apiece against the only team to finish above it in the Eastern Conference last season. The home team has won nine straight matchups.
Kawhi Leonard scored 31 with a seasonhigh 15 rebounds for Toronto, which has lost three straight since opening the season with 12 victories in its first 13 games. Serge
Ibaka scored 21 and Pascal Siakam had 16 points and nine rebounds for the Raptors, who never led in overtime.
Gordon Hayward scored 15 points with five rebounds and five assists in a team-high 39 minutes – by far his biggest workload since the injury that knocked him out in the first quarter of the first game last season. Hayward hit a pair of free throws to open the overtime, Ibaka answered with a jumper and from there it was all Celtics. Hayward scored on a pass from Irving, then Irving rescued Tatum from a near-turnover and drive for the layup to give Boston a 113-109 lead. The Raptors never got closer than three points after that.
UP NEXT
Raptors: Visit the Chicago Bulls tonight. Celtics: Host the Utah Jazz tonight.
Hot Howell has lead at Sea Island
ST. SIMONS ISLAND, Ga. (AP) — Charles Howell III is playing some of his best golf when he least expected it.
Coming from a missed cut in Mexico to a tournament where he missed the cut last year, Howell kept bogeys off his card for the second straight day and was just as good Friday on the tougher scoring course at Sea Island. He had a six-under 64 on the Seaside course and matched the best 36-hole score of his career to build a three-shot lead in the RSM Classic.
“You just never know what’s around the corner in this game,” Howell said. “I thought I played pretty good in Mexico and just missed the cut there. Came here, I like it here, I didn’t really know what to expect and then this happens. So it’s a crazy game and we’re reminded of it daily. This is another reminder.”
Howell was at 14-under 128, his best two-day total on the PGA Tour since the Las Vegas Invitational in 2003.
He was three shots ahead of PGA Tour rookie Cameron Champ and Jason Gore, who only recently was certified as an insurance salesman and found out just five days ago there was room for him at Sea Island. Gore birdied his last four holes for a 63.
“I haven’t played a weekend in so long, I don’t know what to do,” Gore said. “I’ve got nothing to lose. This is fun for me. I’m an insurance salesman now. I’ve got a real job now and all that good stuff. Just glad my boss would let me off to play.” His boss is his wife, Meghan, who presumably does most of the work. Gore plays a lot of golf with clients, and it restored some of the fun in the game that beat him up over the years.
The defence of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers pressures Calgary Stampeders quarterback Bo Levi Mitchell as he throws during an August game in Calgary.
Province expanding gender affirmation surgery services
Improved access to chest/breast surgeries coming to Prince George
Hina ALAM Citizen news service
VANCOUVER — Gwen Haworth says she always knew her gender identity, even when she was very young, but coming out about 18 years ago was a hard choice made even harder by a lack of services in her home province.
Between 2001 and 2004, Haworth said she went back and forth between Montreal and British Columbia to get gender-affirming surgery.
The difficulties Haworth faced will soon be a thing of the past after the British Columbia government announced Friday it will provide reconstructive lower surgery for transgender people.
“Access to care was pretty fragmented, and very challenging, and hard and time consuming and costly,” said Howarth, a member of the trans community and project manager for Trans Care BC.
Health Minister Adrian Dix said the trans community has advocated for a number of years for the complex surgery to be done in the province.
Up until now, those wanting the surgery had to travel to Montreal or the United States, which Dix said resulted in additional medical risks associated with travelling long distances after surgery and with follow-up care.
The Health Ministry says gender-affirming surgery will be available at Vancouver Coastal Health starting next year and trans people will also have improved access to publicly funded chest and breast surgeries in Burnaby, Kamloops, Kelowna, Port Moody, Prince George, Vancouver and Victoria.
Dix said B.C. is the first province in West-
NEWS IN BRIEF
MPs denounce racist post targeting Sajjan OTTAWA (CP) — Federal Conservatives rushed to defend Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan Thursday night after a Conservative group in British Columbia posted a harsh comment about him on its Facebook page. Earlier this week the “Okanagan Conservatives” posted a photo and a link to a critical news article about Sajjan on their page, along with the comment: “This is what happens when you have a cabinet based on affirmative action.”
Conservative MP James Bezan tweeted that he is disgusted by such an intolerant comment. Bezan says Sajjan is a respected veteran who proudly served Canada and deserves nothing less than gratitude for his service as a soldier as well as defence minister, even if the two don’t always agree on policy. Conservative MP Dan Albas, who represents Central Okanagan-Similkameen-Nicola, wrote on Twitter that the post came from another riding association’s account and he asked that it be removed. He says although he did not authorize it, he would like to apologize to Sajjan.
On Thursday the Okanagan Conservatives took to Facebook again, but this time to apologize to Sajjan and those who were offended.
Referendum turnout 18 per cent so far
VICTORIA (CP) — British Columbia’s elections agency says about 597,300 ballot packages have been returned so far in the province’s referendum on proportional representation. Elections BC says the ballots returned so far represent 18 per cent of registered voters. The numbers do not include ballots that have been received by Canada Post but have yet to be transferred to Elections BC. The figures released Friday include packages that are on hand at Elections BC facilities that are waiting to be processed, as well as those undergoing initial processing before screening. Earlier this week Elections BC said 6.5 per cent of ballots had been returned. The mailin ballots must be received by Nov. 30. Voters are being asked whether they want to maintain the existing first-pastthe-post system or switch to proportional representation for provincial elections.
ern Canada to provide lower surgery.
The government says about 100 people travel out of the province for lower surgeries every year and about 200 chest and breast surgeries are expected to take place in B.C. in the coming year.
Haworth said improving access to care will have a ripple effect through society.
Gender affirming surgeries, where a person’s physical body is brought into alignment with how they identify, whether it’s male, female or non-binary, came with
a stigma, she said, but Friday’s announcement fosters a welcoming environment.
“It improves people’s lives and health outcomes.”
During those three years when she needed care, Haworth said the costs came in many forms. Time was taken away from her family, friends, education and work. She said she had to pay for some services herself and getting reimbursed was a challenging process. Haworth said out-of-pocket expenses worth about $35,000 were never paid back. She also had to sell her home.
“And when I look at the place I owned at that point in time, and I move 15 years forward in the Vancouver housing market, that means I actually had to say no to over a quarter million dollars of potential wellbeing at this point in my life.”
The Health Ministry says the surgeries will be covered as part of the province’s B.C. Surgical and Diagnostic Imaging Strategy, which is getting a $25 million funding increasing in 2019-20 to $100 million.
Hospital
Prince George.
How different really are atheists and believers?
Costica BRADATAN Citizen new service
“If you want to understand atheism and religion,” writes John Gray in his new book, Seven Types of Atheism, “you must forget the popular notion that they are opposites.”
The book, just like the rest of his work, is replete with juicy paradoxes of this sort. A master contrarian in the tradition of philosophers Lev Shestov and Emil Cioran, Gray uses paradox not just for rhetorical effect but to a philosophical end.
A major unmasking defines his approach: if one is to be an honest thinker and advance knowledge, one must expose and dismantle the web of popular ideas, convenient labels and lazy thinking that makes up the philosophical orthodoxy.
Following this method, Gray shows convincingly how, for example, Voltaire – the Enlightenment’s atheist philosopher par excellence, as he’s usually labeled – “seems never to have been an atheist.”
Much as he hated Christianity, Voltaire still needed the idea of God to make sense of the world; the Jesuits, with whom he studied, taught him something after all. Nietzsche – the anti-Christ of the modern era, as countless textbooks have portrayed him – is exposed in Gray’s telling as an undercover Christian. An “implacable enemy of Christianity,” Nietzsche was also “an incurably Christian thinker,” Gray writes. “Like the Christians he despised, he regarded the human animal as a species in need of redemption.”
In a similar provocative manner, Gray claims that, since there is no such thing as secularism (“secular thought is mostly composed of repressed religion”), there “never was a secular era.”
And with this we are at the heart of Seven Types of Atheism.
Atheism, Gray argues, is rarely to be found in a pure state. Philosophically, it’s a position difficult to articulate independently of religion. A negative term, atheism needs theistic ideas to give it life: It feeds off them and loiters around them and depends on them, like poor relatives often tend to do.
This is because religion, born out of our fundamental need for meaning, is irreplaceable, according to Gray. A completely meaningless, chaotic world would be too much to bear, even for atheists; they cockily deny religion only to end up with “surrogates of the God they have cast aside,” as Gray puts it.
Even at its most sophisticated, atheism is bound not to stray too much from its more fortunate relation, with the result that “some of the most radical forms of atheism” are indistinguishable from “some mystical
varieties of religion.” Gray accepts that this is unavoidable and understandable, given the need for meaning that religion satisfies. What troubles him is how un-self-reflective and self-deceptive some atheists are.
The seven types of atheism in the book’s title refer to the ways modern atheism
relates to religion.
The first type, represented by “the new atheists,” is also the least interesting. They tend to treat religion as a mere system of beliefs, and implicitly as “a primitive sort of science,” and find it wanting on that account. This is no surprise because religion
has never meant to replace science. The second type is “secular humanism,” manifest in thinkers as diverse as John Stuart Mill, Bertrand Russell, Nietzsche and Ayn Rand. For all its vocal profession of unbelief, Gray finds this type to be nothing but “a hollowed-out version of the Christian belief in salvation in history.”
A third category of atheism makes a religion out of science through a variety of intellectual fashions such as evolutionary humanism, mesmerism, dialectical materialism and transhumanism.
The fourth is of a bloodier kind: turning politics into a form of religion (under such guises as Jacobinism, Nazism, communism and evangelical liberalism), it has over the past couple of centuries left millions of victims across the globe.
The fifth category, quite a spectacular one, is that of the God-haters such as the Marquis de Sade and Ivan Karamazov. Gray is “repelled” by these five types of atheism. Not because he is a believer. He is not – or, if he is, his religiosity is of a different kind. Judging the first five forms of atheism philosophically muddled and intellectually dishonest, he finds himself attracted to two other types: atheisms that are “happy to live with a godless world or an unnameable God.” One is rather disenchanted and misanthropic (“atheism without progress,” Gray calls it) and is embodied in such figures as George Santayana and Joseph Conrad. The other is a form of atheism that, while remote from conventional religion, could be seen as a form of mysticism.
Gray has emerged as a unique thinker precisely because he has no time for the pious lies and empty niceties of the academic establishment. He seems to have a sixth sense that helps him detect whatever is shallow, self-flattering and self-deceptive in our notions of ourselves. He is erudite, witty and persuasive.
A lover of paradox, Gray is himself paradoxical: at once passionate and detached, bold and skeptical, visionary and humble. Indeed, a sense of cosmic humility permeates his thinking.
There is nothing special about us in this world, he conveys, and that’s an important part of our humanity. Yet that’s no reason for panic or despair.
The final line of Gray’s book is strangely comforting: “A godless world is as mysterious as one suffused with divinity, and the difference between the two may be less than you think.”
— Costica Bradatan is a professor of humanities at Texas Tech University. He is the author, most recently, of Dying for Ideas: The Dangerous Lives of the Philosophers.
Remembrance Day inspires faith in God
Remembrance Day 2018 has now passed into our history books. Again we have remembered those who have sacrificed their lives in defense of the free nations of the world.
There is much more that needs to be said about the word remember from a biblical perspective.
The Bible speaks of things that we should remember, and things that should not be remembered. Psalm 25:6 states, “Remember, O LORD, your great mercy and love, for they are of old.” However, verse seven states these contrasting words, “Remember not the sins of my youth, and my rebellious ways; according to your love remember me, for you are good, O LORD.”
These verses from Psalm 25:67 reveals our God as one who remembers to bless human beings, while God choosing to forget the sins of mankind from his youth because of God’s love and kindnesses.
When Jerome Hines was 21, he said, “God does not answer prayer, for He is not a personal deity who busies himself with the mundane affairs of two billion individuals.” Jerome was a promising young
Clergy Comment
PASTOR ARLO A. JOHNSON Westside Family Fellowship
opera singer, but he had never had a prayer answered or seen anything that came close to being a miracle. In the course of the life of Jerome Hines, he was led into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, and the opera star who in his younger years hadn’t believed in a personal God and didn’t believe in prayer was now talking to God regularly and experiencing miracles in his own life.
Late in his career, Hines was invited to Moscow for a final concert. In advance of that concert, he prayed, “Lord, do your servant just one more favour. Give me Khrushchev, the Russian premier as an attendee at my performance at the Bolshoi.” Hines’s manager said, “It is the 1960s and there is a Cold War between Russia and the United States. That is impossible, the International situation is too tense for that to occur!”
But Hines had a personal relationship with the God who remembers to bless, while forget-
ting the sins of one’s past. And just before the curtain opened, Hines heard, “Khrushchev’s coming!”
So Hines responded, “What a God we’ve got! Jerome Hines discovered and developed a relation-
ship with God, who cared enough to die for him in the person of His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ!”
CITIZEN NEWS SERVICE
This is the cover of John Gray’s book called Seven Types of Atheism.
CITIZEN PHOTO BY JAMES DOYLE
A wreath is placed in front of the temporary cenotaph during 2018 Remembrance Day ceremonies.
OTTAWA —
The markets today
TORONTO — Canada’s largest stock index ended a down week in the black Friday as gold pushed the loonie and the materials sector higher and oil endured its sixth consecutive week of declining prices.
The January crude contract was unchanged at US$56.68 per barrel Friday but was down almost six per cent for the week as it ended an unprecedented 12-day run of falling prices. West Texas Intermediate was down 26 per cent from its peak in early October.
The December natural gas contract was up 23.4 cents at US$4.27 per mmBTU.
While some small energies company moved up, the energy sector on the TSX was down half a per cent on the day as bigger names weakened with the West Canadian Select closing marginally higher from its low.
“So I think it’s just a question of investors wrapping their head around Canadian energy given the particular challenges that we’re facing with take-away capacity being so constrained,” said Patrick Blais, senior portfolio manager at Manulife Asset Management.
Low Canadian oil prices will force producers to cut production next year which will have a significant economic impact, he added.
“It’s a tough week to get any momentum or traction behind the Canadian market given that a lot of the bullishness surrounding investing in Canada was based on oil fundamentals coming into a healthy position and now that’s basically been thrown out and we’re going to face a tough environment to find investors to step back into Canada given the challenging prospects.”
The S&P/TSX composite index closed up 10.62 points to 15,155.50, but down from 15.274.44 a week ago.
The volatile health-care sector closed off two per cent Friday while technology and consumer discretionary rebounded. Materials and telecommunications also closed higher.
The December gold contract was up US$8 at US$1,223 an ounce and the December copper contract was up 5.20 cents at US$2.80 a pound.
The Canadian dollar traded at an average of 76.02 cents US compared with an average of 75.75 cents US on Thursday.
In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average gained 123.95 points to 25,413.22. The S&P 500 index was up 6.07 points at 2,736.27, while the Nasdaq composite was down 11.16 points at 7,247.87. The U.S. market got a brief boost after U.S. President Donald Trump was hopeful of a deal with China to resolve their trade dispute, but later retreated.
Deadline time
Government ready to step in to force postal peace
Terry PEDWELL Citizen news service
OTTAWA — The Trudeau government gave one final push Friday to bring the Canada Post labour dispute to a close, suggesting it will act quickly if rotating strikes continue beyond a Saturday midnight deadline for the latest contract offers from the Crown corporation.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said last week that “all options will be on the table” to end postal disruptions if there was no progress in bargaining for new contracts.
Decisions on how to end job action by postal workers could come as early as Sunday, said a government source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, adding that “‘all the options’ does include legislating.”
The prospect of bridging the impasse all but collapsed Friday when the Canadian Union of Postal Workers said it would not bring the latest offers to a vote of its members, although it said both sides remained at the bargaining table.
“CUPW members voted overwhelmingly in favour of taking strike action if necessary to achieve our demands at the bargaining table,” the union’s national president Mike Palecek said in a statement. “We are fulfilling the mandate given to us by our members. A vote will take place when Canada Post presents offers that meet our demands for health and safety, gender equality and more full-time jobs.”
At the same time, Canada Post asked its international partners to halt mail and parcel shipments to Canada as it reeled under the weight of a delivery backlog that had grown to 30 days as a result of the dispute.
The Crown corporation said Friday that its domestic customers were also backed up with packages waiting for delivery as rotating strikes that began Oct. 22 continued across the country.
“The backlogs are also extending to international mail and parcels entering the country,”
Decisions on how to end job action by postal workers could come as early as Sunday, said a government source...
Canada Post spokesman Jon Hamilton said in an email.
“As a result, we have been forced to request that international posts, including the United States Postal Service, refrain from shipping items until we can clear the backlog.”
Britain’s Royal Mail, in a bulletin to its corporate customers, said it would hold any shipments posted to Canada within the last couple of days in its distribution centres “awaiting further updates.”
“As a result of ongoing industrial action, we have now been requested to suspend the dispatching of international traffic destined for Canada, from today until further notice,” it said.
“This applies not only to us, but all international postal operators,” the Royal Mail added.
A similar bulletin was issued by Hongkong Post and online sales giant eBay said it also received a notification from China Post that it was halting deliveries.
Canada Post and the Canadian Union of Postal Workers have been in contract negotiations for nearly a year, with no success.
CUPW began rotating strikes across the country that have shut down postal operations in over 200 communities, hoping to pressure Canada Post into agreeing to contract demands, including better job security, reduced workloads and stronger health and safety measures.
The walkouts have resulted in backlogs at the agency’s main sorting plants, particularly
in Toronto, where Hamilton said the number of mail-filled tractor trailers awaiting processing had reached 407 as of Friday. Dozens of trailers were also sitting idle in Montreal and Vancouver.
The Crown corporation issued new contract offers this week aimed at reaching agreements with its approximately 42,000 urban employees and 8,000 rural and suburban carriers.
CUPW said the latest proposals made positive steps, but not enough to put an end to walkouts, which rotated Friday through most of Manitoba, as well as communities in Ontario, B.C., Alberta and New Brunswick.
The offers were time sensitive, with Canada Post imposing a deadline of Saturday, at one minute before midnight, for the union to accept them.
CUPW wouldn’t say whether it believed tentative deals could be reached by then, but said the union would not be held to an arbitrary deadline.
Palecek was also critical of Canada Post for halting shipments from outside Canada.
“There is no reason to halt international shipments,” he said in a statement. “Let us solve our issues at the bargaining table.”
The union said it wants concrete proposals for dealing with an escalating number of work injuries at Canada Post.
Hamilton said the corporation has proposed a way for the company and union to work together to identify ways to make the workplace safer, and offered to fast-track a review of workloads to reduce overburdening of carriers who have seen a rapid increase in the number of parcels they have to deliver while letter volumes have declined.
Earlier this week, eBay called on the government to legislate an end to the dispute in time for Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales events tied to American Thanksgiving that begin Nov. 23.
News industry may get more federal support
OTTAWA (CP) — The federal government is expected to lay out fresh plans next week to support Canada’s struggling news industry.
The measures, expected in Finance Minister Bill Morneau’s fall economic statement
Wednesday, will be designed to help journalism remain viable after years of shrinking advertising revenues.
The decline has already shuttered newsrooms, led to job cuts in many others, and eroded coverage of key democratic institutions across Canada.
In last winter’s federal budget, Ottawa committed $50 million over five years for local
journalism in “underserved communities.”
The government also pledged in the budget to search for additional ways of supporting Canadian journalism.
Internal federal documents obtained by The Canadian Press under access-to-information legislation say the government assembled a working group of officials from the finance and heritage departments following the February budget. Their goal, the memo said, was “to identify options to address the issues affecting journalism in Canada ahead of the fall economic statement.”
“A range of options to ensure the continued
viability of the journalism industry in Canada are being considered,” reads the briefing note prepared for deputy finance minister Paul Rochon ahead of his meeting last July with the president and the publisher of Montreal’s La Presse newspaper. In the budget, Ottawa promised to take a closer look at potential models to enable private donations and philanthropic support for “trusted, professional, non-profit journalism and local news.”
The government said eventual steps could include new ways for Canadian newspapers to innovate and receive charitable status for “not-for-profit” journalism.
AP PHOTO
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, shown on Thursday in Singapore, is ready to step in to end the labour dispute between Canada Post and the Canadian Union of Postal Workers.
WestJet updates training in response to crash
(CP) — WestJet Airlines Ltd. says it has updated its training in response to revelations of a design issue in the Boeing 737 Max, the aircraft at the centre of a deadly crash off the coast of Indonesia last month.
A Lion Air Max 8 passenger jet plunged into the Java Sea on Oct. 29 just minutes after taking off from the Indonesian capital of Jakarta, killing all 189 people on board. Moments earlier, the pilot had requested permission to return to the airport because of a problem controlling the plane.
WestJet, which has 10 737 Max aircraft in its fleet, says it worked with Transport Canada and other airlines over the past two weeks to revise its flight manual and increase training on a part of the anti-stall system, a feature that pilots at WestJet and other airlines were unaware existed.
CEO holds off on cash request, for now
Citizen news service
MONTREAL — The head of Bombardier Inc. said he held off on asking Quebec’s economy minister for cash at a meeting Friday, but told him the regional jet program is nonetheless in need of “additional support.”
“I pointed to the CRJ,” CEO Alain Bellemare said in an interview, but added he wasn’t ready to comment on potential public support for the ailing jet program.
“Right now, I don’t see that, but I don’t want to say something today and then in a month from now, two months from now, it’s different. My goal is to make this program work by working with customers and by working with suppliers. I have no other intentions than that, at this point.”
Earlier Friday, Economy and Innovation Minister Pierre Fitzgibbon said his government is open to handing over more cash to the Montreal-based firm if it needs help, particularly with the CRJ line.
“I made sure to (tell) Mr. Bellemare that, would there be an opportunity, we would be open for business. This aerospace cluster is of paramount importance for the province of Quebec,” Fitzgibbon told reporters.
Bombardier’s stock has plunged from
its July peak of $5.58 to a two-year low of $1.67 on Friday, down 20 per cent on the day.
Bellemare defended the company’s actions and attributed the troubled stock in part to the firm’s massive debt and rising interest rates in the U.S.
“The company is at a much better place than it was in 2015. Much better. Night and day,” he said, citing improved operating margins and solid liquidity.
The transportation company announced last week it will lay off 5,000 workers – half of them in Quebec – as part of Bellemare’s five-year plan to rein in costs, focus on rail and business jets and reduce the net long-term debt of US$9 billion.
Fitzgibbon compared possible support for the CRJ to the C Series, which got a US$1-billion boost from the province in 2015 before the company sold a majority stake to Airbus last July. Quebec retains a 16.24 per cent stake in the program.
Investment in the beleaguered company is “a difficult question to answer without a program, without a plan,”
Fitzgibbon added, noting that no partnership is in the works at the moment.
His comments came hours after the head of Quebec’s aerospace union called on the province to intervene.
“Faced with the challenges currently
BlackBerry to buy cybersecurity company
TORONTO (CP) — BlackBerry Ltd. has signed a US$1.4-billion deal to acquire U.S. artificial intelligence and cybersecurity company Cylance in what the company called the largest deal in its history.
BlackBerry executives told analysts on Friday that they were keen on acquiring California-based Cylance because it is a pioneer in applying artificial intelligence, algorithmic science and machine learning to cybersecurity software.
The acquisition helps solidify BlackBerry’s shift away from its past life as a smartphone company to software and security services, including its QNX business, which is focused on the automotive sector.
The deal, which is pending regulator approvals but is expected to close by the end of February 2019, will also involve BlackBerry assuming Cylance’s unvested employee incentives.
Under the agreement, Cylance will continue to operate as a separate business.
facing Bombardier, more and more Quebeckers are saying, ‘We can no longer stand to see these bandits with ties rob us and who give themselves big wages – close the shop and good riddance,’” David Chartrand said Friday in an open letter from the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers.
“Quebec must encourage companies to be responsible,” he added, demanding swift intervention that extracts commitments from the company around employment levels.
Following the Friday morning meeting at McGill University’s Bronfman Building, Chartrand said he was “happy” Bombardier intends to work with the aerospace industry to find jobs for laidoff workers.
On Thursday, Premier Francois Legault seemed cool to financial assistance for the CRJ series, adding he believed there was little hope for the regional airliner unless it finds an international partner. Federal and provincial governments have been criticized by some in the past for giving funds to support Bombardier. The plane-and-train maker said in an email that it is the “anchor” of Quebec’s aerospace industry, which employs about 40,000 people, including 1,000 or CRJ workers in Mirabel, Que.
VW planning less expensive electric model
FRANKFURT (AP) — Volkswagen intends to invest 44 billion euros ($50 billion) in the electric and autonomous car technologies expected to reshape the industry – and said it would make batterypowered vehicles more accessible to mass-market auto buyers by selling its new I.D. compact for about what a Golf diesel costs. The investment plans for the next five years aim to make Volkswagen “a worldwide supplier of sustainable mobility,” chairman Hans Dieter Poetsch said Friday. He added that the company is in talks with Ford about possible cooperation in making light commercial vehicles.
Established automakers as well as several U.S. startups are rolling out electric models to compete with Tesla, currently the market leader. Auto companies need electrics to meet new environmental standards in many countries.
In Europe, manufacturers need to sell more battery-powered cars to meet tougher EU limits on carbon dioxide emissions that come into force 2021 and aim to fight global warming. Automakers like Volkswagen, Daimler and BMW risk penalties of thousands of euros per vehicle if they can’t meet requirements for lower average emissions.
Authorities in China, where Volkswagen gets much of its profit, have also mandated a bigger share of electrics and hybrids. Yet right now, such vehicles remain a niche market due to higher price and lack of places to charge. Battery-only vehicles were only 0.6 per cent of the market in the European Union last year. They are running from one to two per cent of U.S. new-vehicle sales so far this year.
CP PHOTO Bombardier chief executive Alain Bellemare arrives at the company’s annual meeting in Montreal in May 2017.
News
A gruesome task
PARADISE, Calif. — Wendy Bailey, a widow and retired stay-at-home-mother, hunched over a charred bathtub, surrounded by ash, looking for any trace of human remains.
It was her second day searching for victims of the ferocious wildfire that destroyed this city of about 26,000 residents last week, an effort that authorities say has become the largest search operation in California history.
As Bailey shifted her fingers through the rubble, in a subdivision where every house was leveled by flames, the scale of the task facing her and hundreds of other searchand-rescue volunteers began to sink in.
That charred piece of glass. Is it a tooth?
The fingernail sized piece of stucco. Is it a bone?
“We have never had anything of this magnitude,” said Bailey, 58, whose team had found the remains of two victims the previous day. “I have seen burned bodies before, but never just disintegrated. It’s usually not like this.”
A week after the Camp Fire was sparked in Northern California, the death toll from the state’s deadliest wildfire in its history continues to grow. At least 63 people have died in the fire, officials said Thursday night, including the remains of seven people discovered that day. But search teams continue to sift through an estimated 10,000 destroyed structures for signs of the people who remain unaccounted for, an ever-changing list of names amid the frenzy of new and canceled missing-persons reports. The number of missing people increased dramatically, to 631.
“You have to understand, this is a dynamic list,” Butte County Sheriff Kory L. Honea said. “Some days might be less people, some days might be more people, but my hope at the end of the day, we have accounted for everybody.”
Some remains may never be recovered, the sheriff said.
With this hilltop community still smoldering, California authorities are leaning on volunteers such as Bailey for what is being called the largest body-recovery mission in state history, and one of the largest in the United States since the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
After Honea put on a statewide appeal for help earlier this week, more than 450 members of California search-and-rescue teams have come here offering to help. They represent nearly all of California’s 58 counties, highlighting the effectiveness of a state law that mandates each county sheriff maintain volunteer search-and-rescue teams.
The volunteers are a variety of ages, both male and female, “a cross-section of our community,” as Ben Ho, who coordinates cadaver-dog teams for the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, put it.
Bailey joined the effort eight years ago, as a volunteer in an aquatic search-and-rescue
After deadliest fire in California history, search for human remains begins
unit in Southern California. Her unit, based in Kern County, usually responds to water rescues in the Kern River or missing hikers in the lower Sierra Nevada mountains, but has been called in to other areas with largescale disasters.
Even here in California,where the concept of search and rescue dates back to efforts to rescue settlers who went missing while crossing the Sierra Nevada mountains in the 1800s, the scale of the Camp Fire response is testing first responders. As the number of state fire disasters continues to grow, state emergency officials say communities here and nationwide need to step up drills and training for how to effectively use volunteer search-and-rescue teams in natural disasters and other mass-causality events.
Ho and other regional emergency managers to develop a more effective plan for search and rescue, including more cadaver dog teams.
“He said we need to have the SWAT teams of rescue teams throughout the country and go to big disasters,” Ho said.
I have seen burned bodies before, but never just disintegrated.
— Wendy Bailey
After a few years of planning, including the formation of committees Ho participated in, modern-day urban search-and-rescue teams were formed. States and localities also greatly expanded use of cadaver dog units. Those teams, which often operate in conjunction with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, have been front-line responders to disasters, such as 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
“It doesn’t even seem real,” said Freeman, 75. “We are basically looking for anything that looks like it could be a body, but the fire was so hot, there may not be a lot left there.”
Each morning, the volunteers are broken up into teams of eight to 10 people. If they find suspected human remains, the volunteers have access to anthropologists who help differentiate human remains from animals. Coroner teams are then responsible for removing the bodies.
On Wednesday, Bailey’s team discovered half of a human skull and several bone fragments, roughly the size of a knuckle, she said.
But Honea, who is also the Butte County coroner, has been warning this grief-stricken community that some victims may not be found. The fire was so hot, he said, “its possible that some remains were completely consumed by fire.”
“We will continue our search but at some point, ultimately, with the passage of time and circumstantial evidence will lead us to the conclusion they’ve perished,” Honea said.
The scale of the disaster is even posing problems for cadaver dogs. Although the dogs are trained to sniff out human remains, even those that have been badly burned, public safety officials say the dogs are encountering challenges working in rough terrain that many here fear could be toxic.
“We can’t put booties on their paws because that is like a rock climber with gloves on,” Ho said. “You can’t put masks on them, because they need their noses.”
Mike Delannoy, a volunteer dog handler from Riverside County, spent Thursday morning running his six-year-old border collie, Journey, through a destroyed house. A woman who lives there had been reported missing, but Journey only gave fleeting signals that any remains were located on the property, and ultimately none were found.
Many cadaver dogs are not as prepared as they should be to work safely in ash, officials said. California emergency managers also continue to refine how volunteer search and rescue should be deployed, and under what command.
“Each one seems to be much more intense, and also the expectation of the public, the families, the agencies, is that we can do a number of tasks that are very challenging,” said Ho said. “This is daunting – both physically and mentally.”
Ho said the modern-day search-andrescue team can be traced back to the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, which devastated parts of San Francisco Bay area. At the time, Ho was a search manager for the Oakland, Calif., fire department. After both San Francisco Bay area communities and federal officials struggled to respond to the earthquake, President George H.W. Bush pressed
There has also been a proliferation of volunteer wilderness search-and-rescue teams, especially here in California. Christopher Boyer, executive director of the National Association for Search and Rescue, said wilderness teams are better suited to respond to the Camp Fire due to the scope of the disaster, which has charred about 140,000-acres – nearly the size of Chicago.
“The FEMA teams are designed around finding live people, and their dogs find live people,” said Boyer, whose organization has about 16,000 members. In Paradise, “we are talking about finding human remains, and in some cases, cremains that have been burnt.”
Many of the responders to the Paradise fire say they were stunned by the devastation they now must work in.
David Freeman, a search volunteer from El Dorado County near Sacramento, compared his task to working on the moon.
“The takeaway for us will be we need to focus more on training for large areas with cadaver dog teams,” Delannoy said. “This is an environment where I want to minimize the time he is active in an area.”
But Yerania Molina, a search-and-rescue volunteer from Kern County, said she’s not sure any amount of training could have prepared first responders for what they are encountering in Paradise.
Molina, 37, has a full-time job as an information technology specialist. Since joining Kern County’s rescue team three years ago, Molina has helped recover nine bodies, mostly from the Kern River.
On Thursday, as she prepared for her daily assignment, Molina said she and her fellow teammates approach their jobs with a mix of adrenaline and anxiety.
“You hope you don’t find anybody today because you don’t want any more deaths,” Molina said. “But you also know you that you have to find them because you know they are out there.”
Tim CRAIG Citizen news service
WASHINGTON POST PHOTO
Mike Delannoy and dog Journey look for remains in Paradise, Calif. Search teams were combing through thousands of fire-destroyed structures for signs of 130 people who were still missing as of Thursday.
WASHINGTON POST PHOTO
Search-and-rescue team volunteer Harry Halterman crawls out of a shed on Thursday in Paradise, Calif.
Franklin’s Amazing Grace film finally in theatres
Nekesa MUMBI MOODY Citizen new service
NEW YORK — Three years ago, Alan Elliott was at the Telluride Film Festival, prepared to unveil the holy grail of musical works:
A documentary on the making of Aretha Franklin’s Amazing Grace, which had been lost to the archives for decades until Elliott spent decades restoring it so it could finally be seen.
But then, through lawyers, he got word that the Queen of Soul herself was trying to prevent the film from being shown. Elliott’s business partner, Tirrell Whittley, recalls the moment as “deflating.”
“It was disappointing .... You try to figure out what is it that happened,” Whittley said.
But as determined as Elliott and Whittley were to get the documentary to the world, they decided not to fight Franklin.
“It would just be the wrong and the wrong spirit,” Whittley said, adding later: “In talking to Alan, it was really around patience and saying, ‘You know what? God may not have meant it right now. And that’s OK. Let’s just be patient. When God says it’s the right time it will be the right time, not just for us but for her, for her family, for her legacy.”’
That time has arrived, three
months after Franklin’s death from pancreatic cancer, with the blessing of her family. And while there are parts of Amazing Grace that are rough, from a few off-kilter camera angles to choppy editing, it’s a profound, brilliant display of one of the
world’s greatest singers performing in her element – the church.
“It’s the most important document of American popular music ever filmed,” said Elliott. “It’s completely unique to any other experience that I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen a lot of them.”
The album Amazing Grace is one of the seminal albums in not only Franklin’s discography, but the canon of American pop music. Franklin, then 29 and at the height of her fame, recorded the album in a Los Angeles church in 1972, with a full choir and an audience that included Mick Jagger, over two nights. Legendary gospel star James Cleveland directed the choir. Franklin’s famed father, the Rev. CL Franklin, spoke at the pulpit in praise of his daughter while the revered gospel star Clara Ward sat in the front row.
Warner Brothers Films contracted Oscar-winning director Sydney Pollack to helm the movie, with hopes it could be as popular as the concert film of Woodstock. But Pollack made critical errors, including not utilizing a machine to sync the audio to the visuals.
With such problems, the film was written off by the movie studio. While the album would go double platinum and become one of bestselling gospel album of all time, the film was forgotten – but not by everyone.
Jerry Wexler, the renowned Atlantic Records producer who helmed many of Franklin’s greatest hits, told Elliott – his protege, a then-25-year-old music executive – about his hopes to one day get the film to screen, and it would become Elliott’s “passion project” for two decades.
According to Sabrina Owens, Franklin’s niece, the legend spoke about her love for the film. But by the time Elliott and Whittley were ready to release it, Franklin wasn’t ready for the world to see it.
“I honestly don’t know what her concerns were,” said Owens. “We never really discussed her business... I do know for a fact that she did love the movie.”
Elliott suspects it may have been frustration at the poor handling of the project. “I’m sure she was upset that Warner Films couldn’t finish the
movie in the way that she was expecting it to be done and that was probably something that stuck with her,” he said.
Elliott spoke to Franklin about the project only once – and very briefly. Elliott went to a concert of Franklin’s and afterward waited backstage for the Queen of Soul to beckon him, and when she did, he nervously talked about the film project he had embarked on with Wexler.
“And she said, ‘Yes we’ll be talking.’ And she walked away.” He never spoke to her after that, but kept in touch with her family over the years, particularly Owens, to give her updates on the project. After the Telluride injunction, Elliott reached out again, and Owens explained her aunt was ill. That revelation reinforced Elliott’s approach to be patient; he had hoped a recovered Franklin would be involved in the project at some point.
“There was no place to have her be a part of the movie while she was not doing well,” he said. “We didn’t know how sick she was, and we didn’t know how long she had been ill.”
Owens invited Elliott to Franklin’s funeral, and a few weeks later, Elliott screened the film for about 60 members of her family. The reaction was immediate and effusive, and soon afterward, the family agreed to the film’s release.
“It was just interesting seeing her at that age and her voice was crystal clear, and she just sang her heart and soul out, and almost every song makes you cry or makes you feel some kind of way just like all the rest of her music,” Owens said. “So it was it was wonderful. I loved the performance.”
Amazing Grace does not yet have a distributor, but Whittley and Elliott are showing it in New York and Los Angeles to give it a push during Oscar season in hopes it could garner a nomination for best documentary, and it has received resplendent praise since its release.
“This film, it’s going to take you to church,” said Franklin’s nephew Vaughn Franklin.“ You know, I expect to see people up on their feet, tears coming down and holding hands and laughing and joking ... the whole gamut of emotions I think is going to come out there.”
Jill DOBSON Citizen news service
NEW YORK — Mark Wahlberg may be known for his tough guy image thanks to movies including Mile 22 and The Departed, or for his comedic roles like in Ted, but he tugs at the heartstrings in his latest movie, Instant Family. Out Friday, it stars Wahlberg and Rose Byrne as a couple who adopt three siblings. The story is based on director and co-writer Sean Anders’ own adoption experience.
Although there are funny moments showing the challenges of a couple taking in three kids and trying to learn to parent on the spot, Wahlberg says they were careful to be respectful of the process. Ultimately, he also hopes people will consider fostering or adopting children because of all the kids out there who “are in desperate need of a home.”
CITIZEN NEWS SERVICE FILE PHOTO
In this July 27, 2010 photo, Aretha Franklin performs at The Mann Center for the Performing Arts in Philadelphia. More than 40 years after it was filmed, a documentary detailing the making of Aretha Franklin’s groundbreaking and best-selling album Amazing Grace has been released.
Creed II is a knockout
The weight of legacy hangs heavily over Creed II. Not just for most of the characters, who must come to grips with their own family histories.
But also for the filmmakers, tasked with making a sequel to a successful spin-off of a beloved franchise. It would put any film on the ropes. Not this one.
Creed II pulls off a rather amazing feat by adding to the lustre of its predecessor and propelling the narrative into a bright future while also reaching back to honour its past, resurrecting unfinished business from Rocky IV and adding a dash of Rocky III. Pound per pound, the sequel might even be better than its predecessor.
Steven Caple Jr. replaced Ryan Coogler in the director’s chair this time but there is plenty of continuity: Michael B. Jordan returns as Adonis Creed, with Sylvester Stallone by his side as former heavyweight champ and trainer Rocky Balboa.
Also back: Tessa Thompson as Creed’s love interest, Phylicia Rashad as Creed’s mom, and Wood Harris as a coach. Max Kellerman is ringside again as colour commentator.
The sequel pits Creed against man-mountain Viktor Drago, the son of Ivan Drago, who killed Adonis Creed’s father, Apollo Creed, in the ring in Rocky IV. That stirs up trauma for Rocky, who feels responsible for the elder Creed’s demise.
Rocky went on to avenge the death by beating the elder Drago but we also now learn what that disgrace meant for the Dragos.
This film is about ghosts as much as it is a meditation on fatherhood. At one point Kellerman says the showdown between the sons of Creed and Drago is almost like a Shakespearian drama and – laugh if you must – it feels sort of right here.
Desire – or lack of it – plays a key role in Creed II since we meet young Adonis as the new champion, at the top.
Viktor Drago is at the bottom, hauling cement in Ukraine and burning for family redemption.
“My son will break your boy,” Ivan Drago threatens Rocky, who sort of agrees. “When a fighter’s got nothing to lose he’s dangerous,” he warns Creed. “Listen, that kid was raised in hate. You weren’t.” Dolph Lungren returns as the elder Drago and there’s even an appearance by Brigitte Nielsen, who plays Drago’s wife in 1985 and was a real-life wife of Stallone. (Talk about keeping it in the family.)
Caple matches Coogler’s moody, gritty vision of a brutal sport conducted by mostly honourable men trying to outwit each other.
There’s plenty of gore, slo-mos of smashed heads and Rocky trademarks – the glorious montages with uplifting music as fighters prepare for their shot in the ring.
(Prepare to look away if you are fans of massive truck tires – many get horrible beat downs.)
Stallone got his mitts on the script – after having had a role penning all the Rocky films but sitting out writing Creed – and teams up with Cheo Hodari Coker, creator of the Netflix superhero hit Luke Cage. Onscreen, Stallone returns with his dark fedora and small bouncing ball, shuffling about and mumbling, allowing his sad eyes to do the bulk of his acting. It’s in the small moments between crusty Stallone and cocky Jordan where the film finds its sweet spot. “What are you fightin’ for?” the elder man asks the younger.
Jordan proves again that he’s a film force to be reckoned with, capable of searing and savage intensity and yet also goofy softness.
This time, his swagger is tested and he must overcome intense pain and anguish. Watching him get up off the canvas again and again will make even the most uncharitable viewer cheer.
As Adonis, he wants to carve his own legacy away from his father’s: “This is our chance to rewrite history. Our history,” Creed tells Rocky. Thompson and Rashad both temper the piles of testosterone onscreen as women who steer and guide the young Adonis.
Thompson’s character is battling progressive hearing loss and that is handled intelligently by the writers. There’s even a scene when Adonis is punched so hard that he falls in silence and looks over at her, both connected for a moment in enveloping quiet.
The filmmakers, meanwhile, are creating their own family legacy. Both Creed films share the same composer (Ludwig Goransson) art director (Jesse Rosenthal), special effects co-ordinator (Patrick White), costumer (Rita Squitiere) and location manager (Patricia Taggart.) The films even have the same barber for Jordan (Kenny Duncan).
And Coogler didn’t go far – he’s an executive producer.
But while a Creed III is almost guaranteed, there may be dangers ahead if the filmmakers choose to keep reopening old wounds or plundering story lines from the past. And the creep toward more cinematic bombast needs to be watched vigilantly (remember how nuts the last few Rocky films got?)
Having said that, this spin-off franchise is clearly in very good hands – ones that are heavily wrapped, protected by a glove and aiming for your gut. Creed II, a Warner Bros. Pictures release, is rated PG-13 for “sports action violence, language and a scene of sensuality.”
Mark KENNEDY Citizen news service
CITIZEN NEWS SERVICE PHOTO BARRY WETCHER/METRO GOLDWYN MAYER PICTURES
Florian Munteanu , left, and Michael B. Jordan are shown together in a scene from Creed II.
Green Book is guide for black people in mid-century America
DeNeen L. BROW Citizen news service
There’s a scene in the newly released movie Green Book, when Don Shirley, the African- American classical-trained pianist, and his white chauffeur Frank Tony Lip Vallelonga climb into a blue Cadillac before setting out on a 1962 concert tour that would take them through a still-segregated United States, including potentially treacherous stops in the Midwest and the Deep South.
Don Shirley (played by Mahershala Ali) slides in the back seat. His chauffeur Frank Anthony Vallelonga Tony Lip (Viggo Mortensen) takes the driver seat, prepared to leave New York for an eight-week tour. But before they hit the road, a manager slips Vallelonga a Green Book, explaining quickly that black people can’t stay everywhere and that the guide might help the chauffeur find accommodations for Shirley.
The chauffeur glances at the cover of the Green Book and tosses it on the passenger’s seat.
Despite the movie’s title, there are not many more references in the movie to the guide that was essential for black travelers in the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s and 1960s when segregation was in full force in the United States.
The Green Book, which was initially called The Negro Motorist Green-Book when it was first published in 1936, became so vital to black travelers that thousands of black travelers would not make plans without it. The information listed in the Green Book-hotels, motels, cafes and restaurants that welcomed black people – could literally mean life or death for black travelers.
Black travelers who ended up in the wrong place, wrong hotel, wrong street, wrong town were sometimes lynched: beaten, shot, pulled from their cars and dragged out of town. A wrong turn could lead to an encounter with the Ku Klux Klan. Bad timing or bad information could lead a driver into a “sundown town,” cities, towns and communities across the country, where African-Americans were not permitted to after nightfall. Some of those towns had warning signs at their borders, “N-----, Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on You.”
“Sundown towns were throughout the country; they were everywhere, even on Route 66,” Candacy Taylor, a Harvard fellow and cultural documentarian working on a project about the Green Book, told The Post.
“When you have that reality, you need a guide. You need something to tell you where you could stay that was safe... There were lynchings still happening.”
In 1936, Victor H. Green, a postal worker who lived in Harlem with his wife, Alma, encountered discrimination during a car trip. Victor Green decided to begin publishing The Negro Motorist Green-Book.
“Just What You Have Been Looking For!!” Green wrote in the first edition. “Now We Can Travel Without Embarrassment.”
The Green Book was not just for travel through the South or Midwest but included listings in the West and in Northern cities where segregation and discrimination was also common.
The first Green Book documented safe places in metropolitan New York. It listed hotels, tourist homes, service stations, restaurants, garages, taxicabs, beauty parlors, barbershops, tailors, drugstores, taverns, nightclubs and funeral homes that welcomed black people at a time in the country when it was legal for establishments to discriminate by race.
The response to the first guide was so great that the next issue went national, offering listings across the United States. Over the years, the price variedsome cost 75 cents, others $1.50. Salespeople helped distribute the copies. Customers could also order the guidebook in Green’s Harlem office.
“If you’re traveling you don’t have to worry about accommodations – whether this place will take you in or that place will sell you food. That is if you’re white and gentile. If you’re not, you have to travel a careful route like seeking oases in a desert,” an ad in the 1949 edition of the Green Book said.
Except during World War II, the Green Book guide was published annually until 1967, three years after the passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act, said Maira Liriano. She is the associate chief librarian at the Jean Blackwell Hutson Research and Reference Division in the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture-New York Public Library, where 22 Green Books have been digitized. (The 1966-67 issue is not digitized because of copyright concerns. But the library has a physical copy.)
“After the Civil Rights Act is passed, you can’t discriminate on race,” Liriano told The Post. “African Americans could go to any hotel and restaurant and couldn’t be turned away. Once it was the law of land, the Green Book was not necessary.”
The Schomburg has the largest collection of Green Books in the country. “There are other guides,” Liriano said. “But none were published as long as the Green Book.” The Hackley & Harrison’s Hotel and Apartment Guide for Colored Travelers: Board, Rooms, Garage Accommodations, etc. in 300 Cities in the United States and Canada” was published twice in 1930 and 1931.
In the 1949 edition of the Green Book, Wendell P. Alston, a special representative to Esso Standard Oil Co., which became a major distributor of the Green Book, explained just how crucial the Green Book was for African American travelers.
The Green Book offered a way to sidestep danger and humiliation, listing hotels and businesses from New York City to Birmingham, Alabama. Green died in 1960, four years before the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act – which included a prohibition against discrimination in public accommodations.
CITIZEN
This image released by Universal Pictures shows Viggo Mortensen, left, and Mahershala Ali in a scene from Green Book.
Millennials plan to spend big this holiday season – on their pets
Gerald PORTER JR. Citizen news service
Millennials love their pets, and that love’s showing up on their holiday credit-card bills.
The much-discussed generation of shoppers, known for their industry-disrupting tastes, will spend heavily on their pets this holiday season –more than double what consumers overall are expected to pony up, according to a report from PwC.
Millennial households earning $70,000 or more will be the biggest spenders, forking over an average of $183 for pet gifts this holiday, versus the $67 that overall consumers will spend, according to PwC. High-earning millennials, feeling good about the economy, will spend an average of $2,021 on all gifts this holiday season – including for humans.
The holiday spending comes as pet owners increasingly treat their animals like members of their families – a trend known as humanization – boosting spending for premium pet food and toys.
“It’s the same kind of joy you get when you bring home a gift to a small child,” said Lori Kogan, a psychologist and clinical sciences professor at Colorado State University.
Pet stores are trying to cash in on the trend. Petco is rolling out products targeted at gift-seeking consumers, with Christmas and Hanukkah-themed stockings, toys and treats
already on shelves. The company is also gearing its latest dog apparel brand, Reddy, toward millennial shoppers, according chief merchandising officer Alex Tomey.
“Millennial consumers are fanatics about their pets,” Tomey said.
Christopher Rivera, 32, makes that clear. Rivera – who works at an Unleashed by Petco on Manhattan’s Upper East Side – said he’s already bought a laser pointer for his 19-year-old cat, Ajani. With the holidays around the corner, he’s now thinking about what else to put under the tree.
The holiday spending comes as pet owners increasingly treat their animals like members of their families...
“I’m going to just give her some extra treats, maybe one of those Christmas trees that have the catnip in them,” he said, noting that his cat is “equal priority” as friends and family when it comes to holiday gifts.
“My cat is my sole responsibility; she’s a perpetual kid.”
BLOOMBERG PHOTO
A dog, waiting to be groomed, stands near some items from the Holiday Tails Collection at a Petco Animal Supplies store in Seminole, Fla.
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Get tips to improve your bottom line, every Friday with business coach Dave Fuller
bathtub a necessity or a luxury?
some, the answer could be changing
Elizabeth MAYHEW
Special to The Citizen
When I was growing up, it seemed as if every television commercial break featured at least one advertisement that showed people (read: women) enjoying the benefits of a bath.
In the ‘70s and ‘80s, Jean Nate ran ads that showed a woman stepping out of a luxurious bath and refreshing herself with the popular après-bath scent. And who can forget the “Calgon, take me away!” ads? The catchy slogan became a verbal cry for any woman who needed a well-deserved break.
But in today’s frenetic digitally paced world, taking baths – and owning bathtubs – has, to some, become a thing of the past.
If one looks to hotels as a sign of the state of the tub, many of the newer boutique hotel brands such as Canopy by Hilton have done away with bathtubs altogether. Instead, each bathroom is outfitted with a barrier-free walk-in shower.
Gary Steffen, the global head of Canopy by Hilton, says the company conducted years of research, including a survey of more than 9,000 travelers, and found that their guests most valued functionality. Canopy’s rooms feature extra storage for amenities, doorless “open” closets and walk-in showers – all helpful for a traveler with a time-crunched schedule.
The standard rooms at the Draftsman Hotel, a new property in Charlottesville, Va., that is part of Marriott’s Autograph Collection, also have bathrooms outfitted with walk-in showers only. But the bathrooms in suites have tubs as well as walk-in showers. The implication is that the tub signifies luxury, only afforded by those who have the ultimate luxury: the time to soak in that tub.
The no-tub trend applies to homes as well. Millerton, N.Y.based architect John Allee says that almost all of his clients would prefer not to install bathtubs and usually do so only for resale value. When they do request a tub, it’s usually for the master bathroom only, and it’s a free-standing soaking tub (he often uses Victoria + Albert’s contemporary, sculptural Barcelona model).
“Many of my clients are past toddler-time (except for grandchildren) and will put in a tub/ shower combo only if there is a logical place like an extra guest suite,” Allee says. Even his clients with younger kids only install a functional kid-washing tub if they have three or more full baths.
Allee theorizes that his clients’ movement away from installing bathtubs is a combination of our culture’s fastidious hygiene and our busy schedules. Relaxed bathing is a luxury and a therapeutic experience, neither of which seem to be interests of Allee’s busy clients.
Dolores Suarez and Caroline Grant, who head the New Yorkbased design firm Dekar Design, say most of their clients need a tub and a shower. In their experience, it’s often a his-and-her situation, in which one prefers baths and one prefers showers, so creating a designated space for the tub is essential. And if there are children, they say a tub is critical as it’s the safest and most fun way to bathe
them. Michael Rankin, a managing partner at TTR Sotheby’s International Realty, feels differently. As one of the top real estate agents in the D.C. area, he says that his buyers still want tubs, but that they don’t necessarily need them.
“Everyone is too busy, and time is short, but when you finally have a quiet moment – and that may only be every month or two –people still desire a bath,” Rankin says. He equates the bathtub conundrum to that of the dining room:
“A dining room might only get used four or five times a year, but the buyer still wants a house with one.” Rankin also makes it clear that having a tub, particularly in
Ozone treatment, used carefully, can get rid of
Jeanne HUBER
Special to The Citizen news service
Q: I live in a second-floor condo unit. The woman who lived below me for around 10 years was a heavy smoker. I had a cigarette smell in my unit constantly, and although she moved away nearly 20 years ago, I can still smell it. It’s worse in my closets, and it still seeps into clothes stored in drawers. If it is spring or fall when the heat pump fan is not running often, I smell the lingering cigarette odour when I walk in. How can I eradicate this?
A: Cigarette stink lingers long after the smoke has cleared because it penetrates into fabrics, water-based paint and other materials, but isn’t locked in there. For many years, the smelly ingredients gradually seep back into the air or into other objects.
For years, the best advice was to clean or toss out everything absorbent and then to seal the walls, ceiling and floors. To get rid of any remaining odour, people could set out containers of charcoal or other odourabsorbing material. Then ozone treatment came along, and today it’s the go-to solution offered by numerous companies that specialize in cleaning up after fires.
But there are some serious caveats about resorting to ozone, said Brian Christman, a professor of medicine at Vanderbilt University who volunteers as a national spokesman for the American Lung Association. “Ozone makes it hard for people with asthma or heart trouble, and at high enough levels, it can bother anyone,” he said, noting that ozone is a key factor in air pollution.
The ozone treatment gets rid of the smelly bits you can’t scrub away. With three oxygen atoms in each molecule, rather than the two oxygen atoms in the air we breathe, ozone is unstable, so its extra oxygen atom can detach and grab onto many other kinds
a master bathroom, is a sign of luxury that his clients expect to see. “Free-standing spa tubs and walk-in showers with rain shower heads, handheld fixtures and numerous body sprays are master bathroom musts.”
Nancy Taylor Bubes, another top D.C.-area agent and associate broker for Washington Fine Properties, has a personal bias because she loves a bath and doesn’t go a day without taking one. But she has found that the market has changed, particularly in urban areas. “Young professionals are living in smaller places and seem to prefer the walk-in shower convenience because it’s quick and easy,” Taylor Bubes says. Plus, a walk-in shower design is low maintenance; with fewer parts to clean and fewer corners where mold can get caught, walkin showers are a bonus for busy families.
Traditionally, Taylor Bubes says, bathtubs were always installed in the hall bath for the kids’ use, and the master bath was outfitted with a shower only.
But over time, master bathrooms got bigger, and tubs got architecturally fancier.
Eventually high-end buyers began to expect to see free-standing luxury tubs in master suites.
“Sometimes I feel like tubs are the fireplace of the bathroom – they are the centerpiece, the focal point of the bathroom,” she says. “Many people still want both tubs and fireplaces, but the reality is that they don’t use either as often as they might think.”
“Interesting,” Taylor Bubes ponders, “fireplaces and tubs – the places we relax around – could both be on their way out?”
— Elizabeth Mayhew, a Today”show style expert and former magazine editor, is the author of Flip! for Decorating.
cigarette smells
uof molecules. If the molecules are stinky ones, they can change to be non-smelly. But if the molecules are inside the lungs of a person or pet, the result can be lung damage, chest pain, coughing and shortness of breath. Unfortunately, to effectively eliminate odour, the ozone concentration needs to be higher than what is considered safe to breathe, Christman said.
The Environmental Protection Agency, which recommends against buying home air-filtering equipment that generates ozone, reviewed numerous scientific studies and concluded that ozone concentrations that do not exceed public health standards
have little likelihood of removing odours. But the EPA warned that concentrations high enough to work can cause damage to plants, rubber, electrical wire coatings, fabrics, and the dyes and pigments in some artwork, in addition to causing health problems.
Calamus agrees with the warnings. “This is a serious thing,” he said. “People can’t be around. It would be like breathing bleach.” He warns his customers to remove especially vulnerable items before the treatment. To prevent damage to the plastic coating on electrical wires, trained technicians run an ozone generator for only two to four hours at a setting that is safe for wiring.
Then they leave the house closed for two full days, allowing the ozone molecules to do their work.
The technicians air out the space before people and pets move back in.
The cost for ozone treatment starts at $600, which generally covers about 1,000 square feet, Calamus said. Numerous other factors can also affect the cost. Could someone just skip the ozone treatment? “No,” Calamus said. “It’s what takes away that smell. The other things are just helping. If you don’t do ozone, you still have the smell underneath the paint.” But with ozone and the proper prep and follow-up steps, an odour problem can be cured “99 per cent of the time,” he said. The exceptions he’s seen involved basements with mildew and other issues.
If you don’t think you need the full odour-removal process, there are a few other things you can try. Consider getting a portable air purifier that does not generate ozone, or upgrade the filter in your heating and air-conditioning system so it works as an air purifier.
The level of particulate filtering isn’t relevant for your issue, but do search for equipment that includes a thick filter of activated charcoal or another absorbent material.
The EPA’s Guide to Air Cleaners in the Home, 2nd Edition, updated over the summer, includes shopping advice. Find this document online by typing the title into a search engine, such as Google.
You can also try to spot-treat places where the odours are most noticeable.
For example, paint the closet interiors and the insides of your bureau drawers with a shellac-based primer or clear shellac. (It’s wise to avoid oil finishes in confined spaces because they can add unpleasant odors as they age.)
Clean everything before putting it back into these treated spaces.
CITIZEN NEWS SERVICE
A bathtub below an archway in the master suite bathroom of a multi-million-dollar home is in Greenwich, Conn.
CITIZEN NEWS SERVICE PHOTO BY AMRITANSHU SIKDAR
Odor from cigarettes is a lingering issue for some tenants who live near smokers.
Pion Brian Allen Apr 28, 1953 Sept 11, 2018
It is with great sadness that the family of Brian Pion announces sudden passing on Tuesday Sept 11, 2018. Brian will be lovingly remembered by his wife, Leslie and his stepchildren Kimberly (Warren) and Kyle. Brian will also be fondly remembered by his grandchildren Terran and Sophia, his sisters Karen (Myles), Mona (Serge) and brother Louis (Ethel) and by numerous nieces and nephews. Brian was predeceased by his parents Harvey and Marguerite, brother Maurice and nephew Ryan.
Richard David Honey November 19, 1944November 11, 2018
With a heavy heart and great sadness at Ricks passing, we honor his time here on Earth. In loving memory, Richard was the middle child of Charles and Dorthy Honey of Toronto. His childhood was spent in Toronto with three brothers and one sister. Rick is predeceased by his parents and his three older brothers: Peter, Stephen and John. Rick is survived by his wife Dolores, his sister Janet Perry, two sons: Brad Honey, Brock (Karen) Honey, the boys mother Marie Honey, two stepsons: David (Michelle) Dotten, Michael Dotten, grandchildren: Mathew, Jordan, and Bruce Honey ,Jessica Monsma, Owen Teichroeb as well as many nieces, nephews and their children.
Rick spent his career in banking in Toronto, Vancouver and Prince George. He worked for B.D.C. and Canadian Western Bank in Prince George before retiring. He loved teaching small business seminars at the local college. He taught Dale Carnegie courses as well. He made numerous friends wherever he went. His other passions were skiing and golf. As his health deteriorated he spent time volunteering with St. John Hospital Auxiliary Society in Vanderhoof. After Dolores and he married, Rick spent the last ten years on a farm west of Vanderhoof. He loved being outside splitting firewood for the winter - gardening not so much. He enjoyed the farm life even though he thought of himself as a city boy.
He demonstrated great strength and fortitude in his long struggle with cancer and the side effects of treatment. A special thank you to all the doctors and nurses who helped us through the journey. A special expression of gratitude to Drs. Suzanne Campbell and Sergi Filatov. You both gave him hope and kindness beyond words. Rick has laid down his burden and is at peace now.
A celebration of his life will be held on Sunday, November 18 at 2:00 pm at the Community Event Centre, 474 E. Victoria St., Vanderhoof, B.C. In lieu of flowers, donations to St. John Hospital Auxiliary Society would be greatly appreciated.
BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY
HOFF,GarryK.
April18,1948-November05,2018
Itiswithsadheartsthatweannouncethepassingof GarryKentHoff.Garrywillbedearlymissedby Linda;theloveofhislife,hisbestfriendandwifeof 46yearsandbyhisdaughtersJennifer(Doug) Walker,CindyLoewen,Rhonda(Jeff)Hunter.Garry wasproudofhisfamilyandespeciallylovedhis7 grandchildrenJulia,Emmet,Wyatt,Derek,Liam, ZacharyandGracie.Garryispredeceasedbyhis motherChristinaandbrotherGordonandissurvived bysisterDianneBeladoandbrothersBill(Trudy), Jim(Eileen),Greg(Maureen).Garryhadalarge extendedfamilyandmanyfriendsthatenjoyedhis companyduringhislifetimeandwhowerewonderful comfortduringhisbattlewithcancer.Garrywasborn inPrinceGeorge,livingandworkingheremostofhis life,hewaswellknownandrespectedinthelogging community.Helovedtheoutdoorsespecially hunting,boating,fishingandsnowmobiling.A celebrationoflifewillbeheldtohonourGarryat WestsideFamilyFellowshiponDecember1,2018at 1pm.Inlieuofflowers,wesuggestyoucallyour familyandfriendstoshootthebreeze,thatiswhat Garrywoulddo.AspecialthankyoutoMartyHofffor hiscountlesshourshelpingMomandDad.Youwere veryspecialtohim.
LAPP
CLARENCE
May 28, 1930November 14, 2018
Our wonderful father, grandfather, great grandfather, brother, uncle, and friend to many passed away suddenly November 14, 2018. Born in Watrous, SK on May 28, 1930, Clarence arrived in Penny, BC in 1947. A few years later he met the love of his life, Charlotte, and they lived in PG for over 60 years. Clarence is survived by his 6 children, Brenda (Pat), Harry (Colleen), Beverley (Ron), Richard (Robyn), Helen, and Daniel. His 14 grandchildren, Alec (Jenny), Donna (Matt), Lyle (Celia), Diana (Dale), Ben (Lindsay), Doug (Jenny), Annika, Heather Anna (Kyle), Jordan (Mandy), Margaret, Luke, Mary Belle, Soley, Waylon and his 5 great grandchildren, Joey, Jacob, Jack, Owen and Connor. Also his sister Fern of PG. Predeceased by his wife Charlotte, parents William and Mary Agnes, sisters Hazel, Ona and brother Delmar. Clarence had a long career in the logging industry and he and his wife Charlotte were life-long members of The BC Old-Time Fiddlers Association. He enjoyed visiting and playing cards with family and friends and could often be found at the park listening to music or reading his book. He loved going to Wendy’s six days a week for lunch. A celebration of Clarence’s life will be held at a future date.
DISTRICTOFMACKENZIE LIFEGUARDINSTRUCTOR (FULL-TIME)
TheDistrictofMackenzieiscurrentlyaccepting applicationsforqualifiedFull-timeLifeguard Instructorstojoinouraquaticsteam.Thesepositions areresponsibleforensuringthesafetyand enjoymentofouraquaticcustomers.
LocatedinthescenicNorthernRockyMountains Trench185kmnorthofPrinceGeorge,Mackenzie offerssuperbfourseasonoutdoorrecreation opportunitiesandanexceptionalqualityoflife. Housingcostsareamongthemostaffordableinthe province.Residentsareinvolvedincommunitylife withnumerousserviceorganizations,community clubsandgroupscateringtoavarietyofinterest.The localRecreationCentrewitharena,swimmingpool, fitnesscentre,communityhallandlibraryisviewed asthehubofthecommunity.Alltheseamenities withthesafetyaffordedbysmalltownlivingmakes Mackenzieidealforyoungworkingfamilies.
SuccessfulcandidatesmustholdacurrentNational LifeguardService(NLS)(PoolOption)certificate,be acertifiedRedCrossWaterSafetyInstructor,and haveStandardFirstAid/CPR-C-AED.
Thesuccessfulcandidatesmustbeabletointeract withthepublicinaprofessional,tactfulandpositive manner.Thispositionwillappealtoindividualswho areavailabletoworkeveningsandweekends.The successfulapplicantswillbesubjecttoaPolice InformationCheck.
ThisisaunionizedpositionwithintheCUPE3706 BargainingUnit,offeringanhourlywageof$24.49to $27.27dependingonlevelsofcertification.
Ifyoufeelyouarequalifiedforthispositionyouare invitedtosubmityourresumewithacoverletter indicatingFull-timeLifeguardInstructorCompetition. Pleaseprovidedetailsconcerningworkexperience, education,qualificationsandemploymentreferences to: DistrictofMackenzie Bag340-1MackenzieBlvd. Mackenzie,BC,V0J2C0
Attn:DianeSmith,DirectorofCorporateServices Email:diane@districtofmackenzie.ca
TheDistrictthanksallinterestedapplicantsin advance,howeveronlythoseshort-listedwillbe contacted.
R.Radloff&Associatesisacivilengineeringfirm thatrequiresafulltimeAdministrativeAssistant/ Receptionist.Thisteammembermustbedetailed orientedandhavegreatpeopleskills.Oursmall,fastpacedofficehasbeenoperatinginNorthernBCfor over25years.Offeringverycompetitivesalaryand benefitspackages,wearelookingforindependent, hard-workingindividualstojoinourteam.
Qualifications:
-Effectiveandclearcommunicationskillsinboth verbalandwrittenEnglish
-Highcustomerserviceorientation&professional phonemanner
-Detailedoriented&maintainahighlevelof accuracy
-Relationalskills:Abletocommunicateeffectively andprofessionally;abletodevelopandsustain workingrelationshipswithstaffatalllevels;selfmotivated,professional,andflexible -OrganizationalSkills:Abletoallocateone’stime effectively,workunderpressure,andmanagetight deadlines.
-Multi-taskingSkills:Abletohandlemultiple demandsandcompetingpriorities;adapttonew ideasandconstantchange;abletocopewith changingclientneedsanddeliversuccessfulresults withinagreedupontimeframes
-HighlyskilledWordProcessingskills&afamiliarity withsoftwaresuchasWord,AdobePDF,Outlook
Duties:
-Managingawidevarietyofsmallbutessentialfront desktasks
-Editing,printing,andbindingdocuments(letters, reports,etc..)inatimelymannerwithahigh-degree ofaccuracy
-Handlingcustomerqueries&multiplephonelines -Workingwithinateamenvironmenttocomplete assignedprojects
-MaintainingtheestablishedRecordsManagement System
-Otherassignedprojectsandadministrativeduties
Requirements: -2+yearsofofficeadministrationexperience
-Previouscustomerserviceexperience -Abackgroundinengineering/scienceswouldbe beneficial
Ifyouareself-motivatedandhavestrong communicationandorganizationalskillswe encourageyoutoapply.Interestedcandidatesare invitedtosubmitadetailedresumeandcoverletter onorbeforeNovember24th,2018.
Attn:JaneRadloffjradloff@radloffeng.com 250-562-6861radloffeng.com
