The village of Wells is getting better internet service.
On Wednesday, the Ministry of Citizens’ Services announced new upgrades to select rural communities in B.C. and the Cariboo hamlet was one of them.
Minister Jinny Sims said “high-speed internet access is critical for people to learn, do business and communicate with each other. In today’s connected world, reliable and affordable internet access is no longer a luxury – it’s an absolute necessity. These new projects will help ensure residents of Clinton, Deka Lake and Wells have the same opportunities online as British Columbians in urban centres.”
The money to make the connectivity upgrades comes from the Connecting British Columbia Program which invests 50 per cent of the costs, when an application is successful in the process to boost B.C.’s rural communications infrastructure. ABC Communications led the application to better service Wells, as well as the fellow Cariboo communities of Clinton and Deka Lake. The fund is administered by Northern Development Initiative Trust.
Falko Kadenbach, vice-president of ABC Communications, said “throughout the past two summers, British Columbians have been challenged by natural disasters. ABC Communications, along with many other service providers, provides a lifeline to many residents in rural B.C. during these events.
“Programs like the Connecting British Co-
lumbia program play an important role in making these services available, affordable and reliable to British Columbians.”
The effect on Wells and its next door neighbour Barkerville will be both cultural and economic, according to those who live there.
“The connection between arts and the internet have become a lifeline for rural arts organizations,” said Karen Jeffery, executive artistic director of the Sunset Theatre Society in Wells. “In the fast-paced world of having information at your fingertips, it’s imperative that we continue to be able to offer that service to visiting artists wanting to create in a rural environment while still being connected to an urban centre.”
— see BROADBAND, page 3
Man sentenced for rough treatment of baby daughter
Mark NIELSEN Citizen staff
A former Prince George man was sentenced Wednesday to three years probation for treating his infant daughter so roughly he broke several of her bones.
In issuing the sentence, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Marguerite Church agreed with a joint submission from Crown and defence counsels, who told the court the injuries were not inflicted intentionally and have not left any permanent damage.
The man, whose name cannot be published under a court-ordered publication ban against information that would identify the victim to the general public, was only 21 years old at the time, “and clearly did not have the parenting skills to cope with his infant daughter.”
Over the course of 11 weeks, starting when she was just one month old, the girl suffered fractures to three of her ribs and a femur, as well as bruises to her wrists, shoulders, ankles and back and two cuts to the inside of her mouth.
All of the injuries occurred when he was alone with the girl, usually when becoming frustrated while trying to soothe and quiet her but also when he tripped while getting out of a rocking chair and holding her too tightly, bruising her back.
The mother and daughter left the home and in the 4 1/2 years since then, he has refrained from trying to see the girl.
And a few days after the mother and daughter had left him, he called Project
I don’t understand why you hurt her so many times.
— Mother of the victim
Parent North to say he wanted to learn how to handle a baby. Prior to sentencing, the mother delivered an emotion-filled victim impact statement.
“I don’t understand why you hurt her so many times,” she said though sobs as the father looked on from the prisoner’s box.
“I gave you the most amazing thing I could ever give anyone and you broke it. You literally broke her.”
She went on to say she was “bombarded” with questions from physicians, investigators and social workers and worried the girl would be taken away from her. She vowed to protect her daughter from him for the rest of her life and put the blame squarely on his shoulders.
The man, who no longer lives in Prince George, has accepted full responsibility, the court was told.
Church found the sentence falls within the range for the offence albeit at the low end. But she also noted he pleaded guilty to a count of criminal negligence causing bodily harm and has lived up to conditions during the time he has been on bail.
Conditions of his probation include taking councilling.
SIMS
Research project looks to improve Indigenous health
Citizen staff
Two UNBC researchers, together with northern and provincial partners, have embarked on a five-year research project focused on further enhancing Indigenous health in northern B.C.
Dr. Sarah de Leeuw and Dr. Margo Greenwood received $1.3 million as part of a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.
It is the first joint federal research partnership grant of its kind to be held at UNBC and is one of only nine such grants held across Canada. The work builds on a pilot project launched in 2016.
Key partners include numerous Indigenous and non-Indigenous stakeholders across the north, Northern Health, Two Rivers Gallery in Prince George, and the Na-
tional Collaborating Centre for Aboriginal Health. The Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research is contributing an addi-
tional $130,000 in funding.
“We are excited to have started this journey with our partners through which we
will explore ways to celebrate Indigeneity in health care,” said de Leeuw, a Northern Medical Program and geography associate professor.
The project will focus on ways to transform health service delivery in Northern B.C., across existing organizations and professions, into a culturally safe and culturally humble environment in which to provide and receive care. It also aims to inspire new generations of Indigenous youth in the North to enter the healthcare field.
“We are going to look at what each of us in the North can do to help support our common goals in this project,” noted Greenwood, a First Nations Studies and Education professor, and Northern Health vice president of Indigenous Health.
Other project participants include collaborators from the Northern Medical Program, UBC and McMaster University.
UNBC HANDOUT PHOTO
UNBC researchers Dr. Margo Greenwood and Dr. Sarah de Leeuw have launched a five-year research project on enhancing Indigenous health in northern B.C.
Support for Miracle Theatre
Wood Wheaton Supercentre is the production sponsor of Miracle Theatre’s upcoming comedy, Halfway There. Miracle Theatre director Ted Price, Prince George Community Foundation president Al LeFebvre and Miracle Theatre producer Anne Laughlin (far right) were presented a cheque for $5,000 by Laurie Hannon and Mark Chester of Wood Wheaton. Over the past three years Miracle Theatre productions have raised over $144,000 for a number of local charities. Halfway There is being produced for the sole benefit of the Prince George Community Foundation’s Children of Prince George Fund.
Alpine club hosting showing of Free Solo
Frank PEEBLES Citizen staff
fpeebles@pgcitizen.ca
What Alex Honnold did on 3,200 feet of sheer granite is a spire of human achievement.
The New York Times commemorated his ascent in Yosemite National Park thus: “Alex Honnold’s free solo climb of El Capitan should be celebrated as one of the greatest athletic feats of any kind ever.”
His climb – using no rope, no gear, just bodily mechanics – made the cover of National Geographic and Outside Magazine. He was a guest on Jimmy Kimmel who quipped “it’s a miracle you’re alive.” Honnold is the first to reach the summit of the famous mountain without rope, and in all likelihood is the first to even try it. It was four hours of peak exertion after years of mental and physical preparation. It was all documented by a camera crew. This film debuted in Canada only a few weeks ago and will be screened in Prince George next week thanks to the local branch of the Alpine Club Of Canada.
“At first I was thinking about how much I’d love to see Free Solo, but how unlikely it was to ever come to Prince George,” said Angeline Spears, chair of the Prince George Section of the Alpine Club Of Canada. “Then it hit me. Why didn’t the club bring it to Prince George? Do it ourselves?”
The arrangements were made and Spears said more like it are in the works.
For example, the club hosted the viewing of another film The Dawn Wall, earlier this year and will also host a minifestival of rock climbing films later this winter called the Reel Rock Fest. This is in addition to the courses and guided excursions the club does in the local area, which has an almost endless supply of adventures for the activities under the purview of the club: rock climbing, hiking, mountaineering, ice climbing, backcountry skiing and splitboarding, snowshoeing and just about any other form of ambulation in the outdoors.
What they are not is a club devoted to extreme sports. Spears is a second generation member of the club, her father Frank is currently on the national Alpine Club Of Canada (ACC) executive as the vice-president for activities. She said this club, nationally and locally, is for anyone who enjoys even the most basic of outside experiences. It can sustain your casual relationship with nature or it can lead you at your own pace up to the highest peaks of backcountry immersion.
“I’ve heard these stories about ‘the first time I touched the rock, I just knew...’ but that wasn’t not me at all,” she said.
“I went out with my dad at 16 and just wanted to go home. I wanted my cell phone, I wanted to watch TV. But along life went, I got to a different place in my mentality, I went out with my dad again but this time it was different. It clicked. It wasn’t this light bulb in my brain, but I enjoyed it and I wanted to do it again, and it grew from there.”
Now she is an experienced ice climber and rock scrambler.
She is one of about 180 members of the local chapter of the club, half of whom are also members of the UNBC Outdoors Club which gets automatic membership with the ACC.
It’s one of the smaller sections among the 24 that comprise the ACC nationwide, but it is busy. So busy that many of the courses they offer and exertions they lead have more interested people than available spots. One of the local club’s focuses this year is teaching backcountry trip leadership so more trained people can supervise and thus allow for more participants on each activity.
“It’s a great membership, and we want to see it grow. We are a very busy group, there’s a lot of energy, a lot of sharing of information and supporting each other,” Spears said. It makes events like the screening of this film all the more important, as a fundraiser as well as a social connection.
Free Solo will be shown at Famous Players Theatre for a private viewing on Dec. 5 at 7 p.m.
The only way into the show is online purchase via the Eventbrite website. A limited number of seats are available. Click the link on the homepage of the Prince George Section of the Alpine Club Of Canada to check availability.
While you’re there, poke around on their calendar of events to see the courses, trips, social events and meetings you can also take part in throughout the year.
Volleyball team returns home
The College Heights Secondary School girls volleyball team was on its way home Wednesday following the crash that sent seven team members to hospital in Kamloops.
“As of 8:30 p.m. yesterday evening, all girls had been assessed, treated and released from Kamloops hospital,” the
school added in an update.
“Our players and the family members who had traveled to join them stayed together at a hotel.”
Ten players and two adults were travelling to the B.C. tripleA high school championships in Powell River when their van went off Highway 97 just north of Cache Creek early Tuesday afternoon.
‘Broadband connectivity is essential’
— from page 1
In Wells, the arts is a primary industry.
Wayne Walch, chief of the Clinton Volunteer Fire Department, said this upgrade would have practical and potentially life-saving effects as well.
“Broadband connectivity is essential to Clinton,” he said.
“As fire chief, I can attest to the need for reliable connectivity during emergency situations. With the wildfire of 2017 approaching our village, the fire commissioner set up a mobile command centre enabled through broadband connections. They had access to satellite information, news coverage and other levels of government organizations, which greatly assisted in the co-ordination of our efforts and the dissemination of critical information.”
The program’s public investment in these services total $78,862 for Deka Lake (and neighbouring Sulphurous
Autism centre to host Quiet Santa Time
Citizen staff
Kids on the autism spectrum will get a chance to meet Santa – and do so on their own terms – this Saturday.
A Quiet Santa Time will be held Autism BC’s Pacific Autism Family Centre-Prince George Spoke at 1811 Victoria St., second floor, 10 a.m. to noon.
For kids with autism and other related disorders, a “normal” Santa visit can be a nightmare.
Santa visits are usually held in busy locations, such as shopping malls, where noise, smells and other stimulants can be overwhelming and in some cases, frightening to children who have sensory issues.
The event will provide children with a quiet, sensory friendly space where they can meet Santa on their own terms.
Children may interact with Santa in a way that’s comfortable for them; they don’t have to sit on his lap if they don’t want to.
A professional photographer will also be there and will take a digital photograph of each child, and will email the photo to the parent, free of charge, and before Christmas.
No registration is required but RSVP’s are welcome at cwalker@autismbc.ca
For more information, call Corey Walker at 250961-7620 or email to the aforementioned e-mail address.
Alberta buying rail cars to move oil, Notley says
Mia RABSON Citizen news service
OTTAWA — Alberta Premier Rachel Notley says her province is buying enough new rail cars to ship another 120,000 barrels of oil a day, without the federal government’s help.
The premier was in Ottawa Wednesday to deliver a speech steps from Parliament. She said she’s disappointed the federal government hasn’t even officially responded to her request to help buy more rail cars to make up for a shortage of pipeline capacity.
“The federal government should be at the table on this,” she said. “There’s no excuse for their absence.”
While she continues to press Ottawa to step up, she isn’t going to wait for that. Alberta has already started talks with a third party to buy enough rail cars and locomotives to put two more oil trains a day on the tracks, Notley said.
The details of exactly how many cars, who the negotiations are with to buy them and how much it will cost are being kept secret pending the outcome, expected in a few weeks time.
“Alberta’s energy industry and the hundreds of thousands of Canadians who depend on it deserve nothing less,” Notley said.
Lake), allowing an estimated 200 homes and businesses to access high-speed internet for the first time; the Clinton part of the project gets $334,108 to install a fibre-optic network for 327 homes and businesses; and $59,794 in Wells to enhance internet services for 130 homes and businesses. The total value of these three investments is $945,530, which includes the provincial contribution and spending by ABC Communications.
RCMP officer breaks down at Lemaitre inquest
Hina ALAM Citizen news service
BURNABY — A supervisor of an RCMP officer who took his own life in 2013 broke down Wednesday as he read the last few emails exchanged between the two men to a coroner’s inquest.
RCMP Supt. Denis Boucher, who was Pierre Lemaitre’s supervisor when he was moved to the traffic division, tells him they could meet up for coffee and chat in one of the emails.
“Hope you’re making progress in your recovery,” Boucher said, reading from one of his exchanges with Lemaitre.
“I just wanted to let you know that I’ll
always help you if I can.” A few people in the courtroom also wiped away tears as they listened to the interaction between them.
Lemaitre was a sergeant and a media spokesman for the RCMP when he released inaccurate information, which the inquest has heard he wasn’t allowed to correct, about a man who died after a confrontation with police at Vancouver International Airport in 2007.
Lemaitre’s former family doctor and psychologist have told the inquest he had post-traumatic stress disorder from dealing with victims of crime but the incident involving Robert Dziekanski
increased his depression and anxiety. A former media strategist for the Mounties accused the department of betraying Lemaitre, testifying that he had been “hung out to dry” by his superiors who wouldn’t allow him to set the record straight. Atoya Montague told the inquest that Lemaitre was used to tell a false story about the death of Dziekanski, a Polish man who couldn’t speak English and became agitated after wandering around the airport arrivals area for 10 hours. After the incident, Lemaitre told reporters that officers approached a combative man and jolted him twice with a Taser.
Citizen staff
CITIZEN PHOTO BY BRENT BRAATEN
Tough end to great season for CHSS girls
If tragedies bring people closer together, then the College Heights Secondary School community must be the tightest knit of parents, teachers and students in the city right now.
It’s been a tough past few months for the school. A pair of tragic deaths earlier this fall and now Tuesday’s crash of a van carrying the school’s senior girls volleyball team to the provincial championship in Power River. The vehicle left the highway north of Cache Creek early Tuesday afternoon, sending seven of the team’s 10 players to hospital in Kamloops. Thankfully, all of the girls were treated and released by 8:30 Tuesday night. The team came home Wednesday after spending the night at a Kamloops hotel with family members who came down to be with their children.
It must have been terrifying for the players and coaches. Family and friends would have been sick with worry upon hearing the news and would have anxiously awaited for updates, either while waiting here in Prince George or racing down the highway south to Kamloops, trying not to be in an accident of their own on the way.
Thankfully, all of the girls were treated and released by 8:30 Tuesday night. The team came home Wednesday after spending the night at a Kamloops hotel with family members who came down to be with their children.
Still, it could have been much worse. Naturally, everyone must have thought about the Humboldt Broncos, the junior hockey team involved in the horrific crash on a Saskatchewan highway earlier this year that killed 16 people and left many of the survivors with lifelong injuries. While what happened to the College Heights senior girls volleyball team can’t compare to that, it’s still a traumatic event, both for the individuals involved and for the school as a whole. The tears of relief and the long hugs that must have greeted them when the team got home yesterday would be proof of that.
And for the team itself, their relief is surely tinged with sadness. After an impressive fall season where they proved themselves as the best team in the region, they were heading to Powell River ranked in the top 10 in the province in the triple-A division,
brimming with confidence and eager to compete against the best girls teams in B.C. for a chance at a provincial title. Tuesday’s accident took them out of the tournament. For those who think the players and coaches should be more grateful, they aren’t considering the hard work that got the girls to this point – the grueling practices, the tough games, the scraped knees and banged up bodies. At this level, these girls aren’t just playing for fun, they’re playing to win and to end their season away from the court has to be a disappointment. For the eight Grade 12 players, who won’t get to come back next year, they will wonder what could have been.
As with all successful teams, however, the bonds among the College Height senior girls volleyball squad are strong. Many of the girls have been playing volleyball together (and possibly other sports, as well) since
YOUR LETTERS
Let your voice be heard
The deadline has been extended by a week to get our ballots into Elections BC, but they still recommend that we mail them as soon as possible or, better still, that we drop them off at Service BC Centre at 1044 Fifth Avenue in Prince George.
It is so important that we all have our say to strengthen our democracy. Whichever side of the referendum you are on, it is important that your opinion is registered. Some have commented that they can’t decide which of the three choices of proportional representation to vote on. If that is the case, there is a good five-minute quiz at www.referendumguide.ca. If you’re still not sure, you can just vote on the first question to state whether you want to stay with the status quo or whether you would like to join the majority of successful western democracies and vote for PR. In my opinion, all three choices of PR are a great improvement of our current system of first past the post.
I was delighted to read a refreshingly unbiased article in The Citizen on Nov. 21 by Gordon Hoekstra. He is an award-
If we want to get away from this control and instead influence the policies which we believe will ensure a liveable planet for our grandchildren and their offspring, we need to endorse PR.
winning reporter who used to be with The Citizen but is now with The Vancouver Sun. The Sun has been publishing very biased misinformation in their paper. I should like to congratulate The Prince George Citizen for their fair representation. Granted some of the columnists have been very biased with their rants but The Citizen has allowed a fair balance of views. Hoekstra’s information was totally instructive and helpful.
Today on CBC, I heard a discussion on climate change. One of the panelists stated that the best thing an individual can do, to do their bit to combat climate change, is to vote. This comment
wasn’t relative to the referendum but was relevant to general elections. I found this a most astute comment. Climate change is the most important issue of our time but it never rises as an important election issue due to our current dysfunctional electoral system. There is so much corporate power influencing our political parties. If we want to get away from this control and instead influence the policies which we believe will ensure a liveable planet for our grandchildren and their offspring, we need to endorse PR. In this way we can elect MLAs who demonstrate that they will actually lead our province and country towards a sustainable future.
Don’t delay. Mark your ballot and drop it off at Service BC if you can. If that’s not possible, mail it now in order to ensure that it is received by Elections BC before 4:30 p.m. on Dec. 7. We cannot complain if we don’t exercise our right to vote. Vote for democracy to ensure that we have no more majority governments elected by the minority, which leaves the majority of the electorate without a voice. PR will deliver this much more democratic system.
Hilary Crowley Summit Lake
LETTERS WELCOME: The Prince George Citizen welcomes letters to the editor from our readers. Submissions should be sent by email to: letters@pgcitizen.ca. No attachments, please. They can also be faxed to 250-960-2766, or mailed to 201-1777 Third Ave., Prince George, B.C. V2L 3G7. Maximum length is 750 words and writers are limited to one submission every week. We will edit letters only to ensure clarity, good taste, for legal reasons, and occasionally for length. Although we will not include your address and telephone number in the paper, we need both for verification purposes. Unsigned and handwritten letters will not be published.
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Grade 8. Some may have been together since Kindergarten. They’ve been with each other through big wins, bitter losses, painful injuries and long bus rides to out-of-town tournaments. They’re connected through their love of their sport and being part of a team together. The resiliency of these girls to overcome adversity was developed on the court. During the city final last month at CNC against the Kelly Road Roadrunners, College Heights lost the first set. They didn’t panic and they didn’t turn on one another, pointing fingers of blame. Instead, they lifted one another up and rolled over Kelly Road in the next three sets in convincing fashion. Now, away from the court, hurting with the bumps and bruises of a highway crash instead of desperate dives onto a hardwood floor to save a point, hopefully they can lift each other up one more time, with the help of their classmates, their teachers and their families.
Congratulations on a fabulous season, girls, one you will be proud of and look back fondly on for years to come. We’re sorry you didn’t get to finish the year the way you deserved but we’re glad you’re home safe.
— Editor-in-chief Neil Godbout
Origins in the classroom
In Canada, debates about religious views in school have never been as polarizing as those in the United States. Dating back to the Scopes Trial of 1925, discussions about evolution and creationism in American classrooms have continued unabashed. In this century, some American teachers have chosen to downplay or ignore the teaching of evolution altogether, after experiencing pressure from politicians or other groups.
In Canada, controversies around this topic have centred on secondary issues, such as politicians attending conferences where speakers decry evolution and praise “biblical authority.”
Some highprofile backers of conservative political parties have issued similar statements over the years.
to the survey (38 per cent) think the belief that the universe and life originated from specific acts of divine creation should be taught in schools. A larger proportion (46 per cent) disagrees, and 16 per cent are undecided. We went from two-thirds of Canadians siding with evolution, to less than half who think creationism has no place in the classrooms of the nation.
Fewer British Columbians describe themselves as having “a religion” every time the census rolls around.
This month marks the 159th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin, the scientific book that introduced the concept of evolution by natural selection. Research Co. decided to ask Canadians about their views on creationism and evolution and whether both belong in the country’s schools.
Across the country, 68 per cent of Canadians side with the notion that humans evolved from less advanced life forms over millions of years. One in five (21 per cent) believes God created human beings in their present form within the last 10,000 years. The remaining 12 per cent are undecided.
The divide is not too pronounced when it comes to gender, with 22 per cent of women and 19 per cent of men believing in a creator deity. Age plays a larger role in shaping views, with 24 per cent of Canadians aged 55 and over identifying themselves as creationists, compared with 18 per cent of those aged 35 to 54 and 19 per cent of those aged 18 to 34.
There are some regional differences as well. Forty-one per cent of residents of Manitoba and Saskatchewan say they tend to believe in creationism, followed by Alberta at 24 per cent, Atlantic Canada, British Columbia and Ontario at 22 per cent each and Quebec at a paltry 10 per cent.
The findings can be interpreted in several ways. Some may simply look at Canadians who agree with Darwin outnumbering those who choose “the Bible” by a sizable 3-1 margin. But when we asked Canadians if creationism should be part of the school curriculum in their province, the numbers shifted.
More than a third of respondents
The group that is more heavily opposed to teaching creationism in school is the one that most recently wandered through its halls. More than half of Canadians aged 18 to 34 (54 per cent) think creationism should not be part of the school curriculum, compared with 44 per cent among those aged 35 to 54 and 42 per cent among those aged 55 and over.
B.C. is undisputedly the province where most people, 55 per cent, would keep creationism out of schools, followed by Quebec at 49 per cent. Manitoba and Saskatchewan are next at 45 per cent, followed by Ontario at 44 per cent, Alberta at 43 per cent and Atlantic Canada at 41 per cent.
There are many reasons for these regional variances. Over the past two decades, British Columbia has positioned itself as closest to secularism than any other region of Canada. Fewer British Columbians describe themselves as having “a religion” every time the census rolls around. Still, the last municipal election saw candidates running for school board seats –and winning – after outlining creationist views. Quebec has always been a land of contrasts when it comes to religion. The presence of a crucifix inside the National Assembly is debated extensively in a province where fewer residents are attending church services than ever before. In other areas of Canada, a sort of laissez-faire appears to be the norm. In the provinces with the highest proportions of residents who identify themselves as creationists – Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and Atlantic Canada – there are still more evolutionists who are not letting their personal views suggest that a ban on teachers discussing divine creation would be warranted.
— Mario Canseco is president of Research Co.
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Guest Column
Ford tries, fails to fight Canada’s bilingualism racket
According to Canada’s most recent census, only 17.9 per cent of Canadians claim to speak both French and English, which means 82.1 per cent of Canadians are ineligible to occupy the multitude of government positions reserved by law or custom for those fluent in Canada’s “two official languages.”
This includes not only flashy jobs such as prime minister or Supreme Court justice, but 43 per cent of all positions in the Canadian federal bureaucracy, according to a 2017 report by the Clerk of the Privy Council.
Ottawa is aware that this imbalance is not warmly received by all. As the Clerk’s report delicately noted, “for some public servants, mostly employees who did not learn French prior to entering the labor market, they expressed concern that this makes it difficult to acquire the language skills needed to advance in their careers, and could limit access to bilingual positions to individuals who entered the Public Service bilingual.” “Employees who did not learn French prior to entering the labor market” euphemistically alludes to the fact that bilingualism requirements do not discriminate equally but are heavily biased to the benefit of native French speakers in Quebec. About 94 per cent of Quebec’s population of 8 million claims to speak French, with 44.5 per cent claiming to be bilingual - by far the highest rate in the country. A 2017 Treasury Board “snapshot of Canada’s federal public service” revealed that 32 per cent of all executives in the federal government speak French as their first language, though only 21.4 per cent of Canadians do.
Cancer society offers transportation support
In light of the Greyhound bus lines reducing service in British Columbia, the Canadian Cancer Society (CCS) wanted to take the opportunity to reach out to any people living with cancer who may be impacted by this withdrawal of service. No matter where you live, CCS is here to ensure that no Canadian has to face cancer alone.
Like other British Columbians, we were concerned when we learned of Greyhound’s decision to reduce service in the province.
We know that the bus service provided transportation for people facing cancer who had to travel from rural areas to larger city centres for treatment at a lower cost than other transit options.
If you need us, regardless of where you live, we’re ensuring that you don’t have to face cancer alone.
In some communities in B.C., CCS is partnered with the Freemasons Cancer Car Program to help people with cancer receive rides to and from primary cancer treatment appointments, such as chemotherapy and radiation. Our travel treatment fund can help by providing financial assistance for low income individuals who need to travel for cancer treatment. Additionally, if you need to fly to treatment, CCS continues to connect people with cancer with Hope Air, which provides free travel for people with cancer who meet their eligibility guidelines (see hopeair.ca for more information).
We understand that a cancer diagnosis can make you feel alone and raise many questions and concerns, whether you are living with cancer yourself or caring for someone who is. CCS also offers a number of non-transportation related programs to help support Canadians living with cancer. Through our cancer information service, CCS can connect you with cancer information specialists who can answer your questions and provide reliable cancer information.
If you’d like to speak with someone who has been through a similar cancer experience to you, then our peer match program will pair you with a trained volunteer who can provide you with the support you need. You can also join our online community –CancerConnection.ca – if you have cancer or are caring for a loved one with cancer and want to connect with people going through similar experiences. And if you’d like to offer support to people with cancer in your community, CCS offers peer support group facilitator training to help start and sustain community support groups.
No matter where you are or what type of cancer you’re facing, CCS is here for you. For more information on any of the programs or services, or if you have any questions about cancer, please call us at 1-888-939-3333 or visit cancer.ca
Andrea
Seale, executive director, Canadian Cancer Society British Columbia & Yukon PR is better democracy
If you have not voted yet on the referendum on how we elect our government in B.C., consider the following. There are two indisputable facts that rise out of the many articles we have been subjected to on proportional representation.
When power in a society is unequally distributed, that must be rationalized with a patriotic fable intended to present the inequality as natural and proper. In Canada’s case, this has required much myth-making about the country’s being far more functionally bilingual than it actually is, with French a familiar presence in everyday Canadian life. Over the decades, Ottawa has contributed to the myth in ways that range from silly, such as commissioning official flags to honor the tiny French-speaking populations of places like Newfoundland and Saskatchewan, to extravagant, such as pumping millions into French schools in the Yukon.
Provincial politicians play along, particularly in Ontario, which likes to imagine itself as the country in miniature. Though only 11.5 per cent of Ontarians claim fluency in French – with more than 97 per cent of these claiming to speak English, too – Ontario’s provincial government goes out of its way to affect a bilingual persona increasingly indistinguishable from Ottawa’s. Premiers lapse into French during speeches, French is showily affixed to public signage, and the state provides a multitude of Frenchlanguage services for the benefit of what is flatteringly described as a robust “FrancoOntarian community.”
In 2012, the Fraser Institute estimated that Ontario spends $623 million annually on French services.
1. Our current first past the post system nearly always produces a government that only has the support of 30 some odd or 40 some odd per cent of those who voted. Well over half of those who voted have not had their voice heard.
2. Most democracies in the world have moved to a PR type government that insists that the government in power must have the support of more than 50 per cent of those who voted. The majority of those are prosperous, successful, stable governments. Those are facts and they cannot be disputed by the “no” side of the referendum.
Then the simple question is, “should we stay with a system where the government, no matter which party, has the support of considerably less than 50 per cent of voters or should we catch up to those other countries and adopt a system where our governments must have the support of more than 50 per cent of voters?” Which is the better democracy?
That is question No. 1 on the ballot.
If you are unsure how to vote on No. 2 but if you agree we should move on to a proportional system that will ensure our governments’ majorities will be true majorities then simply don’t fill in question No. 2.
Each of the three concepts in question No. 2 will give us a far more proportional government than we have been getting, we will have at least as many MLAs from the north as we currently have, we will have very few more, if any more, MLAs than we do at present, and a committee made up from all parties plus some experts on PR systems will collaborate to develop a system that will meet the unique needs of our province.
You will need to have some trust in our elected officials to take that leap of faith.
But don’t we do that when we elect a government? We take a leap of faith that they will do what is right for the common good in everything they do. Just let them do their job.
Which brings us full circle right back to if we are going to have trust in our government wouldn’t it be better if that government had the support of more than half the voters?
Vote for proportional representation and if you are concerned about the postal service not getting your ballot to Victoria by Dec. 7, it can be taken to the Service B.C. offices at Queensway and Fifth Avenue.
John Warner, Prince George
Stay to the end of the show
Last Saturday, we attended the Christmas recital for Excalibur Theatre Arts Co. Lots of very excited little dancers, lots of amazing older dancers, lots of Christmas music. A good kick off to the season. Each of the dances were done to the best level of the kids involved. They really were excited about their part in the show. What really upset me was the behaviour of the audience. At the end of each of the routines, members of the audience just stood up and left. Some were leaving as the next act came on.
How disappointing for the kids on the stage.
And what appalling behaviour for adults! When you buy a ticket, have the good grace to stay for all the kids. Kathleen Ruth Prince George
Submissions should be sent by email to: letters@pgcitizen.ca. No attachments, please. They can also be faxed to 250-960-2766, or mailed to 201-1777 Third Ave., Prince George, B.C. V2L 3G7. Maximum length is 750 words and writers are limited to one submission every week. We will edit letters only to ensure clarity, good taste, for legal reasons, and occasionally for length. Unsigned or handwritten letters will not be published.
New heights of profligate delusion were reached last summer, when the Liberal administration of former premier Kathleen Wynne announced plans to open an $83.5 million French-language university in downtown Toronto. It would be “governed by and for Francophones,” declared the provincial minister of Francophone affairs. The Franco-Ontarian community is usually said to be to around 600,000, which describes those four per cent of Ontarians who claim French as their “mother tongue.” Though politicians often describe this minority as an essential part of the province, in reality the cultural relevance of French-Ontarians is vastly eclipsed by the 3.8 million Ontarians whose mother tongue is a non-official Canadian language, such as Chinese, Punjabi or Spanish.
The election of conservative populist Doug Ford to the premier’s office in June initially suggested a willingness to collapse some of bilingualism’s architecture of mythology. Upon taking power, Ford eliminated the Francophone affairs minister as a separate cabinet-level office, folding the duties into the portfolio of Attorney General Caroline Mulroney. Last week, as part of a much-promised effort at government costcutting, it was announced that Ontario’s Office of the French Language Services Commissioner would be abolished, and the unbuilt French university in Toronto canceled.
The backlash was swift, coming from every corner of Canada’s bilingual ruling establishment, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Conservative Party leader Andrew Scheer, Quebec Prime Minister François Legault, the Franco-Ontarian history research chair at Laurentian University and so on.
As the data above should suggest, Ford’s interest in scaling back some of Ontario’s overzealous bilingualism infrastructure was defensible on utilitarian grounds, given the small population affected and his province’s infamously dire financial situation. Yet the enormous backlash against his measures –a backlash that has now inspired a partial climb-down – reminds just how ferociously bilingualism’s defenders will react to any suggestion that their favored policy should be judged according to something as crass as numbers.
“The worrying thing is that he compares us to all other minorities in the province,” an employee for the French Catholic school board in Ottawa complained to the Ottawa Citizen. Legault bristled at the thought of French Canadians “being compared to the Chinese or other cultures.”
Ideas, as Eric Hoffer famously stated, have a tendency to evolve from causes to rackets. In Canada’s present multicultural age, official bilingualism long ago mutated from an ill-conceived but forgivable effort to numb French-Canadian separatism into an indefensible racket to preserve a small slice of the public’s disproportionate grip on state power.
To be bilingual in contemporary Canada is to speak a language of little practical use outside the borders of Quebec or the halls of some powerful federal institution. It is precisely the arbitrary nature of this privilege that means it will not be surrendered easily.
J.J. McCullough is a political commentator from Vancouver.
A humpback whale leaps out of the water near Lahaina on the island of Maui in Hawaii in 2005. Over the past several years researchers have noticed a decline in the number of North Pacific humpback whales showing up in their traditional breeding grounds around Hawaii.
Food chain linked to Hawaii’s missing humpback whales
Caleb JONES Citizen news service
HONOLULU — Research into the decline of humpback whale sightings in Hawaii points to a food chain disruption likely caused by warmer ocean temperatures in the whales’ feeding grounds in Alaska, federal officials have said.
U.S. and international researchers, wildlife managers and federal officials were meeting in Honolulu Tuesday and Wednesday to discuss the decline in sightings of humpbacks that traditionally migrate each autumn from Alaska, where they feed during the summer months, to Hawaii, where they mate and give birth during the winter.
Data presented at the meetings shows a strong correlation between warming oceans and the missing whales, said Christine Gabriele, a federal wildlife biologist who monitors humpbacks at Glacier Bay National Park in Alaska.
Three factors have warmed the ocean in Alaska since 2014, the same year scientists noticed a decline in sightings in Hawaii.
There was a change in an ocean current known as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, a warm El Nino period in 2016, and a massive “blob” of warm water in the region.
The Pacific Decadal Oscillation, a current that switches between cool and warm periods over the course of many years, switched to warm in 2014.
Data shows that “it was more favourable for the whales when we were in a cold period, and then less favourable when the (Pacific Decadal Oscillation) switches to
warm,” Gabriele said.
“In Glacier Bay we have definitely seen a much lower calving rate and much lower calf survival as well as juvenile survival,” Gabriele said. “I think there are metabolic issues that are probably related to the production of a calf. We’re not clear if it’s a lack of pregnancy or lack of ability to carry it to term.”
The whales may also be spreading out or moving north to cooler waters to find their prey, which could explain why there are fewer sightings in Hawaii.
Based on the latest large-scale population study, it is estimated that half of all North Pacific humpbacks make the journey to Hawaii each year, putting the total number of whales making the 9,700-kilometre round trip migration at around 11,000 annually. Most humpbacks were taken off the Endangered Species list in 2016 but are still federally protected. Researchers believe that a change in the whales’ food supply in Alaska is behind the decline in sightings in Hawaii.
If they are forced to find new areas to forage, they could be finding new areas to breed, possibly in the uninhabited Northwestern Hawaiian Islands which are not as closely monitored as the main Hawaiian Islands where the decline has been most notably observed.
And while scientists agree that a decline in sightings in both Alaska and Hawaii is because of a change in food, they still don’t know if there is a larger issue that could be impacting the entire habitat.
Science relies on ability to observe
“What we observe is not nature but nature exposed to our method of questioning.” – Werner Heisenberg Werner Heisenberg was a German physicist and one of the fathers of modern quantum mechanics. It was his famous uncertainty principle that unraveled the clockwork predictability of the universe. The basic underpinning of quantum mechanics is the idea of probabilities at the atomic and even multi-atomic scale.
Unfortunately, the idea of uncertainty in the sub-structure of matter has led to questions about whether anything is truly known. And that all ways of knowing are equivalent.
But Heisenberg wasn’t wrong in his statement. Indeed, to a large degree, the evolution of science and technology to its modern synthesis has relied heavily on the abilities of instrument makers and experimentalists. Consider astronomy.
Our ancestors in all cultures looked to the night sky and wondered about the points of light before them. The nightly pageant inspired many cultures to describe figures in the sky and create stories about the constellations of stars above. The reappearance of the sun each morning was accompanied by its own myths.
It wasn’t until various people started to mark star positions, the point on the horizon where the sun rises and sets each day, where the moon rises and sets, and what the wandering stars were doing that astronomy began to take hold.
But despite having a map of the sky, there were still a great many questions. What are the stars made of? Why are some brighter than others or different colours? Why are the paths followed by the wanderers so different from every other star?
With the invention of the telescope, scientists began the long road to being able to answer some of these questions. Galileo was able to observe the surface of Jupiter and see the Great Red Spot. He observed the rings around Saturn. He detected the phases of Venus and Mercury.
He was also able to discern the four major moons and from these observations became convinced the Earth traveled around the Sun. After all, if moons can orbit the massive Jupiter then planets can surely orbit the massive Sun.
He was also able to use the four moons to calculate the distance to the planets and the speed of light. Because his method of questioning was so much more sophisticated than naked eye observation, he was able to expose so much more of the natural world.
Of course, his work wasn’t the end of everything. Calculating planetary orbits
helped Newton develop his law of gravity. The discovery of gravity as the force binding the world and solar system together added a level of predictability to the cosmos.
The discovery of the wave-like properties of light also allowed Newton to unravel the rainbow. Hans Fraunhofer used this visible spectrum from sunlight to demonstrate the presence of earthly atoms in the Sun.
Indeed, helium was discovered from starlight long before it was detected on Earth. Spectroscopy opened up a whole vista and exposed even more of the natural world.
Instruments to detect the heat content of light allowed us to uncover the infrared region of the electromagnetic spectrum. Waves of light not visible to the naked eye, but readily apparent to a thermometer, expanded our capacity to observe the world. It led to the further realization there are a great many wavelengths over which energy is transmitted. Maxwell’s equations laid bare the entirety of the electromagnetic spectrum and led to the development of radios. Detecting radio waves from space has resulted in an entire sub-discipline –radio-astronomy.
Being able to observe the universe across the entire spectrum allowed astronomers to expose even more of nature. Increasing the size and capability of telescopes eventually led to the discovery of other galaxies. Billions and billions of other galaxies with billions and billions of stars. With the launch of the Hubble telescope, even more of the universe became accessible. Nature was laid bare before us. And other orbiting observatories have let us discover planets around distant stars. It is a fair certainty we are not alone in the universe. At the same time as observations made on Earth exposed more of nature to our questions, scientists have begun to visit the planets and other bodies in the solar system. This past week another probe was successfully landed on Mars. The collection of data being obtained about the planet is painting a very different picture. We now know Mars once had free flowing water, there is still liquid water to be found on the planet, and it is a barren landscape which might have once featured primitive life. The nature of the planet is slowly yielding to our persistent method of questioning and much is being revealed. Science is an ongoing process. The more we know, the better our questions and the more we learn.
Managing editor Neil Godbout puts the news in perspective every day, only in
Kings can enjoy view from the top
Ted CLARKE Citizen staff tclarke@pgcitizen.ca
First place overall – sure has a nice ring to it for the Prince George Spruce Kings.
The Kings completed that climb Wednesday night with a 3-1 victory over the visiting Merritt Centennials, bypassing the Chilliwack Chiefs into top spot in the overall standings in the 17-team B.C. Hockey League.
Coming one game past the halfway point of the season, it’s yet another milestone for the Kings (20-7-1-2), who have never been the occupants of the BCHL penthouse this late in a season since they joined the league in 1996.
On this night, they did it with a team commitment to defence that choked the neutral zone and stifled the Cents, the second-most potent offence in the BCHL.
“Credit to the players and the coaches, we’ve got a hard-working group and we see that every night and this is a goal they’ve set this year, to win our division first and foremost, but it would also be an added bonus if they could finish first overall in the league,” said Kings general manager Mike Hawes.
“They’ve got a long ways to go but certainly it’s a little feather in their cap tonight to leapfrog Chilliwack. Merritt might be the best team in that (Interior) division and well-coached and they’re very good offensively. To limit that team to 20 shots tonight is a credit to our players who do a great job defensively. I think there’s only been one game this year we’ve been outshot.”
The Spruce Kings scored three first-period goals and chased starting goalie Vincent Duplessis. Tyler Schleppe was the first King to strike, just 1:58 in, when he jammed in a loose puck in the crease on his third whack.
The second goal came early in the Kings’ first power play of the game and Ben Brar made it happen. He took a drop pass from Patrick Cozzi and from the ringette line dragged the puck around his check to score on a low far-side wrister.
Three minutes later, Sean Donaldson scored his first goal on
Prince George ice since arriving in a November trade from the Trail Smoke Eaters. He was sprung into the clear after Dustin Manz intercepted the puck at centre ice and Donaldson finished off his breakaway with a high backhander in over the shoulder of Duplessis. That came at 14:25 of the first. Cents head coach Joe Martin elected to replace his starter after he’d allowed three goals on 15 shots and Austin Rodin took over in the Merritt crease.
The Cents (18-10-1-1) were stymied by the Kings’ relentless forechecking and airtight group of veteran defenceman who stood their ground and made it difficult to get through into the attacking zone.
Kings goalie Logan Neaton, who had a relatively easy time of it in the first period while his team outshot the Cents 17-6, came up with three big saves in rapid succession in the early stages of the second
period to keep the Cents off the scoreboard.
He flicked out his trapper to deny Mario Gosselin after he took a breakaway pass just inside the blueline. Neaton also came up with a slick save to turn away Brendan Schneider on a 3-on-2 Merritt rush just before the midpoint of the period.
Going the other way, Kings winger Manz had at least five Grade-A chances, three on breakaways, but could not score on Roden, who stopped all 29 shots he faced in relief duty.
Neaton, a 19-year-old Michigan native who played last year for the Fairbanks Ice Dogs of the North American Hockey League, has been drawing plenty of attention from NCAA college scouts and just returned this week from a fly-in visit to the Air Force Academy campus in Colorado Springs, Colo.
The guys waving scholarships like what Neaton has done for the
Accident scuttles girls’ trip, College Heights boys play on
Ted CLARKE Citizen staff
The College Heights Cougars senior girls volleyball team is back in Prince George after a highway accident Tuesday afternoon which forced the team to drop out of the provincial triple-A championship.
The van carrying the Cougars left the road and ended up in the ditch along Highway 97 near Cache Creek. They were traveling to Powell River, where the Cougars were the ninth-seeded team heading into the 16-team provincial tournament.
which started Wednesday and learned of the accident immediately after it happened around noon Tuesday.
Seven people in the van were transported to hospital in Kamloops for treatment and an eighth, who sustained a serious but non life-threatening injury, was airlifted from the scene.
While few details of the accident were being released by School District 57 officials, the College Heights senior boys team was kept wellinformed through social media connections to the girls’ team. The Cougar boys are in Langley for the double-A provincial championship
“I feel like we had more information than anyone else – it kind of was the talk of the tournament (Tuesday) when we got here for opening ceremonies,” said College Heights senior boys head coach Linden Smith.
“Everybody was asking for an update and everything and our guys, going to the same school as all those girls and being friends with them, they had updates right away and were getting texts from the girls.
“Everyone was telling them they were OK and everything is fine. They were more shaken up than anything. There were a couple injuries but they were more disappointed that they didn’t get to go (to their provincials) and our guys feel for them in that regard, for sure.”
The male Cougars were the No. 2-ranked double-A team in the province going into power-pool play Wednesday. see COUGARS, page 8
Kings in his first BCHL season. He came into the game with the league’s best goals-against average (1.98) and his .913 save percentage was among the top four in the BCHL and while he did not get tested often he improved on those numbers.
Averaging 3.9 goals per game through 29 games, the Cents finally put one in 3:16 into the third period. Gosselin made a couple nifty moves with the puck in the Kings end and finished with a low shot to Neaton’s stick side.
The Cents rarely were allowed second-chance opportunities and they were outshot 44-20 in the game.
“They do a great job playing a team game and they don’t stray away from it and they surprised me a little bit with how much they use the end wall,” said Martin, the Cents coach and GM. “I know the boards are bouncy here but I didn’t see a lot that in the video I did
watch heading into tonight. They do a great job at taking the easy stuff away and you have to find a way to find ugly goals and not give them 40 shots and not give them all those breakaways.”
LOOSE PUCKS: The announced attendance Wednesday was 824... The Kings began a sevengame homestand and will host the Langley Rivermen this Friday and Saturday at RMCA. Newlyacquired 19-year-old right winger Garrett Worth is expected to make his Kings debut Friday night. He will face his former team when the Vernon Vipers pay their only regular-season visit to Prince George next Wednesday…. Neaton met with University of NebraskaOmaha Mavericks goalie coach Kirk Thompson last weekend in Chilliwack. Thompson played three seasons for the Spruce Kings (2010-13) before advancing to three-year college career with the Mavericks.
Spruce Kings add offensive punch
Ted CLARKE Citizen staff
The Prince George Spruce Kings have traded a stopper for a finisher.
They completed a deal Tuesday with the Vernon Vipers to acquire Garrett Worth, a five-foot-10, 176-pound forward from Duluth, Minn., in exchange for goalie Bradley Cooper and future considerations.
Worth, 19, emerged as a deadly sniper last season in his native Minnesota in his third year with the Duluth East high school team. As captain of the team, he collected 38 goals and 19 assists for 57 points in 25 games. He also played 22 games for Team North, a select team of high school players, and in 21 games had 12 goals and 10 assists for 22 points. Worth was picked for the U.S. High School All-USA Hockey second team.
He also had 10 productive games in the North American Hockey League for the Minnesota Wilderness, scoring six goals and three assists for nine points. In four games this season with the Vipers, Worth had a goal and an assist.
He has signed a commitment with Arizona State for the 2019-20 season.
“We’re excited to be adding a great
young man and excellent player like Garrett to our team,” said Kings general manager Mike Hawes in a team release.
“He will help strengthen our forward group and provide us with some more offensive punch up front. At the same time we are sad to see Brad Cooper go. He’s been an excellent player and teammate during his time here and we wish him all the best in Vernon.” Cooper, a 19-year-old product of the Burnaby Winter Club from West Vancouver, was in his second season with the Spruce Kings and held the backup role behind starter Logan Neaton. Cooper was the BCHL’s player of the week on the final weekend of the 2017-18 regular season when he posted back-to-back shutouts on the road in Chilliwack and Langley. He had four shutouts in 15 games last year as a BCHL rookie, finishing with a 7-7 record, 2.31 goals-against average and .918 save percentage. In eight games this season he had two shutouts and compiled a 3-5 record with a 2.28 goals-against average and .914 save percentage. Worth arrived in Prince George Wednesday.
Prince George Spruce Kings forward Chong Min Lee looks to make a play against the Merritt Centennials on Wednesday night at Rolling Mix Concrete Arena.
Cats blanked in Spokane
Citizen staff
The Prince George Cougars worked some penalty-killing magic at Spokane Veterans Memorial Arena on Wednesday night but couldn’t conjure up any offensive production and lost 4-0 to the Spokane Chiefs.
The Cougars – now on a threegame skid – saw their Western Hockey League record drop to 10-13-1-2. The Chiefs, meanwhile, improved to 14-8-1-2.
In the game, the Cougars spent a lot of time in the penalty box but managed to kill off all nine of Spokane’s power plays. The Cats only got four man-advantage chances and couldn’t connect.
They couldn’t get on the board at even strength either, despite putting 27 shots on Spokane goaltender Bailey Brkin, who got the shutout. In the Prince George nets, Taylor Gauthier faced 31 shots.
The Chiefs opened the scoring in the first period, a marker by Riley Woods at the 4:13 mark. The goal was his 19th of the campaign.
In the second, Spokane extended its lead to 2-0 when Adam Beckman found the back of the Prince George net at 12:54. Beckman’s goal was his 13th of the season. Woods scored again in the third period and so did Cordel Larson, into an empty net. Wednesday’s game was the first of four this season between the Cougars and Chiefs. The teams will meet again Jan. 9 in Spokane. The Chiefs will visit Prince George Feb. 26 and 27.
The Cougars began this week’s trip with a 5-2 loss Tuesday night to the Tri-City Americans in Kennewick, Wash. The Americans erased a 2-1 second-period deficit with two more goals in the second and two in the third to hand the Cougars their third defeat in the four-game season series.
Vladislav Mikhalchuk had both Cougar goals, his fifth and sixth of the season and both came on power plays. The Americans were outshot 41-24. Isaiah DiLaura took the loss in net for Prince George, while Beck Warm was the winning goalie.
The Cats return home for their last games of 2018 at CN Centre when they host Victoria Saturday night and Sunday afternoon. Fans are being asked to bring plasticwrapped donations of warm winter clothing to toss onto the rink after the Cougars score their first goal in Sunday’s game.
Return of Sherman
Former Seahawks defensive back set for game against former team
Tim BOOTH Citizen news service
Pete Carroll looked to a Seahawks staffer with a bemused expression as he continued to field questions about a player who is no longer part of Seattle’s locker room.
“Pretty good love-fest for Sherm,” Carroll quipped.
Richard Sherman’s impending return to Seattle this week has dominated the conversation and will dominate the attention leading into Sunday’s game between the Seahawks and Sherman’s new team in San Francisco.
For good reason, too. Sherman remains one of the central figures in Seattle’s success during Carroll’s tenure that included the franchise’s only Super Bowl title.
Yet, his time in Seattle ended with a messy separation this past off-season. It was a business decision that ultimately led to Sherman finding a new home in San Francisco. And while the relationship between Sherman and the Seahawks was at times contentious, there was respect for what he helped the franchise accomplish.
“We had tremendous conversations all the way through the stages of what happened at the end,” Carroll said. “Sherm and I were sitting in my office eye-to-eye talking through everything and it was really straightforward and clear and he was handling his own business and he had to be really on top of it, which he was, and did a fantastic job for himself, too. But our communication was great.”
Sherman was a three-time All-Pro during his seven seasons in Seattle. He developed from a lightly regarded fifth-round pick into one of the best cornerbacks in the NFL, an anchor for Seattle’s “Legion of Boom” second-
He should be received with the loudest cheer they could possibly cheer and the warmest of welcomes.
— Bobby Wagner
ary that’s now been completely taken apart due to departures and injuries. Sherman seemed to always find his way into the centre of attention, whether it was talking smack to Tom Brady after beating the Patriots in a 2012 regular-season game, antics directed toward Michael Crabtree after the 2013 NFC championship game, or barking at coaches on the sideline.
It was clearly time for a change and it included some critical comments Sherman had for Carroll on his way out. Carroll said he wasn’t bothered.
“I know who Sherm is. I know him way differently than you guys probably think I do. I think the world of him,” Carroll said. “There was times (when) he was here where he might have said something that I didn’t agree with and had to work through it and all that. He is his own man. He was a stud of a guy when he was here and whatever came out in the transition came out. I could care less about that.”
Cornerback Shaquill Griffin thinks of Sherman as a mentor. When Griffin arrived last year as a rookie, Sherman became a guide to Griffin on how to be a pro.
“I didn’t expect him to take me under his wing the way he did. That was all a surprise to me but I’m grateful that he did,” Griffin
said. “I came in, he had open arms for me and whatever it took. I remember he told me, ‘I won’t give you so much you can’t handle unless I know you can.’ I remember after the first couple of games he was like, ‘You know what, I see you’re ready. I’m going to give you everything I know and we’re going to go from there.’ It’s not like he got paid to do stuff like that. He doesn’t. So you can tell he’s really a genuine guy.”
Bobby Wagner joked there will likely be a lot of trash talking and that he won’t let Sherman get an interception even if that means coming off the sideline to make sure it doesn’t happen.
Wagner became serious when asked about what kind of reception Sherman should receive. Sports radio has been filled with questions about whether Sherman should be lauded or booed upon his return.
“He should be received with the loudest cheer they could possibly cheer and the warmest of welcomes. It’s not like he said, ‘I hate this team, I want to leave.’ There is a business side of everything,” Wagner said. “I would be surprised if anybody booed. If they did boo him they weren’t a Richard Sherman fan in the first place. I think he deserves the applause. He was part of the team that helped bring the city the first football championship. I wouldn’t expect anything other than respect.”
NOTES: LB K.J. Wright is “away from the team” this week doing rehab on his troublesome knee that has caused him to miss the past two games, Carroll said. Wright will not play this week.... Seattle activated RB J.D. McKissic to the 53-man roster. McKissic had been out all season after suffering a foot injury in the preseason and was placed on injured reserve. He returned to practice last week.
Heartbreak for Canada on soccer pitch
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay (CP) — Captain
Nicole Perez’s first-half penalty sent Mexico to the final of the FIFA U-17 Women’s World Cup with a 1-0 win Wednesday that consigned Canada to the third-place match.
Spain defeated New Zealand 2-0 in the earlier semifinal at Estadio Charrua.
Canada will meet New Zealand on Saturday in the consolation final before Spain and Mexico clash in the championship match.
Canada’s previous best finish at the U-17
tournament was seventh in 2008 and 2012.
Despite the loss, this year’s club has matched the fourth-place finish by the Canadian senior team at the 2003 Women’s World Cup. The only Canadian team to do better – male or female – at a FIFA world championship is the 2002 squad, featuring a 19-year-old Christine Sinclair, that finished runner-up to the U.S. at the FIFA U-19 Women’s World Championship on Canadian soil.
Cougars now third seed
from page 7
They opened with a straight-set (25-19, 25-14) win over Mennonite Educational Institute of Abbotsford, then lost a three-set match to Langley Christian (23-25, 25-19, 15-13) and were defeated in a two-set match by No. 1 George Elliott of Lake Country (25-19, 25-19).
“We started off really strong and then we just kind of didn’t play great in our last two games,” said Smith. “We played well but there was room for improvement and we’re going to work on rectifying those things tomorrow morning.”
College Heights has been re-seeded to No. 3 in the 16-team tournament and will begin championship-round play in a best-of-five match today at 11 a.m. against No. 14 Pacific Christian of Victoria.
“We’re on the bottom half of the 16-team crossover so if all goes well we should actually meet up with George Elliott in the semifinal,” said Smith.
The Cougars will have to win their next two matches to advance to the semifinal round.
The Kelly Road Roadrunners are part of the B Pool as the seventh-ranked team and
lost all three of their seeding matches in three sets Wednesday. The north central zone silver medalists lost to Surrey Christian (25-17, 24-26, 18-16), Abbotsford Christian (25-22, 23-25, 15-4), and Richmond Christian (17-25, 25-15, 15-7). Kelly Road is now seeded eighth and will face No. 9 Prince Charles of Creston in a best-offive match today at 9 a.m.
• The College Heights senior girls won the north central zone title two weekends ago in Dawson Creek. The Cougars finished 11th at the 2017 double-A provincial championship in Langley. D.W. Poppy of Langley is taking the place of the Cougars in the provincial tournament, which starts today.
• After winning the north central zone crown two weeks ago at D.P. Todd, the Kelly Road Roadrunners begin play today at the double-A girls provincial tournament in Burnaby. The Roadrunners finished 10th last year at the triple-A provincial championship in Vancouver.
• The Cedars Christian Eagles are ranked 14th out of 20 teams entered in the singleA girls provincial tournament which starts today in Nanaimo.
San Francisco 49ers defensive back Richard Sherman, left, tackles New York Giants running back Wayne Gallman Jr. during a Nov. 12 game in Santa Clara, Calif.
No rust on Matthews in his return
Citizen news service
TORONTO — Auston Matthews
says the last month has been torture watching his Toronto Maple Leafs.
The team’s star centre jumped right back in the action without missing a beat Wednesday.
Matthews had two goals and an assist in his return to the lineup after missing 14 games with a shoulder injury as the Leafs defeated the San Jose Sharks 5-3 for their third straight victory.
“It kind of just eats away at you,” Matthews said of his time on the shelf. “Watching what we’ve been able to do the last month, we’ve played pretty exceptional at times.”
The 21-year-old was exceptional himself early with a goal and an assist on two power plays before adding the exclamation point on a third-period deflection as Toronto pulled even with the surprising Buffalo Sabres atop the NHL’s overall standings.
In between, however, Matthews didn’t think he was all that impressive in his first game back playing on a line with speedsters Kasperi Kapanen and Andreas Johnsson.
“After the first I felt terrible,” Matthews said. “The second period, I didn’t feel too good and then in the third period I got my legs.”
John Tavares, with two, and Patrick Marleau also scored for Toronto (18-8-0), while Mitch Marner added three assists as the Leafs went 3-for-4 on the power play against the league’s best penalty-killing unit.
Frederik Andersen made 38 saves to improve to 8-2-0 over his last 10 starts. Johnsson had two assists.
Tomas Hertl, Joe Pavelski and
Melker Karlsson replied for San Jose (12-9-5), which dropped to 1-2-2 over its last five.
“I don’t think we’re close,” said Sharks centre Logan Couture, who set up two goals. “We show spurts and signs that we’re capable (of playing with the best in the league), but we haven’t put together an effort against a topquality team.”
Aaron Dell made 24 stops as No. 1 goalie Martin Jones got the night off following the Sharks’ 3-2 overtime loss to Buffalo on Tuesday.
“You’re not going to win on the road giving up two power-play goals, (let alone) three,” San Jose
head coach Peter DeBoer said. “Our attention to detail on the penalty kill is as good as anybody in the league.
“It wasn’t tonight.”
Matthews suffered the shoulder injury after taking a clean hit early in the Leafs’ 3-2 victory over the Jets on Oct. 27. He stormed out of the gate with 10 goals and six assists through seven games this season, but was held off the scoresheet in three consecutive outings before getting hurt.
The Calder Trophy winner as rookie of the year in 2016-17, Matthews was sidelined a total of 20 games last season thanks to three separate injuries, including
the same problem with his right shoulder. Matthews made an immediate impact Wednesday, taking a pass from Marner and finding Tavares at the edge of the crease on a power play for his 16th goal of the season at 3:38. San Jose got that one back at 10:40 when Hertl banged the puck past Andersen on a Sharks’ man advantage, but Toronto restored its lead just 39 seconds later on another power play when Matthews ripped his 11th upstairs shortside on Dell.
Matthews – who said Tuesday he’s been “bored to death” as he recuperated – has now scored in
all four career games where he’s returned from an injury.
Erik Karlsson nearly tied it on a point shot for San Jose that hit the shaft of Andersen’s stick later in the period, and the Toronto goalie had to be sharp on another man advantage with stops on Pavelski and Evander Kane.
Nazem Kadri hit the post on a breakaway for Toronto right after his penalty expired, but Tavares made it 3-1 with 16.3 seconds left in the first when he finished off another brilliant pass from Marner for his 17th.
A third assist could have been credited to Leafs assistant equipment manager Bobby Hastings, who got a new stick to Marner after his broke right before the sequence that led to the goal.
“Put him on the scoresheet,” Matthews joked. “That was unbelievable.”
Toronto’s power play connected a third successive time at 1:53 of the second when Marleau fired past Dell for his sixth.
The 39-year-old Marleau, who played 19 seasons with the Sharks, had never scored against his former team in three games as a member of the Leafs, but now has at least one goal against all 31 NHL franchises.
Pavelski got San Jose back within two when he scored his eighth on yet another power play that Andersen could only get a piece of at 4:18.
But Matthews put the game out of reach for good with his 12th at 10:59 of the third when tipped home Johnsson’s shot before Melker Karlsson scored his second with under two minutes to go.
“As of late we’ve been playing well,” Matthews said. “It’s nice to be back and be part of it.”
Dumba making it easier for Wild fans to forget about Burns trade
Dave CAMPBELL Citizen news service
ST. PAUL, Minn. — More than seven years have passed since the Wild traded Brent Burns. Finally, there’s a reason in Minnesota to stop wincing about dealing away one of the NHL’s most potent defencemen.
Matt Dumba leads all blueliners in the league with 10 goals, a rate that translates to 34 scores over a full schedule. That’s a staggering pace that would crush the franchise record, set by Burns with 17 goals in 2010-11, his final season with the Wild. It’s doubtful Dumba can double that, but it’s clear that the $30 million, five-year contract the Wild gave him prior to this season was a worthy investment.
“It’s fun. I think it’s sustainable if I keep hitting the net and not try to do anything too tricked up or too special. Guys are kind of getting it to me more often and finding me more often,” Dumba said last week, after his two goals helped the Wild beat Ottawa 6-4.
He knocked in a wrist shot from the point in the second period to make it 4-1. In the first period, he scored on power-play one-timer in the circle from a slick feed by Mikael Granlund.
“That was an absolute muffin,” Dumba said. Dumba became just the sixth defenceman in the last 30 seasons to reach 10 goals by the 22-game mark, according to the NHL, joining Shea Weber (Nashville, 2008), Al MacInnis (St. Louis, 1997), Ray Bourque (Boston, 1995), Gary Suter (Chicago, 1995) and Jeff Brown (St. Louis, 1992).
“He’s going to score as long as he keeps shooting the puck and hitting the net because his shot is that good,” coach Bruce Boudreau said.
In Minnesota’s 4-3 loss to Arizona on Tuesday night, Dumba had an assist to stretch his streak to seven straight games with at least one point. That’s tied for the team-record mark for defencemen to match Ryan Suter’s run in 2013.
The 24-year-old Dumba, who had 14 goals and 36 assists to go with a plus-15 rating while playing all 82 games last season, when he established career highs in almost every category. The 6-foot, 184-pound Dumba was drafted in the first round in 2012, exactly one year after the Wild traded Burns to San Jose.
“We’ve got to get him to play a little bit both ends of the ice type of thing, but scoring 10 goals as a defenceman is quite the
feat,” Boudreau said.
Ah, but Dumba has come a long way on the defensive end.
“I get to watch the offensive ability and also not have to feel like there’s going to be a 2-on-1 every time he’s on the ice, because I can’t think of a time that he’s made a poor
decision as far as getting in offensively,” goalie Devan Dubnyk said.
That’s how he gets paired with Suter as the Wild’s most-used duo. He’s averaging 24 minutes per game, just 45 seconds behind Suter for the team lead. Dumba’s shooting percentage is also up to a career-best 12.8, the fifth-best on the Wild, another sign of growth.
“I try not to force stuff really too much. I know that really doesn’t help anyone,” Dumba said. “It’s more of letting it come to you and when you’ve got those opportunities, take a shot and hit the net while you do it.”
Burns has averaged 55 points per season over the last seven years, and he won the Norris Trophy in 2016-17 as the NHL’s best defenceman. If Dumba keeps improving, well, he could find himself in the conversation for that award someday.
“Any defenceman will tell you it’s a tough position, tough as a young kid, because we all come from situations where you’re a dominant player or a player who could do a little more,” Dumba said. “When you play against everyone up here that kind of takes a little bit off of that. So it’s just kind of figuring out where you stand, how hard you have to work to be successful.”
Toronto Maple Leafs centre Auston Matthews and San Jose Sharks right winger Kevin Labanc battle for the puck during the second period of Wednesday’s game in Toronto.
DUMBA
Canadian chart-topper hitting CN Centre stage
Frank PEEBLES Citizen staff fpeebles@pgcitizen.ca
The man at the top of the nation’s country chart is also at the top of the Prince George events calendar this week.
If you check the Billboard list for this week, the No. 1 song in Canadian country right this second is Who’s Gonna Love You by Tebey, and Tebey (pronounced Tay-Bay) is at CN Centre tonight. He’s opening for Tim Hicks on the Get Loud Tour, and the audience is once again turning up the volume for this unique artist in the national music family.
What makes him unique is just how many times and ways he’s been high on the charts, both here in Canada and across the line in the U.S. You know that recent Gord Bamford hit Dive Bar? That song was written by Tebey.
You know that smash single Somebody Else Will by Justin Moore? Yup. That also had Tebey’s pen involved.
All on his own, Tebey has been pumping out his own hits since 2003. For a guy who’s only 35, you do the math. Back then, he was playing hockey in his two hometowns of Peterborough and Burlington, and was an all-Canadian wide receiver who gave his verbal “yes” to play Big 10 college football at Northwestern University just before BNA Records called on him to be a recording artist in Nashville (he’d been on a development record deal since he was 15) and legendary music industry figure Bruce Allen offered to be his manager.
Nashville, it was.
With all that Music City momentum also came a writing contract with Warner Chappel Music. When his solo record We Shook Hands (Man To Man) was a U.S. hit, it looked like he was on his way, but future recordings stalled. But his compositions didn’t. He was the scribe for a who’s who of other artists, and that profession soon took over for him.
He wrote a duet for Teairra Mari and Flo Rida, he struck deep in the U.K. for Pixie Lott, got a No. 1 co-write hit with Rex Goudie, Big & Rich used one of his songs, he got a co-write No. 1 hit with Shawn Desman, American girl group Fifth Harmony took on one of his tracks, The Veronicas down in Australia picked one of his songs as their own, and it got even bigger when Cher tapped his skills, and One Direction flew him to London to work with them directly in the studio using a pair of Tebey’s songs. He was going deep as a songwriter, and as the list of credits indicates it was not just for country artists. But country is where his heart was and the stage kept pulling at him.
“The need to perform, the urge, the drive, to get up on stage every night and sing your own songs never really goes away, you just kind of suppress it,” Tebey told The Citizen.
“I was having success writing songs for other people but there was a band called Emerson Drive that took me out on the road with them, they became really good friends of mine early on, and I’d stand side-stage and watch these guys get up and play the songs I had written to thousands of people and I just said to myself ‘I can do that, too, that is where I started.’ And here we are.”
He and Emerson Drive went to the top of the charts together when Tebey really focused on coming back as a performer. Tebey loved the dance track Wake Me Up (When It’s All Over), and he asked Emerson Drive to join him on a country cover version. It made the Top 100 on the Canadian pop charts, it was so well received, and hit No. 5 on the Canadian country charts. He had a handful of singles already under his belt, at that point, that made him an irrefutable star.
Now it seems like he can’t miss. All that hit-writing he did for other people is now working on his own behalf. Earlier this year he released the tune Denim On Denim and it plowed into the Top 5 and is already certified gold, then his current single Who’s Gonna Love You went all the way to No. 1, that’s where it is today, and it’s not even close to finished its trajectory.
“Having songs on the radio is one thing,
but when a song truly connects with the listener, you can see it. It really does grow your brand and grow your fan base, and we saw it with Denim On Denim,” he said about his sing-along song that feels like one of those destined to be more than a onetime hit. It has that memorable quality that keeps a song alive long after the charts let it go.
“It’s crazy to me, because I’ve been writing songs for a long time, I’ve had some success, but that one surprised me, it really, really did,” he said. “I loved it but I thought the chorus was too simple, and I think as a singer it is too easy to complicate things, and I always felt that it needed more, for some reason. But I was obviously wrong, and I’m glad I was. I’ll admit that I didn’t even want to write that title. It was my co-writer Kelly Archer who is from B.C., actually, and she’s a huge songwriter in Nashville, she had two No. 1s last year; she wrote Sleep Without You for Brett Young which was a massive song, and she and I wrote (Somebody Else Will) that went No. 1 last year as well.”
Tebey could honestly put out an album of all the quality songs he’s written for other people but never recorded himself. He said he hadn’t thought of reclaiming them in that way, but he had toyed with the idea of putting the original demo tracks out into
the public. His voice on songs that are only known under other voices would be potentially fascinating for the public, now that they know Tebey for his own stage presence and singing voice – a voice he’s figuratively maintained throughout his writing process. “I learned a long time ago that I don’t want to tailor songs for certain people because I find, if you do that, you’re behind the curve,” he said. “For instance Carrie Underwood doesn’t want to sing again what she just did on the last record, she wants to turn a corner, she wants to try something different, so if you try to write something for what an artist has already done, I find that that doesn’t work. But I will admit, and Gord Bamford knows this, that I wrote Dive Bar with Blake Shelton in mind, just because I thought lyrically it was bang on for him, but they passed on it, that’s totally fine, and I’m good enough friends with Gord that I could be this forward with him and said ‘hey man, if Blake Shelton doesn’t cut it, you can have it. Full stop.’ It’s a little forward, but in the end I was right, I got lucky. I really don’t send out a lot of songs, actually. I like to have higher quality than higher quantity.”
He’ll have his best in full view tonight as he, Andrew Hyatt and headliner Tim Hicks get loud at CN Centre.
Atwood writing sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale
Victoria AHEARN Citizen news service
TORONTO — More than three decades after The Handmaid’s Tale hit shelves, Canadian literary great Margaret Atwood is writing a sequel to the timely dystopian tale, which she says is partly inspired by “the world we’ve been living in.”
The Testaments will be published on Sept. 10, 2019, Toronto-based publisher McClelland & Stewart said Wednesday. First released in 1985, The Handmaid’s Tale was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and won a Gov-
ernor General’s Award with its look at a totalitarian society in which women are treated as a property of the state. Eight million copies have been sold globally in the English language.
The story inspired the hit Emmy Award-winning series of the same name, starring Elisabeth Moss as protagonist Offred, who is enslaved in a commander’s household and forced to bear children for him and his infertile wife.
The series, which debuted in 2017 and airs on Bravo in Canada and Hulu in the United States, is shot in Toronto and has helped push the book back onto the New York Times bestseller list. Other cast members include English actor Joseph Fiennes as the commander, and Amanda Brugel of Pointe Claire, Que., as a prominent household servant in the Republic of Gilead.
The Testaments is set 15 years after Offred’s final scene in The Handmaid’s Tale and is narrated by three female characters, said McClelland & Stewart.
“Dear Readers: Everything you’ve ever asked me about Gilead and its inner workings is the inspiration for this book. Well, almost everything!” Atwood, who lives in Toronto, said Wednesday in a statement.
“The other inspiration is the world we’ve been living in.”
The Handmaid’s Tale has been touted as an eerily prescient cautionary tale as protests and marches about the rollback of women’s rights have unfolded in various parts of the world since the election of U.S. President Donald Trump.
The TV series, which is now filming its third season, has also inspired some protesters to wear the signature red hooded cloaks and white bonnets of the characters in public as a symbol of female empowerment and resistance.
McClelland & Stewart says The Testaments is not connected to the TV series.
“As the enormous recent success of The Handmaid’s Tale has reminded us, Margaret Atwood is one of the greatest writers and most relevant thinkers of our time,” Kristin Cochrane, CEO of Penguin Random House Canada, said in a statement.
Tebey is part of tonight’s show at CN Centre that also features Andrew Hyatt and headliner Tim Hicks.
School cafeteria manager goes bananas
Citizen news service
Early each morning, while students who attend Kingston Elementary in Virginia Beach, Va., are still asleep, school cafeteria manager Stacey Truman sits down at her desk and picks up a banana.
Actually, 60 bananas.
Sometimes, bunches more.
For the next 45 minutes, Truman patiently writes messages of hope on each banana with a black marker.
“Not all those who wander are lost,” she’ll write on one.
“If you can dream it, you can achieve it,” she’ll print on another.
On she goes (“You get what you give” and “Never give up”), until she’s filled several trays with what students call “talking bananas” – a lunch choice offering both positivity and potassium.
Truman, 35, who has worked in Kingston’s cafeteria for nine years, honed her banana-writing skills on messages that she’d tuck into lunchboxes for her two daughters, Mackenzie, 10, and Kayleigh, 7. Last month, she decided that the kids at Kingston might find the idea appealing as well.
“I want them to succeed in life and have an awesome day at school,” she said. “Whenever I can put a smile on all of those little faces, I’ve done my job.”
Although only about 10 per cent of Kingston’s 540 students put bananas on their trays each day, many more have found Truman’s daily words of wisdom delightful, said the school’s principal, Sharon Shewbridge.
“She’s helped the kids to make healthier choices,” Shewbridge said. “But it’s more than that. Stacey genuinely cares and wants them to know they are loved. What I especially appreciate is that she does
this without being directed or asked.”
Truman, who lives in Moyock, N.C., near the Virginia border, leaves her house every weekday at 4:45 a.m. and drives almost an hour to Kingston Elementary. It’s also her job to open the school and turn on the lights every morning before preparing the day’s lunch offerings with two colleagues. After she checks her email, she enjoys the quiet and writes on bananas at her desk before the rest of the cafeteria crew arrives and the morning becomes hectic.
Her husband, Zachery Truman, a computer tech, helps get their girls ready in the mornings, “because I’m not there when they wake up,” she said. For almost two years when her girls were younger, Stacey Truman also worked nights as a waitress because her family needed additional income to pay their bills.
“My girls sacrificed because I only saw them on the weekend, other than when I’d sneak in while they were sleeping to kiss them on the forehead,” she said. “When I was getting their lunches ready the night before, I started writing little notes on their bananas to let them know I was thinking of them and wished I could be there.”
Truman’s own childhood didn’t include “talking bananas.” Her parents divorced when she was nine, she said, requiring
her and her two sisters to move into their grandparents’ house with their mother.
“It was really hard, I wanted to give my daughters a better life than what I lived through and experienced,” she said.
“Writing on a banana is such a simple thing, but it has an impact.”
She may be starting a trend, now that Shewbridge has shared photos of Truman’s bananas on Twitter. When the Dole fruit company heard about Truman’s efforts in early November, they delivered 540 bananas to the school – one for every student.
On that morning, Truman enlisted help from PTA members and friends to come up with sayings and write them on each banana, “otherwise, I’d have still been writing when school let out,” she said.
To use up the extras, she also created a batch of banana “dolphin” fruit cups that were a huge hit.
A longtime collector of motivational sayings, Truman confessed that she gets a little help now from Google so that she’ll always have a large supply of fresh (but not overly mushy) material.
“To see the kids’ faces light up when they choose their bananas is my reward,” said Truman. “And now, kids who bring lunches from home are coming in with talking bananas from their parents. I really love that.”
Mia RABSON Citizen news service
OTTAWA — Installing solar panels already makes sense for most homeowners in Saskatchewan and Ontario but the National Energy Board says the abundance of cheap hydroelectricity in Quebec and Manitoba means solar power may never make much economic sense in those provinces.
In Canada, long, dark winters means it’s unlikely solar will ever become the sole source of electricity anywhere.
“The country cannot run solely on solar panels in the future,” said NEB chief economist Jean-Denis Charlebois. The NEB today is releasing a study of the costs of solar compared to current electricity prices.
It has an online site where Canadians can plug in their city name and find out whether there is an economic case for solar for them now or in the future (www.neb-one. gc.ca/nrg/sttstc/lctrct/rprt/ cnmcsfslrpwr/rslts-eng.html.)
There are 20,000 communities across every province and territory included in the study that looked at both capacity to produce solar based on hours of sunlight, as well as the cost.
The main finding of the study is that no matter the amount of sunlight, the only places where installing and running solar panels is already cheaper than paying for power from the electricity grids are the places where power rates are already really high. That is in Saskatchewan, Prince Edward Island and most places in Ontario.
But the price to buy power from the grid is going up about two per cent a year. Between those increases and rebate programs for solar installations available in some provinces, over the next decade solar will start to beat the power grid price in Newfoundland and Labrador, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Alberta and B.C., the NEB predicts.
The B.C. coast and the eastern edge of Newfoundland are among the worst places to generate solar power because they don’t get a lot of sunshine. NEB
WASHINGTON POST PHOTO BY ROSELINDA DENTITH
Stacey Truman, school cafeteria manager at Kingston Elementary in Virginia Beach, holds a batch of “banana dolphin” fruit cups she made with leftover bananas earlier this month.
It is with indescribable sadness that we announce the passing of our wonderful wife, mother, and grandmother, Lynda Wagner (1947-2018). She was the kindest, calmest, and most giving person any of us could have ever known. She was a humble minimalist who cared about family and feelings above all else. She taught us all to be better people, and has now left an enduring legacy of goodness. She will be missed terribly. We love you. You are a child of the universe…
In lieu of flowers, please donate to Prince George Rotary Hospice House. Celebration of life will be held at Pineview Community Hall at 12:00pm on Sunday Dec 2, 2018.
We sadly announce the tragic and sudden passing of Wesley Stephen Walker (Steve) on November 17, 2018. Steve was born July 5, 1960 in Surrey and moved to Prince George where he graduated from PGSS in 1977. He soon joined the family business and found joy and happiness working along side family. He became a partner and was very proud to be a part of something built by his father and Uncle Art, as his dad was his mentor and his best friend. Steve was a hard worker and everything he did was always done the right way. He loved his late night hockey games and golf games with the guys. Steve was loved and will be missed by his parents, Wesley and Audrey Walker. He is also missed by his devoted wife Wendy Taylor & fur baby Bella. Steve also leaves behind his half sister Mary, sisters Christine, and Jana (Ken Robertson), as well as his brother Todd (Terri). He will be missed by his mother-inlaw Elaine, brothers-in-law Ken (Belinda) and Robert Taylor. Also, Nieces Amanda Cowan, Lyndsay (Ryan Gallo), Phaedra and Tori Robertson and Robyn Raby (Ryan). Nephews Kyle, Ryan and Joey Taylor. In addition, he leaves his great nephews, many uncles, aunts, cousins, extended family and friends who will miss him and remember how wonderfully kind he was to all he came in contact with. Please join the family at Assman’s Funeral Chapel at 11am on December 1, 2018 and say your goodbye, requesting no young children at service. Private burial at Prince George Cemetery. The family asks that in lieu of flowers please consider giving to the Bursary setup in Steve’s name with SD#57 2100 Ferry Ave PG, BC V21. 4R5 Attn: Natasha Rempel.
‘An end to an era...’ The Chimilowski Girls Marie Jackson, has gone on to join her sisters, Rose, Victoria, Helen, Ann, and Daisy. 21st November 2018, 97 years young. Also predeceased by her husband Robert Lloyd George Jackson in 1969. Loved and remembered by her son Robert (Glenis) Jackson and her daughter Linda (Leo) Schwab. She will be greatly missed by her five grandsons and their wives, two greatgranddaughters, and five great-grandsons, and many, many nieces and nephews. She was born 9 October 1921 in Prince George, B.C. She lived under the Cutbanks with her parents Tomasy and Wasylena Chmielowski (Chimilowski) and her sisters. Living in a small house on 7th Avenue, her home was always open to family and friends. She loved to garden, her flower beds were always beautiful, especially her gladiolas. She belonged to the Horticultural Society in the past and won many awards with them as well as at the Fall Fair. She was well known for her baking , especially her pies and her shortbread, her chicken soup, and playing her lottery tickets... She always remembered birthdays (putting small poems in with the cards), and anniversaries of her family, children, grandchildren, sisters, brothers-inlaw, nieces and nephews, even phoning and singing ‘Happy Birthday’. She was independent to the end and always did things her way. She died in her sleep after a short stay at Hospice house. Thanks to ‘the girls’ at Gateway Lodge and Hospice House, and Dr. Tammy Attia for all your care. She loved you all. A former employer, was recently quoted, saying “They don’t make women like ‘Jackson’ any more”. No service by request.
MITCHELL GUNNAR
MOREN
February 9, 1973November 26, 2018
It is with utmost heartbreak that we relay the passing of Mitchell Gunnar Moren on November 26, 2018.
Predeceased by his father Swede, survived by his wife Tanya, the light of his life daughter Molly, mother Bonnie Stack (Bill Thomas), grandmother Nora Larsen and many close friends and extended family who were such an important part of Mitchell’s life. Mitchell’s courage and determination to overcome were inspiring to all. We know he is in a place where the fish are plenty and the beer is cold.
Please stop by between 12pm & 4pm on Saturday, December 1, 2018 at the Hart Pioneer Centre, 6985 Hart Highway, to celebrate Mitchell’s life and share your stories. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the BC Cancer Foundation. Assman’s Funeral Chapel in care of arrangements.
Bowman, Victor Frank, Born October 16, 1939 passed away peacefully after a very brief stay at Rotary Hospice House on November 13, 2018. Vic was a longtime member and past President of the Prince George Rotary Club, Past President and director of the Prince George Chamber of Commerce, Past Chair and board member of the Prince George, Northern BC & BC Construction Associations. Vic is survived by his three sons Kevin (April), Ward (Diana), Bryan (Janice), Nephew Chris (Darlene), Sister Marion Perison, Mother-in-law Mary Westlake, Brothers-in-law Ray Westlake (Lois), Doug Westlake (Jetta), Grandchildren Jessica (Rob), Nickolas (Aisha), Oliver, Hamish, Ewan, Norah & Jordys, Great Grandchildren Tiani, Mckinley and Paisley, many nieces, nephews, cousins and close friends. Vic was predeceased by his wife Lenore, parents Bill and Mabel, brother Andy and father-in-law Ralph Westlake.
There will be no funeral service by request. There will be a Celebration of Life at the Prince George Golf and Curling Club Friday, November 30th from 1:00 to 3:00 PM. Thank you to the Northern Health Home Support team and to all the staff at Hospice House. And a very special thank you to Dr.’s Knoll, Butow and especially Dr. Boucher for her superior care and kindness. Donations in lieu of flowers to Rotary Hospice House or to the charity of your choice.
MONEY IN BRIEF
Currencies
OTTAWA (CP) — These are indicative wholesale rates for foreign currency provided by the Bank of Canada on Wednesday. Quotations in Canadian funds.
Ripping away some red tape
Feds remove regulatory barriers to trade, hope provinces follow suit
Joan BRYDEN Citizen news service
OTTAWA — The federal government is taking immediate steps to remove some regulatory barriers to trade across the country, hoping to persuade provinces to follow its example.
For starters, it is making the national building code available for free, making it easier for the construction industry to access a single, standardized set of rules which the feds hope the provinces will adopt. Until now, downloading the code has cost $350 and provinces have imposed a patchwork of different rules and interpretations on top.
Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic LeBlanc says the move was inspired by Australia, which saw $1 billion worth of additional economic activity after getting its state governments to harmonize their building codes and drop the fee for accessing them.
The markets today
TORONTO (CP) — Canada’s main stock index posted its largest rally in almost three years on Wednesday after U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell suggested a possible pause in interest rate hikes next year. North American markets were calm until Powell’s luncheon speech in New York sparked a rally in risk assets aside from energy.
“We’re seeing both the Canadian and U.S. stock markets posting some pretty decent numbers today,” said Candice Bangsund, portfolio manager for Fiera Capital. She said the market interpreted his comments as dovish, meaning rates won’t move substantially higher, or even that the U.S. central bank may take a pause in early 2019 after its expected increase next month.
“The environment of rising interest rates that we’ve seen this year has created a lot of problems for equity markets, so the prospect of the Fed slowing down or not proceeding as fast as they may have communicated is good news for equity investors,” Bangsund said. The markets have been shaken by Powell’s hawkish tone and insistence that rates would increase in the face of a bright economic outlook.
The S&P/TSX composite index closed up 227.16 points to 15,171.25, the largest single-day gain since Feb. 17, 2016. The cannabis-heavy health-care sector posted the largest gains on the day but the rally was fuelled by the key materials, industrials and financial sectors on the back of rising gold and metals prices and strong bank earnings reports.
The December gold contract was up US$10.20 at US$1,223.60 an ounce and the March copper contract was up 8.75 cents at US$2.81 a pound.
The January crude contract was down US$1.27 at US$50.29 per barrel. Oil prices fell on an inventory report indicating a 10th consecutive week of stockpile building in the U.S. that threatens the global supply/demand balance.
In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average was up 2.5 per cent or 617.70 points to 25,366.43, the biggest gain in eight months. The S&P 500 index rose 61.61 points at 2,743.78, while the Nasdaq composite was up almost three per cent or 208.89 points to 7,291.59.
The rally helped cyclical sectors of the market at the expense of more defensive plays such as telecom and utilities.
The Canadian dollar traded down at an average of 75.18 cents US compared with an average of 75.25 cents US on Tuesday.
“The faster we can get to a national building code, a standardized building code, the better it will be for that whole sector to reduce costs and grow their businesses,” LeBlanc said in an interview Wednesday.
The move comes as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is preparing to hold a first ministers’ meeting next week, at which eliminating interprovincial trade barriers is high on the agenda.
“I’ve been saying to provincial governments that we want to come to the conversation having identified the federal barriers because I don’t pretend that they’re exclusively provincial,” said LeBlanc.
LeBlanc said the federal government is focusing on areas where it can act quickly to remove regulatory hurdles that impede trade between provinces and territories and add unnecessary costs to businesses.
Besides making the building code free, the government is amending federal energy-efficiency regulations for household appliances, clarifying food labelling rules and modernizing meat inspection regulations.
And it is expanding the federal definition of what constitutes vodka to include vodka made from something other than potatoes or grain. The current defini-
tion has meant that a Nova Scotia or Manitoba micro-distillery that makes vodka from apples can’t label it and sell it in other provinces as vodka.
“There are dozens of examples like that, that we’re trying to eliminate federally, quickly because it gives us I think a better story to tell when we’re asking provinces to do their part,” LeBlanc said. At next week’s first ministers’ meeting, he said the federal government will propose movement in other areas, particularly in the trucking industry and food inspection.
Trade between provinces and territories accounts for 20
Supporting a cause, part one
Afamily friend returned not long ago from a trip to an East-African nation, where he oversaw the construction of a job-generating facility. He hopes the venture eventually becomes self-sufficient, benefitting local families perpetually. He and his family were grateful for the chance to experience another part of the world, but this was something beyond “voluntourism.”
Most touching of all was the gratitude of the people they rubbed shoulders with there.
Many of his employees initially came to work barefoot and got by on one modest meal per day. Those few children who were able to attend school studied hard – their hope for a ticket out of poverty – but resources are thin. It is not uncommon for children to write feverishly on a precious piece of paper, then erase the whole page and use it again. This repeats until the page is so frayed it is unusable.
Despite dire circumstances, corrupt government, overcrowding, disease and venomous critters everywhere, the people are generally very happy. What a contrast to the impending December we face here, where maybe one of our biggest fears is to eat too much.
Philanthropy Support a cause that’s important to you; do a good deed to pay it forward; help the needy after a life-changing disaster; volunteer time to a charity you are inspired by – these are just some of the ways many of us give. Yet while the majority of Canadians – over three-quarters of those age 15 and over – make some form of charitable donation over the
“Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising.”
— Mark Twain Call 250-562-2441
course of the year, our giving tends to be mostly reactional and sporadic in nature. Most of us don’t incorporate giving into our overall wealth or estate plan.
Why give?
You might want to express your values in a tangible way. Preserving those values in your lifetime – and beyond – can be greatly enhanced with some financial planning. For many, the first priority is to pass wealth to the next generation, but if you build philanthropy into your wealth transfer plans, some remarkable tax benefits might greatly enhance your impact.
A giving nation
Canadians are broadly a generous people. A 2013 Johns Hopkins study found that Canadian charitable giving is growing faster than the overall economy and represents some 8.5 per cent of our GDP, second only to manufacturing.
Finding the right balance in giving
Giving can take on many forms but it generally exists within two main categories. One end of the spectrum includes charitable donations which are completely spontaneous, in response a disaster. This may also include donations made at a specific time of year, such as the Christmas holidays.
On the other end of the spectrum is strategic giving – structured and targeted. Individuals
can map out their charitable intent and create a lasting impact both during their lifetime and beyond, even perpetually. In some cultures, this is even considered a concrete form of eternal life, having your name live on forever in your legacy contributions.
Regardless of what your personal beliefs are, there are a number of ways to incorporate philanthropic giving into your wealth transfer plans. This more strategic approach can result in a more meaningful giving experience for the donor and create a greater impact on society over the long term.
Giving by the calendar
According to the Canada Helps 2017 Giving Report, of all donations that are made over the course of the year, 35 per cent happen in December, with 10 per cent on the last three days of December alone.
Reflecting on your personal values
When considering any form of wealth transfer, whether it’s passing wealth to heirs or incorporating philanthropy into your long-term plans, it’s crucial to thoroughly assess your own financial needs first. After detailed wealth planning you might determine that this is something you can afford, then pursue it in a more strategic way. There are a range of options available.
If at this point there is a definite surplus, reflect on your current giving approach and how it meshes with your core values. You or a loved one may have a personal history with a life-changing cause, such as a school, a hospital, a faith group, the environment or the arts.
per cent of Canada’s economic activity, worth $370 billion a year. LeBlanc said studies by the Bank of Canada and others have estimated that removing interprovincial trade barriers would add up to two percentage points to Canada’s economic growth rate – equivalent to the projected economic benefit of Canada’s recently concluded free trade agreement with the European Union.
“But we shouldn’t kid ourselves,” LeBlanc added. “That requires major and significant movement and, frankly, what we’re proposing is just a series of initial steps.”
Thinking this through will help form the basis of your plan. It will provide clearer direction for structuring the most ideal approach to make your mark on the world in a way that balances personal, family and tax considerations.
To ensure your specific circumstances are properly accounted for, consult with a qualified tax and estate planning advisor to receive guidance around how charitable giving could fit into your overall financial picture. Also speak openly with them about the potential amounts, timing and the type of your gift.
Considerations
Whatever the drivers behind your giving are, some important personal and strategic questions to examine include:
• How much time and/or financial support are you comfortable committing to a charitable endeavour or giving now and over the long term?
• Do you feel strongly about continuing to support a cause or an organization not only during your lifetime, but after as well?
• What are the potential income tax considerations associated with giving during your lifetime versus through your will? More on this topic next week. Mark Ryan is an investment advisor with RBC Dominion Securities Inc. (Member–Canadian Investor Protection Fund), and these are Ryan’s views, and not those of RBC Dominion Securities. This article is for information purposes only. Please consult with a professional advisor before taking any action based on information in this article. See Ryan’s website at: http://dir.rbcinvestments.com/ mark.ryan
MARK RYAN
CP FILE PHOTO
Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic LeBlanc is shown in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa earlier this month.
Fesitval of Trees delivers holiday magic
Christine HINZMANN
Citizen staff chinzmann@pgcitizen.ca
The 25th annual Festival of Trees, presented by the Spirit of the North Healthcare Foundation, runs through Sunday at the Civic Centre.
This family-friendly community event offers a host of activities which are geared to raise funds for the non-profit organization that provides the money for much-needed equipment at the University Hospital of Northern B.C. where they strive to make a difference for patients right here at home in the north, as the foundation’s saying goes.
The Children’s Workshop was busy last Saturday morning as children decided what to make as their craft. The three children in the Harrop family were busy munching on their newly-decorated gingerbread cookies, trying to decide what to do next.
Garrett, 8, thought he might bypass making one of the many crafts and instead opt out in favour of purchasing a pair of fascinating magic glasses from the gift shop that show a holiday image like a snowman or a snowflake only when looking up at Christmas lights. Callie, 6, thought she might like to decorate a mini tree, while Ashlin, 10, hadn’t decided yet.
“The Festival of Trees kicks off our Christmas season,” mom, Laura, said.
“We attend this event and then we can start decorating at home - Dec. 1 or Festival of Trees, whichever comes first. The kids are super excited to then go home and decorate and so we make all of it a family event.” Laura remembers how the tradition started.
Garrett was two and as they came into the Festival of Trees as the Grinch was making his away through the display of stunning trees. Garrett was thrilled with the Dr. Seuss character and followed him around and since then the family has been back every year.
The Harrops had a discussion about
voting for their favourite tree and Callie took over dad Brendan’s vote. Rumour has it tree No. 35 would be on top of Ashlin’s best-dressed tree list, also known as the People’s Choice award.
“Christmas is a magical time of the year and it’s great spending time together,” Brendan said. “The Festival of Trees gets us into the Christmas spirit as we look at all the beautiful Christmas trees.”
Carol Bajkov has been in charge of the Children’s Workshop for the last 20 years and said it’s always one of the more popular areas of the festival as it’s a good way for families to share in some creativity, while supporting a good cause.
Children can decorate a gingerbread cookie, or a Santa hat, stocking, ornament or a little wreath, create a tinsel wand or make a bow for a toonie, while decorating a little tree or making a Poinsetta basket cost $4. All proceeds go directly to the Spirit of the North Healthcare Foundation, just like all the other funds raised.
“And we have free activities for the kids who’d like to just sit and colour or use some glitter,” Bajkov said. “This area can get so busy some afternoons and we have a core group of volunteers that come back every year and that makes things a lot easier.”
Check out the Festival of Trees schedule for a full list of events at www. festivaloftreespg.ca.
Citizen staff photo
Callie, 6, on Mom Laura Harrop’s knee, Ashlin, 10, Dad Brendan and Garrett, 8, have made attending the Festival of Trees the start of their holiday tradition for the last six years.
One of the impressively decorated trees shines bright at this year’s Festival of Trees at the Prince George Civic Centre.
Childhood trauma leaves deep scars
To this point, much of the study of genocide has focused on how it happens and what it looks like. This is important, but perhaps we need to go further. What do people go through after these crimes have been committed? In particular, what happens to children?
There are many amazing books written by survivors of genocide. Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search For Meaning gives deep insight into the mind of one living through the Holocaust. In Night, Elie Wiesel describes how, as a naïve teenager, he managed to survive Nazi death camps.
Left To Tell by Immaculee Ilibagiza describes how she survived almost certain death as a Tutsi in Rwanda, and came to find peace.
As great as they are, these books do not tell the story of what happens to young children in the face of crimes against humanity. They do not tell us how these children are left to try to make sense of the world, or even their own feelings, as they progress into adolescence and adulthood, and then try to live from day to day.
In many ways, Mouth of Truth: Buried Secrets by Lillian Boraks-Nemetz, is groundbreaking. As a child survivor of the Holocaust, Lillian experienced the confusion and pain of a world that made no sense. Though she survived, she was deeply impacted. A child needs to feel loved and safe, to be cared for, to be able to trust. This was not the case for a child of the Holocaust. Not only did these people experience fear and neglect, they suffered the absolute trauma of living through horrific experiences, along with
Lessons in Learning
Gerry ChidiaC
the guilt of surviving while others did not. It is no surprise, therefore, that child survivors would have many demons to face later in life.
Unfortunately, what happened to Lillian happened to far too many children and continues to happen. In Canada, we are just beginning to come to terms with what people suffered for generations in the residential school system. How many of our immigrants left horror behind them physically, only to find it haunting their dreams? How many among us experienced the terror of abuse growing up in our homes?
In trying to make sense of her own journey, Boraks-Nemetz was impacted by the revolutionary work of Swiss psychologist Alice Miller, who noted that trauma impacts children differently than adults. Left untreated, survivors will sometimes find destructive means to treat their pain, whether it be addiction to drugs or oppressing the powerless. This often destroys families and brings the trauma to the next generation.
Miller notes, however, that children who experienced trauma and abuse often do not become abusers. This is either because they have a “helping witness” in childhood, someone they can go to for love and support, or “enlightened witnesses” in adolescence or adulthood. These are people who have “understood
and recognized the consequences of child abuse.”
Lillian’s book contributes greatly to understanding the efforts of a person working through the consequences of trauma. The Holocaust did not end for Lillian when her country of Poland was liberated from the Nazis. It did not end when she immigrated to Canada, or had children of her own. The fact is, memories never disappear. Perhaps the best that one can do is to understand the trauma and use the lessons learned to heal oneself and thus heal the world.
We live in a hurting world. The quest for global domination which has preoccupied our societies for the past several
hundred years has left deep and scathing wounds in our humanity. We do not need to look far to find them.
Even greater than our collective trauma is our capacity for healing. We have stories which need to be told, and we all have the capacity to become “enlightened witnesses.”
The stories of our survivors need to be heard with compassion, and free of any judgment. Perhaps this is the greatest gift we can give to our children.
Gerry Chidiac is a champion for social enlightenment, inspiring others to find their greatness in making the world a better place. For more of his writings, go to www.gerrychidiac.com.
Iam sure I have mentioned that one year, I finished all of my Christmas shopping by Dec. 1. This year, I am hoping to do the same. As such, my husband and I have been trying to do the bulk of our Christmas shopping online. What that means is we spend two to three hours searching through endless lists of “Great Gifts for 7 Year Old Boys” and “Great Gifts for 5 Year Old Girls.” Eventually, all of the LEGO sets and Polly Pockets look the same and we start fighting about whether or not a rocket ship is an age-appropriate gift (him : yes and me: no). Then we slam the lid of the laptop down in a pique and huff about thinking that the other person knows nothing about gift-giving. Then we apologize and try again the next day. Mostly we just add things to our cart and then review the cart and take the things out again.
We are worse in a real store. In the event that the children are elsewhere and we have a little time to shop, we wander around looking at possible gifts and offer them up to one another, sacrificial-lamb style.
“What about this?” I ask, hopefully. “Meh,” he replies. “I was thinking more along the lines of this.” “Meh,” I reply.
On and on we go until we get hungry and stop for lunch. Afterwards, we are generally tired and pick up the kids to go home to try and convince them that naps are awesome. Maybe this year will be different and the entire process of gift-buying will be fun and inexpensive. I am not holding my breath.
In addition to having all of my shopping done by Dec. 1, our family is trying to make each other gifts this year instead of buying random crap that we don’t need or want. I would like the record reflect that this was my mother’s idea who is now pretending that the rules don’t apply to her and she can buy whatever she wants for any one she wants to buy for. She is retired now and hard to control.
My husband and I are putting our crafty-pants on and hoping for a Christmas miracle of gifts bought (and paid for) and presents made and not too ugly. There may be a possibility that I will hit a craft fair in the meantime and buy something that looks like I could have made it.
Merry Christmas shopping! ‘Tis the season to make merry and fail terribly at crafting.
Lillian Boraks-nemetz is the author of Mouth of truth: Buried Secrets.
MeGan kuklis
Bridge still drives longtime resident
Bridge player extraordinaire and longtime member of the American Contract Bridge League Carl Mitchell says that to his knowledge he is the only Gold Life Master of the ACBL with 2,500 sanctioned masterpoints here in Prince George. Here is his brief history.
Carl was born in 1933 in Galahad, Alta. His father was a butcher who delivered to his customers by horse and buggy until he purchased an old Ford Model T.
The family eventually moved to Strome, Alta. where his father worked in a flour mill.
When Carl was 12 years old his father was invited to come to Crescent Spur with a promise of a job at the Leboe Lumber Company.
Carl said, “Burt Leboe, the owner of the company, was a former school teacher in Alberta. He knew my parents because he taught my mother when she was in school; it was his policy to hire workers that he was connected with.
“My father worked for Alvin Leboe in the woods as a faller and built our family home in Crescent Spur at the same time.
“We did not have a school in Crescent Spur so 12 other children and I walked three miles to and from school every day on the railroad track to get to our school in Loos. There were no roads and very few trains back then so walking the railroad tracks was relatively safe.
After Grade 8 I took Grade 9 by correspondence and by then I was able to take the train into McBride 34 miles away to finish my grades 10 and 11.
“My first job, when I was about 15 years old, was to start up a donkey engine that was used to pull a long conveyer that carried logs from the river to the sawmill. It was my job to watch over the conveyer and shut off the engine when a chain broke – which worked out to be about three times a week. I was paid a handsome sum of 50 cents an hour for this job – while I read comic books all day.
“I started a log scaling job with a Crescent Spur sawmill while I was still in Grade 11 and worked there until 1954 when I enlisted with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.”
Actually, Carl made it known
that he was going to join the navy to serve his country, an RCMP officer - Cpl. Maxwelltold him that he could do better by joining the RCMP.
Carl said, “I was surprised by that vote of confidence. I was kind of naughty in high school and never thought for a minute that Cpl. Maxwell would recommend me. On the other hand, he treated all the young people fair and always gave us a second (and the last) chance if he caught us 16-year-olds with a bottle of beer. He introduced me to the recruiting officer and they accepted me.
“The training was intense but I graduated and I was on my way. I chose the direction of working with the horses and the musical ride. I was practicing for the musical ride and for some reason the horse stopped in his tracks when it came to a jump and I went over and the horse didn’t. The resulting injury was tragic in more ways than one because it prevented me from staying in the Mounties and I was medically discharged.
“My dream job was gone so I went back to log scaling for the rest of my working career.”
Carl was initially introduced to Jenny Rabczak by his sister. Jenny was his sister’s school friend and also her roommate; they married in 1958.
They moved to Cornell Mills where Jenny worked at the post office and Carl worked as a
scaler. They lived there until the mill shut down. Carl worked in the Pine Pass area for one year until Upper Fraser Sawmills hired him for full time work at Upper Fraser.
Jenny was born in Wainwright, Alta. in 1937. She raised the children and worked in the office for the Prince George Homemakers, a homecare and personal support service, dispatching the caregivers as needed.
When the children were ready for high school, they knew it was time to move into Prince George. By this time, Upper Fraser Sawmills was bought out by Northwood and Carl transferred into Prince George for a log scaling supervisory position at Northwood in 1972.
He was at times hired by insurance companies or a bank to help settle court disputes over the miscellaneous sales of salvaged and found logs along the river banks or floating in a lake. In the end, it was the timber mark identified on the logs that eventually settled each court case and the company with the timber mark on the log was the rightful owner.
Carl said, “Scaling was priva-
tized in the early ‘80s. My job at Northwood included hiring the contractors; the contractors did their own hiring and dispatching of the log scalers and they paid their scalers directly.
“Northwood was always a good company to work for. When Canfor and Northwood merged, I had the opportunity to stay with the new company but I decided to retire instead. I retired in 2001 at the age of 68.”
Carl and Jenny had four children; Carolyn (Greg) Dakin, Stanley (Arlette), Ken (Sherry) and Ellen who in turn gave them 10 grandchildren and one great grandchild.
They lived in the Spruceland area on Manson Crescent from 1972-2007 and later moved into a condo in College Heights.
Sadly, Jenny passed away in 2009 after 51 years of marriage.
Carl was involved with the B.C. Senior Games and competed in softball during the summer, along with Syl and Linda Meise for approximately 10 years and joined a curling team in the winter.
He has been a member of the Knights of Columbus for the past 46 years. He is a grand deputy knight and served as
their treasurer for many years. Carl had some health issues and eventually moved into the Chateau. He got active and enjoyed three healthy meals each day and his health started to improve.
Bridge is his passion and he has been playing the game since the age of 20. He plays online and at the bridge club on Brunswick Street.
Carl ended by saying, “I had health issues and I had trouble getting around so I played duplicate bridge with a passion and obtained my Gold Life Master Status. I played six very competitive games a day both online and with other experts. To make a long story short it took me 15 years to reach my Gold Life Master Status.
“I had a good life and raised a great family. There were some ups and downs along the way but we got through it all. One of my biggest disappointments was being medically discharged from the RCMP after all that extensive training. I hit it lucky to get in with Northwood with my scaling profession. I am enjoying my retirement and I hope to hit it lucky again and regain better health.”
Kathy NadaliN
Seniors’ Scene
carl Mitchell holds his certificate for achieving gold Life Master in the american contact Bridge League. He played competitively
Why we shouldn’t worry about preservatives
Tamar HASPEL Citizen news service
In October, pasta maker Barilla got hit with a class-action lawsuit over its jarred pasta sauces. The suit is over the “no preservatives” claim, which is right there on the label. On the ingredient list, though, is citric acid, which can be used as a preservative.
Sigh. Where do I begin?
How about with the safety of preservatives in general, which is something consumers are very concerned about.
One recent consumer poll found that “no preservatives” is one of the top three claims driving purchasing. (The other two are “no artificial ingredients” and “locally produced.”) What consumers say and what they do are often two different things, but a poll does give us some idea about priorities. People want to avoid preservatives.
When I have a question about safety of an ingredient, I often turn to the Center for Science in the Public Interest, which has been carefully watching safety research for decades. They’re a go-to source for me because, when I disagree with them (which I have, recently over Splenda), I think they’re overly conservative, and I prefer a source that errs on the side of caution than the reverse. When they tell you something’s safe, you can be confident.
Lisa Lefferts, senior scientist at CSPI, ran down the most common preservatives for me. Here’s her list (I’m not going to give you the full names of the abbreviated items; if you want them, they’re easily found):
• Citric acid/sodium citrate
• Potassium sorbate/sorbic acid
• Sodium benzoate/benzoic acid/potassium benzoate
• Ascorbic acid (vitamin C)
• Lactic acid
• Sodium nitrite/sodium nitrate
• Sodium diacetate
• EDTA
• Sodium erythorbate/erythorbic acid
• Sulfur dioxide/sulfites
• Calcium propionate
Of those, only one – sodium nitrite/ nitrate, which is used in bacon and other cured meats – is classified as “avoid” (in CSPI’s safe/caution/avoid taxonomy). Several other, less common preservatives are also rated “avoid” (BHA, Propyl Gallate, TBHQ). Most preservatives, though, are safe, and the risk of preservatives as a group is small. It’s also worth noting that salt, sugar and some spices can act as preservatives, but those aren’t the ones people object to.
Oh, and citric acid, the one Barilla is being sued for? Perfectly safe. It occurs naturally in citrus fruits, although for the past hundred years it’s been made at
industrial scale by using a mold (which is then filtered out).
Although citric acid is perfectly safe, it’s not unreasonable to object to a food system that has become increasingly populated with increasingly processed foods. Preservatives are a proxy.
Just as the fight over GMOs is really a fight over industrialized agriculture, the fight over preservatives is really a fight over processed food.
Is it reasonable to be leery of foods that have had their nutrients stripped out of them, and lots of colours, flavours and preservatives added in? Of course it is. Is it reasonable to be dissatisfied with the process by which ingredients are declared Generally Recognized As Safe (GRAS)? Of course it is. Is it reasonable to suspect that some additives we believe to be perfectly safe may turn out to have effects we don’t understand yet? Of course it is.
Too often, the defense of our food system underplays those objections, or overplays the advantages things like preservatives bring to consumers. To hear the U.S. Food and Drug Administration tell it, “Some additives could be eliminated if we were willing to grow our own food, harvest and grind it, spend many hours cooking and canning, or accept increased risks of food spoilage.” Seriously? It’s either the status quo or 1850?
But of course preservatives do prevent food spoilage, which can help fight waste. Shelf-stable food is a boon to the human race, and one of the reasons many fewer of us go hungry in the modern world. Food-additive watchdogs, though, can force food companies to spend the time and the money figuring out if certain additives are really necessary. CSPI co-founder Mike Jacobson pointed out to me in an email that preservatives can be used “as insurance to ensure that foods have adequate shelf life, but can do (and have done) without many. Thirty years ago BHA and BHT were widely used in vegetable oil (and oily foods like potato chips) but are rarely used now.”
When the give-and-take between industry and watchdogs plays out reasonably, consumers benefit. Unfortunately, though, proxy wars don’t always play out reasonably. Consumers want their clean labels, but they also want their massproduced pasta sauce. Producers want to put “no preservatives” on the label to attract the business of the clean-label customers, but they also want to use preservatives. It becomes a race to stupid, culminating in a lawsuit over citric acid.
Tamar Haspel writes Unearthed, a monthly commentary in pursuit of a more constructive conversation on divisive food-policy issues.
Athletics Canada ponders dropping ‘midget’
Citizen news service
Athletics Canada became the latest domestic sport organization to take steps to drop the use of the term ‘midget’ as an age category classification, a move that came days after the Ontario Basketball Association stated its plans to do the same.
“This topic is now on our agenda for our SAGM (semiannual general meeting) in Vancouver next week,” Athletics Canada spokesman Mathieu Gentes said Friday in an email to The Canadian Press. “We will be following suit to pursue eliminating the term midget as an age category descriptor.”
The recent developments were applauded by Dwarf Athletic Association of Canada director Allan Redford, who said change is overdue.
“Like any of the social challenges that groups like ours have, it’s the right thing to do,” Redford said. “I think it gains awareness, it’s respectful, it provides the proper acceptance of people of short stature, people with dwarfism.”
Several sports across the country – notably hockey, football and lacrosse – use the term prominently as a youth age category. However, the word is considered a derogatory slur.
“It is very offensive,” Redford said. “It harkens back to the times of the circus with the freak shows. So every time you hear it, you cringe. It’s just not
something that we like as a group. We don’t like to be identified in that manner.”
OBA executive director Jason Jansson said the organization’s board supported the change and plans will likely be formalized later this season. The midget category will likely be called U15 (under-15) and major midget would go to U16 (under-16), age terms that are currently in use at the sport’s national and international levels.
Athletics Canada, the governing body for track and field in Canada, currently uses age designators for some of its categories.
“It’s not a huge shift for us,” Gentes said.
Regina Scott, who has a two-year-old son with dwarfism, reached out to the local youth basketball association in Guelph, Ont., after noticing the term on a banner at a mall. Changes were soon made and the provincial association was quick to get on board too.
“It’s such a positive change,” Scott said from Guelph. “There is nothing positive about that word.”
Hockey Canada classifies the midget category as players who are under 18 as of Dec. 31 of the current season.
Bantam is for athletes under 15, with peewee, atom and novice used as classifications for younger players.
Depending on the sport, some
local, provincial and national organizations use descriptors like minor midget and major midget as well.
“It was often confusing anyway, so why not just use the actual age?” Redford said. “That makes the most sense to me and eliminating the M-word of course is very important to all of the little people organizations ... basically to take control over what has become a slur.
“Until as a community we can control that word, we won’t have that ability to get the awareness and acceptance that’s been overdue.”
When asked if Hockey Canada might be planning to consider a change to its categories, an organization spokesman declined comment.
Messages left with Football Canada and the Canadian Lacrosse Association were not immediately returned.
“It’s a word that’s dehumanizing and belittling,” Scott said. “It’s usually used to mock somebody. It’s never used in a positive way.”
In its mission statement, the DAAC said it is committed to providing athletic competition, guidance, support, and information to people of short stature and to their families.
“We really are asking now for all organizations across Canada to eliminate the M-word,” Redford said. “Replace it with a proper age category. It will be better for everybody.”
Dispelling deadly myths about flu shots
Citizen news service
Every year as flu season emerges, so too do myths and misconceptions about the flu shot.
Some people avoid getting the vaccine because they don’t think it works well enough to be worth it. Some think they are too healthy to need it. And some worry it will make them sick, possibly remembering a time when they got the shot and fell ill soon after.
Despite years of consistent messages from health-care providers about the dangers of the flu and the protective power (and safety) of the flu shot, many people still hold false beliefs about both. One reason is that the flu, technically called influenza, encompasses a complicated and ever-changing group of viruses, says William Schaffner, an infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville, Tenn.
Some strains cause relatively mild coldlike illnesses. Others induce worldwide pandemics. (And plenty of respiratory viruses – even bad ones and others that strike soon after people get a flu shot – aren’t influenza at all.)
Influenza viruses also mutate constantly and without warning, which means that people’s experiences don’t apply from one year to the next. “As we say in flu, ‘If you’ve seen one flu season, you’ve seen one flu season,’” Schaffner says. “It’s like fighting a new fight every year.”
Some years are less success-
ful than others, despite constant vigilance by a worldwide surveillance network that works year-round to isolate and analyze which influenza strains are circulating. During the months after experts decide which strains to include in the annual flu shot, viruses can mutate and new strains can show up, making the vaccine less effective than originally planned.
That happened last year, when the flu shot was about 40 per cent effective overall, but only 25 per cent effective against H3N2, a particularly virulent strain. The result was a record-breaking number of hospitalizations and deaths among children.
Some experts worry that these effectiveness numbers cause confusion and unnecessary distrust of the vaccine. In years with a good match, people who get the flu shot are 40 to 60 per cent less likely to have to go to the doctor for an influenza infection, according to the CDC. It may not sound like much if people expect the flu vaccine to rival vaccines for measles or polio.
But a vaccine that is 40 per cent effective has a 40 per cent chance of completely preventing infection, Schaffner says, adding up to millions of people protected from a severe illness and hundreds of thousands kept out of hospitals. And complete protection isn’t the only useful measure.
Even when people get the flu, new research shows they are better off if they got the flu shot. In one 2018 study, among
patients with influenza, those who had been vaccinated were 59 per cent less likely to be admitted to the intensive care unit. And even if they did end up in the ICU, vaccinated patients spent an average of four fewer days in the hospital.
Other recent studies have shown that:
• Adults are as much as five times more likely to die of influenza if they’re unvaccinated.
• Children are half as likely to die of influenza if they’re vaccinated.
• Pregnant women are less likely to be hospitalized if they get a flu shot, which also offers protection to their newborns.
The flu vaccine appears to also protect people from long-lasting influenza complications, such as heart attacks and strokes, which become more likely during a period of inflammation that can follow an initial infection, Schaffner says. And the vaccine remains especially important for older people who are frail or on the edge of frailty. For them, the flu can be like the first domino in a series of bad health consequences.
So far, this year’s flu season is starting off slowly and looking fairly conventional, with sporadic cases and small outbreaks starting to occur around the country. The H1N1 strain is circulating, and for now, the vaccine appears to be a good match, says Gregory Poland, director of the Mayo Clinic’s Vaccine Research Group in Rochester, Minn.
But cases tend to peak in February, and there is still
stress fuels unhealthy diet
During the holiday season cookie exchanges, potlucks and other special meals take center stage and making healthy choices can prove difficult. Navigating workplace holiday functions and the overload of treats available at work can be overwhelming. Unfortunately, working in a stressful environment can also cause us to stop doing the things that keep us healthy. Stressed workers can feel as if they don’t have enough time or energy to prepare healthy food or stay physically active.
A stressful work environment where workers experience high demand, low job control and low social support can lead to skipping meals, eating at workstations, extra snacking and a preference for calorie dense foods. When less healthy food options are all that’s available, you can be left with a difficult choice: eat something that’s unhealthy, or nothing at all.
The American Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) conducted research on workplace eating behaviours and found some surprising results, which they released in June, 2018. Of the 5,222 working adults surveyed, 22 per cent obtained food from their workplace at least once per week accounting for an average of 1,277 additional calories consumed per week. The majority of those additional calories (71 per cent) were coming from free foods, available in common areas, which are generally highly processed and high in fat, sugar
Food for Thought
Kelsey lecKovic
and sodium; think brownies, cookies, cakes, candy and pizza. Major barriers to healthy eating in the workplace include a lack of access to healthy food choices and easy access to unhealthy ones. As you become stressed or tired throughout the day, it’s more likely you’ll turn your attention to those free treats.
There are many other factors that influence our individual eating behaviours, including our perception of our own diet quality, our level of fatigue and the social pressure we can receive from coworkers, all of which can cause us to make less healthy choices when feeling stressed.
Justifying behaviour is one way we rationalize unhealthy choices and habits, especially in the workplace. It can be easy to overestimate the benefits of our healthy actions, while underestimating the impact of our less healthy decisions.
It may seem as if an extra slice of birthday cake or a couple Christmas cookies are no big deal, but every diet decision you make contributes to your overall health and most people have a tendency to underestimate the calories they consume. Plus, when you’re eating chips, cookies, and cake every day, are they still just treats? Or a regular part of your diet?
While it may be virtually
impossible to prevent unhealthy foods from being available in your workplace, you can give yourself healthy options by having nutritious snacks on hand. If you have a fridge at work, bring low-fat yogurt, cottage cheese, hummus, carrots and celery sticks, or cut-fruit. No fridge? Stock your desk or locker with dry cereal, peanut butter and crackers, canned fish, mini bagels, low-salt pretzels or nuts. You can help to eliminate at least one barrier to healthy eating by making nutritious options easily available.
Healthy eating in the workplace can contribute to the enhancement of your physical and mental well-being and help reduce absenteeism and increase productivity. Everyone has a role to play in creating and promoting a workplace environment that supports healthy eating.
While there is nothing wrong with showing appreciation for your coworkers by bringing them food during the holidays, or anytime, keep in mind that the types of foods brought into the workplace can impact the dietary habits of the individuals in that environment. Bringing in a box of mandarin oranges or a tray of vegetables with hummus can be just as much of a treat as a box of chocolates or a tray of squares.
For healthy recipes to share with your coworkers, go to Dietitians of Canada’s recipe website at www.cookspiration. com.
Kelsey Leckovic is a Registered Dietitian with Northern Health working in chronic disease management.
plenty of time for things to go haywire. That’s a lesson Poland learned in winter 2000, when he was on the committee that decided which strains to put in the vaccine. That year, the flu season started out looking tame. Then, in early November, a new variant showed up in the United States and spread rapidly, leading to a particularly bad flu season.
Studies consistently show that the most effective motivator is an insistent recommendation from a health-care provider. But fewer than half of Americans got the flu shot last year.
To avoid the annual battle,
some scientists are working on a universal vaccine that would cover all strains. Others are trying to make the flu vaccine easier to deliver with patches or other methods that don’t require needles.
For now, there are nine options, Poland says, including a version for older people, a newly re-approved nasal mist, a vaccine made in cells instead of eggs, and one that can be delivered by jet injector, a highpressure stream of liquid. Poland recommends that people talk with their healthcare providers about which is best for them.
Best children’s books of 2018
Amal Unbound
By Aisha Saeed
(Nancy Paulsen, ages 10 to 13)
Amal, a young Pakistani girl, wants nothing more than to grow up to be a teacher, but her education and dreams are frustrated when she’s forced to go work as a servant in the house of her wealthy, but corrupt, landlord to pay off a family debt. It’s in this house that Amal finds out how strong she is, how persistent she is to learn. It’s also where she fleshes out her personal identity – one filled with hope and fortitude – in a seemingly hopeless situation.
Betty Before X
By Ilyasah Shabazz and Renée Watson (Farrar, Straus and Giroux,
ages 10 to 14)
A stunning portrait of the great civil rights activist and wife of Malcolm X, Betty Shabazz. It delves into her childhood and tells the story of young Betty, a girl carrying the weight of the abandonment of her mother, coupled with the home she found in the ecstatic language of the activists and heroes of her youth. These ingredients, among others laid out in this brilliant and true tale, eventually lead to her becoming a pillar for the black community and a beacon to the history of America.
Harbor Me
By Jacqueline Woodson (Nancy
Paulsen, ages 10 and older)
A concise, beautifully written novel that puts six students in a room, with only one requirement – that they talk. Of course, talking is never about talking. It’s about listening, connecting, engaging and exchanging. The story addresses a world of ills without judgment and
instead shines light on the fact that this is the world young people are growing up in. So many children are coping, and yet Woodson reminds us that these children are still, in fact, children. If nothing more, this book is a gentle reminder that we all must keep striving to be better humans.
The Night Diary By Veera
Hiranandani
(Dial, ages 8 to 12)
A heart-wrenching epistolary novel about Nisha, a half-Hindu, half-Muslim girl whose life is upended after her homeland of India is split into two countries, the other being Pakistan. Her family is unsafe, so they embark on a harrowing journey from Pakistan to the new India to
find refuge. This is a story about identity, the confusing feeling of being torn in two and the absolute necessity that is family.
A Big Mooncake for Little
Star
By Grace Lin (Little, Brown, ages 4 to 8)
A small girl in starry pajamas mixes a cake with her mother, who puts the baked mooncake into the night sky to cool. The mooncake, a bright, warm, golden confection against the backdrop of deep night and stars, entices Little Star, who nibbles on it a bit every night. Lovely and magical.
Blue
By Laura Vaccaro Seeger (Roaring Brook, ages 3 to 6)
Sixteen two-word phrases
form a poem about a particularly sweet lifelong friendship between a boy and a dog in this gentle portrayal of love and loss. Seeger gracefully deploys the color blue to express a deep sense of emotion in ways that are musical, meditative and reassuring.
Dreamers
By Yuyi Morales (Neal Porter, ages 4 to 8)
Morales tells, through illustrations that seem to dance and sing, the story of crossing borders on a bridge of language with her young son. Together they discover picture books and public libraries, and the gifts they brought with them – open hearts, art, poetry and stories –blossom.
Hello Hello
By Brendan Wenzel (Chronicle, ages 3 to 6)
This exuberant, welcoming look at the hundreds of animals who share the planet with humans is both poignant and lighthearted, thanks to Wenzel’s bright, big-eyed depictions of creatures furry, feathered and fanged. Black and white and brightly colored, they parade through these pages in delightful profusion.
The Stuff of Stars
By Marion Dane Bauer, illustrated by Ekua Holmes (Candlewick, ages 4 to 8)
Where do we come from?
Where do babies come from?
The answer is awe-inspiring, energetic and powerful. Holmes’ deep blues and reds and sunlit, primordial skies celebrate the transcendent mysteries of the universe, the blue planet Earth and the birth of a child.
(Don’t) Call Me Crazy: 33
Voices Start the Conversation
About Mental Health
Edited by Kelly Jensen (Algonquin, ages 14 and older) Jensen has brought together sharp and vivid perspectives concerning mental-health challenges. Featuring writers such as Shaun David Hutchinson, Libba Bray, Adam Silvera and Esmé Weijun Wang, this book asks questions and provides real-life experiences and hope for the future.
Hey, Kiddo By Jarrett J. Krosoczka (Graphix, ages 12 and older)
Best known for two lighthearted book series, Krosoczka had unreliable parents, to put it mildly – his mother was addicted to drugs, and he didn’t meet his father until he was a teenager.
This powerful graphic memoir reveals how he survived, thanks to his grandparents and his artistic impulses.
Martin Rising: Requiem For a King
By Andrea Davis Pinkney, illustrated by Brian Pinkney (Scholastic, ages 9 to 12)
In depicting the final months of the Rev. Martin Luther
King Jr., this book celebrates the strength of King’s life and legacy. Brian Pinkney’s watercolor images are bright, warm and inspired, and Andrea Davis Pinkney’s text bursts with information and feeling.
Spooked! By Gail Jarrow (Calkins Creek, ages 10 to 14)
Not only an entertaining description of the 1938 radio broadcast of The War of the Worlds and its aftermath, Spooked! also engagingly discusses facts, drama, fear and the valuable skills of skepticism.
Endling: The Last By Katherine Applegate (HarperCollins, ages 8 to 12) Byx may be an endling, the last of the talking dogs. As she journeys in search of others, she and her friends uncover the plot of a vicious human king. He plans to kill off all rival intelligent species. In this first novel in a compelling fantasy series, shy Byx emerges as a surprising hero.
Front Desk By Kelly Yang (Arthur A. Levine, ages 8 to 12)
Mia Tang is busy! She helps her hard-working parents run an old motel and writes letters for fellow Chinese American immigrants. When the meanspirited owner threatens their business, Mia rallies her many friends.
The author draws upon her childhood in the early 1990s to create a lively historic tale.
Nowhere Boy By Katherine Marsh (Roaring Brook, ages 10 to 14)
An American boy named Max discovers a Syrian war orphan hiding in his family’s basement in Brussels. Ahmed’s passport has been stolen, and he’s afraid the authorities will send him back.
In this riveting novel, both boys decide to go on the run, desperate to find a new, safe home for Ahmed.
Tales From the Inner City
By Shaun Tan (Arthur A. Levine, ages 12 and older)
Animals and humans connect in odd, amazing ways in these luminously illustrated short stories and poems. Kids take a pig on a moonlit romp, a little girl sees the galloping souls of horses, and an enormous cloud of butterflies visits a city. The book reminds us of the grace and needs of others who share planet Earth.
Tight
By Torrey Maldonado (Nancy Paulsen, ages 10 and older)
When Mike starts pushing Bryan to make bad choices and mocks him for saying no, Bryan doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t want to lose his best friend or be seen as “soft” by his tough dad and neighborhood. The suspense mounts as goodnatured Bryan tries to figure things out.
Citizen news serviCe photos
the covers for a Big Mooncake For Little Star, left, and Hey, Kiddo, above.
Coming events
Autism BC Workshop
Autism BC at Pacific Autism Family Spoke, 811 Victoria St., will host a workshop Saturday aimed at parents waiting to get their children assessed to determine whether they have the condition. Registration fee is $10 per family. Parents can register for the workshop through the events section at www.autismbc.ca
Bel Canto Choirs Winter Concert
Saturday from 7 to 9 p.m., Our Saviours Lutheran Church, 3590 Dufferin Ave., join Bel Canto Choirs as they sing songs about Hope, Peace, Joy & Love for the winter season. Guests will enjoy a wide variety of genres, including classical, musicals, and pop. Tickets are $15 for adults, $10 for children. For more information call 250-981-3843 email belcantochoirsinfo@ gmail.com or visit Bel Canto Choirs on Facebook.
How the Grinch Stole Christmas
Saturday at the Prince George Civic Centre, Room 208, 808 Canada Games Way, Richard Bjarnason will be joining Nove Voce to read the original story as the choir performs songs from the cartoon and movie. There are also some wonderfully, awful Grinchy costumes made by Pat Jorgensen, great music based on the Dr. Seuss cartoon and even the group’s own dog Max. Enjoy favourite Grinch songs like You’re a Mean One Mister Grinch, Where Are You Christmas and Welcome Christmas. There will be five show times on Saturday – 10 a.m., 11 a.m., noon, 1:30 p.m., and 2:30 p.m. All tickets are $5 at the door, cash only, arrive early to avoid disappointment.
2018 Artisans Fair
Saturday from 10 a.m. from 5 p.m. at Two Rivers Gallery, 725 Canada Games Way, the Artisans’ fair features professional local artisans selling the latest work brought directly from their studios and workshops. The event is free to the public and a great opportunity to find unique gifts and goodies this holiday season while supporting the local economy and creativity in Prince George. For more information email shop@ tworiversgallery.ca or visit tworiversgallery.ca.
Million Dollar Quartet
Until Wednesday, Dec. 12 Theatre Northwest, 36-556 North Nechako Rd., a Tony nominated musical tells the true story of a meeting in 1956 at Sun Records. Producer Sam Phillips brought together Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins to the studio to hang out and jam their favourite songs together. Featuring iconic hits like Hound Dog, Blue Suede Shoes, Folsom Prison Blues,That’s All Right and Great Balls of Fire. For more information call 250-6140039 or email FOH@theatrenorthwest.com
Holiday colours
Sunscreens safe, review finds
Citizen news service
A Health Canada review of sunscreens has found no new safety concerns, although the federal department found mild to moderate skin reactions can occur in people sensitive to the products’ ingredients on rare occasions.
The review followed Health Canada’s testing earlier this year of 27 sunscreen brands. It did not identify any serious concerns with the quality of the products.
Questions about sunscreen safety arose in summer 2017 when Health Canada received a higher than usual
number of reports describing skin reactions related to the use of Banana Boat products.
Several mothers complained that their babies suffered burn injuries after using a Banana Boat sunscreen. A B.C. woman said her 12-year-old son developed severe blisters after using one of the products.
Health Canada suggests consumers test children, and especially babies, for a reaction before using sunscreen broadly.
This can be done by using a product on a small patch of skin on the inner forearm for several days in a row.
Citizen photo by James Doyle
Local residents take in fireworks on sunday at the Christmas Light up event at Canada Games Plaza.
Startups, old faces take aim at tesla
Citizen news service
In a renovated old cash register factory in suburban Detroit, 300 engineers are toiling away on an all-electric pickup truck and an SUV that they hope can take on Tesla.
All of them work for Rivian, which on Monday will unveil the two vehicles ahead of the Los Angeles Auto Show. It is among a growing line of startups and established automakers looking to enter the fully electric vehicle market.
The influx of vehicles that run solely on batteries almost certainly will pull buyers from the current leader, Tesla, which likely will deliver over 300,000 vehicles worldwide this year.
Established automakers such as Audi, BMW, Mercedes, Porsche, Jaguar-Land Rover, Volkswagen, Hyundai, General Motors, Ford and even vacuum cleaner maker Dyson have promised to roll out new electrics in the next few years. The luxury automakers compete directly with Tesla’s highermargin vehicles, the Models X and S. There also are electric car brands in China. The two biggest brands by sales – BYD Auto, a unit of BYD Corp. in Shenzhen, near Hong Kong,
and state-owned BAIC Group in Beijing – are making inroads into foreign markets.
BYD sells battery-powered buses in the U.S., Japan and Europe. BAIC announced plans in April to manufacture electrics in South Africa. Its EC series, starting at 150,000 yuan ($22,000), is China’s top-selling electric car. Sweden’s Volvo Cars, owned by China’s Geely Holding, says it plans to make an electric vehicle in China starting next year for sale worldwide.
Michael Ramsey, senior analyst for Gartner, says Tesla “will unquestionably lose market share as more competitors come in.”
What is unknown, though, is whether the demand for electric vehicles will rise enough so that there’s room for everybody.
Currently the market is tiny. In the U.S., electric vehicles only amounted to 0.8 per cent of new vehicle registrations through August this year, according to data from IHS Markit.
But that’s substantially more than the 0.5 per cent at the same time in 2017. Automakers in the U.S. sold just over 155,000 fully electric vehicles through October, about one per cent of total sales, Edmunds. com says.
Yet globally, Navigant Research predicts huge growth in
the next seven years, from just over 1 million sales this year to 6.5 million by 2025.
As competition ramps up, prices are gradually coming down, edging closer to cars with internal combustion engines. At the same time, electric range is on the rise.
For instance, Rivian is promising that the top version of its R1T pickup will have more than 644 kilometres of battery range per charge when it goes on sale in late 2020. The five-seat pickup is aimed at a market Tesla is not yet in, an off-road capable truck with outdoorsy features.
Rivian, headquartered in Plymouth Township, Mich., says the R1T can go fast on pavement, with one electric motor per wheel taking it from zero-to-60 mph (97 kilometres per hour) in three seconds. It also has a retractable bed cover, and storage space running across the width of the truck behind the rear seats that can carry surfboards, snowboards or skis.
It has a unique white horizontal light bar across the front with oval headlamps.
CEO R.J. Scaringe, 35, who has a Ph.D in mechanical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said
exact pricing will be announced later, but a basic truck with smaller 370 kilometres battery pack will start under $70,000. A truck with the longer-range battery will be around $90,000, he said.
The small startup still has a long way to go to sell vehicles, even though it says it has $500 million in funding. It has to develop a sales and service network, announce a battery cell supplier and start producing vehicles in a former Mitsubishi Motors plant it owns in Normal, Ill.
IHS analyst Stephanie Brinley says Tesla may lose sales for a time as competitors bite into a slow-growing market. But eventually she thinks electric vehicle sales will take off and Tesla sales will rise.
At least publicly, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has said many times the competition is good, fostering the company’s goal of sustainable transportation.
“It is impossible for Tesla to build electric cars fast enough to address the carbon crisis,” Musk wrote in a 2014 blog. “Our true competition is not the small trickle of non-Tesla electric cars being produced, but rather the enormous flood of gasoline cars pouring out of the world’s factories every day.”
Zero emissions a great idea but sales quota poses problems
The B.C. government recently announced its intention to introduce legislation next spring to phase in targets for the sale of zero-emission vehicles (ZEVS) and in doing so, will set targets of new vehicle sales being 10 per cent ZEV sales by 2025, 30 per cent by 2030, and 100 per cent by 2040.
As part of the plan, Victoria has suggested it will expand the size of the province’s fastcharger network to 151 sites, increase funding for the CEVforBC program by $20 million this year and also review the program with a view to expanding it over time – initiatives B.C.’s new car dealers welcome as a means of ensuring greater EV adoption.
In B.C., sales of electric vehicles have increased from 567 in 2013, to more than 3,500 in 2017, to more than 6,300 through the first three quarters of this year.
In fact, during the third quarter of 2018, the sale of electric vehicles represented 15.4 per cent of all new car sales in the province, according to FleetCarma.com
New car dealers support the goal of transitioning British Columbians into clean energy vehicles and believe the best way to accomplish that goal is through a carrot, not sticks, approach. We believe incentives that make clean energy vehicles more affordable, education on the latest technologies, and ongoing investment in the provincial wide charging network are key aspects of such an approach.
A ZEV mandate or a legislated sales quota, however is of concern because it does not take a number of key factors into account, such as: EVs are still unaffordable for many individuals and families in British Columbia; in some areas of B.C., particularly in the Interior and the North, geography and climate mean an EV is not a realistic option for many families or businesses; a comprehensive network of charging stations is critical to support increased EV adoption and further details are required about how, where and when the network will be developed, and; there is no recognition that newer model gasoline powered vehicles can also play an important role in emission reductions as manufacturers unveil new internal combustion models that are much more fuel efficient with each passing year.
B.C.’s new car dealers already play a significant role in moving British Columbians to clean energy vehicles and we want to continue doing so with government, in a manner that is based on a thoughtful, fact based and detailed strategy.
To that end, we are interested in the extent to which a public consultation process may occur prior to the introduction of legislation, to ensure that the views of all regions of the province are represented in what is a very important and ongoing discussion.
Blair Qualey is president and CEO of the New Car Dealers Association of B.C. You can email him at bqualey@newcardealers.ca.
Blair Qualey
Citizen news serviCe photo
the Rivian R1t at Rivian headquarters in plymouth, Mich.
