Prince George Citizen October 13, 2018

Get to know your city council, school board candidates

Hakai Cryosphere Node opens at UNBC

Citizen staff

A joint $2.4-million research project

between the University of Northern British Columbia and Vancouver Island University will focus on understanding the role seasonal snow cover and glaciers play in the hydrology of key watersheds along B.C.’s Central and Southern Coast.

Supported by the Hakai Institute, the research will be co-ordinated at the Hakai Cryosphere Node located at UNBC and led by UNBC glaciologist Dr. Brian Menounos, a Canada Research Chair in glacial change, and Dr. Bill Floyd, a research hydrologist with the provincial government and an adjunct professor in geography from VIU.

The cryosphere is one of Canada’s most important natural resources, serving as frozen reservoirs of water that produce surface runoff throughout the year. Glaciers and seasonal snowpack have a vital role along B.C.’s Central Coast contributing to freshwater fluxes that transport nutrients to the marine environment.

“This Node will provide groundbreaking multi-disciplinary geospatial research opportunities for our faculty, postdoctoral fellows and students who will create local solutions with global impact,” said UNBC president Daniel Weeks. “The collaboration between UNBC, VIU and the Hakai Institute aligns with our strategic research areas, specifically around the environment and natural resources.”

Research conducted at the Node will encompass the Hakai Institute research themes of geospatial-ecosystem mapping, and big data and modelling.

“The Hakai Cryosphere Node is the natural completion of Hakai’s declared interest in everything from ‘icefields to ocean’ on the Pacific coastal margin,” said Eric Peterson,

UNBC Geography Professor Dr. Brian Menounos is collaborating with research hydrologist Dr. Bill Floyd with the Province of B.C. on a $2.4-million research project that will explore the role that seasonal snow cover and glaciers play in the hydrology of key watersheds along B.C.’s Central and Southern Coasts.

founder and president of the Hakai Institute.

“The new Node is the natural counterpart to our existing Hakai Node at UBC’s Institute for Oceans and Fisheries, which is

anchored on the “ocean” end of that continuum. The new Node will greatly expand our existing collaboration with researchers from UNBC, VIU and other institutions. In addition, we are very interested in fostering

Lhedli T’enneh chief calls for bridge across Fraser River

Mark NIELSEN Citizen staff

mnielsen@pgcitizen.ca

Lhedli T’enneh First Nation

Chief Dominic Frederick is raising alarm bells in the wake of the natural gas line explosion that forced evacuation of members living on the north side of the Fraser River.

Those forced out of their homes on Tuesday evening had to make their escape via a road Frederick said crosses over the very pipeline that suffered the blast.

Had the explosion set off a chain reaction, lives could have been lost, he said.

“We would’ve been pretty bad,” Frederick said Friday. “We have no other way out of the community except that one road.”

A boat had been put at the ready to carry people across the river, but about 70 to 80 people had to be evacuated.

Frederick said a bridge should be built across the river to connect the northern and southern halves of the reserve and added he said as much during a conference call with representatives of the federal and provincial governments.

“It’s an important safety issue to

us and we’re here, we’re not going anywhere and we’ll always be here,” he said. He estimated the Fraser is about 400 metres across at its narrowest point on the reserve northeast of the city. While the project’s cost would likely be in the millions, Frederick made note of the bridge across the Fraser at Hansard.

Opened in 2007, the 295-metre span cost $6.3 million and replaced a bridge cars and trains had to share. It serves a relatively small population, Frederick maintained.

He said industry, the city and regional district as well as the fed-

eral and provincial governments need to be brought together to deal with the issue.

“We want everybody at the table because they all claim to be our partners and we have done things in the past to support them,” Frederick said. “Now it’s their time to come forward and support us.”

Frederick also said communication needs to be better if a similar incident breaks out in the future. He said developments in the situation were provided only at a moment’s notice.

“Even the startup on the 30-inch pipe, it was on a moment’s notice in the middle of the night,” Frederick said. “Phoning me, telling me I should go knock on doors to let the community know that the pipe is going to be restarted – that kind of stuff is not acceptable after our people and our community have been traumatized by what just happened.”

Meanwhile, Canfor was in the process Friday of restarting Northwood and PG Pulp under a gas restriction.

“We believe we’ll be able to maintain operations if the allocated gas continues to flow,” company spokesperson Michelle Ward said.

career development in this field for UNBC and VIU students. We’ve already seen the quality of UNBC and VIU graduates in our existing operations.” — see ‘IT’S AN INCREDIBLY, page 3

Man who crashed into arena ordered to pay fine, restitution

Mark NIELSEN Citizen staff

A Kamloops man who crashed a pickup truck into the side of Rolling Mix Concrete Arena while drunk will be paying slightly more than $42,000 in damages and penalties.

Of that total, Wyatt Stralak, 23, will have three years to pay $38,983.11 in restitution, with $10,000 of that total going to the city to cover the deductible and the rest to the insurer.

He was also ordered to pay a further $3,175 in fines and victim surcharges within a year and was issued a one-year driving prohibition for the Aug. 31, 2017 incident.

Crown prosecution had also been seeking a 30-day jail sentence or a community sentencing order, but provincial court judge George Leven decided otherwise, noting in part that he quickly took steps to confront his problem with alcohol.

It was determined that Stralak’s bloodalcohol level ranged between .228 and .255 when... (he) drove across the lawn and into the arena’s southwest wall.

It was determined that Stralak’s blood-alcohol level ranged between .228 and .255 when, at about 1 a.m. on the morning in question, he missed the slight bend while heading northeast on Patricia Boulevard and drove across the lawn and into the arena’s southwest wall.

— see TRUCK, page 3

During submissions on sentencing, Stralak’s lawyer, Richard Hendery, said his client signed up for treatment the day after the incident, subsequently spent six months at Baldy Hughes and has not had a drink since he was arrested. And while Stralak denied responsibility when first confronted by police, he pleaded guilty to counts of driving with a blood-alcohol level over .08 under the Criminal Code and driving while prohibited under the Motor Vehicle Act at the first opportunity.

FREDERICK

Skating legends to hit the ice tonight

Frank PEEBLES Citizen staff fpeebles@pgcitizen.ca

Thank you, Canada, signed: Tessa, Scott, Patrick, Meagan, Eric, Kaetlyn, Kaitlyn, Andrew and Elvis.

Each of them is showing their appreciation for their country’s support, one city at a time from one side of this landmass to the other. Tonight, it’s Prince George’s turn.

Not satisfied to keep their sentiments on the ice, the two headliners – Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir – talked to The Citizen to pass on their feelings of gratitude personally to the community, on behalf of the cast.

And what a cast. It is almost the entire set of current Canadian figure skating royalty, plus a past superstar whose name still rings with global resonance.

“We still have to pinch ourselves when we look at who we’re standing on the ice with,” said Virtue.

“It’s an interesting process. It’s the first time we’ve been a part of that side,” said Moir. “We kind of had an idea on the way home from the Olympics that we wanted to do a tour like this where we got to go into every corner of the country and take our friends along with us, so we tried to pick people who had as much hardware as possible, but we also grew up with all of these skaters, and we have personal relationships. We won the Olympic team events with a lot of them, and that makes it a very personal connection as well. I think you can see that in the show.”

“We are thrilled to have Elvis Stojko on board,” Virtue added. “The energy that he brings, the wisdom, the maturity, the experi-

ence, is of course unmatched. This tight-knit group, there is only nine in the cast, but there is so much variety in everyone’s performances. I think we’ve all tried to express ourselves differently with this show and push beyond our comfort levels. That’s what’s thrilling and that’s what’s neat as an artist away from competition, to have the freedom to do so.”

The two darlings of the Winter Olympics talked about how the pressure of competition is different than the pressures of putting on a skating show like this one. True, the panel of judges is gone from their minds, but instead are the thousands of judges sitting in the audience seats. At competitions, the public is there for the event but in an exhibition like this one the public is there for the names on the marquee.

The numbers you’ll see on the frozen stage are some of those competition favourites that earned these superstars their medals, but most of the material will be new choreography and entirely different styles of dance and athleticism. Some of the acts will be the solo and duo acts we are familiar with, as fans, but they also do group numbers and collaborations that are never seen in the competitive arena.

“We have tried to allow each and every cast member to shine in their own way, but with the support of the rest of the cast,” said Virtue.

“Weaving that thread throughout has been really special. Keeping the energy up, I think it’s a high-impact show, and I hope the people are right there with us dancing the whole way.”

Just because the show is different and there is no gold on the line doesn’t mean they aren’t giddy with butterflies in the stomach, they

admitted. Doing anything in front of thousands of watching eyes will give you nervous tension, but Moir said that is the best feeling for a performance art athlete to have.

“They are different types of nerves. We still have the nerves,” he said.

“Luckily we still have each other we can rely on, we’ve always had that in competition, but we have seven other cast-mates, so we build a little bit of a team atmosphere. We are all passionate about putting on a good show. We know people are spending their hard-earned money to come see us so that creates a little bit of nerves. We feel responsible for that.”

The Thank You Canada Tour cuts across the CN Centre ice tonight at 7 p.m. Tickets are available online via the TicketsNorth website, or in person at the CN Centre box office.

The skating stars featured tonight are a who’s who of current Canadian superstars, including:

• Virtue and Moir (five-time Olympic Medalists, three-time World Champions and eighttime National Champions).

• Patrick Chan (three-time Olympic Medalist, three-time World Champion, and 10-time National Champion).

• Meagan Duhamel and Eric Radford (threetime Olympic Medalist, four-time World Medalist, seven-time National Champions).

• Kaetlyn Osmond (three-time Olympic Medalist, three-time National Champion, World Champion).

• Kaitlyn Weaver and Andrew Poje (two-time National Ice Dance Champions, three-time World Medalists and two-time Olympians).

• The legendary Elvis Stojko (two-time Olympic Medalist, three-time World Champion, and seven-time National Champion).

Two additional doctors headed to Fort St. James

Northern Health will contract two additional physicians to support outreach services to First Nations communities in the Fort St. James area. They will start work on Nov. 1, the Ministry of Health said Friday. Funding for the new positions is provided through the ministry’s Alternative Payments Program and will raise the number of APP-contracted physicians in the region to eight general practitioners.

“Supporting people living in rural communities starts with delivering consistent access to the high-quality primary care people need to get and stay healthy,” said Health Minister Adrian Dix.

“These additional family doctors will make a real difference for people living in Fort St. James and the surrounding areas.”

— Citizen staff

Prince George man sentenced for stabbing

A Prince George man was sentenced Thursday to slightly more than two years in jail for a stabbing in downtown Prince George.

In all, Kyle Anthony Rutledge Garnot was issued a term in Prince George provincial court of two years and 1 1/2 months for the Sept. 1, 2016 incident in which police found a “distressed” man near the corner of Victoria Street and Ninth Avenue.

He was rushed University Hospital of Northern BC where he was treated with life-threatening injuries.

Garnot, then 32 years old, turned himself in to police about two weeks later after a warrant for his arrest was issued.

He initially remained in custody for 23 days and then a further 422 after breaching his bail.

— Citizen staff

Skaters Elvis Stojko, Kaetlyn Osmond, Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir pose for a photo in Toronto on July 10. They will be

You Canada Tour, coming to CN Centre tonight.

— from page 1

Menounos and Floyd are studying the glaciers that flow into the Fitzhugh Channel, Queen Charlotte Sound, Johnstone Strait and the northern portion of Georgia Strait.

Using a variety of methods, including geospatial mapping and satellite imagery, scientists will also determine rates of glacier loss that stretch along the B.C. coastline from the U.S. border to Bella Coola and how those rates have changed over the last 100 and 1,000 years.

“Glaciers represent important elements for freshwater storage in the Coast Mountains and other mountain ranges of British Columbia,” said Menounos. “These ice masses release cool, plentiful water to many mountain streams in late summer when seasonal snow cover has been depleted. Our research on B.C.’s coastal glaciers will help inform government and local communities about past and future rates of ice loss.

“Our work with Hakai will explicitly focus on glacier change in some of the most heavily glacierized river basins including the Bella Coola, Klinaklini, Homathko and Squamish. All of these basins are dependent on snow and glaciers and contribute a significant proportion of fresh water to the marine environment.”

Plane-based LiDar and unmanned aerial vehicles will be used to measure snow and ice over various scales and time frames.

“This research will fundamentally change how we measure snow and ice in remote regions of B.C., vastly improving our understanding of its importance to freshwater discharge to the ocean, and the ecosystems and communities that rely on it,” added Floyd.

“It’s an incredibly exciting time to be a hydrologist with emerging technologies to not only collect big data related to water, but also having the computing power and expertize to analyze it. We also get to spend time doing field research in a beautiful part of British Columbia – the scenery never gets old.”

Fire breaks out at motel

Firearms seized from Hart-area trailer

Citizen staff

— from page 1

Stralak had been driving a pickup truck owned by a friend of his brother-in-law at the time. ICBC did not believe the story at first but Stralak confirmed his role with the insurer.

Within about two months, public art made out of granite and steel had been put in place on the lawn Stralak had driven across. However, city spokesman Mike Kellett said Thursday the decision to put the sculptures there had been decided well before the crash had occurred.

Stralak works for a playground equipment manufacturer and is valued enough to currently be working on a project in Quebec City. His employer also paid for his flight back to Prince George for the sentencing, the court was told.

However, the convictions will likely prevent him from working on projects in the United States, which he has in the past.

Prior to sentencing, Stralak said he was “deeply sorry” for his actions and has since turned his life around.

A 30-year-old man was taken into custody and police are working to determine the rightful owners of a trove of firearms found in a Hart-area home on Thursday. In all seven guns were seized from a travel trailer on a Poplar Place property: a loaded pump action shotgun; a semi-automatic dual-chamber shotgun; a loaded .45-calibre automatic handgun; a .45-calibre handgun; a .40-calibre handgun; a 9 mm semi-automatic handgun and a handgun police said was stolen. Eleven boxes of various ammunition

and over 200 loose rounds of ammunition were also seized and the travel trailer and an ATV on the property were confirmed to be stolen, RCMP said.

The man was arrested with the help of North District RCMP. Mounties initially attended at 10:30 a.m. and the suspect surrendered himself to police three hours later.

He’s being held in custody on an outstanding warrant while a 21-year-old woman who also surrendered to police was released on a promise to appear in court early in the new year.

“In the last few months at least five residences have been targeted to steal firearms. In addition, there have been

five reports of firearms being stolen from unoccupied vehicles in our community,” RCMP said.

“The Prince George RCMP want to remind firearm owners to take the necessary precautions to ensure your firearms are secured and to never leave firearms in vehicles.”

Anyone with information about this investigation is asked to call the Prince George RCMP at 250-561-3300 or anonymously contact Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477. Tips can also be made on online at www.pgcrimestoppers.bc.ca (English only).

You do not have to reveal your identity to Crime Stoppers.

CITIZEN PHOTO BY BRENT BRAATEN

Prince George Fire Rescue crews responded to a structure fire at the Willow Inn motel on Friday.

Citizen staff Prince George Fire Rescue doused a fire that broke out at the Willow Inn motel early Friday morning.

Called to the scene in the

Investigation continues at explosion site

Citizen news service

VANCOUVER — Transportation Safety Board investigators plan to remove pipeline wreckage debris from an explosion site near Prince George while the province’s major natural gas supplier asked industrial users Friday to continue to conserve natural gas.

The explosion Tuesday in the underground Enbridge pipeline temporarily shutdown two natural gas pipelines. One of the pipelines was cleared to start shipping gas late Wednesday but on a reduced basis, forcing residents and industrial customers of FortisBC to turn down the heat and cut back on production.

“On Thursday, October 11, some industrial customers began being brought back onto the system with a reduced amount of natural gas,” said Doug Stout, a spokesman for FortisBC in a statement. “This process will continue through the weekend and includes large, multi-family high-rises.”

About 85 per cent of the gas FortisBC feeds to its one million B.C. customers is carried by the twinned Enbridge pipeline that runs from northern B.C. to the United States border south of Vancouver, Stout said. About 750,000 natural gas customers in the northwest U.S. were also impacted by the explosion.

The blast knocked out Enbridge’s 91-centimetre line, but the company’s 76-centimetre pipeline near the damage site is supplying a reduced amount of natural gas, Stout said.

“We appreciate the efforts of our customers to limit their use of natural gas at this time,” said Stout.

He said the gas flow is at about 40 per cent of our normal capacity while Enbridge makes repairs to its system.

The Transportation Safety Board said in a statement Friday its investigators are conducted a detailed site survey of the explosion area.

Investigators will also secure and remove the pipeline wreckage and examine the pipeline’s operating history and inspections, the statement said.

Enbridge records indicate the last inspection on the pipeline was conducted by the company last year, Iain Colquhoun, the National Energy Board’s chief engineer, said Thursday.

He said initial reviews of the inspection reports did not show “worrisome anomalies in the line.”

The safety board said it has appointed pipeline expert Jennifer Philopoulos to lead its explosion investigation. Philopoulos has 15 years of experience in the oil and gas industry.

The RCMP said Thursday there is no indication the pipeline rupture and ensuing fireball involved criminal activity. There were no reports of injuries.

tries and institutions switch energy sources, reduce operations or shut down temporarily.

He said the gas flow is at about 40 per cent of our normal capacity while Enbridge makes repairs to its system.

The supply disruption saw major indus-

Gasoline prices also started to increase as nearby oil refineries in the United States moved to conserve the natural gas it uses to fuel its operations.

Tolko Industries Ltd. closed its Heffley Creek plywood plant near Kamloops and reduced operations at sawmills in the Cariboo at Quesnel and Soda Creek.

The University of Victoria said it switched to diesel power, while Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops turned down thermostats and limited use of fans to conserve natural gas.

Surrey’s school district spokesman Doug Strachan said it requested a district-wide conservation effort.

“As one of the larger consumers of natural gas, Surrey schools is doing its part by asking all district sites to immediately turn down room thermostats and limit the use of hot water,” said Strachan in a statement.

“Fortunately, there are several sunny days forecast, so this will help staff and students to remain comfortable.”

RCMP say voter fraud under investigation

Citizen news service

SURREY — Findings and allegations of voter fraud have been made in several Metro Vancouver cities with just a week to go before provincewide civic elections.

Mounties in Surrey said Friday that they found 67 fraudulent applications to vote by mail when they followed up on 73 people whose personal information was used to complete mail-in ballots.

The City of Vancouver also released a statement saying it was aware of messages circulating on social media messaging system WeChat that appear to offer money in exchange for voting in Richmond, Burnaby and Vancouver.

It says the allegations have been forwarded to both Vancouver police and RCMP in Richmond and Burnaby.

RCMP in Surrey say the fraudulent applications have not been linked to any civic election candidate or party.

Surrey police say they have identified and interviewed two people of interest,

however further investigation is needed to determine if criminal charges or charges under the Local Government Act are warranted.

No ballots were sent to individuals or residences and police say the process to apply for a mail-in ballot was changed by Surrey’s chief elections officer on Oct. 1.

The RCMP says it doesn’t routinely release details of on-going investigations, but the update was provided to reassure the public and allow for transparency in the election.

“It is important for the public to recognize that measures were taken by the chief elections officer to amend the application process to preserve the integrity of the election process,” the release says.

Mounties say they were also made aware of third-hand information about international students giving their personal details in exchange for money.

Police say they’ve found no evidence to substantiate those claims nor has anyone come forward to complain.

CITIZEN PHOTO BY BRENT BRAATEN

Enbridge crews work on scene near the explosion of a natural gas pipeline Tuesday evening.

Gov’t should fund translator for murder

victim’s mother, court rules

Camille BAINS Citizen news service

VANCOUVER — The mother of a 13-year-old girl found murdered in a park in Burnaby has requested a Mandarin translator so she can understand court proceedings, and a judge has recommended the province fund that request.

The mother’s lawyer, Esther Kornfeld, told court her client’s friend translated proceedings last month after a man accused of the crime made his first appearance.

Ibrahim Ali, 28, was back in court Friday, but Marrisa Shen’s mother wasn’t in the gallery that was packed with people supporting the family of the girl who was found dead in a wooded area of Central Park on July 19, 2017.

Provincial court Judge Harbans Dhillon told Kornfeld she didn’t know if she could “bind the hands of the minister” who could consider providing funding for a court-certified translator.

The Attorney General’s Ministry did not immediately respond with a request for comment.

Kornfeld said Shen’s mother, who does not want her name publicized, has a restraining order against her ex-husband, her daughter’s father, and would like her privacy respected in court by having sheriffs alerted to his presence.

Dhillon said she would not entertain the request.

Ali, a Syrian national who stood inside a glassed-off area as an Arabic translator interpreted the proceedings, is scheduled to return to court Nov. 23 to allow the prosecution time to put together disclosure material.

Crown counsel Daniel Porte said 10,000 pages of material has been compiled.

Ali was arrested on Sept. 7, two weeks after the Integrated Homicide Investigation Team said it became aware of him as a suspect. He is facing a first-degree murder charge.

Police have said Ali came to Canada as a refugee about three months before Shen was killed and that he is a permanent resident with a job and family in the country.

Outside court, supporters of Shen’s family lined the street calling for justice as they held signs reading “No bail, no more victims” and “Comprehensive security screening now.”

Xiy Yan Zhou said she came to stand outside court in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside from her home in suburban Maple Ridge because she wants her 13-year-old niece to feel safe in her community.

“I need to be here because I want her to grow up in safety and peace,” she said, standing near a large photo of Shen alongside about two dozen others.

Jeff Jiang of Vancouver said he has supported Shen’s mother throughout her ordeal and saw her last week.

He said the woman moved from Burnaby and is now living elsewhere with a friend.

“She sold her apartment because it’s a sad place,” Jiang said.

He said the girl’s mother is financially strapped because she is no longer able to work at her job at a grocery store.

Shen was last seen on security video entering a Tim Hortons a few minutes after she left her home at 6 p.m., on July 18, 2017.

Her mother reported her missing at 11:30 p.m., and the girl’s body was found by police about 90 minutes later.

Alberta gov’t offers funding for Calgary Olympic bid

Lauren KRUGEL Citizen news service

CALGARY — The Alberta government says it would contribute up to $700 million if Calgary were to hold the 2026 Winter Olympics, but how the remaining costs would be divvied up remains unknown with just a month to go before a plebiscite on whether to bid.

A draft plan for a potential bid pegs the total cost at $5.2 billion. It suggests the city, provincial and federal governments should contribute $3 billion of that. The remainder would come from Games revenue.

Finance Minister Joe Ceci said in a letter to Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi and federal Sport Minister Kirsty Duncan that there wouldn’t be any cash beyond the $700 million.

“The government of Alberta will not be able to provide any additional funds that may be required, including those to cover revenue shortfalls or cost overruns,” he wrote Friday. “Moreover, we will not be providing any form of guarantee for additional costs arising from any source.”

Ceci said the money is contingent on Calgary being awarded the Games and on the bid winning majority support in a Nov. 13 nonbinding plebiscite. The province insisted Calgary hold the vote and contributed $2 million to the cost.

Another condition is that there would be increased transparency from bid organizers.

“We believe that is in the best interest of the bid and what Albertans want and expect of their governments,” Ceci said at a news conference. “This is not an unsubstantial amount of money and Albertans should know where it goes and how it is dealt with.”

Nenshi and Coun. Evan Woolley, chairman of the city’s Olympic assessment committee, said they would review the offer to contribute.

“We’re pleased that the province has come forward with their investment,” they said in a statement. “We have to analyze this announcement, while continuing our conversations with the government of Canada.

“We imagine there will be more to say about the city and federal government contributions in the next few days.”

Duncan has expressed enthusiasm for a bid, but Ottawa has not said exactly how much it would contribute.

A homeless camp in downtown Nanaimo is seen on Sept. 22. An open letter is calling on the City of Nanaimo to delay closing the camp.

Letter calls for delay in closing homeless camp

Citizen news service

NANAIMO — Dozens of individuals along with advocacy and health groups have signed on to an open letter to Nanaimo council asking that it extend a deadline to close a homeless camp.

The letter urges council to honour its commitment in Nanaimo’s action plan to end homelessness that it agreed to earlier this year.

The B.C. Supreme Court gave the city an injunction last month due to be applied on Oct. 12, although the court said it was important that the dismantling

occur in an orderly and sensitive fashion.

The 70 groups and individuals supporting the letter include the Nanaimo Chamber of Commerce, the United Way and the B.C. Civil Liberties Association.

The letter says that extending the Friday deadline will align with the Ministry of Housing’s plan to bring in 170 temporary modular housing units from Fort St. John within the next week.

No one was immediately available from the city to speak about the request.

The letter says solving the challenges of poverty and homelessness requires all three levels of government, as well as the nonprofit sector.

“Municipal councils cannot address these pressing social issues alone and yet they face them daily as they show up at the local level within our communities. This is why it is so important to align your commitments with provincial and federal strategies to address homelessness when you can, and this is an opportunity to do that,” the letter concludes.

Mayor

Willy Ens

Editor’s Note: Willy Ens did not respond to an email request for a photo and submission for this election feature.

Lyn Hall

I’m Lyn Hall, mayor of Prince George and your candidate for mayor in the upcoming municipal election on Oct. 20. If re-elected my focus for the next four years is to have an engaged council in our city through the continuation of our Talktober events and meetings with partner groups and stakeholders. I will also continue to re-invest in our infrastructure upgrades which includes roads, sidewalks and facili-

City council

Frank Everitt

For the past seven years I have had the privilege and honour of serving as a member of your city council.

I have lived and worked in Prince George for nearly 40 years.

During that time I have been very active sitting on boards such as, Spruce Credit Union, CNC and CNIB.

I am past president of the United Steelworkers and Employment Action to name a few.

I am married, have four sons and six grandchildren.

Prince George is going through a period of steady growth with new hotels, motels restaurants, apartment blocks and homes.

As of the end of September, we have had $150 million invested in our city.

During the last four years we have reduced our debt by $40 million dollars.

I am proud of what I and my fellow colleagues have accomplished, but there is still more work to do.

We have shown that even with various different backgrounds and under the leadership of Mayor Hall, opinions can be shared and consensus reached for the benifits of all of Prince George.

Three priorities in my opinion are our infrastructure above ground and below ground, affordable housing and homelessness.

I would appreciate the opportunity to continue working for you.

I will put my efforts, along with the new council, into dealing with these priorities over the next four years.

On Oct.20, I ask for your vote to re-elect Everitt for city council.

Viv Fox

My name is Viv Fox. I have lived in Prince George since 2012.

I am in my 13th year with the Canadian Armed Forces, Infantry Reserves.

I trained the first platoon through the newly re-instated Rocky Mountain Rangers, Bravo Company, here in P.G. in early 2012 and moved up in the fall of that year, to continue to build and train for the unit and also because I knew P.G. was where I belonged.

Outside of the military, since moving to P.G. I have worked with Northern Health as an outbreak software instructor in 2013 (I also taught a part-time teen fitness bootcamp at the Blackburn Community Centre); the 2015 Canada Winter Games as a security planner and venue coordinator and Geoterra as their corporate health and safety manager, from 2015 –2016.

From Oct. 2016 to present, I have been a regional manager with Emergency Management B.C. Since moving here I have been a part of many clubs and organizations, as a member or volunteer, including the P.G. Toastmasters, the Caledonia Ramblers, the Recycling and Environmental Action Planning Society, the Blizzards, the Caledonia Nordic Ski Club, the Shaolin Boxing Club, the Prince George Brain Injured Group, the Groop Gallery art auctions, the Nechako Theatrics Society, the Salmon Valley Women’s Festival, UNBC Continuing Ed, CNC sciences, the Canadian Society of Safety Engineers, the White Spruce City Chorus, the inaugural Steps for Life Prince George walk in 2016, Saint Vincent de Paul Thanksgiving and CPAH Connect Week.

I am passionate about safety, sustainability, emergency preparedness, arts, music and multiculturalism and inclusion. I am also a huge book nerd (I own around 500 books), visual artist and animal lover (I have five SPCA rescues). I also sometimes enjoy riding my motorcycle and jumping out of airplanes.

ties. Another one of my priorities is seniors and affordable housing; it’s important that this housing is located in all areas of our community and meets the needs of our residents. We have witnessed an increase in various housing projects and I’ll work to ensure that need continues to be met. Our parks and recreational areas are important assets. Ongoing upgrades as well as the development of our river frontage is key to enhancing our recreational and lifestyle opportunities. There has been significant re-development in our downtown, with public and private investment making for a stronger community.

Garth Frizzell

I’m honoured that Prince George has elected me three times to serve our city. An effective elected official remembers that she or he is working for you.

You have a right to know how your money is spent. I have successfully brought forward motions for transparency to council that were years ahead of even the province, so that you can see any expenses claimed to the city.

You need to have councillors working for you who know to make budgets work for the city. I have consistently sought ways to offset the huge costs that we all saw coming a decade ago. By working with allies through the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM), we lobbied and ensured the federal government would commit money to fix ageing infrastructure. The current commitment is $180 billion across Canada.

My background as a tech entrepreneur and businessman set me on a path to being past-president of the Prince George Chamber of Commerce and a six-year member of the Province of B.C. Small Business Roundtable. When you listen to networks like that, you hear that businesses need more (and better) supports, such as improved broadband. I have been a voice lobbying successfully for the redundant fibre link, which will break ground in spring of 2019. It will help level the playing field for our businesses and attract new high tech firms to Prince George.

I focus my experience and expertise on making Prince George better for you. I am effective on my own, but I’m very happy to collaborate as part of a team to make our city better.

This past term has seen the results of good, collaborative governance, confidence in the economy, record construction numbers, and business groups lauding Prince George as No. 1. On Oct. 20, I ask for your vote so I can build on our successes with a strong council.

Dave Fuller

My name is Dave Fuller and I am running for city council for the first time.

Prince George has been home to me since 1970.

I have a 30-year history of community involvement including creating jobs through my businesses, of being involved in public campaigns to clean up the air and water, of working with the less fortunate, and supporting community organizations as a board member, and coach for adults and children alike.

Currently as a business coach I works to help CEOs of big and small businesses as well as nonprofits to get their organizations running effectively to benefit their stakeholders.

My platform is grounded in three areas.

People – We need to do a better job of supporting those groups and individuals in our community that promote the city. The truth is that Prince George is really a best kept secret in most of the province. It’s that place up north. Without the ability to hire good talent that is going to stay in Prince George, our companies are limited.

There are neighborhoods, like the Hart and Pineview, where people are paying taxes but feel neglected, we need to do a better job of servicing them with bus service, sidewalks and RCMP support We need to get serious about addressing the homelessness and opioid crisis and safety issues in the downtown core because talking about fixing it just isn’t cutting it with most people working downtown.

The environment – We have a problem with the sewage treat-

ment plants that are stinking up Lower College Heights. Let’s fix it.

Also, let’s start supporting the forest industry and reduce our dependence on plastic bags and straws.

Economics – We need to make good decisions when it comes to using taxpayers’ money. Paying overtime for salaried employees doesn’t make sense.

I believe that the city needs to play an important role in ensuring that there is economic diversity. That we need to ensure that Prince George is once again known as a community that people want to come to work in. To raise their families, buy homes and settle down.

If elected I will use skills to ensure that the interests of the taxpayers and all parties interested in making Prince George a better community are considered Please vote for me Dave Fuller to city council on Oct. 20.

Murry Krause

I want to continue making Prince George a vibrant city and the best place to live. Over the past four years we have seen significant development throughout our city which has created jobs and has meant that workers can stay in Prince George and provide for their families. I will continue to foster this climate of public and private sector investment. I bring experienced and proven leadership to the mayor’s position and would like to thank the residents of Prince George for your support over the past four years. I ask for your vote on Oct. 20 to re-elect me as mayor of Prince George.

edented amount of commercial and residential construction in our city demonstrating investor confidence and all this construction creates jobs and supports spin off industries.

Through policy and engaging with the industry, council has encouraged a diverse mix of housing options, suitable for all ages and demographics, and encouraged infill development. This saves untold dollars versus the realities and cost associated with sprawl.

Moving forward, we need to continue to work earnestly with Northern Health and our provincial and federal partners, local groups/organizations, to address social housing needs and in particular, low barrier housing. Everyone needs a place to live, and while it will not solve all social issues, it will certainly provide a solid foundation to build upon.

community and I do business in our community. As a young professional, I look at Prince George being my home for many years to come. If elected, I will be looking ahead to the future of our city but not staying idle the important issues of today.

I believe a city council should reflect the entire makeup of a community. I will bring a fresh outlook and new perspective around to the council table. I offer passion, dedication, and different experiences to the council table mix.

My approach will be focused on proactively seeking ways to plan for our communities sustainable future and further development, but also on our people and their changing needs.

People, sustainability and community development are my key principles.

If elected, some areas I will focus on include:

• Maintaining a competitive and fair tax regime.

My name is Murry Krause and I am seeking my seventh term on city council. Currently I am the chair of the city’s Collective Impact “Raise up Our Kids” Committee, current past president of the Union of B.C. Municipalities, and am a member of the provincial minister’s Forum on Poverty Reduction. I have chaired numerous committees for the City of Prince George over the years, including the Finance and Audit Committee, the 100th Anniversary Committee, Intercultural Committee and the Heritage Commission.

I am a city council representative on the Regional District of Fraser Fort George, where I chair the Regional Hospital District Board and the Cultural Services Advisory Committee.

I am a past chair of the city’s Homelessness and Affordable Housing Committee and I was a committee member for UBCM’s Special Committee on Affordable Housing, that looked at affordable housing in B.C. That final report helped inform the current provincial government housing strategy.

I am very passionate about poverty reduction, homelessness and affordable housing. A healthy community is important to and for everyone. My entire career has been dedicated to social service and health service provision.

I am hoping to be a member of a team that was effective as we have been over the past four years. The exemplary leadership of our current mayor and dedicated council colleagues have inspired me to put my name forward one more time. I truly believe that we all want Prince George to excel and be everything that it possibly can be. For even more information on my community service and career history, please go to www.murrykrause.ca

I am hoping that you will consider supporting Murry Krause on Oct. 20.

Terri McConnachie

The decisions made and the direction set at the municipal level affect us all. It is where our homes are, where we run our businesses and raise our children, build careers and spend our leisure time and, increasingly, where we choose to spend our retirement years.

Yes, there is still work to do and you get to choose who you trust to participate in the decisions made on your behalf. It has been a joy and an honour to represent you this last term. If re-elected I will continue to bring hard work, integrity and a solid voice to the council table on your behalf.

Cori Ramsay

I’m Cori Ramsay and I’m running for city council. Focusing on succession planning for council is crucial. With long term councillors starting to retire, it’s time to bring in young leaders who can gain the experience and mentorship to successfully lead our city in the future.

The core of my campaign is simple: people and Prince George. I want to see our city thrive and that means working together to tackle hard issues like poverty reduction, accessibility, and homelessness.

There are issues we’re all passionate about: a vibrant downtown, better infrastructure, city facilities, parking, public transportation, and bike lanes, healthcare, affordable housing, preservation of green spaces, cultural events, support for arts and other causes, profitable and thriving local businesses – and those are issues that I’m passionate about as well. Our council is making real progress on the issues that impact our community and I want to be a part of that change. I believe that the success of our community is dependent on us – the stakeholders – and I’m going to work hard, research, be informed on the issues, and make recommendations that the people of Prince George want.

• Retaining our aging population by providing for them through initiatives like seniors housing, accessibility, affordability and more.

• Actively seeking investment and partnership in our community to further expand our industry base, and to not fall behind other comparable markets.

• Bringing balance to our aging demographics by attracting young families, professionals, and students to relocate to Prince George… and stay.

I am certainly not running as a candidate with all the answers to every issue – but I am 100 per cent committed to listening, finding the answers, and working toward a solution to the issues we face as a city.

If you have any further questions about me or my platform, please reach out via my website, www. KyleSampson.ca

I ask for your support in my candidacy for city council. Vote Sampson on Oct. 20. Thank you!

Susan Scott

My name is Susan Scott. Prince George has been my home since I arrived in 1992. I am passionate about our city and want to contribute to building a better future for us all.

The current council has accomplished a massive amount of work this last term including the prioritization of our infrastructure needs (both above and below ground, what we need, what we want and how much it’s going to cost); invested in city and neighbourhood parks and trail systems; encouraged the growth and beautification of our downtown by supporting the initiatives of existing organizations and groups, intrepid entrepreneurs and enforcing existing bylaws. We made it a priority to address paving and snow removal issues including fleet and maintenance programs, and expanded transit service hours. There is still an enormous amount of work to do. We are experiencing an unprec-

I’m a young progressive voice and as a councillor for the City of Prince George, I will bring a fresh perspective to council and help strategize long term solutions for diversifying our economy and ensuring we remain sustainable. With a background in strategic communications, social work and advocacy, I hope to bring a wealth of knowledge to council tacking issues affecting both residents and business owners. We are all stakeholders in our community and together, we can build the future we want. Together, we can build a better Prince George.

On Oct. 20, I ask for your support in electing a young progressive voice.

Kyle Sampson

My name is Kyle Sampson and I ask for your support in my candidacy for city council.

I am a longtime resident of Prince George. I volunteer in our

I spent 21 years in retail bookstores (including 10 years as a manager), and a further 10 years in transportation. Since 2002 I have been walking with families as an officiant at funerals and memorials in our community. My volunteer experience includes serving as the chaplain with the Prince George Fire Rescue Service; The Royal Canadian Legion; and the Rocky Mountain Rangers Army Cadets. Finally, I am on the board of RiverBend (a seniorsoriented housing complex), the Salvation Army Community Council, A Suicide Safer Community (an initiative to move the conversation and resources into mainstream consciousness), the Prince George Inter-Faith Council (a venue among all religions in our city) and the Remembrance Day Planning Committee.

I am seeking re-election because I believe that an effective city council strikes a balance between responsibility to its citizens and passion for service. It must pay its bills today and provide a vision for tomorrow. Specifically, we must make sure we have as many tools as possible for locals to retrain for new roles, help firms attract specialized skill sets we do not have enough of locally, ensure that we have sufficient amounts of affordable, accessible housing for our seniors and most vulnerable residents and build a future based on collaboration and inclusion, where we work together to ensure that all can access opportunities.

On Oct. 20, I ask for your support.

— See more Prince George city council candidates on page 7; the School District 57 board candidates are featured on page 17

Paul Serup

I’m Paul Serup. I was born here and have lived here for some five decades. Happily married, my wonderful wife and I are thankful to God for our young son. I am a renovation contractor and an independent historical researcher and author. I am hoping to serve as councillor to slow and stop tax increases, instead hopefully having lower city taxes and a lighter burden on citizens. One important way of achieving this would be by reducing government waste. A very good, current, example of this is the purchase of a perfectly good hotel, the Days Inn. It is to be demolished, to put a pool on the site, costing millions. Last year’s referendum provided no legal or moral reason to do this, despite claims to the contrary. This hotel should be sold or turned into low income housing, not rubble to be trucked to our near full dump. The new pool could be located beside the Y, or on the Hart, and operated in partnership with the Y, saving millions more. The Massey Drive sink hole is one example of hidden damage to city infrastructure. The city should not waste money but ensure it has funds for this. I want to reduce bureaucracy, to streamline approval processes, such as obtaining building permits and reduce needless regulations, red tape, making, for example, building a house, less expensive and faster. Residents should expect excellence from government. For example, the city traffic system should be improved so traffic flows allow citizens to move around safely and efficiently. Governments should allow citizens’ legitimate entrepreneurial passions and ideas’ free course so they may succeed, helping the city through more

jobs, outside interest, revenues etc. More information is available on my Facebook page Paul Serup for city council. On Oct. 20, please vote for me.

Brian Skakun

My name is Brian Skakun and I am seeking re-election to P.G. city council. It has been an honour and privilege to have served for the last 16 years on city council. I am so proud to call Prince George home. As a 50year resident of this great city I know what many of the important issues are. I am down to earth and approachable and have been able to help individuals and groups when called on. I have a reputation for standing up for what I feel is in the best interest of the community. I also feel it’s important as an elected official to work with your council colleagues in a respectful and transparent manner. However, I feel it is important to retain your independence of thought and action as a city councillor. You need to work together but simply cannot go with the flow for the sake of political harmony. The values and beliefs of the community are critical to the decision making process at city hall. Open and transparent communication is a key to a fair and democratic process. There are a number of issues that I feel need to be continually worked on including:

• Promoting the positive aspects of P.G.

• Review of senior staff job performance and compensation.

• Community safety.

• Expanding our parkland.

• Infrastructure re-investment.

• Low-cost housing.

• Illegal dumping.

When and where to vote

Voters interested in beating the crowds can take advantage of some advance voting opportunities this coming week.

Additional opportunities will be held on Tuesday at the Civic Centre and Fraser Fort George Regional District office, from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., and on Wednesday at the Bentley Centre at UNBC and FFGRD office, from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. The general voting day is set for Oct. 20, from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Locations in the city on that day are at Blackburn Elementary School, D.P. Todd Secondary School, Edgewood Elementary School, École Lac des Bois, John McInnis Centre, Kelly Road Secondary School, Malaspina Elementary School, Ron Brent

Elementary School and Vanway Elementary School.

The library is also hosting an event for School District 57 board candidates from 1:30-3 p.m. today at the main branch. Candidates will each have two minutes to introduce themselves to the audience, followed by informal group and individual discussion. For more on the school district candidates, see page 17.

The Citizen, in partnership with the Prince George Chamber of Commerce, the B.C. Northern Real Estate Board and UNBC, will host an all-candidates forum for city council candidates in the Canfor Theatre at UNBC on Tuesday from 7-9 p.m.

I have worked hard as your elected representative and will stand up for what I feel is in the best interest of the community.

Cameron Stolz

MY FAMILY

It’s amazing how much difference having the right person in your life can make.

I was exceptionally fortunate to have met Terresa five years ago. This February we ran off and eloped, much to the chagrin of our families. We really are the Brady Bunch having seven children between us.

Our family also includes Tank, our SPCA rescue dog and Great White’s mascot.

SMALL BUSINESS OWNER

I started Great White Toys – Comics –Games 28 years ago. I am fortunate to have great staff who have been instrumental in helping me grow my business. In the past two years alone, we have expanded from six to 16 staff.

BETTER ROADS

When I was first elected in 2008, I championed better roads. It took five years but council finally approved proper funding, increasing the annual budget from $3 mil-

lion to $7 million. It ensured every area in our city would see roads improved. Unfortunately, in 2017 just as city was about to make progress on our residential and rural roads, this council slashed the roads budget by $2 million. I will work tirelessly to restore that funding.

SIDEWALKS

For the safety and enjoyment of everyone, we need sidewalks repaired and new ones built. The current council, like their predecessors, dumped extra onetime funds into sidewalks. Unfortunately, this council cut the annual sidewalk budget by five per cent to $1 million, just half of what should be spent annually. I will speak up and find solutions for properly funding our sidewalks.

TRANSIT

Our transit system needs to match the lifestyle of its user. Hours of operation and routes should be expanded in the evening and on weekends. This would allow people to attend events at CN Centre, enjoy downtown entertainment, visit friends, and be able to get home safely – especially at night.

Chris Wood

Editor’s Note: Chris Wood did not respond to an email request for a photo and submission for this election feature.

11

Tigers tame the other WHL Cats

Ted CLARKE Citizen staff

If there was any medicine under the hats of these Tigers, it was a prescription for misery for the Prince George Cougars. They scored early and never let the Cougars leave sickbay, beating them 4-1 Friday night at the Canalta Centre in Medicine Hat.

Ryan Jevne led the way for the Tigers with two goals. Linus Nassen finished with a goal and two assists, Tyler Preziuso had a goal and an assist and Ryan Chyzowski tallied two assists. Josh Curtis fired the lone Cougars goal.

Mads Sogaard, the Tigers six-foot-seven rookie netminder from Denmark, made 22 saves for his second WHL win. They outshot the Cougars 30-23.

Prince George trailed just 28 seconds into the game. Nassen took a shot from the blueline that ticked off the stick of Curtis, a Cougars right winger, and that changed the flight path of the puck just enough to fool Taylor Gauthier.

Gauthier’s woes in the crease continued in the second period. Chyzowski broke in along the left side and let go a shot and the Cougar goalie kicked out a juicy rebound right onto the stick of Preziuso who buried it just 1:50 into the period.

Jevne made it a 3-0 game, 9:26 into the second. He let go a backhander from a sharp angle that Gauthier appeared to have stopped in his trapper but the puck fell out before the whistle and trickled between his legs into the net. Gauthier atoned for that mistake seconds later, stopping Hayden Ostir on a breakaway chance.

Curtis struck for the Cougars 3:39 into the third period, tipping in a goalmouth pass from Rhett Rhinehart, but Jevne cancelled the comeback plan when he scored less than minute later on a Medicine Hat power play.

The win improved Medicine Hat’s record to 4-5-0-1, while the Cougars, who have lost four straight, dropped to 2-50-1. The Tigers have a 5-2-0-0 record head-to-head against the Cougars over six seasons. This was their only meeting of the 2018-19 regular season.

LOOSE PUCKS: The Cougars will be in Lethbridge to play the Hurricanes tonight (6 p.m. PT, then travel to Cranbrook for a Sunday game (3 p.m. PT) against the Kootenay Ice....

The Cougars have just one game next weekend, a Sunday afternoon encounter with the Swift Current Broncos at CN Centre... Willie Desjardins, a former Vancouver Canucks head coach who guided the Tigers to WHL titles in 2004 and 2007, is now program director of the South Alberta Hockey Academy, based in Medicine Hat. Desjardins coached the Canucks for three seasons, from 2014-17.

Hardwood tune-up

Tyrell Laing of the UNBC Timberwolves men’s basketball team drives against Vancouver Island University Mariners defender Tyus Barfoot on Friday night at Northern Sport Centre. The Mariners and Timberwolves held an informal scrimmage, in advance of an exhibition game tonight at 6 at the NSC.

Figure skaters have stars in their eyes

Ted CLARKE Citizen staff tclarke@pgcitizen.ca

There was no hesitation in nineyear-old Starlene Robinson’s voice when asked how far up the figure skating ladder she wants to climb.

“The Olympics,” was her answer, while watching her colleagues at the Prince George Figure Skating Club work out their routines on the ice at Kin 2.

Why not shoot for the stars?

Especially heading into a weekend in which Robinson will get to see a select group of Olympic and world champions perform as part of the Thank You Canada Tour.

While she’s a long way from punching her own ticket for the five-ring circus, having just started with the club’s high-performance program last year, she will be in the stands watching the likes of Tessa Vertue, Scott Moir, Kaetlyn Osmond, Meagan Duhamal, Eric Radford and Elvis Stojko strut their stuff on the ice tonight at CN Centre (see story, page 2).

Robinson watched Osmond capture the women’s singles bronze medal at the Olympics in Pyeongchang in February, followed by her gold-medal win at the world championships. There’s no other skater she’d rather see live and in person.

“I’m really excited to see Kaetlyn Osmond,” Robinson said. “I like her jumps.”

“I mostly like everything about figure skating.”

Robinson joined the CanSkate program in her native Terrace when she was three and was in that group for a couple years before she moved with her family to Smithers. She’s lived in Prince George since 2016, the year she joined the PGFSC. Her athletic background in ballet, tap dancing, wall-climbing, gymnastics and crossfit has served her well as a skater.

Next weekend in Kamloops, Robinson is entered in Autumn Leaves – the fourth competition of her skating career. She remembers her first like it was yesterday. It happened last year in Smithers.

“For my first time I was really ex-

Nine-year-old Starlene Robinson, left, and eight-year-old Eowyn Thompson are part of a seven-skater delegation from the Prince George Figure Skating Club heading to Kamloops next weekend for the Autumn Leaves competition.

cited, and nervous, and I did really well,” she said. “I get super-excited driving to places (for competitions), I just can’t wait. I take a lot of pictures and videos (of other skaters) on my iPad.”

Robinson will compete in the Star 2 class in Kamloops, which also includes an interpretive program, set to her choice of music – Iko, Iko by The Dixie Cups. She practiced all summer and feels ready to turn in her best performance. She’s got her toe loop well-rehearsed and anticipates she’ll come home with either gold or silver.

“I hadn’t seen Starlene for about a week and I came out and was absolutely blown away by her speed,” said coach Jennifer Auston. “She is just flying out there and it’s just made everything better.

“You see when she’s practicing on her own she spends the entire time working hard. There’s not a lot of breaks or messing around, it’s just work. We’re pretty happy with how her jumps and spins are looking so we’re confident she’ll get either silver or gold in her

assessment.”

It’s possible all 10 skaters in the Star 2 class could reach the gold level. There are no placings at the StarSkate introductory levels and the goal is to try to reach the highest assessment level rather than trying to top the field and finish first.

Eight-year-old Eowyn Thompson is still new to figure skating but caught on quickly in her first season and in March was moved up to the club’s high-performance development group. She also skated throughout the summer and is having tons of fun pulling off moves like the waltz jump without too much difficulty. She falls down sometimes but it’s no big deal.

“I’m used to it,” she said.

When she was seven, Thompson enrolled in a CanSkate introductory program and showed right away she was more than willing to focus her efforts on learning how to skate. Before that, she’d tried karate, soccer and ballet but had never been on blades. Autumn Leaves will be Thompson’s firstever figure skating competition and she’s setting her sights high, entered in the Star 1 category.

“I hope I win a gold medal,” said Thompson.

Her coach likes her chances.

“She’s very strong going into the competition and we would actually think about doing Star 2 for her at this point but we’re already in Star 1 and she’s going to go and nail it,” said Auston. “She’s strong in each of the elements that she has to do on the ice.”

Thompson will have added incentive to skate well in Kamloops knowing her nine-year-old cousin Kiedis Corrigan will be there watching.

Auston predicts the best possible results for Robinson and Thompson.

“They’ve been preparing for quite some time now and I anticipate they’ll be at the top of the spectrum,” said Auston.

Five other PGFSC skaters are entered for Autumn Leaves, including: Leah Neurauter, Avery Johansen, Izzie Naphtali, Sophia Mohring and Sarah Anne Awcoula.

CITIZEN PHOTO BY JAMES DOYLE

UNBC men’s home schedule ends this weekend

Citizen staff

They’re all still in their early-20s but as far as the UNBC Timberwolves are concerned, Francesco Bartolillo, Conrad Rowlands and Gordon Hall are senior citizens.

As five-year veterans, the end of their university men’s soccer careers is imminent this fall. But if they have it their way that day won’t come until early November at the U Sports national championship at Thunderbird Stadium in Vancouver.

Ranked fourth in the Pacific Division, the T-wolves take a 4-3-4 record onto the field today against the Heat (2-6-4, seventh in Pacific).

First things first, the T-wolves have to book themselves a berth in the Canada West conference playoffs. They could do themselves a big favour if they can beat the UBC Okanagan Heat in a two-game series today and Sunday at Masich Place Stadium (both 2 p.m. starts).

After that the T-wolves will have just two games left, both on the road next Friday and Saturday in Abbotsford against the Fraser Valley Cascades.

The UNBC women (1-6-3, eighth in Pacific Division) are on the road with games today (11 a.m. PT) in Calgary against the Prairie Divisionleading Dinos (9-1-0). On Sunday (11 a.m. PT), the T-wolves will meet the Lethbridge Pronghorns in Lethbridge.

The T-wolves wrap the regular season at Masich next weekend. They play Thompson Rivers University next Friday, followed by a Sunday date with UBC Okanagan.

Josiah Harder of the Kelly Road Roadrunners breaks through three Nechako Valley Vikings defenders on his way to a touchdown during a Friday night high school football game at Masich Place Stadium.

Kings trying to shake two-game losing streak

Citizen staff

After coming up with a stinker in their 5-2 loss to Powell River Thursday night, the Prince George Spruce Kings will be looking for rosier results tonight when they return to Rolling Mix Concrete Arena to face the Salmon Arm Silverbacks.

The Spruce Kings left the rink a frustrated bunch after an uninspired loss to the other Kings of the B.C. Hockey League, a game that turned on a pair of Powell River powerplay goals in the first period and a shorthanded goal Prince George allowed in the second period.

The Spruce Kings nearly doubled Powell River in shots (37-22), just like they did the previous weekend at home in a 4-3 loss to the Victoria Grizzlies, but the goal count is what matters and for the second straight game the Spruce Kings fell to an Island Division opponent on home ice.

Hoops, for real

The Silverbacks played Friday night at home against the Penticton Vees and that game went the distance with the Silverbacks (6-4-1-0) prevailing 3-2 in a shootout. The Spruce Kings (7-4-0-1) should be the better-rested team tonight. The Silverbacks’ roster includes two 19-year-old NCAA college-committed players – forward Trevor Adams (Air Force) and defenceman Akito Hirose (Minnesota StateManakato). Forward Yewta Plamondon, a native of Quesnel who had 23 goals and 40 points in 40 games last season with the junior B Kamloops Storm, is in his rookie BCHL season.

Prince George will be without forward Spencer Chapman (lower body), forward Michael Conlin (concussion) and defenceman Brennan Malgunas (sick). Forwards Sam Kozlowski and Layne Sniher, who both were sick for Thursday’s game, will be game-time decisions.

NBA regular season starts Tuesday

Citizen news service

From LeBron James’ arrival in Los Angeles to Jimmy Butler’s desire to leave Minnesota, it’s been an eventful NBA preseason.

It was a rocky one for the Timberwolves, who spent most of it dealing with the Butler drama and finished it dealing with Giannis Antetokounmpo, who had 32 points, 12 rebounds and 10 assists in just 25 minutes of Milwaukee’s 143-121 romp.

And it was a rough one for the Spurs, who lost three guards to injuries, including starting point guard Dejounte Murray for the season with a torn ACL.

Russell Westbrook (right knee) and Dirk Nowitzki (left ankle) couldn’t even get on the floor, still recovering from surgeries. Nowitzki has already been ruled out by Dallas coach Rick Carlisle for the regularseason opener next week.

It’s still unknown if Butler will be playing then – or for what team. He didn’t travel with the Timberwolves on Friday to Milwaukee, with coach Tom Thibodeau saying he remained behind to work on his conditioning.

The preseason schedule wrapped up with 11 games, with the Lakers facing Golden State in San Jose, California in the last one. James sat out, as did Kevin Durant for the Warriors.

The regular season begins Tuesday with Boston hosting Philadelphia, followed by Oklahoma City visiting defending champion Golden State.

Spurs 100 Magic 81

DeMar DeRozan scored 20 points, nine coming from the line, LaMarcus Aldridge had 13 points and 15 rebounds and the injury-riddled Spurs reached the century mark for the fourth time this preseason.

Evan Fournier led the Magic with 23 points.

SPURS: The injuries are adding up for the Spurs as Rudy Gay (heel) and Derrick White missed the game. White underwent an MRI examination Thursday that revealed a left plantar fascia tear. ... San Antonio held Orlando to 10 first-quarter points, and the Spurs led 40-30 at halftime as both teams shot less than 31 per cent.

MAGIC: Orlando’s first-round picks from the past two drafts played together for the first time as second-year forward Jonathan Isaac scored five points in 20 minutes and rookie centre Mohamed Bamba added 15 points in 23 minutes.

Nets 113 Knicks 107

Spencer Dinwiddie scored 19 points, D’Angelo Russell had 18 points and eight assists, and the Nets held on for a split of the preseason series with the Knicks. Tim Hardaway Jr. scored 18 points for the Knicks but departed with a sprained left wrist. The Knicks said X-rays were negative.

Hornets 123 Mavericks 118

Kemba Walker and Jeremy Lamb each made three of Charlotte’s 19 three-pointers. Walker scored 13 points in 17 minutes, Lamb added 11 points and rookie Miles Bridges had 13 points and seven rebounds. DeAndre Jordan had 18 points and 12 rebounds, and Luka Doncic also scored 18 for Dallas, which recently returned from two games in China.

Pistons 129 Cavaliers 110

Detroit’s big men dominated in East Lansing. Blake Griffin scored 29 points, Andre Drummond added 21 and the Pistons made 21 three-pointers at Michigan State’s Jack Breslin Student Events Center. Rodney Hood led Cleveland with 21 points, 11 coming from the free-throw line.

Heat 119 Hawks 113

Josh Richardson scored 24 points and the Heat rallied from a 13-point halftime deficit with a 66-point second half against visiting Atlanta. Miami won despite going 7 of 31 from 3-point range and committing 23 turnovers. Jeremy Lin had 20 points off the bench for Atlanta, which had 24 turnovers.

Nuggets 98 Bulls 93

Gary Harris scored 18 points and Jamal Murray added 17 as Denver won at Chicago. Nikola Jokic backed up the two second-year players with 15 points, seven rebounds, five assists and two steals. The Bulls closed within 88-87 with 4:09 to play as Jabari Parker, who scored 19 points, scored eight straight.

Rockets 121 Grizzlies 103

James Harden scored 23 points and Chris Paul and Clint Capela had double-doubles as Houston cruised at Memphis. Paul had 14 points and 11 assists and Capela 12 points with 13 rebounds. Jaren Jackson Jr. led the Rockets with 18 points in 21 minutes.

Brewers survive L.A.’s comeback attempt

Jay COHEN Citizen news service

MILWAUKEE — Clayton Kershaw pounded his glove with his left hand and yelled “Let’s Go!” as he walked off the mound.

Pretty soon, he was gone.

Kershaw was hit hard in the shortest start of his spotty playoff career, and the sloppy Los Angeles Dodgers lost 6-5 to the Milwaukee Brewers in Game 1 of the NL Championship Series on Friday night.

Los Angeles committed four errors, including two by catcher Yasmani Grandal in Milwaukee’s two-run third. But another playoff flop for its ace left-hander might be its biggest concern as it tries to cool off streaking Milwaukee.

Game 2 is this afternoon at Miller Park.

Kershaw holds the team records for playoff wins (eight), starts (21), innings (133) and strikeouts (144), but is just 8-8 with a 4.26 ERA in 26 career post-season appearances. The Dodgers dropped to 13-13 when the three-time NL Cy Young Award winner takes the mound in the playoffs.

The 30-year-old Kershaw quieted some of those October questions when the Dodgers won the NL pennant last year for the first time since 1988, going 3-0 with a 3.82 ERA in six appearances. He pitched six sparkling innings in the NLCS-clinching victory at Wrigley Field against the Cubs, and worked four scoreless innings in relief in Los Angeles’ Game 7 loss to Houston in the World Series.

After he was passed over for Los Angeles’ Game 1 start in the NL Division Series this year, the 2014 NL MVP responded with eight innings of two-hit ball in a 3-0 victory over Atlanta.

The victory against the Baby Braves was one of his best playoff performances. The loss against the Brewers was one of his worst.

The night started to get away from Kershaw and the Dodgers when Brandon Woodruff led off the third inning with a massive drive to right-centre, becoming the third reliever in major league history to homer in a post-season game.

Kershaw glanced back with an incredulous look as Woodruff’s ball soared over the wall, tying it 1-1 and sending a charge through the sellout crowd of 43,615.

Lorenzo

A passed ball and an interference call on Grandal helped set up Hernan Perez’s sacrifice fly before Kershaw minimized the damage by striking out Mike Moustakas, stranding two runners in scoring position and leading to his emotional display as he headed toward the dugout. Whatever Kershaw was trying to do, it

didn’t work.

Los Angeles went down in order in the fourth and Milwaukee’s first three batters reached in the bottom half, chasing Kershaw and producing two more runs on Domingo Santana’s pinch-hit single. Santana swiped second and scored on Ryan Braun’s two-out single against Ryan Madson.

Martinez holds no grudge against Astros

Jimmy GOLEN Citizen news service

BOSTON — J.D. Martinez wants to thank the Houston Astros – not get back at them – for releasing him when he was struggling to make himself into a star.

The Red Sox slugger credits his growing pains in Houston for teaching him “how to fail,” a lesson he credits with transforming him into an MVP candidate who helped Boston win a franchiserecord 108 games and reach the AL Championship Series against his former team.

“My failures in Houston is what made me who I am,” Martinez said Friday, a day before the Astros and Red Sox open the best-of-seven series. “There’s really no animosity there. In a sense they did me a favour by allowing me to leave and play on another team.”

It will be the second straight

year the Red Sox and Astros meet in the post-season – last year it was the ALDS – and the second straight year Chris Sale will go against Justin Verlander in the opener.

The biggest difference this time: Boston has Martinez on its side. And the Astros could have.

Martinez made his big-league debut for Houston in 2011, driving in 28 runs in his first full month in the majors. After playing part time the next two years – hitting 18 homers with 91 RBIs in 199 games – he was 26 years old and batting .167 in the spring of 2014 when the Astros released him, preferring to give the at-bats to top prospect George Springer.

Martinez landed with Detroit that season and by 2015 he was an All-Star, hitting 38 homers with 102 RBIs. He hit 45 homers last year, when he was traded from the Tigers to Diamondbacks and was 14th in MVP voting despite playing just 62 games in the NL.

“I always believed he’s going to be the player he is right now,” said Astros second baseman Jose Altuve, the reigning AL MVP, who came up through the minors with Martinez. “He got a couple of tough years with us in the big leagues. But I think the best thing

Braun’s clutch swing closed the book on Kershaw, who was charged with five runs, four earned, and six hits. He dropped to 2-5 with a 5.24 ERA in 11 career NLCS games. Kershaw’s shortest playoff start before the loss to Milwaukee was four-plus innings in a 9-0 loss at St. Louis in Game 6 of the 2013 NLCS, ending Los Angeles’ season.

that happened to him was going to the Tigers and becoming the player that he is.”

Verlander was Martinez’s teammate in Detroit and said he was “there from the moment he turned his career around.”

“He went and completely revamped his swing that off-season, and saw immediate dividends,” Verlander said. “(He) never stopped hitting. Seeing somebody like that who works so hard and turned their career around to where he’s at now, as a fellow player, and you respect it and I’m happy for him. I really am.”

Now Martinez is one of the keys – with Mookie Betts, who is expected to edge him for the AL MVP award – on a Red Sox team that won a third straight AL East title but advanced in the playoffs for the first time since 2013, eliminating the rival New York Yankees in the ALDS.

The Central Division champion

Astros did OK, too, winning their first World Series last year; Springer was Series MVP.

So, no hard feelings.

“God gave me another opportunity and put me in a good situation with Detroit. And that’s kind of where I continued to grow until where I am today, really,” Martinez said. “And if it wasn’t for that I probably wouldn’t be here right now. Who knows where I would have been?” Tonight’s opener will be a rematch of Game 1 of the ALDS last year, when the Astros jumped on Sale for seven runs in five innings, including back-to-back homers by Alex Bregman and Altuve in the first. Altuve added another homer in the fifth.

Sale and Verlander each came out of the bullpen in Game 4, with the Red Sox lefty outpitching the Astros ace before tiring in his fifth inning of relief and taking the loss as the Red Sox were eliminated.

AP PHOTO

Cain of the Milwaukee Brewers can’t quite haul in a ball hit by Chris Taylor of the Los Angeles Dodgers during the ninth inning of Game 1 of the National League Championship Series on Friday night in Milwaukee. The Brewers still prevailed, 6-5.

MARTINEZ

Facing Stamps could be defining moment for B.C.

Ed WILLES Vancouver Sun

CALGARY – In the run-up to a defining game for a team that’s still impossible to define, a group of veterans addressed the B.C. Lions this week.

Their message – everything we’ve worked for this CFL season is still in front of us – is about what you’d expect this time of year. But the more interesting, and telling, aspect of the locker-room oratory were the players who did the talking.

There was the quarterback Travis Lulay, whose left shoulder is held together with duct tape and paper clips. There was running back Jeremiah Johnson, who’s ceding his job as the feature back to Tyrell Sutton for tonight’s meeting with the Stampeders. There was fullback Rolly Lumbala, who’s rushed for three yards on two carries this season. And there was tackle Joel Figueroa who’s now played 14 games in his storied Lions’ career.

That these four players help make up the core of the Lions’ leadership group might explain the erratic nature of this season. But whatever else they are, the Leos are on a 4-1 run, they have four games left on their schedule and a playoff berth is hanging in the balance.

True, after 14 games, their head coach still isn’t certain what he has with this team but, beginning tonight at McMahon Stadium, he’ll start to find out.

Hell, we all will.

“I don’t know yet,” Wally Buono said as the Lions went through their final walk-through Friday. “Here. Ask me on Sunday. Seriously. You have to step up sometime. You can’t keep waiting. This team has waited long enough.”

And, to borrow from the late great Tom Petty, the waiting has been the hardest part for coach Buono.

While this game comes equipped with some ready-made storylines – Buono’s final regular-season trip to Calgary where he coached

for 13 seasons; his meeting with Stamps’ head coach Dave Dickenson, who Buono coached in Calgary and Vancouver; his relationship with Stamps’ GM John Hufnagel which goes back three decades – the old Lion is only concerned with one thing.

“All that other stuff is great,” he said. “But I’m here to win a football game.”

How he goes about doing that is the next question because, over the last 10 years, McMahon has been as hospitable to the Lions as the Bates Motel was to Janet Leigh.

Since Hufnagel took over the Stamps in 2008, the Lions have gone 5-11 in Calgary with a nifty 0-3 mark in the playoffs. Still,

this will be a different Stampeders’ team facing the Lions, largely because they figure to be missing four starting receivers. But the Lions will also have a different look because, well, they seem to have a different look for each game.

In this week’s makeover, Sutton steps in for Johnson as the feature ball-carrier while Johnson supplants Chris Rainey as the return man and backup running back. The Lions will try to get both players on the field in some packages but the larger goal for the offence is a more physical running game that has been Sutton’s calling card in his five-plus CFL seasons.

“You’re not going to win in October or November unless you

can run the football,” said Buono.

“See that wind (gusting to 35 km/h Friday)? It’s going to be colder (tonight). You have to be physical and when we’re physical, we win. When we’re not physical we lose.”

To that end, Figueroa becomes a key cog in the run game. The six-foot-six, 320-pound tackle from Miami isn’t exactly loquacious but he’s a presence and he’s emerged as a leader this season. When members of the Hamilton Tiger-Cats were messing with Lions’ kicker Ty Long two weeks ago in Hamilton – are you really that tough if you’re trying to intimidate a kicker? – Figueroa arrived on the scene and restored order.

“He had my back,” Long said.

NHL critical of Watson’s suspension reduction

Citizen news service

NEW YORK

— The NHL is criticizing an arbitrator’s decision to reduce the suspension of Nashville Predators forward Austin Watson, who pleaded no contest in July to a domestic assault charge.

Watson received a 27-game suspension from NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman last month. The NHL and NHL Players’ Association announced Thursday that arbitrator Shyam Das had reduced it to 18 games.

The NHL issued a statement Friday saying that “we are disappointed with the Arbitrator’s decision.”

“We firmly believe that the right of appeal to an arbitrator of League discipline was never intended to substitute the arbitrator’s

Watson must serve three months of probation and complete both an in-patient treatment program and a batterer’s intervention program.

judgment for that of the Commissioner, particularly on matters of important League policy and the articulation of acceptable standards of conduct for individuals involved in the National Hockey League,” the NHL said in its statement.

The NHL added that “we will not hesitate

to adhere to and enforce – through firm discipline as necessary – the standards of personal conduct we feel are appropriate for our league.”

The NHL doesn’t have a written domestic violence policy and takes each situation on a case by case basis.

The NHLPA also released a statement Friday, saying: “The NHLPA takes domestic violence seriously and continues to work together with the NHL to ensure that players are educated on this important societal issue.”

As part of those efforts, the NHL/NHLPA conduct domestic violence awareness training in their Rookie Orientation Program and during the season for all NHL players.

Watson was arrested June 16 after a

You have to step up sometime. You can’t keep waiting. This team has waited long enough.

— Wally Buono

“I’ll always have your back, even when you’re wrong,” Figueroa said, before adding: “This is a brand new team. There are guys from all over. It’s taken a while but we’re finally starting to gel. We just have to keep grinding.”

Still, the key to the Lions’ playoff aspirations is Lulay, the oft-injured former most outstanding player who returns to the starters’ job this week after missing four games with a separated left shoulder.

The 35-year-old vet represents the ultimate variable in the Lions’ equation. When Lulay has played this season, he’s given the team a spark but he hasn’t been in the lineup long enough to gain any traction with the offence.

He now has these four regularseason games left to rally this team, four games that could change the narrative of the latter part of his career with the Lions. Lulay admits he’s thought about that.

Then again, he’s thought about a lot of things recently.

“You have to get over that,” Lulay answered when asked about the mental hurdle of coming back from yet another injury. “It can’t exist. If that’s in the back of your mind, if it clouds your focus in any way, you’re not ready.”

And he believes he and his team are ready.

“Nothing is guaranteed in this game, but we have four games guaranteed as a group,” Lulay said. “What we make of those four games is up to us and we have this chance to have a fun ending.” And, maybe, figure out who they are.

witness flagged down a police officer to a gas station in Franklin, Tenn. Watson told police he and his girlfriend were arguing and that he pushed her. Officers said they found red marks on her chest, and she said Watson caused them. Watson pleaded no contest to domestic assault on July 24. He can have the misdemeanour charge dismissed by fulfilling terms of his judicial diversion program. Watson must serve three months of probation and complete both an in-patient treatment program and a batterer’s intervention program. Watson, 26, is a former first-round draft pick who scored a career-high 14 goals and had five assists in 76 games during the 2017-18 regular season. He had five goals and three assists in 13 playoff games.

Otha Foster III, left, and B.C. Lions teammate Anthony Thompson chase ball carrier Kamar Jorden during the second half of a game against the Calgary Stampeders on Aug. 4. The Lions (7-7) visit the Calgary Stampeders (12-2) tonight.

Men pray in a 48-square-metre room in the back of a truck that serves as a mobile mosque. It’s even equipped with four air conditioners.

Mobile mosque takes hospitality everywhere

URAYASU, Japan — A “mobile mosque” was unveiled in Japan’s Chiba Prefecture in late September, with Muslim residents of the Kanto region coming to say their prayers. Capable of being sent anywhere, this mosque on wheels was created with an eye on the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics, as well as other international events that will be held in Japan.

The mosque looks like an ordinary truck – about 12 metres long and about 2.5 metres wide when it drives on the road. Within several minutes of parking, the sides expand to the right and left, rendering the truck about six metres wide. The vehicle

has now become a 48-square-metre prayer room that can accommodate more than 50 people at once.

The prayer room has four air conditioners. It’s also equipped with water tanks and outdoor faucets so the faithful can wash before making their prayers.

A Tokyo-based event organizing company and others came up with the idea for the mosque, in a bid to provide omotenashi –Japanese hospitality for Muslims. It was created by the executive committee for the mobile mosque project for about 100 million yen.

ever, the nation is short of places of worship for Islam – one of the three major religions in the world,” said Yasuharu Inoue, head of the Tokyo-based committee. “I’m a Buddhist, but I wanted to create an environment where everyone can say their prayers at ease.”

The mosque is expected to be leased to event organizers and dispatched to locations that don’t have sufficient rooms for prayer, such as gyms, stadiums and tourist facilities.

of prayer rooms has gradually increased in Japan, but even today, there aren’t many. So mobile mosques like this will make Muslims visiting Japan feel at home,” he said after prayers at the mosque.

Since the completion of the mobile mosque was announced to the press in July, the executive committee has received inquiries from more than 45 countries, and some event organizers are considering using it at international events.

“The mobile mosque is seen as very unique to Japan. Surprisingly, it’s getting a lot of attention from Islamic countries, where there are many mosques,” Inoue said. The committee has set out to create a second mobile mosque. JAPAN

“Infrastructure is being improved to accommodate visitors to Japan of various nationalities, cultures and religions. How-

“There were very few places for worship for Muslims and they had to avoid people’s attention when I came to Japan 30 years ago,” said Sandha Saleem, a visitor to the mosque who is from Pakistan and currently living in Adachi Ward, Tokyo. “The number

Pope to make archbishop’s sainthood official

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP) — Bespectacled, smiling and with close-cropped hair, the late Archbishop Oscar Romero’s visage gazes kindly from postage stamps, handmade busts on sale at the San Salvador cathedral, even from a huge black-dot mural on the side of the Foreign Ministry.

On Sunday in the Vatican, Pope Francis will officially make Romero a saint nearly three decades after he was martyred by an

assassin’s bullet to the heart. But for many Salvadoran Roman Catholic devotees who already know him as “Saint Romero of the Americas” that will only formalize something they have long known in their hearts.

“He was a great man. He already was a saint,” said Jose David Santos, 73, in a recent interview before travelling to Rome along with 5,000 other Salvadorans to be present for the canonization.

What do you see?

When you survey your life, your job, your home, your marriage, your family, what do you see?

Are you one of those folks who thinks, “If I were just married,” or “If if I could just land a different job,” – “then I would be happy.”

I heard a story a few weeks ago that is, I have found, both challenging and inspiring. The story was shared by Russel H. Conwell, the founder of Temple University.

There once was a farmer named Ali Hafib. Ali lived on a farm and he owned a plough and an ox and lived in a very modest hut. He was not a rich man but he was content. I suppose the fact that he was content made him wealthier than most people today.

One day a traveller stopped by and told Ali about how many people were finding great riches in India.

We all know how stories can get exaggerated, and the traveller told of people finding diamonds there

and thus making a fortune. After hearing the story, Ali became more and more discontented with his life. In the days that followed, his agitation and discontentment grew to the point where he decided he must pursue the wealth that the traveller had told him about. He put his farm up for sale and sold it. He took the money and with some he arranged for a place for his wife and children to stay, and then put the rest of the money in a sack.

He kissed his wife and children goodbye and told them that when he returned they would be set and that they would want for nothing. He set out as a soldier of fortune, bent on finding diamonds. After searching and searching, his money gone and his health failing, dejected and in despair, he wrote a farewell note, “No diamonds anywhere” and cast

“He was a great example of humility,” Santos added, clad in a white shirt with Romero’s face imprinted on it. “He professed love for the poor man. He denounced injustices. He defended victims. He criticized the violence of the military and of the guerrillas.”

Romero was slain March 24, 1980, a day after he implored the military dictatorship to “cease the repression” against civilians

himself into a raging river.

Meanwhile, back home, the man who had bought his farm, lived in the same humble hut, ate the same food as Ali, took the same ox and the same plough and began to work the farm. As he ploughed, he became increasingly irritated by these pesky black rocks. He couldn’t plough more than 50 feet without hitting one. In fact, he kept throwing them to the side, and even made piles of them along the side of his fields.

One day, he hit a larger one and when he picked it up he saw that it reflected the light in a beautiful way. He liked the rainbow colours he saw so he took it home and placed it on the mantle as a decoration.

Soon thereafter the local priest came by to welcome him to the community and while they were talking the priest stopped midsentence. His eyes got big like saucers and he said, “Where did you get that rock?” The farmer said, “I picked it up in the field –these rocks are everywhere. I had to start stacking them in piles.”

as the country spiraled toward a 12-year civil war.

At the time – and still today – some in conservative sectors loathed him as a “guerrilla in a cassock” for sympathizing with leftist causes. But he was and remains broadly popular among the poor and working class, whom he passionately defended, and many began lionizing him almost immediately.

The priest said, “Before I became a priest, I was a jeweller, and I am certain that this rock is a diamond in the rough.” Sure enough, it turns out that the rock was indeed a diamond, and in the late 1800s it was appraised at $25,000.

The farm that the discontented Ali Hafib sold to pursue his fortune, became the De Beers diamond fields. He had been living on acres of diamonds.

What about you today?

Are you one of those people who believe that the grass is greener somewhere else?

Are you searching for greener pastures?

Are you one of those people who would go somewhere else in search of diamonds?

One man said, “If the grass looks greener on the other side of the fence… it is probably astro-turf.”

Another man said, “The grass is greener where you water it.”

Each one of us has been given opportunities that are right under our noses and in our own back yards. We are living on acres of diamonds if only we could see

through the eye of faith and develop and invest in what we have now and trust God to help us be good stewards of what we have been given. Opportunity doesn’t just come along, it is right in front of you. If you are diligent and faithful with what you are given, more will be given to you.

Paul writes in Philippians 4:12:

“I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed, or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.”

When you look at your life, what do you see? When you look at our city, what do you see?

Since moving here from the Kelowna in 2009, I have heard a lot of negative comments about Prince George and have known many who moved away to find something “better.”

I love this city, and I love the people here. When I look at Prince George I see a field of diamonds. What do you see?

PAUL BERTEIG Genesis Community Church

Clergy Comment Citizen news service

Currencies

OTTAWA (CP) —

The markets today

TORONTO (CP) — Canada’s main stock index snapped a five-day losing streak on Friday while U.S. markets made up some of the lost ground on a recovery in tech stocks. Despite a strong U.S. economy, many believe investors were spooked by the prospect of a series of interest rate hikes, said Allan Small, senior investment adviser with HollisWealth.

“I think this is one huge overreaction,” he said of the recent sell off. “It’s going to take a bunch of trading days for us to make back what the losses have added up to over the past few days.”

The S&P/TSX composite index closed up 97.16 points to 15,414.29 after shedding 754.92 points between Oct. 4 and Thursday. The market hit a high of 15,470.88 on the day with 289.3 million shares traded.

The health care sector led, rising 4.24 per cent with a big push from cannabis producer Canopy Growth Corp. Ten of the market’s 13 sectors increased, while gold, materials and base metals were down slightly. The latest sell off was smaller than the one earlier this year and Small said it could have been affected by seasonality, with markets typically falling in October, and computer algorithms that triggered selling in afternoon sessions.

“I think that this again will subside and I think the market will bounce higher. Hopefully earnings season will be the catalyst for that,” he said. Still, Small expects companies will begin to note that tariffs are starting to eat into corporate profits.

In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average gained 287.16 points to 25,339.99 after shedding 1,377.74 points in the last two days. The S&P 500 index was up 38.76 points at 2,767.13, while the Nasdaq composite rose 167.83 points to 7,496.89.

Small said people have gotten too accustomed to seeing their portfolios consistently rise and were lulled into a false sense of security.

“I think investors in my opinion were starting to get a little bit greedy. They weren’t happy with the six, seven, eight, nine per cent rate of return. They were chasing the hot investment, the hot technology stock, or cannabis stock.”

The Canadian dollar traded at an average of 76.74 cents US compared with an average of 76.70 cents US on Thursday.

Trans Mountain review doesn’t

look far enough

out to sea, environmentalists say

Mia RABSON Citizen news service

OTTAWA — The back-to-the-drawing board environmental review of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project will assess the impact of increased oil tanker traffic out to about 12 nautical miles from the B.C. coastline.

The National Energy Board released the decision Friday as it laid out the schedule for reconsidering its approval of the project by the Feb. 22 federal government deadline.

Dr. Robert Steedman, chief environment officer of the NEB, said the decision to limit the area of the assessment to 12 nautical miles, known as the territorial sea limit, was based on the comments received from interested parties. The precise reasons for the decision won’t be made public by the board until next week.

However, one of the environment groups that sued Ottawa over its original environmental review of the project, says the distance does not cut it.

“From the get go it looks like a political exercise, not an environmental one,” said Misty MacDuffee, a conservation biologist at the Raincoast Conservation Foundation in British Columbia.

Raincoast was one of the groups behind the

successful lawsuit challenging federal approval of the expanded pipeline. It argued, and the court agreed, that cabinet and the National Energy Board erred in not considering the negative impacts of additional oil tankers on marine life, particularly on the highly endangered southern resident killer whales.

The court also found that the federal government had failed in its duty to consult with affect Indigenous groups.

The NEB had looked at some of those things in its 2015 review and even said it expected the increased tanker traffic would have a negative impact on the orcas. However, it also decided that marine shipping was outside its purview so it didn’t take that into account in deciding to give the project the green light.

After the Federal Court of Appeal struck down the approval in late August, Natural Resources Minister Amarjeet Sohi ordered the NEB to go back and do a new review of the marine tankers.

Raincoast had wanted the new review to cover the area known as the exclusive economic zone, which extends 200 nautical miles from shore. MacDuffee said the 12-mile distance could leave out a number of endangered or atrisk whales, such as blue whales, finn whales

and sei whales.

MacDuffee said the NEB’s decision is very disappointing and might simply be setting the project on another collision course with the courts for failing to do a broad enough assessment.

Steedman said organizations can still submit comments to the board about the impact on other whales if they wish.

It’s estimated the project, which will triple the capacity of the existing pipeline, would result in an additional 30 oil tankers traversing the Burrard Inlet each month.

The NEB review will look at the environmental effects those extra ships will have on species at risk, the potential for oil spills and any mitigation measures that are feasible to prevent negative impacts from increased tanker traffic.

The board is imposing filing deadlines for interveners starting this month, will hear oral traditional evidence by Indigenous groups in November and December and will hear potential oral summary arguments in January.

The federal government has appointed former Supreme Court justice Frank Iacobucci to oversee a new round of consultations with Indigenous communities. It has put no deadline on those consultations.

Safety group calls for Hyundai, Kia recall over fire risk

Tom KRISHER Citizen news service

DETROIT — A non-profit auto safety group is demanding that Hyundai and Kia recall 2.9 million cars and SUVs in the U.S. due to consumer complaints that they can catch fire.

The Center For Auto Safety said Friday that there have been more than 220 complaints to the U.S. government since 2010 about fires and another 200 complaints about melted wires as well as smoke and burning odours.

The complaints involve the 2011 through 2014 Kia Sorento and Optima and the Hyundai Sonata and Santa Fe. Also included is the 2010 through 2015 Kia Soul.

The fires are being investigated by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration as part of a 2017 probe into Hyundai and Kia engine failures.

“The volume of fires here make it appear that Hyundai and Kia

are content to sit back and allow consumers and insurers to bear the brunt of poorly-designed, manufactured and repaired vehicles,” Jason Levine, the centre’s executive director, said. The fire reports have come in from across the country, including a death in Ohio in April of 2017, he said.

Hyundai says it monitors safety concerns and acts quickly to recall defective vehicles.

“We have a robust system in place for monitoring and investigating reported vehicle fires that includes investigation and reporting to NHTSA as required,” a company statement said.

Kia said it is using company and third-party fire investigators to determine what caused the fires so it can address them.

“A vehicle fire may be the result of any number of complex factors, such as a manufacturing issue, inadequate maintenance, the installation of aftermarket parts, an improper repair, arson, or

some other non-vehicle source, and must be carefully evaluated by a qualified and trained investigator,” the company said in a statement.

In June, the Center for Auto Safety filed a petition asking NHTSA to investigate the fires separately from the engine failures. The agency said Friday that it is evaluating the petition and it has requested information from automakers.

In May of 2017 the government began investigating whether Hyundai and Kia moved quickly enough to recall over 1.6 million vehicles because of engines stalling. NHTSA is looking into three recalls by the related Korean brands, and it’s also investigating whether the automakers followed safety reporting requirements.

Hyundai recalled about 470,000 vehicles in September of 2015 because manufacturing debris could have restricted oil flow to connecting rod bearings. That can cause

bearings in four-cylinder engines to wear and fail. The repair is an expensive engine block replacement.

In March of last year, the automakers issued two more recalls covering 1.2 million additional vehicles with the same engine problem.

If NHTSA finds that the companies moved too slowly to recall vehicles, then it can issue fines or order additional recalls. The agency has said the fires appear to be related to engine failures.

Melissa Markoutsis, 39, of Kenosha, Wis., said the engine on her 2012 Kia Soul exploded and failed in an Interstate 94 construction zone south of Milwaukee on May 14, spewing thick black smoke as she was driving amid semis and Jersey barriers.

“I panicked. I couldn’t see anything,” she recalled.

Markoutsis said she safely coasted to an exit ramp and had the Soul towed to a Kia dealer.

“Many a small thing has been

A tanker is docked at Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain marine terminal in Burnaby on May 29. The National Energy Board review of the proposed expansion of the pipeline will examine the impacts of the project out to about 12 nautical miles from the coast.

Return to work tough for nursing moms

Rebecca GREENFIELD Citizen news service

For a breastfeeding mom just returning to work, Sarah Madden has what would be considered the best-case scenario.

Her employer, the nonprofit Guidestar, has a brand-new Oakland office with a lactation room that the 36-year-old can duck into whenever she has to pump. The ability to video chat limits her need to travel. And, she describes her co-workers as generally accepting. Yet, just a couple months back from maternity leave, Madden can already see the “longer-term consequences” breastfeeding can have on her career.

She has to leave meetings early; she can’t schedule back-to-back calls all day; she feels pressured to travel more. On a recent conference call, someone called her out for not flying cross-country for the meeting. “I have a baby,” she explained.

Not all women have it as good as Madden, and many working moms feel that they get stigmatized or penalized for breast pumping at work. A new survey shared exclusively with Bloomberg from Aeroflow, a breast pump maker, found that half of the 773 women surveyed had concerns that breastfeeding at work could impact their career growth. Half of the breastfeeding working moms also said they have considered a job or career change.

“There’s not a forgiving culture for new moms in the workplace,” says Alexis Diao, a producer at NPR with two young kids.

“There is intense pressure to prove that you’re the same woman before childbirth and before pregnancy.”

Motherhood is one of the biggest causes of the gender pay gap. Women’s earnings drop significantly after childbirth, while men’s don’t. That divergence starts the day new moms get back to the office, especially for those who choose to breastfeed.

“There’s a real incompatibility in the U.S. with breastfeeding and continuing to work fulltime,” said Phyllis Rippey, a sociologist at the University of Ottawa who has studied breastfeeding and women’s earnings.

Not all moms choose to or are physically able to breastfeed; for those who do, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that infants be breastfed during the first year for the

best health outcomes. Since only 15 per cent of U.S. workers get any paid time off to care for newborns, most working moms are forced to pump at work to keep up with those recommendations.

It’s hard to measure exactly how much breastfeeding hurts women’s long-term earnings, because few surveys look at the two together, said Rippey. In a 2012 study, Rippey looked at a rare data set that quantified both issues for mothers with children born from 1980 to 1993. They found that women who breastfed for at least six months suffered more severe and prolonged earnings losses than mothers who breastfed for less time or not at all.

“I call it a breast-feeding penalty,” Rippey said.

Women face stigma for taking time away from their jobs, and they run up against the reality that the workday doesn’t stop when they leave to go pump. Breast pumping requires a strict schedule that doesn’t fit squarely in the traditional workday. Pumping times can vary anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour.

Women have to pump multiple times during the workday. That doesn’t mesh with the workday.

“Having to step away and pump when you’re at the office can be an isolating experience. You are essentially locking yourself in a room and, in your deepest insecurities, confirming to people that despite your best efforts, you have changed,” Diao said. (NPR, where she works, has on-site lactation rooms.)

Diann Burns, a Virginia-based attorney with three kids, said that a former employer said her productivity lagged when she started breast pumping-just before laying her off.

“There is an ‘I’m-doing-less-work-attitude’ about it, in spite of the fact that I’m not taking a smoke break like other employees,” she said.

“No employee works every minute. I know I have to get my work done and then pump around it.”

Workplaces have improved conditions for breastfeeding moms in the past 30 years.

A 2010 amendment to the U.S. Fair Labor Standards Act requires employers to provide reasonable break time and a place other than a bathroom for women to pump for as much as one year after the birth of the child. Twenty-nine states also have laws related to

breastfeeding in the workplace. Around half of employers have on-site lactation rooms, up from 28 per cent in 2014, according to a 2018 survey of over 3,000 employers from the Society for Human Resource Management.

Still, many women don’t have workplaces with such accommodations. Only about 40 per cent of women have access to a private space, other than a bathroom, to pump, a 2016 study from the University of Minnesota found. The schools at which Chelsea Wilson works as a nurse, for example, don’t have dedicated lactation rooms. She has pumped in bathrooms, supply closets, and in other people’s offices.

“There is still a large problem with compliance,” said Galen Sherwin, a lawyer at the ACLU. “There’s this notion that women are seeking ‘special’ accommodations, as opposed to seeking conditions that make it possible for them to return to work when they have babies.”

Rippey found that women’s earnings took a big hit because many of them left the workplace altogether. But women are more likely to quit breastfeeding than quit their jobs entirely.

The harder that workplaces make it for moms to pump, the less likely they’ll stick with it, the University of Minnesota study also found. Women who had accommodations were 2.3 times more likely to continue exclusively breastfeeding at the six-month point, the researchers found.

“A lot of women feel stressed,” said Pat McGovern, one of the researchers on the study.

“If they’re racing to this space to breastfeed and back to their office, and don’t feel their direct supervisor is supportive, it can be very stressful.”

Chavi Lieber, a journalist who works at Vox Media, stopped breastfeeding her newborn at six months because “the lifestyle of the job really isn’t cut out for it,” she said.

Her office has a mother’s room, but she spends a lot of her time elsewhere. Once, when she found herself in midtown Manhattan without a place to pump, she ducked into the bathroom at Tiffany & Co.

“While society as a whole loves to pressure women into breastfeeding, it sure wasn’t ready to accommodate a pumping business reporter when I actually needed the physical space to do it.”

Walmart buys online lingerie retailer Bare Necessities

Anne D’INNOCENZIO Citizen news service

NEW YORK — Walmart says it’s buying online lingerie retailer Bare Necessities, the latest acquisition in its niche-brand buying spree. Walmart declined to disclose how much it’s paying for Bare Necessities, but says the deal

will help deepen its expertise in the world of bras, swimwear and shapewear.

The company said Friday that Bare Necessities will remain as a stand-alone site.

As part of the acquisition, Noah Wrubel, CEO and co-founder of Bare Necessities, will lead the intimates area for both Walmart. com and Jet.com, while also continuing to run

Dress

Karla MILLER Citizen news service

READER: My workplace is casual, by design. Our stated dress code is vague at best: “Appropriate office attire is required. Be guided by common sense and good taste.” There are a couple of 20-something women just out of college, and they’re still dressing like they’re at school. Super-skinny jeans; tops that expose shoulders, back, chest, upper arm; stiletto heels; sheer garments; very short shorts and skirts. I am not their supervisor, but I am senior manager and am aware of the image that we need to present to the public.

One of our male employees was asked by his female supervisor to stop coming to work in sweatpants. He complied, and that was the end of it.

I’ve spoken to HR about my concerns. HR is concerned that in light of the #MeToo movement, any counseling of these women would be viewed as hostile and sexist.

KARLA: For those who haven’t heard, #MeToo refers to a social movement sparked by unprecedented numbers of sexual assault victims – mostly women – going public with stories of how powerful celebrities, executives and other professionals harassed them, perhaps by trapping them in hotel rooms and offices or advising them to dress more modestly.

In addition to making clear the pervasiveness of sexual aggression and assault and empowering its victims, #MeToo has also inspired employers and individuals to examine their own behaviour and assumptions and ask, “Am I doing my part to prevent this?”

But, as I’ve said in previous columns, employers have the right – and obligation – to impose and enforce a dress code in line with their business purposes.

The more detailed the do’s and don’ts, the easier it is to detect and discipline violations consistently. (And, of course, the dress code can’t impose unlawfully discriminatory rules on employees of different sexes, faiths or races; deny reasonable medical or religious accommodations; or be based on gender stereotypes or assumptions.)

I don’t know how much clout, if any, you have in persuading HR to tailor its loosely defined standards to better fit your casual workplace. But since fostering gender equality is paramount in light of the #MeToo movement, HR might consider the problems that could arise if anyone thinks to question why a casually-clad male employee – but not his arguably equally underdressed female colleagues – was singled out for a dressingdown.

Miller offers advice on surviving the ups and downs of the modern workplace. Thanks to employment law partner Amy Epstein Gluck, FisherBroyles.

Bare Necessities.

Walmart is aiming to attract younger, more affluent shoppers with its string of business acquisitions.

Two years ago, it bought Jet.com for more than $3 billion and since then it’s been buying smaller online brands including Bonobos and Moosejaw.

Mildred Musni, right, breast feeds her son Eliseo and is joined by other mothers in protest at the main entrance of the city Human Services Agency in San Francisco in March 2016. Months before the protest, Musni was forced to cover up by a security guard when she attempted to feed Eliseo inside the facility. Nursing moms face additional challenges when they return to the workplace.

Interfor slashing production at B.C. sawmills

Citizen news service

VANCOUVER — Interfor Corp. plans to cut production by about 20 per cent across its sawmills in the B.C. Interior as it faces declining lumber prices and higher log costs. The Vancouver-based company said Friday that the scale-back is a temporary measure planned for the fourth quarter. The cuts will be achieved through

reduced operating days and extended weekends and holiday breaks spread across its three mills in the Interior, said chief financial officer Martin Juravsky.

“We’re trying to do it as smooth as possible under the circumstances from an employee perspective.”

The pullback comes as lumber prices for Western softwood have plunged from over US$650 per thousand board feet in June to

under US$400 as concerns mount about the U.S. housing market.

The higher lumber prices had insulated mill operators like Interfor from rising log costs brought on by higher stumpage fees and other pressures, said Juravsky.

“We obviously saw some very strong lumber markets in the first part of this year, and the higher log costs didn’t have as much of an impact when there were higher lumber prices,” Juravsky added. The drop in lumber prices has sent industry stock prices lower for a variety of Canadian players since the June high. Canfor Corp. is down 38 per cent, West Fraser Timber Co. Ltd. is down 34 per cent, and Interfor is down 39 per cent. Interfor’s share price closed Friday down 54 cents or 3.16 per cent to $16.55 on the Toronto Stock Exchange for a 52-week low.

SCHOOL DISTRICT 57 (PRINCE GEORGE) BOARD CANDIDATES

Betty Bekkering

I have lived and worked in Prince George for 29 years. I am retired from the College of New Caledonia as a cooperative education coordinator and I am asking the citizens of Prince George to return me as a trustee for a second term on the School District 57 Board. I was a trustee for the term of 2011-2014. Someone was watching over me and my spouse after the last election because it was the very best time for me to be the full-time caregiver for my spouse and for me to recover from major surgery. I am back in good physical health. I loved my term on the board and feel strongly that education is the key to solving many of the world’s problems such as poverty, tolerance and climate change, to name a few.

B.C.’s new curriculum recently introduced is producing a generationof problem solvers, critical thinkers and team players. I look forward to their innovations and ideas. The school district’s strategic plan adopted in 2016 is very much in line with the new curriculum and is promoting the values of building confidence, being inclusive, using a dynamic approach of experiential learning, being open and providing equitable access. I am such an advocate for experiential learning. My job as a co-op coordinator reinforced over and over to me how important “hands on” learning is to success. The teachers of SD 57 are exemplary. They have a can-do attitude and have embraced the new curriculum. I have the skills to be a good board member, i.e. able to express my views clearly, am always prepared for board and committee meetings and keep the needs of the school district a priority. My slogan for this campaign is “Students First.” I will keep that in mind through all my deliberations as a trustee.

Tim Bennett

It has been an honour to serve School District 57 over the past seven years. Thank you for putting your trust in me. I am running for another term because I am still passionate about public education and still have work to do. I am the current board chair, a director with the B.C. School Trustee Association, long serving executive director with Big Brothers Big Sisters, husband and father of two. The next board is going to have a lot on its plate. It is going to have to find a solution to address the catchment and capacity issues being faced in the district. It is going to need to quickly model a new funding formula and determine how it will impact our students. If there are negative implications, we need to quickly respond to government. We need to ensure a fair and successful bargaining process with both our teachers and support staff. We need to support our staff, students and parents through the final implementation of new curriculum, and while all this is happening we need to focus on improving student achievement outcomes. I have the experience and expertise to help lead the district and will continue to be a champion for our students and our community. My priorities for the next four years include remaining accessible, available and accountable. I want to see additional supports and resources for all students by investing more of our unappropriated surplus. I will ensure a safe and inclusive learning and working environment, and ensure the district is doing a better job communicating with our parents and the community. If you want to learn more you can visit www.timbennett.ca or find me on Facebook or Twitter. I hope to have earned your support on Oct. 20.

Trent Derrick

to making access to all services and supports for all students. I am committed to making sure we have enough support staff, utilize technology to the fullest and make sure teachers have all the tools they need in the classroom. I also believe in supporting food programs for all students. More than 20 per cent of children live under the poverty line and do not have nutritious meals. It is proven that kids who have nutritious meals learn better and act out less. Kids need to have nutrition in their diets in order to be able to learn. I will fully support the recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Indigenous students currently graduate at about 50 per cent. Over the last 10 years, this figure has stagnated. Indigenous students are the fastest growing demographic in the education system and changes need to be made to improve their graduation rates. I am fully committed to building a safe and inclusive learning environment for all student regardless of race, social economic status, sexuality and location. My experience in bringing together stakeholders together to find creative solutions to complex problems will be an asset to School District 57.

Sarah Holland

I am passionate about the importance of the public education system in our democratic society, and the role that our school system plays in helping all our children acquire the knowledge, skills, and attitudes needed to contribute to a healthy community.

In 2010, the school that my children attended was closed and I realized the importance of the district to individual schools and students. I volunteered at the district level, and as chair of the district parent advisory council, I helped represent parent views on issues such as capacity, student time to eat lunch, safety, financial hardship, bullying, and much more. My qualifications for the job of trustee include:

• years of experience with the school system, having participated in committees such as policy and governance, budget, education services, and more commitment to public education;

• strong financial background, to help make decisions on the $165 million budget;

• respectful working relationship with the partner groups of the district

• familiar with policy and procedures, having attended most board meetings over the past seven years.

Some of the things I’d like to work on as a trustee are:

• proactively planning for student numbers, so that students aren’t turned away from school or faced with crowded schools;

• the right of each unique learner to access the resources and supports they need for success;

• working together, because success in education needs a team approach.

• using facts and data to make well thought out decisions;

• a commitment to transparency - it’s important that people be able to see and trust the decisionmaking process;

• school code of conduct, and anti-bullying policies and supports for students - making sure these policies are understandable, coherent, and effective in communicating the rights and responsibilities of our students, programs for anti-bullying and supports, and building strong communities;

• recruitment and retention for employees.

Trudy Klassen

I am a local businessman, owner of Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory and Spa of the North. I have over 25 years of leadership experience in the private, public and non-profit sectors. I believe service to the community is one of the most important task we can do in building a better future. I do believe that a strong public education system is key to building a strong future for our children and grandchildren. The decisions we make today regarding their education will have a lasting on impact on the direction of their futures. I am committed

educator to know what schools need: each voter has their own valuable perspective, so please vote on Oct. 20.“Student Success through parent engagement is my main goal. Since parental engagement is the single biggest factor in student success, let’s work to improve where we can have the most impact. Teachers know how important parents are to a student’s success, the Ministry of Education says they know it, so I will be advocating this, and looking at every policy, budget, and planning decision, that comes my way, and ask: “How will this improve parental engagement and therefore student success?” I grew up in a tiny homesteading conservative Mennonite community in northern Alberta where I attended a public school. I saw the school administration try to deal with low student attendance by implementing various programs to appease the most conservative members. These ideas didn’t work. What worked was engaging the parents, year after year, as people deserving of respect, building on their shared values, and giving parents a voice in their children’s education. Vote for a trustee that has time to listen and engage, vote for Trudy Klassen.

Allan Krantz

My name is Allan Kranz and I am running for school trustee in School District 57. I have taught at the University of Northern British Columbia for more than 17 years as the senior lab instructor for computer science and I love what I do. I have also run my own business in Prince George for the last 20 years. Born in Trail and raised in the Kootenays, I worked many different jobs, spent two years at Selkirk College and 10 years in the Canadian Armed Forces Reserves as a field engineer. I came to Prince George in the 1980s as a professional diver to work in the pulp mills. I am an outdoor person with a love of fishing and hunting. I am married and my wife and I have raised three children here in Prince George. I chose to run for school trustee because it is time to give back to my community. I have teaching experience from UNBC and planning experience from running my own business. I believe that comprehensive long term planning is the best way to deal with many issues that face the school district. One of my concerns is better use of technology where appropriate. Ongoing training in the good use of and improvement of technology is something I would support. Another is that parents have the primary responsibility for the sexual education of their children. Building relationships with organizations that produce teachers in Canada will make recruiting new teachers easier and simpler. The new ward system for School District 57 will require comprehensive communication and cooperation between school trustees in order to work smoothly. There are few things more important than a good education. I am passionate about not just teaching but excellent teaching. I hope to have your support when you choose your school trustees.

Stephanie Mikalishen-Deol

that the amount of money spent on municipal campaigns would be much better spent directly funding youth programs and notfor-profits. Thus I am committed to self-financing my campaign, keeping my costs minimal. In addition, I will not be using any signage in my campaign. Instead, I will be using social media and the web. My husband and I are making charitable donations to local youth organizations instead of signage. Learn more about me and my platform at www.stephaniemikalishendeol.com, on Facebook at Stephanie Mikalishen-Deol for School District 57 Trustee, on Twitter at @StephanieMDeol and on Instagram at @StephanieMikDeol

Ron Polillo

Hi, my name is Ron Polillo and I have put my name forward to be a school trustee in School District 57. I have been on the air in Prince George for 25 years and I’m the program director of 99.3 The Drive and 101.3 The River. I’m the proud father of two teenage girls, Sophia in Grade 11 at Duchess Park and Lauren in Grade 9 at DP Todd. I’m asking for your support on Oct. 20. Many people have asked me why I’m running and the answer is simple. Education has been important to my success and I know how important it will be for my daughters’ success. I have dedicated countless hours of my time to youth in Prince George and I believe every student has the right to a quality education. My campaign has been built on three main pillars – capacity, catchment and classroom. It’s no secret that School District 57 has several schools near or over capacity and along with catchments are the two biggest issues facing us today. They need to be addressed immediately. With accurate information, consultation and the support of staff, parents and students, we can find Prince George solutions to these challenges.

My last pillar is classroom and that includes teachers, students, support staff and curriculum. I would fully support our teachers, educational assistants and staff so they can help our students to successful learning outcomes. This includes our rural schools, Aboriginal programs and students with special needs.

I will be passionate advocate for our district to secure proper funding. We need to lobby the Ministry of Education, cabinet ministers and local MLAs to ensure this happens. We have a huge district with diverse needs and that has to be acknowledged and supported by the provincial government.

I have been a strong community advocate for the past 25 years and I believe my diverse skillset, leadership abilities and hardworking team approach would make me a great choice for school trustee. I thank you for being engaged voters and I look forward to discussing the issues with you.

Corey Walker

Hello, I am Trudy Klassen and this is my first time running for a position on the school board. It is exciting to see many new candidates running as well. I look forward to working with all the trustees, including those from Mackenzie and Mount Robson, and to working collaboratively with SD57 staff to improve student success for all students in our district. Voting for school trustees is important because student success depends on good decisions. Trustees set policy and manage a budget which is larger than the City of Prince George’s. Trustees also make long-term plans for the district. These decisions should reflect the priorities of parents, residents, post-secondary institutions and our employers in order to best meet the needs of students. You don’t need to be an

recruitment challenges. Again, I feel that by having a committee consisting of all voices, including parents and teachers, we can come up with creative, effective recruitment solutions, so that we can address our staffing shortfall, thereby ensuring we can meet the needs of all our students.

Sharel Warrington

Over the past 13 years, I have valued the faith placed in me to fulfill my responsibilities as a member of SD57 board of education.

In seeking re-election, I offer my experience and my commitment to continue to serve our students, our employees and our communities. As chair of the board from 2011 to 2014, I introduced five new trustees to the work of the board. I currently chair the management and Finance committee and serve as the board’s representative on the B.C. School Trustee Association’s Provincial Council. Over the years, I have provided leadership to boards of education throughout the province in my work as the chair of BCSTA Education Committee and as the Northern Interior Branch Education Representative. It has been a privilege to have had the opportunity to support the work of trustees across the province. I believe a board must work as a united team committed to collaboration and responsible leadership. It must focus on supporting an inclusive learning environment and on building positive working relationships as it addresses the district’s goals of learning, engagement opportunity and sustainability. Strong committed voices are needed to listen, to advocate and to encourage community engagement. Understanding the complexities of our district is critical when addressing the needs of our students, our schools, our employees and our communities. Our district has a solid foundation to build upon. There are opportunities and challenges ahead. There is work to be done. On Oct. 20, I ask for your support to allow me to continue this important work of building on our district’s strengths and ensuring equity of educational opportunities, programs and services for all students and all schools.

Bruce Wiebe

I am seeking re-election as a School District 57 trustee, having sat on the Board of Education for the last four years. My focus on the ABC’s of Achieving, Believing, Caring remains strong.

I want to provide safe and quality learning and equal opportunity for every student in our district. I was raised in a family who believes in serving the community. This has been the driving force for my 10-year career with the YMCA and my leadership as president to the B.C. Camps Association; but I know that there is more work to be done for our children and youth, and this is my opportunity to leverage this experience for meaningful change. During my time with the Y, I have worked with many youth programs, initiatives and events, including YMCA Camp Kanannaq, the YMCA Aurora Leadership Program, YMCA Beyond the Bell, the YMCA Strong Kids Campaign, Foundry Prince George, National Child Day, YMCA Healthy Kids Day, the YMCA Road Race and Colour Run, the Fun City Sliders and most recently the Movie in the Park. I will bring my wealth of career experience including leadership, consensus-based decision making, capital budgets, fiscal and community accountability, managing change, policy development, ethical behaviour, and transparent communication. I am also keeping a commitment to green campaigning. I believe

My name is Corey Walker and I’m running for school trustee. I’m the northern regional coordinator for Autism BC and an autistic self-advocate. After hearing from parents that the schools aren’t supporting their kids enough, I decided to run, so that I can make a difference in the lives of our kids. I have lived in Prince George since 1986 and have completed most of my schooling here, including my BA from UNBC. I also have extensive classroom volunteer experience. If elected, one of my top priorities is to work with our employees and their unions, to bring in more training for our school staff, so they can better support all students in their learning. I also want to change district policies, so that parents may bring in the community experts who help support their children, into the classroom and meetings to support, but not replace district staff. I also want to address bullying. In recent weeks, we have heard of teenage suicides. These students were bullied so bad, they felt their life wasn’t worth living. This is horrible, and we need to do more. One of my proposals is to establish an antibullying task force, consisting of school staff, parents and students. This task force will consult with all education stakeholders, including parents and students, and will research what has worked in other jurisdictions. I feel that a fully representative task force will come up with better solutions than the board and administration can on their own. Our district is facing

I have dedicated my life to education working as an educator for 35 years. I was a teacher at Blackburn, Vanway and Malapina Elementary Schools and a school principal at Dunster, McBride Centennial, Hixon, Nukko Lake, Malaspina and Vanway Elementary Schools. I was also the zone principal for 16 years in various zones which gave me a clear understanding of the needs of elementary and secondary schools. My three children went through the Prince George SD57 public education system in both remote and city locations. In addition, my four oldest grandchildren currently attend SD57 schools. I know the people, the operations, the logistics, decentralized budgeting procedures, and the organization. I know the challenges and the opportunities for our students in our public schools, both rural and urban. I know the importance of taking a balanced approach.

We have a lot of hard-working, dedicated people in the classroom who need support with their classroom learning places. They face the challenge of having many diverse learning needs. I want all students to have the best learning opportunities that we as parents and educators can provide to our children.

I believe I have a responsibility to help our school district work together with students, parents and educators to continue to grow student success.

I believe that good leadership, accountability, proven experience and caring about children and their success are important values for a trustee. I believe my skill set focuses on direct support for all students and providing teachers and educational assistants opportunities to meet the learning needs of their students.

Thank you for voting Bruce Wiebe for school trustee.

A&E IN BRIEF

Adams, Arden join CTV’s The Launch

TORONTO (CP) — Bryan Adams and Jann Arden have signed on for CTV’s singing competition

The Launch.

The network says the Canadian singer-songwriters will both be mentors on the series, which is shooting its second season. Adams will also be a music producer.

Other acclaimed producers who’ve signed on to the show include Jon Levine, Alex Hope, and Shaun Frank.

Previously announced celebrity mentors include Sarah McLachlan, Max Kerman of Arkells, Ryan Tedder, and Marie-Mai.

The series sees emerging artists competing for a chance to create a new hit single. The new season will premiere on CTV in early 2019.

Belgian wins cartoon contest

HELSINKI (AP) — Danish organizers say a Belgian artist has won the international Niels Bugge Cartoon Award that this year focused on artificial intelligence. Lars Refn, the chairman of the international jury, said Friday that Constantin Sunnerberg won the 3,000-euro ($3,470) first

prize for his “inspired” cartoon interpretation of AI depicting two robot-resembling figures. Sunnerberg has worked for Belgian newspaper Le Soir and the French weekly Courrier International among others.

French-Iranian Shahrokh Heidari came second while Brazilian Claudio Antonio Gomes was third.

Organizers say the competition, which this year drew more than 1,200 entries, is unofficially known as the “World Cup in satire drawings.”

Worker dies on Mr. Rogers set

MOUNT LEBANON, Pa. (AP) —

Authorities say a crew member working on a movie about Mister Rogers has died after he suffered an apparent medical emergency and fell two stories off a balcony in Pennsylvania.

Allegheny County say James Emswiller fell around 7:30 p.m. Thursday during a break in filming. The 61-year-old Pittsburgh man died later at a hospital. Emswiller was involved in the sound production of You Are My Friend, which was shooting a scene in Mount Lebanon. The film is based on the life of Fred Rogers, the genial host of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.

Police say Emswiller fell over a brick wall on the balcony at an apartment building.

Haunting of Hill House almost the perfect horror show

Hank STUEVER Citizen news service

Horror is once again dominating our cultural head space, for reasons I will now not write an additional thousand words about. Put simply, scary times mean scarier movies and TV shows. Any attempt to increase the adrenaline flow is plenty welcome, so long as you sustain the fear all the way through and resist the urge for a tidy and even sickeningly soft ending. Nobody likes horror that collapses into hokey.

In this spirit, I have good and not-so-good news about Netflix’s The Haunting of Hill House, creator Mike Flanagan’s 10-episode chiller that’s very loosely inspired by Shirley Jackson’s acclaimed 1959 gothic horror novel of the same name. For eight and even nine episodes, the series does everything right as both a compelling, fractured-family drama and a dive-under-the-couch-cushions creepshow. Anyone near my office likely heard a few screams (manly screams, mind you) as I obsessively binged my way through it. That 10th episode, however? The

less said, the better. Until then, here is the show we didn’t even know we wanted: it’s This Is Us, only with all the flashbacks set in a creepy, poorly lighted, ghost-packed mansion. Both the past and the present are strewn with broken-necked phantoms, a corpse that sits upright on a stainless steel mortician’s table (and then cuts the wire holding its jaw shut so that it can scream at us), a basement monster crawling toward a child just as his flashlight conks out and – oh yes – a cardboard box full of dead kittens.

Michiel Huisman stars as Steve Crain, the oldest of five siblings who once lived in the Hill House, an extremely unwelcoming, rundown estate out in the boonies.

His parents, Hugh and Olivia Crain (played in flashbacks by Henry Thomas and Carla Gugino), bought the mansion in the early 1990s with plans to restore it and flip it for a big profit.

Things started going wrong right away, as Hill House revealed itself to be both a money pit and a hellhole. Also, there were ghosts. Also, mom didn’t make it out alive.

Years go by. Grown-up Steve jump-started his failed writing career with a semi-autobiographical

account of what happened (titled The Haunting of Hill House), which became a bestseller and spawned several sequels, in which Steve has fashioned himself as an empathetic ghost-whisperer. Steve’s siblings resent him for getting the story all wrong, claiming that he never saw the extent of the horrors they saw. Each of the Crain children has been affected by what went on in the house. The second oldest, Shirley (Elizabeth Reaser), became a mortician and funeral director, driven to help others cope with the realities of death; Theodora (Kate Siegel) became a child psychologist with a spooky sense of intuition; twins Nell (Victoria Pedretti) and Luke (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) suffered most – Nell, haunted by visions, is grieving the recent death of her husband; Luke, also tormented, has been in and out of rehab for a heroin addiction. Their father (played in his later years by Timothy Hutton), calls with urgent and terrible news: one of the Crain kids has returned to Hill House (it’s been abandoned since the family fled from it decades ago) and committed suicide. Flanagan and his writers use the episodic series format to achieve the slow build that most 100-minute horror movies so desperately need. The screamies don’t come fast and furiously here, and when they do, they are genuine goosebumpers. More impressively, the show takes itself seriously as a drama about a family coping with all kinds of grief – the fresh news of a death and the old wounds of mystery and deceit. The dialogue is precise and the acting is captivatingly plausible, even from the kid actors playing the young Crains.

In a midway episode that takes place in Shirley’s funeral home, Hill House reaches a level of family psychodrama and astonishing confrontations that it comes close to transporting Hutton back to the level of Oscar-winning work he did almost 40 years ago with Donald Sutherland and Mary Tyler Moore in Ordinary People.

Yes, yes, I shouted above the thunder raging outside. This is the stuff that the horror genre was made for: the way it rips open the domestic ideal of family and home, the way it acknowledges what monsters we are to the ones we love.

I’m saying such good things about this show. Now, alas, I have to address its tragically dumb final episode, in the which the Crains make their inexorable return to Hill House for a forcibly sentimental ending that winds up coated in ectoplasmic sap. What happened? Why did it flip so suddenly to mediocre mush?

Things were going so well. Now here I am, out back in the cold of night, burying it.

PHOTO BY TINA ROWDEN NETFLIX

Lulu Wilson appears in a scene from The Haunting of Hill House.

Wonky Donkey taking off thanks to laughing grandma

Hillel ITALIE Citizen news service

NEW YORK — The United States’s hottest book isn’t a hit because of Oprah Winfrey or Donald Trump. It’s all because of a laughing Scottish grandmother.

Thanks to a viral video of Janice Clark reading Craig Smith’s The Wonky Donkey to her baby grandson, and her breathless amusement over lines such as “He was a honky-tonky winky wonky donkey,” the 2009 picture book about a three-legged, one-eyed donkey has sold more than 100,000 copies in the U.S. this fall, much of that in the past week. According to NPD BookScan, which tracks around 85 per cent of the print market, Wonky Donkey topped all releases with more than 90,000 copies sold last week, beating out Bob Woodward’s Fear and Rachel Hollis’ Girl, Wash Your Face, among others.

“You can’t ask for a better endorsement of your creation than when the person reading your book is having a better time than the child being read to. Janice’s infectious laughter was an absolute delight!” wrote Smith, a New Zealand-based musician and author, in a recent email. “Remember, this viral sensation came about because a grandmother read a BOOK to her grandson, albeit a very special grandmother.”

The Wonky Donkey, featuring illustrations by Katz Cowley, had already sold hundreds of thousands of copies in New Zealand and Australia. But until recently it had a much smaller audience in the United States. According to Scholastic, the book had sold about 75,000 copies and was out of print before the video caught on last month.

“Before this fall, if you had said Wonky Donkey in my store, no one would have known what you were talking about,” said Linda Devlin, owner of Linda’s Story Time in Monroe, Conn. “Now, it just sells and sells. People see it and say, ‘Oh, I have to get that for my grandchildren.”’

Scholastic announced Friday that it had ordered another 600,000 copies. Meanwhile, Clark is coming to New York in November for an event at Barnes & Noble.

On his website, craigsmith.co.nz, Smith identifies himself as a creator of “cruisy, easy listening, children’s and sometimes humorous acoustic music.” He has released numerous books and records, including picture stories such as The Drizzly Bear and The Scariest Thing in the Garden.

Wonky Donkey started out as a children’s song, written by Smith more than a decade ago.

“I was sitting at a table at Te Anau Rugby Club rooms in the South Island of New Zealand one night with my mates and family and we were exchanging jokes,” he wrote recently. “A friend of mine told the joke, ‘What do you call a donkey with three legs?’ And the answer was, ‘A wonky donkey!’ Everyone sniggered and groaned.”

“I went home and got my rhyming dictionary out,” he said, “and the cumulative play on words and Wonky tale began. Being an entertainer and songster, I thought it would make a hilarious song.”

Baldwin talk show won’t find him in SNL form

Citizen news service

When his new talk show premieres Sunday night, don’t expect Alec Baldwin to get overly political. The 60-year-old actor plans to leave that on the set of Saturday Night Live with his occasional impersonations of U.S. President Donald Trump. “The Trump thing is just silly. Nothing we do on SNL about Trump is going to change anybody’s mind about anything,” Baldwin said. “There are people in Washington going, ‘That Alec Baldwin, I hate him’... and there are others that say, ‘Thank you, for helping us process this.”’

That’s why he doesn’t see an upside to being overly political on The Alec Baldwin Show on ABC. The show features candid one-on-one conversations with celebrities and cultural icons.

“If you have a very muscular political opinion, it has its consequences. I’m not afraid of that, and thankfully I have other venues to exercise that. But this is not about that at all,” Baldwin said. His guests are another story. The talk show debuts with the politically outspoken Robert De Niro. The hour show will feature two interviews, with Taraji P. Henson as the other guest.

Baldwin plans to pick up where Here’s the Thing – his podcast for WNYC – left off, employing his unfiltered, provocative interview style.

Among the guests sitting down with Baldwin this season include Kim Kardashian, RuPaul, Kerry Washington, Jeff Bridges, Sarah Jessica Parker, Mike Myers, Regina King, Gloria Allred, Ricky Gervais and Norway Prime Minister Erna Solberg.

AP PHOTO

This cover image released by Scholastic shows

The Wonky Donkey, by Craig Smith and illustrated by Katz Cowly.

FLACK

Flack back

Legendary

singer will be on

stage tonight

Nekesa MUMBI MOODY Citizen news service

NEW YORK — Once a week, Roberta Flack gives a musical performance for an exclusive group.

The lucky audience consists of a musical director, who works with the legend to keep her instrument – her voice – in top form. It would be an important exercise for any singer, but even more critical given that the 81-year-old singer had a stroke more than two years ago and suffered a collapse that led to a brief hospitalization earlier this year.

“I know what it is to go over the same songs over and over again, and to try to make them perfect. It’s interesting and it’s hard and it’s difficult at the same time,” Flack said in an exclusive interview with The Associated Press this week. “You have to stay on top of things.”

The public will get a chance to hear the result of those musical tune-ups, courtesy of the Jazz Foundation of America, when it honours her tonight.

“I am very excited about the event, to sing, and to perform. I’m just hoping that I can find the right song,” said Flack, whose long list of hits include The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face, Killing Me Softly with His Song and Feel Like Makin’ Love.

I am very excited about the event, to sing, and to perform. I’m just hoping that I can find the right song.

— Roberta Flack

The Jazz Foundation of America provides assistance of all types to musicians who have suffered setbacks, whether they’re medical, financial or both. It was set to give Flack its lifetime achievement award at the Apollo Theater at a concert featuring Cassandra Wilson, Alabama Shakes lead singer Brittany Howard, Nona Hendryx and more. But Flack collapsed backstage and was rushed to the hospital.

The concert went on without her.

Tonight, the foundation holds its annual loft party, where they will honour Flack again, and Flack is expected to sing – her first public performance in at least a year. Participants include another music legend and friend, Valerie Simpson, along with Macy Gray.

“I’m very excited that they want to give me an award, and I’m excited about the cause of the award, and the whole thing. I’m hyped about it,” Flack said.

Flack spoke to the AP at her assisted living facility in Manhattan. Sitting in a wheelchair and looking glamorous with curly hair cascading down her shoulders, the Grammy winner was bright-eyed and articulate during a nearly 30-minute conversation, though she occasionally relied on her manager to provide her with information about the weekend event, to also feature actors Rosie Perez and Michael Imperioli.

When asked if she’d sing one of her old hits, she quickly retorted: “There’s no such thing as an old hit,” preferring the term “classic” instead.

“I could sing any number of songs that I’ve recorded through the years, easily, I could sing them, but I’m going to pick those songs that move me,” Flack said. “Now that’s hard to do. To be moved, to be moved constantly by your own songs. You need it to be in tune with them, and I don’t mean in tune musically, but I mean in tune with the lyrics of the songs, with the words of the songs, and with the meaning. You need to be in tune with all of that, and that takes a little bit of doing.”

Her work with the musical director from the Jazz Foundation is part of that keeping in tune. Flack’s connection to the group started years ago, when they enlisted her to perform at a benefit for the late folk great Odetta, who had fallen on hard times.

“Ten years ago, she came out to help us when we were helping Odetta, who was one of her idols,” said Wendy Oxenhorn, the foundation’s executive director. “Roberta has been all of our idols. And now, since her stroke, we’ve been able to give back and help her, which is so beautiful.”

Oxenhorn said the foundation is glad it has another opportunity to honour Flack.

“We didn’t want her to miss this because she is loved around the world, and she’s kept so many of us going through our hard times with her music, and she’s been such an icon and pioneer in her genre,” she said. “We want her to know how loved she is.” Flack in turn lauded the organization, and got emotional when speaking to Oxenhorn, who was present for the interview.

“I thank you from the bottom of my heart,” the singer said. “It seems like we get a lot of musicians who don’t need help, who do it themselves or do it on their own, and that’s not true, that’s not true, they need a lot of help. I’m happy to help.”

As for tonight’s performance, Flack said she would likely be excited and nervous, and “all those good things that happen before you go on stage.”

She modestly dismissed expectations when a reporter suggested the night would be amazing.

“It’s going to be real funky and nice. We’re going to make it a party.”

Travel

Far out How about going to

WASHINGTON — With the film First Man earning rave reviews, it’s sure to spark a renewed interest in Neil Armstrong’s one giant leap for mankind, especially with the 50th anniversary of the moon landings arriving in 2019.

Not surprisingly, the Washington, D.C., area is home to numerous NASA-related artifacts and multiple pieces of the moon. Here’s where you can see them:

National Air and Space Museum

First Man, which stars Ryan Gosling as Neil Armstrong, opened Friday in Air and Space’s Imax theatres on the Mall and at the Udvar-Hazy Center in Dulles. On Friday morning, the D.C. museum hosted the unveiling of a new U.S. Mint coin commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Apollo missions. Astronaut Walt Cunningham, who

piloted Apollo 7, was the guest speaker.

Those hoping to pair a screening of First Man with a closer look at the Apollo 11 command module will be disappointed: Columbia is currently on view in Pittsburgh as part of the touring Destination Moon exhibition. Another important artifact from the mission, Armstrong’s spacesuit, is currently being restored by Smithsonian conservationists, with the hope that it can go back on view next year.

But even without those two items, the museum has a sizable number of objects related to Apollo 11 in its second-floor Apollo to the Moon gallery, which closes for an extended renovation on Dec. 3 and is scheduled to reopen on January 2022. (In other words, if you haven’t visited recently, do it now.)

The Apollo Lunar Module LM-2, a test version of the craft that carried astronauts from lunar orbit to the moon’s surface and back, remains on display in the Milestones of Flight Hall, along with the touchable moon rock, which was brought back by the

space without leaving Earth?

crew members of Apollo 17.

Washington National Cathedral

Five years after the first moonwalk, astronauts Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin presented Washington National Cathedral with a seven-gram sliver of basalt rock, collected during their historic mission. The rock, sealed in a nitrogen-filled capsule, sits at the heart of a colourful custom-made stained glass window in the south transept.

Goddard Space Flight Center

NASA’s oldest space flight facility is home to an interesting visitors center and museum, and its outdoor Rocket Garden includes a collection of full-size rockets and hardware for visitors to explore. The star is what NASA calls “a genuine non-flying ‘boil-

The rock, sealed in a nitrogen-filled capsule, sits at the heart of a colourful custom-made stained glass window in the south transept.

erplate’ mock-up” of the Apollo crew capsule, which was used for training. Inside the museum, visitors can climb inside a Gemini capsule – Armstrong was the commander of Gemini 8, a precursor to the Apollo program – and touch a piece of moon rock that was brought back to Earth by the crew of Apollo 14. On Oct. 20, Goddard will be open from 6 to 9 p.m. for International Observe the Moon Night, which includes hands-on family activities, speakers sharing memories of moon landings and special telescopes for observing the night sky.

You’ll never believe what passengers steal from planes

Christopher ELLIOTT Citizen news service

What do passengers steal from planes? Anything that isn’t bolted down.

Among the items snatched from commercial flights: coffee mugs, cutlery, blankets and life jackets.

Life jackets? Yes, life jackets.

When Joyce Kirby worked as a flight attendant, she says, passengers routinely grabbed the emergency flotation devices under their seats before exiting the aircraft. “We had to check each seat after each flight to make sure each one had a vest,” recalls Kirby, who now runs a tour operation in Palm Coast, Fla.

But the “what” isn’t as interesting as the “why.” If passengers are taking everything they can carry when they leave planes, it may say more about the airline industry than it does about them.

Not long ago, I took a hard look at the problem of disappearing hotel amenities. Experts suggested that hotel resort fees –which leave guests with the impression that everything is included – may be to blame for a rise in thefts. The airline problem is similar. Fees are everywhere, and travellers don’t always have a choice about paying them. They’re stealing stuff because they’re angry.

How much do passengers steal from planes? No one knows. There are no recent surveys on airline theft, and airlines don’t publicly report thefts. But there’s plenty of anecdotal evidence from my readers and from colleagues like Brian Sumers, a writer for the online trade publication Skift, who

He has collected 250 bags from 50 countries, including some from airlines that now are defunct. His most prized barf bag is from Aero Lloyd, a German airline that shut down in 2003.

recently observed that passengers were stealing upgraded amenities such as pillows and blankets from first class.

United Airlines last year reportedly sent a memo to flight attendants noting “some confusion about which amenities may be taken off the plane at the end of the flight.”

The pillows and blankets in first class, it said, don’t come with the flight.

“Even if only a small number of these items are taken off each flight, that can quickly add up to millions of dollars across our network over the course of a year,” the memo warned.

Let’s quickly review the items people normally lift from planes.

Airsickness bags: Travelers like Clemens Sehi collect them.

“It’s kind of a tradition for me to take the bags with me as a souvenir,” he says. He has collected 250 bags from 50 countries, including some from airlines that now are defunct. His most prized barf bag is from Aero Lloyd, a German airline that shut

down in 2003. Sehi, a creative director and writer from Berlin, doesn’t consider taking these bags to be stealing.

Table settings: I spoke with several passengers who admitted to taking forks, knives, spoons, glassware and salt and pepper shakers. This is more of a gray area. Obviously, plastic dishware is fine to take, but regular table settings are normally a nono. When it doubt, ask. That’s what Valerio Violo, a civil engineer from Copenhagen, did on a recent Lufthansa flight.

“When I asked the flight attendant if I could buy the coffee mugs, she gave me two,” he recalls. “They’re actually very nice.”

Pillows and blankets: Simah Etgar doesn’t have a problem with taking the blankets on her flights. It is, she says, “good thieving” because she donates the blankets to her school in a low-income area of Raisinghnagar, India, where she teaches English. Indeed, some airlines, including JetBlue, sell the blankets to passengers outright rather than offering them for use during the flight. But as a general rule, you can keep the blankets unless a flight attendant tells you that you can’t, either with a spoken notice (“Flight attendants will now collect your pillows and blankets”) or a written one, such as a card in your amenity kit.

These are hardly the only items passengers steal from planes. Some stolen items are surprising because it’s unclear what the passengers will do with them. That includes warning placards (“Life Vest Under Your Seat”), tray tables and, as one flight attendant told me, “the wings right off my

uniform blazer, which was in the aisle seat.” OK, stealing a flight attendant’s wings –that crosses a line. So what’s behind the in-flight thefts? Blame the increasingly frayed relationship between passenger and airline. A generation ago, when tickets were a little more expensive, they included a lot of things, like the ability to check a bag, reserve a seat and enjoy a decent meal. Today, everything is extra, and that irks some passengers, who feel that the airline is taking advantage of them. Stealing a cup or a life jacket is payback.

Passengers sometimes have a right to feel exploited. When the airline charges exorbitant prices for bland airline meals, it’s easy to justify pilfering a bag of pretzels from the galley. Likewise, when a carrier charges five figures for a premium seat, you might assume the pillows and blankets are included.

“I think taking things from airplanes is more of a moral choice than anything,” says Andrew Mondia, an actor based in Toronto. Like most passengers, he already knows what he’s allowed to take, and what he isn’t. Just in case: if it’s disposable, you can take it. If not, just ask. There’s a way to stop airline passengers and hotel guests from stealing, but it could be expensive. Make the travel experience fair and as free of fees as possible. Don’t hold your breath for that to happen, though. These are industries that became enormously profitable by bending the truth and inventing surcharges. It’s unlikely they’ll give that up.

Fritz HAHN Citizen news service

The Apollo Lunar Module is displayed as a centrepiece below the Spirit of St. Louis in the National Air and Space Museum’s

At Home

Living in a 17th century house has its tradeoffs

M. HERBAUGH

Citizen news service

BOSTON — What does it take to make a 17th century house livable today?

Ask Barbara Kurze, who lives at the James Blake House, which the Boston Landmarks Commission says is the oldest house in Boston.

The five-room, two-level house was built in 1661 by Blake, an English immigrant, in Dorchester, now a neighbourhood of Boston. Kurze was offered the chance to become live-in caretaker of the property, owned by the Dorchester Historical Society.

Keeping the house both livable and historically authentic has been a constant struggle over the centuries, Kurze said.

Like many municipalities, Boston has strict rules about making changes to historic buildings.

“There’s always a balance, what to preserve and what modern touches are appropriate,” said Paul Hajian, an architect and professor of architectural design at Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Still, he added, “people in old houses don’t want to live like they’re in the 17th century.”

Kurze, 58, a preservation planner, moved into the Blake House four years ago and brought a renewed ambition to restore the home to splendour. She enlisted the help of Boston-area interior designer Sarah Cole.

Despite significant restoration work over the years, “It was clear when I first saw the house that it was in need of some serious maintenance and repairs,” said Cole, owner of design firm Sarah C. Interiors. “The paint was peeling everywhere and the plaster was crumbling.”

To start, Cole and Kurze needed approvals from the Boston Landmark Commission and the Mas-

sachusetts Historical Commission to make interior changes. They received permission to restore the plaster on the walls and ceilings, and add a new layer of paint. They could choose the colour of paint so long as it adhered to the commission’s guidelines.

Nothing could be hung on the walls, to prevent damage.

Cole prioritized the house’s unique old charm when it came

time for refinements. “If you look at the walls, they aren’t smooth, and our goal was not to make it look new,” she said.

The Blake House’s floors are slightly uneven, and it has low ceilings and drafty, single-pane windows, all common characteristics of buildings from that era.

Indoor plumbing and electricity were installed in the 19th century and have been updated since.

There’s heat, but no air conditioning.

Storage has proved problematic for the home’s occupant. The Blake House has only one closet.

Until the early 1900s, most people simply didn’t have as much stuff. There wasn’t the need to store extra clothes, shoes and sporting equipment, as there is today.

Another difference is a lack of overhead lighting. “It can get pretty dark,” Kurze said.

The stairs leading to the second floor are narrow and steep.

“I couldn’t bring most of my furniture because it wouldn’t fit up the stairs,” she said.

After the plaster and paint were finished, Cole began looking for furniture that would fit – both physically and esthetically.

“We looked for things that came in pieces,” she said. “It was pretty difficult finding nicer furniture that could be assembled but still look right in the space.”

Accessories help give the rooms a modern feel. Cole chose a floor rug with natural, tan and terracotta hues to complement the wooden beams and floors in the living room, for instance.

For Kurze, the biggest surprise about living in such a historic home has been the number of visitors who stop by to look at it.

“Several Blake descendants have come by,” she said. “I’d say one comes by every month or so.”

Protect your clothes with the right detergent

Lindsey M. ROBERTS Citizen news service

“Take good care of your clothes, and they’ll keep you looking good,” says Christina Elsberry, co-founder of men’s styling company Todd Alan. When laundering, she explains, most of your clothes would do well in cold water on the delicate cycle with the right detergent.

But isn’t that last part the rub? Which bottle or box do you choose from the three long shelves in the laundry aisle?

Elsberry has high standards: the detergent should clean the clothes, yet not destroy fabrics, and the bottle should be easy to use and not take up too much space on the counter.

She and other experts have a few good candidates when it comes to detergents –and some laundry tips, too. Once you’ve chosen a detergent, use less than you think you need, says Alexa Hotz, senior editor for Remodelista in Brooklyn: too much detergent “will leave a film on your clothes and on the inside of your washing machine.” Separate your laundry into different loads: dark, light and workout, and

towels and bedding. “Get extra credit by turning your jeans inside out to preserve the colour,” Elsberry says.

In general, one all-purpose detergent will work for all fabrics, except of course, silk, wool, down and cashmere, which would benefit from delicate detergents or professional treatment. (Hotz likes Tangent Garment Care’s Denim Wash for her jeans.) Last, use caution with the dryer, which can wear down fabrics.

“Invest in a foldable drying rack or two, and it will make laundry easy-breezy,” Elsberry says.

Last summer Erin Barbot, an organizer in Silver Spring, Md., did her own test of laundry detergents, looking for products that were low in chemicals but still effective, without spending too much. “Basically, the unicorn of cleaning products,” she says. Barbot says most big brands have free-and-clear options. Her winner was Tide Purclean Unscented Laundry Detergent.

It’s plant-based, works in all machines and cleans well in cold water. When towels get dingy, she also likes Whole Foods’ 365

Everyday Value Oxygen Whitening Powder. Decant products into containers or store them in baskets to make laundry day even better, Barbot says.

Mrs. Meyer’s Basil Scented Laundry Detergent is the go-to detergent for Elsberry of Todd Alan.

“It’s all the things I look for in a detergent. It gets clothes clean, yet it’s gentle on fabric. It’s concentrated, so a little goes a long way,” she says.

“The bottle doesn’t take up too much space, it has a pretty label design, and there is no gooey mess.” For workout clothes, Elsberry adds Mrs. Meyers Scent Booster in basil “to get things extra-fresh.”

Hotz, of Remodelista, starts with what she does not want in her laundry detergent: sulfates, synthetic fragrance or fragrance of any kind. “I just don’t like the idea of fragranced clothing competing with things like perfume and deodorant,” she explains.

The Honest Company’s Multi-Enzyme Stain Fighting Laundry Detergent, the freeand-clear unscented version, meets her high standards, as it’s made with natural

acids and enzymes. Bonus: designed for sensitive skin, it’s hypoallergenic and dermatologist-tested.

If you are washing sheets, wash them alone, says Missy Tannen, co-founder of bedding company Boll & Branch in New Jersey.

To prevent wrinkling, shake them out after machine-washing and pull them out as soon as the dryer cycle is done. Tannen uses Grab Green’s 3-in-1 Laundry Detergent Pods for her bedding. She prefers the fragrance-free version, but does dry her laundry with wool dryer balls that have a drop of lavender essential oil on them.

When washing more delicate yarns such as wool, merino, alpaca and cashmere, be careful. Alberto Bravo, co-founder and creative director of We Are Knitters, a company based in Spain, uses the Laundress’sWool & Cashmere Shampoo.

“It really preserves the yarn’s softness, which is crucial for us,” Bravo says.

“Once you’re done rinsing your woolly piece, lay it flat gently to dry. This way, you will preserve its shape and form.”

Tracee

This 2018 photo provided by Tracee Herbaugh shows the exterior of the James Blake House, located in Boston’s Dorchester neighbourhood. The house, built in 1661, is listed as the oldest in Boston.

SARAH COLE HANDOUT PHOTO VIA AP

In this 2017 photo provided by Sarah Cole, a specialty craftsman repairs plaster on the walls at the James Blake House in Boston.

Jackie (Jacqueline) Peden (nee McIsaac)

July 27, 1940 - Sept 30, 2018

Jackie Peden; Mom, Grandma, sister and Motherin-law passed away on Sunday, September 30th. Always the loving soul, filling her heart was her family. Mom was known for her lifelong love of animals, her wicked sense of humour, her independent spirit, her stubborn nature and her unconditional love of her family. A sports fanatic her whole life she specifically loved watching CFL (NFL wasn’t really football), curling and live baseball. Loving her and celebrating her life are: her children; Kelly Peden-Yule (Tim), Linda McClelland (Wray), Doug, Sandy, and Grandchildren; Darby, Erin, Corey and Ashley. Jackie is survived by her “older” brother, Alan McIsaac (Sharon); in-laws and friends. She will be greatly missed by her fur babies; Susie and Bailey. Jackie was predeceased by her loving husband Don Peden and her parents, John and Micheline McIsaac. Special Thank-you to all of those that helped care for Mom in her final months. An extra special Thank-you to Dr. Denise McLeod. Please help us return that love and join us for a celebration of her life on Wednesday, October 17th, 2018 from 2 p.m. - 4.p.m. at the Sandman Signature Prince George Hotel; 2990 Rec Place Dr., Prince George , B.C. In honour of Mom’s lifelong love of animals please consider donating to the Prince George Humane Societyprincegeorgehumanesociety@gmail.com

Mildred Joan Carlson

September 2, 1922 - September 28, 2018

After a full and remarkable life, Mildred (Mid), passed away peacefully at UHNBC with loving family members by her side. Mildred is survived by her daughters Megan (Don) Homan and Lori Suffredine. She also leaves to cherish her memory, brother Ben (Lil) Rose, half-sisters Carol McCrone and Patricia Hunter, grandsons Kris (Chansy), Josh (Laura), Nathan (Anna), granddaughter Lori and 5 great grandchildren. Mildred was born in Toronto and grew up in a family with 10 siblings. When World War II was declared, she enlisted in the Women’s Army Corp and proudly served her country at Citadel Hill in Halifax and in England. It was there she met her future husband and later married and settled in Saskatoon. Mildred’s spirit of adventure took the family to New Zealand, then back to Canada and Kamloops, B.C. In later years, she met her life-partner of 23 years, Frank Schmidt, who was also a W.W. II veteran. Together they enjoyed fishing, camping and travel and she was always grateful to be part of his large family. Mildred will be forever remembered for her love of family and love of travel. Our sincere thanks are extended to Dr. Mader and to all the other attending doctors that assisted in Mildred’s care. Also, the nursing staff at Emergency, Pediatrics and Internal Medicine was wonderful. A memorial service for Mildred will be held at the Royal Canadian Legion, Branch #43, on Saturday, Nov. 3rd at 1 p.m. and a celebration of life for the family held at a future date. Donations may be made to the Royal Canadian Legion Poppy Fund or to a charity of your choice.

Mack D Usipuik

November 22nd, 1929October 3rd, 2018

Passed away at UHNBC Hospital on October 3rd, 2018 at the age of 88 years.

Mack is lovingly remembered by his wife Dorothy; his three children Kathy (Donnie Gee), Shane (Janice), and David (Kim); his grandchildren Ashley (Jared Brann), Megan, Kirstin, and Daniel; his great-grandchild Aela; and his beloved companion Annie. Mack was predeceased by his parents William and Helena Usipuik, sisters Annie, Katie, and Mary, and his sister-in-law Bernice. He was survived by his brothers Joe, John, and Steve, and his sister Lena. He will always be remembered for his storytelling, his green thumb and love of fishing, and his pride in his family. His Celebration of Life will be held on Saturday, October 13th, 2018 at the Fore Bistro and Patio (at the Prince George Golf Course) from 1:00pm to 5:00pm. There will be an open mic available at his service for anyone who would like to share stories and memories. Please join us in celebrating his life.

Lawrence Marsolais October 22, 1928 to September 14, 2018

It is with great sadness that we say goodbye to a Husband, Father, Grandfather, Great Grandfather and friend. Lawrence is now back in the loving arms of his wife, Hilda who left us in January of 2013. Survived by daughters, Cheryl and Eva; son, Art (Gretchen); grandchildren, Lecia (Tony), Opal, Lance, Mitchell; and great grandchildren: Cianna, Ivy, Payton, Gunner and Ryken as well as extended family and friends. Lawrence was the brother to Christine Thevenot, Simone Ray, Lucien Marsolais, Roseanne Peters, Connie Ducharme, Andre Marsolais. Predeceased by parents, Arthur and Celina Marsolais; brothers Tony Marsolais, Jacque Marsolais, Guy Marsolais, Martin Marsolais and sisters, Clare Fontaine, Jeanne Lloyd. In lieu of flowers, donations to the Rotary Hospice House, 3089 Clapperton Street, Prince George, BC V2L 5N4 or a charity of your choice would be appreciated.

A special thank you to Dr. Attia and Dr. Geddes for their wonderful care of Lawrence.

Kristi and Julie, you put a smile on his face daily, he was so lucky to have you both in his life. To celebrate Lawrence’s life the family would like to invite you to join us for a tea at the Hart Pioneer Centre (6986 Hart Hwy) on Sunday, October 14th, 2018 from 2 pm to 4 pm.

STEVEN GENAILLE (Garfie) October 5, 1959, Kamsack, Saskatchewan to October 4, 2018, Prince George, BC Predeceased by his father Rennie Jean Genaille, sister Bernadette, brothers Vernon, Laurie and Mickey and brother-in-law Bill Wipfli.

Survived by mother Lenore Genaille, sister Darlene, brother Frank (Valerie), sister-in-law Fran, daughter Jeannie (Shawn), son Steven and his very cherished grandchildren: Justyss, Jurrney, Taiya, Tierney, Rielle, Brent, Brayden, Billie and Daylynn. Numerous aunts, uncles, nieces and nephews. Special mention to his most favorite aunt Madeline Whitehawk.

Visitation Friday, October 12, 2018 7:009:00pm at Assman’s Funeral Chapel, Service Saturday October 13, 2018 at 10:00am at Assman’s Funeral Chapel. Luncheon to follow 12:00 noon at the Prince George Native Friendship Centre, 1600 3rd Ave.

Bayley,RussellR. November4,1947-September29,2018 ItiswithgreatsadnessthatthefamilyofRussell RaymondBayleyannouncehispassingattheageof 70.Russellpassedawaysuddenlywhilesurrounded byfamilyandfriendsonSeptember29,2018. Russell’slifewillbecelebratedandlovingly rememberedbyhiswifeof49yearsIda,hisson Michael(Heidi)andgranddaughterTeaganakaBaby Girl.Hewillalsobeforeverrememberedbyhis sistersJoanne(David),Jennifer(Bryon),Brother Derek(Jesse),Sister-in-lawsMaureenandFanny plusmanynieces,nephews,extendedfamilyand friends.

ACelebrationofLifewillbeheldOctober27,2018 from1:00-4:00pmattheMarroittHotelat900 BrunswickStreetinPrinceGeorge,BC.

GEORGE JAMES LAMANES

February 21, 1924October 4, 2018 George is survived by his wife, Agnes; son, Brian (Ruth); granddaughters Tara (Eric), Mandi; great grandsons: Jack and Mason; and sister Flossie. He was born in Esterhazy, Saskatchewan; spent some time in Vancouver, then settled as a long time resident in Prince George. He worked at Rustad Brothers for over 40 years. George enjoyed the outdoors, playing cards &