Since medical assistance in dying became legal in Canada on June 17, 2016, 59 people within the Northern Health region have used the service.
Within the province and its five health authorities that number is considered typical and 74 per cent of those who used the service within Northern Health are those who had an original diagnosis of cancer, followed by cardiovascular disease and respiratory issues, like chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
Medical assistance in dying provides patients, who may be experiencing intolerable suffering due to a grievous and irremediable (incurable) medical condition, the option to end their life with the assistance of a doctor or nurse practitioner, according to the province of British Columbia website. Between males and females, it’s almost an even split, with 56 per cent being male and the average age of the 59 people who used the service was 72.
There was only one request where the person died before they were able to receive the assistance and that person made the request to be at a lake when the end of their life came. About half were at home at the time of their death, while others were in hospital, in palliative care, or in seniors residences.
People in B.C. wishing to use assisted dying can choose between an intravenous method or two oral choices using different medications.
The two options for oral medications came about when secobarbital was not available in Canada when assisted dying became legal in 2016 and then was recently made available.
Northern Health’s medical assistance in dying care coordinator Kirsten Thomson said that will eventually change to one oral medication choice of secobarbital, which is
Jennifer SALTMAN Vancouver Sun
1916
Residents taking advantage of assisted dying
Kirsten Thomson is the medical assistance in dying care coordinator for Northern Health.
faster than the other cocktail of medications used to end life.
Those who want to consider assisted dying should speak to their family physician for more information.
Two practitioners in two different interviews need to agree to the request once a person puts it in writing. There is a 10-day waiting period, to ensure the person can reflect upon their choice.
“From my perspective the program is
being received well,” said Thomson, who believes that some people are still not aware that medically assisted dying is an option in Canada.
“I think as we continue to provide the service – not just in Northern Health – but across the board, it becomes a more normalized part of the care continuum,” she said.
“Everyone is committed to making this an extraordinarily patient-and-family-centred experience,” she added.
Firms seek to fill bus void
With Greyhound’s departure from B.C. less than two weeks away, three companies have received approval to operate new bus routes between Vancouver, Kamloops, Kelowna and the Alberta border. Greyhound announced in July that it would pull out of B.C., Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and northern Ontario at the end of October, after suffering millions of dollars in losses from a 46-per-cent drop in ridership since 2010. Only a bus route between Vancouver and Seattle will continue.
In order to restore service to people who will be affected by the service cancellation, B.C.’s Passenger Transportation Board – which is responsible for approving inter-city bus routes – is “fast-tracking” applications and using a simplified process to encourage operators to fill the gap on routes that will be abandoned by Greyhound.
According to the board, “Greyhound’s departure from B.C. will leave many areas of the province without inter-city bus service and access to essential services, such as work and education, and safe transportation.”
The first to be approved was an application from Regina-based Rider Express Transportation, which plans to operate a route from the Alberta border to Vancouver via Highway 1 and Highway 5. There will be 14 stops, including Golden, Salmon Arm, Chase, Merritt and Langley.
It will be a reservation-based service that runs seven days a week, with two departure times each day. It will use four, 55-passenger wheelchair-accessible
buses on the route.
Rider Express eventually plans to run service between B.C., Alberta, Manitoba and Ontario.
Alberta-based Diversified Transportation, doing business as Ebus, proposes adding two routes serving Vancouver, Kamloops and Kelowna.
The Vancouver-Kamloops route would provide daily semi-express departures from Vancouver and Kamloops – one in the morning and one in the afternoon or evening. Buses will travel along Highway 1 and Highway 5, and additional stops could be made in Abbotsford, Chilliwack, Hope and Merritt.
There would also be two daily express departures from both Vancouver and Kamloops via Kelowna in the morning and afternoon. The first leg of the trip will be between Kamloops and Kelowna along Highway 1 and 97, via Vernon, and the second leg is between Kelowna and Vancouver along Highway 97C, Highway 5 and Highway 1.
Bookings for the reservation-only service will be made via website, over the phone and in person.
Diversified already offers transportation services in five provinces and one territory.
John Stepovy, director of business development with Ebus, said the company is moving “full steam ahead” and hopes to be up and running by Nov. 1, so there is no interruption in service when Greyhound withdraws.
“We’re about two weeks away from Nov. 1, so it’s certainly going to be a challenge for us, absolutely, to get going but as things sit right now that’s still our plan,” he said.
— see MULTIPLE COMPANIES, page 3
“From the physicians to nursing staff who are supporting the person and even the pharmacists who are dispensing the medications are really working as part of a team to make sure the experience for the individual and their family is what they want it to be.”
For more information about medical assistance in dying, visit northernhealth. ca or email maid@northernhealth.ca or call 250-645-6417.
Where to vote on
election
day – and who is running
Citizen staff
General voting day for civic elections is today and schools and community halls in and around the city will be the places to cast ballots.
All polls, both in the city and Fraser-Fort George Regional District, are open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.
Those living within Prince George can vote in the races for city council at the following locations: 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.
Running for the mayor’s seat on city council are Lyn Hall and Willy Enns and running for one of eight spots as a councillor are Frank Everitt, Viv Fox, Garth
Frizzell, Dave Fuller, Murry Krause, Terri McConnachie, Cori Ramsay, Kyle Sampson, Susan Scott, Paul Serup, Brian Skakun, Cameron Stolz, and Chris Wood.
School board
Running for one of five seats on school board representing Area One – Prince George are Betty Bekkering, Tim Bennett, Trent Derrick, Sarah Holland, Trudy Klassen, Allan Kranz, Stephanie Mikalishen-Deol, Ron Polillo, Corey Walker, Sharel Warrington and Bruce Wiebe. Within city limits, the same polling stations open for the city council race will accept votes for the Area One election.
Area One also covers Electoral Areas A,C, D, F and the southeast corner of G (south of McLeod Lake and Carp Lake Provincial Park) in the Fraser-Fort George Regional District.
— see REGIONAL, page 3
UNBC beats fundraising goal
Citizen staff
The University of Northern British Columbia raised $21.4 million in its first comprehensive fundraising campaign.
The total easily surpassed the $15-million goal set in the Northern Leadership Campaign.
Launched in late 2014, it focussed on three priorities: strengthening research and teaching excellence, inspiring next-generation leaders and creating local solutions with global impact.
A total of 3,306 donors contributed, resulting in the creation of 158 new student awards.
The funds also supported strategic investment in a number of institutional priorities and projects that will foster further innovation and high quality academic programming and research.
“We are incredibly grateful and truly honoured by the generosity and outpouring of support shown by our donors, founders, community partners, alumni, faculty and staff,” said UNBC president Daniel Weeks.
“Their commitment to UNBC has made a huge impact that will transform lives and communities in the North and around the world for years to come.”
UNBC hosted a donor appreciation event on Thursday night.
Opinions vary when it comes to council candidates questions
Citizen staff
Readers were all over a variety of issues when it comes to the all-candidates forums held in Prince George recently.
The Prince George Citizen poll stated “there are three more all-candidates forums for mayoral and city council candidates.” Then asked “what issues would you like them to address?”
The main issue that readers wanted the candidates to take on was management of wages and overtime, which came in with 31 per cent and 407 votes, followed by
homelessness, which took 21 per cent and 274 votes, while roads took 13 per cent with 166 votes.
Downtown revitalization took 12 per cent and 153 votes, while snow removal and discarded needles each took eight per cent and 99 votes.
The total votes cast was 1,305. Remember, this is not a scientific poll. Next up for the online readers is “now that marijuana is legal in Canada, what will you do?”
To make your vote count visit www. pgcitizen.ca
Regional district elections today
— from page 1
Those in the FFGRD can vote in that election at the FFGRD office, Nukko Lake Elementary School, Beaverly Elementary School, Miworth Community Hall, West Lake Community Hall, Blackburn Elementary School, Hixon Elementary School, Shell-Glen Fire Hall, Sinclair Mills Community Hall, Ferndale Community Hall, Willow River Fire Hall, Bear Lake Community Commission office, Summit Lake Community Hall, Kelly Road Secondary School and Vanway Elementary School.
Harold Edwards of Dunster and Bob Thompson of McBride are vying to represent Area Three – Robson Valley.
Voters who live within the municipal limits of either McBride or Valemount can vote in that election at their respective village offices. Those in the FFGRD can vote at Dunster Community Hall, Valemount Community Hall and Robson Valley Community Centre (McBride).
Shuirose Valimohamed is in by acclamation for Area Two – Mackenzie.
Regional district
In the FFGRD, Lara Beckett and Colin Clyne are the candidates in Electoral Area C (Chilako River-Nechako), Kevin Dunphy and Joe Rositano are running in Electoral Area F (Willow River-Upper Fraser), James Clefstad and Pat Crook are
the choices in Electoral Area G (Crooked River-Parsnip) and Dannielle Alan and Ben Hunter are on the ballot in Electoral Area H (Robson Valley-Canoe).
In by acclamation are Warren Wilson for Electoral Area A (Salmon River-Lakes), Bill Empy for Electoral Area D (Tabor Lake-Stone Creek), and Art Kaehn for Electoral Area E (Woodpecker-Hixon) and for Bear Lake Community Commission, Sandra Child, Herbert Franklin, Charlie MacDougall and Sandra McClure.
For Electoral Area C, votes can be cast at Miworth Community Hall, Beaverly Elementary School and West Lake Community Hall.
For Electoral Area F, it’s Bear Lake Local Community Commission Office, McLeod Lake Community Hall, Summit Lake Community Hall, and District of Mackenzie Office.
For Electoral Area G, it’s Ferndale Community Hall, Shell-Glen Fire Hall, Sinclair Mills Community Hall and Willow River Fire Hall.
For Electoral Area H, it’s Dunster Community Hall, Robson Valley Community Centre and Valemount Community Hall. Votes for all electoral area elections will also be accepted at the FFGRD office. All polls, both in the city and FFGRD, will be open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.
Up-to-date results and reaction will be posted at www.pgcitizen.ca.
Multiple companies stepping up
— from page 1
Stepovy said the company received inquiries over the past few years from communities across the province about expanding into B.C., and Greyhound’s exit provided an opportunity. Ebus is looking at expanding further in the future.
Wilson’s Transportation (which operates as Island Connector or B.C. Connector) was also approved to run a “commuter, expressstyle service” between Vancouver and Kamloops, and Vancouver and Kelowna. The proposal is to operate one trip per day in each direction on a reservation-only basis.
Wilson’s, which is based in Victoria, already provides charter bus service on Vancouver Island, and cross-ferry transpor-
tation between Vancouver and Victoria. The company has also applied to provide service between Vancouver and Whistler, but a decision has not yet been made on that route.
In August, Trail-based Silver City Stagelines received approval for a reservationonly Nelson-Kelowna route that runs a minimum of six times per week and stops in Castlegar, Trail, Grand Forks, Greenwood, Midway and Rock Creek. It replaces the company’s Trail-Castlegar route.
The Passenger Transportation Board has received other applications for routes between Richmond/Burnaby and Whistler, Vancouver and Whistler, and in and around the Nicola Valley, including Merritt. Decisions are pending.
Open house planned for city energy system
Citizen staff
An open house will be held Tuesday afternoon at the city’s downtown renewable energy system. It’s being held as part of Bioenergy Day in North America. The facility is located at 215 George St. City wastewater and district energy su-
pervisor Steven Mercedes and engineering assistant. Todd Angus will explain how the system works, how such systems are energy efficient, and how the system helps reduce the city’s greenhouse gas emissions. The entrance to the plant faces Second Avenue toward Dominion Street and attendees are asked to use the entrance off Second. The event runs from 1 to 3 p.m.
Dawson Road townhouse fire Friday
Citizen staff
A two-storey townhouse complex in the 6400 block of Dawson Road was reported on fire with Prince George Fire Rescue crews responding from three halls at about 2:45 a.m. Friday. When crews arrived they found smoke coming from the kitchen of one of the
units. The fire, due to cooking, was quickly extinguished and a lone occupant and two cats were accompanied out of the building. The occupant was taken to hospital with smoke inhalation. Damage is estimated at $50,000. No other units were damaged. There were no injuries to fire personnel.
CITIZEN
Pipeline repair could take until November
VICTORIA — It could be the middle of November before repairs are complete on a section of a natural gas pipeline that ruptured and burned earlier this month in central British Columbia, setting off a provincewide effort to reduce gas use.
Work to fix the damaged pipeline is underway, and once it is officially cleared to operate, it should be back in service next month, Calgary-based Enbridge said in a statement Friday.
“Based on current information, Enbridge estimates that subject to regulatory approval, its 36-inch TSouth line will be repaired by mid-November, back in service at a reduced pressure of 80 per cent of normal operating pressure,” the statement said.
The pipeline ruptured on Oct. 9 at a rural location about 15 kilometres northeast of Prince George, causing an explosion and large fireball.
There were no injuries and the RCMP said it did not suspect criminal activity, but the cause of the blast has yet to be determined.
Enbridge said a second natural gas pipeline near the blast site was not damaged and it has been used to transport natural gas to southern B.C., on a reduced basis.
FortisBC, the utility supplying natural gas to about one million B.C. customers, said residential, industrial and institutional gas users should continue with conservation efforts.
Spokesman Sean Beardow said warm fall temperatures have helped keep gas usage down.
Public places limited for smoking cannabis
Mark NIELSEN Citizen staff mnielsen@pgcitizen.ca
Cannabis may now be legal in Canada, but choose your spots if you want to partake.
Like tobacco, the locations where the product may be smoked are subject to a raft of restrictions starting with provincial legislation that prohibits its consumption in areas frequented by children, like on or near school property, parks, playgrounds and other recreation areas.
Inside taxis, at bus stops and the common areas of condominiums, apartments, and dormitories that are enclosed or near the building’s a door, window, air intake or workplace are also out of bounds.
The city’s Smoke and Vape Free Places Bylaw, passed in 2016, also took cannabis into account.
Along with many of the restrictions now in place under the province’s Cannabis Control and Licensing Act, the city’s bylaw sets out within six metres of a place of business or a customer service area and within 25 metres of any outdoor sport facility or playground as an infraction.
If you’re caught violating any of those restrictions, you can be fined as much as $100 per offence under the city bylaw and under provincial legislation as much as $5,000 and three months in jail for a first-time violation rising to $10,000 and six months for a subsequent breaking of the law.
The province does allow consumption on designated areas of heath authority property but Northern Health has closed that loophole. Indeed, for years marijuana – the pre-legal term for cannabis – has been noted alongside tobacco as not allowed under its smoke-free grounds policy on any of its properties.
As for University of Northern B.C. and College of New Caledonia, forget about it.
At UNBC, smoking tobacco is allowed at seven designated spots, but cannabis is completely off limits.
“Cannabis may be legal now but it needs
It’s an intoxicating substance and certainly other people don’t want to be around cannabis smoke necessarily.
— Barb Daigle,
to be restricted in a public place,” Barb Daigle, UNBC associate vice president of people and risk, said. “It’s an intoxicating substance and certainly other people don’t want to be around cannabis smoke necessarily.”
UNBC is taking the same position many universities have taken, she added. CNC communications director Alyson Gourley-Cramer said the college’s substance use and abuse policy was updated in advance of the big day.
“The policy treats recreational marijuana use the same way that we would treat all intoxicants and substances that can lead to impairment – with zero tolerance,” she said. And what is smoked must have been purchased from a provincially regulated retailer.
None have yet been opened in Prince George although product can be bought online through the BC Cannabis Stores website.
And if you’re out in the public there’s only so much you can carry around – up to 30 grams of dried cannabis or its equivalent. Equivalent amounts for one gram of dried cannabis are five grams of fresh cannabis, 15 grams of solids containing cannabis, 70 grams of non-solids containing cannabis (liquid product such as cannabis oil), 0.25 grams of cannabis solid and non-solid concentrates and one cannabis plant seed. Edibles and cannabis concentrates are not currently listed as products that can be sold, although the Cannabis Act says they will be added within a year.
A chain link fence is being installed along the bypass between 18th Avenue and 20th Avenue to stop pedestrians from crossing the busy highway and force them to use the controlled cross walk
Province working to approve more pot stores
Laura KANE Citizen news service
VANCOUVER — British Columbia cabinet ministers defended the provincial government’s pace in approving marijuana stores as they toured the only brick-and-mortar shop in Kamloops Friday.
Attorney General David Eby and Public Safety Minister Mike Farnworth visited the new BC Cannabis Store in the province’s Interior. The Liquor Distribution Branch is currently engaged with a number of municipalities about opening additional stores, Eby said.
“The key for them is what we found in Kamloops, which is a municipality with clear guidelines, with an intent to work with the (branch) in establishing a store,” he said.
“There’s no question that over the next period of weeks and months, they’re going to see more and more stores coming online, both public and private.”
The managers of two illicit pot shops that were raided by RCMP in Port Alberni on Wednesday have criticized the province for not processing applications more quickly. Both stores have applied for provincial licences and are waiting for approval.
While B.C. only has one legal store and a website, Newfoundland and Labrador and New Brunswick have 20 stores each and Alberta has 17. Ontario, on the heels of a recent provincial election, has no physical stores.
Farnworth said other provinces established stores with very little community consultation, but B.C. made clear that local governments could decide what kind of stores, if any, they wanted.
The province also has local government elections on Saturday and many communities have said they want to deal with licences and locations afterward, Farnworth added.
“We’ve taken an approach that was very much collaborating with local governments and we believe that was the right approach to take.”
Farnworth also said the province could not legally issue private retail licences until after the federal Cannabis Act came into force on Wednesday. He wouldn’t explain when asked why the act was a roadblock for B.C. but not for other provinces.
A spokesman for the attorney general’s office said in an email that the province could legally create the regulatory framework to allow provincial licensing before legalization.
“However, it could not issue a licence to sell cannabis (which is an official instrument of government) while it was still
federally illegal,” he said. Alberta issued interim licences to 17 retailers by early October that allowed them to order product and get stores ready for legalization. Stores with interim licences that fulfilled all conditions were issued a sales licence on Wednesday so they could open to the public.
In B.C., the provincial government forwards applications to municipalities, which review them and make a recommendation to the province. The province then decides whether to issue a licence. Some municipalities have also established their own business licences in addition to that process.
Jag Sandhu, a City of Vancouver spokesman, said the province has notified it of eight applications for stores. Seven appli-
Suspicious death ruled a homicide
Citizen news service
VANCOUVER — Police say the suspicious death of a man near Seton Portage, B.C. has been confirmed as a homicide.
Officers were called out Saturday afternoon to investigate a kidnapping and suspicious death. In a news release issued Friday police reported the identity of the deceased as 71-year-old Patrick Zube Aylward.
They say his body was found in a residence on a rural road outside of Seton Portage, about 25 kilometres west of Lillooet, B.C.
Investigators say they believe it was a targeted killing, however, they have not yet released the cause of death, or any suspect information.
cants have previously been issued development permits, the first step that needs to be completed, and must now post a sign on site for 14 days notifying the public they intend to obtain a provincial retail licence.
Once the provincial licence is granted, the operator can apply for a municipal business licence, he said.
“We do not have a timeline on when the first store will open as it will depend on the applicant completing the process and fulfilling all provincial and municipal requirements,” he said.
The City of Surrey has banned any business growing, producing or storing cannabis, and plans to tackle retail marijuana after the local election.
“Council endorsement of the specific de-
tails of a Surrey framework, including retail sales, has not occurred. This will be an issue that the new Council will review once they are in office. Until then the existing bylaw is in place,” said Terry Waterhouse, general manager of public safety.
Most B.C. residents who purchased legal weed this week did so online. There were 9,175 sales online and 805 purchases at the province’s only physical store in Kamloops on Wednesday, according to the Liquor Distribution Branch.
But on Thursday, sales slid nearly 70 per cent, with 2,563 online transactions and 521 at the BC Cannabis Store.
The branch is not releasing the total value of the sales, which it says is its policy for liquor store sales as well.
CP PHOTO
Customers walk out of British Columbia’s first legal B.C. cannabis store with shopping bags of product in Kamloops on Wednesday. Attorney General David Eby said the province is working to approve additional pot stores in the coming weeks.
Pot legalization unifying for conservatives
Because Prime Minister Justin Trudeau can be such a polarizing figure in Canada, one of his inadvertent talents is clarifying the positions of his critics.
Before Trudeau came along, the question of how the Canadian electoral system was structured was not overly divisive. Today, thanks to his botched efforts to make the present system “fairer,” the status quo has become more jealously guarded by the right. His unprovoked decision to tightly associate his administration with Canada’s liberal abortion regime has likewise pushed the Conservative Party into closer alliance with the antiabortion movement.
Trudeau’s decision to legalize marijuana, which officially took effect this week, seems destined to follow a similar script. So illconceived is the move, it can only improve the wisdom of anything conservatives conceive in contrast.
Before Trudeau, Canada had established a marijuana status quo that, while deeply flawed, was at least reflective of Canadians’ own inconsistent attitudes toward the drug. Marijuana remained nominally illegal, but the illegality was poorly enforced, with police and prosecutors mostly ignoring minor possession and dealing-related offenses. The mainstreaming of the notion in the early 2000s that smoking pot could be considered “medicine” signaled a significant
cultural shift and helped quietly rationalize a proliferation of brazenly illegal retail pot shops in urban centres. Deference was afforded to law enforcement to distinguish innocuous neighborhood dealers from brazenly criminal enterprises, with raids and arrests of those who had clearly crossed the line from smalltime vendors to drug kingpins offered as proof the system was working.
Amid the erratic enforcement, pot’s illegality preserved symbolic virtue. At a cultural level, it served to reinforce a message every civilization benefits from hearing: drugs are bad and shouldn’t be consumed.
of a proper social order.
Marijuana is a personal health hazard, a public nuisance and a habitforming depressant that routinely hurts families, friendships, careers and other important relationships.
Parents had the law on their side when they told children to stay away from weed; principals and employers could justify zerotolerance policies. Even if the net effect was just a low-level sense of guilt and anxiety around the drug, there was value in this. Much of the apprehension we feel about committing minor offenses such as jaywalking, littering and petty theft come from a sense that these are negative acts that contribute to the erosion
A great deal of bad behavior is against the law without rising to the level of a high crime. Marijuana is a personal health hazard, a public nuisance and a habit-forming depressant that routinely hurts families, friendships, careers and other important relationships. The state held a legitimate mandate to stigmatize the substance. Trudeau’s legalization plan has taken a wrecking ball to this delicate social order. His administration will not only carry responsibility for the consequences that follow but also bear the political fallout of tying his partisan brand to this haphazard project.
Even after delays and substantial consultations, Trudeau’s legalization rollout was tied to arbitrary timelines – a stunt implemented as it was conceived: shallowly, and for short-term electoral gain.
That old regime, in which pot was illegal but widely used, sired many negative social consequences, but responsibility was diffused, because the situation wasn’t anyone’s particular idea. By contrast, the lofty rhetoric Trudeau has used to justify
YOUR LETTERS
Patriotism rises above partisanship
True patriotism stems from a commitment to the ideals of a country, not to petty partisan loyalties that confuse hurt individual pride with actual national interests.
And while it’s true that governments, even democratic ones, often fall short of our lofty expectations, that should not deter us from pursuing the moral obligation of every generation, which is to work to leave the world better than we found it.
I admit that lately the rhetoric between Canada and the U.S., perhaps more so on one side than the other, has been hurtful, but I would urge readers to see past the political bombast.
When all is said and done, the U.S. and Canada have more similarities than differences, especially when compared to the rest of the world. Let us not forget that amidst all the political spin.
Economics is a complicated business. Not even the most esteemed economists can fully claim to understand the dismal science and even they would admit that fundamentally theirs is a philosophical endeavour. How else could one argue what the proper system of distributing goods, services, and wealth should be? Whatever your stance on the merits of managing the supply of Canadian milk, the fact remains that both countries believe it’s in their interest to preserve a bilateral relationship centered on trade and cooperation on transnational security matters. Our businesses still profit from one another and our soldiers continue to fight, bleed, and die together. When all is said
and done, the U.S. and Canada have more similarities than differences, especially when compared to the rest of the world. Let us not forget that amidst all the political spin. It is on this basis, both moral and practical, that I can emphatically state that my continuing love of America is a good thing for Canada because it strengthens my commitment to preserving the Canadian democratic experiment which, like America’s, proposes that governments of the people, by the people, and for the people still represent humanity’s best hope for achieving an ever more prosperous and just society. The proper way to voice dissent is to participate in the democratic process (that means vote!) and encourage others to do the same. Stay informed and stand up for your principles. Doing so is good for Canada, the United States, and democracy everywhere.
Ignacio Albarracin Prince George
LETTERS WELCOME: The Prince George Citizen welcomes letters to the editor from our readers. Submissions should be sent by email to: letters@pgcitizen.ca. No attachments, please. They can also be faxed to 250-960-2766, or mailed to 201-1777 Third Ave., Prince George, B.C. V2L 3G7. Maximum length is 750 words and writers are limited to one submission every week. We will edit letters only to ensure clarity, good taste, for legal reasons, and occasionally for length. Although we will not include your address and telephone number in the paper, we need both for verification purposes. Unsigned letters will not be published. The Prince George Citizen is a member of the National Newsmedia Council, which is an independent organization established to deal with acceptable journalistic practices and ethical behaviour. If you have concerns about editorial content, please contact Neil Godbout (ngodbout@pgcitizen.ca or 250-960-2759). If you are not satisfied with the response and wish to file a formal complaint, visit the web site at mediacouncil.ca or call toll-free 1-844-877-1163 for additional information.
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this new regime of legalization – a cure for marijuana-related crime, persecutions and (most preposterously) consumptionpresupposes a government prepared to own all the problems of a society in which pot is now explicitly condoned by the state. Hence so much fresh concern over matters such as stoned driving, pot-related ER visits, the attractiveness of edibles to children and the difficulties marijuana users face entering the United States. None of these are new phenomena, yet through legalization’s stamp of approval, Ottawa has abruptly become far more accountable for their existence.
For those who have never trusted or supported marijuana legalization, Trudeau’s underwhelming implementation does offer some upsides.
As his earlier forays into the politics of abortion and electoral reform have proven, the prime minister’s clumsy style has a tendency to awaken the previously disinterested.
If the net consequence of legalization is the solidification of consensus among Trudeau’s rivals that marijuana’s corrosive role in Canadian society is a matter serious enough to deserve government attention beyond a lazy wave of the “legalization” wand, then some good may yet come of this.
— J.J. McCullough is a political commentator and cartoonist from Vancouver.
Five myths about Apple
Even after the rise of Google and Facebook, Apple remains the most closely watched technology company of them all. It shouldn’t shock anyone, then, that Apple has always generated an unusually high volume of misunderstandings masquerading as common knowledge.
Myth No. 1: Apple is the most valuable company in history. Apple achieved a historic feat when it hit a value of $1 trillion in August. To many observers, that made it “the most valuable company of all time.”
But Apple’s milestone was specific to market capitalization on a U.S. stock exchange. Eleven years before, PetroChina – the Chinese state-owned oil and gas company – briefly hit $1.2 trillion on its opening day on the Shanghai Stock Exchange. (It subsequently spiraled into what Bloomberg News called “the biggest stock collapse in world history.”) Another state-owned petroleum behemoth, Saudi Arabia’s Aramco (which plans to hold an IPO by 2021 at a valuation of up to $2 trillion), is worth $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion today, according to most analysts’ estimates.
Myth No. 2: Apple doesn’t profit from its users’ personal information.
Apple CEO Tim Cook is fond of reminding us that the company is unlike some other tech giants – think Google and Facebook –because its main business is selling hardware, not pelting consumers with targeted advertising based on information it’s collected about them.
It’s true that Apple has opted out of the ad business and doesn’t snoop on users of its products; it even makes it tougher for other companies to do so (the Safari browser was the first to block third-party cookies by default).
But a recent Goldman Sachs report estimated that Google will pay Apple $12 billion next year to remain the default search engine on the iPhone, iPad and Mac. Let’s be clear: The only reason Google would be willing to fork over a sum anywhere in that range is because targeting Apple fans with ads is so profitable. Apple is making a tremendous amount of money from the tracking of its customers’ search results; it has merely rented the right to scrutinize users to a third party.
Myth No. 3: Apple designs its products to quickly become obsolete.
From the moment Apple announced its first iPhone in 2007, pundits have accused the company of willfully curtailing its smartphones’ useful life, the better to sway us into buying new ones on a
regular schedule. Last December, when Apple acknowledged that it had tweaked iOS to slow down older iPhones, the cynics thought they’d found their planned-obsolescence smoking gun. “
All but lost in the controversy was Apple’s sensible (and true) explanation: It was “throttling” those iPhones because their aging batteries tended to cause abrupt shutdowns – a flaw that, left unchecked, might have not only been irritating but also led consumers to replace their phones prematurely. The company responded to consumer ire by offering discounted battery replacements and adding an option in iOS to turn off the battery-health monitoring feature that initiated the slowdowns –steps that, if Apple had taken them in the first place, might have allowed it to sidestep the kerfuffle.
Myth No. 4: A disruptor under Steve Jobs, Apple now plays it safe.
A frequent charge is that the company has “lost its mojo” under Cook, as an NPR writer put it in 2017, because it no longer turns entire sectors upside down. In truth, Jobs’s product development skills always had as much to do with evolution as revolution. Yes, the 2007 iPhone was a breakthrough. But the App Store, which unlocked most of its power, didn’t arrive until a year later. It took another year after that until the phone’s camera got features such as autofocus and the ability to shoot video. Today’s Apple – steadily improving the Apple Watch of 2015, for example – follows a similar strategy.
Myth No. 5: Macs aren’t susceptible to viruses and other malware.
Back in 2006, Apple pitched the Mac on TV with a commercial that showed comedian and writer John Hodgman introducing himself as a PC, sneezing uncontrollably and then toppling over – to dramatize the fact that there were “114,000 known viruses for PCs.” Actor Justin Long, portraying a Mac, wasn’t susceptible to any of them. It is true that Macs are less malware-ridden than their Windows counterparts. But partly that’s because Apple ships only seven per cent of the world’s computers, making it a far less juicy target for bad guys. Still, the software company Malwarebytes reported a 270 per cent increase in Mac-specific viruses from 2016 to 2017.
— Harry McCracken, the technology editor for Fast Company, also covered the tech industry for Time and founded the Technologizer site.
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HARRY MCCRACKEN Fast Company Guest Column
HMCS St. John’s, one of Canada’s Halifax-class frigates, heads through the fog as it returns to port in Halifax on July 23. The federal government is in talks with Lockheed Martin about a potential $60-billion contract to replace Canada’s aging fleet.
Feds, Lockheed Martin talk warships
Lee BERTHIAUME
Citizen news service
OTTAWA — The federal government and Lockheed Martin are preparing to launch high-stakes negotiations after the U.S. defence giant was given the first shot at a contract to design Canada’s $60-billion fleet of new warships.
Government officials said Friday that Lockheed’s proposal beat out two rival submissions in the long and extremely sensitive competition to design replacements for the navy’s entire frigate and destroyer fleets.
That doesn’t mean a contract has been awarded. Negotiators for both sides as well as Halifaxbased Irving Shipbuilding, which will actually build the warships, must now hammer out the details – including the final cost – before a deal is formalized.
At the same time, Lockheed’s victory could be a catalyst for legal action by the other bidders after questions about why the company’s bid, which was based on the British-designed Type 26 frigate, was allowed in the first place.
Lockheed was up against U.S.based defence company Alion, which proposed a design based on a Dutch frigate, and the Spanish firm Navantia, whose proposal was modelled on a frigate used by the Spanish navy.
The government is planning to build 15 new warships starting in the next three to four years, which will replace Canada’s 12 aging Halifax-class frigates and alreadyretired Iroquois-class destroyers and serve as the navy’s backbone for most of the century.
The stakes will be high for government, Irving and Lockheed negotiators, with hundreds of millions of dollars in play as well as pressure to make up lost time after numerous delays in the project.
Irving has warned that it could be forced to lay off hundreds of employees if work on the warships is not ready to start by the time it finishes building the navy’s new Arctic patrol ships in 2021 or 2022.
Patrick Finn, the Defence
Department’s head of military procurement, acknowledged the need for urgency, but noted the need for care as the talks could have ramifications for the navy and taxpayers for decades.
“So it behooves us to stop and make sure we do the final checks in all of the areas,” Finn said, adding that the hope is to start construction in three to four years.
One of the key negotiating points is the amount of intellectual property that Lockheed will be required to hand over, which Ottawa wants so it can operate and maintain the vessels on its own after they are built.
The intellectual-property issue has proven contentious in the past, which is why the government and industry agreed to wait until now to iron out the details.
The government has reserved the right to walk away from the talks if Lockheed drives too hard a bargain and negotiate instead with the second-place bidder, which was not identified. Officials hope that won’t be necessary.
“We have notional time frames allocated,” said Andre Fillion, who oversees military and naval projects with Public Services and Procurement Canada.
“And should everything go according to plan, we’re looking at winter 2019 for the award of the contract. If it doesn’t go according to plan, then we go to Plan B - and obviously that would take longer.”
The bid by Lockheed, which also builds the F-35 stealth fighter and other military equipment, has been contentious from the moment the design competition was launched in October 2016.
The federal government had originally said it wanted a “mature design” for its new warship fleet, which was widely interpreted as meaning a vessel that has already been built and used by another navy.
But the first Type 26 frigates are only now being built by the British government and the design has not yet been tested in full operation.
There were also complaints from industry that the deck was stacked
in the Type 26’s favour because of Irving’s connections with British shipbuilder BAE, which originally designed the Type 26 and partnered with Lockheed to offer the ship to Canada.
Irving, which worked with the federal government to pick the top design, also partnered with BAE in 2016 on an ultimately unsuccessful bid to maintain the navy’s new Arctic patrol vessels and supply ships. That 35-year contract ended up going to another company.
Irving and the federal government have rejected such complaints, saying they conducted numerous consultations with industry and installed a variety of firewalls and safeguards to ensure the selection process was completely fair and unbiased.
“The selection of Lockheed Martin as the preferred bidder was based on the merits of the final bids,” Irving spokesman Sean Lewis said in an interview.
“The project is the largest and most complex in Canadian government history, and given that fact, extraordinary steps have been taken to ensure it is conducted in an open, fair, and transparent manner.”
Several industry insiders, however, predicted Lockheed’s selection as the top bidder combined with several changes to the competition after it was launched, including deadline extensions, would spark lawsuits from the other bidders.
Government officials acknowledged the threat of legal action, which has become a favourite tactic for companies that lose defence contracts, but expressed confidence that they would be able to defend against such attacks.
“Part of the work that we’ve done as we’ve unfolded this is to actually mitigate some of the legal risk by making sure that we were listening to industry feedback throughout the process,” Finn said.
“We don’t make all our decisions based on legal risk, but we don’t ignore it either.”
— With files from Michael Tutton in Halifax
Pot names aimed at kids, health critic says
Janice DICKSON Citizen news service
OTTAWA — Scroll through Ontario’s online cannabis shop and you’ll see strains of marijuana called Banana Split and Tangerine Dream.
There are others with the far-out monikers Dreamweaver, Super Sonic and Pink Kush.
The names appear on packages even though the federal Cannabis Act is meant to discourage kids from using pot by prohibiting products that appeal to youth.
The law also forbids packaging or labelling cannabis in a way that is attractive to the demographic.
Thierry Belair, a spokesman for Health Minister Ginette Petitpas Taylor, said the department will continue to monitor
the market and enforce the rules on a case-by-case basis now that recreational cannabis use is legal. “The law clearly prohibits promotions that associate cannabis with a particular way of life such as glamour, recreation, excitement or vitality, and that includes cannabis strains descriptions,” said Belair.
The government expects all participants, including provinces, territories and those in the cannabis industry, to follow the law, he added. But the names are not sitting well with Conservative health critic Marilyn Gladu. Gladu says the Liberals need to do more to ensure cannabis products available online are not enticing to kids.
“The sprit of the regulation was that they did not want the packaging in any way to be attractive to young people,” she said.
Ted CLARKE Citizen staff
tclarke@pgcitizen.ca
The UNBC Timberwolves still have a shot at the Canada West women’s soccer playoffs. They did their part to remain in the U Sports postseason picture, stoning the Thompson Rivers University WolfPack 2-0 Friday night at Masich Place Stadium.
The T-wolves also needed some external help and the MacEwan Griffins gave that to them in the form of a 4-1 defeat of the UBC Okanagan Heat earlier Friday night in Edmonton.
The T-wolves, WolfPack and Heat are in a three-way dogfight for sixth place in the Pacific Division. Only the top six advance to the playoffs and that sixth spot won’t be decided until the final games of the season on Sunday. Friday night at Masich, UNBC sophomore Brooke Molby, was cast into the role late as the starting goalie and she almost singlehandedly took the team on her shoulders, diving and punching her way to a 12-save shutout.
At the other end of the field, rookie midfielders Ashley Volk and Hannah Emmond picked the perfect time to score the first goals of their university soccer careers.
Volk, a 20-year-old from Victoria, got her forehead on a high looping cross-feed from Julia Babicz and deflected the ball in from 10 yards out. The goal came 4:57 into the game. “That was super-awesome, moving into a different position this year I think it’s all coming together – (Babicz) delivered a great ball in and I was just able to finish it,” said Volk. “We’ve been working a lot on heading and it paid off.”
Emmond, a 19-year-old Prince George youth soccer product, was subbed in late in the first half and was on the field for the secondhalf kickoff, which turned out a fortuitous decision by T-wolves head coach Neil Sedgwick. Less than two minutes into the second half Emmond was at the receiving end of a breakaway pass from Paige Payne and she made it count, booting a high shot from 20 yards out that beat WolfPack goalie Danielle Robertson. It didn’t take long for the WolfPack to test Molby’s reflexes. Early in the first half, Marlie Rittinger ripped a hard shot from just inside the box which was heading into the upper reaches of the net until Molby punched it away with her fist, one of about a half-dozen diving saves she made while on the way to her third shutout of the season.
TRU forward Chantal Gammie came close not long after that, redirecting a corner kick with her foot. The shot got past Molby and was heading into the net but UNBC defender Kylie Erb, playing the second-last home game of her five-year career, was standing on the goal line to deflect the shot. But Molby stole the show. “Talk about being ready,” said Sedgwick. “She made a fantastic save early in the game and tipped one over the bar and then just continued to progress. What a
Timberwolves stay in playoff chase
fantastic effort from Brooke.”
Molby had been nursing a knee injury to her prime kicking leg in the T-wolves’ game last Sunday and wasn’t expected to start but a family issue affecting goalie Madi Doyle resulted in the game-day lineup change.
“At the last minute, Neil decided to put me in and I was pretty nervous at first but I feel I stepped up to it and it was good game for everyone,” said Molby. “I practiced once this week but it was very light and I only did light passing, no kicking.
“I was getting a little nervous at the end. They were really pushing us and we dropped off a bit, which kind of stressed me out, but we deserved the win and I’m happy with that.”
After Emmond’s goal, the WolfPack answered by creating several Grade-A chances at the net but each time Molby was there to make the save. They played much of the second half in the UNBC end but came away empty-handed. The shots on goal favoured the T-wolves 16-12.
“The girls did really well tonight, we had a plan and they stuck to it and executed well,” said Sedgwick. “They knew what was on the line and competed well. They worked hard and defended well and credit to TRU, they had a few chances on
Captain Curtis finding his scoring touch
Ted CLARKE Citizen staff
Josh Curtis has ditched his scoring slump and that might spell trouble for the Swift Current Broncos.
When he left town last week for a threegame tour of the WHL Central Division the 20-year-old captain of the Prince George Cougars had just one assist to show for his first seven games. Curtis snapped himself out of his slump, scoring his first goal of the season last Friday in a 4-1 loss to the Medicine Hat Tigers.
The following night in Lethbridge, he pumped in two more goals and an assist in a 6-5 shootout win over the Lethbridge Hurricanes. The Cougars wrapped up their trip Sunday in Cranbrook against the Kootenay Ice and Curtis set up linemate Ilijah Colina for the 2-1 winner, 33 seconds into overtime.
“It is really nice to contribute, we needed some offence,” said Curtis. “We haven’t scored a tremendous amount of goals (the Cats have just 22 goals through 10 games) so it was nice to finally produce and I thought our line (with left winger Vladislav Mikhalchuk) played pretty well.”
All of a sudden, Curtis is on top of the team scoring chart with three goals and
three assists for six points, tied with Mikhalchuk, Ethan Browne and Ryan Schoettler.
“It was a big two wins, with travel and playing in different buildings,” said Curtis.
“I thought we played a really good team game, especially in Lethbridge. It was a bit of a barn-burner but regardless, the biggest thing was when things weren’t going our way in the third period when they scored and went ahead it was good we went right back down and scored. That was the attitude we had, to never give up.”
The win in Lethbridge ended a four-game losing streak. The Cougars (4-5-0-1) are solidly entrenched in third place in the B.C. Division, four points ahead of the fourth-place Kamloops Blazers, with a chance to make it three wins in a row Sunday afternoon when they host the Broncos (2 p.m. start).
“It’s big for everyone,” said Curtis. “You obviously want to build that idea that you can win on the road and win on any night. It’s good to know we’re finding ways to win both games.”
Both Cougar goalies played well. Isaiah DiLaura, in his second start of the season, made 49 saves to preserve the win in Lethbridge and Taylor Gauthier was sharp against the Ice, blocking 45 shots.
The Broncos (1-9-0-0) are the defending WHL champions but their roster has been decimated by graduation and this is obviously a rebuilding year. They began
us and created some problems. “Last year it came down to the last weekend for the same three teams and we’re all not just scrapping to get off the bottom anymore. We are at the bottom but now we’re challenging the teams at the top. We’re contenders when we’re playing against any other team at the top of the league, so the parity is getting better.” UNBC (2-8-3, eighth in Pacific) will host UBC Okanagan (3-8-2, sixth place) in the final game of the regular season for both teams Sunday at noon at Masich. It’s a must-win game for the T-wolves, who will also have to get help from MacEwan Sunday in Edmonton. If UNBC wins and the Griffins defeat TRU, the T-wolves will be in the playoffs for the second straight season. “Grant MacEwan’s a great team and we’re just confident in their ability to hopefully win the next game, just like they did tonight,” said Volk. In Canada West men’s soccer action Friday night in Abbotsford, Andrew Peat scored the only goal of the game in the 90th minute, giving the Fraser Valley Cascades a 1-0 win over the UNBC T-wolves. With that victory the Casades (7-6-1) leapfrogged the T-wolves (5-4-5) and clinched third place in the Pacific Division.
their trip Tuesday in Langley with a 6-2 loss to the Vancouver Giants in which they were outshot 71-16. The Broncos played Wednesday night in Victoria and lost 5-2 to the Royals, outshot 35-12. Swift Current played Friday night in Kamloops.
The Cougars will try to improve their effectiveness on the power play at the Broncos’ expense. The Cats still rank deadlast in the WHL with just three power-play goals in 42 opportunities, a 7.1 per cent success rate. Heading into Friday’s game the Broncos were connecting with 13.9 per cent efficiency, 20th in the 22-team league.
The Cougars will have had almost a full week between games and with no injuries to deal with they should be well-rested to face the Broncos Sunday on Minor Sports Day at CN Centre. Curtis knows the Cougars are favoured to come out of it with two more points but he says the team won’t be taking the Broncos lightly.
“It doesn’t matter what team comes in, if you don’t play the right way you’re not going to win and we can’t underestimate this team,” said Curtis. “They did get outshot big-time (by the Giants) but that means they’ll be fueled and ready to play Sunday and we’ll have to have a good start.”
CITIZEN PHOTO BY JAMES DOYLE
Madison Emmond of the UNBC Timberwolves fights off Chantal Gammie of the Thompson Rivers University WolfPack and gets ready to put boot to ball on Friday night at Masich Place Stadium. The Timberwolves, backed by the goalkeeping of Brooke Molby, won 2-0. UNBC plays its final game of the Canada West regular season on Sunday (noon start time) against the UBC Okanagan Heat.
In fast company
P.G.’s Logan Jewell testing his talents on U.S. stock car circuit
Ted CLARKE Citizen staff tclarke@pgcitizen.ca
Prince George stock car racer
Logan Jewell is thriving in the desert heat.
The 28-year-old Super Late Model Series driver qualified 14th out of 25 Friday at the Bullring at Las Vegas Motor Speedway and finished third in the heat race.
Only the top-24 qualify for today’s 150-lap Senator’s Cup Fall Classic main event.
“We’ve been racing Super Late Models this year pretty well, we went and got a 620-horsepower engine and we’ve been going all-out,” said Jewell. “The next step up is NASCAR.
“The competitiveness has gone way up and the quality of drivers is very high. I have to be better. I’m racing guys who have been racing in Xfinity, guys like Noah Gregson and Jeremy Doss, who win a lot of races down here.”
Jewell started the season racing in the Northwest Super Late Model Series.
In May at the Galloway 150, reaching speeds of 210 kilometres per hour on the high-bank five-eighths mile oval at Evergreen Speedway in Monroe, Wash. He went on to finish eighth in the main event.
In July, Jewell qualified sixth out of 27
for the Montana 200 Super Late Model race in Kalispell, Mt. He also raced the Idaho 150 and was the lone Canadian in the Late Model race in Wenatchee, Wash.
“We’ve had a few mechanical failures that have taken us out of some races but we’ve been wicked fast wherever we seem to go,” sad Jewell.
“It’s a huge step up. I get to have all the fun behind the wheel and I can’t thank (team owner Gary MacCarthy) enough for it.”
Jewell also raced Late Model events this year in Edmonton and Saskatoon. He qualified second in Edmonton and finished third in the first half of the main and eighth in the second 100-lapper.
Most of the races on the Late Model Series are 100 or 150 laps and take as much as two hours to complete.
He ran with a crate motor last year as a rookie in the Super Late Model Series. The additional horsepower has been a huge change.
Jewell has been involved in racing since he was seven years old, starting out on the kart track at PGARA Speedway in Prince George. By the time he was 14 he was racing stock cars and he climbed the ladder quickly, jumping from bombers to hobby stocks in the Prince George Auto Racing Association.
While still in his late teens, Jewell made the jump to WESCAR, the pro-
vincial late-model series and got to the winner’s circle often enough to draw sponsorship interest from Terrace auto dealer MacCarthy. That led to Jewell winning the WESCAR points championship in 2016.
Jewell has his dad from Prince George, Mark, along with him in Las Vegas as part of his pit crew, along with Tony Atkinson, Corey Price and Glen Witt. The crew has been following the advice of Travis Sharp of Racing Dynamics in Montana to get the car set up. MacCarthy GM and Prevost RV and Marine in Terrace are the team’s primary sponsors.
Logan Jewell works in Prince George at University Hospital of Northern B.C. as a power engineer.
“This year we’re just tiptoeing our feet down here to see how we’d do in these big races and we’re coming up pretty competitive, so next year we’re going to take part in as many $10,000-to-win races as we can,” said Jewell. “The risk or reward is huge. If you go to local shows but you’re only going to get a couple grand, but if you go to these shows, I think we can win 15 grand US this weekend.”
Young skater branching out at Autumn Leaves
Ted CLARKE Citizen staff
Christmas is coming about a month early for 13-year-old Alex Callaway.
After nine years of practicing her figure skating form, she finally has qualified to compete in the BC/Yukon Super Series Section Championships, set for Nov. 8-11 in Coquitlam.
To prepare herself for that big event, Callaway is in Kamloops this weekend skating at the Autumn Leaves competition, entered in two categories. She’ll skate today in the Star 7 women’s event and on Sunday will take her game up another notch in the juvenile women’s under-14 class. It will be the first time skating in front of panel of judges for Callaway since a pre-juvenile Super Series event in May and she has an entirely new program to unveil.
“I’m super-excited I’ve got a new program, it’s something I’ve wanted for a while now,” said Callaway, who trains with the Northern BC Centre for Skating. “It’s challenging trying to get the performance and all the elements you need all together and being able to do them well.
“This competition is a warm-up but it’s also to test how I’m feeling and get going with my new program. I have two more combos and I’ve added two more doubles. We’re trying to get the doubleLutz ready for sections. I’m just trying to get the feeling.”
Callaway trained throughout the summer, four and sometimes five times per week, working out the bugs in her new program. Her mother Nicole is a distance runner who has competed in the Canadian Death Race ultra-marathon off-road race a few times and Alex has inherited her mom’s love for trail running, which builds stamina for skating.
“I love running on trails, I live by Ginter’s (recreation area) so it’s perfect trails,” she said. Asked if there’s one thing most people don’t know about figure skaters, Callaway did not hesitate.
“How hard we train, it’s intense,” she said. “The off-ice portion in the summertime is pretty intense and training on the ice you’re always focused and ready to learn more and do more and get things done.”
NBCCS veteran Justin Hampole, 17, is heading into his third year in the junior men’s category, coming off a season in which he finished 13th out of 18 at the Canadian Tire national championships. Hampole has been fighting off a lower back injury that bit into his training time but the pain has subsided and he made the trip to Kamloops. He skated both programs cleanly without a hitch on the practice ice Wednesday at Kin 2, which should set him up well for a strong weekend at Autumn Leaves.
“I’m basically using this as a simulation for sectionals, just to practice my mental
game going in,” said Hampole. “I want to lay out two solid programs before the qualifying competitions start and just have a very positive experience that will set me up for the season.
“The biggest difference in my skating this year is my consistency. Last year I had triples that were on and off but this year I’ve been making sure to follow this conveyor belt training, triples over and over again with choreography from my programs and that’s resulted in consistency when I run through my program.”
Hampole needs to finish in the top four at the section meet in Coquitlam to advance to the Skate Canada Challenge, Nov. 28 to Dec. 2 in Edmonton. He knows his routines and has every reason to feel confident about his skating. He just needs to stay healthy.
“I was considering withdrawing from Autumn Leaves but it turned out my body’s feeling better and I’m skating well so I’m just going for it,” said Hampole. “It’s the same injury that’s been recurring. My sacroiliac joint isn’t sitting right and it’s putting a lot of stress on the ligaments and it flares up usually when training gets intense. It started around
AND HAMPOLE
two years ago.
“It’s taken a toll on my training but I’ve followed a strict regiment of recovery and I’ve been doing as much as I can on the ice. I think I was really smart with my plan my coaches (Rory Allen and Andrea Ludditt) came up with and now I feel very ready for the season.” Hampole was scheduled to skate his short program Friday night. Thirteen other NBCCS skaters are competing this weekend at Autumn Leaves. Keira Bells (intro interpretive) and Ella Wedel (silver interpretive) started on Thursday. Also on the ice Friday were Bells (Star 4 girls under-13), Reece Johnson (novice men’s short), Calum Mckay Stratton (Star 4 boys), Jayna Mason (pre-novice women’s short), Eilleen Reay (Star 4 girls under-13), and Halle Matlock (Star 4 girls under-13) . Today, Makenzie Domhof and Kailey Logan will join Callaway in Star 7. Also representing the club will be Hampole (junior men’s free), Mason (pre-novice women’s free), Johnson (novice men’s free), Ally Norum (Star 9 women) and Colbie Norn (Star 5 girls under-10).
HANDOUT PHOTO
ABOVE: Logan Jewell has his car at the Bullring at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
CALLAWAY
Celtics can’t stop Leonard
Citizen news service
TORONTO — Kawhi Leonard
had 15 of his 31 points in the third quarter Friday to lead the Toronto Raptors to a 113-101 victory over the Boston Celtics in a marquee Eastern Conference matchup. Leonard, who was serenaded by chants of “M-V-P!,” also hauled in a team-high 10 rebounds in his second real NBA game in nine months.
Serge Ibaka had 21 points, while Kyle Lowry had 15 points, six assists and five boards as the Raptors (2-0) remained undefeated in early season action. Danny Green chipped in with 14 points, while Fred VanVleet added 11. Kyrie Irving led the Celtics (1-1) with 21 points.
The game was an early gauge of how the Raptors stack up against the general consensus team to beat in the East, and preview of what should be a fierce seasonlong battle between the two Atlantic Division powerhouses that could extend into the playoffs.
The Raptors were coming off a 116-104 win over Cleveland in Wednesday’s season opener, while the Celtics began their campaign Tuesday with a 105-87 rout of Philadelphia. Neither team led by more than eight points on Friday, and the Raptors took an 82-79 lead into the fourth quarter in front of a sold-out Scotiabank Arena crowd that included swimmer Penny Oleksiak and former Toronto Argonauts quarterback Damon Allen. Leonard launched a three-pointer midway through the fourth that put the Raptors up by six and brought the crowd to its feet. An Al Horford three pulled the Celtics to within two points with just under three minutes to play, but Green and Lowry connected on back-to-back three-pointers to put the brakes on any Boston momentum. It was all Toronto the rest of the way.
Leonard, who until Wednesday’s opener hadn’t played an NBA regular-season game since January 13, had predicted it would take time to find his rhythm. And while the former San Antonio star shot just 3-for-11 in the first half, he was constantly creating havoc on the defensive end and grabbing rebounds with his enormous hands.
The Raptors improved to 10-1 versus Boston at home. The two teams have accounted for 12 of the last 14 Atlantic Division titles, Toronto winning five and Boston seven.
Rough landing
crashes to the field after intercepting a pass
in Vancouver. The Lions won the game 42-32.
Brewers push Dodgers to Game 7
Citizen news service
MILWAUKEE — Ryan Braun slid across home plate and raised his arms in sheer joy.
A big lead, a bruising bullpen and a boisterous crowd have the Milwaukee Brewers all set up for Game 7.
Jesus Aguilar sparked Milwaukee’s slumping lineup with three RBIs on a pair of two-out hits, and the Brewers beat the Los Angeles Dodgers 7-2 on Friday night to even the NL Championship Series at three games each.
Game 7 is tonight in front of the same frenzied crowd that booed Manny Machado vociferously after he tangled with Aguilar while the series was in Los Angeles. Dodgers rookie Walker Buehler faces journeyman Jhoulys Chacin, with well-rested relief ace Josh Hader looming in the bullpen for Milwaukee after a surprise day off.
It’s the first Game 7 for the Brewers since losing to St. Louis in 1982 in their only World Se-
Citizen staff
Brar fires winner in overtime for Spruce Kings
ries appearance. The Dodgers dropped Game 7 of the World Series last year to Houston.
David Freese led off this Game 6 with a home run that quieted Miller Park – but just for a moment.
Backed by raucous fans waving yellow towels that read “ONE TOUGH CREW,” Milwaukee rebounded from consecutive losses at Dodger Stadium with the same formula it used to win the NL Central during a breakout season.
Some timely hitting by Aguilar and company produced an early lead, and Corey Knebel and Jeremy Jeffress led the way in another shutdown performance by Milwaukee’s tough bullpen.
Los Angeles was looking for its second straight NL pennant and some time to prepare for the mighty Boston Red Sox in the World Series. But losing pitcher Hyun-Jin Ryu was tagged for four runs in the first inning, two on a double by Aguilar that sent Braun sliding home.
After Wade Miley pitched into the fifth
inning in his second straight start – he faced only one batter in Game 5 – Knebel, Jeffress and Corbin Burnes closed it out with hitless relief. Knebel got the win and Burnes retired the Dodgers in order in the ninth, setting off a wild celebration for the crowd of 43,619. If manager Craig Counsell was tempted to bring in the dominant Hader, Aguilar likely erased that urge when he scored on a wild pitch in the seventh and then singled in Lorenzo Cain in the eighth. The big first baseman had driven in just one run in the series heading into Game 6. Freese drove in both runs for the Dodgers. The rest of the Los Angeles lineup managed just three measly singles. Hounded by boos all night long, Machado went 0-for-4 with two strikeouts.
The 35-year-old Freese was a surprise choice for leadoff hitter by Dave Roberts, and he made his manager look quite good when he started the game with a drive to right-centre for his ninth career post-season homer.
Ben Brar scored 1:54 into overtime Friday to give the Spruce Kings a 5-4 win over the host Coquitlam Express. Brar took a feed from Dustin Manz and deposited the puck into the Express net behind goalie Kolby Matthews. Manz led the way offensively for Prince George with two goals and an assist. He scored his second of the game while shorthanded, 4:53 into the second period. Nick Bochen and Ben Poisson had the other Kings’ goals.
Chase Danol, Alex DiPaolo, Regan Kimens and Connor Gregga scored for the Express. Gregga’s goal, 14:05 into the third period, tied the game 4-4. Bradley Cooper made 16 saves for his secondstraight win and third of the season. The shot count favoured the Kings 25-20.
The win allowed the third-place Spruce Kings (9-4-0-1) to move to within two points of secondplace Coquitlam (10-5-1-0) in the B.C. Hockey League’s Mainland Division standings.
Adam Konar of the Edmonton Eskimos
against Bryan Burnham and the B.C. Lions on Friday night
Younger Domi playing for arch-rival, and that’s fine with dad
Michel LAMARCHE Citizen news service
BROSSARD, Que. — It’s possible to have amassed 3,515 penalty minutes in the National Hockey League and still be a gentleman. Tie Domi proved as much this week.
What began as an individual interview at the Montreal Canadiens practice facility Thursday quickly transformed into an imposing scrum as the former Toronto Maple Leafs enforcer held court for more than 10 minutes.
The task was no doubt made easier because the 48-year-old is happy to see his son Max feeling so at home with his new team, the Canadiens.
“He works hard every day, he has a smile on his face, so that’s nice to see,” Domi said. Seeing his son so happy, “makes my day,” he added.
played the first three years of his career, has been welcome. In Arizona, there were constant questions about the fate of the Coyotes, which takes a toll on the players.
“It’s kind of unstable in that situation – where are they going to be, the fans,” Domi said. “Here you live it, you walk it, you breathe it every day. That’s what you dream to do, and he’s living his dream now for sure.”
I played for Toronto, but Montreal was always my team as a kid, and Guy was always my favourite player.
Domi said he had not been planning to attend the Canadiens home game Wednesday against St. Louis, but his son persuaded him, and he witnessed his first goal in a Habs jersey.
Even though he is from Ontario and played 777 of his 1,020 regular-season games for the Leafs, Domi said he hasn’t thought twice about cheering for the Canadiens – and not only because his son is on the team.
It is not “weird” to see Max wearing the colours of a team that was an arch-rival when he was playing, he said.
“It was actually emotional because I was happy for him – original six. It’s a historical franchise,” he said. “I grew up idolizing Guy Lafleur and the Montreal Canadiens and the winning tradition. I played for Toronto, but Montreal was always my team as a kid, and Guy was always my favourite player.”
Domi said his son’s move from Arizona, where he
— Tie Domi
He said Max had been used to winning, including three trips to the Memorial Cup with the London Knights and a gold medal at the 2015 World Junior Championship. In Arizona, he played for teams that were out of playoff contention by Christmas.
“It’s a tough pill to swallow for anyone,” he said.
Now, Domi said, his son is “on a real team, in a real market. It’s exciting to see him taking it all in, but at the same time, he’s taking it a day at a time. He’s a positive kid.” Max Domi, 23, echoed his father’s sentiments when he got off the practice ice, saying he has been happy with the trade since day one.
“It’s a huge honour to be part of this franchise, and to be a part of this team,” he said. “Obviously, the start has been great for us, and we’re all enjoying ourselves at the rink right now.”
In the past, some players have balked at coming to Montreal because of the pressure of being constantly under the microscope. He said such pressure can be a positive.
“When you’re winning the city’s on a high. When you’re going through some tough times it’s harder to play,” he said. “Some people don’t like that, and others thrive on it.... Playing in a market like this is something I’ve dreamed of my whole life.”
Crosby the best, says Babcock
Citizen news service
TORONTO — Connor McDavid or Auston Matthews? Auston Matthews or Connor McDavid?
With debate ramping up this week about which player currently stands atop hockey’s thrown as “best in the world” after some incredible early-season performances, Maple Leafs head coach Mike Babcock’s went with a tried and tested third option for his pick – Sidney Crosby.
“This is what I think,” Babcock began as he made his case for the Penguins captain prior to Pittsburgh’s 3-0 victory over Toronto on Thursday. “I think one guy’s got two Olympic gold medals and three Stanley Cups.”
And the other guys?
“They don’t.”
McDavid, the captain of the Edmonton Oilers, owns back-to-back NHL scoring titles and has won the Hart Trophy as the league’s most valuable player, while Matthews, the Leafs’ deadly sniper, tops this season’s points race with 16 in just eight games. McDavid, with his blazing speed, set an NHL record earlier this week by becoming the only player to either score or assist on the first nine goals of his team’s campaign.
On the other hand, Matthews and his lethal shot that often leaves an opposing goalie looking up at the replay for a glimpse at a puck that just whizzed into the top corner, is just the fifth player in league history to record seven straight multi-point games to start a season.
Those accomplishments by the 21-year-old phenoms are nice, to be sure, but Babcock said personal accolades only matter so much.
Crosby, 31, has been on top of the hockey world for the better part of the last decade, winning the Cup in 2009, 2016 and 2017 to go along with gold medals for Canada at the 2010 and 2014 Olympics.
Had it not been for the concussions that saw him play just 63 of his team’s 164 games between 2010 and 2012, the two-time Hart and Conn Smythe Trophy winner might own even more hardware.
“I don’t think he plans on giving anything away,” Babcock said of Crosby, who he coached at both the Vancouver and Sochi Games, and again at the World Cup of Hockey in 2016, which Canada also won. “I saw McDavid play the other night... he had four points and was an absolute star, but these guys (like Crosby) have done it forever.
“Team success in the end, that’s how you’re measured.”
CP PHOTO
Max Domi, in his first season with the Montreal Canadiens, celebrates a goal by teammate Artturi Lehkonen against the Toronto Maple Leafs on Oct. 3.
A shared responsibility to help
Man who spends his life assisting young people is now donating a kidney
Allison KLEIN Citizen news service
David Simpson is donating his kidney to a young woman in Washington, D.C., because his tissue is a perfect match, and her kidneys are failing and slowly poisoning her.
Simpson didn’t have to do it; he had an out. “They told me they’d write me a letter saying they rejected me if I wanted,” Simpson said of his doctor.
But Simpson, 57, and his wife, Kathy Fletcher, 56, never take the easy way out. Their life’s work has become pushing the boundaries of what it means to give to young people, many with dire life stories, who are just entering adulthood and are hungry or don’t have a place to live or enough money for college or countless other needs.
It started around 2010 when they began helping friends of Fletcher’s son, Santiago, while he was in middle and high school. But years later they had become so engrossed in helping young people that Simpson decided to quit his job working for a nonprofit that advocates for campaign finance reform to dedicate himself to it full time.
“We said yes – step by step by step – until we had eight kids living in our house,” said Simpson, referring to last year, when all their beds were full. They convinced neighbours to take in another few young people they didn’t have room to house.
In fact, the 20-year-old woman who is getting Simpson’s kidney, Madeline Hernandez, lives with Simpson and Fletcher, one of four young people in their 20s, most of them artists, who are now part of their make-shift family.
But the couple also helps an extended family about 40 other young people through a nonprofit they created two years ago named, appropriately, All Our Kids, or AOK. And the world of people who assist and support the effort – with donated funds or tickets, time, an extra bed or a few dozen cookies – include friends, family and famous musicians like Yo-Yo Ma and Joshua Bell.
“What we’re doing is insane,” jokes Simpson, as he tries to explain the tribe of young people he and his wife have informally adopted.
For Simpson, giving his kidney to one of his “kids” was a simple decision once he realized he was a match – an almost miraculous coincidence given the odds of about one in 10,000.
“Of course I’m going to do it,” he said.
The couple’s mission started when Santiago, then a student at Alice Deal Middle School in the District of Columbia, brought home a friend who needed a meal. One friend in need led to another and another, until Santiago’s house became the go-to hangout spot in high school.
“We started establishing relationships with these kids and we realized there were things they weren’t getting, not because of love but because their family didn’t have it – clothes, bikes, lots of things,” Simpson said.
As Simpson and Fletcher listened to their life stories, they figured out they could help here and there.
If someone needed a shirt, they’d buy one or give one of their own. If someone needed help filling out financial aid forms, or finding a lawyer or counsellor, they could depend on Simpson and Fletcher. The couple also tried to give them undivided attention and guidance, and regular family dinners, which many had never had before.
A few kids started spending the night. One didn’t have a home after his mother lost her
job and she went to stay with a sibling. Another had lived with his grandmother who passed away. Yet another wasn’t getting along with her parents and was living on friends’ couches after her parents kicked her out.
Simpson and Fletcher are financially comfortable but not wealthy; as her day job, Fletcher runs an arts educational program through the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Their three-bedroom home in the Crestwood neighborhood of D.C. is warm but not fancy. But compared to the young people they were helping launch into adulthood – kids who had been without a safety net as they coped with the fallout of sexual assaults, violence, homelessness and other trauma – they had more than enough to share.
Plus, Fletcher grew up with nine siblings, 14 aunts and uncles and 74 first cousins in an Irish Catholic family on Long Island. So a house is not a home for her without some foot stomping, singing and laughter. She also has a deep commitment to civil justice and looking out for those who are vulnerable.
“I feel like we all have a shared responsibility in this world to take care of people,” she said.
As word got out in the friend group and D.C. artists community, more kids started showing up –and hanging out, and staying over in a spare room. In the summer of 2016, Fletcher and Simpson encouraged several of their “kids” to apply to college, and they all got in.
“We were like, ‘We don’t have any money,’” Simpson said. “They have some financial aid but that doesn’t cover costs of college.”
Fletcher and Simpson talked to a bunch of friends who committed to giving money if they formalized what they were doing. So the couple created a nonprofit and Simpson left his job. They held some local fundraisers and some in New York. Fletcher was able to get cellist Yo-Yo Ma to donate VIP tickets to an AOK auction, and violinist Joshua Bell has performed at three benefit concerts for them.
Generosity such as that is the financial backbone of AOK, as Simpson and Fletcher are now helping to support 15 kids in college with either tuition assistance, a monthly stipend or both – and they give various other young people things as needs become apparent: computers, toiletries, shoes,
For Simpson, giving his kidney to one of his “kids” was a simple decision once he realized he was a match – an almost miraculous coincidence given the odds of about one in 10,000.
advice. They also have started an arts collective with donated space where the young artists can get together and show their work.
The four young people who reside with them now mostly live in a converted garage and partially finished basement. The house rules include respect, kindness and honesty. They rarely have problems. Once their car was stolen by a guy who was living with them – but he left it four blocks away and never came back.
“The peer component is the most important thing,” Simpson said. “They challenge each other to make good choices.”
While Fletcher and Simpson have opened their home and hearts to kids for years, a kidney donation is a new level of giving.
Fletcher loves Hernandez as a daughter, too, she said, but she was hoping somebody on the list of potential donors other than her husband would be a match because she was concerned about the medical risk.
But when the news came back, and Simpson was medically cleared to be a donor, she felt like it was meant to be. She didn’t want to fight fate.
“When it turned out to be him, it was like grace,” Fletcher said.
For years, the family has been hosting Thursday night dinners at their home for anywhere from 20 to 30 guests, mostly AOK kids, as well as a group of Simpson and Fletcher’s neighbours and friends who both support them and enjoy their energy.
This time, they hosted a big, tearful pre-kidney donation dinner as a send-off before Simpson and Fletcher went to back-to-back five-hour surgeries at Georgetown University Hospital.
Sara Pratt, a civil rights attorney who regularly comes to weekly dinners to offer guidance and support, was among those who showed up.
“I feel like I’m an aunt,” said Pratt. Pratt was joined at the table by a few neighbours and about 15 AOK kids ranging in age from 17 to 24. Dinner rules are to put
your napkin on your lap and take seconds of the food. They generally go around the table and talk about things they’re thankful for, or anything that’s on their mind. Emotions are often laid bare.
One by one, the guests each told a story of how a friend brought them to this home for dinner either years or months ago, and they’ve been coming back since.
Several choked up about how much AOK means to them.
“Sometimes I feel like I don’t deserve this,” said Chynajah Lewis, 20, a student at Howard University as tears streamed down her face. She explained how she met James Drosin, 21, who is a part of AOK, and how he brought her for dinner. After that, Simpson and Fletcher started helping to pay for her college when her mother could no longer afford it.
Many said they were initially confused about what AOK is. One of the first things they noticed was that Fletcher and Simpson are white and that everyone they are helping is a person of colour. Simpson is up-front about this, and says he does not purposely seek out people of colour, but he also does not shy away from using his “white privilege” to help others.
One of the women at the table said the first time she showed up for dinner the racial differences made an impression on her.
“I’m not going to lie, I was like, ‘Is this a cult?’ she said, getting big laughs. Lewis added she felt the same way, but thought: “‘OK, I’ve got this, I’ve been to summer camp.’”
Lewis said her mother wound up in a domestic violence shelter with her younger sister, unable to continue paying her college tuition.
A woman who would identify herself only as Tahrook, 24, shared how she grew up in the slums of the Philippines.
“I know how it feels to have nothing,” she said.
Shaughn Cooper, 23, said a friend brought him to dinner for the first time at Christmas and Simpson and Fletcher gave him a present to unwrap.
“I hadn’t gotten a Christmas
Does pot use increase risk of stroke? U.S. study finds link
Citizen news service
MONTREAL — New research based on U.S. hospital statistics suggests that recreational cannabis users are increasingly at risk of stroke.
In findings presented Friday at the World Stroke Congress in Montreal, scientists from Avalon University in Curacao used a database covering 1,000 hospitals to analyze trends in stroke prevalence and stroke-related hospital stays among recreational marijuana consumers. Looking at more than 2.3 million hospitalizations of adult cannabis users from 2010 through 2014, researchers found a steady increase in the number of strokes suffered.
Of the total, 32,231 – or 1.4 per cent – had a stroke, including 19,452 with acute ischemic stroke, which occurs when arteries to the brain narrow or are blocked.
Over the five-year period, researchers found a 15 per cent rise in all types of stroke and a 29 per cent rise in acute ischemic stroke among cannabis users. The results held across all age groups.
“The trend is increasing,” Dr. Krupa Patel, the lead researcher, said in an interview.
“We also looked at the general population, and we didn’t identify any trends, meaning that the rates of stroke in the general population was stable.”
While the research suggests there is a poten-
tial link to stroke because of the effects of cannabis on the brain’s blood vessels, additional study is needed to establish a causal link.
“More prospective studies need to be done to understand where the 15 per cent and the 29 per cent (increases) are coming from,” Patel said. She said previous studies have focused on tobacco and cocaine as compounding the risk of strokes.
Patel said further research is needed on the interaction between cannabis and illicit drugs. It is also unclear whether stroke risk could be related to the frequency and duration of cannabis use and whether there is a genetic or racial susceptibility.
present in years,” said Cooper, who is now a freelance photographer. When it was Hernandez’s turn to talk at the dinner, she said she was “having a weird day.” She had just come back from dialysis.
Her medical problems started in 2016, when a few months after she moved in, Simpson took her to the dentist, who tested her blood pressure and told her to go right to the emergency room. At Children’s National Medical Center, she was diagnosed with kidney disease, and was told at some point she’d need a new kidney.
Things got worse over time.
“She was getting sicker and sicker in front of our eyes,” Fletcher said. Over the summer, her kidney function dropped so much that doctors said it was time for a transplant.
Simpson started working the phones to find possible donors. He had a list of eight people, including some of her family members. Also on the list was his neighbour Paul Budde, husband of Mariann Budde, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese at the National Cathedral.
The Buddes are close friends of theirs who have taken in several AOK kids who Fletcher and Simpson did not have room for, including two who are currently living at the Budde home.
But Simpson got the call instead, and now he and the young woman he thinks of as a daughter were waiting for one of his vital organs to become hers.
Hernandez shared her own story of meeting Simpson and Fletcher.
She had been fighting with her parents and sleeping on friends’ couches when she met the couple through friends, she said, and they gave her a room in their house.
“I was having a hard time, I wasn’t fitting in anywhere,” she said.
She had problems trusting, and at first stayed in her room, begging off from dinner often. As time went on, she started to come to dinner and open up. She would not have imagined she’d still be in their lives three years later, she said.
“If you invest a little of yourself into people, you can get that back,” said Hernandez, a student at the University of the District of Columbia.
Now she said they’re like her second family. And despite her anxieties, Hernandez told the group, she was ready for go time.
“I’m taking David’s kidney with me,” she said with a wide smile.
David Simpson, left, and 20-year-old Madeleine Hernandez – the woman to whom he is donating a kidney – share a
weekly dinner for young men and women in Washington, D.C.,
CP FILE PHOTO Voters in Vancouver, and across B.C., will head to the polls today to elect city councils, regional district directors and school board trustees.
Vancouver municipal election anyone’s game, as B.C. goes to the polls
Amy SMART Citizen news service
VANCOUVER — As Vancouver voters prepare to elect a new mayor and council today, observers say it could still be anyone’s game.
The campaign has been marked by a crowded race of new candidates and parties with converging platforms focused on fixing the city’s housing affordability crisis.
“I wouldn’t want to be on the record predicting this election,” said Sanjay Jeram, senior lecturer of political science at Simon Fraser University.
Kennedy Stewart, a former New Democrat MP, is seen as one of the leading candidates for the mayor’s seat in Vancouver. He is running as an independent in a field of 21 candidates that includes the Non-Partisan Association’s Ken Sim, independent Shauna Sylvester, YES Vancouver’s Hector Bremner and Coalition Vancouver’s Wai Young. Incumbent Gregor Robertson isn’t seeking re-election.
Jeram warned it’s hard to accurately gauge public opinion for municipal elections.
“We just don’t have as much data and there’s less stability in municipal elections generally,” he said, adding that the rupture of the party system in Vancouver has added another wild card factor to the race.
“Moreover, with so many candidates and the margins so slim, therefore it becomes even harder to predict. I would say there’s four maybe five candidates who have a legit shot.”
The left vote may be split between Stewart
and Sylvester, while the right could be split between Sim, Bremner and Young, he said.
The city is somewhat unusual in Canada because it operates under a party system.
Since 2008, centre-left Vision Vancouver has dominated council under Robertson but the party isn’t running a candidate for mayor in this election.
The centre-right Non-Partisan Association or NPA had a long-running grip on power before that, with some notable exceptions, including 2002 when the Coalition of Progressive Electors won the mayor’s office and eight of 10 council seats.
Vancouver is not the only city in the province where the race for mayor is being closely watched.
Leonard Krog, an NDP member of the legislature, is running for mayor in Nanaimo, and Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps is facing nine challengers. Surrey will also get a new mayor as Linda Hepner isn’t running again.
Andy Yan, director of the City Program at Simon Fraser University, said the housing crisis has been the major issue of the campaign in Vancouver.
And while there’s variation in the candidates’ promised solutions, almost all of them are focused on increasing supply.
Stewart is promising to build 25,000 new non-profit affordable rental homes and 35,000 new condos, coach houses and townhouses over the next decade. Sim wants to immediately allow two secondary suites in each de-
tached home. And Sylvester says she’ll use city land for housing and support services, allow medium-density rezoning and fast track the permitting process for homeowners creating affordable housing on their lots.
“It’s interesting because all the platforms have almost seemingly converged on the issue of affordable housing. I think that reflects an angst the city has merged into when we think about life in the city of Vancouver for both renters and homeowners,” Yan said.
He said that’s true for candidates across the spectrum, as they appeal to voters ranging from young families who still want to buy their first home to seniors with skyrocketing property values whose kids and grandchildren can’t afford to live nearby.
Even if they have a direct relationship with affordability, other issues like economic development and transportation have gotten less attention, he said.
Whoever wins the mayoral race will likely face a challenge delivering those promises.
It’s possible that a party like the NPA, which has the most candidates in the race for council at eight, could win the mayor’s seat and a majority at city hall. But observers say more likely is a scenario where the next mayor will be leading a fractured council representing multiple parties and independents.
“The mayor at best has a bit of a bully pulpit, some appointing capacity and a really nice chain that he or she can wear. Beyond that, he or she is one of only 11 votes,” Yan said.
Other B.C. local election races to watch
Citizen news service
VANCOUVER — Local elections will be held across British Columbia today. Here are some races to watch:
• Nanaimo: The election could trigger a provincial byelection if Leonard Krog, a New Democrat member of the legislature, wins the race for mayor and gives up his seat at the legislature. It wouldn’t be enough to tip the balance of power into the Liberals’ favour against an NDP minority government that’s propped up by the Greens, but it would bring it to the brink. The Liberals have 42 seats in the house, the New Democrats 41, the Greens have three seats and there is one Independent.
• Victoria: Incumbent Lisa Helps has courted controversy through the campaign season, first with the decision to remove a sculpture of John A. Macdonald from city hall and later when the Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner claimed she and Esquimalt Mayor Barb Desjardins rushed to conclude an internal investigation against former police chief Frank Elsner. Helps is defending her record against challengers that include political consultant Mike Geoghegan and lawyer Stephen Hammond.
• Surrey: Public safety and policing has emerged as one of voters’ prime concerns in Surrey, where a task force aimed a preventing gang violence recently recommended more police enforcement. Mayor Linda Hepner isn’t running.
• Burnaby: Opposing the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project has dominated Mayor Derek Corrigan’s fiveterm tenure in recent years. He’s facing competition from former firefighter Mike Hurley and respondents to one recent poll put housing ahead of the pipeline as the city’s top issue.
The individual versus the collective
Eight books explore how identity politics both divide and unite us
Carlos LOZADA Citizen news service
I’m Catholic, and these days that’s hard.
I’m an immigrant, though it wasn’t my choice.
I’m now a citizen, even if it took a few decades to commit.
I’m a husband and father struggling to make more time.
I’m Hispanic, but perplexed by the label.
I’m a registered independent, because it was easier than choosing.
I’m a journalist, yet I never wrote for the student paper.
And I’m a college football fan sacked by guilt.
These are but a few of my identities, ones I was born into, stumbled upon or can’t bring myself to shed.
They inform my politics, I suppose, and shape how others see me. But asserting them - really staking out any one of them as my thing – feels almost duplicitous.
There is always someone with a stronger claim, always a reason I don’t entirely belong.
Identity is “negotiated,” scholars assure us, but who really ever closes the deal?
Here we enter the realm of identity politics, a term so contested that even writing it down can exhaust.
The demand for recognition from groups united around race, gender, ethnicity or other assorted identities is a natural impulse, and a praiseworthy one.
Yet, in its more dogmatic iterations, identity politics can stifle free speech, demonize opponents, infantilize proponents and blow past proportion.
Criticisms of identity politics span the mundane (look at the silly fake studies I can sneak into niche journals – so clever!) to the philosophical to the practical.
In his latest book, Identity, Stanford University political scientist Francis Fukuyama calls identity politics one of the “chief threats” facing liberal democracies, diverting energy and thinking away from bigger problems, such as increasing economic inequality.
And in his 2017 book, The Once and Future Liberal, Columbia University historian Mark Lilla decries the way left-wing identity movements have embraced the “pseudopolitics of self-regard” and stressed the history of “marginal and often minuscule groups,” all of which makes it harder to articulate a comprehensive liberal project. How can we come together on anything big, they ask, when we keep slicing ourselves into smaller factions? “Down this road lies, ultimately, state breakdown and failure,” warns Fukuyama.
It is a stark case, yet it is complicated by recent memoirs, anthologies, political tracts and sociological studies that analyze or affirm particular identity groups.
No doubt, the literature of identity can be self-obsessed, isolating and overwhelmingly aggrieved.
But with their search for new language and demand for new vantage points, these works, wittingly or not, can also rally us toward a cause consistent with the broad aspirations of liberal democracy. That cause is the individual.
If the logic of identity politics is to divide us into smaller and smaller slivers, that sequence ends, inexorably, with the identity of one.
And the only way to protect and uphold the individual – each individual – is through broad-based rights and principles.
So, yes, we must move toward a politics of solidarity, as Fukuyama and Lilla contend. But for that solidarity to endure, it must grapple with the politics of identity. The margins are never marginal to those who inhabit them.
Identity politics, for all its faults, is not opposed to an encompassing national vision. It is a step toward its fulfillment.
The quest for individuality is evident in Austin Channing Brown’s memoir, I’m Still Here, a slim, personal reflection on being a black woman with a white man’s name navigating majority-white schools, neighborhoods and workplaces.
Brown professes “kinship and responsibility, pride, belonging, and connection” with the African-American community.
Yet she also recalls her shock after a childhood move from Toledo to Cleveland that left her suddenly surrounded by blackness. What Brown needs then is not just blackness but the freedom to express it in her own way. “I could choose what felt right for me without needing to be like everyone, or needing everyone to be like me,” she explains. “Black is not monolithic.”
Her parents named her Austin, they told her, because they thought she’d get more job interviews if employers expected a white male, and Brown encounters plenty of perplexed white hiring managers suddenly resetting their expectations.
No wonder that, in the working world, she craves her individuality once again, especially within organizations that prize numerical more than intellectual diversity.
“I became either a stand-in for another Black female body – without distinction between our size, our hair, our colour, our voices, our interests, our names, our personalities – or a stand-in for the worst stereotypes – sassy, disrespectful, uncontrollable, or childlike in need of whiteness to protect me from my (Black) self.”
The cry for individual identity can be no louder than in Wesley Yang’s piercing collection, The Souls of Yellow Folk, which gathers a decade’s worth of the writer’s essays and magazine profiles.
Yang describes “the peculiar burden of nonrecognition, of invisibility” carried by Asian men in America but also rejects the stereotypical and internalized notions of Asian Americanness.
Yang relishes this angry and unyielding side of himself, he explains, and pledges to “bear any costs associated with it.”
His writing is packed with a fierce and
refreshing ambivalence.
He lashes out at identity politics as “a beguiling compound of insight, partial truths, circular reasoning, and dogmatism operating within a self-enclosed system of reference immunized against critique and optimized for virality.”
Yet for all his skepticism of collegiate identity activism that argues less by honest debate than by delegitimizing anything deemed offensive, he wonders if perhaps he’s just grown accustomed to “life’s quotidian brutalities,” which younger people now feel empowered to reject.
Yang lingers on the crucial role of language in defending identity.
It can be counterproductive, he argues; the ever-expanding definition of white supremacy, for instance, only dilutes the power of the charge.
But Yang recognizes that the muchmocked terminology of campus identity politics – “microaggression” and “safe space” and the rest – caught on precisely because it elicits a throb of recognition.
“The terms were awkward, heavy-handed, and formulaic,” Yang writes, “but they gave confidence to people desiring redress for the subtle incursions on their dignity.”
Language does not just defend identity; it can recognize it, too.
In Unbound, sociologist Arlene Stein’s
sensitive study of young transgender men in the United States, she notes how often her subjects may not have fully grasped who they were until they actually heard the words.
Ben, a 29-year-old whom Stein follows through his chest-masculinization surgery, had identified as a tomboy early in life, then a lesbian, but “about six months after he learned that there were transgender people,” the author reports, “he began to identify with the label.” Stein, a professor at Rutgers University, highlights how the burgeoning language of the transgender experience – “what are your pronouns?” –makes the goal of better aligning one’s body with one’s identity feel more attainable. But new collective classifications can also clash with individual self-understanding. Late in the book, Stein attends a transgender conference of academics and activists, and she is overwhelmed by difference and nuance. “Once stable gender categories are being sliced and diced and shattered into a million little pieces,” she writes, and notes the dozens of gender options available to us, whether cataloged by city governments or by Facebook. “Here, at the conference, there are even more categories to choose from, so many that it often seems that our gender identity is so deeply personal that the only thing each of us can say for sure is that we alone possess it.”
Ben embraces the trans label but still finds it lacking.
“I can’t even say that I can neatly put my finger on exactly what words describe who I am,” he tells Stein. “Trans man, yes, that’s typically the box I fit into. But does that really describe who I am? No. I think that it’s more complicated than that. I’m sure more words will come out in time.”
Language can limit and exclude. But language also holds out hope for individual freedom.
Lilla doesn’t want new words, just the restoration of old ones.
Lamenting the “speaking as an X” approach to political engagement among American college students, whereby personal identities sanctify opinions, he argues that citizenship should be the pre-eminent American identity, providing a “political language for speaking about a solidarity that transcends identity attachments.”
The demands of identity politics can be met by elevating citizenship, he explains, with its call for full enfranchisement and equal rights. That is, he explains, “all we should have to appeal to.”
The Franklin Roosevelt era was a time of such solidarity, Lilla recalls wistfully, when citizens were involved in a “collective enterprise” to protect one another against risk, hardship and the denial of essential rights. This vision “was class based,” he writes, “though it included in the deserving class people of any walk of life – farmers, factory workers, widows and their children, Protestants and Catholics, Northerners and Southerners – who suffered from the scourges of the day.
In short, nearly everyone (though AfricanAmericans were effectively disenfranchised in many programs due to Dixiecrat resistance).”
Ah, that parenthetical, two quick keystrokes that say so much and offer so little. When society can bracket off the plight of a particular minority group from the warm embrace of “nearly everyone,” then the case for identity politics seems clear.
Lilla hails the American civil rights movement for taking citizenship seriously, for urging the nation to live up to its principles, and he argues eloquently that “there can be no liberal politics without a sense of we – of what we are as citizens and what we owe each other.”
In a November 2016 New York Times op-ed, from which this book originates, Lilla chastised the Hillary Clinton campaign for succumbing to “the rhetoric of diversity” rather than appealing to commonality, to our “shared destiny.”
Still smarting from electoral defeat just days earlier, liberals assailed the piece and its author.
Yet it was a useful exercise, forcing us to consider who counts in that “we.” To be meaningful, that “we” must become more capacious, more inviting, than U.S. history has so far allowed.
Attacking identity politics for its “turn toward the self,” as Lilla does, seems less than fair when those selves have enduring reasons to feel excluded from the whole. When they fit in a parenthetical.
— See REJECTING on page 22
On being a Grouch
Travis M. ANDREWS Citizen news service
He’s green, he lives in a trash can and he’s always waking up on the wrong side of the bed. His name is Oscar the Grouch, and even people who watched Sesame Street as kids might find him a bit confounding.
Why is he green?
How did he choose his home?
And why’s he in such a bad mood?
The answer lies with Caroll Spinney, the performer behind the roles of Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch, who announced his retirement from the show on Monday after almost 50 years. (Fellow puppeteer Eric Jacobson, who plays Miss Piggy, Grover and Bert will take the reins.)
Spinney was introduced to the characters when Sesame Street creator Jim Henson called him up in the early 1960s.
“(Henson) said, ‘Why don’t you come down to New York and talk about the Muppets?’” Spinney told NPR in 2003.
“‘I have some characters I want to build. One is a tall, funnylooking bird and the other’s going to be this grouchy character who’s
Caroll Spinney, voice of Oscar the Grouch, Big Bird, retiring after 50 years
going to live in a pile of trash in the gutter.’”
After Oscar the Grouch was born as that grumpy Muppet – though,
originally, he was orange – Spinney had to give him a voice.
“I had never done a character like Oscar, and I didn’t feel any of my voices sounded like the Muppets I was used to hearing,” Spinney wrote in his book The Wisdom of Big Bird.
He looked to the streets of New York City for inspiration, finding the Bronx cab driver who drove him to the meeting with Henson.
“He was the stereotypical cabbie of the time – a guy in his 40s from the Bronx wearing a tweed cap with a little brim – and he kind of growled out of the corner of his mouth, ‘Where to, Mac?’” Spinney wrote.
“Who could be more of a Grouch than a cabdriver from the Bronx? I had my ideal model for my new character.”
The purpose of Oscar, according to the Smithsonian National Museum of American History’s description of the character, is to teach “the importance of understanding, tolerance, and diversity.”
According to Robert W. Morrow’s book, Sesame Street and the Reform of Children’s Television, Oscar acted differently and lived in a different kind of home as a metaphor, “to dramatize tolerance for those who are different... In segments about conflicts between Oscar and the others on the street, the show taught how children might cope with diversity in the context of school desegregation.”
Despite the admirable intentions behind the character, though, Spinney originally thought he might not be suitable for children.
“I used to question that in the early days of Sesame Street. Why is Oscar on? He’s such an unpleasant and even seemingly rude character,” he told HuffPost.
“One producer said, ‘Well I think it takes all kinds to make a world. And he’s just another kind.’”
But in the end, Spinney found that Oscar always had a heart.
Though he would complain, he still helped those in need – he just did so while grumbling away.
And I’ll say this. After playing Big Bird all day, it is almost therapeutic to switch to Oscar, to live awhile with the exact opposite attitude about life.
— Caroll Spinney
When his human friend Maria needed a bolt to fix a wagon, for example, Oscar dug through his trash can to help find one, but not before muttering, “Gee, another rotten day.”
“As grouchy as he is, he would always let a hungry kid eat before he did,” Spinney wrote.
The character proved to be an enormous hit. On the show, he would sometimes complain to famous musicians like Johnny Cash and Billy Joel. And the character spawned various versions throughout the world: his cousin Moishe Oofnik appears in Israel, living in an old car. In Turkey, his name is Kirpik and he resides in a basket. And in Pakistan, he’s Akhtar, and his home is an old oil barrel.
He’s even popped up in a number of other popular shows, such as Scrubs, The Simpsons and South Park.
Oscar may be a worldwide celebrity at this point, but to Spinney, he’s just the grouch who goes to great lengths to hide his heart of gold. Spinney admitted that Oscar “doesn’t think the way I think at all,” but that’s what made the character so special to him.
“I’m dealing with a mental entity who isn’t me, even though I’m empowering him,” Spinney wrote.
“Oscar has taught me the power of the puppet.”
“And I’ll say this,” he continued.
“After playing Big Bird all day, it is almost therapeutic to switch to Oscar, to live awhile with the exact opposite attitude about life.”
Classified unites rappers, Trailer Park Boys actors, for all-star track
TORONTO — Celebrating Nova Scotia’s hip hop scene is second nature to Classified, but the Canadian rapper wanted something particularly special for his latest album. So he whipped together an all-star track featuring some of his closest friends from the Halifax area. All it took was calling them up and inviting them to swing by his studio in Enfield, N.S. That impromptu collaboration turned into Super Nova Scotian, a boastful tribute that presents the province as the undisputed champ of the East Coast music scene.
“It feels like some old ’90s rap posse cut,” Classified said, referencing an era when it was common for a huge roster of stars to jump on the same song. Super Nova Scotian appears on Classified’s new album Tomorrow Could Be the Day Things Change.
Puppeteer Caroll Spinney is interviewed during a break from taping an episode of Sesame Street in New York on April 10, 2008. After nearly 50 years on the show Spinney is retiring.
David FRIEND Citizen news service
Rejecting identity is its own identity
— from page 17
Fukuyama’s view of identity politics is broader, encompassing not just gender politics, campus upheaval and resurgent white supremacy in the United States but also the nationalist uprising in Europe and the spread of political Islam. He explores the philosophical origins of identity politics, lingering on Friedrich Hegel’s notion that human history is driven by the struggle for recognition. (It’s not a real Fukuyama book until Hegel makes a cameo.) Until about the 1960s, Fukuyama writes, identity politics implied a more individualized pursuit of self-esteem and personal potential. But with the rise of the civil rights, feminist and environmental movements and, later, of advocacy on behalf of disabled, Native American, immigrant and gay rights, identity politics became “the property of groups that were seen as having their own cultures shaped by their own lived experiences.”
Now, he believes, identity politics has become a dangerous distraction. He applauds contemporary movements such as #MeToo and Black Lives Matter for “changing culture and behavior in ways that will have real benefits for the people involved,” but he argues that identity obsessions make it harder to address large-scale socioeconomic problems. “It is easier to argue over cultural issues within the confines of elite institutions than it is to appropriate money or convince skeptical legislators to change policies,” he says. Identity politics also places a lower priority on “older and larger groups whose serious problems have been ignored,” he writes, pointing to the travails of America’s white working class. And most troubling of all, Fukuyama contends, left-wing identity politics has stimulated white-nationalist identity politics. “The right has adopted the language and framing of identity from the left: the idea that my particular group is being victimized,” Fukuyama writes. Lilla, meanwhile, argues that “those who play one race card should be prepared to be trumped by another, as we saw subtly and not so subtly in the 2016 presidential election.”
Yet if you accept even some of the challenges motivating modern identity movements – for instance, that police violence against minority groups is disproportionate, or that sexual assault and workplace gender discrimination are prevalent and systemic – then worrying mainly about a white-nationalist and patriarchal backlash, or about the despair of the white working class, arbitrarily elevates the anger of one group over that of another. And interpreting #MeToo or Black Lives Matter as driven by “cultural issues” rather than by questions of justice, fairness and even survival may reflect, dare I suggest, a certain privilege of the academic perch.
To gaze upon the landscape of liberal identity politics and conclude that this is why Donald Trump won – that overzealous activism on the left backfired and gave us Charlottesville, “lock her up” and “build that wall” – is to grant identity politics both too much power and not enough. It also underplays a longer story. Recall how the nation’s first black president was deemed an outsider, a criminal, a stealth socialist, an anti-colonial activist, a foreigner, his very Americanness rendered retroactively suspect, years before Black Lives Matter was a thing that mattered. Fukuyama agrees that citizenship must be the cornerstone of a renewed national identity, one based on constitutionalism and equality, an identity that embraces diversity yet is not defined by it. But what happens when citizenship is itself part of the contested terrain of identity?
In Latinx: The New Force in American Politics and Culture, a sprawling study of Hispanic identity in the United States, journalist Ed Morales stresses the “in-between space” that Latinos inhabit, crossing racial, national, cultural and gender identities and sometimes falling into the cracks. Though Hispanics embody an “unstable constellation of ethno-racial realities,” he writes, they have become “racialized through doubt about their citizenship.” Legal status, as much as ethnic or cultural prejudice, has become a new mark of difference for Latinos in America. In this light, calling for citizenship to be the primary national identity forces its proponents to confront the challenge of the undocumented, of asylum-seeking parents and their children, to determine who can be part of America and why.
The anti-immigrant zeal of our era also enhances the political potential of a Latino community that activists have often had difficulty mobilizing. “Trumpism creates an obvious organizing target,” Morales writes, yet he acknowledges that “the diversity of Latinx racial, class, and national origins” poses the main obstacle to Hispanic unity. Indeed, for all his emphasis on the political will of Latinos – whom he hopes will develop common cause with AfricanAmericans in a “collective blackness” of shared marginalization – even Morales reverts to the pull of individuality over group identity. “Awareness that one’s self possesses multiple possible subjectivities or identities resists categorization,” he writes. Or as Yang puts it with typical bluntness, “Though I am an immigrant, I have never wanted to strive like one.” Sometimes fending off labels can be an identity, too. — See FOCUS on page 23
Focus on dignity forges bonds
— from page 22
This rejection of essentialism, of some force ostensibly tethering a people, is the thrust of Kwame Anthony Appiah’s The Lies That Bind, a memorable tour through the history and philosophy of identity based on religion, nation, race, class and culture. Appiah, a professor of philosophy and law at New York University, understands the integrating power of identity – “we’re clannish creatures,” he writes –but also recognizes its bent toward destructive social hierarchies.
Identities can become “the enemies of human solidarity, the sources of war, horsemen of a score of apocalypses from apartheid to genocide,” he writes.
“Yet these errors are also central to the way identities unite us today.”
Appiah, too, dwells on the individualism behind our various collectives.
“People may join churches and temples and mosques and announce sectarian identities, but when it comes to the fine points of belief, it can sometimes seem that each of us is a sect of one.”
And he regards that identity as inherently volatile, shifting over time.
Cultural identity, for instance, is not an immutable inheritance; it is acquired, spread, transmitted, mixed, messy.
“That it has no essence,” Appiah writes, “is what makes us free.” This is the identity not of the group but of the individual cutting across countless groups, whose salience varies in different moments and circumstances.
Scholars of intersectionality emphasize how a mix of identities can leave individuals vulnerable to multiple forms of systemic oppression and discrimination, while other writers go so far as to dismiss individuality itself as a fiction.
In her book White Fragility, a catalog of how white Americans’ racial deflections – I don’t see colour, I was brought up to treat everyone the same – only affirm white advantages and “invalidate” nonwhite experiences, lecturer Robin DiAngelo spurns individualism as another Western ideology, a “storyline” that erases the significance of identity groups.
DiAngelo even includes an author’s note anticipating how white, nonwhite and multiracial audiences may receive her arguments. (I must say, being told in advance how I will react to a book invalidates my experience as a book critic.)
By contrast, individual identity as a means to broad-based rights is the kind of identity politics that Fukuyama finds most constructive, yet the one he worries is most threatened.
“Universal recognition has been challenged ... by other partial forms of recognition based on nation, religion, sect, ethnicity, or gender, or by individuals wanting to be recognized as superior,” he writes.
“Unless we can work our way back to more universal understandings of human dignity, we will doom ourselves to continuing conflict.”
But there is no working our way back, only a lengthy path forward.
Identity politics, by underscoring the inconsistencies of our grand national visions, shows how far there is left to travel.
“I am grateful for my ancestors’ struggle and their survival,” Austin Channing Brown responds archly when people emphasize that things have gotten better. “But I am not impressed with America’s progress.” In the end, though, there needn’t be some trade-off between our individual and collective identities, as DiAngelo suggests and Fukuyama fears.
“Each person’s sense of self is bound to be shaped by his or her own background,” Appiah writes, “beginning with family but spreading out in many directions – to nationality, which binds us to places; to gender, which connects us with roughly half the species; and to such categories as class, sexuality, race, and religion, which all transcend our local affiliations.”
It may be that identity politics comes down to the individual, but that the individual quest for dignity is easier within a group.
Less exhausting. For my birthday recently, I received an Ancestry. com kit.
I was born in Lima to Peruvian parents but with some Spaniard roots, and I’ve often wondered, half in jest, whether I was more Inca or conqueror. A few weeks after I spit into a tube, the verdict came: 52 per cent Spain, just 28 per cent Andes.
Such tests are hardly definitive, but the result was still a shock. What did I know of Spanish history and culture, beyond some school-age texts? Was I less connected to my Peruvian origins, less part of the north-south dynamic dominating the Hispanic-American experience? God forbid, must I begin cheering for Spain’s la Roja along with Peru’s blanquirroja?
Then I calmed down. DNA does not equal identity. Better to treat this new insight as yet one more layer, one more ambiguity in a whole that is always rediscovering its parts.
No one has yet asked for my pronouns, but I’ve realized there’s only one that fits: It’s me.
Oregon Desert Trail challenging
Emily GILLESPIE Citizen news service
Ifelt every drop of sweat make its way down my face, neck and back as I stared down the rattlesnake, its beady eyes locked with mine, daring me to move. At this point, a few miles into my solo-backpacking trip through Oregon’s remote desert, I considered turning around and heading the several miles back to my car. After I caught my breath, I shook off the idea.
Testing myself, I thought, is exactly what I signed up for.
I’d had the idea for the trip a few months ago. Travel Oregon had released an elaborate animated advertisement featuring lush rivers, snow-peaked mountains, miles of vineyards and coastline, and breathtaking Crater Lake.
When I watched it, I couldn’t help thinking: false advertising.
Though Oregon is often depicted in terms of Douglas fir-filled forests, the truth is that half the state is a water-starved desert. Even I, after calling Oregon home for 20 years, am guilty of green-washing: although I knew the desert was within Oregon’s borders, I had never explored it.
Then I learned of the Oregon Desert Trail, a 750-mile, W-shaped path that weaves through the state’s most arid landscape. The trail shows off some of the state’s unsung attractions, including the Oregon Badlands, Lost Forest, Owyhee Canyonlands and picturesque Steens Mountain, a single mountain that stretches more than 9,000 feet high and 50 miles north to south. Created by the Oregon Natural Desert Association (ONDA) conservation group as a way to spur appreciation for the lands it is trying to protect, the trail is unusual in many ways. A big one: it isn’t really a trail. Waypoints on a map will help guide you, but the route isn’t marked. One-third of the route is cross-country, so a GPS device and compass skills are necessary; finding your own way gives the journey a choose-yourown adventure quality.
Carving through the least-populated areas of the state, the trail is also remote – but that’s part of its appeal. Wildlife biologist and thru-hiker Sage Clegg, the first person to hike the trail end-to-end, said she really only saw other people when she went into a nearby town to resupply. Because she’s witnessed hikers clogging the Pacific Crest and Appalachian trails – in what’s known in the hiking community as the “Wild” effect, in reference to the popular book-turnedmovie – she appreciated the contrast. “I love a lonely trail,” she said. “It helps me be able to interact with the natural world as if it were something that I could actually communicate with.”
The trail’s stewards also see its location as part of its charm. “You might hear people say, ‘There’s nothing out there, it’s a wasteland,’” trail coordinator Renee Patrick said. “We don’t think its wasteland. It’s one of the most remote places left in our country, and we want people to experience that firsthand.”
Because I’m not a thru-hiker, I settled on a 22-mile loop that traversed one of the canyons that makes up the Owyhee Canyonlands, an area affectionately called Oregon’s Grand Canyon. Tucked in the southeast corner of the state, the undeveloped area is also one of the largest unprotected areas in the American West. I planned three days for the loop. In preparation for the desert conditions, I went on an exposed six-mile hike near Portland on an unusually hot day and barely went through a liter of water. To be safe, though, I planned to drink about three liters of water a day and would carry more than twice that amount for one stretch of the hike.
I spent the night before my hike at Birch Creek Historic Ranch. Homesteaded around 1900, the property along the Owyhee River is now a popular spot for rafters. I was disappointed that it was cloudy when darkness fell, because the region is one of the largest pockets of land untouched by light pollution, according to a 2016 analysis of artificial light called the New World Atlas of Artificial Sky Brightness. In the middle of the night, however, loud bullfrogs alerted me to the cloudless sky overhead. The dark, empty backdrop allowed the stars the perfect stage to dazzle and the moon shone down on me like a headlight.
The next day, I left the ranch on foot and followed an old jeep road to an open field before reconnecting with the river. The scenery was so breathtaking that more than once I stopped abruptly and said “wow,” even though no one was around to hear it. Craggy red rocks jutted out from the sloped canyon wall, creating magnificent spires and rock formations that looked like a petrified crash of a wave.
After only a few hours of hiking, though, I felt the desert’s ruthless effects. It was, in a word, grueling. The first six miles, which on a path would normally take me about three hours, took eight. At times, the steep canyon walls emptied straight into the
river and my options for moving forward were to hop along boulder-sized lava rocks, machete my way through thick reeds of grass taller than myself or scramble up the hillside and walk at a slant, using the sagebrush to help keep me perpendicular to the ground. Each proved difficult in its own way. With the glaring sun beating down on me, rattlesnakes restarting my heart and extra time and energy spent calculating my next step, I was exhausted by the end of the day. I was also out of water. In practice, instead of three litres a day, I’d gone through three liters in half a day. I could refill, but the next night of my planned loop was nowhere near a reliable water source, meaning the seven litres I could carry wouldn’t be enough to see me through.
After setting up my tent along a rare bit of flat, sandy ground, I decided to turn my three-day trip into an overnight out-andback. I was learning firsthand an important lesson of the desert: water is king. Clegg and other hikers who have done the entire trail had to cache water throughout, especially in the more remote pockets. Sitting at camp and feeling a bit clobbered by the hostile landscape – I would encounter three more rattlesnakes on my way back – I looked up to catch the sun setting on a circular rock towering on a hill across the river. In the golden hue, it reminded me of the Colosseum. Rock formations like this one, and another in the region reminiscent
of ancient pillars, make it easy to see why a nearby town is named Rome. After hiking out the next day, I drove in that direction, stopping for a night at a bed-and-breakfast.
On what would have been the third day of the original loop plan, I set out to find an area that would give me a taste of the cross-country hiking I had missed by cutting that trek short. I settled on a stretch of the Oregon Desert Trail near Rome – which turned out to be a dot on the map that I would have blown by if not for a lone business along Highway 95.
After scaling a hill, I was met with flatland. The only thing in sight was miles and miles of sagebrush.
The level ground made it a much easier hike, but after about an hour into my journey, I picked up on what made this part of the trail difficult: keeping track of where you are going. Moving left and right to navigate the sagebrush, and without a mountain, river or highway as a reference point, it was hard to maintain my intended direction.
More than once I glanced down at my GPS to learn I was headed in the opposite direction of where I wanted to go.
After my hike, I stayed the night at Rome Station, a part-convenience store, partdiner with a few cabins, which caters to regional ranchers and truckers traveling between Nevada and Idaho.
Over a burger and beer at the bar, I chatted with owner Joseph McElhannon and a
fellow patron, a self-proclaimed cowboypoet from Texas who wore his long, gray hair tucked under a wide-brim straw hat and a leather vest over his long-sleeved black T-shirt.
McElhannon told me that he likes the trail, but doesn’t like ONDA. Over the years, the conservation group has made land-use proposals that have left ranchers worried about grazing rights and business-owners like McElhannon concerned about access for hunting, a sport that keeps his business going in the winter. (ONDA is aware of its reputation, trail coordinator Patrick said, and hopes the trail creates opportunities for conversations with local stakeholders about the best path forward.)
Despite his reservations, McElhannon agreed to have Rome Station listed among the trail resources and was holding a few resupply packages for hikers due to stop by in the coming months. He said he likes hikers; he used to be a backpacker. Even more, he loves showing people the beautiful slice of world he calls home.
The experience left me with a new appreciation for this part of the state and for hiking without the ease and comfort of a trail. Doing just a small portion of the Oregon Desert Trail reminded me of nature’s riotous side and challenged me in the best way. It pushed me out of my comfort zone and forced me to trudge a path full of lurking rattlesnakes and stunning star-filled skies that was uniquely mine.
Remnants of Morrison Ranch, homesteaded around 1900, still stand near Birch Creek Historic Ranch on a bend of the Owyhee River, above. Sagebrush stretches across miles of flatland outside of Rome, Ore., below, making it difficult to navigate the unmarked Oregon Desert Trail. Hikers are encouraged to take a map, compass and GPS device.
At Home
Surprise, surprise
Concealed doorways the latest trend in home design
Roy FURCHGOTT
Citizen news service
Washington and secrets go together hand in glove. Or maybe it’s more like cloak and dagger.
It should be no surprise then that the D.C. area is one of the hot spots energizing the nation’s growing demand for secret doors – panels, bookcases, mirrors or artwork – that swing open to reveal a passage to another room.
The obvious purpose of a hidden door is for security – to conceal a safe room or valuables. But as prebuilt, ready-to-install doors become more widely available, people are adding them for aesthetics, for fun or maybe because they watched too much Scooby-Doo.
For D.C. resident Nicole Buell, a bookcase that concealed a doorway solved a design problem.
In her 540-square-foot condo, the doors to the only bathroom were in her bedroom and the living area. The living area door left too little room for pictures or bookcases.
“It just wasn’t a good use of space,” Buell said.
Walling over the door was an option, “but,” she said, “I didn’t want guests to have to go through the bedroom to get to the bathroom.”
The solution began with door hinges bought from Secret Doorways, a company in Sunbury, Ohio, owned by a cousin. With the help of her father, she constructed shelves and mounted them on the ball bearing hinges to create a bookcase that swings open to reveal the loo.
“It’s fun to surprise my guests when they visit,” she said.
Now secret doors are going mainstream.
“It has become more of a trend than we expected,” said Jeff Watchko, the interior door buyer for Home Depot.
Three years ago, Home Depot
began to offer, online, pre-hung bookcase-doors from Murphy Door in Ogden, Utah.
“The overall draw to the site was more than we expected,” Watchko said. “It’s very popular on the East Coast and anywhere there is a large metropolitan area.”
The Murphy doors can come pre-hung – already mounted in a frame – in standard door sizes, so it’s a simple matter to install one in a doorway. Watchko said the popularity of the secret doors – which range from $850 to $1,750, depending on size and finish – has prompted Home Depot to introduce displays of them in several cities.
“We are looking at rolling out a pilot program in select stores,” he said. “It will be the first time people can walk into a store and touch and feel a Murphy door.”
Julie Patrick of Alexandria, Va., added a Murphy door to the condominium unit she purchased almost a year ago. The building was constructed in 1939, and her unit had closets so small that “you had to turn jackets in sideways to get them in,” she said.
But a tiny hallway closet backed up to her bedroom closet. Opening the wall between the two gave her a closet big enough that “in a pinch,” she could dress in it. She could have closed off the hallway
closet entrance, but after seeing bookcase-doors on Pinterest, “I realized this is something people do. I could do this,” she said. “It was really just for the coolness factor that I did it.”
She didn’t purchase through Home Depot, she said, because her closet door was not a standard size.
“I realized what I needed required a special order,” she said. “The range they can do in their customization is amazing.”
She was sent wood samples to choose from. Customer service helped with design – whether to get shelves or shelves and cabinets (she went with just shelves). When the completed door arrived, “the hardest thing was to take it off the pallet,” she said. “It was ready to go in.”
The result is a 24-inch bookcasedoor.
“It’s small,” she said, “so you have to think skinny thoughts to get through.”
Leigha Basini of Lorton, Va., decided to save on a Murphy door by purchasing it in a kit, which arrived ready for her contractor to construct. Kit doors save $200 on assembly and $125 on shipping, said Jeremy Barker, chief executive of Murphy Door.
“We were redoing our master bathroom and closet, and I don’t know where I saw hidden doors, but I was a big mystery reader as a child, and when I saw we could have a hidden door, I wanted one,” Basini said. “It was probably threequarters fun, one-quarter storage.”
Basini’s contractor assembled and installed the door while she was at work.
“I was shocked, because I just came home and there it was,” she said. The shelves on the bathroom side swing open to reveal a walkin closet. “That is exactly what I wanted. It brought me back to my childhood, wanting a secret room, and I loved it.”
The shelves hold non-breakables, such as tissue and cotton balls. Items that might roll off are
in baskets, and Basini also bought some putty to secure items as required.
“I haven’t needed it,” she said of the putty. “I just have to remember not to push the door open too forcefully.”
She has shown the passageway only to select friends. It is, after all, in the master bath.
“Everyone said they think it’s unique,” she said, “but I don’t know if anyone would tell me to my face that it’s stupid.”
The effect of a hidden door on the value of a house is debatable. Manufacturers say hidden doors increase market value. But Victor Brown, a real estate agent and a home appraiser with Capital Market Appraisal in the District of Columbia, said that is unlikely.
“My initial reaction is, no, it wouldn’t raise value,” he said. “It isn’t a big enough item.”
Location, size, condition and exterior amenities are far more important, he said.
But Brown said that mentioning a hidden door in ads might attract more traffic to an open house.
“Indirectly, it might help you get a higher value because you are getting more people interested, which might drive the price up,” he said.
“The key word there is might.”
There are people who want something more elaborate than a swinging bookcase. For them, there are companies such as Creative Home Engineering in Gilbert, Ariz. Founded by Steven Humble, who said he began his career as a machine engineer at Boeing, Creative Home often designs doors of unusual size and complexity. The options include a mirror that hides a safe room and an entry large enough to drive a vehicle through.
Because the doors are on the pricier side – a mirror panel starts at $1,500 – a smaller proportion of Humble’s customers are buying for aesthetics alone.
“I’m going to say 75 to 80 per cent have a security purpose in mind,” he said.
WASHINGTON POST PHOTO BY BILL O’LEARY
With the help of her father, Nicole Buell built a secret door that opens to a bathroom in her condo.
WASHINGTON POST PHOTO BY BILL O’LEARY
Buell demonstrates how to open the cleverly concealed panels in the door.
IN MEMORY OF ELDON LEE
BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY
Susan Oakley
April 5, 1945-October 7, 2018
Susan passed away on October 7,2018 at the age of 73. Left behind with many wonderful memories are her siblings Jean (Dan), John (Vickie), Jill (Jim), Alan, Anne (Alf). Also left behind are her children Ken (Julliette), Denise (Greg), and her grandchildren Sonya, Robert, Stacey, Brad, Jesse, and Jyelle and six great grandchildren. She was predeceased by her parents Betty and Howard Craig and her husband Robert Oakley. Susan was involved in many community activities. She was an avid knitter, sewer and crafter. She will forever be remembered for her big smile and warm hugs. A service will be held for Susan on October 20,2018 at the Columbus Community Center from 2:30-5:00pm. Susan will be laid to rest beside her husband in Cecil Lake Fort St. John.
Gone, But Not Forgotten
Diane Elva Marie Cooper (Beauchamp)
April 16, 1948-September 10, 2018
It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of Diane Elva Marie Cooper (Beauchamp) on September 10, 2018. She is loved as a Wife to Allen, Mother to D’arcy (Devon) and Monica (James) and Grandma to Melissa, Ryan, Joshua, and Lauryn as well as an inspiration to all her brothers, sisters, cousins, nieces and nephews all over Canada and the United States. In her final days she was surrounded by the people who loved her, sharing stories, laughs, tears, and admiration for such a strong willed person who thought of others often. She survived many battles with Cancer, but in the end succumbed to the disease. We love her and miss her, but know she is looking over us in heaven with her Mom and Dad and baby Joseph. We wish to thank the Hospice House for all of their caring and support during this difficult time.
Revelation 21:4 ESV
“He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”
Our gratitude to everyone for compassion and support during the loss of our husband, father, grandfather and great grandfather. Thank you to friends and colleagues for your condolences, cards and flowers; St. Giles Presbyterian Church for a beautiful Memorial Service and Reception; Russell Audio Visual; UNBC; Prince George Citizen. ~The Lee Family~
OIVA ERNEST SALMONSON
May 22, 1941October 15, 2018
It is with great sadness that we announce the sudden passing of Oiva.
Leaving with loving memories is wife, Jocelyn: daughter Debbie (Calvin), grandsons Michael (Antony) and Jayme, sister Elsie, brothers Ed and Ron; Inlaws Nancy (Karrey), Joan (Roger), Betty (Neil), Rod (Shirley), Adrian (Cheryl) and numerous nieces and nephews. He is especially missed by his four legged pal, Chloe. He was predeceased by his father Kaarlo, mother Edna, and previous wife June Ebert. Oiva was born in Port Arthur, Ontario. After trade school, he migrated west to join Intercon Pulp on March 1st, 1968. Retirement on March 1, 1999, allowed him to enjoy tinkering in the shop building trailers, boats and whatever struck his fancy. It also allowed time to enjoy hunting, fishing and snowmobiling with Lance & Janette, Dennis & Jan, Richard, Ian, Fred and all the gang at Great Beaver Lake. No funeral service by request.
Herb Eckert
September 24, 1925October 11, 2018
The family of Herb Eckert is sad to announce that Herb peacefully passed away in his sleep at the age of 93. Herb was born in Morden, Manitoba, one of 12 children to parents Gottlieb and Mathilde. Herb is survived by his daughter Charlotte (Guy) and son Ken (Jan), grandsons Grant (Christine), Chase (Chris) and Blair, great grandchildren Casey, Jacob and Luke. Herb is predeceased by his wife Irene, son Larry and daughter Marilyn. Herb was born with the Eckert family stubborn streak. This determination lead to a successful life. Herb’s greatest loves were his family, logging, farming and a good game of crib. Herb’s family would like to thank the nurses, care aides and staff at Jubilee Lodge. Your loving care and kindness made his final days comfortable. Thank you Dr. McGlynn and Dr. MacEoin. A special mention to Fil (his right hand), Alice and Gayleen. Your constant care and concern will always be remembered. There will ba a casual celebration of Herb’s life Saturday, October 20 at the Coast Inn of the North, McGregor Room from 1:003:00pm. Please stop in for a coffee and share a story.
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OTTAWA — These are
The markets today
TORONTO (CP) — Canada’s main stock index ended the week on a positive note with investors taking on a defensive posture out of concern about the possibility of a further sell-off to come. Consumer staples, real estate, utilities and telecommunications sectors were the winners Friday as all but two sectors on the Toronto Stock Exchange gained on the day.
The health-care sector fell the most at 3.46 per cent as cannabis stocks lost ground for a thirdstraight day since legalization. It was followed by technology which lost 1.65 per cent. There was a defensive tilt to the trading on both sides of the border, said Ian Scott, an equity analyst at Manulife Asset Management.
“What kind of stands out for me is the breadth of the defensive,” he said in an interview.
More than 90 per cent of Canadian staples, real estate and utilities stocks were up on the day.
The S&P/TSX composite index closed up 65.97 points to 15,470.10, after reaching a high of 15,579.83 with 245.8 million shares traded. The market gained 55.81 points on the week.
The market rose even though Canadian economic data on August retail sales and inflation missed expectations.
In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average was up 64.89 points to 25,444.34 while the Nasdaq composite lost 36.11 points to 7,449.03.
The S&P 500 index lost one point to end the week at 2,767.78, slightly below its 200-day moving average.
Scott said there’s a debate among investors about whether this is a healthy sell-off or something more negative.
Investors are assigning various reasons for the market weakness of late. Some are worried about rising interest rates while others point to trade uncertainty, geopolitical risks with Saudi Arabia, Chinese economic weakening, the Italian fiscal situation, emerging markets and the strengthening U.S. dollar.
Despite these concerns, about 84 per cent of U.S. companies reporting so far this quarter have beaten forecasts.
“It’s going to be interesting to see if strong earnings out of the States and hopefully out of Canada as well can provide a boost to the market or if these other concerns continue to outweigh the strong results.”
The Canadian dollar traded at an average of 76.31 cents US compared with an average of 76.59 cents US on Thursday.
The December crude contract was up 57 cents at US$69.28 per barrel.
Morneau going on China mission
Mike BLANCHFIELD Citizen news service
OTTAWA — Two senior Liberal cabinet ministers are off to Beijing next month to cochair a high-level business conference and to push Canada’s trade interests with China.
International Trade Minister Jim Carr says he and Finance Minister Bill Morneau will be in the Chinese capital for two days starting on Nov. 11 to advance Canada’s trading interests.
Carr is also reiterating that nothing in the recently negotiated United States-MexicoCanada Agreement prevents Canada from doing just that.
Carr was asked during testimony before the Senate trade committee about a controversial clause in the new USMCA.
It allows any of the countries to withdraw from the deal on six-months’ notice if one of the partners starts free trade negotiations with a non-market economy – widely assumed to be China – to which they object.
Carr says Canada and China aren’t embarking on formal free trade talks so, for now, it has nothing to tell its North Ameri-
We will look to deepening and broadening our trading relationships with China, sector by sector.
— Finance Minister Bill Morneau
can partners.
“We will look to deepening and broadening our trading relationships with China, sector by sector. If at some stage of the game we enter into a conversation about a full free trade agreement, we will inform our North American partners as we are obliged to do,” said Carr.
“But it does not constrain us in continuing to deepen our ties with China or any other nation in the world.”
Carr says the clause is “reciprocal” and ap-
Federal deficit hit $19 billion last year: report
Jordan PRESS Citizen news service
OTTAWA — The red ink on the federal government’s budget showed no signs of fading as the annual financial report card revealed a $19-billion deficit for the second straight fiscal year.
Expenses and debt payments were all up last year as overall spending hit almost $332.6 billion, leaving a deficit for 2017-18 slightly smaller than what the Liberals predicted in February’s budget.
Revenues were up too, including $9.9 billion more in personal taxes from the previous year, in what officials described as a “new normal” due to the full effects of a new tax bracket for high-income earners.
The numbers in the government’s annual financial report released Friday – made public five weeks after the auditor general signed off on them –pushed the overall national debt to $671.3 billion.
Confusing matters was a change in the way the government calculates its pension liability – a fix officials say has been at the top of the list for auditors for years.
The result is revisions to 10 years’ worth of budget numbers, which included turning the slim surplus the previous Conservative government left with much fanfare in 2014-15 into a small deficit. Conservative MP Dan Albas said the accounting change doesn’t hide that the Liberals have blown past their own spending promises made to voters in 2015.
“Canadians, I think, are going to be more concerned with the overall direction of government and not necessarily with some of these lines as to how things get reported,” Albas said.
“For me, the fundamentals of this government are still very clear – that they make commitments and then they do the opposite, and then they continue to break those commitments.”
Beyond 2017-18, Morneau’s February budget pre-
plies to the U.S. and Mexico as well. If Canada does enter into free trade talks with China, it will duly inform the North American partners, he added.
“And if our partners don’t like it, they have the capacity to bolt from the agreement, just as they do now.”
Carr noted the current North American Free Trade Agreement as well as the newly negotiated USMCA have a broad termination clause that allows any party to leave the agreement, for any reason, by giving six months’ notice. The Chinese embassy in Ottawa has blasted inclusion of the new clause, saying it targets China’s potential trading partners and unfairly brands it as a non-market economy. Trade experts and analysts support the careful approach Carr is advocating because it gives Canada room to talk to China, without overtly angering the U.S.
The U.S. is embroiled in a trade war with China that has seen the imposition of hundreds of billions dollars of tariffs by the Trump administration on Chinese goods and retaliation by Beijing.
Airlines make case against carbon tax
dicted an $18.1-billion shortfall for this fiscal year
– a number that’s expected to gradually shrink to $12.3 billion in 2022-23, including annual $3-billion cushions to offset risks. Morneau is expected to update those numbers in the coming weeks when he releases his fall economic statement.
Following the 2015 election, the Liberal government abandoned campaign pledges to run annual deficits of no more than $10 billion and to balance the books by 2019.
Instead, Morneau has focused on reducing the net debt-to-GDP ratio – also known as the debt burden – each year.
After the pension-related revisions were taken into account, the debt ratio edged down to 31.3 per cent of GDP in 2017-18, from 32.0 per cent a year earlier.
Officials say internal projections still show the measure on a downward track, even if the numbers have shifted slightly from February’s projections due to accounting methods.
“This is an accounting change. I don’t think it changes the narrative around the fact that the federal government has very solid fiscal balances,” said Craig Alexander, chief economist at Deloitte Canada.
“The government of Canada is actually in better shape than almost all of its international peers.”
The change could provide a budgetary boost on paper in the long term – the result of expected interest rate increases that will on paper shrink the size of the pension liability, said Randall Bartlett, chief economist at the Institute for Fiscal Studies and Democracy, headed by former parliamentary budget watchdog Kevin Page.
Morneau has cited a weaker-than-expected economy for the bigger shortfalls as well as a need to make investments to lift Canada’s long-term growth.
Citizen news service
Canadian airlines are urging Ottawa to exempt them from the Jan. 1 imposition of a federal carbon tax, which they warn will boost airfares and push passengers across the border to rival carriers and airports.
The National Airlines Council of Canada sent a letter to three federal ministers Friday cautioning the government about the reduction the levy would cause to revenues as well as marginal domestic routes.
“A carbon tax is probably the worst tool that you can envisage for aviation if you want to reduce emissions,” said lobby group president Massimo Bergamini in an interview.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has committed to impose a carbon tax on provinces that lack their own form of pricing for greenhouse gas emissions.
As it stands, airlines will be required to pay the levy on flights within provinces that fall under the federal system. Meanwhile the government plans to work with jurisdictions to adopt a pricing scheme for interprovincial flights.
CP PHOTO Finance Minister Bill Morneau speaks during question period in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Tuesday.
‘I restore myself when I’m alone’
Marilyn Monroe’s personal Jewish prayer book up for auction
Isaac STANLEY-BECKER Citizen news service
Marilyn Monroe was the woman on the screen – hardly even real, so exalted was her public image.
But she was also a person of the book, as some Jews call themselves.
The actress converted to Judaism in 1956 when she married the playwright Arthur Miller, who was of Polish-Jewish descent. Now, more than half a century after Monroe’s death in 1962, her personal prayer book – known as a siddur, derived from the Hebrew for “order” – is going under the hammer in New York.
It could be worth thousands.
Annotations are believed to have been inscribed by the actress herself, recording the instructions that she had received either from Miller or from the rabbi who had given her the book.
“Omit,” it says next to certain prayers.
“Skip.”
The auction on Nov. 12 brings new attention to a little-known side of a celebrity about whom everything is known, from her movies to her marriages to her melancholy. Numerous items have been sold over the years, including her lipstick and leather sandals, her nose drops, and an X-ray of her chest.
But her prayer book reveals something different about the star of The Seven Year Itch and Some Like It Hot who once said, according to Ms. Magazine, “I restore myself when I’m alone. A career is born in public – talent in privacy.”
“It means that deep inside, she has a Jewish soul,” said Jonathan Greenstein, the owner of the auction house J. Greenstein & Co., which is running the sale in Cedarhurst, New York. “She took it very seriously, even after she left Arthur Miller. She considered herself Jewish.”
The prayer book has a beige, Bakelite cover, decorated with religious ornamentation, including a Jewish star and a shofar, the ram’s horn whose wailing notes ring out from synagogues on Jewish holidays. It bears the imprint of the Avenue N Jewish Center in Brooklyn, the synagogue attended by Miller, who was Monroe’s third husband. The 1922 copyright is from Vienna. If it hadn’t been used by the actress, the book of daily prayers would be worth between $100 and $200, Greenstein estimated. But because it belonged to Monroe, he said, it could fetch between $7,000 and $12,000 – more if “two crazy people start bidding for it.”
Greenstein received the book several months ago from an Israel-based American who had bought it from Monroe’s estate in 1999, in an auction run by Christie’s.
The original buyer, who is now of advanced age, left the item with her sister in the United States, and recently consigned it to Greenstein to resell.
It didn’t find a buyer in a Doyle auction last year.
Greenstein said the prayer book has generated significant interest.
Since news of its upcoming sale appeared Monday in the Jewish press, “my phone has been blowing up literally nonstop,” he said. “In 35 years, this is the most significant celebrity Judaica we’ve ever had,” he said. He has auctioned musician Sammy Davis Jr.’s menorah, as well as the entire collection of Jewish ritual art amassed by Alan Dershowitz, the Harvard Law School professor who has taken to defending President Donald Trump on occasion. “We’ve had some incredible items. But nothing like this – Marilyn Monroe’s personal siddur.”
One potential buyer, Greenstein said, is a member of the Avenue N Jewish Center where Monroe and Miller prayed.
He said the man had contacted him two weeks ago, after reading an announcement in a local Long Island paper, and said he wanted to buy the item for the synagogue’s archives.
“In my heart of hearts, I would like to see it back at the synagogue,” the auctioneer said. “But the truth is that it might have a better home with a private collector. Instead of a museum collection, it might have
more meaning to someone who actually wants to use it.”
Anyone who uses it could find themselves
following the scribbled instructions left in pencil by Monroe. The notes appear to be in the movie star’s
handwriting, Greenstein said.
Significant wear on the pages, as well as on the spine, which is almost separated from the body, suggests that Monroe made daily use of the book, he added.
“It was a daily prayer book. I believe it was used daily,” Greenstein said. “It has had a lifetime of wear in the very short period from the time she was married to Miller to her death. She probably was very attached to it.”
The movie star was raised in Los Angeles by foster parents whose belief in Christian Science she never fully embraced, according to biographies and an exhibit at the Jewish Museum in New York called Becoming Jewish, which examined the conversion of Monroe, as well as that of Elizabeth Taylor.
Miller, the author of Death of a Salesman, did not require Monroe to convert.
The interest was hers, according to letters written after the movie star’s death by Miller’s longtime rabbi, Robert Goldburg, who oversaw Monroe’s conversion.
He officiated the couple’s Jewish wedding in the summer of 1956, several days after a civil ceremony at the Westchester County Court in White Plains, New York.
In one letter, written in 1962 to the head of the Reform Movement’s American Jewish Archives in Cincinnati, the rabbi recalled how he had met Monroe at her Manhattan apartment and was struck by her “personal sweetness and charm.”
She had explained to him that she “had no religious training other than some memories of a Fundamentalist Protestantism which she had long rejected,” Goldburg wrote.
She spoke of being drawn to Judaism, he explained, because of Jewish people she knew, namely Miller, as well as “the rationalism of Judaism – its ethical and prophetic ideals and its concept of close family life,” as the rabbi explained.
He gave her several books to read, including What is a Jew? by Morris N. Kertzer. “Marilyn was not an intellectual person but she was sincere in her desire to learn,” the rabbi recounted in the letter.
“It was also clear that her ability to concentrate over a long period of time was limited. However I did feel that she understood and accepted the basic principles of Judaism.”
Indeed, the perceived mismatch between Monroe and Miller – the century’s most famous sex symbol and its most piercing playwright – was a source of media intrigue.
“America’s best-known blonde moving picture star is now the darling of the leftwing intelligentsia,” the columnist Walter Winchell famously observed.
Variety announced the June wedding with the headline, “Egghead Weds Hourglass.”
Her conversion came with a cost. Egypt reacted by banning her films, according to an account of her marriage to Miller, The Genius and the Goddess: Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe, written by Jeffrey Meyers.
The movie star described herself as a “Jewish atheist,” according to Meyers. And after her divorce from Miller in 1961, she maintained only a few trappings of the Jewish faith, including a mezuza – a tiny box containing Hebrew texts – on her door frame.
After Monroe’s death from a drug overdose in August 1962, her first husband, Yankees star Joe DiMaggio, arranged for a funeral over which a Lutheran minister presided.
“She was not buried in a Jewish cemetery – it’s true,” said Greenstein, who will be auctioning her prayer book next month. “While she was alive, though, she thought of herself as a Jew.”
Remaining tokens of the religious life of the actress also include a brass-plated musical menorah, featured in the exhibit at the Jewish Museum.
It was a conversion gift from Miller’s mother, and stood on the celebrity’s mantle.
Whether these ephemera provide evidence of her Jewish faith, they are pieces of American movie history.
They are also clues into Monroe’s quest for an interior life, away from the screen that so delighted and tormented her.
CITIZEN NEWS SERVICE PHOTOS
This April 1962 file photo, above, shows actress Marilyn Monroe on the set of her last movie, Something’s Got To Give, in Los Angeles. Hear Jewish prayer book, below, bearing a 1922 copyright, is being auctioned next month in New York.
