Prince George Symphony Opera kicks off
Citizen staff
Prince George Fire
carport of a 2100-block
Sampson, Ramsay join incumbents on council
Citizen staff
Kyle Sampson and Cori Ramsay will join Mayor Lyn Hall and the six incumbents on Prince George city council.
Hall cruised to victory in the mayoral race with 11,702 votes, easily defeating political rookie Willy Enns 1,045.
As he has done for the past several elections, Brian Skakun topped the city council field with 9,475 votes, followed by Sampson, a first-time candidate, with 8,304.
The other five incumbents finished third through seventh –Garth Frizzell with 8,199, Murry Krause with 8,008, Susan Scott with 7,775, Terri McConnachie with 7,111 and Frank Everitt with 6,680. Ramsay, also a first-time candidate, took the eighth and final spot with 5,693 votes, defeating Dave Fuller (5,001) and former city councillor Cameron Stolz (4,971) by 700 votes.
“I was hoping for this,” Ramsay said. “But I didn’t let myself get too excited because I didn’t want to jinx it. I’m elated, I couldn’t be prouder of the work I put in. I have an amazing team behind me and they really championed me
into this and everyone’s been so supportive and I couldn’t be more grateful.”
In the next four years, Ramsay said tackling poverty in the downtown core and homelessness will be major focuses for her.
“Working on accessibility for the city as well will be a priority,” she said.
“Really I am in it to do the best job I can to really make a difference in my city.”
— see ‘I’M SO, page 3
nce 1916
Carport fire sees $250K in damages
Bennett tops SD57 election
Ted CLARKE Citizen staff
tclarke@pgcitizen.ca
For the third straight term, Prince George voters have put their trust in Tim Bennett as a decision-maker on the School District 57 board of education.
The incumbent board chair topped the list as the most popular of the 11 school trustee candidates in Saturday’s municipal election, gathering 6,825 votes.
Election night was a little nerve-racking for the trustee candidates, who had to wait much longer than city council candidates to learn their political fate.
“It took a little longer than expected for trustee results to come out but when they did it was a truly humbling experience to see the support the community has shown me, giving me the opportunity to serve for another four years,” Bennett said.
“November sixth, this new board is going to be sworn in and we’re going to have five of seven brand new trustees. This will also be the first time the board has elected representatives from Mackenzie and the Robson Valley, so it’s going to be great to bring that team togeth-
er. It’s a very diverse team and we’ll be able to come together and learn everyone’s priorities.” Bennett said they’ll be sure to address all needs throughout the school district.
“We need to come together to support all 13,009 students that make up School District 57,” Bennett said. “We have a lot on our plate. I talked a lot during the campaign about the many local issues that we need to address. We have a lot of provincial issues on the horizon so it is going to be a steep learning curve for the team.”
— see ‘I’M CONFIDENT, page 3
BENNETT
CITIZEN PHOTO BY JAMES DOYLE
Cori Ramsay, left, is all smiles as she chats with members of her campaign team, Taylor and Heather Sapergia, on Saturday night at a victory celebration at Betulla Burning after claiming a seat on Prince George city council.
Healthier You Expo showed the way to get and stay fit
Christine HINZMANN Citizen staff chinzmann@pgcitizen.ca
The annual Healthier You Expo was held Sunday at the College of New Caledonia.
The popular free event, presented by MLA Shirley Bond, the Prince George Citizen, Northern Health and the Immigrant and Multicultural Services Society, offered advice and demonstrations on how to improve health by exercising, eating healthy and living with a positive attitude.
One of the many information sessions that filled the schedule from 10 a.m. up to 4 p.m. featured local physiotherapist Kerry Roberts, who works at the YMCA of Northern B.C., who talked about seniors and weights.
Roberts had several talking points including how weight training at any age is beneficial and especially when it comes to fall prevention.
Coralie Fitz-Gerald, who attended the
Healthier You Expo for the first time, said she was particularly interested in hearing about how to improve her stability because she broke her shoulder after taking one particularly terrible fall last winter.
“I couldn’t lift my arm up very far at all after it healed,” Fitz-Gerald said. After months working with a physiotherapist her arm is better but she knows she’s not doing enough to protect herself from more falls.
After hearing about how anyone, including seniors, can improve their health, balance, stability, and agility by lifting weights Fitz-Gerald was inspired and a bit surprised by the information presented by Roberts.
“Listening to her, it made me realize I’m pretty darn lazy and I maybe need to smarten up and get involved with something,” Fitz-Gerald said. After the lecture, some audience members wandered down to the health corridor at the Gathering Place at the college where there was a host of booths
providing information about non-profit societies in Prince George like the Kidney Foundation, Diabetes Canada, Canadian Mental Health Association, along with businesses like London Drugs and PG Surg-Med showcasing their services while the College of New Caledonia’s dental clinic and medical lab offered information as well.
Demonstrations were also provided, including a Bollywood-style dance session that saw at least a dozen people trying to keep up with the instructor. There was a flu shot clinic available for those in need as well.
One of the highlights of the expo was the talk given by BodyBreak’s Hal Johnson and Joanne McLeod who offered advice on healthy eating and how to make good choices, while especially trying to avoid sugar, about how to keep moving, despite any excuses you might think you have, always having a positive attitude and how surrounding yourself with like-minded people will help keep a person on a fitness track ideal for them.
Air quality advisory issued for city
Citizen staff
An air quality advisory was issued Monday afternoon for Prince George due to high concentrations of fine particulate.
It was issued shortly before 12:30 p.m. and will remain in effect until further notice.
“Exposure to fine particulate matter is of particular concern for infants, the elderly and those who have diabetes, and lung or heart disease,” officials said.
“Persons with chronic underlying medical conditions should postpone strenuous exercise until the advisory is lifted. If you are experiencing symptoms such as continuing eye or throat irritation, chest discomfort, shortness of breath, cough or wheezing, follow the advice of your health care provider.
“Staying indoors helps to reduce exposure to fine particulate matter.”
All open burning – including recreational fires and use of wood-burning appliances, except for households who rely solely on wood-burning heat – is prohibited under the city’s clean air bylaw whenever an advisory is in effect.
Fire fundraising concert coming
Frank PEEBLES Citizen staff fpeebles@pgcitizen.ca
The Postmen are ringing.
The disaster relief group started out with a couple of spontaneous grassroots volunteers who collected goods and money for the victims in the throes of the Fort McMurray fires. Their efforts took off and grew to the level of multiple provinces and even into the United States.
The Postmen helped out during the Cariboo wildfires last year, and they were busy helping B.C. again this summer.
Award-winning rap group Swollen Members is appearing Wednesday night in Prince George with the show’s proceeds going to The Postmen. They are touring in support of their latest single Bank Job and the new album they are set to release.
Swollen Members have picked up four Juno Awards, five MuchMusic Video Music Awards, four Western Canadian Music Awards and many other accolades. They are considered one of the all-time pillars of Canadian hiphop.
The event is an all-ages concert (there is a bar for those 19-plus) with local opening acts. It happens at the Prince George Golf & Curling Club during an early performance window compared to most live music shows. The entertainment is scheduled to run from 6-10 p.m.
Tickets are $40 available in advance at Black Sheep Gifts at Pine Centre Mall or online by clicking the ticket link on the event’s Facebook page.
CITIZEN PHOTO BY CHRISTINE HINZMANN
During Sunday’s Healthier You Expo at the College of New Caledonia Hal Johnson, best known for television’s BodyBreak, talks about how sugar is addicting and bad for you, during his and partner Joanne McLeod’s talk about how to stay healthy and fit for life.
Man guilty of trafficking heroin, handgun
Mark NIELSEN Citizen staff mnielsen@pgctizen.ca
A B.C. Supreme Court Justice has found a former Prince George man guilty of drug and firearm related charges – and of giving implausible testimony when on the stand.
During the trial, Robert Michael Mero testified that neither the 21.5 grams of heroin, worth about $5,500, nor the loaded .38-calibre handgun police found in his 200-block Harper Street home were his and suggested they were actually planted by the man who tipped off police about the items. But in a decision issued Friday, Justice Joel Groves poked holes in Mero’s story.
The heroin was found in a sock stuffed into a living room couch and the gun in an athletic bag when RCMP executed a search warrant on the home during the early morning hours of Jan. 8, 2016. Additionally, police found a bulletproof vest draped over a kitchen table chair.
On the heroin, Groves noted that score sheets – used to keep track of who owed how much for drugs sold – were found in the home. Mero testified they were actually for keeping track of winnings of fellow players while playing online poker. Groves was skeptical.
“Why would it be necessary for him to write down the amounts of others when, generally speaking, games such as this keep track of everyone’s scores?” he said.
On the gun, Mero testified he never owned a gun except for one he used for skeet shooting.
But Groves noted there were also shells in the bag in which the gun was found and a box of matching shells found in a kitchen
— from page 1
As it quickly sunk in that he was voted in second only to Skakun, Sampson said he was overwhelmed with the support.
“I’m so grateful, humbled, excited –there’s a lot of feeling right now,” Sampson said. “And it feels really good.”
He said the focus for the next four years will be keeping Prince George strong well into the future.
“I think Prince George elected a great team and I look forward to sitting down with them and see where all of our visions lie,” Sampson said.
“I really want to look ahead to the future of Prince George. I think we need to start planning ahead, looking long-term and doing our part to make sure that Prince George is growing in a sustainable way and I’m really proud to be part of that.” Skakun is eager to work with Sampson and Ramsay.
I think it’s absolutely incredible. Cori Ramsay and Kyle Sampson are bringing a different dynamic to council so that we will have some younger voices there,” he said.
“I think we’re going to get more younger people and youth engaged. This is probably the happiest I’ve been out of pretty well
drawer as well as shells for a different gun found in a basement bedroom.
It was all too coincidental for Groves who said that in order to believe the accused, he would also have to believe a “mysterious person” not only planted the gun but the shells found in the kitchen drawer.
On the bulletproof vest, Mero, who said he used to sell drugs but no longer did so, maintained he bought the vest in 2014 after getting a “duty to warn” statement from the RCMP saying he was in danger. According to Groves, Mero further testified he thought the vest was in the closet and “kind of forgot about it but still knew it was there.”
Groves did not believe Mero on that count as well.
“It is not in the closet, it’s hanging within a few seconds reach from anywhere in the kitchen or anywhere in the living room on the back of a chair in the kitchen,” Groves said.
“That is odd and unexplained.”
The man who gave RCMP the tip had gone to police after getting into an argument with Mero over a drug deal gone bad, Groves said.
Along with contending the heroin and gun were planted, Mero denied there was an argument.
Given that a drug deal gone bad suggests someone lost a lot of money, Groves found Mero’s contention that $5,500 worth of heroin plus a gun had been sacrificed to set him up “simply makes no sense.”
Mero, who now lives in Quesnel where he is on a methadone program, will remain out on bail while awaiting sentencing. But he must now report to the parole officer three times per week – two of them in person – up from once per week.
Four kids fire chief for a day
Christine HINZMANN Citizen staff chinzmann@pgcitizen.ca
Fire Chief for a Day was the title four lucky elementary school students took as their own on Saturday at Prince George Fire Rescue Hall No. 1.
The children’s names were picked during a random draw and were among 4,000 who were given the chance to participate in the education piece provided to them during Fire Prevention Week, a national initiative to raise public awareness about the dangers of fire, how to prevent it and how to keep their family safe by having, and practicing, an escape plan.
The four participants were Jackson Wium, 8, from Malaspina Elementary, Johnny Rosenburg, 8, from Foothills Elementary, Murray Wanner, 8, from Glenview Elementary and Vivian Ingraham, 6, from Harwin elementary.
Prince George Fire Rescue has hosted the event for more than 15 years.
The children, accompanied by their parents, were taken on a tour of the fire hall, located at the corner of Seventh Avenue and Dominion Street, which included a demonstration of what personal equipment a firefighter uses, including respirator with oxygen tank, helmet, coat, pants and boots, and what special equipment is featured on a fire truck.
One of the many highlights included a special visit to Fire Chief John Iverson in his office.
Iverson offered his seat to each of the children, replacing the name plate on his desk with one for each of the children.
Jackson was pretty happy to be there but his reaction was surprising when he was
offered the chief’s chair.
“I’m gonna take a nap,” Jackson smiled and promptly closed his eyes.
“You’re the boss today, what would you like us to do?” Iverson asked.
“I don’t know,” Jackson said. Then Iverson asked if he had any questions.
“When’s lunch?” Jackson laughed.
Iverson asked each child if they had any orders for the firefighters at Hall No. 1 but each declined to give any orders while Iverson suggested an order of getting the firefighters to talk about fire safety with all the children.
After the tour and time spent with firefighters and chief, the children were presented with plaques declaring them Fire Chief for a Day, as a memento of the special occasion.
The children were then loaded into the backup fire truck where they got to take the seats usually reserved for firefighters ready for action and were promptly transported to the MacDonald’s on Victoria Street for lunch.
Each of the children was equipped with special headsets so that firefighter Trent Blair, who drove the truck, could keep in constant communication with them during the short ride. Parents followed the truck in their own vehicles to join the party at the restaurant.
To pass the time in the fire truck, Blair chatted with each of the children using the headsets and then had a riddle for them.
“Where does a polar bear keep his money?”
Nobody had a good guess, so Blair gave the answer.
“In a snow bank.”
confident that we can get started’
— from page 1
“But looking at who this community put together I’m confident that we can get started on that work and make it a really successful four years for the district,” Bennett said.
Bennett, a long-serving executive director of the local chapter of Big Brothers, Big Sisters, was first elected as a trustee in 2011. The father of two has served as board chair since 2015. In his election platform, Bennett honed in on catchment areas and capacity issues in city schools as his top priorities.
Sharel Warrington was re-elected Saturday for a fifth term with 4,723 votes. Warrington, who chaired the board from 2011-14, was first elected in 2006.
Three new trustees were elected in Area 1 – Ron Polillo, Trent Derrick and Betty Bekkering, who served one previous term on school board before 2014.
Polillo, in his first bid to become a trustee, locked up 5,318 votes, taking a strong second place only to Bennett.
Derrick is no stranger to the political pro-
MAKING IT RIGHT
In the story about residents taking advantage of assisted dying that was published Oct. 20, it should have read “there has only been one request for a non-traditional setting at the time of death but the person passed away before (assisted dying) could be administered; there were other cases where individuals died before they were able to receive the service.”
cess, having run in the 2014 federal election as the Cariboo-Prince George NDP candidate. He finished third with 4,852 votes.
Bekkering took the last Prince George trustee position with 4,603 votes.
Incumbent Bruce Wiebe was defeated in his effort to secure a second term. The former elementary teacher/principal gained 3,989 votes.
The other non-elected candidates, with their voting results, were as follows:
Trudy Klassen (4,202), Sarah Holland (3,829 votes), Stephanie Mikalishen-Deol (3,408), Corey Walker (2,590 votes), and Allan Krantz (1,711).
In response to the province’s new ward system to create more local representation, one trustee from Mackenzie and one from Robson Valley (McBride-Valemount) will also serve on the seven-member board.
Shuirose Valimohamad was acclaimed in Mackenzie (Area 2).
In the Robson Valley race (Area 3) race, Harold Edwards (434 votes) defeated Bob Thompson (402 votes).
SAMPSON
CITIZEN PHOTO BY JAMES DOYLE
Firefighter Chris Schloegl shows off features of Engine 11 to Murray Wanner and Vivian Ingraham on Saturday morning at Prince George Fire Hall No. 1 during the annual Fire Chief for a Day event.
Two easy wins for new city council
Congratulations, Lyn Hall, on your re-election Saturday night. Congratulations to the six incumbents – Frank Everitt, Garth Frizzell, Murry Krause, Terri McConnachie, Susan Scott and Brian Skakun – on your re-election to city council. Special congratulations to Cori Ramsay and Kyle Sampson, the two new councillors victorious in their first efforts running for public office. Congratulations to the new School District 57 trustees and Regional District of Fraser-Fort George directors.
There is so much work to do, as McConnachie said in her campaign announcement. With that in mind, here are two suggestions for the first 100 days of this new city council:
• Senior management wages
There’s nothing to be done about the huge wage hikes handed out by city manager Kathleen Soltis to the rest of the executive team at the City of Prince George (which also grew from seven to nine people under her tenure).
But that can come to a grinding halt immediately and Ramsay could lead the charge on a long-term solution to make sure such increases don’t go forward in future without city council input. Before she ran for city council, Ramsay
spent the first half of this year chairing a citizen’s committee that reviewed the income of the mayor and city council. This committee is formed of local applicants at the beginning of each election year to make recommendations to the current mayor and council about what the next mayor and council – the ones who get elected in the fall election – should be paid during their fouryear mandate.
So how about lumping the city manager and the rest of the city’s top bureaucrats in with city council and leaving their wage reviews in the hands of a citizen committee once every four years? But senior bureaucrats aren’t political positions, some might argue.
Even if one were to accept that as true (which it’s not), that doesn’t mean their wages can’t be assessed by a group of citizens, with recommendations to the council of the day.
As for dollars and cents, it saves the city from commissioning yet another consultant’s report on senior management wages at the City of Prince George.
Motion: Immediately freeze the wages of the city manager, the four general managers and the four directors at the City of Prince George until June 2022, pending the citizens committee report and review by mayor and council about whether to pass all
or some of the committee’s recommendations.
• Senior management overtime policy
Of the new city council, only Brian Skakun consistently campaigned to do more than just look at the wages and the overtime policy for senior management. Skakun wants changes, said so, and was the top vote-getter for city council.
With that in mind, Skakun can push for a serious overhaul and he’s got plenty of latitude to do so.
As the 2017 consultant’s report into senior management compensation points out, “exempt overtime polices and practices vary widely” among the nine comparison municipalities in B.C. There is no provincial standard because all nine of those local governments do something different.
Furthermore, two of the nine municipalities have “no formal overtime policy,” which is government speak for no overtime pay will be granted because in the public sector, if there is no written policy or procedure, it doesn’t happen.
One of the municipalities with no overtime gives the city manager the discretion to grant up to five days off to senior staff in lieu of overtime. The other municipality with no overtime encourages the top bureaucrats “adjust their work schedule to accommodate having to work extra hours.”
YOUR LETTERS
Proportional representation a fairer system
Bringing in proportional representation is British Columbia’s chance to show Canada how to strengthen our democracy.
Our prime minister got into power largely because of his promise to bring in democratic reform across Canada but as soon as he gets into power, with a majority government, he reneges on that promise.
All of the Quebec opposition parties agreed, prior to their election, to bring in proportional representation without a referendum in Quebec. B.C. has opted to give us all a vote to decide in the upcoming referendum whether we want to stay with the status quo or move to a more progressive form of election and government.
One of the main fears the naysayers bring forward is to state that coalition governments don’t work and the various parties can’t agree on policy. However, nothing could be further from the truth. We enjoy Medicare and
the Canada Pension Plan thanks to collaborative decisions from minority governments.
With the present first past the post system, a government can be elected with 35 per cent of the vote and yet have all the power in a majority government. MLAs are more beholden to their party than they are to their constituents. Candidates are chosen by party members, a very small percentage of the local population. In ridings where the same party gets elected every election, the rest of us have no say in who is going to represent us so our voice is seldom heard. Democracy means government of the people by the people.
In a majority first past the post government, we are instead ruled by a virtual autocracy. In proportional representation, all our voices are heard and seats in government are allocated according to the number of votes earned.
If a party wins 40 per cent of the vote, they will have 40 per cent of the seats. How can it be fairer than this?
There is another fear expressed by the naysayers that PR opens the door to extremists but Trump, Ford and Brexit all came in with
first past the post type systems. Also a party has to have five per cent of the vote to be included in B.C.’s PR government. In the last provincial election, all the nonelected parties together didn’t come close to five per cent of the vote.
The vast majority of OECD governments have already switched to PR. There are very few of us left still struggling under first past the post. It is time to bring ourselves into the 21st century, embrace diversity and govern by collaboration and consensus rather than the accustomed hostility and aggression.
Our present system produces very low voter turnout as many feel disenfranchised. In particular the young voter finds it difficult to align with the status quo. It is our duty to think to the future and make sure that the diverse views of the electorate are represented in our legislature. If the referendum wins for proportional representation, we will enjoy this fairer system in time for our next provincial election in 2021. Please vote for PR to strengthen our democracy.
Hilary Crowley Summit Lake
LETTERS WELCOME: The Prince George Citizen welcomes letters to the editor from our readers. Submissions should be sent by email to: letters@pgcitizen.ca. No attachments, please. They can also be faxed to 250-960-2766, or mailed to 201-1777 Third Ave., Prince George, B.C. V2L 3G7. Maximum length is 750 words and writers are limited to one submission every week. We will edit letters only to ensure clarity, good taste, for legal reasons, and occasionally for length. Although we will not include your address and telephone number in the paper, we need both for verification purposes. Unsigned 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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That’s a nice way of telling managers to use time management when it comes to their own jobs, to recognize that there are busier times of year than others and to take extra time when available during slower weeks and months of the year. That’s the unwritten rule across most of the private sector and much of the public sector.
Since there is no B.C. standard for overtime pay, there is plenty of room for a made-in-Prince George, Skakun-style policy.
Motion: The City of Prince George rescinds its exempt employee overtime procedure in its entirety and adopts the “adjust your work schedule to accommodate extra hours worked” policy, with oversight by the city manager. It’s important to stress that neither of these changes are punishments. Local residents are well-served by Soltis and her team. Instead, city council gets the oversight it should have over the wages of senior managers but through the lens of a citizen committee while paid overtime for the top people gets the well-deserved boot.
Two quick and easy wins to get started for this new city council. The voters have spoken. The power is in the hands of mayor and council now.
—
Editor-in-chief Neil Godbout
Life goes on, despite legal pot
Sniff. There is something in the air.
But it is not the rampant smell of marijuana pervading our streets. Children high on drugs are not running wild. People are still going to work. The world has not ended.
The legalization of marijuana, or cannabis, last Wednesday certainly has dominated the news but it hasn’t brought an end to this country as some have predicted. It is also not going to solve all of our problems with billions in new government revenue.
Simply put – marijuana is a commercial product which has moved from controlled access to open access. But because it was prohibited for so many years as an illicit substance, moving it to an open market has been wrought with controversy.
So let’s back up a bit and consider just what makes something a drug. If I was to define the word, I would say it is a substance which is able to alter a biochemical process or pathway in an organism. The online version: “A medicine or other substance which has a physiological effect when ingested or otherwise introduced into the body.”
Both definitions come to the same point. Drugs are chemical compounds capable of producing changes in a person. While we don’t call food a type of drug, in one sense they are closely related and certainly there are a number of drug compounds to be found in food. After all, broccoli contains carcinogenic substances and cyanogenic compounds are found in almonds. These are compounds which can significantly alter our physiology.
The things we call drugs tend to fall into three broad categories. The first is over-the-counter legal drugs such as aspirin or Tylenol which are generally recognized as both safe and something people can self-prescribe. Into this category, we can also put antihistamines, stomach acid controlling compounds, vitamins and a host of other chemical compounds found on the shelves of our local drugstore.
The second category are prescription drugs which are only available through a licensed professional. Compounds such as statins, blood pressure medication, power pain relievers, insulin, antibiotics and a host of other compounds fall into this category. And the third category are the illicit or illegal substances such as heroin, LSD, MDMA, cocaine and others which we have banned from use.
All three categories contain
substances which can harm or kill an individual. All three categories contain substances which can be potentially addictive. All three categories contain substances open to abuse.
So when a Citizen guest editorial, such as last Saturday’s, says: “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.”
My immediate response is “so do alcohol and tobacco – so what makes marijuana different?”
For that matter, so do opioids and other forms of painkillers along with any number of substances which we sell legally. What makes a drug illegal versus legal?
Consider the billions of dollars alcohol consumption costs the economy let alone the countless lives lost on our roadways and in our homes. If humans had not been consuming alcohol for millennia and it was brought to market today, would it be legalized?
Doubtful.
Ditto for the nicotine in tobacco.
The drug itself is actually beneficial in small doses but the accompanying compounds generated while smoking it lead to lung disease, coronary heart disease, and a variety of other ailments. Maybe nicotine could be made legal but the delivery mechanism sucks.
The same could be said about marijuana.
The drugs it contains – THC and CBD – have some therapeutic value in addressing nausea, appetite and anxiety, but the delivery mechanism – if smoked – has all the same drawbacks. But is this a reason to ban the substance? If so, shouldn’t we also ban cigarettes and other forms of smoking?
The commentary which has filled the airwaves and newspapers over the past week – including this column – take a wide variety of stances on the substance. There are lots of questions. No doubt about it. Shifting a controlled or banned substance to the open market is going to generate a lot of questions, regardless of the substance. And with a compound as stigmatized as marijuana, there is no doubt the controversy will continue for some time.
But is it the smell in our air? No, that’s just fall coming on.
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TODD WHITCOMBE
Climate atlas shows impact of climate change on Canadian forests
Bob WEBER Citizen new service
WINNIPEG — New online maps let viewers zero in on how climate change will affect their part of Canada’s boreal forest.
“It’s designed to give information that’s relevant to people where they live,”
Danny Blair, co-director of the Prairie Climate Centre at the University of Winnipeg, said Monday.
The centre released its climate atlas of Canada last spring. This week, they’ve added information that details how things are likely to change in the boreal forest, the vast ribbon of green that stretches across the northern reaches of most provinces and into the territories.
“So much of climate change information just isn’t relevant to people,” he said. “It’s big scale, very long-term trends. It all seems rather vague and I’m not surprised that people turn away from it.”
Blair and his colleagues divided the entire country into a grid of squares 10 kilometres per side. Using a combination of 12 international climate models, they made their best projection as to how each of those grid squares would be changed.
The changes were calculated for high-
and low-emissions futures. As well, they were projected out to the end of the century. Their method allows them to be quite specific. Edmonton, for example, currently averages three or four days every summer in which the temperature climbs above 30 C, Blair said. By the second half of the century, little more than 30 years from now, that is likely to increase to more than 20 such days.
Similarly, Winnipeg is likely to go from 12 30-plus days to more than 50.
“It’s really quite dramatic if we follow the trend that we’re on right now,” Blair said. “We’re going to see some really high temperatures.”
At the same time, the prairies from Manitoba to Alberta are likely to be drying out. Blair has no hesitation in linking the larger, hotter forest wildfires of the last few summers at least partly to climate change.
“If there’s one thing we’re quite certain about, it is that forest fires are getting worse under climate change and they’re going to get worse.”
Insect infestations are also likely to grow. Huge swaths of boreal forest in much-loved areas such as Jasper
National Park are already reddened by dead trees caused by the mountain pine beetle.
As well, the forest is being squeezed.
On the south, drought stress is making it tough on boreal staples such as aspen trees. But the soils of northern climes are too thin to allow trees to move northward, although some shrubs are already making the move.
“Soils have a very, very long time of generation,” Blair said.
The point of the maps, he said, was to give Canadians a plain-language tool they can use for themselves to understand what’s coming.
Much of that climate change is already here. The UN-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change suggests the planet has little more than a decade to lower emissions to avoid further impacts.
“It has real implications for agriculture, for human health, all aspects of our life that are affected by temperature,” Blair said. “It’s going to get a lot hotter – that’s coming one way or another. Hopefully, we’ll limit it by reducing our carbon content in the atmosphere.”
The map can be views online at: climateatlas.ca/climate-maps-forests
Earthquakes recorded off Vancouver Island
Citizen news service
VANCOUVER — Three relatively strong earthquakes that began Sunday night in the Pacific Ocean off Vancouver Island didn’t trigger a tsunami because they happened along a fault line where sections of the Earth’s crust are moving sideways, says an earthquake seismologist with Natural Resources Canada.
“That horizontal type of movement is the least likely to generate a tsunami, because there is no vertical movement of the sea floor. It’s a horizontal slipping,” John Cassidy said on Monday from Victoria.
The U.S. Geological Survey reported a 6.6 magnitude quake about 260 kilometres west of Tofino, followed by a 6.8 tremor and then a third measuring 6.5. Survey geophysicist Zachary Reeves in Golden, Colo., said all three quakes occurred in the same general area over about an hour and at a shallow depth of about 10 kilometres. He described the quakes as “pretty big.”
Emergency Info BC tweeted that the quakes were felt in parts of the province, but there were no reports of damage or injury. At least four aftershocks were reported late Sunday or early Monday ranging in intensity from 5.2 to 4.3. Cassidy said more were expected.
“The most likely scenario now is that the aftershocks will continue for days or weeks, but they will become smaller as time goes on, and they will become less frequent,” he added.
About 200 people reported feeling the quakes to the U.S. Geological Survey website, most of them on the east coast of Vancouver Island.
Three earthquakes of the magnitude recorded within a 45-minute window are unusual, Cassidy said, but he added they don’t necessarily mean a damaging shaker is imminent.
“These are a very good reminder of plate motions and earthquakes that occur here in this region. We have seen much larger in the past and we will see larger again in the future.” He said it is important to be aware of earthquakes so people “know what to ex-
pect and be prepared.”
British Columbia is located on the Pacific Ring of Fire, an active seismic zone where thousands of mostly small earthquakes are recorded annually by sensors in the province.
Most of the quakes happen near the Cascadia subduction zone, an area where the Juan de Fuca and North American tectonic plates converge, stretching from Vancouver Island to northern California.
An earthquake early-warning system recently tested off the B.C. coast could give residents anywhere from 20 seconds to two minutes to prepare before a quake.
The first-of-their-kind warning sensors developed by Ocean Networks Canada are installed along the Cascadia subduction zone and when fully operating next March will be able to estimate location and magnitude of a megathrust earthquake.
PHOTO
The northern lights shine above the glow from a wildfire on highway 63 south of Fort McMurray, Alta., on May 6, 2016.
New online maps lets viewers zero in on how climate change will affect Canada’s boreal forest where they live.
MONEY IN BRIEF
Currencies
OTTAWA — These are
by the Bank of Canada on Monday. Quotations in
The
markets today
TORONTO (CP) — Canada’s main stock index closed down Monday as investors remain cautious after a recent see-saw in markets while U.S. indices were mixed.
Losses on the Toronto Stock Exchange were widespread across materials, financials and energy indexes while more conservative utilities and real estate indexes rose.
“I think we’re seeing a little bit of a continuation of caution from recent volatility,” said Craig Fehr, Canadian markets strategist for Edward Jones.
The S&P/TSX composite index ended down 57.4 points at 15,412.70 on 277.58 million shares traded. It hit an intra-day high of 15,492.88 points.
The information technology index had the biggest gains at 2.74 per cent as Shopify Inc. climbed 6.05 per cent. The cannabis-heavy health-care index was down the most at 7.47 per cent as marijuana producers continued their post-legalization downward slide.
Cannabis stocks have fallen after a significant run-up in stock prices ahead of legalization. The sector, whose stocks dominate trading volumes on the TSX, will continue to be volatile, said Fehr.
“There’s probably still plenty of upside in some names, and plenty of downside in others. Our view is that as an investor you have to treat these as speculative investments at this point.”
The Canadian market overall is expected to face continued challenges for overall growth compared with the U.S., said Fehr.
“Some of the domestic headwinds that the economy faces, combined with the impact that has on corporate profits in Canada and the interest rate outlook in Canada, are really contributing to this trailing effect that we’ve seen for the TSX for the majority of this year.”
In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average closed down 126.93 points at 25,317.41. The S&P 500 index closed down 11.9 points at 2,755.88, while the Nasdaq composite was up 19.6 points at 7,468.63.
The Canadian dollar averaged 76.31 cents US, unchanged from Friday.
The December crude contract ended up eight cents at US$69.36 per barrel and the November natural gas contract was down 11.2 cents at US$3.14 per mmBTU.
The December gold contract closed down US$1.40 at US$1,228.70 an ounce and the December copper contract ended up three cents at US$2.78 a pound.
May pleads for Brexit support
Jill LAWLESS Citizen news service
British Prime Minister Theresa May sought to scotch a growing rebellion against her Brexit plans Monday, saying a divorce deal with the European Union is 95 per cent complete and urging fellow lawmakers to “hold our nerve” during the difficult last push in negotiations.
May told the House of Commons that “the vast majority” of issues had been settled, including the status of Gibraltar, Britain’s territory at the tip of the Iberian Peninsula.
She said there is just “one real sticking point left” – the border between the U.K.’s Northern Ireland and EU member Ireland.
“We cannot let this become the barrier to reaching the future partnership we all want to see,” May said.
May faces growing dissent from her political opponents – and, more worryingly, her own Conservative Party – over her blueprint for separation and future relations with the bloc.
Grumbling has grown since she suggested at an EU summit last week that Britain could remain bound by the bloc’s rules for two years or more during a transition period after it leaves on March 29, to help solve the border problem.
London and Brussels agree there must be no customs posts or other barriers that could disrupt businesses and residents on both sides of the border and undermine Northern
Ireland’s hard-won peace process. But they do not agree on how to achieve that.
The EU has proposed keeping Northern Ireland in its customs union after Brexit, eliminating the need for border checks. But Britain says that is unacceptable because it would mean checks between Northern Ireland and the rest of the U.K.
May said the EU had shifted and was “actively working with us” on a British counterproposal that would keep the whole U.K. in a customs union with the bloc.
Britain says any such arrangement must be temporary, while the EU insists the border “backstop” guarantee can’t have a time limit.
May said she believed a solution could be found, but “serving our national interest will demand that we hold our nerve through these last stages of the negotiations, the hardest part of all.”
Britain and the EU say they remain hopeful of striking a deal this fall, so that relevant parliaments can approve it before Brexit day.
But May’s room to manoeuvre is limited by pressure from pro-Brexit Conservatives and her government’s Northern Irish ally, the Democratic Unionist Party, who oppose any more compromises with the EU.
She’s also opposed by pro-EU lawmakers who want to keep close ties with the bloc after Brexit.
Amid talk of a leadership challenge, criticism of May has grown increasingly intemperate. Weekend newspaper headlines saying the prime minister is entering “the killing
zone” and faces a metaphorical knifing drew sharp rebukes.
Conservative legislator Sarah Wollaston tweeted to condemn the “disturbing & violent language” used by some of her colleagues. May said it was “incumbent on all of us in public life to be careful about the language we use.”
Conservative lawmaker Grant Shapps said the coming week would be dangerous for May, as pro-Brexit Tories pondered whether to try to oust her.
Party rules state that if 48 Conservative lawmakers – 15 per cent of the total – submit letters to a party committee calling for a noconfidence vote in the leader, one must be held. Only the head of the committee knows how many have been sent in so far.
“It’s fairly high on the scale” of risk, Shapps told the BBC. “But she operates at the upper end of that scale almost every day of her life and remarkably, walks out at the other end.”
With the Brexit clock ticking, fears are growing that Britain could crash out of the European Union without an agreement, an outcome that could create chaos at the borders and in the EU and British economies.
The Confederation of British Industry says a majority of U.K. firms are poised to implement Brexit contingency plans by Christmas, steps that could include cutting jobs, adjusting supply chains outside the U.K., stockpiling goods and relocating production and services overseas.
Notley proposing moving oil by rail
CALGARY (CP) — Alberta Premier Rachel Notley is proposing Ottawa get into the crude-by-rail business – at least temporarily – so that producers in her province can get a better price for their oil.
“We are in the midst of putting together a specific business case that we’ll be taking to the federal government late this week, early next
week, where we lay out the specific costs,” Notley said Monday. She noted that Alberta heavy oil producers have been dealing with a punishing price gap between their product and U.S. light oil – in the order of around US$40 to US$50 a barrel in recent weeks.
Absent new pipeline capacity connecting Alberta crude to international markets – like the
stalled Trans Mountain pipeline expansion to the B.C. coast – Notley said moving oil on rail cars can be a stop-gap measure to help narrow the price discount. And she said Ottawa should step up to making it happen, noting the federal government won’t be recouping $2.6 billion it loaned to Chrysler in 2009 to keep the automaker afloat and save jobs.
NEB agrees to consider LNG Canada pipeline jurisdictional challenge
Citizen news service
The National Energy Board says it will consider a jurisdictional challenge of a pipeline approval that is a key component in a recently sanctioned $40-billion liquefied natural gas export facility in British Columbia. The federal regulator says it will accept submissions until next Monday from challenger Mike Sawyer, the provincial and federal governments, and other parties on whether the 670-kilometre pipeline should be considered a federal project.
If it is, it will require National Energy Board approval to proceed, making approval of the Coastal GasLink Pipeline Ltd. project from the British Columbia Oil and Gas Commission insufficient.
LNG Canada announced earlier this month that it was going ahead with a plant in Kitimat on B.C.’s coast with the pipeline delivering natural gas from the northeast corner of the province. The energy board says Sawyer’s jurisdictional challenge was received in July, comment was then provided by Coastal (a subsidiary of TransCanada Corp.), and Saw-
The federal regulator says it will accept submissions until next Monday from challenger Mike Sawyer, the provincial and federal governments, and other parties on whether the 670-kilometre pipeline should be considered a federal project.
yer was allowed to reply.
It says Sawyer argues that because TransCanada operates the pipeline and the connected Nova Gas Transmission Ltd. system together, they are in fact a single federal undertaking. In reply, according to the NEB, Coastal accuses Sawyer of pursuing a “vexatious” litigation designed to frustrate upstream natural gas development in B.C., further charging it’s not a coincidence that his complaint was made as the project was finally proceeding, not years ago when it was approved.
LNG Canada’s five partners – Royal Dutch Shell, Mitsubishi Corp., Malaysian-owned Petronas, PetroChina Co. and Korean Gas Corp. – had delayed the final investment decision on the project in 2016, citing a drop
in natural gas prices. Sawyer could not be reached for comment, but his lawyer said the board’s decision is “a major step forward.”
“There’s a real kind of rule of law issue here as to whether a pipeline like this really is in federal jurisdiction under the constitution versus whether it’s under provincial jurisdiction,” said Bill Andrews. He said Sawyer pursued similar legal avenues against the former Pacific Northwest LNG project near Prince Rupert, which was shelved last year by Malaysian state-owned energy giant Petronas. His case ended when the project was stopped, said Andrews. Coastal GasLink Pipeline, LNG Canada and the provincial Energy Ministry could not immediately be reached for comment.
PHOTO
In this image taken from Parliament TV, Britain Prime Minister Theresa May makes a statement to the House of Commons on Oct. 22 in London. May faces dissent from political opponents and from within her own ruling Conservative Party over her blueprint for the Brexit separation and future relations with the EU.
Sports
On to the playoffs
UNBC Timberwolves forward Sofia
(20) is mobbed by teammates after scoring against the UBC Okanagan Heat on Sunday afternoon at Masich Place Stadium. Jones’ goal clinched a Canada West playoff berth for the Timberwolves.
Dramatic final weekend lands UNBC women’s soccer team in Canada West postseason
Ted CLARKE Citizen staff
tclarke@pgcitizen.ca
The UNBC Timberwolves got the help they needed on the U Sports women’s soccer pitch in Edmonton, then got down to business on their own field at Masich Place Stadium Sunday to barge their way into the Canada West conference playoffs.
Rookie forward Sofia Jones scored the only goal of the game, a 25-yard strike from the middle of the field, and the T-wolves hung on to defeat the UBC Okanagan Heat 1-0.
UNBC (3-8-3) finished sixth in the Pacific Division, just as it did last year, and will travel to Winnipeg for a single-elimination playoff game against the Manitoba Bisons (6-5-3), who placed third in the Prairie Division.
“We are finally happy because we finally got the results we were working for all season,” said UNBC’s Kylie Erb, 22, who along with midfielder Madison Emmond played the last home game of her five-year career with the T-wolves.
“It’s a good way to end for us seniors because now we have another week with our team and it’s a good way to leave our crowd because they’re so supportive. They’re a very good team, they play a lot like us and they possessed the ball a lot today but we still figured out a way to get around them.”
UNBC started the weekend in eighth place, chasing UBCO and the Thompson Rivers WolfPack for the sixth and final playoff spot.
The T-wolves stayed alive by defeating TRU 2-0 on Friday, while the Grant MacEwan Griffins did them a favour earlier in the day by beating the Heat 4-1.
The Griffins helped UNBC again Sunday when they came back to tie the WolfPack 1-1.
“Everything went our way,” said T-wolves head coach Neil Sedgwick. “I’m proud of the way girls played, they competed well against two good teams. UBCO, in the future, is going to be at the top of the table.
“Sofia putting that goal away was great. She didn’t have many chances today but when she had that clear one she did what she had to do. I got it wrong as a coach
She didn’t have many chances today but when she had that clear one she did what she had to do.
— UNBC head coach Neil Sedgwick
in the beginning and for about 35 minutes we did a lot of chasing. But we made a couple of changes (in strategy) which helped us late in the first half and that led into the second half. The energy was good and we started to get more of the ball and we looked more like the team we have been during the season.”
The T-wolves knew the GriffinsWolfPack outcome as they walked off the field at halftime, still locked in a scoreless draw.
Jones finished her first U Sports season with four goals and two assists and the T-wolves lost just once in games in which the California native scored. She’d gone
Fortune frowns on male Timberwolves
Ted
The elevator ride that was the season for the UNBC Timberwolves men’s soccer team ended Sunday afternoon when the cable snapped, taking with it the T-wolves’ hopes of playing in the postseason. The weekend started in Abbotsford for UNBC where not just once but twice the Fraser Valley Cascades conjured up lategame dramatics to spoil the day for the T-wolves.
On Friday the Cascades scored the only goal of the game in injury time when Andrew Peat got his head on the receiving end of a free kick. The 1-0 win allowed Fraser Valley to leapfrog the T-wolves into third place in the U Sports Canada West Pacific Division. Then in the rematch Saturday night, while nursing a 2-1 lead in the 90th minute, UNBC was caught on a hand-ball in the box and Cascades midfielder Gurmaan Jhaj scored on the ensuing penalty kick,
seven games without a goal heading into Sunday’s contest. That came in the 60th minute, the first real threat faced by Heat goalie Emma Terrillon since the early stages of the game. Paige Payne forced a turnover and got the ball to Jones and she wasted no time launching a high shot into the open side of the net.
“Paige did an amazing job, she gave me the ball right in the front
his team-record 13th goal of the season, to give the Cascades a 2-2 tie.
That goal meant the Thompson Rivers University WolfPack still had a shot at catching the T-wolves.
But, to do so, they had to knock off the undefeated UBC Thunderbirds, the No. 1-ranked team in the country, which they did on Sunday afternoon in Kamloops.
of the net,” said Jones. “I’m so excited to make the playoffs. It’s a privilege to be on this team.”
Although the shots on goal were pretty much even, a 7-6 edge for the Heat, UBCO had a wide advantage in ball possession in both halves and forced UNBC goalie Brooke Molby out of her comfort zone on several occasions. Maddy Ellis’s shot off a corner kick was stopped by Molby 22 minutes in and not long after that Aurora Gardiner’s high shot hit the crossbar. Molby came up with one of her best stops in the 80th minute, diving to deflect a long-range howitzer from Ellis. Erica Lampert also came close with a shot that skipped off the turf.
“I’m very proud of the way we played – we didn’t get the result but we showed a lot heart and that’s what matters going forward,” said Lampert, 19, a secondyear Heat defender who spent the first eight years of her life in Prince George. “We have a bright future, we just have to keep our heads up and keep playing the way we did. We had our chances but didn’t capitalize. UNBC played well and we’ll be rooting for them as they go forward in the playoffs.”
Defender Josh Barton converted a free kick from Mitch Popadyenetz 45 minutes into the game for the only goal and goalie Jackson Gardner had just one save to make to preserve a 1-0 TRU victory, which ended the T-wolves’ season.
“UNBC was two minutes away from a third-place finish in the Pacific, and that’s quite an accomplishment,” said T-wolves head coach Steve Simonson Saturday on canadawest.org. “For these boys and how far they’ve come, I’m so proud of them, I really am.” — see SEASON WAS, page 8
Jones
CLARKE Citizen staff
control
Current Broncos on Sunday afternoon at CN Centre.
Leppard bites Broncos
Ted CLARKE Citizen staff tclarke@pgcitizen.ca
The Prince George Cougars were having trouble bucking the Swift Current Broncos off their backs Sunday afternoon.
So they turned loose their Leppard to get the job done.
Jackson Leppard, who went nine games without a goal since returning from the Tampa Bay Lightning’s training camp, snapped a 1-1 deadlock with his second goal of the season, providing the Cougars what they needed to fortify a 3-1 victory.
“I think for 20 minutes of the game we kind of under-estimated them,” said Leppard, who also had two assists Sunday. “They caught us off guard and we stuck with it. It was a close game and we had some good bounces and were fortunate to bury a few in the end there.”
The Cougars began the third period working with a two-man advantage but failed to generate anything close to a good scoring chance in 98 seconds of 5-on-3 time. Their power play has been a source of misery all season and they started the game on a 3-for-42 clip, worst in the WHL.
Leppard struck not long after the two penalties expired when he picked up a loose puck in the high slot and let go a wristshot that went through the legs of goalie Joel Hofer.
Josh Curtis made it a 3-1 game, scoring the Cougars’ fourth power-play goal of the season. Leppard took the shot and Curtis rushed the net to jam in the puck left uncovered in the crease.
“We haven’t been too great on the power play and it was good to get one on the board,” said Leppard, who collected his first goal of the season last Sunday in Cranbrook. “Back-to-back goals, they’re going to start flowing in now. I just had to get that one out
of the way, I think.”
The win allowed the Cougars (5-5-0-1, third in B.C. Division) to climb back to the .500 mark for the first time all season. The Broncos (1-11-0-0) are last overall in the WHL.
In the teams’ only regular-season meeting, both goalies played exceptionally well. Hofer made 37 saves while Taylor Gauthier made 30 stops for the Cougars.
The Cougars scored first at even strength, 6:42 into the game. Ethan Browne was standing just off the post when he rapped in the rebound of Austin Crossley’s point shot. Swift Current evened the count a few minutes later, taking advantage of its first power play of the game with Mike MacLean off for kneeing.
Tanner Nagel took a pass from linemate Alec Zawatsky and quickly fired off a high backhander that found the corner behind Gauthier. It was the fifth shot of the power play for the Broncos.
Playing their fourth game in six days in their B.C. Division tour, the visitors outshot
Brar earns weekly BCHL honour
Ted CLARKE Citizen staff
Ben Brar is playing like a guy who wants to get noticed by NCAA schools waving full-ride college scholarships.
The 19-year-old Prince George Spruce Kings right winger scored the game-winning goals Friday night in Coquitlam and Saturday night in Langley and kept up his offensive tendencies Sunday afternoon when the Kings returned to Coquitlam to take on the Express.
Brar got the road-weary Kings off to a great start in their third
B.C. Hockey League game of the weekend, scoring shorthanded and on the power play in the opening period, but it wasn’t enough to derail the Express
A four-goal second period gave Coquitlam the lead and the Express hung to beat the Spruce Kings 5-3, which ended a threegame winning streak.
Joshua Wildauer scored twice, ending the second period with a power-play goal, and Chase Danol and Regan Kimens also scored to put Coquitlam up 4-2. Christian Sanda, for the Express, and Kings winger Corey
the well-rested Cougars 14-11 in the opening frame and held them to only a couple good scoring chances and were even more dominant in a scoreless second period.
“It was kind of a tough one for us – we couldn’t get into it off the bat, but as soon as we hit the third we came out as hard as we could and played a really good third period,” said Crossley.
“(Leppard) came back with one of the better games of the year. He had a good road trip too and got the monkey off his back against Kootenay and he’s doing well. We struggled for a couple games but I’m happy with the team. We’re coming together now and it’s looking good for the year.”
The Broncos have just seven players left from last year’s WHL championship team and head coach and general manager Dean Brockman knows he will have to be patient with his troops.
“That was probably our best game of the year for two periods and then the third we kind of let it get away on us,” said Brockman.
“They amped it up and we didn’t and we’ve certainly got to build in the things we did well. There’s a lot of guys learning how to be an everyday player and we just have to stay with it, day by day.”
Broncos centre Ethan O’Rourke, in his first game back in Prince George since the Cougars traded him last season to Everett for Browne, came close to scoring his first of the season on a left-wing rush late in the first period.
The Broncos have been on the road since they won in a shootout in Brandon Oct. 13 and have struggled ever since with four straight losses. O’Rourke knows they came close to ending that winless streak Sunday.
“It’s obviously been a tough start so far but our first two periods tonight was probably the best we’ve played.”
The Cougars host the Tri-City Americans tonight. The puck drops at 7.
Cunningham, with an assist from Brar, capped the scoring in the
third period. Brar finished the weekend with four goals and two assists and now has 11 goals – tied for third in the league – and five assists in 16 games. He leads the Spruce Kings with 16 points. For his efforts, Brar was named on Monday as the BCHL player of the week (for the week ending Oct. 21).
Alex DiPaolo picked up three assists Sunday for the Express (11-5-1-0), which moved back into sole possession of second place in the Mainland Division, two points ahead of the Spruce
Season was record-setting for T-wolves
from page 7
“It was a great performance from us (Saturday) – I thought it was fantastic. We knew they were going to come at us at the end. To be undone on a penalty call, that’s tough. But we’ve got to respect the referee’s decision and go on from there.”
Rookie Anthony Preston, with his fourth of the season, and Francesco Bartolillo, in his final U Sports game, scored Saturday for UNBC.
The T-wolves (5-4-6) finished fifth, establishing new team records for fewest losses (four) and most goals scored (20) in a season.
The WolfPack (6-6-3) was one of the hottest teams in the league down the stretch, winning four of their last five and they went undefeated in their final six games. Fourth-place TRU, who beat UBC for national bronze last year in Kamloops, will play Alberta (12-0-2), the Prairie Division regular season champions, in a single-elimination playoff game Friday in Edmonton.
Raptors keep rolling, move to 4-0
TORONTO (CP) — While the Raptors ran their record to 4-0 and came close to a franchise record with 36 assists in their highest offensive output of the young season Monday, coach Nick Nurse pointed to his defence after a 127-106 win over the Charlotte Hornets.
“I think we created a lot (of offence) out of our defence tonight which I was probably more happy with,” he said. “It was a highscoring free-shooting team coming in here and we asked (our players) to get out and contest and disrupt some of their rhythm and we did a pretty good job of that.”
“Eight blocked shots, (we) got our hands on a lot of balls,” he added.
Kawhi Leonard scored 22 points and Kyle Lowry added 16 points and 14 assists for his second straight double-double as the Raptors never trailed. Toronto, which led by as many as 25, was up by double figures the entire second half.
“It’s a very good defensive group,” Charlotte coach James Borrego said of the Raptors. “Bringing in two elite defenders like Danny Green and Kawhi Leonard, you add that to their length, their athleticism, that’s going to be a heck of a defence all season.”
Jonas Valanciunas had 17 points and 10 rebounds for Toronto off the bench.
Kings (10-5-0-1), who have one game in hand.
Prince George outshot Coquitlam 31-30.
Dartmouth University recruit Clay Stevenson improved his record to 5-1-0 in goal for the Express.
Logan Neaton took the loss in the Prince George nets.
The Kings will embark on their longest road trip of the season with three games in three days, a weekend tour that will take them to Trail on Friday, Wenatchee on Saturday and Salmon Arm on Sunday afternoon.
Prince George Cougars forward Reid Perepeluk tries to
a bouncing puck while being chased by Matthew Culling of the Swift
Capital gains
during the first period of Monday’s game in
the
Sale pitching for Series ring
Jimmy GOLEN Citizen news service
BOSTON — Chris Sale would rather talk about the ring he can win as a World Series champion instead of the almost certainly nonexistent navel ring that – he maintains with a straight face – scratched him from a start in the last round.
The Red Sox left-hander will belly up to the mound to start Game 1 against Los Angeles on tonight, 10 days after his last outing and nine after he was hospitalized with what the team called a “stomach illness.”
Sale joked – we think – that it was from a piercing gone bad, and he kept up the ruse back in Boston.
“I’m not going to spill all of my secrets,” he said.
Clayton Kershaw is scheduled to start for the Dodgers, giving baseball a matchup of marquee lefties from a pair of iconic franchises at two of the oldest ballparks in the majors.
The Red Sox, who won a franchise-record 108 games and their third straight AL East crown, are going for their fourth title in 14 years; the Dodgers, who lost to the Astros in the Series last year, will try for their first championship since 1988.
“It’s going to be rocking. This place is going to be obviously going crazy,” Sale said. “We’ve all been waiting for this. And our fans, too.”
Dodgers set for Game 1 test
The 2017 AL Cy Young runner-up – a favourite for this year’s award before arm problems down the stretch – Sale never missed a start through the end of July, when he went on the disabled list with what the team called “mild left shoulder inflammation.”
He came back for one start in August but then shut it down again as the Red Sox, who had a double-digit lead in the AL East, coasted into the playoffs.
After sitting out a month, he threw 26, 42, 73 and 92 pitches in four September starts to rebuild his arm strength for the post-season. He won Game 1 of the AL Division Series against the Yankees and came on in relief in the Game 4 clincher, then got knocked around in the opener of the ALCS against Houston.
During Game 2, the team announced that he had been hospitalized, forcing him to join his teammates late when the series moved to Houston and pushing him back in the rotation from the fifth to the sixth game.
Sale insisted he was prepared to gut it out, but the Red Sox clinched in five, thanks to David Price’s pitching and Rafael Devers’ threerun homer.
“Obviously D.P. and Devers and everybody else had a different way of going about it,” Sale said. “Having these extra few days has been nice to be able to get back on that routine, get a little more normalcy back into it. Getting my
BOSTON (AP) — Hooting and hollering, Chris Taylor and a couple of Dodgers took aim at the Green Monster. With their arms, not bats. Standing in left field, they kept throwing balls at a small, square space in the scoreboard, shouting every time a miss clanged off the
strength back... got back to doing some things that made me successful in the past.”
Kershaw is a three-time NL Cy Young winner who has been in the top five for the award in each of the last seven years. In 2014, he was the league’s MVP. He said he’s glad to be facing Sale in Boston, where the pitchers won’t be batting.
“Probably wouldn’t have been a good matchup for me,” he said.
Sale said on Monday that he is back to 100 per cent, and he deflected questions about the illness that melted even more weight away from his 6-foot-6, 180-pound frame. But his comment about the belly button ring has exploded like the infected wound he is pretending to have.
Brock Holt said he would get a nipple or belly button ring if the Red Sox win it all; second baseman Ian Kinsler said it might become a trend.
“I’ll get any type of ring if we do it,” Kinsler said. “If we can get four wins we might all be walking around with nipple rings or belly button rings, whatever it may be.”
Sale, wearing what appeared to be the same grey T-shirt he has sported all through the post-season, said he wasn’t surprised.
“Hey, that’s what I do,” he said. “Fashionista, I guess.”
He was joking again.
We think.
metal letters.
“I’ve got good aim!” Taylor shouted after he finally tossed one through, ending the contest Monday.
A lot of fun for Los Angeles, frolicking at Fenway Park during a World Series workout.
Might not look, sound and feel so
friendly come Game 1 tonight.
“It’s a completely different atmosphere,” Boston reliever Heath Hembree cautioned. “Are they going to feel the Monster breathing down on them?”
Goes beyond the ballpark, too.
“I think the biggest challenge for a
Ryan’s air attack leads to victory
ATLANTA (AP) — Matt Ryan threw a 47-yard touchdown pass to Marvin Hall, Tevin Coleman broke loose on a 30-yard scoring run and the Atlanta Falcons added another chapter to New York’s miserable season, beating the Giants 23-20 on Monday night.
Ryan completed his final 18 passes and finished 31 of 39 for 379 yards, sending the Giants (1-6) to their fourth straight loss. Giorgio Tavecchio, filling in for injured Atlanta kicker Matt Bryant, sealed the victory for Atlanta (3-4) with the longest field goal of his career from 56 yards.
Facing one of the NFL’s worst defences, New York botched its best scoring chance by going for a touchdown on fourth-andgoal from the one early in the third quarter. To the surprise of no one who has seen the Giants stumble through the season, Eli Manning’s pass for tight end Scott Simonson fell harmlessly to the turf.
Manning was sacked four times but still managed to complete 27 of 38 for 399 yards. Odell Beckham hauled in eight passes for 143 yards, his fourth 100-yard receiving game of the season, and Sterling Shepard finished with 167 yards on five receptions.
The passing game got little help from the ground attack, however. Rookie Saquon Barkley was limited to 43 yards on 14 carries, forcing the Giants to go one-dimensional. Both teams got off to sluggish starts offensively. The Falcons failed to cross midfield on their first three possessions, and the Giants weren’t much better. Then, suddenly, Atlanta struck for two big plays to grab the lead. Ryan went down the left sideline to tight end Austin Hooper for a 36yard gain, pushing the Falcons into New York territory for the first time. Then Ryan spotted Hall breaking free down the middle of the field, hitting him perfectly in stride for the touchdown.
The teams traded field goals in the final minute of the first half, sending the Falcons to the locker room with a 10-3 lead. Tavecchio, who first connected from 40 yards, added a 50-yard kick that extended the lead to 13-6 on the opening play of the fourth quarter. Coleman rumbled for another Atlanta TD without being touched, giving the home team some breathing room before the Giants finally showed some life offensively.
team coming in here is you’re playing the Boston Red Sox,” pitcher Nathan Eovaldi said. That’s the part Clayton Kershaw will focus on, trying to contain Mookie Betts, J.D. Martinez and a team that blitzed to a team-record 108 wins, then breezed through the AL playoffs.
Ben Hutton of the Vancouver Canucks, centre, tries to clear
puck past Washington Capitals forwards Jakub Vrana, right, and Brett Connolly
Vancouver. Prince George’s Connolly helped the Caps to a 5-2 victory.
Fillion explores ‘mid-life change’ in The Rookie
Victoria AHEARN Citizen news service
TORONTO — Nathan Fillion is at the downtown CTV headquarters, talking about his new series The Rookie, when he stops mid-sentence to react to police sirens wailing outside.
“Wait – they might need me,” quips the former Castle and Firefly star, who hails from Edmonton.
“It’s natural now. That’s the call.”
Playing a rookie cop and co-executive producing on the new ABC drama series, which airs Tuesdays on CTV, has made the 47-yearold more aware of police activity around him, he says. He also got in tip-top shape for the role of John Nolan, a divorcee who leaves his construction job to work for the Los Angeles police force after a life-altering experience.
Fillion says he did simple things, like cutting out sugar and carbohydrates, drinking lots of water, and walking at least 12,000 steps a day.
“I have a little watch that would count my steps,” Fillion says. “The only problem is, the numbers are so small and my eyes are bad now, so I couldn’t quite read it. I had to have someone else read my watch to tell me how many steps I got in.”
Such is the other realization the role has brought Fillion: his age.
Much of The Rookie centres around the fact that John is older than his colleagues. They make fun of him for it, and his commander accuses him of being “a walking mid-life crisis.”
Co-stars include Calgary-born actress and singer Melissa O’Neil, who won the third season of Canadian Idol in 2005. She plays John’s love interest.
The story speaks to a “new cultural norm we have of people starting over,” Fillion says.
“It’s been described as a mid-life crisis and I think it’s inaccurate. There’s no crisis here. It’s that people are experiencing this,” he says.
“Children grow up, so you’re no longer required as a parent; people get divorced, so they’re no longer a husband or wife; their jobs don’t stretch on for 40 years anymore. Things move much quicker now, so change happens and you have to change along with it.
“And this mid-life change is the new norm.”
Fillion himself is noticing some of those
changes, which he describes with signature wit.
“I call it ‘the daily betrayal’ – I always expect the 32-year-old me to look back in the mirror, and that’s not happening,” he said.
“I’m now at a point where I can’t say so much that, ‘Oh, I’m just in my 40s.’ I’m pushing 50 now, I’m getting up there.... For most people, that’s past the halfway mark. I’m on the downslide now.”
Not that he shows it.
On The Rookie, Fillion does plenty of stunts and confirms he is indeed the one running in the police-chase scenes. And he showed his physical might in the recently released short fan film Uncharted, an adaptation of the popular PlayStation video game.
But his knees aren’t happy, he admits.
“These babies are saying 50-plus. They’re saying ‘Slow down,”’ he says. “I remember I was 32 years old, I did something to hurt this (right) knee and I said, ‘Oh, that’ll be fine in two weeks. It’ll heal.’ That doesn’t happen anymore.
“I do plenty of stunts – I’m just not dying to
do them; I die when I do them.”
Fillion lives in L.A. but visits Edmonton often.
“I adore my family, we’re very tight,” he says, noting they all recently travelled parts of Europe together.
“My parents still live in the house I grew up in, but my room is my dad’s office.... There are all these pictures up, like a shrine. All that’s missing is candles.”
He says he wasn’t sure he was ready to return to prime-time TV so soon after Castle ended its eight-season run in May 2016. But he couldn’t turn down a chance to work with executive producer Mark Gordon of Grey’s Anatomy, and creator Alexi Hawley, who was also a writer and producer on Castle.
He was also enticed by the story of a character who wants to do something that affects the world – who wants to matter.
“I can respect that, I can get behind that,” says Fillion. “I can’t imagine anything worse than not being relevant to the world around me, and I think that’s something we can all relate to.”
Shark Tank backs late 9-11 cleaner’s idea, pitched by kids
LOS ANGELES — The sharks on Shark Tank are supporting an invention created by a New York
City firefighter who died of cancer after helping clean up the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks. Kevin Young’s children on Sunday pitched his Cup Board Pro,
a chopping block that features a detachable bowl for cleanup. The 53-year-old died in March, months before the ABC show taped the segment. His children explained their dad had to delay his project because their mom was diagnosed with breast cancer and died in
August 2012. The panel decided to invest $100,000 in the project and pledged to donate any proceeds to support firefighters who have illnesses related to the Sept. 11 attacks. Contestants on the show try to persuade the panel to invest in their ideas.
LOUIS-DREYFUS Louis-Dreyfus presented with lifetime award
WASHINGTON — After a 35year acting career and with two iconic television characters to her name – Elaine Benes of Seinfeld and foul-mouthed Vice-President Selina Meyer – Julia Louis-Dreyfus has been honoured with the Mark Twain Prize for lifetime achievement in comedy.
On Sunday night at Washington’s Kennedy Center, the 57-yearold actress received a stream of testimonials from celebrities including Jerry Seinfeld, Stephen Colbert and 2010 Mark Twain recipient Tina Fey, touching on the multiple aspects of her career.
“We both started comedy in Chicago,” said Fey, paying tribute by tracking the similarities between their lives.
“We both moved on to Saturday Night Live. We both lost our virginity to Brad Hall,” referring to Louis-Dreyfus’s husband and former SNL castmate, sitting next to the honoree. Fey praised the “secret precision” of her comedy and her willingness to make her Seinfeld character so flawed.
“Julia let Elaine be selfish and petty and sarcastic and a terrible, terrible dancer,” Fey said. “Julia’s never been afraid to be unlikable –not on screen and not in person.”
Louis-Dreyfus is the 21st Mark Twain recipient, joining a list that includes Richard Pryor, George Carlin and Carol Burnett. Bill Cosby, the winner in 2009, had his award rescinded earlier this year after he was convicted of three counts of aggravated indecent assault.
Seinfeld, while on the red carpet before the ceremony, recalled first meeting Louis-Dreyfus during an informal audition. His iconic sitcom, Seinfeld, was still in the planning stages and producer Larry David knew Louis-Dreyfus from their time together on Saturday Night Live.
“We had just two short pages of script, and we sat down to read the dialogue together,” Seinfeld said. “As soon as she opened her mouth, I knew she was the one.” Seinfeld also credited LouisDreyfus for having the confidence and strength of personality to hold her own on what he called “a very male show.”
That confidence was evident very early for Louis-Dreyfus, who said she knew as a young child that she had a gift for comedy.
“The first time I really knew was when I stuffed raisins in my nose and my mother laughed. I ended up in the emergency room because they wouldn’t come out!” LouisDreyfus said before the ceremony.
Comedian Kumail Nanjiani grew up in Pakistan and never saw an episode of Seinfeld until he immigrated to the U.S as an adult.
“But I became a huge fan as soon as I moved here,” he said. The co-writer of the movie The Big Sick recalled her iconic, slightly convulsive “Elaine Benes dance” on the show, which he credits to Louis-Dreyfus’ gift for physical comedy.
“There are some comedians who think physical comedy is beneath them,” he said. “But she was just fearless and ego-less.”
At the end of the night, LouisDreyfus accepted her award with an extended comedic bit and a few shots at new Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
A native of the Washington suburbs in Maryland, LouisDreyfus is a graduate of the elite Holton-Arms school, alma mater of Christine Blasey Ford, who accused Kavanaugh of assault. Louis-Dreyfus make a veiled but unmistakable reference to Ford’s testimony-framing it around her performance in high school of the play Serendipity.
“I can remember every single aspect of that play that night, so much so that I would testify under oath about it,” she said, to a round of laughter and applause.
“But I can’t remember who drove me there or who drove me home.”
AP PHOTO
Nathan Fillion attends the PaleyFest Fall TV Previews for The Rookie at The Paley Center for Media on Sept. 8 in Beverly Hills, Calif. The show airs on Tuesdays on CTV.
Ashraf KHALIL Citizen news service
Time to dish up SODA dinner
Fundraiser helps those in need in India
Christine
HINZMANN Citizen staff chinzmann@pgcitizen.ca
When physiotherapist Hilary Crowley started traveling to India, it was ultimately to help children with polio and the devastating affects the disease had on their bodies.
That was in 1994.
“I spent a year there training local people in the community to do physiotherapy during the height of the polio epidemic,” Crowley said. “I had five people to train when I first got there and by the end of the year I had trained 12 and now there are 28 working in the program.”
More than two decades later, Crowley is still making the trip to India but because polio isn’t a threat there anymore, the program is now focused on preschool-aged children and young adults with spinal cord injuries.
“This experience has changed my life completely,” Crowley said. “Since that first year I was so impressed with the dedication of the
people who work there and the appreciation of the families that we worked with.”
Crowley is the founder of the Samuha Overseas Development Association (SODA), which is a development organization that works with those in need in South India to improve their quality of life.
“I just wanted to stay involved and the year after I got back was when I started SODA,” Crowley said of the local non-profit society.
She started taking physiotherapy and occupational therapy students to India in 2001.
“Since then they’ve come back and have now graduated as therapists and several of them help with the fundraising in the communities they live in also,” Crowley explained.
The goal for the association is to raise funds to support the program geared for those with disabilities and the society has committed to raising $20,000 annually. Each year through efforts like the SODA fundraiser featuring an Indian buffet, entertainment and silent auc-
tion the society has raised as much as $40,000 a year, Crowley said. During the fundraising event there is also a slideshow presented to the audience showcasing SODA’s work with the disabled in India.
“It’s just amazing how generous people are when they see the need and they know that every cent they donate is going directly to the program,” she said, adding that everyone who travels to India uses their own money to get there and every aspect of the society is volunteer based.
This year’s SODA event will be held Saturday at the Hart Crown Banquet Hall. Silent auction items include a traditional Indian dinner for 10, a weekend at a cabin on Summit Lake and handmade items from India, as well as a variety of gift certificates to many local restaurants. It’s mandatory to reserve seats by emailing soda.sec@gmail.com or calling 250-617-3464. Admission is by donation. For more information about the cause visit www.samuha.ca
PGSO hitting the right notes
Sean FARRELL
Special to The Citizen
The mainstage season opener of the Prince George Symphony Orchestra’s 2018-2019 season was held this past Saturday, the start of year two of our local orchestra’s multi-year plan to reclaim its natural leadership position within the classical music scene in northern B.C. Last season – Maestro Michael Hall’s first with the orchestra – was labelled A New Beginning and this year’s theme is For People Like You.
Even for people like me?
Seems like a dare, but in fact the performance proved to be a near flawless start to what should be a continued upward ascent in performance quality and community engagement for the foreseeable future.
The season opener’s title was Russian Fantasies and provided the near-capacity audience at Vanier Hall with a lively, often emotive, aural smorgasbord of Slavic fare.
The soloist for the evening was guest pianist Andrew Staupe, who delivered a magical performance of Chopin’s Second Piano Concerto in F minor. I promised myself that I wouldn’t complain too much about the fact that Chopin was a native of Poland who became a French citizen and whose music has little or no connection to Russia whatsoever. So, I’ll just leave that to the Fantasies component of the program, which opened with a lovely rendition of the Vocalise by Sergei Rachmaninoff. Originally composed as a song for a high voice, without lyrics, Rachmaninoff himself orchestrated the piece and it has remained a staple of light orchestral fare for the past century. The musicians of the PGSO gave a warm and sincere interpretation and it was an excellent warm-up for the sumptuous piano concerto to follow. Chopin’s F Minor Concerto is the first of two that he composed,
The soloist for the evening was guest pianist Andrew Staupe, who delivered a magical performance of Chopin’s Second Piano Concerto in F minor.
but it was published in reverse sequence. Chopin himself premiered the piece, written when he was just 20 years old.
Both of Chopin’s concerti are staples of the concert hall and the international piano competition circuit. At the opening of the first movement, I was slightly concerned by what I perceived to be an overly cautious and measured tempo selected by the orchestra, but as soon as Staupe commenced playing, an entirely different mood flooded the stage, one of confidence and a profound comprehension of the languid and sensual compositional style of Chopin. In fact, it became evident to this listener that Maestro Hall and Andrew Staupe have a musical affinity for one other, and a very real and personable musical relationship between the two men became evident on stage. In fact, this specific performance was very much a conversation between conductor and soloist, with both solidly supported throughout by the proficiency of the orchestral musicians.
There are certain passages in the Chopin second piano concerto that are inspired – harmonic progressions and melodic flourishes that enter one’s consciousness upon first hearing and that never really leave you. For me, there are some phrases in this piece that I know will be part of my personal vernacular until my final days, and which became moments in Staupe’s performance that were
simply electrifying. Staupe’s technical and interpretative command of Chopin’s language was superb and I have not heard a pianist make the aged Bechstein piano of Vanier Hall soar and sing like that in a long time. Particularly noteworthy was the gorgeous interplay between piano and bassoon, performed by one of Canada’s most illustrious woodwind soloists Nadina Mackie Jackson, which added a rich and generously loving moment to the on-stage romance playing out in front of us during the second movement. It was first-class throughout, and folks who skipped this concert really missed something special, with this highly personal and intimate performance.
The evening concluded with toe-tapping fun via Tchaikovsky’s Suite from Swan Lake. Having worked in the world of ballet when I was a youngster and having hacked my way through this balletic score literally hundreds of times on honky-tonk keyboards in Toronto rehearsal studios, I have to admit I expected to be counting the moments until the conclusion of the program, but in fact, I was really charged-up by the PGSO’s rousing and invigorating performance. I am going to nit-pick here by noting the absence of a real harp on stage – it’s just such an expected centrepiece of late 19th century dramatic orchestration and it does affect that overall visual experience in a live concert setting. But as I predicted last season, PGSO concerts clearly are the must-attend events this season. Even competing with a busy social schedule this past Saturday night, including election parties, the 100 or so audience members who stayed around for the post-concert, on-stage chat was evidence that the PGSO organization is taking its challenge of “for people like you” seriously, delivering live classical music events that are resonating with local audiences and sustaining an economy for our local professional musicians.
HILARY CROWLEY HANDOUT PHOTO
Shown are three of SODA’s physiotherapy clients who have sustained injuries after falling from palm trees when harvesting nuts. This photo was taken during Hilary Crowley’s last trip to India in January 2018.
Murder, music coincide in Destroy All Monsters
news service
John DOMINI Citizen
Destroy All Monsters: The Last Rock Novel
By Jeff Jackson Rock music has always had a kinship with violence, from Jerry Lee Lewis’ flaming piano to the pantomimed gun deaths in Childish Gambino’s recent This Is America video. Many a concert has turned bloody, and many a player suffered an untimely death. The earliest victim might be Johnny Ace (Pledging My Love), cut down on Christmas 1954 by a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The disturbing yet deeply involving new novel by Jeff Jackson, Destroy All Monsters, is dedicated, in part, to Ace, and he’s described as “the ghost that haunts rock ‘n’ roll” –though he gets more and more company as Jackson’s apocalyptic vision unfolds.
As “the epidemic” begins, “bands were being shot in the middle of their performances all across the country.” The carnage erupts on the opening pages and threatens to continue throughout. Yet Jackson keeps us wondering how the horror will go down. Once or twice the ugly business feels a tad familiar, but far more often the author delivers canny surprises. One suspicious package, for instance, turns out to hold 45s, rather than a .45.
Importantly, the violence isn’t political. The novel isn’t cautionary like The Handmaid’s Tale; rather, its rampages could be punk-
rock. The killers weasel around security the same way anyone else would, and, if they survive the melee, they linger on the crime scene “with serene and unshifting eyes.”
Authorities can’t discern any clear motive, though the perpetrators all seem to be “obeying the same subconscious marching orders.”
If anyone achieves deeper understanding, it’s a handful of youngsters in one of the small cities visited by the killing. Despite the paradisiacal name, Arcadia is another scrap of discarded America, the shops downtown “little more than darkened shells.” Still, the place claims a music scene. The main characters are part of a fledgling band: Shaun and Florian (whose real name provides another element of intrigue), plus the ethereal Xenie.
Then there’s the band’s manager, Eddie – or is it Edie? This fourth figure provides crucial support following two murders, and does so in two genders, thanks to the text’s most radical gambit.
Destroy All Monsters includes its own alternative version, a novella featuring the same widespread massacres and bereaved young Arcadians, but with the latter playing different roles. This B Side reads in the opposite direction as the A; it requires you turn the book over as you would a record. Both titles are gloomy – My Dark Ages and Kill City – yet the whole has a playful quality. Each story upends the other.
A mere gimmick in lesser hands, Jackson’s
twice-told tales “each absorb and expand the narrative.” In particular, a recurring image of trompe-l’oeil deer, their painted heads seeming to emerge from a wall, comes to suggest both the slaughtered innocents and the power of art: keeping the dead before us, challenging us to live better. Questions concerning art hang over
everything no matter which direction you’re reading, including a veiled reference to Vladimir Nabokov, who was always fascinated with aesthetics. The most thoughtful explanation of what spurred the epidemic has to do with artistic quality.
“These bands are poisoning something that used to be meaningful,” Xenie says. “Nobody wants to talk about any connection between the bands that have been targeted... but most of them have been terrible. I’m not so sure that’s a coincidence.”
Still, I don’t mean to suggest that this novel is a blood-soaked whimsy, Rock Critics Gone Wild! Xenie’s insight isn’t the final piece of the puzzle, but rather helps reveal her depth, as she and Eddie (male version) slog through the woods on a mission for a murdered friend. Poorly equipped yet trying to do right, they generate the sympathy that imbues all these nightmares. Jackson recognizes that Xenie and the others are themselves American scrap.
As for their chosen art form, even their wildest musical ideas – at one point, they play a show nude – fail to free them from their stunted lives. Even the ecstatic promise of rock winds up another delusion, a monster that someone ought to destroy. Small wonder that the one song that matters most to both of Jackson’s flamboyant yet subtle tales is that scorched-earth anthem, Ring of Fire.
“Cita” Princicita Mercader Bjorklund July 9, 1959October 18, 2018
It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of our beloved Cita who passed away at the UHNBC, surrounded by her loving family and will be greatly missed. She is survived by her husband Carl Bjorklund, children Sharon Skibinski (Bill), Lloyd Bjorklund (Ruby), Vince Murphy, Karl Bjorklund, Donna Bjorklund, Duwayne Bjorklund, Cheryl Ryan (Mike), and Curtis Bjorklund, many grandchildren, greatgrandchildren, numerous family in the Philippines and her good friends. Cita was predeceased by her parents Felino and Paciencia Gaspan. Cita left the Philippines and moved to Canada on her own at a very young age. She worked very hard and dedicated her time to helping others. She enjoyed her life to the fullest but most of all she loved to be surrounded by her family and friends whom she cherished so much. A funeral service will be held on Friday, October 26, 2018 at 1:30pm at St. Mary’s Parish, with a viewing held prior starting at 12:30pm, 1088 Gillett Street, Prince George, BC, with Father Gilbert Bertrand OMI and Father Ken Anderson OMI officiating.
