The ground beneath the Old Fort landslide had been moving for months before it finally let go in a massive collapse in September and forced more than 150 residents to evacuate their homes.
Geologists that have been studying the slide since it let go Sept. 30 were pushed for answers about their findings and the future facing evacuees during a tense, two-hour sit-in at the Peace River Regional District office in Fort St. John on Wednesday.
It’s been 17 days since residents were ordered to evacuate on Oct. 7, one week after the nearby hillside collapsed and destroyed the only road in and out of Old Fort.
The landslide started because of failure in the bedrock, said Tim Smith, a senior engineering geologist with Westrek Geotechnical Services. That triggered another slide to the west of it and sent a large tension crack splitting out to the east toward Old Fort homes.
The company is analyzing its data and assessing the future risks to the community. Those will be filed in a report to the regional district, which will make the ultimate decision on whether residents can return home, Smith said.
“We’re trying to work out, if this thing fails, where does it go to? And are there houses on the east side of the main slide that could be at risk?” said Smith, who was questioned by residents and regional district board chair Brad Sperling during a phone call at the sit-in.
“We’re trying to get an under-
standing on how fast this slide is likely to move, and does that give them (residents) time to get out if something goes on.”
“If the slide goes again, how fast does it move, how big do we think it’s going to be, and where does it end up getting to? From there, we can say, ‘Well, this is what we recommend,’” he said.
The bedrock failed in the area of a gravel pit that had been operating on the hillside above Old Fort, according to Smith.
The slide was last estimated at more than eight million cubic metres, and has pushed its way down through a gully beneath the gravel pit and into a back channel of the
Peace River.
Evidence so far suggests the ground had been moving for months before its collapse, Smith said.
“This piece of ground has been moving for quite a while before it let go,” he said.
“It’s a pretty big slide. It’s not just what has happened so far.”
Data from a laser light survey technique called LiDAR continues to be collected daily, and recent data hasn’t shown any significant movement of the landslide, Smith said.
However, that could change, and winter weather will be a factor.
— see ‘THE POSITION, page 3
ince 1916
Legal challenge against Site C dismissed
Alaska Highway News
A B.C. Supreme Court judge has dismissed a bid by two Treaty 8 First Nations to halt work on the $10.7-billion Site C dam. Justice Warren Milman refused to grant an injunction to West Moberly and Prophet River First Nations on Wednesday, but ordered a trial on whether the project infringes aboriginal treaty rights be held by mid2023, before the dam’s reservoir is filled.
The First Nations wanted work on all, or some portions of Site C be stopped until then. However, granting the injunction would put Site C into “disarray,” Milman said.
“Although the claim raises a serious question to be tried, West Moberly’s chances of ultimately succeeding with it and halting the Project permanently are not strong,” Milman wrote in his 98-page decision.
“The proposed injunction, in either of its iterations, would be likely to cause significant and irreparable harm to BC Hydro, its ratepayers and other stakeholders in the Project, including other First Nations and that harm outweighs the risk of harm to West Moberly flowing from not granting an injunction.”
The First Nations plan to pursue the trial, and are considering an appeal of Milman’s ruling, their lawyer said.
“The court acknowledged that there was a serious issue to be
We are disappointed the Court chose not to suspend work immediately...
— Tim Thielmann
tried, as well as the risk of ‘irreparable harm’ being suffered, ordering a trial of the treaty infringement claim to occur before the reservoir is flooded. My client has every intention of proceeding to trial and will also consider appealing this judgment,” said Tim Thielmann of Sage Legal.
“We are disappointed the Court chose not to suspend work immediately, but landslides and potential appeal may force the same result. West Moberly and Prophet River do not believe this Project will ever be completed. Taxpayers should ask how many billions of dollars will be wasted before it finally grinds to a halt.” In a statement, BC Hydro CEO Chris O’Riley said the Crown utility continues construction. “BC Hydro has reached benefit agreements with the majority of First Nations that we consult with on Site C. We remain committed to working with Indigenous communities to build relationships that respect their interests, O’Riley said.
Crews pave Winnipeg Street at Carney Street Wednesday morning. Winnipeg Street has been closed for several weeks
Prescribed burns planned near Valemount on Monday
Frank PEEBLES Citizen staff fpeebles@pgcitizen.ca
There will be smoke in the local air from more fire in the forest. This is not wildfire, however, but prescribed burns as part of regular forest management.
On Monday, the BC Wildfire Service and BC Timber Sales agencies jointly announced a 15-hectare deliberate blaze for the Clemina Creek area, about 30 kilometres south of Valemount.
On Wednesday, they added a Prince George fire, a 50-hectare prescribed burn about 75 kilometres east of the city on the north side of the Fraser River.
The agencies explained that the fires would reduce “accumulations of dead and combustible material to decrease the risk of catastrophic wildfires in the area” and prepare the sites for silviculture once the fires had done their job.
“Fire is a normal and natural process in many of British Columbia’s ecosystems,” said Prince George’s fire information office.
“The BC Wildfire Service works regularly with land managers to undertake fuel management activities, including the use of prescribed burns, to help reduce the severity of future wildfires and related threats to communities.”
The closest of these fires will
likely be visible from Highway 16 and other points around the local area. It will occur at the sixkilometre mark on the McGregor Forest Service Road. The public might detect smoke in the air, depending on the prevailing weather conditions.
“This burn will only proceed if site, weather and venting conditions are suitable and allow for a low- to moderate-intensity fire,” said a statement from the Prince George Fire Centre. “All prescribed burns must comply with the Environmental Management Act and the Open Burning Smoke Control Regulation. This helps minimize the amount of smoke generated.”
Local woman arrested for wild drive in Kamloops
Citizen staff
A 59-year-old Prince George woman is suspected of driving while impaired after striking three vehicles before colliding with a home in Kamloops on Monday night.
Starting at about 10 p.m., RCMP received numerous reports of someone driving erratically on Highway 5 and exiting at a high speed near Copperhead Drive. The driver entered the Pineview area of the city and hit the vehicles and the home while
travelling along Foxtail Drive, according to Kamloops RCMP. The woman, whose name was not released and has not yet been formally charged, was arrested at the scene and taken to hospital for treatment of head injuries from the deployment of her car’s air bag. She “displayed possible signs of impairment and the investigation is ongoing to determine if drugs or alcohol contributed to this incident.”
The vehicles she hit were empty and there were no other injuries.
Province funds ATV trail network upgrade
Frank PEEBLES Citizen staff fpeebles@pgcitizen.ca
Prince George off-road vehicle trails just got a significant cash injection from the provincial government. The money will be used in large part to upgrade the backcountry network that makes this area one of B.C.’s best ATV tourism and recreation destinations.
Local enthusiasts have been rolling their quads and side-by-sides and other wilderwheels through the great Omineca-Cariboo outdoors for decades. This past summer, though, it was a small army of all-terrain vehicle visitors who came in for the wowride, and in the wake of that – the ATVBC Quad Riders Association of British Columbia Jamboree – the Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development announced that the Prince George ATV Club (PGATVC) was getting $15,000 and the Prince George Tabor Mountain Recreation Society was getting $20,000 “to improve trail riding conditions and promote rider safety.”
The PGATVC money was specifically allocated to a bridge over George Creek and the rest to rehabilitate the off-road vehicle route from Prince George to Wells.
That trip was the featured tour when the jamboree came to this area in late August. The backcountry trail that links Prince George (starting at Tabor Mountain) to the arts and industry hamlet of Wells and its Barkerville historic attraction next door is one of the tourism highlights of the area, according to the event’s organizers.
“There is varying terrain, different forest varieties, big lakes, impressive rivers and waterfalls, and something amazing to see
around every corner, I don’t care how many rides you’ve been on before,” said John Corbett from Forest Power Sports, one of the key sponsors and himself an ATV enthusiast. They coordinated equipment demonstrations and provided quads to some of the riders on the jamboree trail.
“Where else can you see grizzly bears playing in a waterfall? It is spectacular, really special country, I don’t care if you’ve lived around here your whole life. It’s amazing.
There’s the Keithly Creek Cemetery, there’s an abandoned eco-resort (Comet Creek Resort), there’s even a library you’ll come across along the way. Ghost Falls alone is worth the trip. It really is a one-of-a-kind trip you’ll never forget, and you’ll want to
‘The position we’re in is we’re tasked with making sure that our information is correct’
— from page 1
“The time of year when movement is going to be of the greatest concern is during the periods when we have excessive snowmelt or rain on snow, and the groundwater levels are high,” Smith said.
The company is aiming to have its report ready for the regional district on Friday, though that could change and the report won’t immediately be public, Smith said.
“The position we’re in is we’re tasked with making sure that our information is correct and it doesn’t put the public at risk,” he said.
BC Hydro crews have replaced dozens of power poles and restrung more than three kilometres of power lines to restore electricity to more than 50 homes. The Ministry of Transportation continues to build a temporary road around and through landslide debris. An
update on that work wasn’t immediately available on Wednesday.
On Wednesday, residents learned PNG had shut off natural gas to the community due to safety concerns.
The regional district said the company has been issued a permit to enter the community, and that four technicians will be inspecting gas lines up to the meter at each home. The technicians will be shutting off the valves at the meter.
“Once all valves are shut off, inspections are completed, and risk is mitigated then PNG will pressurize the distribution system,” the regional district posted in an update on its website.
Residents will have to request that their valves be turned back on in order for a technician to return to do so and relight any appliances, the regional district says.
do it again and again.”
The trails are quite distinct and well marked, but Corbett recommended taking the route only with a PGATVC guide the first time or two, for safety but also to get a strong interpretive experience along the way.
“They are forefront in getting people on quads and snowmobiles on those trails,” he said. “They are working with the Wells Wheels ATV Club down at the Wells end, and that group has done a tremendous amount of work. They now have a trail from the Forest Rose Campsite and the Lowhee Campsite so when you come into the Wells area, you now have access right into the townsite so you can get fuel, food,
provisions, and that access was important if you’re at the end of the trail on the machines. Before, you were so close but not quite able to have that connection to the town and now you can go right in. It completes the mission. It will make Wells and the link to Prince George a Mecca for off-road vehicle enthusiasts.”
The overall jamboree event had about 170 people attend, in a convoy of quads. It was a six-day convention altogether. The ride from Prince George to Wells was only one of the built-in tours for the attendees who came from all over B.C. and Alberta. They received a special treat, as a historical crescendo to the P.G.-Wells trip. The caretakers of Barkerville issued the group a special one-time permit to ride their machines through the picturesque ghost town museum. A dinner for all participants was also held at the rare gold rush attraction.
“The ATV Jamboree in Wells/Barkerville was something we will remember for a long time,” said Jeff Mohr, a Prince George rider as well as a veteran of the ATVBC Quad Riders Association of British Columbia.
“This year was a chance to renew friendships, as we have not been at an ATV event for three years, and wow how they all made us feel fantastic.
“The ATV crowd at this event came from all walks of life and brought them together to enjoy some of the best scenery in the world on their seat of choice: ATVs and UTVs,” Mohr added. “Although the forest fire smoke reduced the view from most places it did not dampen the enthusiasm that everyone had.”
To find out more about this area’s backcountry riding trails and opportunities to enjoy the company of other ATV/Quad riders, visit their website at pgatvc.ca.
CITIZEN FILE PHOTO
The Prince George ATV Club played host to the 2011 BC ATV Jamboree.
The shallow boom
Building permits are way up in Prince George. So is home construction. Unemployment is low and has been for more than a year. Downtown development is soaring. The city is well-positioned to cash in on the LNG Canada project. Work continues on Site C. UNBC continues its evolution as one of the top small universities in Canada. CNC has done a fantastic job attracting international students to Prince George. Now the federal government is spending money on some much-needed runway upkeep at the Prince George Airport.
So much economic good news but it seems to fly in the face of the reality on the ground, where households are saddled with stagnant wages, increasing consumer debt, soaring housing costs, steadily rising levels of taxation and bureaucracy from
all levels of government and a lack of job security.
The Cariboo wildfires of 2017, combined with this year’s wildfires in the BulkleyNechako region to the west, have left area rural communities hurting. Retail and entertainment businesses and non-profits are having to work harder than ever to survive, hammered by online shopping, big screen TVs and Netflix.
This isn’t uniquely a Prince George or north-central B.C. problem. These are global economic forces at work. In the United States, the stock market is at a record high, unemployment is low and business is booming but millions of Americans are so frightened and angry by the pace of social, technological and economic change that they embraced Donald Trump as president.
Income disparity and inequality are fueling distrust of traditional institutions, from
government to the courts, from the news media to the police, as well as a rage that transcends political stripes against the one per cent that seem to be getting richer and richer while the 99 per cent work harder and harder to stay afloat.
For the working poor being left behind because of a rapidly changing economy that no longer values low education and manual labour, talk by business and political leaders about booming growth just makes their blood boil. Somebody’s getting rich while they toil in dead-end service sector jobs with minimum wage with few raises and little or no health benefits.
That’s how on one hand, the newly elected Prince George city council finds itself basking in strong economic conditions while the other hand struggles to address increasing homelessness, an epidemic of opioid overdoses, an outbreak of mental health issues, seniors finding their pensions
Needle exchange solution
I read a little bit of Brian Skakun’s comments on the needle exchange but he gave no real solution so with a little thought I’ve got the answer for this concern.
The city first forms a bylaw where needles are not to leave the building. This is not a new concept; they’ve been doing this for the Vancouver East End people for some time now. They enter after being let in by a security person, get their drug required, they then go to a specialized booth, inject their drug with the needle given, then the needle is discarded into a special bin in front of the security guard before their able to leave the building. Simple and safer for all citizens as well.
I’m hoping something will be done to eradicate this long outstanding, festering community wound that has never been properly dealt with by the past mayor and council. Hopefully, this city council will once and for all make the right decision for all involved.
Also of importance is that this building that will be for needle use must be on the east side of Queensway. Out of sight, out of mind. It would also be a boom for the businesses that are currently affected by this cancerous model of providing needles. Time for city council to have this fixed with a tried and true approach to handling these needles.
Miles Thomas Prince George
Careful what you vote for
I think that there is something that we must consider, if we are considering proportional representation. How many would really want the Christian Heritage Party, who are against same-sex
Parties like this should stay out of our politics, unless they win enough of the popular vote.
marriage and abortion, or the Marxist-Leninist party to win seats in the Legislature?
Parties like this should stay out of our politics, unless they win enough of the popular vote.
Overall, there are too many political parties in Canada. I fear that all of these political parties will not work well together and that proportional representation will be a failure.
Arlene Roberts Prince George
Crowley off base
I disagree with the comments made by Hilary Crowley that our ways of electing MLAs and MPs should be changed.
When going to vote at provincial and federal elections, vote for the party you want to vote for. Too many voters are voting the opposite of their preferred choice to keep one party out of government over another. If voters voted for who they prefer, you would see in most cases right across the country, minority governments both provincially and federally. Minority governments work well because the elected government must listen and work as a team with the opposition parties. A surge would develop in the number of Green party MLAs and MPs elected.
Electoral reform is a major waste of time and a waste of taxpayer dollars to hold a referendum on the issue. At least this way, taxpayers would get a third and fourth say in the politics of government.
We live in a democracy, so mark your voting ballot for the party that you want to see win a
seat in government. Joe Sawchuk Duncan
Call assisted dying by its true name
Lies, damned lies, and statistics. And euphemisms. Don’t forgot euphemisms. They might be the most damned lies of all. We had a few great examples on the front page of Saturday’s newspaper. Let’s start with “assisted dying.”
It sounds so helpful, doesn’t it?
We all need assistance from time to time, and don’t we appreciate the people who give it to us?
Except that just two and half years ago we would have used a different word in Canada. That’s right – murder.
The second one is even better: “medical assistance in dying.”
A wonderful euphemism. And isn’t it handy that the acronym is “MAID?” It implies an old-fashioned sense of service, gentility, and harmlessness. “Here I am, ma’am. How can I help you today?” But we never used to commend our maids for poisoning people while they slept.
The third one is better yet. We are told that MAID is “part of the (health) care continuum.” Indeed. It’s amazing how well a euphemism can hide the truth. MAID is precisely the opposite of health care. Health care aims for life; MAID aims for death (and invariably accomplishes it). There is no continuum here. Opposite goals and opposite directions. The last one is perhaps the best of all. Apparently, we now refer to being murdered as “the experience.” Don’t we all love to have an experience! “You’ll never guess what happened to me! I was murdered!” Ah, yes, what a lovely experience. It took a team effort, but it was worth it. Wasn’t it? Well, I suppose we’ll never know. No one has come back to tell us.
Tim Schouten Prince George
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and OAS cheques aren’t keeping up with inflation and other social problems. For residents in the rural areas outside of Prince George, particularly the ones affected by the wildfires of the past two years, it’s easy to see how they are feeling forgotten and neglected. For every announcement about a new hospital in Fort St. James, they feel they hear 10 more about something for Prince George, like Tuesday’s airport runway announcement. Just another big cheque for another Prince George amenity. In past booms, everyone benefitted, some more than others, of course, but everyone at least got a piece of the action. In today’s boom times, here in Prince George and elsewhere, there are winners and losers.
The old economic phrase about a rising tide lifts all boats needs to be updated.
Some boats rise but others sink beneath the waves.
— Editor-in-chief Neil Godbout
Third strike needed for PR
In the coming weeks, British Columbians will be asked to vote in a very important referendum on changing how we elect our MLAs, not an insignificant initiative. We’ve rejected proportional representation twice before. It’s essential we do so a third time. I support our current voting system, which is simple, produces stable governments and is one of the institutional pillars that all our successes stand on. On the first question on the ballot, I urge you to vote in favour of first past the post (FPTP), option one.
The alternative is to jump into the unknown. Three versions of proportional representation (PR) are on offer. Two have never been used or tried anywhere in the world and the third is presently used in just four countries. That third option is called Mixed Member Proportional (MMP). It was soundly rejected in BC by the hard-working Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform in 2005 because of the damage it does to local representation.
The claims that PR jurisdictions outperform ones like ours, or that PR improves voter turnout or that the environment fares better under their preferred electoral system are not comparing apples to apples. Such claims stand on a foundation of misdirection, lies and obfuscations. That is because the electoral systems that inform the research findings are not even on the ballot in B.C. this fall.
The Yes side says PR is used in more than 80 countries. In truth, only four countries actually use any of the forms that appear on B.C.’s referendum ballot. The rest use some form of “list” PR. That means parties make lists of candidates to be elected, and seats are allocated based on the overall proportion of votes. Over 90 per cent of the countries held up as examples use electoral systems B.C. isn’t even voting on.
Citizens of countries that do use list systems are becoming very uncomfortable with this form of election. The evidence is clear on at least two fronts.
First, radical parties of the left and the right are taking advantage of the low threshold to win a seat. They seize on voters’ fears and frustrations and run single-issue, municipal-style campaigns based on emotion, ignoring vast swathes of policy. You can see this today in Germany, Austria, Poland, Hungary, Rumania, even Italy, which has had 61 governments in 67 years under such systems.
Secondly, countries are constantly fiddling with their electoral processes to try and make a flawed system work better. New Zealand has recently passed a bill that would strip MPs of their seat if they switch parties or their leader kicks them out of the party. Germany is trying for the third time to introduce a vote threshold to minimize small parties. The second question on our ballots in the fall referendum reflects the dense
academic nature of this attempt to fix proportional representation. Let’s look at the one option on the ballot used in the real world – MMP. Under this model, 40 per cent of the elected members are from party lists. This means constituencies will be at least 40 per cent larger, with a real impact in the north and interior of B.C. For example, the provincial riding of Stikine, already large, if increased by 40 per cent to allow for party lists, would be larger than New Zealand. Taking systems in use in small countries and transferring them to B.C. in a social experiment disenfranchises people outside the Lower Mainland. Local representation is cast aside. On the No side, we know how important a local MLA is. Our current system puts local representation first, where it should be. Most countries which use FPTP are or were members of the British Commonwealth. It is part of our heritage. MMP is used for parliamentary elections in four countries including Germany and New Zealand. In Germany, it took almost six months to form a coalition government after last September’s election. Germany’s Bundestag is now home to seven parties, including radical parties on both the right and the left. Proportional representation amplifies their impact by giving them legitimacy and resources to advance their extremist agendas. New Zealand recently switched electoral systems to MMP. It’s not going well. The current government is a hodge-podge of the Labour Party, the Greens and an anti-immigrant party called New Zealand First. The latter two members didn’t elect a single member in constituency elections by getting the most votes. They leveraged their seven per cent of the popular vote into four cabinet posts, including that of deputy prime minister. PR promoters claim that proportional representation is the solution to all our electoral woes and point to its widespread use around the world. The truth is that the options we’ve been given are complex, esoteric and used in very few places with little experience to point to. We’ve rejected changing our system in referendums twice this century for very good reasons. All three options on the ballot leave the important details, including maps and the number of MLAs until after the referendum. It’s only then the NDP/Green marriage of convenience will carefully choose those to favour their electoral prospects. This referendum is a desperate move to give the Green party a permanent platform. If they can elect three people in a small corner of the province, they deserve three seats. With apologies to Churchill, FPTP is the worst electoral system, except for all the others. Vote to keep the status quo. John Winter Past President and CEO B.C. Chamber of Commerce
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Every vote should count
In the provincial ridings of Prince George Mackenzie and Prince George Valemount, the elected party typically gets 60 per cent of the votes, with the same party elected time after time.
Provincially, typically the winning party gets a mere 40 per cent of voter turnout (with the 2017 election being an exception).
In Prince George this means 40 per cent of the electorate is not represented.
And provincially, 60 per cent of people are unheard, creating a “false” majority mandate for the winning party. Why vote then?
Certainly, voting when your vote never counts, election after election, is deeply discouraging. Voter turnout is low particularly from the non-white, younger-than-50 demographic, I submit in part because their votes don’t contribute to the outcome. We really don’t want a society in which segments don’t participate as eventually it leads to unrest. Do we want the existing first past the post voting system which discourages voting from so many?
Proportional representation means everyone is heard and all votes matter. Thirty per cent of the votes result in 30 per cent of the seats. It ensures cooperative decision making. For example, decisions advancing resource development will incorporate better environmental and labour protection to pass in the Legislature. And that social programs and schools are suitably treated from balanced perspectives.
The mail-in referendum first asks if you favour proportional representation. In my mind there are strong reasons to vote ‘yes’ because all votes will be represented. Additionally the second (optional) question, asks you to rank three proportional representation systems. All three proportional representation systems provide both a proportional percentage of seats to their party and give regional representation.
I urge you to vote yes, in favour of proportional representation in the mail in referendum, so everyone has a voice at the table.
Judy Thomas Prince George
NEWS IN BRIEF
Body
of missing man
found near Duncan
DUNCAN — Police and the family of a British Columbia man who has been missing on Vancouver Island since mid-May confirm his body has been found.
A statement posted on the Facebook site dedicated to finding Ben Kilmer says his body was found Oct. 17 in a remote area of Duncan, near the Chemainus River. Police say the body of the 41-yearold Victoria-area husband and father was found by a hiker, well outside the original search area.
The RCMP says in a statement that foul play isn’t suspected and the case has been turned over to the BC Coroners Service.
Kilmer’s work van was found, with the engine still running and traces of blood inside, at the side of a rural road west of Duncan.
The family statement says a private memorial is being planned.
Kilmer’s widow, Tonya, posted a separate statement on the Find Ben Kilmer Facebook page calling the news “agonizing.”
But she says the couple’s children will “grow up knowing their daddy as (a) strong, fierce, tenacious, loving family man...”.
Saskatoon getting second urban reserve
SASKATOON (CP) — The Yellow Quill First Nation is setting up its second urban reserve in downtown Saskatoon.
The First Nation says it has obtained reserve status from the federal government for a building that’s currently home to the First Nations Bank of Canada.
The reserve is adjacent to Yellow Quill’s original urban reserve in the city. The band says the designation will help attract First Nations companies that want to do business in the downtown.
Chief John Machiskinic says it will also provide another source of revenue for programs benefiting Yellow Quill members on and off reserve.
The Yellow Quill First Nation is based about 245 kilometres northeast of Saskatoon. There are about 968 members on reserve and another 2,005 in communities throughout the province.
Unanswered questions
I received the Voters Guide a few days ago and decided to give it a good look so I could make an informed choice. After several reads I determined that the Voters Guide actually raises more questions than it give answers. It is very convoluted and, while I profess to have a mind that’s capable of understanding most things, this Voters Guide appears to be bereft of any kind of straightforward explanation that I think the voters (taxpayers) of B.C. deserve before this proportional representation referendum vote goes forward. Here are a few examples: 1. It states: “…if a proportional representation voting system is adopted, the government has said that after the referendum: a
legislative committee will determine how some aspects of the new system will work.” Who on Earth would want to vote to implement a system that still has blank spaces in the operation manual? Would you buy a car if the dealership told you that they haven’t figured out how the motor is going to work?
2. It states: “…an independent electoral boundaries commission will determine the number of boundaries of the electoral districts and regions represented in the legislature.” Another blank space that should leave B.C. voters to wonder why are they not given this information before they vote. Kind of like the same dealership telling you that you have to buy the car before they tell you just where you are allowed to drive it.
3. It states: “…the total number of MLAs in the legislature will be between 87 and 95.” Excuse me,
before every single political vote I have ever cast – whether municipal, provincial or federal – I always knew exactly how many positions in a government would be filled. Remember that dealership? It’s like them telling you that you don’t get to know how many people will be available to look after your car until after you buy it.
4. It states: “…no region in the province will have fewer MLAs than it does now.” Well that’s nice to know but I am reading that some regions in the province will have more than one MLA. So how do I get two MLAs for my region? And if the candidate I like and trust is one of them, do I just get a “party pick for the second one” and what guarantee is there that the second one will actually be from my region?
5. What it doesn’t state, and likely because they don’t want you
to know, is there are many parts of Pro Rep that have never ever been tried in any country in the world. Do you want your province to be a guinea pig for a new voting system that would determine how you are going to be governed?
6. I could go on and on, but this last point is the real killer. I am told by the guide and by Elections B.C. (in a phone call) “If you don’t understand anything in the Guide… just go to the Attorney General’s Report and you will find your answers.” Hey, honey, stop the packing, hold off on the holidays a few weeks, gotta read the Attorney General’s Report to try and figure out what I am voting for. And these, my friends, are just some of the reasons why I am saying a big no to the proportional representation system of voting.
R. Harris Osoyoos
Spear points found in Texas oldest on continent
Sarah KAPLAN Citizen news service
For as long as Buttermilk Creek has wound its way through Texas Hill Country, its spring-fed waters have carved through the region’s dark, dense clays, cutting away layers of earth to expose the rock – and the history – below.
Here, archaeologists have uncovered evidence of a human settlement stretching back as far as 15,500 years: hammer stones and broken knives, fragments of fractured tools.
And now, scientists say, the Buttermilk Creek complex has offered up the oldest known spearheads in North America.
The new “projectile points,” reported this week in the journal Science Advances, come in two unusual shapes – a fact that geologist Mike Waters, who oversaw the excavation, found both “bizarre” and “really exciting.” The find adds to the evidence that the first people arrived in the Americas earlier than researchers thought, even as it raises new questions about who those people were and how they made their epic migration into the continent.
“This is a really fascinating paper,” said Jennifer Raff, an anthropological geneticist at the University of Kansas who was not involved in the new study.
“It’s filling in some of the gaps in the archaeological record regarding the Clovis complex and the histories of the very first peoples in the Americas.
If the projectile point was the cellphone of the Pleistocene – an omnipresent technology that shaped cultures and defined daily life – the Clovis tools were the iPhone X. These points, named for the city in New Mexico where they were first found, featured a fluted bottom and rounded sides tapering to a sharp point.
The distinctive spearheads are scattered throughout the rock record between 10,000 and 13,500 years ago, from the East Coast to the Rocky Mountains and as far south as Venezuela.
The tools are so ubiquitous that for nearly a century, archaeologists thought that the Clovis tradition represented the first people to arrive in the Americas.
But research in recent decades has revealed
archaeological sites much older than Clovis, and genetic analyses of modern Native Americans suggest their ancestors crossed a land bridge from Asia to Alaska about 20,000 years ago, then migrated down the Pacific coast between 20,000 and 15,000 years before present.
So who exactly were these early Americans?
The new points uncovered at Buttermilk Creek may offer a clue, said Waters, who directs the Center for the Study of the First Americans at Texas A&M University. Because tools are so essential to the tasks of survival – hunting, cooking, building, killing – they can say a great deal about the people who wielded them.
In more than 10 years of excavations at his site, Waters and his colleagues have found Clovis points in a rock layer dating to about 13,000 years ago. Below that, in older rocks, they uncovered scores of stone point fragments, but no whole spear heads. It was difficult to know if they were looking at older Clovis artifacts, or something entirely different.
Then, in 2015, the archaeologists uncovered two perfectly preserved artifacts: one triangular point, which resembles a predator’s sharp tooth, and one lobe-shaped projectile with a tapered, or “stemmed,” bottom.
With these whole points as models, Waters’ team was able to make sense of the 10 additional fragments they collected. They seemed subtly but significantly different from Clovis and other toolmaking traditions – neither a clear ancestor to the later technology, nor an obvious competitor.
“I just thought, ‘Holy cow,’” Waters recalled.
“Whenever you see something for the first time that you didn’t expect, it’s always very exciting and exhilarating.”
Radiocarbon dating of the soils where the points were found suggested they were made between 13,500 and 15,500 years ago – offering a significant piece of archaeological evidence for a migration into the Americas that predates Clovis.
But the points also raise new questions, Waters said: were the Clovis people descendants of these early inhabitants who came up with a new toolmaking technique? Or did they migrate separately into the continent before scattering their tools across the Americas?
“We’re just beginning to answer that,” Waters said.
The Canadian
Guard
Henry
is seen in Allen
during an operation in 2010. If the globe’s climate warms 2 C above pre-industrial levels, the
A call for action
Acouple of weeks ago, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released their latest report.
It is titled: “Global Warming of 1.5 C, an IPCC special report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5 C above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways, in the context of the strengthening the global response to the threat of climate change, sustainable development, and efforts to eradicate poverty.”
Quite a mouthful.
A total of 91 authors composed the document and it was reviewed by thousands of experts prior to its release. Its central message is we are already seeing the consequences of a one-degree Celsius shift in the average surface temperature across the globe. Changes ranging from Arctic sea ice minimums to rising sea levels to extreme weather events and droughts can be shown to be connected to the changing temperature.
The report argues we will need to engage in drastic and rapid changes in our relationship with energy and carbon dioxide emissions in the next decade if we intend to limit global warming to 1.5 C by the end of this century.
It makes the case that a 1.5 C rise would be better than a full 2 C which is where we appear to be heading. For example, a summer free of sea ice in the Arctic would be a once-per-century event
Relativity
at 1.5 C versus a once per decade event at 2 C. We might actually save some of the coral reefs in our oceans at 1.5 C.
But despite all of the work and effort by scientists to both understand the basic science driving environmental processes and the macroscopic impact of molecular interactions, there are still people who do not believe in the science. Or accept the science, but do not think it is leading to changes in the climate. Or believe the climate is changing, but it is not a result of human interactions. Or it is anthropogenic, but there is nothing we can do about it.
I have been writing about climate change for close to 25 years.
In that time, I have tried to get across the basic science involved. For example, we know the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has steadily increased across the past 150 years from 280 ppm to 405 ppm – although we only have high precision measurements for the past 60 years.
But even over the past 60 years, we have seen carbon dioxide levels measured by the SCRIPPS Institute of Oceanography NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory from 315 ppm to 405 ppm. The measurement technique involves running a spectroscopic analysis of the air. By shining specific wavelengths of light through a sample, we can detect just how much light is absorbed and determine very precisely the concentration of the gases present. Similarly, we know with absolute certainty carbon dioxide absorbs infrared radiation or heat. Indeed, it is by measuring the extent of this absorbance in a spectrophotometer that we can determine the concentration of the gas in the atmosphere. We also know there are other compounds in the atmosphere which interact with infrared radiation and we know what the absorbance spectrum of all the gases in the air looks like. This understanding is one of the basic components for the concern about climate change. There is no doubt among scientists – despite U.S. President Donald Trump’s instincts – about the mechanism of heat transmission and absorption through the atmosphere. We can measure the input from the sun, the amount reflected by our albedo, the flow rate of heat through the atmosphere, the wavelengths at which energy is re-emitted by the Earth and any number of other parameters.
Over the past 60 years, as the science has evolved and the instrumentation has been developed and refined, we have been able to develop a very good understanding of the atmosphere with respect to heat flow and the impact of various gases in the atmosphere. We understand the basic science and we are gaining an understanding of the macroscopic impacts.
This is what the latest report from the IPCC provides. It is by no means a complete picture. It is an evolving understanding as we gain a better picture of everything involved. What feedback loops will be amplified? Where are the tipping points? What other variables might be involved?
But the message from the IPCC is simple. We have a limited time to act if we are to prevent even more impacts for life on this planet.
Will climate change wipe out life on this planet and destroy the Earth? No. The climate has changed in the past. But the last five major climate shifts resulted in mass extinctions and many of the minor extinctions appear to be linked to climate shifts. The present report provides the information politicians and policy makers need. The question is – will they act?
Coast
icebreaker
Larsen
Bay, Nunavut,
Arctic could be ice free once a decade.
Cougars fall to Ams in shootout
Ted CLARKE Citizen staff tclarke@pgcitizen.ca
Close, but no cigar.
The Prince George Cougars had to settle for a single point Wednesday after losing 4-3 in a shootout to the Tri-City Americans.
Nolan Yaremko and Isaac Johnson each connected for the only goals of the shootout to spoil the celebration for a sparse Cougar crowd at CN Centre.
The Americans (8-4-0-0) moved into second place in the U.S. Division. They’ve won their last four games. The Cougars (5-6-0-2) remain third in the B.C. Division.
The Cougars had a chance to end it in overtime when Americans defenceman Mitchell Brown was forced to hook Josh Curtis – sprung on a lead pass from Joel Lakusta. But the Cats’ power play failed to convert with 1:18 to work with before the shootout. They ended the game 1-for-7 on the power play, while the Americans went 2-for-5.
Down 3-1 to start the third period, the Americans came out with an all-out blitz and tied it up. Their forechecking forced the Cougars to take a penalty in the opening minute of the period and on the ensuing power play Parker AuCoin went to the short side and tucked one in behind Isaiah DiLaura. The Cougars suffered a noticeable energy dip in the final period and were outshot 11-4.
The equalizer came when Cougars winger Jackson Leppard got caught trying to stickhandle out of his own zone. Sasha Mutala stole the puck and fed it to Czech import Krystof Hrabik, who scored with a low shot from the slot.
In the first game of the series Tuesday the Cougars generated plenty of chances but lacked finish around the Tri-City net and suffered the consequences, losing 5-1. They shook off those demons early on in the rematch with two quick goals.
Cole Moberg jumped into the rush from his point position and tried to centre the puck but it hit the stick of Americans defenceman Samuel Stewart and slid into the net.
Josh Maser got into the scoring act 75 seconds later, collecting a
along the boards, past Tri-City Americans
and Americans played the second half of a doubleheader on Wednesday night at CN Centre.
big rebound kicked out by goalie Beck Warm after Ilijah Colina unloaded a shot, set up by a pass from Josh Curtis. With that assist, Curtis extended his point streak to six games.
The Americans started the second period with a power-play goal 1:55 into the period, a face-off circle one-timer from Yaremko. The Cougars’ power play, which had dipped to a league-worst 4-for-52 clip, finally struck oil, restoring the two-goal lead 10:38 into the second. The goal came right after Moberg forced Warm to make a tough save with a closerange blast from the side of the ice. Moberg got the puck behind the net for Ethan Browne and he fed Rhett Rhinehart for his first of the season, a low slapper to Warm’s stick side.
The Cougars will have few days to rest up before they board the bus to Kelowna Friday to play the
Rockets on Saturday.
LOOSE PUCKS: Attendance was announced at 2,130, slightly worse than Tuesday’s 2,162 crowd count. Those are the two smallest CN Centre crowds through seven games this season… The Americans are now three games into an 11-game stretch of games on the road (nearly a third of the
season total of 34)… Americans head coach Kelly Buchberger made his first visit to the visitors’ bench at CN Centre. The former Moose Jaw Warrior, a 51-year-old native of Langenburg, Sask., played 1,182 regular-season games and 97 in the playoffs in a 17-season NHL career as a right winger with Edmonton, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Phoenix and Pittsburgh. He was an assistant coach last season with the New York Islanders. Buchberger and Cougars GM Mark Lamb are best friends, dating back to their playing days with the Oilers… Leppard had to be helped off the ice late in the first period after Americans right winger Blake Stevenson levelled him with a high hit at centre ice. Stevenson made contact with Leppard’s head. Stevenson was assessed a major penalty and game misconduct. Leppard returned to the game halfway through the five-minute penalty.
T-wolves absorbing painful end to solid season
Ted CLARKE Citizen staff
The sting of being shunted from the U Sports Canada West conference playoff picture just before it was framed still haunts the UNBC Timberwolves men’s soccer team. How could a team with so much promise – by far the strongest squad the T-wolves have ever had since they joined U Sports/CIS in 2012 – be left on the outside looking in when eight teams kick off the postseason this weekend?
When the T-wolves left Prince George last weekend for Abbotsford they were the third-place
stakeholders in control of their own destiny. All they needed to claim their second-straight playoff ticket was a win or a pair of ties to close out the regular season against Fraser Valley Cascades.
Two plays, both in injury team, changed the T-wolves’ fate. In Friday’s game the Cascades broke a scoreless draw on a freekick header with two minutes left on the clock and in the rematch Saturday it was a hand-ball in the box that gave the Cascades a penalty kick with only a couple minutes left and they scored on it to produce a 2-2 tie. Then
on Sunday, while the T-wolves were driving home, the Thompson Rivers University WolfPack unexpectedly beat the previouslyundefeated UBC Thunderbirds
1-0 to leap past UNBC and claim the fourth and final Pacific Division playoff spot.
That’s all it took to end the Twolves’ season.
“That’s sport for you,” said head coach Steve Simonson. “I kind of always knew it wasn’t sealed up even though people thought it was and was trying to limit that talk until it was official. But after the TRU weekend it looked pretty good and UBCO it looked really good after that.
“It came down to the two games against Fraser Valley and Friday we gave away a goal in extra time and, ultimately, if that was a tie it would have worked out for us. Then on Saturday we give away a goal on a penalty shot that ended up killing us. If that didn’t go in (and the T-wolves had won) we would have ended up in third place.”
The WolfPack, last year’s national bronze medalists, got hot at the right time, winning five of their last six. TRU finished fourth with a 6-6-3 record, while UNBC (5-4-6) placed fifth.
“All we can say is full credit to TRU for doing what they needed to do, don’t begrudge them for getting the job done,” said Simonson. — see UNBC, page 8
CITIZEN PHOTO BY JAMES DOYLE
Prince George Cougars defenceman Ryan Schoettler advances the puck
defender Mitchell Brown. The Cougars
Champion in the house
Cardinals star wins Clemente Award
Citizen news service
BOSTON — Many around Major League Baseball rallied to help Puerto Rico after it was ravaged by Hurricane Maria last year.
The efforts of one native son were honoured with an award named for the island’s greatest player Wednesday.
St. Louis Cardinals catcher Yadier Molina was named the recipient of the Roberto Clemente Award, a fitting recognition for the star who grew up on Puerto Rico and idolized the island’s late Hall of Famer.
Commissioner Rob Manfred and Clemente’s widow, Vera Clemente, presented the award to members of Molina’s family before Game 2 of the World Series. It is given annually to the player who best represents Clemente’s humanitarian efforts.
Molina wasn’t on hand to receive the award himself because he is currently in Colombia, coaching Puerto Rico’s under-23 national baseball team in the Baseball World Cup. Clemente also managed the national team while he was playing in the major leagues.
Molina has worked tirelessly to help Puerto Rico recover from the effects of Maria last year.
The 36-year-old Molina and his wife, Wanda, in 2010 created the Foundation4 (Fundacion4) to improve the lives of underprivileged children on the island who have been affected by poverty, abuse and cancer.
“What he represents for the whole country and for all of Latin America is the same spirit that dad had,” Clemente’s son, Luis, said of Molina. “We’re very proud to continue the Clemente legacy.” Red Sox manager Alex Cora, who is from Caguas, Puerto Rico, greeted Molina’s family during the award presentation and gave Vera Clemente flowers.
Cora, who has also been a visual presence in the hurricane relief efforts back on his native island, said he is an admirer of the work
Raptors move to 5-0 on season
Molina has done there in the aftermath of the storm.
“I call him the leader because he’s the leader of our national team. He’s the leader of the St. Louis Cardinals. And he’s the leader on the field. But off the field, he became the leader last year,” Cora said.
“Very proud of what he’s done throughout his career. But I think last year was the highlight of his career.”
UNBC women preparing for Bisons
from page 7
“What speaks volumes to our season is literally, if that decision in extra time Saturday is not given against us, it’s our best season of all time and that’s the fine margins of the year. That’s how close we were.”
For forward Francesco Bartolillo and defenders Gordon Hall and Conrad Rowlands – all three are in their fifth seasons of college soccer eligibility – there is no tomorrow. They’ve played their last U Sports game. Seven other players are graduating UNBC this school year and won’t be back next season, including: goalie Scott Brown; forward Matt Jubinville; defenders Clay Kiiskila and Emmanuel Drame; and midfielders Liam Stewart, Jesse Rake and Josh McAvoy.
“That’s the most frustrating part of the end of the season –of course you want to do well results-wise, but you’re saying goodbye to teammates and that’s a hard one, for sure,” said Simonson.
Losing so many experienced players is a bitter pill but Simonson says the T-wolves won’t be left with an empty cupboard in 2019.
“We do lose players but we’ve been building over the last two or three years to make sure we’re not caught by this,” he said. “Two-thirds of our starting 11 will still be here and guys who have been developing for two years will take the place of guys who are leaving. I think we’re pretty well set up for it.”
Figuring in that future are second-year midfielder Abou Cisse and rookie forward Anthony Preston, who made an impact this season. Cisse is listed as a sophomore but this was his first year to get significant playing time.
“They’re both great players and we know that, but people don’t know much about them,” said Simonson. “If they’re going to be that good in Year 1, what are they going to be like in Year 3, 4, 5? It’s exciting.”
The team will continue to train together indoors five days a week at the Northern Sport Centre until the spring term ends in April. Simonson says they’ll have one more trip coming in March, playing a series of exhibition games somewhere in a warmer climate.
TORONTO (CP) — Kawhi Leonard scored a season-high 35 points to help the Toronto Raptors improve to 5-0 with a 112-105 win over the Minnesota Timberwolves on Wednesday, matching their best-ever start to a season.
Toronto also won five straight to open the 2015-16 campaign.
A nine-time All-Star, Molina is an eight-time Gold Glove Award winner and has spent all 15 of his big league seasons with the Cardinals. Clemente died on Dec. 31, 1972, when his airplane that was carrying supplies to earthquake victims in Nicaragua crashed after taking off from Puerto Rico.
It was Toronto’s 15th straight home victory over Minnesota – a franchiserecord for consecutive games against a single opponent at home. Toronto has not lost at home to the Timberwolves since Jan. 21, 2004.
Toronto’s Kyle Lowry had his thirdstraight double-double with 13 points
— see World Series coverage, page 9
Molina is the third Puerto Rican-born player to win the award and fourth from the island. He joins Carlos Beltran (2013), Carlos Delgado (2006) and Edgar Martinez (2004).
and 10 assists.
Raptors big men Serge Ibaka (15) and Jonas Valanciunas (16) combined for 31 points. Valanciunas, a seven-footer, hit two three-pointers on the night to the delight of the sellout crowd of 19,800 at Scotiabank Arena.
“It’s hard because of geography and we have to find ways to generate the funds to get out of town because it’s such a competitive disadvantage for us compared to the UBCs of the world who can play games every week all year long in a massive city against whoever they want,” said Simonson. “Those winter games are something we need to try and claw more (wins) out of the year and help close that competitive gap.”
• The UNBC women did make the playoffs and will take on the Manitoba Bisons Friday night in Vancouver in a suddendeath elimination game. The game at Thunderbirds Stadium starts at 6 p.m. The winner advances to the quarterfinals Sunday at noon against UBC.
See Friday’s Citizen for a women’s soccer playoff preview.
Ashleigh McIvor, the first-ever Olympic gold medalist in women’s skicross, was the main speaker at a Hart Highlands Winter Club fundraising dinner at the Hart Community Centre on Saturday night. McIvor, from Whistler, won Olympic gold in 2010 on her home hill. Skicross was brand
new to the Olympics that year.
AP FILE PHOTO
St. Louis Cardinals slugger Yadier Molina, left, celebrates a Sept. 4 grand slam against the Washington Nationals with teammate Yairo Munoz.
Sox have Dodgers in World Series hole
Kyle HIGHTOWER Citizen news service
BOSTON — J.D. Martinez and the Boston Red Sox made magic with two outs during the American League playoffs.
With a World Series on the line, seems they have plenty left.
Martinez delivered a two-out tiebreaking single, and Boston got all of its runs with two down while beating the Los Angeles Dodgers 4-2 on Wednesday night for a 2-0 World Series lead.
Boston has done most of its scoring with two in the books: nine of its 12 runs through two World Series games have come that way, and 36 of 68 for the post-season.
Martinez has been the electrifying force for much of that two-out October lightning. He entered Tuesday batting .667 with a 1.515 OPS with two outs in the post-season.
Despite playing on the sore right ankle he rolled in Game 1, Boston’s free-agent pickup went the other way for a two-run single in the fifth, a two-out knock that snapped a 2-2 tie.
Martinez has 13 RBIs through 11 post-season games, and seven of those have come with two outs.
The Red Sox entered Wednesday batting .405 with a 1.335 OPS with two outs and runners in scoring position, getting 29 runs out of those situations. Then they went 2-for-4 in those situations Wednesday.
Nothing new for Boston. The 108-win Red Sox led the majors with 329 two-out runs during the regular season.
That relentless offence has chased some of baseball’s best pitchers thanks to threats one through nine in the batting order.
In Game 1, Andrew Benintendi had four hits to send away Clayton Kershaw. Eduardo Nunez then provided a pinch-hit, three-run homer late to help seal it. Of course, Nunez did it with two outs.
Ian Kinsler kicked off Wednesday’s two-out trouble, driving a single down the third-base line to score Xander Bogaerts from second on a two-out offering from starter Hyun-Jin Ryu in the second.
Ryu nursed a 2-1 lead into the fifth and got two quick outs. He then gave up singles to Christian Vazquez and Mookie Betts and walked Andrew Benintendi.
Ryan Madson relieved with the bases loaded. For the second night in a row, he opened by walking
Puck pursuit
Steve Pearce, this time to bring in the tying run. Martinez then poked a fastball into shallow right, bringing Betts and Benintendi around to score.
Dodgers’ moves don’t work
BOSTON (AP) — Maybe this World Series just isn’t in the cards for the Los Angeles Dodgers. Trying to play the matchup
game, manager Dave Roberts’ team instead looked overmatched at Fenway Park. They staggered home after a 4-2 loss Wednesday night, down 2-0 to the do-everything-right Boston Red Sox. Not even a bit of new-age strategy could save them.
The Dodgers led 2-1 in the fifth inning when right-hander Ryan Madson was summoned to replace lefty starter Hyun-Jin Ryu with the bases loaded and two outs.
As Madson warmed up, a Dodgers bat boy trotted onto the diamond, where outfielders Chris Taylor, Cody Bellinger and Yasiel Puig were waiting. The bat boy gave each of them laminated cards, presumably with new alignments for defensive positioning for Madson on the mound.
They didn’t help when Madson walked Steve Pearce, forcing home the tying run and bringing cleanup man J.D. Martinez to the plate. Martinez led the majors with 130 RBIs this season, and drove in two more runs in Game 1. A dangerous hitter, no doubt. So Puig moved back in right field. Way back, in fact. And when Martinez whistled a line drive to right, Puig was nowhere close. He couldn’t even begin to make a move to catch it, and the ball dropped for a goahead, two-run single. As the fans went wild, Puig could do little except look at all the grass around him.
Tough road test in store for Lions
Citizen news service
It seems the B.C. Lions have cured their road woes.
The Lions opened the season dropping their first five road games before snapping that dubious streak with a 32-14 win over the Montreal Alouettes on Sept. 14. Since then, B.C. has won two of its last three contests away from B.C. Place Stadium.
B.C. (9-7) will have its road mettle put to the test Saturday night when it visits Saskatchewan (11-6). The Roughriders’ rabid fans make Mosaic Stadium a very difficult place to play at the best of times, let alone with the hometown team still battling for home-field advantage in the West Division playoffs (depending on what the Calgary Stampeders do Friday night, that is).
The Lions have also punched their postseason ticket, although it’s still unclear exactly where they’ll finish in the standings. But B.C. comes in as one of the CFL’s hottest teams, having won three straight and six-of-seven games overall.
The Riders are no slouches, having won four of their last five games and eight of 10. That includes a 29-24 road victory over Calgary last weekend without rush end Charleston Hughes.
Hughes, who leads the CFL with 15 sacks, didn’t play after being charged Oct. 11 with impaired driving and failing to supply a breath sample for analysis. The 11-year veteran is expected to return this week.
But the Lions also have a road win over
Calgary to their credit, a 26-21 decision Oct. 13. B.C. clinched a playoff berth last weekend after rallying for a 42-32 win over the Edmonton Eskimos.
Quarterback Travis Lulay threw four TD strikes in that game, three to DeVier Posey. And Tyrell Sutton ran for 97 yards on 16 carries after rushing for 106 yards in his Lions debut versus Calgary. The Riders effectively bounced back from their lopsided 31-0 loss to Winnipeg on Oct. 13 with their five-point victory over Calgary. Quarterback Zach Collaros threw for 352 yards – his first 300-yard passing performance this season – while Saskatchewan ran for 140 total yards and two touchdowns.
With both teams having stout defences, this would appear to be a very tight game. In that scenario, Saskatchewan’s loud, enthusiastic fans should give the Riders an edge.
Prediction: Saskatchewan Calgary Stampeders at Winnipeg Blue Bombers (Friday night) The Blue Bombers (9-7) can clinch a playoff berth with a fifth straight victory. Receiver Darvin Adams is 98 yards shy of a second 1,000-yard campaign and running back Andrew Harris is second overall in rushing (1,269 yards). Calgary (12-4) has dropped two straight and can finish first in the West with a win. The CFL’s top-ranked defence allowed almost 500 net yards last week but it’s hard to imagine a Bo Levi Mitchell-led team losing three straight. Prediction: Calgary
Los Angeles Dodgers outfielder Chris Taylor waits for a pitcher change during the eighth inning of Game 2 of the World Series on Wednesday night in Boston.
Jake Virtanen of the Vancouver Canucks, left, and Reilly Smith of the Vegas Golden Knights battle for the puck during Wednesday night’s game in Las Vegas. The teams went to a shootout and the Canucks won 3-2.
NEWS IN BRIEF
B.C. bison killed by anthrax
FORT ST. JOHN (CP) — Thirteen bison on a farm in northeastern B.C. died of naturally acquired anthrax, a bacteria that the provincial Agriculture Ministry says can remain dormant in certain soil conditions for many years. The ministry says in a statement that the animals are thought to have contracted the disease from exposure to dormant anthrax spores in the soil of a feeding site on a farm near Fort St. John. The site is no longer being used and the farm has reported no other losses in its remaining heard of 150 animals.
A vaccine for anthrax for livestock is available and the ministry says exposed animals can be successfully treated if diagnosed early.
It says that anthrax can affect humans, although it’s very rare and there is no indication that anyone in contact with these animals has been infected. Anthrax can remain dormant in soil under certain conditions for many years and the ministry says it occurs naturally in livestock in the Prairies.
Provincial pot sales brisk
VICTORIA (CP) — The B.C. Liquor Distribution Branch rang up more than 21,000 cannabis transactions during the first seven days of legalization, nearly half of which occurred on Day 1. The BCLDB says there were 17,266 online sales completed between Oct. 17 and 23, while a further 4,014 sales were made at the province’s lone B.C. Cannabis Store in Kamloops.
On Oct. 17 alone, the first day of cannabis legalization in Canada, there were 9,100 online sales registered at bccannabisstores.com and 800 transactions completed at the Kamloops pot shop. Despite being the sole wholesale distributor of non-medical cannabis in B.C., the BCLDB is declining to release more specific figures relating to cannabis sales. A request for first-week dollar figures was denied by the branch.
“We will not be releasing sales figures, and moving forward we will be providing cumulative transaction totals only,” the BCLDB said in a statement.
Ammonia leak at B.C. facility
LANGLEY (CP) — An ammonia leak at a dog-food manufacturing facility in Langley forced the evacuation of an industrial area.
Deputy fire chief Bruce Ferguson says the ammonia leaked when a refrigeration system failed but maintenance contractors had contained it by the time firefighters arrived so there is no danger to the public.
However, Ferguson says the fire department evacuated businesses within a 400-metre radius of the Gloucester Industrial Estates in case the contractors’ vacuum pumps fail.
Mail bombs sent to Democrats, CNN
Michael BALSAMO, Eric TUCKER and Colleen LONG Citizen news service
WASHINGTON — A sudden wave of pipe bombs targeting Hillary Clinton, former President Barack Obama, other prominent Democrats and CNN was thwarted without physical harm, but an anxiety-filled day on Wednesday deepened political tensions and fears two weeks before national midterm elections.
None of the bombs detonated as law enforcement took them away for examination and disposal.
The first crude bomb to be discovered had been delivered Monday to the suburban New York compound of George Soros, a liberal billionaire and major contributor to Democratic causes.
The FBI said an additional package was intended for former Attorney General Eric Holder, but that one ended up at a Florida office of Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, whose return address was on it.
Later Wednesday, a package addressed to Rep. Maxine Waters with similar markings and characteristics to the other devices was intercepted at a Los Angeles mail facility.
The targets of the bombs were some of the figures most frequently criticized by U.S. President Donald Trump, who still assails Clinton at rallies while supporters chant “lock her up” – two years after he defeated her and she largely left the political scene. Trump accuses Soros of paying protesters and singles out cable news network CNN as he rails against the “fake news” media.
He took a softer tone at a rally in Wisconsin Wednesday night.
“Let’s get along,” he said. “By the way, do you see how nice I’m behaving tonight? Have you ever seen this?”
The attacks overtook other news in an already-tense political season that could reshape Congress and serve as a referendum on the first two years of Trump’s presidency. The actions, which caused panicked building evacuations and reports of additional explosives that later proved unfounded, are bound to add to fears that overheated rhetoric could lead to deadly violence as the parties engage in bitter fights over immigration, the Supreme Court and the treatment of women.
The White House condemned the attacks aimed at Democrats and other perceived foes of the administration.
“Acts or threats of political violence have no place in the United States,”
A member of the FBI Weapons of Mass Destruction team works outside the Time Warner Center in New York on Wednesday. A police bomb squad was sent to CNN’s offices to investigate a bomb mailed to the news outlet.
Trump said. “This egregious conduct is abhorrent.”
Other Republican leaders said the same. But Democratic Senate and House leaders Chuck Schumer of New York and Nancy Pelosi of California said such words “ring hollow” when coming from Trump. They noted the president’s recent praise of a GOP congressman who body-slammed a reporter, among other Trump statements.
Law enforcement officials said all the packages were similar: manila envelopes with bubble-wrap interior bearing six stamps and the return address of Florida Rep. Schultz. She is the former chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee who was accused by Clinton rivals of secretly helping the party’s eventual presidential nominee.
The package intended for Holder had the wrong address and was forwarded to Wasserman Schultz.
The devices all were sent to an FBI lab in Virginia to be studied. Officials provided no details on a possible suspect or motive.
“Suffice it to say, it appears an individual or individuals sent out multiple, similar packages,” said John Miller, the New York Police Department’s head of intelligence and counterterrorism, who briefed reporters.
The U.S. Secret Service intercepted a bomb that was addressed to Hillary Clinton at the Chappaqua, N.Y., home
she shares with former president Bill Clinton, and another that was sent to Obama at his home in Washington.
A police bomb squad removed still another from CNN’s New York office, which was evacuated. The package was addressed to former CIA Director John Brennan, who has publicly clashed with Trump and is a regular CNN contributor.
Speaking at an event in Austin, Texas, Brennan called the spate of pipe bombs “an unfortunate turn of events,” particularly if he and others are being targeted for their public comments.
“Unfortunately, I think Donald Trump, too often, has helped to incite some of these feelings of anger, if not violence, when he points to acts of violence or also talks about swinging at somebody from the press, the media,” Brennan said.
Overhead TV shots showed a truck carrying that device being driven away. The package sent to CNN contained a live explosive, with wires and a black pipe, and an envelope with white powder, officials said. The powder was tested and determined to have been harmless, according to a law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation.
New York City Police Commissioner James O’Neill says investigators are reviewing security video to see if they can identify a courier believed to have delivered the pipe bomb package to CNN’s office.
Mockingbird chosen as America’s best-loved novel
Lynn ELBER Citizen news service
To Kill a Mockingbird, a coming-of-age story about racism and injustice, overpowered wizards and time travellers to be voted America’s best-loved novel by readers nationwide.
The 1960 book by Harper Lee emerged as No. 1 in PBS’ The Great American Read survey, whose results were announced Tuesday on the show’s finale. More than four million votes were cast in the six-month-long contest that put 100 titles to the test. Books that were published as a series counted as a single entry.
The other top-five finishers in order of votes were Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series about a timespanning love; J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter boy wizard tales; Jane Austen’s romance Pride and Prejudice; and J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings fantasy saga. Turns out the contest was a Mockingbird runaway.
“The novel started out at No. 1 on the first day of the vote, and it never wavered,” series host Meredith Vieira said.
Joining her to sing the book’s praises was writer Aaron Sorkin, whose adaptation of Mockingbird starts Broadway previews next month, and cast members. Sorkin (The West Wing, The Social Network) said reading Lee’s novel was his first brush with “astonishing writing.”
“There is soul-crushing injustice in this book that still exists,” he said. “And at the centre, morality, decency and what it is to be a person strikes us.”
LaTanya Richardson Jackson, who portrays Calpurnia in the play, marveled at Lee’s achievement.
“I was most impressed that a woman wrote that way” during that era, the actress said, and that Lee was so “deeply involved on the right side of right.”
Lee’s slender, Pulitzer Prize-winning novel proved enduring enough to overcome the popularity of hefty epics adapted as blockbuster movie franchises (the Potter and Tolkien works) or for TV (Outlander). Even Pride and Prejudice, the 200-year-old inspira-
Acclaimed poet dies at 64
tion for numerous TV and movie versions and with an army of Janeites devoted to Austen and her work, couldn’t best Lee’s novel.
Debbie Ford of Orion, Ill., an Outlander fan whose love of the books was showcased on an episode of The Great American Read, expressed disappointment they didn’t win. But she delighted in the attention they – and the joy of reading – received.
“I believe this PBS series has reminded some of us again that reading is important, and it has exposed us to books that we may not ordinarily pick up. And that’s such a good thing!” Ford said in an email Tuesday, adding a friendly plug: “So please go read a book that you have not read before – especially if you haven’t yet discovered Outlander!”
To Kill a Mockingbird has sold more than 40 million copies worldwide and remains a fixture on school reading lists. The 1962 screen adaptation won three Oscars, including a best-actor trophy for Gregory Peck’s portrayal of heroic Atticus Finch.
Set in the 1930s South, the book centres on attorney Finch and his young children, daughter Scout and son Jem. When Finch defends an AfricanAmerican man falsely accused of assaulting a white woman, the trial and its repercussions open Scout’s eyes to the world around her, good and bad.
Lee’s second published novel, Go Set a Watchman, was written in the 1950s before Mockingbird but is essentially a sequel. After being put aside by the author, it was rediscovered and released in 2015. Lee died the next year at age 89.
Besides the TV series, The Great American Read initiative included a 50,000-member online book club and video content across PBS platforms, Facebook and YouTube that drew more than five million views.
The 100-book list voted on by readers was based on an initial survey of about 7,000 Americans, with an advisory panel of experts organizing the list. Books had to have been published in English but not written in the language, and one book or series per author was allowed. Bookworms could vote once daily for their favourite work.
NEW YORK (AP) — A prize-winning poet admired for his candour and sharp, off-beat humour has died. Tony Hoagland was 64. Jeff Shotts, executive editor of Graywolf Press, said Hoagland died Tuesday at his home in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The cause was pancreatic cancer. A native of Fort Bragg, N.C., Hoagland
published several works of poetry and essays about poetry. The titles helped sum up his take on life: Unincorporated Persons in the Late Honda Dynasty, Application for Release from the Dream and Priest Turned Therapist Treats Fear of God, which came out this year. He was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle award for his 2005 collection Rain.
The Hockey Song taking place of honour
Citizen news service
Stompin’ Tom’s iconic sports anthem The Hockey Song is being immortalized in the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame.
The catchy ditty celebrating “the good ol’ hockey game” will be honoured on Saturday as the Toronto Maple Leafs play the Winnipeg Jets at the Scotiabank Arena.
During the ceremony, the late singer’s son Tom Connors Jr. will be presented with a hall of fame plaque, while country singer Tim Hicks will perform the song.
The induction marks the latest achievement for a novelty track which spent decades as a cult favourite before it graduated into the Canadian pop culture canon.
Released in 1973, The Hockey Song was a favourite among the Saint John, N.B., singer’s fans during a period of unmatched
success for Connors.
At the time, he was on a streak that saw him winning the male country singer Juno Award for five years straight, from 1971 to 1975, propelled by hits like Bud the Spud and Sudbury Saturday Night.
But it wasn’t until the Ottawa Senators began playing The Hockey Song in the early 1990s that it caught the attention of Leafs coach Pat Burns. He called for the song to be played at his team’s games as well.
The Hockey Song quickly spread to other professional hockey rinks across the country where fans enthusiastically sang the chorus from the stands.
Fellow musicians have shown their adoration for the song too, with artists like Great Big Sea and Corb Lund performing their own versions.
Connors died in 2013.
AP PHOTO, LEFT, AND HARPER VIA AP
This combination photo shows author Harper Lee during a ceremony honouring the four new members of the Alabama Academy of Honor at the Capitol in Montgomery, Ala., on Aug. 20, 2007, left, and the cover of her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, To Kill a Mockingbird.
Jack was born in Canora, Ontario on December 15, 1936 where he grew up and met his wife, they had three children, two boys James Thomas Bruvall and Keith Richard Bruvall and one daughter Laurie Ann Bruvall. Jack and his wife divorced when his kids were young and he got on a train and came from Ontario to Prince George and then to Mackenzie in late 70’s early 80’s where he got a job with CN Rail as a conductor where he worked till he retired. Jack died at the age of 82 peacefully at the Mackenzie Hospital. He is predeceased by his mother Borghild Bruvall, father Bernt Alf Mathiassen Bruvall, and son Keith Richard Bruvall. He has left behind a son and daughter, and 10 grandchildren. Jack had many friends and everyone who knew Jack loved him. He will be dearly missed by all who had the pleasure of meeting him. A Celebration of Life will be held on Saturday, October 27, 2018 from 12pm until 3pm at the Elk’s building in Mackenzie, BC.
“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. Cita will be laid to rest in the Prince George Memorial Park Cemetery. Following the interment, friends are welcome to join the family at St. Mary’s Parish for some snacks and refreshments.
JAMES FRASER
ROBERTS (JIM)
January 28, 1952October 21, 2018
It is with heavy hearts we announce the passing of our beloved husband, father, grandfather and a true friend Jim Roberts on October 21, 2018.
He is survived by his family, best friend and loving wife Deb, daughter Tannis (Chris) and son Jayson. He is also survived by his 2 grandchildren Brayden and Alyssa whom he loved more than anything. There will be a Celebration of Life on Monday, October 29, 2018 at the Blackburn Community Hall from 1:00 - 3:30pm.
In lieu of flowers, please make donations to the PG Hospice Society.
Elmer Ladd Enders, born in Nipawin, Saskatchewan, June 18th, 1924, passed away at home on Friday, Oct 19th, 7:30pm, at the age of 94. Elmer is survived by Helen, his loving wife of 70 years, daughter Rita, sons Garry/Suzanne, Rocky, 3 grandchildren - Corina/Philip, Jen/Mike, Jess/Brandon and 3 great grandchildren - Dagon, Evan and Henley. He was predeceased by his daughter Valerie in 2008. Elmer and Helen were known for putting smiles on many faces with their music and Elmer’s home made custom instruments. He will be greatly missed but will live on in our memories. At his request there will be no service, but the family will host a social gathering with light refreshments at the Pineview Community Hall on Bendixon Road from 12:00 - 3:00pm Sunday Oct 28, 2018.
April
Blanche Mary Hourie
12, 1937 - October 9, 2018
Floyd Edwin Glover
12, 1963 - October 6, 2018
Floyd was survived by his father, Warren Glover; daughter, Leah Glover; son, Aaron Glover; granddaughter, Lakeli; sisters, Debbie Villeneuve, Stella Ross and brother, David Sanguez. He was predeceased by his mother, Winifred Villeneuve
DREW FRANK SCHEMENAUER
2,
MONEY IN BRIEF
Currencies
OTTAWA (CP) — These are in-
dicative
BoC raises rate, more increases coming
Andy BLATCHFORD Citizen news service
OTTAWA — The Bank of Canada raised its trend-setting interest rate Wednesday and sent signals that future hikes could be upon Canadians sooner than previously expected.
With a big source of trade uncertainty finally out of the way, the central bank delivered a quarter-point rate increase for the fifth time since the summer of 2017. The move lifted benchmark to 1.75 per cent – its highest level in about a decade.
The hike arrived with Canada’s economy showing resilience and the unemployment rate hovering near four-decade lows.
The increase followed governor Stephen Poloz’s first policy meeting since Canada agreed with the United States and Mexico earlier this month on an updated North American free trade deal. The bank said the new trade agreement will reduce uncertainty, which it described as “an important curb” on business confidence and investment.
The removal of one of the trade shackles also coincided with a notable change: a single word yanked from the bank’s statement.
Recent post-policy-meeting statements used the word “gradual” to help explain how the bank’s governing council would approach the timing of future rate increases.
This time around, however, the bank decided to leave the word out. Some observers interpreted the omission as a signal of the bank’s shift to a faster, more-aggressive hiking path.
The markets today
TORONTO (CP) — North American markets fell hard as Canada’s main stock index posted its worst day in more than three years Wednesday, just two weeks after recording another large broad-based decline.
The S&P/TSX composite index closed down 2.5 per cent or 376.04 points to 14,909.13, marking the largest single-day decline since Sept. 1, 2015 and surpassing the 336.65 point drop on Oct. 10.
The decrease was led by the cannabis-heavy health-care sector, which fell 5.9 per cent. But it also included the heavyweight materials, financials, industrials and energy sectors, which together account for three-quarters of the Toronto Exchange.
“We’re in a risk-off environment that’s affecting all sectors except the safety sectors like utilities (while) telecom is down very modestly,” says Anish Chopra, managing director with Portfolio Management Corp.
Although it’s difficult to predict the market’s future path, he said there is an environment of slower global growth amid an era of increasing tariffs.
“It’s hard to make a really bullish case for the TSX unless you see large increases in the commodity price environment and the solution to the pipeline capacity issue out west,” he said in an interview.
The triple-digit market slide came as the loonie traded higher in the wake of an interest rate hike by the Bank of Canada.
The Canadian dollar traded at an average of 76.75 cents US compared with an average of 76.35 cents US on Tuesday in the wake of the Bank of Canada’s decision to raise its key interest rate by a quarter of a percentage point to 1.75 per cent. In New York, American exchanges were walloped as they fell as much as 4.4 per cent.
The Dow Jones industrial average was down 608.01 points to 24,583.42. The S&P 500 index lost 84.59 points to 2,656.10, while the Nasdaq composite shed 4.4 per cent or 329.14 points to 7,108.40.
The December crude contract was up 39 cents at US$66.82 per barrel and the December natural gas contract was down 5.6 cents at US$3.23 per mmBTU. The December gold contract was down US$5.70 at US$1,231.10 an ounce and the December copper contract was essentially unchanged at US$2.76 a pound.
Poloz insisted the word’s exclusion was designed to give the bank more flexibility when it comes to the speed at which it chooses to proceed.
“Markets seem to have settled on ‘gradual’ meaning we would only move on every second meeting, to put it most bluntly,” Poloz told reporters Wednesday when asked about the change.
“We thought, well, we really don’t want to reinforce that as a locked-in, mechanical expectation. And so, this is serving notice that it could be faster or it could be slower.”
Either way, the bank sent the a clear message that more increases will be needed to bring the rate to a “neutral stance” in order to keep infla-
tion from running too hot. Poloz’s team has pegged the neutral rate at between 2.5 and 3.5 per cent, so several more increases are likely on the way.
The bank stressed the pace of future hikes will be guided by how well households are adjusting to the higher interest rates, given their high levels of debt.
So far, the bank said Canadians have been making spending adjustments in response to earlier rate hikes and stricter mortgage policies – and credit growth continues to moderate.
Household vulnerabilities – while still elevated – have edged down as a result, it said.
“You always need to see more data because it’s still relatively early days, but they seem to be adjusting as we had expected,” senior deputy governor Carolyn Wilkins said.
“I think higher interest rates are always difficult when people haven’t seen them in a long time.”
Poloz said he understands rate increases can be difficult for some people, but he argued the economy is running at its capacity and no
longer needs stimulus.
“It’s our job to prevent the thing from overheating and creating inflation pressures down the road,” he said.
Until the hike Wednesday, the interest rate hadn’t been above 1.5 per cent since December 2008. At that time, during the financial crisis, the bank made a three-quarter-point cut to the benchmark, bringing it to 1.5 per cent from 2.25 per cent.
Moving forward, the bank predicts the economy to remain solid.
Consumer spending is expected to continue expanding at a “healthy pace,” thanks in large part to the steady rise of incomes and the strength of consumer confidence.
It projects exports to keep growing at a moderate clip, even though they will face limitations from several factors – including transportation capacity constraints, global trade uncertainty and stiff competition, particularly from the U.S.
The report predicted business investmentoutside the oil and gas sector - to expand due to solid domestic and foreign demand.
The bank noted, however, that Canada is still grappling with competitiveness challenges linked to major U.S. tax and regulatory changes as well as ongoing uncertainties around pipeline approval. It anticipates these factors will encourage some exporters to delay their investments or to make them outside Canada.
Following the new North American trade agreement, the bank now expects lingering trade tensions – such as U.S. metals tariffs and Canada’s countermeasures – to lower business investment by just 0.7 per cent by the end of 2020, compared with the 1.4 per cent reduction it had predicted in July. Exports are now expected to take a negative hit of just 0.3 per cent compared to the previous prediction of a 0.7 per cent reduction.
The bank also released its latest monetary policy report, which predicted Canada’s real gross domestic product to expand 2.1 per cent in 2019, down from its July call of 2.2 per cent, and by 1.9 per cent in 2020.
Its growth projection for this year has been increased slightly to 2.1 per cent, up from its previous prediction of two per cent.
Some children are born with a hand in the cookie jar
Alocal fiction writer was doing a reading at the college one evening a couple of years ago.
It was a story about a wilderness journey for an adventurous young woman. Since the author was also a friend of a friend, we were all very excited to attend as a family.
Arriving early, we took up several of the better seats in the centre of the small lecture theatre. And that’s when we noticed the cookies. Stacks of them. Huge ones.
The event was shortly after the dinner hour, and apparently none of the other 50 to 60 in attendance were hungry. I also noted that no other children were in the crowd and interpreted that in terms of cookies per capita.
Just as I arrived at the cookie table and started loading up, the signal was given for the start of the event, so I clumsily grabbed enough for our family – two each. It’s a big family and thus it was an unwieldy armload of goods. I squeezed past my girls and distributed the loot to them, sitting down, just as the author introduced herself.
She set the stage for the opening scene of the novel. A stunningly beautiful river. A backwoods canoe ride. Then came a warning about sexual content. My wife glanced at me with that “you’re dead” look.
I shrugged it off and took a bite of my cookie as the storyteller waded into the opening sex scene rather abruptly. My daughters looked like they had all been thwacked in the head with a dead seagull. Flushed cheeks, big eyes.
My wife was glowing red. I took another bite of my cookie, certain that the main character would soon realize that she was Catholic, but as the description continued to unfold, I too started to sweat a bit.
Gagging on my cookie, a minute later we were all balancing stolen baked goods in our hands, and “excuse-me-ing” through the tight row of seats. All eyes were on us, including the author’s, who paused briefly and almost, but not quite asked for her cookies back.
A moment later we had escaped from lecture hall along with our baked goods. A nice outcome really. Saved from an awkward moment of explicit dialogue, our cookies still in-hand. Depending on how you write your will, chil-
It’s Only Money
dren of successful investors will probably get all the cookies they’ll ever need and more. Here are a few points to consider so the children of financially-successful parents get some of the lessons of life, without too much baked-in privilege.
Raise financially responsible children
Most people who have built a relatively high level of wealth have done so through hard work, either as a business owner, executive or professional. Many are concerned that their children won’t recognize the value of all that work.
A solid financial education is a key part of every child’s successful future. The best way to protect your children from “affluenza” is to prevent it in the first place.
Give children a reasonable allowance
An allowance to your children can provide much more than a pool of spending money. You can use an allowance to teach money management skills to your children. For example, your 12-year-old might get $12 per week ($1 per week for each year of age can be a starting point), but with strings attached from the get-go, similar to the following:
• Save one-third. Introducing the concept of “paying yourself first” at a young age will help kids manage expectations and recognize the value of saving for the future. Also consider having your children read well-known and easy-to-read financial planning books.
• Spend one-third. Figuring out how to stretch this amount will develop valuable budgeting skills. Let them buy some of their own clothes
and supplies with the funds.
• Share one-third with charitable causes. Children will develop a social conscience as they decide which organizations and causes to support. This system is flexible enough to work for kids of all ages and can be easily modified to suit your family’s specific objectives.
Set limits
Parents with above-average financial resources aren’t able to say “no” with that old parental standby: “We can’t afford it.”
But they still need to teach the lesson that we don’t always get what we want. One solution is to sit down as a family and draw up a monthly or semi-annual budget that accommodates reasonable activities and purchases for everyone in the family.
When the kids invariably ask for something that’s not part of the plan, you’ll have an ironclad answer: “No, that’s not in the budget. But maybe we can include it next time.”
Explain the numbers
When children start earning income, they should understand how to read their pay slips and bank statements. You can also consider having them take part in preparing their own income tax returns.
What if it’s too late?
If you feel like your children are already too spoiled, or if you have concerns about their choice of partners, or potential creditors, then you may wish to explore a testamentary trust. Triggered at the death of the second parent, this tool can manage the dispersion of wealth according to your reasonable wishes. Mark Ryan is an investment advisor with RBC Dominion Securities Inc. (Member – Canadian Investor Protection Fund), and these are Ryan’s views, and not those of RBC Dominion Securities. This article is for information purposes only. Please consult with a professional advisor before taking any action based on information in this article. See his website at: http://dir.rbcinvestments.com/mark.ryan.
MARK RYAN
POLOZ
How to know where to sit in a meeting
Karla MILLER Citizen news service
Reader: I’m a project leader. I recently organized a meeting in our small conference room. After I sat down, my supervisor told me I was sitting in “John’s” seat. I apologized and immediately took another seat.
A few minutes later, John, a manager, arrived and sat in the seat I had vacated. I felt uncomfortable about being told to move, as I was the only woman at this meeting. I have not worked much with John, although my supervisor says he is considered a “genius.”
When I told a female co-worker about the incident, she said it reminds her of Rosa Parks, with a man telling a woman to get up so another man can sit down. I have been quiet about this event, but now wonder if I should inform my supervisor’s boss about this or consult with the EEOC.
Karla: My first thought was, is your coworker seriously comparing this white-collar seating squabble to an iconic event in the struggle against institutionalized racism? Let’s dial that rhetoric back a tick.
Now then. I can see why it might raise your hackles that you, as project leader and meeting organizer, were not afforded the minimal courtesy of being allowed your choice of seats. But I can think of several explanations that would have nothing to do with you or your gender:
John may have a hidden condition, such as claustrophobia or PTSD, that is alleviated by sitting in that particular seat.
The same traits that give John a reputation as a genius may also make him extremely particular about seating arrangements, and management may have decided that’s a small price to pay for his contributions.
That seat may traditionally go to someone in John’s role. (My editor informs me that the Washington Post newsroom meetings follow role-based seating traditions.)
Or John may just be a privileged crank with seniority whose preferences are in-
dulged out of mindless habit or fear.
Or I could be completely off base, and this one incident may be symptomatic of a subtly sexist environment in which women are primarily the ones tasked with taking notes, ordering lunches or brokering interpersonal conflicts – acts that individually seem innocuous but collectively seem insidious.
You need a broader context than this one
incident. So observe and investigate: are you and other women generally treated as equals among your male peers?
Ask your supervisor: “Were you just pulling my chain? What’s the history with John and his chair?”
Once you’ve done your research and have a better sense of the context, the stakes and the possible consequences of breaking the
“John” rule, you can decide whether this issue is worth taking a stand – er, seat – on, or whether it merits nothing more than a shrug and a “Sorry, I’ll try to remember that.” Miller offers advice on surviving the ups and downs of the modern workplace. Thanks to employment law partner Amy Epstein Gluck, FisherBroyles.
Ontario labour reform bill prompts death threats, vandalism
the previous Liberal government shortly before the spring election.
TORONTO — The premier of Ontario received death threats and his labour minister had her constituency office vandalized hours after a sweeping labour reform bill was introduced in the legislature, the Progressive Conservative government said Wednesday.
Government House Leader Todd Smith said the incidents were an attempt to bully and intimidate the government and would not be tolerated.
“What we want is to see... some of these other radical groups acknowledge the fact that a line has been crossed here,” Smith said.
The proposed labour law, introduced Tuesday afternoon, freezes the minimum wage to $14 an hour until 2020 as part of a rollback of labour reforms introduced by
The measures have been met with strong criticism from antipoverty activists, union leaders and the opposition parties.
Labour Minister Laurie Scott said her office in Kawartha Lakes, Ont., was broken into and vandalized early Wednesday morning.
She said the windows were smashed and the outside wall was spray-painted with a message that read “Attack Workers. We fight back. $15.”
“This is obviously tied in to the piece of legislation that we introduced yesterday,” Scott said.
“I believe in democratic and peaceful protest and debate but we will not tolerate vandalism, intimidation or bullying... We don’t know who did this, we are just saying everyone should say that that’s not acceptable.”
Scott said local and provincial
The proposed labour law, introduced Tuesday afternoon, freezes the minimum wage to $14 an hour until 2020 as part of a rollback of labour reforms...
police are investigating the incident.
Smith said all the groups opposed to the labour reform should distance themselves from the perpetrators of violence.
“What we’re saying is that vandalism, violence and intimidation is not going to be acceptable,” Smith said. “We’d really like to see
the NDP and we’d really like to see the union leadership say the same thing.”
NDP Leader Andrea Horwath said people should engage in peaceful protest if they disagree with the government’s decisions.
“No matter how much hurt this government creates, no matter how far they drag us backwards, no matter how many disappointing announcements we get... there is no justification for violence, no justification for criminal activity,” she said.
Ontario Federation of Labour President Chris Buckley said that group does not support or condone violence against persons or property.
“While we understand that the government’s decision to repeal workers’ rights and protections is deeply troubling and a great concern to the people of Ontario, we encourage all workers to join
with the OFL and its community partners in peacefully demanding better working conditions and higher wages for all workers in this province, whether they are unionized or not,” Buckley said in a statement.
Interim Liberal leader John Fraser, whose party had promised to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour in January, condemned the incidents, but said he can understand the anger over the labour bill.
He also said the premier and his government must set a higher standard for public debate.
“It’s incumbent on the premier of this province to set the tone in here and outside,” Fraser said.
“All I know is that when he’s here in Question Period that tone is one of conflict, and combativeness and partisanship. We need to take that down a notch. A couple of notches.”
Mediator called in to settle postal strike
Terry PEDWELL Citizen news service
OTTAWA — The federal government named a special mediator Wednesday in hopes of ending rotating walkouts at Canada Post that forced closure of the Crown corporation’s biggest sorting plants for a second day and spread to the West.
Labour Minister Patty Hajdu announced the appointment of Morton Mitchnick just hours after the Canadian Union of Postal Workers said it would keep its members on the picket lines in the Greater Toronto Area.
Hajdu said in a statement that Mitchnick, a former chair of the Ontario Labour Relations Board, is a highly respected senior arbitrator and mediator. She said he will be joining a team of federal mediators from the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service that have been working with the two parties.
Hajdu said she hoped the new mediator would
“bring a new perspective to the negotiating table.”
“There are still a number of challenging issues that both parties have to work through, and having sometimes a fresh set of eyes on a challenging problem like that will help the parties to continue to look for creative solutions,” the minister said after meeting with her Liberal caucus colleagues early Wednesday.
Nearly 9,000 CUPW members walked off the job in the Toronto region early Tuesday as part of rotating walkouts that began Monday to back contract demands.
They remained on picket lines Wednesday and were joined by roughly 250 postal workers in Kelowna, who joined the walkout at 6 a.m. local time, Canada Post confirmed.
The job action at the giant Gateway parcel facility in Mississauga, Ont., which processes roughly twothirds of all parcels mailed in Canada, and the South Central mail plant in the Toronto’s east end, forced delays in shipments of tens of thousands of letters and parcels across the country.
Those delays were expected to continue Wednesday, although Canada Post said it would do what it could to deliver mail and parcels outside Toronto.
“Customers across the country should expect to see delays for parcel and mail delivery,” said Canada Post spokesman Jon Hamilton, adding the agency continues to operate across the rest of Canada and is accepting and delivering mail and parcels in all other locations.
Shawn JEFFORDS Citizen news service
Longtime news director leaves city
Frank PEEBLES Citizen staff
fpeebles@pgcitizen.ca
The affable presence of Dave Barry has beamed into Prince George homes for three decades. On radio and primarily on television, Barry has been an anchor of confident news and community events since he first came here in 1989 as the secondary sports reporter for what is now the Jim Pattison Broadcasting Group. He was hired by then-news director Mike Woodworth to work with then-sports lead Kelly Sharp.
“I moved over to the news side in the early ’90s and it was probably the best thing I ever did in my job,” said Barry. “I was too inquisitive. I couldn’t go as deep as I wanted in sports, so I pursued the news side. But I still believe a good story is a good story, that can certainly come from sports and frequently does.”
Barry is not leaving the news profession, but he is leaving the city. Barry accepted a position in Kamloops so he has signed off as news director at CKPG,
leaving as one of the longest tenured media figures in the Prince George press corps.
He had to clear his throat a few times as he described what he’d be leaving behind.
He admitted “I wasn’t actually prepared for how emotional I would feel about this, but yeah, it’s hitting me, all the friends and all the memories,” he said.
“this city has been more than wonderful to Colleen and I and more than a home.”
Those who know Barry know he loves to drink Scotch, spend time at the ballpark, and although it’s not exactly classified as a hobby, it is what he put his energies to: general community support. He was someone who pitched in. He helped. He gave of himself, far above and beyond his duties at work.
when we wanted to build that baseball stadium (Citizen Field, opened in 2006 with strong volunteer support from Barry), we just rallied the troops and we built a baseball stadium. You can assemble the people here, when there’s something that’s for the good of the community. People support you, and you support them, and each time the community gets a little better.”
— Dave Barry, former CKPG news director
As a reporter he remembered watershed moments that advanced the community in large ways. He was here to cover the opening of UNBC, the opening of CN Centre, the healthcare professionals’ rally that spawned the Northern Medical Program, the opening of the Northern Sports Centre, hosting the Canada Winter Games.
“That’s what’s really unique about this community, and it really is something special Prince George has going on:
“How can you not respect a community that helped you raise your children and make
them into contributing members of society themselves, now,” he said. “This city has been more than wonderful to Colleen and I and more than a home.”
Barry turned the public eye onto calamities, triumphs, tragedies and comedies of our local culture. He could think of no “best” story even though his news team was the winner of multiple awards. The definitive story for him, when looking back at his professional takeaways, was a mountain helicopter trip he once did with the late George Evanoff who took Barry high into the jagged local landscape to teach him (and thus the public) about the finer points of avalanches.
“It started out as a simple overview of avalanche safety, but it became a story about this man who had so much knowledge because he had such a spiritual love for the mountains. And then when it was an avalanche that took his life, later on, that was just a continuation of that. They don’t name a conference room at a hotel after you (at the Coast Inn of the
North), and a provincial park, unless you’re a special person in the community, and George showed me how you can do that just by doing what you love with passion.”
Barry got to exercise his own affinity for the great local outdoors when he left the news business temporarily and was on the communications team for the provincial Ministry of Environment and for the McGregor Model Forest Association for a time.
He came back to the broadcast chair though, unable to shake off the desire to ask questions more than answer them.
“If there’s one thing I could say about it all, it’s thank you,” he said. “Thank you so much for the way you gave a young man a positive path in life that has lasted more than three decades, gave a family a chance to thrive, and it’s all been fantastic. I’ve had a fantastic career. I loved it because it was telling the stories of Prince George, and those were so interesting and so powerful. And there is so much growth potential.”
Citizen photo by brent braaten
dave Barry will be leaving Prince George after being in the city 29 years. he left the role as news director at CKPG and will take on the same roll at CfJC in Kamloops.
A Radiant Mother writes her book
Citizen staff fpeebles@pgcitizen.ca
Sufey Chen gave birth to her first child less than a year ago. Now she is also the mother of a new book about the experience.
Chen, 24, has spent the past decade touring the world as a globally sought yogini. She has taught the principles of yoga and the paths of peace across a number of continents, climate zones, and walks of life. When she started her own journey of motherhood, she knew it was an opportunity to share her unique perspectives.
Chen is now the author of the book Radiant Mother that combines her yoga infused insights with her own wideeyed wonder at being a first-time young mother.
“The book is a compilation of my writings from pregnancy until now, a diarystyle memoir, my raw feelings as they happened,” said Chen from her home in Pennsylvania shared with partner David and their baby Tahvy.
“I wrote all this, but I did not have my mind on a book,” she confessed. “It was just journaling and blogging some of it, and I started getting feedback that it should all be put into one place. I had some good girlfriends pushing me, and I had my parents really encouraging me to make it a book. When I see how much my parents have done with their lives with five children, that has always inspired me to do the most I can with my life.”
Her hometown of Prince George knows well that Chen makes the most of that lesson passed on from her parents. She has been an award-winning musician, dancer, figure skater, professional photographer, a marketer and publicist, an event planner, a leader of the city’s
debate sector, an honoured student (she was in UNBC at the age of 16), celebrated philanthropist, and it all added up to the 2010 Prince George Youth of the Year.
When she won that distinction, presented by then-mayor Dan Rogers, she was asked what motivated her volunteerism and charitable organizing.
“I adore children,” she said at the city hall ceremony.
Like a rope tying the eras of her own life, she now proclaims her affinity for children once again, for the world to enjoy and learn from.
“Mother is the greatest identity for a woman, but making the most of motherhood for me means pursuing my creative dream,” she said, hinting at the secret to her overwhelming and sustained ability to succeed at a number of fields. It is combining elements. The act of being mother and the act of writing the book were unified.
“It’s not me. It’s like the divine is alive in me for the first time in this way, and I’m just riding the power,” she said. “It’s like going through this portal into my divinely creative self, full of power, creative essence. I’ve been riding that high. It’s all creating: a baby and a book.”
She’s also songwriting and penning the drafts of children’s books yet to come, but who’s keeping score?
“I hope it gives mothers hope. I write it from a really raw place, talking about the realities, the realness. I’ve heard the pretty polished versions and I’ve heard the depressed version. I believe you can move through the suffering and initiation you go through as new mothers, but stay connected to love and fulfillment within the struggles. It is possible to feel everything and still love it all.”
What Radiant Mother is not is a longform advice column. Chen said the book flowed from experiences and impressions either in the moment or after short
periods of reflection. It is a book that allows the reader to walk alongside her through pregnancy, labour, birthing, and the first several months of first mothering. It is one woman’s example, although carefully considered and drawn from her yogini perspective. It is not a manual.
One of the unique stories Chen gets to tell is cocooning at home with Tahvy for the first 40 days following the homebirth. It was important to Chen to have that transition time together as a welcome for them both into the new reality
they both shared. Parenting is about forming connections, she said, and that applies not only to the ties of love between those in the family unit but also the people of one’s community.
“If we care about our society, we must care about our mothers and especially new mothers,” she said.
A lot more is discussed, with a high number of photographs, in Radiant Mother available now online at amazon. com.
Frank PEEBLES
Former prince george resident Sufey chen has written a book about motherhood.
Gord Bamford returns to P.G. Friday
Frank PEEBLES Citizen staff fpeebles@pgcitizen.ca
Few Canadians have accumulated more country music awards than Alberta’s Gord Bamford. Before the truckload of CCMAs (a whopping 24 trophies, plus 36 other nominations),
the four Juno Award nominations, and even two CMA trophies from the American side of the border (he was named the genre’s top international performer in both 2013 and ‘15), Bamford was a road warrior who often came to perform at the clubs of Prince George before the stadiums of the continent. He named his latest road-
show the Honkytonks & Dive Bar Tour because he wants to turn those wheels right back full circle, and a club in P.G. is once again where he’ll perform, as up-close as back in the rookie years. Bamford will perform at Heartbreakers on Friday night.
“We’re carrying a lot of production for some of these rooms, a lot of video and lighting,” said Bamford in a phone chat with the Citizen. “I think we’re running more tech in some of these honkytonks than we do for some of the big shows. We wanted people to leave each night saying ‘I can’t believe I just saw that’ so it’s not just a band standing on the stage. Everybody’s excited about it, a great way to end our year, going back to where we started.”
He got his real start on the farm, and his broader family is still heavily involved in feeding the nation’s families. One of the reasons hot new Canadian country star Jade Eagleson is coming to Prince George to perform with Bamford is because he spotted in Eagleson a genuine flashback to his own early years. Eagleson is a farm kid from Ontario who couldn’t seem to stop singing.
Another aspect of Bamford’s early life was sports. “I was more of an athlete. This (professional music) wasn’t my plan, I’m just glad it worked out,” Bamford said, and the other big up-and-comer on stage for the Honkytonks & Dive Bars tour is Jojo Mason who was a junior hockey (Bamford and his family love their hockey) player in B.C. before an injury forced him into this highly successful Plan B. Mason is a Roughriders fan, as is Bamford’s wife, so their football talk can gang up on him a bit.
One sport he appreciates for the athleticism but can’t take seriously as a spectator is the other kind of football - aka soccer.
“I find soccer comical,” he said. “I just went and watched some Aussie Rules Football in Australia, the NRL (National Rugby League) Finals were on and I got a chance to go to that, and they’re beating each other up without equipment, and some of these soccer guys go down like they’re shot when they get hit in the shins and then they show the replay and they didn’t even get hit. It’s quite comical. I have a tough
time watching soccer.”
He doesn’t have much time to just kick back and catch a game of any kind, except the live ones played by youngsters. All three of his kids are involved in sports, and some flashes of music in their young lives as well, so when he’s not out on the road he is deep into parenting.
“Time flies, you know, so I’m just trying to keep up with the family life and help out as much as I can, because the kids are very, very busy. You know, I don’t know how my wife does it, to be honest with you. I try to relieve her when I can.”
He does that in between the albums and singles. Where A Farm Used To Be, When Your Lips Are So Close, Leaning On A Lonesome Song, Don’t Let Her Be Gone, Day Job, Blame It On That Red Dress, Little Guy, My Daughter’s Father, Put Some Alcohol On It, those are just some of the chart-climbers.
His latest album, Neon Smoke, has given him the Top 5 hit Livin’ On Summertime, the Jim Cuddy duet Ain’t It Grand, and the title track that is already into the Top 10. Now Dive Bar is climbing up there with it.
Those conditions are ripe for rolling down the highway. Good songs get radio play and press stories. That builds fans. They hunger for concerts. He’s the kinda polite farm boy who’ll oblige, from Europe where he
has a large fan base, to the U.S. where he’s hot on Spotify and Vevo, and down in Australia where he was born in the first place. He has about 40 shows booked down under this coming year, and Canada keeps him busy enough he isn’t peeking over the southern border much at all these days. When Bamford was first starting out, Canada was a different place for musicians. He and the country developed together in that just when he wants to be home more with family, home has enough fans to support that dream.
“Yeah, 100 per cent, good point,” he said. “It’s an unbelievable market, y’know. I’ve been able to make a living in it for 10 years now just playing music. It’s been very good to me and my family. The fans here are as passionate as anywhere in the world. It’s the real deal. The radio is real, the festivals are real, the award shows are real, it’s every bit as good as the American market, it’s just smaller. But I guess it’s the second biggest country market in all the world. It’s very achievable, if you really want to work hard, to have a great career right here in Canada.”
In fact, it can be right here in Prince George where Bamford, Mason and Eagleson will show how it’s done on Friday night at Heartbreakers.
Amy Schumer pregnant
Citizen news service
Amy Schumer took the long way around to announce she’s pregnant with
The comedian and actress broke her baby news Monday on the Instagram stories of friend and journalist Jessica Yellin . Yellin, of the site NewsNotNoise.org, showed at the end of a list of Schumer’s recommended congressional and gubernatorial candidates the line: “I’m pregnant-Amy Schumer.”
Schumer is known for her liberal politics: She was recently arrested protesting the confirmation of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court. The 37-year-old made her film debut in the 2015 film Trainwreck. She starred this year in the movie I Feel Pretty. Schumer married Fischer, a chef, in February.
Halloween Spooktacular
Huble Homestead hosts its annual Halloween Spooktacular on Friday, Oct. 26 and Saturday, Oct. 27 from 3 to 8 p.m. at Huble Homestead Historic Site, 15000 Mitchell Rd. Attend this bone-chilling event giving those who feel up to the challenge an opportunity to venture north to the homestead. There’s pumpkin carving, costume contests, crafts, a maze and more. Family admission of suggested donation of $10. For more information visit www.hublehomestead.ca.
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gord Bamford, multi-award winning country singer, will do an up-close-and-personal show at Heartbreakers Friday night.
husband Chris Fischer.
Canadian recipes star of road trip book
Frank PEEBLES Citizen staff
fpeebles@pgcitizen.ca
A feast of a book is getting a sumptuous response from the public.
Feast: Recipes And Stories From A Canadian Road Trip was written by Prince George’s Lindsay Anderson and her culinary accomplice Dana VanVeller from southern Ontario.
Actually, a better word for it would be, this book was experienced into existence by the two wandering gastronauts. They spooned and sprinkled doses of Rankin Inlet, Dawson City, Newfoundland, Vancouver Island, prairies, forests, cities and fields until Feast was a 300-page meal for the mind. They plated the richest and oldest stories of Canadian food perhaps ever assembled.
The nation has noticed. Anderson and VanVeller were recently shortlisted for a Taste Canada Award in the Regional/ Cultural (English language) category. The winners of Canada’s premier foodculture awards will be revealed on Oct. 29.
They were also called onto the national airwaves when Canadian book icon Shelagh Rogers, host of The Final Chapter program on CBC-Radio, brought the two of them to the microphone to talk about three of Canada’s greatest appetites: books, food, and road trips.
Following the radio interview, Anderson told The Citizen that the response to Feast has been voracious.
“We feel incredibly grateful that the book has been received so well,” she said from her home in the Lower Mainland. “It’s a vulnerable thing to put everything you have into a project, and eventually send it off into the world.
“It’s so personal. The vast majority of feedback we’ve received, however, has been from people who say they’ve loved reading the book as much as they enjoy cooking from it. Feast was always about sharing stories that go beyond a particular ingredient or dish, so that’s been a really satisfying thing to hear. It’s also been fun to receive photos from friends and acquaintances of the book in bookstores large and small, near and far.” Anderson had become famous in food circles of the Lower Mainland as the daily food blogger for the City of Richmond, but she had never written a book before, nor had VanVeller.
They started from lofty heights, when Feast was picked for publication by Appetite by Random House, a division of Penguin Random House, one of the biggest book production companies in the world.
“Sometimes the whole thing—from when we first met with Robert McCullough of Appetite by Random House to the first time we held the finished product in our hands—feels like an impossibility,” Anderson said.
She couldn’t have predicted that the book would also get the attention of the Final Chapter team at CBC, or that one of
Lindsay anderson from prince george co-wrote a culinary adventure entitled Feast: Recipes and Stories From a canadian Road trip. the book was recently nominated for an award.
the best known broadcasters in Canada would call her and VanVeller in for a nationwide chat.
“You know how people say you shouldn’t meet your heroes, because they’ll end up disappointing you? Well, I’d been listening to Shelagh Rogers for as long as I can remember, so I was actually sort of afraid to speak to her directly,” Anderson said. “Of course, my anxiety was completely unwarranted. She was even more friendly, engaging, curious, and funny than I’d imagined her to be, so the interview was an absolute joy. Our book has provided us with some amazing opportunities, and this one ranks pretty high amongst them.”
The Taste Canada nomination is also a highlight. Ask almost any author who has ever made that shortlist. Anderson called the news “surreal” and “such an honour.”
In their category they are nominated with Rod Butters (The Okanagan Table: The Art of Everyday Home Cooking), Simon Thibault (Pantry And Palate: Remembering And Rediscovering Acadian Food), Emily Wight (Dutch Feast) and the duo of David Wolfman and Marlene Finn (Cooking With The Wolfman).
The winners will be revealed at a Toronto banquet at the Fairmont Royal York Hotel.
Organizers called the gala “a one-of-akind gastronomic celebration, that brings together writers, publishers, chefs, farmers, industry, media and cookbook fans and promotes a vibrant national conversation about food and the art and culture of culinary writing.”
Anderson said the heat generated by Feast was so exciting “personally, I think I’ll come around to the reality of it all in about a decade or two.”
Grisham takes readers on journey to Deep South in new novel The Reckoning
Jeff AyErS Citizen news service
The Reckoning (Doubleday), by John Grisham
Author John Grisham takes readers on a journey to the Deep South in 1946 in “The Reckoning.” The main character, Pete Banning, was a prisoner of war in World War II. He was presumed dead at one point, so when he came home, the entire town celebrated.
That makes it all the more shocking when he heads to his church one morning and kills the Rev. Dexter Bell. He does nothing to hide the murder, so it isn’t a surprise when he’s arrested.
Banning’s defence attorney demands answers as to why he shot Bell, but he refuses to talk.
He doesn’t want to plead insanity, and he replies to every question with, “I have nothing to say.” His family has no idea what happened to prompt such drastic action, but he won’t even talk to his wife and children.
There’s a suspicion that Bell might have been a little too friendly to Banning’s wife while Pete was overseas.
The quest for justice is only the beginning in this Southern-family saga. Readers expecting Grisham’s usual themes of justice and corrupt lawyers won’t be disappointed, but he does so much more this time around.
Grisham takes a snapshot of a chaotic time and showcases the world of law and the lack of equality for everyone and wraps it in a family-saga package.
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U.S. politics from a Canadian perspective
Watching corporate sponsored mainstream news can be a confusing and frustrating endeavor. I honestly have great difficulty sitting through report after report about Russia tampering in U.S. elections. Why is this news? What did they stand to gain? Haven’t the Americans been tampering in elections in other countries for generations?
Though millions accept the nonsensical issues which dominate the news agenda and have drawn the frightening conclusion that they are powerless, nothing could be further from the truth.
We need to remember that some news sources are quite credible. They ask simple, intelligent questions, and better yet, they help us find answers. Those addressing the issues have proven track records for integrity and for bringing about positive change. The best analyses of current events, I have found, come from veteran citizen rights
Lessons in Learning
Gerry ChidiaC
activists Ralph Nader and Noam Chomsky. Chomsky and Nader believe in the potential of the American political system, and both draw the same conclusion with regard to the current state of affairs in their country: Corporatist lobbyists determine the agenda of both major political parties.
The result has been the deterioration of consumer and labour rights since the Reagan era. While wages for corporate leaders have increased, middle class America has fallen into crisis. The consumer rights championed by Nader in the 1960s and 1970s are also in danger.
One can even question whether he would be able to take on the auto industry and win if the battle had to be fought today.
The media continues to paint a picture of Democrat vs. Republican, liberal vs. conservative. In actual fact there is very little disagreement on many issues. Rank and file Democrats, Republicans, liberals and conservatives, for example, all want their families to be safe.
While corporatists hide behind a conservative agenda, their views are anything but conservative. Government support for failing corporations has nothing to do with true conservatism, which calls for less state involvement in industry. If a company fails because its goals are short-term and unsustainable, it has no right to demand taxpayer support under the banner of conservatism. What they are asking for is simply corporate socialism.
The private health insurance lobby also has people convinced that paying twice as much for half the health coverage (when compared to Canada) is good for capitalism. The fact is that these costs are putting an unnecessary burden on small
businesses. Even larger international corporations find it less expensive to locate their North American offices in Canada.
A recent guest on Nader’s radio show, experienced investigative journalist Allan Nairn, pointed out that Americans are facing a crucial time in their history. Donald Trump has continued to push policies which increase the gap between the rich and poor and push the corporate agenda. Chomsky points out that Republican climate policies put the entire planet at risk and that this has gotten even worse under Trump.
Many Americans will argue that the Democrats are also terrible. They are correct. The Clintons and most Democrat members of Congress are in the pockets of corporatists as well.
As charming as Barack Obama was, he continued to add fuel to foreign animosity by supporting covert military operations. He also did little to improve race relations or income inequity at home, and he agreed to bail out American financial institutions
despite their criminal practices. Chomsky points out, however, that one can work with the Democrats. Removing Trump’s majority in the upcoming midterm elections will therefore be an important first step in restoring democratic rights to the American people. From there citizens can work at the local level to ensure that candidates represent them as they should. If they will not, they will simply be replaced. Though corporatists today control a great deal, they do not control the vote in the United States or in any other developed country. We still have free elections and every adult citizen has a voice. As long as we the people listen to those who truly have our best interests at heart and act accordingly, the future is bright. The responsibility truly does rest on our shoulders. – Gerry Chidiac is a champion for social enlightenment, inspiring others to find their greatness in making the world a better place. For more of his writings, go to www.gerrychidiac.com.
The good, the bad and the headband infiltration of school photos
The proofs for my children’s school photos were released last week.
As I was reviewing their forced smiles and strange expressions, I saw something that caught my eye on my daughter’s photo.
“What on earth is on her head?” I ask my husband, bewildered.
“That’s what I thought too,” he said.
“The teacher was also surprised.” Nestled in amongst her bangs, which she had carefully brushed off her forehead, contrary to how she left the house in the morning, was a skinny purple headband with a small white flower. I believe the headband belonged to a doll and it must have been uncomfortably tight, strung across her forehead, Rambo-style. She looks very pleased with herself. She must have snuck the headband to school and
put it on right before the photo. Since her teacher was also surprised at the appearance of the headband in the photo, my daughter must have taken it off again after the photos. It was just a secret between her and the photographer. I am not getting retakes. I will proudly display the Rambo Kindergarten photo on my photo shelf and I will distribute the rest of the photos to my friends and family to their delight because she looks adorable. I failed at photo distribution last year.
I recently found the virtually-untouched package of my son’s school photos from last year. I put the package on the photo shelf, intending to send the photos along with my Christmas cards. I did not do Christmas cards last year. Now I have a ton of out-of-date photos that I do not know what to do with other than feel guilty every time I look at them. I hope to do better this year but I would not bet on it.
Photo packages are deliberately organized to be the opposite of helpful. I have a large family and, whether they like it or not, they are going to receive pictures of my kids for Christmas.
Not one parent wants 16 wallet-sized photos in their package. Throw in some extra 8 X 10s and some 5X7s and we will all be happy. I have to buy the packages with the stupid wallet-sized photos because it
is the best deal and I will keep these tiny photos forever because I feel weird throwing out photos of my children. The photographers are selling digital prints now, however I know myself well enough to know that I will never get them printed. Perhaps if we banded together to demand sensible packages from the school photographers, we would not be left with ridiculously-sized photos good for only those school years photo frames that remain stubbornly empty at the back of closets because, really, who has the time?
Likely, nothing will change and many years from now I will be receiving strangely small photos of my own grandchildren because their parents miscounted the number of photos they needed to give away. What goes around and all that.
MeGan kuklis
Home Again
Hoover’s humanitarian work overlooked
Herbert Hoover, the 31st president of the United States, has a bad public image. Most Americans continue to blame him for the Great Depression of the 1930s and he is almost always listed as one of the worst American presidents. Born in a small cabin in Iowa, orphaned at an early age, and a life-long Quaker, Hoover over came his past by becoming a worldrenowned engineer and from his engineering abilities, a very wealthy man.
Following the assassination of the Austrian Crown Prince in June 1914, the summer passed without much thought of war. Americans continued to visit Europe to enjoy the Old World summer, so 120,000 or so were caught unawares when war was declared.
Unable to return to the states as shipping wound down and many without funds to do so, they were abandoned, or so it seemed. Using his own funds and what he could raise from others, the 120,000 Americans were able get home using tickets purchased by Hoover. Of the vast sums loaned to them for travel, when all was finished only $300 remained outstanding.
Hoover’s humanitarian work had begun.
Germany quickly overran Belgium and northern France. The German war machine quickly took control of all food and distribution (Belgium raised only about 25 per cent of its food needs) and gave their army priority over all. Soon, the populations of these areas were starving.
There was food aplenty in the Americas but the British had declared a blockade around European ports now held by the Germans. While not impervious, few commercial ships were willing to risk capture or sinking to carry food to ports under German control. Even if some food got through, the British (especially Churchill) thought
Sidebars to History
the German army would simply seize the food.
In 1914, Hoover could have forgotten about the needs of the starving and made an even larger fortune by continuing to deal in the precious metals needed by the nations at war. That is how he had gained his first millions. According to a friend and house guest at Hoover’s London home, Hoover fretted over the choice for a week or more – to become one of the world’s richest men or direct his best efforts into a massive humanitarian project the likes of which had never been tried.
One morning, Hoover made his decision. Over his morning coffee, he said, “Well, let the fortune go to hell” and from then on he directed his many talents into solving the humanitarian crisis unfolding in Belgium.
Hoover set out to cut through the Gordian knot created by the German desire to feed its troops and the British need to stop any American food from getting to those troops by enforcing a blockade.
With another American, he formed the Comité Central de Secours et d’Alimentation (“Central Relief and Food Committee”) to feed the starving Belgiums.
Hoover obtained assurances from the Germans that if he could get food to Rotterdam (and thence to Belgium) it would be distributed as relief to the Belgium people and not taken by the German forces. Hoover was even able to station American inspectors in Belgium (and later northern France as the program expanded) to insure proper distribution, with the United States being neutral.
He had more problems securing a right of passage through
the blockade from the British. Churchill remained steadfastly opposed to the idea, threatening to sink any relief ships and charge Hoover with assisting the enemy or treason.
Cooler heads in the British government prevailed and Hoover was able to gain assurance from Lord Grey that his ships would have safe passage.
Hoover’s navy was born.
The ships, freighters that had been tied up due to the war, took to the seas flying a distinctive flag and with RELIEF in large letters painted on their sides.
Canal barges, trucks, and horse-drawn wagons were enlisted to distribute the food throughout Belgium.
In 1915, the Germans agreed to let the food into northern France under German occupation with the same conditions. Churchill continued to oppose these efforts as, he claimed, without such relief the starving people would riot and attack the German occupation forces.
Belgium had been noted for handmade lace. With the coming of war, the women who made this lace could not get the necessary supplies to knit the lace nor, if they could do that, were they able sell their product. Fearing the skill would be lost forever, Hoover arranged to supply the lace makers and provided a market for their wares.
What is often overlooked is that the British blockade did not only stop items destined for Germany and her allies. All Scandinavian countries were affected.
Norway was especially hard hit as even her fishing fleet was restricted from sailing due to the blockade. Her imports were vastly reduced and exports all but eliminated.
An even bigger mission remained. The British blockade had hit hard on Germany and her allies, especially AustriaHungary.
Wonder Woman sequel pushed back to summer 2020
Citizen news service
LOS ANGELES — The world will have to wait a little longer for the Wonder Woman sequel, which will now arrive in theatres in summer 2020.
Warner Bros. announced Monday that Wonder Woman 1984 will now open on June 5, 2020. The film starring Gal Gadot as the Amazonian superhero had been slated for a November 2019 release.
Patty Jenkins is returning as director and has teased fans with tidbits about the series’ time jump to the 1980s.
The first Wonder Woman was a major blockbuster for Warner Bros.’ DC Comics franchise. The film earned more than $800 million globally. The original became the most successful live-action film directed by a woman.
The sequel would have been released a month after the Joker which is scheduled to open on Oct. 4, 2019.
Starvation had become commonplace in cities like Berlin and Vienna, leading to riots in the streets. Estimates are that over 750,000 German civilians, many of them women and children, died of starvation and disease before the war ended.
When the German navy mutinied and refused orders to engage in one last ”glorious” battle against the Royal Navy, strikes in the cities by the left wing Spartacus group and the general population culminated in Germany’s armistice and surrender.
This would later be used to support the Nazi myth that German’s Army had not been defeated in combat but had been “stabbed in the back” by Jews and Communists.
The British, even as the ear ended, were not willing to release the blockade. As a result, a further 100,000 died after the guns went silent.
The British blockade continued for eight months until June 1919. During that time, Hoover and his crews (now under an American name) continued to expand their relief efforts into Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Eastern Europe.
After the Great War had ended, a series of armed conflicts broke out in Eastern Europe as various parties jockeyed for power. Every eastern European country had either a civil war or a war against a neighbouring country, or both.
The Russian Revolution led to the Red-White Civil War in a country already ravaged by the Great War. Lenin had survived an assassination attempt but died a short time later bringing Stalin to power.
What followed was the deliberate starvation of the Ukraine in two phases. Preceded by the Polish and Finnish famines, the first in the Ukraine lasted from 1921 to 1923.
Lenin initially refused any outside aid but finally relented and allowed Hoover and his
American Relief Administration to fed an estimated 10 million people, most funding coming from the American government. Even so, the death toll was estimated at five million. Worse was to come later. The Holodormo, which would follow in the 1930s, was Stalin’s deliberate starvation of the Ukraine.
All foodstuffs were “owned by the state” and the state needed to sell the harvest abroad to raise hard currency. Stalin’s internal police seized all crops and an estimated 10 million died of forced starvation.
In order to commence and continue his humanitarian efforts, Hoover had to raise the money to buy the food, buy ships to carry the food, negotiate with countries at war or too weak to help themselves, get permission to deliver and distribute the food, and hire all those necessary for these and other monumental tasks.
To get food to Finland, Hoover had to convince the American navy to provide armed protection for his ships. Perhaps no other humanitarian has faced more daunting missions and saved as many people from starvation.
“The bad that men do lives long after their deaths, the good interred with their bones” writes Shakespeare.
Even when Hoover repeated his humanitarian works during and after the Second World War it is his opposition to Roosevelt’s New Deal that still remains as his legacy. The great humanitarian work, the saving of millions, is all but forgotten.
Hoover’s humanitarian works tower above the mansions, yachts, private jets, and other luxuries of the present one per cent and provide a glowing example of what can be done by the richest amongst us should they elect to follow his example. To be fair, some of the wealthy have supported “good works” but nothing to match the scale of Hoover’s efforts.
willow arune
Short stay in town turned into a happy 56 years
Retired pharmacist Bud Whitwham and his wife Muriel have been a huge part of Prince George for the past 56 years.
Bud, the eldest of three children, was born in 1930 in Vancouver. His parents lived in south Burnaby and since there was no hospital in Burnaby, at the time, Bud came into the world at the relatively new Grace Hospital at the corner of Heather Street and 26th Avenue in Vancouver.
His father was employed as a foreman at British Wire Ropes at Granville Island. Back then the area was an industrial manufacturing area and today it is a popular tourism and entertainment destination.
Bud grew up in Burnaby, graduated from Burnaby South High School, attended the University of B.C. and graduated with a bachelor of science from pharmacy school in 1954.
Bud explained, “during my studies at UBC, I worked for George Reid. George had three stores; he owned the prescription pharmacy in the Birk’s Building in Vancouver, the drugstore in North Burnaby and the Fifth Avenue Pharmacy in Prince George.
“George worked at the Birks Building store and his son Ken Reid worked the North Burnaby store. When I graduated I took over as manager and a partner in the North Burnaby store. When George retired in 1954 Ken went to the Birks Building; after a bit George wanted Ken to go to Prince George and take over the Fifth Avenue Pharmacy and he sold the Birks Building store.
“We came up to Prince George in 1959 on a holiday and liked what we saw.
“Prince George was growing by leaps and bounds and many doctors started to arrive. The doctors had confidence in the future of Prince George and in
1960 there was a group of six doctors that wanted to start their own group clinic. Plans were made to build the first phase of the Victoria Medical Building; the original threestory building opened in 1962. The second phase of the Victoria Medical Building was the addition of a five-story building next to the original building.
“In 1962, Ken Reid moved into the new pharmacy in the Victoria Medical Building. Muriel and I moved to Prince George and I took over the Fifth Avenue Pharmacy from 19621970. In 1970 I also moved into the pharmacy in the Victoria Medical Building.
“The old Fifth Avenue Pharmacy building now belongs to the Prince George Italian Club.
“When Muriel and I and our three children moved to Prince George, the Fifth Avenue Pharmacy was part of the centre of town. We were near the old liquor store, CKPG and Jack Lee’s Outrigger Restaurant. We had a perfect location in the busiest part of town.
“Back in those days, doctors made house calls during all hours of the night and day. At the pharmacy, we worked 12-hour shifts because of the shortage of pharmacists. The extremely busy doctors were not shy at all about phoning us at home and after hours to go down and open the store to fill a much-needed prescription and of course we did it for the doctors and for the people that needed the medicine.”
Bud met Muriel Spurr in 1948 and they married in 1952. Muriel was born in Rocanville, Sask., in 1929. She was the third of eight children. Her father worked at the coal docks
in Rocanville and when her mother died, when Muriel was 10 years old, her father moved the family to New Westminster and found work at Fraser Mills.
Muriel graduated from Trapp Tech high school and worked for the unemployment insurance office for many years.
Bud hung around with a group of guys his age and they were known as the Burnaby Boys. Similarly, Muriel hung around with a group of girls her age and they were known as the New Westminster girls. The group of 12 New Westminster girls that are still left remain good friends to this very day.
Both groups attended a dance at the Hollywood Bowl in New Westminster on the same night and to make a long story short that is how Bud met Muriel.
Muriel said, “Bud wasn’t the best dancer but we got along just fine on the dance floor and the rest didn’t seem to matter.
We got married in 1952. To this day he can admit that he is not a great dancer and you know it still doesn’t matter.
“When we got married Bud still had two years of pharmacy school before graduation and I just kept on working and paying the bills.”
Bud said, “Muriel was the bread winner while I was still in pharmacy school so I owe one half of my degree to Muriel. I am quite proud to say that we recently celebrated 66 years of marriage.
“Muriel and I had three children. Our eldest child is Rob; he is the general manager of community services for the City of Prince George.
“Our daughter Sandy (Don) Augatis has worked with Costco in Prince George since the day it opened and is now part of the office staff.
“Our son Jay (Lisa) is a chartered accountant in Vancouver.
“We have four grandchildren and two of them have graduated from UNBC with degrees.
One of the best things to come to Prince George has been UNBC. We supported UNBC from its inception and now our grandchildren are benefitting from all the hard work that the many volunteers did to make it all possible for our city.”
When the children started to arrive, Muriel became a stay at home mom. She volunteered with everything to do with their children.
Bud said, “We can remember that when we moved here the only place that the children could go to see Santa Claus was at an old furniture store on the corner of Third and Victoria. There were many happy children who came to see Santa Claus. The children entered in the front door and exited on a side door after talking to Santa Claus.
“In the 70s the building came up for sale; Barry Phillips and I bought it, tore it down and rebuilt the store to what is now the Western Bank Building.
“We just want the people at the Western Bank to know that the spirit of Santa Claus is in your building. We tore down that old building and those of us who remember Christmas back then and the fun that the children had visiting Santa Claus for so many years – well, we just know that the spirit of Christmas and Santa Claus is in your building.”
When they became empty nesters, Muriel took up golf.
Bud said, “Over the years she competed in the B.C. Senior Games and has well over a dozen medals in her trophy box. She taught me how to golf but she must have kept some secrets because she can still beat me on the golf course. I am actually pretty proud of her for that.
“I retired in 1993 and we started to spend our winters golfing in Arizona. We used to arrive back in Prince George in time to golf but for the last 10 years we have remained in
Prince George year-round.”
Bud and Muriel concluded by saying, “Our move to Prince George has been nothing but good for us and our family. We only intended to stay here for five years and now 56 years later we are still here with no intention of leaving. Prince George has been a great place to raise our children and we have made many long-lasting friendships with really great people.”
*** October birthdays that I know about: Emma Mauro, Kelly Flath, Dave Mazurak, Helen Green, Mike Green, Barbara Chartrand, Lindy Barnes, Alda Russman, Pam Boulding, Minnie Meier, Janice Taylor, John Broderick, Adene Clay, Pietje Kragt, Joe Chartrand, Frank Sarrazin, Victor Bowman, Eileen Hoagland, Syl Meise, Judy Shul, Barb Sandberg, Bill Mintenko, Cameron Sutherland, Cathy Bilbrough, Robbyn Unruh, Sally Rosevear, Yvonne Rowe, Don McLaughlin, Bobbi Pringle, Bertha Orydzuk, Pat Husberg, Shirley Smith, Ann Miller, Henry Engelsjord, Donna Roach, Larry Rowe, Ute Schuler, Margaret Smith, Don Wilson, Tony Carpino, Christa Hughes, Hope Humm, Denice Gudlaugson, Ann Fitzsimmons, Steve Marynovich, Ida Nikkel, Marie Prentice, Annette Yarama, Claudette Beauchamp, Ralph Fetterly, Doris Little, Irene Hnathshen, Shirley Moonie, Gordon Sewell, Synove Dedreu, Elaine Ceal and Cheryl Renwick.
*** October anniversaries that I know about: 65 years for John and Ethel Esler, 64 years for Swede and Amelia Peterson, 64 years for Allan and Gladys Thorp, 58 years for Hugo and Ursula Riske, 56 years for Bob and Ruth Reid, 56 years for John and Judy Elmquist and 54 years for Roy and Sandra Goodkey.
Citizen
Bud and Muriel whitwham have worked and raised their family in prince george since 1962.
Kathy NadaliN
Seniors’ Scene
My Memory of Us a stylishly-animated adventure
Christopher Byrd Citizen news service
Developer: Juggler Games
Publisher: IMGN.PRO
Available on: Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One
Aquick way to gauge if My Memory of Us will resonate with you is to ask yourself two questions: 1) Do you like voice of the noted actor Patrick Stewart and 2) Are you a fan of fairy tales starring plucky children? If you answer “yes” to either of these questions than this stylishly animated adventure game might be worth a look. If, however, you are troubled by the Disneyfication of historical tragedies than you’ll probably be put off by it, regardless of its conspicuously good intentions.
At the start of the game an urban-dwelling little girl hastens along the streets until she arrives at a bookstore. Once inside, she finds an old man napping at a desk. Rousing him from slumber, she learns that the fantastical books she seeks are located up above. Leaving him to his nap, she heads up the stairs.
Ignoring the surrounding books, her eyes are drawn to a ladder which she uses to reach the attic. On a table in the far corner of the room she finds a book which has obviously been given pride of place.
When she presents the book to the shopkeeper downstairs, the vestiges of sleep depart him.
As the old man turns over the pages of the drawing-filled book, his memory is inflamed.
Between the pages, he discovers half of a torn photograph. The picture in his hands bears a remarkable resemblance to the girl in front of him despite the fact that it was taken many decades ago. Spurred by the comforts of tea and two cozy chairs, the old man (voiced by Stewart) proceeds to tell the girl a story about his childhood friend in the photograph involving robots and battles, two areas of interest to the little girl.
As a child the old man was a bit of a street urchin who got himself into trouble with the law.
One night, in an effort to shake off the cops, he jumps off a roof and lands in a garbage can whose lid closes tightly above him. The following morning a little girl comes across the garbage can while searching for a stray ball and frees him. A friendship quickly forms between them as they come to rely on each others’ particular skill sets.
The mechanics of the game are pleasingly emotive. With the tap of a shoulder button on the controller one can choose to control either the boy or the girl. Tapping one of the controller’s face buttons causes them to hold hands. With their hands linked, one can choose to have either the girl or the boy lead.
When the girl is leading the boy can take advantage of her speed and run faster than he could on his own. Conversely, when the boy is leading, the girl is able to benefit from his thieving skills and crouch to make detection harder.
The boy is smaller than the girl so he gets into some places where she can’t. Each of the two also gains useful tools in the game. The boy acquires a light that’s essential for illuminating dark places, and the girl comes into the possession of a slingshot that can be used to target out-of-reach objects such as buttons.
After an evil king robot and his callous minions take over the children’s country, the duo must help themselves and whomever they can to survive. The city where the children live is modeled on Warsaw, Poland. The robots are proxies for the Nazis and in the charcoal gray atmosphere of the game, the people forced to wear bright red clothing are stand-ins for Jewish people.
Over the course of their adventure the children help separated lovers exchange tokens of affection, acquire medicine for orphans, disseminate resistance propaganda and engage in other acts of sabotage and subterfuge. Their journey takes them from a ghetto where the red-dressed people are corralled, to a robot base, to a resistance camp and beyond.
Along the way, they can acquire “memories” or documents that relate facts about Polish life under Nazi occupation and the real-life heroes who played a role in the struggle against fascism.
As taken as I was by the game’s lovely animation, varied puzzles, and brisk pacing, I wasn’t particularly stirred by its historical moorings. I simply couldn’t square what I know about the brutality of what the Nazis did in Poland with the game’s evocation of those events.
To be sure, I’m not the ideal player for a game such as this, but I could potentially see how parents might use My Memory of Us as tool to introduce young children to one of the intractable nightmares of history.
Rapper falls from plane
Citizen news photo
VERNON — The management team for a 34-year-old rap artist says the man fell to his death in the Okanagan while performing a stunt that included rapping while walking on the wing of a plane.
A statement from the group that represents Jon James McMurray says he died Saturday filming a project he had been working on for months and that included intensive training for the stunt. The team says as McMurray got further onto the wing of the plane, it caused the small Cessna to go into a downward spiral that the pilot couldn’t correct.
It says McMurray held onto the wing until it was too late and he didn’t have time to pull his chute.
The statement says he combined his passion for making music videos and performing stunts, and he would want to be remembered as a “beacon of light to follow your dreams.”
IMGN.PRO haNdOut IMaGe
My Memory of Us is a stylish adventure game with a storyline some might find off-putting.
