2005-02-20

VOL. 3 ISSUE 8

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ST. JOHN’S, NEWFOUNDLAND AND LABRADOR — SUNDAY THROUGH SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 20-26, 2005

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LIFE 15

LIFE 13

SPORTS 25

Noreen Golfman on hugging Danny to death

Harold Horwood, renaissance man

He’s so Vain. Vid Vain that is, from central

All ships at sea Investigation into sinking of Ryan’s Commander results in safety bulletin impacting fishing vessels worldwide

By Jeff Ducharme The Independent Allan Moulton, an employee of the Fishery Products International plant in Marystown for more than 30 years and the union representative, stands on a bluff overlooking the plant with the FPSO looming in the background. He says the future of rural Newfoundland is in jeopardy because it’s being decided in corporate boardrooms.

Paul Daly/The Independent

Self-made town

Marystown could serve as model for rural Newfoundland and Labrador; regional hubs servicing smaller outports JEFF DUCHARME MARYSTOWN arystown is becoming the commercial and industrial hub of the Burin Peninsula, a model that provincial government officials praise as a blueprint for the future of rural Newfound-

M

QUOTE OF THE WEEK “A Newfoundlander is the greediest man around.

When he got going, he wanted everything. If he didn’t get it all, he didn’t want none.”

— Byron Adams, retired fisherman.

For more, see page 13

Making ice at Mile One for Scott Tournament of Hearts Life story . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Youth column . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Crossword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

“Marystown has evolved pretty much into that on its own, the urban core of the Burin Peninsula.”

Rationalization in the fish processing sector has been called a necessity for the survival of the industry and the outports that rely on it. Cutting the 122 licensed processing plants down to just a handful of See “More than,” page 4 Also see related stories, pages 3, 18 & 19

See “Their boat,” page 4

Sharing the wealth New plan may increase number of federal jobs in province; as it stands, only 1.5 per cent of workers located here, not a single federal Crown corporation STEPHANIE PORTER

T SPORTS 26

land and Labrador.

Innovation, Trade and Rural Development Minister Kathy Dunderdale says it’s a selfevolving reality. The fish plant here is one of the more advanced in Fishery Products International’s stable and Kiewit Offshore Services, owner of the shipyard, has proven the yard is viable.

“Well it wouldn’t be made a commercial hub — it’s made itself, it’s evolved into (that),” Dunderdale tells The Independent.

B

ased on preliminary findings into the sinking of the Ryan’s Commander, the Transportation Safety Board has issued a safety bulletin that will have farreaching implications on shipping around the world, The Independent has learned.

The Ryan’s Commander was lost on Sept. 19 off Cape Bonavista, taking the lives of David Ryan, 46, and Joseph Ryan, 47. The bulletin states the capsizing was partly due to the crew not being properly trained in the use of stabilization tanks in rough seas.

Stabilization tanks reduce the roll of a vessel by shifting water from side to side, making it a more stable platform for the crew. But that stability can also affect the ship’s behaviour in rough

he MP for Random-Burin-St. Georges says there’s been “intense discussion” within the federal Liberal caucus over the past couple of months about the need to decentralize federal departments and services.

“We’ve had some very serious talks about this,” Bill Matthews tells The Independent from his Ottawa office. “And we’re all hopeful we’ll … get some jobs out to various regions of the country, like Newfoundland and Labrador.”

In the past week, there has been talk there may be provisions made in this year’s federal budget, slated for release Feb. 23, to do just that.

“I don’t know if it would be relocating full departments or some increase in jobs in certain departments, certain divisions,” says Matthews.

Politicians and lobbyists from this province have long argued Newfoundland and Labrador doesn’t get its fair share of federal jobs.

According to numbers compiled by The Independent last fall, there are currently 268,000 federal government employees in the country. About 4,400, or 1.5 per cent, are located in this province (55 per cent work in Ottawa or nearby Gatineau).

Of 55 Crown corporations operating in Canada today, none are located in Newfoundland and Labrador (22 are in Ontario/Gatineau). “(Federal) jobs are very important to the

economies … and if a number of people didn’t relocate, there would be some openings for new people to enter the workforce,” Matthews says.

“They’re federal government jobs and they’re decent paying jobs.”

Robert Makichuk, a spokesperson for the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat, says talk of decentralization is speculation at this point — but acknowledges rumours are flying.

“I had a phone call from the Calgary Herald, they wanted to know how many jobs are coming to Calgary,” he says.

“There’s not a whole lot I can say … except over the last three years the government’s been modernizing service delivery to provide more integrated, consistent access to programs.”

So far, that’s involved integrating call centres — there were three, now there is one — and government services websites — 170 have been steamlined into one.

These pilot projects are part of a program called Services Canada — but as far as what Services Canada might turn out to be, Makichuk “can’t speculate on that … or the impact on public servants or the impact on communities.

“I could very easily speculate that because you have one portal instead of 170, it’s easier to move that portal someplace else … but again, I’m not saying that.”

Whether something to that effect comes down in the budget, Makichuk finishes, will not be known until Feb. 23.

Percy Downe, a Senator from Charlottetown, See “You never,” page 4

Rhonda Hayward/The Independent

2 • INDEPENDENTNEWS

FEBRUARY 20, 2005

FEBRUARY 20, 2005

INDEPENDENTNEWS • 3

‘A fighting chance’ All hands fighting for earlier retirement package for fish plant workers, 75 per cent of whom could be over 45 by 2016

By Jeff Ducharme The Independent

W

ith the average age of fish plant workers in the province pegged at well over 40, an early-retirement package for the aging workforce is once again being called for by workers, unions and politicians.

The province’s Liberal MPs have held informal talks with the Fish, Food and Allied Workers’ union concerning an early-retirement program. But plant workers are already concerned the union, provincial government and the feds won’t get it right — again.

David O’Keefe, who worked in the now-defunct Harbour Grace plant for 40 years, missed the 1998 early-retirement plan by two days.

OUT IN THE COLD Under Ottawa’s Fisheries Restructuring Adjustment Measures, or FRAM, the criteria was that only those over 55 were eligible, leaving many like O’Keefe out in the cold even though they had worked more than 30 years in a plant.

“I hope they know what they’re doing this time because the first time, as far as I’m concerned, the union done nothing for us,” O’Keefe tells The Independent.

Norman Hunt of Harbour Grace, who began working in the plant in 1963, says the feds just wanted to save money by using criteria based solely on 55 years of age and not years of service.

He calls it the “lesser of two evils.

“If this package had been done prop-

erly in ’98, there would have been none of this,” says Hunt. “There wouldn’t be people still on welfare.”

Federal Natural Resources Minister John Efford says if there is to be a new program, it “should be a combination of years and age.”

Efford says questions such as the number of workers who may qualify for an early retirement package and age have to be supplied by the union before he can advance the case.

Those numbers are currently being compiled.

Bonavista-Exploits Liberal MP Scott Simms, who was part of the initial meetings, says early retirement would give “rural Newfoundland a fighting chance” because young people see no future in the fishery as plants shut down and those still employed put retirement on hold.

“It’s these young families that keep our schools full of children,” says Simms. “They spend more, they are more apt to having two cars instead of one, it keeps rural Newfoundland alive.”

FFAW president Earl McCurdy says modernization has brought in machines that cut jobs and it’s the “younger people that lose their jobs.

“Let’s face it, the economy doesn’t want 55-year-old plant workers,” McCurdy says. “That’s the grim reality.”

By 2016, it’s estimated that 75 per cent of all fish plant workers will be over 45. The province says there are 15,000 plant workers — the union puts the number at 9,000 — from 500 communities that draw their livelihood from the fishery.

Flo Yetman, former plant worker.

There are 122 licensed groundfish plants in the province.

Provincial Fisheries Minister Trevor Taylor supports an early-retirement plan, but says Ottawa will have to carry part of the burden and the package must remove positions from the industry.

“Early retirement programs that serve to just remove older workers so younger workers can take their place will only perpetuate the cycle of low annual incomes,” says Taylor.

“Any programs that are implemented must be part of a bigger strategy for the industry. Such a strategy must provide for rationalization, a stable work envi-

Rural renditions T

alking with musician Ray Johnson about growing up in Job’s Cove, Conception Bay, it’s easy to understand his two life passions — music, and the preservation of rural Newfoundland and Labrador — and why they travel hand in hand.

Johnson is loved for his accordion and fiddle playing, singing and songwriting as one of the other fellers in Buddy Wasisname and the Other Fellers.

Lately, however, he’s started touring towns for a different reason: to brainstorm and drum up support for a Rural Symposium (slated for June 13 and 14), designed to raise awareness and tackle major issues faced by rural communities across the province.

“The purpose, I guess, is to let everyone know that a plan of action has to come about here, in the form of a positive attitude change,” he tells The Independent, “because once rural Newfoundland goes, Newfoundland is gone.”

The often overlooked needs of Labrador will also be addressed.

As chairperson for the event — entitled Who Will Speak for Newfoundland and Labrador? — Johnson says the aim is to develop a social and economic game plan through workshops, question-andanswer sessions and media coverage. The Royal Commission on Our Place in Canada, education, out-migration, business development and tourism will be just some of the topics up for scrutiny.

With help from the organizers of the symposium — Mariner Resource Opportunities Network, in Carbonear — Johnson is busy holding meetings,

researching and trying to arrange a venue for the event, which he’s determined to get televised.

“So when the camera’s rolling right across Newfoundland and Labrador and across Canada, people will be able to see, first-hand experience, why attitude has to change to make a positive goal to save our rural towns and communities.”

Johnson speaks for the cause with an enthusiasm and emotion stemming from his own firsthand experiences. He says his fondest childhood memories were built on his daily routine.

He remembers getting up at 3:30 a.m., eating breakfast and heading down to the water to wait for his uncles, before rowing out in a dory, anticipating the haul from the cod trap.

“When we pulled that trap, lots of times we were saddened because the fish weren’t that plentiful, but there were other times when our eyes just jumped — when we saw so much fish.

“So after filling our skiff with fish, we’d come up … I’d head home, take my accordion and head to a little pub in Job’s Cove and play for the fishermen and friends in the community. These are the memories that I hold onto.”

Today, Johnson lives just a kilometre away in Lower Island Cove with his family — wife Madeleine and children Adam, 26, and Nicole, 16. He still works with Buddy Wasisname, who recently recorded the bulk of their newest album The Shed, due for release in September.

The group has a spring tour across the mainland planned for March through to May. It’s a busy time for Johnson, who’s chairperson of Flambro Head Heritage Society, started in 1994 to preserve the heritage of the local community.

Johnson is also wrapping up a dedica-

ronment, and improved annual incomes for workers.”

McCurdy says the buzz word — rationalization — is “a big word” and the question that really has to be answered is what happens to people who lose their jobs if the provincial government decides to close plants and centralize operations.

But all sides agree that if government doesn’t manage industry changes properly, the fallout could be far worse.

China has burst onto the fish processing scene, says McCurdy, who calls it a “juggernaut.

“The U.S. can’t handle it, nobody can

handle it,” says McCurdy. “But one thing Canada can do, and I think has a responsibility to do, is use the resources of the country as a whole to help the people who are victimized by that juggernaut.”

Flo Yetman, a union activist and longtime fish plant worker, made herself a thorn in the side of the province and the feds. She launched a battle on behalf of plant workers whom she felt were “left behind” after the dust settled from the last retirement package.

“I’m going to do whatever’s in my power,” says a still feisty Yetman. “I’m not going to let it rest.”

Warming up Home-heating oil rebate helps thousands weather winter

By Alisha Morrissey The Independent

M

Ray Johnson isn’t just one of the fellers behind Buddy Wasisname, he’s a Newfoundlander determined to save a way of life

By Clare-Marie Gosse The Independent

Paul Daly/The Independent

tion to his own past, in the form of a book about the couple who adopted him as a five-year-old orphan and instilled in him a passion for his music and his home.

“The book is called And I Owe It All to Bridget and John. Believe it or not, I think I’ve got it almost ready for a publisher to look at.

“They were hardworking, determined to make things work, but I never ever saw anything in the way of greed. They never missed anything they didn’t have.”

Johnson’s work with the heritage society has struck a chord, particularly with young people and even friends from away.

He reads out an e-mail sent from a professor at New York University: I think the special quality of Newfoundland and Labrador is in the spirit of those who pitted their wits against nature; those who braved the dangers of the sea. It is the spirit of your generation – and I don’t know how that may be preserved — but if it is going to be preserved it’s more likely to be preserved in the rural areas.

When he’s back on the road with band mates Wayne Chaulk and Kevin Blackmore, Johnson intends to incorporate into the show some of his passion for the cause, amongst the usual music and comedy.

He recites a piece from his act: “Do I have anything to say about the death of the fisheries, something that hasn’t been said before? … I’d like to report yes, but I can’t. What can you say about the death of an industry? Despite our best efforts I don’t think mankind, governments, have learned a thing about the inshore fisherman … I believe the only way out of all of this is to sing about it and I hope that the message strikes home and maybe, just maybe, I’ll get an opportunity to spend another summer on the water.”

ore than 11,000 applications for a $250 home-heating oil rebate from the provincial government have been processed, with still more working their way through the system.

Finance Minister Loyola Sullivan tells The Independent more than 17,000 applications have been forwarded to his department, and approximately $3 million will be paid out to low-income households.

Final numbers on the rebate won’t be tabulated until after the April 30 deadline.

“While we have a significant number processed, the deadline is not until April and I wouldn’t want to conjecture on how many people might apply between now and then,” Sullivan says.

“They’re still coming and it would be too early to draw that conclusion.”

Of the 11,000 applications processed, 3,600 — or about one third — have been turned down for the rebate.

Sullivan says those turned away either filled out the application wrong, or didn’t meet the criteria.

Those who made a mistake on their application can make adjustments or corrections and reapply.

“The criteria to qualify is really straightforward,” he says. To qualify, an applicant must have been eligible to receive the seniors’ benefit, HST credit, social assistance or child benefit since July 2004. Only those living in homes heated with furnace oil, stove oil and propane can qualify.

According to Statistics Canada, homes in Newfoundland and Labrador burned 153.1 million litres of home-heating oil in 2003.

This winter is not the first in which a heating rebate has been handed out by the provincial government.

Similar programs were implemented in 2001 and 2003.

While Sullivan cannot say how many people qualified for the rebate in past years, he says there have been

changes to this year’s program, including the amount — $250 up from $100.

“We know that people were getting their rebates last year in June and July — and here it was in the heat of the summer — so we initiated the program early, we made the decision early,” Sullivan says.

“So people could get a cheque …

by Christmas and in the winter, when their bill were the highest, they got a cheque for $250 which was a big help.”

Sullivan wouldn’t comment on the use of a similar rebate in future years, saying it would depend on the need and price of home-heating oil.

‘DIFFICULT TO TRACK’ He says people are using other primary heating fuels since the rise in oil prices, “but it’s very difficult to track.

“If you look at wood, how do we track it? If somebody buys a permit … they may cut a portion of it, they may use it all, they may give it to their mother to use in their house.

We’d never be able to control and monitor all these,” he says.

The question of a rebate for electricity users has been raised in the past, though never acted on.

Sullivan says it’s not likely to happen soon.

“The electricity rates are set for this year … and there would have to be a process to go through to have a rate increase and that couldn’t be done this winter,” he says.

“But we did not know, from one day to the next, what the fuel prices were going to be.”

Sullivan says the rebate program came from a promise to help seniors with their winter heating bills.

Government later extended the rebate to include low-income families.

“It has benefited the individual by at least being able to pick up a significant part of the winter’s extra fuel costs.”

Sullivan heats his home with electricity.

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FEBRUARY 20, 2005

4 • INDEPENDENTNEWS

‘Their boat should have never been approved’ From page 1 weather because the tanks — depending on whether they’re empty or full — raise the centre of gravity.

“The people that have these things installed on their vessels need to be taught how to use them,” Capt. Michael Kruger, the safety board’s chief investigator, tells The Independent in an exclusive interview.

“Guaranteed,” says Kruger when asked whether the safety boards’ findings will have global implications.

The bulletin states: “Currently, the regulatory stability requirements of Canada, UK, USA and Australia make no specific reference to such installations, nor have any recommended standards or operational guidelines been introduced.”

Kruger says skippers and crews shouldn’t panic, but they must be aware of the concerns. “... if you find yourself rolling a little bit more than what you figure you should be rolling, then you better start taking some water out of that tank,” says Kruger. “And if you’re too stiff, if you’re jerking around really fast, then you might consider putting some water in.”

According to the bulletin, “there are no reg-

ulatory requirements, standards or guidelines addressing the installation and operation of roll reduction devices, including paravanes and anti-roll tanks, for any vessels.”

The safety board investigation also found “no formal written instructions were provided for its (the stabilization tanks) safe operation — particularly regarding severe weather limitations and any recommended emergency discharge parameters.”

Johanna Ryan Guy, who lost her two brothers in the sinking, says she’s not surprised by the latest findings.

“It (the rules) literally allowed a 65-footer to sail through (the cracks),” she says.

Ryan Guy expects Transport Canada, officials of which are currently reviewing the safety board’s findings and is responsible for instituting any rule changes, to find a “sacrifical lamb.

“I wonder who the fall guy for this is going to be?”

Federal regulations created a class of vessels called 64-11s (the Ryan’s Commander was one such boat), because they come in just under the mandated length. Mid-shore vessels are 65-100 feet — anything over that length is considered offshore.

“Everytime that they use up fuel, every time

‘You never know until it’s done’ From page 1

million annual payroll — a “tremendous impact” on the province.

It’s still the only national department with its headquarters outside Ottawa. Downe says “other areas should get the same benefits P.E.I. has for the past 29 years.”

P.E.I., isn’t impressed by what he’s hearing about the Services Canada plan.

Downe drew the attention of fellow Senators to the benefits of decentralization last fall, and has led the debate among them since. But moving call- ‘INTO THE centre jobs and other lower-paying BUDGET CYCLE’ He says he started the debate last positions isn’t enough — the model only really works, he says, if the fall “intentionally to get it into the whole department is relocated, from budget cycle for this budget … I’m the highest to the lowest paid, from hoping it will have some traction.”

In the end, Matthews says decenthe deputy minister on down.

“It’s not important just because of tralization is only one of a number of salaries, it’s important that there be a items he’s pushing for.

“We’re been policy component, working hard trythat the people ing to get susrelocated should be tained funding for able to make deci“I’m really hopeful sions,” he says.

ACOA, for stratethis time we’ll see According to gic community Downe’s research, investment and some jobs move 70 per cent of seninnovation, for a ior positions in the down to Newfoundland small crafts harfederal government bour … and Labrador, for all — the higher pay“And until the ing government budget comes the right reasons.” jobs — are in the down, you really Ottawa area. don’t know. You Bill Matthews For a precedent, lobby and lobby he points to the and lobby for example of the months … but you Department of Veterans Affairs, never know until it’s done. which relocated in entirety from “I’m really hopeful this time we’ll Ottawa to Charlottetown almost 30 see some jobs move down to Newyears ago. There are now 1,200 per- foundland and Labrador, for all the manent government jobs with a $68 right reasons.”

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that they load cargo, they are changing the centre of gravity of the ship,” says Krueger.

“So they may have to adjust the level of water in the (stabilization) tank and they definitely have to be informed that if in doubt, dump it.”

The Ryan’s Commander was built by Universal Marine of Triton. Transport Canada conducted the inaugural inspection of the vessel in 2004.

Ryan Guy says the vessel wasn’t subject to incline tests that would have determined stability because a smaller sister ship had already been tested. She says changes to the design of her brothers’ vessel made it unstable. The vessel had an extra deck, the wheelhouse was further aft than the sister vessel, and had no concrete ballast.

“Their boat should have never been approved,” says Ryan Guy. The federal government has been reviewing shipping regulations in an effort to address regulations that some contend may have been overtaken by technology.

Kruger would only say the investigation is ongoing and wouldn’t confirm or deny if more safety bulletins will be released before the release of the final report into the sinking of the Ryan’s Commander, which could take months.

Jim Wellman

More than ‘rhetoric’ From page 1 regional operations was recommended in the recent Dunne report that delved into the industry’s future.

The report listed criteria for towns to become regional processing centres — the focal point for services from hospitals and schools, to banks and fish plants, to churches and heavy industry.

And that’s exactly what Marystown is becoming.

Provincial Fisheries Minister Trevor Taylor says it’s obvious the town has become a regional centre.

“From that perspective, even without government saying or doing anything, it becomes a centre by default.”

Taylor points to St. Anthony as another centre that has evolved on its own.

“The industry and the resource will support the communities that it can,” says Taylor.

“There’s no point trying to put licenses in places that defy logic. If we are going to try and preserve some of the fabric of rural Newfoundland and Labrador then we have to have places out there where young people want to live and work.”

Young people, says Taylor, have already decided they aren’t interested in seasonal work or communities that offer little more than basic services. “... at the end of the day we killed northern cod because we caught too many because we needed to catch too many to keep too many people employed in an industry … we’ve been paying for that now for 15 years and we’re going to continue to pay for it for a few more years yet.”

From 1991 until 2003, the Burin

Peninsula lost an estimated 5,500 residents. The provincial government predicts the area will lose another 4,400 by 2018. It’s estimated that from 1991 to 2018 the province’s total population loss will come in at 82,000 — approximately 50,000 from outside the Avalon Peninsula.

Dunderdale says Marystown, and hubs like it, are the future.

“Not every community will have everything anymore,” says Dunderdale.

“It’s a whole region working together, nobody has all of it, but everybody has a part of it.”

The province recently announced a $10-million venture-capital fund to spur investment.

MARINE STRATEGY Further, it has announced a marine strategy to make the province “a centre of excellence in marine technology worldwide.” Broadband Internet is being introduced in rural areas and an aquaculture program will guarantee up to 80 per cent funding so that companies, most on the south coast, can access loans.

“It’s more than political rhetoric, because there are all of these actions that we’ve taken in the last year that support that,” says Dunderdale.

Some groups aren’t waiting for government. The Marystown-Burin Area Chamber of Commerce is hosting Partners in Progress in May. The conference will bring together industry, labour, education and government with a focus on the area’s marine assets — shipyard, deep-water port and an experienced workforce soon to be left in the wake of the SeaRose — Husky

Energy’s Floating Production Storage and Offloading vessel.

The chamber has called for a national shipbuilding policy and asked its parent association in Ottawa to lobby the feds.

“It’s moving along, but the jury is still out on that,” says Russ Murphy, conference chairman. “We all know how slowly governments move.”

Murphy says it’s critical that while the SeaRose is still under construction, it’s used as a showcase.

“Mortier Bay (in Marystown) ... it’s close to the shipping lanes of the North Atlantic and it’s probably got the finest harbour on the eastern seaboard ...”

A committee is currently working on developing the port.

“Commercially, Marystown is the hub, but we don’t look at it in that light,” says Murphy. “... the long-term answer is we’re looking at the entire Burin Peninsula as opposed to an individual bay or a harbour or a street or a town ...”

Ruud Zoon, Husky Energy’s head of east coast development, says company officials are thrilled with the support from the area and its workforce.

“There isn’t a lot we can see in the pipeline that follows from this project in the short term — that’s the downside,” says Zoon.

Fortune-Cape La Hune MHA Oliver Langdon says people are seeing the fallout from the collapse of the northern cod fishery of more than a decade ago.

In Langdon’s district, Harbour Breton is fighting for its life after Fishery Products International closed the plant there. Langdon says if the Danny Williams’ government has a plan, it must move quickly before outports reach the point of no return.

“Fifteen months into their mandate there is nothing been rolled out, they don’t have anything to roll out and the rural Newfoundland population continues to decrease,” says Langdon.

He maintains that government is forcing centralization — a politically correct term for resettlement.

“People are moving into the larger centres because government is neglecting services in rural parts of the province, making it more difficult for people to receive the necessary services they require on a daily basis,” says Langdon. “Educational, medical and social opportunities are slowly being withdrawn from smaller communities and centralized into larger centres.”

The fishery, says Taylor, will continue to play a major role in rural areas if government “handles it right.”

If not, the downturn will only get worse.

“I don’t see rural Newfoundland and Labrador surviving without (the fishery).”

Allan Moulton, a fish plant worker of more than 30 years and union representative for the Marystown plant, says the biggest threat to rural Newfoundland is where decisions are made.

“If the corporate boardrooms are the people who’s going to decide what happens in rural Newfoundland,” says Moulton, “then we won’t have a rural Newfoundland.”

FEBRUARY 20, 2005

INDEPENDENTNEWS • 5

Spanish target endangered fish Trawler cited for catching moratorium species American plaice; inspectors obstructed

By Jeff Ducharme The Independent

A

Spanish trawler fishing on the Grand Banks was charged recently with misreporting its catch and failing to assist a fishery inspector, marking the fifth citation laid by the federal Department of Fisheries to date this year.

The Playa de Tambo — which is still fishing just outside Canada’s 200-mile limit — was boarded and inspected on Feb. 8. Inspectors sampled 52 boxes in one section of the ship’s hold and found that five of the boxes contained endangered American plaice — exceeding the five per cent bycatch (or incidental catch) limit for a species under moratoria.

“Based on the sample alone, five out of 52, it’s a little less than 10 per cent,” Randy Jenkins, acting director of con-

servation and protection with the federal Fisheries Department, tells The Independent.

“And in this particular case American plaice wasn’t logged, so it’s pretty clear cut.”

The ship’s hold has been sealed, but it continues to fish.

FINDING CONFIRMED Inspectors from the European Union fishery patrol vessel Jean Charcot also inspected the hold and confirmed the finding of the Canadian observers. The final inspection won’t take place until the vessel returns to its homeport.

“American plaice is one of the species that is under moratorium so if they are catching it and they’re going to retain it onboard they resort to misreporting so it wouldn’t show up on their logs ...”

The second citation, failure to facili-

tate the work of an inspector, was laid after the captain of the Playa de Tambo refused to help inspectors investigate the hold.

“In this particular case the captain refused to assist any further once they discovered boxes of American plaice,” says Jenkins. “I guess he didn’t want to let us find out the extent of what was onboard.”

The citations represent the first ever issued to the Playa de Tambo.

“When you get incidents like this here, it only underlines our need to remain vigilant and to continue to closely monitor fishing activity,” says Jenkins.

The other ship to be cited so far this year was the Latvian vessel Atlas. It received three citations that included fishing shrimp illegally and having an observer working as part of the crew.

A total of 15 citations were issued in

2004 just outside the 200-mile limit in an area regulated by the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization. NAFO is generally seen as powerless, unable to enforce the quotas it sets.

Under NAFO rules, Canada cannot order the ships to port for investigation.

Instead, officials must ask the flag country for permission to take the ships to the nearest NAFO port, or to investigate themselves.

CRACKDOWN The Paul Martin government began its crackdown on foreign fishing leading up to the recent federal election — a move that led to charges of electioneering. Ottawa calculates that in recent years, foreign fleets have increased the catch of illegal species — including cod and American plaice — to as much as 15,000 tonnes. American plaice was processed at the fish plant in Harbour

Breton that Fishery Products International shut down late last year.

At that level, federal Fisheries Minister Geoff Regan has said fish stocks face “virtual destruction” in as little as three to five years.

Over the past decade, more than 300 citations have been issued against foreign vessels. Most of the citations were issued without publicity, often against boats that have been cited frequently, but face no penalty in their home country.

Fishing advocates in this province have repeatedly called for Canada to take custodial management of the Grand Banks, a move Ottawa has been reluctant to take.

Foreign fishing outside the 200-mile limit impacts fishing in Canadian waters in that groundfish stocks, which are migratory, don’t recognize the imaginary dotted line.

Nickel and dimes

Mining begins in Voisey’s Bay this year, but no way to tell what revenues province can expect JAMIE BAKER

Voisey’s Bay, by the numbers…

T

he first shipment of ore is scheduled to leave Voisey’s Bay in November of this year, but there’s no way of knowing what the projected cash worth of the mega-project will be to the province — now or in the future.

Instead of attaining actual “royalties,” the province stands to gain revenue by way of taxation. Under the Mining and Mineral Rights Tax Act, government does not divulge information about specific corporate taxpayers — such as Voisey’s Bay Nickel — meaning there’s no way of confirming just how much the project itself will contribute to provincial coffers once production starts.

The project is expected to impact the gross domestic product (the sum of all goods and services produced) by $11 billion over its 30-year life span. As well, 76,000 direct and indirect person years of employment are expected to be created.

Once operational, the mine and concentrator site at Voisey’s Bay will employ 400 workers, increasing to 800 when underground mining begins. The hydromet demonstration plant at Argentia, scheduled to become operational in November of this year, will employ 200 and the commercial hydromet processing plant, slated for construction in 2009 and operation in 2012, will employ 400.

That’s what’s known.

What’s not clear is the actual projected financial benefit to the province.

Last year, the provincial government

Resources • 30 million tonnes proven reserves Annual production • 110 million pounds nickel in concentrate form, containing 5 million pounds cobalt and up to 15 million pounds copper Employment (up to December 2004) Total workforce — 1,908 Total Newfoundlanders and Labradorians employed — 1,443 Contracts (up to January 2005) Total awarded — $810.5 million Contracts awarded to Newfoundland and Labrador/aboriginal companies — $653 million Projected total capital investment over life of project — $3 billion Projected provincial revenue from the project — unknown Hydromet demonstration facility, Argentia

collected just over $129 million in taxes and royalties on natural resources, with almost $137 million projected for 2004-2005 — an increase of $8 million.

Officials in the Departments of Finance and Natural Resources could not confirm whether Voisey’s Bay tax revenues were responsible for the increase — nor would they say if any further increases can be expected next year when Voisey’s Bay becomes fully operational.

The Mining and Mineral Right Tax

Act covers all mining operations in the province, except those in Labrador West — including IOC and Wabush Mines — which have their own legislation.

The act identifies mining tax as a 15 per cent tax imposed on the net income of the operator. A 20 per cent Mineral Rights Tax is imposed on any royalty receipts, less certain deductions.

Proposed changes to the Act were introduced as part of the signing of the Statement of Principles between Inco and the provincial government in 2002.

According to the Statement of Principles, the amendments were introduced, “…to strengthen the law while ensuring the province receives a fair and reasonable share of the economic rent from mining projects.”

Features of the proposed amendments included: – A cap of $2 million annually on the unlimited 10-year Corporate Income Tax credit (tax holiday) geared to, “…ensure a reasonable share of economic rent on mining projects, while maintaining a competitive tax regime

which encourages exploration and development.”

– Changes to the existing processing allowance resulting in only those assets located in the province being eligible for the allowance. The minimum processing allowance of 15 per cent of net income would be eliminated.

– A provision to allow mine operators to carry unused portions of exploration expenses forward for an unlimited amount of time as opposed to the existing five-year carry forward period.

SHIPPING NEWS The comings and goings of the ships in St. John’s harbour. Information provided by the coast guard traffic centre.

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 14 Vessels arrived: ASL Sanderling, Canada, from Halifax; Tuvaq, Canada, from Montreal; Northern Osprey, Canada, from Sea. Vessels departed: Northern Osprey, Canada, to Sydney.

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 15 Vessels arrived: Irving, Canada, from Saint John, NB; Northern Eagle, Canada.

Vessels departed: ASL Sanderling,

Canada, to Corner Brook; Atlantic Kingfisher, Canada, to Terra Nova; Maersk Placentia, Canada, to White Rose; Northern Eagle, Canada, to North Sydney.

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 16 Vessels arrived: Maersk Norseman, Canada, from Hibernia.

Vessels departed: Atlantic Eagle, to Terra Nova; Irving Canada, to Holyrood.

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 17 Vessels arrived: Bear Cove Point, Canada, from Fishing; Newfound Pioneer, Canada, from Sea; Cabot,

Canada, from Montreal; Maersk Chancellor, Canada, from White Rose.

Vessels departed: Sound Of Islay, Canada, to Southeast Bight; Newfound Pioneer, Canada, Fishing; Maersk Norseman, Canada, to Hibernia.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 11 Vessels arrived: Sound of Islay, Canada; Jim Kilabuk, Canada, from St. John; Atlantic Eagle, Canada, from Terra Nova.

Vessels departed: Cabot, Canada, to Montréal; Henry Larsen, Canada, to sea; Hudson Bay Explorer, Canada, to Bay Roberts.

Exclusively at

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FEBRUARY 20, 2005

6 • INDEPENDENTNEWS

OUR VOICE

Still, there’s hope O

f all the places to build a community, our fishermen forefathers had to pick the most inhospitable places on earth: the edges of peninsulas and sides of cliffs.

Where there was no land for a fishing shed or flake, fishermen built on stilts over the sea. The soil wasn’t much good for farming; there wasn’t much forest nearby, either.

But there was fish, loads of that.

Newfoundland and Labrador was settled on the strength of the commercial cod fishery. When that died in the early 1990s, life went on as it always had.

Outport people found a way to get by.

But life is slowly changing.

Today, 13 years after the northern cod moratorium was handed down, fish plants — the heart and soul of rural Newfoundland and Labrador — continue to cut back and shut down. Harbour Breton’s plant has closed; Fortune’s future is up in the air; Arnold’s Cove has issued layoffs.

There’s still a crab and shrimp fishery worth more than $1 billion a year.

Secondary processing and aquaculture

are promising industries, have been for years, but they aren’t stopping the outports from fading away.

It costs millions of dollars a year to supply services to rural towns, from snow clearing to schools. Those towns aren’t contributing what they once did, placing an extra burden on an already cash-strapped provincial government.

Still, there’s hope.

The Atlantic Accord has sparked renewed optimism in the offshore oil and gas industry as a way to pull the province up by its bootstraps. The guaranteed $2 billion from the new resource revenue deal with Ottawa will, no doubt, help pay the bills.

But non-renewable resources aren’t the saviour of rural Newfoundland and Labrador.

The Internet will definitely lend a hand. More and more communities are gaining access to high-speed services, creating job opportunities where before there were none. Computers can work anywhere, from Toronto to Triton.

But the web alone won’t save the outports.

Tourism is taking off. Thousands flock here every year from around the world. They come to see the whales and icebergs, sea and shoreline. They come to see us, a wonderful people, and experience our arts and culture. Job creation projects (make-work, in other words) also help keep the outports presentable.

The cities need rural Newfoundland and Labrador to survive and the outports need the support of the townies.

But tourism and make-work alone won’t save the outports.

Towns like Marystown on the Burin Peninsula see Wal-Mart moving into the community as a sign of faith in the future.

But Wal-Mart alone won’t save The Boot, as the peninsula is known.

Neither will any single politician. Not Danny Williams, not Bill Matthews, not Jack Harris.

All those things will certainly help the outports, but the only long-term solution to what ails rural Newfoundland and Labrador is a renewed groundfish fishery. The renewable resource that is the fish stocks kept this place going for almost 500 years. It will keep this place going for another 500 years — nay, 10,000 times 500 years — if nursed back to shape and managed properly.

We must make sure that happens. We must settle for no less. The rest of Canada must be made to understand what the fishery means to this place, to us, as a people, to our continued existence. Foreign overfishing must end; the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization must be replaced with a mechanism that works. Canada must be pressured to break new ground and take control of the continental shelf for the good of Newfoundland and Labradorians and, indeed, the rest of the world.

The Avalon Peninsula has boomed in recent years with the redistribution of the outport population. So many baymen have moved to St. John’s and become townies. But the cities aren’t what has nurtured and grown this province — rural Newfoundland and Labrador did that.

Short-minded townies better be sure they understand the overall economic picture before they discount the outports as irrelevant or insignificant or a drain on the rest of the province.

A fishery (assuming one lasts) cannot be run out of St. John’s. The cities need rural Newfoundland and Labrador to survive and the outports need the support of the townies. Townies and the baymen are inextricably linked, whether they like it or not.

It’s true what’s been said, “Once rural Newfoundland goes, Newfoundland is gone.”

Let’s use our renewed hope and spirit to build a future for our children and grandchildren so that they may also be blessed and, God willing, live and prosper in the outports of their forefathers.

YOUR VOICE

The Indy: ‘Only newspaper I buy’ Dear editor, the word Newfie on her sides. We My name is Donna Boardway. I never use the word Newfie in a conhave written to Jeff Ducharme sever- text that would be insulting because al times and find Jeff to be an excel- we have too much respect for all lent fellow. The Independent is the Newfoundlanders. The boat was only newspaper I named out of rebuy. I trust you and spect for this proyour writers to keep vince and the peoThe fishing culture me informed with ple who live here. the truth. Unlike We have taken out is a very strong The Globe and many friends on our one here and little Mail and Margaret boat and shared a Wente, your paper lot of good times by little it is being and writers show a with them. eroded away. professionalism We are sadthat is becoming dened about the fact hard to find. that the cod fishery I am writing in regards to Ryan is in the state that it is. We took Cleary’s column, Newfie Joke, in the Newfie to Burgeo for cod this past Feb. 6 edition of The Independent. summer. The weather was rough and I have been told that Newfie is we could not really relax like you can slang for Newfoundlander and it is when you are near home. We are insulting to some Newfoundlanders. I saddened by the fact we are missing have met many Newfoundlanders out on some great fishing, but more who did not mind being called a importantly, the fact that this province Newfie. is losing out on yet another natural I think it all comes down to how the resource. The fishing culture is a very word Newfie is used in a sentence. strong one here and little by little it is My husband and I are from the being eroded away. My husband and United States. We bought a home I were not even reared here and we that was abandoned here on the west feel the despair and anguish that coast of the island. We also bought a Newfoundlanders must feel when bay boat just for fishing here and they cannot even put cod on the tables named her after this province. She anymore. has big red and gold letters on her Once again, thank you for putside that state the word Newfie. ting out such a great paper and We also have a couple of puffin having wonderful writers like Jeff decals on her. We had named her Ducharme. before we found out that some people take offense to that word.

Donna Boardway, We are very proud of our boat and Stephenville

Ode to snowclearing Dear editor, I would like to comment on the icy roads and the people you see treading along them.

(Note: it is about falling on your ass while cautiously finding a secure place to walk. Capital — as in money.

Met — Meteorological, metropolitan, play on meeting. Sanctity — as in inviolability and not holiness or sacredness.)

Allan Flynn, St. John’s

Capital (lack thereof) Roads in Winter … in an urban setting ice immersed; terra firma met(ing) methodically dispersed.

Desperately seeking paths of least distance, I found my bottom inverted so, my sole lacked resistance and cursed the sanctity of snow.

AN INDEPENDENT VOICE FOR NEWFOUNDLAND & LABRADOR

P.O. Box 5891, Stn.C, St. John’s, Newfoundland & Labrador, A1C 5X4 Ph: 709-726-4639 • Fax: 709-726-8499 www.theindependent.ca • editorial@theindependent.ca The Independent is published by The Sunday Independent, Inc. in St. John’s. It is an independent newspaper covering the news, issues and current affairs that affect the people of Newfoundland & Labrador.

PUBLISHER Brian Dobbin MANAGING EDITOR Ryan Cleary SENIOR EDITOR Stephanie Porter PICTURE EDITOR Paul Daly

All material in The Independent is copyrighted and the property of The Independent or the writers and photographers who produced the material. Any use or reproduction of this material without permission is prohibited under the Canadian Copyright Act. • © 2005 The Independent • Canada Post Agreement # 40871083

The Independent welcomes letters to the editor. Letters must be 300 words in length or less and include full name, mailing address and daytime contact numbers.

Letters may be edited for length, content and legal considerations. Send your letters in care of The Independent, P.O. Box 5891, Station C, St. John’s, NL, A1C 5X4 or e-mail us at editorial@theindependent.ca

Palm Sunday F

or those who missed it, Newfoundland and Labrador is the “youngest, coolest” province in Canada, according to Maclean’s Magazine.

FREE NFLD. T-shirts are all the rage, and pink, white and green are the only colours to fly this season.

Our new-found status is thanks, of course, to Danny Williams — by count, the ninth coming of Christ since Confederation.

Williams’ government is billed as quite the act across the country, not a bad review for a one-man show, even if he’s from Newfoundland, where most of the country’s characters are carved.

We do so love our superstars to shine — especially upalong in Canada, where they t’inks they’re better than us and need to be brought down a peg or two. The downside with having only one light in the political darkness is that it can’t reach every corner; it’s easy to miss what moves in the shadows.

What we’re missing is a strong supporting cast, flashlights to support Danny’s high beams.

So what else is new?

Quick, name five ministers in the 10year lifespan of the Peckford administration? (And, no, Joe Sprung isn’t one of them.) Clyde Wells passed on his own crop of ministers and picked a right-hand man from outside cabinet.

(Hint: the once right hand of Clyde sleeps these nights at Government House in town and throws the garden party of the summer.)

Brian Tobin, of course, wasn’t one to share the stage with anyone, but then the media spotlight only followed him, and him alone.

Danny knows one way: his way, and so far it’s worked for him — and us. He took on the unions, and beat them squarely. He was on the ball enough to make Paul Martin promise 100 per cent, and then stick him to it.

One challenge at a time; stand it up and knock it down. Dan’s the man of the hour and foreseeable future.

Take this to the bank: Williams’ focus has shifted back to government’s

RYAN CLEARY

Fighting Newfoundlander books. The province’s fiscal belt will be tightened five or six notches come the March budget. The medicine will be tough on the civil service, but it won’t kill it — the bureaucracy always carries a few extra pounds to weather a storm.

The focus of any new spending will be on education — much the same as the Irish model the premier is molding us after.

When Ireland joined the European Union in 1973, its economy was the poorest on the block. Today, it’s the fastest growing EU economy. (Facts taken directly from a Williams’ speech.)

Danny knows one way: his way, and so far it’s worked for him — and us.

He took on the unions, and beat them squarely.

He was on the ball enough to make Paul Martin promise 100 per cent; and then stick him to it.

Ireland boasts the youngest population in all of Europe and an exceptional education system.

This province may be the coolest, but Williams has Irish envy, and has said as much. Expect the leaky roof at a school near you to be fixed come spring.

The Accord money won’t be enough to make that happen; Churchill Falls will be the next money stream to be brought on tap, natural gas after that.

To review: Williams plans to beat the provincial government into financial shape and find a way to put a few extra dollars in its pocket. At the same time, he says he’s going to focus on developing a rural development policy.

But then there’s the rub: outport Newfoundland and Labrador is doomed without the fishery, which falls further down on Williams’ priority list.

He has said the fabric of our nation is “woven in our small communities.”

If that’s the case, the fabric is coming apart at the seams; it won’t last another decade at the rate fish plants are shutting down, dragging communities to the bottom with them.

Williams, if he’s smart, which his mother (who’s always there at the airport to greet him) says he is, should call on his cabinet to play a bigger role in the scheme of things.

If he doesn’t have the team he needs fresh recruits.

But it’s all about team, as Williams, the hockey player, loves to bring up.

There’s no reason Williams can’t develop the lower Churchill and task a minister to lead the fight on rejuvenating the fishery. Other than Loyola Sullivan, who’s always close to the premier to slip him a figure or two, not a single minister has stood out in the Williams cabinet.

Some are raring to go, of that you can be sure, and will only be held back for so long. Some, a few, likely have trouble with the tougher tasks like tying their shoes in the morning.

Williams told a formal crowd in Toronto recently that when you hear the name Newfoundland and Labrador in 10 or 20 years, “the words you will use to describe our province will not be cold, foggy or poor. But prosperous, vibrant and self-reliant.”

No doubt, he’s right, but it will take more than Williams to make it happen.

Saviours, in this place, tend to end up nailed to the cross.

Ryan Cleary is managing editor of The Independent. ryan.cleary@theindependent.ca

FEBRUARY 20, 2005

INDEPENDENTNEWS • 7

‘In this story people die’ S

o riddle me this. A bunch of nasty Martinites in Ottawa decide to make a parlour game out of the money squandered in the fight for the hearts and minds of Quebecers. Instead of helping bury this scandal — as would be the usual practice by the natural governing party — they decide to make a big issue of it. A very un-Liberal thing to do.

Why? Not because they are outraged about the scandalous waste of yours and my hard-earned tax dollars. Hardly.

They did it to try and hurry Jean Chrétien out of office so their boy could take his place. They thought this would do the trick.

It kind of did.

Martin and his people got into power by playing nasty, weaselly little backroom games. They seemed to be good at that. They seemed nowhere near as good at running an election campaign, which they nearly lost. And since then Martin has fumbled just about every issue he has dealt with.

The sponsorship scandal is a case in point. Martin took the high moral

IVAN MORGAN

Rant & Reason ground and set about spending $100 million to find out what happened to $150 million. This makes no sense.

Everyone involved is going home with barrels of money — money that should have been spent on you and me. And no one will ever be the wiser. The whole thing is nothing more than a financial feeding frenzy for yuppies.

FINANCIAL FEEDING FRENZY So here is the mystery: here in Newfoundland and Labrador, CBC Television uncovered a real scandal that is possibly a bigger financial feeding frenzy on tax dollars. The provincial and federal governments spent about $280 million to move 700 Innu from Davis Inlet to Natuashish as part of a “healing strategy.” They showed us that despite all this money being spent, peo-

Ontario’s ‘piteous protestations’

ple are still living in squalor, desperation, and misery. They showed clear evidence of widespread corruption. And instead of happy, well-paid yuppies, in this story people die.

So many questions.

Where did the money go? Why isn’t the Opposition, both federal and provincial, howling from the rooftops? Where is Roger Grimes on this? Once upon a time the premier — Clyde Wells — was also the minister for Aboriginal Affairs.

That’s how important the aboriginal issue was to the provincial Liberal party. Now this scandal falls into their laps, in full colour on their TV sets, with all the work done by the CBC, and not a peep from any of them. We apparently had to wait for the government minister responsible, Tom Rideout, to call for the inquiry.

Is there an opposition in this province?

The claws and fangs are being sharpened for the up-coming federal by-election in Labrador. Is this going to be an issue? If Martin is so worried about corruption, why is his minister working so

diligently to bury this in a sea of denial and political correctness.

THE BIGGEST PROBLEM I worked for a native organization for many years, and I got to know the constituency and the problems that plague it. In my opinion, the biggest problem for aboriginal people is that government spends millions upon millions of dollars on the problem and the average native person never sees a cent of it.

So where does the money go?

Not to the average aboriginal person.

They are — like people anywhere — mostly terrific. Unlike the rest of us, however, they suffer under a terrible unspoken systemic racism that keeps them isolated, marginalized and plagued by alcoholism, drug abuse and sexual deviance.

It’s the people who fed on their misery. That’s where the money goes. Their leaders are like our leaders. There are good ones, but there are also bad ones.

The good ones fight for their community. The bad ones are corrupt and pander to the people who feed them money

while brutalizing their own constituents.

Then there is the industry of non-aboriginals experts who gravitate to the stupefying amounts of money poured into native communities in an attempt to solve their problems. Some are well meaning — some aren’t. In any case, most are pretty well paid for their troubles. There will probably be an inquiry now. Lots of experts will swoop down to investigate. They will all send their bills to the federal government.

And as for the Innu people? There is an economic theory that is popular amongst rich fiscal conservatives — the theory of trickle-down economics. It is an economic theory that claims investing money in business and giving them tax breaks is the best way to make communities wealthy.

That might all be well and good, but ask most of the people of Natuashish and they will tell you, not a lot has trickled down to them.

Ivan Morgan can be reached at ivan.morgan@gmail.com

SMOKE ON THE WATER

Editor’s note: the following commentary was written by Independent columnist John Crosbie for CBC Television.

Methinks McGuinty should be briefed on how lucky Ontario is to have Ottawa on its soil and all the other federal pablum it receives through federal civil servants and he offshore revenue agreement facilities! signed recently gives our Imagine a premier of the province province one last significant that considers itself to be Canada chance to become a have province climbing on the backs of Newfoundand for our provincial government to landers and Nova Scotians, trying to find its fiscal feet in Canada. get more for themselves on such spuBefore Ontario and other provinces rious and mistaken grounds. misinterpret how this new arrangeNewfoundland and Labrador’s ment affects them, remember that it future is now in our own hands to deals with changes — not decide. to the federally controlled The revenues we have equalization program — gained through righting but to the Atlantic Accord the Accord wrongs will bilateral agreements on make it possible for us to management and sharing overcome our governof revenues from our offment’s fiscal weakness shore resources. over time if we use our It is essential to underseveral billions of dollars stand that no other equalto reduce our nightmarish ization-receiving pro$11.6 billion provincial vince loses or gains as a debt and out deficits of result of this deal.

John Crosbie $375 million cash each The Government of year to manageable levCanada will spend more to reimburse els. us and Nova Scotia, but Ottawa will Premier Danny Williams and pay these reimbursement amounts — Finance Minister Loyola Sullivan, to not any other province. whom we owe much for their skill Since the other equalization-receiv- and backbone, we must support for ing provinces suffer no losses, the our long-term future by resisting calls piteous protestations from Ontario for spending by politically influential Premier Dalton McGuinty are erro- groups. neous. Ontario still has plenty and Reduce the devil debt today for a loses nothing! brighter tomorrow! Spend only on Neither Ontario nor Alberta nor any programs that lead to economic province makes equalization pay- growth and greater productivity. ments. It is individual taxpayers — The going had been tough, now such as myself and all of you who pay let’s help the tough, Williams and taxes to the Government of Canada Sullivan, get going for a Newfound— who pay for equalization pay- land and Labrador of opportunity, ments, just as every federal taxpayer optimism and renewal. across the country pays for federal John Crosbie, spending programs.

St. John’s

T

Smoke billowed from a life boat aboard the oil tanker Tuvaq in St. John’s harbour Feb. 18, despite the no-smoking sign.

What’s good for Ontario …

Efford’s constituents ‘blind and spellbound’ Dear editor, The analysis by Ivan Morgan (Brian Tobin has left the building, Feb. 6 edition of The Independent) regarding the imminent signing of the adjusted Atlantic Accord, potential spin-off effects, and political landscape was most interesting. I think Ivan was right about the opportunity presented for us to shed our defeatist, pessimistic, disabling psyche — which has haunted too many of us for too many years.

I would suggest the rancor caused by the Accord has provided an opportunity for us to mature politically. The hot and cold debates left little room for people of the province to just sit back. We were required — realizing it or not — to make a decision as to where to place our feet.

Those decisions were tweaked and reached in workplaces, kitchens and barrooms. The conclusions were sometimes boldly shared with various media for public consumption.

For many, a psychological corner was indeed turned.

For me, there are a couple of pieces of residue from all this that have to be addressed. One is what to do about John Efford. Since going to Ottawa, he has not shown himself to be a promoter of our province’s best interests.

On this issue, the Accord issue alone, he would have left billions of dollars on the table if Williams had bought into Efford’s take-it-or-leave-it campaign on Ottawa’s behalf. Most recently, he’s on record as being “cool heeled” regarding promotion of a power corridor across

John Efford Rhonda Hayward/The Independent

Quebec.

Exactly what is Efford after? How many pieces of silver, and from where?

Prime Minister Paul Martin has got to see Efford will/should be a liability for him in the next election.

A healthy sign for me this province has indeed turned a psychological political corner will be the removal of Efford from this province’s political scene.

His constituents should request his immediate resignation. Otherwise, vow

Rhonda Hayward

to send him into retirement in the next election.

I very much doubt his district is capable of doing that, and John knows it (remember his “I’d get elected running for the green party” statement). His supporters couldn’t be insulted.

My fear is Efford was correct, that his constituents are blind and spellbound when it comes to their MP. It’s not likely to change any time soon.

The other thing that bothers me is Parliamentarians Bill Matthews and Scott Simms stood by their province, placing their personal aspirations and political careers on the line when it got tough in Ottawa. These gentlemen placed the perceived best interests of their province ahead of their own, which was selflessness and personal integrity of the highest order.

I don’t think their strength, and sense of righteousness has been properly recognized and honoured by this province to date. They established a high bar for all politicians to emulate.

As far as I am concerned they should receive the Order of Newfoundland and Labrador for distinguished service.

Personally, I feel they shouldn’t have to campaign in the next election. Let the people of their ridings simply return a debt of gratitude to them on behalf of the province, and send them back to Ottawa. Both gentlemen have demonstrated the province will be in trusted hands, while in their hands.

Ron Tizzard, Paradise

Dear editor, investment to convert to peacetime There are those within our country, production. including, sadly, Dalton McGuinty, This heavy investment by the federwho need a lesson in what Canada is al government contributed to the all about. regional disparities that resulted in the Canada is a nation. The taxes we need for equalization. pay to the federal government go Canada gave Ontario the auto pact. directly from us to our country. That One study revealed that policy taxed money never belongs to the province all Canadians an average of somein which we live. Whenever this where between $2,000 and $3,000 for money is used to benefit any region or each automobile they purchased. The province of this country it does not federal government made a decision to diminish Canada. support the aerospace industry but not Not all regions or the ship-building provinces benefit from industry. national investment at McGuinty, and those Either all the same rate. For politwho share his view, ical reasons certain actions benefiting that by enabling Nova regions or larger Scotia or one province provinces tend to beneNewfoundland and fit more from federal to benefit more than another Labrador government policies from their resources because of their larger and make some headare harmful and pool of voters. way in catching up to wrong or not.

Some provinces have the vast wealth of larger resource bases Ontario, is unfair to than others because of Ontario, must also the structure of our country. As one admit policies such as the 1912 expanexample, in 1912, Ontario benefited sion of Ontario, the wartime and post from the federal purchase of Rupert’s war investments, and the auto pact Land by receiving a large tract of were unfair to the other provinces. resource-rich territory as a free gift Either all actions benefiting one from the federal government. That province more than another are harmwas a benefit that was not shared, for ful and wrong or not. In the overall example, by the Maritimes. context of national policy, the offshore During the Second World War, the agreement is fair either as a means of federal government decided to invest building a stronger Canada through heavily in the war effort. building more financially independent In order to be safe from German provinces or as equalization to those attack, they placed most of the invest- provinces for the benefits Ontario has ment in wartime industries in central received from federal government Canada. policies.

After the war those same industries Phyllis Wagg, PhD history received another influx of federal West Bay, N.S.

FEBRUARY 20, 2005

8 • INDEPENDENTNEWS

What kind of editor uses ‘pooh pooh’?

PAPER TRAIL

B

ill picked up a reporter’s notepad the day after former JEFF DUCHARME U.S. president John F. Kennedy had his brains blown out all A Savage over Jackie’s Chanel suit in Dallas.

Journey By the time I met Bill, he had been in the business for almost 40 years — 35 years longer than most survive. The dangling from his mouth.

Bill had been grandfathered, meanfact he was that much of a masochist to endure four decades in journalism is ing he was allowed to smoke because he had smoked years before the ban alone worthy of respect.

While I was still sitting in front of the came into effect. More likely, no one family television eagerly waiting for had the guts to tell him otherwise.

Legend had it that he had quit the my name to be mentioned when Susan from Romper Room looked into her paper more times than many of us magic mirror, Bill was covering stories would have jobs in our lifetimes. Each time the powers that be sought him out with a press card stuck in his hatband.

Bill came from the era that never and begged him to come back. If there viewed journalism as a path to a comfy was a heart and soul of that paper, he public relations job or a political was it — though his heart was swimappointment (as so many do these ming in draft beer and his soul clouded by cigarette smoke. days). To him, journalism was a job.

The minute the paper was put to bed, Even though his use of “pooh pooh” in headlines left me frothing at the Bill would rush off to the legion.

He’d sit at one of the big round mouth, it was a grammatical eccentricity that could be grudgingly over- tables with a jug of draft and rip open pull-tab tickets. looked.

“It’s for a good cause,” he once He was everything you expected and assured me, an empty everything Hollydraft jug overflowing wood wrote about with tickets. old-time scribes. His You would have Soon there was a skin was leathery, his beard streaked with an easier time trying full table of us gleefully ripping open the tobacco stains and he to tell Jesus how tickets and then, spoke in grunts (that almost in unison, is, if he spoke at all). to walk on water bemoaning our One could sit within than trying to tell pathetic fortunes. feet of the man for After 40 years in weeks at a time and Bill anything this business, you never have a converdevelop a few pet sation that was more about journalism. peeves. Bill’s was the meaningful than use of “of” with the “good morning.”

The managing editor of the paper felt word “couple.” Slang had left the “of” it incumbent on himself to give new off the expression “couple of days” recruits to the paper a speech about making it “couple days,” which drove Bill, assuring them that although it Bill absolutely bonkers.

The newsroom silence was often might seem that “Bill doesn’t like you, he really is a good guy. It’s just his shattered by Bill leaping to his feet and screaming “couple of, couple of,” and way.” throwing crumpled balls of paper in the No doubt, Bill is a really good guy.

Bill had seen it all — from typewrit- direction of the offending reporter.

He’d then punctuate the lesson by ers to computers, from notepads to tape screaming “get it right” and then curse recorders.

You would have an easier time trying under his breath as he plunked himself to tell Jesus how to walk on water than back down in his pink and grey chair trying to tell Bill anything about jour- that he’d probably been sitting on since the FLQ Crisis. nalism.

One poor woman who suffered Bill’s After a night of cow tipping and fried chicken eating, our shift at the Alberta “couple of” rants on a regular basis was paper began early. One morning, I so shattered by the cursing that she left noticed Bill having a smoke at his desk. the paper and went to work for the Bill’s desk was more of a provincial Catholic church. Since Bill wasn’t archive than a desk. It was turned Catholic, he felt no guilt.

It’s a grammatical rule that a number square to the wall so he could choose who to acknowledge and who not to of reporters will never forget. For the rest of their careers, be they decades acknowledge.

Papers and tidbits of information long or months short, they will hear a were piled three-feet high in four dis- dusty voice screaming in their ears, tinct piles. Screwing up my nerve, I “couple of, couple of.”

Bill is retired now and he took with asked Bill if it was OK to smoke in the newsroom before normal business him an era in journalism that, sadly, hours — all the while noticing the no- will never come this way again. smoking sign someone had lovingly Jeff Ducharme is The Independent’s placed above his desk.

“I don’t know about you, but I can,” senior writer. jeff.ducharme@theindependent.ca he said in a monotone growl, cigarette

In local newspapers of the 1940s, illustrations were used to sway Newfoundland and Labrador voters.

The good ol’ days

By Alisha Morrissey The Independent

A

bleak picture has been drawn of rural Newfoundland and Labrador in recent years, images abound of falling down churches and jobless wanderers hopping a flight to the mainland.

But the picture wasn’t always so desolate.

On June 2, 1951, The Daily News, a defunct St. John’s-based newspaper, ran the headline, “Burin economic picture bright, councillor says.”

“There isn’t one able-bodied man unemployed,” the story began.

Frank Brenton, then-town councillor for Burin, was quoted saying: “Why, when we tried to get six men we needed there for work with the town council, we had to go clear out of the district to get them.”

He also mentioned the “shore fishery is very promising,” despite a note about a brief bait shortage.

Burin may have had full employment, but Bay Roberts faced a job shortage in the 1950s.

The Bay Roberts Speaker was a handtyped newspaper with hand-written headlines. The paper began in the 1950s and was mostly filled with local events.

Lists of wedding and death announcements ran under the heading of News Briefs.

The monthly paper, which operated for seven years, didn’t touch on much hard news, save for a single story that had to do with then-premier Joey Smallwood.

The article was actually a copy of a telegram sent to the community of Bay Roberts from Smallwood. The Christmas greeting was received by the paper and published on Jan. 3, 1953.

Christmas, 1952, will be celebrated in Newfoundland in greater comfort than

for many years past. We have more prosperity than we have ever had before. I believe that 1953 will be just as prosperous, if not more so.

In the same edition an editorial read that 1,500 men in Bay Roberts were out of work.

GEARING UP On the other side of the Island — and almost two decades later — the Town of Stephenville was gearing up for the grand opening of the pulp and paper mill, expected to be a major employer in the community.

The Stephenville mill, owned by Abitibi Consolidated (formerly AbitibiPrice), began its operation with promise.

The Reporter — Stephenville’s ‘Family’ Newspaper — ran front-page, goodnews stories about the conversion of the former liner-board mill.

The paper’s July, 29 1981 edition reported the mill was making 400 tonnes of the “highest-quality paper” a day.

The headlines of the Reporter’s first

edition in 1979, read, “Newsprint market looks good.”

The mill once employed 4,000 people, but today employs about 240 people year round.

Nowadays, the mill is under review by

Abitibi Consolidated due to the high price of energy and a wood shortage.

Another town that saw a big boom and slow decline is the copper-mining community of Springdale.

A one-time paper, The Springdale News, ran a story in June 1967 that read, “The changes that have taken place in the town in the last three years are astonishing.” Read another story, “Springdale continues its building boom with numerous houses being built around the town.”

In 1967 more than 6,500 people read The Springdale News. The population of Springdale now stands at 3,500.

Even before Confederation, Springdale was a hub of activity. In a series of articles published in The Springdale News, called History of Mining in Northeastern Newfoundland, letters written by Rev. Moses Harvey, as he travelled the Green Bay area in 1874, described mining exploration and activity.

He wrote that when he arrived for a second time within a month, double the number of men were working in the mines as his previous trip.

Even tiny victories were happening everyday — like getting television in Port aux Basques.

The Echo, the area’s first newspaper, reported on Feb. 21, 1967 that after five years of lobbying Ottawa the Chamber of Commerce had found an obsolete television transmitter in Montreal and installed it on Red Rocks Hill.

The story read, “To the ‘scrooge’ who said it could not be done and then sat back, all we can say is, ‘Enjoy your safer seat.”

The first set of television listings — for the one channel — followed the story on page six alongside a Dagwood comic strip.

Port au Basques was 12 years after St. John’s in getting television and 15 years after Ontario.

LIFE STORY

‘Mixture of wool and memories’ Philip J. Pardy, 1906-1992 Fisherman, grandfather HARBOUR MILLE, FORTUNE BAY

By Pam Pardy Ghent For The Independent

W

hen my grandfather died, my grandmother gave me his old blue woods sweater. It was the sweetest gift she could have given me.

As a teenager, I would often reach for that old blue sweater to haul over my designer jeans as I rushed out the many doors of my grandparents’ saltbox home.

With a slice of homemade apple pie in my claws, and with a smile from the suspender-clad old man sitting in his chair shaking his head as his cataract eyes twinkled at my youth, he would call out, “Stick a piece of pie in your pocket for later.”

No matter how many times he told me to stick food in my pocket — everything from doughboys to leftover fish — I always laughed. And I would roll the collar of his knitted blue sweater over my nose and breath deeply as I jumped from the step to the gate that led to the waiting world.

As I ran down the harbour, or walked up to the pond to meet my friends, I had the scent of my grandfather around me.

As my friends and I wandered the safe-

Philip J. Pardy

ness of Harbour Mille I often picked out bits of forest left behind in the wool.

This was the sweater my Pop put on as he brought in the wood that kept the stove going so my grandmother could keep us in grub, and keep our cots snug when we piled in from our evening gallivants. The sweater was kept on a hook in the closet by the stove, and the scent was a mixture of wood, turpentine, saltfresh air, home cookin’, and the best flagrance of all — the one unique to my grandfather.

The blue sweater was well worn and abundantly patched and darned. The bot-

The Independent is now accepting obituaries and memoriams to be included in our publication.

tom ridge was stretched and no longer clung as it once did, which was great, in my self conscious teenaged mind, as it hid my wide behind, and made my legs look thinner. The right side was lower than the left side from all the mending, but I didn’t care. It was warm, it held the scent of a man I dearly loved and adored, and the colour looked great with jeans and my dark features.

I kept that sweater in my closet from 1992, the year he passed, until my son was born in 1997, and then I moved it to the closet in his room of our Mississauga home. I don’t know what I was hoping for, or wishing for, but somehow, seeing that familiar blue wool would warm my heart every time I went to gather something from my little boy’s closet. I never washed that sweater, and it still held the scent I knew so well from my youth.

We have moved twice since 1997. My final move was back home to Newfoundland, back to the home my grandparents raised their own children in, and I wish I knew what unpacked box holds the treasure of that mixture of wool and memories. The closet that once held my grandfather’s blue sweater is now filled with the snow gear and belongings of a seven-year-old boy, but if I close my eyes, and lean in real close, I can still get the scent of the man who made this house home for his own family, and many grateful grandchildren.

A great way to commemorate those in a tasteful and elegant manner. Rates are $12.00 for the first 10 lines and $1.00 for each additional line.

INDEPENDENTWORLD

SUNDAY THROUGH SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 13-19, 2005 — PAGE 9

Toronto, Ont.

By Keith Levit

Toronto aid crisis looms Grim picture: more than a million Ontarians are not making enough money to live in the city

By Royson James The Toronto Star

T

oronto is faced with the creation of a permanent underclass in the next recession, says a dream team task force bent on repairing the country’s fraying social safety net.

Programs that paid out billions of dollars during the last recession in 1992 have been changed and amended to such a degree that thousands of people will be left without help if the hard times return, they warn.

“We estimate there would be several billion dollars that would have been paid out in 1992 that wouldn’t be paid out this time; at least a couple billion dollars under the old EI and welfare rules that wouldn’t be there this time,” says David Pecaut, co-chair of the task force.

“What we risk in the next recession is creating a permanent underclass,” says Pecaut.

“Look how devastating that’s been for the U.S. We have a flawed system here and it

needs to be fixed.”

It is Toronto’s problem because the city Among the grim facts already collected will bear the brunt of problems — at food by the task force: banks, United Way, homeless shelters and • A million low-income Ontarians are not the social service agencies, says the task making enough money force. to live in our cities.

“The problems of • Half the low-income “We risk … creating a per- food banks and homeearners are making $10 less will be magnified manent underclass. Look dramatically because an hour or less. This puts them a step away from the social nets have how devastating that’s being destitute and a failed us,” Pecaut says. recession will tip them early findings of been for the U.S. We have theThe over. group of bankers, • In 1990, more than activists, lefta flawed system here and social 80 per cent of unemand right-wing think ployed citizens received tanks, labour and civic it needs to be fixed.” employment insurance do-gooders is welbenefits. Now, only 38 comed by front-line — David Pecaut per cent are eligible. workers who have Further rules and barricharted the trends, but ers mean only 25 per have been unable to cent actually get the benefits. That means get public attention. only one in four unemployed people are “We hope we have a team assembled who receiving employment insurance benefits. can make a change,” says Susan Pigott, task

force co-chair and CEO of St. Christopher House, a social service agency. “This links the social activist with the powerhouses on the Toronto City Summit Alliance that we will need to move this along. There is interest and urgency around this.”

The task force will file a report in June and then go on a campaign to fix the “mess” of a problem that Canadians think is working well but is badly damaged.

Among the other data collected by the task force: • The welfare system discourages recipients from accepting a minimum wage job because any new small earnings trigger a loss of many essential medical, child-care and housing benefits.

• Government spending on seniors has kept pace with inflation, spending on children is up significantly but “low-wage earners have not kept pace with inflation or with average workers.”

See ‘People’ on page 10

Cellucci’s successor

Could be a while before America’s next ambassador to Canada chosen NEW YORK

By Stephen Handelman For The Independent

A

s the guessing game begins about who will replace U.S. Ambassador Paul Cellucci when he leaves Ottawa next month, there are hints that, with Washington’s foreign-policy plate chock full at the moment, it may take a while before any candidate emerges.

A long while.

“We’re hearing that it could be as long as six months,” says one well-connected Canadian diplomat in the U.S. “They haven’t even gotten around to naming a new ambassador in London.”

Of course, George W. Bush could

STEPHEN HANDELMAN

Global Context surprise everyone by moving quickly through the Beltway dance of leaking names, testing reaction in both countries, and final Senate confirmation.

But a prolonged vacancy might not be a bad idea — especially if it gives both countries breathing space to examine where their long-suffering relationship is heading.

In his four-year tenure as ambassador, the often less-than-diplomatic Cellucci raised the rhetorical tempera-

Go Further

ture. The former Massachusetts governor needled Ottawa about defence spending (not enough), marijuana policy (dangerous), and sharing the burdens of the war on terrorism (Iraq).

He was, of course, doing his job. For a U.S. administration that has radically, and self-consciously, transformed its approach to the world, beating around the Bush is considered a cop-out — whether it involves allies or enemies.

Yet, for all the venom directed at him by the Canadian media, Cellucci illustrated the bonds that tie both countries together. “On a working level,” he said this month, “this is probably the closest relationship between any two governments anywhere in the world.”

It’s not just sentimental — or con-

spiratorial — to make the point. The U.S.-Canada agenda has filled up at warp speed since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, with security of the U.S. “homeland” jostling for precedence over the $1.2-billion (Cdn) a day trade across the border.

Both countries need each other more than ever, even if the driving motivations are different on each side of the border. Yet the coincidence of the deepening security dialogue and deepening economic integration makes Canadians increasingly uncomfortable: it’s rarely been so difficult to forge a national consensus about the future of a relationship that is crucial to Canadian prosperity.

Prime Minister Paul Martin came into office with ambitious plans to put

From its earliest days Memorial University has been central to the social, cultural and economic life of Newfoundland and Labrador. Since it’s beginning, Memorial

some of the jitters on both sides to rest.

He made overdue structural changes in Ottawa to manage the relationship rationally: for instance, a special cabinet committee dealing with U.S.Canada issues. But despite Bush’s visit to Canada in December, the relationship is still treading water.

One reason, on Canada’s side at least, is Martin’s minority government status.

Rather than fashioning a consensus, he is forced to follow it on hot-button issues like Canada’s participation in the U.S. National Missile Defence — an issue which, while important, obscures the larger challenge of what kind of continental security relationship

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www.mun.ca

FEBRUARY 20, 2005

10 • INDEPENDENTWORLD

WORLDBRIEFS Indonesia rebuilds BANDAACEH, Indonesia (Reuters) - Indonesia will build up to 80,000 new houses for those whose homes were swept away by the Dec. 26 tsunami in Aceh province and will train local Acehnese to build them.

The tsunami killed at least 121,000 people in Indonesia, almost all of them in Aceh on the northern tip of Sumatra island. More than 400,000 were displaced.

Indonesia has been working on a blueprint to rebuild shattered Aceh, taking advantage of the billions of dollars which have been pledged by donors around the world.

Chief social welfare minister Alwi Shihab says the government would also set up training centres to teach Acehnese building skills like carpentry and masonry so that they could take part in the reconstruction.

“We are aiming at activating (survivors) so we will have training centres,” he says. “When there is big reconstruction in Aceh, we will no longer need workers from outside Aceh. This will make the economy run.”

Indonesia has already said authorities are considering a plan to legislate against building homes too close to the sea, with talk of a buffer zone along the coast.

Britain doubles anti-drug funding for Afghanisan Activists clad in polar bear outfits gather in the Ginza shopping district of Tokyo late last week to celebrate the Kyoto Protocol.

Toru Yamanaka/AFP/Getty Images

Ocean, Arctic studies show global warming is real WASHINGTON

By Maggie Fox Reuters

A

parcel of studies looking at the oceans and melting Arctic ice leave no room for doubt that it is getting warmer, people are to blame, and the weather is going to suffer, climate experts say.

New computer models that look at ocean temperatures instead of the atmosphere show the clearest signal yet that global warming is well underway, says Tim Barnett of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

Speaking at an annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Barnett says climate models based on air temperatures are weak because most of the evidence for global warming is not even there.

“The real place to look is in the ocean,” Barnett says.

His team used millions of temperature readings made by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to calculate steady ocean warming.

“The debate over whether or not there is a global warming signal is now over, at least for rational people,” he says.

The report was published one day after the

United Nations Kyoto Protocol took effect, a 141-nation environmental pact the United States government has spurned for several reasons, including stated doubts about whether global warming is occurring and is caused by people.

Barnett urges U.S. officials to reconsider.

“Could a climate system simply do this on its own? The answer is no,” Barnett says.

His team used U.S. government models of solar warming and volcanic warming, just to see if they could account for the measurements they made. “Not a chance,” he says.

HOMELESS BEARS And the effects will be felt far and wide.

“Anywhere the major water source is fed by snow ... or glacial melt,” he says. “The debate is what are we going to do about it.”

Other researchers found clear effects on climate and animals.

Ruth Curry of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution found that melting ice was changing the water cycle, which in turn affects ocean currents and, ultimately, climate.

“As the Earth warms, its water cycle is changing, being pushed out of kilter,” she says. “Ice is in decline everywhere on the planet.”

A circulation system called the Ocean Conveyer Belt is in danger of shutting down, she says. The last time that happened, northern Europe suffered extremely cold winters.

She says the changes were already causing droughts in the U.S. West.

Greenland’s ice cap, which contains enough ice to raise sea levels globally by 23 feet, is starting to melt and could collapse suddenly, Curry says. Already freshwater is percolating down, lubricating the base and making it more unstable.

Sharon Smith of the University of Miami found melting Arctic ice was taking with it algae that formed an important base of the food supply for a range of animals.

And the disappearing ice shelves meant big animals such as walruses, polar bears and seals were losing their homes.

“In 1997 there was a mass die-off of a bird called the short-tailed shearwater in the Bering Sea,” Smith says.

The birds, which migrate from Australia, starved to death for several years running when warmer waters caused a plankton called a coccolithophore to bloom in huge numbers, turning the water an opaque turquoise color.

“The short-tailed shearwater couldn’t see its prey,” she says.

KABUL (Reuters) -Britain, leading an uphill international drive to stem Afghanistan’s huge narcotics trade, says it is doubling its funding to the effort to $100 million and launching a bid to raise another $300 million.

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw made the announcement after Afghan President Hamid Karzai said he was launching an internationally backed anti-drugs plan for 2005/06 next month.

Straw says narcotics blight the lives of too many people in Britain and Western Europe and drives Afghanistan’s drug economy.

“This a joint problem, but also a joint responsibility,” he says. Straw says Britain is doubling its contribution for the coming financial year to $100 million and launching an international trust fund to raise a further $300 million by encouraging smaller countries to contribute.

He says half the British contribution would go to providing alternative livelihoods for opium farmers.

While eradication and better law enforcement were essential, “unless you are able to provide poor farmers with alternative livelihoods, they will fall back on poppy cultivation if the only alternative is poverty,” Straw says.

Shark bites drop MIAMI (Reuters) - Sharks and humans both fled the coast as hurricanes battered Florida last year, causing a dramatic drop in shark attacks in the state that usually has a third of the world’s annual total, scientists say.

Shark attacks occur most often in North American waters, and Florida normally has more than any other state or country because its long coastlines, dense population and year-round swimming weather often bring sharks and people together.

U.S. invests in climate WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States, which refused to participate in a United Nations-backed global plan to slow global warming, nonetheless says it will spend nearly $5.8 billion in 2005 on research and programs addressing climate change. The Kyoto protocol was signed by 141 nations and went into force Feb. 16 to limit carbon dioxide and other heattrapping gases blamed for a rise in global temperatures.

Asking the right question

‘People really want to get ahead’

Continued from page 9

Continued from page 9

Canada needs in 21st-century North America.

In the meantime, others try to fill the gap. About 70 Canadians and Americans met in New York’s Catskill Mountains this month for four days of discussions about U.S.-Canada relations. The meeting was sponsored by the American Assembly, a New York-based foundation which puts on such gatherings every 20 years.

The last meeting, in 1984, helped pave the way for developing a consensus on the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement. But this one (Cellucci and Quebec Premier Jean Charest were among the speakers) reflected today’s uncertainty.

Should Canada move towards a so-called Grand Bargain with the U.S. that would involve negotiating a new North American understanding on trade, energy and security?

Or should it concentrate on smaller objectives like streamlining the border and setting up new mechanisms to resolve trade hassles like lumber and beef?

For the most part, those who represented the official bureaucracies called for caution.

Academics and private-sector representatives, meanwhile, warned of increasing troubles ahead unless the two countries set mutual goals they could reach together.

“If Canada and the U.S. can’t work out some way to increase the benefits of their co-operation, for instance by freeing up the movement of people across the border, in the same way European countries have, how can we even call this a community?” says one frustrated participant.

That’s the right question. Do we want to operate and manage the parts of North American life that have become effectively a community — with Mexico joining in as part of the bargain — or should we let “nature” take its course and hope for the best?

By the time the next ambassador takes up residence, it would be nice to have some sort of Canadian answer rather than merely seethe at Washington’s “bullying.”

Stephen Handleman is a columnist for TIME Canada based in New York. He can be reached at shandel@ix.netcom.com. His next column for The Independent will appear March 6.

decrease; loss of basic dental coverage for her child, back-to-school benefits and winter clothing • The average wage jumped 22.5 per cent over allowance; loss of prescription drug coverage that the last decade, but barely kept pace, when infla- doesn’t require payment upfront; reduced sales tion is factored in. The reality is worse for those tax credit; and will begin to pay federal income earning minimum wage: a 10 per cent cut in real taxes at the $1,000-a-month income level. wages between 1993 and 2004.

“Some of our members were surprised to find “They’ll turn to the city or become homeless,” people would be worse off taking a job than being Pecaut says of the impact of on welfare,” Pecaut says. the next recession. Pecaut “They wondered why any heads the Toronto City economically rational person Summit Alliance, a group of on welfare would want to “They wondered why civic organizers who are fightwork, unless they can make any economically rational $12 or $13 an hour.” ing to improve Toronto’s politics, economy, competitivePigott says Pecaut and the person on welfare would new team has energized the ness and future.

The city summit alliance fight to reform the system. want to work, unless has pushed for a new deal for Front-line workers and cities, battled SARS, invigorsocial activists have been they can make $12 ated the tourism industry, saying this for some time, established an immigration but the prospect of Canada’s or $13 an hour.” council to get new immigrants movers and shakers adding into the workforce, set up a credibility and punch and — David Pecaut research alliance to push the data and studies and heft to region’s bio-technical the campaign offers hope strengths and generally that the system can be attempt to increase the Toronto region’s strengths. reformed, she says.

But this might be its toughest battle yet.

“Day in, day out, we see people who really Pecaut says the business people on the task want to get ahead. The very policies the general force are flabbergasted at a system where public think are there to try and help people, are Ontarians on welfare, some 216,000, stand to lose in fact another hurdle. It’s terrific to have represo many benefits if they take a minimum wage sentatives from all areas of civil society” willing job that it is better to stay on the pogey. to tackle the problem, she says.

For example, a single mom living in public “We’ll report in June. Then we’ll sell, sell, housing who takes a minimum wage job paying sell.” $1,500 a month on top of welfare would be hit with the following clawbacks: This article originally appeared in the Toronto A reduction in social assistance for every dollar Star. Reprinted by The Independent with permisshe earns; a rent increase and child care subsidy sion.

FEBRUARY 20, 2005

INDEPENDENTWORLD • 11

Coffee with the enemy Colombians flee homes, flood cities amid refugee crisis BOGOTA, Colombia

By Hugh Bronstein Reuters

S

She said the men would not allow her to reopen her father’s saddle shop, forcing her to find low-paying work as a cook. Later, after the rebel group tried to recruit her oldest son, then 16, at gunpoint, she asked a friend to smuggle the family to Bogota in the back of his truck.

290,000 FLEE The United Nations estimates up to three million rural Colombians have fled to overcrowded urban centers, the world’s third-worst internal refugee problem caused by conflict after the Congo and Sudan.

Almost 290,000 peasants were forced to flee their homes in 2004, up 39 per cent from the previous year, according Colombian human rights group Codhes.

The 37-year-old refugee was too scared to be identified because violence often follows such displaced people to the cities. The same armed groups that rule wide swathes of the countryside take over in places where the police are weak or the government

AN OLD STORY Accounts of Colombia’s capital city in the 1940s describe an infrastructure stressed by the influx of people driven from the countryside by a violent struggle between the Liberal and Conservative parties. Today, the city is still straining to absorb new arrivals from different conflicts.

President Alvaro Uribe has a popularity rating of over 70 per cent thanks to his tough security policies, which have reduced crime in his two-and-ahalf years in office.

He is fighting with Congress over the rules by which a peace deal will be offered to the paramilitaries and the rebels, leaving Colombia’s refugees to wonder when a stronger emphasis on poverty reduction might be possible.

“We know the best security policy is to fight poverty. But Colombia cannot have an effective anti-poverty strategy because the government does not control the national territory,” says Eduardo Gamarra, director of the Latin American and Caribbean Center at Florida International University.

“The average Colombian appears to have told President Uribe they want him to deal with the issue of security first,” Gamarra says.

“Trying to fight poverty has been postponed.”

But the woman who fled to Bogota says she cannot postpone feeding or educating her children. She ended her interview by asking a reporter to tell her if he hears about an available job.

he knew she had no future in her village when she found herself serving coffee to the men who had killed her father three days before.

She couldn’t call the police because the government was unable to control her mountain town in central Colombia.

She couldn’t lash out because her three children were in the room and might have gotten hurt.

So she fixed black coffee for the four Marxist guerrilla enforcers who showed up in in her living room to attend her father’s funeral reception.

Her mind was focused on how to escape the violent countryside and get to a city where she could find work and start anew.

Now, at 37, she shares a tiny apartment with her children in Bogota where, as in many other cities in Colombia, a steady stream of refugees flows into long-neglected slums.

Refugees from Bojaya, Colombia, some 580 kilometres northwest of Bogota, wait after escaping clashes between Colombian paramilitary forces and guerrillas.

Luis Acosta/AFP Photo

is distracted by battling the country’s 40-year war.

“Extortion, sexual violence, loansharking and the forced recruitment of young people are not uncommon,” says Roberto Meier, Representative in Colombia of the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR).

“We are concerned that, as a result of the violence and intimidation by irregular armed groups in some urban areas, people are becoming displaced for a second and even a third time,” he adds.

When they flee violence, refugees

leave jobs and family support systems and usually become even poorer. This leads many to join the country’s illegal Marxist or far-right paramilitary groups, both of which use Colombia’s huge cocaine trade to finance themselves.

ROOM FOR RENT The woman’s father made the mistake of renting a room to a member of the national police. So the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, killed him in December 2001.

The only people not too frightened to attend the funeral reception held in her home were the four men who she says forced her father off a bus three days before and shot him.

The first of the men walked into the empty reception and leaned against the door frame. He brushed his jacket back and propped his hand on his waist, exposing a pistol tucked into his belt, she says.

The leader of the group “put his hand on my knee and said, ‘Look, you have to learn how to live here,”’ she recalls, trembling as she speaks.

Gaza or global warming? NATO seeks new challenges BRUSSELS, Belgium Reuters ATO soldiers monitoring the peace in Gaza? Its aircraft rushing aid to refugees in Darfur?

Or how about NATO-hosted talks on global warming?

Days before a Feb. 22 summit of NATO nations being billed as a reconciliation after the damaging rift over Iraq, it is open season for ideas on where the 56-year-old alliance is heading. All agree the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation must reinvent itself, a decade-and-a-half after the end of the Cold War that was its reason for being.

But with Americans and Europeans seemingly split on when to use military power, and the European Union eager to show it is a strategic force in its own right, many ask what NATO can offer.

“Are we there in NATO? Of course we are not,” Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, its

N

Dutch secretary general, told an international defence event in Munich.

“But I think this alliance is very alive and very kicking.”

NATO officials say President George W. Bush’s move to begin his second term with a NATO summit is proof enough the organisation lives on. They argue the alliance is much busier than during the Cold War, which it won without firing a shot.

NATO is due to expand its 8,500strong peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan and is studying how it can gradually take command of the larger U.S.-led operation there.

It leads 18,000 peacekeepers in the U.N.-run province of Kosovo, patrols shipping in the Mediterranean and wants to train 1,000 Iraqi officers a year outside Baghdad. Not to mention its enlargement last year to include seven states from the former Soviet bloc.

But sceptics say all that masks a deeper decline.

The opposition of key NATO allies such as France and Germany to the Iraq war ruled out any combat role for the alliance. Before that, Washington shunned NATO for a “coalition of the willing” to invade Afghanistan and to oust its Taliban rulers for harbouring Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda network after Sept. 11.

Some say Bush had little choice. His envoy to NATO complains that while the U.S. army can deploy 75 per cent of its 2.4 million troops overseas, Europeans can muster only three to five per cent of their combined armies of 2.5 million for foreign missions.

“Kosovo is increasingly looking like NATO’s first and last war,” Daniel Keohane, defence analyst at the London-based Centre for European Reform, says of the NATO bombing in

1999 which forced Serb troops out of the province.

Complaining NATO was no longer the “primary venue” for transatlantic dialogue, Germany asks why it did not debate issues such as U.S. resistance to the Kyoto treaty on global warming, or European discomfort at the use of the death penalty in the United States.

NATO’s top officials are keen for it to have a more political role, but few believe it makes sense to go as far as the German proposals.

“NATO has no ambition to discuss all aspects of transatlantic relations,” says a NATO official.

Others point to a risk of duplication in a world already full of committees.

“For the U.S., a more political role for NATO might make sense. But from the European view it could weaken the EU as an animal able to stand on its own feet,” says Stanley Crossick, of the

European Policy Centre.

So how does NATO make itself future-proof?

Some say NATO must resign itself to more mundane roles — peacekeeping tasks after the real war has ended, or as military consultant to countries trying to knock their armies into shape.

The real test of its staying power will come when, or if, the EU feels it can stand alone as a military power.

Annette Heuser of Germany’s Bertelsmann Foundation think-tank says that could take 15 years. Until then, she says, NATO and its members would be advised to use the Feb. 22 summit as quality time to build ties and not get hung up on the future.

"Europeans have got to realize that for the United States, NATO is still the only security anchor it has in Europe," she said. "So why bring up all this now?"

FEBRUARY 20, 2005

12 • INDEPENDENTWORLD

VOICE FROM AWAY

Stacks from four steam generators rise from the MacKay River steam-assisted oil sands facility, opened in 2002 by Petro-Canada in Fort McMurray, Alta. Production is targeted at 30,000 barrels per day.

Larry MacDougal/iPhoto.ca

It’s not a ‘Little Newfoundland’ Three Newfoundland natives reflect on life in the fastest-growing town in Canada, Fort McMurray

By Stephanie Porter The Independent

M

ark Cramm’s story is one many Newfoundlanders can relate to. Cramm, from Botwood, couldn’t find work at home and, out of money, decided he had to do something about it.

“I had a friend here (in Fort McMurray) who told me I could find work here easily,” Cramm tells The Independent. “He was right. I started work a week after I arrived and have been working ever since for the same company.

“And if I did, for some reason, lose my job, I could easily find another fairly quick.”

Cramm has been in Alberta for eight years, employed in the construction industry as a draftsperson and project co-ordinator.

He says Fort McMurray’s population was about 40,000 when he arrived. Now it’s up to about 75,000.

Terra Nova-native Bryce Short has also been in Fort McMurray about eight years. He puts the

number of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians living in town at about 18,000.

Well over 60 per cent of the employees of the Fort McMurray branch of his company, Transwest Mining, are Newfoundlanders. “We bump into Newfoundlanders all the time, bump into them every day,” he says.

GAINFUL EMPLOYMENT Darrell King, from St. John’s, has been living in Alberta 27 years. Most of his family — mother, father, brother, sister and cousins from both sides of the family — are also in Fort McMurray. “And just the other day I met a fellow who had just arrived from the Rock and was working out at the gym here at the college.

“He is here like the rest of us, looking for gainful employment.”

Fort McMurray is definitely booming, thanks to the nearby wealth of oil fields and all the petroleum industry and spinoff jobs that go with it. It’s characterized as a young town, fast-paced, intense — and the fastest-growing place in Canada. While

there are still plenty of opportunities for skilled trade,” he offers to anyone thinking of making the workers, residents warn that it’s not the place it move. once was — and the fast money doesn’t come “You’ll get a job, but you’ll be very disappointwithout a price. ed because the cost of living is very very high, “There’s a lot of Newfoundlanders here, but it’s unless you want to live with your aunt or uncle, not a ‘Little Newfoundland,’” says Short. “People which is good for the first couple of weeks, but it’s on the island are different from not really a life.” people (in Fort McMurray), He says the days of where they have a lot of money, “It’s not like it used to be, people heading to Fort and things become more materiMcMurray to make a where you’d go up north alistic. That’s what we miss quick fortune are over. about people at home.

“It’s not like it used to and if you could suffer “Newfoundlanders are probabe, where you’d go up bly the nicest people you’ll north and if you could through five years, you meet, and they’re still nice out suffer through five years, here, but you take a Newfoundyou could pretty much could pretty much live lander who didn’t have anything live anywhere on the and give him everything and island and live like a anywhere on the island into a busy place … you’re just, king,” he says. “You canand live like a king,” what is it Buddy Wasisname not do that anymore.” said? ‘You don’t fit in with the Short has taken a new — Bryce Short boys’ anymore.” job within the company, Where he lived in Newfoundand he and his family are land, Short says, most people planning to move to put family first, working to provide for them, and Edmonton this summer. for the weekend trip to the cabin. “Here, on the “Fort McMurray has treated me very well, no other hand, it’s 24 hours a day, it’s hustle and bus- complaints, it’s provided lots of opportunities, the tle … You almost have to have the heart rate of a school system is amazing … but it’s time for a hummingbird to survive here, you can’t slow change.” down.”

Eventually, Short says he could see settling in Cramm agrees, saying life in Newfoundland “is the interior of B.C., where the weather is “too so much more peaceful than here, the excessive nice” nine months of the year. Although he has amount of money in this city makes it feel like a looked at purchasing a home near Terra Nova, he rat race some days. doesn’t see it happening.

“It will never feel like home.”

King has no plans to move back east either, though he does plan to relocate soon — to ‘CRAZY’ COST OF LIVING Victoria, B.C., where he can golf, fish, ski, and be As a result of the fast growth, house prices have close to his daughter, who will be attending uniskyrocketed, and increase sharply every month. A versity there this year. trailer/mobile home sells for $250,000, and an “Alberta has a tremendous advantage and has average, 1,200 square foot home can go for for a very long time, thanks in part to good luck $330,000 or more. (Houses in Edmonton are an and in part to King Ralph (Klein),” he says. estimated 30 to 40 per cent lower.)

“That little house on Whiteway Street in St. “The price of housing has gone crazy,” says John’s will always be the centre of my universe, Cramm. “For someone just starting out in Fort but with all my family here I think the west might McMurray these days, they could find it hard.” just be the best place for me.”

Short agrees that, for all the prosperity in town, new residents will have a tougher time of it than in Do you know a Newfoundlander or Labradorian the past. living away? Please e-mail editorial@theinde“First, don’t come here unless you’ve got a pendent.ca.

INDEPENDENTLIFE

SUNDAY THROUGH SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 20-26, 2005 — PAGE 13

Harold Horwood

‘Enlightening mainlanders’

By Stephanie Porter The Independent

A

lthough Harold Horwood is one of this province’s most prolific writers — responsible for teaching a generation of high school students about the seal hunt and Captain Bob Bartlett — when he began writing books about Newfoundland and Labrador, he was “writing for mainlanders.”

In a telephone interview from his current home in Annapolis Royal, Horwood tells The Independent he was “trying to encourage the few people who read at all, to learn something about the province.

“Mainlanders knew nothing about us at all, at the beginning, say 1949. They had a total misconception of what we were like. I was trying to make Newfoundland intelligible to people on the mainland.”

Born in 1923 in St. John’s, Horwood’s early career was varied and colourful: he was a union organizer in the 1940s; a member of the House of Assembly from 1949-52 (Horwood was the first legislator to represent Labrador); a journalist, columnist and, finally, editor of The Evening Telegram for six years in the late 1950s.

Although Horwood thought about moving to Montreal or Toronto to continue as a journalist, he decided to stay at home, settling into the career he had decided on back in the early ’40s. His ambition was to be a full-time writer, which he did, and still does, and has managed to make a decent living from.

Horwood says his brief political career was never meant to be much more than

‘Founder of Newfoundland renaissance,’ Harold Horwood reflects on rural life, changing culture, and mainland misconceptions “research” into the people and power of polThings improved in Labrador, Horwood itics. It was also a paid opportunity to get says, almost immediately after Confederout and see the province first-hand. ation, thanks to new federal services. And in He remembers well his first trips into Newfoundland, too, residents “began to Labrador in the late 1940s. There had expect things like turning on a tap and havalready been a series of failures in the fish- ing water come out of it.” ery — the Labrador fishery collapsed, he Something else started to change, too. says, decades before the Often referred to as a northern cod stocks— and founder of “the the poverty of the coastal Newfoundland renais“I tend to think areas was overwhelming. sance,” Horwood says in “It’s hard to imagine now, the 1960s Newfoundland Newfoundland from our present point of began to “wake up to the culture tended view, what provincial confact that it had a distincditions people lived in,” he tive culture that was to flourish after says. “The summer houses, worth encouraging and the ones they fished from, exporting.

Confederation, had no floors, and there was “I tend to think Newno nearby firewood because rather than before.” foundland culture tended it had already been cut and to flourish after Confedburned years before.” eration, rather than before Harold Horwood He was struck, though, by … People became more the people’s “determination conscious of saving to stay, no matter what” — a determination, things from the past … saving things like he says, that still marks the province today. attitudes and things like music.”

The island of Newfoundland, at the time, This happened (and remains so today), he was “still poor, but not as desperately poor says, in spite of the fact the “so-called out… the inshore fishery and the bank fishery ports changed from being quite a separate were still flourishing and people made a liv- culture from the rest of the country to being ing at it.” carbon copies of small Canadian towns. The

houses were radically different.”

Horwood spent years travelling the province, by boat and later, by car, when the roads were so bad he says he would be lucky to get 5,000 miles out of a set of tires.

Fortunately, he laughs, he generally had someone paying his way.

Looking to the future of rural Newfoundland and Labrador, Horwood says “it’ll be a thinner population, but outport people will continue to make some kind of a living from the fishery and bits and pieces of other things … and there’s the use of the outports as dormitory towns, like Brigus. Brigus became a place for St. John’s to go and live, rather than a centre for marine industry as it was 50 years ago.”

Horwood moved from his home in Beachy Cove — 20 minutes outside St. John’s — to Nova Scotia in 1979. It’s only been the last few years that Horwood hasn’t returned to his home province every summer.

“When you get to be as old as I am you have to put up with things like living where you are; you can’t keep dashing back and forth as I was doing 10, 15, 20 years ago.”

Horwood has written over 25 books so far in his career; fiction, non-fiction, science, and travel writing, including a biography of Joey Smallwood, Death on the Ice, Bartlett: the Great Explorer, the Foxes of Beachy Cove, and two volumes of memoirs.

Most of his writing focuses on his home province, though Horwood did his share of work elsewhere in Canada. He was one of the founders of the Writers’ Union of Canada (he served three terms as vice-chair See ‘Working’ on page 15

LIVYERS

‘More dinner times than dinners’ Former skipper of Norma and Gladys on baby-bonus cheques, white slavery and the fishery

SWIFT CURRENT

By Jeff Ducharme The Independent

B

yron Adams stands on a bridge in front of his home and bellows a welcome. The long-time skipper’s hello is an omen of opinions to come.

“I’ve been in the fishery all my lifetime, over 60 years,” says Adams. “So I’ll have a few catches made before I conks out — that could be any day.”

Swift Current lines both sides of Highway 210 that snakes through the Burin Peninsula.

Originally from Grand Burin Island and in a boat since age 13, Adams skippered the ill-fated and controversial Norma and Gladys that was touted as the province’s version of Nova Scotia’s

Bluenose. Eventually found to be unseaworthy, it was sold to the highest bidder in 1984 and now rests on the bottom of Placentia Bay. “Under sail, little power,” Adams tells The Independent of the Norma and Gladys, rising from his kitchen table to hunt for photographs.

He returns with an envelope of photos — schooners to trawlers. There’s even a campy 3D picture of Joey Smallwood.

“The father of Confederation. He’s better than Pope John Paul,” he says, flashing a mischievous grin.

With 10 siblings, Adams says before the baby bonus was introduced with Confederation in 1949 “we had more dinner times than dinners.

“We didn’t know what a dollar was because we never seen one,” says Adams. “White slavery — eating fish

and caplin, that’s all we had to eat.”

But all that changed when the meager, but welcomed baby-bonus cheques (about $6 a day per child) started flowing from Ottawa.

“Joey was the man,” he says, adding that the Government of Newfoundland hadn’t done anything for rural families up to that point.

“Ottawa did the best they could do for us.”

Callers to open-line radio shows saying the province should separate from Canada are, as Adams so eloquently puts it, “a bunch of arseholes.

“A Newfoundlander is the greediest man around. When he got going, he wanted everything. If he didn’t get all, he didn’t want none,” he says.

“If we separated from Canada, it would be just as well to start shipping

Byron Adams

Paul Daly/The Independent

rice from China into Newfoundland, cause that’s all we’d be eating — rice.”

The 74-year-old Adams, like so many other fishermen, says there’s no shortage of fish.

“There’s too many that knows too

much and don’t know what they’re talkin’ about.”

While Adams casually cruises the waters of Plancentia Bay in his converted 41-foot inshore boat, his sons follow in his footsteps and skipper offshore draggers.

“They go out there and they never seen so much God damn fish anytime as what’s on the go this fall and the winter,” says Adams.

“Not allowed to take it. Not allowed to touch it. Flounder the same thing, not allowed to touch it because the God damn DFO crowd and the government don’t know what they’re talking about … scientists,” he says with disgust.

For more than a dozen years, Adams says he skippered a federal Fisheries See “The People” on page 18

FEBRUARY 20, 2005

14 • INDEPENDENTLIFE

THE LOST WORD

Down Comes The Old Church Editor’s note: The lost word is a twicea-month feature in which The Independent prints an excerpt from an out-ofprint local book. For our first selection, we’ve chosen a piece from our own columnist, Ray Guy’s book, That Far Greater Bay.

By Ray Guy

I

t gives you an odd start — something like glimpsing your face in a bowl of soup just after you’ve lost your front teeth.

The old church was only a hundred feet or so from where we lived and when I went out there a few weeks ago they had it torn down.

All of a sudden there’s just a hole in the air and the funny part is the large bunch of nothing seems much more conspicuous then the church ever did.

I’ve no inclination to get purple paschal prosey over the passing of this rustical tabernacle — in fact, most of my churchy recollections are just as dreary, dismal, depressing and oppressive as they are anything else.

Indeed, looking back on it, I think it was in very early childhood that any churchy inclinations were chilled out of

I recall being passed up the stairs inside the belfry and then up some rickety ladders. With every inch in altitude my eyes grew rounder and my little chubby cheeks glowed a deeper crimson. And, in the stark terror of it all, I probably forgot to sniff back my infantile post-nasal drip, too.

me.

It was a calm, sunny day and a group of the more conscientious laity were up there making repairs to the belfry.

One of them looked down in our yard and saw me engaged in some four-yearold’s enterprise like shoveling gravel into a tin can with a spoon and dumping it out again.

He apparently decided that young Master Guy was ready to absorb some new sensation and climbed down and got me.

I recall being passed up the stairs inside the belfry and then up some rickety ladders. With every inch in altitude my eyes grew rounder and my little chubby cheeks glowed a deeper crimson. And, in the stark terror of it all, I probably forgot to sniff back my infantile post-nasal drip, too.

By and by we broke out into daylight at the top of the belfry. There seemed to be wind up there even though it was a calm day.

Before I could take any more observations of the atmosphere, someone had grabbed me firmly around the rib cage and shoved my face out over the edge.

“Look, look, look,” they were saying.

“Look way down there. Way, waaaaaaay down.”

Before that, two steps up the ladder by the side of the house was the highest I’d got in the air and even that used to make me almost too weak in the knees to get down out of it again.

Now I went into a spasm of shaking and shivering and my breakfast porridge commenced to rise in my throat.

“Awww, take him back out of that,” said one observant Christian workman.

“He’s getting afraid.”

So I was hauled back in from outer space, burning cheeks, running nose, saucer eyes, regurgitating oatmeal and all, and there was the usual standard lecture about juvenile bravery.

They still do it, I suppose, with the best of intentions. But I don’t know what their aim was. To turn out a brand new race of Gordon of Khartoums, quite possibly.

Goulds, Newfoundland

Anyway, I was hauled in from the brink of the void and by great effort managed to keep my knitted short pants dry.

“Oh, look, look, look,” they stared in again. “Look at the nice bell. See the great BIG bell. Want to see where the noise comes from?”

There were a few winks all around, my head was rammed in under the rim and, just then, someone slammed the clapper against the side of the iron monstrosity.

WWHHHOOONNNGGGGGGG. In this coming together of heaven and hell, I believe I veered sharply away from my baptismal vows and showed the makings of a damned fine Mahometan.

Because at the instant my heart commenced pounding again and my eyes stopped spinning like two marbles on a

Rhonda Hayward/The Independent

glass-topped table I let out a howl that would have called the faithful to prayer from as far as Come By Chance and Bay Bulls Arm. Someone lowered the big sissy back to solid earth and he made a straight scoot across the yard to his mother’s skirts.

The remembrance of this unfortuitous introduction to the House of God didn’t occur to me until twenty-five or thirty years later.

Whenever the bell commenced whanging outside my bedchamber on Sabbath mornings I suffered a few vague pangs of subconscious unease all along.

But it’s all gone now.

Torn down, smack smooth.

Gone with the restful scent of sun-hot varnish and mildewed hymnbooks in summer and wet coats overcoats and

wood smoke in winter.

With the hacking and coughing and the footstools crashing over at any season; with the unseemly shufflings of the tanked-ups lads in the back pews at weddings and the gentle sniveling of those left behind in the front pews at funerals.

With the kerosene lamps on the tops of poles at the ends of every second pew when the nights drew in, and the sun striking through the bit of blue and red glass in the eastern end on Midsummer’s Day. And the dead flies on the window ledges, and the sermons.

And your five cents for collection sweating in your tight fist.

And the stench of Sunlight Soap one Sunday a month after the women had attacked the floor with scrub brushes.

The old church is down. Amen. So be it.

Ding dong.

‘From an island to an island’

Placentia native Kevin Collins nominated for Irish songwriting award; working on DVD release

By Jamie Baker The Independent

B

Kevin Collins

Courtesy Kevin Collins

een wondering what singer/ songwriter Kevin Collins is up to?

Ask anyone in Ireland — they’ll tell you.

The Placentia native has had a wildly successful year plying his trade on the Emerald Isle, capped by recently being named as a finalist for Songwriter of The Year by the Irish and Country Magazine Awards.

The awards will be handed in Kildare on Monday night, Feb. 21.

“It’s absolutely a huge honour because, as anybody knows, Newfoundlanders have been signing Irish music all their lives — that’s where the music came from,” Collins tells The Independent.

“Ireland has a lot of great songs and great artists to nominate and present awards to without going outside their country, so it’s flattering they would want to include me in that.”

Besides performing and having his own songs in regular radio rotation in Ireland, Collins had a number of his songs recorded by noted artists such as Louise Morrissey, Kieran McGilligan, Patrick Feeney and Barry Doyle (who has actually recorded two of his songs).

Some of those artists will be performing Collins’ songs during the awards ceremony — as will Collins himself.

To his knowledge, he says no other Newfoundland artist has had so much of their music recorded in Ireland so fast.

As far as Collins knows he’s also the first Newfoundlander nominated for the award, “… for their contribution to the music of Ireland.”

Collins got his musical licks early on in life, singing since the age of six and regularly performing since he was 13.

(During a trip to Boston with his grandmother when he was just eight-yearsold, he performed on stage with Leroy Van Dyke.)

He credits his father, the late Tony Collins — a country performer for more than 25 years — as a major influence.

Although the younger Collins was initially pegged a country artist, he says he has incorporated a great deal of Irish content into his work in recent years.

“I do both styles … country is probably more popular over here than in Canada and the United States. Country and Irish music speak to the lives that we live — it’s a rural-type life and probably a more down-to-earth approach.”

Over the course of his career, Collins has released 12 albums — including six Irish-Newfoundland releases, four country, one gospel, and one Christmas selection. Two of his albums were produced in Nashville by Grammy Award winners Al Delory and Kevin McMannus.

One of his more recent albums, Jump in and Swim, was chosen as album of the month by Country Music Round-up — Britain’s biggest country music magazine. The publication will also feature an article on Collins in its March issue.

As a performer, he has toured across Canada and made numerous appearances in Nashville.

But things really took off in May 2003 when he visited Ireland to retrace his roots. He was subsequently invited back the following year to perform his

music, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Collins big project at present is a 10song DVD, using different parts of Ireland as a backdrop.

The compilation is appropriately entitled, From an Island to an Island.

“We’ve travelled to various parts of Ireland from Dublin down to Wexford and we’re going to be including not only music, but also real life footage, talking to people and the sights and sounds of Ireland as well.”

Ironically, the title song for the DVD was written by another prominent Newfoundlander — St. John’s South MP Loyola Hearn.

“I don’t know what people back home know about (Hearn’s song), but people over here in Ireland are getting to know it pretty quick.”

Although the music is the focus of the DVD, Collins says he also wants to use the work to help strengthen connections between Ireland and Newfoundland — two places, he says, that have an awful lot in common.

“We’re so alike — people from home would have to come here to see it for themselves … this DVD is going to bring Ireland back to them.

“With the Newfoundland government looking to develop opportunities and open doors to Ireland, I think I’m in a superb position to be a major link in that chain — if I’m not an ambassador I would certainly want to be.”

Despite the roaring success Collins has been enjoying in the home of his ancestors, be it ever so humble, he says there’s no place like home.

“I’m not looking to move out of Newfoundland. I’m coming back home, hopefully with greater ties between Newfoundland and Ireland.”

Literature to listen to From Newfoundland & Labrador

Audio and MP3 CDs • Michael Crummey • Wilfred Grenfell

• Robin McGrath • Susan Rendell

• Janis Spence • Agnes Walsh

AVAILABLE AT FRED’S AND ONLINE

www.rattlingbooks.com

FEBRUARY 20, 2005

INDEPENDENTLIFE • 15

Our premier’s solidarity with culture I

t’s hard not to feel buoyant in the wake of the signing of the Big Deal, and why would one resist? Like everyone else I am so pleased with Premier Williams’ triumphant trumping of Ottawa I could hug him to death. If I were Andy Warhol I’d be silk-screening his image on all the gallery walls. If I were a Barenaked Lady I’d be singing If I Had Two Billion Dollars at every concert.

There is now enough folklore circulating on the streets about what actually happened in the closing hours of the Atlantic Accord talks to fill a rich master’s thesis: about who swore what to him; whether John Efford aggressively helped or maddeningly hindered the process; how intimidated Martin’s people were of Williams’ take-no-prisoners negotiating style, and so on.

We are all dining out over these stories, however ungrounded or implausible, and most of them have everything to do with an understandable need to enhance the premier’s tough heroics and irresistible bravado, and ourselves by extension. After all, it’s not every day anyone gets a leader who is both fearless and successful.

Surging high on his momentum, Williams was asked to address the dowdily named Empire Club in Toronto on Feb. 3, a quaint 100-year-old institution with a prestigious pedigree of public speakers. Hundreds of well-suited power people routinely attend the Club’s respectable York Hotel lunches to hear important leaders put their vision on record. In addressing the

NOREEN GOLFMAN Standing Room Only membership, Williams shared a platform on which have stood such luminary figures as Churchill, the Dalai Lama, and Margaret Thatcher. As clubs go, it’s a big one.

By all accounts Williams delivered his speech with his typical earnest gusto. Its misleadingly bland title — My Canada … Today and Tomorrow — was offset by its stirring contents, and by the end of it all those self important Bay Street mandarins were up on their feet, applauding the man who made them feel so warm and fuzzy about both themselves and this craggy noisy troublesome province.

Miraculously, the Premier turned whine into good will. Reading the speech you can practically hear his own enjoyment in the moment, his gentle mocking of the very audience he is addressing, his pride, as he so often invokes that word, in his fresh accomplishments.

Reading the speech you can also see that Williams warmly connected with his audience by invoking the names of admired local celebrities and emphasizing the distinctiveness of “our rich culture.” Framing his talk about our right to claim our own natural resources was a deliberate emphasis on “a far more precious resource — some of the most

Wanna see my tattoos?

H

i. I’m the new guy, and I don’t really know anyone around here, so I guess some introductions are in order. Do you want to go first, or will I? Don’t everybody jump at once …

OK, then. I guess that means I go first. My name’s Adam, but until we get to know each other a little better “new guy” will do just fine. Never let it be said that I don’t know my place in the great journalistic food chain. Anyway, I’m 22. A Libra. I like Shakespeare and long, moonlit walks on the beach. Actually, scratch the moonlit walks. I tend to get stuck in the sand. I really do like old Billy (Shakespeare), but I also happen to like guitars, tattoos ADAM and violent video games.

WARREN Oh yeah, I From the hip almost forgot the whole wheelchair thing. See, I’m in one. That might help explain the whole getting-stuck-in the-sand thing — just in case you were wondering.

Note, though, that the chair is last on the list. It’s on the list because it’s a significant part of my life and, I suppose, at this early stage in our relationship, it would be a little dishonest of me to try and shove it aside — pretend like it’s not there. So, now it’s here, in black and white. But it’s last on the list because it is not who I am.

Who I am is a writer, a musician, a proud Newfoundlander.

Someone who loves to learn and can only hope to, someday, be given the chance to teach something, say something, create something of value and leave it behind. But from where I sit — here on the rock, and here in this chair — if what I have to say is not about one of those two things, then it can be a little difficult to get people to listen. That’s why I’m so glad to have been given the opportunity to write this column. Until now, I’ve been spoon fed a cliché — “write what I know.”

Well, could it be that I know something besides life with a disability in Newfoundland? I think that’s likely. Could it also be that there might be something that I would like to know, that a lot of young Newfoundlanders would like to know?

Yes? Good.

Then, let me tell you what this column won’t be about. It won’t be about those everyday obstacles that I face as a wheelchair user. They’re there, but they’re really not all that interesting. It won’t be about all the tiny little “victories” in my life — the ones that are supposed to have made me the “triumphant” person that some folks seem to believe I am.

For the record, I think the word triumph gets flung around far too easily these days, when real triumphs are damn near impossible to come by. Lastly, this column will not be actionpacked with endearing stories of my childhood: the first time I realized I was different; the first time I fell in love with the little deaf girl from up the road. (And what a charming couple we made.)

I do have stories like that — lots of them. But somebody else already pays me to write them down. And if I wrote every one twice I think I’d feel a little like I was cheating on that somebody else. And we can’t have that now can we? Besides, it’s nice to be able to introduce myself for once. Not to leave my introduction in someone else’s hands, where I almost invariably come out as wheelchair user Adam Warren — following which I’m expected to spit up one of my well-chewed tales of oppression, or … triumph.

While we’re being so honest with each other, I’m not exactly sure what this column is, in fact, going to be about. Mr. Editor says that I can write whatever I like. And with the exception of those things that I mentioned above, what I like has been known to change from one week to the next. But if there’s one thing I know, it’s that you probably shouldn’t be expecting the same thing twice. And now we’ve done the chair thing. Gotten it out of the way. Let’s move on shall we?

So — you wanna see my tattoos?

Adam Warren’s column appears every second week.

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talented, gifted entertaining individuals one. If I were Minister Paul Shelley I’d in the world.” To prove the point, he be hugging myself to death, too. Finally, wittily dropped familiar names: we are hearing that the “survival of a Damhnait Doyle, Seamus O’Regan, culture” is intimately linked to our stoRex Murphy, Rick Mercer. He bragged ries of that culture, to our ability to sing, about “our boys” in Great Big Sea, our write and dramatize it. “award-winning authors” and “our If I were Minster Shelley I would be musicians.” He gave all those artists delighted that culture clearly occupies equal weight with our “bright young the same important space on the minds” who lead corporations around Premier’s agenda as anything else, be it the world. He asked rhetorically, draw- health, education, the fishery or mines ing knowing chuckand resources. As les, “Where else is with everything else storytelling a comabout the Accord, By opening and closing petitive sport?” it’s about time. his speech on the theme By opening and So it is that we closing his speech now have to ask, of cultural richness, on the theme of culhow is the Premier’s tural richness, Wilopen solidarity with Williams did quite a liams did quite a the cultural producbrilliant thing — he brilliant thing — he ers of this province connected the mategoing to be realized? connected the material rial wealth of the We know his heart is land and sea with in it. Let’s see how wealth of the land something more abhis mind sets to and sea with something stract, more endurwork on it.

The Department ing, and ultimately more abstract, more of Tourism, Culture, more sustaining. He and Recreation has repeated the word enduring, and ultimately long occupied a marculture often enough more sustaining ginal space in govso that even the most ernment, a much wine-happy minds poorer cousin to listening to his talk would have easily understood there is other ostensibly more important units. something being produced here that just Furthermore, tourism and recreation cannot be purchased, negotiated, bought have for too long put the squeeze on the culture file in the portfolio. But the sky is or sold.

It is easy to imagine another speech in now suddenly full of signs and wonders, which culture might be taken for grant- as well as flags, and there is every reason ed, or elided completely, but not this to believe that everything is changing.

If I were the premier I would infuse Shelley’s department with an enhanced budget, putting my money where my Empire Club speech was. I would stress the need to offer sustained long-term funding to eligible provincial arts organizations, delivering envelopes for up to three years of support.

If you want a rich culture, like the economy, to survive, as the Premier insisted, you have to provide for a reasonable measure of stability. Lurching from year to year in a state of anxious uncertainty, artists and arts organizations of every imaginable kind need to know there is finally a future here.

Those with a proven track record, despite years of scrambling for funds, need to be acknowledged. Those who are emerging on the scene and who can demonstrate their creative potential need to be encouraged, nurtured, and even mentored. Provincial programs need to be developed that optimistically show the way to sustaining and renewing possibilities.

The Premier must carry the brilliant promise of his Empire Club speech right into the next Throne Speech, where it ultimately counts the most. We heard, we applauded, and now we want him to commit. The premier openly admitted that all along he has been “motivated by a passion” to ensure cultural survival. He’s not alone.

Noreen Golfman is a professor of literature and women’s studies at Memorial University. Her next column appears March 6.

‘Working on staying alive’ From page 13 and one as chair), writer in residence at the Universities of Western Ontario and Waterloo, and spent years travelling back and forth to Ottawa with the Canada council.

As for his current project?

“I’m 82 years old and I’m working on staying alive as long as I can so I can continue drawing my pension,” Horwood says with a laugh.

“Actually … well, I’m not working actively

on things that matter anymore from the point of view of publication. The things I’ve been writing the past two or three years are for the archives.”

Except, of course, for Cycle of the Sun, a limited edition collection of poetry — his first ever. Published through Nova Scotia’s Gaspereau Press, the collection is described as a lament for northern Labrador.

“That’s probably the last thing I’ll ever publish, I don’t know, I just don’t know. I don’t have any plans.”

When reflecting back on his goal of enlightening mainlanders about Newfoundland and Labrador, Horwood says, “I wouldn’t say I achieved a tremendous amount. Maybe somewhat. But my efforts to establish Bob Bartlett as a national figure didn’t succeed; he’s still almost unknown.

“Except on the history channel, a dozen times he’s been on that and I’ve been interviewed every time … and I’m tired of that now.”

FEBRUARY 20, 2005

16 • INDEPENDENTLIFE

IN CAMERA

‘A future here

The recent arrival of Wal-Mart to this Burin Peninsula town brought more than low, low prices and a second traffic light — it brought a strange sense of hope. High school kids may not see themselves here in 10 years, but the largest retailer in the world wouldn’t have moved to the peninsula if there wasn’t a future.

Paul Daly, photo editor, and senior writer Jeff Ducharme visited the peninsula recently. This is their report:

MARYSTOWN, PLACENTIA BAY

T

he Peninsula Mall is quiet, almost tomb-like. A man sells tickets on an ATV and an oldtimer sits on one of the concrete benches scratching lottery tickets. There’s very little hustle and bustle in this mall on a weekday morning.

But when the clock hits 12:30 p.m., kids from the local high school take over Barb’s Cafe and Bakery. They line up at the cafeteria-style lunch counter and order pizza and whistle dogs — a special menu Barb puts on for her adolescent customers.

Over the counter hangs a sign that reads: “This business operates on the basis of customer service. If you’re satisfied with us please tell others. If you’re not, please tell us.”

Just last year, Barb Norman pulled

up stakes in Ontario after 25 years and returned home. Well, close to home.

She was born in Rushoon, a nearby community in Placentia Bay whose population has dwindled to 275 from a peak of 750.

“It’s a dying community and most of the people that are there now, the majority are seniors,” Norman tells The Independent. “I’ve been crying for 15 years to come home and finally the opportunity landed in my lap.”

BRIGHT SPOT It’s a trend that seems to have been stoked by the activity at the shipyard and the Fishery Products International plant here in Marystown — one of the bright spots in an otherwise flagging fishing industry. The fish plant has a workforce of 600; the shipyard has at least double that.

“People are very optimistic and (there’s) a place down over the road

called Bull Arm — wherever that is, I have no idea. I think that’s down around Goobies,” says Norman with a maniacal laugh and wink.

Bull Arm was where Hibernia’s gravity-based structure was built.

“People say Marystown can’t go any lower than it’s been.”

But it’s the arrival of mega-retailer Wal-Mart that seems to have made everyone confident Marystown is the place to be.

“Yes darling, we have arrived,” says Norman.

But the kids chowing down on the homemade pizza and whistle dogs tell a different story.

Chantal Thornhill sits with her friend Valerie Hodge eating lunch.

The two are too quick to respond to a question that two 15-year-old girls with braces shouldn’t be prepared to answer.

“They know we got to leave,” says Chantal, a teenager from the nearby town of Burin, when asked how she

and her friends view the future.

“There’s nothing here for us, I don’t think there is.

“It’s pretty upsetting to know that you’re going to have to go one day, know that you’re not going to be able to make a living here.”

The story is the same at a nearby table where the boys hangout.

Mitchell Edwards, 15, doesn’t see much hope for the youth in Marystown.

“It’s doing well now, but I don’t think it’s got any future,” says Mitchell. “After Cow Head (the shipyard) is done with the White Rose project, I don’t think there’s much left for it then.”

RALLYING THE TROOPS While the kids speak of a future elsewhere, Norman can be heard in the background trying to rally the young troops by saying, “Wal-Mart knows more than we do, there’s a future here in Marystown.”

Norman’s attempt at spreading hope for the youth falls short.

“Some people are positive, but I dunno, I think they’re all going to move away,” says Mitchell.

Marystown is a strange dichotomy.

In one breath, People say Marystown is booming. In the next breath, they speak about how the town of 7,000 is barely holding on and that one ill economic wind could blow down what some see as an economic house of cards.

The White Rose Floating Production and Storage Offloading (FPSO) vessel will be complete this summer and then Marystown’s future becomes unclear. Rumours of more contracts in the offing are rampant, but Kiewit Offshore Services, which runs the shipyard, has yet to land one.

At Marystown Ford, a lone customer sits in the one-car showroom watching TV. “Actually we need to hire another person,” says Jim O’Keefe, the sales

FEBRUARY 20, 2005

INDEPENDENTLIFE • 17

in Marystown’

“People in those plants would like to work yearround, believe you me. But they don’t want to see their co-workers go out the door with nothing either.

So there’s been some sacrifices made by senior people in the plant and that’s a credit to ’em.”

FPSO union representative Allan Moulton

manager and lone salesman. “They’ll only come here and starve to death and that wouldn’t be fair to them.”

The Ford dealership broke records when the shipyard first opened; Kiewit was a big Ford buyer.

“There was boom around here then, that’s when people knew they had five years. But people that are there now know they only have six or seven months left and it’s going to be said and done and gone.”

The 26-year veteran of the car business says people remain skeptical.

“Are the doors locked after this and we got to wait two more years, or three more years for another project?”

But like everyone in Marystown, O’Keefe says Wal-Mart has brought more than low, low prices to the town — it’s brought a strange sense of hope.

The store also brought the town its second traffic light.

“Wal-Mart is (here) so there’s going to be all sorts of traffic in this area so we increased our product line,”

O’Keefe says. “I think the town has a tremendous future.”

Allan Moulton stands on a bluff overlooking the fish plant. The FPSO looms in the background.

“This plant employs workers from all over the Burin peninsula from as far away as Grand Bank, Lawn ...,” he rattles off a dozen communities. “This plant is very important to the entire economy on the Burin Peninsula,” says Moulton, who has worked at the plant for more than 30 years and is also the union representative.

The plant currently employs 600 people working in four shifts — shifts A and B comprise the most senior workers, who get 24 weeks work; B and C, less senior workers, get 18 weeks.

“People in those plants would like to work year-round, believe you me.

But they don’t want to see their coworkers go out the door with nothing either. So there’s been some sacrifices made by senior people in the plant and

that’s a credit to ’em.”

The 40-minute drive to the community of Lawn is beautiful as the bays are laid out before you. The beauty is tempered by closed schools and abandoned houses. As if to show there’s still hope for the area, a group of kids play pond hockey as the sun slowly hides behind faraway hills.

Joe Edwards sits at his kitchen table. He’s lived his whole life in Lawn except for a year in Toronto and has been a fisherman since the late 1950s. After the cod moratorium in the early 1990s, the community lost 300 people and the population fell to 800.

“If I had any sense, perhaps I would have stayed ...,” says Edwards of living a year in Toronto.

Some 25 people travel the 40 minutes to Marystown every day to work in the fish plant, the shipyard and the like.

There are few young people to be seen, but the community did get a new

$4-million school last year, compared to an old school that the community built themselves a generation ago for only $65,000.

“We got come-home year coming up this summer and we had one 10 years ago, there’s not very many of us left now, my age group,” says Edwards in a gentle voice that hides his anger at government and industry for destroying the fishery.

“No b’y, when you gets up into this age you can’t feel too sad about anything.”

TUNNEL VISION St. John’s, or “parasite city” as Edwards and his buddies call it, may be doing well because of oil and gas, but he says government’s tunnel vision towards that new industry ignores the past and thumbs its nose at the future.

“If you starts losing them, don’t just ship out the few fishermen, take the whole sluttin’ lot of them, ship ’em off

to Alberta and turn this into a dump,” says Edwards.

Back in Marystown, tucked away in a corner of the mall parking lot is the Admiral’s Galley and Keg, complete with porthole windows and a mix of various nautical themes. It’s almost closing time and a group of women are settling their bill with the bartender. An acoustic guitar sits against the wall and a microphone hangs from a chrome stand.

A man wearing a greasy ball cap saunters up to the bar and asks for change and a couple of beers, while his buddy, seemingly holding on to his barstool for dear life, stares at the barroom floor.

Bartender Chris Holley, 21, hands him the change and the two beers.

“It’s probably not going to be right away, but there’s talks of other projects,” says Holley about the future of the shipyard.

“Wal-Mart doesn’t invest in a place that’s going downhill.”

FEBRUARY 20, 2005

18 • INDEPENDENTLIFE

Survey says Polls of high schools show graduates don’t plan on hanging around; more focus needed on career counselling

By Alisha Morrissey The Independent

S

urveys of high-school students in rural areas indicate most plan to leave the province once they graduate, leading to a further cut in the population and future impacts on basic education.

Today, Internet classrooms are the norm in rural Newfoundland and Labrador, bus rides are longer as schools are centralized, multi-grade classrooms are reminiscent of one-room school houses, and students surveyed say they have little faith the province can provide a future for them.

Fred Douglas, president of the Newfoundland and Labrador Teachers’ Association, says young people need to feel more valued.

“I think there has to be an atmosphere created in this province of hope,” Douglas tells The Independent. “Unless something changes very quickly, we’re not going to have the young professionals in our province with the expertise to build our economy, to provide the kind of infrastructure, in terms of human resources, that is necessary.”

There are currently 314 schools in the

province, catering to 81,500 students.

That compares to 518 schools and 125,000 students in the early 1990s.

Surveys completed by high-school students in Labrador in 2003 reveal approximately 30 per cent felt they didn’t have a future for themselves in the province, compared to 18 per cent who did see a future.

In a 2001 survey in the western region of the island, most students planned to continue with post-secondary education, but less than half planned to earn their degree in the province.

One quarter of the students were prepared to settle in the province, but “many more” said they didn’t see a viable future for Newfoundland and Labrador.

The numbers may well be different in future studies as the result of increased career-counselling services that will be available to students as early as September, says Education Minister Tom Hedderson.

“It’s very important the information is given to our young people so that they understand where they want to go and the choices that are available to them,” he says.

“They’re making a choice, saying

A former grade school in Pouch Cove has been reborn as an artists’ residence and studio space.

that ‘Because I can’t get a job here, I shouldn’t go to post-secondary here,’ and that’s not a good connect.”

Hedderson admits career counselling isn’t the only problem facing the education system in rural Newfoundland and Labrador.

Howard Sooley retired as principal from Ridgewood Jr. High School in Green’s Harbour when the school closed in the late 1990s.

Sooley began teaching in 1963 in a one-room school house in Change Islands.

“I didn’t have it written down any-

where on paper, but in the back of my mind I knew it had to be a student-first type thing. That’s what I was there for,” he says.

“I think teachers need to hold on to that and I think teachers need to buy into it.”

He says quality teaching and a solid learning environment are features that are falling by the wayside in rural schools.

“We’re educating our students right out of our rural communities,” Sooley says. “We’re educating them for a world that’s urbanized, industrialized and

Rhonda Hayward/The Independent

career oriented, where the climate in our rural areas is almost the opposite.”

The minister says government can’t make available a full compliment of courses to every community.

“Our geography is our greatest asset to some degree … but on the other hand it’s very difficult to deliver certain services,” Hedderson says.

“Some schools are able to take that basic curriculum and enhance it by offering, for example, French immersion, but to say that we will be offering that throughout the whole province would be impossible.”

Differing opinions Experts agree to disagree over the future of the fishery — and rural Newfoundland

By Alisha Morrissey The Independent

T

he author of a 1990 report that predicted the demise of cod stocks says he isn’t sure the groundfish fishery will return, let alone dominate the economy as it once did.

Leslie Harris tells The Independent rebuilding groundfish stocks in the northwest Atlantic is going to take increased scientific study, understanding, and co-operation from harvesters, processors, governments and agencies.

“We have many, many, many problems to resolve and much to learn before we can say with any degree of certainty that we can bring the stocks back to anything approaching what they were before the 1950s and ’60s,” he says.

“I wouldn’t be totally optimistic because we’ve seen in the past so many of the key stocks of fish on the shelf … utterly destroyed and coming back, if at all, very, very slowly.”

Harris says the species making up the commercial groundfish fishery today — including yellowtail flounder, halibut and red fish — indictes “we’re fishing at the bottom of the barrel.

“We always believe we can learn from mistakes of the past and we can do something different,” Harris says. “Our record in the past has not been very conducive of the belief we can do things differently.

“Perhaps I may be totally too gloomy and everything may bounce back in an

amazing way … but I think we can do much better than we’re doing.”

John Joy, a lawyer specializing in marine law, says the fishery could sustain rural economies if managed properly.

“Rural Newfoundland has had an incredible resilience over the decades and the centuries and they have always been able to adapt to changing circumstances,” Joy says.

“I think the fishery will always form the heart of the economic development opportunities in rural Newfoundland and that’s why the restoration of the groundfish stocks are so important.

“I’m not ready to give up on the groundfishery and I don’t think rural Newfoundland is either.”

He says despite what some are saying rural Newfoundland and Labrador is not dying.

“There is an international trend and it’s been going on since the middle of the 19th century to move people from rural areas to urban.

“Migration runs both ways, when circumstances improve at least some people return and then, with a general level of activity, other people move into the community. But I do believe this is not the time to give up on the restoration of groundstocks.”

Mark Small, a fisherman in White Bay for the past 45 years, says he hopes the fishery can be a mainstay of the province’s economy, but “all of rural Newfoundland won’t survive.”

“I’m pretty well sure of that and we

might as well make up our minds to that.”

The fish plant shut down in White Bay after 14 years and the five longliners that dock in the community fish anywhere but the Baie Verte Peninsula, he says. “There’s only room for regional areas — regional plants — and the people are going to move away to fish in those areas.”

Small says other resources are having to take the place of the fishery, but one day they will run out too.

“Baie Verte was a booming mining town 25 years ago … and after the mines closed up, the Baie Verte economy hasn’t rebounded and what do we get to replace that?” he asks. “Forestry was a big thing and now the numbers working in the forestry is being cut back to just skeleton crews.”

Small is hopeful the inshore fishery will return, but says that won’t happen without controls over the offshore fishery.

“I see a big improvement in the fishery along the northeast coast … that’s certainly because there’s not much pressure on it, but we have to have more than just local bay stocks to keep the rural economy going.”

Small, Joy and Harris may not be able to agree on whether the economy of rural Newfoundland and Labrador will rely solely on the fishery, but all three are members of the Fisheries Institute for North Atlantic Islands (FIN), a group that recently formed to further the province’s fishing industry.

‘The people slipped away, not the fishery’ From page 13 research vessel.

“I had 10 or 15 scientists, just as well as if I had 10 or 15 friggelbacks aboard,” says Adams. (Asked for the meaning of friggelback, he says plankton. But “idiots” will also suffice.)

“The people slipped away, not the fishery,” says Adams. “... we had so much going for us and everybody was willing to work, but now nobody’s willing to work,” says Adams.

“We didn’t look for it. No handouts — what we made by hand and what our share was, we got.”

Adams takes dead aim at his then Fishery Products International boss turned fishery advocate Gus Etchegary.

“For a man like Gus Etchegary to get up and save the fishery now, he should be put away,” says Adams.

“Saddam was never half so bad as what he was.”

His bombastic tone turns suddenly sullen when he speaks of the seven men he and his crew tried to save after answering a mayday. The dragger Zeta had floundered in winter storms off St.Pierre-Miquelon many years ago. All but one of the mostly Newfoundland crew was lost that day.

“They all drowned right along side the dragger,” he says.

“I never gots you all. We wanted youse all, but we couldn’t do it.”

When the northern cod moratorium was announced in 1992, Adams was literally fishing off Cape St. Mary’s.

“We got a call from the fellas that owned the plant in St. Brides to ‘Take up your nets.’”

Just a couple of years ago, Adams threw up his hands and sold his fishing licenses, converting his 41-foot boat into a cabin cruiser.

“I just got clear of it. I wasn’t going to have no more.”

FEBRUARY 20, 2005

INDEPENDENTLIFE • 19

Bucking the trend Unlike other rural communities, Labrador’s north coast thriving HAPPY VALLEY-GOOSE BAY

By Bert Pomeroy The Independent

W

had close to 500 university graduates — that’s a high number when you consider our small population,” she says.

“We’ve also had a lot of people who have completed programs in various trades — many have been able to get work at Voisey’s Bay, at the rock quarry at 10-Mile Bay (near Nain) and the rock plant in Hopedale.”

The establishment of the Nunatsiavut government, adds Strangemore, will present new opportunities for the Inuit and their communities.

hile many rural areas of the province struggle to survive the wrath of out-migration, Inuit communities along Labrador’s north coast are thriving.

The five communities, which have had their share of social and economic problems in the past, are on the brink of becoming among the most prosperous in the province, thanks in part to Voisey’s Bay and the settlement of the Labrador Inuit land claims agreement. ‘IN-MIGRATION’ EXPECTED “We have so much to look “We’re going to have a lot forward to,” says Jodie of jobs, and we’re going to Strangemore, the education need people to fill those jobs,” counsellor for the Labrador she says. “I expect we’ll see Inuit Association. “There are more of an in-migration. I a lot of good things happenhope that we’ll see more of ing in our communities.” our people coming back — Out-migration is virtually a those who have received non-issue, says Strangemore, training in the past. who lives in Postville. In fact, “We have a lot to look forshe says, people are moving into the ward to,” Strangemore adds. region.

The executive director of the “People are so close to their homes Combined Councils of Labrador and their families that they find it hard agrees.

“There is a lot of good stuff happento leave,” she tells The Independent.

“Those that do leave, for the most part, ing on the north coast, and there is a lot of potential,” says Jamie Snook. go on to further their education.”

Many of them come back, she says. “While out-migration has been an issue in other parts of “We have teachers, Labrador, such as the lawyers, public-servsouth coast, we ice workers and a lot “We would like to haven’t heard much of people with trades about it on the north that have come back see some of these coast.” to work at Voisey’s younger people who According to Bay,” she says.

Statistics Canada, the “When I left my are staying in their region has seen a 2.4 home to attend unicommunities to per cent increase in versity, there was no doubt in my mind population from 1986 come forward and that I was going to to 2001. In fact, it’s the only region in come back.” offer themselves in Labrador that has But there are still a leadership role.” seen its population many young Inuit increase. who decide not to Jamie Snook With municipal further their educaelections slated for tion, mainly because the fall, Snook says they are afraid to the combined councils is hopeful the leave home, Strangemore says.

“I keep telling them home is always north coast communities won’t have going to be here,” she says. “If they problems fielding candidates.

“We would like to see some of these want to contribute and have a good future, then they have to go away for a younger people who are staying in while to further their education. They their communities come forward and offer themselves in a leadership role,” can always come back.”

Snook says.

EDUCATION FUNDING “Many of the councilors on the Members of the Labrador Inuit north coast have been involved in Association receive education fund- municipal politics for a long time and ing, allowing them to attend university many are tired of it, but they stay on and other post-secondary institutions because nobody else wants to get at no or very little cost, Strangemore involved. says.

“With such a bright future, you “Over the past 20 years, since LIA would think people would want to play has been funding students, we have a role.”

Rural connection More outports than ever connected to Internet; economic opportunities growing

By Clare-Marie Gosse The Independent

S

tatistics Canada figures show an average of 56.3 per cent of households in this province were hooked up to the Internet in 2003. But a growth in the communications industry and an effort to bring technology to more rural communities since then suggest current numbers may well be much higher.

Geralyn Hansford, regional manager for Aliant in eastern Newfoundland and Labrador, tells The Independent by the end of 2005, Aliant expects to have connected up to 80 per cent of the province’s web-users and only two per cent of those will rely on dial-up.

“A number of years ago we invested in a program called Network Modernization and that program allowed our customers in just about every community in Newfoundland and Labrador to have access to the internet,” she says.

The economic and social importance of access to high-speed Internet in remote areas has been recognized both nationally and provincially. Just last year the province’s Department of Innovation, Trade and Rural Development began working on the Broadband for Rural and Northern Development (BRAND) initiative.

Both Aliant and the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency (ACOA) are also partners in the project.

BRAND is a $105-million program spearheaded by Industry Canada to bring high-speed Internet to communities currently without a hook-up. It’s expected to reach up to 90 different locations within the province.

“In this land too we’re moving from an industrial age into a knowledge-based age and it’s important for people to have access to those kinds of technologies in their working lives as well as in their private lives,” says Industry Minister Kathy Dunderdale.

“Under the BRAND initiative we’ve been working with a number of communities and a number of regions in the province … so that would certainly indicate that the average is up. The national average for usage is

about 65 per cent and I’d certainly say we’re on par with that.”

In small communities with few employment prospects, the home-based business possibilities highspeed Internet provides are invaluable. Dunderdale says there are still technical issues needing to be addressed in some parts of the province, which the department is looking into solving.

“Some representatives from the department have recently been to meetings in other parts of the country to have a national discussion on how we do that and what technology is available to us.

“The main thrust for us right now is to get broadband in as many places as we possibly can get it.”

The minister says because many American IT companies are moving back from the Middle East for security reasons, this province is making an active effort to attract potential business opportunities.

“We’re strategically positioned to pick up on some of that business so we have a real, focused effort now in the Nearshore (Atlantic) initiative taskforce to pick up on some of that and there’s no reason, in terms of IT, once you have the highspeed internet, why we can’t move some of that business around the province.”

Nearshore Atlantic is a $1.5 million collaboration between local government, Aliant and the Newfoundland and Labrador Association of Technology Industries to establish the province as a recognized centre for information and communications technology and attract international business.

Although rural Newfoundland and Labrador faces a number of complex issues on an economic level, the freedom and opportunities offered by high-speed Internet access are a positive step forward.

“Once folks are able to have access to the higher speeds to be able to do business online, it opens the opportunity for everyone around the world,” says Hansford. “Most businesses today do a lot of business through e-mail and a lot of business through the Internet so it’s a fabulous opportunity, particularly for rural parts of our country.”

EVENTS FEBRUARY 20 • Miss Teen Newfoundland and Labrador Pageant, St. John’s Arts and Culture Centre, 7 p.m., $24 ($22 student/senior), 729-3900.

• Open mic, hosted by Zak Chaulk, Fat Cat Blues and Jazz Bar, George St., 10 p.m.

• The Choirs, Orchestra and Bands of Holy Heart Cochrane St. United Church, St. John’s - Susan Quinn directs the many vocal choirs and the string orchestra. Grant Etchegary conducts the bands and small ensembles, 3 p.m. Tickets $10 ($7 Student/Senior).

• 2005 Scott Tournament of Hearts, Mile One Stadium, St. John’s, runs until Feb. 27. Tickets start from $65.

576-7657.

FEBRUARY 21 • Celebrate Heritage Foundation of NL, a celebration For Heritage Day, including a proclamation, awards presentation and reception. H.M.S. Briton Room, Murray Premises, Water St., 739-1892.

• Open mic with Damien Follett, Greensleeves, George St., 10 p.m.

FEBRUARY 22 • Paddy Reilly, one of Ireland’s most prominent balladeers, St. John’s Arts and Culture Centre, 8 p.m., 7293900.

• Computer Club: Power Point 7 Web-4-All, 7-9 p.m. Call Alicia Hann at the ILRC, 722-4031.

FEBRUARY 23 • Benefit Concert in aid of Dermot O’Reilly, at Club One, George St. The Masterless Men, Shannyganoock, Sons of Erin, Middle Tickle with Darcy Broderick, The Punters, and The Irish Descendants.

• Ocean Technology Speaker Series, Atlantic Room, Institute for Ocean Technology, National Research Council building Arctic Avenue, MUN campus, 8 a.m. Register by phone: 738-7059.

• Folk Night at the Ship Pub Fergus O’Byrne and Fergus BrownO’Byrne. Fergus the Elder (songs aplenty, guitar, banjo, concertina, bodhran) Fergus the Younger (fiddle, accordion, banjo) 265, Duckworth St. 9:30 p.m. $5.

FEBRUARY 25 • Spirit of Newfoundland, Reunion at Purgatory High, Majestic Theatre. A play that digs up every kind of ghost from high schools in NL. Stars Susan Kent, Steve Cochrane and Sean Panting. Written and directed by Beni Malone. $42 with dinner. ($22 show only) 579-3023.

• The Beatles…Back in NFLD! Musical theatre featuring Shelley Neville, Peter Halley, Steve Power and others. Produced by Spirit of Newfoundland Productions. 5793023.

FEBRUARY 26 • Grass Always Greener, game show, dinner and auction. Capital Hotel, Kenmount Rd. An evening of entertainment and a three-course meal.

Doors open at 6 p.m. Tickets $30 ($60 Double). In support of Planned Parenthood Newfoundland and Labrador. 579-1009.

• Music Collection Showcase ’05 for RealTime Cancer, featuring teachers and ensembles. Majestic Theatre. 7382982.

FEBRUARY 20, 2005

20 • INDEPENDENTLIFE

WEEKLY DIVERSIONS ACROSS 1 Nose 5 Manly in Madrid 10 Drug-induced state 14 Post-game sum-up 16 Reserved 17 Mussel menacing Lake Erie 18 ___ du Quebec (Quebec Police) 19 “Air Farce” stockin-trade 20 Secret or esoteric 22 French here 23 Children’s entertainer Nagler 25 Exactly vertical 27 Alta. summer time 28 Comb makers 30 Nfld. painter 33 Globe 34 Opposite of fem.

35 “See you!” in St. Ives 37 Wind: prefix 39 S’il vous ___ 41 Alter 43 Buddhist meditation hall 46 Buttock muscle 48 Expert ending?

49 Revulsion 51 Sailor’s drink 52 Having had too much

54 Halifax had the first one in Canada 56 Charley ___ 57 Among 59 Cut off 60 French vineyard 62 Extol 63 Sully 65 Sense of humour 67 Where the Gobi is 69 From ___ to worse 70 Notched 72 Equal: prefix 74 Horsemen 76 French queen 77 ___ New Guinea 79 Inane 80 Part of TNT 82 Candid 84 Singer K.D. 87 Female elephant 88 Allude (to) 89 U.S. wine region 93 Terre dans la mer 94 Place for books 96 All: prefix 98 Start of a day?

99 Winnipeg event, 1919 101 Avid 104 Formed into whirlpools 106 Shun 107 Burn with steam

Solutions on page 26

108 Portals 109 Tear apart 110 Feudal peons 111 Witnesses DOWN 1 Singer Cockburn 2 Out of this world 3 Billy Bishop 4 A McGarrigle 5 Eyelash lengthener 6 Yodeler’s perch 7 Pigeon sound 8 Hula ___ 9 Get rid of, by giving to someone else 10 Basil, e.g.

11 Inuit TV corp.

12 Prairie grass: blue ___ 13 Like some training: ___-on 15 Continuous 17 African river 18 Bro or sis 21 List ending 24 State of seeing red 26 Conference room coffeepot 29 Bear droppings 31 Shy 32 Be on your ___ 34 Native of Ulan Bator 36 Hastens

38 Type of stocking 39 Actor Christopher 40 Light in Limoges 42 Nanette’s nose 44 Like denim 45 Container for bones 46 German author (The Tin Drum) 47 Canada’s first woman doctor 49 Greek architectural style 50 ___ bear 53 Start for glottis 55 Scot’s word of regret 58 Like the Snowbirds 61 Without decoration 64 Royal in a sari 66 Jose’s aunt 67 French cut (of clothes) 68 Stratford on ___ 71 Slightly loco 73 Short railway branchline 75 Aboriginal TV (from 1999) 77 “The Magnificent Mohawk”: lacrosse star Gaylord ___ 78 Provides 81 Caviar 83 Sleep stage 84 Fleur de ___

85 Rite site 86 Impertinence 90 Blazing

91 Reporters 92 Help 94 Slip

95 Confront 97 Promising words 100 + or - item

102 Needlefish 103 North Pole helper 105 Female rabbit

POET’S CORNER

WEEKLY STARS ARIES – MAR 21/APR 20 Everything you touch turns to gold, Aries. Make productive use of your resources, and you’ll attract much support down the road. But, beware of those who take advantage.

LEO – JUL 23/AUG 23 This week will be hectic and you might feel stressed out and distracted, Leo. Spending long hours at work will not help the situation, so see if you can sneak out early one day.

SAGITTARIUS – NOV 23/DEC 21 You’ll be faced with delicate topics this week, Sagittarius. Don’t tiptoe around the issues. Get to the heart of the situation, and be honest about your feelings.

TAURUS – APR 21/MAY 21 Happy times are here, especially if you are beginning a new romantic relationship, Taurus. Your connection is now stronger than ever thanks to your ability to speak openly.

VIRGO – AUG 24/SEPT 22 Unexpected glitches in a project are set to arise on Tuesday, Virgo. You’ll be full of energy for most of the week, so you’ll be able to tackle the problem effortlessly.

CAPRICORN – DEC 22/JAN 20 You don’t need any outside motivation to plow through your work — you’re naturally motivated. Afterward, rest up, because change is in store for you, Capricorn.

GEMINI – MAY 22/JUN 21 Keep plugging away at projects.

You’ll find you must multi-task this week, especially when something big arrives by midweek. Make a list, or have a game plan in mind.

LIBRA – SEPT 23/OCT 23 Money has been burning a hole in your pocket, and you’re ready to spend, Libra. Better keep that cash in check a little while longer because you’ll soon need it.

AQUARIUS – JAN 21/FEB 18 Follow-through is the key to locking in deals that can help you in your career, Aquarius. Make sure you dot your “I”s and cross your “T”s as well — details are appreciated.

CANCER – JUN 22/JUL 22 Your ability to concentrate will not be very strong this week, Cancer.

Friends can help you along and provide the guidance you need. Expect big news by Thursday.

SCORPIO – OCT 24/NOV 22 You will make tremendous progress in fulfilling goals you’ve set for yourself, Scorpio. You have motivation, power and resources on your side to get the job done right.

PISCES – FEB 19/MAR 20 Keep doing what you’ve been doing, Pisces. You’re in an ideal position to expand your skills, horizons and earning power.

One Hundred Per Cent

By Francis Patey, St. Anthony Mr. Martin was Prime Minister, an election he did call.

When he came to Newfoundland, he said you can have it all.

To his home he did return, with no deal in the bag.

Fuming mad, he shouted out, Boys lower the flag.

Talking about our offshore wealth, revenue from our oil.

When he said one hundred per cent, it made our people smile.

All the people from up-along, said Danny you’re to blame.

How dare you lower the Maple Leaf, hang your head in shame.

Danny told the people, from St. John’s to Labrador.

If they give us what they promise, have-not, shall be more.

But Danny to his ground he stood, with his people likewise too.

A face to face with Martin, Nothing else will do.

He packed his bags and headed west, to Winnipeg the talks were real.

Come out here, Danny boy, And we’ll sign a deal.

One-on-one with Martin, this time the talks were real.

Soon Danny said to his people

By God we have a deal.

With Mr. Goodale he did meet, Efford had little to say.

But when they broke their promises, Danny walked away.

Our people now live in hope, In Newfoundland and Labrador.

That some day down the road of time, Have-not shall be no more.

INDEPENDENTBUSINESS

SUNDAY THROUGH SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 20-26, 2005 — PAGE 21

Rhonda Hayward/The Independent

‘Albatross around the neck’ Financial statements of St. John’s Sports and Entertainment nine months late; operating deficit expected

CLARE-MARIE GOSSE

T

he 2004 financial statements for the group operating Mile One Stadium in St. John’s are running nine months late, The Independent has learned.

As a result, St. John’s Sports and Entertainment (SJSE) can’t put a figure on the size of its latest deficit, which would be piled on top of its long-term debt of nearly $5 million.

SJSE’s financial statements were last released in June 2003. Updated statements were expected in June 2004.

Lisa Neville, Mile One’s general manager, hopes to have the statements by month’s end. She says the delay is the result of a change in auditors.

“It becomes kind of a lengthy process,” she says. “It’s not as simple as coming in and just looking at our books, and where it’s their (the new

auditor’s) first run-through, they kind of have to learn your business before they can audit it.”

The City of St. John’s recently switched auditors, which is why SJSE is following suit.

“The city’s year-end was the end of December and their statements aren’t released,” says Neville. “Our year-end was the end of May so, if the city hasn’t gotten theirs out, I’m not concerned with getting mine out.”

The 6,000-seat Mile One facility featured 110 paying events last year.

Despite the business, SJSE is expected to record a deficit.

Mile One lost almost $1 million between June 2002 and May 2003 — despite a $700,000 subsidy from the city.

Corner Brook’s Pepsi Centre — a 3,100-seat facility that hosted roughly 50 paying events last year — did not record a deficit in 2004.

The Halifax Metro Centre, a 10,000seat facility, accumulated a deficit of

approximately $100,000 last year after hosting 150 events.

“The major reason for losing money has been in the past few years the declining numbers of spectators to the hockey games,” says Keith Coombs, SJSE’s chairman. “You’re at the mercy of the fans in terms of whether or not they like the product on the ice.”

This year the St. John’s Maple Leafs team is one of the best ever, but attendance has suffered because the franchise is moving to Toronto next season.

Unlike Corner Brook’s Pepsi Centre and the Halifax Metro Centre, Mile One is operated solely by the city.

On Aug. 8, 2001, what was originally called the Civic Centre Corporation changed its name to St. John’s Sports and Entertainment, which today consists of 14 board members — four of whom are city councillors — and a management team overseeing the stadium, the St. John’s Convention Centre, and the St. John’ s Maple Leafs.

The construction of Mile One cost

nearly $50 million and came after years of heated negotiations. Mayor Andy Wells was once the strongest opponent of the project (he’s since changed his tune); Danny Williams was one of the strongest advocates (and still is).

With Fog Devils owner Derm Dobbin announcing his Quebec Major Junior Hockey League team will not play next season due to a failure to reach a lease agreement, Mile One is facing the likelihood of a year without a major tenant.

“Over the next few months we’ll be unveiling basically a full-fledged plan as to how we’re going to market and brand Mile One,” says Coombs. “Our management staff are in the process of developing a very aggressive schedule and that will all depend upon such things as what acts are available, what acts we can afford to bring in here, what acts the customer wants to see and their availability.”

He adds the possibility of the Fog Devils playing out of Mile One is still

not completely out of the question.

A disagreement over the sharing of concessions — estimated in the $300,000 range — currently divides the two sides.

Scott Ferguson, vice-president of operations and general manager of the Halifax Metro Centre, says without a team, Mile One will find it hard to make up lost event days.

“They’ve got a responsibility to bring events and to ensure they have organizations like hockey teams and concerts and shows but they’ve got a responsibility at the end of the day to the taxpayer.”

Mayor Wells says SJSE’s responsibility to the taxpayer is the reason they won’t accept just any deal with the Fog Devils.

“These are volunteer people who are serving without compensation, but who are just interested in making sure that Mile One does not become any more of an albatross around the neck of the taxpayers than it currently is.”

Anchors away

Avalon Mall may have lost Wal-Mart and customers it attracted, but negotiations underway for new tenant

By Clare-Marie Gosse The Independent

T

he hallways of the Avalon Mall in St. John’s have been quiet of late, but manager Sue Freake says that could be attributed to the time of year and poor weather, rather than the loss of the mall’s largest anchor tenant — WalMart.

“Only two weeks have passed since they closed and certainly it would be too early to tell what kind of impact it would or would not have,” she tells The Independent. “This is February and you certainly have lower volumes of traffic in February ... The last two weeks again, we’ve been plagued with snow and rain storms so that has visibly had an impact.”

Recent weekends, meantime, have been as busy as ever, Freake says.

After the January sales, Wal-Mart moved from the mall into a new, standalone store located further west on Kenmount Road, taking current staff

and hiring a few extra.

It’s always daunting when a shopping centre loses such a high-profile store, a scenario Terry Harvie knows only too well, as manager of the Village Mall on Topsail Road.

Two and a half years ago, The Village lost its Wal-Mart to a larger, stand-alone location in Mount Pearl.

Although the retail company was given the option of having their remaining two-year lease bought out, they decided to continue paying for the empty store — potentially guaranteeing their customers would follow them to the new location.

Harvie says The Village only recently regained control of its space.

“We’ve got proposals out to a retailer to take the entire space at the moment. I would hope within the next four to six weeks we would have an announcement. There’s a tremendous amount of work that would have to be done because obviously the configuration of the store would have to be different.

The former Wal-Mart in the Avalon Mall.

We’d be looking at either a fall or spring opening next year.”

Harvie says the Village suffered after Wal-Mart left, and customer numbers

Rhonda Hayward/The Independent

still haven’t returned to what they once were.

“Certainly, when you lose a tenant that has the kind of volume that a Wal-

Mart does, your traffic in your centre drops off usually in the 25 to 30 per cent range and that’s pretty consistent right across the country when a major tenant like that leaves.”

He expresses concern for the Avalon Mall.

“We were fortunate in the fact that we still had a Sears here as an anchor store, where they don’t have a second anchor over there…”

It seems the Avalon Mall isn’t worried, however. Although Wal-Mart is still leasing the space, Freake says negotiations with a new anchor tenant are already underway.

“Indeed the space is available for us to re-lease this year. We are presently in negotiations with another retailer and we are hopeful to have a replacement anchor this year.

“We have 150 stores here in the shopping centre, we have a very strong tenant mix with many leading national tenants so we feel they have the selection there to offer to our customer.”

22 • INDEPENDENT SPECIAL SECTION

FEBRUARY 20, 2005

FEBRUARY 20, 2005

INDEPENDENTSPECIAL SECTION • 23

FEBRUARY 20, 2005

24 • INDEPENDENTBUSINESS

Sealers asked to support association

By Jamie Baker The Independent

I

f the Canadian Sealers’ Association is going to make a comeback, it will be up to fishermen themselves to pay the bills.

The association closed its doors on March 31 last year, but efforts are underway to revitalize the group, an advocate for sealers and their way of life.

The association was formed in 1982 in response to negative publicity against the seal hunt. The association represented more than 6,000 sealers and worked with both levels of government to promote the industry.

But without consistent government funding, which the association largely relied on in the past, Frank Pinhorn says it will be up to fishermen to help the association get back on its financial feet — and stay there.

Pinhorn is part of a group currently touring the province meeting with sealers in an attempt to generate new interest, to discuss the future of the industry and, more specifically, the future of the association itself.

“In the past, (the association) was partially funded by government, but now we’re putting the case to fishermen they need a strong association to promote the development and continuation of the sealing industry,” Pinhorn tells The Independent.

“You need an independent sealers’

Paul Daly/The Independent

association — there’s no reason why it shouldn’t be financially independent.”

Pinhorn estimates the cost of running the association to be in the neighbourhood of $100,000 to $130,000 a year.

Meantime, he says government will likely be called upon to play a role in special circumstances, “… for things like research and development and to do specific things that would be generic to the harvesting and processing sec-

tors.”

Pinhorn played down any suggestion federal Natural Resources Minister John Efford — his former boss in the provincial Fisheries department — played any role in his being tasked to help revitalize the association.

Pinhorn says his past experience — including 25 years handling the seal file for the provincial Department of Fisheries — more than supports his tak-

BUSINESSBRIEFS Vioxx safe enough?

GAITHERSBURG, Maryland — A panel of U.S. experts by a narrow margin say Merck & Co. Inc.’s now-withdrawn painkiller Vioxx is safe enough to be sold in the United States despite an increased risk of heart attack and stroke.

A Reuters unofficial count showed 17 out of 32 voting panelists told the Food and Drug Administration the drug could be on the market with some restrictions. An official tally is pending.

N.J. sues Blockbuster NEW JERSEY (Reuters) — New Jersey Attorney General Peter Harvey Friday has filed a lawsuit accusing Blockbuster Inc., of deceiving customers with its new “no more late fees” rental policy.

In a statement outlining his complaint, Harvey accuses Blockbuster of failing to disclose key terms of the policy and said some of its stores did not participate in the policy and continued to charge late fees.

“Blockbuster boldly announced its ‘no more late fees’ policy, but has not

told customers about the big fees they are charged if they keep videos or games for more than a week after they are due,” says Harvey.

Blockbuster spokeswoman Karen Raskopf says the company was surprised Harvey’s office “never directly contacted us about this” before filing the suit.

She said Blockbuster stood by its new policy and has done everything to explain to customers how it works.

Blockbuster — currently locked in a bitter takeover battle for Hollywood Entertainment Corp. — unveiled its “no more late fees” policy in December in an attempt to jump-start its business as competition escalates.

New finance minister for Quebec MONTREAL (Reuters) — Quebec replaced its finance minister Friday, as Premier Jean Charest shuffled his cabinet just weeks ahead of the province’s annual budget.

Michel Audet, former economic development minister, was named finance minister, replacing Yves Seguin. Charest says cabinet will not be weakened by Seguin’s departure.

“I offered him the ministry of justice, … and he refused it. That’s too bad,” Charest says.

Commentators on Radio-Canada said Audet may prove to be more inclined than Seguin to act on Charest’s April 2003 election promise to reduce taxes in Quebec, the most taxed jurisdiction in North America.

Rate worries may subdue stocks NEW YORK (Reuters) — Stocks could show some weakness next week as earnings season winds down, while inflation and interest-rate worries stoke investors' concerns about future profits.

Oil prices around $48 a barrel could also keep up the pressure on the markets, strategists says.

Friday, Wall Street got a warning shot from a bigger-than-expected jump in U.S. producer prices, excluding food and energy. The core Producer Price Index shot up 0.8 per cent in January.

That increase — well above the Street's expectation for a 0.2 percent rise — fanned inflation fears and bolstered a growing expectation the Federal Reserve will keep raising interest rates well into 2005.

ing a lead role ensuring the association makes a successful comeback.

“I know a lot of the fishermen and I’ve worked with a lot with them. I’ve been talking to the feds and provincial government for years about the development of the sealing industry.”

Pinhorn does note, the lines of communication between the association and both levels of government — including Efford’s office — will be

very much open.

Pinhorn says a great deal of focus in the ongoing meetings is the upcoming seal hunt, slated to get underway in April.

That fishery, he says, could be the industry’s most lucrative ever.

“The value of pelts today is higher than it’s ever been in our history. The processors tell us the prices will be equitable to what they were last year, which was an all-time high.”

Sealers in the northeast Atlantic and the Gulf, he adds, are entering the final year of a three-year plan that carries a total quota of 975,000 seals, of which 319,000 are left to harvest.

As per usual, Pinhorn expects some protest and opposition to the hunt to come from animal rights groups such as Greenpeace and the International Fund for Animal Welfare.

Combined with more humane hunting practices and the “professional way in which the fishery itself is being conducted,” Pinhorn says the ability of such groups to damage today’s industry has been greatly reduced.

“It’s into Europe, it’s into Russia — you can’t target one particular market.

And because the market is so spread out, you would very little impact on the overall market for seal products.

“I don’t doubt they’ll be here because they always come. The best thing we can do is quietly pursue our fishery and quietly bring it in and do what we’ve always done …”

Clearing the air Voisey’s Bay Nickel Company officials say ‘no indication’ mould making workers sick

By Jamie Baker The Independent

remediation and clean-up work is carried out at the first sign of a problem. oisey’s Bay officials say “It’s a function of continuously there’s no reason to believe monitoring to determine whether or mould in living quarters at not there is a presence of humidity or the project site in northern Labrador water in the trailers which can be is making workers sick. caused by any number of things — A recent outbreak of the flu at the pipes that are dripping or breaking or mine and concentrator site added to condensation occurring on windows speculation that mould in areas of the and surfaces, to a build up of snow accommodations complex might be around the trailers in the winter playing a role in employee illnesses. months and so on.”

Past inspections at the site have Part of the problem, Carter says, is found evidence of Stachybotrys char- the fact the living quarters are being tarum, a toxic form of microbial in assembled at the mine concentrator several areas in the accommodations site by way of combining newer trailcomplex, The Independent has ers with older units that come from a learned. Moisture, variety of different microbial and locations. mould-related “Some of them “We remediate based indoor exposure in are absolutely brand homes, offices, on a very clear process new and others have and public buildbeen at the condepending upon the ings are being struction site going increasingly recextent of the mould.” back to some of the ognized as one of initial work we were the most common doing there in the — Bob Carter indoor environlatter part of the mental health 1990s.” issues.

He says the company has been Bob Carter, public affairs manager working with the province and the for Voisey’s Bay Nickel Company, occupational health and safety comsays, to date, health and safety per- mittee on site. “There is a very clear sonnel stationed at the site have had protocol” in place for mould and air no reports of workers complaining of quality, he says. any mould-related health problems.

“When we have any situation that “I have had absolutely no indica- requires remediation, we remediate tion whatsoever that the mould situa- based on a very clear process tion, as you call it, is resulting in ill- depending upon the extent of the ness of workers at site.” mould. It can be as simple as cleanCarter says the company is fully ing surfaces using common houseaware of the moisture and mould hold cleaners like Javex … or if you problems in some of the buildings at have materials that are built up the site, particularly the living quar- behind surfaces we can, in an ters, and appropriate measures are extreme case, see ourselves removbeing taken. ing walls, stripping trailers down, He says the issue has been con- cleaning them, and putting them back stantly monitored going back to in place.

2003-2004 and that maintenance, “You have to keep the camp as safe

V

INDEPENDENTSPORTS

SUNDAY THROUGH SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 20-26, 2005 — PAGE 25

Photos courtesy of Vid Vain

He’s so

VAIN

His name is Vid Vain (a.k.a. Trevor Davis) from Bishop’s Falls. He’s 6’2’’, 265 pounds and the owner of Victoria City Wrestling

By Jamie Kreiser For The Independent

F

ebruary has always been an important month in the life of Vid Vain — his birthday is on the 5th; it’s the month he first stepped into the squared circle three years ago; and this year, he will embark on a new endeavour, the debut of his own promotion: Victoria City Wrestling.

Vain describes the event as “a family show,” featuring talent from promotions such as TRW (Top Ranked Wrestling out of Abbotsford, B.C.) and ECCW (Extreme Canadian Championship Wrestling), companies that Vain currently wrestles for.

“What I am trying to do for Victoria is I want to cut out the politics,” promises the current NWA (National

Wrestling Alliance) Canadian Heavyweight champion from Victoria, B.C. “Whoever wants to come over can come over here and work. No one is going to be blackballed or have any problems.”

Not bad for a once selfdescribed “short, fat kid” from Bishop’s Falls, whose wrestling aspirations are rooted from finding solace and inspiration in Hulk Hogan’s mission statement of “training, prayers and vitamins” in the early 1980s.

“It hit me hard, I bought it hook, line and sinker,” confesses Vain, who admits that his chocolate Labrador is even named Hogan, as a

means of sincere homage. “Every year it would be upgrades on my weights. My dad would buy me new benches and new this and new that. I started working out when I was 12 and now I’m 34.”

For the record, Vain (born Trevor Davis) now stands at 6’2” and weighs in at an impressive 265 pounds.

His training began in the ECCW school outside Vancouver. He had just ended a 12-year run in the military, a venture that saw him leave the East Coast and relocate to Victoria, where he currently works as a full-time prison guard. He considered the training a birthday gift to himself, but he admits he never thought it would go anywhere.

His first match was in Abbotsford against the Canadian Butcher. It lasted all of 15 seconds. “I was supposed to come in and take out the big bully,” recalled Vain. “And I really did because I think he had some kind of heart attack or heart aneurysm or something. He jumped me from behind. I backed up in the corner. We were just punching each other for real because we are bigger guys, bigger guys usually kind of just lay into each other. I went to throw him into the one corner. And he hit the canvas and just bolted. He went out the door, right to emergency.”

Unscathed from his first match, Vain went on to work in numerous promotions including Cutting Edge Wrestling in NewSee ‘A big day’ on page 26

Who needs the NHL, bring on Zamboni smash-up derby

W

hat the fog is going on here?

As our premier so ably demonstrated, it’s crucial to stick to your guns when trying to hammer out a deal.

But to have those guns pointed squarely at your own feet, the forehead of your potential suitor, and the hearts of hockey fans just doesn’t make sense.

Is that what the folks at St. John’s Sports and Entertainment have done in negotiations (or lack thereof) with the Fog Devils junior hockey franchise? It sure seems that way.

It brings to mind a song by R.E.M. — Everybody hurts.

As champions of taxpayers’ money, SJSE has every right to ensure public

BOB WHITE

Bob the bayman money is used to benefit all citizens it represents — not just hockey fans, and/or businesspersons interested in offering hockey to the masses.

Just like it did with the St. John’s Maple Leafs, right?

Regardless, the whole preposterous affair is over — for now. The Fog Devils have been put in the penalty box for a full season, and even the referees aren’t certain as to when they will be allowed

on the ice.

What a shame. But hey, its hockey, and considering the mess the NHL finds itself in, we shouldn’t be surprised. From this point on, perhaps every hockey operation — from minor associations all the way up to the professional ranks — is destined to endure some sort of turmoil.

The local squirt division announced recently its newly formed Triple A circuit has suspended operations, citing a lack of wins, which led to a decrease in revenue. The players are blaming the parents, the parents are blaming the coaches, and both sides are threatening tantrums. Each side seems to be victimized by a sugar rush.

Even with the rec league I play in, there are hints that all is not well with our current operating standards.

For one, the beer tastes the same — whether it follows a win or loss.

However, I only tasted one victory brew so far this season, so I might need more opportunity to taste (er, test) that theory.

Some of the more vocal players have even gone so far as to suggest a conspiracy theory.

The post-game feeds of caribou and moose sausages also seem to be a ploy by team management to keep our minds off the impending playoffs. There’s more at stake during the second season (playoffs). Giving it your all is only good when it results in a win.

That kind of stress might lead to our demise. If that happens, S.W. Moores Memorial Stadium in Harbour Grace Stadium will be without one of its major tenants. The loss at the gate could be disastrous, for its tough to get a ticket for the classic Monday night showdowns. In fact, I haven’t heard of any fans who were successful in buying a ticket. Oh well.

This scenario could play out in arenas all over the land.

I just wish someone would have stopped for a moment and thought of the Zamboni drivers. Those guys are going to find it difficult. But hey, maybe they See ‘Getting Juiced’ on page 26

FEBRUARY 20, 2005

26 • INDEPENDENTSPORTS

‘A big day for me’

From page 25 foundland, Irish Whip Wrestling in Ireland and, of course, TRW. In 2004, he had five bookings with a little organization called World Wrestling Entertainment, the first of which he garnered as a result of being boisterous. “I just came back from Newfoundland, I was doing some shows and I had bragged in the newspaper back there that the WWE was coming to Vancouver the day after I get back from my trip so I was going to show up and just walk in there,” he says with a laugh.

After a slight case of nerves, Vain showed up and made good on his word. He was actually asked to appear on WWE’s televised program, Sunday Night Heat. Though his appearance ended up being scratched, his foot was in the door. To date, he has had one televised match with the company and one of his bookings resulted in an encounter that Vain considers a high point in his career.

He was given a private one-on-one

ring session with Canada’s own Chris Benoit. “We were in the dressing room and he just started talking to me and he found out that I was Canadian,” says Vain. “We were both getting changed and he went out to the ring first, I followed after. He was in the ring standing by himself. I was nervous all as hell. I was stretching and warming up. I was really nervous about getting in the ring. I could tell he was eyeballing me. He was just standing there with his arms on the ropes and staring at me. Finally I look over and he says, ‘Hey kid, what’s your name again?’ I told him and he says, ‘You wanna go messing around?’ I said, ‘Yeah!’ We were in the ring for about an hour together.

“It was just him and me and the whole arena.”

Afterwards, Vain had the opportunity to receive critical evaluation from the likes of Arn Anderson and Dean Malenko. “It was kind of a big day for me,” he says simply.

PRIMARY FOCUS But for Vain, his achievements do little to overshadow his primary focus: the unveiling of Victoria City Wrestling.

He sees the promotion as a vessel for youth advocacy, already partnering with organizations like Rock Solid and Big Brothers and Big Sisters.

The emphasis is on kids to attend the show. “I have had kids e-mail me,” he says. “What Vid says is, ‘If Trevor Davis from Bishop’s Falls, Newfoundland can get to the WWE, then anybody can.’ I’ve worked hard.

Endless hours in the gym ... I do a lot of good things here in Victoria. I’m pretty excited about my own promotion.”

Dave Merklinger

Rhonda Hayward/The Independent

Ice makers

Turning Mile One into a curling rink isn’t easy; difference between good ice and bad ice a tenth of a degree

By Darcy MacRae For The Independent

D

ave Merklinger may be the busiest person in St. John’s this week. The Vancouver, B.C. native is in St. John’s on behalf of the Canadian Curling Association, serving as head ice maker for the 2005 Scott Tournament of Hearts.

The event — which began Feb. 18 at Mile One Stadium and continues until Feb. 27 — serves as the Canadian Women’s Curling Championships and keeps Merklinger on his toes at all times.

“It’s a lot of fun. It’s totally different than making ice in a curling club,” Merklinger tells The Independent. “The media is around, newspaper reporters, radio stations and TV cameras are everywhere. We have a good time.”

Merklinger arrived in St. John’s on Feb. 12 and immediately took the opportunity to get a good look at Mile One. The transformation of the stadium from a hockey rink to a curling club began immediately following the St. John’s Maple Leafs/Manitoba Moose hockey game, as arena employees began taking the glass down and removing the large protective nets from the end zones.

The following day Merklinger and his crew — mostly volunteers, some from as far away as Ontario — began the process of making hockey ice into curling ice.

The first step is to remove any high spots on the ice surface before bringing the zamboni out to scrape the ice down almost to the paint that covers the stadium’s cement floor. The ice is then reapplied using purified water, giving curlers a harder, cleaner sheet of ice to work with.

“The most important aspect to me is to create ice that will produce entertaining curling for the spectators to watch,” Merklinger says. “If the girls have good ice to play on, they have the confidence to attempt tough shots and put on a show.”

Once Merklinger is sure the ice is level in all areas, it’s time to paint the entire surface white. When that’s done, the lines and sponsors’ crests are painted, a procedure that’s time consuming, as those who stopped by the stadium on Feb. 14 could plainly see.

Throughout Mile One, men and women were seated on milk crates, tracing various symbols on the ice before using a heat gun to dry their artwork.

Although several of the workers were volunteers, two were actually local icemakers who were assigned by the Canadian Curling Association to assist Merklinger on the job.

Tony Angel of the Bally Hally Golf and Curling Club and Peter Russell of the St. John’s Curling Club were on hand to help complete the project. While both men have performed similar jobs at major curling events both here and on the mainland before, they are still proud to work on such a prestigious sporting event.

‘AWFULLY BIG EVENT’ “As an icemaker, you want to give the curlers the best ice to play on,” says Russell. “This is the Canadian championship, it’s an awfully big event.”

The Scott Tournament of Hearts features the country’s top women’s curlers, including defending national champion Colleen Jones; Kelly Scott of British Columbia; Ontario’s Jenn Hanna; and Heather Strong of Newfoundland and Labrador. The event is televised nation-

ally by the CBC and is a staple in newspaper sports sections across the country.

That type of exposure can bring a lot of attention to ice makers such as Merklinger, Russell and Angel, which they don’t mind as long as it’s not for something they did wrong.

“Believe me, there’s a lot of pressure,” says Merklinger. “The difference between good ice and bad ice is only a tenth of a degree. And if the ice is bad, it’s televised all over Canada.”

That scenario has crossed Angel’s mind as well, but he says he doesn’t let it bother him.

“I try not to think about that, and I just cover it up if I do make a mistake,” Angel says with a big laugh.

As much as Merklinger, Russell and Angel enjoy curling, they probably won’t watch much of the 2005 Scott Tournament of Hearts. It’s not that they wouldn’t like to, they simply won’t have much spare time.

“There’s a fair amount of work after each game — scrapping and cleaning the ice,” says Russell. “We’ll be pretty busy throughout the tournament.”

Aside from dressing the ice several times a day, the trio will also keep an eye on the temperature of the stadium, as well as the ice. With crowds of more than 6,000 expected daily, Merklinger says staying ahead of the game is the key to avoiding a disaster.

“I can tell by the way a rock reacts going down the ice whether or not we have to make any adjustments,” he says.

“This place is going be filled with 6,000 people, and if you’re not ready for that you’ll have a lot of trouble. The building and ice heats up in a hurry, so you have to be prepared.”

Darcy_8888@hotmail.com

Getting Juiced with The Chemist From page 25 can start up their own racing circuit, just like NASCAR. Or some sort of smashup derby.

Apparently, there are several arenas throughout North America that have just freed up ample time on their schedules.

••• Back in the day, Jose Canseco was deemed a freak of nature. Up until he

burst on the scene in the late 1980s, no one had ever witnessed a professional baseball player who could hit, run and throw like Canseco.

Turns out, and I’m sure we all had our suspicions, he was a freak of science — not nature. And, if you believe what he’s written in his new tell-all book, Juiced, he ushered in a new generation of baseball players.

A self-proclaimed student of steroids,

Canseco even earned the nickname of The Chemist, derived from his desire to concoct just the right mixture of chemicals to produce so mightily at the plate.

In that, he was highly successful, as I’m sure his book will be. People love to read about scandals.

I feel sorry for the guy, though. What a shallow existence. I also feel sorry for any aspiring professional athlete who might look at what Canseco has been able to accomplish (i.e., fame, infamy and fortune) by injecting hormones and performance-enhancing drugs.

Technically, it worked, and worked quite well. The guy put up huge numbers.

Ethically, however, Canseco created a monster that threatens to destroy the inner fabric of America’s beloved game.

People don’t want to pay to watch enormously talented athletes like Canseco and others he has alleged are steroid-abusers.

Or do they?

Depending on who’s asked and the response, the answer to that question might be somewhat disconcerting. I would hope most people would answer no.

But if that is the majority’s reply, and Canseco is telling the truth about the number of players using steroids, it means baseball stands to lose many fans.

It will be interesting to see how Major League Baseball deals with this. It’s a tough one to ignore, and won’t be quietly swept under the rug.

Bob White writes from Carbonear. whitebobby@yahoo.com Crossword solutions from page 20

FEBRUARY 20, 2005

INDEPENDENTSPORTS • 27

All good things must end Browne, Dalton leave lasting legacy at Memorial; hope to play in Europe next season

By Darcy MacRae For The Independent

M

emorial University’s women’s basketball team is approaching the end of an era.

With just under a month remaining in the 2004-05 season, the team is preparing to say good-bye to two of the best players ever to wear a Sea-Hawks uniform.

“Jenine Browne and Amy Dalton are the heart and soul of what we’ve accomplished … particularly in the past four years,” says Doug Partridge, head coach of Memorial’s women’s basketball team.

“Their scoring, play-making abilities, leadership skills and what they’ve meant to recruiting played a big part in our development into a national-caliber program.”

Browne and Dalton are in the fifth and final year of eligibility at the university level, and — as usual — are the driving force behind another strong Memorial squad. They played their final home games in Sea-Hawks colours on Feb. 12 and 13, leading the team to a pair of wins over Acadia.

A PROPER SEND OFF The duo received a proper send off after the Feb. 12 contest, as 1,500 fans stayed after the final buzzer to say good-bye to Brown and Dalton. With cheers and applause raining down from the Field House stands, they were presented with framed jerseys and given the chance to tell the crowd how much they enjoyed their five years at Memorial.

“A lot of people came out to support us and say good-bye and thank you,” Dalton tells The Independent. “It was amazing.”

The following afternoon, reality struck home. As Dalton sat in the locker room just moments before tip off, it dawned on her that she was about to play her final home game for the SeaHawks, a day she knew was coming but never looked forward to.

“I was pretty emotional,” says the 22year-old. “I didn’t really want the game to come, because I knew once it was over, it was all over. I wish it could have lasted forever, but everything comes to an end.”

Browne also had some emotions to deal with prior to tip off, but says once the game was underway she was all business. Like Dalton, she will miss taking to the court against various AUS competitors, especially since the team has been a national power in recent years. But more than anything, Browne says leaving her teammates is the most difficult thing to deal with.

“I’m definitely going to miss the girls,” says the 23-year-old. “Being with them every single day, we’re just like sisters now.”

Browne, a native of St. Brides, and Dalton, who grew up in Harbour Main, may be leaving Memorial but they certainly won’t be forgotten. Their names are written throughout the women’s basketball team record book.

Among the records held by Browne are career field goals (525), and the alltime lead in scoring average (20.7).

Dalton’s accomplishments include the all-time records for steals (184) and assists (398).

Both players have impressed fans for the past five years. They also made it easier for Sea-Hawks to add quality newcomers to the program. According to Partridge, selling the school and the team to potential recruits is a lot easier when players the caliber of Browne and

Amy Dalton and Jenine Browne

Dalton are already on the roster.

“People wanted the opportunity to play with them over the years. Also, when players come to visit the school, they (Browne and Dalton) make them feel very comfortable and make Memorial a desirable place to play,” he says.

With a strong supporting cast in place, Browne and Dalton have led the Sea-Hawks to two AUS conference titles (2002, 2003) and came within one win of a third last season. The victory in 2003 was especially sweet for Dalton,

Rhonda Hayward/The Independent

since it came in front of legions of hometown fans.

“Winning the AUS title at home was nice. There were about 2,500 people in the gym that day. It was the greatest feeling in the world,” says Dalton.

Browne agrees the 2003 win was special, but adds the loss to the University College of Cape Breton in the AUS final last year was one she still hasn’t stopped thinking about.

“I’ve had a few tough losses,” says Browne, “but losing to Cape Breton last year was really hard.”

The Sea-Hawks have four regular season games remaining before they compete in the AUS championships in Fredericton in early March. Should they reclaim their conference title, Brown and Dalton will lead the Sea-Hawks into action at the national championships in Winnipeg later in the month.

Upon graduation in April, both players say there is a chance they will look into playing professionally in Europe next season.

Darcy_8888@hotmail.com

SPORTS IN BRIEF Former MVP runner-up wants Canseco’s award RALEIGH, N.C. (Reuters) — The man who finished second to Jose Canseco in voting for the 1988 American League most valuable player award says he should have the award now that Canseco is talking publicly about his steroid use. “Where’s my MVP?” former Boston Red Sox outfielder Mike Greenwell tells the Fort Myers, Fla., News-Press. “(Canseco’s) an admitted steroid user. I was clean.”

Chargers place franchise tag on QB Brees SAN DIEGO (Sports Network) — The San Diego Chargers announced this week that Drew Brees has been designated the club’s franchise player, meaning the quarterback will at least make

the average of the top five players at his position for the 2005 season. Brees, whose salary would be a reported $8.078 million US for next year, can still negotiate with other clubs. Tagging him as the “non-exclusive” franchise player, the Chargers will have the option of matching the contract or receiving two first-round selections from the team that signs Brees.

Linebacker Bruschi suffers mild stroke TORONTO, (Reuters) — Super Bowl champion New England Patriots linebacker Tedy Bruschi has suffered a mild stroke.

According to television reports, Bruschi, who played in the Pro Bowl in Hawaii, was diagnosed with a mild stroke, but was in good spirits.

The heart of the Patriots defense, Bruschi has played a key role in New England’s three Super Bowl wins in the last four years, including a 24-21 victory over the Philadelphia Eagles two weeks ago.

MLB and its umpires ratify new CBA NEW YORK (Sports Network) — Major League Baseball and its umpires have ratified a new collective bargaining agreement.

The contract, agreed upon by both sides in December, is effective Jan. 1, 2005 and runs through Dec. 31, 2009.

“I am very pleased Major League Baseball has reached this agreement with the umpires,” says commissioner Bud Selig.

“Our umpires continue to display the dedication and professionalism that make them the best officials in the world.”

The deal also resolves a grievance filed by the umpires over the use of the QuesTec umpire information system.

Major League Baseball will still be able to apply the computer system and other evaluation methods to critique strike zone performance.

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WORKERS WIN WHEN WE BUY LOCAL • FRANK TAYLOR OF THE CAW SPEAKS OUT FOR RETAIL WORKERS • WORKPLACE DISCRIMINATION: MENTAL HEALTH CHALLENGES • THE LABOUR RELATIONS AGENCY MEDIATION MAN: JOE O’NEILL • IN THE SPOTLIGHT: NANCY RICHE • YOUTH & WORKPLACE SAFETY • RELUCTANT HEROES: THE ST. JOHN’S REGIONAL FIRE FIGHTERS • WORKPLACE SEXUAL HARASSMENT: NO JOKE • THE FOX GUARDING THE HENHOUSE: ARE THE OIL COMPANIES CALLING THE SHOTS? • DANNY WILLIAMS: WORKING TO BECOME PREMIER •LOBLAW’S STADIUM DEVELOPMENT: GOOD FOR WORKERS • HIBERNIA WIN HUGE VICTORY FOR WORKERS’ RIGHTS • THE WORKING POOR: GOOD PEOPLE WITH A HARD LIFE • ANNA THISTLE-MINISTER OF LABOUR • THE MINIMUM WAGE: RAISE IT NOW! • LABOUR HISTORY:THE TRAGEDY OF ST. LAWRENCE • PASSPORT TO SAFETY • WHEN THE JOB OVERWHELMS YOU • TOM HANLON OF NAPE • THE YOUNG WORKERS’ VOICE • RURAL NEWFOUNDLAND: LET’S STOP THE BLEEDING • THE HUMAN TOUCH: A TRIBUTE TO OUR NURSES • VOISEY’S BAY:MORE QUESTIONS THAN ANSWERS • THE WORLD SOCIAL FORUM • THE OCEAN RANGER • LABOUR HISTORY: EARLY STRUGGLES OF WOMEN • WORKING WITH HUMOR • THE MARYSTOWN SHIPYARD: BUILDING A BRIGHT FUTURE • COAKER & THE FISHERMEN’S PROTECTIVE UNION • BILL PARSONS: OFFSHORE OIL & GAS BENEFITS:WHERE ARE THEY? • UP CLOSE: WAYNE LUCAS OF CUPE • THE CONFEDERATION DEBATE: DISPLACED, MISPLACED & OUT OF PLACE • HEALTH CARE SURVEY: PUBLIC OR PRIVATE HEALTH CARE? • STRESS: OBSTACLE OR OPPORTUNITY • BANKING: IT’S ALL ABOUT PEOPLE … OR IS IT? • LABOUR DAY • WORKPLACE EDUCATION: BACK AT THE BOOKS • UP CLOSE: WAYNE RALPH OF THE UFCW • THE (UN)EMPLOYED: WORKERS WITHOUT

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FEBRUARY 20, 2005

28 • INDEPENDENTART

GALLERYPROFILE BARBARA PRATT Visual Artist

F

or Barbara Pratt, whose paintings sell for thousands of dollars, being an artist isn’t about the pay cheque.

For her, being an artist means working when the mood or inspiration strikes her; it also means fulfillment.

“If my career were my life, then so many things would have to suffer,” she tells The Independent.

On this day, the day before her 42nd birthday, Pratt works in the kitchen of her home. She dabs at an easel set up to capture the natural light from the corner windows. Her sons, Philip, 11, and Peter, 8, sit at the table doing their homework.

There, in the comfort of her home, Pratt can work, while spending quality time with her children.

She says being a full-time artist is ideal because she has no boss over her shoulder, no set hours for work and family time.

“I’ve got nobody hanging over me saying, ‘Why aren’t you working’ … except for myself.

“My career is not my world, my children are my world. They come before anything.”

Pratt has been working inside the house lately, rather than her back-yard studio in Portugal Cove-St. Phillip’s, to spend time with her children while working on her new show. The exhibition has yet to be named, but it’s focused on flowers.

Well-known for her work depicting fashion models, Pratt, daughter of renowned artists Christopher and Mary Pratt, says she wanted to work on a show that’s more personal. She says she couldn’t possibly look at another fashion magazine.

“I wanted to say something more about my own life,” she says. “I wanted something optimistic.”

Painting flowers gave Pratt a chance to work on a beautiful subject, one that allowed for subtle emotional and symbolic cues to show through.

“When you’re painting flowers, while the emotion is there you can pretend

you don’t see it. You can pretend that it’s just a picture of a pretty flower when in fact it’s much more, and you know it, but at least you don’t have to face it

everyday.

“Flowers are so often a symbol of love and affection or they are a symbol of sympathy, but the way in which I pre-

sented these flowers is very non-traditional.

“It’s much deeper than just a bunch of flowers.”

Pratt has six pieces prepared for the show, expected to open this spring at the Emma Butler Gallery in St. John’s.

— Alisha Morrissey

The Gallery is a regular feature in The Independent. For information, or to submit proposals, please call (709) 726-4639, or e-mail editorial@theindependent.ca