2005-04-17

VOL. 3 ISSUE 16

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ST. JOHN’S, NEWFOUNDLAND AND LABRADOR — SUNDAY THROUGH SATURDAY, APRIL 17-23, 2005

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OPINION PAGE 15

SPORTS 25

Spring is here – so are the fundraisers, says Noreen Golfman

Marc Moro, final captain for the St. John’s Maple Leafs

Lack of Efford Early retirement package will cost more than $120 million; Efford still waiting for data, other MPs have it JEFF DUCHARME

T

he Fish, Food and Allied Workers’ early retirement proposal calls for a five-year plan sources say will cost more than $120 million. Depending on the criteria, as many as 3,600 people could retire from the processing industry, The Independent has learned.

It’s expected the program would be cost-shared, with the feds picking up 70 per cent and the province picking up the remaining 30 per cent.

Provincial Fisheries Minister Trevor Taylor has already said he supports the plan — but only if the feds come on side with the lion’s share of the funding.

Newfoundland and Labrador’s representative in federal cabinet, Natural Resources Minister John Efford, says he doesn’t have all the facts and figures — and therefore can’t push Ottawa for the early retirement program.

But the six-page union proposal obtained by The Independent clearly shows the figures Efford

Irene Ploughman, chairperson of the FFAW local at Shawmut Fisheries in Witless Bay, says aging plantworkers deserve an early retirement package. She says it would also help industry deal with a dwindling resource that can’t provide enough work to help people survive in the outports.

Rhonda Hayward/The Independent

requested from the FFAW were supplied to him Feb. 28.

A spokesperson in Efford’s office confirmed the minister has yet to see the proposal. Efford didn’t respond to requests for an interview.

FFAW president Earl McCurdy doesn’t know what to make of Efford’s claim.

“I’m hard pressed to explain that one,” says McCurdy. “Clearly, that’s been in there for well over a month now.”

QUOTE OF THE WEEK “I may only catch the dumb ones.”

— Professor Robert Lewis on students who plagiarize

IN CAMERA 16

Get inked: an afternoon in a tattoo studio BUSINESS 19 Marystown shipyard and the FPSO

Paul Daly/The Independent

Marystown cries foul over $1.1M for Bull Arm ALISHA MORRISSEY

A

fter being told for years the Marystown shipyard must stand on its own two feet and make its own way in a competitive business world, Mayor Sam Synard says government should take its own advice. The Bull Arm fabrication site received a $1.1 million shot in the arm as part of the provincial 2005 budget.

“We spent a lot of years going back and forth with former premiers and we were lectured basically, as a town, that the Marystown shipyard and the Cow Head site have got to become competitive,” Synard tells The Independent.

“We bought into that and we support that and now we come to find out that we’re on the other end of that flipped coin.”

The $1.1 million is for day-to-day operations of Bull Arm and to market the facility internationally.

Synard says the money gives the government-owned facility an upper-hand when it comes to courting work for the offshore. Kiewit and Sons, who owns the Marystown shipyard where more than 1,000 people are currently employed, is looking for projects to replace Husky Energy’s Floating Production Storage and Offloading vessel. It will leave for the White Rose field this summer.

“What’s going to happen as we look into the future towards Hebron/Ben Nevis? We’re going to be disadvantaged by not having a level playing field,” he says.

“I think government has an obligation to ensure that all private businesses in the province have a reasonable chance at competition.

“We’re just saying, level the playing field.”

Natural Resources Minister Ed Byrne says Bull Arm isn’t in direct competition with Marystown.

See “Rough ride,” page 2

Record number of visitors expected in St. John’s

LIFE 13

Shelagh Rogers on the day she was ‘stunned silent’ Life Story . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Paper Trail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Crossword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

The package sent to each of the province’s MPs is, says McCurdy, “as much information as anyone is able to accumulate right off the top, in terms of See “It’s going to be…” page 2

Total recall Keeping power to develop industry considered crucial part of lower Churchill plans JAMIE BAKER

I

f the province wants to jolt extra life into the economy, some say keeping a portion of the electricity generated by the lower Churchill project and using it to power industry is as important as selling it.

Most of the focus with the project to date has been on selling power to customers such as Ontario, Quebec and the eastern United States. But a significant energy-recall component is considered crucial to developing industry within this province, especially in Labrador.

After reviewing the expressions of interest (EOI) document issued by the province, Combined Councils of Labrador executive director Jamie Snook says Labradorians are concerned.

“It is widely accepted in Labrador that there must be some access to that power here for industry development,” Snook tells The Independent.

“Nowhere in that EOI did it ask companies to look at putting lines to Goose Bay or Labrador City. If you don’t put that in your EOI, these companies aren’t going to graciously suggest they should go there.”

The lower Churchill project is expected to cost approximately $4.8 billion and will generate 2,824 megawatts of power (2,000 at Gull Island, 824 at Muskrat Falls).

Snook says a number of existing and potential operations in central Labrador require access to that kind of power in

order to move forward. As a result of not having access to hydro power, 5 Wing Goose Bay is forced to use a more costly steam plant.

Graeme Scott is the managing director for Markland Resource Development Inc. The company made a substantial mineral find in the Churchill River last year.

Although that project is still in the exploration phase, he says the availability of power will be a huge part of any plan for secondary processing of minerals in Labrador. The project could mean hundreds of jobs for the area.

Scott says the question of power was raised during recent meetings in Labrador.

“When I met with the (Happy ValleyGoose Bay) town council that’s one of the questions they had — how much power would we need?” Scott says.

“One of the reasons this project is attractive and, hopefully down the road, economic, is the long-term availability of inexpensive power in Goose Bay.” Electricity rates in central Labrador are among the cheapest in the province, but Scott says the question isn’t the price — it’s the amount of power.

“It’s obvious low-cost power is available, but now it’s a matter of if, going forward, there’ll be enough of it with the power projects that have been proposed up there.”

Snook says part of the problem in the past has been the high cost of building transmission lines from Churchill Falls to Happy Valley-Goose Bay – a project estimated at $60 million.

See “It’s going to be tough,” page 5

APRIL 17, 2005

2 • INDEPENDENTNEWS

‘It’s going to be tough to sell, quite frankly’ From page 1 an indication of the magnitude.”

St. John’s South MP Loyola Hearn says “the information was presented” to him and that the union did a “thorough job” in assembling the data.

“If we don’t ease out some of the older people, it’s the younger people that are losing their jobs,” says Hearn.

“And consequently, in five, 10 years down the road, there isn’t going to be a workforce in the fishery.”

Plant workers’ frustration bubbled over April 5 as they launched a province-wide protest that included taking over the offices of Liberal MPs Efford, Scott Simms, Lloyd Matthews and Gerry Byrne.

Simms, MP for the riding of

Bonavista-Exploits, has the proposal from the union, and says the province’s MPs expect a meeting with the Human Resources and Skills Development Minister Lucienne Robillard. Human Resources would manage the early retirement program, if it were approved.

“It’s going to be tough to sell, quite frankly,” says Simms.

There are almost 14,000 plant workers in the province — 27 per cent are 50 or older.

The five years of the plan would allow workers currently finding themselves under the 55-year-old cutoff mark — 1,980 workers — to eventually be eligible. The union has proposed an age plus years of service criteria for the program — a formula not adopted by the feds in the 1998 early retirement package, when 1,400 plant workers qualified. Employees that only had a few years working in plants qualified because they were 55, but employees with far more seniority were left out in the cold.

“There were problems with the program ... we want to make sure that there is that feasibility of getting this program in and at the same time tweaking it, fixing it so that way the inefficiencies that were done last time will not happen

again,” says Simms. care of that.

The 1998 program, called Fisheries “Right now we got a lot more people Restructuring and Adjustment then there’s work for and it would get Measures, was worth a total of $730 the number more in line,” says million shared amongst the four McCurdy. “It would fundamentally be a Atlantic provinces. workforce reduction issue “It would really make an with some limited degree of appreciable difference in backfilling (jobs) dependtrying to wrestle with the ing on the circumstances.”

Irene Ploughman, chairproblems in the groundfish person of the FFAW local at and shellfish sectors if Shawmut Fisheries in there’s an early retirement Witless Bay, says getting program that helped with the enough work to qualify for (employee) numbers,” says Employment Insurance is McCurdy. “getting more difficult” Hearn says it’s “complete Scott Simms and utter nonsense” to talk with each passing year.

After 25 years in the plant, the 55about reducing bodies in the processing year-old knows just how hard that envisector.

“We have been deliberately going out ronment is on an aging workforce.

“You’re in the cold and you’re in the there, downsizing the workforce, downsizing plants, to meet a dwindling dampness and, of course, arthritis sets resource,” says Hearn. “What we in,” says Ploughman.

McCurdy says there’s no guarantee a should be doing is looking at the resource to see how we can enhance it new program would include those and improve it to meet the numbers (of workers who missed the 1998 retirement package — it would depend on the people) depending on it.”

Taylor has said the province isn’t final criteria.

“Obviously we’d be interested in interested in a program that doesn’t reduce the number of employees in the doing whatever we could to help people who, as the saying goes, have fallen plants.

McCurdy says the market will take between the cracks.”

‘A really rough ride’

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From page 1 “Any company ... if they wish to use any of the facilities in the province, Bull Arm being one of them, they would have to pay a competitive rate to do so and from that point of view, it is our belief that we are not providing a competitive advantage,” Byrne says.

He says government would like to see Bull Arm be self-supporting.

“There’s been a lot of work through that site this year and we hope to have it more active in the years to come and there’s some potential on the horizon, specifically the potential development of Hebron/Ben Nevis that we’re excited about, but those things will present themselves as things go along.”

Synard says Marystown is going to fight for work on Hebron/Ben Nevis, a project not expected to start for several years.

“The bottom line is that in Marystown we’ve created a good industry here in the last three years, we’ve proven ourselves when it’s come to offshore oil work and we’re looking forward to Hebron/Ben Nevis,” Synard says. “As the White Rose project winds down — that project will be finished this calendar year — then we’re into a period of several years waiting for the next big offshore development.

“In that two-year interim between the winding down of White Rose and the winding up of the Hebron development, these are going to be two lean years.”

Byrne says no matter who wins the contract, he’s sure work will be available for both facilities.

“I think there’s a great deal of work with the oil and gas industry on the horizon and the Burin Peninsula is perfectly positioned to take advantage of that

emerging work whether it be natural gas on the sub-Laurentian basin or potential projects with Hebron/Ben Nevis. So government’s role is to promote and try to attract as much work to our province as possible.”

Synard says he’d rather government make a choice.

“There’s certainly no logic to subsidize industry to get jobs in Bull Arm because if you use that logic, then why won’t government subsidize Marystown?”

“We’ve had a really rough ride here, not in the last couple of years because of the work with White Rose, but prior to that we’ve had a rough ride and we moved away from … public-sector subsidies into a private-sector entity.

“Either they get out of it all together or they equally subsidize competing interests.”

APRIL 17, 2005

INDEPENDENTNEWS • 3

Down in the dump Gov’t says PCB levels at New Harbour landfill acceptable; environmentalist says it’s ‘a catastrophe waiting to happen’ NEW HARBOUR

By Jamie Baker The Independent

B

etter to let a sleeping dog lie.

That’s the approach the provincial Department of Environment is taking concerning transformers that were improperly disposed of, and remain buried, at the New Harbour dump in the 1980s.

Environment Minister Tom Osborne says government has spent $100,000 over the past two years conducting testing at the site and says there is no cause for alarm. He says PCB levels of 50 parts per million are considered acceptable for a landfill site, and that every test so far has been under that limit with the exception of one, which showed levels of 52 parts per million.

He also says testing indicates the PCBs have not “migrated” off the landfill site.

“We’ve been told by professionals within the department that if the limits are below what is considered acceptable, the best thing to do with those (transformers) is to leave them right where they are,” Osborne tells The Independent.

“There’s no sense spending $500,000 to $600,000 to dig up something that is not causing a concern.”

Environmentalists in the area are far from convinced. Allan Williams of New Harbour has been lobbying to have the site cleaned up for years.

He says land and bodies of water — many of which are popular local swimming and fishing spots — near the dump are showing signs of contamination with everything from dead insects to deformed fish. He’s worried toxins from the dump will eventually end up in the water table for the area.

“All the testing that’s been done is surface testing. You have to drill down through the bedrock to understand what’s going on with the groundwater,” Williams says.

“The ponds are polluted in there, so how long is it going to be before this reaches our drinking water? That’s what we want to know.

“That stuff is going to get out, maybe

not tomorrow, but it will get out. What happens if someone, some child, dies?”

When Osborne was environment critic as part of the Opposition in 2003, he toured the site with Williams. Following the tour, Osborne called for an inquiry into how transformers ended up in New Harbour when they should have gone to an approved disposal site near Come by Chance. The inquiry never happened.

While he stands by the fact the transformers, which came from Makinsons, “should never have gone to New Harbour,” he says the priority now is monitoring the site. Eventually, once a new regional landfill is identified, the dump will be closed entirely.

A committee of local service districts in the area has been struck. Osborne says the committee has indicated they want the dump to remain open until a new regional landfill site becomes operational.

“We have committed to continue to monitor the situation, and if it becomes a concern at any point, we will do what is right in dealing with those transformers,” Osborne says.

“If the New Harbour site is to remain open for another four or five years — and I’d love to see it closed — I’m prepared to accept that if that’s what the local service districts want.

“When the residents are ready to close the site, we’ll do it properly.”

Williams, for his part, doesn’t have much faith in the new committee.

He feels the group is in a conflict of interest because most local service districts rely heavily on government funding.

He’s also upset the committee is limited to local service district representatives. Despite his experience dealing with the issue, he can’t be involved unless he joins a local service district.

Still, he says he’s more than willing to take any committee member, official or individual around the area so “they can see this mess for themselves.

“Anyone who goes in there to see it — forget the reports and documents — when you come away, common sense will kick in and tell you there’s something seriously wrong there … it stinks,” Williams says.

New Harbour resident Allan Williams.

Osborne admits some of the testing has shown somewhat high levels of heavy metals in and around the dump, but says the numbers are consistent with other landfills and with the natural geology of the area.

“I’ll say, cautiously, the levels are consistent with what’s been found from

Paul Daly/The Independent

the test results at other dumps,” Osborne says. “Yes, there are some heavy metals that have migrated from that site, but it is consistent with most every other landfill in the province.”

The idea that government is monitoring the dump is little comfort to Williams.

“This stuff can show up out of nowhere — and we’re simply going to trust government to monitor that?”

Williams says. “That mess in there is trickling down into the ground and water 365 days a year.

“What we have in at that dump is a catastrophe waiting to happen.”

‘Someone will notice’ Term papers, final exams, newspaper and magazine articles — you might be surprised at the amount of plagiarism around you

By Jeff Ducharme The Independent

A

sociology professor at Memorial University says we are living in a “culture of plagiarism,” and that “term-paper mills” make breaking the rules far too alluring for students.

The issue of plagiarism hit the front pages recently when the St. John’s Telegram fired a reporter who the paper alleged had plagiarized a number of articles. In that case, the reporter was alleged to have lifted background material for the stories from the Internet.

Professor Robert Lewis says plagiarism in newspapers is nothing new.

“Go back to the 19th century, look at how they used to write newspapers then ... they just copy and pasted from each other,” Lewis tells The Independent.

“Who knows where (the news) came from?

“There’s been scandals about plagiarism that took place before there was ever the Internet — fraternities having a stock

of papers that they turn in.”

Plagiarism knows no cultural or social bounds. Alberta Premier Ralph Klein was investigated last year after a professor at Athabasca University charged that the premier had handed in a plagiarized paper.

The university cleared Klein of the charges. That same year, the chairman of the Orange County school board in the United States resigned when he was caught plagiarizing a speech.

Plagiarism, says Lewis, is a serious charge — often resulting in a student being expelled — but the burden of proof lies with professors, who often don’t have the time to check sources and build a case.

American studies contend 20 per cent of post-secondary students use the Internet as a source for plagiarism — stealing facts from various sites and then not giving the source credit. Lewis says the numbers are similar in Canada.

“Part of the problem is that a lot of our students aren’t very good writers anymore,” says Lewis. “The reason they’re

not good writers anymore is because the way you learn to write is by reading — that’s the only way, really.”

TV and the Internet have not only created cheaters, but bad ones.

“They (students) don’t realize that when I read a paper that I can see the difference in writing styles between two (styles) because they don’t see the difference.”

The Internet is littered with sites where students can buy papers for as little as $9.99 (US) per page, which are “themselves plagiarized.

“And, of course, this is a pretty safe business because if you’re a student, you get poor service you’re not exactly going to make a big fuss about it.”

There are a number of sites in the U.S. that offer services to catch plagiarized papers — Memorial doesn’t use such a service. Using powerful search engines, they compare content of submitted papers against other papers that are contained in a database and Internet sites.

Greggory Senechal operates a site

(www.plagiarized.com) from his home in Ottawa that helps educators beat cheaters.

He puts little faith in sites that profess to solve the growing problem.

“Detection services have emerged — presenting their technologies as foolproof solutions to this problem,” says Senechal. “Like lemmings, colleges and universities have been turning to these services, signing massive contracts, and immediately dismissing the problem as ‘solved.’ These services won’t detect essays from contract-writing services.

Hundreds — probably thousands — of assignments are slipping through the detection net every semester.”

Senechal says the Internet has made plagiarism easier and more tempting.

“The Internet has lowered the barrier to act on an impulse to plagiarize,” says Senechal.

“As for journalism, plagiarism is always a surprise ... When your audience is counted in the hundreds of thousands — someone will notice.”

Some students, says Lewis, have even

taken to sending plagiarized papers to Russian translation services that translate them to Russian and then back to English in an effort to cover their tracks. Even a guide to plagiarism: How Profs Catch a Cheat, which is available in an electronic version, has built in protections so readers can’t cut and paste its content.

Taking ideas from other sources is acceptable, but the line is crossed when students don’t cite the source of the material.

“Nobody ever writes completely new ideas and completely new words ... If you come up with one or two decent ideas in your whole life, you’re well ahead of the game,” says Lewis.

Cheating sites are even available to people who play video games and want to find the easy way to win.

“The game is to beat the game and (young people) come from a culture that may very well see it as that.”

Since Lewis only sees the cheaters he catches, the problem could be even larger.

“I may only catch the dumb ones.”

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APRIL 17, 2005

4 • INDEPENDENTNEWS

Ocean needs to heal

HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL

Grassroots conference to precede international fisheries conference; participants want part of Grand Banks shut down

By Jeff Ducharme The Independent

A

coalition of environmental groups will meet in St. John’s and Petty Harbour April 29-30 to discuss alternative fishery management issues. Organizers expect one of the conference’s primary recommendations will be to close the nose and tail and the southern Grand Banks for fishing.

“It does need to heal, it’s been torn up so badly it really needs a chance to recover,” says Fred Winsor, one of the event coordinators.

“We have to allow the ocean to recover and the evidence is so overwhelming and the science for the southern Grand Banks ... pretty desperate” RECOMMENDATIONS IGNORED As recently as 2003, the Fisheries Resource Conservation Council recommended closing certain areas of the Grand Banks. Ottawa has ignored such recommendations.

Winsor says deciding to close those areas of the Grand Banks outside the 200-mile limit would only be the first step. Managing such a contentious issue — and convincing the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization, the body that manages stocks outside the 200-mile limit — would be further challenges.

“They really haven’t been looking at any other kinds of ways to get fish stocks to recover outside of the very standard method of single stock quotamanagement system, which we all can see hasn’t served us very well,” says Winsor. After 13 years of a moratorium on cod, he adds, the stocks are still on life support.

The Gearshift Coalition is made up of the B.C.-based Living Oceans Society, the Ecology Action Centre, based in Halifax, and the Fisheries Recovery Action Committee of St. John’s. The conference, called A Call for Healthy Fisheries at Home and on the High Seas, will include environmentalists, fishermen and community leaders.

The Department of Fisheries of

Oceans will host The Governance of High Seas Fisheries and the UN Fish Agreement — Moving Words into Action May 1-5, in St. John’s.

Winsor says the Gearshift conference, through workshops, discussions and guest speakers, will examine alternatives not likely to be presented at the DFO meeting to aid in the recovery of groundfish stocks.

“We could have simply a doom and gloom of all of the bad things the draggers have done over the years, all of the destruction of the ocean floor ... but what we’re really looking at is the future, is that there is hope for the future, but we have to go in a different direction,” he says.

The coalition is also pushing for a ban on trawling. Though DFO maintains the technology is not destructive, the idea of prohibiting trawling is not new — in 1911, the government of Newfoundland pushed for an international ban. The idea was vetoed by the British government, who maintained bottom trawling and dragging could not, since they were so new, be deemed destructive.

Both the federal and provincial governments refuse to entertain an outright ban on any fishing gear. Provincial Fisheries Minister Trevor Taylor has said such a ban could be considered only in certain sensitive areas.

Winsor hopes the two levels of government listen to the ideas that come out of the Gearshift conference.

OTHER VIEWPOINTS “It’s a form of lobbying and it’s a form of presenting issues and getting issues on the public agenda and getting people to understand that there are other viewpoints out there besides the government or the standard viewpoint,” says Winsor.

The conference, says Winsor, will help focus the concerns many smaller groups have been raising for years.

“I think almost every fishing community has had some kind of small fisheries organization at some point ... we’ve all come to realize that we need to have a much larger organization that’s focused on very specific issues, as opposed to a broad range.”

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Some Picnic!, a new play performed by Prince of Wales collegiate students, will be part of the Holocaust memorial service held Sunday, April 17, 8 p.m. at P.W.C. in St. John’s. The play is based on the true story of one family's escape from the Holocaust. From left: actors Kerri SteeleNash, Josh Ellis, Mark Day and Shelley Feltham.

Rhonda Hayward/The Independent

Security spending up in the air

T

here’s still no word if any of the $222 million federal marine security funding announced in the 2005 budget will be spent in Newfoundland and Labrador.

“To date funding from that $222 million will go towards things like patrol vessels for the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Seaway,” says Vanessa Vermette, a communications advisor with the federal Transportation Department. “Maybe some additional regulatory inspections and emergency response teams for the Great Lakes and Seaway as well.”

The breakdown of that funding has-

n’t been announced yet.

“It’s not something that’s going to be based on regional allocations. It’s going to be more divided by types of initiatives.”

In April 2004, the federal government allocated $308 million for marine security projects in a three-year, application-based program. In the first year of the project, $115 million was handed out.

Five ports and marine facilities around Newfoundland and Labrador received a total of more than $530,000 of that funding: Kewit offshore services, Marystown ($84,000); A. Harvey

From page 1 “If they develop the lower Churchill, the line from Muskrat Falls to Goose Bay would be a very short distance – there’s no reason why Goose Bay shouldn’t be able to access power, which is such a short distance away, for future development.”

Premier Danny Williams, who has taken the lead on the project, was unavailable for comment.

Opposition Liberal Leader Roger Grimes says power recall was one of the biggest challenges his government faced in doing a lower Churchill deal and expects the current government will face the same hurdle.

Most power-buying customers who would be willing to sign on for the long term, he says, will probably want all the power generated by Gull Island and Muskrat Falls.

The issue of power recall, he says, was what ultimately scuttled his government’s attempt to develop the project with Hydro Quebec in 2002.

“We were close (in 2002), but we didn’t think we had enough to satisfy the expectations of Labradorians, let alone the island.”

Roger Grimes “The more power you take out, the less you have to sell and the less valuable it becomes in terms of securing a long-term customer – the long-term customer would like to have it all,” Grimes says. “We were close (in 2002), but we didn’t think we had enough to

Petro-Canada supports environmental education at the Fluvarium – curriculum based programs that are hands-on and fun. We appreciate the strong emphasis on environmental awareness, which fits nicely with our values, and

Part of your communit y.

— Alisha Morrissey

‘I don’t think recall should be a stumbling block’

stories from here

perhaps yours too.

and Company, St. John’s ($64,000); Newfoundland Transshipment Limited at Wiffin Head ($133,000); and Oceanex Inc. ($73,000) and Port Harmon ($184,000) in Stephenville.

Officials with the Transportation Department say applications for the second-year’s funding will be soon be available.

As for what security spending will be done from this year’s budget in this province, Vermette says more information will be available in the next few months.

satisfy the expectations of Labradorians, let alone the island.”

Grimes says the issue of power recall automatically eliminates the only proposal known publicly – the joint proposal between Ontario, Quebec and SNC Lavalin.

“With the one they were floating, Ontario was going to get one-third and Quebec was going to get the other twothirds – where’s the energy for Newfoundland and Labrador?” Grimes says. “Obviously, that proposal has to be dismissed out of hand – there has to be a significant recall component.”

Snook says there’s no reason why the province shouldn’t have power access.

“I don’t think recall should be a stumbling block,” says Snook. “One of the things in the original Churchill contract was that we had recall rights, so you would expect any future deal to be better than that one.”

Ferry review complete A sweeping review of Marine Atlantic Gulf ferry services is complete, officials with Transport Canada confirm.

“We did receive the report on time as requested by the minister,” says Brian McGregor, a spokesman for the department. “It will be released by the end of April.”

The review is to include recommendations to improve efficiency within the Gulf ferry system.

The federal government is constitutionally obligated to provide ferry transportation between Nova Scotia and the island portion of the province.

Former Marine Atlantic chair Capt.

Sid Hynes led the review, but couldn’t be reached for comment.

The province has been dealing with complaints of poor service, lack of capacity and ever-increasing fares on the boats. Between 1999 — when thenTourism minister Chuck Furey recommended a five-year rate freeze — and year-end 2004, there was a 32 per cent increase in fares, prompting worries the cost is deterring tourists from visiting the province.

Rates were frozen last year and will continue to stay frozen until the end of 2006. Marine Atlantic’s annual passenger numbers average 491,000, though passenger traffic was down eight per cent in 2004.

— Alisha Morrissey

APRIL 17, 2005

INDEPENDENTNEWS • 5

‘A huge, huge problem’

Teachers’ pension bankrupt in eight years; increase for public service pensioners unlikely: Sullivan

By Jamie Baker The Independent

T

he last time public service pensioners had an increase based on inflation was 1989, and Provincial Finance Minister Loyola Sullivan says there won’t likely be an increase any time soon.

The provincial public service pension plan currently represents one-third of the province’s $12 billion debt — $4.5 billion. Health care, such as prescription drugs, add another $1 billion to the debt.

Sullivan says it’s all the province can do just to keep its head above water.

“I understand the concerns of those pensioners, but if we do anything to enhance the plan we drive that debt up beyond $4.5 billion – we don’t have enough money to meet the payments now,” Sullivan tells The Independent.

Contributions to the overall pension plan only fund 30 per cent of the cost.

“We have a huge, huge problem with our public service pension plans,” says Sullivan.

He says each year government is putting $156 million into the pension plans, which includes $76 million for the teacher’s plan and another $60 million for other plans. Even with the extra contribution, Sullivan says the teacher’s plan is looking down the barrel of bankruptcy by January of 2013.

As for the other plans, he says they could receive the $60 million contribution forever and never be able to get beyond being 50 per cent funded.

“If (the teachers’) pension plan, in six or seven years time goes bankrupt, it will cost us $200 million a year just to pay those pensioners their cheques.

“As for the $60 million, we can put that in forever – you’ll be long gone and I’ll be long gone and likely our grandchildren will be long gone – and

Lorraine Pasha Mercer

we still won’t be any further ahead,” says Sullivan.

“A $5.5 billion problem is a huge issue we have to deal with – it’s one of the most challenging issues we have in the finance portfolio today,” he says.

Sullivan says the only thing “keeping us above water” at this point is the fact the pension plan, since 1980, has been invested wisely, averaging a 10 per cent yearly return. “… that’s been a bit of a saving grace,” the minister says.

Rhonda Hayward/The Independent

“Extraordinary measures have to be taken to address this problem.”

Lorraine Pasha Mercer is a retired nurse and president of the Newfoundland and Labrador Association of Public and Private Employees (NAPE) retirees Local 7002. She says the problem with pensions can’t be justified based solely on simple dollars and cents – that process, she says, ignores the social cost of retirees who are suffering because they can’t afford the basic necessities of life.

Many, she says, are forced to go to the malls in winter to keep warm, utilize soup kitchens on a regular basis, and find themselves deciding if they can afford prescription drugs or not.

“We have people who are getting pensions as low as $176 to $212 every two weeks — these poor people have lost all their dignity and respect,” she says.

Pasha Mercer says without a cost of living increase since 1989, each dollar is worth only 60 cents to pensioners.

“I have so many dents in my head from banging it on the stone walls at Confederation Building and nobody is listening … this is so frustrating.”

As for the unfunded liability, Pasha Mercer says pensioners shouldn’t have to pay the price for government’s past decisions.

“The government took it – they didn’t ask us – which to me is illegal. They took the money from the workers and they built roads, bridges, hospitals and they built government buildings. They even took so much of our money and put it in Bre-X and lost it.”

With many provinces having their public service pension plans funded up to 80 per cent or even 100 per cent, despite scrambling by the province, the future isn’t bright given the current fiscal situation.

Sullivan says it’s a daunting challenge.

“When someone works for government for 25 or 30 years, when they retire, they expect to get a cheque and to get it based on what they’ve earned,” says Sullivan.

“They expect, when they get sick and need drugs and medications to get 50 per cent coverage and get that paid for. There’s not enough money to do that.”

Pasha Mercer says if government can pump millions into the arts, it should be able to provide a cost of living increase for retirees.

“We think our pensioners, who worked and built this province and earned a pension, should be able to live with dignity and respect and die with dignity and respect,” says Pasha Mercer.

“When it comes to making films or doing a video, that’s not going to help the poor person in their house cold and dying – government has to come up with money for the pensioners”

‘One of the most contaminated sites’ College of the North Atlantic assessing training potential of “ambitious” 5 Wing clean up Happy Valley-Goose Bay

By Bert Pomeroy For The Independent

T

he College of the North Atlantic is looking at whether it can play a role in helping to clean up one of the most contaminated sites in the country.

“Like any project, we have to assess whether there is some training need before we move forward,” says Happy Valley-Goose Bay campus administrator Bob Simms, in reference to an environmental clean-up project at 5 Wing Goose Bay. “There are possible opportunities for the college to get involved, but we need more information before we consider setting up a plan.”

To date, some 113 sites — containing a broad range of environmental contaminants such as hydrocarbons, pesticides, heavy metals and chlorinated compounds (PCBs) — have been identified at the base, notes remediation project director Don Edgecombe.

“We’re still trying to come to grips

with all of the areas that could cause expected to be available soon. contamination,” he says, adding the “We’re hoping to be able to impleentire project could take over 15 years ment the recommendations of that to complete at a cost of more than report,” Edgecombe says. A request $100 million. “The Department of for proposals for multi-year environNational Defence has a long-term mental consultant services is expected commitment to to be awarded by the cleaning up the conend of May. tamination.”

“We have a very “Like any project, At the base’s ambitious program we have to assess upper tank farm, planned for this sumknown locally as mer.” whether there is “little Kuwait,” an SOIL CLEAN-UP estimated 2.5 milsome training lion litres of fuel has Site investigations need before we been recovered will also continue this from the ground year at another tank move forward.” since 1991. farm, located just off Officials with DND the base. The plan is to Bob Simms expect there’s remove any fuel from another 2.5 million groundwater in the litres yet to be recovered in this area. area and, if necessary, clean up the soil Edgecombe says more than $15 mil- around site, Edgecombe says. lion has been spent cleaning up this As well, officials are still studying and other sites around the base since and monitoring the potential environthe late-1980s. mental impacts of an abandoned A report outlining recommendations dumpsite on the south escarpment of 5 on how to best clean up the contami- Wing. Used primarily by the United nation at the upper tank farm, is States Air Force during the 1960s, a

clean-up effort has been ongoing at the site since the early 1990s.

Hundreds of drums — some of which contained fuel oil and chemicals such as DDT and dry-cleaning solvents — and other debris have been removed from the site. In the mid-1990s, DND confirmed that small fish found in still water adjacent to the site were larger than normal and sterile.

Last summer the provincial Department of Environment, following a request from DND, implemented a moratorium on the leasing of any new agricultural land along the TransLabrador Highway near the south escarpment. Edgecombe couldn’t offer any update on whether groundwater at existing farms have been contaminated.

“We’re still studying this area,” he

says.

In any event, Simms says the college will keep a close eye on the clean up, and will move to implement training programs if the need arises.

“We’re just finding out the potential opportunities for training,” he says. “If there are needs identified, we could look at enhancing some of our existing programs or setting something up, depending on what’s required.”

Simms says the college’s three-year environmental sciences technical program at its Corner Brook campus could also benefit from the project.

“There’s also the possibility where students can come from Corner Brook and do part of their course here (in Happy Valley-Goose Bay),” he says.

“There are a number of opportunities that can open up from this clean-up project.”

APRIL 17, 2005

6 • INDEPENDENTNEWS

OUR VOICE

Time to be heard P olitical skullduggery, stupidity and scandals jeopardize the almost $2.6 billion in offshore oil royalties this province was promised by the federal Liberal government.

While we wait in anticipation for the cheque to arrive, Alberta announced a projected budget surplus of $1.5 billion for 2005-06. This, despite increased health care, education, and municipal infrastructure spending. Despite the cost of relief programs for cattle farmers affected by mad cow fallout.

From oil and gas alone, Alberta expects to reap a total of $7.6 billion, up $3 billion from last year.

Ontario, too, may soon receive a windfall. Prime Minister Paul Martin has agreed to sit down with Premier Dalton McGuinty to discuss McGuinty’s much publicized $23 billion gap — the difference between what Ontarians give Ottawa, and what they receive.

McGuinty’s looking for a $5 billion sign of good faith from the feds.

The Ontario leader — a Liberal himself — has at least one powerful Conservative MP onside. Belinda Stronach

stood up in the Commons last week and pled his case: “When will the Prime Minister sit down with the premier of Ontario to negotiate a more fair and equitable arrangement for the taxpayers of Ontario?”

Sounds familiar.

This province’s $2.6 billion seemed a certainty a couple of months ago. After taking down the Canadian flags, stirring the nationalist pot, fighting the good fight, we were finally to be the principal beneficiaries of our oil and gas resources.

But final legislation is tangled up in Bill C-43, an elaborate omnibus bill, which includes a number of Kyoto-related initiatives, among other things. Kyoto threatens Alberta’s industry base and that’s something the Conservatives refuse to support.

Now the feds have bigger things on their minds: political survival. The sponsorship furor means Newfoundland and Labrador and the Atlantic Accord are out of the spotlight, on the backburner.

A federal election may be called any day now. If current polls are correct, we might be heading for another minority

government, led by Harper’s Conservative hands.

In the short term, the federal Liberals are going to be spending a lot more time trying to please Ontario, their supposed stronghold. And they’ve got a lot of work to do if they don’t want to be shut out of Quebec.

The seven seats in Newfoundland and Labrador will not necessarily be on the radar this flyover. Don’t count on any favours during the next election.

In the slightly longer term, another fragile government would mean more uncertainty, more instability, and likely more time before that $2.6 billion comes this way.

Although all parties pledged during the last campaign to give Newfoundland and Labrador “100 per cent,” who will actually deliver, and when?

We rely heavily on the federal government for funding, services and any number of support systems. That’s the federation; we need Ottawa. But when you’re in the hinterland of a big country like Canada, it’s easy for Ottawa to forget it needs you too.

If the Atlantic Accord has fallen off

the front pages, other issues vital to the province — overfishing, hydro developments, etc. — are even further away.

When the national issues so darkly overshadow provincial needs, how can we get what we need to move ahead as a province? Think about the recent provincial budget, all aglow with the Atlantic Accord success — how does that change if the $2.6 billion cheque is never written?

Last Thursday night, The Independent was honoured with a national Citation of Merit for its detailed cost-benefit analysis of Confederation published last fall.

The Independent was one of five media outlets in Canada nominated for the prestigious 2004 Michener Award, considered the top journalism award in the country.

Up against The Calgary Herald, The Globe and Mail, CBC and Canadian Medical Association/Radio-Canada, The Independent was nominated for its series that concluded the province has benefited by $8.9 billion from the federation and Canada has reaped six times that, or $53.5 billion.

The series could not have come at a

better time, published last fall when the Accord debate was going full stride, and the premier and prime minister were in a very public battle.

Congratulations must go to the Globe for winning the Michener for its investigation of the federal sponsorship scandal. But in the meantime we can all take pride — all Newfoundlanders and Labradorians — for bringing the issues important to us into the national spotlight for a while. For showing we’re proud of what we have, that our province is valuable, and that we are contributors to this Confederation.

But for all that, should the federal government fall, we may be back to square one.

When you’re in a province of priceless resources, but less than two per cent of the national population, you’ve got to scream to be heard.

It may be time for the people of this province — led by our premier, who’s been a little too quiet on the national stage for our liking — to focus on what matters, and raise our voices.

The deal is not a deal until the cheque is delivered and in the bank.

YOUR VOICE The fishery … and a Yankees baseball cap Dear editor. they could buy up the customers from I’m one of the few Newfoundlanders their competitors. If you wanted to buy who actually fished with our Minister groceries in St. Anthony you had to or Fisheries, Trevor Taylor. It was 20 buy from Dominion, if you wanted to years ago now and I was 12 at the time. buy groceries in Mount Pearl you had I even remember the baseball cap that to buy from Sobeys.

Mr. Taylor used to What do you wear. It was a black think you would be baseball cap with paying for your groThis isn’t a fishery white lettering in the ceries today? Not same typestyle of only would milk issue; it’s a freedom the New York Yancost you 10 dollars a issue, an issue kees, but when you carton, but you turned the hat sidewould only be buyof choice and ways it (told people ing it from Dominfair competition. where to go). ion because they I don’t think there would have bought is any point in reall the customers hashing the reasons why plant produc- from the other players. tion quotas are a bad idea for the peoFishermen (harvesters) aren’t buying ple of Newfoundland and Labrador, from the plants, but selling to them, but there are many others who have made the exact same thing will happen under that point clear.

Mr. Taylor’s plan.

For those of you who are outside the I hope the people of Newfoundland issue and think the rich fishermen are and Labrador who aren’t directly just complaining again I will write a involved in the fishery can understand few words on the issue. Quite often an what a fundamental wrong is occurring analogy is a good way for people to here. This isn’t a fishery issue; it’s a understand a complicated issue, so let’s freedom issue, an issue of choice and talk about groceries. Suppose the fair competition.

Liberal government in power during I think Mr. Taylor is still wearing that the ’80s and ’90s decided that they baseball cap and he is turning his entire should share out the number of house- head sideways at the people of Newholds in Newfoundland to the various foundland and Labrador. Just rememgrocery providers. ber though, Mr. Taylor, you are an We’ll give 100,000 to Sobeys, elected official and I’m not the only 100,000 to Dominion, 100,000 to Co- one who has a good memory. op and so on. There wouldn’t be any Greg Boyde competition amongst providers, and Arnold’s Cove

For the record Dear editor, An article on Harold Horwood in the Feb. 20-26 edition of The Independent listed Death on the Ice as one of the 25 books written by the author.

I wish to straighten the record here in that Death on the Ice was written by Cassie Brown with Harold Horwood.

The second last paragraph of the preface, written by Horwood, states: “This is Cassie Brown’s book, not mine. She did more than nine-tenths of all the work on it. My contribution was limited to editorial advice, mainly to cutting and trimming the narrative from a much longer one to its present length.”

As a sometimes participant in gathering research for the book, I accom-

panied Cassie during some of the trips around the province and can attest to the many years of research that went into the book.

Snubbing local publishers (Cassie thought her work was worthy of larger circulation), she approached national publishers, and was accepted by Doubleday. There was a catch-22 in that they would not publish an unpublished author’s work, so the solution was to engage Horwood’s services to do some needed editing and add his name to the cover.

To this day, royalties from the publication are still split 90/10 between Cassie’s estate and Horwood.

Derek Brown, Paradise

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

Is it time for the auditor general to investigate DFO? O ur ancestors had mettle. Mettle means courage — and more than courage. It is an ingrained capacity to bear up after the fashion of a finely tempered sword blade. To be on one’s mettle is to be roused and prepared to do one’s best with spirit, courage and ardour.

The time has come for Newfoundlanders and Labradorians to display that mettle to the federal government, make it clear to Prime Minister Paul Martin we have had enough mismanagement of our once great fisheries, and we demand he dedicate and commit himself and his government to rebuilding the resource from its current state of destruction.

The contention that “everybody had a share in overfishing and mismanaging” is pure nonsense. It was and still is a federal responsibility.

In 1949 the Canadian government assumed jurisdiction over fisheries adjacent to the new province, including the Grand Banks of Newfoundland.

Ottawa became responsible for developing the regulatory measures and the appropriate enforcement regime to manage our 500-year-old fishery on a sustainable basis.

The fact Canada joined two fishery commissions (ICNAF and NAFO) did not lessen federal responsibility to protect this invaluable industry. The fishery we transferred to Ottawa in 1949 elevated Canada from 14th to sixth place as a world exporter of fish products.

Participating as one of three commissioners in over 25 annual meetings of those two commissions and also attending pre-commission negotiating briefing sessions, I am fully aware of the fact Canadian fishery bureaucrats and DFO ministers knew, beyond question, the fishery we had delivered to Canada in 1949 was in serious decline as early as 1970.

Furthermore, despite glaring evidence presented each year at those lengthy annual meetings, Canada as the coastal state and protector of our fisheries, did little to convince other foreign

GUS ETCHEGARY

Guest columnist

member nations to curb their irresponsible fishing practices that would inevitably deplete and destroy one species after another. And this is what eventually happened.

The final blow to our fisheries, especially 2J3KL cod, was delivered through the objection procedure clause

by NAFO nations. This was coupled with a horrendous mistake by DFO Minister Romeo Leblanc in 1978 when he responded to the Nova Scotian fishery lobby, and subsidized a full-scale assault by the offshore Canadian trawler fleet on Hamilton Inlet Bank during the cod spawning season, in spite of objection from the Newfoundland and Labrador-based companies.

Hundreds of millions of small soft cod were caught, and as a result, not only was the fish stock damaged biologically, but the U.S. and European markets were enormously over-supplied with low quality and small cod block production from which the industry never fully recovered.

That is the truth of the matter, and I would challenge anyone here or in Ottawa to take issue with the above.

The Newfoundland and Labrador fisheries have now hit an all time low, with a shrimp industry that has a 20 per cent European Union tariff against our industrial production, and a federal government refusing to intervene on our behalf with Danes and other EU countries that are main tariff beneficiaries.

We have a crab industry that has been vastly over licensed on the harvesting side and mismanaged in a fashion that has created a very divisive labor management dispute, with the province drawn into the middle.

DFO Minister Geoff Regan and his senior bureaucrats are allowing the once competent and well-staffed sci-

ence department in Newfoundland to self-destruct. Through attrition, we will lose invaluable corporate knowledge gathered over the years. There are no replacements being hired for retiring scientists or others who are fed to the teeth with the incompetency in DFO. Don’t be surprised if this is all part of a plan concocted in Halifax and Ottawa to have the White Hills fisheries science division follow the weather forecasting scheme that saw the Gander-based operation transferred to Regan land, or the Corner Brook DFO office transferred some years ago by Romeo Leblanc to his home province of New Brunswick.

It is high time we stood up and were counted. The Regans, Thibaults and even some from our own province have to be told enough is enough. The latest charade is another wasteful conference scheduled for May, between DFO and irresponsible foreign fishing nations.

It is just another diversionary tactic to bring the government past another federal election date.

It is a total waste of time and taxpayers’ money but nothing will stop it from happening. It will have absolutely no impact on overfishing and stock rebuilding, but still more precious time will be lost in confronting those major problems.

That is to stop all groundfishing on the Grand Banks and to develop a comprehensive science program to provide the basic information needed to begin a rebuilding program of fisheries on the continental shelf.

Do we have what it takes to stand up to those misinformed and misdirected bureaucrats and politicians in Ottawa?

Time will tell.

These are times to test the mettle in us all.

Gus Etchegary is a fisheries advocate living in Portugal Cove-St. Phillips.

Ryan Cleary’s column will return next week.

APRIL 17, 2005

INDEPENDENTNEWS • 7

There are two things important in politics …

M ark Hanna was a Republican bagman and political organizer who lived in the United States over 100 years ago. I kept thinking about him as I watched the interminable Gomery revelations.

Hanna uttered one of my favourite political quotes — noting perhaps the most important thing anyone can ever learn about politics. He said “There are two things important in politics, the first is money and I can’t remember what the second one is.”

The Gomery Inquiry is showing a lot of people just how important money is to the political class. Especially easy money. Easy money is the best. If there is easy money to be had, there are folks who are going to get it.

On Saturday last, I spent the day at a provincial junior high volleyball tournament — sitting in a school gym from early morning to evening with lots of other parents. I talked with a lot of different people. People who don’t read newspapers. People who don’t read my column. People who care nothing for politics. People who don’t know much about easy money. One subject came

IVAN MORGAN

Rant and reason

up over and over. The Liberal sponsorship scandal.

I read that Tories and Liberals were waiting for the polls to tell them how the public were reacting to the scandalous revelations. Who needs to look at polls? Go sit in on a kids’ volleyball tournament.

PERSONALLY OFFENDED Here’s what I learned: People are taking it personally. Paul Martin was quoted in the media as being personally offended. He isn’t the only one.

Almost every person I talked to felt personally offended.

One guy spoke of the hardship the Canada Revenue Agency had inflicted on him over $1,100.00 they said he owed. Four kids to feed and they had sued him, threatened to garnish his wages and put a lien on his house.

YOUR VOICE Restore U.S. relations Dear Editor: I can’t think of a more dangerous example of the depth to which Canada-US relations have plunged than a proposed American missile test that could see missile fallout land within kilometres of our offshore drilling platforms.

This is just another example of what is occurring at the highest levels when our federal government is not at the table with our US counterparts.

My concern remains that CanadaUS strategic aerospace cooperation is not conducted at a level of interaction

Treated him like a criminal for a scrousty $1,100 bucks. Yet those Liberal bastards …

I heard the same thing, over and over, all day. The government can tax the life out of me and I can’t get ahead, but those guys … I had to wait 10 hours in a waiting room with my Mom moaning in pain because those guys say there’s no money for doctors, but then … Can you imagine what we could have done with that $100 million? … What did they want our oil money for? This? …

One senior bureaucrat sighed and said it was nearly impossible to do his job anymore, as he spends all his time filling out forms, proving to his superiors he’s still honest. Yet these guys, he said in the next breath, have seen fit to help themselves …

Money is important to people, and a lot of people are not seeing past their hard won tax dollars being looted with such ease and arrogance.

Paul Martin might claim to be personally offended, but everyone I talked to wondered how he could have not known. Is he a liar or just clueless? Not

much of a choice. Shouldn’t he have known? Wasn’t he a cabinet minister from Quebec? Wasn’t he the minister of Finance? Isn’t $100 million enough

Paul Martin might claim to be personally offended, but everyone I talked to wondered how he could have not known. Is he a liar or just clueless? … How can $100 million disappear? to hold people accountable for? How can $100 million disappear?

Please don’t e-mail me the truth. I know Martin called this inquiry. I know this is “only in Quebec.” I know this was dropped in Martin’s lap by the Chretienites. I know the Conservatives are scary. Save me the e-mails explaining the difference between the Liberal

Party of Canada and the federal Department that collects taxes.

There is a real anger brewing. I wouldn’t want to be a prospective Liberal candidate right now. I wouldn’t want to be facing slogging through a three-week campaign with this on my shoulders. I wouldn’t want to be psyching myself for the torrents of abuse Liberal candidates are going to face. People are really pissed off.

If I was a federal Liberal I would be very very worried. The Conservative Party of Canada seems poised to call an election. There is a mood that the Liberals need to be thrown out of office. A lot of people have said to me the Tories couldn’t be any worse. I hope they are right.

It reminds of another one of my favourite political quotes. This one from the American humorist and legendary cynic H. L. Menken, who noted “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it, good and hard.”

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

CANADIAN HOPEFUL

that would fully protect Canadian sovereignty. It is unacceptable the Americans did not consider it important enough to check with the Canadian government on the trajectory of the missile and nothing is done by our government to ensure it does not happen again.

I think it is time we had a federal government that restored relations with our neighbours to the south before we are kept out of the loop altogether.

Gordon O’Connor, Conservative MP Carleton-Mississippi Mills

Fan and pan mail Dear Editor, Thank you for giving us reasons to read local newspapers again, for giving us a safe haven for independent and intelligent thought, for reminding us there are better ways, deeper thoughts and indeed new insights. I greet every paper with excitement and intrigue.

The only pan in this fan mail is that

the paper has seen fit to include Crosbie and Coady as columnists.

While these folks might be interesting to read, they are hardly independent and it is the only place in the paper where one can say “I’ve read this at least once before...”

Ray Penton Jr. St. John’s

My obsession Dear Editor: I was born here in beautiful Labrador on what was formerly the beautiful American air base here in beautiful Goose Bay almost 55 years ago. To be obsessed with beautiful Labrador or a beautiful movie actress or any beast or thing means a drifter can kiss goodbye to freedom, peace,

and progress and everything it stands for.

Not even the most beautiful and passionate music in the world can free any nation from an obsession because they only thing greater than an obsession is love.

Dale Mesher Happy Valley-Goose Bay

Call John home, please Dear editor, I never thought I would have been able to laugh so hard at anything remotely related to the potential loss of the Atlantic Accord Deal until I read Ivan Morgan’s column “What the ‘con’ means in Confederation” (The Independent, April 3).

Thank you for that Ivan.

John Efford is in the muddle, sorry, middle of it again. What can be done John Efford with the man? He’s a puppet, it’s embarrassing. There hasn’t been a meaningful peep from his constituency of Avalon. Why? Therefore, I have no confidence in his voters being able to do what needs to be done now or in the future: demand Efford’s resignation.

Can the province request he not be referred to as our federal government representative in Ottawa, or that he be replaced perhaps by Gilles Duceppe?

Gilles wouldn’t have done as much damage.

Provincially John Efford had mighty

power, and the power to silence. It would seem he still has the power to silence in the district of Avalon.

However, his own ineptitude has foiled his adjustment to the federal political scene, to the company of real politicians, and is he’s falling on his face.

He’s a very small fish in a very big pond now, with no life support, no power.

And, we’re beginning to see that he really can’t swim after all, just flounder … treading water every day.

If Efford is permitted to stay in Ottawa without a sustained cry for him to come home, then shame on us as a province for letting it happen.

The people of the province should demand that he resign immediately, and hold himself accountable in a byelection.

Then the electorate of Avalon can do what needs to be done, please. Enough is enough.

Ronald Tizzard Paradise

Dylan Cag of St. John’s Is thrilled to make it through to the next round of auditions for Canadian Idol. The auditions took place in St. John’s at the Holiday Inn last week.

Rhonda Hayward/The Independent

The ‘what if’ boogeyman Dear Editor, Quebec leapt from the feudal age into a modern industrial society almost overnight. Here we are, older than they, with more on the ball, still petrified in the old colonial mentality, not even daring to dream big dreams, much less pursue them.

Why do we believe we have to turn, cap in hand, to others like Quebec for a “job”?

Why is it so hard to see the best favour Abitibi could do for Stephenville would be to get lost?

Brian Dobbin, in his column, “Fear shouldn’t stop us,” (The Independent, April 3), hit the nail right on the head.

It isn’t just the government that’s frozen in fear of the “what if” boogeyman. The myth of the poor fishermen endures, yet, as in the past, vast fortunes continue to be reaped from this resource, though, except for a few mil-

lion dollar homes and multi-million boats, there is little evidence of any of this wealth being invested back into the local economy.

Must we remain forever on the low road, chasing after some messiah or other in the hope of being led to the promised land?

Not even Danny Williams can lead us there on his own. In the case of our entry into Confederation there is an abundance of reasons and a great deal of historical and statistical data to show why we couldn’t make it on our own.

For those who take the opposite point of view there is no such statistical evidence or any real examples to prove their point.

Their appeal can only be to those abstract qualities of the human spirit that challenge the mountain simply because it is there.

The one person most responsible for leading Newfoundland into the confederation dead-end was J.R. Smallwood.

Supporters of his crusade contend his success lay in his being a man of the people, albeit barely more than half of them agreed with him.

The message J.R. Smallwood preached was that it couldn’t be done.

Haul up your fishing boats and your nets and burn them on the beaches and follow me to the New Jerusalem — two jobs for every man!

Today, 56 years later, the thousands of Newfoundlanders who are continuing to abandon their homes, their boats already rotted on the seashore, are following in the thrall of that same Smallwoodian plaint, echoing accusingly in the silence of so many emptied outports: “it couldn’t be done.”

Lloyd C. Rees Conception Bay South

APRIL 17, 2005

8 • INDEPENDENTNEWS

The age of mutually assured destruction

A

few weeks ago, I found myself in a shop on Duckworth Street talking to a woman about the issues that young people face these days. It was one of those “when we were young” conversations.

There have been a lot of those discussions lately.

When I was young, younger-generation lectures were common. You know how they go; a parent would flash you a stern glance and shake a finger in your direction after you asked for something they viewed as a luxury. It would go something like, “When I was young, we used to walk two miles barefoot, uphill in a blinding blizzard to get to school.”

Apparently, there were a lot of blizzards in those days, schools were built on the tops of mountains in the middle of nowhere and shoes were hard to come by.

Young people these days face a lot of challenges. Beyond the environmental nightmare they have been left with is the fact unprotected sex could carry a death sentence. When we were young, the greatest consequence surrounding unprotected sex was a phone call telling you that the rabbit died — the pregnancy test was positive.

LIFE STORY

JEFF DUCHARME

A savage journey

seat of any great power. There were no delusions of grandeur — hopes of stopping the red hordes expected to storm across the Arctic from the Soviet Union.

The city’s skyline was dotted with huge air raid horns that stood silent, painted a cold grey — towering metal harbingers of doom. When we sat on my best friend’s balcony enjoying the summer’s warm breeze, the air raid sirens poked through the trees reminding us that there were more serious things to consider than if we had enough empties to buy another case of beer with. Foolish as it was, it led many of us to have nightmares, waking up to a bright flash and then nothing.

A number of times a day you could turn the TV on and listen to the eerie drone of the Emergency Broadcast System. TV stations would test the system using a mindnumbing tone followed by a monotone voice that said “If this was, in fact, a real emergency, you would be instructed ...”

SMART LOVERS To this day, the squeal of that tone Smart lovers in my day carried makes me shiver and quake. protection. Smart lovers today also I always wondered what they carry test results. would instruct us to do. If it was, in There’s no question that facing fact, a real emergency, was this the such life and death issues changes a firing of the starter’s pistol for socigeneration. Life becomes more seri- ety to run amuck and let the pillagous than it should ever have to be. I ing begin; do all those things you see it every day in the eyes of the never had the guts to do when sociegeneration following in my wake — ty was still intact? that weight-of-the-world gaze.

Civilization and those that govern Growing up should be fun, or at and police it would be underground, least that’s what I was always led to covered by metres of reinforced believe. The cares of the world concrete, gleefully oblivious to the shouldn’t catch up to you when madness and panic above. you’re only 18.

It was something that we had This woman and I come to accept, but grew up in different it was still the sort parts of the world, of thing that nightbut we were both mares were made of right smack dab in Growing up should — roving hordes of the middle of the mutants trying to be fun, or at least cold war when halfsurvive a nuclear crazed politicians winter. There was that’s what I was sat in plush offices no getting away quaking with from it. power, fingers always led to believe.

Eventually, we poised on nuclear decided that all we The cares of the launch buttons — a could do was make muscle spasm away world shouldn’t catch a pact that we from the end of the would meet on my world. It was the buddy’s balcony, up to you when age of mutually bring refreshments you’re only 18. assured destruction and sit and watch — MAD. No the final fireworks acronym has ever that we all expected been more fitting. It would come any was absolute and day. complete madness.

It was a fatalistic approach, but it We weren’t the first generation to seemed to alleviate some of our daydeal with such a constant chill, but to-day fears — knowing we had a we were likely the first generation to place to go to watch civilization understand that nuclear drills urging come to an end. people to “duck and cover” were The threat has changed, but the really a matter of “kiss your arse world seemingly hasn’t become goodbye.” kinder for the generation that will Living in Ottawa, we knew we inherit it. were a target, only because we were a stop on the way to the White Jeff Ducharme is The IndepenHouse and not because we were the dent’s senior writer.

Terry Fox’s father Rolly and mother Betty at the new memorial for their son at the St. John’s waterfront. Rhonda Hayward/The Independent

‘I learn from him every day’ Terry Fox’s family reflect on the Marathon of Hope and its legacy Terry Stanley Fox 1958-1981

By Darcy MacRae For the Independent

T

imes have changed for the Fox family, even if they have not.

Twenty-five years ago, they were an average Canadian family living in Port Coquitlam, British Columbia. That was before their son Terry inspired an entire nation with the Marathon of Hope, and thrust the Fox name into the limelight, where it has remained ever since.

The family has kept Terry’s dream of raising funds and awareness for cancer research alive through the Terry Fox Foundation. Terry’s younger brother Darrell, who accompanied his sibling for much of the Marathon of Hope, is now the foundation’s national director.

“I’d say I’m proud, but I don’t think that word justifies how I feel. It’s amazing to see how Canadians have continued what he started in 1980 and have chosen not to forget him,” Darrell tells the Independent. “I learn from him every day of my life. I feel truly honoured and humbled that I have an opportunity to represent his name so many years later.”

Terry Fox’s mother Betty and father Rolly joined Darrell in St. John’s on

April 12 for the unveiling of a harbourfront monument, commemorating the start of the Marathon of Hope 25 years ago. Betty spoke afterwards at a ceremony at the Battery Hotel, and thanked the entire province for the generosity shown to her son a quarter of a century earlier.

She read passages from the journal Terry kept during his 137-day run, and wiped more than one tear from her eye.

Afterwards, she said the Fox family is still extremely proud of what Terry accomplished and are taken aback by the way Canadians continue to remember and honour him.

“We had no idea that 25 years later what he started would be stronger than ever,” she says.

These days, Betty is recognized across the country as the mother of one of Canada’s most celebrated heroes.

“We still are just an average family,” she insists. “We have not changed a bit.

Yes, we’re known by more people, but we’re still the same people we always were.”

Darrell agrees wholeheartedly, and adds the notoriety that comes with being Terry Fox’s family has only helped them raise funds for the fight against cancer.

“If it has changed our lives, it’s certainly been for the positive,” he says.

“There is a whole generation growing up who did not witness the Marathon of Hope and yet they are very much aware

of what Terry accomplished.”

When Terry dipped his foot in the harbour on April 12, 1980, he hoped to raise $1 for every Canadian (24,000,000 at the time) for cancer research. To date, over $360 million has been raised worldwide in Terry’s name.

“I don’t think Terry in his wildest dreams would have imagined this,” he says. “If Terry is smiling down on us, which I’m sure he is, he’d be very happy.”

Betty Fox says when Terry began his historic run, she never imagined he was on his way to becoming a Canadian legend. She was simply worried he would be injured on the busy Trans Canada highway.

“To think Terry was running alongside large busses and transport trucks that rock your car when they pass you was tough,” she says. “It never entered our minds that he would become a historical figure.”

Betty says the millions who have taken part in the annual Terry Fox Run — which usually takes place on the second Sunday after Labour Day — deserve credit for making sure Terry’s dream lives on.

“We are so proud of all the people who believe in cancer research and come out every September,” she says.

“We’re honoured to be part of it all.”

Darcy_8888@hotmail.com

PAPER TRAIL

A walk through the landmines in springtime

By Alisha Morrissey The Independent

S

pring is a time of rebirth, but during the years of the Second World War, spring was a time of bloodshed for countless Newfoundland men.

From the time Newfoundland joined the Second World War on Sept. 3, 1939, until the full surrender of the Germans on May 7, 1945, more than 15,000 Newfoundlanders risked their lives in battle while thousands more took part in the merchant navy.

The Express, known as Joey Smallwood’s newspaper, was in print for only one year — 1941.

The paper had a different perspective than other papers published in the province at that time, especially when it came to covering the war.

The first edition of The Express — published on Feb. 15, 1941 — looked at the issue of an American presence in the then-country of Newfoundland.

While the editorial slant implied the paper was in favour of the foreign presence, the paper took issues with the Commission of Government. The commission put in place price-stabilization policies that meant Newfoundlanders employed on American military bases were paid lower wages compared to U.S. civilian employees.

The Enquiring Reporter was a weekly column where a reporter would ask one question to many people.

Of course, the first week’s question was, “What do you feel about the Americans being here?”

Every single answer from Joseph O’Keefe, the grocer, to Stan Condon, the

real estate agent, used the word “delighted.”

Ernest Ash, an electrician, who was one of many fortunate enough to get a job working for the Americans at Pleasantville, said “Money talks and the Americans have it.”

Most everyone believed the 10,000 Americans who served at bases throughout Newfoundland and Labrador would bring worldwide notoriety to the country.

The Family Fireside was a monthly newspaper that published from 1924 to 1958. In the April 1942 edition, it printed photographs and brief descriptions of soldiers from around Newfoundland – not unlike many other papers during the war.

There were incredible stories of survival including A. B. Gideon Goulding, a nurse from Dark Cove who enlisted in 1940 and was “torpedoed twice during his first two years of service.”

Under the pictures of baby-faced soldiers were their names and the simple phrase “serving somewhere in England.”

There were death notices of men who’d been shot, and those who were missing and presumed dead. More than one notice also had a list of brothers or other family members lost in the war.

It seemed there wasn’t enough space or ink to list the dead.

The Observer’s Weekly, based in St. John’s, spent three years printing photographs of young men who had died, married, been commended or injured in the line of duty.

In a feature called “Keeping in Contact with Our Men: On the Air, On the Sea and On The Ground,” letters

from overseas were printed — most were generic summaries of what young men had written to their mothers.

There was news of 19-year-old veterans with legs blown off after stepping on landmines and 18-year-old boys who’d been rejected by one battalion only to be accepted in another and then killed in action. In the February 20, 1945, edition of The Observer’s Weekly, a story about the behaviour of “Newfies” while overseas, likely filled those back home with pride.

Described as “wiry, tough lads,” the boys were known for bravery on the battlefield. The report read that everywhere the men went, they treated those around with kindness and received the same in return.

By late April 1945, the Nazi regime had begun to fall and there was evidence in the Weekly. In two photographs, run on April 17 and 24, Russian Jews were pictured taking their revenge in Bonn, Germany. One headline read “Revenge is Sweet” and showed an elderly man who’d been in a concentration camp beating a Nazi soldier over the head with a bag — the soldier cowering, head under his arms.

The May 1, 1945, edition of the Weekly published a photo of “Little Jacqueline Newman” — five years old — waiting at the St. John’s waterfront for the father she had never seen.

All of a sudden — though there had been no official announcement in any of the newspapers — the news returned to normal.

Talk turned to a bad budget and the upcoming fishing season, like the war had never happened.

INDEPENDENTWORLD

SUNDAY THROUGH SATURDAY, APRIL 17-23, 2005 — PAGE 9

Bloc Quebecois leader Gilles Duceppe in the House of Commons.

Reuters/Jim Young

Prime Minister Gilles Duceppe?

That’s just one of the way-out-there ideas making the rounds on Ottawa’s cocktail circuit OTTAWA

By Susan Delacourt

A

s the threat of a snap election hangs over Ottawa, a cottage industry seems to have developed, churning out wild political scenarios.

Suddenly, everyone is a pundit and prognosticator, with pet theories on how an election could be avoided. If you’d like to try this at home, here are just a few of the wayout-there ideas feeding the buzz around the federal corridors and on the cocktail circuit.

Each one paves the way for even more outrageous speculation.

PROROGUE, PLAY TURTLE Serious people are talking about this scenario, in which Prime Minister Paul Martin would avoid the collapse of his government by simply shutting down the House of Commons and retreating into a shell until the coast is clear.

Here would be his reasoning: The opposition parties are paralyzing Parliament with all their games and election threats.

Nothing is getting done and Canadians are disgusted. Moreover, all the polls are showing, in overwhelming numbers, that citizens would like to hear more from Justice John Gomery’s inquiry into the sponsorship

scandal before judging the parties in a general election.

So it follows, according to this theory, that Martin could shut down Parliament, thereby denying the opposition parties any opportunity to defeat the government during the day-to-day business of the Commons. All he’d have to do is brazen out the opposition’s outrage until it dies down — by normal media attention-span standards, about a week.

In a month or two, when the furor has subsided and Gomery has stopped hearing from witnesses, Martin could pull the plug and go into an election when the political climate is less toxic toward Liberals.

UPSIDE: It almost sounds plausible, doesn’t it?

DOWNSIDE: The outcry might not die down, and in fact, might increase.

HANDING OVER THE KEYS TO 24 SUSSEX This one has also been the subject of idle musing by Liberal insiders.

Say, for the sake of argument, that Martin simply wearies of the daily barrage and instead of calling an election, marches over to Rideau Hall and says to Governor General Adrienne Clarkson: “Stephen Harper has essentially been running the

show in Parliament, working with the other opposition leaders, so why don’t you ask the Conservative leader if he wants to take over?”

After all, the prime minister of Canada is the person who commands the confidence of the House.

It’s not such a stretch, either. Back last fall, when the opposition parties were negotiating the terms of supporting the throne speech, Harper and the other leaders talked about making this case to the Governor General. Their worry was that Martin would provoke his own government’s collapse whenever the poll numbers looked favourable.

What would happen then is that the Conservatives would be even less able than Liberals to hold things together and that they would have to plunge the country into an election with the memory of their governing failure fresh in the public’s mind.

Martin could point out on the campaign trail that Harper had to rely on separatists to prop up his fragile rule; perhaps the Conservative leader would have had to invite Conservative senators into his cabinet to round out regional representation.

UPSIDE: Might take that smug smile off Harper’s face when he suddenly finds himself prime minister.

DOWNSIDE: Harper might make it work and survive longer than Martin before an election needs to be called.

PRIME MINISTER GILLES DUCEPPE This is by far the most outrageous scenario. In it, Canada does go through an election, in which Quebec votes en masse while the rest of the country fragments among the other three parties and a smattering of smaller parties and independents.

Do the arithmetic: The Bloc gets all 75 seats in Quebec. The other 233 seats would be divided roughly three ways, but because of the presence of independents or Greens, none get as many as the Bloc. Say, for the sake of wild speculation, the Conservatives get 74 seats, the Liberals get 74, the New Democrats get 74 too, with another 11 seats scattered among Greens, the Marijuana Party and independents.

Would the Governor General be obliged to at least ask Duceppe to form a government? What if he said yes?

UPSIDE: When Quebec separates, it takes the rest of Canada with it.

DOWNSIDE: Kind of embarrassing, internationally.

Reprinted from the Toronto Star by permission.

Weapon of mass destruction at work John Bolton, dubbed a “serial abuser,” may prove boost to Canadian diplomacy NEW YORK ohn Bolton has spent his career battling weapons of mass destruction.

He ought to know: he is one himself.

From the evidence provided last week at the U.S. Senate hearings on his nomination to be Washington’s newest ambassador to the U.N., Bolton has been a self-propelled guided missile directed at the multilateralist and “globalizing” forces of the post cold-war world that he and his fellow arch-conservatives consider dangerous to the

J

STEPHEN HANDELMAN

Global context United States.

That includes the U.N. — and some of his own colleagues.

“I’ve never seen anyone like (Bolton),” Carl Ford, a former State Department intelligence official, told the senators after listing examples of

Bolton’s attempts to sabotage or humiliate officials who disagreed with him over the four years he has served as U.S. Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security. This diplomat, said Ford, was a “serial abuser.”

Bolton has rarely deigned to direct his eyes north of the border. But while Canadians might want to dismiss him as yet another caricature of the U.S. hard right, he may prove the biggest and most creative boost to Canadian diplomacy in years.

On one level, Bolton offers no starker example of the intellectual and diplomatic divide between Washington and Ottawa. “There is no such thing as the United Nations,” Bolton once said.

“There is only the international community, which can only be led by the only remaining superpower, which is the U.S.” So he’s against the U.N.? Not quite.

What Bolton dislikes is the trend towards turning the U.N. into what he considers an instrument for international activism. Or, as some of his defend-

ers put it, the “squishy” idea of global governance.

“We will never accept global governance,” columnist David Brooks wrote in The New York Times. “We love our constitution and will never grant any other law supremacy over it.”

Global governance and its related concepts, ranging from the International Criminal Court and reinforced peacekeeping, to partnering the U.N. with multinational corporations in See “Get yourself confirmed,” page 12

APRIL 17, 2005

10 • INDEPENDENTWORLD

‘Rant and roar like true Queensland drovers’ A crowd of musicians and actors have been bringing Newfoundland and Labrador arts and culture to the land down under Melanie Caines, one of four actors in Tempting Providence, is in Canberra, the capital of Australia, where the group is finishing its tour.

T

heatre Newfoundland and Labrador’s production of Tempting Providence recently played to enthusiastic audiences and rave reviews in Tasmania.

“Our first two shows in Hobart, Tasmania, we were actually called out for three curtain calls each show,” Caines tells The Independent in an interview from Canberra, Australia.

“And on our closing night the crowd just went nuts — stomping on the floor and hooting and hollering … The show seemed to really work in Tasmania, I guess because Newfoundland and Tasmania have a lot in common and the audience could really identify with the piece.”

Tempting Providence, written by Robert Chafe and directed by Jillian Keiley, is the story of Myra Bennett, a British-born nurse who devoted her life to working tirelessly in outport Newfoundland.

The show, a hit since its 2002 opening on the west coast of the island, has since played to audiences in Atlantic Canada, Edmonton, Ottawa, Scotland, Ireland, England and more.

The four Newfoundland-born actors — Caines, Deidre Gillard-Rowlings, Robert Thorne and Darryl Hopkins — their stage manager Karla Biggin, and Theatre Newfoundland Labrador general manager Gaylene Buckle arrived in Tasmania March 29.

‘SO MUCH LIKE HOME’ They took part in the Ten Days on the Island festival, which features artists from island cultures around the world. Festival performances take place across the island of Tasmania. Tempting Providence played in Hobart, April 1-5, and then in Launceston, April 7-10.

The troupe then headed off to Canberra, on mainland Australia, for two performances at the Street Theatre.

“This is the first time in this part of the world for all of us,” says Caines. “Tasmania is … an island half the size of Newfoundland, but with almost the same population.

“The people there are so friendly, I couldn’t get over it … Like Deirde says, they don’t treat you like another face in a crowd. It was so much like home in that way — I guess it’s the island culture.

“Also some of the landscape was very similar.

No kangaroos or Tasmanian devils home, though … and the weather is quite different. Going into

A Crowd of Bold Sharemen: Gerry Strong, Fergus O’Byrne, Corey Clarke, Daniel Payne and Jim Payne.

Fergus O’Byrne has just returned to St. John’s after a month on tour in Australia with a Crowd of Bold Sharemen. While on the road, he answered a few questions from The Independent.

the details being taken care of by professional organizers and handlers.

“We just have to be there for sound checks and the gig,” he says. “We’ve done a tremendous amount of interviews and they are all prearranged Crowd of Bold Sharemen —musicians for us as well … everything runs like clockwork.”

Jim Payne, Fergus O’Byrne, Gerry The band played a series of school shows in Strong, Daniel Payne and Cory Clarke — Tasmania. The children were appreciative, have spent the last month bringing Newfoundland O’Byrne says, and “curious that we’re from exactmusic to Australian audiences of all ages. ly half way around the world.”

According to O’Byrne, the band played to full While admitting he’s spent more time around houses each night and “were festival crowds than the public, a hit” at festivals in O’Byrne says he senses Melbourne, Canberra and Australians in general have a Tasmania. Not to mention appreciation for all forms “… it reminds them of good their nine-day stint — three of art — evidenced in the public children’s presentations a day sculptures and art work on distheir own traditional — at the Sydney Opera play.

House.

“I’ve met a lot of folk artists at music as their music “There’s been a lot of buzz the festivals who are performing developed much along great original and traditional around the band,” O’Byrne says. “People are fascinated Australian music,” he says. the lines ours did …” that we all play so many “Also the lads have had some instruments as well as sing great sessions with other tradiFergus O’Byrne with such big voices. We’re tional players down here. performing all “The music obviously reminds Newfoundland material, trathem of music from England and ditional and originals by the band.”

Ireland, but they are aware the stories of the songs Thinking back over the tour — his first time ever are about Newfoundland … in fact, it reminds in the country — O’Byrne has a hard time picking them of their own traditional music as their music out a highlight. developed much along the lines ours did in “There have been many … but I guess the first Newfoundland.” gig we did at the Port Fairy festival (near O’Byrne gives one obvious example: We’ll Rant Melbourne) was great. Of course we were all a bit and We’ll Roar Like True Newfoundlanders has a apprehensive as to how it would go. We were on version Down Under called We’ll Rant and We’ll one of the five stages in the festival and played to Roar Like True Queensland Drovers. about 400 people.

“It’s a great feeling to find people fascinated “We had a standing ovation and got to do a big with our province,” he says. “And I guess the encore. From then on it’s been the same every- proof is in the pudding in that we’re being asked where we go.” when we’ll be back again.”

— Stephanie Porter O’Byrne says the tour has gone smoothly, with

A Darryl Hopkins and Deidre Gillard-Rowlings in Tempting Providence.

their fall they were still hitting 26C.” Tempting Providence’s tour came out of Contact East, a 2002 artist showcase/conference held in St. John’s, attended by producers and promoters from around the world.

TNL caught the eye of the director of the Tasmanian festival, who extended an invitation to participate. The show has gotten some interesting attention down under as well.

“We did meet an actor, James Karen and a producer, Alba Francesca, who live in L.A. but were in Sydney (where Karen was) filming Superman,” Caines says.

“They loved the show and said they wanted to put us in contact with a theatre in L.A., they think it would do well there … you never know.

“We also met an interviewer from New Zealand who said she would certainly spread the word about the show when she returns home.”

After Tempting Providence’s final performance in Australia this week, Caines plans to travel around Australia and New Zealand for a while, returning to Newfoundland on May 11.

“They seem to have no trouble here understanding our accent,” Caines says. “I think we were all expecting a warm reception and that is certainly what we got.”

— Stephanie Porter

Canadian Progress Club of St. John’s presents

MyBigFat GreekAuction!

18th Annual CPC Gala & Auction Please join us on May 6th, 2005 at The Delta Hotel for an evening of “Opa” as we celebrate Greek culture while raising much needed resources for our worthwhile charities The Vera Perlin Society and The Newfoundland and Labrador Special Olympics.

Remember flower power?

Complimentary Cocktails at 7:00 p.m.

Greek Inspired Dinner at 8:00 p.m.

Dinner Entertainment by The Perlin Players Continuous Silent Auction with over 70 great items Outstanding Live Auction hosted by Dave Greene Music and Dancing with Billy and the Bruisers Tickets are $100.00 per person and can be purchased by contacting any of the following CPC members: Terry Murphy 834-7402 Chris March 576-1383 Gary Haynes 753-7822 Roger Downer 739-6017 Peter Furlong 576-4208 Brad Marche 728-5146

Win a trip for two to Greece!

If you do, you may be at the age when you begin to notice that things just don’t sound the way they used to. Some forms of hearing loss are common – they’re also easy to fix. We can get your hearing back to its full potential.

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APRIL 17, 2005

INDEPENDENTWORLD • 11

APRIL 17, 2005

12 • INDEPENDENTWORLD

WORLD BRIEFS Nurses stage pajama protest JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) — South African nurses are wearing pajamas and nighties to work to demand a higher uniform allowance, drawing criticism from health officials who say they are

confusing patients and turning hospitals into bedrooms.

The protest in South Africa’s North West province began on Monday and nurses vowed to continue wearing pajamas to work until their demands were met.

Nurses say their uniform allowance was inadequate, citing a yearly figure of 54 rand ($9) for shoes. Health Minister Manto TshabalalaMsimang says steps to raise the uniform allowance are being looked at, but she regarded the protest as premature.

Japan expands whale hunt TOKYO (Reuters) — Japan is set to expand its annual whale hunt to take two new species as well as nearly doubling its planned catch of minke whales, recent media reports say.

The move is virtually certain to spark global fury if true. Under a new plan for what Tokyo calls its research whaling program, Japan would take humpback whales and fin whales in addition to the four whale species it currently hunts, sources close to the situation were quoted as telling Kyodo news agency.

‘Get yourself confirmed quickly’ From page 9 tackling global poverty is, of course, central to Canada’s way of looking at the world. And it is an article of faith to Prime Minister Paul Martin and his soon-to-be released international policy review.

Bolton and his defenders willfully misinterpret the meaning of global governance, which is intended to strengthen democratic accountability rather than create a “world government.”

But that’s beside the point. Their principal objective is to retain Washington’s freedom of manoeuvre, unhampered by constraints of multilateral treaties or pesky international criticism.

‘AROUND THE U.N. AXLE’ To understand Bolton, it’s necessary to understand the political dynamic of the U.S. since Sept. 11, 2001. The attacks exposed vulnerabilities many Americans never thought they had. Ideologues like Bolton, long mocked and discounted by liberals and the media, skillfully capitalized on the pervasive feeling that the U.S., despite its power, has been the victim, not the master of globalization.

The most potent threat to America, according to this Bolton made some thinking, is the loss of sovereignty at the astonishing suggeshands of those who do not have Amertions: ban U.S. solican interests at stake. “American indiers from peacedependence and flexibility” Bolton wrote keeping activities; in a 1996 article, reject reform of the have been hampered by “becoming Security Council, wrapped around the U.N. axle.” make U.N. contribuWhy should a man like Bolton prove tions voluntary useful to Canadian policymakers? instead of mandatory.

Sometimes the best gift to innovative thinking is to have a clear, articulate opponent. In his 1996 article, Bolton made some astonishing suggestions: ban U.S. soldiers from peacekeeping activities; reject reform of the Security Council, make U.N. contributions voluntary instead of mandatory.

In countering them, Canadians and other pro-U.N. allies will be forced to focus on sharpening alternatives and on earmarking the resources to make them work.

GIVE CANADA LEVERAGE Some of the U.N. reforms already proposed, such as eliminating the corrupt U.N. Human Rights Commission and making U.N. agencies more transparent are a needed step towards compromise. So are proposals for stronger legal measures against nuclear proliferation and terrorism.

Bolton, 57, a Yale-trained lawyer, is no backwoods primitive. Even as he thunders from the U.N. rostrum, he will inevitably be drawn into the backroom trading that constitutes real U.N. diplomacy, which should give Canada key leverage as both an important U.S. ally and a prominent U.N. player.

The fact is, Bolton may turn out to be the best weapon for change at the U.N. in years. Introducing him last month, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, pointedly noted that Bolton could “build a broader base of support” for the U.N. (translation: among the American right) in the U.S. She’s not the only one who thinks so.

At last week’s hearings, Bolton said he had received a telephone call from U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan.

The message, according to Bolton, was “Get yourself confirmed quickly.”

Stephen Handelman 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 May 1.

INDEPENDENTLIFE

SUNDAY THROUGH SATURDAY, APRIL 17-23, 2005 — PAGE 13

Shelagh Rogers interviews musician Kelly Russell at CBC Radio’s Duckworth Street studio in St. John’s.

Paul Daly/The Independent

‘I was stunned silent’

CBC personality Shelagh Rogers talks about her battle with depression and her love affair with Canada

By Jeff Ducharme The Independent

H

er voice has the familiarity of a hometown. A voice that, for many Canadians, has become as necessary a fix as that first cup of coffee in the

morning.

But Shelagh Rogers has paid a price for such stature. Although much has been made of Rogers’ hypertension, the host of CBCRadio’s Sounds Like Canada hasn’t spoken to the media — at least until now — about the depression that left her without a voice.

“I found once I got off the conveyor belt of daily radio, that I was stunned silent because my identity was so wrapped up in what I do for a living,” says Rogers, in St. John’s last week to attend the Terry Fox 25th anniversary events.

“It was shocking to encounter the hollow man; I really didn’t have a sense of who I was without saying ‘I’m Shelagh Rogers, I

work at the CBC.’” Giving hypertension as the reason for her six-month medical leave in 2003 — she calls it Canada’s most famous case of high blood pressure — it was the depression that often accompanies hypertension that left her lost.

“There were changes going on at the CBC that I found hard to deal with, that certainly added into the mix. But also into the mix were the deaths of four people I loved very much, including Peter.”

Canada’s icon of the airwaves, Peter Gzowski, had spent years nurturing the woman he lovingly called his “Vanna White” of the airwaves.

“Peter was always somebody I could go to talk to and say ‘my God, things are crazy.

Help me out here.’ And I didn’t have him anymore and there were three other people

LIVYERS

who, within a year and a half of his death died as well, and that I found …” she says, pausing.

“I still find hard,” her voice lowering and gaze dropping.

After Gzowski’s retirement in 1997, many expected Rogers would be the heir apparent, but CBC brass had other ideas.

Michael Enright and Avril Benoit took over, as Gzowski’s Morningside spot was renamed This Morning.

Enright soon went solo — only to cut back his schedule not long after.

The door was left open for Rogers and she bolted right through it. This Morning eventually became Sounds Like Canada, and the country has had a love fest with Rogers ever since.

It would be easy for Rogers to blame CBC for the emotional ups and downs she’s

been through, but she doesn’t, not for a second.

“You know what you’re getting into if you’re signing up for a national daily radio program — it’s not a secret. It’s going to be intense.”

The medication and the three-times-aweek counselling sessions are gone, replaced by Pacific Ocean swims and Pilates classes. The “experimental” radio that made her hate the microphone, her selfprofessed hiding place, is also gone, replaced by what Rogers loves most and does best — interviewing this country’s endless stream of interesting and entertaining characters.

“And that makes me very happy, but when I wasn’t doing it, I was not happy,” says Rogers.

Just like Gzowski, Rogers is a cheerleader for the “greatest country in the world.” She talks about Canada with pasSee “The people,” page 14

‘We’re still here’ Running the 121-year-old family business, ‘Mackey’ Cram has seen it all GREEN’S HARBOUR

By Jamie Baker The Independent

O ‘Mackey’ Cram in his Green’s Harbour office.

Paul Daly/The Independent

utside E. J. Cram’s General Store in Green’s Harbour, a group of fishermen from nearby Hopeall are leaning on the back of a pick-up, chatting with friends. Inside, a couple of local women are picking up a few things for supper.

It’s been this way since Cram’s opened its doors 121 years ago.

Inside, tucked away in an upstairs office with a bird’s eye view of the store’s interior is the man who runs the show — Stephen Maxwell Cram, or “Mackey” as

everyone calls him. These days, he’s preparing to hand the reins over to his son Stephen, the fourth generation to run a family business that was started in 1884

by Ebenezer John Cram of Old Perlican.

In his 50 years in the job, Cram says he’s seen it all, but through everything, his business continues to survive.

“There’s a lot of big stores that have hurt a lot of these smaller family businesses, but we’re still here after all these years,” Cram says as he eases back in his creaky office chair and fixes his trademark red-and-white knitted hat.

“But people in the community must like us … they keep coming from up and down the shore.”

Cram had just completed a bachelor’s in mathematics and physics at Mount Allison University when he was called to the head of the family operation in 1956 after the sudden death of his father, Stephen. The then-21-year-old ran things smoothly until a mid-afternoon fire destroyed the store in 1977.

The sign from that original building, with its charred edges, hangs proudly inside the new store.

“The firefighters and a few people gave me a strange look when I climbed up on the side of the store and got the sign after the fire,” Cram says.

See “Look after,” page 14

APRIL 17, 2005

14 • INDEPENDENTLIFE

‘The people are phenomenal’ From page 13

Trotsky, Lenin and Prince Igor of the “serf”-rock band The Kremlin.

Paul Daly/The Independent

Red army rising Part theatrics, part political movement, ‘serf’-rockers are out to impose their dance mandate

By Alisha Morrissey The Independent

B

eginning a revolution is hard work. With the world in the evil clutches of capitalism, good friends and Russian revolutionaries Leon Trotsky and Vladimir Lenin rose from the ashes of 20th century Russia and banded together in resurrecting Prince Igor Sviatoslavich to teach the world about the benefits of socialism and communism.

KREMLIN DANCE PARTY They created the Kremlin Dance Party of Canada to make a “pure revolutionary art,” available to the masses.

Their medium: “proletariat-serf rock,” played at clubs in the St. John’s area.

Or so the story goes. Trotsky, Lenin and Sviatoslavich are given away by distinctly Newfoundland accents. But they don’t come out of character, or costume, during the interview.

For their bar shows, the trio place a

bust of Lenin on stage, perform surfrock music with few lyrics, and play original speeches given by (the real) Lenin in Russian.

During and after the shows they recruit new “comrades” to create a revolutionary group to stand together in solidarity against the capitalist monster.

“I guess primarily the Kremlin, as an independent political organization, is interested in beginning a socialist revolution … based on freeing art from the types of chains of the capitalist industry,” Lenin tells The Independent from the group’s Cabot Street studio.

“People are trapped in capitalism, so we want to reach them by recruiting them through our music.”

Lenin says the province, while not the group’s destination, is an appropriate place to begin a revolution. Newfoundland and Labrador has a rich history of oppression and its culture was built on the “backs of workers and labourers and fishermen … It seems like an appropriate place to sow the seeds of socialism.”

Sviatoslavich, in 11th century prince character, is chained to his drum kit during shows. Trying to get a word in, he’s quieted by his bandmates, who threaten to tighten his chains or lead him away to his cage.

“I’m a monarch I’ve never steered a boat — we have people to do that sort of thing,” he says. “They’re ruining everything that my world stands for … What they’re doing is getting all these people and telling them to dance, dance …”

The band has been working together since “the early 20th century” — or just before Christmas.

REVOLUTIONARY PROJECTS “And Trotsky of course began the red army and since then we have been working in some capacity with one another on various revolutionary projects — the Kremlin is just the latest manifestation,” Lenin explains.

As for the St. John’s audience? They often don’t understand.

“People respond mixed ways —

mostly confused,” Trotsky admits.

“The reaction is generally positive and to the music people respond, for the most part, enthusiastically, they get up and they take part in our dance mandate,” Lenin says.

“Though we have had a few lousy capitalists who couldn’t help but …”

“Hurl insults,” Trotsky finishes.

Sviatoslavich shouts about how the boys should be getting back to digging gutters for the kingdom, as Lenin says to Trotsky “I told you we should have gotten Marx to play drums.”

The Kremlin promotes social issues, and stands against a Conservative government, but they invite Premier Danny Williams and Finance Minister Loyola Sullivan to attend one of their “rallies.”

“We’d like to see them dance” Trotsky says. “Before we can influence Danny Williams, we need the support of the people.”

The Kremlin Dance Party of Canada next play April 22 at Roxxy’s Pub on George Street, St. John’s.

Provincial history textbook ready for fall launch

By Alisha Morrissey The Independent

A

lthough developing a new Newfoundland and Labrador history book has been “trying,” and his book company may not even break even on the project, Wade Foote says the project is worthwhile.

Starting this fall, Grade 8 students

across the province will use Voyage to Discovery: A History of Newfoundland and Labrador 1800 – present, published

by Breakwater Books, as part of the new history curriculum.

Foote, Breakwater’s general manager, says he wishes the book had been around when he was in school.

“I have learned so much more from this textbook just working on it than I ever

learned in school about my own province, my own history,” Foote tells The Independent.

The cost of creating the books, including teachers’ guides and website — all in both official languages — is expected to cost about $1 million.

Whether Breakwater will make any profit for its efforts is still a question mark.

“It’s been a long, long road and a very trying road, but one that I feel at the end of the day is worth it,” Foote says. “As for actually how much it cost to put it together — I might say Breakwater might break even on this, but you never know.”

The book will retail for about $37. The cost will be covered by the provincial government — students don’t begin buying books until high school.

The course will be the first change to the Grade 8 curriculum since 1996.

A team of teachers, historians and authors worked on the book, but what makes the finished product unique, says Eldred Barnes, director of program development for the Education Department, is

there’s hardly a page without at least one image.

“You can’t compete with a GameBoy or the Internet or that sort of thing, but at the same time it will certainly be one of the most colourful books from a local perspective,” Barnes says.

Barnes says if the last textbook series — Land, Sea and Time, a recent addition to high school literature courses — could be used as an indicator, it may be very difficult to get the books back.

“Students took them home and the parents would keep them,” he says.

Newfoundland and Labrador history (up to 1800) is already compulsory for students in Grade 5.

In high school, students have choices when it comes to their studies, which makes it difficult to implement a program, Barnes says.

Besides, he says, teachers have to get students interested when they are young.

“We’re hoping that they’ll build up an interest, a knowledge base as well as a skills base before they get too old and uninterested.”

sion that equals that of her beloved Peter. She’s been to every province and has heard almost every gripe that tugs at Confederation. But she has no answer as to why Canada faces so many internal struggles.

“Maybe it’s because we need some kind of drama in our lives,” she says.

“I think about this in terms of some of my own friendships and relationships ... I have friends that if something isn’t going crazy on the backburner, boiling over, then they don’t feel alive.”

Last year, it was the writer’s festival at Woody Point in western Newfoundland that stole Rogers’ heart. For her, it was all there — authors, artists, books and beauty.

“I fell in love with that place like I’d fallen in love with a guy,” says Rogers about Woody Point. “You know, it is so beautiful.”

She professes her affection every chance she gets, even risking the odd cliché.

“The country’s great, the people are phenomenal,” says Rogers. “It’s a cliché, but it’s a cliché because it’s true.”

Rogers takes a long pause when asked about Newfoundland and Labrador’s struggle to find its rightful place in Canada.

“I’ve been thinking about this a lot this week; what happens when you’re a country and then stop being a country and you become a province?”

She has no answer. She simply poses another question.

“What if Canada became a state?”

The reverence people in this province have for the place they belong is a “classic Canadian quality,” Rogers says, that makes people stand up for wherever it is they call home.

“The phrase distinct society has, in Canadian political terms, always referred to Quebec. Come on over here to see a distinct society,” she says, flicking her head as if inviting a buddy closer to offer some friendly advice.

“This is like no other place. People say it’s like Europe, but it’s not. It’s not, there’s something different here, it’s about here. This is where it is.

This is who it is. It has sprung out of this land.”

‘Look after your customer’ From page 13 The store continues to supply the community with many of the same things it always has, with new additions. If you can’t find something in the area — groceries, plumbing and building materials, paints, furniture, appliances and any number of dry goods and other curiosities — there’s a good chance you haven’t been “out to see Mackey.”

Cram is a busy volunteer, lending his time to a number of local organizations including the Masonic Lodge, the Green’s Harbour Lion’s Club (for which has been treasurer for many years), church groups and the commission that runs the Trinity-Placentia Stadium in Whitbourne.

“I put a lot of time into volunteering — I’ve got somewhere to go every night. I spend a lot of nights doing the books for the store with (sister) Mona, so it’s busy all the time, but I do what I can.”

As always, much of his livelihood is based on the fishery.

“The year after the cod fishery failed, it was pretty tough for everyone … crab kind of took over, but we have 300 customers and their families that rely on the work they get in the local fish plants and when things are tough, you can see the difference here.”

Cram worries about the state of rural communities as young people continue to leave and populations shrink.

“When I came here in 1956 we could have a hockey team from Green’s Harbour just like other nearby communities, but now, you need the whole shore to find enough for one team.”

At age 70, Cram isn’t planning on full retirement just yet, but admits he’s easing back to relax and spend more time with his large family, which added three grandchildren in the past year.

“You need a good memory to work in this business, so I’ll be involved until that starts failing I guess,” Cram jokes.

“There must be something right about what we’re doing because we’re still here. You have to look after your customer and that’s what we try to do as best we can.”

Cram is looking ahead to the future, perhaps even to a fifth generation owner.

“Stephen has a boy, but he’s only a few weeks old … who knows?”

APRIL 17, 2005

INDEPENDENTLIFE • 15

The $100 rites of spring NOREEN GOLFMAN Standing room only

A

pril showers bring mayhem to everyone’s pocketbooks. Last weekend there was a benefit at the Fairmont Newfoundland to raise money for the MUN Botanical Gardens.

For $100 you got a chance to sport a hat only Camilla would wear, chew on an overcooked piece of halibut, quaff a glass or two of wine, and seize the opportunity to bid on some lovely garden-themed arts and crafts.

Caught up in the flowery enthusiasm, I bid successfully on two black and white prints by Christine Koch and am now wondering how much to spend on framing and where to hang them.

The week before that the Resource Centre for the Arts Theater Company (The Hall) hosted an April Fools Comedy Night benefit at the Arts and Culture Centre. Tickets were a modest $20, albeit there was no overcooked fish.

Multiply that by some 800 or so seats and you have a nice bit of change, but then subtract the exorbitant costs of leasing the Centre for an evening and the more modest performance fees and you are scarcely ahead of where you started.

Even an artist can do the math.

At the end of April there is going to be a benefit “fun raiser and dance party” in St. John’s on behalf of the Writers of Woody Point. Admission is $8, but you should bring a pocket full of cash for the raffles, auction, and drinks. More chances to buy art will be had by all.

In early May the Resource Centre for the Arts is holding another benefit event, a roast of St. John’s Mayor Andy Wells (Andy’s Inferno) that will set you back another $100. Bring more dollars — raffles and an auction are being planned, drinks will be a necessity.

And to round out the seasonal list, the Anna Templeton Centre has recently launched an inventive campaign to ask 1,000 people for $100. The money will go towards an expansion of the arts and crafts design building on Duckworth St. in St John’s. For $100 you get your face in the elevator. Every time you go up or

Amy House is artistic director for the Resource Centre for the Arts. RCA is holding a benefit event, Andy’s Inferno, in May. Paul Daly/The Independent

down a floor you can remind yourself of your virtue.

It’s getting to the point where it might be cheaper to go to Cuba for a week than attend a round of benefits in springtime.

In both cases, you are contributing to the social economy, but in one you end up with a tan and some sand between your toes.

The proliferation of fundraising events in and for the arts is symptomatic of a gradual shift from a Canadian/European to a US model of support.

Two factors are contributing to this disturbing state of affairs: public funding for the arts is increasingly unstable and unreliable, and as many arts-based

organizations get more established and professional, they require more public funds to sustain their success. They need more, but less is available.

This is where the fundraising comes

But times, like the luck of the Liberal party, have changed.

A hundred dollars is the new $20 and silent art auctions are as common as potholes.

Take a number, and plan your life

A

few days ago, I got a letter in the mail. Despite its manila envelope looking a little distressed at the corners, and despite the fact it had been half-heartedly folded down the center and squat into our mailbox — despite all that, this letter smelled of things official.

It smelled like a deep desk drawer, in an office painted beige, or some other inoffensive colour. Like the inside of a really, really big filing cabinet and a machine that spends all day gluing labels.

The letter was from Memorial University, and it was addressed to Mr. Adam G. Warren (200020303). That’s me. That’s my number. Actually, the number came first.

Dear Mr. Warren, On behalf of the Selection Committee, at Memorial University, [we are] pleased to inform you that your application to the Intermediate/Secondary Education program of study has been accepted…

It went on congratulating me at some length, but that was pretty much the gist of it. I’d filled out the forms, submitted a resume and wrote a 500-word letter, outlining my interest in, and qualifications for, the program.

It wasn’t easy to find the right 500 words to say something like that. But now, months later, after everything’s been passed through the appropriate hands, I suppose some people along the way must have liked what they read.

I’m glad they did. Whoever they are, I’m glad they decided to move my application into the thumbs-up pile. Because now … well, 16 months from now, when I’m finished the program, I’ll get to

ADAM WARREN From the hip stand in front of a classroom full of young adults (I chose the Intermediate/Secondary level of teaching because I find something very intriguing, very rewarding, in teaching both the young and the adult for that brief period when both can exist, in equal parts, within the same person).

I’ll get to stand up there and help these people find the right words to say, the things that might not be easy to say. If there’s one thing I love as much as the act of writing, it’s showing someone else what there is to love in the act of writing.

Thank you very much, sir, for the steady income.

I’m looking forward to retirement.

Before I go on, I want to make clear the extent of my happiness at receiving that letter. I want to thank whoever decided to send it to me. But, for all the filling out of forms, and the carefully composed letters of interest, and the obliging references from professors and employers — for all that, there was no opportunity for me to discuss my desire to teach with a person.

Not, at least, with someone who might have a say in allowing me to pursue that

desire any further. Just as importantly, there was no one for me to thank, faceto-face.

I wonder how many letters went out.

How many people were denied acceptance and left without the opportunity to defend their cases — to defend their choices — in front of a living human being? How many others were accepted?

Did they open their letters, look for a word or two in bold print and then go back to eating a sandwich, having decided, in those few seconds, that this is what they were going to do for the next substantially large chunk of their lives?

Get in. Get out. Put on the teacher’s uniform and punch the clock, after breakfast – “Thank you very much, sir, for the steady income. I’m looking forward to retirement.”

Or did they, right away, start thinking about how their classrooms would be different? How their classrooms would be better.

That last group of people — years from now, those are the people I’d like as the teachers of my children. Those are the people I’d like to count myself among. And, whether or not they were accepted to any program of study, those people deserve the chance to show the folks behind the big desk they’re not just a grade point average, that they can bring more to the table than a neatly and correctly completed application form.

Would someone please talk to them?

So, who wants to write the first letter?

Sincerely Yours, 200020303 Adam Warren’s column appears every second week. adam_g_warren@hotmail.com

in. The linen-draped tables at many of these benefit events are now occupied by both private citizens and corporate sponsors. The arts and culture cause is increasingly being supported by a PetroCan, an Aliant, a law office, and sometimes a utility company.

This phenomenon is by no means unique to Newfoundland and, in fact, in some ways we have been the slowest in North America to catch on to the individual citizen/corporate fundraising trend, perhaps idealistically believing we would never have to sink to frenzied annual rounds of what we could call volunteer benefitism.

Once upon a time, public tax dollars

were considered the only legitimate source of support for the arts: anything else was unclean or unthinkable.

But times, like the luck of the Liberal Party, have changed. A hundred dollars is the new $20 and silent art auctions are as common as potholes. To be fair, there are benefits to these benefits: they offer pleasurable opportunities for some healthy social solidarity and often they really are fun, rubber chicken, overcooked fish, bad wine, and all.

But a lot of volunteer time and energy is going into planning these events, as every nervous group aims to come up with the most creative and gimmicky angle, all the better to lure donors, develop patrons, and pay off the evening in the first place.

This year the challenges are greater than ever. It is a commonplace that people are tapped out after throwing everything they had in charitable reserve at the tsunami disaster relief.

Every gift-dependent organization is suffering. We won’t even talk about the freezing of funds promised to various arts groups through the besieged department known as Sponsorship Canada.

And one hates to think of how much money is being diverted to the Church of Rome after last week’s astonishing television spectacle of death or renewal, depending on your point of view.

Where is it all going? Applications for public funding for the arts are now obliged to demonstrate private and corporate fundraising efforts as a sign of good faith. The same $100 is circulating through the same circles of interest, time and time again. Call it the giving circle.

Perhaps the federal government should simply make everyone over 18 pay an annual $100 art tax, the way the Europeans do it. That handsome sum of support could then be distributed to all those arts groups and events demonstrating need, saving us all a lot of effort and bad food.

Sure, it sounds crazy but think of all the money already in tired circulation at this time of year.

In the meantime, if I don’t see you at the next benefit, auction, or raffle I will assume you’re in Cuba.

Noreen Golfman is a professor of literature and women’s studies at Memorial. Her next column appears May 1.

APRIL 17, 2005

16 • INDEPENDENTLIFE

IN CAMERA

Tattoo you

According to Dave Munroe, with his body one-quarter covered in permanent ink, tattoos aren’t just for rebels, loners and drunken sailors anymore. In fact, he says, large, intricate custom tattoos are more popular than ever — for reasons as different as those that wear them.

Photographer Rhonda Hayward and reporter Alisha Morrissey spent an afternoon at his studio. This is their report.

D

ave Munroe smirks slightly as he settles into his place of work. Over his street clothes he slips on a green metallic apron with a red XXX marked across the chest. Here, there’s no scent of stale workplace coffee and toner — rather, a whiff of antiseptic fills the air as Munroe collects his office supplies, disinfectants, long sterile needles, and a huge roll of Saran wrap.

Your family dentist has nothing on Munroe.

Freddy Baker, 18, wanders around the lobby of Trouble Bound Tattoo and Body Piercing in downtown St. John’s while Munroe prints a transferable image of what will become Baker’s 10th tattoo on tracing paper.

The drawing is of a basketball-player angel kneeling at the gates of heaven; indeed, most of Baker’s tattoos are basketball-themed. The only one his mother likes, though, is the portrait of his younger brother into his right bicep.

Only custom tattoos, products of a suggestion and an artist, are done at Trouble Bound.

While some customers may find the wait frustrating — clients visit the shop for a consultation, and then come back as much as a month later for the actual ink job — Munroe says they usually perk up when they learn no one else will ever have the same tattoo.

Flipping through tattoo magazines

APRIL 17, 2005

as he waits, Baker admits he’s beginning to get nervous, but says he’ll get more tattoos, many more.

“Until there’s no room,” he says, adding he won’t get any tattoos in places that would be visible if he was wearing a suit, just in case.

As Munroe begins wrapping everything in Saran wrap — the lower part of his apron, all his tools, and half the chair Baker will sit in for the fourhour process — he tries to explain why different people decide to permanently mark their bodies.

“I was compelled by the permanency of it and it wasn’t necessarily the graphic,” he says. “Then you have other people where it is about the imagery, and some people it’s about status, and some people it’s about affirmation, and for some people it’s actually about the physical discomfort, but it’s very unique to each person individually.”

YOU GET AN ITCH… While the process of tattooing is believed to have begun in Egypt, Munroe says no one really knows how far it goes back.

“Humanity has spent as much time on the earth as it has trying to decorate things, be it wall or a body,” he says.

Baker climbs into the chair and says during his first tattoo, just two years ago, he sat there sweating, unsure if he was ready.

Munroe cleans Baker’s right arm and presses on the transferable image.

He doesn’t like the way it turned out, wipes the area clean, and tries again.

Once he’s satisfied with the placement, he directs Baker to a full-length mirror to survey the beginnings of the drawing.

A quick nod and a few marks on Baker’s arm with a Sharpie, and Munroe hooks his gun up to a foot switch. Baker pops a movie (Natural Born Killers) in the TV/VCR combo to his left and everyone settles in.

A solid hum rings out and Baker is grinning. As time passes, he’s squinting, rolling his eyes and gnashing his teeth. Some of Baker’s friends show up to offer support and encouragement.

“It’s not the kind of pain you would expect,” says Munroe. “You’ll notice it in some places and other places you won’t notice it at all and some places are really sensitive and some places are not.”

He says people are beginning to get larger pieces in more obvious places.

INDEPENDENTLIFE • 17

Ironically, he says it’s because clients realize a tattoo is a permanent investment.

“We’re very much a society that doesn’t believe in lasting things.

Marriage doesn’t last, cars don’t last, houses don’t last — everything’s disposable, but this is one of the few things in life that you will take with you,” he says, adding he’d like to change around a few of his tattoos, but doesn’t regret any.

Born in Australia and raised in Ontario, Munroe says friends and co-

workers did most of his tattoos. While he can’t count how many he’s had, he estimates at least one-quarter of his body is covered by permanent ink.

“There’s a weird thing about tattooing where you kind of get an itch — and you can only describe it as an itch … you know that some time in the very near future you’re going to make every endeavour to actually go and get that done.”

Munroe describes people who just come by for a look in his shop as “tourists.

“You know ‘I want to go look at the weirdos today,’ and you find that in the industry and it’s something that you got used to … they treat you like you’re some kind of an odd circus specimen.”

That curiosity is a double-edged sword, he admits, because without the mystery, the service he performs wouldn’t be as valuable.

“The fact that millions of people have done it before you — the fact that it’s just about as old as time and documentation — still doesn’t seem to

steer away from the idea of carefully constructed notions of the rebel and the loner and the bad person,” Munroe says.

“But the mysticism that has been created by that is kind of one of the reasons people feel so endeared and driven towards the process. You feel like you’re crossing a line that you’re not supposed to cross.

“So removing that sort of mysticism, on some level, helps with dealing with those stigmas, but I don’t think it would be so endearing.”

APRIL 17, 2005

18 • INDEPENDENTLIFE

WEEKLY DIVERSIONS ACROSS 1 Young salmon 5 Was indebted to 9 Binding words 13 Friend 16 Eyelashes 17 Altar event 18 Small suckers 19 Cellular letters 20 Scattered (4 wds.)

23 Prov. with most thunderstorms 24 Defeated 25 Lady loved by a swan 26 Inuktitut for “our land” 28 Mat 29 Prompter 31 Quick look 33 Egyptian river 34 Expert ending?

35 Charged particles 36 Lout 37 Tibetan oxen 39 Inviolable 42 Non-clerical 44 Female rabbit 45 Wily 46 Tavern 49 Alta. town with Eddie the Squirrel (roadside attraction) 52 Author of Sisters in

the Wilderness 54 Intermediate: prefix 55 Sainte-___-deBeaupré, Que. 56 Quebec lake 57 Breathe convulsively 58 Lament 59 Gone by 60 Rebuff 62 Elec. unit 63 Russian ruler 64 Municipal statute 66 He calculates insurance risks 68 Old French coin 69 Source of heat 70 Part of an accusation 71 Burdening 75 Tramping ___, Sask.

77 Beaver or fox young 78 Olympic event 79 Primate 82 Narrow valley 84 Not responding 86 Theatre sec.

87 Form of Buddhism 88 W African country 90 Italian smoker 92 Swallow 95 ___ de cologne 96 Like many a modern artist (2 wds.)

99 Handsome prints?

100 Elation

101 Hodgepodge 102 Crazy 103 Summer time in St. John’s 104 Neuter (a stallion, say) 105 Religious group 106 On a cruise DOWN 1 Mushroom cap 2 A family film is appropriate for ___ 3 Public disturbance 4 Rant 5 Number 4 from Parry Sound 6 ___ Bay Ecological Reserve, Nfld.

7 Anaesthetic, once 8 Action 9 Ailing 10 Author Schoemperlen 11 Reside in 12 Observed 13 Temporary 14 Cancel 15 Coffee order 16 Sask. town named for wild goat-antelope 21 Curtain call 22 Office of the pope 27 Turkey’s capital 30 Italian one

32 Newt 35 Desktop picture 36 My one and ___ 38 Jungfrau, e.g.

40 Ruckus 41 Pronto!

43 Afro-Cuban rhythm 46 Rip 47 The Personals, e.g.

48 Kitten’s cry 49 Yukon town between Mayo and Keno 50 Tango 51 Office rumour 52 Like wild meat 53 Savings plan: abbr.

54 Provincial rep.

57 Needlefish 58 Cote d’___ 61 Lighter gas 63 Egyptian Christian 64 Soft cheese 65 Japanese coin 67 Marine diving bird 68 Cronenberg film (2002) 69 Island off Naples 71 Quebec cheese 72 Unpredictable 73 French bag 74 Montreal paper 76 The ___ Woman (Atwood) 80 Spanish coin, once

81 Way in 82 Collect patiently 83 B.C./N.W.T. river

85 Chart stand 86 Quebec uncle 89 Sturdy wool fibre

TAURUS: APR. 21/MAY 21 It's hard to resist friends, Taurus, especially when they approach you with an idea that sounds like it can't fail. Get a professional opinion, though before you sign on.

GEMINI: MAY 22/JUNE 21 Erratic behavior by a family member makes your life difficult this week, Gemini. With work projects on the back burner, you're feeling pulled in a million directions.

CANCER: JUNE 22/JULY 22 Be prepared to deal with the hitches associated with a work

commute, Cancer. This week proves to be very busy for travel. Leave enough time so you don't end up frazzled.

LEO: JULY 23/AUG. 23 Murphy's Law will be messing up your plans, Leo. Be prepared to deal with glitches that affect your finances, like a credit card that won't work or checks that bounce.

VIRGO: AUG. 24/SEPT. 22 When you least expect it, conflicts might arise between your significant other and your family. No matter what is said, try to show compassion for both sides, Virgo.

LIBRA: SEPT. 23/OCT. 23 In a rush to bring business to a close, miscommunications could arise, Libra. Expect to work out a few problems when the new week arrives. You'll be the hero.

97 Dry flax 98 Plant container Solutions on page 27

POET’S CORNER

WEEKLY STARS ARIES: MARCH 21/APR. 20 Your idea to fund a new venture ends up fulfilling a goal you've had for a while, Aries. However, caution is in order, because some of your actions could be viewed as unethical.

91 New Mexico town 93 Pinta’s sister ship 94 African game

SCORPIO: OCT. 24/NOV. 22 Unexpected expenses are par for the course this week, Scorpio. Since you have the money to cover them, don't worry too much about being frivolous. You're not a spendthrift.

SAGITTARIUS: NOV. 23/DEC. 21 You might notice something about one or both of your parents that seems odd this week, Sagittarius. Unless they open up to you, it's better to let sleeping dogs lie.

CAPRICORN: DEC. 22/JAN. 20 You treat personal information with extreme confidentiality normally, Capricorn, but this week, you may disclose something that you didn't mean to.

AQUARIUS - JAN 21/FEB 18 Professional organizations or group activities could raise

some unexpected financial concerns, Aquarius. Don't let it overly worry you... you'll manage.

PISCES: FEB. 19/MARCH 20 You may have lofty travel plans, Pisces, but no money in your wallet to back them up. Get creative so that you can still get away.

FAMOUS BIRTHDAYS APRIL 17 Jennifer Garner, Actress APRIL 18 Conan O'Brien, TV Host APRIL 19 Kate Hudson, Actress APRIL 20 Luther Vandross, Singer APRIL 21 Tony Danza, TV Host APRIL 22 Christina Aguilera, Singer APRIL 23 Barry Watson, Actor

I Wonder

By Phil Earle, Carbonear

If I could hear the heart beat in a robins breast, The tap of spiders feet upon her vest.

See the world in ultraviolet like a bee, Or envision like an Eagle for miles anything I see.

I wonder then how the world would be?

If I could like a falcon calculate instantly and master flight, Conserve my energy as the butterfly flying the Atlantic over night.

Be consumed by the drive that makes grass grow, Or just perceive an inkling of what makes light go.

I wonder then what new worlds I’d know?

If I could understand the sparrow’s song, Unravel why an Atom is so strong.

Know how gravity makes the river flow, And frost in winter turn water into snow.

I wonder then what the world would show.

But no matter that on one Universal day of earthly spin, One human contemplated this timeless din.

Who smiled within with pure delight, At all this beauty within his sight.

For to be touched by all these worldly things, that be, Would then not also that world, Be he?

INDEPENDENTBUSINESS

SUNDAY THROUGH SATURDAY, APRIL 17-23, 2005 — PAGE 19

Jean-Pierre Andrieux

Paul Daly/The Independent

More room at the inn Major chains have their sights set on the capital city; effects on locally-owned operations unknown

By Jeff Ducharme The Independent

J

ean-Pierre Andrieux calls it just another straw hat, but seeing legendary gangster Al Capone’s hat displayed under glass is a memory few tourists forget after visiting his St.Pierre-Miquelon hotel.

Andrieux, who is currently constructing a four-story addition to his Harbour View Inn on Water Street (it will become the Marriot after the addition is complete), says Capone’s hat is nothing compared to the attractions in this province.

“Anything is good for an attraction and Newfoundland is very rich with its history on its own,” Andrieux tells The Independent.

The infamous hat was given to his grandfather, whose general store was converted to an inn by Andrieux and his wife. Capone visited the island in its glory days as a rum-running hub.

During one such trip, Capone stopped by the general store and his grandfather commented on Capone’s hat. The world’s most notorious gangster gave the hat to the shopkeeper. The famous hat wasn’t immediately enshrined; it first spent time as a play toy for Andrieux’s mother at the family’s country home.

“I rescued it ... If it had stayed (there) much longer, it would have been destroyed,” he says.

Not only has Andrieux brought his considerable hotel experience to St. John’s, he’s also brought one of the largest hotel chains in the world with him. With only a handful of Canadian properties just a few years ago, Marriott has been on a buying binge and now operates more than 50 hotels in Canada.

They’re aiming for 150.

“It should bring tourism that follows Marriott products around the world, with their 2,600 hotels, they have a strong following. We think that it will perhaps

bring extra people in that fashion also.”

Within the next two years, at least 400 hotel rooms will open in the city. It’s a much needed boost to a market that often has no room at the inn during the months of July, August, and September, when the occupancy rate often pushes the 100 per cent mark. Since 1999, according to a Destination St. John’s study, occupancy has actually declined by six per cent, as more hotel chains set their sights on the capital city.

Bill Mahoney, chairman of the Downtown Development Commission, says the decline in the occupancy rate is not a negative.

“The hotel business in St. John’s is one where you have 12 months of expenses and seven months of revenue,” says Mahoney. “It creates some challenges to operate a business under those circumstances.”

The expansion of The Delta will add 125 rooms to the market this summer.

On Higgins Line, economy hotel giant

Super 8 will open its doors this year. A number of other projects are currently under construction or in the planning stages.

“St. John’s is a very attractive conference destination so when these conference planners look to St. John’s and they see a shortage of accommodations, there’s no question that’s going to impact on their decision.”

For every dollar spent by those attending conventions, according to Mahoney, nine times that amount trickles through the economy. For each day spent in the capital city, the average amount injected into the economy is $250 per person.

Hotels are also large employers, though most of the jobs usually pay minimum wage. Typically, the ratio is one employee for every guest room. The average hotel room can cost more than $100,000 to construct.

“It’s a great expression of confidence See “deep pockets,” page 20

‘Creating a flow of money’ Some 60,000 cruise ship passengers and personnel will visit the province in 2005; St. John’s expects nearly 20,000 conference delegates

By Alisha Morrissey The Independent

I

f Newfoundland and Labrador tourism is like a patchwork quilt, the biggest panels are related to conventions and cruise ship dockings — huge chunks of the province’s $800 million tourism industry.

Cruise ships are the fastest and largest growing sector of provincial tourism, and convention attendance tends to bring in the most money per visitor. Together, they’re helping the province register huge profits and record numbers in visits from out-of-province tourists.

Visits to the province increased by 5.9 per cent in 2004, and expenditures from out-of-province visitors were up 10 per cent, to $330 million.

Residential tourism, making up 63 per cent of visitation, brought total spending figures to $800 million in 2004.

The hike in visitors to the province directly relates to cruise ship visitation, which increased 26 per cent in 2004. This summer and fall will see a confirmed 60,000 passengers and crew wander through the province — spending money as they go.

Cruise passengers spend on average $125 in each port of call, often in only a

few hours.

While the number of ships visiting St. John’s and Corner Brook — the only two ports in the province cruise ships are allowed to enter before heading back into international waters — haven’t changed much from last year (17 in each harbour), the number of passengers travelling on them will double in 2005.

Dennis O’Keefe, chair of Cruise Newfoundland and Labrador, tells The Independent a minimal investment can bring impressive profits. Last year, he says, St. John’s spent $140,000 courting cruise lines, and the return to the city was more than $1.5 million.

“They’re nice to have here and all of that, but the purpose is to create a flow of money into the city and the province,” O’Keefe says.

The outlook for this year is good, he says, but next year and the year after will be bigger and better.

On a recent trip to Miami’s Sea Trade conference, where the international cruise industry meets each year, O’Keefe says he discovered a company promoting tours of the North Atlantic islands (The Faroe Islands, Greenland and Iceland).

Immediately, several meetings were scheduled between the Newfoundland delegation and the North Atlantic islands

delegation, and a committee was formed.

The two groups are now in talks about creating an itinerary for major cruise lines.

“The possibilities are so enormous,” he says. “We’re told over and over again … the day is quickly coming when we’ll have cruise ships lined up to get in that port.”

The convention season began early this year, starting with the Scott Tournament of Hearts in February and the Canadian Home Builders’ conference in March. Including last week’s Castle See “A destination,” page 20

APRIL 17, 2005

20 • INDEPENDENTBUSINESS

‘They have deep pockets and they have staying power’ From page 19 in the city, in the economy of the province because those people study the market very carefully,” says Mahoney.

“They’re here to stay. They have deep pockets and they have staying power.”

But with the larger chains locating in St. John’s, bed and breakfast operations and local hotels could fall victim to the growth in the city’s hotel industry.

“The B&Bs have really flourished because of the demand for that accommodation in the summer months ... and now that the larger chains want to establish themselves here, those B&Bs won’t enjoy the same level of revenue they have in the past,” says Mahoney. “Hopefully we won’t lose any.”

While the occupancy rate for those few summer months is among the highest nationally, which should drive room rates up, rates in St. John’s are among the lowest of Canada’s major cities.

“It is a bit of an anomaly,” says Mahoney.

Other cities may have theme parks or professional sports teams, but Andrieux says St. John’s has what those cities will never be able to construct — million-dollar views.

“I think to a visitor this is very important,” says Andrieux, looking out the window. “We don’t appreciate the beauty of this.”

Oil boom fuels Alberta’s 12th budget surplus EDMONTON, Alberta Reuters

A

huge jump in revenue from Alberta’s booming oil and gas industry is expected to help generate a budget surplus of $1.5 billion in 2005-06, despite higher spending, the province’s government says.

In what could be one of the last budgets under Premier Ralph Klein’s administration, the government says surging oil and gas prices should mean a $7.6 billion take from the energy sector, up $3 billion from last year’s fiscal plan. Total revenues are budgeted at $27.3 billion.

Expenditures are pegged at $25.8 billion, up about $3.2 billion from the last budget, as Alberta, with a population of three million, celebrates the 100th anniversary of its entry into the Canadian Confederation with a 12th straight budget surplus.

Finance Minister Shirley McClellan describes the plan as “an investment budget” for Alberta’s second century.

Spending is hiked in a host of areas, including health care, education, social services, municipal infrastructure, law enforcement and tourism promotion, the Conservative government says.

With adjustments for unbudgeted costs — such as relief programs for farmers hit by the extended closure of the U.S. border to cattle due to the mad cow scare — overall expenditures are up about 10 per cent.

Klein became known throughout North America as a fiscal hawk by eliminating budget deficits within two years of taking office in Alberta in 1992. He has promised to step down some time this term. His reputation as a tight-fisted manager of the public accounts has suffered as program spending has increased by 17.6 per cent since 2003.

Last year his government set side money to pay off its accumulated debt, allowing Klein to claim the status of running the only debt-free province in Canada. Much of that money was fueled by energy prices and booming activity by the industry.

The new budget assumes U.S. oil prices of $42 a barrel, up from last year’s budget forecast of $26 a barrel.

Natural gas prices were projected at $5.91 per thousand cubic feet at the wellhead, up from $4.20 in 2004-05. Again, the assumptions rose through the year, reaching $6.38.

Anticipating perennial criticism that it is “low-balling” projected energy revenues, the government for the first time published a summary of private-sector forecasts that it gathers, although it did not identify individual analysts.

Revenue estimates ranged between about $6.5 billion and $10 billion.

New budgetary spending will address issues raised in the November 2004 election, in which the majority of Klein Conservatives in the provincial legislature was cut sharply.

BUSINESS IN BRIEF Northern town takes on Alcan VANCOUVER (Reuters) — The town of Kitimat, British Columbia, has launched its second lawsuit in two years to try to stop aluminum giant Alcan Inc. from selling electricity to the United States.

The northern coastal town says the nearby Kemano hydroelectric plant was built to provide power to Alcan’s Kitimat aluminum smelter, and not to export power.

It has asked the B.C. supreme court to rule that two provincial government orders that have given Alcan permission to export power from the Kemano plant are illegal.

The town argues the government overstepped its authority with the 1997 and 2002 orders, as the sale of power violates a 1950 agreement with B.C. that gave Alcan access to inexpensive hydroelectricity in return for building and operating the aluminum smelter.

The original agreement led to the establishment of the town of Kitimat.

Nearly half the town’s population of 12,000 is directly or indirectly dependent on the smelting complex for their livelihood.

In January, the B.C. Supreme Court dismissed a similar suit filed in 2004 on grounds that the town did not have legal standing to sue the firm over the sale of electricity.

A tax on brothels SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) — Nevada lawmakers are considering a bill that would tax the state’s 28 legal

brothels, the only regulated bordellos in the U.S. The brothels pay local taxes and license fees but have never been taxed by the state, which under the bill would impose a 10 per cent tax on drinks and food and collect a $2 fee on each customer.

The Nevada Brothel Association backs the bill, but not all bordello owners think it is a good idea.

Dennis Hof, owner of Moonlite BunnyRanch in Carson City, says a bordello tax would be “ridiculous.”

“I’m paying big license fees,” says Hof. “If you had two McDonald’s and sell 50 million hamburgers a year, it would cost you $300. I sell a little bit of sex and it costs me $200,000 a year.

That’s enough.”

A spokesman for Republican Gov. Kenny Guinn says the governor did not support the tax bill because he doesn’t want to break with the tradition of managing legalized prostitution at the local level in rural counties and because he opposes new taxes.

Europe, Japan must boost growth WASHINGTON (Reuters) — U.S. Treasury Secretary John Snow says he will push Europe and Japan to take steps to boost their economic growth when Group of Seven finance ministers meet.

“They clearly need to grow faster.

They need to get rid of impediments and obstacles to growth in those economies,” Snow says.

“Our economy is growing well … over double the growth rate of our trading partners.”

In response to questions, Snow decried what he said were “worrisome” trends toward protectionism in global trade as countries threaten to impose tariffs against one another’s imports.

There are growing calls on Capitol Hill for legislation to impose tariffs against Chinese imports as a way to compel the Asian export giant to adopt a more flexible currency.

‘A destination that people are talking about’ From page 19 Building Centres conference, more than 2,600 delegates have already visited St. John’s this year.

Over 16,000 more conference-goers will hit the city before Christmas 2005.

“The year is progressing well,” says Kelly Barry, sales manager for Destination St. John’s.

Ninety-six conferences were held in Newfoundland and Labrador in 2004, as opposed to 62 the year before.

Results of a 2003-04 survey filled out by delegates for Destination St. John’s show 88 per cent said they made the decision to attend a conference in St. John’s because it was in St. John’s.

More than 96 per cent of people who responded to the survey said they were either satisfied or very satisfied with the entire trip.

“The Federation of Canadian Municipalities is expected to attract over 2,000 delegates in the first week of June this year, every hotel in the city will be welcoming delegates for this conference,” Barry says.

Other conferences, including the International Marine Biotechnology Conference, Canadian Payments Association, Canadian Institute of Actuaries and McDonald’s National Franchisee Conference will likely see 350 delegates each flood into the city.

Many delegates stay for a few days before or after a conference for shopping and sightseeing.

Estimates show conference delegates spend on average $250 a day — up from $200 last year — for a total, on average, of $1,700 per trip. The majority is spent on accommodations and rental cars, followed by meals and entertainment.

“It’s an exciting time for St. John’s. We are definitely a destination that people are talking about,” says Barry.

Numbers gathered for the provincial budget 2005 show a 13 per cent hike in the number of air visitors to the province over the previous year.

“At a recent trade show in Ottawa in February, St. John’s was the hot destination among meeting planners,” Barry says.

“It was great to see so many people that have held their events here are scheduled to come or who wanted to talk about bringing their group to St. John’s.”

Officials with the city of Corner Brook weren’t prepared to comment on the year’s conference projections. They are currently hiring a new tourism director.

APRIL 17, 2005

INDEPENDENTBUSINESS • 21

‘Heritage rock’ sells Aging rockers thrive in turbulent music industry; modern “cookie-cutter” artists might not be so lucky LONDON Reuters

Sanctuary grew out of representing heavy metal group Iron Maiden — still touring and putting out albums, despite falling off the mainiddle-aged musicians who have nei- stream radar. ther burned out nor faded away — yet “We’ve recognized that selling records is only may be some years past their creative one part of the mix, and that’s especially true for peaks — are pulling in the real money in today’s heritage artists,” says John Williams, a senior topsy-turvy music industry. vice president at Sanctuary.

In the young person’s game that is popular “They’ve got touring down, their publishing music, the top of Rolling Stone magazine’s 2004 income from songwriting is substantial, and money list is dominated by artists of a certain merchandise is brilliant — Led Zeppelin T-shirt age, like Metallica and Rod Stewart. sales, for example, are as strong as they ever They may not produce as were. many chart-topping songs as “It’s the artists that are they once did, but with album songwriters, artists that love “Bryan Adams … sales flagging due to Internet to tour, and artists who love piracy and competition from to reinvent themselves — understands that other entertainment outlets, these are the types of the they pull in revenue streams artists who can go out and if he doesn’t play the from merchandise, concerts constantly tour and not just and books. play the greatest hits,” he songs people want To find a group on the adds.

Rolling Stone list that has been However, heritage acts to hear, they won’t go around for less than 10 years, that neglect playing their hits away feeling warm you have to go down to Linkin risk angering their fan base, Park at No. 9. which often includes a secand fuzzy.”

The rock band trails artists ond or even third generation such as Prince and Madonna, raised on a diet of classic Max Hole who both had blockbuster pop music. tours and Jimmy Buffett, who “When I just saw Bryan released his first fully-fledged Adams play to 12,000 peocountry album in 2004, but more importantly ple in Sydney, no one left feeling like they didhas a lucrative string of “Margaritaville” chain n’t hear him do Summer of ‘69,” Hole says. restaurants.

“He understands that if he doesn’t play the It’s not only true at the top. songs people want to hear, they won’t go away Artists dubbed “heritage acts” like Simple feeling warm and fuzzy.”

Minds, Iron Maiden and Bryan Adams still enjoy avid fan bases and are making good LIVE LONG AND ROCK money and playing big concert dates.

Music bosses say the secret to making the “When you write really big songs they con- move from young chart-topper to prosperous nect with people in such a way that it reminds heritage act lies mostly in the long, hard slog of them of the moment they first heard them,” says touring: steadily building a fan base from the Max Hole, executive vice president for market- bottom up. ing and A&R at Universal Records.

“Nothing can replace touring,” says Sanctuary “They want to keep being reminded, and one Group President Tom Lipsky. way is to go see them live.”

“What (heritage acts) share is that they had that originality, something that no one else was SHE SELLS SANCTUARY offering, and they were relentless; they toured Many niche yet lucrative heritage acts are and toured and toured.” housed at Sanctuary Group, known half-jokingIt is a formula that means many of today’s ly in the industry a “haven for aging rockers,” cookie-cutter pop acts are unlikely to enjoy which is the world’s biggest independent music longevity. label.

“The business is so much faster,” says Hole.

It is also a major player in artist management, “It’s harder to get noticed, a big part of the merchandising and touring. The company pur- pipeline is being used up by TV-driven instant chased Elton John’s management company for artists, and it’s quite difficult for them to build $30 million last week. careers.”

M

Bryan Adams, long after the Summer of ’69, rocks in front of a capacity crowd in Barcelona, Spain.

BUSINESS IN BRIEF Wake up to a smart alarm LONDON (Reuters) — Groggy, sleepdeprived students at Brown University in Rhode Island have invented a new alarm clock that gently wakes snoozers during the lightest phase of their sleep cycle.

Instead of waking up grumpy and tired, the clock goes off when people are more likely to get up feeling perky and alert.

“The clock, called SleepSmart, measures your sleep cycle and waits for you to be in your lightest phase of sleep before rousing you,” New Scientist magazine says.

“Its makers say that should ensure you wake up feeling refreshed every morning.”

The clock is the brainchild of Eric Shashoua, a recent graduate of the university, and his friends who have created a company to develop the idea.

They have nearly finished a prototype and hope to market the product by next year.

will rise over the next one-and-a-half years as the economy approaches full capacity, but gave no hint of a specific timetable.

Canada’s economy is set for “continued robust growth,” the bank says, but it cut its 2005 growth forecast slightly to 2.6 per cent from 2.8 per cent in its January report.

The central bank says the economy is adjusting to global developments including the stronger Canadian dollar, although it cautioned a further fall in the U.S. dollar would be needed.

It also says excess supply in the domestic economy would grow modestly in the first half

Getting rich is bad?

CARACAS (Reuters) — Buy and sell, wheel and deal, but don’t get rich.

That’s the advice to businessmen from Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez, a self-proclaimed revolutionary who wants to develop a new form of socialism to fight poverty in the world’s No. 5 oil exporter.

“Being rich is bad, it’s bad. People who are rich, who have a lot of money should donate all of that,” Chavez says.

Chavez, an ally and admirer of Cuba’s Fidel Castro, often presents his left-leaning policies as an alternative to “savage capitalism.”

Since his 1998 election, he has increased public spending on a raft of social programs for the poor.

But critics accuse Chavez, the son of rural schoolteachers who rose to political fame by leading a botched military coup, of increasing state intervention in the economy and squeezed private business with currency and price curbs.

“I don’t want money. Really, when I leave here, there’ll be a shack or a hammock waiting for me somewhere,” says Chavez, dressed in a sharp business suit. “I don’t want anything for myself.”

Bank of Canada sees growth OTTAWA (Reuters) — The Bank of Canada has made it clear interest rates

The areas for the east end of St. John's include: Elizabeth Ave west Lemarchant Rd./Lime St. Gower/Bond St. Signal Hill Rd. Churchill Sq. area Fox Ave. area Airport Heights area

of 2005, but would vanish by the end of 2006.

The bank says it takes 12 to 18 months for its interest rate changes to affect the economy.

The bank started raising rates last year, but has kept them unchanged since last October.

Most economists say they expect the bank to resume rate hikes in the second half of 2005, though a few expect a continued freeze or a cut.

One wild card remains the Canadian currency, which rose about 30 per cent through 2003 and 2004 and has been a drag on exports. Since the beginning of 2005 it has fluctuated between 80 and 83 U.S. cents.

Andreu Dalmau/EPA

22 • INDEPENDENTSPECIAL SECTION

APRIL 17, 2005

APRIL 17, 2005

INDEPENDENTSPECIAL SECTION • 23

APRIL 17, 2005

24 • INDEPENDENTBUSINESS

EVENTS APRIL 17 • A musical evening with Averill Baker and friends, Gander Arts and Culture Centre, tickets $12, 256-1082.

• Concert Under the Dome with Christopher Bowman (baritone), Ian Sutherland (piano), Douglas Vaughan (French horn) and Alison Black (violin), 3 p.m., Cochrane St. United Church, St. John’s, 729-3900.

• Volunteer appreciation event by the Happy Valley-Goose Bay recreation department, 8968542.

• Beagle Paws volunteer meet and greet in the park, meet at Bowring Park west entrance for a walk through the park with the beagles, St. John’s, 2 p.m., 738-7297.

• Volunteer week Newfoundland and Labrador begins today, call Community Services Council Newfoundland and Labrador volunteer centre 1-866-753-9860, volunteercentre@csc.nf.net.

• Holocaust memorial service, Prince of Wales collegiate, St. John’s, 8 p.m.

APRIL 18 • Chef to Go five-week cooking class begins, featuring dishes from France, Japan, India, and Spain, St. John’s, 754-2491 APRIL 19 • No Man’s Land at the Gander Arts and Culture Centre, 256-1082. Continues April 20.

• CBC’s Singers and Songwriters presents Sean Panting with guest Jill Porter, LSPU Hall, St. John’s, 753-4531.

• Neil Diamond tribute show, St. John’s Arts and Culture Centre, 729-3900. Continues April 20.

APRIL 20 • CBC’s Singers and Songwriters presents Jim Payne and Fergus O’Byrne, LSPU Hall, St. John’s, 753-4531.

• MIANL’s Rising Stars 5 with Colleen Power and Duane Andrews at the Gander Arts and Culture Centre, 256-1082, $10.

• Rocks On performance by Sarah Joy Stoker, Eastern Edge Gallery, 7:30 p.m.

APRIL 21 • Babe the Sheep Pig at the Corner Brook Arts and Culture Centre, $5, daytime shows only, 637-2580.

• Ron Hynes in concert, recording his live album, LSPU Hall, St. John’s, 753-4531.

Continues April 22.

• Vera Perlin Lip Sync at the St. John’s Arts and Culture Centre, 729-3900.

• Arthritis Society volunteer social, 2-4 p.m. at the Arthritis Society, 78 O’Leary Avenue, St. John’s, 2-4 p.m., 579-8190.

• Marystown recreation committee volunteer social, St. Gabriel’s Hall, Marystown, 7 p.m.,

On April 23, The Cormiers perform at the Labrador West Arts and Culture Centre. Paul Daly/The Independent

279-1661.

• Rocks On performance by Sarah Joy Stoker, Eastern Edge Gallery, 7:30 p.m.

APRIL 22 • Thousands of books for sale at St. David’s Presbyterian Church, Elizabeth Avenue East, St. John’s, 7-9 p.m.

• Rising Stars 5 featuring Colleen Power and Duane Andrews at the Labrador West Arts and Culture Centre, 944-5412.

• Community Mediation Services two-day course, dealing with anger in conflict begins, 722-5040.

• Celebration Gospel Quartet at the Gander Arts and Culture Centre, 256-1082.

• Poe at the Corner Brook Arts and Culture, continuing April 23, tickets $5, daytime shows only.

APRIL 23 • Thousands of books for sale at St. David’s

Presbyterian Church, Elizabeth Avenue East, St. John’s, 9:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m.

• The Cormiers at the Labrador West Arts and Culture Centre, 944-5412.

• Town of Happy Valley-Goose Bay Recreation Department community awards banquet and presentation, Happy Valley-Goose Bay, Royal Canadian Legion, 896-8542.

• NSO Sinfonia, directed by Peter Gardner, presents Bach to the Future, 8 p.m., D.F. Cook Recital Hall, Memorial University, 8 p.m., 722-4441.

• Spirit of Newfoundland productions presents Diamonds in the rough … a Neil Diamond tribute, opening night. 7 p.m. for dinner and a show at the Majestic Theatre. For reservations and other showtimes, 579-3023.

• Leary’s Brook school fundraising blitz: silent auction, recycling drive, flea market, car wash, theatre production (noon and 3 p.m.) and dessert concert (7 p.m.), 15 Larkhall St., St. John’s, 726-9889.

INDEPENDENTSPORTS

SUNDAY THROUGH SATURDAY, APRIL 17-23, 2005 — PAGE 25

St. John’s Maple Leafs captain — and team defenceman of the year — Marc Moro.

Rhonda Hayward/The Independent

A classy captain After three years in St. John’s, Leafs’ defenceman Marc Moro is sad to be leaving the provincial capital

By Darcy MacRae For The Independent

T

he St. John’s Maple Leafs could have no more fitting a captain than Marc Moro.

For an organization that has tried all year to get fans to remember the good times, it served them well their final team captain was one of the nicest guys to ever wear the Leafs’ emblem on his chest.

“Marc is probably the classiest and hardest working guy I’ve ever coached,” St. John’s head coach Doug Sheddon tells The Independent.

“My mistake was not naming him captain last year.”

Moro’s warm smile and ready handshake are the first indicators he is indeed all his coach says he is. He always has plenty of time for his teammates, fans and the media. He embraces the responsibilities that come with wearing the ‘C,’ and is proud to be the leader of the AHL franchise.

“It’s obviously quite an honour, especially with it being the last year in St. John’s,” Moro says. “They’ve had some good captains here before me and I’m just trying to continue that legacy. Just having my picture on the wall with all of those guys has been an honour.”

After 14 seasons in the provincial capital, the Baby Buds played their final regular season game in St. John’s on April 16 and the occasion was not lost on Moro. He has only played here for three years, but is well aware of the team’s place in the hearts of local hockey fans.

The big defenceman feels being the final greatly benefited the Leafs in the win. captain in team history makes the posi- Just past the five-minute mark, a tion all the more enviable. rebound bounced around dangerously in “It’s a little added meaning and some- the Leafs’ crease with several Americans thing I can tell my kids about some day,” swarming the net in pursuit of the says Moro, who was named defenceman game’s first goal. of the year at the Leafs’ game April 15.

The closest American to the puck was Born and raised in Toronto, Moro Chris Taylor, who looked as though he knew little about St. John’s before join- may just swat the loose puck home ing the team in the before Moro interspring of 2002. It didvened. The two briefly “You always feel n’t take him long to jostled for position fall in love with the before Moro out-muslike you’re welcome, city, a fact that makes cled Taylor and leaving at the end of pushed him to the ice, like you’re part of the the season all the more preventing the difficult.

Rochester forward community. I never “I’ve really enjoyed from bulging the my time here. The fan twine. really had that in support has been secMoro’s defensive ond to none. Comheroics were on disother cities I lived in pared to other places play again at the midso I really enjoyed it.”

I’ve played, it’s been way point of the periunbelievable. The city od when he levelled Marc Moro itself is a lot of fun.

Rochester’s Tomas When we have some Vanek with a shoulder time off, the nightlife check in the slot beis great,” Moro says. fore the high-scoring winger could get a “You always feel like you’re welcome, shot on the Leafs’ goal. like you’re part of the community. I Plays like these caught the attention of never really had that in other cities I the Baby Buds’ bench, encouraging lived in so I really enjoyed it.” everybody to work as hard as their capFans in St. John’s have also grown tain. quite fond of Moro, and appreciate his “He’s so steady back there,” says feltough, no nonsense style of play. He was low Leafs’ defenceman Brendan Bell. at his best April 13 when he helped the “Guys all over the league know he’s Baby Buds get past the Rochester tough to play against. That’s never Americans 5-2, a team St. John’s had underappreciated by coaches or teamstruggled against all season. mates. He’s just been a rock for us. He’s Moro’s play in the first period alone all you can ask for in a captain.”

Bell is one of several St. John’s blueliners who are barely old enough to hit George Street, a group that makes the 27-year-old Moro seem like a grizzled old veteran. While his experience has undoubtedly aided in the young defence corps’ growth and maturity this year, Moro insists the young guys have also helped his game.

“If anything it’s helped me feel younger,” Moro says. “Just hanging out with these guys and keeping up with them helps me keep my tempo up and keeps me playing hard.”

For the first time during his tenure in St. John’s, Moro is part of a Calder Cup contending team this year. In his first two seasons, the Leafs failed to qualify for the AHL playoffs, forcing the ultra competitive Moro to sit and wait for next year. This season was certainly different, with the club playing winning hockey almost from the get-go and easily clinching a playoff position.

“It’s been a lot of fun all year,” Moro says. “In the past couple of seasons, we were kind of out of the picture early on and it made it tough to come to the rink every day. It wasn’t fun when what you really wanted wasn’t attainable.”

When the AHL playoffs begin April 20 in St. John’s, there is little doubt Moro will be front and centre leading the Leafs into their first-round series with the Manitoba Moose.

“Mo is awesome,” Bell says. “He’s your prototypical captain, one of those guys who will do anything to win.”

Darcy_8888@hotmail.com

Playing their hearts out for Herder

B

y the time you’ve read this, the Herder Memorial Trophy will most likely have been awarded.

Newfoundland and Labrador’s muchcoveted senior hockey prize will have been won by either the Conception Bay North CeeBees or the Deer Lake Red Wings.

Whatever the outcome, this series will go down in memory as a very special moment in Herder history, for a number of reasons.

First, the hockey has been fantastic. I did not get to the west coast to catch the action, but from several accounts and from witnessing the games at Mile One in St. John’s, fans have been treated to an excellent brand of play.

There have been highlight reel goals

BOB WHITE

Bob the bayman (take CeeBee Keith Delaney’s undressing of Deer Lake’s defense in game three, a short-handed goal that came with the CeeBees two men short during a five-on-three). That goal was as a good as you would ever find on TSN, The Score or Sportsnet.

Both goalies have stood on their heads. Graham Cook of Deer Lake would probably have the edge in net, but only because he has had the opportunity to face, and turn away, more

scoring chances. The shots have been pretty even, but without Cook, this series would probably be over right now. If Deer Lake gets to hoist the Herder, he should get the MVP. Freddy Diamond for the CeeBees has been steady, much like he was in the Avalon East final against Southern Shore. He handles the puck well and is great at smothering the rebounds.

For Deer Lake fans, and for all hockey fans in this province, it has been a treat to watch NHLer Darren Langdon skate with the Red Wings. He may not be the slickest player on the ice, but the guy flat out knows how to play the game. And that intimidation factor has been key for Deer Lake.

The reason Langdon is a Red Wings

player/coach this season is also another factor in how this series will be remembered. With no NHL hockey to consume fans this spring, these games have taken on even greater focus.

When you consider why the NHL cancelled its season, and compare it to why these Herder hunters willingly take the pounding they do, it’s hard not to admire them.

They could very well be getting a few dollars to lace ’em up, but hey, I don’t have a problem with that. As long as it doesn’t get out of hand and destroy senior hockey (can you say NHL?), these guys deserve a few bucks for taking on such a risk.

Fans should realize these guys put their health on the line, play their hearts

out and then show up to work their real jobs the next day. Take last weekend at Mile One, where three games in three days left even the best-conditioned of players stiff, sore and exhausted. Make no mistake, these guys are playing for their love of the game and that automatically endears them to fans.

Another reason this series will be remembered is the return of the CeeBees to Herder action.

It’s been nearly 40 years since the Herder was last won by the CeeBees, and fans out here in Conception Bay sure have appreciated the run. It was also a nice tip of the hat to former CeeBees great George Faulkner at the See “Return to reality,” page 27

APRIL 17, 2005

26 • INDEPENDENTSPORTS

579-STOG 77 Harv Harvey ey Road

Stoggers’ Pizza The“best The “bestpizz zza in town” is

BACK! American cyclist Lance Armstrong waves as he takes a victory lap after the end of the last stage of the 2004 Tour de France cycling race in Paris.

DPA photo

Armstrong ‘the alien’ expected to announce retirement PARIS Reuters

F

or six years, the main question about Lance Armstrong was whether he could win another Tour de France. Now the main doubt is whether he will ride another one after this year.

The Texan will be at the start of cycling’s biggest race in July, if only to fulfill his obligations with his team Discovery. Win or lose, the 2005 Tour will almost certainly be his last.

The most successful Tour de France rider of all time has fuelled speculation that retirement is in the cards by calling a news conference on April 18, on the eve of the Tour of Georgia in the United States, and making it clear that he has an important announcement to make.

The six-time Tour winner’s contract with Discovery includes a clause that he must ride at least one more Tour.

There is no doubt that the 33-year-old American will honour his contract but only last week he told Italy’s Gazzetta dello Sport newspaper: “In four-and-ahalf months it’ll be over.”

Armstrong told French daily Le Figaro he was finding being apart from his five-year-old son and three-year-old

twin daughters, who live in Texas, harder and harder to bear.

“My frequent absences, plus the long distances make me feel like saying stop and returning home to be near them,” he says.

Armstrong, who returned to competitive cycling in 1998 after a near-fatal encounter with testicular cancer, told the newspaper his love of the sport has not diminished.

“To ride for three, four hours or more like I used to do before I turned pro still produces the same passion. It will never change,” he told Le Figaro.

The allure of more Tour wins was waning, however, he said.

“To win a seventh Tour is now my goal. But seven would just be one more whereas six was magic.”

Armstrong, never a conventional character, surprised everyone recently by showing up at an amateur event, the Ojai race in California.

He also wrong-footed his critics last month by paying an unexpected visit to an Italian judge to discuss new doping allegations against him.

Armstrong, who has never failed a doping test and who has always been cleared in legal cases against him, may also be weary of the non-stop contro-

versies surrounding him.

This season, he took part in ParisNice to please International Cycling Union (UCI) chief Hein Verbruggen, who needed the leading character in the sport to be at the start of the inaugural event of his new ProTour.

If he indeed announces the end of his career, some will say the American is leaving too soon, without achieving some of the feats he is capable of.

The one-hour world record, which all cycling greats in history have held at one stage, is certainly within his reach.

The American, however, has never behaved like everybody else and even though he grew up to respect cycling traditions, he was always at heart the young man from Austin, Tex., who became world champion in 1993 without a clue about the sport’s history.

“I’m not interested in leaving a deep imprint,” he says. “For cycling, I will remain the alien who came from a faraway land.”

Armstrong set up his own foundation to help fellow cancer patients and a large portion of his popularity stems from his fight against the disease and his charity work.

“The fight against cancer will give me work for the next 50 years.”

Newfoundland and Labrador Environmental Awards 2005 Recognizing outstanding environmental and conservation achievements The Department of Environment and Conservation, along with its partners, MMSB and the Newfoundland and Labrador Women’s Institutes are seeking nominations for the 2005 Newfoundland and Labrador Environmental Awards, which will be presented during Environment Week, May 30 - June 5.

Awards are presented in six categories: Individual (19 years or older), Community Group or Organization, Youth or Youth Group (18 years or younger), School or Educational Institution, Municipality or Regional Waste Management Committee and Business.

There are many environmental champions all over our province who are dedicated to protecting our environment and, indeed, deserving of an award that honors their environmental achievement.

We encourage you to nominate an environmental hero in your community.

Honourable Tom Osborne MINISTER

Nominations and application forms are available at: Department of Environment and Conservation Phone: 709-729-5783 toll free: 1-800 -563-6181Fax: 709-729-1930 E-Mail Tcoffey@gov.nl.ca or visit http://www.env.gov.nl.ca/env/whatsnew.asp Deadline May 10th, 2005

0-1161286

APRIL 17, 2005

INDEPENDENTSPORTS • 27

SPORTS IN BRIEF Boy charged after baseball murder LOS ANGELES (Reuters) — A 13year-old California boy has been charged with murder for a fatal attack with a baseball bat on a 15-year-old who had apparently teased him about losing a baseball game.

Jeremy Rourke, 15, died Tuesday night after the final game of the Pony League season in the desert city of Palmdale, 50 kilometres north of Los Angeles.

Witnesses said the two boys were standing in line at the snack bar when an argument broke out. Some says that Rourke had teased his attacker after his team lost the final game of the season to the worst team in the league.

The two boys had known each other for years and the family said in a message that their son’s attacker “is not a monster. He’s a good boy who made a bad mistake.”

The maximum penalty for a minor found guilty of murder would be incarceration in a youth facility until the age of 25.

T’wolves owner says experiment failed RALEIGH, N.C. (Reuters) — The owner of the Minnesota Timberwolves has called the signing of Lattrell Sprewell and Sam Cassell two years ago, a failed experiment.

“It certainly didn’t work out as we had hoped it would,” Glen Taylor told the St Paul (Minnesota) Pioneer Press. “Overall, it was just a failed experiment.”

Both players could be with new teams next season, Taylor hinted.

As for the 35-year-old Cassell, who has been hampered by injuries this season, Taylor says, “He’s on our payroll this next year, so you’ve got to deal with it.”

Cassell reacted strongly to Taylor’s comments.

“That’s bull — for him to make a statement like that, if he said it that way,” Cassell says.

Sprewell declined comment.

Putting with the pope ROME (Reuters) — From golf balls stamped with “Vatican Golf Club” to highbrow encyclical texts in Latin, the memorabilia business is booming in Rome after the death of Pope John Paul II. The boulevard leading to the Vatican, Via della Conciliazione, is home to a string of shops and stalls selling religious items, trinkets and books to the millions of tourists and pilgrims who flooded Rome after the pope’s death on April 2.

“It’s true, there isn’t a golf course at the Vatican,” a shop assistant conceded as he stood beside a basket of balls costing three euros ($3.86 US) each and bearing an image of St. Peter’s Basilica.

Return to reality From page 25 beginning of game three at Mile One. After all these years, Faulkner is still considered by many as the greatest hockey player this province has ever produced, and judging by the standing ovation he was given prior to dropping the puck for a ceremonial face-off, his exploits are recognized by young and old.

This series could have gone 10 more games, and still would have sold out Mile One and the Pepsi centre each time.

It would be great to see this level of fan enthusiasm for every game of senior hockey, all season long. If the NHL lockout drags on and on, and fans have to turn somewhere to get their fix, perhaps a full-blown provincial league might work. It would be a costly venture, but not impossible.

Solutions from page 18

LORD STANLEY’S CUP Reports out of Upper Canada have some lawyers trying to get the Stanley Cup awarded this year to an amateur or senior hockey team.

When I first read this on the Internet, I figured these guys were just looking for a bit of publicity and were not really serious.

But they want to take this thing to court! Whoa, guys. Step back for a second and return to reality. The Stanley Cup is the NHL and the NHL is the Stanley Cup. Yeah, I’m also peeved it’s not going to be presented this year, but to give it to anyone but the best in the NHL is wrong. Just wrong.

Go have a cup of tea with Governor General Adrienne Clarkson (who thinks it should be given to the top women’s team) and vent.

Bobby White writes from Carbonear. whitebobby@yahoo.com Solution from last week’s puzzle

A LITTLE OF YOUR TIME IS ALL WE ASK. CONQUERING THE UNIVERSE IS OPTIONAL. Think it requires heroic efforts to be a Big Brother or Big Sister?

Think again. It simply means sharing a few moments with a child. Play catch.

Build a doghouse. Or help take on mutant invaders from the planet Krang.

That’s all it takes to transform a mere mortal like yourself into a super hero who can make a world of difference in a child’s life. For more information...

Big Brothers Big Sisters of Eastern Newfoundland 1-877-513KIDS (5437) www.helpingkids.ca

Jimmy Croke Jr.

Rhonda Hayward/The Independent

Darts ‘on the back burner’ Provincial darts champion Jimmy Croke Jr. says his sport deserves funding too, especially when players qualify for nationals

By Darcy MacRae For the Independent

J

immy Croke, Jr. had no idea winning a provincial darts title would be so much extra work.

The Shea Heights resident captured his first Newfoundland and Labrador darts championship on March 13 in Gander, topping 57 other darts players from around the province. His first reaction was to be expected — he was filled with excitement and pride when he realized he was the 2005 champion.

But soon after, feelings of disappointment and frustration also crept into the picture, as Croke realized the effort it would take to represent the province at the National Darts Federation of Canada championships in June.

Like many who have competed at nationals before him, Croke was surprised to learn there wasn’t any funding available to assist him in getting to the Canadian Championships. Instead, he is trying to raise the $5,000 needed to get to the event himself.

“You finish your provincials in March and you have to be at nationals in early June so you don’t have much time for fundraising,” Croke tells The Independent.

“It’s in Victoria, B.C., this year, which unfortunately is a big plane ticket.

You’re up there for 11 nights in a fourstar hotel, so that’s $150 a night. The average person can’t afford to just put their hand in their pocket and bring out the money to pay for the trip.”

While winning the provincial title still

has Croke smiling, he says it’s shame there’s even the possibility the provincial champion could be forced to skip the nationals.

“In Newfoundland and throughout the rest of Canada, it’s hockey, hockey, hockey, and there’s all kinds of funding for it,” says Croke. “Sports like darts or bowling are put on the back burner and not much is heard about them.”

Croke’s first step in fundraising was to approach businesses that may be able to assist him in his travels. In typical Newfoundland and Labrador fashion, the majority of the responses he received were positive.

“The people I associate with playing darts, and the community I live in, everybody sticks together,” says the 28-yearold. “A lot of suppliers have donated stuff I’ll need.”

With his funding campaign coming along nicely, Croke can now focus his efforts on his game. He continues to use the same approach he has used all of his life — to simply have fun.

“The key is to not get nervous,” he says. “Obviously darts is a sport with a lot of hand-eye coordination. If you get nervous, your hand shakes and you lose your edge.”

Victoria will be the furthest Croke has ever been from Newfoundland and Labrador. He is certainly looking forward to taking in the sights and sounds of the West Coast — and to action at the darts tournament. “I’m more anxious than nervous,” he says. “This is the biggest event of my career. I’m looking

forward to playing against some of the best players from around the country.”

Croke will be joined by seven Newfoundland and Labrador teammates in Victoria, providing each can come up with the $5,000 needed to make the trip.

Should his teammates experience the same good fortune as Croke and find themselves with enough cash, he is confident they will be each other’s biggest supporters.

“We’ll all be there, cheering each other on in every game,” he says.

Croke will compete not only in the men’s singles, but also in the men’s doubles with provincial men’s runner up Jason Coombs, and in the mixed doubles with provincial women’s champion Patricia Ferrell.

Croke’s goal is to earn a spot in the final round, a feat that would firmly establish him as one of the top young darts players in the nation. But even if he returns to Shea Heights after the first round, he insists the hard work will have been worth it.

“Everybody says that once you make your first trip to nationals, you want to compete every year and try to get back there,” he says. “People who have been there say it is a great experience.”

Regardless of where he finishes, Croke is sure he will make a few new friends while in Victoria. Given the reactions by those he’s asked for financial assistance, it shouldn’t take him long to become a popular figure on the West Coast.

Darcy_8888@hotmail.com

APRIL 17, 2005

28 • INDEPENDENTARTS

GALLERYPROFILE

DEAN PARSONS Photography

A

sked to describe his art — and business — Dean Parsons points to the sky and says, “I try to keep my eye up there, not down here.”

Parsons has been building his photography skills and portfolio for almost seven years. Having long been interested in flying remote-controlled helicopters, for the past five years he’s been focused on researching and building aircraft capable of taking still photographs and video footage.

“This technology is state of the art,” says Parsons. “The machines I’m flying now, these helicopters are not hobby machines, not the machines you’d buy in the hobby shop, and the cost reflects that.

The camera gear is also high-end.

“It’s an investment of time and money — but I’m very interested in it and have been for some time, in the research and development phase of it.”

Almost two years ago, Parsons launched his ground- and aerial-photography business, Gound Effect Imaging. He’s not quite ready to give up his computer science day job, but he says he’s getting closer.

In terms of business, Parsons says he’s been hired to do everything from virtual tours of golf courses to a 360-degree video pan of a new subdivision to weddings and other group events. Parsons’ helicopters can fly in any season, he says, and in up to

40 kilometre an hour winds.

Sending the helicopter up over water — such as the time it was flying hundreds of feet over Signal Hill — can be nervewracking, Parsons admits.

“We do pay attention to weather, and winds,” he says. “Obviously, we want to go about this the right way — and we’re insured as well.”

Ground Effect Imaging is certified by Transport Canada, and Parsons often has to call and get clearance from nearby control towers to operate, just as a full-sized helicopter would.

When not working on a contract, Parsons shoots for his own collection or freelance — from the helicopter, and from the ground.

“I look for angles and things that haven’t been seen from certain heights and angles,” he says. “Landscapes and vertical shots of something very simple, even a pile of grass or dirt or trees, next to a road, a vertical shot of that is very different.”

It took a good deal of trial and error, but Parsons says he’s now “getting used to knowing what the camera is looking at …

I know the composition I’m getting, I can guarantee the shot.”

Whether using film, digital or video cameras, Parsons says the work is exciting.

“It really does capture something you can’t get any other way. Helicopters can go anywhere, can hover at four feet or 40 … fly over wooded areas and water and places … a full-sized machine can’t even get there.” www.groundeffectimaging.com — Stephanie Porter

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