VOL. 3 ISSUE 35
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ST. JOHN’S, NEWFOUNDLAND AND LABRADOR — SUNDAY THROUGH SATURDAY, AUGUST 28-SEPTEMBER 4, 2005
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OPINION PAGE 3
SPORTS PAGE 32
Ray Guy offers his solutions to ‘the Newfoundland syndrome’
Tom Collingwood gears up his Firebird for this year’s Targa
Glut or gluttony? Shrimp plants close as industry fails; external factors blamed ALISHA MORRISSEY
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he St. Anthony shrimp plant shut down this past week, forcing 150 workers out on the street. Days earlier two other plants belonging to the Daly Brothers — one in St. Joseph’s, St. Mary’s Bay, and the other in Anchor Point on the Northern Peninsula — also closed. An untold number of shrimp plant workers have been laid off as shrimp piles up in cold storage and markets collapse. Caroline Davis, manager of St. Anthony Seafoods, a plant owned by Clearwater Fine Foods, recommends the entire industry be shut down. “We are one company that will shut our doors … and we’re very concerned. We have a lot of inventory as many people do and we’re concerned about the market,” Davis tells The Independent. “There’s a lot of rumours that other plants will be shutting down and peo-
ple are making decisions from day-today, week-to-week about what they are going to do and a lot of people feel that in the next two weeks plants will shut down.” The problems with the local shrimp industry stem from a variety of external factors. Industry representatives blame legal and illegal foreign fishing outside the 200-mile limit, the subsidization of foreign fleets, a 20 per cent tariff slapped on Canadian shrimp entering the European Union (EU), and a shrimp glut in the marketplace. Foreign fleets fishing shrimp outside the 200-mile limit on the Flemish Cap do not fish by quota, but by sea days — a system that allows them to legally overfish suggested catch limits. Banned from Canadian ports since last December, vessels from Greenland and the Faroe Islands have disregarded shrimp quotas and set their own — directing hundreds of more tonnes of shrimp into the world market. See “I cannot make,” Page 4
Gord King collection, 1972
Why doesn’t everybody live in Newfoundland? Glimpses of life on the Newfoundland frontier Editor’s note: the following feature was written in 1971 for Saturday Night magazine by the late Sandra Gwyn. Reprinted with permission. By Sandra Gwyn
Paul Daly/The Independent
‘Imagine the guts’ Armine Gosling helped Newfoundland women land the right to vote Editor’s note: Seventh in a series of articles on the top 10 Newfoundlanders and Labradorians of all time. The articles are running in random order, with a No. 1 to be announced at the series’ conclusion. By Alisha Morrissey The Independent
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hile Armine Gosling didn’t burn her bra in the street, she and a group of likeminded women may have given Newfoundland its biggest boost for women’s lib — the right to vote. But the choice of Gosling as a top 10 Navigator isn’t just to do with her involvement with the suffrage movement. She founded the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals
(SPCA), was a staunch advocate of child welfare groups, supported a home for elderly women and still found time to raise enormous sums for her church. Marian Frances White, author and producer of The Untold Story of the Suffragists of Newfoundland — a docudrama now shown in Newfoundland and Labrador schools and based on the small group of women who secured the right to vote — says Gosling was an inspiration. “She’s not a woman that you would See “No obstacle,” page 2
T
he nicest part about being a Newfoundlander now, in 1971, is that at last other Canadians are beginning to catch on to what we always knew. The jokes, for instance, are fading: what can you say, anyway, about the real newfie who put all the newfie jokes in a book, sold them to mainlanders at $1.50 a throw, and made a small killing? Instead of laughing at Newfoundland, mainlanders are beginning to crowd onto the island, looking not just for scenery but for soul. One of them, a writer friend whose world view has been shaped largely by the Four Seasons in Toronto and the Four Seasons in New York, said to me when he came back: “I want to tell everyone to go there, because this is so different
QUOTE OF THE WEEK “I’m a grandmother, I’m an active person; I want a fishery. I want someone to pay attention to what’s happening in Newfoundland.”
— Bonnie Jarvis-Lowe, on why she took part in food fishery protests, page 5.
and so beautiful, as different from Ontario as Ireland is, and yet somehow entirely part of us.” He’s a bit sentimental, and so am I, and to hell with being afraid of sentiment. As a Newfoundlander who has spent most of her adult years in places like Montreal and Ottawa, I’m delighted to watch Canada discover us. The attraction clearly goes beyond nostalgia for simplicity. The point is that in Newfoundland you find, on our frenetic continent, an environment that’s still human — though even that sounds impossibly solemn when you find yourself out on the Tinkers in a swell and the skipper is brewing up a stew of salt beef, and turnips and potatoes from his own plot, and some fatback pork and a cod that came out of the sea five minutes ago. This year I spent two weeks doing that and some other things, in company with a collection of mainland Canadians and Americans bent on discovering Newfoundland. The Anti-Confederation Song says: “Her face turned toward Britain, her
LIFE 17
Meet architect Philip Pratt
IN CAMERA 20
Where the bags are made
back to the Gulf, come near at your peril, Canadian wolf.” On this moist, misty morning — the kind of day the Irish say is soft and the Newfoundlanders we’re with say, with a straight face, is not as good, b’y, as last week — we’re about three-quarters of the way up her back, or Gulf, side. We’re at Millicent Billard’s Guest House in Port au Choix, starting the day with fish and brewis, the soul food of Newfoundland. “Let’s hope it is good for the soul,” the lady from New York says grimly, pouring hot molasses on an inscrutable mixture of salt cod and hard tack. We got here late last night, after driving pell mell 300 miles north from the ferry terminal at Port aux Basques, along “The TC Aitch” — the TransCanada Highway — where it cuts between the broody Long Range mountains and the sea, then up the rough gravel road to the Northern Peninsula. See “Sheer joyous,” page 19
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2 • INDEPENDENTNEWS
AUGUST 28, 2005
Canada and Norway co-operating to restructure NAFO; limited changes will take time By Alisha Morrissey The Independent
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AFO has been seen as a toothless tiger for years, but with co-operation from the Norwegian government it seems the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) is intent on restructuring the regulatory agency. A plan to reform the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization, which monitors fishing outside Canada’s 200-mile limit and serves 12 countries, plus European Union-member countries, was discussed at a recent meeting between federal Fisheries Minister Geoff Regan and his Norwegian counterpart, Svein Ludvigsens. The pair met while attending Aqua Nor — the biggest aquaculture trade show in the world — in Trondheim, Norway earlier this month. NEW RULES The two ministers agreed enforcement of quotas, surveillance and fisheries science should be priorities with NAFO. Canada and Norway have held an agreement on mutual fishery relations since 1976. David Bevan, assistant deputy minister of DFO in Ottawa, says the changes to NAFO may include new rules about post-objection behaviour, a process for dispute settlement, a refined conservation plan and — in the more immediate future — a commitment to the turbot rebuilding plan. (A 15-year reduced-quota plan implemented, but ignored, since 2003.) The use of the objection procedure is seen by critics as a fundamental flaw of NAFO, whereby member countries can arbitrarily opt out of quotas and set their own. Ottawa calculates that in recent years, foreign fleets have increased the catch of illegal species — including cod and American plaice — to as much as 15,000 tonnes. At that level, federal Fisheries Minister Geoff Regan has said fish stocks face “virtual destruction” in as little as three to five years. Bevan says while enforcement will
THE NEW OLD HOUSE
be key in NAFO’s future, flag states will still be responsible for penalizing vessels that don’t follow the rules (which critics see as another fundamental flaw). In other words, NAFO countries won’t be looking at an international court system just yet. Over the past decade more than 300 citations have been issued against foreign vessels for illegal fishing on the Grand Banks, although most of the citations were issued without publicity or penalty. FLAG COUNTRY Under NAFO rules, Canada cannot order the ships to port for investigation. Instead, officials must ask the flag country for permission to take the ships to the nearest NAFO port, or to investigate themselves. Bevan says the Governance of High Seas Fisheries and the UN Fish Agreement — Moving Words into Action, a conference held in St. John’s last May, was influential in the decision to make changes. “We’ve talked to a number of members of NAFO who have agreed to support these types of initiatives, always there’s going to be debate, there’s going to be concerns about change — there always is — but we are confident that we are going to be making progress,” Bevan tells The Independent. Bevan says the process of change will take time. “We wouldn’t be expecting to change the entire organization overnight, but we would be expecting the organization to continue on some of the progress it’s made,” he says. Since NAFO is a consensus-based organization, Bevan says all of the recommendations will have to be voted on at the next annual meeting in September in Estonia. “Generally what we find on conservation measures in general … even if some parties are not happy about the measures, they usually go along with the majority. So I think if we can line up that support than most of the people will then go along with it. They wouldn’t want to be an outlier, I guess, or obstructing progress.”
An old fishing stage being moved across the harbour in Harbour Breton last week.
‘No obstacle was too great’ From page 1 forget after you’ve learned about her … she definitely influenced me and I identified with so many of the issues that she was concerned about, especially the SPCA and women’s issues and literacy,” White tells The Independent. Through the film, White says Gosling still teaches young women in classrooms around the province about the importance of being a strong women. “She had big struggles and I think that coming here she could identify with some of the struggles that were going on,” White says. “The fact that she just met things head on and no obstacle was too great for her to resolve.” Gosling was born Armine Nutting, the youngest of five children, in Waterloo, Que. in 1861. Her mother was a seamstress; her father a drunkard who worked as a court clerk. Gosling studied at the Shefford Academy before going on to study briefly in Ottawa — her mother Harriet believed education was a way to escape poverty and insisted on classes in French, elocution, drawing and music. In a biography prepared by Memorial University, Gosling was described as “bright, if not brilliant.” Noreen Golfman, a professor of literature and women’s studies at Memorial, as well as a judge for Our Navigators, says any one of the suffragettes would have been suitable for the top-10 list, but Gosling “embodied many of the qualities we admire in Newfoundlanders — an ability to deliver fine and impassioned speeches and to write especially well.” Gosling moved to St. John’s at the age of 21, where she worked as the principal of the Church of England Girls’ School. BOARDING HOUSE It was at her boarding house where she met her husbandto-be, William Gilbert Gosling, originally from Bermuda, who worked with Harvey and Company, a wholesaling firm based in St. John’s. William Gosling would later serve as mayor of the city from 1916 to 1920 — in part because of his wife’s support. “Together they were a great force and a force for the good,” says White. In 1886, Gosling gave up her job at the school to plan her
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January, 1888 wedding. The couple had six children. Gosling had her hands in many pies, including founding the SPCA, supporting the Child Welfare Association and an elderly women’s home, and leading several groups within the Church of England. In fact, she helped the church raise $5,600 for the rebuilding of the Anglican Cathedral after the 1892 fire, an enormous sum in those days. Gosling was heavily involved with women’s sports in Newfoundland, especially curling and golfing. She is perhaps best known, however, for charting the course for women’s right to vote in Newfoundland. “Imagine the guts it took to be so public, so outspoken and determined, especially when your husband was a respected businessman and you were living in a genteel, well-mannered world,” Golfman says. “On Jan. 15, 1912 Gosling gave a lecture entitled Woman Suffrage, arguing that women should be granted the right to vote in order to improve society,” reads an archive prepared by Memorial. “It’s just as important to convince the public that women are angry as it is to convince them women are right,” Gosling once said. ‘WOMEN ARE ANGRY’ Her first victory allowed women to vote in the city’s municipal elections in 1920. Women won the right to vote in Newfoundland elections in April, 1925 although Gosling was taking care of her sick husband in Bermuda at the time of the announcement. Gosling wrote two books, including the completion of her husband’s memoirs after his death. In 1930, the year of the death of her husband, Gosling donated his collection of books to Newfoundland, which led to the founding of the Gosling Memorial Library, once located on Duckworth Street in St. John’s. Gosling died in Bermuda on Dec. 15, 1942. “Armine Gosling is a wonderful example of the kind of spirited and intelligent character we all recognize living in Newfoundland, a woman who ended up having enormous influence on future generations of similar characters,” Golfman says. “She would be a navigator whose boat I would like to be on and I guess I feel in some ways I have been,” White says. “I think Armine would be one of the top people because she had her finger in so many pies and really had an impact on so many people of her generation and so many generations to come. “Where would we be without the vote, and who would have done it?” Judges for Our Navigators include John Crosbie, John FitzGerald, Noreen Golfman, Ray Guy, Ivan Morgan and Ryan Cleary.
AUGUST 28, 2005
INDEPENDENTNEWS • 3
Faith in the Father Gerald Critch of Gaskiers on the southern Avalon has felt the tears of firefighters at New York’s Ground Zero and reportedly been stricken by stigmata By Clare-Marie Gosse The Independent
traditional Newfoundland music. “That’s kind of neat. I’m not one who’ll stand still when music’s being ather Gerald Critch has a gift played … it’s not just for healing and empathy, Newfoundland, but it’s the which has shaped the course of Caribbean that’s in me now.” his vocation as a priest and former He says he visits Newfoundland Franciscan friar for over 30 years. every year and just two months ago Since leaving his home of held a healing mass at St. Gaskiers on the Irish Loop at the age Bonaventure’s chapel. of 16 to “follow people like Mother As one of nine children born from Theresa and St. Francis (of Assisi),” Irish descendants, Critch has many his ministry has taken him on mis- family members in the province. sions around the world. Some They went through a difficult time in include the West Indies, the 1998, when the media reported he Caribbean and New York’s Ground had been afflicted with stigmata durZero, administering to the rescue and ing a healing mass in Antigua. investigative teams in the weeks folEye witnesses claimed to see lowing 9/11. blood leak from wounds on his Several years ago, his work threw hands, feet and side and some parishhim into a media ioners said they whirlwind surroundwere thrown to the “After I came back to floor by an invisiing the controversial phenomenon of stigble force, their Florida, I could not mata, a mystical injuries healed. condition resemCritch was get through a homily bling the marks and rushed to hospital, or preaching without where a doctor physical suffering of the crucified Christ, said he was unrebreaking down.” which has afflicted a sponsive to treatnumber of religious ment. The local — Gerald Critch people through the diocese, while not centuries. quantifying the Today, Critch is a pastor at St. incident, did state: “something Thomas More parish in Sarasota, unusual took place.” Fla., one of the “fastest growing” Critch doesn’t bring up the controparishes in the area. Much of his time versial subject himself, and is silent is spent working with local immi- for a moment when questioned about grant communities, as well as taking that time. part in an ongoing re-building effort “You can ask, but I can’t talk about after the onslaught of Hurricane it,” he says eventually. “I still can’t. Charley a year ago. The church usually silences us or “I’m used to travelling, but I keeps it quiet … the bishop didn’t always miss (Newfoundland),” he deny it, which still holds. ‘We’re not tells The Independent, via phone commenting,’ that sort of thing, you from Florida. “I keep on the Irish know, and they have asked me to music, the Celtic music and I think respect that request of theirs.” that I bring a lot of that into the Stigmata is a delicate subject withEucharist here.” in the Catholic Church and officials Critch says Thomas More has a usually refuse to comment, unless large number of young parishioners cases have been proven to be frauduand the musicians have been learning lent. It’s a cautious approach in an
F
attempt to avoid sensationalism and the possibility of making a mistake in authentication. St. Francis of Assisi lived in the 13th century and was the first officially recognized stigmatic. Since then, the most famous sufferer of the painful condition — which involves adopting the physical sufferings of Christ — was Italian priest Padre Pio. It’s said Padre Pio bore the wounds on his hands for 50 years (he bled on a daily basis, forcing him to keep his hands bound and gloved). The Church waited until after his death in 1968 to authenticate his condition and declare him a saint. Although unable to comment on his own experience, Critch says it has led him towards working with people in pain and suffering. “That’s why I got so deeply into the healing ministry, you know, because I can deal with and at least somehow have empathy when people are going through certain things … it takes a lot, a lot of energy.” Critch is currently in the process of organizing this year’s mass and memorial service in New York to mark the fourth anniversary of the collapse of the Twin Towers. He says returning to the scene has become gradually easier over the years; he has friends to catch-up with and has been asked to perform a wedding for one of the members from his Ground Zero team. Critch’s memories of his time amongst the carnage and fear of 9/11 remain strong and he still keeps his unwashed lab coat, stained on one shoulder from tears of firefighters. As well as hearing confessions and offering counsel, Critch also blessed the remains of victims. “It was nightmares upon nightmares after that.”
As hard as the experience was, he says it helped to be surrounded by so many supportive people. Every night, the New York Police Department would debrief and Critch says they gave him a chance to receive some psychological respite — although leaving the site and returning to Florida was tough. “When you move away from that scene and you come back and no one really understands … I kind of realize what these kids, when they come back from war (go through). I don’t think they have anyone to really relate to. “I remember, even in church, giving the talks after I came back to Florida, I could not get through a homily or preaching without breaking down.” As well as helping to organize the anniversary mass, Critch is involved in getting a book of lullabies published through Heavenly Productions Foundations, the catalyst behind Heavenly Lullabies, a collaborative
CD which was released to raise money for the orphans of 9/11 victims. He says former president Bill Clinton has approached the foundation to request all proceeds of the new book go to orphans of the Southeast Asian tsunami. As a charismatic member of what is often perceived as an old-fashioned and sometimes mistrusted denomination, Critch says he is hopeful for the future of the Catholic church, which is currently in need of its own healing. He adds the church was built on the down-to-earth, grass roots of the first 12 disciples and it can be easy to lose sight of its basic, human beginnings. “We tend to forget that the people are the church, period. You know? And we’re always going to be, like the body itself, when one hurts we all hurt and … it’s almost like the beginning of — if you want to call it — ‘clean up’ and I sense a more compassionate church taking place now, more willing to listen to everyone.”
The Newfoundland syndrome E
verybody take a Valium or we’re gonna capsize the boat. “Who hath warned you to flee the wrath to come?” OK, I guess there’s not exactly panic in the streets yet but judging by the glut of public occurrences recently some people are getting pretty squirrely and it doesn’t hurt to be watchful … bird flu is heading west over the Caucasus and the Dutch are keeping all their hens indoors. Clever people, the Dutch. Here in Newfoundland? Well, those of us who are of riper years have an advantage. We have seen public tumults, general excitements and popular hallucinations before and know they eventually pass. For example, most of those living today cannot begin to imagine the uproar Woolworth’s (as they were then) caused in the province when they brought in the first load (flock?) of budgie birds ever seen here. A considerable percentage of the
RAY GUY
A Poke In The Eye population, the deeply religious, thought budgies were of the devil. As far as they could glean from Scriptures, the Lord God Almighty never created blue, green and yellow dicky birds and if the word of God was anything to go by these things were Satan’s handiwork. I pointed out, at the time, that there was no mention of potatoes in the Bible, either, and got preached against in the churches. But the majority of Newfoundlanders took to budgie birds. It was an era of fresh novelties and proposed Great New Industries. It was an optimistic time in the life of the happy province … and to make sure of this, Joey’s government made us plaster “The
Happy Province” on the arses of all our vehicles. Anyhow, nearly everyone had to have one of these new budgies. Woolworth’s did a roaring trade. People were sold a budgie and took it home with little or no direction. They let their budgie outdoors for a bit of fresh air on a mild day in March. The damn things wouldn’t come back in when they were called. People fed their budgies exclusively on (what else) bread crumbs and the radio open line shows rang with tragedy: “Lookahere, Ron. My budgie blowed up and bust; not a very nice thing to look at, a bust budgie is not.” And so Woolworth’s sold at least twice the number of budgies — replacement birds plus budgie cages and special budgie grub and records for teaching your budgie how to repeat the Ten Commandments. One of our leading radio stations was hot off the mark. Teach your budgie to say “I listen to CJON” and win a mag-
nificent prize. A lovely colour picture of Geoff Stirling, suitable for framing, most likely. Yes, those were simpler times, kinder times, gentler times. It takes a lot more today to upset the general mental balance. But it can be done. The signs are there for all to read. The deputy mayor of Corner Brook, clever fellow, took his holidays and skittered off west to Alberta for good like so many more. Rather demoralizing. On top of this, the population of Corner Brook may have sunk below 20,000, the magic figure which permits a town to call itself a city, however teensy-weensy. And there’s a rumour that one of Corner Brook’s dealerships may be shutting down … which is taken by many to mean the arse is really out of her. What kind of a province has only one city in it (Mount Pearl’s one escalator doesn’t count) and that only what
would elsewhere be judged a small town? For lack of a humbling comparison this side of New York or London, Boston or Dublin, St. John’s remains insufferably smug in its outport-ringed isolation. Shift the capital, I say. Cartwright, capital of Newfoundland. It is roughly the geographic center. It might get rid of that childish and embarrassing “Newfoundland and Labrador.” And it would be worth the cash to hear the paralyzing shrieks of Townie bureaucrats being dragged off for resettlement to the howling tundra. For another thing, the body politic is starting to look a bit pink, white and green around the gills. Creating fake historical blarney is fine as long as it’s to catch the pennies from our valued tourists. When we start believing this bumph ourselves it’s time to worry. I have no prejudice against a flag with pink in it, not on the grounds that See “I may be,” page 4
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4 • INDEPENDENTNEWS
AUGUST 28, 2005
‘I cannot make a commitment’ From page 1 The 20 per cent tariff on Canadian shrimp entering the EU has been in place for years, although its impact is particularly devastating this year. Finally, fishing vessels from the Faroe Islands are said to receive a hefty government subsidy, giving them an unfair advantage over domestic fleets. Davis acknowledges each of the above factors has played a role in the closure of the St. Anthony shrimp plant. Davis can’t guarantee the plant, which also processes crab, will reopen for shrimp processing next year. “But right now the market conditions are such that I cannot make a commitment to do that,” she says. “We are hopeful that things will improve in the market and that we’ll resume again, maybe even this fall, but definitely in another season.” NO SHUT DOWN Of the 13 shrimp plants in the province, the four on the Northern Peninsula produce 30 per cent — 44 million pounds — of the entire volume landed last year, processed by about 600 workers. Robin Quinlan of Quinlan Brothers says the company’s three plants that produce shrimp — located in Baie De Verde, Old Perlican and Black Duck Cove — aren’t in danger of shutting down right now as there are several orders to be filled. “It’s been a difficult year in the shrimp industry there’s been quite a few players bow out and close down,”
Quinlan says. “Primarily, I just attribute the problem to an oversupply of shrimp globally. When you have an oversupply of any product then you get into a situation where demand is down.” He says Royal Greenland, the largest producer of cooked and peeled shrimp, has been causing problems for most local plants as the company has been catching more shrimp as opposed to buying directly from Newfoundland companies. THEIR OWN MARKET “What were large buyers of shrimp — Royal Greenland, being an example — they are now processing … to sell it to their own market,” Quinlan says. The shrimp industry was worth $135 million to the province last year, according to Derek Butler, executive director of the Seafood Producers Association, representing most of the province’s fish processing companies. He says the industry’s biggest problem is the tariff on Canadian shrimp entering the U.K. — the world’s largest market for shrimp. The EU tariff is set at 20 per cent for shrimp entering the market after the first 7,000 tonnes, which is subject to a six per cent tariff, provided it’s processed in Europe. “People in the plants are out of work, harvesters are now stopped fishing … but in terms of the market we’ve got what we need,” Butler says. Shrimp processing in this province extends from May until October in most years.
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EXECUTIVE DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM 2005 September 18 - 30
Election signs in St. John’s
Step up or die
Federation of municipalities says people have to express interest in their towns, or risk losing them By Clare-Marie Gosse The Independent
T
he upcoming Sept. 27 municipal elections may well shape a new municipal landscape in Newfoundland and Labrador. Due to a lack of candidate interest in some of the smaller rural communities, clusters of towns have already started to form under single councils. Herb Brett, president of the Federation of Municipalities, tells The Independent there’s a likelihood many towns will be forced to follow suit with amalgamation over the next few years. He says developing more town clusters is one strategy the federation has been considering as part of a current analysis of the province’s towns. Results of a municipal poll conducted last year showed only 23 per cent of current council members planned to run in the 2005 election and although Brett says some might have changed their minds since — he’s concerned. The federation is in the process of holding regional, public sessions to encourage residents of small towns to get involved. “It’s reached the stage for the rural part of our province, in particular, where it’s getting serious … I think we’re going to see a big change over the next few years in the municipal
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governance. The fact is you’re going to see more towns coming together, working together,” says Brett. “If there’s no one interested in the community the community’s going to die, I mean it’s as simple as that.” The 2001 election saw approximately half of the province’s 283 municipalities forming councils without an election process, due to the fact only a bare minimum of seven candidates were interested in running. STRESS OF OFFICE Paul Bolt, mayor of Grand Le Pierre at the top of the Burin Peninsula, says that’s how his town’s council was formed last election — and it will be the same this year. “When I was to a (municipal) meeting in Gander there was a cause for concern, because 60 per cent of councillors and mayors that ran in the municipal elections are not running this time because of stress,” he says. Bolt is worried for the future of his town and those in the surrounding area. “Now it’s a concern for me because I’m wondering what’s going to happen if you don’t get enough on council, you know, you can’t do a lot of things; your voices are not heard the same.” He says he’s not sure if forming an umbrella council around several small
towns would be the solution. “We could be amalgamated with English Harbour East or Terrenceville the next time if people don’t get out and run,” Bolt says. “It would be good and bad I think. You would have a stronger voice, for one thing, but then you’ve got three communities … then you’ve got fire services; one community is 16 km away, another one is 10. How would you be able to do that kind of a service?” Brett says more and more communities have shared services in recent years. In January, Melrose, Port Union and Catalina on the Bonavista Peninsula joined together to form a new town called Trinity Bay North, which he says has been working out well so far. In his opinion, developing a strong partnership with the provincial government is a crucial step towards helping rural Newfoundland and Labrador. “We’ve got to start working together to help towns become stronger, but it’s got to be done as a partnership with the provincial government. To me, that’s where our future is.” Brett says he would like to see more diversity among the municipal councils and he particularly encourages more young people and women to run.
‘… I may be a bit funny in the head’ Continued from 3
25th Anniversary
Paul Daly/The Independent
pink is usually regarded as the colour for little jumper suits for female babies. It’s just that to the rest of the world, pink will look like red that’s badly faded and probably waved around by persons with the backsides out of their pants. It seems an artificial and trumpedup symbol like the abominable “screech in.” Excuse my outport ignorance, but I saw or heard nothing of our glorious pink, white and green until very recently. But that figures, out around the bay we didn’t even have the proud flag of Elmer, the Safety Elephant. Some of the pink’s supporters claim to be creating a new symbolism. All I can gather is that it once had something to do with some Roman Catholic sect in St. John’s. I hardly think the Sons of the Pentecost in White Bay will embrace it. Beyond that, the whole “culture industry” racket seems to have gone a bit off the head. There was the recent image of the former “Loveboat” pitched ashore in Trinity. Good for Trinity but, this summer, it seemed that every damned hole in the rocks was wildly promoting its “festival” all mad keen to be a little Trinity, the only future, according to some, for us all. Can’t happen. It’s the chicken-takeout syndrome, the unisex beauty salon
syndrome, the Newfoundland syndrome. Somebody starts something new that is a mild success and every copycat and his brother pitches head over heels into it and the thing is soon ruined for everyone. A harmless bit of fakery like Trinity is not going to be the salvation of us all. Leave the Disneyfication of Trinity to Mother Donna who started it all. Call it Trinityland. Call it Buttworld … but selling “festivals” under the label of “our precious cultural heritage” is not going to put Cheesies and Pepsi in all the classrooms of the province. Another small but alarming sign may be seen among a few of our editorialists and columnists. They are about each other’s ears in contention over whether or not “new nationalism” is of the bar stool or should be confined to the editorial board meeting. As no stranger to either the stool or the meeting, I can witness that there’s damn little lasting wisdom at either venue. A good natural Valium for any journalist is this: stick your finger into a bucket of water. Remove finger. See any difference? Yes, brethren, this is indeed our own sorry role in life, Cassandras all. Before the mass panic can get out of hand the cry of “Danny Williams will save us!” now rings loud and clear. I dunno. Danny has chopped the legs out from under several bold enough to
give him an argument and, by hauling down the Maple Leaf he may have proved himself a one-trick pony. God save us all, another Godfather in the making. If Williams really wants to do us some good he will stop farting around with the Canadian flag and haul down, burn, dump on, jump up and down on … the Stars and Stripes. Quick like a bunny, Georgie Bush and Pat Robertson and those “folks” would be along with the Christian aim of restoring democracy and freedom to this pivotal oil-and-gaseous part of the world. Right after, of course, they properly shocked and awed us to hell and back with loud bangs and U.S. Marines. Come on, Danny, get out of the playpen and step up to the plate with the big boys. Even what seems like good news may be a little too good to be true. Rumours come that the entire top floor of Atlantic Place (St. John’s, natch) is being redecorated to suit the oilies so certain that the next big offshore oil well is about to spout. But hang on, there. Let the past be our guide. For every Grand Banks oil well that’s opened before, haven’t 35,000-40,000 Newfoundlanders hightailed it west? If we get any more prosperous the province will be gutted. Ah, but don’t mind me … I may be a bit funny in the head. See, I never owned a budgie.
AUGUST 28, 2005
INDEPENDENTNEWS • 5
‘Goin’ out in boat?’
What makes a grandmother and retired nurse take part in the illegal cod fishery? It takes her ‘truly home’. By Clare-Marie Gosse The Independent
O
n Aug. 20, Bonnie Jarvis-Lowe, a retired nurse and grandmother, set out with friends and family in an 18-foot open boat from her home in Shoal Harbour near Clarenville to catch cod. Jarvis-Lowe isn’t a regular fisherman; her family doesn’t work in the fishery. Something innate spurred her to join the many other fishing vessels off the northeast coast that day taking part in the second food fishery protest. “I’m 56 years old,” she tells The Independent. “I’m a grandmother, I’m an active person; I want a fishery. I want someone to pay attention to what’s happening in Newfoundland.” Jarvis-Lowe and her husband spent many years in Nova Scotia and she says living away from Newfoundland and Labrador during the 1992 cod moratorium meant she “didn’t have an upfront personal view of what was happening” in her native land. Today, only fishermen along the province’s south coast can legally fish cod. As a result of the July 30 and Aug. 20 protests, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) has laid 28 charges involving 24 people to date for allegedly illegally catching cod and obstruct-
Bonnie Jarvis-Lowe
ing fisheries officers. Jarvis-Lowe says she and her husband came back to Newfoundland and Labrador in 2000 and decided to retire in their plot of family land in Shoal Harbour. “I have a sunroom with a beautiful view of the sea, which was always my dream. I used to stand in the OR (operating room) in the middle of the night and that’s when I designed my house … I had an Irish friend and he used to say, ‘The savage craves his native shore’ and it’s so true.” As someone who was born in
Labrador and grew up in various would “fight for the fishery. Newfoundland outports, she describes “I would do whatever it takes … I running off on summer evenings to just fear for my province, I fear for catch cod in the bays. what’s happening with the people.” “The first question would be always, Despite the numbers of protesters when we got out of school and it was a joining her, Jarvis-Lowe says many nice day, ‘Goin’ out in boat?’” Newfoundlanders seem to have Jarvis-Lowe says she is at least “thrown in the towel.” thankful to have particShe adds they’re ipated in the 2001 and mistrustful of sci“The study that was ence and govern2002 food fisheries. She describes how it promised two years ment. felt to hand-line her Many fishermen first catch. ago has never been insist cod stocks are “I could close my abundant, but the eyes and remember a done, so our question federal government friend and I hand-lining says they are still too is, ‘What are you a fish and it just took weak to support a me back. basing this decision fishery. “During that food “I can see our fishery we went out and on, not to have a food island becoming a we caught fish, one day different place from fishery?’” we got into a school of what it was,” says fish and we had three Jarvis-Lowe. “The Bonnie Jarvis-Lowe on at once and they codfish are there, were big, really big fish they’re huge. The … and then, all of a sudden the next study that was promised two years ago year, there’s no fishery. has never been done, so our question is, “I remember that summer, feeling so ‘What are you basing this decision on, well and so good, being out on the not to have a food fishery?’ Clearly, water, out in the sunshine in an open now, nobody trusts the science of it and boat, fishing, and the smell of the water, the foreign vessels are fishing within 60 the smell of the fish and I knew I was miles of our shores … and they’re taktruly home.” ing tons of cod.” She says that’s when she knew she Many of the protesters charged have
SHIPPING NEWS WEDNESDAY, AUG. 24 Vessels arrived: Atlantic Kingfisher, Canada, from Terra Nova Oil Field. Vessels departed: Maersk Norseman, Canada, to Hibernia; Jim Kilabuk, Canada, to sea; Madrus, Estonia, to Flemish Cape; Maersk Challenger, Canada, to White Rose. THURSDAY, AUG. 25 Vessels arrived: Lomur 2, Estonia, from Fishing; Maersk Nascopie, Canada, from Hibernia; Cabot, Canada, from Montreal; Anticosti, Canada, from Orphan Basin. Vessels departed: Atlantic Kingfisher, Canada, to Terra Nova; Gulf Sable, Canada, to Orphan Basin. Paul Daly/The Independent
K
eeping an eye on the comings and goings of the ships in St. John’s Harbour. Information provided by the Coast Guard Traffic Centre. MONDAY, AUG. 22 Vessels arrived: Atlantic Eagle, Canada, from Terra Nova Oil Field; Jim Kilabuk, Canada, Lewis Hills, Oil Field; ASL Sanderling, Canada, Halifax.
Vessels departed: Oceanex Avalon, Canada, to Montreal; Louis M. Laurier, Canada, to sea. TUESDAY, AUG. 23 Vessels arrived: Wilfred Templeman, Canada, from Sea; Maersk Challenger, Canada, from White Rose. Vessels departed: Gulf Spirit 1, Canada, to Orphan Basin; ASL Sanderling, Canada, to Halifax.
FRIDAY, AUG. 26 Vessels arrived: Atlantic Eagle, Canada, from Terra Nova; Cicero, Canada, from Halifax; Lomur 2, Estonia, from St. Johns; Maersk Chignecto, Canada from Hibernia. Vessels departed: Maersk Nascopie, Canada, to Hibernia; Atlantic Eagle, Canada to Terra Nova; Cabot, Canada, to Montreal; Lomur 2, Estonia, to Flemish Cap; Wilfred Templeman, Canada, to sea.
Terra Nova time out
T
he Terra Nova FPSO (floating, production, storage and offloading) platform is gearing up for a 40-day shut down, beginning Sept. 1. John Downton, spokesman for PetroCanada, tells The Independent the “turnaround” maintenance was planned ahead of time and will take place on location on the Grand Banks. “We always have a schedule for planned maintenance of these facilities … we’re making some improvements to our gas compression system, that’s one area that we’re focused on. We’re also doing work that’s required for regulatory
purposes, inspections, that sort of thing.” With oil prices continuing to nudge $68 US, Terra Nova will likely loose hundreds of millions of dollars in revenues during the shutdown. Downton says repairs will be carried out by current staff and any specialty contractors needed. “When we’re not producing oil we’re able to up staff from 80 — normal operating personnel on board — to 120.” Terra Nova’s gas compression and injection system has been the main cause of operation downtime over the past couple of years.
Between August, 2003 and October, 2004 production was either shutdown or significantly reduced for roughly five months, predominantly as a result of problems with the gas compression system. In November 2004, production was shutdown for three weeks due to an oil spill. The C-NLOPB (CanadaNewfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board) carried out audits of the development in March and May of this year, followed by annual surveys in June. — Clare-Marie Gosse
court appearances next month, and a date for a strategy meeting to assess the next course of action for the fishermen has yet to be confirmed. The group is also looking forward to receiving the results of a court ruling involving the Terms of Union. The ruling concerns what Jarvis-Lowe calls “an ancient clause,” which states: “Newfoundlanders retain the right to fish within three miles of their shores, headland to headland.” “That has never been removed so we’re expecting a ruling on that by the end of September and a lot depends on the decision that comes down from that ruling.” Despite her fighting spirit, JarvisLowe says she’s “not a person to go out on pickets or carry signs, or get into altercations.” It’s simply a matter of “we’ll face what we have to face.” She quotes an e-mail from a friend and fellow Newfoundlander living away from the province and says it sums up exactly how she feels about her homeland. “I long for the day when … all Newfoundlanders, those living at home and away, can engage in a traditional activity that was once the lifeblood of our province. I am saddened that all levels of government have allowed such a vibrant way of life to be destroyed.”
6 • INDEPENDENTNEWS
AUGUST 28, 2005
OUR VOICE
The tourism world L
ast week I wrote about the best feature of our tourism industry — our people and our culture, but to really appreciate how good we have it here, you need to experience what some other places in the world have when it comes to tourism. By virtue of entering the international property and vacation-sales market, we have had the opportunity to see what others are doing, and what ingredients they had to start with. While we can never compete with warm sunny destinations like the Caribbean or Hawaii, we are lucky that sun all the time is not everything it is cracked up to be. The growing perception in the affluent Western markets that steady UV exposure is a ticket to skin cancer is good for us. That sounds facetious, but you would be amazed at how an article in the New York Times can affect economies. Ask the salmon farmers who suffer from bad press even though their product is a hell of a lot healthier for you than their protein competition. The most obvious example of that was the Florida tourism industry a few
BRIAN DOBBIN
Publish or perish years ago when some stories of carjackings made it into the international press. The following year the tourism industry in Forida was reported to be down by $6 billion US … $6 billion! The truth of the matter was that it was far more dangerous statistically to drive to the country for the weekend, but in the tourism industry, perception really is reality. That is one area Newfoundland suffers greatly from. Our largest obstacle in bringing people here for their vacations is the ass-backward ideas they have about the place. It is bad enough that our Canadian brothers and sisters tend to talk about Newfoundland as a vacation destination the same way we would talk about Davis Inlet as a good spot for a holiday, but sometimes we actually go out of out way to invest in
the bad press. The classic case was the misguided effort by our tourism department to spend a lot of money promoting Newfoundland tourism around the different premieres of The Shipping News. Did anyone actually read the book before they made that decision? I mean it did win the Pulitzer — perhaps it would have been a good idea to pick it up. I had to put it down after the first 50 pages as I found it to be so stereotypical of Newfoundlanders that I was getting physically upset. ANY PRESS IS ... That movie probably cost us several million dollars when it came out in the UK, as we immediately saw the cancellations of a number of trips planned by potential property buyers. It almost lost me one of our key directors as he happened to watch it on the plane as he was coming to Newfoundland to start a job. Luckily there were no stops en route. The old adage of any press being good press does not apply to a destination people are planning to spend thousands of dollars vacationing in.
Promotional challenges aside, we have the ingredients necessary for a holiday experience that can be enjoyed by a vast majority of the market. Right now there is a tourism destination trying to be developed in Dubai that cannot claim the same. Perhaps you have heard of it — they have bought up most of the world’s press over the last number of years. Sheik Mohammed of the United Arab Emirates has decided that they are going to have a tourism destination, and there is no amount of money they are not prepared to spend to get it. You may have seen Tiger Woods hitting golf balls off the top of the Burj Al Arab Hotel on Palm Island in Dubai … that was not cheap given Tiger’s hourly wage. You know Palm Island, that is the massive island shaped like a palm tree they have created out of sand that is slowly sinking into the sea year by year. As we tried to get our first aircraft in London to charter to Newfoundland, Emirates Air had been there before us with almost everyone we talked to — with a hell of a lot more money to spend. A great amount of ink has been
spilled internationally about all of the world celebrities that have properties there — well you would too if you were given it for free. Rightly or wrongly, the sheik has decided to buy a tourism industry in an area where outside temperatures can top 50 C, where sand is everywhere and in everything, and in the middle of a culture that frowns on libation and exposed female body parts. I see it as the great tourism experiment of the 21st century. So far he has had a hard time attracting the Western tourism market, and I understand the majority of the traffic is Arabs from Saudi Arabia or Russian neo-capitalists who come for the night life, while others in their groups mostly shop in the new massive malls that have been built. Hmmm … what do you think faithful reader, would you rather have more money than common sense and be trying to build an industry there, or have no money at all and be trying to convince people to come here? I’ve got my own opinion about that, but let me get back to you in 40 years to let you know how it turns out.
YOUR VOICE
‘Piece of garbage’ Editor’s note: the following is a letter written by Gus Etchegary, retired fishing industry executive and diehard fisheries advocate, to Dr. Wendy Watson-Wright, assistant deputy-minister, science, with the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) in Ottawa.
ple, have appeared before the House of Commons and the Senate fisheries committees on many occasions in the last several years and especially since 1995 when Paul Martin cut the fisheries science budget for the Newfoundland and Labrador region by 50 per cent. Their message to the MPs and Dear Dr. Watson-Wright, Senators has been repeated over and I somehow doubt many of our fish- over: we don’t have enough financial ery scientists will respond to your resources to carry out minimum stock insulting letter. Apart from giving assessment on groundfish, pelagics, some measure of dignity to what has crustaceans or to advise and provide to be the epitome necessary guidof senselessness ance for fisheries contained in your managers. We are not interested letter to the There aren’t in Canadian scientists enough research Independent’s editor (Aug. 21-27 ship surveys to studying sea lions on edition), the two determine the state former DFO scien- the Galapagos Islands… of so many fish tists hopefully stocks so essential would refrain from for any scienceresponding to what has to be the most based recovery program. Where have meaningless piece of garbage ema- you been and are you at all familiar nating from Kent Street in some time. with the fact that practically every For your information we are not fishery off our coasts has been depletinterested in Canadian scientists ed to levels of commercial extincstudying sea lions on the Galapagos tion? Islands off Ecuador, we are far more As soon as I can secure your mailconcerned that we no longer know ing address I will forward a copy of the state of groundfish stocks off our Dr. Wilfred Templeman’s Marine coast. History of Newfoundland. Read it We are losing top-level retiring sci- please, and try to understand why we entists who are not being replaced. feel such resentment toward a bunch And, by the way, all signs point to of bureaucrats in an ivory tower on another plot to move the Kent Street who are totally incapable Newfoundland and Labrador region of providing the standard of fisheries of DFO to Halifax in the same devi- management required here in ous manner Ottawa moved the weath- Newfoundland and Labrador. It’s not er station to Nova Scotia from difficult to understand why our fishGander. Those two eminent scientists eries are in such a state when one you referred to (George Rose and Ed reads your letter to The Independent. Sandeman), along with a supporting Gus Etchegary, group of experienced industry peoPortugal Cove-St. Philip’s
‘An amazingly evocative photograph’ Dear editor, “A picture is worth a thousand words.” So says the old cliché. Indeed this is so true and ample evidence of this would be all the high quality photographs produced in your paper. None more so than the front-page photograph in the Aug. 21-27 edition entitled From one field to another, by Ray Fennelly. Rarely have I ever seen
a photograph that encapsulates what it means to live in this place at this time. It shows a slice of a moment that instantaneously connects our past and our future together on to one canvas. An amazingly evocative photograph. Well done Ray. Michael Boyle, St. John’s
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
Pride and prejudice S
ummer is a great time to be around the bay, especially when a Newfoundlander living away returns for a visit. Like a salmon run, it’s one of the great natural wonders of the world to witness, as long as the kids in the backseat aren’t pounding each other silly and the trailer remains safely hitched to the arse end. (Nothing worse than a soft-top passing you when it’s your own.) Newfoundlanders are eager enough when they start their journey home from foreign destinations like Trono, but the final 10-hour drive across the island from Port aux Basques takes the good out of them, so that they arrive back on their native shore pretty much done, flopping on the front-room couch like a spent salmon. But then spawning isn’t the driving force behind a Newfoundlander’s return. He comes home with the wife and kiddies to see Nanny and Pop and the other relatives still firmly planted on the harbour sill. He comes home for the kids to experience the Newfoundland he grew up with. A taste of the freedom an outport offers, to go off by themselves for a few hours in the woods, up the road or down the shore without fear of being mugged or maimed. Drive-by shootings are a remote possibility, but only if you’re a moose. The fog may look like smog, but it doesn’t singe the lungs to breathe it in. It’s easy enough to spot a Newfoundlander who’s been on the mainland a few years. He sticks out like a tourist on Water Street in Town. Wide-eyed and hurried, like they’ve never seen the place before. And they use cross walks, whereas locals step into the middle of the street and stare traffic down. The Newfoundlanders who’ve been away occupy themselves with lookin’ and smellin’ and tastin’ and spendin’. “You can smell salt in the air,” they say. That’s right, so you can. It’s always nice to talk to a
RYAN CLEARY
Fighting Newfoundlander Newfoundlander who’s been away, to hear if they’ve picked up the accent or not. Some sound like mainlanders after a two-week vacation to see their brother or sister in Mississauga. The sound is awful — using eh in the same sentence that they drop the H from Holyrood. Others, those who’ve been away long enough and didn’t have a clue to begin with, refer to themselves as newfies — and are proud of it. They sound foreign, as if they never belonged here, or understood the place.
The Newfoundlanders who’ve been away occupy themselves with lookin’ and smellin’ and tastin’ and spendin’. “You can smell salt in the air,” they say.
Even better than talking to a Newfoundlander who’s been away, is to talk to his mainland wife. Especially if she works for the federal government. One such senior civil servant, here on annual vacation from Ottawa, told me there’s a simple enough reason why immigrants to Canada don’t want to settle here. “Why would they,” she said, “Newfoundlanders don’t even want to stay here.” And how wrong is that? What Newfoundlander living away
wouldn’t move back home in a heartbeat if they had the opportunity — if the job was here and the money was right? It’s not that Newfoundlanders and Labradorians want to move — it’s that they have no choice but to move. Big difference. When Danny Williams talks about rebranding that’s what he’s talking about. Mainlanders see Newfoundland and Labrador a certain way — poor, out of work, uneducated. Fishless fishermen and placid plant workers. That’s pretty much it. There are positives: easy-going, funny, partiers, storytellers — not to be taken overly serious, and we’re not. If the federal bureaucrats — no, scratch that — if the rest of Canada saw us differently they would treat us differently, which is why our image needs a makeover. Why should the federal government give us anything if we’re not deserving? Even then, there’s the central Canadian attitude to get past. Following last fall’s cost-benefit analysis, The Globe and Mail carried out a review of The Independent’s findings. As part of the review, a photographer was dispatched to take pictures of the staff. While at the office, the photographer, a pleasant enough guy, talked about the province’s future as it relates to oil and gas and how promising it looks. He scoffed at Alberta’s prosperity in recent years, saying he couldn’t wait until that province ran out of oil so the people there would come down from their high horses and lose the attitudes. I remember thinking to myself, “Wouldn’t it be nice if Newfoundland and Labrador found itself in Alberta’s shoes someday.” Rebranding is just the ticket for changing attitudes, but it’s no cure for central Canadian prejudice. Ryan Cleary is managing editor of The Independent. ryan.cleary@theindependent.ca
AUGUST 28, 2005
INDEPENDENTNEWS • 7
A dark time in the shire O
nce upon a time, not that long ago and not far away, there lived a scribe. The scribe toiled for the oldest broadsheet in the shire. The broadsheet was old and tired, and had lost its way, but the good people of the shire still read it faithfully. When asked why, many confessed they read it out of habit. “Why do I read it?” they would respond, perplexed. “Why … because I always have,” was often the reply. Some would add: “Well, there’s the obits, and I enjoy the scribe!” And indeed the scribe was good, and added much to the old broadsheet. But there came a dark time in the shire. There was much discontent. The good people of the shire grew unhappy with the treatment they received from the kingdom to which the shire belonged. Resentment brewed amongst the populace. Up-start broadsheets started popping up like mushrooms. People were asking questions and looking for answers.
IVAN MORGAN
Rant & reason
And bewilderment filled their heads. Some looked to the scribe to offer solace and reason, but he would confound his admirers with his scribblings. They would follow him through hill and dale, over the soggiest bog and through the densest forest, always in hope for insight or answers to their questions. Often, at the end of their journey, they would find that he had been making the Buddhist point — that it was not the destination but the trip that mattered. Some would mutter sourly. Others began to ignore the scribe. But the scribe seemed unaware, or worse still, indifferent, to their reactions. Soon, lesser scribes, writing in new, upstart broadsheets, began asking their own questions, and making bold state-
ments — statements never made by the old broadsheet. The populace gathered in small groups in public houses and in the market square, eagerly reading the work of these new scribes. Some began to complain that the old broadsheet in general, and the scribe in particular, had grown out of touch with the feelings of the tremulous and bewildered populace. Some — a few — began to prefer these new scribes. Yet some of us lesser scribes stuck by him. Don’t be so hard on the scribe, we exhorted. Who among us can swat it out of the park every week? The scribe had crushing responsibilities at the old broadsheet. OK, so sometimes his writings were vague and obtuse. It mattered not to the lesser scribes, who enjoyed him nonetheless. Besides, when he felt like saying something, it was good. The lesser scribes beamed in admiration. But the lesser scribes also scribbled furiously for fun and profit, and they had the temerity to feel they might also have something to say. They asked
questions about the kingdom — pointed questions — questions that needed to be asked. They made provocative statements that rattled the powers that be. They got attention for their scribbling. It was then that the scribe got nasty. He wrote that the good people of the kingdom were fools to ask questions. He pointed out that the good people of the shire were too dependent on welfare payments from the kingdom. They, he implied in a world-weary tone, know not what they say. There were many in the shire who took his tone to be condescending. Too dependent on welfare to make a change? Other, lesser scribes took umbrage to their scribbling being referred to as “beer philosophy.” Then the lesser scribes began muttering dark things too. Was the scribe drawing a line? Did the scribe want to dance? For if the scribe wanted to dance, he’d have to come back out of the woods and leave his thesaurus home. It might appear to some that the
scribe thought himself somehow superior to his ink-stained colleagues. It might come to pass (only as a self-serving ploy to draw attention to their own humble efforts, of course) that some of the lesser scribes might come to target the scribe for his pompous, condescending, patronizing tone. What, prithee, had the lesser scribes to lose? What might become of the old broadsheet then? What if the populace came to see it as the voice of the kingdom, not the shire? What if the populace took umbrage at being sneered at from the lofty heights of the corporate world of the kingdom that they so resented? What if the populace began to think that the editorial policy of the old broadsheet seemed to be “Keep your mouth shut, cash your welfare cheques, and buy the stuff advertised in our flyers?” I think it might bode ill for both the scribe and the old broadsheet. Ivan Morgan can be reached at ivan.morgan@gmail.com
REST IN PEACE, SAILOR
YOUR VOICE
Taking the CBC to task Editor’s note: the following is a letter written by Scott Yates, a 29-year employee of CBC Radio in St. John’s, to Richard Yerema, editor of Canada’s Top 100 Employers. Dear Mr. Yerema: I am a technician with the CBC and I just spent $23 of my first lockout pay on the 2005 edition of Canada’s Top 100 Employers. CBC made this year’s list and is now using that recognition to help justify to Canadians that they have the right to shut down the CBC and lockout its 5,500 unionized employees (CBC’s full-time workforce is 8,860, according to your publication). CBC’s open letters in local and national newspapers refer to your publication as well. At first glance, I found it ironic that CBC earned high grades in “health, financial and family benefits” and “vacation and time off” — benefits hard won at the bargaining table by our unions. These are the same benefits that many of our temporary employees will never enjoy and have never enjoyed as a result of the increasing casualization of our workforce. Now, after locking out members of the Canadian Media Guild, CBC holds up membership in your publication as justification for trying to erode a skilled, dedicated workforce and breaking its union.
Is this how you intended your publication to be used? There is one criterion not listed in your publication: methods used to negotiate contracts with employees. How much weight did your publication give to labour relations? How much weight did your publication give to the fact that CBC management has been for many years incapable of negotiating collective agreements with its employees? How many of the Top 100 have had one strike and two lockouts since 1999? CBC’s shareholders, the Canadian public, are being fed misinformation by CBC management. Unfortunately, membership in your publication contributes to that misinformation. Your publication gives the impression that CBC is a well-managed company with very content employees. Shouldn’t a well-managed company that’s accountable to its shareholders be able to negotiate a contract with its employees without repeatedly putting them on the street? In the final paragraph of the preface you talk about “Our greatest satisfaction comes from seeing what happens to employers once they make the Canada’s Top 100 Employers list.” You must be really proud of the CBC. Again, I ask, is this how you intended your publication to be used? Scott Yates, St. John’s
The Rooms controversy: ‘It cries out to be rectified’ Dear editor, A number of years ago Larry Small publicly supported me over a letter to the editor I wrote complaining about one of the Department of Education’s inane policies at the time. I now return the favour with reference to his letter published in the Aug. 14-20 edition — The Rooms: What are we to believe? — of your excellent newspaper. I support the concept of The Rooms — a place where we can properly store and proudly display all our treasures. I agree with the name The Rooms — I still go back to “the room” in Barrow Harbour, Bonavista Bay where my English ancestor landed over 200 years ago. It is a spiritual experience. I like the design and location of The Rooms — from the harbour arterial it puts a whole new dimension on the city skyline. And the view from the top floor? As the security guard said to me last week, “It’s my favourite display.” But what is a poor outharbour man
to believe from the sketches he gets from the media regarding the latest (but not first) sudden dismissal of personnel from our public centre? Thank you, Larry, for putting it in perspective. Yes, by God, we’ve waited 500 years for this edifice, and it belongs to us — the people of Newfoundland and Labrador. So if the appointed board is not acting on our behalf, and particularly on behalf of the many esteemed artists of the province, then turf them out. Come on Danny, you stood up for us when we were slighted by Ottawa. This is small stuff by comparison. But as Larry says, there has been a betrayal of trust here, an affront to the dignity of “this place,” the people of the province have been insulted. And it cries out to be rectified. Oh yeah, and I, too, prefer the Art Gallery of Newfoundland and Labrador. Thanks again, Larry. Roy Babstock, Eastport
Pro wrestler, taxi driver and political candidate Ed “Sailor” White died Aug. 26 at the age of 56. White, a one time WWF tag-team champion, was known for his colourful antics — and his brushes with the law. White was driving his taxi last December when it hydroplaned and crashed, reportedly breaking two bones in his neck. A funeral mass for Sailor White is scheduled for Aug. 29, 9:30 a.m. at St. John Bosco Church. Paul Daly/The Independent
The duel citizenship fray Dear editor, I am responding to Michael Harris’ column of Aug. 21, entitled More fight out of a dead dog. The choice of topic was the appointment of Michaëlle Jean as Governor General, bringing forth what has to be the worst traits of our collective psyche — narrowmindedness, bigotry and, in the case of the sovereignists, crass opportunism. I had no intention of getting into the fray myself until I got half way through Harris’ column and this sentence: “There is the fact that she is a citizen of France as well as of Canada, an undisputed and built-in division of loyalties.” I have the privilege, like many other Canadians, of holding dual citizenship and, frankly, this is the first instance where I felt it might be considered a handicap — a sin even — since it seems to guarantee that my loyalties are divided. I wonder whether the late Dr. Alain Frecker who, like me, was born in St-Pierre-Miquelon and who was hence a French citizen, made sure his constituents were aware of his so-
Michaelle Jean
Reuters
called divided loyalties before running for office and becoming minister of education. Should my previous employer, Radio-Canada, have been conscious that by letting me become a reporter in Newfoundland and Labrador they were running the risk of my being co-opted by French media outlets? Should I con-
fess my dual citizenship to every person I work with or associate with, in case he or she wants to trust me with state secrets? Should I renounce any ambition I might have towards higher office in this country, one that has been mine for more than 30 years? Should I resign myself to the fact that I now seem to be a second-class citizen whose loyalties are to remain forever in doubt? The fact is that Canada, France and many other countries make new citizens but never lose them. Once you attain citizenship, you cannot renounce it, and why should you? What counts is where you choose to live, to vote, to make your mark — in a word, to contribute. What those of us who hold dual citizenship bring to Canada is a greater commitment to the country we choose to live in, a wider understanding of the world and a more tolerant approach to different points of view, attributes sorely lacking in this great country, as evidenced by this latest column. Françoise Enguehard, St. John’s
Fisheries science: ‘a monumental disaster’ Dear editor, Someone wrote to ask me what it is that I consider to be asinine about Dr. Wendy Watson-Wright’s letter to The Independent (Aug. 21-27 edition). Here is my reply. Knowing how they think up there, would it be reasonable to expect anything different. Reporter Alisha Morrissey is just another dumb newfie who doesn’t know what she’s talking about and should be put in her place and told to shut up. Like a hen-hawk, Watson-Wright swoops down on Morrissey’s alleged statistical “mistakes,” while dismissing the terrible tragedy to which attention is being drawn, and of which we are the primary victims. The issue is not Canada’s science program, but Canada’s fisheries science program — a monumental dis-
aster. It is not the asinine component of Watson-Wright’s comments that infuriates me as much as it is representative of the Canadian federal mindset that
“Canada a world leader in fisheries science.” Indeed! refuses to acknowledge any responsibility for one of the greatest ecological disasters in recorded history, not only in terms of the destruction of a great food resource, but the destruction of a centuries-old culture and way of life that
was symbiotic. In typical patronizing fashion, she reminds Morrissey of Minister Geoff Regan’s $11 million commitment, incapable perhaps of comprehending how far short that falls of the real needs, and how little compensation it is for the multi-billions, in monetary terms, we have lost, and continue to lose, as a result of the ignorance and incompetence of that Ottawa DFO bunch of nincompoops whom she would defend. “Canada a world leader in fisheries science.” Indeed! Clearly, there can be no future for Newfoundland as long as we continue to carry the curse of the 1949 albatross about our necks. The time is long past for talking. Lloyd C. Rees, Conception Bay South
AUGUST 28, 2005
8 • INDEPENDENTNEWS
Make-work not ‘menial’ anymore: minister By Alisha Morrissey The Independent
carried out. Projects are expected to begin in early September rather than later in the winter. “We’re right on schedule for that,” Byrne says of the community-enhancement program, adding the schedule allows for more substantial projects. “So it’s not just out cutting brush … it’s projects for the long term,” Byrne says. That said, one of the successful applications under the crab-support program will see Brigus receive $26,500 for shingling, trail cutting, ditching and brush cutting. The intent of the community enhancement program is to create infrastructure that will lead to full-time jobs, he says, but it will take time. “We’ve been here for 500 years. This is not something that’s going to turn around in eight or 10 months; we have to lay plans, put plans in place and that’s what we’re trying to do. “We’re hoping that in due course … this program will be reduced because we will be creating jobs in the communities.” One of the things that brought the Tories to power was a platform of mak-
ing make-work a thing of the past. In fact, Byrne told The Independent last year he was looking forward to the end of the annual programs. Former premier Brian Tobin also promised to put an end “to painting the graveyard fence,” to create meaningful, dignified employment during his run for the province’s top government job, a pledge he couldn’t live up to when he made it to the eighth floor. So far there have been 1,285 workers apply for jobs under the crab-support program, with $1.6 million allocated. “We said we would assist those people … and it was a quite legitimate, logical thing to do and statement to make and we did that and we’re doing that.” Last year, between the province and the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency (ACOA) more than $34.25 million was spent in Newfoundland and Labrador on job creation. ACOA paid out $30 million in a socalled short-term adjustment initiative in an attempt to employ 1,800 “codaffected workers” at 187 projects in communities around the province. The province paid $4.5 million for 450 jobcreation programs.
Take Hitler. and different promises to please anothHitler was a rather small man in er, in a continuous fight towards grabstature. It’s said he was beaten by his bing the upper hand. father, was a bit of a mommy’s boy and But too little confidence can cause a unpopular with the ladies. certain type of person or an institution And Stalin (also vertically chal- to turn inwards, compulsively obsesslenged). He contracted smallpox as a ing and self-analysing. Suddenly the child, which scarred him for life and leprechauns are bungee jumping. When earned him the unfortunate nickname this happens it’s easy to lose sight of Pocky. He was common sense and renowned for being enter a zone of mild cunning and highly susOver the course of a insanity. Whether picious — particularly that means you lifetime, we all take of Hitler, as it happens. become too nice or Between them they too nasty is anyone’s knocks, and some were responsible for the guess. deaths of close to 100 There’s a lot to be harder than others. million people. said for taking a Organized religions deep breath and Newfoundland and are arguably sustained imagining everyone by some of the biggest Labrador should know. in the room is naked insecurities of all — a — leprechauns need for vindication included. and a need to belong. (Incidentally, the small green men Politics and nations are definitely are said to vanish if you look away.) propelled by insecurities: a declaration Over the course of a lifetime, we all of war to prove decisiveness; a declara- take knocks, and some harder than othtion of peace to show magnanimity. ers. Newfoundland and Labrador Promises to please one set of people should know.
What happens to a unique and fragile nation when it suffers continuous beatings? A struggling nation that eventually forfeits its independence in the hopes of solving poverty only to discover it may have made a big mistake? That nation could be forgiven for becoming either too ingratiating in the hopes of finding salvation, or downright bitchy in the act of placing blame. Two things Newfoundland and Labrador have been accused of over the years. It seems to me, figuring out what’s best for the future of Newfoundland and Labrador shouldn’t involve obsessively analysing past hurts and it shouldn’t be about pointing the finger — or rolling over either. It should be about finding the balance, turning the inner, ever-searching eye outwards and using experience to strike a common ground between self-confidence, humility and ultimately success. And lynching the leprechaun.
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unicipal Affairs Minister Jack Byrne says despite two major make-work programs costing the province $22 million this year, government is making “good progress” in getting away from job creation. The two programs include a socalled community-enhancement project, which has the same $4.5 million budget as last year, and another $18million project exclusively for crab workers impacted by this year’s short season. Make-work helps a person qualify for Employment Insurance (EI). Makework can also be used to top-up EI benefits. Byrne says he can’t compare the number of applications received to date this year versus the number of applications approved as requests are still pouring in. The deadline for the so-called crabsupport program is Dec. 31, while the community-enhancement project has an Aug. 31 deadline. “I believe that we were making good
Make work: more than moving rocks?
progress in getting away from those job creational make-work projects,” Byrne tells The Independent. In previous years, he says programs were implemented too late in the year and government found itself scram-
Paul Daly/The Independent
bling to find money to pay for makework. This year money was allocated in the budget for employment projects and application deadlines were early enough for an appeals process to be
Lynching the leprechaun W
hy is a criticism so much easier to believe than a compliment? You can bet your life if 10 people compliment you and just one person criticizes, that single negative comment will stick like glue, the only one to make any sense. It’ll bounce around your head like a gleeful leprechaun for days to come. And for some odd reason that leprechaun seriously knows his stuff. “Ah to be sure, you’ve as much talent as a dead dog and you’re funny looking to boot.” It seems nobody ever really gets away from those prancing leprechauns, no matter how successful they are. Nicole Kidman, in a recent article, admitted she feels inadequate every time she starts a new movie. She said, without the fear, she’d have no motivation to succeed. Perhaps that’s why we instinctively hone in on our own negative qualities; it forces us to push the limits. Without insecurities, where would the world be? I believe insecurities are one of the
CLARE-MARIE GOSSE Brazen
biggest motivators behind most types of human behaviour and one of the single biggest reasons anything good or bad ever happens at all. They shape personalities. A certain level of insecurity can make a person too nice. I’m sure I’m only ever polite because I assume I have no right to be otherwise. And I guess I can blame insecurity for the fact I check my teeth after every meal (there’s nothing quite so fearful to me as the image of my own clueless grin decorated with foliage). Some go too far. We’ve all met people who are self-deprecating, desperate for approval and overly eager to please. On the other hand, we’ve also met the she- and he-bitches from hell, who’d roast you on a spit soon as look at you. Nothing causes a dog to bite quicker than fear.
Clare-Marie Gosse is The Independent’s senior writer. clare-marie.gosse@theindependent.ca
YOUR VOICE
‘Energy alone will not make us rich’
PM found his backbone
Dear editor, Let me see if I have this straight. Sue KellandDyer thinks we can develop hydro electricity power ourselves (Power within, Aug. 21-27 edition), attract industry from other parts of Canada-U.S. in direct competition with cheap Chinese labour and use the profits to enhance home-grown industries? Sounds to me like another case of develop resources (or equalization-transfer programs) to “creatively” keep the economy of St. John’s going (i.e. civil service jobs) as was done in the past. If you could, oh genius of economic development, maybe tell me why the Bay d’Espoir region hasn’t seen this so-called economic boom since that region had one of the biggest hydro-electric power projects in Atlantic Canada in the last 50 years?
California wine producers with similar levies? We Dear editor, Well, it appears our prime minister isn’t such a have our own Niagara region that produces beau“ditherer” after all. While I am rarely impressed tiful wines. Why not impose similar restriction on by Paul Martin, I take heart in one very important the import of water? Their contempt of NAFTA, the North American current issue. He seems to have found his backbone in dealing Free Trade Agreement, is astonishing, especially with our neighbours to the south, the U.S. For since the U.S. was the original proponent of NAFTA. And now, with their years now, the U.S. has ignored scornful attitude of this freely rulings from virtually every govnegotiated agreement with parterning body with regard to the We don’t have to ner countries, it is time for action. softwood lumber dispute. The While they may be the only World Trade Organization has take their water. superpower left in the world, the continually reprimanded the U.S. rest of us must stop cowering in for its levies on our softwood. And we certainly trepidation. Just because they’re Now NAFTA has joined in the chorus. do not have to take the biggest, mouthiest kid on the Even a court in the U.S. itself playground does not make them their crap. has ruled against their protectionright. Might does not equal right, ist policies when it comes to as virtually every schoolyard importing our softwood. We, in bully must eventually learn. Canada, are well within our rights to impose simSo, if they refuse to play by the rules that they ilar duties and levies in retaliation. And it appears happily negotiated we have no choice but to that Paul Martin will not shy away from doing so. defend ourselves. We don’t have to take their wine. We don’t have If the U.S. is determined to proceed with its own unilateral, illegal actions on the softwood issue, to take their water. And we most certainly do not the time has come for Canada to strike back. After have to take their crap. Debbie Burton, all, the U.S. has collected over $5 billion in illegal revenue because of this. So, why not stick Mount Pearl
As I recall, there aren’t any aluminum smelters or steel mills in that region. This is another case of St. John’s mentality of developing “our” resources to keep the economy of the Avalon northeast humming along while the rest of the province withers away. Whether we like it or not, energy alone will not make us rich (a story on homeless and minimum wage in Calgary will tell you that) and the provincial government would be much better off implementing an innovation fund (which it doesn’t have) to finance some of the “new” ideas that are out there. The money is already there, just remove it from the hands of the zealous civil servants who want to keep their little empires afloat. Angus Campbell, St. John’s
AUGUST 28, 2005
INDEPENDENTNEWS • 9
‘Beyond belief’ A review of the Newfoundland National Convention (1946-1948) By Ryan Cleary The Independent
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The triage bus.
Rhonda Hayward/The Independent
ER on wheels Converted Metrobus on standby — just in case By Darcy MacRae The Independent
$20,000. The 50-foot bus — which is housed, cleaned and maintained by St. John’s Metrobus — is self-contained and has he Health Care Corporation of St. John’s has at least various power sources, including its own generator. one piece of equipment that no other province in The unit also has an external scene halogen lighting sysAtlantic Canada has. tem mounted on tripods with adjustable heads, hot and cold Paramedic Art Simms of the Health Sciences Ambulance running water, a fridge, stove, microwave and bathroom Department says the health care corporation’s emergency facilities. response triage unit — also known as ERTU and ER 2 — “You never know how long you could be on site,” Simms is the only such machine east of Quebec, something he’s says. “It could be anywhere from 12-48 hours. This allows quite proud of. you to come in from the cold, eat and have something to “We are extremely fortunate to have such a piece of drink.” equipment,” Simms tells The On the inside, the only part of the Independent. “Not every city has one. ERTU that still resembles a bus is the It’s a luxury.” steering wheel. The rest of the bus has “You never know how The ERTU can be spotted at any been completely converted. Supplies major car accident, fire or potential disare stored safely in wooden cabinets long you could be on aster in or around St. John’s. It’s a virtulining the sidewalls, while a curtained al emergency room on wheels, equipped area is available at the back. site … This allows you with enough medical equipment, supWhile major surgeries still have to be plies and oxygen to replenish a field to come in from the cold, performed at a hospital, minor proceresponse team on site. It holds numerdures can take place on the ERTU, ous stretchers and makeshift wheeleat and have something including splinting broken bones and chairs. bandaging wounds. to drink.” It has countless packages of medicaAs well as providing relief on the tions and painkillers on board, stored scene of an accident or fire, the triage safely in one of its many wooden cabiunit also allows for good communicaParamedic Art Simms nets. Safety equipment — hard hats, tion between the accident site and hossteel-toe rubber boots, insulated rainpital. Cellular phones and portable coats — are also on hand. It holds enough medication and radios are used by field operatives to communicate back to supplies for more than a dozen emergency rooms. the unit as well as to all field paramedics, physicians, nurs“When you go to a site, you have to be prepared for any- es, and responding ambulances. It also allows for commuthing,” Simms says. nication with fire departments, the coast guard, and all The process of creating the ERTU was kick started by emergency measures organizations. emergency room physician Richard Barter, then program Since it was built, the vehicle has responded to numerous director Louanne Kinsella and EMS manger Dan Crocker airport calls, fires and car accidents. It was called into in the mid-’90s. A few years later a bus was donated by St. action on Sept. 11, 2001 to conduct medical examinations John’s Metrobus, and the conversion into an emergency on diverted passengers, as well as provide medication to response vehicle began. passengers whose pills were locked in the luggage departFunding for the project was supplied through a grant ment of their plane. from Emergency Preparedness Canada. The bus was conAlthough the ERTU has never had to respond to a disasverted into the multitasking piece of equipment it is today ter such as a plane crash or major explosion, Simms says it by Country Trailer Sales in Kelligrews at a cost of close to is reassuring to know the vehicle is always fully stocked and ready to go if an emergency does come along. “I hope we never have such a disaster,” he says. “But if we do, at least we’ll be prepared for it.”
T
ander may have prospered during the Second World War, but its airport — one of the world’s largest at the time — lost a fortune. In a move later described as “incomprehensible,” the Government of Newfoundland took over the airport and its operating losses — estimated at between $500,000 and $1 million a year — on April 1, 1946. The government of the day — run by a six-man commission — approved the takeover, despite the fact the only plane it owned was a single-engine, twoseater “which had been written off as useless.” There were three main considerations with the takeover: the Newfoundland government had to pay $1 million to Canada for the infrastructure it had constructed at the Gander airport over the course of the war, as well as equipment Canada left behind; government had to pay another $500,000 to convert the military installations to civilian use; and, finally, government faced an annual operating loss of up to $1 million a year — to be shouldered entirely by Newfoundland taxpayers. Those were high prices for Newfoundlanders to pay to operate a huge airport for the convenience of wealthy international airlines.
DOUBTFUL PRIVILEGE The takeover went ahead anyway — stirring a flurry of outrage. “That the Commission of Government decided to make the Newfoundland people pay such prices for such a doubtful privilege is to us almost beyond belief,” read a December 1946 report into the operation of the Gander airport. The report was prepared by delegates to the Newfoundland National Convention, held in 1946-48 to decide the country’s future post-commission government. Teetering on bankruptcy, the colony had signed away democracy in the form of responsible government in 1934 in favour of a government run by an appointed commission. By the mid-1940s, Newfoundland’s finances had turned around — primarily due to the outbreak of the war and the country’s strategic location in relation to Europe. Military bases popped up all over the island and Labrador, creating thousands of jobs in a country starved for work. The National Convention was held to get a handle on Newfoundland’s finances, to determine if the colony could once again be self-supporting. The Gander airport certainly wasn’t. According to the transportation report, the commission government (more specifically, the commissioner responsible for public utilities) was asked why it had agreed to “saddle” itself with such a huge “unnecessary” expense. The commissioner “made no comment.” The commissioner was also asked whether the commission government had made the “extraordinary” decision to take over the Gander airport at the request of the British government. Again, no comment.
Road to CONFEDERATION AN ONGOING SERIES It was then suggested the commission government could have refused to take over the Gander airport — “that if the foreign airlines wanted to use it, Newfoundland would operate it at the airlines’ expense.” The commissioner declined comment. Indeed, one of the frustrations of the National Convention was that it couldn’t retrieve reliable information from the commission government. When the transportation report was presented to the National Convention, held at the Colonial Building in St. John’s, the delegates were furious. The late Michael Harrington, a delegate and future editor of The Evening Telegram (1959-1982), called the way in which the Gander airport was operated a “public scandal. “The most reasonable thing to do would be to close down Gander. It is like a man with $3,000 a year trying to operate a 50-car garage for the benefit of his neighbours. It is a disgrace.” At the time of its construction in 1939, Gander was the largest airport in the world. During the war years, an estimated 6,500 British and 10,000 U.S. aircraft touched down on its runways. The foreign governments were charged little, if anything, for use of the airport. In fact, until April 1941, when the airport was leased free to the Canadian government, the Newfoundland government paid half the $200,000 annual operating costs. STRATEGIC POSITION Delegates to the National Convention said not only should the airport have been run without loss to Newfoundland, but the colony “should have gotten something out of it.” “We have a strategic position, but it seems to have been given away,” said Robert Job, delegate for St. John’s east. Delegate Edgar Hickman, who also represented St. John’s East, said Newfoundland should have refused to operate the airport. “How Newfoundland came to be forced into a deal that would put our poor little country in that position, to finance an airport for the great power of the world, I cannot understand.” Said Twillingate delegate Thomas Ashbourne: “I believe that the vast majority of the people of Newfoundland have thought that the airports on our soil would have been real assets to this country, and not, as we find out today, a liability.” When Newfoundland joined Confederation in 1949 Canada took over civil aviation, including the Gander airport, as outlined in the Terms of Union. In 1996, Transport Canada handed control of the airport over to the Gander International Airport Authority. The background for this column is taken from The Newfoundland National Convention, 1946-1948, by James Hiller and the late Michael Harrington, available through the Newfoundland Historical Society and various retail outlets.
AUGUST 28, 2005
10 • INDEPENDENTNEWS
LIFE STORY Rufus Guinchard, 1899-1990 By Alisha Morrissey The Independent
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‘Young at heart sort of person’
ate in his life people began asking Rufus Guinchard about the secret to his longevity. Guinchard always said he “lived every day like it was going to be his last and acted like he was going to live forever,” says his good friend and long-time musical partner Jim Payne. Guinchard’s name is now memorialized by a hospital, scholarship and music festival in the province, but for 91 years (and one day) he was known as a musical icon in Newfoundland and Labrador, who would walk as many miles as it took to get to an event to play the fiddle. “People would get a message to Rufus that they wanted him to play an event and it was nothing for him to walk 10, 20 sometimes 50 miles to play for a wedding or something,” Payne tells The Independent. “There’s times he would come out of the woods and play all night and go straight back into the woods again.” Guinchard learned to play the fiddle at the age of 11, and it was because he was so shy that he perfected his own style of holding the instrument. He would sit on a table, feet up on a chair, peering out the window at the garden path (making sure no one was coming). In order to avoid striking the window with the bow as he played, he’d hold the violin with his left hand — the body of it pressed to the right side of his chest — holding the bow halfway up the shaft. He was later known by the unique style, but avoided speaking on stage or in front of a group
of people. n’t realize it until later in life when younger genPayne travelled the world with Guinchard erations would question him about it. during the last decade and a half of his life. “I remember talking to him one time just “He was a great friend and mentor, certainly about modern ills and people getting stressed to me, and you know, I learned so much from out and he found that hilarious, that people him, the least of which was about music,” Payne would be emotionally stressed out about somesays in an interview one week before the 15th thing, when all during his lifetime people anniversary of Guinchard’s death. worked so hard physically,” Payne says, laugh“He was also a wealth of knowledge, I mean, ing at the memory. “(For Guinchard) there was let’s face it he was born in 1899,” Payne says. no time to sort of mope about and get all worked “He lived through the 20th up about something in your century in Newfoundland just head because there’s always “He found that about.” something to be done.” Guinchard’s grandfather Guinchard wasn’t “discovhilarious, that people ered” as a musician until he was the first of his name on the island. After fighting in the 72 years old, but at that would be emotionally was Crimean War, the senior point he began performing with Guinchard found himself on a traditional musicians and stressed out … when other fishing vessel in the Strait of travelling the world — from Belle Isle. He jumped ship, all during his lifetime Europe to Asia, Canada and the swam to shore and waited United States — with some of until the ship left, before setthe province’s most legendary people worked so ting up house and home. musicians. hard physically” Guinchard junior lived in “He was amazingly enerDaniel’s Harbour on the getic, and remained so up until Jim Payne Northern Peninsula from the just a couple of weeks before time he was born until shortly he died,” Payne says, adding after his first wife, Prudence, Guinchard used to say he was died during the birth of their ninth child in 1946. living on someone else’s time in his later years. Shortly after Guinchard moved to Port “He was always a sort of young at heart sort of Saunders, where he met and married his second person.” wife, Carrie Ploughman, in 1949. The couple As for Guinchard’s faults, Payne says there had three more children together. weren’t many besides a little impatience. Guinchard was a labourer for most of his life Payne does say it’s the “irony of ironies” that with his last job — at the age of 68 — working the Rufus Guinchard Health Centre in Port as a night watchman. Saunders is named after the famous fiddler. Payne says Guinchard was a historical “He was never sick a day in his life. He had no resource on life in rural Newfoundland, but did- time for doctors.”
FROM THE BAY “The 1980 soccer season is just around the corner and teams and players alike are preparing. The first division looks like it will be better than ever. The first division will have four teams this year, they will include the Laurentians, Yeti, the All Blacks and Wabush.” — From Labrador Free Press, May 21, 1980 YEARS PAST “While asbestos is a mineral and indestructible either by fire or the action of the elements, it can be woven into cloth like silk. Its great value commercially is just being recognized and its future possibilities and uses are incalculable. Canada produces about 90
per cent of the world’s supply.” — From the Evening Herald, Sept. 7, 1909 AROUND THE WORLD “A bulletin from London says the German dreadnaught (battleship) Hindenburg is reported sunk. The
Hindenburg was Germany’s newest dreadnaught completed since the opening of the war and regarded as the last word in German naval construction. She was a ship of 29,000 tons.” — From St. John’s Daily Star, June 3, 1916
LETTER TO THE EDITOR “Dear sir, death has again visited our little community of Templeman (Bonavista Bay) and has taken away a well-respected citizen in the person of William Templeman, who departed this life at the age of 65 years … God thought it best to take him from a world of sin and sorrow to be with Him in paradise and we know that our earthly loss is his heavenly gain.” — From The Fisherman’s Advocate, Aug. 2, 1929 EDITORIAL STAND “Yep, off to the polls again to try and elect government that will make an honest attempt to cure our ills. I’ve heard it said so often, ‘What’s the use, it doesn’t matter what party is elected,
so why vote?’ This is the attitude we must forget as Canadian citizens we not only have the right to vote, but the duty.” — From The Reporter, Feb. 6, 1980 QUOTE OF THE WEEK “Ask the average Canadian the name of a premier in a province outside his home and there’s every chance he won’t be able to tell you. “But ask any Canadian in any province who the premier of Newfoundland is, and answer is sure to come back: Joey Smallwood.” — Bob Tulk, the newfie-joke man. From the Free Press, April 28, 1971.
INDEPENDENTWORLD
SUNDAY THROUGH SATURDAY, AUGUST 28-SEPTEMBER 4, 2005 — PAGE 11
Paper making in Grand Falls-Windsor.
Paul Daly/The Independent
Mill towns seek new vision In New Brunswick, as in all of Atlantic Canada, it’s time to talk about the details By Lisa Hrabluk Telegraph-Journal
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t’s all downhill into Dalhousie, N.B. Take the Charlo exit off Highway 11, follow the road past the power plant (fueled by Orimulsion) and into this northern town of 4,000. The road, a bit worn on the edges and pot-holed, will crest and then begin its descent, past the grey stone church and the small homes with their vinyl siding, coasting down towards the Restigouche River and the mill. The mill. It sits there, as it has since 1930, running the length of the main street: to the left restaurants, a drug store and other businesses and to the right, the one thing that keeps them all open. Back in its day this paper mill, started by the New Brunswick International Paper Company, boasted of being the largest in the Maritimes, built beside a deep-water port that had, since the early 1800s, ferried the province’s lumber across the Atlantic to Great Britain and a waiting market-
place. continue their slow decline. But its day has now passed. There is so much to think about in New Bowater Inc., which purchased the mill Brunswick and Atlantic Canada these in 1998, makes newsprint here with a third days. of the workforce that once turned pulp to Are we falling behind? Do we need a paper. new deal with Ottawa? It is a tough market to How do we stem the outbe in, producing what migration? industry analysts refer Where will the Are we falling behind? to as low-grade stock, a province’s next era of product that can be easieconomic growth occur? Do we need a new ly and cheaply produced It is so easy to slip into deal with Ottawa? How grand pronouncements elsewhere in the world. An hour down the and even grander plans. do we stem the outhighway in Bathurst, We’ll fly to Europe to they know all about the tempt Eastern migration? race to the bottom that Europeans here. consumes producers of We’ll lower business low-end paper. taxes and embrace highEarlier this month, Smurfit-Stone er education. closed its corrugated cardboard mill and We’ll talk about value-added this and left 267 people unemployed in a small city value-added that and then proudly declare that is already bracing itself for the closing we’re free traders to our core. of its zinc mine in 2009. All such happy thoughts but where, in In Dalhousie, they likely watched and all this chatter, is there room for a place thought that one day that could be them. such as Dalhousie? Sooner rather than later, if the markets This little town, so like other little towns
around the province — St-Quentin, Boisetown, Atholville and Juniper — is built on a heady combination of forests and history. The forestry sector is as old as the province itself, arriving with the Europeans, who after casting their nets for fish, turned to the forests to build boats to carry their catches back home. Today, it is the second-largest of New Brunswick’s exports (behind the lucrative petroleum market), but it is faltering. For instance, paper mills’ exports were valued at $766 million in 2004, down from just over $1 billion in 2000. Pulp mills have also fallen, exporting $469 million last year, down $200 million, a drop of one-third the total value four years earlier. Even sawmills have seen exports decline by just under $100 million to sit at $624 million last year. After four years of worrying and lobbying, the forestry industry has caught the attention of senior cabinet ministers, just See “Lost,” page 14
Truth is the issue
It’s time for Canadians to be heard on the Martin Grits record of failure and dishonesty
T
he latest Strategic Counsel poll, released last week, shows the federal sponsorship scandal has receded from voters’ minds — with only two per cent of Canadians picking it as the most important issue facing the country. In the opinion of veteran pollster Allan Gregg, the worst appears to be over for PM Paul Martin’s Liberals. In his view, the Liberal strategy of doing everything they had to do to weather the crisis — making a budget deal with the NDP, handing a cabinet job to Tory defector Belinda Stronach, announcing billions in additional spending — appears to have paid off. The poll shows the Liberals at 36 per cent support, the Conservatives with
JOHN CROSBIE
The old curmudgeon 28 per cent and the NDP at 17 per cent. Are these results in any way justified by the significant political happenings of this past year? Consider the Liberal spending spree that risks pushing Canada again into deficit, likely preventing any meaningful tax relief for the next five years. Not long after the 2005 budget, the Martin minority government agreed on $9.1 billion in additional spending, including the $4.5-billion deal with the
NDP and $5.7 billion for Ontario — with the result that program spending is now estimated to reach $163.7 billion this year, up 15.8 per cent from the $141.4 billion of just two years ago! The Canadian Council of Chief Executives pointed out June 2 that what Canada needs is sound strategy, not more spending. The magazine The Economist wrote, “Martin has gone from deficit slayer to drunken spender.” Meanwhile, aside from the scandal and corruption revealed by Justice John Gomery’s inquiry into AdScam, the demoralization and decline of our civil service’s skill and morale continued. Auditor-General Sheila Fraser advised the Gomery commission that some of the problems that led to the
sponsorship scandal (e.g., a flawed competition process and poor management) were also found in the government’s regular advertising procedures. The sponsorship program spent $250 million, but from 1998-2003 Ottawa spent $793 million on advertising. Fraser found important problems in the selection of agencies as well as the management of contracts. Then, this past week, the RCMP reported they were closing their files with reference to their investigation of one of the most important political events of the past year — the nownotorious tapes made by Conservative MP Gurmant Grewal. Grewal recorded meetings he had with Martin’s chief of staff, Tim
Murphy, and Health Minister Ujjal Dosanjh regarding the possibility that Grewal and his wife Nina, also a Conservative MP, might cross the floor and join the Liberals. The Mounties indicate nothing criminal occurred. But in my view, transcripts of the tapes indicate the morals and ethics of those close to the PM, and it was fortunate that Grewal recorded these conversations. In speaking about what might be done for the Grewals, for instance, Dosanjh said, “I’m sure rewards are there at some point, right. No one can forget such gestures but they require a certain degree of deniability.” See “Need for honesty,” page 14
AUGUST 28, 2005
12 • INDEPENDENTWORLD
A chance for politics to come in from the cold
Getting ready for flu pandemic
By Chantal Hébert Torstar wire service
By Rita Daly Torstar wire service
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t may come as a surprise to some Liberal MPs but there are worse election mishaps than having one’s campaign signs buried in a snow bank. How about, for instance, witnessing the slow death of all meaningful national discussion as a campaign turns into a race for the intellectual bottom? Or having name-calling contests in both official languages in lieu of leaders’ debates and losing the interest of more disenchanted voters every step of the way? All of the above have been trademarks of the last few federal elections, proving that former prime minister Kim Campbell had a point in 1993 when she undiplomatically argued campaigns were not a suitable format for thrashing out serious issues. Rather than lament the inconvenience of the Prime Minister’s promise of a winter election, party strategists might want to seize the opportunity to bring federal campaigns into the 21st century. It has been 25 years since Canada last went to the polls in the dead of winter. In 1980, there were no cell phones, no Internet, no all-news Canadian networks and certainly no Blackberries. Neither the slower pace, nor the season seemed to stand in the way of a vigorous campaign. Still, no one today wants to go back to this technological dark age. And yet Canada runs campaigns as if an information revolution had not taken place. Leaders sprint from one end of the country, often like zombies, as if they should be defined by their capacity to repeat the same stump speech in as many times zones as possible over as little time as possible. While they preach in halls where the converted are crammed like sardines — the better to provide the image of momentum for the cameras — those who hold contrary views are just as happy to stay outside and demonstrate noisily in the hope of hijacking the day’s coverage. Desperate to break the monotony that usually sets in as early as the second campaign stop, the touring media are usually only too happy to oblige. There has to be a better way to con-
E
very public health unit, hospital, town and city in the Greater Toronto Area is getting ready for a flu pandemic, officials say. “There’s a lot of things going on and have been going on for a long time,” says Dr. Michael Gardam, head of infection control for the University Health Network and a key player in pandemic preparedness plans. “I can say honestly, pandemic flu has taken up probably half my time in the last year.” Among the issues being considered are: the ability to staff hospitals, the need for triage centres to access ill people, alternative care facilities to deal with large numbers of sick people, the development of a volunteer management plan, morgue capacity and absenteeism. “People have to realize everything we do in life will be affected by this,” Gardam says.
Running from one end of the country to the other “like zombies” — is this the best way to campaign? Above, Stephen Harper works on a speech with one of his writers. Reuters
duct such affairs. How about, for instance, a winter campaign centred on a string of debates rather than a crescendo of competing monologues culminating in a make-or-break shouting match in each official language? How about fitting the logistics of the leaders’ tours around debates held in every region of the country? Surely that would not be harder than trying to plan daily flights around an uncertain weather forecast and it would still give all leaders time to touch base with supporters from coast to coast. How about making sure those debates do not turn into a mere road show by agreeing to discuss a different theme on every occasion?
Although the cat seems to have gotten the tongue of many federal politicians in the wake of the Supreme Court
Party strategists might want to seize the opportunity to bring federal campaigns into the 21st century. ruling on medicare, surely the leaders have enough to say on social policy to fill more than the half hour or so devoted to the issue in the last election’s televised debates.
Ditto for the future of free trade. Or the challenges posed by the energy issue. Or the so-called war on terrorism. Surely it no longer makes sense that candidates for the leadership of the same party — who, presumably, are fundamentally like-minded people — have more occasions to debate policy with each other than Canadian leaders do in the lead-up to an election. Some of our politicians have cold feet at the thought of a winter campaign. Good! Then they should be eager for their leaders to come out of the cold and under the sun of the networks’ cameras so that voters can watch them trade ideas in the comfort of their living rooms.
Boy, we complain a lot! By Patrick Evans Torstar wire service
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ere’s something to complain about. Canada is the fourth biggest complainer among countries in the world, according to a new study out of the U.K. NOP World, a British market research company, asked more than 30,000 people in 30 countries if they had lodged a complaint against a company or organization in the past year. The Swiss took the top spot for bellyaching. The U.K. was second and Australia third. At the bottom of the NOP’s list of malcontents were China, Saudi Arabia and Taiwan. “It’s a new culture emerging, with people demanding a high level of service,” says NOP spokeswoman Amanda Wheeler. She says questions about complaining were a new addition to the NOP’s huge annual consumer survey, the Roper Reports Worldwide. The survey examines people’s lifestyle, values and consumer habits. “We brought in a few questions on
complaining … because of the trend we picked up we’ll be asking things more in-depth on next year’s survey. A press release outlining the study results says, “Across the world, those who make complaints tend to be wealthier and better educated — they consume more, they know what they want, and they aren’t prepared to settle for second best.” FREEDOM TO GRIPE Ian Skurnik, a University of Toronto professor who studies consumer psychology, said the NOP survey could be showing more about the freedom to complain in various countries than the levels of annoyance in different cultures. “In a country that doesn’t have the same kind of democratic conditions that Canada does, it’s possible you’re just less willing to lodge a complaint with anybody who seems to be in a position of authority,” he says. “It might be that you actually harbour dissatisfactions and you’re not giving voice to them in this way. You might complain to your friends and family instead.”
SARS LESSONS Hospitals, nursing homes, school boards, ambulance services, business and government are working together to limit the impact of any pandemic in the GTA. Gardam says there’s only so much that can be done to limit its destruction, which is why preparation is so important. And plans are being readied across the region. In Toronto, public health officials have been discussing how to battle a pandemic since late 2002, with a pause in 2003 while the city wrestled with the SARS outbreak. “Our job as public health officials is to make the assumption that it’s going to hit,” says Councillor Joe Mihevc, a member of council’s board of health. “We want to be prepared.” A steering committee has been created with representatives from public health, hospitals and police and fire conducting monthly meetings. And business leaders have been alerted to the risk that a new flu virus could cause skyrocketing absenteeism, changes in demand for goods, decreased travel within the city and have other effects. Fears of a global outbreak have risen since the avian virus spread recently from Asia into Siberia in eastern Russia and Kazakhstan. Health Canada, in its pandemic report released last year, estimates up to one-third of the population could fall ill and more than 50,000 people could die as a result of a pandemic. AIRPORT ENTRY About one million people in the Greater Toronto Area could fall ill, with at least 420,000 requiring medical treatment. Another 7,000 to 8,000 would need in-hospital care. By comparison, 375 people in the GTA were sick with SARS. In Peel Region, health officials are developing a plan that would co-ordinate their efforts with those of police and government, and also create a mechanism for informing the public about possible health risks. Officials are also looking at measures to prevent an outbreak at Pearson airport. Airports can be points of entry for diseases. “The region takes this matter very seriously, given that (Pearson) airport is within its jurisdiction,” says Dr. Hanif Kassam, Peel’s medical officer of health. “If there were to be a pandemic flu ... Peel would be at the hub of the pandemic.” Gardam, who sits on the provincial and federal pandemic committees, says that a pandemic won’t result in hospital closings or the screening of health-care workers. But schools and businesses would be forced to shut down.
AUGUST 28, 2005
INDEPENDENTWORLD • 13
VOICE FROM AWAY
Left: Farmers look back as they wait for the gate to open at 6 a.m. so they can get to their farm. Right: Desmond Parsons by graffiti on a retaining wall in the Duheisheh refugee camp in Bethlehem.
‘The world has got to say no’ Newfoundlander Desmond Parsons is getting a first-hand look at the conflict in Palestine and Israel By Desmond Parsons For the Independent
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hen a friend told me The Independent wanted interesting stories about Newfoundlanders and Labradorians living abroad, I thought my summer might count as a different experience for a boy from Lumsden. I’m studying for the ministry in the United Church of Canada as a candidate from Gower Street United in St. John’s. Currently, I’m working with our partner, the World Council of Churches in their Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel, for three months. The goal of the program is to live in solidarity with Palestinians under occupation, and to work for a non-violent resolution to the conflict in Palestine and Israel in cooperation with Palestinian and Israeli peace activists. The first thing for the crowd from home to understand about Palestinians is, contrary to most of the stuff you get on the news about extremists (on both sides), the people here are basically baymen (not that there is anything wrong with townies!). They are an incredibly friendly lot. Passing by someone’s door is all you need to get invited in for a cup of tea or their incredibly strong and very good, Arabic coffee. I arrived here July 10, and now live in the small market city of Tulkarm, 10 kilometres from Netanya, where the suicide bombing occurred a few weeks ago. When I first arrived, I lived in a small farming community named Jayyous. We were in Jayyous because of the so-called “security fence,” more accurately dubbed the Apartheid Wall. Jayyous is in the West Bank, the area internationally recognized as Palestine, but it is about three kilometres from the 1967 green line (border with Israel). When the Israeli government decided to build the fence, supposedly to secure its people from
terrorist threat, it actually built inside the green theft of land and dignity here in Palestine is horriline, taking large portions of Palestinian land. bly wrong. It’s not about security from “terror.” The fence is now between the community of My colleague from Switzerland (our team is Jayyous, where people live, and the majority of Swiss, Norweigian, Swedish and Canadian) asked the farmland. As well, six of the seven wells for a farmer in nearby Qalqilya if the soldiers treated the town are outside the fence. them differently when internationals were present. Farmers who want to go to their land must go He said yes — but it’s the wrong question. “All every day through the gate to get to their land. the internationals ask this question,” the farmer They can no longer go very early in the morning said, “but if someone steals $100 from you and is to avoid the heat or stay late at polite to you afterwards, night — the gate is only open does that make it right?” certain hours. Each time they The big news these days pass through the gate they are — home, as well as here — But he doesn’t understand is about the pull-out of setsearched by Israeli soldiers. Our group of four accompatlers from Gaza and four why he is searched on niers went to the gate daily. We West Bank settlements. watched 60-year-old farmers the way home. It is just to One has to understand this going to the land of their fathers, is a drop in the bucket to grandfathers, and great-grandfathis particular problem. humiliate, it seems. thers. We watched as their donThe wall now puts most key carts were looked over by settlements on the Israel soldiers the age of their grandside, isolating Palestinians children, and their lunches lifted and looked at. further, stealing their land. One farmer here, a well-spoken man we call Despite incredible restraint by the local Abu Azam (it means Father of Azam, his oldest Palestinian population, eager to see any moveson’s name — it’s the Palestinian equivalent of ment by powerful Israel, they live in a state of fear calling the neighbours “Uncle”), jokes his beat-up from radical settlers who walk around the West Ford tractor is his “F-16,” making fun of its daily Bank with weapons (Palestinians are not allowed inspection by the Israeli Defence Forces. to own guns). He says he can see why they search him on the Most settlers are not extremists who beat down way to the land, now on the same side of the fence as Israel, to make sure he has nothing that could cause any security problems. But he doesn’t understand why he is searched on the way home. It is just to humiliate, it seems. And yet people here hope for a just peace. They go to their mosque and pray. There is always a ready smile as the farmers pass us on the way through the gate. They hope, as we hope, that our presence on behalf of the World Council of Churches sends a message: the world is beginning to realize the
the doors of Palestinian homes and threaten the lives of the inhabitants — but some are. Recently, I visited the town of Yanun where in 2002, 80 settlers did just that. Our organization and others have lived in the village ever since, as violence against Palestinians decreases when there is an international presence. Can you imagine having to invite Swedish, African or Chinese representatives to live in your town in order to be able to stay there? I will go to Yanun again this week for support. There is much tension from the radical settlers who have been protesting this week against the withdrawal. As I write, two of my colleagues are gone to monitor the situation in a Palestinian village near the now vacated settlement of Sa-Nur. Radical settlers recently entered the villages, tormenting local Palestinians as a means to protest their government’s actions. I haven’t been here long, but I’ve been here long enough to know the world has got to say no to this occupation and the extreme oppression of the people of Palestine. It is an interesting, and in some ways rewarding summer, but it is not exactly easy. And yes, it’s extremely hot, on several different levels. Do you know a Newfoundlander or Labradorian living away? Please e-mail editorial@theindependent.ca.
AUGUST 28, 2005
14 • INDEPENDENTWORLD
Pitfalls still in Liberals’ path Despite leading in the polls, the party faces tough challenges OTTAWA By Les Whittington Torstar wire service
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espite occasional glimpses of Stephen Harper serving up ice cream in Quebec or posturing for the Calgary Stampede, the Conservative leader’s summer-long charm offensive has had so little impact that his office issued a news release to remind the media that he’s out there. Entitled Just the Facts — Harper Hard at Work, the statement recounted his appearances and remarks across the country in July and August. Clearly smarting from the lack of attention all this is generating, the Harper team complained that “apparently, some commentators have taken the summer off.” Harper’s problems, as borne out by the latest opinion polls showing the Liberals once again ahead of the sputtering Tories, continue to provide a safety net for Prime Minister Paul Martin’s accident-prone government. Martin and his caucus colleagues are
in a much better frame of mind than they were in the bleak days of spring, when the uproar over the Liberals’ sponsorship program seemed almost certain to lead to the demise of his minority regime and a day of reckoning at the polls with an angry electorate. The Prime Minister thought that a spring election was inevitable, in fact, until Conservative MP Belinda Stronach staved off the defeat of the Liberals in the Commons by switching sides to become a Liberal cabinet minister. More than anything, Martin wanted to get his party’s main budget legislation and the $4.5 billion in extra spending under the Liberal-NDP deal through the Commons, and that was accomplished. This package, with new cash for everything from health care to cities to defence, gives Martin something to talk about when voters ask what he’s been up to for the past 21 months. Liberals are also relieved to have the divisive debate over same-sex marriage out of the way as they prepare for an
election the Prime Minister has prom- figures — for the fiscal year that ended ised to hold this winter. March 31 — will probably show anothBut as MPs prepare to return to er surplus that’s $4 billion or $5 billion Parliament on Sept. 26, the political more than forecast. landscape is still litNor are consumers tered with potential likely to be cheered hazards for the governby Goodale’s stance ment. that there’s nothing One of the most Ottawa can do about The Liberals will be worrisome is the high gas costs mathematically upsurge in gasoline because any reducabove the $1-a-litre tions in taxes would incapable of ensuring just be swallowed up mark. The federal governby the oil companies. their survival if ment collects a 10 Another issue lurkcents-a-litre gasoline ing out there for the pressed in a vote of excise tax and then, on Liberals is gun crime, top of that, levies the particularly the wave confidence. seven per cent GST. of murders in This “double taxation” Toronto. Martin’s helps produce a windparty, which is heavifall as pump prices rise. ly dependent on voter support in the It’s not hard to imagine the mood of Toronto area is going to have to come hard-pressed motorists as they contem- up with an adequate response to mountplate the fact that, over the past seven ing questions about the number of guns years, the federal government has flooding into Canada across the U.S. recorded budget surpluses totalling border. $61.4 billion. And that the latest budget The growing disarray in commercial
relations with the Americans is another trouble spot, particularly Martin’s inability to get President George W. Bush to honour his country’s free-trade commitments with Canada. At the same time, the wisdom of dispatching more troops to Afghanistan could be widely questioned if casualties begin to mount in the months ahead. And the government faces another acrimonious, unpredictable parliamentary session in which the Liberals will be mathematically incapable of ensuring their survival if pressed in a vote of confidence. Again flush with extra budget revenues, the Liberals are working toward a fall mini-budget with a wide enough appeal that it can steal votes from both the Conservatives and the NDP. At the same time, the package would be designed to give Martin something to put in the window to deflect attention from the damaging revelations of Liberal corruption expected to once again spark national outrage when Justice John Gomery delivers his sponsorship report.
Lost in the woods From page 11 not here in New Brunswick. Rather, a series of mill closings in northern Ontario this summer forced Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty and his natural resources minister to act. First, they created a commission of forestry executives and municipal politicians to advise them on how to increase competitiveness. That group has already reported back and McGuinty responded with an actual idea — a financial aid package to help mills modernize. From Queen’s Park to Parliament Hill, the fears about the forestry industry’s fate traveled, arriving just as the Americans once again pooh-poohed Canada’s demands over softwood. Federal Natural Resources Minister David Emerson, sensing trouble in the woods (and their accompanying boardrooms) struck his own committee - this one with MPs, including New Brunswick’s Andy Savoy - and promised a new vision for the industry by early autumn. New Brunswickers who have heard Messrs. McGuinty and Emerson talk about their ideas about tax breaks and energy costs can be forgiven if they’ve heard it all before. They have, from this province’s forestry executives, who have asked for the same things from the Lord government. There has been little response. Maybe New Brunswick’s cabinet ministers are too caught up in planning their grand vision for the province, with its building blocks and policy agendas, to talk about the details. Fine. But as they gaze upon their vision, our political leaders must not lose sight of those little places, like Dalhousie, that are in danger of being lost in the woods.
‘Need for honesty’ From page 11 Murphy noted, “I am not offering and I am making no offers, and I think that is a narrative we have to stick to.” Does this not indicate they don’t feel they have to stick to the truth? One would have thought such events would convince Canadians to take action to remove the Liberals. This latest poll indicates they have made no such decision as yet. As the summer ends, I ask whether there is any hope for the restoration of a vigorous, competitive Canadian political system with honest debate about real issues? Are Canadians prepared even to contemplate the return of Martin’s government to office with this record of failure and lack of care about the need for honesty, truthfulness, morality, ethics and idealism in public service and political life? John Crosbie’s column returns Sept. 11.
AUGUST 28, 2005
INDEPENDENTWORLD • 15
Co-workers in fight over lottery win
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A masked Palestinian member of the Islamic militant group Hamas holds his gun next to a model of a Jewish settlement house during a rally in the Jabaliya refugee camp outside Gaza City. Damir Sagolj/Reuters
Toronto pair meet at Israel’s divide HOMESH, West Bank By Mitch Potter Torstar wire service
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hen the Israeli army came knocking last week for Toronto-born settler activist Yaakov Feldman, the longest imaginable odds prevailed: the captain in charge of evacuating the house announced himself a native of Toronto as well. But Capt. Yoni of the Israel Defense Forces — pullout troops were forbidden from supplying their surnames to the media — wasn’t in the mood for hometown chatter. He was preoccupied with the containers of oil and other propellants sitting in Feldman’s backyard, and worried that the man barricaded inside might have more besides, ready to splash on Capt. Yoni and his 16-man withdrawal team. “Do you think he is violent?” Capt. Yoni asked. Then, realizing a Toronto Star reporter was on the scene, he wondered if we would mind leading the negotiations. Ummm. No thanks. Capt. Yoni’s troops knocked politely multiple times. No answer. Then, after carefully scoping the perimeter, they broke the lock on a side door and went in. Thus began one of the final scenes of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s successful evacuation of settlers from territory occupied since 1967. By the end of yesterday, soldiers had cleared Homesh and nearby Sa Nur, the last two of 25 settlements — four in the northern West Bank and 21 in the Gaza Strip — targeted under Sharon’s controversial dis-
engagement plan. The pullout, expected to take weeks, took just seven days. First to be led to the waiting evacuation buses were Feldman’s wife and a daughter, weeping but walking. However, Feldman, 45, a father of eight, would not budge. Sitting on the living room floor with one of his sons, the computer engineer held firmly to a prayer pamphlet as a soldier knelt at his side, quietly urging him to leave. The pamphlet included a prayer for
“I asked him to leave the house like a man, not like someone who needs to be carried away.” the Western Wall spoken traditionally during Yom Kippur and also the prayer for the dead. The theme that bound these blocks of Hebrew text — mourning. Fifteen minutes later, with a curt nod of permission, the troops moved in groups of four to lift first the boy and then Feldman himself, stepping gingerly into the blinding afternoon sun. Feldman’s resistance was passive — not violent — as the mild-mannered but religiously motivated settler had vowed since the day he joined the anti-disengagement protest movement many months ago. The soldier who handled the negotia-
tions, who declined to give his name, later acknowledged “this is difficult for us, difficult for everyone. “I asked him to leave the house like a man, not like someone who needs to be carried away,” the soldier said with a shrug. Feldman and family were only temporaries in Homesh, having moved there 10 weeks ago in protest against the withdrawal. Just before midnight last night, he, his wife and four of their children were safely back in their real home in Peduel, also a West Bank settlement. The three youngest were still with family in Jerusalem, for safety. They had a brief scare upon learning their eldest son, 19-year-old Yishai, a yeshiva student at Homesh, had collapsed from dehydration during yesterday’s standoff. But he too was safe with friends last night, having been resuscitated by a triage unit deployed at Homesh. Feldman’s final thoughts on a year of protest? “I’m tired, exhausted, sweaty, sticky. Someone said to me tonight that if they can take away two settlements in a day, they could give up the entire country in 10 years. And that’s a pretty scary thought.” But Feldman is certain the religiously driven settlement movement will not bend to this unprecedented week of setbacks. He believes political payback is inevitable. “The government’s idea was to put down our way of thinking. It’s a war against a certain ideological line,” Feldman says. “And there’s no question it is going to boomerang. Whenever the opportunity comes, people are going to be a lot more active from now on.”
or Tanis McQuillan it should be proof. a dream come true — a huge On Saturday, after two draws withlottery win that offers a secure out a jackpot winner, the restaurant future for her and her family. group held the only ticket in Canada But the fast-food restaurant matching all six numbers. It’s worth employee, mother of a three-year-old, $14,507,724. says colleagues are excluding her and But McQuillan says her colleagues, another woman from a share of last some of whom are childhood friends, Saturday’s $14.5 million Lotto 6/49 are not willing to give her and jackpot, even though they helped pay Weisgarber their share. for the winning ticket. Eleven equal shares would be “It just feels like a slap in the face $1,318,884, some $293,085.30 less and a stab in the back,” than if it were to be McQuillan, 25, says split nine ways. from her home in “That’s my family’s Mission, east of “It just feels like a future, my son’s eduVancouver. “You cation,” says wouldn’t expect that slap in the face and McQuillan, who’s from your friends and married to a labourer. a stab in the back.” co-workers.” She and Weisgarber Nine employees of a have hired a lawyer to Tanis McQuillan Mission A&W explore their options, Restaurant went to and B.C. Lottery British Columbia Corp. is investigating Lottery Corp. offices on Tuesday to their claim. claim their prize. Spokesperson Tamara Ibbott sugBut it was only to find they could- gests a lottery group agreement, availn’t because McQuillan and Megan able on-line, could have prevented the Weisgarber, 19, had filed a formal dispute. complaint. “We don’t decide whose in the McQuillan says she and Weisgarber group for them,” she said. “That’s made their regular weekly contribu- their decision.” tion of $2 to buy tickets, but have no — Torstar wire service
16 • INDEPENDENTWORLD
AUGUST 28, 2005
INDEPENDENTLIFE
SUNDAY THROUGH SATURDAY, AUGUST 28-SEPTEMBER 4, 2005 — PAGE 17
Philip Pratt
Paul Daly/The Independent
Building controversy From The Rooms to the new supermarket on the Memorial Stadium site, Philip Pratt’s architectural projects have raised more than one eyebrow
By Alisha Morrissey The Independent
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op culture has been changed by a napkin before. The outline for more than one idea, song, poem and deal began its life on a napkin. So it’s only fitting a napkin hangs on the wall of PHB Group’s boardroom in downtown St. John’s. Philip Pratt, partner and architect with the group, sketched the original four-square design of the controversial Rooms project in black ink on the decorative-paper napkin. Pratt, turning 60 “in the near future,” shows no signs of stopping — or avoiding controversy — when it comes to city architecture. Leading the development, Pratt’s most
recent project is a Dominion supermarket on the site of Memorial Stadium in east end St. John’s. “When someone says Signal Hill is next, that’s absolute hogwash. What’s going to happen next? Another supermarket in Bowring Park? That’s absolute hogwash,” Pratt tells The Independent, scowling. Not that he doesn’t like the public input. “The public concern has resulted in a much better project,” Pratt says of the compromise to incorporate the old stadium into the new grocery store. “I don’t mind the controversy, I don’t mind that people love it or hate it and there are legitimate opinions.” An architect for 32 years, Pratt’s most controversial project has been The Rooms, which houses the province’s art gallery, archives and museum — attracting a lot of attention even after its opening. Love or hate The Rooms, Pratt calls it his greatest success to date. “Someone asked me ‘Well, what can you do to top this.’ And I said if someone asked me to design a national gallery in Ottawa — which they never would — it wouldn’t be as exciting as The Rooms because The Rooms is a Newfoundland building,” says Pratt. “I love Newfoundland, I breathe the foggy air and I’ve got a house in Brigus five
feet from the water and I breathe the foggy air and love it.” Pratt says people have to admit the building next door to the Basilica is a “very, very important” one. “It’s the first public building really to be built in years and years,” Pratt says. “It was a remarkable decision by the province to go ahead with it, it’s easy to build a hospital — you know everyone loves you if you build a hospital. “But building a major cultural facility takes a certain amount of guts by a government in a province like Newfoundland.” He says the province’s arts and artifacts deserve better than “fourth-world facilities,” adding lovers and haters of The Rooms are not only arguing, but learning too. “It’s been successful in that it’s been controversial … it’s been successful in that the notion of the simple Newfoundland structure is being talked about. Someone may say ‘Geez, it doesn’t look like fishing rooms to me it looks like a monstrosity on the hill,’ but at least they’re thinking.” Buildings seem to be all Pratt wants to talk about — even when admitting his affinity for tourism. “Yes,” he hisses, his eyes beaming at the See “The biggest,” page 22
LIVYER
Home cookin’
Talat Mian misses her family in Pakistan, but she wouldn’t live anywhere else By Darcy MacRae The Independent
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alat Mian may be very far away from where she grew up, but she feels right at home in St. John’s. Born and raised in Lahore, Pakistan, Mian has lived in St. John’s since 1990. Although the climate and culture differ from her native home, Mian’s warm smile and kind manner allow her to fit in perfectly. “I am very happy here,” Mian tells The Independent. “I wish all the best
for Newfoundland. It gave me a good opportunity and I feel it should grow and become more prosperous.” Mian spent her first six months on Canadian soil in Prince Edward Island before she and her husband (who passed away in 1994) moved to St. John’s. Mian worked for a time as a research assistant at Memorial University until the grant funding her position expired. In 1996, she then took over a grocery store specializing in international foods on Duckworth Street and served the odd meal to cus-
tomers who could eat at one of two tables set up in a corner. Soon more customers were asking about her dishes, so she added a few more tables, and later added even more. Eventually the business ceased to be a grocery store and became solely a Pakistani-style restaurant. These days International Flavours serves the types of food Mian grew up eating. “I saw that no place was selling what we eat at home in Pakistan,” Mian says. See “It gives me,” page 22
Talat Mian
Paul Daly/The Independent
AUGUST 28, 2005
18 • INDEPENDENTLIFE
GALLERYPROFILE
DORA COOPER Visual artist
D
ora Cooper can blame — or credit — her husband for her latest hobby. Cooper, “like so many of us,” did as many art classes as she could throughout high school — and then put down the paintbrush for years. “I ended up in nursing, the next thing, you’ve got a family,” she says. “Between working 12-hour shifts, taking care of the house, the kids, trying to see friends once in awhile … it was amazing, I got out of it totally.” Four or five years ago, out of the blue, her husband gave her art lessons for Christmas. “I opened the card and went, ‘Oh, that’s nice. Now what am I going to do with that?’” she says, laughing. But she attended the classes, and rekindled an old interest. “After the first session, it was like I didn’t know enough to quit,” she says. Cooper has been going to art classes ever since, studying under different instructors in the hopes of learning a variety of techniques and theories. “I try something different with each (piece); I don’t really know what I want
to paint yet,” Cooper says, surveying her living room. A number of her framed acrylics are on display — landscapes from Newfoundland and New Zealand, portraits of her two children, fishing villages, plant life and birds. She says she’s relaxing and becoming more adventurous in her work every year. “I don’t think I’ve developed my style yet. It’s all a big experiment, really.” She also takes classes for discipline. Cooper knows that every week — no matter how busy her schedule — she
will devote a minimum of one evening to painting. Cooper still works full time in health care. She and her husband are avid dancers — they take ballroom and Latin dance classes and attend dances whenever possible — and are restoring her grandfather’s old house in Winterton. “When you have all these different interests, it’s hard to put all the time you want into (painting),” she says. “And like anything, to do well with it, the more you do the better you get.” Cooper says she likes working with
contrast in her paintings. She looks for light and shadow, colour and drama in the scenes she captures. It will take a while to gain the skill she’d like to, she admits, and she’s enjoying the journey. “I’ve got five years until retirement, that’s what I’m working towards,” she says. “Then I’ll have lots of time to devote to painting, because you can’t sit at home and do nothing. “I just want to keep going, get better and build up a clientele … But I don’t ever want it to become a full-time job.” Cooper sells some high-quality prints
and cards of her work — and a handful of originals. “The ones I have here I don’t know if I want to sell any of them,” she says. “Eventually I’ll have to because there’s only so many walls. “I paint because I enjoy it. I sell some things, but not a lot. Right now, if I sell enough to cover my expenses, that’s enough.” Cooper’s work is available in Dandelion Green, St. John’s. For more, contact doracooper@nl.rogers.ca. — 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
POETS CORNER Some Things Some things in this world are inexplicable Like how the rain makes you giggle And the stars make you pensive How the ability to draw a breath Diminishes the more I think of you My head begins to spin My chest begins to ache The signs of an ailment Which can never be cured But which needs to be treated Some things are hard to put into words Like my thoughts when I get close to you No script can capture my senses No prose has sufficient depth and complexity To encapsulate the feelings which overcome me The truth is all around us A thousand words tell the story But none do it justice Or can fully explain Why you complete me
Some things are not easy to see Like a pane of glass against a white back ground They carry no reflection They absorb no light But it is substantial and real It may be right in front of us But was never before seen And when it finally materializes It quickly consumes you And fills a void that has always existed Some things in this world make perfect sense Like our want for love and passion Our desire to feel needed Our need to feel desired And our wish to be ever closer Closing the door Ceasing to exist Beginning to live. — Nathan Roberts St. John’s
AUGUST 28, 2005
INDEPENDENTLIFE • 19
Summer movies that actually satisfy The 40 Year Old Virgin Starring Steve Carell 1/2 (out of four)
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ontrary to what his closest associate at work believes, Andy Stitzer is not a serial killer. He’s one of the sweetest guys you’d ever want to meet, and one evening, when his co-workers need someone to sit in on a poker game, they finally get the opportunity to discover this for themselves. As events transpire, they also discover that the 40 year-old Andy is a virgin. Suddenly, Andy, who’s more or less a loner, gains three solid friends who seem willing to take a bullet if it means that it’ll help him lose his virginity. A couple of years ago, The 40 Year Old Virgin would never have seen the light of day as it is right now. The character Andy Stitzer would have been depicted as a pathetic loser, subjected to one outrageous humiliation after another in a motion picture built up of gags based on his stupidity. It would have been cruel and nasty. Hopefully, that kind of comedy has played itself out, and this one won’t be the exception. The focus here is not on Andy’s virginity as much as it is on the reaction of everyone around him. He’s willing to go along with their schemes and follow their advice, but Andy seems to look at losing his virginity as a step towards making his way along a path that will eventually help him find a rewarding relationship.
TIM CONWAY Film Score Andy’s a sweet and innocent guy, and the film respects him for this, but the movie itself is far from sweet or innocent. The 40 Year Old Virgin isn’t above liberal doses of crude humour, profanity, racial and sexual stereotyping, or bouts of homophobia. Just as we find in some of Adam Sandler’s pictures, it seems there is a lack of confidence in the material, so cheap gags are inserted, just in case. Andy Stitzer is played to perfection by Steve Carell, in his first feature film starring role. He jumped from the trenches a couple of years ago with a scene stealing performance in Bruce Almighty, and hasn’t looked back since. Serving as co-writer and co-producer on this picture, Carell is able to reaffirm the talent we suspected was his along. With his outstanding performance here, his upcoming role as Maxwell Smart in the film version of Get Smart has become an exciting prospect. The 40 Year Old Virgin is hardly a milestone in film history, with shortcomings at every turn. It’s longer than it needs to be, occasionally meandering in every conceivable direction, and some of the material, especially the cheap humour, is unnecessary. At the same time, Carell’s Andy and his cohorts make the experience an
Rachel McAdams and Cillian Murphy in Red Eye.
entertaining one, and the intelligent, and sometimes insightful material that one finds here is engaging and refreshing. In spite of itself, The 40 Year Old Virgin is definitely one of the year’s best comedies. Red Eye Starring Rachel McAdams (out of four) If there’s a wasted moment in Wes Craven’s new feature, Red Eye, you’d
be hard pressed to find it. Clocking in at just under an hour-and-a-half, the film packs as much suspense in time as it does in space, delivering one of the most satisfying thrillers to come this way in years. Inspired in part by Phone Booth, Red Eye takes the scenario one step further by placing victim and threat side by side in an airplane at 30,000 feet in the air, where there’s nowhere to escape and options are few. Presented in a fashion that would have drawn praise from Mr. Hitchcock
himself, this is a must-see for fans of the genre. On her return flight on the late night Red Eye, Lisa Reisert finds herself an unwilling pawn in international terrorism. If she does not comply with her captor’s wishes, her father will be killed, and if she does concede, an innocent man will be murdered. Seated amongst dozens of other individuals, Lisa is as helpless as if she were locked in a bare room, and the clock is ticking down to the moment when she must make her crucial decision. Craven’s experience with horror films stands in good stead here as he moves the camera about, keeping things fresh in a confined space. Knowing when to tighten and relax the screws, or thrown in a moment of levity, he keeps us constantly glued to the events as they play out on the screen, a task, one would assume, made easier by the fine performances from Rachael McAdams, and Cillian Murphy. Just as The Forty Year Old Virgin has emerged as a surprisingly satisfying comedy, Red Eye has come from almost nowhere to deliver delightfully effective thrills and suspense, with a bit of action thrown in for good measure. With the summer movie season winding down, it seems that things are finally starting to heat up. Tim Conway operates Capital Video on Rawlin’s Cross, St. John’s. His next column appears Sept. 11.
‘Sheer joyous rollicking rhetoric’ clusions: Newfoundland fishermen, because unorganized, were helpless before the commercial power of the merchants and fish companies; Newfoundland fishermen were too scared to organize. The fisherman had tried to organize many times before and had failed miserably. This time with McGrath, it worked.
From page 1 Along the way we encountered: 1. Pierre Elliott Trudeau, whose helicopter landed at Port aux Basques precisely the moment our ferry docked (the Post Office there closed in his honour; the liquor store stayed open). 2. A shy hitch-hiker called Ken who’d gone down the road to Toronto, found there wasn’t much at the end of the rainbow for an eighteen-year-old with Grade 7 and was on his way home to fish off Cape St. Mary’s. 3. A political friend, normally sunny, today looking like a thundercloud, having dinner at the Deer Lake Motel: he’d just discovered he and Joey Smallwood’s son were both after the same nomination and begged us to stay and help drown his sorrows. We didn’t, and it didn’t matter because a week later he won anyway. 4. A moose …”It’s a horse. No, you fool, it’s a ruddy great moose” … that galloped across our headlights somewhere south of Sally Cove. 5. Bess Myerson Grant, talking about deceptive packaging over WCBS New York, the one radio signal you can really count on getting at night in these parts. Until the gravel road went through here in the late 1960s, the only way you could move round overland was in winter, by dog-team. Otherwise you sailed. No weathered, white-painted, flat-roofed outport houses here, no rocky clefts or tickles or coves for Sunday painters. CLUMPS OF BUNGALOWS The shoreline is flat and curiously unindented. The hamlets — Cow Head, Hawke’s Bay, Port Saunders — are raw as the frontier town in McCabe and Mrs. Miller, clumps of bungalows and a service station and a tavern strung along a dusty highway. Until 1904, this whole 250-mile St. Barbe Coast wasn’t really even part of Newfoundland. Fishing rights belonged to the French. (They called it le petit Nord.) In the afternoon, we go by longliner to gather mussels for supper on St. John Island, four or so miles out in the Gulf. Halfway, someone tosses a cheese sandwich to a panhandling seagull. Within seconds there’s a blizzard of them whirling in our wake and they’ve eaten all our lunch. They were worth it. Besides, ashore we find wild strawberries, infinitesimal and luscious, and blueberries nearly ripe. And briar roses tangling in the salty grass, and tiny starshaped flowers growing in the sand. Friday’s footprint on this northern desert islet is a pitted black marble obelisk we find on a rise looking seaward, with an inscription in French. Time and the weather have worn the letters almost to oblivion but, mostly by touch, we figure some of them out. It’s the grave of a “capitaine francaise” — the name we can’t quite decide on — who died here, a long way from Brittany, in the spring of 1892. “And he ne’er more was heard from, nor his vessel so brave, so it was figured pretty general that he’d found a watery grave,” I remember from a Newfoundland ballad. In Port au Choix itself there are graves that are older. Traces of Dorset
Photo Gord King collection. 1972
Eskimos and the mass burial site of the Red Paint People, a race of archaic Indians. But the reason this town — population around 1,000 — gets a little bigger on the provincial road map each year is that it’s what the federal Department of Regional Economic Expansion likes to call a “growth centre.” Mostly, this means that there’s a central high school and that people from smaller outports are being moved in — although these plans don’t always work since a hundred or so miles up the road seven Jehovah’s Witness families (the entire population of Big Brook) would rather do without electricity, telephone and indoor plumbing than move. Port au Choix is prosperous, at least at the moment. The skipper of the boat that took us to St. John Island cleared $20,000 last year. Longliners from here have branched away from cod and are scooping up scallops and the tiny succulent shrimps that live only in northern waters. The reason we’ve all come is that Port au Choix represents a true
Newfoundland frontier, that place where two powerful social movements intersect. One is Memorial University’s Extension Service. Beyond argument the best in the country, it has fostered the development of NRDA, the Northern Regional Development Association, among the first of thirtythree similar grass-roots community organizations which have mushroomed across the province. The other major social action force in contemporary Newfoundland was born here in Port au Choix. On May 2, 1970, Father Des McGrath founded the Newfoundland Fishermen’s Union. Since then, it has spread right round the coast, organizing, for the first time into a single body, the ordinary trap and longliner fishermen and the fish plant workers. McGrath’s strength is that he is a simple man, and a strong one. A graduate of St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, with its long co-operative traditions, he, while parish priest in Port au Choix, reached two simple con-
DEATH STRUGGLE McGrath is big, burly, physically strong, soft-spoken. A disciple of the church militant; brother to the Berrigans. The Scarlet Pimpernel of the movement is Richard Cashin, a former federal Liberal MP in search of a cause. Only Joey Smallwood on his rarer and rarer good days, and Don Jamieson, can match Cashin for sheer joyous rollicking rhetoric. He’s now Union president (it was formally established at a founding convention in St. John’s last April) and since May has been locked in a death struggle with the fish merchant at Burgeo, a totally isolated town on the south coast. There the fish plant, the supermarket, the dairy, the barbershop, even the Catholic church (since he built it for his wife) all belong to one man. He is Spencer Lake, a merchant prince who imported to these rocky shores a stable of riding horses and three llamas, who is given to telling inquisitive reporters:
“I’m not anti-union, I just think that in certain circumstances unions are not practical, and this is one of them. You haven’t the local leadership to run them intelligently with all due respect to the people — I’m very fond of them.” That night round our beach fire, as the light faded and the rum passed round, we talked of Burgeo. Neither McGrath nor Cashin was sanguine about the prospects for quick or easy victory. In one sense, the strikers can hardly lose since, as affiliates of an international union, they earn almost as much on the picket lines as they would in the plant. And yet the price of victory may well be that Spencer Lake will simply walk away and leave Burgeo with its union but without an industry. The old gibe about “freedom to starve” is still painfully close to reality here. Newfoundland’s unemployment rate makes Quebec’s seem a triumph of economic planning. The other day Statistics Canada churned out some figures which show that average incomes in Newfoundland are 57 per cent of the national average — lower, that is, than they were four years ago; lower, that is, despite all the over-planned interventions of the federal Department of Regional Economic Expansion. The second half of Sandra Gwyn’s article will appear in the Sept. 4 Independent.
AUGUST 28, 2005
20 • INDEPENDENTLIFE
IN CAMERA
Billy Boot’s family
East Coast Converters Ltd. began in the plastic packaging business almost 30 years ago. Times, technology and products have changed incredibly since then. Now, with sales of their flagship Billy Boot garbage bags growing every year, the company is fighting the effects of rising fuel costs and an international marketplace — and succeeding. Photo editor Paul Daly and senior editor Stephanie Porter spent an afternoon at the plant in Donovan’s Industrial Park in Mount Pearl.
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he sound and smell of plastic production is unmistakable. Step through the doorway and into the lobby of East Coast Converters Ltd. — home of Billy Boot bags and manufacturer of hundreds of other plastic bags and products — and the air is warm, thick with humidity and mechanical clatter. The scent is familiar, something between burning rubber and the waft from a freshly opened package of garbage bags. It’s summer, the busiest time of year for the Mount Pearl-based operation. The machines run 24 hours a day, producing thousands of plastic bags every hour (600 pounds worth, hourly, is one estimate). Half a dozen or more products are being produced at any one time — and
there are three shifts of workers organized and ready to monitor, sort, design, package and load. Although the public may be most familiar with the Billy Boot family — from Baby Billy Boot bags for the kitchen trashcan to Big Billy Boot for lawn and garden cleanup — it’s just a fraction of the family-owned business. East Coast Converters also makes custom-printed bags for Manna Bakery, Fred’s Records, Winsor’s apple flips, Scotia Gold apples, College of the North Atlantic, Chester Dawe and many more organizations and businesses. They produce everything from thick bags for road salt to thin, food-grade bread bags. But over half of their business
comes from catering to the fishing industry — which is why they’re so busy in the summer, and why management has learned to be flexible in dealing with the ups and downs of an unpredictable industry. Indeed, it was the fishing industry that started it all. The company began in 1976, strictly as converters: they purchased rolls of plastic from Ontario, making them into bags, sheets and packaging for various fish plants and businesses in Newfoundland and Labrador. By the early-1980s, they’d purchased equipment to make their own unfinished plastic — and all was going well, until the 1992 cod moratorium. “We lost 60 or 70 employees just like that,” says owner and manager
AUGUST 28, 2005
Chris Hutton, who began the company with his father almost 30 years ago. “In the year the fishery collapsed, business fell 60 per cent. “We did 3.8 million pounds of production that year. Thirteen years later, we’re not back to where we were.” This year, Hutton estimates production will hit three million pounds. He says the crab dispute hurt business, as does the instability in the shrimp fishery — so much so, he had to shut down for a couple of weeks earlier this summer. But right now, business is booming. All the inventory stockpiled during the closure was snapped up, and Hutton says he’s got the same amount again on backorder. In the storeroom — usually stacked high with boxes — the pallets are virtually empty. Even the Billy Boot supplies are just now being replenished. “We’re steady belt these days,” says Hutton. “It sounds great to be busy, but the problem is the fish companies, they might order 100,000 bags and need them in 48 hours. “Which isn’t so bad, though it usually takes three weeks to process an order, except you’ve got 20 customers who are saying that. There’s
INDEPENDENTLIFE • 21
no time to break. “Fish companies are coming in, they’re taking salt bags for fish, they’re taking bread bags, they’re taking whatever they can get their hands on.” ••• Hutton walks over to a corner of the main production room. Raising his voice over the clangs, bangs and whirs, he picks up a handful of opaque plastic pellets, and begins to describe the process. The pellets, or resin, are the raw material the plastic is made from. They come in by the truckload from Ontario, and are loaded into silos outside the facility. Most are from recycled plastic, sorted into different grades and colours. The pellets “pass through about 12 different heating zones …then are passed through a series of screens, through extreme pressure and heat. And then we take that, and blow it like a huge bubble …” Hutton smiles at his simplified explanation, and points upward to make a point. There’s a huge billowing tube of plastic, being blown from the machine on the floor to the ceiling. There, fully cooled, it’s pulled taut, folded, and comes back down to be wound into rolls. Electricity will be
passed through the plastic if it is to be printed on. “Some clients want sheets or bags on rolls, perforated so it tears off like toilet paper,” Hutton says. “There’s lots of technology here, it takes operators years to learn it all. That plastic there, it’s one-thousandth of an inch thick.”
“It sounds great to be busy, but the problem is the fish companies, they might order 100,000 bags and need them in 48 hours.” Chris Hutton Hutton continues his tour, past a printing machine (up to six colours, each on a separate roller, requiring separate plates), cutters, perforators and more. The bags zip by with mesmerizing speed. There’s a baling machine for all
scrap plastic, which is shipped to Toronto for recycling. Hutton takes pride in the environmental initiatives the company makes — and it works to save the environment, and money. All the wooden pallets are re-used or recycled, all plastic scraps are sent for recycling, most of the resin is recycled. Most of the paper cores for plastic rolls are used, purchased from local printing companies. All cardboard is reused or recycled. “We have a recycling machine for our inks and solvents now,” Hutton says. “We used to just dump the stuff … now all the solvents go right back into the process.” ••• Business, though not what it might have been in the early-’90s, is coming along. The Billy Boot line, created to fill the gap when the fishery closed, is selling more every year. The products are even starting to creep outside the province. Hutton, who has spent virtually years in the plant, crashing on the couch in his office, now has a number of employees who have been with him 20-plus years — people he can trust, who know the process and business well. There are challenges to be met,
almost daily. The price of oil is driving his transportation and material costs way up; there’s new competition from larger facilities in central Canada and, now, China. As bigger corporations buy up smaller businesses, East Coast Converters has lost some clients — privately owned bakeries, grocery stores and pharmacies. And once mid-fall hits, production eases off for about six months. But there are also opportunities ahead. It’s more than a full-time job to stay on top of changing technology and markets. Hutton says he was in university when his father came to him and invited him to “work for $12,000 a year” in the plastic packaging business. And in spite of all the ups and downs, Hutton says he’s just as determined now to keep the plant competitive and relevant. Preaching good quality, local production and a commitment to the environment and the community (three cents from every package of Billy Boot bags is donated to the Newfoundland chapter of the Canadian Paraplegic Association), Hutton predicts a long future. “It’s not easy,” he says. “But we’re determined, we’ll stick around.”
AUGUST 28, 2005
22 • INDEPENDENTLIFE
‘In the trenches’ St. John’s actress Nicole Underhay has gone from The Shipping News to filling the shoes of Marilyn Monroe By Clare-Marie Gosse The Independent
Underhay is at Shaw for the second year running and this time she’s stepping into the shoes of Marilyn Monroe as Cherie in the stage production hen Nicole Underhay decided to take a of the famous 1950s film Bus Stop. The premise is year off from studying geology at a classic love story, which takes place in an Memorial University at the age of 19, American diner near Kansas City where a group she had no idea what direction she wanted her life of people are thrown together to wait out a snow to take. storm. She packed her bags and eventually ended up in Underhay is also performing a completely difToronto. While staying with a friend from ferent role as a “precocious” 18-year-old in Newfoundland who was studying dance there, George Bernard Shaw’s You Never Can Tell, a Underhay all of a sudden realized the benefits of family-focused light-hearted comedy set in a living in a big, anonymous city. small English seaside resort. “I realized, oh, you can conJuggling her schedule and trol your own identity, be what retuning her character-brain you want, nobody knows you,” “I feel as if I’m getting between the two shows — which she tells The Independent. “I just run side-by-side eight or nine paid to go to theatre times a week until November — thought, ‘I might actually like to take some acting classes’ and can be tough, but Underhay says school in a way. Just she loves the variety. that’s how it started.” Underhay began classes and a “They’re entirely different, it’s short time later went back to St. the resources that are fantastic … I never know more John’s where she “pulled the a day ahead, where I’m supavailable to you here than worst possible nightmare posed to be and at what time.” maneuver” on her unsuspecting Underhay, who calls her acting are so incredible.” parents. experience “pieced together over “I came home, supposedly to the years from doing community Nicole Underhay start university again, and took theatre and taking workshops,” on the Shaw Festival likens the Shaw Festival to them aside and said, ‘Oh, I’m not going to go back to universi“learning in the trenches.” She ty, I’m going back to Toronto says the reason she so often and I’m going to be an actor.” works outside Newfoundland and Labrador Underhay says it understandably took her par- (which is still her home base) is because artists ents a while to whole heartedly jump on board. back home need to be so diverse to stay alive and They’re fully on board now, however, and just at the moment she just wants to focus on acting. returned from visiting their daughter in Niagara“What’s great about the Shaw Festival, I feel as on-the-Lake, where she’s currently fulfilling a if I’m getting paid to go to theatre school in a way. nine-month contract with the Shaw Theatre Just the resources that are available to you here are Festival. so incredible.” Over the phone, grabbing a break between She adds it helps when you have genuine clasrehearsals and multiple performances, the St. sical material to experiment with. John’s girl with the wild curls, dimpled smile and “In a way the scripts are really tried and true … a claim to fame as the only Newfoundland and you’ve got great walls to push against. My creLabradorian woman with a speaking role in The ative process is taking these words that have been Shipping News, talks about life at the festival. around for a long time, already, that so many peo-
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RYAN’S RELEASE
Martin Happer, Jenny L. Wright, Ben Carlson and Nicole Underhay in the Shaw Festival’s production of Bus Stop.
ple over the years have spoken and trying to find my own take on it.” Although Underhay has grabbed the attention of publications like Elle Canada and The Globe and Mail for her theatre work, some of her first few big breaks took place on film in Newfoundland and Labrador. She likens this year’s current level of high film activity in the province to the 2000/2001 period when productions like Random Passage, Rare Birds and The Shipping News were in full swing. ‘SLIGHT HEART ATTACK’ As a fledgling actress, Underhay landed parts in both Random Passage and The Shipping News. She recalls being floored by the prospect of working alongside actors like Gordon Pinsent, Kevin Spacey, Judi Dench and Julianne Moore. “I remember working on The Shipping News and the first couple of days we were shooting in Halifax … you go to this hotel and there’s a call sheet waiting there for me of what we’re shooting the next day. The list of people on that call sheet, I sat there and I had a slight heart attack.” Underhay’s role as Beelie Buggit required a memorable performance of weeping and wailing
at the wake of her thought-to-be drowned husband who miraculously sputters to life in his open coffin. She says it took two full days to film. “I think the crew just hated me by the end of it: ‘Oh God, she’s back again.’ There was no sound stage or anything, so it was a tiny little room and me screaming and crying all day.” Although film activity is currently high in Newfoundland and Labrador, Underhay says there’s no guarantee it will stay strong. She admits to being apprehensive about finding more work in the winter, although she isn’t tempted to move to Ontario permanently. She says Toronto is too big for her and Niagara-on-the-lake is “pretty,” but “there’s something slightly Stepford about it.” With all her experience, Underhay says she still doesn’t think of herself as “successful. “I think that’s something that never goes away. I think there’s a certain amount of humility that you have to have, anyway, to be successful, that you always have to be aware of how lucky you are to be doing what you want to do. “So I think there’s a part of me that will never believe that I will get more work. It keeps you hungry, I think.”
EVENTS AUGUST 28 • Tom Wilson (formerly of Wreckhouse) at the Ship Pub. • Equestrian Show, call 754-2349. • Two13 album release at Club One, price of admission includes a copy of the new CD. Doors at 10 p.m, special guest Stereotype. • 6th Annual Greyhound Picnic, free, noon-4 p.m., Swilers Rugby Club, 754-3371. AUGUST 29 • BandFest featuring Prometheus, Alice Beneath the Well, Breaking the Silence, Fatal Omission, $2 at SUF
Hall, Kelligrews. • Overeaters Anonymous public information meeting, 7 p.m., Sobeys, Long Pond, CBS, 738-1742.
SEPTEMBER 1 • A Night of Tales, 7:30 to 9:30 pm at the Crow’s Nest Officer’s Club, 6853444.
AUGUST 30 • Arts and Craft camps at the Anna Templeton Centre, for kids 7-11, 7397623.
SEPTEMBER 2 • Wine and Words at the Newman Wine Vaults. $6 includes glass of wine or port, call 739-7871.
AUGUST 31 • Folk Night at The Ship Pub with Colleen Power. • Neil Diamond dinner theatre, 7 p.m., Majestic Theatre, 390 Duckworth St., 579-3023.
IN THE GALLERIES • The Craft Council Gallery members’ exhibition, Craft Council Gallery, 59 Duckworth St. • Summer Dance, group show at the Leyton Gallery of Fine Art.
‘It gives me good inside feeling’ From page 17
Sherry Ryan is ready to release her debut CD, Bottom of a Heart. Ryan left her native Newfoundland seven years ago to persue a career in occupational therapy — and has returned, with a greater passion for music than ever. She describes the 14 original songs on Bottom of a Heart as country-laced combination of blues, bluegrass and old-time country; classic stories of heartache, longing and love. The album was produced by Newfoundland alternative artist Mark Bragg, and features Bragg, Duane Andrews, Patrick Moran and Shirley Dalton. Ryan will officially launch Bottom of a Heart with a performance at the Elk’s Club in St. John’s Sept. 1. Paul Daly/The Independent
“Then I said ‘Why not make it a balanced meal with lentils, beans, vegetables, curry?’” In 2002, Mian moved her business to Quidi Vidi Road at the base of Signal Hill and admits she worried the change in location could result in loss of business. But as she soon discovered, those who enjoyed her meals had no trouble finding International Flavours after the move. “When I moved my loyal customers said ‘Wherever you go, we will follow you,’” Mian says. Customers enjoy Mian’s traditional Pakistani menu, which has become well known for its lentils, curry, spicy sauces and Mian’s use of lemon juice and coconut milk. She has gotten to know many of her customers on a first-name basis, since a great number of them are restaurant regulars. “My customers are very loyal. They definitely come once a week, sometimes twice a week,” she says. “I survive because of them, they come again and again. I am good to them and they are good to me.” Mian enjoys getting to know people, and says like most anyone who comes to the province, she finds
Newfoundlanders and Labradorians to be friendly people. She has made many friends since arriving in the province. “That’s my nature; I like to talk and be friendly,” says Mian. “People tell me ‘We don’t only come for food, we want to see you too.’” While she has never had trouble making friends close to her age (she eventually admits she’s 51), Mian has also become close with many customers several years her junior. “When I hear that from the younger generation, it gives me good inside feeling,” she says. Upon arriving in St. John’s, Mian found many differences from her homeland. For starters, St. John’s is much smaller than her home city of Lahore, which has close to 6.5 million citizens. She also found the climate to be a bit chilly, but says she eventually discovered a way to overcome it. “Now I’m too busy to be cold,” Mian says with a laugh. “It doesn’t bother me. If you’re not busy, you feel more cold.” Once she grew accustomed to the weather, Mian began to enjoy the winters in Newfoundland. In particular, she loves when the sun comes out after a heavy snowfall and glistens off
the fresh white powder covering the sidewalks and rooftops. “That is the most beautiful day; I enjoy that day,” Mian says. “And of course I love the summer here. Even though I’m busy, I love walking up the Battery. Going up the hill and back down; I love that walk. It relaxes me after work; you can see the ocean and how the bay is formed. I just love the harbour.” While St. John’s is now her home, Mian still visits family and friends in Pakistan with regularity. She has one daughter living with her now — her other daughter is returning to St. John’s in October once she finishes university in Pakistan — but still gets homesick for her brothers and sisters. “Sometimes I miss my relatives, I feel lonely then,” says Mian. “I go back every year. If God gives me the money to make the trip every year, I’ll be happy.” Upon returning to Pakistan, Mian is flooded with questions about her new home in Newfoundland. She says her answers are always the same: she loves it here. “I tell them I’m lucky, I’m working and am loved by my customers,” she says. darcy.macrae@theindependent.ca
‘The biggest disappointment’ From page 17 word tourism. He says tourism-based projects are frustrating, but a pleasure. “A lot of these projects start off with good intentions, but end up being executed very poorly. “We’re seeing new tourism facilities that are just kind of missing the boat. Restaurants built looking at the parking lot instead of the view out back.” Pratt says he’s working on a topsecret study with exciting tourism
potential, adding the contract may not go ahead because of financial restraints. “It’s getting tramped in how cheaply can we do it ...” PHB Group, around since 1989, has designed some well-known monuments in the city, including Memorial University’s student centre, the new Janeway hospital at the back of the Health Sciences and the renovations and restoration of the Basilica, LSPU Hall and Anna Templeton Centre. The next big project will be the waste water treatment plant on South Side Road.
Pratt’s first building was the Boy Scout headquarters on Wishingwell Road in St. John’s. While since renovated and updated, he says he’s still proud of it. “There’s nothing I’ve built that I’ve been ashamed of … but the biggest disappointment would be some of the great projects that didn’t get built.” Pratt admits he did get nervous about opening The Rooms. “All of a sudden I realized that, good Lord, it’s really a big responsibility I think I was really uptight leading up to the opening.”
INDEPENDENTBUSINESS
SUNDAY THROUGH SATURDAY, AUGUST 28-SEPTEMBER 4, 2005 — PAGE 23
At work in the Marystown shipyard
Paul Daly/The Independent
‘Hustling hard’ Marystown shipyard in the hunt for new business; Navy contracts could be the answer By Clare-Marie Gosse The Independent
T
he departure of the successfully completed SeaRose FPSO (floating, production, storage and offloading) platform from the Marystown shipyard has left more than an empty space behind, it’s left operators, Kiewit Offshore Services, with a serious marketing job on their hands. “We’re marketing to the oil patch, to the marine sector, been down in Brazil looking at maybe a rig conversion as a possibility,” Frank Smith, director of business offshore development for Kiewit, tells The Independent. “You can certainly say we’re hustling hard.” Just under two weeks ago, the massive SeaRose platform — with a contract value of $395 million US and a production capacity of 100,000 barrels of oil a day — sailed off towards its new home, the White Rose offshore field on the Grand Banks, 350 km southeast of St.
John’s. $2.1-billion project to procure three Since taking over operations at new Navy vessels, called Joint Marystown shipyard in 2002, the Support Ships, to help assist the SeaRose has been Kiewit’s sole proj- Armed Forces in task-force operaect and Smith says the successful tions. completion of the platform, on time Smith says Marystown shipyard is and on budget, bound to attract shows what work “We’re blessed in so specialty Newfoundland and over regular, Labrador’s fabrica- many ways … we just smaller contracts. tion industry can do. “This sort of “I think what need some work to be large fabrication Kiewit’s done at industry around Marystown has out there to bid on” the world is generproven that you can ally pretty cyclic. build very large, Where the Marystown Mayor complex systems. labour’s cheap It’s really one of the like China, Sam Synard only one’s in the Singapore and world that’s come in Korea, they keep on time and on budget.” pretty steady. Outside of those areas Although he adds he has confi- you’re really going in for specialty dence the shipyard can drum up new stuff and it doesn’t come along every business, Smith doesn’t want to stir day.” up excitement just yet. Sam Synard, mayor of As well as offshore work, one Marystown, says he has great confiproject Kiewit has bids on is the fed- dence in the shipyard’s facilities and eral government’s promise to fund a praises the workforce for turning out
SeaRose on time and on budget. He’s looking forward to the possibility of procuring work from the Hebron-Ben Nevis development, which if negotiations with the province pan out as expected, should move ahead within 18 months. “We’re blessed in so many ways,” says Synard. “Great facilities, great workforce and now a good reputation; all the dominos are lined up, we just need some work to be out there to bid on. I’m convinced that Marystown will play an ongoing, active and positive role in the future development of offshore Newfoundland and Labrador.” He adds having the SeaRose gone from the shipyard is going to take some getting used to. “It’s strange to drive back into Marystown and not see the SeaRose on the landscape as you enter town. I think the absence of the SeaRose has certainly changed the landscape, figuratively, and it’s also changed it literally, it’s going to change the economic landscape as well.”
The right to trade T
he provincial minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture issued a press release recently requesting federal action on the European Union’s shrimp tariffs. I agree that this serious issue is impeding the province’s access to the largest market of cooked and peeled shrimp in the world. Removal of this trade barrier has been actively pursued by the federal government for some time, without complete success. Over a year ago, I was with the federal minister of International Trade in a meeting with the Association of Seafood Producers to discuss this very important matter of EU trade tariffs. Their impact on our trade potential in the shrimp industry is enormous and is causing the early closure of the fishery.
SIOBHAN COADY
The bottom line The shrimp industry is now one of the two pillars of the province’s fishing industry and offers great potential for further development. The stock is robust, but access to the largest market is controlled. Over 90,000 tonnes of shrimp was landed in this province last year and that tremendous economic impact both from the harvesting and processing sectors permeates the provincial economy, rural and urban. The issue surrounds a 20 per cent tar-
iff imposed by the EU on all imported the tariff as they do not have a domescooked and peeled shrimp. Denmark’s tic cold-water shrimp harvesting or proshrimp industry, the only country with a cessing sector and as the major constrong interest, has a sumer, the tariff significant shrimp represent a signifi“brining” sector and cant burden for the If we are going to build a domestic industry a modest (virtually one company) and the UK conshrimp cooked and strong shrimp industry in sumer. peeled processing Currently 7,000 this province, it is essen- tonnes sector and has been of cooked vigorous in ensur- tial that headway be made and peeled shrimp ing the tariff can enter the remains. European market at on this issue. Over the last the reduced tariff decade, the United rate of six per cent, Kingdom — which consumes approxi- but that’s only a drop in the bucket for mately 45 per cent of the world’s con- the province and the rest of Canada, the sumption of cooked and peeled, cold- world’s largest supplier of cooked and water shrimp — has worked to lower peeled shrimp.
The high tariff limits the province while Greenland, Norway, Iceland and the Faroe Islands can enter the market tax free. Fisheries Minister Trevor Taylor has requested a meeting with federal Minister of International Trade, James Petterson. Minister Taylor will be updated on the federal government’s actions — including pursuing market access for Canadian fish and fish products in the World Trade Organization’s Doha Round negotiations, and championing a sectoral agreement on Fish and Fish Products that would eliminate or almost eliminate tariffs of all major traders, including the EU.
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See “Stronger action,” page 25
AUGUST 28, 2005
24 • INDEPENDENTBUSINESS
Cuts to red tape won’t slice jobs, officials say By Darcy MacRae The Independent
“It kind of creates a little bit of a competition within the cabinet. It makes sure staffs bring the regulations in line.” To ensure the number of regulatory requirements doesn’t increase once the cutting is complete, the B.C. government implemented a stipulation stating any department wishing to add a regulatory requirement must first eliminate one. “That’s a key component,” Oram says. “Without that, we’re wasting our time as far as I’m concerned.”
T
he province’s plan to reduce red tape by 25 per cent over three years — modelled after the same blueprint British Columbia used in 2001 to cut more than 126,000 regulatory requirements — will not result in job cuts, officials say. In fact, it could mean more work. “It (the B.C. model) led to job increases,” says Bradley George of the provincial office of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business. “If you’re cutting red tape in the community and saving $7,000 per employee (the amount red tape costs a business per employee per year) for a business of five, you’re only going to help businesses hire employees. “Look at it this way: you’re not necessarily reducing jobs, you’re changing the way government does its work, you’re helping government work better and work smarter.” B.C. MODEL The provincial government announced last week its red tape reduction task force would use the same model the B.C. government implemented in 2001 when they hoped to cut red tape by 33 per cent over three years. In the end, B.C. actually exceeded its goals, cutting red tape by more than 40 per cent. An official with the provincial government in this province says similar success is possible here. “An attainable goal is 25 per cent over three years, but I really hope we’ll do even better than that,” says Paul Oram, Tory MHA for Terra Nova district and chair of the red tape task force. “I’m hoping we’re going to show 30 per cent.”
Danny Williams
The provincial government researched red tape reduction projects completed by a number of provinces and countries before settling on the B.C. model, a decision George recommended. He says other provinces and countries were merely “weed whacking” — eliminating red tape problems for a short period of time only to watch them return years later. He says the B.C. model takes care of the red tape for good. “We felt that to really get at red tape, government needs to examine every-
around 250,000), an official of each department will study the regulations before meeting with the relevant minister to decide which regulatory requirements will be eliminated. Then every month, cabinet ministers will present their findings to cabinet. “For example, (Transportation Minister) Tom Rideout would say ‘I’ve reduced by 10 this month.’ Then (Municipal Affairs) Jack Byrne would say ‘I reduced by 15 this month, why have you only reduced by 10?’” Oram explains.
NO SERVICES ELIMINATED Oram says the process shouldn’t result in job losses to the public sector. “In all my discussions with the officials in British Columbia, they never once said they laid off someone because of red tape reduction,” Oram says. “In all sincerity, our plan is not to lay off employees, it is honestly to make government more efficient.” Oram adds that no services will be eliminated either. “The plan is not to do that at all,” he adds. Early next month, Don Leach, the former deputy minister of business for B.C. and a member of that province’s red tape reduction task force, is slated to visit St. John’s to do a presentation for all of the deputy ministers to show them how the model works. “We still have some questions about how the B.C. model came down. We’re going to sit down and pick his brain to find out how all this is going to happen,” says Oram. Immediately following Leach’s visit, the Newfoundland and Labrador government will begin counting its regulatory requirements. Cuts to red tape will begin immediately afterward.
drivers, who offload 40 per cent of the goods shipped through Vancouver, staged the wildcat strike in July to protest against wages and working conditions at the port. Facilities at the port have failed to keep up with the rapid rise in shipments from Asia and soaring fuel prices have taken a big bite out of truckers’ earnings. The strike ended after the truckers and their brokers agreed to a temporary two-year deal aimed at getting goods moving again while the more complex problems at the port are resolved. The real cost of the strike to Canadian retailers has yet to be deter-
mined, Evans adds, noting the $100 million figure covers only the cost of finding alternative transportation. “That doesn’t include lost sales,” Evans says, adding that many small retailers didn’t have the resources to make other arrangements and simply had to endure delayed shipments. The strike had its biggest impact in British Columbia because containers bound for central Canada are usually loaded directly onto rail cars in the port. However, some large national retailers that use B.C.-based warehouses to store goods before loading them onto rail cars were hit by the strike.
Paul Daly/The Independent
thing it does — all regulatory requirements,” says George. “If government is to start weed whacking — taking out a regulation here and there — does that really get at red tape?” The B.C. model suggests government do an inventory of all regulations and statutes — everything on the books in terms of anything a business has to do in order to access government. After the regulatory requirements in every department are counted (B.C. had close to 400,000; Oram estimates Newfoundland and Labrador to have
B.C. port strike may have cost $100 million Retail Council of Canada asks Ottawa to intervene By Dana Flavelle Torstar wire service
C
anadian retailers were forced to spend an extra $100 million ensuring goods imported from Asia reached store shelves during a four-week strike by container truckers at the Port of Vancouver earlier this summer, the Retail Council of Canada estimates. The retailers spent at least that much
making alternative arrangements, in some cases rerouting goods through other ports, or paying extra to secure precious space on already crowded railway cars, the council says. Now, the retailers want Ottawa to rethink a temporary agreement that got the truckers back to work this month, saying it amounts to re-regulation of that segment of Canada’s trucking industry. The deal, brokered by federal mediator Vince Ready, set rates for the
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truckers that are on average 40 per cent higher than before the work stoppage, the retail council’s western vice-president Kevin Evans says. “We need a free market where the customer can make their own selection based on service and costs,” Evans says. “We want them to rescind the (agreement).” If the agreement remains in force for the next two years as planned, some of Canada’s largest retailers could start buying their own rigs and hiring their own drivers to get around the rules, Evans predicts. About 1,000 independent container
Canadian politicians accused of ‘classic protectionism’ By Chuck Brown Telegraph-Journal
A
Maine economic group that supports a liquefied natural gas project in Passamaquoddy Bay says Canadian politicians, such as Premier Bernard Lord and federal cabinet minister Andy Scott, are premature protesters. Lord and Scott both say Passamaquoddy Bay is not suitable for LNG developments. Two U.S. companies are looking to build LNG import terminals on the Maine side of the bay, near the New Brunswick resort town of St. Andrews. “It’s a little disingenuous for the Canadian government to weigh in on an LNG project over here when there’s one proposed in Saint John,” says
Dianne Tilton, executive director of the Passamaquoddy Bay. Sunrise County Economic Council. “I understand your concerns and will “The project, we think, is a good idea.” insure that our role is carefully considThe organization promotes economic ered,” McKenna wrote to New development in Washington County, Brunswick Liberal leader Shawn Maine. Graham. The council has put Politicians on all its support behind The opponents have levels, and of all Downeast LNG, a stripes, have weighed said the proposals Washington, D.C., in on the LNG procompany that wants to posals this week. threaten fishing, build an LNG terminal Federal cabinet minin Robbinston, Me., ister Andy Scott, aquaculture and across Passamaquoddy local Tory MP Greg Bay from St. Andrews. Thompson, Graham tourism industries. Meanwhile Frank and Premier Bernard McKenna, Canada’s Lord say they oppose ambassador to the U.S., says the LNG developments on the Maine side embassy is studying proposals by two of Passamaquoddy Bay. American companies looking to build The politicians and other opponents liquefied natural gas terminals on say the proposals threaten existing fishing, aquaculture and tourism industries. They’ve also raised concerns about tankers travelling through the bay’s narrow channels, including the Canadian waters of Head Harbour Passage between Campobello and Deer Island. “This is a very serious cross-border matter and I am reassured by the fact that the ambassador is seized with the issue,” Graham says. McKenna says he’s referring Graham’s concerns to the environment section of Canada’s embassy in Washington. He says the issue needs further study before the embassy can determine its role. Opponents of LNG want the Canadian government to declare Head Harbour Passage off-limits to LNG tankers just like it did for oil tankers 30 years ago. Federal officials have stopped short of promising to bar the tankers from the Canadian waters, saying the LNG proponents have not submitted any applications or proposals asking for access. In Maine, opinions on LNG are split. Opponents say the industry will destroy a quiet way of life while those in favour of development like the promise of good-paying jobs and big tax bills for the plants.
AUGUST 28, 2005
INDEPENDENTBUSINESS • 25
GUEST COLUMN
Redress on the upper Churchill By Tom Careen
Then maybe we can get federal help in the form of loan guarantees, federal grants such as the oil comull Island and Muskrat Falls hydroelectric panies received for the development of a certain developments have been in the news as of Canadian off-shore oil field, a cap on interest rates late. They are the two potential sites com- paid to bond holders, and perhaps a federally guaranmonly referred to as lower Churchill. teed floor price for the electricity produced, some Premier Danny Williams recently released a short 2,800 megawatts. list of potential developers and, joy of joys, Danny Would it be desirable to have the federal governalso included a fourth opinion — the province and ment as an equity partner? Perhaps, but I would be Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro may develop the more comfortable dealing with the Great Khan than resources independently. Good. Very, very good. the Big Con. If Québec were to throw a hissy fit, then Three proposals were also short listed at the Aug. Stepmother Ottawa would beat us or abandon us, or 8 news conference for financing options for the both, to pacify La Bell Perfidie. hydro development. Two: The Independent’s Aug. 14 edition carried a It is one of the legacies of the disastrous upper full-page piece by Clare-Marie Gosse on the political Churchill contract that Gull Island and Muskrat Falls history of Labrador’s mighty Churchill. In the article still remain undeveloped. It is fact both should have there is this troubling paragraph: “Between 1972 and been developed in the late 1970s, early ’80’s and 1982, Newfoundland and Labrador lost unknown paid for with the windfall profits, accruing to us, hundreds of millions of dollars as a result of an from the upper Churchill. equalization inequity. During this 10-year period, the One of the proposals for financing options is from federal government allotted equalization payments something called Borealis Infrastructure as if the province was receiving the full market value Management, a wholly owned of the Churchill Falls electricity. subsidiary of the Ontario The province has never received Municipal Employees a retroactive benefit.” Up and at ’em, Loyola. Retirement System, one of the It seems to this observer that is largest pension plans in Canada. insult added to injury. Sharpen your pencil. The It is also a legacy of the loss of Finance Minister Loyola the upper Churchill and its fabuSullivan acquitted himself very lous windfalls year after year successful bringing home well during Danny Williams’ after decade after decade that our fight with Ottawa over the of this lost cash (plus provincial employees’ pension Atlantic Accord. His numbers funds are in the red. interest) will look good on were beyond reproach by his Dear reader, try to describe federal counterpart and his minthis province if our public your résumé in the provin- ions. employees’ pension funds were Yet here is a chance for cial election of 2011. players in the Canadian economy Sullivan to take the lead on a or even the Maritime economy. serious shortfall. He didn’t mind Far fetched? Not at all. The ecodunning his own for unpaid dornomic rent from the Churchill mant school taxes plus interest. River system would have made us a have-province The unknown hundreds of millions plus interest that past 25 years and so, this corner of the world we since 1972-1982 would go a long way to paying the call home would look much different. interest on borrowed money in the development Mr. Editor, if you have more paper and ink, here years (perhaps as much as 10) before Gull Island and are my three proposals for financing our develop- Muskrat Falls are producing electricity. ment of the lower Churchill. Up and at ’em, Loyola. Sharpen your pencil. The One: on Sept. 20 last year Prime Minister Paul successful bringing home of this lost cash (plus interMartin opined that the lower Churchill is a national est) will look good on your résumé in the provincial project of national significance. Those words mean election of 2011. absolutely nothing. What we need the prime minister Three: pay for the lower Churchill with the windto say are these four words — “in the national inter- fall profit from the upper Churchill. It is craven and est.” As in the sentence, the lower Churchill is a knavish to say there is no way out of the upper national project in the national interest. Beware: Churchill contract and we should patiently wait until national project of national interest means nothing as 2041 when the contract expires. We need to redress well. The constitutional open sesame for federal on the contract. It is attainable. The day after Danny involvement is “in the national interest” spoken or Williams was elected there was this ancient Chinese written by the prime minister of all Canadians. proverb written in the other newspaper: “Heaven
‘Stronger action is required’ From page 23
G
Minister Petterson speaks of this issue repeatedly including recent discussions with the European trade commissioner. There has been some success made by the federal government, including an increase in the annual tariff quota of some 40 per cent (an increase of 2,000 metric tonnes) but even with this increase the 7,000-tonne quota for 2005 was filled by February. Stronger action is required. This has been an ongoing challenge for a decade and if we are going to strengthen and build a strong shrimp industry in this province, it is essential that headway be made on this issue. We must increase the awareness of this trade barrier and the impacts that it has on this province and indeed, on all of Canada.
Paul Daly/The Independent
never seals off all exits.” And the final answer to the Jumble in the same paper was “shoe-in.” In that other newspaper last October I wrote a piece the editor titled History may provide a solution wherein I stated I have identified three possible ways, outside of law courts, that may compel Québec City and Ottawa to make redress on the Upper Churchill contract. Since that time I have found another event that may be used in our seeking redress. To paraphrase the late, lamenting John Efford, “Do you want them, Minister Sullivan? Do you want them, Premier Williams?” They are yours for the asking. They are free of charge. Gratis. Be mindful other searchers may find other ways out. Danny Williams has spoken often of the psychological impact on the people of this province gaining the $2.6 billion in the Atlantic Accord. And the effect has been great, no doubt. Tell us soon, Danny, the psychological impact on our people of redress on the upper Churchill contract. Tom Careen is a resident of Placentia.
UNFAIR ADVANTAGE Trade barriers give unfair advantages to competitors, result in lost opportunity and customers, and reduce consumption. All this tremendously impacts our economy as you can’t catch and process what you can’t sell. It is a frustratingly slow process — what’s even more aggravating is that our competitors harvest shrimp just outside our 200-mile limit, and sometimes within it legitimately or otherwise, and then sell it to the very market that we have limited access to. The bottom line is that while the federal government has attached importance to this trade dispute, with some positive indicators, a real solution is required. Everyone knows of the softwood lumber trade dispute but few know of the shrimp lockout. We need to increase the national awareness and keep the pressure to ensure access to the largest market. As with the softwood lumber, when push comes to shove we’ll need national support. Because when diplomacy isn’t working, it’s time for retaliation. Siobhan Coady’s column will return Sept. 11.
AUGUST 28, 2005
26 • INDEPENDENTBUSINESS
WEEKLY DIVERSIONS ACROSS 1 Poles for sails 6 Inkling 10 Knocks 14 Summerside summer time 17 West Indian sorcery 18 Stir up 19 Great Lake with world’s most valuable freshwater fishery 20 Pacific island neckwear 21 Equivalent 23 Proud in Paris 24 Young fellow 25 Tee preceder 26 CBC radio’s longestrunning show: “The Happy ___” (1937-59) 27 Ukrainian port 29 “___ me a river ...” 30 In this way 32 Venomous lizard 34 Equal 35 Mountain pass 37 Fritz’s exclamation 39 Composure 42 Surrender 45 Signs of saintliness 48 Quench 49 Get to 51 Asmara is its capital 53 Major pique 54 Looked disdainful 55 Small island 56 Gets in the tub
58 Did not 59 “Those were the ___, my friend” 61 Money set aside for political bribery (2 wds.) 63 Only fish in the sea? 67 WWII submarine 69 Diaphragm spasm 71 And not 72 She wrote Revenge of the Land 75 A Nova Scotia univ. 76 Captivate 78 Infuriate 79 Lapwing 81 Puts up 82 Sport 83 Sot 86 Rainbow, e.g. 87 Functional start? 89 Psst! 90 Bait 92 ___ Braintree, Man. 95 Prov. with more than 90 sandy beaches 97 Need for liquid 100 Group of two 102 That woman 103 Feasted 104 Indian royalty 105 Deviation from the normal 108 Operate 109 Central Asian sea 110 “See you!” 111 Norwegian inlet 112 ___ and caboodle
113 Lighten up? 114 Track tipster 115 Big tops DOWN 1 Short sacred choral composition 2 Disconcert 3 Gratification of the senses 4 Make edging 5 Carpet of the 70’s 6 Expressing the opposite 7 “Greatest Canadian of all time” 8 Wittenberg one 9 Choir voice 10 Arbitrator 11 Stands 12 They often contain fruit 13 Block of ice in a glacier 14 Signal that danger is over (2 wds.) 15 Pricey 16 Orderly 22 Periodical, for short 28 German thanks 31 Glaswegian, e.g. 33 Supporters 36 Pieces of eight? 38 Rue or savoury 40 Common harrier (2 wds.) 41 Desert feature (2 wds.)
43 More than slow down 44 “Until the ___ of time ...” 45 Lead 46 LakmÈ highlight 47 Weathered 50 Toe total 52 Armchair traveller’s volume 54 “___ you went away ...” 57 Humble abode 58 French noble 60 Too sweet 62 Pertaining to a son or d aughter 64 Sometimes (2 wds.) 65 Rough and crude type 66 Sins 68 Huge 70 Start for legal or medic 72 Put in stitches 73 Belonging to: suffix 74 Amount of slope 75 Arcand of film 77 Marie-France’s mother 79 Juvenile 80 He repatriated our constitution (1982) 84 Nasal 85 Timber trouble 88 Leash 91 Organ of
equilibrium 93 ___ and sweet 94 Is inclined
95 Kejimkujik or Algonquin 96 Small case
98 ___-kiri 99 Diplomacy 101 Crazy
106 Life story, for short 107 Bind Solutions on page 34
WEEKLY STARS ARIES: MARCH 21/APR. 20 You'll be spending more time on travel, socializing and entertaining this week, Aries. Enjoy all of the attention you will be receiving everyone knows you enjoy the limelight. TAURUS: APRIL 21/MAY 21 You've been optomistic about a financial venture, Taurus. But don't celebrate too soon. An unexpected setback arrives in time to put a monkey wrench in your plans.
Fill in the grid so that each row of nine squares, each column of nine and each section of nine (three squares by three) contains the numbers 1 through 9 in any order. There is only one solution to each puzzle. Solutions, tips and computer program available at www.sudoko.com THIS WEEK’S SOLUTION ON PAGE 34
GEMINI: MAY 22/JUNE 21 Bigger and more elaborate things may be on your agenda this week, Gemini, but you won't have the time to get everything completed. Better save some items for next week as well. CANCER: JUNE 22/JULY 22 Finally your big break has arrived, Cancer. Enjoy the moment with a big celebration that involves all of your family and friends. It's a long
time coming, so make it count. LEO: JULY 23/AUG. 23 Can't shake a nagging feeling that bad news is in store, Leo? Stop those negative thoughts and focus on what is happening right now. Excessive worry won't get you anywhere. VIRGO: AUG. 24/SEPT. 22 The theme of this week is surprises, Virgo. Expect things to be very interesting, because you won't be able to predict one day to the next. You'll love it all. LIBRA: SEPT. 23/OCT. 23 Stop butting heads with a family member. This person gets his or her kicks from seeing you squirm. Ignore these antics and you will be much happier. SCORPIO: OCT. 24/NOV. 22 You'll be spending more time on travel, socializing and entertaining this week, Scorpio. Relish the attention you will be receiving,
even though it's not something you normally seek. SAGITTARIUS: NOV. 23/DEC. 21 You feel dissatisfied with a certain relationship. End it quickly if you feel that strongly about it; otherwise talk it over and find a middle ground. Just don't ignore the problem. CAPRICORN: DEC. 22/JAN. 20 Someone dear to your heart has an important question to ask. You already know the answer deep in your heart. This is the beginning of wonderful things to come. AQUARIUS: JAN. 21/FEB. 18 Don't lose your patience when a friend asks for help yet again. You are the only one he or she can turn to, Aquarius. Think through your actions before you react. PISCES: FEB. 19/MARCH 20 No one likes a sore loser, and that's
what you've been acting like lately. Things can't always go your way, Pisces. Realize that now.
FAMOUS BIRTHDAYS AUGUST 28 LeeAnn Rimes, singer AUGUST 29 Michael Jackson, singer AUGUST 30 Cameron Diaz, actress AUGUST 31 Richard Gere, actor SEPTEMBER 1 Gwyneth Paltrow, actress SEPTEMBER 2 Salma Hayek, actress SEPTEMBER 3 Charlie Sheen, actor
AUGUST 28, 2005
INDEPENDENTSPECIAL SECTION • 27
28 • INDEPENDENTSPECIAL SECTION
AUGUST 28, 2005
AUGUST 28, 2005
INDEPENDENTSPORTS • 29
Sens make tough choice
EUROPE BOUND
Deal helps keep top blueliner(s) on team By Damien Cox Torstar wire service
themselves roughly $3.8 million immediately and positioned themselves to keep one or both of their prized defencemen. f the Ottawa Senators prove to be particularIn Ottawa, of course, this kind of hard decily adept at making tough decisions within sion involving real or projected franchise playthe environs of the new NHL economic ers is nothing new. Once upon a time Bryan structure, it is because they’ve been making Berard was the first overall pick of the NHL those types of decisions for years. draft, but he made it clear he didn’t really want On the surface, the strength of the Ottawa to play for the then sad-sack Senators and was lineup took a hit last week, accepting the physi- dealt to the Islanders for Redden. cally and emotionally damaged Dany Heatley in Alexei Yashin, meanwhile, wanted to be paid exchange for their most explosive forward, far more than Ottawa felt it could afford, and he Marian Hossa. Those who watched Heatley play was peddled in a deal, also to the Islanders, for last year in Europe, at the World Cup and at the a package that essentially amounted to Chara world championships, came away convinced and Jason Spezza. that he is but a shadow of the Hossa, by desiring a payplayer who appeared to be the cheque well in excess of next great star on the Canadian Less than a month into Alfredsson’s, essentially horizon before being involved forced Ottawa’s hand in the as the driver of a speeding car the NHL’s new world same way Berard and Yashin in a 2003 crash that killed once did. Atlanta Thrashers teammate … most teams appear The choice, after all, was to Dan Snyder. have Hossa without Redden intent on staying well and perhaps Chara, or Heatley Indeed, it was stunning to watch Heatley fumble and with Redden and maybe Chara shy of the $39 million as well. bumble his way at the worlds in Austria last spring, either the Muckler hopes Heatley is salary cap result of lost confidence or posbetter in the spring than Hossa sibly an eye injury that has left was and that Heatley will be one pupil permanently dilated. At this point in able to escape his personal demons better as a their careers, it would seem Hossa is a better bet member of the Sens. The significant nature of than Heatley. the trade, meanwhile, suggests that those who But the Sens, you have to understand, didn’t have predicted that the NHL’s new salary cap have the luxury of simply weighing the relative system will put a chill on big deals may not be merits of the two players. They had to examine, correct. first, their internal pay structure, and second, the Less than a month into the NHL’s new world, contractual demands they will face now and in major swaps involving Chris Pronger, Mike the near future. Captain Daniel Alfredsson is Peca, Hossa and Heatley have been generated currently the team’s highest-paid player at about and most teams appear intent on staying well $4.7 million (all figures U.S.), and Sens GM shy of the $39 million salary cap both as a hedge John Muckler wisely wasn’t willing to pay against a possible cap reduction next year and to Hossa more, particularly given the Slovak leave room for expensive acquisitions this seasniper’s so-so playoff performances of recent son. years, including a series of disappearing acts In other words, expect more substantial trades against the Maple Leafs. over the next seven months. Also, Ottawa doesn’t particularly want to Hossa, meanwhile, joins the list of top young envision the future without defensive standouts forwards who have been taken off next sumWade Redden and Zdeno Chara. By moving mer’s free agent list, a group that includes Joe Hossa and his contract plus the inflated, Ranger- Thornton, Jarome Iginla and Vincent Lecavalier. initiated price tag of rearguard Greg de Vries Any team banking on being passive now in ($2.3 million each of the next two years) to order to be opportunistic next summer, it seems, Atlanta last week for Heatley, the Sens saved has probably miscalculated badly.
I
‘It can happen to anyone’ From page 32 Collingwood says. “The people who can afford to come this far for a race — where’s there’s no money or points involved — must have enough money to do up their car to top standards. I only have a few dollars to modify my car and I have to face the fact that some people coming here are going to have a huge budget to make even more modifications.” Despite the fancy equipment, Collingwood says such cars are not guaranteed success at Targa Newfoundland. After all, he knows as well as anyone that mechanical problems or minor accidents can destroy a driver’s chances of winning at any
point in the race. “So many things can go wrong during the event, it doesn’t matter who you are or how money you’ve spent,” he says. “It can happen to anyone.” Despite the competition that exists between drivers, Collingwood insists he has made many friends at the races in the past three years. In fact, he says one of the thrills of entering Targa Newfoundland is meeting people from across the world. “You have a lot of people with the same interests,” he says, “so it makes for a good feel amongst everyone.” darcy.macrae@theindependent.ca
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Harold Druken is taking his game to Europe, according to a report last week in the Toronto Star. Druken has reportedly signed a deal with EHC Basel in Switzerland, after spending the past two seasons with the St. John’s Maple Leafs. The Shea Heights’ native recorded 38 points in 48 games with St. John’s last year. Paul Daly/The Independent
NFL drug pitch a scam Randy Moss would have surprised more people if he said he didn’t smoke pot. Since his admission, Moss has been back-pedalling, but the news probably bothers relatively few fans. Yet there is one bothersome angle to his admission: Moss’s agent says his client has never failed an NFL drug test and is not part of its substance abuse program. Ricky Williams, whose pot history is positively Marleyesque, says NFL players routinely circumvent the league’s drug testing with detoxifiers available on the Internet. If players can successfully fudge something as harmless as a marijuana detection test, can’t they also scam the tests for the more harmful drugs, i.e. steroids? Can it be true that the NFL, with more than 300 players who weigh more than 300 pounds each, has no drug problem? The sad death last week of 23-year-old Thomas Solution for crossword page 26
Herrion, an aspiring guard with the San Francisco 49ers, is a mystery. It may have an entirely logical explanation involving pre-existing conditions. Toxicology results will take weeks. Leaving aside Herrion for a moment, how can there not be a red flag about all these enormous individuals who are 40 per cent heavier than players of preceding generations, yet much faster and more agile? There are 320-pound linemen now faster than running backs were in the 1970s. The NFL and the players’ union stonewalls on drug issues. Everything is secret. The NFL releases only selected data about test results — like how clean everyone is. As Moss, Williams and others repeatedly demonstrate, why should anyone trust the NFL when players essentially scoff at the drug tests as beatable? Why should any pro league be believed on its say-so, ever? — Torstar wire service Solution for Sudoko page 26
AUGUST 28, 2005
30 • INDEPENDENTSPORTS
‘Dream job’ Brad Peddle is returning to the hockey team he once starred for — this time as head coach By Darcy MacRae The Independent
I
t hasn’t taken Brad Peddle long to move up in the coaching ranks. Just last season the St. John’s native accepted his first head coaching position when he was named bench boss of the Antigonish Bulldogs of the Maritime Junior A Hockey League. One season later Peddle is now in the midst of preparing for his first year behind the bench with the St. Francis Xavier (St. F.X.) XMen, a club located in the same small Nova Scotia town as the Bulldogs. “It took me 10 seconds to accept the job,” Peddle tells The Independent from his office in Antigonish. “This is a dream job for me. I always wanted to come back to my school and coach.” Peddle starred for the X-Men from 1995 to 1999, before embarking on a pro career that took him to Europe and the southern United States. Returning to the school and town in which he forged so many fond memories is a pleasure for the 31-year-old. “This town was always like a second home for me,” Peddle says. Peddle was named head coach of the X-Men over the summer after long-time head coach Danny Flynn took a one-year leave of absence to assist Ted Nolan in running the QMJHL’s Moncton Wildcats, the host team for the 2006 Memorial Cup. Peddle has assumed all head coaching duties, including recruiting and running a local hockey school. Should Flynn return as head coach as planned next year, Peddle expects to retain a full-time position with the school and continue many of the chores he currently handles — including recruiting and organizing the team’s practices. “That would be a perfect scenario if he did come back. If he doesn’t come back, then hopefully it becomes more than a one-year job for myself,” says Peddle. As excited as Peddle is about coaching the XMen, he hopes things go a lot smoother this year than they did during his first return to Antigonish last season. Just three months into the 2004-05 campaign, Peddle resigned his post as the club’s head coach after a dispute with ownership.
Brad Peddle
Although he doesn’t like discussing the specifics of the situation, he does say he felt he had no other choice but to leave the team. “There were some things going on that made me feel I couldn’t do my job as a coach to the best of my ability. I was coaching the team but my hands were tied — I wasn’t able to do the things a coach should be able to do because of some interference from above,” Peddle says. “I felt moving on at that time was the best thing for my development as a coach. “It was disappointing because we had a great group of kids, and I had developed a good relationship with them.” Despite his quick departure, Peddle wasn’t out of work for long. Just one day after his resignation become public, the Halifax Wolverines — a longtime thorn in the side of the Bulldogs — came calling. Halifax head coach and general manager Jim
Bottomley offered Peddle an assistant coaching liked him,” says Peddle. “He was a big recruit for position and the St. John’s native quickly accept- me because he was my first commitment. He was ed. highly regarded — he was the top defenceman “Jim realized what was going on and under- coming out of the Q and looking to go to school.” stood the situation,” says Peddle. “It worked out Besides recruiting, the next biggest challenge great, we had a good relationship. Jimbo’s been for Peddle will be getting accustomed to a higher around for a long time and was looking for some- level of play than he experienced last year as a body to come in and do a lot of the practices and coach in junior A. As he is well aware of from his preparation, so it worked out well.” playing days, Canadian university hockey features Perhaps looking to once again rub salt into the many talented players. Most hockey observers wounds of his old rival, Bottomley insisted Peddle feel it is at least equal to major junior, and possihandle the head coaching duties the next time bly even a shade better due to the players being a Halifax travelled to Antigonish for a game. few years older. “It was nice he let me take over. He knew that “These guys are almost pro. Most of them could would mean a lot,” Peddle says. go to any minor league in North “It was difficult — I had coached America, but they want to get those kids for the first three “In this little hockey their education first and then months of the season. But at the go,” he says. “In junior, you same time I did everything I have to teach them some fundatown, it’s expected could to help our team (Halifax).” mentals. But at this level, these that the X-Men win … players have a good foundation Although he enjoyed his time learning under Bottomley, Peddle of fundamentals so you just If you lose two in a continued looking for coaching have to put some systems into positions at the end of the season. and get them to play for row in this town, it’s place He was interviewed by Real you.” Paiement for an assistant coachPeddle will also have to deal like losing seven in a with ing job with the St. John’s Fog the pressure that comes Devils, but removed his name with coaching the X-Men, a row in junior.” from the list when he accepted team the town of Antigonish folthe post with St. F.X. lows with a great deal of pasBrad Peddle Upon taking the position, sion. Peddle immediately got to work. “In this little hockey town, it’s The X-Men needed to replace 12 graduating play- expected that the X-Men win,” Peddle says. “And ers, so he had to learn a lot about recruiting right that’s a good thing because all the guys coming in away. realize there’s pressure to win. If you lose two in “Recruiting is a big part of the job — it takes a row in this town, it’s like losing seven in a row months to nail down your guys,” says Peddle. in junior.” “You’ve got to identify them first and then conWhile he is happy to be back in Antigonish — vince them to come to St. F.X.” this time with his wife Susan and seven-monthSpeculation around maritime hockey circles old son Tyler — Peddle also hopes it is not his last was that the X-Men program was headed downhill stop. He wants to go as far as he can in coaching, with a rookie head coach behind the bench in and hopes he learns enough at St. F.X. to advance place of the experienced Flynn. But Peddle to even higher levels. silenced his critics by recruiting one of the most “The next step from here would be pro,” says sought-after players on the market — fellow St. Peddle. “I want to get the necessary experience I John’s native Sam Roberts, who was coming off need to get to that level, but that’s absolutely three successful years in the QMJHL. where I want to go in the grand scheme of things.” “I watched him play with Gatineau and really darcy.macrae@theindependent.ca
Lefty Downs leaves lasting impression By Richard Griffin Torstar wire service
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eft-hander Scott Downs is similar to Ted Lilly in a lot of areas, except for one thing. Next season he will cost the Toronto Blue Jays’ substantially less money to serve as a useable fifth starter. Downs, in his six starts since Roy Halladay’s shin injury, has flashed enough toughness to show Blue Jays general manager J.P. Ricciardi that he is better suited as a member of the rotation than in the bullpen. It could allow them to try and move Lilly in an offseason deal. “I’ve been a starter my whole career,” Downs says. “I’m just getting back into the feel of my pitch count, that kind of stuff. I’ll do whatever it takes to help this team. Right now, they want me to start, so I’ll start.” Downs, as he does at every park he’s never pitched in, went out to the Yankee Stadium mound early last week and got a feel for the slope, the rubber, the stride, the ghosts. It was his first trip to the Bronx. “It was exciting,” the 29-year-old career National Leaguer says. “I walked out when there wasn’t anybody out there and looked at how tight it felt from the mound. A lot of kids dream of coming here to pitch and I lived it out.” The other lefty, Lilly, didn’t make it
Scott Downs
out to the main mound. He threw a simulated game out among the monuments. The Jays couldn’t use the main field because of a Yankees clinic. Lilly, with legendary lefties like Whitey Ford and Ron Guidry staring out with unblinking bronze eyes, threw everything in his repertoire for the third straight side session and is ready to go on a rehab assignment. The fact is the Jays have missed Lilly less than they thought they would in the 30 days since his left biceps injury. Which brings us to next year. Lilly, arbitration-eligible, is coming off a year
Reuters
in which he earned $3.1 million (all figures U.S.). He can become a free agent following ‘06. Downs, earning slightly more than
the major-league minimum this year, is arbitration-eligible for the first time and will earn under a million. If he continues to pitch well as a fill-in, it may become a two-month audition for a return to someone’s rotation full-time. “You’re always auditioning,” Downs says. “I’ve just got to go out there when I get the ball and take advantage. I can’t look at next year.” The most impressive aspect of Downs’ performance against the Bronx Bombers last week, with history permeating the field and with the leadoff runners on base from the second through sixth innings was that he never yielded to pressure and emerged with just one earned run. “It felt comfortable,” Downs says. “I wasn’t overwhelmed. It just felt like another ballpark. Granted it is Yankee Stadium and there’s a lot of history. There wasn’t anything bothering me except for myself not throwing strikes.” Blue Jays’ Manager John Gibbons
perks up when asked about his starter. “He can pitch,” Gibbons says. “Since he jumped in that rotation, he’s pitched great. He’s a classic lefty. He moves it around. He changes speeds. He throws the breaking ball behind in the count. He did a great job.” When Lilly and Roy Halladay return, it’s not a given Downs will be one of the two pitchers bumped. Sure, Gibbons and Ricciardi enjoy the luxury of two southpaws in the bullpen, but on Sept. 1, when the rosters expand, the Jays could bring up a minor-league lefthander to join Scott Schoeneweis and leave Downs in the rotation. As it currently stands, Gustavo Chacin must be considered the ace of this cobbled together rotation, with Josh Towers as No. 2, followed by Downs, Dave Bush and Dustin McGowan. Combined, that rotation has 63 career major-league victories. How is this team still in any sort of post-season race?
Terra Nova Texas Hold’em Golf Tournament
AUGUST 28, 2005
NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIPS
INDEPENDENTSPORTS • 31
They’re going to show more emotion From page 32 inappropriate to shout such things at the Fog Devils or visiting teams this winter. These players are young, and are going to make more mistakes than the baby Leafs. They’re also going to show more emotion, which will be good in the form of added physical play and plenty of scoring chances but bad in the form of the occasional mishap or bad penalty that could cost the home team dearly. I just hope fans remember that guys like Thompson and Roy are grown men who don’t get shaken up by the occasional slam from those in attendance. But for the teenagers in the QMJHL this season, having insults rained upon them from the bleachers may be a bit hard to take, especially when they’re in the middle of a week-long road trip and are trying to fit time in to study for exams, work out and call their girlfriends. When a major junior player gives the puck away in his zone or takes a needless penalty, just imagine that young man is your son or nephew before chastising him for his miscue. Considering the warmness and kindness I’ve seen people here extend to visitors in the past, I don’t expect any less this hockey season.
Ace pitcher Mario Tee led the St. John’s Caps into action at the Canadian Senior Baseball Championships in Kamloops, B.C. last week. The Caps lost their opening game 10-4 to Quebec before dropping their second game 5-2 to Kamloops. Final results were not available prior to The Independent’s press deadlines. Paul Daly/The Independent
Burris finds ‘mighty glow’ By Rick Matsumoto Torstar wire service
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enry Burris has climbed down off the fence. That’s made him a better quarterback and the Calgary Stampeders a better team. Stampeders offensive co-ordinator Steve Buratto says Burris’ slow start this season was due in part to indecisiveness from the 30-year-old, who was a much-ballyhooed off-season free agent signing from Saskatchewan. “Slow starts are generally related to decision making,” says Buratto. “He’s thrown some balls that have been incomplete that under normal circumstances he’d complete. But that’s because he was trying to make a decision whether to run or throw and got caught in between and didn’t have his feet set.
“The game has slowed down. When I step in under the centre or if I’m in the shotgun I can see things occurring before they occur.” Henry Burris “It was more a process of, ‘Hey, be decisive. If you’re going to throw it, throw it. If you’re going to run, run.’” Burris says he’s no longer a fence sitter. Is it a sign of his own increased confidence and growing familiarity with the Stamps’ offence and receivers? Last week, he was named the CFL’s offensive player of the week after throwing two touchdowns and rushing for another in a 40-37 win over Montreal on Aug. 18. “The game for a quarterback is more mental than physical,” Burris says. “For me, the game has slowed down. When I step in under the centre or if I’m in the shotgun I can see things occurring before they occur. For a quarterback, when the game slows down that way, it puts you in a different zone that a lot of quarterbacks are trying to achieve. “We call it the upper level. You reach that glow. That mighty glow. To me guys like Damon Allen, Anthony Calvillo and Dave Dickenson have all been there and still have it.” Burris says getting to know his new receivers contributed to the team’s early inconsistencies, including a season opening 22-16 loss at home to the Toronto Argonauts. “I wasn’t running the same plays I had in Saskatchewan,” he says. Burris admits that earlier this year he was still thinking as though he was running the Riders’ offence. “But (the Stampeders) have a more aggressive passing game ... the reads and my role within the offence is different,” he says. “Each week I’m understanding more of what I’m supposed to do. I’ve been able to grow and that’s brought comfort to my game.”
DRESSED TO KILL Is it just me, or are the new jerseys for the Canadian national hockey teams just putrid? I’m not opposed to changing the national team jersey every few years, but these uniforms are ridiculous. Skin tight, vertical stripes instead of horizontal and looking like something found in the trash at a yard sale, the new uniforms are sure to make Team Canada the laughing stock of the upcoming World Junior Championships and Olympic Games. darcy.macrae@theindependent.ca
INDEPENDENTSPORTS
SUNDAY THROUGH SATURDAY, AUGUST 28-SEPTEMBER 4, 2005 — PAGE 32
Tom Collingwood in the car he’ll be racing in this year’s Targa Newfoundland.
Paul Daly/The Independent
Start your engines With this year’s Targa Newfoundland just weeks away, Tom Collinwood is putting the finishing touches on his Pontiac Firebird By Darcy MacRae The Independent
T
he wait is almost over for Tom Collingwood. Ever since last year’s Targa Newfoundland ended, the St. John’s resident has been anxiously awaiting the beginning of the 2005 event. His performances in both 2003 and 2004 have him convinced this could be the year he takes home the title in his category. In each of the past two years, Collingwood was tied for first place half way through the seven-day course before falling behind the pack due to mechanical problems. Throughout the past 12 months, he has been working to ensure his 1996 Pontiac Firebird takes him all the way to first place this time around. “Even though it’s been almost a year, you know it’s coming,” Collingwood tells The Independent. “You can’t wait to get in the car and go as fast as you can from stage to stage. When you’re lined up and you hear ‘3-2-1-go,’ it’s a good buzz.” Collingwood took the engine out of his ride recently and began fine tuning it for this year’s Targa Newfoundland, which runs Sept. 10-17. His goal is to eliminate any potential problems similar to those that caused him to fall from first place — half way through the races in 2003 and 2004 — to 24th by the end. “Any mechanical problem that could
happen to the car, I have totally gone The fact that his home province is one of through,” he says. “Last year was it for me. only three places in the world to host a This year I want to have everything taken rally competition on paved roads makes care of it, even if it costs me a few more entering Targa Newfoundland all the more bucks over my budget. I don’t want to suf- special for Collingwood. fer the same disappointment as last year.” “It’s very unique. It’s a special race, Although he is putting a lot of work into being one of only three in the world,” he his car, Collingwood says it is nothing new says. “It’s nice to say this is our back yard. to him or other Targa We can say ‘This is how Newfoundland competiwe do it in tors. Dedicating much of “The people who can Newfoundland.’” the year to maintenance Collingwood has taken afford to come this far part on a vehicle only used in Targa for one week may seem Newfoundland since its excessive to some, for a race … must have inception in 2002. He Collingwood admits, but using his Pontiac enough money to do began to those who enter the Firebird in 2003 when he event, it’s well worth the entered his current cateup their car to top effort. gory, in which modified “It’s a great opportunimodern cars between the standards.” ty to race and not have to years 1991-98 are given a go away. It is the cheaptime to finish a stage, and Tom Collingwood est, easiest way I can be are slapped with penalty involved,” Collingwood says. points if they fail to cross the finish line Targa Newfoundland is the only race of within that time frame. its kind in North America, and one of only However, there was more to entering the three in the world (Australia and New race than just buying a fast car — Zealand also host Targa races). The event Collingwood had to soup it up first. includes seven days of competition on 500 He ripped out almost the entire inside of km of closed roads across the eastern and the car, including the back seats, radio, central regions of the island and attracts door panelling, carpet and even the air condrivers from across the province and the ditioning and cruise control. rest of the country. Drivers from the United “You take off every piece of weight that States and Europe also attend. is not necessary to make the car drive or
stop,” Collingwood says. Before a driver can enter their car into the race, they also have to install an international standard roll cage. Specific materials and shape have to be used or a driver will not be allowed to enter the event. But there are benefits to having such equipment in the car. “The cool thing is I could take this car any place in the world and be approved to race,” says Collingwood. The proper tires are also a necessity (Collingwood prefers Goodyear run flats), as is the car’s suspension. “The money you put into your suspension … you can really feel it,” Collingwood says. “If it was just a car you drive to work, you wouldn’t notice it. But in a race, you really see the rewards.” Over the past three years, Collingwood estimates he has put more than 1,000 hours worth of work into his car. He says his efforts are paying off, but adds it is sometimes discouraging to work so hard and then see a vehicle enter the event with much superior equipment. Usually such cars are operated by drivers who have travelled a great distance to enter — drivers Collingwood says have plenty to spend. “You get a lot of state-of-the-art cars,” See ‘It can happen,” page 29
They only look like men S
ometimes it’s hard to believe someone so young can be so talented and so big. That thought came to mind a lot recently when I took in some of the St. John’s Fog Devils’ training camp. Players between the ages of 16-20 were roaming the halls of the Glacier in Mount Pearl looking every bit as big as grown men. Teenagers well over six feet tall, several in the 6’2 – 6’5 range, and weighing much more than 200 pounds crowded the locker rooms and canteen in between on-ice sessions during the team’s inaugural training camp. As big as these guys looked off the ice, they were even more imposing
DARCY MACRAE
The game with all their equipment on — I kept waiting for the imperial march to play over the loud speakers whenever Paradise’s Matt Boland (a 6’4, 240 pound 16-year-old) skated down the ice. From high in the stands, it was difficult to tell the age of most of the players. If a person just happened to wander into the Glacier not knowing what was
going on, they wouldn’t be blamed for assuming a very large senior men’s team was working out on the ice. From a distance, there was little difference between the teenagers and men many years their senior — until their helmets come off, that is. For some players, a smooth, almost hairless, baby face was exposed once the lid was removed. Suddenly they ceased to look like men, and began to more closely resemble the teenagerson-the-verge-of-adulthood that they are. Sure, some of the players have been living away from home for a few years now and are no doubt more mature than
their peers in high schools and colleagues throughout the metro St. John’s area. But at the end of the day, they still have much less life experience than the adults whose size they closely emulate. When Quebec Major Junior Hockey League action begins at Mile One Stadium this fall, the players’ speed and puck handling abilities will again closely resemble the skills of men many years older. Fans will cheer the goals, saves and big hits, just as they did during the St. John’s Maple Leafs run in the provincial capital. But one thing I hope fans remember is that the Fog Devils are not adults, and they — as well as their competition
— should be granted a little more leniency when it comes to mistakes they will make. During my one season covering the baby buds last winter, I admit it was fun to hear the fans taunt rival players such as Edmonton’s Rocky Thompson and Manitoba’s Jimmy Roy. As long as the taunting was in good taste and didn’t cross the line, it was all good-natured fun. Players like Thompson and Roy certainly didn’t seem to mind, and in all honestly, actually seemed to like the interaction with the fans. But while such banter was part of the fun at the AHL level, I think it would be See “They’re going to,” page 31