2005-10-23

VOL. 3 ISSUE 43

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ST. JOHN’S, NEWFOUNDLAND AND LABRADOR — SUNDAY THROUGH SATURDAY, OCTOBER 23-29, 2005

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OPINION 6

IN CAMERA 20-21

Cabot Martin emerges from writing hiatus in light of ‘exciting times’

Picture editor Paul Daly faces demons on Harbour Haunt

Cash cow

BITE ME

Hibernia platform may be expanded; province considering buying Ottawa’s 8.5 per cent stake in project CLARE-MARIE GOSSE

T

he Hibernia offshore oil platform may be gearing up for a massive project expansion based on increased reservoir findings, The Independent has learned.

“We have issued expressions of interest for work to assess potential development opportunities, but no decisions have been made,” says Margo BruceO’Connell, a spokeswoman for Hibernia Management and Development Corporation.

O’Connell says it’s too early to judge how much extra oil may be recoverable from the southern area of the Hibernia reservoir, or how much an expansion would cost, but Premier Danny Williams says he’s heard there may be around 330 million extra barrels.

Despite Hibernia’s ever-increasing production levels, Williams tells The Independent the province is no longer expecting to acquire the federal government’s 8.5 per cent stake in the development as a goodwill transfer — an aim outlined in his administration’s Blue Book of pre-election promises.

“Our position before was that they should transfer it to us,” says Williams, “That’s simply not on. I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

He says the province would be interested in purchasing the share at a reduced rate instead.

“I don’t want to pay the peak price for it,” Williams says. “I’d like to say fine, give us an opportunity to buy this at a carried interest basis, whereby as it earns income we can pay it off, so we don’t have to outlay $100 million or whatever it happens to be.”

In 1992, the federal government swooped in to save the Hibernia project by putting down $451 million to secure an 8.5 per cent stake. The project had been forced to shut down after Gulf Canada suddenly pulled out.

See “$300 million,” page 2

QUOTE OF THE WEEK “My modest objective? ... To hear before I die, not jokes, but people demanding of their politicians in a variety of settings around the world: ‘Why can’t we be more like Newfoundland?’”

— Cabot Martin on writing again, page 6

OPINION 3

Ray Guy on Paul Martin’s eternal damnation WORLD 11

Michael Harris on punishments that don’t fit the sexual crimes Life Story . . . . . . . . . . 8 Livyer . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Book review . . . . . . 22 Crossword . . . . . . . . 28 Sports . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

Dracula (Clint Bulter) ravages the innocent maiden Lucy (Laura Beth Gray) in Dracula, a play running at Holy Heart auditorium over the Halloween weekend. See story page 8.

Paul Daly/The Independent

Plugging in Video conferencing could help save outports; south coast project needs support

By Stephanie Porter The Independent

C

arol Harris remembers the anxiety she felt the first time she had to use videoconferencing equipment.

She and a fellow researcher were in Grand Bruit, a community of 35 on the south coast of Newfoundland. They needed to get across the coast to Francois to lead a workshop, but bad weather had rolled in.

It was another member of the community

who suggested they go to the local school and use the video equipment.

“Even though we had come to look at this technology, we didn’t think of using it ourselves,” says Harris, a member of faculty of education at the University of Victoria.

“Not only that, but we froze in horror at the thought we’d have to do it.”

Harris and her colleague steeled their nerves and the workshop went ahead via video cameras and monitor screens. Harris says she will “always have sympathy for the people who

fear the technology itself.”

She and her team have spent the past three years assessing the effects and use of new communications technology — including video conferencing — in five communities along the south coast of the province: Grand Bruit, Burgeo, Ramea, Grey River and Francois.

Now at the end of her research, Harris firmly believes the technologies are key to sustainSee “Great chance,” page 2

Flag poll Province’s poll shows only 24.7 per cent would adopt Pink, White and Green; premier surprised STEPHANIE PORTER

A

ccording to a poll commissioned by Danny Williams’ office, only one in four Newfoundlanders and Labradorians is in favour of changing the official provincial flag to the Pink, White and Green.

The results of the “Provincial Flag Survey,” obtained by The Independent, show nearly half the 854 residents polled — 46.7 per cent — are opposed to the idea of replacing the current flag, designed by Christopher Pratt in the 1980s.

A further 28.6 per cent have no opinion; the remaining 24.7 per cent are in favour of a change.

The premier himself was surprised at the

Paul Daly/The Independent

results. “I would have thought it would have been at least 50-50,” Williams tells The Independent.

Williams initiated the $3,325 poll in the face of growing public debate and media focus on the provincial flag. The pre-Confederation tricolour has become a popular sight on homes, clothing, and other paraphernalia.

“If (the flag) is symbolic then let’s see what it means and measure it and gauge it and say it’s something that’s really growing … then I have

an obligation as premier to take notice of it,” says Williams.

“When it involves young people, I take huge notice of it.”

While the poll results indicate the Pink, White and Green won’t be hoisted over Confederation Building anytime soon, Williams says its prevalence is an indicator of what’s going on in the province today.

See “All good stuff,” page 5

2 • INDEPENDENTNEWS

OCTOBER 23, 2005

$300 million profit

Great chance to save rural Newfoundland

From page 1

From page 1

According to the federal Finance Department, Ottawa has made a profit of close to $300 million since paying off its initial investment, which is controlled by a federal Crown corporation called Canada Hibernia Holding Corporation, based in Alberta.

National media reports earlier this year speculated Ottawa was planning to sell the share, which was estimated to be worth between $500 and $800 million on the open market. In a March 2005 interview with The Independent, however, a spokesman with the federal Finance Department denied the rumours.

At that time, the spokesman implied the shares would not be transferred to Newfoundland and Labrador.

Williams says he brought up the issue of the 8.5 share during negotiations over the Atlantic Accord, but Prime Minister Paul Martin almost immediately “dismissed it.” With so many other issues pressing, Williams says he had to push the 8.5 aside and pick his battles carefully, beginning with the Accord.

“So I said what we’re going to do is we’re not going to keep that one in his face, we’ll push that aside, focus on the Accord … we also had to talk about lower Churchill, 5 Wing Goose and custodial management. They were my big issues.”

Williams notes Hibernia’s oil resources have almost doubled in recent years. The project is expected to produce 74 million barrels of oil this year, from 23.8 million in 1998, the first full year of operation.

“That whole project is looking pretty good, which is why I’d be interested in the 8.5 per cent,” he says.

Liberal Opposition leader Gerry Reid says although the Williams administration aimed to acquire the share as a goodwill transfer, he’s not overly surprised they’re now viewing it as a potential purchase.

He says when the Liberal party governed the province they considered buying the 8.5 per cent share.

“It’s been one of the best projects the federal government has ever carried out … we lobbied the federal government. At one point we were even considering buying it, but with the financial position we were in at the time it didn’t seem to be viable.”

Despite noting the federal government is under no obligation to simply transfer its share, Reid says it would be a reasonable gesture, given how much money Ottawa has made from the offshore over the years.

“That project (Hibernia) is probably making the federal government more money than any other project they undertook since the Confederation in 1867 and after milking it for what it’s worth, the great cash cow, why don’t they just say, ‘Here, you can have your turn at the trough.’”

ing communities on an isolated coast — video conferencing could revolutionize rural education, medicine, community development, and facilitate business. The system on the south coast could be a model for rural Canada.

But though the equipment is there, she says, the training and awareness is not: children still do not have access to classes; patients still travel unnecessarily to see a doctor; communities along the coast were “surprisingly” unconnected to each other.

Harris is calling on government, health-care and school district workers to make use of her data and continue on where her initial project leaves off — or a great chance to save part of rural Newfoundland may be lost.

“It is time for a co-operative effort on the part of larger organizations to make use of the technologies … they have supported financially for five years,” she says.

“It would be a shame to have this excellent system under-utilized or unused.”

In 2001, the Burgeo Broadcasting System launched a $2-million project to bring videoconferencing and broadband Internet services to the south coast.

The goal was to connect the communities — reeling with the effects of the downturn in the fishery and out migration — to each other, the

“It would be a shame to have this excellent system under-utilized or unused.”

Carol Harris

Carol Harris

Paul Daly/The Independent

province, and the world.

A video conferencing station was set up in the health clinic and school in each community. Community Access Program sites, featuring a bank of computers with broadband access, digital cameras and scanners, were also installed.

In 2002, Harris, who had been conducting research on educational research in the area, was asked by Burgeo Broadcasting to lead an evaluation of the equipment’s uses and successes, and to put forward a plan for improvement.

Her 11-member team featured researchers, graduate students and

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community workers from British Columbia and Newfoundland and Labrador.

“We were looking at all these new technologies,” she says. “Were they allowing the communities to bounce back, to be resilient?

“Technology is one thing … we’re fighting to have technology used appropriately.”

Harris’ research was participatory and at the grass-roots level, involving interviews, workshops and community work. She was surprised many in the community weren’t even aware the communications facilities had been installed.

“Technologies go into the communities and often the people don’t know it’s coming,” she says. “This happened very much the way things always happen in Newfoundland: a decision was made in one place and the people, the community members, didn’t know about it.

“The technology was a bit of a mystery to them.”

Video conferencing has been used to teach French and music courses to students along the coast — as long as there is one qualified teacher in the district, Harris says, everyone can benefit.

But there are less successful stories: in one class, six out of six children failed; in another — a distance-learning advanced math program — five out of five boys dropped out.

BAD TEACHING “Bad teaching over video conferencing is the same thing as bad teaching anywhere,” Harris says. “Training is needed.”

One of the key members of the team, says Harris, is community development worker Amy Young, a 22-year-old Burgeo native.

“My job is to get people to use this equipment. It’s a lot harder than I thought,” Young says. “You’ve really got to get to know people.”

To promote her work, Young has joined a number of committees. “I volunteer because I care about what happens around here, but another part is just to throw the idea out and get it into play.

“If people don’t see any use for it, they’re not going to use it, but when they see a use for it, they start to try things.”

The funding for Young’s position ends in December.

“It took a long time before people were open to hearing this idea. Now it’s just like people are starting to be open to it and the job’s over.”

Young is happy to report video conferencing is currently being used by teachers, by the area’s community youth network, and by a United Church reverend for vestry meetings.

A personal goal is to see the healthcare workers use it more.

Harris is also full of ideas: video conferencing could be used by nurses — who rarely stay in the smaller communities more than an hour at a time — to teach nutrition or sexual-health classes. Science, math and writing classes, at all levels, could be offered; the police and fire brigade could hold meetings.

ONLY THE BEGINNING Harris says her final report should be only the beginning.

Best practices need to be developed to ensure a standard level of teaching.

Those working in the community need more training and encouragement to develop their own “imaginative uses … or build on traditions of technological teaching and telemedicine.”

As school, health and community services boards amalgamate, Harris fears smaller communities will get forgotten. Things have already gotten lost in the shuffle: initial plans for training teachers were put in place by the former Cormack Trail school board, she says, only to be shelved in the 2004 reorganization. (Harris is now distributing this information to school principals on her own.)

Harris is not the type to let dust settle on her work. She and her team still hope to connect the five communities with provincial initiatives for primary health care and e-learning, to get the “unwieldy organizations” on side with funding and support.

“These communities are resilient and their people are ready for action,” Harris says.

“I think it’s just a matter of a few years until this coast I work on is going to be discovered …

“These will not be the old traditional communities, but they’re going to change anyway. I see a tremendous future for coastal communities if we can keep them going long enough for this to start happening.”

OCTOBER 23, 2005

INDEPENDENTNEWS • 3

Matthew’s log From Bristol to Bonavista — and back again, replica of Cabot’s ship has been around

nel and the tide would go way out and they’d go aground. When they went aground they’d have to have a flat bottom on the boat to ensure they would stay upright when they were sitting on the ground and the water was gone.

“This led to the boat having a tendency to roll. Excessively.”

Although the replica is intended to be as accurate a copy of the original as possible, LeGrow says there are, understandably, some differences.

“The conveniences on it are different,” he says. “Obviously when we came across we needed a way to make water, a modern way to navigate and communicate with the rest of the world.

“The one that we came across on, of course, was built so that we didn’t drown and kill ourselves.”

For that reason, the replica was equipped with radar, satellite communication, global positioning and an engine.

LeGrow, who was 20 when the Matthew set sail in 1997, says he feels lucky to have been a member of the crew.

“I loved it,” he says. “I remember one of the storms we had, it was a Friday night and I was up on the deck. Water was splashing over us and we were struggling to get the sail in and I’m thinking: ‘If I were at home in Newfoundland I’d probably be downtown wasting money. Instead I’m out here having the time of my life.’ It was one of those epiphanies you have at weird times.

“I also made some good friends I don’t think I would have made if I was living in a city or in a town,” he says. “One of my better friends on board was a 67-year-old Welsh priest. This guy was a character. We used to sit up on deck at night and he used to tell these fantastic stories.”

LeGrow hasn’t seen the Matthew since it left Newfoundland, but he says he’s planning a trip to Bristol in 2007 — the trip’s 10-year anniversary.

“I’d like to go over there and go on the boat just like anyone would,” he says. “I wouldn’t show up and say I was a crew or anything. I’d just like to go on the boat like every other person that pays to go on board and look at it and walk around. Look at the stuff, if it’s still there, that I made or fixed or repaired and see if it’s still working.

“I miss the ship.”

JENNY HIGGINS

I

n 1997, a crew of 18 volunteers sailed from England to Newfoundland on a replica of John Cabot’s ship, the Matthew.

Today, that same ship is docked in its permanent home of Bristol, England.

It remains open to the public and regularly carries passengers on harbour cruises.

Jean Fletcher, treasurer of the Matthew Society in Bristol, says the ship is still sailing and still has a volunteer crew.

“Normally it sails abroad in the summer months to various tall ship festivals,” she says. “At the moment it’s winter and she will stay in Bristol until next April.”

The Matthew replica belongs to and is maintained by the SS Great Britain Trust, an organization that was established in 1970 to preserve another famous vessel, the SS Great Britain — the world’s first iron-hulled, steam-powered ocean-going ship.

The ships are permanently docked next to each other in Bristol.

The replica Matthew was built to celebrate the 500-year anniversary of Cabot’s historic voyage from Bristol to what is now Bonavista.

“In 1997 she sailed to Newfoundland and came to Bonavista,” says Fletcher.

“The Queen was there to welcome her.

“Eventually she went all up around the east coast of America and returned to England in 1998. She has stayed in Bristol docks since that time.”

Like Cabot’s Matthew, the replica was hand-built and made from wood — oak and Douglas pine. It took shipwrights two years to build the 23-metre vessel.

Also like the original, the Matthew replica was built with a flat bottom and round hull, says Chris LeGrow, a Newfoundlander who sailed aboard the ship during her trans-Atlantic voyage.

LeGrow says a flat bottom doesn’t always make for ideal sailing on the open seas. In fact, its movement on the water has been likened to a cork in a bottle.

“The reason they designed it that way back then was because a lot of those ships were sailing up and down the Bristol Channel and the tides over there are much like you find in the Bay of Fundy, they’re quite high and quite low,” he explains.

“So because they didn’t have engines there’d be times they’d be sailing up the chan-

Eternal damnation doesn’t appear to bother PM

D

id the Pope really put the double whammy on Paul Martin? I think we should be told. That’s the trouble with today’s journalists. They drop these little bombs and seldom tell us the upshot.

A few weeks back, it was reported that the Vatican was somewhat inclined to excommunicate the prime minister of Canada because he countenanced same-sex marriage. This is serious stuff. After all, the Vatican has still not got around, after all these years, to excommunicating Adolph Hitler.

Oh, I see. You always thought that Hitler was, perhaps, a Southern Baptist? A common mistake and one made by many ... even in the case of Benito Mussolini and Generalissimo Francisco Franco. Of course, young Joseph Stalin studied for the priesthood but that was Russian Orthodox and he got both Vatican barrels, didn’t he.

RAY GUY

A poke in the eye So it is no small thing. We may have a prime minister who is now constantly on edge about the prospects of hell’s flames for all eternity. I’ve been trying to get glimpses of Paul Martin on television to see by his face if he’s preoccupied by the notion of eternal hot pitchforks in the hinders ... but he looks like that in the best of times, doesn’t he?

We should all care. Eternal damnation might distract him in the election campaign making God’s own bornagain, Stephen Harper, the winner.

Or Paul might get the sympathy vote, which would also slew the true electoral intentions of … This Great Nation of Ours.

Religion is the new Satan and blind faith is the broad highway to Hell.

It’s back to the future and the future is the 1400s, folks. This time they’ve all got nuclear bombs.

George Bush believes that God tells him what everybody else in the world should do; Osama Bin Laden believes that God tells him exactly the same thing. Bush has got by far most of the big bangs, but Osama has got a billion people who, to one degree or another, think he’s a fine fellow.

So here we are in danger of the earth being burned to a cinder and the liberal-minded, the politically correct, the moderates among us caution us, entreat us, would even legislate us to never whisper the word “religion” because it might hurt someone’s feelings! Priests, mullahs, rabbis — the new sacred cows.

Notice the newspapers. Unless there’s some huge and obviously reli-

A PRETTY KETTLE OF FISH Now, here’s a pretty kettle of fish.

Jack Straw, the foreign secretary of the UK, said the other day that Turkey should be admitted into the European Union because, said Jack, “we are all People of the Book.”

Good old Jack, trying to latch on to the positive, however slight.

People of the Book. Three books, actually. The Koran, the Bible and the Torah … each one grasped by either Muslims, Christians or Jews.

Each group believing — with the fear

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of hell and the hope of heaven — that it has got the only correct version.

There’s the straw that Jack clings to.

The religious among us seem to come in three categories (A) half decent, (B) good and (C) de luxe.

George Bush obviously thinks he and his 40 million “born-again” fellow Americans are of the de luxe variety; but so do Osama Bin Laden and his suicide “martyrs” who put on airs.

And the Pope, surely, goes without saying.

The old Smothers Brothers TV show had a joke I still remember. It was keen for the time: “There are 764 varieties of religion in the USA and they have one thing in common; each one thinks it’s the only right one.”

So we get Protestants who think that teasing rattlesnakes and drinking strychnine is the true pathway to Christ’s kingdom; we get Jews who

gious slaughter, any other mild religious mention is tucked away in back along with, perhaps appropriately, the comics and the horoscopes. As in the Middle Ages, it’s almost too sacred to touch. Bush wants a Supreme Court, which might judiciously consider, at least, the rack, the stake, thumbscrews and Guantanimo Bay.

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4 • INDEPENDENTNEWS

OCTOBER 23, 2005

Federal office shuts down quicker than expected

By Clare-Marie Gosse The Independent

T

he Public Service Commission office in St. John’s has officially shut down, eliminating another handful of federal jobs in the province.

When the announcement to close the St. John’s office — along with eight other Public Service Commission offices in Canada — was made in July, the agency stated the closures would be gradual and would probably take two to three years. The restructuring is designed to consolidate and improve Public Service Commission operations across the country.

Staff will be placed in other federal positions as they become available.

Jeannie Baldwin, Atlantic regional executive vice-president of the Public Service Alliance of Canada, the union representing federal government workers, tells The Independent she’s shocked and surprised by the sudden closure in St. John’s.

“It’s more than just about jobs lost, it’s a service that was provided,” she says. “That service is no longer there, what they’ll have to do is go to another area of Canada now, probably Halifax or Moncton, Ottawa, to obtain the service that was provided there.”

The Public Service Commission is an independent agency responsible for recruiting and appointing employees within the federal government, as well as providing audits, investigations and

maintaining political impartiality within the public service.

Baldwin says she’s concerned the closure will severely impact federal recruitment in Newfoundland and Labrador, as well as “relocation priorities.

“We have individuals that are called a relocation priority, where people would relocate because of, for example, relocation of spouse … now they haven’t got that service there.

“I’m not even quite sure there would be a priority list. How would they be able to market themselves?”

Although the four employees within the St. John’s office were all found other federal positions locally, Baldwin says there are still four less federal

posts in the province.

“At one time Newfoundland had 8,000 (federal) jobs and it’s now reduced down to 3,900 and before you know it there won’t be any positions within the federal government in the Newfoundland and Labrador region.”

She says the province needs a stronger voice in Ottawa.

“I’ll tell you what’s really ironic about it, John Efford’s office (the regional minister for Newfoundland and Labrador) is in the same building as the Public Service Commission.”

After the July announcement to close the office was made, Tom Marshall, the provincial minister for Intergovernmental Affairs, stated he had called on the federal government to

reverse its decision and address the lack of federal presence in the province.

Recent federal office closures or proposed closures in Newfoundland and Labrador include the weather office in Gander, the proposed closure of the Atlantic Cool Climate Crop Research Centre in St. John’s and the proposed removal of the Department of Fisheries and Ocean’s Toxic Chemical Program.

Baldwin says the St. John’s Public Service Commission office played a major role in the local federal hiring process.

“To close it sends another message to the residents of the Newfoundland and Labrador region of exactly what the federal presence means, which is nothing. This is terrible.”

What’s good for NAPE and CUPE …

By Clare-Marie Gosse The Independent

P

remier Danny Williams says he dislikes the term “pattern bargaining.” But when it comes to negotiating new contracts with doctors, teachers and nurses in the province, he says his government’s approach of sticking with what is fair for one group is fair for another is a matter of necessity.

“It’s just simply a recognition of the reality of what we’re in,” he tells The Independent. “The pattern is there because I have a financial problem and I have to follow this pattern because it’s the only way I can get out.”

Despite vast improvements to the coffers of the province in the last year and the chance to virtually eradicate consolidated debt by next year’s budget, he says from a fiscal perspective, Newfoundland and Labrador is still dramatically behind the rest of Canada.

Williams sticking firmly to pattern bargaining in contract talks with doctors, teachers and nurses In spring 2004, government legislated NAPE and CUPE members a five per cent raise over four years, as well as sick leave concessions. The raise saw zero per cent wage increases in the first two years, two per cent in the third year and three per cent in the fourth.

Because both nurses and teachers have been without new contracts for over a year, they have technically already fulfilled the first year of a zero raise and are well into fulfilling the second.

Williams says the money saved has been significant.

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Paul Daly/The Independent

“The principle of zero, zero has been accepted by our unions and I appreciate that, I’ve got to tell you.

“That’s been a huge contribution.

Every one per cent is $22 million.”

Kevin Foley, president of the Newfoundland and Labrador Teachers’ Association, says being without a new contract for so long has been tough.

“We’ve been under that cloud, so to speak, since then because obviously we’ve gone a year with no increase in wages. We obviously have certain expectations within our opening package.”

Negotiations between teachers and

the province are expected to begin soon. At the moment, contract talks with doctors are in full swing and Williams says his government is still holding firm.

“We’re in negotiations with doctors right now on sick leave concessions. I mean that’s what we legislated our other public servants. How could we turn around and say, ‘Well OK docs, we can do another deal here — we’ll give you two, two, two and three (nine per cent over four years) and sick leave beside, because you happen to be doctors’?”

Foley says teachers have unique

needs that have to be considered on their own merit away form the pattern bargaining concept — particularly in light of recent school board amalgamations.

“We’re going to the table with the expectation that we will be taken seriously,” he says.

“It’s very difficult to say a particular chief concern, but certainly wages and working conditions. Working conditions have been identified as being very, very bare and serious for teachers.”

The association’s negotiating team has just wrapped up three days of training sessions as they prepare for the contract talks and Foley says the two parties have yet to exchange opening packages.

When asked if teachers might be prepared to go on strike if government sticks to its pattern mandate, Foley says it’s too early to judge.

“Generally, decisions to strike are a long ways off from when you begin negotiations.”

Williams, for his part, says he doesn’t expect anything like last year’s 28day public sector strike.

“You know something, I don’t.

We’re sitting down with the unions, we’re working with them. Doctors, we’re close with doctors now, to a deal.

I can’t prejudge it because it’s not signed off — but it’s very close.”

OCTOBER 23, 2005

INDEPENDENTNEWS • 5

Checklist

Online provincial lobbyist registry up and running

By Clare-Marie Gosse The Independent

P

aid lobbyists operating on behalf of clients and employees lobbying on behalf of their company had until midnight Friday, Oct. 21 to officially register their activities under the province’s Lobbyist Registration Act. The new registry — which is accessible online to the public at no cost — has been designed to create transparency within government decision-making.

The federal government already has mandatory lobbyist registration, as do roughly half the other provinces in Canada.

“The premier felt very strongly about bringing in this type of legislation,” Justice Minister Tom Marshall tells The Independent.

“So the people of this province know what people out there are being paid to lobby public officials and what they’re lobbying public officials about.”

He says he remembers a time, before entering politics, when it was often considered impossible to bring a proposal to government without hiring a paid lobbyist.

“I took great offence to that, you know, I believed that everyone would be treated equally and everyone could get a meeting with a minister, or a meeting with an MHA without having to pay someone to get the meeting.”

The act is primarily aimed at regulating lobbyists who are paid to advocate on behalf of a client seeking to influence how government collects and spends public funds.

People representing their own personal concerns will not be expected to register.

A Commissioner of Lobbyists, LeeAnn Montgomery, was recently appointed to oversee the process and investigate any violations under the act.

The commissioner has the power to decide if lobbyists information can be withheld for confidentiality reasons (such as if a company feels they might lose a business advantage by exposing information).

She can also recommend changes to the code of conduct and hand out penalties to anyone in breach of the act.”

If a person commits an offence under the act the penalty is up to $25,000 for the first offence and for a second offence, up to $100,000,” says Marshall. “The penalties are quite high” As of The Independent’s press deadline, eight different companies or lobbyist representatives for companies had signed up on the registry. Amongst the eight are employees with Chevron Canada, including Chevron Canada’s president Alex Archila citing lobbying of government policies related to offshore oil and gas exploration.

Chevron is currently in negotiations with the province over the development of the Hebron-Ben Nevis oil field.

Energy lobbyists dominate the registry. Employees with the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers are registered multiple times for various offshore issues and one of the companies short listed to potentially develop the lower Churchill, TransCanada Corporation, has also registered, citing lobbying activities concerning the lower Churchill and natural gas exploration.

‘All good stuff’ From page 1 “It’s an outward sort of expression of the pride of Newfoundland and Labrador, whether that’s the right flag or those are the right colours,” he says. “But it’s also a pop culture sort of an icon that’s developed.”

Data for the flag poll was gathered from across both Newfoundland and Labrador on Oct. 1 and 2, and is considered accurate to within 3.4 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

Respondents who stated they were against changing the flag were asked to give a reason.

“Typically, the answers included ‘Content with the current flag’; ‘Fine as is’; ‘No need to change’; and ‘Would be costly to change,” reads the poll report.

“A number of respondents said they identify with the current flag and ‘You can recognize the (current) flag anywhere in the country’ … quite a few referenced pink as not being an appropriate colour for a flag.”

Respondents in favour of changing the flag were asked if they would agree to adding a symbol representing Labrador to the Pink, White and

Green: 88.6 per cent said yes.

More male respondents were in favour of changing the flag (31.6 per cent) than females (21 per cent); those aged 18 to 29 were most likely to be in favour (39.3 per cent); and respondents from the Northeast Avalon were most likely to say yes (33 per cent).

The idea of adopting the Pink, White and Green was least popular on the west coast (16.3 per cent) and in Labrador (18.4 per cent).

Results in hand, Williams seems content to let the flag issue lie.

“I don’t want to spur on the separatist, independent side,” he says.

“That’s a whole other argument that might be very valid at some point in time … we’ve got so many other issues, and fish to fry … with the Canadian government that we need to work with them and co-operate.

“You have to be careful that you don’t fuel it too much … but to hit (the interest in the Pink, White and Green), or something else, or Rex Goudie or young Michael Ryder is symbolic of something good for Newfoundland and Labrador.

“That’s all good stuff.”

Charlie Anonsen on the Scademia

Pulling up anchor Scademia sets sail for Costa Rica; skipper Charlie Anonsen hopes to draw tourists back to Newfoundland

By Jenny Higgins For The Independent

O

n Oct. 19, the tour boat Scademia — a fixture in St. John’s harbour — pulled up anchor and set sail for Costa Rica.

Skipper Charlie Anonsen says he wants to break into the country’s burgeoning tourism industry. He plans to stay in the South American country until mid-April.

“It’s a beautiful country,” he says.

“They had 1.6 million tourists last year and they expect in 2007 about four million tourists. So it’s growing really fast.

The whole country is booming.

“We’re going to do some whale watching down there.”

Anonsen says it’s been a lifelong dream of his to work here in the summer and somewhere down south in the winter— he says it beats tying the Scademia to a wharf during the winter months.

For the past few years, he’s been shopping around for a suitable winter port.

“I’ve been down on a few trips looking for interesting places to go,” he says. “A lot of the areas have already been established with tour boats — like Barbados and Jamaica. So I was looking for an emerging market.

“A little gem I’d heard about but had little knowledge of was a place called Costa Rica,” he says. “So I went down last month.”

Anonsen liked what he saw — so much that he decided to spend this winter there on a trial run.

He says Costa Rica waters are

The lunatics will be running the asylum From page 3 bomb babies in baby carriages; we have Catholics who can’t find it in their hearts to condemn outright Adolph Hitler and his baptized boys; we have Muslims who fly airliners into office buildings ...

We have Hindus, for God’s sake, who although they’re more or less off The Book, have got the nuclear bomb and who have slaughtered millions who have had the poor judgment to be Muslims.

But Jew, Christian, Muslim ... the better they think they are the closer they think they must follow every jot and tittle of their extremely bloody Books.

If the trend continues, the lunatics will be running the lunatic asylum.

Medicine, if it had never progressed beyond the ancient blowing sand, dementia and camel shit of religion ... we’d still be going to the best doctors in the land to have holes drilled in our skulls with rusty augers to let the evil spirits out.

Let me see if I’ve got this straight: George Bush and his 40-million US “born agains” support Israel and the Jews because once Israel gets the budget in the black the Jews will rebuild Solomon’s Temple; at this point Armageddon will occur and the Lord God Almighty of Texas and South Carolina will destroy all the unbelievers, including the Jews.

With friends like that ...oy vey!

For 50 years or more we were all in danger of going up in a blue flash because of a Cold War between secular religions, capitalism, fascism, communism. Hitler, Stalin and Mao

had made themselves gods. Now we seem to have gone right back to The Book, this time with weapons of mass destruction for all God’s chill’un.

Back to the Torah, the Bible, the Koran — which, despite all those “nice bits” we think we can pick and

Rhonda Hayward/The Independent

choose — are bloody and savage documents with three, and three only, holy and sanctified ways to deal with infidels, heretics and unbelievers. Conversion, enslavement or death and eternal damnation.

Ask Osama. Ask Bush. Ask the Pope.

swarming with whales, but lacking in tour boats.

“The whales down there come up from Antarctica and down from North America, from Alaska and Russia,” he says. “They go there to calf. So there’s an abundance of whales down there.

But the little boats they use are not much bigger than canoes, about 10-passenger boats.

“I met some people who were doing it with these small boats and I told them I’d be interested in partnering with them. They looked at my 28 years experience and now we’re going to go into partnership and try it.”

The Scademia is a 90-foot schooner that can carry up to 75 passengers at a time.

Anonsen expects to arrive in Costa Rica by mid-January after all the hurricanes and tropical storms have passed.

“I have a three-month window of opportunity to do my tours without paying an import tax on my boat, which could be substantial,” he says. “So I have to pick what the best three months to operate are. It’s from the middle of January and all of February and March.

I’ll have really good weather, it’s high season for tourists and the cruise ships will be there.”

Anonsen says another variety of tourist will also be in Costa Rica — the super-rich. He’s hoping to lure a few of them to Newfoundland in the summertime.

“The super-rich of the world go sports fishing in Costa Rica, it’s called catch and release,” he says. “That excites me too because we have excellent sports fishing opportunities here

that nobody is really taking advantage of with tuna fish and swordfish. It’s my intention to attract some of these sports fishermen type people to Newfoundland.”

Anonsen says if he wanted, he could sail the Scademia to Costa Rica in six weeks, but he plans to instead take a leisurely route, visiting places like Boston and St. Pierre-Miquelon along the way.

He’s hoping to pick up competent and interesting crewmembers along the way.

“I’m looking for people who would enjoy the trip, are excited about the adventure of it and would get along with everybody,” he says. “Someone being a writer, another a singer, someone else play guitar or an accordion, people of interest, you know.”

Ten years ago, Anonsen sailed to the Caribbean on the Scademia. He says the schooner is still up for the voyage — and so is he.

“I was always a little bit of a bohemian,” he says. “I always had something on the go and I travelled everywhere.”

Aside from the adventure, Anonsen is hoping the business in Costa Rica is good because he says it’s dwindling in St. John’s. He says the amount of money he makes in the city has dropped by 50 per cent over the last two years.

“I think in Costa Rica without an effort it’s a market,” he says. “We’re in the North Atlantic here. It’s hard to get to, there are no accidental tourists here.

“The old saying goes if you can turn a dollar in Newfoundland, you can turn five anywhere else.”

6 • INDEPENDENTNEWS

OCTOBER 23, 2005

‘These are exciting times’ How exciting? Exciting enough to draw Cabot Martin back into column writing

H

ere I go again. My first attempt at column writing was about 15 years ago.

Back then there were cod.

In the meantime, Newfoundland has been down a pretty rocky road.

Sure, our journey has been trivial compared with the pain that is nightly paraded across our TV screens. But, in our own context, it has been brutal.

To make matters worse, our pain and vulnerability have been paraded across Canada by editorial writers and everyday jokesters alike as inherent defect.

Our traits and circumstances have been made the butt of cruel, deliberate, ethnic jokes.

The more we suffered, the harder they came.

Last week I was vacationing on the Greek island of Santorini. So widespread has this “stupid newf” idea become that a shopkeeper in a very ordinary, not to say mind-numbing souvenir shop, kept insisting as I was completing my minor purchase: “You are from Newfoundland? They tell a lot of jokes about Newfoundland!”

As I walked out into the late season Greek sun, I kept thinking, “Who

CABOT MARTIN

Guest column taught this man to think like that?”

But what damage has been done is done. Now, forged in the crucible of pain and change, there is realistic hope for an end to all that.

And, as always with such transformational events, the strength has come from many sources, not just a few, and not least from our artistic community.

Oil prosperity on the northeast Avalon has no doubt been critical, but if you look at the track record of the oil industry worldwide, it has often more pain and poverty in its wake than real and equitable development.

So, for a “nation” that has not had the benefit of “growing up” through the process of decolonization, meeting the challenge of oil has acted as a good, but thus far insufficient substitute.

So I’m getting on board, for these are exciting times.

Young people are finding more and

more ways of staying and others are coming home, new skills in hand.

Hardly a day goes by when I do not have yet another reason to stand up and cheer.

And our excellence is being fueled with the leavening of all those “new Newfoundlanders” who daily come to our shores bringing with them their skills, different cultures and life experiences.

They honour us with their presence, the phrase “CFA” being as unacceptable to me as “newf.”

I say the minute they say in their hearts, “This is my home and I will work to make it better,” they are as much a Newfoundlander as I am.

So it’s not just the big, down from the top, stuff that is at work.

Look at all the incremental, brick by brick social reconstruction going on all around you.

From the two young ladies with their picnic lunches at Ferryland lighthouse to all who work the world’s seas in the offshore to our IT types and to those who report each week in The Independent from the Diaspora, change is coming to Newfoundland. Positive

change.

Maybe I can’t duplicate the youthful energy behind many of these efforts but I can download a few things: lessons I’ve learned, things I know, things I feel.

I’d particularly like to bring a bit of historical and economic analysis and fact to the debate over both the Hibernia royalty regime and the upper Churchill power contract.

On the latter, there is lots to say, as the Supreme of Canada has never said “a contract is a contract is a contract,” nor has it indicated (nor has it the power to indicate) that we should not try again with a differently constructed Act to remedy this all-corrosive travesty.

Serious stuff and each deserves their own piece — just too much cash to be had.

But I’d also like to share my interest in 17th century history, and Newfoundland economic history (expert on neither), profile some movies and books, some local success stories and of course some travel articles.

Fuel to the fire so to speak.

Also expect some words on the costs,

consequences and opportunities of Newfoundland independence.

Not as part of threatening separatism to get more out of Ottawa, a tactic that is advocated by some and too easily slipped into.

That’s a cynical, ineffective dead end and only clouds the issue and debilitates from clear analysis and creative solutions.

Still, make no mistake, my disaffection with Canada is profound, which is probably the big difference between the 1990 model and the 2005 model.

So in short, and come what may, I want to hasten that better future, less I miss it.

Being 61 does that to you.

My modest objective?

To do my part in helping Newfoundland go from the butt of jokes to a world oasis of civic and environmental sanity, racial and religious tolerance and cultural, technological and entrepreneurial dynamism.

To hear before I die, not jokes, but people demanding of their politicians in a variety of settings around the world: “Why can’t we be more like Newfoundland?”

YOUR VOICE Heroes’ blood pulses in our hearts and undaunted purpose (known Dear editor, Your column (Hungry for only to themselves) did they disHeroes, Oct. 2-9 edition of The play in steering death in the face?

These Newfoundlanders, the greatIndependent) disturbed me.

The two definitions of hero as est seamen the world has ever given in the American Heritage known, who lived and died with Dictionary of the English Language respect of the sea but not fear of include: 1) a person prominent in dying from it, were they not also some event, field, period or cause the greatest of heroes?

Is there a hero, even a single one, by reason of their special achievements or contributions; 2) anyone in all the chronologies of our great noted for feats of courage or nobil- Newfoundland heritage? I ask you is there? What ity of purpose — about the young especially one who men and boys of has risked or sacriWhat about the the Royal Newficed their life. f o u n d l a n d The Independent’s sealers in our long Regiment who, in list of heroes — 1916, went over from Michael history of the seal the top at the battle Fleming to Smallfishery in what of Beaumont wood — met the criHamel? Men who teria of definition probably was and is knew they faced one, and would surely be agreed the most dangerous death but scoffed at it and sacrificed upon by those who job in the world? their lives, in know our history.

For me, howevcourage, for the er, the more meanpurpose of freeingful heroes — not implied or dom and duty to country. A regiincluded in your column — are ment of the souls of vitality and valthose whose lives are, and were, our nurtured in the communities, lived and tested by the criteria harbours and coves of this mardescribed in definition two. velous beautiful place. Who, I ask What about the miners of you, are or could ever be anywhere Buchans and Bell Island who went on earth, greater heroes? down into the unsafe, dark and danThe truth is not that there haven’t gerous caves? Men who risked their been that many great Newfoundlives every day in back-breaking landers or that “Confederation stole work for the pennies that provided our heroes,” but rather for the size subsistence for their families. Men, of our population we have been who in cave-ins gave their lives blessed with numerous heroes and while their buddies above volun- nothing done by Confederation, or teered to risk their own to go down could be done by it in the future, and save them! would ever negate or change their Are they not true heroes? feats.

Is there a hero in our past? What Some eras lend themselves to about the sealers in our long history specific events whose challenging of the seal fishery in what probably nature is such that just the act of was and is the most dangerous job facing it requires, and defines, the in the world? Where is there more characteristics of a hero. courage and dedication to purpose Let our longing for this hero and in times of peace than in those who the changing of our way of life by face the dangers and the potential of circumstance not blind us from our death on the North Atlantic in history and heritage or rob us of our March? Are they not heroes? connection to it, the connection that Is there a hero in our history? still makes our character strong.

Who were the schooner captains If you look close at the right peoand seamen who for 200 years plied ple at the right time and place, you their trade in tiny wooden ships will find that the heroes’ blood of voyaging the winter storms across courage still pulses in their hearts. the great ocean with only canvas, compass and themselves? What Phil Earle, countless acts of courage, bravery Carbonear

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

Marriage plans N ow that our marriage with Canada is back on track, and The Independent (the editor anyway) has dispelled any notion of separation (at this point), it shouldn’t hurt our tried and tested relationship a bit to reach into the bag of conspiracy theories and pull one out.

Brace yourself for it: Was the marriage between Newfoundland and Canada an arranged one?

Arranged as in when someone other than you (Newfoundland in this case) pops the question and answers it.

Arranged as in the type of union planned when the bride (Newfoundland again) is still sucking its thumb and skipping with an umbilical cord.

That kind of arranged.

There’s evidence to suggest it was. In 1983, Dr. Philip McCann, a professor with Memorial University’s education faculty, gave a public lecture to the Newfoundland Historical Society called Confederation Revisited: New Light on British Policy.

McCann set out to settle the debate: A) Was Confederation brought about by the incredible “oratory, will-power and efficiency” of Joey Smallwood? Was Richard Gwyn on the mark when he wrote that Joey “virtually single handed … dragged Newfoundland into the 20th century”?

B) Or, was Newfoundland used by the United Kingdom as an “international pawn” for the purpose of making international deals with the United States and Canada — an allegation leveled by the greatest anti-confederate of them all, Peter Cashin?

Put another way, was Joey the real Father of Confederation or was the birth more the result of shadowy artificial insemination?

Before I discuss McCann’s findings, you should know that he did his homework — reviewing the papers of the Dominions Office, the Treasury and the British cabinet up to 1949, the year of Confederation.

Wrote McCann, “Most governments, in their wisdom, allow 30 years to elapse before they let people like you and me learn what they have been doing in our name.”

According to McCann, the Confederation story did not begin, as most accounts suggest, in December 1945 with the announcement of the Newfoundland

RYAN CLEARY

Fighting Newfoundlander

National Convention to decide our fate post commission government. It started in September 1942 at the height of the war with Germany when Clement Attlee, then-secretary of state for the Dominions, and deputy prime minister in the wartime Winston Churchill coalition, dropped by Newfoundland for a visit.

He thought Newfoundland should return to a democracy in stages and dismissed Confederation as “unlikely to be acceptable to public opinion in either country.”

The six-man commission government had other ideas, however, arguing for Newfoundland’s incorporation with Canada.

McCann wrote Canada’s growing interest in Newfoundland, her fear of an increase in United States influence, her desire to acquire the Labrador, were all “powerful factors in the situation.”

The commission government did not propose a formal approach to Canada.

Rather, “it is one of the alternatives which we consider might be explored in secret between persons in the highest quarters,” read one of the released documents.

In a June 1943 “goodwill mission” three MPs arrived from London for a three-month visit. They concluded Newfoundland couldn’t be helped without outside financial assistance.

“You cannot run the British empire unless you are prepared to pay for it,” one of the MPs was quoted as saying. “I want to say quite plainly that Newfoundland is a disgrace, economically and socially, to the British empire …”

The goodwill mission succeeded in putting Newfoundland back on the radar of the UK Parliament and public.

Between the jigs and the reels, the commission government produced a 10year program to “reconstruct” the social and economic development of Newfoundland at a cost of $100 million — loans to be backed by the UK government.

The whole thing was taken over at that point by the UK Treasury (“Though Newfoundlanders were to never know

it”).

The war drained most of Britain’s finances in the mid-1940s and the UK couldn’t afford to back the $100 million.

It needed financial help from Canada and any aid to Newfoundland would lessen the amount it received.

Canada wanted Newfoundland, no doubt, but Newfoundland apparently didn’t want Canada.

The national convention was held as a delay tactic to try and change the minds of Newfoundlanders.

To make a long story short, and I do hate to condense this fascinating tale, McCann concludes that Cashin’s allegation that Britain was engaged in a “plot” or “conspiracy” must be given “greater credence.”

“There can be little doubt that Confederation was engineered by the British, almost entirely in secret and largely by the Treasury,” he wrote.

“Newfoundland — and Labrador in particular — were used as pawns in a deal with the Canadians.”

McCann quotes A.P. Herbert, one of the British MPs who visited Newfoundland on the goodwill mission, who wrote in 1950: “A Frenchman said that Labrador was the country that God gave to Cain. History may say that it was the country that Britain gave to Canada.”

The rest is history — our history.

McCann includes a fascinating footnote.

Three days before the second referendum on July 22, 1948, Philip Noel Baker, secretary of state for commonwealth relations, issued a memorandum to cabinet, warning responsible government supporters were concentrated in and around St. John’s and there was risk of civil disturbance.

Baker asked for a warship to be available around the time of the referendum, able to move into St. John’s at short notice.

Wrote Baker: “I hope very much in fact there will be no disturbances; but we must be prepared to maintain order as long as we are in charge of the island.”

Fifty-six years after the arranged marriage, the blood of most every Newfoundlander and Labradorian has been mixed with Canada’s.

Who says you can’t pick family?

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

OCTOBER 23, 2005

INDEPENDENTNEWS • 7

One columnist to another

Ivan Morgan welcomes Danny Williams to the newspaper fold — and then gives him a tap

D

anny, Danny, Danny. It has been a while since I have written you one of these.

I read your guest column across from me last week. I guess this makes us colleagues of sorts. How cool is that? And although I guess with your editorial debut we can, in the larger sense, be called colleagues, there are a few subtle differences between us. For one thing, I like to generate a lot of what you probably think is unsubstantiated tripe. (Like this column, for example.)

I read with interest your column and liked its tone. I liked your optimism.

And I actually agree with you about the nasty personal edge to politics. You wrote in our paper last week that you fervently wished that “personal and partisan politics are put aside.”

Yeah? You first, big guy.

You don’t think the people of Harbour Breton didn’t take it personally when you opened your caucus to an

IVAN MORGAN

Rant & Reason inexplicable “free vote” on the FPI deal — sealing their fate? You, the guy who insists his MHAs have written permission before they fart, suddenly agreed to a free vote? After you had personally gone down there and told them you would do everything you could to help them?

You don’t think Beth Marshall didn’t take you meddling in her portfolio personally?

How about Fabian Manning? Why do I have to feel sorry for Fabian? You put him over on the other side as a clear warning to the rest of your team?

Don’t they take that personally?

Does the fact that I’m not an opposition member and I neither own nor

have the time to sit in an armchair mean I am trying to tear down and diminish what you are trying to do?

Am I off the mark here? Is my negativity and agenda wasting precious time? I am guessing it’s your big picture I can’t see. Weren’t you, not too recently, an armchair critic and then an opposition critic raining all over Roger Grimes’ big picture? That must have been different. If only Roger had done the decent thing and resigned the premiership and offered it to you. It must be frustrating when other people’s political partisanships and agendas keep getting in the way.

And while we are on that subject, last weekend you had Stephen Harper here for your second-year lovefest. Is it too negative to ask you where your party stands on certain issues? I have always thought you were a Tory like I am a Tory — a red Tory. Harper isn’t.

He’s nasty. Danny, I don’t like him and I don’t like what he stands for and I

wouldn’t get in his tent. I don’t like that you seem comfortable in there.

Why? Have you read his policies?

Have you heard his speeches? Did you listen to some of his backbenchers?

Are those your type of people? I’ll agree something has got to be done about the poisonous federal Liberals, but do you really think this Harper cure would be better than the Liberal disease under which we all currently suffer? I need to know this because there is an election coming up. Where will you stand?

I need to know this because my gay friends take Harper’s policies — wait for it, Danny — personally. They, and my women friends, are funny like that.

Harper speaks for a lot of so-called Christians who think their beliefs should be my beliefs — whether I like it or not. I don’t, Danny. And I take it really personally when you invite him to town to tell everyone what a terrific guy you are. Gives me the creeps, actu-

ally.

This isn’t criticism for the sake of criticism. This is criticism because I speak for a lot of people who don’t like your style — not one little bit. You have a reputation for having a thin skin and a nasty side. That’s why I write these little pieces where I talk to you in a familiar manner. My readers know you don’t like it. It makes them smile.

That sells papers. Do ya get it, sunshine?

The funny part is other than this, I am happy to say in print that on balance I think you are doing a terrific job.

Not a perfect job, but a far better job than most of your predecessors. But it is this inability to take criticism that might just prove to be your Achilles’ heel.

You really need to get past this. As my kids would say: “Suck it up, dude.”

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

FAMILY REUNION

YOUR VOICE Breastfeeding: ‘This wonderful part of life’ Dear editor, I write to congratulate The Independent on its beautiful front-page photo of a breastfeeding baby. It was a stunning picture that captured the beauty and intimacy of breastfeeding.

Our society needs as many positive images of breastfeeding mothers as possible to help celebrate this wonderful part of life.

I found it ironic that this photo graced your front page the same week that a New Brunswick magazine (Here) with a photo of a breastfeeding baby on its cover was pulled from store shelves because publishers viewed the photo as “inappropriate.” Kudos to the editors and publisher of The Independent for showing a higher level of insight and understanding.

Christine Healy, St. John’s

The Cej family, reunited after seven years, at home in St. John’s (left to right): elder son Adnan, mother Hafize, and son Remzi. The family, originally from Kosovo, was broken apart when war broke out in 1998. Fearing for Adnan’s safety — he has a hearing disability — Hafize made the difficult decision to send her son to Turkey; soon she and Remzi were forced to flee to a refugee camp. With no idea where Adnan was, Hafize and Remzi moved to Canada in 2000. Just last year, thanks to a Turkish current affairs show, Adnan was located. The family has been on pins and needles ever since as they tried to arrange for Adnan to join them in St. John’s. “My cheeks hurt from smiling so much,” says Remzi. “We are finally all at home.” Hafize is equally ecstatic — she says she still can’t sleep at night, but her insomnia is now brought on by excitement, not worry for her son. “The people of this place have given everything to us,” she says.

Paul Daly/The Independent

‘Archbishop Penney is not to blame’ Dear editor, I believe the decision of the administration of St. Bonaventure’s College to ask Alphonsus Penney to celebrate the school’s opening mass in September was wholly appropriate.

As Father Vernon Boyd, the principal, stated: “He (Penney) is an alumnus of the school —of course it was appropriate.”

By all accounts, Penney’s words at the mass were quite relevant and thoughtful as he related stories of his early education at St. Bonaventure’s College.

If the woman quoted in the story (Continuing to condone, Oct. 9-15 edition of The Independent) who opposes this action had been there, she probably would have realized Penney is a human

being, flawed like the rest of us, and terribly burdened, but ultimately a holy and genuine person.

This woman has not used scandals as an excuse to stop attending mass as others have.

The church, however, is not a cafeteria. One may not take what one likes and leave the rest.

Her attitude towards Penney leaves a gaping hole in the Our Father, which is incomplete without forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Continued bitterness towards this man, who had nothing to do with the physical acts, flies in the face of Christ, who forgave his crucifiers.

To whom does the article headline Continuing to condone refer? Who is

still condoning what? Penney has committed no crime and resigned as bishop of his own volition. He has no reason to hide. There were weak leaders in the past. It is certainly not the case today.

The complete cessation of abuses speaks rather loudly to that fact.

The vast majority of these scandals are alleged to have taken place during the episcopate of Archbishop Patrick J. Skinner — not that of Penney. Penney could not erase them.

It was Skinner who failed to properly exercise his role as shepherd. Skinner, incidentally, was also the bishop who spent a fortune defiling the historic interior fabric of the Basilica while the structure was crumbling. See any parallels?

Mr. J.J. Byrne condemns the adminis-

tration of St. Bonaventure’s College for taking a “cavalier attitude” towards the scandals and of being desirous to return to “business as normal.”

To him I say that all this took place before I, and students of St. Bonaventure’s College, were born.

While I am certainly not saying that I don’t care about the scandals, they don’t figure very largely into my perceptions of the church. Neither does it shock me.

The woman quoted in the article may have been the indirect recipient of some injurious behavior, but she has no business suggesting who should celebrate mass or where or when they should do it.

The social ostracism endured by Penney, as scapegoat, has been a far more painful penalty than that of the

offenders he allegedly protected.

What does this woman want from Penney? In the end, her comments are hurting not only a quiet, well-intentioned old man who loves his church, but also the entire Catholic community in Newfoundland. The fact is that the Catholic Church in Newfoundland has moved on. It is a pity that you cannot.

Speaking for myself, a young Catholic, fully aware of the events in question, and not recalling a time when my faith was without negative stigma because of them, I suspect that the students of St. Bonaventure’s college are mature and intelligent enough to understand that Archbishop Penney is not to blame. If schoolchildren can understand, why can’t this woman?

Ian Power, St. John’s

An immigrant myself some 31 years ago, I know dearly of the sacrifices and commitment that one has to have to leave one’s family behind and start a new life. It is emotionally draining and full of unknown and challenging experiences. In a world filled with terror, the last thing we want to do is to encourage individuals who may enter the country with ulterior motives — 911 certainly demonstrated that.

However, there is a difference between

would-be terrorists and hard-working families.

If rules and regulations do not permit the flexibility to deal with these situations then the rules and regulations need to be changed to meet current needs and demands.

If we really truly want to encourage new Canadians among us let’s stop the persecution.

Dave Rudofsky, St. John’s

Stop ‘persecution’ of Marystown immigrants Dear editor, My heart goes out to the Portnoy family: Alexi, Angela and their four children who have been living in Canada since 2001.

This hard-working family who operate a pizza shop in Marystown is clearly contributing to the economy, earning a living and dearly want to stay in Canada. Obviously there are two sides to every story, each case has to be considered individually and ruled on its

merits. However, there does not seem to be much common sense when it comes to humanitarian needs.

We hear daily from federal and provincial governments that we need to expand our immigration policy to welcome more immigrants to Canada. Yet we appear to make it difficult and in some cases impossible for them to stay.

As long as these people are law-abiding citizens and not a threat to society, why don’t we welcome them with open

arms instead of threatening them with deportation? Who made up the rule that you could only apply for immigration to Canada from outside the country? I realize why such rules might be necessary but surely exceptions can be made in certain circumstances.

Families in such dire need have little or no financial resources, how are they supposed to pay for expensive trips for the sake of fulfilling a bureaucratic rule?

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YOUR VOICE Time right for PM to retaliate against U.S. over softwood lumber Dear editor, It seems that the penny has dropped in Ottawa. Paul Martin has finally gotten George Bush on the phone about softwood.

I realized that the U.S. had no intention of moving on this issue after the devastation of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

They’re starving for lumber in the southern U.S. They must rebuild but have a very limited supply of wood to rebuild with.

If Bush had any intention of loosening his chokehold on our lumber exports to the U.S., it would have happened by now.

Perhaps Paul realized the

same thing. While this issue has been simmering for a long time — years in fact — he’s moving toward actually doing something about it. It first started with news reports that he was eyeing imposing tariffs on American water and wine. That was a good start. Then he took his show on the road.

His address to high-powered business people in New York was quite impressive. This time, he targeted our energy exports. He quite simply told them that if the U.S. won’t play ball on softwood lumber, then we might not be willing to play

ball on other exports. And energy was his ace in the hole.

Then he got George himself on the phone and told him the same thing. George, of course, wants diplomacy … negotiation. What for? This has been negotiated to death over the years. Not only that, but rulings from various boards and courts are almost unanimous in their support for the Canadian position.

The most welcome news of all came from former president Bill Clinton. Clinton addressed an Ontario audience recently and verbally slapped Paul on

By Clare-Marie Gosse The Independent

P

repare to meet Count Dracula as Bram Stoker intended him to be. Charming, vicious, powerfully evil and without a whisper of any romantic notions of ill-fated love.

“He’s actually kind of an asshole,” says John Rao, the writer, producer and co-director of Dracula, which comes to Holy Heart Auditorium in St. John’s over the Halloween weekend.

Despite the many film adaptations of Stoker’s famous novel, there is still no official, or accurate theatrical adaptation of the book and Rao — a big fan of the story — set himself the onerous task of writing one.

First on his check list was to keep as true to the original as possible, which meant disregarding all the cheese, overt romanticism and generally mistaken notions modern cinema has managed to perpetuate.

“If you read the book … he talks about how he has the blood of Attila (the Hun) in his veins and that’s not something everybody would boast about,” says Rao, who enlisted the help of world renowned Dracula expert and retired Memorial University professor, Elizabeth Miller, to stay true to Stoker’s vision.

“She (Miller) made a comparison between him and the antiChrist and that was actually my hook for writing it. When I realized that’s what it was, it completely changed the interpretation of the book.”

Bram Stoker’s Dracula follows the story of an unfortunate solicitor, Jonathan (played by Todd Perry in the production) who travels to Transylvania in the 1800s to relay information to Count Dracula (Clint Butler) about property he recently purchased in London, England.

Jonathan is incarcerated in the Count’s castle and subjected to unimaginable horrors at the hands of his host (and a bevy of scantily clad, evil brides). Jonathan eventually manages to escape and upon returning to London to his fiancée, Mina (Emily Thompson), convinces himself his experience was simply a form of temporary madness. Shortly after, Mina’s best friend, Lucy (Laura Beth Gray), is consumed by a mysterious illness, which according to professor Van Helsing (Tolson Barrington) is the work of a vampire.

For Rao, an experienced director, artist, musician and drama teacher from St, John’s, taking on the adaptation of Stoker’s book and the realization of a full production was more than a fleeting notion of pulling off a scary Halloween production. It was a chance to produce a visual piece of art — from book, to script, to stage and everything in between.

“It’s so multi-faceted,” he says. “It’s like painting; directing is like painting; it’s about moving moods around … and the more medium I can put into my show, the more I like it. This show for example has video projection, it has 2D slides, it has Balinese shadow play, there’s everything. It adds so many layers.”

Rao says writing his own adaptation of Dracula was nerve wracking.

“I had lots of ideas but it was so intimidating there were times that I just couldn’t write. I would write a little bit and I would go, ‘Oh that’s really good,’ and I would walk away.”

Having Miller to guide his progress was a huge help and Rao says he would constantly ask her opinion by sending her bits and pieces of his script as he went along.

the back for talking tough on the issue.

Of course, in the world of partisan politics he must disagree with Bush, but he didn’t have to do it with quite such vigour.

Given Katrina and Rita, the climate should be right for Bush to change his mind on softwood lumber, but he won’t.

His own citizens are suffering, but that apparently is of no concern to him. Paul appears to have realized this, as has Clinton.

So, the time is right for Martin to retaliate. The U.S.

W

Dear editor, I have lived in St. John’s for five years and walk to school, work and around town on a daily basis.

On my wanderings I have been surprised and saddened by how few in our city bother to walk. In an age of increasing obesity, environmental and health concerns, as well as a need to just slow down and smell the roses, I would like to try and encourage others to return to walking.

It pains me to see that so many people have chosen to travel gas guzzling, pollution-creating cars.

Each day as I walk to work, I must inhale their toxic fumes and

be harassed by their infernal horns. In inclement weather, they splash me and in winter I must fight for a simple piece of road.

At night I am blinded by their headlights and frightened by their speed.

Despite all these confrontations and frustrations, I continue to walk tall through life.

I may arrive many mornings at work soaked to the bone from salty splashes of road water, but I will continue to walk and take comfort in knowing I’m not alone.

As parking lots pave over flowered fields, as sidewalks become a

thing of the past, as pollution grays the skies of our cities, I tip my hat to the few, the happy, healthy few who continue to walk.

You who rise that little bit early to walk to work; you who take joy in that simple walk after supper; you who everyday brave the dangers of winter walking.

To all those who continue to walk tall, I say in the immortal, if slightly altered words of that band, AC/DC, from a nation that still prizes the walkabout, For those about to walk, we salute you!

Rebecca MacDonald, St. John’s

Original adaptation of Bram Stoker’s classic novel plays at Holy Heart with helping hand from world-renowned Dracula expert

Clint Butler and Laura Beth Gray.

Paul Daly/The Independent

“Her encouragement really helped an awful lot. She really had two critical things to say and I changed them based on what she said … other than that she thought it was a genuine interpretation.”

Miller, who specializes in 19th century British Gothic literature, will be travelling from the mainland to give pre-show talks before select performances of Dracula over its six-day run. Miller is president of the Canadian chapter of the Transylvanian Society of Dracula and has published six books on the subject.

A review of the Newfoundland National Convention (1946-1948)

hen they were in full swing, the mines on Bell Island employed hundreds of Newfoundlanders, work that was in short supply, especially during the Depression.

But the economic activity didn’t translate into a windfall for the Newfoundland government — certainly not during the days of the Second World War when the demand for iron ore was through the roof.

In fact, the company that operated the Bell Island mines in the mid-1940s, Dominion Iron and Steel Company, did not have to pay royalties on the ore it mined.

Rather, an export tax was introduced in 1929 that saw the company charged 10 cents a ton on the first one million tons of ore exported for processing (mainly to the Sydney steel mills), and three cents a ton thereafter up to 1.5 million tons. The company was not subject to any other taxes.

The maximum tax the Newfoundland treasury could collect in a year was $115,000 — no matter how much ore sold for on the world market, or how much profit the mining company earned.

The price of ore in 1948 was pegged at $4 a ton, which, given 1.5 million tons were mined, meant a total income of $6 million.

The subject of the tax collected from Bell Island came up in April 1947 during the Newfoundland National Convention, which was held to determine

For those about to walk, this reader salutes you

Depths of Dracula

‘A filthy story’

By Ryan Cleary The Independent

would be in hard shape without our energy. The threats about applying duties to water and wine might not have made much of a ripple in the consciousness of U.S. consumers, but similar threats about energy seems to have hit their mark.

Enough threatening, Paul.

They know you’re serious.

Time to show them just how serious you are. Either they stop the duties on softwood and pay us back our $5 billion, or they’ll languish in an energy crisis.

Deborah Burton, Mount Pearl

INDEPENDENTNEWS • 9

Road to CONFEDERATION AN ONGOING SERIES

Newfoundland came to be ruled by a six-man commission in 1934 after the colony — facing a massive debt and teetering on bankruptcy — voluntarily gave up its democracy.

Newfoundland’s fate once commission government ended.

Newfoundland came to be ruled by a six-man commission in 1934 after the colony — facing a massive debt and teetering on bankruptcy — voluntarily gave up its democracy.

Besides helping to choose the next form of government, the national convention reviewed Newfoundland’s finances — which included the mining sector.

Joey Smallwood appeared to take great pleasure in pointing out the weaknesses of the mining tax governing the Bell Island mines, considering the 20year tax was introduced by Peter Cashin when he served as finance minister in

1929.

He and Smallwood were bitter enemies in the debate over Confederation — Cashin being a staunch anti-confederate.

Not only was the company that operated the Bell Island mine charged the measly sum of 10 cents a ton, but the ore was not weighed before it was exported so there was no way of knowing exactly how much ore was being shipped out.

Newfoundland could have been losing out on even more tax revenue.

“The history of the relationships between the Bell Island company or companies and the Government of Newfoundland has been a filthy story that would disgrace any country,” Smallwood told the national convention (the future premier was one of 45 delegates elected to the convention from around the colony).

Cashin and others argued the company that ran the Bell Island mines was in poor financial shape. Smallwood was outraged that the company was taken at its word in regards to its finances.

Ore from Bell Island was mined in winter and stockpiled for shipment in spring. Employment peaked at about 1,600 men, who were paid an average wage of 58 cents an hour in the 1940s.

The Bell Island mines closed in 1966.

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.

As well as his cast of young — yet seasoned — actors, Rao praises his production team, including co-director Janet O’Reilly, who managed to help him create what promises to be a uniquely portrayed work of original visual, technical and musical art.

Along with using subtle and special effects, accents and dramatic costumes created by Matrix-inspired local clothiers AbbyShot, Rao hopes the essence of Dracula will be portrayed ultimately through the strength of the performances.

“Some of the scary moments are things you don’t expect but

it’s not about creating moments where people jump in their seats … I think disturbing is probably a good way to put it.

“I think people are going to have a lot of fun. I think people will walk away thinking, ‘I didn’t know Dracula had so much depth.’”

Dracula runs nightly from Oct. 27 to Nov. 1, including matinees and pre-show talks by Dracula expert Elizabeth Miller on selected days. For information visit www.dracula1897.com

Giving up the ghost P

eople just love Halloween — all that candy and a chance to show off in flamboyant costumes or lack thereof.

I once knew a guy who bar hopped around downtown Halifax with two semi-naked companions, dressed as the snake in the Adam and Eve story. (Well actually he was dressed as a cheek-exposed guy in a thong with a cuddly serpent wrapped around his waist.)

Perhaps the real reason people love Halloween is the opportunity to revel in the realm of the unknown. Personal tales of ghosts and strange happenings can be related with minimal fear of ridicule — after all, it’s Halloween; get in the spirit.

Everyone enjoys a good ghost story. I guess we’re masochists, we love to be terrified. I think deeper than that, we love to believe there’s something mysterious out there other than our run-of-the-mill, eating, working, sleeping lives.

I recently discovered I’m a mystic. I learned this information after watching The Exorcism of Emily Rose at the theatre. It’s a court room/horror film about a religious, demonically possessed teenager who dies from her unfortunate condition under the care of a priest. A skeptical lawyer, played by Laura Linney, is faced with the task of defending this priest (Tom Wilkinson) in court, by convincing the jury the possession was legitimate.

Despite claiming to be agnostic, Linney’s character is informed by the priest during some of their initial meetings that she is actually a mystic.

It’s not as new age as it sounds; no tarot cards or claims of psychic powers are involved. According to the dictionary, a mystic is someone who has a consciousness and belief in the existence of realities beyond apparent perception.

CLARE-MARIE GOSSE Brazen So if you’re not specifically religious, but you’re open to supernatural possibilities, then mystic seems to pretty much sum it up.

As easily as I can scare the absolute crap out of myself by doing something as stupid as waking up from a dead sleep at 3 a.m. on the nose (if you saw the movie you’d understand; something to do with the devil’s hour), I still enjoy the feeling of believing in the unknown.

Turn the lights off and leave me alone, however, and I’m a complete wuss with the imagination of a maniac.

I never could understand the point of being a professional skeptic. Your whole purpose is to put time and energy into proving beyond reasonable doubt that there’s nothing more to our lives than the everyday hum drum. No magic, no mystery, no mysticism. How depressing.

Skeptics must be smug people, just dying to sit back with folded arms and announce to a horrified audience: “Guess what? We’ve managed to prove beyond question, there is no God, no meaning to life, and you’re all unfortunate products of a chemical reaction. And as for life after death ...”

As British paranormal investigator Phil Whyman said in an interview: “You can’t scientifically prove that ghosts exist and you can’t scientifically disprove their existence either. So logically we should all be sitting on the fence 50/50, willing to accept either outcome.”

I’ve never actually seen a real ghost and there are times I feel disappointed about that.

When I was a child, I used to hang out the win-

dow on Halloween and scrutinize the street below to see if I would catch a glimpse of anything sinister afoot. As Catholics, my parents strongly disapproved of all things occult (Halloween apparently falls under that category) and I had to get my kicks somehow.

The reason the Catholic Church disapproves of the occult (psychic readings, astrology etc.) is because they believe firmly in the supernatural and consider it powerful and potentially dangerous.

Because of Christianity, Oct. 31 has become known as Halloween, which is a Middle English rough translation of All Hallows’ Eve, the night before All Saints’ Day on Nov. 1.

Christians came up with All Saints’ Day to counteract the pagan Celtic celebration of Samhain, the name for the night before Nov. 1 (which was the beginning of the Celtic New Year).

The Celts believed that on the night before the new year, the boundaries between the worlds of the living and the dead faded. The Celts feared the presence of the dead, but they also believed supernatural spirits made it easier for their druids to make accurate predictions for the future. So they held large gatherings and offered burned crops and sacrificed animals as gifts to the gods.

Far scarier than any walking spirits — and something we should all consider as we swan around in tights and sequins this Halloween — is the Celts viewed Nov. 1 as the beginning of the dark, cold, winter, a time of the year so cruel it was linked with human death.

So enjoy Samhain while you can, because before you know it you’ll be freezing to death under bundles of clothing, cursing a god who put you in the firing line of razor-sharp blizzards and fearing for your lives over treacherous, snow-banked streets.

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OCTOBER 23, 2005

10 • INDEPENDENTNEWS

LIFE STORY

Going to explore FROM THE BAY “Little Joe Young, son of Mr. and Mrs. R.D. of South Side, had a narrow escape from drowning on Wednesday when he was discovered in the water by his grandfather who happened to walk down the wharf at the same time. Although he had taken on considerable water, Joe is little the worse for his experience.”

— The Twillingate Sun, July 31, 1948 YEARS PAST “Mr. Preston (oil supplier) is forced to ration 75 gallons a month per household. He reported that an oil tanker had made three attempts so far to reach Fogo Island and was on its way again from Halifax. Things are meant to look brighter by May 15 according to the weather forecasters and hopefully the ice will run out before patience does.”

— Fogo Islander, May 1972 AROUND THE WORLD “There is a financial crisis in Italy. The cabinet is weak and has been forced to adopt paper currency.”

— The Daily Tribune, June 2, 1893 EDITORIAL STAND “At a meeting of the Roman Catholic inhabitants of this town ... making arrangements relative to the bringing of stones from Kelly’s Island to the New Cathedral at St. John’s. A sum of ?75 15s was realized, which is expected to be enhanced by the contributions of those who were unable to attend.”

— The Carbonear Sentinel, March 3, 1840 LETTER TO THE EDITOR “I wish to send a letter of thank you to the staff of the Fogo Island Motel for their kindness and consideration to me when I was stranded there on the night of Jan. 21 during a snow storm. After their day’s work they had to stay up all Saturday night and Sunday.

They also gave up their beds, prepared food, etc.”

Signed Mercedes Ryan — Fogo Islander February 1973 QUOTE OF THE WEEK “I realize that my greatest gift to another person may be an opportunity for him to develop and exercise his own capacities.”

Navy Relief Society Volunteer Workers’ Creed — The Foghorn, from Argentia, Nov. 10, 1960

MINA HUBBARD 1870-1956

Mina. She felt Wallace had inaccurately portrayed her husband as inexperienced and foolhardy.

When Wallace announced his plans in 1905

By Jenny Higgins to attempt the expedition for a second time, For The Independent Mina decided she would beat him to the punch and complete the journey herself. our years after her marriage and two In her book, A Woman’s Way Through years after becoming a widow, Mina Unknown Labrador, Mina discusses her Benson Hubbard set out to finish the motives for undertaking the journey, saying: work that had killed her husband — to trek “The tragic ending of Mr. Hubbard’s expediacross a dangerous portion of central Labrador. tion is well known … he failed to accomplish She succeeded, becoming the first person to his purpose; but that did not prove his expedireliably map the 576-mile stretch of land and tion a carelessly and ignorantly planned underthe first white woman to traverse the territory. taking … It seemed to me fit that my husband’s Today, a full 100 years after her journey, his- name should reap the fruits of service which torians are still writing books about Hubbard — had cost him so much.” one of the province’s most interesting explorers.

Mina quit her job as a nurse and left New Mina Benson was born in 1870 on a farm in York for Labrador.

Hamilton Township, near Bewdley, Ont. She On June 25, 1905, she and her crew arrived was the seventh of eight children. Her father, in Labrador on the same boat that carried James Benson, served on the township council Wallace and his team. and was elected Reeve in 1861.

According to records, the two rival expediAfter working for a short time as a school- tions left Northwest River in Labrador within teacher, Benson decided to leave her home and 24 hours of each other. They would travel the study nursing in Brooklyn. same route Leonidas had attempted.

It was a decision that would lead to her mar“My expedition left Northwest River Post riage and her future as an explorer.

3:30 p.m., June 27,” writes Mina. “I had two In May of 1900, a young (19-foot) canoes and four New York journalist named guides, chief among whom Leonidas Hubbard Jr. became was George Elson, who had sick with typhoid fever. loyally served Mr. Hubbard in “It seemed to me The nurse treating him was 1903 … My supply of proviMina Benson. Eight months totalled 750 pounds, the fit that my husband’s sions later, she was also his wife. complete outfit weighing They lived together in New 1,000 pounds.” name should reap York for two years before As far as Mina’s group Leonidas set out for central knew, they had to travel the the fruits of service Labrador. He wanted to be distance to Ungava Bay in just which had cost the first white man to explore two months. That’s when the the region by travelling last steamer was set to leave him so much.” through the Naskaupi and Labrador. If they missed that, George rivers up to Ungava they would have to wait until Mina Hubbard Bay. the following summer for The expedition was not a another ship. success.

Also spurring them on was In January, 1904 Mina the awareness Wallace’s team learned she had been a widow for three months was racing them to the finish. by reading a telegram: “Mr. Hubbard died But Mina’s expedition proved to be better October 18 in the interior of Labrador.” equipped and more efficient than Wallace’s.

The other two men in Leonidas’ expedition, On Aug. 27, after canoeing and portaging Dillon Wallace and George Elson, survived the across 576 miles of wilderness, Mina and her trip, but did not finish the route. team reached the finish line.

Upon his return to New York, Wallace pubThe steamer had not yet left. More imporlished a book about the journey called The Lure tantly, Wallace’s team had not yet arrived. of the Labrador Wild. The account infuriated It took him an extra 60 days to reach Ungava.

F

Mina produced the first reliable maps of the Naskaupi and George River watersheds and the American Geographical Society accepted her work.

She returned to New York to write her account of the journey, which was serialized in Harper’s magazine and published as a book (A Woman’s Way Through Unknown Labrador).

While promoting her book in England, Mina met and, in 1908, married Harold Ellis, the son of a British Member of Parliament and heir to a railway and mining fortune.

They divorced in 1926 after having three children together: Mahlo, Margaret and John.

Mina remained in England, but always kept in touch with George Elson. She even shared her book royalties with him.

There is some speculation that a romance was brewing between Mina and Elson during their trek in Labrador, but such theories have never been confirmed.

Still, on a trip to Canada in 1936 Mina, then 66, visited Elson for a few days in northern Ontario. The two are said to have gone on one last canoe trip together, this time up the Moose River.

In 1956, at the age of 86, Mina became confused and wandered onto a railroad track.

Instead of walking over the tracks on a bridge, she opened a forbidden gate and stepped into the path of an oncoming train. She was killed instantly.

Testimony was given at an inquest into her death that she had gone out for a walk, saying, “I am going to explore.”

INDEPENDENTWORLD

SUNDAY THROUGH SATURDAY, OCTOBER 23-29, 2005 — PAGE 11

‘The death gets to you’ Stephen Lewis, the U.N. secretary-general’s special envoy for AIDS/HIV in Africa, takes a break from work on the ground to deliver this year’s Massey Lectures

Stephen Lewis

Steve Russell/Torstar wire service

By Oakland Ross Torstar wire service

S

tephen Lewis has walked among the dead in Africa, where the velocity of darkness far exceeds the shuffling pace of light. Perhaps the laws of nature no longer apply in the region of the planet that stretches south of the Sahara Desert or perhaps the world makes no sense at all.

For nearly five years, Lewis has toiled as the U.N. secretary-general’s special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa. Wielding the only weapons he owns — two eyes, one voice, one heart — he has struggled mightily to preserve the lives of millions of human beings on the world’s poorest continent, and it remains a mystery to him why they are still being left to die.

By the time the sun sets tomorrow in Lusaka, Zambia — at 6:06 p.m., South Africa Standard Time — more than 10,000 Africans who are alive right now will be alive no more, laid low by AIDS, a disease that has been reduced to a chronic but manageable condition in much of the world.

In Africa, the malady remains a death sentence on a colossal scale.

“The omnipresence of death gets to AIDS and women. AIDS and death. you,” Lewis admits, on a damp, grey afterIn his five lectures — already collected noon in mid-October in central Canada. in a book called Race Against Time, to be Lewis is temporarily out of Africa. published by House of Anansi Press — “You find it very hard to shake loose. Lewis will be deconstructing the so-called I’m constantly ricocheting between hope Millennium Development Goals, a fiveand despair.” year-old commitment by the rich on behalf Lewis is seated on the edge of an arm- of the poor to change the world fundamenchair in the living room tally by the year 2015. of his Toronto home. He But it won’t happen, has rolled up the sleeves “You find it very hard says Lewis, certainly not of his white dress shirt, in sub-Saharan Africa, and loosened his tie, a red where most people will to shake loose. cravat adorned with remain poor and uneduI’m constantly images of youngsters cated, where women will with their arms upraised. continue to suffer monricocheting between His oversized eyeglasses strous hardship and went out of fashion more inequality, where the hope and despair.” than a decade ago — ranks of orphans will something he is probably continue to swell, and Stephen Lewis unaware of and wouldn’t where millions more care about in any case. will die of a treatable Lewis is in Canada to deliver a series of disease called AIDS. public talks, the 2005 Massey Lectures.

Stephen Lewis, only a month shy of his His five-city tour ends in Toronto’s 68th birthday — difficult though that is to Convocation Hall on Oct. 28. believe — is no longer the young socialist His subject will be AIDS, of course. firebrand of Ontario politics, a role he last AIDS and Africa. AIDS and children. performed nearly three decades ago as

leader of the province’s New Democratic Party. He is no longer former prime minister Brian Mulroney’s surprising choice to serve as Canada’s ambassador to the U.N. He is not a senior U.N. bureaucrat anymore, either.

There is nothing in this Africa thing for Stephen Lewis, unless you count the saving of other people’s lives as a personal benefit. He has no prospects for career advancement. He isn’t looking for a raise.

Since the year 2000, Lewis has been seeking to goad, browbeat, cajole and shame the major international donors of the world into confronting AIDS in subSaharan Africa, the battlefield where the greatest number of lives are at stake, by far.

He has tramped through slums and villages, slogged across savannas, huddled in mud-and-wattle rondavels, haunted the corridors of overcrowded, badly equipped hospitals, buttonholed ministers, potentates and presidents. He has held press conferences, issued appeals, challenged the mighty, comforted the poor. He has begged and pleaded. He has broken down and See “Many are still alive,” page 15

Punishment to fit the crime

Any judicial system that releases convicts knowing they haven’t responded to treatment is complicit in future crimes

I

mportant news cuts to the heart twice: first, with the details of the story, and then by the dread meaning it holds for the rest of us.

In crime reporting that means our hearts break over the senseless loss of individual human life and then our minds get going on how to limit similar tragedies in the future. The Oct. 19th advance in the Ardeth Wood murder investigation is a case in point. Both heart and mind are now fully engaged.

In a press conference that really supplied more questions than answers, we

MICHAEL HARRIS The Outrider now know that police have charged a 25-year-old man in the 2003 slaying of Ardeth Wood. His name is Chris Myers and he is presumed innocent until proven guilty. That principle extends to the other four sexual assault

charges he faces in Ottawa.

We also know that Myers came to the attention of the police early on in their investigation. In addition to the alleged sexual assaults in Ottawa, there was also a charge in North Bay, where the accused has been in custody since May 2005.

Here are some things I would like to know about this particular case: why was Chris Myers of interest to police so early in the Ardeth Wood investigation?

Was his name on the Ontario Sex Offender Registry? (It couldn’t have

been on the National Sex Offender Registry because that wasn’t created until late 2004.) Was Myers on probation or parole at any time during the offences with which he is charged?

Finally, did the alleged killer leave any DNA evidence at the Ardeth Wood crime scene?

The best we can do for the young woman who was found submerged in Green’s Creek on Sunday, Aug. 10, 2003 is to pursue the facts of this case indefatigably through the courts to a final determination. Either Chris Myers

See “Dangerous offender,” page 13

Simply fill out this form and mail to Walter Andrews, 5 Dartmouth Place St. John’s, NL, A1B 2W1

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will be proven guilty or the evidence against him will fail and he will be a free man. An individual tragedy will either find closure or the misery will continue. The social debate is another matter.

What would happen to such a person if he were to be convicted? And that brings me to Ralph Ernest Power. On July 2, 2006, Power is set to walk free from prison after a crime spree back in 1981 that included the sexual stalking

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OCTOBER 23, 2005

12 • INDEPENDENTWORLD

VOICE FROM AWAY

A relatively idyllic lifestyle Corner Brook’s Ed Flynn says relaxed pace, tax-free salaries and tasty rum drinks make Bermuda easy to get used to

By Ed Flynn For the Independent

were crumpled and shipped to the States — there now exists a robust and flourishing one that sees 1992 VW Golfs fetching $10,000 in private sales.

And nobody carpools.

While the income is virtually tax-free (and on par with the U.S. dollar), things are expensive. Our current two-bedroom, two-bathroom place runs $2,600 per month. A loaf of bread can command $4. Diapers, formula and cereal for our son are off the charts and gas has been over $1.40 a litre since 1998 (it is now over $1.70 a litre).

But I can still fill my scooter for less than $10 and be good for a week. I won’t tell you what the light bill runs on a monthly basis, especially when three air conditioners hum with a manic monotone from May to October.

B

ermuda. I had heard of it only in a Beach Boys song. Like many people I had no idea where it actually was. South of Florida?

Somewhere in the Bahamas? Sure, it had to be in the Caribbean. Nope.

Six hundred miles east of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, lies a little archipelago: a collection of small islands which, combined, are 21 miles long and “a smile” wide. That is to say it’s shaped something like Nike’s swoosh and not much bigger than the one on the side of my brother’s basketball sneakers.

In May 1997, I packed my life into a hockey bag and left my parents’ home in Corner Brook for Toronto. My fiancée Mary and I were only seven months from being married when we moved into a basement apartment in Toronto.

By the fall of 2001 we were looking to purchase a house. But the thought of a $400,000 mortgage and a call from a headhunter coincided; the job opportunity with an IT company in Bermuda came at the right time.

Bermuda’s lifestyle combines the slow and friendly pace of life in Newfoundland, the amenities of a big city, the climate of a sub-tropical island, and the income taxes of Monaco.

We arrived July 2002, and since then we have grown quite accustomed to life here and are very much at home.

Our first few months were spent settling in to a standalone little sandstone house with two bedrooms, a galley kitchen, an open living/dining room and a bathroom. Our weekends were spent touring around, marveling at the endless sea, the rocky vistas, the pink sandy beaches and every sip of a “darkn-stormy.”

STRICT RULES Bermuda’s famous cocktail is a combination of Gosling’s Black Seal rum and ginger beer. Mix a shot of Old Sam with ginger ale and you’ll get an idea, but ginger beer has more bite.

Strict rules govern who can work here or even look for work here. I had a valid work permit so Mary was able to speak to both private and public schools about employment.

She started teaching in January of 2003 at a public middle school in St. David’s, one of Bermuda’s poorest areas. Some of the children and problems she encounters are similar to those one would find in a middle school in a

Top: the Bermuda the tourists know (Photo Paul Daly). Right: Mary, Michael and Ed Flynn.

large inner city.

Bermuda, despite its small population (60,000) and relatively idyllic lifestyle, is a microcosm of an urban centre, complete with violence and poverty, albeit on a much smaller scale.

Unlike Corner Brook or even St. John’s, perhaps, its neighbourhood gangs and other socio-economic problems exist almost in a vacuum.

The hustle of IT sales in Toronto contrasts starkly to the slow pace of business in Bermuda. Like the sweltering summers, though, the pace of work has become almost enjoyable to the point where now I don’t know if I would want to be any place else. But the plan is still to return to Newfoundland in the next few years, and make a go of it at home.

We were lucky to meet up with some great people who have become close and dear friends. Many are Canadians, but others come from all over — England, Ireland, Scotland, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand.

Like many before, I was convinced to take up rugby. A co-worker said it would fill the ice hockey void with camaraderie, contact and cold beer. So

I joined the Mariners Rugby Football Club and Mary became one of “the girls.”

For the most part we were in the same stage of life: everyone in, or associated with, the club was 20- or 30something, had no kids and was in Bermuda temporarily to save some money and party.

The partying has dialed back for many of us. Our first child, Michael, was born a year ago. In fact, over the

course of the last two years, over a dozen of the lads have become dads.

Something in the Heineken, they say.

Another adjustment is driving a scooter 40 kilometres per hour on the left side of the winding roads. Not exactly the 401 or Toronto’s one-way, four-lane streets.

The rules governing automobile ownership are strict, one per household is the benchmark. Further, where once there was no used-car market — they

BEACH LIFE We have gotten to the point where we take even the beaches for granted. I have gone to the beach exactly twice since the waters warmed up. Well, they are always warmer than Deer Lake or Davey’s Pond, but locals typically don’t go “overboard” until the Queen’s birthday in May. It does get cold here. January and February see temperatures in the low teens.

And it rains. While sunshine is recorded over 300 days per year, the rain does fall on each and every business day during the winter months. The summers are sunny and dry and hot but the winters are hit and miss as the waters of the mid-Atlantic cool and the systems brought by the jet stream move in hard and fast and frequently.

Golfing in July, heck walking across the street in July, is an exercise in lungcollapsing intestinal fortitude. Thirtydegree heat combined with 100 per cent humidity means a saturated shirt.

Watching the weathermen from Toronto or Detroit or New York warning of the humidex on a daily basis, makes our eyes roll. Sixty-eight per cent humidity? Makes for a cool night.

No need for air conditioning. Take the dog for a run or play two sets of tennis.

It’s cool, b’y! (They say that in Bermuda too — there are many parallels with home.)

I guess that’s why we like it here. A stranger will greet you with a good morning, as opposed to an unwavering shoulder because their eyes were on the sidewalk below.

Do you know a Newfoundlander or Labradorian living away? Please email editorial@theindependent.ca

OCTOBER 23, 2005

INDEPENDENTWORLD • 13

N.B. considers extending daylight savings time

By Carl Davies Telegraph-Journal

Toronto Mayor David Miller

Reuters

Toronto police park cruisers

T

oronto officers will continue to park their cruisers in between calls until the pressure tactic prompts the police services board to remove “outrageous” demands at the bargaining table, the union says.

“Our officers are responding to all calls for service, not just emergency calls,” Toronto Police Association president Dave Wilson told reporters last week. “The public is not at risk.”

Police services board chair Alok Mukherjee says using the pressure tactic to get issues off the table is unfair.

“It amounts to holding a gun to our head,” he says, adding the board could do the same and refuse to negotiate until its demands are met. Instead, he argued it’s best to settle their differences at the bargaining table. “Sworn officers cannot withhold or withdraw services.”

Foot and bike patrols are going ahead, and officers are still writing traffic and parking tickets.

The job action, which began earlier this month with officers wearing baseball caps and union ties, will continue to escalate until the police board removes its bargaining demands, Wilson says. He refused to say what will be next, although there has been speculation about a “blue flu” where officers book off sick en masse. The union has set Nov. 1 as the date for further action.

The union says contract talks are at an impasse in three key areas: benefits coverage; getting officers on a compressed work week to work an extra 3.5 hours per month, or 42 hours per year, for which they are now paid; and reducing retention pay, a bonus paid to officers who stay with the force at least eight years.

The union, which represents 5,500 uniformed officers and 2,200 civilian employees, says if it agrees to the board’s contract demands, it would risk moving from being the top paid force to one of the worst.

“I think it’s a fair request for them to ask to be the highest paid in the province. They’ve got a tough job. We’re the biggest city,” Mayor David Miller says.

— Torstar wire service

Dangerous offender laws are there, but you’d never know it From page 11 of 15 women in Toronto and ultimately the murder of fashion model Sheryl Gardiner. It was the victim’s sister, Carolyn Gardiner, who lobbied MPs last year for a law that would force convicted killers to provide a DNA sample to a national DNA bank. She succeeded — Bill C-13 became law. The way the law was written added 5,000 retroactive offenders to the system and that is all to the good.

But the sad fact is that Canada still does not have a sexual-predator law that would allow for the detention of highrisk offenders beyond the expiration of their warrant. That’s why serial pedophile Peter Whitmore is once again at large, even though he routinely violated his parole conditions by being in the presence of children, and officials in the Correctional Service of Canada agree that he has a 100 per cent likelihood of re-offending during the next seven years.

Our dangerous offender laws are there, but you would never know it from how frequently they are used by the courts. The main reason for that is that these laws can only be invoked at the time of sentencing, not release.

Another area where we can protect society and help police investigate sex crimes is the DNA databank that people like Carolyn Gardiner and Steve Sullivan navigated through a reluctant system. It has already proven invaluable in solving heart-wrenching crimes similar to the murder of Ardeth Wood, but it can only be taken after a conviction.

Compare that to Britain, for example, where DNA samples are routinely taken at the time of arrest for anything.

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT There is crime and there ought to be punishment. We need to get tough and stay tough on sentencing, with far more attention paid to risk assessment. Any system, like the way we have, that releases a convict knowing that he has not responded to treatment and is virtually certain to reoffend is complicit in his future crimes. Conditional sentences for violent offenders are a bad joke on every lawabiding citizen.

For now, we have a federal prison system that obsesses about the early release of prisoners and trivializes the sentences they do receive. Edmonton serial rapist Larry Takahashi was given escorted temporary absences to play golf only five years after receiving three life sentences for a series of vicious sexual assaults against seven women.

And James Sweeney, a murderer and sexual sadist, raped and killed halfway house worker Celia Ruygrok back in 1985. Somebody, somewhere in the system put him back on the street.

It is ironic that on the day that police arrest a suspect in the Ardeth Wood murder case, Deputy prime minister Anne McLellan and Justice Minister Irwin Cotler announced new government initiatives to support victims of crime.

Canada now has a new National Office for Victims within the Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness to supply a much-needed victim “lens” on the criminal justice system. And from now on, victims of crime who want to attend the parole hearings of the people who murdered or harmed their loved ones can get financial assistance to make the trip.

It is a beginning Ardeth Wood, but we have far to go to keep faith with you.

Michael Harris’ column returns Nov. 6.

W

ith Quebec ready to follow the United States’ lead on extending daylight savings time for a month, New Brunswick is still contemplating whether it will follow suit.

The final decision could come down to a choice between the safety of schoolchildren versus energy savings and businesses trying to keep in step with their export markets.

When Canada’s premiers met in Banff this summer, they toyed with the idea of matching an initiative of U.S. President George Bush that will extend daylight savings by a week in the fall and three weeks in the spring.

The move, which goes into effect in 2007, is designed to save money on energy costs by extending daylight hours into the evenings.

Conversely, particularly in northern states and north of the border, it will mean darker mornings for commuters and children heading off to school.

The biggest concern for Canada’s premiers and business leaders was to stay on the same

clock as its largest trading partner to the south.

But the premier is still weighing the pros According to reports out of Quebec, govern- and cons of a temporal shift. ment sources there say that province is ready Research by New Brunswick officials to to announce it will follow suit with the date has focused on the shift in daylight savAmericans in 2007, and is ings time and not on a urging other provinces to shift to eastern time. do the same.

While Quebec Time is a provincial appears ready to make Quebec and PEI favour jurisdiction and in New the change, federal offia change; N.S. and N.B. Brunswick it would take cials have urged the approval of the legislature provinces to find a comstudying the issue; to change the Time mon solution to the Definition Act, which dictime-change dilemma.

Newfoundland and tates when the clocks In Atlantic Canada, Labrador “cold to the change.

Nova Scotia is studying When the subject was the issue, along with idea” raised in Banff, New New Brunswick.

Brunswick Premier P.E.I. Premier Pat Bernard Lord said it made Binns has indicated he’d sense to synchronize watches with the U.S. favour a change, citing an online poll his govand even floated the more radical idea of tak- ernment has conducted that shows overing New Brunswick off Atlantic time and put- whelming support for doing as the Americans ting it into the eastern time zone, which will do in 2007. includes Quebec, Ontario and the U.S. Eastern Premier Danny Williams has been cold to seaboard, places where New Brunswick does the idea, but it is of less concern to a province the vast majority of its export business. that is already on a different clock.

OCTOBER 23, 2005

14 • INDEPENDENTWORLD

Saddam’s TV trial ‘a sad spectacle’

By Vinay Menon Torstar wire service

W

hen it comes to made-for-TV trials, Iraq still has much to learn about Western democ-

racy.

Saddam Hussein returned to his former National Command headquarters yesterday but, this time, as a reviled defendant. Saddam and seven codefendants are facing charges related to the 1982 massacre of 143 Shiites in Dujail.

Horrific and brutal, yes. No question.

But on TV yesterday, Saddam looked more like a deranged botanist than a murderous dictator.

Sitting in the enclosed white dock — garbed in his post-spiderhole ensemble of dark blazer, white shirt and matching beard — he was by turns bored, amused, tired and defiant.

Day 1 of the tribunal lasted for about three hours before it was adjourned until Nov. 28. With the time-zone difference, the proceeding was over before most of us had our first coffee.

So for much of the morning, the cable news channels switched to Highlights Mode, broadcasting disjointed snippets of dimly lit footage that was transmitted via tape delay from state-run Iraqi television.

Technical difficulties abounded, with regular interruptions to both sound and picture: this was a crimes-againsthumanity tribunal that had the bumbling gravity of traffic court.

Saddam Hussein speaks to a judge last week

Reuters

CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, who was in the courtroom, made this observation: Saddam “was defiant in that he kept repeating that he didn’t recognize the court’s jurisdiction.”

This, I think, could be a problem.

A crawl on BBC World read, “Saddam Refused to Answer Questions.” A graphic on MSNBC read, “Hussien (sic) Scuffled with Guards & Challenged Court’s Legitimacy.”

And so it went.

Anchors called the proceeding “momentous” and “remarkable” and “extraordinary.” But as a television event, these were all lies.

A decade after the O.J. Simpson verdict turned courtrooms into showrooms, there was a palpable sense of anti-climactic disappointment. Some commentators used pop-cultural references to enliven the staid post-mortems before coverage could return to, say, Hurricane Wilma and the Powerball lottery.

Dan Murphy, a correspondent with the Christian Science Monitor, told MSNBC, “This wasn’t Perry Mason time.” Michael Scharf, legal adviser to the tribunal, told CNN, “This is sort of like that movie Judgment at Nuremberg.”

Canadian Ashleigh Banfield, who

has joined Court TV, told viewers: “Saddam is no dummy. This guy is really media savvy. This is a guy who used to watch John Wayne movies all the time and drink Johnnie Walker in his presidential palaces ... He knows the way this stuff works.”

Maybe. But Iraqi officials clearly do not.

Saddam was escorted into the court by guards in bulletproof vests. He glanced at co-defendant Awad Hamed al-Bandar, former head of Iraq’s Revolutionary Court.

Saddam’s exasperated smirk seemed to say, “Can you believe this, Awad?

Goddamn infidels. I’m missing Baywatch for this.”

Court TV Canada, the digital station, aired a special report, including an endless loop of footage and exchanges between Saddam and judge Rizgar Mohammed Amin.

Amin, it should be noted, was the only judge (there are four others) brave enough to have his face beamed across the planet on satellite television. This says much about postwar Iraq, not to mention the visceral fear Saddam can still engender. (As a commentator on Fox News noted: “The witnesses they thought would be there were simply too scared to show up.”)

At any rate, I think it’s safe to say that friends will not be dining al fresco with Amin any time soon. He asked the defendants to identify themselves. This did not sit well with Saddam, who stared at the judge like he was Captain

Kangaroo.

“You ask for my ID,” came his reply via a translator who, at times, seemed in need of a translator. “But. But. But this is a formality of the court.

Therefore, I don’t acknowledge neither the entity that authorized you nor the aggression because everything that is based on falsehood is falsehood.”

Judge Amin: “You can sit down, please.”

Rizgar Mohammed Amin, sir, you are no Lance Ito. The most dramatic event — Saddam jostling with two guards who tried to physically escort him from the court during a recess — didn’t even unfold on camera. Nevertheless, it was heavily analyzed.

There’s something unseemly about comparing atrocities. Still, some experts were puzzled by the prosecution’s decision to pursue the Dujail massacre, given other acts of genocide linked to Saddam: the Anfal Operation against the Kurds; the Shiite crackdown of 1991; the poison gas attack in Halabja.

But as former CIA analyst Ken Pollack told CNN: “So much of Saddam’s regime consisted of little day-to-day incidents — of murder, of torture, of other forms of abuse.”

So after months of anticipation, the tribunal is finally underway. Saddam and the others pleaded innocent. Well, sort of.

As he said, more than once, “I do not respond to this so-called court.”

OCTOBER 23, 2005

INDEPENDENTWORLD • 15

Timing and content of proposal seals former Parti Québécois leader’s estrangement

By Chantal Hébert Torstar wire service

I

s Lucien Bouchard about to undergo yet another spectacular political metamorphosis?

That question was on many minds last week after Bouchard and a group of 11 co-authors drawn from across the Quebec political spectrum released their political manifesto.

Titled For a Clear-Eyed Vision of Quebec, the document is not a philosophical treaty but rather a call to arms against some of the province’s most cherished sacred cows.

It calls for a major realignment of the Quebec model in the face of the dual challenges of a declining birth rate and the emergence of the new economic superpowers of China and India.

Short of a shift, the group argues, Quebec is doomed to become a smaller, more impoverished society.

The main themes of the manifesto may mirror Paul Martin’s recent lecture to federal mandarins. But the similarities stop there.

Of the two, Bouchard’s text is paradoxically the one that comes across as a plan of action for today rather than a woolly essay on uncertain tomorrows.

It is immensely more focused and, consequently, likely to be immensely more controversial.

For all that, Bouchard swears he has no plans to come back to active politics to promote his prescriptions. Given his age, 67, there is no reason not to take him at his word.

‘Many are still alive’ From page 11 cried.

And has he made a difference?

“Yes,” he says. “I don’t want to overstate the difference, but we have made incremental progress on resources and incremental progress on treatment.”

Lewis relates the tale of a group of 16 children in a Zambian village whom he met one day in 2003. All of them had AIDS, all seriously ill, all bound to perish — unless someone located a supply of anti-retroviral medication, the only medicine that would save them.

And Lewis did.

“They were so incredibly appealing,” he recalls now with pleasure. “A good many of them are still alive.”

MAW OF DEATH He has other happy stories to tell, chronicles of individual lives plucked from the maw of death slavering across Africa. Of course, no one knows better than Lewis that such tales are the rare exceptions.

It is no surprise most of Lewis’s tales of Africa are cast in shadows — the dark interiors of rural huts, the gloomy wards of hospitals, the cramped confines of windowless rooms, places where human forms shift back and forth like phantoms, where mothers die while their children watch, the expressions on their young faces impossible to make out.

A few short years ago, such scenes were sadly inevitable for there was little to do for Africans with AIDS but comfort the dying and bury the dead.

Now, however, there are anti-retroviral drugs available to save them. The medicine has been configured in ways that work in Africa, at prices that make sense.

And yet huge numbers of Africans continue to die for lack of treatment, and tens of millions more are fated to follow.

“The fact that you can keep people alive makes it all the more enraging,” says Lewis. “You know that there is no excuse for losing thousands of people everyday.”

ELUSIVE SOLUTION Despite progress in many areas, the prospects for a solution to AIDS in Africa seem almost as elusive now as it did five years ago.

A vaccine against the disease is at least a decade away. Meanwhile, the world does not seem to be coming up with the money needed for prevention and treatment, not to mention all the other costs imposed by AIDS — the loss of skills, the loss of labour, the gutting of villages, the explosion of orphans.

He wants to continue this struggle at least until there’s a breakthrough, whatever form that breakthrough takes, however far off it may be. In other words, he wants to do this job until it’s done.

“This has been something I never imagined in my life,” says Lewis. “I so want it to end, for these lovely people who ache to live.”

eignist at heart, but he is clearly no that a beaming Premier Jean Charest longer a pequiste. tabled the manifesto in the National The text takes aim at some of the Assembly. party’s most As for Mario strongly held posiDumont, he invittions, calling, for ed its authors to It is no accident a instance, for the run for his Action beaming Jean Charest introduction of a démocratique private health-care party in the next tabled the manifesto in stream parallel to Quebec election. the public system, Up to a point, the the National Assembly. an end to the freeze manifesto valion post-secondary dates both their tuition fees and a major debt repay- parties at the expense of the PQ. ment effort.

As for the Parti Québécois, its top More importantly, it thumbs its nose at PQ orthodoxy by arguing that sovereignty is not a prerequisite to putting Quebec on the course to a brighter future.

These days, the notion that Quebec can only move forward by achieving sovereignty is treated as an article of faith by the men and one woman who are vying for the PQ leadership.

But the charismatic figure who came so close to leading sovereignists to the promised land a decade ago begs to disagree.

The same hard choices would still face Quebec the day after sovereignty and the solutions available would not be different, he argues.

Bouchard is unlikely to ever be back in the political arena in an official capacity.

But that does not mean his latest foray will not once again change the political dynamics of Quebec and, by deflection, Canada. It is no accident

leadership contenders were wary of taking on a man whose aura remains brighter than their own and whose political accomplishments they have spent the past few months claiming as their own.

But the next Quebec election may now have become a taller order for the PQ. It is one thing to run against the likes of Charest and Dumont — both of whom have been demonized for promoting some of the policies contained in the manifesto — and another to campaign against Bouchard, even in spirit.

579-STOG 77 Harv Harvey ey Road

Lucien Bouchard Paul Daly/The Independent

But if he ever wanted to re-enter politics, it is also clear that he would not elect to go back to the Parti Québécois he once led. Since he resigned as premier, Bouchard has never graced a single PQ gathering. That is not about to change.

This manifesto, both in its timing and its content, seals his estrangement from his latest party. He may still be a sover-

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16 • INDEPENDENTWORLD

OCTOBER 23, 2005

INDEPENDENTLIFE

SUNDAY THROUGH SATURDAY, OCTOBER 23-29, 2005 — PAGE 17

Jean Smith, executive director of NIFCO.

Paul Daly/The Independent

Happy birthday NIFCO Thirty years of independent filmmaking in Newfoundland

By Jenny Higgins For The Independent

I

n 1975, a group of local filmmakers decided that artists here should be able to make their films without having to leave the province. So they formed NIFCO — the Newfoundland Independent Filmmakers Co-operative.

Now, 30 years and more than 300 films later, NIFCO is thriving from its base in downtown St. John’s.

“NIFCO is a filmmaker training centre,” says Jean Smith, NIFCO’s executive director. “We’re also a postproduction house for film editing and we do production for first film.”

NIFCO rents equipment and facilities to filmmakers who would otherwise have to leave the province to complete their work.

“Because of NIFCO, any filmmaker in the province can work with their editor or director to see their film from its creation to the final output,” says Smith. “Because of NIFCO’s facilities and our reduced rates, we allow the filmmaker that opportunity to complete their project at a reduced cost.”

Smith says all money NIFCO earns goes back into its

programs, services and equipment.

The NIFCO building is located on King’s Road in downtown St. John’s. From the outside it looks like three separate and colourful townhouses. But on the inside — and as a result of numerous renovations — it’s a single, sprawling, maze of a building. Amazingly, it’s entirely wheelchair accessible.

Smith says the exterior of the NIFCO building was intentionally meant to look like three regular townhouses.

“NIFCO didn’t want to lose its feeling of being part of a downtown neighbourhood. If we took the three buildings and made them into one façade, they would look like some sort of plant.”

The building is packed with rooms and rooms of equipment — sound editing systems, video editing systems, animation workstations, cameras, mixers, microphones and miles upon miles of cables.

But because of the evolving nature of technology, Smith says keeping all of NIFCO’s equipment up to date is a major problem.

“When I first came into the co-op in 1995 it was still using analog editing,” she says. “Within a year, they had applied to a grant with the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency to deal with the new reality of digital. Everything

now at our post-production house is edited the new digital way.

“Now we’re faced with the new challenge of high definition. We’re in the process of looking for funding to upgrade to high definition.”

Aside from the state-of-the-art equipment, Smith says NIFCO also offers new filmmakers the chance to learn from veterans in a mentoring program.

“A new filmmaker can come into the co-op and be partnered with a senior producer or filmmaker and be given advice on either the production or post-production side of their filmmaking.

“People share their expertise here; people assist.”

There is a variety of ways to become a NIFCO member, but Smith says the most common one is to have screen credits in three NIFCO films.

She says NIFCO membership fluctuates over the years.

“This year, depending on what’s happening, there could be 20 to 30 NIFCO members that access the facility in some way shape or form. That’s not necessarily the same 20 to 30 that will access it next year.

“Over the past 30 years, probably 200 members have See “Building,” page 22

LIVYER

Foxtrap farmer

David Fagan doesn’t just grow Jiggs dinner vegetables anymore

By Jenny Higgins For The Independent

W

David Fagan

Paul Daly/The Independent

hen David Fagan started farming with his father, he grew potatoes, cabbage, carrots and turnip — all the fixings for Jiggs dinner. Now Fagan, 56, owns his own farm in Foxtrap. He says things have changed since his father’s day.

“We grow a lot of things now because the public is after changing their diet. They have recipes for different things,” he says. “Now we’re into leeks, brussel sprouts, Chinese cabbage, lo bok, bok choy, there’s snow

peas, beans, and I don’t know how many more.”

Fagan says he has some crops on his farm that he hasn’t even tried himself.

“I have so many things that I wouldn’t know what to do with it,” he laughs. “There’s stuff here now I haven’t even eaten. The lo bok, I don’t know. I guess you use that in a stir fry.

“I’ve eaten some things now just going around the garden and harvesting. I’ll take it and eat it raw.”

Fagan says he bought his property when he was 17 years old. The land wasn’t developed, but he spotted its potential.

“I knew there was good soil in here, so I came in, staked it out and went through the procedure, through the government and got it.

“I made the whole thing. You weren’t able to park your car up there,” he says, pointing to a dirt road leading up to his fields.

Each year, Fagan says he plants about 15 acres of land and prepares another 15 for the following year’s planting season. He works in the field and his wife, Jocelyn, drives to St. John’s to sell the vegetables at the See “Family affair,” page 19

OCTOBER 23, 2005

18 • INDEPENDENTLIFE

GALLERYPROFILE

E

mma Davida doesn’t know exactly what draws her to knitting, but she’s “crazy about it.”

She first learned the craft as a child, and created plenty of simple knit scarves and squares. But about four years ago, Davida’s old hobby popped back into her head. “I thought ‘Oh my God I have to do this,’” she says, grinning. “Now I knit constantly and I’m never tired of it. I get so excited about new wools and I’m always thinking about the next design and the next design …”

Davida’s first solo exhibition of knitwear is currently up at the Craft Council Annex Gallery in Devon House in St. John’s. The colourful hats, scarves and sweaters are hand-knit with handdyed wool — with many of the colours derived from plants native to Newfoundland.

“There is a strong knitting tradition in Newfoundland, but I don’t really see much young stuff on the go,” she says. “I always feel that there should be more contemporary knitting.”

While Davida is focused on creating trendy, stylish designs and patterns, runway fashion is not her cup of tea.

“I have sort of crazy hats on the go, which are different than what’s out. I have flower pins that you can move and put on your jacket or whatever …

“But I’m not naturally a very fashion person, in the sense that I am into design but I’m really lazy about dressing and I don’t want to be cold … I’m not into short

skirts and that kind of fashion, like you see on Fashion File or something.

“Making a statement or looking original without being totally exposed — that’s sort of what I’m about.”

Born in British Columbia, Davida spent much of her childhood moving around with her family — her father, an agricultural consultant, had contracts in places as far away as Sri Lanka and Indonesia. She finished high school in Quebec and studied graphic design in Ottawa.

She moved to St. John’s in 2003 and “clicked” with both the city and the textile studies program at the Anna Templeton centre. She graduated a few months ago.

Davida says she has developed a “very big love” for Newfoundland. Although she plans to head to Montreal later this year for more studies — she wants to gain industry training on knitting machines and computer design programs — she hopes and plans to return.

Her exhibition, Cosy View, also features Davida’s pastel drawings of Newfoundland landscapes, animals and still life.

“I wanted to put them on the wall so there would be something besides white,” she says with a laugh. “I draw for fun and inspiration or to sketch out ideas … sometimes I think there’s too much here to inspire me.”

For more, visit www.emmadavida.com. Cosy View is on display until Nov. 13.

— Stephanie Porter

EMMA DAVIDA Knitwear

Model Kathryn Byrne Paul Daly photos 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

OCTOBER 23, 2005

INDEPENDENTLIFE • 19

Little more than a two-hour preview TIM CONWAY Film Score Elizabethtown Starring Orlando Bloom and Kirsten Dunst, 123 min. (out of four)

D

rew Baylor didn’t spend last Christmas with his family.

Having designed a shoe that would revolutionize the footwear industry, he was the focal point of an all-out celebration at his place of work, Mercury Worldwide Shoes.

The young designer was bigger than Christmas that day, as everyone in the company foresaw great things ahead for themselves, thanks to Drew’s creation.

A number of months later, however, Drew finds himself as far removed from that atmosphere of joy and adulation as one could get. Designing that shoe must have been only the first in a number of stages before it eventually hit store shelves, and while along the way any number of company executives must have approved it, the outright disapproval of the shoe in the marketplace, a rejection of mythic proportions, becomes attributable to only one individual, Drew Baylor.

Being the kind of responsible guy he is, Drew accepts the blame for his company’s billion-dollar loss. He doesn’t just say this for the benefit of the media, or to placate finicky shareholders — he really does feel responsible, and following his last meeting with the company president, he goes home with the intention of doing himself in.

Just as he has devised an elaborate means by which to orchestrate his own demise, Drew gets a phone call from his sister, informing him that their father has just passed away while visiting relatives in Kentucky.

Their mother is at the end of her wits, and they need Drew to go collect his father’s remains and bring them home.

The responsible kind of guy that he is, Drew postpones his appointment with death until the weekend, and heads to Elizabethtown, Kentucky.

As the only passenger flying coach, Drew attracts the attention of a sweetheart of a flight attendant who moves him up to the first class section, and tries to entertain him with friendly conversation. By the time he lands, she has provided him with a map and her phone number, and since she’s played by Kirsten Dunst, we know that they’re going to hook up somewhere down the road.

The drive into Elizabethtown is a little surreal, as the occasional store displays a sign regarding the passing of Mitch Baylor, Drew’s father.

Presumably, because Drew is recognized as a stranger, he is assumed to be Mitch’s son. Townsfolk wave to him, and a kid on a bicycle guides

Family affair From page 17 farmer’s market in Churchill Square.

During peak season he employs about 10 people, but says finding workers can be a problem.

“This has been the best year I’ve had since I’ve been farming,” says Fagan. “It’s a blessing, but it’s also very stressful because I’ve never had to take so much stuff up before. Trying to get labourers is a big problem. You may get some for a few days and then they’ll probably go do something else, or they’re just not interested. That’s a big problem.”

It’s harvesting time now on Fagan’s farm and he has a unique way of storing his vegetables — he keeps them in giant Oceanex containers, one buried in his field and another in his back yard. The doors of the compartments are above ground, so trucks can drive in and load up with vegetables.

“I got them for a bargain,” says Fagan. “Today they’re worth around $3,000 or $4,000. I got both of them for $1,000. That was roughly around 1990.

“I bought them off a guy in the Goulds. I had a contractor bring them in on a float and I excavated to dig out the ground.

“I don’t know where I got the idea. It just came to me and I knew it would work.”

Fagan says he doesn’t know of any other farmers who are using buried Oceanex containers as storage compartments, but says some of them have complimented his innovative thinking.

Right now, the container in Fagan’s field is filled with thousands of bags of potatoes. He says they’ll stay there until next April or May. “Once the snow blocks the road and I close the doors, this here buries over until the spring of the year,” says Fagan. “The snow will be on the roof and all over.

Everything will be nice and cold until spring.”

Fagan says that although he loves farming, retirement has been on his mind lately.

“I’m involved with the prison ministry now for about seven years. I’d like to semi-retire and spend more time at stuff like that,” he says.

Fagan says he plans to one day give the farm to his son, Chris. The farm, he says, has always been a family operation.

“My wife is on the (Churchill) Square and my son is with me ever since I started, since high school, and his wife will also go out to the Square and help package some of the stuff.”

Although he’s considering retirement, Fagan says he doesn’t know exactly when it will happen.

He says retirement is always a little more tempting during fall’s busy harvesting season than it is during the planting season.

“I’m tired now, but once spring comes, something just gets into you, with the nice summer days and spring days and you just want to get in on the tractor and do it all over again.

“It just gets in your blood.”

Rothermere Fellowship Cameron Crowe, writer-director of Almost Famous, Vanilla Sky, and Jerry Maguire, brings us Elizabethtown, in theatres now.

him to the funeral parlour, where he finds a number of his relatives. With his mother and sister still in Oregon, Drew finds himself to be the sole representative for his father and immediate family among a large number of people who have held Mitch Baylor in high regard.

LARGE SPREAD Writer/director Cameron Crowe lays out a fairly large spread here, with numerous morsels to sample, but very little to bite into, and nothing to chew. For more than two hours, we get an array of moments that never really lead to anything more than a set-up for something that could be explored with insight and lead to some kind of point.

Unfortunately, Crowe seems more interested in getting on to something else, and rather than bring a previously raised notion along, he drops it entirely. Likewise, characters are introduced as though they’re going to play some larger part in the film later on, but for the most part, they’re pushed into the background. Chances are that they would have been more significant to the story except that

much of the change in Drew’s attitude is shifted to Dunst’s character, Claire.

Elizabethtown also suffers from a malaise more often found with less experienced writer/directors, whereby the main characters stop short of being completely convincing because they are obviously serving the master behind the scenes.

Consequently, a fair bit of what they say and do can only be explained in terms of their actions and lines having been scripted by someone else.

There’s perhaps one scene in the film that is improvised, and probably not a single syllable uttered by an actor that isn’t written on a page.

There’s probably a very good motion picture lurking about in there somewhere, and a skillful editor could bring it out. At the same time, there’s enough good material here to form the basis of a decent mini-series, if someone wanted to throw a few dollars and a little more work into it. As it is, however, Elizabethtown plays like a two-hour preview for a great movie that we’ll likely never see.

Tim Conway operates Capital Video in Rawlin’s Cross, St. John’s.

Applications for the 2006 Rothermere Foundation Fellowship are invited. The fellowship, made possible by the generosity of the Rothermere Trust and amongst the most prestigious fellowships available to Memorial University alumni, supports students to pursue a master’s or doctoral degree in a university in the United Kingdom.

Applicants shall have completed a bachelor’s degree at Memorial University and have completed or be about to complete a master’s degree at Memorial University or at another university in North America.

The fellowship is currently valued at £8,329.00 per annum, plus university fees and certain other expenses such as return air travel to the United Kingdom. The fellowship is awarded by the Rothermere Fellowships Trust, on the recommendation of the President of Memorial University of Newfoundland.

The application deadline is Nov. 30th, 2005.

To obtain application forms or further information, please contact: Margot Brown, Executive Director, Office of the President Room AA2028, Arts and Administration Building Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John’s, NL, A1C 5S7; Tel: (709) 737-8216; Fax: (709) 737-2059; e-mail: mbrown@mun.ca or visit www.mun.ca/rothermere

OCTOBER 23, 2005

20 • INDEPENDENTLIFE

IN CAMERA

scream?

H O W

L O U D

C A N

Since 2002, the Harbour Haunt has been attracting huge crowds to the old Woolworth’s building on Water Street in St. John’s in the weeks leading up to Halloween. The haunted house features vampires, werewolves, zombies and monstrous characters from movies such as Friday the 13th, The Ring and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Picture editor Paul Daly and reporter Darcy MacRae experienced the haunted house first hand — and lived to tell the tale.

Y O U

OCTOBER 23, 2005

T

he emotions are as mixed as the costumes backstage at the Harbour Haunt an hour before the evening’s festivities begin. The cast of 70 is busy preparing for another night of scaring the life out of people.

Some of the actors are giddy with excitement, giggling as they apply the last touch of makeup or step into costume. Others are all business, as they get into character well before the lights go down and the show begins.

Among the more excited is Ernest Elli, who plays a chainsaw-wielding maniac for the fourth consecutive year. As his makeup is applied — including stitches from his stomach to his neck — he remarks that he keeps coming back because it’s a lot of fun.

“You just like scaring the living shit out of people,” Brent Smith says to Elli moments before the final rehears-

INDEPENDENTLIFE • 21

al. Smith is executive director of Easter Seals — which receives the proceeds from Harbour Haunt — and organizer of the haunted house.

Before the crowd assembled outside is allowed in, Smith takes the cast through one last walk through the maze of horrors that is Harbour Haunt.

Characters such as Jason from Friday the 13th are instructed how to make a mock cutting of a frightened woman’s throat look realistic — and how to convince the crowd that one of them is next. A deranged dentist is told how to properly bloody her patient and a caged monster practices his escape from prison. If everything goes well, a few spectators won’t even finish the maze before retreating for safer ground.

“We have a chicken list,” Smith explains. “Every night there are people who turn around and go back half

way through the maze. So far we have 19 on the chicken list, but we’ll probably add a few tonight.”

As the clock strikes seven, the lights go off and the sound effects kick in.

Screams of torment and cries for help come from every direction, just in time for a group of teenage girls who are the first to enter the maze.

It doesn’t take long for the young girls to get vocal, as they encounter zombies and masked creatures already covered in blood. By the time they reach Elli and his raging chainsaw, one girl bolts for an opening in the maze and retreats to the safety of the front lobby.

“We have some young actors who really take a lot of pride in the fact they’re really good at scaring people,” Smith says of Elli.

Now in its fourth year, Smith says the 2005 edition of Harbour Haunt is

the scariest (the set was voluntarily built by students from Academy Canada). With a cast of 70 and more than 30 individual scares, it is the biggest haunted house east of Toronto.

In its first year, more than 4,300 people attended. In year two, 10,000 paying customers entered the building while last year 11,000 people walked — and often ran — through the maze.

All proceeds go to Easter Seals Newfoundland and Labrador, and last year the event raised $65,000 for the charity that assists children with physical disabilities. This year, Smith hopes to raise $75,000.

Considering how beneficial Harbour Haunt has been for Easter Seals, Smith laughs at the thought he once doubted whether the event would be beneficial.

“I thought ‘Is it a good fit for Easter Seals?’ And as a fundraiser, I wasn’t

sure what the demand would be for a haunted house,” Smith says. “But as we explored the concept a little more, it became clear this was something we could have a lot of fun doing and it would be a lot of fun for kids and adults. I was pretty amazed when more than 4,000 people came out the first year. I knew we had something pretty significant.”

Smith not only organizes Harbour Haunt, he also takes part in the show.

Dressed in black and wearing a werewolf mask, he enjoys jumping out and surprising unsuspecting visitors.

“If you think getting scared is fun, you should try throwing the mask on and prowling around and scaring somebody,” Smith says. “When you can lift a person out of their shoes, that’s a lot of fun.” darcy.macrae@theindependent.ca

OCTOBER 23, 2005

22 • INDEPENDENTLIFE

Alligator wrestling MARK CALLANAN On the shelf Alligator

By Lisa Moore House of Anansi Press, 2005

OCTOBER 23 • Harry Martin at the St. John’s Arts and Culture Centre, 729-3900 • Bash by Neil Labute, three one-act plays (mature subject matter), presented by c2c theatre. 2 p.m. pay-whatyou-can and 7 p.m., Rabittown Theatre, 739-8220.

• Harbour Haunt, 351 Water Street, 7-10 p.m. nightly until Oct. 31, 7541399. Funds raised go to Easter Seals Newfoundland and Labrador.

OCTOBER 24 • Ring of Fire, the story of Johnny Cash, presented by the Stephenville Theatre Festival starring Mike Pellerin and Jerry Doyle. Labrador West Arts and Culture Centre, 8 p.m.

L

ike its trap-jawed namesake, Lisa Moore’s Giller-nominated first novel is a vicious, unpredictable

beast.

The interconnected lives of its main characters, rendered in brutally short narrative sections, are framed and unified by the book’s opening scene: a man putting his head inside an alligator’s mouth; the alligator biting down. It is a sequence of events both comical and disturbing — terms that could be equally applied to the lives of Moore’s characters.

Colleen is 17, idealistic, and much to the dismay of her mother Beverly, has just been caught committing an act of vandalism in the name of ecological preservation. Colleen’s aunt Madeleine barrels recklessly through late middleage, juggling the artistic film that is her current directorial passion.

Frank, a young man without any living family, works his hot dog stand in downtown St. John’s while trying to steer clear of the explosively violent Russian sailor Valentin. Valentin routinely threatens and intimidates to get his way and is engaged in an affair with Isobel, the fading star of Madeleine’s film.

Through the course of the novel, Colleen and her mother drift further and further apart, Madeleine obsesses over her production and tries to keep her failing heart ticking long enough to complete it. For his part, Valentin exerts his terrible will on Frank and Isobel. There is something unsettling and reptilian in the self-absorption of these characters, a cold-bloodedness that is evident as well in the book’s tone.

Desire is one of Moore’s main thematic preoccupations in Alligator — specifically, the desire for financial gain. In language closely mimicking that already applied to the physical description of alligators, we are told toward the end of the novel that “money moves by instinct ... It will lie still and then it will move.”

Beverly’s deceased husband David had money briefly and then lost it; Colleen steals and betrays trust in order to obtain it and Madeleine’s art depends on having enough of it around.

Frank works hard to make his money and Isobel works hard too when she can but there’s little money in acting.

Valentin will stop at nothing to get money. They are each in their own way trapped by its horrible jaws.

Of course, their motivations are much more complicated than sheer avarice; a great deal of the book concerns itself with regret, desire’s nostalgic cousin. It too is a powerful motivation.

EVENTS

OCTOBER 25 • St. John’s Folk Arts Council annual general meeting, 7:30 p.m., Crow’s Nest Officers’ Club.

• Balance book club discusses Thaw

by Nicole Lundrigan, 7:30 p.m., Balance Restaurant, 147 LeMarchant Rd., 722-2112, all welcome.

• Harry Martin at the Labrador West Arts and Culture Centre.

OCTOBER 26 • Folk Night at the Ship Pub with Janet Cull and Steven Miller, 9:30.

• Songwriters’ showcase hosted by Kathy Phippard at the Fat Cat. • The Woman in Black, adapted by Stephen Malatratt, based on the book

by Susan Hill, directed by Petrina Bromley, starring Aiden Flynn and Steve O’Connell, 8 p.m., LSPU Hall, 753-4531. Continues until Oct. 31.

• Annual MUN fall volunteer fair, at the University Centre, Memorial University, 10 a.m.-2:30 p.m., 7374301.

As her fans will already know, Lisa Moore is a virtuoso when it comes to description, ruthlessly accurate in pinning down the physical world. A crushed napkin on a table opens “like a flower blooming in a time-lapse film.”

Often, this proficiency is used to great comic effect: an emotionally distressed woman emits “a breathy, snot-slickened crying, alternating with a high whine, a unique calibrated chuffing of breath”; demolished buildings have “bowed down like supplicants greeting a Japanese emperor”; techno music “bleating in the background” sounds like “cash registers or air conditioners or hundreds of women panting toward orgasm.”

That being said, Moore does make some questionable narrative decisions in the last third of the book, in which three minor characters, previously mentioned only in passing, are thrust into the foreground.

They feature in sections of their own and then drop just as suddenly into the background again. The effect is jarring on a reader, and fruitlessly so, as it does not seem to accomplish much in terms of either theme or plot that couldn’t have been done with the characters Moore had previously established.

There is no fathomable reason, for instance, why we should follow Carol,

Frank’s downstairs neighbour, for only three pages out of 300 when her perspective adds nothing to our understanding as a whole.

Similarly, Kevin, a childhood friend of Frank’s who now lives across the street from him, takes narrative precedence for four brief pages and then is heard no more. Common sense would dictate that these characters are either important enough to be treated in further detail or should never be brought into focus at so advanced a point in the book’s trajectory.

I should add, however, that while I found these narrative diversions a mild nuisance, they don’t constitute a serious obstruction.

Like most, I’m not in the business of making predictions on the outcome of literary award competitions. What I do know is that two Giller nominations in the space of three years (Open was nominated in 2002) is a pretty impressive feat. It is also a strong indication that whether Alligator wins this year’s prize or not, Lisa Moore’s fiction has earned our attention and will likely continue to do so, whatever future form it might take.

Mark Callanan is a writer living in Rocky Harbour. His column returns Nov. 6.

OCTOBER 27 • 2005 MasterCard Skate Canada International, Mile One Stadium, 576-7657. Continues until Oct. 30.

• Grand Ole Newfoundland Opry Eastern Edge Gallery auction: an evening of music and laughter with an intermission auction of local landscape work. Ticket includes fourcourse meal and theatre production, at the Majestic Theatre, 6:30 p.m., 7391882.

• Ring of Fire, the story of Johnny Cash, presented by the Stephenville

Theatre Festival starring Mike Pellerin and Jerry Doyle. Gordon Pinsent Centre for the Arts, Grand FallsWindsor, 8 p.m.

OCTOBER 28 • Reflections of Heaven: a two-day exhibit and art sale of photography by Steve Wyatt, RCA Gallery, LSPU Hall.

Ends Oct. 29.

• Ring of Fire, the story of Johnny Cash, presented by the Stephenville Theatre Festival starring Mike Pellerin and Jerry Doyle. Gander Arts and Culture Centre, 8 p.m.

• Off-Broadway Players present the Rocky Horror Show at the Corner Brook Arts and Culture Centre.

Continues Oct. 29.

• Writers’ Alliance of Newfoundland and Labrador annual general meeting, Masonic Temple, Cathedral Street, St. John’s. Readings, workshops and panel discussions continue through Oct. 30, 739-5215.

OCTOBER 29 • Opening reception of Nick Dubecki’s digital panoramic photo prints, Rogue Gallery, Eastern Edge Gallery, 2 p.m., 739-1882.

• Newfoundland Symphony Orchestra’s 15th annual Big Ticket, SHAYE and the Eight Track Favourites. Hosted

by Seamus O’Regan, 722-4441.

• Eastern Health and Independent Living Resource Centre’s disability information seminar and fair, 9:15 a.m.-3 p.m. at the Miller centre, Classroom 107-110, St. John’s, 7224031.

• Accessing Our Creative Energy, a workshop offering a supportive environment for those who wish to explore the artist within through colouring and/or writing, and group sharing. One a series of workshops offered this fall at the Five Island Art Gallery, 7 Cove Rd., Tors Cove. 9 a.m.-12:30 p.m., 334-3645, www.fiveisland.ca IN THE GALLERIES • In the Eye of the Beholder, giant panoramic photographs of St. John’s

by Eric Deitch, Balance Restaurant, 722-2112. Until Oct. 29.

• Still Life Revisited, with pieces by Anita Singh, Elena Popova, Pam Hall, Clement Curtis and Bonnie Leyton, Leyton Gallery of Fine Art. Until Nov. 5.

POET’S CORNER Circus Re-run Bob LeMessurier, Goulds

The circus is back! the Ringmaster cracks his tongue-lash, whacks, performers writhe and roar, feelings hurt, egos sore; “decorum’s nearly always poor.”

Perennial perpetrator of this horror, many of us didn’t vote for, would-be candidate, “Just for laughs?” could be, “Just for Riff-Raffs?”

Laughing stock we will remain unless, until, the Board will gain His Worship, our reprieve, only if the fool will leave.

We hope you’ll Steele him from us soon and save us from this dim and gloom, his antics better served with thee, departure, we’ll observe, with glee!

Building film careers for 30 years From page 17 accessed NIFCO’s facility and there’s been over 300 films that have been produced — shorts, documentaries, comedies, dramas.”

Alongside helping filmmakers with the production of their work, NIFCO also offers a basic filmmaking workshop for people interested in learning the craft. Students — who don’t need any experience in film to apply — will conceive of, shoot and produce a short film over two six-week periods.

Smith says the workshop’s popularity is growing.

“When I first came to NIFCO we

were doing one basic filmmaking workshop a year. That workshop has exploded. At present we are doing anywhere from three to four workshops a year.”

Lori Clarke is a local filmmaker who got her start at NIFCO. She now works full time as a composer and sound designer for film and television.

“I probably wouldn’t have gotten involved with film if it hadn’t been for NIFCO,” she says. “I’ve done three films of my own, the first one through (NIFCO’s) first time filmmakers’ program and the others were produced and completed at NIFCO. “NIFCO is the centre of the film

community here. I don’t think the film community would even exist in the first place without NIFCO.” Smith says helping people like Clarke forge a career in film is what makes her job most rewarding.

“When I see somebody come through the door, wondering where to go with a script idea, or seeking work and I suggest places for them to go, or I assist them in getting their film project up and running, and they come back and say ‘Thank you. I got a job,’ or ‘The film you helped me on just got an award and I just wanted to say thanks to you and NIFCO,’ that’s glorifying at the end of the day.”

INDEPENDENTBUSINESS

SUNDAY THROUGH SATURDAY, OCTOBER 23-29, 2005 — PAGE 23

Trans Ocean Gas president Steve Campbell.

Paul Daly/The Independent

‘A vision for Newfoundland and Labrador’ Local company has the technology to ship natural gas in plastic containers; cheaper alternative to pipelines

By Clare-Marie Gosse The Independent

A

Newfoundland and Labrador company, Trans Ocean Gas, has discovered an original, simple and cost-effective solution for transporting natural gas that could not only potentially help secure a natural gas and petrochemical industry in the province, but transform similar offshore gas sites around the world.

Company president Steve Campbell — who grew up in St. John’s and studied engineering at Memorial University — began envisioning a notion for transporting gas in large, fibre reinforced pressurized plastic containers almost 20 years ago. He was working as a supervisor during the construction of Hibernia’s concrete gravity-based structure at the time and was trying to figure out a way of transporting the reservoir’s gas.

Expensive pipelines and transporting liquefied natural gas in steel structures — which have corrosion and rupture characteristics — weren’t good enough options.

After spending time as a pipeline and facil- eventually focused on his fibre-reinforced ities engineer in Alberta, which included pressurized plastic containers in 2001. some work with plastics, Campbell began to Trans Ocean Gas, which is located in the envision a simpler solution.

National Research Council’s Institute for “I saw a bus going by that was fuelled by Ocean Technology (Memorial University natural gas and I said, ‘Well what kind of con- campus), is currently in the process of comtainer’s on that?’” he tells pleting a $1.5-million dollar The Independent. “I found verification and certification that it had a composite project. The company has “All the benefits (reinforced plastic) pressure the financial backing of vessel but it had an alumultiple private investors would be here; it’s minum liner, still the same including the provincial thing with the corrosion government. such a vision for potential, but it was comCampbell — who is preposite wrapped … I realized senting at a Compressed Newfoundland.” that an all composite presNatural Gas workshop in sure vessel would be the Houston this week — says Steve Campbell trick. Lightweight and Trans Ocean Gas could frozen resistant.” become a publicly traded After investigating the company within 12 to 18 possibility of building secure, compressed months and he anticipates securing worldplastic vessels on a grander scale, Campbell wide contracts in as little as six months. immediately patented the concept. He “Although we looked at Hibernia as one returned to Newfoundland and Labrador to thing to get gas moving here, we found that work on the Terra Nova development and this was a solution that was in global demand

and now it is very much in global demand,” he says.

Fibre-reinforced pressure vessels have been used with great success in the aerospace industry and public transit for years. Trans Ocean Gas intends to transport its containers by ship and received approval from the American Bureau of Shipping in 2003.

Currently, the only way to transport natural gas is by pipeline or by liquefied natural gas tanker. Both methods are massively expensive, especially for smaller, isolated natural gas fields such as those around the coasts of Newfoundland and Labrador.

Without steel, Campbell says the plastic vessels strengthen in cold temperatures. His new technology, which combines freezing and compression and avoids the need for expensive and environmentally damaging regassification plants, would cut companies’ costs by as much as two thirds.

“Our method brings the liquid back; it’s See “Our method,” page 24 See related story, page 24

New housing starts down; renovations up

Numbers point to active construction industry in urban areas; increasing costs, lack of skilled workers a concern

By Stephanie Porter The Independent

A

lthough housing starts in urban areas around the province — including St. John’s — fell by more than 10 per cent this year, the new construction industry is still “very active,” says Brian Martin of the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation.

But it is outpaced by a steadily growing home renovation market, which accounts for about two-thirds of all expenditures in construction activity.

According to numbers provided by Martin, senior market analyst for

CMHC’s Newfoundland and Labrador office, provincial housing starts are down 13.4 per cent this year across the province, compared to the first three quarters of 2004. In the St. John’s area, starts fell by 15.3 per cent.

“You have to put it in perspective,” says Martin. “We’re still fairly strong in historical terms. The first three quarters are still the second strongest in a decade, above two years ago.

“Last year (2004) was such an exceptional year, in St. John’s we had record levels of starts, hitting 30-year highs … we’re falling from that peak, but in historical terms, it’s still a very active construction market.”

Martin says the decline in new construction was expected — and he’s predicting modest declines next year as well.

“It’s a trend,” he says. “Building costs are going up, material costs, land development, skilled labour costs … with the cost of new growing, it makes existing homes even more competitive in price.”

A few years ago, continues Martin, there was a slim supply of homes on the market. An increasing number of homebuyers, unable to find the home they wanted, decided to build.

These days, the supply of existing homes is up — there’s a 30 per cent

increase in listings through the Eastern Newfoundland Real Estate Board, for example — and so people are less inclined to break new ground.

Greg Hanley, project manager with Karwood Contractors and a director on the board of the Eastern Newfoundland Home Builders’ Association, says his company is about as busy as last year — but he’s heard stories from others in the business who are starting to notice the slowdown.

“Part of the thing slowing it down, municipalities have started to tax builders with development fees no one knows about,” says Hanley. “We pay $1,000 on every house we build as a

flat tax now, in Paradise at least.

“This little development tax went through fairly quietly in the past year … Paradise started in, and St. John’s are now on side, they’re starting as well.”

Anything that increases the price of a home, Hanley adds, makes it slightly less attractive to certain buyers.

Another major issue facing the industry, says Hanley, is the shortage of skilled workers. Increasingly, companies are under pressure to find ways to employ their workers over the winter.

“Technically, I mean, that’s really See “Housing,” page 25

24 • INDEPENDENTBUSINESS

OCTOBER 23, 2005

CONVOCATION PROTEST

‘Our method brings the liquid back’ From page 23

The president of the Graduate Students’ Union at Memorial University boycotted an Oct. 21 convocation ceremony to protest the awarding of an honourary degree to Scott Hand, Inco’s chairman and CEO. Inco — which owns the massive nickel find at Voisey’s Bay and paid for the Inco Innovation Centre on the MUN campus — has been condemned by some for its poor environmental, social and human rights record around the world.

Paul Daly/The Independent

only our method that would enable enough ethane — which is only 10 per cent of the gas — to actually be able to create a petrochemical industry here,” says Campbell.

Despite receiving support from the province and the Bull Arm Site Corporation (he plans to submit a full site development plan to Bull Arm with a vision to using the site for vessel manufacturing) Campbell is concerned by some recent comments made by the premier.

In talks with the media last week, Danny Williams expressed concern over shipping gas by boats, favouring pipelines to mainland Canada as a means of transportation.

Campbell says he was hugely surprised by Williams’ comments and wonders if the premier just hasn’t realized the full potential of transporting natural gas in pressurized vessels.

He says because of the vast quantity of ethane needed to operate a petrochemical industry (something Williams envisions for the province) his method is the only realistically viable option, one that would create massive local economic development without the need to build multiple pipelines around the province.

“You’re looking at $5 billion by the time it’s over for sure,” says Campbell, “whereas we (Trans Ocean Gas) are talking about a $2-billion method to put the whole thing together and provide enough ethane for petrochemicals … this is the way to go, to be able to create industrial benefit for Newfoundland and Labrador.

“All the benefits would be here; it’s such a vision for Newfoundland.”

As well as developing new technology through Trans Ocean Gas, Campbell recently made his first public presentation on another huge, energy related plan, which could see the province naturally generate five times as much power as the lower Churchill.

Riding the tide

It’s about time.

Engineer has plan to harness energy from tides; could also solve fixed-link problem

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ith multiple engineering patents under his belt, St. John’s engineer Steve Campbell is becoming known for taking simple concepts and blowing them up on a large scale.

One of his latest ideas — which he spoke about publicly for the first time last week at an Ocean Renewable Energy Group conference in St. John’s — is to harness between 10 and 20 gigawatts of pure tidal wave energy within the Strait of Belle Isle between Labrador and the island.

Not only does Campbell see such a project as a massive source of energy (it would generate potentially more than five times the power of the lower Churchill), but he also sees it as a solution to building the fixed link.

His plan is to join massive concrete caissons (huge boxes made of steel-reinforced waterproof concrete often used in bridge construction) across the Strait, paired with giant paddle wheels, submerged in pressurized containers that would work to drive the water out.

The design would allow surface ice to slip over a divider and could also potentially corral approaching ice bergs for harvesting.

“These concrete caissons, because they sit there then it would be so easy to put 50-metre, pre-stretched concrete beams on them and put a bridge deck and then continue on, which would be no marine work, all your work would be by a crane,” Campbell explains, adding there would be a partially submerged tunnel in the centre.

“My father continuously posed the question to me of how to solve the fixed-link problem,” he says, “and the tidal flow that emits … when you see that much mass moving you know there must be a way to harness it.

“It’s taking existing technologies and just modifying them to suit the environment … although it’s grand in scheme the principals are very basic.”

Campbell says Canada’s long coasts are ideally suited to this type of energy technology.

“We have an immense potential for tidal power energy around our coast … there are other locations that we see the potential and in large rivers this would work well, because it doesn’t hold up the ice.”

With his company Trans Ocean Gas on the verge of entering into the world market for transporting compressed natural gas using revolutionary new technology, Campbell says he’s trying to take one idea at a time. He hopes a larger organization will realize the possibility of building the tidal wave development and fixed link.

“We’ll probably, more or less, give this now to a large firm to allow them to move forward with the tidal power because it’s too massive … something like this would be of such national potential importance.

“It would take 30 years to build something like this, so it needs to be a long-term vision and a long-term commitment.”

OCTOBER 23, 2005

INDEPENDENTBUSINESS • 25

Housing market ‘leveling off’

OIL REBATES

From page 23

An estimated 25,000 households will be eligible for the province’s $9-million home heating fuel rebate announced Oct. 21. The maximum rebate, $400, is a $150 increase over last year and is available to individuals and families with a household income level of $30,000 or less and whose primary heating source is fuel. NDP leader Jack Harris says the rebate is inadequate, especially compared to the $35-million program announced in Nova Scotia.

Paul Daly/The Independent

Hot real estate sales expected to cool

By Tony Wong Torstar wire service

T

he heated Canadian residential real estate market continues to post healthy sales, but realtors shouldn’t expect the good times to continue indefinitely, industry leaders say.

“I think we are in a special time economically, but we are due for a slowdown,” says Phil Soper, president and CEO of Royal LePage Real Estate Services Ltd. This week’s Bank of Canada interest rate increase will help to further cool the market, as will more rate hikes expected in the future, says Soper.

Don Lawby, president and chief operating officer of Century 21 Real Estate Canada Ltd., warns realtors to “expect a tightening” in the market soon.

“The only exceptions I see right now are in Alberta and British Columbia,” says Lawby.

Alberta and B.C. have been slower to experience a hot real estate market than other provinces, and could still see good

increases in sales. Alberta, in particular, is enjoying some robust growth because of oil revenues, says Lawby.

The Canadian real estate market continues to post impressive gains. In Toronto, a record number of homes changed hands for a September, up 11 per cent from the same month in 2004, which held the prior record. But with the housing cycle on an upswing over the last nine years, many realtors are wondering if the party will end soon.

The panel agreed that strong economic fundamentals meant there was no “bubble” in the market, a phenomenon that caused the last real estate crash in the early 1990s. However, real estate leaders say realtors should not be expecting market conditions to remain as hyper-charged as they have been over the last several years.

“I agree that the market is tightening up,” says Stephen Wong, chairman of Living Realty Inc. “We’re at a point where first-time buyers can no longer afford to buy a home. The market for the entry level home has gone way up.”

Bosses fail employees’ performance test

By Elaine Carey Torstar wire service

H

ere’s cheery news as you head off to work: most of us don’t think our bosses are even adequate, let alone great.

In an online poll, 100,000 Canadians gave their bosses an average failing grade of -2.5 on a scale from -50 (horrible) to +50 (perfect) with zero considered a fair performance.

“Overall, Canadians are sending a clear message: their bosses are halfway to being perfect — with room for improvement,” says Louis Gagnon, vice-president of Monster.ca, a Montreal-based job website which released the poll last week.

Ontario bosses were near the bottom of the pack with an average score of -3.8, ahead of only Saskatchewan and Newfoundland. Quebec bosses were rated the highest and their employees gave them the only plus rating of 0.6.

Of the three major cities, Toronto bosses got the lowest score at -3.7 while Montreal’s got the highest mark of +0.4, well ahead of Vancouver’s -3.3.

Out of seven criteria, bosses were

rated worst at acknowledging their own mistakes, followed by being a born leader. They came across best at letting their employees know what’s expected and taking their well-being into consideration.

The poll “reveals just how strongly Canadians feel about working for someone they consider to be a good boss,” says Gagnon. “A good boss can make all the difference and we hope these results will encourage bosses out there to take a look at how to raise their game every day.”

An earlier poll by Monster found that “liking your boss” was a key to job satisfaction for 83 per cent of respondents.

In this poll, bosses in the science and health industries got the highest rating while industrial sector bosses got the lowest marks.

By job title, doctors, dentists, real estate and architectural bosses rated the best while police and security bosses and those in radiology and medical imaging were at the bottom.

Women liked their bosses a lot more than men, giving them an average rating of +0.3, compared to a dismal -5.9 rating from men.

As a result, many first-time buyers have gravitated toward condominiums, says Wong.

Bernie Vogt, president of Prudential Real Estate Affiliates of Canada Ltd., says while he did not think the overall market was in any way overheated, the condominium market is questionable.

“I think there is some vulnerability in the condo market; it is vulnerable to speculation,” says Vogt. “If you’ve got a situation where 25 to 30 per cent of the units are being sold to investors, then you have some vulnerability in the marketplace.”

All the leaders agree the Canadian market is in for a soft landing rather than a hard one — unlike other parts of the world, which have had much bigger upswings in real estate prices.

“We are the only country in the world with a trade and a current account surplus,” says Michael Kalles, president of Harvey Kalles Real Estate Ltd. Good job numbers and solid immigration also bode well for the future of the market, say the experts.

the way it should happen,” he says.

“If you look at forestry or fishing, they’re completely reliant on the unemployment insurance system.

That’s also the case with the construction industry – it’s seasonal — but when the season picks up again, you’re trying to find qualified employees and that becomes difficult.

“Trying to find a way to keep them through the winter, do renovation work or whatever … that comes at a price as well; you don’t always make money doing that.”

Many workers move out of province to work for higher wages offered elsewhere. In Alberta, Hanley admits, skilled workers can often make twice as much per hour as they would in this province.

If new house construction is cooling off slightly, the renovation market is stronger than ever.

Garnet Kindervater has been in the renovation business for 28 years. He started fixing up old homes downtown in the late 1970s, long before it became trendy to do so.

“We’ve done really well in the new housing market in the last number of years, but it’s leveling off,” Kindervater says. “Renovation activity consistently grows. Even when there’s spikes and people stop building, renovation grows.”

Kindervater — who does everything from fixing a step for clients to whole house renovations — says he’s doing less small jobs. “There are a lot of legitimate small job operators,” he says. “And an awful lot who are not … the underground economy is there to put pressure on the market all the

time.”

Kindervater employs 10 people year-round. He sees a “good future” for his industry in the province: people are electing to stay in mature, existing neighbourhoods, he says, and many who have moved to the country are now moving back.

“Neighbourhoods change and demographics are changing and some people that live in 30- or 40year-old houses, well, (those homes are) not geared towards today’s lifestyle.

“We’re not going to run out of work … the problem is going to be having people there to do it.”

CMHC’s Brian Martin also anticipates the renovation market will continue to grow.

“As our housing stock ages, as the cost of moving becomes higher — including construction — people are choosing to stay in existing properties.”

The growing resale market also has a strong effect on renovators.

Surveys show that homeowners spend the most money on renovations within the first three years of purchasing their new home, says Martin. Likewise, there are more sellers fixing up their homes to get them ready for market.

“Reno is huge,” he says. “It’s just amazing the amount of people doing it.”

Overall, says Martin, housing is the leading economic indicator — and from his numbers, the economy is still going strong, in St. John’s particularly.

“Housing is cyclical, like the rest of the economy,” he says. “When we’re comparing this year to last year … we’ve still got a healthy market.”

OCTOBER 23, 2005

26 • INDEPENDENT SPECIAL SECTION

Employment Opportunity

Executive Director Ad #: 200510-1184 St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador Stewart McKelvey Stirling Scales, which was ranked as the # 1 law firm in Atlantic Canada in a recent survey conducted for Canadian Lawyer magazine, has more than 210 lawyers and 300 support staff throughout the region.

Our St. John’s office, with 34 lawyers and 34 support staff, is seeking to fill the newly created position of Executive Director. The position entails responsibility for the office’s overall administration, including finance, information technology, human resources and facilities management. The role of Executive Director will involve participation in both local strategic planning and marketing efforts.

The successful candidate will be a CA or CMA who possesses strong relationship, problem-solving and planning skills. He or she will have a high energy level and will be a hands on type person who is comfortable in a multitasking environment. Prior experience as an administrator of a law firm is preferred, but not required.

Stewart McKelvey Stirling Scales offers a challenging and progressive environment and the successful candidate will be rewarded with an appropriate compensation package. If you feel you meet or exceed our requirements, please reply in confidence with a detailed curriculum vitae and references via fax, mail or e-mail by October 31, 2005 to: Lewis Andrews, Q.C. Managing Partner Stewart McKelvey Stirling Scales P.O. Box 5038, St. John’s NL A1C 5V3 Fax: (709) 722-4565 E-mail: landrews@smss.com No telephone inquiries please. Only those selected for an interview will be contacted.

When results count.

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OCTOBER 23, 2005

INDEPENDENT SPECIAL SECTION • 27

28 • INDEPENDENTBUSINESS

OCTOBER 23, 2005

WEEKLY DIVERSIONS ACROSS 1 Inuit hooded shirt 6 Yukon town with record coldest temperature 10 Opposite of post 13 Impolite 17 Wedding fabric 18 Young salmon 19 Dimensional start?

20 Coup d’___ 21 Set straight 22 Years from birth to death 24 Football kick 25 Capital of Mexico?

26 Knight’s title 27 Affirmative vote 28 Rare 30 Of the shore 33 Yours, once 34 Italian cathedral 36 Lawyers, collectively 37 Most easterly point of N. America: Cape ___, Nfld.

39 My (Fr.) 40 Drink 42 Parched 43 Product bars, in brief 46 Pertaining to a planet’s path 48 Canada’s largest island 50 Make short cuts

51 Soap or horse follower 52 Onassis, to his pals 54 Driver’s licenses, e.g.

55 Less cooked 56 Building parcel 57 Fool 58 City with Sugar Loaf Mountain 59 Lonely sort of trip 60 Backbone 62 Japanese carp 63 Bard’s twilight 64 Irish police force 67 Digits 68 Russian capital 70 Flexible 72 Alien Life Form 73 Tight 74 Capital of Lebanon 76 Weeding tool 77 Befits 78 Dry, to an oenophile 79 He designed the maple leaf on our flag 81 Traveller’s stop 83 Statue support 85 Broad-brimmed hat 86 ___-relief 87 Romaine lettuce 88 Internationally successful Quebec singer of 1940’s: ___ Robi 92 Teen hero

SOLUTION ON PAGE 29

93 Perfectly happy 96 Efface 97 Shivering fit 98 Skippered 99 Portoferraio’s island 100 Athlete going downhill 101 Sea swallow 102 Dawn goddess 103 Textile worker 104 Our planet, to Pierre DOWN 1 Pronto!

2 Grimm offering 3 Inflammation: suffix 4 Male “escort” 5 Country stopover 6 Cleft 7 Capital of Kenya 8 Pound sound 9 Ill-defined situation (2 wds.)

10 Insect stage 11 Cellular letters 12 Famous physicist 13 Mend 14 Reversal 15 Tango 16 Major ending?

23 French salt 26 Tiny pore 29 Sudan’s neighbour 31 Mimic

32 Pertaining to Jewish clergy 34 S. African village 35 Skepticism 37 Architect of Montreal’s Habitat 38 Captive 39 Meadow bellow 41 Result of power failure 43 Not good enough 44 Banana cream ___ 45 Revival technique, in brief 47 Items in the fire?

49 Yukon’s flower 50 Long stories 53 Perches 55 Boat race 60 RR stop 61 Parliamentary type 65 Christian of Paris 66 Pass with flying colours 68 Acceptable to Canada Post 69 Preoccupied 71 Desires 73 To kill in Calais 75 Drink cooler 77 ___ Continents (Ronald Wright) 80 Author of The Polished Hoe 81 Prevaricate

82 Olfactory trigger 83 Sires 84 Kind of panel or

power 85 Italian car 86 Offers a price

89 Den 90 Belgian river 91 Dried up

94 Sun sign 95 Go by plane 96 East in l’Estrie

WEEKLY STARS ARIES - MAR 21/APR 20 An argument at the office puts you in a difficult predicament, Aries. Let it blow over for a couple of days before you try to make amends. You'll earn some enemies as a result, however.

TAURUS - APR 21/MAY 21 Unfortunately, things are a little glum this week, Taurus. Your positive outlook is seriously hampered by some financial concerns that must be taken care of promptly.

GEMINI - MAY 22/JUN 21 Don't expect fruitful returns from your endeavors, Gemini, unless you're really willing to put in the effort. Help from a colleague can put you on the path to success.

CANCER - JUN 22/JUL 22 A regular social butterfly, Cancer, you find it hard to spend this week alone, which is what you'll be

forced to do. Enjoy the quiet time for some reflection and personal renewal.

LEO - JUL 23/AUG 23 Watch that barbed tongue, Leo; you don't want to step on any toes.

Keep your opinions to yourself for the time being to avoid an allout war in the family.

VIRGO - AUG 24/SEPT 22 One of your past romantic conquests will come back to bite you, Virgo. Maybe it wasn't such a great idea to throw caution to the wind in that relationship.

LIBRA - SEPT 23/OCT 23 Things begin to fizzle out with you and your romantic partner, Libra. Light a fire once more by thinking of unique ways you can both spend time together.

SCORPIO - OCT 24/NOV 22 A family member's antics has put you in a foul mood, Scorpio. In

this instance, it may be wise to approach the person and give him or her a well-deserved piece of your mind.

SAGITTARIUS - NOV 23/DEC 21 Little secrets you've been keeping are about to be revealed, Sagittarius. Expect the results to be disastrous. You'll have a hard time working your way out of this mess.

CAPRICORN - DEC 22/JAN 20 You may think you have your finances in control, but your partner goes off on a spending spree, Capricorn. Assess the damage, and have a long talk about it.

AQUARIUS - JAN 21/FEB 18 You've fallen into a stagnant routine, Aquarius. Now's the time to get motivated and change your activities to something more creative and challenging. A trip may be the way to go.

PISCES - FEB 19/MAR 20 You're a ball of energy this week, Pisces. Those around you can't keep up, and they might find your antics a bit tiresome.

FAMOUS BIRTHDAYS OCTOBER 23 Ryan Reynolds, actor (29) OCTOBER 24 Monica, singer (25) OCTOBER 25 Ed Robertson, musician (35) OCTOBER 26 Natalie Merchant, singer (42) OCTOBER 27 Simon LeBon, singer (47) OCTOBER 28 Julia Roberts, actress (38) OCTOBER 29 Winona Ryder, actress (34)

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 SOLUTION ON PAGE 29

OCTOBER 23, 2005

INDEPENDENTSPORTS • 29

Making a case for Turin Players look for Olympic invite

D

J

Eric Lindros’ play this season has once again made him a candidate for the Canadian men’s Olympic hockey team. Both Lindros and Michael Ryder were among 81 players named to Canada’s preliminary list of players eligible to play at the Turin games. REUTERS/Mike Cassese

an NHL shootout king this season, or figure that Shane Doan, despite a very slow start, is a far better candidate because of his size and ability to fight through international clutching and interference?

Kariya wasn’t even at the Olympic camp, while Doan was. Of the other forwards in Kelowna, three — Rick Nash, Ryan Smyth and Steve Yzerman — are injured, with Nash and Smyth not expected back anytime soon.

Others among the 21 forwards at the pre-Olympic session have been slow out of the gate. Mike Peca, Joe Thornton and Alex Tanguay struggled early, and 2004 MVP Martin St. Louis had just two points in his first seven games with Tampa Bay. Todd Bertuzzi, a player Gretzky has all but guaranteed a berth on the team, is, understandably, struggling after a long suspension.

Other forwards not invited to Kelowna who can’t help but catch the attention of the Olympic team officials include Sidney Crosby, Marc Savard, Jason Spezza, Eric Staal, Daniel

Spitfire hazing amuses Tucker Leaf says young players pampered

By Mark Zwolinski Torstar wire sports

H

azing far worse than the widely publicized incident with the Windsor Spitfires has been commonplace in junior and other levels of hockey, several Toronto Maple Leafs players say.

“If that’s the biggest thing they (Spitfires) had to go through ... let’s say there’s a lot of veterans in the NHL laughing right now,” Darcy Tucker says.

Spitfires player Akim Aliu spoke with the Star last week and described being one of four rookies stripped naked and told to stand together in the cramped toilet of a team bus, known as the “hot box.”

No other details have been released about the ordeal.

“I find it hard to believe the punishment (to Mantha) fits the crime,” Tucker says.

“The players, and not the coaches, are involved. And the players police these things; the coaches have nothing to do with it. You can’t throw daggers at the coach all the time ... I’m sure there’s a few sheepish guys in the dressing room there.”

Tucker says he was involved in rookie initiations in junior, but would not divulge details.

“I find some of the young guys are pampered in all this stuff ... you put a smile on your face and come to the rink the next day,” Tucker says.

“You go through these things. We have our rookie meal here. Guys get

their heads shaved. You go through it and you go to the next stage in your career.

“Things happen at the back of the bus that the coaches don’t hear about.

It (Windsor incident) wasn’t hurting players, it wasn’t anything that kept them from a game.”

“Putting a few guys in the washroom ... I find that amusing,” Tucker adds.

“Hey, I don’t make up the rules or anything. When I played, no one ever said anything. It was a laugh for all of us, and it brought all of us closer together as a team, honestly.”

Tucker says the hazing incident that forced the cancellation of the McGill University football program after allegations of sexual assault contrasts dramatically with the Windsor incident.

“I don’t agree with types of hazing ... if my son was involved in something like the McGill (incident), I’d be irate,” Tucker says.

Leafs coach Pat Quinn agreed with the Mantha suspension.

“Yes, absolutely ... I think he (OHL commissioner David Branch) had to be effective and he was,” Quinn says.

“Hopefully this is a message not only to this team but to teams all over. My own view is that there is no place for (hazing). I don’t see team building in that.”

Leaf centre Kyle Wellwood, a former Spitfire, worried about another “black eye” for Windsor. “You definitely don’t like to see it. But it’s happened, it’s in the public eye now.”

By Dave Perkins Torstar wire service oes anyone else notice, when vacancies are created for Major League Baseball managers and the usual suspects are rounded up to fill them, whose phone never rings?

Cito Gaston notices, too.

Ran into him last week at the service for Tom Cheek, where Gaston was a pallbearer for his good friend.

“How come I never hear your name when all these jobs come open?” Gaston was asked. “You only have the two World Series rings, though. Is that what’s holding you back?”

He smiled. He isn’t seeking a job, but he wonders, too.

Major league owners and GMs always claim how much they want to win.

But when they have an opening, they don’t call a guy with two championships. Names are recycled, such as Jim Leyland, Jim Fregosi, Terry Collins, etc. But no Gaston.

Some of this, granted, is his own fault. He turned down a chance to manage the Angels for personal reasons, when they gave the job to Mike Scioscia.

He thought he had the White Sox job that went to Ozzie Guillen and he clearly was the choice of GM Ken Williams, who played for Gaston in Toronto (and who could ever forget Kenny on the base paths?).

Two versions circulate about why Gaston didn’t get the job: one, that he asked for far more money than Ozzie, and two, that Jerry Reinsdorf, the principal owner, wanted to reward his loyal long-term soldiers, such as Guillen, by keeping them in the family rather than bringing in an outsider.

Because Gaston has been out of

By Damien Cox Torstar wire service ust because Brett Hull is gone doesn’t mean Wayne Gretzky hasn’t got his share of headaches these days.

And not all of them have to do with the Phoenix Coyotes. Bryan McCabe, for instance, is causing a stir that Gretzky, as executive director of Team Canada for the 2006 Winter Olympics, just can’t ignore.

The Maple Leafs defenceman wasn’t one of the 12 blueliners invited to Team Canada’s pre-Olympic camp in August, a pretty strong rebuke. Well, much has changed. The experiences of the lockout — a tough stint in Sweden, a demanding, uncomfortable role as union spokesman when his colleagues were mostly ducking — have delivered to the Leafs this fall a more mature and effective McCabe. Right now, he’s not just his team’s top blueliner.

He might be the best defenceman in the entire NHL. When Gretzky met last week with Hockey Canada officials in Calgary to discuss roster issues, McCabe’s name certainly came up.

His start to this season, which has included impressive discipline under the new NHL officiating standards and improved patience and all-around smarts, is showing that the 30-year-old McCabe has lifted his game to a new level.

If you look at the dozen blueliners who were in Kelowna, B.C., for the pre-Olympic sessions, meanwhile, all is not well. Robyn Regehr is injured, Eric Brewer is minus-6 with one point in his first year with St. Louis, Rob Blake hasn’t scored a goal yet and is minus-5 in Colorado, Jay Bouwmeester has struggled in Florida. And even Scott Niedermayer is off to a sluggish start with the Mighty Ducks.

While McCabe, really, is the only defenceman pushing hard for Olympic consideration, a much larger number of forwards are lighting it up in the first part of the season.

For some, like Nashville’s Steve Sullivan, that early success can clearly be linked to the NHL’s new standard on fouling players with and without the puck in the offensive zone. But that may not help Sullivan get an Olympic nod.

At the moment, you see, it appears almost certain the “new rules” that have so brilliantly lit up the NHL this season will not be in effect in Turin.

Instead, Hockey Canada boss Bob Nicholson says he believes the IIHF officiating system, which uses the onereferee system and includes more hooking and holding on puck carriers and arguably more interference in general, will be that in use for the Olympics.

Which, with all the world watching, could provide a contrast most unflattering to European hockey.

It also will make roster selection doubly difficult.

For instance, do you now reconsider Paul Kariya, a former Olympian and

Cito Gaston deserves a call

Briere, Pierre-Marc Bouchard and, yes, 1994, ’98 and ’02 Olympic team member Eric Lindros.

Smaller players like Briere and Bouchard would be particularly attractive under NHL rules, but the Olympics will likely be played under entirely different circumstances.

Which means picking Team Canada’s roster is getting more complicated by the day.

Solution for Crossword on page 28

the managerial loop since 1997 and has turned down at least one job, then, there may be a perception that he’s no longer interested.

He’s only 61, the same age as Cardinals’ manager Tony La Russa and three years younger than Braves’ manger Bobby Cox. With Jack McKeon winning a World Series with Florida in his 70s, age can’t be a factor.

So what is? It would be nice to think that skin colour no longer is an issue.

Minority managers in the major leagues still may lag behind participation rates, but their very presence should be largely unremarkable at this point. Should be, but if his phone never rings, who can suggest this is not an issue?

Gaston always had his detractors, even while he was winning in Toronto.

Like all managers, he needed the right kind of team to handle, in his case a veteran club that knows how to play and requires little onfield tinkering.

The critics used to shriek that “anyone” could have managed those Blue Jay teams and won in 1992 and ‘93. If that’s true, why couldn’t all those terrific Oakland, St. Louis and Atlanta teams find the right “anyone”?

Much of managing a ball club is about getting guys to play hard for you.

Keeping an even-keeled clubhouse and getting production out of the head cases is exactly what Gaston excels at.

Strategy, in-game decision-making and playing hunches and such is another item entirely and other managers might be stronger, no question.

Gaston might not fit every team, but with as many World Series rings as Cox and La Russa combined, it makes sense that he would fit some team somewhere — if they’d ever think to call.

Solution for sudoku on page 28

30 • INDEPENDENTSPORTS

Murray: Raptors don’t know hoops Lamond Murray, who did so little in three seasons with the Toronto Raptors that they paid him handsomely to go away, is hardly wistful and sentimental about his former team.

“They don’t know basketball up there,” the current New Jersey Net told reporters last week. “They’re just guessing every year.

“I’m glad to be out of there.”

Murray, 31, was waived by the Raptors this summer and signed as a free agent by the Nets. He returned to the Air Canada Centre for an exhibition game on Oct. 19.

He says the team showed how dedicated they are to winning when they traded Vince Carter, a move he never agreed with.

“To do what they did, to go make that trade, they basically gave up on us.”

— Doug Smith/Torstar wire service

OCTOBER 23, 2005

Marathons to triathalons From page 32 People told me it was a great time for somebody who was 17 and doing their first marathon. That was part of the reason why I wanted to keep doing it,” Ruggles says.

At the conclusion of the Halifax marathon, Ruggles knew it would not be the last time he ran such a race.

Although he entered under the impression it would be his one and only marathon, he was “hooked” by the time he crossed the finish line.

At the advice of veteran runners, he began running shorter races that required greater bursts of speed. But eventually he returned to marathon running. Over the years, Ruggles and his wife, St. John’s native Mona Goodland, used the marathons as a means to see the world.

“We used to plan our vacation around me doing a marathon,” he says.

“I’d do the marathon, then we’d spend a week or two enjoying the area.”

Ruggles has run marathons in such places as St. John’s, Halifax, Ottawa (where he ran his personal best of two hours, 26 minutes), Boston, Philadelphia, New York state, Vermont, New Zealand and Tahiti. He relished the opportunity to complete each one, but says the Boston marathon is his favourite.

“I really enjoyed Boston the two times I did it,” Ruggles says. “It’s a really interesting course and there are lots of people to run with. But it’s still not too big like New York or Chicago.

There’s lots of spectators, too. It’s a challenging course.”

Since he began running marathons, on only one occasion was Ruggles unable to finish the race. It happened 10 years ago when he was living in New Zealand and had just finished running in that country’s three major

marathons. While visiting Tahiti he tried to push his luck a bit by attempting to run his fourth marathon of the year.

Nearing the three-quarter mark of the race, Ruggles had to drop out.

“It was my fourth one of the year and it was probably just too much.

With the heat as well, I ended up having to drop out at 30 km,” Ruggles says.

The last marathon Ruggles ran was in Halifax a year and a half ago.

Although he’s run shorter races since, he hasn’t attempted a 26.2-mile course because of a persistent Achilles tendon injury he first noticed in Halifax.

“It’s an over use kind of thing — from excessive running. It’s been a year and a half that I’ve had the problem and I don’t think it’s going to go away completely,” says Ruggles.

“My joints, ligaments, and tendons don’t bounce back as quickly as they

did when I was 17 or 18,” he adds with a laugh.

The nagging injury is serious enough that Ruggles is contemplating switching sports.

“I’m actually thinking about doing triathlons instead of marathons because doing the biking and swimming and cutting back on the running would be a lot easier on my body, the Achilles in particular,” says Ruggles.

While the marathon in Detroit may well be his last, Ruggles is not disappointed. In fact, he would have been happy if he had to stop earlier and admits bringing an end to his marathon days has been on his mind for quite some time.

“Since my 20th marathon, I keep telling my wife ‘This is my last one,’ and she just laughs at me,” says Ruggles. “I would be happy with 25 if this is the last one.” darcy.macrae@theindependent.ca

OF THE

DEVIL WEEK DEVIL STATS

Oscar Sundh, left wing Age: 18 Birthplace: Sweden Favourite hockey team growing up: Djurgarden (Swedish Elite League) Hobbies: Spending time with friends Favourite movie: Dumb and Dumber Favourite actor: Jim Carey Favourite actress: Julia Roberts What do you like best about living in St. John’s? “So far I love everything except losing.”

NAME

POS.

#

GP

G

A

PTS

Scott Brophy Oscar Sundh Luke Gallant Marty Doyle Brett Beauchamp Matt Fillier Nicolas Bachand Pier-Alexandre Poulin Wesley Welcher Maxime Langlier-Parent Sebastien Bernier Olivier Guilbault Philippe Cote Zack Firlotte Pat O’Keefe Jean-Simon Allard Anthony Pototschnik Matt Boland Josh MacKinnon Kyle Stanley Steve Tilley

C LW D RW D LW RW C C LW D RW RW D D C RW D D D RW

12 10 6 43 2 27 23 18 14 16 44 21 22 5 11 4 24 26 8 3 25

9 8 13 13 12 13 12 13 13 11 12 13 13 13 6 13 9 5 9 10 113

5 2 2 2 2 1 4 2 2 3 1 2 1 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 0

6 8 8 5 4 5 1 3 3 1 3 1 2 2 2 2 0 0 0 0 0

11 10 10 7 6 6 5 5 5 4 4 3 3 3 2 2 1 0 0 0 0

GOALTENDER Brandon Verge Ilya Ejov

W 3 0

L 7 3

GAA 4.08 7.45

S.PCT .893 .800

All stats current as of press deadline Oct. 21

HOMEGROWN “Q” PLAYER Robert Slaney Colin Escott Ryan Graham Justin Pender Brandon Roach Mark Tobin Sam Hounsell

HOMETOWN Carbonear St. John’s St. John’s St. John’s Terra Nova St. John’s Pound Cove

TEAM Cape Breton Gatineau Gatineau Halifax Lewiston Rimouski Victoriaville

GP 11 11 13 7 12 13 2

G 0 0 6 0 5 4 0

A 1 1 1 0 9 5 0

PTS 1 1 7 0 14 9 0

GOALTENDERS Ryan Mior Roger Kennedy Jason Churchill

HOMETOWN St. John’s Mount Pearl Hodge’s Cove

TEAM P.E.I. Halifax Saint John

W 5 1 3

L 6 1 6

GAA 3.11 3.54 4.17

S.PCT .919 .851* .888*

* This week’s stats unavailable

OCTOBER 23, 2005

INDEPENDENTSPORTS • 31

Weekend of one

The total package

David Lewis may be the most complete player in local junior hockey; scoring title not out of range

hoping a guy like David could turn our team around and he certainly did,” says Dunne.

In the process of helping the Breakers turn things around, Lewis has become a fan favourite on the Southern Shore.

“They (the fans) never say ‘He’s not from Southern Shore,’ they just took him on and now he’s one of the boys from Southern Shore,” says Dunne.

Lewis says the feeling is mutual.

“I must say it’s a treat to play with the Southern Shore. They take their hockey seriously, senior and junior,” Lewis says.

Aside from playing hockey, Lewis is an engineering student at MUN. Coming out of midget hockey, he had offers to try out for major junior and junior A teams, but chose to stay home and concentrate on his education while still playing competitive hockey. It is a choice that has earned him the respect of his coach.

“It can’t be easy being an A student and playing hockey every second night,” says Dunne. “He’s got his priorities straight if he’s doing well in school.”

sport’s equivalent to major junior hockey), but if you do you’ll probably agree this game was a beauty.

For those who don’t know much about the importance of this game, I’ll summarize: a win by Notre Dame would propel them into national championship contender status and would all but end USC’s hopes of a third straight NCAA title.

The Notre Dame-USC game was without a doubt the best football game I have ever watched. It featured drama, suspense, controversy, and a last second touchdown for the win. My only regret is that Notre Dame lost.

With my self-pity over being home alone now on hiatus, I immediately turned the channel to CBC at the conclusion of the football game.

With a bag of popcorn in one hand, a bottle of cola in the other (I forgot to pick up beer as well as groceries), I settled in for one of the more entertaining Habs vs.

Leafs games I’ve seen in a while. I found it less thrilling than the previous week’s encounter because the boys in blue and white won this round.

Even with the disappointing ending, I went to bed that night with a smile on my face.

Sunday featured much of the same, as I quickly settled in for another afternoon of football. First it was an NFL contest between Pittsburgh and Jacksonville — and for the record, Pittsburgh QB Tommy Maddox stinks, even I wouldn’t have thrown that interception in overtime — followed by a CFL game featuring Toronto and Winnipeg.

As the second game ended, it occurred to me that it would soon be time to pick up the missus. So I quickly tidied up, put on a clean shirt and combed my hair (got to look good for the missus). My weekend of one was coming to an end, and despite the temporary joys watching non-stop sports brought me, I was more than happy to see my three days of solitude come to an end.

darcy.macrae@theindependent.ca

darcy.macrae@theindependent.ca

By Darcy MacRae The Independent

T

here isn’t much David Lewis doesn’t do in a hockey game. The 20-year-old is a good skater, can rifle a puck past any goalie, is capable of feathering a perfect pass to a teammate at the other end of the rink and can run over an opponent if he has to. The only thing Lewis doesn’t do over the course of a game is slap on the goalie’s equipment and stop shots. Chances are, however, he could probably do that as well if the Southern Shore Junior Breakers asked him to.

In his third year with the Breakers, Lewis just may be the most complete player in the St. John’s Junior Hockey League. At six feet and close to 200 pounds, he has the size and strength to out-muscle opponents while also possessing the skill to out-manoeuvre them.

“He can score goals, is good on the power play, he penalty kills for us,” says Derek Dunne, head coach of the Junior Breakers. “He’s just an all-round great player.”

In his team’s first five games, Lewis has 12 points, good for first on the Breakers and in the league. In his first two seasons in the league, Lewis was much the same player he is now. But after watching him this year, observers are left with the impression that this could be the season Lewis takes over the league and solidifies his spot as the top player in the eight-team loop.

The first step in securing such a title would be to win the scoring race, a feat not out of the question for Lewis.

“As the year goes on you’re going to have hot and cold streaks, but you have to try and be consistent. Hopefully if I stay consistent, maybe I can win a scoring title. That’s not the biggest thing though,” Lewis says, eluding to the fact he’d like to lead the Breakers to a league title.

The Breakers came close to claiming the league championship last season, making it all the way to the finals before dropping the seventh and deciding game in overtime to the Trinity Placentia Flyers.

Lewis says the Breakers are desperate to get back to the top, but recognizes they have a tough road ahead of them.

“We’ve lost a lot from last year, a cou-

David Lewis

ple of key forwards and some good D,” says Lewis. “We lost Jarrod Rumsey, Stephen Oates and Justin Chafe in particular but we still have Stefan Sullivan, he’s our captain this year.”

Lewis says the team has added a lot of good 18-year-olds straight out of minor hockey. He knows that it will be up to players like him and Sullivan to guide the rookies in the right direction.

“We have to be leaders for the 18year-olds, groom them for when they get put into our position,” says Lewis.

Discussing the strengths of his team, the excitement in Lewis’ voice grows when he brings up the Breaker’s goaltending situation.

“Last year we led the league in goalsagainst-average, and we haven’t lost a goaltender,” says Lewis. “Our goaltenders (Christopher Letemplier and Colin Pritchard) are our strongest asset.

They’re two good goalies and having them back is an advantage.”

Considering how much he enjoys playing with the Breakers, it’s ironic to think there was a time Lewis wasn’t sure he wanted to play for the team. After two

Paul Daly/The Independent

seasons with the St. John’s Midget AAA Leafs, the native of Avondale was taken first overall by the Breakers in the 2003 junior league draft of players not already affiliated with member teams. Given the Breakers were coming off a disastrous season the year before, Lewis didn’t know if they were the team for him.

“I was a bit sceptical to go up there when I first got drafted because they were coming off a 10-point season. But I decided to go out to a couple of practices,” says Lewis. “From the first time I laced up the skates with them I knew this was where I wanted to play.”

In his first year with the Breakers, Lewis helped Southern Shore rise two slots in the standings to sixth and was a key factor in their first-round upset of Mount Pearl in the playoffs. Last season he was the team’s leading scorer as they rose to second in the regular season standings.

His coach says Lewis has become exactly the player the Breakers hoped he would when they drafted him.

“When we picked him we were after finishing last the previous year. We were

From page 32

INDEPENDENTSPORTS

SUNDAY THROUGH SATURDAY, OCTOBER 23-29, 2005 — PAGE 32

Dave Ruggles (left) and Peter Power train for the Detroit marathon.

Paul Daly/The Independent

Running man

By Darcy MacRae The Independent

D

ave Ruggles finds it hard to stay still. The 40-year-old entered his first marathon when he was 17, and has been running them ever since.

Today (Oct. 23) Ruggles is scheduled to run in the Detroit Free Press/Flagstar Bank Marathon, the 25th time he has run a 26.2-mile race.

Reaching such a milestone is an accomplishment for any runner, but usually runners have a quite a few years on Ruggles by the time they run their 25th marathon.

Ruggles, a doctor in St.

John’s, says he’s been able to achieve the milestone so quickly because he enjoys running marathons as much today as he did when he started.

“I like the accomplishment of finishing something like that. The distance tests your speed, endurance and your mental fortitude,” Ruggles tells The Independent. “It’s a run where you get tired gradually and have to persevere through that. When you finish, and have run it the right way, you get a good feeling knowing you ran strategically. It’s a combination of strategy and training.”

Ruggles had little interest

in competitive racing growing up in Liverpool, N.S. In fact, he played very little competitive sports at all. But one activity he did enjoy was packing camping supplies together, slinging them over his back and getting away for a weekend of cross country cycling with his friends.

During his first year of university in Halifax he began running to prepare for an upcoming biking trip. He discovered he really enjoyed the activity and was fond of the physical fitness level running helped him achieve.

Once the biking trip was over, Ruggles says he was in the best shape of his life, so

he decided to enter the Halifax marathon.

“It was a good experience.

I went out relatively slow and ran comfortably. I had plenty left at the end, so I don’t remember it being a difficult experience,” Ruggles says. “I just tried to run well within myself, which is probably why I enjoyed it so much.”

Although Ruggles took his time, he finished his first marathon in just two hours and 52 minutes. His fellow runners were stunned that he was able to break the threehour mark on his first try.

“I was pretty pleased.

St. John’s doctor has completed marathons all over the world; 25th may be his last

See “Marathons,” page 30

One is the loneliest number

I

was left to fend for myself last weekend. Like a young boy thrown to the wolves, I found myself all alone in unfamiliar territory for three days, during which time I felt confused, angry, and yes, a bit frightened. What happened to me is not for the faint of heart, but is a story I feel should be shared, so others may learn from it.

What happened was every man’s worst nightmare — I was left at home, all alone, for the entire weekend while the missus was away on a business trip.

With only my cat Buffy around for

DARCY MACRAE

The game support, I discovered that one truly is the loneliest number.

After dropping the missus off at the airport at 5 a.m. on Friday, I returned to an empty house (except for the cat, but she doesn’t talk much) in the mood for a grand breakfast. Only problem was my skills in the kitchen don’t go far beyond opening a can of

soup.

While the missus is capable of whipping up a drool-worthy omelette in mere minutes, I found myself with limited options in her absence. After much deliberation, I settled on a peanut butter and jam sandwich, and coffee — lots of coffee since it was production day at The Independent.

Throughout the day, I didn’t worry too much about being alone all weekend. Frankly, I was too busy to concentrate on such matters. But once I returned to the house much later that night, the situation hit home.

There was no hello at the door. No

pot of tea on the stove. And certainly no chance of a late night snack since I had forgotten to go to the grocery store during lunch. I went to bed that night wondering what I would do to make it through these troubled times when the answer hit me like a Todd Bertuzzi sucker punch — sports.

I decided to bury my sorrows the only way I knew how — by watching loads of sports on television.

This soothing technique has been practiced and perfected by men in my situation for generations. So when I awoke Saturday morning, I instantly went to the TV guide to plan my

schedule. First up was a CIS football game between a pair of Ontario schools. I can’t remember the teams that played, which says a lot about how interested I was in the contest.

But that was all right, since I was using the game as a warm up for the college football game I was really looking forward to — an NCAA tilt between Notre Dame and the University of Southern California (USC).

I doubt a lot of people in these parts follow American college football (that See “Weekend,” page 31