2006-02-19

VOL. 4 ISSUE 8

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ST. JOHN’S, NEWFOUNDLAND AND LABRADOR — SUNDAY THROUGH SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 19-25, 2006

GALLERY 14

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WWW.THEINDEPENDENT.CA —

IN CAMERA 16-17

Painter Taryn Sheppard returns to Newfoundland with fresh eye

Mine games

$1.00 HOME DELIVERY (HST included); $1.50 RETAIL (HST included)

Brad Gushue’s team takes on world in Torino Olympics

HATS OFF

Prospectors find gold, silver in Argentia hills before being barred; lawsuit filed STEPHANIE PORTER

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ow that Voisey’s Bay Nickel has decided Argentia isn’t the place for its processing plant, Adrian O’Keefe is ready to be heard.

O’Keefe, a prospector from the Placentia area, spent close to three years and $150,000 exploring the old Silver Cliff mine site on the former U.S. naval station at Argentia. He believed, and still does, there’s enough gold, silver, and zinc to make a mining operation worthwhile.

In 1997, “with no forewarning,” he says he and his business partner George Lannon were barred from continuing by Public Works Canada. The reasons given included “concerns for health and safety.”

Since then, O’Keefe and Lannon have been quietly fighting the decision in the courts. Lawyer Ken Hollett has been working on behalf of the prospectors since 1999, and will return to court later this month.

“We see that Mr. O’Keefe and Mr. Lannon seem to have had their rights or their interests in the minerals expropriated from them without any compensation,” Hollett tells The Independent. “We feel this was a wrong for which the law should be able to provide a remedy.

“They were allowed in there for a number of years and invested all their time and money into the work and they were suddenly barred out and they lost that.”

After this much time, Hollett says the men are not looking to get back onto the site and start over again — but they are hoping to recoup some of their losses.

O’Keefe says he’s kept his court battle out of the media and public spotlight because of Inco, owner of the Voisey’s Bay deposit.

“We never brought it to light before now because we would have been tarred and feathered,” he says. “The community was desperate for jobs and opportunities and See “Awful coincidental,” page 2

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“On a night flight, you’d fly about an hour offshore and all of a sudden the horizon would light up with a city of lights. It wasn’t something you’d expect. The Russians would have over 200 ships there, just raking the sea bottom and the Grand Banks … I was not aware of the extent of foreign fishing, it’s a big business.

From left: Chris Mercer, Bryan Vaughn, Kelly Pond, Dean Doyle, Chris Downey, Chad Furlong and Don O’Keye. Deadpan Alley Productions, Goulds’ first and only community theatre group, presents The Full Monty at the LSPU Hall, Feb. 23-25. Proceeds will be given to the parents of Rebecca Cole, a four-year-old battling a life-threatening illness.

Paul Daly/The Independent

Medical implications U.S. doctor says proper treatment may have impacted spread of breast cancer CLARE-MARIE GOSSE

T

he hormone drug Tamoxifen could have slowed or prevented the spread of breast cancer in Newfoundland and Labrador patients who missed out on the treatment due to inaccurate testing, according to a U.S. oncologist.

But Carina Biggs, a surgeon at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, says there is no data to support the possibility the drug may have prevented death or unnecessary breast removal in cancer patients.

The Independent first reported last October that as many as 1,000 breast cancer tissue samples dating back to 1997 had been sent from Eastern Health in St. John’s to Mount Sinai Hospital in Ontario for review.

Inaccuracies had been detected in hormone

Replacing the Pen Province may ask Ottawa to contribute to new federal/provincial prison

— Col. Peter Drover of flying maritime surveillance missions over the Grand Banks. See page 11

OPINION 5

Ray Guy’s heart bleeds for Rideout and Hearn OPINION 15

Noreen Golfman’s take on new provincial tourism ads

Life Story . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Paper Trail . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Off the eating path . . . 18 Crossword . . . . . . . . . . 24

Her Majesty’s Penitentiary in St. John’s.

Paul Daly/The Independent

receptor tests, which are used to determine the correct course of treatment for patients. An estrogen positive result in the samples would indicate the sufferer might benefit from taking the drug Tamoxifen. Out of the 1,000 negative samples retested, as many as 200 may have in fact been positive.

“There’s such a broad spectrum of breast cancer,” Biggs tells The Independent. “If you See “Not likely,” page 2

T

By Clare-Marie Gosse The Independent

he province is considering asking the federal government to contribute to the cost of a new prison to replace the aging penitentiary in St. John’s, The Independent has learned.

The province does not have a federal prison, although the new facility could house federal and provincial inmates.

Justice Minister Tom Marshall has not yet broached the possibility of a new federal/provincial facility with his federal counterpart, Vic Toews, but he has requested a meeting with the new minister, along with Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day, to discuss correctional issues.

As part of his pre-election platform, Stephen Harper hinted at more money for the RCMP. Marshall himself says increasing police numbers is also a major provincial issue. He adds legal aid funding is another subject he wants to address in upcoming federal meetings.

Harper’s public safety platform also outlines plans to impose mandatory minimum sentences and an end to house arrest for certain crimes under the Criminal Code of Canada.

Marvin McNutt, the province’s director of adult corrections, says that could mean as many as 350 more inmates at provincial prisons a year, which could translate into serious See “End of,” page 4

2 • INDEPENDENTNEWS

FEBRUARY 19, 2006

‘Not likely it will

become a class action’

From page 1

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receptor status, the quick answer is estrogen receptor positive patients take someone who has an estrogen will get Tamoxifen, estrogen recepreceptor positive breast cancer who tor negative patients won’t. has metastatic disease (the cancer However, there are a lot of variables has spread), certainly she could that will go into making the decision have benefited from Tamoxifen. or the recommendation for Whether or not she would have been Tamoxifen.”

Michelle Hanlon, a Mount Pearl cured or whether or not her survival would have been prolonged signifi- woman, has launched a suit against Eastern Health for cantly, no one’s misdiagnosing going to be able her tissue sample. to say that.”

“Whether or not she She alleges the She adds, would have been cured cancer that cost “there certainly is her both breasts a benefit to or whether or not her and later spread to Tamoxifen in the her lungs, liver, right person.” survival would have and brain could Tamoxifen can been decrease the likebeen prolonged signifi- have stopped or slowed lihood of the cancer returning in cantly, no one’s going if Eastern Health had correctly perpatients who to be able to say.” formed her horhave undergone a mone test. lumpectomy proHanlon’s cedure with radiCarina Biggs lawyer, Colin ation to remove cancer cells, as opposed to a full Feltham of the St. John’s lawfirm Roebothan, McKay, and Marshall, mastectomy.

“It also has a protective affect on says his firm is also dealing with the contralateral (other) breast,” other clients in respect to the breast cancer tests. says Biggs. “(It’s) not likely it will become a Out of the 200 patients thought to have had false-negative results, she class action,” he says, “but I can’t says it’s unlikely they would all say it has been ruled out at this have been offered Tamoxifen, even point.”

Eastern Health is expected to if they had been correctly diagrespond with a statement of defence nosed.

“When a medical oncologist by early March. makes a recommendation for Tamoxifen, based on estrogen clare-marie.gosse@theindependent.ca

October 2005

‘Awful coincidental’ From page 1

we didn’t want to be the lonely natives in the area protesting the operations of Inco.

“We’ve been sitting on (this story) like a hen on an egg, hopeful that things would have been resolved and gotten us back on track.”

The story actually begins in the late1800s, when the London-based Cliff Sliver Mines Company began working at Silver Cliff, as the site came to be known. It was mined on and off until 1925. From 1942 onwards, the mine was part of the territory under the jurisdiction of the U.S. naval base. O’Keefe and Lannon started their work in 1993.

“With the day’s technology, and knowing the Argentia base was to be closed, we knew that there may be access to looking at some of the old mine sites,” says O’Keefe. “We thought it might be a golden opportunity to revisit the site.”

O’Keefe and Lannon received authorization from the U.S. government to begin work. They brought that permission to the provincial Mines and Energy Department, which granted a ground-staking license.

“We worked the property through 1993 and into 1994 and there was no problem, we were still accessing the site through the main gateway,” O’Keefe says. “Public works Canada knew why we were there and what we were doing; they were well aware of our intentions.”

Based on the federal Mining Act, O’Keefe says, they had five years to work the area. They continued their exploration through 1995, and were granted daily access to the property. In July of that year, they were given a oneyear pass by the federal government.

All was going well. “Based on the work we’ve had done, the levels of gold, silver and zinc were all of mineable amounts per ton,” O’Keefe says.

He and Lannon signed an option agreement with Vancouver-based MIA Investment Ltd. in the summer of 1996.

“They were very interested in the property and we did flyovers at a fairly significant cost, targeting specific areas on the property that we were interesting in doing a couple of drill holes.”

In May 1997, they were “suddenly barred” from the property.

“We got a letter from Public Works Canada that basically said, due to environmental concerns you’re no longer authorized to be on the facility,” says O’Keefe. At no time, he says, were they given any indication of what or where the areas of concern were.

“We were allowed to work the property for three years,” he continues.

“The doors were open wide, we had great co-operation from the Argentia Management Authority, provincial people were very pleased we were revisiting the mine site. Everybody was very positive when all of a sudden, bang, the door gets slammed in your face.”

O’Keefe suggests the decision of Voisey’s Bay to look at Argentia as the site of their smelter may have had something to do with the change in attitude.

“It was awful coincidental a month and a half after Inco announced its intentions we got this letter,” he says.

What O’Keefe knows for certain is that he and Lannon are out $150,000 “with no recourse and no retribution.”

Adding to his frustration, O’Keefe says a commercial woodcutting operation, two quarries, and trails and picnic areas were developed in the late-’90s on some of the land he was no longer permitted to explore.

Over the past eight years, O’Keefe says the matter has “bounced back and forth” between lawyers, government departments and levels of government.

“The immediate issue is regarding jurisdiction,” says Hollett. The lawyer says the federal government argues the prospectors should have gone to a provincial panel with their beef — while his clients disagree.

“The critical points right now are the federal government is arguing the province has jurisdiction over its lands and, second, the prospectors had their interests taken away, expropriated without compensation,” Hollett says.

“It’s a very unusual case, you’re dealing with an American military base and provincial mineral rights and imposing federal jurisdiction and that relates back to the Terms of Union and the Constitution. It’s complicated.”

As the case moves through the next stage of the legal process, O’Keefe says the whole thing is a classic case of David and Goliath.

“We’ve lost our mineral rights … frustration is an understatement,” he says. “We’ve been doing prospecting elsewhere across the island and Labrador but this one had a golden lining, for want of a better term. To see it completely dashed before you knew what was there is a sad thing and sad for the community as a whole.

“Even a small mine site could employ 300 to 400 people. It’s a heartbreaker.”

FEBRUARY 19, 2006

INDEPENDENTNEWS • 3

Rum runners

SCRUNCHINS A weekly collection of Newfoundlandia

WHAT A GUY If you didn’t know already, Newfoundland writer and columnist Ray Guy is a living legend (see page 5 of this week’s Independent). Ray has been asked to be a guest presenter at this year’s National Newspaper Awards ceremony, slated for May 26 in Halifax. Ray won a National Newspaper Award in 1967 for the best feature story in Canada.

Headlined No more ’round the mountain, the piece was about the end of the passenger rail service in Newfoundland. Ray travelled on the train (known far and wide as the Newfie Bullet) from St. John’s to Port aux Basques and back.

TOP 5 EXCERPTS: # 1 … The Island’s railway actually had “second class” built into it from the start. A bill passed by the government in 1881 stated that “the railway intended to be constructed shall not be what is deemed in England or the United States, a first-class railway.”

Donald Gordon, former president of CNR, implied shortly before his resignation that Newfoundland still could not afford better than second class. #2 … A stroll through the “day coach” at 2 a.m. is an unforgettable sight. The Black Death has struck. Twisted bodies sprawled in fantastic shapes.

Mouths agape. Hideous snores and groans. Bottles rolling from side to side as on a derelict vessel.

Frightened children crying. Limp arms and legs flopping in the aisles as train jiggles through the night. #3 … The characteristic smell on the CN is of coal smoke and stale urine. The coal smoke is, as has been explained, pumped aboard and locked in at St. John’s. #4 … If CN takes its air on at St. John’s, it must get its supply of water from Port aux Basques. Our western gateway has the dirtiest looking drinking water I’ve ever seen. Hotel guests there sometimes complain that the toilet wasn’t flushed after the last room occupant left. It was. #5 … The thing I’ll miss most about trains is the way they encourage people to talk. I’ll miss the people who do you the honour of telling you all their troubles and hopes starting within five minutes after they sit down. But these people deserve better than second class.

AYREING IT OUT The MC for this year’s 57th National Newspaper Awards ceremony is none other than Miller Ayre, who’s being billed as “certain to inject levity into the evening’s proceedings with his wit and talents as a frequent master of ceremonies.” Something else that’s funny is the fact Miller, as publisher of The Telegram, let Ray go as a columnist. All eyes will be on the stage in Halifax May 26th when the two meet again.

FLAG FLAP The Rotary Club of St. John’s Northwest is slated to hold its annual speak-off March 7. Always a popular event, this year’s topic is a particularly interesting one: “The Pink, White and Green, Newfoundland and Labrador’s future flag?”

The winner of the public speaking contest will win a trip to Ottawa in early May to take part in an Adventure in Citizenship program, which brings together students from across Canada to learn about the diversity of our country. Maybe the winning student will be permitted to fly the Pink, White and Green on Parliament Hill.

BYELECTION BATTLE Nick Careen, the independent candidate in Tuesday’s byelection in the provincial district of Placentia and St. Mary’s, is a former Tory MHA who served in Opposition at the time of the Clyde Wells Liberal administration. Ever the character, Careen stood in the House of Assembly one day to tell Clyde he “couldn’t run an outhouse over a river.” But then Careen had a line for every occasion. He once gave a speech in the legislature about a man named Clyde Lloyd. But Careen pronounced the last name Lied, so he ended up saying Clyde Lied about a dozen times that day. Premier Wells wasn’t impressed, but it was funny as all get out.

Let’s see … what rhymes with Danny?

OH CANADA! John Markman, editor of The Daily Advantage, an independent investment newsletter, wrote recently the United States should ask Canada for Alberta, whose oil sands rival Saudi Arabia’s reserves.

Quote: “Oh Canada! We love your beer, your funny accents, your flag with the botanical theme.

Now be a dear and just let us have Alberta. Hey, it’s just one province. You have nine more, plus three territories. You can keep the one named after the dog (Labrador) and an SUV (Yukon) and all the rest. We just want the one with those nasty, dirty tar sands.” ryan.cleary@theindependent.ca

St-Pierre-Miquelon is known for its smuggling history, but the illegal trade isn’t what it used to be

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By Clare-Marie Gosse The Independent

ewfoundland and Labrador still has its fair share of liquor smuggling, but it’s nothing compared to the days of American prohibition, when American gangster Al Capone might have been spotted in the hub of the illegal industry — St-Pierre-Miquelon.

For 13 years during the 1920s and ’30s, the rum-running trade boosted the economy of the French islands off the Burin Peninsula with as many as 80 specially designed ships loaded with 4,000 cases of liquor each, travelling to and from St-Pierre and the United States at any one time.

The vessels were fashioned after First World War submarine chasers: solid grey silhouettes, floating low through the Atlantic Ocean at night, bellies heavy with cargo. Nova Scotia’s south coast, the beneficiary of the rum running vesselbuilding business, earned the nickname “Rum Row.” St-Pierre, with its business-friendly low taxes, was perfectly positioned to receive rye, bourbon and rum from distillers along the Canadian coasts that were forbidden from delivering to ports enforcing prohibition.

“This was gigantic,” says Jean Pierre Andrieux, a local expert on prohibition who has interviewed people actually involved in the illegal trade.

Andrieux owns the Harbour View Inn on Water Street in St. John’s. He has family roots in StPierre (as well as owning two more hotels there) and is the author of the book Prohibition and St. Pierre.

Studying the history behind rum running has been a passion of his for over 30 years and through extensive research Andrieux has collected an incredible amount of material on the subject. He hopes to complete another book later this year, using as many as 360 old photographs that portray everything from mafia groups bootlegging off the coast of Newfoundland, to St-Pierre houses built in the 1920s from wooden whiskey crates.

Andrieux points to a black and white photograph of St-Pierre’s harbour covered in boxes in the 1920s.

“The waterfront is all champagne, whiskey,” he says. Some of it would come from Canada, rye and bourbon, but you had scotch that came from Scotland, you had some champagne that came from France. But the bulk of it was rum, was Canadian, produced by the Canadian distillers, commercialized by them with their own subsidiaries in St.-Pierre.”

No alcohol was made on the island, it just gathered there, awaiting transhipment. Mostly it would travel on to New York, but Newfoundland and the East Coast of Canada also received some of the cheap product. Warehouses were all over StPierre, full of local workers who had discovered an alternative livelihood to fishing.

An American called Bill McCoy was the first to realize the bootlegging potential of St-Pierre when his schooner was forced to dock for repairs in Halifax. While there he met a French wine merchant who offered to sell him some alcohol and recommended he take his vessel for servicing to St-Pierre. Soon McCoy had his own alcohol trade

on the island.

“He had a very good reputation because he gave to his clients nothing but the best,” says Andrieux.

“When you bought from McCoy you got the real McCoy — and this is the real McCoy right here.”

He taps a picture of a smiling man on board a boat. McCoy looks casual, as if out on a fishing trip.

Other photos in Andrieux’s album show images of Mafia members. One picture shows a man and woman smiling into the camera; some are taken with local warehouse workers and others are group shots of rum runners. The Mafia look is unmistakable, almost a caricature: clean-cut young men wearing expensive coats and fedora hats.

One such hat, belonging to Al Capone, sits today in Andrieux’s hotel on the island. It was a chance gift to his grandfather, who owned a trading store on St-Pierre. Andrieux says one day Capone happened to stroll in. All the staff knew exactly who he was and were afraid, so Andrieux’s grandfather attempted to lighten the atmosphere.

“He said, ‘Oh, you’ve got a lovely hat,’” recounts Andrieux. “‘You like my hat? (says Capone) Here, keep it, it’s a souvenir.’ And it’s stayed ever since.”

“‘You like my hat? (says Capone) Here, keep it, it’s a souvenir.’ And it’s stayed ever since.”

Jean Pierre Andrieux

Rum running wasn’t all easy money and freeflowing liquor, like any illegal activity it came with risks and problems. Cargo usually travelled under cover of night and vessels would meet to transfer loads at sea. The liquor was stored in wooden crates that had a tendency to make a racket during the loading and unloading process, often alerting lurking patrol vessels down wind.

Smuggling penalties included prison time, fines and boat and cargo confiscation.

Wrapping the alcohol in straw and placing it in burlap sacking for transportation eventually

solved the noise problem and some 350,000 wooden crates ended up abandoned on the island’s shores every month. St-Pierre locals were able to use the cast aside crates as firewood, or for house building — which was often the case — hence the number of 1920s homes in the area with liquor logos on floorboards and siding.

Piracy was also a problem. Andrieux shows a photograph of an attacked schooner, which was rammed by a fishing trawler and had its men and illegal cargo taken.

Today, the border between St-Pierre and Newfoundland’s coast still gives local RCMP customs and excise officials cause for concern — although booze and tobacco smuggling is far less problematic than it was in the 1980s, when a drop in police patrols caused a surge of illegal trade for a period of about 10 years.

Bud Bennett, the RCMP’s head of customs and excise in the province, says regular patrolling along the border is still necessary, and the Burin office recently acquired a brand new vessel for the task.

“The liquor smuggling is still an issue here,” he says. “It’s not an offence for the French islands to sell, but it is an offence not to declare it into Canada … that’s still pretty prevalent. Down here it appears people have been doing it for years and they consider it to be a way of life, which I disagree with.”

Bennett, who couldn’t provide any statistics on the amount of goods seized annually, says tobacco smuggling is a bigger issue in the province. He says goods are usually mailed from reserves in Ontario and Quebec and delivered all across Newfoundland and Labrador.

RCMP Const. Neil Wentzell, with customs and excise in Burin, says his department has been working alongside the French gendarmes in StPierre to help curb smuggling.

“It’s having a very positive effect on our crossboarder relations,” he says, adding the increased co-operation helps the monitoring of all criminal activity spanning the border — not just liquor and tobacco smuggling.

Andrieux calls today’s smuggling “peanuts” compared to what St-Pierre saw during the prohibition years.

One significant photograph in his collection, a “mock funeral parade of the St-Pierre trucker’s association,” sums up the culmination of the island’s illegal trade back in 1933.

“This is the end of prohibition,” he says, pointing to the black and white picture of a line-up of men and vehicles.

“The American and French flags were at half mast, saying today it’s all over, tomorrow there’s no more work. This was after president Roosevelt was elected in 1932. He said that he would repeal prohibition, which he did … that happened on the 5th of December, 1933.” clare-marie.gosse@theindependent.ca

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4 • INDEPENDENTNEWS

FEBRUARY 19, 2006

Former minister confident NAFO can be reformed

A

A net seized from the Portuguese trawler Brites in May 2004 is displayed at coast guard headquarters in St. John’s.

Jeff Ducharme/The Independent

s the Conservative government gears up to take custodial management of the nose and tail of the Grand Banks, former Fisheries and Oceans minister Geoff Regan says he’s still confident NAFO can be reformed.

At the same time, attempts to reform the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization have been ongoing for years with little success.

Last fall Regan and other NAFO delegates voted to reorganize the organization, although little has happened since then.

As for custodial management — a plan whereby Canada would take control of the Grand Banks, including responsibility for enforcement and quota assignments, on behalf of NAFO-member states — Regan says he hasn’t heard much on the subject since the Conservatives took power Feb. 6.

Regan says he supports the measure.

“They’ve been talking about it for a long time,” Regan tells The Independent. “What I’m interested to see is what they bring forward that is different and I want to see success,

T

By Alisha Morrissey The Independent

he Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization has been criticized for years as being ineffective and toothless, unable to enforce the quotas it sets.

Formed in 1979, NAFO is made up of 13 member states (including the European Union) and is responsible for monitoring fishing in waters outside Canada’s 200-mile limit.

Foreign overfishing isn’t the problem it once was on the Grand Banks, but experts say the reason is because there’s less fish to chase.

A 2005 study by the advisory panel of straddling fish stocks stated that NAFO’s policies “make it inevitable that it will fail.

For years critics have pointed out NAFO’s flaws, calling for major restructuring or the organization’s demise. The latest federal minister of Fisheries and Oceans, Loyola Hearn, has long been an advocate of scrapping NAFO. Political observers wait to see whether he will follow through with his long-stated promise to impose custodial management over the Grand Banks.

The following is a breakdown of NAFO weaknesses:

OBJECTION PROCEDURE States that disagree with NAFO quotas can use the objection procedure to opt out and unilaterally set their own.

DISCLOSURE NAFO refuses to release a so-called blacklist of fishing vessels that continually break the rules.

“This means that the public cannot find out who is fishing in the NAFO area … a vessel that may have been fishing in an illegal or unregulated manner in the NAFO area may leave the region after being cited and go on to fish in other waters,” according to a 2005 Greenpeace study.

CANADIAN INSPECTIONS Before Canadian inspectors can issue a citation for illegal fishing on behalf of NAFO, inspectors from the offending vessel’s home country must first confirm the infraction (this is especially true with EU member states).

NEUTRALITY “NAFO could not act as a neutral arbitrator, because it directly represented the interests of its member governments in the issue,” according to a 2002 study called Turbot and Tempers.

TIMELY INFORMATION NAFO members often do not submit observer

SHIPPING NEWS Keeping an eye on the comings and goings of the ships in St. John’s Harbour. Information provided by the Coast Guard Traffic Centre.

MONDAY, FEB. 13 Vessels arrived: Ann Harvey, Canada, from Sea; ASL Sanderling, Canada, from Halifax.

Vessels departed:

TUESDAY, FEB. 14 Vessels arrived: Atlantic Kingfisher, Canada, from Terra Nova; Northern Osprey, Canada, from Sea; Atlantic Hawk, Canada, from White Rose.

Vessels departed: Northern Osprey, Canada, to North Sydney; ASL Sanderling, Canada, to Corner Brook; Burin Sea, Canada, to Terra Nova.

WEDNESDAY, FEB. 15 Vessels arrived: Cicero, Canada, from

AN INDEPENDENT VOICE FOR NEWFOUNDLAND & LABRADOR

Montreal.

Vessels departed: Maersk Dispatcher, Canada, to White Rose.

THURSDAY, FEB. 16 Vessels arrived: Newfoundland Otter, Canada, from Marystown; Atlantic Eagle, Canada, from Terra Nova; Atlantic Eagle, Canada, from Terra Nova.

Vessels departed: Atlantic Kingfisher, Canada, to Hibernia; Cicero, Canada, to Montreal; Franca Morte, Portugal, to Fishing; Newfoundland Otter, Canada, to Fishing; Atlantic Hawk, Canada, to White Rose.

FRIDAY, FEB. 17 Vessels arrived: Maersk Chignecto, Canada, from White Rose.

Vessels departed: Ann Harvey, Canada, to sea; Atlantic Eagle, Canada, to Terra Nova.

GENERAL MANAGER John Moores john.moores@theindependent.ca

SALES MANAGER Gillian Fisher P.O. Box 5891, Stn.C, St. John’s, gillian.fisher@theindependent.ca Newfoundland & Labrador, A1C 5X4 Ph: 709-726-4639 • Fax: 709-726-8499 PRODUCTION MANAGER John Andrews Website: www.theindependent.ca john.andrews@theindependent.ca Independent 11.5x3.5• production@theindependent.ca 2/16/06 9:50 AM Page 1 sales@theindependent.ca • circulation@theindependent.ca

REFORM THIS FALL? NAFO reform could come as early as this fall, Regan says, as meetings are planned for the spring.

“The thing to remember is that it’s an international organization and in an international organization the rules that you develop are developed by agreement … and it’s often hard … but you have to fight for it and fight hard for it,” he says. “What’s important to understand that when you’re making the arguments to these countries … you have to start recognizing that and saying look we all have an interest in protecting this fishery and conserving it for the people across the world who need this source of food and we can’t have the benefit for any of us if we destroy it.”

— Alisha Morrissey

Foreign fishing citations

NAFO weaknesses

SUBSIDIZED FISHING NAFO doesn’t have rules regarding the subsidization of fishing fleets. Canada does not subsidize its fleet, although other countries such as Spain do, enticing them to fish harder and for longer periods.

but if they do things that don’t lead to success and make things worse for us then I won’t be very impressed by that.

“I support whatever will help the fish. That’ll help conservation of our fishery’s resource in a successful and effective way — for me, that’s the key — it has to be effective.”

reports on time or on a regular basis and there are often discrepancies between observer reports and dockside monitoring reports.

NON-COMPLIANCE Because violations and subsequent citations have to be investigated and acted upon by the flag state of an offending vessel, they are often never acted upon.

Further, there is little information to say whether offending vessels are actually disciplined by their home countries.

TRANSHIPPING The ability of foreign trawlers to transfer fish at sea for shipment aboard another vessel to their home country often allows for fishing violations to go undetected.

INFORMATION GATHERING NAFO regularly relies on catch reports from fishermen and observers as the basis for scientific reports. The reports from fishermen often aren’t reliable.

OBSERVERS Observers are often the same nationality as the crew they’re tasked with monitoring, which critics say amounts to a conflict of interest. Observers have been known to fish as part of the crew. In one case the observer was identified as the ship’s cook.

Year Citations 1984 22 1985 37 1986 37 1987 20 1988 8 1989 9 1990 7 1991 30 1992 30 1993 40 1994 63 1995 20 1996 12 1997 13 1998 16 1999 17 2000 26 2001 27 2002 32 2003 23 2004 15 2005 30 2006 (to date) 5 539 Total

Source: Federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

‘End of ... it’s useful life’ From page 1

implications for Her Majesty’s Penitentiary. “(House arrests) have diverted a lot of people from the prison system and allowed us to keep more federally sentenced offenders here,” he says. “So the implications could be significant for us. Not so much perhaps in the short term but perhaps in two to three years.”

The province currently receives between $3.5 million and $4 million in annual funding to house federal inmates. A federal inmate is one sentenced to more than two years in prison.

Issued more than 140 occupational health and safety orders last October, the pen is in desperate shape.

“Our prison has come to the end of, I think, it’s useful life and it’s time now to take steps to reorganize the system in the province,” Marshall says. “Obviously the priority has to be the penitentiary in St. John’s, or the prison in St. John's, I think is a more appropriate word.”

The Independent reported last December that the union representing prison guards had issued a complaint

about the penitentiary to the Justice Department, citing security concerns.

Problems such as the personal safety of staff and contraband items (smuggled goods, including drugs) entering the facility were raised by NAPE (Newfoundland and Labrador Association for Public and Private

Employees) in a September meeting with Justice officials.

The provincial cabinet is currently considering a number of options for the future of the penitentiary, but a new facility is by no means guaranteed. Marshall couldn’t say if funding would be announced in the upcoming provincial budget, but he did say a cabinet committee recently visited the facility to assess its condition.

“Obviously no one can say this building is not at the end of its useful life,” he says.

McNutt says his department is working alongside occupational health and safety officials to rectify the orders — which target asbestos contamination and inadequate staff training, among other concerns — issued against the penitentiary.

“A tender had been let for the removal of the asbestos and a tender has also already been awarded for the replacement of the roof on what we call the centre block, the oldest facility on the property,” he says. “The training has been initiated … there’s just so many (orders), there’s 140 of them.” clare-marie.gosse@theindependent.ca

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FEBRUARY 19, 2006

INDEPENDENTNEWS • 5

‘Our hearts must bleed for Tom and Loyola’

L

That’s the ticket Mayor not ready to drop idea of traffic enforcement office

S

By Clare-Marie Gosse The Independent

t. John’s Mayor Andy Wells isn’t prepared just yet to let the idea of a city-funded Royal Newfoundland Constabulary ticket office drop off the radar, despite the fact council rejected the proposal Feb. 6.

Wells says re-enforcing the city’s capacity to police for moving traffic violations such as speeding is “one of the most important issues we’re faced with in this city right now.

“There’s only three or four of us on council that are in favour of it, the rest of the idiots are opposed to it,” he says. “It’s just totally irresponsible.”

Moving violations

Tickets issued by the RNC in 2004 for entire northeast Avalon: 8,144.

Yearly tickets estimated to be issued by cityfunded enforcement unit in St. John’s alone: 7,800.

COMPLAINTS FROM PARENTS Although council doesn’t support city engineer Average ticket cost: $80.

Robin King’s traffic enforcement proposal, Wells is hoping public outcry might force some action.

He’s considering approaching local parent/teacher associations or school councils King’s report shows a consistent drop in movwith the issue, and says he’s received complaints ing violation enforcement between 1992 and from parents concerned about school zones.

1999. When the Constabulary set-up a special “When somebody gets killed there’ll be some- traffic enforcement unit of nine officers in 2001, thing done,” says Wells. “It’s absolutely terrible. prompted by the city, King says collisions immeWe can handle the non-moving violations but it’s diately dropped by about 25 per cent. The unit has not enough.” since been disbanded, however, due to manpowThe city pulls in an estimated $2 million a year er requirements in other areas. in parking tickets and King’s seven-page report predicts the city could more than cover the cost of ‘EVERYBODY’S a new police unit with funding from moving vio- RESPONSIBILITY’ lation fines.

“The first thing to get hit is the traffic unit” says The estimated cost of running the operation — King, “and as a result right now there’s nobody which would consist of four full-time officers and working traffic and traffic is supposed to be a supervisor (all dedicated solely to moving vio- everybody’s responsibility I guess. lations) — is $469,046 a year, with a start-up cost “I do know that the numbers of collisions that of $152,000. are in the city are on the increase again.”

It’s estimated each officer could average just The city’s report shows a drop down to 8,144 under 2,000 tickets a year. Given there would be tickets issued for moving violations in 2004 on four officers and the average ticket is $80, total the northeast Avalon, from 13,327 tickets issued revenue could come in at more than $600,000. in 2003.

“We feel the revenue proWells says he isn’t blaming the jections are extremely conserprovince or the Constabulary for vative,” King tells The its manpower issues — he just “When somebody wants an opportunity to fix the Independent. “Realistically speaking, the vast majority of gets killed there’ll be situation.

A critic of the proposal, offences under the traffic highsomething done.”

Councillor Frank Galgay, sugway act are substantially more gested putting the responsibility than $80 … in some cases — Andy Wells of what should actually be a here, if an officer issued three provincially-managed office in tickets per shift for speeding, the hands of the city, might lead to they could certainly fit in line further departmental “offloading.” with the revenue projections we have made.”

Wells disagrees.

Although King used Constabulary statistics on “That’s totally false. And I don’t care. If the moving violations over the last decade in his report, he says it’s difficult to figure out the stats province wants to download and give us a revfor the St. John’s area alone. All Constabulary enue stream that will support it, sure I don’t figures are accumulated for the entire northeast care.”

Currently in Newfoundland and Labrador, Avalon. What was clear from the numbers, however, is that when moving violations dropped — Mount Pearl has its own municipal police force to indicating a lack of enforcement — the number of deal with issues such as moving violations, as does both Grand Falls-Windsor and Gander. accidents rose.

RAY GUY

A poke in the eye

Loyola are having to tell him that even the whore’s egg quota can’t stand.

But, hark, there comes a distant echo! Great new industries, Mr. Speaker! A great new refinery. A great new hydromet facility. A great new … fill in the blank.

Smallwood believed the fishery would never cut it for Newfoundland. Who would be surprised if Williams thought the same? Of course, he doesn’t want to say that out loud and hurt Bill Barry’s feelings.

Daniel is vexed with those who refuse to rejoice over his “wonderful, positive news.” Of course he is. People like that won’t vote for him again.

Well, this new-found pessimism may be a bad thing for Daniel Williams but it’s a splendid thing for Newfoundland. Lord, now lettest thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation. Mine eyes saw no such thing in the 50 years gone by.

We were a few old-young grouches when Smallwood went lunatic on “great new industries” and laid the foundation for the current $11-billion provincial debt. We were maladjusted grinches during the several decades the oceans around us were slaughtered. We were harmless neurotics while the paper companies slashed and ran.

When a creature like Brian Tobin was brought home by rejoicing multitudes we were considered mentally retarded to look away. But it is a long road that has no turn. So if, today, Daniel W. doesn’t get loud cheers wherever he’s got an X marked on his speech ... that’s one up for Newfoundland.

If any of our present crop of politicians expect sad old tricks to be hailed as “wonderful, positive news” and is sadly disappointed, that’s another great credit for Newfoundlanders.

At the same time, there’s no reason even our politicians can’t also walk, now, on this brighter side of life. They can still be a little bit slow or a little bit stupid. Aren’t we all?

There’s only one fairly strict path, let us hope, for the bright new model of Newfoundland politician. It is well marked.

The signposts are: Do. Not. Tell. Lies.

Er, sorry. Please excuse the manic optimism.

Sap is on the rise?

Have you noticed the benefits our oil and gas industry is bringing to Newfoundland and Labrador?

Busy restaurants and hotels.

The Keg, St. John’s, NL

Paul Daly/The Independent

oyola Hearn and Tom Rideout came out of their first meeting looking like they’d met the devil in the middle of a dark road.

It was a pitiful thing to see. Their faces were masks of anxiety. They carried themselves slumped and shuffling in the posture of the hopeless.

Our two kingfishers, so to speak, Tom and Loyola, both of them former school teachers, were suddenly hammered by cruel reality and the frightening positions they were both in.

Yes, my informants tell me that poor Tom and poor Loyola stumbled out of that meeting looking like they were the only two survivors of the wreck of the Hesperus. But survivors for how long? The mighty sea still rolled and the howling wind still shrieked and the face of heaven was turned away from them.

Loyola looked like something the cat dragged in because — we must suppose — the 110 promises he’d made about the fisheries before the election didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell ... or Ottawa. Tom looked like a poor pitiful relic because Daniel Williams had shoved him on the plane in a hammerlock with orders to “Get it from him! Get it from him!

Get it from him!”

Now poor Tom had to return empty-handed to face the wrath of Khan. Our hearts must bleed for Tom and Loyola.

I know mine is on fast drip.

Nothing sandpapers Danno’s scrotum more than having to ask for anything. Except being told he can’t have it. That’s when he hurls himself into a tantrum and chews the ears off his teddy bear.

Has anyone seen Tom Rideout’s ears lately?

Loyola vexed Daniel right from the start because now, in Ottawa, he’s a cardinal and Williams is a mere archbishop. Dan has got to ask Loy and Loy has got to tell Dan, “No.” And Tom, who once rode out and then rode in again, is cheese in the sandwich.

What does this alarming situation mean for Newfoundlanders and other pelagic species already gravely overfished and in danger of extinction?

Wolffish like Bill Barry and dogfish like FPI will probably find enough trash fish left to make one last scavenge and gain strength to sail away to slightly greener undersea pastures.

The rest of us might just as well leave our nets and follow Jesus. No ice for the seals, no icebergs for the tourists.

In the middle of the mix is Daniel (my will be done) Williams now actually cognizant of the ghost of a fear. It will take more than St. John’s to reelect him. But the other four-fifths of the province is falling to bits and Tom and

Spin-off benefits from the oil and gas industry accounted for more than $370 million in retail sales in the province last year. The industry has invested more than $15 billion in the province since 1991. To learn more please visit www.capp.ca.

A message from:

403, 235 Water Street, St. John’s, NL Canada A1C 1B6 Tel (709) 724-4200

6 • INDEPENDENTNEWS

FEBRUARY 19, 2006

Taller than the moon M

y daughter left home three weeks ago. Moved out, moved on. Physically, she’s only two blocks over and one block down. But her new home is in a parallel universe.

The first time she comes back, on a flying visit to get the rest of her clothes, I reach out my arms to draw her back, not too far, just far enough to strike a balance.

She stays by the door: Is it all right if I use the dryer? That used to be my line.

Her hat is new, so is her hair. She doesn’t have time to explain — she’s between dimensions, anxious to get back to the new one, where I am only one reference point among many.

Where she is the primary, the only, power and the clocks tick to the click of her stiletto heels. See you soon, she calls over her shoulder. Soon — I curse the word after she leaves, it’s too noncommittal, shaky. Devious. A week later she invites me for dinner. A spatter of short calls in between; miniscule emails. I smell guilt, a most unpleasant odour. The next time she comes there are three thousand kisses; she’s having nightmares in the new house, can she

SUSAN RENDELL

Guest column

sleep over? But then she suddenly realigns herself, slips back through the Looking Glass.

Her father disappeared when she was three, and later died a death softer than the leaving, out beyond our boundaries.

For half my life, there’s been only the two of us. And so this thing I thought would be a blip on the domestic radar turns out to be something else. This house is not an empty nest, oh no, it has suddenly collapsed in on itself and disappeared, it is a place of empty air; I am alone on top of Everest, moaning with vertigo.

When the house feels so hollow I think I am the smallest doll, the only doll, inside a Russian egg, I go into her bedroom and stand there, waiting. And her smell comes and wraps me in its arms. A palimpsest of odours: first the baby scent; ointment, the sweet sweat in the folds of an infant’s neck. I’m

imagining this one, helped by a dollsized sweater I find in the bottom of one of her dresser drawers. Shameless, ransacking her room like a pirate, Mother Hood, roaming the seas of memory looking for my lost child. But I’m not here to violate, only to scavenge. Desperate for a little of her essence, her ambergris.

The next layer belongs to a skinny eight-year-old. It smells of leather; a horse’s bridle hangs on a hook in the closet. Leather and grass and the acrid blood of scabs collected from the outside world, which she loved despite its nonchalant wounding of her. When she was three I told her we couldn’t live with her father any more because he yelled too much. She looked at me with all the earnestness of a three-year-old, which is almost all the earnestness there is in the world. He doesn’t mean it, you know, she said. Childhood’s particular gift of grace: no one, nothing, means it, not hidden rocks that trip you or tree branches that snap or fathers who are unable to be fathers — the entire world is innocent. Sometimes I was able to twist the kaleidoscope that is life, see her vision for an instant. And

I thought, this is how God looks at the world.

The last layer is darker, older, even though it is the topmost layer.

Expensive perfume, adult flesh; a whiff of loneliness, fear. Much has been lost between the walls of this house. A father, grandparents, a horse, cats, a good dog, privilege, innocence — they all died here, or were grieved here. The death of her child’s faith in me. “I used to think you were taller than the moon,” she said shortly before she went.

I leave her room, shutting the door as if it is a meaningless gesture, go downstairs and put Angel, a Buffy the Vampire Slayer spin-off, in the DVD player. The cat pads after me; we haunt the house together. The cat used to refer to my daughter as dat missus wit’ the nice hair. So my daughter claimed; she gave voices, personas to all the creatures who ever lived here — The Wind in the Willows meets Hatching, Matching and Dispatching. This cat, a feline version of Shaun Majumder’s character on HM&D — although predating Cyril by 10 years — used to purr to beat the band when my daughter let him curl up on her long taffy pull hair

— some nice hair you haves, missus, he’d say, grinning like he just won the lottery. The cat is mute now, just an ordinary grey and white cat — hard to believe he used to take tea with the next door neighbours, argue politics with the dog. Hard to believe this house wasn’t always silent as shame.

Tonight the cat and I sit at opposite ends of the couch, watching Angel, the vampire with a soul, whose face is contorted with grief. A spell has been put on the vampire’s son, making him forget his father.

I turn the grieving vampire into ashes with a flick of the remote. The cat and I look out the window for a while; the moon is tall in the sky, walking with a star by her side. The star is light years away from her, their closeness an optical illusion. So the astronomers say. I prefer the poets, the myth-makers. The moon and her child walking the black night in perfect accord, forever and ever.

Susan Rendell, author of In the Chambers of the Sea, is a freelance writer who lives in downtown St. John’s.

YOUR VOICE Oil companies should either use natural gas or lose it Dear editor, Regarding Brian Dobbin’s Feb. 5 column (Oops, where did that come from?), he’s right — this is yet another example of how our province is not getting the lion’s share of our nonrenewable natural resources.

Similarly, the oil companies discovered 4.2 trillion cubic feet of natural gas on the Labrador shelf in the mid 1970s. Back then, the natural gas wasn’t worth much and it was not economical to transport it by pipeline. Oil companies considered the natural gas to be stranded and not worth the cost of developing, they took tax write-offs, and then they abandoned any efforts to develop it.

Luckily for the people of this province, the natural gas abandoned by these oil companies is now worth approximately $30 billion. By this time next year, it could double in value. And if Labrador’s natural gas reserves have been low-balled or significantly underestimated like the oil reserves in the Hibernia field, there is probably a lot more natural gas on the Labrador shelf.

Right now, a new and patented compressed natural gas technology is being developed by a local company, Trans Ocean Gas. The technology will allow the natural gas stranded off the Labrador coast to be economically developed, and will further allow the natural gas to be transported all over the world by road, rail and sea.

It is now time for our government to make a strategic move and adopt a useit-or-lose-it approach to the oil companies sitting on Labrador shelf acreage.

Such an approach means that these oil companies should either use the 4.2 trillion cubic standard feet of gas dis-

covered on the Labrador shelf or lose the significant discovery licences that they hold in respect of same. In the event that they do not start to produce natural gas from the Labrador shelf within a set period of time, ownership of the licenced acreage should revert to our government.

Once back in public hands, the Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board should then set about re-tendering the acreage, making the grant of any future licences conditional on it being developed within a fixed number of years. At present, the oil companies can wait indefinitely on their discovery licences, with no obligation to convert them to production licences. Just imagine: a license that you hold forever, with no expiry date. Isn’t that a sweet deal? Even the deal for the upper Churchill expires, albeit in the year 2041.

Premier Danny Williams needs to implement a fallow field program like that in the United Kingdom. The use-itor-lose-it program in the United Kingdom has been extremely effective, but their remaining oil and gas fields are marginal compared to the undeveloped natural gas fields on the Labrador shelf. Valued at $30 billion or more, the Labrador natural gas fields are a massive prize. We must give the oil companies that hold licences on the Labrador shelf an incentive to use it or lose it. As Brian Dobbin said in the article that inspired this letter: “We need you, Mr. Premier. You are the right man, in the right place, to change our history. Lead and you will be followed.”

Steven Campbell, President, Trans Ocean Gas St. John’s

All Canadians fund equalization

Dear editor, I’m writing in response to another article in a mainland newspaper that is perpetuating the myth that the haveprovinces of Alberta and Ontario are funding the equalization formula.

Equalization is a federal funding program enshrined in section 36 of the Constitution Act 1982. It is funded from federal general revenues. The provinces of Ontario and Alberta do not pay an equalization fee or tax, while they properly lament the current fiscal imbalance between the second and third orders of government. We too, here in Newfoundland and Labrador, lament the fiscal imbalance as evidenced by the cost-benefit analysis

conducted by The Independent, for which it received a nomination for a Michener award. However, avoiding that tangential argument, Newfoundland contributes to the funding of the equalization formula by contributing to the federal treasury, notably through the 8.5 per cent share in the Hibernia oilfield, as well as the federal government deriving 53 per cent of offshore oil revenue. These contributions are further bolstered by our share of federal taxes. Enough is enough, all Canadians fund this essential quid pro quo of Confederation.

James Vaughan, St. John’s

AN INDEPENDENT VOICE FOR NEWFOUNDLAND & LABRADOR

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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.

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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

God’s country I

t’s funny that things should start to turn around at this particular point in Newfoundland’s history, just as Armageddon is about to clean our clocks.

I wouldn’t be so foolish as to predict the end of the world in the pages of The Independent, I’ll leave that to the experts quoted in Maclean’s magazine, which has been around a lot longer than this paper and can afford to predict an “oil–related apocalypse” without fear of the editor being declared unfit for active duty.

The logic, as outlined in the article, When the oil runs out, goes like this … World Oil Peak Day passed us by last fall (Nov. 25, to be exact, according to one expert), meaning oil is getting harder and harder to come by … we’re running out. Oil companies realized that long ago, which explains why a new oil refinery hasn’t been built in America since 1976; tankers are being retired “faster than they’re being built”; and exploration budgets aren’t rising near as fast as “prices and profit.”

The End of Oil theory “is a conviction that we are dangerously near the ‘topping point,’ where half of the world’s petroleum reserves are gone,” the Maclean’s story reads. Jeremy Legette, an Oxford-trained geologist and professor at the Royal School of Mines, is quoted as saying “Big Oil and its government partners are covering up the depletion, while holding back alternative technologies.

“And when the truth can no longer be obscured, the price will spike, the economy will nosedive, and the underpinnings of our civilization will start tumbling like dominos,” he says.

“Once affluent cities with street cafés will have queues at soup kitchens and armies of beggars. The crime rate will soar. The earth has always been a dangerous place, but now it will become a tinderbox.”

Picture Mad Max doing doughnuts on a packing lot circa Great Depression/fall of Rome.

If that wasn’t bad enough, Legette tells Maclean’s the earth will start falling apart due to climate change —

RYAN CLEARY

Fighting Newfoundlander

global warming will begin to dry up the world’s water supplies. Water may one day cost an arm and a leg, or about the same as a litre of gas.

DRIVER’S SEAT You’re probably asking what all that means for Newfoundland and Labrador. Simple, it means we’re in the driver’s seat for as long as the world’s economy remains intact, the earth stays in decent shape and our biblical clock keeps ticking.

We have the two commodities — oil (energy in general) and water — that everyone else wants or will want soon enough.

Danny is right to demand the Hebron stake — why settle for a piece of the pie when we can own part of the oven and make our own pies?

It’s the Hebron project that’s on the table now, with talks ongoing to bring the province’s fourth major oil field on tap. Danny Williams wants an equity stake, a big fat piece of the Hebron pie. His demands are considered excessive, so much so it’s been suggested the oil companies may actually walk away from the negotiating table if he keeps it up. The companies will turn their backs on the Grand Banks rather than put up with a crackie premier from newfie-joke land with the gall to ask for more than he’s given.

What a bluff, I say, and it’s time we

called them on it. The oil companies would no more walk away than Danny would give it away.

Mind you, we have to be careful what we ask for. If Danny announced plans today to build a billion-dollar fish plant in Placentia Bay we’d think he was off his rocker. What’s the difference between a refinery and a fish plant? We’re running out of oil the same way we ran out of fish. How do you feed a second refinery when the cupboards are going bare? We’ve got enough white elephants in our backyard as it is.

Another bargaining chip on the Hebron table is a gravity-based structure. Make no mistake, a GBS made right here would mean tons of jobs and billions of dollars to the economy, the same way that the Hibernia project did.

But other than the memory of $25an-hour security guards and $30-anhour janitors, what would we be left with once the GBS sailed off into the Grand Banks’ sunset? Not much, I suggest — GBSs aren’t exactly flying off the Bull Arm assembly line, the transfer of technology that was to take place with the Hibernia project did not happen, and we definitely aren’t living high on the hog off Hibernia royalty cheques.

Danny is right to demand the Hebron stake — why settle for a piece of the pie when we can own part of the oven and make our own pies?

It’s exciting to be an energy warehouse, blocked to the rafters with — not just oil and natural gas — but wind power and hydro potential, the “faint hopes of a granola Eden.”

Maclean’s does offer hope but the magazine article ends with a sobering thought: “there’s also a pervasive sense that the earth would be a lot better off with a lot less people, consuming fewer resources.”

No worries then, Newfoundland (a.k.a. God’s country) is well ahead of the game.

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

FEBRUARY 19, 2006

INDEPENDENTNEWS • 7

The longest month

Ivan Morgan proposes government legislate a paid holiday for February

W

hat twisted, faceless little control freak in the bowels of government is responsible for this? What horrible slip of fate has rendered us so? Why, in the name of all that is decent and human, has no one dealt with this before?

Am I talking about the trouble in the Middle East? Am I referring to the fiasco that was Harper’s first week? Am I hoping for a resolution to the situation in Haiti? No. I am referring to something that I suspect, if you are honest with yourself, you will agree is far more important to you and I than any of that.

I am referring to the fact that there is no paid holiday in February. This is a terrible, terrible oversight.

February is the longest month of the year. It is weeks longer than July and August. June positively flies by in comparison. Don’t write me referring to calendars and the like — most people know exactly what I mean. The cold, dreary days of February grind along at

YOUR VOICE

IVAN MORGAN

Rant & reason

a glacial pace, and each dismal, blustery, icy grey day is made all the more interminable by the knowledge that there will be no merciful respite.

We Newfoundlanders have lost many of our cherished holidays over the years. In the Clyde Wells administration we were sternly lectured that this was in the interest of efficiency and it was good for business. So? It wasn’t good for me. Why are we supposed to care about what is good for business?

Now I have to work more days for the privilege of paying $2 for a head of romaine lettuce. I have to give up family time so the bank can pilfer “fees” from my tiny account. Business is doing great. It’s me that needs a break.

Not only are holidays not bad for

business, but I submit that a paid holiday puts a spring in the step of the average wage slave. It does in mine.

That has to be better for the employer than a staff full of dead-eyed automatons who know that the only thing to look forward to in February is more February.

I know that there is a class system to the holidays, and some people can get days off in February. Unionized employees are fortunate — they exist on a higher strata with special agreements for paid holidays. Public servants breathe an even more rarefied air.

They have sick days (pronounced free time off). Non-unionized workers know nothing of this. They are the folks who work hard, get paid the least, are treated the worst and receive the fewest paid holidays. It is they who need this holiday the most.

But there is no holiday in February.

Some helpful soul volunteered that he thought snow days were February’s holidays. That’s quite the idea — lotto

FACING THE MUSIC

holiday. But for a great many employees, snow days crash up against the pitiless policies of their corporate managers and the coin-flipping approach of the Nova Scotian weather service. Not exactly a day at the beach.

Don’t get me wrong — I am not a winter hater. I love snow and ice. I love brisk cold air and big fires in the woods and sliding and woodstoves and hot chocolate and all that. I just think we need another day in February to enjoy all of it. Mount Pearl has the right idea with a Frosty Festival. A lot of the colleges have festivals too. Anything to get through February.

So I propose a holiday in February.

Late February, so it teases us through the month. If I thought I could move Valentine’s Day and make it a paid holiday I would. I think you should have one day a year when you get paid to be with the one you love — whether that is with wine, good food and a human being, or with a 40 of vodka, a pizza and the Hustler channel. Make it the

last Monday in February. That would take the sting out of this accursed month.

I mentioned this campaign to a few friends. One of them disagreed. The days are getting longer, he said. The sun is warmer in the sky. The promise of spring hangs in the air. I smacked him on your behalf.

February is the month I am most likely to drink Scotch out of the bottle.

February is the month I most hate the clock alarm. February is the month I am most likely to come home and just curl up in front of the TV with a bag of Cheese Doodles. There is nothing in February to look forward to except, as madness begins to gnaw at the brain, the slushy slide into March.

Come on Newfoundland. Let’s show the country that once again that we are a culture to be admired. Let’s legislate a paid holiday in February.

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

‘Akin to a cat awaiting its pathetic prey’ Dear editor, Maybe it’s time someone did a television documentary concerning the plight of a small family consisting of a mother, her three children and one soon-to-be-born child in Marystown.

Newfoundlanders and Labradorians were so proud to see the accolades of gratitude placed upon our province in the wake of the 9-11 horror show and the welcoming of thousands of stranded people from all over the globe.

Now we witness a scene out of the Russian gulag minus the cruelty of the guards, as well as the comfort afforded them by way of furniture, which is in itself a blessing.

The people of the community of Marystown and surrounding areas have done their utmost to supply physical and moral support and should be commended for their kindness.

Many people are, as myself, somewhat mystified by this whole unnecessary blight upon our otherwise hospitable lifestyle.

We’re not talking of terrorists or criminals here, we’re talking about a woman and three small children who are begging through tears and fears to be allowed to stay in our homeland. Instead we have a federal immigration department that has ordered immediate arrest and deportation of all upon the mother giving birth in the local hospital … somewhat akin to a cat awaiting its pathetic prey.

If this sad tale were taking place in Communist Russia back in the 1950s or ’60s I would at least accept that unfortunate instance. But to have this public humiliation being carried out

by Canada in the year 2006 is utterly shameful.

Whether the Portnoys are welcomed in or kicked out of our homeland will soon be known to one and all.

How long is it going to take before SWAT teams are seen kicking in doors with stun guns in churches throughout this nation in order to drag out frightened men, women and children? Perhaps it is time for us all to wake up and smell the coffee.

Paul Morrissey, St. John’s

Is poker a sport?

Dear editor, Regarding Darcy MacRae’s Feb. 12 column, Sports conservative, from his comments such sports as snowboarding, ski jumping, gymnastics, as well as some events such as synchronized swimming are not considered sports (because the results are dependent on

The 55th annual Kiwanis Festival begins Feb. 19 and runs until March 6 at venues around St. John’s. Above, nine-year-old Peyton Morrissey — who won three awards at last year’s event — practices. For a full schedule of the 2006 festival, visit www.kiwanismusicfestivalsj.org.

Paul Daly/The Independent

Protecting ‘jewel of the Avalon’

Dear editor, Douglas Ballam, president of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, recently called on government to release the natural areas plan.

This plan was developed by a committee of government workers and volunteers over a decade ago and identified special and representative areas in our province that should be protected.

Now in a province where politicians like to brag about the uniqueness of this wonderful place, being the only province in the country without a natural areas plan is disgraceful.

Unfortunately, while our politicians may like to brag about how beautiful this place is, the reality is that only

under extreme public pressure have they ever acted to protect those unique features from development.

Mr. Ballam pointed out that most wildlife sites are slowly being nibbled to death by conflicting developments.

And no better example of a unique area that has been nibbled to death is located just a short distance from St John’s.

The area in question is in the Fox Marsh and includes the Clam River, Peddles Waters, Round Pond West, Neil’s Pond, Fourth Pond, Ripple Pond and the Colinet River. This area was once considered the “jewel of the Avalon” and for over 30 years government talked about protecting the area.

This area is best known for the

A simple story to warm hearts Dear editor, In these days of memoirs that are not really memoirs, over-reactions to irresponsible cartoons, and unethical politicians who campaign on increased accountability, but when elected (or not) do not seem to know the meaning of accountability, I thought this simple story might warm a few hearts.

The story is about an old and good friend, Margie Harris. Margie and I met in 1981 when we were young social workers at St. Clare’s Hospital.

Margie was then and is now passionate about life, people and animals.

Today, with a very busy family life including a devoted husband, three

judging). But I assume you do believe poker is a sport?

By the way The Independent has some interesting articles. Many don’t tell it like you guys. Keep up the good work.

Boyd Legge, Mount Pearl

great sons and a full-time and parttime job, Margie has three large dogs.

Margie and the dogs go for long walks each day in Conception Bay, which brings me to the point of this letter.

Earlier this week, Margie and the dogs were on one of their daily walks when they came upon an injured rabbit. The rabbit was in obvious distress so Margie had all three dogs lie down, at her command, so as not to further panic the rabbit. Margie approached the rabbit and was able to examine it.

Margie wondered if the animal had been shot or had been a potential meal for a local hawk.

Margie cradled the animal and, while wondering what to do, a neigh-

ribbed moraines, dominated by centuries-old huge yellow birches on the north-facing slopes. Regrettably today most of this area has been clear-cut and many of those unique ribbed moraines now resemble a moonscape.

However, as luck would have it, the small area of old-growth forest remaining (30 sq/km) is home to several hundred erioderma pedicellatum, a tree lichen growing on the bark of mature and dead balsam fir. Erioderma is listed as a vulnerable species on the provincial endangered species list and on the global red list of the International Conservation Union.

Erioderma pedicellatum is critically endangered. It is now extinct in Sweden, New Brunswick and Norway.

Nova Scotia has less than 20 plants with Newfoundland being home to 99 per cent of the erioderma left on the planet.

However, all indications are that the species is in decline here as well. In light of the decline the Newfoundland Lichen Education and Research Group has made application to government to grant wilderness protection to this last intact stand of old-growth forest left on the Avalon Peninsula. If the reserve receives approval all present recreation activities would be permitted inside the proposed wilderness boundaries, but any further clear-cut commercial logging would not be allowed.

Eugene Conway, Conception Harbour

bour came by. Both Margie and the neighbour questioned whether the rabbit would live. Margie hoped if the animal were to die, it would do so in the warmth of her arms. However, as they both had other commitments, and Margie had to deal with three large dogs in the wind and snow, they found a sheltered place to leave the rabbit. Given its coat and general appearance, they wondered if the rabbit was someone’s pet.

It was now snowing more heavily.

I kept thinking about the injured rabbit and wondering how long it would be before Margie went back to check on it. While talking with her that night, I had the feeling that she would go

back and check. A couple of days later, by e-mail, Margie told me she had gone back to the site, and although weakened, the rabbit was alive.

And true to form, Margie brought the cold and weak rabbit home.

Thinking it would die, Margie was surprised when, the following morning, the rabbit started to move around and eat.

The wild rabbit had the good fortune to have been found by a true and humane person who will help it get ready to resume its journey.

Geoff Chaulk, St. John’s

FEBRUARY 19, 2006

8 • INDEPENDENTNEWS

Construction of new provincial training centre to start by August

A

By Darcy MacRae The Independent

lthough all of the necessary funding has yet to be confirmed, construction of a new provincial training centre will begin this summer, says project manager Rod Snow.

“From our perspective, the project is a go,” Snow tells The Independent.

“We’re hoping to break ground by August.”

The new provincial training centre will be built on the grounds of the Swilers Rugby Complex in St. John’s.

Plans include the construction of an indoor training facility, as well as an extension to the existing infrastructure.

The extension will house offices, a multi-purpose room for 60-80 people for major dinners, coaching clinics etc., a strength and conditioning room, as

well as medical offices for sports therapy, physiotherapy, and massage therapy.

The project’s budget is $4.9 million.

“The momentum in terms of the fundraising has been steady … and in terms of our progress, we think it’s been excellent,” says Snow, a former professional rugby player in Wales who returned to Newfoundland for good last summer. “Right now, we’re up to virtually the $4-million mark with confirmed funding.”

The $4.9 million needed for the project will come from several sources.

Snow says the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador has committed $2 million, while the City of St. John’s has made $1.3 million available.

An additional $700,000 has been raised through Sport Newfoundland and Labrador and various community efforts.

Snow says the final $900,000 will be raised a number of ways, including asking the newly elected federal government for a $500,000 contribution.

“Before the federal election we had some very good discussions with the candidates involved … and Loyola Hearn was one of the people we had the most positive discussions with,” says Snow. “Obviously he’s been elected and been given a high-profile cabinet position in Fisheries and Oceans, and he’s in a position to help us.

“He’s an ex-physical educator himself, before he went into politics, so he understands exactly where we’re coming from, trying to promote sport and recreation in the province.

Additional funds will be raised through sponsorship from the business community — both Snow and Dr. Pat Parfrey, president of Swilers Rugby

Club, have approached members of the private sector — and through selling the naming rights to the new provincial training centre.

“We’re in negotiation right now (for the naming rights), so I don’t want to discuss the details. But it would be with a Newfoundland company that is prominent in the community,” Snow says. “We’re very positive something is going to happen on that front.”

Snow also says since the new training complex will be a provincial training centre, he would like to see other municipalities from the province donate money to the project. To date, however, his requests are falling on deaf ears.

“We’re actively pursuing that right now,” says Snow. “It’s a tough sell when you go to speak with municipalities outside the St. John’s area about helping support a venue that is in the

middle of St. John’s. But we believe it’s a provincial training centre and we want it to be accessible to all the province’s athletes.”

Snow says construction should take less than a year. Work will not begin until after the Rugby World Cup qualifier between Canada and the United States, a game that will take place at the Swilers Rugby field on Aug. 12.

The old provincial training centre in Torbay closed in 2002, and the province has been without such a facility since.

Snow says the province’s athletes need such a centre if they are to compete at an elite level “Even if we don’t produce any world champions, at least we’ll have a healthy adult population 10 or 15 years down the road that understands the benefits of physical fitness.” darcy.macrae@theindependent.ca

LIFE STORY

Newfoundland’s biggest export E.J. Pratt 1882-1964

P

By Ben Curties For the Independent

AROUND THE BAY “Schools in Harbour Breton were closed for several days last week when an epidemic of influenza hit the area, confining people of all ages to their beds. More than 50 per cent of the school population was affected by the outbreak, described by a Department of Health spokesman as a “mild form of influenza.” Industry and business in the south coast community was also slowed by the absentee rate among employees who contracted the disease.

— The (Burin Peninsula) Post, Feb. 10, 1972 YEARS PAST “Due to the almost impassable condition of Water Street, a west end butcher, while driving to his store last evening, capsized his sleigh and broke one of the shafts. The horse, which bolted, was stopped by a passer-by and willing hands made temporary repairs to the broken part. After a few minutes delay he was again on his way. Several teamsters are complaining of the ruts and gulches and it is next to impossible to haul loads without meeting an accident.”

— Daily Mail, Feb. 11, 1925

AROUND THE WORLD “We regret to learn that since our last advices no improvement has taken place in the prices of cod oil; latest sales affected are reported at £25 to £26 in the English market. From Brazil we are glad to learn that a slight advance of codfish has taken place in the market.”

— The Courier, Jan. 6, 1858

EDITORIAL STAND “Confederation is a rather obscure subject because there has been little public information on what it represents; to what extent the federal government would aid, and in what particular directions Newfoundland, as the 10th province, would be mistress in her own home. Of course prospects of how we should benefit or lose under Confederation are rather a matter of one guess being as good as another.”

— Newfoundland Trade Review, Jan. 12, 1946 LETTER TO THE EDITOR “In order to conserve the existing stocks of coal an order has been issued by the Commissioner for Public Health and Welfare to coal merchants in St. John’s that they may not sell more than one half ton to any private householder and then only if the householder has not more than five cwt (1/4 ton) of coal in his home. Coal dealers are not to accept orders by telephone, but orders must be placed personally with the coal merchants and a declaration must be signed by the purchaser to comply with these terms. The Commissioner anticipates that this order will not be necessary for more than three weeks.”

Signed the office of Public Health and Welfare.

—The Observers’ Weekly, Feb. 14, 1943 QUOTE OF THE WEEK “In the old days the liquor business was despised and looked down upon but now the Government has become a saloon keeper, that it has made it respectable in the eyes of many. Now there is no shame in being a bartender.

It is a Government job like being a post master or customs officer.” Editor of The Daily Globe.

— The Daily Globe, Feb. 24, 1925

ratts have always been a prominent industry in Newfoundland, including artists Christopher Pratt, Mary Pratt, and Barbara Pratt, architect Philip Pratt, the late-Senator Calvert C. Pratt, photographer Ned Pratt, and business magnate John Kerr Pratt, just to name a few.

But the honour of this province’s most famous Pratt belongs to E.J. Pratt, considered by many to be Canada’s leading poet of the early 20th century.

The son of a travelling Methodist preacher, Pratt moved from his 1882 birthplace in Western Bay to a succession of other outports. He spent a lot of time amongst the cliffs and waves of Newfoundland, which likely impressed on him the “salt of the sea and the sinews of the sailor” that biographer David Pitt describes in Pratt’s poetry.

“It’s very masculine verse,” Pitt tells The Independent. “It’s a strong, vigorous, and sinewy kind of poetry. There’s nothing wishy-washy about it.”

VARIED CAREER Pratt didn’t write poetry until he was in his 30s and had almost finished his doctoral work in philosophy. In fact, as a young man he seemed to make money in every field except poetry. According to The Complete Poems and Letters of E.J. Pratt, an exhaustive online anthology and history project, Pratt was a teacher, a preacher, a dried goods vendor, a postal worker, a draper’s apprentice, a dictionary salesman, a refreshment stand operator, a real estate speculator, and in a most outlandish scheme, a hawker of patent medicine.

Hoping to earn money for a trip to Victoria College, part of the University of Toronto, Pratt and a friend sold a brew concocted from cherry bark, spruce tops, sarsaparilla, and rum, and sold it to sailors as “Universal Lung Cleaner.”

“The two of us got up to Toronto with $150, and that paid all our expenses practically for the year in tuition and food and lodging,” Pratt chuckled during a 1958 CBC interview.

In 1913, Pratt graduated as the top student in his bachelor’s of divinity program at Victoria College. He earned a gold medal for his accomplishment, which he immediately pawned in order to buy dinner for some friends from Newfoundland.

“I didn’t know what to do with a gold medal,” he told the CBC. “You could stick it away in some closet and forget about it or you could sell it. I had a lot of friends from Newfoundland who were always hungry — on the verge of existence.”

Pratt put on a dinner for 12, treating his friends to everything the Queen’s Hotel could offer.

A few months later, Pratt started to see former classmate Viola Whitney, who encouraged him to attend a poetry group meeting held by Pelham Edgar,

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head of Victoria College’s English department.

Three relationships bloomed from this happy invite: Pratt and Whitney were engaged in a matter of months and were together until his death in 1964; Edgar would become a life-long friend; and Pratt began his love affair with poetry.

After completing his doctorate in philosophy, Pratt joined the English faculty at Victoria College. He also pursued yet another passion — psychiatry, helping to establishing the Canadian Mental Health Association. But poetry began to occupy more and more of his time.

His early poems progressed from campus paper Acta Victoriana to Canadian Forum, and were eventually published in his first book, Newfoundland Verse, in 1923.

Though Pratt was now 40 years old, his poetry career had just begun.

Newfoundland Verse won critical acclaim, and Pratt expanded narrative style to write longer epics such as The Titans (1926) and The Titanic (1935).

He won his first Governor General Award for Fable of the Goats and Other Poems (1937); he would win two more for Brébeuf and His Brethren (1940), and Towards the Last Spike (1952).

Courtesy of Christopher Pratt

But Pratt stayed humble through all his success. Pitt, author of a two-volume Pratt biography and former head of Memorial University’s English department, often spoke with the poet when attending the University of Toronto. He says Pratt was helpful and encouraging to the “flock of young writers” he attracted.

“He was a very outgoing, friendly, one might often say effervescent type of character,” Pitt says. “He loved to entertain and he loved to be entertained.

There was nothing stuffy about him for sure. He wasn’t a stuffed shirt. There was nothing snobby or standoffish about him.”

Christopher Pratt agrees. Though he only met his great uncle a handful of times in his youth, he remembers his sense of humour.

“He wasn’t a dour scholarly humourless academic by any stretch of the imagination,” the painter recalls. “He never lost that Newfoundland edge that he grew up with and which he took with him when he left here.”

Indeed, though Pratt lived in Ontario until his death, he continued to visit Newfoundland, to write poems about Newfoundland, and to take an interest in Confederation and the establishment of Memorial University.

INDEPENDENTWORLD

SUNDAY THROUGH SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 19-25, 2006 — PAGE 9

David Emerson (left); buttons on sale at an Emerson forum in Vancouver last week

Reuters

Much ado about nothing Chantal Hébert says bandwagon against floor-crossing on a side trip to nowhere

O

By Chantal Hébert Torstar wire service

n the scale of the ailments that afflict Canada’s democratic system, party switching is the equivalent of a cold, an illness that will cure itself in seven days if it is treated, and in a week if it is left alone.

Notwithstanding the ongoing David Emerson furor, the currently popular notion of having MPs who switch parties submit themselves to a byelection is akin to forcing a critically ill patient to swallow a bowl of chicken soup.

At best, it won’t do much harm; at worst it amounts to suppressing a symptom rather than treating a life-threatening infection.

If anything is corroding Canada’s democratic system from the inside, it is ultimately not the lack of mechanisms for voters to hold politicians accountable for their actions.

On that front, the system does offer corrective measures, by giving voters the last word. The fact that this recourse can usual-

ly be exercised only after tempers have had time to cool, can make the difference between a lynch mob and a fair hearing.

The only way for an MP who crosses the floor to avoid the judgment of his/her constituents is to bail out of politics.

CAREER TERMINATION In Emerson’s case for instance, the quasicertain outcome of his decision to turn his back on the Liberals will be the termination — most likely at his own hands — of a political career that had until recently put him on every list of potential Liberal leadership aspirants.

Meanwhile, one of the side risks of making party switching as unpalatable as possible is to make it even less likely that MPs will be inclined to hold their ground on issues of principle.

Lost in the current shuffle is an even more fundamental malaise that goes to the root of our current election system.

Move 100,000 votes in Ontario and Atlantic Canada last Jan. 23 and you have the elements of a majority Conservative

government that is still devoid of representation from Canada’s three major cities.

Move that same 100,000 votes the other way and you have the ingredients of a national unity time bomb, and a Liberal majority government without representation from Alberta or francophone Quebec.

The reality is that the first-past-the-post system, despite the results of the last two votes, is more heavily tilted toward stability than equitable representation.

The instruments to fix that deficiency are blunt. They tend to do as much damage to the fabric of our democracy as the tears they are meant to mend.

DOSE OF PATRONAGE In the lead-up, and in the aftermath, of the last Quebec referendum, for instance, Jean Chrétien sent various Montreal MPs to patronage heaven to make room for Lucienne Robillard, Stéphane Dion and Pierre Pettigrew.

His Liberal government desperately needed stronger francophone representation to counter a surging sovereignist

movement. A hefty dose of patronage was the only way to get it.

In the same spirit, Chrétien appointed a number of women to promising ridings.

Leaving it to market forces to ensure that women are more adequately represented in the political arena simply has not worked so far.

When he appointed Emerson and Michael Fortier to his cabinet, Harper was not primarily seeking to bolster his numbers in the Commons. Nor was he looking to reward two men who can earn twice their ministerial salaries in the private sector.

Rather, he was trying to fill a gap that many critics felt left a fatal hole in the heart of his government, one that even the advent of a majority government could not have left unplugged.

So jump all you want on the bandwagon of a crusade against floor-crossing. But keep in mind that, when it comes to achieving a system that produces governments that reflect the complexities of Canadian society, that bandwagon is on a side trip to nowhere.

Wood, water just tip of the iceberg

With his appointment of a new ambassador to the U.S., it’s time for Harper to say where he stands vis-a-vis America

W

ith former Mulroney-ites popping out of the ground like extras from the Night of the Living Dead, Stephen Harper is getting to look, well, scary.

Derek Burney, Marjory LeBreton, and now Michael Wilson. How odd that our new man in Washington is the finance minister who dreamed up the Goods and Services Tax, (GST) which the Tories now plan to abolish. Nice to know Wilson also supported the Iraq war. But then so did his new boss in an earlier, more innocent time, when artists’ sketches passed for smoking guns.

MICHAEL HARRIS

The Outrider

Come to think of it, it was also Mulroney-esque to recruit a political turncoat and use the backroom of the Senate to elevate his campaign co-chair into the cabinet. Got to have an unelected party guy from Quebec in charge of Public Works, right? Accountability, right?

But not to quibble about tactics.

People may soon forget that our prime minister wiped out the decision of 20,000 voters in Vancouver-Kingsway for the good of the Tory party in some future election.

LEST WE FORGET Muldoon hopped in bed with the separatists for the same reason back in the 1980s. Canadians may even forget that Michael Fortier didn’t even want to run for the office he was ultimately handed like a knighthood from a PMO that is already looking depressingly monar-

chial.

No wonder the Bush administration is delighted with Harper’s election. The new prime minister is taking to ducking out of side doors to avoid the media, while his political quisling of choice, David Emerson, looks like he’s going to hold about as many press conferences as Dick Cheney, the man who bagged his friend and then sat down to a good dinner. Dead-eye Dick last met the assembled press in 2002.

Tactics may be forgotten, but strategy is another matter. You always reveal your true intentions in the big picture

See “No need for close,” page 10

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decisions. Stephen Harper has already stressed that improving relations with the United States is a front-burner issue with his new government. With one major campaign promise already broken, a question: Will Harper stand up for Canada, as he pledged when seeking votes, or sing for his supper like Muldoon?

No one knows. But not even the most buttoned down of press operations will be able to suppress the answer for long.

The first test will be softwood lumber.

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FEBRUARY 19, 2006

10 • INDEPENDENTWORLD

Turin’s Muslims in Games’ shadow

No need for close dancing with U.S. administration From page 9

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By Sandro Contenta Torstar wire service

ike most merchants in the teeming Porta Palazzo market, Said Karroui is as comfortable haggling in Italian as in Arabic.

He closes deals at his fruit and vegetable stand with a deep voice and an easy give-and-take manner. If only Turin’s police were as skilled at finding the middle ground, he says.

“I know there has to be security during the Olympics, but they are putting too much pressure on us — too much,” said Karroui, 42, who arrived from Morocco 16 years ago.

“The Olympics has made life much more difficult for us. We can’t walk around without being stopped by police,” he says, working his stand within sight of a group of police officers eyeing a market with about 150 Muslim merchants.

Karroui’s complaint is heard widely among Turin’s estimated 30,000 Muslims. For them the Winter Olympics has been somewhat less festive than for most residents and tourists.

Community leaders say the increased surveillance results in immigrants being given 15 days to leave the county when stopped without the proper visas. They don’t know how many have been caught but insist they are far more often workers supporting families back home than troublemakers.

The Games have also made them wary of drawing attention to themselves. The community decided not to demonstrate against Italian newspapers that published Danish cartoons denigrating the Prophet Muhammad.

“With the Olympics going on, we don’t want to frighten anyone with a street protest, even though our protests are always peaceful,” says Ibrahim Amir Younes, who heads an Arabic school.

Even cabinet minister Roberto Calderoli, with the xenophobic

A shoe seller at an outdoor market in Turin sells his wares as the Olympic Flame burns in the Andy Clark/Reuters background.

Northern League, cannot get them out on the street. Calderoli caused a storm by proudly proclaiming that he wears a T-shirt emblazoned with the controversial cartoons.

Younes says the only message Muslims want to get out is their support for the Olympics. Their last street demonstration was to express exactly that. “We want everything to go as smoothly and peacefully as possible.”

Italian officials have said they know of no international threats against the Games, but are not taking any chances.

Some 25,000 police officers have been brought in from across Italy.

Aircraft are banned from flying over Olympic venues and NATO surveillance planes are on 24-hour patrol.

Only a small fraction of Italy’s estimated 1.2 million Muslims are accused of links with international terrorist groups. Members of cells in northern Italy have been convicted of providing logistical support to terrorists. Among 200 people deported in the past two years for suspected extremist activity was Bureiqi Bushta, a radical preacher.

Younes says “propaganda” against Islam by some Italian politicians and media means the Muslim community is paying for the criminal actions of a few.

He emigrated from Egypt 26 years ago, when the tiny immigrant community quickly landed jobs at Fiat Auto, the city’s main employer, and were welcomed as an exotic attraction.

“We were much more respected back then. When I walked down the street I was always invited into a bar for a coffee. They preferred foreigners to Italians from the south. Today, it’s completely the opposite.”

In the 1960s, it wasn’t unusual to find homes with signs proclaiming the landlord did not rent to southern Italians, says Hamza Piccardo, general secretary of the Union of Islamic Communities Organizations in Italy. and Discrimination against Muslims now is more subtle but just as devastating.

“The first thing a landlord asks you when you call is, ‘Where are you from?’ As soon as I’d say Morocco, they’d say they rented the apartment the day before,” says Jaouad El Guelai, 27, who is studying filmmaking.

Also, with Fiat’s 60 per cent share of Italy’s market cut in half, immigrants are finding work hard to come by.

Once the Games are over, it’s time to focus on the social needs of immigrants, Younes says. Until then, Turin’s Muslims are under surveillance.

edgy, including former Alberta premier Peter Lougheed, who says Watch the footwork here. The Bushies Canada should loudly and clearly are suddenly all warm and fuzzy over serve notice our water is not for sale. the prospect of restarting the soft- Will Harper agree?

Mishandling relations with the wood lumber negotiations. David Emerson is quivering to seal this deal United States could send the first Tory as a way of legitimizing his brazen caucus meeting after the next election abuse of democracy and personal bad back to a phonebooth. The worst strategic mistake any Canadian prime manners.

But do you know of any other case minister can make is to underestimate where the guy who loses in court gets this country’s love of taking a friendto negotiate his way out of the ver- ly stance with the Americans while following an independent course in dict? That’s what courts do: Decide.

There should be no further negotia- matters of the national interest.

There is no need for Stephen tions on softwood lumber because the Harper (short of a matter has been deep philosophidecided by every trical attraction) to bunal in the book, While the rest of the do any close including NAFTA’s dancing with the highest panel for world sees the shield current U.S. resolving disputes trading between as the weaponization of administration.

That would be partners. In fact, furspace and the starting like booking a ther negotiations stateroom on the would simply signal line for a new arms Titanic — comdefeat and recogniuntil you tion of the fact that race, our new govern- fortable started seeing fish some people are a law unto themment wants to consider through the porthole. selves. The only The American honest thing left to its options. people, who now do on this file is to overwhelmingly look the Bushies in the eye and say, “When can we expect see this president as a failure, are about to crush the Republican Party in that $5 billion?”

Then there is the missile defence the coming mid-term elections. They shield. Harper says he wants to talk are disgusted with the Iraq war, with about this pet project of the presi- being spied on by their own governdent’s, a project that so far has been ment, with corporate corruption, with unable to take down an incoming the politicization of science, and an Canada goose. While the rest of the administration that has borrowed world sees the shield as the more money from foreign governweaponization of space and the start- ments and banks since 2000 than all ing line for a new arms race, our new other U.S. federal governments comgovernment wants to consider its bined since 1776.

And when bodies started popping options. Whatever could that mean, given this country’s longstanding up in New Orleans streets, President commitment to reserving the Milky Bush was vacationing at Crawford Ranch, the vice-president was flyWay for stars?

Water is a still greater test of fishing in Wyoming, and the head of Harper’s notion of Canadian sover- homeland security decided it was beteignty and his intentions vis-a-vis ter to attend a meeting on avian flu President Bush. Over the last several than to oversee the rescue of a decimonths, a growing list of Americans, mated American city. And last week, including former U.S. ambassador to all three got blasted for their derelicCanada Paul Cellucci, have been tion of duty, by Republicans.

Americans have seen the real wondering out loud why we won’t sell our water south of the border. George Bush. The real Stephen This has made a lot of Canadians Harper will be at least as interesting.

FEBRUARY 19, 2006

INDEPENDENTWORLD • 11

VOICE FROM AWAY

Newfoundland nomad

From maritime surveillance to international defence, Clarenville’s Paul Drover has been a soldier for 35 years

I

By Stephanie Porter The Independent

t’s about 8 a.m. in Washington D.C., and Col. Paul Drover has already been at work an hour. Today there’s the added bonus of a Canadian men’s Olympic hockey game on in the background — but he’d be in the office early anyway.

“In the Armed Forces, it’s kind of the way we do things,” he says. “But here in Washington, it especially makes a lot of sense, you’re able to get ahead of all those civil servants.”

Drover was born in Clarenville and spent his early years there. His interest Col. Paul Drover (above); in a rare departure in the forces started early — he joined from protocol, the Calgary Flames team flag Air Cadets “probably the only youth flies along with the Canadian national flag at activity in town at the time.” The flying the Canadian Embassy, in Washington, D.C. scholarship he received as a cadet led — where Drover is currently based. The U.S. him down a road that would take him Capitol is in the background. from Halifax to British Columbia to Yuri Gripas/Reuters Colorado to Alaska to Washington, “It was fairly traumatic, but I wasn’t the D.C., with plenty of stops in between.

Nearing retirement, Drover modestly first, nor the last, to experience it. If calls his 35-year career “unremark- that were to happen now, I might have able,” although it certainly has been full second thoughts, but when you’re young and enthusiastic, it didn’t phase of challenge and adventure.

Drover got his private pilot’s licence me.

“All said and in Gander when he done, I completed was a cadet. After a “On a night flight you’d the program and got year at Memorial, he my wings.” entered the regular fly about an hour offDrover’s first officers training proassignment was gram — the shore and all of a sudSquadron 880 based Canadian forces would pay for his den the horizon would in Shearwater, N.S., where he flew twoeducation; he would light up with a city of engine aircraft on work for them aftermaritime surveilwards. lights … I was not lance missions. It During the sumwas back in the midmers, he participataware of the extent of 1970s, about the ed in pilot training time Canada in Chilliwack and foreign fishing.” declared the 200Winnipeg, eventualmile economic zone, ly graduating to Col. Paul Drover and Drover and his Tutor aircraft (simicolleagues kept an lar to those the eye out for pollution and monitored Snowbirds fly).

There he faced his first serious fishing boats.

“It was quite incredible,” he says. mishap.

“During the training program I was “On a night flight you’d fly about an doing aerobatics and the aircraft hour offshore and all of a sudden the ‘departed controlled flight,’ which horizon would light up with a city of means it was out of control,” he says. lights. It wasn’t something you’d The aircraft apparently locked in an expect. The Russians would have over 200 ships there, just raking the sea botupside-down position.

“The system is designed to have an tom and the Grand Banks … I was not ejection seat and parachute — and it aware of the extent of foreign fishing, worked. I was able to get out of the air- it’s a big business.

“It was rewarding first employment, craft before it crashed.”

Drover says he basically walked being from Newfoundland and having away from the accident, and it didn’t the opportunity to participate in an keep him from getting back in the air. important program.”

M

After three years of flying surveillance, Drover spent three years instructing in Nova Scotia — making for one of his longest stays in any location.

He ended his maritime association there, heading to Ottawa for Frenchlanguage training, then on to a staff job at the headquarters in the capital city.

“I was working on an international program, with Russia, France, the U.S. and Canada, we put a satellite in orbit for search and rescue detection … that was before the Cold War was over so it was significant Russia was involved.”

Drover is pleased to add, though the actual satellites have changed, the search and rescue program is still going strong.

After a year in Toronto for more training, he (and his family, by now Drover had a wife and two young girls)

went to Comox, B.C., where he was assigned to a search and rescue squadron.

“We had two search and rescue technicians with us,” he remembers. “And these guys were medics, paratroopers, scuba divers, they did it all. And if we found a crash site, we’d throw those folks out of the aircraft and they’d do triage and first response medical …”

Though the mountains of the west coast provided a challenge, Drover says “I don’t think there’s better work than flying out there.”

After three years in Comox, he went to Trenton, Ont., to take a position as a senior staff officer for search and rescue forces — and after three years his “reward” was a return to Comox, this time as commander of the search and rescue squadron. He went on to become wing operations officer at the site (“I

was airport manager, more of less,” he describes).

Then it was back to Ottawa to work as one of the chief planners for “peacekeeping operations in places like Haiti and Cambodia.” That led into a shift to the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) headquarters in Colorado Springs. “That’s where I got in the business of air defence,” he says.

“I ran exercise training programs for all of NORAD for three years. It was an incredible experience, an example of a success story where two nations have come together for a common defence.”

His last operational job was in Alaska, as deputy commander for the NORAD region.

And then, to his current position as an air attaché at the Canadian Embassy in Washington, D.C. “I deal with air activities and military affairs between the two countries,” he summarizes.

Drover co-ordinates a number of exchange positions and other co-operative programs.

Although he can’t say enough about the bustling, culturally rich city of Washington, Drover says he’ll be retiring from the Forces this year (but not fully retiring — he plans to work elsewhere). He and his wife plan to settle in Ottawa, at least for a while. His daughters, now 26 and 28, are both married and have families of their own.

“My wife is a dependent of an Air Force family so she doesn’t have any roots anywhere in Canada,” he says.

“And I don’t really, so we’re not entirely sure whether Ottawa is a place we want to roll into old age … but who knows? There’s a reasonable chance that this is going to be a place of some permanency.”

After 35 years of moving place to place, of uprooting his children and family again and again, Drover says he’s got “nothing against homesteading in one location, but the opportunities we’ve had have been totally enjoyable.

“If you do a whole career in the military, there’s nothing exceptionally remarkable about my specific career path … you don’t do the same job for 35 years. You’re going to be fairly mobile, nomadic.

“The most enjoyable aspect of the career is the absolute pleasure to have met so many people from all over the world, all over the country. It’s been incredible.”

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

Toronto may ban toy guns

ayors around the Greater Toronto Area are being asked to endorse a ban on kids possessing toy guns in public.

The move to prohibit anyone under 18 from having toy guns in public spaces is being led by Scugog Mayor Marilyn Pearce, whose township north of Oshawa was the first in Ontario to enact the ban last month.

“I am hoping all of the municipalities in the GTA will come on board on this initiative to get toy guns off the streets,” Pearce says. “It is really about protecting children.”

Pearce says it was an “alarming” number of “scary” incidents involving the toys over the last year that prompted the town council to act.

“The concern was that these realistic toy guns are being used by children in such a way that a police officer might shoot first and ask questions later.”

Durham Region Council recently discussed instituting a similar ban region-wide, but on legal advice referred the matter to its local municipalities for consideration.

Under the Scugog bylaw, the “possession” of toy guns in public places by anyone younger than 18 years old is punishable by a $150 fine. Imitation or replica guns are legal for anyone older than 18 unless used in committing crime.

Durham Region Const. Todd Petzold says officers would use discretion in enforcing the bylaw and would not be issuing tickets to 8-year-old children.

“In those cases, I would take the child home to the parent and inform them of the dangers of playing with these toys on the streets,” he says.

“There is no problem with children using these toys in their homes, but if you take a realistic-looking toy gun on the street, you could be in danger.”

He also says since Scugog passed its bylaw in January, some kids have started turning their toy guns in to police.

“I have received several of them from children who says they just did not want them now that the bylaw had

been passed.”

Petzold, a community police officer who works in Port Perry area schools, says some of these weapons cost as little as $2 in discount department stores.

Under federal law, the sale of replica or imitation handguns is prohibited to persons younger than 18.

“But that hasn’t stopped parents from

buying these very realistic-looking toys for their children.”

Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair says that while there isn’t a toy gun ban in Toronto, a police program called Gunplay No Way works with community partners in exchanging in toy guns for less violent toys.

— Torstar wire service

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FEBRUARY 19, 2006

12 • INDEPENDENTWORLD

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INDEPENDENTLIFE

SUNDAY THROUGH SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 19–25, 2006 — PAGE 13

Lorraine Michael

Paul Daly/The Independent

‘The gospel of social justice’

A

By Stephanie Porter The Independent

t the Voisey’s Bay mine and mill site in Labrador, 75 per cent of the workforce is aboriginal, and a significant number — almost 25 per cent — are women. At Inco’s hydromet demonstration facility in Argentia, 37 per cent of the staff is female.

Last spring, a representative from the Women in Resource Development Committee (WRDC) was invited to make a presentation at the provincial building and construction trades council’s annual general meeting, and was warmly received.

Recently, Corner Brook Pulp and Paper, during an environmental assessment for a new development, had to provide an employment equity plan.

In the often-thankless work of social activism, these are the kind of breakthroughs that keep Lorraine Michael going.

For the past seven years, Michael has been executive director of WRDC, a provincewide organization committed to opening doors for women in careers of trades and technology, fields still dominated by men.

It’s the latest stop in a career of fighting for change. Michael has been an educator, administrator, researcher and a lifelong tireless advocate for social justice, working on behalf of women, children, the underprivileged and the environment.

She may soon take that drive into the political area. Though she hasn’t made a

Lorraine Michael on encouraging women to get involved in male-dominated fields, running in Jack Harris’ shoes, and her faith

final decision, Michael is well aware her name is being bandied about as one of the possible successors to Jack Harris, the provincial NDP leader. “I’m giving consideration to that,” she says. “I do think I have an awful lot to bring, in my background and my history and the work I’m doing now … and I still have the energy.”

These days, Michael keeps going in the face of the challenges and frustrations of her work by focusing on positive changes happening around her.

In 1990, she wasn’t able to do that.

“It’s not something I talk about much, but I had very severe burnout and I was about two years in recuperation,” she says. “I didn’t know if I would ever get back to being myself again.”

For the first major part of her professional life, Michael worked towards her goals as a devoted Catholic. She was “Sister Lorraine Michael” for almost 30 years.

And then the foundation of her beliefs were profoundly shaken.

“I was doing work within the context of the Roman Catholic Church at a time when what the church was going through was very difficult for me to deal with, which was the

sexual abuse issue,” she says.

“I so believed that the gospel is a gospel of social justice. I rooted all my work in that …

I just couldn’t take it any more, working for social justice and having a complete betrayal by the structure in which I was doing that.

The way I saw them responding to the issue was just so at the basis of what I thought social injustice was about. After years of very very hard work, this just broke me.”

But it didn’t completely break her. After two years of careful thought and determination, she came back. No longer active with the church, Michael feels her commitments and focus have never wavered.

She still gets called “Sister Lorraine” once in awhile — and doesn’t mind anymore.

“It’s part of my persona, I was that for 30 years, that’s part of what formed me,” she says.

In the past decade, Michael’s work has turned slightly, taking her face to face with industry, business, and politics. After living and working in Toronto through the early’90s, the opportunity to be part of the Voisey’s Bay Environmental Assessment Panel got her back to the East Coast.

That experience — dealing with the natu-

ral resources sector in Newfoundland and Labrador, promoting the training and hiring of aboriginal women — made her a perfect fit for the lead position at WRDC. Now based in the organization’s head offices in downtown St. John’s (there are satellite offices at four other locations in the province), Michael is back home, literally a stone’s throw away from the houses she grew up in.

Her work with Voisey’s Bay Nickel Company over the past few years is a source of great pride. From her first days sitting on a panel, listening to representatives of the company, to working directly with them to develop policies and programs, Michael is thrilled at the strides they’ve made towards equal opportunity.

“There are examples in the history of Inco that I know about and would not be happy with and I had lots of reservations about Inco being involved here,” she admits. “Even in Sudbury with regard to environmental issues they don’t have a great history.

“But Voisey’s Bay Nickel is showing itself to be very concerned.”

Another WRDC staff member is working with the company to develop continuous gender and cultural sensitivity training. And the 37 per cent women employees in Argentia is major, says Michael — one-third s considered a critical mass, and that site is one of the few examples of a place that has achieved it.

As for other industries in the province,

See “A difference,” page 15

LIVYER

In the spotlight

Brad Dobbin returned to St. John’s to work with Fog Devils; never guessed his job would make him a celebrity

T

By Darcy MacRae The Independent

he arrival of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League in St. John’s meant different things to different people. To many young athletes, the chance to play major junior hockey for the Fog Devils presented itself, while fans were given a team to replace the departing St. John’s Maple Leafs.

For Brad Dobbin, the arrival of the Fog Devils offered him the chance to return home.

“As soon as somebody floats by the opportunity to get involved with sports business or sports management, you

have to jump at it if you’re a sports fan,” Dobbin tells The Independent.

Dobbin was living in Toronto with his wife Susanne Hiller (a St. John’s native who formerly worked as a reporter with the National Post, and now works in communications) and newborn daughter Lucy Rose when his father Derm and uncle Craig were awarded the Q franchise. It wasn’t long before Brad held the position of team governor, and he, Susanne and Lucy Rose were on their way back to St. John’s.

“After spending seven years essentially on our own in Toronto with a young baby, it’s really nice to be home and have our daughter, who’s only 19

months, get to know her grandparents and the rest of her family a lot better,” says Dobbin.

The 36-year-old’s return home offered him a chance to plant his feet for a while after living in several different cities over the past 20 years. While in his late teens, Dobbin left St. John’s to attend Choate Rosemary Hall, a prep school in Wallingford, Connecticut.

“At the time I was an avid basketball player, so it was a combination of academic pursuits and an opportunity to go play some basketball at a higher level,” says Dobbin.

Upon graduation Dobbin headed to Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania, where he played division

Brad Dobbin

III NCAA basketball for two years before a back injury forced him to hang up his sneakers.

“It was exciting, it was fun to play at a level like that,” says Dobbin.

“Basketball was a much bigger specta-

Paul Daly/The Independent

tor sport in the United States than it was in Newfoundland at that time.

“It’s changed a lot since then … now you can’t drive around St. John’s withSee “Ecstatic about,” page 18

FEBRUARY 19, 2006

14 • INDEPENDENTLIFE

GALLERYPROFILE

TARYN SHEPPARD

A

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gainst the wall of Taryn Sheppard’s studio leans a landscape painting, just started, with swaths of black, green and blue along the top. It’s going to be Torbay on a snowy day, she says — or a version of it.

Sheppard picks up the photograph she’s working from. It’s mostly white snow and black rocks, a colourless winter scene.

“When I stare at that kind of (black-andwhite) contrast, I start to see different shades in there, in the white all these different colours come popping out,” she says.

“Since I moved back here last June, I’ve just wanted to paint landscapes, lots of landscapes. From my head and from photographs … sometimes I’ll start from a photograph and then go on and it takes a life of its own, I’m improvising colours and …

“This one is definitely evolving into something a lot further from the original.

It will become a full-on abstract painting by the end.”

Sheppard spent the last six years “on the mainland”; four of them in Halifax completing a bachelor of fine arts at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. She’s excited to be back home, and inspired by the dramatic and graphic scenes around her (“The geography is very flat where I was living in Nova Scotia,” she shrugs).

The landscape in progress is just one piece Sheppard will be showing as part of a group exhibition opening at the Leyton Gallery of Fine Art March 4.

Although Sheppard says her pieces for the show will be primarily landscapes and portraits, a quick look around her workspace shows she’s not limited in her chosen styles or subjects.

Or location. Sheppard spent her last semester of school in Tucson, Ariz., surrounded by sand, palm trees, heat and “a really interesting light quality in the air.”

While there, she was drawn to various iconic images of that area of the States.

She points out one painting: a sculpture she came across in a small church. “I just really wanted to capture the gold and the vibrant colours of the statue,” she says.

Not far away is another scene from along the highway in Arizona.

“There was this amazing mural of the Virgin Mary and a shepherd and an old truck next to it, and it was strange to see this fluorescent sign (for a video store) mounted on top of this beautiful mural,” she says.

Sheppard says her primary inspiration comes from impressionist painters, but she’s also intrigued by darker, gothic sensibilities. A trio of abstract paintings of ships’ masts are darkly moody, with careful attention paid to the sky and creeping fog.

While her work is full of personality and atmosphere, Sheppard insists she’s not interested in telling the public about herself directly through paintings … “it’s more an interpretation of the world I see around.”

Sheppard began her studies with a focus in sculpture, but the practical realities of the medium — maintaining a foundry or wood shop after school is expensive — struck her about two years in.

“I figured I’d focus more on painting so I could have a career in the arts,” she says.

“I’ve pretty much always thought I was going to be an artist and now I’m an artist … it’s comfortable, I’m pretty comfortable.

“It’s not an easy lifestyle but the arts community here is fantastic.” www.theleytongallery.com — Stephanie Porter

The Gallery is a regular feature in The Independent. For information, or to submit proposals, please call (709) 7264639, or e-mail editorial@theindependent.ca

FEBRUARY 19, 2006

INDEPENDENTLIFE • 15

Thinking beyond the cliché F lying Air Canada last week I caught my first glimpse of the province’s new tourism advertising campaign. Up on those tiny plastic encased screens, sandwiched between yesterday’s news and a prehistoric episode of Will and Grace, was a gorgeous two-minute video entitled The Edge.

It was hard not to notice how everyone’s attention was suddenly diverted to the screens. Passengers turned from their newspapers and inner thoughts to look up. Even without headphones, the images were distracting. You had to watch.

That’s the idea, of course. How do you package a province like ours in a minute or two? As the old joke goes, with great difficulty. The Department of Tourism, Culture, and Recreation has been working on developing the new ads for some time, well before Minister Hedderson moved over from Education.

Timing is everything in politics and Hedderson gets to bask in the glory of what appears to be a richly successful tourism campaign, but credit must go to all those at Target Marketing who had a part in conceiving and then producing these fine pieces.

And so what is so good about them?

For one thing they are unlike anything we have ever seen before. In the postmodern age it is impossible to be original. As soon as an image appears it is reproduced and appropriated, freshness drained from it like a poster of Van Gogh’s sunflowers. It didn’t take long before ads for Newfoundland and Labrador started looking like the ads for Nova Scotia and vice versa. If you had a good ear you could distinguish the Rankins from the Folk of the Sea but it was impossible to tell one bergy bit, whale fluke, or berry from another.

Maritime tourist planners rode the Celtic revival wave to death. Anyone interested in travelling to these parts figured they were more likely to bump into a village idiot doing a jig than a Wal-Mart. No wonder the whole cultur-

NOREEN GOLFMAN

Standing room only

al tourism project has bred cynicism.

This newly minted trilogy of finely crafted ads avoids the kind of sentimentality that characterizes those of the past. In fact, it is more accurate to call them films, not ads. They are defiantly arty. The Premier has been talking about “branding” the province differently, a term that should produce a gag reflex in any self-respecting citizen.

But if these ads are examples of what he had in mind, then bring it on.

The first and longest of these introduces the viewer to a place that resembles Middle Earth. The camera swoops and circles over the orange and purple hued coastal terrain like a curious gull.

The accompanying music is provocative, at once ancient and contemporary, like the drum beats of some exotic tribe. From afar we see a lone figure walking up to the edge of the cliffs, the sea roaring and rising dramatically beneath him. The camera keeps following him, moving in closer to get a better look. White bearded, ruddy faced, his eyes now twinkling back at us, he is part skipper, part biblical patriarch.

A sonorous, off screen voice intones that “the people from the flat earth society believe that this place is one of the four corners of the world … the very edge of the earth … ah, that’s just foolishnesses, isn’t it?” Cut to the provincial flag, waving in the wind. Until that last signifying frame you might think you had been taken to some exotic other world, drawn into a strange and compelling drama. At best, the short film expresses a mythic sense of place, as far from the familiar as Bonavista is from Belleville.

Indeed, the campaign is specifically aimed at Ontario residents who are seeking alternative experiences of nature and culture, intriguing and chal-

THREE JUNO NODS FOR PROVINCE

lenging but safely within our national borders. Travellers looking for diverse urban experiences and streets full of high-end shopping know where to go.

Not here.

The second in the series is as stunningly shot, but its emphasis is on art and culture, as well as geography.

Seeing it is appreciating, but it is enough to say it is a masterful celebration of local craft, an ingenious borrowing of familiar local images to make an important point about the quality of what is produced here. You will never look at a clothesline the same way again.

The third and equally successful film in the series takes us through a graceful montage of rural communities, matching charming place names to humourous visuals. So it is that we see a welcoming rocking chair on a cabin porch in Little Paradise, a couple of plump rosy cheeked boys smiling at us from behind a fence in Cupids, a handsome groom sweeping his laughing bride into his arms in Heart’s Desire, and a suggestively romantic night scene in Conception Harbour. In a matter of mere seconds the filmmakers suggest the full range of rich life experiences available to any traveller in Newfoundland.

And there’s more to them than any descriptive paragraph can capture. All three films are clever and understated, implicitly signifying the wit that makes being here so appealing. If there’s a gripe it’s that the last film concludes with a disembodied voice stating the obvious, that this place is “as far from Disneyland as you can possibly get.”

It’s too bad Disneyland is even mentioned. The images and the stylish stories they tell speak for themselves.

Ironically enough, those Disney ads sure work their magic on Newfoundlanders.

Noreen Golfman is a professor of literature and women’s studies at Memorial University. Her column return March 5.

As announced last week, Great Big Sea and Rex Goudie pulled in a total of three nominations for the 2006 JUNO awards. Great Big Sea (above, from left, Alan Doyle, Bob Hallett and Sean McCann) received a nod for best roots and traditional album of the year (group) for The Hard and the Easy, the band’s first all-traditional, acoustic CD. Rex Goudie (left) may have come in second during last summer’s Canadian Idol, but he got the national recognition — Goudie is vying for artist of the year and album of the year for Under the Lights. Idol winner Melissa O’Neill did not fare so well, receiving no nominations.

The 2006 JUNO awards will take place in Halifax, N.S., April 2.

Paul Daly (above); Rhonda Hayward (left)/The Independent

POET’S CORNER Hard Times Oh, the fisherman, heartsick, is out all the day, And when in the evening he sails up the Bay He walks into the kitchen, gives Kitty a nod, Sayin’, “Another vain day in our trying for cod” — Ah, ’tis hard times, ha-a-a-rd times.

Yes, they bane as bad as we ever did see,

We don’t have no fun like the old-fashioned spree.

There’s no one to fiddle, and on one to play— Oh, it’s hard times, ha-a-a-rd times.

Skipper George says such cruel times he never has seen, While he blames Sir William, Big Tom blames Moreen.

Neilson’s Hatchery drives all the fish from the Bay— Oh, it’s hard times, ha-a-a-rd times.

A poem from volume one of The Book of Newfoundland, 1937.

‘A difference in atmosphere’ From page 13

Michael says they’re coming along.

They are having their first discussions within the forestry sector; there are still extremely few women offshore, but during the construction phase of White Rose, “great steps” were made.

“We had to intervene in Marystown because women were putting in their resumes and they weren’t even getting interviewed,” she says. “ We had to go to Husky … and they reacted and got things turned around.”

Although the statistics don’t yet show it — it may take another 20 years “before there will be significant numbers” — Michael says there have been

many changes in the world of women in trades and technology.

“There is a difference in atmosphere,” she says. “It’s easier to talk about these issues than it was seven years ago.”

WRDC also runs several education, experience and awareness programs for girls, introducing them to careers in the fields of trade and technology. Michael reports growing support from educators and industry — and an overwhelmingly enthusiastic response from the girls.

“We’re proud of what we’ve done,” she says. “We really are working to change the face of Newfoundland and Labrador, working to make real societal change. To add to our economy by get-

ting women on a better foot economically.”

Michael takes a time out to give a nod to the staff and board of directors she works with, as well as the countless volunteers and other organizations striding towards similar goals.

“Our work is hard. We work hard and we’re always at it, but we see so many success stories every day … this one has this job, this one had to move away, but look at the job she got.

“I’ve been at this a long time, you struggle and the struggle continues but you see change happening. And as long as you see change happening you keep at it.” stephanie.porter@theindependent.ca

16 • INDEPENDENTLIFE

IN CAMERA

Canada’s Brad Gushue-led curling team has battled hard at the Torino 2006 Olympic Winter Games. As of The Independent’s Feb. 17 press deadline, Gushue had a record of four wins and two losses. Photographer Andy Clark is covering the curling competition for Reuters News Service.

Clockwise from top: Brad Gushue (top) and Russ Howard (centre) watch over the shoulder of Norway's Lars Vaagberg Feb. 16. Canada defeated Norway 6-5.

Gushue (front) shouts to teammates as Germany's second Oliver Axnick (centre) and lead Holger Hoehne watch during their match Feb. 13. Canada won 10-5.

Gushue reacts to his last shot in the 10th end during play against Norway.

Howard (left) and Gushue chat during a break in their match against Germany.

Gushue (centre) discusses the team's next move with Howard (right) and Mark Nichols during their match against Finland Feb. 17. Canada lost, 7-6.

Gushue alone after he and his teammates were defeated by Sweden in extra ends Feb. 14. The final score was 8-7.

FEBRUARY 19, 2006

FEBRUARY 19, 2006

INDEPENDENTLIFE • 17

Gushue delivers against Britain Feb. 15. On the right is Canadian lead Jamie Korab and on left third Mark Nichols. Canada defeated Britain 9-5.

Ice rage tugs at Gushue T

By Dave Perkins Torstar wire service

here’s trouble in the curling paradise that is the Pinerolo Palaghiaccio.

Lousy ice is creating short tempers among all combatants and even the Gushue rink isn’t having much fun and required a team meeting to readjust attitude.

After getting into a peck of trouble because of a “pick” against Switzerland that turned a go-ahead point into a gutter ball and a loss of three, Brad Gushue’s rink rallied with an astonishing four consecutive steals to swipe a 7-5 win over Ralph Stoeckli’s foursome — and Stoeckli was just as confused by, and fed up with, the ice and the picks as the

Canadians and every other rink. (“Picks” are tiny little momentum — and path-changing bits of debris, or footprints on soft ice that affect rocks.).

The Gushue rink had an airclearing team meeting because of some age-specific tension prior to a 9-4 rout of Great Britain on the afternoon of Feb. 15.

Three of the Newfoundlanders are in their mid-20s and Russ Howard is a few days from his 50th birthday and no, this wasn’t about what music they can all listen to. Howard says it was a “first date” kind of thing; they’re still getting used to each other.

“We had a good team meeting and threw it all out on the table, as we usually do,” Gushue says, referring to friction and stony

silence between team members.

“It’s not the way we usually are.

Russ is from the old school of curling. The rest of us are New Age, we work with sports psychologists and stuff like that.

We’re working on him.”

“We just didn’t feel our attitude was right in (a Feb. 14 loss to Sweden). I stunk the joint out. I wasn’t very happy about the way I was curling and none of us got any good vibes from that game,” Howard says.

“We’ve always thrived on being happy, fun, and Newfoundlandlike and we just didn’t do that. So we had a meeting and came out and played great. Hard to say how good we played (against Switzerland) because the rocks had a mind of their own.

“We’re two different schools,” Howard continues, speaking of the differences. “It’s about intensity. I get intense and I don’t think it affects my game. If anything, it gets the old arteries going. But I think it maybe sends the wrong message to the boys. They’re not used to it.

“I play with my brother or Wayne Middaugh and they don’t care if I’m running around ranting and raving, screaming and yelling. It’s different with the boys.”

Think how different everything would be if they had lost to Switzerland.

As it was, they weren’t too happy after the win.

“That’s the most disappointed I’ve ever been after a win,” says

Gushue, who held his breath on his final stone, leading 6-5, facing two Swiss counters and needing to draw to the button. The rock caught something, but still spun to the house for the winning point.

“It’s nerve-wracking. You’re trying to draw to the button, which I’m going to do 90 per cent of the time, but you don’t know if it’s going to pick. It did pick, too, but fortunately the weight didn’t come out of it.

“It is absolutely the most frustrating time curling. You throw rocks and have no idea where they’re going,” Gushue continues.

“And Ralph got some, too. It wasn’t just us.”

“I’ll bet Brad had eight (picks) in that game and we still won it.

Unbelievable,” adds Howard.

FEBRUARY 19, 2006

18 • INDEPENDENTLIFE

The making of a chef J

ust before I departed for culinary school in search of what it means to make good food, I picked up a book called The Making of a Chef by Michael Ruhlman.

It was a writer’s journey through the first year of the Culinary Institute of America, what amounts to a Harvard education for aspiring chefs. He enters the first year of the culinary school, and with the help of the administration, hides out as a student. The events of that year change him forever. While initially he was not thinking about becoming a chef, the school was ever etching itself upon the writer. He found that he was running everywhere. Not because he was a runner, but cooking in a kitchen with tight deadlines and lots of pressure and just having to get the work done … no matter what, made him run.

Books can have a profound effect on you. I read a lot of books about food — from food writers to biographies of chefs and lots of good cookbooks.

NICHOLAS GARDNER

Off the eating path

Ruhlman’s book is real. I lived it. I felt that tightness the CIA students felt. The early morning classes, the time deadlines and the expectancy that you were there for class, no matter what.

The Making of a Chef was my student handbook.

Food writing should be provocative.

It should push you to thinking about food in many different ways and it should inspire.

I know I was inspired by The Making of a Chef to be the best. Ruhlman’s journey through the kitchens of the CIA is poignant and is true to the experiences in a culinary school. I highly recommend this one for all young and aspiring chefs to read about the beauty

THE WAY THEY WERE

and the struggle of a culinary education. And for anyone else for that matter to see what it is like behind the doors of one of the great culinary schools.

On the other hand, there are some authors who have taken it upon themselves to make a harrowing admission in print. Kitchens are dark and dirty.

This is an exchange I get frequently at parties when the subject turns to food.

“Have you read the book about the chef in New York? You know the one about the kitchen?”

“Kitchen Confidential?” I offer.

“Yes. That’s the one. What do you think about it?”

For the most part, Anthony Bourdain in his now infamous work Kitchen Confidential exposes the darker side of the rough and tumble world of cookery.

Now, I do not live in the vastness of Gotham as he does nor have I partaken in the perils of the hard-core drug

From page 13

out seeing basketball nets in people’s driveways.”

After college, Dobbin worked in the IT industry with several companies, including the CHC Helicopter Corporation owned by his uncle Craig.

Later, Dobbin would start and sell his own IT company before working in Europe and Toronto.

Returning to St. John’s offered Dobbin not only the opportunity to come home, but also to experience a new career.

“My job has taken on a bit of a marketing shift, which is an interesting departure from IT,” Dobbin says. “But probably the most exciting part (of the job) has been getting to know the young guys who come to the team.

Just getting to know the 25 or 26 play-

ers who have come through here, and finding out what their impressions are of Newfoundland and what their take is on being a hockey player at their age.”

One aspect of his new job that hasn’t been so enjoyable is the way Dobbin has been thrust into the spotlight whenever a controversial issue arises regarding the Fog Devils.

However, he says it’s unavoidable ,considering his position.

“That was one of the biggest surprises — how high profile the job is,” Dobbin says. “If I screwed something up from an IT perspective, it wasn’t in the paper the next day.

“It was an adjustment to get used to something as high profile, but it also has its benefits as well. Not a whole lot of people would stop me in the street to ask me about IT, but I get

the passion for good food is fuelled.

The other is the regular outlook on the culinary journey. For most cooks, an education is gleaned on the job, moving nomadically as need be to develop new skills. Kitchen Confidential is a raw look at cooking at ground zero and reliving the experiences that go with that kind of cooking.

Comparing them is easy, but they are different experiences. One is like eating food in a brand new restaurant.

Squeaky clean and perfect in its presentation. The other is like the trip to your local greasy spoon diner. Sure, the place is not as clean as it should be but the flavours are familiar and the people are as real as the food. While both are different experiences, they are equally satisfying.

Nicholas is an erstwhile chef and current food writer now living in St. John’s. nicholas.gardner@gmail.com

EVENTS

Photographer Kent Barrett's exhibition The Way They Were runs from Feb. 19 -March 26 at the RCA Gallery, LSPU Hall in St John's.

Paul Daly/The Independent

‘Ecstatic about the job’

movement, but certain similarities exist, if not to those extremes.

Sure there are those fringe elements, but what job does not contain some fringe element? Busy, hot and cramped but certainly not that level of hard-core living Bourdain tries to offer the reader.

Kitchen Confidential offers a rockand-roll outlook to the culinary world.

It is full of pain and savagery at times … meetings with the mob for food supplies and being hired out as a mercenary chef.

Even for the entire rock-and-roll attitude, Bourdain writes from a beenthere, done-that attitude. This arrogance, possibly rightly fuelled by experience, has become the bible for line cooks the world over. Believe me, in some circles Bourdain is revered as a god.

The two books cover different territory. One is the journey for excellence, one steeped in a vast education.

Everything has weight and measure and

stopped pretty regularly to talk about this business, and that can be pretty fun.”

As much as he enjoys being a part of the Fog Devils, Dobbin has no illusions of one day serving as the team’s general manager or head coach. He’s the first to admit he’s a “basketball guy,” and says he’ll leave the hockey decisions to Réal Paiement.

“I’m certainly not making any hockey decisions for the Fog Devils, which is a good thing, believe me,” Dobbin says. “That would be a dangerous, dangerous thing at this point, to be quite frank.

“I’m ecstatic about the job Réal Paiement is doing and we defer to him on every hockey decision and will continue to do that for a long time to come.” darcy.macrae@theindependent.ca

FEBRUARY 19 • Groovin’ and Improvin’ workshop/jam sessions presented by the St. John’s Jazz Festival, every Sunday 25 p.m. at Rabbittown Threatre, 106 Freshwater Rd, 739-7734 or e-mail info@stjohnsjazzfestival.com • Norse in the new world, the Vinland Seawolves bring first Europeans to life, The Rooms, 2 and 3 p.m.

• Exhibition opening: The way they were, Kent Barrett’s photographs of Newfoundland performers and artists from 1973-1985 — and rephotographed again today. Subjects include Ron Hynes, Chris Brookes, Noel Dinn, Cathy Jones and more.

Reception 3-5 p.m., RCA Gallery, LSPU Hall, 753-4531.

• Heritage day: museums in St. John’s and Mount Pearl offer free admission and/or family activities.

Check out Admiralty House, The Rooms, Johnson GEO Centre, Railway Coastal Museum, Newman Wine Vaults, Cabot Tower, more. 7229034.

• Miss Teen Newfoundland and Labrador pageant, St. John’s Arts and Culture Centre, 7:30 p.m.

• The Avalon Unitarian Fellowship’s regular Sunday service starts 10:30 a.m. at the Anna Templeton Centre, Duckworth Street.

• Closing day for Mount Pearl’s annual Frosty Festival. Visit www.mountpearl.ca for schedule of events.

• The Good Thief, written by Conor McPherson, performed by Aiden Flynn, Rabbittown Theatre Company, Merrymeeting Road, 739-8220.

FEBRUARY 20 • Steele Communications tribute to the legends of country music featuring the 8-Track Favourites and opening act Sherry Ryan. St. John’s Arts and Culture Centre, 8 p.m.

• CBC Radio’s annual poetry face-off Rumble at The Rabbittown, hosted by Angela Antle and featuring Geraldine Rubia, Amy Snook, Robin McGrath and Sean Panting. For more, see www.cbc.ca/poetryfaceoff.

• Grown-ups book club: Marnie Parsons hosts a discussion of Diana Wynne Jones’ Fire and Hemlock, a retelling of the Tam Lin legend. 8 p.m., Granny Bates, 2 Bates Hill, 739-9233 or info@grannybates.com.

FEBRUARY 21 • Lunch with traditional music featuring Frank Maher, Rick West, Stan Picket and Andrew Lang, Auntie Crae’s, 272 Water Street, 12:30 p.m.

754-0661.

• Open studio at the Anna Templeton Centre dye studio every Tuesday evening, 7-10 p.m. With Susan

Furneaux, dye technician, 739-7623 to book space.

• Avalon sledge hockey association versus municipal politicians in an exhibition game, CBS Arena, 8:10 p.m.

FEBRUARY 22 • Folk night at the Ship Pub hosted by The Rosalines, 9:30 p.m.

• Atlantic Ballet Theatre of Canada presents Amadus world premiere tour, St. John’s Arts and Culture Centre, 8 p.m.

FEBRUARY 23 • MUN Cinema series: Everything is illuminated, 7 p.m., Studio 12, Avalon Mall.

• 55th annual Kiwanis Festival begins at the St. John’s Arts and Culture Centre.

• Masters of Curling begins at Mile One Stadium. Continues through Feb. 26.

• St. John’s experimental musicians Spanner (Paul Bendzsa, woodwinds, electronics; Rob Power, percussion) release debut CD at Ship Pub, 8 p.m.

• Newfoundland Historical Society lecture by Dr. Terry Carlson titles Up Against the Prison Wall, 8-10 p.m., Hampton Hall, Marine Institute.

FEBRUARY 25 • The Vigina Monologues by Eve Ensler, produced by the Women’s Resource Centre, 8 p.m., Reid Theatre, Memorial University COMING UP • Exhibitions opening at the Craft Council Gallery, Devon House: Internal Lndscapes, watercolours and silk paintings by Diana Dabinet; and Comfort in Place, an exhibit of quilted nudes that celebrate the fat lady by Cara Winsor Hehir. Reception Feb. 26, 2-4 p.m., exhibitions on display until March 24.

IN THE GALLERIES • Where Wonder, What Weight by Will Gill and Beth Oberholtzer, The Rooms.

• Humble Goddess by Nicole Pitcher, Craft Council Gallery, Devon House.

• Colour & Light, a joint exhibition by Danielle Lemelin and Laurie Leehane, balance restaurant and art gallery, 147 LeMarchant Rd, 722-2112. Until Feb. 25.

• The way they were, Kent Barrett’s photographs of Newfoundland performers and artists from 1973-1985 — and rephotographed today. Subjects include Ron Hynes, Chris Brookes, Noel Dinn, Cathy Jones and more.

RCA Gallery, LSPU Hall.

INDEPENDENTBUSINESS

SUNDAY THROUGH SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 19-25, 2006 — PAGE 19

Roger Chafe

Paul Daly/The Independent

Personalized approach William L. Chafe and Son Ltd. has been offering fine men’s clothing in St. John’s for over 75 years

R

By Darcy MacRae The Independent

oger Chafe sees a lot of familiar faces when he goes to work.

Following in the footsteps of his grandfather, William L. Chafe, and his father, William L. Jr. — Roger Chafe is a third-generation manager of William L. Chafe and Son Ltd. men’s clothing store on Water Street in downtown St. John’s.

He’s been working at the store since childhood, and still sees many of the same people shopping in the store today that he saw as a kid.

“I’ve got men coming in here who tell me they’ve never shopped anywhere else,” Chafe tells The Independent. “They bought suits from my grandfather …

we’ve got a dedicated clientele.

“Most of our customers, we know them by name, so it’s more personalized. They appreciate that.”

William L. Chafe opened in 1929. In the beginning customers came in, picked out a material they liked, had their measurements taken and a suit was made. The outfit was manufactured right in the store, as a team of up to 30 women took care of the tailoring.

While the approach was popular with customers, it was phased out over the years until the store stopped the process altogether in 1975.

“These factories in Montreal were starting to stock suits, so made-to-measure was starting to become less popular,” says Chafe. “Made-to-measure is labour

intensive … so it became easier for us to have suits in stock. Gradually it became less made-to-measure and more in stock.”

The end of the made-to-measure era is one of the biggest changes the store has faced (excluding a fire three years ago), but Chafe says the actual products sold have also been tweaked. In the store’s early days, the only clothing for sale was suits. But now customers can find everything from leather jackets to corduroy pants.

“When they started off it was just suits.

You’d buy a suit and get two pairs of pants with it,” Chafe explains.

“Now we do casual wear, your suits, your tuxedos … We sell everything for men except for jeans.”

When William L. Chafe opened in

1929 such stores were customary in St. John’s. But 77 years later, the city and surrounding area is littered with shopping malls and big-box stores that offer virtually every brand name known to the clothing industry, providing steep competition for private downtown businesses.

“Every four or five months another mall is opening, another strip mall is opening, and these big-box stores are obviously taking a toll on the traffic that is coming downtown,” says Chafe.

Perhaps the biggest advantage the big box stores have is their ability to offer customers acres of free parking, he says.

“Downtown has different challenges.

Parking is one of them,” he says. “And I See “Overcoming obstacles,” page 20

Buyers’ rights

Review of homeowners’ insurance recommends telling customers the truth about what they’re buying

T

By Alisha Morrissey The Independent

he consumer advocate for homeowners’ insurance wants to level the paying field between customers and insurance brokers by creating a buyers’ bill of rights.

If knowledge is power then a report compiled by Tom Johnson — to be submitted to the province later this spring — will give plenty of control to homeowners.

“I think that it’s high time the playing field got levelled between consumers and insurers and I think the best way to level the playing field is knowledge,”

Johnson tells The Independent.

Johnson’s recommendations, along with advice from the public utilities board on commercial and marine insurance, will be submitted to the province as a part of government’s bid to reorganize the insurance industry.

A bill of rights for consumers is a new idea in Canada, Johnson says, although it’s done elsewhere in the world and would be fairly cheap to implement.

“The bill of rights would spell out the rights that homeowners have when it comes to their insurance,” Johnson says. “For instance everybody is always concerned about whether they are paying too much … you should have the

right to know upfront what your deductible options are and also how your premium will change depending on the deductible that you go with.”

Most Newfoundlanders and Labradorians have a $500 deductible, Johnson says, meaning homeowners pay a fairly high premium.

“Most people who have a claim on their homeowners’ insurance will not put in a claim for a five or six or seven hundred dollar claim because the deductible comes off and then what are you left with $150 or $200,” he says. “A lot of people would absorb that cost themselves because if they put in a claim they’d be afraid that their premi-

um would go up anytime or that they could lose it.”

But insurers don’t always explain the options what it comes to choosing a deductible, Johnson says.

“By choosing these higher deductibles you can save a significant amount on your premium and I feel that as a consumer that is something that should be mandatory,” he says. “A high deductible is not for everybody, but what I’m saying is at least give people the knowledge upfront so that they can make an educated choice. Given how many Newfoundlanders have low deductibles how many of these consumers are not asking these questions?”

Johnson has recommended a change in the legislation that currently allows an insurance company to cut off a customer’s coverage with only 15 days notice. He’s also suggested that sales commissions should be made available to the customer.

People should be told, in detail and in writing, why they have been turned down for insurance Johnson says, adding he wants to see a formal customer complaint system implemented.

Protecting the customer from being blacklisted for calling about a possible future claim would be removed under See “Consumer,” page 20

20 • INDEPENDENTBUSINESS

FEBRUARY 19, 2006

AIR EXPANSION

Elevated job action

Labour board called into elevator strike

A

By Alisha Morrissey The Independent

Air Labrador is expanding its Dash-8 flights within the province through the purchase of a new aircraft and the hiring of 30 new employees. New weekday morning flights will be added between Happy Valley-Goose Bay and St. John’s, as well as Deer Lake and St. John’s.

Paul Daly/The Independent

‘Consumer bill of rights’ From page 19

Johnson’s plan — unless there were direct risks to the insurance company.

“Like if you were (calling the company) saying ‘My house is on fire, will that be covered?’ that might be different than saying ‘Look, I had some broken glass I’m not sure If I’m going to put it through my policy.’ So I’d like to have people to be protected so that stuff like that is not going to be used against them.”

Johnson is also recommending that insurance policies should be clear in which types of accidents are covered and which aren’t — in other words, no fine print … “so that there’s no nasty surprises.”

After hearing from people around the province, Johnson says he’s confident he has a grasp on what they want from

homeowners’ insurance and he’s just as confident the province will honour many of his recommendations.

“A lot of the changes that I have put forward are not ones that really cost the province any money … and I believe that what I’m putting forward is realistic,” he says. “The types of initiatives that I’m looking at in terms of a consumer bill of rights has been put in place in places like Texas and other places and I think that it would be good for consumers and not something that would produce a hardship for insurers to comply with,” Johnson says.

“Let people have the information so they can make their own choice.”

To make suggestions about homeowners insurance or to find out more about insurance reform write to consumeradvocate@groupmail.ca or call 1-866-218-4559. alisha.Morrissey@theindependent.ca

fter a year off the job, the province’s striking elevator workers have asked the labour board to try and impose a first agreement with the companies and regulatory board they accuse of bargaining in bad faith.

Glen Jones, representative for the International Union of Elevator Constructors, says negotiations stalled nearly a year ago because Otis and KONE — two of the three elevator companies involved — are not willing to bargain (the third company is ThyssenKrupp). Contentious issues include company-paid pensions and wages — workers in this province are the lowest paid in the country.

Jones says the companies and the Canadian Labour Relations Agency of Newfoundland and Labrador (CLRA), the regulatory body for construction workers and companies, have hampered negotiations.

The labour board has the ability to impose an agreement, Jones says, “but this is down the road. This is not going to happen overnight.”

Since the strike began last February, no new elevators have been installed in the province.

While workers are certainly affected by the strike, Jones says he doesn’t want to talk about specific cases until the labour board rules on its petition to force a contract.

The CLRA, on behalf of the companies, offered a deal to the four elevator installers — two from ThyssenKrupp and two more from Otis — on Feb. 7, but it was turned down, Jones says, adding he won’t reveal details of the proposed contract for fear of damaging future negotiations.

ThyssenKrupp’s two elevator installers aren’t working, despite the

company offering them a deal they accepted last fall. Bill Gillard, manager of the ThyssenKrupp shop in Newfoundland and Labrador, says the CLRA began a court battle to prevent workers from returning to the job. The court action, he says, led to a $10,000 fine against the company.

“Basically they (the CLRA) have taken an outlook that the agreements in Newfoundland will be zero, zero and zero, which means nobody can get any increases and … right now we have 13 outstanding new installations that we are not allowed to complete, but we have been working on the other portions of our business which is maintenance and repair,” Gillard says. “I have people calling me on a regular basis. I had a lady show up here crying because her mother is into a senior’s complex that we’re supposed to install an elevator in but they won’t allow us to do the work.”

With an average of 10 to 12 elevators being installed in the province each year, Gillard says the elevator business is different here than in bigger places. The CLRA should recognize that, he says.

Meantime, the Super 8 Motel on Higgins Line in the east end of St. John’s has opened its doors for business without an elevator service. The Delta St. John’s on New Gower Street added 128 new rooms this year, but the two new elevators aren’t installed.

Jean Pierre Andreieux, owner of the Marriott Courtyard, says at least four other public buildings — the Bank of Nova Scotia, a building at Memorial University, the Dominion Store on Blackmarsh Road, and his hotel in downtown St. John’s — are also waiting on new elevators.

Like the Super 8, Andreieux plans to open the Marriott this year with empty elevator shafts.

‘Overcoming obstacles’ From page 19

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hear it every day. Customers coming in cursing and swearing, they can’t get a parking spot or they come down … and they get a ticket.

“It’s a pain and I know. I get thousands of dollars in parking tickets myself, and I pay for three parking spots across the street. It’s a big obstacle.”

But overcoming obstacles is nothing new to the owners of William L. Chafe. Just three years ago a fire gutted the business. Chafe rebuilt in the same location, although this time around he purchased the neighbouring building, knocked down the wall separating the two structures and expanded the store. He then renovated the excess room upstairs into apartments for rent.

“We were just trying to make the best of a bad situation,” Chafe says.

The added size of the store’s showroom was good for business, and no doubt helps Chafe fend off the advances of the ever-expanding, bigbox store market in St. John’s.

Another way the store remains successful is by securing contracts with the RNC, Metrobus and private businesses to produce employee uniforms.

“I just finished taking measurement for the RNC for a new pea coat I designed,” Chafe says. “We provide uniforms for security guards, bus drivers, cops …”

Chafe adds the main reason the store has remained successful in a time when many private businesses face tough times is the fact it’s a family run operation. His mother Winnie, father William and sister Heather all join him in working in the store, each developing relationships with the loyal customers who have been coming through the doors for years.

Together, Chafe says they work to ensure the business will be around for future generations.

“We have a good following that keeps up going,” says Chafe. “We’re small, and it’s only family. We keep our expenses low.” darcy.macrae@theindependent.ca

FEBRUARY 19, 2006

G

INDEPENDENTBUSINESS • 21

TYLER HAMILTON

Torstar

len Estill’s first appreciation of wind power was on a camping trip on the rugged hills of Newfoundland, during a short sabbatical after 20 years in the computer business.

The co-founder of computer wholesale company EMJ Data Systems remembers repeated attempts to set up a tarp at his campsite, only to have a gust of wind keep blowing it way.

“If you were looking for the lightbulb moment that would be it,” says Estill.

“It was windy all the time. It just seemed there was so much energy there.”

He returned home to Ontario and began searching the Internet for information on the wind-power industry.

Five years later, Estill is founder and president of Sky Generation Inc., a single-turbine wind power producer in Lion’s Head on the Bruce Peninsula in Ontario that will be expanding its operation to three turbines this summer.

Estill is among a growing legion of wind-power advocates who are concerned Ontario is underestimating the potential of wind — and renewable energy alternatives in general — as a major source of clean electricity for the province. They also worry the province is leaning too much on nuclear.

Wind is only expected to represent about 12 per cent of the 41,750 megawatts of generation the Ontario Power Authority (OPA) says is required by 2025. It’s not nearly enough, argue wind advocates, insisting the province wouldn’t have to invest as much in new nuclear — and untold billions of dollars on future radioactive waste disposal — if it pushed further with wind systems and other renewables, such as solar, biomass, and even geothermal.

They point to Denmark, where 20 per cent of electricity production already comes from wind farms, or Germany and California, where the hope is that renewables — predominantly wind — will account for between 20 and 30 per cent of the power generation mix by 2020.

“They’re clearly not getting all the renewables we can,” says Jack Gibbons, chair of the Ontario Clean Air Alliance, pointing to a report commissioned by the OPA that found 13,000 megawatts of wind power potential within 20 km of the existing electricity transmission network. “We can assume that at least that amount is doable.”

The Canadian Wind Energy Association believes it’s reasonable for wind to reach the OPA’s target before 2015 and account for 30 per cent of power capacity by 2025.

But smoothly integrating wind power into the electricity system isn’t a breeze.

Accommodating a healthy supply of wind energy requires some creative thinking — backed by political will — to overcome the resource’s inherent

A group of wind turbines generate electricity near Palm Springs, California.

Fred Prouser/Reuters

Wind when you want it Storage technologies could plug us into more power from the air up there.

Yet many feel energy planners are giving wind — and other renewables — too short shrift limitations.

“The utilities are just not very proactive,” says MacMurray Whale, an energy analyst with Sprott Securities Inc. in Toronto. “The long-term growth plan is really nuclear.”

The fact is wind doesn’t always blow where we need it. There may be plenty of wind blowing in northern Ontario, but building thousands of megawatts of wind projects there would require expensive upgrades to transmission infrastructure to carry that electricity south.

Perhaps wind’s biggest limitation is that it doesn’t blow all the time, or lacks “firmness” in industry lingo.

Don Tench, director of planning and assessment at the Independent Electricity System Operator, says it’s easier to manage the fact wind power is intermittent when other “flexible” energy resources are available, such as natural gas and coal plants that can be fired up to fill the power gap when the wind stops blowing.

Nuclear power plants, which provide “baseload” power to the province, have zero flexibility. They’re difficult to stop and start and work best when running continuously at a constant output.

Estill and Gibbons say nuclear power can be replaced over time by a combination of energy sources, technologies and approaches, including conservation.

Completely phasing out nuclear may seem extreme, but building more natural gas generation to complement and bring more “firmness” to wind power is one way of reducing the province’s dependence on both coal and nuclear.

“The flexibility (offered through natural gas) can be built over time,” says Estill.

There are other ways to unlock value from wind. A handful of cities in Iowa are working together to use electricity from a wind farm to force compressed air into rock formations deep underground. The air is then released when needed and mixed with natural gas for use in electricity-generating turbines.

One proven approach is to couple

wind farms with hydro dams. Wind power is used to pump water behind the dam, which acts like a massive natural battery.

The stored-up water is then released to generate power when the wind isn’t blowing.

Even easier is to stop or restrict water flow on a hydroelectric dam depending on how much wind power is being generated.

“To manage these two resources on a combined basis is powerful,” says John Douglas, chief executive of Torontobased wind developer Ventus Energy Inc., which has several large projects under development in Ontario, Quebec and Atlantic Canada.

Looking ahead, technologies are emerging that could make large-scale energy storage more economical for use with renewable resources such as wind.

Most inquires about electricity storage technologies are coming from Europe, says Vince Sorace, president of Vancouver-based VRB Power Systems

Inc., which makes a massive chemical “flow” battery that can store 10 megawatts of power for up to 12 hours.

“The energy is stored in a fluid, in an electrolyte, which is stored in tanks,” he says. “If you want more hours you simply add more tanks and more fluid.”

A VRB system is installed on King Island off southern Australia, where five wind turbines complement diesel generators to supply about 2 megawatts of power to the remote community. The massive-flow battery, the size of a small hockey arena, kicks in when the wind stops.

Large-scale energy storage might not be an option for Canada’s immature wind market, and may not be for years, but observers say a lot can happen between now and 2025.

It would be a mistake, they say, to rest so much of Ontario’s energy future on nuclear technology.

“Twenty years is a long time,” says Estill. “If there is another way, let’s do it.”

Sound of silence

Grand Falls-Windsor residents await Abitibi’s next move bitibi’s silence on the fate of its No. 7 papermaking machine is no solace to the people of Grand Falls-Windsor whose lives depend on it.

Darren Finn, town councillor and chair of the concerned citizen’s group lobbying Abitibi to keep both of the papermaking machines in the community up and running, says residents are hopeful the company will reconsider its plans to shut down the No. 7 machine.

“It seems to be relatively quiet in terms of any information that’s coming from Abitibi and none of their messages have changed from the very beginning in terms of their intent to close No. 7,” Finn tells The Independent. “I don’t think anybody is getting hope out of silence.”

Abitibi Consolidated, the world’s largest manufacturer of newsprint, has two papermaking machines left in the province following the closure of its Stephenville operation last year.

After an internal review of four mills last winter, Abitibi announced the removal of one machine from Grand Falls-Windsor and the shutdown of two mills (Stephenville and Kenora, Ont.).

Prior to that, however, Abitibi announced its intention to have two machines running in the province — one in Stephenville and one in Grand Falls-Windsor.

With Stephenville out of the picture, Finn says there’s always the possibility the company will keep both of the central Newfoundland machines running.

The province has said if the company removes either the No. 7 or No. 3

machine from Grand Falls-Windsor it will invoke Bill 27, which would take away Abitibi’s right to cut timber from Crown land — 60 per cent of its current wood supply.

NO SET DATE Roger Pike, spokesman for Abitibi, says the company is still committed to closing the second machine in Grand Falls-Windsor, but there’s no set date.

“Our long-term goal is to modernize the Grand Falls mill; No. 7 is not a part of our long-term future,” Pike says. “It is our intent that we will phase out that paper machine over time … the overall plan hasn’t changed for Grand Falls.”

A spokeswoman for the Natural Resources Department tells The Independent there are currently no talks planned between the company and province, although government is keeping an eye on the situation in central Newfoundland.

Back in Grand Falls-Windsor, Finn says the concerned citizen’s group has asked Abitibi for meetings. He says the company has agreed, although they’re still waiting for a time and a place.

Should the second machine be removed, Finn says area residents want the province to remember its commitment to remove timber rights. Because of the silence, residents are even hopeful the threat of Bill 27 will be incentive enough to prevent the removal of the second machine.

“We don’t care what machines they have there as long as they have a twomachine operation and so if it requires a different machine then so be it,” he says.

“Both of the machines in Grand Falls-Windsor are in need of significant investment in order to speed them up and to generate greater production levels so we’re hopeful that while everything is quiet, we’re hoping that Abitibi Consolidated is willing to make an investment in this mill because we think that this mill has many advantages that many of the mills across north America do not have.

“The fact that they haven’t acted …

I guess people are hopeful for that point.”

Jan. 2005: Abitibi undertakes a 60-day review of four mills.

TIMELINE

A

By Alisha Morrissey The Independent

alisha.morrissey@theindependent.ca

May 2005: 56 people laid off in Stephenville and Grand Falls-Windsor mills with warnings of more cuts to come.

July 2005: Abitibi announces its intentions to close its Stephenville operation.

Oct. 2005: The company idles Stephenville mill. The province offers a $150-million energy subsidy — $10 million a year over 15 years.

Nov. 2005: Natural Resources Minister Ed Byrne promises to revoke timber rights under Bill 27 should the company shut down the second papermaking machine in Grand Falls-Windsor.

Dec. 2005: About 300 employees at the Stephenville mill refuse to agree to contract concessions and days later the company announces the permanent shutdown of Stephenville and Kenora, Ont.

579-STOG 77 Ha Harv rvey ey Road

Stoggers’ Pizza Rethink your Pizz Pizza! a!

22 • INDEPENDENTBUSINESS

FEBRUARY 19, 2006

Financial Advisor

Financial Consultants Ad #: CB-02-012409

Ad #: 04-226-CB

Location: St. John's, Gander, Marystown, Bay Roberts, Corner Brook, NL Company URL: http://www.lfs.ca Contact Name: Paula Coulson, Director of Recruitment and Training Contact E-mail: paula.coulson@LFS.ca

Be Daring! Join the LFS Team!

Laurentian Financial Services (LFS) is part of Desjardins Financial Security, with assets of over $80 billion, the 6th largest financial services organization in Canada . We are a Canadian leader in the financial services industry with a dynamic coast-to-coast network, comprised of 43 financial centres and more than 1,100 associate partners.

LFS is a full service financial services provider with access to multiple insurer and investment fund products. Our track record is based on the quality of support services delivered to associates with a company wide commitment to professionalism. We believe in listening to our associate's needs for providing the products and tools needed to maximize their value in meeting clients' financial planning needs.

Due to our exceptional growth we are looking for individuals to join our newly established financial centre in St.John's, NL in the role of Financial Advisors.

We are looking for people who are: Join the LFS Team and improve your business by: 1. Staying independent, while maintain access to • Entrepreneurial a multi-disciplinary team and qualified experts • Problem solvers 2. Receiving financial backing to purchase viable • Out-going blocks of business • Commitment to quality 3. Having access to multiple insurers and products and • Hard working more than 60 mutual funds and segregated fund companies • Professional 4. A competitive pooled compensation bonus structure • Service oriented and immediate vesting • Computer literate 5. Incentive plans based on multiple insurers' products, • Committed to continuing education and mutual and segregated funds personal development 6. New associate training and mentoring programs • Experienced in sales (an asset but not necessary) which are unique in the industry Interested individuals are invited to apply directly to Paula Coulson, 7. Market planning and support Director of Recruitment and Training via e-mail at 8. Business continuation support paula.coulson@LFS.ca quoting Ref#: 04-226-CB. 9. Leading edge technology

We love computer nerds.

Web Developer/Programmer

Ad #: CB-Web Developer/Programmer

Cyber geeks. e-dorks. We accept computer nerds of all kinds. Okay, that's a lie. We have strict criteria. In a Web Developer/Programmer, we seek a logical thinker and technical doer. Your mission? Superior web development with a focus on building innovative, effective, interactive sites and applications for clients. You've been honing your programming skills for 4-5 years using ASP, Visual Basic and JavaScript. You know Adobe Photoshop and SQL Server 7.0/2000 like the back of your hand on your mouse. Know .net and Macromedia Flash too? Even better. Plus, you have a Bachelor's degree in Computer Nerdology (i.e. Computer Science) or equivalent. And when we call you a computer nerd, you don't mind, because, in spite of your nerd status, you're super cool. That's why we love you.

Primary responsibilities will include: • Develop various internet user interface initiatives designed to achieve client goals and objectives.

• Design prototype user interfaces for development and usability evaluations.

• Work with internal staff and external client representatives on user interface issues to maximize product effectiveness, including interaction and visual design.

• Review, develop and design new and existing sites, site-promotional campaigns, announcements and new features.

• Develop initial and ongoing sections of a functional, usable, well-designed web site.

• Post information daily on company web site.

• Connect web pages with back-end data.

• Develop forms for data-entry through the web.

• Connect software programs and their outputs to the web, providing real-time data to the field.

• Backups and server maintenance.

Other Qualifications: • Undergraduate business degree or diploma from a recognized post-secondary institution with a concentration in computer science and/or information technology, or other related discipline.

• Three (4) to five (5) years of related experience in the design, development, and maintenance of internet user interface products.

• Experience in web design for technology-based products including web-page layout and image optimization.

• Excellent strategic and conceptual skills.

• Strong interpersonal and communication skills.

• Strong organizational skills, problem-shooting savvy, ability to multi-task and team player enthusiasm.

This position is located in St. John's, NL, and is being offered on a permanent, full-time basis.

Please e-mail your application, stating the position title (CB- Web Developer/Programmer), to Human Resources at april@m5.ca. Applications will be accepted up to February 24, 2006.

M5i Interactive Inc. is an equal opportunity employer offering a competitive salary and excellent benefit package.

Call Center Management Positions (various levels) Ad #: CB-0209-CCM Help Desk Now is a growing company and requires qualified individuals for various management positions at our call center location in Grand Falls-Windsor, Newfoundland. We are seeking career-minded, experienced and self-motivated individuals to help manage our business.

We are interested in candidates who have at least 3 years relevant experience, are focused, can demonstrate effective communications skills and are able to work flexible hours. Experience in a call center environment is preferred.

HDN is a large outsourcer providing inbound customer support solutions to clients. We offer opportunities for advancement, a competitive salary and benefits package.

If you are interested in becoming part of our dynamic and growing management team and willing to relocate, please send your resume: • By email at: careers@helpdesknow.com • By fax at: (709) 292-8709 Please quote #CB-0209-CCM We thank all applicants for their interest in our company, however; only candidates selected for interviews will be contacted

Investors Group Financial Services has been a leader in Canadian financial planning for over 75 years. With a solid reputation and market leading systems and support, Investors Group is looking for driven, business-minded professionals across Atlantic Canada who are only satisfied with the best life has to offer.

Key Qualifications include: • An outgoing, confident personality • A strong sense of independence and desire to succeed • A professional demeanor • A proven track record of success • A natural instinct for networking and building relationships • A dedication to professional development While not required, the following advantages would be recognized: • Professional designation from or current enrollment in the Certified Financial Planners Council of Canada program • Experience in the financial services industry • Completion of licensing for mutual funds and insurance Successful Financial Consultants with Investors Group can expect the limitless financial rewards and personal freedoms that come from independently operating their own business. Together with the finest support systems in the industry, their level of success is determined by their own activity. There are also management opportunities available for the right candidates.

To find out what your true potential is, send your resume and cover letter quoting reference #CB-02-012409 to: Consultant Resumes Kim Jordan Suite 1409, Purdy's Wharf Tower 2 1969 Upper Water St., Halifax, Nova Scotia B3J 3R7 Fax (902) 422-5334

YOUR FUTURE STARTS HERE… …AND NOW.

CUSTOMER SERVICE REPRESENTATIVE Permanent - Full-Time

Join us at TeleTech where our fun, fast-paced team has been providing global telephone support and business solutions since 1982! Our primary goal is to help our clients satisfy the business needs of their customers. Come join our team of incentive-driven professionals today and enjoy great financial rewards, outstanding opportunities for career development and so much more!

As a Customer Service Representative in our customer management center, you will handle inbound phone calls and provide concise, quality customer service for a large telecommunications provider. Individual headsets, workstations, and a month in advance work schedule provided. All of this in addition to great pay and benefits!

Positions start at $8.50/hr with the opportunity to earn more based on individual performance.

Qualifications include: • Goal oriented/dependable • 6 months previous experience • Ability to work 8am-12:30am M-Sun • High school diploma or GED • Strong computer experience Must be able to pass a criminal background check.

Want to talk with us sooner, apply online at:

or in person at 760 Topsail Road, Mount Pearl- A1N3J5.

Your future can start right here…right now!

EOE

FEBRUARY 19, 2006

INDEPENDENTBUSINESS • 23

Sales, Eastern Canada – Territory Business Leader

Senior Software Developer

Ad #: CB-SEC/1006

Effem is proud to announce the creation of 3 new Eastern Canadian sales opportunities. There are two Territory Business Leader roles, one in Halifax, NS, and one in St. John’s NFLD. There is also one Bilingual Territory Business Leader opportunity in Moncton, NB. We are actively recruiting for these positions and would encourage anyone with 5 years in sales, a successful track record with a CPG market leader, and a University Degree to apply.

The Business: Effem is an $18bn business operating in over 65 countries. We are a privately owned company, making us one of the largest 'small family businesses' in the world. Our success is not simply due to developing the right products. It's a unique combination of innovation and determination, the essence of which can be found in the Five Principles that shape our business: • Quality • Responsibility • Mutuality • Efficiency • Freedom Over the years, Effem has built a portfolio that has few equals. From M&M'S, Twix, Mars, and Snickers in snackfood, to Pedigree, Whiskas, Cesar and Sheba in petcare, and Uncle Ben's in food, our brands are recognized, used and trusted on every continent and in almost every countr on earth.

At Effem everyone has the freedom and power to make a difference, no matter what their role. And because we believe it's their efforts and limitless enthusiasm that help make us who we are, we make it a priority to recognize and reward those efforts.

The Role: The Territory Business Leader reports to the Regional Retail Manager and is responsible for coordinating a team of territory sales merchandisers to meet and exceed retail objectives at the point of sale. The individual is also responsible for a pipeline of products within their territory by calling on a designated number of regional accounts, wholesalers, cash & carries and club locations within the area. Simply put the TBL is responsible for the leading and the execution of the Retail Plan including both distribution and merchandising at retail and wholesale levels.

Nature and Scope: Working in the field with merchandisers on a regular basis, and tracking performance against objectives.

Sell company products, programs and promotions to achieve assigned account objectives.

Responsible for the team’s execution against corporately defined priorities.

Ensuring the presence of all authorized Effem Inc. products at the point of sale through maintenance and distribution of products, merchandising, display, andhelf rotation for optimal product freshness.

Merchandiser development through tracking performance against team objectives, and arranging for targeted training.

Accountable for the organization of the performance development process, which includes input into performance reviews with the guidance of the Regional Retail Manager.

Participate in the hiring process for all merchandiser positions.

Requirements: • 5 years selling experience, preferably in the food industry • Must have a University Degree • Key account experience an asset • Demonstrated ability to train and lead others

Come work for one of Canada's Top 100 Companies. And live life on the most easterly point in North America in historic St. John's, Newfoundland!

Consilient (www.consilient.com) develops award-winning wireless software for mobile devices and phones. By building software using open standards and push technology, Consilient is changing the mobile email landscape. And we're winning awards for our work. We were recently named a Top 100 Employer in Canada, Emerging Entrepreneur of the Year by Ernst and Young and an Innovation Leader by the National Research Council (NRC).

We offer a generous compensation package and assistance with re-location costs. Consilient's work environment is dynamic and energy-driven and innovative thinking is our strong point. If your passion lies in developing new, wireless technologies for mobile phones, we'd like to hear from you.

Job Location: St. John's, NL, Canada Description: As Senior Software Developer at Consilient, you will contribute to the overall design and architecture of our wireless products for messaging platforms with the primary focus on email, calendaring and contact integration. You will help build high-performance, highly scalable operator and enterprise client-server software for mobile phones.

Keys to success: • Strong system programming and design skills in server-side environments • Strong debugging skills, ability to organize and write clean, maintainable code • Passion to work in an exciting environment Educational Requirements: • BCS/MCS or BCE/MCE or related technical degree(s) Required Skills & Experience: • 6+ years minimum industry experience working on full software development cycle from concept to product deliverables through system deployment • Solid system programming experience with C++, Java, multi-threaded programming, API programming Good knowledge of: • Database programming interfaces and database usage - My SQL, Oracle, or other RDBMS • Internet technologies – e.g. HTML/XML, HTTP/HTTPS, JSP, Servlets, SOAP • Email, calendaring and messaging technologies – e.g. IMAP, POP3, MAPI, OMA DS • Network technologies – e.g. proxy server, Load Balancers, TCP/IP, UDP Contact: Please send cover letter and resume stating competition # to: careers@consilient.com

Financial Planner - Investment & Retirement Planner,

Corner Brook, Newfoundland Ad #: 50825

Financial Planner - Investment & Retirement Planner Who we are The Canadian Personal and Business (CPB) segment consists of our banking and investment businesses in Canada and our global insurance businesses. Our 30,000 employees provide financial products and services to over 11 million personal and business clients through a variety of distribution channels; including branches, business banking centres, automated banking machines, full-service brokerage operations, career sales forces, the telephone, Internet channels and independent third-party distributors. CPB is comprised of the following business lines: Personal Lending focuses on meeting the needs of our individual clients at every stage of their lives through a wide range of products including home equity financing, personal financing and credit cards.

If this role is a good fit for your experience and career goals and you are a driven person who thrives on success and building business, please forward a word version of your resume quoting #CBSEC/1006 to john_bennett@sympatico.ca. All information will be held in the strictest of confidence.

Effem is an equal opportunity employer.

Ad #: CB-SSD-0206-SJ

Personal Payments and Client Accounts provides core deposit accounts, transactional payment services, foreign exchange and other related services to individual clients.

Investment Management provides full-service and discount brokerage, asset management, trust services and other investment products.

Business Markets offers a wide range of lending, deposit and transaction products and services to small and medium-sized business and commercial, farming and agriculture clients.

Global Insurance offers a wide range of creditor, life, health, travel, home and auto insurance products and services to individual and business clients in Canada and the U.S., as well as reinsurance for clients around the world.

Position Overview: Successful candidate will service the Corner Brook, NL market.

In this role, the Financial Planner - Investment and Retirement Planning contributes to meeting area/centre sales plans by acquiring and growing profitable client relationships. Provides solutions and financial advice designed to satisfy the client's investment and retirement needs, leveraging RBC Financial Group expertise. Seeks out new clients by developing relationships within the community and local centres of influence. Enhances the experience of existing non-account managed investment centric clients providing accessibility and proactive client-focused investment solutions and advice.

Anchors clients with the appropriate delivery channel within RBC Financial Group. This role also balances the rewards of meeting business objectives with the risk of loss to the client, employee and shareholder by following corporate compliance/policies to maintain risk exposure and to operate within a legal framework and in accordance with securities regulations.

Note: Compensation will be "commission only" following training period (maximum training period is 6 months).

Required Skills: Demonstrated sales success and the ability to build rapport quickly with prospects. Excellent communication, time management, organizational, networking and relationship building skills. The position requires a flexible work schedule.

Must be an accredited Financial Planner, or working towards accreditation, and licensed to sell mutual funds in accordance with provincial regulations (CFP or PFP designation). Mutual Funds Licensed for 1 year either IFIC or CSC. We thank all interested candidates, however, only those selected for an interview will be contacted.

If you are interested in this dynamic role, please go to www.rbc.com/careers and submit your resume and cover letter to us quoting reference # 50825.

We've got people talking!

• Now hiring for opportunities in customer service!

• Inbound calls only!

Customer Service Ad #: MB0601274321

What would you say to $8.50/hr to start and the potential to earn even more based on your performance? TeleTech, the leading global provider of customer care solutions, offers this, plus good benefits, an internet café, and your own headset! If you have proven customer service experience, MS Windows skills, scheduling flexibility, and the ability to obtain a criminal abstract, Let's Talk!

Please join us… We are hiring for full time positions! Learn about our worldwide operations and discover the many advantages of being on the TeleTech team. We're also hiring for a Talent Acquisition Manager, Talent Acquisition Specialist, Training and Quality Manager, and Operation Supervisors!

As one of Mount Pearl's largest employers, we offer great pay, excellent benefits including health, dental, life, retirement, and tuition reimbursement programs to enthusiastic, service-focused professionals who go the extra mile to satisfy our customers. Comprehensive benefit plans are available after a brief waiting period.

Apply online to: www.hirepoint.com • Act quickly… these newly created opportunities are sure to fill up fast!

24 • INDEPENDENTBUSINESS

FEBRUARY 19, 2006

WEEKLY DIVERSIONS ACROSS 1 Land ___ 7 Canadian photographer of the famous 12 Oldest village on Queen Charlotte islands (B.C.) 18 Jazz fan 19 Toward the attacking zone (hockey) 20 Incarnation 21 Have ambition 22 Reinforcing rod 23 Revolve 24 Expert ending?

25 ___ of Good Hope (S. Africa) 27 First Quebec woman in Parliament: Monique ___ 29 Lump 30 Like a McCoy 32 Flatweave rug 35 Offend 36 Alone in Amiens 37 Block of ice in a glacier 39 Strange and mysterious 41 Nova Scotia-built mystery ship: Mary ___ 43 Slangy negative 45 Inuit boot 47 N.S.’s official tree: ___ spruce 48 Migraine 51 Insect egg nest 53 Chews

57 Devoted follower 58 Close to closed 60 Dollars and ___ 62 Alta. town at U.S. border 63 Halloween mo.

64 Swiped 66 Destroys 68 Pasture 69 Animal fat 71 Type of jazz 73 Be acquainted with 74 Gerund ending 75 Nerd 77 Give weapons to anew 79 Grasping 81 The long arm of the ___ 83 Tribe ruler 85 Upon: prefix 86 Hunting cry 90 Pertaining to sound 92 Smoothes (wood) 96 Part of eye 97 Newt 99 Singer-songwriter Wainwright 101 Inedible cake 102 Apple seed 103 Confuse 105 Shade of green 107 “___ at a time!”

108 Security round 110 Book trade magazine: Quill and ___ 113 Pianist Louis ___ 115 French star

116 Unwarranted 117 Soggy 118 Furnish 119 German city 120 Yearly records DOWN 1 Presides over (a meeting) 2 Renter 3 Become visible 4 Here in Honfleur 5 Grape-pressing residue 6 T-bone, e.g.

7 Painter of A Prairie Boy’s Winter 8 Rwanda primate 9 Curved bone 10 Cut residue 11 Toaster’s lead-in 12 Seagoing sort 13 Stratford’s river 14 Was not off one’s rocker 15 Phases 16 Give the cook a break, maybe 17 ___ clef 26 Flipper ___ (Nfld. dish) 28 Savings instr.

31 Singer of “Hymns of the 49th Parallel” 33 Its capital is Tehran 34 Imitate 36 Inuit goddess of the sea

38 Unit of gem weight 40 Source of pillow filling 42 Thing to break or shake 44 Scarf or veil 46 Inuit filmmaker (Atanarjuat) 48 Parrot 49 Between (Fr.) 50 Creator 52 Wasp attack 54 Speak without notes 55 Tiny 56 Yukon town with record coldest temperature 57 Pleat 59 Medieval stringed instrument 61 Sleep noisily 65 ___ Ark 67 Trades 70 B.C. falls, highest in Canada 72 Earlier 76 Mutton ___, Nfld.

78 List of offerings 80 Prejudice 82 Filmmaker Anne ___ (“Bye Bye Blues”) 84 Adolescent age 86 PM with shortest time in office 87 Pilot a plane 88 Elementary particle 89 Not lit 91 A winkin’, blinkin’,

or nod 93 Pacific Coast people 94 Aykroyd, in full 95 Cyclist’s choices

98 Winter headwarmer 100 Mexican sauce 103 Tree trunk 104 Weapons

106 Ontario’s official bird: common ___ 109 Relieved (of) 111 Some cards and tags

112 Regret 114 Operated

Solutions page 25

WEEKLY STARS ARIES - MAR 21/APR 20 Don't worry if your finances are not as strong as you would like them to be. In a few days things will be better in the money department, Aries. Just don't spend it too quickly.

TAURUS - APR 21/MAY 21 This week, you should take things easy and not start any new projects. They just won't work out, Taurus, and they will hold you back from doing more interesting things.

GEMINI - MAY 22/JUN 21 You will feel an easing of financial restrictions this week, Gemini. It will be a great relief because you've been operating under stress lately due to this situation.

CANCER - JUN 22/JUL 22 You have a lot of important things to get done, Cancer, but only a limited time in which to do them.

You can make the load easier by

sharing friends.

responsibilities

with

LEO - JUL 23/AUG 23 The most important thing about this week is that you keep a cool head and must not let anyone push you into doing something foolish, Leo. You'll have silly ideas in your head.

VIRGO - AUG 24/SEPT 22 You have some important factors working to your advantage this week, Virgo. You have a firm grip on what needs to get done in your life, and you're ready to make it happen.

LIBRA - SEPT 23/OCT 23 You are incapable of making a strong decision this week, Libra.

It's because you fear the worst happening. Money worries are especially on your mind lately.

SCORPIO - OCT 24/NOV 22 You may think you understand

what makes a loved one tick, but this week you realize just how little you know about what goes on inside this person's head.

SAGITTARIUS - NOV 23/DEC 21 You have to let go of the idea that you can do everything on your own, Sagittarius. No matter how energetic you may be, spread the workload around so you don't burn out.

CAPRICORN - DEC 22/JAN 20 Make sure you know what you are getting yourself into before you part with cash or back someone in a creative venture, Capricorn. Just because you trust someone doesn't mean it's a good idea.

AQUARIUS - JAN 21/FEB 18 Minor disagreements could get out of hand this week, Aquarius.

Think before you speak to avoid any disagreeable circumstances.

And don't get frazzled over things others say.

PISCES - FEB 19/MAR 20 It may seem that others are ganging up on you, Pisces, but it is just an illusion caused by your inability to take criticism this week.

FAMOUS BIRTHDAYS

FEBRUARY 19 Justine Bateman, actress (40) FEBRUARY 20 Cindy Crawford, model (40)

FEBRUARY 21 Charlotte Church, singer (20)

FEBRUARY 22 Drew Barrymore, actress (31) FEBRUARY 23 Brad Whitford, musician (54) FEBRUARY 24 Billy Zane, actor (40)

FEBRUARY 25 Sean Astin, actor (35)

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 25

FEBRUARY 19, 2006

INDEPENDENTSPORTS • 25

Wells believes Blue Jays have it

Excited about team belonging with elite

T

given the loss of Carlos Delgado, the Jays needed him to be a leader out of the gate. Instead, he struggled the first he sights and sounds of the two months but bounced back as the Bobby Mattick Training Center season wore on, finishing with a .269 last week were far removed average, 28 homers and 97 RBIs — from events taking place in Turin. This plus a second Gold Glove for his defence. was all about the spring.

“Struggling for two months is For Toronto Blue Jays centre fielder Vernon Wells and the dozen or so team- tough,” Wells says. “You’ve got to try mates who had already reported to to separate the good from the bad, even camp, their minds were only on base- though there’s not that much good. You ball and the coming season. At spring struggle, you get dropped in the lineup and get even more frustrated.” training, there are no lugers.

Wells has been working out at home Following a winter of spending furiously, there is more of a buzz than for since November. He bought a tire sled any edition of the Jays since 1994. For online that he has been dragging around the 27-year-old Wells, it’s the feeling of a track to improve power and explosiveness. He dropped out of last year’s belonging with the elite that’s so new.

“It’s different this year,” Wells says. sprint school (or was drummed out).

Part of the reason for his early arrival “We’re being talked about from coast to coast and from country to country. at camp is the World Baseball Classic, It’s fun to sit back and watch. It doesn’t for which, with three centre fielders on matter what’s on paper, you have to the U.S. roster, Wells is willing to move prove yourself day in and day out, espe- to right for Ken Griffey Jr. “I’m expecting (Junior) to play cencially in our division.”

The Blue Jays, if healthy, can possi- tre,” Wells says. “I figured I’d mix in some right and some bly contend for a wild centre on his days card. When asked off.” which teams could “Leadership can be That game pressure, also be there come in fact, may be his key September, Wells defined in so many to a faster start. And thought long and hard while he’s concerned listed the then different ways. the three weeks of the Yankees, Red Sox, Whether you’re a WBC will cost him A’s, Angels, Rangers, bonding time with White Sox, Twins and rah-rah guy or new teammates, he’ll Indians. Jays includstill be expected to ed, that’s nine of the a quiet leader.” lead even more than 14 teams in the AL. he did in ‘05 on his Obviously, a couple Toronto centre fielder return. are going to be disap“Leadership can be pointed.

Vernon Wells defined in so many “There’s a lot more different ways,” Wells talking (about the says. “Whether you’re Jays),” says Wells.

“You just talk to random people and, a rah-rah guy or a quiet leader. It took a when they figure out who you play for, little to learn just how different it would they say, ‘Man, you guys did a lot this be without Carlos in the clubhouse and off-season.’ It’s fun to talk about possi- behind me in the lineup. But it was a learning experience and part of the bly winning this year.”

For that to happen, Wells has to be growing pains of major-league basemore consistent than last year when, ball.”

By Richard Griffin Torstar wire service

Marlies’ gate expectations

Former St.John’s Maple Leafs have an abundance of talent but fan turnout has been disappointing

T

he Toronto Marlies would be a blissfully happy American Hockey League franchise if their success at the turnstiles matched their success at providing the Toronto Maple Leafs with new talent.

After 14 years in St. John’s, the Leafs moved their AHL affiliate to Toronto for the 2005-06 season. But after five months, though, the Marlies realize that while their developmental value to the Leafs has been tremendous, the franchise has fallen short of its projected attendance.

“On the financial side, it’s missed our expectations,” says Richard Peddie, president and CEO of Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment. “The team has done well in developing players, it’s exceeded our expectations. But the Leafs have come back (from the lockout) with more gusto than anyone could have imagined. With the Leafs, you have someone buying $200 tickets and they’re ordering four at a time. With (the Marlies), all our season tickets were brand new ... and I think we underestimated the challenge there.”

Executives from the Marlies and MLSE have already begun developing marketing and ticket-selling strategies for next season, with an eye toward launching those plans in April.

The goal is to increase group sales by reaching into grassroots hockey levels around the greater Toronto area. More than 2,000 season ticket-holders signed on for the Marlies’ inaugural season this year, but the club feels further inroads can be made with the hundreds of thousands of kids and families who make up Toronto’s minor hockey systems.

Despite the low attendance, Peddie says he is satisfied overall with the Marlies since moving the team last sum-

mer from St. John’s to Toronto. By relocating the club next door to the Leafs, MLSE realized significant savings in player travel costs, and obvious branding opportunities with Marlie players waiting in the wings to join the Leafs.

When the Marlies opened for business last October, expectations were set at an average of about 6,000 fans at the 8,295seat Ricoh Coliseum. Through 24 home games to date, the Marlies have averaged 4,465 fans per game, ranking 18th in the 27-team AHL. Peddie, though, says the Marlies are one of the top revenue-generating clubs in the league. When the former Toronto Roadrunners were evicted from Ricoh Coliseum after one season, MLSE placated city politicians — who had renovated the 83-year-old arena with taxpayer money and were now left without a prime tenant — by taking over operation of the arena under a 20-year sub-lease and relocating the Leaf farm team.

Marlie tickets range from a high of $49 — cheaper than the Roadrunners’ best seats — to a low of $10. Including Marlie games, Ricoh Coliseum is booked for about 100 dates, with plans for much more.

MLSE hopes to regularly fill the building for Marlie games within three years, when the kinks in marketing are smoothed out and fans establish a bond with players and the league. Those hopes received a boost last week when the AHL awarded its 2007 all-star game to Toronto.

Peddie says winning remains the team’s best marketing tool. The Marlies currently sport a 27-21-4 record and have supplied the Leafs with the likes of Carlo Colaiacovo, Jay Harrison, Staffan Kronwall, Andy Wozniewski, Kyle Wellwood and John Pohl.

Next year, high-round draft picks, like highly touted goaltender Justin Pogge, will be with the Marlies.

Solutions for crossword on page 24

Solutions for sudoku on page 24

By Mark Zwolinski Torstar wire service

Canada's Chris Pronger and Joe Sakic congratulate Jarome Iginla on his first-period goal during their win over Italy at the 2006 Winter Olympic Games on Feb. 15.

REUTERS/Brian Snyder

Passing the torch

Present, future hopes of men’s hockey team rest with solid young core

J

By Ken Campbell Torstar wire service

oe Sakic wears the C on his sweater and Ryan Smyth will always be Captain Canada, but it’s clear that both the present and future of the Canadian Olympic men’s hockey team now lies with the likes of Joe Thornton and Vincent Lecavalier.

“Oh yeah, for sure,” says Sakic, a long-time lynchpin for Canada who looks to be headed for third-line duty at the Turin Games.

“I’m okay with that. I’ll do whatever it takes to win a gold medal.”

If it wasn’t already apparent during the World Cup two years ago, it will be in these Olympic Games, that there is a definite and clear changing of the guard in Canadian hockey. Sakic, Mario Lemieux and Steve Yzerman have been replaced, something that was apparent when Canada played for the first time last week.

Their top two lines consisted of Thornton between Simon Gagne and Rick Nash, and their second unit featured Lecavalier between Dany Heatley and Martin St. Louis.

With the exception of St. Louis, all are in their mid-20s and will not only be key factors for the Turin Games but should also be the core players in 2010

in Vancouver. The most intriguing combination will be the Thornton line, which played together at last year’s world championship and finished 1-23 in tournament scoring. Thornton and Nash also tore up the Swiss league with Davos last season and clearly enjoy playing with one another.

“I think we complement each other so well. He’s a big guy who protects the puck so well and I’m more of a setup man and he’s a goal scorer.”

Thornton says.

As for Lecavalier, he played briefly with Heatley last season in the Russian league with Ak Bars Kazan and says he loves playing with teammate St. Louis in Tampa Bay. It should be another interesting combination with Lecavalier, who started as an extra forward in the World Cup, but finished it as the MVP. Heatley was unequivocally Canada’s worst player in the World Cup, but it’s clear that he has both cleared his mind and found his form since then.

Sakic is in the middle of one line between Jarome Iginla and Kris Draper. Sakic combined well with Iginla and Gagne in the 2002 Olympics, but coach Pat Quinn could not ignore the success that Gagne had with Thornton and Nash in the world

championship.

“With our lines, we had a look at two guys and we fiddled around with it from there,” Quinn says. “They all happened to be centre and right winger and we tried to find a fit at the left side.

“I fought with myself because Gagne was so successful in 2002 with Joe and Iggy.”

Canada will still rely on experience on defence, with the tandem of Chris Pronger and Rob Blake getting most of the minutes, not to mention the heavy lifting. Both have had injury issues — Pronger with a cracked bone in his foot and Blake with groin troubles.

In a mild surprise, Maple Leafs defenceman Bryan McCabe was supplanted in the top six by Jay Bouwmeester, despite the fact that McCabe was named to the taxi squad over Bouwmeester prior to injuries to Ed Jovanovski and Scott Niedermayer.

Bouwmeester has loads of recent international experience, but Quinn says that wasn’t a factor.

“Bryan knows all about playing for Canada,” Quinn says. “He was on the gold medal-winning team in 1997.

We’re going to dress seven defencemen and we’ll use them all.”

26 • INDEPENDENTSPORTS

FEBRUARY 19, 2006

Speed skater uncorks grit for bronze

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By Rosie Dimanno Torstar wire service

et us call her Anouk of the North. She’s not the type to mind punning slang. Anouk Leblanc-Boucher is a pistol. And last week, the 21-year-old native of Prévost, Que., became a bronze medallist in the always hairy, manic sport of short-track speed skating, putting Canada on the podium again at these XX Winter Olympics.

A Canuck was projected to medal in the 500metre sprint, just not this particular Canuck, competing at her first Games. When teammate Alana Kraus got messed with by an aggressive rival, it appeared the event was doomed, from Canada’s perspective. Yet Leblanc-Boucher — with the slowest qualifying time of the finalists — managed to uncork that critical spurt of speed and grit in the closing lap, overtaking China’s Fu Tianyu with a time of 44.759 seconds. Ultimately, it wouldn’t matter anyway because Fu was disqualified for cross-tracking.

But it was rewarding for Leblanc-Boucher to know she’d won bronze on merit and smarts, not because somebody else had screwed up.

“Fu already did a false start,” Leblanc-Boucher

said afterwards, releasing her multi-coloured streaked hair — blonde fringe, raven mane, pink tendrils in the back — from her racing helmet.

That required a restart and put a bit of trepidation in the Chinese girl’s launch — a double fault would have meant ejection.

“She was just inside of me but I didn’t panic, I fought hard to get up into third,” says LeblancBoucher, describing the moment when she turned on the after-burners down the stretch. “I hooked in at the end of the corner and I had some speed left to do it. And I passed her.”

It looked, at the finish line, as if Bulgaria’s Evgenia Radanova had crossed illegally, transgressing one of the sport’s arcane rules that requires the racer to “kick out” with both blades firmly on the ice. Yet that wasn’t called, which would have elevated Leblanc-Boucher to silver behind China’s Wang Meng, who dominated every race she skated here on route to the final.

Stepping up onto the podium, in front of a personal rooting section that included both parents, two uncles, an aunt and a legion of short-track teammates, Leblanc-Boucher was over the moon.

“It felt, like, WOW. I’m just so happy. The best moment is when the crowd is cheering for you.”

OF THE

DEVIL WEEK

Italy deals with identity crisis Nine Canadian-born players on hockey roster

Matt Boland

T

By Paul Hunter Torstar wire service

Position: defence Age: 16

Jarome Iginla tries to hit a loose puck out of the air during Canada’s game with Italy on Feb. 15 at the Winter Olympic Games. Italy goalie Jason Muzzatti is one of nine Canadians on the Italian roster. Canada won the game 7-2.

Al Bello/Reuters

Height: 6’4

Weight: 235 lbs Born: Gander Hometown: Mount Pearl Last year’s team: St. John’s Midget AAA Maple Leafs Last year’s stats: 18 games played, 1 goal, 1 assist, and two points (Newfoundland Midget AAA League stats only) Acquired: Boland was the Fog Devils’ fourth choice, 55th overall, in the 2005 QMJHL midget draft Claim to fame: in his one season with the midget AAA Maple Leafs, Boland was thought of as the hardest hitter in the provincial midget AAA league

DEVIL STATS NAME Scott Brophy Oscar Sundh Luke Gallant Nicolas Bachand Zack Firlotte Wesley Welcher Marty Doyle Olivier Guilbault Ryan Graham Sebastien Bernier Anthony Pototschnik Matt Fillier Pat O’Keefe Pier-Alexandre Poulin Jean-Simon Allard Rodi Short Ivo Mocek Josh McKinnon Kyle Stanley Jonathan Reid Paul Roebothan Matt Boland

POS. C LW D RW D C RW RW LW D RW C D LW C D LW D D LW RW D

# 12 10 6 23 5 14 43 21 16 44 24 27 11 18 4 15 9 8 3 n/a 19 26

GP 54 43 56 57 57 57 57 58 46 57 52 47 42 58 53 24 28 29 52 2 14 28

G 20 12 18 24 8 18 11 16 12 6 12 5 3 5 2 2 0 0 0 0 0 0

A 30 38 28 21 28 16 20 11 14 18 3 9 11 7 7 3 2 1 1 0 0 0

GOALTENDER

W

L

GAA

S.PCT

Ilia Ejov Brandon Verge

11 7

15 15

4.20 4.24

.883 .883

heir birth certificates show decidedly unItalian roots such as Cobalt, Renfrew and Toronto, but their hearts say something different.

So don’t start with the “Other Team Canada” or “Canada II” questions. Frankly, they’re tired of the storyline. The squad that the Canadian men’s hockey team faced Feb. 15 to open their 2006 Olympic hockey tournament wants to be known only as “Team Italia.”

“The blood in us is probably Italian,” says Tony Iob, Canadian-born but Italian winger by choice.

“We’re here to represent our country.”

There are nine Canadian-born players on the Italian team and two Americans, giving the 23-man team roughly a 50 per cent split between Italians and Italos, as they call them here. That’s a much different breakdown than back in 1980 when coach Dave Chambers brought over 20 Italian-Canadians for the world championship and won the B Pool.

“People got upset about that and the rules changed,” says assistant coach Ron Ivany, another Canuck who has coached in the OHL. Now, a player must have lived in Italy for two years before pulling on the national jersey. That stopped the interlopers but some things don’t change. The head coach remains Canadian — former University of Ottawa bench boss Mickey Goulet.

While there seems the potential for dressing room resentment — the language of instruction is English and there are some unilingual Italians on the squad — the ex-pat Canucks have been embraced.

“I think it is wrong to consider it Team Canada because in their hearts all the Italo-Canadians are Italian,” says Bolzono-born Stefan Zisser.

‘I’m very fortunate’

PTS 50 50 46 45 36 34 31 27 26 24 15 14 14 12 9 5 2 1 1 0 0 0

From page 28

learned from Sarah Chalker. She’s a smart volleyball player.”

Teaming with the veterans on the Sea-Hawks, Wilkins helped lead MUN back to the AUS playoffs this year after the team collected just one victory in the past two seasons (0-15 in 2003-04 and 1-18 in 2004-05). Considering the hardships her teammates endured in the past, Wilkins is not taking this season’s fourth place regular season finish (with a record of 9-12) for granted.

“It’s an awesome feeling. To know I contributed to the success we’re having is great,” says Wilkins. “I’m very fortunate. There are girls who have been on the team for four or five years and they’ve never went to the playoffs. This is my first year and I’m going.”

With the Sea-Hawks back in the post-season this year, Wilkins is looking forward to helping the team reach even greater goals in the future.

She envisions MUN competing for an AUS cham-

Stats current as of press deadline Feb. 17

HOMEGROWN “Q” PLAYER Robert Slaney Ryan Penney Colin Escott Chad Locke Brent Lynch Brandon Roach Mark Tobin

HOMETOWN Carbonear St. John’s St. John’s St. John’s Upper Island Cove Terra Nova St. John’s

TEAM Cape Breton Cape Breton Gatineau P.E.I. Halifax Lewiston Rimouski

GP 47 16 36 22 31 53 56

G 3 1 4 4 3 15 22

A 4 4 9 7 1 32 18

PTS 7 5 13 11 4 47 40

GOALTENDERS Ryan Mior Roger Kennedy Jason Churchill

HOMETOWN St. John’s Mount Pearl Hodge’s Cove

TEAM P.E.I. Halifax Saint John

W 18 8 13

L 31 4 33

GAA 3.99 3.79 4.00

S.PCT .89 .880 .898

Herder predictions

From page 28

more interesting.

The West Coast Senior Hockey League has wrapped up its regular season and has begun postseason play, while the Avalon east league is nearing the same point. At the risk of looking foolish later this spring, I’m ready to make my Herder predictions now.

The two teams that will meet in the provincial senior hockey finals will be the Deer Lake Red Wings and Southern Shore Breakers.

The Red Wings finished second to the Grand Falls-Windsor Cataracts in the west coast standings (the teams had an equal amount of points — 24 — but the Cataracts recorded one more victory). I’m picking Deer Lake to come out on top in the postseason because they’re the defending Herder champs.

I know they no longer have Darren Langdon or goalie Graham Cooke, but the Red Wings are still stacked. They led the west coast league in scoring

But it is a moniker that is hard to shake. Last week, a photographer got all of the North Americans to pose together. That divisive approach caused some discomfort.

“It bothered me a little bit,” says Mario Chitarroni, who was born in Cobalt, in northern Ontario, but has spent 13 winters on the Italian national team. “We’ve all got Italian heritage. We like to be considered Italian, not Canada II.” While the Italian Italians, if you can call them that, like the fact their numbers on the national squad have increased, they want the Italos around for two reasons.

Firstly, it allows them to compete reasonably well internationally. Secondly, instead of stunting the growth of hockey in Italy, where the sport has never migrated south of Milan, they feel it fosters it because the skills brought to Italy improve the quality of play.

“We play with them, we learn from them,” says Zisser. “It’s a good mix for us.”

It’s important to take into account that it is a very different hockey culture in Italy, where the exposure to high-level hockey is extremely limited. Hockey games are not televised, so the only way for young kids to get exposure to quality professional players is by watching games in the rink. Quite often those professionals are originally from Canada or the United States.

But Italy remains the only Olympic team without an active NHL player — Toronto’s Jason Muzzatti, who has played 62 NHL games, will start in net — and many have projected it to finish last in the 12team tournament. But don’t expect them to be intimidated.

“You try not to put too much pressure on yourself by saying, ‘We have to play the best in the world.’

“We have no illusions but we believe anyways,” Zisser says.

pionship one day, while her coach sees Wilkins eventually battling for some major individual awards.

“If she continues to improve the way I know she can, she could easily be a (conference) MVP or a first-team all star,” Oates says.

Wilkins admits winning an AUS MVP award is a personal goal, as is someday playing for the Canadian national team. She also has her sights set on playing some professional volleyball, whether in Europe or on the pro beach volleyball circuit in the United States.

Given her track record for achieving her goals, no one should bet against Wilkins fulfilling her dreams.

“I always set goals like that for myself,” she says, “and I never think they’re impossible to reach.”

Darcy MacRae is The Independent’s sports editor darcy.macrae@theindependent.ca

with 98 goals in 20 games, with Mark Robinson again leading the way with 46 points in 18 games.

They also have Rob Robinson (30 points in 17 games) and Mark White (37 points in 17 games) and have recently added Ryan Power of Making the Cut fame.

I see Southern Shore winning the Avalon east because of all four teams in the league, the Shore has been the most consistent since the start of the season. Conception Bay North has certainly turned it up a notch in recent weeks and Mount Pearl can ice a lethal team of their own whey then have a roster of healthy players, but the Breakers will prevail.

They’ve played well since day one of the 2005-06 campaign, and don’t have to worry about peaking too soon (CBN) or exactly who will be available to play once the post-season begins (Mount Pearl).

As for who will win the Herder, let’s just say the friendly folk of the Shore will have reason to celebrate early this spring.

Darcy MacRae is The Independent’s sports editor. darcy.macrae@theindependent.ca

FEBRUARY 19, 2006

INDEPENDENTSPORTS • 27

A

By Darcy MacRae The Independent

fter almost a year apart, Amy Dalton and Jenine Browne are about to rekindle the on-court magic that made them the backbone of the MUN women’s basketball team for five seasons, The Independent has learned.

Dalton and Browne, natives of Harbour Main and St. Brides respectively, left St. John’s Feb. 16 for Adelaide, Australia, where they will play pro basketball together for the first time. The two haven’t played on the same team since the 2004-05 university season came to a close last spring, but say it won’t take them long to rediscover their on-court chemistry.

“To play with Jenine again on a professional team in a different country … you don’t get an opportunity to play with a friend like that very often,” Dalton tells The Independent.

Dalton and Browne will play in the second division pro women’s basketball league, one step down from Australia’s top league. They wouldn’t reveal how much they will be paid, although they said they would be well looked after.

Their contracts cover housing and transportation costs.

Dalton and Browne played together at MUN for five years, and spent the five years previous to that suiting up on provincial all-star teams. Throughout their time at MUN they were the driving force behind three conference championships (2002, 2003, 2005) and each player holds numerous team records — Browne is the all-time Sea-Hawks leader in scoring average and field goals while Dalton leads in assists and steals.

Dalton and Browne were not only the team’s best players during their time at MUN, but also best friends off the court.

“We played together for 10 years and it was a really different feeling playing without her,” says Dalton, 23. “You always know where she’s going to be, you know when it’s time to play hard, she’ll play hard. When I’m on the floor with Jenine in a close game, I feel like we’re going to win it.

“I enjoy basketball when I’m playing with Jenine, so when I had the opportunity to play with her again … I couldn’t pass it up.”

Dalton actually began the season playing pro ball in Leitzig, Germany. Her team had players from eight different counties, with just one other player besides Dalton speaking English. She admits the first few weeks in Germany were lonely ones since verbal communication wasn’t an option.

Amy Dalton and Jenine Browne.

Rhonda Hayward/The Independent

Reunited, and it feels so good Former MUN stars Amy Dalton and Jenine Browne headed Down Under to play pro basketball Although there was a language barrier to overcome both on her team and on the streets, Dalton enjoyed her time there.

“I absolutely loved it,” Dalton says. “It was a totally different experience. Life in Europe is a lot different than life in Canada. Everything is different — transportation, food, sports, people’s attitudes towards things. It was a whole new experience for me.

“I think everyone should go to Europe.”

Before returning home for Christmas, Dalton negotiated her way out of the contract she signed in Letzig. When friends and family asked her why she would leave a situation she obviously enjoyed, Dalton’s answer was an easy one.

“The only reason I’m not in Germany is because I had the opportunity to play with Jenine again,” she says.

While Dalton has kept her game sharp in Germany, the trip to Australia provides Browne with her first shot at pro basketball. The 24-year-old has kept in shape by playing recreation ball since October and has occasionally practiced with the MUN Sea-Hawks.

NOT WORRIED Browne is not worried about jumping into the pro game after a long layoff, and is more concerned about getting used to living so far away from home.

“That’s a big thing,” Browne says. “At all the games (at MUN), I could look up

in the crowd and know I had friends and family watching. It’s going to be different not knowing many people there.”

One thing that will make things easier for Browne is the fact she will share an apartment with Dalton in Adelaide.

“It will make the transition a lot easier,” says Browne. “Actually playing with someone you’ve played with for 10 years will be a big help (on the court).”

Browne is looking forward to getting to know her new teammates, and is eagerly awaiting the opportunity to take in the sights and sounds of her new home.

“I used to always say I wanted to go to Australia,” Browne says. “To have the chance to go there and actually play basketball is a big thing.

“I’m looking forward to the climate down there, there really isn’t a winter, so that should be great.”

Dalton is equally as excited about spending what is normally a wet, cold time of year in Newfoundland in the sunny confines of southern Australia.

She admits to not knowing a great deal about Adelaide, other than that it is a great deal larger than her hometown.

“I just know the city we’re going to has 1.4 million people in it,” Dalton says.

“And it’s the desert, so apparently it’s like a city on the beach.

“It’s their summer, so the temperature right now is 40 degrees.” darcy.macrae@theindependent.ca

Williams puts on brave face far from Turin CBC veteran tries to look enthusiastic hosting first Olympics from Toronto

I

By Chris Zelkovich Torstar wire service

Brian Williams

t may have been Brian Williams’ finest moment of these Games, at least the first four days’ worth.

In introducing upcoming features last night, the CBC prime-time host looked almost giddy as he listed the evening schedule, finishing with, “and a most interesting question put earlier today to Wayne Gretzky.”

At last, something resembling news or controversy for Williams to sink his teeth into. Where’s a figure-skating scandal when you need one?

Williams has done a pretty good job of looking enthusiastic, but you have to wonder how thrilled he is to be working his first Olympics without leaving CBC studios. Heck, he doesn’t even get to issue his signature-time checks, though he did seem to take pleasure on Feb. 15 in telling viewers that it was morning in Turin and saying good morning to

reporter Elliotte Friedman.

He didn’t, however, mention what time it was in Saskatoon, which is probably the only difference viewers might have noticed. The CBC says technology has advanced to the point that Williams and morning host Terry Leibel work out of Toronto without a hitch and so far the network looks right.

CBC brass say things are being done this way so the network can control the show better, but you know the real reason is that it saves money. But if you can do the job just as well and save a million taxpayer dollars or so, what’s the problem?

So far there’s not really much difference and there’s been no attempt to fake it. There’s no fake Italian backdrop and viewers are getting all the news, highlights and interviews CBC usually provides. The show doesn’t have the pizzazz that makes NBC’s nightly production sparkle, but again we’re talking about taxpayer dollars here. In the early

going, there seems to be more emphasis on competition and less on interviews and that’s good.

I can’t imagine that the decision to leave the hosts at home has had any effect on ratings, which are as expected down from Salt Lake City. This is more a product of when the live events take place than whether Williams gets his coffee from Second Cup or the nearest piazza in Turin.

The CBC says it’s happy with ratings numbers so far, which are on par with the last Olympics held in Europe: the 2004 Athens Games.

It’s nice when the people’s network is happy.

Channel surfing, the good: CBC made a wise move last week in breaking into figure skating to air the end of the U.S.-Finland women’s hockey game. Considering there was a major upset in the making with the Finns leading, it was the right thing to do. Or maybe CBC just wanted to show view-

ers a women’s hockey game that was decided by fewer than seven goals. ...

CBC cross-country ski analyst Jack Sasseville solved the mystery for many viewers last week when he gave a good explanation of what lactic acid is and what it does to athletes. The term has been used dozens of times in skiing and speed skating, though not in curling.

Channel surfing, the bad: it was more bad luck than anything else, but CBC broke for commercials on Feb. 14 and missed Canadian cross-country skier Sara Renner breaking a pole, a crucial event in the team sprint. But I guess those commercials have to run sometime.

Channel surfing, the ugly: maybe the IOC should conduct drug tests on whoever thought up that yogurt commercial with the shrieking voices. Of all the ads interrupting Olympic coverage, it’s by far the one most likely to make viewers reach for the remote — or a brick.

INDEPENDENTSPORTS

SUNDAY THROUGH SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 19-25, 2006 — PAGE 28

Sasha Wilkins

Paul Daly/The Independent

‘The sky’s the limit’ MUN volleyball player Sasha Wilkins isn’t afraid to think big; first-year Sea-Hawk could be future MVP

S

By Darcy MacRae The Independent

I had no doubt she would do it this year.”

Wilkins chose MUN despite tempting offers from the University of Waterloo (Ontario) and Dalhousie University in Halifax. She picked MUN because she “wanted to stay in Newfoundland and help MUN get to the playoffs,” and planned all along to play a big role on this year’s team.

“I never doubted that I could (start) this year,” Wilkins says. “When I knew I was starting I looked forward to playing well and maybe winning (AUS) rookie of the year. That was a goal of mine coming to MUN.” Tall, lean and athletic, Wilkins has the makeup of a dominant volleyball player.

With great leaping ability she’s able to quickly leave the floor and get in position for a kill, while the whip-like motion of her powerful right arm produces a far more thunderous spike than one would expect from a player still enjoying her teenage years.

Watching Wilkins hammer the ball past opposing players certainly brings a smile to Oates’ face, especially since there was a time not so long ago when it wasn’t known if Wilkins would ever be able to play such a style at the university level.

After several seasons of playing with considerable pain in her right shoulder, Wilkins finally had surgery to correct the problem last year.

“From Grade 8 on I never had any time off. I played all through high school and all through the summer every year and they said it was a repetitive injury, from overuse” Wilkins explains.

While surgery was necessary, it kept Wilkins out of action for the second half of last year’s high school volleyball season. It also put her spot on the Canada Games team

uccess on the volleyball court is nothing new to Sasha Wilkins. Not only does the Gambo-native expect it, she also demands it — both from herself and her teammates.

“The sky’s the limit with me,” Wilkins tells The Independent. “Ever since I was in Grade 7 or 8, I was telling my mom ‘I’m going to be a pro volleyball player.’ I just always set high goals for myself. I won’t take no for an answer.”

Just 18 years old and in her first year on the MUN women’s volleyball team, Wilkins is already making a name for herself in the Atlantic University Sport (AUS) conference. She finished the regular season 10th in kills (2.52 per game), ninth in service aces (a total of 23), 11th in digs (3.10 per game) and 10th in points (3.09 a game), and won the AUS rookie of the year award.

“She’s got fantastic skills, is exceptionally athletic and very fast,” says Melissa Oates, head coach of the women’s volleyball team at MUN. “She is hitting the ball now as hard as anybody I’ve ever seen.”

Oates was very familiar with Wilkins before the 2005-06 university season opened last fall, having coached Wilkins on various provincial teams in recent years, including the 2005 Newfoundland and Labrador Canada Games team. When Oates was named MUN’s new head coach over the summer, she was happy to hear Wilkins was joining the Sea-Hawks and knew the 18-year-old was capable of making an immediate impact.

“It wasn’t a surprise at all,” Oates says.

“I’ve seen it before in some individuals, and

Cheesed off I

’m annoyed at a few things lately.

No matter how hard I try, some things just continue to strike a nerve with me. I’ve tried being positive, I’ve tried to ignore the bothersome issues, I’ve even sought counselling — although I’m really not sure confiding in the cat counts as counselling.

Regardless, it appears the only way to get rid of the tension and excess bloating caused by being cheesed off all the time is to simply get some things off my chest.

So here goes …

I’m annoyed Eric Staal is not on the Canadian men’s Olympic hockey team (being a member of the “taxi squad” doesn’t count). The more I watch the Carolina Hurricanes’ superstar centre the more I wonder how Wayne Gretzky

DARCY MACRAE

The game

and company could have left him off the team.

Staal is third in the league in points, well ahead of Martin St. Louis, Brad Richards, Shane Doan, and Todd Bertuzzi, all of whom are on the team. I know Team Canada needs experience if they’re going to win gold, but whatever happened to icing the best team possible?

As long as Staal is not on Team Canada, it’s not the best hockey team this country can put together.

in jeopardy.

“I had a big challenge because I was after making the Canada Games team,” says Wilkins. “I couldn’t practice or do anything else for about two months. Everybody else on the team was getting the training and the exercise they needed while I was recovering from surgery. That put a lot of pressure on me … to get strong enough to stay on the team.”

Throughout her recovery, Wilkins was faced with the possibility that her shoulder may not be the same as it was before.

Doctors were unsure if she’d be able to hit

SASHA WILKINS Age: 18

Hometown: Gambo Position: power

First-year honours: Wilkins won AUS rookie of the year award last week

I’m annoyed at the schedule makers of the inaugural World Baseball Classic.

I had been looking forward to the first best-on-best baseball tournament ever since I initially heard word of it a couple of years back. Unfortunately that excitement has completely died since I saw the schedule for the event and learned the vast majority of Canada’s games, as well as the schedule for the entire tournament, will be played way too late in the evening for fans such as myself to enjoy.

I thought the World Baseball Classic was supposed to be used as an avenue for promoting the sport, but with games starting as late as 11:30 p.m.

Newfoundland time (10 p.m. in major baseball centres like New York and Boston), few young fans will see so

as hard as she once did, leaving Wilkins with an uncertain future in the sport.

But as is always the case, she wasn’t about to take a wait-and-see approach. As soon as she was cleared to work out, she hit the gym and prepared herself for the Canada Games.

“I did a lot of hard work, worked out every day, went to physio and gradually got back into it,” she says. “And it went really well at the Canada Games, it was one of the best times I ever played.”

Wilkins’ performance at the Canada Games gave her even more confidence in her abilities, a confidence she took with her to MUN this year. But as sure as she was of her abilities, Wilkins knew the university game — where several players are in their early and mid-20s — would provide new challenges.

“The level of play was much higher, competition wise and pressure,” she says of her first few weeks on the MUN team. “The volleyball is a lot faster … every point counts in university volleyball. If you let the other team have so much as a four-point run, that could be the game. Every mistake counts because the players are so smart.

They notice every mistake you make and pick you apart.”

Aside from relying on her athletic ability and strong work ethic, Wilkins has also taken to learning from the veterans on the Sea-Hawks roster. Among the more experienced players she’s kept a close eye on is Sarah Chalker, a third-year student from Portugal Cove-St. Phillips who was named an AUS second team all-star last week.

“I’ve matured a lot this year from playing with older players,” says Wilkins. “I’ve See “I’m very fortunate,” page 26

much as an inning. It’s yet another example of the ineptness of the people who run baseball at its highest level.

I’m annoyed at the CBC for only broadcasting Toronto Maple Leafs games on Saturday nights. Last time I checked Montreal and Ottawa called Canada home, but yet only the Leafs get to play during the prime timeslot on Hockey Night in Canada. The CBC says it has no choice but to air the Leafs because of the high ratings they generate, but the CBC is a public broadcasting company — not a private one.

It’s supposed to be about promoting all things Canadian, not just hockey teams in Toronto. It’s fine if TSN or Rogers Sportsnet wants to latch on to one team, they’re privately owned businesses in search of profit, not a govern-

ment-funded organization designed to protect Canadian culture and heritage.

I’m annoyed at the way mainland media keep referring to Team Gushue as underdogs in Olympic curling. Far too often I hear broadcasters say things like “the Gushue rink is in tough today” or “it will be a challenge for the Gushue rink to prevail.” Any other Canadian curling team would be spoken of as favourites, so why not Gushue and company?

I have a feeling I know the answer, but I don’t feel like opening that can of worms this week.

HERDER HOPEFULS Changing topics for a minute, the senior hockey season is about to get a lot See “Herder predictions,” page 26