2006-08-20

VOL. 4 ISSUE 33

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ST. JOHN’S, NEWFOUNDLAND AND LABRADOR — SUNDAY THROUGH SATURDAY, AUGUST 20-26, 2006

Charged with the firstdegree murder of his twin daughters, Nelson Hart’s life has been marred by rumours of mental illness and a gambling problem.

‘I’m in here on the wrong.’

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What the kids are wearing these days

Catching our quota of cod on Conception Bay

‘I never hurt my daughters’

PART ONE OF A TWO-PART SERIES.

By Nicholas Kohler

O

n Aug. 4, 2002, Nelson Hart drove his threeyear-old twin daughters to a secluded beach just west of Gander, where both girls drowned. The deaths, on an overcast morning when most of Gander was busy preparing for a local festival, afforded investigators no witnesses. According to news accounts, Hart, 33 at the time and unable to swim, told police that upon seeing the first girl fall in the water, he jumped into his grey Dodge Shadow and drove for help.

With a spotty work record, rumours of mental illness and a gambling problem, Hart came under immediate suspicion. Three days later, The Telegram reported on its front page that police would lay criminal charges against him — only to run a correction the following morning. “While the RCMP has started a criminal investigation,” it read, “police have not identified anyone as a suspect.”

The Telegram had jumped the gun: it would take the RCMP nearly three years to arrest Hart, a balding, heavy-set man with a moustache, charging him with two counts of first-degree murder. (Hart pleaded not guilty to both charges in June.) What happened in the years between the deaths of his daughters, Krista and Karen, and the day police arrested him in Gander will likely be the subject of his trial, due to begin early next year.

But in an exclusive telephone interview from Her Majesty’s Penitentiary in St. John’s where he’s been

Pearl and Jennifer Hart hold photos of Karen and Krista. Nelson Hart is in prison, awaiting trial for the murder of his twins four years ago.

since a judge denied him bail, Hart recently gave Maclean’s magazine his own account — a tale that shows him to be greedy, self-serving and highly susceptible to persuasion. Yet he insists he played no role in the drownings and that he is the victim of a bizarre plot to imprison him.

Smelter situation Letter from Brazil shows Inco settled on Long Harbour, despite province’s stance NADYA BELL

G

ary Keating, mayor of Long Harbour, has received a letter from the Brazilian company bidding to take over Inco saying they look forward to building a plant in his town.

Companhia Vale do Rio Doce’s interest in Long Harbour comes despite the provincial government’s position the plant should go in Argentia. “(The letter says) if they are successful acquiring Inco, they look forward to coming into the province and hopefully they will continue to invest in the project,” Keating says.

“It’s introductory, which is good at this point. I am encouraged to receive a letter from them so soon. It would seem obvious they are well up on the Inco situation, not only in Newfoundland but also around the world.”

Keating received the letter signed

by Vale chief executive officer Roger Agnelli on Aug. 14, three days after the company offered $19.4 billion for Inco. Although a competing offer

from Phelps Dodge Corp. is higher, the Brazilian company’s offer is currently favoured for having the most cash.

Keating says the letter from Vale is the latest indication nickel processing will proceed in Long Harbour. He says Natural Resources Minister Kathy Dunderdale’s statement Inco has a moral obligation to build the plant in Argentia is only holding up the process.

“The only thing it’s doing, in my opinion, is delaying the project to some degree,” he says.

“The province needs the project, the investment of over $1 billion is imminent, and I think that this government of today should get on with it and let both the towns and the region and the company do their thing and prepare for this mega-project, and prepare for the spin-offs.”

Keating works with Penny Industries, a company that does electrical work for Inco’s demonstration plant.

Long Harbour is 15 kilometers from Argentia, and the two towns are very much a part of the same social community. The mayor of Long

“I’m in here on the wrong,” he said, in a high, pleading voice. “I never hurt my daughters.” Police say they charged him after a sting operation uncovered new evidence. Hart says he was drawn into an elaborate ruse when, last winter, he met a stranger in search of his lost sister — a chance encounter that

QUOTE OF THE WEEK “We have no official sports teams, but we do have latenight spotlight games and peddle bike gangs. There are no clubs to belong to, but everyone is welcome to the cabins the boys build in the woods.”

— Pam Pardy Ghent on life in Harbour Mille. See page 19.

BUSINESS 22

A tour of Inco’s hydromet demonstration plant

GALLERY 14

Bonnie Leyton’s spectacular sunsets Life story . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Voice from away. . . . . . . . . . . 11 Noreen Golfman . . . . . . . . . . 15 Food and drink . . . . . . . . . 17-18

See “Inco will,” page 2

1 866 686 8100

humbervalley.com

soon drew him into an underworld of violent hoods, suitcases of cash and a mysterious crime boss who brooked no dissent. He ended up in handcuffs.

See “Child in a man’s body,” page 4

Taxable benefits As government memo points out, not every expense is tax-free IVAN MORGAN

M

HAs have to be careful how they spend their expense allowances. According to a provincial government financial management circular from March 2003, some MHAs may owe some of that money to the Canada Revenue Agency.

“Income is income,” says Leslie Cheeseman, a spokeswoman for the agency, cautioning she cannot comment on a specific issue.

“People do owe taxes on personal income earned.”

The government meno, obtained by The Independent, refers to payments to provincial government employees that may not go through the payroll system. It does not refer specifically to MHAs, although some items may apply.

The document outlines expenses that may be considered taxable income and must be reported to revenue and payroll section of the comptroller general.

Professional fees, parking, gas allowances, automobile allowances,

Relax. Summer’s not over yet.

Book your holiday today.

Donald Weber / Maclean’s

special clothing, housing, board and lodging, personal use of government vehicles, spousal travel, reimbursement for the cost of tools, educational allowances, and other services can be viewed as a taxable benefit.

Cheeseman says the guide to understanding what constitutes personal income is mostly common sense. “If it only benefits a person personally, it is considered income, because that is what personal income is — money for yourself as opposed to money for your job.”

Speaker Harvey Hodder says MHAs are aware of what is and is not taxable. He says constituency expenses are not taxable because they are receipt driven, but some expenses are.

For instance, a receipt passed in by an MHA for travel would be reimbursed, and would not be considered taxable income. However, cabinet ministers, including Hodder, are issued an $8,000 annual car allowance. That is taxable income, as that car can also be used for personal use.

The payment or reimbursement of spousal travelling expenses is a taxable benefit. While in power the See “Case by case,” page 2

2 • INDEPENDENTNEWS

AUGUST 20, 2006

Long Harbour Mayor Gary Keating.

Paul Daly/The Independent

Inco will keep commitments From page 1 Harbour works in Argentia, and Argentia is part of the Placentia-area municipal council.

In either location, Bill Hogan, mayor of Placentia, is preparing for the influx of workers related to Inco’s processing facility with a new fire station, water and sewer services, sewage treatment, arts centre and town square.

But Hogan says he would have preferred the plant in his municipality.

“They decided Argentia was the site, and it’s incumbent on the province to hold them to that decision. It’s not a matter of them choosing one site over the other — it’s a matter of holding a major industry to the commitment that they made to a certain site.”

Private businesses are “waiting for the other shoe to fall,” says Hogan, because of Inco’s change of mind and uncertainty about the site.

According to the development agreement for Voisey’s Bay Nickel, Inco must build a processing plant in Newfoundland or Labrador. The plant was originally proposed for Argentia on the old site of the U.S. naval base.

In January, Voisey’s Bay officials announced they were looking at Long Harbour as an alternative site for the processing plant — whether the new hydro-metallurgy technology at the demonstration plant in Argentia works out, or if they have to build a traditional smelter.

Manager of Voisey’s Bay, Phil du Toit, says they made the decision to move to Long Harbour after an envi-

ronmental assessment of the Argentia site, and when they understood their waste disposal requirements.

“We’ve come to the conclusion after really a comprehensive study of all those risks that the site at Argentia just posed too much of a risk to us,” du Toit says.

To dispose of their waste from a plant in Argentia, a pipeline would have had to be constructed through several protected watersheds.

“The beauty of the Long Harbour site is it is within the social area and all the local businesses as well as local people will get really the same benefits,” du Toit says.

He says Voisey’s is firmly committed to building a plant in Long Harbour, pending environmental approval from the provincial and federal governments.

He says they are still in talks with government over the site.

“Government would like to make absolutely sure for their part that the decision was made for the right reasons and we are still in discussions with them to explain the rationale behind our decision,” he says.

Du Toit says the international bidding war for Inco is having no effect on the planning for Long Harbour.

“With the agreement Inco has with the province it is very clear: irrespective of the change of ownership of Inco, we have to follow, and the new owners will have to follow, the development agreement.

“I can make one statement absolutely categorically: that there will be a processing facility in Long Harbour.”

‘Case by case, item by item’ From page 1 Liberal government spent over $93,000 in spousal travel in a seven-month period — MHAs owed tax on those expenses. Hodder says the current administration will not allow any spousal travel to be paid out of taxpayer’s money If MHAs are found to have overspent their allowances — including those currently under investigation — any money deemed for personal use by Canada Revenue Agency would be considered taxable income. Regardless of what penalties that MHAs might face, including paying back the money, they would owe taxes on that amount.

The provincial government memo also lists, as a final item, “any other payment to an employee that is considered by the Canada Revenue Agency to be a taxable benefit.”

Although Cheeseman cannot com-

ment on specific examples without an investigation, the clause may cover such items as gold rings, artwork and expensive wines — unless it can be shown these items were necessary to the work of the person who purchased them.

“If it comes out that it was for his or her own personal gain, and not related to being an MHA, then that would definitely be considered income,” says Cheeseman.

“We would have to look at it very carefully, and go over everything. If we come in and we do our own investigation of the situation, then we will be looking at those expenses, and we will be determining is this personal, is this benefiting the person, should this be income, or are they regular business expenses that came in the course of doing their job? We would look at everything, case by case, item by item.”

AUGUST 20, 2006

INDEPENDENTNEWS • 3

Brain gain

By Ivan Morgan The Independent

N

ewfoundland doesn’t attract enough immigrants, and the president of Memorial University says one solution is more foreign students.

“We have a rapidly aging population — and that’s true throughout Canada — but the big difference in Atlantic Canada … is that hasn’t been offset by immigration,” Axel Meisen tells The Independent.

In the spring of 2004, Globe and Mail columnist John Ibbitson wrote a column headlined Why Atlantic Canada remains white and poor. He suggested part of the problem with Atlantic Canada’s lacklustre economy is the low rate of immigration.

“We all agree in Newfoundland and Labrador that we need to do something about our demographic problem, and there are very few solutions available to deal with that problem,” Meisen says.

Since he began his tenure at Memorial in 1999, Meisen has been working to encourage foreign students to come and study in the province. His initiative seems to be working.

The number of international students attending Memorial has increased significantly since the beginning of the decade. In 2000, according to Meisen, there were approximately 350 foreign students studying at Memorial. In the 2005 academic year, there were 860.

Of those, 512 were undergraduate and 384 were graduate students. Based on a tuition fee of $9,000 for undergraduates and $2,500 for graduates, that’s gross revenue of over $5 million for the university. That does not include other fees, such as student union charges, health insurance, and residence.

While the money certainly helps, Meisen says that’s not the whole picture. International students also add to the global presence of Memorial, allowing the university to make connections that enrich the province economically and socially.

They “prepare our own students from Newfoundland and Labrador for a much more international world,” says Meisen.

“And those benefits are every bit as great as filling placements.”

But the fact remains the number of young people in the province is declining. Meisen says the university antici-

Axel Meisen promoting a future for foreign students at Memorial

Memorial University president Axel Meisen

pates the number of 20 year olds in the province will drop to 53,000 in the next 12 years from 67,000 today. Attracting students from other countries to the province is one way to prevent an enrollment crisis.

Meisen hopes to see the number of foreign students increase to between 3,000 and 4,000 in the next decade.

While Meisen cannot say how many foreign students actually stay in Newfoundland, he says between 30 and 40 per cent would like to.

But many cannot. Here on student visas, they have to go home and apply to return, which can take years. Meisen would like to see this obstacle overcome.

“It would be well in Canada’s interest to have a policy that encourages international students to study in Canadian universities, particularly Atlantic Canadian universities, with the view to these students becoming immigrants,” says Meisen.

In the meantime, Meisen says the university needs to promote itself more on the international scene.

“Memorial University, particularly outside the country, is not as well known as it should be,” he says.

Memorial has international information campaigns and recruiting agents in some countries.

There are also about 130 foreign students enrolled in junior high and high schools around the province.

Graduating with a Newfoundland high school certificate “perfectly positions” foreign students to enter Memorial, and Meisen predicts about 50 per cent of these students will eventually do that.

But he would like to see more done.

He says the provincial government should cover visiting foreign students with MCP. “That would be a sensible as well as a friendly, welcoming gesture.”

While language skills are an academic challenge, the university has developed programs to help students adjust to being away from home. From being met at the airport to services offered by MUN’s International Student Centre, every effort is made to welcome the students and help them integrate into campus life.

“I think we have all become much more welcoming and much more aware of the needs of international students,” Meisen says.

“We have a very good university.”

2000 Number of foreign students at MUN:

350

2006 Number of foreign students at MUN:

860

2020 Number of foreign students projected to attend MUN:

4,000

Paul Daly/The Independent

SCRUNCHINS The June 2006 edition of Hustler magazine, owned by the famous Larry Flynt, included a story about a 32-year-old fisherman from Harbour Mille on the Burin Peninsula. The article, which was teased on the front cover (Sharing the knob in Newfoundland), described an encounter between the fisherman and two women from Toronto who chartered his boat for a day on the bay. Most predictable line: “Ohh,” giggled Hillary, “the fish aren’t the only things that get big around here.”

ECOLOGICAL MARVEL The world can be a hard and scary place — thank goodness for places like Twillingate and Musgrave Harbour. Our own Rex Murphy returned to Newfoundland recently from up along to get away from it all — the all being the stress that comes from not being able to take toothpaste on an airplane for fear it could blow you out of the sky.

Murphy, a columnist for Saturday’s Globe and Mail, wrote this of Twillingate: “This outport on the very edge of North America will easily lead

SILVER-TONGUED Speaking of challenges, The Globe’s Lawrence Martin wrote an interesting piece recently about another of our own, General Rick Hillier, chief of defence staff and author of Canada’s role in Afghanistan. Martin said Hillier has a

General Rick Hillier

“silver-tongued magnetism” comparable to Robert McNamara, secretary of defence under John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson and the principal architect of the Vietnam War. Martin took Hillier to task for initially saying the country’s Afghan role would be limited enough to leave sufficient military resources for a peacekeeping mission in Darfur, Haiti, or the Middle East.

Hillier also said the combat part of the Afghan mission was to last only a year.

Writes Martin, “Gen. Hillier hasn’t been pressed to explain the changes in his position. The casualties mount, meanwhile. And Canadians start turning against the mini-war.”

SPECIAL DATES I came across a lovely treasure this week, a copy of Who’s Who in and from Newfoundland 1927. The book includes

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a chronology of the “chief events” in Newfoundland since its discovery. Two dates of interest …

1914 — Royal Newfoundland Regiment mobilized. The article listed the total number of men accepted for service overseas between 1914-1920 at 6,133. What’s more interesting is the total number of Newfoundland men rejected over that time span as medically unfit for services in the regiment — 6,184.

1811 (Sorry to backtrack but I couldn’t leave this out) — Catholics given right to bury their dead. “Lord Liverpool, writing to Governor Duckworth, said: ‘It is desirable that you immediately comply with the request of the Roman Catholic Bishop that the Roman Catholic Church may be allowed the same rights which that of Nova Scotia possesses of burying its own dead.’” Now that’s progressive …

DUST TO DUST Geoff Carnell of St. John’s was one of the speakers at the 88th annual convention of the Cremation Association of North America at the Royal Pacific Resort in Orlando, Fla. earlier this month. Owner and operator of Carnell’s Funeral Home and Crematorium, Carnell spoke about how he became the owner of his family’s funeral home after the untimely death of his father, and

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even non-Newfoundlanders to believe that the world’s great vacation spots — the Caribbean islands, gaudy Maui of the Pacific, famous others — are greatly overrated as ecological marvels.”

Murphy called Musgrave Harbour “the very jewel of the northeast coastline,” describing the people as “iron men” who “set their teeth to the howling gales and tempests of brutal north Atlantic winters.

“Sixty or 70 years ago on Newfoundland’s northeast coast, people worried about storms, shifting ice, the perils of direct encounter with an imperious Nature as they pursued a livelihood.

Now, you may be going into a convenience store in London, or walking to a beach chair in Bali, or working in a great tower, or just taking a subway home, and a percolating menace surrounds us Rex Murphy and all we do.

“I am not sure, in one sense, which was the more challenging life.”

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TUNA HEIST A recent news article from Australia revealed how Japan caught and hid $2 billion worth of bluefin tuna, effectively killing the stock commercially. An investigation into the imperiled fishery found Japanese fishermen and suppliers from other countries caught up to three times the Japanese quota each year for the past 20 years, and hid it.

The Australian Fisheries Management Authority’s managing director, Richard McLoughlin, said it was an enormous international fraud. “Essentially the Japanese have stolen $2 billion worth of fish from the international community, and have been sitting in meetings for 15 years saying they are as pure as the driven snow. And it’s outrageous.”

The Japanese have been fishing tuna on the Grand Banks for years. Maybe someone should have an eye on that fishery …

From

50 5.7

h wy : m p g

how he was forced to learn and adopt a new career.

Cremation in Canada this year is expected to surpass 90,000. There are six crematoria in Newfoundland and Labrador, all on the island, and it is estimated 10 to 15 per cent of the roughly 5,000 deaths in the province will use cremation.

4 • INDEPENDENTNEWS

AUGUST 20, 2006

Pearl Hart (Nelson's mother) and his wife Jennifer Hart, shown in Pearl's home, often talk to Nelson on the phone. Nelson Hart is in prison for the murder of his twin daughters four years ago.

Donald Weber/Maclean’s

‘A child in a man’s body’ From page 1 Nelson Lloyd Hart is something of a hard case. The eldest of three sons, he was nine months old when a high fever triggered the illness that still plagues him. When Pearl Hart, his mother, heard his laboured breathing late one night in the village northwest of Gander where they lived, “he was coal-black in his crib,” she says. By the time they arrived at the Gander hospital, an hour and a half away, “they told me they didn’t think he was going to make it.”

Though he survived, the illness brought on the epilepsy he inherited from his father’s family. Pearl recalls him as an infant, “his eyes rolled over, foaming at the mouth, his tongue hanging out.” The fits “prevented him from being normal,” she says. “He was always deprived of a lot of things and he was always bitter.” Later, his schoolmates were repelled by the fits. “They used to tease him and tell him how ugly he was — because he was,” Pearl says. “People didn’t get all that close to Nelson.”

By age 12, Hart had already spent three years in Grade 5. Pearl agreed with school officials that he would go no further and, from then on, he stayed home. “To look at him he was healthy — you couldn’t see into his brain,” says Pearl. Hart still has difficulty reading and has lost his driver’s licence several times due to his condition (medication he began taking in his late 20s allowed him to continue driving). Believing his licence was “the only thing in life he had going for him,” says Pearl, Hart frequently refused to go to hospital for serious seizures, fearing doctors would alert authorities. By his mid-20s, he was jobless and living at home. That changed when Pearl’s new common-law husband, whom she says Hart threatened to kill during a row, demanded he move out. “He was sort of a child in a man’s body,” says his mother.

Living on his own, Hart’s seizures grew worse. “I’m having a weak turn,” he would holler, slapping his stomach. The episodes became so severe, says Pearl, that in October, 1997 the provincial government arranged for him to receive live-in care, hiring Jennifer Hicks, a young woman with doe eyes. But Hart wanted more than a nurse and, before long, he and Jennifer were lovers. Asked what drew her to him, Jennifer, now 32, just giggles (the couple was married in March, 2000). The relationship caused Jennifer to lose her homecare job, putting both on social assistance.

Soon, she was pregnant, with twins. The prospect of having children terrified Hart: he prayed they wouldn’t suffer from epilepsy too.

He wondered how he would care for them.

During fits, Hart clutches objects in a rictus grip — glasses break in his fists — and he worried he could suffocate a child.

Karen and Krista were born on March 9, 1999. Karen was the elder by a minute or two and, at five pounds, eight ounces, was just over a pound lighter than Krista. As they grew, the twins’ personalities diverged. “Krista was like Nelson and Karen was like me,” Jennifer says. “Krista was like a little woman — she thought she needed to take care of Karen.”

Though there were two beds in the room the girls shared, in the morning Jennifer often found that one had crawled in with the other.

Meanwhile, the chronically poor Hart, who had broken his neck in a car accident the year before, received something of a windfall: a $25,000 insurance claim. Hart bought a bed, a chesterfield, a table set and clothes for his newborns, but when social services discovered the award, says Pearl, they forced him to sell his purchases and relinquish the money.

“That’s when everything started downhill for Nelson,” says Pearl. By the time of the drownings, Hart was spending what little money he had gambling. “He’d stay until the machine shut down,” recalls Jennifer. The situation was so dire that social services threatened to remove the children and told Jennifer she would have to make a choice. “It was either going to be the girls — or Nelson,” she says.

Such were his circumstances on the morn-

Nelson and Jennifer Hart. Nelson Hart is in prison for the first-degree murder of his twin daughters four years ago.

Donald Weber / Maclean’s

“I loved my daughters.

My own flesh and blood — there are times when I cried, I cried, I cried.”

Nelson Hart

ing of Aug. 4, 2002, when Hart drove his girls to their deaths. The family had been looking forward to that day’s demolition derby, part of the annual Festival of Flight celebrations that locals call “Gander Day.” Jennifer “had the girls dressed and fed,” recalls Hart, but needed a shower and to do her hair — a chore that, with locks flowing down to the small of her back, took over an hour. Due to his fits, Hart had always avoided being alone with the twins. But that day he loaded them into his Dodge Shadow and asked where they’d like to go. “We wants to go to the swings,” they sang.

With that, they set out for Little Harbour, a hidden corner of Gander Lake surrounded by thick brush 10 km west of town where swings had been erected just days earlier. Upon their arrival, Hart first retrieved Krista from the back seat, setting her on the ground, then Karen.

He had just put the second child down and shut the car door when he says he suffered a massive seizure. Hart recalls one of the girls running but cannot remember whether she was running toward him or to the water (the twins were frightened of his seizures and, when one came upon him at home, he would hide from them). When he came to, Hart told Maclean’s, he looked and saw Krista “into the water.” The fit left him confused. “All I could

picture was Jennifer — where’s Jennifer?” he says. “I could see her but I couldn’t get to her.” Though he knows he got behind the wheel of his car, he does not remember driving home. “By this time, I was starting around to my real senses,” says Hart. “I said, ‘Oh my God, Karen’s there, too.’ “ As he sped back to the harbour with Jennifer, says his wife, “it didn’t seem like Nelson was going fast enough — but he had the gas to the floor.” At the beach, “we found Krista into the water,” says Hart. She had drifted into the middle of the harbour, beyond reach. Jennifer, who couldn’t swim either, began searching the surrounding forest for Karen, who had disappeared entirely. Hart, meanwhile, raced to a nearby gas station and called authorities. Paramedics retrieved Krista, who somehow survived but died the following day in hospital, and found Karen in the water 10 metres from the wharf, dead. As police drove him away from Little Harbour for questioning later that morning, Hart suffered a second seizure. “I loved my daughters,” says Hart. “My own flesh and blood — there are times when I cried, I cried, I cried.”

The account of the drownings that Hart supplied Maclean’s forms a more detailed picture of that morning’s events than did news reports that followed after the tragedy, when police said he drove away immediately upon seeing the first girl in the water. Indeed, according to his mother, Hart did not tell police of his seizure until over a week after the deaths. “He didn’t want to lose his driver’s licence,” says Pearl (though she cannot explain Hart’s reticence even after suffering one in the back of a cruiser later on the morning of the deaths). Yet Hart’s latest account of that day is not what he told a man by the name of Steph Sauve and Sauve’s mysterious boss last summer.

Next week: details of the sting.

The above story appeared in the Aug. 14 edition of Maclean’s magazine. Reprinted with permission.

AUGUST 20, 2006

INDEPENDENTNEWS • 5

New licence regulation sees dramatic drop in caplin dumping; losses still expected in fishery

By Ryan Cleary The Independent

F

isheries Minister Tom Rideout says a new regulation implemented this year by his department cut the amount of caplin tossed overboard to less than 100 tonnes from last year’s mark of more than 12,000 tonnes.

On the down side, at least one fish plant owner has pegged losses in this year’s caplin fishery at $40 million US, a result of the alleged failure of the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) to open the fishery at the right time.

Rideout is familiar with that complaint, but says it’s too early to put a dollar value on losses.

“You know I’m concerned,” Rideout tells The Independent. “Obviously we want to see the season optimized for the benefit of everybody involved and if the fishery isn’t opened when the caplin are at their optimum level then you’re not

going to get your best price and everyone suffers.”

Market dictates when best to carry out the caplin fishery. Buyers prefer female caplin when the roe is about 90 per cent mature — meaning fishermen have to be allowed to catch caplin at the right time, when the fish are at the right stage of development.

In last week’s Independent, fish plant owner Fonce Best of Southern Harbour described the 2006 caplin fishery as a bust, blaming the badly-timed opening dates. As a result, he said, caplin caught this year were small, fetching less from Japanese buyers.

Rideout says it’s too early to predict losses in this year’s caplin fishery.

“We’d need to do a recapitulation of the industry — how much was caught, and what price it fetched in the market place.”

The minister says it’s difficult to make the “right call” about opening the fishery so caplin are in the best shape

Paul Daly/The Independent

for markets. Years ago, Rideout says samples were taken in various parts of bays to determine opening dates.

Well compensated Stephenville mayor says flood compensation blessing; people rebuilding in area

By Ivan Morgan The Independent

S

tephenville Mayor Tom O’Brien says more than 90 per cent of homeowners receiving compensation for damage caused by last year’s flood are choosing to remain in the area.

With the mill closed and the town’s economy in trouble, O’Brien says that’s a hopeful sign.

Some Stephenville locals claim their settlements are in the $100,000 to $350,000 range.

Government is not releasing any amounts, but says 38 claims have been paid out of 103 properties damaged, with 22 to be settled within the next two weeks, and 22 more in progress.

To date, approximately $11.3 million has been paid out on personal/business claims. While all claims are different, that averages out to almost $300,000 each.

“The compensation people are receiving is based on replacement cost at today’s values and today’s codes,” he says. “Independent appraisers and adjusters were sent into each and every home.”

The appraisers, working for companies in located in Corner Brook and central Newfoundland, focussed on not only property value, but also the cost of replacing the contents of the houses, O’Brien says. That explains both the rel-

atively high amounts and the discrepancies between settlements.

As he points out: if one house has oak cupboards and another has plywood, one is going to cost more than the other to replace.

“Most people are happy with their compensation, but there are two levels of appeal for those who are not,” he says.

The provincial government says no one from inside the flood zone is appealing, and all have signed paperwork indicating so.

The mayor says the compensation money is great for the economy both in the short term, with people buying homes or building new ones, and the long term, as it indicates people have confidence in the future of the area.

Over $4.6 million has been approved for municipal infrastructure, which makes a total infusion into the local economy of almost $15 million.

O’Brien is happy with the compensation and the fact people appear to be staying. “I feel good.

People have determined Stephenville is their home and they are going to stay in their home — in their home from a community perspective if not a structural perspective.”

The 103 damaged homes will be demolished, and the land will be designated a green space, and perhaps a park, says the mayor.

No ore leaving Labrador

U

nionized workers at Sudbury’s nickel smelter plant say they won’t process Voisey’s Bay ore that crosses picket lines — but their refusal is theoretical so far, since no ore is leaving Labrador.

Phil du Toit, managing director of Voisey’s Bay, says no nickel concentrate has left the plant since July 28, when the strike started. When the mine is functioning, ore is being processed in the Sudbury smelter until a plant is constructed in Newfoundland.

“Since the strike has started we haven’t shipped any concentrate, but we are keeping our options open,” says du Toit. “We understand the sentiment behind that and we are going to be respectful to the unions throughout this whole process that we are going through.

“They have concentrate in the supply pipeline that was produced before the strike, and one would assume they would process all of that.”

While 117 Voisey’s Bay workers are currently picketing Inco offices in Happy Valley-Goose Bay, St. John’s and Nain, 230 workers remain at the plant carrying out care and maintenance duties.

Local 9508 of the United Steelworkers Union and Inco management have not resumed talks since contract negotiations failed, but du Toit says he’s hoping to get back to the negotiating table as soon as possible.

Chris Montague, president of the Labrador Métis Nation, is calling for an end of the strike because of its economic effect on the area.

— Nadya Bell

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“I believe they’ve moved away from that protocol and they do one large opening now, which is perhaps some-

thing that ought to be revisited during the course of this winter in preparation for next season.”

A new condition implemented this year on caplin processing licences meant fish plants weren’t allowed to dump male caplin unless they made every attempt to find markets for the fish or sell to another processor.

“As a result, at the end the season preliminary results told us where there was 12,000 tonnes of male caplin dumped last year, there was less than 100 dumped this year,” Rideout says.

He says the drop proves there are market opportunities for male caplin and if the incentives are put in place processors won’t do the “easy thing” — dump the fish.

“We wanted to see every fish landed in this province sold for some economic value.”

This year’s caplin quota was set at 30,500 tonnes, an increase of 7,600 tonnes from last year.

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6 • INDEPENDENTNEWS

AUGUST 20, 2006

Give the devil his due T

here’s no such thing as a stupid question, but I always seem to have one handy.

And so I ask you … If we were a separate country, meaning Confederation was merely a bad dream and the last 57 years we were on our own (how liberating it is to write those words), would Canada hold the rights to petroleum reserves beneath the Grand Banks of Newfoundland?

To be clear, let me put it another way … Would Canada, as a whole other nation from the Republic of Newfoundland (a sweeter statement still), be permitted to reach her hand over the Gulf of St. Lawrence, across the island and, beyond that, extend out over a few hundred kilometres of north Atlantic to stake a claim on the ocean floor?

One more way — Would the federal government own the oil and gas off Newfoundland if we were independent?

The answer to that question, as far as I can tell, is no.

As the adjacent state, meaning the land nearest the undersea treasure, Newfoundland would own the oil and gas outright. No question — unless there was a war maybe, and Canadians

RYAN CLEARY

Fighting Newfoundlander aren’t like that (unless Afghanistan changes them/us).

Stick with me now, another question: Why then does the Government of Canada own the oil and gas? Alberta owns the reserves beneath its soil. Why don’t we own what’s under our water?

To be precise, and I’ve said this before, we — as Canadians — own the resource, we — as Newfoundlanders and Labradorians — do not.

The Supreme Court of Canada made that decision in 1984, but judges, like everyone else, can be wrong.

Just because it’s the law doesn’t make it right. Not from where Newfoundland and Labrador stands anyway.

And so we move on to the point we’re at today, with Danny and Newfoundland Supreme Court Justice Raymond Halley going at it in public over the appointment of Max Ruelokke as head of the CNIDOG (I can never get that acronym right) that oversees the lucrative offshore oil industry.

How lucrative? The price of oil today sits at about $70 US a barrel. Compare that to the early 1990s when experts pinned the breakeven point for offshore oil production at $13 US a barrel.

Someone is making a killing — and it ain’t us, even counting what Danny wrestled from Ottawa out of the Atlantic Accord.

Danny thinks Andy Wells is the best person to help change the status quo.

Supreme Court says otherwise.

The law outlines a process that must be followed to anoint a new master of the CNIDOG. That process was apparently followed to the letter of the law — at least according to Halley. Again, that doesn’t make the law right — not from our side of the Gulf.

Halley called Danny’s actions “reprehensible.” Danny says Halley went over the top in his condemnation.

Danny questions whether the justice got up on the “wrong side of the bed” on the day he handed down his decision. Indeed, Halley may be guilty of conduct unbecoming.

Danny may have his bed laid out before him, but he isn’t lying in it. He absolutely should appeal Halley’s decision. Fight the ruling until either he wins, the federal government backs

Fight the ruling until either he wins, the federal government backs down and allows Andy to serve beside Ruelokke, or the law is changed to suit our purposes. down and allows Andy to serve beside Ruelokke, or the law is changed to suit our purposes. This dispute is a political one — Halley should know that and refrain from sticking his gavel where it doesn’t belong.

I’m a fan of Danny boy, in case that wasn’t obvious. Let me correct that — I’m a fan in some ways, not in all respects (that should also be obvious).

Danny may be God’s gift to Himself in terms of oil and gas, but he’s nowhere near the right hand when He moves beyond the overpass. A Townie can’t be expected to understand the outports when he’s not from there — maybe

that’s what it comes down to. Danny’s also given up the fishery for dead (fault No. 2 in case anyone’s counting).

The cards appear to be in the federal government’s hand when it comes to oil and gas but that doesn’t mean Danny has to play the hand he’s dealt. More power to him for beating his way outside the Confederation box.

Loyola Hearn is a perfect example of what happens when a Newfoundlander tries to change the Canadian system from within — he fails miserably.

Loyola can do all the joint patrols he wants of the Grand Banks with his newfound NAFO friends but that doesn’t change the fact the holes in the system are big enough to sail a fleet of foreign trawlers through.

Loyola we hardly knew ye, until ye got to Ottawa.

One of the many downsides of the political scandal that grips the land is the potential it has to sap Danny’s strength in his fight with the feds and the oil companies. That’s too bad, but that’s it. Does support for a politician have to be absolute and unwavering?

There I go with another stupid question … ryan.cleary@theindependent.ca

YOUR VOICE ‘Once again the public has been duped’ Dear editor, Finally we have a newspaper in this province that engages in investigative reporting — unlike other papers that regurgitate what politicians and bureaucrats tell them.

I read with interest your article on the Newfoundland and Labrador Legacy Nature Trust (Questions of trust, Aug. 6 edition). The story prompted me to do a little research myself. My research tells me that once again the public has been duped.

I give credit to the Newfoundland and Labrador Wildlife Federation for pursuing the issue for six years and for your paper’s research.

To tell people that half of the $1 million was to be taken back and used on programs for small conservation groups and then not do it is scandalous.

I agree that the auditor general should do a full public inquiry into the legacy group and get our tax dollars back.

My research into the eight-man Liberal “Outdoor use of resources” committee tells me that the money given by Brian Tobin to the legacy was to go to small, local groups for their projects. Again, this didn’t happen. Why? The auditor general confirmed that

the legacy groups did not meet the conditions of the agreement as set out by government. It should have been banned then but it wasn’t. Why not?

It appears that people with political connections get what they want at taxpayers’ expense.

As a citizen I am demanding that the auditor general find a way to get the legacy to give the people back their money.

If I broke an agreement or contract with the bank I would have to repay it.

This money could be better spent in dying rural Newfoundland. Why did the $1 million sit in a drawer for a full year? I am very concerned that this wanton waste of public money may well go back before 1999 — and possibly in more than one government department. This has to found out.

The answer given by the legacy spokesperson seemed to be nothing more than smoke and mirrors and I feel that the legacy avoided the issue.

Not good enough.

How much more dirt and money was pushed under the carpet this way? The carpet needs a good beating to see how much more loose change and dirt will come out.

Larry (George) Nicholl, St. John’s

‘Words can create or destroy’ Dear editor, In Bill Kelly’s letter to the editor (Dyer warning, Aug. 13 edition), whose credibility are we talking about anyway?

Kelly uses some choice words with which to berate Sue Kelland-Dyer. He openly admits to not knowing Kelland-Dyer personally yet he uses a public forum to sully her name.

Words are a very powerful tool we have as humans, with words we can create or destroy.

Having heard Kelly on VOCM Open Line and having read some of his written articles, it is my opinion that Kelly’s work comes across as both negative and angry. Kelly uses the term “masquerading.” Is it possible that Kelly’s style of writing masquerades his fear?

Could it be that Kelland-Dyer’s ability to stick to the facts and to live

Sue Kelland-Dyer

her life (which is totally her prerogative) as she sees fit, instills fear in Kelly.

To stay with the camel motif … highly versatile, uniquely adaptable animal, who can survive quite well in their environment.

Ursula Dowlor Cartyville

AN INDEPENDENT VOICE FOR NEWFOUNDLAND & LABRADOR

P.O. Box 5891, Stn.C, St. John’s, Newfoundland & Labrador, A1C 5X4 Ph: 709-726-4639 • Fax: 709-726-8499 www.theindependent.ca • editorial@theindependent.ca The Independent is published by Independent News Ltd. 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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sales@theindependent.ca • production@theindependent.ca • circulation@theindependent.ca 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. • © 2006 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

The Portnoys, a family of ‘lawbreakers’ Dear editor, I’m not in the habit of listening to radio call-in shows, however the other day, while driving, I heard Randy Simms of VOCM express that he was indignant over the fact that Canadian immigration authorities did not inform “the world” or him of their decision over whether the Portnoy family will be allowed to stay in Canada.

Instead, officials put their decision in writing and sent it to the Portnoy family. This is the correct way as nothing can be mistaken when it is written. This is a personal issue between the Portnoy family and the Canadian Department of Immigration. If the Portnoys wish to make the decision public then that’s fine, but the government does not discuss private issues in public for fear of legal reprisals under the Privacy Act. I address the issue the following way …

(1) The Portnoy family is in Canada illegally. They were deported from Canada in 2000 and returned, illegally, in 2001. They broke Canadian immigration law.

(2) If Canada starts making excuses for not following its own laws where does it stop?

(3) What about people who are following Canadian law and who are waiting for permission to come to Canada?

Are they to keep moving to the back of the line because we are permitting the “law breakers” to jump ahead of them?

(4) If we don’t have laws we have anarchy.

(5) What if the people who complain had relatives waiting to come to Canada who were always being bumped because of people like the Portnoys?

Would they be so quick to take up the “cause” for such lawbreakers?

I’m not against the Portnoy family coming to Canada. I would be one of the first to welcome them, if they abide by our laws. What kind of message are we sending to the world if we keep letting people into our country who break our immigration laws? We may as well just put saloon doors at the Canadian border. The world we live in today demands that we have (and enforce) strict immigration laws to pro-

tect our people.

I remember Mr. Portnoy. Before being deported he said he was afraid for his safety if he was deported back to Israel.

Well that proved to be untrue. Mr. Portnoy is living and working in Mexico, having moved there from Israel. All I ask of the Portnoys and others who wish to come to my country is to respect Canada’s laws.

So Mr. Simms, instead of being a “sensational news reporter” try being a “responsible news reporter.”

Don Lester, Conception Bay South

The Portnoy family in Sacred Heart parish, Marystown, 2005.

Paul Daly/The Independent

‘Give the Portnoy family the justice they deserve’ Editor’s note: the following letter to the province’s seven MPs was forwarded to The Independent.

An open letter to Newfoundland and Labrador Members of Parliament: It’s about time we got this matter behind us. As a taxpayer and one who helped frame the Charter of Rights, I say in God’s name give the Portnoy family the justice they deserve and let

them stay with us.

In deporting these people we are denying the charter rights of Canadian citizens. The nameless and faceless bureaucrats of Ottawa and Moncton have denied this family the right to stay in this country. Where is the compassion? As scripture says, “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.” I know our premier who has always stood for the rights of the downtrodden

would agree. Let all our MPs sponsor a resolution calling on the federal government to reverse this shameful order and let’s get on with getting an immigration agreement with Canada as is the case with Quebec.

Justice and pride in our well-earned reputation for hospitality demands no less.

James A. McGrath, St. John’s

AUGUST 20, 2006

INDEPENDENTNEWS • 7

Qualifications in eye of beholder

M

any years ago I was notified I was no longer qualified to do a job I had been doing for 11 years, and was still doing. Some bright spark with a business degree was hired by the organization I worked for, and to get herself started in her new career, had gone over everyone’s resume. She “discovered” I did not have the proper accreditation.

Being fresh out of university, she jumped on this without talking to anyone, and issued me a dismissal form.

Cooler heads prevailed (mine was not one of them) and it was determined I had been hired several years before the proper accreditation had been drafted by something called Human Resources.

Everything was sorted out and I was — and this is a term I resent — “grandfathered” in. It meant I could keep doing what I was doing.

On paper she was qualified and I wasn’t. On Earth, it was the contrary.

The premier wants Andy Wells to head the CNLOPB. Supreme Court Justice Raymond Halley ruled Wells did not have the qualifications. Halley, I

IVAN MORGAN

Rant & Reason assume, examined the requirements of the job as outlined in the act. But “qualifications” are in the eye of the employer.

There are jobs that demand accreditation. Surgeons, electricians and judges come to mind, although history shows distinct latitude in what constitutes a judge’s qualifications.

By this I mean no disrespect to Justice Halley, who did his unenviable job with dispatch. I’m just saying candidates for these jobs have to demonstrate a basic level of competency before we allow them to practice on us. But there is more to judging ability than the number of letters behind your name, and that is especially true in politics.

Andy Wells has shown many of the appropriate skills for the job. He cannot be intimidated, is not particularly in the

of his goal.

Mr. Higgins is not the only one who believes in the effects of EMFs. Much is known, little has been done except the categorical attempt at discrediting the efforts of those who try to make the difference in raising our awareness.

Rest assured, all that is required is a look in to determine the severity of the problem, or lack thereof. If there is truly nothing to worry about, so be it.

But maybe there is something to it, and if it is a huge problem we can develop a strategy to deal with it over time, but in full awareness, and with an eye towards eliminating exposure.

I would appreciate it if you could take the time to go to the web, search for the harmful effects of EMFs, and see what your publication can do to help this man’s efforts. Maybe even get the community councils off their butt’s to start complaining again.

Dave Callahan, St. George’s

‘Boo hoo’ Dear editor, Well boo hoo! Danny doesn’t want to speak to you guys and cancelled his subscription. Another example of taking the ball and going home if you don’t play by his rules.

Oh, and ask a question as long as it’s a pre-arranged one he and his government can answer. Ryan, my boy, keep it up please!

Roger Linehan, St. John’s

Province can’t cure poverty by itself Dear editor, Even with the Newfoundland and Labrador Drug Card expansion, as indicated in last March’s provincial budget and the June 2006 Poverty Reduction Strategy Action Plan Report, there is still no guarantee that all health consumers will have government assistance, as their incomes exceed the new provincial threshold limits!

In other words, some people may have coverage while others don’t.

Even though the drug card expansion is a step in the right direction, it unfortunately will not cover every person without drug coverage!

I am glad that all the provincial and territorial health ministers endorsed the National Pharmaceutical Strategy Progress Report on making medications equally accessible and affordable across the country. A national pharmacare program will certainly go a long way to reducing our province’s poverty rate and making our society a healthier one

also fails to pass the smell test. When the compromise suggestion of having both serve was offered — one side, the industry side, wasn’t having any of it.

The local oil industry is hardly endearing itself to the electorate at the moment. We are dealing with an industry that leans on the premier to settle the dispute with ExxonMobil, a company that suddenly thought his demands for our share of the profits from our oilfields were a little too rich for their liking, and called off talks. This is the same company whose record profits this year were described on CNN as “an outrage,” and whose defence of those profits was the observation they could not control the price of oil.

ExxonMobil also had this to say about Iraq. Scott Nauman, manager of the economics and energy division at Exxon, says “Iraq has significant opportunities for growth. We see them more than doubling what they produce right now.”

So Exxon is excited about Iraq, but not so crazy about us here in Newfoundland. What do you think

Ruelokke would have to say about that?

How about Andy Wells?

The “qualifications” argument is another in a long line of insults handed down to us by people who have the gall to condescend to us while they pillage our resources. We shouldn’t be surprised — we have been spoken to like this for centuries.

The premier wants Wells on the CNLOPB. He seems to be mulling over the idea of sticking to his guns, and going back to court to appeal the decision. This is a time when we should all revel in the premier’s trademark petulance. Turned outwards, it will benefit all of us if he gets his way.

Wells is well qualified for the position, as he was when he stood up to telephone executives over their salary entitlements all those years ago. What basis do I offer for my argument that Wells is the right man for the job?

You don’t have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.

Ivan Morgan can be reached at ivan.morgan@theindependent.ca

WOMEN’S WORLD CUP

YOUR VOICE ‘The results were absolutely scary’ Dear editor, I know that reporter Clare-Marie Gosse has written a fair bit on a topic held ever so dearly by Gerry Higgins.

I was involved with a little study conducted by Mr. Higgins a few years back when I was mayor of the Town of St. George’s. The results were absolutely scary to say the least.

Over 90 communities participated in a little informal study of cancer victims, and their proximity to EMF producing transformers. Every single community reported the same thing — the highest percentage of people afflicted with the disease were right next to transformers. This in itself is enough to scare the be jeepers out of people, and should warrant a study by an impartial source.

Unfortunately because of his passion, and a few setbacks in his life, Mr. Higgins has not been able to be effective in his lobby efforts. He has been all but ostracized by the open lines because they downplayed his efforts, his enthusiasm, and the valour

pocket of the oil industry, and has shown backbone when he sees an injustice he would like to challenge.

A year ago I wrote a column endorsing Wells for the job based on his past experience of sticking it to industry insiders comfortable with the way things are — and I used the example of his time on the Public Utilities Board as an example.

As this is a 28-page paper, I don’t have the time or the resources to review the number of people appointed to jobs they weren’t even remotely qualified for. In fact, I haven’t the time to review those currently holding jobs they aren’t qualified for. One needs only to review the former elected Liberals and friends of Liberals (or now in this province, Tories) heading up boards, panels and committees, or working in the public and quasi-public services to see the long list of laughably unqualified people.

So questioning Wells’ qualifications would be funny if it wasn’t so suspect.

The fact the industry and the “powers that be” want Max Ruelokke so badly

In terms of the overall provincial government poverty reduction strategy, I give the Danny Williams government credit for tackling this very difficult and complex issue. There is a wide range of poverty-related issues to deal with, including housing, child care, minimum wage, education, drug plans, income support, employment, taxation, disability supports, low-income seniors, health care and so on.

The Government of Newfoundland and Labrador cannot realistically reduce poverty in this province all by itself. The province will need the federal government’s support.

We need federal, provincial and local governments, the business community, unions, churches, and various concerned community and disabilityrelated non-profit organizations to make our province’s poverty reduction to become a reality.

Edward Sawdon, St. John’s

Pu Wei, captain of the Chinese national women's soccer team, with teammates Zhang Ying and Pan Li-Na, will play Canada in a world cup qualifying game at King George Field in St. John's Tuesday. Saturday’s game was played after The Independent’s press deadline.

Paul Daly/The Independent

How does the church feel about Viagra?

Dear editor, The Condoms4Life group, which includes both Catholic clergy and parishioners, is promoting the use of condoms to prevent HIV/AIDS by arguing that the present church ban on contraceptives is no longer a valid one.

If non-condom use is good because life is always possible (when not barred by such artificial means as condoms or birth control), why can’t we also view condoms that are used to prevent the contraction of HIV/AIDS as a promotion of an existing life and therefore equally moral?

The group further contends that human dignity (which AIDS destroys), and the right for a person to use one’s own conscience, must be allowed to be exercised in dealing with this terrible disease. They contend the rationale behind the rule — which is a pro-life rule, not simply a no-condom rule — justifies the use of condoms to save lives.

In fact, the group is only fighting the issue to save the lives of innocent partners of AIDS victims since the church does not have a no-condom rule for sex outside marriage because the simplicity of the church doctrine states that such actions are sinful and forbidden. One can thus manipulate

that fact to justify the use of condoms outside marriage. To have to perform such cerebral leger de main is itself demeaning and takes away some of a person’s integrity.

Conversely, one has to ask the question, a reverse question involving the artificial use of Viagra and Levitra to create the conditions to make a new life possible. If a man suffers from impotence, would the Church condemn the use of such drugs as an artificial means to create life? It is obvious that the life-creating process has entered a new realm for without those drugs or some other artificial means such as vitro fertilization — which the church is opposed to in all possible forms — the possibility of life is not present.

Yet it is my understanding the church does not condemn the use of Viagra.

If the church is accepting of such drug use to create life, is it not conceivable that the church should also be open to the use of condoms to protect existing life, both inside and outside marriage?

I do not know the answers to those questions but I am sure competent Catholic and other theologians could address both parts of this issue — the use of condoms and Viagra.

Aubrey Smith, Grand Falls-Windsor

No idle threat In part, the terrorists have won; they’ve got us royally on the run, from shadow, threat and smoking gun, there is no cover from this son.

Our greatest enemy is fear; the kind that’s very hard to bear; disrupting habit and routine, the one that’s hardly ever seen.

Except in every dark man’s face; in everyone of Arab race; in all that go to mosque to pray, “they must be guilty, make them pay!”

The Jews remain pariahs still ’til now, the Muslims fill the bill; if all the terrorists make that mold, then all of Islam must be sold.

On terrorism’s tragic law, that compensates for failure’s flaw; in faithfulness and blinded bliss, the kiss of death is placed in awe.

Loathe thy neighbour, hate his race; tell him “terrorist” to his face; tolerate his faith no more, now, you must feel secure!

Bob LeMessurier Goulds

AUGUST 20, 2006

8 • INDEPENDENTNEWS

IN CAMERA

Catch of the day

A

t 6:30 a.m., the sky over Conception Bay is still dark with cloud cover, but the rain seems to be finished and, most importantly, the wind has finally dropped off. So comes the first-hand weather report from my father, as he gives the thumbs up for the fishing trip we’d been planning — and postponing — all week.

It’s my first time in the boat this year, but my Dad, Rex, has been out several times since the food fishery opened Aug. 1. He hasn’t always had the time or luck to fill the five fish per person daily quota — but most times he has.

Joining us in the 23-foot fiberglass speedboat are Peter and Gail Ferguson, cousins with family ties (and a house and boat) in Twillingate. They live in California, but make it to Newfoundland for a few weeks most summers.

My father’s side of the family comes from Change Islands, just off the island’s northeast coast, not far from Twillingate. While he’s never been a full-time fisherman, many of our relatives were, and he’s spent more than his share of time on the water.

My brother and I joined him from a young age, bobbing along in the boat, exploring

On Aug. 1, for the first time in three years, the recreational food fishery opened in this province. Last week, photo editor Paul Daly and managing editor Stephanie Porter set out for a morning on Conception Bay — determined not to come in until the daily quota had been caught. coasts and islands, playing in the water as fish were split and gutted. As preschoolers, we knew lobster pots, salmon nets, mussel beds, and the spell-binding sight of a cod trap being hauled, filled with hundreds of fish flipping and splashing the surface.

Mostly we knew cod jigging, and spent many summer days helping stock the freezer with more cod than we could bear to eat in a year.

I think about all this, the memories I share with countless Newfoundlanders and Labradorians, as we bounce along the waves.

Hugging the coastline between St. Philip’s and Portugal Cove, we’re headed for familiar favourite fishing spots.

We near Portugal Cove, the boat slows, and the depth sounder goes on.

The cod jigger is now outlawed, replaced by hand lines or angling gear. We put down two lines, each with three small hooks baited with bits of squid. (“Fish can smell pretty good,” Dad says. “So it can’t hurt.”)

The fishing begins. It’s unspoken, but no one has any plans to head in until the boat limit of 15 groundfish — hopefully all cod — is reached.

After too many quiet minutes, Peter gives a sudden tug, and starts pulling in his line. The rest of us look into the water, waiting to see the ghostly outline of first catch of the day.

Peter sighs as two big, spiny sculpin break the surface.

Time to try somewhere else.

•••

Hedley Butler, a commercial fisherman and deputy mayor of Bonavista, is just in from a morning on the water himself when he answers the phone.

“I got that big of a fish, I had to split it,” he says of the estimated 25-pound cod he caught.

“The food fishery, I’d say it’s going very good out here … other than the weather, I think it’s going excellent, everybody’s going out and getting their fish.

“There’s an awful lot of fish around, the most that’s been around for years — you can see that on the sounder.”

While he says everyone’s enjoying the food fishery, it’s not long before he changes topics.

A small-scale inshore commercial fishery was also given a go-ahead this summer, as a one-year pilot project. About 2,300 fishermen were each allowed up to 1,350 kilograms of northern cod each, within the 12-mile inshore limit.

Butler says that amount is “an insult.”

“I mean, what fish is around!” he says. “The squid is in the thousands, we can’t sell that, the turbot, we got our quota in three hauls, the cod is in the thousands and we can’t be at that …

“There’s lots of fish and they just won’t let us fish them.”

He says FPI’s going price for fresh fish is 50

AUGUST 20, 2006

cents a pound — another slight.

“I got no complaints with the food fishery, long as it’s looked after and people don’t abuse it. People have got to have fish for their tables too.

“But look after us too, the commercial fishermen.”

••• There are a couple commercial trawlers out on Conception Bay, but mostly the water is dotted with small — some very small — inshore boats. Most hold exactly three people.

We put down our lines again, a little further down the coast past Portugal Cove. The water, about 120 feet deep, slowly grows shallower as the boat drifts.

Again, Peter gets the first bite. This time, he pulls up a small cod. It’s against the rules to “high grade” and let the little guy go — in hopes of catching a bigger fish later — so the fish stays in the boat and we all cross our fingers for a bigger catch next time. (“It’s good to see there are young fish there,” Dad says. “Good to know babies are surviving, we need to see fish of all ages.”)

Barely a minute later, Peter pulls his line in

INDEPENDENTNEWS • 9

again. As usual, we peer into the water expectantly … but take a step back when a diamond-shaped body and flailing tentacles become visible. Everyone knows to move back when a squid hits the surface.

When it comes out of the water, the squid is so white it’s transparent. It cycles through a surreal series of colours — bright red, neon green, purple, flashes of brown and blue — punctuated by the odd panicked squirt of ink as it’s taken off the hook and put aside. Fresh bait.

Peter, still the only one catching anything, pulls in another sculpin.

Then, finally, he snags a fiery looking rock cod, meal-sized at least.

After a small conner met his fate on another hook, we decide to search for more plentiful waters.

••• The habour supervisor in Twillingate, Gordon Noseworthy, says no one’s been disappointed in the catch this month. One fellow even hauled in a cod weighing an unbelievable “40-something” pounds.

“There’s a nice amount of fish what’s being brought in,” he says. He’s not sur-

prised. “For years there’s been no fishing out here, and there’s always been reports of fish being out there … and right now, the reports are, there’s plenty of it.

“I don’t know of anyone who’s not getting their fish, their five and 10 and 15.”

Though Noseworthy sees a “good bit of fishing going on,” he says the Twillingate waterfront is quieter than when the crab season is in full tilt. These days, there’s only a bit of shrimp coming in, and the cod.

As far as Noseworthy knows, everyone is adhering to the food fishery regulations. And given his position, he says he’d hear if anyone had been caught breaking the rules.

“People are behaving. But the commercial cod is being monitored, where the five fish a day aren’t.”

Noseworthy hasn’t had the chance to get out on the water himself, but he says he will, before the Sept. 4 deadline. Meantime, he’s had more than one feed of the freshest fish.

“I bought 40 pounds from a commercial fisherman and that gave me more than a meal,” he says with a laugh. “I’ll have enough fish this winter I’ll probably go upriver and spawn.”

••• We arrive at “the ledges,” a popular fishing ground near Bell Island. The water is deeper — about 140 feet — but it’s much more rewarding.

This time, Peter is not alone in catching fish (though he does manage to land a flounder and one more sculpin, along with some respectable cod). Both lines are dropped and pulled in repeatedly.

As the 15th fish, a nice-sized cod, falls into the boat, the sun breaks through the clouds, and the little wind there was earlier all but drops off. It’s the kind of summer day on the ocean that heals the soul — and the promise of a meal of fresh fish doesn’t hurt.

We cut straight across the bay for a smooth trip back to St. Philip’s. More boats come and go on either side.

We pull up to the wharf in the marina, and are greeted by one of the locals, meandering along the boardwalk, hands in pockets. He peers into the boat, casting about for a look at the catch of the day. Spotting the rubber tub, about one-third filled with exactly 15 fish, he half nods, half shrugs.

“It’s not too hard to get your quota,” he says. “But it’s not much to brag about either.”

AUGUST 20, 2006

10 • INDEPENDENTNEWS

SCATTERED PAST

Cannons over Placentia A visit to Castle Hill National Historical Site

By Nadya Bell The Independent

T

he British flag snaps in the wind on its wooden pole, a hundred metres above Placentia Bay. Below the flag sits Fort Royal’s guardhouse, a rare outof-the-wind place to eat lunch.

In England, tourists are kept back from Stonehenge by a fence, but in Newfoundland, Fort Royal’s remains on Castle Hill are unguarded, save for a little bilingual interpretation.

Children run over the drawbridge and scamper around the perfect place to play Robin Hood.

Plaisance was founded as a French community in 1662, and continues to be visited by a great number of French tourists. The town was the rival to St. John’s, and the base from which attacks on the English were launched.

The hill bristled with cannons: Fort Louis, 26 cannons; Gaillardin and Fort Royal, 10 cannons; Detached Redoubt, four cannons; and La Fontaine Battery, six cannons. From the hill soldiers could defend the town below and the harbour.

The fort was hard to reach by the enemy — solders had to climb a treacherous trail — and was protected in front and behind.

Pierre Le Moyne d’Iberville, the famously capable French soldier, led three attacks from Placentia on St. John’s and other campaigns on the Conception Bay area. They destroyed 36 settlements and captured 700 prisoners in four months.

Amy Wilson and Patrick O’Keefe perform at Castle Hill National Historic Site in Placentia.

Three times, French from Placentia attacked St. John’s and burned the city around the military fort. Because there were too few French to hold the city, the English fishermen returned every time.

Despite d’Iberville’s wins in Newfoundland, the French transferred him elsewhere, and bargained

away the island to England in exchange for losses in Europe. The fort was renovated by the British after they took it over in 1713 — a result of the War of the Spanish Succession — and maintained it until 1811.

Basque fishermen lived and worked in Placentia as early as 1594,

Nadya Bell/The Independent

and were known for being a tough crowd. In the interpretation centre currently at the old fort, a mannequin diorama shows two men with rough wool and sheepskin clothing and long dark hair fighting over some fish flakes.

According to a historical play put off by a troupe of actors on the site,

there was high demand for space on the rocky beach to dry fish flakes, and quarrels between residents and seasonal fishermen often turned violent.

Jean Svigaraicipi, a Basque sea captain and corsair — a kind of legal wartime pirate — found his grave in Placentia. He was killed while raiding an English settlement, and his tombstone from 1694 is on display.

The rank-and-file French soldiers were not much better off than the fishermen, with their posting in a remote part of the world. While Placentia was a long way from Paris, and they would go years without pay or rations, there must have been plenty for them to eat in the area to maintain the base and launch successful campaigns from obscurity.

Pottery from around the world tells the story of trade over the centuries.

The dark grey stoneware comes from France and a nearly complete large earthenware bowl from England.

Even Chinese export pottery — a piece of a teacup with blue trees — was found in the area.

A bone comb dated 1642 looks a bit like a flea comb with teeth of different thickness on top and bottom. A Jew’s harp, a small folk music instrument, was also found.

Today, bluebells, clover and daisies bloom between the stone walls and over the top of the hill. The fort was built in the late 17th century: the walls are crumbling, but the view of the long rocky Placentia beach and the harbour must have been enjoyed by many a soldier keeping watch.

LIFE STORY

Building St. John’s suburbia SIR BRIAN E. S. DUNFIELD (1888-1968)

By Keith Collier For The Independent

I

n June 1943, a commission of inquiry into housing and town planning published a report called General Review of Housing Conditions: Outline of proposal for remedies.

Despite the bland titles of both the report and the commission, they drastically changed St. John’s, moving thousands of people from the cramped central core to the green valley north of the city — the area’s first suburbs.

The commission’s vision and subsequent developments were largely the work of its chairman, Supreme Court Justice and senior civil servant Brian Dunfield.

Born in St. John’s April 10, 1888, Dunfield was educated at Bishop Feild College. After earning a degree in philosophy at the University of London, he became a lawyer, originally partnering with Sir Edward Morris.

He worked with various law firms and companies, and was soon named

counsel to the Department of Justice.

In the dying days of responsible government, during the political turmoil that ended Sir Richard Squires’ political career, Dunfield became deputy minister of Justice. His work with the commission government kept him heavily involved in Newfoundland political life.

Dunfield remained with the Justice Department until 1939, when he was appointed to the Supreme Court, a position he held until his retirement in 1960. He was knighted in 1949.

He chaired various commissions and inquiries throughout the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s, dealing with everything from public accounting to the logging industry, as well as several labour disputes, such as the 1941 strike at the Buchan’s mine.

His most publicized inquiry was an investigation of the Knights of Columbus fire. On Dec. 12, 1942, the Knights of Columbus Hostel in St. John’s caught fire during a dance.

Ninety-nine people, mostly servicemen, lost their lives. Rumours circulated that it was the work of German agents operating in the city, and Dunfield was appointed to investigate.

His work determined the fire was an accident, but rumours persisted.

Where Dunfield was to have the greatest impact, however, was undoubtedly leading the commission into housing and city planning. The entire Churchill Park development was initiated under his direction.

By 1942, it was apparent St. John’s was facing a housing crisis. In May of that year, the commission came up with a plan to clear the central slum — the area where Mile One Stadium and City Hall are today — and relocate the population.

Both the commission and the subsequent St. John’s Housing Authority were chaired by Dunfield. He was appointed by deputy mayor Eric Cook, who counted on Dunfield’s dedication and proven ability to work with the commission government.

The housing commission, driven almost entirely by Dunfield, wrote five reports in two years. The report of 1943 gave solid evidence about the condition of housing in St. John’s. Of 4,613 houses surveyed, over 2,400 were considered substandard.

The reports laid the foundation for the redevelopment scheme, and

A view of Dartmouth Place as seen from Churchill Park from the publication Newfoundland: Canada’s Newest Province published by the federal government in 1950.

Dunfield went to great lengths to publicize them. When was the last time a government report was hand delivered door to door by cheerful Boy Scouts?

For the housing corporation, Dunfield was hard-working, energetic and dedicated. His experience in government proved valuable, and is partly responsible for the speed of redevelopment. There were barely four years between the publishing of the commission’s first report and the sale of the corporation’s first houses.

The Churchill Park development scheme included the entire area bordered by Elizabeth and Empire Avenues, and Torbay and Freshwater Roads. Government expropriated and developed 800 acres of land, effectively doubling the size of St. John’s and opening the door for the post-war expansion of the city.

Churchill Park was the first postwar suburb in Canada, and one of the largest.

At the sod-turning ceremony marking the start of construction of Elizabeth Street (now Elizabeth Avenue), Dunfield said it was “the first step in a program which we all believe may bring marvelous changes to our city.” It was “not a program to be carried out in a year (and it) may take a generation to realize the effects of this scheme.”

That scheme, once referred to as “Dunfield’s folly,” brought tremendous change to the city. It opened the areas north of Empire Avenue to development, and was the first step in creating the sprawling City of St. John’s as it is today.

Sir Brian E. S. Dunfield died on March 19, 1968, at the age of 79.

AUGUST 20, 2006

INDEPENDENTNEWS • 11

B.C. teen gets four new organs

VOICE FROM AWAY

By Chistopher Maughan Torstar wire service

T

Meaghan Williams

Paul Daly/The Independent

‘Clean and calculated’ St. John’s double bass player in midst of two-year orchestra contract in Japan

By Nadya Bell The Independent

D

ouble bass player Meaghan Williams flew home to St. John’s from Japan for a visit, but she couldn’t bring her performance instrument back with her.

Tighter restrictions for airline luggage mean double basses — which stand over two metres high — are effectively too big to get on the plane.

“Where it was difficult before, it’s next to impossible now to fly with your instrument,” she says.

Williams has a two-year contract with the new orchestra at the Hyogo Performing Arts Centre in Japan. The group was conceived as an orchestra for performers under the age of 35, perfect for Williams, who finished her performance diploma — the equivalent of a master’s degree — in Berlin in the fall of 2003.

She says she enjoys playing with the orchestra and its charismatic conductor, Yutaka Sado. The orchestra has members from 18 countries, including two of her friends from undergraduate studies at the University of Toronto.

“We have a very charming artistic director, and he sells a lot of tickets,” she says.

“That’s something an orchestra always looks for because you need to put a face on the product.”

Their repertoire of classic orchestral

“As opposed to the western idea of art and emotion and that kind of stuff, perfection definitely comes first there.”

Meaghan Williams works by Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms and Takemitsu has proven very popular in Japan, and most of their concerts have sold out. For their opening nights, they performed Beethoven’s ninth symphony, which Williams says was a real crowd pleaser.

DIFFERENT APPROACH She says the approach to classical music is slightly different in Japan than in North America and Europe.

“They are very clean and very calculated as opposed to sort of on the edge and expressive,” she says.

“The culture is more about the form of something — the wrapping you give a gift in is probably more important that the gift itself — so the technical aspect of the music is really really emphasized in the conservatories in Japan, and the pursuit of perfec-

tion.

“As opposed to the western idea of art and emotion and that kind of stuff, perfection definitely comes first there. I’ve noticed that in the playing of my colleagues who are Japanese.”

Williams has plenty of feelings for her instrument of choice. She describes her bass as deep and melodic, although her choice means she often plays a supporting role in the orchestra.

“It’s like playing left defense on a soccer team,” she says, laughing. “When you play it, you can feel the sound in your feet on the floor and in your arms in the air that is surrounding it — it’s not just an ear thing,” she says.

Although she’s looking forward to another year in Japan, she is quick to say she hopes her travels will take her home to Canada and Newfoundland soon. She hopes some day there might be a teaching position in double bass at Memorial’s school of music for her.

“I like it here, one of the things I miss is the clean air and the space,” she says. “I would love to live here, it’s just there’s not that many full time positions in music in Newfoundland. There’s a lot of really talented musicians here, but if you ask them, they probably have about five jobs.”

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

hey told her to prepare for the death of her son. That’s how desperate things got for Lori MacIver of Prince George, B.C. “They were telling me to prepare and to accept, but I still wasn’t on that page,” she said.

Maybe it was a mother’s intuition, but wherever MacIver’s faith came from, it was well-founded.

Her son Gairett, 18, is recovering after a high-risk, four-organ transplant operation on Aug. 1 at Toronto General Hospital.

Gairett now has a new bowel, liver, pancreas and stomach, all from the same donor. His parents and doctors say his success is nothing short of a miracle.

Bowel transplants are extremely uncommon. Though the first successful one was performed in 1988, they were virtually unheard of until about five or six years ago. Multiple organ transplants have a longer history, but procedures involving four organs are extremely rare and always dangerous.

But Gairett had no choice. He suffered from improperly formed blood vessels in his bowel that caused bleeding, which in turn caused damage to his stomach and liver.

His doctors weren’t even sure what caused the condition, but they knew something had to be done quickly.

After other, less risky attempts to fix the problem failed, he and his parents were out of options; they had to commit to an operation that doctors say is one of the most difficult to perform.

“Only a handful of these procedures have ever been performed in Canada and the U.S.,” says Dr. George Therapondos, one of Gairett’s transplant physicians. “Even expert surgeons need to acquire the skill for this.”

For Gairett and his family, the successful operation is a remarkable turnaround. Lori remembers being told that because he’d need four new organs, there was a good chance doctors wouldn’t find a donor on time.

When the call came, the MacIvers sprang into action.

Gairett’s parents had him on a plane to Toronto and on the operating table in less than 24 hours.

The MacIvers waited anxiously for 12 hours as a team of eight surgeons replaced his organs.

Therapondos says an operation like this has many challenges, but none is more daunting than making sure blood flows properly once the new organs are installed. “The most crucial time is when the blood vessels that supply the liver are opened up.

For reasons we don’t really understand, the patient can become unstable when the blood supply goes into the new liver.”

Despite the potential complications, Gairett’s surgery went so smoothly that his parents found him sitting up in bed, talking in a strong voice, looking healthier than he had in months. “It was amazing. It was so good to see colour in his face,” his father says.

It’s an incredible relief for Gairett’s parents and brother, who have seen him go through scores of health problems growing up. He’s lost sight in one eye, hearing in one ear, and broken his leg skiing, running and playing soccer. In fact, it was broken so many times it had to be lengthened because it had stopped growing.

While the cause of the poorly formed blood vessels in his bowel is still unknown, doctors think it could be related to an infection Gairett developed while his leg was being treated.

Therapondos says Gairett’s prognosis is improving every day, but remains uncertain. As an organ recipient, he’ll have to go in for regular checkups and take immune-system suppressants for the rest of his life so his body doesn’t reject its new parts.

Because he’s had so many organs transplanted at once, finding the right dosage of suppressants can be difficult, Therapondos says. That’s why he’s unwilling to put a time frame on Gairett’s release from Toronto General.

But the resolute young man, whose mother now calls him her “hero,” isn’t worried. His father said that when Gairett is feeling strong, he sits up scanning the newspapers for good deals on his first car.

“He thinks we’re going to buy a car and he’ll drive us back to Prince George when we finish all this,” Lori says.

“When you’re 18, you’re invincible.”

12 • INDEPENDENTNEWS

AUGUST 20, 2006

INDEPENDENTLIFE

SUNDAY THROUGH SATURDAY, AUGUST 20-26, 2006 — PAGE 13

Sheila Williams

Photos by Paul Daly/The Independent

A spirited business After 10 years, 3,500 performances, a handful of venues and two restaurants, Spirit of Newfoundland co-founder Kathie Hicks says the company has found the key to success: focus on entertainment

By Clare-Marie Gosse The Independent

I

t’s a Thursday night at The Majestic Theatre on Duckworth Street and the place is packed with expectant audience members, clustered around tables full of food and drink, enjoying the meal, but ultimately waiting for the show to begin.

While the crowd chews and sips, a slide show of images from past Spirit of Newfoundland productions plays above the stage, filling time before the curtain opens on From Gags to Glitches … 10 Spirited Years in Review.

In its 10th summer season, Spirit of Newfoundland is celebrating with a variety show poking fun at itself and reminiscing about a decade that brought 37 different shows and 3,500 performances.

In between the slides float the words: “10 years … not quite a ‘mighty’ long time but not bad all the same.”

Not bad at all, for as Kathie Hicks, Spirit’s co-founder and chief operating officer says, “when you’re in a creative enterprise, oh man, that’s unusual.”

Speaking to The Independent at the company’s busy office on Prescott Street in downtown St. John’s, Hicks reflects on the success thus far.

“We’re really passionate about Newfoundland so that’s what keeps us there,” she says. “But we can’t believe we’re still alive 10 years, we can’t believe it.”

It helps that Hicks and her cofounder, Peter Halley, seem to possess the right mix of talent to make a company specializing in dining and drama work.

Halley, as president and artistic director, oversees the shows, per-

forms and writes all the original material (often with help from other members, such as long-time contributor Sheila Williams). Hicks calls Halley a “total theatre force” and confesses that although she loves musical theatre she can’t play or sing.

With a background in business and journalism, Hicks, a woman who exudes energy, says her forte is sales and marketing. Although Halley specializes in performance, she says he too has “turned into a business person.”

Back in summer 1997, the province was in the throes of the Cabot 500 celebrations. Hicks and Halley were good friends and she says it began to feel as if she was having impromptu concerts at her place every night.

“Because, you know, he’s at the piano singing, arsing around … it was 1997, the Cabot 500 anniversary and so we said ‘let’s do a summer project, dinner theatre’ … the first summer it exploded on us, it just went really well and we thought, oh my God, we’ve got a real business happening here, and it just grew from that … it was our lives.”

As the company grew, so did the need to keep changing and adapting.

They mixed up the performances, found new venues, and evolved the business side of the operation.

This year Spirit of Newfoundland is embarking in a new business direction after dealing with some financial losses in 2005. Despite the fact the company has dramatically grown — now employing almost 150 people — the bigger the organization, the harder the occasional glitch can hit.

Last year, Hicks and Halley were running the Spirits Pub and Thai Room restaurant in the Majestic.

They found the effort of keeping up

with restaurant competition in St. John’s while juggling dinners and shows too much.

Hicks says they began to realize, rather than adding more notches to the enterprise, it was time to streamline the workload, while still keeping the same staff.

Now Spirit of Newfoundland subcontracts its full catering operation and sub-leases the restaurant part of the Majestic, now downtown St. John’s first Greek eatery.

“Our building at Majestic needed a restaurant downstairs,” says Hicks.

“We fancy ourselves sort of like restaurant developers because we open a restaurant then we lease it.”

(The concept has already proven successful for Restaurant 21 on Queen’s Road. Formerly The Bread Pig, the space is part of the Prescott Street building housing Spirit’s offices and is now one of St. John’s most popular high-end restaurants.)

All this gives Spirit of Newfoundland more time to focus on what it does best — stage performances. The company now entertains audiences at The Wilds Golf Resort and O’Brien’s Whale and Bird Tours in Bay Bulls, as well as their Duckworth Street mainstay.

As part of its new business approach, Spirit recently branched out into TV advertising for the first time, and the company hired a new sales and events manager last December.

Paul Bugge, a native Newfoundlander, worked with Disney in Florida for 14 years.

“He’s been amazing to help us restructure and focus on that guest experience and focus on the entertainment portion,” says Hicks.

The company also recently appointed an advisory board made up of people from all sections of the com-

Peter Halley

munity, from the media to city council, to help them make company decisions.

Through all the changes, Hicks says the integrity of the company has been maintained by sticking to three philosophies: give the customer whatever they want, never say no (that includes to your colleagues), and just be yourself — a Newfoundlander.

“We love it, it’s very vibrant here.

You’re stimulated at every turn … I know it sounds corny, but the customers, they’re just awesome and you know, you’re (always) meeting someone new. They’re just so interesting, and you love it still, you love talking to them, you know, having a laugh with them.”

If the audience response to Thursday night’s show is anything to go by, the feeling is mutual. Whether they’re staging a tribute to Frank Sinatra, belting out Buddy Holly,

crooning Newfoundland ballads, touring the country, tutoring hopeful actors, collecting theatre awards, or performing to royalty, presidents and premiers, the members of Spirit of Newfoundland certainly live up to their title.

“Every dollar we make, we get from doing a show, a bum in a seat,” says Hicks.

If that’s the case, Spirit of Newfoundland is facing at least another decade of successful gags and glitches.

Spirit of Newfoundland is currently performing Every Joan Dick and Harry, A Newfoundland Musical Comedy (The Majestic Theatre), Buddy’s Deadly Wedding (O’Brien’s in Bay Bulls), I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change (The Wilds Golf Resort) and “From Gags to Glitches” (The Majestic. www.spiritofnewfoundland.com

AUGUST 20, 2006

14 • INDEPENDENTLIFE

GALLERYPROFILE

BONNIE LEYTON Visual Artist

I

t took 16 years, but Bonnie Leyton says the sunsets over Conception Bay finally got to her. The vivid, delightful results will be up on the walls of her gallery shortly, part of a two-person landscape exhibition she’s sharing with Toby Rabinowitz.

“I’ve been taking pictures like crazy of the sunsets over Bell Island,” Leyton says of the view from her home and studio in Paradise. “I now have hundreds and hundreds of photographs; I’d just be there every night taking pictures. I still am … they’re just awe-inspiring.”

But she says she was never able to

transfer what she captured on film to her artwork. She loved the “Christopher Pratt lines” of the bay and the coast and the islands, but wasn’t happy with her attempts to bring them to life.

Leyton has been in her current home for 16 years. Before that, she lived in Torbay — where she felt moved to create the entire 23 years she was there.

“Torbay and I were married to each other; it was in my soul … I made so much art about Tobay and the cliffs, it was a natural partnership,” she says.

“And moving was difficult. I thought I’d never feel that connection again.

“Even though I did fall in love with Conception Bay, it’s a different beauty, a very peaceful beauty where the colours change regularly.”

In letting herself explore those colours — letting her vibrant palette of

The

oil paints carry the painting — Leyton says she finally found a way to convey the spectacular sky and sea in her work.

That, and using long, narrow boards to paint on. Many of her new works are 48 inches long and between four and eight inches high — a slim slice of horizon instantly familiar to anyone who has spent time in St. Philip’s, Portugal Cove, Paradise, or the other communities along that coast.

Leyton also found success in creating sunsets with water colour and monotyping, sometimes in rectangle or square pieces — it just depends on the evening.

“Because of the form the sunset takes, sometimes they swoop out of the sky like an arrow out of nowhere, and sometimes the beauty is in the reflection on the water and sometimes the sun, it’s

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like it’s just sitting there, floating …”

Leyton, who started as a production potter, now bounces from sculpture to paint and, sometimes, printmaking.

She’s known to tackle topics as wide ranging as the media she employs — in tune with nature as much as pop culture and politics, her art is whimsical, thoughtful and always surprising.

Whether using softer, floating watercolours or buttery slices of bright oil paints, her work is unmistakable.

She’s also moving into her fourth year of operations at the Leyton Gallery of Fine Art. Sticking to her mandate of supporting up-and-coming and established Newfoundland-based contemporary artists, Leyton was rewarded for her work with the Kippy Goins Award (given to an individual or organization whose efforts helped to sustain and

build the visual arts sector) at the first annual provincial EVA (excellence in visual arts) awards last June.

Obviously proud of her gallery — and in awe of her staff and the artists she represents — she brings the conversation back to the work at hand.

“I really love working an idea through to the end, so this will probably lead somewhere else interesting,” she says of her sunset series.

“It was really exciting to capture something I hadn’t been able to release.”

Land, Sea and Sky, featuring the work of Bonnie Leyton and Toby Rabinowitz, opens Aug. 26, 3-5 p.m., at the Leyton Gallery of Fine Art. www.theleytongallery.com — Stephanie Porter

AUGUST 20, 2006

INDEPENDENTLIFE • 15

The art of war Noreen Golfman reflects on a rich weekend spent at Eastport’s Winterset Festival

L

ast weekend marked the fifth annual Winterset in Summer Literary Festival in Eastport.

Launched by friends of the late Sandra Gwyn to honour her memory and her love of Newfoundland, the event has by now achieved the air of an established necessity.

It’s an odd thing we humans do, but every August several hundred people — locals, people from St. John’s and tourists from all over Canada — gather at the blue-clad Beaches Heritage Centre to listen to authors read from their works. The sun is beating down on the bay, berries and chanterelles are screaming to be picked, and the trails are just dying to be hiked, but we’d rather file into a cramped, stuffy theatre and listen to someone read to us.

Perhaps it’s a primal need: bedtime stories for grown-ups.

This year’s festival was organized around the 90th anniversary of the infamous Battle of Beaumont Hamel.

Most of the invited authors had written about the battle or the Great War of which it was a shameful part. The thought of spending a weekend, even in “beautiful Eastport,� listening to highly wrought war stories seemed as appealing as wearing a gas mask.

Nonetheless, the B&Bs were completely booked up and tickets were all sold out long before the indomitable chair and host, Edythe Goodridge, wished everyone a warm welcome.

War might be hell, but it sure makes for great literature.

Arguably no one has made better literature out of World War I than British author Sebastian Faulks (pronounced folks), the feature guest and biggest star of the weekend. Faulks’ brilliant 1994 novel Birdsong manages to capture the soiled, muddy flavour of trench warfare, achieving in prose fiction what few if any works of histori-

NOREEN GOLFMAN Standing room only cal writing could ever approach in words. That Birdsong also contains some of the most erotic passages in modern literature doesn’t hurt its appeal either.

Faulks’ reading on the opening night of the festival was mesmerizing.

Shrewdly focusing on the moment in the Battle of the Somme before the soldiers were to go over the top and into certain death, Faulks’ voice filled the theatre with vivid images of fate and fear. And then who better to lead Faulks on stage into a discussion of warlike things than the Honourable Edward Roberts, whose brain is so stuffed with historical data it’s a wonder he can get through the doors of Government House.

Talking to Roberts, Faulks revealed that his publisher had advised him no one wanted to read a book about the First World War. Not only did the publisher end up eating his pencils, but he failed to realize how hungry readers are for the transformative power of literature, which, when done right, can turn the most hideous facts of human experience into inspired and even beautiful truths.

A theme of the evening was the long and painful denial of the war effort, its failures and absolutely stupid blunders, Beaumont Hamel being the most familiar of these to readers of the Independent. Almost without exception, official history had ignored the savage victimization of the troops, such as those who were part of the Newfoundland Regiment.

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A LITTLE OF YOUR TIME IS ALL WE ASK. CONQUERING THE UNIVERSE IS OPTIONAL. Think it requires heroic efforts to be a Big Brother or Big Sister?

Think again. It simply means sharing a few moments with a child. Play catch.

Build a doghouse. Or help take on mutant invaders from the planet Krang.

Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s all it takes to transform a mere mortal like yourself into a super hero who can make a world of difference in a childâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s life. For more information...

Big Brothers Big Sisters of Eastern Newfoundland 1-877-513KIDS (5437) www.helpingkids.ca

Rising Tide Theatreâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Kevin Woolridge, Philip Goodridge, Doug Ballett, John Ryan and Mark White performed Kevin Major's No Man's Land in 2005.

Paul Daly/The Independent

Birdsong, and other works of fiction based on the war, however, had trumped history altogether, foregrounding the complexity of the experience and the truth of its ignominy.

Fiction can take license but it can also enhance the facts, and in the samples of work heard at Winterset audiences could hear far more than they would ever wish to live through.

Faulks had never been to Newfoundland but he seemed to take to the place like a gull to herring. His welcome was eased by both a highly respectful audience and a flock of invited authors who took to the podium in the days that followed.

David McFarlaneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s reading from Danger Tree was one of the most passionate, intense, and persuasive readings delivered anywhere about anything. Joseph Boydenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s reading from his acclaimed novel about the role of aboriginals in the war, Three Day Road, drove listeners to the book-

sellerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s desk like scavengers at a fire sale. And the Rising Tide production of Kevin Majorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s No Manâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Land on the last day of the festival brought people to their feet in moving, reverent gratitude.

To be sure, the panels and readings, and all the talk of war and words was warm and memorable, informative, and fully satisfying. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s well worth a few dollars to eavesdrop on smart people saying smart things. Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the great beauty of festivals like Winterset: they bring communities of readers and listeners together in magnificent surroundings and make everyone feel privileged and plain lucky just for showing up.

This week many of the same writers and participants have been enjoying the west coast pleasures of Bonne Bay, where the literary festival is celebrating its third wildly successful year, and without even a whisper of war. The five-day Writers at Woody Point event

sold out in about a day, a shocking fact of its success and the finest example of how forcefully art and culture generate activity.

Now itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s time to build up some of the services in these areas. Where are the small-business entrepreneurs? Accommodations are few and alarmingly spare. If you were a bit late in your bookings and wanted to go to the Winterset festival you had to stay as far away as Glovertown or even Port Blandford. If you wanted to attend the Woody Point festival you had to camp out in Gros Morne. Think of the daily gas costs.

Is the business community listening? Can someone send some entrepreneurs a few tickets next year, with a map of the nearest rooms for rent within a 50-kilometre radius?

Noreen Golfman is a professor of womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s studies and literature at Memorial. Her column returns Sept. 3.

AUGUST 20, 2006

16 • INDEPENDENTLIFE

Nocturnal notions I

t seems to me, many writers have two things in common: a fondness for alcohol and a tendency to work at night.

Why this is, I have no idea. Alcohol helps loosen the tongue, so maybe that goes for the inner voice tapping away at the keyboard as well. But, night … aren’t we all supposed to be more productive during the day? Programmed to wake with the sun and fall asleep under cover of darkness? I wish it were that simple.

Some people just aren’t at their creative best at 7 a.m., or even 9 a.m. My body and mind seem to operate on a schedule that flies against the natural laws of humankind’s average nine-tofive workday.

As soon as dusk arrives, my limbs wake up and crave movement. By the time I’m lying in bed at, say, midnight, I’m fantasizing about going for a run.

There’s something about being outside late at night — particularly on weekdays. It’s quiet and private. Every sound and smell is heightened. Every living thing you come across is wrapped up in its own agenda and has no time for you. It’s a great chance to get the job of writing done, because just as my body wakes up, so does my mind.

Although I much prefer summer’s sunshine to winter’s gloom, I could

CLARE-MARIE GOSSE Brazen quite happily conceive of a work day beginning at around 10 p.m. and ending at sunrise. I’ve had (short-lived) jobs in the past that have required me to be up for sunrise, and I remember loving that time, but being unable to shake the feeling I should be about to end my day as opposed to start it. In my perfect body clock world, after a few hours enjoying the morning light, I would go to bed at 9 a.m. and get a solid eight hours rest before rising at 5 p.m. for breakfast.

When I was a university student, living in a world of nightly activity and daily naps, every piece of coursework I handed in was conceived and delivered in the small hours of the morning.

As soon as orange rays of light fingered their way through my curtains, I knew it was time to wrap it up.

Despite how much more productive and energized I might feel if I could indulge my warped body clock, I’m sure I would start to feel lonely and out of the loop after a while. A life spent as a vampire (minus the blood sucking) might be perfect for my own creativity

needs, but it would be brutal for maintaining a normal social or family life.

Even taking the occasional night to get work done is difficult, because it throws off your whole schedule for days, and if I don’t get at least eight hours of sleep, I’m useless.

Alcohol certainly can’t help. I don’t understand how anyone can drink and write coherently at the same time. For me it works for about one paragraph and then I get either sleepy or distracted by other ideas unrelated to the task at hand.

The bottom line is there are two types of people: morning and nonmorning. I appreciate that my nocturnal notions might be a bit outside the norm, but there are many people who feel more creative and productive later in the day than earlier. Unfortunately, these people generally have to learn to get over it and force themselves to jump in line with the early risers if they want to hold down successful careers and normal lives.

One of my oldest and best friends, Laura, is my exact antithesis. She’s the epitome of a morning person and I have no doubt that if we’d ever lived together as roommates our friendship would have collapsed.

Laura generally wakes at dawn and is practically bouncing off the ceiling within an hour. When I’ve stayed

EVENTS overnight with her in the past, I’ve forced myself to find her energetic enthusiasm and offerings of tea and toast at inconceivable hours endearing — which is doable for a weekend, but not much more. By 9 p.m. Laura’s stone cold ready to pass out and it’s me bouncing off the ceiling …

I think I love being active at night because it’s a time when nothing is expected of you. For some reason, just knowing everyone is completely within their rights to indulge in eight hours of selfish oblivion makes me want to do the opposite. Then, if I spend the night being productive, by the time the rat race of the day begins, I’m perfectly within my rights to bow out of it.

The rest of the world can operate as I indulge in my own deserved oblivion.

Which leads me to wonder if my nocturnal notions are as much a form of escapism as the result of an unusual body clock.

Whatever the reason, I’ve had to learn to get over them. As I wrap up this column it’s 2 p.m. and I can’t help wondering if the siesta is Spain’s solution to solving the diverse body clock dilemma: work for four hours, sleep for two, work another four and go home for a late supper.

Interesting idea … claremariegosse@hotmail.com

AUGUST 20 • Closing day of Mount Pearl’s annual Bluegrass and Old Time Country Music Festival. Visit www.mountpearl.ca or call 748-1008 for details.

AUGUST 22 • Heather Kao, violin, Heather Tuach, cello, Gary Graham and Andrew Coffin, piano in concert at Petro Canada Hall, Memorial University school of music, 8 p.m.

AUGUST 23 • Christopher Pratt talks about his National Gallery of Canada exhibition, now on display at The Rooms. Talk begins 7 p.m. at the Rooms.

• WORD: Writings On Race and Diversity open mic, Youth Sevices Centre, 12-16 Carter’s Hill Place, 7:3010 p.m., free. www.ritallin.com • Folk night at the Ship Pub with Erika Wherry and Mike Hopkins, 9 p.m.

AUGUST 24 • Blue Jazz night with the Mary Barry Quartet, Jenny Gear, and Holly Hogan.

At Bianca’s Bar, Water Street, 9:30.

• Weaving the Wind, a Celtic harp recital by Ed Kavanagh, 1-2 p.m., Basilica Cathedral Museum, 726-3660.

AUGUST 25 • The Compleat Works of William Shakespeare (abridged), Rabbittown Theatre, Merrymeeting Road, 7:30 p.m., 739-8220.

• An Evening with the Faerie Folk, stories by Dale Jarvis at the Newman Wine Vaults, 436 Water Street, 8-9:30 p.m. www.hauntedhike.com/the_fairies.htm • Ron Hynes at the Rose and Thistle, Water Street.

• Scott Goudie matinee at Fat Cat Blues Bar, George Street.

AUGUST 26 • Bridges to Hope wash away hunger car wash, 10 a.m.-4 p.m., Sobey’s parking lot, Ropewalk Lane.

• Eastern Edge Gallery’s Express ’06: A Festival of Art in 24 Hours, also known as the 24 hour art marathon.

Begins at noon at 72 Harbour Drive, ends Aug. 27 with a silent and live auction.

IN THE GALLERIES • Annual members exhibit, Craft Council Gallery, Devon House, until Sept. 1.

• 29th annual garden and nature exhibition, Memorial University Botanical Garden, until Aug. 27.

• Annual summer show, Leyton Gallery of Fine Art, until Aug. 24.

• Douglas Coupland, Play Again? at The Rooms, until Sept. 17.

• Silver and Stone, the art of Michael Massie, The Rooms, until Sept. 4.

POET’S CORNER

Dark Cove

By Robert Burt

Here the tides seep in And like at every cove, With the regularity Of birth and death.

Here the waves slap up To the very fingerprint, Any more and the lines would break And fall under.

Here the storms cough up.

The Harbour is iron anchored, And drawn to conclusions No one can fully understand.

Tweed skies surrender to the deep Dead winter lanes echo the silence loudly, rhythms of land and rhyme of sea The heart hears but will not rest in its lea.

From Beginnings, published by Creative Publishers, 1985.

INDEPENDENTSTYLE

BACK TO SCHOOL EDITION

SUNDAY THROUGH SATURDAY, AUGUST 20-27, 2006 — PAGE 17

Classics for class Sneakers, jeans and T-shirts as popular as ever for back to school— but this year, it’s all about the details

By Mandy Cook For The Independent

T

eenagers and back-to-school shopping go together like, well, teenagers and the mall all year round … and this year’s no different.

While the kids are still maxing out summer break with swims at the beach and nights at the movies, the days are spent busily stocking up on this season’s “must-have” item — which turns out is not so much a particular piece, but a particular look. It is so pervasive among the 11-17 set you could almost call it the Teen-iform.

By comparison, the 10 and under crowd are exhibiting a trickle down effect from their elder peers, with a few tailored tweaks here and there (including a liberal dash of teen pop queen Hilary Duff’s influence).

The formula works like this: T-shirt, jeans, sneakers. No surprise there, but it is not just any random combination of these three articles of clothing. Skateboarding sneakers are the building block to achieve the desired look, and are being snapped up at sporting goods stores, including a downtown St. John’s skateboarding shop.

Gillian Hill, manager of Ballistic, says several brands of skateboarding shoes — such as DC, Etne and Circa — are flying off the shelves this time of year. The shoes come in every vibrant hue you could possibly crave and sport oversized tongues and a broad sole. Hill calls them “fashion forward,” but says it’s the cushy factor that drives their overwhelming popularity amongst the teen See “Back to school,” page 19

Left: Evelyn Dray and Gillian Hill model popular clothing choices from Ballistic in St. John’s.

Paul Daly/The Independent

Brown bagging it “The longer I work in nutrition, the more convinced I become that for the healthy person all foods should be delicious.”

— Adelle Aavis, pioneer of the American health movement

T

he stores are full of the smells of the end of summer, filled with the plasticated aroma of binders, reams of paper, coloured pencils and nylon backpacks. In short — the smells of another school year about to begin.

The beginning of a new school year is time to change the eating habits of those heading back to class, and to try and blend good eating with tasty food. Nowadays, schools have full canteens ready to serve a whole host of foods to the students — but most aren’t much better than your local fast food chain.

My food experiences when I was at school were a little different than most. I had a mom who was perfect at choosing what I should have for lunch every day.

I was a bit of a fussy one. I didn’t like to

NICHOLAS GARDNER Off the Eating Path have a drink with lunch, so tetra-pack boxes were out, but I loved a good sandwich (still do), and there had to be an apple to finish.

Simple healthy food is the keystone to a healthy body and mind. While carbohydrates (found in chips, fries and other “beige” foods) are a good boost of energy for while, they have no staying power.

This is why in the middle of the afternoon students who eat this kind of food become slow and lethargic — they have used up what little energy came from the boost and their body is slowly trying to finish converting the complex carbohydrates into energy.

One of the keys to successful learning is being able to fuel the body with the right foods to stave off that mid-afternoon ener-

gy crash. Here are some good ideas: Fresh fruits and vegetables are the best way to get the nutrients needed for the day, but don’t stop there: add a small yogurt as a dip for chopped fruit or a honey mustard dip (one tablespoon honey, one tablespoon mustard mixed until combined). They add flavour without all the heavy fats.

I was a fan of a thermos of soup and a small sandwich for lunch at school. Not only did it feel like a substantial lunch, but it kept me warm on the inside during winter months. Most manufacturers have styles of thermoses made just for soups, including a folding spoon and a wide mouth for pouring into the attached cup.

When I was in my first year of university, my mom was worried I wasn’t eating right and she came up with a sort of trail mix for the “guy on the go.” In a little square of plastic wrap was an assortment of dried fruit, nuts, cereals and other fibreand protein-laden foods — a one-bite energy snack. The key was having it small enough to eat in a couple of bites. Perfect for running between classes and not get-

ting caught while eating it! I found it to be the perfect brain food to keep me going.

Try almonds, dried papaya, dried pineapple, Vector cereal and raisins.

The last thing to consider is the bag all this healthy food goes in.

For those who poo-poo the modest brown bag, there are plenty of lunchboxes which have thermal linings to keep hot food hot and cold food cold, as well as being made in stylish shapes and colours.

Like any change of food choice, the key to success is finding out what your children like to eat — and then modifying it. Giving them the same foods day after day will only encourage stagnant eating habits.

Get your children involved in making their lunches. Then they are helping with the new food change, rather than having it imposed upon them.

For busy days, make lunches the night before, keeping foods that might go off in the fridge until morning. Mix up sandwiches with wraps, baguette or even toasted bagels.

Finally, why not add a dash of encour-

agement in the form of a note.

Saying “have a good day” or “good luck with that test” can make a difference to your child’s mental well-being.

The challenge for school is not just getting good grades, but feeling good while doing it. Healthy food is an important first step.

Nicholas is a freelance writer and erstwhile chef living in St. John’s nicholas.gardner@gmail.com

AUGUST 20, 2006

18 • INDEPENDENTSTYLE

DRINK

Raising the bar Nicholas Gardner’s got advice for stocking a starter bar Nicholas Gardner For The Independent

O

K, classes are about to start and university life is about to gear into full swing. Let’s be honest: university is a time for hard work, long hours of study, writing papers and cramming endlessly for tests (well, it was for me) — and during the “off hours,” it’s time to blow off a little steam.

Now, I’m not here to condone underage drinking, but university is the time when some of the population gets to enjoy their first legal drink.

So what do you get? A beer? A shooter from the cute bartender? Single malt Scotch?

All are good choices, provided you enjoy them, but I think it’s time to set the bar a little higher, pardon the pun. I propose you invest in a starter bar for those “socials” you will be having.

Who doesn’t like the thought of hosting a swinging party in their apartment or room?

THE RUBY This drink that made it into the lexicon of Sex and the City — so it can’t be wrong and is great for when the girls come over.

• 4 oz pink grapefruit juice • 1 1/2 oz vodka • Grapefruit section for garnish Mix juice and vodka in shaker with ice and strain into a martini glass.

Garnish with section of grapefruit.

To do that, you need to set some ground rules and have a good idea of what to have on hand.

The pillars of a great bar are: rum, vodka, gin, tequila, whisky and a creme liqueur. A few beer will never go astray.

Additionally, a martini glass or two, a shaker to mix drinks, orange juice, soda, other drink mix and plenty of ice are essential. The final touch is a good bartending guide. There are many available on the market and many to suit any entertaining style.

With these few things you can make all sorts of great drinks and be a superb host — why spend dollars downtown when all you need is a few recipes to have a good time?

Here are a few that aren’t too well known, but will start you on that cool drinks way.

Always remember mixing fabulous drinks is all about having a good time, but if you drink — you don’t drive. That’s the law.

Class dismissed.

THE BRAVE BULL Half end-of-evening drink, half beginning-of-evening drink … it’s too good to be true.

• 3/4 oz of coffee liqueur or coffee • 1 1/2 oz tequila • Lemon peel Shake or blend liquor and coffee and pour into a glass. Twist lemon peel over drink and drop into the glass.

nicholas.gardner@gmail.com SHIRLEY TEMPLE The quintessential non-alcoholic drink, a must have for the nondrinkers. (Although, if you add an ounce of vodka and it becomes a Shirley Temple-Black.)

• 4 oz orange juice • 1 oz lime juice • 1 oz grenadine (found in grocery store) • Maraschino cherry Paul Daly/The Independent

TASTE

Tarts from Hell’s Kitchen

By Susan Sampson Torstar wire service

T

hese pretty tarts show off the season’s fresh, bountiful, local tomatoes. The recipe was created by British celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay. He’s best known for unleashing his short temper and foul mouth on the TV shows Hell’s Kitchen and Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares. His tart is a wee bit tricky, but the attempt won’t make you fly into a rage.

TOMATO AND PARMESAN TARTS Adapted from Gordon Ramsay: A Chef For All Seasons. Use a serrated peeler on the tomatoes and a swivel (potato) peeler on the chunk of parmesan.

• 400 g package puff pastry,

thawed • 8 ripe plum tomatoes (about 1 1/2 lb or 700 g), peeled, sliced one-eighth to one-quarter inch thick • 1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon balsamic vinegar • 2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil • 3/4 tsp sea salt • Freshly ground pepper to taste • 1 tbsp each: chopped chervil, chopped parsley • 3 oz (90 g) parmesan, shaved • 3 oz (90 g) arugula leaves, coarsely chopped On lightly floured work surface, roll out pastry to 1/8-inch thickness. Cut out four rounds, each five to six inches in diameter. (Save scraps for other uses.) Place on baking sheet. Bake 12 minutes in preheated 400F oven. Top with second baking sheet to flatten.

Bake until golden, 10 to 12 minutes.

Remove to rack to cool.

On baking sheet, arrange tomatoes in four circles, overlapping to make them about the same size but no wider than pastry rounds. Drizzle with one teaspoon each vinegar and oil. Sprinkle with half a teaspoon salt, pepper, chervil and parsley. Lay parmesan on top, making sure shavings connect with top of tomato slices right to edge.

Place on top rack under preheated broiler just until cheese melts and holds tomato circles together. (Do not brown.) Cool 30 seconds. Using large, wide spatula, transfer tomato circles to pastry rounds.

In medium bowl, whisk together remaining teaspoon vinegar, tablespoon oil, 1/4 teaspoon sea salt and pepper. Add arugula. Toss. Place on top of tarts.

Makes 4.

Watch your slogans In hallways of province’s schools, dress code is all about respect

By Ivan Morgan The Independent

D

oes your daughter think she’s too pretty to learn math? If she’s wearing a T-shirt with a slogan like that to school, teachers and officials may have a problem with it.

The key factor when deciding what

is OK in back-to-school wear is respect. Students are not allowed to wear offensive or derogatory clothing or slogans. Deciding what is and is not offensive can be tricky. As Darrin Pike, assistant director of education for the Eastern School District — and the person designated responsible for the district’s dress code — says “offensive can be in the eye of the

beholder.”

Pike says while the code is for all schools, its interpretation and enforcement is left to each principal, which can lead to varying standards.

“Schools will apply these standards with their own set of expectations,” says Pike Parents or students concerned about the dress code should also consider

age appropriateness — what might be acceptable in high school may not be in elementary. Any messages or styles which are “lewd, vulgar, or obscene” are banned, as are messages “which promote products or activities that are illegal for use by minors, or which contain racist, sexist, or otherwise derogatory to a protected minority group.”

The difficulty comes in the grey areas, with girl’s T-shirt slogans such as “Who Needs Brains When I Have These” or “No Car. No Money. No Chance.” being good examples. Pike tells The Independent these slogans make him and many educators uncomfortable. Is it ironic humour or negative stereotyping of women? It can be a very fine line.

“One of our roles as educators is to have open-minded students who have free thought and free thinking, but at the same time not oppress other groups in their beliefs.” He suggests that such controversy can actually be an educational opportunity.

Parent Jean Graham echoes this sentiment. She has two daughters in two schools, and says issues like this are a chance for young people to learn about the bigger issues in society.

“My daughter has a T-shirt with the slogan ‘They’re only boobs — get over it.’” Graham sees it as a protest against the negative stereotyping slogans that are all too familiar in school hallways.

Such stereotyping still exists, she says, and a healthy debate on the subject may get people to “think twice before they put something on their chests.”

“One of our roles as educators is to have open-minded students who have free thought and free thinking, but at the same time not oppress other groups in their beliefs.”

Darrin Pike, assistant director of education for the Eastern School District Student leader Amanda Borg, who attends Prince of Wales Collegiate, thinks controversy over these slogans is overblown. “Sometimes schools try to fix things that don’t need fixing.”

She says student expression should be encouraged, even if it generates a little controversy.

Religious dress and cross-dressing can also be dress code issues. Pike says respect is still the key to understanding their policy. If a student is sincere in how he or she wants to dress, then it is the duty of the school community to respect that person’s sensibilities, regardless of an individual “comfort zone.” While piercing and tattoos are not specifically included in the policy, Pike says they would be governed by similar guidelines.

AUGUST 20, 2006

INDEPENDENTSTYLE • 19

Back to school gets kids back in style From page 17 set.

“They’re extremely comfortable,” she says. “They’re designed for skateboarding — high impact sport on your feet and heavily cushioned.”

Preference for the skateboarding shoe goes across the board for teens of both sexes. As the first step to constructing an outfit, the shoes naturally set off the overwhelming choice for both male and female bottoms: the timeless pair of perfect jeans.

Whereas the guys tend toward a cleaner, fitter look, the gals overwhelmingly choose a slight flare at the bottom to cover their laces. But God is in the details, which tend to show up on the backseat: lots of crystals, lace, glitter, velvet, embroidery, you name it, the back pockets have got it.

To top it all off, shirts are loose or fitted, tees or cap sleeves, or mock and V-necked — but they must have certain requirements. Rock and roll regalia is exceedingly popular, with skulls and crossbones adorning the front; graffitilike splotches of colour under prints of hearts, birds or flowers; and flirty expressions like “I ♥ Trouble.”

Katie Bishop, 12, says she likes the T-shirt and jeans look, but is branching out this year because she feels so much older now that she’ll be a teenager come September.

“My first day of school outfit will be a mini-skirt, tight ankle-length leggings and a black and white striped tank top,” she says. “I’ll have a black headband in my hair. And long dangly earrings because I just got my ears pierced. And nail polish.”

Like the junior high crowd, the elementary school kids like the same combo of tees, jeans and sneaks.

Though offerings at corporate mall franchises such as Northern Getaway are decidedly more darling.

“Besides your regular picks of jeans and t-shirts, the boys like the silky gym pants that can double as regular wear and gym clothes,” says Janaya Dodge, sales associate. “There are dancing outfits for the girls, and both sexes like our western selection of cute plaids and cowboy hats. We sell a lot of cowboy hats.”

The little girls can’t get enough of cute cotton shirts with kittens or horses on the front – but the important part

Gillian Hill

Photos by Paul Daly/The Independent

is the matching detached sleeve complete with thumb holes, inspired by the aforementioned sugarpop songstress.

The boys aren’t as fussy about their designer decals and are content with the stalwart soccer and hockey references, with the youngest boys gravitating towards dragons and skateboarding pictures on their shirts.

Both little boys and girls are devoted to denim, but the boys are into the wide-legged version with a little bit of gathering around the knees. Some of the boys are happy with jeans as they

are, but some take the final styling upon themselves, scissors in hand.

“I wear jeans with pictures of skateboards on the sides,” says 9-year-old Owen Winsor. “That’s the kind I like, but my friends like to put rips in theirs.”

Little girls take their dungarees dressier, buying up pairs with lace inserts on the bottom flares and pictures on the hip such as butterflies and flowers set off with sequins and glitter. Chunky belt buckles loaded with turquoise and sparkles

A life for my boy

I

t’s our little secret. If you came out this way, you would drive on past. Salmonier Falls is one of the places our outport children visit on a hot day or a long summer evening.

The path is near invisible from the road, and you must duck under tree limbs to access it. Even after a rainless week, your feet sink in muck as you slop through tall grass and raspberry bushes to reach the incline that leads to the swimming hole at the bottom of the falls.

There is a 35-foot sheer drop of rock, muck and loose dirt. There are ropes to cling to, installed by some industrious boys. Some, like me, climb down backwards, clinging fiercely to the rope and gathering burns and callouses on the way. Some of the boys consider the ropes a suggestion and slide down on rugged bay-boy bottoms, grabbing the rope only if they think it will throw off a peer above them as they make a more controlled descent.

I take a vanload of kids to this haven almost daily. While I am getting used to the muck, the climb down and — my dear God — the climb back up, I still spew cusses as I do, reminding those lads with each precarious step that one of them had better clean the damn swamp out of my van when we return to the harbour.

I went down with my son and two of his friends last week. Two swim like fish, and one can’t swim a stroke.

The lad who can’t swim climbed in a rubber dingy and the other boys took turns dragging him around by its attached line until they grew bored.

Then they attempted to scare the bejesus out of him. Quick turns and spins jerked the boat and knocked him forward and backwards, and almost out of the vessel. A look of terror would cross his face, followed by a wide smile — and evil laughter from those in the water. I was on alert for a mid-river rescue.

The next game I entitled Sorry! because that’s what the boys said

PAM PARDY GHENT

Seven-day talk every time they “accidentally” let go of the line and the boat flew quickly downstream and around the bend. At first, this game found me, in a panic in the rush of the water from the falls to perform just-in-time rescues.

Tiring, I looked around and realized the boat would eventually find itself in shallow water and the boy-inboat could abandon ship and walk to shore.

The first time I didn’t rush to save and salvage, the kids in the water — not to mention the terrified one in the boat — screamed in real horror as I shrugged on shore and called a Sorry! of my own.

The instigators rushed to the rescue themselves, but weren’t as fast as I had been, and the boat came to rest in the shallows. Not satisfied with the outcome, one lad tried to push the boat off the rocks and back into the stream. This time, I knew the boy-inboat would keep going for a long time. A “don’t you DARE!” from me stopped that.

We stayed until dark that night. The boy-in-boat just sat and bobbed in the river. The others had constructed an anchor from rocks and rope. That way, he could be with them, even if he wasn’t actually in the water. They moved him and his anchor when they changed positions.

They dove for interesting rocks and other treasures and tossed them into the dingy, purposely soaking the fully-dressed boy. At times he tossed things back into the water, purposely hitting them underwater. No one lost an eye, there was no blood. A few scratches, bruises and bumps belong on bay-boys.

I thought of a conversation I had with my sister in C.B.S. who has a boy my son’s age. Her summer, like every other season, has been filled

with camps, practices, games, tournaments and tight schedules. It has also cost her a hell of a lot of coin.

Our reality is that if those activities were available, not many could afford it. In 2004, my first year here, 25 families (out of 190 residents) in Harbour Mille existed on social assistance.

Five children out of the 20 under the age of 15 lived on $4,300 for the 8.7 months the average family was on social assistance. Fifty people were on E.I. for at least part of that year, earning an average of $7,900 in benefits.

The average income per household was $27,800, but many homes out here have a few generations living in them. Some have pensioners, welfare recipients, E.I. collectors and seasonal workers living together and sharing expenses.

I admit I wonder at times if we should move somewhere more urban.

Thoughts of depriving my nine-yearold a “full life” pop up on occasion, especially when others asked how he could grow up “proper” without little league and Boy Scouts.

These past three years my son has only cost me time and a little bit of gas. We have no stadium — we ice skate on the pond, roller blade on the road. We have no pool — we swim in fish-filled ponds or in the saltwater where jellyfish leave stinging reminders that they live there also.

We have no official sports teams, but we do have late night spotlight games and peddle bike gangs. There are no clubs to belong to, but everyone is welcome in the cabins the boys build in the woods.

No, my boy isn’t deprived of anything by being out here. If anything, his life is richer.

I was thinking of getting a group together to clear the entrance of the falls, so it’s visible from the road. I’ve decided against it. I like that it’s our little secret.

Pam Pardy Ghent lives and writes from Harbour Mille on the Burin Peninsula.

are also popular.

No matter what grade you’re headed into you must have a hoodie to finish your look. The ever-popular hooded sweatshirt comes in every incarnation, but camouflage is always a classic choice, complete with distressed, ragged edges or fabric appliqués.

Parents can watch proudly as the well-heeled and hip troops trot off, lunches and bus money in hand.

Though you might want to remind them to attend class amongst all the giddy posing in the hallways …

“I wear jeans with pictures of skateboards on the sides. That’s the kind I like, but my friends like to put rips in theirs.”

9-year-old Owen Winsor

AUGUST 20, 2006

20 • INDEPENDENTFUN

WEEKLY DIVERSIONS ACROSS 1 Bestows 7 Avril follower 10 Ont. town with “Jumbo the elephant” statue: St. ___ 16 Journalist’s piece 17 French fabric 19 Open in St. Ouen 20 Unmelodic 21 Hunter in the sky 22 Type of TV screen 23 One on the hustings 24 Shores 26 Large, flightless bird 28 Revival tech 29 Composer of “The Planets” 31 Sort of ending?

32 Listen to 33 Worm, e.g.

34 Opening for a coin 35 Down Under bird 36 Starring role 37 Seasons 38 Help 40 S. African wine centre 42 Taxi 43 Breed of sheep 46 Steal from 47 Lucerne 51 Warning 52 N.S. town with Gaelic College: St. ___ 54 Peter Pan pirate 55 Thole insert 56 Lots

57 Subcontinental prefix 58 Symbol of shelter 59 Remedy 60 Prospector’s find 61 ___-Joli, Que. 62 Prov. with Esk, Fiske and Leask 63 Easy card game 64 B.C. gulf island 66 Duck tolling retriever 67 River with Quebec’s first aquatic reserve 68 Nordic rug 69 Condescend 71 Winter mo.

72 Source of cocoa 75 Meech, e.g.

76 Prov. with National Capital 78 Moo crew 82 College on the Thames 83 Trivial Pursuit, e.g.

84 Piglet’s mom 85 Luxuries: ___ things 86 It goes through withdrawals 87 Sunscreen ingredient 88 Colonize 90 Welsh river 91 Certain winds over NW Cape Breton: Les ___ 93 Talk 95 Profits made on another’s work

97 Snare 98 Australian symbol 99 Body’s communication system 100 Craving 101 TLC providers 102 Avaricious DOWN 1 Math visuals 2 Upgrade machinery 3 U.S. lunar program 4 Not: prefix 5 Piece of undeveloped land 6 Allied victory site of 7/18/44 7 Jollity 8 Fire sale phrase 9 Equal: prefix 10 Hard drinker 11 Hoop of the 50’s 12 Eggs 13 Peyote 14 Axilla 15 By fits and ___ 17 It could be either 18 Imaginary 25 Goal 27 Once owned 30 Flight of steps 32 Parsley or sage 33 Rum cake 35 Shogunate capital 36 Thailand’s neighbour 37 Secure storage place 39 Bank payment: abbr.

41 Florence’s river

42 Treble or bass ___ 43 Town near Orford, Que. 44 Ont. town on Grand River 45 Revolting one 47 Out of control 48 Opera’s Quilico 49 Persian language 50 Rugged ridge 52 Part of A.D. 53 Summer time in St. John’s 54 Help! signal 57 N.S. town with Highland Village 58 Sturdy wool fibre 59 Ostentatiously stylish 61 Yukon town 62 French silk 63 Fate of Wednesday’s child 65 Iraqi neighbour 66 Fake shot 67 Calgary summer time 69 Tablecloth fabric 70 Pacific Coast people 72 Ended 73 Adjust 74 Space bodies with a tail 75 Test site 77 It has eight official languages 79 Bitter salad green 80 Played a fish 81 Not casual 83 Where to find 61A

84 Their babies are white 85 Abnormal body tem-

perature 87 Anjou or Bosc 88 Comedian Cullen

89 K.D. from Consort 92 Start of a threesome 94 Pedro’s please: ___

favor 96 “___ we there yet?”

Solutions page 27

BIZARRO

WEEKLY STARS ARIES (MAR. 21 TO APR. 19) Impatience with those who don’t keep up with you can cause resistance, which, in turn, can lead to more delays. Best to be helpful and supportive if you want results.

TAURUS (APRIL 20 TO MAY 20) A surprise announcement from a colleague could put you on the defensive. Gather your facts and respond. You’ll soon find the situation shifting in your favor.

GEMINI (MAY 21 TO JUNE 20) The time spent away from a project pays off with a new awareness of options you hadn’t considered before. Weigh them carefully before deciding which to choose.

CANCER (JUNE 21 TO JULY 22) Consider confronting that person-

al conflict while there’s still time to work things out. A delay can cause more problems. A long-time colleague might offer to mediate.

LEO (JULY 23 TO AUG. 22) Some emerging matters could impede the Lion’s progress in completing an important project.

Best advice: Deal with them now, before they can create costly delays.

VIRGO (AUG. 23 TO SEPT. 22) Your aspect continues to favor an expanding vista. This could be a good time to make a career move, and taking an outof-town job could be a good way to do it.

LIBRA (SEPT. 23 TO OCT. 22) Disruptive family disputes need to be settled so that everyone can move on. Avoid assuming this

burden alone, though. Ask — no, demand help with this problem.

SCORPIO (OCT. 23 TO NOV. 21) Patience is called for as you await word on an important workplace situation. A personal circumstance, however, could benefit by your taking immediate action.

SAGITTARIUS (NOV. 22 TO DEC. 21) Don’t lose confidence in yourself.

Those doubters are likely to back off if you demand they show solid proof why they think your ideas won’t work.

CAPRICORN (DEC. 22 TO JAN. 19) A temporary setback might cause the usually sure-footed Goat some unsettling moments. But keep going. The path ahead gets easier as you move forward.

AQUARIUS (JAN. 20 TO FEB. 18) There’s welcome news from the workplace. There could also be good news involving a relationship that has long held a special meaning for you.

PISCES (FEB. 19 TO MAR. 20) You might still need to cut some lingering ties to a situation that no longer has the appeal it once held. In the meantime, you can start to explore other opportunities.

YOU BORN THIS WEEK Your sense of what’s right can inspire others if you remember not to push too hard to make your case. Moderation works best for you. (c) 2006 King Features Syndicate, Inc.

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 27

INDEPENDENTBUSINESS

SUNDAY THROUGH SATURDAY, AUGUST 20-26, 2006 — PAGE 21

St. John’s International Airport

By Ivan Morgan The Independent

B

oard of Trade President Ray Dillon says Air Canada’s “tease and freeze” business tactics are having a detrimental effect on the local economy.

By refusing to indicate its future intentions regarding trans-Atlantic cargo service, Air Canada is causing uncertainty in the business community. The oil and gas and fish industries are already worrying about the months ahead. “(Air Canada) were letting the signal out that they might put on some sort of flight at some time … and some of the other carriers were nervous that Air Canada was marking its territory,” Dillon tells The Independent. Those carriers are not eager to move in, only to be “run out of town.”

Earlier this year, Air Canada created an angry stir when it announced the termination of its direct flight from St. John’s to London, England.

It’s become a point of contention not just for passengers, but also for those looking to fly cargo across the Atlantic.

The Boeing 767 Air Canada has been using for trans-Atlantic service,

Paul Daly/The Independent

Tease and freeze

Air Canada tactics blocking competition; ‘big wrinkle’ in local business plans ending Sept. 4, has a large cargo capacity. The company is offering a replacement service, starting next April, on the smaller Airbus 320, which has a smaller cargo capacity.

Until then, passengers will have to fly through Halifax to get to and from Europe.

Dillon says he and the board of trade have “given up” trying to persuade Air Canada to change its mind.

“We’ve threatened, we’ve cried, we’ve pleaded, and we’ve tried political persuasion and everything else.

They’re not going to bend.”

St. John’s councillor Art Puddister is even more blunt. He helped pass a “request” that council and city staff use carriers other than Air Canada for business travel.

Puddister says Air Canada is being vague about its plans to deliberately frighten off other carriers.

Newfoundland travellers and busi-

nesses will be left with no option but to use existing Air Canada routes.

Some in the business community say the situation is causing a serious negative impact on a wide range of local businesses, both directly and indirectly.

Deirdre Robinson Greene, spokesperson for Newfoundland Ocean Industries Association (NOIA), offers an example.

“Key parts for oil and gas production can cost hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars,” she says.

“These are not parts any company is going to keep on the shelf. In the past, these parts could be flown in directly.

As of Sept. 4, the most realistic scenario will be flying the parts to Halifax, and then trucking them to St. John’s.”

A two- or three-day shut down of production becomes a five- or six-day delay.

“When you add on time you add on cost,” Greene says. That time and cost overrun can trickle down to all business involved.

Homegrown oil and gas industries, looking to sell their expertise elsewhere — including the North Sea — are also feeling the pinch. Air Canada’s decision, says Greene, effectively doubles the cost and amount of time to travel to and from the island. She says return trip between Europe and Newfoundland for business will cost an extra $800.

“That makes doing business in Newfoundland a little less attractive.”

It isn’t just the oil industry that’s concerned. Bruce Wareham of Ice Water Seafoods “doesn’t know” how his product — fresh cod — will reach markets in Europe. His company has a contract with Fly Fresh Freight to ship product to Europe. They assure him “something will be in place.”

But, he adds, “at this point in time I am not aware of what that will be.”

Paul Lannon of Fly Fresh Freight understands Wareham’s concern. The flight cancellation puts a “wrinkle” in his business plan, and “it could be a big wrinkle.”

He says his company is currently weighing its options.

“Europe wants fresh fish every day … the fish is caught and processed the same day, and on the airplane that night. It’s a beautiful product when it gets to the other side,” he says.

“In the long term we are going to be able to absorb it (the cancellation of the service), but in the short term it certainly slows down our business plan.”

Still in talks with Air Canada cargo — and other carriers — Lannon picks his words carefully. But he will say Air Canada has “no empathy for Newfoundland businesses.”

Isabelle Arthur, spokesperson for Air Canada, says the existing transAtlantic service does not meet “financial targets,” and the company is developing new routes and services.

When asked about cargo service, she says “Air Canada cargo division is still looking at different opportunities to how to best meet the market demand.”

‘Tax freedom day’ should come sooner

O

nce a year the Fraser Institute, an independent public policy organization, releases its “Tax Freedom Day” — the date Canadians start working for themselves and not the government’s tax rolls.

According to the institute’s annual calculations, Newfoundlanders worked until June 17 this year to pay the total tax bill imposed on them by all levels of government. This date is almost a month more today than it was when this calculation began 25 years ago.

Buried in this calculation is a littleknown tax on insurance premiums that it may just be time to abolish so Tax Freedom Day can occur earlier in the spring.

It appears the provincial government may be ready to open the file on the sales tax we all pay on insurance premi-

RAY DILLON

Board of Trade ums. That’s good news to consumers — businesses included — that have been faced with soaring insurance costs.

It was only a few years ago insurance issues dominated the news here.

Limited affordability and availability of insurance coverage has been a growing problem for businesses and homeowners alike, and a proverbial hot potato for provincial governments under mounting pressure to find solutions to what is a complex, market-driven trend not isolated to Newfoundland and Labrador.

When it comes to property and casualty insurance, businesses in “highrisk” categories, such as some in the hospitality industry, are having the most difficulty. If these types of operations can manage to get coverage in the first place, then they often pay extremely high rates.

However, in recent years businesses of varying types and sizes are facing similar challenges. Small and mediumsized operations are perhaps impacted most severely: when margins are tight, even a slight rise in insurance costs is often difficult to absorb. As well, there are concerns some businesses are unable to obtain adequate coverage because they are deemed to be unprofitable risks.

This limited affordability and accessibility can mean the businesses have to

cut back, lay off employees, or otherwise alter their activities. Operating without insurance coverage isn’t a realistic option, as it makes the business very vulnerable to a claim being filed against them.

BANK NOTICE And being uninsured poses other problems — try getting the bank to look at you when your business doesn’t have adequate insurance coverage.

Last week, the provincial minister of Government Services issued an initial response to the report completed earlier this year by the Public Utilities Board on commercial, homeowners, and marine insurance in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Among other steps to improve consumer knowledge and protect con-

sumer rights, government has committed to assess the current rate of tax on insurance products in this province to ensure Newfoundlanders and Labradorians aren’t being taxed at inordinate levels.

The St. John’s Board of Trade has a long-standing policy calling on the provincial government to eliminate the 15 per cent tax consumers in this province pay on insurance premiums.

This tax is a significant burden on Newfoundland and Labrador businesses and consumers, and puts us at a distinct disadvantage compared to other jurisdictions when it comes to purchasing insurance.

Newfoundland and Labrador is the only Atlantic province, and one of only See “A more bearable,” page 22

A stunning collection of photography from the portfolio of The Independent’s own Paul Daly.

Available in September. To preorder your copy, contact

Boulder Publications at 895-6483

22 • INDEPENDENTBUSINESS

AUGUST 20, 2006

A more bearable spring From page 21 a few nationwide, that levies such a tax directly from consumers, and we pay the highest rate by far.

It is somewhat of a hidden tax, and can easily be confused as being the HST. But it’s entirely separate from the HST, and isn’t eligible for input tax credits.

Besides this 15 per cent tax, there is a four per cent tax charged to insurance companies operating in the province, the cost of which is, in reality, transferred to the consumer. So, in effect, Newfound landers and Labradorians pay tax on a tax when they purchase insurance. In fact, a 2001 study for the Insurance Bureau of Canada noted that when the two taxes are combined, it yields an effective cascading premium tax rate

of 19.6 per cent.

Of course, as the cost of insurance rises, so does the money the provincial government collects from the sales tax. It adds up to tens of millions of dollars in annual revenue the government counts on. Given the province needs to stay fiscally prudent, it may not be realistic to expect this tax to be done away with in one fell swoop — but perhaps it could be gradually reduced and phased out over time.

That’s one surefire way to bring measurable relief to insurance consumers in Newfoundland and Labrador: improve the province’s overall tax competitiveness, and make spring in this province a little more bearable.

Ray Dillon is president of the St. John’s Board of Trade.

Time on Friday

T

ime magazine will move its delivery date from Monday to Friday beginning next year as part of a broader plan to makeover the magazine and its website.

Time says its research has shown readers would spend more time with the magazine if it were available over the weekend. Time was originally published on Fridays under its founding editor Henry Luce, who started the magazine in 1923.

The move is the first big change under Time’s new managing editor, Richard Stengel, whose appointment was announced in May.

Time says it will make other, unspecified changes in coming months to “redefine the relationship” between the reader, Time and its website “as a continuous 24/7 experience.”

News weekly magazines have been under pressure to adapt their business models as more people get their news from online sources and cable TV. Time Inc. last year cut a number of senior executive jobs, including the president of Time magazine, Eileen Naughton.

— Torstar wire service

The hydromet demonstration plant.

Submitted photo

Inside Inco

The Independent takes a tour of the Argentia demonstration hydromet plant

By Nadya Bell The Independent

T

he bridge, or control room, has two workers on duty in front of banks of thin-screen black monitors flashing diagrams. They lean back in their chairs while red and yellow alerts go off along the bottom of the screen. It looks every bit like Homer Simpson’s work station.

But these men and women could not be more different than the hapless Homer. A delegation of 150 highly trained scientists and engineers work at the the Argentia demonstration hydrometallurgy plant overlooking Placentia Bay. On the other side of the window, production proceeds smoothly in the research and development facility. Well-regulated steaming and hissing and a two-story tangle of pipes and vats accompanies a whole bouquet of faint chemical smells — tangy batteries one minute from the copper production, warm steel the next.

Inco has invested $85 million to build a demonstration plant to test if its new water-based method for processing nickel will work commercially. After completing a successful mini-pilot test plant, Inco has stepped up the scale in the Argentia facility.

It’s been nearly a year after the first concentrate was put into the system in October 2005, and operations manager Don Stevens says he’s pleased with the information they’re getting from the plant. The facility is at full operation and is producing sale-grade nickel, copper and cobalt.

“It’s all about data, it’s all about data gathering, and so from that perspective we’re really pleased that the information we are getting is answering a lot of questions we have, and the demonstration plant program is progressing as planned,” says Stevens.

In one month at the facility, 7,000 chemical samples are processed from every stage of the process — from the translucent forest green nickel concentrate to the residue destined for lined pits behind the building.

“It’s a tremendous amount of information that we’re collecting, and analyzing all the molecules and using that information to validate the process,” says Stevens.

The lead metallurgist is wary of revealing certain numbers or photographs of the interior of the facility. The heart of the process, the autoclave, uses water and gas to force the nickel away from other impurities. The exact ratios of chemicals and their concentrations created are unique to the plant.

The nickel concentrate arrives in two-tonne

sacks, and is fed into the plant. Ground up and mixed with water, the slurry is put through the autoclave, where gas helps the separation from copper and cobalt. The different metal solutions then follow a series of purification processes to remove other elements.

The purified metal solutions are put in vats with anode and cathode sheets, and the nickel molecules form thin, wide plates.

Hydromettalurgy uses less energy than the traditional smelter or pyromettalurgy process that burns impurities out of the concentrate. It also avoids sulfur emissions into the air.

“We are very keen to look and do work and research and development to see if we can make that process work. It’s a more cost effective process overall,” says Phil du Toit, managing director of Voisey’s Bay. “Seeing as this is a new technology we really need to understand the composition and characteristics of the residue so that we can find an environmentally acceptable way to dispose of it, not to give us a long-term liability,” he says.

“That is really what we want to get from the demonstration base — understanding how to dispose of and how to treat the tailings so that it is not a threat to any person.”

The plant has been producing a range of nickel so far, from off-specification to very high quality material. Some buyers want higher standards, with 99.99 per cent pure nickel. Others look for a certain thickness or smoothness to the metal.

“That’s not quite too easy to do, to make a thick nickel,” says Stevens. “That’s one of the things that Inco prides itself on, how our size and shape of the nickel product that we make, and that it is very smooth and fine grain in structure.

“We are always striving for the best … We get varying successes in that.”

After several Australian business experiments in hydromettalurgy failed to live up to their potential in the 1990s, Inco is taking what Stevens describes as a methodical and cautious approach to research and development.

“We’re an over 100-year-old company, and we make sure we do things the right way. We don’t take decisions on new technology very lightly, we make sure we do it in a very systematic approach and we don’t go and invest many hundreds of millions of dollars without being very sure.”

They are on their fifth run of the complete process, while they take care of maintenance and specific testing in the interim periods.

The plant runs 24 hours a day, and will continue to do so until the end of the test phase in 2007 — once chemicals are put into the system, it can’t be turned off.

AUGUST 20-26, 2006

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The Woody Wagon I

’m fairly sensible about vehicle acquisitions these days. There’s the economical four-door sedan for my family and a truck for me to cart around my multi-disciplined services and goods. Half a lifetime ago I selected a vehicle strictly for the purposes of rock ’n’ roll, an excellent hobby at the time. It was a massive station wagon, even for the late 1970s, towering above all else on the road. International Harvester manufactured the beast and called it the Travelall. I researched it recently and found some alarming statistics — seven-feet wide, six-feet high and 18-feet long with a 392-cubic-inch engine. The beast weighed two and a quarter tons!

The overgrown station wagon could seat seven adults comfortably with enough room behind them for two bathtubs. Her faded orange paint was tastefully accented with a two-foot swath of plastic wood-grain trim from

stem to stern that earned it the nickname Woody Wagon, which I dutifully painted on the dump-truck sized bug deflector on the bow. With the back seat folded down the Woody Wagon could swallow all the necessary equipment and accouterments of a small band and lavishly ensconce three rock stars up front. On weekends we’d ply our trade up the Southern Shore much to the delight of the hard working, hard drinking, savage-dancing locals.

Saying “Thank-you very much and good night” at one in the morning would earn us a chorus of roars for “one more,” and we’d oblige them with two. Then it was back to the Woody Wagon for the long drive home.

She climbed the bay hills effortlessly as I recall, her two gas tanks weren’t a concern back then either. Gas was cheap and rock ’n‘ roll paid handsomely. We made $9,000 cash in two months of weekends (Revenue Canada

can bite me). the band fired up we were One particular road trip virtually mobbed. Who stands out among all others. were these traveling minWe were hired to entertain strels from St. John’s with their outrageous machinaClarenville for three nights at tions? the bar in the strip mall and “Clarenville rocks,” I were offered a house to live in said, “Thank-you very much during our tour. We loaded up the Woody Wagon with the and good night.”

MARK usual equipment but I also I awoke to a beautiful WOOD brought my favourite toy, a Friday afternoon and decidfairly new Yamaha YZ 250 WOODY’S ed to explore the trails on Motocross bike, hung on the Yamaha. After a short WHEELS my back bumper. It was an excitwhile I found my route to ing cruise out the highway, the highway and stalked out the massive V-8 humming through dual a long grassy stretch close to the road.

Thrush mufflers, with all the cash and It was fairly clean, void of any boulfun that Clarenville had to offer await- ders and after a few passes I could safeing us. I distinctly remember we ly attain highway speed. This was agreed, as only bands can, that we had something I always dreamed of as a kid traveling on the Trans-Canada, looking the world by the tail.

The Woody Wagon drew a few curi- out the window and imagining a ous onlookers upon arrival, the motorcycle ripping through the alders Yamaha drew a few more and when and jumping over hills. I went to the

top of a grassy hill and surveyed the approaching cars, specifically one with a pile of youngsters. Then I dropped the hammer on the Yammy and hauled up alongside about 40-feet away doing 60 miles an hour, looked over at the kids and did a wheelie. The kids bounced around in the car, bawling and waving while I slid up to the end of my racetrack. Then I’d go back and do it again for another carload of kids. And that’s how I spent my time in Clarenville, entertaining afternoons and evenings.

The band broke up as bands often do and the Woody wagon died in my driveway. The last time I saw it running my friends were working on it and the engine was on fire. Thank-you very much and good night! And to all those kids … that was me on the Motorcross.

Mark Wood lives in Portugal Cove-St. Philip’s and is a retired rock star.

24 • INDEPENDENTSHIFT

AUGUST 20, 2006

FAST CARS

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ops, I did it again. Driving along, accidentally splitting my attention between the road and the annoying little display of letters and numbers that, at first glance, mean nothing. It seems these things get more complicated every day, and though they’ve been around for years now, I still can be tricked into missing the message.

New cell phone?

Nah, vanity plates.

In 1983, Ontario let people start choosing their own plates. I remember getting my sister, Liz, plates for Christmas that year. Well, her column name is Liz, her real name is something similar. Because we secured it LORRAINE SOMMERFELD so soon after the program was introduced, we didn’t have to put a number after her name, or use some bastardized spelling.

As people have become more and more creative, my little brain twitches trying to figure out what they heck they’re trying to advertise. All the doctors are taken, from TUTH to BAK to FT to I to BAYB to BONZ. I’ve seen a CARSLSMN, a REELTR, MUMZY and GRAMPA. I believe there are always aspects to vanity plates that some people forget to take into consideration. If you’re going to put ‘HOTTY’ on your plate, you make better make damn sure when I pull up beside you I don’t burst out laughing.

Gifting mom with plates that say HUNEEBNZ is kind of cute, until dad is driving the minivan. With a really red face. I don’t think I’d be giving my daughter plates that said LOLA 19 anytime soon, either.

One of the best plates I ever saw was on a little red Miata. It read MEDID. I thought that was quite witty. I also thought it would be totally stupid if the person had to put it on anything else. That’s when vanity plates become a one-hit smile, the fancy dress you can never wear twice because everyone already saw you in it.

I question the long term thought processes involved in ordering plates that say things like 4 JOEY or TO DODO. It reminds me of leaving a tag on a Christmas present after you’ve started to wear it. And of course, I always get distracted wondering if the mystery giver gave them the whole car, or the just the plate.

There’s a car downtown with the address on it. While I’m sure he never gets a parking ticket, I wonder if he can pass the plate on if he ever moves. I believe I have seen and interpreted every conceivable spelling of MIDLIFE CRISIS — always hanging off a convertible the owner usually needs a can opener to get into, and never needing an explanation. Trust me.

I saw a plate once with two Qs in the word ‘look.’ The plate was looking at me. I kept looking back. I was supposed to be driving. I’m never quite certain why someone puts the word LOTUS on say, a Lotus. It’s like forgetting to remove your ‘Hello, my name is…’ name tag after you leave a wine and cheese party. I do like when the hot rodders put the year of their car in the plate (68 STANG).

As the vanity plate mine becomes stripped of its best resources, the spelling becomes odder and odder. 1’s stand in for i’s, z’s for s’s, places are spelled phonetically (MISKOKA, anyone?) and people attempt ever trickier ways to dodge around the good taste censors at the transportation bureau.

Actually, that’s a job I’d like to have. I imagine smut where none exists, I have an imagination that can do gymnastics, and I pride myself on getting oblique references to trivial nonsense.

I’m sure people write out every imaginable combination when selecting their personal message. They spell it 10 ways, as the chances of getting your first pick are now slim to none. They run it by their built in dirt-detector to avoid being denied.

We learned the hard way, however, that some things can still be overlooked no matter how careful your planning.

On Christmas morning, my sister opened her custom plates, way back in 1983. She was thrilled, and passed them to my Dad for inspection. Glimpsing them for the first time, I’ll never forget his face as he saw the tags his daughter’s VW Bug would be proudly displaying: LIZ — YOURS TO DISCOVER www.lorraineonline.ca

AUGUST 20, 2006

INDEPENDENTSHIFT • 25

I

f it wasn’t for the thousands of vol- erage, liaise with outfits like the unteers who offer up their time, CASC-Ontario Region for stewards, energy and expertise because of Motorsport Marshaling Services for their love for the sport, just about every marshals, the Canadian Timing auto race in the world would be spin- Association for timing and scoring ning its wheels in the paddock. assistance and the Ontario Race It’s true. Michael Schumacher, who’s Physicians Association (a doctor and paid about $3.5 million per race to nurse) and ensure that at least two drive for Ferrari, could not do his job at, ambulances (complete with parasay, the Grand Prix of Canada in medics) and several tow trucks will be Montreal if it weren’t for flag marshals on site. and other race personnel who get nothOh, and he has to buy the 600 cobs of ing more at the end of the day than a corn (or delegate the purchase) for that free lunch and maybe a beer. post-race meal, too.

This isn’t to say that the F1, Indycar In all, about 100 volunteers are needand American LeMans Series organiza- ed to run a regional race. Here’s what tions don’t have many of their own offi- some of them do. cials and consultants on hand whenever When Einarson finishes his preparaand wherever they race. They do — and tions, he hands responsibility for runyou can bet those folks are very well ning the event over to the clerk of the paid and usually on expenses, to boot. course, Bill Lobban, who’s assisted by But the majority of people Jack Higgins, Bob Page, working at any and all of Keith Nailer and his wife, those big-league events — be Mary Lobban, who specialit producing grid sheets at the izes in crew and family liaiBritish GP or working pass son and can also act as a traucontrol at the recent Molson ma counsellor if needed.

Grand Prix of Toronto — are Now, in order to race, you there purely and simply have to have a pace car, because of their love for the which is driven by Phil sport.

Delahaye and Robby Reck.

NORRIS MCDONALD That’s professional racing.

You have to have a starter On the other hand, non-pro(Ian Galbraith) and a regisfessional — or amateur — trar (Greg Clement) and racing depends entirely on judges of fact (Ian Galbraith, volunteers. There would not Nan Einarson and Pat be a Sports Car Club of Gannon, who also doubles as British Columbia competition at Chief Pit Marshal.)

Mission Raceway Park this weekend, Judges of fact? For instance, there’s a or the Targa Newfoundland in that glo- “blend line” leaving the pits that a drivrious province next month, or the er can’t cross till it ends. Did the driver Canadian Touring Trophy Races pre- cross too soon? The judges of fact sented by the British Automobile decide.

Racing Club (BARC) at Mosport last Now, in order to better understand weekend if it were not for volunteers the process, I went to Mosport Aug. 12 who do what they do free of charge. for an afternoon with some of the So let’s take a closer look at that BARC members and, in particular, Pat BARC weekend at Mosport.

McDiarmid, the Mock Grid Chief.

Paul Einarson is BARC’s race direcPat has been a member of BARC for tor (or organizer) and it’s his responsi- 15 years and has been Grid Chief at bility to have everything arranged and regional events and some professional in place in order for a race weekend to races — her team will handle the Mock go ahead. Call him the general manag- Grid duties for the American LeMans er, if you will. He doesn’t do everything Series race at Mosport in two weeks, himself — there are department heads for instance — for the past nine.

— but it’s his butt that’s on the line if She’d been involved with hobby something’s not right. stock cars at Flamboro Speedway near He oversees the renting of the facili- Hamilton and had gone to a BARC ority, the preparation of a minute-by- entation meeting out of curiosity. She minute schedule for the weekend, up to joined the club soon after. She also conand including the time of the post-race vinced just about everybody else in her meal for 400-500 people (racers and family to join, too. their families, crew members and volThat Saturday, for instance, Pat’s unteers) and the purchase of the neces- husband Mike was at Mosport, volunsary permits. teering as chief of track rescue services He has to arrange for insurance cov- (safety crew). Her two sons, Dan and

Volunteers keep auto races running VIRTUALLY EVERY RACE EVENT IN THE WORLD — FROM THE SPORTS CAR CLUB OF B.C. TO TARGA NEWFOUNDLAND — DEPENDS ON THE HARD WORK OF ITS FANS FOR SURVIVAL

TRACK TALK

Targa Newfoundland and Labrador, 2004

Paul Daly/The Independent

She posts that information and supplies the grid sheets to Pat McDiarmid. If it’s an event that attracts coverage, she hands out official results to the media.

“I got tired of having to pay to see the races,” she says, laughing. “I wanted to get in free, but in order to do that I had See “If they’re not,” page 26

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McLeary, Aileen Ashman, Cindy Babb, Jay Kettle, Moe Aye and Lindsay Shortt.

Lily Weedon works in the Castrol Tower at Mosport and is in charge of results. Drivers go out to practice or qualify and they seek out Lily to find out how fast they were going and where and when they will line up for the races.

Kyle, were helping Mike, as was her son-in-law, Jeff Owen, and her grandson, Aaron Owen.

Granddaughter Michelle Owen, meantime, was volunteering as a member of Pat’s Grid Crew (which makes sure all cars are in position and lined up properly for a race), along with non— relatives Jacqueline Tippell, Army

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GM steps toward hydrogen-fuelled car G

eneral Motors Corp. has achieved a milestone in its quest to bring a hydrogen fuel cell-powered vehicle to market, announcing it now has a drivable version of its Sequel concept car.

The Sequel, which looks like a shrunken minivan and has a range of 500 kilometres, will be demonstrated for reporters next month in California, GM chief executive Rick Wagoner said yesterday during a speech at the Center

for Automotive Research Management Briefing Seminars in Traverse City, Mich.

But production and sale of the Sequel is a long way off. Wagoner wouldn’t give a time estimate for when

the public could buy one.

“That’s rocket science when you get in that car,” he said.

“This is the most sophisticated product, technologically advanced product, I think we’ve ever made in the history

of GM.” Nearly all automakers are testing hydrogen-powered vehicles, with some in use by government workers.

— Tortar wire service

At the Avondale Speedway MOTOCROSS AND ATV RACE RESULTS FOR AUG. 13, 2006 1. BEGINNERS MOTO 1 1st No. 20 Donald Squires 2nd No. 56 Tyler Robison 3rd No. 23 Kyle Walsh

5. BEGINNERS MOTO 2 1st No. 20 Donald Squires 2nd No. 622 Kristy Hynes 3rd No. 23 Kyle Walsh

2. JUNIOR/ INTERMEDIATE MOTO 1 1st No. 22 Kevin Dowden 2nd No. 1 Billy Joe Jackman 3rd No. 24 Tony Murphy

6. JUNIOR/INTERMEDIATE MOTO 2 1st No. 22 Kevin Dowden 2nd No. 1 Billy Joe Jackman 3rd No. 2 Andrew Morrissey

3. ATV MOTO 1 1st No. 9 Stephen Philpott 2nd No. 4 Mark Evans 3rd No. 11 Herbie Lewis

7. ATV MOTO 2 1st No. 9 Stephen Philpott 2nd No. 4 Mark Evan 3rd No. 11 Herbie Lewis

4. EXPERT/VETERAN. MOTO1 1st No. 59 Rod Snelgrove 2nd No. 9 Scott Young 3rd No. 33 Tyler O’Neil

8.EXPERT/VETERAN MOTO 2 1st No. 15 Andrew Burton 2nd No. 59 Rod Snelgrove 3rd No. 33 Tyler O’Neil

9. OPEN QUALIFIER 1 1st No. 9 Scott Young 2nd No. 59 Rod Snelgrove 3rd No. 22 Kevin Dowden 10. OPEN QUALIFIER 2 1st No. 22 Jeff Comerford 2nd No. 15 Andrew Burton 3rd No. 4 John Robinson 11. MOTOCROSS OPEN 1st No. 22 R Jeff Comerford 2nd No. 15 Andrew Burton 3rd No. 22 B Kevin Dowden 10. ATV OPEN 1st No. 4 Mark Evan 2nd No. 9 Stephen Philpott 3rd No. 11 Herbie Lewis To download photos or additional info, visit www.AvondaleSpeedway.com Targa Newfoundland and Labrador, 2004

Paul Daly/The Independent

‘If they’re not here, we don’t race’ From page 25 to work. So here I am. And I love it.”

Another volunteer who loves what he’s doing is Gannon, the guy who’s in charge of pit lane at BARC events.

“We’re out here in all kinds of weather,” he says.

“Blazing heat or pouring rain in the summer, it doesn’t matter, and it can get really cold in the spring and fall. But I’ve been doing this for 19 or 20 years, so you’d have to say that I enjoy it.”

Greg Adamkowski is president of BARC and, when asked to define his job, says simply: “Representing the club and its members as best I possibly can.”

“BARC is the biggest race organizing club in Ontario and maybe all of Canada,” he continues, “but we still don’t have enough people for all the jobs, so we have to work with the other clubs as they work with us (the British Empire Motor Club and Deutscher Automobile Club, who also organize Ontario races).

“The great satisfaction of doing this is creating a place and a situation and the atmosphere for all these people to race. I get a big kick out of doing this. It’s the most fun, and that’s what it’s all about.”

Now, let us never forget that motorsport is dangerous. In 1966, marshal Gordon Harrisson was killed at Mosport between turns two and three when a car went out of control and off the track.

Marshal Jean Patrick Hind was killed during the

running of the first Molson Indy Vancouver in 1990 (Pat Gannon was working as a marshal just two corners away) and Gary Avrin died in the wreck at the Molson Indy Toronto in 1996 that also took the life of driver Jeff Krosnoff.

In the words of Judy Johnstone, who told me about the time the hood off a crashing Corvette flew past her marshal’s post, just missing her, “it is not a job for the weak of heart or mind.”

But Johnstone, who’s been flagging for 13 years and has been a marshal at the 24 Hours of Daytona, the 12 Hours of Sebring and the Grand Prix of Canada, among other races, has no plans to call it quits.

“I’ll do it as long as I can continue to make a contribution to this sport,” she says, after a day of training a “blue-flagger” (who signals a car’s driver that he or she is being overtaken) between turns one and two.

“I’ll do it as long as I can physically save my own life and the lives of those around me.”

And thank goodness for attitudes like that, says Formula Ford team owner Hector Pickering, of Kingston, who’d entered a car last weekend for Oakville’s Matt White to drive.

“We racers, we race for bragging rights — the glory and a handshake,” he says. “The volunteers don’t even get that.

“But at the end of the day, all of us racers have just one thing to say: ‘Thank God for the marshals and the other volunteers. Because if they’re not here, we don’t race.’”

Camaro to roar back on scene in 2009

By Tony Van Alphen Torstar wire service

T

he buzz has turned into a roar for the legendary Chevrolet Camaro but some analysts are already wondering whether the growling will wind down to a whimper when the legendary muscle sports car finally arrives in showrooms.

Rick Wagoner, chief executive for General Motors Corp., recently announced the struggling automaker will start selling the Camaro coupe again in early 2009 after a seven-year absence.

The move follows big buzz at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit in January for the Camaro concept.

However, analysts say, among other things, the model could be coming to the muscle car party too late to make any lasting noise in a shifting marketplace.

“There is some serious downside,” says auto watcher Dennis DesRosiers.

Wagoner didn’t disclose where GM will build the Camaro but its pending flexible manufacturing complex in Oshawa and a sports car plant in Wilmington, Del., are the leading candidates.

Analysts argue it will be difficult for GM because rivals already have a good head start in the small muscle car segment; low and high-end roadsters are cutting into the niche; expensive insurance dampens interest and fuel prices show no sign of easing for the traditional gas guzzlers.

The success of the Ford Mustang in recent years renewed interest by rivals but, DesRosiers says, the number of models will make it tougher to make money.

Mustang sales in Canada and the U.S. topped 170,000 last year. Seeing the potential, DaimlerChrysler reincarnated the Dodge Charger and is bringing back the Challenger in 2008.

Meanwhile, numerous companies from DaimlerChrysler to BMW have introduced roadsters to their lineups in recent years. Those vehicles cater to the particular needs and desires of consumers who might have also considered a muscle car in the past, according to analysts.

In GM’s case, the company can’t keep up with demand for the Pontiac Solstice sports car. It also produces the popular Saturn Sky. Auto watchers say the Camaro’s return will result in some “cannibalization” within the GM lineup of sports cars.

Consumers have also shifted to smaller, more

fuel-efficient vehicles because of record gasoline prices in the U.S. and Canada. That continues to reduce the potential for muscle cars, according to analysts.

“Oil prices will likely stay in the $65 (U.S.) a barrel range for the next year or so,” says Carlos Gomes, senior economist and auto industry specialist at Scotiabank. “I think it will be somewhat of a head wind for the muscle car segment.”

But those factors are not deterring GM. It says the 2009 Camaro version will not only appeal to fans from a generation ago but women and younger drivers.

The car features V-6 or V-8 front engines with up to 400 horsepower, independent rear suspension, manual or automatic transmission and some of the same distinct Camaro styling cues from a generation ago including long hood, short deck and wide stance.

Wagoner says the Camaro, which went out of production in 2002 after a 35-year run, generated an overwhelming positive response with the showing in Detroit and reminded him of the “iconic place our products can have in customers’ hearts.”

“Camaro is much more than a car,” he says. “It symbolizes America’s spirit and its love affair with the automobile.”

Insiders say the Camaro could be a “halo car” that would help attract customers to other GM models and boost overall sales.

“In that way, it could be very significant for GM,” says DesRosiers.

He says sales of the Camaro should easily surpass 100,000 annually in the first two years but the model needs to maintain that level in subsequent years to justify the investment.

DesRosiers, president of DesRosiers Automotive Consultants, says critics question whether it would have made more business sense for GM to invest in big volume models than a niche product like the Camaro, regardless of its halo potential.

GM has not announced the names of the models for the manufacturing complex in Oshawa later this decade.

Insiders say the complex will likely build two or three high volume rear-wheel drive, mid-size models and possibly the Camaro.

GM built the aging Camaro and the Pontiac Firebird sports car at its Ste. Thérèse, Que. assembly plant, but closed the operation in August 2002 because of declining sales.

AUGUST 20, 2006

INDEPENDENTSPORTS • 27 Solutions for crossword on page 20

Solutions for sudoku on page 20

Catch and release in Labrador.

Paul Smith photo

Learning to do it right From page 28 insanely optimistic. Some of them even have regular jobs.

These hardcore anglers are our rivers’ best chance against poaching. They care the most and are they’re there the most.

It’s simple. Take them off the river and it’s “welcome, poachers.” Although our federal and provincial guardians are extremely dedicated folks, they can’t be everywhere.

There are those who adamantly oppose hook and release fishing. They claim many salmon die after being released.

From what I have read and experienced first hand, I think the mortality rate on released fish is low, if simple guidelines are followed and common sense exercised.

Read the angler’s guide for the full story, but here’s how I do it.

First, don’t play the fish too long, especially in warmer water. Apply plenty of pressure — so what if the tippet breaks? Long line releases are fine. As soon as the salmon starts to tire, when it’s no longer jumping and taking off on reel burning runs, it’s time to end the engagement.

If possible, I wade out in the river up to my knees, otherwise my back may be in for a stretching. This allows me to reach the salmon’s mouth with my left hand while my right hand holds the rod high in the air.

It goes more or less like this: when the fish has torn up the river for a few minutes and appears ready to secede, reel in your line to about 12 feet while guiding your tiring quarry to the least turbulent water you can find.

Reasonable upward pressure should now get its head up out of the water. The head-up position gives you full control over the fish, and you can guide him where you want. With the rod held high, slide him or her towards you and slide your other hand down the line until you feel the fly and the fish’s snout. Grip the barbless hook between your thumb and forefinger and give a quick twist. The hook releases its steely grip and the salmon swims off, never touched by a human hand.

If you feel your back isn’t up to the task, you can have your buddy pluck the hook but don’t forget: heads up.

Without control over the fish, it will dart off insanely from your ominous human shadow, unnecessarily prolonging the fight.

If you learn to do it right, there’s no need to play a salmon to complete exhaustion. And of course, if it’s worth doing, it’s worth making the effort to do it right.

Paul Smith is a freelance writer living in Spaniard’s Bay, enjoying all the outdoors Newfoundland and Labrador has to offer. flyfishtherock@hotmail.com

‘It keeps me young’ From page 28 league has played out of Lions Park. The first 18 years were played in Bannerman Park, followed by one year at Victoria Park. Lions Park took over as the venue in 1976, and it was the hub of softball until the league switched to the Caribou Complex near Quidi Vidi in 1995. The league stayed by the lake for six years, but headed back to the cozy confines of Lions Park in 2001.

Barron says this is a lean time in the league’s history — but adds he’s seen times like it before over the past 50 years.

The state of the game is healthy enough, he says, attributing its dwindling numbers to a couple of all-too-familiar Newfoundland and Labrador issues — out-migration and the low birth rate.

“We certainly don’t have the numbers, but people are not having big families like they used to and once ball players finish school or university, they disappear to the mainland.

Every sport is in the same boat.”

But Barron believes there will always be a core group to keep things going, just as it has for the past 50 years. And you can count him in on the action, for as long as he finds it enjoyable.

“It keeps me young, or at least feeling young. It keeps your mind occupied and I enjoy being around the park and the players. As long as I still enjoy it, I’ll probably stick at it as long as I have good health.”

Barron was instrumental in helping select five decade allstar teams. The 45 all-stars and those selected as all-time top performers received awards during Molson anniversary celebrations at the 50th anniversary celebration, which was scheduled for Aug. 19 at the St. John’s Curling Club whitebobby@yahoo.com

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INDEPENDENTSPORTS

SUNDAY THROUGH SATURDAY, AUGUST 20-26, 2006 — PAGE 28

Bill Barron

Paul Daly/The Independent

50 years and counting Bill Barron is a walking talking encyclopedia of fastpitch facts from the past half century

By Bob White For The Independent

W

hile some might think the game’s era has passed, a national junior championship has breathed a little new life into one of the province’s most successful sports.

Since it was first introduced to this province some 80 years ago, fastpitch softball has produced many top players and teams that have gone on to much success on provincial, national and international levels. (Earlier this month, Newfoundland and Labrador’s Kelly’s Pub Junior Canadians team won the National Junior Men’s Fastpitch Championship in Quebec.)

And with very few exceptions, Bill Barron has seen it all. If there ever was a

softball expert, it’s Barron. He’s a walking, talking encyclopedia of fastpitch facts and has been instrumental in keeping the sport going in the capital city through all its ups and downs.

The St. John’s Senior Softball League is celebrating its 50th season this year.

Barron has been an executive member and chief stats guy for 45 of them. Oh — and you can toss in two league titles as a player and a provincial title as a coach.

Barron, 66, has been a tireless volunteer, especially in statistics and recordkeeping, and has accumulated a treasure trove of information. Professional leagues in any sport would envy the years of data he’s gathered. It’s been a longtime passion for Barron, who still heads to the ballpark several hours a night, three times a week.

“I grew up in an era when really the only thing to do was play sports,” he says. Barron retired 12 years ago after 30 years with Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation.

“And I fell in love with the game. I love doing statistical work, researching history and things like that. It comes very natural to me.”

His home office is a museum of sorts, filled with game sheets and loads of softball memorabilia, which Barron would like to see find its way to a sports museum down the road.

“I’ve got oodles and oodles of stuff.”

Some of the information has landed in cyberspace, where it can be found at www.nlfastpitch.com. Barron is in the process of adding more to the site, updated with the help of Gerald Gosse. Gosse

is in charge of uploading data, a realm Barron hasn’t quite mastered yet.

Barron, who was an umpire for a few years in the early 1970s, can be credited with bringing an umpire’s association to the St. John’s league.

He’s seen thousands of players in his day and has, for the most part, enjoyed every minute of it.

“You have your good days, and with anything like this, there are some down days. But I’ve become friends with a lot of people, I’ve seen a lot of good ball players. I’ve enjoyed the games, I’ve seen some great games, national championships. And I’ve worked with a lot of good people on the executive.”

Barron says this is the 25th season the See “It keeps,” page 27

The art of hook and release

W

hile chatting with an old college friend last week, the topic somehow turned to salmon fishing. I’m not sure who brought it up, but just about everybody who knows me is aware of my fishing addiction.

Maybe he asked, “how’s the fishing?” as a conversation filler. We hadn’t spoken in years and things in common had faded. I gave him the Reader’s Digest version of my two weeks salmon fishing in Labrador. He seemed genuinely interested, in a non-angler sort of way, but I often have difficulty distinguishing intrigue from politeness.

Maybe I just don’t know when to stop talking about fishing — that’s what my wife tells me.

PAUL SMITH

The Rock

Outdoors Anyway, when I finally stopped for a breath, my friend’s response to my Labrador angling tale was simple: “You must have caught a lot of fish in two weeks.”

I had covered exciting details about tenting, river wading and hungry bears, but I neglected to tell him how many fish I caught. “The fishing was pretty decent, I was hooking about four a day on average,” I said.

“Geez, that’s a lot of salmon! I

thought they were endangered or something,” my old chum excitedly replied.

I only keep a few fish for the camp pot, I explained.

That totally confused him. “You drive all the way to Labrador with the price of gas sky-high, get eaten by flies, sleep in a bloody tent, and then let the fish go?”

He was an economics major in college, I’m an angler, and we live on different planets … time for my golf analogy. It goes something like this: golfers spend tons of money to bang around a ball and bring home nothing. He appreciated my point, but I’m not expecting to meet him on the Pinware next year.

When you buy a salmon licence you are entitled to retain a total of six fish,

and this depends on what rivers you fish. You get two blue tags, two red and two green. On Class 1 rivers like the Humber, any colour tag may be used any time throughout the season.

On a Class II river, red or green tags may be used, and on Class III rivers, fish may be retained with red tags only.

If you decide to take up salmon fishing, read the provincial government’s angling guide very carefully before getting your waders wet, because there are complicating factors. For instance, this year the Gander is only a sort of Class I river. Fish may be taken on blue tags, but only after Aug. 1.

So if you are a decent angler, and there are salmon under your fly, you will not be away from home long on

your fishing adventure unless you decide to practise hook and release. The object of salmon fishing for some is just to fill their tags. They’ll go home happy to have a few fresh wild Atlantic salmon they caught themselves in the freezer.

This is fine, but there are others who want much more. Not more fish in the freezer, but more time on the river; more time pursuing the king of game fish from one end of our fine province to the other. These are the people who spend countless hours on the river and feel its moods. High water, low water, full moon, rain, shine, they’re there casting rhythmically, never bored, See “Learning,” page 27