VOL. 4 ISSUE 39 — ST. JOHN’S, NEWFOUNDLAND AND LABRADOR — FRIDAY THROUGH THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 29-OCTOBER 5, 2006 — WWW.THEINDEPENDENT.CA — $1.50 HOME DELIVERY (HST included); $2.00 RETAIL (HST included)
OUR TERMS
Salvaging what’s left
Our Terms ... so far
Talk of the fisheries arouses anger, passion, cynicism and calls for provincial control STEPHANIE PORTER Third in a six-part series. See related stories pages 4, 5 and 13.
F
ormer lieutenant-governor James McGrath says the fishery is proof enough Newfoundland and Labrador didn’t negotiate its Terms of Union with Canada — because this province, he says, would never have given up the rights to the resource at the basis of its economy, history, and culture. “(The Terms) were negotiated between Britain and Canada,” he says. “I don’t mean to have 20/20 hindsight vision, but I can say that, with some degree of accuracy.” The end result of the negotiations was Term 22, which allowed for the continuation of Newfoundland’s fisheries laws until 1954. At that
point, management of the fisheries off the province’s coast became a federal responsibility. Given the unstable state of the fisheries today, most agree the federal government, for whatever reasons — and there are many theories — did not live up to the responsibility of managing a resource that could have been sustainable. Roger Grimes, former Liberal premier of Newfoundland and Labrador, summed it up: “No one is satisfied with what’s happened on the federal side so that can’t continue to be it.” But how to salvage and protect what’s left of fish stocks off the East Coast of Canada? And should they recover, how to ensure management is done right this time? These are some of the tough questions The Independent’s panel of experts had a look at during its round-table discussion about the Terms of Union. The fisheries, the second major topic tackled for Our Terms, The Independent’s sixpart look at the Terms (past, present and future),
roused passions, anger, debate, division and cynicism unlike any of the other issues. Some panelists — most forcefully, fisheries advocate Gus Etchegary — believe that had the province retained control of the harvesting and management of its fisheries, the stocks would not be where they are today. Others disagreed, forcefully. “Our own fishermen are out there cheating at every possible chance, not observing the rules and blaming the foreign fishermen,” John Crosbie started in. “You’ve got to face human nature,” echoed St. John’s Mayor Andy Wells. Certainly, there are few global examples of well-managed fish stocks. Whether the province would have done a better job or not is a moot point — within the Canadian Constitution, the fisheries fall under federal jurisdiction. “You say we should have control, but we’re not going to get it,” Grimes stated. “There’s a practi-
A running list of recommendations emerging from The Independent’s six-part series on Newfoundland’s Terms of Union with Canada
POLITICS Newfoundland and Labrador’s MPs operate as a bloc Senate reform: implement a Triple-E Senate, with equal representation from each province
FISHERIES Management to be carried out by an arm’s-length fisheries board. Custodial management of the nose and tail of the Grand Banks. Recommendations emerge from The Independent’s panel: Ryan Cleary, John Crosbie, Brian Dobbin, Gus Etchegary, Roger Grimes, Ray Guy, Maura Hanrahan, Peg Norman, Nancy Riche, Andy Wells.
cal element to this … because then you’re going to have to get jurisdictions in Nova Scotia, PEI, N.B. and B.C. and that’s not the Canadian thing that’s going to happen.”
Fishermen from today and yesterday have called St. John’s harbour home port.
NAFO reforms concern Fisheries critic MANDY COOK
T
he NDP critic for Fisheries and Oceans says new NAFO reforms still leave holes for “pirates” to slip through. “Even though we have improved the situation, we still have a sort of more volunteer system where the countries themselves have to police themselves in many ways,” Peter Stoffer tells The Independent from Halifax. “And that is still a bit of a concern for me. In order for these things to achieve its goals, you have to have very strict and careful monitoring.” The reforms were adopted during the Northwest Atlantic Fishery Organization’s annual general meeting in Nova Scotia earlier this month. Under the reforms, foreign vessels caught committing serious infractions — such as misreporting their catch — will be directed to port for immediate inspection. As well, countries will be obliged to impose a fine, suspend fishing licenses, or seize fishing gear or the illegal catch of any vessel caught breaking the rules. Any vessel directed to port by
Canadian inspection officers can choose which port to return to — either in Canada or in its home country. Those aboard the offending boat can also request Canadian inspection officers leave the ship on its way to the port of its choice. Wayne Follett, regional director of DFO in St. John’s, says he has yet to see a member state refuse inspection officers and doesn’t “expect it to happen” in the future. Follett says it’s up to the home state to fine the offending ship and to offload any illegal catch. He says vessels will be deterred by the loss of revenue. “Any vessel caught (breaking the law) must immediately cease fishing, which we estimate to be $15,000 a day for the costs of operating the vessel and loss of fishing, and the home state is obliged to impose sanctions,” says Follett. “The onus is on member states to immediately prosecute.” Follett couldn’t specify how the $15,000 sum was calculated, but said it is a “rough estimate.” NAFO, which monitors fishing on the high seas outside Canada’s 200-mile limit, is seen by critics as See “NDP believes,” page 11
See “Change,” page 11
Paul Daly and Edward Rowe photos
QUOTE OF THE WEEK “I know how well I am doing against my competitors every day of the week. I look at the paper and I will see someone resting comfortably at a competitor’s and can gauge every week if we are doing well.”
— Geoff Carnell, of Carnell's Funeral Homes. See page 3.
LIFE 17
Wayne Johnston’s book IN CAMERA 8-9
The ‘honest portraiture’ of Shane Kelly
Life Story . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Shift . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Classifieds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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Labrador: ‘never had a say’ Labradorians fighting to have voices heard, contributions recognized, by provincial government IVAN MORGAN
W
hen asked, political leaders in Labrador offer a host of grievances that sound similar to Newfoundland’s grievances with the federal government: inadequate and ineffective representation, transportation issues, and the desire for access to basic services most Canadians take for granted. “I think a lot of the problems that the province has dealing with the federal government, we can bring them down to a provincial scale here in Labrador,” says Leo Abbass, mayor of Happy Valley-Goose Bay. “The people of Labrador probably feel the same way dealing with our own provincial government.” Ron Barron, interim leader of the Labrador Party, agrees. “There are many issues in Labrador where we feel neglected. “Labrador has never had a say in its own future — ever … In 1927 the Privy Council handed Labrador over to Newfoundland. Did the people of Labrador have a say? No they didn’t. Since that time we have had representation in government — but no
say.” Barron likes the idea of united representation in the House of Assembly. “The first thing is a united voice for Labrador. Right now we have two Liberals, one PC and an NDP — who are each in their own right fighting for their own districts. Labrador is neglected and left out of the loop — there is only one voice speaking for a certain area. “But if you get four voices sitting at a table demanding the government?” says Barron. “Just imagine four MHAs sitting at a table saying ‘Listen, this is what we want. We don’t want it all, but we expect a fair share.’” Abbass does not agree with the bloc approach. “I know Roger Grimes, the former premier, was talking about a bloc vote (in the Sept. 22 edition of The Independent). Well, why would we vote as a bloc? Why would Quebec vote as a bloc? It’s almost like it is a bully tactic. Are you doing it for the right reasons or are you doing it to get your way?” Abbass says strong leadership is the answer to representation in Labrador. “If we have strong representatives then our voices and our concerns are heard and addressed.” See “Labradorians face,” page 11
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2 • INDEPENDENTNEWS
SEPTEMBER 29, 2006
‘What is everybody’s property is nobody’s responsibility’ John Crosbie says fish shouldn’t be a common-property resource
A
bout 50 per cent of the global continental shelf is now trawled, with the most productive areas trawled several times per year. The destruction to the marine environment is horrendous and exacerbated by the fact that many governments have over-capitalized the industry. Boats built through low-interest loans compete for fewer and fewer fish. Longliners that spool out miles of lines fitted with thousands of baited hooks in a single set wipe out sword fish and other billed fish in tropical and semi-tropical seas worldwide. Coastal and high seas drift nets and gillnets account for huge catches of large fish
JOHN CROSBIE
The way I see it and become “ghost nets,” lost nets that drift in the ocean for months and years entangling and killing dolphins, sea birds, sea turtles, sharks and groundfish. Management practices based on targeting big fish are a big part of the problem since big fish are the very ones needed to propagate the species because they are sexually mature.
Permitting fishing on spawning populations where large masses of fish get together to procreate happens all over the world and is a sure-fire recipe for destroying the fishery. All of this occurred off our shores as well. The fundamental problem of the fishery that prevents prosperity and stability is the common-property nature of the fish resource, which is no one’s property until caught. As Brian Crowley wrote, “What is everybody’s property is nobody’s responsibility,” and this fundamental truth is the feature that causes the structural characteristics of fisheries that are most troublesome to the industries and econo-
I believe the failure to put in place rightsbased fishing is the fundamental weakness of the fishery, which has plagued fisheries from the very beginning
mies built on competitive fishery regimes. Although this is widely recognized, few governments have taken the action necessary to change the common-property nature of fish resource exploitation so fishers have the incentive to obey the conservation rules that could save the wild fish fishery. Since changing common-property fisheries to rights-based fisheries is not popular or supported by many inshore fishermen, the move to rights-based fishing is very slow, resulting in groundfish fisheries lurching from one crisis to the next about once a decade, with each crisis deeper and longer than the previous one. There have been some steps taken in the direction of rights-based fishing in individual fisheries and in several countries such as Iceland and New Zealand, where rights-based fishing is firmly established, but the political will has not existed elsewhere to put in place this superior alternative to the commonproperty regimes where the first will take the most in the race for commonproperty exploitation. So long as enough public subsidy underpins a common-property fishery there will be no incentive to change. In Canada, fish stocks are still a common-property resource owned by no one, with the Constitution granting jurisdiction over them to the federal government, which grants access to the various fisheries through a regulatory system based on licensing. A licence to fish is not a property right to a share of the fish caught, for example, but rather a kind of permit allowing its possessor to join the harvesting effort within regulatory limits that dictate when, where and with what equipment one may fish. The result is obvious. Our regulatory approach tries to control the harvesting effort of too many fishers by decreeing ever shorter seasons and ever more intrusive limits in both gear and onboard storage capacity. These efforts are largely futile since the ingenuity and inventiveness of the fishers mean that the regulations and restrictions frequently lag behind the latest techniques for circumventing the rules. The licences do not give the fisher any right to a share of the catch, but only a right to put their lines or nets or traps in the water so each invests disproportionate capital in such catch and storing capacity to increase his chances of getting an adequate share of an uncertain harvest. Each fishing season becomes an ever more harrowing high-tech race to catch an unpredictable share of a dwindling resource. In rights-based fishing, fishers own a share of the stocks or a share of the total allowable catch (TAC), which is a scientific estimate of the amount of fishing effort a stock can sustain. Such a property right is usually an individual transferable quota (ITQ). The fisher then has no need to race because his share of the harvestable stock is guaranteed. The ITQ acquires a value in the market and becomes, like a farmer’s land, his chief capital asset. Harvesters have an interest and incentive to cooperate to build the stocks because each will benefit from increased catches in the future, not least because the current market value of each ITQ will rise with the potential future value of the stocks. I believe the failure to put in place rights-based fishing is the fundamental weakness of the fishery, which has plagued fisheries from the very beginning and which I believe is now life or death for the fisheries because of the technical breakthroughs since the Second World War that make it possible to catch every last fish in our oceans under the common-property regime. John Crosbie’s next column will appear on Oct. 12.
Correction Senator Bill Rompkey is supporting Bob Rae in the current federal Liberal leadership race. Information to the contrary appeared in Lining Up, a story in the Sept. 22 Independent.
SEPTEMBER 29, 2006
INDEPENDENTNEWS • 3
SCRUNCHINS A weekly collection of Newfoundlandia A couple of interesting characters were scheduled to drop by Town on Tuesday aboard the cruise ship Black Watch. The two — Mark Chislett and David Redfern — were the crew of a much more famous vessel … the Matthew, the replica of the 15th century, square-rigged caravel that sailed into Bonavista harbour on June 24, 1997, the 500th anniversary of John Cabot’s historic landing. The Matthew was no joy ride, but then I’m sure Cabot’s original wasn’t either. “It’s like a cork inside a bottle,” one of the crewmembers told me at the time. The Matthew had set sail a month earlier from Bristol, England, where more than 250,000 people lined the banks of the river Avon to see her off (NTV’s Fred Hutton was industrious enough to get us front-row seats aboard a private yacht). Chislett, the carpenter aboard the Matthew, and Redfern, the media director, hadn’t been in Newfoundland since
the historic landing. “I shall be giving talks on the Matthew’s Atlantic journey of Newfoundland on the cruise ship, which goes on to Montreal, etc.,” Redfern said in an e-mail. “It may make a little story. I’ve no doubt we’ll visit George Street … who would have thought it was almost 10 years since the Matthew’s visit?” It was King Henry VII of England who commissioned Cabot, an explorer, to find a new trade route to Asia across the “sea of darkness.” No better spot than Bonavista to bump into … DISCOVERY TRAIL Redfern is currently organizing a tour of England with a replica of the Discovery, one of the three vessels that completed a 1607 voyage that led to the founding of Jamestown, the first permanent English-speaking settlement in America. The replica Discovery is scheduled to complete its four-and-ahalf month voyage across the Atlantic to England from Jamestown on Oct. 15th, the 400th anniversary. As for
The Matthew, replica of John Cabot’s ship.
By Ivan Morgan The Independent
I
n one sentence, Ivan Emke, associate professor at Sir Wilfred Grenfell College, explains the reality of the funeral business: “There’s one death for everybody and we all get one.” Death is a growth industry in the province — but it is also a tricky and highly competitive one, says Emke, who has done research on the funeral business. As the “boomer generation” ages, the death rate will rise. Businesses will have to meet the increased demand, accommodating tradition, religion and innovation, all while assisting people in the most stressful times of their lives. And, of course, trying to make a profit. Geoff Carnell, president of Carnell’s Funeral Homes in St. John’s, says the aging population is going to have a profound effect on the industry. “Anybody who has looked at North American culture and the baby boomer generation and that particular cohort would be the first to admit that as that cohort ages, many things will change,” says Carnell.
ANTICIPATES GROWTH While the industry anticipates growth, Emke says people’s interest in healthy lifestyles may slow the boom. “They have been saying for about 10 years that it’s a growth industry, but I think that people are living a little longer,” he says. “Some companies got into a lot of trouble some years ago because they expected this to be a real windfall, and that is when there was a lot of buying up (of funeral homes) and so on, but most of those companies went into financial problems. “I think it is possible to overemphasize how lucrative this is going to be.” Emke and Carnell say the bereavement industry, as it is also known, is unique in the business world. “It’s an odd thing, because you have three things coming together,” says Emke. “You have technical skills —
Greg Locke/Reuters
embalming, body preservation, and all that stuff. You have business skills — the selling of the casket, the urn, keepsake jewellery, and flowers, and then you have the professional aspect of therapy, where you care for the family. “Funeral home directors are often the first ones to hear the story of the death. They have more contact with the bereaved than clergy do since we don’t go to church so much anymore.” Carnell says the industry has other unique aspects. “I know how well I am doing against my competitors every day of the week,” he says. “I look at the paper everyday and I will see someone resting comfortably at a competitors and can gauge every week if we are doing well or we are not doing well.” Reputation, tradition and religion still play a vital role in market share, says Emke, with businesses catering to specific religious denominations. “It is very clear that people feel comfortable in a funeral home where they have been before, where they know the funeral home personnel understand their traditions,” he says. “So it makes sense, for example, that Caul’s (another prominent St. John’s funeral home) are going to get a lot of Roman Catholic funerals. “I often have trouble thinking of another occupation that has the same contradictions and problems within it that so many funeral directors are good at. The industry itself is a very complicated mixture of interests.” Carnell agrees. “It’s a calling — not just a business … We would like to do better. We would like to grow.” The challenge for the industry is dealing appropriately with change — which it has not always done well. Take, for example, cremation, a relatively new option in the province. Carnell’s built the first crematorium in 1986. But then, Emke says, competition led to overcapacity, and there are now six in the province, dealing with approximately 4,500 deaths annually. Cremations per capita in Newfoundland are well below the national average, and don’t justify the number of crematoria, says Emke. The cost is passed on to the consumer.
what happens to replicas once their retracing of historic voyages is done … the Matthew is back in Bristol today after a trip to Clovelly, England (her best speed was 7 knots) to take part in a film about Christopher Columbus. One last word about the Matthew … once the trip to Bonavista was over, the ship sailed around the island, with one of its first legs being to Grates Cove. The first thing spotted that morning as the sun burned away the fog over the water leading to the community — a Sobeys bag. You don’t suppose Cabot saw the same thing … CURRENCY CRASH Back in Cabot’s day the waters were so thick with cod that he could haul them in over the side of the Matthew by the bucket. Codfish would later become known as Newfoundland currency. According to the Fisheries and Oceans website, cod populations off the island’s northeast coast and Labrador have declined by more than 97 per cent, with virtually no sign of recovery. One of the reasons for that is continued fishing by foreign fleets outside the 200mile limit. Which brings us to federal Fisheries Minister Loyola Hearn, who filled out a questionnaire prepared by the St. John’s Board of Trade prior to the federal election earlier this year. This is what Hearn had to say about custodial management: “Our Party initiated the idea of custodial management. We had a resolution to that effect passed in Parliament. In our policy statements we commit to taking custodial management if we become Government.” So much for that idea … HARPER’S STAND In a Jan. 4, 2006 letter to our Danny, this is what the future prime minister had to say about imposing custodial management immediately upon taking
Stephen Harper with MHAs Dianne Whalen (left) and Elizabeth Marshall. Paul Daly/The Independent
office: “A Conservative government would support extending custodial management of the Continental Shelf beyond the 200-mile limit … under 12 years of Liberal mismanagement, cod stocks have collapsed in the Atlantic. International overfishing has contributed to this collapse and cannot continue. It is both a matter of environmental stewardship and of protecting Canada’s economic interests.” So much for that idea too …
be wherever the pirate chooses. As well, if there are any Canadian enforcement officers on board they can be ordered off by the foreign vessel’s home country. Yes sir, the overfishing problem should be solved now. Foreign countries will also be obliged to come down hard on ships that break the law — only DFO can’t say how hard. In fact, DFO can’t say what discipline, if any, has been imposed as a result of the dozens of citations issued in recent years …
BLUE SKY Of course, as everyone learned this week, custodial management isn’t necessary because NAFO has been reformed and the Grand Banks of Newfoundland have finally been saved — thanks to Hearn et bureaucrats al. Let’s see if I have this straight … if a foreign trawler is caught committing a serious infraction (catching endangered species such as cod, for example), the foreign ship will be directed to port for immediate inspection. But that port can
BERRY GOOD The final Scrunchin goes to the Forteau company, Labrador Preserves, whose Pure Labrador line of bakeapple, partridgeberry and blueberry spreads and syrups have been taken on by four gourmet retail food chains in three New England states. One thing you can say about the Americans, they’ve sure got great taste … ryan.cleary@theindependent.ca
“... and that brings us to our most popular item — the Blowin’ In The Wind urn... the pipe’s decorative of course.”
Ashes to ashes
Funeral homes may be one of the last bastions of family business in the province; industry prepares for baby boomers “There is a real strong sense still of a connection between the living and the dead, where the people can go visit the dead,” he says. “And the dead are often in traditional communities placed in the best real estate — on the hill overlooking the water.” Geography and economics have also been barriers to cremation in Newfoundland and Labrador. “If you are going to have a grave, what’s the advantage of burning you first?” Emke asks — especially if there’s no crematorium in your town.
Tradition is still key in the province’s bereavement industry. Carnell is the sixth generation of his family to run Carnell’s. “The funeral homes are one of the last bastions of family business in this province that is still Newfoundland owned and controlled,” he says. But change is coming. Emke says niche marketing — such as offering multicultural services, or more modern options — will ensure the survival of some smaller businesses. Green burials are another example.
While cremation takes a lot of energy and is not environmentally friendly, with a green burial there is no embalming or casket. Emke says the market is growing yearly. “What they do is put people in wicker coffins, so it breaks down very quickly, and they bury them in woodlands,” says Emke. “These are people who always loved woods and loved nature and that’s the best place for them to be — to go back to that.” ivan.morgan@theindependent.ca
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4 • INDEPENDENTNEWS
SEPTEMBER 29, 2006
W
hen The Independent panel’s discussion turned to the state of the fisheries, the volume in the room intensified immediately. For some, it was an hour’s worth of heated, passionate discussion — while other participants were left wondering why. Panel participants were invited by The Independent to meet for an afternoon to discuss Newfoundland’s Terms of Union with Canada. Moderated by editor-inchief Ryan Cleary, the talk explored — but wasn’t limited to — five categories: politics, fisheries, oil and gas, finances and transportation. Former Liberal premier Roger Grimes, entrepreneur (and NDP candidate) Peg Norman, St. John’s Mayor Andy Wells, writer Maura Hanrahan, businessman Brian Dobbin, commentator Ray Guy, retired politician John Crosbie, activist Nancy Riche and fisheries advocate Gus Etchegary took part. This is the second of five excerpts from the discussion, and it’s all about the resource that was once the province’s most important. Next week, the discussion moves on to topic No. 3: oil and gas. Comments have been edited for clarity and length. Ryan Cleary: Mr. Etchegary, you’re probably the most outspoken on the fisheries. We basically handed over the fishery (to the federal government) in 1954. What would you want in terms of changes to the Terms of Union? Gus Etchegary: Oh my, there’s a long list … I would use the threat of separation, I would pursue that on the basis of extension of jurisdiction (over the nose and tail of the Grand Banks) or else. Because unless there is extension of jurisdiction, there will never be recovery of the resource. Crosbie: I don’t agree. If we had complete jurisdiction, we wouldn’t be doing any better. Cleary: How can you possibly say that? Crosbie: How can I possibly not say it? When I look at what the provincial government does in areas where it does have jurisdiction, it hasn’t got the guts to take a firm stand on anything because of the political influence it has on voting in Newfoundland. Maura Hanrahan: We wouldn’t have bargained our fish away. Crosbie: Every politician here talks about beyond the 200 and the nose and the tail of the Banks. That’s because they got somebody else to blame … Stopping overfishing — that’s all rhetoric. Our own fishermen are out there cheating at every possible chance, not observing the rules and blaming the foreign fishermen … Wells: You’ve got to face human nature. Newfoundlanders are just as much environmental bandits — do you think we’re more virtuous? Ray Guy: I think we’re a bunch of sons of bitches because we had to be for 300 years. Etchegary: Folks, I tell you, you’re out to lunch. In the 1970s – from 1971 to 1982 — we went from 89 licensed plants to 246, and that was done by politicians and bureaucrats … Wells: And where were the people saying ‘This is wrong?’ Etchegary: You’ll learn something about this bloody business. The increase in demand in those plants was just as detrimental to the resource as the foreign overfishing … Cleary: We’re here to try to make this a better place, not to fight. Nancy Riche: Maybe that’s why we can’t. Hanhrahan: Andy, we’re not saying
Gus Etchegary
Paul Daly/The Independent
If we had control Opinions of Independent panel sharply divided on fisheries
we’re better, but we’re no worse either, which is what some of the people around this table are saying. Crosbie: The fundamental problem with the fishery that politicians will not deal with because it’s unpopular with inshore fishermen is the common-property nature of the resource … the fishermen should have a property right. Hanrahan: The common property theory has problems in Newfoundland. Prior to Ottawa taking over, Newfoundlanders didn’t treat (fish) as a common-property resource, certain families fished on certain grounds. Some communities had draws for berths. It wasn’t chaos — it was managed at the community level. Ottawa just walked in here saying that it’s common property … and that was an excuse to take over the management of the resource and look what’s happened. Etchegary: You (Crosbie) talked about the advice you had in 1992, you had to close down the fishery, you had no choice … but the information you got was the same bloody information that was fed to ministers before you and it was corrupted by the bloody fishery managers at the federal level. Wells: How would that change if we had control? Etchegary: You don’t understand. Wells: No, b’y. Loyola Hearn repeated the same old mistake, the recreational fishery: got to keep the crowd happy. Etchegary: That was a mistake. Wells: I know it’s a mistake! But you’re saying if we had control those mistakes wouldn’t be made? Etchegary: That was a federal minister making that decision. Wells: I don’t care if he’s federal of provincial. His personality isn’t going to change. Cleary: The way I look at the fishery: if you have one crowd controlling harvesting and another crowd controlling processing, that can’t work.
OUR TERMS Hanrahan: That’s right. But we have a federal government that believes the fish are gone anyway. Crosbie: A joint federal-provincial board will not work. There’s too many conflicts between them. You don’t get proper advice in the federal government, Gus, I will agree with you there … their advice was, if we shut the fishery for two years, this should remedy the situation. Etchegary: That’s not what the working scientists were saying, though. That’s what management was saying. Roger Grimes: The idea of joint management was to give Newfoundland and Labrador veto power … It might be a recipe for deadlock — but at least they don’t get to make decisions that harm you. Riche: Is it a renewable resource? Is it gone? When (the Terms) were negotiated, it was a very valuable resource … the Canadians knew it was valuable; they were smarter negotiators is my guess. If it was not renewable, if the fish are gone — it’s probably blasphemous to say that — why are we having a big discussion about who manages it when the more important resource is the offshore oil? Cleary: I believe it can come back. Wells: We should assume that it is. We don’t know the answer to that question and we have no control over it. The question is, if it comes back, how do you want to see it organized? Etchegary: Nobody knows (if stocks will rebuild). Because in 1995, Paul Martin chopped the science program by 50 per cent and he destroyed the organization down here. Crosbie: Let’s remember, when the cod went, the shrimp and the crab expanded exponentially. How did the provincial government handle that? They
allowed so many new plants that they practically crucified those industries. Who wants joint management with the whole history of Newfoundland managing is so poor? Grimes: That’s not right. I’ve heard both yourself and Gus talk about the number of plants and governments have done it over the years … shrimp and crab yes, because it’s a new species and the federal government had first of all said, here’s how much you’re allowed to catch … But the province says, we’ll spread it between five communities instead of one … but when it goes into a decline afterwards and they’re cutting back and someone’s got to close, there’s pressure. Hanrahan: Every other province has complete management of their most valuable resources, because they happen to be on land … but where our resources are offshore, we don’t have control. Ray Guy: I think a whole generation, my generation, growing up in the 50s, were turned away, had their guts turned on the fishery … people were trained and brought up “you’re not going to work the way I had to work, and it’s a dirty, lowdown, the filthiest thing you can imagine.” So I think a whole generation turned away. So what damage might that have done? Cleary: A lot. Dobbin: Seems to me, we spend an awful lot of time talking about the past here. I don’t think the fishery is an industry we should put much attention on. It’s a dying industry. Guy: It should be like the pulpwood. They’re two renewable things … the oil and gas and minerals, they’re going to be gone in 20-25 years. Etchegary: Up until 1975, we had what we called a federal fisheries research board. If was composed of 15-18 top-level people in the fishing industry, from fishermen to processors to academ-
ics and so on. And they set the fisheries protocols and programs for science and quotas … you take it out of the hands of politicians, period. Crosbie: It doesn’t matter what you do about the Terms of Union, what you do about the federal government, what you do about the provincial government, it’s up to the politicians if they’ve got backbone. If they’ve got backbone like they have in Iceland, we’ll be better off … if they haven’t, like they haven’t been in Newfoundland, federal or provincial, the fishery is in the kind of shape we find it in. Wells: If we had local control, would we have been better able to restrain the greed and the avarice and the politics which prostituted the fishery? I don’t know. Maybe not, but we may have had a better chance and that’s all I can say about it. Check your history books and read your Jared Diamond (specifically, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed), and you will see these things are played out time and time again: same script, same results. Guy: Just on a point of learned information, from Mr. John and Mr. Gus to a member of the laity who was turned aside from the fishery at an early age. I get the confused idea that every time Ontario, say, wanted to sell some plastic dingbats to Europe, that somehow in exchange for this, the Spanish, or the Germans or whoever, will get a little bit of Grand Banks fish. It’s up there … is it a childish notion? Crosbie: That’s just a dirty suspicious mind. There’s no evidence of that, but we will always have these demon theories and so on … Riche: How many ministers of Fisheries have been from Newfoundland since Confederation? Crosbie: Two, I guess, McGrath and myself. Cleary: Would that solve our problems then, just have better leaders? Dobbin: So we put in the Terms of Union that we need better leaders? The Bedford Institute did a study, a 10-second film … it shows all the oceans of the world from the 1800s ’till now, and it shows heavy fishing in red and no fish in blue and you watch all the oceans go from red to blue … It’s human nature, we’ve fished it out. Wells: There ain’t going to be nothing left in 20 years, it’ll all be gone. Dobbin: Have we at least decided on management? Guy: No, I think it’s deciding whether there’s any or not. Etchegary: The federal fisheries research board that was cut in the ’70s … Dobbin: If we had our own management, would that not be the first step to getting that back again? Etchegary: Yes it would, and it would go a long distance towards controlling the thing and bringing back some confidence of the people. Cleary: Would this be similar to the CNLOPB, for example. (Laughter) Wells: Jesus, I hope not. Cleary: But could it be like that, in terms of representatives from the federal and provincial government? Etchegary: Yes, federal, provincial, fishermen, processors, academics and scientists, the whole works necessary to assess a scientific document that has not been frigged with and establishing a management system based on that. Grimes: You say we should have control, but we’re not going to get it … because then you’re going to have to get jurisdictions in Nova Scotia, PEI, New Brunswick and British Columbia and that’s not the Canadian thing … The C-NLOPB is not a bad model. It has political oversight at the end of it, but the day-to-day work is done by representatives appointed federally and provincially. We like to think it’s ours, I’d like to say the oil and gas is ours too. But the model is already there saying it’s Canadian jurisdiction, so the best you get is this board who has some veto power. Cleary: So do we put a clause in the Terms of Union to say that we bring it back to an independent management board? Dobbin: Ask for management of the fisheries. We want management, and we want custodial management of the nose and tail. We’re renegotiating, right? This is a business deal … it’s a great debate. Cleary: So we want management of the fisheries. Hanrahan: Yes! I can’t believe we’ve been debating it. Cleary: So that’s it, we want management of the fisheries. Guy: And bakeapples, and the Newfoundland pony, and … Wells: We want a better opportunity ourselves to screw it up. We don’t need any federal help … because then we’d have no one else to blame. Hanrahan: Accountability, that’s right, Andy. Dobbin: We would not join Canada without that today. That’s a no-brainer. Guy: I want to be on the connor and sculpin secretariat. Wells: We’ve got that set up for you. Cleary: This sounds simple, but management doesn’t do anything about migratory stocks and foreign vessels fishing outside the 200-mile limit. The Terms of Union doesn’t do anything about that.
SEPTEMBER 29, 2006
By Ivan Morgan The Independent
A
strong Canadian dollar, high fuel prices, the unresolved issue of processing over-capacity, a “disastrous” price setting mechanism, non-existent or dwindling fish stocks, competition from cheap overseas labour, strong competition from technologically advanced countries like Iceland, and out-migration are driving the province’s fishing industry to an all-time low. “I try to tell myself not to be too negative, but that’s going to be tough to do,” says Fred Woodman, owner of Woodman’s Sea Products in New Harbour, Trinity Bay. “If I had to give you one word? Brutal.” The high dollar, says Woodman, is the single largest negative impacting factor, but high fuel prices are also taking their toll on the industry. Outmigration is also a problem. “This is a dying industry. It is just a question of how long it will take to die. If we don’t run out of money, we are going to run out of people. Crew members are becoming almost impossible to find for vessels, and plants are going through the same thing,” Woodman says. “There is nothing in this industry to draw anybody young into this industry.” Stocks are either diminished or extinct. The picture in this province is grim. George Lilly, a fisheries ecologist with DFO, says northern cod stocks show “no sign of recovery,” and remain at 1 to 2 per cent of historic levels. If there is any optimism, he says it is for the inshore stocks, and on the south coast where cod levels are 50 per cent of traditional levels. Leslie Harris, author of a 1990 report that foretold the collapse of the northern cod stock, says the rebuilding of cod stocks is just not happening. “We haven’t really done as well as we might have done in this regard,” he says. “If you look at what Iceland has done with its limited resource in comparison to ours and what Norway has done, I think there are lessons to be learned.” Fisheries activist Gus Etchegary points to a report of the recent Global Groundfish Review, held in the
‘Brutal’ Fishing industry reeling from a multitude of problems
Fred Woodman, owner of Woodman’s Sea Products, New Harbour, Trinity Bay.
FISHERY FACTS
OUR TERMS
INDEPENDENTNEWS • 5
• Number of fish plants in 1977: 89 • Number of fish plants in 2005: 138 • Number of licensed vessels in the province 1983: 16,335 • Number of licensed vessels in the province 2002: 8,709 • Number of fishermen in the province 1983: 27,997
• Number of fishermen in the province 2002: 15,315 • Total commercial landings 1976: 339,211 tonnes • Total commercial landings 2004: 360,185 tonnes • Estimated annual landings of Atlantic cod adjacent to Newfoundland and Labrador in the 1960s/70s: 1,250,000 tonnes. • Amount of Atlantic cod landed 2006: 10,672 tonnes
Terms of Union weren’t negotiated; fisheries control rejected by Smallwood By Ryan Cleary The Indepedent
N
ewfoundland’s Terms of Union with Canada weren’t drawn up after prolonged negotiations. In fact, there weren’t any negotiations to speak of. The late Gordon Winter — one of Newfoundland’s signatories of the Terms of Union — said in 2003 that Newfoundland’s “shopping list” of items to be included in the Terms was “useless.” “We were not allowed to negotiate,” Winter said in a Jan. 16, 2003 appearance before the Royal Commission on Renewing and Strengthening our Place in Canada. A copy of Winter’s transcript was published, for the first time, this past March in The Independent. “(We were told) there is no way that you people or anybody else can come up here and negotiate advantageous considerations and circumstances which apply only to Newfoundland and are not going to apply to any other provinces. It is impossible for the Government of Canada to accept that position. “So, we could tear up about half of our shopping list that we had and it coloured, I suppose, the whole rest of the discussions.” There were three main conditions brought by the Newfoundland negotiation committee: that Canada accept the decision of the British Privy Council that awarded Labrador to Newfoundland; that Canada provide a ferry from Port aux Basques to Sydney; and that assurances be given that margarine could continue to be manufactured in Newfoundland. (“If margarine was going to be cancelled out, you had a big item like butter which would be about 60 cents a pound, or somewhere around that, insofar as Canadian butter was concerned, against what, 20-odd cents a pound for the margarine, so this was a tremendous cost of living increase,” said Winter.) The remainder of the shopping list was basically tossed aside. “We were not going to be able to negotiate Terms of Union as we had been left to believe we were going to do,” Winter said. “The prime minister explained to us that there were some matters that we would have to deal with which were constitutional and that there were other matters which were government policy.” Indeed, in a 2003 report to the royal commission, St. John’s lawyer Stephen May wrote that then-prime minister Mackenzie King, among others, did not want the Terms of Union “to be seen to be more generous than existing arrange-
OUR TERMS ments with other provinces.” In the case of the fishery, in the 1940s the industry was controlled by the Newfoundland Fisheries Board, which was established in 1936 to regulate the catching, curing, grading, packing, branding and exporting of fish from Newfoundland. The late Joey Smallwood led a delegation to Ottawa in 1947 to investigate union with Canada. According to May’s report, Smallwood and another delegate, Gordon Bradley, rejected the option of providing Newfoundland with exclusive provincial jurisdiction over fisheries at a
Paul Daly/The Independent
meeting with officials of the federal Fisheries Department. In his report, May wrote that a memo to the assistant secretary to the federal cabinet indicates that the Newfoundland delegation rejected the option on the basis that it would “deprive Newfoundland of the assistance of the federal Department of Fisheries, and they did not wish to deprive Newfoundland of these services. “The concept of concurrent legislative jurisdiction was rejected due to the federal government’s ability to override any provincial legislation.” May wrote the Government of Canada offered its terms for accepting Newfoundland into Confederation through an Oct. 29, 1947 letter addressed to the governor of Newfoundland by King himself.
Netherlands, which shows Norwegian and Icelandic cod catches have not varied to any extent over the last 10 years. He says this has enabled both countries to maintain a very strong competitive position in the world market. Many see this as a reflection of superior fisheries management by these countries in comparison with Canada. Other stocks are also diminishing, and a number of factors are cited, including environmental factors, overfishing and poor conservation practices. The promise of aquaculture is mixed, with some successes in the production of mussels, rainbow trout and char. However, competition from strong foreign markets threaten profit margins. On top of this, says Woodman, comes the problem of politics. He cites the “disaster” of the squid fishery as an example. “There was lots of squid. It was just that the price-setting panel set a minimum price that was higher than anyone could afford to buy it and sell it in the global market,” he says. “Squid this year would have been a godsend. Would have been a godsend for our fishermen. Would have been a godsend for our workers. But somebody somewhere else decides ‘No you can’t have a fishery because — whoops — we picked the wrong number.” Woodman is frustrated. “I could give you a bunch of reasons (why the price was set so high) but obviously it was not market-driven. It was politics. In the case of squid, they eliminated a fishery, and that is to the detriment of probably the largest component of fisherman in the province, the small-boat fisherman.” He says political interference just makes a bad industry worse. “The fishery is so tangly because it’s got to serve so many agendas, and ultimately, at the end of the day, economics is rarely the guiding principle. And that’s fine in years when there is lots of margin, but in years when there is no margin, and you start messing with things that are not economic, then those who sign the fronts of cheques really get hurt.” Tom Rideout, provincial minister of Fisheries, was not available for comment. ivan.morgan@theindependent.ca
6 • INDEPENDENTNEWS
SEPTEMBER 29, 2006
At our own mercy T
imes are good these days, but don’t let that fool you, we’re still royally shagged in the long haul. The dirty grey of doom and gloom is no colour to start a column with. No Newfoundlander (or Labradorian, I would venture to guess) wants to see that, especially when the sun’s splittin’ the rocks outside. Have a look out the window and you’ll see how nice it is. Things have never been better in Town, where there’s enough money circulating to keep a nightlight on outside the Basilica. Streetlights may be a rare thing around the bay, but then Nan and Pop retire earlier these days, and there’s hardly a soul out and about after dark. There are no protests in the streets; the outports are as quaint and quiet as ever. Potential revolutionaries move to Alberta, where any fires in their bellies are doused with buckets of cash, where golden streets keep it bright 24-7. Times are only good here on the surface. Just below the waterline (i.e. the neck) is the Newfoundland and Labrador debt — a jump in interest rates would bring this place to its knees, and what we breathe in then will be most unpleasant. The fishery is but a shadow of its former self, and even the
RYAN CLEARY
Fighting Newfoundlander shadows are fading west with the twilight. Stats Can reported this week that the province is the first jurisdiction in Canada to experience more deaths than births over the course of a year, and this is the 14th year the population has fallen. There were 509,677 people living here as of July 1, 4,300 fewer than the year before. So is there a problem? Are we satisfied with the state we’re in today and the forecast for tomorrow? These are the first questions to ask ourselves. My answer would be no, and no, not for a second. Newfoundland and Labrador needs a hell of a lot of work. Which brings us the purpose of Our Terms, the review of the Terms of Union The Independent has taken on. Piling 10 Newfoundlanders in a room and throwing them topics to gnaw on won’t solve our problems. To expect an ultimate blueprint is as foolhardy as expecting an ultimate leader, and we’ve
done that a time or two in the past. The path we were manoeuvered into The project is not the be-all and end- taking was to give up our democracy in all — it’s designed to generate debate, favour of government by commission. to stand our problems up so, hopefully, But that’s old news. Flanagan raises a we can knock them down. Our prob- good question: How can lems never go away, we just learn to Newfoundland and Labrador pull itself live with them. As a people, we’re the to its feet into a have position? bomb in terms of adjusting to the cliDanny Williams isn’t having much mate. luck with it. He’s Tom Flanagan, a butting heads with political science proOttawa at every Our problems never fessor with the turn: fallow-field University of Calgary go away, we just learn legislation and the and former manager of push for developto live with them … the Conservative Party ment of the Hebron of Canada (don’t hold oil field; a new we’re the bomb in that against him), equalization plan raised an interesting terms of adjusting to that would see more question in a column money for every the climate. this week for The province except us; Globe and Mail. Inco and the “The right question Argentia fight; the for other provinces to ask is not, ‘How C-NLOPB and Max Ruelokke. Now can we get our hands on Alberta’s Quebec is gung-ho on developing wealth?’ but rather, ‘How can we hydro from rivers flowing out of become as wealthy as Alberta?’” Labrador at the expense of the future Alberta wasn’t always loaded — dur- lower Churchill development. ing the Depression it was the only Where is all this leading? Some peoprovince in Canada to default on its ple would say The Independent’s debt payments. Of course, review of the Terms of Union — Our Newfoundland wasn’t a province back Terms, as we call it — is a backdoor then and we didn’t default on our debt. way to raise the separatist card. That’s
bull — the one thing made clear by The Independent panel is that separation isn’t the answer, not at this point. That doesn’t mean separation should be ruled out. Nothing should be crossed out in terms of how to push this place forward. (And the mere mention of separation isn’t a backdoor way to get into the mode.) One of the panel members — Brian Dobbin, a businessman and publisher of this paper — questions the conviction of our population, whether the fight has left us. “Maybe we are more comfortable sitting on a bar stool talking about things rather than doing anything?” he asks in this week’s guest column (see below). Dobbin can’t see the forest for the trees (he’s a tree). His success in resorts like Humber Valley is proof that we, as individual Newfoundlanders and Labradorians, can help to turn this place around and break outside the box. The status quo isn’t working; blue skies never last. Personally, I’m believer in self-reliance, in doing things for ourselves and seizing our own destiny — be it with the fishery or offshore oil — so that we’re never at anyone’s mercy but our own. ryan.cleary@theindependent.ca
YOUR VOICE Independent allows me ‘to feel connected’ Dear editor, My name is Carl Mercer, I’ve written a few articles for The Independent in the past, in the international section. I just wanted to send a message and say how much I enjoy reading your articles. Being in Indonesia, the only avenue I have is the online edition (which, as you know, many newspapers certainly don’t publish all of the
articles online) and it allows me to feel connected to Newfoundland and everyone at home. I find all of the articles to be refreshing and well written! Also, its nice to support a Newfoundland owned newspaper for a change! Carl Mercer, Banda Aceh, Indonesia (hometown: Butlerville)
Independent pick up Dear editor, I picked up your paper at the Needs store in Badger last Saturday (when I went there to buy The Telegram). Really enjoyed it! We are about 8 km west of Badger, so can only get a daily paper if we go to Grand Falls, which is about 40 km from us. The Needs store carries The Telegram on
the weekends only so I always make it a point to pick it up for my weekend reading. I’m delighted to know The Independent will be available there on a weekly basis also. Good move! Good luck to you all! Bernice St. Croix, Badger
Labrador left out Dear editor, A bang-up job youse have done, now that you are a “provincewide” paper, of soliciting and including Labrador voices in your panel of eminent separatists, crypto-separatists, virulent nationalists, and John Crosbie.
You see, I remember things like this whenever I hear Newfoundland nationalists bitching about Victoria-toHalifax syndrome. Wallace J. McLean, Ottawa
Ban bottom dragging gear Editor’s note: the following letter was written to federal Fisheries Minister Loyola Hearn, with a copy forwarded to The Independent. Mr. Hearn, The Newfoundland and Labrador Defense League is a non-profit advocacy group dedicated to the growth, stability and improvement of Newfoundland and Labrador. We are made up members locally, from across Canada and around the world. We would like to urge your government to support the United Nations effort to ban bottom dragging gear. According to a report issued recently by your own department, the use of this type of equipment has a catastrophic effect on the sea bed and in some cases the recovery of those areas can take centuries, if it
occurs at all. The defense league believes that in order for fish stocks in the north Atlantic to recover it is critical that the environment in which they live and reproduce be protected. This is an opportunity to counteract criticism levelled at the seal hunt and show the entire world that indeed Canada is a nation that is dedicated to the conservation and protection of truly imperiled species. As Newfoundland and Labrador’s representative this is your opportunity to make some progress in protecting the fish habitat/species on which so many rural communities depend. Please don’t waste this chance to take a stand for your country, your province and your people. Myles Higgins, Portugal Cove
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.
PUBLISHER Brian Dobbin EDITOR IN CHIEF Ryan Cleary MANAGING EDITOR Stephanie Porter PICTURE EDITOR Paul Daly PRODUCTION MANAGER John Andrews
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
A question of perspective M
y anticipation of sitting with such a diverse group to reexamine our terms of Confederation was seriously tempered when I was told it would happen on a Friday afternoon. There are few business customs that I am loyal to, but not working on a Friday afternoon is one with which I have a religious dedication. That aside, what an interesting group of patriots to listen to discuss and debate — the Terms of Union, Newfoundland’s place in Canada, the history of the fishery, the time of day ... To be perfectly honest, I could have listened for a much longer time to the argument, rhetoric and discussion of our history. Aside from having a good cross-section of viewpoints, there were several first-person glimpses in the conversation into how we have become what we are. My own take on the exercise was that the really key Terms of Union are quite easy to re-write ... given you believe in the ability to re-write them. What became obvious as the discussion rolled on was the importance of each participant’s perspective on whether it would make any difference at all if we had a chance to resubmit a deal to join Canada. The group seemed pretty evenly split on our ability to re-define ourselves. One side seemed to believe it was possible to start again, while the other believed we were locked into our place in the Canadian federation and therefore any changes to the Terms should be scripted to enhance our lever of power in the House of Commons, or take a bigger slice out of the federal re-distribution of cash. With a big caveat that we had no constitutional lawyers present, we believed it was possible to rework our own structure of government and decision-making without having to change either the Terms of Union or the Constitution. As John Crosbie pointed out, most of the really bad turns in the course of our history were
BRIAN DOBBIN
Publish or perish made with our own hands on the tiller. So OK then, if we could change some things ourselves about who makes the decisions in this place, what more do we need than a return of our territorial rights and ownerships? Surprisingly, a fair number in our group were dismissive of any realignment of provincial rights, as there would have to be a structural change to the Canadian Confederation to achieve it. While no one debated that such a paradigm shift would probably be supported by a majority of the provinces, there was a lot of cynicism about how achievable it could be. PASSIONATE NEWFOUNDLANDERS While all on the panel were passionate Newfoundlanders, not surprisingly the strength of conviction about changing our destiny seemed to fade with age and experience. More surprisingly, I recognized in myself an apathy that didn’t exist 10 years ago in regards to how possible real change is in this place. Not because the power to change our level of self-determination does not lie at our fingertips, not because there is a lack of opportunities for us in building a new economy or a new political reality, but because I have come to doubt the real conviction of our population. Maybe we are more comfortable on a bar stool talking about things than doing anything. I guess the first question to ask is do we need any change? Sure, the St. John’s-Toronto-Fort McMurray flight I sit on as I write this is chocka-block. But what’s the big deal? A few flights a week and you can make your money anywhere ... it’s how I
live my life now. I think perhaps there is not enough fight left in our population to tackle any serious political change — after all, revolutions are not fought by 40 to 80 year olds. Have you looked around at how many twentysomethings are in our population these days? The Terms of Union discussion was a privilege and a pleasure to be part of. But the question should not be how would we change our terms, but is there enough collective will in our province to even contemplate it? I guess any 50-year-old with a good allowance is going to be hard to convince to leave Mom and Dad’s house and get a real job ... and having been around to a lot of other people’s houses over the last 20 years, I have come to appreciate how great ours is. We enjoy mass affluence that should be the envy of most other peoples, we live in a secure and safe society, and our environment is virtually unspoiled with natural beauty and yet we have excellent infrastructure. Perhaps we’re better off getting our allowance from our parents and stop talking about getting our own job. After all, the greatest portion of the outflow is over, and there just aren’t that many left to march in the streets. Too bad we didn’t do this story 30 years ago, back then it would have been a hell of a lot easier to start the drum beating — now it seems to be more of a theoretical exercise. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe there is a will out there — certainly there is a passion. Being passionate about a concept does not make it happen, however. At some stage you actually have to do something, and although we have a leader these days who is not afraid of action, no Newfoundland leader is going to start talking about renegotiating the Terms of Union without a public groundswell. I won’t hold my breath, but it is a beautiful thing to sit down on a Friday afternoon to talk about.
SEPTEMBER 29, 2006
INDEPENDENTNEWS • 7
We can afford to take care of each other T
here’s an ad running on television, sponsored by one of the health insurance companies, that shows an unhappy, middle-aged woman looking out at us and talking about drug costs. As she talks, the camera pulls away to reveal her sitting on a couch in a dowdy, poorly lit living room. She says she wished she’d purchased health insurance before her husband got leukemia. His drugs cost $40,000 a year. I think the point of the ad is to show that she’s living in poverty (although the living room looks nicer than mine). I guess they’re trying to frighten yuppies. Television advertisements fascinate me. They cost a fortune to make and they aren’t made for our benefit. They are made to make money. They are made to establish perception. This one was particularly interesting. Last week I wrote about perception and the negative way some Newfoundlanders view their past. What is true for our collective selves is also true for our individual selves. How people see themselves affects how they act. In a recent column, the Globe and
IVAN MORGAN
Rant & Reason Mail’s Rick Salutin wrote of the importance of perspective in people’s political views. He wrote of trying to make people see they are not charity cases — they are the victims of theft. “That,” wrote Salutin, “gives one the dignity to fight!” I think health care — and the role of this ad in the health-care debate — is an excellent example of this. The ad, to my mind, tries to make the viewer see the world a certain way: You are a fool if you don’t buy medical insurance. They are trying to frighten people into buying their product. The message is clear: buy from us or end up with nothing — end up a charity case. Years ago we had another set of television ads. These depicted youthful looking older people smiling at harried over-worked young people. “Who are you?” the stressed out
young person would ask. “Why, I am you in the future. You invested in Freedom 55. We’re retired,” says the fit, tanned, relaxed, older person, who would then smile condescendingly and race off on his bicycle, dive into a pool or trot off to start a tennis match. The message in this ad was “Don’t be a chump — buy now and retire early.” Well, 55 is looming for a lot of us, and not only are many not retiring early, but many of those who paid to be “free” by 55 will probably get fleeced by the big pharmaceutical companies for the opportunity to stay alive. And they will provide pharmaceutical companies with huge profits doing so. It might be cynical to suggest that certain businesses are targeting the retirement savings of baby boomers, but the explosion in the last decade in the type, variety and cost of pharmaceuticals has not been by accident. The drug business is just that, a business. And please excuse my naiveté, but I believe there are some things one should not profit from. Saving people’s lives is at the top
of that list. If corporations think it’s worth the investment to make scary ads, can we not organize a system where we look after ourselves for a more reasonable price? This seemed like a good idea with health care in the 1960s. Our parents gave us universal health care. Now we seem poised to bankrupt it. At least that’s what we are being told. And concern over the public-health system is now so great that some companies have decided it is worth their time and money to put together an expensive ad to scare the bejesus out of people with a few extra dollars. Charging someone $40,000 to save his or her life isn’t free enterprise. It is robbery. The odds of any of us getting cancer in our lifetimes seem to be about one in four. Those are not odds any of us should trifle with. We all need to be protected, and to know if the worst happens, we are at least going to be able to get help. No one should look at this ad and be frightened. People should watch it and
DOWN TO EARTH
YOUR VOICE
Appeal held that the term respecting the ferry service created a legal duty requiring the Government of Canada to ensure the continuous, year-round operation of a ferry service between Prince Edward Island and the mainland. Note the virtually identical language in the terms requiring Canada to “assume and defray” the costs of the ferry service in PEI and the fishery in B.C. A case by B.C. fishermen challenging DFO’s refusal to fund test fisheries, enforcement, stream keeping or other management activities key to the protection and encouragement of the fishery would be very interesting. Normally, a provincial government would assume the responsibility of ensuring that Canada lives up to its constitutional obligation to a province, but here in B.C. with this government … As an aside, in 2002, DFO killed the spawning ground counts in the Quesnel system because of a supposed lack of funding. In 2002, almost 4.6 million summer run sockeye swam upriver under the Mission Bridge, but we don’t know how many made it to the spawning grounds. The largest previous escapement on this cycle was 1.2 million in 1998. Only 2 million summer run sockeye returned this year, so it may well be that 4 million on the spawning grounds in 2002 resulted in only a 2 million return in 2006. What really happened? Conveniently for DFO, we will never know the answer because DFO didn’t fulfill their duty to protect and encourage Fraser River salmon or the fishery on the Fraser socks in 2002. As to all free advice, mine is worth what you paid for it, but BC’s Terms of Union are certainly worth a closer look by a fishing group with the resources to retain expert legal counsel. Phil Eidsvik, B.C. Fisheries Survival Coalition Vancouver
Mainland talent Dear editor, At the end of a week where everyone has their knickers in a knot over the Bonavista car ad that has a Cape Bretoner playing a Newfoundlander (I can’t say newf because Snook might get offended … now that’s irony). Well, in this same week, I’m watching NTV interview Tom Hedderson, minister of Tourism, who is promoting the new Discovery Trail ads that are running, and going on incessantly about how it’s all
about local communities, and local jobs, but does everyone know that the voice actor on these ads is from Vancouver? Yes, they recorded it in a studio in Vancouver. There are at least 10 experienced, qualified union and/or non-union actors here who could easily do this job as well, myself included. The left hand doesn’t know what the right is up to. It’s shameful. Gerard Whelan, St. John’s
Ivan Morgan can be reached at ivan.morgan@theindependent.ca
‘Barroom bluster’
Terms of Union and the BC fishery Dear editor, We’ve been asked repeatedly whether British Columbia’s Terms of Union affect the continued refusal of the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) to fund key management duties while demanding that local fishermen pay more and more for DFO fishery mismanagement without any say in how the department spends its dollars. Here is a quick answer: DFO says they have no money for fishery management, so fishermen must pay more and more, but I noticed in the Northern Aquaculture magazine that DFO just gave $434,000 to a New Brunswick company that is trying to fish farm halibut. Obviously, DFO has lots of money — it’s just that money for the B.C. wild fishery is very low on the department’s priority list. What duty does Canada have to the B.C. fishery? A partial answer to this question is found in B.C.’s Terms of Union — the conditions upon which B.C. joined Canada. Term 5E states: “Canada will assume and defray the charges for the following services … protection and encouragement of fisheries.” The next question is whether B.C.’s Terms of Union impose a duty on Canada to pay the costs to protect and encourage the B.C. fishery? Some insight is provided by the federal Terms of Union between Canada and Prince Edward Island. The Term regarding the ferry service reads: “That the Dominion Government shall assume and defray all the charges for the following services . . . Efficient Steam Services for the conveyance of mails and passengers to be established and maintained between the island and the mainland of the Dominion, Winter and Summer, thus placing the island on continuous communication with the Intercolonial Railway and the railway system of the Dominion.” In 1976, the Federal Court of
be angry at the cynical, manipulative way some corporations are trying to profit from people’s fear of illness and vulnerability. I do not believe that we as a society cannot afford to take care of each other. I cannot believe the health-care system would be even remotely better if it were privatized (at least not for the majority of us). I find scare tactics presented under the guise of cautionary tales highly distasteful. Don’t worry about not being covered — be angry at the idea there are people out there who would hold back treatment for your illness if you couldn’t come up with the cash. There is a lot being written in this paper recently about Terms of Union with Canada. While it wasn’t mentioned in the Terms, universal health care is one of the ways I define myself as a Canadian. If I lost that, it would not be the only thing I would lose.
Dear editor, Confederation needs a shakeup, the country needs a shakeup; the best country in the world, by most standards of measurement, needs an overhaul. So say the gathering of minds sponsored by The Independent at a recent meeting. “There are no new ideas under the sun,” says one ageing sage. No new ideas at the meeting for sure; we simply dust off, in Platonic style, ideas that already exist in some higher order. Some blochead wanted to form a bloc ... that’s it, send 10 blocs to Ottawa! What a revolutionary idea. Ten blocs in a war of all against all, each pushing the separation envelope right to the limit as one numbskull suggested. It’s nothing short of embarrassing barroom bluster.
I say to all these young people: don’t listen to the conspiracy theorists ...
Canadian Space Agency astronaut Julie Payette paid a visit to St. John’s Sept. 27, speaking to children at the Johnson GEO Centre in the morning and delivering a lecture on space exploration at Memorial University. Montreal-born Payette is the eighth Canadian and the second Canadian woman in space. She's also the youngest Canadian astronaut. Paul Daly/The Independent
There’s a party going on right here Dear editor, I would like an opportunity to respond to two articles that appeared in The Independent’s Sept. 22 edition ‘Terms of Staying’ and Our Terms. It was with some surprise that I read and soaked up what the panel and especially former Premier Roger Grimes were saying. Mr. Grimes very candidly stated that the formation of a Newfoundland and Labrador bloc-style party modeled after the Bloc Quebecois is just a “matter of time.” I have to wonder where the panel and Mr. Grimes have been living for the past two years. We have had a party in Newfoundland and Labrador for at least that long that is exactly what some members of the panel and Mr. Grimes propose — the Newfoundland and Labrador First Party. Leader Tom Hickey has spent much time on the airwaves promoting the party and speaking up on issues relevant to our
place in Canada. In fact, he ran under the NL-First banner in the provincial byelection in the district of Placentia-St. Mary’s in February past. I would like to point out that as a member of the party’s executive council our goals are exactly along the lines as what some members of your panel and the former premier now promote. I would suggest to them that if they believe in the cause then get on board with us and let’s do this together. I would be willing to sit down at any time with anyone interested in discussing our party. I am sure our leader would be only too happy to do the same. Whether you are interested in the federal or provincial wing of our party, there is a place for you. Ellsworth Penney, Hickman’s Harbour
Another beauty wants to do away with elected representatives and have an appointed cabinet to direct our affairs. Professionals, perhaps exEnron executives and the like if they could get special dispensation to operate from the clink? Where’s this guy’s head? I’m not sure if this idea is even marginally better than saying nothing at all. And on it goes ... I’ve got to stop reading this stuff. It tends to depress and the bleating is annoying at best. Why not start from a basic principle that Canada is one hell of a place to live. Name one better, I challenge you all. Now, if it is the case that a 10-yearold child in an outport ends up teaching in Calgary, lawyering in Timmins, or accounting in Moose Jaw because her hometown fish plant closed ... so what? I say to all these young people: don’t listen to the conspiracy theorists, the Cashinists, the blocheads, the culturally oppressed, the habitual complainants. They’re rooted so deeply in their anticonfederate, anti-Canadian delusions that they can’t see the greatness of this country and its tremendous opportunities. They are so entrenched in their narrow let’s-make-a-deal Newfoundland shroud that they’d piss in their pants before moving forward, or moving anywhere for that matter. To you the youth of Newfoundland I say: if you end up in a fish plant then so be it. There’s dignity in all work. But it is my fondest wish that you have the opportunity to explore other possibilities in this great country, your country. Robert Rowe, St. John’s More letters on page 11
SEPTEMBER 29, 2006
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INDEPENDENTNEWS • 9
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Eyes to the soul By Stephanie Porter The Independent
T
he warm smell of fresh-baked bread is never far from Shane Kelly as he works. His cozy and cluttered office sits on the third floor of a Water Street building — with Auntie Crae’s, the bakery and food market run by his mother — down at street level. It’s a familiar and comforting scent, and no doubt quite a change from the family business where Kelly got his start. For 30 years, the Kelly family ran Bridgett’s Pub on Cookstown Road. In the days before George Street and the LSPU Hall, Bridgett’s was as central to the St. John’s arts and music scene as any one place in the capital city. “I would never have gotten to photography without music,” Kelly says. And he might never have become so entwined with the local music scene, were it not for a youth spent hanging around the pub — and 12 years of practically running the place. A dozen years since Bridgett’s closed its doors, Kelly now says “music is still one of my larger passions, as a listener.” His other passions include home renovation, architecture and old houses. Indeed, Kelly says he’s
just as likely to be “putting up clapboard as setting up studio lights,” but with three children under seven and a photography business to run, classes to teach and a studio to maintain, there’s just not enough time for everything. Kelly’s office, filled with computers, cameras, photographs and files, sits beside his studio, a beautiful expansive room. Kelly spent two-and-a-half years renovating the building to fit his vision (and the city’s building codes) —— and he calls the result “the biggest creative endeavor I’ve ever taken on.” The Studio, which is just that — a former warehouse space, lovingly restored with plank walls and floors, exposed brick, high ceilings and big front windows — also serves as classroom, function room, exhibition space, concert hall, and Kelly’s retirement package. Kelly got his start in photography almost by accident, as an aside that grew into a career. At the time, Kelly was working almost every night of the week in the pub, bartending, taking care of sound, booking music, postering, advertising — “anything to do with music, I ran. I would not have been involved otherwise.” His father and brother
Over the next few weeks, some of Newfoundland and Labrador’s best-known photographers will contribute a selection of their work for publication in The Independent. For our third guest photo essay, St. John’s-based photographer Shane Kelly steps up to the plate with a sampling of “honest portraiture” from his ever-growing personal collection. split daytime shifts. “I met hundreds of musicians, some of whom became really good friends,” he says. “I actually never started photographing them at Bridgett’s, I started at concerts. “The turning point was the Tina Turner concert here in 1985 and I was obviously an amateur photographer, 21 or 22 years old, and I got a couple of good pictures. It was just enough incentive to take a camera to the next concert.” He also visited his aunt in New York City from time to time, using a 10-day trip to take in 10 or 15 shows. Eventually, he got around
to photographing in the pub. “Some of the shots turned out really well, and I would give them to the musicians. And then they would start asking me to do promo shots for them, and album covers …” The next turning point came at another concert. This time it was David Bowie’s 1990 show at Memorial Stadium. Kelly ran into photographer Ned Pratt, who was then working for the Sunday Express. “We sort of knew each other, and he asked if I was interested in doing a bit of fill-in work because he literally couldn’t get a day off,” Kelly says. “He asked if I could print —
I said I couldn’t — and he said, ‘Well, I’ll show you.’ “So I went into the darkroom, he gave me a crash course in processing and printing film and I shot for the paper the next week and printing it all and that was the real turning point. Once I got control of my images like that, my interest, and my learning, skyrocketed. I lived and breathed it.” About that time, the Kelly family decided to close Bridgett’s (“basically, we ran out of children to run it”) and Kelly was free to focus on his craft. With the exception of one course taught by Mannie Buchheit through the old MUN Extension — which “filled in the gaps” for Kelly — there were no photography courses offered in St. John’s at the time. “I’m self-taught that way. But I love doing it, and I dive into stuff and just get encompassed by it. If you’re passionate about it, you will learn,” he says. In 14 years as a professional photographer, Kelly has carved out a niche for himself, and created an impressive body of work. A significant and beloved part of his business will always be shooting for musicians and artists. He also does commercial work and documentary-style wedding photography. When he has time, he uses it for personal work, mostly “honest portraiture” and streetdocumentary shots.
While he says digital photography is “the best thing that ever happened to commercial work,” he generally shoots film for his personal collection — out of habit, mostly, not for any lack of quality in today’s digital technology. Kelly offers a series of photography courses through the fall, winter and spring. His darkroom course, though still available, doesn’t attract many takers anymore — but the 35 mm film camera course does. And, of course, there’s plenty of interest from those wanting to master the newest digital technology. “Teaching is fun, I learn a lot from the students,” Kelly says. “It forces me to stay current, keeps your eye in shape …” When choosing a selection of work to show in The Independent, Kelly pulled from his personal files, portraits capturing something true and different. “I like the intense, darker images,” he says. “I don’t give my subjects a whole lot of direction … I just let it roll. The pictures are who they are at that second in time. The whole thing about eyes being the windows to the soul — that’s what’s there, that’s the strength. “Consequently, a lot of my portraiture has strong eye contact, because I think that’s what speaks.” www.shanekellyphotography.com
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SEPTEMBER 29, 2006
PAPER TRAIL AROUND THE BAY A herd of horses is causing concern to motorists on the road between Grand Bank and Marystown. The herd, about 20 strong, is often seen on the paved section of the road, about 5 miles from Grand Bank. A resident of Grand Bank told The Post that several accidents have been narrowly averted and that it will only be a matter of time before someone is hurt badly as the result of a collision with the animals. He said the danger is more acute in foggy weather and at night. The motorist revealed that he had seen the herd on the road on a daily basis and that the authorities do not appear to be doing anything about the problem. — The Post (Burin Peninsula), Oct. 7, 1971 YEARS PAST The shooting of dogs in the noon day in public thoroughfares and without regard to the proximity of houses, most of which have glass windows, is likely if not abated and put a stop to, and will in all probability, result not only in the killing of quadrupeds, but also in the loss of human life … A man by the name of Treble, employed by Mr. Moors has recently set up as “dog shooter.” On Monday last Treble, who it appears was under the influence of liquor, shot at a dog in Forest Road, when the contents of the gun went through the window of Mr. John Peach. Mrs. Peach was standing near the window and miraculously escaped being shot. The Courier, Sept. 25, 1875
LIFE STORY been robbed been shot OR DONE ANYTHING Telephone or Drop a Postcard, or Come In, or In Any Convenient Way Inform The Echo — The Echo, Oct. 12, 1967 LETTER TO THE EDITOR Dear Mr. Pumphrey, Thank you for the box of chocolates and I would like to apologize for convicting you without a trial … but I knew the facts of the case before I did so. I know why I did not receive the first box of chocolates and as far as that goes, I wouldn’t have received the second box if it hadn’t been for a kind gentleman, who knew that I did not receive the prize that I won three months ago, and asked your reporter to explain why I didn’t receive it. Then, one day before your magazine was put on sale I received the chocolates. MAYBE you only sent them so you could tell your readers that I had received the prize. I didn’t need the chocolates Mr. Pumphrey, but since I won them I deserved to have them. What is wrong with fighting for your rights? Yours Truly, Hettie Stone — Conception Bay Times, September, 1961 The Colonial Building, former home of the provincial legislature.
AROUND THE WORLD Two years to the day after Pope John Paul II stood at Flatrock and warned against the dangers of concentration of ownership and excessive profit-taking in the fishing industry, the inshore sector appears to be in deep trouble. At a Sunday afternoon mass meeting in St. Kevin’s Parish Hall Sept.7 representatives of all sides of the industry blamed indiscriminate fishing by Canadian, rather than foreign offshore draggers — those of FPI and National Sea Products — for another dismal failure this year. — The Monitor, Sept. 25, 1986 EDITORIAL STAND If you have – been on a trip entertained guests celebrated a birthday married your secretary caught a big fish moved had a baby sold your cows had an operation bought a car painted your house had company been married cut a new tooth died sold out
The Reporter, Sept. 28, 1856
QUOTE OF THE WEEK Each time I write a front page, I keep hoping that someone will come along and volunteer to do the next one. It seems no matter what I write about, people just won’t respond. Someone outside the community would think that everything is just ‘hunky-dorry’ and that we wouldn’t change a single thing about local conditions. Very shortly I will be forced to give up a great majority of the work I do for The Cove. As yet I have found no one willing to step in and take over the job as Editor (no experience necessary). There will be an Issue 17 on October 2 but if I have found no one to take over after it, then I will have to completely stop and let The Cove become a fond memory. – Editor. — The Cove (Arnold’s Cove), September 18, 1974 mandy.cook@theindependent.ca
Brown’s secret document Labour leader, politician, fighter for responsible government — Ken Brown took at least one secret to the grave KENNETH MCKENZIE BROWN (1887-1955)
Party before the June 1932 election. Brown was returned as the member for Grand Falls, and Alderdice By Keith Collier appointed him to his cabinet as For The Independent Minister of Labour. But Brown’s position as News that you, Magor?” foundland’s first minister of Labour “Yes.” was short-lived. He soon found him“Ken Brown is speaking. What is the meaning of that sarcastic self in the curious position of voting letter you sent me? Look here, Mr. himself out of a job when the Magor, I’m not standing anything Alderdice government agreed to the from you. You can fly straight back to Amulree Commission’s recommenhell or Canada where you came dation that responsible government be suspended. from.” Brown would not be idle, however, Robert Magor was a businessman from Montreal who had been brought and returned to his work as a labour to Newfoundland to offer money-sav- leader. In 1936 he replaced Jack Scammel as president ing advice on the of the Fishermen’s operation of the “I have a piece of Protective Union, Newfoundland Railwhich by then was as way. He was also paper in my pocket protective of loggers involved in relief for they were of fisherthe poor. Magor was now. I won’t read it, as men. trying to meddle in the After the Second distribution of relief but if I did I doubt World War, Brown funds in Brown’s district of Twillingate, if there would be 10 was elected to a seat in the National Conand Brown was not men in this House vention. As the repregoing to stand for it. sentative for BonKenneth McKenzie who would vote avista, Brown argued Brown was born on ConfederaApril 3, 1887 in for this resolution … against tion, supporting a King’s Cove, Bonareturn to responsible vista Bay. He was I will leave it to government. educated there, and as “I have a piece of a young man moved some other time.” paper in my pocket to British Columbia now,” said Brown where he worked for Ken Brown during a National six years on fishing Convention debate on vessels along the Oct. 30, 1946, “I won’t read it, but if Pacific coast and in Alaska. He studied at the Vancouver I did I doubt if there would be 10 men Nautical Academy, and by the time he in this House who would vote for this returned to Newfoundland, he had resolution … I will leave it to some risen from able-bodied seaman to other time.” The resolution under discussion second engineer, and then to captain was to send a delegation to Canada to of his own fishing vessel. Back at home, Brown turned his begin discussions regarding possible attention to the land and the people terms of union. Brown would never get to reveal who worked it, although he continued to support fishermen and the fish- the contents of this document. Just eries. He married, and went to work seconds after making this statement, for the Anglo Newfoundland Brown collapsed, suffering a massive Development Company at their pulp stroke on the floor of the House. Brown survived the stroke but and paper mill in Grand Falls. Brown made a name for himself as never recovered from it, and the cona labour leader at the A.N.D. tents of this mysterious piece of paper Although Company, showing the same kind of were never revealed. resolve and grit he would later show Brown continued to cast votes in the towards Magor. Brown was heavily convention by mail, his days as a involved in the union at Grand Falls, politician and labour leader were and in 1921 he lead a major strike effectively over. Whether or not the contents of against the company. From April to August 1921, 800 “Brown’s document” would have had men were off the job in protest of any effect on the outcome of the convention is doubtable, but Brown reduced wages. Brown’s popularity with working would have spoken his mind as long men attracted the attention of fellow as he was able. A man of his experilabour leader William Coaker and his ence and respectability would have then political associate, Richard been a powerful voice. “I have always tried to fight the Squires. In 1923, their Liberal Union Party chose Brown as the candidate cause of the working man,” he once for Twillingate, and Brown won the said in the House of Assembly. election, a seat he would hold through Brown spent decades working for three separate governments until loggers’, miners’ and fishermen’s rights, leading strikes and settling 1932. In 1932, Brown saw the imminent strikes, and his presence in end of the Squires government (and Newfoundland public life would be probably the political careers of many missed by political colleagues and involved with it) and wisely switched labouring men alike. Ken Brown died in St. John’s on allegiance. He joined F. C. Alderdice’s United Newfoundland Feb. 28, 1955.
“I
SEPTEMBER 29, 2006
INDEPENDENTNEWS • 11
Change doesn’t come easy
NDP believes in custodial management
From page 1
From page 1
Firstly, there is a strong belief out there — within the province, as well Etchegary said he’d like to see the as within the panel — that the fishery return of the Federal Fisheries is a resource of the past and there is Research Board (in existence until too much time spent discussing it. To the mid-’70s). Editor-in-chief Ryan that, Wells was characteristically Cleary asked the group if they blunt: “We don’t know the answer to thought the C-NLOPB (the board that that question (will the stocks recovregulates the province’s offshore er?) … The question is, if it comes industry, comprised of back, how do you want government appointees to see it organized?” and industry stakehold“Ottawa doesn’t And the point was ers) would be a good taken: the province has model to use in the fishto be prepared for the like giving up eries. future, and there is any of its The idea was met with much work to do now. laughter — given the Second, custodial jurisdiction.” recent controversy surmanagement of the nose rounding the petroleum and tail of the Grand James McGrath Banks is a priority. board — but also with some positive reaction. There was expressed Such a board would frustration at the fact the give Newfoundland and Labrador federal government has yet to move veto power, as Grimes pointed out. on this, though it was a Conservative And it could potentially put fisheries election promise. scientists in a position to actually be The presence of some sort of stand heard — which Etchegary said needs alone fisheries board may encourage to happen. the implementation of custodial manIn an interview with The Indepen- agement and enforcement as well. dent, McGrath — also a former federThough some members of The al Fisheries minister — says he Independent panel would like the strongly believes a fisheries board is fisheries to be handed back to the prothe only answer. More importantly, he vince, there was optimism that a fishsays, the province can make a logical eries board would be the more likely argument for one. scenario within the Canadian confed“Of all the provinces in Canada, eration. we’re the only one where our rural As McGrath cautions, major areas depend solely on the fisheries,” change doesn’t come easily. he says. “If you look at the other fish“Ottawa doesn’t like giving up any ing provinces, they all have mixed of its jurisdiction,” he says. “But it economies. They have the fishery, but comes back to the survival of rural they also have agriculture, farming, Newfoundland and Labrador. (Those forestry, tourism … regions) are dependent almost solely “But Newfoundland is solely on the fishery and we have to have dependent on the fishery. Conse- some say in the management of it. quently, I believe a case can be made “Unfortunately, we don’t amount to for joint management … using the C- a row of beans, because we don’t have NLOPB as a precedent. the clout. We have less than three per “We know the disaster the federal cent of the seats in the House of government has made of managing Commons (7 of 308) and that’s a fact the fishery. In order to salvage what’s of life. But we have to have strong left, we have to have some say.” voices, we have a strong premier now, A couple of other key things came and that can help to offset the weakout of the panel discussion. nesses in the federal structure.”
toothless, unable to enforce the quotas it sets. Those critics say one of NAFO’s biggest flaws is the so-called objection procedure, whereby countries that don’t agree with quotas can unilaterally set their own. Another NAFO reform involves striking a panel to settle disputes over quotas. The panel must first be agreed to by the legislatures of the individual NAFOmember countries, a process Follett expects to take “months.” Meantime, countries that object to quotas can continue to fish while waiting for a ruling. Stoffer says he will press the minister
of Fisheries and Oceans, Loyola Hearn, on the Parliament. He says he wants to know how Canada will enforce a decision to bring a suspect boat into port if it does not have the power of arrest, and what happens if vessels attempt to use the objection procedure as a delay tactic to take fish while waiting for a decision. Stoffer says he’s “always believed” in the custodial management of Newfoundland and Labrador’s fish stocks and points out Hearn’s Conservative government committed to custodial management if his party were to form the government. The 29th annual general meeting of NAFO will meet next September in Portugal. mandy.cook@theindependent.ca
Loyola Hearn.
Paul Daly/The Independent
Labradorians face brutal choices From page 1 Barron says neglect has been the norm in the provincial government’s treatment of Labrador, and it’s reflected in the way most Newfoundlanders speak. “In the article (Terms of Staying, The Independent, Sept. 22) I just wanted to see how many times that someone just mentioned Newfoundland. The only time Newfoundland and Labrador ever was said was when Ryan Cleary said it first; and then Premier Grimes was the only one who continued to say Newfoundland and Labrador. This is what the majority ever says — Newfoundland. That pisses me off.” Representation is only one issue. Abbass says transportation issues are near the top of the list of Labrador’s grievances with the government in St. John’s. “I don’t know what was actually said when we came into Confederation with regards to the transportation connection (and) the ferry service, but I personally believe that ferry service is an extension of the Trans-Canada Highway,”
says Abbass. He says Labradorians face brutal choices when they want to travel. If they drive, they face hours on dirt roads. If they take a ferry, they also face difficulty. “If I left Goose Bay to travel to the island by ferry, it is 33 hours to Springdale,” says Abbass. “Not only is there a heavy financial burden to an individual or to a family, but the conditions that we are forced to travel in are Third-World conditions in a lot of cases. “It is far from a cruise.” Barron, who lives in Wabush, also highlights transportation woes. “People here have to deal with the high cost of travel with the airlines. Not everybody here works for the company and has medical coverage.” Abbass says Labradorians only want what most Canadians enjoy. “If you look at one of the things that brought us into Confederation, it’s the transportation system. I don’t believe that our transportation system meets the standards of the majority of Canadians,” he says. That desire for an adequate standard
of living is the foundation for a lot of complaints from Labradorians, aimed squarely at the government in St. John’s. “The quality of life and the living standards of people of central Canada — a lot of that is being provided on the backs of people in rural or northern Canada,” says Abbass. “Resources are flying out of our area to southern points and people in southern points’ standard of living are quite a bit higher than we have here. And all we are saying is we are looking for the basic necessities here.” Labrador should be properly recognized for the contribution it makes to the province’s well being, says Barron. “It’s fine for John (Hickey, minister of Labrador Affairs and Transportation and Works and MHA for Lake Melville) to say ‘I am working here on behalf of the people of Labrador and I am trying to get your message across’ — but it doesn’t get listened to by the powers that be in St. John’s. And this is the same issues that you are talking about in Ottawa. No different.”
mental impact and contributed to the resource failure NL faces today. In 1976, DFO changed its management focus to the interest of the people, from the interest of the fish. Through federal agencies such as DREE, DRIE, latterly ACOA and others, overcapitalization in the harvesting sector and processing facilities occurred at an unprecedented rate putting enormous strain on a diminishing resource and eventually led to the collapse and restructuring of the fishing industry in 1983/84. The number of licensed processing plants in the province rose from 89 in 1972 to 245 in 1984. The subsidy programs for vessel construction soared with a direct federal subsidy at one time reaching 50 per cent of the final cost of new construction in a Canadian shipyard. In 1977 Canada decided to extend the fishing limit to 200 miles and thereby stopped foreign fishing on the important northern cod stock that spawned on Hamilton Inlet Bank in
winter and early spring. The industry was disappointed that extension had not been declared to the edge of the continental shelf, however, we were pleased that northern cod would finally have an opportunity to recover. DFO, under pressure by Nova Scotia, yielded and offered a financial subsidy of $23,800 per 13 day trip to Canadian trawlers to fish where the foreigners had overfished for 30 years. Eventually the whole Canadian fleet engaged in the northern cod fishery and effectively prevented its recovery. The failure of the federal government to recognize the special status of the Grand Bank fishery and the need for its complete protection from overfishing by foreigners has been the direct cause that series of stocks not recovering since the 1992 moratorium. Federal politicians and bureaucrats have deliberately ignored the fact that the main species (cod, three flounder species, redfish, haddock, turbot, shrimp) migrate over the 200-mile line and as a
result are fully exposed to uncontrolled fishing. NAFO has failed in providing any measure of conservation or enforcement of regulatory measures respecting mesh sizes that are regarded by foreign owners and skippers as somewhat of a joke. A recent incident with a Portuguese trawler illustrates the point. Unlike any other fishing province, unlike any other fishing nation in the world Ottawa has a very special case to extend jurisdiction to protect our fisheries. The 200-mile limit fully protects Peru’s anchovy resource, the groundfish fisheries of Iceland, Norway, the U.S., the Maritimes and Quebec but it has allowed EU countries, the Scandinavians and some Asian fishing nations to destroy our 500-year-old fishery and depopulate our province. The time has come Newfoundlanders and Labradorians to “fish or cut bait.” Gus Etchegary, St. Philip’s
ivan.morgan@theindependent.ca
YOUR VOICE Fish or cut bait Dear editor, It is clear from Open-Line comments and other public statements that few people in our province really understand the evolution of our fisheries since Confederation. In particular, the destructive role played by the Canadian government that assumed management in 1949 when Newfoundland gave up its independence. There is, in fact, a massive amount of documented data to prove that federal fisheries management policies caused the decline and eventual collapse. Unfortunately Newfoundland and Labrador has stood alone over the years in the fight to elevate fisheries management to Icelandic/Norwegian standards. We’ve stood alone because none of the other East Coast fishing provinces has been negatively affected to our extent. One has only to check the annual seafood export value of the other provinces to understand why we are left alone to fight the battle with Ottawa. The other provinces have
repeatedly refused to support our position. That has had an impact on Canada’s inability and/or unwillingness to confront the international fishing nations that invaded our fishery in 1950 and have continued to fish to this day in a totally uncontrolled fashion. When politicians decided in the early 1970s to dissolve the Federal Fisheries Research Board and transfer all fisheries management responsibilities to DFO, it was the beginning of collapse of the all important groundfish fisheries. Up to that date the research board, composed mostly of experienced non-government personnel from the fishing industry, the science community and universities, had effectively controlled the politicians and bureaucrats and prevented them from implementing damaging management regulations or controls. When the minister and his bureaucrats dissolved the board they had a free hand and a series of policy changes followed that had a detri-
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12 • INDEPENDENTNEWS
VOICE FROM AWAY
The new Newfoundland society (of Ottawa) The future looked bleak for the once-strong Newfoundland group in Ottawa — until a chance meeting in the Dominican Republic By Stephanie Porter The Independent
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his time last year, the few remaining members of the Newfoundland Club of Ottawa had all but given up on their organization. There were plenty of people from Newfoundland and Labrador living in the nation’s capital — the best estimate puts the number at about 18,000 — but they didn’t seem interested in getting together for the annual barbeques, jigs dinners and Christmas parties anymore. The 10-year-old club, once 350 strong, was dwindling away. “Everybody kind of went their own way,” then-president Jim Crocker told The Independent last September. “I’d say this is about the end of it.” And so it was, for about eight months, until a chance meeting on a Caribbean island last spring. That meeting led to the first official social event of the new Newfoundland Club earlier
this month. David Musseau, a native of Grand Falls-Windsor, is the interim president of the club. He moved from St. John’s to Ottawa four years ago, and currently works for the federal government’s public service commission. “Ottawa, it’s not home but I guess it’s the next best thing,” he says. “It’s a fairly large city but it has a small-town feel which makes it much more comfortable, if you’re determined to put down roots.” On a trip to the Dominican Republic with his wife earlier this year — “you know how Newfoundlanders tend to congregate together” — Musseau met Hannie Fitzgerald, a member of the Ottawa-based Labrador society. “It was the oddest thing,” Musseau says. “In speaking with her, I found out about the Newfoundland society, and she talked about how it had to disband. “And I found it kind of odd because I’d been here four years and I’d never
even heard about the society, which shows something … I’d been looking for something to do outside my work life, and this seemed to come along at the right time.” On his return to Canada, Musseau called former president Crocker. “I said I was interested in reviving the society — he gave me all the corporate history, and we took it from there.” Crocker now sits on the interim board (they’ll have elections once the society is stable again) as the advisor to the executive — a wealth of knowledge for a society just revving up. The first event was a Thursday evening meet-and-greet at a local pub a couple of weeks ago. There was Newfoundland music on hand — and over 170 people showed up. (“Jim had a big smile on his face the whole time,” says Musseau, obviously pleased.) “A lot of the executive worked the room the whole night and tried to speak to as many as possible. A lot didn’t want
to see the old society die but didn’t have the answers to how to keep it alive.” Musseau says he even had membership requests from non-Newfoundlanders. Anyone’s welcome, he says, as long as they are interested in “furthering the goals” of the organization. Of course, the first aim is to organize events where Newfoundlanders can meet, have some fun, and develop a network in different parts of Ottawa. But the ultimate goal, says Musseau, is to raise money for charity (currently the money is earmarked for the St. John’s Janeway and the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario). Musseau knows the key to survival will be appealing to some of the younger Newfoundlanders and Labradorians living in the city — he plans to host monthly happy hours (the third Thursday of every month at the Earl of Sussex), trivia nights and music events. But he also wants to offer events that appeal to older crowds and families too,
like skating and dinners. “These are the things we have to deal with as an executive,” he says. “We feel this is our one kick at the cat. We have to get people interested.” Members are asked to pay $10 a head to join. “We’re getting a big network here,” he says. “Every couple of days I hear about someone who knows someone from home. If not, it’s someone who wants to go there, which certainly makes you proud to be a Newfoundlander. “The society will build … people are positive and adamant about getting together for another event.” Anyone interested in finding out more can e-mail Musseau at nlsocietyofottawa@gmail.com Do you know a Newfoundlander or Labradorian living away? Please email editorial@theindependent.ca
Is Africa not ‘sexy’ enough?
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anada’s military isn’t sending troops to assist the humanitarian crises in the Sudan and elsewhere in Africa because helping “black African peasants” isn’t a “sexy” mission, a Liberal senator has charged. Senator Peter Stollery made the claim Sept. 26 after Gen. Rick Hillier, the chief of defence staff, told a Senate committee that Canada’s armed forces were “tapped out” and unable to send troops to Africa. But Stollery said it was a “disgrace” that Canada’s 62,000-strong military has only 65 of its soldiers serving in a continent “the whole world knows is going through a terrible time.” Later, he said a military mission in Africa lacks the appeal of the war on terror, such as Canada’s ongoing mission in Afghanistan, where 2,500 troops are based. “I think that the military does not want to go to Africa. We’re dealing with black African peasants. I don’t think it’s sexy and they don’t want to go,” Stollery said. “I think that they feel that it’s an area that they’re not trained to deal with.” Liberal Senator Roméo Dallaire, a veteran
former general who saw first-hand the genocide in Rwanda, rebuked Stollery for suggesting war is sexy. “Nothing is sexy in war,” he said. “The whole concept of war is perverse. The fact that we’re into one area and not the other is because political decisions have been taken.” But he also accused Canada of being hypocritical and a “banana republic” for publicly urging international intervention in humanitarian crises like those in Sudan’s Darfur and in the Democratic Republic of Congo while saying it doesn’t have the military resources to act itself. “We have great theories and great concepts, but we don’t have the guts to back it up,” Dallaire said, adding Canada had lost its focus as a “great middle power.” “Either we stay at home, shut our face and stop expounding how great people we are with all our values ... or, in fact, shift to becoming a great nation with a vision, a destiny in regards to the world and build that capability.” Still, he thought the military could muster 600 combat soldiers to serve in Darfur, backing up an African Union force. — Torstar wire service
Governor General Michaëlle Jean at Government House garden party in St. John's.
Paul Daly/The Independent
Will Jean thwart election call? OTTAWA By Chantal Hébert Torstar wire service
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n the wake of the defeat of Paul Martin’s minority government last fall, Governor General Michaëlle Jean said she considered calling on Stephen Harper to form a government rather than have Canada go through another federal election. Despite the fact Martin had put an expiry date on his Liberal government for the early part of 2006 on national television some months before Jean was even appointed, the governor general told Canadian Press she felt that she had the option of not sending voters to the polls. Experts were called in to provide her with advice on what came across to most outsiders as a pro forma call. “l wanted to make the best decision possible in light of the democratic rules in place in Canada ...” Jean explained as she looked back on her first year in office last week. She was actually the second governor general in the space of a single government mandate to ponder whether to ask the opposition parties to come to a working arrangement rather than have a full-fledged election campaign. In her just published memoirs, Adrienne Clarkson writes that, had the Martin government not survived its first six months in office, she would have turned to the opposition to try to prevent a premature return to the polls.
ARCANE TIDBITS These would be arcane tidbits if Canada was not into its second consecutive spell of minority government and if the tenure of the Harper regime did not look like it might be even more short-lived than that of Martin. Last week, Bloc Québécois Leader Gilles Duceppe signalled that the Conservative government could not count on his support for its second budget next spring unless it devolved close to $4 billion in new yearly transfers to Quebec. The chances of that happening are virtually non-existent. But Duceppe probably knows that. His warning to Harper is really the first public sign that the Bloc is not keen to give the Liberals a chance to regroup under a new leader before going into another campaign. Duceppe, who has his finger on the pulse of Quebecers, knows that Harper’s current policies
could shift part of the Bloc’s support to the Liberals in the next election. As things stand today — and contingent on the identity of the next Liberal leader — many Quebec voters might prefer to reconcile themselves with the party of Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin than risk a Conservative majority government. The prospect of a Liberal resurgence is an even larger concern for the NDP. Next spring, Jack Layton will have less incentive than Duceppe to support the budget. And while the Liberals would probably want to avoid a spring election, their new leader would be unlikely to want one of his first acts to be ensuring the safe passage of a Conservative budget. Having experienced first hand the difficulties of going straight from a leadership victory to an election campaign, the Prime Minister himself might not be inclined to make it easy for any of the opposition parties to ensure the survival of his government beyond the end of next winter. ALL THAT STANDS IN THE WAY Given all that, it may be that Jean will end up being all that stands in the way of Canada heading to the polls, for the third time in less than five years, a little more than six months from now. Past practice suggests the governor general would be extremely unlikely to step in the way of another campaign. But then, Jean has been wading uncommonly deep in political territory over the past few months. Over the course of her first-year anniversary interviews last week, she offered pointed criticism of Quebec sovereignists. That’s something none of her predecessors engaged in, even in the heat of the 1995 referendum campaign. Jean has also emerged as the most articulate advocate of Canada’s military deployment in Afghanistan in Quebec, a stance that is at odds with the position of the NDP and that seems to give short shrift to the reservations of the other two opposition parties. With her defence of the Afghan mission, Jean has stepped into the void created by the aloofness of the Harper government in Quebec. But these days, Jean also has some observers wondering just how literally she takes her title of head of state. They may get a chance to find out if the Harper government does die an early death next year.
INDEPENDENTBUSINESS
FRIDAY THROUGH THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 29-OCTOBER 5, 2006 — PAGE 13
Fish plant in Arnold’s Cove.
Paul Daly/The Independent
Reaping what’s sown Fishery’s future tied to conservation, innovation and marketing By Ivan Morgan The Independent wo fishery experts say the future of the province’s fishery lies in having fish to catch — and learning how to market them profitably. Leslie Harris, author of the 1990 report that foretold the collapse of the northern cod stocks, sees hope for the future. “There is a future I would hope, particularly if some of the conservation measures being discussed can be brought under control, if we can handle the restoration properly,” Harris tells The Independent. “So far we’re not doing a very good job … I think the state of the offshore stocks are as desperate as they were 10 years ago or worse.” Harris points to the successes of Iceland and Norway as a blueprint for the future of our industry. “The Icelanders have done a much better job than we have, and out of a fishery resource that was less than ours. They have
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made a decent country and a decent economy. We didn’t do so for a variety of reasons, largely related to our inability to capture and master the technologies that were required and to run with them at the right time.” Fisheries activist Gus Etchegary also sees the Icelanders and Norwegians as examples to be studied. He notes statistics from a recent Global Groundfish Review that show fresh cod exports from Canada totalling 4,000 tonnes, as opposed to Iceland’s 34,000 tonnes and Norway’s 44,000 tonnes. Of the Icelanders, Etchegary says “They can filet it (cod) fresh, put it in layers of ice and fly it in and still make a healthy profit.” Harris envisions rebuilding lost markets and finding and cultivating new ones. “There is some hope in the fresh and salt cod markets. I think that one of our problems has been getting a good product — a fresh product — to market in good condition, and our traditional practices were not such as to give us a top quality product.” Harris says quality control is not the only obstacle. There are also tariff problems —
especially with the EU and shrimp, fiscal exchange problems related to a strong Canadian dollar, and problems related to the low wage levels that the Chinese are able to manage all stand in the way of success. “When you consider that the Chinese can come into Newfoundland and buy fish, take it back to China, process it, resell it to us in our supermarkets at prices that we can’t ourselves match, there is something going on there,” says Harris. While Newfoundland’s salt fish industry is small, Iceland (82,500 tonnes) and Norway (123,000 tonnes) have strong markets that traditionally were Newfoundland’s. The industry will have to be re-introduced to those markets on a competitive level. Other fisheries are also fraught with trouble, Harris points out, pointing to the frail state of the crab and shrimp stocks. “I don’t see there’s a great future unless we pull up our socks and start working on proper conservational practices and marketing strategies. We haven’t done a particularly good job to date.”
But he’s not ready to give up. “I think that fishing can provide a decent living and can provide a good living and even beyond a good living, can provide a satisfying lifestyle, if it is handled properly and we use the technologies properly that are available to us.” Harris says attitudes need to change — and thinks they’re starting to. The fishery can no longer be viewed, as it has been, as the employer of last resort. Innovative thinking is the key. “For example,” he says, “if we were to learn how to manage our fish stocks and export our knowledge — that would be something. “So there is still some hope I think — but the major hope for a species like cod, which used to be the foundation of our lifestyle, is very limited unless we can learn a great deal more about how to handle fish populations better than we have demonstrated ourselves able to do in the past.” ivan.morgan@theindependent.ca
Bridging the capital gap Every business needs an angel, writes Ray Dillon, and St. John’s Board of Trade is making heavenly help easier to find n a classic scene from the 1940s film It’s a Wonderful Life, banker George Bailey’s guardian angel tells him, “Every time you hear a bell ring, it means that some angel’s just got his wings.” If all goes according to plan, bells should soon be ringing in our business community, with local entrepreneurs having the funding needed to find their way to the “promised land” of sustained growth and success. For years, entrepreneurs in Newfoundland and Labrador, and those interested in facilitating the development of our province’s private sector, have lamented the relative lack of ready access to capital so critical to business start-ups and early-stage companies. A 2001 ACOA study of entrepreneurship among young Atlantic Canadians
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RAY DILLON
Board of Trade reinforced the idea that there is definitely room for improvement in terms of access to capital, business skills development and mentoring. The study suggested government, lending institutions and entrepreneurs agree that lack of access to capital is a major barrier to business growth in the region. Lending institutions and investors also point out basic business skills, such as management, sales and business planning are often lacking among entrepreneurs.
Clearly, there is a significant gap to close in order to connect more of our small businesses with the valuable capital and knowledge needed to help them succeed. That’s where “angels” come in. To reference the title of John May and Cal Simmons’ 2001 book, every business needs an angel. Angel investors are individuals who personally invest in early-stage businesses. They are not your average venture capitalists or professional investment bankers — they’re usually your neighbours, the high net-worth individuals living next door who have achieved a level of success in their professions that allows them to have discretionary savings for creative, higherrisk investing. Angels provide investment that ful-
Angels provide investment that fulfills the financial gap between “love money” … and formal investment. fills the financial gap between “love money” (money most struggling entrepreneurs get from family and friends to keep their business idea afloat at the earliest stages) and formal investment (such as venture capital). Angel investment finances seed and start-up phases of business, typically in the range of $50,000 to $1,000,000. It helps prepare the business to expand and access higher levels of capital in
later growth stages. Angel investors often also provide guidance, support and mentoring as the business progresses from the idea stage through product development and preparation for market entry. Without this angel investment, there is often a funding gap that makes it difficult, often impossible, for businesses to reach their potential. The problem is finding those angels. Business financing is available through federal and provincial government departments through a myriad of different grant programs. However, capital from private sector sources is not always easy to come by. It may well exist; it’s just not easy to find and secure for many small businesses. See “Angels will be,” page 14
A stunning collection of photography from the portfolio of The Independent’s own Paul Daly. Available this fall. To preorder your copy, contact
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14 • INDEPENDENTBUSINESS
SEPTEMBER 29, 2006
Call centre calling Recruitment fair in Marystown ‘good early indicator,’ but no promises from call centre company’s head office MARYSTOWN By Pam Pardy Ghent For The Independent he Marystown economy may be in a slump — the shipyard is slow and fish plants gather cobwebs — but at least one company sees possibilities and the town is thrilled. Recruiters from Help Desk Now, an international company currently operating a call centre in Grand FallsWindsor recently held an open call in Marystown. Deputy mayor Julie Mitchell says the response showed promise. “There was well over 300 people and that doesn’t count those who couldn’t turn out but who sent in resumes just the same,” she says. Paul McGinn is executive director of the Schooner Regional Development Corporation, which worked with the town on its proposal to attract the attention of Help Desk Now. He says the company is looking to house a 75-seat inbound call centre, and will ultimately need to fill around 170 positions. Al Hawkins, executive director for Canadian operations with the company, says the call centre business on the island is a “fast-paced industry” and the company has exhausted the resource potential in Grand Falls-Windsor. A second facility opened this summer in Stephenville, expected to employ 100. “We have to look around the island
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now for alternate sites in case we have extra contracts, but we are in the assessment stage only,” he says, adding the downside of holding a job fair in any area is the expectation that’s created. “You don’t have a job fair one day and open the next … if we open there at all.” Mitchell says she knows the company was just putting feelers out in Marystown. “They need to know if Marystown would be a viable place to have such a centre and while we feel we are, it’s up to the company to decide that. “It’s an obvious requirement that a company like this would need access to a large number of people … These centres have high turnover.” She says Marystown has “absolutely no commitment of any sort” from Help Desk Now, but she’s happy they’re at least on their radar screen. “Our attrition rate is about 20 per cent, and you need to take that into account when you look at a region,” Hawkins says. While the numbers were “good” in Marystown, he says the company has yet to determine if the skill set of those who turned out match the company’s needs. “We normally hire one for every four (applications) we look at,” he says. “Marystown might be one in three, one in five, we don’t know at this point.” According to the deputy mayor, many attendees were female, and for-
mer FPI employees “eager and anxious” for work. While Mitchell knows the call-centre pay is low — and she has no ill-conceived notions this type of job opportunity will bring people back to the area — but she says the centre can employ those who are there now and who want to stay. “It would be silly for someone to leave a job in Alberta making $20 an hour for one making $8 in Marystown, but it’s a start,” she says. “This company is growing.” Hawkins says rural Newfoundlanders offer “above and beyond” service to their U.S.-based clients, but there are challenges to setting up in rural areas of the province. “There is always that fear that people will relocate out of the area, or out of the province, if other industries in the area fail.” Hawkins says 65-71 per cent of their employees are women earning a second income. That’s what attracted Annette Collins, one of the hundreds from the area who attended the fair. “I was looking for a good opportunity,” she says. “I work now, but it’s nice to have options, and a new company brings new ones, right?” “We’re glad Marystown was excited about the possibilities and the turn out was a good early indicator,” Hawkins says. “Unfortunately, we will just have to leave it at that for now.”
MP Loyola Hearn (left) and Ray Dillon announce the Newfoundland and Labrador Angel Network.
Paul Daly/The Independent
Angels with be much easier to find From page 13 Often, even when willing investors and their money are present, there is no real link to those seeking capital. An entrepreneur may have a product or business idea ripe for development and may be even market ready, but he or she cannot easily find (and doesn’t know how to go about searching for) potential investors. And vice versa: investors may have money they’re willing to put towards the right business venture, but they aren’t plugged into what opportunities are out there. So, oftentimes, the business is there, the investors are there, but never the twain shall meet. A new initiative of the St. John’s Board of Trade called Newfoundland and Labrador Angel Network addresses that need. The project will be twopronged, offering management and investor-readiness training to better
equip entrepreneurs to advance their enterprises, and also uniting small businesses in need of capital with a network of local angel investors. What do investors bring to the table? The most obvious and important thing is money, of course, along with the wherewithal to raise more money. They also have the experience of creating and growing companies, and expertise on wealth creation, right from the startup phase to the exit event. Many have contacts that can help an early-stage company by assisting in putting a management team in place, building product development, establishing distribution channels, and so on. What do entrepreneurs have that angels are looking for? Precious ideas: a product, a process — something with commercial potential. And, entrepreneurs also have the drive and determination to succeed. How does the network help the aver-
age entrepreneur? Angels will be much easier to find. And, for the angels, investment opportunities they wouldn’t otherwise be aware of can be coordinated. Opportunities like this are overdue in Newfoundland and Labrador, where we desperately need to do a better job of fostering the development of an investment culture. In so many cases, the talent is there; and they’re not for want of winning, innovative ideas. But, they sorely need that extra assistance to move forward with their business plan. If we want to develop Newfoundland and Labrador’s pool of high growth potential small businesses, then we had better find ways such as angel investing to help bridge the capital gap. Heaven knows we could use it. Ray Dillon is president of the St. John’s Board of Trade. His column returns Oct. 13.
Tim’s heats up menu wars anada’s favourite coffee and doughnut chain has begun quietly selling its version of the Egg McMuffin in restaurants in and around Toronto. Tim Hortons Inc. plans to have the new hot egg-and-cheese sandwich in most of its locations across the country by next month, company spokesperson Diane Slopek-Weber says. The move puts Canada’s biggest quick-serve restaurant in direct competition with its nearest rival, McDonalds of Canada Ltd., in the growing market for breakfast on the run. Tim Hortons’ breakfast menu didn’t include a hot sandwich until now, while McDonald’s has offered one for 30 years, in various versions. McDonald’s also serves breakfast burritos and McGriddles, a kind of pancake. “We have a pretty robust breakfast menu,” says McDonald’s spokesperson Ron Christianson. Priced at the same level as an Egg McMuffin, the Tim Hortons’ version has many of the same features. Both sell for $2.49, but Tim Horton’s ver-
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sion comes on a bun, while McDonald’s is served on an English muffin. The new Tim Horton’s breakfast sandwich is reportedly selling well, an analyst says. In competition, McDonald’s has introduced a value-priced version, called the Sausage McMuffin, which comes without the egg and sells for $1.39. McDonald’s also began running ads last month in praise of “the one and only Egg McMuffin,” Christianson says. The new Tim Hortons sandwich could help boost sales if consumers spend more on breakfast, says analyst David Hartley, at Blackmont Capital Inc. The new sandwich costs $1.50 more than Tim Hortons’ breakfast bagel and could help boost the average sale beyond the current $2.75 level. Tim Hortons is Canada’s largest fastfood restaurant chain, with 2,600 stores. — Torstar wire service
SEPTEMBER 29, 2006
INDEPENDENTBUSINESS • 15
HYDRO AT HOME
Canada slips in global competitiveness score By Tara Perkins Torstar wire service
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anada and the United States have slipped in a global ranking of competitiveness, with Switzerland grabbing the top spot, sparking calls for Canada to do more to boost its economic performance. Canada fell to 16th this year, from 13th, on the Geneva-based World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Index. Roger Martin, dean of the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, says the rankings indicate “Canada is not living up to its full potential in economic performance.” The United States dropped from first to sixth place, beaten by Switzerland, Finland, Sweden, Denmark and Singapore. The rankings take into account factors such as infrastructure, macro economy, government efficiency, health, education and market efficiency. Martin, who is also chair of the Institute for Competitiveness & Prosperity — the World Economic
Forum’s Canadian partner — places more weight on the corresponding Business Competitiveness Index in yesterday’s report. In that ranking, Canada fell to 15th from 14th. While a one-spot slip shouldn’t cause worry, the longer trend is more troublesome, Martin said. In 1998, Canada ranked sixth. “Canadian business and government leaders still have a lot of work to do to strengthen Canada’s competitiveness in the world,” Martin says He would like to see lower taxes, more Canadians in higher education and further deregulation of industries such as telecommunications, transportation and commercial banking. But Martin believes the first step is for Canadian policy workers to do more work benchmarking this country against others. “We have the highest taxation of business investment in the industrialized world,” he says. “We’ve lowered it, and we say ‘Hooray, we’ve lowered it.’ But that’s not the question. The question is how low has it gone relative to other people?” A report released last week by the C.D. Howe Institute said that, in a
reversal from last year, companies in Canada will pay lower taxes on profits of new investments this year than those in the United States. But that report also said that, while Canada is making strides, it is lagging behind such countries as Australia, Finland, Ireland and the Netherlands. “We only educate 25 per cent of our population in university,” Martin said. “Is 25 good? The only way you can answer that is to ask, what do the best performing economies in the world do?” Canada’s ranking is dropping not because the country is worsening, but because such countries as Norway and Japan have stepped up their competitiveness, Martin says. On the brighter side, Martin said, Canada's standing has been fairly steady when measured only against “consequentially sized” countries. “There's a side of me here that says do I really care that we're behind Iceland and Norway? Iceland is about the size of Winnipeg” in terms of population, Martin says. Among countries with a population of at least 10 million, Canada ranked sixth, the same as it did in 2001.
At a press conference Sept. 27, Premier Danny Williams stated it's in Canada's best interest to support the development of the lower Churchill Falls over hydroelectric projects in Quebec, especially given that province’s unstable politics. Paul Daly/The Independent
Spam’s surge
Latest junk e-mail sliding past filters By Tyler Hamilton Torstar wire service
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pam is an evolving, adaptive and fascinating creature of the Internet. Some weeks can go by and not a single piece of junk email enters my in-box, a sign maybe that security-software makers and ISPs are winning the battle to eradicate this online nuisance. But it’s been a few months since I’ve felt that way, and I’m now convinced that spam is winning the war. Clearest evidence of this is the proliferation of a relatively new mutation of junk e-mail called “stock spam.” You know, the ones touting penny stocks from energy and mining companies and that liberally scatter “!!!” and “BUY NOW” throughout the text. “Get on this speeding train before it’s too late!” exclaimed a stock spam I received, promoting a computer services company that trades, as most of them do, on an over-the-counter exchange. “You don’t want to be a bystander on this one!” For the first couple of months that I received these emails — and I’ve received a lot of them — I wondered what purpose they served. I mean, they’re not pitching Viagra or trying to get me to click on a link or Google advertisement. They’re not promoting child pornography. All they’re doing is alerting me to a stock I’ve never heard of and would never think of investing in. Then again, as is the case with any classic “pump-anddump” scheme, you only need a few greedy suckers in this world to carry out a scam. And as researchers at Harvard Law School, Oxford University and Purdue University have found, stock spamming is popular because, well … greedy suckers are plentiful. “Our analysis shows that (stock) spam works,” the researchers write in a recent collaborative study that examined 75,000 stock “touts” over an 18-month period. “Among its millions of recipients are not only those who read it, but who also act upon it.” And how does acting on a stock spam benefit the sender? You start with a penny stock that the spammer or its client owns. That stock is typically traded in low volumes, making it more vulnerable to manipulation. Theoretically, if only a few dozen people out of a million decide to buy the stock, the increased trading volume does two things: It drives up the price and the increased liquidity allows the spammer to cash out his shares at the higher price. Once the spammer has cashed out, the stock spam campaign comes to a halt and the price of the shares settles back down. The spamming victims, if you can call them that, usually end up holding shares that have fallen well below their purchase price and are difficult to unload. What the researchers found is that this above scenario is anything but theoretical. “We find on average that there’s an increase (in a spammed stock’s price) of about 5 per cent,” Purdue professor Laura Frieder, a co-author of the study, told U.S. National Public Radio last month. Frieder goes on to say that the spamee — i.e. the greedy sucker — will tend to lose an average of 7 per cent after two days of holding on to the stock. It’s an intriguing conclusion, which I’ve informally verified by checking a handful of stock spam messages. Sure enough, if I cross-reference the date of the spam with the touted stock’s activity on that same day I find that in most cases volume and price see an uncharacteristic spike. Pressured to respond, Pink Sheets LLC, an over-thecounter stock quotation system in the United States, asked the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission earlier this year to impose stricter disclosure rules so that “victims” can be more informed. The problem with regulation is it assumes spammers are law-abiding citizens who play fair and expect they can be caught and punished. Wrong on both counts. It also assumes that with proper information we’ll think twice about falling for a stock scam. But if this were the case, society wouldn’t have a gambling problem. Stock spam, because it works so well, is a growing problem. Sophos, a supplier of Internet security software, issued a report this summer estimating that 15 per cent of all junk email is now stock spam — compared to just 1 per cent 18 months ago. The reality is that stock spam will likely become more of a nuisance over the years, clogging corporate email servers, creating havoc with penny-stock exchanges, and giving delete keys an extra workout. In case you’re interested, CBC Newsworld will be airing a documentary on spam Oct. 17. “If you’ve ever been spammed, you can’t miss this film,” says a news release, “It will have you looking at your spam in a whole new light.” No doubt.
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INDEPENDENTLIFE
FRIDAY THROUGH THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 29-OCTOBER 5, 2006 — PAGE 17
Wayne Johnston, author of The Colony of Unrequited Dreams, says he always knew he would resurrect his “favourite” character Sheilagh Fielding, who he admits shares many of his own traits. As he allows readers back inside Fielding’s mind in his new book The Custodian of Paradise, he gives The Independent an insight into his own — sharing thoughts on writing, revenge, his home province and his personal paradise TORONTO, Ont. By Clare-Marie Gosse For The Independent
I
Paradise FOUND
n interviewing prolific author Wayne Johnston, it’s difficult to stick to the point — which at this moment is his latest book, The Custodian of Paradise. Because despite the quality of his most recent publication and the pleasure of seeing an unforgettable character from a previous novel resurrected to star in her own story, Johnston has seven other absorbing books under his belt. It’s all too easy for a lover of literature to get wholly distracted and ask incessant questions about all of them, from The Story of Bobby O’Malley (his first) to The Colony of Unrequited Dreams (his most notorious) as well as Baltimore’s Mansion (a family memoir), and everything else besides. But as Johnston settles into a couch in his modern townhouse in the heart of Toronto, just a few days before leaving for what will be a two-and-a-half month “20-something city tour,” it’s Sheilagh Fielding who commands his attention — as only a striking, six-foot-three woman with a biting wit can. “I was glad to bring her back, it’s fun to have her back,” he says of the heroine of The Custodian of Paradise, currently on the long list for the prestigious Giller Prize. “My favourite character is definitely Fielding, I
don’t mind admitting that.” Readers of Johnston’s books will remember “Fielding” as the lost love and continuous obsession of his fictitiously presented protagonist Joey Smallwood in The Colony of Unrequited Dreams. Throughout Colony, Fielding (a satirical journalist) and Smallwood (a political wannabe) emotionally dance around each other; at turns bosom friends and enemies, in an unconsummated saga that shadows Smallwood from his impoverished beginnings to his triumph as premier. Fielding is haunted by many sorrows. Her mother abandoned her when she was six, her short-statured father openly doubts he’s her biological parent (by continuously harping on about her extreme height), and her first love not only rejected her, but left her pregnant at age 15 with twins she was forced to give up. As beautiful, hilarious and imposing as Fielding is in Colony, it is The Custodian of Paradise that really brings her story home. We see early 20th century Newfoundland through her eyes, as she goes from a troubled girl to a troubled middle-aged woman in possession of an astonishing talent for verbal and written wit — which is usually wielded as a protective emotional weapon. Smallwood pops up occasionally, but this is Fielding’s tale of dealing See “I shall,” page 18
LIVYER
‘I’ll never sell this bar’ Ralph O’Brien celebrates 20 years of songs and shenanigans at Erin’s Pub By Heidi Wicks For The Independent
T
here’s barely time to walk through the grotto of Irish paraphernalia and approach the bar — much less ask for Ralph O’Brien, owner and operator of Erin’s Pub and original member of legendary Sons of Erin — before the bartender speaks. “You’re looking for the man with the
hammer,” he says, nodding sideways towards the Irish Zeus nailing letters to the sandwich board on the sidewalk. With firecracker eyes and a warm greeting, O’Brien motions towards a table by the window. “I’ll be right witch’yeh, love,” he winks, whisking into the back office. Ten, 20 minutes float by. Eventually, O’Brien scuttles back through the bar, plunking down at the table. “I’m so sorry about ’dat, love,” he
says, shaking his head, “I was, uh, I got, sidetracked … well, the truth is, love, is that I forgot about yeh!” he says apologetically — yet there’s a twinkle in his eye. O’Brien’s scatterbrain essence is hilarious and endearing. There’ve been more shenanigans at Erin’s pub over the past 20 years than any Guinness drinker can keep track of — from chasing a runaway toy leprechaun named Seamus (who now lives in a glass box atop the bar to prevent
him from escaping) down to George Street, to a bloody big set of CBC lights crashing to the floor. But the one part of the legendary Irish pub that sings most famously through the streets of St. John’s is the strong musical tradition and contribution. “The thing that I’m most proud of, and the best thing we ever done in this bar is the music,” says O’Brien. “We would have our Wednesday talent
nights here, and gather all the young musicians together, and consequently, bands were formed.” And not bands from the musical graveyard. Aside from The Sons of Erin, who still tear down the house Friday nights, members of Great Big Sea, The Irish Descendents, The Fables, Connemara, and many others gained early performSee “Newfoundland’s Irish,” page 19
SEPTEMBER 29, 2006
18 • INDEPENDENTLIFE
GALLERYPROFILE
L
ori Doody has always wanted to whether the film featured an animated wear a dress in “glorious rabbit in red overalls or a sexy Marilyn Technicolour.” Inspired by her Monroe. Strapless, the dress boasts a love of classic MGM musicals featur- very ample sweetheart neckline and a ing radiant actresses kicking up their flipped-up skirt tail. Set against a backheels with the likes of Fred Astaire and drop the colour of pale honeydew Gene Kelly, Doody’s new paintings are melon, the red seams along the hips and a grown-up version of nipped in waist are her tiny and delicate slightly blurred, creatPapier Couture ing the illusion the prints. Her latest coudress is inhabited — ture “collection,” if undulating and sashayyou will, is a lot less ing towards the viewer. little girl and a whole Cock your head sidelotta woman. ways, and it looks like A Sir Wilfred a pair of sensuous lips Grenfell visual arts on their end, lipstick graduate and last smudged. year’s emerging artist Doody says she was of the year (awarded Visual Artist somewhat uncertain by the Newfoundland returning to her paint and Labrador Arts Council), Doody has pots after working with the printing made a temporary departure from her press for so long. A printmaking major signature print series celebrating the in university, it had been eight years teeny-tiny versions of the female since she applied a brush to canvas — wardrobe and, instead, has blown them unlike the layered and lengthy process up larger than life. Kind of like the of creating a print from the initial etchHollywood personalities the artist used ing to the final inking. to admire as a little girl. “At first it was kind of intimidating “A lot of the dresses are based on my to go right at it,” says the artist. “I’m so memories of the old movies,” she says. used to taking my time and having this “Mainly I remember Cyd Charisse longer process. Painting is just a lot from Singing in the Rain and Band- faster. With painting you just apply pigwagon with Fred Astaire. She was just ment directly to the painting, but in a really good dancer and I grew up printmaking you have to create this doing dance classes and just loved whole matrix, apply ink and run it watching these movies. They had great, through a press.” fun, music and beautiful dresses.” Although Doody says she would Doody’s version of the cocktail dress never design clothes to sew and wear, comes in fire engine red, regal blue, she can easily picture herself in one of emerald green and a pretty in pink tulle her creations spending a night on the number. town or sipping cocktails at a swanky Each painting is tagged with a clever party. She envisions the dresses as colour-specific title, such as Red Hot “powerful,” a glamorous and empowerMama, or Green with Envy. Doody says ing accoutrement a woman can pluck she comes up with the name first, and out of her closet for a special occasion. then paints accordingly. She is partial to “They’re definitely not for doing the the fiery red, knockout frocks. dishes.” “I like my new red dresses,” she says. Lori Doody’s new work can be “They kind of remind me of smudgey viewed at the Emma Butler Gallery, 111 lipstick, like curve-y ladies like Jessica George St., St. John’s. Rabbit.” www.emmabutler.com Red Hot Mama looks like it just — Mandy Cook mandy.cook@theindependent.ca came off the rack of a movie set —
LORI DOODY
‘I shall keep an eye out for a tall man with a taste for Scotch’ From page 17 with demons, all the while punctuated with her (or rather Johnston’s) nail-onthe-head humour. “The basic story on Fielding — which may be the case with every character a writer creates — is that Fielding is more me than anything else,” he says. “Every character is like that, male, female, they’re all in a way, versions of the author.” The Custodian of Paradise opens near the end of the Second World War with Fielding single-mindedly making her way to a once-inhabited, now wild and completely deserted Newfoundland island called Loreburn. She’s middleaged, heartbroken, lame in one leg (thanks to a bout of tuberculosis years earlier), and has no plan other than to ruminate over her personal journals and possibly drum up enough courage to read her recently deceased son’s memoirs. She is also hoping to escape the elusive but ever-present spectre of a man who has stalked her all her life, a mysterious, fairytale figure known only to Fielding as her Provider. “She goes out there with a kind of ‘to be, or not to be’ view of things,” says Johnston. “She doesn’t come right out and say it, but you know that a woman heading alone to an island in the 1940s with two trunks of Scotch has got something on her mind.” Yes, Fielding is a drinker with an impressive tolerance for the hard stuff. No, although he does share her tendency towards sleeplessness, solitude, and a preference for working at night, Johnston doesn’t much like Scotch. “I give her a lot of the sort of incidental characteristics that I have myself … not Scotch,” he laughs, “I really don’t like Scotch at all; I like bourbon, but I have a local bar — I don’t own it but I
feel like I do … and I go there sometimes … but yeah, writing at night, talking aloud while I write, and walking and talking and writing at the same time …” Johnston says many people have tried to deter him from his nocturnal routine, but “I get more work done on this schedule than I did on any other, so why fix it if it’s not broken?” Writing from the point of view of a woman didn’t daunt Johnston when he first penned Fielding’s journal entries in Colony. He says he always had the feeling he would revisit her story in a later book, but wanted to wait a while, considering the fuss (good and bad) over Colony. Johnston describes Fielding as a kind of amalgamation of sharp Newfoundland writers and satirists such as Greg Power, Harold Horwood and Ray Guy. “Not everyone was convinced by my portrait of a woman,” he says. But Fielding couldn’t be described as a typical anything — let alone a typical woman. She might be one of the most fascinating and tragic figures to appear in recent literary history. Her brilliant wit weaves through the book, from verbal sparring matches with her self-absorbed, vertically challenged father about her parentage: Fielding’s father: “This confirms it. No one in my family has ever turned to drink.” Fielding: “I shall keep an eye out for a tall man with a taste for Scotch. How many of them could there be?” To her infamous, irony-laden columns in the Evening Telegram, written as letters under the moniker Fielding the Forger: “My Dear God Almighty: I have some quibbles with the Bible. Adam and Eve. It’s hard to understand what deficiency in the life of an Omnipotent Being a naked man and
Vince Talotta/Toronto Star
“She goes out there with a kind of ‘to be, or not to be’ view of things. She doesn’t come right out and say it, but you know that a woman heading alone to an island in the 1940s with two trunks of Scotch has got something on her mind.” Wayne Johnston on the character Sheilagh Fielding woman were intended to correct … Abraham and Isaac. You appear to Abraham and ask him to kill his son Isaac … at the last second, You stay Abraham’s hand and ask him how he could have thought You would let him kill his own son. The Israelites urge Abraham not to say anything in reply … even worse would be to ask You how long You think it will be before Isaac gets a good night’s sleep. Your Faithful Servant, The Right Reverend Archbishop Cluney Aylward.” As was his intention, Johnston’s use of Fielding’s quick humour only serves to further emphasize her consuming sorrow: “I must not let go … something will drag me under if I let it. I will sink. It seems that everything confirms it, every object, every looming building, every motorcar and every face… “The unqualified love of a single soul. I do not have it. I never have … who do I love as I long to be loved? My children, whom I do not know.” Johnston says one of his aims in Custodian was to explore a question: “How do you put an end to the quest for revenge? And can you put an end to it? “It seems like it’s a quest that begins in paradise itself, actually began by God,” he says. “Because he avenged himself … on his own creation, so he kind of stacked the cards against the people he created. If I had to say in one word what
the book is about, I would say revenge.” The reader comes to realize both Fielding and her strange Provider have valid reasons for seeking vengeance in their lives, and the story opens and closes under the shadow of man’s ultimate act of revenge — war. “She goes to this island and it’s to escape something that she can’t escape because it’s herself,” Johnston says. “Loreburn functions as a symbol of paradise. “I see paradise as being this vast place where there’s one person and that’s Loreburn, that’s Fielding.” Johnston has created a life for himself in which he can enter his own personal paradise at will. “Downstairs,” he gestures to a door off his hallway. “It’s a space I don’t show people, but my bunker is where I write … I’ve seen other people’s writing spaces and they usually have a window, I do not have a window; they usually have wall hangings, I have no wall hangings. I have sort of industrial carpet, I have soundproofing and that’s it. It’s a very spartan place. Yeah, that’s my idea of bliss.” Born in 1958, Johnston grew up in the Goulds as the third in a family of six children. He recalls Christmases on a “Dickensian” scale, thanks to having an incredibly large extended family of uncles, aunts and cousins, and he says his
Christian Brothers’ education was strict, rigorous, but “good in many ways.” He flirted with the possibility of becoming a doctor before completing an bachelor’s degree in English at Memorial. After graduation he worked as a reporter at the St. John’s Daily News. At 23, Johnston decided he wanted to be a full-time writer and completed a masters in creative writing at the University of New Brunswick. Not long after, he published his first book, The Story of Bobby O’Malley, which earned him his first major award. The awards and accolades have continued to fall thick and fast ever since. Although he writes almost exclusively about Newfoundland and Labrador, Johnston has never been able to physically write in his home province and he says he’s never really “diagnosed” the exact reason why. Johnston divides his time between Toronto — where he lives with his wife of 25 years, Rose, and their cat D.B. (Dust Bunny) — and Virginia, where he holds a chair at Hollins University. “I think (Newfoundland and Labrador) over-inspired me or something,” he says. “There were days — and this is very unusual for me — I would find myself walking the street, because (usually) you have to rip me away from my desk.” He visits often, however, and still has family in St. John’s. “I see it changing a lot and I think if the change is handled properly it could be great … the reason I’m optimistic about it is just the sheer force of the people themselves. The power of the collective personality of Newfoundlanders is so much greater than anything else I’ve ever seen, and I’ve travelled a lot.” Johnston’s next bout of travelling will take him back to Newfoundland and Labrador for a book launch at Chapters in St. John’s Sept. 29. He’ll also be holding a press conference about the stage adaptation of The Story of Bobby O’Malley, due to be performed at The Rooms, Nov. 15. Considering all the media attention and daytime activity this nocturnal and usually quite solitary writer is about to court, it’s a good job The Custodian of Paradise is his favourite of all his books to date. “My favourite book … it’s (always) the most recent book,” he laughs. “For me, it’s something I have to say otherwise it’s like admitting you’re getting worse.” As for Fielding, Johnston’s absolute favourite of his characters to date, it’s possible this lonesome, fairytale heroine, stranded on a wild, deserted island as she grapples with ghosts, still has a further tale to tell, even past The Custodian of Paradise. “She’s a pretty complex character,” says Johnston, “and I don’t think I’ve finished with her yet…”
SEPTEMBER 29, 2006
INDEPENDENTLIFE • 19
When artists’ eyes are smiling… Stop obsessing about the past, writes Noreen Golfman, and start thinking about how to keep and attract people here NOREEN GOLFMAN Standing room only n acquaintance recently directed me to a website detailing how artists living in Ireland benefit from the tax system. To quote from the site, “If you have produced a painting or sculpture or written a book, play or musical composition then you may be entitled to receive any income from your work tax free. Providing the work is original and creative or has cultural or artistic merit then it should qualify.” Wisely, the Irish have been offering this incentive since the late ’60s. It has both produced brain gain and plugged the brain drain. It’s no surprise artists like U2 and Van Morrison have benefited handsomely from the scheme, but on the other hand these superstars do not have to hide their bank accounts in the Cayman Islands or Switzerland. Moreover, they end up hanging around and contributing to Irish culture and its healthy international reputation just by keeping their home address. For years, artists from all over Europe have migrated to Ireland just to take advantage of the tax incentive, like Irvine Trainspotting Welsh and Frederick Day of the Jackal Forsyth. If it’s such a small cultural leap from here to there, you have to wonder why aren’t we doing the same thing? We blather on about how much we have in common with the Irish, we arrange festivals to prove it, and sign countless memoranda of understanding to encourage familiarity. But let’s also look at the difference in how we treat our artists. Outmigration is such a huge problem in Newfoundland we might as well establish a minister in charge of it, or in charge of stopping it. With all due respect, Mister Independent Editor, it’s a nice idea to
A
U2 (Larry Mullen, Bono,Adam Clayton and The Edge) arrive at a book launch in Dublin.
get a bunch of high-profile Newfoundlanders together to talk to each other so you can fill pages of print with abbreviated versions of their conversation, but why stick to the exhausted topic of whether we did or did not benefit from Confederation? I mean, come on, here we go ’round the mulberry bush. What about getting these same Newfoundlanders to stop obsessing about the past and start thinking about how to keep and attract people here? It’s called talk of the future. Maybe the yakking finally did get around to subjects more visionary. But my advice is to shake up that crowd of politicians, developers, and unionists with some writers, musicians, and playwrights.
And make them youngsters, people who want to stay and ply their trade here, fish or no fish. Consider exactly what species of mainland adult tends to pack it all in and move here — willingly, voluntarily, maybe irrationally. Why, it’s artists, of course. First they come for a few days to get away from the heat and the humidity. They visit to open up a show at the Rooms or at a gallery in Corner Brook. They visit because they think they are falling in love with a Newfoundland man or woman they met abroad. They visit because the bars close at 3 a.m., the street life is supposed to be inspired, and the landscape is staggering. They visit because
Leon Farrell/Photocall Ireland
they’ve heard it’s a cool place to think, talk, and practice art. And so, the next thing you know they’re buying a quaint little spot in town, in Trinity, or in Rocky Harbour, or maybe even moving in with that Newfoundlander they’re crazy about. You meet them at concerts, gallery shows, book launches, and theatre openings. They’ve transformed themselves into spontaneous ambassadors, waxing mad about the place and wondering why they hadn’t moved here sooner. Indeed, they not only paint or sing about the landscape but they start improving on it, mythologizing and recreating it. Artists have been migrating here for
decades now because they recognize how much their art can be nourished by people and place. They migrate despite the high price of gas, the whims of Air Canada, and the lousy looking vegetables in February. They migrate despite the wind and the herds of Newfoundlanders moving in the direction from which they’ve come. How many more artists would migrate if they had a strong tax incentive on top of everything else they value about living here? Newfoundland would be the envy of the Canadian art scene, not so much competing with but sharing with Ireland in its effort to enhance its reputation as a cultural Mecca. Now, to make the scheme really progressive, and to encourage business developers to partake of the riches of artistic success, the province really ought to establish tax credits for renovation of buildings that create space for artists and/or artist related enterprises. And so if you are a property owner merely sitting on some fine location but not doing a damn decent or respectable thing with it, you should be encouraged, even pushed, to renovate for artists. They will enhance your site and the entire world in which you live, and you’ll end up getting a nice tax break for your creative business sense. This isn’t some pie-in-the-sky fantasy. The Irish do it and many dying communities all over the west have taken up the challenge offered by American public policy professor Richard Florida. His provocative theories in his best-selling The Rise of the Creative Class have radically challenged the dull monotheism of shopping mall culture, arguing instead that only by investing in “high bohemianism” can cities hope to thrive. Why, we are halfway there already. Let’s do the rest. Let’s give artists a break. Noreen Golfman is a professor of literature and women’s studies at Memorial. Her column returns Oct. 13.
POET’S CORNER The Ocean I was born listening to the ocean. While in my Mother’s womb, I heard its song. As a boy, I felt it roll beneath me. I know I’ve been away from it too long.
I don’t know what it is about the ocean. It calls to me beyond the realm of time. I only know that I have felt its magic, Beyond the highest mountain I may climb.
I want to see the gulls around Gull Island, And see the gannets diving far below. I want to swim within this salty Heaven, And feel the power of the undertow.
I must begin the long and tangled journey, Back to where the soaring seagulls cry. I must go back again toward my ocean, And feel it just once more before I die.
I want to see the moonlight on the surface, And see the cape so many miles away. I want to smell the fragrance of the kelp beds, Just as in that far off yesterday. Ralph O’Brien
Paul Daly/The Independent
‘Newfoundland’s Irish connection’ From page 17 ance experiences at Erin’s Pub. “I remember one night Chris Andrews (of Shanneyganock) came into the bar, wanting to play. He was only about 17 years old at that time, and he said he had this tape done. I told him, quite seriously now, ‘I don’t think it would be fair to our customers, Chris’ … he hasn’t let me live that one down,” O’Brien chuckles. O’Brien arrived in Newfoundland from Toronto around 1968, where he made a living as an electrician before segueing into music. O’Brien, Fergus O’Byrne, Dermot O’Reilley and Gary Kavanaugh were the original members of The Sons of Erin, and together they travelled from St. John’s to Los Angeles “so many hundreds of times I couldn’t keep count. “I always thought I was going to have a bar,” he says. “I don’t know why … I wanted something to fall back on being a musician, and I didn’t want to fall back on being an electrician. I suppose it was also a way that we could still perform whenever we wanted to.” He’s also met many dear friends through his pub adventures, many of whom he still considers family. Coming to Erin’s is much like stopping by a friend’s house for a pint and a yak. “There are people who have come here every single Friday for the last 20 years. If I closed this place, there would be people out on the street going, ‘Where’s my bar?’ They feel happy here, enjoying the music and the company, and as long as people are happy, there’s never any trouble, love. I’ll never sell this bar or close it.” To celebrate those 20 years of business, O’Brien is hosting a party — a great big five-day party, to be exact. The main festivities will take place on Friday and Saturday nights (Oct. 5 and 6), with music throughout the days as well. Scheduled acts include the Irish Descendents, Sons of Erin, Connemara, Middle Tickle, Gulliver’s Spree, Jason Simms, Ronnie Power, and many others. O’Brien is also expecting many friendly ghosts of Erin’s past, perhaps pulled to the stage via the magnetic mixture of love and whisky. Although Irish-born, O’Brien and his bar per-
By Ed McCann St. John’s
fectly represent the words on the front window (“Newfoundland’s Irish connection”), and the core of the Newfoundland spirit — embracing music, love, laughter and the company of family and friends. The anniversary celebrations run Oct. 3-8 at Erin’s Pub, 186 Water St., St. John’s.
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SEPTEMBER 29, 2006
20 • INDEPENDENTLIFE
TOWARDS A MORE INDIGENOUS ART
Untitled (mixed media on panel, 2006), by Michael Pittman is part of Towards a More Indigenous Art, now on display at the RCA Gallery in the LSPU Hall, Victoria Street, St. John’s. Pittman, born on Newfoundland’s west coast, recently received his Masters in Fine Arts from the Waterford Institute of Technology in Ireland. The exhibition of Pittman’s new work will continue until Oct. 15.
EVENTS SEPTEMBER 29 • Writers Alliance of Newfoundland and Labrador presents Wise Women and Words, until Oct. 1. Readings and workshops at the Deer Lake Motel and Deer Lake Public Library, (709) 6354090, pageone@nf.aibn.com • Thaddeus Holownia, The Terra Nova Suite, exhibition opening at The Rooms, 8 p.m. SEPTEMBER 30 • Annual potato festival at Memorial’s Botanical Gardens, Mount Scio Road, St. John’s, 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Admission: perishable food item. • Book launch: P is for Puffin by Newfoundland author Janet Skirving,
illustrated by Odell Archibald, 3-5 p.m. at the Basilica Library Museum on Military Road, St. John’s.
three-day workshop in botanical watercolours at MUN Botanical Gardens, starting Oct. 2, 753-2643.
OCTOBER 1 • Avalon Unitarian Fellowship regular Sunday service, 10:30 a.m., Anna Templeton Centre, Duckworth Street, 726-0852. • CBC Radio Arts presents Sandy Morris: In Concert at the LSPU Hall, St. John’s, 8 p.m., with guests Erin Best, Jenny Gear, Anita Best, Gordon Quinton, Heather Kao, Kristen Oliver and Graham Wells.
OCTOBER 3 • Season premiere: This Hour Has 22 Minutes, starring Cathy Jones, Shaun Majumder, Gavin Crawford and Mark Critch, 8:30 p.m. on CBC-TV.
OCTOBER 2 • Botanical artist Pamela Stagg offers
OCTOBER 5 • MUN Cinema Series presents Souvenir of Canada, by Douglas Copeland, Studio 12, Avalon Mall, 7 p.m. www.mun.ca/cinema • Live to Tell, Kelly-Ann Evans’ provocative Madonna stage show featuring dancers and a full band, 9 p.m., Majestic Theatre, St. John’s, 579-3023.
• Etcetera, wearable art accessories in the Craft Council annex gallery, Devon House, until Oct. 6. • Works by Jim Miller and David Wright, Ocean Road Gallery, Terrace on the Square. • Masterworks of Nineteenth-Century French Realism and Giddy-Up! on display at The Rooms, www.therooms.ca/artgallery • Randy Hann, new works, Gander Arts and Culture Centre art gallery.
IN THE GALLERIES • Saucy Boats and Knotty Baskets, clay works by Linda Yates and David Hayashida of King’s Point Pottery, Craft Council Gallery, until Oct. 6.
ALSO • The St. John’s International Women’s Film Festival (Oct.18-22) is looking for volunteers. Please contact Linda Fitzpatrick, 722-6930.
Craig Sharpe among his fans at the St. John’s International airport.
Paul Daly/The Independent
OCTOBER 4 • Folk night at the Ship Pub, St. John’s, with Tobias and Gerald Pearson, 9 p.m. • Public talk and slide presentation by botanical artist Pamela Stagg, 7:30 p.m, MUN Botanical Garden, 753-2643. • Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat, St. John’s
Arts and Culture Centre, 8 p.m. Continues through Oct. 7.
We’re number two! Don’t be too bummed for Craig Sharpe, at least he knows what he’s up against t’s been a couple of weeks now since Newfoundland’s own Craig Sharpe took second place to Eva Avila in CTVs big Canadian Idol extravaganza, and I imagine things are getting back to something approaching normal for Upper Island Cove’s favorite son. It’ll never be the same again, naturally. How do you go back to normal life once you’ve been hugged by Ben Mulroney that many times on national television? I figured sticking it out to the very last show and snagging the silver medal was a pretty impressive feat for a 16-year-old, but I guess you can’t please everyone. With characteristic go-team enthusiasm, some disgruntled Newfoundlanders came forward last week to suggest the voting was rigged to keep our Craig out of the top spot and let the girl from Quebec win. Did anyone else find it hilarious listening to complaints about ballot-box stuffing from people who were prepared to travel by bus to pay phones in St. John’s and cast vote after vote after vote for their hometown hero? Now, you’re unlikely to meet anyone who’s going to claim reality television is about bringing out the best in people. The main source of entertainment in your regular Survivor/Big Brother/Fear Factor reality series has always been the joy we secretly derive from watching someone cooler, younger and/or better looking than us get raked over the coals until they cry. It’s revenge of the couch potatoes. Making beautiful people eat bugs or don swimwear and lie around in a vat of tarantulas gives the rest of us a chance to feel superior without having to put down our chips, get on some real pants and do something for a change. The Idol shows are a different animal entirely. Far from being about humiliation and meanness, Canadian/American/insert-name-of-country-here Idol shows are cheesy but fun feel-good affairs. They are, we are told, a chance for young performers to compete for fame, fortune and super-stardom, all of which will be theirs as soon as they win the contest and sign on the dotted line. Since the earliest days of rock and roll we’ve been fed the grand old myth that stars are “discovered” and ascend into the pantheon in a single glorious event: a cigar-chomping promoter sees some young kid at a gas station, or in a dingy club or on a television talent contest and waves his magic wand to make them rich and famous beyond their
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SEAN PANTING
State of the art wildest imaginings. This is, of course, total hogwash made up by PR department hacks at movie studios and record labels. Plenty of people, even industry insiders who should know better, believe this tripe. The fact is a career in music is just like a career in anything else. You start at the bottom and work your way up. Sometimes it’s fun and glamorous, sometimes it really sucks and mostly it’s kind of dull and monotonous. Some people — people who get to sing in front of two million viewers on a weekly basis, for example — have an easier time getting started than others, but nobody, and I mean nobody, is going to achieve lasting fame for singing somebody else’s songs on a TV show. At the risk of offending Rex Goudie-o-philes everywhere, Kelly Clarkson, the first of the American Idols, is still the only person to break out of the Idol ghetto and become a big-time star in the limos and swimming pools sense of the word. I was pleased to see Craig make it as far as he did. It was fun to watch him rise to the challenge, and in the end coming second probably puts him in a better position than the winner. For Eva Avila, being forever branded a Canadian Idol might turn out to be something of a mixed blessing. The star-maker apparatus will now be cranked into full gear as Sony BMG seeks to make as much dough as they can off their new acquisition. Young Eva will no doubt be faced with a great many difficult choices about what she wants versus what her new bosses think she should do and wear and sing. So don’t be too bummed for Craig. He’s only 16, after all. Having had a taste of the big time, he can cool his heels, finish high school and hone his considerable talents. This way, if he decides to go for the brass ring in a couple years time at least he’ll know what he’s up against. Sean Panting is a musician, actor and writer from St. John’s. His column returns Oct. 13. www.seanpanting.com
INDEPENDENTSTYLE
FRIDAY THROUGH THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 29-OCTOBER 5, 2006 — PAGE 21
Suits you, Sir Fashion show fundraiser to highlight men’s fashion options By Mandy Cook The Independent sk any guy where he likes to shop and you’ll invariably be on the receiving end of a blank, or perhaps slightly befuddled expression. Most men will admit to having zero to very little interest in trolling the malls or spending a day in the change room of a chic boutique. But, when pressed, they will usually offer up a resounding condemnation of the state and availability of men’s fashion in the province. The people behind the Fall Fashion Show of Downtown Retailers, a fundraiser for Kittiwake Dance Theatre at Club One slated for Oct. 3, hope to have a hand in changing that perception — but acknowledge there are several style challenges to overcome. Steve Penney, a 28-year-old graphic designer from St. John’s, says he manages to put together a wardrobe by shopping at a few select stores. “I think (men’s fashion options) are probably not as good as it is for females, especially with more high-end types of things,” he says. “There’s a lot of smaller boutique shops for women, which cater to them better than to guys. There is some good stuff here but it’s not quite up to par as other cities in Canada.” Penney says he frequents Ballistic for his style finds, and will sometimes score a few items at Winners. He relies on retailers at the Avalon Mall such as the Gap and American Eagle for his regular “stand by” shopping needs, but says he would like to buy his more formal clothes downtown. “I own a couple of suits,” he says. “I’ve looked around and checked everywhere for suits, but so far it’s been the mall. I would like it to be more downtown.” Stephanie Stoker, co-organizer of the show, says men have more shopping choices than they realize, but must change their perceptions of the Newfoundland fashion industry first. “I really want to promote these new stores like Hostyle,” Stoker says. “Ballistic too, they definitely have their fans who always buy there but I think they need to break into the main market a little bit more and help people realize that you can go in there and find something that’s fairly decent in price and on par with what you’d get outside of the island.” Stoker says a lot of men think the clothing available in the burgeoning “fashion district” in the mid-center of Water Street in St. John’s is too rich for their wallets. She says higher prices are a necessary concession the would-be well-heeled male shopper must make. “Boys continually complain that there’s no clothes available in St. John’s, especially downtown, and that the clothes that are there are quite expensive,” she says. “But most clothes that are quality clothes and designer clothes are expensive regardless of if it’s for a boy or a girl.” Stoker and Liz Carroll, an employee at Hostyle on Water Street, make the same point. Carroll says higher prices are par for the course when creating your own personal style statement. She hopes the fashions strutting down the catwalk at Club One next Tuesday night will encourage the male population to put more emphasis on their look. “I think guys are afraid to show they can be a bit more fashionable,” she says. “I guess guys just aren’t into it and that’s the whole point of the fashion show is try and get them into it. Looking at other people and saying they can go ahead and do it too. Hopefully this will teach them something.” Stoker points out this indifferent stance results in a dearth of fashion choices for Newfoundland men. “I think that women are more prone to spending the money so obviously there’s more of a call for it,” Stoker says. “Whereas men tend to spend less money, so obviously stores are not going to bring in the same quantity of male garments that they do for women.” The Fall Fashion Show of Downtown Retailers will host 20 different presenters (and male and female models!), a set by Mark Bragg, a live auction, door prizes and DJ Pat Dunn spinning into the early a.m. Tickets are $10 and available at participating downtown retailers and Kittiwake Dance Studios, 157 Water St. Doors open 8 p.m. mandy.cook@theindependent.ca
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Peter Simms models a suit from William L. Chafe & Sons.
Paul Daly/The Independent
Cold comfort Perfect mashed potatoes — just what the patient ordered ’ve got a cold. It has been lingering, hanging on for dear life and I’m tired of it. Maybe I’m sick because my wife has the same cold — as does my mom and dad — and there is no reprieve. I’m coming to the end of it. The sniffles are still there and the headaches persist and the pain — oh the pain is the worst. But I’m not here to tell you of my woes. There are more important things to discuss. Fall is officially here and starting to take hold. This cold is one of those things that marks the beginning of the school year — and everything that comes with it. Earlier in the week, when the cold was at its worst, my wife looked at me and said “I need some comfort food. Potatoes, mashed potatoes.” For some reason, I do not see this as a comfort food. This is a side dish — something attached to a meal. But it’s
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NICHOLAS GARDNER Off the Eating Path what she wanted — some steaming hot mashed potatoes — and who am I to deny it if it will make her feel better? So what is comfort food? Anything that you attach a special meaning to and has a nurturing or memorable experience attached to is a comfort food. Children seem to latch onto certain foods as easily as they would a security blanket, and adults are the same. The feeling of warmth and familiarity always makes you feel better. There have been some studies to suggest these foods can induce an opiate-like effect on the brain, and this is the reason comfort foods have that special soothing nature to them.
Into the kitchen I went to make some cold comfort food. What can we do to make those simple mashed potatoes different? Think of the potato as a blank canvas, ready for all manners of complex flavours to be introduced and enjoyed. Joel Robuchon, the internationally influential French chef, had what he considered the perfect recipe for potato puree: Take two pounds of russet potatoes, cooked by boiling in lightly salted water with the skin on. Once cooked, peel the potatoes while still hot and place in a food mill or push through a fine-mesh sieve. Then add one cup of whole milk, heated to just under boiling. Then, while adding 16 tablespoons of butter, one at a time, whip the mixture with a whisk. And if that was not enough work, he says to pass the entire mixture through the mill again. When satisfied with the texture, season with
sea salt, nothing else. It is a workout of a mixture, but what you are left with is a perfect potato puree, which is soft and luxurious and decadently rich. My darling wife insisted her cold remedy would include butter and finely grated old cheddar. When I tasted the mixture, it was soft and soothing on the throat, and made me want to have a good nap to sleep off the rest of the cold. However, I think that other ingredients could be added — thinly sliced and slowly caramelized onions are beautiful and sweet and would pair well with pork or chicken. For the longest time, restaurants have looked to the noble garlic clove as the answer to the potato question. Roasting garlic serves to sweeten the garlic flavour and remove the noted pungency: take a whole head of garlic and cut the first centimetre off the top
of the bulb, exposing the tops of the cloves. Place in an ovenproof dish and drizzle with olive oil and salt and pepper and roast at 350F for about 40 minutes or until the cloves are golden and soft. The added benefit is the fragrance of the sweet garlic, which aromatizes the house as it roasts. Take the roasted garlic and squeeze out half of the bulb — don’t worry, it’s not overpowering — and mix it into the luxurious potatoes. The rest of the roasted garlic will keep, wrapped up, in the fridge for several days. For an added twist, grate half a peeled apple into the potato mixture and you get a fresh fall flavour perfect for the harvest and wonderful with any roast. Nicholas is a freelance writer and erstwhile chef living in St. John’s. nicholas.gardner@gmail.com
SEPTEMBER 29, 2006
22 • INDEPENDENTSTYLE
DRINK
Relaxing is hard work … and discovering the perfect beer is even harder
Nicholas Gardner For The Independent here is something relaxing about sharing a beer with friends while outside on a lazy weekend. The girls were tending to the garden, winterizing and deadheading. A perfect thing to be doing. Preparation for the winter months is important, especially for a garden which requires serious attention. Begonias and lilies were purged of their stalky innards, and weeds of the summer months were removed, proving that we are somewhat in control of the destiny of the flowerbeds. While all this “work” was being attended to, the men were talking shop. Winterizing of the motorcycles, and determining the best spot to park the vintage rides for the winter. With the sun shining in the late afternoon, it was a collegial affair with lots of attention paid to the workers and a lot of attention paid to the beautiful dog, a retriever who thought it best to walk around with rawhide bones and other twigs and branches — everyone was pitching in. So being the kind of neighbour who realizes when a beverage is in order, I organized a spontaneous party, com-
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plete with different beers to taste and compare. On the block was an Alsace beer called Fischer Tradition (NLC $5.07) and Monty Python’s Holy (Gr)Ail (NLC $3.80). The Fischer Tradition was up first. The cool flip top was noted and produced a good pop upon opening. The brown bottle hid the true colour of the ale, which was pale and almost golden. When poured into the cups, it produced a thick creamy head, which quickly faded. I wanted to like this beer, as all my friends did. They said it was drinkable and light and not too beer tasting — that’s a lager, not an ale. To me, ale is darker and more robust, not light and watery. It’s a great sipping beer and is a great change from other light lagers, but I would not consider it an ale. On the other hand, the Gr(Ail) was definitely more robust. While it is marked as ale, I would consider it a bitter. The finish of the beer was distinctly bitter and not smooth — it has more characteristics of an ale than the Fischer Tradition. Dark and bitter, it has a more distinct palate and, for me, it is a more interesting beer. Kind of like a Python-esque joke — snappy, then it lulls you into a false sense of security, and then it pokes you in the
eyes. When the chatting was all over, I sat down to think about the beers and tried desperately to come up with a preferred choice. I found it in another beer: Radelberger pilsner (NLC $2.99). This was refreshing after the heavier
beers. Light and hoppy with a slight leaning towards the spicy/sweet side of the palate. This light straw-coloured beer was structured enough to just to kick back and enjoy after a hard day’s relaxing. nicholas.gardner@gmail.com
TASTE
Going bananas for muffins By Susan Sampson Torstar wire service he nutrition is camouflaged in these moist, barely sweet muffins. Perfect for lunchboxes and brown-bag lunches.
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CHOCOLATE BANANA MUFFINS • 2 cups all-purpose flour • 2/3 cup natural wheat bran • 1/4 cup cocoa powder, sifted • 1 tsp each: baking powder, baking soda • 1 tsp salt • 1 large egg + 1 large egg white • 1 cup buttermilk • 1/4 cup vegetable oil • 1 tsp vanilla • 1/3 cup packed brown sugar • 1 cup mashed ripe bananas (about 2)
In big bowl, stir together flour, bran, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Make well in centre. In medium bowl, whisk together egg, egg white, buttermilk, oil, vanilla and brown sugar until smooth. Whisk in bananas. Add to flour mixture. Stir just until blended; do not overmix. Line 12 muffin cups with large paper liners. Spoon in batter. Bake in preheated 425F oven 15 minutes or until firm. Cool on rack 10 minutes. Transfer muffins to rack to cool completely. Makes 12, each with 2-1/2 carbohydrate choices and 2 fat choices for diabetics, or 249 calories, 5 grams protein, 10 grams fat, 39 grams carbohydrate and 4 grams fibre.
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Listing life’s moments Four dudes from B.C. have hit T.O. in need of an accommodating professional baseball team By Jen Gerson Torstar wire service n the movie About Schmidt, Jack Nicholson, facing the third act of his life, realizes that he’s wasted the first two parts of it. He decides to take a break from harassing his dunce of a daughter and sets off in an RV for a cross-country adventure filled with mishaps, hilarity and drama. That is essentially what Dave Lingwood, Ben Nemtin, and Jonnie and Duncan Penn are doing: living the retirement dream. But they’re in their late teens and early 20s. The four started their journey in August. In a loaned RV, the blue-shirted boys from B.C. had a mission: compile and complete a list of 100 things they’d like to do before they die. After leading the Peachfest Parade in the interior of B.C., opening the evening news in Vancouver and learning how to kick a field goal from Lui Passaglia, the group has touched a nerve. Their mission embodies a youthful generation that thrives on corporate sponsorship, revealing everything it does on the Internet and controlled spontaneity (see theburiedlife.com). Half the items on their list are their own aspirations; the other half is in the process of being compiled from people met along the way. The trip started out as a three-week documentary, but after the four only managed to knock their first 30 or so off the list in that time, they decided to keep going. Now they’re trying to convert the documentary into a series of shows. In Toronto they hope to conquer No. 36: Throw the first pitch at a major league baseball game. “We’re still trying to work out all the details,” Nemtin says. “The season’s pretty much over now so we may have to wait.” Sometimes the boys have to hustle in order to live their dreams. For example, to kick a field goal, they tracked down B.C. football legend Lui Passaglia. “We basically explained what we were doing and he said: ‘OK. Just come on down and I’ll teach you how to kick a field goal,’” Nemtin says. Sometimes, because of the publicity surrounding the tour on the West Coast, the items on the list seem to fulfill themselves. Item No. 13, for example: “Make a toast at a stranger’s wedding,” accrued more than a half-dozen wedding invitations. “Something about this idea really inspires people,” Nemtin says. “It’s like, once they hear the idea, this seed is planted and it just makes them want to go out and try new things.” Through word of mouth, he says the boys have received hundreds of e-mails, offers of support, help and thanks. One e-mail was from the mother of 4year-old Diego, who was “knighted” by Nemtin, dressed in full medieval regalia and wandering the streets of Victoria. “Diego is now telling everybody that he is a real knight,” the mother wrote. “As well ... I am now thinking more and more about my dreams and aspirations as a human being.’” Nemtin says the trip was financed by sponsors. “The second we told them what we were doing, they were happy to help us out,” he says. “I think there’s something about this tour that we’re showing people.” Now the four are doing whatever they can think up. On a shoestring. And they’re loving it. But what’s going to be left for them when they retire?
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SEPTEMBER 29, 2006
INDEPENDENTSTYLE • 23
Fussing and fretting ‘Domestic delinquent’ Pam Pardy Ghent gets ready to take over when her mom goes on vacation y mother is going out west to visit my sister for a week. You would think she was leaving my father for a year the way she’s fussing and fretting. The kitchen table strains under the weight of food-filled mason jars all signed, sealed, and ready to be devoured with a twist of his wrist and two minutes in the microwave. The fridge is stocked, the cupboards overflowing, and there are mom-scrawled notes everywhere. My father has enough pills organized in those color-coded by-day/by-meal functional whatcha-ma-call-its to last him two months. I raised my eyebrows at her. In case the plane gets delayed, she said. “Come up!” my mother ordered one morning. She wanted me to test my father’s blood sugar. By the time I arrived he had eaten and gone. I got The Look. “Mom,” I protested, “I have done this before. I know how to test dad’s sugar.” “It’s a new machine,” she scolded. “If he goes into a diabetic coma while I’m
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PAM PARDY GHENT
Seven-day talk gone, you’re history!” I tested the machine out on myself. She felt better. I was bleeding, but no longer in trouble. She showed me my father’s clothes. There is stuff he’s allowed to wear, and stuff he isn’t. “This drawer is his doctor things,” she said of his good shirts. “If you see him in these,” she said of drawer No. 2, “and he isn’t mowing the lawn or painting something, take them off him immediately.” “Got it,” I answered. “Leaving him naked in public is better than having him out in unapproved clothing.” She growled at me. I had to study the not-inpublic drawer closely. She put a finger in my face and told me not to let him out of the house in an unironed shirt. I am allowed to do his laundry, she said, but do it right. Never
wash his dark socks with towels. (Been there and barely survived.) “Do not run up my electrical bill,” she said. She will know, she threatened, if I use the dryer and not the clothesline. After three days of crazy-lady antics, my mother finally crashed — two days before her trip. Sick, she said. I comforted her with the knowledge that “there’s something going around,” and told her to relax. She isn’t sleeping. My father is restless. They have been married 40 years, and they hate to be away from each other for so long, though neither will admit it. She needed a distraction. There was a wake at our outport church, and we needed to pay our respects. “Get up,” I ordered. My mother dug herself out of her blankets, put down her hot toddie and applied her lipstick. Strange cars lined the narrow road, and the normally dark stainedglass windows of St. Mary’s blazed with light. The front of the church was full. People surrounded the deceased, a 94
year-old lady. There was chatter, laughter, tears, and lots of hugs. Seated at the head of the casket, dressed in his best brown suit, was her husband of 60-some years, looking lost and incredibly sad. He held my hands and cried when I approached him. He was whispering something that I could barely make out. I leaned in. “I’m alone now. I miss her.” This man will go back to his nursinghome life in a few days without his partner. Their children and grandchildren looked heartsick. There were three generations of women mourning the loss of a mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and a wonderful woman. Yes, she had a long life, but that made her absence somehow more painful. My mother left the church feeling better than when she went in. She saw old friends. She got caught up. “Weddings and funerals are the social center of communities like this,” she said. I left feeling worse. My father will be without her long enough to miss her. He will eat things she forbids, and watch
TV shows she hates. Before long, she will return to her role of “all things” in his life. For me, the pressure of his laundry, meals and health hangs heavy over my head. Having her leave, trusting Dad in my care, is a sudden, sullen reminder of my inadequacies. I can’t cook as well as she can. My housekeeping skills pale in comparison — she is a domestic diva, I am a domestic delinquent. When she comes for tea, she folds my laundry, washes my dishes, and dusts my corners. My mother is my walking buddy, my coffee date, my shopping partner, my confidant, and my very best friend. She is as important to me at 36 as she was to me at six. Perhaps even more so. I will do my best for my father — and for myself — while she is gone, still, we will be grateful when she returns. I miss her, and she hasn’t left yet. Pam Pardy Ghent lives in Harbour Mille. Her column returns Oct. 13.
DETAILS
Mohair scarf $42, mittens $29, and tam $35; knit mohair headband $18 and crocheted spotted hat $33; Quoyle rollneck knit sweater $179. Woof designed the Quoyle sweater for actor Kevin Spacey for his role as Quoyle in The Shipping News. The sweater was so well-received, the producer of the film gave 400 sweaters as a gift to the cast and crew at the end of the shoot. Woof Design is a Newfoundland cottage industry. The products are handcrafted in Newfoundland homes using domestic knitting machines. Paul Daly/The Independent
An apple with a side of fries, please Isn’t it just the way it goes — in the morning, we have the best intentions and reach for an apple or some yogurt for a snack. But by around 4 or 5 p.m., we’re into the hard stuff — potato chips and chocolate bars. At least, that’s what a survey of Canadians has found. The NPD Snacking Report followed 3,000 people, including kids, who were asked to complete diaries about their food intake for one week in 2005. As the report puts it, fresh fruit “represented 20 per cent of snack food eating occasions” in 2005, while chocolate, yogurt and cookies came in at 7 per cent and potato chips at 6 per cent. Yogurt and fruit, that’s what we say we eat. Uh-huh. But somehow the ’70s hit song Junk Food Junkie by Larry Groce comes to mind: “You know I love that organic cooking, I always ask for more, and they call me Mr. Natural, on down to the health food store.” (But late at night, he hits his hidden stash.) “I’m afraid someday they’ll find me, just stretched out on my bed, with a handful of Pringles potato chips, and a Ding Dong by my head.”
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SEPTEMBER 29, 2006
24 • INDEPENDENTSTYLE
Beer with divine links By Josh Rubin Torstar wire service o most people, the phrase “God’s work” means something like raising funds for a new Sunday school or volunteering at a seniors’ home. To beer drinkers, it might mean what’s being made at the Abbey of Our Dear Lady of the Holy Heart in Belgium. The abbey, better known as Westmalle, was founded in 1794. A few decades later, it began brewing beer. At first, it started out strictly as a lunchtime refreshment for the Trappist monks. During times of fasting, it often served as nourishment as well. As word of the beer’s excellent quality spread, the monks began to sell some at the abbey’s gate. Over the years, the brewery expanded. Across Belgium, other abbeys had started up their own tasty cottage industries, and abbey beer, as it came to be known, saw its fame spread far and wide. Many abbeys sold their breweries to out-
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How sweet it is ross-out candy is popular with juveniles of all ages. This item is sure to please: a candy scab that comes in its own bandage-like wrapping. Whip it out, open it up, have a few licks and listen to the gratifying ewwww … from your audience. The “scab” is “pressed dextrose,” according to candywarehouse.com, which sells the Lick Your Wounds Candy Scabs. Just $19.80 US for two pounds of these suckers. The bad news is, kids, first of all, they’re currently sold out. Second, the website will ship to Canada, but only for a $200 U.S. minimum order. But hey, they sell other candy, too, so you could make up a mixed order. How about some Fear Factor candy cockroaches? Or hairy chocolate ears for Halloween? Check out http://store.candywarehouse.com.
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siders, as demand for the beer outstripped the ability of small monastic orders to produce it. Some outside brewers even started creating their own versions of the brew, without any connection to any abbey. For purists, though, there’s nothing like the real thing, which is referred to as Trappist, to distinguish it from “abbey style” beer in the same way that Champagne refers exclusively to sparkling wine from a small region in France. Just seven breweries — six in Belgium, one in the Netherlands — are allowed to call their beer Trappist. This means that it is made at a monastery and is either produced by the monks themselves or the brewery is directly under their control. All of the Trappist breweries produce a broadly similar style of strong ale. (The Westvleteren abbey’s product has been called the world’s greatest beer, although good luck getting your hands on any.) Westmalle is perhaps best known among beer aficionados as the first brewery to produce a Tripel, which contains roughly three times the malt of the lunchtime refreshment the monks
originally made. Much less frequently seen in North America is Westmalle’s Dubbel, which is currently on offer in Ontario as part of the LCBO’s fall release. The Dubbel, which has roughly twice as much malt as the original ale, is a masterpiece of the brewer’s art. It’s a rich, dark, chestnutcoloured ale with a hint of sweetness and just the right touch of bitterness. Like other Trappist ales, it’s been given another hit of yeast as it’s bottled, so a second fermentation takes place in the bottle. That adds another layer of complexity to the flavour and aroma. It also converts more of the sugar in the malt to alcohol. At 7 per cent, this is fairly potent stuff, so it’s a beer to be savoured. Sadly, there are no longer any monks working the production lines at Westmalle. It’s “too heavy” a burden, according to spokesperson Marleen Hurdak. They still, however, have final say on all brewing matters. And besides, it’s not as if they’ve given up producing tasty things, Hurdak points out. “Our monks have a farm with 120 cows, and they do make cheese.”
First lady of wax By Philip Marchand Torstar wire service he was a talented artist and a pioneer in that high-growth industry: celebrity worship.
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Today you can go to the heart of her empire, Madame Tussauds in London, England, and gape at waxen celebrity after waxen celebrity, including a Brad Pitt with squeezable buttocks. But her first subjects were from a higher station in life. Marie Tussaud was a pillar of respectability in Victorian England and a survivor of the French Revolution, a skilled businesswoman who, in the days of the Terror, bribed the executioner to borrow the freshly severed heads of famous victims. She learned to model in wax from her partner, a man named Dr. Curtius. (He was the one who actually arranged the bribes to the executioner.) Together, in pre-Revolutionary days, they displayed before curious crowds their replica of the royal family at the dining table: a fateful step in the descent of royalty from sacred figures to tabloid fodder. “The female spectators were looking at the figure of Marie Antoinette for style tips, trying to be like the queen, imitating the queen,” says Kate Berridge, author of a new biography, Madame Tussaud: A Life In Wax. “This sets into motion all sorts of dangerous developments.” In 1802, after Tussaud moved across the English Channel, she made her fortune displaying a wax effigy of Napoleon, a figure of endless fascination for the English. “It’s almost impossible for us to conceive of a monochromatic world where unfamiliarity with the appearance of public figures was the norm,” Berridge says. “Illustrated periodicals came surprisingly late in England. Up to about 1840, therefore, these wax, lifelike figures were a source of utmost wonder. These displays were a news service, they were public information.” Tussaud’s famous museum has been a London attraction since the 1830s. Despite all the advances in broadcast technology, the wax effigies retain their appeal: new Madame Tussauds have been established in New York City, Las Vegas, Hong Kong and most recently in Shanghai. These establishments are not to be confused with the Tussaud’s wax museum in Niagara Falls, Ont., part of a lesser chain of museums with franchises in places such as Grand Prairie, Tex., founded by Louis Tussaud, a man Berridge calls a “renegade relation” of Marie Tussaud. The Niagara Falls museum, in the recollection of this reporter, fea-
Wax figures of actors Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt on display at Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum in New York. Keith Bedford/Reuters
tured awful representations of famous people like President John F. Kennedy. However, this very awfulness can be part of the appeal of a waxworks, Berridge points out — along with the scenes from medieval torture chambers, a dependable favourite. But surely the London museum, the heart of the Madame Tussaud empire, is a higher-class affair. “It’s entertainment-based now,” Berridge says. “It really is, and getting more so. Brad Pitt has squeezable buttocks. The educational function has gone by the wayside. Even the observatory has been converted into something called ‘Star Dome — a celebrity experience.’” Berridge, a veteran “forty-something” London-based journalist, is the author of a previous book entitled Vigor Mortis: The End of the Death Taboo, described in the dust jacket of the present book as a “provocative social history of attitudes toward death.” When the conversation switches from a discussion of this first book to the question of why waxworks tend to be macabre, Berridge takes alarm, as if finding herself in danger of being presented as a professional crepe hanger. “This is an interesting story,” she says of her Madame Tussaud book. “This is not deathly. If I have any request for you, it’s not to present me as this person with a morbid fixation.” Fair enough. Berridge certainly doesn’t create that impression in person. Also, the connection between her two books is rich social history, not the presence of flesh-creeping material. But why are waxworks so often associated with things like medieval torture chambers and celebrity murderers? Berridge cites Charles Dickens, who was fascinated with Madame Tussaud and her wax effigies. “When Dickens visited the Paris morgue, he said that the most disconcerting thing about dead people was that they did not return your gaze,” Berridge says. “That’s the same with waxworks. They can be truly life-like, with life-like hair and features — but with these dead eyes.”
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Car guts and glory ike most of the population, I didn’t have a clue about cars. Put gas in ’em and drive around, that’s about it. Of course I was very young and cars back then were huge horse-drawn affairs. My younger brother bought a car and that changed everything. He spent 90 per cent of the time crawling around under it and hauling the guts out of it. I thought it was hilarious, but at the same time I was intrigued. One of the benchmarks of genius is the ability to explain complex theories in plain language. Luckily for me, he was naturally possessed with this quality, or I certainly wouldn’t be writing about it now. While up to his elbows in ... stuff … he explained the combination of mechanical systems, worked his magic and I learned. We laughed, cursed, drank beer in the driveway, and worked on his old car. After my education in engines we moved onto painting, which he figured should never be attempted in half measures. So he removed the
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entire interior — seats and carpet, the whole shot, On that fine summer day my brother did verily everything. Looking back on it now he probably stomp onto the gas pedal and laid a mighty patch went overboard, but then again I was just a half- of rubber in front of our humble abode, much to wizard and he was a wild child. the delight of all assembled. His car was gutted, sitting in the I don’t know how Mom put up with driveway, behind Mom’s car and she all our crap; it was, after all, the 1970s was going out so the hotrod had to and safety wasn’t invented yet. move. My brother put a milk-crate in his The resulting vehicular momentum car for a driver’s seat and hopped in. dislodged my brother from his milkYou don’t realize how tall car seats are crate perch and he rolled all the way to until they’re gone. He sat behind the the back of the trunk, totally unencumwheel, nose level with the door, thus bered by the usual interior trappings like achieving the much desired Low Rider seats and stuff. effect. All the rage in Mexico, east Los Me and the crowd were treated to the MARK WOOD Angeles and, back then, the parent’s spectacle of an empty car shooting down driveway. the road, but then again, I’m an automoWOODY’S tive journalist, not a crime reporter, so A small crowd gathered to watch my “compadre” move his “mochine” and WHEELS nothing happened. He recovered gracecalled for a “patch of rubber” to be fully, dove forward and caught the brake “burned out” in front of the “’rents pedal with his hand. Anyone can use one hacienda.” with their feet, sitting comfortably on a car seat. It You can tell by all the quotation marks that an takes skill to dive out of a trunk and stop a car. He urban legend is about to unfold. got right back in Mexican mode and parked the
car. Nothing to see here, folks! I learned a lot from that kid and I always decline the compliment from him that he learned a lot from me, too. We both grew up and left the driveway in peace. But not before he left a monument that still stands today. He was also an artist who delved in T-shirts and other freehand wonders like the mural of Jimi Hendrix that remains on his bedroom wall. From there he became an architectural draftsman, progressed to an AutoCAD program and eventually took the position as center of gravity co-ordinator for the Hibernia gravity-based structure. Yeah, my brother balanced the Eighth Wonder of the World. These days he’s in demand as facilities planner on huge projects in Alberta. Companies constantly bombard him with job offers and naturally he’s paid a king’s ransom, as he should. And I have half an idea about ... stuff. Mark Wood of Portugal Cove-St. Philip’s is quite proud of his brother Paul.
26 • INDEPENDENTSHIFT
SEPTEMBER 29, 2006
Motorsport equivalent of cottage country NASCAR drivers Robby Gordon in his #7 Chevrolet and Bobby Labonte in his #43 Dodge drive past Jeff Burton in his #31 Chevrolet as he spins out.
t was nice to see Jeff Burton win a Nextel Cup race last weekend and justify his presence in the 10-driver NASCAR Chase for the Championship. That leaves Mark Martin as the only “playoff player” not to have won a race this year. Kasey Kahne, who just squeezed in on the last night of the “regular season” three weeks ago at Richmond, is having bad luck and will probably finish well back in the playoff but his year-long record illustrates precisely what’s the matter with the Chase format. Kasey Kahne won five (count ’em, 5) Nextel Cup races this year but was not going to make the Chase — until he did at the last second. Tony Stewart is the defending champion. He won two races — and didn’t make it into the playoff. Kurt Busch won a race and he’s on the outside looking in. Ditto Greg Biffle.
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Nonsense. Memo to NASCAR: if you want to improve the Chase, by all means continue with the format that rewards the top 10 drivers (and those within 400 points at the cuttoff). Consistency should count. But then reward accomplishment. Add any other driver who wins a race during the regular season. It is absolute folly to have drivers who haven’t won in, and winners out. And automatically include the previous year’s champion, too. The champ must be able to defend his title in combat. You’re welcome. WRAPPING UP The first paragraph of the press release was short and to the point: “Mosport International Raceway wraps up the road racing season Sept. 30-Oct. 1 with one of the most entertain-
ing and affordable weekends of the year — the Mosport/CASC Celebration of Motorsport 2006.” Translation: All the club racers will be in action and final races of the season run. And it’s free. Just go to the website (www.casc.on.ca) and print yourself out a ticket — or 20. It will also mark the end of another season of watching racing, talking about racing, arguing about racing and just generally carrying on about racing by a totally unorganized organization at Mosport that’s known as Corner Two Racing. One any given race weekend, the population of Corner Two and the Corner Two Annex (the people who make up Corner Two Racing) can range from five people to 50. All sorts of people come and go. Some might show up every race; others might show up once a year. Some have motor homes and house trailers,
Dave Ferrell/Reuters
others have tent trailers or just plain, old, announcer might intone after reading the ordinary, sticks-in-the-ground canvas epistle. and a ground sheet. For several years at the back of the It is, in reality, the motormotorsport monthly, PRN, sport equivalent of cottage Corner Two regulars Pete country. The only differMcMurty and Rick Creuzburg ence, as one of the regulars contributed a pot-pourri of puts it, is that the cottagers motorsport information, views, don’t fish and they don’t rumours and just plain old gosgolf. Their collective intersip about the group. est is racing. It was eventually cancelled As well as eating, drinkfor lack of interest. The only ing and laughing — not necpeople who read it were in it. NORRIS essarily in that order. Ed Moody is a motorsport hisMCDONALD Their activities are tolertorian. Known as Mr. Ed (only a ated with good humour and few of the folks up there use full grace — by most. names when introducing themTrack officials are periodselves), he has been a fixture at ically handed snippets of Mosport since it opened in 1961. information about the comings and “I came with my mom the first time goings within the community. “Situation and we sat in lawn chairs beside what is at Corner Two abnormal, as distinct from now the Castrol Tower,” he said. “It wassituation normal at all other corners,” an n’t built then and the view was great. When they put up the tower the next year, I moved to Corner Two. I’ve been there ever since. “It’s the best place to get an over-all understanding of what’s going on in a race. The marshals (who have radio communication) let us know if there’s an incident we can’t see, so we’re always in touch. “We sit around the campfire all night and then we watch racing all day. It’s the perfect life.” But Moody, who had a pot of spaghetti sauce simmering on the stove of his Mississauga digs when we talked last (“I expect we’ll feed 20-25 at dinner Friday night”) said the character who really created the Corner Two community is a retired Canadian soldier/atomic energy employee from Pembroke, Ont., named Martin Martinell - better known as “Marty the Mayor.” Marty, who lives race weekends in what is now his third motorhome that he parks in the same spot year-after-year under a tree at Corner Two, has been faithfully attending races at Mosport for 35 years. He credits (the late) Harvey Hudes for fighting tooth and nail to keep Mosport in business during a very trying and turbulent period in the 1980s and ’90s after the Formula One race was moved to Montreal and the Indy cars established themselves in downtown Toronto — among other setbacks. He says the worst thing that happened to Mosport was the death of Hudes in 1996. The best thing? When U.S. businessman Don Panoz gained control of the property in 1998. “When Harvey died, the place could have been lost,” he said. “Bernie Kamin (Hudes’s partner) tried some things that didn’t work out and he had to leave. An American fellow named Andy Evans and his group took over but that didn’t work out either. Mosport was put up for sale and Dr. Panoz bought it. “The good thing here was that Myles Brandt (general manager) was kept on throughout this period and he was the link to the past that was needed in order for the business to move forward.” In 2000, Marty the Mayor, 63, decided that something had to be built to commemorate Hudes. “The Corner Two people agreed that something should be done. I asked, but Mosport wasn’t going to do anything and that if I was going to do something I needed the permission of the Hudes family. Myles got that for me.” It took him a weekend, his own cash, most of his own labour and 30 bags of cement but Marty the Mayor built a monument for Harvey Hudes. It’s a stone cairn high on the hill overlooking Corner Two and boasts a 30-foot flagpole from whence the Maple Leaf flag flies on race weekends. A bronze plaque says simply: “In Memory of Mr. Mosport, Harvey Hudes, 1932-1996.” If you haven’t seen it, and you’re at Mosport this weekend, wander on up to Corner Two and ask for Marty or Mr. Ed and they’ll show you around. If you’re nice to them, and if you happen to have something for either the communal dinner or the beer fridge, they might even let you stay.
TRACK TALK
SEPTEMBER 29, 2006
INDEPENDENTSHIFT • 27
A hitchhiker’s guide What to do to discourage kids from thumbing a ride? Tell the truth he last time we drove to the cotI babbled a little about the iconic tage, we saw something odd. travels of Jack Kerouac and Hunter S. Hitchhikers. Thompson, but glazed eyes told me “Hey! What are they doing? That they only cared about our Winnipegsign said Winnipeg!” bound duo and when they’d Jackson hooted in my ear last showered. I recalled my from the back seat. mom picking up a hitchhiker “Well, they’re trying to get once, and told the boys. I to Winnipeg,” I replied. don’t remember if my dad “Do they know how hard was with us, but I distinctly it’s going to be to find somerecall a clean-cut boy hopone going all the way to ping into the back of our staWinnipeg from here, that’ll tion wagon, looking like he’d stop and get ’em?” he asked. just popped out of an LORRAINE SOMMERFELD I gave the boys a crash Abercrombie and Fitch ad. course in hitchhiking. I My mom had a type. Come explained it usually involves to think of it, I’m sure my many, many rides, and a dad wasn’t with us. great deal of discomfort and We drove him probably hassle if those rides never five miles or so, in town. I materialize. I told them they are never remember scooching as far across the allowed to hitchhike because not only back seat as I could, staring at this is it against the law, their mother will polite stranger. Looking back, he was kill them. probably some student heading home “How long do they stand there? Are for Sunday dinner, no doubt taking they cold? How do they eat? How do with him a story of a little girl who didthey go to the bathroom? Where do n’t blink for five miles. they sleep? Why don’t they take a bus? The boys asked if we’d ever taken a Where are they from? Why is it ille- hitchhiker all the way to the cottage. I gal?” The questions flew as I saw their told them we couldn’t even stand our source disappearing in my rearview own family enough to travel that far mirror. with them, let alone a stranger. I told
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them of all the dangers that now lurked out there, and how it was never safe to give, or take, a ride from someone they didn’t know. I regaled them with tales of serial killers and escaped convicts that haunted the roadways. I brought urban legends to life, all in the name of good parenting. My theory? If you can’t teach them, scare the hell out of them. Of course as I blundered on, my high horse securely saddled beneath me, they sprung the trap. Jackson asked me if I’d ever hitchhiked. Contrary to some teachings, I tell my kids the truth. I do some adapting, but the essence is true. “Once. Dumbest thing I ever did,” I replied. Jackson forgot Winnipeg, as his eyes found mine in the mirror. With ears full of tales of escaped killers and fearsome robberies, his jaw dropped. “No way. When?” I told them that once, at age 17, I’d been visiting a friend at college in the next town. I was still in high school, so I was feeling pretty grown up and worldly. We blithely blew off our planned ride home, and decided we would hitch. Like we did it all the time. Sure.
I stood on the side of the road and stuck out my thumb. It was 4 p.m. on a sunny day in a busy city. My friend quivered in the shadows, wondering just how dead I was going to get her. A guy pulled up in a Chevette. It didn’t take long; we were cute back then. I looked the car over, and with an arrogance I must have borrowed from somewhere, I said “no thanks.” Mr. Chevette shrugged and took off. My friend stormed from her hiding place as the only courage she had for this left with him.
I told her if I was going to hitchhike only once, it wasn’t going to be in a Chevette. As if on cue, a 1976 black Trans Am pulled up. It had the requisite gold eagle painted on the hood. Thanks only to dumb luck, the guy took us home and dropped us around the corner. As I got out of the car, I realized my legs were rubber from fear. I guess some of us get to stay safe, in order to pass on how stupid we were. www.lorraineonline.ca
GM facilities cut energy use and add renewable energy sources
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Automaker Chief Operating Officers Rick Wagoner of General Motors (R), William Ford of Ford Motors (C) and Tom LaSorda of Chrysler walk through the halls of Capitol Hill in Washington May 18, 2006. U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert on Thursday told chief executives of the beleaguered Detroit-based auto companies that they can work together to help the industry produce more fuel-efficient vehicles. REUTERS/Jim Young
Extended warranties can prolong hassles
! s Offers End Oct. 2 y a D l Fina 2006
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At least Murphy is dealing directly with DaimlerChrysler Canada. I get many complaints from people who buy an illiam Murphy leases a 2004 Dodge extended warranty from their car dealer and find Grand Caravan. He pays $40 a month out later it’s from an independent company. for a plan to cover his car’s scheduled While the Ontario Motor Vehicle Industry maintenance. Council regulates car dealers, it doesn’t have But the hassles he had while in the United jurisdiction over the outside warranties they sell. States made him question the “Alas, third-party warranty usefulness of the service concompanies are not regulated,” tract. says Mary Jane South, deputy regAn explanation Murphy, who lives in istrar. Tillsonburg, rented a condo Complaints I hear most often: might lead to lower last March near Fort Myers, • The extended warranty doesFla. He went to a local n’t cover what’s wrong with the warranty sales, but Chrysler dealer on a Saturday car. morning for an oil change and • Coverage is refused if you customers deserve tire rotation. don’t do the required mainte“When I presented my servnance. to know what kind ice contract card, the service • Repairs are done with used manager absolutely refused to of protection they’re parts, not new parts. honour it. He told me it was • You need to pay an activation being offered. not his problem,” he said. fee of $25 or $50 to get started. Murphy tried calling Terry Warne paid $2,000 for an Chrysler’s customer service, extended warranty for his new but found no one answered the phones on week- Pontiac Grand Am in 2002. ends. This summer, he had mechanical problems with On Monday, he was told to go back to the same his car — and found himself dealing with an dealer and pay for the work. He could then bill unfriendly call centre in Ohio. His extended warDaimlerChrysler Canada Inc. ranty provider, formerly based in Canada, was “I had already driven 100 kilometres,” he said. sold to a U.S. firm last year. “I wasn’t about to waste more of my time and gas “When I purchased the extended warranty from driving back to the dealer.” a GM dealership, I was certainly under the He eventually got Chrysler to reimburse him impression that General Motors was behind the for work done at an independent repair shop. But warranty — and if they weren’t, why wasn’t that he’s still unhappy. made explicitly clear?” he asks. “The arrogance of the young service manager Few large automakers offer their own extended in Fort Myers was quite a shock,” he said. warranties any more. So, it’s buyer beware. “Also, everyone I talked to through this whole Ask for a copy of the contract and read the fine incident, both at my dealership and at Chrysler print. Talk to dealers about their experience. customer service, expressed frustration and a lack Check the Internet for complaints. of faith in this maintenance program. Find out if the third-party warranty is insured. “They were all aware that some dealers decline Is there another company that will take over if the the card, yet Chrysler has never notified its cus- original provider goes under? tomers.” If the warranty is not insured, the dealer may be Stuart Schorr, a spokesman for Daimler- on the hook in a business failure. Chrysler Canada in Windsor, apologized for the “Our standards of business practice state when inconvenience. dealers sell uninsured warranties, they will “We do emphasize that customers get their assume the warranty company’s obligations under vehicle serviced at the selling dealer and that if the agreement if the warranty company fails to do there are any problems when trying to get service so,” said South of the vehicle industry council. from a different dealer, we will reimburse the cusDealers have a duty to explain to customers that tomer directly,” he said. they’re offering a third-party extended warranty, “We recognize that dealers outside of Canada said consumer advocate Mohamed Bouchama of might not be able to verify the contract because of Car Help Canada. different computer systems, but we will cover the An explanation might lead to lower warranty cost regardless.” sales, but customers deserve to know what kind of
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expected 72.5 trillion BTUs by the end of the year in GM’s North American region. “The combination of cost and environmental benefits makes renewable energy sources extremely important to us,” Skiven says. “Our use of alternative energy is a sound business decision, resulting in lower costs and a broader portfolio of energy sources.” General Motors also has achieved substantial energy use reduction as a result of its commitment to energy conservation initiatives in its operations. “Although renewable energy projects are highly visible and intriguing, equally important are consistent efforts to drive energy savings in our ongoing manufacturing operations,” says Skiven. “At General Motors, we believe that managing energy use is a vital part of our business,” Skiven says. “Smart energy decisions are not only good for the environment; they are good for the bottom line.”
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Washington, D.C.
28 • INDEPENDENTSHIFT
SEPTEMBER 29, 2006
WEEKLY DIVERSIONS ACROSS 1 Canadian who developed first cardiac pacemaker 6 Hodgepodge 10 And so on 13 Notice 17 Accustom 18 Call a sum a thumb 19 Also 20 Soviet news agency 21 Canadian Peter Robertson’s invention 22 Relating to the home 24 Opera solo 25 Synonym of 63A 26 Number of Canadian provinces 27 Caviar 28 Goose 30 Sweats 33 Control tower tool 34 N.B. artist Molly or Bruno 36 Didier’s “Darn it!” 37 Gather 39 Mo. that seems longer than it is 40 Flaw 42 Throwaway coin 43 Nfld. cover, often 46 Layered entrée at Luigi’s 48 Toronto’s Casa
Loma, e.g. 50 Hamlet’s infinitive 51 Useful 52 ___-jong 54 Success 55 “Super” Lemieux 56 Pesticide 57 ___ on parle français. 58 Wind up 59 Bonobo 60 Acts skittish 62 Heir, often 63 Synonym of 25A 64 City in N. France 67 Fly high 68 Little one 70 Worn out 72 Poet’s twilight 73 Uncork 74 Sask. town named Canada backwards 76 Summer time in Black Diamond 77 Guides 78 Fishing pole 79 ___ diving 81 Impassive 83 Groundbreaking concepts (2 wds.) 85 Frozen drips 86 Soft infant food 87 Friend 88 Bear constellation 92 Bear with cold food
93 Roadside creature in Stewiacke, N.S. 96 Royal symbol 97 Mace, to nutmeg 98 Public plugs 99 What to enclose with your ms. 100 Resign 101 Ancient Persian 102 St. John’s summer time 103 Sidewalk sale drinks 104 Streetcars DOWN 1 Snaky sound 2 ___ in a blue moon 3 Knitting stitch 4 Like ready-to-assemble houses 5 Put in stitches 6 Ancient 7 Treat as a celebrity 8 Doctrine 9 Lighter kind of opera 10 Major ending? 11 You (Fr.) 12 Tim Horton’s home town 13 Where fans may be found 14 Winter jacket 15 Willow 16 Russian despot
23 Mayday! 26 Memento 29 Hop-drying kiln 31 Nifty devices 32 Kind of squash 34 ___ around the bush 35 Volcanic glass 37 Playing the part 38 Reactor disaster 39 Winter affliction 41 Starved 43 Front leg 44 Geisha’s sash 45 Earth: prefix 47 Birch 49 Big shaggy canine 50 Hoofed, snouted animal 53 Oak seeds 55 Strait between Sumatra and Malaysia 60 Wind dir. 61 Soil turner 65 ___ and the swan 66 Stratford summer time 68 Astronaut 69 Orillia folk festival 71 Stand for a portrait? 73 Trompe l’___ 75 Pertaining to fat 77 Place 80 Abusive moneylender 81 Frighten
82 Fearful 83 Flying mammal 84 Swedes’ neighbours
85 Mosque prayer leader 86 Sibilant signal 89 Tomato variety
90 Go through channels? 91 Formicary residents 94 Say further
95 Mom and ___ 96 Souris summer time Solutions page 31
WEEKLY STARS ARIES (MAR. 21 TO APR. 19) Cosmic changes create a potential for disruptions in your travel plans. In the meantime, you might want to consider shifting your focus to another area of your life that needs attention. TAURUS (APR. 20 TO MAY 20) It’s a good time for beauty-loving Bovines to enjoy something special for the senses. It will restore your spirit and return you to the workaday world ready for the next challenge. GEMINI (MAY 21 TO JUNE 20) With your planetary ruler, Mercury, going retrograde, you might want to slow down the pace in pursuing some of your projects. Rushing things could be counterproductive. CANCER (JUNE 21 TO JULY 22)
Tensions begin to ease in those once-testy relationships. This helps create a more positive aspect all around. Expect to hear news that could lead you to rethink a recent decision. LEO (JULY 23 TO AUG. 22) The pace of activity that had slowed last week now begins to pick up. This is good news for Leos and Leonas who have careerbuilding plans that need to be put into operation. VIRGO (AUG. 23 TO SEPT. 22) Venus offers encouragement to romance-seeking Virgos who are ready to get up, get out and meet more people, one of whom could be that long-sought soulmate. LIBRA (SEPT. 23 TO OCT. 22) An ongoing problem with a coworker might need to be sent to
arbitration. Get all your facts together so that you have a solid base from which to make your argument. SCORPIO (OCT. 23 TO NOV. 21) You are usually decisive about most matters. But you might want to defer your decision making this week until you get more facts. Someone is holding out on you. SAGITTARIUS (NOV. 22 TO DEC. 21) That quiet period is ending, and a new burst of activity creates some problems at the workplace. But things are soon resolved, and everything goes back to normal. CAPRICORN (DEC. 22 TO JAN. 19) Relationships could be either helpful or hurtful as you pursue your career goals. You might have to make some difficult
choices depending on what your priorities are. AQUARIUS (JAN. 20 TO FEB.18) You might still have some doubts about a career move that could involve a lot of travel. If so, continue to check things out until you feel secure about making a decision. PISCES (FEB. 19 TO MAR. 20) Love rules as Venus continues to exercise her cosmic influence on both single and attached Pisces. New developments might cause you to change your travel plans. BORN THIS WEEK You often think of others before you consider your own needs. You enjoy helping people and would make a fine teacher or caregiver. (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 31
INDEPENDENTSPORTS
FRIDAY THROUGH THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 29-OCTOBER 5, 2006 — PAGE 29
Paul Daly/The Independent
Stepping up With seven injured Fog Devils out of the line-up, Wes Welcher wears weight well By Bob White For The Independent es Welcher has been asked to step up his game for the good of the team. The 19-year-old from Paradise, named as an assistant captain of the St. John’s Fog Devils in the pre-season, has done just that. With four goals in four games to start the season, Welcher has helped the team to a decent 2-2 start. However, goal scoring and assists are but one measure of his leadership abilities. With seven regulars already out of the lineup with a variety of injuries, the Fog Devils are a hurtin’ squad. Welcher knows more will be asked of him because of this, but this is his third
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season in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League (his first was with Moncton), and he says he’s ready to contribute. As an elder statesman on the team — if you can be called that at 19 — Welcher will be expected to help guide some of the rookies. “With so many veterans hurt to start the season, it basically leaves positions for the younger guys to step up into,” Welcher says. “I’m hoping to lead by example and hopefully they can build off us veterans and help the team. “Guys like myself and Ryan Graham (who also has four goals to start the season), if we keep our play up the others can feed off that and hopefully it can rub off and the rest of the team.” Welcher says he’s honoured to be one of
the team’s captains. “I’m proud to be wearing that letter for this group of guys and this organization, which is great to play for.” Welcher seems to have the intangibles coaches look for in a captain, so it’s not surprising to learn he wants to become an RCMP officer when his junior days are over. It’s been a dream of his since he was a kid, and while he plans to pursue hockey as long as he can, he’s smart enough to know he needs to have career plans. “Everyone has their dreams, and I’d never turn down the chance to pursue hockey as a pro, but I’m trying to be realistic. I don’t want to be chasing something that might be out of my reach and then See “We have,” page 30
Please, clean your rifle Paul Smith just can’t relate to a man who has no respect for his shootin’ iron t’s downright nasty the way some men treat their rifles. I’m not being sexist, I just haven’t seen a woman treat a gun badly. Rust on a rifle affects me like long fingernails scratching over a chalkboard, or a knife that slips off a bone and screeches across a glass plate. My whole being quivers in utter disgust when I see a finely crafted shootin’ iron so unloved. I just can’t relate to a man who has no respect for his rifle. The finer the rifle the more it hurts to see it without a good home. A few years back, a new acquaintance asked Goldie and I to stop by for a visit. We did so on a late summer
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PAUL SMITH
The Rock
Outdoors evening. Fall was approaching, so naturally the conversation gravitated to moose hunting. My host told me about his 30-30 lever gun that had taken its share of big four-legged critters. “Want to see her?” “Sure,” says I. Our wives chatted away in the kitchen and I followed my fellow hunter out into the back porch. “Funny place to keep a gun cabinet,” I’m thinking. He
led me to the closet and opened the folding door. My mind was racing … surely, Lord, he doesn’t store his rifle in a corner of the back porch coat and boot closet? Images of snow-covered winter boots kicked up against an American Black Walnut stock and grains of rust pitting greedily into fine blued steel clouded my judgement. “You keep your gun in the closet?” involuntarily erupted from my voice box in a tone that conveyed much more than the actual words. I’m sure he sensed I wasn’t impressed. I braced myself as he reached into the dingy depths, pushing aside pool noodles and
softball bats. The rifle he extracted through his wife’s long winter coats left me appalled. I was expecting a plain-Jane field grade model 94 Winchester 3030. But before my eyes appeared a rifle I’ve lusted over since 1986, when Winchester released my favourite limited edition commemorative version of its quintessential lever action woods rifle. I cradled its lovely warm walnut stock and thumbed over the embedded Ducks Unlimited medallion. Caressing the engraved pewter-plated receiver, I felt something totally repugnant. Rust was rearing its ugly head.
The winter boots covered in snow and driveway salt had been most unkind. The barrel was pitted on the outside, ruining the aesthetics of this finely crafted firearm — but on the inside it was much worse. Opening the action and looking into the barrel confirmed my worst fears. The bore (inside of the barrel) was choked with a filthy sludge of rust, copper and burnt gunpowder. “Nice gun, but it could use a little oil and elbow grease,” was my best effort at being polite and tactful. We never became hunting buddies. See “Rifles,” page 30
30 • INDEPENDENTSPORTS
SEPTEMBER 29, 2006
Baumann swims back home Olympic hero to run new program for Canadians By Randy Starkman Torstar wire service he maple leaf tattooed over Alex Baumann’s heart has faded in colour over the years in Australia, but never in importance. The Canadian swim legend is coming home after 15 years to direct the drive for gold at the Summer Olympics. He is the new director of the Canadian Olympic Committee’s new Road to Excellence program. There was great criticism of the Canadian team’s performance at the 2004 Athens Summer Games, when the country placed a dismal 21st in the medal standings with three gold, six silver and three bronze. The program Baumann will oversee is the COC’s summer version of Own the Podium, which proved such a success at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy, and is a $110 million initiative created primarily to make Canada the No.1 nation at the 2010 Vancouver Winter Games. Baumann knew how to get on a podium. The lanky swimmer from Sudbury smashed world records in both the 200- and 400-metre individual medley races to win two Olympic gold medals at the 1984 Games in Los Angeles.
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Solutions for crossword on page 28
He became a Canadian icon, was immortalized in a Ken Danby painting and made an Officer of the Order of Canada. He set six world and 32 Canadian records while capturing 34 national swim titles and was as impressive out of the water as he was in it, always handling himself with class. Yet, somehow, the Canadian sports system couldn’t find a place for the bright and articulate athlete after he retired in 1987. He was essentially blackballed on the swimming scene for criticizing the Canadian swim program under then boss Dave Johnson. His departure for Australia, partly for family reasons because his wife Tracy is from there, has long been seen as a great loss for Canadian sport. Baumann has enjoyed great success as an administrator. His work has included being CEO of the Queensland Swimming Association, which in swimming-mad Australia is the equivalent of being general manager of the Montreal Canadiens. His association produced some of Australia’s top swimmers, including world-record holders Kierin Perkins and Susie O’Neill. He became executive director of Queensland Academy of Sport in
2002, helping produce many of Australia’s top Olympians. He oversaw a centre that had about 650 athletes in 25 programs in 21 sports and also had responsibility for identifying and cultivating future talent. Baumann, who will move to Ottawa with his wife and two children, Ashton, 13, and Tabitha, 11, said in Brisbane just before the 2000 Sydney Olympics that he couldn’t ever imagine returning to live in Canada “I go back to Canada and everybody thinks I’ve got an Australian accent and I come here and everyone thinks I sound like a Canadian,” Baumann said. “I probably don’t say ‘eh’ a lot any more. It’s quite interesting. My kids, even though they’re Australian, say ‘out’ like Canadians.” The COC botched negotiations with Baumann when he expressed interest in the CEO’s job in 2001 and never told him he didn’t make the short list. The new program is in its infancy and it remains to be seen what kind of resources will be devoted to it. Baumann was helped in Australia because it’s a sports-mad country, but he will be returning to a culture that only cares about Olympic sport every two years. That will be among his biggest challenges.
Rifles are meant to be used, but not abused From page 29 Why some hunters shell out hardearned cash for a rifle and then not care for it is difficult to understand. It really doesn’t take much effort to properly clean and maintain a firearm, and you’ll be rewarded with a rifle that shoots straight and pleases the eye for your whole lifetime. Then you can pass it on to your children for another lifetime of dependable service. I still own and treasure my father’s old 30-30; it’s well oiled, retired, and tucked away in my gun locker. Someday I will pass the rifle and its memories on to an enthusiastic and deserving hunter of the next generation. Rifles, unlike cars, are made to last lifetimes. Generally, rifles that appear abused on the outside are also ill-maintained on the inside and are prone to malfunctions and inaccuracy. I’m not talking about that well-worn but cared-for look that results from many years of hard hunting and even harder cleaning. Rifles are meant to be used, but not abused. Rusty dull tools reflect on the craftsmen. My first big-game rifle was a Savage Model 99 in .308 Winchester. My hand fit comfortably around the receiver and
‘We have to do it as a team’ From page 29
Solutions for sudoku on page 28
that’s how I carried it for many miles of youthful woods trudging. The gun blue was worn off under my grip, but the unprotected shiny metal was absolutely free of rust. I hunted in all sorts of weather and conditions from snow to sun and tundra to thick woods. Water, twigs and dirt were no stranger, but my rifle was stripped and thoroughly cleaned after each and every outing. I remember the day I bought my brand new Model 99, at Sears in the Village Mall when they still sold guns. I had drawn my first moose license and I just had to have a new rifle. It looked perfect, not a scratch on the stock, not a single flaw in the blued steel. After decades of wear and service, it inevitably had nicks on the stock and flaws in the bluing. The barrel still shone on the inside in spite of thousands of rounds and you wouldn’t find a molecule of rust with an electron microscope. It was better than new — it had character. Next week I’ll talk details on how to care for a rifle. Paul Smith is a freelance writer living in Spaniard’s Bay, enjoying all the outdoors Newfoundland and Labrador has to offer. flyfishtherock@hotmail.com
have nothing to fall back on.” Welcher is currently taking two courses at Memorial, which is about all he can manage with hockey taking up so much of his time. He does, however, enjoy being able to do all of it in the comfort of home. Knowing what it’s like to play hockey away from home after spending a season in New Brunswick, Welcher loves the opportunity to regularly play in front of friends and family and, of course, those homecooked meals. “I had a great experience my first year, I had great billets and it was a great town. But here, I’m used to the surroundings and getting to go to Mile One everyday is just beautiful.” Welcher brings intensity to the Fog Devils’ lineup, allowing him to be an effective two-way player — always his forte. He came into the league with a penchant for penalty killing and he still has that ability, while his offensive game has grown. With the new regulations and the resulting increase in penalties and power plays,
a supportive team
Welcher figures as a key player for the Fog Devils. Welcher says he likes the new rules, even though the number of penalties called has been a major adjustment for all hands — players, coaches and referees. “All the penalties can definitely work in your favour, but they can also work against you too.” Asked if he has set any goals for the new season, Welcher is again realistic, looking more at team goals than individual ones. Yes, it would be great to score more, but Welcher wants the Devils to build on last year’s success. The team made the playoffs — just barely — in their inaugural season. With so many injuries so early in the season, it would be understandable if the team faltered, but Welcher and his teammates are determined to not let that happen. “We have to do it as a team, the vets have to step up and the younger guys have to fill in.” Sounds like a true leader. whitebobby@yahoo.ca
delivering the best In preparing to achieve my curling goals, I always benefit from the support of great team-mates, giving us the best chance to face our sporting challenges. At Cancer Centres throughout this province, many people are meeting much bigger challenges of their own. In excellent conditions, they are given the best opportunities to face their cancer, helped by our highly-qualified cancer care teams. Please support the Dr. H. Bliss Murphy Cancer Care Foundation, so we can provide for our teams to deliver the very best in cancer care. Thank you.
Brad Gushue, Honourary Chair, Cancer Care Foundation and Olympic Champion
1-877-999-7589 www.cancercarefoundation.nl.ca PHOTOGRAPHY BY PAUL DALY
DESIGNED AND PRODUCED BY COLOUR NL
SEPTEMBER 29, 2006
INDEPENDENTSPORTS • 31
Hockey minor in major U.S. markets TV, newspapers reduce coverage; ‘A niche sport’ says editor in L.A. By Chris Zelkovich Torstar wire service
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Paul Daly/The Independent
The Ultimate road trip By John Rieti For The Independent
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ravel is an essential part of sport. The pros get chartered planes, most amateur athletes know the agony of a bus-trip, and ultimate Frisbee players pack five guys into a Volkswagen Golf and drive across the province to throw a disc around for an afternoon. We leave the city Friday afternoon; our last chance to stretch comes as we toss the disc around a small parking lot on Duckworth. This is the second year players from Mile Zero Ultimate league made the trip to Corner Brook. The official goal for the St. John’s players is to promote the increasingly popular sport on the west coast. Robyn Auld, the league president, is in charge of running a short clinic and slinging business cards and Ultimate swag. The unofficial goal of the trip is partying. By nature, Ultimate is a very social sport with respect for everyone who plays at the core of its rules. The Spirit of the Game — Ultimate’s most important document — demands that its players be friendly, supportive and fun, above all else. The Lavababies, who are my teammates — four of whom are with me on this trip — are a fine example. Friday night’s stopover in Grand Falls isn’t for careful mental preparation for our game — it’s for liver degra-
dation at Kelly’s bar. If you’re traveling there I highly recommend going to see local cover band Young At Heart, and eating a dish called “the mess” at Hiscock’s restaurant which consists of wedge fries smothered in dressing, onion, gravy, chunks of hot dog, and ground beef. The next morning, it’s off to Corner Brook, which must be one of the most beautiful cities in the world. We head to a softball field overlooking the city, with its perpetual plume of white smoke interrupting the skyline. The outfield isn’t the best Ultimate field, but it’s much better than parking lots. Players in Corner Brook haven’t yet established a big enough following to demand field space. However, a small group has been playing four-on-four frisbee games regularly and they were out to prove they could take on the cityslickers. About 20 players formed their team – Mile 430. While Auld takes them through some simple drills they can later use in practices, the Lavababies lie on the grass. After the first pull (the equivalent of a kickoff in football) everyone is smiling again, and there is some great skill on display. Most games of Ultimate are simple pick-up games, which run about an hour or so. As we tire, and the rivalry on the field begins to build, a game to five points is called and the showdown is on. The Townies win 5-0. No matter. Afterwards, each team is
given three cheers and a lot of high fives for their efforts. Ultimate is probably the only sport where you give high fives to your opponents after they score on you. During the game two elderly women stop by to take in the action, I ask them what they think of the sport. “I think its great … but you’ll have to tell me how to play,” says Molly Tobin, a Corner Brook native. Even some neighborhood kids seem fascinated with our game. “What are they doing?” one kid asks. I ask him if he has a disc. “Yeah, but I don’t do that with it,” he says. To Peter MacDonald, who played for five years in Ottawa before moving to Corner Brook, the weekend is an excellent chance for some more intense competition. He says he’s very excited to be at the forefront of west coast ultimate. His girlfriend Suzanne Carey agrees, she’s hoping to start a summer league. Through their travel experiences and mine I can tell you, no matter where you go, Ultimate players are the same, spirited people. The drive back from sporting events is often subdued since everyone is tired and sick of each other. Our trip home is just as fun … and as we get back to St. John’s wondering how this trip could be better, we already know the answer — a night of fall-league games at King George V field.
ith a new season set to open next week, the National Hockey League is facing a new challenge to avoid hockey being dismissed as a minor sport in many major American markets. U.S. TV ratings for the NHL hit an all-time low last season and newspapers in the league’s two largest markets, New York and Los Angeles, have either decided against sending reporters on the road with their home teams or are considering doing so. “In our market, it is a niche sport,” Los Angeles Times sports editor Randy Harvey told a Philadelphia newspaper recently. The Times has decided not to travel with either the Kings or the Anaheim Ducks and says the seasonlong lockout in 2004-05 contributed to the lack of interest. The reduction in coverage follows a Stanley Cup final in June covered by reporters from only 17 of the league’s 30 cities. “It was probably the poorest representation that I can remember in my 30 years here,” says New York Post hockey writer Larry Brooks, past-president of the Professional Hockey Writers Association. The NHL has taken notice. “It’s certainly a concern … and it’s something we have to work on,” says NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly. “But I think it’s more reflective of the changing nature and dynamics of the entire media industry and the economics of hard-copy newspapers.” Last season, the New York Times didn’t send reporters on the road to cover the home team for much of the season and is considering staying home again this season. Sports editor Tom Jolly plans to cover the Rangers’ first road game in Philadelphia, but hasn’t decided about the rest of the season. Brooks agrees the lockout accelerated the trend to reduced hockey coverage. “Budgets of newspaper sports departments have been hit pretty hard and I think the lockout made it very easy for sports editors who aren’t especially tuned to hockey in general to cut back on coverage.” Detroit Free Press sports editor Gene Myers points out that his paper’s decision to skip the final was based more on the travel difficulties created by an Edmonton-Carolina matchup and the success of the Pistons and Tigers than a lack of interest in hockey. With an enlarged Sunday section this fall, Myers anticipates increased coverage this season. But that exposes hockey’s vulnerability. If anything has to be cut for budget concerns or lack of space, hockey is the most likely candidate to be squeezed out, even in traditional markets like Detroit and New York. The reason for this reduced ink, many say, is the league’s low profile on television, thanks mainly to a decision
Last season, the New York Times didn’t send reporters on the road to cover the home team for much of the season and is considering staying home again this season. to leave ESPN and move to the hardto-find Outdoor Life Network. While the NHL is everywhere on Canadian screens and dominates the sports ratings, it barely registers in the U.S. American television ratings hit an all-time low last season, with regularseason games on NBC barely beating out the likes of the Arena Football League. OLN is in a small percentage of American homes, most of those occupied by cycling and fishing fans who suddenly found hockey on their screens last fall. “Moving to OLN took them off the map,” says Brooks. “There’s no water cooler talk the next day because people haven’t seen the game. There’s no word of mouth generated by the games being on OLN. None. “There’s no pressure on sports editors to assign people to cover.” Daly admits television is near the top of the league’s targets, but he sees promise. “Improving television ratings has to be a focus and a priority for us,” he says. “Some of last year was a matter of the lockout and us being in new places (on television.)” But it’s not all gloom and doom at the NHL. The league set an attendance record last season, revenues are up and labour peace is at hand following a bitter lockout.
INDEPENDENTCLASSIFIED
FRIDAY THROUGH THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 29-OCTOBER 5, 2006 — PAGE 32
FEATURE HOME 22 GADWALL
Photos by Paul Daly/The Independent
w w w. s u b d i v i s i o n s . c a You won’t be disappointed in this bright and beautiful one-year-old 3+1 bedroom 2 storey, which is close to schools and shopping in a great family neighbourhood. The eat-in oak kitchen has ample cupboard space and a breakfast bar. It opens into the charming family room which features a propane fireplace. Master bedroom has his and her closets and an ensuite with a whirlpool and shower. The basement is complete with family room, bedroom and full bathroom. Transferrable Atlantic Home Warranty still remains on this property. Call Glenn Woodland of The Jim Burton Sales Team at 687-6699 for your private viewing. Asking $257,900.
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