2006-10-06

VOL. 4 ISSUE 40

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ST. JOHN’S, NEWFOUNDLAND AND LABRADOR — FRIDAY THROUGH THURSDAY, OCTOBER 6-12, 2006

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STYLE 21

LIFE 17

Fine furniture from Bonavista Bay studio

Through the lens of red-hot St. John’s filmmaker Noel Harris

‘Back away’

GIVING THANKS

FOURTH IN SIX-PART SERIES See related transcript from panel discussion, page 14; related stories pages 5, 13, 15.

STEPHANIE PORTER

I

f Newfoundland and Labrador had more members in the House of Commons, Andy Wells believes, there would be no question about it: this province would manage its own offshore resources.

“Once the Canadian, the national security of supply is guaranteed, not infringed on, as far as I’m concerned, the feds should back away and let us run it, like Alberta runs it,” said the St. John’s mayor during The Independent’s panel discussion about the Terms of Union.

“I can tell you right now,” Wells continued, “if we had 100 MPs or 75 MPs, if this was Quebec or Ontario, that’s exactly what Harper would do.

They’re determined to keep control.”

There was almost unanimous agreement among panelists about the oil and gas industry: control should be firmly in the hands of the province — just as if the riches were below the surface of the land.

Currently, offshore oil and gas resources are managed and regulated jointly by the feds and the province, through the seven-member CanadaNewfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board.

If power was transferred to the province, it is believed regulators could ensure Newfoundland and Labrador emerges as the “principal beneficiary” of the resource — as promised in the Atlantic Accord.

It’s a matter of dignity, the pride and promise of controlling one’s own destiny, of taking responsibility for successes and mistakes.

And, as Wells offers, that may offer the best hope of changing the way the industry — often seen by the public as money-hungry and secretive — operates.

The Independent’s panel of experts gathered to discuss the state of Newfoundland and Labrador, See “It’s our last,” page 4

QUOTE OF THE WEEK “We stepped in in 1992 to help out, but we have no need to invest in this kind of project. We’re in the business of taxation and spending those taxes to benefit Canadian citizens.”

— Federal Natural Resources critic Roy Cullen on the federal government's stake in Hibernia. See page 5.

SPORTS 29

The Independent welcomes newest columnist Don Power IN CAMERA 8-9

Sheilagh O’Leary’s photo portfolio LIFE 18-19

Tim Conway previews women’s film festival Ray Guy. . . . . . . . . . 5 Paper Trail . . . . . . 10 Gallery . . . . . . . . . . 19 Crossword . . . . . . 28

Students at St. Mary's Elementary School on Waterford Bridge Road in St. John's write Thanksgiving thoughts on paper feathers. The feathers decorate a turkey in the school gym.

Paul Daly/The Independent

‘What happens now?’

Province’s only anonymous health clinic closes doors; ‘great loss’ for voiceless and marginalized

By Stephanie Porter The Independent

T

here wasn’t a free moment when the anonymous health clinic in downtown St. John’s was open. It operated 10 hours a week, and there was virtually always a line-up of patients, waiting to avail of the services provided by the one nurse on staff.

The clinic was housed in the offices of the AIDS Committee of Newfoundland and Labrador, formerly on Harbour Drive. Last week, the committee’s new offices — and the Tommy Sexton Centre — opened in Pleasantville.

RYAN CLEARY

And the clinic is closed, at least for now.

Michelle Boutcher, the committee’s executive director, says the decision was an issue of insurance.

“Around the same time we moved here, the nurse came on as a staff person … and we had to have our insurance policy renewed, and that’s when we realized we had to have additional coverage,” Boutcher says. “There’s financial implications to that.

“It’s not necessarily closed forever. We’re hoping to get it back up and running, there’s just some red-tape stuff that has to be figured out.”

Boutcher says the provincial government had committed funding for a nurse to be at the clin-

ic six hours a week. That funding was to continue until next spring.

Kari Sparkes, the nurse and one-woman force behind the clinic, worries about the people that won’t seek help anywhere now.

“The clinic helped so many people who wouldn’t have gotten help elsewhere,” she says.

“Where are they going to go? What happens now?”

During the two-and-a-half years the clinic was operational, Sparkes didn’t take appointments, or ask for names or MCP numbers. She tested patients for HIV, hepatitis, sexually-transSee “Reaching risky,” page 2

Protecting the pitcher

A

s the symbol on the province’s spanking new brand, the pitcher plant is receiving more attention than ever, but that’s not necessarily a good thing.

Todd Boland, a research horticulturist with Memorial University’s Botanical Gardens in St. John’s, tells The Independent that Newfoundland and Labrador’s official flower needs protection.

“The plant is not protected by any laws,” says Boland, adding there’s no legislation in place to discourage people from picking the plant, “which is worrisome for the species’ survival in our province,” as well as its fragile habitat.

The province’s new brand features three buds from a pitcher plant rising from the words Newfoundland Labrador (the conjunction and isn’t included). While the pitcher plant has been the province’s official flower since 1954, as well as a symbol used for years on stamps, coins (one-cent piece prior to Confederation) and as the logo for the province’s parks division, the new brand will bring even more attention to the plant.

Boland fears it could bring the “wrong kind of interest.”

“Pitcher plants grow in bogs — a type of wetland,” he explains. “Wetlands are very fragile habitats and overuse (particularly by ATVs

Todd Boland, a horticulturalist with MUN’s Botanical Garden, holds a pitcher plant. Paul Daly/The Independent

and even by foot) can cause permanent damage.

Pitcher plants cannot be easily dug up and cannot be easily transplanted or grown in a garden

or greenhouse.”

See “Mind the plants,” page 2

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2 • INDEPENDENTNEWS

OCTOBER 6, 2006

Questioning Confederation Patrick O’Flaherty says Newfoundlanders have every right to look over their shoulder

I

hate it when a commentator tells a group of Newfoundlanders “to stop obsessing about the past,” as Noreen Golfman did in her last column for The Independent, referring to the paper’s panel on the Terms of Union. The subject they were discussing, “whether we did or did not benefit from Confederation,” was, she said, “exhausted.” She knew something better for them to be “yakking” about.

I find something patronizing in what she said. There’s an anti-intellectual edge to it too. It’s a bit like living in France and telling people there that’s enough about the French Revolution!

Forty-two books over the past 20 years have exhausted the subject. Or telling the Irish to lay off the topic of the Great Famine. Or Quebecers to stop going on about their place in Canada.

I know what I’d say if she told me to stop obsessing about the past: that’s my history you’re talking about, and I’ll damn well obsess about it if I want to.

“Obsess” means to trouble the mind to an excessive or unreasonable degree. The Newfoundlanders I know don’t “obsess” about their past. Far from it. If you want to find a society that has a deep sense of its history — I wouldn’t say “obsesses” about it — look to England, Scotland, or Ireland.

In London you can’t spit without hitting a statue of a man on a horse or pedestal who helped build the empire and establish the country’s greatness.

English literature and art typically dis-

erate turning from the past in the press and government. Democracy was disPATRICK carded, a “new order” was in place.

O’FLAHERTY The commissioners encouraged this jettisoning of history in various ways, A Skeptic’s Diary one of which was dismantling the Newfoundland Museum and stowing play knowledge of history and love of the exhibits in various spots around St. country. Scores of museums and gal- John’s, including a smoke house. leries throughout England illustrate Those who grew up in the 1940s historical accomplishment. There are will recall the attitude towards the past numerous general histories of in the minds of many ordinary people.

England. And they’re still being writ- It wasn’t worth talking about — it had ten. That’s not to brought only miscount the scores of ery. It was in J.R. historical monoSmallwood’s interI’ve lived in London graphs, articles, and est to spread this and I can’t recall biographies that jaundiced view in come out yearly. referenda camcomplaints that citizens the The English have a paigns of 1948. were obsessing about vibrant sense of hisWe’re now tory … they live it. recovering from it. their past.

There’s nothing Teachers are makwrong with that. ing new efforts to I’ve lived in London and I can’t recall bring Newfoundland history to the reading complaints that citizens were schools, more scholars, writers, and obsessing about their past. artists have taken up the subject, variNewfoundlanders’ sense of their ous local histories, some of fine qualipast was altered by events in the 1930s ty, have been published. A number of when their leaders gave up the coun- historical plaques have appeared in try’s independence and accepted the recent years. The Rooms splendidly ignominy of commission government. house the museum and archives. Yet The Amulree Report, which brought the Colonial Building, the center of on the commission, depicted elective government from 1850-1933, Newfoundland history as a stewpot of and for a decade after 1949, has been corruption and incompetence, and this shamefully neglected. The National became imbedded in the public mind. War Memorial, though greatly honFollowing the inauguration of the oured still on July Drive and commission in 1934, there was a delib- Remembrance Day, is not otherwise

given the protection and respect it merits. Much remains undone.

Newfoundland does not have an overload of historical inquiry and debate. Check the bookstores for a competent general history of Newfoundland from the beginnings to the 21st century and see what you find.

I’ve recently looked at the period 1843-1933 and found, with certain notable exceptions, a paucity of scholarly and other perceptive comment to rely on.

As for the “exhausted topic” of “whether we did or did not benefit from Confederation,” where is the book that exhausts it? It was not laid to rest for me by the royal commission appointed by the Grimes administration. (Not that the commission didn’t make a contribution to the subject.)

The economic condition of the province in 2006 is by no means woeful, but the depleted cod fishery, marginalized seal fishery, the plundering of the offshore, out-migration, the depressed rural economy, and high unemployment — all require continued analysis, and one explanation of at least some of it may lie in the constitutional relationship with Ottawa. The topic is far from exhausted and the argument taking place in The Independent is timely and worthwhile.

Patrick O’Flaherty’s book Lost Country: The Rise and Fall of Newfoundland, 1843-1933 appeared in 2005.

Reaching risky people From page 1 mitted diseases and pregnancy. She offered male and female pap tests, hepatitis-B vaccinations, vein maintenance information and a needle-exchange service. She had free condoms, lubrication and morning-after pills. Her oneroom clinic was small but well stocked, with donated furniture and medical supplies.

“It started off being a clinic one day a week and the demand for it was so great we … it was sort of exceeding our ability to provide those services.”

Michelle Boutcher “We get the marginalized crowd — the sex-trade workers, people having sex for money, needle drug users,” she told The Independent in an interview earlier this year. “I have swingers coming in, or businessmen, you know, the condom breaks and they’re not going to see their family doctors about that.”

She called her clinic “groundbreaking” and “world class,” the only one of its kind in the province. “Most places realize that if you’re going to reach risky people, you’re only going to do it if it’s anonymous.”

And, though many may choose to believe otherwise, prostitution — both male and female — and injection drug use are alive and well in Newfoundland and Labrador. The incidence of hepatitis C and chlamydia are on the rise; HIV isn’t going anywhere.

Sparkes would usually face a line-up of patients when she arrived to open the clinic — and there was often still one when she had to leave.

“That was another problem, too,” says Boutcher. “It started off being a clinic one day a week and the demand for it was so great we … it was sort of exceeding our ability to provide those services.

“I don’t know if we could have kept up with the pace it was anyway. The nurse was only here 10 hours a week and she was just getting so many people … so I think that identifies there was definitely a need for something like this.

“This is going to give us an opportunity to look at what we’re doing, what our limits are …”

The needle-exchange program is still operational, Boutcher says, and may soon expand with the help of a donated van — she’d like to have the vehicle make deliveries, or park at specific areas on certain days to “mitigate the fact that we’re out of downtown.”

With the move to the Tommy Sexton Centre, and all the new services the AIDS committee is now facilitating — the centre provides shelter and housingsupport services — Boutcher admits she and the rest of the staff are just trying to get settled. The committee also does extensive outreach, health promotion work, advocacy and more.

“Everyone’s work load here has doubled. So in the midst of everything else, we’re trying to figure out a way to get the clinic running again,” she says.

“Should it be our place to do it?

Probably not. Is there anyone else to do it? Probably not.”

Boutcher says she’s going to try and make contact with “someone from public health” to investigate options for reopening the clinic, either in the new Tommy Sexton Centre, or elsewhere.

“Really, that could be a part-time job or a full-time job for someone in its own location,” she says. “Our mandate was never to provide primary health care, it just kind of happened and snowballed, but really, when you look at it, it’s something that should be funded by the health care system.”

Mind the plants From page 1 The Botanical Gardens has received a number of calls since the brand’s unveiling this week from people asking where to find the plants.

“We recommend people view pitcher plants in national, provincial and regional parks (including Memorial’s Botanical Garden), where the pitcher plants are growing near boardwalks,” says Boland. “This way, the pitcher plant isn’t damaged.”

The new brand replaces more than 40 versions of the provincial logo, which was primarily built around the province’s Coat of Arms. The medal presented to recipients of the Order of Newfoundland and Labrador is in the shape of a pitcher plant flower. ryan.cleary@theindependent.ca

OCTOBER 6, 2006

INDEPENDENTNEWS • 3

SCRUNCHINS A weekly collection of Newfoundlandia This week’s Scrunchins are all over the plate — er, map, which serves as a much better segue into the topic of Newfoundland roads and an interesting letter to the editor published recently in the Toronto Star.

Mark Augustin of Richmond Hill (isn’t that the up-scale Toronto neighbourhood where Brian Tobin’s premier’s pension is mailed?) raised a question about two-lane highways (God knows there are enough of them in this neck of the Canadian woods).

More specifically, in the case of a twolane highway that expands to permit passing, what happens when there is a merge back to one lane — who should allow the other vehicle in?

“In Newfoundland, we are left in no doubt. The left lane has the words YIELD painted on it. In other areas, drivers are left in doubt. In Ontario, the dotted line continues to the shoulder.

“So the choice for a driver who has moved right to allow passing is to push sideways, or slow down, or stop, or to stay in the lane, be forced onto the shoulder and eventually into the rhubarb. And this does happen. It makes sense to me that the vehicle that has moved over to permit a faster vehicle to pass should have right of way.

The passing vehicle — the vehicle that is probably over the speed limit — should be responsible to care for the vehicle overtaken. Newfoundland has it right!”

Don’t we always …

ROAD WORK Did you know (and I bet you didn’t) … between 1944 and 1946 the commission government (which ruled this

place when we gave up our democracy), spent $1.4 million on the Conception Bay highroad — from St. John’s around Conception Bay to Carbonear, a distance of some 76 miles. At the same time, $530,000 — more than one-third of that total — was spent on the 9.2 miles between St. John’s and Topsail. No wonder Townies and baymen haven’t always gotten along …

NOT IMPRESSED The above tidbit was one of the many facts brought out during the Newfoundland National Convention, 1946-48, held to decide Newfoundland’s fate once commission government was done away with. Joey Smallwood, the pro-confederate who attended the convention as delegate for Bonavista Centre, went off his head when he heard the amount spent on the road between Town and Topsail.

“I wonder what the people of Gambo (Smallwood’s home town) will think when they hear that in the past two years $500,000 had been spent from St. John’s to Woodstock? I do not know a great deal about the area, but my guess is that that was done for the people who have country houses out around Topsail.” Smallwood brought up a cove near Silver Hare Island, Bonavista Bay, where, in order to get to school, local children had to climb over a 30- to 40foot cliff because the road was “broken.”

Another convention delegate, Daniel Hillier of Burin West, had some advice for people taking the road from Burin to St. Lawrence. “One thing I would advise is that you have your life insured, another thing is to bring a nice soft cushion.”

Rex Goudie

Wayne Johnston

Joey Smallwood

WAYNE’S WORLD The following caption recently played beneath a photo of Newfoundland author Wayne Johnston, whose latest book recently hit store shelves.

“WAYNE JOHNSTON — he is a very fine Canadian novelist whose new novel, The Custodian of Paradise, is set on an island off the east coast.” What island would that be …

Newfoundland and Labrador’s debt (just so we don’t forget) — $15 billion and rising …

utes because I didn’t want to go walk around in the hall.” Hope Craig Sharpe is having an easier time in Grade 11 back at Ascension Collegiate in Bay Roberts. As for Goudie, he and O’Neil, now a mature 18 years of age, share a house in Toronto …

DEBT DOWNER Moving along … Nova Scotia recently reported a $228-million surplus for 2005/2006, $77 million more than forecast in July and the highest posted by the province in “recent memory.” Michael Baker, Nova Scotia’s Finance minister, told the Canadian Press the province’s net direct debt also went down by about $66 million over the last year to $12.2 billion. I raise the story as an excuse to bring up

HIGH SCHOOL CONFIDENTIAL Rex Goudie, the Burlington b’y and runner-up on last year’s Canadian Idol, practically hangs out in the pages of Maclean’s magazine. He makes his latest appearance in the Oct. 9 edition as the boyfriend of Melissa O’Neil, who won the competition. The story was about the hard time O’Neil got when she returned to her high school for the final two months following the Idol competition and a cross-country tour.

O’Neil was practically hated — “One of my best friends called and asked me if I was coming back to school,” recalls O’Neill. “She said, ‘I really don’t think you should, everyone hates you.’”

O’Neil says some days she would have to pee bad, “But I waited 15 min-

FLOWER POWER Finally, the province’s new brand — Newfoundland Labrador without the and, complete with our native flower, the pitcher plant — isn’t exactly a novel idea. Government’s parks division used the pitcher plant for years as its logo … only that particular plant was flowering, unlike the flower on the new brand, which is but a bud (three buds actually). Who was it said there are no new ideas? Oh right, it was John Crosbie … ryan.cleary@theindependent.ca

What a dollar can buy Selling assets for a buck can be a good move

By Ivan Morgan The Independent

A

Marystown Shipyard

Come by Chance refinery.

Paul Daly photos/The Independent

local economist says selling provincial assets can be a viable economic move — even if it’s for a buck.

“If you are a government holding on to an asset that you cannot operate and somebody else might be able to operate and make a positive contribution to society and to the economy, it wouldn’t strike me as an unreasonable thing to do,” says Wade Locke, professor of economics at Memorial university.

The provincial government recently gave FPI permission to sell its Harbour Breton plant to the Barry Group for $1, a stipulation of the FPI Act. In the past, the Marystown shipyard and Cow Head fabrication facility, the Come-by-Chance oil refinery, and more than one fish plant, have changed hands for a dollar. Many other government-owned or financed facilities have been sold for far less than their “worth.”

Locke says governments have to look at more than just the economic bottom line.

“There’s more to Newfoundland than the provincial treasury. There is you and there is me,” he tells The Independent. “Having activity in terms of employment and business activity is a good thing — even if the provincial treasury gets very little from it.

“The point is there are legitimate societal reasons for why we invest in things, and there might also be good reasons for why we turn it over for a dollar. That doesn’t mean we turn it over unconditionally.”

Liberal opposition leader Gerry Reid agrees. He says as long as such a sale benefits the region, he has no problem with selling assets at a loss.

He says he saw it happen when he worked in the department of Fisheries.

“The government at the time

DOLLAR SALE • Come-By-Chance oil refinery • Marystown shipyard • Cow Head fabrication facility • Harbour Breton fish plant (and others)

owned fish plants. At that time the general consensus in the industry and in government was that some of these fish plants that were closed, that’s what they were worth — a dollar,” says Reid. “Without fish they were of little value to anybody. And some of them were passed over for a dollar and some of these facilities are still being operated today.”

The most famous “dollar sale” could be the Come-By-Chance oil refinery. Financed with loan guarantees from the Smallwood administration, the refinery went bankrupt in 1976, at the time the largest bankruptcy in Canada. It was sold by PetroCanada in October 1986 to Cumberland Farms, an American convenience store chain, for one dollar. They sold it to Vitol in 1994, which operates it as North Atlantic Refining Ltd. Vitol employs 700 people at the refinery and in 80 gas stations across Newfoundland.

Locke points to this as an excellent example of a government cutting its losses for the future benefit of all.

“I don’t know what the numbers were for Come-By-Chance, but I would say to you that it doesn’t matter. Whatever was sunk into it was sunk. The issue from hereon is, ‘Can we turn this into a viable concern?’”

The situation with the linerboard mill in Stephenville was similar, according to author, journalist and former Smallwood cabinet minister William Callahan. That facility was, according to him, sold for “less than nothing.”

The province “nationalized” the mill in 1974. The facility lost hundreds of millions of dollars and the government eventually decided to

“sell” the plant to a private company.

“My recollection is that AbitibiPrice, on the face of it, was to pay $28 million dollars, but at the time the talk was generally was that the tax benefits due to the losses were well over $40 million, so you might say that they got it for less than nothing.”

Callahan agrees there are benefits when assets are given to those who can make a go of them.

“If you sold it for a dollar and the company packed it up and put it on a ship and sold it to Indonesia, then the province would have a dollar,” he says.

“But if someone pays a dollar and then rehabilitates it … it would be unforgivable not to do that if the opportunity existed — and if it doesn’t exist, you should try to create it.”

The Marystown shipyard and Cow Head fabrication facility was sold to Friede Goldman, with the stipulation they provide 1.2 million hours of work in Marystown for each of the subsequent three years. Conditions also made provisions for large fines were these conditions not met.

In 1984 a number of large fish companies went bankrupt, and were merged to form Fisheries Products International.

Locke says sometimes societal needs motivate government to sell assets for little or nothing — or at a loss.

“If it wasn’t for the amalgamation and consolidation of the fish plants we would have had a very serious social problem on our hands,” he says.

Sometimes perceived as acts of desperation, Locke says dollar sales — provided they’re done correctly — can turn a bad situation around.

He stresses government is not perfect, and has to meet a number of conflicting priorities.

Cutting their losses for a buck is one way of doing that. ivan.morgan@theindependent.ca

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4 • INDEPENDENTNEWS

OCTOBER 6, 2006

Justice delayed Whitbourne Boy’s Home victim frustrated with delays in case

By Ivan Morgan The Independent

T

ony Edwards, who is suing the provincial government for physical and sexual abuse he says he suffered while at the Whitbourne Boys’ Home in the early 1970s, is frustrated with the slow pace of his case.

“They don’t want to even acknowledge that anything even happened out there. It is all cut and dried,” Edwards tells The Independent. “The government doesn’t want to admit anything ever happened. That’s what they’re worried about, I suppose, that there is going to be a big payout.”

The Mount Pearl resident cannot understand the delay. “This has been going on since 1997. It’s just the same old bullshit — putting it off and putting it off and nothing happening. Absolutely nothing.”

St. John’s lawyers Richard Rogers, Bob Buckingham, and Jack Lavers represent a number of former residents of the Home who allege physical and sexual abuse while residing there.

Edward’s lawyer, Richard Rogers, is sympathetic, but says delays are part of the process. In this case, the delay has been caused by lawyers for a number of clients applying to approach the courts together.

“There was an application made to the court to try and get the Whitbourne matter compiled into one large action — sort of like a pseudo class action suit,” says Rogers.

“And we’re still waiting on Judge (James) Adams to give us back a decision. We expected it ages ago. Once that’s done then we can move ahead, because if we have the power of numbers it will probably go in our favour,” says Rogers.

Buckingham says not all the delays are procedural.

“My reading of it is that the government does not have any will to settle these matters,” he says. “They are trying to hamstring the process by having us deal with them one by one.”

Buckingham speaks from experience. “We were on the Mount Cashel file for eight years before the liquidation took place,” he says.

“And the main culprit that caused a good part of that was the provincial government.

“They would not make the political decision to give up the money that they paid out in 1996 to the victims. That forced the liquidator to embark upon a series of lengthy litigations that were very costly. Went on for years. The litigator spent $6 million litigating issues that did not need to be litigated, because in the end the government abandoned its position, which was able to result in

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a settlement.”

He says he sees the same delay tactics at play today.

Geoff Budden, another lawyer with experience in this area (Budden is representing foster home victims but not Whitbourne victims) disagrees. He says the province is getting better at dealing with such claims. He says the nature of these claims is such that it is hard to not want to settle.

‘APPALLING INCIDENT’ “You listen to what happened to them (the victims) when they were eight years old and when they were 12 years old and how it has affected their lives, and as a lawyer and as a human being you are going to be less inclined to try to wiggle out of a claim,” says Budden. “You’ll see the claim for what it is, which is an appalling incident in Newfoundland history which a lot of people should be ashamed for. But if the lawyers and the government’s policy in 2006 is to try to treat the claims fairly – and I haven’t seen any evidence that it isn’t.”

Meantime, Edwards’ frustration continues to grow.

“They came back with an offer — the Salvation Army — $30,000 bucks or something,” he says. “That was completely refused, but then they came back and said they weren’t going to offer anything anyways

until they could see what the government was actually going to offer before they decided to offer anything themselves.

“So that has been in limbo for a year-anda-half now — and we’re still waiting on the government proposal.”

The Whitbourne Boys Home has been the centre of previous sexual abuse scandals.

Roman Catholic priest Father Ronald Bromley was convicted by a jury on July 10, 1998 on 11 charges which included indecent assault, gross indecency, buggery and sexual assault of boys at the home. The acts occurred between 1970 and 1984. According to media reports of the time, a complainant disclosed the abuse to staff at the Whitbourne Boys’ Home, but no action was taken. On Aug. 11, 1998, Bromley was sentenced to six years and six months imprisonment.

On Nov. 20, 1998 then Justice minister Chris Decker rose in the House of Assembly in response to a question from then opposition member Ed Byrne regarding the province’s action on the allegations of abuse at the home.

“The honourable member is asking me to do the appropriate thing,” Decker said. “I tell him proudly that the appropriate thing is indeed being done.”

Almost 10 years later, Tony Edwards is still waiting. ivan.morgan@theindependent.ca

Bob Buckingham

Paul Daly/The Independent

‘It’s our last best chance’ From page 1 reflecting on the effects of the province’s Terms of Union with Canada, and offering amendments to better position the province for the future.

Oil and gas was the third topic under scrutiny, and the conversation was dominated

by Wells, entrepreneur Brian Dobbin, and former premier Roger Grimes, all of whom have had first-hand dealings with the players in “the only game in town,” the petroleum industry.

Premier Danny Williams put Wells’ name forward as his choice candidate to lead the CNLOPB — an appointment refused by the feds. After haggling in the media and in the courts, the dust settled last month: Max Ruelokke is head of the board; Wells is a member.

Wells tells The Independent he’s not heading into his position with optimism or pessimism — and he’s in the process of researching and planning his agenda.

“The C-NLOPB is an important agency in terms of trying to advocate for industry in this province,” he says. Even within the current management structure, he says, there are major things that can be improved — and watched out for.

Wells has always kept an eye on employment benefits in the province. In the late 1990s, he founded Friends of Gas Offshore (FOGO), a lobby group that fought the transfer of 250 engineering jobs to England by the Terra Nova developers. He went so far as to fight the company’s actions, the “big sellout,” in court.

“The judge said we didn’t have anything to stand on and the companies were let off the hook … but he did say we had a point,” says Wells. “The public were with me … and we had some effect on the industry. I’ve been told there are lots more people working in the province because of that … it frightened the crap out of the companies.”

Even now, he says, while 95 per cent of the jobs in the province’s offshore industries may be held by Newfoundlanders and Labradorians, “it’s in the other 5 per cent where the knowledge transfer takes place.

The high-end, technical jobs, engineering … the question I have is, what in the 5 per cent can be done by (people from this province)?

I’m still getting calls from people who are qualified.”

Wells is optimistic, however, about the path Danny Williams is taking. Although there was no agreement in the Hebron-Ben Nevis talks — which has frustrated some,

while others believe in holding out for the right deal — Wells says Williams was right to fight for an equity stake in the project.

“Williams was looking for less than 5 per cent interest in Hebron,” he says. “What do they care if the government has 5 per cent?

Five per cent is nothing to them …

“But (the province) is trying to get better information, because knowledge is power.

(The companies) don’t want the province to have representatives in there, on the board — companies want to get, and keep the upper hand.

“They don’t want government to know how they’re operating.”

He points to the report on Hibernia released by Williams in July, which indicated, among other things, that operating costs for the project had fallen, reserves had more than doubled, and operation revenues had increased more than six-fold, from $1.7 billion to $10.1 billion. “Holy God!” Wells says.

“The companies are out there making a big pile of money.”

In finding a way for Newfoundland and Labrador to get a piece of that, he invokes Norway as a model for success.

Norsk Hydro, one of the most significant players in oil and gas in the North Sea and around the world, is 44 per cent owned by the Norwegian government. The company’s involvement in global projects allows the state the same rights as any other shareholder — including dividends.

(As an aside: if the Hebron-Ben Nevis development was to go ahead as proposed, without the province owning an stake, the Norwegian government — as the major shareholder in Norsk Hydro, one of the partners in the project — would own more of the project than the province.)

In 2004, 28 per cent of Norway’s revenues came from the petroleum sector, almost $35.5 billion (Cdn). More than half of that came from taxes; dividends accounted for $1 billion.

During the panel discussion, Wells also mentioned the Norwegian government tables all deals it makes with regards to oil and gas management in parliament for debate and discussion.

“The model for the way we handle our industry is indeed the way the Norwegians do it … but we’re screwed by the federal government.”

The premier visited Norway last month, and returned determined that seeking an equity stake in new offshore developments is not only desirable, but realistic and fair. While Norway may be a country, Williams looks to

Our Terms ... so far

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.

OIL AND GAS Assume control and management of offshore petroleum resources 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.

the Canadian government for better support — and, consequently, higher returns.

“If we can get the federal government’s support on moving projects like the Hebron field forward, then not only do the people of the province benefit, but indeed all Canadians benefit,” he stated in a Sept. 6 press release.

“I sincerely believe it is time for the federal government to stand with the provinces and territories and demand greater benefits from our resources for our people … Norway has done exactly that and is now one of the highest performing countries in the world.

“Let’s embrace the Norwegian approach.”

At the end of the day, members of The Independent’s panel agreed: if Newfoundland and Labrador is going to take full advantage of the oil and gas it brought into Canada, the province wants the opportunity to take the reins.

Already there is much unease and cynicism about the way oil and gas is playing out.

“If you’re going to fundamentally change the way the industry operates, the government has got to change the way it operates,” says Wells. “People say, ‘Well, you’re trying to change the rules.’ And I say, what’s wrong with that?

“I wish it wasn’t this way but it seems to be the only game in town … it’s our last best chance. We’ve got to make sure we get it right.”

OCTOBER 6, 2006

INDEPENDENTNEWS • 5

The stealthy gutting of Newfoundland W

hat a handy contraption the personal computer is. I am by no means a dab hand at one. I can use it like a glorified typewriter and not much more. I’d mull around the dirty bits but these scare me by coming like an avalanche and then I panic and throw the master switch for the whole house to wash my sins away.

Anyway, I was lately looking for a sad bit for a woeful column. Something we once had to learn in school occurred to me. “The Destruction of Senacharab” … just the ticket, so I thought, to punch up the sorry state of our devastated shores today.

And there it was: “And the widows of Assur are loud in their wail, and the idols are broke in the temple of Baal. And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword, hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord.”

RAY GUY

A Poke In The Eye Tough titty for Senacharab. How very like our own dear Island! The lights blinking out along our coastline. Darrell and Darlene hightailing it for Fort McMurray. Poppy taken off by the merciful release of a stroke and Nanny moved into a large cardboard box on the hospital parking lot.

And nobody seeming to care! Back in the time of an earlier “centralization” the widows and their cats were howling from the rooftops. Great bulks of newsprint were chewed up on the subject.

Prizewinning photos of houses being floated on empty oil drums.

This current destruction comes like a thief in the night.

There’s no Colonel Alston, fresh from herding displaced persons after the Second World War, now commissar for resettlement, as there was the last time.

No official maps with red pins representing people. No designated “growth centers” into which the fearful and discombobulated were dumped.

Not even the scattered plaintive folksong. Television does it, as television must, by dribs and drabs. A few tears here and a few sniffles there. A U-Haul winding away uphill in the sunrise.

But nothing that gives the impression that large crowds of people are on a seminal move, for richer for poorer, in sickness or in health. It’s a curiously stealthy gutting of Newfoundland.

We go gentle into that good night.

Nobody says that the comparatively

raucous caterwauling which marked our last great population upheaval would make any more or any less difference now.

Nor did it make much during “resettlement.” My parents’ home was next to the church. I’d go out some weekends and without fail the church bell was tolling for another funeral.

It was, in general, a funeral for a man aged between 55 and 60. Women are tougher and so yet more widows. There was terrible bile in the air, a rancour between the 200 people who’d always lived there and the 1,500 who were resettled on top of them.

A whole generation passed away before some semblance of normal life returned. I once met a school fellow who’d moved to Leaf Rapids, Man. I asked if he’d ever had an urge to move back.

All the time, he said, until this year.

That year his oldest boy had entered junior hockey.

Newfoundlanders have long moved west. This is nothing new. My mother was among the migrants of the 1920s, a trained nanny to the Harriman’s of Albany, NY, if you please … and had to pretend she was Irish because no one knew what a Newfoundlander was.

She eventually came back and made up for the enforced duplicity in later years.

People are again going.

The widows (if not the journalists) of Assur are loud in their wail.

Anyhow, this being a more modern day and age my search for those widows of Assur was located on the Internet next to an advertisement: “Widow Seeking Relationship. Looking for anything, ages 18-99. United Kingdom.”

Yes, but can she bake bread?

Oil companies have first dibs on Hibernia share

By Mandy Cook The Independent

L

iberal MP Bill Matthews says Ottawa is under a contractual obligation to offer its 8.5 per cent share in the Hibernia oil project to other stakeholders before it could sell it to the government of Newfoundland and Labrador.

“If indeed the federal government wanted to sell its share, I think they first have to offer it to the oil companies,” Matthews, MP for the federal riding of Random-Burin-St. George’s, tells The Independent.

“Now if that offer was made and the oil companies refused, then I think the federal government would have some flexibility on the issue. If this federal government or successive federal governments developed an appetite to unload that share, the companies have the first right of refusal.”

In 1992, with the Hibernia project in peril after Gulf Canada pulled out, Ottawa bought an 8.5 per cent share for $451 million, keeping the project on track.

OUR TERMS The exact value of the 8.5 per cent stake today isn’t known. However, in 2004, experts estimated the federal government’s take at $700 million. In February 2003, Craig Dobbin, chairman and CEO of CHC Helicopters Corporation, said the oil companies would break even at about $13 US on a barrel of Hibernia oil — $50 US less than today’s price.

The Government of Newfoundland and Labrador is interested in purchasing the federal stake in the multi-million dollar offshore oil project, but Prime Minister Stephen Harper has yet to state definitively whether or not he will sell Ottawa’s share.

In a letter dated Jan. 4, 2006, Premier Danny Williams asked Harper, then Opposition leader, if he would support the sale of the share to the province, if Williams were to endorse Harper for the country’s top spot.

At that particular time, Harper wrote: “It is not an endeavour a Conservative government would support,” but stated he would be willing to discuss it in the future.

Federal Natural Resources critic Roy Cullen says he supports selling the 8.5 per cent stake back to Newfoundland and Labrador.

“If there’s no contractual obligation to the other stakeholders, then there’s no reason why we should keep it,” Cullen says from Ottawa. “It’s not the business of the federal government to be investing in financial ventures. We stepped in in 1992 to help out, but we have no need to invest in this kind of project. We’re in the business of taxation and spending those taxes to benefit Canadian citizens.”

If the province was to acquire the 8.5 per cent, it would go a long way towards making Newfoundland and Labrador the principal beneficiary of the offshore — a stipulation of the Atlantic Accord.

Hibernia produces approximately 200,000 barrels of oil per day. Oil currently sells for $63 US a barrel, or $71 CDN.

SHIPPING NEWS

Star Princess in St. John’s harbour

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

THURSDAY Vessels Arrived: Cabot, Canada, from Montreal; Maersk Placentia, Canada, from Hibernia.

FRIDAY Vessels Arrived: REM Angler, Norway, from Orphan Basin; Maersk Chignecto, Canada, from White Rose; Maersk Chancellor, Canada, from Terra Nova.

Vessels Departed: Cabot, Canada, to Montreal; Atlantic Vigour, Canada, to fishing grounds.

SATURDAY Vessels Arrived: Maersk Challenger, Canada, from White Rose; Conbaroya Cuatro, France, to Spain; Maersk Detector, Canada, from Orphan Basin; Maersk Nascopie, Canada, from Hibernia.

Vessels Departed: Maersk Chancellor, Canada, to Terra Nova; Maersk Challenger, Canada, to White Rose.

SUNDAY Vessels Arrived: Oceanex Avalon, Canada, from Montreal; Saga Ruby, Britain, from Halifax;

Paul Daly/The Independent

Atlantic Hawk, Canada, from White Rose.

Vessels Departed: Saga Ruby, Britain, to Azores; Maersk Nascopie, Canada, to Hibernia; Atlantic Vigour, Canada, to fishing grounds.

MONDAY Vessels Arrived: ASL Sanderling, Canada, from Halifax; Atlantic Kingfisher, Canada, from Terra Nova; Maersk Chancellor, Canada, from Terra Nova; Maersk Dispatcher, Canada, from Orphan Basin.

Vessels Departed: Atlantic Hawk, Canada, to White Rose; Oceanex Avalon, Canada, to Montreal.

TUESDAY Vessels Arrived: Maersk Norseman, Canada, from Hibernia.

Vessels Departed: ASL Sanderling, Canada, to Halifax; Maersk Detector, Canada, to Erik Raude.

WEDNESDAY Vessels Arrived: Sir Wilfred Grenfell, Canada, from sea; Maersk Challenger, Canada, from White Rose; Star Princess, Barbados, from Greenland.

Vessels Departed: Atlantic Kingfisher, Canada, to Terra Nova.

6 • INDEPENDENTNEWS

OCTOBER 6, 2006

No flies on us I

t’s some easy to poke fun at our new brand, what with the three psychedelic eyeballs, big and juicy as Florida oranges (with a funky peel going on), bobbing on rope necks and poking out of bad grammar.

The Rock has lost its ring — Newfoundland Labrador sounds foreign without the and, the same way rock roll loses its impact without the and in between. Keep in mind we Newfoundlanders Labradorians (I suppose I can drop the and everywhere now) are finally cool, with a newfound reputation to protect.

Taking in a scattered alien (which the pitcher plant could be mistaken for), even ones without an arm or leg to call its own, could solve our declining population problem. The Stephenville and Gander airports could also do with the intergalactic traffic (as long as the saucers aren’t military crafts from NATO-member countries, which don’t pay landing fees).

A giant eyeball on a stick wouldn’t be much good for manual labour (selling tickets at the mall or bagging groceries), but it could be just the ticket for dipping beneath the Grand Banks

RYAN CLEARY

Fighting Newfoundlander to have a look at what’s going on under the waterline. And Geoff Stirling could always do with another eye in the sky to keep check on Captain Canada’s comings and goings from the roof of NTV studios in Town.

Says the giant eyeball on a stick (well, the eyeball doesn’t have a mouth, but you can bet it has telepathic powers), “Carry me (no legs remember) to your leader, Danny Williams, but drop by the Robin Hood Bay on the way for a quick feed of fresh flies.

“And can I have a side-order of dandy long-leg rings (similar to onion rings, only less filling) to go please.

Oh, almost forgot — throw in a can of diet bog water. Thank you earthling, you may live another day without me opening my eyeball and zapping you with my death ray.”

Pitcher plants are meat eaters — insectivorous, actually — meaning

they eat bugs. The part of the plant you see on the brand is harmless enough; it’s actually the bud, which eventually (by June’s end or early July) turns into the flower.

It’s the jug that local mosquitoes have to watch out for. The pitchershaped leaves are usually half filled with water and the flaring lips are lined with downward pointing hairs that help capture insects. The water inside the leaf has a special agent that causes the bug to sink.

The plant feeds on the nitrogen; mosquito larvae dine on the winged corpses. Todd Boland, a research horticulturist with Memorial University’s Botanical Gardens in St. John’s, and a much, much braver man than me, poured some water from a pitcher into the palm of his hand. The sperm-like mosquito larvae (which, lucky for them, are immune to the plant’s digestive enzymes) swam their little tails off up the crevice of Boland’s lifeline.

(Bog water has lost all appeal for me.)

The pitcher plant is much better known than the butterwort, whose sticky leaves also capture bugs. But butterwort is no plant to use on a brand. Imagine finally losing the newfie title, only to be called butterworts.

Our other insect eater is the sundew, which has a much more pleasant name but whose leaves (and this will come across as highly unappetizing, if you haven’t been grossed out already) are covered with reddish, gland-bearing hairs that exude a sticky juice for capturing insects (George Street Elixir, I think it’s called). Just so you know, other Canadian names for the pitcher plant include Indian dipper and huntsman’s cup and, my least favourite, piggywigs.

HEARTIEST OF ALL Our particular type of pitcher plant is the heartiest of all pitcher plants. As the literature for the $1-million marketing campaign proclaims, “They grow almost in spite of nature … and nothing can shake them loose, from whatever spot they choose to call home (too bad the same can’t be said for us). Isn’t it strange, and wonderful, how very like them we are?”

The words played over and over on an intercom in a theatre at The Rooms in Town where the brand was unveiled this week, to the point that certain media questioned whether they were being programmed (but then that’s what aliens do).

I was stuck for words last week when someone asked me what I thought of our new brand. Of course, that someone worked for the premier’s office, and it was immediately after Danny broke the news.

The giant orange eyeballs aren’t instantaneously recognizable as the pitcher plant, that’s a fact. But I do like the fact the plant is in its budding stage, preparing to blossom into a beautiful, wine-red flower. As a Newfoundlander, I can relate to the dream that we may also someday blossom. That’s the goal anyway.

A brand is only pretty packaging — it’s the product that counts.

Newfoundland Labrador is a fabulous place, with fabulous people. That’s not to say the product doesn’t need work — you can read about our problems (and potential solutions) every week in the pages of this newspaper.

To the people who say the money could have been better spent on the outports or this and that, I say maybe so. From a big-pitcher plant perspective, however, maybe the world will finally, once and for all, see there are no flies on us.

We devoured them. ryan.cleary@theindependent.ca

YOUR VOICE Flaws in the Canadian fabric Dear editor, Permit me to respond to Robert Rowe’s letter (‘Barroom bluster’) in the Sept. 29th issue of The Independent.

Said Rowe, “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-year-old 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?”

The problem, of course, with this whole picture is that while people, energy, and talent are free to move to many wonderful destinations throughout Canada, economic conditions and political orientation ensure that Newfoundland and Labrador is not on that map of possible locales. I ask Mr. Rowe, why is it that people from Calgary, Moose Jaw and Timmins are

not moving to Newfoundland and Labrador in any great numbers, but towns all over Canada can count thousands of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians amongst their residents?

It seems apparent to me, at least, that there are serious flaws in the structure and fabric of the Canadian union.

As a young Newfoundlander (who has spent much of his life outside of his home province due to lack of economic opportunity for himself and his family) I find it ironic that Mr. Rowe addresses young Newfoundlanders and Labradorians in his letter. If he wanted to address my high-school peers he would have done better to write letters to English-language newspapers overseas or, better yet, to newspapers all over Ontario and the west of Canada, not The Independent.

Stephen Penney, Montreal

‘Old, weather-beaten and defeated’ Dear editor, I appreciate The Independent coming to rural areas. A number of citizens, a dozen or so in most communities, look forward to investigative journalism and provoking commentary. The paper is a link to ideas that require development and response.

Your Terms of Union gang — John Crosbie, Gus Etchegary, and Ray Guy in particular — fine gentlemen, but hardly suited for proposing changes to the Confederation. Crosbie appears angry, probably guilty for the changes he never brought about in Ottawa. He defends the status quo. Evangelical Gus travels a narrow tunnel of idealistic thought that can never be

achieved unless we separate, and that will not occur. Guy, a favourite of mine when I taught high school, is contented to sprinkle all debate with satire and sarcasm.

Overall, the group appeared too old … weather-beaten, defeated troops from distant political and economic wars. There was no professor. Why? No youth, small businessperson, fisher, unemployed, clergy, or athlete. An interesting exercise, but a second model with more diverse backgrounds would be just as revealing. Keep up the good writing.

Jim Combden, Badger’s Quay

‘Silly’ logos and ‘cartoon’ commercials Dear editor, I sit in astonishment as I watch the news. I just had to leave my couch to get my frustrations out of my head. I had no idea our government was rich enough to spend $1 million on a “brand” for our province. Wow, $1 million to ditch the word “and” and to sprout three alien eyeballs from the newly named “Newfoundland Labrador.” Danny Williams must have hit his head … little kids with special needs can’t get their daily needs met in their classrooms but our tax dollars can buy silly logos and “cartoon” commercials drawn by Oscar-nomi-

nated artists? It’s too bad we have no say in where our taxdollars go. I’m thinking of sending out tax bills to all of the residents in the city — I’ll tell them to send their money to the Government of Kelly. I’ll take all of their money and spend it on useless things and not let them have any say in it. But maybe when I make my logo, I’ll take a picture of pitcher plants on a sunny day … they don’t look near as frightening when they are in bloom.

Kelly Warren, St. John’s

AN INDEPENDENT VOICE FOR NEWFOUNDLAND & LABRADOR

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

Get our house in order first Dear editor, It would be a better proposition to first get our own house in order before deciding on the faith of the rest of Canada. Reform is not only needed but also imperative here in our own province. A good start would be to change the structure and focus of the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador to reflect the will of the people. The present premier may reflect the viewpoints of many residents but what of those forced away? Not all of

our woes are Ottawa’s doing — the fiasco with the number of fish plants is one example and it’s not even necessary to mention others. It seems to me that looking at both present and past governments, too much power was concentrated in the hands of the premier’s office. A sound proposal would be to divide the legislative body between a district-elected representative and at-large, proportionally elected seats. This would retain power at a local level while still maintaining a

Dear editor, As an individual fish harvester residing in rural Newfoundland, I have concerns about the direction that the fishery has taken over the past few years.

I am very afraid for the future of small-boat fishermen operating enterprises under 35-feet in length. The fishery is like any resource — we can take a little for a long time, or a lot for a short time.

Analogy: were the forestry department to unleash upon the province of Newfoundland and Labrador 2,000 wood harvester machines, there would be a boom in the forest industry.

Sawmills would hum along, paper companies would have unlimited wood supply, but one morning we would wake up and be able to look across the entire province with not a single tree blocking our view.

The same was bound to happen in the fishery — we took a lot for a little while.

So what are my fears for the future?

(1) That we will continue to think that bigger is better. A few bigger plants supplied by bigger boats, bigger nets, brighter lights, stronger sonar, more capital investment requiring bigger catches of a beleaguered resource.

(2) I fear the major fish companies will be successful in maintaining corporate quotas, frozen-at-sea, and transferred to transport vessels destined for the cheap labour markets of the world.

(3) I fear that as the more lucrative fisheries become less so, a greater pressure on pelagics will result in herring and mackerel stocks collapsing.

(4) I fear that given the present trend of thinking on numbers of processing plants, that small-boat fishermen will

Small is still ‘beautiful’ in terms of sustainable fisheries

wake up and find that there is absolutely no buyer left interested in their 500 pounds of squid, mackerel or herring.

I agree that the model of large draggers supplying mega plants with hundreds of employees was and is doomed to failure as part of a boom-and-bust scenario, and as such probably no longer have relevance.

I feel, however, we should learn from the failure of this model and adjust our focus and expectations accordingly.

In my mind, small is still beautiful, in terms of sustainable fisheries.

My father fished for 60 years, most of these with a six-horse power Acadia gas engine, consuming less than 45 gallons of fuel per season — his total capital expenditure.

Obviously his footprint on the resource was very small. I am not advo-

broader provincial view. Such a model could enable district members to block such fiascos as Churchill Falls without fear of repercussions from the premier’s office. In other words, the issue would have to have a broad consensus before any movement is pushed on.

Such a model could readily be adopted on the national stage, with Newfoundland and Labrador leading the way.

A. Campbell, Mount Pearl

cating that we all rush out and buy a dory, but I feel we have learned very little from the errors of our past, and continue to drift further and further from a sustainable fishery model. A model in which the small-boat fisherman with access to small processors employing localized secondary processing is given top priority.

Small, community plants, specializing in high-end fish products using small volumes of catch directly from the ocean, supplied by small-boat fishermen, with little time lag could and would produce similar gross revenues, but use much less of the oceans resources, employ more people and help keep rural communities alive.

David Boyd.

Twillingate

OCTOBER 6, 2006

INDEPENDENTNEWS • 7

A battle to liven up our fall I

suspect there are certain people in the Department of Justice who are thinking they might want to campaign for Lorraine Michael this month.

With the Lamer report still fresh in Jerome Kennedy’s mind (if no one else’s), and after years of trying to right the wrongs endemic within that hidebound department from the outside, Kennedy has — out of the blue — decided he’s political, and offered himself as the Tory candidate in the upcoming Signal Hill-Quidi Vidi by-election.

There must be a few foreheads at Justice sweaty at the thought of him winning. If he does (and he might) he would find himself inside — very, very inside — the traditional place from which to fix things in the bureaucracy.

And things do need to be fixed in that department. I do not for one minute believe Kennedy has anything else on his political agenda. The department has a terrible reputation, having lost many cases, in addition to the high-profile wrongful dismissals championed by Kennedy.

If his reputation is anything to go by,

IVAN MORGAN

Rant & Reason the energetic lawyer is going to hit the ground running in this campaign. With the considerable force of the Williams administration behind him, he is already sitting pretty.

In a rural district, this would be enough — but this is an urban district, and a long time Jack Harris fiefdom.

Lorraine Michael has been banging on doors for a while now, and she has her own and Jack Harris’ reputation, as well as a hard-working NDP team, on her side.

Is it going to be enough to beat Jerome Kennedy?

We’ll see. In what has to amount to the saddest comment on the party in decades, the Liberals can’t seem to find anyone to run in the district. Lamely claiming it’s “tradition” to allow party leaders to run unopposed, the Liberals

YOUR VOICE ‘Get back the upper Churchill’ Dear editor, Premier Danny Williams and Finance Minister Loyola Sullivan seem to spend a lot of time worrying and talking about equalization.

Danny has said recently that the windfall profit from the upper Churchill would make us a “have” province. The logical solution: get back the upper Churchill and be a “have” province like Alberta and Ontario.

Last week, Williams had this to say about Hydro Quebec’s plans for the Lower North Shore developments doing an end-run around his lower Churchill development: “The more we can spread out our energy supply means that we won’t be totally dependent on Quebec for energy — which, given the volatility of politics in Quebec, could be a very, very sen-

to be a sad looking hopeful to be a patriot. I’m not a fan of nationalism — it’s an ugly force of hate indoctrinated in an us-versus-them melting pot. I’m not a member of the St. John’s establishment, and as an Acadian from Port au Port I know I’ll never be. I sleep very well at night knowing that, but I wish I could see a little bit of change — just a little. Oh, and while I’m at this, if you’re looking for “independent thinking” you won’t find it in the socalled real Newfoundland (and not Newfoundland and Labrador) flag.

You must admit that it’s not “independent.” It’s a knockoff of the Irish flag. And all the creativity of our people …

Ali Chaisson, Proudly from Cape St. George’s (Port au Port) Residing (until they figure it out) in St. John’s

Premier too concerned with long-term future Dear editor, Premier Danny Williams and his government had a unique opportunity to help grow many rural economies, thanks to factors such as increased benefits from our offshore oil industry and increased federal government funding.

The premier and his government have failed to do that by not taking a leadership role and, in not doing so, are destroying the social fabric of many rural areas in our province — maybe beyond repair.

Many rural areas, including the Burin Peninsula, have not realized the benefits that such economic development leadership would have created.

The biggest mistake that Premier

NDP in this by-election.

The NDP has made much of Michael’s reputation as an advocate for social justice. Kennedy sort of trumps that card. His passionate defence of his clients, and ultimate victory on their behalf, is pretty stirring stuff too.

Harris’ last electoral victory was a narrow one (2,456 votes), with slightly more people voting against him than for him. In that election, 2,221 people voted for the relatively unknown Tory candidate Karen Carroll. Ray O’Neill won 391 of what has to be the rocksolid core Liberal vote. So Kennedy can look to just as solid an electoral base as Michael. Every vote will count in this election. If you live in the district, expect to be tormented this month.

If he wins, Kennedy will add to the Williams government’s lustre. He will not be viewed as another faceless rubber-stamp minister. In fact, I wonder how he’ll get along with the premier, cut as they seem to be from the same intemperate bolt.

If Michael wins, she will add a much needed independent woman’s voice in

the male-dominated — Danny Williams-dominated — house. Clearly we can’t turn to the Liberals for meaningful opposition.

The stakes are high for the NDP. If Kennedy loses, he will have to solace himself with his lucrative Water Street law practice and Williams will earn a political black eye. If Michael loses, then Randy Collins will be the sole NDP member in the House, and most people will politely avert their gaze.

It looks to be a fascinating battle to liven up our fall. For the non-partisan amongst us, this is shaping up to be a win-win by-election, and perhaps a hint of what will follow one year from now, when the province goes to the polls.

And for those people in the provincial justice system who might be worried about Jerome Kennedy as minister of Justice? I might be wrong about advising them to campaign for the NDP. They might not want to piss him off any more than I suspect he already is.

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

TURNER REPORT RELEASED

sitive situation in years to come.” Was Danny thinking of Quebec separatism?

For the past three years of Williams’ premiership Quebec has had an iron-clad lock on the upper Churchill. And long before his term in office and for the next 35 years until July 1, 2041, Quebec feasts at our expense. If there “could be a very, very sensitive situation in years to come” vis-a-vis Quebec and the rest of Canada, shouldn’t it be incumbent upon our premier to search for a likely way out of the upper Churchill contact?

Anyone got any good ideas on how? To quote Archimedes, who knew a thing or two about water and leverage, “Eureka!” — Greek for “I have found it.”

Tom Careen, Placentia

Not all voices heard Dear editor, Wow — typical. Great to see the regular cast of characters on your “provincewide” panel for your “provincewide” paper. Mind you, the people you have chosen are generally good and most of them have my most sincere respect — albeit not many would be deemed “independent” in a blind political taste test. Someone else mentioned the absence of Labrador, but I’ll go further. Where was your aboriginal voice? Where was your regional voice from the Great Northern Peninsula? I hope you’re not insinuating that one must be a Townie to be a “patriot,” as Brian Dobbin puts it.

However, if you’re telling me that it was essentially a St. John’s-based recipe with a little beyond-the-overpass flavour — then I’m OK with it. I know one thing … one does not have

have bowed out, and have asked Danny Williams to let Michael run unopposed. His answer is Jerome Kennedy. Ouch.

This is going to be something to watch. On the plus side, both Kennedy and Michael have excellent reputations, and they are both people of principle — so we can look forward to being spared the childishness of past elections, spraypainted signs and the like.

They will both have well-organized, hard-working teams. They will both be well financed. Each candidate is well educated and used to public debate. I suspect the campaign will address issues of substance.

They both have baggage. One half of Michael’s caucus is sitting under a very dark cloud, and has been very quiet about that cloud. While the New Democrats are wonderful at hollering about the moral shortcomings of others, they don’t seem near as adept at dealing with trouble in their own house.

It may be true that everyone is guilty until proven otherwise, but Randy Collins’ silence isn’t going to help the

Williams continues to make is concentrating far too much on the longterm future of our province and far too little on the short-term.

The biggest mistake the majority of the PC government members continues to make is not dealing appropriately with the concerns of the people who elected them and not telling the premier often enough that he needed to rethink his strategy.

In the end, come election time many of them could very well pay the ultimate price … they may not get reelected.

In the end, the premier may also pay the ultimate price … his government may not get re-elected.

Everett Farwell, Burin

Darlene Neville, the provincial child and youth advocate, released the Turner Review report Oct. 4. The three-volume document examined the circumstances around the death of Zachary Turner, 13 months old. Zachary died when his mother, Shirley Turner — awaiting trial for murder — held him as she jumped to her death in Conception Bay. Coroner Peter Markesteyn, who conducted the investigation, had strong words for the provincial government: “Nowhere did I find any ongoing assessment of the safety needs of the children,” he stated. Above, Kate Bagby holds a photo of her deceased grandson at a 2004 vigil.

Paul Daly/The Independent

History repeats itself in Harbour Breton Dear editor, I find it disturbing and unfortunate that Danny Williams, given his reputation as a fighter, and the cabinet under his direction would support the sale of the Harbour Breton plant to a private company. I ask the premier and the cabinet ministers, if they were selling their own private company — which their financial future and actual existence depended on — would they not put safeguards in place to protect their future and the viability of their family?

The Progressive Conservative government did not provide for future protection of the community of Harbour Breton. These residents were desperate for jobs and would agree to anything to

get the employment. It is government’s responsibility to protect these vulnerable residents.

I feel government gave the residents of the community a dory without any oars so that the residents have been left adrift. Mr. Williams condemned the Liberals for leaving loopholes in the Voisey’s Bay agreement, but Mr. Williams followed that lead in Harbour Breton. This way Mr. Williams can wipe his hands of Harbour Breton and its residents — similar to his measures in Stephenville … transfer the responsibility to the residents and provide no government support or direction.

The plant should have been leased to a private company following the sale to

the community, including any harvesting and processing licences attained and/or retained. History seems to always repeat itself in the province regardless of the leadership.

If this is Mr. Williams’ solution to rural development and the long-term existence of the communities outside the eastern Avalon, these communities will be extinct.

Our premier shows once again he has no interest in the province’s fishing industry. In exercising his right to gain the confidence of rural Newfoundland Mr. Williams has failed.

how many eggs from wild chickens? We don’t — we grow them, don’t we?

We have these wonderful clean, deep, cold-water bays in Newfoundland and Labrador. We must grow our own salmon, trout, cod, and shellfish and sell them at $10 a mouthful. Aquaculture is the future and if I were a younger man this business would be an attractive option. So forget the blame games and the old hacks who contributed their fair share to the fisheries mess; it’s too late for their come-lately visions. Take the self-inflicted pain now and plan for the future in aquaculture. I was astonished the panel didn’t make more of this.

But a quick word on Brian Dobbin’s column of the same publishing date. His usual virulence and enthusiasm was missing, his most redeeming qualities.

And Brian, don’t fret about Ryan’s com-

ment that you’re only a “tree.” Even if it’s true — be an oak!

Lastly, don’t worry too much about the young people of this province; they’ll do just fine if we don’t condemn them exclusively to fish plants.

Remember, they own one-sixth of the total world landmass, not to mention the water in and around it. Not a bad start in this life, don’t you think?

But you’re right, it is a question of perspective and I think ours has been skewed because of past indignities and grievances. The Mom-and-Dad’s house analogy needs to be reworked. It’s our house now — we are Mom and Dad. Keep your own room clean, of course.

But take ownership and responsibility for the whole bloody place.

Robert Rowe, St. John’s

Boyd Legge, Mount Pearl

Faults and facts Dear editor, The second session of The Independent’s panel of experts focused on the fishery. But ho hum, it’s all been said before, and many times at that. To try and pick through the arguments is tedious and they all seem to contain some element of truth. But there is a certain unity within the variations — (i.e.) collectively we have screwed up.

I for one am not prepared to dwell on the past and indulge in self-flagellation for what is likely only one example of a world-wide phenomenon. Wringing our hands and beating our gums about whose fault it was will not change a fundamental fact: the wild fishery as we know it, is over, finished, in its death throes, all over the world!

Now what do we do? How much bacon do we harvest from wild pigs,

OCTOBER 6, 2006

8 • INDEPENDENTNEWS

OCTOBER 6, 2006

INDEPENDENTNEWS • 9

IN CAMERA

‘Not just a pretty picture’

This week, St. John’s-based photographer Sheilagh O’Leary contributes selections from her portfolio of work for The Independent’s fourth guest photo essay. O’Leary, disarming with her forthright conversation and big smile, opens the door for an “emotional exchange” with every person she photographs. The engaging results are on these pages.

By Stephanie Porter The Independent

S

heilagh O’Leary is direct and assured when talking about her commitment to capturing faces and bodies — most often at home or, better, outdoors — in photographs.

“The reason why I do photography is because I’m interested in human nature,” she says. “If I wasn’t a photographer, I would just find another tool or medium to do that … photography is a great way to explore a person and document somebody, but also try to get underneath the surface a bit.

“It’s not just a pretty picture.”

Although the subtleties of social interaction and the human form have

always fascinated O’Leary, it wasn’t always clear photography was her calling.

“I was always interested in science, actually,” she says. “Really into biology and human anatomy and I thought I was going to go into medicine. My mom was a nurse and had anatomy books around …”

But when she got started in university, O’Leary realized medical science wasn’t what she wanted after all. She “sort of flailed around a bit,” eventually becoming interested in human anthropology and sociology.

And then she took a photography course with Mannie Buchheit, an inspiration and mentor for many of the professional (and otherwise) photogra-

phers in the province today.

“That course really turned me on,” she says. “There was something that I understood there.” While some photographers talk about the epiphany of the first darkroom experience, for O’Leary, another part of the process caught her.

“It was partly the darkroom magic, absolutely,” she says. “But for me it was always the human aspect … the big question was trying to document something about the human spirit. That was my interest.”

And she realized her camera could help her do that.

For more than 15 years, O’Leary has been a full-time, professional photographer. She’s gone on to hone her craft

at Concordia University, the Banff Centre for Fine Arts and the Rockport Maine Workshops. The best learning, of course, has come on the job.

“I rarely do any studio work,” she says. “I prefer something more mobile.

I like going into people’s spaces and seeing what I can pull out of that particular space or the context they’re in. I guess I’m really about less is more; I’m not really into the baggage or the technology.

“It’s helped me learn more about light. Because I’m going into challenging situations and oftentimes I’m shooting with natural available light … it’s about ‘How am I going to document this? How am I going to problem solve?’”

O’Leary has exhibited internationally and been published in national newspapers and art magazines. She’s also done art installations, film work, and is responsible for the shots in the St. John’s Folk Arts Council’s annual calendars of fun-loving (and seminaked) musicians.

She does weddings, commercial work, and publicity portraits. She may be best known, though, for her heart breaking, sensitive shots of children — with or without their parents. And, of course, for her honest and organic nude portraits.

Whatever the assignment, for a customer or her own artistic needs, O’Leary carries the same techniques and philosophy with her.

“Whatever successes I’ve had is because I wear my heart on my sleeve, always,” she says. “I’m a very open and upfront person and I always let it be known who I am and what I’m interested in. I have nothing to hide.

When you approach someone with that and that kind of openness, they relax, they trust you and open up.”

While O’Leary says she admires those photographers who can fade into the background and become observant flies on the wall, she always knew that wouldn’t work for her.

“There’s no way I can walk into a room and not be noticed,” she says.

“I’m big in stature and I’m equally big in personality. How do I deal with that?

I have to be right in your face. I come right in.

“If I’m doing a wedding, I’m a part of the family that day, I’m buddying up with the bride’s dad, I’m right in with the pack and that’s the only way for me to draw out that intimacy, that bit of emotion I’m trying to capture.”

That’s not to say O’Leary is abrasive or intimidating — a look at her work, always respectful and intimate, is proof of that. She’s currently putting the final touches on a new show of nudes, Human Natured, slated to open Nov. 30 at The Flower Studio on Military Road.

She says it’s most important for her to have an “emotional exchange” with

her model — they’re not professionals — which usually involves a cup of coffee and a get-to-know-you chat.

Like most of her work, the nudes are generally outdoors, on beaches or forests, amid rocks, trees and water.

O’Leary, a self-professed nature lover, considers both the natural setting and her subject, allowing them to interact and create an abstract image or arresting portrait.

“It’s their face and they’re naked so they have to be very powerful,” she says of the models she works with. “In some ways, I try to make them be more powerful than the viewer so that the roles are exchanged — instead of them being the vulnerable model, I want

them to be in charge.”

As with so much of her work, the shots are “about our relationship to our land and the vulnerability of being here … that’s a big part of my experience of being here as a Newfoundlander.”

As much time and energy as O’Leary spends on each of her subjects (“I can’t get in there, shoot, and get out again”), she exudes confidence and is more than able to promote and sell herself — with characteristic honesty.

After the upcoming exhibit, her next major project is a book, in collaboration with Agnes Walsh. The publication will examine the connection between Ireland and the Cape Shore of Newfoundland through O’Leary’s

black-and-white photography and Walsh’s poetry.

“I have a lot on my plate here,” she says. “I’m a single mother of three now, I’ve got a great support network, but it’s a juggling act. But I find the more I have to do, the more I can accomplish.

“I have to support my family. That’s part of it, but it’s not the driving force, because I could go out and get a regular job, one that’s not so up and down and all around and seasonal … but I love what I do. I love the work and it enables me to stay social.

“I connect with people all the time.” www.sheilagholeary.com

OCTOBER 6, 2006

10 • INDEPENDENTNEWS

YOUR VOICE

LIFE STORY

‘I live the way she taught me to’ MARION PARDY 1934-1997

By Pam Pardy Ghent For The Independent

T

Ban the owner, not the dog Dear editor, When are people going to get it? For public safety and the safety of other dogs, keep your dog on a leash, regardless of the breed.

Breed banning seems to be the answer for some. I think irresponsible owners should be banned. There is a stigma attached to certain breeds, poodles are yappy; beagles are stinky and difficult to housetrain; greyhounds need to run; rottweilers, German shepherds; dobermans and staff/pit bull terrier types attack people. If you research these breeds you can find some very interesting information that may surprise you. Education is the key to choosing a dog that is right for you, as well as choosing a reputable breeder who breeds for sound temperament and health.

The issue of breed banning came to light again this week following an incident where pit bulls attacked an Australian shepherd. This must have

been a horrifying experience for the dog and its owner. Owning a pit bull-type dog is not to be taken lightly. Some people get this dog for image as far as I’m concerned. The image presented in movies and by famous rap artists in music videos makes owning a pit bull cool. Having this breed isn’t cool; this is a breed that needs consistent training and constant socialization. Like many terriers they tend to be dog aggressive and need to be owned by a responsible individual. To own this dog you have to be able to take criticism and be as selfconfident as the dog itself. This breed can be a wonderful companion and family dog providing it doesn’t get into the wrong hands.

It is time to let the breed banning issue die. I work with dogs and see aggression on a daily basis, in all types of breeds. Where do we draw the line?

Wendy Clarke, Paradise www.voiceforcanines.net

Every animal deserves a chance Dear editor, I’d like to thank writer Sue Rendell for her recent article in The Independent in which she described progressive models of dealing with homeless animals — models that are saving animal lives in places like New York City.

No-kill, or, more correctly, low-kill shelter policies reflect an understanding that every animal deserves a fair chance to be re-homed. This chance should not be taken away by the number of animals coming in the shelter door either before or after it.

Such low-kill systems seem to work best when two goals are met: there is support from carefully-chosen and trained foster-care providers which temporarily home animals before they are permanently placed; and the constant flow of unwanted kittens or puppies is slowed by an aggressive policy of spaying and neutering animals before they are re-homed.

The local registered charity RuffSpots Animal Welfare Foundation Inc. was founded in 2003 to help all shelters and rescue groups in Newfoundland and Labrador meet the second goal by funding the spaying and neutering of adoptable animals. To date, we have assisted 14 provincial animal charities and public municipal shelters spay or

neuter 115 animals. Our desire is that every animal from the shelter/rescue system in this province fortunate enough to get re-homed would be spayed or neutered first. This is the only way to make sure that these individuals do not further contribute to the number of animals being dumped in the system.

The many lovers and supporters of animals in our province must understand that the only long-term humane solution to reducing the needless waste of animals through euthanization is to promote spaying and neutering in the larger community and to spay and neuter shelter/rescue animals.

The recent airing in the media of the controversy between the City of St. John’s, the St. John’s SPCA, and Heavenly Creatures has simply made public the division that has existed within the province’s animal rescue community for some time. If there is a silver lining, it may be that Mayor Andy Wells’ comments have made it clear that there has never been a better time for a real effort to improve communication and co-operation among the dedicated volunteers and workers in the animal-care community.

Carolyn Walsh, Ruff-Spots Team Member

here is a headstone in a cemetery overlooking the ocean outside Little Harbour East, Fortune Bay. Simple words, “In loving memory” written above a name, Marion (nee Hillier) Pardy. It says so little to unknowing eyes — yet anyone walking by would notice the red roses.

A bouquet so high, wide and full it hides the words chiseled there, words picked out by a man not yet ready to be alone.

On this grey day, widower Sidney Pardy and his granddaughter Vanessa Pardy tend to the gravesite, mowing the grass for what may be the last time this year.

“Even to this day I can still sit down and just bawl, it’s just not fair,” the younger Pardy says, taking a rest.

“She was one of those who just did everything right; she didn’t drink, never smoked, she respected all the laws of God and man, she was kind, honest. I just can’t do her justice in a few sentences, no one can.”

There are many memories to share of this wife, mother of two and grandmother to four. She was the one who helped with homework displaying the patience of a saint. Hers was the kitchen that welcomed all, a place where everyone was fed and embraced. “Everything was tastier at Nan’s,” Pardy says, remembering her grandmother’s “taddy-cakes.”

“There was no modern technology in her kitchen, everything was done the old-fashioned way because that’s the way she did it and that gave everything that extra dose of love and patience.”

Pardy recalls how butter was melted in a mixing bowl over a pan of warmed water. “There was no short cuts, if it took time, it was worth it,” she laughs.

This was a woman who showed love through gestures and actions.

“The words may not have always been there, but it was just in the way she treated you and made you feel so special,” Pardy says. Nights spent with Sidney and Marion Pardy her grandparents always ended in a toasty bed. “Nan would put hot water bottles in the bed to warm it before I went upstairs. That was always so “She was a sweet, comforting, but that wasn’t just loving person who because of the hot bottles of water, it was because she thought to do it for went much too fast.” me.”

Pardy left for Brooks, Alta. after Vanessa Pardy finishing high school in 1995, and the two women wrote letters to stay in touch. These notes were of little things; the weather, who was doing When her grandmother went to the what, who was leaving, who was back home, but Pardy is happy she hung on doctor, a brain tumor was discovered.

“She was given a year. A year, that to most of the correspondence.

“I never dreamed she’d be gone like was all the time she had,” Pardy says. this, but I just kept them, I don’t know “Nan said, ‘Thank you, Doctor,’ and went home. That was Nan, always so why,” she says.

Pardy heard her grandmother was polite, she even had to thank the doc“acting different” in a phone call. The tor for his time.”

Pardy returned home to see her once-skilled knitter was spending more time unraveling work than fin- grandmother and stayed as long as she ishing projects. “She was trying to fin- could. “I went in her kitchen before I ish a sweater and she kept taking it left to go back to Brooks. I had to say back, saying she couldn’t remember good-bye because I was leaving, but I how to finish it and that wasn’t like knew that wasn’t the good-bye I was saying. I knew I wasn’t going to see Nan.”

her again.” Pardy went back to Alberta and waited for the phone to ring telling her to return home for a final good-bye.

Pardy observes her grandfather as he mows the grass and tends to the flowers. “He really misses her,” she says. “I know how bad it is for me to go into their house and realize she isn’t there, so it’s worse for him.”

Pardy says they come to the graveyard at least once a month and take care of things for her, the way she tended to them.

Pardy became a mother two years after her grandmother died and returned to Newfoundland to raise her daughter. “I tell Megan (her daughter) about Nan all the time,” she says. “I wish I had her before Nan went, so she could get to experience the love my grandmother had to give, but you can’t predict the future and I try and keep her memory alive as best I can and live the way she taught me to.

“She was a sweet, loving person who went much too fast.”

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OCTOBER 6, 2006

INDEPENDENTNEWS • 11

PAPER TRAIL AROUND THE BAY We are informed that two squids were taken at Bonavista last week.

The size of one of them ran: length of body, 17 feet; width of tail, 4 and 1/2 feet; thickness of skin, 3 inches; horn 32 feet long. — This extraordinary fish was intended for Exhibition, but could not be conved here in time. We hope it may keep for the next.

— The Star and Conception Bay Semi-Weekly Advertiser, Oct. 4, 1872 YEARS PAST Customs Detective Tobin, assisted

by Detectives Byrne and Simmonds, made a raid on the Maritime Drug Store and confiscated some liquor which is alleged to have been smuggled. The drug store is a licensed dispensary under the Prohibition Act and the seized liquor is believed to have been purchased with a view of dispensing it in the usual way.

— The Daily Mail, Oct. 3, 1923 AROUND THE WORLD Although Castro has taken over many aspects of Cuban commerce, the buying of salt cod, one of the basic foods of Cubans, remains in private hands. Cuba imports about 12,000 tons of salt fish per year and of this amount Canada provided about 6,000 tons. Newfoundland’s contribution was about 2,500 tons.

The Examiner asked what the future held for the sale of Newfoundland fish in other markets besides Cuba.

“Anybody’s guess,” replied J.M. Laws, manager of NAFEL. — The Examiner, Oct.1, 1960 EDITORIAL STAND “And what of deference? This characteristic was obvious to the most casual observer and the recent Liberal leadership convention.

Convention delegates asked why they were supporting X or Y, normally responded by praising X or Y’s “education,” “Polish,” “guts,” or other personal quality. There seemed to be very little appreciation or concern with the man’s political record and none at all for his policy preferences.

“This is not meant to be a criticism of the behaviour of the Liberal Party as such, but of the long-standing elitist and paternalistic attitudes to their leaders on the part of

Telegraph & Political Review, 1874

Rick Hillier taking questions from the media in St. John’s.

Paul Daly/The Independent

Newfoundlanders in general.”

— Suburban Mirror, Nov.2, 1977

Rick Hillier: general, God or Dallas cheerleader

LETTER TO THE EDITOR Dear Editor – I must comment on the Communist Party build up that is at a steady incline here in our beautiful country of Canada. We cannot stand back and allow this kind of treachery and “one world government system” to continue to take place in this great country. The one and only purpose of communism is to take over the world and to reign over it as one government. We must stand together as Canadians now!

Before it’s too late. The first thing communists do when they take over a country (and don’t think that’s not what they want to do!) is to stamp out the bible and remove all sense of freedom from the people of the country. So let’s go Canada. Let’s stand up for our country, our freedom and most of all, Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

Jeff B. Joyce, Christian Life Outreach, The Northern Reporter, Oct.29, 1986

Dear editor, I find it very strange that General Rick Hillier is allowed to speak directly to Canadian citizens exhorting them to support our troops in Afghanistan.

He has either become a puppet for the pro-Afghanistan policy of the Harper government or vice-versa, or he is merely overstepping his boundaries.

In a democracy, the citizens elect the government, the government puts a military in place and sets federal policy for that body, and the military carries out the will of Canadians through a proxy group — the government.

Hence, Hillier’s exhortations are very

annoying. He should learn to respect the system.

If he wants to play general, please play the role properly. If he wants to play God, he should resign his commission and get a theology degree.

Then wait for a vacancy. Of course, given the eternal nature of the deity now in that position, he may have to wait a little longer than it took him to make general.

Alternatively, if he wants to become a cheerleader, let him go to Dallas.

Meantime, I find it very disconcerting to be cheered on and told what to think by a Canadian military general

even though I fully support our troops — just not in this particular theater of war.

It cost American parents many dead children before they realized the folly of Vietnam and the fraudulent propaganda put out by Johnson and Nixon, who were finally forced to retreat under the blatantly false smokescreen of “peace with honour.” Do we really have to make the same mistake? I thought the benefit of studying history was to avoid repeating the bad parts.

Aubrey Smith, Grand Falls-Windsor

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

In a recent breach-of-promise case the defendant, who was sixty-five years old, was described as having “one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel.”

— The Daily Globe, Oct. 24, 1925 mandy.cook@theindependent.ca

NEW SEASON. NEW LAUGHS. SAME RICK.

RICK MERCER REPORT Available in HDTV cbc.ca/mercerreport

8

Tuesdays at :30

pm

OCTOBER 6, 2006

12 • INDEPENDENTNEWS

VOICE FROM AWAY

By Carl Mercer For the Independent

T

he province I live in is relatively poor, compared to the immense wealth of natural resources it possesses. If you ask the people, they will tell you that bad deals and federal policies are a big factor of their misfortune. Bordering the ocean, the fishery is the source of livelihood for many people, and the inhabitants are a friendly, proud stock of people with a deep and profound history.

Sound familiar?

Well, while similar in many respects, it isn’t Newfoundland. I’m living in Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam, better known as Aceh, Indonesia.

The similarities end there. Aceh sits at the northern tip of the island of Sumatra, Indonesia, in the hot Indian Ocean. It’s brimming with luscious rainforests and is complemented on its coasts with exotic beaches.

Also, and unfortunately, Aceh has endured a 30-year civil war with the Indonesian federal state and is probably best known around the world as ground zero of the horrific 2004 south-Asian tsunami, in which over 200,000 people died.

A few days ago, I visited one of the beaches. A friend and I sat there in the early evening, drinking traditional coffee and watching the white-capped waves roar into the shoreline. Once again I found myself thinking about the day of the tsunami and the sheer magnitude of the waves, which I still find unfathomable.

The thought of waves 30 and 40 metres high tearing into the city is something we can barely imagine. It seems incredulous. And yet, the proof is here: the water marks on the walls of many buildings, the remnants of infrastructure, and the fact half the city is leveled — and most shockingly, the fact there is a large tanker sitting in the middle of town, having been carried over the roofs of buildings and deposited into a residential area.

Two years later Butlerville native Carl Mercer is living in Aceh, Indonesia, ground zero for the tsunami almost two years ago But that was almost two years ago.

Arriving here recently, I expected to see devastation, buildings in ruin, and rubble on the streets. But this is really not the case. Banda Aceh is doing well.

Taken at face value, the city is thriving, the streets are full of people going about their day, the shops are open, investment has jumped with a new

first-class European hotel and a slew of new restaurants, cafes and businesses.

One can argue the city is doing better than ever.

And this wouldn’t be a strange statement, after 30 years of civil war and a seeming eternity of struggle. People were afraid to leave their homes, bodies turned up on the streets, unemployment

ran high as investors were afraid of the instability, and the government restricted access to the province.

The situation in Aceh was not good, and while a peace deal was in process, it had yet to materialize completely.

I’ve been told the tsunami was like the horrible bloody climax to a long struggle. While it was, without a doubt, the

most devastating blow to the Acehnese people in their history, it did speed up the coming peace deal in an indirect way, bringing a bittersweet stability to the region.

And then there are the people. After two years, how are they faring?

On this subject I tread with care.

After only four months in Banda Aceh and only the beginnings of friendship, I am still an outsider and obviously not prepared to speak on behalf of the Acehnese people.

On the surface, most people seem fine. They work, they eat, they laugh and talk and sing. As my gym instructor here once told me, “Life has to go on…”

But does this mean the grief is gone?

Or that people have moved on with their lives? Certainly not, and as a friend of mine was quick to point out, what you see and what people are feeling are very different things. I will never know what most Acehnese are feeling, for I can never understand what they have been through, or how they can find a way to deal with such a loss.

And that is what I can see of Banda Aceh today. The grief and shock are still strong — how could they not be?

— and there’s still a great deal to be done as many are without homes.

But the will to go on, the generosity from international donors and non-governmental organizations, and the tightknit community support of a friendly people with a long and strong history are rebuilding Banda Aceh.

The city is growing, the beach is full of people swimming and laughing, and there is, overall, a sense of promise and hope.

Carl Mercer is from Butlerville, Newfoundland and a graduate of Memorial University. He has previously worked in Ethiopia and is currently in Indonesia working for the MENTOR Initiative, a UK based public health organization, which fights malaria in developing countries.

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

Kennedy the likely kingmaker

H

e’s going to have to fight for it all the way, but the leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada is still Michael Ignatieff’s to lose.

Based on the preliminary results of this weekend’s round of delegate selection meetings, Ignatieff will need to get a second wind to prevail but he has the advantage both quantitatively and qualitatively going into the final stretch.

He leads the pack in delegate support and, alone

of all candidates, he has performed strongly in the prime election markets of Central Canada.

As of now, four of the eight candidates that remain on the ballot are simply out of contention.

The tables have been turned on three of those four: Martha Hall Findlay, Ken Dryden and Scott Brison. They have spent the past three months courting delegates; now it is the other camps that will be courting these candidates with a passion.

None of the three emerged from the weekend with enough delegate support to hope for a win in Montreal. But Dryden, because of his celebrity, is considered a prime catch for the leading contenders as are, to a lesser degree, Hall Findlay and Brison by virtue of their respective status as the sole remaining woman in the race and the sole candidate from Atlantic Canada.

DISMAL ABSENCE To the obvious relief of the many Liberals, Joe Volpe emerged from the weekend vote as a distant also-ran.

The exercise also confirmed Gerard Kennedy’s dismal absence from the Quebec radar. The former Ontario education minister had his worst provincial score in Quebec, results so poor that they indicate he would need years — not months — to make an impression on the province.

As a result, Kennedy is more likely to play kingmaker at the convention than to get his hands on the crown.

Neither Bob Rae nor Stéphane Dion or, if it came to that, Ignatieff, is likely to rally to a candidate who inspires such profound indifference in Quebec. But Kennedy’s support for one of the other three could well determine the winner.

Over the course of the campaign, Rae and Dion have shared much of the same space on defining issues such as the Constitution or Canada’s foreign policy. It would come as little surprise if one

hope

By Chantal Hébert Torstar wire service

ended up moving over to the other in Montreal.

But that might not be enough. Over the weekend, they were shown to have a serious weakness in common in Ontario.

In that province, Dion’s score reflects an organization that is much less robust than that of his main Ontario-based rivals. But polls have shown that Ontarians have largely failed to cotton on to the only Quebec candidate in the race.

As for Rae, Ontarians in general may be more inclined to forget the lingering memories of his unpopular NDP government than Liberals from Ontario are to forgive him for wresting power from them in 1990. Poring over the preliminary weekend results, that sense could translate into an anybody-but-Rae Ontario movement on the floor of the convention.

Ignatieff’s uneven performance on the campaign trail did prevent him from building an insurmountable lead among the elected delegates. But he has transformed his presumed front-runner status into a reality. And despite conventional wisdom to the contrary, he might have more growth potential than Dion in Quebec and Rae in Ontario.

The former NDP premier is not the only leading candidate who brings cumbersome domestic baggage to the last stretch of the campaign.

Many Quebec Liberals are clearly reluctant to go into the next election under the leadership of Dion, who originally made his name in federal politics as the father of the Clarity Act on secession.

Not all the delegates selected will make it to the convention. About a thousand ex-officio delegates will also be thrown into the mix. Made up of riding presidents, senators and past and present candidates, this establishment group may find Kennedy, Rae and Dion’s proven weaknesses in key election markets at least as daunting as the prospect of a leap into the unknown with Ignatieff.

For every question there is an answer.

Hope through education, support and solutions.

We’re here.

1.800.321.1433 www.arthritis.ca

INDEPENDENTBUSINESS

FRIDAY THROUGH THURSDAY, OCTOBER 6-12, 2006 — PAGE 13

‘That’s the win-win’ Experts say developing lower Churchill hydro for use inside the province may be best — but outside market will always exist

By Ivan Morgan The Independent

A

move by Hydro-Quebec to develop hydroelectric projects on rivers that flow out of Labrador should not interfere with the lower Churchill project, industry experts say.

And when it comes to finding a use for that new lower Churchill power, an aluminum industry spokesman says keeping a good part of it in the province — for a smelter or another industrial project — is a good idea.

Christian Van Houtte, president and CEO of the Aluminum Association of Canada, says a smelter is a good “fit” for a development like the lower Churchill.

“They are going to Iceland and South Africa æ why not Labrador? The power is there, the shipping facilities are there — it might be something, but I cannot talk for (the company),” Van Houtte tells The Independent.

“I know the Aluminum industry is looking for additional power. Where this power comes from is more or less irrelevant, as long as a competitive cost for the power and long-term contracts will serve both sides, because we are looking at a fixed market for 20 or 25 years.”

Van Houtte likens it to a portfolio for utilities — money can be made from the spot market, but with a stable client who uses a considerable amount of power 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, “you can go to market and borrow and get the financing for your project.”

He says that was the approach the Quebec government took with James Bay in the 1970s. Quebc signed a longterm contract with Aluminum and steel companies.

“You diversify your portfolio,” Van Houtte says, “by having these stable clients who pay the first of the month.”

Murray Stewart, president of the Energy Council of Canada, says finding a use for the electricity within the province in a value added industry makes sense.

“I would assume Newfoundland is looking at (finding) a way to use the electrons in Newfoundland and Labrador.

That’s the win-win,” says Stewart.

“Are you shipping Aluminum or are you shipping electricity? The only value added in Canada in the Aluminum is the electrons — we have no other resource in Canada. It (the Aluminum industry) is totally only here because of the abundant electricity.

“It is no different than what is going on in Alberta today, and it is one of the issues in the political leadership. Do you do the upgrading of the oil sands in Alberta — or do you ship it out at a relatively low value? The issue again is value added and having the industrial development in Alberta.”

Stewart says Hydro-Quebec’s decision to develop the “five rivers” region of the north shore should not, in itself, be a barrier to development of the lower Churchill.

“I think overall, when you look at the demand for electricity in Ontario and the northeast U.S., I don’t think there is a problem with markets,” he says. “It’s a question of how you structure the various facilities. I don’t think it is market limited — if people can find a way to work together to deliver all of it (hydro power from the province and Quebec) I think there is a market here.”

There’s no need for political posturing, says Pierre Fortin, president of the Canadian Hydropower Association. He refuses to comment on politics, but says the future of hydro development can be good for everyone.

“There is a tremendous potential for hydro development in Canada,” says Fortin. “And I believe it is incumbent on everybody to develop that potential.”

Fortin says hydroelectricity is the perfect resource, as long as stable supply is guaranteed. “When you talk about stability and reliability, there’s no doubt that hydro power can meet those requirements. There will always be water.”

He says the power needs of Ontario alone are huge — and growing. He says a deal that both Newfoundland and Quebec could each live with would be profitable for both.

Stewart agrees. “I think that is a negotiation that has to happen. If there is good, competitive electricity coming from lower Churchill then that is the basis — possibly — of a deal.”

“I just came from a luncheon with Dwight Duncan (Ontario’s minister of Energy). He has the challenge of finding 10,000 megawatts of new generation.

There is no lack of market here in North America.”

The issue of negotiating a power corridor through Quebec is another political problem. Carmen Dybwad, a board member with the National Energy Board says power generation has traditionally been a right jealously guarded by the provinces, and may ultimately have to be solved by them, and not the federal government.

Stewart says Newfoundland and Labrador’s market access issues are not the only ones in Canada.

“For Alberta to ship all their electricity down to the northeast US, it has to go through British Columbia.” When asked about how that deal is being negotiated, he laughs. “It’s not simple.”

As Van Houtte says, “It is not the clients or the utilities who decide (the future of these projects) it is the politicians — and the politicians of course, the long term for them is four years.” ivan.morgan@theindependent.ca

Transmission lines near Churchill Falls.

Paul Daly/The Independent

Credit card considerations T

hey’re about 8.5 by 5.25 centimeters. They’ve become more common than cash. The whole story of their use is on that small magnetic strip on their back.

There are about 2.5 of them for every human in Canada, about 75 million in all. Some estimates suggest an average balance of $1,200.

They weigh one-fifteenth of an ounce each. So 106 of them will make up a pound of plastic and the 75 million weigh about 720,000 pounds.

However, their financial weight is well over 100 billon dollars.

And they’re wonderful. Wonderful — if used wisely, appropriately, and with prudent discretion.

Credit cards and the public’s fervent use of them began in the mid1960s. If you’re in your 30s, you

AL ANTLE

Your Finances can’t recall not having a credit card or two. But if you’re in your 50s, you can well recall your first. By the 1970s, the pace picked up and by now, virtually everything we consume is a credit card consideration or can become one.

It’s interesting to also note the real measurement of our standard of living came with the common use of credit and credit cards in the 1960s.

Marketers with large national retail chains began to understand that people rarely saved for a major purchase

— at least working class people didn’t.

But they put great priority on maintaining their good name and so they always paid their debts. Then, as now, 99 per cent of the population always paid up. Only 1 per cent needed to be chased. Almost half of this 1 per cent paid if prodded, so losses were minimal.

The evolution of this mentality, and the acceptance of the financial reality by business allowed people to begin consuming goods and services much sooner than had previously been possible. Homes began to fill up with stuff, the economy improved and ultimately two people working in each household was necessary to keep ahead … but that’s a story for another week.

Regrettably, the interest rates charged were oppressive, at least with certain retail cards. Many consumers paid 30 per cent or more above the price of their new sofa. Ten years passed before bankers began to recognize this lucrative credit market. But when they did, consumers won again with lower borrowing costs.

Credit cards came from Frank X. McNamara. Frank (I suspect his name was Francis Xavier, but I really don’t know for sure) was dining out one evening in New York City.

When the waiter brought the check, an embarrassed McNamara, who was the head of Hamilton Credit at the time, discovered he’d forgotten his wallet. He decided to invent the credit card, which appropriately enough

he called “Diners Club.”

His card was soon used by 20,000 New Yorkers, who preferred to present it, not only at restaurants, but also for gasoline. McNamara was convinced his metal card was only a fad, and so he sold his interest in the business off. Poor Frank. But I digress …

Over time, the marketplace continued it’s natural evolution. By the 1990s things had come almost full circle and our need for a credit card from every outlet where we did business diminished.

This was because most stores accepted either the bank-issued Visa or Master Card (or both). This was a good thing for consumers too, since bank credit card rates are much lower See “It’s not,” page 15

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

Available this fall. To preorder your copy, contact

Boulder Publications at 895-6483

14 • INDEPENDENTBUSINESS

OCTOBER 6, 2006

NEW FOUND BRAND

Premier Danny Williams unveiled Newfoundland and Labrador’s new brand Oct. 3 at The Rooms in St. John’s, developed by Target Marketing at cost of $1 million. The pitcher plant was made the province’s official flower in 1954.

Paul Daly/The Independent

S

t. John’s Mayor Andy Wells, a passionate believer in the importance of Newfoundland and Labrador’s offshore resources — and the centre of recent controversy surrounding the leadership of the offshore regulatory board — led The Independent’s recent panel discussion on oil and gas.

The panel participants had been invited by The Independent to meet for an afternoon to discuss Newfoundland’s Terms of Union with Canada. Moderated by editor-in-chief Ryan Cleary, the talk explored — but wasn’t limited to — five categories: politics, fisheries, oil and gas, finances and transportation.

Wells, 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.

(Note: Crosbie and Riche were absent from this segment of the discussion).

This, the third of five excerpts from the discussion, focuses on the resource Wells believes is “the only game in town” — and leads to a rare moment of agreement among those in the room.

Next week, the discussion moves on to topic No. 4: finances.

Comments have been edited for clarity and length.

Gus Etchegary, Andy Wells and Roger Grimes

Ryan Cleary: I’ll let you open this one, Mayor Wells. You’re the one up to your neck in the Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board, and that whole dispute. What would you do in terms of oil and gas?

Andy Wells: Not much different than we’d do with fishery … I’m working my way to it now, but there are some provisions (in the Atlantic Accord) there respecting Canadian security of supply … so as far as I’m concerned, subject to those provisions, I think the province itself should regulate the industry, subject to federal environmental laws, occupational health and safety and all those sorts of things.

Cleary: What would that mean for the Atlantic Accord and the C-NLOPB? Wells: The government would control the board.

Cleary: The province of Newfoundland and Labrador.

Ray Guy: I keep thinking about the Americans, what about the Americans?

They want that, b’y, they’re going to have it.

Wells: What?

Guy: Anything they want.

Wells: That’s probably true. The problem I’ve got with it is not particular to

this board (C-NLOPB), it’s with all regulatory agencies, it’s that the regulators become the regulated. And I’m not saying they’re wining and dining and handing out cheques to people, just, psychologically, the regulators become too close to the people under regulation. I experienced it on the Public Utilities Board when I was there a few years ago before these guys (gestures to Roger Grimes) fired me and I’m …

Guy: Bastards!

Wells: … I’m expecting to find the same thing at the C-NLOPB. Brian Dobbin: So what are you saying? If we got management of the oil and gas we’d end up too cozy with the oil and gas companies?

Wells: I think it’s too cozy now. I think you’d be able — I’m using the same arguments we used earlier — I’m not sure if we’d be better off (regulating ourselves) but I think we’d have the possibility of exerting better control. There are other ways we could influence events, which I think would be advantageous to the province that you can’t do …

Dobbin: Isn’t sovereignty over the 200-mile limit kind of a catch all for these two categories (fisheries and oil

‘The only game in town’ Independent panel recommends province retain management control of oil and gas

Paul Daly/The Independent

OUR TERMS and gas)? Once you have sovereignty, isn’t there a decision there …

Wells: I hadn’t thought about it like that.

Dobbin: But we’re talking Terms of Union here. Would we join without it?

Grimes: But much of the oil and gas is outside the limits.

Guy: What are the benefits? How long will it last? 25 years?

Wells: I’m not up on the geology …

I’d be very surprised, and none of us are going to be around then, if there isn’t an industry in this province 80 years from now. You can look at Norway and their expectations in the ’60s and now they’re looking ahead 80 years and doing projections on what the industry is going to need.

This is the only game in town for this friggin’ province. There’s nothing else on the horizon that’s foreseeable. We’re going to be stuck with oil and gas for a long time, unless there’s somebody’s going to come up with the magic bullet.

Dobbin: That’s what they said about trains.

Wells: I’ve read about fusion and wind and about this and that, and when you look at what people who know anything about it say, oil is going to be around for a long time. And gas … I can’t control whether somebody is going to come up with something else.

Grimes: We need it now.

Wells: So let’s assume that oil is going to be necessary for the next 50 years.

We’ve got a lot of it, and we’ve got a lot of gas.

Maura Hanrahan: You’re saying we’ve got to plan for it.

Dobbin: So we want management of it.

Wells: I’m saying there’s a good chance we’ll make the same shaggin’ mistakes as we did with the fishery.

Cleary: In terms of oil and gas, what you believe, Mayor Wells, is Newfoundland and Labrador should control the management of the oil and gas sector. Is that it?

Wells: If you look at the act, there’s a section in there about security of supply, and once the Canadian, the national security of supply is guaranteed, not infringed on, that as far as I’m concerned, the feds should just back away and let us run it, like Alberta runs it. And I can tell you right now, if we had 100

MPs or 75 MPs, if this was Quebec or Ontario, that’s exactly what Harper would do. They’re determined now to still keep control. There was no hope with the federal Liberals and no hope with the provincial Liberals, we thought Harper might be interested but he’s just as bad as the other two governments …

Guy: No …

Wells: There’s a real serious power struggle here, let me tell you.

Cleary: Does anybody have a different idea about what to do with oil and gas in terms of the Terms of Union besides direct management? Do you agree with that, Mr. Grimes?

Grimes: I agree, absolutely.

Cleary: Do you agree with that, Peg? Peg Norman: nods Cleary: Maura?

Maura Hanrahan: Yes, I’d like to hear some comments about royalties though.

Wells: That’s another issue. That’s something the province has got to do, that’s a negotiation thing. That’s what you elect the governments for … and the government has got to face the electorate. I’m not worried about the government getting the goods — there’s elections over that sort of stuff.

In Norway, for instance, the government has to table in parliament, the deal, and the deal is debated and discussed and the model for the way we handle our industry is indeed the way the Norwegians do it … but we’re screwed by the federal government.

Guy: Is there any difference in the way Scotland — they’re part of the United Kingdom, we’re part of Canada, are there any similarities there? I admit ignorance but …

Dobbin: I think they’ve divided up the North Sea — Scottish, Norwegian, English …

Wells: I don’t really understand that … the bottom line is the way the Norwegians govern themselves over there.

Cleary: Do you agree with that, Ray, that we control the management of it?

Guy: Like I say, I’m totally ignorant.

Grimes: His point is the relevant one, in terms of our circumstance, with Scotland being part of the UK and us being part of Canada.

Wells: I don’t think there’s a Scottish government that has a regulatory agency in the UK. Hanrahan: The UK isn’t a federation — Scotland’s got a parliament.

Guy: They’ve got a bit more than we’ve got, haven’t they?

Cleary: So that locks down oil and gas.

Guy: Some simple, b’y.

BUILDING HEALTHY COMMUNITIES

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to the Board for organizational effectiveness, sound fiscal operation, and the leadership of an executive team in the management of a comprehensive healthcare delivery system and to government to maintain established health policy directions.

As the CEO, located in Grand Falls-Windsor, you will lead the ongoing consolidation of the region’s health care system and establish strategic and operational objectives for the organization. Working with the Board of Directors, government, and the other regional health authorities, you will provide executive leadership in championing the vision for Central Health’s success. This role is accountable

As the ideal candidate, you possess extensive senior management and healthcare system experience. You also have broad financial and budgetary experience and you have the ability to navigate initiatives in a public environment. You must have a broad understanding of the health industry to address interdisciplinary concepts and health delivery issues. You have acquired these attributes through considerable

experience of a progressive nature and you are backed by a graduate degree in health or business administration, or an equivalent combination of education and experience.

To explore this opportunity further, please contact Lloyd Powell in our Newfoundland office at (709) 722-6890 or forward your resume in confidence to: dionne.lane@robertsonsurrette.com

OCTOBER 6, 2006

INDEPENDENTBUSINESS • 15

Waiting for a royalty regime The province has offshore riches in natural gas, but no pipeline or royalty structure MANDY COOK

A

global expert in natural gas says there’s an estimated $100 billion worth of the resource — up to 30 trillion cubic feet — beneath the seabed off Labrador.

“There’s more value in the gas out there than there is in the remaining oil,” Steve Campbell, president and founder of Trans Ocean Gas, tells The Independent. “A large part of that would be recoverable.”

Campbell says it’s only a matter of time before natural gas surpasses oil in terms of a lucrative payoff for investors.

“Even though the price is gone down at the moment, one cold snap is all it’s going to take and boom, up the price of gas is going to go again,” he says. “It’s very volatile and … if oil stays high, you’re going to see gas at a very valuable price. Even right now at $5 per thousand cubic feet it would still be very economical to transport to market.”

John Foran, senior economist with Natural Resources Canada, says natural gas is a “very big” business. In 2004, the Canadian natural gas industry earned $41.5 billion. He says the majority of natural gas production is taking place in Alberta.

“There are some forecasts for production in Newfoundland,” he says. “But right now it’s not economical because there is no pipeline.”

Campbell says he has the solution.

Along with ExxonMobil, Trans Ocean Gas holds the patent for a technology called Pressurized Liquefied Natural Gas, or PLNG, whereby natural gas is extracted from under the ocean floor, frozen and shipped in special containers to a processing plant and, ultimately, enters the energy grid.

Campbell says his company, in conjunction with the National Research

It’s not ‘your’ credit card From page 13 for the most part.

In spite of the numerous changes to the credit card market, the majority of the “good ideas” for their use, which evolved 50 years ago, still apply. Think about these guidelines: • We should never allow our credit availability to exceed what we need.

• We should not allow ourselves to be up-sold just because we’ve got a credit card in our pocket.

• We should pay the balance in full each month, and we should always make as large a down payment as is possible on a big-ticket item.

• We should reconcile our credit card statements every month.

• We should keep our credit card balances written down, and we should list it among our liabilities.

• We should always know the location of our credit cards.

• We should never adopt a “minimum payment only” mindset — $2,000 in appliances will cost over $9,000 if we make only minimum payments of 3 per cent of the balance each month, presuming the annual rate of interest is 29 per cent.

• We must remember that time is money. Making minimum payments means you’ll need more time. Thirty years plus six months, to be exact, if you make minimum payments of 3 per cent of the balance at an annual interest rate of 29 per cent.

• If you’re in trouble with credit cards, consider radical action as the cheapest way to resolve the problem.

Radical action includes prioritizing the cards, cutting back on expenses to “create” cash for payments, or even selling off some of your assets.

Consolidation works too, but this should only be chosen if you’ve taken steps to cut the sources of credit in the first place.

• Recognize that it’s not “your” credit card. The pieces of plastic fantastic that you use are actually owned by the financial institution whose name appears on them.

Some of the new realities of credit cards for today’s consumers to be careful of are: • Don’t get caught up in loyalty points plans as your only reason for using a credit card.

• Don’t use a credit card for a cash advance unless you’re in an extreme emergency.

Al Antle is the executive director of the Credit Counselling Service of Newfoundland and Labrador.

Council, is about five weeks away from testing its prototype pressure vessels for transporting the gas in Nova Scotia.

Meantime, the nearest tie-in to the grid is the Maritimes-Northeast pipeline in Goldboro, Nova Scotia, says Campbell.

But the greatest challenge to tapping natural gas as the province’s next profitable natural resource is the lack of a royalty regime.

The Atlantic Accord provides for the right of the provincial government to administer, manage and tax its offshore resources as if it were on land and without any interference or negotiation with Ottawa.

The Newfoundland and Labrador government has yet to do so with regards to natural gas.

A NOIA spokesperson says energy giant ConocoPhillips is anticipating dropping a well in the Laurentian subbasin off the south coast of the island as early as 2008. She says it is the only oil and gas company in the process of exploration at the present time.

Colleen McConnell, communications advisor with Husky Energy, says her company is waiting on word from the provincial government whether they should proceed with natural gas exploration.

“We do have some natural gas in the

Steve Campbell

White Rose field,” she says. “One of the things that we and a lot of the others, I guess, are looking for in order to devel-

Paul Daly/The Independent

op a plan to progress that is a royalty regime.” mandy.cook@theindependent.ca

16 • INDEPENDENTBUSINESS

OCTOBER 6, 2006

How will the world recognize us?

They will recognize us by a symbol that represents our natural beauty, humanity, and the strength of our collective character. One that has adapted to this place over generations, sur vived ever ything the world has thrown at it, and thrived.

It’s a symbol of our creativity, of our way of looking at things differently, of our belief that there really is no place on Ear th quite like this place.

The pitcher plant. At once both simple and amazing. Possessed of a fierce determination. Standing proud in both sun and storm, head to the wind. And always growing. It’s a symbol of who we are, and what we’re made of. One symbol, one voice. And by it, the world will recognize and know us from now on.

INDEPENDENTLIFE

FRIDAY THROUGH THURSDAY, OCTOBER 6-12, 2006 — PAGE 17

Filmmaker Noel Harris at the King’s Bridge Road service station — setting for his short film Two or More.

Paul Daly/The Independent.

When less is more

Susan Rendell and local filmmaker Noel Harris — fresh from an international tour with his latest short film — talk about industry support, making a feature, and the draw of a certain white truck For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.

Matthew 18:20

L

ocal writer/producer/director Noel Harris is sitting across from me in the living room of his brother Bill’s home on Patrick Street, which also doubles as a photography studio. Behind him is a camera; behind the camera, a thick green vine seeks the sun on a stained glass window. As Harris tells me about his life and his work, I think how aptly the camera and the window motif combine to make a metaphor for both of them.

Harris has just returned from film festivals in Los Angeles and Halifax, where his film Two or More was well-received by audiences — and an L.A. selection committee that included actress Thora Birch of American Beauty fame.

Two or More was one of approximately 700 films from 29 countries picked for the 10th annual Los Angeles International Short Film Festival. “Everyone said — and this is going

SUSAN RENDELL Screed and Coke to sound strange — that it was ‘just like a movie,’” Harris says. That’s because although Two or More is only seven minutes long, it has all the elements of a full-length film — solid characterization, plot, theme — a beginning, a middle and an end. An end with a twist, a spiritual spin, an uplift on the wings of angels.

Two or More, starring local actors Peter Soucy, Kevin Lewis, Frankie O’Neill and Roger Maunder, is partially based on a personal experience of Harris’s. Reflecting his Roman Catholic upbringing, the film is about the ultimate connectedness of the great mystery in which we live. “There’s a force out there, there’s a power,” he says. “These are tough times to live in, people want something uplifting … to know we’re going to be okay.

I believe in the goodness of people, of humanity in general. That comes through –

I’d like that to come through.”

Two or More was shot on a budget of roughly $14,000, but Harris tells me its production value is actually $70,000 – the acting bill alone would have been over $10,000, he says, if the actors hadn’t volunteered much of their time. Local businesses donated food and other items; the fire department hosed down the set to create atmosphere; the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary donated cruisers.

“The RNC told me, ‘Look, you’re an artist, we’ll come out and help you,’” says Harris.

“In Toronto, you’d be looking at $50-$60 an hour for a cruiser.”

The truck driven by Maunder’s character, a Christ-like figure, was spotted by Harris, who spent weeks tracking down its owner to lease it for the shoot. The vehicle’s white body, red (for blood) bonnet, and a trail of rusty tears under the side mirror struck Harris the first time he saw it. “I had to have that truck; the symbolism was perfect,” he says.

Although grateful for the support he received from the people of St. John’s while making Two or More, Harris wasn’t surprised

by it.

“I’m a Townie, a corner boy,” the slight, dark-haired man says, smiling. He grew up on Power Street in St. John’s, one of 13 children in a close-knit Roman Catholic family; even after seven years in Toronto, Power Street is still in Harris’s vowels, his anecdotes and his attitudes.

“Ever since I was a kid,” Harris says, leaning forward in his chair, “I knew I wanted to be a storyteller.” It took some time before he was ready to pursue his dream. “I went out and I worked for 11-and-a-half years in a factory here in town, and I was just dying inside.”

In 1993, Harris left for Ontario to study film at Niagara College, graduating in 1996.

After four years working as an assistant director on various films shot in Toronto, he decided to quit and make his own films.

“I saw a lot of people around me who could have been talented filmmakers,” Harris says.

“They were at the 15-, 20-year mark as an AD (assistant director) or a production designer.

See “Our crews,” page 18

Tourism lessons from Africa New tourism studies instructor at Grenfell says much can be learned from his native Ghana Corner Brook

By Jonathan Walsh For The Independent

R

ecently, students of Sir Wilfred Grenfell College were offered a distinctively different vision of Africa. While many in Edward Addo’s audience may have expected an exploration of economic woes and international aid projects, his lecture focused instead on the emergent tourism industry of his native Ghana.

Addo, who arrived in Corner Brook in late August, is lending his expertise as a tourism studies instructor at Memorial’s

Grenfell campus. Born and raised in the Ashanti region of Ghana, he has traveled throughout Europe and North America obtaining his education and experience.

His credentials include a doctorate in planning (focusing in regional economic development), masters degrees in geography and political science, and a host of diplomas and professional certificates in travel and tourism.

Most recently, Addo taught tourism at St. Cloud University in Minnesota for six years.

“I have a very diverse background in tourism,” Addo says, “so I will be able to cover a lot of the courses that the pro-

gram is intended to offer. The students need to understand the foundation of tourism, that it is a system of supply and demand, with external factors including cultural and natural resources.

“I use Ghana as an example because it shows students that the tourism model is applicable to many economies, and because for many students who would like to travel to West Africa, it removes the stereotypical images that everybody is poor. Currently, the country is being used by the United Nations as a model for tourism in Africa.”

As Grenfell’s tourism studies department gains interest, additional instruc-

tors will be needed to help them reach the standards of the international tourism industry.

“Students will have to know how to use computers and be familiar with the automation aspect of the industry,” Addo says. “Even if you’re not going to use a specific program … most employers look for your familiarity in the types of programs, because you can easily adjust.”

He references large hotel chains, airlines and restaurants as being heavily reliant on automation.

Students who wish to experience Addo’s infectious enthusiasm for

tourism and travel can look for more of his courses to be offered in the winter semester. Now a tenured professor, he is making Corner Brook his permanent home, and plans to investigate more of the Newfoundland tourism landscape.

He has already explored Gros Morne National Park, and conferences in the coming weeks will provide an opportunity to see more of the island.

Addo is planning another public video presentation, chronicling the beauty and cultural diversity of Ghana. He’s also spearheading a learning mission to See “I do this with passion,” page 18

RESERVATIONS 1 866 686 8100 humbervalley.com

OCTOBER 6, 2006

18 • INDEPENDENTLIFE

‘Our crews are just as professional as the one in L.A.’

‘I do this with passion’ From page 17 Ghana, planned for April or May 2007.

Over a two-week period, travellers will visit the nation’s urban and rural areas, witnessing the modernity of Accra, the nation’s capital, together with the villages and untamed wildlife that characterize the lush, unspoiled landscape.

“Ghana is beautiful for the history, culture, and hospitable people,” Addo says. “It is magnificent and I do this with passion.”

Though most interest in the project has come from his students, Addo strongly welcomes travel enthusiasts

from across the island who wish to accompany him. “It’s a great opportunity for people to learn about that part of the world, and actually at a very low cost. It is a wonderful experience, and a lifetime memory.

“You cannot get this experience from watching it on TV or reading about it …

The objective is to give Newfoundlanders the opportunity to experience international tourism, and also to see Africa — a continent that has many questions unanswered.”

From page 17

Edward Addo can be reached at eaddo@swgc.mun.ca.

Edward Addo

They got into the business to write and make films. They were very bitter.”

In 2000, he was working on a CBS movie of the week, One Kill, starring Anne Heche (she’d “talk the ear off you”) and Sam Shepard (“very quiet, very professional”) when he made the Joseph Campbell decision to follow his bliss.

Harris returned to St. John’s and started writing. His first film, Colic, another short, was shown on American television in 2001, and made the rounds of festivals in Los Angeles, Hamburg, Madrid, Toronto and Tokyo, winning awards at the latter two.

Harris spends almost half the interview praising the Newfoundland Independent Filmmakers Cooperative — “If NIFCO was a person, I’d want it as a girlfriend!” — the Newfoundland and Labrador Film Development Corporation, the Newfoundland and Labrador Arts Council and dozens of individuals in the local film community, particularly the cast and crew members of Two or More.

People like Bob Petrie, whose technical expertise was instrumental in getting the film made, and whom Harris refers to as “a well-respected, yet unsung industry veteran.” According to Harris, provincial film industry workers are every bit as talented as their American counterparts.

“The crew I met down there (in L.A., where he was a director’s observer on Where the Red Fern Grows), as professional as they were, were no more professional than the crews we have here,” says Harris, who worked on Rare Birds and Hatching, Matching and Dispatching. “Man for man, woman for woman, our crews are just as professional as the one in L.A.” I mention the $30 million dollar film currently being made in Halifax. The movie, which is about Vikings (isn’t that us?) and aliens (ditto — well, alien stories have been universal ever since Ezekiel saw the wheel), will drop about $20 million into Nova Scotia’s economy. The film is employing members of our industry, forced to leave to find work these days, like so many others.

Why can’t we attract/generate more filmmaking — a lucrative and sustainable industry?

Harris says the problem is economics; we don’t have full-blown infra-

structure or enough people working in the industry; too much has to be flown in, from cameras to crew.

“It’s part of the growing process,” he says. “Halifax’s film industry … is a good 30 years old. We need to attract multiple productions to keep us going year round. Look at New Zealand, a little country in the South Pacific. They have a thriving film industry down there because key people stayed at it and promoted it.

“It’s like anything else in life, you get knocked down once or twice, which the Newfoundland film industry has, (but) we keep getting up and dusting ourselves off. Putting money into the development of young filmmakers is key — you need some good films made here, some good stories told.”

Despite his success as a writer, director and producer, Harris says, “If people ask me what I do, I say I work in the film industry and I’m an aspiring film director. When I make my first feature film, then I’ll say I’m a film director.”

He’s about to take the plunge: his next project will be a feature-length film called Gros Morne. He says it’s “based on what I’ve seen here in Newfoundland society. I think (it’s) a very matriarchal society — females give and give and give and give, and in the end they are often tossed aside, or subjugated or not respected for who they are.”

The main character’s name is Grace — not a name randomly chosen, I think, as he outlines the gritty plot, which culminates in one of those acts of compassion that place humanity a little above the beasts, a little below the angels.

I leave the elegant Edwardian lady of a house after refusing Harris’s generous offer of a ride home; the day is as warm as a cat on a roof and I feel like stretching my legs. I’m halfway down Patrick Street when Harris shows up in a red sports car and motions excitedly — get in!

We pull up across from his brother’s house, in front of St. Patrick’s church, and he points through the windshield.

And there it is, the truck from the movie, parked in front of the great neoGothic structure — white body, red hood, rusty tears. The rearview mirror, wrapped in rosary beads, glitters in the late afternoon sun like the third eye, that ancient symbol of enlightenment.

To view Two or More and Colic, free of charge, visit www.NoelHarris.com.

Fabulous films Y

ou are cordially invited to observe affluent Swiss investment banker Hanspeter’s evening of food and drink as he prepares to finalize a big deal with his boss, Philip. Unaware of a critical piece of information, however, he has unwittingly engineered a social powder keg that over the course of the event is splashed with alcohol, and pelted with glowing charcoal.

Stina Werenfels’ Nachbeben (Going Private) will make its North American debut when it screens at the 17th St. John’s International Women’s Film Festival, Oct. 18-22. This engrossing film will enjoy the company of almost seven dozen others — this year, the intrepid folk of the WFF have pulled out all the stops, offering daytime shows in addition to the usual evening screenings.

TIM CONWAY Film Score Those unused annual leave days will certainly come in handy if you’re a film fan. In addition to the numerous local productions that you’ll want to catch — and that you’re sure to be hearing about over the next couple of weeks — the expanded line-up features fabulous entries from the rest of the country and around the world.

Julia Nunes’ documentary Harvest Queens follows three young contestants vying for the title of Harvest Queen in a small Ontario community.

It’s the biggest deal in town, and while

Dealbreaker co-writers and directors Mary Wigmore and Gwyneth Paltrow.

A scene from Dalit Kimor’s captivating documentary, Pickles.

OCTOBER 6, 2006

INDEPENDENTLIFE • 19

GALLERYPROFILE

‘I celebrate the beauty of a place in a whole different way’

T

haddeus Holownia doesn’t take pictures of cobwebs with dew on them, sparkling in the sun, or vibrant shots of jellybean row. Rather, he turns his banquet camera — producing mostly black and white panoramic negatives so expansive they require no enlarging — on the gritty 1980s version of St. John’s, an abandoned general store in Cape Broyle, or stacks of core samples from Voisey’s Bay. “I celebrate the beauty of a place in a whole different way,” says Holownia.

“There’s a certain beauty in that simple form, a simplicity when dealing with images that are maybe a little more rugged.”

For 25 years, Holownia has been photographing scenes in Newfoundland and Labrador. During that time, his camera has been witness to much — time passing, and its effects on the landscape and architecture of this province.

The tonality and depth of his oversized contact prints are startlingly sharp visual

documentations, endless in detail tained within the painted lines and an immaculate record of times of a single parking space, past and places that once were or reclined, shoes kicked off, still remain. Empty lots where handbags sitting upright on the hotels once stood or urban waste hot asphalt. The terraced downspaces are just some of the subjects town core floats above the last the artist likes to point out to his tier of parking risers behind audience. them.

“I don’t purport to change the Although the artist’s Terra world or make value judgments THADDEUS Nova Suite, showing at The about things, but I think any artist Rooms until Jan.7, is full of subis making observations that then HOLOWNIA jects and settings others might make people maybe slightly more Photographer pass by, he also savours the natsensitive to what has become the urally sublime, such as a cloud common or the mundane or the unobserved enshrouded road into Trout River Gulch, to the person who is familiar to something,” barely revealing the extreme rise of the says Holownia.

Tablelands. A gentle, sloping cloud bank blankets the mountain to the left, while a BLANKET AND ALL foreboding mass rears up on its end to the Like four women captured in an impromp- right, threatening to strike down a dose of tu spot of sunbathing on the top level of the weather. Separating the two is a thin, diffuse Atlantic Place parking garage in 1981. sky.

Blanket and all, the women are tidily conThe view from Holownia’s giant camera

lens is undeniably breathtaking. Although he says his images are “loaded with meaning” and he has a definite point of view, Holownia says he strives to avoid judging his subjects.

“I’m an observer,” he says. “I’m not trying to cram it in people’s faces. I think people have to be comfortable in their own skins, but it’s nice to make a body of work over a period of time and have things become referential.”

Holownia’s Terra Nova Suite does just that. Whether a before and after shot of a pair of dwellings in Brigus and their cosmetic improvements (or lack thereof), or a gnarled tamarack branch bleached bone white by the sun in Gros Morne, the immediacy and crystal clarity of the images leaves the viewer with an absolute record of each.

“Photography operates on that multi-level of art, history, social document — all these different factors come into play immediately, and are so democratic in many ways.” mandy.cook@theindependent.ca

The Gallery is a regular feature in The Independent. For information, or to submit proposals, please call (709) 726-4639, or e-mail editorial@theindependent.ca

Those unused annual leave days will certainly come in handy if you’re a film fan, writes Tim Conway, because this year’s Women’s Film Festival is bigger than ever many question this kind of competition, Nunes manages to discover that glamour isn’t always the priority of the entrants. Sometimes it’s the best chance to assert oneself, or simply test a personal goal.

Another means to this end is explored in Dalit Kimor’s captivating documentary, Pickles, which follows the efforts of a group of widows in northern Israel who defy tradition and go into business together, making and distributing bottled pickles. A more intense Israeli drama, The Substitute, features a young soldier eagerly anticipating transfer from her isolated base. Zohara’s plans are compromised, however, by the fragile young woman set to replace her.

A third film from Israel, Talya Salama’s The Better Half, finds young Boaz decorating cars for bridal couples, his job in the family business.

Unable to work up the nerve to approach a woman he fancies, he answers her personal ad in a local paper, but in a moment of distraction, jeopardizes his chance at success.

This entertaining comedy of errors set in the dating world is one of the light forays into romantic relationships offered at this year’s festival. Debra Felstead’s (Ontario) Richard Is Beautiful, adapted from the short story by James Grainger, puts us in bed with Paul and Theresa.

They’re two mostly unsympathetic characters, whose sexual exploits during the absence of Richard (her boyfriend/his best friend), demonstrates an engaging dynamic as Paul shows an emotional investment Theresa doesn’t share.

Jane Devoy (UK) heads into the www and pulls out Gary who entices Yulia to travel from Russia for romantic possibilities. Although Miss Russia highlights the biggest shortcoming of Internet dating, it charmingly demonstrates how romance blooms in the equally flawed real world. Another UK offering, however, leaves subtlety on the cutting room floor as Kitty Flanagan’s Dating Ray Fenwick cleverly mines mother/daughter tension for big laughs. While Georgie Glenn, as meddling mom Marjorie, does a superb job in engaging our sympathies despite her shrewish behaviour, Flanagan refuses to let her off the hook, with hilarious results.

A pair of American films, Dirty Mary, a multiple award winner at numerous film festivals this year, and Dealbreaker, co-directed by Gwyneth Paltrow, are shameless rip-offs of Sex and the City, and to a lesser extent, Bridget Jones’s Diary, but since they are both clever, polished, and fitfully funny takes on dating, we can excuse them as homages, then sit back and laugh.

The dating scene forms the backdrop in the short film winner at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival. An endearing picture that is sure to be a favourite, Renuka Jeyapalan’s Big Girl (Ontario) features outstanding perform-

ances, particularly by young Samantha Weinstein, who has also landed a key role in the forthcoming adaptation of Margaret Laurence’s The Stone Angel. Here, as Josephine, she’s demonstrably unimpressed with her mom’s latest beau, Jerry (Degrassi: The Next Generation’s Kris Holden-Reid), so he proposes a series of contests to determine the future of the relationship. For the most part, we know where this one’s going, but it’s a top quality ride all the way.

Caroline Bâcle’s quirky comedy, Judith (UK/Canada), stars Harriet Cox as a woman whose reality starkly contrasts her perception of it as reflected in the novel she’s writing. Her new roommate seems to fuel her delusions, but then again, there’s that grey area in the middle. For her superb performance, Cox received an award at this year’s Nickel Film Festival.

The San Francisco International Film Festival chose Victoria Gamburg’s Twilight, an American-Russian co-production as its best short narrative, and for good reason. The story of a woman haunted by the loss of her daughter is affecting, but with the performance of Maria Voronina and Nicholas Sherman’s cinematography — using locations in and around St. Petersburg during Russia’s “white nights” — the result is flawless.

Quebec filmmaker Marie-Hélene Copti wisely casts veteran actor Pierre Lebeau in a couple of films screening this year. In Jacques & Jack, Lebeau plays a seasoned stage actor on his way to shoot a scene with Jack Nicholson in a Hollywood film. He is accompanied by a student who has chosen him as the subject for a class film project. Along the way, Jacques (Lebeau) describes his craft, and his dedication to it. When he arrives at his destination, the results are amusingly different from what he, and we expect.

A less jocular entry, 300 Seconds, is a cleverly crafted, five-minute picture, filmed in one take.

A continuous shoot follows Lebeau as Ben, on his way from a business deal to pick up a present for his son. Along the way, his encounters with various individuals illuminate his dynamic personality, and illustrate realistic takes on everyday urban life. It’s compelling and well executed.

Finally, for those of us who savour plot above all else, there is a short thriller from the US, Renie Oxley’s Terminal, which, though a little glib, is an otherwise polished affair in which a woman’s tragic life affords her one final victory.

The films mentioned above are only a fifth of what’s in store — but if this sample is any indication, you won’t want to miss a single show at this year’s Women’s Film Festival.

For more information, visit womensfilmfestival.com, or phone (709) 754-3141.

Tim Conway operates Capital Video in St. John’s. His column returns Oct. 20.

OCTOBER 6, 2006

20 • INDEPENDENTLIFE

True lies A

t the outset of This Much Is True, Tina Chaulk’s first novel, protagonist and narrator Lisa Simms finds herself in the netherworld of the recent arts graduate. With a BA in philosophy, accumulated student loans and little in the way of prospects, Lisa sets off for Toronto to join the female friends who have gone before her in search of gainful employment in the big city. The year is 1983; hair is bad, music worse. Lisa and her friends are ’80s poster girls complete with teased hairdos, cassette-tape synth-pop and tapered jeans.

In Toronto (or “Hell,” as she soon dubs the unofficial Canadian capital), Lisa works an assortment of low-paying, unfulfilling jobs, drinks at a Newfoundland bar, pursues various romantic relationships and shares an apartment with her old friend Karen, a struggling artist who has rechristened herself “Rain” and now perpetrates wonky performance art pieces. “Who the Hell are you?”

Lisa demands when Karen/Rain shows up in a borrowed van to pick her up.

As Lisa makes abundantly clear through her bubble gum-popping narration, Rain is not at all the same person she used to be when she was living at home. Her once naturally blond hair is now nothing but “a small growth of black whiskers around the perimeter of her head”; her face is adorned with lip ring, nose ring, eyebrow rings. She has turned into a bitter rebel, disgusted by all things commercial

and disdainful of Lisa’s tastes. She is also a practicing witch.

It all proves more than small town Lisa can handle and the rekindling of their friendship soon burns out of control: Lisa can’t stand Rain’s smelly boyfriend Dredge and Rain expects her to pay 50 per cent of the rent, despite the fact she’s made to sleep on a piss-reeking couch and has no proper room of her own. Lisa does display some tenderness towards her old friend when the latter is hospitalized by Dredge, but otherwise she maintains a holier-than-thou contempt.

It’s this nay-saying, judgmental attitude that makes This Much Is True a bit of a slog. Lisa constantly bemoans her fate as an exile; Toronto is, predictably, “a cold heartless place” where nobody wants to talk to anybody else.

The book, in fact, makes for a great showcase of such stereotypes: Karen used to be “Miss Priss” but now she’s alternative girl; a Newfoundlander named Frank, “like most everyone from home, would give you the shirt off his back if you needed it”; the mother of one of Lisa’s Ontarian boyfriends is a rich WASP who drinks too much in the middle of the day and ridicules Lisa at every opportunity; Lisa’s gay friend Clay is “a flamboyant, walking stereotype.”

Despite this reliance on pre-assembled characters and situations, Chaulk occasionally manages to

MARK CALLANAN On the shelf This Much Is True, By Tina Chaulk Jesperson Publishing, 2006 produce some phrasings that are close to original.

Miss Vardy, a teacher at Lisa’s old school and sexual desire of all the young boys in her class, is like “a model with legs up to forever.” Lisa’s grownup sexual encounter with a male teacher she’d fancied in high school turns out to be, disappointingly, “McDonalds — in and out in five minutes.” Before she finds out Clay’s name, Lisa takes to calling him “Mandonna” for his platinum hair and mascara look.

What seems to work about this novel is its structure, which hinges on the pairing of Lisa’s letters home with her first-person narration. Each chapter begins with a short missive to her parents, the content of which is inevitably hopeful in tone, filled with talk of new job opportunities and positive experiences. These are the lies she tells her parents to keep them from worrying about her. The truth is what comes out in Lisa’s subsequent narrations. It is rarely pretty.

This insistence on philosophical weight has the unfortunate effect of preventing the book from being harmless fluff. Chaulk is most effective when she’s writing the kind of novel you’d want to take with you to the beach, rather than examining the

mindset of the manically depressed or soliloquizing, as she does, on the nature of violence. Frankly, she just doesn’t have the writer’s chops to pull off serious enquiry. For all that, there’s something endearing about the sheer earnestness of Lisa’s voice, its wide-eyed, Cyndi Lauper bedraggled presence. And it’s that energy that carries the story along, gaudily dressed as it may be.

Mark Callanan is a writer living in St. John’s. His column returns Oct. 20.

INDEPENDENTSTYLE

SPECIAL HOME EDITION

FRIDAY THROUGH THURSDAY, OCTOBER 6-12, 2006 — PAGE 21

Fine furniture From forest to finished piece, Mike Paterson produces fabulous Newfoundland furniture

By Mandy Cook The Independent

M

ike Paterson makes furniture you can sit on, eat on, sleep on and rest your weary feet on. He and an industrious team of seven craft all manner of wooden furniture, crafts and architectural details such as moldings and window frames in their studio “right off the beaten track” in Upper Amherst Cove,

Bonavista Bay. They can build a frame for your new house, restore an old one, and furnish it too. But it’s the cherry chairs, pine tables and birch bed sets that are today’s focus. It is a labour of love Paterson admits requires some flexibility.

“Furniture is our main focus,” he says. “If you reduce it to dollars and cents, it’s about half of our business.

We joke here how the other work sup-

ports our furniture habit.”

For those of you who do not share the same sense of satisfaction from the creation of a functional item — where the inherent beauty comes from its usefulness and aesthetic appeal — perhaps you will not understand Paterson’s joke. If you do share in the sentiment, you will probably run right out and snap up a few pieces from his showroom.

Not only is Paterson’s furniture

designed to be a feast for the eyes, the gleaming pieces are, as a rule, created in the spirit of local tradition and culture and crafted from locally harvested wood, such as aspen, tamarack, spruce and balsam fir.

“I’m studious, I read a lot and I’m kind of a student of the whole craft,” Paterson says. “I started visiting the Newfoundland museum collection and See “A student,” page 24

OCTOBER 6, 2006

22 • INDEPENDENTSTYLE

DRINK

Photo Paul Daly/The Independent

By Nicholas Gardner For The Independent

W

hen we think tea, we think chat and catching up. For me, tea is associated with happy memories: Sundays and memories of “tea time” while watching the Wonderful World of Disney as a child; the big tea cups my grandfather uses (with the requisite biscuits); and the relaxing feeling of tea in the idle part of the afternoon.

My wife is a connoisseur of tea. We have tea — lots of it. From China, Japan, England, India and anywhere else you might find it. She has collected some 32 varieties, all of them different. We are, pure and simple, a teahouse.

So what makes a good cup of tea? Patience and hot water seems to do the trick.

For some, tea involves the simplicity of a tea bag and a mug, for others it is the symbolic gesture of relaxing. In all my reading about tea, here is what

Tea time I have distilled from it.

Choose the tea wisely — there is all the tea in the world: black teas (Tetley and most other generic blends are Orange Pekoe — I am partial to Darjeeling); green teas like Japanese Sencha; herbal teas like Sleepytime (Celestial Seasonings), a spearmint blend and part of my late-night ritual; and finally fruit tea which, according to tea fanatics, isn’t really tea as it is comprised of fruit skins, rosehip and other flavourings, but no actual tea leaves.

Use loose over bagged. I believe tea should be

loose, so I can control the quality and quantity of flavour. However, there is nothing like a good strong cup of Tetley with the bag sitting in the bottom, the flavour getting stronger and stronger with every passing sip.

Warm the pot — this makes sure that the tea does not cool too quickly. When warming up the teapot, why not add some steaming water to the cups to keep them warm too?

Let the kettle boil — empty the kettle first, to rid the kettle of “dead” water. Fill with, if possible, filtered water. Let the water boil, but not for too long.

The trick is to catch it at the peak of boiling and then switch the kettle off to let it rest for a second or two. For fruit and green teas, catch the water just under the boil, to ensure the fruit does not burn.

For each cup, add one teaspoon of loose tea.

Some proponents suggest “one extra for the pot.” I like this idea as it always makes a stronger cup of tea.

The real trick is in the steeping. For black teas, steep a maximum of five minutes. I use a little digital timer to keep track and never go past four minutes. Leaving it too long will make the tea bitter.

For fruit or herbal teas, the longer you steep, the more medicinal properties can be produced. For green teas, no longer than three minutes is recommended.

My favourite time for tea these days is as the evening winds down — as the nights get colder, tea is both relaxing and medicinal. nicholas.gardner@gmail.com

OCTOBER 6, 2006

INDEPENDENTSTYLE • 23

Thankful for memories, lists, and the great turkey nap

I

’ve never had a countdown for Thanksgiving. As a kid I didn’t lie awake the night before, tingling with anticipation. Maybe if there were presents involved, there would be a bit more excitement and attention from people in general. Unwrapping a turkey would be interesting, if nothing else.

I contemplated not acknowledging it at all and finding something else to rant about instead, however it felt like the right thing to do. It wasn’t so much the feeling of obligation, rather the need to show someone else what it means to me. Oct. 9 will be a day like any other.

It’s the feelings behind the meaning we give Thanksgiving that makes it important.

The immediate and selfish thought that first came to me when I realized Thanksgiving was approaching was, “That means school holidays and that equals lots of glorious sleep.”

That happy bubble of thought was quickly burst by the sharp needle of reality. There are midterms and assign-

LEIA FELTHAM Falling face first ments that can’t be ignored. Nice try, Leia, life isn’t what it used to be.

After that, I thought more about the actual holiday. Growing up, I spent that long weekend at my grandparents. Nan made the best turkey in my family.

While writing this, I can imagine her bustling around the kitchen with my aunt and mother trailing behind. I was getting in the way and was sent to set the table — a sneaky trick I never picked up on until now. The smells stand out the strongest in these memories. No turkey dinner will ever smell exactly like that, not ever again.

After Nan passed and times changed, Thanksgiving turned into an event that needed a week’s worth of planning.

Having a significant other meant a list

of people and places that need to be visited. There’s no leaving anyone off the list, and most certainly you have to eat something everywhere you go. You’d need to fast for days to accommodate the food put in front of you by kind, but insistent relatives.

Once again, it all comes back to sleep because the best part of the day is the inevitable turkey nap.

Since it’s customary, I must begin the list of what I’m thankful for. First, I am thankful I don’t have to experience the aforementioned train of turkey dinners this Thanksgiving. I really do enjoy meeting wonderful people and eating their delicious food, but relaxation and time to study is needed more.

I’m thankful I’m not in charge of the planning, preparing and cooking — yet.

There’ll be a time when I won’t have family to fall back on for the perfect dinner. I already know I’m screwed and I apologize in advance to anyone who has to taste my first Thanksgiving meal.

I’ll keep telling myself that the food

DETAILS

Harvest decor, courtesy Details and Designs, 151 Water St., St. John’s: Chinese lantern garlands $32.99; Cornucopia $59.99; leaves, berries and lantern stalks $5.99 Paul Daly/The Independent

Traditional hang-up

W

allpaper. The very word invokes Grandma’s front parlour, dark and cluttered, with antiMacassars jealously protecting the seat-covers from perils unknown. Enough to make the New Millennial Homeowner cringe.

But wallpaper has gotten a bad rap — or should that be wrap?

These days, wallpaper is the hip new approach to wall-covering, a way to express your individuality in bold, unique visuals.

“When I see wallpaper,” muses interior stylist Amanda Eaton, “I see confidence, and I think it’s great. Wallpaper has come a long way.”

The basic concepts of wallpaper and wall decoration can be traced back thousands of years.

The Chinese glued rice paper to their walls; ancient Egyptians and Greeks jazzed up their surroundings with wall paintings.

In Europe, wallpaper dates to around the 15th century, when it evolved as a less-costly substitute for the tapestries and paneling.

Wallpaper coverings were a great hit in Elizabethan England.

By the 17th century, new production techniques produced rolls, and no less a splendiferous personage than the French King Louis XVI decreed the legal

length of a roll.

The post-modern world ushered in a strong aversion to the wall coverings of the past — in Canada, the baby boom house buyers of the ’70s and ’80s stripped off reams of the stuff in their quest for “cleanness” and light. Exposed brick and white paint became the wall-coverings of choice, followed a decade later by the Beige Brigade.

But the pendulum has started to swing back. Today, interior design consultants are using wallpaper to make striking statements.

“I like to use wallpaper as an accent,” says Eaton, “on one wall, or in unexpected areas, like

a small vestibule. I’ve seen it used on ceilings, and it’s great.

These days, there’s such a selection, I think it’s really easy to personalize a space.”

Lesley Money, of Farrow and Ball, a luxury British paint and wallpaper company, agrees.

“Don’t be bound by old traditional hang-ups,” she urges.

“Think about introducing it in different ways, and you’ll be surprised at the effects you can achieve.

“We’ve gone through decades without wallpaper because people have been scared. My advice is, don’t be scared to use wallpaper again. It’s back.”

— Torstar wire service

There are the precious gifts I take for granted like education, medicine and shelter, though what I appreciate the most at this very moment is not being given up on.

isn’t the important part.

Jokes aside, this year what stands out in my mind is appreciating all that I had and lost, what I never knew I had all along. Sometimes it feels like there’s been too much change to assimilate, yet after the dust has settled there’s still

beauty to be found in the wreckage.

I’m thankful for my family (bet you never saw that one coming), and true friends. Laughter at unexpected moments, movies with good endings, sunny days and tea the way I like it all make the list. There are the precious gifts I take for granted like education, medicine and shelter, though what I appreciate the most at this very moment is not being given up on. I am thankful for this because I know I have much to give and isn’t that what Thanksgiving is about?

My hope this year is that the people I love know that I’m thankful for them and that their Thanksgiving is filled with more gobbling than squabbling (see? I need that extra sleep direly). Oh … and I can’t forget: I’m thankful for the endless turkey sandwiches in the weeks to come.

Leia Feltham is a first-year student at Memorial University. Her column returns Oct. 20.

OCTOBER 6, 2006

24 • INDEPENDENTSTYLE

NICHOLAS GARDNER Off the Eating Path

I

’m proud of what I have accomplished. Just like I am proud to be associated with a great newspaper.

My first column appeared just over a year ago. When I pitched it, I was full of venom. I had something to prove to the city — look at me! I know food! I read my first pieces and I shudder at my arrogance.

Sure, I have credentials. Sure I can write. But am I any good?

I’m my own worst critic — all chefs are. ‘You’re only as good as the last plate you put out’ is a common mantra. Same in the writing business. You’re only as good as your last piece.

“If it sounds good, then it is good.

Write by ear.” These words of encourage-

A year on the path ment have guided me and have been my recipe for success.

Writing by ear is like cooking — sometimes you just know it’s going to work, and other times you send it out, hoping it is not a complete flop. So, over the past year I have tried, with all due diligence, to produce the best possible.

Over the last week I have revisited all I have written about: local markets, feasting with family, a whisky tasting, perfect

scrambled eggs, and plates of raw meat.

What’s left? Everything.

I wish I had a plan. I wish I had a menu, something to follow. Give me the ingredients and I can create. I see flavour in my head, like a painter sees colour. I know what works together, almost as instinct.

There are few columnists who write and get great heapings of column inches to work with. Fewer still are able to command large tracts of written real estate above the fold.

I have been asked many times in the past year if I will venture into the realm of food criticism. People have said they enjoy Joanne Kates in the Globe and Mail for her balanced approach to the subject.

I think I prefer the Hunter S. Thompson approach. I know the late Dr. Thompson was not a food critic, but he was a good writer. He complained, moaned, bullied, cheated and lied to get as many column inches as possible to speak his mind — truthfully — and in spades.

Like the late Gonzo writer, to be a suc-

cessful food critic is to lead a life of solitude. No one should like you.

Writing a restaurant review is a tough business. I have only done one, and that’s it for me. Many, many things have to be considered, but if I told you them all, I’d be out of a job.

There is so much we can learn when we read a review. To some diners, the restaurant review is the guide to dining.

In a large metropolitan city, a review can make or break a business. If critical, a large city has the ability to absorb the loss if indeed the establishment goes under.

In comparison, St. John’s is small and compact and its people have long memories of injuries against them. As I said, no restaurant reviewer can have any friends, and I am right. No reviewer worth his salt should in good conscience hold back on a review. It is just not done.

If the food is bad, I would say so. And if it is good, I would say that too. If a reviewer gives a passing mark to an establishment where the food was terrible

and the décor stunning — well, that’s not right.

It’s not honest to the reading public, and not to the restaurant. To write a review means that for good or ill, in the writing and the opinion (as that is what a review is, opinion) that the truth is spoken. Not lip service, with every one getting a passing grade.

Have no fears, this column was designed as a wandering road map of food. Taking readers through an endless path of food and experiences. Where will it go? Who knows? I don’t. As long as there is food to be shared, wine to be poured and fun to be had — with luck, it will be around for a long time.

Ludwig Bemelmans, noted children’s author, said it best: “The true gourmet, like the true artist, is one of the unhappiest creatures existent. His trouble comes from so seldom finding what he constantly seeks — perfection.” nicholas.gardner@gmail.com

Death knell for the kilt

T

he kilt is dying. Not in fashion magazines where tartans for fall are here, there and everywhere. The death is occurring at Catholic schools where kilts are slowly disappearing from school uniforms.

For the first time, Grade 9 students at Michael Power/St. Joseph Catholic Secondary School near Toronto are not allowed to wear kilts. Walking shorts have been offered instead.

“What motivated the change was, I believe, enforcing a decent length worn by our female students was becoming rather onerous,” says principal Rory McGuckin.

“We would field calls from people — parents and former Power graduates — complaining that the length of the girl’s kilt was, in their opinion, unacceptable.”

The school understands replacing uniforms is expensive. Kilts are about $79.95. So after consulting with parents, staff and the student council, it decided to phase them out.

Returning students can wear them.

New students can’t.

Board policy dictates kilts be a maximum of 15 centimetres above the middle of the knee. But “in many cases they’re being modified well beyond the prescribed length.”

Karen Henderson isn’t shocked by the news. The director of sales and marketing for uniform manufacturer R.J. McCarthy is familiar with the schools’ concerns.

The Toronto-based company introduced a new kilt design three years ago that incorporates a pair of shorts that some schools have opted for.

Students can’t roll the kilts up “because of the shorts inside. It also makes it difficult to alter them,” Henderson says.

Students have always tried to push the envelope. But lately “we’re noticing ... that they’re trying to push everything a little bit further,” Henderson says. “With a uniform they’re told they have to wear it and they don’t like being told what they have to do.”

Hence, the teeny tiny kilts.

‘A student of the whole craft’ From page 21 just copying pieces that appealed to me and learning how they were put together and why they were made and it was really interesting.”

Like the Turned bed, a design gleaned from Francis Cody of Harbour Grace. Cody’s original was made circa 1840, and features turned posts and elegant proportions. Retailing at $1,900 for a double, Paterson has sold about 50 in the past year.

Paterson likes the fact the original piece is still in use today, 160 years later, and was built to last.

It is the very reason Katie Parnham, lead instructor of the textiles studies program at the College of the North Atlantic, purchased her rocking chair from Paterson for reading, watching TV, drinking beer and, most importantly, sitting by the fire.

“I decided I am not going to invest in anything that will not last for a whole long time,” she says. “I think about the $5 plastic furniture that gets dumped, and if people just spent a bit more money on something that was

not just for their lifetime but for other lifetimes and it becomes that special piece — I want that to speak of me.

“Like I invest in artwork and craft-

work and enjoy all those things and all of those things speak to me — that chair spoke to me in the same way.”

Paterson is not “religious” about where his designs come from. He says he will borrow and blend elements from whatever appeals — whether it’s a traditional Newfoundland design, a magazine or a book.

He says he and his team are like technicians, taking things apart and figuring out how they were put together. However, he credits retired St. John’s furniture maker, Ralph Clemens, for guiding him through the “very strong Newfoundland slant” in his work and drawing on elements of outport furniture — themselves derived from the British Isles. It’s a natural procession, Paterson says.

“We don’t do that for the purposes of being cute, it’s just something that we really feel fits good for us, you know?”

For more information, check out www.patersonwoodworking.com or visit the showroom. Call (709) 4454431 to book an appointment. mandy.cook@theindependent.ca

What’s new in the automotive industry

OCTOBER 6-12, 2006

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by Paul Daly at Pippy Park Golf Club, St. John's.

Where cars go to die K

eeping a vehicle on the road is expensive — estimates from a couple of years ago averaged $1,500 a year. No matter what you’re driving, you’re going to go through tires, brakes and exhaust systems every couple of years. That’s just basic maintenance … point A to point B wearand-tear.

If you’re driving a vehicle without a warranty and something extraneous pops up (an alternator or a starting motor gives out), you really feel the pinch. But like everything else these days, you can solve all your troubles online.

Click on www.vatchers.com to access their online inventory with over 75,000 parts available. They’re also linked to over 3,000 recyclers across North America to source out those hard-to-find parts.

As a locally owned and operated company they’ve got quite a history. Ed Vatcher Sr. started out on Mayor Avenue in St. John’s back in 1948 and was recycling vehicles

long before it was fashionable. In 1958 he average of 1,000 tons of metal a year. moved to the present location on Thorburn Vatcher’s is also a member of the Auto Road and Ed Vatcher Jr. took over the busi- Recyclers Association of Atlantic Canada ness. and in partnership with the Clean These days Ed Jr. is still involved Air Foundation offer the charitable but his two sons, Glen and Dennis, benefits of a program called Car handle the daily operations, making Heaven (www.carheaven.ca). it a third-generation success. In Their mandate is to accelerate order to thrive they also had to the retirement of older, higher polevolve. First of all, they realized the luting cars by offering incentives. importance of human resources — By donating your old car (1995 and you have to have knowledgeable older) you’re offered a free tow, staff for efficient customer relavalued at $200, and a $50 charitaMARK tions. The first person you meet ble tax receipt for the Canadian WOOD inside their door has 20 years expeDiabetes Association. If eligible, WOODY’S you could also receive a $1,000 rience in automotive parts and even more importantly — patience.

WHEELS incentive coupon towards a new Even though they’re in the parts GM vehicle. business they’re also protecting our In the past six years the Clean Air environment by collecting hazardous mate- Foundation estimate they’ve recycled rials and transferring them to industrial 34,000 cars in Canada, eliminating over waste services. For an idea of the number of 25,000 tons of greenhouse gas emissions vehicles they recycle, Vatcher’s export an and 15,000 tons of carbon monoxide.

They’re also pro-active in all aspects of vehicle recycling. By the foundation’s accounts, an average of 19 litres of operating fluids are removed from a recycled vehicle by local companies such as Vatcher’s.

After the reusable parts are removed the vehicle is shipped to a crusher and then to a shredder. By using a flotation system with a magnet it’s possible to retrieve 70 per cent of a vehicle in steel and cast iron and a further 6 per cent in aluminum, copper and zinc.

The Clean Air Foundation would like to match the European target of 90 per cent recycling per vehicle.

Buying used parts can save you a few dollars, but you also have to weigh the options.

Is it really worth fixing? Sometimes you’re better off just buying another vehicle and recycling your old one.

Mark Wood of Portugal-Cove St. Philip’s encourages responsible auto recycling.

26 • INDEPENDENTBUSINESS

OCTOBER 6, 2006

Construction manufacturer JCB's Dieselmax car, which aimed to set a new land speed record for diesel vehicles on the Bonneville Salts Flats in Utah, U.S. The car is nine metres long and powered by two JCB444 diesel engines, which produce 750 bhp each.

Re

Uncomfortable questions need to be asked In the wake of the death of 17-year-old drag racer, certain issues need to be discussed

K

endall Hebert, a 17-year-old questions that, unfortunately, may drag racer from southwestern make some people uncomfortable.

Ontario, was killed Oct. 1 at 1) Are children under the age of 18 Toronto Motorsport Park, too young to be driving racsouth of Hamilton, when ing cars? her “jet car” dragster went Kendall Hebert was born out of control at nearly 500 into a racing family. There kilometres an hour (a tick are hockey families and under 300 mph). there are rock ’n roll families When the Ontario and hers is a racing family.

Coroner’s Office calls an Her dad races. Same with inquest into her death — her grandfather. The name of NORRIS and an inquest must be held the team is Hebert Family MCDONALD — let’s hope the right quesRacing. It is their culture. tions get asked.

So, as it was with Walter When I say the “right” Gretzky, who had Wayne out questions, I don’t mean the on the ice soon after he nuts-and-bolts questions learned to walk, Kendall’s about racing car safety (this dad taught her to drive when wasn’t a car wreck, it was a plane she was about four. He souped-up a crash), or her experience. Neither of little toy riding car so it could go as those (or similar questions) will get to fast as 40 kph and turned her loose. the nub of what should be the focus.

From all reports, she had a heavy foot There are, instead, philosophical right from the start. questions that must be answered — She was racing junior dragsters

TRACK TALK

when she was eight or nine. She was officially licensed to drive the family dragster shortly after her 16th birthday. She’d gone nearly 325 kph (200 mph) in that car. She’d done maintenance work on the cars between races and was learning the business side of the sport. She’d raced in Canada and the U.S. and she knew how to work a crowd. She was preparing for what was supposed to be a long and successful career.

In terms of commitment and ambition, she was exactly the same as Michael Schumacher and Ron Fellows and Paul Tracy and Danica Patrick and virtually every other top driver in the world today when they were her age. They all started as kids.

They all showed great promise. She was no different.

So, on paper, she was likely qualified to drive that jet car. She had the experience. She had the talent (Gretzky turned pro when he was 17,

too). The people who owned the car wanted her in it. The family supported her. It would be a big step up. It would likely gain her even more fame and notoriety than she already had.

But, for all that, did Kendall Hebert, at 17 years of age, have the maturity, the inner-strength, to maybe — and I emphasize maybe — say no?

Did she have the self-assurance, the backbone that comes with self-confidence, to say, perhaps: “I don’t know whether this is such a good idea.

Maybe I should wait for awhile.”

Does any 17-year-old possess those qualities?

Maturity and self-assurance and self-respect are things that only years of life can give you. Kendall raced competitively for eight years before she died. If she hadn’t started till she was 18 — the legal age to drive alone on the roads and highways of most provinces — she’d maybe have been in her 20s before having to decide

whether or not to strap herself into that rocket ship.

At 23 or 25 or whenever, she’d have known a lot more about life than she did at 17.

Maybe she’d have made the same decision. Maybe not. But she’d have had more of a choice.

2) Should parents let their children race?

I don’t know of any kid anywhere who, at four or five or six years of age, climbs out of bed in the morning and says to his parents, “Daddy and Mommy, I want you to buy me a gokart because I want to go racing.”

But hundreds of thousands of children all around the world (and right here in Canada, of course) are being introduced at a very young age by their parents (usually their fathers) to a sport that could do them very serious harm and maybe even kill them.

None of us who love racing like to talk about it, but auto racing is a deadly game. If it can happen to Ayrton Senna and Dale Earnhardt Sr., it can happen to anybody.

Certainly, you can get seriously hurt playing hockey and high school football, but death is rare. And yes, racing, as compared to 25 or 30 years ago, is remarkably safer than it was, when you take into consideration the number of people involved and the number of events held.

But — and it’s a big “but” — racing can kill you. Kendall Hebert was killed a week ago. It doesn’t matter how (was it the impact against the wall, was it when she was ejected from the car?) Who cares? She’s dead, at 17 years of age. Between eight and 10 top professionals (and dozens of other semi-professionals and amateur racers) have died in racing cars in the last 10 years (Greg Moore and Jeff Krosnoff among them).

Between eight and 10 top professionals and/or dozens of other participants have not been killed in any other major spectator sport in the last 10 years (baseball, basketball, hockey or football; don’t talk to me about boxing).

So anybody who wants to argue that racing is in any way “safe” (as compared to those other sports) is mistaken.

In the “old days” — as recently as the 1980s — you had to be 18 just to get into the pits at most speedways or racetracks in North America. There was no question about getting behind the wheel because if you weren’t old enough to get into the pits, you couldn’t get into a car.

But then this thing called the “parental consent form” came along in which, once signed, the parent accepts responsibility for death or injury suffered by their child.

By doing this, are the parents being responsible?

Parents are supposed to keep their children out of harm’s way. It could be argued that by strapping their crash-helmeted, fire-suited child into a go-kart or quarter midget and sending them into battle at the age of eight (the age that the FIA, incidentally, will sanction races involving children) that these parents, in fact, are deliberately putting their children at risk.

It is against the law — illegal, to put it strongly — for anybody to even start to learn to drive a car on the street before they are 16. But a note from a parent makes it OK to do it elsewhere?

I have always been nervous about this. My now-adult children came to the speedways with me when I raced (a decision I did not make until I was in my 30s, by the way), we watched racing together and we talked about racing.

They always knew if they wanted to go racing, they would have my full support. But they would make their own decision — when they became old enough to drive legally on the street.

I left it up to them to race or not; it was not a decision I would make for them.

So, should a parent even be allowed to make such a risky decision on the part of his (or her) child?

Is it worth the potential price?

OCTOBER 6, 2006

INDEPENDENTBUSINESS • 27

A

n Open Letter to the Person Whose my own home. My children only have to pee Parking Spot I am Waiting For: Hi. It’s when I get in the tub, even if I’ve just asked if just me, sitting here blocking the aisle anyone needs the bathroom. We are connected at waiting for you to pull out. I’m really not lazy, but a genetic level that uniquely ties their bladders to it’s a crazy Saturday afternoon and there really are my need for peace. It’s always been that way. no other spots. I don’t mind walking — But you don’t even know me, and truly — but sometimes I’m relegated to you are effectively going out of your stalking people as they leave the store. way to make me nuts. The scientists A few weeks ago I was totally faked said it’s an instinctive thing, a territorial out. A guy got to his car, my adrenaline statement. I don’t know about instinct. surged and then he merely dropped Instinct is sneezing with your eyes shut some packages into his trunk — and so your eyeballs don’t shoot out of your went back into the store. That is so head. A territorial statement is your cat against the rules I nearly made a citipeeing in your shoes when you bring a zen’s arrest. new kitten home.

LORRAINE SOMMERFELD You teased me at first, coquettishly Put down the phone. Drive directly to cutting through rows of cars, pausing the call-ee’s house, and just show them dramatically once or twice and then the cute new shoes you got for half proceeding on. My boys started placing price. bets on just where your car would end Even if they’re too high, you will up being. One even had a buck that look adorable sitting down. And as for you’d totally traverse the parking lot and then go that Gap sale, they will agree with you that all the wait for the bus. good sizes were gone. They will even agree that But today I lucked out. The other lot trollers you should have bought leggings, even though have to find their own mark — I have locked you you both know they looked stupid the first time in. I have my indicator on, the universal sign that around, and they look even stupider now. You can your spot, should you choose to vacate it, is sigh together, in person, over women being slaves indeed mine. I am stopped at a bad angle, because to fashion.

I’m uncertain which way you will be exiting the A cell phone is totally breaking the rules of spot. This angers other trollers, but is a necessary engagement. These rules stand even between hospart of the kill. tile nations, to avoid senseless slaughter. Once Oh. No. Put down the cell phone. That is just everyone is adhering to the rules, then they can wrong. Get out of my spot. I have already waited proceed with their sensible slaughter. for you to adjust your radio. I have watched you You can see the person behind me, enduring put on your seatbelt in the most perfect manner I chain reaction parking rage. Like a butterfly flaphave ever seen a seatbelt engaged. You have ping its wings in China, you are setting off a opened your glove box — twice — you have put chaotic series of events that is bringing this parkgum in your mouth, you have checked your hair ing lot to its knees.

— twice — in your rear view mirror, which you Your refusal to hang up and drive has people have also adjusted. I’m not entirely sure how it stranded in their cars, blocked by trollers unable could have moved in the hour you’ve been in the to move. With no room for more cars to tuck into store, but I’ll let that go. the aisles, you are messing with the flow of trafBut not a cell phone. fic right back to the street.

I’m sure you’ve read the same article I read a While science has explained your selfish while back. It said that people have an unnatural actions, I will never understand the pleasure you attachment to their parking spots when they are could possibly derive from inconveniencing so aware that someone else is waiting for it. many people. I truly believe you should just Scientists timed people, and found that those with move. waiters spent an average of more than two extra Then again, I guess I could, too. minutes before pulling out.

I understand this phenomenon with people in www.lorraineonline.ca

‘You should just move’

POWER SHIFT

E-bikes legal, as of now

L

uddites, don’t get excited. The so-called “e-bike” is not a new invention to help you better navigate the web.

But it is now legal to ride one on some roads in Canada.

In a three-year pilot project announced Oct. 4, electric bikes, which range in price from $800 to $2,000 and have a top speed of about 30 kph, are legal to be driven anywhere regular bicycles are ridden in Ontario.

The bikes — a sort of cross between a bicycle and a motorized scooter — feature handle-bar brakes and gear shifters.

But just like a car, a key is needed to start the motor, which on some models sits between the two wheels. On others, the motor is placed between the spokes of the back wheel.

The electric motor plugs into a regular wall socket to re-charge.

Ontario’s Minister of Transportation Donna Cansfield made the announcement.

“They work just like a regular bike,” she said, noting the benefits of free parking, exercise, and fuel efficiency. “We want to help people reduce (traffic) con-

Toyota and Honda sales up

T

oyota and Honda finished second and third in monthly auto sales for the first time in the history of the Canadian auto industry during September.

Reflecting a continuing shift in the market, the two booming Japanesebased auto makers posted more strong gains across the country and finally topped DaimlerChrysler and Ford at the same time last month.

Auto watcher Dennis DesRosiers described the results as a “watershed” for the industry, though they are not surprising since Toyota and Honda have regularly moved ahead of either Ford or DaimlerChrysler in monthly sales during the last year.

Their performances and a big increase by industry leader General Motors boosted overall sales by 9.3 per cent or more than 11,500 to 135,764 vehicles in September from the same month last year.

It marked the first time this year that auto sales, a key indicator of the economy’s health, have increased in two consecutive months and signalled the market might be getting some traction.

Sales for the first three quarters of the year are now up 1.3 per cent or more than 16,000 to 1.24 million vehicles from the corresponding 2005 period.

DesRosiers, president of DesRosiers Automotive Consultants, said the latest increases are indicative of a “relatively healthy economy.”

Business at General Motors of Canada Ltd. jumped 8.1 per cent to 35,687 last month.

DaimlerChrysler Canada Inc. and Ford Motor Co. of Canada Ltd. also reported increases last month.

— Torstar wire service

gestion.”

Riders have to be 16 and must wear a helmet.

E-bikes are already in Alberta and British Columbia.

Environment Minister Laurel Broten, who owns an e-bike but could not use it until last week, lauded the move as a way to help take more gas-spewing cars off the road.

About five electric bikes were lined up on display, some with the ability to power the bike without the cyclist peddling and others that power up only when the peddles move.

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28 • INDEPENDENTBUSINESS

OCTOBER 6, 2006

WEEKLY DIVERSIONS ACROSS 1 Watering holes 5 Snaky fish 9 Noise of heavy impact 13 Web page code 17 Eight (Fr.) 18 X marks the ___ 19 Watchful 20 State on L. Erie 21 It ends a threat 22 Location 23 Cuff 25 Very small island 27 Grass stalk (bot.)

29 Alg., e.g.

30 Wit 31 Stick to (2 wds.)

33 Union annoyer 35 Knighted one’s title 36 Wind dir.

37 Cole ___ 39 Alta. town with Pronghorn antelope statue 41 Atlantic fish 43 Bag (Fr.) 46 Like Thomson Highway 48 Keats’ works 50 Two-footed one 54 Pequod captain 56 Ten (Fr.) 57 Scan 59 Stare open-mouthed 60 Cattle-herding people of Africa 62 Verso’s opposite 65 Flat-woven rug from

India 67 Tree frog 69 Whole: comb. form 70 Part of eye 71 Gordon Lightfoot’s hometown 74 ___ Craig, Ont. 77 Tree with fluttery leaves 80 Patella site 81 6/6/44 83 Stale 85 Sow 86 Actress Polley 88 Accepting bribes: on the ___ 90 Orphaned child 92 Rubble maker, briefly 93 Q & A online 95 Parliament ___ 97 Kind of tide 99 Part of rotating shaft 102 Harbour tower 104 Simple soul 106 Covered with a cloth or flag 110 Good feller 111 Ont. site of Diefenbunker 113 Non-clerical 115 La Traviata, e.g.

116 Gift-giving occasions 119 Blue (Fr.) 121 Coup d’___ 122 Track contest 123 To laugh (Fr.)

124 Something to see through 125 Prepare for the anthem 126 Pelvic bones 127 Once more 128 End of a kitchen?

129 Canonized Fr. women DOWN 1 Arab chief 2 Evidence of heartbeat 3 Bridal path 4 Makes a cuppa 5 Curve 6 Vast 7 Water lily 8 Steel maker 9 URL part 10 Injury 11 Solos for Jon Vickers 12 Spiritually symbolic 13 Fireplace shelf 14 Melts 15 ___ Basin, N.S. 16 Hunters’ retreat 24 Palpitate 26 Post-shower sprinkle 28 BLT sauce 32 Late (Fr.) 34 Camper’s blankets 38 Small overflow dam 40 Birth name indicator 42 Get off the topic 43 Southern uncle 44 “Caught ya!”

45 Checkout person

47 Devon river 49 Winter blues: abbr.

51 Low protective wall 52 Start for dermis or glottis 53 Cee follower 55 Tomato sauce seasoning (2 wds.)

58 Skir ___, N.S. 61 Down with a bug 63 Actor Maury 64 You (Fr.) 66 Ultraviolet rad.

68 Help 71 Consents to, briefly 72 Ribonucleic acid 73 N.B. summer time 75 Piglet’s mom 76 Park of “Air Farce” 78 Velvet ending?

79 Summer time in Witless Bay 82 Syllable of admiration 84 Passed away 87 Emerge from the egg 89 Israeli airline 91 Yukon town named after a card game 94 B.C. gulf island 96 Legally responsible 98 Covers a wall 99 Sask. town named for wild goat-antelope 100 Forming an axis 101 Thank you (Fr.) 103 Prairie product 105 ___ mignon

107 Small in St. Paul 108 Wipe out 109 Takes out

112 Heap of material for burning 114 Throwaway coin

117 Assam or Darjeeling 118 Use a Singer

120 Exploit Solution on page 30

WEEKLY STARS ARIES (MAR. 21 TO APR. 19) Your Aries charm helps persuade others to listen to your proposal.

But it’s still a long way from acceptance, unless you can stand up to the tough questions that are set to follow.

TAURUS (APR. 20 TO MAY 20) Plan to share a weekend getaway from all the pressures of your hectic workaday world with a very special someone. You could be pleasantly surprised at what develops.

GEMINI (MAY 21 TO JUNE 20) Your keen insight once again helps you handle a challenging situation with a clearer perception of what it’s really all about. What you learn helps you make a difficult decision CANCER (JUNE 21-JULY 22)

If you want to steer clear of getting involved in a new family dispute, say so. Your stand might cause hurt feelings for some, but overall, you’ll be respected for your honesty.

LEO (JULY 23 TO AUG. 22) Expect recognition for your efforts in getting a project into operation.

Besides the more practical rewards, your Lion’s heart will be warmed by the admiration of your colleagues.

VIRGO (AUG. 23 TO SEPT. 22) Set aside time to rid yourself of clutter that might well be drawing down your creative energies.

Consider asking someone to help you decide what stays and what goes.

LIBRA (SEPT. 23 TO OCT. 22) A colleague could make a request

that might place you in an awkward position with co-workers. Best advice: Share your concerns with an associate you can trust.

SCORPIO (OCT. 23 TO NOV. 21) Your energy levels are way up, allowing you to take on the added challenge of a task you’ve been hoping to secure. Expect this move to lead to an important opportunity.

SAGITTARIUS (NOV. 22 TO DEC. 21) Your continuing sense of confidence in what you’ve set out to do gives encouragement to others.

Expect to see more people asking to add their efforts to yours.

CAPRICORN (DEC. 22 TO JAN.19) You might think it would be best to reject a suggestion others insist would be unworkable. But you

might be surprised by what you find if you give it a chance.

AQUARIUS (JAN. 20 TO FEB. 18) Changing a decision might disappoint some people, but the important thing is that you are honest with yourself. Don’t go ahead with anything you have doubts about.

PISCES (FEB. 19 TO MAR.. 20) There could be some fallout from an emotional confrontation that you really should deal with before moving on. Best to start fresh with a clean, clear slate.

YOU BORN THIS WEEK: Your honesty not only helps you make decisions for yourself but also helps others find the right choices for themselves. (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 30

INDEPENDENTSPORTS

FRIDAY THROUGH THURSDAY, OCTOBER 6-12, 2006 — PAGE 29

Olympic gold medalist Brad Gushue.

Paul Daly/The Independent

Great expectations Curler Brad Gushue knows the pressure to play well is on. That pressure, however, comes from within.

By Don Power For The Independent

O

n Feb. 24, Brad Gushue crouched in the hack and took a deep breath.

Staring at six of his own rocks in the house, Gushue knew an Olympic gold medal was within his grasp.

He also knew the eyes of the curling world — especially Canadian eyes — were on him.

Fast forward to last week in Gander, and Gushue crouched in the hack for his first meaningful toss since that day in Pinerolo, Italy. Competing in the Don Bartlett Curling Classic, Gushue — now with a revamped lineup — knew all eyes were upon him.

Every stone he throws and every decision he makes this season will be scrutinized by not only the hardcore curling aficionado, but by the casual fan.

That’s how it is when you’re the reigning Olympic curling gold medallist.

Throw into the mix the changes in his lineup — gone is two-time world curling champion and legend Russ Howard, in is 24-year-old Albertan Chris Schille — and everybody is going to watch Gushue’s performance this year.

It’s a situation he’s acutely aware of, and

one he’s fully prepared to handle. In fact, he says, nobody will be more critical of the team than the team itself.

“We can’t worry about all that,” Gushue said, with maturity beyond his 26 years.

“We’ve got to worry about what we’re thinking and control what we can do.

“I still expect a lot. I still expect us to do well. We want to go have a good year.

We’re going to lose events, but it’s just a matter of trying to improve on what we did last year.”

Improve? On an Olympic gold medal?

How is that possible?

“We’re just trying to get better and better till 2010,” he said.

Gushue has always been one to see the big picture. He’s looking long term, and not worried about a particular spiel.

In Gander, for example, Gushue’s rink, which also includes holdovers Mark Nichols at third and Jamie Korab at lead, reached the semifinals, where they lost 6-2 to Alberta’s Kevin Martin.

“We were pleased,” Gushue said Oct. 2, following that event, and prior to leaving for Switzerland where they play in this weekend’s 32-team Swiss Cup Basel tournament. “(Eventual winner Kerry) Burtnyk,

Martin and (Randy) Ferbey had all played in events prior and had a few weeks, if not months, of practice. So I think we did well.”

Doing well is not only something Gushue’s fans expect, it’s also what he expects of himself and his team. That means eliminating the peaks and valleys that accompanied the team last season, when they went from hot streaks to cool periods.

This year, along with several stated goals, the buzzword is consistency.

“Last year we started off very poorly,” Gushue said. “We built it up quite well until the (Olympic) trials and we peaked at the trials. Then in between the trials and Olympics we played very poorly, and we didn’t really play well at the Olympics but we were able to scrape out a win there.

“We didn’t play consistently well last year and that’s one thing I want to get better at and want the team to get better at. We want to get to a certain level and play at that level every game. If you get beaten, you get beaten, but most of the time you’re going to win. I think that’s what we have to do.

“Week in and week out it almost has to be a guarantee that we’re going to make the playoffs. I think that’s when we’re going to know that we’ve improved.”

With the team’s plan set squarely on rep-

resenting Canada at the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, Gushue acknowledges other goals, such as winning the Canadian curling championship.

“The biggest goal is to get back to the Brier. We definitely want to win the Brier in the next few years; before 2010 anyway.”

While the goals have remained large, the schedule has been cut back. The team won’t be nearly as busy this season, with just seven events prior to Christmas, and perhaps four or five after. Of course, the Gushue rink will participate in provincial playdowns, too, but will not play in the local St. John’s Super League.

For the St. John’s native, wins and losses are just part of the equation. Getting caught up in the hype of being Olympic champs can be mentally draining, so they’ll try to sidestep the cauldron of pressure if they can.

“If we think about all that stuff, it will be draining and very tiring,” Gushue admitted.

“But I think the important thing is for us to go into events with a little more relaxed attitude. By that I mean, just worry about what we can do.

“If we go out and curl 85 per cent game in, game out, and not worry about the result, we’re going to have a good year.”

Where have all the flakes gone?

A

s Shannie Duff once casually remarked to me, I’m hardly an art aficionado. (Truth be known, I said it after looking at the bare-footed rowing statue at the head of Quidi Vidi Lake, but she remarked in her high-handed way, “I’m impressed you know how to pronounce it.”)

Nonetheless, I think the mural on the west end of Duckworth Street depicting life in old St. John’s is an outstanding piece of work. Granted, that and a quarter will get the artists a phone call.

Derek Holmes and April Norman put a ton of work into the project (and I confess I know and like Holmes) and it’s paid off. People stop to look at the lengthy painting and remark at the people splayed over the concrete.

Whenever I drive by, my eyes are constantly drawn to Bucky King. Why, I have no idea, but they are.

I’m too young to remember the antics of Bucky King at hockey games. I’ve never seen him skate on the ice at Caps games, or pull any of his stunts.

But I know who he is. I even knew

DON POWER

Power Point what he looked like long before Holmes and Norman plastered him over the wall. Why? Because he was one of the characters in sport.

Everybody knew who Bucky King was. He was one of our most famous citizens during his time. And all because he was flamboyant.

I miss that in sport. I miss the exuberance of the people — some athletes, some fans — who made going to sporting events exciting.

Remember the good old days of sport? Remember when you went to watch games because of the people who played them? (Remember when you went to watch the games? Period. This year’s Regatta — pre-monsoon — didn’t draw enough people to hold hands.)

Well, like the fans who no longer visit

St. Pat’s, King George or Lions Park, the characters who inhabited these locales have also disappeared.

To save some of these guys and gals embarrassment, I’ll keep the names to myself, but anybody who has visited a local park knows who they are.

Look around at the different sports now, and everybody’s the same.

Nobody wants to stand out from the crowd. It’s the cookie-cutter generation.

(I will admit TR is an exception. Great athlete; great character.)

Sure the athletes are better in some respects, but they’re so bland. It’s like they’re all accountants in grey suits.

BORING! That’s why rugby is the best sport on the go right now.

Not only is The Rock the two-time defending Rugby Canada Super League champion, they have real people who don’t mind being real people. Don’t believe me? Just check out the team’s bios on the RCSL website.

League leading scorer Dean Blanks can apparently break into song and

humour, with “one sniff of the barmaid’s apron.”

Robert Wilson is said to be — and this is something no other sport would mention — “the envy of his teammates in many departments.”

There are others, but you get the point.

And I haven’t even mentioned going to the Swilers Complex for a game.

That in itself is a raucous event, featuring more fans than every senior soccer, baseball and softball game combined.

Years ago, the mainstream sports all had flakes, extroverts or showmen on their rosters.

Watching Bucky King stare back at me from a concrete wall makes me wish we still did.

A NEW TEAM FOR ME, TOO The summer sports season officially ended last weekend.

City titles in four leagues were determined in a four-day span, with the senior and intermediate softball champions crowned, followed by junior and senior

baseball winners.

There were new winners (North Atlantic Marine’s first senior softball title since 2000 under a different banner), and repeat winners (Shamrocks dominance in senior baseball continued with their fourth straight championship, 19th in 27 years).

But that’s over now, and for many of the people involved, it’s time to change uniforms, switch teams and sports, and embark on winter activities.

Fittingly, perhaps, I too am trying on a new uniform. After a decade-and-ahalf with the same team, I am now — to continue the sports vernacular — a free agent.

So expect to see my face and ramblings in this space over the next while.

We’ll tackle many issues and topics, and hopefully generate discussion about amateur sport, its people and the events that transpire.

Sit back, fold down that paper, and enjoy. donniep@nl.rogers.com

30 • INDEPENDENTSPORTS Solutions for crossword on page 28

OCTOBER 6, 2006 Solutions for sudoku on page 28

Rifle cleaning: the details L

ast week I poured out my feelings about neglected and abused rifles. I may have ranted, but now I feel warm and fuzzy as I visualize my readers checking over their rifles and prepping them for moose hunting.

I hope I didn’t hurt anyone’s feelings or cause cases of dirty gun guilt syndrome, but if just one needy rifle received the solvent and oil it needed, so be it.

Now for some details. Let’s start with a brand new rifle, fresh from the factory.

Off we go to the range or field and fire away — right? Not quite. If you want maximum accuracy and performance from your rifle barrel, you should follow a break-in procedure.

The rifling in your barrel was created by cutting tools and without doubt there will be rough surfaces, sharp edges and jagged bits of steel in your new barrel; artifacts of the machining process.

The first bullet through the barrel will squeeze by your new barrel’s virgin blemishes, dislodging and moving tiny fragments of steel, as well as losing some of its own copper skin. If the barrel isn’t cleaned at this point the next shot might mar the rifling as the bullet passes a dislodged piece of steel or fragment of copper. Before a second bullet passes through the barrel give it a thorough cleaning.

Google “barrel break-in” and you will find numerous variations of shoot and clean rituals. Mine has evolved from the Internet’s collective wisdom and my own experience. You need to sight-in a new rifle anyway so don’t waste expensive ammunition on break-in alone. I take a new rifle to the range with scope mounted, and my cleaning gear in tow.

It takes me about 20 rounds to get a new rifle zeroed to my satisfaction, and 20 rounds is also the generally recommended break-in quota.

Here’s the regimen: clean the barrel after every shot for the first five rounds, then again after each three-shot string until your box of ammo is depleted. This will give you five three-shot groups, which should suffice for an initial sight-

PAUL SMITH

The Rock

Outdoors in. I use three shots in each string, because that’s how many it takes to establish an average impact point for scope adjustment. This way, I can shoot my three shot groups uninterrupted.

This procedure will leave your barrel burnished smooth and free of tooling marks — ready for a lifetime of accurate shooting. After break-in I typically clean a rifle barrel after every 20 to 40 rounds.

So how exactly do you clean a rifle barrel? First and foremost, you need a good-quality solvent that will remove copper fouling and burnt powder residue.

I use G96 Rifle Solvent, but there are many other fine products on the market from Remington, Shooters Choice and Hoppes. I’m not sure if there’s a scientific basis for my choice of solvent — I just love the smell of it.

Unlike bathrooms, guns are a joy to clean. I thought I was alone in my appreciation for the aroma of gun cleaning products till just recently. I read a column

by Terry Wieland in Rifle Shooter entitled A Labour of Love. He writes passionately about the smell of Hoppes No. 9.

The solvent is the essential ingredient for barrel cleaning, but you obviously need some physical mechanism to apply the fluid and scrub the inside of the barrel. Enter the gun-rod. A high-quality cleaning rod is a worthwhile and essential lifetime investment. I use Dewey onepiece nylon coated steel rods. Steel is more rigid then aluminium or brass and the nylon coating will not damage rifling.

If you already own an uncoated metal rod, consider coating it. Electrical shrinkwrap works really well.

Next, you need a bronze brush and cleaning jag that attaches to the end of the rod. The jag will hold the cotton cleaning patches that you can either buy or cut yourself from scrap cloth.

Finally, you need some mechanism to

hold the rifle securely while you clean it.

A spouse might do in a jam, but gun cleaning is best handled solo. You can buy a fancy cleaning cradle or fashion your own. The function of the cradle is to hold the rifle securely with the muzzle angled downwards. This is so the solvent will run out the barrel and not back into the rifle’s action where it doesn’t belong.

(Note: these instructions are for boltaction rifles. Semi-autos and lever guns must be cleaned from the muzzle end, which is a tad more awkward.)

Remove the bolt from your shootin’ iron and secure it in a muzzle-down orientation. Soak a cotton patch with solvent and pass it through the bore, letting it drop free from the jag when it exits at the muzzle. Some shooters scrub back and forth, but I prefer not to pull anything back through the muzzle for fear of damaging the delicate crown at the very end of the rifling.

Attach the cleaning brush to your rod and give your barrel a good scrubbing — 10 or so strokes. This will loosen copper fouling and imbedded powder grains.

Follow with alternate wet and dry cotton patches until they come out clean. Then, diligently dry up all traces of solvent with dry patches. If you are storing your rifle for a while, run one final patch soaked with a good quality gun oil to inhibit rusting in your bore. However, be sure and wipe it out before your next outing.

I’m getting long-winded and I haven’t said a word about the exterior of a rifle — but fortunately this part is very simple.

You just need to keep a protective film of good-quality gun oil between your rifle’s steel and the elements.

When I get home from a wet day hunting, I dry my rifle off and place it in a warm, well ventilated area. For God’s sake, don’t leave it in your gun case.

When my rifle is completely dry, I strip it down and apply some sweet smelling G96 Gun treatment to every nook and cranny. I reassemble it and store in a well ventilated and locked cabinet.

Care for your firearms and they will serve you well for a lifetime. flyfishtherock@hotmail.com

Club dues

The St. Lawrence Laurentians, provincial champs again, rely on friends and fans for hefty fundraising duties

By Bob White For The Independent

W

hen one thinks of the St. Lawrence Laurentians, provincial soccer supremacy immediately comes to mind.

Again this year, the tiny town from the Burin Peninsula is home to Newfoundland and Labrador’s best senior men’s team. The Laurentians are competing in the national Challenge Cup tournament in Surrey, British Columbia Oct. 4-9, an event they have attended as provincial champs 22 of the past 39 years.

It’s no secret the townspeople take tremendous pride in their soccer team, a major reason the Laurentians are successful season after season, even when faced with a declining population and other rural challenges.

One testament to the town’s ability to overcome is the enormous amount of money raised each season. Operation costs go up considerably when the team leaves the island. Adding to the intensity, the club doesn’t know until the provincial Challenge Cup is decided on Labour Day weekend whether they’ll be competing in the nationals. When they win, the club has three or four weeks to fundraise. On average, a trip to the mainland to represent the province costs the Laurentians between $40,000 and $45,000.

How does this tight-knit community, which has earned the right to proudly call itself the “Soccer Capital of Canada,”

Paul Slaney, Blair Aylward & Clinton Edwards

come up with the money?

The funds come from a hundreds of die-hard Laurentians supporters — ex-players, hometown fans, and expatriates living all over the country and beyond. People like Lyle Drake, who admittedly takes more of a lead role in fundraising than most.

“Everyone gets behind it, it’s a lot of work, but we do just about everything in order to raise funds,” said Drake, 56, who also runs the club’s website. “And for the most part, the money is raised in small increments, a dollar at a time.”

Toll gates, bingos, cold plates, relays, Texas Hold ’em tournaments, car washes, telethons, yard sales, bake sales — you name it, the club has staged just about every type of fundraising event you can think of.

This year, Drake, who has his own music label, Avondale Music, helped organize a benefit concert at Club One in St. John’s. It was a successful event and raised a nice chunk of change for the club.

Drake grew up in St. Lawrence, left for the mainland in 1969, and returned home for good in 1992. Since settling in St. John’s, he’s been an avid supporter of the team and lets his volunteer activities take over his “real life” in times when the players need a substantial amount of money in a short period of time.

Drake has travelled with the club, mostly on his own dime, to almost all Challenge Cup tournaments since 1992. This year, he won’t be making the cross-country trip, but plans instead to go to Charlottetown, PEI for the Canadian masters championships. (The Laurentians won that provincial title too.)

Nonetheless, Drake expects the Laurentians to have a fair amount of support from fans in Surrey. No matter where the tournament is held, Drake says a couple hundred or more fans travel from all parts of the country to cheer on their favourite team.

“Really, when you consider our fans and how dedicated and supportive they are, you have to look at fans of English soccer, or Brazilian soccer or Italian to find the same kind of passion.

That’s how much it means to a Laurentians fan,” he says.

Drake cites the 2002 Challenge Cup tournament, hosted in St. John’s. The Laurentians were provincial champs and had a Cinderella trip to the national final that year against Manitoba.

They didn’t win, but the 8,000 fans that showed up to cheer on the club are still talked about in Canadian soccer circles.

There aren’t too many places that can attract that number of fans to a senior club game — perhaps nowhere else in the country.

These days, many of the Laurentians players live outside the community. But still, a large portion of the fundraising is done in St. Lawrence and on the Burin Peninsula. Simply put, the heart of the team resides in St. Lawrence and that’s where it will stay.

OCTOBER 6, 2006

INDEPENDENTCLASSIFIED • 31

INDEPENDENTCLASSIFIED

FRIDAY THROUGH THURSDAY, OCTOBER 6-12, 2006 — PAGE 32

F E AT U R E H O M E 1 3 2 WAT E R F O R D B R I D G E R D .

Photos by Paul Daly

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