2007-01-05

VOL. 5 ISSUE 1

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ST. JOHN’S, NEWFOUNDLAND AND LABRADOR — FRIDAY THROUGH THURSDAY, JANUARY 5-11, 2007

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LIFE 17

Soldier Jonathan Cranford’s pictures from Afghanistan

Danny Williams on the highs and lows of public life

Prison terms Federal and provincial governments agree to fund new federal prison

signed off by both levels of government.

IVAN “I am optimistic that we can MORGAN achieve some kind of substantive agreement within a matter of he federal government has months,” says McNutt. agreed to share the cost of There is general consensus Her building a federal prison in Majesty’s Penitentiary in St. John’s Newfoundland and Labrador, says — parts of which were built 150 Marvin McNutt, the province’s years ago — needs to be replaced. director of adult corrections. He says There have been complaints in the negotiations are now past about severe underway to hammer overcrowding at the out the details. penitentiary. A new “I am optimistic “The bottom line prison is estimated to is, yes, the federal cost up to $80 million. that we can government is comSentences up to two achieve some mitted to the princiyears less a day are ple of contributing to served in kind of substantive generally the cost,” McNutt provincial prisons. tells The Those longer than two agreement within a Independent. “What years are usually has to be worked out, matter of months.” served in federal penal however, would be institutions on the the amount of the mainland.

Marvin McNutt funding that would In this province — be committed.” the only one besides While McNutt cautions negotia- PEI that does not have a federal tions are at a “preliminary and prison — the government has always exploratory stage,” he says there had the option of allowing federal should be progress soon. A federal- prisoners to serve their time in provincial committee is being estab- Newfoundland. lished and McNutt is developing McNutt says the province does not their terms of reference. He says See “Site for new,” page 2 those timelines will have to be

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Moving forward Independent youth panel calls for education reform, increased immigration, long-term planning, and more welcoming environment STEPHANIE PORTER Final of a two-part series

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resh out of school — or still in the midst of high school and university courses — it didn’t take long for members of The Independent’s youth panel to focus their attention and criticism on the province’s education system.

Citing examples of overcrowded classes, inadequate courses, and unhappy university professors, the

panel of nine young women and men called for creative reforms. Social work student Lesley Bishop, fresh from a work term, is haunted by the youth she met — 16 year olds with a Grade 2 reading level, who were nevertheless pushed through to high school.

As panelist Sheena Goodyear says, a solid, challenging and relevant education could resolve many current issues. “If people are getting an education where they’re encouraged to be strong and to think, then if people care about their (outport) towns, then See “Are we,” pages 4-5

QUOTE OF THE WEEK “I bought a truck. I bought a Chevy Silverado. 2007.

Crew cab. Red in colour. Four-by-four. It’s soooo nice.”

— Lottery winner Darryl Pittman of Corner Brook.

See page 3

SPORTS 29

At 14, Sarah Davis tops in province OPINION 5

Ray Guy on the terrible and barren news days of January

Paper Trail . . . . . .

Patrick O’Flaherty Woody’s Wheels .

Crossword . . . . .

10 11 25 28

Whitbourne’s jewel Shannon Tweed on her Newfoundland childhood, Playmate days, parenting with a rock demon — and plans to bring her hit reality show home

By Ivan Morgan The Independent

B

y her own account, Shannon Tweed — Playboy playmate, Hollywood actress and TV star born and raised in Whitbourne — has seen her share of success. In her autobiography, Kiss and Tell, published last fall, she writes of growing up in rural Newfoundland and how it shaped her life.

It’s a long way from Whitbourne to Hollywood, where she lives today with her partner of 23 years, rock demon Gene Simmons of KISS. The book is an honest, straightforward account of her remarkable life.

In an interview with The Independent, Tweed, 49, says the values she learned in her childhood have sustained her through her life. She also talks about visiting her hometown — and bringing her hit reality TV series with her.

Tweed is philosophical about her fame and success.

“Oh, you know … I did OK,” Tweed says. “You know I am not

sure — I am positive — I didn’t do it the right way, but it ended up OK. It’s not a path I’d recommend to anyone.”

Tweed found fame as 1982’s Playboy Playmate of the Year and girlfriend of Hugh Hefner. She went on to become known as the “Queen of the “Bs” — starring or co-starring in many low-budget movies in the 1980s and early 1990s dubbed “erotic thrillers.” Currently she co-stars, with her partner and children, in a reality series called Gene Simmons Family Jewels.

EARLY YEARS In her autobiography, Tweed writes of her early years in Whitbourne, growing up on a mink ranch with parents and her six brothers and sisters. While not “poor,” they had to make do. She envied classmates whose parents could afford to send them to school with “store-bought bread that looked fancy, with meat from the store sandwiched between the slices.”

She was embarrassed by her lunch-

es of homemade bread with peanut butter and jam that were always ruined by her leaky Thermos. She had a habit of eating chewed-up gum, taking it off the ground and picking the dirt off it and popping it in her mouth.

“My Mom thinks that is why I never get sick. My immune system is incredible. I knew if it was still shiny it had a little sugar left in it,” Tweed laughs. “I think it came from not liking my lunches.”

She writes of leafing through the Sears catalogue as a young girl and dreaming of one day appearing in it as a model. To the young Tweed the models were “the essence of elegance” and while she didn’t think she was pretty enough for the glossy pages, she “was reasonably sure” she could manage the pose.

Twice a year her mother packed them all up and drove to St. John’s — “town” as she remembers it — to shop downtown. It was a rare treat to eat restaurant food. She still loves See “Yay Woolworths,” page 2

2 • INDEPENDENTNEWS

JANUARY 5, 2007

‘Federal responsibility be damned’ Randy Simms says province should help pay for Gander airport

I

t hasn’t been talked about much at the provincial level, but there’s an economic crisis looming in the province and it’s crying out for attention.

I’m not talking about issues like outmigration or lack of diversity in the economy, but a specific disaster that needs some full-time attention from our political leadership at Confederation Building.

Imagine losing a business that generates more than $136 million in direct and indirect wages, a business that impacts the local labour market to the tune of 2,382 full-time jobs. Imagine that business failing after 50 years of operation and writing off some $312 million in annual economic output.

According to a report from Intervista Consulting out of Vancouver, the value of the business to Newfoundland and Labrador is immense. Losing such a business would be staggering. Now imagine the province ignoring it.

I’m speaking about the Gander International Airport. (I know, I know —

Site for new prison not chosen yet From page 1 have the capacity for higher security prisoners, who are sent to the Atlantic Institution, a maximum-security prison in Renous, N.B., located on the site of a former Canadian Forces ammunition depot.

For lower security federal prisoners housed at the penitentiary, the province charges the feds about $200 a day. This raised $4 million in revenue in 2005 and is expected to bring in $4.5 million in 2006.

“We’ve had a long-term partnership with Corrections Canada,” says McNutt. “We have a very strong partnership in terms of the level of programming that we provide and we are not very anxious to duplicate resources.

“And having an institution of this type that could serve the needs of offenders serving short terms as well as those serving longer terms would be in the interest of both governments.”

McNutt will not discuss what percentage of the cost the province is asking the federal government to pay.

“The terms of reference will dictate what authorities or what responsibilities each sector would have,” he says.

McNutt says one of the big decisions will be the location of the new site.

“We don’t know what site would be suitable at this point,” he says. “You have to determine, first of all, what kind of program you are going to have, that would determine the size, and then the design of the facility itself would dictate the nature of the site that you would need.” ivan.morgan@theindependent.ca

RANDY SIMMS

Page 2 talk a federal responsibility) The airport authority has been fighting to keep things going for more than two years now and the federal government, which downloaded Canada’s airports to these not-for-profit authorities, has apparently decided, despite local efforts, that Gander can die. Federal Transport Minister Lawrence Cannon seems quite willing to “take back the keys” if the local authority walks away from the job.

Every move the authority made in the last years to stave off locking the doors has failed to produce the desired results.

They asked the feds for some $2 million a year in additional funding for up to five years to help get over the hump. The feds said no. They asked the feds to pay their way and stop using the airport for free.

From page 1 fries and gravy, with vinegar and ketchup.

“Yay Woolworths!” she says.

“French fries and gravy at Woolworths.”

She loved Barbie and local boys, and preferred to steal her mother’s cigarettes — menthols — to her father’s nasty Rothmans. Her life was complete.

But her father, Donald Keith Tweed, was in a car accident on a snowy winter night in 1966. The driver, who “may have been too drunk to drive,” was killed, and Tweed’s father badly hurt. He was rushed to hospital in St. John’s.

He survived, but gone was the laughter, the hugs and the adoration.

He suffered brain damage and was permanently disabled. His personality changed, and he was incapable of controlling his emotions. Her parent’s marriage, which had been a happy and loving one, was effectively over. Her Dad was now a raging, broken man.

That accident marked the end of her warm outport upbringing.

“It was heart-breaking to see my strong, vibrant father turned into this angry, crippled mess in a wheelchair,” she writes.

Although the ranch was everything her father had worked for, Tweed’s mother eventually faced the fact that she couldn’t run it and raise seven kids by herself.

“It was the ’60s in rural Canada, and the banks took a dim view of a woman’s ability to run a ranch and refused to lend her enough money to keep things going.” Tweed’s mother made the decision to sell the farm and moved herself and her children to Saskatchewan to stay with her sister.

While they moved when she was still very young, Tweed says the values she learned in Whitbourne have stayed with her.

“Whether I learned from bad shit that happened to me or whether I retained all the good stuff — it all comes from my Mom, and my Dad, for sure,” says Tweed. “It comes from living where we lived and learning the value of things and learning a work ethic — and definitely the work ethic — I mean no one worked harder than my parents and God knows I wouldn’t have had the balls to raise seven kids by myself, I would have hung myself.”

In her book, Tweed wonders if, had her father not been hurt, she would be living today in Dildo with five kids.

When challenged on that line, Tweed says she does wish she had five kids — but thinks her path would have led her away from Whitbourne and rural Newfoundland anyway.

“Well, you know, I really think, given the character of my parents, and their work ethic, I probably would have gone on to be some sort of professional,” says Tweed. “I’m thinking doctor. I have a tendency and an affinity towards medicine and diagnosis that … it fascinates me. Probably I would have gone on to university.”

She currently works as an actress.

Her CV includes countless vintage acting credits, including a stint on

The feds said no. All of the downloaded airports must provide services to the federal government for nothing. Start paying in Gander, they say, and they would face similar invoices from all of Canada’s airports. Let’s forget how unfair the federal position is for the moment and simply accept that they are not going to pay. Should such a huge economic engine be allowed to fail without a good fight?

Last year the federal government offered Gander a lifeline of sorts. Under the plan, the feds would cover losses up to $5.9 million over two years. In that time the authority is to write a new business plan, one that does not include the federal government paying any bills.

The authority said no. While I think they may have been hasty and probably should reconsider that decision, there is another point to be made.

That brings me back to the Intervista report. The Gander airport supports the economy of the entire central/eastern region. If it were a major fish plant or a

paper mill the province would be right there to offer a helping hand. I know the federal-responsibility argument but this can’t be ignored much longer.

The province should act.

Business Minister Kevin O’Brien should do two things over the next couple of months to address this issue.

Given the airport is the mainstay of his provincial district and given his role as minister, the ideas should appeal to him.

One: secure some provincial funding for the airport, say $1.5 million a year for the next five years. The argument to cabinet is obvious. We found money for fibre optics, money for aquaculture, even money for an expansion to ice cream making. Why not money to secure the economy of the Gander region? And it’s not a lot of money. It should be an easy sell around the cabinet table.

Two: go to Ottawa and negotiate a cost-sharing arrangement with the feds.

Leave the idea of the feds paying for use of the Gander airport out of the equation.

With our $1.5 million and their $1.5 mil-

lion the airport might well weather this storm. It’s worth a try.

Last fall the local communities around Gander struck a committee to work on the problem. The committee included business people, local mayors and representatives of the authority. I could be wrong but we have no knowledge of this committee ever seeking financial help from the province. Why not? Federal responsibility be damned — the province can help.

One final purely political thought.

Let’s assume the feds still say no and won’t even do a 50/50 cost-share agreement. Wouldn’t Danny Williams love to take care of another piece of business the Harper government has left undone?

Want to deliver a goose egg to the federal Conservatives next time? What a place to start. What a stroke of political genius and imagine this … it’s the right thing to do.

Randy Simms is host of VOCM’s Open Line radio show.

‘Yay Woolworths!’

Playing outside the mink sheds.

Lance, Sara, Kim and Shannon

“It’s a classic case of not judging a book by its cover. Everyone thinks Gene is probably a heroin addict or something.

You know, he’s never had a drink in his life. I’m the one that was so experimental with everything — however short a period of time it was — so I kind of know what to look for and know what kids are into.”

Shannon Tweed 1980s classic soap opera Falcon Crest, and roles in Frasier, Baywatch, L.A. Law, Days of our Lives, Murder She Wrote, Dukes of Hazzard, Married with Children and many more.

Critics note her new reality show is remarkable for what her family doesn’t appear to be — dysfunctional. The show depicts legendary rock star Simmons as he really is — shrewd businessman, devoted father and adoring partner to Tweed.

When asked why her kids are so well adjusted, she replies “because they have Dudley Do-right for a father.

“It’s a classic case of not judging a book by its cover,” says Tweed.

“Everyone thinks Gene is probably a heroin addict or something. You know, he’s never had a drink in his life. I’m the one that was so experimental with everything — however short a period of time it was — so I kind of know what to look for and know what kids are into.

“I can nip things in the bud, but I really believe the most important thing is being vocal. I don’t keep

things from them. I think it is important to talk everything to death, and I do.”

She says Simmons’ show business persona as a hard-living rock star is just that — an image. Tweed and her partner (Simmons is strongly opposed to the concept of marriage) have raised their children using their own past experiences and through communication. She offers an example.

“My son said to me, and I am sure he’ll kill me if he ever reads this … ‘everybody’s been having sex and I haven’t,’ and I am kind of embarrassed I don’t know what to say. I said, ‘The beauty of it is you don’t have to say anything because a gentleman wouldn’t, and you can save face that way — you don’t have to say you haven’t — you just don’t have to say.’”

In her book she writes she craves homemade bread, covered with butter and sugar. She says she has a source in Los Angeles where she can get it.

“Everything I complained about when I was young I love now,” says Tweed. “I like beans now, I like oatmeal — it’s all such a funny turn around, I guess, because I appreciate

the value of it, and it’s nostalgic.”

She last visited Newfoundland in the early 1980s, to see her father. He died shortly after, never knowing of the fame and success she would earn.

While she’s close to her mother, Tweed still struggles with the decision to move them away from home.

“It’s there. I think of it all the time,” says Tweed. “I mean I don’t agree with the way she didn’t keep us in touch with my Dad. I thought that could have been handled differently, but I understand it intellectually.

Emotionally I don’t, but I don’t know that I would have done anything different given the same circumstances.”

She says she would love to bring her TV series back to Whitbourne. Gene Simmons in rural Newfoundland, she notes, has serious entertainment potential. And she would love her own children to see where she grew up.

She says she’s working on it and is hoping to make it happen in 2007.

Kiss and Tell, by Shannon Tweed and Julie McCarron (with a forward

by Gene Simmons), was published by Phoenix Press. ivan.morgan@theindependent.ca

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JANUARY 5, 2007

INDEPENDENTNEWS • 3

SCRUNCHINS TWEED JACKET Moving on to another interesting read … Shannon Tweed’s 2006 book Kiss and Tell. Growing up in Whitbourne, the 1982 Playmate of the Year wrote that most of the people she associated with were of Irish, English or Scottish descent. “The only difference between neighbours was religion — and believe me, I didn’t know the meaning of the word. After school my friends and I used to throw rocks at the Catholic kids, and they at us. We didn’t even know why we didn’t like them. I don’t think I even knew what Catholic meant, but someone told me they were ‘different.’”

A weekly collection of Newfoundlandia

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his week’s Scrunchins begins with a what-I-got-for-Christmas theme. Of course, no hockey household should be without a Don Cherry video under the tree, in this case Don Cherry 18, billed as “the best hockey video of all time.” (As if it could compete with the first 17.) Don Cherry 18 has the best hits, goals, saves and bloopers from the fastest sport on earth, or so it says on the back of the DVD case. As for bloopers, one particular Coach’s Corner begins with Ron MacLean introducing Premier Danny Williams “from last night at the legion.” Back in January 2006 Stephenville hosted CBC’s Hockey Day in Canada.

“Have a listen,” says MacLean, setting up the tape for the national audience, “sickening really.”

The tape showed our Danny standing at a podium wearing a peach tie, robinegg blue hanky, and a burgundy and olive-striped sports coat with oversized lapels. “I have this jacket on every Saturday night because this man is my idol. I just absolutely adore him,” said the premier, walking towards Cherry, who wore an equally outrageous jacket at the end of the head table. Danny proceeded to fire a kiss at Cherry’s top shelf (his balding head, in other words).

“I love him,” Danny said. Words weren’t necessary, premier, your jacket said it all …

BRIGUS BOUNTY Santa also dropped off a can of Brigus Blueberries and Cream, natural bath salts. The blueberries (kissed with cream) smelled so fresh I felt like ripping out a pie pan and preparing a crust.

Premier Danny Williams and sportscaster Don Cherry in Stephenville during CBC’s Hockey Day in Canada 2006 — a still from Don Cherry 18.

But then the hockey player in me pulled the apron over the baker’s head and smacked him silly. One to four tablespoons per bath and you’re good to go, the directions read. I just have to remember not to bring up the topic of bath salts in the dressing room after the Friday beer league hockey game …

FAR OUT PHARAOH Personally, my favourite gift is a book — preferably something dripping with Newfoundland flavour (and seasoned with Scrunchins). I wasn’t disappointed this year, not with Our case, Premier Smallwood’s Statement of Policy, a booklet published by the provincial government in 1959. Here’s what Smallwood had to say about iron

ore in Labrador: “A vast, sun-filled bowl of rust-red earth, streaked with blood-red pools … it was like looking into some vast excavation in the Egyptian desert, mute with the memories of a vanished Pharaoh.”

One more quote, this time about Confederation: “It was not the addition of the 42,000 square miles of the island itself and 110,000 square miles of Labrador that made the difference to Canada — herself the third largest land mass of the world — but the ultimate competition and crowning of Canada’s Atlantic boundary and sovereignty. Not to speak of adding 500,000 people of sound British stock.”

Hold on, didn’t we come from the Pharaohs …

Money for something Lottery winners talk about the joys and realities of winning

Darryl Pittman and Heidi Dawe

By Ivan Morgan The Independent

OLD GUARD Premier Danny Williams announced the appointments of several new deputy ministers earlier this week, as well as the retirement of Barbara Knight, who’s leaving government after 31 years. “I have worked closely with Barbara Knight over the past three years and I can attest to her professionalism, dedication and unwavering commitment to public service.” Ironically, Doug House, the premier’s point man on economic development, wrote a book critical of the provincial government that also mentioned Knight.

Published in 1999, Against the Tide named names — Knight’s included — who were members of what he termed the Old Guard, “the power behind the throne” in Newfoundland politics.

“Basically, they are adept at making the premier and the ministers dependent on them, mainly through techniques of information management and control,” House wrote. “The Old Guard are resistant to change, especially to change that is initiated by agencies outside their orbit …”

Guess The Old Guard has lost its Knight …

LEFT BEHIND Christie Blatchford of The Globe and Mail wrote a compelling piece in late December on the death of four Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan last fall, including Warrant Officer Rick Nolan, 39, of Mount Pearl. According to Blatchford, on the day the soldiers died, a noncommissioned officer is alleged to have deserted his troops while they were under fire. “He left them there to die,” Master Corporal Ward Engley told The Globe. Another soldier alleged the NCO claimed to have been hit, then left his men behind, saying he was off to get them support. Said another soldier, “He basically deserted, left the section while a couple of guys were pinned down.”

War really is hell … ryan.cleary@the independent.ca

Warrant Officer Rick Nolan

When it finally sank in that they had won, Pittman decided to go to the grocery store and validate the ticket on an official lotto machine. arryl Pittman’s story of winning the lottery When he showed the cashier he’d won, “I got sounds like a Disney movie script. The 37- another hit across the chest,” says Pittman, laughing. year-old maintenance supervisor from For Newfoundland and Labrador, lottery sales for Corner Brook realized on Christmas Eve that he had 2006 totalled more than $308 million, with just won $2,000 every two weeks for the next 20 years. more than $186 million in “traditional” sales of tickLike many Newfoundlanders and Labradorians, ets, and more than $122 million in video lottery Pittman bought a few extra lottery tickets in the days sales. Last year the provincial government collected leading up to Christmas. almost $106 million in revenues from lotteries, “During Christmas I like to buy more tickets,” while the lucky few who won shared more than Pittman tells The Independent. “Because that’s the $107 million in prizes. time when you want to be set. You want to be rich.”

An Atlantic Lottery survey shows most people Although the draw was Dec. 21, Pittman never bank their money, pay bills, share it with their famibothered checking his tickets. ly, buy stuff for the house, or buy cars. Most say Christmas Eve found Pittman and his fiancée winning was great, but didn’t change them.

Heidi Dawe at home.

Wayne Courage of Chamberlains won $50,000, an “She was doing the books Christmas Eve, on the Atlantic PAYDAY ticket that was a gift from his coffee table,” says Pittman. “And I looked at her and mother. said ‘What are you doing? Wait till after “It wasn’t a life-changing event by any means, Christmas.’” just a very nice feeling to win it, of course,” Courage Instead she did some online banking, discovered tells The Independent. “It just makes things a little she had $26 in her account, and paid a $25 bill, leav- bit easier.” ing herself $1.

Courage says he gave some to family, paid a few A friend called him, and during the conversation bills, and bought a piece of land he says he will asked if he had checked his eventually build a summer ticket yet, as the prize had not home on. been claimed. The computer “We started sponsoring a What winners do with their money. was on, so he went to the lotto foster child several years ago, • 78 per cent bank their money website and checked his ticket. we sent some money his way,” • 60 per cent pay bills “I had all four numbers and I says Courage.

• 57 per cent share it with family was in total shock. I was James Traverse of Gull • 31 per cent buy appliances/furniture speechless. I was froze. I was Island won $64,906 on TAG. • 27 per cent renovate their homes … The ticket was in my hand He was considering going to • 23 per cent buy new vehicles and I looked up to the screen Alberta to work, but winning • 19 per cent donate to charity and I froze. I can’t speak. I has changed his plans • 19 per cent make mortgage payments can’t blink. I can’t do nothing. I “We’re working — we got • 15 per cent invest in stocks must have been like that for no pile of money,” says • 13 per cent invest in education for self/family about 10 seconds. I couldn’t Traverse. “And it comes in Atlantic Lottery Corporation even move,” says Pittman. handy to pay off a few bills.

He checked the numbers “I got a good bit sove — I again. Then again. And again. got a good bit put away.”

“I had it,” he says.

Pittman talks about what the extra money means He leaned over to his fiancée, kissed her and said, to him.

“We won.”

“I drove a 1995 Tercel with 220,000 kilometres on “She gives me a slap across the chest and says her. I drove her for eight years. There’s a lot wrong ‘Quit foolin’ around,’” Pittman laughs. with it. I couldn’t fix the hand brake. I couldn’t fix “So I went back to the screen and checked again. the struts. My rear defroster has been gone for two I said, ‘No. We won.’” years — I couldn’t get that fixed. My wipers — you She again told him to give it up, took the ticket know how you pick up the wipers to clean off the from him, and went to the computer to check for windshield? Well two of them falls off — it’s only herself. Then she decided he had put a practical joke gravity that keeps them on,” says Pittman. on the screen. Then she thought he had gone on the “I bought a truck. I bought a Chevy Silverado. lotto website and changed the numbers. Pittman 2007. Crew cab. Red in colour. Four-by-four. It’s says Dawe’s father was the same way. soooo nice.”

“When you come back from Moncton, I’ll know you have the money,” Pittman quotes his future ivan.morgan@theindependent.ca father-in-law.

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4 • INDEPENDENTNEWS

JANUARY 5, 2007

‘Are we even thinking about From page 1 The panel participants, aged 17-27, met recently in The Independent’s offices for a candid and sweeping discussion about the past, present and future health of Newfoundland and Labrador. The first part of the conversation was published just prior to Christmas. This week features the second half of the conversation, during which the focus was squarely on how to make change for the future.

The participants were full of suggestions. They asked politicians to take a long-term and sustainable look at the province’s problems — to take care of Newfoundland and Labrador’s resources and not be satisfied with make-work “patching up” or short-term solutions.

Although they are not convinced many plans are being laid for the future, the panelists expressed positive feelings towards Premier Danny Williams, seeing him both as a fighter and leader who’s going to start changing how politics and business is done.

There wasn’t a strong reaction to the idea of the province controlling its own resources or putting more distance between itself and Canada — although “we’re not taken seriously yet,” talk of separation seemed more as a point of pride than real desire.

“We have to let the world know that we are open for business but we’re in control – but we are good to work with,” panelist Luke Pike warned. “If we fight and scream over everything, people won’t come here …”

And people do need to come here.

Again and again, the panelists said immigrants must be welcomed to Newfoundland and Labrador and encouraged to use their professional training. Fresh ideas, innovation and creativity should be both respected and funded. The old communities may be slowly ebbing away — but

the youth in The Independent newsroom didn’t seem nostalgic: they see a modern Newfoundlander emerging who is proud, strong, and increasingly part of the national and international scene.

If these nine people are any indication, there’s no shortage of ideas and motivation to keep the province moving forward.

As Lane summed up when asked to offer advice to Premier Danny Williams: “Keep listening.”

The panel was moderated by Independent editor-in-chief Ryan Cleary. Comments have been edited for length and clarity.

Ryan Cleary: Where do you think we’ll be in 20 years?

Danielle McNicholas: Maybe, unfortunately the oil will be like it is with fishing — that we don’t have it anymore but people aren’t rushing to find new jobs, to find new ideas to bring in, they’re just trying to get the fishing industry going again.

Nadya Bell: Some of our resources might be much more in demand by then, the water we’ve got, the trees.

Dave Lane: Either we take care of our resources and we become this energy powerhouse or something messes up and we waste our trees, oil and water and we don’t do the wind thing.

But, are we even thinking about the future? Is there enough of that?

We’re so rooted in the past … and we’re always up for the fight right now, but do we look to the future?

Lesley Bishop: I think we’re planning for the oil, but beyond that, I don’t think there’s enough of that.

Lane: I think we’ll become a major tourism destination. Just the physical beauty of the place.

Fergus Brown-O’Byrne: Aside from random technological stuff that can come out of nowhere, it’s just how much the demographic is going to change in 20 years … how many

Scott Winters, 27

Christine Rose, 17

Danielle McNicholas, 17

Luke Pike, 22

Lesley Bishop, 23

Dave Lane, 24

Nadya Bell, 24

Fergus Brown-O’Byrne, 21

Sheena Goodyear, 21

Panelists: St. John’s native Scott Winters, 27, currently employed by MedicLINK Systems Ltd. for international business development; Christine Rose, 17, Grade 12 student, Gonzaga High School, St. John’s; Danielle McNicholas, 17, Grade 12 student, Prince of Wales Collegiate, St. John’s; Grand Bank native Luke Pike, 22, completing a bachelor’s degree in science at Memorial and the province’s 2006 Rhodes Scholar; Lesley Bishop, 23, a Torbay native in her fourth year of a social-work degree at Memorial; Dave Lane, 24, from St. John’s, has bachelor’s degrees in commerce and science and is working as a web developer and musician; Nadya Bell, 24, of St. John’s, currently in the final year of Carleton University’s Bachelor of Journalism program; Fergus Brown-O’Byrne, 21, St. John’s musician in his fourth year of philosophy at Memorial; and Labrador city native Sheena Goodyear, 21, currently completing her bachelor’s degree in history and the news editor of The Muse (Memorial’s student newspaper).

people in a lot of areas are going to be retiring? There’s going to be a complete change in the workforce and industry. That’s going to have a larger impact than anyone can predict.

Lane: I think we could see a lot of spin-off from oil and gas, people who are brought here by a job and decide they want to live here and … they won’t have the same mentality like,

oh, it’s just going to collapse again.

Bell: It’s not a huge workforce for the oil and gas and all the money is going to town. I think you’re seeing a growing disparity between rich and poor. There’s less sense of a unified community.

Cleary: What else can people recommend to get Newfoundland and Labrador out of this rut?

McNicholas: We seem to have all

these people coming in from other countries that are very qualified. I have a friend who just moved here from India and she was a lawyer there but her degree isn’t recognized.

We need to fix that, or you have someone from Pakistan who is a topnotch doctor and he comes here and spends the next 20 years of his life driving a taxi.

Lane: We should be using these

The terrible and barren news month RAY GUY

A Poke In The Eye

B

ack at scribble school (Ryerson ’60-’63) we were warned that the first two weeks of January were the news pits of the year.

Under some strange laws of the universe, noteworthy public events vamoosed for a fortnight.

Neither a two-headed calf nor a tender-hearted politician in sight. Beware, they warned us, of the news doldrums of early January.

As a cautionary example we were told of the mighty Times of London caught newsless in early January. London Bridge still standing and no Lords caught out in a bit of slap-and-tickle with Ladies other than their own. What was the Times to do?

“Small earthquake in Peru,” announced its main headline that day. “Not many killed.”

The peevish tone of the Times is clearly evident; the personal affront shines through. How dare news be so slack? Who cut off the glut of public occurrences?

As an exercise to fortify us journalism students against the January drought we were challenged to come up with “Small earthquake in Peru” headlines of our own.

Mine didn’t take top marks but I still modestly recall it: “No tragic Xmas fire at orphanage; cheap but serviceable toys somewhat enjoyed.”

TINY JOKE I might have meant that as a tiny joke at the time but when I got stuck into the job at the St. John’s newspaper (1963) I found it wasn’t too far off reality.

New Year’s Eve itself involved the bizarre ritual of nailing down and photographing the First Baby.

Earlier in the day you had to contact the maternity wards of the three or four city hospitals. Then came the delicate question: Were any of their patients most likely to “bring forth” on or about midnight?

Since all were keen for the honour, the truth was stretched pretty thin. I can only remember quivering by the newsroom phone with a cocked and primed photographer ready to make the midnight dash.

Then darting about like a lunatic from St. Clare’s to the General to the Grace and perhaps on a sidetrack to the Battery where some maternal patriot decided to deliver in the comfort and convenience of her own kitchen.

Looking back I can only marvel at how quickly mother and child had been dusted off, propped nicely in bed smiling gamely for the home team

… and the front page of the paper.

No rest for the weary. On New Year’s Day the ritual of the “at homes” had to be recorded for the public prints. Merciful God, give me a small earthquake in Peru. The lieutenant governor “received” the clergy; the clergy “received” each other; the mayor “received” the Board of Trade; the chief of police “received” most of the above …

Since you were the same reporter and photographer who had chased the first baby the night before, your reports of all these New Year’s receptions often fell a victim to error … for which you received the full savagery of the editor, himself in many of those reception lines.

BARREN NEWS MONTH But the terrible and barren news month of January was not yet finished. Another feature was the string of “prominents” speaking to the St. John’s Rotary Club. No, on second thought, this was a good thing because all you had to do was quote these worthies at length and in detail and space was filled and potential advertisers thrilled.

Looking back at it, I think the reason the first two weeks in January were such lean pickings was because the last two weeks in December were bloated.

Oh, how the advertising rolled in. Unlike today when every weekend brings us a certain shameless sheet soggy with ads and little or nothing to keep them from rubbing together, back then there was at least a token effort to keep up the accepted ratio of 60 per cent advertising to 40 per cent “news.”

At Christmas, all the mercantile element wished to inform the public how much it valued their custom and how they all planned to donate toward a new pair of crutches for Tiny Tim. This left every newspaper reporter straining in harness to fill the space between the plum pudding ads. Christmas at the orphanage; Christmas at the mental … as it then was; Christmas on troubled Bell Island; Christmas at the poor house; Christmas at the sanitarium; Christmas at the children’s wing …

It is a wonder to me that journalists of that day didn’t collapse with a serious Christmas-related mental illness. Hmm. Maybe that flask of vodka in the bottom drawer served its purpose after all.

And on serious reflection I don’t think the news biz has changed all that much. Come the season and both our TV outlets present Tiny Tim with shiny new crutches. And such local newspapers as there are stuff the goose with thoughtful, personal pieces … like this.

Or, as we have always called them in this wonderful and cynical biz, “thumb suckers.”

Ray Guy’s column returns Feb. 2.

JANUARY 5, 2007

INDEPENDENTNEWS • 5

the future? people, taking advantage of them …

Sheena Goodyear: I want this to be a place where you don’t have to be afraid to be creative … I think there should be more funding for things like the arts, so that someone could have this wacky idea like, ‘I want to be a writer or an actor — I think I’ll go to Newfoundland.’

So people don’t have to be afraid to start new or innovative or creative things that aren’t about what we can take out of the ground or the sea but that we can take out of ourselves.

McNicholas: Yeah, we spent the last half an hour talking about oil and gas but I think our most important resource is the human resource.

Lane: There are so many worldclass artists and groups here — it’s ridiculous. And we’re only starting to recognize that, let alone fund it.

Cleary: What about free education?

Bell: The best thing the government has done in a long time was Roger Grimes lowering tuition rates.

Bishop: I say let’s revisit the primary school system … I just finished my work term working with youth who are not in the mainstream education system. And these people are 16 years old and reading at a Grade 1 or Grade 2 level — but they made it to Grade 10, because they’re being pushed through.

Goodyear: I think you can graduate high school and not know who your prime minister is or ever having read a good book or watched the news in your life … you’re encouraged to get as many math and science credits as you possibly could but if you take more than one English it’s ridiculous.

Cleary: Is there anything else to say about survival of the outports?

Goodyear: If creativity isn’t sti-

fled, if people are getting an education where they’re encouraged to be strong and to think, then if people care about their towns then they won’t die.

What I didn’t like about high school … there was a real idea of soak in information and regurgitate, there was very little emphasis on school as a place to learn to think and to grow. I don’t think that’s there. I didn’t have to take Canadian history. Why shouldn’t we take more history? Why can’t there be philosophy? To get you to think about morals and ethics and criticism. And current events? Why aren’t we sitting around and having discussions just like this in high school?

Rose: They do have those groups, but … you have to seek it out and initiate it.

Lane: The kids are just as smart as the kids in any other city. And I’ve also met so many brilliant, wise, intelligent Newfoundlanders who don’t have a scrap of (formal) education — so it’s not even the parents. And it’s definitely the teachers, because every teacher in Newfoundland, you’re there for a reason. Because you want to do something good.

Let’s make sure when we restructure education, which we seem to do every two or three years, let’s get everyone’s input and let’s find out what has to be learned and how it has to be taught. Give teachers more freedom …

McNicholas: Teachers really have to recognize the individual needs of students. I remember in my accelerated math class in my first year of high school there was 44 kids. If I had a question, it didn’t even matter, because there were 43 other kids who were going ‘what?’

See “We’re in,” page 14

Police continue to probe development association

T

he police investigation into possible misuse of funds by the former executive of the North Shore Regional Development Association, which covers much of the north shore of Conception Bay, is still in “preliminary” stages.

The Independent first told the story of the investigation in late October.

Among other charges, the association’s new executive alleged thousands of dollars were directed into Northern Bay Sands, a park once owned by Ronald Johnson, a one-time head of the association, and father of Tory MHA Charlene Johnson.

The new executive also charged it had been blacklisted by Charlene Johnson — a charge the politician denied.

Cpl. Clarence Burgess of the RCMP’s Harbour Grace detachment told The Independent in October that he’d had one meeting with the new executive — and hoped to have a “good idea” of the direction of his investigation within two weeks.

But the probe has been at a standstill ever since.

“I don’t have any update,” Burgess says. “I still have (the information) in my possession, I’m still looking at it.”

The new executive turned over the bookkeeping, invoices, and other files it found when the members took office.

“It’s not a lot … it’s just trying to sort it out,” says Burgess. “It’s a new executive, so it’s new to everybody so therefore you’ve pretty well got to look at

Charlene Johnson

everything in order to understand it.”

The Liberals have also been keeping an eye on the investigation. When Premier Danny Williams closed the House of Assembly a day earlier than originally planned in December, the opposition held a mock question period in the media centre at Confederation Building. Their stated goal was to pose the questions they would have, had house business continued as planned.

The “police investigation in MHA Charlene Johnson’s district” was on their agenda. Liberal leader Gerry Reid had three questions to ask: he wanted to know the status of the investigation;

Paul Daly/The Independent

and “The new development association says they are having a difficult time securing funds from government as a result of airing (their) concerns … is this true? And if so, is it appropriate to refuse funding to a development association because they are raising concerns about possible wrongdoing?”

Burgess has not had any further meetings with the executive.

“I’m hoping in the next week, probably in the next week I’ll have something maybe to offer,” he says. “It’s been on the backburner for a while.”

— Stephanie Porter

Furey won’t say where pension donated

By Mandy Cook The Independent

C

huck Furey, the province’s chief electoral officer, may have been forced to give up the pension he was awarded during his time as a Liberal MHA as a condition of his new job, but he won’t say who is on the receiving end.

Furey does say he gave his estimated $50,000-$60,000 annual pension income freely.

“I’m not sure if it was a requirement,” he tells The Independent. “It was something I offered to do. When I made the

offer they put it in a contract for me and for the period of time that I’m here I have agreed to give up my pension and I have agreed to give it to charity once a year.”

When Furey was hired last May as the province’s new chief electoral officer and commissioner of members’ interests — a job that pays more than $125,000 a year — deputy premier Tom Rideout stipulated Furey was to donate his pension to charity to avoid “double dipping” in the public purse.

Furey is not revealing where or how much of the pension he is donating, but says part of it is going somewhere in the

arts community on the west coast of the island.

Furey says he does not believe an individual artist is a charity, but that the money will be used for an “artistic endeavour inside a complete larger project.”

He would not say where or when the remaining portion would be going and says it is his money to spend.

“It doesn’t come from the public. It’s something I earned in my 23 years working in the public service.” mandy.cook@theindependent.ca

CHANGES IN WILLIAMS ADMINISTRATION

Two senior members of Danny Williams administration have recently resigned. Former finance minister Loyola Sullivan (left) announced his departure Dec. 29, and has returned to private life; Ross Reid (right), former deputy minister to the premier, resigned Jan. 4 to take the role of Progressive Conservative Party Campaign Chair. The provincial election is scheduled for Oct. 9, 2007.

Paul Daly photos/The Independent

6 • INDEPENDENTNEWS

JANUARY 5, 2007

No more Mr. Nice Guy G

overnment may have started advertising in The Independent, but that’s not why I’m lining up behind Danny Williams. The ads are critical, especially in January when most people don’t have a cent to their names, but I’d rather see the newspaper fall than kiss a politician’s arse.

I’m behind Danny because he’s got the balls and reputation to take on the Canadian wolf. Make no mistake: there’s a big, bad wolf inside country Canada just as there are so many innocent and naive Red Riding Hoods.

In our particular fairy tale the Grandma lives in a saltbox around the bay and the wolf gets away with murder. Little Red Rubber Boots ran into the wolf on her way out from Town with a load of supplies from the Price Club. The wolf beat it back to Nan’s, ate her for Sunday Dinner and gobbled up Rubber Boots with a cold plate later that evening. A fisherman could have saved the day by cutting open the wolf’s belly with a filleting knife and freeing Nan and Little Red Rubber Boots, but the fishermen are long gone to the mainland.

Of course I’m behind Danny — he’s a hunter. Who better to gut the wolf

RYAN CLEARY

Fighting Newfoundlander like a fish? Another major scrap is coming; the signs are there.

Although keep in mind I’m an instigator.

One of the battlegrounds of 2007 will be the Churchill, upper and lower weight divisions.

I’ve got news this week, but a little background before I get to it …

Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro is currently studying how best to get lower Churchill power to market — either the obvious way, across Quebec transmission lines, or the Maritime route, via a power cord stretched over the floor of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, bypassing Quebec altogether.

The Maritime route is said to be the more expensive way to go, but, presumably, that’s only taking into account the 2,800 megawatts of power from the lower Churchill. What if the switch was flicked on the upper Churchill project and all that power (5,200 megawatts) was redirected over

way over the undersea cable?

Would the Maritime route make more economic sense then?

I posed that question in my last column of 2006. Who could blame us for breaking the 65-year contract with Quebec, a shady deal to begin with, not to mention the fact the profits are so outrageously lopsided in favour of Quebec as to make the deal a moral disgrace.

Since then, and just for badness, we fired off a question to Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro asking whether officials were looking into the possibility of transmitting as much as 8,000 megawatts over the Maritime route — power from the upper and lower Churchill.

The news is this: Ed Martin, Hydro’s president and CEO, didn’t say no.

Read his answer carefully: “The information we will assess regarding the Maritime submarine route will include a range of power capacities and would be relative to potential market destination requirements. We understand the system considerations that have to be respected for design and reliability. All options continue to be explored and we are not in a position to indicate at this point in time

what the capacity could be of a submarine route. We consider this information to be commercially sensitive.”

What a fabulous way to start 2007 — with a declaration to Canada and Quebec that all cards are off the table.

The only way that Danny is going to make any headway on any major file is to fight tooth and nail for it — a fact of Canadian life. Nothing is given freely to Newfoundland and Labrador, not in this federation. It’s time for Newfoundlanders to stop playing Mr. Nice Guy — it doesn’t work for us.

This month marks the one-year anniversary of the Stephen Harper minority government. Ask yourself this: are we further ahead under the Conservatives? The reopening of the Gander weather office will most definitely create a few jobs, and there’s a good chance (fingers crossed, knock on wood) we’ll be able to keep the Atlantic Accord cash we won two years ago.

But aren’t we just treading water?

Loyola Hearn may be Fisheries minister, but ask yourself another question: if Hearn was gone tomorrow, what would be his legacy?

He wouldn’t have one, except for the fact he managed to successfully

break or ignore most of the promises he made in opposition. Danny needs a hand on the national stage and he hasn’t been getting it. Fabian Manning isn’t exactly tuckered out from waving his pompoms.

Bill Rowe worked out well for a while as the province’s point man in Ottawa. He went upalong to spread the word that Danny is a madman in terms of negotiations — and it worked.

Rowe’s replacement, John FitzGerald, hasn’t been heard from since he went apartment hunting in the nation’s capital. But then picking out furniture takes time and can be quite stressful.

Now Danny has lost his right hand — Loyola Sullivan. There’s talk Loyola may run federally if Hearn gives up his seat, which would work out well for Danny. He needs someone to help out from the inside of the Ottawa beast.

Danny is not a perfect leader, far from it. I’ve spent more than one column picking him apart and pissing him off — and there will likely be more of those to come. But on major bread and butter issues right now he’s our best hope. ryan.cleary@theindependent.ca

YOUR VOICE

Lest we forget (rural Newfoundland) Dear editor, I am writing in response to the youth panel invited by The Independent in its Dec. 21 issue to discuss the past, present and future of Newfoundland and Labrador. As a 30-year-old individual who has chosen to live in the beautiful rural community of Branch, operate a business here and serve as mayor, I was quite interested in what these young adults had to say about the future of our province.

As I read the responses of your panelists, I quickly gained a sense of their lack of connection with rural Newfoundland and its unique challenges and strengths, with the exception of Luke Pike from Grand Bank. Upon discovering that six of the eight panelists were from St. John’s and surrounding environs, I could not help but wonder why more rural Newfoundlanders and Labradorians weren’t asked for their insight. While their responses were interesting, they smacked of a view of rural Newfoundland that could only be gained from listening to the first 10 minutes of the evening news.

One panelist noted that a low quality of life exists in our rural communities. Another said we must approach the future with a view that the fishery is dead. Yes, unemployment rates are high, out-migration is a huge issue and we are facing significant challenges. At the same time, we live in communities with significant social-support networks, community cohesion and genuine

vibrancy. In essence, the capacity is remarkable and, for me, enthralling.

As for a dead fishery, in many parts of this province fish harvesters are thriving in the new fishery that has brought massive prosperity and a new breed of harvesters — the businessmen and women of the fishery.

DESPERATE NEED OF WORK Earlier today, I spoke with two individuals in my community who hope to “make it to the spring.”

They’re in desperate need of work.

It is also important to note, though, that these individuals sit on three of the eight community-based organizations that operate to increase social and economic development opportunities within Branch and contribute to the high quality of life that exists here. They are rural Newfoundland. It is necessary to remind your readers that we do not just survive in these rural communities … we live here.

As Newfoundlanders and Labradorians we are much too brilliant to allow a predictable view of Newfoundland to permeate our analysis and conclusions. We are moving forward in this province and have been for some time. If we forget the rural nature of this province — these communities that ultimately define who we are — we will have painted a very incomplete and colourless picture.

Priscilla Corcoran Mooney, Happily sitting atop a cliff in St. Mary’s Bay

Declaring Quebecois a nation ‘no big deal’ Dear editor, Let’s put this Quebec nation crap to bed.

According to Mr. Oxford, a nation is a community of people of mainly common descent, language, history or political institutions and, usually, sharing one territory and government.

According to Mr. Oxford, a country is a territory of a nation. Therefore, Canada is a country consisting of

many nations: French, English, Ukrainian, Aboriginal, etc.

So, the Quebecois people are enclosed as a nation, but so are the rest of the groups of Canada.

Declaring the Quebecois as a nation is no big deal; it’s not like they recognized Quebec as being a nation!

Monty Newhook, New Harbour

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

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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 ADVERTISING DIRECTOR Sandra Charters SALES MANAGER Gillian Fisher CIRCULATION MANAGER Karl DeHart

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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

Missed the boat on nationhood Dear editor, Only with a sense of frustration was I able to read Dave Lane’s take on the issue of nationhood within Canada (Vive la Newfoundland and Labrador libre! Dec. 21 edition). Mr. Lane’s lack of insight into the issue and complete misunderstanding of the word “nation” is evident in his question: “Why shouldn’t Newfoundland and Labrador divorce from Canada?”

The implication is that “nation” refers to country. A survey of reliable of dictionaries or scholarly articles will confirm that “nation” is best defined as a group of people with a distinct sense of identity. Such an identity is often rooted in language, history and culture but is not reliant on

statehood; indeed, many nations can exist within a state. Where Quebec understands this and has been effectively determining the political agenda and language in Canada we here in this province are seemingly not even engaged in the debate so far as understanding what it is about. In the unfortunate Newfoundland and Labrador tradition of according ourselves no agency in political affairs, Mr. Lane suggests we “let the rest of Canada debate whether Quebec is a nation” seemingly oblivious to the fact that the deed has already been done.

While Mr. Lane believes we must “focus our attention on improving our place in Canada” he has completely missed the boat in terms of recognizing

that nationhood might be the very vehicle for this. Federal recognition of our unique identity and circumstances would help open the door to positive change such as giving jurisdiction over offshore resources to the province. To that end, the Newfoundland and Labrador Defence League has launched a campaign to demand that Newfoundland and Labrador be granted the same status of “a nation within a united Canada” as Quebec.

Mr. Lane’s article highlights the need to begin with education and information regarding the issue.

Stephen Penney, St. John’s

John Efford should eat more fish Dear editor, Hallelujah brother, another Christmas miracle. John Efford flew to the Holy Land (Florida) and had his diabetes cured. Yes folks, with the assistance of an insulin pump, John is now ready to become the Come Back Kid. Too bad somebody doesn’t invent a brain pump.

Then, and then only will Efford realize Newfoundlanders don’t want him back.

Efford may well vie for the Liberal party’s crown prior to the 2011 election.

Wow, what a coincidence. Isn’t that the date Danny Williams said he is to retire from political life. Hey John, I publicly challenge you to run against Williams in the next election. After all, did you not say you could run for the Green Party and get elected? No guts no glory John.

Danny kicked Efford’s butt into oblivion in 2005 and now the “miracle boy” expects Newfoundlanders to forgive and forget his famous statement, “Take it or leave it Mr. Williams; take it or leave it Mr. Sullivan.”

Apparently he remains in close contact with his friend and current Liberal party president, Danny Dumaresque, the other half of Newfoundland’s answer to Abbott and Costello. John even believes that Gerry Reid can be

premier after the 2007 election.

Yes sir, that trip to Lourdes (Florida) that gave him the strength to overcome his diabetes even got John believing that Williams can be beaten by the Liberals.

He says he is still “confronted” with the memories of what led up to his decision to depart from federal politics. I would say John they are not memories, but rather nightmares of Williams forcing you to retreat to Never Never Land (Port de Grave).

You are quoted as saying “you are the one people turned their negative attitude toward.” I guess they did John. You were Paul Martin’s puppet. Martin pulled the string and you nodded back and forth or up and down. Why? Because your ego caused you to lose sight of the reason why people sent you to Ottawa. It was to do good for them, not do good for John Efford.

You say, “I believe in Newfoundland and Labrador and I would have never done anything to let people down.” Well let me tell you something Mr. Efford, you did let us down. You voted against the amendment to the Atlantic Accord that would have given us what Martin promised to Premier Williams in June

John Efford

2005. You did it to save your political hide. And you have the nerve to tell us (Newfoundlanders) that you would never let us down.

I would strongly suggest you go back to Florida and go on a major binge of eating lots and lots of fish. They say it’s good for the brain. Who knows, we may see another miracle.

Don Lester, Conception Bay South

JANUARY 5, 2007

INDEPENDENTNEWS • 7

Where is the justice?

T

hanks to the Internet, I was offered the opportunity to attend a hanging — something Newfoundlanders have not had a chance to see since 1835. Weird how all this technology seems to be dragging us back to the Stone Age. I don’t agree with the execution of Saddam Hussein. Intellectually I think capital punishment is wrong.

The trouble is that, try as we might, we are often not intellectual creatures. I might speak piously of not believing in the death penalty, but if — God forbid — someone were to intentionally harm one of my loved ones, I could very well become bent on revenge. I could not be trusted. I cannot say I would not dedicate myself to finding a way to exact a terrible vengeance on the perpetrator. It is, after all, the plot of many Hollywood films.

And that is how the cycle of violence continues. The law needs not only to protect us from criminals, it needs to protect us from ourselves. I understand this in my brain, if not in my heart.

Saddam Hussein was a vicious

IVAN MORGAN

Rant & Reason sociopath, a butcher who ruled his country by stark terror. I watched a video from the 1980s of him casually ordering the surprise — and immediate — execution of people in the room with him. They were grabbed by guards and dragged away. You can see the rest of the people in the room visibly flinch as shots ring out while Hussein weeps and lectures them about loyalty.

Hussein was as pitiless as his own executioners, who mocked him last week as they prepared to hang him.

When it was done he was as dead as those he himself had killed — all of it such a pointless waste of life.

Then his executioners danced as he swung. Do I understand that joy? I sure do. I have only an inkling of what they went through under his brutal regime.

Try and imagine politics where if you

lose, you die.

My problem with the execution of Hussein is from the moment that trap door opened up underneath him, he became a martyr. His followers will exact revenge, and they will then retaliate, and so it goes.

Had I the power, I would have commuted Hussein’s sentence to life imprisonment. But it would mean exactly that — life.

But here is where I have philosophical problems. I have never understood the idea, the law here in Canada, of parole for first-degree murderers. The notorious Colin Thatcher of Saskatchewan, son of a former premier who was himself a government minister, was convicted in 1984 of murdering his ex-wife, JoAnne Wilson. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison with no possibility of parole. That I don’t agree with. He, and all deliberate killers, should be sentenced to life. There is no second chance for JoAnn Wilson.

Thatcher took her life from her. That is permanent. So his sentence should also be permanent.

Had I the power, I would have commuted Hussein’s sentence to life imprisonment.

But it would mean exactly that — life.

When it is proven in court that a person deliberately kills another, I think the murderer has lost his or her right to be free. People who believe in capital punishment think they have lost their right to be alive.

I think killing is always wrong, but for those who do kill with, as they say, malice aforethought, losing their freedom forever should be the price.

What must it be like to be related to Ms. Wilson and know her murderer is free? Does 25 years dull the pain of her

loss? She was a battered wife, terrified of her husband — with cause, as it turned out.

I understand incarceration is how our society deals with criminal behaviour, and different crimes carry different times. But killing another human being deliberately is in a class of its own.

Thatcher did not even serve his full sentence. “No eligibility for parole” translated into being released three years early.

I understand the concept of forgiveness, and I understand that mercy is the highest quality a society can show to its members. It is why I do not believe in the death penalty. Our province’s shameful wrongful conviction record should be the final comment on capital punishment.

In my world, Saddam Hussein would have spent the rest of his life in prison.

So would Colin Thatcher.

What is the point of one more violent death? Where is the justice in ever letting a cold-blooded killer go free? ivan.morgan@theindependent.ca

STEPPING DOWN

YOUR VOICE An Independent environmental challenge Dear editor, I am an outdoorsman. I hike, bike, snowshoe, wade, crawl, cook and camp in the woods and on the rocks of this pink, white and green nation. I love it and I preserve it any way I can.

There are, however, certain obstacles that I fear will soon overcome my own abilities to protect this land and its (for lack of a more broadly understood word) resources. In my own ventures I am beginning to notice visible and statistical changes in the natural environment around me. Ice flows are significantly weakening.

Migratory birds are staying for much longer into the winter than they naturally should. The summers are hotter and the winters pussyfoot around like they’re not sure if they’re staying or not. Whether this is our own fault (through global warming and the greenhouse effect) or not, it’s what we’re in now and we should, at the ultimate least, take notice of it.

I challenge The Independent to take a detailed look at how the environment in and around Newfoundland and Labrador is changing. What are the changes? Where are the changes most prevalent? What are the changes in temperature? How is temperature affecting animal populations? Are there changes in the length and displacement of our seasons? If so, how is season length affecting animal migrations? How is climatic inconsistency affecting vegetation?

I can assure you that I would not be the only nature lover interested in knowing more on what is happening to our land as we “progress” into this combustion-fueled era of warming. I might suggest talking to local ecologists and natural historians to get their take and, hopefully, some solid research.

Jeff Foran, St. John’s

Drug message in a bottle Dear editor, My friend and I often walk in a local park with our dogs and we really enjoy it. We love the chance to get fresh air and play Frisbee with our dogs. A week ago we were walking the park and came upon a used pop bottle that contained three used syringes. I somehow doubt that a person with diabetes would go to a park and inject insulin.

It seems to me that the bottle was left behind by drug addicts.

While I realize that addicts will do what they have to do wherever they can, I think if the needle-exchange program was expanded it might help to ensure that people don’t leave their syringes in public places. From everything I read most addicts hope to get off the drugs at some time in their lives. Meantime, as a society we have to make it as safe as possible for them so that when and if they do kick the habit their health will not be too compromised because of lack of clean needles and good hygiene practices.

Most people do not want to think about or engage in discussion about IV

drug use. However, if you ask a person who knows or lives with someone who is a drug addict they first wish that the person would give up the drugs all together. Their second wish might be that the person taking drugs by injection would use the cleanest means possible to ensure they do not become infected with the different diseases that can be transmitted by sharing needles and reusing the needles a number of times. Harm reduction is a very real option and should be funded well. Harm reduction is the most humane thing that we can hope for people caught in the grip of an addiction.

I commend the people who are involved with harm reduction and the needle-exchange program here in the city. Most of us would not be able to do much to help addicts even if we were getting paid for it. We just do not have what it takes. I take my hat off to you. Keep up the good work.

Premier Danny Williams asked Lake Melville MHA John Hickey to step aside as Minister of Transportation and Works and the Minister responsible for Labrador Affairs Jan. 4. Hickey is currently being investigated by auditor general John Noseworthy for receiving an alleged $3,700 in double payments.

Paul Daly/The Independent

Harry Street, St. John’s

David Boyd, Twillingate

Taken out of context Dear editor, “He who steals my purse steals trash,” wrote Shakespeare in Othello, “but he who steals my good name makes me poor indeed!”

The same could be said for people, who in an attempt to advance their own agenda, or for cheap sensationalism, misconstrue and take out of context a line in an article to give an impression exactly opposite of that which the writer intended.

This is exactly what Independent columnist Patrick O’Flaherty did in his Dec. 15 piece, Freedom to fish. Some weeks ago I wrote a letter to the editor of several Newfoundland newspapers in which I expressed a concern about the growing demands that fish proces-

sors were making of DFO to allow fish companies to catch their own fish, formerly the sole privilege and prerogative of fishermen.

I stressed that fishermen should not and indeed, could not, compete against large, well-equipped company-owned vessels and that the catching of fish should be the sole privilege of fishermen. Fish companies should be content to process the products fishermen bring to the wharves.

O’Flaherty took that to mean I am opposed to a food fishery, and people like me are a force against a recreational cod fishery.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

How a learned man could take one

line in a letter so out of the context is simply beyond me.

As a matter of fact, I am one of Newfoundland’s most vocal advocates of rural Newfoundland and traditional rights and privileges, providing they are exercised in a responsible manner.

On both CBC’s Fisheries Broadcast and Bill Rowe’s radio show, I supported, this summer, a responsible food fishery, but warned that we must be careful not to kill thousands of juvenile cod by using small mackerel hooks which, by their nature, attract a very small run of fish.

tion) the PM’s claim that “accountability in government is now the law” and Treasury Board John Baird’s claim that the Conservatives have delivered “clean government” as a Christmas gift to Canadians, even though: • The accountability act only contains 30 of the 52 measures (60 per cent) that Harper and the Conservatives promised.

• The act repeals key ethics rules for the PM, cabinet ministers, their staff and

senior government officials.

• Harper and the Conservatives claimed all 52 measures were needed to clean up the federal government and make it accountable.

• The Conservatives rejected all attempts by opposition parties to add most of the 22 measures and ethics rules that the Conservatives promised to include in the accountability act.

The applauding of the act’s passage is

only one of many examples that could be cited of political reporters and editors neglecting to point out politicians’ false claims and broken promises, which not only encourages politicians to lie to voters and break promises, but also violates the fundamental journalistic principles of accuracy and objectivity.

Journalistic principles violated Dear editor, If a sports team scored 60 per cent as many points as they pledged to score before a game, even though they had every opportunity to score 100 per cent, no sports reporters would congratulate them on their success.

If a movie reviewer went to a movie promised to be 100 minutes long and it ended after 60 minutes, the movie would very likely be viciously criticized

as a rip-off and its director as a fraud.

If a corporate CEO promised a 100 per cent return, but only delivered 60 per cent, business reporters would charge her with misleading shareholders.

Yet most political reporters and media outlets have applauded Prime Minister Stephen Harper for successfully keeping his election promise to pass the Federal Accountability Act, and many have repeated (without question or qualifica-

Duff Conacher, Co-ordinator Democracy Watch, Ottawa

JANUARY 5, 2007

8 • INDEPENDENTNEWS

JANUARY 5, 2007

INDEPENDENTNEWS • 9

IN CAMERA

Picture of war

Last November, The Independent profiled the family of Jonathan Cranford, a young Newfoundland man serving in Afghanistan. This week, Mandy Cook follows up with the soldier himself during his 18-day Christmas leave. The photos were all taken by Jonathan during his most recent tour of duty.

By Mandy Cook The Independent

W

hen Cpl. Jonathan Cranford of the First Battalion, Royal Canadian Regiment, Bravo Company, talks about the threat of Taliban fire, 45 degree heat, mountain blizzards and elevation sickness, there is one mantra he repeats: don’t quit.

“You can’t quit,” the St. John’s native says over the telephone from Ottawa. “You’ve got too

many other people to look after.

You can’t quit.”

It is one of the mental doctrines he applies in his latest role as a fighter in Operation Baaz Tuska in the Panjwaii district of southern Afghanistan. The other is: family is everything.

Jonathan was flown out of base camp in Kandahar in the first week of December, landing on Canadian soil Dec. 8. Kicking back in his home on the outskirts of the capital city two days before Christmas, he says he doesn’t

want to do anything “outrageous.”

He just wants to be a normal family.

“Pretty much all I want to do after this break from Panjwaii, is to relax, spend time with my family and do the normal things. Have a really good Christmas. That’s pretty much it.”

Jonathan, his fiancée Kerri, and her four boys had a surprise visit from his parents, Gary and Bonnie, a few days after he landed. An innocent breakfast trip to Denny’s one morning saw

Jonathan hop out of his car and stop in his tracks at the sight of his father standing in the parking lot.

“I pulled up by the corner and I saw a man that looked like my Dad, and I was like, ‘OK, that’s my Dad, what are you doing here?’” he says. “He looked at me and his eyes were big, big blue eyes, and I started running towards my Mom. It was great to see them again.”

Gary Cranford recalls the same day. He says his second-born son “never had a clue,” and the parents

were delighted to pull the wool over Jonathan’s eyes with the help of covert cell phone calls to Kerri.

The family reunion was full of fun, shopping and a six-hour spa visit for the ladies — courtesy of Jonathan. He says he’s concerned about the stress the women in his life suffer and wanted to help out a little.

A spa visit is a completely foreign concept for a soldier out in the field. Jonathan says to come home and sleep in a bed with a mattress with sheets is a luxury.

“In Afghanistan I have a sleeping bag, an air mattress which is a centimetre thick that you blow up and sleep on the ground,” he says.

“That was my bed. Showers, I can probably count on two hands the amount of showers I had in three months. It’s pretty disgusting but it is reality.

“Lots of baby wipes. I come home and have hot water, shower, soap. You can’t even compare it.

You definitely come back a different person.”

So much so that everyday chores

take on poignant meaning.

Jonathan says it takes time to decompress after emerging from the dusty and arid landscape of Afghanistan.

“I remember the second day I was home, me and Kerri were down sweeping the basement. It just hit me, like, I’m sweeping the basement. Two days ago I was hunting Taliban and now I’m sweeping the basement so it takes a little bit of adjusting there,” he says.

A regular day for a Canadian sol-

dier in the Afghani desert includes patrolling security checkpoints, building defences with sandbags, and, most of all, yearning for loved ones.

Jonathan says he and his fellow “brothers,” as he calls them, are constantly thinking about home, talking about home and who they’re going to see when they get home.

Happily, that day has been nailed down — Gary says his son will return to Canada Feb. 12.

Jonathan says he won’t be volun-

teering for another tour. He wants to concentrate on his family and hopefully get work as a firefighter.

Kerri and the boys love Newfoundland, he says, and would happily move east.

It all hinges on the family’s future possibilities — and Jonathan removing the dog tags, including one with the Newfoundland flag on it, from around his neck for good.

“I would probably move back in a day. I miss it,” he says. mandy.cook@theindependent.ca

JANUARY 5, 2007

10 • INDEPENDENTNEWS

YOUR VOICE Fight continues for children of Paradise Elementary Dear editor, As we welcome in the new year our children go back to “their” schools. My son felt a need to remind me this morning that I had to drive him to the School for the Deaf, as Paradise Elementary isn’t his school anymore. Those words reminded me of the sadness we all felt with the closing of our school. Those same words, however, spurred me this morning to continue the fight for our children to have a new school. I continue to be concerned that many parents do not have all the facts. I think it may be difficult for many to read between the numerous lines fed to them by politicians of various sorts. So here are a few facts as I see them: No. 1: At least three attempts have been made to remediate mould problems in our school.

No. 2: Each time professionals have said our school was safe only months later it wasn’t.

No. 3: The number of children reported by parents as being sick while attending at Paradise Elementary is alarming, and indicates the school was not safe even a year after the remediation in September 2005. (Health Survey results taken from parents at the public meeting on Nov. 14 noted 77 per cent reported at least some of the symptoms associated with Sick Building Syndrome and 25 per cent reported asthma or inhaler usage.)

No. 4: The school’s history says it all — we need a new school to replace the existing building.

No. 5: We have not been promised a new

school.

No. 6: Our school council is in support of a new school but must quietly ask for one — they are not allowed to speak out publicly unless approved by administration.

No. 7: At the December school board meeting our school board trustee put forward a notice of motion. In other words, he let the other trustees know that at the February 2007 school board meeting he will ask for them to vote on a motion for a new school for Paradise.

No. 8: On Jan. 10 the Eastern School Board will hold a public meeting at 7:30 p.m. at Newtown Elementary. It is imperative that we show through our attendance that we need and demand a new school.

No. 9: On Feb. 7 the Eastern School Board will be holding a Public Meeting at 7:30 p.m. at Coley’s Point Elementary. At this meeting the trustees will vote on whether or not we should have a new school.

No. 10: If the trustees vote in favour of the motion for a new school, then the school board must request funding from the Department of Education. It is imperative government realize this is a crisis for our children and we cannot wait three years for a new school. Funding needs to be granted now!

As you can see, there is a continued need to lobby the school board and government for a new school. If you want your child to attend school in a safe environment, you need to get involved.

Lisa Crane, Paradise

‘History that seems to go unnoticed’ Dear editor, I draw your attention to a recent article in the media by Larry Hickey about Christmas aboard the MV Taverner.

There is part of our history that seems to go unnoticed and that is the role of the coastal boats within out province. In particular, I am thinking about the 1960s and 1970s when most of Newfoundland and Labrador depended upon the coastal boat service for mail, passengers and freight. Many of the stories are still untold.

Mr. Hickey’s article was one such example.

I have seen a number of attempts to tell the story of the coastal boats, but most of them have failed. Recently, CBC TV aired a program that lacked focus and missed the point completely. Others have written about the coastal boats and have only provided descriptions of the various steamers. But telling the stories of those who worked on the steamers and those who depended upon them still has

to be told, both in word and picture. There are those whose lives were saved because one of the steamers, most often in a storm, carried them to a hospital. The first car or truck often arrived on the steamer as well as hens, lumber and oranges.

In the midst of the many demands placed upon you, I am wondering if you see a place in your publication for these stories.

Boyd Morgan, St. John’s

AROUND THE BAY Do twins “run in the family”? Our answer must of course be a very definite “No” but in the case of Mrs. Ernest Stuckless of Tizzard’s Harbour the affirmative is correct. Mrs. Stuckless gave birth to twins at Nortre Dame Bay Memorial on New Year’s Day. Her married sister Rose (we should have asked her name, but forgot it at the time) was also blessed with twins last summer. They are daughters of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Locke of Tizzard’s Harbour and — you guessed it — twins.

— The Twillingate Sun, Jan. 6, 1951 AROUND THE WORLD There have been doubtless plenty of incidents where new transient American servicemen have made themselves obnoxious, as there are places in the world that would just as soon never see Newfoundland servicemen again. We must not forget that however much it has gone astray, however much its byways have been clogged by sordid deviations of graft, crime and greed. The American Republic is the first great democracy founded in revolution. It is the great thing America has given the world greater than the gadget, the movie, the atom, is the vote.

— The Stephenville News, Jan. 11, 1958 YEARS PAST A very quiet and uneventful New Year’s Day has just passed, without snow, without cold, without rum, and with general good humour.

Indeed the absence of intemperance was particularly marked and was one of the pleasantest features of the day.

— The Morning Chronicle, St. John’s, Jan. 4, 1881 EDITORIAL STAND What is the case in relation to fresh herring?

You go into a store having them for sale and take them as they are — guts and all. Does anyone think that appeals to the busy housewife, possibly with small facilities for cleaning them — even if she knows how — and in many instances who has never cleaned one in her life? The answer definitely is, No. Yet, if you suggest that the dispenser should clean them for you, you are likely to be met with a look of utter amazement.

Why, the very idea! Take them home and clean them yourself, is the answer you are most likely to receive. That, my friends, explains to a very large degree why Newfoundland is where it is today.

— Fishermen-Workers Tribune, St. John’s, Jan. 22, 1943

Twillingate Sun, 1951

LETTER TO THE EDITOR Sir — I don’t mean to complain, but I was thinking that if the Mounties made some signs like ice too thin for skating, this would be a good thing to keep the kids off the pond when the ice is thin and dangerous. The Mounties could bust that ice with an axe every morning and see how thick that ice is. I hope you can make this out good enough to put in your Post because I think this is very important and it will be the first time you have had a letter that is not complaining. I am not complaining about your Post, I think it is a good paper and is good to read and everything.

WORRIED MOTHER, MARYSTOWN SUB DIVISION — The Post, Marystown, Jan. 9, 1974 QUOTE OF THE WEEK There were cattle abroad grazing in the suburban fields yesterday.

— The Colonist, St. John’s, Jan. 2, 1892

JANUARY 5, 2007

INDEPENDENTNEWS • 11

Poor ol’ Scrooge Patrick O’Flaherty has some sympathy for Ebenezer

O

ver Christmas I reread the Charles Dickens classic, A Christmas Carol. Ebenezer Scrooge is visited by four ghosts late on Christmas Eve. He is dragged hither and yon by three of them, has the miseries of his past dredged up to look at, and finally is shown the headstone over the neglected grave where his bones lie.

After undergoing the punishment he changes his ways. If it happened to you, you’d change your ways too.

The Scrooge we meet at the beginning of the story is well on in years. “A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin.” He is a man who made his way in trade by hard work, keeping overhead costs down, and staying long hours at the office. As far as we can see, he has done nothing illegal or dishonourable.

We catch only glimpses of what he was like as a youngster. He was lonely, poor, and neglected by his father, and he evidently spent some Christmases in an all-but-deserted boarding school, presided over by a “ferocious” headmaster. He was then apprenticed to Fezziwig at “a certain warehouse,” a “business” of some sort. Soon we find him “in the prime of life,” his face beginning “to wear the signs of wear

PATRICK O’FLAHERTY A Skeptic’s Diary and avarice,” as Dickens says. (I’m not sure how avarice can show on your face, but maybe it can.) He is then engaged to be married, and we overhear an exchange between him and his wife-to-be, one where she has much more to say than he and seems altogether more dogmatic and aggressive. (I give an abbreviated version of it.)

“Another idol has displaced me,” she says. “A golden one.”

He protests. It is she, not he, who breaks the engagement. “This is the even-handed dealing of the world!” he says. “There is nothing on which it is so hard as poverty; and there is nothing it professes to condemn with such severity as the pursuit of wealth.

“I am not changed towards you.”

“Our contract is an old one,” she replies, “It was made when we were both poor and content to be so, until, in good season, we could improve our worldly fortune by our patient industry.

You are changed ... (you) weigh every-

“You weigh everything by gain” is thing by gain.”

And so, Dickens says, “She left him her hardest shot. The reader has to agree that to judge “everything” by this and they parted.”

Dickens expects the reader to side standard is a bit much. But to gain, with the woman, but who can read it meaning to improve your financial position in life, is a without sparing some human longing, as sympathy for real as hate or love.

Scrooge? Her wishing to be an “idol” is one …There’s something Distorted, it amounts to greed, but every mark against her, at least to modern ears. to be said for working sentiment or belief can be distorted.

Scrooge is right to say hard, securing your Wanting to be an idol the world is hard on a distortion. Most poverty yet hypocritiown position in the ispeople perhaps don’t cally condemns the weigh “everything” pursuit of wealth. He world, paying your by gain, but they is indirectly criticizing her for swallowing taxes, and not becom- surely spend a lot of their lives pursuing it what he feels is the ing a burden on your — educating themnormal claptrap. He selves for good jobs, has learned how the world works. Scrooge fellow man or a curse finding work, moving job to job, buyhasn’t been “content” to your neighbours, from ing a house, providto stay below the ing opportunity for poverty line for a good family and friends. their children, and so long time as she doeson. It is a natural, n’t mind doing. healthy aspiration.

Improving a worldNewfoundland history, which I’ve ly fortune by patient industry could take a lifetime. He wanted to make a been studying of late, is primarily a fast escape from poverty, and who can story of gain. How to make this place function as an economic unit, how the blame him?

YOUR VOICE Aquaculture proposal ‘madness’ Dear editor, Cyr Couturier, It’s infuriating the president of the The people are so way the poor people Newfoundland on the south coast Aquaculture Industry desperate for jobs have been treated by Association, accused Fishery Products me, in The that they are being International et al.

Independent’s Dec. 8 The people are so edition, of having my suckered into desperate for jobs facts confused while believing that the that they are being being critical of suckered into believCooke’s proposal to Cooke aquaculture ing that the Cooke expand its enterprise aquaculture scheme the south coast. scheme is a blessing. on is a blessing.

Mr. Couturier states This, in fact, is that the ratio of feed anything but a blessing. It is counter- to weight gain in fish farming is one to productive and destructive; it is mad- one. ness. Worst, it lets governments off the That’s not only ludicrous … it’s hook for the mess they’ve caused. impossible. It takes eight to 10 pounds

fishery can be made to pay, how forest and mineral resources can be exploited to best advantage, what improvements can be afforded in education and health care — such questions have been central and perennial ones in our history and all are related to gain.

“You fear the world too much,” Scrooge’s fiancée-and-wannabe-idol tells him. And he has indeed been hurt by the world, by poverty itself and no doubt by slighting comments about the poor directed at him. As a result he withdrew into himself. You mind your own business, and I’ll look after mine, is his philosophy when we first meet him. That sounds harsh, but there’s something to be said for working hard, securing your own position in the world, paying your taxes, and not becoming a burden on your fellow man or a curse to your neighbours, family and friends.

Surely the person who lives by such a creed adds a little to the store of human happiness, and may even, without being prompted by spirits, have something extra to give to the needy, as he or she should at Christmas.

Patrick O’Flaherty is the author of Benny’s Island, a futuristic novel.

Bédard returns to Canada of other fish to produce one pound of salmon. Furthermore, Mr. Couturier makes no distinction between carnivorous and herbivorous fish species, referencing China and the U.S. success stories while overlooking that finfish aquaculture in those countries consists almost exclusively of farming carp and catfish, which are herbivores.

Unlike Mr. Couturier, I am not a fisheries expert, so my opinion probably does not count for much. David Suzuki is, however, a world-renowned environmental expert. Suzuki’s comments can be found on his website.

Lloyd C. Rees, Conception Bay South

M

yriam Bédard is expected to return today to the country she once represented internationally, a nation she now says has forced her to flee to avoid persecution.

If Quebec authorities whisked her home Jan. 4 from a Baltimore airport as scheduled, she will have left behind a strange three-month U.S. odyssey, the last 13 days of which she spent in a jail in a Maryland suburb.

Her lawyers said Jan. 3 they felt U.S. authorities had purposely arrested Bédard on Dec. 22 because it was her 37th birthday and the 12th birthday of her daughter, Maude.

They also alleged that a traffic accident, which delayed the arrival of her current husband Nima Mazhari at Bédard’s court appearance last week, was “a concentrated effort” by someone to keep him from attending.

Bédard is to be arrested by the RCMP, according to arrangements made by Canada and U.S. authorities.

She will return to Quebec to face a charge of parental abduction.

When she left Canada, she said she had to flee the country because she was being persecuted for her testimony at the sponsorship inquiry, which ultimately cost the job of VIA Rail chair and former Jean Chrétien chief of staff Jean Pelletier.

In her testimony and subsequent comments in Canada, Bédard claimed Mazhari had persuaded Chrétien to stay out of the war in Iraq and she falsely alleged that race car champion Jacques Villeneuve had received $12 million from the sponsorship program.

Bédard won two gold medals in the 1994 Winter Olympics.

— Torstar wire service

JANUARY 5, 2007

12 • INDEPENDENTNEWS

VOICE FROM AWAY

By Temma Frecker For The Independent

A

bumpy bus ride snaking its way up through the clouds, past villages, churches and cornfields all clinging to the impossibly steep hillsides, basking in the last golden rays of the day. The oppressive heat of Tuxtla Gutierrez (the capital of Chiapas, Mexico) evaporating in the fresh mountain air. The layers of sweat and stress accumulated over an exhausting week of work dripping into the valley below.

A chance encounter with a couple from the U.S. led me up this long and winding road to El Rancho Orgánico.

Lisa and Miles have made San Cristóbal, Chiapas their home, and they welcome others to share their little slice of paradise.

Armed with only a business card and a hand-drawn map, my friend Erin and I flagged down a taxi from the San Cristóbal bus station. The driver dropped us off at a dark dead end street on the outskirts of town, with a look on his face that said “Are you sure this is the place?” A loud bark. A porch light.

Then Miles’ friendly face and open arms welcoming us “home.”

Miles has been in Chiapas for six years (after escaping the rat race of life as a lawyer and businessman in the U.S.). In that time, more than 600 volunteers have come from all over the world to Rancho Chichihuistan — a 20-acre ranch in the Chiapan highlands, sadly out of commission for lack of water — and Rancho Orgánico in San Cristóbal, the old colonial capital of Chiapas. Two years ago Lisa joined him, adding her enthusiasm, teaching skills and computer knowledge to the project.

Rancho Orgánico is a small organic farm with a cornfield, a pear orchard and a greenhouse full of herbs, flowers and vegetables, not to mention two dogs, two cats, four kittens and a colony of worms (for composting).

The greenhouse is constructed out of recycled materials, a model they hope to reproduce for others in the community. El Rancho offers a unique experience to learn about sustainable living and organic agriculture.

They also have very close ties with members of the indigenous community and they employ their indigenous neighbours whenever possible. In fact, the day we arrived, Lisa spent the night at the hospital with Manuela, their Tzeltal neighbour, as she gave birth to a beautiful baby girl. We were invited to celebrate the birth and were deeply touched to find out that they had named her Lisa Adriana in appreciation of Lisa’s support and friendship.

Erin and I stayed in La casa de sueños (the house of dreams), Miles’ recently finished labour of love. The casa is a treehouse, complete with a view of the sun coming up over the green Chiapan jungle (through windows made out of old Coke machine doors), and a spectacular mural of a fantastical bird painted by a previous

Masked rebel leader of the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN), Subcomandante Marcos (R), speaks during a meeting at La Hormiga in San Cristobal de las Casas, in the Mexican state of Chiapas Jan. 4, 2006.

MicPhoto-Press/Reuters

Beyond the beaches St. John’s native Temma Frecker takes a break from her work in Mexico to find a slice of paradise in the Chiapan highlands volunteer, a bird that had come to her in a dream. We woke up to a delicious breakfast of sour dough pancakes and maple syrup, ready to start the day.

We explored the narrow cobblestone streets of San Cristóbal, which led us to a vibrant textile market displaying brightly coloured blankets, beaded bracelets, hand-embroidered dresses, amber jewellery, and T-shirts of the infamous Sub Comandante Marcos hiding behind his trademark balaclava.

There are also several museums and cultural centres and an abundance of cosy cafes serving organic Chiapan coffee and funky bars featuring fancy martinis and live salsa music.

In the nearby town of Chamula I had a deeply moving experience at the church of San Juan Bautista, a place where Christianity and indigenous

Tzotzil traditions worship harmoniously. Passing from the bright sunlight of the square over the threshold of the church, I entered a magical world.

The sight of thousands of candles shimmering on a carpet of pine needles, the smell of incense, pine and flowers, and the sound of a dozen people chanting in an unrecognizable language mixed with the occasional squawk of a sacrificial chicken made me breathless and light-headed, with my heart beating a little faster — yet somehow overwhelmingly peaceful. I truly got the sense I was in a sacred place.

Another place that really stands out is La Albarrada school, a state-funded technical school offering practical courses in organic farming, baking, carpet weaving, woodworking, pup-

petry, medicinal plants and herbs among other options. Students also learn about their rich heritage, history and traditions as well as health and nutrition, protecting the environment and respecting human rights.

The students, ranging from teenagers to grandmothers, live, eat and study on the campus — 40 hectares of peaceful forest and farmland tucked away behind busy city streets. Everything is free for Chiapan residents, and as a foreigner, you can pay a minimal fee to participate.

Erin and I only had three days to see the sights, enough of a taste to draw us back to Chiapas in the future.

Meanwhile, Miles and Lisa, along with Marcos, their “adopted” Mexican son now studying ecotourism, have big plans. They want to put in composting

toilets and a solar shower at Rancho Orgánico, and if all goes according to plan, start an eco-treehouse community in the Montebello Lakes region of Chiapas. If you’re interested in discovering a different side of Mexico beyond beaches, resorts and package vacations, Chiapas has a lot to offer.

To find out more about Rancho Orgánico visit: www.ranchoorganico.org or Marcos: www.ranchoorganico.org/marcos.html. For more information on the Albarrada school visit: www.dsocial.chiapas.gob.mx/comunidad_inicio.

Temma Frecker, a CIDA intern with the Falls Brook Centre, is currently at the University of Chapingo, Mexico working with a national network of local organic markets.

Crisis looms for refugees in Somalia

A

humanitarian crisis is looming in Somalia as security fears overshadow the plight of refugees, and the fate of Islamist loyalists — Canadians among them — remains unclear.

Ethiopian warplanes reportedly targeted fleeing members of Somalia’s Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) Jan. 3 and the heightened security measures along Somalia’s border with Kenya have trapped hundreds of Somali civilians.

The United Nations condemned Kenya for sealing its border and sending as many as 400 Somali refugees back into the war-torn country as they tried to seek help.

“It’s a sad day for us,” says Nemia Temporal, head of the United Nations

High Commissioner for Refugees camp in Dadaab, Kenya.

“We can’t believe this is happening after all the years that the Kenyan government has been very generous in providing international protection to asylum seekers.”

Former Toronto resident Bashir Ali Makhtar is in custody in Kenya on allegations he was a member of an Ethiopian separatist group sympathetic to Somalia’s Islamist movement, a government source told the Star yesterday.

There are also unconfirmed reports that more Canadians have been detained and questioned in Somalia’s southern towns near the border, the source and members of Toronto’s Somali community say.

On Jan. 3, a team from the UN

agency made the 90-kilometre trek from the Dadaab camp to the border town of Liboi, as they do each day, to process and transport the latest influx of refugees fleeing Somalia. But when they arrived, they discovered Kenyan military and police now guarding the border had driven away the asylum seekers.

“I think of the people who have taken the risk to walk and cross the border.

We feel for them,” says Temporal.

The Dadaab camp was established in 1991 when Somalia’s government was overthrown and the country descended into anarchy. There are now 168,000 refugees at the camp waiting to go home or be accepted abroad.

— Torstar wire service

INDEPENDENTBUSINESS

FRIDAY THROUGH THURSDAY, JANUARY 5-11, 2007 — PAGE 13

Scenes from White Hills, winter 2006.

Photos by Paul Daly/The Independent

The hills are alive

By Mandy Cook The Independent

P

Winter season heats up at two of province’s ski hills

eaking at an elevation of 1,791 feet, Marble Mountain in Steady Brook on the island’s west coast has what general manager Anne Pinsent calls “an incredible consistent pitch from the top that makes it a real skier’s mountain.”

Having grown up on the hill, run the ski school and now the facility’s manager, Pinsent should know. An avid skier, she claims Marble to be one of the best she’s ever experienced.

“You’ve got this incredible terrain and I’ve skied quite a few ski hills,” says Pinsent. “It’s just a wonderful atmosphere.”

Pinsent says unparalleled skiing, the breathtaking view of the Humber River valley and the Newfoundland hospitality demonstrated by the snow school’s expert ski and snowboard instructors is what makes the ski resort

such a great success.

This year Marble is budgeted for $2.3 million in gross revenue.

Pinsent says 2,300 season passes were sold last year and they are currently at the 2,000 mark for passes.

“We expect to exceed that and our skier visits are up so far this year. We expect overall to be over 85,000 skier visits this year. We were about 81,000 last year. We’re already ahead to date.”

In previous years, Marble boasted season pass holders from South Africa, Portugal and Mexico.

While St. John’s and the Atlantic region remain the traditional market for skiing customers, Pinsent says they are getting numerous bookings from Ontario as a result of their presence at the Toronto ski show for the past three years.

“Then we have visitors from the

United Kingdom who are coming on the charters to Humber Valley.

They all love it here. We actually had a great Christmas with them as well as with our locals,” she says.

Carmel Smith, general manager at White Hills in Clarenville, is hoping to open next weekend (Jan. 12), weather permitting. With 55 acres of ski and board terrain and a vertical drop of 750 feet, the resort is a perennial favourite for skiers on the east coast of the province.

Although the future of the hill has had moments of uncertainty, Smith says there has been enough snow, skiers and boarders to see her into this, her 17th season. She says they break even every year.

“We manage to get open every season,” she says . “We’ve had our ups and downs but we’ve always

managed to open each winter.”

As a business venture dependent on the weather, White Hills compensates for any of Mother Nature’s shortfall by generating its own artificial snow. Snow making is a science, according to Pinsent, who allots eight per cent of her operating budget for snowmaking at Marble. Humidity and wind can make it difficult because the snowmaking guns aren’t as efficient and the ideal temperature is –10 C. Snow can be made at –2 C or –3 C, but not if it’s going to rise above zero in a couple hours time — the temperature must be consistent.

Smith says their snowmaking equipment has been busy in preparation for opening weekend.

“We’ve been making snow for the last week and a half, the temperatures have been really good

and the snow’s been a good product so far,” she says.

In addition to new runs cut into the hill in the past couple of years, like Lee’s Delight and Outer Limits, the hill boasts brand new chairs on their triple chairlift in anticipation of what Smith says will be a busy winter.

“Numbers are good. Every year there’s an increase and we’re seeing more families with their children,” she says.

Although a “very vital” component of White Hills’ success rests on visiting school groups from surrounding areas like St. John’s, Gander, Placentia and Bonavista during the week, Smith estimates they see approximately 500-600 skiers enjoying the hill each weekend.

Both White Hills and Marble Mountain hope to remain open for fun in the snow until the middle of April in order to accommodate all interested school groups. mandy.cook@theindependent.ca

Financial resolutions you can keep

T

here’s no time like a new year to make a new promise — or resurrect an earlier resolution that might have fallen by the wayside. It’s around now that we promise ourselves we’ll lose weight, spend more time with family, study more effectively, volunteer, stop smoking, drink less and on and on.

For most of us, the first several days of the new year brings great gusto. Our devotion to the new cause is palpable.

We seek supporters — there’s nothing like a few cheerleaders to help with any task or endeavour.

A couple of weeks later, enthusiasm wanes. By the end of the month, many

AL ANTLE

Your Finances promises have become millstones we simply abandon, frustrated, aggravated, and sometimes embarrassed at our failure. So goes the evolution of the New Year’s resolution.

A resolution involving personal finance doesn’t have to be like this ,though. Our financial world is vast, and there are hundreds of starting points. So start with a plain and uncom-

plicated promise to simply do better.

At the beginning, the key is to make sure our tasks are bite-sized morsels and don’t require a lot of time or large amounts of cash. Avoid huge undertakings or things that can be affected significantly by external forces.

For example, one resolution might be to reduce the time remaining in your mortgage. The bite-sized morsel will see you trying to pull together enough money over the next 12 months to make a single extra monthly payment to be applied directly to the principle.

The huge undertaking would have been a promise to reduce the term by five years.

Which of the two is more likely achieved? If you’ve got 20 years left in your mortgage’s life, and you can make a single extra payment each year because of this resolution, then you will have reduced the overall term by about two years. If, during 2008, you can save a second monthly payment, you’ve reduced it to just beyond four years, and so on.

Try measuring the success of your resolutions in a way that won’t require a lot of time. If you decide to “do better” by reducing your dependence on credit cards, you can measure success quickly each month by determining if your balance is less than it was last

month. Remember: success is any improvement whatsoever.

You should always establish a timeline and it must be reasonable. Instead of saying “We’ll be operating entirely on a cash basis starting right now,” why not try, “We’re going to try operating with cash for five per cent of our consumer purchases for the first two months of 2007.”

You’re then free to rack that amount up to 10 per cent in several months — but again, set the timeline. If you achieve the five per cent goal, congratulations — you’ve won the race.

See “All the,” page 15

14 • INDEPENDENTBUSINESS

JANUARY 5, 2007

‘We’re in transition’ From page 5 Fergus: The math thing you mentioned, I think that’s one of the worst-run programs in school right now … I was in the middle of Grade 8 math, and they were like, OK, you guys are smart, you can teach yourselves Grade 9 math in six months and have fun with that … and there was no teacher or anything.

Lane: That’s brutal but it’s exactly what they do.

Winters: We talk about changing and shaping the minds of our youth, we also have to change and shape the minds of our decision makers, the government. People our age have these discussions — but what’s the proportion of people our age in government?

Goodyear: Maybe if people learn more early on about government they’d care more about it.

Cleary: Do we need to change our expectations of our politicians?

Bishop: I think there’s too much of a mentality that we try to pacify as many people as possible and then nothing gets changed. I’m not saying it’s right or wrong that a fish plant be opened, but is it really sustainable? I don’t think we’re looking at that. I think we’re looking at how long can we keep people in Fogo. That’s a really hard situation to be in … but it can’t just be, well, we’ll get them their stamps this year and try to sort something out next year.

McNicholas: If the people said to the politicians ‘We don’t want short-term solutions, we want you to find a solution that’s going to work for the long term,’ then it would just be a normal part of the politician’s life.

Bishop: But that really puts rural Newfoundland at a loss because that’s how we’ve been getting by, just patching up. There’s been no long-term infrastructure or planning in rural Newfoundland for a long time …

Winters: I know we talk about the importance of politicians, but is the proper succession planning there? People are retiring and who’s coming behind them?

Goodyear: I am so sick … I work at the university paper and I struggle to find stories that don’t have old men in them. Young people are not apathetic and passive, but they’re just not active within the system.

You ask people why they don’t vote and it’s not because they don’t care. These are still energetic and creative people, but they don’t vote because the (candidates) all seem very similar.

Bell: I think a lot of us have the same frustrations, about the closed old-boys club … it’s very insular and it’s destructive because you really do need to have constant renewal and turnover.

Goodyear: How is Memorial supposed to become this great international institution when you’ve got all of these women saying, off the record, that they don’t really like it there because it’s run by old men who don’t care what they think?

And they think it’s reflective of Newfoundland.

People come to my office sometimes and say, the university is doing all these things to me, but I can’t

The Independent’s youth panel gathered for a two-hour discussion.

speak because I’m not tenured and I’m a minority, or I’m a woman, or I’m young.

Cleary: So a lot of this comes back to changing attitude?

Lane: We’re in transition. We’re changing from something that makes us who we are — the fishery for example, rural Newfoundland … we’re part of Canada and the world and everything that’s happening. The human rights issues, that’s not unique to Memorial … we’re getting to a point of is that we’re actually talking about issues and debating them. Maybe that’s what has to happen — we have to keep having these little focus groups and that’s how we educate ourselves.

Goodyear: And we need to not feel helpless.

Lane: Well, when you have a group of people … (looks around the table) I mean, I don’t feel helpless any more.

Goodyear: I’m from Labrador West and we have this mine, and everyone works there, my dad worked there, and my grandfather … I work in the mine every summer and it used to be such a community, we had such a strong union. But now, we’re so helpless. We have a strike, and we say all sorts of things, but then we settle for the exact same thing we started with.

Cleary: Do we need to control our own resources?

Lane: Yes, but I think we need to realize what we already have control over. I’m not saying you’re wrong (about the mine) … but the mine is making millions, I don’t think any intelligent company is going to just let that go …

Goodyear: There’s a scare tactic there.

Lane: You’ve got to resist it. Not in an ignorant way, but unfortunately I think we need to be like Danny Williams, a fighter … he has to keep doing

Paul Daly/The Independent

that, we have to keep doing that, because we’re not taken seriously yet.

Bishop: I agree. Before we got someone like Danny Williams who said ‘No, this is not good enough,’ we had a history of saying, ‘Oh, that’s good enough’ … If you don’t change the way you do business or politics, you’re never going to get a change.

Luke Pike: I think the trick is to get a leader that’s not always a politician because politicians are pacifists who are always going to try and satisfy their voters. You want someone that’s going to choose a direction and go in that direction.

We need people who are going to unify what our ideas are and head in that direction, no matter who stands in our way.

Cleary: What about recommendations for Danny Williams?

Lane: Keep listening.

Cleary: Anything else?

Bell: Don’t give up on the fish. I know none of us are fishermen, but I really want to be able to eat fresh Newfoundland codfish in 20 years. I think there must be a way we can have a sustainable fishery, so we have to sort it out with the federal government, sort it out with the fisheries ministries, so we have enough people working there so you can still be bringing in a certain amount of fish. It’s not going to be the industry it was …

Cleary: Should we be controlling our resources?

Winters: Yes and no … I mean, things were in somewhat of disarray before Confederation …

Lane: If we get control now, it would be really weird, because we’re used to being part of Canada.

I think that’s why we’re not all like ‘yes, give us control of everything’ because we’re like ‘oh, we love Newfoundland, but we love Canada too.’

Pike: We do need to maintain some element of control, but we can’t put up such barriers that people don’t want to come here to develop … or live.

That you have to go through five yards of red tape before you see any oil.

The dangers of big business considered, but big business is business … you can’t set up bars and expect money to flow into your coffers. We have to let the world know that we are open for business but we’re in control, but we are good to work with. If we fight and scream over everything, people won’t want to come here …

Brown-O’Byrne: It’s not just our image in Canada we need to work on, but our world image … a lot of our cultural export isn’t to Canada, but to Europe, with all of our ties to the English, the Irish, the French. We don’t need to restrict ourselves to saying ‘hey Canada, pay attention to us’ but if the rest of the world sees this is a good place to invest, the rest of the country will almost have to toe the line.

Bell: It’s back to having an open culture.

Cleary: Is there a new image of Newfoundland?

Lane: Some people take the (Pink, White and Green) flag’s resurgence as a historical thing, but I think it’s more something we see as part of Newfoundland and something we can identify with.

Goodyear: There’s a weird modern Newfoundlander image that’s like, I’m not necessarily my grandmother with her Tetley tea but this is my Newfoundland …

Lane: It’s not a separatist flag we’re all rallying around, it’s like … we’re kind of joking about that.

Bell: We’re just doing it to get the mainlanders worked up about it …

Winters: (laughs) And we’re sitting back here, snickering.

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JANUARY 5, 2007

INDEPENDENTBUSINESS • 15

YOUR VOICE Fibre optics ‘important and real’ as wharf or warehouse Dear editor, I would like to comment on the recent fibre-optic debate, an interesting contrast between the appearance of public good and real public good.

To begin, I have limited knowledge of the fibre-optic sector and no political affiliation. I believe the project to be good for the province and view the government’s participation in such strategic infrastructure as acceptable.

Since the fibre-optic project was announced the Liberal Opposition has pushed its pre-election drive to chisel the notion of impropriety into the public mindset. They showed too much showmanship, too little statesmanship,

a low standard and a bad example.

The Liberals listed their protests.

They raised claims of buddy support, bias against a local company, unfair competition, insufficient use of public tendering, duplication of existing fibre and the uncertain use of governmentowned fibre.

Yet the fibre-optic project has considerable support and is strategic infrastructure.

Claims that the Public Tendering Act should have been used beg further explanation. A project has to be considered in its entirety and not piecemeal. The fibre-optic project is also very much an economic development

All the little things add up From page 13 Another easily managed financial commitment is to be an informed consumer. Promise yourself that you’re going to research value for money, the quality and life expectancy of any good or service with a price tag of more than $50. Don’t say you’ll research everything — you simply won’t have the time.

As you assess where to start, it’s best to look at the biggest consumers of your net income. In other words, where do you spend the biggest chunk of your take-home pay? For most of us, the list in descending order will be: shelter, transportation, food …

Look for ways to “do better” inside your house first. Consider energy efficiency, communication costs, property insurance, life and mortgage insurance, and the actual security of your property. This is also an ideal time to carry out an inventory and determine the value of all the things you’ve got around. Don’t forget to include collections, jewelry, art, antiques and books.

When it comes to transportation, don’t just look at vehicle payments, insurance and gasoline.

Consider maintenance, depreciation, parking, cleaning and the inevitable ticket or two. Include public transportation costs. Consider the route you take to and from your various destinations and ask yourself how you might do better. Don’t forget to factor the age-old enemy “finding time” into any savings you plan.

NUTRITIONAL LOSS In the food department, look at your dependence on convenience food and the frequency of your shopping trips. Consider the effect of advertising on your children’s likes and dislikes and make sure that any savings you plan won’t be a nutritional loss.

Remember that you’re accountable, from a success perspective, only to yourself — and, consequently, to the people in your household. So don’t share your financial resolutions with anyone outside your immediate family.

Staying motivated is a huge challenge. The best way is to reward yourself for a job well done, and only you can say what form that should take.

Make sure it’s more than just knowing you’ve done better. Treat yourself. This might be to something as simple as a CD, book, or family dinner at a restaurant you might otherwise have passed up.

If you tell yourself, “This is my reward, I’ve done well,” chances are you will continue with your new habits.

All the little things add up. A slight savings here added to the slight savings there, along with goals you achieved a few months ago, will show you an improved bottom line. At the end of the day, that’s where financial success is really measured.

In two weeks, we’ll be talking about clothing and effectively managing that resource.

Al Antle is the executive director of Credit and Debt Solutions.

tool.

Claims relating to competition and capacity were more spin than substance. Most other provinces have expanded competitive systems and have benefited from the growth and advancement of knowledge-based industries.

FOR WHOM? Associated with the claim of unfair competition were charges there was sufficient capacity in the existing fibre-optic network. Sufficient capacity for whom?

The reality is the current system is limited. What is good for the telephone

company is not necessarily good for the province.

The Liberals criticized government for not announcing its intended use of the fibre strands. This also is a red herring. Even if the government-owned strands were to remain unused (i.e. dark fibre) for, say, the next 10 years, government’s participation in the project would still have been a good decision.

Media coverage of the issue was generally shallow and in the case of some print media a disservice to readers. Much of the coverage was a case of parrot by paraphrase.

The fibre-optic project — as part of

the backbone of knowledge-based activity — is just as real and important to the economy as a wharf, pavement project or warehouse in Donovans.

Perhaps, as the New Year unfolds, more MHAs will place more focus and emphasis on the real public good and demonstrate forward thinking.

Perhaps voters will also keep a careful tally to help them make up their minds come the October election. To the partners in the project, please treat the province fairly and bring on more projects.

Hedley Barrett, Mount Pearl

16 • INDEPENDENTBUSINESS

JANUARY 5, 2007

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INDEPENDENTLIFE

FRIDAY THROUGH THURSDAY, JANUARY 5-11, 2007 — PAGE 17

Making a difference Premier Williams on his time in politics, the highs and lows of public life and his legacy

By Don Power For The Independent

Oil company executives are upset with Williams over his negotiations on Hebron, which forced Chevron to drop the project off its own to-do list. Oil industry players say morale is low because of Williams’ stance.

Media pundits accuse of him of being a control freak, wanting a hand in every government decision.

Others say he can’t handle criticism of any sort, taking every dart thrown at government personally. Williams deflects that.

“You do have to restrain yourself sometimes when you know that somebody is saying something that’s incorrect,” he says “But when you’re defending what you think are the right policies or when you’ve done something right, that’s not a problem.

You can stand up with a clear heart and clear mind and say, ‘Here are the answers. At the end of the day, the people of the province will decide on the merits …

“I take comfort in the knowing there is wisdom in the masses and they see through it.

They realize where we’re taking the province and we’re doing things for the right reason.

“When people question the (Williams family) foundation and where you’re making donations (from his premier’s salary), that causes me difficulty, because that’s personal.

“Anything that’s meaningful hits home. If somebody makes a point and it’s something we haven’t considered, or it’s something we should be looking at, we listen. But the opposition criticism — and that’s their job and I acknowledge they’ve got a job to do — when they spin that out, that just spins off my back.”

Last year was difficult for the premier, with many of the swings he mentioned. The lowest point came with the auditor general’s uncovering of the constituency allowance spending scandal, which implicated five MHAs of all parties.

“It just hurt overall,” Williams says, his voice reflecting the pain, “because it reflects on all of us and it’s not resolved yet. It still has to go through the process. We have to see where it takes us.

“That for me was a big shock. It’s something that you have to deal with, not so much from a partisan perspective as leader of the PC party. You have to deal with it as leader of the province.”

As quickly as the sombre tone hits, it’s gone again, and Williams lists off his successes of 2006 — Harbour Breton, education, pay equity, innovation, poverty and cultural strategies. As he looked to 2007, there are many more tasks on his list.

A “personal milestone” was the international exposure he and the province received on CNN and Larry King Live, when he took on Paul McCartney (and his then-wife Heather) over the seal hunt. Large photos of him on CNN adorn a corner desk in the office.

But as he enters the final year of his initial mandate, Williams looks, as he always does, he says, at the big picture — long term.

He’s excited about the lower Churchill and other projects on the horizon. But Williams is more excited about the change in the philosophy of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians.

He wants us all to be “masters of our own destiny,” and in control of our future. And while some people believe his arrival in St. John’s with the $2-billion cheque will be his lasting legacy, “if that is, that’s fine.

“I’m very proud of that and it’s made a big difference to us. There’s a big picture here.

“I’ll never get them all done. I’ll never be 100 per cent successful in any of them. But if I can do a majority of them and people stand back and say, ‘He really made a difference’ then that is why I went in in the first place.

“If my legacy is that he made a difference, I’ll be delighted with that.”

A

side from being a multi-millionaire and the premier of Newfoundland and Labrador, Danny Williams is just like you and me.

At one point or another during the past three years, virtually everybody living in this province has rhetorically asked what a man with Danny Williams’ money is doing running the province.

Williams has asked himself the same question.

“Absolutely, I’ve said that lots of times,” Williams said. “Oh, yeah.”

However, unlike the rest of us who might say, ‘It wouldn’t be me’, Williams has an answer to the question.

During a lengthy one-on-one interview in his eighth floor Confederation Building office prior to Christmas, Williams candidly discussed what it was that drew him out of a lucrative private life and into the throes of public life.

“I’ve done well in this province,” he says.

“I’ve given everything I can to this province but the province has been good to me, so maybe I can give more back through public life.

“I decided that if I didn’t do it, in 10 years time I would have looked myself in the face and said, ‘I should have done that,’ because I think I would have made a difference. ” That mantra is often what pushes businessmen and women into politics. Success in private life sometimes leaves people wanting to do something for the greater good of the place that allows them to live more than comfortably.

Sometimes it’s just a desire to get their name in the history books.

In the past three years, Williams has surely done both. Even his greatest detractors — and there are some — would have a hard time arguing Williams’ impact on this province since becoming premier Oct. 21, 2003, even above and beyond the $2-billion Atlantic Accord cheque he squeezed out of the federal government.

“Going back over those three years, we’ve had a lot of significant milestones,” Williams says, jacket off and tie loosened. “We had our head down and just worked hard …

“To look back, we’ve accomplished more in three years than I ever thought we were going to get done. Our blueprint was an eight-year plan and we’re well along into that.”

Some detractors say Williams was lucky or the timing was right. Whatever. Williams entered politics with a long to-do list, and in three years has many objectives marked off.

But there’s more to do.

“Someone said to me when I got into politics that you’ll have the highest highs and lowest lows you’ll ever have in your life,” he says. “It’s so true.

“There are peaks and valleys and good times and bad times. But absolutely I’m running again. I’ve already sought the nomination in Humber West. I’ve said before if I had all the things done I wanted to get done and had my list completely checked off, then I’d move, but I don’t. Nor did I expect to.”

Williams’ success has translated into unrivalled popularity, Smallwood-like numbers.

In a December Angus Reid poll, 70 per cent of the population stated they’d vote for Williams and his Progressive Conservative party again. Even more impressive, 83 per cent of respondents stated they were satisfied with Williams’ personal performance.

(Although that figure was down six points from June’s poll.)

Despite the high numbers, Williams has been subject to some stinging criticism.

Opposition members have hammered him on the $15 million fibre-optics deal, arguing Williams personal connections with the proponents made the deal happen.

Premier Danny Williams in his Confederation Building office.

Paul Daly/The Independent

donniep@nl.rogers.com

‘Every penny’ President of provincial Mothers Against Drunk Driving chapter says local fundraising efforts will suffer due to negative national press

By Mandy Cook The Independent

W

hen her mother lost her life to a drunk driver on April 28, 1992, while crossing the Goulds main highway on her way home from church, Christine Care channeled her grief into Mothers Against Drunk Driving. It is a decision she has never regretted — even in the wake of recent negative press suggest-

ing 81 cents of every dollar raised by the organization pays for a telemarketing campaign.

On Nov. 1, MADD launched its annual red ribbon campaign — its main fundraiser of the year. In December, the national body of MADD was accused of spending the bulk of donated money on professional fundraisers, resulting in an angry public backlash.

Care says “every penny” that her chapter raises is spent locally on the

programs and services the organization offers. Now, she says, the group must reverse the damage done and fears their little red boxes on store shelves will be significantly lighter when she collects them this weekend.

“I am absolutely certain there will be a marked difference in the dollars in those red ribbon boxes. Some of (the boxes) aren’t even out there because See “You can’t change,” page 19

Christine Care holds a MADD red ribbon.

Paul Daly/The Independent

JANUARY 5, 2007

18 • INDEPENDENTLIFE

GALLERYPROFILE

Corner Brook Triathlon, 2005

Gros Morne

Corner Brook at night.

Twillingate

Trout River

A

s a ski instructor, avalanche awareness course provider, and associate professor of environmental studies and geography at Sir Wilfred Grenfell College in Corner Brook (never mind his own recreational skiing, hiking and kayaking schedule) it’s hard to believe Keith Nicol has time to keep up with his steady freelance writing and photography work.

“I do have a few different things on the go at the one time,” he says with a laugh. “But one of my long-time interests has always been photography.”

To date, Nicol has had more than 500 articles published in a variety of magazines and newspapers, and has also released two books: Best Hiking Trails in Western Newfoundland and Images of Western Newfoundland (both published by Breakwater Books). He’s sold countless other photographs to organizations and publications, and is currently working on an avalanche safety DVD for western Newfoundland.

“We do go out to schools and talk about snow awareness … hopefully this DVD will bring home the fact that although we don’t have (avalanches) as often here, we do have to be careful.”

Nicol grew up in the midwestern United States and moved to British Columbia with his family as a teenager. It was while at university at UBC that the lifelong outdoors enthusiast started to “play around” with his camera.

On arriving in Corner Brook for his new job with Memorial University in 1981, he realized the potential his hobby presented.

“I began to shoot a lot more with a particular focus on publications,” he says. “A lot of things I’d shoot would be for general interest, but I also had in the back of my mind to place them in a magazine or newspaper.”

KEITH NICOL Photographer Nicol has amassed an admittedly large bank of photos, a resource he doesn’t actively market — but one that’s becoming popular for anyone looking for active and outdoor shots from the east or west coasts of Canada.

“It used to pay for all the film I went through,” Nicol says of his side business. “Not it pays for the lenses and other equipment.” It’s just been in the past year or two that he’s invested in digital camera gear and fully made the transition.

He lists three main interests in taking photos.

“Scenery is one component,” he says.

“Putting people into the landscape from a recreational point of view, whether they be sea kayakers or skiers, that’s another component.

And then a third interest is related to putting people in a landscape that’s mainly focused on the action.

“For example, if you’re trying to photograph a skier making a turn, you’ve got to get them at the right part of the turn. The landscape then becomes less important and you’re just trying to get a sharp image that shows fluidity and flow.”

He’s been taking images of the latter type to accompany a regular technical how-to ski column he writes.

“Really, it all depends on the season and what I’m trying to do … I try to appreciate the landscape, whether there are people in it or not.” knicol@swgc.mun.ca — Stephanie Porter

lives here.

It’s here in our community. Please make a difference by volunteering.

1-800-268-7582 www.mssociety.ca

Stop a heart attack before it starts.

Your support is vital.

Research into the root causes of heart disease and stroke will help millions live longer, healthier lives. As a leading funder of heart and stroke research in Canada, we need your help.

Call 1-888-HSF-INFO or visit www.heartandstroke.ca

JANUARY 5, 2007

‘You can’t change their minds first nor last’

INDEPENDENTLIFE • 19

Back to the future

Sean Panting looks to the year ahead for the arts community SEAN PANTING

From page 17 some people took them in,” she says.

When asked what a decrease in funds from the campaign means, Care’s first thoughts are for the victims. Each year, the chapter chooses people who have suffered the loss of a loved one or have been injured themselves to send to a candlelight vigil in Toronto. The three-day event provides victims with counselling workshops and emotional support.

She fears this year they will have to pick and choose who gets to attend.

The Newfoundland and Labrador MADD chapter receives approximately $12,000 per year from the national organization. Typically, the provincial chapter will raise $18,000 more, for a total of $30,000.

DONATED OFFICE The money pays for the printing of literature, red ribbons to tie on car antennas, pins and other supplies.

Care says the only administrative costs they have is a monthly phone bill at their donated office space.

Care says the eight board members and 20 volunteers working with MADD locally receive “absolutely none” of the money they accept in donations. She says most of them are out of money for much of the work they do — roadside sobriety checks, public service announcements around major holidays and, most importantly, victim counseling — because very few, if any, submit expenses for time or travel.

“We all work, this is totally volunteer. So if I do it I take annual leave, which is money out of my pocket.”

MADD Canada is currently undergoing an internal and external review of its fundraising and reporting of expenditures. It has also commissioned an independent survey of the leadership of MADD Canada as well as the heads of provincial chapters, including Care.

BREAKDOWNS OCCURRING “That’s exactly what they need to do,” she says. “See where they think the breakdowns are occurring.”

As a committed crusader and champion of victims’ rights, Care says she and her fellow advocates are working hard to dispel the charity’s tarnished image. They have their work cut out for them.

“The sad fact of life is that this may greatly affect local chapters,” she says. “(MADD) National will survive it, I’m sure. But local chapters may have difficulty because in a small community people hear something and that’s it, you can’t change their minds first nor last. That perception is what we now have to try and change.” mandy.cook@theindependent.ca

State of the art

L

adies and gentlemen, the unthinkable has happened. 2007 is upon us. A few years ago when they were gearing up for the big millennium celebrations on the waterfront and savvy rip-off artists the world over were charging top dollar for Y2K insurance and the like, who could have imagined how quickly we would find ourselves here? Not me, certainly.

As it is the end of one year and the dawning of another, I was at first tempted to go back over the big happenings of 2006. But then I thought, why? We just lived through 2006. It’s fresh — too fresh, even — in all our minds. Instead, I’ve decided to look forward to some of the stuff that’s going to happen in the arts in 2007.

In June of this year the legendary LSPU Hall in St. John’s — birthplace of the careers of Andy Jones, Mary Walsh, Rick Mercer and a host of others — will get a facelift.

Far from being a simple cosmetic overhaul, this renovation will give the Hall the one thing it needs to ensure its continuing survival as a viable theatre — more seats. In addition, there are plans for extensive technical improvements, air conditioning, an expanded art gallery, a wheelchair lift and finally — let the joyous news go forth across the land — shiny new bathrooms.

At $2 million it isn’t going to be cheap, but a hefty chunk of the funds are already in place. Wising up to the idea that the Hall is the epicenter of the arts on the northeast Avalon, the city

Rick Boland and Mary Walsh of Hatching, Matching, and Dispatching. The fate of the show could be determined by a possible strike by the actors’ union, which could happen as soon as midnight Jan. 7.

Paul Daly/The Independent

and the province have put up $500,000 each. The second million is expected to come from a combination of federal cash and good old fashioned fundraising. Expect to hear more about ways you can help out with that.

On the national front, be on the lookout for a potential ACTRA strike.

ACTRA is the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists.

In English, that means it’s the actors union. They’re in a legal strike position right now, and if they should decide to hit the picket line in January, the entertainment industry in this country could be in for a bumpy ride.

I know what you’re thinking — what

possible difference could it make in my life if Canada’s actors decide to stop pretending to be people they aren’t in situations that aren’t really happening?

Well, if it drags on into the summer, ACTRA job action might have unpleasant consequences for some locally produced films and TV shows. Film and TV is expensive and labour-intensive, and when it happens around here that translates into cash money.

When Hatching Matching and Dispatching was short-sightedly (and disastrously) replaced by The One — CBC’s too little, too late, too lame attempt to cash in on the Idol phenomenon — production of episodes sched-

uled for the summer of 2006 was delayed until 2007. A strike would throw another wrench into the works and put some of this province’s finest out of a job two years in a row, so say a little prayer for the ACTRA bargaining unit. And if there is another cancellation, may I also suggest saying a prayer for the poor slob who’d have to go and break the news to the cast and crew.

And in government? With the continuing minority parliament situation in Ottawa, there’s always the chance of a change federally. Provincially, however, it appears it’s going to be Dannytime for the foreseeable future.

Ultimately that’s good news for the arts community.

Premier Dan — God love his little cotton socks — has been steadily pumping funds into the arts sector and there’s no reason to believe he’s going to stop, a change in finance ministers notwithstanding.

In 2006 the province released its Creative Blueprint outlining some of the ways it intends to improve the lot of cultural workers in Newfoundland and Labrador. It included a commitment to exploring what they’re calling “status of the artist legislation” to cover labour relations and collective bargaining rights in the arts sector, pension plans, professional development and training and “improving the economic status and security of the province’s professional artists.”

Woo-hoo! Could this be the year the honourable members get the ball rolling on that? Ask your MHA and find out. And while you’re at it, wish them Happy New Year from me.

Sean Panting is a writer, actor and musician living in St. John’s. www.myspace.com/seanpanting

Actors’ strike threatens television across Canada

By Bruce DeMara Toronto Star

A

new sci-fi series filming in Toronto may be the first victim if the national union representing actors and performers makes good on its threat to go on strike Sunday at midnight.

With less than a month left in production of its first season, The Dresden Files producer Jonathan Hackett says future production could move elsewhere because of a labour disruption by ACTRA (Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists).

“We have to complete our season one way or another. I wouldn’t even want to guess what we would have to do to do that. But we’re scheduled to complete production at the beginning of February, and we’ve got air dates and all that kind of stuff,” Hackett says.

The series is to premiere on the U.S. SciFi Channel and Canada’s Space Channel within weeks.

“If we were to be disrupted, it would kill the show (in Toronto). If there is a protracted negotiation ... this show

POET’S CORNER Charlotte In our last walk to Dr. Grise’s office, you sniffed constantly, filling your senses with the full world, a big text that you were always eager to read.

You loved Purdy’s chocolate, ferreted out seasonal treats, well hidden in closets and cupboards. You ignored the Zeller’s chocolate one pound Allan’s Easter bunny.

Aaron says you could levitate, which explains how you ate the tops of flowers in crystal vases on high shelves, leaving the stalks intact.

Each day you invited us out of the house to join you on a trail that never ceased to astonish, always the sense of wonder at the unfamiliar.

I wish I had scratched your belly more, perhaps let you kiss me with your basset hound breath, born out of places your nose enticed you.

When you ran fast, your ears waved like a heron’s wings, and we thought you would defy gravity like a jumbo jet, overweight with a belly that brushed the earth.

Thank you for the lessons: Smell everything.

Run fast enough so your ears stick out straight.

Always hunger.

Forget you’re a dog among other dogs.

Expect others to carry treats in their pockets.

Love children.

Take long naps.

Expect adoration.

Poop plenty.

Eat grass.

Bark, bay, howl with a heart’s loud echo of each day’s bounty.

By Carl Leggo. Reprinted with permission from Come-byChance, a collection of poems published by Breakwater Books, 2006.

could easily go back to the States or to another jurisdiction that offers a better deal,” Hackett says. He adds Chicago — where the series is set, based on author Jim Butcher’s novels — had previously lobbied heavily to have the series shot there.

Union leaders recommenced negotiations with members of the Canadian Film and Television Production Association and its Quebec counterpart Jan. 3 in Toronto, after delaying a strike call scheduled for 12:01 a.m. on New Year’s Day. But the union, which represents 21,000 members across Canada, with about 60 per cent of its membership in Toronto, set a new deadline as negotiations resumed.

Karl Pruner, president of the Toronto chapter, says the strike deadline is firm even if negotiations continue.

In part due to the rising Canadian dollar, the billion-dollar industry, which employs about 25,000 residents of Toronto alone in film and TV production, has already shown a decline in 2006, says Rhonda Silverstone, manager of the Toronto Film and Television

Office.

“We’re hopeful that the parties will resolve the issues as soon as possible.

But beyond that, we don’t like to comment,” Silverstone says.

Pruner acknowledges that big American studio productions in Toronto were “far below normal” for the past eight months.

He adds Vancouver and B.C. now have “higher total production” than Toronto, in part because of federal incentives provided to the province.

B.C. also has a separate union representing its actors and performers.

MAJOR ISSUES But Pruner says there are major issues on the table: wages and compensation for members in the “new frontier” of digital media and the Internet.

“People have this idea that performers are sitting by the swimming pool waiting for the phone to ring,” Pruner says.

“The truth is most of my members are among the working poor; they’re highly educated, highly motivated, but they survive on five or six jobs a year

and the rest of the time you meet them ... waiting on your table.”

Pruner says there is a 32 per cent wage gap between ACTRA members and their U.S. counterparts in the Screen Actors Guild. “We would like obviously to close the gap. But we’re not asking anybody to close the gap in one 32 per cent gulp. We are saying, ‘Don’t let it get any further apart,’” Pruner says.

Performers also deserve to be compensated for other work, including Internet spam aimed at drawing television viewers or transmitted through mobile phones.

Jeff Brinton, spokesperson for the producers’ association, says no “business model” exists to deal with the issue of compensation for “new media,” an issue that is contentious elsewhere.

He described both sides as “a little bit far apart” on the wage and compensation issues.

“Both sides are very much committed to finding a deal. It’s really too early ... to convey how (the negotiating) is going,” he says.

JANUARY 5, 2007

20 • INDEPENDENTLIFE

The intersection of tradition and modernity It’s no surprise Mary Dalton’s latest poetry collection is garnering so much national praise, writes Mark Callanan

Tell: Riddles for Conception Bay, and various other praiseworthy sundries that demonstrate just why Mary Dalton is getting so much critical attention these days.

In The Boat, a flying vessel that has wrecked itself “high and dry in a bed of petunias,” is evaluated by the locals. It is a striking parable on the intersection of tradition and modernity:

MARK CALLANAN On the shelf Red Ledger

By Mary Dalton Signal Editions, 2006. 101 pages.

The mayor proposed a stern letter be written; the councilor shuffled her ordinances.

The police dogs searched it for drugs.

The priest prayed for the drowned crew.

The biologist listed the worms and the sea-lice.

I

n a review of Mary Dalton’s first poetry collection, The Time of Icicles, Stuart Pierson makes reference to a Newfoundland pastoral mode of writing. Its hallmark, the late historian explains, is ambivalence, characterized by “revulsion against the excesses” of mainland Canadian culture and contrasting feelings of shame at their powerful allure. The pastoral mode also “consists of a vague regret that Newfoundland did not try to make a living as an independent, perhaps poorer, but more dignified, country.”

I am tempted to label Mary Dalton’s fourth collection, Red Ledger, a more political venture than her last book of poems, but I think I’ll follow Pierson’s lead instead and call it an example of the pastoral mode described above. Though, come to think of it, Dalton’s Merrybegot is quite a political book as well — if not overtly so. Through the very fact of its engagement with issues of language and culture, it has introduced itself into the great Newfoundland cultural debate.

The ageless questions of this dialogue run thus: Is Newfoundland culture dying or is it already dead? If the latter is the case, do we bury it or call the necromancers? Did the culture we seem to remember actually exist? Can a culture be corrupted or does it just adapt?

The beauty of Merrybegot lies in its confident dismissal of the questions. It

Mary Dalton

takes regional dialect, turns of phrase and figures of speech as evidence enough of distinctiveness (such a loaded word these days) and rarely belabours arguments or assigns blame.

Any statement on the Newfoundland situation — which I’ll define here as being, in part, a struggle against absorption into North American culture — is made obliquely, entirely by unspoken relationships between the world of the poem and the state of the actual world: Janneying comments on cultural dilu-

Paul Daly/The Independent

tion by describing the tradition in full swing; its real-world analogy is dragged out of the closet every so often as a show piece, material for a Christmas pageant but largely not an active tradition.

The great success of Merrybegot is in how much it says within so small a space, each poem a piece of time and circumstance squeezed into a compact burst of language, a window into lives and their larger context — or better yet, the smoke and heat that denote the pres-

ence of a nearby flame. Red Ledger has that same fire interspersed at points throughout, but it is sometimes diluted by too overt an engagement with issues of identity.

Oldfella and Mr. Subaru (included here, along with several other poems from Dalton’s first two collections) corners one incarnation of the infamous Newfie joke, offering up a rereading. At the end of the poem, Mr. Subaru — stereotypical tourist in Tilley hat — takes notes on a local interaction “next to the pasted-in / ad from Holiday / Inn and Air Canada: Earn / Points While You Sleep” — an unsubtle mockery of cultural homogenization.

Of course, to leave you with the impression that Red Ledger is nothing but a bristling manifesto or cultural lament would be the worst kind of betrayal. The book features numerous erotic pieces, several poems that are united by their fascination with the symbolism of salt, a series of tantalizing riddles under the title of I’m Bursting to

And on and on the list goes until the boat heaves itself “up out of their element” while the assembled crowd is busy arguing.

Veiled commentary on contemporary Newfoundland or farcical take on mainland urbanity? Perhaps both.

That’s the beauty of Pierson’s Newfoundland pastoral: it relishes this sort of ambiguity, allying itself with the reader on the muzzle end of the poem by allowing that we are always (and should always be) divided over that for which we care most.

Red Ledger is easily one of the best collections I’ve read in the past year, but while in many ways it is a bigger and more varied book than Merrybegot, it is not necessarily a better one. There is something visceral and immediate about Dalton’s third collection that better tells (to borrow Pratt’s phrase) the story “Of human veins and pulses, / Of eternal pathways of fire.” Both are books we will be reading for a long time.

Mark Callanan writes in St. John’s. callanan_ _@hotmail.com

We lost many who made a difference JANUARY Irving Layton, 93 – Nominated twice for the Nobel Prize in literature and named to the Order of Canada, he published more than 40 books of poetry and prose.

Pierre Grondin, 80 – Cardiovascular surgeon who performed Canada’s first successful heart transplant operation in Montreal in May 1968.

FEBRUARY Shirley Maheu, 74 – Senator and former Montreal-area Liberal MP. She

resigned her seat in 1996 so Stéphane Dion could run in a by-election.

Mart Kenney, 95 – Known as Canada’s Big Band King for the dance orchestras he led in the 1930s and ‘40s.

William (Billy) Cowsill, 58 – Lead singer of the 1960s family band, the Cowsills.

MARCH Iona Monahan, 82 – Journalist who helped define haute couture in Canada.

Bernard “Boom Boom” Geoffrion, 75 – Invented the slapshot and later

popularized it during 14 seasons with the Montreal Canadiens.

APRIL Harold Horwood, 82 – Writer and one of the first post-Confederation members of the Newfoundland legislature, from 1949 to 1952.

Jane Jacobs, 89 – Author and urban activist known for her book The Death and Life of Great American Cities.

John Kenneth Galbraith, 97 – Harvard professor, renowned as a liberal economist, backstage politician and witty chronicler of society.

MAY George Bain, 86 – Elegant writer and The Globe and Mail’s first Ottawabased columnist.

Heather Crowe, 61 – Waitress who appeared in anti-smoking ads on TV describing how she contracted lung cancer from second-hand smoke.

JUNE Leon Pownall, 63 – Actor, director and writer. Spent 14 seasons with the Stratford Festival.

Mike Forrestall, 73 – Former Conservative MP representing Halifax and 40-year veteran of both the Commons and Senate.

Ken Thomson, 82 – Canada’s richest man who guided his inherited fortune out of the newspaper business into the era of electronic information.

JULY Don Rogers, 89 – Chief test pilot at Avro Canada who oversaw flight operations for the revolutionary but ill-fated Avro Arrow fighter jet.

Al Balding, 82 – First Canadian to win a PGA Tour event.

AUGUST George Mario (Jamie) Astaphan, 60 – Gave Olympian Ben Johnson performance-enhancing drugs.

Maynard Ferguson, 78 – Jazz trumpeter known for his soaring high notes and for recording the hit theme for the film Rocky.

John Weinzweig, 93 – Composer, considered the dean of Canadian classical music.

Glenn Ford, 90 – Canadian-born actor who starred in The Blackboard Jungle and Gilda.

SEPTEMBER Edna Staebler, 100 – Cookbook author known for books including Food That Really Schmecks.

Earl Heywood, 89 – Country music singer who wrote more than 350 songs.

Louis-Albert Cardinal Vachon, 94 – Roman Catholic archbishop emeritus of Quebec.

OCTOBER André Viger, 54 – Pioneering wheelchair athlete who won two gold medals, two silver and one bronze during

Paralympic Games between 1984 and 1996.

Ian Scott, 72 – Former Ontario attorney general who introduced North America’s first equal-pay law for women in the private sector.

Michael Jacot, 82 – Wrote, produced and directed more than 100 documentaries for Canadian and British TV. Daryl Duke, 77 – Emmy-award winning director who directed the 1983 TV miniseries The Thornbirds.

Trevor Berbick, 52 – Former world and Canadian heavyweight boxing champion.

NOVEMBER Jackie Parker, 74 – One of the alltime CFL greats. Played on three Grey Cup winners with the Edmonton Eskimos.

Noella Leclair, 61 – Recipient of Canada’s first artificial heart transplant in 1986.

Gilles Grégoire, 80 – Co-founder of the Parti Québécois.

DECEMBER Mavor Moore, 87 – Actor, producer, writer and key figure at the CBC, Stratford Festival, Charlottetown Festival and Toronto’s St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts.

Norman “Dutch” Mason, 68 – Nova Scotia musician called “the prime minister of the blues” by friends and fans.

— Torstar wire service

INDEPENDENTSTYLE

FRIDAY THROUGH THURSDAY, JANUARY 5-11, 2007 — PAGE 21

Gym dandy Choosing your New Year’s resolution is easy — now just pick your spot Paul Daly/The Independent

By Mandy Cook The Independent

N

ow that the Christmas cookies and cake of 2006 are padding our collective hips and bottoms, many of us turn our thoughts to the reliable New Year’s resolution of getting fit.

In 2007, the majority of us will at least think about embarking on a fitness regime — if not necessarily act upon it. Whether

you are just determined to make a healthy lifestyle change, become a body-sculpting muscle maniac or are perhaps undergoing bridal boot camp for a June wedding date, hustle on down to your wellness centre of choice and start sweating.

Christine Young, executive director of the Humber Community YMCA in Corner Brook, says the phones at the facility have been “constantly buzzing” with enquiries about fitness memberships.

She says they are expecting about a 15 per cent bump in new members as January is a traditional time for new sign-ups.

“It’s a tangible date, people say, ‘Effective January first in the New Year this is my resolution.’”

Instead of joining up for the usual aerobics class, however, Young says gymgoers are opting instead for an individually-tailored workout. She says it allows for more flexibility and people can choose

how and when they will exercise. There are classes like yoga or Muscles Plus — with a core-strength focus using stability balls and exercise tubes — still on offer, but the overall trend is to create your own fitness schedule.

“You can do it on your time — some people might come in and might do a half hour in the morning and come back in the See “Healthy lifestyle,”page 23

JANUARY 5, 2007

22 • INDEPENDENTSTYLE

TASTE

Recipes of the year From the hundreds of recipes tested in the Toronto Star’s kitchen this year, here are four favourites

By Jennifer Bain and Susan Sampson Torstar wire service

All the food that was news W

ith 2006 behind us we can look back and see the gripping headlines of the past year — war in Iraq, troops in Afghanistan, London bombings, political scandal in Newfoundland, the execution of Saddam Hussein … and the world stopped for the tale of a once famous pop princess who was thrice pictured sans underwear. The world was fascinated and captivated by these stories. But where was the food news?

What we didn’t see were the rough and tumble headlines of the year in food and the stories that surrounded them. Here are some of these stories.

E. coli stops salad production, husbands rejoice In November, a woman in California dies suddenly from E. coli, a potentially deadly food-borne bacteria, which causes severe sickness and sometimes death. Eventually, the illness is traced to a farm producing spinach. Sources reveal that all over the U.S. people are becoming sick.

A nationwide spinach ban occurs.

This leads to spinach and mixed salad being pulled from the shelves all over Canada as well. For two weeks no one ate a leaf of lettuce for fear it was tainted. Foods we once thought were safe in their “triple washed” bags were not entirely safe.

Husbands around the nation passed on greens thereafter, asking “What are you trying to do? Kill me?”

California trumps France: redux In 1976, there was a famous wine tasting now known as the Judgement of Paris, a blind tasting in which top Californian wines went head to head with some of France’s greatest wines — and won.

In May of this year the grudge

NICHOLAS GARDNER

Off the Eating Path match took place. Thirty years later, the French were still mad that an upstart wine-producing region could slay the mighty French giant. So, in London, England, wine panelists sat and smelled, tasted and spat their way through the same wines. And the result?

California still came out ahead.

There has always been speculation that some, if not all, California wines are unsuitable for cellaring for long periods of time. The French have had a monopoly on the cellaring market forever, and now they have to defend their pride. This proves that California wines are certainly suitable for cellaring, and impress even the most discerning of palates.

Perhaps France will see this as a challenge to rediscover their roots and teach us again why French wines are great.

Foodies fear foie finished forever; food fiends flip-flop The alliteration notwithstanding, chefs in America held their collective breaths as Chicago went through the fight of the summer.

Having fixed the city’s other problems — poverty, inner-city violence, lack of affordable housing and unemployment — Chicago banned the fattened liver of a duck from restaurants.

Any other city would leave it at that, but we’re talking Chicago here, a foodie destination. In an unlikely turn of events, Mayor Richard M.

Daley backed a proposal to repeal the ban on foie gras, after only one month.

Restaurant owners and foodies alike rallied together to appeal the fact that the city had gone too far in restricting what people should or should not eat. I am glad that Chicago has seen the light. Maybe foie will survive, maybe it won’t. But at least now it has a fighting chance.

A GAZE INTO THE NEW YEAR Some of the food trends of the last year were pretty ridiculous including a $100 hamburger made from Kobe, Argentinean and Prime beef and a $30 slice of white truffle pizza.

Predictions are in and the luxe comfort food of the year is going to be hot dogs. I feel there will bea resurgence in the ignoble hot dog — hand-stuffed casings of premium meats, fats and other ingredients, as well as a wide variety of condiments to choose from, make hot dogs the next big thing.

With the E. coli scare behind us, look for more packaging extolling the virtues of small-acreage farming.

I feel that more people will be looking to purchase foods from small distributors seeking safety over price.

Finally, I feel that the age of the ethnic food has finally arrived. I think this is the year when all the small and, as yet, undervalued ethnic restaurants will become very popular, with the clear leader being East Indian curry houses.

Here’s to a food-filled 2007.

Cheers!

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

Stop a heart attack before it starts.

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Research into the root causes of heart disease and stroke will help millions live longer, healthier lives. As a leading funder of heart and stroke research in Canada, we need your help.

Call 1-888-HSF-INFO or visit www.heartandstroke.ca

GREEN AND YELLOW STRING BEAN SOUP WITH DILL Easy, healthy and packed with flavour, this soup comes from Elorabased culinary activist/gastronomer Anita Stewart.

• 2 tbsp canola oil • 1 onion, finely diced • 1 clove garlic, minced or pressed • 1 lb (450 g) green and yellow string beans, trimmed, cut into 1-inch (21/2-cm) pieces (4 cups) • 1/2 cup chopped fresh, stemmed dill • 28 oz (796 ml) can diced tomatoes • 3 cups tomato juice • 1 tbsp granulated sugar • 1-1/2 tsp salt • 1 tsp each: freshly ground pepper, crushed dried basil GARNISH • Sour cream or plain yogurt • Fresh chopped basil Heat oil in stock pot over medium to medium low. Add onions. Cook, stirring, 5 minutes or until softened and transparent. Add garlic. Cook, stirring, 2 minutes. Add beans. Cook, stirring, 1 minute. Add dill, diced tomatoes with juices, tomato juice, sugar, salt, pepper and basil. Raise heat to high; bring to boil. Reduce heat to low. Simmer 30 minutes to allow flavours to blend.

Soup can be served hot, at room temperature or chilled. Serve garnished with dollop of sour cream or yogurt and sprinkled with basil.

LAMB POPSICLES WITH FENUGREEK CREAM SAUCE Adapted from Vij’s: Elegant & Inspired Indian Cuisine by Vikram Vij and Meeru Dhalwala (2006, $40). This is the signature dish at Vij’s restaurant, a Vancouver eatery famous for its updated Indian cuisine. French-cut means the meat and fat have been scraped off the ends of the bones; these become your popsicle sticks.

Fenugreek leaves are sold in Indian stores and spice shops.

LAMB • 2 tbsp sweet white wine • 1/4 cup grainy mustard • 1/2 tsp each: sea salt, pepper • 2 racks lamb, french-cut (each about 1-1/4 lb/550 g), cut in chops (8 to 10 per rack) SAUCE • 2 cups whipping cream • 2 tbsp lemon juice • 2 tsp dried fenugreek leaves • 1-1/2 tsp sea salt • 1/2 tsp paprika • 1/4 tsp cayenne • 2 tbsp canola oil • 2 cloves garlic, minced • 1/2 tsp turmeric

For lamb, stir together wine, mustard, salt and pepper in large bowl. Add lamb. Toss with hands to coat well.

Cover bowl with plastic wrap.

Refrigerate 2 to 4 hours.

For sauce, stir together cream, lemon juice, fenugreek, salt, paprika and cayenne in large bowl.

Heat oil in medium skillet on medium heat. Add garlic. Cook, stirring, 30 seconds. Stir in turmeric. Cook, stirring, 1 minute. Stir in cream mixture.

Bring to boil, then reduce heat to medium-low. Simmer 5 to 10 minutes, until sauce is thickened.

To finish dish, remove lamb from marinade. Discard remaining marinade.

Grill lamb on barbecue preheated to high, uncovered, on direct heat, turning and moving as needed to prevent burning, until browned on both sides, about 10 minutes for medium-rare. Serve lamb with warm sauce alongside.

Makes 8 appetizer servings.

CHILLED CORN & CHICKEN SOUP WITH TOMATO, AVOCADO & CILANTRO SALSA Adapted from The Passionate Cook: The Very Best of Karen Barnaby (2004, $24.95). It’s full of fabulous recipes from a Vancouver chef. Use fresh or frozen corn.

SOUP • 1 lb (450 g) boneless, skinless chicken breasts • 7 cups chicken stock • 4 cups corn kernels • 3 leeks (1 bunch), white part only, thinly sliced • 1 large red potato (1/2 lb/225 g), peeled, cut in 1/2-inch dice • 1 tsp each: sea salt, cumin seeds • 1/4 tsp cayenne • Freshly ground pepper to taste • 175 g tub plain yogurt (about 1/2 to 2/3 cup)

SALSA • 1 tomato, finely diced • 1 avocado, finely diced • 1 tbsp coarsely chopped cilantro • 2 tsp lime juice Put chicken in single layer in medium pan on high heat. Add enough of the stock to cover chicken by 1 inch.

Bring to boil on high heat. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer 10 minutes or until just cooked through. Drain, reserving stock. Cover and refrigerate chicken.

In large pot, stir together reserved stock, remaining stock, corn, leeks, potato, salt, cumin, cayenne and pepper. Bring to boil on high heat. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer 20 to 25 minutes, or until vegetables are tender.

In blender, purée two-thirds of soup in batches until smooth.

Stir together purée and remaining soup in large container with tight lid.

Refrigerate until cold or overnight.

Before serving, stir in yogurt. Shred chicken.

Stir together salsa ingredients in medium bowl.

Ladle soup into serving bowls. Top with chicken and salsa.

Makes 12 cups, or 8 main servings.

COWBOY SKILLET STEAKS Smoky ancho chili pepper meets steak and onions in a one-skillet meal.

Adapted from a Bon Appetit recipe.

Serve this with tomatoes for a fast meal.

• 3 tbsp olive oil + more for drizzling • 2 tsp kosher salt + more for seasoning • 4 large onions, halved, thinly sliced • 4 large cloves garlic, minced or pressed • 1/4 cup + 2 tbsp chopped cilantro leaves • 1-1/2 tbsp + 1 tsp ancho chili powder • 1/2 tsp chili flakes • 2 tbsp water • 4 cubanelle peppers, seeded, chopped • Two 1 lb (450 g) striploin steaks (each about 1-1/2-inches thick), patted dry • Freshly ground pepper to taste In large, cast-iron skillet, heat 3 tablespoons oil and 2 teaspoons salt over medium-high. Add onions, garlic, 1/4 cup cilantro, 1-1/2 tablespoons chili powder and chili flakes. Stir well.

Add water; cover. Cook 5 minutes.

Uncover; stir well. Add cubanelles.

Cook, stirring, 6 minutes, or until vegetables are tender and lightly charred.

Transfer to bowl; cover and keep warm.

Rub each steak with 1/2 teaspoon ancho powder. Generously season each with salt and pepper. Drizzle each with oil; rub in well. Add steaks to hot skillet set on medium-high heat. Cook as desired, about 6 minutes per side for medium-rare. Transfer to cutting board; cover loosely with foil. Let stand 5 minutes. Slice as desired.

To serve, divide steak among 4 plates. Garnish each with portion of remaining 2 tablespoons cilantro. Side each with equal portions of onion mixture.

Makes 4 servings.

JANUARY 5, 2007

INDEPENDENTSTYLE • 23

When the clock strikes 12 Leia Feltham reflects on New Year’s past, present and future

I

f a Scrooge of New Year’s Eve existed I’d be it. I wouldn’t go as far as the Grinch and try to steal it from all the people who love it. I would, however, hide away somewhere where I could pretend that the world wasn’t moving on and I was standing still.

On New Year’s Eve you can look back at all your experiences from the year gone by, the good and the bad.

Regrets easily creep into a mind filled with second guesses. There’s finality in counting down the seconds until a new year. At midnight there’s no going back and trying to scrounge the remains of what may have been a disappointing year. What’s done is done.

Last year shaped me more than most.

Love has a way of making a permanent mark like nothing else. Like a tattoo, it can hurt like hell and a leave a scar — either beautiful or ugly. All wounds heal though, and besides the occasional ache to remind me that I was once hurt, all that remains are memories and lessons learned.

In 2006 I took a lot of other major

LEIA FELTHAM Guest Column steps. I graduated from high school, a day that felt painfully distant and somehow arrived abruptly. I moved away from childhood into an adult world that had a whole new set of rules.

I met amazing people who have given me the gift of friendship that will hopefully last a lifetime. They’ve given me strength and courage, advice and wisdom, which is more than I ever expected or imagined. I’ve even found a career path that I dream of being successful and happy in. All of these decisions and changes have altered the course of my life. I was always afraid that if I took too big a step I’d fall — and yet I’m still standing. I even have someone now to catch me if I stumble.

What always made New Year’s Eve a struggle was the inescapable feeling of loneliness. Standing in a crowd of peo-

ple, laughing and celebrating and I’m the one dreading midnight. All I could think is “Will this year be the same as the last?” History has a way of repeating itself and it’s not always easy to learn from mistakes. For a long time, it felt like I was trapped in a wheel where everything I’d done wrong was continually coming back to haunt me.

I thought nothing would ever change.

Then, like the wheel brought me back to my mistakes, it also returned me to a place I never thought I could be again.

I’m not particularly religious, but I believe in some force, whether you call it faith or fate, that influences all life.

All I needed was patience and that person that I needed in my life came back to me. It could have been coincidence, merely a series of random events that caused this but I believe some things are simply meant to be.

Now when I think about New Years ‘gone past, I don’t feel as alone knowing that there was someone else watching the sky light up and dreaming of someone they used to know. I think that everything happens for a reason. This

DRINK

belief makes hardship easier to swallow and joys all that more precious. We suffer to know happiness, we lose only to gain something else and then again some things are never really lost.

New Years resolutions may be like wishes on birthday candles and shooting stars — they might come true if you keep them a secret. I’m not that superstitious and my resolution has little to do with outrageous odds like winning the lottery so I’m safe to tell.

I want to go into 2007 proud of what I’ve accomplished. I want to live like each day was my last. Take chances, laugh more and speak my mind. There are years ahead of me filled with promise. I won’t be standing still anymore, and certainly not alone.

Healthy lifestyle From page 21 evening and do something else,” she says.

She says membership fees average out at about $25 per month for adults if you purchase a season pass — or you can test the waters by paying a $6.90 drop-in fee.

At Nubody’s gym in Atlantic Place, St. John’s, manager Ryan Dauphinee says they have the perfect approach for getting fit in 2007. Besides easing the shock to your system by providing towel service, men’s and women’s saunas and “spa-like” change rooms, Nubody’s offers a free, five-step approach to mastering the efficient workout called the Jump Start program to its members.

“The big thing is for people joining this year is to make sure you’re 100 per cent ready mentally to start a fitness regimen because if you’re not, you’re going to be one of those people who give up in February — but you won’t if you do our Smart Start program,” he says. “That will ensure you will be mentally ready.”

Smart Start, an hour-long orientation to incorporate fitness into your busy life, is led

It’s nearly beer

T

hope

he holiday season can bring wretched excess, especially of the food and drink variety.

As an antidote, many people hastily swear off rich foods and, for a while at least, try to limit their alcohol intake.

Brewers and other beverage makers have stepped into the breach with non-alcoholic beers.

Most of them are, quite frankly, wretched and what little flavour they’ve got comes from non-barley grain “adjuncts” like corn or rice. Beck’s, on the other hand, makes a non-alcoholic tipple that actually resembles the real stuff.

“What this brew lacks in alcohol, it makes up in flavour,” goes the description on the Bremen, Germany-based brewery’s website.

Marketing hyperbole from a company that’s fond of calling itself the world’s No. 1 imported beer? Yes. But is it still a whole lot better than most near-beers?

Definitely.

It’s not a classic, but it has a bit of hoppy bitterness and a golden colour deeper than many major brewery products. The only thing to look out for is to buy bottles that haven’t been sitting under bright light. Thanks to a longstanding Beck’s tradition, this beer comes in green bottles, which when combined with bright light can lead to skunkiness.

Rather than making a real beer and then removing the alcohol, Beck’s simply doesn’t add yeast so the beer never ferments. This leaves a bit of sweetness, which some drinkers may find off-put-

ting but isn’t overwhelming.

While the lack of alcohol can be appealing for those merely wishing to avoid another post-New Year’s hangover, it’s also good for beer drinkers looking to cut their calorie count. The Beck’s nonalcoholic brew has 60 calories per bottle, compared to roughly 100 in the brewery’s standard beer. The Beck’s near-beer is also good for anyone avoiding alcohol for other reasons, such as being a designated driver, being on medicine like antibiotics, or being pregnant.

It also happens to be handy if you’ve got a house-guest who’s had one too many, and is insisting on another drink. Pour him one of these and he just might not be able to tell the difference.

For every question there is an answer.

We’re here.

Hope through education, support and solutions.

1.800.321.1433

www.arthritis.ca

— Torstar wire service

by a personal trainer. It is followed by four more lessons in cardio, resistance, circuit training and core strength and is free upon purchase of a membership, which starts at $26 biweekly, depending on the classes or extras you choose. Dauphinee says the classes are popular and booming.

“The spinning (cycling) classes are a big kick,” he says. “It’s in a class atmosphere so it’s motivating, there’s fun music, and it’s led by a fitness instructor.”

Dauphinee says it is an “industry standard” to see an influx of members in January and is expecting this winter to be a busy one. As does Young, who says New Year’s resolutions are the catalyst for many to make fitness a lifestyle and are pleasantly surprised by the outcome.

“This is the motivator, this is why they’re coming in, they want to get healthy, they might want to lose weight, but I find that the people today, what keeps them coming is the social connection that they make and the feel good results.” mandy.cook@theindependent.ca

JANUARY 5, 2007

24 • INDEPENDENTSTYLE

EVENTS

Average lifespan passes 80

By Louise Brown Torstar wire service

es of death from heart disease to suicide, murder, AIDS, pneumonia, diabetes and cancer — except breast canhether they smoke less, eat cer, which hits women more. better or take new wonder But as they lead more healthy drugs to tame their choles- lifestyles and have access to better terol, Canadian men are living longer medications for problems like high and pushing the average life span cholesterol, men are catching up to beyond 80 — a record for this coun- women’s life expectancy, says the try, a new study shows. new study from Statistics Canada, The bad news is, these booming and as they do this, they drive up the ranks of elderly Canadians could average Canadian life span overall. crash our health system unless we Life expectancy for both sexes focus more on helping old people stay combined surpassed 80 for the first healthy and independent, warns an time, said the Statistics Canada international expert in public health. report, reaching 80.2 in 2004, up from “There’s a demographic tsunami 79.9 the year before. headed our way: By the year 2050, While women still tend to live the biggest single group in the longer — their life span is 82.6 years Canadian population will be people compared to men’s 77.8 years — over 80 — the ‘old-old,’” cautioned men’s has been increasing at a faster Dr. Alejandro rate. In the past 25 Jadad, a physiyears, men’s life cian and leading expectancy rose “So when a man loses researcher in 6.4 years, whereas using technoloa wife, he may be losing women’s rose just gy to enhance 3.8 years, which the person who helped people’s health. some experts sug“It’s wondergest is because keep him healthy. For ful to live longer, women already but unless we are living about as women, this doesn’t find ways to long as is reasonhelp people lead ably possible. seem to be the case.” independent Professor Ivan lives — imagine Brown of the tiny tools that prevent you from acci- University of Toronto, manager of the dentally pouring soap into your soup Centre of Excellence for Child or that sound an alarm if your head Welfare, cites men’s gradual move suddenly falls by more than a meter away from strenuous physical labour — this group could break our econo- as a factor in stretching Canadian my,” said Jadad, a professor at the lifespans.

University of Toronto who holds the Brown also said that as women Canada Research Chair in electronic have shouldered a more equal share innovations for promoting health. of the financial responsibility of rais“We spend $150 billion on health ing families, it’s not surprising that care in Canada and we’re already men’s and women’s lifespans would stretched thin with the bulk of the become more similar. population still in middle age,” he Howard Dombrower, a geriatrician said. at Toronto’s Baycrest Centre — “But only two per cent of health where women still outnumber men in spending now goes to prevention. So the chronic care wards — has another for Canada, hitting this 80-year life theory why women live longer than span could be an early warning sign men: they can survive longer after a of trouble.” partner dies.

Traditionally, men have died “Women seem to be more resilient younger than women partly because than men to the death of a spouse, and they were more likely to indulge in if you think about it, women are usuhigher risk behaviours like drinking, ally the ones who are responsible for drug abuse, violence and even aggres- health care in a family. sion that can lead to injury and fatal “So when a man loses a wife, he accidents, said Jadad. may be losing the person who helped Men continue to outnumber keep him healthy. For women, this women for almost all 15 leading caus- doesn’t seem to be the case.”

W

Berni Stapleton and Jim Payne of Revue ‘06

JANUARY 5 • A Feast of Cohen: Vicky Hynes presents the songs of Leonard Cohen in the seventh Feast of Cohen with Tim Baker (Hey! Rosetta), Mary Barry, Jenny Gear, Blair Harvey, Bryan Hennessey, Joel Hynes, Sean Hynes, Jill Porter, Colleen Power, Liz Solo, Des Walsh and The Beautiful Losers Band: Sandy Morris, George Morgan, Kelly Russell, Dave and Geoff Panting, at the LSPU Hall, 753-4531.

Continues through Jan. 6.

• Colin Mochrie and Brad Sherwood present an evening of improvisational comedy, Mile One Centre, 8 p.m.

JANUARY 7 • Avalon Unitarian Fellowship’s weekly service, 10:30 a.m., Anna Templeton Center, 278 Duckworth St. JANUARY 10 • Chris Picco at Folk Night, the Ship Pub, 9 p.m.

• Kitchen party open jam, Turner’s Tavern, Water Street, 9:30 p.m.

• Wessex Society lecture by artist Gerald Squires, Marine

Paul Daly/The Independent

Institute, 8 p.m.

JANUARY 11 • Rising Tide Theatre’s annual Revue starts its provincial tour at the St. John’s Arts and Culture Centre, 8 p.m.

Continues through Jan. 20 in St. John’s.

• MUN Cinema winter series begins with Catch a Fire, Studio 12, Avalon Mall, 7 p.m. More information about this film and the season’s schedule is at www.mun.ca/cinema.

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS • The Independent Artists Cooperative presents the Third Annual Rock Can Roll Independent Music and Video Festival Jan. 26-28, in St. John’s. The cooperative is calling for submissions of short films and videos from bands, and work from filmmakers and new media artists with rock-related subject matter, themes or soundtrack. Entry fee is $10, deadline is Jan. 15. Send submissions, preferably in DVD or mini DV format (VHS is also acceptable) to: Rock Can Roll Records, P.O. Box 2383, Station C, St. John’s,

NL, A1C 6E7. Contact 754-6662 or indieartscoop@gmail.com.

IN THE GALLERIES • Digital works by Ron Pelley, Balance restaurant and art gallery, LeMarchant Road, St. John’s until Jan 6.

• Human Natured Nudes, black and white photographs by Sheilagh O’Leary, Flower Studio Gallery, 124 Military Rd., St. John’s, until Jan. 6.

• Masterworks of Nineteenth-Century French Realism at The Rooms, until Jan 7.

• All In, annual RCA Visual members’ exhibition, RCA gallery, LSPU Hall, until Jan 14.

• Simple Bliss: The Paintings and Prints of Mary Pratt, the Rooms, until Feb 4.

• Thaddeus Holownia: The Terra Nova Suite, The Rooms, until Jan. 7.

• Melt, an interactive video installation

by Toronto-based Michael Alstad, at Eastern Edge Gallery, Harbour Drive, St. John’s • Kaleidoscope, annual group exhibition at Red Ochre Gallery, 96 Duckworth St., St. John’s.

Packing a lunch can save a bundle Jane Taguicana Toronto Star

I

t isn’t the sexiest thing to carry to work every day, but a brown-bag lunch tucked into the corner of a briefcase could easily save 5 per cent of your annual personal spending, experts say.

It’s just human nature that we shrug off “gotta-have-it” purchases and would rather not talk about the boring exercise of slashing personal expenses.

But consolidating credit card debts, opting to take public transit, renegotiating mortgage rates and making your own meals are simple ways to fatten your wallet.

“There’s no magic answer,” says David Chilton, author of the financial advice bestseller The Wealthy Barber.

“Cutting back on dining out, taking lunches with you and eating more often at home are outstanding ways (to cut back.)”

Cultivating frugality is helping Harold Tiamzon secure a more comfortable future. The 25-year-old brand manager for a manufacturing company says implementing a few nips and tucks in his personal spending habits has helped him afford a recent move to a new apartment in pricey downtown Toronto.

For example, Tiamzon figures he will save $4,030 a year by learning how to cook and cutting out his daily ritual of a store-bought coffee and muffin.

“The regular one or two drinks at an expensive lounge bar will also go away.”

Tiamzon says he’s been scrutinizing his expenses in hopes of meeting the demands of his new lifestyle.

To take penny-pinching to the next level, financial planner Graham Fallis of investment dealer ScotiaMcLeod in Ottawa encourages the tried-and-true consolidation of credit-card debts.

“Converting high interest credit and consumer cards to low-interest credit cards can get you ahead,” Fallis said.

For example, a $20,000 debt on a credit card with an interest rate of 18 per cent will trigger interest charges of more than $3,600 a year. On a credit card with 8 per cent interest, the charges drop to $1,600 for savings of $2,000.

Tiamzon consolidated six of his credit cards, including department store cards with rates as high as 28 per cent, to one credit line with an interest rate of 6.5 per cent. After negotiating the lower rate, he switched to automatic payments.

“That helped control and manage all

the payments,” he said.

Opting for public transportation can save thousands of dollars a year, especially considering the high price of fuel. Add in upkeep costs, insurance and amortization, and “owning a car doesn’t seem financially prudent,” Fallis says.

Chilton agrees that cars, while unparalleled for convenience, can be a huge financial drain.

“Relative to our income level, it’s unbelievable how much most of us are willing to spend on them.”

Homeowners enjoy the ability to build equity in their investment, but should never be afraid to push for a better mortgage rate when it comes time to renegotiate, says Fallis.

“Never accept the posted mortgage rate, always negotiate a lower rate.”

The best advice of all is to stop trying to keep up with the Joneses, Chilton says.

“Live within your means and spend less than what you make.”

What’s new in the automotive industry

JANUARY 5-11, 2007

FEATURED VEHICLE

WORLD CLASS The all-new Volvo S80 – Built for the unwritten road. The S80 comes available in either a 4.4-litre 311 HP engine or a 3.2-litre 235 HP engine, both available engines are mated to a six-speed Geartronic transmission. Leave it in automatic mode for carefree driving, or nudge it into manual mode to shift gears yourself. With standard features such as an electronically controlled AWD system, adaptive cruise control, World Class Audio system, personal car communicator, new Four-C and speed dependent steering, heated front seats and an Interior Air Quality System, the 2007 Volvo S80 is built for the comfort of both the driver and passenger alike. The Volvo S80 is available at Global Imports located at 934 Topsail Rd., Mount Pearl. Photo taken on George Street in downtown St. John’s by Paul Daly.

Basket case T

wo months before the Ocean Ranger forget — New Year’s Eve. Time to take stock of sank I went to sea in an offshore supply your life, look back on the past year and make vessel. It was a really bad winter for resolutions to change your life for the better. storms. On Dec. 27, 1981 one such While the clock crept up on midstorm came up and intensified over the night I made a promise: if I ever get next 10 days. I took to sleeping during out of this I’ll never go out on New the day and staying up all night in the Year’s Eve again. wheelhouse watching the waves break The storm subsided around Jan. 5, over the bow. And break over the stern. when even a 20-foot swell seemed And engulf the entire vessel right up to mild and manageable enough to the wheelhouse so that the lifeboats venture out on deck and take some practically floated, which was no small fresh air. accomplishment considering the By mid-January myself and anothMARK lifeboats hung about 60 feet above the er crewmember were able to catch a WOOD waterline. crew change with a helicopter on an The vessel would somehow shake off via the basket hoist. To the WOODY’S oilrig the water and cork back up and taunt the uninitiated (me) it didn’t sound risky WHEELS at all, but for those afraid of heights, next wave. You could feel the shock of impact when the bow dug into a wave. it would prove nerve-wracking.

As it crested the whole ship would shudder and On a clear afternoon the supply vessel rise like a breaching whale half out of the water maneuvered next to the oilrig while a basket and crash again, with the hull taking the full was lowered from a crane atop the rig. The basimpact. It was a rough time, day after day of ket was about two metres across at the base pounding seas. with a couple of chain ladders rising to a peak There was one night of the storm I’ll never two metres high. The dangerous part came as

I wouldn’t have the guts to do it today — it’s one of the most dangerous things I’ve ever done. the crane plucked the basket off the deck of a ship moving up and down in the ocean swell.

You didn’t ride in the basket either — you stood outside on the edge hanging on in case the cable broke. In that case, it was hoped the chains go to the bottom without you.

While standing on deck we were informed that we only have one chance to do it right. As the ship rose on a wave, the cable tightened and two of us made it away on the basket. Then the ship moved out from below us and we found ourselves rising a couple of hundred feet up the side of an oilrig on the Grand Banks in January.

I wouldn’t have the guts to do it today — it’s one of the most dangerous things I’ve ever done.

Within minutes of landing on deck of the oilrig (Bow Drill 1) we were issued survival suits while our helicopter approached. A fresh crew arrived for their shift while we shuffled under the moving chopper blades for our lift home.

The co-pilot stuck his head in the door to give us some last-minute instructions, a crucial bit of advice that still rings in my ears.

Over the roar of the chopper he pointed under a seat and yelled, “That’s the life raft, don’t pull the cord until you get it outside.” Why would we want to take the life raft out? Oh yeah, in case we crashed. The whole offshore industry back then was full of last-minute, life-saving advice.

A month later, on Feb. 14, the Ocean Ranger sank and the sea took 84 lives, some of them my co-workers.

The sea is made of mothers’ tears.

Mark Wood of Portugal Cove-St. Philip’s considers himself lucky.

26 • INDEPENDENTSHIFT

JANUARY 5, 2007

Carlos Barria /Reuters

Top 10 auto racing stories of 2006 T

he biggest auto racing news story 2. DIESEL WINS 24 HOURS of 2006 was the defection from OF LE MANS. Formula One to NASCAR of Although diesel-powered cars are not Juan Pablo Montoya. new to racing, the victory by the Audi It was, to put it mildly, a shocker — R10 at the world’s most famous sports and bigger than just about all car race last June drove home the other Top Ten stories of the the reality that the times realyear combined. ly are a-changin’ when it To put this in context, retired comes to fuelling racing driver Gerhard Burger said machines. these words a few years ago: We’d all better get used to “There are only two motorthe fact that the gas/oil days sports in the world — F1 and will end at some point and, in NASCAR. The rest don’t matthe meantime, the search for ter.” alternative fuels and power NORRIS MCDONALD In this case, truer words sources will have an enorwere never spoken because mous impact on our sport.

Montoya, when he called his And not just in the tangible old boss, Chip Ganassi, to ask sense. Auto racing is an easy about a job, clearly wasn’t target. Remember the Arab thinking of the Indy Racing oil embargo of the early League.

1970s? Which sport got it in the ear for Because F1 is bigger than the sum of “wasting precious resources?” Correct. its parts, Montoya’s decision to leave Auto racing. And that sort of thing could easily happen again as the world “goes was no big deal.

But it was a huge coup for green.”

NASCAR, because Montoya is one of Diesels at Le Mans; ethanol in the the most famous auto racing names in cars at Indianapolis. It’s just the beginthe world. He also symbolizes ning.

NASCAR’s push for diversity and you can bet it will exploit his presence to 3. CANADA’S F1 PRESENCE VANISHES the hilt.

NASCAR can now do what CART It was a double whammy. Jacques talked about for years but never did: Villeneuve was shown the door (again) market itself to the “other America” — by Formula One and the first Canadian that huge population made up of minori- owner of an F1 team, Alex Schnaider of ties.

Toronto, was forced to sell out.

Montoya was the first to leave F1 for Poor Jacques. He’s talking these days NASCAR. He won’t be the last. as if he left F1 with his head high, misHere, in order, are the rest of the Top sion accomplished. But that’s just Ten stories of `06: because he’s happy in his personal life

TRACK TALK

— he’s got a new wife and a new son.

Professionally, it was another slap in the face, He did not resign from BMWSauber; he was fired. Just as he was fired by BAR three years ago.

It really is quite tragic.

Schnaider, a Russian-born Canadian billionaire, purchased Eddie Jordan’s team nearly two years ago and renamed it Midland F1. Schnaider had the best of intentions.

The problem is, it ain’t easy. If it was, as the saying goes, everybody would be doing it. (Which explains why the landscape is littered with bankrupt teams, team owners and team sponsors.)

Alex Schnaider is far from bankrupt.

But he probably got out when the going was good.

4. ALEX ZANARDI TESTS F1 CAR. Alex Zanardi was one of the most talented drivers ever to strap himself into a racecar (F1, CART) and it was a miracle that he wasn’t killed in that dreadful accident in Germany five years ago. But he lost his legs and a lesser man would have given up.

Not Zanardi. An inspiration not only to handicapped people around the world but to just about everybody, he learned to walk again using prosthetic legs and then went back to racing in the German touring car series. And not only racing, but winning.

Three years ago, he returned to the speedway in Klettwitz and drove a Champ Car for the 13 laps he’d missed as a result of the wreck (which happened on lap 187 of a 200-lap race) and

then, a month ago, he did two days of testing in a BMW-Sauber F1 car at Valencia, in Spain.

5. BOURDAIS WINS THIRD STRAIGHT CHAMP CAR TITLE. Sebastien Bourdais did for Indy car racing what hasn’t been done since Ted Horn did it back in the 1940s — win three straight championships.

Other drivers in other series (Michael Schumacher, Steve Kinser) have done that, and more, but Bourdais’s hat-trick still ranks up there as one of the great accomplishments.

Yes, the Champ Car talent level leaves much to be desired but the guy is that good.

6. DENNY HAMLIN’S GREAT YEAR IN NEXTEL CUP. The guy’s 27 and he’s a rookie in the top stock-car racing series in the world.

But he’s not just driving in it, he’s winning in it.

He shocked NASCAR by winning the first big race of the season, the Budweiser Shootout, at Daytona last February. Then he won two races during the season and made it into the Chase for the Championship.

He eventually finished third in the title run.

7. NASCAR BUYS CASCAR The rumour had been around for several years. The deal was finally done in the latter half of the year and many people think it’s just the shot in the arm that Canadian national stock car racing needs.

But all’s been quiet on the NASCAR Canada front since. In this day and age of instant (and constant) communication, this has been somewhat disconcerting.

Canadian Tire is on board as title sponsor but that is just about the extent of what anybody knows about this new series. Where they’ll race, the number of races in the championship and the date of the first event is anybody’s guess.

8. SCHUMACHER RETIRES Some people will think this story should have been higher in the Top Ten but, since it was no surprise, it’s ranked here just for the record.

I wrote, when it happened, that it would prove to be a bad thing for Formula One. But I was mistaken.

There is a real sense of anticipation, missing previously, as we head toward the ‘07 season.

Fernando Alonso, the two-time champion, has switched teams and there are no team orders at the “new Ferrari” (they insist). So the word championship is wide open.

9. PAUL TRACY Fighting other drivers? All dolled-up in a wrestler’s mask and cape? Drinking and driving? His one hour and 15 minutes are nearly up. Pray he gets his act together so that if he can’t go out a winner, he’ll at least have his dignity.

10. PAUL DANA AND KENDALL HEBERT Passion, desire, dedication and determination. It wasn’t enough.

Ford puts brakes on Freestar

I

t’s the end of the line for the Ford Freestar minivan. Ford won’t restart production of the slowselling minivan at its Oakville assembly complex so it can concentrate on output of the hot new Edge and Lincoln MKX crossover utility vehicles.

The company had temporarily shelved output of the Freestar in November so it could accelerate the launch of the crossover vehicles.

Ford had planned to resume production of the Freestar early this year but spokesperson John Arnone confirmed this morning that the company has now decided not to do it.

The minivan has been a huge disappointment for Ford since the company redesigned its Windstar model and renamed it the Freestar in 2003. Better innovations and more competition from rivals pulled down sales of the Freestar.

The Oakville plant was the only site in the world where Ford built minivans. It exported the model to 30 countries.

Ford plans to begin assembling a new crossover-type vehicle in Oakville to replace the minivan next year. Ford calls the new Fairlane a “people mover.”

— Torstar wire service

JANUARY 5, 2007

INDEPENDENTSHIFT • 27

Hy-Drive bridge to hydrogen future

By San Grewal Torstar wire service

T

om Brown didn’t exactly have a Eureka! moment when he was first shown in 1998 how a Calgary-based company planned to use water to help the world.

But like Archimedes — the ancient mathematician who is said to have discovered the principle of buoyancy and leapt from his bath shouting the Greek word for “I have found it!” — Brown knew he was on to something big. The former management consultant was so impressed with Hy-Drive Technologies Ltd. that he went from being an investor to becoming the president and CEO. Since moving from Calgary to Mississauga in 2003, Hy-Drive has quietly developed its revolutionary technology into a product slowly being adopted around the world.

And Brown’s convinced it’s only a matter of time before the Hy-Drive unit becomes as common as the water that runs it.

The technology is used with any internal combustion engine, creating hydrogen gas from water and then injecting it into the engine to drastically improve fuel efficiency and reduce harmful pollutants that damage air quality.

Trucks, cars, generators, buses, trains and anything else that uses a traditional engine can easily be fitted with one of the compact units that only require a couple litres of distilled water to run.

HreinOrka, an Icelandic company, just signed a contract with Hy-Drive to help that country reach its goal of becoming a hydrogen-based economy by 2050.

Distribution agreements for India, China, Japan and Hong Kong have been signed and existing contracts have already helped Hy-Drive sell its units in Canada, the U.S., the U.K., Australia and New Zealand.

Up to now the company has focused on units for long-haul trucks, but a partnership with Vaughan-based auto-parts manufacturer Martinrea International Inc. has been established to get the HyDrive technology into cars.

Sitting behind the desk of his spartan office, Brown explains that while fuel and hydrogen-cell technology might one day replace the need for oil completely, it probably won’t happen in his lifetime.

“It may be the future, but we’re the bridge to that future.”

Brown’s philosophy is that until the infrastructure evolves to help the world make the transition from a fuel-based economy, the best approach is to work with what we have.

Hy-Drive says its units increase fuel efficiency by at least 9 per cent and by as much as 40 per cent. A California study of the Hy-Drive unit showed emission reductions of 74 per cent in hydrocarbons and 80 per cent in particulate matter.

High time to put the top up T

his one is going to take some explaining, so I’m calling on my fearless readers to help me

out.

We have been experiencing unseasonably warm weather of late. I am aware of that. I have been dashing out of the house in just a sweater, I haven’t shoveled anything but my own words in recent memory, and I still haven’t put the hose away.

I was on the highway a few days ago. Beside me, zipping along in the passing lane was a very smart little four-door BMW. It was a convertible, and to make sure we minivan drivers didn’t miss a moment of envy, the driver had the top down.

He also had all the windows up and I’m sure the heater was going full blast, but looking ridiculous is apparently worth it to remind one and all that you are in a convertible.

The driver of this car was well prepared for such an outing, however. He had his hair slicked back with half of the Alberta tar sands, in that style made famous by the Harris government. Mike Harris and Ernie Eves, like Fred Flintstone and

Barney Rubble, sharing a hairdo as ridiculous situation, freezing their they gutted a province. I wouldn’t tails off in December, and there was take style tips from a politician any nothing they could say about it. If it more than I would a writer. were two couples, Alpha Female So, hair helmet in place, Top Gun would have been in the front seat sunglasses ready for action, this guy with Top Gun. Instead, as it is writwas flying down the highway mid- ten in the Code of Dumb, Beta Male afternoon. It gets better. got the front seat, and the two Held hostage in the car women hopped into the with him were three peoback. They will grow older, ple I’m guessing were his they will grow something employees. I could hear a else, and this will change. phantom conversation in Instead, these two women my head that took place with shoulder length hair that morning. were being whipped stupid, “Well, I’ve made lunch because everyone knows a reservations for today! woman cleans out her purse Everyone ready?” in September and takes out LORRAINE SOMMERFELD “Sure, boss. Shall I all the scrunchies. If you drive? I have a minivan.” have long hair and you go “Oh, no need, I’ve got in a convertible, you automy new Beemer — we’ll matically tie your hair up or all fit!” risk going blind.

There were two younger From my vantage point in women in the back seat. There was a the lane beside them, I could see Top younger man trapped in the front. Gun yelling to Beta Male all the cut How did I know they were co-work- lines from the BMW brochure. He ers? How did I know this was their was gesturing as he yelled, so Beta boss? wouldn’t miss anything. Mostly, Because they were stuck in a Beta was just missing his desk.

POWER SHIFT

The captives in the back seat were futilely trying to keep their hair and their dresses down, but like the stick arms on a snowman, they are frozen in place. They had endured a whole forced festive lunch of old guy jokes, and were now enduring the fact that the boss got a new car as a Christmas bonus, and they each got a fruit basket.

I do not get convertibles in the winter. Unless you have a girl in a sash waving from your car as you drive five kilometres an hour, and a big fat guy in a red suit is bringing up the rear, convertibles are for summer.

Come to think of it, the people I saw probably would have welcomed a jolly well-padded guy, if only for the extra warmth.

So, tell me folks. I totally get it for that first crazy hot day in spring. I totally get it for that last warm fall day of an Indian summer. But if your passengers are crying ice cubes like Chilly Willy, I say it’s time to put the top up. www.lorraineonline.com

Boom times for auto sales

T

he auto industry overcame a slow start to 2006 and ended the year with its second-best Canadian sales on record: just over 1.6 million units, up by two per cent from 2005.

Industry leader General Motors saw its market share decline by 2.8 percentage points to 25.9 per cent, while Toyota gained one point and sold 12.1 per cent of the country’s new light vehicles.

Carmakers overall “you might say, ‘shot the lights out’ in the last half of 2006 and managed to turn what looked like a relatively bad sales year, midway through the year, into a slightly positive performance once the year was completed,” said Dennis DesRosiers, head of industry data compiler DesRosiers Automotive Consultants.

The year’s total of 1,614,700 vehicles was second only to 2002, when Canadians drove away in 1,703,246 new passenger cars and light trucks, including pickups, sport utility vehicles and minivans.

DesRosiers noted that the past year’s sales were supported by “the unbelievable economic performance in the resource- and energy-rich provinces.”

Sales were down in all provinces aside from Alberta, Saskatchewan, British Columbia and Newfoundland.

Among the North American Big Three automakers, Ford had an eight per cent volume increase to 228,878 vehicles for the year, while the DaimlerChrysler’s Chrysler group gained 1.7 per cent to 220,553 and General Motors declined 7.8 per cent to 418,176.

Sales for Japan-headquartered Toyota, including its Lexus premium line, rose 11.4 per cent to 195,780, while Honda, including Acura, advanced 7.4 per cent to 165,985.

— Torstar wire service

NO ONE IS ALONE IN THE FIGHT AGAINST CANCER. Behind every person who is touched by cancer, there is a growing force fighting all types of cancer in communities eve r y w h e re.

The Canadian Cancer Society is leading the way through research funding, information services, support pro g rams – and we advocate for healthy public policy. Together, we’re growing stronger. To volunteer, donate or for more information, visit cancer.ca or call 1 888 939-3333.

28 • INDEPENDENTFUN

JANUARY 5, 2007

WEEKLY DIVERSIONS ACROSS 1 Liquid or sticky mess 5 Summer time in Black Diamond 8 Mace, to nutmeg 12 Remuneration 15 Whitewater place 17 Humbug preceder 18 Very short skirt 19 Liver secretion 20 Hooded shirt worn under Inuit parka 21 Calls the accused to court 23 Earthen pot 24 Kidlit author (Love You Forever) 26 Harbour craft 27 Actor at the Comédie-Française 29 Macaque 30 Soil turner 32 Lawn-care item 36 Reversal 37 Canadian forest cat 39 Tokyo, formerly 40 Alberta’s flower 41 Squash 44 Partway through a semester 46 Paris museum 47 Egg producer 49 Face 53 Pelvic bones 54 Get on it!

55 Get ready to drive: ___ up 56 Egg ___ 57 Cape Breton coal miners’ choir: ___ of the

CHUCKLE BROS

Deeps 58 Our highest mountain 60 Unwhittled whiskers 62 Needlefish 63 Sank teeth into 64 “___ at a time!”

65 Type of frost 66 Phone starter?

67 Site of P.E.I. Potato Museum 69 WWII submarine 71 Canadian novels, as a whole 73 Located on the right side (zool.)

75 He was thrown out 77 ___-by-Chance, Nfld.

79 Exclamation of disgust 80 Summer fair feature 81 Maritime wildflower 82 Two-masted sailboat 85 Had a meeting 86 Alphabet trio 89 Norma and Carmen 91 Sweet potato lookalike 93 Mob 95 Departed 96 Longtime Chatelaine editor 101 Raptor’s claw 102 Cheers for a bullfighter 103 Blacken over heat 104 Three: prefix 105 Vote in 106 Grief-stricken 107 Japanese city with 1995 earthquake

108 Sure thing!

109 Bugs DOWN 1 Prairie grass: blue ___ 2 Started smoking (2 wds.)

3 Just like ewe?

4 Clothespins 5 Business deg.

6 Pub fixture: ___ board 7 Strum idly 8 French pal 9 Oil drilling apparatus 10 Traveller’s stopover 11 Mona ___ 12 Mushroom cap 13 Attract 14 Long 16 He wrote Barney’s Version 19 ___ up! (Cheers!)

22 Long follower in a story 25 Strictly by the rules: according to ___ 28 Longtime “As It Happens” theme: “___ Soul” (Koffman) 31 Business letter abbr.

33 Golfer Mike 34 Canadian match maker 35 Go bad 38 Bantu language with clicks 41 Cirque du ___ 42 S. end of Ont.’s Trent-Severn Waterway: Bay of ___

43 Rad. of a kind 44 A ___ of Glass (Urquhart) 45 Even once 46 W. Indian dance with bar 48 Delivery vehicle 50 Quebec violinist Dubeau 51 Patrick Roy, e.g.

52 White heron 54 Ripen, as cheese 55 Cigarette by-product 58 Singer McKennitt 59 Black chalcedony 60 Squeeze snake 61 Opposite of faster?

65 Whole: comb. form 66 It does a bang-up job 68 Regards with approval 69 Itch 70 Thai currency 71 Fermented apple juice 72 Fabric from wood pulp 74 N.W.T. hamlet, for short 76 ___ and vigour 77 Small roof dome 78 Lifted the lid 81 Company emblems 83 Quebec strongman, once 84 Hurried 86 More competent 87 Prevent 88 Dollars and ___ 90 Prov. with Blackstrap

Mountain 92 Additional

94 Indonesian resort island

97 New: prefix 98 Pat gently

99 Poet’s word 100 Small bite

Brian and Ron Boychuk

WEEKLY STARS ARIES MAR. 21 TO APR. 19) Shutting people out to avoid distractions, even under a deadline, can cause hurt feelings. Instead, return calls and e-mails and explain why you need a zone of privacy for now.

TAURUS (APR. 20 TO MAY 20) Although your keen Bull’s eyes can usually discern what’s fact from what’s faux, that upcoming decision will need really solid data before you can risk a commitment.

GEMINI (MAY 21 TO JUNE 20) As your confidence grows, you should be able to work toward your goals with more enthusiasm.

Open your mind to suggestions.

Some of them might even work for you.

CANCER (JUNE 21 TO JULY 22) Reconnecting with someone from your past stirs up that old sense of adventure. But before you do anything else, be sure to get answers to those still-lingering questions.

LEO (JULY 23 TO AUG. 22) Some people might resent the way you plan to resolve a difficult situation. But your commitment to making tough but fair decisions soon wins you their respect and support.

VIRGO (AUG. 23 TO SEPT. 22) Mixed signals could be causing that vexing workplace problem.

Before you choose to leave the project, ask for a meeting, where you can get things out in the open.

LIBRA (SEPT. 23 TO OCT. 22)

Your good intentions could backfire if you’re not careful with other people’s feelings. Try using persuasion, not pressure, to get others to see your side of the situation.

SCORPIO (OCT. 23 TO NOV.21) Your dedication to finishing the task at hand is laudable. But be careful not to overdo the midnight oil bit. Take time for relaxation with someone very special.

SAGITTARIUS (NOV. 22 TO DEC. 21) Although your intuition will help you make some tough choices in the first half of the month, you’ll need more facts to back up your actions later on.

CAPRICORN (DEC.22 TO JAN. 19) All that hard work and research in the workplace finally pays off as

you’d hoped it would. Ignore comments from jealous types out to get the Goat riled up.

AQUARIUS (JAN.20 TO FEB. 18) An unfair decision creates unnecessary problems. But avoid anger and move carefully as you work this out. Expect to get support from an unlikely source.

PISCES (FEB. 19 TO MAR.20) A fuzzy financial vista persists until midmonth, when things begin to clear up. You’ll also gain a better perspective on how to handle those pesky personal problems.

BORN THIS WEEK: You have a wonderful way of being there for those who need your help in difficult times. (c) 2007 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, JANUARY 5-11, 2007 — PAGE 29

Sarah Davis (facing camera) enjoys the camaraderie of the dressing room and her teammates.

Photos by Paul Daly/The Independent

Under aged, over skilled At 14, Sarah Davis is among the best female hockey players in the province

By Don Power For The Independent

J

amie Jewers remembers getting her first glimpse of Sarah Davis at a provincial under-15 hockey camp a few years ago. That first impression was a lasting one.

“She was 11 at the time, and she had tons of skill and ability,” recalls Jewers, who still coaches Davis, now with the St. Thomas of Villanova High School girls team.

One of the first things Jewer did was prepare Jeff and Donna Davis for the inevitable.

“When I saw her as an 11-yearold, I said to her parents, ‘get ready to find a place for her to go, because I really think she’s got a lot of potential.’

“I think she’s a total package.

She’s got work ethic, a great attitude; she’s a really good team player. She’s got a lot of skill.”

Jewers is hardly alone in her assessment. Ask anyone about girls’ hockey in this province, and Davis’s name is usually the first to be mentioned.

Just 14, Davis was recently named to the province’s Canada Games team that will compete at the 2007 games in Whitehorse.

Women’s hockey is open to players born in 1988 and later, which means Davis will play against competition three years older.

Jewers says not to worry.

“We had her at the Challenge Cup this year with the under-18 team,” Jewers explains. “She was an under-ager. She was one of the top players even at that level.

She’s more than earned her spot on our team.

“She really was one of the players on our team who stood out.”

Davis’s play was not only

recognized by the provincial coaches, it was also noticed by people at Hockey Canada.

Wally Kozak is Hockey Canada’s head scout for the national women’s program. He praises Davis’s ability.

“Sarah Davis is one of the top forwards on the under-18 provincial team, which is amazing because of her age,” Kozak says.

“She has size, skill and strength and good hockey sense. She is one of the top under-15 players I have seen this year and we are looking forward to see her play at the Canada Winter Games.

“She will play the team game, and at the same time rise to the occasion to help her team using her individual abilities that she demonstrated so well at the Atlantic Challenge. She is young and has lots of time to keep developing.”

The Conception Bay Regional Minor Hockey product has been wowing players, coaches and fans since she started playing at age seven. Davis was enrolled in figure

Things that may happen in 2007 A

new year brings with it a clean sheet of ice, so to speak. For me, it also means a clean sheet of paper, an unobstructed view of what may or may not take place.

So since the view has been cleared, let’s take a look at the year ahead at a couple of events.

For Brad Gushue’s curling team, a clean sheet is just what’s needed this year.

Exactly 12 months ago, Gushue and his mates were on a high, being feted all over the Avalon Peninsula — and the province really — for their surprise win at the Olympic curling trials. The rink would, of course, go on to capture Olympic gold in Italy in late February, thereby securing the story of the year before the year was two months old.

Since then the team has been treated like royalty everywhere except on the ice. There, the foursome of Gushue, Mark Nichols, Jamie Korab and Chris Schille (the new second who replaced Russ Howard, who had replaced Mike Adam) are treated just like any other men with brooms. They are simply opponents — with a larger target on their backs to be sure, but opposition nonetheless.

As the new year breaks, Nichols is at home resting his leg, Adam is in school, severed completely from his

DON POWER

Power Point

team (although not apparently from his friends, although that may be argued), and Gushue is an embattled skip, wondering how he’s going to get through January, let alone 2007.

The Tankard takes place in Gander Feb. 6-11. Despite everything, Gushue represents Newfoundland and Labrador at the Brier in Hamilton.

The coming year also brings the Canadian senior men’s softball championship to the city in late August.

Newfoundland is one of the stronger softball centres in Canada, even though the St. John’s league has just four teams and the players are rarely from St. John’s. At least a dozen local players play for (and are key parts of) mainland teams. Our provincial junior team won the national title last year.

But that doesn’t mean all should be well in August. Under the leadership (if that term can even be used) of Lloyd Power, Softball Newfoundland and Labrador is a mess. There’ll be more fighting before this tournament than in the House of Assembly.

The players who are away are being invited home to play as New-

foundland’s top team. That means the guys who play here may get shafted out of a game of ball.

It should make for a great summer of softball fights at Lions Park.

Although my view is unobstructed, it’s difficult to say where the Herder Memorial Trophy will spend the summer.

This being January, senior hockey teams on the east and west coast will begin the process of loading up on their rosters. As any serious hockey fan can tell you, the season never begins until after Jan. 10, when players must be signed to a card.

And even then, there’s nothing final with Hockey Newfoundland and Labrador.

However, I will take a leap of faith and say it’s going to be very difficult to wrest the trophy from the hands of its current owners, the Conception Bay North Cee Bees.

Dominant in the Avalon East league, the Cee Bees will retain the Herder, and parade through Harbour Grace once again in April.

••• In a splendid, sure-fire Hall of Fame NHL career, Steve Yzerman scored 692 goals. With his penchant for going to the net, there’s no doubt he deflected more than one of them in.

Yzerman continued deflecting

I will take a leap of faith and say it’s going to be very difficult to wrest the trophy from the hands of its current owners, the Conception Bay North Cee Bees.

Tuesday night, but this time he was redirecting praise showered upon him during a Detroit Red Wings ceremony to retire his No. 19 jersey.

With Joe Louis Arena in Detroit filled to capacity — not only with fans but with many former Red Wings, great and not-so-great — Yzerman saw his number raised up with Terry Sawchuk (1), Ted Lindsay (7), Gordie Howe (9), Alex

skating and would often go watch her brother Bryan (two years older) play and practise hockey. Finally, she asked her Dad if she could play.

“Sarah’s got a bright future,” says Chris Whelan, who coaches the Canada Games women’s team and is the technical director of the CBR association and very familiar with Davis. “You watch Sarah at a high school game and she’s like a man among boys.

“She’s got it all and probably the thing she’s got going for her most is she’s got a passion for the game.

She just loves to play and she’s incredibly smart when it comes to playing.”

Davis’s abilities are evident during a high school girls game. She carries the play seemingly at will, ragging the puck the length of the ice before dishing off to an open teammate.

Whelan says even though she appears to be much better than the other high school females, people See “Skill and strength,” page 30

Delvecchio (10) and Sid Abel (12).

But while others who spoke talked of Yzerman’s leadership, dedication, passion and maturity, Yzerman redirected all talk away from himself and onto the organization.

He said while he was captain, coach Scotty Bowman was the real leader of the Wing teams that won three Stanley Cups.

He even told the fans, to a chorus of boos, no less, that his leadership ability was “overblown.”

He thanked his family, the Ilitch family, teammates of all stature (Tim Cheveldae was specifically mentioned), and said the credit for all his success was due to everybody but himself.

Not being a Red Wing fan but a hockey fan, I was very familiar with his credentials, and always enjoyed watching him play for Canada whenever he wore the maple leaf.

However, if ever there were a moment where the classy superstar tag ever fit, Tuesday night’s retirement ceremony was it. Yzerman embodies everything good you want to see in an athlete: humility, gratitude, a profound genuine feeling that he doesn’t think he should be receiving this attention. donniep@nl.rogers.com

30 • INDEPENDENTSPORTS

JANUARY 5, 2007

Skill and strength From page 29 need to remember she’s just 14 and in Grade 9.

“You have to remember she’s playing against 17-year-olds in Grade 12,” Whelan cautions. “You think about what she can do at that age.”

Davis’s passion for the game extends beyond female hockey. Since she started, Davis has played with and against boys.

Today, she’s a co-captain on the CBR bantam A boys all-star team in Tri-Com. And even though the boys game is a lot more physical, Davis is undeterred.

“I’ve been playing with the same group of guys since I was seven, so it’s not really any different,” the Paradise native says. “They treat me like one of the guys. Sometimes they give me a hard time, but I get over it.

“I like playing bantam. Girls hockey in Ontario is even faster than the boys hockey I play now. The boys hockey can help me with the places I want to go.”

And Davis wants to go places.

“My dream is to play on the Olympic team,” she shyly says, adding a more realistic and closer goal is to attend prep school and university.

That shouldn’t be a problem.

“I really think she can get her post-secondary education paid for through hockey,” Jewers notes.

Whelan goes further.

“It’s tough to predict what will happen two or three or four years down the road,” he says, “but Sarah has the abilities to definitely play for the national under-22 team. Will she play for the national (senior) team? I think there’s a chance of that too.

“One of the great things she’s got going for her is she wants to play the game. For anybody to succeed and make it to the highest level possible, they’ve got to really commit themselves to off ice training, learning the game, the nutrition, the whole works. I think Sarah does that.

“The sky is the limit for her, but it kind of depends on what kind of interest she has over the next few years. Everything you need is all there.

“What happens over the next three years will tell the tale, but if she stays with the game and continues the interest and continues her progress, she’ll be a phenom.” donniep@nl.rogers.com

The year of the cabin Forget cutting calories or heading to the gym — Paul Smith resolves to build a log cabin in 2007

I

t’s time again for New Year’s resolutions: eat less, cut down on the coffee, go to the gym, no more greasy chicken, same old song and dance. Come to think of it, most Jan. 1 resolutions either deprive us of pleasure or impose misery.

Maybe it’s time to resolve to do something that I’ve been putting off, something I’ve always wanted to do, but just haven’t found or made the time for. I turned 47 yesterday and the clock just keeps on ticking. Nobody knows how long they have left to play.

I have quite a long list of things to do in the back of my head; maybe this year I can tick off a big one. I’m going to treat myself in 2007.

Let me see now. I’ve loved airplanes and flying since childhood. Imagine having your own bush plane, a small Cessna or a Piper Super Cub. The adventures would be endless.

As a kid I read Field and Stream religiously; images of Piper Cubs flying sheep hunters and their gear into the remote foothills of Alaskan Mountains fuelled my daydreams. These northern workhorses could scout the mountains for game and nimbly land on a river’s gravel bar or an alpine meadow. This was pretty romantic stuff to a young hunter. Some day I would hunt and fish where only a plane could take me — and indeed I have, but there’s still a severe itch left unscratched.

You know what they say about boys, men and toy prices. Well, now I’m dreaming about owning and piloting my very own light aircraft.

Forty-seven years on Earth and still daydreaming.

Can you imaging the freedom? Flying over Newfoundland’s most remote wilderness, scout-

PAUL SMITH

The Rock

Outdoors ing for moose and caribou, landing on crystalclear lakes and casting a fly from the pontoon of my own plane. Now that’s the way to live — like Lee Wulff flying his Super Cub out of Portland Creek in the 1960s, on a quest for world-class trout and salmon fishing. Maybe 2007 will be the year I get my pilot’s license.

But flight training and aircraft are expensive dreams. I’ve got a daughter in college and another finishing high school this year. Flying or tuition? Perhaps 2007 might be best dedicated to a cheaper tick on my daydream checklist.

Maybe I’ll fly when the kids are educated and independent.

And now for an economical resolution: building a log cabin. I’ve always fancied log cabins; not the big fancy expensive ones on the covers of drugstore magazines, but those cosy tranquil dwellings nestled amongst tall trees with moose antlers over the doors and snowshoes on the walls.

Not the variety that come as kits loaded on 18-wheelers, but modest earthy shelters constructed of hand-hewn logs cut on site. Like trapper’s cabins from Labrador to Alaska. The only cost is sweat, time and simple tools. This I can afford now.

Of all the hunting and fishing I’ve done, it has all been without the benefit of a cabin to call my very own; a place to cook up a feed and have a

nip of rum on a blustery winter day. So this year I resolve to build one.

Actually, Rob and I have already discussed this cabin issue and have a site picked out, strategically located for moose hunting and trout fishing. It’s the log part that needs resolving. It will be much more work than the standard twoby-four and plywood construction, but both of us agree that the personal satisfaction will be worth it.

The plan is to harvest our logs this winter and pile them at the building site. We will peel them in the spring and let them dry over the summer.

Come September, they should be dried enough to begin actual construction. I suppose a rough cabin could be built from green unpeeled logs, but Rob and I really want to do this right. I’ll be reading up on log building and planning the actual construction.

The only material not from the woods will be some felt or plastic for the roof, but whichever synthetic we choose, it will be covered by moss for that natural look and durability. Moss cushions the impact of ice falling from overhanging trees that would most certainly puncture plastic or felt. Many traditional cabins were sealed on top with birch bark for water resistance and then moss for durability. We’d use birch bark if larger trees were more abundant.

Anyway, by next Christmas we should be nearing completion of our humble woodsy abode. I’ll keep you posted and Happy New Year.

Paul Smith lives in Spaniard’s Bay and enjoys all the outdoors Newfoundland and Labrador has to offer. flyfishtherock@hotmail.com

NFL PICKS Wild-card weekend Sammy’s Crystal Football SATURDAY, JAN. 6 KANSAS CITY AT INDIANAPOLIS (-6 1/2) The running game will be key to the Chief’s ability to keep the Colt’s offense off the field. Expect Kansas City to run the ball as Indy has had problems stopping the run all year. TAKE KANSAS CITY (+6 1/2) DALLAS AT SEATTLE (-3) Dallas has been trampled in its last three home games, being outscored 104-55. Seattle is favoured by only three points because three of the four Seahawk starting defensive backs are out due to injury. Dallas is no doubt happy to be the road but … TAKE SEATTLE (-3)

SUNDAY, JAN.7 NY JETS AT NEW ENGLAND (-9 1/2) The Jets surprised even themselves this season by squeaking into the playoffs with a relatively weak schedule. In the last 18 games against each other, the underdog is 14-3-1 against the spread. That said … TAKE THE JETS (+9 1/2) NY GIANTS AT PHILADELPHIA (-6 1/2) Even though the Eagles lost QB Donovan McNabb to injury, backup QB Jeff Garcia has filled in nicely. Philly is entering this game with a five-game win streak. The Giants are missing a few big names and the Eagles were able to rest their key players last weekend. Got to TAKE PHILADELPHIA (-6 1/2)

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JANUARY 5, 2007

INDEPENDENTSPORTS • 31

INDEPENDENTCLASSIFIED FRIDAY THROUGH THURSDAY , JANUARY 5-11, 2007 — PAGE 32

FEATURED HOME 26 COUNTRY GARDEN RD.

Photos by Paul Daly/The Independent

Leslie-Ann Stephenson

Gillian Fisher

26 Country Garden Road $499,900.00 Enjoy spectacular sunsets over Conception Bay from this spacious one-year-old executive bungalow in St. Philips’ Country Garden Estates. The many features include a large eat-in custom built Artistic kitchen with a 7-foot granite top island, Corian countertops, built-in appliances including wine fridge, bar services area and a walk-in pantry. A formal dining room with cove lighting, den/bedroom, bath and a master suite that includes walk-in closet, 4 pc ensuite with in-floor heating are additional upper level features. A large family room with rough-in wet-bar, 2 well-sized bedrooms, laundry/office, full bath and lots of storage completes the lower level walk-out. Full sized windows in all lower level rooms. Both levels are wired for stereo, cable, and high-speed internet. Both the upper and lower level gardens are landscaped with Newfoundland bluestone. Driveway and garden lighting rough-ins have been strategically placed in the landscaping. The full size 2 car garage is insulted and heated and ample parking is available. This home was built with entertaining in mind. For details call Peter Goulding of Remax United Inc. at 364-8848.

Southcott Estates