CANADIAN COMMUNITY NEWSPAPER AWARD 2012
Publications Mail Agreement No. 391275
46th Year No. 21 THURS., MAY 24, 2012
GAZETTE NORTH ISLAND
EDITORIAL Page 6
LETTERS Page 7
www.northislandgazette.com NORTH ISLAND LIFE Page 12
PAGE 11 North Islanders gather nearly 30 tonnes of debris in cleanup of back roads.
Newsstand $1.25 + HST CLASSIFIEDS Page 17-19
SPORTS Page 13
McNeill student tops in Canada Gazette staff Already named the top apprentice carpenter in B.C., Port McNeill’s Morgan Brown is now best in the nation. The 21-year-old North Island Secondary School graduate and current Vancouver Island University student represented British Columbia at the Canadian National Skills competition in Edmonton from May 14 to 16. He qualified for the national competition after winning the gold medal in carpentry among post-secondary students at the Skills Canada competition in Abbotsford, B.C. last month. During the two-day Skills Canada competition, Brown had to build a child’s play house with limited time and materials. Plans provided the dimensions, which were checked closely, along with fit
Feet fleet
Jordan Laughlin races Blue between games in the annual Sointula Baseball Tournament Sunday in Sointula. See more coverage on Page 13 and online at northislandgazette.com. J.R. Rardon
See page 4 ‘Apprentice wins’
Fisherman denies court’s jurisdiction Monisha Martins Black Press Holding out his birth certificate, the one which assigned him an “English” name, James Wadhams approached the bench and asserted the charge he’s facing has been laid against a fictional being, albeit one who exists on only paper. “I’m not an aboriginal,
I’m an Indian,” Wadhams said before taking a seat. In court, he asked to be called “Gee-alas” – his Kwakiutl name, one which he refused to spell because Kwakwala is only spoken and has no alphabet. Wadhams hoped the saga that began in July 2009 would finally end last week.
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caught under “It’s been too long,” he said “This here is an aboriginal communal before entering fraud.” license for Port Coquitlam food, social, Provincial James Wadhams ceremonial Court. purposes to A resident of the owners of Port McNeill two fish and on Vancouver Island, Wadhams was found chip shops in Maple Ridge guilty last July of illegally and Pitt Meadows. Wadhams and his “spokesselling halibut that had been
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person,” Van Gale Dumont, or “Ste-emas,” continue to insist the province of British Columbia has no jurisdiction over them. The Kwakiutl, he argued, had never ceded their land to the British and had every right to make a living through fishing. “The federal jurisdiction does not exist here,” said
Ste-emas, who tested Judge Steinberg’s patience repeatedly by demanding he produce his oath of office and persistently declaring neither the judge nor the Queen of England had power over him.
See page 4 ‘Judge orders’
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