THE WEDNESDAY
CANADIAN COMMUNITY NEWSPAPER AWARD 2012
TRI-CITY NEWS RIVERVIEW: Grand plan
Summertime, arts time
SEE PAGE 14
SEE ARTS, PAGE 22
JULY 4, 2012 www.tricitynews.com
INSIDE
Tom Fletcher/10 Letters/11 A Good Read/16 Sports/26
Fireworks fizzle first, then flash Fireworks fans breached fence, forced stoppage By Janis Warren THE TRI-CITY NEWS
Coquitlam Mounties have launched a criminal investigation after some Canada Day partygoers breached a security fence to see the fireworks display, prompting officials to postpone the pyrotechnics until the next night.
On Tuesday, RCMP Cpl. Jamie Chung said police are interviewing several people but he declined to say if any arrests had been made in connection with the July 1 incident that left some 20,000 spectators wondering why there was no Town Centre Park light show as planned at 10:30 p.m. According to the city, which was forced to reschedule the fireworks to Monday at 10 p.m., the show was halted by Archangel Fireworks —
a Winnipeg-based company that won the HSBC Celebration of Light competition in 2007 and ’08 — when several revellers jumped into the restricted fall zone on the east side of Lafarge Lake. “Archangel prides itself on safety for our people and our audience, and sometimes that means the show doesn’t go on,” Candice Mitchell, Archangel’s general manager, said in a news release. see FIREWORKS, O KS, page g 6
LEFT: TRACY RIDDELL ; RIGHT: STEVE SMITH
Rain plagued a busy weekend in the Tri-Cities that included Golden Spike Days at Port Moody’s Rocky Point Park (left) as well as Canada Day celebrations and fireworks in Port Coquitlam (right) and Coquitlam.
AFTER THE FIRE As a youngster, Erica Salemink recalls, her brother was a sweetheart. But then he changed. See page 3
Teaching style key: Crown By Gary McKenna THE TRI-CITY NEWS
Aleksandr Plehanov, a for mer substitute teacher accused of sexually assaulting several Tri-City elementary school students, carried on his behaviour despite an investigation and
warnings from district administrators about inappropriate touching. During her closing arguments Tuesday in Plehanov’s trial, Crown prosecutor Wendy Van Tongeren Harvey said that incidents continued and escalated even after Plehanov was told
he would have to see a psychologist about his “boundary issues.” “He approached children in ways that could easily be seen as inappropriate,” Van Tongeren Harvey told the court. see TEACHER’S, TEACHER S, page 9
ALEKSANDR PLEHANOV