THE WEDNESDAY
CANADIAN COMMUNITY NEWSPAPER AWARD 2012
TRI-CITY NEWS Riverview: Exercise
TC talent takes TUTS
SEE PAGE 14
SEE ARTS, PAGE 22
Police camp popular with next generation Mounties
JULY 11, 2012 www.tricitynews.com
INSIDE
Tom Fletcher/10 Letters/11 A Good Read/18 Sports/26
Plane crash takes life of PoMo man Roger Knox BLACK PRESS
JANIS WARREN/THE TRI-CITY NEWS
ABOVE: A B.C. Ambulance helicopter lands in the middle of the Centennial Oval by Centennial secondary as part of the Emergency Response Fair on July 6. BELOW: Const. Kent Emery with the RCMP Explosives Disposal Unit, showing how a robot can pick up a water bottle. See page 7 for more.
Ro n a l d C a m e r o n knows he’s lucky. Had he not turned his head to the right while enjoying a break from a bike ride at Vernon’s Marshall Field, Cameron might have been an onthe-ground victim of Saturday afternoon’s plane crash that killed pilot James Langley, 59, of Kelowna, and his passenger, Karim Makalai, 53, of Port Moody; they were married to sisters Sheneez Makalai and Shaida Langley. The brothers-inlaw were killed after Langley’s twin engine Piper PA-23 aircraft crashed into the popular Okanagan Landing soccer field, which neighbours Vernon Airport, shortly after takeoff, just after 1 p.m. Makalai, a software engineer, had recently lear ned to play the guitar after taking lessons for most of 2011 with Sami Ghawi of FUSIONpresents in Coquitlam. “Karim was such a generous and sweet soul, with a true passion and appreciation for music,” Ghawi said.
LISA VANDERVELDE/MORNING STAR
Onlookers survey the remains of a Piper twin engine aircraft that crashed into a field in Vernon on Saturday. “He was always smiling, no matter what he was going through in his life, and he always lit up the studio with his presence. “He will be forever missed as one of our favourite students.” Witnesses said the craft nearly hit the indoor soccer centre also located at Marshall Field in Vernon. “The planes are flying out every 10 to 15 minutes and they all have different sounds, you can hear them if it’s quiet and if you don’t hear them anymore, they’ve gone,” said the 60-year-old Cameron. see PLANE, page 3
Knotweed menaces Metro landscape By Jeff Nagel BLACK PRESS
BLACK PRESS PHOTO
Japanese knotweed, a nearly invincible plant, is seen at one of the footings of the Ironworker’s Memorial bridge.
It is truly a demon weed. Japanese knotweed, n ow r u n n i n g r a m pant across Metro Vancouver, can drill through asphalt, crack house foundations and spring back from virtually any non-chemical attempt to eradicate it.
And it now has transp o r t at i o n m i n i s t r y of ficials scrambling after it was discovered splitting concrete in the footings of the Ironworkers Memorial Bridge and infesting a Burnaby section of the $3.3-billion Port Mann/ Highway 1 expansion project. “It’s a monster plant,” said Jennifer
Grenz, program manager at the Invasive Species Council of Metro Vancouver. “And it’s a huge issue in terms of infrastructure and safety.” She said some Highway 1 construction in Burnaby from B o u n d a r y Ro a d t o Canada Way may be delayed while plants are sprayed and given
time to die, adding they would otherwise grow right back up through t h e p ave m e n t . T h e council, which manages invasive plants on local highways, is now moving to assess all provincial highway bridge and overpass footings in the region. see NEARLY,, page 3
Farnworth recognized for saving man’s life: Page 4