THURSDAY
S I N C E
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SEPTEMBER 20, 2012 Vol. 117, Issue 182
110
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Redstone designer returns Page 14
INCLUDING H.S.T.
PROUDLY SERVING THE COMMUNITIES OF
ROSSLAND, WARFIELD, TRAIL, MONTROSE, FRUITVALE & SALM SALMO
TRAINING DAY
Status quo suggested for airport BY TIMOTHY SCHAFER Times Staff
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. The draft Trail Regional Airport Economic Impact Assessment has recommended that if the airport was to maintain its existing advantage over nearby competing airports, it needs to enhance what it already has. Future decisions of expansion should be balanced with the minimal economic impact the airport held, advised the company hired to examine what direction to take with the facility, at a special presentation to the East End Stakeholders Committee Tuesday night in the regional district building. According to the report by Wave Point Consulting of Victoria, the “economic impact of the Trail airport based on input/output analysis is relatively small.” The low impact was primarily due to the relatively low level of passenger traffic, a “volunteer” business model used to operate the airport, and the relatively minor contribution that the small general aviation sector was able to generate. As a result of the study, the consultants urged extensive analysis of property tax impacts before any major infrastructure investment was made.
GUY BERTRAND PHOTO
The staff at A&W goes through the training paces on Wednesday as the fast-food restaurant prepares to open its doors in downtown Trail today. See story Page 3
See REVIEW, Page 2
Census points to decrease of married couples in Silver City See figures for Greater Trail region on Page 3 BY BREANNE MASSEY Times Staff
There’s a reason psychologists refer to families today as “nuclear.” Statistics Canada reported the changing tides of modern-day family compositions with new census data released on Wednesday. The ties of marriage, blood, or adoption, constituting a single household, interacting and intercommunicating with each other in their respective social roles as husband and wife, mother and father, or even son and daughter, brother and sister are creating a common culture in today’s society. “Some of the data suggests that if people live common law, they’re
not test-driving a marriage, they think it’s different,” said UBC sociology professor Mary Anne Murphy on Wednesday morning. “But I think the story is that it may not be, at least not in the near future and the question is at what degree does it mean that they will become aware of changes to family law . . . for their lives.” She noted that marriage has a solid foundation in Canada, despite the decline in marriages in the Greater Trail area. Married couples with and without children make up 69.5 per cent of families in Trail. That’s a decrease from the last census taken in 2006 when 72.8 per cent of couples were married. While common-law couples make up 13.8 per cent of the families, up from 2006.
“The new census is telling us – not that the new family is crumbling – but that new young couples choosing to couple up are far more likely to choose to go common law than to marry .” MARY ANNE MURPHY
“I don’t think (couples) are trying to buck tradition with common law, I think they really see it as a different family form,” she explained. “People are just getting married at an older age.” Across Canada, the percentage of married couples has dropped
over the last five years from 68.6 per cent to 67 per cent of all families. Couples living together without being legally married make up 16.7 per cent of all families across the country, an increase from the 2006 census when it was 15.5 per cent. “The new census is telling us—not that the new family is crumbling—but that new young couples choosing to couple-up are far more likely to choose to go common law than to marry,” Murphy concluded. Roughly 7.3 per cent of all families in Trail are couples living together with one or more children where at least one child is the biological or adopted child of only one of the parents. And a total of 1 per cent of children under the age
of 15 live with at least one grandparent instead of a parent. “Relationships seem to break apart and I can’t say it’s easy, I’ve been in a couple of relationships that have broken apart and I can’t say that it was ever easy,” said diaconal minister Keith Simmonds of the Trail United Church. “But I think people are perhaps less willing to live a life of pain and suffering if all they can see ahead of themselves is heartbreak and sorrow and incompatibility—I think they work really hard and when they realize that it isn’t going to result in anything better, then they’re not as willing as their grandparents were to sacrifice what they needed to in order to maintain a home for the children.”
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