Wednesday January 20, 2016 www.saobserver.net $1.25 GST INCLUDED
Feeling the pinch on produce By Tracy Hughes OBSERVER STAFF
Salmon Arm consumers might be experiencing pain in their pocketbooks when it comes to filling up their grocery carts. The price of many types of produce is exceptionally high at the moment, due to a combination of factors – primarily poor weather, the low Canadian dollar and the high cost of shipping. “You are out on the floor and you are hearing and seeing the customers staring at the prices and they are traumatized,” says Askew’s Uptown produce manager Mike Medwid. “They really just can’t understand it.” Prices of items like cauliflower, celery, broccoli, leafy salad greens, green onions and herbs like cilantro and parsley are among the highest grocery stores have seen. “These growers plan People have come to months in advance to expect these types schedule their crops, of produce on the but you can’t count on shelves year-round... Mother Nature,” says Medwid, who notes and when you can’t drought conditions, fol- produce enough to lowed by El Nino-influmeet the demand, enced heavy rains have prices go up resulted in widespread flooding of fields. “People have come to expect these types of Mike Medwid produce on the shelves year-round, so there ASKEW’S is demand for it, and PRODUCE when you can’t produce MANAGER enough to meet the demand, prices go up.” Medwid suggests consumers be cautious with their spending and only buy smaller amounts of produce they are sure they will use before it spoils. “Now is not the time to stockpile,” he says. Brad DeMille, at DeMille’s Farm Market, says prices have been shocking, even to those in the know. “I’ve been looking at the price lists and going, ‘holy jeez,’” he says. See Low dollar on page A4
EVAN BUHLER/OBSERVER
New home: Mustafa Zakreet, Salmon Arm’s first Syrian refugee, pays a visit to the city’s waterfront while adjusting to his new life in Canada. He hopes his father and brother will be joining him here soon.
City welcomes refugee
Salmon Arm: Mustafa Zakreet settles into his new surroundings. By Barb Brouwer OBSERVER STAFF
Mustafa Zakreet has been in Salmon Arm just a little more than a week. That he is happy to be here is evidenced by the charming 24-year old’s wide grins – smiles that light up the room as he describes his welcome to Salmon Arm and the group of about 35 residents who are supporting him. “They saved my life,” he says simply of what coming to Salmon Arm from a refugee camp in Lebanon means to him. “I don’t know how to thank them.” Zakreet says he feels comfortable in Salmon Arm, a city that reminds him of his hometown in Syria. “There was a river close to my house and there is space between the houses like my town,” he says.
This week It’s all about infants for Mahalia and Mike Meeuwsen, parents of three identical girls. See A3. The Golds extend their winning streak to 10 games after a weekend tournament. See A17.
Able to speak some English, Zakreet is attending language lessons at Okanagan College and is intent on learning as quickly as possible in order to act as a translator when more refugees arrive. Zakreet has completed two years in environmental engineering. While in Lebanon, he passed a first-year university course in English and developed a love of the works of Shakespeare. While there, he also volunteered with the Canadian arm of Right to Play, an organization that believes every child has the right to play and links sport to learning. Zakreet also taught kindergarten for a year-and-a-half. While he was too tired to speak when his plane landed in Montreal after a day-and-a-half of travelling, he
was buoyed by his welcome to B.C. “I thought I had to look for the sponsor,” he says of his arrival in Kamloops last Monday. But he needn’t have worried. Eight members of his sponsoring team were on hand to greet him with welcome signs written in Arabic. Joyce Henderson, a founding member of the Salmon Arm Community Group and part of Zakreet’s sponsoring group, laughs as she explains nobody knew whether they were holding the signs right-side-up, or down. Help came from an individual known simply as Hassan, who is in a masters program at Thompson Rivers University and fluent in Arabic. He accompaSee Sponsors on page A2
Index Opinion ....................... A6 View Point .................. A7 Life & Times ............... A8 Sports................A15-A18 Arts & Events ... A19-A21 Time Out................... A22 Vol. 109, No. 3, 40 pages