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TUESDAY, MARCH 8, 2011
Surrey Eagles take on their Chief rivals in playoffs ❚ Sports, page 19
❚DEFYING EXPECTATIONS
Rochette in Surrey for talk Tom ZILLICH
Staff Reporter
SURREY – Olympic figure skater Joannie Rochette and former governor general Michaelle Jean will be in Surrey for a day-long April 15 event expected to attract hundreds of female business leaders. The $249-a-head “Defying Expectations” gathering will be hosted by Surrey-based Maximum Impact Training & Development in the auditorium of Peace Portal Alliance Church in South Surrey. In addition to Rochette and Jean, Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts and Patricia Graham, editor-in-chief of The Vancouver Sun newspaper, will also address the conference. Maximum Impact has staged similar, but smaller, leadership-development events in recent years, mostly of the luncheon kind. “We’ve had some great speakers, but I’ve always wanted to take this up a notch,” said Jamie MacDonald, the company’s managing partner. “We’re very excited.... Building our community in Surrey is what we’re all about.” Rochette is best known for her emotional bronze medal-winning performance at the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver. She skated at the Games despite the loss of her mother, who died of a heart attack while in Vancouver to watch her daughter compete. At the Games’ closing ceremony, she was the flag bearer for the Canadian team and was recently voted female athlete of the year by The Canadian Press. For event details, visit www.maximumimpact.ca.
Vancouver Symphony Orchestra music director Bramwell Tovey was a special guest at Johnston Heights Secondary last week for a “Meet the Maestro” event that had him talking about classical music and performing on the piano. Close to 900 students took part in the ❚PHOTO/Kevin Hill event, including some 650 students from nearby elementary schools.
❚COURTS/Gary Johnston being tried for Vic Fraser’s 1998 murder in Bridgeview
Trucker killed for money: Crown SURREY Tom ZYTARUK – Jeannie Fraser Staff Reporter used to play crib with Gary Johnston, drive him to the beer store, and lend him videos, coffee and smokes. She had him over on Christmas Day, 1997. “I invited Gary to come over to enjoy some of my baking,” she explained to Justice Robert Crawford, in B.C. Supreme Court in New Westminster. On Monday, Fraser laid eyes on Johnston for the first time in a long while, and he waved to her from the prisoner’s box. You’ve put on weight, she remarked. “Fifty pounds, I bet.” Johnston is being tried for second-degree murder for the March 10, 1998 killing of her brother Vic Fraser, a 43-year-old crane operator from New Westminster. Vic had been at Jeannie’s little yellow bungalow in Bridgeview when he was killed. During the Crown’s opening
statement Monday, at the outset of the trial, prosecutor Adam Jantunen told Crawford what he could expect to hear over the next month. The brother and sister had owned neighbouring houses in Bridgeview and while he rented his out, she lived with her teenaged son in hers. Jeannie Fraser testified that Vic had called her some hours before he was killed and told her he suspected his renters were harbouring a marijuana grow op. He’d asked the police to investigate it but they told him they couldn’t help him, so he’d check it out himself later that morning, she said he told her. Jeannie left her key under a mat and went to work. Vic was planning to meet her boyfriend, Tim Bailey, at her house, and then they’d go over to the rental house together to talk with the tenants. In Jantunen’s opening statement, the court heard that when
Jeannie Fraser knew the man who is on trial for killing her brother, Vic Fraser. Bailey arrived, he found Vic dead on the floor inside the house, covered in blood, then ran to a neighbour’s house to call 911. It’s the Crown’s theory that Johnston, who was a friend of the tenants, needed cash and, knowing Jeannie’s routine, broke into her place. Surprised by Vic, the
Crown alleges, Johnston grabbed a couple of knives from the kitchen counter and stabbed him at least nine times in the neck, breaking one of the blades off inside his throat, and then hit him over the head with a clay object and kicked him in the ribs. The Crown alleges Johnston waited around for Vic to die before making off with his wallet and the knife handles, which were later chucked into the river. The clothes he’s alleged to have worn during the murder were burned sometime later in a buddy’s fireplace. A few months later, Johnston left Surrey for Regina, where he stayed at his friend Rick Smith’s place. In November that year he killed a caretaker named Wayne Griffith inside Smith’s residence, by stabbing him in the neck multiple times, and is alleged to have told Smith “I f-ked up, I killed the
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