KAMLOOPS THIS WEEK TUESDAY
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OCTOBER 10, 2017 | Volume 30 No. 121
TODAY’S WEATHER Showers High 13 C Low 4 C
WOMEN IN TRADES
EIGHT IS ENOUGH!
TRU wants to talk to those with an interest
Kamloops Blazers are 0-8 to start the season and aim to get that first win Wednesday
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Stone expected to launch leadership bid Tuesday CHRISTOPHER FOULDS KTW EDITOR editor@kamloopsthisweek.com
Todd Stone’s bid for the leadership of the B.C. Liberal Party will begin Tuesday with a three-city blitz: a 9:30 a.m. announcement in Surrey, followed by a press conference in Victoria and ending with a 6 p.m. event at Thompson Rivers University in the Campus Activity Centre’s Mountain Room. Stone, the Kamloops-South Thompson MLA, former transportation minister and current Opposition municipal affairs critic, has garnered the support and help of various B.C. Liberal players. Running the communications arm of his leadership bid is Stephen Smart, the former reporter who was most recently
press secretary for former premier Christy Clark. Also on board is Shuswap MLA Greg Kyllo and former cabinet minister Peter Fassbender, who in an email statement said “this is an incredibly important time for our party and our province. British Columbia needs a fresh vision to keep us on the right track.” The addition of Stone to the leadership race brings to eight the number of candidates seeking to succeed Christy Clark, who resigned as leader after the party lost its majority in the May 9 election. Stone’s challengers include MLAs Sam Sullivan, Mike de Jong, Andrew Wilkinson, Mike Bernier and Michael Lee, Terrace businesswoman Lucy Sager and former Surrey Mayor and Conservative MP Dianne Watts. Stone has been prepping for his leadership bid, spending time at the recent UBCM convention and releasing a video in which he reiterated his opposition to taxpayer-funded subsidies for political parties as proposed by the governing New Democrats. In early September, Stone told KTW he was seriously considering a run, touching on the significant cost to stage a campaign. The B.C. Liberal Party has set a $600,000 cap for spending, a level Stone said serious contenders will reach. Those contenders must also contribute to party coffers beyond that sum, making the real fundraising need about $750,000. “The components for any leadership campaign are message, membership and money,” Stone said. “If you don’t have all three in plenty, you won’t be successful.” See STONE, A4 Kamloops-South Thompson MLA Todd Stone was elected to a second term in May. KTW FILE PHOTO
CHOOSE YOUR PROGRAM CLEARANCE EVENT!
Though he served as Kamloops MLA from 1975 to 1981 in the freeenterprise coalition known as Social Credit, Rafe Mair supported the NDP in the 2009 provincial election. This photo shows Mair with local New Democrat candidates Doug Brown (left) and Tom Friedman (right), neither of whom was elected that year. KTW FILE PHOTO
Rafe Mair dead at 85 Prominent radio broadcaster, former Kamloops MLA and environmental advocate Rafe Mair has died — eight months after predicting his demise would occur this year. Mair died on Monday morning. He was 85 years old. Early word of his death was confirmed via a brief post to his official website and his Twitter account on Monday morning. In January of this year, Mair sat down with North Shore News columnist Trevor Lautens and said he expected to die in 2017. “Rafe Mair, astronomically paid battling broadcaster in the balmy days when CKNW styled itself Vancouver’s Top Dog, is in shaky health and thinks he’ll die in 2017,” Lautens wrote in the Jan. 12 column. “He turned 85 on New Year’s Eve, has balance problems probably due to a long-undiagnosed stroke, and uses a walker in his Lions Bay townhouse shared with wife Wendy. An electric scooter at the door gets little use these days.” Mair, who commanded an enormous audience as a talk show host through the 1980s and 1990s, was born in Vancouver and studied at the University of B.C. He became a lawyer
and practiced in Vancouver before moving to Kamloops where he entered politics. Mair was an MLA in Kamloops with the B.C. Social Credit Party from 1975 to 1981, serving as a cabinet minister under then-premier Bill Bennett. He held the seat until retiring from politics in 1981 and was succeeded by Claude Richmond. Mair served as a cabinet minister under a variety of portfolios, including health, consumer and corporate affairs, education and environment. Mair’s post-politics career led him to the talk show mic at CKNW, where he remained until being fired in 2003. He followed that with a short-lived talk show on CKBD and continued to write columns for various publications. Mair was an avid fisherman and frequently spoke against fish farms. He has also written a number of books on Canadian politics, as well as a memoir released in 2004. In 2009, Mair sent an email to his supporters, telling them he was voting NDP in that year’s provincial election, arguing then-NDP leader Carole James was closer to Social Credit values than was then-B.C. Liberal Leader Gordon Campbell.
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