Wednesday, August 21, 2019 | Your community newspaper since 1916
CITIZEN PHOTO BY JAMES DOYLE
Days Inn demolition Demolition continues at the Days Inn on Tuesday morning. The site will be the location of the new pool.
Ethics committee to decide whether to dig deeper into SNC-Lavalin report The Canadian Press/ Citizen staff
CITIZEN PHOTO BY JAMES DOYLE
Anna Russell was named as the director of Ring of Fire: The Johnny Cash Story on Tuesday morning at Theatre Northwest.
Russell to direct TNW’s Cash show Christine HINZMANN Citizen staff chinzmann@pgcitizen.ca A member of the local arts community will be directing Theatre Northwest’s upcoming production of Ring of Fire: The Johnny Cash Story that will take audiences through the legend’s whole life. Along with director Anna Russell, two local performers, Curtis Abriel and Amy Blanding, will also be involved in this project by taking to the stage with the rest of the cast of five when the show opens on Nov. 28. Russell came to Prince George eight years ago from Vancouver and has directed several musical and dramatic productions through Judy Russell Presents. Theatre Northwest’s executive director, Marnie Hamagami, reached out to Russell to see if she wanted the job. Russell said Prince George having a professional theatre company was important to her. “Before I agreed to move to Prince George here with my husband (Judy and Bill Russell’s son
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Matt), I looked into the community and what was available and I did check to see if there were any professional theatres in town, so Theatre Northwest was a big motivating factor to actually get me to move to Prince George so this is a full circle moment for me as I get the chance to direct something here,” Russell said. The play has been cast and Russell is in the early research stages while the theatre is already in the process of building the set, which will be put in storage after it’s built and then erected when it’s time to present the play. Russell believes Ring of Fire is a good match for the Theatre Northwest audience, who was very responsive to Million Dollar Quartet, a musical which was presented last year on the professional theatre stage. Who’s got the lead? “Everybody’s Johnny Cash,” Russell said. At different points throughout his life, at different moments, each of the five cast members takes on the role of Johnny Cash, she explained.
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“It’s definitely a kind of intimate concert feel with all five actors on the stage,” Russell described the upcoming production. “It’s going to be a real showcase for everybody and the story itself follows Johnny Cash from childhood through his more rebellious days that eventually leads to the end of his life where he comes full circle – it’s a Ring of Fire.” Because it’s a unique play, it offers the opportunity to bring some original elements to the play and Russell is just starting to develop those ideas now. Rehearsals will start three weeks before the play begins, as is traditional in a professional setting. “I am really excited to work with Anna, having a group of local directors is really exciting for the organization,” Hamagami said. “We have been very intentional over the past four years about developing local professionals with the technical expertise to operate the theatre and adding directors to that group is very exciting.” Tickets are available at TheatreNorthwest.com or Book & Company.
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A handful of MPs, including Prince George-Peace RiverNorthern Rockies MP Bob Zimmer, will be back on Parliament Hill today to decide whether to dig more deeply into the federal ethics watchdog’s scathing report on how Prime Minister Justin Trudeau handled the SNC-Lavalin affair. Conservatives and New Democrats pushed for the emergency meeting of the House of Commons ethics committee, which Zimmer chairs, so MPs could debate whether to invite ethics commissioner Mario Dion to testify. “Now we have facts,” said NDP MP Charlie Angus. “We should be able to ask the man who found those facts to explain them.” The Liberals hold a majority on the 10-member committee. Voting in favour of the motion to invite Dion to appear would mean keeping the SNC-Lavalin controversy in the headlines as MPs gear up for the Oct. 21 election. None of the six Liberals on the committee had agreed to comment by late Tuesday afternoon. The report, released last week, concluded that Trudeau violated the Conflict of Interest Act by improperly pressuring former attorney general Jody WilsonRaybould to end criminal proceedings on corruption charges against the Montreal engineering giant. Trudeau, who has defended himself by insisting he was acting in the best interests of Canadians, is now suggesting voters want to move on.
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ZIMMER “Voters speak to me about jobs,” Trudeau said Tuesday in Trois-Rivieres, Que., when asked whether he is hearing about SNC-Lavalin at his meet-andgreet events. “Yes, people have concerns, but mostly, they speak of the work that we are accomplishing together.” Conservative MP Peter Kent said he hopes his Liberal colleagues, at the very least, support inviting Dion to debrief the committee on his report. Mary Dawson, the previous ethics commissioner, spent two hours answering questions about her December 2017 report that found Trudeau had violated the Conflict of Interest Act when he and his family when on vacation to a private island in the Bahamas owned by the Aga Khan. Kent said if the Liberals are concerned about the timing, they could have supported his efforts to investigate the scandal earlier this year. At the time, Liberal MP Nathaniel Erskine-Smith said it would be “premature” to begin such a probe before the justice committee wrapped up its study. — see ‘WE HAVE, page 3
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