Brink donates $1M to CNC
Mark NIELSEN Citizen staff
mnielsen@pgcitizen.ca
Saying he sees a viable future for the forest industry in northern B.C., Prince George lumber manufacturer John Brink committed $1 million to trades and technology training at the College of New Caledonia on Thursday.
During a ceremony in front of the building on the CNC campus that holds his namesake, Brink presented a giant cheque for the amount to the school’s interim president Tara Szerensci.
The contribution will be spread over 10 years with the first installment coming in February 2020.
“Especially in light of all the things that are happening and all the things that government is trying to do, both provincially and federally, we believe that we have to step up to the plate and try to assist in bringing us forward to a new industry,” Brink said.
Szerensci called the donation “phenomenal” and said CNC will be working with Brink over the next while to determine how best to use the money.
“There are lots of areas of need,” she said. “We can certainly upgrade shop equipment and training aids, we can even do facility shop and upgrades, student awards. We can even put funding towards developing new curriculum and trying to launch new programs. There are so many options for a gift like this.”
The announcement also comes almost 20 years after Brink became CNC’s industry partner and donated $500,000 to the school. In 2002, the John A. Brink Trades and Technology Centre in the old Canadian Tire store across the street from the college’s main campus.
Despite the current troubles, Brink was upbeat about what lies ahead for the forest sector.
“The current challenges, although there are many of them, are temporary,” he said.
“The industry is going to get smaller but I see still lots of opportunities.”
Indeed, Brink said his company is in the process of expanding its operations in Prince George, Vanderhoof and Houston.
An addition to the Brink Forest Products finger-jointed lumber plant in Prince
George will increase its production by 40 per cent and add 75 more employees to the payroll once completed late next year.
Another 20 to 30 people will be employed with an expansion at Vanderhoof Specialty Woods while Pleasant Valley Remanufacturing in Houston will bring on another 10 to 15 once work there is finished.
“What we are doing is saying we understand the challenges that we have today but
Trudeau ‘brownface’ apology sincere, Calogheros says
Mark NIELSEN Citizen staff
Cariboo-Prince George Liberal
candidate Tracy Calogheros says she believes party leader Justin Trudeau is genuinely sorry for wearing brownface while clad in a turban in 2001.
“Listening to the prime minister’s apology last night, I really believe he’s genuine, I really believe he’s sincere,” Calogheros said Thursday.
“I thought a lot about it because quite frankly the best lessons I’ve ever learned are from the mistakes I’ve made.
“And I think when you look at our prime minister’s track record since he’s been in public life, everything he’s done has been to fight racism and bigotry and helping new Canadians from all over the world.”
On Wednesday, Time magazine published when an 18-year-old photo of Trudeau, dressed in an Aladdin costume with his hands and face darkened. He had dressed up for a theme gala at the private school where he taught. He profusely apologized for having indulged in what he acknowledged was a racist act of wearing brownface, and confessed to another: wearing makeup during a high-school talent show, while performing a version of Harry Belafonte’s “Banana Boat Song (Day-O).”
we believe that the future looks bright going forward,” Brink said.
Brink predicted a shift away from a sole reliance on dimensional lumber and towards “new products for new markets.” However, he said there needs to be better access to fibre and an end to higher penalties in the form of tariffs for adding more value to a product that’s shipped into the United States.
Judge sentences elderly man in sex-abuse case
Keith
An 86-year-old B.C. man who repeatedly sexually abused his two daughters nearly 50 years ago has been sentenced to 10 years in prison.
The man, who is identified only by initials in a court ruling, was convicted in November 2018 of two counts of sexual intercourse without a person’s consent and two counts of indecent assault, with the offences occurring at “various locations” around B.C.
what you have done, it is this,” B.C. Supreme Court Justice Arne Silverman told the dad. “You denied your daughters their childhood.”
At the sentencing hearing in Prince George, the judge noted that while a lengthy jail sentence was warranted, the difficult aspect of the process was the extent to which the length of the sentence should be reduced due to the dad’s age and the fact he possibly suffers from dementia.
The offences against the girls, who were groomed for the sexual abuse when they were younger than 10 years of age and suffered the abuse after turning 10, happened as early as March 1966 and continued until December 1979.
The girls are also only identified by initials due to the publication ban.
Conservative leader Andrew Scheer suggested Thursday morning his campaign had been aware of the video and decided to pass it along to a media outlet.
Then Thursday morning, Global News published a video of a young Trudeau in blackface, showing him sticking out his tongue for the camera and raising his arms over his head, part of a montage of people apparently goofing around in a setting that’s hard to discern. A Liberal spokesperson confirmed its authenticity and said it was filmed in the early 1990s, when he was in his early 20s.
— see ‘TRUDEAU, page 3
Three of the offences involved more than 100 incidents each of sexual abuse committed by the dad, who is now 86 years of age.
“If one sentence could sum up
The judge concluded that despite the evidence that the dad was possibly or probably suffering from dementia, the accused’s lawyer was able to take instructions from him and there was no fitness issue either at the trial or sentencing stages of the proceedings.
The aggravating factors included that the dad was in a position of trust and authority when he abused his daughters, the sexual abuse started by grooming and was unrelenting and continuous, and there were hundreds of incidents.
— ‘YOU SHOULD, page 3
CITIZEN PHOTO BY BRENT BRAATEN
College of New Caledonia interm president Tara Szerenczi receives a million dollar cheque from John Brink Thursday morning.
FRASER Vancouver Sun
CITIZEN PHOTO BY BRENT BRAATEN
Tracy Calogheros Liberal Candidate for Cariboo-Prince George takes questions about Trudeau Thursday afternoon.
Talktober set for Civic Centre
Citizen staff
With last year’s civic elections now out of the way, Talktober, the opportunity for Prince George residents to raised their question and concerns directly with city council members, is back on the calendar. It’s set for two days, Oct. 1 and Oct. 2, at the Civic Centre. Council members and staff will be on hand from noon to 8 p.m. and presentations will be held at 12:15 p.m. and 5:30 p.m. on both days.
Each presentation will be followed by a question and answer session facilitated by Mayor Lyn Hall. There will also be displays and staff from the service centre at city hall will be there to take service requests from residents.
“Talktober began in 2015 as a way for council to reconnect with residents,” Hall said. “This year will
be no different, but because infrastructure reinvestment is such an important issue, and because Prince George’s population appears to be continuing to grow and in-fact could be nearing an all-time high, Talktober 2019 will feature information about the state of our utilities, roads, civic facilities, and parks – all of the civic assets commonly referred to as ‘infrastructure.’ They are a big part of what the City provides to support businesses, recreation, culture, and overall quality of life.”
The City will also be providing information at www.princegeorge.ca/talktober and through social media channels to complement the events.
In addition, Talktober 2019 will feature an online web survey to collect feedback about residents’ priorities to be used to inform council’s 2020 budget deliberations.
What is business courage?
It takes courage for some people to get out of bed each morning and face the day. For others, it’s courageous to go up and say hello to a new person in their class or in their office. People who take risks to save lives, stand up for what is right, face daily pain, jump out of airplanes with a sheet on their back, adventure in the outdoors, could all be considered courageous. But what does it mean to have courage in business? Courage is defined by the Webster Dictionary as “mental or moral strength to venture, persevere, and withstand danger, fear or difficulty.”
I know a fellow who left his job, not quite sure of how he was going to feed his family, to start up a business. Some of his co-workers might have called him foolhardy but in the end he made it work. Whether it actually it works out or not, starting a business, giving up other opportunities, risking your life savings, years of your life and putting your reputation at stakes, takes real bravery and courage. Running or owning a business or an organization, requires courage on a daily basis. As a CEO, it takes courage to try new technology, advertise differently, plan for the future in a challenging economy, trust our employees to do their jobs, keep people accountable, and implement systems that are going to make a difference. As a commissioned sales employee, you are essentially self-employed. Sales people of any sort have to be some of the most courageous employees in your organization because it takes guts to pick up the phone each day and ask prospects for their business.
It takes guts to trust that after hearing no 10, 15, or 20 times that someone is going to say yes.
It takes willpower to believe that when people say they don’t like the product or service that you are selling, that they are not talking about you.
As employees, it takes courage to stand up to a boss and question the direction of the company, to call to task a co-worker who is not pulling their weight or to ask for more training when you don’t feel that you have the skills to do your job as it should be done.
You need a dose of courage sometimes to trust that the vision the company is moving toward will allow you to continue to feed your family for years in the future.
Whether we are in a start-up or a longstanding business, if we
NEWS IN BRIEF
Tourism Prince George CEO resigns
Tourism Prince George is seeking a new chief executive officer. After 5 1/2 years, Erica Hummel has resigned to take on a new posting in Edmonton, the organization said in a statement issued on Thursday.
“During her time with TPG, Erica’s dedication has resulted in the growth and development of the tourism sector in the community and delivered tangible benefits to tourism stakeholders and industry partners,” a statement by Tourism Prince George said. Hummel’s last day on the job is Oct. 4. The board has appointed Sarah
want to be successful as leaders, we need to create a climate in our organization where bravery and courage are celebrated. If we are running a company and our employee does come up to us and challenges our vision for the business or the strategic direction, do we handle it from a defensive position or do we give the conversation serious consideration?
If an employee is destructive or dysfunctional, do we deal with it courageously or put it off because we feel spineless that day?
Every day we make decisions in our business that encourage or discourage bravery and those decisions have an effect on our outcomes.
Recently, I heard of a business that had a revolving door of employees because of the dysfunction of a general manager. Apparently, the owner was more concerned about the fact that they might have trouble finding a new GM, and so didn’t consider the cost that this toxic employee was costing the business in the long run. He wasn’t celebrating courageous actions by avoiding the conflict. Are there things you are doing that give a message to your employees that courage is not welcome in your firm? It takes a lot of backbone to take your head out of the sand and identify the elephant in the room that no body is talking about. It takes courage to work with the tools in your business to build a better future when it seems that the odds are stacked against you. It’s easy to give up when times get tough but it’s more challenging to strategically think through the process and identify possible routes forward through difficult waters.
Courage is not something that should be taken lightly in business and the ramifications of courageous thinking by business leaders, large and small, play an important role in the economics of our cities, regions and countries. Let’s find ways to create environments where brave decisions and actions are celebrated, not vilified. Dave Fuller, MBA, is an awardwinning business coach and the author of the book Profit Yourself Healthy. Have courage to email dave@profityourselfhealthy.com.
Kirk as interim CEO.
— Citizen staff Fiddlers
dance tonight
The BC Old Time Fiddlers are holding a dance tonight from 8 p.m. to midnight at the PG Elks Community Hall, 663 Douglas St. Everyone is welcome to enjoy some toe-tapping live music to swing your partner. This is the chance to do the old-time dances like polka, waltz, schottishe, barn dance, seven step, two step. Entrance fee of $10 includes a light lunch and prizes. There is a cash bar. Tickets available at Books & Co. or at the door. Children get in free. For more information call 250563-1025 or email beth.bressette@telus.net.
— Citizen staff
CITIZEN FILE PHOTO
Dorothy Friesen gives the city her feedback during a Talktober session at the Wood Innovation and Design Centre in 2016. Talktober returns Oct. 1-2 at the Civic Centre.
DOHERTY
KERR
‘Trudeau thinks he shouldn’t be held to the same standards’
— from page 1
Todd Doherty, the Conservative candidate in Cariboo-Prince George, declined to comment on the matter, saying it’s for others to comment on.
The riding’s NDP candidate, Heather Sapergia, limited her comment to saying that “for people who really have brown skin and black skin, it’s painful because it’s racism and it’s time for us to stand up for Canadian values of diversity and inclusion.”
Mackenzie Kerr, the Green Party candidate in Cariboo-Prince George, issued a blistering statement: “If at 29 years old in 2001, you still didn’t understand that blackface is racist, then you’re a shmuck and you deserve a stiff upside slap of the head.
“Trudeau thinks he shouldn’t be held to the same standards as regular Canadians. This is not the first example. This arrogance coming out of the prime minister should not
be tolerated.”
People’s Party of Canada candidate Jing Lan Yang said she hopes voters will not fall for his charm and accept his apology.
“We need a leader who is a person of integrity and with dignity, and who will serve us, every Canadian, with truthfulness and honour,” she added.
Calogheros also said voters need to allow political leaders to make mistakes and learn from them, “otherwise you demand perfection from people like that and really all you’re doing is asking them to lie.”
“So in this case, we’ve had a statement from him, he is contrite and I think we really need to focus on issues in the individual communities around the country, you know. The political divisiveness that we see in public discourse today is tearing the world apart.”
— For more coverage, see page 4
‘You should have been prosecuted decades ago’
— from page 1
The judge added that the abuse was highly invasive and painful and there were threats of violence, with the dad telling his children that he would kill them if they disclosed the abuse to anyone.
The dad also used his “fearful” and “innocent” younger son to perpetrate the abuse against one of the sisters and exploited and degraded one of the daughters and his son by using an intoxicating substance to facilitate sex between them and by allowing other adult males to watch and masturbate in the presence of and film the children.
The only mitigating factor in the case was that the dad had no prior criminal record.
The dad’s lawyer argued that his client
had led an exemplary life after the children left home, but the judge said that submission didn’t move him at all.
“You should have been prosecuted decades ago and you were not prosecuted decades ago because of the psychological harm and the threats that these young girls had lived under,” said Silverman. “So I see nothing benefiting you in the so-called exemplary life that you have lived since.”
The judge also noted that prison officials had assured him that an elderly man with health issues can be accommodated while being incarcerated.
The sentence was handed down orally in court Aug. 23 and posted on the court’s website Tuesday.
Judge finds couple not guilty in son’s death
Bill GRAVELAND The Canadian Press
LETHBRIDGE, Alta. — A judge has found an Alberta couple who treated their son with herbal remedies rather than seek medical attention for him not guilty in the boy’s death.
David and Collet Stephan were charged with failing to provide the necessaries of life to 19-month-old Ezekiel, who died in March 2012.
The medical examiner who did the autopsy said Ezekiel died of bacterial meningitis, but a pathologist called by the defence said the child died from a lack of oxygen to the brain when he was in an ambulance.
Justice Terry Clackson spoke to the court in Lethbridge, Alta., for only four minutes before releasing his written decision.
In it, he wrote that there was no physical evidence that the toddler had died of meningitis and that the Crown had therefore failed to prove its case.
“The child had been sick, had improved, then regressed and was waxing and waning. They were watching him closely for signs of meningitis, just in case, even though he did not appear to have any of the symptoms,” Clackson wrote.
“I have concluded that the Stephans knew what meningitis was, knew that bacterial meningitis could be very serious, knew what symptoms to look for... They thought their son had some sort of croup or flu-like viral infection.”
Supporters in the courtroom cheered and Collet Stephan cried as she hugged her husband.
“It was an emotional roller-coaster. We didn’t know what to expect today,” David Stephan said outside court.
“It is the right decision.
“And it is shocking because it has been seven years of our lives fighting this, so it has become part of our identity. It is just a beautiful thought that we can move on with our lives.”
It was the second trial for the Stephans, who were found guilty by a jury in 2016. The Supreme Court of Canada set aside the conviction and ordered a new trial. Stephan’s father co-founded Truehope Nutritional Support in Raymond, Alta., in 1996 to find a natural treatment for bipolar disorder after his wife took her life.
Over the course of the trial, the Stephans testified that they initially thought Ezekiel had croup, an upper airway infection, and they treated him with natural remedies including a smoothie with garlic, onion and horseradish.
They said he appeared to be recovering at times and they saw no reason to take him to hospital, despite his having a fever and lacking energy.
The did call an ambulance when the boy stopped breathing.
A family friend, who is a nurse and midwife, testified that she advised Collet Stephan the day before to get a medical opinion.
The friend feared “something more internal like meningitis.”
David Stephan, who represented himself at trial, argued it was a failure by medical professionals to properly intubate his son that led to his death. Testimony indicated the boy was without oxygen for nearly nine minutes because the ambulance that took him to hospital wasn’t properly stocked with breathing equipment to fit a child.
“The physical evidence supports ... (the) conclusion that Ezekiel died because he was deprived of oxygen. That occurred because he stopped breathing and the resulting oxygen deprivation lasted long enough to lead to his death,” Clackson wrote. Clackson also wrote that Ezekiel was indeed sick, but the law does not impose a duty to seek medical attention for every sick child.
He also wrote that the Crown did not prove medical attention would have saved the boy’s life.
Trudeau asks Canada to look at current, not past, actions on race
Stephanie LEVITZ The Canadian Press
OTTAWA — Justin Trudeau’s privileged upbringing created a “massive blind spot” when it came understanding how dressing in blackface could be harmful, he said Thursday.
But the Liberal party leader, seeking re-election as prime minister and getting exactly the wrong kind of global attention, asked Canadians to consider him a man changed by more than a decade of political service that’s taught him darkening his skin for fun or performances at least three times in his younger days was a terrible mistake.
“I didn’t understand how hurtful this is to people who live with discrimination every single day,” he said in Winnipeg, a day after the first evidence of what are now three instances of him in black- or brownface was published around the world.
“I’ve always acknowledged that I come from a place of privilege but I now need to acknowledge that comes with a massive blind spot.” Canadians need to understand the damage that blind spot can allow, said the NDP’s Jagmeet Singh, who challenged people to see the implications of Trudeau’s acts not through the eyes of the prime minister but through Singh’s.
It was a moment full of political and personal resonance for the NDP leader, whose presence in the campaign as a visibleminority leader of a major party is a first for Canada.
“Imagine what that would feel like if you’ve gone through pain in your life, if you’ve been treated differently, if you’ve faced insults, if you’ve faced physical violence because of the way you look, if you’ve been treated differently by the police, if you’ve faced systemic barriers,” Singh said at an event in Hamilton, Ont. “And then to see the prime minister making light of that. How would someone feel living in this country? I can tell you that it hurts.”
Even Singh’s rivals acknowledged Thursday that perhaps he stands alone among them as the person who can best address the significance of what Trudeau did – both as a teenager and as an adult, including as a
teacher at a Vancouver private school.
“I think I might take this opportunity to just highlight the response from Jagmeet Singh,” Conservative leader Andrew Scheer said at an event in Saint-Hyacinthe, Que.
“I thought he showed genuine concern and as someone who has obviously been victim of these types of things in a way I never have. I think he responded with a lot of class and dignity and obviously he was speaking on behalf of so many Canadians who have been victims of racist acts or mockery like that.”
But both Scheer and Singh questioned whether the Trudeau of today is truly a changed man.
Singh pointed to an incident in the spring when people advocating for better treatment for an Ontario First Nation struggling with mercury poisoning protested at a private Liberal fundraiser. During the event, a protester was escorted out of the room.
Trudeau thanked her for her donation,
going to hurt, but I think the black community will be forgiving,”’ said Liberal Greg Fergus, who is chair of the cross-party black caucus on Parliament Hill and is running for re-election in a riding in Quebec but adjacent to Ottawa.
“The reason why they are going to be forgiving is because they have seen what he has done and they have appreciated what he has done,” he said.
Fergus said that included putting Viola Desmond, a black civil-rights activist from Nova Scotia, on the $10 bill, investments to improve the lives of the black community, having a diverse Liberal caucus and declaring that anti-black racism exists in Canada.
Trudeau suggested that even actions like those don’t absolve him, entirely.
“This has been personally a moment where I’ve had to reflect on the fact that wanting to do good, wanting to do better, simply isn’t good enough,” he said.
“You need to take responsibility for mistakes that hurt people who thought I was an ally. Hopefully many of them still consider me an ally, even though this was a terrible mistake.”
suggesting as a joke that she was a big party contributor.
“I think there will be an impact on people’s decisions in this campaign in relation to what Mr. Trudeau has shown himself to be in public and now what we have seen in his private life,” Singh said.
“I think it shows that there is a difference there and a lot of legitimate questions coming forward because of that.”
The emergence, first Wednesday night, and then Thursday morning, of the photos and a video of Trudeau in black- or brownface brought the planned activities of the campaign to a screeching halt for the Liberals.
Trudeau spent Wednesday night and the bulk of Thursday morning on the phone with members of cabinet, candidates and staff from visible minority communities, some of whom – cautiously – stood up in his defence on Thursday.
“I told him, ‘Prime Minister, people are
The first image of Trudeau that surfaced showed him dressed in an Aladdin costume with his hands and face darkened and was published by Time magazine. He had dressed up for a theme gala at the private school where he taught.
When profusely apologizing for that on Wednesday night, he confessed to another: wearing makeup during a high-school talent show, while performing a version of Harry Belafonte’s Banana Boat Song (Day-O).
Then Thursday morning, Global News published a short video of a young Trudeau in blackface, showing him sticking out his tongue for the camera and raising his arms over his head, part of a montage of people apparently goofing around in a setting that’s hard to discern. The Liberals said that video was from the early 1990s, putting Trudeau in his early 20s.
Scheer suggested Thursday morning his campaign had been aware of the video and decided to pass it along to a media outlet. — With files from Joanna Smith
B.C. auditor says tighter expense rules, oversight needed at legislature
Dirk MEISSNER The Canadian Press
VICTORIA — British Columbia’s auditor general says tighter rules on expenses for top officers at the legislature are needed following allegations of spending abuses made by Speaker Darryl Plecas earlier this year.
Carol Bellringer said Thursday her audit found weaknesses and gaps in expense policies in the offices of the legislature’s clerk, sergeant-at-arms and Speaker.
“These expenses included staff travel, gifts and clothing,” she said during a telephone news conference. “For example, we found that travel expenses were frequently made without clear documentation to support the purpose of that travel.”
She said some expenses were made without the appropriate approval or a documented business purpose.
In January, Plecas issued a report alleging spending misconduct by former clerk Craig James and sergeant-at-arms Gary Lenz. Both men have denied any wrongdoing.
“Probably the biggest surprise with the whole audit was just how often things were not getting approved,” Bellringer said. “I know that sounds somewhat bureaucratic, but it’s really uncommon in an organization for things to not just naturally go
up the ladder.”
Bellringer’s audit made nine recommendations including that a framework be put in place to govern financial practices, the establishment of a travel policy and that clear guidance be set on what work-related clothing would be paid for.
Plecas couldn’t immediately be reached for comment on the auditor’s report.
The legislature’s all-party management committee appointed Beverley McLachlin, the former chief justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, to investigate overspending allegations against James and Lenz.
In a report released in May, McLachlin concluded James improperly claimed benefits and used legislature property for personal reasons.
New Democrat House Leader Mike Farnworth announced the same day that James had retired with a “non-financial” settlement.
James said in a statement after his departure was announced that he had “been publicly ridiculed and vilified.”
He said his family has been hurt by the accusations.
“In an effort to put an end to that, I have decided to retire, and reach a settlement with the legislative assembly,” his statement said.
McLachlin cleared Lenz of wrongdoing but he remains on paid administrative leave.
CP PHOTO
Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau makes a statement in regards to photo coming to light of himself from 2001 wearing “brownface” during a scrum on his campaign plane in Halifax, N.S., on Wednesday.
Arctic thaw bringing jobs to far north
Danielle BOCHOVE Bloomberg
James Kalluk spent much of his childhood inside an igloo in Canada’s far north, close to the Arctic Circle. Building that kind of home requires temperatures low enough to freeze the region’s countless lakes, a particular consistency of snow and a long-bladed knife the Inuit call a pana.
“Today, there’s not much snow and it’s harder to make an igloo,” said Kalluk, now in his early 70s. “You may find a spot here or there that’s good, but the snow is very difficult now. It’s different.”
The loss of snow and ice are causing Canada to heat up much faster than the rest of the worldmore than twice the global rate of warming, according to a national scientific assessment published in April. The farther north you go, the more accelerated the warming. The Canadian Arctic is one of the fastest-warming places, heating up at about three times the global average. That makes Canada’s northernmost Nunavut territory, a region the size of Mexico, a bellwether for the unexpected ways an altered climate transform lives and livelihoods.
In Baker Lake, Nunavut, the town of about 2,000 where Kalluk lives, almost everyone’s income is tied directly or indirectly to a nearby gold mine operated by Agnico Eagle Mines. As global warming increases access to the region’s rich natural resources, he believes the local economy will change.
“In the years to come, there are going to be more houses, more development here,” Kalluk said.
“More people will be able to work.”
Such growth may be welcome in Canada’s fast unfreezing north, but there are trade-offs. Kalluk worries about dust from new roads disturbing caribou that are already under siege from warmer temperatures, and about water pollution affecting fish. That environmental tug of war is the central story of Canada’s remote north. After living sustainably for thousands of years, the country’s aboriginal groups became some of the earliest to be hit by climate change. They are also in a position to benefit most from opportunities that now beckon.
From the mosquito-sheltered comfort of his Ford Explorer, David Kakuktinniq surveys his empire through Prada sunglasses. As president of Sakku Investment Corp., he oversees 17 businesses from the town of Rankin Inlet that together get roughly half of their revenue from Agnico.
The Toronto-based mining giant opened two new mines this year at a cost of $1.23 billion: Amaruq, located 175 kilometers north of Baker Lake; and Meliadine, about 24 kilometers from Rankin. Kakuktinniq, 55, has never been busier. Of the 120,000 tonnes of supplies bound for the mines this year – enough to fill 6,000 shipping containers – half will be unloaded by his crews. One of his joint ventures helps provide the 120 million liters of diesel the mines will use this year.
Founded in 1957 by a now defunct nickel-and-copper mine, Rankin looks like it was built by grabbing whatever came off the barge first. Empty oil drums and shipping containers are scattered among homes and businesses. Dogs lie chained beside broken pallets, old boats and snowmobiles. The most spectacular view of the pristine waters of Hudson Bay, home to whales and arctic char, is beside the town dump. For an entrepreneur like Kakuktinniq, it’s possible to stand next to the rusty remnants of the town’s past and imagine a bright future in which longer windows of ice-free waters open the town to tourism and business.
The world’s Arctic and subArctic land and waters generate $174 billion in annual economic activity, according to a report released by the Canadian Senate in June. Canada controls 25 per cent of this circumpolar geography but accounts for less than two per cent of its economy. Rich in natural resources that have long been stranded by climate, the far north may soon benefit from increased coastal access. This will create opportunities-and potentially, headaches.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s recent offer to buy Greenland from Denmark is indicative of the heightened interest in the Arctic from the world’s superpowers.
For Canadian policymakers, this underscores a need to reinforce national claims and invest in infrastructure. The government unveiled a $2 billion plan in 2017 to invest in the north, but there’s been only modest spending so far.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, in a close fight for re-election on
Oct. 21, recently put forward a new northern policy initiative around sovereignty and investment.
The opportunities, especially around trade, are significant.
As melting ice opens up coastal areas, Canadian ports are likely to become gateways linking Asia and Europe through the Northwest Passage, bypassing the Panama and Suez canals. The Russia-controlled Northern Sea Route will be a major rival.
The Port of Prince Rupert on the Pacific coast is already positioning itself to take advantage of the new routes, which it claims can shave nine days off a shipment to Rotterdam. Global warming will eventually add four to eight weeks to the unfrozen shipping season in Churchill, Man., a deep-water port on Hudson Bay.
“We’re definitely looking at a future with less sea ice in the Canadian Arctic and more shipping activity,” said Chris Derksen, a climate scientist with Environment Canada who tracks the speed of warming. On the current trajectory, the Arctic will warm an additional five to six degrees Celsius by the end of the century, meaning it likely will be clear of ice in summer. If the Paris Agreement on climate is met-a longshot goal, under current trends-Derksen’s research suggests sea ice loss will continue until 2050 or 2060.
The melting ice will mean increased access to offshore oil and gas reserves, further complicating any effort to limit global greenhouse-gas emissions. Tapping inland resources may be trickier.
Mining is the largest private sector employer in Canada’s Arctic, generating up to a quarter of gross domestic product across the three northern territories and accounting for one in six jobs. Miners do business here across an area bigger than India, despite limited roads, power or telecommunications infrastructure.
Mining engineers will need to contend with climate-triggered “thermokarst,” a process in which thawing permafrost makes soil
slump, creating new lakes and forcing others to drain. It’s not insurmountable, but it will drive up costs. Thawing is expected to add to the feedback loops that are accelerating Arctic warming. As sea ice turns to water, for example, less heat is reflected back into the atmosphere, speeding up the thaw. The thawing permafrost, in turn, releases more carbon that traps more heat in the atmosphere.
Arctic vegetation is shifting in response to that amplified warming. Page Burt, a 73-yearold biologist in Rankin, monitors changes to blooming times and the replacement of the tundra’s low heath with taller shrubs that caribou dislike. Even with the higher wages provided by mining, caribou remain the primary food source for Inuit in the region, which means warming could increase food scarcity. The trend has been particularly devastating on Baffin Island, where the main herd has all but disappeared.
Mining is an almost inevitable employer in Rankin. Among Burt’s many jobs – her house is part of a hotel she runs – is consulting for miners, including Agnico, on environmental impacts. Her husband, John Hickes, 75, has his own connections to the mines, having served as chief negotiator between the Inuit and Agnico. Hickes, who was born in an igloo, also operates a dog-sled tourism business. Among the most dangerous climate-related changes he’s noticed is unpredictable ice thickness, which makes hunting more dangerous. “Twenty years ago, you could ask an Inuk if a lake was suitable to cross by foot. Right now, that Inuk will tell you, ‘I don’t know,’” Hickes said.
The all-weather road to Agnico’s Amaruq mining camp bisects an expanse of tundra that in late July is a multicolored tapestry of lichen, moss and wildflowers. Speed is capped at 50 kilometers an hour to control dust and keep the gigantic trucks from flattening wildlife. On route to the camp,
family members. Housing is desperately short and prohibitively expensive throughout the north, prompting Agnico to fly some twothirds of the mining workers on charter flights from elsewhere in Canada. Amitnak recently decided to join the long-haul commuters, leaving her daughter with family so she can rent a home in Ottawa. Living far away won’t be easy, she said, but it will provide her daughter with otherwise unattainable luxuries. She pulls up a photo of the little girl on her phone, dressed in traditional Inuit clothing and trying to bore a fishing hole in the ice with a chisel-or “tuuq”-so big she can barely hold it. Amitnak recently bought her a trampoline with her mine wages and is looking forward to an upcoming heavy metal concert in Toronto.
“It’s almost like living in two worlds,” she said.
22-year-old Kaytlyn Amitnak describes the animals who live here: sand cranes and foxes, wolverine and muskox, eagles, hares and legions of ground squirrels called siksik. Twice a year, as many as 250,000 caribou migrate across the mine’s routes from Baker Lake and Rankin Inlet. The herd has closed the roads for more than 50 days so far this year. Amitnak works as a human resources agent for the mine. Until now, she’s managed to split her “two weeks on/two weeks off” rotation between the camp and her parents’ home in Baker Lake, which she shares with her two-year-old daughter and other
Back in Rankin Inlet, David Kakuktinniq threads his car through stacks of shipping containers fresh off the barge. Pulling into an area filled with heavy equipment, he stops in front of a line of shiny yellow tractors. Until three years ago, Kakuktinniq’s crews used these to haul sleds of fuel, but he parked them when the ice became too unpredictable.
“It’s just too risky,” he said. It’s not the only change he’s noticed as the region thaws. Houses in town that were built with steel piles socketed into permafrost are starting to tilt as the ground shifts beneath them.
“It’s changed, but it’s OK,” said Kakuktinniq. “We’ll create a business that fixes houses on piles.”
Bloomberg’s Eric Roston, Ashley Robinson and Natalie Obiko Pearson contributed.
BLOOMBERG PHOTO BY COLE BURSTON
James Kalluk sits for a photograph at his home in Baker Lake, Nunavut, on July 29.
Thanks for the love
The outpouring of support, concern and encouragement – not just in Prince George but from around the province and even across the country – on Thursday was deeply humbling and so appreciated.
After our announcement that we were ceasing publication of our paid daily newspaper next weekend in favour of a free Thursday weekly newspaper starting in October, we held our breath. We really didn’t know what to expect but we were also not surprised at the amount of love and caring we received in the form of phone calls, e-mails, texts and even a handwritten card from a certain MLA well-known for the personal touch.
That’s Prince George right there.
Along with MLAs and MPs, we heard from former Citizen staffers and former residents scattered across Canada, congratulating us on the job we’ve done to date, wishing all of the employees their best and imploring us to keep it up as we move forward.
The most gratifying words came from local residents and readers that make reading The Citizen part of their daily ritual. They
wanted to tell us how much the newspaper means to them and how long it has been part of their lives. They told us stories of bonding with children and grandchildren as they headed out together to deliver the paper. They told us about news stories that had made a huge difference in their lives. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. There really aren’t the words – both in quantity or quality – to adequately express how much your caring meant to us. That’s the Prince George way, of course. Even people who have had plenty of reason to be upset with our stories and opinions over the years reached out with kind words because The Citizen is Prince George’s newspaper and they care about all things Prince George, including its newspaper and the people who work here.
“Many have been my grouses about Neil’s perspective and even editorial choices but I have never doubted his dedication to community journalism or his sincere efforts to keep this paper’s head above water,” one reader posted beneath our letter to readers and the community on our website. “Good luck to him and the rest of the Citizen team as this inevitable downsizing and transfor-
mation proceeds!”
“Very sad to hear this,” added Art Betke (he goes by his real name on our website). “Reading the Citizen over breakfast five days a week has become the highlight of (most of) my mornings. (Monday mornings always felt somewhat empty without it.) You will be greatly missed. October 3 being a Thursday, I assume that’s the day of the week it will be out in print form.”
“Slim” made a fantastic suggestion.
He wondered if The Citizen could offer something like the famous Friday Free For All that Ben and Elaine Meisner had on 250News, where residents could share their views on any issue they like and debate amongst each other.
Yes, we most certainly can.
As of this morning and every Friday going forward, website readers can find the Citizens Corner (thanks, “PG_Resident” for the name) and can dive in. Looking forward to reading those views. We just ask that everyone be polite and respectful – yell the expletives and insults at your screen then play nice in the sandbox with the others, please.
One last note. Sorry, but not sorry, to the
YOUR LETTERS
Petro pressure
I am feeling like an injustice is being done in Prince George so I’d like to share some thoughts about it.
This weekend, a family member has come to our house essentially pressuring us to sign a petition in support of the proposed petrochemical plant.
For those of you who don’t know, while this plant will secure about 1,000 jobs here, it seems that the corporation that is backing it up is ignoring the significant impacts on the air quality here – the airshed simply cannot support such a plant inside the city limits.
It’s time to start investing these billions of dollars into sustainable technologies. While I do empathize that there have been significant curtailments in the mills all over B.C., resulting in thousands of jobs lost, it does not make sense to keep investing in a sector that will not last and
that is harmful to the people and environment.
There are places all over the world – Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden, who have been making strides in the right direction. Here, we seem to want to continue going backwards and desecrating the land that was not ours to begin with, but that we do love for the beauty it possesses and the time we’ve had here.
If not for the love of our ecosystems, we should want to make the decision that is best for our health and the health of other living things around us.
I implore you all to do your own research and decide for yourselves, and not be pressured by someone you know.
Neelam Pahal, Prince George
Birth alerts necessary
The ending of the birth alert seizures will certainly result in an increase of infant mortality from mothers unable to care for their
babies as was the reason the program was implemented initially. The reasoning smacks with political correctness and the infants will be the victims of such a measure. Whether it be native, white, black, or purple does not matter. What matters is the risk infants will be exposed to. The report is ludicrously false when it says it is a form of violence toward the infant. The very need for such actions will not wane and infants will still be at extreme risk of violence and neglect from their mothers which has already been the case many times in the past and proven. Some mothers are incompetent caregivers, whether due to family history or drugs and alcohol. The reasoning for seizures is still necessary but the new system they put forth will surely produce more infant moralities that fall through the cracks. Who will be responsible?
Phil Gatehouse Prince George
LETTERS WELCOME: The Prince George Citizen welcomes letters to the editor from our readers. Submissions should be sent by email to: letters@pgcitizen.ca. No attachments, please. They can also be faxed to 250-960-2766, or mailed to 201-1777 Third Ave., Prince George, B.C. V2L 3G7. Maximum length is 750 words and writers are limited to one submission every week. We will edit letters only to ensure clarity, good taste, for legal reasons, and occasionally for length. Although we will not include your address and telephone number in the paper, we need both for verification purposes. Unsigned or handwritten letters will not be published. The Prince George Citizen is a member of the National Newsmedia Council, which is an independent organization established to deal with acceptable journalistic practices and ethical behaviour. If you have concerns about editorial content, please contact Neil Godbout (ngodbout@pgcitizen. ca or 250-960-2759). If you are not satisfied with the response and wish to file a formal complaint, visit the web site at mediacouncil.ca or call toll-free 1-844-877-1163 for additional information.
reporters at the local news outlets for not returning your calls asking for comment about our changes. Our sole focus was on our employees, our readers and our customers, which is where it will remain. Thank you for offering the opportunity to speak to your audience but we wanted to say what we had to say in our own words and in our own pages and on our website. It’s our job to report on the news and to be the news as little as possible. Our letter was pushed down the website quickly on Thursday as we shared news about John Brink’s amazing donation to the College of New Caledonia, the reaction of local federal candidates to the Justin Trudeau brownface scandal and the sentencing of an elderly man for sexually abusing his daughters. Bad news, hard news, good news – that’s what we do.
We just couldn’t let the kindness and consideration we received Thursday from so many of you pass without us publicly expressing our gratitude once more. We’re going to do everything we can to keep earning the respect and appreciation you have for who we are and what we do.
— Editor-in-chief Neil Godbout
Start peace now
At a Prince George Rotary peace event in 2018, the audience was asked was to share their thoughts of what peace really means to them.
The main themes that emerged from each group were similar. Inclusiveness. Respect. Collaboration. Joy. Community. Dignity. Forgiveness. Kindness. Acceptance. Tolerance. Co-operation. Harmony. Unity. Compassion. Supportive. Friendship. Smiles. Education. Diversity. Sustainability. It set the table for a fantastic evening.
Each year, the International Day of Peace is observed around the world on Sept. 21. The General Assembly of the United Nations has declared this as a day devoted to strengthening the ideals of peace, both within and among all nations and peoples. Established in 1981 by unanimous United Nations resolution, Peace Day provides a globally shared date for all humanity to commit to Peace above all differences and to contribute to building a culture of Peace.
Rotary International, comprised of 1.2 million members around the world, including more than 150 Rotarians in Prince George in three clubs along with Rotaract (19-30 year-olds) and Interact (high school) is an organization where neighbours, friends and problem-solvers, share ideas, join leaders and create lasting change locally and internationally.
We are people of action. Promoting peace is important to Rotary. It is among our six areas of focus, which also include fighting disease, providing clean water, saving mothers and children, growing local economies, and supporting education.
Why is peace crucial?
Every project that Rotarians undertake, whether in Prince George, provincially, nationally and internationally, has a certain element of peace to it.
Yellowhead Rotary’s Taste of India fundraiser has supported the Blackburn Community Association, Big Brothers/Big Sisters, the Prince George Public Library and St. Patrick’s House.
Prince George Downtown Rotary’s Gourmet Gala fundraises for the breakfast program at Westwood elementary, scholarships, bursaries, suicide prevention, mental wellness and youth programs.
Operation Red Nose, organized by the Nechako Rotary Club, helps get party-goers safely home during the holiday season and supports youth and amateur sport organizations.
Through our youth services programs, whether through youth exchange or the Rotary Youth Leadership Awards, we help students develop better ethics, com-
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SPECIAL TO THE CITIZEN ANDREA JOHNSON
munication and leadership skills.
The youth exchange program gives Prince George high school students the opportunity to study abroad around the world.
Ambassadors for not only Prince George, but Canada, they create lifelong friendships, find common ground and embrace their differences. In 2018-19, three local students spent the year in Norway, Italy and Denmark.
Over the years, our collaborative efforts in Prince George have made a huge difference to the community.
Rotary Hospice House provides peace and comfort to families and their loved ones. The Rotary Soccer Fields provide a field of play for a game that stresses teamwork sportsmanship and fun.
The Rotary Hair and Wig Salon at the Kordyban Cancer Lodge has helped ease the anxiety of cancer patients who lose their hair. In 2018, we joined forces to plant 200 seedlings in Rainbow Park to replace trees that were hit by the pine beetle epidemic. Those are just but a few examples that support education, sustainability, better health, inclusiveness, tolerance, dignity and community. Prince George Rotarians are passionate about eradicating polio. Since 1998, Rotarians have worked closely with the World Health Organization, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, UNICEF, the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention to reduce the number of polio cases by 99.99 per cent.
The disease only remains in three countries – Nigeria, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Rotarians around the world have contributed millions of dollars to the End Polio Now campaign. One dose of the vaccine only costs $1. It is why Sept. 21 is so important to Rotarians.
You can learn more about Rotary’s peace efforts or Rotary in general this Saturday at Downtown PG’s Fall Fest.
Stop by our table and let us know what your idea of peace is. Or you’re welcome to learn more at any one of the Prince George clubs at our meetings at the Coast Inn of the North.
The Rotary Club of Prince George meets Tuesdays for lunch; the Nechako Rotary Club meets Wednesdays for breakfast at 7 a.m.; and the Yellowhead Club meets Thursdays for lunch. — Andrea Johnson is a peace champion and the public relations chair for the Rotary Club of Prince George Nechako and Rotary District 5040.
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Rural Nevada residents worried about huge Storm Area 51 crowds
The Associated Press
Visitors descending on the remote Nevada desert for “Storm Area 51” are from Earth, not outer space.
No one knows what to expect, but the two tiny towns of Rachel and Hiko near the once-secret military research site are preparing for an influx of people over the next few days.
“It’s happening. We already have people from all over the world,” Little A’Le’Inn proprietor Connie West said Wednesday from her bustling cafe and motel, where volunteers have arrived from Poland, Scotland, Australia, Florida, Idaho and Oklahoma.
Neighbours, elected officials and event organizers said the craze sparked by an internet joke inviting people to “see them aliens” might become a cultural marker, a monumental dud or something in between.
Area 51’s secrecy has long fueled fascination about extraterrestrial life, UFOs and conspiracy theories, giving rise to the events this week and prompting military warnings not to approach the protected site.
“This phenomenon is really a perfect blend of interest in aliens and the supernatural, government conspiracies, and the desire to know what we don’t know,” said Michael Ian Borer, a University of Nevada, Las Vegas, sociologist who researches pop culture and paranormal activity.
The result, Borer said, was “hope and fear” for events that include the “Area 51 Basecamp,” featuring music, speakers and movies, and two festivals competing for the name “Alienstock” starting Thursday.
Some neighbours and officials in two counties near Area 51 are nervous. The area of scenic mountains and rugged desert is home to a combined 50,000 people and compares in size with New England. Elected officials signed emergency declarations after millions of people responded to the Facebook post this summer.
“We are preparing for the worst,” said Joerg Arnu, a Rachel resident who could see from his home a makeshift stage and cluster of portable toilets in a dusty area recently scraped of brush surrounding West’s little motel and cafe.
Arnu said he installed outdoor floodlights, fencing and “No Trespassing” signs on his 30-acre property. He’s also organized a radio-equipped night watch of neighbours, fearing there won’t be
enough water, food, trash bins or toilets for visitors.
“Those that know what to expect camping in the desert are going to have a good time,” Arnu said. “Those who are looking for a big party are going to be disappointed.”
He predicts people showing up in the desert in shorts and flipflops.
“That doesn’t protect you against critters, snakes and scorpions,” Arnu said. “It will get cold at night. They’re not going to find what they’re looking for, and they are going to get angry.”
Officials expect cellular service to be overwhelmed. The nearest gas station is 72 kilometres away. Campers could encounter overnight temperatures as low as 5 C.
“We really didn’t ask for this,” said Varlin Higbee, a Lincoln County commissioner who voted to allocate $250,000 in scarce funds to handle anticipated crowds. “We have planned and staged enough to handle 30,000 to 40,000 people,” Higbee said. “We don’t know how many will come for sure.”
Though the creator of the Facebook event later called it a hoax, the overwhelming response sent local, state and military officials scrambling. Promoters began scouting sites. A beer company produced alien-themed cans. A Nevada brothel offered discounts to “E.T. enthusiasts.”
The Federal Aviation Administration closed nearby air space this week.
“People desire to be part of something, to be ahead of the curve,” said Borer, the sociologist. “Area 51 is a place where normal, ordinary citizens can’t go. When you tell people they can’t do something, they just want to do it more.”
George Harris, owner of the Alien Research Center souvenir store in Hiko, welcomed the attention and planned a cultural program focused on extraterrestrial lore Friday and Saturday.
The “Area 51 Basecamp” promises up to 60 food trucks and vendors, trash and electric service, and a robust security and medical staff.
Harris said he was prepared for up to 15,000 people and expected they would appreciate taking selfies with a replica of Area 51’s back gate without having to travel several miles to the real thing.
“It’s exactly the same,” Harris said. “We just want people to be safe. As long as they don’t go on the desert floor and destroy the ecosystem, everyone will have a good time.”
West, the motel owner, is planning an “Alienstock” Thursday through Sunday in Rachel, a town of about 50 residents a more than two-hour drive north of Las Vegas on a normally lonely road dubbed the Extraterrestrial Highway.
AP PHOTO
Little A’Le’Inn owner Connie West speaks on the phone Wednesday outside of the restaurant and bar in Rachel, Nev.
AP PHOTO People enter and exit the Alien Research Centre in Hiko, Nev.
Silent spring, summer, fall and winter
North America has lost three billion birds in the last 50 years
Karin BRULLIARD
The Washington Post
Slowly, steadily and almost imperceptibly, North America’s bird population is dwindling.
The sparrows and finches that visit backyard feeders number fewer each year. The flutelike song of the western meadowlark – the official bird of six U.S. states – is growing more rare. The continent has lost nearly three billion birds representing hundreds of species over the past five decades, in an enormous loss that signals an “overlooked biodiversity crisis,” according to a study from top ornithologists and government agencies.
This is not an extinction crisis –yet. It is a more insidious decline in abundance as humans dramatically alter the landscape: There are 29 per cent fewer birds in the United States and Canada today than in 1970, the study concludes. Grassland species have been hardest hit, probably because of agricultural intensification that has engulfed habitats and spread pesticides that kill the insects many birds eat. But the victims include warblers, thrushes, swallows and other familiar birds.
“That’s really what was so staggering about this,” said lead author Ken Rosenberg, a senior scientist at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and American Bird Conservancy. “The generalist, adaptable, so-called common species were not compensating for the losses, and in fact they were experiencing losses themselves. This major loss was pervasive across all the bird groups.”
The study’s authors, who include scientists from Canada’s environment agency and the U.S. Geological Survey, were able to put a number on the decline because birds are probably the best-monitored animals on Earth. Decades of standardized, on-the-ground tallies carried out by ordinary bird enthusiasts – including the annual North American Breeding Bird Survey and the Christmas Bird
Count – provided a wealth of data that the researchers compiled and compared. They then cross-referenced that with data from a very different, nonhuman source: 143 weather radars that are designed to detect rain but also capture “biomass” flying through the skies, as hundreds of migratory bird species do every fall and spring. Birds look “sort of like big blobs” in radar imagery, said co-author Adriaan Dokter, a migration ecologist at the Cornell Lab. Measurements of the blobs’ size and movements showed that the volume of spring migration dropped 14 per cent in the past decade, according to the study, published Thursday in Science. Earlier research has documented several threats that could be responsible for the large-scale bird decline. Agriculture and habitat loss are thought to be the primary drivers, with other factors such as light pollution (which disorients birds), buildings (which they crash
into) and roaming cats (which kill them) amounting to “death by a thousand cuts,” Rosenberg said.
Birds, because they are so wellmonitored, should be viewed as canaries in coal mines, the authors argue – harbingers of a wider environmental malaise at a time when other creatures, including insects, are also thought to be fading but are more challenging to count.
“Studies like this do suggest the potential of a systems collapse,” said Richard Gregory, head of monitoring conservation science at the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. “These birds are an indicator of ecosystem health. And that, ultimately, may be linked to the productivity and sustainability of agricultural systems.”
Gregory, who was not involved in the study, called its scale “impressive” and said the “picture of decline and general methodology is compelling and first-rate.”
The study is the largest effort yet to document a bird decline
that has been detected in previous studies in Europe and elsewhere. In 2014, Gregory and colleagues reported a loss of 421 million birds in Europe over 30 years. Scientists in Germany reported this month that Lake Constance, at the border of Germany and Switzerland, had lost 25 per cent of its birds in three decades. A recent United Nations report warned that 1 million animal and plant species are at risk of extinction as people log, farm and mine the natural world and as the climate warms. But in the case of most dwindling bird species, the problem is not that they are in immediate danger of vanishing. Instead, the authors say, bird populations are shrinking at rates we do not see, and so do not act upon. Conservationists refer to this as “shrinking baseline syndrome,” and it can have devastating effects: Passenger pigeons were once so abundant that their massive flocks darkened U.S. skies. They were driven to extinc-
tion in just a few decades. “Birds are not dropping out of the sky,” said Cagan Sekercioglu, a University of Utah ornithologist who was not involved in the new report, which he described as a “landmark” study. “When you are young, that’s your baseline. The problem is, the next generation, their baseline is lower. But they don’t know what they’re missing.”
Losing birds is not just about no longer seeing their vast array of shapes and hues or hearing their dizzying repertoires of songs and sounds. They provide essential “services” to ecosystems, the study said.
Some are “seed dispersers” –they eat seeds from tree fruits and then spread them across wide areas through defecation, helping create new trees; when they’re not around, “seed predators,” such as rodents, consume seeds from fallen fruits but crack them open, rendering them unable to grow, said Sekercioglu, who has studied birds’ roles in ecosystems. He cited studies finding that birds save conifer farms in the Pacific Northwest many hundreds of dollars per hectare by eating harmful insects and help Jamaican coffee farmers reduce the use of pesticides. Some birds are pollinators. Some are predators, and some are prey.
“They’re integral to the system. It’s like a very large corporation in a marketplace – they’re diversified across all areas,” said co-author Mike Parr, president of the American Bird Conservancy. “If that corporation starts to have problems, then it starts showing up everywhere.”
The study notes some bright spots. On the rise are wetland birds such as ducks and geese, which have benefited from conservation efforts by hunting groups. Also increasing are raptors such as bald eagles, which were close to extinction before the prohibition of the insecticide DDT.
Endangered species protections helped them rebound, and they remain protected under other federal laws.
A murmuration of birds was spotted leaving a tree at Seventh Avenue and Winnipeg Street on Monday morning this past January. These aerial flocking formations by starlings and other kinds of birds are common and are comparable to huge schools of ocean fish moving en masse.
Sports
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Cougars more fit, expect better results in 2019-20
Season starts tonight against Giants at CN Centre
Ted CLARKE Citizen staff tclarke@pgcitizen.ca
When the Prince George Cougars did the math, after they missed the WHL playoffs for the second consecutive year, their third-period collapses stood out like a sore thumb.
In a 68-game schedule they lost 49 times and in 13 of those games after two periods they were either tied (eight games) or led (five games) before they succumbed to their opponents.
Was it conditioning, or lack thereof? Perhaps.
The youth and inexperience of the players probably had more to do with what happened to the Cougars, who set a team record for futility with a 17-game losing streak which ultimately led to the firing of head coach Richard Matvichuk.
That slate has been wiped clean and the Cougars are under new barking orders now that Mark Lamb has shed the interim tag and is doing double-duty as head coach and general manager, with newly-hired associate Jason Smith sharing his expertise as a former NHL captain and WHL head coach. Despite flagging attendance, the Cougars ownership group has shown there’s no interest in pulling the plug and moving the team to greener pastures. They’re in it for the longterm, having run the team like a professional franchise since they took it over in 2014.
They’ve succeeded in changing the culture and the message has gotten through to the hockey world that players who wear the Cougar crest get treated like pros, at home and on the road, and despite the challenges of its isolation from the rest of the league Prince George is no longer a WHL address to try to avoid. Everybody connected with the team desperately wants it to succeed on the ice and return to the days of capacity crowds and MasterCard commercials of the late 1990s which showed how much this city loves its Cougars. That love affair still smoulders, it’s just waiting for a bandwagon to climb aboard.
The season starts tonight at CN Centre where the Cougars play the Vancouver Giants and local hockey fans are once again being asked to be patient. They’re still young, with eight fresh faces among a cast of 17 returning players who went through those growing pains.
Given a fresh start under the new regime, with another year of experience behind them, they should score more goals and win more often than they did last year. Will it be enough to make the playoffs? Maybe. But these Cougars still a couple years away from being legitimate contenders for the Ed Chynoweth Cup.
Here’s a breakdown for what we can expect over the next six months and hopefully for more, for the Cougars’ sake:
First impressions
Don’t be fooled by the Cats’ lack of production in the preseason. Held to just six goals in five exhibition games, they were missing most of their veterans in all but one of those games and in that one they took an undefeated Edmonton Oil Kings team to overtime. Speed is an asset the Cougars do possess and chances are they won’t get outworked. Lamb has seen the fitness testing results and they’ve returned from a long summer break in better shape than they were last year at this time.
“They put in the time in the summer, so the dedication is there,” said Lamb. “It doesn’t automatically make you win games
UNBC
Ted CLARKE Citizen staff
either, there’s a lot there that goes into winning hockey games, but it gives you a better chance to have success.
“They practice hard, they practice fast and we’re going to have more speed in our lineup. Will that translate into wins? We don’t know that. We didn’t have a lot of offence last year. We need goals right through our lineup, you need your third or fourth lines to chip in once in a while.”
Forwards
Leading scorer Vladislav Mikhachuk has turned pro in the KHL but the Cougars retain 30-goal scorer Josh Maser brings a man-among-boys presence to the left side and he’ll start the season working in tandem with the ever-tenacious Reid Perepeluk, another bruiser on the right side, combining on a line with centre Ethan Browne, perhaps the team’s most skilled playmaker.
Jackson Leppard is capable of much more than the 10 goals and 29 points he put up last year and on his line he’s the mate for two Czechs – Matej Toman and rookie Fillip Kofer, who has been a quick study learning the game on North American-sized rinks.
Lamb says his forwards will have to take care of their own end first before they go looking for those big stretch passes and everybody has to pitch in create offence from the far end of the ice.
“We’re going to have to play a real structured defensive game, right from our goaltender out, to have success,” he said.
“We didn’t score a lot of goals but we gave up way too many goals. When you play strong D the offence will come and we didn’t play strong D last year. Everybody talks about goal scoring, we’re going to emphasize our play without the puck “
Another player to watch is Ilijah Colina (currently nursing a shoulder injury), who has overcome personal struggles that forced him to leave the team in January. Rookie Craig Armstrong, the Cougars ninth overall pick in 2018, has a bit of Theo Fleury in him.
Despite his lack of size he can take a hit and he never quits. Mitch Kohner, Connor Bowie, Tyson Upper and Brendan Boyle know the fast way around a WHL rink and newcomers Blake Eastman and former Prince Albert Raider Davin Griffin will also compete for icetime.
“I think last year we didn’t get to the ugly
areas around the net enough and this year guys are out to prove a point that we should be in playoffs and have a good team this year,” said Maser. “Mark and Jason obviously have a lot of knowledge of the game of hockey, where you should be and what to do and the guys are listening carefully to what they have to say.”
Defence
The backbone of the Cougars was fed to the wolves last season and they bent at times, giving up an average 3.48 goals per game, but there were six WHL teams that allowed more over the course of the season.
Cole Moberg used his quick wheels, smart stick and big shot to emerge as an NHL prospect and the Chicago Blackhawks liked him enough to draft him in the seventh round. Returnees Ryan Schoettler, Jack Sander, Cole Beamin and Rhett Rhinehart move the puck quickly and play tough enough in their own end to log big minutes. Rhinehart, as a 17-year-old with a late-November birthday, put up five goals and 24 points. Beamin has intimidating size at six-foot-four, 209 pounds. Austin Crossley could end up as a winger but will start the season on D. Joe Kennedy, a Washington native who played junior A last season in Ontario, Manitoba midget grad Ethan McColm and Delta Academy product Ethan Samson are new guys on the blueline.
“Defence is one of our strengths and it has to be strength because we don’t have that scoring touch yet,” said Moberg. “Hopefully we can find a couple guys this year to break out and get some goals. Obviously, after losing Vlad (Mikhalchuk) from last year it’s a big hole to fill, but if we play strong defence we’ll get wins.
“With our compete level, we’re not going to die out in third periods. We did that a lot last year but we’re in much better shape than we were last year at the start of the year and it’s just going to get better from here.”
Goaltending
Taylor Gauthier’s draft-day disappointment is now a distant memory. This is his time to prove to the NHL scouts he’s a future pro in the making. Heading into his third full season, Gauthier was a workhorse last season and should reap the benefits of
women return to Masich
Two borders away last weekend in Saskatchewan, they played some of the best soccer of their careers and a single point was their reward.
Now the UNBC Timberwolves will try to pick up where they left off when they host the Lethbridge Pronghorns in U Sports Canada West women’s soccer action at Masich Place Stadium (6 p.m. start).
After winning their first two games of the season, the T-wolves traveled to Saskatoon to meet the unbeaten Huskies on Saturday and ended up losing 3-1. They followed that Sunday in Regina against the Regina Cougars and came home with a 1-1 tie.
“The games against Saskatchewan and Regina were our fastest-paced games so far,” said fifth-year T-wolves defender
Julia Babicz, on unbc.ca.
“It was an incredible matchup against them. Three incredible teams that utilized their strengths and looked to expose each other’s weaknesses. Our confidence hasn’t dwindled as we played our game and we played it well. We had many scoring opportunities, and how our team capitalizes on said opportunities for the upcoming matches will be the difference maker.”
Babicz, a Prince George Youth Soccer product, assisted on Paige Payne’s goal Sunday, which came right after Babicz drilled the crossbar with a shot at the Regina net.
In tonight’s game the T-wolves (2-1-1, fourth in Pacific Division) will be taking on a Pronghorns (0-2-2) team still looking for its first victory. Then on Sunday (noon start at Masich), UNBC hosts the
other Cougars of Canada West from Mount Royal University in Calgary. Mount Royal (0-4-0) faces the first-place Calgary Dinos (3-0-1) tonight.
Despite the losing records of the Alberta teams, Babicz says there’s no chance the Twolves will be counting points before they earn them.
“We expect each of our opponents to have the best game of their life,” she said.
“If we prepare that way, personally and as a squad, we will be ready. The last time we played Mount Royal was two years ago. A lot can change in two years.”
The UNBC men (3-3-1, fifth in Pacific) are on the road this weekend in Edmonton.
The T-wolves play Alberta (1-4-1, fifth in Prairie Division) on Saturday afternoon (1:15 p.m. PT), then take on the McEwan Griffins Sunday at 1:30 p.m. PT.
all that playing time. In 55 games with a last-place team his numbers - 3.45 goalsagainst average .899 save percentage, three shutouts – weren’t Vezina-like. But he was a sharp learning curve and will benefit from another season working with goalie coach Taylor Dakers. That should give the Cougars a chance to win on most nights. Tyler Brennan, 16, is a big body at six-foot-three, 190 pounds and still growing. As the goalie of the future, the 21st overall bantam pick in 2018 won’t simply be a bench-warmer as he makes the jump up from Rink Academy in Winnipeg. Lamb has promised he’ll get his share of the starts.
Coaching
Lamb had seven years as a GM/head coach with Swift Current. His handiwork at the draft table before he left for the AHL and later on as a behind-the-scenes advisor built the Broncos into WHL champions two seasons ago.
He gave up a job offer this summer to return to the Edmonton Oilers as an assistant coach to stick with the Cougar project and aims to see it blossom into another championship team. Smith has a 88-44-10-2 record and back-to-back conference final appearances a couple years ago as a WHL head coach with the Kelowna Rockets and like Lamb he carried a reputation as an NHL player whose work ethic was off the charts. If they can get the players to match that intensity the Cougars’ progress to contender status will be fast-tracked.
“Mark has set the tone right from the start that we’re going to be a hard team to play against and we’re not going to be a team that takes nights off and give teams easy games,” said Smith.
“Guys have put in the work from the start by paying attention to detail and making sure the compete level is where it needs to be. That’s the only way you can take the step as a team and grow is to have internal competition and push each other to be better every day.”
Prognosis
The best the Cougars can realistically expect is to make it as a wild-card playoff team. But if they get there, look out. They might have a surprise or two in store for whoever they do meet in the first round.
The Griffins (1-3-2) host the UBC Thunderbirds (3-1-1) Saturday afternoon.
UNBC has won its last two games. The shut out Victoria 2-0 on the road on Sept. 7, then last Friday at Masich handed Mount Royal a 3-2 defeat – the Cougars’ first loss of the season.
“Our mindset going into the Alberta game should be the same as it has been all year – go out and try to put a great performance on the field,” said UNBC midfielder Jonah Smith. “The results against Victoria and MRU show the strength of the team’s collective mindset, and our ability to thrive in adversity.
“The results prove that we can score in big moments and defend against dangerous teams.
“Everyone is excited to continue to build and improve on our recent success.”
CITIZEN PHOTO BY JAMES DOYLE
Team Hamhuis (black) took on Team Brewer (white) at CN Centre during the Young Guns game on the opening day of Prince George Cougars training camp. Team Brewer defeated Team Hamhuis by a score of 6-5 in overtime.
Members of the Prince George Spruce Kings were only a few of the roughly 350 people of all ages that walked, ran, biked, or wheeled their way around the five kilometre route while taking part in the 39th annual Prince George Terry Fox Run on Sunday at Lheidli T’enneh Memorial Park.
Depleted Spruce Kings hit the road
Ted CLARKE Citizen staff
tclarke@pgcitizen.ca
Injuries and illnesses are part of the game for hockey teams and the Prince George Spruce Kings, just four games into the season, have already been affected.
They’re in Chilliwack to play the Chiefs (1-3-0-0) tonight to start their first roadtrip and they’ll do so without winger Corey Cunningham and defencemen Brendan Hill and Cole Leal.
Cunningham is out with the flu and did not board the bus on Thursday. Hill, a Lake Superior State recruit from Michigan, suffered a day-to-day lower-body injury in the first period of Saturday’s game against the Penticton Vees when he fell into the boards after a shoulderon-shoulder hit with Vees captain David Silye.
Leal, another first-year defenceman, is nursing a high-ankle sprain he hurt two weeks ago in the season-opener against Surrey. He’s expected to be out at least two more weeks.
The good news is the Kings will have Nick Bochen back to health for the game in Chilliwack. An undisclosed injury lim-
ited the University of Michigan recruit to just power-play duty in their 4-3 overtime loss to Penticton Saturday at Rolling Mix Concrete Arena but he drew an assist on Chong Min Lee’s tying goal late in the game with goalie Jack McGovern on the bench.
Defenceman Sol Seibel, a 20-year-old acquired in an August future considerations trade with the Salmon Arm Silverbacks, left the Kings after just one game and has returned to his home in Kamloops.
“He left the team and has decided not to play hockey,” said Kings head coach Alex Evin. Hill and Leal on the shelf and Seibel gone, affiliated player Brendan Wang, 17, got the call from the Burnaby Winter Club midget prep team to join the Kings on the road.
The defending B.C. Hockey League champion Spruce Kings (1-1-2-0) left the ice Saturday disappointed with their loss to the high-flying Vees (4-0-0-0) but feeling satisfied with how well they contained their opponents on the weekend, which started with a 6-1 win over the Victoria Grizzlies.
“We got three of four points against two good teams,” said Evin.
For most of the Penticton game they were down to just four defencemen, including rookies Amran Bhabra, 16, and 17-year-old Colton Cameron.
“We played really well against Penticton and held them to two shots in the third period and overtime and they scored on both of them,” said Evin.
“We outshot them 18-2 from the third period on and I don’t think too many teams will do that.”
McGovern, 17, in his first career BCHL start, made 14 saves in the loss to Penticton and Evin liked what he saw out of the Waterdown, Ont., native.
“I wanted him to play one of our first four games and he did quite well,” said Evin.
“We didn’t win but we gave up two shorthanded goals and the chances are not ones we’d blame on our goaltender. He deserved to be in there.”
The Kings move on to Langley to face the Rivermen Saturday night (7:15 p.m. start), then play the Express in Coquitlam on Sunday (3 p.m.). This is the Kings’ only three-games-in-three-days roadtrip in 2019-20. Last season they had eight.
Game time in Chilliwack tonight is 7 p.m.
Horvat’s two-point night leads Canucks past Oilers
Shane JONES The Canadian Press
EDMONTON — Bo Horvat had a goal and an assist as the Vancouver Canucks came away with a 6-1 pre-season victory over the Edmonton Oilers on Thursday. Brogan Rafferty, Jay Beagle, Sven Baertschi, Lukas Jasek and Adam Gaudette also scored for the Canucks who improved to 3-1 in exhibition action. Cooper Marody responded for the Oilers, who are 1-2. Rafferty opened scoring for Vancouver four minutes into the opening period when he teed up a blast from the point that blew past Oilers goalie Mikko Koskinen.
Edmonton responded a couple of minutes later as Marody backhanded in a puck that was lying in the crease, surprising Canucks starter Jacob Markstrom, who thought he had it under his pads. A giveaway at Vancouver’s blue-line led to Beagle beating Koskinen high and to the glove side as the Canucks regained the lead with 86 seconds left in the first period. Vancouver went up 3-1 on the power play 12 minutes into the second period as Horvat made a terrific pass through the seam to give Baertschi an easy redirect into the net.
Jasek’s wrist shot from the top of the right circle came on a power play nearly
four minutes later.
Shane Starrett replaced Koskinen in the Edmonton net to start the third and was beat early on as Horvat scored on a breakaway.
Gaudette was left alone in front of the net with four minutes remaining to record the Canucks’ sixth goal.
The Oilers remain home to host the Calgary Flames on Friday, while the Canucks head to Salt Lake City to face the Los Angeles Kings on Saturday.
Notes: Vancouver won the previous pre-season meeting between the two teams 4-2 on Tuesday The Oilers and Canucks open up the regular season against each other in Edmonton on Oct. 2.
Jays sweep Orioles
David GINSBURG The Associated Press
BALTIMORE — It didn’t matter to Austin Hays that the game he was in had absolutely no bearing on the playoff picture.
That was the last thing on his mind as he chased after a soaring line drive that appeared destined to go over the wall.
The Orioles rookie made a highlight-reel grab, one that will be played over and over long after anyone remembers that the Toronto Blue Jays beat Baltimore 8-4 Thursday night.
Cavan Biggio and Lourdes Gurriel Jr. homered for the Blue Jays, who scored 27 runs in their first three-game sweep at Camden Yards since July 2010.
Hays’ catch – and his enthusiasm in making it – belied the unimportance of a matchup between two teams that long ago dropped out of contention in the AL East.
After Biggio and Gurriel homered off Gabriel Ynoa (1-9) within a span of three pitches in the fourth inning, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. sent a deep drive to centre.
“Once I got closer to the wall, I realized there was a chance that I was going to jump for it,” Hays said.
Hays raced to the warning track, leaped to reach over the 7-foot wall and snagged the ball in the middle of his glove.
“It’s kind of the catch you dream about playing in the backyard, playing Wiffle ball and all that, so that was pretty cool,” Hays said. “That might be the first time since I was in high school that I robbed a home run. Definitely a cool experience.”
Upon returning to the ground, Hays pounded his chest three times in succession and yelled with delight.
“Yeah, it’s just raw emotion,” he said. “You don’t get to do something like that every day.”
Realizing the ball didn’t make it out, Guerrero showed his appreciation for the play by taking off his helmet and waving it in Hays’ direction.
Hays, chomping hard on his gum, lifted his cap over his head and pumped it up and down twice as a way of thanking Guerrero.
Toronto manager Charlie Montoyo wanted the home run, but that didn’t lessen his recognition of a job well done.
“That was an outstanding play by Hays,” Montoyo said. “That would have been cool to watch, three (homers) in a row.”
The night became even more memorable for Hays in the eighth, when he hit his second big league home run. The first came during his previous stint with the Orioles in 2017.
Though denied by Hays earlier, Guerrero hit a two-run double in the pivotal six-run seventh inning after Biggio singled in a pair of runs.
Anthony Kay (1-0) earned his first major league victory by pitching four innings in relief of opener Wilmer Font. Afterward, Kay received what he called a “beer shower” from his teammates. Trey Mancini had four hits for the Orioles, who have lost four straight and 15 of 19.
Trainer’s room
Blue Jays: SS Bo Bichette was removed for concussion protocol a couple innings after being struck in the left side of his batting helmet by a sixth-inning pitch from Ynoa. ... Guerrero was obviously feeling chipper after leaving Wednesday’s game with an apparent rib injury. “Just a little contusion on his side but he’s fine,” Montoyo said. ... Gurriel is still recovering from a left quad strain that put him on the IL for more than a month. “He’s not 100 per cent, so I think that’s big for him to learn how to play that way,” Montoyo said. Orioles: RHP Hunter Harvey was shut down for the season on Wednesday with soreness in his biceps. He made a positive impression in seven games as a reliever with the Orioles, going 1-0 with a 1.42 ERA. “He looked great in that lateinning role,” Hyde said.
Up next
Blue Jays: Toronto continues a 22-game stretch against AL East foes at Yankee Stadium on Friday night in the opener a three-game set.
CITIZEN PHOTO BY JAMES DOYLE
Health groups call for more vaping regulations
Christian PAAS-LANG The Canadian Press
OTTAWA — Federal officials have to act right away to avoid further risks of serious illness from vaping, eight Canadian health organizations said Thursday.
The groups are asking for an interim order from Health Canada to curb the marketing of vaping products, restrict the flavours available and regulate their nicotine levels.
Vaping products, the organizations say, should be treated the same way as tobacco products.
“Youth vaping has become a public-health crisis,” Dr. Sandy Buchman, president of the Canadian Medical Association, said at a news conference in Ottawa.
Thursday’s call comes after news of a serious vaping-related illness in London, Ont., as well as hundreds of cases in the United States, including seven deaths reportedly linked to vaping.
Authorities are still struggling to determine what exactly has made vapers sick.
And on Thursday, Health Canada issued a statement advising vapers again to monitor themselves for coughs, shortness of breath or chest pain and to seek medical attention if they are concerned.
The coalition of health groups said an interim order would allow the government to put in place regulations for up to 12 months while permanent versions were drafted.
“Wasting time on this can only increase the risks to Canadians,” Buchman said.
The organizations are asking for all federal parties to commit to issuing such an order within 60 days of forming government after the Oct. 21 election.
The group includes the Canadian Cancer Society, Canadian Lung Association, Coalition
quebecoise pour le controle du tabac, Heart & Stroke, Ontario Campaign for Action on Tobacco and Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada.
The organizations recommended restrictions on advertising similar to those on ordinary tobacco, a ban on most or all flavoured products, and a nicotine restriction of 20 mg/ml of vaping fluid in line with European Union standards.
The groups shied away from calling for a full ban on vaping products, instead focusing on the surging rate of vaping among younger Canadians.
A survey done for Health Canada and published this year found that one-fifth of high school aged students reported using vaping products, as well as one-seventh of children aged 13 and 14.
Cynthia Callard, the executive director of Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada, said vaping products have changed to become more addictive, attractive and accessible to youth.
“In short, tobacco companies are hooking kids on vape products in the same ways they used to hook their parents and grandparents on cigarettes,” Callard said.
Imperial Tobacco Canada issued a statement Thursday saying the solution to recent health concerns over vaping was “enforcement of existing restrictions on sales to youth and prohibitions on flavours appealing to youth” as well as regulations ensuring higher product quality and safety.
David Hammond, a professor at the University of Waterloo who has studied vaping in Canada, said the statement from the health groups emphasizes a consensus that “something has to be done” on vaping, especially on advertising, flavours and access for youth.
He said vaping can clearly be harmful, though less harmful than smoking – which is
not saying much, he added.
Still, Hammond said there is some room for vaping as a means of helping people quit smoking.
“Can they help people quit? Yes. Are they an absolute game-changer? Not right now,” he said.
There is no doubt that the rate of vaping in Canada has increased “on every measure,” Hammond said.
He noted that legislation allowing the sale of vaping products coincided with the entrance of the company Juul into the market. That company “changed the chemistry to make it easier, more palatable to inhale very high levels of nicotine,” he said.
At the same time, the Canadian government “clearly opened (the door) too wide for advertising and promotion,” especially to younger Canadians, Hammond said.
He said restrictions on advertising, on at least some flavours and on sales were a good place to start, but cautioned that vaping will be a tough challenge for governments.
“These are here to stay,” he said, flagging the vaping of cannabis as the next issue.
Juliet Guichon, a professor at the University of Calgary, echoed the view that Canadian legislation does not address youth vaping with enough seriousness.
“I think (the government) didn’t realize at the time what was going to happen,” she said. She floated a few ways of reducing vaping among minors, including requiring retailers to ask for identification from purchasers, and potentially raising the age required to buy vaping products to 21.
On Wednesday, Health Minister Ginette Petitpas Taylor said Health Canada would look at several kinds of regulations for vaping, but had not yet committed to any changes.
Airbnb to go public
Dee-Ann DURBIN The Associated Press
Airbnb Inc. said Thursday it plans to go public in 2020, a long-awaited move by the home-sharing company that is both loved and reviled for its disruption of the hotel business.
Airbnb disclosed the news in a brief statement. It didn’t give a target date for the initial public offering or say why it thinks the timing is right. Airbnb was valued at $31 billion last year, according to Renaissance Capital, which researches IPOs.
San Francisco-based Airbnb was launched in 2008. Co-founders Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia needed some extra cash, so they put three air mattresses on their apartment floor and set up a website promising a place to sleep and a free breakfast.
They named their new venture AirBed and Breakfast.
Since then, Airbnb has grown into one of the world’s largest home-sharing platforms, rivaled only by Booking.com. Six guests check into an Airbnb every second, the company says. Airbnb has more than 7 million listings in 100,000 cities worldwide. Nearly 1,000 cities have more than 1,000 Airbnb listings. In 2011, only 12 cities did.
Airbnb has said it was profitable on a pretax basis in 2018 and 2017, but it didn’t release specific numbers. The company said it made “substantially more than” $1 billion in revenue in the second quarter of this year, the second time in its history that quarterly revenue topped $1 billion. Airbnb didn’t say whether it made a quarterly profit.
Investors may be cautious after some recent IPO flops.
The ride-hailing companies Uber and Lyft debuted on the market earlier this year, but they continue to lose money and both are trading well below their IPO prices. WeWork, which is also racking up big losses as it opens shared office spaces, delayed its IPO earlier this week.
The gains were fuelled in part from Wednesday’s interest rate cuts by the U.S. Federal Reserve, says Kash Pashootan, CEO and chief investment offi cer at First Avenue Investment Counsel Inc.
“We are in the last leg of optimism and rally before the lower interest rate environment enthusiasm wears off,” he said in an interview.
The S&P/TSX composite index closed up 58.06 points at 16,858.35, after going as high as 16,913.49 earlier in the trading session. Despite the Fed’s uncertain language, investors still expect further rate cuts this year, said Pashootan. “The market still believes that rates are going lower and so that’s a positive in helping markets go higher,” he said.
“We feel that given that the U.S. economy will have to absorb a recession at some point in the next 12 to 18 months, we feel that (Fed chairman Jerome) Powell has softened expectations of future cuts and so when he does introduce them later it will be a pleasant surprise and a main driver to accelerating out of the recession.”
Pashootan said market expectations are high about a retaliation for an attack on Saudi Arabian oil facilities that will prompt a further rise in oil prices.
Crude oil prices surged 15 per cent following last weekend’s attack. They fell as Saudi Arabia said it brought some of the output back online but remain up about six per cent.
The November crude contract gained 15 cents at US$58.19 per barrel Thursday while the October natural gas contract was down 9.9 cents at US$2.54 per mmBTU. Eight of the 11 major sectors of the TSX rose, led by materials. The sector was pushed higher – despite lower gold prices – by a 10.3 per cent rise in shares of First Quantum Minerals Ltd. along with Barrick Gold Corp. The December gold contract was down US$9.60 at US$1,506.20 an ounce and the December copper
A man exhales vapor as he demonstrates the use of his electronic cigarette. Eight Canadian health organizations are calling on the federal government to impose greater regulations on the vaping industry.
Robert Allen Wiebe July 25, 1968September 7, 2019
It is with deepest sorrow that we announce Rob Wiebe’s passing, born July 25, 1968 in Prince George, British Columbia. Rob courageously battled cancer for almost twenty years and is now at peace. Rob was predeceased by his father, Peter and his mother, Marianne. Rob is survived by his wife Barb, children Scott and Sarah, his sister, Barbara (Ray), niece, Natalie and nephew, James. A celebration of life will be held on September 28, 2019 at 1:00pm, at the First Baptist Church, 483 Gillett St, Prince George, BC. In lieu of flowers donations can be made to the Canadian Cancer Society or the Prince George Hospice Society.
Laura Nicole Freeman (nee Martin) August 4th, 1976September 16th, 2019
With profound sadness we announce the passing of Laura Freeman at the age of 43. Laura will be deeply missed by her loving husband of 21 years, Cory and their four children, Alex, Connor, Kirstin and Brooklynn. She is survived by her parents, Carrie and Al Martin, brothers Nathan (Renée) and Eric (Vincent). Laura was born on August 4th, 1976 in Prince George, B.C. She earned her Bachelor of Social Work from UNBC and threw herself into her work with foster families with passion and integrity.
Laura’s creativity allowed her to enjoy numerous hobbies including scrapbooking, card making and crocheting which resulted in friends, family and even strangers wearing cartoon themed toques, but her children were her greatest creation.
Laura’s wicked sense of humour and quick wit allowed her to share her intelligence and stories and she kept family and friends laughing until the end. The family would like to personally thank Dr. Campbell, Dr. Babcock and the Oncology dept. in Vanderhoof, Tina, Laila, Louise and Jen. Heartfelt thanks to her co-workers at the Ministry of Children and Family Services in Vanderhoof. A Celebration of Life will be held this Saturday, September 21st, 2019 at Assman Funeral Chapel on Queensway in Prince George, B.C at 9:30am. Memorial contributions may be sent to the Canadian Cancer Society.
Barbara Lorraine Jean Harris (Thiel) October 22, 1954 Prince George B.C.
Barbara passed away peacefully surrounded by her loving family at Rotary Hospice House on September 13, 2019 after a 9 1/2 year battle with cancer. She is survived by her husband Glen, daughter Shannon (Cezary and granddaughter Clara), many siblings, and extended family.
A viewing for family and friends will be held at Prince George Funeral Services 1014 Douglas Street from 7 - 9 pm on Friday, September 20, 2019.
A graveside service with interment will be held at Memorial Park Cemetery 3300 Memorial Park Lane at 1 pm on Saturday, September 21, 2019. Reception to follow at Two Rivers Gallery 725 Canada Games Way.
A celebration of Barbara’s life will be held at First Baptist Church 483 Gillett Street at 1 pm on Saturday, October 12, 2019.
Barbara will be fondly remembered and dearly missed by her family, friends, and those whose lives she touched during her career at BC Tel/Telus, her involvement in the arts community, and in her 28 years of volunteering with Girl Guides of Canada. In lieu of flowers, please consider donating to Rotary Hospice House, Canadian Cancer Society, or Girl Guides of Canada.
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SusannahPowpassedawayinthemorningof September16,withfamilybesideherafteravery briefbattlewithcancerattheageof68.
Susannahwasalovedwife,mother,grandmaand friend.Shefeltitwasimportanttogivebacktothe communityshelivedinanddevelopedmanylasting relationshipsfromherwork,volunteering,and church.
Susannah’sfamilywillbecelebratingherlifeon September21,at1:30PMatGraceAnglicanChurch, PrinceGeorge,BC.Allarewelcometoattend.
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Willis Michael Vincent July 31, 1950September 14, 2019
Willis was born in Nova Scotia. He is survived by his wife, Connie Vincent; daughter, Pamela Belsham (Eric, Zachariah and Mattea); daughter, Erin Ridsdale (Robin, Evelyn and Brennan); sister, Nancy MacKenzie (Colin); uncle, Herrick Vincent (Lois); sisters and brothers in law and many nieces, nephews and cousins. Willis served in the Canadian Armed Forces from 1970 - 1978. He was in retail from 1979 - 2004 at Zellers and McLeods. He worked along side his wife in family daycare from 2008 - 2018 and was an active volunteer until 1 month ago at the YMCA. Willis was an avid gardener, enjoyed painting, drawing, reading, music, cooking, history and walking with his friends.
Willis was predeceased by his mother, Phyllis (Townsend) Vincent and father, Aubrey Vincent. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the Canadian Cancer Clinic or a charity of your choice. Thank you to Dr. Nadeem, Dr. Shahnawaz, Dr. Valev, Dr. Appleby, many nurses, home care, Red Cross, P.G. Cancer Clinic and a special thank you to Devi, who has been beside us all the way. Celebration for Willis is at 1:00pm at Lakewood Alliance Church, 5th & Ospika, September 28, 2019.
“Just so you know” Pow,SusannahE. April7,1951-September16,2019
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