Brady McIsaac (orange) battles for the puck against alumni Aiden Reeves (green) on Sunday morning at Kin 1 during Team 1’s scrimmage on the final day of the Cariboo Cougars U18 and U16 training camp.
Spruce beetle threat looms over city
CHRISTINE HINZMANN Citizen staff
Local homeowners are being warned about the threat posed by the spruce beetle infestation to their beloved trees.
Parts of the Pidherny and Otway forests within city limits have already been affect-
ed by beetle damage.
The city has taken several steps to protect against the threat and homeowners can get ahead of the spruce beetle by taking action before the beetles take flight again next spring.
“People are so upset, it’s like they’re talking about their children,” Tanya Milner,
Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development, Prince George District specialist, said about homeowners react when they learn their beloved old-growth trees are at risk.
The spruce beetle, which is endemic to the B.C. forest, prefers to attack old growth trees, especially those that are downed.
The problem in the region is significant. In 2013, 7,653 hectares of forest in B.C. were affected by the spruce beetle. Last year, there was more than 503,799 hectares impacted across the province and more than half of that was in this area.
CITIZEN PHOTO BY JAMES DOYLE.
WHAT:
COUNCIL CONSIDERATION OF APPLICATIONS
City Council consideration of applications regarding:
•Temporar yUse Permit Applications
•Proposed Cannabis Licensing Application
•Proposed “City of Prince George 2895 Gunn Road Road Closure BylawNo. 9129, 2020”
•Proposed amendment to “City of Prince George Zoning BylawNo. 7850, 2007”
WHEN:
6:00 p.m., Monday, September 14, 2020
WHERE:
Council Chamber sofCity Hall, 2nd Floor,1100 Patricia Boulevard, Prince George, BC
PROPOSALS:
1. Temporar yUse Permit No. TU000063
Applicant: Andrea Petersen for Spruceland Tire Supply Ltd., Inc. No. 92253
Subject Proper ty: 2274 Queensway
The pur pose of the application is to allow the operation of achiropractor clinic within a15.0 m² (square metre) unit of the existing building .The applicant has applied for aTemporar yUse Permit to allow for Health Ser vice, Minor as aper mitted use on the subject proper ty
The proper ty is cur rently zoned as M3: Business Industrial, which does not per mit Health Ser vices, Minor as aprincipal use. In accordance with the Local Government Act,temporar yuse per mits can allow ause not per mitted by azoning bylaw. These per mits mayonly be issued for amaximum of three (3) year sand mayberenewed once for an additional three (3) year s.
The proposed Temporar yUse Permit applies to the proper ty legally described as Lots 1and 2, Block 26, District Lot 417, Cariboo District, Plan 1409, as shown outlined in bold black on the below Location and Zoning Map #1. Location and Zoning Map #1 2274
2. Temporar yUse Permit No. TU000062
Applicant: Epik Products Inc. (Larissa Dawn Lebel) for Healx Medical Corporation Inc., Inc. No. BC1163648
Subject Proper ty: 356 George Street
The pur pose of the proposed per mit is to allow Retail, Cannabis use on the subject proper ty.The applicant has successfully completed the required financial integrity checks and security screenings for anon-medical cannabis retail store by the Liquor and Cannabis Regulation Branch. In accordance with the Local Government Act, temporar yuse per mits can allow ause not per mitted by azoning bylaw. These per mits mayonly be issued for amaximum of three (3) year sand mayberenewedonce for an additional three (3) year s.
The proposed Temporar yUse Permit applies to the proper ty legally described as Lot 5, Block 135, District Lot 343, Cariboo District, Plan 1268, as shown outlined in bold black on the Location and Zoning Map #2 below
2.1. Cannabis License Application No. CN000013
The applicant has applied to the Liquor and Cannabis Regulation Branch for aCannabis License for anon-medical retail cannabis store on the subject proper ty.The applicant has successfully completed the Liquor and Cannabis Regulation Branch financial integrity check and security screening for anon-medical cannabis retail store.
The proposed hour sofoperation are: MondaytoSunday: 9:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m.
The proposed Cannabis License Application applies to the proper ty legally described as Lot 5, Block 135, District Lot 343, Cariboo District, Plan 1268, as shown outlined in bold black on Location and Zoning Map #2 below
Notice of City Council’sdecision will be forwarded to the Liquor and Cannabis Regulation Branch for their reviewand final deter mination on this application.
Location and Zoning Map #2 356 George Street
3. “City of Prince George 2895 Gunn Road Road Closure BylawNo. 9129, 2020”
Applicant: City of Prince George
Pur suant to section 40 of the Community Char ter,the City of Prince George intends to close an approximate 0.161 hectares (ha) por tion of road as shown on Reference Plan EPP103617 dedicated on Plan 902, adjacent to the proper ty legally described as Parcel C(P30015) of Block 61, District Lot 629, Cariboo District and Parcel A(P30012) of Block 61, District Lot 629, Cariboo District and remove the road dedication, as shown in the outlined in bold black on Location Map #3 below
The pur pose of the road closure is to enable the sale of the closed road area to the adjacent proper ty owner.The proposed closure and sale provides the proper ty owner the ability to consolidate the closed road area with their adjacent proper ty
Location Map #3 2895 Gunn Road
COUNCIL CONSIDERATION OF APPLICATIONS
4. “City of Prince George Zoning BylawNo. 7850, 2007, Amendment BylawNo. 9135, 2020”
Applicant: Devinder Parmar for Sarjiwan Parmar
Subject Proper ty: 530 Freeman Street
BylawNo. 9135, 2020 proposes to rezone the subject proper ty from RS4: Urban Residential to RT2: Two-Unit Residential.
The pur pose of this application is to facilitate the development of atwo-unit house (duplex) on the subject proper ty,orother uses, pur suant to the proposed RT2: Two-Unit Residential zoning designation(s).
The proposed bylawapplies to the proper ty legally described as Lots 15 and 16, Block 33, District Lot 937, Cariboo District, Plan 752, as shown outlined in bold black on Location and Zoning Map #4 below
Location and Zoning Map #4 530 Freeman
Street
HOWCAN IPROVIDE COMMENT?
Residents are invited to provide comments to Council by writing
As aresult of the COVID-19 pandemic, City Council at their meeting held April 6, 2020 passed aresolution to discontinue infor mal hearings for bylaws and applications where such hearings are not legally required to be held. Accordingly,noPublic Hearings will be held for :
•Temporar yUse Permit No. TU000063;
•Temporar yUse Permit No. TU000062 and Cannabis License Application No. CN000013;
•City of Prince George 2895 Gunn Road Road Closure BylawNo. 9129, 2020; and •City of Prince George Zoning BylawNo. 7850, 2007, Amendment BylawNo. 9135, 2020.
Pur suant to section 464(2) of the Local Government Act,City Council has also waived the requirements for aPublic Hearing to be held respecting proposed Zoning Amendment BylawNo. 9135, 2020 during the Regular Council Meeting held on Monday, August 17, 2020.
Written comments should be forwarded to the Cor porate Officer by 5:00 p.m., Tuesday, September 8, 2020, to be included in Council’sagenda package. Submissions received after this time will be provided to Council on the dayofthe Council meeting for their consideration during deliberations on the application or proposed Bylaw. Submissions maybesent by email to citycler k@princegeorge.ca, faxed to (250) 561-0183, mailed or delivered to the address noted below
Please note that written submissions for all applications will for mpar tofthe Council agenda, become public record and are posted on the City’swebsite. By making a written submission you are consenting to the disclosure of anyper sonal infor mation that you provide.
Authority
Personal infor mation is collected under the authority of section 26(g) and disclosed under the authority of section 33.1(1) of the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act(FIPPA). Forinfor mation or questions, contact the City’sFIPPACoordinator at (250)561-7600 or 1100 Patricia Boulevard, Prince George, BC, V2L 3V9.
NEED MORE INFORMATION?
Acopyofthe proposed Bylaws, applications and anyrelated documents will be available for reviewbythe public on the City’swebsite www.princegeorge.ca under ‘News and Notices’ beginning September 2, 2020.These documents mayalso be reviewedatDevelopment Ser vices on the 2nd Floor of City Hall on September 2, 3, 4, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 14, 2020, between the hour sof 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
WHO CAN ISPEAK TO?
Formore infor mation, please contact Development Ser vices in per son, by telephone at (250)561-7611 or by email to devser v@princegeorge.ca.
Formore infor mation regarding the Road Closure Application, please contact Real Estate Ser vices in per son, by telephone at (250)561-7611 or by email to realestate@princegeorge.ca.
COVID-19 Resources
The City of Prince George has been in regular conver sation with Nor ther nHealth about the most reliable sources of infor mation on novel coronavir us (COVID-19), and any assistance the City can provide residents and visitor swith reliable infor mation about measures that can be taken to prevent the spread and stayhealthy.
People are advised to takeall necessar yprecautions to prevent exposure such as staying home when sick, disinfecting surfaces, washing their hands, and coughing and sneezing into the crook of their ar ms.
Formore infor mation:
•V isit the BC Centre for Disease Control website
•V isit the BC Transit COVID-19 website
•V isit the BC Ministr yofHealth webpage on Pandemic Preparedness
•V isit the Gover nment of Canada’swebsite on COVID-19
•V isit the HealthlinkBC website
•V isit the WorldHealth Organization website
•Download the BC Ministr yofHealth’sAdvice on Recreational Facilities -March 13, 2020 [PDF]
Nor ther nHealth COVID-19 Update
Nor ther nHealth has launched aCOVID-19 Online Clinic and Infor mation Line to help answer questions and concer ns from Nor ther nB.C. residents. The NH COVID-19 Online Clinic and Infor mation Line can be reached at 1-844-645-7811.
PRINCE GEORGE
MOTEL FIRE PROMPTS CLASS ACTION LAWSUIT
MARK NIELSEN
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
A class action lawsuit has been filed seeking damages for those affected by the fatal fire at the Econo Lodge motel.
With the help of two law firms, Leonard Hay filed a notice of claim Aug. 25 at the Prince George courthouse that lists the motel’s owners and franchiser, two fire safety businesses and the City of Prince George as defendants.
The court action is being brought on behalf of anyone who was a registered guest or in the adjoining Yolks All Day restaurant or simply on the site at the time of the fire, with the exception of the owners and staff.
In the claim, Hay said he suffered second-degree and third-degree burns as well as psychological injuries and all his possessions were destroyed when the fire broke out on the morning of July 8.
He had been renting room 243 at the motel at 910 Victoria St. for $1,200 per month.
At about 8:30 a.m., Hay “heard screams from the room next door, and saw flames outside his window.
“The window exploded. He was able to exit through the outside door leading to an exterior walkway and run along that walkway to safety.”
Hay did not hear any fire alarms and did not see motel staff helping guests to safety, according to the notice.
Three people died in the fire and RCMP
have launched an investigation into whether a crime was committed.
Along with the City, Prince Georgebased Mundi 910 Victoria Enterprises Ltd., Vancouver-based Choice Hotels are named as defendants, as are Parksville-based All Points Fire Protection Ltd. and Aztech Fire Safety Planning and Consulting (2015) Ltd. Hay is claiming the fire was caused by negligence by the defendants and is seeking damages for loss of life, loss of personal property, loss of housing, loss of past and future employment income and
pain and suffering.
The defendants have yet to file responses and the claims are yet to be tested in a court of law.
Dick Byl Law Corp. and Vancouver-based Camp Fiorante Matthews Mogerman LLP are listed as the plaintiff’s lawyers.
In an interview, Byl said the step is the beginning of a long process due to the complexity of the case.
“There is an ongoing police investigation, there are other court proceedings that are probably going to take place (and) with
something like this, we’re looking at years, not months,” Byl said.
Steps include serving the notice to the defendants, receiving their responses and getting a judge to certify the notice as a class action and then signing more plaintiffs onto the action.
Byl said Camp Fiorante Matthews Mogerman is a class-action law firm.
He declined to comment on his confidence in the case, saying it would be inappropriate to do so given that it is before the court.
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CITIZEN STAFF PHOTO
Prince George fire crews battled the Econo Lodge City Centre fire in July. Three people died in the blaze.
Council to consider indoor walking at CN Centre
ARTHUR WILLIAMS
Citizen staff
City council will consider reopening CN Centre for indoor walking this winter, after Mayor Lyn Hall received a request from the Prince George Council of Seniors.
On Monday, city council requested city staff bring back a report by Oct. 5 on what reopening CN Centre for walking would cost, and what the logistics of opening it during the COVID-19 pandemic would look like.
“The concerns from the Council of Seniors were about October,” when snow and ice make sidewalks slippery, Hall said.
Normally four indoor walking options are available to residents: CN Centre, Rolling Mix Concrete Arena, the Northern Sports Centre at UNBC and Pine Centre Mall, city director of community services and public
safety Adam Davey wrote in a report to council.
CN Centre was one of the civic facilities closed in March because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In previous years, CN Centre and Rolling Mix Concrete Arena opened for public walking in mid-October.
“Because there are two alternative options available in Prince George (NSC and Pine Centre Mall), administration does not recommend providing an indoor walking service at this time due to the overall budget shortfall,” Davey wrote.
“Staff require approximately four weeks to prepare an indoor walking service. Therefore, to accommodate a mid-October opening, administration would require direction by mid-September to build and staff a cleaning protocol and expand the online registration tool used at the Aquatic
Pods help fight beetle spread
from page A1
The Prince George District saw 259,629 hectares of forest destroyed by the spruce beetle while the Omineca Region, which includes Prince George, Fort St. James, Mackenzie, and Vanderhoof reported more than 354,000 hectares of damage.
Since 2014, a total of 1.3 million hectares have been impacted in the province, making it the biggest outbreak of spruce beetle infestation since the 1980s.
Since the population of the spruce beetle has grown, the hordes are now attacking healthy trees, too.
The biggest impact so far has been in the Pidherny recreation area by another beetle. Since 2016, Milner and her team have been combatting the Douglas fir beetle by monitoring the area and setting up trap trees - felled living large-diameter trees that attract the beetle, which prefer downed material.
Trap trees may absorb up to 10 times the number of beetles of a standing tree from up to 0.4 kilometres away.
Another way to combat infestation is to repel them by attaching anti-aggregation pheromone methylcyclohexenone (MCH) pods to the tree bark, which tricks beetles into thinking the tree is already infested with beetles so they move on. The pods work on both spruce and Douglas fir beetles.
A guide is offered by the city on how to manage Douglas fir beetle infestation on private property and this year the city is working with property owners to take ac-
tion against the spruce beetle in response to that beetle being seen in Pidherny and Otway last year. There were more than 100 hundred trees identified as infested in that area.
“We went out there with city staff to put up the anti-aggregation pheromone (methylcyclohexenone - MCH) pods on the trees,” Milner said.
There were more than 600 pods used this year within the city including Rainbow Park, Connaught Hill Park, the graveyard as well as other areas. The pods must be placed on the tree before the beetle flight takes place and that happens when there is a consistent temperature of 16 C.
“We will continue to work with the city to help identify areas that are vulnerable,” she added.
If it gets worse in the city with an increase of spruce beetle infestation, the recommendation will be to fall affected trees and dispose of them.
Plans for an in-person town hall about the spruce beetle had to be canceled in April because of the pandemic and the fall and burn that was scheduled in Pidherny was delayed because of open-burning restrictions set out by the ministry of environment.
“We’ve modified our plan and what we’ve done is felled trap trees in Pidherny and Otway and this fall and winter before the flight next spring we’ll have our wildfire management branch crews look after the falling and burning and we’ll burn those trap trees before the beetle flies out in the spring,” Milner said.
Centre to book (free) online walking registrants.”
The CN Centre concourse area would be limited to 50 walkers, who would have to pre-register, he added. Of the city’s two indoor walking facilities, reopening CN Centre makes more sense and “should the CN Centre reopen for ice usage, supplying indoor walking would be relatively easy to accommodate.”
Coun. Garth Frizzell – who chairs the city’s finance and audit committee – said the city continues to face a serious financial shortfall this year and reopening more services will deepen that shortfall.
“We’re making a decision that is for the betterment of the community, but there is a cost,” he said. “We chose not to reopen many of our facilities, because of the financial challenges we’re facing. They are incredibly expensive (to operate).”
Providing indoor walking spaces in the winter is important, particularly for seniors, Coun. Murry Krause said.
“Seniors become virtual prisoners in their own home in the winter time,” he said. “It really is about health and wellbeing.”
A fall on icy sidewalks can break bones at any age, Coun. Terri McConnachie said.
“I do think it’s an essential program in the winter,” she said.
McConnachie also asked residents using the city’s public facilities – the recently-reopened Kin Centres and the Prince George Aquatic Centre opening on Sept. 8 – to be understanding that the new safety rules in place are for their protection.
“(This is) just an appeal to people to follow the rules and not give our staff a hard time,” McConnachie said. “That’s how we can keep them open.”
Five-year driving ban appealed by woman who ran over toddler
MARK NIELSEN
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
A woman who drove over a toddler in a Prince George parking lot is asking a judge to reduce her five-year driving prohibition.
On behalf of Barbara Joan Husband, 85, lawyer Dave Jenkins Sr. argued during a hearing last Thursday at the courthouse that the term is “demonstrably unfit” and that a six-month prohibition is more appropriate.
Husband was issued the prohibition in February after she was found guilty of driving without due care and attention under the Motor Vehicle Act from a Dec. 19, 2018 incident.
During a trial on the matter, the court heard that Husband, who lived 17 kilometres out of town, was taking her kittens to the Ospika Animal Hospital, located in a strip mall at 2380 Ospika Blvd. S.
Heading south along Ospika, she reached a break in the median adjacent to Enemark Crescent and turned left to get into the parking lot.
But instead of turning directly into the first entrance, she drove a further 50-60 feet diagonally as she crossed two northbound lanes to reach a third entrance that is closer to the office’s front door. As she
did, the driver of an oncoming vehicle and of the one behind had to “brake hard” to let Husband through.
Once in the parking lot, Husband pulled her SUV into a stall six to eight feet away from where a woman was packing her baby son into her car and, in the process, ran over the woman’s 3 1/2-year-old daughter.
The left front wheel of Husband’s vehicle went entirely over the girl’s pelvic region, but she escaped without a fracture although she felt still some discomfort and psychological trauma at the time of the trial.
Jenkins argued the sentence issued was not proportionate to the gravity of the offence and that the trial judge erred in not giving enough weight to mitigating factors, including Husband’s spotless driving record up to that time and her remorse.
Citing sentences for other cases, Jenkins contended such a five-year prohibition is reserved for instances in which the driver is found guilty of a criminal charge and had a record of bad driving. In one that resulted in a death, the driver was given a six-month prohibition, he noted.
In response, Crown counsel Marie Louise Ahrens said the cases Jenkins raised involved drivers who had a momentary
lapse of attention whereas Husband’s actions amounted to a “cumulative litany of driving errors.”
The trial judge found the gravity of Husband’s behaviour to be at the high end of the spectrum for the offence, bordering on dangerous driving under the Criminal Code, Ahrens noted.
She said Husband was being sentenced for the manner of her driving, not the consequences, and that the judge found Husband “demonstrated a complete lack of attention to the road.”
On Husband’s remorse, Jenkins noted his client told the court there had not been a day that went by when she thought about what occurred and wished it had never happened. Ahrens replied that “we have a problem of semantics.”
While no one is saying that she was not sorry the girl was hurt, Ahrens said Husband nonetheless testified that she did not believe she ran over the girl and noted Husband’s “bizarre” response at the scene when she presented the girl with one of the kittens to calm her down.
Ahrens said Husband was not aware there was a problem until the mother pounded on the window of her vehicle and the two offered differing accounts of when the girl started screaming.
While Husband maintained it began only when the fire department arrived, the trial judge agreed with the mother’s version that it started as soon as her daughter was run over.
“Ms. Husband exited the vehicle. She said ‘she’s OK,’ not ‘will she be OK,’ and then reached into her vehicle and pulled out a kitten to distract the child, I suppose,” Ahrens said. “She (the trial judge) found that this happened when the child was screaming uncontrollably on the ground.”
It was not the first time Husband had driven along the northbound side to reach the parking lot, according to Ahrens. Driving 50-60 feet against oncoming traffic on a divided highway was “an accustomed route taken by the appellant on previous occasions, not withstanding the rules of the road.”
Given his client’s age, Jenkins said a five-year prohibition effectively means Husband will be banned from driving for the rest of her life.
B.C. Supreme Court Justice Jennifer Power reserved her decision to a later date. In doing so, she told Jenkins she is not sure she is persuaded by his arguments but will take the time to give them further consideration.
Council questions parkade costs
ARTHUR WILLIAMS Citizen
staff
Prince George city council wants answers about why the city parkade under construction at George Street and Sixth Avenue is $5.3 million over budget.
City council approved the 351-space parkade in 2017 with a budget of $12.6 million, as a partnership with A&T Project Development. The public parkade serves as the foundation of, and provides underground parking for, a 151-unit Park House apartment condo complex under construction at the location.
As of the end of 2019, the city had spent $17.9 million on the project, according to information released in the city’s annual report.
“I’m so unhappy with these cost overruns,” Coun. Brian Skakun said. “This can’t keep happening.”
Skakun put forward a motion, which was supported by council, calling on city staff to prepare a report explaining why the project is so much over budget.
City general manager of planning and development Ian Wells said major structural changes were required, because of the groundwater conditions on the site. In
addition, U.S. tariffs increased the price of steel construction materials.
Construction of the project is expected to be completed later this year, Wells added.
“This council approved a parkade for $12.6 million and to get notified in the annual report that it is at $17.9 (million), it doesn’t sit well,” Coun. Cori Ramsay said.
City manager Kathleen Soltis said members of the city’s finance and audit committee were informed of the overruns in November.
In June, city council was informed that the new fire hall under construction on Massey Drive was expected to be $2 million over budget.
“This is a significant overrun – again,” Coun. Teri McConnachie said.
“I know we’ve discussed this in the past. We’re here to provide oversight. Moving forward, there has to be more communication.”
Coun. Kyle Sampson said these major cost overruns put future city projects in question.
“How can I believe, when we get these reports, that it will be done on budget?” he said.
— See related editorial on page 15
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Ancient Forest enhancement planned
ARTHUR WILLIAMS
Citizen staff
The Lheidli T’enneh celebrated the beginning of an $8.7 million dollar enhancement project planned for Chun T’oh Whudujut/Ancient Forest Park last Friday.
Detailed planning is scheduled to start this fall, with construction starting next year, Lheidli T’enneh Chief Clay Pountney said. Completion of all the upgrades is expected to take four years.
“There has been a lot of support for this project,” Pountney said. “We all recognize it a very special place. We will continue investing in this.”
The Lheidli T’enneh are contributing $900,000 to the project, and have reached a memorandum of understanding with the provincial government and BC Parks to manage the provincial park site. The federal and provincial governments announced a combined $7.8 million in funding for the project in June, as part of a $65.3 million
investment in 24 infrastructure projects in northern B.C.
Delegates including Federal Minister of Infrastructure and Communities Catherine McKenna, B.C. Minister of Environment and Climate Change Strategy George Heyman, Mayor Lyn Hall, Regional District of Fraser-Fort George chairman Art Kaehn and others offered their praise for the project.
Plans for the park include a new interpretive centre, a traditional pit house, sweat lodge, widening and upgrading the existing boardwalk, installation of handrails along the trails and the purchase of a Trailrider mobility device to enhance access for people with limited mobility.
While some of the developments will happen at the current park site, some of the activity will be happening in a planned riparian trail area and cultural site near the Fraser River, project manager Karyn Sharp said.
Pountney said the cultural aspect of the
project is important and will provide an opportunity for Lheidli T’enneh members and others to connect and learn about the traditions and culture of their people. The cultural sites at the park will be part of the First Nation’s broader initiative to preserve their language, culture and traditions for future generations, he added.
“The culture is not lost,” he said. “We’re just trying to bring it back.”
B.C. Assembly of First Nations Regional Chief Terry Teegee, a former professional forester, said the ancient forest is a special place.
“It is such an unique area. You don’t find these areas in the interior. It’s really unique, like the Amazon jungle,” he said. “It’s not only a significant biozone, it significant to our people. This will tell that story, only only to speak to that science piece, but also about the heritage of the Lheidli T’enneh people.”
Local MLA Shirley Bond praised the work by many people in the community
Quesnel hospital getting $27M upgrade
Citizen staff
Quesnel’s hospital emergency room and intensive care unit are getting a $27 million upgrade.
Last Tuesday, Northern Health announced it had awarded the contract for construction of the roughly 16,700 sq. foot
redevelopment at G.R. Baker Memorial Hospital.
True Construction Ltd. of Kamloops is expected to begin work on the project this month, with completion aimed at the spring of 2022.
“Both the Cariboo Chilcotin Regional Hospital District and the City of Quesnel
who have been passionate advocates for the preservation of the ancient forest.
“It’s a place that touches your heart,” Bond said. “This is a chance for all of us to learn from the Lheidli T’enneh.”
Bond said she was especially glad to hear about the projects that will increase the accessibility of the site.
“For people who can’t make that trek, they will have access.”
Local MP Todd Doherty said visiting the ancient forest is a chance to “listen to the voices of the people who have walked there before.”
Northern B.C. Tourism Association CEO Clint Fraser said this project has been a long time coming.
“I didn’t know this day would come,” he said. “The Lheidli T’enneh have demonstrated great leadership with this project. This project will only make this region a more desirable destination. Accessible wilderness is one of the biggest assets we have in northern B.C.”
are very excited to see this long-awaited hospital expansion project get started in earnest,” Quesnel Mayor Bob Simpson said in a press release. “The new ICU and ER will improve health care service delivery for the north Cariboo by creating a more modern, efficient, and effective space for both health care workers and their patients.”
Simpson is the chairperson of the Cariboo Chilcotin Regional Hospital District, which is providing 40 per cent of the funding for the project.
The project will the upgraded emergency room located next to the five-room intensive care unit.
Parents have options as area schools reopen
ARTHUR WILLIAMS
Citizen staff
School District 57 superintendent of schools Anita Richardson and district chairperson Tim Bennett understand the worries parents have as children prepare to go back to classrooms on Thursday.
Richardson and Bennett hosted an online town hall session last week to answer parents’ questions about what the return to school looks like in the middle of a pandemic, and what options exist for parents who aren’t ready to send their kids back.
“We understand the angst everyone is feeling. We’ve had the same discussions around my kitchen table. My wife is a Kindergarten teacher, and my kids are going back to school,” Bennett said. “Thank you for trusting us to take care of your children. (And) if you’re not ready to come back next week, that is OK.”
For specific questions about what is happening in children’s schools and classrooms, principals and teachers are the first point of contact, he said.
Those who missed seeing the town hall session live can view it on the district’s Facebook page and website, Bennett said.
In addition, the district will be publishing answers to frequently-asked questions.
Parents should have emails from their children’s schools with specific information about their school schedule and school-specific information, Richardson said.
Many of the questions from parents were around school safety – including questions about why public health directives for schools are different than those for the general public – and about options for parents who don’t want to send their children back to class.
Students at elementary level will be grouped in learning groups of up to 60 students, Richardson said, which means about two or three classes. Secondary students can be organized into learning groups of up to 120, according to provincial health guidelines.
“In School District 57, we have made our secondary school learning groups closer to 60 to 70,” Richardson said. That’s been made possible by going to offering classes in four quarters, instead of two semesters, in most secondary schools in the district, she said.
Students won’t be required to social dis-
tance inside their learning groups, but will be encouraged to avoid physical contact.
Secondary students will be required to wear masks when in common areas where social distancing with students or staff outside of their learning group isn’t possible, she added. Secondary school students will be provided two reusable face masks –one right away and another one when supplies are available, Richardson said.
Extra hand washing stations, staggered lunch hours, designated entrances for student learning groups and other safety measures are all outlined in the school district’s back-to-school plan available online, she said.
“Common learning spaces such as computer rooms, gyms and libraries will be used,” Richardson said. “Each room will be cleaned between groups.”
Acitivities like school sports and band programs will continue, although no inter-school competition will be allowed. Students taking part in shop classes will be assigned tools for their use, whenever possible, to reduce sharing as much as possible, she added.
All the safety measures in place are based on directives from provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry’s guidance for schools, Richardson said. Henry and her team have studied what happened in other jurisdictions like New Zealand where students have gone back to school and found there was no increase in COVID-19 cases once schools reopened, she said.
Students who don’t follow the safety guidelines will be educated about the rules and if they continue to repeatedly not follow the rules, the normal progressive school disciplinary system will be used to enforce them, Richardson.
If a student does show any symptoms of illness, they will be sent home as soon as possible and required to stay home, Richardson said. However, only students who have symptoms will be required to stay home, unless directed otherwise by Northern Health.
Children who have pre-existing condi-
tions like asthma will be allowed at school.
If any student or staff member is diagnosed with COVID-19, Northern Health will contact those who need to self-isolate or get tested.
“We will follow Northern Health’s direction. We are advised who to proceed by Northern Health,” she said. “We are not to share information about any potential cases unless directed by Northern Health.”
Parents have four options available to them for their children’s education, Richardson said.
Parents can send their children to school when classes return Sept. 10; arrange a gradual return-to-school plan for your child with your school; enroll your child in School District 57’s distributed learning program; or home school.
If students enroll for distributed learning or home-schooling, they will lose their spot at their current school, Richardson said. Holding spaces isn’t possible, because there may be students on a waiting list to get into that school, or new students may move into that catchment area, she said.
“We’d like to as many students as possible in class,” Richardson said. “A return to school is about more than learning.”
Parents interested in enrolling their children in distributed learning should register their children on the waiting list, Richardson said.
The waitlist will inform the district’s decision about providing extra resources for distance learning.
Last Thursday afternoon, the school district found out it will receive $2.4 million in federal funding for school safety. That funding can be used to hire additional teachers to provide distance-learning options, Richardson said.
Richardson said she understands it is a tough decision for some families, but her own children will be returning to school this month.
“I know it’s a stressful time for all of us. We’re all being required to be brave,” she said. “I wish you all the very best in the decision you make.”
Local parent has concerns about school restart plans
CHRISTINE HINZMANN Citizen staff
A concerned local parent has turned to social media to publicly question School District 57’s return-to-school decisions.
Christina Watts, a local artist and small business owner, has two children in Heritage elementary school in Grades 5 and 7.
She’s afraid her children will get COVID-19 because of the risk of exposure they face in school, Watts said.
“Dr. Bonnie Henry says we will see cases of Covid in the schools when they resume,” Watts said. “For us, this is not an acceptable risk. Talking with numerous other families, we are not alone.”
The consequences of not putting the children back into the school is that they could lose their place in the school, even when they live in the catchment area.
While looking to other options, Watts discovered the B.C. Distance Learning Programs but the program is full and the wait lists are daunting.
Home schooling lacks the support Watts’ family needs to be successful and there is no online learning option that follows the B.C. curriculum, which is her first choice at this time to continue her children’s education.
Watts was inspired to start a petition to try to get the attention of School District 57. The petition is called Safe Learning Op-
tions for School District 57 at change.org.
Watts is concerned because each learning pod her children will be in has 60 students in it which means their family is suddenly exposed to 120 people, plus their families who go to work and have friends and do activities.
The potential for exposure is so great and the consequences of contracting COVID-19 are dire, Watts said.
“Why can’t the learning pod just be the kids in each classroom - that would be 30 students,” she added. “That would diminish the risk.”
Soon after Watts posted her video on Facebook she tagged Tim Bennett, trustee and board chair at School District 57, and
DRUGS, WEAPONS SEIZED
More drugs and weapons were seized last Wednesday night during an ongoing drug trafficking investigation by the local
Warrants were executed at residences on Hill Avenue and Aleeza Crescent and on Isle Pierre Road west of the city.
Fentanyl, cocaine, cash, firearms, drug trafficking paraphernalia and other evidence were seized as a result of the warrants.
A 51-year-old male, 38-year-old female, and two 50-year-old females were arrested as part of this investigation. All four were released pending further investigation and charge assessment from the Federal
Prosecution Service of Canada.
The Prince George RCMP is committed to aggressively targeting those responsible for causing harm through drug trafficking and its associated violence in our community.
If anyone has any information about illegal drug activity in the Prince George area contact the Prince George RCMP at
Prince George, get quality healthcare on your phone.
Leveraging the power of technology, you can safely see aBC-licensed doctor on your phone. Book an appointment in minutes using the Babylon by TELUS Health app, and adoctor will video-call you on your smartphone, even on eveningsand weekends.
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Shirley Bond, Prince George-Valemont MLA and got responses from both that acknowledge Watts’ concerns.
Watts wants to know if the schools are truly prepared to keep children safe, are the teachers ready and do the teachers feel they will be safe.
“I’d rather be safe than sorry,” she said.
“I am asking the province, our School District 57 and local schools to provide what our family and many others need. The opportunity to stay in their respective schools with teacher supported learning from home options that follow the BC Education curriculum. Less children in the school, make it safer for kids who are unable to learn from home as well.”
(250)561-3300 or anonymously contact Crime Stoppers at 1(800)222-8477 or online at www.pgcrimestoppers.bc.ca (English only).
You do not have to reveal your identity to Crime Stoppers. If you provide information that leads to an arrest, seizure of illicit drugs or recovery of stolen property, you could be eligible for a cash reward.
“I was able to see adoctor on aSunday afternoon and my consultation was quick and on-time. Ireceived advice that addressed my concern and the doctor was professional and caring.”
–Michelle, Babylon by TELUS Health user
Citizen staff
RCMP Street Crew Unit.
SEXUAL OFFENDER ORDERED TO ATTEND HALFWAY HOUSE
MARK NIELSEN
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
A Prince George man serving a federal sentence for convictions related to child pornography and luring must remain in a halfway house when he begins statutory release.
A Parole Board of Canada member imposed the condition on James Sidney Bell after learning he violated a special condition of his day parole release when he failed to report a relationship with a woman.
On sign-out sheets at the community residential facility where he was staying, Bell claimed he was going for a walk or to
buy groceries when, in fact, he was going to the home of the woman and her 17-yearold daughter, which was also a violation of his conditions.
Bell initially claimed he was working at the home and did not enter the residence. When his parole officer said she would follow up with the woman, Bell admitted he entered the home, kissed the woman and met her teenage daughter.
He also told the woman he was serving a sentence for drug offences, not sexual offences involving children, and possessed a cellphone with internet access which he said was given to him by another woman with whom he also had a sexual relationship.
Premium parking launched at airport
Citizen staff
Frequent flyers will be able to park next to the terminal at the Prince George Airport.
The spots, located beside the terminal’s international terminal, will be available through a premium parking program.
“We have a number of frequent travellers
who have annual permits, whether they live in P.G. and work elsewhere or it’s a business whose employees rotate, this is another option for them to consider,” CEO Gordon Duke said.
The spots have been outfitted with electrical plug ins.For more information call 250-963-2411 or email parking@pgairport.ca.
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Bell’s actions “showed dishonesty and selfishness” and a return to behaviour consistent with his established crime cycle, the member said in the decision.
In July 2018, Bell was sentenced to three years in federal prison for making and distributing child pornography and luring a young teenage girl over the internet.
He was granted day parole in December 2019. Correctional Service Canada reported the breaches to the parole board in May 2020 and a parole board panel subsequently confirmed revocation of his day parole in June 2020.
The decision to keep Bell in a halfway house while on statutory release was issued on July 31.
With the exception of those serving life or indeterminate sentences, statutory release mandated by law after they have served two-thirds of their sentence if full parole was not already granted.
Those who breach their conditions can be returned to prison and see their statutory release revoked for the remainder of their sentence.
Day parole, in which offenders must return to a facility at night, is typically granted six months before one third of the sentence has been served and, depending on the their behaviour, full parole is granted after one third. Those on full parole can serve the remainder of their sentence in the community of their choice.
Myeloma march set for next weekend
It started with pain in her shoulder and ribs so severe it sent her to the doctor.
Jenn Collins, a mother of three, was 37 when she was diagnosed five years ago with multiple myeloma, an incurable form of cancer of plasma cells.
Initial test results showed abnormalities in her blood work and kidney function, which are common symptoms of the disease.
She was given three to five years to live.
When she first heard the news, Collins said she was in shock.
“I realized I wouldn’t see my kids grow up,” Collins said. “I was devastated. I wanted to be there for my kids.”
She’s still here because she’s beaten the odds. Through aggressive treatment Collins went into remission but unfortunately, the cancer has returned.
To raise awareness and funds, Collins and her family will participate in the fourth
annual Prince George Multiple Myeloma March on Sept. 19 at 10 a.m.
Since the pandemic has changed things, people are encouraged to walk in their own neighbourhood and join in the event via Zoom.
Currently, Collins is managing her condition and her quality of life has improved as she returns to activities she loves like playing softball and skiing.
Collins knows her progress is because of research developments that have been made towards combatting this rare form of cancer. Her fundraising goal for the Prince George event is $18,000.
Prince George is one of a record 33 communities in Canada to participate in this year’s Multiple Myeloma March. The national fundraising goal is set at $650,000. Myeloma is the second most common form of blood cancer. Every day, nine Canadians are diagnosed with myeloma. Despite its growing prevalence, this cancer remains largely unknown.
Citizen staff
New Hart high school mirrors Duchess
MARK NIELSEN
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
Duchess Park North?
Think of the new Shas Ti Secondary Kelly Road Secondary as an updated version of a certain high school on Winnipeg Street. Indeed, a tour of the Hart’s new high school unveiled plenty of things in common with Duchess Park Secondary School.
But perhaps most important as far as far as School District 57’s general manager of facility services, Nino Maletta, is concerned, it’s a big improvement over its predecessor across the way. Just finding you’re way around it will be a lot easier compared to the old Kelly Road Secondary School. At 9,590 square metres, Shas Ti Secondary Kelly Road Secondary covers about two-thirds of the floor space of its predecessor - the difference being a confusing array of multiple additions over the 40-plus years the old KRSS was a fullfledged high school.
Then there is the cost of heating and cooling the building. Maletti made much of the school’s geo-thermal heating and ventilation system. He made note of the school’s exhaust system will recover 95 per cent of the heat from the air, “so the air that’s coming in gets tempered with the air that’s going out.”
The net effect, he indicated, is the school district’s monthly heating bill should drop by more than half.
Like DPSS, Shas Ti Secondary Kelly Road Secondary is centred on a spacious, two-storey atrium along one side of which you will see a three-dimensional wood design that maps the confluence of the Fraser and Nechako Rivers.
On the opposite wall is a carving by First Nations artist Clayton Gauthier depicting a raven flying towards the sun, placed in a more prominent spot than where it was found at KRSS. The carving welcomes students into an Indigenous education centre.
Directly to the east are two foods classrooms connected to a walk-through pantry with a pass-through window into the canteen that serves the lunch tables.
The classrooms’ cooktops have induction elements that transfer heat to the cookware with virtually no trace of heat from the elements themselves.
At the west end is the learning commons - a combination library, computer lab and meeting space with acoustic treatments on the walls and ceiling to dampen the sound. And off the atrium, you’ll find a series of wings devoted to each of a typical high school’s educational pursuits - social studies, shop, science, music and theatre. In one wing, which Maletta referred to as “tech alley,” students will be able to learn the intricacies of such modern-day vocations as robotics, computer programming and running a 3D printer.
Large enough to hold 900 students, the school is home to 17 “learning spaces,” each equipped with whiteboards and internet-linked projectors as well as lapel microphones to keep teachers’ voices
from faltering. Two of the classrooms have sliding glass walls so the spaces can be adjusted in size as needed and one of the breakout zones features a charging station for devices. And in keeping with the theme of collaborative learning, there are breakout zones throughout the building where groups can meet and use as study spaces. Windows are abundant, many of them at ceiling level to let in natural light while the artificial lights can dim and brighten automatically, depending on the weather and time of day outside. The theatre is large enough to hold an audience of 204 and holds the latest in sound, lighting and rigging technology while the music room features a high ceiling, advanced acoustics and sound-locked doors.
Adjacent to the to the atrium, you’ll find the gym, well lit and large enough to hold 1,532 people on an sprung maple-wood floor. On the second floor and overlook-
ing the gym is a fitness room filled with weights, machines and stationary bikes.
The school has all-gender washroom on each of the two floors with fully-enclosed stalls and common washing areas. There are also washrooms for students with exceptional needs as well as family-friendly washrooms and separate staff washrooms. As students now tend to carry their books and papers in backpacks, most of the school’s lockers will be half-size which leads to wider hallways although there is also a row of full-sized ones for students with extra equipment.
There is still work to be done as the old school will be demolished, new roadways, bus lanes and parking lots will be developed to the south and a new sports field installed to the north. In all, $44.3 million was budgeted for the project, with about $15 million going towards demolishing the old KRSS.
CITIZEN PHOTO BY JAMES DOYLE.
A wooden model of the confluence of the Nechako and Fraser Rivers line the wall the atrium at the new Shas Ti Secondary Kelly Road Secondary School.
PGSO all set for 50th season
CHRISTINE HINZMANN Citizen staff
The Prince George Symphony Orchestra couldn’t go dark in their 50th year. Not even a pandemic could make that happen.
“The way the symphony has existed for the last 50 years is by adapting and facing difficulty and making things work so we thought ‘no, we need to adapt and try,’” Teresa Saunders, general manager for the symphony, said. “So we’ve planned the season in stages so that we can respond to whatever COVID brings next.”
The Fall Classic Series, Bringing Back the Joy of Live Music, will begin on Saturday, Sept. 26 and following protocols to safeguard against the coronavirus, shows are going to look a little different.
There are four times made available for each show over two days so there are two matinees and two evening performances
IS THE BOX EMPTY?
from which to choose. Maximum number of people is 50 for each performance to follow pandemic protocols.
The Prestige Treasure Cove Resort is sponsoring the symphony by hosting all the shows in their ballroom.
“Patron response has been very positive,” Saunders said.
The symphony board of directors sent out a survey earlier this summer to subscribers to ask if they would be interested in seeing live music while observing the rules of the pandemic and the number of positive responses are reflected in the current ticket sales.
“This is very exciting for us,” Saunders said. “We’ve gone ahead and it’s a grand experiment.”
An interesting observation that came from these circumstances is that matinee performances have proven to be very popular and that information could change performance times in the future.
“Many of our patrons are seniors and an afternoon outing suits them far better,” Saunders said.
There are four shows in the series with the grand finale seeing Michael Hall conducting while Les Dala, former PGSO conductor, will return to Prince George as
Last May Conductor MIchael Hall led the Prince George Symphony Orchestra as they performed Franz Lehar’s Merry Widow Waltz at Prince George Playhouse during Art of the Dance, the final PGSO mainstage concert series performance of last season. This year the season will look different but it’s still going ahead during their 50th year.
the guest pianist for the fourth and final concerts taking place Nov. 14 and 15. The year ends on a fun note with the Fall Kinder Concert called Winter Wonderland on Dec. 5 for two matinees at 1 and 2:30 p.m. which are suitable for those as young as three years old.
To celebrate the PGSO’s 50th anniversary, there is a 50/50 for $50 to raise funds for the non-profit organization. Maximum pay out if all 1,000 tickets are sold is $12,500 followed by two secondary prizes of $6,250 each.
To get tickets visit: www.pgso.rafflenexus. com
For more information about the season visit www.pgso.com
CITIZEN FILE PHOTO
MORE PAY HIKES AT CITY HALL BUT STILL NO ACCOUNTABILITY
City of Prince George city manager Kathleen Soltis was given double the wage increase the city’s unionized employees and most of the senior management team received in 2019, according to the city’s recently released statements of financial information.
While CUPE workers and eight of the nine other senior managers received wage increases of 1.75 per cent last year, Soltis enjoyed a 3.5 per cent boost, taking her annual base pay to $265,725.35.
That 2019 increase for Soltis was agreed to by Prince George city council when they renewed her contract on Jan. 1, 2018, the city’s senior communications officer Michael Kellett said in a written response to questions from The Citizen.
Furthermore, the 2019 increase was the final piece of a multi-year plan to bring the city manager’s wage up to $265,000 per year, Kellett added in his e-mail response. A 2017 consultant’s report urged Prince George city council to raise the city manager’s pay by 15 per cent so it would be more in line with comparative cities like Kelowna, Kamloops and Nanaimo.
The same report mentioned but chose to ignore the fact that Prince George’s city manager receives a vehicle allowance (unlike any other city manager outside of the Lower Mainland), the above-average overtime policy (two weeks off in lieu of pay to attend evening meetings) and the “more generous than the median” vacation policy (six weeks over and above the two weeks overtime policy).
Meanwhile, vacation payouts, particularly for the city manager and senior staff, continue to spiral out of control.
On top of her base pay, Soltis received a vacation payout of $12,037.96 in 2019. Ian Wells, the general manager of planning and development, was given a $11,305.06 vacation payout last year while Rae-Ann Emery, director of human resources, took home a $9,358.67 vacation payout and Walter Babicz, general manager of administrative services, saw $9,066.95 in vacation pay, all over and above their annual salaries.
To put those numbers in a broader context, those four individuals received a total vacation payout of $41,768.64. The city’s total vacation payout in 2019 for all 1,014 of its employees was $508,013.15. In other words, four people (who just happen to hold senior leadership positions) representing 0.4 per cent of the city workforce took home 8.2 per cent of the total vacation payout.
All of this comes on the heals of yet another multi-million dollar cost overrun on a city project, this time the new city parkade, currently $5.3 million over budget. City council was informed back in June that the new fire hall is $2 million over budget. Before that came the whopping $7 million cost overrun to build a new bridge over Haggith Creek and another 4.5 per cent increase in property taxes, well above the annual inflation rate.
What is Prince George city council doing about it?
Other than being concerned, not much.
“I’m so unhappy with these cost overruns,” veteran city councillor Brian Skakun said Monday night. “This can’t keep happening.”
“It doesn’t sit well,” added rookie city councillor Cori Ramsay.
“This is a significant overrun – again,” chimed in Coun. Terri McConnachie. “I know we’ve discussed this in the past. We’re here to provide oversight. Moving forward, there has to be more communication.”
“How can I believe, when we get these reports, that it will be done on budget?” asked Coun. Kyle Sampson.
At least these four councillors are speaking up, in contrast to the deafening silence from Mayor Lyn Hall and the other four city councillors.
Some regret covering city wages
Along with my editorial this week, I thought I’d share with you some background on my reporting on the substantial wage hikes received by the city manager and the senior administration team at the City of Prince George in recent years.
First, a disclosure.
A reader challenged me back in the spring to publicly reveal that I had unsuccessfully applied for a position at the city. That is true but it’s dated information.
Under Derek Bates and Beth James, the two previous city managers before Kathleen Soltis (and their respective mayors Dan Rogers and Shari Green), I applied once each for a communications position at the city.
After Beth James became city manager in May 2013, she called me and asked for a meeting.
At that meeting, she surprised me by asking me what I thought the city needed in terms of communications and if I’d be interested in joining the city under her leadership to do some of that work. When the posting appeared that summer, I applied and was interviewed for the position.
Both Colleen Sparrow, my publisher, as well as the city hall reporter at the time, Charelle Evelyn, were aware of my appli-
cation to make sure I wasn’t in conflict of interest and I wrote no editorials during that time – positive or negative – about the city.
Incidentally, Todd Corrigall, who is now the CEO at the Prince George Chamber of Commerce, filled that city communications position until he was let go when James was removed as city manager shortly after Lyn Hall became mayor in 2015.
As I informed the reader who brought this issue forward, my pointed criticism of the wages hikes and overtime received by the city manager and senior administration came five years after I was considered for a position at the city. If all this has been sour grapes on my part, it sure was a long time coming and I was taking it out on a different city manager and a different mayor and council.
I have no regrets of not informing readers of that sooner because I never felt it was an issue and neither did my manager when I first started writing about the wages and overtime issue in the summer of 2018.
I also have no regrets with raising these issues.
Unlike provincial and federal governments, Prince George and most municipal governments have no official opposition to hold mayor and council accountable. And as Kris Sims from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation pointed out in her guest editorial last week, the provincial government isn’t using its powers under the Municipal Act to hold local governments responsible, either.
That leaves local news outlets, which have been decimated by Google and Facebook.
History clearly shows that when accountability of elected officials and senior bureaucrats diminishes, corruption rises.
My actual regret is that I didn’t push harder.
I let up for a variety of reasons.
I was distracted by other issues arising in the community. I was distracted by the challenges in our industry and at the Citizen. I was distracted by some personal and family issues.
I didn’t file more Freedom of Information requests.
I stopped asking questions. I didn’t stay with the story.
That’s no excuse.
We all face different professional and personal challenges but that shouldn’t get in the way of doing important work.
Sadly, speaking up but doing nothing to fix the underlying problem has become a constant theme.
Eighteen months ago, when council fretted about the Haggith Creek bridge mess, McConnachie called the situation “a debacle” and “simply unacceptable.”
“In my opinion, somebody’s got to be held responsible,” Skakun thundered.
“We are held responsible every four years and in this case there is obviously some mistakes made.”
Not only has no one ever been held responsible for that specific fiasco, the city refused to pursue legal avenues to recover costs.
Furthermore, Adam Homes, the city’s director of infrastructure services, received a six per cent pay raise last year, Kellett confirmed in his email - the 1.75 per cent everyone else received, plus a “step increase” into the top level of the pay structure for city directors.
The time for hand wringing and stern words is long since past.
If Prince George city councillors are truly upset about this growing list of cost overruns, they have the authority to do something about it, starting with holding the city manager and senior staff truly accountable for repeated errors costing taxpayers millions of dollars.
— Editor-in-chief Neil Godbout
I can’t help but wonder if I had stuck with this story more consistently and aggressively if things might have been different.
Would mayor and council have held Soltis more accountable?
Would the wages and overtime have been more of an election issue in the fall of 2018?
Would Hall have faced a more formidable candidate for mayor when he ran for re-election in 2018 than Willy Ens and would more candidates have challenged the six incumbent councillors that ran for re-election?
Would Hall and the current city council have already reviewed and changed or removed the overtime policy for senior staff, something they promised at public forums in 2018 they would do once re-elected but still haven’t done nearly two years later?
We’ll never know the answer to any of those questions but I know in my heart I could have - and should have - done more.
You may have found all of the above interesting background or you may have found it all self-important naval gazing. I agree with both assessments.
My editorial has the numbers, what I think it all means and what I believe should be done about it.
As always, what you do with that is entirely up to you.
But now you know.
Agitators losing their heads
Apparently, “Old Tomorrow” has had his head removed by some shiftless miscreants in what was once called New France. The usual psychobabble percolated to justify these actions - colonialism, Sir John A.’s race, defund the police, etc. I’ll not deny that our first prime minister had several imperfections and that some of his policies hindered more than they helped my own First Peoples. But to behead and compare him to 20th century tyrants is insulting and absurd.
Second only to my vitriol for all things Post-Quiet Revolution in this banal excuse for a country is my unending puzzlement at our homegrown leftists from the 1960s onwards who are always aping their American cousins. From Vietnam protests to contemporary agitation over all things race and gender related, one would think our own radicals would display a little originality. Instead, while proclaiming to be anti-Amerikkka to the max, they mime their movements daily.
What would you do if you woke up one morning and right there on your Facebook page, for the whole world to see, was a complaint about how terrible one of your staff members was treating customers?
Customer complaints are nothing new, however, it once was that when customers received poor service from you or your staff, they verbally told their friends. Now thanks to social media they can tell the world and in many cases the world listens.
This is exactly what happen to the woman who called me up last week stressed because one of her employees was going rogue and the world was learning about how badly they could be treated if they crossed the threshold of her establishment.
It is easier than ever for disgruntled customers to complain about poor service, bad products or even policies they don’t like.
In fact, in this day and age you don’t even have to be a customer to raise a fuss about a business and try to ruin its
RIGHT OF CENTRE NATHAN GIEDE
Of course, this only serves to harm the objectives of Canadian radicals, for the moment that anyone becomes acquainted with the facts, the comparisons come apart. At the exact same moment John A. was founding this country, America was piecing itself back together after what is still the bloodiest conflict in their history, the Civil War. The victorious Union then turned their army, the largest in the world, west and began bullying or killing my ancestors, the Plains Sioux. That did not happen in Canada. Even if one wants to cite the Louis Riel rebellion, first, the casualties bear no resemblance to the conflicts south of the border and second, open rebellion, like Fenian Raids, earns you the untempered violence of state authority - have a plan to win or prepare to face the consequences. As a side note, we restive First Peoples had modern assault
weapons - lever actions - in that conflict while the Canadian Army carried outdated small arms.
Despite rebellion, and my own tribe’s penchant for stealing back the horses sold to the American whiskey traders, eventually resulting in the Cypress Hills Massacre which in turn resulted in the creation of the Northwest Mounted Police, treaties with First Nations as well as legislation to aid their transition continued to be debated and passed in Parliament. Indeed, even Sitting Bull referred to the now defaced Queen Victoria as “Great-Grandmother Across the Sea.”
None of it was perfect and I have consistently called for the Indian Act to be amended to an unrecognizable degree or tossed out completely. But again, looking at the situation of the late 19th Century, especially questions of race and culture, considering that this was in the midst of the rise of eugenics, the fact that a campaign of full scale slaughter did not occur in this country is actually a miracle. And part of that reality is thanks largely to Sir John A.’s own temperament.
Let us recall again that after breaching
the Rockies and delivering the promised CPR to the Most Beautiful Place on Earth, Macdonald was shocked B.C. had not made treaties with local tribes. In typical liberal fashion, our lover of the universe premier had no sympathy for the First Peoples or their claims, while Gov. Douglas, a Creole-Scott, and Gov. Seymour, an illegitimate son of nobility, displayed both empathy as well as fidelity regarding agreements over land use.
But none of this is here nor there. How can the black masked cowards know any of this if all they’ve been taught is Marxian theory by pseudo-academics at the adult day care centres we call universities? Hyphenated courses and the degrees they add up to are nonsense - they do not teach the facts of what happened, only the predetermined conclusion we must all come to lest we not be allies, or worse, stay within our racial bias, which obviously is inherently violent.
Sir John A. Macdonald knew how to deal with agitators. It is my sincere hope all are prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Our founding father deserves at least that much.
Making it right with customer service
reputation. I had this exact situation a few years ago where people who were halfway around the globe were trying to discredit us on social media.
Complaints about your business should be a good reason for you to stop and wonder if you are in the wrong. If customers didn’t tell us what they didn’t like about the business, how could we progress? When we listen to what our clients are telling us it gives us the opportunity to improve on aspects of our organizations that perhaps we haven’t noticed. Yet far too often we brush off those complaints until they blow up in our face or hit social media.
In the case of the woman who called me, she told me that she had known for a while that her staff member was not ideal. She said that this staff member had upset
customers in the past some of whom had left in a huff after encounters with her.
However, the owner had chosen to ignore the issue because it was hard to find employees and she needed to take holidays.
I get that it can be difficult to find great staff but when we compromise our values for a short-term gain, we risk everything we have invested in building our business.
Dealing with customer complaints is not rocket science.
In my experience of 30 years of business and millions of transactions, I have had to deal with hundreds of customers that who took issue with something that they didn’t like about a product or service they received.
In 99 per cent of the cases, the customers are right.
Either the product didn’t work or the service they got was not up to standard.
Customers had spent their hard-earned money in our establishments and expected us to live up to our promise of customer satisfaction.
Most people don’t want to make a big fuss about nothing.
Complaining takes energy and while there are some people who will complain more than others, the majority of people only raise issues when they are seriously upset.
The key to dealing with upset customers is compassion.
What customers want more than anything is someone to listen to their complaints.
When we take the time to truly get to the root of the issue and actually listen to what the customer is saying, in most cases we can understand why they are frustrated and then deal with that frustration.
In 99 per cent of cases, customers are realistic.
They know there are limits to what you can do in your business to make things right.
One solution is simply asking your customers what would be a reasonable resolution to the problem. What is it that they expect?
I have been surprised when I have asked this. In many cases, they simply want to bring it to your attention.
— See SHOW COURAGE on page 17
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PRINCE GEORGE
PRINCE
PRINCE GEORGE
Collisions felt across the universe
We have all heard the apocryphal story of Newton’s discovery of gravity.
He really wasn’t sitting under an apple tree but there was one visible from his window.
And he really didn’t discover gravity. Instead, he worked out the law of gravity, which explained the relationship between the mass of two objects, their distance apart and the force of attraction.
The law of gravity tells us how gravity works but not why.
We still don’t have a good understanding of why but the best explanation we have is provided by Einstein’s work.
In essence, gravity is a consequence of the curvature of spacetime.
An often used analogy is a sheet of rubber with a heavy object placed in the middle.
The object stretches the rubber to make a parabolic indentation and if you introduce, say, a marble it will roll down the surface of the rubber sheet until it meets the heavy object.
From a two dimensional perspective, it is not a bad analogy.
It gets a bit stretched when you apply both a third dimension and time but in essence gravity is a consequence of the underlying curvature.
One of the consequences of Einstein’s equations is the existence of gravity waves – ripples in spacetime.
RELATIVITY
In our stretch rubber sheet analogy, hitting the sheet produces a rippling effect which propagates outward.
If you push on the heavy object and let go, it will oscillate up and down resulting in oscillations in the surrounding rubber.
Or maybe a better image is the rippling effect which surrounds Neo when he gains control of the Matrix.
Gravity waves are a ripple in both space and time – for a brief moment neither time nor space are smooth.
Some physicists became convinced that with the right apparatus and a lot of careful measurements, they might be able to see gravity waves.
Not from ordinary objects like you and me as the waves we produce are very tiny (an ant walking across our rubber sheet wouldn’t really be noticed) but from collisions of gravitationally massive objects such as black holes and neutron stars.
When LIGO or the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory was turned on in 2015, scientists were able to detect gravity waves for the first time.
With LIGO, we now have a brand new
way of looking at the universe and observing phenomena we couldn’t detect by any other means.
When the Italian equivalent of LIGO (Advanced Virgo) started up, even better measurements could be made and when a new Japanese version comes online in the next year, measuring gravity waves will become even more refined.
Over the past five years, LIGO and Advanced Virgo have detected dozens of collisions between super-massive objects.
The signal they received on May 21, 2019, however, was different.
Not only was it the most powerful and distant ever seen but the black holes involved should not have existed according to our present understanding.
The mass of each black hole falls into a mass gap in which theorists believe it is impossible to make black holes by the standard route of collapsing a star.
The stellar class of black holes arise when a large star (bigger than our sun) runs out of nuclear fuel.
It stops exploding outwards and gravity forces the mass inwards. The bigger the star, the more massive the catastrophic event.
But for truly massive stars (more than 65 solar masses) their cores have so much energy they start converting photons into particle/antiparticle pairs through a process called pair instability.
This triggers an explosion of oxygen
Menopause and brain injury
Idon’t know how else to say this. Menopause sucks! Especially with a brain injury.
Some of the common struggles of menopause are hot and cold flashes, increased body and facial hair, weight gain, migraine headaches, mood fluctuations, depression and anxiety, disturbed sleep, food allergies and a host of gynecological issues.
For over 20 years, I had hot flashes so bad that I would stand outside in -30 C weather to cool off. I would roll down my vehicle windows in the winter. No matter how cold it was, I would turn down the heat in the house and turn on the ceiling fan in my bedroom. Summers were horrible. I rarely spent time outside unless I was in water. During tropical vacations, I would spend a lot of time in my hotel room with the air conditioner cranked up to maximum.
My poor husband Bob froze every winter. He would go to sleep wearing a long sleeved shirt, jogging pants and socks. He asked me many times “when is this going to end?”
Show courage when dealing with customers
BOGGLED
DIANE NAKAMURA
After brain injury, my hot flashes got worse. I had to wear my hair up in a pony tail all of the time and my night sweats were off the chart. I was very confused about how this could possibly be happening. I thought hot flashes were supposed to decrease over time, not ramp up. What the heck was going on?
My case manager at the Brain Injured Group (BIG) noticed I was literally burning up during one of our support sessions. I told her my hot flashes were unbearable. She asked me if I experienced worse hot flashes after my injury. I had to think about it for a minute and I told her the answer was “yes.” She explained that brain injury damages the body’s temperature regulation system. Brain injury survivors can
— from page 16
They don’t want money or you to fire the employee that caused them grief. They want you to hear what they are saying. In other cases, they want a replacement, reimbursement or the resolution concerning the product or service issues. Again, its not brain surgery you are performing. You
nuclei which totally destroys the star. The stars disappear rather than creating a black hole.
This means theoretically there should be a cutoff of about 65 solar masses for the size of a first generation black hole. Some theorists even argue the cutoff should be only 45 solar masses.
The event detected on May 21 involved two black holes of 66 and 85 solar masses and at least one of the black holes is beyond the expected theoretical limit.
Further, the black hole created by the merger is 151 solar masses, which is unique.
No other black hole has been detected in this range.
We do know massive black holes with 1,000 to 1,000,000 solar masses, like the one imaged at the heart of M87, exist but how these massive holes form has been something of enigma.
In detecting a collision which happened 7 billion years ago to generate this 151 black hole, astronomers may have uncovered a vital clue. The monsters at the hearts of galaxy may have formed from multiple collisions of smaller black holes and slowly accumulated over time. This collision provides the first indirect evidence such a path is possible.
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, two black holes danced towards each other and we are just now seeing the results of that collision.
have either hot or cold flashes or swing between both.
Since my injury, it is a daily routine of taking cold showers or baths (even in the winter) and dressing in layers. People in my circle have become accustomed to seeing my face suddenly turn beet red and watch me dash out of the room. It’s a good thing I don’t wear makeup because it would be dripping off my face. I used to have dry facial skin but now I rarely use cream because my face is well hydratedand not for a good reason.
Going through menopause and having a brain injury is having a double whammy of symptoms. Friends of mine report because of brain injury, they developed menopause symptoms AFTER they completed menopause. This is like a ghost that never stops haunting us. The difficult aspect of this is determining what symptoms are because of menopause and which ones are brain injury related. There is definitely a significant overlap here.
Putting the topic of menopause aside for a moment, us survivors are used to symp-
are simply making it right. Recently, I had a complaint with Telus about how they offered a service to new customers but not existing customers. The staff member I was dealing with didn’t have the power to resolve the issue. However, when someone higher up heard my complaint, they made it right.
toms going away, then coming back. It is a constant argument with ourselves not to stay discouraged because we often feel we are going backwards in our recovery. It is noticeable that medical practitioners who treat female brain injured patients know very little about assessment and treatment of combined brain injury and menopause symptoms. This is not their fault because there has been hardly any research done on the topic. It’s frustrating because if a condition is not proven scientifically, then it’s regarded as non-existent. Survivors’ concerns fall on deaf ears and they’re told there’s nothing to prove their concerns are valid. We might as well be told that that we’re crazy and making this all up for attention. Not being heard is a common occurrence for survivors.
I feel there’s been a huge ball dropped. Why hasn’t there been research done in this area? In Prince George alone, I know many who are suffering with no treatment or relief in sight. This gaping hole in research and data collection is shameful and needs to be rectified.
Being courageous enough to root out troublesome issues for our customers, “making it right” for them, ensures longevity and success for our businesses.
- Dave Fuller MBA, is an award-winning business coach and the author of the book Profit Yourself Healthy. Complaint about this column? Email dave@pivotleader.com
It’s important for older people to do weight-bearing exercise to maintain healthy bones and enjoy gains in strength. Here, a small class takes part in a group session at the Prince George Family YMCA.
EXERCISE ESSENTIAL TO HEALTHY AGING
CHRISTINE HINZMANN
Citizen staff
There’s an old saying that states you’ve got nothing if you don’t have your health.
As we all age, maintaining physical fitness, agility and stability can become a greater challenge but there are many things we can do to help maintain our health.
Moderate and weight-bearing exercise is recommended to maintain a strong body and healthy bones.
The coronavirus pandemic has provided an extra bit of challenge when it comes to maintaining or gaining ground in a person’s level of fitness.
“Most people have had a sedentary lifestyle,” Shannon Johnson, centre manager of the Prince George Family YMCA, said. “Covid has provided an even playing ground so we’re all having to start over again. People who have had positive experiences in the past know how to do it and some of us never really had those positive experiences so it’s a bit more of a challenge and maybe even feel defeated or a bit overwhelmed. I think it’s important for people to realize that everybody has an op-
portunity to restart and make new choices on how they want to move forward in the new normal and what that means for them. We have to take care of ourselves. Nobody is going to do that for us.”
It’s important for everyone to start with small steps because loss of muscle mass and the potential for injury can happen by starting off too fast, she added.
“You want to take small steps and set realistic goals,” Johnson said. “Get a taste of success, focus on the feeling better part of it, not necessarily the weight loss or strength gain because that will come in time. If you make positive lifestyle changes you will eventually see the results. It just takes time and it’s possible for everybody.”
At the Family Y in Prince George, there’s also the social aspect of exercising.
“Besides the physical fitness gains, the biggest thing we see here is the social engagement,” Johnson said. “People being involved in a program where they see their people, whether it’s an individual program or a group program is really important to their overall well being. Being part of a community, no matter what that community looks like, links us all.”
Weight-bearing exercise is really important to combatting osteoporosis and osteo-
penia, the precursor to osteoporosis.
Nutrition is a very important part of good health and while your doctor or a nutritionist is probably the best person to talk about that, the Family YMCA is a good resource to gain knowledge about how to best help your physical self.
“What we do with fitness, we do weight-bearing and strength training activities - something that puts an imposition onto the bones, which encourages bone to manufacture new bone and that offers better support,” Johnson said. “Now if someone already has osteoporosis or osteopenia our certified fitness leaders can provide modifications to the program.”
It’s never too late to start on a program to increase health, she added.
“As a senior, yes you have bone loss, you have muscle loss and metabolism slows down, and gains are not as quick but you can progress, you can make things better,” Johnson said.
Lack of flexibility is also an issue not to be overlooked.
“A lot of people don’t think it’s important to stay flexible,” Johnson said. “The gains that you get functionally by doing flexibility training provides better posture and provides more muscle balance.”
Fall prevention is a big movement in the fitness industry for seniors.
“What we do is give people an opportunity to engage their core,” Johnson said. “By engaging your core you are using the deep muscles in your pelvic floor and the transverse abdominal muscles and those stabilize your hip alignment as well as your lower back and provides a good base for any movement that you make so you have better balance.”
During a fall prevention session, instructors will offer tips and advice on how to prevent and even prepare to minimize the damage a fall can do.
Benefits as a result of exercise includes increased metabolic rate, increased bone density, lower blood pressure, better blood lipid profiles, greater glucose utilization, better digestion and elimination, reduced lower back pain, decreased arthritic discomfort, and increased self confidence.
“Just try to increase activity, you don’t have to go for an hour-long walk, go for 10 minute increments instead to enjoy cardiovascular benefits,” Johnson said. “Do things with other people, try to engage with your grandchildren or your dog - that always helps - and do something with some consistence to get good results.”
HANDOUT PHOTO
Catching a wave in Tofino
STEVE MACNAULL
Special to The Citizen
Surf instructor Ania Splawinski makes us feel awesome about being kooks.
Kook, or a Barney, if you prefer, is a beginner surfer and depending on how quickly newbies catch onto the sport, the term is either affectionate or derogatory.
“These longboards you’re riding will allow you kooks to catch the cruisy waves,” Splawinski tells my daugher, Grace, and me.
The longboards we’re attempting to ride are nine-feet-long and known as the couches of surfing.
And cruisy waves, while sounding cool, are actually neophyte-perfect tiny..
Grace and I are in the Pacific off Cox Bay Beach in Tofino, the small surfing town on the west coast of Vancouver Island that’s become a big tourist destination.
Splawinski joins us in the water, picks our waves, gives us a shove, screams at us when to paddle and eventually stand up on the board to ride the gentle crest of foamywhite water.
My 17-year-old daughter is a natural and is soon showing off atop the board.
Me, on the other hand, spent most of the time struggling to stand up and then toppling off the board.
Splawinski works for Surf Sister, which isn’t about excluding men from lessons and rentals, but including women.
And men, women and children of all ages and abilities come to Tofino to surf.
Tofino’s roots are in fishing, logging and hippie surfer culture.
But it’s remote, dramatic location, abundant natural beauty, other activities, range of accommodations and food scene have made it a desirable to all kinds of visitors..
Tofino had few cases of COVID-19 and was hesitant to welcome tourists back
until provincial medical health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry gave the go ahead for leisure travel, with precautions, within B.C.
As such, Tofino’s summer tourism resurgence is thanks to B.C. locals, which is making up for the lack of Brits and Germans, who generally make up half of all tourists to the region.
Tofino is a one-hour flight from Vancouver or a ferry and long drive.
But don’t let hours in the car, including time on winding Pacific Rim Highway, put you off. The drive is spectacular through dense forest with regular glimpses of jaw-dropping water views.
In fact, in a province full of beauty, Tofino bats above its weight.
Since we’re not diehard surfers, my wife, Kerry, and I and our daughter rounded out our quintessential Tofino itinerary with luxury accommodation, high-and-low-brow dining, hiking and bear watching.
And don’t forget quiet, reflective time for strolling the beach in the mist and absentmindedly staring at the ocean.
Kerry declared those two simple pleasures the highlights of the trip.
We stayed at Cox Bay Beach Resort in one of its 40 beach suites, which was handy for those aforementioned beach walks and ocean gazing, as well as breakfasts and an sundowner drinks on the patio.
Fine dining took us to The Great Room at neighbouring Long Beach Lodge Resort for crab legs, Shelter in town for salmon surf bowls and the famous Wickaninnish Inn’s Pointe Restaurant in the next bay for pork belly and scallops.
Casual eats included fish and chips at Surfside Grill at Pacific Sands Resort and beef and bean tacos at Tofino’s institution-of-a-food-truck Tacofino in the back parking lot of the Ocean Break shopping
catch some waves at Cox
this
complex.
Bear watching with The Whale Centre took us onto the waters of the UNESCO Biosphere-designated Clayquot Sound in a 12-passenger boat.
Besides enjoying the breathtaking scenery, we idled, close up, in front of a beach in the Fortune Channel where a big female bruin paid us no nevermind while
she foraged for shore crabs and barnacles at low tide.
Our hiking found us hugging an 800-yearold gigantic western red cedar along the Rainforest Trail in Pacific Rim National Park and strolling through the ethereal mist at Long Beach, which is also in the national park.
Check out TourismTofino.com
STEVE MACNAULL PHOTOS
Top, Surfers head out to
Bay Beach in Tofino. Above,
800-year-old gigantic western red cedar is along the Rainforest Trail in Pacific Rim National Park.
HORO SC OP ES &P UZ ZLES
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DOWN
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Motion of assent
Adventure stories 30. Sort of sister
Wolfed down
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Crossed letter
In-____ (relative)
Tangle
In this way
Present!
Tantrum
Unbarred
Cries
Set down
Highest card
Tied contest
Command to adog
PUZZLE NO.783
HOW TO PLAY:
Fill in the grid so that every row, every column and every 3x3 box contains the numbers 1through 9only once.
Each 3x3 box is outlined with adarkerline. You already have afew numberstoget you started. Remember: you must not repeatthe numbers 1through 9inthe same line, column or 3x3 box.
PUZZLENO.
Teresa Saunders
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VOTING OPEN AUGUST20-SEPTEMBER 13, 2020
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REMEMBRANCES
BURDEN,WILLIAM(BILL)
OCTOBER27,1934SEPTEMBER2,2018
DearestDad, Ithasbeentwolongyears sinceyouleftustobewith Mom.Youwereourshelter whenlifegotstormy,our lifeboatwhenwewereadrift, ourrockwhenwefaltered. Youshowedusthatfamilyis themostimportantthing, andyouwerethegluethat heldustogether.Youtaught ussomuchaboutlife,you gaveusthestrengthtocarry on.Wemissyoueveryday. Love, Yourdaughtersandtheir families.
, passed away peacefully on August 31, 2020 at the age of 88 years.
Barbara is survived by her daughter Linda (Don) Ramsay, son Glen (Delphine) MacPhee and grandchildren; Lynn, Brian, Jacqueline, Tyler and great grandchildren. She is also survived by her brother Wylie (Carol) White and sister Glendean Parker. Barbara was predeceased by her husband Robert MacPhee and daughter Beverly Richards. No service by request. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Hospice Society. Special thanks to Dr. A. Daskarev for being there when Mom needed her.
Dujo “Duke” Cirko
Sep 20, 1935 - Aug 29, 2020
Dujo “Duke” Cirko of Prince George BC passed away peacefully Saturday, August 29th surrounded by his wife and four children. He was born September 20, 1935 in the small hamlet of Raseljke Croatia, the fifth of eight children to parents Pera and Mate Cirko. Like many men in his generation his childhood was interrupted by WWII and equally as difficult were the years spent living under communism in the aftermath of war. By the age of 23 he decided to flee his homeland in search of a better life, he journeyed on foot to Klagenfurt, Austria where he spent time in a refugee camp before being accepted by Canada. Dad came to Canada in 1958 and immediately fell in love with his new home country. He settled in BC and eventually called Prince George home where he and wife Anda worked hard and raised their four children. Affectionately known as Duke to most everyone, he was a proud Croatian, a proud Canadian, but he was proudest of his kids and his grandkids and he let everyone know including complete strangers. He will be fondly remembered for his selective hearing, his funny sayings, his love of soccer, his generous smile, his big heart, and his unwavering love for his family.
Left to celebrate his life are his beloved wife of 48 years Anda, his daughters Tereza (Percy), Lucy (Troy), Dina (Jon), his son Ante (Summer), and his eight grandchildren Audrey, Sophie, Jagger, Abby, Lucy, Logan, Mary, and Jack. Dujo also leaves behind his brother Ivan and sister Jaka both of Croatia as well as numerous nieces, nephews and cousins throughout Canada and Croatia. The funeral service for Dad will be recognized but due to Covid 19 restrictions the service will be limited to family only. Special thanks to Dr. Grose and all the staff of Hospice House for making Dad’s last days comfortable.
EYLES,DannyW.
December9,1945-August2,2020
Itiswithgreatsadnessandheartbreakthatthefamilyof DannyEdwardWilliamEylesannounceshispassingatthe ageof74onSunday,August2,2020,inVernon,BC,after alengthybattlewithchronickidneydisease.Dannywasa long-timeemployeeofTelus,andwasanavid outdoorsman,enjoyinghuntingandfishinginthe KootenaysandNorthernBCwithhisson. Knownasagentlegiant,hemadeanimpressiononall whoknewhim.Dannywasknownforhisgreat storytelling(especiallyabouthuntingandfishing),his treasuryofjokes,andquickwit.Hiskindnessand willingnesstolendahelpinghandwillberememberedby friendsandfamilyalike.
DannywillbelovinglyrememberedbyhiswifeAnita,the loveofhislifesincehewas18yearsold.Danny’s greatestlegacyheleavesbehindarehischildren,Juditte (Derek),Tracey(Matthew),andTurk(Regina);andhis sevengrandchildren,Russell(Lindsey),Brendan,Jordan, Nicolas,Hannah,RowanandJesse.Dannywaslooking forwardtothebirthofhisfirstgreat-grandchildin November.Dannywillalsobemissedbyhisbrothersand sisters,Terri(Albert),Kenny(Kathie),Larry(Julia), Dorothy(Joe),Keith,Greg(Karen)andMartin;andmany niecesandnephews.
WelookforwardtoseeingyouontheothersideDanny. Weknowyouwillhavesomegreatstoriestotell.Thank youtothosespecialstaffatVernonJubileeandKelowna GeneralHospital-youknowwhoyouare.Dannywillbe crematedandacelebrationoflifewilltakeplaceatalater date.
Asakidneytransplantrecipient,Danny’sfamilywould appreciatedonationstotheKidneyFoundationofCanada, inlieuofflowers,at: https://kidney.akaraisin.com/ui/generaldonation/donations /start
Condolencesmaybeofferedatpleasantvalleyfh.com
August 7, 1939August 29, 2020
It is with heavy hearts we announce the passing of our adored Peter Lupul.
Lovingly remembered by wife Doreen (58 yrs), children Merv (Raylene), Marlene (Steve), Greg (Marcella), Melanie (Ron), grandchildren Gerry, Shaylene (James), Douglas (Courtney), Kristi, Brittany (Cory), Matt, Jordan (Steff), Riley (Jenna), Branden, Kelly, great grandchildren Cole, Cheyenne, Delacey, Montanna, Clay, Charmaine, Daylan, Nicholas, Cooper, Hunter, Jaxx, Austyn, Dalton, Dylanna, great great grandson Warner, special nephew Danny Lupul and family, sisters Doris, Kay, Ann, Irene, Jenny, brother Sandy, numerous nephews, nieces, extended family and friends and his four legged friend Missy Predeceased by parents Nick and Lena, 4 brothers, and 4 sisters.
Peter was born in Vilna, AB, raised on the family farm with 14 siblings. He moved to Sinclair Mills BC in 1958 to work in the logging industry which lasted many years. He met Doreen Robinson shortly after arriving in BC, marrying August 11, 1962.
Peter will be remembered by his passion for work, his love of hockey, fishing, and watching his birds in the yard.
Other people’s trash was Dad’s treasure (aka Ukrainian fabricator).
Heartfelt thanks to The Prince George Cancer Clinic, Prince George Hospice House, Home Care Nurses. Drs Din and Mansour. Special thanks to Dr. Denise McLeod, a true angel going above and beyond when Dad needed an Angel. To Nurse Bonnie for her extraordinary care and compassion especially in the last days.
In lieu of flowers please donate to the Prince George Hospice House in Peters Name.
A Celebration of life will be held at Dad’s favourite place - 4070 Gill Place ( Cluculz Lake) September 12th, 1 - 4 pm. Please bring a comfy chair and a memory to share. Covid restrictions will be recognized.
Celebrate the lives of loved ones with your stories, photographs and tributes
LISA BOLTON
Peter Lupul
BARBARA KATHERINE MACPHEE
In Memoriam
Louis Joseph Matte
February 14, 1929 - August 28, 2020
Sadly, we announce the passing of our loved husband, father, grandfather and great-grandfather, Louis Joseph Matte, on Friday August 28, 2020 at UHNBC at 91 years of age.
Louis is survived by his loving wife, Rolande. His 11 children: Marvin (Barb), Maureen (Robert Friesen, Emile (Ruth), Hubert (Laura), Sharlene (Tim Irving), Harold (Mandy), Catherine (Al Erricson), Sylvia (Tom DaSilva), Carmel Matte, Eldon (Christine), Christopher (Dawn). 47 grandchildren, 25 great-grandchildren. His brother: Theodore Matte (Gabrielle). Sister-in-laws: Emmy Matte, Maureen Matte, Jeannine Brain, Paulette Brain. Brother-in-law: Arthur Turcotte (Judy). Many nieces & nephews, great nieces & nephews, cousins and many friends.
Louis is predeceased by his grandson Mathew Matte and great grandson Jacob Pesserl. His parents: Edoige & Katherine Matte. Brothers: Francis and wife Adrienne, Leo, Edward. Sisters: Delores and husbands Jeff Turgeon and John Courteau, Blanche and husband Heinz Knoedler, Ellen and husband Ted Long. Mother and father-in-law: Alice & Alcide Turcotte, step-father-in-law Henry Brisson. Sister-in-law: Yvette Silverside and husband Cliff. Brother-in-laws: Victor Brain, Gordon Brain.
Louis was born in Dollard, SK., raised on his parent’s farm until grade 12. He then attended Normal School in 1949 in Victoria, BC. His first teaching job was in McBride, BC for 2 years; he was vice-principal of Borden St. School in Prince Rupert in 1952-53. Louis then attended Saint Thomas Moore University in Saskatoon, SK for one year, as he thought he might go into law. However, Louis previously met his future wife-to-be, Rolande Turcotte, in Prince Rupert and changed his plans.
Louis married Rolande on August 19, 1954. Together they taught in rural schools at Upper Pine and North Pine near Fort St John, BC for two years and one year at Aleza Lake. As they had already started their family with their first born, Marvin (born in 1956) in Fort St. John, they decided it was best for Rolande to leave teaching to stay home and raise their children. They moved to Kelowna for one year where Louis taught in a junior high school.
As Louis was looking to get out of teaching and do something else, it was decided in 1956 that the Prince George area was a place of opportunity and he and Rolande decided to move their family there, where they resided ever since. Louis then taught at Connaught Junior High School for 9 years before he retired from teaching to become a full-time entrepreneur. Since that time he was involved in many business ventures, land development and construction projects in and around rural Prince George and area.
Louis moved his family in 1973 from town to the country side, in an area west of Prince George known as Beaverly. Here he and Rolande raised their children on a farm which they developed from raw land. Louis taught them the responsibility of raising many different animals, how to develop and work the land all while instilling in his kids the value of a hard day’s work.
Louis was a founding member of the Knights of Columbus in Prince George, Council 5246. He was involved in the early stages of the Immaculate Conception Church and the construction of the elementary school.
Louis was a philanthropist in his community and province. He was often involved in politics on the local, provincial and federal levels. He was also involved in various prolife issues over the years. However, Louis’ greatest legacy that he has left behind is his very large healthy family of children, grandchildren and great grandchildren.
We would like to thank all the doctors, nurses, care aides, and many others who helped Louis with his various health issues since his vehicle accident in 2002 and especially during the past year and a half. You all helped him reach the good age of 91!
In honour of Louis’ memory, if you so wish to make a donation, donations will be accepted at ‘Hope for Women Pregnancy Services’ 112-1600-15th Avenue
Prince George, BC V2L 3Y3
A private family Catholic prayer and funeral service were held on Tuesday September 1st and Wednesday September 2nd at the Immaculate Conception Church. We wish to thank Fathers Chris Lynch, Pier Pandolfo and Frank Salmon for their support at this time. Also thank you to Grace Memorial Funeral Home.
God bless you all on your journey through life.
DARREN GORDEN TORRAVILLE
May 25, 1981Aug 22, 2020
We are heartbroken to announce the passing of Darren Gorden Torraville on August 22, 2020. Survived by mom Brenda, his daughter Kaylee and her mom Megan and her grandparents Connie and Kevin Goertzen, brother Tom (Shyla), grandmother Lois Dewar, aunts Karen Duckworth, Janice Berg, Heather Dewar, uncle Jim (Lorena) cousins Daniel, Deanna, Krystal, Trina, Mike, Jason, Curtis and Kyla. Predeceased by father Mike, grandparents Tom and Mildred Torraville, Calvin Dewar and uncle Delbert Dewar. Service to be held at Prince George Memorial Park September 12 - 11 A:M Family/friends after -covid limits apply.
Darren could always make you smile - just ask the person getting the bill at Inland Kenworth.
MAH, Bud Chu Ming
June 14, 1932 - Doon Wo Lee, San Gark, KwangtungAugust 23, 2020 - Calgary, Alberta
Bud Mah of Calgary, AB, passed away on August 23, 2020 at the age of 88 years.
Bud and Esther operated Toppers Cleaners in Prince George B.C from 1966-1991.
Bud was well known for his happy, good natured demeanor and generous spirit. He loved fishing, good Dim Sum and a challenging game of Mah Jong.
He was predeceased by his wife Esther Shue Fong Mah (nee Chan) (2019), and their children, Colleen Sim (nee Mah) (2007), and their son David Mah (2016).
He will be missed by his extended family and friends in the communities where they lived.
Condolences, memories and photos may be shared and viewed on Bud’s obituary at www.McInnisandHolloway.com.
In living memory of Bud Mah, a tree will be planted in the Ann & Sandy Cross Conservation Area by McINNIS & HOLLOWAY FUNERAL HOMES, Crowfoot, 82 Crowfoot Circle NW, CALGARY, AB T3G 2T3, Telephone: 403-241-0044.
McLaughlin, Kerri Ann
August 6, 1955August 29, 2020
We are broken-hearted to announce the sudden passing of Kerri following a heart attack. She was a beloved wife, mother, grandmother, sister, auntie and friend. Kerri made lasting friendships wherever she worked but will be especially missed by her colleagues and the golfers at Aspen Grove Golf Course. The family treasures many memories of happy times at their Norman Lake cabin. Kerri and Eddie spent half the year in Mulege, Mexico returning home to work and be with family for the warmer months! While in Mexico they enjoyed the local beach life and made lifelong friends. She was a dedicated fundraiser for the Mulege orphanage. Kerri was very social and had a great sense of humour. She loved to talk and tell stories. She was bright and ‘sharp as a tack’, loved reading, her crosswords and puzzles and was a great organizer. Being a grandmother brought such joy to her life. She knows that she was loved and we shall miss her laugh and her wit.
Kerri is survived by her husband Eddie Devlin of forty- two years, her daughter Kiera and son Derek (Deanna) and her precious grandchildren, Peyton, Kaitlyn and Henley. Also left to mourn are sisters Jackie (John) and Moira and brother Kevin (Linda), her niece Moira and nephew Brian (Danielle), their children Conlan and Anna. Predeceased by parents, Frank and Mary McLaughlin. Survived also by relatives in Canada, the U.S.A. and Northern Ireland. Special thanks to Paramedics, the Emergency and ICU staff at University Hospital of the North. Closed reception for family and close friends due to Covid. Interment of ashes at the Prince George Mausoleum at a later date. In lieu of flowers please consider a donation in Kerri’s name to the B.C. Cancer Agency or the B.C. Heart and Stroke Foundation.
“Your family’s never in your past. You carry it around with you everywhere”. M.L. SteadmanThe Light Between Oceans (Kerri’s favourite book).
WALTER I BUSH
March 15, 1931August 24, 2020
Dad passed away in Sechelt B.C. on August 24 in his ninetieth year. He was predeceased by the love of his life, Claire in 2003. They were married for fifty happy years. He is survived by his six children - Orlando (Suzanne), Kirsten (Terry), Karl (Laura), Heidi (Paul), Johanna (Larry) and Eve (Harris). Dad and mom will be forever missed by their adoring grandchildren and great grandchildren - Arden (Jen), Chester (Melissa), Alex (Georgia), Haden, Eden, Grayson, Elle, Ava, Trond, and Maeson. He is also survived by his sister, Violet Bauder.
Dad was born and raised in Enderby, B.C. along with his siblings Arthur, Jack and Violet. Growing up, he developed a life long love of sports that he passed on to his children. He particularly enjoyed hockey and baseball. Every Saturday night the t.v. was tuned to Hockey Night in Canada. He moved to Vancouver as a young man and started work at GMAC - a career that would last forty five yearsthirty of those years in Prince George. During that time he played and coached baseball and hockey for many teams including the Canada and Columbus Hotels, and the PG Mac’s. He also enjoyed announcing at the Mohawks hockey games.
In 1986, Mom and Dad moved to Vancouver as he had been asked to help out with the GM Pavilion during Expo ‘86. After Expo ended, they moved and eventually retired to Gibsons, B.C. They spent their time traveling, fishing, making wine, gardening and hosting their children and grandchildren. We all have very special memories of our time at Grandma and Poppa’s.
Dad lived life exactly as he wanted and passed away peacefully. We are very grateful for the excellent care he received during his year long stay at Totem Village. Thank you to everyone who helped Dad transition to LTC with kindness, patience, and respect - you are amazing. A very special thank you to Lori and Dr. Annette McCall for your caring and compassion.
A private family memorial will be held next year.
JOHANNE FORT 2x70.8 PGC002052
MCGILLIVRAY,RoryRoderickAngus May9,1983-August5,2020
Itiswithprofoundsadnessthatweannouncethesudden passingofRoryRoderickAngusMcGillivrayonAugust5, 2020,fromabrainhemorrhage.Rorywasanavid motorcyclist,sailor,andwaswellrespectedasatalented andhighlyskilledmachinist.Rorywastheonlychildof RodandJudithMcGillivray.Hewaspredeceasedbyhis father,RodMcGillivray;grandpa,MikeMcGillivray;and grandparents,CharlieandMabelTurchanak.Roryis survivedbyhismother,Judith;nana,Liz;aunties,Miriam Scribner(Oliver),SaraMcGillivray(DermotShirley),and AnneMcGovern(Edward);uncle,ScottMcGillivray;and severalcousins.
Rory’sfun-lovingspiritandgreatsenseofhumourcanbe viewedthroughavideohepostedtoYouTube(macrory) called:DirtBikesDon’tFloat.
AscholarshipisbeingsetupinRory’snameforfuture machinists.Thefamilygratefullyrequeststhosewishing tomakeagiftinhonourofRory’smemorydosotothe BCITFoundation.GiftsinMemoryofRorycanbemade onlineatwww.bcit.ca/foundation;byphoneat 604-432-8803,orbycheque.Pleasemakecheques payabletotheBCITFoundationwith"InMemoryofRory McGillivray"inthememo,andmailtoBCITFoundation, 3700WillingdonAvenue,Burnaby,BC-V5G3H2.
LEONARD EARL OSTBERG
Leonard Earl Ostberg passed from this life a few weeks before his 84th birthday on August 30th, 2020 at his residence at Gateway in Prince George, BC. Left to mourn his passing are his devoted wife of 66 years, Audrey Ostberg, his children, Doug Ostberg, Lee Ostberg (Shelly), Kathy Sykes (Guy) as well as daughter in law Carol Ostberg. Len will live on in the memories of his 7 grandchildren and their spouses as well as his 13 great-grandchildren. He will also be lovingly remembered by his sister, Jean Mooney, as well as numerous extended family members and the many friends he made along the way.
Len’s working life was mainly in the lumber industry working for Clear Lake Sawmills and Canfor. He was active in the curling community during the winter and enjoyed time in the summer at the cabin at Stuart Lake where many cherished family times were shared. He, along with Audrey, was an active member in several church communities where they lived.
Len and Audrey spent their retired years in the Kelowna area in the summers and Yuma, Arizona in the winter months. In January of 2019 Len and Audrey returned to their roots in Prince George. In recent years vascular dementia may have diminished his physical and communication abilities but he never lost his love for a catchy tune as evidenced by the tap of a toe, the pleasure of a sweet piece of chocolate, or a visit with his family as shown by the twinkle in his eyes when a family member came into his room or a soft chuckle in response to the antics of his great-grandchildren.
A celebration of life will take place at a later date. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to World Vision a favorite charity of Len’s.
March 8, 1935August 31, 2020
With heavy hearts we announce the passing our beloved Lucien on August 31, 2020. He is survived by his loving wife Theresa of 60 years, daughters Yvonne (Ray), Debbie (Sheldon), son Raymond (Debbie), grandchildren Dallas (Bronwyn), Skyler (Anika), Chelsea (Jamie), Shayla (Clint) and Damien, great grandchildren Aubree, Brynlee, Ainsley, Jarrett and soon to be Abbygail. Lucien is predeceased by his mother and father, four brothers and two sisters. Survived by one brother, four sisters and many nieces and nephews.
Special thank you to the nurses at UHNBC in the FMU ward and Doctors Sola and Patrick. No service by request.
March 18, 1935 - August 31, 2020
Terry was predeceased by his wife, Jean, in 2009. He had 85 years of adventure, hardwork, friendship, generosity and love for his family.
Survived by his four children and their families. Also his three brothers, many extended family and friends.
Always so proud of his ten grandchildren and fourteen great grandchildren who all loved him and will miss him dearly.
Thank you to everyone at Prince George Hospice House for your care and compassion.
Condolences may be offered at www.LakewoodFH.com
BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY
Street,PrineGeorge,BC.
Lucien Marsolais
Rest in peace Dad
Terry Randall
Notice of Sale of Vehicle Pursuant to the Repairer’s Lien Act
Whereas JESSICA TURNER is indebted to PRINCE GEORGE FORD in the sum of $9981.85 for repairs completed and payable upon a 2007 FORD FUSION BEARING VIN 3FAHP07Z67R236896, this vehicle will be offered for sale on SEPTEMBER 17, 2020 at 1331 CENTRAL STREET, PRINCE GEORGE, BC.
Please contact MIKE at 250-563-8111 in order to place bids or to arrange to view.
Trucks & Vans
Parts Trucks
Chrome tailgate, fits 3/4 ton GMC, cover top fits GMC 6 1/2 ft box, chrome rails. Shop vac250-963-6898
Utility Trailers
Diesel w/ plow. Exc. cond. $10,000. 250-3980720
1977 FORD 1 ton, renovated, $2500. 250-306-2292
14’ HD Tandem axle flatdeck trailer, 7000lbs axles, Bridgestone 700-R-15-LT steel belted radials, c/w elec brakes and loading ramps. $2500. obo. 250-564-0678
Vans
V.I.M. Wheelchair conversion van. Side entry power ramp, removable front seats, loaded 2003 Grand Caravan Sport, 139,000 miles. $18,500. Will accept trades 250-981-0055 or 236-423-2297
2014 Dodge Journey
62,000 km, lady driven, excellent condition
$12,500.00 250-613-1262
Apartments / Condos-For Sale
Spacious, 3 level 4 bdrms, 4 baths, superb location. $277,500. 250-561-1255 Ready to sell!
Duplexes for Sale
2220 & 2226 UPLAND ST. 2 bdrm duplex w/ 2 bdrm finished suite each side. Good revenue property, in good shape. $450,000 250-6146667 or 250-568-2338 Houses for
Property For Sale
“DUNSTER PROPERTY FOR SALE” 115 acres with 1/2 mile Fraser River frontage. 10 acres Island. 15 acres cleared. Mixed forest. 100% reliable water source. Log cabin attached to mo-
Whereas CHACITY WAGNER is indebted to PRINCE GEORGE FORD in the sum of $9441.28 for repairs completed and payable upon a 2008 FORD FOCUS BEARING VIN 1FAHP334N08W129294, this vehicle will be offered for sale on SEPTEMBER 17, 2020 at 1331 CENTRAL STREET, PRINCE GEORGE,
Please contact MIKE at 250-563-8111 in order to place bids or to arrange to view.
or thereafter, the unit maybe sold at 805 1st ave, prince George, Bc. For more information call nR Motors Ltd. 250-563-8891
TheImportance of Eavestrough Cleaning
Peopledon’t often stop to think of the issues thatcan arisefromclogged gutters, but thereare actually many.Ifwater is not abletoproperly flow away from your house, then damage can result in anumberofdifferent locations, from your roofingtoyour foundation. Thereare numberof reasons to makesurethatyour gutters get cleanedout. Hereisa look at sixofthosereasons
Roof Damage
When leaves and other debris clog up your gutters to the point thatwater is flooding over,you can end up having issues with rotonyour roofing. This is one of themain reasons thatit'simportant to keep your gutters clean.
Keep Out Pests
Clogged up gutters can be appealing to anumber of critters as anesting site. From birds to mosquitoes, abed of damp leaves can be alluring.
Damage to Fascia
Thefascia is thatboard thatruns right behind your gutter.Overflowing water can damage this important component of your gutter system.
Overwatering Garden Beds
If your gutters become clogged to the point thatwater is spilling over the side and into your garden beds, you can damage your plants' health by essentially drowning them. Overwatering can be as harmful as not watering enough.
CracksinFoundation
If water overflows and pools along your home's foundation, it can end up freezing, which can cause it to expand and generatecracksinyour foundation.
Damage to Brackets
Clogged gutters areholding too much weight, which can result in damage to the brackets.
Realty’sMaintenance Team can help you with your yardand other home maintenance &renovation jobs. Call 250-562-6671 or email us at maintenance@pacerealty.ca today for afree, no hassle quote.
Mary-Jean (MJ) Jacobson loves to talk real estate!She is passionate about helping clients increase the value of the assets. She is aProfessional Property Manager,StrataManager,RealEstate Sales Agent and Licensed Managing Broker.She writes aseries of articles blogs and whitepapers about the real estate and property management industry at ASK MJ.
5
essential precautions if you have a wood-burning fireplace
A wood-burning fireplace can add warmth and charm to your home. However, if certain precautions aren’t taken, these devices pose a serious hazard. To ensure your home and family members remain safe, here are five practices you should adopt.
1. USE THE RIGHT WOOD
Wood smoke contains a number of pollutants. To minimize emissions, opt for hardwood like elm, maple and oak, and avoid softwood such as spruce and fir. Additionally, make sure the logs are clean and dry.
2. INSTALL QUALITY ALARMS
Smoke and carbon monoxide detectors are essential.
Purchase quality devices from a recognized brand, test them regularly and always have extra batteries on hand.
3. KEEP AN EXTINGUISHER NEARBY
A single misdirected spark or fallen ember can lead to a devastating fire. Make sure you always have easy access to a fire extinguisher and that you know how to use it.
4. STORE ASHES SAFELY
Keep your fireplace clean by putting hot ashes in a sealed metal container outdoors and away from buildings and flammable materials. Wait a few days before transferring the ashes to the garbage.
5. CLEAN THE CHIMNEY
Get a professional to clean and inspect your chimney every year. This will ensure proper ventilation and reduce the risk for chimney fires.
If you carefully follow these tips, you and your family will be able to safely enjoy the benefits of having a wood-burning fireplace in your home.
3 advantages of floating floors
If you need to replace your flooring, keep in mind that the quality of floating floors continues to improve while its other enticing characteristics remain. Here’s what floating floors have to offer.
1. SUPERIOR RESISTANCE
The most common type of floating floor material is laminate, which is resistant to impact, scratches and UV ray damage. Laminate does fine in a damp environment, so you can safely install it in a basement or bathroom.
2. AFFORDABLE PRICE
A floating floor is an affordable solution that offers a balance between quality and price. Even if you opt for a higher quality floating floor material, the cost is only
about $5 per square foot. Installation tends to be cheaper as well.
3. EASY INSTALLATION
This type of flooring is referred to as “floating” because it doesn’t need to be glued or nailed to the subfloor. Instead, each plank has grooves that make them interlock. With a few simple tools, you can install them yourself, although you’ll likely get better results if you hire a professional.
Keep in mind that floating floors can mimic the appearance of wood, ceramic or stone. This means there’s a flooring choice that’s right for every room, and you won’t have to compromise on style.
GO FOR GOLD.
offers awiderange of rental properties available to rent,aswell as
can provide management services foryour investment and strata properties.
4 perks of an open-concept floor plan
Does your home feel closed off and cramped? If you want to transform your living space, here are the benefits you can look forward to with an open-concept floor plan.
1. IT LETS IN MORE NATURAL LIGHT
Removing interior walls is an effective way to brighten up your living space and allow natural light to extend further into your home.
2. IT MAXIMIZES SIGHT LINES
Whether you enjoy hosting dinner parties or need to keep an eye on young children, an open-concept floor plan will offer you a clear view of the living and dining room while you work in the kitchen.
3. IT MAKES SMALL SPACES FEEL LARGER
While you might not be able to add square footage to your home, taking down walls to combine several smaller rooms provides you with more usable space.
4. IT OFFERS FLEXIBLE DESIGN OPTIONS
Without walls to delineate each room, you can easily rearrange the layout of your living space to suit the evolving needs and preferences of your family.
If you want to have an open-concept home, keep in mind that restructuring a house’s floor plan is a major undertaking. To achieve the design of your dreams, be sure to enlist the help of experienced professionals including engineers, architects, contractors and interior decorators.
7 things that can liven up a corner
Is there a corner in your home that could use a makeover? If so, here are seven items you can use to spruce it up.
1. BOOKSHELF
Whether it’s designed for a corner or simply placed at an angle, a unit filled with books is a practical way to style an unused space.
2. FRAMES
Hang an assortment of family photos, prints and artwork on both of the adjoining walls in an empty corner. Use similar frames for a cohesive look.
3. ARMCHAIR
Transform an unoccupied corner into a comfortable reading nook with a soft, upholstered armchair. If you need a more compact alternative, consider a pouf, padded chair or stool.
4. LIGHTING
Brighten up a dim corner with a few pendant lights hung at different heights. A classic floor lamp is another good option.
5. BASKETS
Suspend baskets from the ceiling or arrange them on wall-mounted shelves. You can do the same with wooden crates, or if the corner is in a kitchen, you can hang pots and pans.
6. PLANTS
Breathe new life into a forgotten corner with an arrangement of potted plants. You can display them on a stand, arrange them on the floor or suspend them with macrame hangers.
7. SHELVING
Install a few corner-shaped floating shelves and decorate them with trinkets or practical items. You could display glassware in a dining room, cosmetics in a bathroom or candles in a living room.
Feel free to mix and match these items to create a space that suits your needs and tastes.
Stock vs. custom cabinets: which to choose for your kitchen?
If
cabinetry. To help you make a choice, here are the advantages of each option.
STOCK CABINETS
Many home improvement stores offer a wide selection of prefabricated cabinets. You can choose from various materials, colours and finishes to match your design style. The best part about ready-made cabinets is you can take them home immediately or get them delivered within a few days.
If you have a strict renovation timeline, a simple kitchen layout and a limited budget, stock cabinets are likely the right choice for you.
CUSTOM CABINETS
Cabinets that are made-to-measure and built by a tradesperson are guaranteed to optimize the available space in your kitchen and meet your exact style preferences. You get to decide on the size, material, colour, finish, hardware and more. Nothing is left to chance.
If you have a flexible timeline and a fairly generous budget, custom cabinets are the superior option as long as they’re built and installed by experienced professionals.
DID YOU KNOW?
The return on investment for a renovated kitchen is typically between 75 and 100 per cent. Given the potential effect on the resale value of your home, it’s worth investing in quality cabinets, regardless of whether they’re prefabricated or custom-made.
What’s the best material to frame your windows?
WOOD
If it’s time to replace the windows in your home, you’ll need to choose a material for the frames. Here are the most common options and what you should know about them.
VINYL
Made of PVC and often supported with a metal interior, this material is easy to maintain, an effective insulator and resistant to moisture and corrosion. It’s also the most affordable window frame option. Over time, however, fluctuating temperatures can cause the corner seams to fail.
ALUMINUM
This durable material requires little maintenance and is extremely weather-resistant, although exposure to sunlight can affect its appearance. Though more expensive than vinyl, these sturdy frames can be built thin to increase the surface area of glass in your windows.
This timeless, warm and recyclable material is both an eco-friendly and esthetically pleasing option. However, it requires meticulous care to protect it from water damage and rot. Alternatively, hybrid window frames include a layer of aluminum or fibreglass to shield the wood from the elements.
FIBREGLASS
While not as affordable as vinyl, this low-cost option offers the strongest window frame structure. It’s also resistant to temperature fluctuations and moisture. Fibreglass tends to discolour in the sun, but it can easily be repainted. Plus, the material won’t deteriorate.
All of these window frame varieties have an average lifespan of 20 to 30 years. However, if properly cared for, wood frames can last much longer.
John harT
How to incorporate antiques into your decor
Whether it’s a vintage radio purchased from a local collector or an armoire that’s been in your family for generations, antique pieces can add charm and character to a home when properly showcased. Here are some tips to help you stylishly integrate vintage and antique furnishings with the rest of your decor.
REMEMBER THAT LESS IS MORE
A space filled with antiques can easily look outdated rather than stylish. Ideally, you should limit yourself to two or three compelling pieces per room. This will allow you to highlight the unique furnishings and create an eclectic space that’s still pulled together.
FIND CREATIVE WAYS TO REPURPOSE
You can easily add intrigue to a room by giving new life to historical pieces. Rather than simply put these items on display, set up your great-grandmother’s sewing machine table as a desk or use an antique spinning wheel to support a climbing plant.
DON’T BE AFRAID TO DIP INTO DIFFERENT ERAS
If you respect the interior design principles of scale and proportion, you can mix and match pieces from different periods and achieve beautiful results. In fact, the striking contrast between modern, antique and vintage items can help bring a sense of balance to a space.
Ultimately, the key is to choose pieces you love and that reflect your personality.
Flooring options to spruce up your garage
If your concrete garage floor has seen better days or you want to protect it from stains and damage, a coating or covering can help. Here are some of the available options.
COATINGS
Before applying any type of coating to your concrete floor, it needs to be rigorously cleaned. This option is better suited for heated garages as the coating won’t stick to damp concrete. The most common ones are:
• Concrete paint. This inexpensive product can be applied like regular paint. Regardless of whether you opt for a latex or oil-based version, annual touch-ups are a must.
• Epoxy resin. This durable material is resistant to chipping, corrosive chemicals and damage from frequent use. It’s also easy to maintain, available in a variety of colours and contains no VOCs.
Whereas concrete paint is easy to apply, epoxy is tricky to work with and requires extensive preparation. For
best results, hire a professional to install this coating. COVERINGS
Typically, a covering is quick and easy to install. Simply give the concrete floor a thorough sweep in preparation. Although more expensive than coatings, this flooring option is immune to moisture. The two types of coverings are:
• Interlocking tiles. These come in a wide variety of patterns and colours, making it easy to create a custom design. You can also choose between flexible tiles that are comfortable to walk on and rigid, perforated tiles that allow snowmelt and spills to drain away.
• Rollout mats. Available in various sizes, colours and patterns, these thick rubber carpets are an affordable covering option. However, their soft texture makes them susceptible to damage from chemical stains and gravel imprints.
If your garage floor is substantially damaged, a covering is the most effective way to give it a fresh, blemish-free surface.
5 reasons to renovate your home in the fall
Although most home renovation projects can be undertaken at any time of the year, there are numerous advantages to starting them in the fall. Unless you need to deal with urgent repairs, here are five reasons it’s best to renovate in autumn.
1. IDEAL TEMPERATURES
Unlike the weather that’s typical in winter and summer, the coolness of fall offers optimal working conditions for most renovation projects.
2. PROMPT SERVICE
Since the demand for home maintenance work tends to diminish at the end of summer, contractors and tradespeople are more readily available in the fall. This means shorter wait times for service.
3. LOWER COSTS
Given the decrease in demand at this time of the year, some home renovation companies reduce their prices in
the fall, which could allow you to enjoy considerable savings.
4. SIMPLER LOGISTICS
The influx of workers, temporary loss of living space and ubiquitous layer of dust that come with a major renovation will be much less inconvenient once your kids have returned to school in the fall.
5. WINTER PREPARATIONS
If you complete projects like replacing windows, improving insulation and upgrading the heating system in the fall, you can make sure your home is ready for winter. Plus, you’ll have a stylish new space for the holidays.
In addition, postponing your renovation projects until the fall will allow your family to enjoy backyard summer weather without the constant noise and bustle of a major renovation project.
How to make a windowless room seem brighter
Whether it’s a powder room, a basement or an office, a room with no windows can be dark and hard to decorate. Here are a few tips to help you brighten your windowless room.
• Play with lighting. Install overhead pot lights evenly across the whole ceiling. Set up a few table or standing lamps for times you don’t want all the lights on.
• Use the right colours. Opting for pastels or light neutrals will give the room an airy, open feel. Stick with a simple colour scheme and avoid contrasting shades.
• Hang a mirror or two. Mirrors reflect light, making
the space seem brighter and bigger. Metallic, glass and other reflective surfaces have the same effect.
• Keep it simple. To keep the space feeling open and light, choose streamlined furniture and avoid filling the room with too many decorations.
• Install interior windows. If possible, replace a door or wall between two rooms with a frosted glass window or door. This will allow light from the adjoining room into your windowless space.
Even a windowless room can be light and airy. Follow these tips to make it a space you’ll love to spend time in.
