Gateway to the North - August 2017

GATEWAY The PG hosPice socieTy PresenTs

Your community voice for the north!

WEDNESDAY August 23, 2017

NEWS AND EVENTS FOR PRINCE GEORGE AND CENTRAL INTERIOR

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Sole Sister relives Death Race experience Ted CLARKE Citizen staff tclarke@pgcitizen.ca Handhout photo

The three members of Sole Sisters from left, Elizabeth Dabels, Tara O’Brien and Devon Kelsh pose at the finish line after completing the Canadian Death Race in Grande Cache, Alta.

Pushing themselves to the extreme edge of their physical limitation, three Prince George women did the job of five in the Canadian Death Race.

It was a race like no other they had ever experienced, a multistage endurance run that made one of them sick to her stomach, but their efforts on the course at Grande Cache, Alta., paid off for Devon Kelsh, Elizabeth Dabels and Tara O’Brien.

In their first attempt in the 125-kilometre race, held over the August long weekend, Sole Sisters took second place in the women’s team relay, finishing in 17 hours 44 minutes 29 seconds, Their time was more than two hours quicker than the 20-hour goal they set for themselves. They were 13th overall out of 56 teams, male and female.

“We did well, it was awesome,” said Kelsh. “We were thrilled to finish it. So pumped, but we had no inclination we would place (on the podium) at that point, so to find out we got second was incredible.

The team ahead of us was a team of five – they had a fresh runner for every leg and they were over an hour ahead of us.”

The winning women’s team, What the Hill?, clocked 16:10:01. Brandon Miller of Grande Prairie, Alta., took the men’s solo race in 14:26:25, while Rhondal BackmanLoo of Brooks, Alta., captured the women’s solo race in 16:58:47.

The mercury climbed into the mid-20s C on race day, which was great for the race volunteers but not so good for Kelsh, 38.

After Dabels, 44, tagged her after running the first two sections, Kelsh ran the third leg Saturday afternoon then had to wait more than five hours for the 41-year-old O’Brien to finish the long and challenging fourth leg.

— see RUNNING PARTNERS, page 4

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Running partners set sights on next Death Race — from page 3 That section required her to summit Mount Hamel, the last of three mountain peaks on the route, and all that waiting took a toll on Kelsh not long after she started the fifth and final stage.

“The weather was the nicest they’d had in years, it was a blue blazer day and everyone survived without injury, but it was superhot in the valley where I was and I got a bit of heatstroke,” said Kelsh. “I tried to get a little rest and re-hydrate while Tara ran, but about 10 minutes into Leg 5 I got sick.”

Kelsh said she thought about quitting the race but did not want to let the team down.

After emptying her stomach she started feeling better and began drinking liquids to raise her electrolyte levels and ate some gels to give her enough energy to finish the race.

Her final section was run completely in the

dark, her biggest fear going into the race.

“I have a really good headlight and honestly I felt so crappy I didn’t even think about being in the dark,” she said. “There was about 6K of single track at the beginning of that section and it’s really rooty and overgrown so I went down twice on that section.

It was a lot more technical in some areas than you were expecting but it was good.”

“I felt pretty good at the end, surprisingly.

Liz and Tara both had a lot of climbing to do and they have sore quads, which to be expected.”

Kelsh said she and her running partners are already thinking about their next race, and it could prove even more challenging – the Sinister 7 ultra off-road race in Crowsnest Pass in southwestern Alberta next July.

The 161km race climbs seven peaks and involves 5,687 metres of elevation gain.

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Marriott hotel construction continuing Christine HINZMANN Citizen staff chinzmann@pgcitizen.ca Standing at a second storey window of what will soon be the Marriott Courtyard Hotel in downtown Prince George, developer Rod McLeod looked at the iconic Connaught Hill stairs and fond memories came back to him.

“When I was a kid, I lived on Pine Street and I used to come down here and go to the Strand and Princess Theatres and I would play hockey at the old Coliseum – there were no stairs there, so you can imagine trying to get up and down the hill when it was icy and we weren’t smart enough to walk around it so we’d slide down to the bottom grabbing twigs to slow ourselves down,” he laughed.

Fast forward to 2017 and McLeod, principal of River City Hotel Inc. and River City Ventures Inc., is hosting an exclusive tour

range in size from 340 to almost 500 square for The Citizen of the six storey, 174-room, feet. Beneath the hotel will be 93 under$35 million hotel property at Tenth Avenue ground parking stalls. and Brunswick Street.

The journey hasn’t always been easy for Construction will be completed by the end the lifelong resident with this project. In of the year with an opening date in 2018, April 2012, he announced a 12-storey hotel once the hotel is furnished and staff are with 35 luxury condohired and trained. miniums on top. ConAttached to the What was imporstruction was slated to 151,000 square foot tant to us for this start that summer with hotel is a 3,600 squareproject was to completion by the end foot space outfitted for of 2013. a restaurant, which is hire as many people from Instead, site preparaavailable for lease.

Prince George as we could. tions didn’t start until The hotel has about 6,100 square feet of — Rod McLeod September 2013. A foundation was built convention space, that winter but then work ground to a halt along with a separate meeting room that is in March 2014.

400 square feet.

At the time, McLeod told The Citizen that There will also be a lounge, bistro, pool, design changes were needed and then new exercise room, media room, library and building permits were required but the laundry facilities on site to service the Delta Hotel was still full steam ahead. guests in the sound-proof 174 rooms that

The site lay dormant for more than two years before Marriott Hotels of Canada revealed in May 2016 that it had replaced Delta as the hotel operator.

Utah-based PEG Development published an artist rendering of the revised hotel project on its website.

Work finally began again last July, in large part due to a $3.2-million cash injection from the City of Prince George, working with money from a development fund from Northern Development Initiative Trust, along with a 10-year tax exemption.

The extent of the city’s involvement wasn’t made public until a series of Citizen stories in December and January revealed the behind-the-scenes efforts to reboot the development.

For McLeod, that’s water under the bridge now as construction nears completion and he can look back at what drew him to the project and kept him striving to get it done.

— turn to page 7

GATEWAYnews “It was part of the plan to revitalize the downtown,” McLeod recalled.

“This whole project was brought to us in 2012 by Initiatives Prince George when Tim McEwan was CEO and the first feasibility study was done by IPG. That whole process was started back then when they were trying to bring economic activity into Prince George. I was born and raised here and so it was important to bring the best to the city and you’ve only got one chance to get it right.”

After the idea was first brought to McLeod, he was downtown with his wife, Denise, one Sunday and after lunch they wandered down to the lot at Tenth and Brunswick.

“So there we were looking at the lot on a sunny day like this and my wife, who is not a partner in this project but is my partner in life, took a look and said ‘it looks great and you guys should do this’ and that’s where it all started,” he said.

Finishing it was always the goal but finishing it right was critical for McLeod.

In that spirit, he insisted as much wood as

possible be used, so above the concrete and steel first floor, floors two to five are woodframe fir construction.

“What was important to us for this project was to hire as many people from Prince George as we could, including trades, suppliers and engineers,” he said.

“And we were able to do that. There’s only a few trades from out of town that were not available here – like the guys doing the fibre cement tile – that’s a specialty item.”

There are 30 sub-trades from Prince George on McLeod’s long list.

The rest of the project uses local businesses as much as it can, McLeod said, showing a page filled with rows of local company names listed.

“I would say 80 per cent of our trades and consultants are from Prince George and I would say there was about 35,000 hours of employment created here,” McLeod added.

“There will be another 40 to 50 jobs at the hotel once it’s completed and I can’t say enough about Mayor Lyn Hall, the council and the City of Prince George because their support of this project has been outstanding.”

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North facing severe shortage of physiotherapists Barbara LATKOWSKI Citizen staff The lack of physiotherapists in northern B.C. remains critical, according to Louis Theriault, vicepresident of industry strategy and public policy for the Conference Board of Canada.

Theriault released a new report by the Conference Board of Canada titled Stretched Too Thin: The Demand For Physiotherapy Services in Canada.

On behalf of the physiotherapists for northern communities, local physiotherapist Hilary Crowley was eager to hear the report.

“We know this shortage is a fact and we want to change that,” she said.

“We’ve been advocating for the last few years to extend distributed programming for physiotherapists.

We’ve been advoRight now cating for the last there are few years to extend 80 with distributed programming UBC being for physiotherapists. the only school.

— Louis Theriault Right now, we want to have another 20 and we want them situated here in a distributed program. That way they are embedded into the community and are likely to stay.”

According to Theriault, from a sustainability perspective, there is not an abundant supply of physiotherapists to satisfy a dramatic rise in demand, especially in rural and remote communities.

As of 2014, the unemployment rate for all professions in Canada was 6.9 per cent.

With the unemployment rate among physiotherapists around 0.3 per cent, there is no surplus to alleviate the rising demand and exhausted supply especially in rural communities.

Furthermore, nearly all of Canada’s physiotherapists (90 per cent) are employed in an urban area.

And the number of Canadians consulting physiotherapists increased from 8.4 per cent of the adult population in 2001 to 11.6 per cent in 2014, representing an increase of 3.8 per cent per year.

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Prince George artist behind Clinton mural Frank PEEBLES Citizen staff fpeebles@pgcitizen.ca Clinton was already a quaint town with the Cariboo Highway snaking through its main street and its long history.

Now its story gets told in big bold expressions that draw the eye even sharper into its gold rushing and cowboying past. A new mural stretches along 320 feet of downtown Clinton, all of it depicting that colourful Cariboo character.

That mural might essentialize Clinton but it was splashed on that long wall by three Prince George artists led by high-profile painter Greg Gislason, the man behind the Spirit Of The Games mural on display at the Prince George Airport, the new images on the back of the Seniors Activity Centre on Brunswick Street and some of the work done on the Black Donkey Café’s outdoor gathering space.

Gislason was aided by frequent collaborator

SUBMITTED photo

Stretching 320 feet in downtown Clinton, this mural was created by three Prince George artists, led by painter Greg Gislason.

Andrew Mooney, a spray can specialist, and Carsten Peterson who joined in for the learning opportunity on such a unique project.

Gislason’s business partner Rebecca Sinclair was there when the opportunity was first born.

“A couple of us were down there a couple of years ago and showed the owner of the campground, Mike (Dier of the Gold Trail RV Park), the pictures of the mural Greg painted in Prince George at the airport. Mike thought it would

be such a cool idea to paint his fence along the highway. It happened this year because it is Canada’s 150th birthday and it is also the 150th anniversary of the May Ball which is this huge social event in Clinton, one of the most important social events in Cariboo history that has survived to today.”

Once the financing was in place to hire Gislason and his team, they set to work as soon as the weather would allow, working at breakneck speed to be done in time for the Clinton May Ball.

But the weather didn’t roll out any red carpets.

“We got going on May 1, but we had to take a lot of unwelcome breaks,” said Gislason.

“Wind, rain, hail… We had ice on the projector glass at three in the morning. We were battling freezing temperatures a few times.”

The artists were burning a gallon of kerosene a night, when the mercury dipped below zero. They had to work at night so the images they projected on the wall could be seen well enough to sketch, then from those rough out— turn to page 13

GATEWAYnews lines they could paint the detail in.

It was also the time when traffic was lightest.

“Sometimes we had to set the projector up across the highway, so we had to run an extension cord across the road,” said Gislason. “Every time a car drove by, we imagined the cord getting caught and yanking the projector down the highway. It never happened, but we always had that thought in our mind. And sometimes when those trucks would roar by, it would be pretty unnerving being that close. But we also got a lot of toot-toots, too – people showing us some support as we worked.”

It took 15 painting days to get the paintings finished to Dier’s satisfaction, then a few additional sessions to touch up the details and apply a coating. Gislason figures more protective coating will be needed.

He estimated at the outset that it would take each artist 333 hours of work but he said it actually turned into about 450 hours for him.

All the artists are back in Prince George or off on their own individual projects now. Gislason said he can still taste “those famous steaks at the Gold Trail” and he has hopes that Dier might be interested in adding new images to

I’ll paint anything, I’ve even painted a toilet reservoir for someone’s bathroom.

— Greg Gislason the remaining blank walls. The feedback from the public has been enormously positive.

Gislason is in talks to do more prominent murals in Prince George and he is always busy with the other airbrush and paintbrush commissions he gets. Sculpting has also become a recent addition to his activities and he has an inventory of posters and other commercial items for sale that carry his artwork.

“I’ll paint anything,” he said with a laugh.

“I’ve even painted a toilet reservoir for someone’s bathroom. I had to sandblast it to give the porcelain enough tooth, but it worked.”

For more information or to make contact, look him up on Facebook at Gregory Michael Gislason, or slow down for a long look as you pass through the southern gateway to the Cariboo.

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Takla Lake boy part of fashion show Barbara LATKOWSKI Citizen staff blatkowski@pgcitizen.ca At only 10-years-old, Derrick Packer has already made a mark as a top designer at the inaugural Indigenous Fashion Week in Vancouver on July 22-29.

Wearing his design was his 15-year-old sister, Guadelupe, who proudly walked down the runway hand in hand with her brother.

It was a dream come true for the youngest designer at the show, originally from Takla Lake First Nation.

“I made the dress for my sister,” Packer said.

“I designed and sewed it myself,” Packer said.

“My sister loved it. She got to model the dress at the show and she’s a natural.”

And as for his design, Packer could not be more happy with the result.

“I was a little nervous at first, but then I got the hang of it and was really easy,” Packer said.

According to Packer’s mother, Cindy, it was a challenge but one that her son, who has a passion for fashion, could not pass up.

“He started volunteering and Indigenous Fashion Week producer, Joleen Mitton asked if he has ever designed a dress. He had never done anything like that before except making Barbie dresses,” Cindy said.

“She asked if he could make one and so we just jumped right in,” Cindy said.

Mitton continues to raise awareness for local indigenous fashion by producing fashion shows.

She also works with a number of nonprofit organizations and is currently involved with the Aboriginal Urban Butterflies Day Camp for children in foster care and also for the Mentor Me Program which is for indigenous young women in care.

“There were about 40 girls modelling at the show who were from the program,” Cindy said.

SUBMITTED photo

Derrick Packer, right, was one of the designers at the inaugural Indigenous Fashion Week in Vancouver on July 22-29. His sister Guadelupe, left, modelled his creation.

“It was really beautiful.”

The first Indigenous Fashion Week was aimed at bringing global recognition to local indigenous fashion designers and artisans

showcasing the power and beauty of authentic Indigenous art and design by creating safe havens for talent development according to the Indigenous Fashion Week website.

— turn to page 15

GATEWAYnews Today’s Indigenous Fashion was expressed at the show and delivered identity, stories and creativity in many forms and textures using: leather, bone, feathers, skin, denim, silk, weave, brocade, wool, beads, graffiti, chain, stone and colour.

Indigenous Fashion Week was inspired by history, politics, the environment and the economy, reclaiming stories of strength from a past rekindled through energy and vibrant colour.

Indigenous Fashion Week also paid tribute to the missing and murdered First Nations women at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre Atrium.

The “Red Dress Showcase” invited guests to wear a red piece of clothing to honour the missing and murdered women.

This tradition began in 2011, when Metis artist, Jaimie Black had red dresses hang from trees at the University of Manitoba in an effort to bring attention to the issue. The show had it’s somber moments but Packer definitely brought new hope and excitement into the room as he made his way onto the runway.

“The whole place erupted when he came

out with his design. This was invitation only and there he was along with some top designers like Bill Reid. It was such a big deal and a huge event for Derrick,” Cindy said.

The master of ceremonies also said that it was so nice to see young indigenous men honouring their sisters.

“I’m so proud of Derrick. He worked so hard. To know that his dress made the mark along with the big designers, it’s so amazing,” Cindy said.

Packer now lives in Surrey with his family and he is gearing up for Grade 6 in September.

Originally from Takla Lake, Packer certainly knows where his roots are.

“That’s where I am from. That’s where my ancestors are from,” Packer said.

Takla Lake Nation is a First Nation located around Takla lake, 400 km north of Prince George.

For Packer, the entire experience is only the beginning.

“This is what I want to do,” Packer said. “I want to be a fashion designer and I’m going to keep doing it.”

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