The best of the season to you and yours from the staff of The Citizen The Citizen will resume regular publication starting on Thursday, Dec. 27
The College Heights Cougars hold up their trophy after defeating the Prince George Secondary
For more photos from the game, see page 9.
Mark NIELSEN Citizen staff
mnielsen@pgcitizen.ca
Fraser-Fort George Regional District directors voted unanimously Thursday in favour of adopting the official community plan and zoning amendments for establishment of a lime plant and quarry in the Giscome area.
Electoral area F (Willow RiverUpper Fraser) director Kevin Dunphy spoke in favour of the move prior to the vote, saying the project has been a long time coming and that the so-called Eastline area needs economic activity.
The proponent, Richmondbased Graymont Western Canada Inc., has secured all the permits it needs, he added, “so I don’t really see too much further that we need to take this and I think we should go through it today and carry on.”
With the approval, the plant should be up and running in about two years, directors were told.
The company has said the project will cost $80-$90 million and take about 18 months to build.
Once completed, there will be a lime-producing plant near the southwest shore of Eaglet Lake centred on one kiln but with enough room to add two more.
The quarry will be located 4.3 kilometres to the southeast and feed the plant material via a conveyor, which will be covered to reduce noise and dust.
A 600-metre spur line will connect the plant to the CN Rail mainline and will be used to transport most of the product.
However, trucks will be used to haul lime to local pulp mills that use the product, those who attended a Nov. 29 public hearing on the matter were told.
According to the meeting minutes, Graymont representative Rob Beleutzs said one kiln will mean seven 40-ton trucks will be traveling to and from the site each day.
The company has also been talking to Coastal GasLink about getting a natural gas pipeline extended to the plant. If that falls through, the kilns will be heated with coal brought in by rail.
— see PLANT, page 3
Mark NIELSEN Citizen staff
A temporary injunction prohibiting opponents of the $6.2-billion Coastal GasLink natural gas pipeline project from blockading a bridge was expanded Friday to cover two entire forest service roads.
Coastal GasLink had applied for the amendment after a process server hired by the company encountered a blockade further up the Morice Forest Service Road on Tuesday while on the way to post the original order at the bridge.
Members of the Unist’ot’en, a clan within the Wet’suwet’en system of hereditary chiefs, have been maintaining the blockade at the bridge as well as a camp about a kilometre away since about 2012. The injunction would not affect the camp, Coastal GasLink has stressed.
The neighbouring Gitdumden clan had put up the latest blockade, according to a statement from the Wet’suwet’en Hereditary Chiefs.
The new order, approved by B.C. Supreme Court Justice Marguerite Church after hearing submissions from Coastal GasLink lawyer Kevin O’Callaghan
during a brief hearing at the Prince George courthouse, also applies to the Morice West Forest Service Road.
The process server encountered a school bus blocking a one-lane bridge on the Morice Service Road about 45 kilometres south of Houston, O’Callaghan said in an application seeking the revised order.
“Beyond the school bus, there were vehicles, a structure and several pieces of wood which had been placed at or near the Morice West Forest Service Road at its intersection with the Morice Forest Service Road.
It’s the latest development in something of a cat-and-mouse game between Coastal GasLink and the Wet’suwet’en Hereditary Chiefs.
All five elected band councils within the Wet’suwet’en First Nation are onside with the project to construct the 670-kilometre pipeline that would deliver natural gas to the fledgling LNG Canada project near Kitimat from a station at Groundbirch west of Dawson Creek. Combined, the cost of the pipeline and LNG plant adds up to $40 billion.
— see COMPANY, page 3
Once again it’s that time of year where those Christmas lights enthusiasts head for the never-ending display on Candy Cane Lane, which begins on McKenzie Avenue. Here are a few other places in the city to stop and admire some excellent Christmas light displays:
• 3574 Riverview Rd.
• 2592 Lorne Cres.
• 274 Kelly St. South
• 3651 Westwood Dr.
• 2451 Upland St.
• 2749 Upland St., which is at the corner of Candy Cane Lane
• 8135 Malaspina Ave.
• 2895 Andres Rd.
• 1542 Alward St., just off 15th Avenue.
• 9610 Old Cariboo Highway
• 450 Radcliffe Dr.
• 6070, 6100 and 6200 Buckhorn Rd.
• 10025 South Heights Rd. in Beaverly (show starts at 5:30 p.m. and goes until 9:30 p.m., tune into 104.1 FM for the accompanying music)
Frank PEEBLES Citizen staff
fpeebles@pgcitizen.ca
He said such nice things to the world about Prince George, it was almost mandatory for Marc Bernardin to be invited back to Northern FanCon.
Bernardin – a writer of comic books, screen scripts and magazine articles for the biggest titles in those industries – was the co-host of Fatman Beyond, the global podcast he does with filmmaker Kevin Smith. It was broadcast live off the floor of CN Centre last year, giving the world an unprecedented view of Prince George and its pop-culture festival.
“We are excited to see Marc return and look forward to him connecting with fans plus hosting another stellar workshop at Northern FanCon 2019,” said event organizer Norm Coyne who said Bernardin’s encore was “by popular demand.”
With so many aspiring writers in all the genres in which he is proficient, there is a large student base for Bernardin’s workshops.
He is a craftsman of the language and a wizard of conjuring the imagination onto the page.
He’s also a master of conversation. He brought a lot of fun and interaction to the participants at last year’s Northern FanCon.
“Marc Bernardin is a man who wears many hats, and is no
Marc Bernardin is a writer of comic books, screen scripts and magazine articles and co-host of Fatman Beyond, the global podcast he does with filmmaker Kevin Smith. He will part of the 2019 Northern FanCon lineup.
stranger to the world of pop culture and comic cons,” said Coyne.
“He has moderated panels at San Diego Comic-Con International, appeared in pop culture video documentaries and made many personal appearances at comic cons and colleges alongside his pal filmmaker Kevin Smith as part of the Fatman Beyond podcast.”
Bernardin also broadcasts
another franchise-based podcast. He and Tricia Helfer co-host the Battlestar Galacticast internet show. She, too, was a popular guest at last year’s Prince George fan convention.
Northern FanCon 2019 happens May 3-5 at CN Centre and the Kin Centres. Tickets are on sale now via the event’s website and Facebook page.
— from page 1
Preliminary engineering on a pipeline has been completed but detailed engineering and obtaining the right of way for the pipeline are still required, David Chamberlain, who also represented Graymont, told the meeting.
The plant was first proposed in 2007 but soon put on hold over concerns about how the provincial government would treat greenhouse gas emissions from the operation.
But by 2013, it was back in play
and became a source of some controversy as concern was expressed about emissions from the plant and their effect on the local population as well as the quality of adjacent farmland.
The project met with Northern Health approval although Graymont is required to carry out monitoring to make sure the actual emissions line up with the modelled or predicted outcomes.
Once in operation, it will initially extract up to 600,000 tonnes of limestone per year, ris-
ing to 1.7 million tonnes per year at full build, and employ 10-15 people full-time. The Lheidli T’enneh are in support of the project, directors were told. In 2014, the two signed a cooperation agreement through which the First Nation stands to see economic benefits from the proposed development. The agreement also addresses potential concerns about archeological sites, traditional use in the area and environmental impacts.
— from page 1
The company has reached a series of benefit agreements with 20 elected bands along the project route, including those of the Wet’suwet’en, amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars.
However, the Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs say they have never consented to the project, although at least one hereditary chief has reportedly spoken in favour.
The company wants to begin pre-construction work – field reconnaissance, access development, clearing, grading and construction of a work camp – starting Jan. 2 saying a small delay could contribute to a significant overall delay further along. $24 million in contracts and 87,000 in employment is at stake if the initial work is not able to go ahead, the company has also said.
The injunction, which came into effect on Monday, is to last until May 31, 2019 in order to give the defendants enough time to provide a fuller response to Coastal GasLink’s application for a permanent injunction while also allowing the company to carry out the pre-construction work.
Once that phase is completed, the company doesn’t plan to return to the disputed site until June 2021.
The order was also amended to allow Coastal GasLink to simply post the order on its website and provides for an alternative method to serve the order on the named defendants, Freda Huson and Warner Naziel, should they no longer have counsel.
The defendants’ lawyer, Michael Ross, took no position on Coastal GasLink’s application.
Also at play is a jurisdictional challenge over whether the project is inter-provincial so, should also be reviewed by the National Energy Board.
To that end, the NEB is scheduling hearings over the next three months, saying it will consider only the question of whether the British Columbia Oil and Gas Commission had jurisdiction to issue approvals for the project.
If it decides the project should be under federal jurisdiction, the regulator says the proponent will have to make a formal NEB application and undergo a separate process to win federal approval.
“If the NEB decides Coastal GasLink is to be federally regulated, then the project believes the NEB will need to address transition from provincial to federal jurisdiction,” pipeline spokeswoman Jacquelynn Benson said in an email on last week.
“If that situation occurs, Coastal GasLink will review that decision to determine its path forward.”
The NEB actions are in response to a challenge by B.C. resident Mike Sawyer who argues that because TransCanada Corp. will own and operate the proposed pipeline and its connected Nova Gas Transmission Ltd. system together, they form a single system that crosses the Alberta-B.C. boundary and therefore must be regulated by the federal government.
The NEB says on its website it will accept additional written evidence from the builder late this month, take written evidence from interveners in January and gather information requests and responses from parties in January and February before holding final oral arguments in March.
LNG Canada announced in October its partners – Royal Dutch Shell, Mitsubishi Corp., Petronas, PetroChina Co. and Korean Gas Corp. – had made a final investment decision to proceed with the project after delaying it in 2016 due to poor global prices for LNG.
The 670-kilometre, 48-inch diameter natural gas pipeline would have an initial capacity to bring up to 2.1 billion cubic feet per day of natural gas from prolific wells in northeastern B.C. to the proposed liquefied natural gas export facility near Kitimat on the West Coast. It can be expanded to five billion cf/d. Construction activities are expected to begin in early 2019 with a planned in-service date in 2023.
— with files from The Canadian Press
Citizen news service
VANCOUVER — White Rock Mayor
Darryl Walker says it could take months and millions of dollars to repair the city’s beloved pier after part of it was ripped away during an intense windstorm that swept over British Columbia’s southern coast.
It’s one of several communities dealing with the aftermath of Thursday’s storm, which BC Hydro is describing as among the most severe in many years.
The 457 metre pier will be closed until further notice after several boats broke away from their moorings and battered the middle of the pier, eventually collapsing a 30-metre section, Walker said.
“The damage that was done to our pier appears to be something that will take some months for us to recoup from, it’s extremely damaged,” he said.
The force of the waves also tossed logs and concrete picnic tables onto the popular promenade along the city’s waterfront and Walker said that area will be cordoned off while repairs are made.
One person was trapped at the end of the pier and had to be airlifted by helicopter to safety at the height of the storm
but no one was hurt.
BC Hydro said more than 100,000 customers were still without power by late Friday afternoon and some could remain in the dark for days as crews work to repair outages on Vancouver Island, Metro Vancouver, the Sunshine Coast and Fraser Valley.
“Yesterday’s windstorm was one of the most severe storms BC Hydro has experienced in years,” a post on the utility’s website said.
At its height, about 400,000 customers lost electricity and many remained without power overnight.
Environment Canada says gusts topped 100 km/h just south of Vancouver and in parts of the Fraser Valley, making the storm more powerful than the 2006 gales that levelled a large section of forest in Stanley Park.
The City of Nanaimo issued a statement Friday saying the storm caused its water treatment plant to breakdown.
While the water is safe to drink, the city urged its residents and businesses to restrict their use until the full system is restored, in order to preserve enough for firefighting emergencies.
The city’s emergency operations centre
has been activated and staff are preparing contingency plans in the event that the water treatment plant does not return to full operating capacity soon.
City pools and arenas are closed until further notice.
One woman died when a tree fell on her tent in a wooded area near Duncan, RCMP said.
There were four other people in the tent and two male occupants were also injured.
One was airlifted, and the other was transported by ambulance, to hospital for treatment.
The BC Coroner Service said the woman was in her late 20s but it’s too early in its investigation to release further details.
“Our investigation will look at how she died, where and by what means,” spokesman Andy Watson said.
All wind warnings have been dropped and service is getting back to normal on BC Ferries routes after most sailings were cancelled Thursday.
The first sailings Friday were already full on most major routes, while power outages at smaller terminals were affecting those schedules.
Bob WEBER Citizen news service
An Environment Canada report says that despite much talk on preserving caribou habitat, little progress has been made to close gaps in the protection of the threatened species.
The agency says not much has changed since a coast-to-coast survey in April.
“Despite the progress being made, the gaps in protection, as described in the first progress report, remain,” says the report issued Friday.
“Additional efforts, including those noted in this report, are needed to reverse the loss of critical habitat and declines in boreal caribou populations.”
The department is required under the Species At Risk Act to assess provincial and territorial efforts to assist the recovery of caribou populations.
In April, Environment Canada found significant problems. In every province, agencies that issue permits for forestry or energy development aren’t required to conform to the federal Species At Risk Act.
That earlier report also noted that little conservation is taking place on the ground. Measures in almost every case are still being planned or drafted.
That situation continues. The new report lists dozens of ongoing negotiations, draft plans and provincial promises to restore caribou populations to sustainable levels, but there are few fully implemented protected areas.
Planning is good, said Florence Daviet of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society. Action would be better.
“They were supposed to be doing this planning and talking since 2012,” she said. “They’ve had a lot of time to talk.”
Barry Robinson, a lawyer with the group Ecojustice, pointed out that Friday’s report was itself almost two months overdue. So are many of the protection measures that should be in place by now, he said.
“We still don’t have any range plans in Alberta, which were to have been done by October 2017.”
Many governments, including Alberta, have announced ambitious plans for new protected areas. But almost all remain in draft form or remain unimplemented, he said.
“The big gaps are still there.”
Caroline Theriault, an Environment Canada spokeswoman, said the report shows many steps have been taken across the country to support caribou recovery.
“Since the last report was published in April, provinces and territories have made some progress on protection plans and on the ground recovery efforts,” she said in an emailed statement. “We recognize that more needs to be done, and we are already taking action.”
The latest assessment of woodland caribou suggest that 81 per cent of Canada’s herds are in decline. Loss of another one-third of the population is expected “in the near term.”
Operation Red Nose Prince George will have 18 teams out on the road tonight to provide safe rides home to party-goers on the last weekend before Christmas.
Those who require a safe ride home can call 250-962-7433 between 9 p.m. and 3 a.m. Clients must have a vehicle with valid B.C. license plates.
All donations go towards youth and amateur sport organizations in Prince George. Operation Red Nose is organized by the Rotary Club of Prince George-Nechako in partnership with ICBC and the Prince George RCMP.
— Citizen staff
Police are continuing their investigation into last Friday’s shooting death of a man outside a 700-block Johnson Street home – and are hoping the public can help
track down the culprit.
“Investigators are asking anyone that may have witnessed or have information about this violent crime to contact the detachment at 250-561-3300,” RCMP said. “Home or business owners in the area that have outdoor surveillance images, are also asked to also contact investigators.”
A drug-related search warrant was issued on a home in the same hundred block but police have not said whether it is the same home where the shooting occurred. “Further information may be provided as it becomes available,” RCMP said. — Citizen staff
VANCOUVER (CP) — The BC Conservative party says it will participate in the upcoming provincial byelection in Nanaimo and expects to name its candidate in the coming weeks.
The party, which currently has no representation in the legislature, made the announcement Friday in a news release welcoming the results of a mail-in referendum that rejected electoral reform.
The Nanaimo seat has been held for years by the New Democrats.
Teresa WRIGHT Citizen news service
OTTAWA — U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis’ decision to resign creates a void for Canada, says former Defence Minister Peter MacKay, because of Mattis’s deep understanding of Canada’s role in joint NATO and UN missions and good ties with Canadian security officials.
His years of experience in the U.S. military and on-the-ground understanding of the parts of the world where he served as a Marine general, particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan, are “virtually irreplaceable,” MacKay said.
After serving for two years at the top of the U.S. military machine, Mattis announced Thursday that he’d resign as of the end of February, in a move widely seen as a rebuke of Trump’s decision to abrupt withdraw U.S. troops from Syria.
The retired general has been considered a moderating influence on Trump over his last two years as Pentagon chief, which is why concerns have been raised by ally nations about how his departure could affect U.S. security and foreign policy.
These concerns are particularly focused on America’s role in the NATO transatlantic alliance after Trump said this week that not only will the U.S. military pull out of Syria, but the number of U.S. troops will also be cut in half in Afghanistan, where the U.S. is part of the NATO-led joint mission Operation Resolute Support.
“In spite of the moniker ‘Mad Dog Mattis’ he was anything but. He was a highly intelligent, highly rational guy and he saw firsthand the integration of defence, diplomacy, development that Canada was doing and was very full of praise and admiration for that,” MacKay said.
Mattis’s departure is even more keenly felt in light of the departures of H.R. McMaster and John Kelly, who U.S. President Donald Trump also appointed to serve in his administration, MacKay added. McMaster was an army general who was Trump’s nationalsecurity adviser for a year; Kelly is a retired Marine general who served as secretary of homeland security and then Trump’s chief of staff.
McMaster resigned last April; Kelly is to leave the White House at the end of this year.
“Jim Mattis and the others have and feel an abiding respect for Canada and our role in NATO and in NORAD, for our niche capabilities, what we were able to do along with others in the coalition, both the UN and
NATO coalition in Afghanistan, our support role in other missions,” MacKay said. “That, too, is in some jeopardy depending on who replaces Gen. Mattis.”
But in spite of ongoing political tensions at the top, Canada’s defence and security relationship with the U.S. is hardwired at the bureaucratic and institutional levels and has not materially changed with the election of Donald Trump, said Fen Hampson, director of the global security and politics program at the Centre for International Governance Innovation.
Mattis’ resignation will not alter those ties, he said.
“There’s a constant flow of exchanges and communication on, I would say, almost an hourly basis. That’s not really going to change in substantive terms,” Hampson said. “I think where it’s going to be probably felt most keenly is at the cabinet-to-cabinet level where our officials have met with Mattis and (Secretary of State Mike) Pompeo on a pretty regular basis and that’s where the hole is going to be felt.”
Dave Perry, a senior defence analyst with the Canadian Global Affairs Institute, echoed this, saying he has heard of little change on the ground when it comes to the day-to-day bilateral work and partnerships between Canadian and American officials.
“It’s a relationship that’s pretty embedded at the working level in institutional agreements, exchanges, all the Canadians that work directly within the U.S. defence structure in the United States – so I think the degree of change has probably been overstated with this administration,” Perry said.
Michelle McQUIGGE Citizen news service
Incoming new rules for drone operation in Canada are designed to help buck a growing global trend of incursions into space reserved for air travel, government officials said as tens of thousands of travellers in Britain grappled with the fallout of the largest such incident to date.
Canadians were among those stranded at London’s Gatwick Airport, which effectively shut down for 36 hours after drones were spotted buzzing the runway.
The prospect of a deadly collision between what police described as industrial-grade drones and an airliner led authorities to stop all flights in and out of Britain’s second-busiest airport on Thursday. While flights had resumed by Friday, officials said more delays and cancellations were expected.
Government agencies around the world, including Transport Canada, have documented a spike in the number of incidents posing a risk to aviation safety in recent years.
The federal agency said tighter regulations that would impose age limits, knowledge tests and registration requirements on all drone operators are set to come into effect in 2019 and will hopefully curb the trend.
“The number of reported incidents more than tripled from 38 when data collection began in 2014 to 135 last year,” Transport Canada said in a statement, adding the 2018 figure stood at 95 as of Nov. 30. “This brings with it increasing threats to the safety of Canadian airspace and to the safety of people on the ground.”
Canada and several other countries already have rules in place mandating minimum distances between drones and airspace, with guidelines changing based on the size and classification of the drone.
Existing rules impose few limits on those wanting to fly drones weighing less than 35 kilograms for recreational purposes and no special permissions are necessary, but Transport Canada offers some guidelines for safe operation. These include flying drones less than 90 metres above the ground, staying at least 5.6 kilometres away from airports and 1.9 kilometres away from heliports.
Violating those rules, the agency said, could result in fines of up to $3,000.
Larger drones weighing more than 35 kilograms, or those used for research or work, currently require permission to operate via a Special Flight Operations Certificate.
Fines for violating those certificates range from up to $15,000 for individuals to $25,000 for corporations, Transport Canada said.
Much of this would change under the proposed new rules, which would impose stricter limits on anyone planning to operate a drone weighing between 250 grams and 25 kilograms.
Rules would be particularly stringent for those operating in urban areas, near controlled airspace or close to airports.
Transport Canada is advising a minimum age of operation of 16 in those zones, and would-be pilots would also have to pass a written test, register their devices and affix government-issued registration marks to the aircraft.
The agency said endangering aircraft is a particularly serious offence that even now can carry additional fines of up to $25,000 or possible prison time.
news service
FORT ST. JOHN — The B.C. Oil and Gas Commission has blamed fracking for three earthquakes in northeastern B.C. last month.
The provincial regulator says the events 20 kilometres south of Fort St. John on Nov. 29 occurred because of fluid injections during hydraulic fracturing at a Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. wellsite.
The events, which were felt but caused no surface damage, measured 3.4, 4.0 and 4.5 magnitude.
Fracking operations within the lower Montney formation were suspended after the earthquakes and are to remain
suspended at the multi-well pad involved pending the results of a detailed technical review.
The commission says seven wells into the upper Montney formation had previously been drilled and completed by the Calgary-based company at the well pad with no seismic events larger than magnitude 2.5 detected.
The immediate shut down of operations is required when an induced seismic event in that region reaches or exceeds a 3.0 magnitude.
Hydraulic fracturing involves injecting water, sand and chemicals into a well under pressure to break up tight underground rock and free trapped oil and gas.
This editorial first appeared in the Dec. 24, 2013 edition of The Citizen and it’s become a bit of a local favourite for its twist on the famous “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus” letter. Enjoy and Merry Christmas from everyone at The Citizen!
Dear Madam Publisher,
I am soon going to be 70 years old. Some of my senior friends say there is no Santa Claus.
It seems to me that still being a kid at heart and not real keen to “act my age” I think it is just fine to believe in all sorts of things. I don’t have to be able to see something or have to touch it to think it could be real.
At the Festival of Trees this year, I watched as people of all ages came in to that Christmas Wonderland. It wasn’t just the children that had their eyes wide open and expressing all sorts of excitement.
I looked in to the eyes of many of the older people and I could see the joy and memories flooding back with their recollections from many a past Christmas. It was a sight to see. No, it is not only children but people of all ages who believe in things you cannot see or feel.
I say to my friends and family that if you see something printed in The Prince George
Citizen, then it must be so!
So Madam, please tell me the truth, is there a Santa Claus?
Thank you and Merry Christmas, David Yarmish Prince George •••
David, your senior friends are wrong.
They have been affected by negative people living in a negative time.
They have been influenced by people like my editor-in-chief, who wrote a horrible editorial, The Problem With Santa.
He’s a journalist and you know what those people are like.
They don’t believe a thing unless it slaps them in the face and then they write to say they saw it coming.
Negative minds are small minds that can’t see the size of the whole universe and the big truths, the ones that are bigger than us and last forever.
Yes, David, there is a Santa Claus.
Even the saddest soul believes in love and giving and trust. Those are the things that make us all happy, that give our small lives meaning.
How pathetic would our existence be, tiny creatures living on a pebble floating through the empty darkness of space, without those eternal truths.
How pathetic our lives would be without
Santa Claus. If would be as awful as if there were no one like you, with the heart to believe in what matters but also a curious mind eager to know the truth.
To not believe in Santa Claus is to not believe in the Easter Bunny.
We could ask all of the scientists at UNBC to investigate but even if they couldn’t find Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny or any other miracle of childhood, it only proves they can’t find them, not that they don’t exist.
You are right, David, to recognize that the most real things in the world are the things we can’t see or hear or touch or taste or smell but what we feel in our hearts.
Those joyful moments we share with our friends and family create bonds that no force can ever tear apart.
No scientific instruments or the words of know-it-all writers can measure or describe these things in all of their beauty and glory.
Yet they are real and are more real and lasting than anything else in all of the world. They are not bound by time or by space or by the limits of our tiny imaginations or by the negative people around us who would deny the very best part of what it is to be a human being.
We should be thankful to live in a world with Santa Claus.
It is difficult to see as a positive development this week’s announcement of a second road blockade at the Unist’ot’en camp to block the Coastal Gaslink gas pipeline, in Wet’suwet’en territories.
We cannot see how setting the stage for further litigation or worse can benefit our people.
The backlash Wet’suwet’en people are facing, whether they are for or against the project, is devastating.
Our leaders, elected or hereditary, are advancing what they believe is right and as such all deserve respectful treatment. Social-media campaigns led by non-Indigenous groups are simply not contributing to a solution. There is no doubt that the hereditary leadership has some responsibility for land and natural resources within our territory. At the same time, the elected leadership has responsibility for our people and the external affairs of their First Nation.
The Wet’suwet’en Nation exists within a complex mix of federal, provincial, municipal and Indigenous jurisdictions.
Current varying interpretations of the 21-year-old court Supreme
Court of Canada decision of Delgamuukw, or non-binding international commitments outlined in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, do not change the fact that without economic development in our territories, our people will always have to accept a diminished quality of life unless they move elsewhere.
We all lose while we are divided and positional. The media and other outsiders will continue to pit us against each other in order to build a more sensational story or to influence the outcome of the LNG Canada and Coastal Gaslink project. The headlines are not the place to explore these complex issues, especially with an often uniformed public audience watching. Our division hurts our people deeply.
Much is being said about “reconciliation” without much common understanding of what that might mean. But before we can reconcile with the rest of society
we need to take the high road and begin true reconciliation with each other. Rather than position ourselves for failure we need to come together for our people. We need the Wet’suwet’en people to do this ourselves – hereditary chiefs, elected chiefs and most of all our people – children, women, men and families. As 2018 closes, more than anything I wish for peace. Peace for this country and peace for our nation. I hope we can spend the season with our families and start the new year off where we can all sit down as Wet’suwet’en people first, without titles or positions, and find a way forward where all our interests are listened to and respected. We need to start somewhere.
We must try to find a higher ground to come together. Our people deserve nothing less.
Karen Ogen-Toews is a former Wet’suwet’en elected chief and is CEO of the First Nations LNG Alliance. The alliance is a collective of First Nations who are participating in, and supportive of, sustainable and responsible LNG development in B.C.
LETTERS WELCOME: The Prince George Citizen welcomes letters to the editor from our readers. Submissions should be sent by email to: letters@pgcitizen.ca. No attachments, please. They can also be faxed to 250-960-2766, or mailed to 201-1777 Third Ave., Prince George, B.C. V2L 3G7. Maximum length is 750 words and writers are limited to one submission every week. We will edit letters only to ensure clarity, good taste, for legal reasons, and occasionally for length. Although we will not include your address and telephone number in the paper, we need both for verification purposes. Unsigned or handwritten letters will not be published. The Prince George Citizen is a member of the National Newsmedia Council, which is an independent organization established to deal with acceptable journalistic practices and ethical behaviour. If you have concerns about editorial content, please contact Neil Godbout (ngodbout@pgcitizen. ca or 250-960-2759). If you are not satisfied with the response and wish to file a formal complaint, visit the web site at mediacouncil.ca or call toll-free 1-844-877-1163 for additional information.
SHAWN CORNELL DIRECTOR OF ADVERTISING
Sparrow
Here’s a lottery player’s nightmare: A winning $1-million 6/49 ticket will expire unless the person who bought it in Victoria claims the prize in the next two weeks. Quick, look down the back of the couch. Now. It’s true. The B.C. Lottery Corp. says someone in Victoria bought a ticket that matched all 10 digits — 18923844-07 — in the Lotto 6/49 guaranteed prize draw held Jan. 3. No, they can’t say where in the city it was purchased.
If the ticket is not redeemed by midnight this coming Jan. 3, it will be valueless — Cinderella’s coach turned into a pumpkin, poof.
At the lottery corporation, they’re holding out hope that someone will stumble through the doors before that happens.
“It’s extremely rare that large prizes go unclaimed,” says spokesman Evan Kelly.
It does happen, though: In B.C., four prizes of $1 million each — two from Lotto Max tickets and two from the 6/49 — have gone unclaimed in the past 10 years.
When that happens with one of the nationally run games like 6/49 or Lotto Max, the unclaimed money goes back into the prize pot. When it’s a BCLC-operated game like the BC/49, the cash goes into provincial government coffers.
All this leads to a few thoughts:
A) Don’t you feel better about the $10 scratch-and-win that you accidentally sent up the chimney last Christmas?
B) What would you do if you found the winning ticket in your overcoat pocket on Jan. 4?
C) Have you ever watched Waking Ned Devine? It’s a charming little 1998 movie about the people of an Irish village conspiring to claim the winnings of a man who expired before his ticket did.
D) If the idea of missing out on $1 million drives you crazy, then you’ll go barking-at-the-moon, voting-for-Trump nuts when you read this: someone has yet to claim the $1.5 billion US prize from the Mega Millions draw Oct. 23.
The single most valuable lottery ticket in U.S. history, it was purchased in Simpsonville, South Carolina. If not redeemed by April
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19, it will be as worthless as your first husband. The Mega Millions winner isn’t the only one with something to lose should the ticket not be redeemed. The convenience store vendor who sold it won’t collect a $50,000 bonus. It’s not clear whether whoever sold the winning ticket in Victoria will be able to collect the couple of grand he would be due should the winner not step forward.
If the ticket-holder does emerge, let’s hope he or she at least has the good grace to emulate Vancouver Island’s greatest lottery winner of all time, Vinnie Parker, who was a 51-year-old Zeballos logger living in an 18-foot travel trailer when he won $1 million in 1999.
A disturbing number of lottery winners husband their windfalls cautiously, thereby betraying their moral responsibility to go a wee bit wacky — using $100 bills to light $50 cigars — on behalf of those wage slaves whose retirement plans are predicated on saying yes to the Extra.
Not Parker. Dragged in front of the media, he became instantly, if fleetingly, famous when he outlined his plans for the money: “I’m going to blow it.”
A Barracuda man, he planned to buy some muscle cars. He was going to build his own RV park so that he and his buddies could party without being hassled like they were in the municipally owned one. (“Just to piss the mayor off.”)
He was going to get his dog laid.
“If there’s anything worse than me having an attitude, it’s me having the same attitude and having money,” he told the Times Colonist’s Carla Wilson.
After he died at age 63, Parker’s friends confirmed that he did indeed burn through his winnings in six months or so — though in doing so he was awfully generous to those around him, from buying mini-quads for the town’s kids to ride to quietly slipping cash to those who needed it most.
Somewhere in Victoria — in a desk drawer, forgotten in an old pair of pants — is the ticket that, if found in the next couple of weeks, could give us the next Vinnie. Check your couch.
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ABOVE: College Heights Cougars Scott Cousins looks to put a shot on goal while being checked by PGSS Polars defender Cole Penner on Friday afternoon at CN Centre as the two teams met in the 16th annual Spirit of Hockey and Community Cup game.
LEFT: The College Heights Cougars pose for a group photo after defeating the PGSS Polars 4-3 to win the annual Spirit of Hockey and Community Cup game.
TOKYO — Organizers of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics say they have secured another $1 million in domestic sponsorships and that the operating budget for the games remains at $5.6 billion.
The organizing committee, announcing its third version of the operating budget, said Friday “as with the previous version, the OCOG budget remains balanced and fully privately financed by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), sponsors, licensing and ticket revenues” and includes the cost of the Paralympic Games.
It said domestic sponsor revenues had increased since its last budget to $3 billion.
“With less than 600 days to go until the games, we are finally entering a fullyfledged implementation phase,” Tokyo 2020 President Toshiro Muto said.
“As many aspects of the games have become more detailed, Tokyo 2020 has seen increases in some new areas but has successfully reduced expenditures in other areas, resulting in the updated budget remaining the same as the previous version.”
The total cost of the Olympics, however, including $7 billion to be spent by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government and the Japanese government, is $12.6 billion.
Tokyo’s winning bid in 2013 projected overall Olympics costs of 829 billion yen ($7.3 billion).
Earlier this month, IOC president Thomas Bach and other IOC members said Tokyo was the best prepared host city in recent memory.
But Australian John Coates, the head of an IOC inspection team, said then that Tokyo’s summer heat was a growing concern. Organizers are proposing to start the marathon between 5:30-6 a.m., and have moved up morning rugby matches by 90 minutes to play in the cooler air. Mountain biking will be contested later in the afternoon for the same reason.
Tokyo’s privately-funded operating
Joshua CLIPPERTON Citizen news service
budget relies most on domestic sponsorship sales, and Coates and Bach said the enthusiasm of Japanese companies had helped break all records.
Also on Friday, the organizing committee said that the concept behind the Paralympic torch relay to be held after the Summer
Games would be “Share Your Light.”
It said the slogan expresses Tokyo 2020’s goal of achieving a “fully-inclusive society,” as well as to “communicate the spirit and values of the Paralympics.”
The Paralympic torch relay will be held over seven days between the closing cer-
Miro Heiskanen (Finland)
emony of the Summer Games on
and the Paralympics opening ceremony on Aug. 25. The route will go mainly through Tokyo and its nearby prefectures of Chiba, Saitama and Shizuoka, all hosts of Paralympic events.
Canadian fans are usually the ones bemoaning an NHL team not releasing one of its young stars to take part in the world junior hockey championship. This year, however, some other countries will be without top-end talent at the tournament that gets underway Dec. 26. Here’s a look at eligible NHL players who won’t be on the ice in Vancouver and Victoria:
Rasmus
The No. 1 selection at the 2018 NHL draft has been a linchpin for the surprising Buffalo Sabres in his rookie season. Dahlin has three goals and 16 assists to lead all rookie defencemen in points (19), and ranks third on the team with an average ice time of 20 minutes 32 seconds through 35 games.
Jesperi Kotkaniemi (Finland)
The first player born in the 2000s to suit up in an NHL game, the 18-year-old has impressed in his rookie season with the Montreal Canadiens. Kotkaniemi has four goals and 12 assists in a somewhat sheltered role as a third-line centre through 36 outings. The No. 3 pick at last June’s draft, Kotkaniemi would have been a big asset in Vancouver and Victoria for his country.
The 19-year-old defenceman has impressed in his first season with the Dallas Stars. Heiskanen has seven goals and 10 assists in 35 games to go along with an average of 23:07 of ice time a night, which ranks third on his team and leads all rookie blue-liners.
Brady Tkachuk (United States)
The fourth pick last June, Tkachuk has become an important player for the rebuilding Ottawa Senators. The 19-year-old has 10 goals and eight assists in 24 games in his rookie season.
Robert Thomas, Michael Rasmussen (Canada)
While it’s not like missing Connor McDavid, the Canadians won’t have two 19-year-old centres that could have taken part in the tournament. Michael Rasmussen wasn’t be released by the Detroit Red Wings, while Robert Thomas is being kept by the St. Louis Blues. The ninth pick in 2017, Rasmussen has five goals and five assists in 34 games with Detroit this season. Thomas, who recorded six points for Canada’s gold-medal winning team in Buffalo, has two goals and eight assists this year.
Gemma KARSTENS-SMITH Citizen news service
VANCOUVER — Alexis Lafreniere isn’t thinking much about the elite class he’s about to join –he just wants to play hockey.
The 17-year-old will be Team Canada’s youngest player at the world junior hockey championship next week.
Few athletes have made the squad before turning 18. Those who have include some of the biggest names in the sport, from Wayne Gretzky to Connor McDavid. But Lafreniere didn’t consider himself an underdog going into last week’s selection camp in Victoria.
“It doesn’t matter how old you are,” he said before the roster was finalized. “We all have the same chance.”
His spot on the national squad was solidified earlier this week when it was confirmed that L.A. Kings prospect Gabe Vilardi will miss the tournament due to a back injury.
Team Canada coach Tim Hunter said he likes what Lafreniere brings.
“He’s capable of being on this team because he’s good enough,” Hunter said at the selection camp.
“He doesn’t play like a young player. Plays heavy, plays smart, plays hard. Doesn’t have those young player moments where ‘Oh, this is hard’ and forget his assignments and what have you.”
Lafreniere has already drawn attention for his quick hands and deadly shot during his time with the Rimouski Oceanic in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League.
The six-foot-one, 192-pound forward put up 80 points in his rookie campaign last year and has 17 goals and 34 assists so far in his second season.
“He’s the kind of player that sees the game,” Rimouski’s assistant coach Charles Juneau said in a phone interview. “He knows where the puck is going before it gets there, he knows where teammates are going to be before they get there.”
Lafreniere, a native of the Montreal suburb St. Eustache, Que., was just 15 when he started playing with the Oceanic. Since then, he’s grown into a more complete player, becoming more concerned about details and working on playing without the puck, Juneau said.
The young athlete’s passion for hockey is obvious and infectious, the coach added.
“He’s that kind of guy that loves to be on the ice,” Juneau said. “If we don’t kick him off the ice, he’ll stay there all day.”
Playing against older players at the international level will bring a bigger challenge, Lafreniere said.
“You have to raise your game,” he said, noting that there will be positives, too.
“I think that I can learn a lot from the other guys. They are older and have a lot of experience.”
St. Louis Blues defenceman Jay Bouwmeester remembers being 16 years old and playing on Team Canada with Dallas Stars centre Jason Spezza at the 2000 world junior tournament.
Canada had an exhibition match up against Sweden and the then19-year-old Sedin twins, Henrik and Daniel.
“They beat us pretty bad. And (Spezza and I) were just sitting on the bench. We we just like ‘Oh man, what are we doing here?”’ Bouwmeester said. “But as the tournament went on, we got to play more and we really felt like more of the team.”
Being a young player in that environment can be intimidating.
“From 16 to 19 in that tournament, there’s a lot of changes. Physically, experience, all that, ” he said. “So when you’re a young player, these 19-year-old guys are guys that have been to NHL training camps and played some games. And you’re kind of like in awe of these guys.”
While it can feel like the pressure and pace are relentless during the tournament, looking back, “it’s no big deal,” Bouwmeester added.
“You’re not going to remember specific things from games. You’re going to remember the experience and the friendships you made,” he said.
The Blues are currently on a Canadian road swing, so Bouwmeester has caught some of Lafreniere’s play on TV recently.
“The guy’s obviously a special talent and deserves to be there,” he said. “I wish him all the best.” Pittsburgh Penguins captain Sidney Crosby has also watched some highlights of the up-and-coming hockey star.
“I think the fact that he’s on the team obviously says a lot about what kind of talent he is and I think it’s a great opportunity to be a young guy and playing for Team Canada regardless of how old you are,” said Crosby, who was 16 when played at the world junior in 2004.
TORONTO — His 39-year-old right knee wrapped in gauze for support, Roberto Luongo insists it’s all still worth it. The aches and pains, the amount of preparation needed just to step on the ice, and the injuries that take a lot longer to heal don’t come close to rivalling the one desire burning inside the Florida Panthers’ veteran goalie.
“I just want to be in the playoffs, man,” said Luongo, grey hair dotting his beard. “I just want to get a taste of that. That’s why I play.”
In his 19th NHL season, Luongo sits six wins shy of tying Ed Belfour for third all-time at 484, is 12 appearances away from equalling Patrick Roy for second in games played at 1,029 and needs four shutouts to pull even with Dominik Hasek and two others for sixth with 81. But those numbers and his slam-dunk spot in the Hockey Hall of Fame don’t matter to the Montreal native.
He wants another shot at the Stanley Cup, a trophy Luongo came so close to touching with the Vancouver Canucks in 2011.
“The rest of that stuff will come on its own,” he said inside the visitors locker room at Scotiabank Arena earlier this week. “At the end of my career you can look back on those numbers and appreciate them, but for now I just want to keep doing a good job.”
He’s done his part for the Panthers this season, but it’s unlikely there will be spring hockey in south Florida.
Luongo, who was left hung out to dry by teammates in Thursday’s 6-1 loss to the Toronto Maple Leafs, is 7-6-1 with one shutout, a .900 save percentage and a 3.14 goals-against average in 2018-
19 after missing the first month of the season with a strained medial collateral ligament in his right knee suffered in Florida’s opener.
The Panthers struggled without Luongo and, despite back-to-back wins before the blowout in Toronto, sit nine points out of the second wild-card spot in the Eastern Conference.
Still, he continues to push his body.
“It’s tough. I’m not going to lie. It’s not easy,” Luongo said. “There’s a lot of stuff you have to deal with. When you get up there (in age), recovery is not as fast and you have to put a lot of work in.
“Right now I’m willing to do whatever it takes to keep going.”
Panthers head coach Bob Boughner said Luongo “is his own boss” when it comes to the goalie’s workload.
“It’s crucial for us he stays healthy,” said Boughner, whose team missed the playoffs by a point last season. “He’s our most important player.”
Luongo signed a 12-year, US$64-million contract with Vancouver that kicked in ahead of the 2010-11 campaign – a front-loaded deal that carries an annual average value of $5.333 million.
After earning $10 million the first season, he made $6.716 million for seven consecutive years. But Luongo’s salary in real dollars dropped by more than half to $3.382 million this season and falls to $1.618 million in 2019-20.
That number dips even further to $1 million in both 2020-21 and 2021-22, should he continue playing well into his 40s.
Luongo insists when he inked his extension with the Canucks, who traded him back to Florida in 2014 after originally acquiring him from the Panthers in 2006, his intention was to play as long as he could, regardless of the money.
“I never said I was going to retire at a certain age,” Luongo explained. “I just wanted to keep playing as long as I enjoyed it (and) was able to play at a high level and be as healthy as I can be.
“Right now other than the injuries a little bit, I still feel that I can play at a high level.”
The fourth pick in the 1997 draft by the New York Islanders has a career goals-against average of 2.51 to go along with a save percentage of .919, which he’s bettered in four of his five seasons since returning to Florida.
Leafs head coach Mike Babcock, who had Luongo at a number of international tournaments, said the netminder’s approach is key.
“His care-free personality, his love of the game, the kind of guy he is ... not a lot of stress there,” Babcock said.
“He just comes out and plays and he’s smart.
“As long as he can keep reading the play, looks to me like he’s doing a good job.”
That care-free side continues to come through Twitter, where Luongo will playfully needle teammates and opponents. Before the game in Toronto, he suggested Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner get the night off after their cameo in The Nutcracker.
“When I’m loose and having fun I tend to be in a better space and play better,” said Luongo, who has participated in just six post-season games since 2013. “We are playing a game and we’re privileged to be doing so.”
And all he wants is the privilege of another shot at the Cup, as far as off as it might seem.
“I’m loving playing,” he said.
“I don’t have a set time. Hopefully I get another playoff run.”
Ted CLARKE Citizen staff tclarke@pgcitizen.ca
Sarah Beaudry knew her parents from Prince George, Pierre and Leisbet, were among the thousands of spectators who lined the course Friday at the BMW World Cup biathlon women’s sprint in Nove Mesto, Czech Republic and she didn’t want to disappoint them.
So she went out and skied the race of her life.
The 24-year-old Caledonia Nordic Ski Club member, in her first World Cup race of the season since being called up from the IBU Cup circuit, posted a career-best 12th-place finish. Beaudry shot clean in two bouts on the range and finished just 42.7 seconds behind gold medalist Maerte Olsbu Roeisland of Norway, who finished in 19:44.6 with no missed targets.
Former world and Olympic champion Laura Dahlmeier of Germany won silver (+4.5 seconds, 0+0) and Paulina Fialkova of Slovakia claimed bronze (6.2, 0+0).
Emma Lunder of Vernon also placed in the top20, finishing 17th (+57.9, 1+0), her best-ever World Cup result.
Beaudry and Lunder joined the World Cup team in Nove Mesto after the raced IBU Cup events last week in Italy.
Rosanna Crawford of Canmore also nailed down a top-60 finish needed to qualify for Saturday’s 10km pursuit, placing 54th (+1:59.9, 2+1). Megan Tandy of Prince George finished 81st (+2:50.0, 1+2) in a field of 96 starters. Beaudry will start the pursuit 12th and will leave the start gate 42.7 seconds after Roeisland. Lunder will start 17th and Crawford 54th.
In the men’s 12.5 km pursuit, Christian Gow of Canmore will start 21st, Jules Burnotte of Sherbrooke is 33rd in the order and Scott Gow is 38th in the field of 60. They’ll be chasing sprint winner Johannes Thingnes Boe of Norway.
Mass start races are scheduled for Sunday. Meanwhile at the IBU Cup super sprint final Friday in Obertilliach, Austria, Nadia Moser of Whitehorse, Yukon was the top Canadian in seventh place. She ended up 18.8 seconds off the winning 15:49.9 pace of Felicia Lindqvist of Sweden (0+0+0+0). Elisabeth Hoegberg of Sweden won silver (+1.7, 1+0+0+0) and Karoline Ofigstad Knotten of Norway captured bronze (+14.3, 2+0+0+0).
In qualifying Megan Bankes of Calgary was 31st (+42.1, 0+3), Caledonia club member Emily Dickson of Burns Lake was 33rd (+43.5, 0+1) and Darya Sepandj of Calgary was 67th (+1:27.5, 0+1).
In the men’s super sprint final, Aidan Millar of Canmore placed 13th (+20.4, 0+0+0+1) - the only Canadian to make the top-30 final. Gold medalist Sindrie Pettersen of Norway clocked 13:53.3 (0+0+1+0). Lorenz Waeger of Austria took silver (+4.9, 0+0+0+0) and Daniele Cappellari of Italy won bronze (+5.1, 0+0+0+0).
Meanwhile, at the FIS World Cup women’s snowboard cross Friday in Cervinia, Italy, Meryeta O’Dine of Prince George finished 18th as the top Canadian. Lindsey Jacobellis of the United States won gold, Eva Samkova of the Czech Republic claimed silver and Charlotte Bankes of Great Britain won bronze. They’ll return to the Cervinia slopes today for qualifying runs, with finals set for Sunday.
In the men’s race Friday, Evan Bichon of Prince George finished 58th.
In 2018, the news cycle seemed to spin like a hamster wheel powered by an overcaffeinated rodent. In other words: So. Much. Happened.
It was easy to forget some of the year’s biggest pop culture-meets-politics story lines since they got overtaken so quickly by whatever was the next drama du jour (or perhaps we should say a la minute?).
So let’s rewind the tape and take a moment to recall the big, the weird and the fun stories that caught our attention for at least a few minutes. 2018, we hardly knew Ye.
Just earlier this year, all was rosy for comedian Roseanne Barr: the reboot of her sitcom Roseanne was the most-watched show on television and was earning plaudits for its humorous take on the country’s cultural divide – and for offering a rare blue-collar, Trump-supporting protagonist. And then the acerbic Barr’s own politics and twitchy Twitter fingers got the better of her. After a racist tweet targeting Valerie Jarrett, the former adviser to President Barack Obama, ABC pulled the plug on her show and her former co-stars distanced themselves from her statement.
Barr melted down even further on her favourite social-media platform. The silver lining? The Roseanne-less show was re-rebooted as The Conners.
Kanye West seems to have learned lessons from the Kardashian playbook with his constant headline-making flirtation with all things politics and President Donald Trump. There was some MAGA hat-wearing and a politics-laden rant after an SNL performance, but the apex of Ye’s year of politics was a 45-minute, televised Oval Office meeting with President Dragon Energy himself, a confab that saw West monologuing on everything from the 13th Amendment to “male energy,” to his own diagnosis of bipolar disorder (the rapper said it was a mistake; he was just sleep-deprived).
When the White House Correspondents’ Association picked Daily Show contributor Michelle Wolf to be the entertainment for its annual black-tie dinner, the group’s leadership cited her “feminist edge” and “truth-to-power” style.
But then Wolf turned up at the dinner with some serious burns aimed at the Trump administration (which is part of the
job description, remember), and Washington’s swamp people got real mad.
The dinner’s organizers threw Wolf under the bus faster than you can say “we’re revoking your hard pass” and sniffed that her material (she called White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders an “Uncle Tom but for white women who disappoint other white women”) was “not in the spirit of the evening.”
On the Trump-hosted Celebrity Apprentice, Omarosa Manigault Newman was cast as the villain, a role she reprised when Trump hired her in his administration.
The onetime reality TV star publicly expressed loyalty to the president, but once she was maybe-escorted from the White House gate in dramatic fashion, she quickly turned. Omarosa snagged a book deal for a tell-all called Unhinged (so, yeah, it was a
devastating portrait of her former ally) and aired secret tapes of Trump and her West Wing co-workers.
Stunt comedian Sacha Baron Cohen was up to his old tricks, adopting several different personas to convince unsuspecting politicos to step in front of his cameras for a little humiliation.
The Borat funnyman got former Vice President Dick Cheney to autograph a “waterboarding kit,” used a fake “pedophile detector” on unsuccessful Senate candidate Roy Moore, and got former Illinois congressman Joe Walsh to support a program to arm children called “Kinderguardians.”
We spent more time than we liked in 2018 following the love life of the president’s eldest son. The Instagram-happy Romeo known as DJTJ first split with wife Vanessa in March, after 12 years of marriage.
That breakup prompted a new look at a song that former Danity Kane singer Aubrey O’Day reportedly based on her 2011 romance-gone-south with the first son. Titled DJT, the angsty tune includes lyrics like “I thought it was forever at the time but maybe I was lying to myself.” (And yeah, we also spent more time that we wanted to listening to Aubrey O’Day songs.) And O’Day herself fueled the rumours more recently when she posted a photo of herself on Instagram in front of the White House wearing a shirt that bore a rather rude (and possibly double-entendre-laden) message for its occupant.
Meanwhile, the first son found love again with, unsurprisingly, a Fox News host. He and Kimberly Guilfoyle, who was married
to Gavin Newsom when he was San Francisco’s mayor, made things social media official when he started posting photos of the two on vacation together.
Now the couple frequently appear together arm-in-arm at the White House. Who says love is dead?
Forget former first lady Michelle Obama’s holographic, thigh-high boots from Wednesday: the biggest political fashion statement of the year was literally a series of words: “I really don’t care do U?”
That was the phrase emblazoned on the back of the jacket that first lady Melania Trump wore for a trip to the U.S.-Mexico border to visit detention facilities used to house immigrant children.
The collective freakout was instantaneous, and despite a changing explanation (her spokeswoman first denied it carried any meaning; the president said it was aimed at the media; and Melania Trump herself later said it was for all her haters), the phrase is likely to be included in just about every lengthy story about the first lady – unless she makes an even bolder statement soon.
OK, so this one hardly moved the needle on the pop culture radar, but we’re including it as a fun aside that reminds us that politicians really are a lot like us after all. Vice President Mike Pence, despite having a full staff and boundless resources at his fingertips, went the saddest Valentine’s Day route ever and snagged flowers for his wife, Karen, at a downtown CVS.
It was pink roses, we think, although it’s possible he did what women everywhere dread and opted for the carnations.
Citizen news service
It’s a busy time of year for Santas worldwide. But for Jerusalem’s Mr. Claus, it’s been particularly hectic.
On Sunday, a restless crowd waited outside the shiny red door of his tinsel-lined home on Santa Claus Lane in Jerusalem’s Old City.
It was a familiar scene, one played out in thousands of malls and stores across the globe: children and parents eagerly seeking a little face time with the kindly red-suited gentleman.
Yet in Jerusalem, the traditional trappings of Christmas are hard to find, despite the Old City’s cobblestone streets being the backdrop to much of this holiday’s story. Even as thousands of Christian pilgrims make their way to the Holy Land this time of year, fairy lights, seasonal music, and an official Santa are all conspicuously absent.
But not this year.
In July, Issa Kassissieh participated in the annual World Santa Claus Congress in Copenhagen and became a full-fledged certified Santa.
And with that, Jerusalem finally had its own St. Nick.
Kassissieh formally began his Santa duties on Dec. 1, and he has already greeted about 3,000 visitors with sparkling Santa stardust, imported candy canes and fake snow. When
he’s not working from home, he’s out visiting the sick and others who cannot make it to him.
“I am the only official Santa of the Holy Land,” Kassissieh, 40, said.
He pointed proudly to the neatly framed diplomas hanging on the wall above his special Santa desk, on which stands the manual typewriter he uses to respond to letters and requests he receives from fans all year round.
Kassissieh, an Arab Christian and former professional basketball player, is a wellknown figure in Jerusalem.
For years he had donned the red suit and white beard, finding fame as possibly the only Santa whose preferred mode of transport is a camel, as opposed to a reindeer.
But, taking his role very seriously, Kassissieh decided to become formally certified, attending Santa schools in Denver and in Michigan, as well as the Copenhagen congress.
“People think that anyone can just put on a red suit, but you also need to study the special spirit and the joy of Santa,” he said.
You also need to know how to bake cookies and carve wooden toys, apparently – all skills Kassissieh has mastered at special Santa workshops.
Everything in his Santa’s House – a 700-year-old stone structure in a narrow alley that is decked with Christmas lights and a helpful sign directing visitors to Jeru-
salem, the North Pole, Santa’s House and Santa’s workshop – is handcrafted. He has even built a full-size Santa sleigh.
“They also teach you how to talk to children, how to dress properly, to be clean and smell good,” he said. “You need to show happiness and welcome everyone – even those who are scared of you – with a smile.”
But that is no easy feat in Jerusalem, where political and religious tensions can sour even the most genuine of gestures.
In the past, the appearance of Christmas trees and other holiday decorations in malls and hotels has drawn protests from ultraOrthodox Jews.
Last week, a shopping mall in the southern Israeli coastal city of Ashdod sparked an uproar by erecting a Christmas tree in its central plaza.
One city council member from the ultraOrthodox Shas party said it was “intended to hurt anyone who identifies as Jewish.”
The mall pointed out that many Ashdod residents are immigrants from the former Soviet Union who celebrate Novy God, the civil new year, with a holiday tree, Haaretz reported.
“My aim as Jerusalem Santa is to bring everyone together with peace and security,” Kassissieh said. The recent tensions between Israelis and Palestinians would not deter him from spreading Santa’s joy, he added.
“We are all human,” said Kassissieh, who
In this new era of social media, the selfie has become a new and accepted norm.
I don’t believe I will ever grasp “the duck face.”
When I see one, my first thought is usually why.
Why are you doing that?
In our selfie culture, I feel this phenomenon, which for many is just harmless fun on the one hand, also has the potential of qualifying as one of many symptoms of a growing narcissistic, self-centred world view that is eroding our communities and our culture. Giving to charity is down. Volunteerism is down. Suicides and depression are up. Loneliness and isolation are up. This new selfie culture is changing how we see Christmas, how we view God and how we view others.
As we reflect for a few moments on Christmas, I felt I must agree with author Leonard Sweet who writes: “There is no doubt about it. Christmas is a dangerous time of year. You ever tried negotiating a mall parking lot between Black Friday and Christmas Eve? You know one level of danger. You
ever tried to gather together a fractious, far-flung family into one Christmas moment?
You know another level of danger. You ever tried buying a toy for the kids or grandkids, a toy where levers don’t break off, where there are no hidden, choky bits, where glitches galore don’t make the toy ‘unsafe?’
You know another whole kind of threat.”
But the real danger of Christmas is not about parking spaces or perilous toys or dysfunctional families but is the danger we are all called to open ourselves to during this season of miracles.
Why is Christmas dangerous?
1. It could go to your head.
2. It’s hard on your heart.
3. It callouses your hands and feet.
Even the Grinch has taught us that the most dangerous aspect of Christmas is allowing its true
meaning to break in upon your heart and change your lens, your mind-set and your attitude.
Certainly for most, the meaning of Christmas is a very subjective subject.
When I look at Christmas and its meaning, I choose to attempt to look at what undergirds the traditions and meaning of this season through our Heavenly Father eyes.
The real challenge of the meaning of this season, for me, comes when I try to apply that wisdom in my own life and relationships.
I have to allow the true spirit of Christmas to affect:
• my head – how I think;
• my heart – how I love and show love;
• my feet – how I serve and give to others.
I need to apply the same values and the same love qualities that I see modelled by my Heavenly Father in the Christmas narrative.
Here are just a few for your consideration:
1. Christmas is about the ultimate expression (Divine Agape) of love – not a saccharine sweet, romantic, gushy, sentimental kind of love, but a raw, fierce, extrava-
receives Jewish, Muslim and, of course, Christian visitors. “It makes me happy to see people coming here from all over the world and from every group.”
Sarah Tuttle-Singer, a Jerusalem-based writer who is Jewish, took her two children to visit Santa last week. She said it was important to her that her children learn about other religions and cultures.
“My kids love the lights and the tree and the candy and the holiday spirit even though they know it isn’t our holiday,” Tuttle-Singer said. “They especially love how jolly Santa is and how he laughs and makes them feel special.”
Kassissieh’s journey to Santa-hood started in the Christian Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City, where much of the city’s Christian population lives and works. He was born just a stone’s throw from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the site where Christians believe Jesus was crucified, buried and later resurrected.
“Even though I grew up here, the center of Christianity, we did not celebrate Christmas like they do in other countries,” he said. “I really wanted to bring what I saw in Europe and in America to the children here, too.”
Now, as a fully qualified Santa, Kassissieh does just that. Opening the door to his lovingly crafted home on Santa Claus Lane and greeting his visitors every evening with a “Ho, ho, ho” from the Holy Land.
gant and practice love, that had redemption and reconciliation at its core, demonstrated by the highest level of selfless giving and personal sacrifice. That’s love that is courageous, bold and benevolent, characterized by “always choosing for the highest good of God first, others second, and self last.”
2. Radically generous giving – Jesus came to give His life as ransom for many.
3. Courageous humility and vulnerability – Jesus came as a lowly baby, not a conquering king.
4. Forgiveness toward even the undeserving – Jesus’s first coming was to express and show mercy, not to bring judgement – John 3:16,17. And He calls me to do the same, to show mercy and forgiveness to those who trespass against me. At Christmas, Jesus came as the lamb of God to take away the sins of the world. When he comes again, He will come as the lion and will come to bring judgment for sin.
Friend, if your focus and view of Christmas and what it means all revolves around you, and what you feel, and what you get or don’t get, my heart breaks for you. If
you are all about getting, rather than giving this Christmas, I urge you to reconsider the heart and intention of our Heavenly Father. I believe that the prayer of St. Francis captures the heart of Christmas and of our Father in his famous prayer: Lord, make me an instrument of your peace, where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy. O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console, to be understood as to understand, to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive, it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
On behalf of the church, and the ministers and ministries of Prince George’s ministerial, I want to wish you a very blessed and Merry Christmas.
Blessings to you, your family and your home. May the Lord bless you and keep you and make His face to shine upon you. May He give you peace.
A sonogram to a girlfriend from her boyfriend announcing that his ex-girlfriend is pregnant with his baby, above, and a kitchen knife make the list of worst Christmas gifts ever, below.
because it was convenient.
When Jennifer Purdie’s new boyfriend handed her a jewelry box, she felt embarrassed that she’d been outdone. They’d been dating only two months! She had assumed that they’d go small and sweet with their Christmas gifts, so she had baked him cookies. And here he was, giving her jewelry. Or was he?
Purdie, then in her mid-20s, opened the box to find a slip of paper. It was a sonogram – an image of the inside of another woman’s uterus. Purdie was confused. Maybe this was his way of announcing he was going to be an uncle?
Wrong again. “I’m going to be a daddy!” her boyfriend said. No, he hadn’t cheated on Purdie – he’d just (accidentally) gotten his ex-girlfriend pregnant before they broke up, and this was his way of sharing the news. “He thought he was being clever, and he was just being stupid,” Purdie said. He wanted to keep dating, but Purdie decided it was all too much. They broke up shortly thereafter. She thinks her ex is still with the mother of his child, Purdie said recently, and “that makes me really happy.”
It’s been about 15 years since Purdie opened that jewelry box, and the sonogram remains the worst item a significant other has ever given her. If her then-boyfriend had just told her in another way and given her something small, commensurate with the time they’d spent together – flowers, say, or dinner at a nice restaurant – that Christmas gift exchange might not be etched into her brain in such an indelible way. When we care a lot about people, we can read a lot into the gifts they give us. We take them as proxies for the depth of a person’s feelings, or lack thereof. When gifts are wildly out of sync in ways that mirror other imbalances in a relationship, it’s fair to take note and be a little upset.
But often the meaning we ascribe to these objects is horribly out of whack. It’s possible that person who presented you with a kitchen utensil when you were expecting jewelry just needs some pointers about what you really wanted. Gift giving doesn’t come naturally; it’s a skill that can be refined with time.
Once we talked about it, the gifts got a lot better. He’s a thoughtful guy; he just needed some direction. Men “tend to go for those practical things rather than thinking about the thoughtful,” David said. Hence the tool kit and the kitchen knife. “As women we’re a little more intuitive to men dropping hints, or paying attention to little details.”
Like wrapping paper. Rosa Carrasco, a 45-year-old scientist, remembers the first Christmas she exchanged gifts with a boyfriend who went on to be her husband – and then ex-husband. At the time they were both 20-something graduate students in the late 1990s. Carrasco gave him a book of physics lectures from a famous professor, and he handed her a present wrapped in one of her towels. (Note to gift givers everywhere: do not wrap something in the cloth that dries your body after a shower.) She peeled it away to find the Doom trilogy, one of the original first-person shooter computer games. It was an odd gift to receive, because Carrasco wasn’t a gamer; “I think Tetris was the only game I played before this,” she recalled recently. She had a brand new computer, one that stood out for being “super-fast” at that time, and so he gave her something for himself –a game that he wanted to play on her machine. There was a small problem with that plan, however. “He would get motion-sickness every time he tried to play,” Carrasco said, so she started playing out of spite. And she got pretty good at it – whizzing through the levels and finishing the entire game. “It got me through graduate school,” Carrasco said, “but it sucked for him because he couldn’t play it.”
And yes, women tend to have higher expectations for the gifts they receive and read more into them than men generally do, says Alison David, director of matchmaking for Omaha Love and Midwest Matchmaking. The best gift her husband ever gave her? When they’d first started dating, David mentioned she’d been trying to find a bookshelf – and her then-boyfriend went out and found a used one for her.
“It wasn’t fancy,” David said, “but it was exactly what I wanted.”
When I posted on social media asking people to tell me about the worst gift they’d received from a significant other, barely any men chimed in – while dozens of women responded complaining about gifts they’ve received from men, including: a tool kit; a kitchen knife; a plastic rabbit; a Precious Moments figurine given to someone who is neither religious nor a knickknack collector; a carved wooden stick from Ireland; a leather apron. The list goes on.
In college I remember telling a boyfriend that I no longer wanted gifts he had obviously purchased from the student store. It wasn’t so much what he was gifting that bothered me, but the fact that he wasn’t putting any foresight into it. He was hopping downstairs from the student newspaper office on his lunch break and just picking out whatever he could find in my favourite colour. I wanted something with meaning, not merely something procured
It wasn’t the only gift from this man that felt like a mismatch.
Two years later, when Carrasco and her boyfriend were longdistance and she moved into a new apartment, he gave her an electric can opener for Christmas. “I don’t cook; I don’t eat things out of a can,” Carrasco said. “It sat in my kitchen for years; I never used it.”
At this point, Carrasco realized her boyfriend needed some direction in the gift-giving department, which is a conversation that experts recommend. You don’t have to itemize the things on your wish list; instead start by going macro. Dominique Clark, a relationship expert in Charlotte, suggests talking about your respective love languages, or the ways in which you express love for another person and how you feel loved in return.
The five love languages – receiving gifts, quality time, words of affirmation, acts of service and physical touch – were first detailed in a best-selling self-help book from the 1990s and have since become a cultural phenomenon. Someone whose love language is words of affirmation, for example, might especially cherish a love letter or poem written specifically for them. A person who most desires quality time might prefer an experiential gift, like going to a concert and dinner together.
Clark finds that bad gifts often stem from lack of thought paired with last-minute shopping, which is something Purdie witnessed a lot during her days working in a department store.
“We had these bird feeders and on Christmas Eve, I remember looking up and all these men were buying them. I just thought: That’s a male shopper – leave it to the last minute, and so this is all that’s available and so they just grab it.”
This kind of last-minute dash is what Carrasco presumes led to the infamous can opener. Or maybe, like the video game, it was something he wanted all along. When they split about four years ago, he got the can opener in the divorce.
Ron CHARLES Citizen news service
It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas – everywhere you read. In fact, if you scratch below the surface of the best-seller list, you’ll find Christmas novels draped all over like tinsel.
But 175 years after Charles Dickens published A Christmas Carol, the holiday novel has undergone a transformation more radical than anything Scrooge experienced.
Nowadays, Santa’s sleigh couldn’t carry all the titles that appear like magic. There are Christmas cozies and Christmas thrillers, Christmas fantasies and Christmas westerns, Christmas science fiction and Christ-
mas ghost stories, Christmas comics and Christmas comedies, and especially Christmas romances. So many romances –from trysts as pure as the driven snow to X-rated erotica that gives a whole new meaning to some guy in a red suit shouting, “Now, Dancer! Now, Prancer, and Vixen!”
We’ll call it Rule 34B: If it exists, there is porn of it involving a partridge in a pear tree.
Fiction writers love Christmas. The whole Christmas season. Now please don’t ask why. No one quite knows the reason.
But it surely has something to do with the advent of the e-reader. Among the top 500 best-selling books in all formats on Amazon last week, Christ-
mas was the single most popular subject. More than 35 titles make reference to the holiday – usually with a pun more rancid than last year’s eggnog. And many are self-published e-books, which points to the industry’s fundamental transformation over the last decade. In the olden days, manuscripts had to find an agent and then a publisher before the elves could print and ship hard copies to brick-and-mortar bookstores. Under those conditions, most of these Christmas stories would have been stuck in the North Pole. But now – as e-books – they soar over the gatekeepers and distribution hurdles and collectively sell tens of thousands of copies a week.
I’m making a list and checking it twice. It’s obvious which ones are naughty and nice. Some of these titles – offered for as little as 99 cents – will inspire you to grumble, “Bah, humbug.” But here are 12 books of Christmas that sold at least 1,200 copies last week:
1. Jingle Balls, by Vanessa Waltz. I warned you there would be bad wordplay, and that’s just the start in this romance full of stockings well hung.
2. Eating Her Christmas Cookies, by Alina Jacobs. The wordplay, it only gets worse.
3. The Christmas Scorpion, by Lee Child. The author of the bestselling Jack Reacher novels has no trouble finding a traditional publisher, but this is a short story, available exclusively from Delacorte Press as an e-book, which is a whole new revenue stream for popular novelists. In this story, Reacher gets snowed in on Christmas Eve with a notorious assassin on the loose.
4. Scrooge Me Again, by Milly Taiden. Book 18 in the Paranormal Dating Agency series tells the heartwarming tale of a woman who finds love on another planet with a lion shape-shifter, which is no more unlikely than flying reindeer.
5. A Baby For Christmas, by Layla Valentine and Holly Rayner. These two enterprising authors write novels about billionaires, who are a dime a dozen in the romance genre. This volume, part of their Baby Surprises series, follows “a gorgeous, Christmas-loving billionaire” who is “like a gleeful blizzard of holiday cheer,” because who wouldn’t love that?
6. Christmas Cake, by Celia Aaron. The author of this collection of sweet holiday stories warns that she “is not responsible for cavities or sugar highs.”
7. Christmas Wish, by Chiah Wilder. In Book 12 of the Insurgents Motorcycle Club Romance series, a vet finds a woman living on his property with a tiny son named Timmy. God bless them, every one!
8. All I Want for Christmas... Is My Sister’s Boyfriend, by Brooke Blaine and Ella Frank. There’s always one person in the family who is so hard to shop for.
9. The Christmas Dragon’s Love, by Zoe Chant. Book No. 3 in the Christmas Valley Shifters series is about a man-dragon who falls in love with a professional dog-sitter. Frankly, I think he could do better; I mean, come on: He’s a mandragon.
10. Reindeer & Robberies, by Hope Callaghan. Book 15 in the Cruise Ship Christian Cozy Mysteries series gets extra points for putting Grandma on the cover. The navy blazer completely covers her six-pack abs.
11. His Gift, by Ashlee Price, is a Billionaire Bad Boy Christmas Romance about a man who needs Santa to bring him a shirt.
12. Decked, by Susi Hawke and Crista Crown. Squeaking in at No. 500, this is a M/M romance about male pregnancy, the latest in the Team A.L.P.H.A. series. The North Pole will never be the same.
Barack Obama appears on Miranda’s latest Hamilton song
NEW YORK – Barack Obama, or Barap Obama?
The former U.S. president appears on a reworked song by Lin-Manuel Miranda originally from the Broadway hit Hamilton. Released Friday, One Last Time (44 Remix) features Obama reciting a passage from George Washington’s farewell address. The song also features vocals from Tony nominee Christopher Jackson, who played Washington in Hamilton. The track was produced by Grammy-winning gospel singer BeBe Winans and Tony and Grammy winner Alex Lacamoire. Miranda performed his song Alexander Hamilton at the White House in 2009 when Obama was in office. He went on to write Hamilton, which hit Broadway in 2015 and became a cultural phenomenon, winning 11 Tonys, a Pulitzer Prize and a Kennedy Center Honor.
Miranda returned to the White House to perform One Last Time in 2017 in a farewell to Obama.
Michael E. MILLER Citizen news service
The boy stood in the front of the church, flanked by his cousins yet utterly alone.
It was the Sunday after Thanksgiving and the four children had been called before their congregation to speak. One by one, they listed the things for which they were grateful: their friends, their siblings and, above all, their parents.
When it was his turn, the boy took the microphone reluctantly.
“I’m grateful for my life and -,” Isaac Flores Amador began.
Then the 11-year-old burst into tears.
“And for my mom,” he sobbed as his pastor, David Santana, hurried to give the child a hug.
“His mom is in another country,” Santana told the congregation.
“But the boy is here, thank God.”
Eleven months earlier, Isaac and his mother had made the dangerous two-week journey from Honduras to the U.S.-Mexico border to ask for asylum. Instead, they were separated. His mother was deported. And Isaac was left behind.
More than 2,500 migrant children were taken from their parents at the border earlier this year under the Trump administration’s now abandoned “zero tolerance” immigration policy. After months of court orders and administrative chaos, the majority of these children have been reunited with their parents – some in Central America but most in the U.S.
In more than 200 cases, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, deported parents have made the painful decision to leave their separated sons or daughters behind in the hope that they will have a better life in America.
For these families, Trump’s short-lived separation policy threatens to become permanent.
Isaac had never slept apart from his mother until she was taken from him. Now he lives in central Illinois with an uncle he hardly knew while his mother tries to parent him via text message from 2,000 miles away.
As he struggled to adapt to a new life in a new country, Isaac often escaped his loneliness by playing the online video game Fortnite, which offered a sense of community and belonging.
But it was the game’s objective that resonated most with him: survive, on your own and against long odds, as long as possible. His lifeline to his mother was a Samsung Galaxy with a shattered screen.
Sometimes they video chatted as he rode to school in the morning. But most days, Jeny Amador could only afford to text her son, each message accompanied by an emoji heart or kiss.
Sometimes her texts would suddenly stop. Usually it meant her phone needed to be charged. But once, when her phone was stolen in Honduras, Isaac didn’t hear from her for days. Each lull in communication was like holding his breath.
“Hello,” he texted her in Spanish one Saturday evening in December.
“Mom.”
“What are you doing.”
“Are you at church.”
“Mom.”
“Where are you.”
By the time they spoke, it was Sunday afternoon.
“Hola mi amor,” she said from Honduras, where it was the rainy season. “Cómo estás?”
“Bien,” he replied from his cousin’s house in a snow-dusted trailer park decorated with inflatable Santas and plastic nativity scenes.
Amador still harbored hopes that they would somehow reunite in America. But she had little
“That’s the way he’s found to close himself off, to not feel, to forget,” said Amador. “When he feels sad he starts playing so he doesn’t have to think.”
In Honduras, he rarely played video games, instead spending free time at the beach or the river or the soccer field with his older siblings.
In Illinois, his fascination with snow had lasted about 30 minutes. Now he stayed inside, dressed in a T-shirt, shorts and secondhand Batman sandals, playing Fortnite. With its hundreds of hundreds of characters or costumes and vast, colorful landscapes, it distracted him from more than his loneliness. When his midterm grades came back with two F’s, his uncle set a rule: no Fortnite on school nights.
chance of appealing her deportation, and she refused to let Isaac return to Honduras.
He was her baby: the youngest of five who always slept beside her until the day they were separated.
His first memory was of her feeding him the mangoes that fell behind their pink cinder block house in Omoa, on the Caribbean Sea.
Since splitting from his father a few years ago, she had scraped together a living by baking. He used to wake to the smell of her homemade chocolate doughnuts.
But sometimes she didn’t have enough money to buy baking ingredients, or even food, and so they ate mangoes for days. She began talking about taking him to the U.S. to escape not only poverty, but also gangs. At 10, he was approaching the age where he could be recruited, she said.
Instead, she became the target. She’d campaigned for the incumbent in Honduras’s 2017 presidential election. When he was declared the winner amid weeks of turmoil, she said, gang members came to her home.
“They said, ‘Your party stole the election, and we are going to burn your house and kill you,’ “ she would later tell a U.S. asylum officer.
A few weeks later, she paid a smuggler to take her and Isaac through Guatemala to the southern border of Mexico, where they and four unaccompanied minors crossed a river in a small boat. On Jan. 13, 2018, they walked across a bridge in El Paso and asked for asylum.
But when Border Patrol agents questioned the unaccompanied minors, they said one was actually 21 years old. Amador, the agents would later testify, had been given money to help him reach the border.
Amador denies this, saying she was never paid and that she played no role in helping anyone other than her son.
Agents took Isaac aside and asked him whether Amador was really his mom.
“Sí,” he pleaded. “Es mi mamá.”
They spent the night on the cold floor of a holding cell. The next morning, Isaac recalled, “A man came in and grabbed my mom and said we were being separated.” He screamed and clutched at her, but agents pulled them apart.
One promised they would be reunited soon, Isaac recalled. Instead, he was taken to the airport and put on a plane to a children’s shelter in Arizona. The boy who once wanted to be a pilot spent his
first flight in tears.
“They lied to me,” Isaac said.
Although the Trump administration wouldn’t announce zero tolerance until April, it had already begun splitting families in El Paso under a 2017 pilot program, charging parents with federal crimes and sending their children to shelters.
As Isaac was taken to Phoenix, his mother was taken to jail and then federal court, where she was charged with “bringing in and harboring aliens,” a felony.
For two weeks, Isaac didn’t hear from her. Instead, he tried to navigate a new world of roommates and chores and English classes and soccer games surrounded by chain-link fences.
“Where are you?” he asked her when they finally spoke by phone.
She said she was in a big house with a swimming pool. He knew she was lying but didn’t say so. He didn’t say much of anything.
“He was very quiet,” Amador recalled. “His social worker said it was normal, but I told her no, it wasn’t normal.” They were supposed to be able to talk twice a week, but Amador said she sometimes called a dozen times without reaching him and that they spoke just four times in 50 days.
“I started going crazy,” she said. After six weeks in jail, prosecutors dropped the charge against her, and then sent her to immigration detention. An asylum officer found her credible, but her request for parole was denied. On May 9, with no money for an attorney and no faith she would ever be released, she agreed to be deported.
By then, Isaac was already in Illinois, where his uncle had agreed to take him in.
He was able to talk to her more easily after she was deported in June – and after a relative gave him his phone this fall – but the distance between them seemed to grow by the day.
In Honduras, Amador had always awakened him on his birthday by singing Las Mañanitas, a Latin American birthday song. When the day arrived in July, she could only leave a message for him.
She had thrown him birthday parties on the beach with homemade cakes and piñatas. But in Bloomington, there was no beach, no party and no piñata. The cake
came from the grocery store.
In their phone calls, she tried to bridge the chasm between them with questions.
“Is your school going well?” she now asked as he sat in his cousin’s kitchen.
“What did you do last night?”
“What did you eat for breakfast?”
But the mother who had meant everything had been reduced to a broken voice coming from a broken screen.
“You’re very intelligent, my love,” she told him. “You have to do all your homework. You can play video games or watch TV but only after you finish your homework. OK, son?”
“Okay,” he said as he silently watched a Fortnite video on his phone.
“What’s wrong, my love?” she asked. “You seem a little – sad.”
“Nothing,” he said, as the game flashed on screen.
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure,” he answered, tapping on another video.
“You have to tell me everything,” she said. “The good, the bad, the happy, the sad. Everything.”
“OK,” he said again, as the video began to play out loud, drowning her out.
With his avatar perched atop a building, rifle in hand, Isaac waited for his target to appear.
“Snipe him!” shouted his American-born cousin, Yariel.
Isaac tapped a button on his PlayStation controller. His opponent sank to his knees and then disappeared, leaving behind weapons and ammunition.
“Nice,” Yariel said as the boys sat on the floor in front of a large television.
“Thank you, bro,” Isaac said in English, collecting his spoils.
“Thank you very much.”
This was how the two 11-yearolds spent their weekends: in the world of Fortnite.
They played for hours, together and separately, on PlayStation and cellphones, bragging and laughing and dancing and occasionally fighting until Yariel’s mom made them go to sleep. Then they’d wake up the next morning, slip out of Yariel’s bunk bed and fire up the game again.
For the two boys and their friends, Fortnite was how they bonded. But for Isaac, it was something more. It was an escape.
The uncle, who declined to participate in this article but allowed a reporter to spend time with Isaac, hadn’t been Amador’s choice for a sponsor. Her ex-husband’s brother worked long hours doing construction and liked to drink on weekends. Amador had tried to place Isaac with Yariel’s mom – the uncle’s ex-wife – but she wasn’t a blood relative.
When Isaac had first moved into their three-bedroom bungalow, his uncle had been living with a girlfriend and her children. But Isaac and her son had fought and the woman moved out, taking her furniture. The only items now left in the living room were the uncle’s lawn chair with cupholders and a speaker that belted Honduran music.
Isaac looked forward to weekends at his cousin’s trailer across town, where there were couches and a Christmas tree and stockings, even if none had his name on it.
Yariel’s mom worried that the bungalow wasn’t a good place for Isaac. She tried to nurture the boy when he came over, but she had three children of her own, including a newborn.
“It’s important for him to have his mom,” she said.
In Honduras, Isaac had loved watching his mom sing in the church choir. His uncle didn’t attend services, so Isaac went with Yariel’s family instead. When he had first arrived, the pastor had asked the congregation to stand and pray for Isaac, their hands stretched out toward him.
“He’s started to participate, but it’s been hard on him,” Santana said two weeks after the boy burst into tears at Thanksgiving. “This time of the year is the worst, since it’s all about family.”
A light snow fell on a Monday in mid-December as Isaac walked from the school bus stop to his uncle’s house. Christmas was coming, but the bungalow had no wreath or creche, no tree or festive lights.
In Honduras, Isaac had spent the day poor but happy, hawking fireworks on the street alongside his mom and siblings as he begged her to let him light the rockets he was supposed to sell. With the money they earned, they bought a holiday dinner the next day. Isaac didn’t know how he would spend Christmas here – his first without his mom – but he guessed it would be at his cousin’s house, playing Fortnite.
He had asked his uncle for his own PlayStation, but the present he most wanted was the one he increasingly feared would never come.
He opened the front door and entered the quiet house, sitting down on a gray carpet in the empty living room with his back against a gray wall.
He plugged his phone into the socket and texted his mother he was home, but she told him she couldn’t afford to call him.
So he turned to the game, its bright lights filling the barren room.
Jonathan
LANDRUM JR. Citizen news serv ice
LOS ANGELES — Mariah Carey’s All I Want for Christmas Is You is the highest-charting Billboard Hot 100 holiday hit in 60 years, but Americans still prefer hearing carols such as Silent Night and Jingle Bells, a new poll shows. With Christmas next week, 12 per cent of Americans named Silent Nightas their favourite holiday song followed by Jingle Bells at eight per cent, according to a poll by The Associated PressNORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
The open-ended question showed that It’s a Wonderful Life is a fan favourite among holiday films, followed closely by a mix of recent comedies and classics.
Nine per cent of respondents listed the 1946 Frank Capra classic It’s a Wonderful Life as their favourite film. Jimmy Stewart plays a conscientious family man who faces a seemingly insurmountable debt and attempts to end his life, but is stopped by a guardian angel on Christmas Eve.
“It’s a story of redemption,” said Michael Germana, 65, who called the film his favourite. The California native is also among the 21 per cent of adults 60 and older who choose Silent Night, which was first performed 200 years ago.
“It’s a song of inclusion,” Germana said. “There’s no strife.” Americans under 30 are more likely than those older to name Jingle Bells (12 per cent) and Carey’s All I Want for Christmas is You (seven per cent) as their favourite.
Carey’s song only trails the 1958 song The Chipmunk Song by David Seville as the highest-charting hit on Billboard. Other popular songs on Billboard charts include Kenny G’s Auld Lang Syne and This One’s for the Children by New Kids on the Block.
All I Want for Christmas Is You was named by three per cent of adults overall, while Baby It’s Cold Outside, which has drawn criticism in the #MeToo era and led some stations to stop playing it, was named by five per cent.
There were more contemporary choices among respondents when it came to film. Seven per cent chose 1983’s A Christmas Story and How the Grinch Stole Christmas, but most people didn’t specify whether they preferred the 1966 animated television special or the 2000 live-action adaption starring Jim Carrey.
A computer animated version, The Grinch has earned more than $239 million domestically since its early November release.
In this Dec. 31, 2017 file photo, Mariah Carey performs at the New Year’s Eve celebration in Times Square in New York. Carey’s All I Want for Christmas Is You is considered to be the best selling modern-day holiday song with over 16 million sales.
Six per cent selected the 2003 comedy Elf starring Will Ferrell, the Chevy Chase-led National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation and Home Alone, a 1990 box office hit starring Macaulay Culkin as the burglar-thwarting Kevin McCallister.
Also listed as a favourite by two per cent of respondents: the 1988 Bruce Willis action film Die Hard.
Overall, 70 movies or Christmas specials and 107 songs were cited as holiday favourites by poll respondents. The AP-NORC poll of 1,067 adults was conducted Dec. 1316 using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed
to be representative of the U.S. population.
The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 4.1 percentage points. Respondents were first selected randomly using address-based sampling methods, and later interviewed online or by phone.
CITIZEN NEWS SERVICE FILE PHOTO
In this Feb. 4, 2004 file photo, Audrey Geisel, widow of Dr. Seuss creator Theodor Geisel, appears during an interview at her home in the La Jolla area of San Diego. Geisel died Wednesday at age 97.
Citizen news service
NEW YORK — Audrey Geisel, the widow of children’s author Dr. Seuss and longtime overseer of his literary estate, has died.
Random House Children’s Books announced that she died Wednesday at age 97. She died “peacefully” at her home in La Jolla, California.
Dr. Seuss, whose real name was Theodor Geisel, died in 1991 and two years later Audrey Geisel founded Dr. Seuss Enterprises. Numerous publishing projects followed, along with the Broadway show Seussical. She also served as executive producer for some film adaptations of his work, most recently The Grinch, which came out last month.
She was a Chicago native whose parents broke up when she was little and who as an adult would be in the middle of two broken marriages. She and Theodor Geisel, who was 17 years older, were both married to others when they began an affair in the 1960s. Theodor Geisel’s first wife, Helen, killed herself and Audrey Geisel sent away the two daughters she had with her first husband after she and the author married in 1968.
“They wouldn’t have been happy with Ted, and Ted wouldn’t have been happy with them. He’s the man who said of children, ‘You have ’em and I’ll entertain ’em,”’ she told The New York Times in 2000. “Ted’s a hard man to break down, but this is who he was. He lived his whole life without children and he was very happy without children. I’ve never been very maternal. There were too many other things I wanted to do. My life with him was what I wanted my life to be.”
Michael O’SULLIVAN Citizen news service
In the 2010 documentary Marwencol, the world met Mark Hogancamp, the survivor of a vicious beating 10 years earlier who had turned to art as a form of therapy.
In strange and strangely moving photographic dioramas, Hogancamp documented life in an imaginary world he had constructed in his Upstate New York backyard: A miniature, Second World War-era Belgian town populated by foot-tall dolls and filled with meticulously rendered details.
One G.I. Joe-style figure represented Hogancamp’s alter ego: A U.S. Army Air Corps pilot called Captain Hogie. Among the other inhabitants were figures representing both occupying Nazi troops and the members of an all-female squad of partisans, in the form of customized Barbie dolls.
Hogancamp’s true, if fictionalized, story, is now being told in Welcome to Marwen, starring Steve Carell as both Mark and, via motion capture, the heroic Hogie. Co-written by director Robert Zemeckis and Caroline Thompson, the resulting film is a sometimes jarring but ultimately effective extended metaphor for healing, in which two narratives unspool simultaneously: one taking place in the real world, and one that exists only in Mark’s deeply traumatized psyche.
Unlike the real Hogancamp’s photographs, which simply hint at the existence of a magical parallel universe, Zemeckis’ film makes that fictional universe literal, segueing between live action and animation in a way that blurs the seams between them while making it clear that Mark is the only true inhabitant of that second world.
This grown-up Toy Story takes some getting used to, but the film wastes no time in setting its bizarre stage.
Welcome to Marwen opens with an animated sequence that features Hogie getting shot down over Belgium and then ambushed by Nazi soldiers, in a cartoonish attack that recapitulates Mark’s actual pummeling (which was far more brutal in real life than the movie ever shows, even in flashback).
This prologue also suggests the reasons behind the attack – reasons that make it clear it was a hate crime and not a simple mugging.
The animation is excellent, from the plastic “skin” of Mark’s action figures and fashion dolls to their stiffly jointed movements. Occasionally, there’s a disconnect between the more jocular tone of the animated passages – as when Hogie refers to cattle that have been killed in crossfire as “cow-lateral damage” – and the film’s serious subject of a man struggling with PTSD in the aftermath of brutal violence.
That story centres on Mark’s relationship with several women who serve as inspiration for the female denizens of Marwen (“dolls,” as Hogie calls them, in an unironic borrowing from the lingo of 1940s and 1950s war movies).
Chief among the dolls’ real-world counterparts are Roberta (Merritt Wever), a friend who runs the hobby shop where Mark buys his art supplies, and Mark’s new neighbour, Nicol (Leslie Mann), a veterinary technician for whom he starts to develop romantic feelings – feelings that he projects onto Nicol’s 12-inch avatar. (Throughout the film, Mark talks to his dolls, and they talk back to him, if only in his head.)
Meanwhile, twin deadlines loom: the sentencing hearing for Mark’s assailants, which he would rather avoid, and the opening reception for his first show in a Manhattan art gallery.
Will he get his head together in time? If these stressors feel like plot contrivances, they are no more artificial than the film’s central conceit, which you have to admit sounds pretty bonkers.
Just keep reminding yourself: it’s all based on a true story.
Hogancamp was a talented illustrator before the attack rendered him unable to draw. In retreating to a world of his imagination as a way to exorcise the demons that tormented him, he ended up creating real art. I’m not sure Zemeckis’ achievement rises to the same level, but this cinematic excursion to Marwen is almost certainly a trip to someplace you haven’t been before.
— Two and a half stars
Alice Walker defends praise of controversial author
NEW YORK (AP) — Alice Walker is defending her praise of a British author widely condemned as an anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist. Walker, best known for her novel The Color Purple, wrote on her blog this week that David Icke’s work was “very important to humanity’s conversation,” and disputed allegations of his anti-Semitism. She also tied the “smear” of Icke, and herself, to her protests against Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians.
Many criticized Walker after she cited Icke’s And the Truth Shall Set You Free as a favourite book during a recent New York Times interview. Ickes has promoted the fraudulent, anti-Semitic The Protocols of Zion and has blamed “a small Jewish clique” for helping starting the First and Second World Wars.
Steven ZEITCHIK Citizen news service
NEW YORK — Harvey Weinstein’s criminal trial will proceed, clearing the way for the man whose alleged actions set off the #MeToo movement to face a legal reckoning.
The judge in the case on Thursday denied the defense’s motion to dismiss the charges against the disgraced movie mogul because of what it alleged was both improper behaviour by prosecutors and the police in the case.
“The court finds that there is no basis for the defendant’s claim of prosecutorial or law enforcement misconduct,” wrote the judge, James Burke of New York Criminal Court, in his six-page ruling.
Weinstein is facing five felony charges, including counts of first- and third-degree rape, for alleged incidents involving two women. A sixth count stemming from an instance involving a third woman was earlier dismissed because of how a police officer handled evidence.
The defense, led by high-profile New York attorney Benjamin Brafman, had been seeking a dismissal Thursday on all five charges because it said the case was “irreparably tainted by police misconduct” as well as “pervasive falsity and professional misconduct in and around the grand jury.”
Brafman had alleged that former lead investigator Detective Nicholas DiGaudio had improperly intervened with alleged victims and withheld information from prosecutors, calling the detective a “serial obstructer” in a court filing. He had also claimed that prosecutors did not sufficiently tell grand jurors about contact that an alleged victim had with Weinstein. In his ruling, though, Burke said that to warrant dismissal police conduct would need to violate the “integrity of the proceeding” and hurt the defendant as a result, which it did not. And he said the prosecution’s presentation to the grand jury passed muster because of the essential nature of the proceeding and the lighter burden it placed on prosecutors.
“They are not obligated to search for evidence favorable to the defense or to present all evidence in their possession favorable to the accused,” the judge wrote.
The defense had also requested a separate hearing to determine if the police handled the evidence correctly. Burke rejected that, as well, saying that Weinstein’s team “does not provide a legal or factual basis to request such hearings.”
The proceedings in the downtown Manhattan courtroom Thursday morning were brief. After Weinstein, wearing a dark suit and a serious demeanor, was led into the courtroom, Burke convened both the prosecution and defense teams for a bench conference. The conversation was not public.
Approximately 10 minutes later, he dismissed everyone until March 7, when a pretrial hearing will take place.
The ruling was released shortly after.
Among the felony charges Weinstein faces in addition to the rape charges are two counts of predatory sexual assault and one count of criminal sexual act in the first degree. The charges stem from allegations that Weinstein raped a woman in a New York hotel room in 2013 and forced another woman to perform oral sex on him in his Manhattan apartment in 2006. Weinstein has pleaded not guilty.
Weinstein, the brash longtime producer and distributor of numerous Oscar-winning films, was accused by more than 80 women of sexual misconduct in reports in the New York Times, New Yorker and other publications beginning last year.
The allegations kick-started accusations against many powerful men in the entertainment and other industries and helped create both the #MeToo and Time’s Up movements.
Weinstein’s case has been watched closely by activists and Hollywood as a trial balloon for future criminal proceedings against alleged abusers in the entertainment and other industries. No other men who have first been accused of sexual misconduct since the movement began last year have been held to criminal account, though there have been other noncriminal consequences.
Earlier this week, former CBS chief executive Leslie Moonves was denied a large severance payout by the CBS board after a report from outside law firms found “willful and material malfeasance” involving sexual misconduct by the former executive.
A number of Time’s Up figures from Hollywood were at the courthouse as well, including the actors Marisa Tomei and Amber Tamblyn, though none spoke.
Lisa Borders, head of Time’s Up, briefly addressed reporters.
“Frankly we are relieved that Harvey Weinstein failed in his efforts to avoid accountability for his actions. We’re very happy none of the charges were dismissed,” she said outside the courthouse.
Brafman, Weinstein’s lawyer, told reporters after the hearing he was “obviously disappointed” in Burke’s ruling but said the decision should not reflect on his client’s guilt.
“I think Mr. Weinstein will be exonerated,” he said.
Brafman also said he believed this trial was “not about the MeToo movement – this is about defending a particular criminal case.”
Madeleine DELIEE Citizen News Service
I have a holiday inferiority complex. I have no aptitude for decorating, limited patience for baking and an introvert’s aversion to parties. But I’ve internalized the idea that it is my job as mom to make the season magical: a heartwarming, memory-stuffed,
amber-hued experience that my children will treasure forever. These conflicting realities have left me with a bad attitude about my inability to provide adequate seasonal wonder. I didn’t realize how entrenched that feeling was, though, until a brave woman in my running group declared on social media that she had
failed at the holidays.
Her tree was covered in mud, she said, and she didn’t care. It was going to stay brown.
“Please post your #holidayparentingfails!” she implored.
It was like a dam burst.
There was the mom who recounted the year her toddler pulled every ornament off the tree and then pulled the tree onto himself. And a mom who realized belatedly that the pretzel, white chocolate and red M&M treats she’d made for the class party looked like breasts. Another said she’d threatened to call Santa Claus to report her kids’ misbehavior. Apparently, the Elf on the Shelf and the Mensch on the Bench are doing serious overtime, because “Oh, yeah!” and “I did that, too” responses popped up instantly. I’m not the only mom who’s left the gifts where my kid could see them (I told him those were going to Toys for Tots).
And like me, other moms owned up to having surprises ruined by an obvious package delivered from Amazon; “Thanks a lot, Walmart,” one mom grumbled about the box that arrived with a giant picture of the item plastered on its side. I learned that holiday cards are a pain for other people too. It took me two weeks to finally pick up the ones I’d ordered; other people weighed in with “I’ll get them out in January,” “I ordered them without including our name,” “I had them sent to my old address,” and “I cut off half of my husband’s head.”
Seeking more fails, I put the call out on social media at large: tell me about your #holidayparentingfails.
One mom said that her diaper bag-andpurse combo caught her dress at a performance of the Nutcracker, and she mooned a large portion of the audience before someone – probably another mom – spotted the problem and yanked the dress down for her. A cousin told of being treated to wine in her sippy cup because her mom got distracted after a Christmas party.
A friend shared that one year, her mom forgot to put names on the presents and just had everyone open whatever they could get their hands on. Another recounted the time her family returned from midnight Mass to find the cats drunk on catnip and the human gifts torn to shreds.
And there were countless chocolate Advent calendar fails, tales of kids emptying them on the first day of the season. One woman confessed that her daughter also polished off the two that were meant for her brothers.
This thread was miraculous. Yes, of course, I know other people mess up. We’re all human. But I loved this willingness to not only own the mistakes, but to put them on display, when so much of social media feels like a curated show of only our best selves.
“Look,” these posts said, “I blew this one big time. Check it out.”
We all mess up.
We forget to take our kids for pictures with Santa, we buy the wrong cookies or beat ourselves up for not baking them ourselves, we misplace the advent calendar until Dec. 22, we use birthday candles in the menorah, we bake for the office party a week too early or schedule the thoughtful floral delivery for Grandma a week too late. We all do it, which means I’m not alone –and that not-aloneness was freeing.
The announcements from all these strong, capable women about their holiday
It’s impossible to please the kids big and small for the whole Christmas season, so accept the fact that there will be mistakes, sad faces and other Christmas catastrophes.
implosions relieved me of that awful selfimposed pressure to somehow – between regular life and the occasional curveball like my kid breaking his arm the week before Thanksgiving and my other kid breaking up with his girlfriend the week after – create a fantasy holiday. It turns out that’s a false bill of goods. No one’s holiday is perfect. No one goes from mid-November to early January without burning dinner, breaking a decoration, or dropping something heavy on themselves and cursing loudly in front of their most judgmental relative. No one’s season is flawless – because none of us are.
The real magic is that my kids won’t be damaged or emotionally stunted because I didn’t set the table with a cloth and place mats or because I sent in juice boxes for the class party instead of whipping up something creative that I found on Pinterest. They’ll remember that we watch Santa on the NORAD Tracker every year, even though the older one is in high school now; that we light the menorah my mom brought over from Prague; that we set aside one evening before Christmas to drive around with takeout cups of hot chocolate and find the most over-the-top displays of lights and lawn decorations; and that I always insist they write thank you notes once the holidays are over.
I hope they remember feeling loved and grateful for what they have. I’m trying to lead by example, and avoiding a “my life isn’t curated enough” freakout is a good place to start.
Seeing other moms’ candid screw-up revelations felt like Scrooge’s discovery that the sun spilling through his window meant it was Christmas Day and that he hadn’t missed his chance.
I have a chance, once again, to accept that my home will be imperfect, but it will be warm; my plans will be imperfect, but they will be loving; and I will be imperfect, just as I am every other day of the year.
Madeleine Deliee is a freelance writer and a teacher, mom and recovering actor.
Fred BOWEN Citizen news service
Around this time of year, I review the almost 50 columns I wrote to see what I got right and what I got wrong in the past 12 months. As usual, my record has some wins and some losses.
In February, I correctly predicted that the Philadelphia Eagles would upset the New England Patriots to win Super Bowl LII (the Roman numeral for 52).
I also got it right that English soccer star Wayne Rooney would be a big help to D.C. United. But I made mistakes, too – including some big ones. Before the major league baseball season, I wrote confidently, “The Nats should roll through the regular season ... winning 95 to 100 games.” Whoops! The Washington Nationals finished with a record of 82-80 (82 wins, 80 losses) and were prob-
ably the most disappointing team in baseball. On the eve of the Major League Soccer (MLS) playoffs, I wrote, “(D.C.) United has a chance to go all the way.” Wrong again. United was bounced from the playoffs in its first game.
Everyone, from presidents to kids on the playground, makes mistakes.
I coached more than 30 kids sports teams and discovered that lots of kids are afraid to make mistakes. They won’t take a shot in basketball or soccer because they’re scared they might miss. They won’t try a new sport because they’re afraid they might stink.
I used to tell my players, “A missed shot is not a mistake.”
But if kids won’t take my word, maybe they’ll listen to John Wooden.
Who’s John Wooden? Probably
the greatest college basketball coach ever. His team at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) won 10 NCAA men’s basketball championships from 1964 to 1975.
Wooden said, “The team that makes the most mistakes usually wins” because “the doer makes mistakes.” He went on to explain: “The individual who is mistake-free is probably sitting around doing nothing. And that is a very big mistake.”
It’s true, in sports or just about anything in life. You have to take a chance you might fail or miss the shot to accomplish anything. Mistakes, especially for kids, are part of getting better.
So here’s hoping everyone plays more sports, has more fun and, yes, makes more mistakes in 2019.
Fred Bowen is the author of 23 sports books for kids.
Streetcars of San Francisco are history on a roll
When Rick Laubscher was six years old, he rode a streetcar to the circus. The San Francisco native is pretty sure he saw the lions and tigers and all that comes with it, but he wasn’t left with much of an impression.
“I don’t remember the circus,” he says six decades later. “But I remember that streetcar ride.”
So started a lifelong fascination with San Francisco’s streetcars that eventually led to Laubscher playing a key role in the creation of a vintage trolley line through the heart of the city, allowing visitors and commuters alike to ride the rails just as they did a century ago. While perhaps not as recognizable as the city’s famed cable cars, the F-Line of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (also known as Muni) offers a unique way to take in the sights. Every day, up to two dozen vintage streetcars, many built before the Second World War,carry people from the Castro District to Fisherman’s Wharf.
“San Francisco’s past isn’t just frozen in an old picture or sitting in a museum,” says Ed Reiskin, the transportation agency’s director of transportation. “You can actually get on and ride these streetcars from another era.” Reiskin says that Muni is unique because it has two vintage types of transit integrated into its otherwise modern system. The famous cable cars date from 1873 and were designed to climb the city’s steep hills by connecting to a cable that moves beneath the street. The 1906 earthquake destroyed many of the city’s cable car lines and most were replaced with more modern streetcars, which receive their power from an overhead wire.
As it did in many cities, the streetcar spurred a huge amount of development in San Francisco. By the 1930s, 50 trolley lines connected every neighbourhood, including four sets of streetcar tracks right up the middle of Market Street.
“Streetcars built the urban America that we know today,” Laubscher says. “The electric streetcar helped stretch the boundaries of our cities.” Streetcar ridership across the country began to decline with the advent of the automobile. In the 1950s, dozens of streetcar routes were replaced with buses in San Francisco. In the 1970s, the city began to modernize its rail system and replaced its old streetcars with modern light rail vehicles.
It also put its Market Street route beneath the main thoroughfare.
In 1982, the last vintage streetcars were put into storage. To mark the end of rail service on Market Street, Muni rolled out one of its oldest streetcars for a final ride.
It was that ride that gave Laubscher, then chair of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce’s transportation committee, an idea to organize a vintage trolley festival that would offer rides up and down Market Street on weekends. The chamber took the idea to Mayor Dianne Feinstein, who supported it, but cautioned she did not “want to see any junk out there.” The first festival was an overwhelming success that was repeated for five years, setting the stage for a permanent vintage
trolley line through the city. On Sept. 1, 1995, the F-Line opened for service.
The F-Line starts at the intersection of 17th and Castro streets, in the heart of the vibrant Castro District, and heads toward downtown on Market Street. Heading east, the trolleys pass the U.S. Mint and within a few blocks of landmarks such as city hall (which features the fifth largest dome in the world) and Union Square. Near the intersection of Market and New Montgomery streets, the F-Line passes in front of the Palace Hotel, where President Warren Harding died in 1923.
After skirting the Financial District, the F-Line rounds a curve toward the small San Francisco Railway Museum run by Market Street Railway, a nonprofit organi-
zation that advocates for and supports historical transit in the city. Next stop is the Ferry Building, completed on the city’s waterfront in 1898 and known for its clock tower that reaches 75 metres into the air. From here, the F-Line follows the waterfront all the way to Fisherman’s Wharf, a popular tourist destination. Along the way, passengers can take in views of the bay and Coit Tower, a concrete edifice dedicated to firefighters who perished in some of the city’s worst blazes. While the more-modern light rail vehicles in Muni’s fleet may offer a smoother and quieter ride, the experience of riding one of the vintage cars is much more memorable. Instead of cold plastic seats, the vintage cars have wooden benches and the only air conditioning is
an open window. While Muni has upgraded the cars with amenities such as GPS and backup cameras – all standard on more-modern streetcars – you would be hardpressed to find anything else from the 21st century when you board. Emma González has been at Muni for 20 years and has been working on the vintage streetcars since 2008. She says it’s hard not to fall in love with the old cars, which come in a variety of shapes, sizes and colours.
“I feel like a movie star” operating the old streetcars, she says. “People come from all over the world to ride them.”
Her favourite streetcar is No. 578, affectionately called the Dinky. The car was built in 1896 and looks nearly identical to the hill-climbing cable cars. In total, Muni has more than 50 historical streetcars, many from across the United States, but others hail from England, Italy and Australia. The bulk of the fleet is made up of Presidents’ Conference Committee streetcars, or PCCs, streamlined cars that date from the 1930s. More than 4,500 PCCs were built and used in 33 cities. While some of the PCCs are painted in Muni’s vintage green and cream livery, most are painted in tribute to different cities that used PCCs, including Washington, Boston, Chicago and Philadelphia.
“It’s a riot of colour, patterns and designs representing all of the different transit agencies,” Laubscher says.
Maintaining century-old streetcars is no easy task, Reiskin says. Because of their age, Muni frequently has to make its own parts to keep them in service. However, the agency receives plenty of help from Market Street Railway; Laubscher is the group’s president. Over the years, Market Street Railway has advocated for the expansion of historical streetcar service, including the creation of the E-Line in 2015 that goes from the Ferry Building toward AT&T Park, home of the San Francisco Giants.
There are dozens of museums across America dedicated to streetcars. Some cities have followed San Francisco’s lead and re-created their own vintage lines. However, Laubscher says none of them is quite like the F-Line in San Francisco, particularly because the streetcars are still a critical part of the city’s transit system, one that in addition to carrying visitors takes commuters to work and school.
“It’s not enough to just preserve machines like these as static displays; you have to let people experience them,” he says. “San Francisco relishes its transit history, but we also put our history to work.”
Managing editor Neil Godbout puts the news in perspective every day, only in The Citizen
Citizen photographer Brent Braaten was invited inside Bedford Place Bed & Breakfast to capture the spirit of Christmas in the home, located on Patricia Boulevard.
Witness Wanted
Anyone having information regarding a mid 30’s male cyclist injured by a red 4 door Honda at approximately 1:00 p.m. on October 30th, 2018, traveling south along Carney Street near the intersection of 10th Avenue, in Prince George is asked to contact Bailey Quinn of Dick Byl Law Corporation at: 250-564-3400, or at bailey@dbylaw.com
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Thomas Wesley Ward Feb 4, 1925 to Dec 15, 2018
With great sadness we announce the passing of Wes with loved ones by his side. Survived by his loving wife Dolly, his son Byron, his much loved grandchildren Melodie, Alwynne, Rayven & Anthony and the light of his life, great granddaughter, Sitara. Sisters Joyce Stewart, Vi Weir, Shelby (Barry) Cooke, Gloria (Dale) Berg and brother Eldie (Georgina) Ward. Also sister law Shirley Ward & Marian Grieves and many nieces and nephews whom he loved. Predeceased by his daughter Faith and siblings, Pearl Terry, Gladis Shore, Arthur Ward, Wilber Ward, Olive Paul and Larry Ward. Special THANKS to Judy for being there for 6 days & nights before Wes passed. Thanks to all the managers and staff at Simon Fraser Lodge. They were like family and their kindness won’t be forgotten. Also Dr. Tom Young. Wes was a beautiful soul whom always had a smile to share and helping hand to give! No service by request.
MARGARET KEIBEL
Dec. 8, 1930 — Dec. 16, 2018
We are very sad to announce the sudden passing of Margaret Keibel on Sunday Dec. 16, at the amazing age of 88. She is survived by daughters; Laura, Lindsey (Gord) and Janet. Grandchildren; Ashley, Shaun, Quinlan and Zachary, great grandchildren; Lukas, Hannah and Grace, sister in law Maureen Keibel and many nieces and nephews. Predeceased by her husband Alfred and Brothers Ernest and Jimmy. Margaret was born in Clayton-le-Moors, Lancashire England in 1930. Her adventurous spirit led her to move to Canada landing in Hamilton Ontario in 1958. She heard the call of the North and made her way to Prince George in 1960. Margaret settled into her nursing career and married life and proceeded to deliver hundreds of Prince George babies. She also taught prenatal classes and was a breastfeeding consultant. Over the years she helped countless Mothers and Fathers prepare for the complexities of childbirth and the mysteries of breastfeeding. Margaret had a passion and talent for this teaching and continued with it into retirement. Margaret later became active at Elder Citizens Recreation Association (ECRA) where she was involved with the Forever Young Choir. She was instrumental in forming the PG UKES after a successful run with her friends in a Ukulele group called “The Mother Pluckers”. These groups were like family to her and gave her such joy. She continued participating in playouts and concerts right up to her very last days. We will forever be thankful for their friendship and support and for making her days full of good notes. Margaret and her dog Charley moved into the Riverbend Senior Residence this past summer. There, they were welcomed by old friends and were enjoying making new friends and participating in the many fabulous social activities within the building. We would like to give a special thank you to Dr. Smith and Dr. Textor as well as Hamid and the Northern Health nurses who visited her each day. At Margaret’s request there will be a Celebration of Life at ECRA on May 6th 2019 from 2:00-5:00pm. Her wishes were for friends and family to come together and enjoy an afternoon of music and laughter, so please bring your instruments and voices. We hope to see you all there.
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Ashley Laurie Dec 6, 1984 to Dec 15, 2018
It is with utmost sorrow that we announce the sudden passing of a wonderful mother, daughter, wife, sister and friend. She will be dearly missed by her husband Jason Laurie, her children Austin and Elizabeth Laurie, her parents Pat and Brenda O’Neill, grandparents Adam and Linda Meier, Betty Eheler, sister Willow, Sara, Melissa, nephew Jax and niece Arabella, numerous aunts, uncles, cousins and extended family. She loved her “partners in crime” so much. She’s gone to soon but will always be held in our hearts.
John Clifford Last Nov 20,1947 - Dec 18, 2018
It is with profound sadness to announce the passing of John Last on December 18 2018. John was loved and respected by all that knew him. He was a fun loving, care free, dedicated family man. John is survived by his loving wife and best friend Kathy , of 52 years, sons, Michael, Russell (Bonita) and beloved daughter Kristie ( Grant ) Creuzot. Grandchildren Samantha, Jesse and Kale, great grandchildren Abbey and Hayley. John was able to enjoy his last six months retired with his favorite people, his family. There will be no formal ceremony as per Johns request, a private memorial will be announced at a later date where a glass of good scotch whiskey will be tipped in celebration of John’s unique character. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to a charity of your choice. John’s charity of choice was Hospice House.
Joao da Silva Arantes May 29, 1936 Braga Portugal Dec 20, 2018 Prince George BC
It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of Joao (John) da Silva Arantes John will be dearly missed by his loving spouse Rose Munro, family and his dear friends. He is survived by his sister Albertina and his brother Anival in Portugal. He is predeceased by his parents Jose and Maria; his sisters Teresa, Cardlina and Fatima, His brothers Fernando and Kentino. He was a much loved member of the Portuguese community and will be deeply missed. Visitation will be held at St Marys parish Thursday December 27th at 10:00am With the Funeral Mass at 11:00am. Reception to follow. Joao (John’s ) final resting place will be in Portugal. In lieu of flowers donations to the heart and stroke foundation would be appreciated
Currencies
These are indicative wholesale rates for foreign currency provided by the Bank of Canada on Friday. Quotations in Canadian funds.
Citizen news service
Staff and contractors in Victoria have been crunching the numbers on climate change costs for the coastal city and it’s not looking good, the mayor says.
Lisa Helps says based on a report commissioned by the regional government in 2015, storm surges combined with a onemetre rise in sea level – which is projected by the year 2100 –could result in business disruption losses of $415,557 per day.
Victoria was one of the first municipalities in British Columbia to pen a letter to oil and gas companies last year asking them to chip in to cover growing bills in proportion to their emissions.
It is joining local governments around the world in seeking some relief.
“We’re actively working through our climate leadership plan to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels, but in the interim there are real costs to taxpayers,” Helps said.
North American markets concluded a painful week by closing well in the red Friday on a busy day of trading as crude oil prices sank and the loonie hit a 19-month low.
A variety of concerns drove investor actions, including heightened rhetoric from U.S. President Donald Trump that an impending partial government shutdown could be lengthy.
The S&P/TSX composite index lost 206.33 points to end at 13,935.44 after hitting an intraday low of 13,924.38. The Toronto market lost almost 660 points or 4.5 per cent in one week and 8.3 per cent in December with just four trading sessions remaining in the year. All sectors lost ground on the day, led by technology and cannabis-heavy health care. Shopify Inc. fell 3.3 per cent in line with tech losses in the U.S. They were followed by the influential financial, energy and industrials sectors. Energy was down 1.9 per cent as the February crude contract was down 29 cents at US$45.59 per barrel and the February natural gas contract was up 22.4 cents at US$3.75 per mmBTU.
The Canadian dollar traded at 73.71 cents US compared with an average of 74.10 cents on Thursday. It’s down more than a cent this week. In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average closed off 414.23 points at 22,445.37. The S&P 500 index was down two per cent, falling by 50.84 points at 2,416.58, while the Nasdaq composite was down three per cent or 195.41 points at 6,332.99.
“It’s pretty fair to say ‘You caused this, you need to help us mitigate the cost,’ even as we all – energy companies and cities –work toward a renewable energy future.”
West Coast Environmental Law, which has driven the campaign in B.C., says 16 local councils have voted to write letters to fossil fuel companies. The most recent was West Vancouver, which voted last week.
“It’s been increasing in momentum,” said Andrew Gage, the organization’s staff lawyer.
It’s not about handing the entire bill to fossil fuel producers, but seeking a reasonable contribution relative to a company’s pollution, he said.
“No one is saying the individual consumer bears no responsibility, it’s a question of what the relative responsibility is,” he said.
The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers declined comment, saying that since the letters are sent directly to companies, it considers the issue “company specific.”
The campaign has largely flown under the radar until recently when the resort town of Whistler in B.C. drew the ire of Alberta for sending one of the letters to Calgary-based oilsands giant Canadian Natural Resources Ltd.
Last weekend, Alberta’s economic development and trade
“Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising.”
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minister, Deron Bilous, took a dig at Whistler Mayor Jack Crompton while speaking at a pro-oil rally in Grand Prairie.
“The people of Whistler need to tell the truth: that they are using Alberta gas for their cars, for their petrochemical products, and they’re using our oil and it’s time to smarten up,” he told the rally.
Crompton apologized in a Facebook video last week.
Governments in other parts of the world are trying different tactics.
Several cities in the United States, including New York and San Francisco, have tried unsuccessfully to sue major oil companies over climate change.
The Shell Group said in a statement it’s position on climate change has been a matter of public record for decades.
“We strongly support the Paris Agreement and the need for society to transition to a lower carbon future, while also extending the economic and social benefits of energy access to everyone,” it said.
“We believe co-operation is required across all segments of society, not lawsuits that impede the collaboration needed for meaningful change. Individual communities can be powerful drivers of positive change in the energy transition, but filing lawsuits against the producers of energy that drives the world’s economy, raises living standards
and improves lives, is not the answer,” it said.
In the Philippines, the Commission on Human Rights has an ongoing investigation into a complaint filed against 47 coal, oil, gas and cement companies.
Greenpeace says it’s the world’s first human rights investigation into corporate responsibility for climate change and was launched in response to complaints from typhoon survivors, advocates and community groups.
While there’s no monetary element to the investigation, Greenpeace said it could set a precedent for other legal cases relating to climate change liability.
In Ontario, the legislature has twice debated a private member’s bill intended to clarify the rules around suing fossil fuel companies. The bill was killed by the Progressive Conservative government under Premier Doug Ford.
Greenpeace Canada said it’s working on a tool kit for local governments considering launching a legal challenge to fossil fuel companies similar to those in the United States.
“We’ll be encouraging cities across the country, and I’ll personally ask the City of Toronto, to launch this kind of a case,” said Keith Stewart, senior energy strategist at Greenpeace Canada.
Stewart pointed to a city staff report that found between 2000 and 2012, Toronto experienced three one-in-100-year rain storms
and it said the city would continue to experience extreme weather events.
“This wave of climate lawsuits, which have just picked up speed in the last couple of years, is not going to go away,” Stewart said. Whether the letter writing campaign will be effective beyond raising awareness has yet to be seen.
Since Victoria sent 19 letters to the largest fossil fuel companies in the world, none of which Helps said were Canadian, it has received only one response. Shell Canada responded on behalf of Royal Dutch Shell in a letter that did not commit to any payment but highlighted the companies support for transitioning to a low carbon economy.
It also highlighted its Quest project, launched in Edmonton in 2015, as an example, saying it reduces carbon dioxide emissions from oil sands operations by more than one million tonnes per year.
“These are a few examples of the actions we are taking today, recognizing that the global energy transition will span decades, moving at different paces and producing different outcomes in different countries depending on local factors,” says the letter signed by president Michael Crothers.
“We welcome efforts toward constructive, collaborative action as we collectively attempt to address this complex global challenge.”
Jim Pattison roars through rural Saskatchewan in his silver pickup truck, barreling down the prairie road that runs arrow-straight to the horizon. Tossed into the back seat is a sleeping bag and crimson pillow – the unlikely berth for Canada’s self-made billionaire when he can’t find a motel.
Observing the speed limit appears optional, using the turn signal an afterthought. Not that there’s much in the way of obstacles, only shimmering fields of wheat stretching across a terrain so flat that if you lost your dog, as the saying goes, you could watch it run away for three days.
It’s here in Canada’s vast breadbasket that Pattison was born and where, at age 90, he’s overseeing one of the newest arms of his $10 billion empire: Pattison Agriculture, a string of John Deere equipment dealerships serving 21 million acres of farmland.
“We’re seeing more opportunities than we ever have,” says Pattison, steering confidently, his diminutive frame overwhelmed by the cavernous, black leather seats of his Ram 1500 Laramie truck. “There are still lots of opportunities with all the changes going on in the world.”
The road trip offers a rare glimpse of the intensely private Pattison, Canada’s third-richest man, who created his iconic business group in seeming defiance of modern empire-building. He eschews emails, carries a cell phone but barely checks it and can count on one hand the number of times his group has used an investment bank in recent memory.
Pattison is often dubbed Canada’s Warren Buffett, a trope that underscores how relatively unknown he remains outside Canada despite a conglomerate that operates in 85 countries across a dizzying array of industries: supermarkets, lumber, fisheries, disposable packaging for KFC, billboards across Canada and ownership of the No. 1 copyrighted best-seller of all time, the Guinness World Records. Believe it or not, he even owns the Ripley Entertainment Inc. empire.
“Back in Omaha, I’m known as the Jim Pattison of the United States,” Buffett quipped this month when he surprised Pattison onstage in Toronto as the Canadian billionaire was inducted into the country’s Walk of Fame. Pattison dismisses the comparison. “Warren Buffett is in a class all by himself,” he insists.
Pattison has driven 1,700 kilometres (from the Jim Pat-
tison Group Inc. headquarters in Vancouver, across the towering Canadian Rockies to the prairies where he’s acquired four farm equipment companies to create Pattison Agriculture. He likes to drop in unannounced on his holdings, including his supermarkets and dealerships, but word quickly gets around.
“You’re the man we’ve all been waiting for,” says the receptionist at the dealership in Moosomin, Sask. (population 3,100). “You got a call, did ya?” he says with a grin as he shuffles into the shop, helping himself to popcorn as he quizzes employees.
He listens intently as they share their pain points – the dearth of mechanics, narrowing margins on new equipment sales, and the intolerable noise in the cab of a new tractor that has farmers complaining. He occasionally pulls out a pad and an array of coloured pens but mostly relies on his still razor-sharp memory.
Pattison’s rags-to-riches story recalls a different era. Born in Luseland during the Great Depression, he wore clothes stitched together from the castoffs of other children because money was so tight. The family moved out west when he was six, settling in Vancouver’s gritty east side. In the summers, he’d return to the family homestead in Saskatchewan, where the land was still plowed by horses. A natural salesman, he was touting seeds door-to-door at age seven and within a few years was trouncing grown men in a competition to sell the most subscriptions of the Saturday Evening Post.
His path to fortune began with a Pontiac Buick dealership in 1961. He bought it with a $40,000 Royal Bank of Canada loan after persuading the local manager to exceed the branch’s lending limit fivefold. He keeps the yellowing, handwritten financial statements from that first year in a clear plastic folder.
Pattison says his favourite job is still being a used-car salesman. “If I had to, I could always go back.”
He parlayed that into a global business empire over the next five decades, completing hundreds of acquisitions to create the nation’s second-largest private company.
Pattison’s folksy approach belies the tectonic shifts facing some of his businesses. Magazines in their
heyday were his best business of all, he says, but people aren’t reading print anymore and the group agreed to sell its U.S. magazine distribution business last month. His car dealerships have seen ridesharing and autonomous driving threaten to accelerate the potential demise of vehicle ownership.
One of his biggest stakes in an outside company is Westshore Terminals Investment Corp., North America’s biggest coal export facility in Vancouver, a cash cow with a shrinking life span in an era of tightening emission standards. His biggest public holding is a controlling stake in Canfor Corp., the lumber company that has plunged about 35 per cent this year as the U.S. housing market slows.
“Some businesses, we’re exposed like heck,” he says. “But we make the best of what we got. This is part of why I’ve got a job.” Behind that stodgy image are businesses navigating technological disruption.
The Pattison Agriculture dealership in Yorkton is a newly renovated hub in a region of 60,000-acre farms, some bigger than Lichtenstein. Most of the equipment inside costs half a million dollars each; some customers will drop as much as $40 million a year in purchases.
“See what it costs to be a farmer these days?” Pattison asks as he walks around the warehouse, his 5-foot-6-inch frame dwarfed by the tires on some of the machines. “They’ll be less and less small farms. What’s happening is consolidation, consolidation, consolidation.”
Pattison’s low profile is occasionally punctuated by a wellcalculated spectacle. When the provocative, flesh-coloured gown worn by Marilyn Monroe in 1962 to sing Happy Birthday to thenPresident John F. Kennedy came up for auction, Pattison rang his son, Jim Jr., who runs the Ripley Entertainment business.
“I almost had a heart attack when I saw what they thought the dress would go for,” Jim Jr. says in a phone interview from Orlando, Florida. “We have to get a return on everything we invest. I didn’t want it.” His father bid for it anyway, paying more than $5 million, making it the most expensive dress in the world.
The company has reaped dividends in publicity from the purchase, Jim Jr. says. News of Ripley’s purchase in 2016 set off a global tweet storm. The dress has drawn crowds to Ripley’s venues across North America, and the garment will soon embark on a world tour, where visitors will be able to try on a true-to-hourglass-size replica of it.
The dress was a rare splurge for a man who started off with so little.
“Most of the time, I didn’t have the money to buy anything that was any good, so I had to buy stuff that nobody wanted,” Pattison explains. “I didn’t know what goodwill was for a long time,” he says of the premium paid in acquisitions for intangible assets like a brand.
Historically, he’s kept the existing management in place after takeovers and he gives his deputies a long leash. “He trusts people to do their job,” says his son. The organizational hierarchy is as flat as the surrounding prairies.
“My responsibility is to help you be the most competitive in this area,” Pattison Sr. often tells his employees, instructing them to take down his number in case they hit a wall. “But we can’t fix it if we don’t know what the problem is.”
In return, he demands results. In his early years running a car dealership, Pattison would fire the lowest-performing salesman on the lot every month. In practice, he says he was more flexible and intuitive.
“The best salesman I ever had didn’t sell a car for two months, but I stuck with him,” says Pattison. “It just took me a while to decide what he needed to help him.”
For a company with 45,000 employees, it’s still run a bit like a startup. To this day, the corporate headquarters on the 18th floor overlooking Vancouver Harbour and Stanley Park doesn’t have a human resources department. The most important hiring decisions over the years have been made by Pattison and Maureen Chant, his executive assistant of more than 50 years.
Chant may have the most understated job title in corporate Canada. With her shock of snow-white hair and round face, she looks more like a kindly grandmother
than the invisible hand that’s kept Pattison and his incongruous empire running.
Chant advises the group’s nearly 30 business divisions and has influenced who runs them. She oversees Pattison’s $25 million, 150-foot yacht, the Nova Spirit, which has hosted everyone from Princess Diana to Oprah Winfrey. She also looks after his private jets, his Vancouver office condo and a Palm Springs property (previously owned by Frank Sinatra) where Pattison gathers his top lieutenants once a year. For most of her career, Chant has worked seven days a week. She first came to his notice as the night switchboard operator when she’d listen to him practicing his speeches and tell him he was “no good.” In the late 1970s, when Pattison made a disastrous foray into commodities trading, Chant was fielding the margin calls from brokers as a $78 million paper profit evaporated.
Realizing Pattison wouldn’t cut his losses, she told him he was out of cash.
0“In the meantime, without telling me, she tucked away $6 million that I didn’t know I had, otherwise I’d have just spent it,” Pattison recounts.
Asked if he’d ever considered giving Chant, 79, a more prominent title, Pattison seems surprised. It’s never occurred to him, he says. “She’s been a major influence,” he says. “She can retire anytime she wants, but she works because hopefully she likes it.”
While he loves to regale visitors about his company’s past, Pattison is firmly focused on a disruptive future.
“One thing is for sure, things are going to be significantly different 25 years from now,” he says, back in the truck. “You saw those big tractors – who would ever have dreamed that that kind of equipment would be seeding the land or harvesting it?”
On this trip, Pattison has picked up an old pal on the way – Bill Stinson, 83, head of the Westshore coal business and a former chairman of Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd. The two business titans at times struggle with Google Maps and fumble to see if there’s a paper map on board. But soon they’re back on their way, resuming their conversation about the world’s inexorable churn. Drones could deliver groceries. Autonomous trucks could overhaul distribution. Companies are getting bigger; dogs are definitely getting smaller.
“You see them, Bill, in downtown Vancouver? They got dogs now the size of cats,” Pattison marvels.
The afternoon’s wearing on and Pattison is impatient to cram in a couple more dealerships before finding a motel for the night. Neither he nor Stinson has eaten since their 6 a.m. breakfast at the Days Inn that morning in Yorkton. When they finish their loop of Saskatchewan and Manitoba in a few days, they’ll drive home in one straight shot, taking turns at the wheel for the 22-hour drive.
Does he ever take a vacation? “Well, I get 365 days,” he quips. “If you like your work, it’s not work.”