Hurricane Florence slams Carolinas, at least four killed
Tour de North
The 29 riders on this years Cops for Cancer Tour de North ride up Ospika Boulevard on their way to Highway 16 west on Friday morning. The group of RCMP members and emergency services personnel, and community members from across northern B.C., will cycle over 850 km on the route from Prince George to Prince Rupert. This years fundraising goal for the team is $300,000. Their first stop is Vanderhoof. Today they will ride into Fort St. James then on to Fraser Lake for the night. Sunday night they will be in Burns Lake, Monday in Smithers, Tuesday in Hazelton, Wednesday in Terrace. Thursday they will finish the ride in Prince Rupert.
Cannabis
policy and bylaw to go before council Monday
Mark NIELSEN Citizen staff
A series of amended bylaws and a revised policy setting out how the city will treat cannabis sellers and growers will be presented to city council on Monday night.
Pending council approval, cannabis retailers will be able to set up shop within select commercial zones.
The sites will not be “pre-zoned.” Rather, each will require a separate rezoning application and approval from city council.
The stores are to be no less than 1.6 kilometres from each other and their hours set at 9 a.m. to 11 p.m., with council reserving the power to increase or decrease them on a case-by-case basis. Both retailers and growers will also pay the city $5,000 per year for a business licence, which staff said is consistent with the rates
charged by other B.C. municipalities for these types of businesses.
As per the existing bylaw governing medical marijuana grow operations, properties to be used for cannabis production will be at least 15 hectares in size and have at minimum 150-metre setback from any parks and schools. As well, there must be a 30-metre setback from the property line for the facility, rising to 60 metres if there is no screened buffer.
As well, the term “cannabis” will replace all previous references to “marijuana” in the city’s existing bylaws and the product has been essentially folded into the city’s existing liquor licensing policy.
The relevant items will be up for first and second reading.
Also on the agenda:
• Coun. Brian Skakun will seek council’s support for a proposal to
heighten the battle against illegal garbage dumping.
Specifically, he has put forward a motion to direct administration to work with the Fraser-Fort George Regional District to develop a strategy to reduce the practice.
“Illegal dumping has negative effects on natural areas and to the overall cleanliness of our community. There have been reports of illegal dumping within the City of Prince George specifically in areas surrounding Foothills and Tyner boulevards,” Skakun says in a report included on the meeting agenda.
The FFGRD “faces the same challenges,” Skakun continues. Along with the regional district, he suggested key stakeholders such as the Spruce City Wildlife Association be included in the process.
— see TOURISM, page 3
Pot farm odour, security concerns leaders
Jeremy HAINSWORTH
Citizen news service
Marijuana farm odour and security on B.C.’s Agricultural Land Reserve are issues of concern for municipal leaders gathered in Whistler for the annual Union of B.C. Municipalities conference.
“The No. 1 issue is going to be odour,” said Vanderhoof Coun. Brian Frenkel.
“I’m going to suggest the odour doesn’t come and go,” added Chilli-
wack poultry farmer and city councillor Chris Kloot. “It’s 24/7.”
Control of odour can fall under federal, provincial and local controls, government officials said.
The federal Cannabis Act outlines cultivation and processing practices,
B.C. Ministry of Agriculture senior policy analyst Jackie Cushing said.
Cannabis can be grown in open fields or in buildings constructed specifically for growing crops prior to July 13.
“Any building that has been used
for animals or livestock does not qualify,” said Agricultural Land Commission CEO Kim Grout.
“It’s only buildings that have been used for crops.”
However, said Willow Minaker, director of the Ministry of Agriculture’s Strengthening Farming initiative, Ottawa has yet to release odour compliance and enforcement guidelines.
However, she added, federal regulations say filtration systems must be in place to restrict odours.
— see ‘IT’S IMPOSSIBLE, page 3
Thirteen candidates running for council
Mark NIELSEN Citizen staff mnielsen@pgcitizen.ca
Prince George voters will have 13 candidates to choose from for the eight city councillor spots – and two for mayor. Willy Ens, a relative unknown, submitted nomination papers Friday to run against mayoral incumbent Lyn Hall.
Ens could not be immediately reached for comment but on a Facebook page, said he is a “radical nonconformist thinking coach. Here to preserve Mother Earth for seven generations forward.”
Running for the remaining seats on city council are Frank Everitt, Viv Fox, Garth Frizzell, Dave Fuller, Murry Krause, Terri McConnachie, Cori Ramsay, Kyle Sampson, Susan Scott, Paul Serup, Brian Skakun, Cameron Stolz and Chris Wood.
As for school board, running for one of five area one (Prince George) seats are Betty Bekkering, Tim Bennett, Sarah Holland, Trudy Klassen, Allan Kranz, Stephanie Mikalishen-Deol, Ron Polillo, Corey Walker, Sharel Warrington and Bruce Wiebe.
Harold Edwards and Bob
Thompson are vying to represent area three (Robson Valley) and Shuirose Valimohamed is the sole candidate for area two (Mackenzie). As for the Fraser-Fort George Regional District board of directors, Warren Wilson, (Electoral Area A Salmon River and Lakes), Bill Empey (Electoral Area D Tabor Lake-Stone Creek) and Art Kaehn (Electoral Area E Woodpecker-Hixon) are in by acclamation. Here’s a look at the contested races:
• Electoral Area C Chilako River-Nechako: Lara Beckett and Colin Clyne.
• Electoral Area F Willow River-Upper Fraser: Kevin Dunphy and Joe Rositano.
• Electoral Area G Crooked River-Parsnip: Terry Burgess, James Clefstad and Pat Crook.
• Electoral Area H Robson Valley-Canoe: Dannielle Alan and Ben Hunter. Candidacies remain subject to challenge until Tuesday at 4 p.m. and the deadline for withdrawal is Friday at 4 p.m. The campaign period begins Sept. 22 – although candidates have been allowed to erect signs since September – and general voting day is Oct. 20.
Majumdar wrote, stars in TNW double-bill
Frank PEEBLES Citizen staff fpeebles@pgcitizen.ca
Theatre Northwest’s new season is staring us in the fish eyes.
The city’s popular professional theatre company begins the new campaign of drama with an awardwinning flourish. The double-bill of Fish Eyes and Let Me Borrow That Top has scored high applause across Canada. These interlocking plays (there is also a third one in this trilogy) were written by Anita Majumdar and she is the star in Prince George starting Thursday night. It is a look into her own youth as an Indo-Canadian growing up in the Canadian suburbs. It has a lot of bangra dancing, a lot of laughs, and looks hard, in a comedic way, at the ways two cultures come together in the everyday Canadian high school. She explained to The Citizen the reallife truths that ended up composing these characters.
Citizen: These plays are centred on coming of age, and the angsts of youth. Please talk about why you centred on at that period of time in a person’s life. Who were the real people and real situations in your own youth that found their way onto these pages?
Majumdar: When I was in high school, I remember thinking, “I can’t wait till I’m out of here and be treated like an adult!” I had this felt experience of double standards as a woman of colour, but I assumed that was a high school issue and that everything would change after the age of 18. When I finally became an adult, I realized that high school had actually been a primer for what to expect when I grew up. When I started writing Fish Eyes, I was in my early twenties and one of the only people of colour in my theatre school acting class. My first day of school was 9/11. I watched a diversity-driven city like Montreal change into a people who moved to the other side of the subway car when I or anyone who looked like me got on. As well, for three years I witnessed a few teachers taking advantage of or bullying young students under the pretense, “that’s just how it goes.”
Placing Fish Eyes in a high school setting redirected the rage I felt and did that thing that high school plays do: it made it funny. The nostalgia we have when we revisit high school as adults gives us the opportunity to cringe and laugh at what seemed so important in those early years. But it also offers a fresh perspective on the everyday inequities we readily accept as adults. Fish Eyes also came out of loneliness. I’m an only child and learned to talk to myself to keep myself company and never stopped. Being the only South Asian-Canadian kid in elementary school who didn’t speak English till she was six also isolated me. So it made sense that I gravitated towards the solo show format. And perhaps that’s why Fish Eyes has had so much appeal for so many
years. Given how vast this country is, I think there’s a reason we’re attracted to stories about isolation and “otherness” in Canada. Fish Eyes both addresses that isolation and tries to fill its void.
Citizen: When you move the performances from place to place, how do the themes of the play resonate in different communities?
Majumdar: That’s hard to say given that I’m only ever in each community for the duration of the performance, which is too short a time to accurately assess the social climate beforehand.
And it also depends from performance to performance. A student matinee resonates in a different way than an adult/evening performance does. But sure, communities with larger concentrations of South Asian-Canadians usually means there are more audience members who catch the Bollywood and other cultural references that are laced throughout the plays, but for some communities the stories act as a gentle introduction to a culture that can seem complex. Either way, the premise of high school seems to unify those collective audience experiences while at the same time reminding us that Canadian teenagers come in all shapes and colours.
Citizen: What were the things that advanced your career and ignited you to stay on
in the performing arts when so many other professions are available to you?
Majumdar: I always knew I wanted to be an actor, but what I didn’t anticipate was becoming a playwright, a choreographer, or a producer. If I’m honest, I wouldn’t have stayed in the performing arts if I had only been an actor. It wouldn’t have been feasible to make a living on only that. But more than happening upon a multiple revenue source, acting alone wasn’t enough to keep me happy. I need change-ups to my work to keep me on my toes and each time I wear a new hat, I understand my first love of acting in a new way.
As an actor, my first film, CBC’s Murder Unveiled, was pretty life-changing and helped me figure out my process and what I needed (and didn’t need) to prepare for a role that I didn’t write myself. It was also the first time I travelled for work and got to go to film festivals and win my first award. But I remember shooting that film and then having to fly back to Toronto to produce and perform a workshop production of Fish Eyes at Harboufront Theatre. Tina Rasmussen at Harboufront taught me the fundamentals of producing and marketing theatre, for which I’ll be forever grateful. Just like writing, it was another set of tools to ensure I didn’t need to wait for the phone
to ring in order to get work in the arts. I would also say being accepted into the National Theatre School of Canada was a pivotal moment. That was where I was able to understand that all of these arts traditions that I knew how to do or was interested in could have a place in the theatre. It was three years of figuring out that it was possible to shape Canadian theatre and add my voice into the mix and not just as an actor fulfilling someone else’s vision. It empowered me to make a greater contribution and changed my sense of worth.
Tickets on sale now
This is Majumdar’s first visit to Prince George. She and her double-feature launch Theatre Northwest’s 25th anniversary season with a lot of laughs and a lot of truths, no matter which root culture you might come from. Fish Eyes and Let Me Borrow That Top run together until Oct. 7. Tickets are on sale now online at the Theatre Northwest website or at Books & Company. The book form of the Fish Eyes Trilogy can be purchased online at www.playwrightscanada.com, co-published by Banff Centre Press and illustrated by Maria Nguyen.
HANDOUT PHOTO BY DAHLIA KATZ
Anita Majumdar wrote and stars in Theatre Northwest’s production of Fish Eyes and Let Me Borrow That Top.
Pool foe makes council bid
Mark NIELSEN Citizen staff mnielsen@pgcitizen.ca
A Hart-area resident is running for council – and against the plan to build a new Four Seasons Pool.
If elected, Paul Serup hopes to convince fellow council members to nix the project, even though voters authorized the city to borrow $35 million to replace the aging downtown pool in a referendum held in October 2017.
“Council can be changed and it then can be (nixed),” Serup maintained in an interview Friday.
Rather than tear down the old Days Inn to make way for the pool, Serup said
it could be used as affordable housing.
The city purchased the hotel for $4.5 million and the cost of demolishing it and the old pool has been estimated at $2.5 million, both over and above the cost of building the new pool.
Serup’s father, Svend, was behind a petition calling for a pool to be built in the Hart instead. It drew 1,660 names but council took no action on it when it was received.
Asked if he would like to see the Hart be home to a new pool should he win council’s support for scrapping construction of a new pool downtown, Serup said putting one next to the YMCA of Northern B.C. and having the Y manage the facility is worth investigating.
At the time the idea was first raised, Y CEO Amanda Alexander said handing over operations to her organization would save the city millions of dollars.
However, according to city manager Kathleen Soltis, the pool would have been part of a larger project that would have included a new YMCA building and “would have cost far more than the new pool proposed in the referendum.”
Serup said he would also seek ways to reduce bureaucracy and streamline approval processes.
“Unless it’s necessary, government should get out of the way of people and let them pursue their dreams, their legitimate entrepreneurial dreams,” he said.
Derrick running for school board
Citizen staff
A local businessman whose name has appeared on ballots in the past is running for school board.
In a statement issued this week Trent Derrick said he stands for access to all services and supports for all students, supports food programs for all students and fully supports the recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The owner of Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory and Spa of the North, Derrick was a candidate in the last federal election under the NDP banner and ran for city council in 2014 and for mayor in 2008.
According to the statement, Derrick brings over 25 years of leadership experience in the private, public and non-profit sectors and has served the community in many roles such as coaching baseball, sitting on numerous boards and volunteering throughout the community. Derrick is from Prince George and has “experienced the many challenges of students within rural and urban settings” and is “fully committed to strengthening and building a safe and inclusive learning environment for all students regardless of race, social economic status, sexuality and location.”
General voting day for school board, city council and regional district is on Oct. 20.
Tourism asking council for decision on hotel tax
— from page 1
Tourism Prince George is asking council members to decide whether a tax originally intended to pay for promoting the city to tourists will also be applied to affordable housing projects.
Visitors to the city currently pay a threeper-cent levy on the cost of a hotel or motel room and that levy raises about $1.1 million a year for Tourism Prince George.
The provincial government has added af-
fordable housing as a permissible use of the funds raised to help address local housing needs and ensure tourism workers can find housing. There are also provisos: revenues from online-based services such as AirBnB can be used for affordable housing, but spending of those raised through traditional accommodation venues remain subject to approval of 51 per cent of the city’s hotels and motels.
‘It’s impossible for greenhouses to be retrofitted for no odour’
— from page 1
Pitt Meadows Coun. John Becker said he hopes the odour regulations will be enforced, adding that the city has taken legal advice on odour control.
He said Health Canada regulations on odour issues would trump any right to farm.
For a cannabis producer to obtain a licence, they must prove they will have zero odour, he said.
“It’s the greenhouse conversions,” Becker said.
“We’ve been told it’s impossible for greenhouses to be retrofitted for no odour.”
Minaker said the only successful remedy is a fully enclosed heating, ventilation and air conditioning system.
“It’s difficult. Closed systems can be successful.”
The growing of cannabis in open fields has raised the issue of theft.
Officials downplayed those concerns.
“With legalization, cannabis is going to be readily available,” Cushing said. “People will be able to grow it themselves at home. What is the risk of large-scale crime compared to a completely legal product?”
AIDS Walk Block Party goes today
Frank PEEBLES Citizen staff fpeebles@pgcitizen.ca
Positive Living North makes it a positive living block on Third Avenue this weekend.
The city’s HIV-AIDS support agency is celebrating their support network and a year of promoting community wellness with the annual AIDS Walk Block Party today in front of their headquarters at the Fire Pit (1120 3rd Ave).
“As a community, we are all tied together,” said AIDS Walk coordinator Judy Mitchell who feels that the AIDS Walk is more than just a fundraiser.
“The AIDS Walk is an opportunity to learn and raise awareness about HIV,” she said.
“The AIDS Walk celebrates the resiliency of people who are living with this chronic disease. The Tied Together theme is how we are all connected and how by coming together we support each other in support and understanding for those who are affected by HIV.”
The AIDS Walk celebrates the resiliency of people who are living with this chronic disease.
— Judy Mitchell, AIDS Walk coordinator
The connections can all shake hands, hug and introduce each other at the block party. It runs 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. One of the biggest obstacles for HIV-AIDS advocates to overcome is an old social stigma that still persist after all these years of fighting the disease. Stigmas melt when communities come together in support of advocates, helpers, and especially the people who live every day with these conditions.
“We stigmatize, avoid and ostracize because of fear but you can’t get HIV from a hug,” Mitchell said.
“You cannot get HIV from listening to a person’s story. You cannot get HIV from shaking a hand. However, you are at risk for intense feelings of caring.”
According to data from the network of HIV-AIDS agencies across the country, of which Positive Living North is one, more than 65,000 people in Canada are living with HIV.
“This is more than ever before. In fact, one in five of those people don’t even know they have the disease,” said Mitchell.
“When you have HIV, life gets a lot harder. You may face stigma and discrimination, and the subsequent loss of relationships with friends or family when they learn of your HIV status.
“Despite advances in treatment, there is still no cure or vaccines to prevent new infections.
“The AIDS Walk reminds us that HIV-AIDS still poses major obstacles for people living with the virus.
“The need for providing support and creating awareness is as urgent as ever.”
The AIDS Walk hosted by Positive Living North in Prince George is being held in conjunction with AIDS Walks that will be taking place in over 27 communities across Canada during September.
This year marks the 22nd year of the national initiative. Since its inception in 1996, the national AIDS Walk campaign has raised more than $42 million.
Adding to the Saturday festivities is the open partnership this year between the Positive Living North block party in the 1100 block and the coincidental Farm Fest Prince George street event only one block west.
The two are combining crowds to mutually improve the atmosphere.
DERRICK
CITIZEN PHOTO BY BRENT BRAATEN
Paul Serup is running for Prince George city council.
Hydro repairs
work on the hydro line in the alley between Third Avenue and Fourth Avenue
Eight paving projects on city schedule
Citizen staff
The city is starting eight new paving projects this week adding up to nearly 7.5 lane kilometres of newly-paved road. Here’s a look:
• Bird Street from Queensway to the end of the street (0.30 lane kilometres).
• Foothills Boulevard from Vellencher Road to Highland Drive (1.760 lane kilometres).
• Hamilton Avenue from Queensway to Hazelton Street (0.410 lane kilometres).
Report calls for additional protection for caribou population
Frank PEEBLES Citizen staff fpeebles@pgcitizen.ca
A new report was released this week to address declining caribou populations.
The new report was put out by the forest industry.
It may have followed that a forest sector examination of a woodland animal might have hinted at environmental protection tactics that somehow still permitted unfettered logging. Not so. In fact the document entitled Forest Sector Contributions To Woodland Caribou Recovery called for stepping up whatever measures were necessary to bring this species – with endangered herds in multiple regions around Prince George – back from the edge of extinction.
Published by the Forest Products Association of Canada (FPAC), it urged all levels of government to invest in new science, accept more input from people working out on the land, and accept historic Aboriginal accounts of wildlife trends dating back prior to written history.
The reasons for the ecological endorsement is perhaps not expected, said FPAC chief executive officer Derek Nighbor, but healthy forests are profitable forests, and conscientious business practices make Canadian wood products a better buy on the world market.
“Canada’s forests and forestry workers create real environmental, social, and economic opportunities for our country,” said Nighbor. “This report and its recommendations reflect an ongoing commitment from the dedicated professionals in our sector to work with all levels of government, Indigenous communities, researchers and scientists, and local community groups to support caribou recovery across Canada.”
are out on the land, we are close to all those values that are connected to our harvest and reforestation values. You have multiple interests all on the same landscape and we want to see government policy that is based on the very best possible science. We don’t want to create ecological victims and we don’t want to be the industrial victims of bad decisions. We are an industry that has the ability to be flexible to the needs of the ecology, we know it is important to our customers around the world, and we know it’s the law. We just want – for everybody’s sake – to be operating under the best possible data-sets.”
Operational decisions should be researched carefully to anticipate its ripple effects, said Nighbor, and that includes the decisions to log a certain area or what silviculture should be done, where to build a resource road or where to clear a landing. That applies as well to ecological tactics on behalf of endangered species.
“It’s important to not end up doing more damage to the ecology due to unintended consequences of very noble intentions, and on the industry’s part we need to consider that just because we’ve done things a certain way up to now, that that can continue without dire consequences. We all have a role to play, we all have our impacts, and the best way to go forward is with strong science and strong dialogue with those people who have regional knowledge.”
Nighbor said it wasn’t lost on the industry that more pressure was put on these issues by fire than by forestry.
Getting a handle on shutting down wildfires before they balloon into Shovel Lake or Verdun Mountain or Elephant Hill would help the industry be better resourced to help the endangered caribou and other species under threat.
• LaSalle Avenue from Queensway to the end of Hazelton Street (0.890 lane kilometres)
• Quadrant Crescent from Queensway to the end of Inlander Street (1.100 lane kilometres)
• Highway 16 Frontage from Westgate Road to Marleau Road and Marleau Road to Lalonde Road (1.78 lane kilometres)
• Rose Lane from Quadrant Crescent to Regents Crescent (0.390 lane kilometres)
• Royal Crescent from Queensway to Regents Crescent (0.790 lane kilometres)
All of the projects are scheduled for completion by Wednesday. Motorists are urged to use alternate routes whenever possible and to drive with caution.
In an exclusive conversation with The Citizen, Nighbor said the national forest industry has already done this kind of thing before, helping the Vancouver Island marmot to climb exponentially higher from critical population lows, and the sector is also advocating for other species like the marbled murrelet, northern goshawk, the barn owl and several others.
“All of this stuff is really connected,” Nighbor said. “We are an industry that plans in 100- to 200- year cycles for harvesting, and we develop five-year and 10-year plans within those larger plans. We in the forest sector need to know where the wetlands are, where are the eagles nests? Where are the bear dens? And where are the caribou? We need to be out in front of that, and we
“We have lost 20 times the amount we harvest to fires and pests. If that’s not a call to action... And B.C. is ground zero for a lot of this stuff,” Nighbor said.
The ferocity of the modern forest fire is a symptom of global climate change, he said, and that is having a profound impact on the entire ecosystem where forest works do their work. It has changed hydrology, growth periods, species patters, animal migrations, plant life, and will also change forest policy.
Nighbor said investing in caribou protections, especially the research needed, would also help inform overall knowledge of the changing Canadian forest and how to it could be better managed.
CITIZEN PHOTO BY BRENT BRAATEN
Linemen
on Friday.
Hurricane Florence slams Carolinas
Jeffrey COLLINS, Jonathan DREW Citizen news service
MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. — Florence already has proven deadly with its nearly nonstop rain, surging seawater and howling winds, and the threat is days from ending as remnants of the once major hurricane slowly creep inland across the Carolinas.
Some towns have received more than 60 centimetres of rain from Florence, and forecasters warned that drenching rains with as much as a metre of water could trigger epic flooding well inland through early next week. At least four people have died, and authorities fear the toll will go higher as the tropical storm crawls westward Saturday across South Carolina.
North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper called Florence an “uninvited brute” that could wipe out entire communities as it grinds its way across land.
“The fact is this storm is deadly and we know we are days away from an ending,” Cooper said.
As 645-kilometre-wide Florence pounded away at the coast with torrential downpours and surging seas, rescue crews used boats to reach more than 360 people besieged by rising waters in New Bern, North Carolina, while many of their neighbours awaited help. Dozens more were rescued from a collapsed motel.
Florence flattened trees, buckled buildings and crumpled roads.
The storm knocked out power to more than 910,000 homes and businesses, and the number could keep rising.
A mother and baby were killed when a tree fell on a house, according to a tweet from Wilmington police.
Also, a 77-year-old man was apparently knocked down by the wind and died after going out to check on his hunting dogs, Lenoir County authorities said, and the governor’s office said a man was electrocuted while trying to connect extension cords in the rain.
Storm surges – the bulge of ocean water pushed ashore by the
hurricane – were as high as three metres.
Shaken after seeing waves crashing on the Neuse River just outside his house in New Bern, restaurant owner and hurricane veteran Tom Ballance wished he had evacuated.
“I feel like the dumbest human being who ever walked the face of the Earth,” he said.
After reaching a terrifying Category 4 peak of 225 km/h earlier in the week, Florence made landfall as a Category 1 hurricane at 7:15 a.m. at Wrightsville Beach, a few miles (kilometres) east of Wilmington and not far from the South Carolina line. It came ashore along a mostly boarded-up, emptied-out stretch of coastline.
Florence was downgraded to a tropical storm later, its winds weakened to 112 km/h as it moved forward at 6 km/h about 25 km north of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.
But it was clear that this was really about the water, not the wind.
Morehead City, North Carolina, had received 58 cm of rain by Friday night with more torrents on the way.
Florence’s forward movement
Province promises to create more childcare spaces
Jeremy HAINSWORTH Citizen news service
New childcare spaces are on the way for B.C. families as the province announced community partnerships Tuesday through the Union of B.C. Municipalities (UBCM) to fund 1,370 spaces with almost $17 million in funding that has already been announced.
“We know how hard it is for families to struggle with the cost of living,” said Minister of State for Child Care Katrina Chen.
“This is just the start.”
Minister of Child and Family Development Katherine Conroy said $13.7 million would go to the Community Child Care Space Creation Program to focus on infant and toddler care.
Conroy said municipal and regional governments can access up to $1 million per project.
Priority would go to projects for infants and toddlers, those offering care outside regular business hours, those operated by a public organization or non-profit and those benefiting underserved populations, which could include First Nations; children with special needs; lower-income families; and minority, immigrant or refugee groups.
Chen said local communities have frequently used the UBCM as a forum to lobby for better and more childcare.
“Unfortunately, your calls were unheard and because of that, there’s a childcare crisis in this province,” Chen said.
She said having the UBCM administer the program would help develop partnerships in communities where care is needed most
“We need local knowledge to better understand what is going on in communities to give relief to struggling parents,” Conroy said.
Conroy also announced $3 million for the UBCM to administer a Community Child Care Planning grant program.
The program would enable municipalities to work locally to identify needs around childcare spaces.
Local governments are now eligible to apply to the UBCM for up to $25,000 from the planning program, which is targeted to communities that are interested in creating new childcare spaces over the next 10 years.
The funding is part of a joint agreement with Ottawa announced in February.
That announcement allocated $153 million over three years to create the new spaces, provide working funding to care providers for low-cost infant and toddler care and reduce parent fees for at least 1,786 children.
“Today’s announcement will ensure that more families and children have a real chance to succeed right across British Columbia,” federal Minister of Families, Children and Social Development Yves Duclos said in a news release.
An announcement is expected later this year on the use of allocated money to expand culturally based Indigenous childcare for on- and off-reserve programming with 390 new spaces.
and New England by the middle of next week.
Meteorologist Ryan Maue of weathermodels.com said Florence could dump a staggering 68 trillion litres of rain over a week on North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky and Maryland. That’s enough to fill the Chesapeake Bay or cover the entire state of Texas with nearly 10 cm of water, he calculated.
North Carolina alone is forecast to get 36 trillion litres, enough to cover the Tar Heel state to a depth of about 25 cm.
In Jacksonville, North Carolina, next to Camp Lejeune, firefighters and police fought wind and rain as they went door to door to pull more than 60 people out of the Triangle Motor Inn after the structure began to crumble and the roof started to collapsel.
In New Bern, population 29,000, flooding on the Neuse River left 500 people in peril.
during the day slowed to a nearstandstill – sometimes it was going no faster than a human can walk – and that enabled it to pile on the rain.
The flooding soon spread into South Carolina, swamping places like North Myrtle Beach, in a resort area known for its white sands and multitude of golf courses.
For people living inland in the Carolinas, the moment of maximum peril from flash flooding could arrive days later, because it takes time for rainwater to drain into rivers and for those streams to crest.
Preparing for the worst, about 9,700 National Guard troops and civilians were deployed with highwater vehicles, helicopters and boats.
Authorities warned, too, of the threat of mudslides and the risk of an environmental disaster from floodwaters washing over industrial waste sites and hog farms.
Florence could become a major test for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which was heavily criticized as slow and unprepared last year for Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, where the death toll was put at nearly 3,000.
The National Hurricane Center said Florence will eventually break up over the southern Appalachians and make a right hook to the northeast, its rainy remnants moving into the mid-Atlantic states
“WE ARE COMING TO GET YOU,” the city tweeted around 2 a.m. Friday. “You may need to move up to the second story, or to your attic, but WE ARE COMING TO GET YOU.”
AP PHOTO
High winds and water surround buildings as Hurricane Florence hits Front Street in downtown Swansboro, N.C., on Friday.
Time to save our oceans
Over the past year, the movement to ban plastic straws has seen tremendous success.
Major companies including Starbucks have decided to eliminate them in their stores, and some metropolitan areas have passed citywide bans. This consumer and environmental trend has been an encouraging example of collective action on an economy-wide scale and has no doubt helped keep plastic out of our oceans and out of marine life. But ultimately, these actions are small steps toward solving a massive problem. To truly save the ocean, we must take serious action to halt climate change on a global scale – and soon. Our oceans are critical to every part of our lives – they feed us, transport us, secure our borders, employ us, give us oxygen and inspire us – but week after week, headlines reflect gloom and doom. Coral reefs around the world are dying; rising seas are flooding coastal communities and threatening to overwhelm some of the world’s busiest airports; fishermen from New England to
Alaska are hauling in empty nets; and intensifying storms threaten not just our coastlines but inland communities as well.
Climate change is a major contributor to all these problems, and yet the ocean is far too often left out of conversations about climate solutions. If we want to survive and thrive on a warming planet, that has to change. At this week’s Global Climate Action Summit in California’s Bay Area, oceans are finally part of the agenda. This summit provides an opportunity for nonfederal actors to come together to discuss how we as a nation and world can mitigate and adapt to the impacts of climate change by leading from a local level – notably, without commitments or leadership from the U.S. government, which announced its intention to withdraw our country from the Paris agreement more than a year ago. It’s certainly important to document the damage that climate change is doing to the ocean, but a major topic of discussion at the summit will be also be how to unlock the ocean’s climate solutions, which have many
additional benefits. Creating and enforcing marine protected areas means fish stocks can recover even amid warming oceans, providing increased food security and additional fishing jobs.
Improving our coastal infrastructure and making it more resilient to sea-level rise and extreme weather means not only stronger communities but also increased trade opportunities.
Restoring “blue carbon” ecosystems, such as sea-grass beds and mangroves, would mean the oceans can continue to work hard to absorb our excess carbon, clean our waters and protect our communities. The oceans may be under deep threat from climate impacts, but they can also be the basis of a new blue economy.
However, the hard reality is that the subnational action being touted at this week’s Global Climate Action Summit, while thoughtful and hopeful, is not enough on its own to create the real change we need to avert disaster. A recent study found that the commitments to cut emissions from cities, states, regions and companies are signifi-
Woodward book exposes Trumps’ bluster, bungling
Ispent the transformative summer afternoons of 1972 affixed to the new colour television set in my grandparents’ living room.
The Watergate hearings chaired by the drawling and laconic Sam Ervin preempted network soap operas to broadcast a different set of scandals and intrigues live across the continent, slowly but surely sending the U.S. administration to its grave by winter.
A few years later, by the time journalism became my post-secondary pursuit, Bob Woodward was an acknowledged deity, onehalf of the combo that befelled Richard Nixon and bequeathed a new power of the press.
Many before him and colleague Carl Bernstein were investigative, but no one had held the most powerful person in the world to such accountability for malfeasance.
I have marvelled how over a half-century Woodward has sustained, how he has recurrently mustered the insider story – for the Washington Post, where he has worked since 1971, and for decades now with his own books about president after president that have shed light after light.
I spent many hours last week, and recommend it to others, to course through Fear: Trump in the White House, his new book on an unlikely ascension to and occupation of the U.S. presidency, and it is not exactly what you might think.
Sure, the excerpts that preceded the release were of folly, of fumbling and of fomenting a disgusting vein of America – story after story of the belittling of
aides who at times swipe documents from his desk to avoid further chaos, the uncouth bigmouth who amplifies conflict out of an insecure reflex, the absence of logic or consistency or attentiveness to even basic tasks, and the utterly unapologetic and proudly ill-informed leader.
Fair enough: this was what many in his audience craved, and Woodward has put out a fulsome platter of red meat to affirm their detraction. For want of a better term, the result is tribal, convincing none of President Donald Trump’s supporters they backed the wrong person while enthusing those who accept the orthodoxy of his incompetence, corruption and need to be taken down. I got as a reader what I expected in yet another long-form magazine-style chronicle, a piece of current writing that probes the most pressing issue of the day –Woodward’s books usually need to be read in their first few weeks because they report on events of the last few months.
The most vivid elements arise from a controversial technique Woodward has of recreating conversations through recollections of one or more participants or someone present in the room.
It is a neat, but obviously flawed, way to enliven a book’s narrative, but in Fear it is a regular dagger in hand. (I mean, the stuff he says Trump says!)
In greater context, though, the book does not so much explore
the consequence of Trump’s blunders as it does the impact of his bluster. While its revelations do not prove the criminality Woodward found in Nixon, it is certainly evidence of what he calls a “nervous breakdown” of the most powerful office of the most powerful country – even if we cannot determine how it arose or where it might lead – and an extraordinary culture of fear in Trump’s home.
As literary journalism, Fear succeeds where Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury failed. It is broader, deeper and fairer, and there are fewer (but still some) selfinterested passages from the likes of Steve Bannon. But most important, it also does not spare Trump’s foes, at times on international relations but also on his domestic perspective of an America with many left out of the spoils of success. Trump would have been wise to co-operate with Woodward; he is hardly ruined by him.
It is at its heart about a president who didn’t realize he was going to win and still can’t determine with any discipline how to exercise his clout.
On issue after issue, it demonstrates an incoherence of journey, an acceptance of second-best practices, and a boss who through the complicity of his aides is protected from the wider world and from himself. It’s proof you can’t run a country the way you run a business. The longer Trump stays, the more it seems likely Woodward can furnish sequels in the same vein.
— Kirk LaPointe is the editor-inchief of Business in Vancouver and vice-president, editorial, of Glacier Media.
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cant but are “still not nearly enough to hold global temperature increase to ‘well below 2 degrees C’ and work ‘toward limiting it to 1.5 degrees C’” – the Paris agreement threshold for triggering dangerous warming. And at the national level, the Trump administration has not just been inactive – it has been on a rampage to warm our planet and harm our oceans, such as rushing headlong into increased onshore and offshore drilling. We can’t let a U.S. president who doesn’t believe in science or care about climate change stop us. As small an action as it may be, banning straws shows that Americans are paying attention. Will Americans continue to use their voices and their wallets to make real change for our oceans? I believe that they can, and they will, and that making oceans a part of the climate solution conversation – at the subnational, national and global levels – will lead us to a more sustainable future.
— John Podesta served as chief of staff to former U.S. president Bill Clinton and counsellor to former president Barack Obama.
Sex advice for first-year students
Ispent last Saturday afternoon in a darkened theater, surrounded by giggling college freshmen, watching a play about sexual assault. I was back at my alma mater, and not much had changed.
Correction: a few things had. When I was a freshman in 2006, Princeton’s orientation-week sex-ed program was called Sex on a Saturday Night, and upperclassmen sometimes attended just to heckle. In 2018, it had been renamed The Way You Move (still awkward but less salacious) and was a decidedly more solemn affair.
That said, the basic contours remained the same. Student actors dramatized a weekend night out, replete with budding romances and too much beer. There was “pregame” drinking, a goofy dance party and then, startlingly, an alcohol-enabled rape.
That harrowing scene was followed by a somber debriefing and an introduction to the college’s peer advisers for sexual health. Having sex with a blacked-out classmate was not OK, because she could not consent. An administrator took pains to define the term and to discuss the “gray area” between a clear yes and an absolute no – it was described as a contaminated space, where to engage in sexual activity was to assume varying amounts of risk.
This was where it began to strike me as odd, in a way it hadn’t back when I was one of the 18-yearolds in the audience. Something was missing from the conversation, which seemed awfully coldblooded. The discussion was all about consent, but it was only about consent. Consent is not a bad thing, of course – a profusion of sexual harassment cases has taught us that much – but consent isn’t enough.
Over the past year, the #MeToo movement has prompted a healthy reevaluation of our sexual mores. But as more-complicated cases come to light – a bad date with Aziz Ansari is harder to parse than Harvey Weinstein allegedly attacking women in hotel rooms – it has become increasingly clear that the rethinking is not complete. While we’re much better at calling out bad behavior, we haven’t come to an agreement on what’s good.
Consent is the line we use to separate the acceptable from the unacceptable, but it’s thin and often detached from a real understanding of the human person. While consent is a helpful legal framework for risk avoidance, it too often allows us to bypass questions of respect, relationship and care. Is the worst thing about taking advantage of a drunken classmate really the fact that you didn’t get her to mouth “yes” first?
Even among the consent
regime’s fiercest partisans, the realization that something is missing has been quietly gaining steam.
Feminist writer Jaclyn Friedman, co-editor of the seminal Yes Means Yes anthology, recently wrote as much in Refinery29: “On the way to codification we’ve replaced some of the old rape myths with this new one: That consent is just a hurdle you have to clear in order to Get The Sex.”
She continues: real consent “requires us to see our sex partners – whether they be anonymous hookups or life partners – not simply as instrumental to our own pleasure but as co-equal collaborators, equally human and important, equally harmable, equally free and equally sovereign.” It’s not enough to just note that there is a “gray area” that requires risk avoidance, independent from any ethical concerns.
After the presentation ended and the freshmen filed out, I stopped backstage to talk to the student actors. Had the play seemed like enough, in their opinion? Wasn’t it a little incomplete?
“Yeah,” one, a junior, agreed.
“The logic is sort of Cartesian.” (Oh, college!) Do this, not that. Don’t break the rules. But given the time constraints...” she shrugged.
She was right, of course. A onehour play, even combined with a well-intended administrative extrapolation, can’t impart a full understanding of human dignity.
Moral consciousness is built over a span of years, maybe decades.
Empathy and intimacy have to be learned. And developing true humanity – the ability to view relationships as shared rather than transactional, to see others as deserving of respect and goodwill – is the work of a lifetime.
No doubt the creators of these college skits now realize that they’re a backstop at best and know they don’t deliver a holistic sexual education or moral sensibility. Because college is too late.
One would hope parents and primary schools are doing their part, long before they release their subjects out into the world.
And maybe, too, in dorm rooms or philosophy seminars, questions of ethics and empathy will be discussed in more detail by the students themselves.
That might be the task for this next generation of sex-havers – to develop a sexual ethic that is not just a set of rules but also truly respects the human person.
In the meantime, my advice to the Class of 2022 is simple, though in practice I know it’s going to take some work: Yes, get consent. But try to be human as well.
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CHRISTINE EMBA Washington Post
Guest Column
Cardiologists not sold on new Apple Watch
Hayley TSUKAYAMA Citizen news service
The newest Apple Watch can now flag potential problems with your heartbeat – a feature that’s been cleared by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and that Apple is marking as a major achievement. But some doctors said that including heart-monitoring tools in such a popular consumer product could prompt unnecessary anxiety and medical visits.
The company touted its heart-tracking feature as proof that the watch can help people proactively manage their health
“The Apple Watch has become the intelligent guardian for your health,” Apple chief operating officer Jeff Williams, who oversees the development of the Apple Watch, said in the company’s presentation of new Apple products this week.
Onstage, American Heart Association head Ivor Benjamin said that products such as Apple Watch offer “deeper health insights” that can promote longer, healthier lives. The technology used to flag potential heart problems is more complex – and closer to what physicians use in diagnostic tests – than the heart rate trackers used now by Apple, Fitbit and other wearable device makers.
The FDA has cleared Apple’s device as a Class II medical device, meaning that it is intended to diagnose or treat a medical condition and poses a minimal risk to use. (Other Class II devices include some powered wheelchairs and pregnancy kits, according to the FDA website.) In its letter to Apple clearing the feature, the FDA listed as a risk factor the potential for mistakenly flagging a problem, prompting unneeded treatment.
Physicians say the watch could be good for patients who have irregular heart rhythms but may not realize it. Some people who have atrial fibrillation, the condition for which the watch is screening, don’t always have noticeable symptoms. In an ideal situation, someone who doesn’t know they have a problem could get a warning from their watch and take that data to their doctor.
But there is also concern that widespread use of electrocardiograms without an equally broad education initiative could burden an already taxed health-care system. Heart rhythms naturally vary, meaning that it’s likely that Apple Watch or any heart monitor could signal a problem when there isn’t one – and send someone running to the doctor for no reason.
“People are scared; their heart scares
them,” John Mandrola, a cardiologist at Baptist Health in Louisville, said. “That leads to more interaction with the health-care system.”
An extra visit to your doctor may not sound like a bad thing, but Mandrola said it would potentially lead to another round of tests or even unnecessary treatment if there are other signs that can be misinterpreted.
And doctors might wind up facing a crowd of anxious Apple Watch users getting false signals – something physicians have already had to deal with as fitness trackers that monitor heart rates have become popular.
“I’ve had to tell patients: Just take off the Fitbit and don’t look at the data,” said Gregory Marcus, a cardiologist and director of clinical research in cardiology at the
University of California San Francisco. But he recognizes there could be positive medical and financial outcomes from a watchtriggered doctor visit – especially if the ECG is accurate enough to allow for a diagnosis without the need for other tests.
“It’s too early to tell from a public health perspective whether the costs will outweigh the benefits,” Marcus said. There are many other factors, such as someone’s general health or age, that affect whether an irregular heartbeat needs to be treated, he said. Those must be evaluated by a physician to find the right approach for each patient.
What could help calm anxiety, he said, would be more general education about conditions such as atrial fibrillation.
“Generally, physicians talk about these things among themselves,” he said. “Per-
haps this movement into the consumer realm means educating the public about these issues, as well.”
Marcus – whose Health eHeart study is evaluating how technology can help patients – and Mandrola say they are optimistic about how data collected from Apple Watch from people who’ve opted in to studies can help researchers. But for those who wear the watch and get spooked by an alert, the concern that the warnings will cause unnecessary anxiety is real.
“I see patients; I see normal people come in, and most people are scared out of their wits,” Mandrola said. With the widespread appeal of the Apple Watch, he said, that’s only likely to increase.
“You could get a tsunami of people coming in.”
B.C. drug users question ‘exceptional’ availability of medicine
Drug users who didn’t respond well to a reformulated methadone treatment introduced in British Columbia four years ago now have access to a medication that may work as well as the original version for some people but advocates worry it’s available only on an “exceptional basis.”
Nearly 18,000 people were switched from methadone to
Methadose in 2014. However, drug users say they weren’t consulted before the change to a medication that failed to keep painful withdrawal symptoms at bay for 24 hours.
The new option, called Metadol-D, has recently been offered to Methadose patients, though advocates are questioning why the drug that’s been around for years wasn’t made available sooner.
Dr. Christy Sutherland, who treats substance users in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, said
Methadose caused substance users to become “dope sick” in about 14 hours, instead of 24 hours, leading to withdrawal symptoms that had many people seeking intravenous drugs such as heroin on the streets during a crisis fuelled by the deadly opioid fentanyl.
“Methadone and Methadose are supposed to be the same but the entire population said they felt incredibly different with that change,” Sutherland said.
“Patients would always say to me, ‘It doesn’t have legs.’ And
A vaccine without the shot
A prototype of how to fight the next pandemic
Carolyn Y. JOHNSON Citizen news service
When the next deadly pandemic flu hits, the first challenge will be to develop a vaccine. But looming behind that obstacle is another: how to get an inoculation to millions of people without inadvertently exacerbating the crisis.
After all, droves of people – some perhaps already sickened – who flock to health centers for a shot could be a potent way for the infection to spread.
On the 100th anniversary of the influenza pandemic of 1918 that sickened a third of the world’s population and killed 50 million people, vaccine researchers are searching urgently for new approaches to prepare for the next pandemic – a threat most public health officials consider inevitable. A new study provides proof of concept for a solution that could upend the traditional centralized model, in which health professionals give injections at clinics.
Researchers created an H5N1 vaccine, boosted by a special ingredient that primes the body’s immune system to respond. Then they administered it through a microneedle that penetrates only the skin’s upper layer. They see this prototype technology as a platform that could lead to novel vaccine
patches that can be distributed rapidly and administered without a nurse. People would simply stick a bandage-like strip, lined with microscopic needles, onto their skin.
“It’s an excellent, extremely comprehensive and well-done study,” said Mark Poznansky, director of the Vaccine and Immunotherapy Center at Massachusetts General Hospital. He was not involved in the research, published in Science Advances.
“What they’re suggesting is something you could stick in an envelope and get to people rapidly – it’s an important breakthrough technology.”
The research team combined several different technologies into their prototype: tiny, hollow microneedles that penetrate only the upper layer of the skin were paired with vaccines made from noninfectious “virus-like particles” that can be rapidly produced by tobacco plants. Crucially, researchers added another ingredient, called an adjuvant, that speeds up and strengthens the body’s response to the vaccine. The study, funded by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, is still at an early stage. Large-scale human trials will be needed to determine the safety of
what they meant was that it didn’t last the 24 hours,” she said of Methadose. “They would wake up each morning in withdrawal, with cravings, with sweats, sometimes with diarrhea, with pain. So they would be quite desperate for their dose that day. That led to a lot of instability for people.” Sutherland said she has now switched many of her patients from Methadose to Metadol-D, adding it seems to work well. She said Metadol-D is the old formulation of methadone for
What they’re suggesting is something you could stick in an envelope and get to people rapidly – it’s an important breakthrough technology.
— Mark Poznansky
the approach, which successfully protected ferrets from H5N1 and appeared safe in a small human trial to study safety.
Darrick Carter, a biochemist at the Infectious Disease Research Institute in Seattle, said that one of the most exciting things their study showed was that the adjuvant seemed to confer protection against not just the target virus but also related viruses. If that observation is borne out in further studies, it could address an important problem in vaccine development. If the strain of virus used to create the vaccine mismatches the pathogen that is out there circulating in the world, the vaccine becomes much less effective. The 2016-2017 flu vaccine,
diabetics because it doesn’t contain sugar.
The B.C. Centre on Substance Use has been providing information about Metadol-D to doctors, but they must apply for the medication on an exceptional basis for each patient.
The province has said the switch to Methadose was believed to be a better option because it has a longer shelf life, and was less prone to dispensing errors because pharmacists don’t have to compound it.
for example, was only moderately effective because of a mutation in the virus.
Because public health officials seeking to prepare for a pandemic flu won’t know the exact strain in advance and the virus could change during an outbreak, vaccines that could be made more broadly effective with an adjuvant are exciting to researchers.
“If you think about the mechanics of how the stockpile is done, with a single virus and millions of doses – the probability of that exact virus emerging is, in my mind, fairly low,” Carter said.
Carter and colleagues are eager to move the work forward but say they have reached something of an impasse. While they were able to secure early funding to demonstrate the science behind the technique and show early proof of its clinical promise, they don’t yet have a partner to scale up the effort and test it in a larger population.
As they search for support to move the research to the next step, they said, they plan to apply the technology to an area of medicine where funding is typically more accessible: cancer. They hope that the adjuvant that stimulates the immune system could, if injected into a tumour, awaken the body’s immune cells to attack the tumour.
Jeff Williams, Apple’s chief operating officer, speaks about the Apple Watch Series 4 at the Steve Jobs Theater during an event to announce new Apple products on Wednesday in Cupertino, Calif.
Camille BAINS Citizen news service
Lake life
Planning the key to a wonderful week of houseboating on the Shuswap
Neil GODBOUT Citizen Editor ngodbout@pgcitizen.ca
There are so many things to remember when going out on a Twin Anchors houseboat for seven days on Shuswap Lake. How to start the boat. How to safely moor on shore. How to start the generator. How to drain and fill the hot tub. How to use the toilet.
They’re all important, so important in fact that part or all of your trip can be affected if you mess one of those thing up.
In the end, however, they don’t matter next to the most important ingredient. You must like your boat mates well enough that spending seven days with them on a structure the size of a singlewide mobile trailer, sharing fridge and bathroom space, listening to their jokes, their snoring and other bodily functions won’t ruin your relationship or drive you crazy.
If you get this wrong, you’ll have a terrible time and relationships with friends and family will require mending.
If you do it right, however, you’ll love them even more than you did a week earlier, you’ll have a ton of great memories, you’ll wonder where the time went and you’ll start planning the next trip. Thankfully, I’m still married, love my kids and think the other members of the extended family that joined us are even more awesome than I already thought they were. Planning is key to a successful Twin Anchors holiday. All of that information posted on their website, including the short instructional videos, isn’t for marketing. Once you get on the boat, you want the fun and relaxation to begin but that means doing some homework to prepare.
A seven-day meal plan is essential. The two eight-cubic-feet fridges aboard our CruiseCraft II were more than adequate for seven adults and four kids – two of them teenagers – in our party but that’s because food choices were made well in advance and coolers and ice were brought along to keep the beverages cold. Sharing meals and taking food that everybody likes will help.
We overnighted in Kamloops the night before, hit Costco first thing in the morning with our shopping lists and then headed east along
the Trans-Canada Highway to Sicamous, a short two-hour drive.
Boarding is from 2 to 7 p.m. and we made the mistake of arriving at 2 p.m., meaning we were one of the last groups in line to get our boat orientation, get matched with one of the many boats in the Twin Anchors armada (when you see their pier in Old Town Bay, you’ll know what I mean), get our food and belongings on board and head out onto the lake.
Next time, we’ll be there by noon for an earlier departure.
The spacious parking lot was more than big enough to handle our three vehicles and a full-size motorhome towing a boat trailer.
Ah, the boat.
Bringing along a motorboat to tow behind the houseboat added a whole other level of fun, from early morning fishing, mid-afternoon runs to the floating store in the narrows for extra supplies and to dump garbage and taking the kids out for some tubing before dark.
In seven days, there was plenty of time for us to explore the lake
and its four major arms but we kept to Anstey Arm and Seymour Arm, the two more remote parts of Shuswap Lake with plenty of beaching options each night.
As a result, we were only out on the lake for about four hours or so each day, taking our time to get going in the morning with time in the hot tub or sleeping in before a leisurely breakfast. Once we were out on the water, we’d be looking out for a spot to beach for the night by the late afternoon, so we could relax, whip up some supper and enjoy the scenery, each other’s company and our libations of choice as the sun dropped behind the mountains.
We spent two nights in Twin Bays, a private, isolated spot about halfway up Anstey Arm that only has room for two houseboats with a large rocky beach separating the two for extra privacy. We ended up staying in both spots. After first staying in the northern cove of Twin Bays, we spent a day on the water going to the northern end of the arm and then headed back south. Our previous spot was now
occupied but now the southern cove was available so we decided it was meant to be and hunkered down there for another quiet night.
The southern cove came with a bonus in the form of a rough but walkable trail alongside a creek. By the end of August, the creek was dry for about 100 metres before the shore but once we reached where the water still flowed, we found ourselves in a protected rainforest so lush and humid that we were walking on moss and lightning strikes from years past on a few of the trees had failed to start a forest fire, with the damage contained to the unfortunate single tree.
The next day, we stopped in Cinnemousin Narrows to drop our garbage at the provincial park bins (made much faster because a few of us just zipped over in the motorboat) and have a yummy lunch and drinks at the Shuswap Shark Shack, the floating restaurant staffed by a friendly crew that stays in bunkhouses for the summer aboard the barge. Twin Anchors houseboats can pop over to the floating store nearby for free propane top-ups (and you’ll need it if you’re in the hot tub every morning and night).
Once through the narrows, we made our way northeast up the long and mostly quiet Seymour Arm, staying overnight at Cottonwood Beach, near where Shuswap Lake is its deepest at more than 180 metres.
Our second day on Seymour Arm, travelling to Bughouse Bay, the northernmost point of Shuswap Lake, was our best weather day. The forest fire smoke blew away, leaving us with clear skies, a warm sun and gorgeous views of the surrounding mountains, Beach Bay, the cabins and camping spots at Fowler Point and then the small community of Seymour Arm at the end of the lake.
While most of the beaches along Seymour and Anstey Arm are somewhat rocky, the provincial marine park at Bughouse Bay has a lush, sandy beach, is well protected from the wind and we were lucky enough to have the whole place to ourselves for the night.
From there, we spent our longest day on the open water, taking six hours to make our way from Bughouse Bay down the length of Seymour Arm, back through the narrows and southwest to the southern tip of Marble Point. That made for a leisurely last
full day on the water, following the shore along Bastion Bay and admiring the gorgeous, luxury cabins, some of them cut right into the cliffs.
We spent our last night like our first, parked on the beach next to Twin Anchors. On the first night, we didn’t feel like trying our luck further up the lake, hoping for an empty beach and trying to set up with darkness closing in. On the last night, we wanted to not have to worry about getting up early to make our 9 a.m. return at the Twin Anchors wharf.
The wharf was bustling with multiple boats unloading at the same time, staff bustling around on quads, towing carts filled with luggage up to the loading area, where we packed up our vehicles.
We got off the houseboat the same way we had got on a week earlier, loud and laughing, cracking jokes and grateful to be in each other’s company.
If you go
There are a few things Twin Anchors doesn’t have on their list of items to bring that would have made our holiday even better.
A day didn’t go by that we didn’t wish someone had brought binoculars to have a closer look at interesting landmarks or possible sites to beach for the night.
Bathmats at the front and back entrances would have helped us (and especially the kids) from bringing in dirt, sand and water on our bare feet. We ended up using beach towels but bath mats would have been ideal.
Each Twin Anchors houseboat comes outfitted with a dryer in the back, so handy for wet clothes, swim suits and towels. Having dryer sheets, especially for the towels, would have been an extra little convenience.
Finally, staying in Kamloops or even Kelowna would be fine, so long as you’re up early and checking in at the main parking lot on Old Town Road in Sicamous by noon, especially if heading out during high season. But if you’d like a shorter drive to Twin Anchors on the morning of your departure, staying in either Salmon Arm or Vernon would work better.
CITIZEN PHOTO BY NEIL GODBOUT
ABOVE: Sunrise at Cottonwood Beach on the Seymour Arm of Shuswap Lake.
CITIZEN PHOTO BY NEIL GODBOUT
While the author catches some rays, Captain Mick pilots the houseboat north on the Seymour Arm of Shuswap Lake from the top side helm. Houseboat hot tub tip: drain it each morning before heading out and then fill it with fresh water during a stop in the middle of the lake.
Managing editor Neil Godbout puts the news in perspective every day, only in The Citizen
No quit
UNBC Timberwolves midfielder Paige Payne and Amou Madol of the University of Regina Cougars chase the ball as it rolls across the sideline at Masich Place Stadium on Friday night. The T-wolves earned their first win of the Canada West season, a 3-1 triumph. Payne netted one of the UNBC goals while the others came from Mara McCleary and Sofia Jones. Madison Emmond of the Timberwolves had two assists in the contest and UNBC goalkeeper Brooke Molby made seven saves. UNBC jumped out to a 3-0 lead before Nikita Senko of the Cougars scored on a penalty kick in the second half. The T-wolves will be back in action on Sunday (11 a.m. start at Masich Place) against the University of Saskatchewan Huskies.
Spruce Kings now 3-0 to start season
Ted
CLARKE Citizen staff tclarke@pgcitizen.ca
Ben Brar brought some TNT to the rink with him Friday night. In fact, he might have rubbed a few drops of nitro glycerine into that hockey stick of his. Whatever Brar had working for him, it had a dynamite effect on the Coquitlam Express. He was dangerous all night and with two timely goals blew away all hope the Express had of leaving Rolling Mix Concrete Arena with a win at the expense of his Prince George Spruce Kings. They beat the Express 5-3 to improve their B.C. Hockey League record to a perfect 3-0-0-0 in front of 731 spectators.
Brar already had five quality shots on goal when he finally buried his sixth, just 14 seconds into the third period. Sprung into the clear by defenceman Liam Watson-Brawn, Brar took aim from the face-off circle and rifled a low shot that went off the glove and through the legs of goalie Clay Stevenson. That put the Kings ahead 3-2 but their first lead of the night didn’t last long.
Cooper Connell took the puck off the side boards at the blueline, skated deep into the Prince George zone and slid in a backhander along the ice as he cut through the crease.
But with less than four minutes to play, Patrick Cozzi fired the game-winer. He cradled the puck on his stick on a feed from Dylan Anhorn and waited for Stevenson to dip his shoulder before he let go a wrist shot from 30 feet out.
Brar capped the scoring with his third of the season, an empty-netter off a well-timed dive to chip the puck off the stick of Pito Walton.
“I had a lot of chances but my teammates made it easy for me out there,” said Brar. “Our d-men really stepped up and made it easy for our forwards.
“We kind of fell asleep in the game there (in the second period) but it was nice to pull out the ‘W.’ We just have to learn how to play the full 60 minutes but that will come as the year goes on. Coquitlam has turned their team around pretty well and it was a tight game all night.”
The Kings got great production from their defencemen – Anhorn, with a goal and two assists, and Watson-Brawn, who contributed two assists. Corey Cunningham
Cougars’ Curtis captain material
had the other Spruce Kings goal. Christian Sanda, Regan Kimens and Connell scored for Coquitlam (1-2-0-0).
After a scoreless first period the teams each struck twice in the middle frame.
Outshot 14-4 in the first period, Coquitlam connected for the game’s opening goal five minutes into the period. Sanda took a cross-ice feed from linemate Joshua Bruce and lifted a hard backhander into the far side of the net.
Kimens doubled the lead on an Express power play, cruising in from his point position to fire a wrister that went in over the glove of goalie Logan Neaton, who drew his third consecutive start in goal for the Kings.
Down 2-0, the Prince George power went to work late in the second period and just eight seconds into Chase Danol’s tripping penalty, after a face-off win by Nolan Welsh, the puck came back to the left point for Anhorn and the 19-year-old defenceman unleashed a slap shot that sailed in behind Stevenson.
Ted CLARKE Citizen staff
Josh Curtis will someday be the answer to a Prince George Cougars trivia question.
Who was the last Cougar to play 72 regularseason games in one season?
Curtis and his teammate, defenceman Ryan
Two minutes later, a pair of P.G. boys combined to score the equalizer. Craig MacDonald chipped the puck away from Express forward Dallas Farrell, sending Cunningham in alone and his wrist shot caught a piece of Stevenson’s glove before it ended up in the net.
“Obviously the first goal for me to start the third wasn’t the best one, I’d kind of like to have that one back,” said Stevenson. “But overall I thought the guys battled hard. We could have shown a bit more grit to kind of hold it off and seal it up but…”
Stevenson, a Dartmouth College recruit, was with the Express last season and suffered through a 10-win last-overall season. It’s a much different team in front of him now.
“At the beginning of the season we started really gelling as a group more and it’s pretty exciting to see what we can accomplish this season and what we have to look forward to,” he said. “I feel our group has a lot of potential. We knew (the Spruce Kings) were a
Schoettler, played in all 72 games in 201718, the last year before the Western Hockey League shortened its schedule to the current 68 games. Playing a full slate of games takes durability and a high level of skill. Both players showed those qualities and made it impossible for
strong team coming in and we knew we had to battle hard and we showed what we can do in the first half of the game but we kind of let off the gas in the second half and they capitalized on it.”
Watson-Brawn also drew an assist on Anhorn’s goal and played a solid game in his own end. The 18-year-old Colgate University recruit showed great hustle getting back in time to knock the puck away from Farrell on a partial breakaway after Anhorn overskated the puck with the game still tied 2-2.
Friday’s 2-0 deficit was the first time in the three games this season the Kings have had to mount a comeback.
“We didn’t have the best second period but I like how we bounced back and came up with the win,” said Watson-Brawn. “All credit to Coquitlam, they played a great game, but we just have to come out harder (Saturday).”
The same teams meet again tonight (7 p.m.) at RMCA.
head coach Richard Matvichuk not to put them in the game-day lineup.
For Curtis, heading into his final season of junior hockey, becoming an everyday player in a league a tough as the WHL takes extraordinary effort.
— see ‘WE HAVE, page 11
CITIZEN PHOTO BY JAMES DOYLE
Prince George Spruce Kings forward Ben Poisson tries to go to the outside on Coquitlam Express defenceman Pito Walton on Friday night at Rolling Mix Concrete Arena in the first game of a weekend BCHL doubleheader.
a
and
ended in a 12-12 tie.
a B.C.
Roadrunners, Cougars go to overtime in high school football season-opener
Citizen staff
The Kelly Road Roadunners and College Heights Cougars kicked off the B.C. Secondary School Football Association Northern Conference double-A varsity season Thursday at
Hinzmann golden at Games
Masich Place Stadium and the teams played to a 12-12 overtime tie.
Tonight at 7:30 at Masich, the Nechako Valley Vikings of Vanderhoof will play their first game on the new all-weather field when they host the South Kamloops Titans in an
Citizen staff
She’s always been able to spin a good yarn, now Citizen reporter Christine Hinzmann is showing she
exhibition game. The Northern Conference regular season resumes Thursday when the Prince George Polars square off against College Heights at 5:30 p.m., followed by a Nechako Valley-D.P. Todd Trojans game at 7:30 p.m.
also has what it takes to be a track and field star.
Competing in the throwing events this week at the 55-plus B.C. Games in Kimberley-Cranbrook, Hinzmann
won three medals in the women’s 5559 age category. She won gold in the discus Thursday with a throw of 17.2 metres, nailed silver in the javelin (14.27 m) on Wednesday and was the
Zetterberg forced into retirement
(AP) — Henrik Zetterberg knew something wasn’t right with his back last January when he stopped practicing. Despite the aches and pains, he did not miss a game all season for the Detroit Red Wings. When Zetterberg laced up his skates for the final game of the regular season, he thought that might be the finale of his career. He held out hope over the summer his career could resume and was still clinging to that when he met with a doctor last week.
“Got the final result and nothing really had changed,” Zetterberg told reporters Friday in Traverse City, Mich.
The 37-year-old Zetterberg, who won the Conn Smythe Trophy as the top player in the post-season when the Red Wings hoisted the Stanley Cup in 2008, is calling it a career.
“Obviously, it is emotional,” Zetterberg said. “It’s been 15 years here. I wish that I could have played a little bit longer.” Zetterberg will go on longterm injured reserve with three years left on his 12-year, $73 million contract.
“He’s got a degenerative condition in his back,” Red Wings general manager Ken Holland said. “Part of the degenerative condition is significant arthritis. Nothing can be done.”
silver medalist in the hammer throw (19.34 m) on Thursday.
Hinzmann also competed in the shot put event on Friday. Results were not posted on the Games website.
CITIZEN PHOTO BY JAMES DOYLE
Kelly Road Roadrunners player Colton Fors dodges a tackle from
College Heights Cougars defender on Thursday afternoon at Masich Place Stadium. The Cougars
Roadrunners clashed in
Secondary School Football Association Northern Conference double-A varsity game that
Lions end road woes
Lori EWING Citizen news service
MONTREAL — Unlucky Travis Lulay watched most of the game from B.C.’s bench, his left shoulder wrapped in ice.
Johnny Manziel watched all of the game from the Alouettes’ bench, and was surely stinging as starting quarterback Antonio Pipkin struggled all night.
T.J. Lee and Anthony Orange had fourth-quarter interceptions for touchdowns to lift the B.C. Lions to their first road victory of the season, a 32-14 win over the Montreal Alouettes.
But the storyline was about the quarterbacks: both the ones who were on the field, and the ones who weren’t.
Lulay was knocked out of the game for the second straight week, injured on the Lions’ first drive of the night thanks to a hit from John Bowman.
“Right now the good thing is it’s his left shoulder,” said Lions coach Wally Buono. “If it’s something we can get resolved then we’ll get it resolved. The left shoulder is easier to deal with than the right.”
Lulay’s replacement Jonathon Jennings completed 19of-30 pass attempts for 180 yards with one touchdown and one interception.
“I guess I had a dress rehearsal last week because it was kind of the same thing,” Jennings said. “It’s always kind of crazy when it happens, but just got to settle yourself down, realize that you’ve got a job to do and go in there and execute.”
Pipkin, a 23-year-old rookie making his third start, was 11 for 22 for 95 yards, with four interceptions. He was sacked six times, prompting a pocket of fans behind the Alouettes’ bench to chant “We want Johnny!”
A day earlier, a healthy Manziel had wondered aloud whether the Als had lost faith in him. The Heisman-Trophy winning QB vented to reporters, saying he thought he’d be “the guy” after recovering from his concussion three games ago.
Als coach Mike Sherman stuck with Pipkin on Friday, saying afterward it was just a bad night.
“There isn’t a quarterback out there in the NFL that hasn’t had a game like this at some point or another, believe me,” Sherman said. “It was bound to happen. Was hoping it wasn’t going to happen tonight, but this is going to happen at some point. It happened tonight.”
The game was still either team’s for the taking when Lee picked off Pipkin with three minutes left and ran 37 yards for a touchdown.
“Honestly, I visualized it two plays before it happened, it was weird,” Lee said. “And when it happened I just jumped it and it felt easy, it felt like practice because we practiced hard, and took one to the end zone and I’m happy about that.”
Orange sent the Molson Percival Stadium crowd of 15,346 streaming toward the exits when he picked off the struggling Als quarterback for a 54-yard touchdown return a minute later.
“Any time the defence can do that, we’re giving ourselves a chance,” Jennings said of the two big plays. “You see Saskatchewan, they’ve been playing like that, similar ball to that. When you do that and your defence can score, a lot of times you have a big chance to win, and I thought they did a tremendous job. It was fun watching.”
Bryan Burnham scored B.C.’s other touchdown, while Trevaughn Campbell’s thrilling 87-yard run after a blocked field goal attempt was Montreal’s only major on the night.
Burnham had five receptions for 104 yards for B.C. (5-6). Eugene Lewis had one reception of 36 yards for the Als (3-9).
The night marked the final game at Molson Stadium for the retiring Buono, who grew up in Montreal and both played and coached here.
‘We have a lot of young talent and speed’
from page 9
Throughout his career, dating back to his minor hockey days in Winnipeg, Curtis has maintained an unfailing dedication to get better in practice and stronger in the gym and a fearless attitude on the ice that enables him to use his speed and quickness to find the freedom to operate.
Now, just nine days shy of his 20th birthday, he’s looked upon as one of the designated leaders of a young team on the rise. After missing the playoffs last year, the Cougars appear to have all the pieces in place to be a contender this year and the five-foot-11, 173-pound Curtis knows it’s his job to bond that group and show them what it takes to be a Cougar.
“I like the team so far, we have a lot of young talent and speed and we have the grit as well,” said Curtis, who will be in the lineup tonight (7 p.m., CN Centre) when the Cougars play the Kamloops Blazers in the final preseason test for both teams.
“You want to set a winning atmosphere right away and you want to make sure everyone hates to lose and winning those three games so far has been great. Obviously we have some rivals here now and we want to set the tone for the season. We had a rebuild last year and we don’t want to rebuild this year.
“We have a little more experience this year, and that’s big. I think we have a good chance to do well this season. There’s a lot of great guys here.”
Curtis has never worn a letter on any team before but there will be one on his jersey this year. Whether he gets the ‘C’ or not will be decided by the coaching staff and GM Mark Lamb before the season begins next week.
“Josh has really come into his own and he’s a guy that does the right thing all the time,” said Matvichuk. “If you look back to two years ago to when him and Aaron Boyd were playing on our
fourth line, it was tough to see him back there, knowing he did everything we asked them to do but we had so much depth that year and it was a matter of them sticking with it.
“Now Josh is a top right winger for us. He’s one of those guys we’re going to rely on heavily on the ice and off the ice. The way he speaks to the young guys, the way he holds himself, he is a true leader and it’s great to see how he’s evolved and we’ve been a part of it.”
Curtis was one of the older Cougars at the end of last season. He and defenceman Joel Lakusta, who just returned from the St. Louis Blues rookie camp, and newly-acquired winger Mike MacLean, are the three 1998-born players now with the team.
“You want to lead the guys and show them the way but at the same time I don’t change much of what I do, I’ve always led by example,” Curtis said.
“I’m not much of a louder guy but if there’s something I can help with I’ll do that. Those three 20s last year and even before that with 20-year-olds – (Ty) Edmonds, (Colby) McAuley and (Sam) Ruopp – you learn from them and you take what they taught you and show the younger guys what you were taught, just what’s right and wrong.
“I’ve always been a hard worker and sometimes the results were there. It’s gone really fast but it’s been very enjoyable.”
Over the summer, Curtis travelled to Europe for a 16-day tour and had some of his teammates come by for a five-day visit to his family cabin at Lake of the Woods, Ont., two hours away from his home in Winnipeg.
Curtis scored nine times last season and had 27 assists for 33 points and carried a minus-7 rating on team that unloaded most of its key veterans at the trade deadline. He’s never been the type of guy to light up the scoreboard but his quick feet, smart stick and great
anticipation make him dangerous on penalty kills. This season, playing right wing on a line with playmaking centre Ilijah Colina and speedy left winger Tyson Upper, don’t be surprised if Curtis becomes a 20-goal scorer.
“Sometimes chemistry just comes naturally and we just got paired up in training camp,” he said.
“We just played well and played hard and fast and that’s kind of turned into something nice. We put up some good numbers in Vancouver (they had a hand in three of the seven Cougar goals) and I like my line.”
LOOSE PUCKS: Cougars winger Jackson Leppard, 18, made enough of an impression at the Tampa Bay Lightning rookie camp to be included on the list of 62 players invited to the Bolts’ main camp which started Friday in Brandon, Fla... Cougar prospect Cole Beamin, a 16-year-old defenceman for the Nipawin Hawks, scored the Hawks’ first goal in their emotion-charged 2-1 victory over the Humboldt Broncos, which opened the season in the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League Wednesday in Humboldt, Sask. It was the first game for the Broncos since the April 6 bus crash which killed 16 members of the team.... The Blazers sport a 3-1-0-0 preseason record, same as the Cougars. They beat the Cats 5-0, Aug. 31 in Kamloops. Prince George will be in Victoria next weekend for a doubleheader against the Royals to open the season. The Cats also play Wednesday night in Kelowna before they return home to play the Rockets at CN Centre, Sept. 28-29... Graduated Cougar forwards Aaron Boyd and Brogan O’Brien are now playing in U Sports for the Carleton Ravens and room together in Ottawa. O’Brien is majoring in computer science and Boyd is studying business. They’ll be playing against Jared Bethune, the other Cougar 20-year-old last season, who is now studying at Queens University in Toronto.
PHOTO
Davon Coleman of the B.C. Lions dives to take down Montreal Alouettes quarterback Antonio Pipkin during the second half of Friday night’s CFL game in Montreal.
Underwood struggles to get personal on Cry Pretty
Kristin M. HALL Citizen news service
Carrie Underwood, Cry Pretty (Capitol Records Nashville)
For the first time in her career, Carrie Underwood took over co-producing duties on her new album, Cry Pretty, and co-wrote nine of the 13 tracks. But does it make the collection more personal?
Underwood’s career under the spotlight started with American Idol, and she’s a spectacular natural singer with a great ear for songs. But after an injury to her face last fall, she hid from the public for months as the tabloids circled.
Ultimately, she returned this year looking about the same as before and announced this summer she’s pregnant with her second child. Now her personal life has become a bit more front and centre than before. She’s always sung with authentic emotion and drama, but she was more skilled at interpreting the song than revealing much about herself.
Cry Pretty is not a confessional record, as evidenced from the title track that notes she’s “not usually the kind to show my heart to the world.” But she’s pushing
herself in new musical directions, teasing out parts of her multifaceted voice with rhythm and tempo that feels like you’re hearing her anew.
Working with producer David Garcia, who co-wrote the pop country crossover collab Meant to Be by Bebe Rexha and Florida Georgia Line, Underwood adds R&B, pop and dance rhythms to songs like Backsliding and End Up With You. On Low, she slinks into a bluesy country groove that sounds like a perfect vehicle for a duet with Chris Stapleton.
However, the county ballad
The Bullet feels empty with lyrics such as, “You can blame it on hate, or blame it on guns, but mommas ain’t supposed to bury their sons.” Love Wins is in a similar vein, but the building music makes better use of her soaring, arena-sized vocals. She ends the album with what is likely the closest we’re going to see of “real Carrie” on Kingdom, where she sings about scampering children and the highs and lows of a family that’s “perfectly imperfect.” The song seems more revealing than the others, especially because it touches on her strong Christian faith. It also shows that she can be relatable when she lets her guard down.
Rise of a villain
How Dhawan broke new ground on Netflix’s Iron Fist
best friend to Iron Fist protagonist
Danny Rand (Finn Jones).
Before Sacha Dhawan became one of the most violent and intriguing antagonists in Marvel’s live-action entertainment era, he was sitting on a bus in London, reading Iron Fist comics, convinced he would never land the role of the mystical martial artist the Steel Serpent.
Each flip of the page revealed few similarities between Dhawan and the classic villain he had auditioned to play for Marvel and Netflix’s Iron Fist series.
Davos, the man under the mask of the Steel Serpent, seemed almost alien to Dhawan. He saw skin of a different colour and a hulking figure that seemed twice his size.
“I kind of thought there’s no way in a million years I’m ever going to get this job,” Dhawan told The Washington Post. But surprisingly to him, Dhawan got the role for Iron Fist’s polarizing first season, playing a brother/
After it came out, famed comic book writer and current Marvel television producer Jeph Loeb called Dhawan to let him know Season 2 of Iron Fist was a go, and that Davos would play a much larger and darker part in the plot.
Knowing he was about to make the transition from friend to foe in Iron Fist’s second season, Dhawan began four months of intense training and weightlifting to bulk up, to prepare for turning on the evil switch in front of the cameras.
Dhawan studied various forms of martial arts, including Wing Chun, Choy Li Fut and boxing, working with his trainers to create a style of fighting for Davos that worked well for both the character and Dhawan’s abilities.
“I wanted to give the impression that between Season 1 and Season 2, Davos, he had lost everything, but it meant that he trained harder and wanted to come back harder,” Dhawan said. “I started off in Lon-
don with a range of different trainers and then (was) really upping my training regime, sometimes training twice, even three times of day and living a bit of a kind of lifestyle as Davos would, where your life just revolves around eating and training and focus and discipline. It was a real challenge.” The culmination of all that training came during Season 2’s fifth episode, Heart of the Dragon. The episode opens with Davos, having just stolen the power of the Iron Fist from Danny Rand, destroying a cement wall with a red chifueled closed fist. In that scene, Dhawan wears the Iron Fist mask many fans have been clamoring to see more of. He says a decision was made that he would not continue wearing the mask, so he would not cover up the anger that was written on his face in every scene. But in the moment, he was overcome with emotion and felt like a superhero.
“It was something that I never thought was possible for someone who’s a British Indian actor,” Dhawan said. “I was thinking about Davos at that time, thinking about his mom and father in K’un-Lun, and me, Sacha Dhawan, thinking about my mom and dad back in the U.K., and I’m thinking, ‘I did it, mom and dad.’ It was a very proud moment, not just for me, but for other British Indians or Indians all over the world (to see) that this is possible. It’s a real big step for the Marvel universe.”
Not lost in that moment was Dhawan realizing in that scene he was giving viewers the Iron Fist of colour many thought the show needed, even if he was the bad guy. (Many fans thought Marvel and Netflix should have cast an Asian lead actor as Iron Fist.) But what Dhawan, nor anyone streaming that episode could have known in that moment, was that would not be the last time they’d see someone other than Danny Rand with the power of the Iron Fist.
Perhaps the most talked about and controversial moment of Season 2 is leading lady Jessica Henwick (who plays Colleen Wing) gaining the power of the Iron Fist in the 10th and final episode after she and Danny Rand successfully take the power away from Davos. Dhawan says no one on set knew the change was coming.
“It’s something that they were very secretive about telling people. Because if it leaked, then we’re ruining the surprise for everybody,” Dhawan said. “I’m excited to see how Colleen handles it. Is she going to fall in love with the power? And who else is going to have access to it?”
PHOTO BY NETFLIX-MARVEL
Sacha Dhawan stars as Davos in Netflix’s Iron Fist.
David BETANCOURT Citizen news service
Ghomeshi essay draws backlash
Victoria AHEARN, Adina BRESGE Citizen news service
Disgraced former CBC Radio host Jian Ghomeshi penned a personal essay in The New York Review of Books that drew swift backlash on Friday, with many social media users questioning why he was given such a prestigious platform to detail his life post-trial.
Ghomeshi was acquitted in March 2016 of four counts of sexual assault and one count of choking involving three complainants. In May 2016, he apologized to a fourth complainant and signed a peace bond that saw another count of sexual assault withdrawn.
In the piece, titled Reflections from a Hashtag and published online Friday, Ghomeshi reveals that he had suicidal thoughts in the aftermath of the allegations and reflects on his trajectory from a high-profile Canadian personality to a self-described “outcast.”
He also expresses “deep remorse” for the way he treated some people, admitting he was “demanding on dates” and “emotionally thoughtless.”
“I’ve become a hashtag. One of my female friends quips that I should get some kind of public recognition as a #MeToo pioneer,” he writes. “There are lots of guys more hated than me now. But I was the guy everyone hated first.”
Farrah Khan, manager of Ryerson University’s Consent Comes First office, wondered why the semimonthly magazine gave an opportunity to such a controversial figure when many people affected by sexual violence are not given such an opportunity.
“Why was he given this platform? Why now?” Khan said, also questioning if the magazine fact-checked the piece.
Ghomeshi writes in the essay that he cannot confess to accusations he maintains are “inaccurate,” but admits he should have been more “respectful and responsive” with the women in his life.
“It’s interesting, who gets to have that platform. Publications oftentimes are invested in giving space to people like Ghomeshi to boost their sales, to create this hyped conversation about it.”
Ghomeshi came off as “arrogant” for suggesting he’s part of a decades-long fight for the rights of survivors of sexual violence, she added.
“When reading the article, one of the things that was really salient to me was his speaking about how he was one of the #MeToo pioneers, or making a quip about it,” Khan said.
“He didn’t start the movement on sexual violence –we did.”
In anticipating the reaction to the roughly 3,400word essay, which marks the first time Ghomeshi has addressed the trial publicly, he acknowledges that it focuses on his own experience, “which may be seen as not helpful in rendering women’s experiences more visible.”
The cover story, billed as Jian Ghomeshi on Jian Ghomeshi, is set to appear in the magazine’s October issue on The Fall of Men.
A representative for the New York Review of Books said the publication had no comment on the matter.
The Ghomeshi trial and ruling triggered an emotional public debate about how abuse complainants are treated by the justice system, which some consider to be a precursor to the #MeToo movement that emerged last fall.
Ghomeshi writes in the essay that he cannot confess to accusations he maintains are “inaccurate,” but admits he should have been more “respectful and responsive” with the women in his life.
“What I do confess is that I was emotionally thoughtless in the way I treated those I dated and tried to date,” he writes. “I leveraged my influence and status to try to entice women and lead them on when they were interested.”
Ghomeshi said he struggled with suicidal thoughts in the weeks after the allegations surfaced in 2014, which coincided with him mourning his father’s death. “It was as though the end of my life as I knew it was somehow conjoined with the actual end of his.”
As his professional and personal support systems collapsed, Ghomeshi said he faced “financial calamity” between his firing from CBC and legal fees.
He also fumed over what he characterized as “inaccurate” depictions of him on social media, and said he fielded a barrage of racist remarks over his Iranian heritage.
In mulling over whether men facing sexual misconduct allegations should apologize, Ghomeshi said his own experience makes him “distrust” public declarations of remorse in the immediate fallout of a scandal.
GHOMESHI
‘I’m having fun’ McCartney enjoying chance to share stories about Beatles
David FRIEND Citizen news service
TORONTO — Paul McCartney says sharing the raunchier stories of his days in the Beatles doesn’t faze him anymore and he’s getting a kick out of knowing others enjoy the tales.
The 76-year-old musician recently spilled the dirt on the Fab Four in the pages of GQ. One memory involved the time he and his bandmates applauded the loss of George Harrison’s virginity and in another McCartney fessed up to hiring two Las Vegas prostitutes.
“I’m not really trying to get attention, I’m having fun,” the musician said in a phone interview from Quebec.
“I have a feeling that you can actually sort of say a bit more these days than you would’ve wanted to say in previous years.”
McCartney, who launches his Freshen Up tour in Quebec on Monday, says the “spicy stories” he’s shared in recent interviews are only the tip of the iceberg, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he’ll be sharing more tales about the “joys of youth.”
“Let’s face it, we were young kids from Liverpool,” he said.
“And then we were young kids from Liverpool on tour getting famous and drawing attention to ourselves. So there’s quite a few stories. Not all suitable for public consumption, I don’t think.”
After his stop in Quebec, McCartney plays dates in Montreal (Sept. 20), Winnipeg (Sept. 28) and Edmonton (Sept. 30) before heading to Japan.
He said he’s especially looking forward to entertaining Canadian audiences.
“It’s always good to play an English-speaking place, although we start in Quebec which is barely an English speaking place,” he says.
“You get a feeling about Canada... they love their music, it’s a very warm audience and I feel a kinship. They come to party and so do we.”
McCartney says returning to the same Beatles and Wings hits each tour doesn’t bother him, even after all these years, because he feeds off the audience’s appreciation for iconic songs like Hey Jude.
“I should really be bored of it by now, but I’m not because every time I do it, particularly these days, you see the coming together of people,” he says.
“It’s the fact that the song is working and it’s bringing people together that makes it a joy to play.”
“I like the song,” he adds. “It’s not a bad one.”
Grande laments loss of Miller
Citizen news service
LOS ANGELES — Ariana Grande has posted a tribute to her ex-boyfriend Mac Miller a week after the hip-hop star’s death, saying she’s sorry she couldn’t save him.
Grande posted a video of Miller laughing on her Instagram page Friday.
The post says she adored Miller since she met him at 19 and is sorry she couldn’t fix him or take away his pain, calling him the “kindest, sweetest soul with demons he never deserved.”
They’re the first words the 25-year-old singer has shared since Miller’s death.
The two were in a relationship for two years that ended earlier this year.
Paramedics declared the 26-year-old Miller dead in his Los Angeles home Sept. 7. No cause has been announced.
Miller spoke frankly of his depression and substance abuse in his music.
MCCARTNEY
AP FILE PHOTO
In this March 2, 1964 photo, the Beatles, clockwise from top left, John Lennon, George Harrison, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, pose in the window of a train at Paddington Station in London.
Postal workers table demands
Citizen news service
OTTAWA — Canada Post and the union representing Canadian mail carriers remain miles apart in contract talks as a strike deadline looms less than two weeks away.
The Canadian Union of Postal Workers posted its contract proposals on its website Friday, showing a demand for 3.5 per cent annual wage increases over the life of an agreement for both rural and urban postal workers. On Sept. 7, Canada Post offered wage hikes of 1.5 per cent a year.
Postal workers will be in a legal
strike position – and Canada Post could lock out its employees – as of Sept. 26 after CUPW’s 42,000 urban members and 8,000 rural carriers voted in favour of job action to back contract demands.
CUPW also wants hourly pay rates for rural and suburban carriers equivalent to what urban letter carriers are paid, along with better job security and minimum guaranteed hours –proposals that the union said have so far been flatly rejected by Canada Post.
Where there might be room for agreement falls under the notion of expanding services at the Crown corporation.
The union wants Canada Post to offer financial or community banking services – something the post office provided decades ago – as well as expanded postal services for Indigenous communities and broadband internet.
CUPW said the latest proposal from the agency suggests it’s prepared to offer customers a “selected set of new financial services,” but offers no details of what those services would involve, and no timetable for when they might be launched.
A spokesman for Canada Post has said the company will not talk publicly about the contract talks, other than to say both sides are working to reach agreement with the aid of a third party.
The talks have been ongoing since last year.
The union posted details of its latest contract proposals on its website Friday as bargaining wrapped up for the week.
Federal Labour Minister Patty Hajdu has encouraged both sides to continue negotiating.
a victory sign while sitting inside the Soyuz TMA14 spacecraft shortly after his return to earth on Oct. 11, 2009. A federal tax court says the out-of-thisworld trip taken by the
Space trip not a business expense, court rules
MONTREAL — The Tax Court of Canada has ruled that a trip to outer space by billionaire Quebec businessman Guy Laliberte in 2009 was a taxable benefit. At issue was a $41.8-million price tag for a trip the Cirque du Soleil’s founder had been reimbursed for as a business expense.
The Canada Revenue Agency challenged that and Tax Court Justice Patrick Boyle wrote in a ruling Wednesday he believes a large portion of the travel cost to the International Space Station was indeed a taxable benefit.
“I find that the motivating, essential and overwhelmingly primary purpose of the travel was personal,” Boyle wrote.
“I find that the Appellant (Laliberte) is the person who made the decision to travel on his space trip and that his overarching reasons for that decision were personal.”
The judge added 27 reasons to buttress his decision – notably that Laliberte had long been interested in space travel and there was no evidence the Cirque du Soleil was considering sending anyone else to space; that Laliberte’s representative negotiated the flight agreement on behalf of Laliberte; and there was no suggestion that any benefit attributed to the Cirque du Soleil was contemplated ahead of the trip.
A spokeswoman for Laliberte, the Cirque’s controlling shareholder in 2009 when he took a Soyuz capsule to the station, said Friday the billionaire was aware of the court decision and was considering his options.
Laliberte was Canada’s first space tourist when he took the 12-day space trip as part of a “social and poetic mission” to raise awareness about water issues for his One Drop foundation.
It included a two-hour feature program involving various artists such as Bono and Shakira as well as environmentalists David Suzuki and former U.S. vice-president Al Gore.
The businessman first paid for the trip through a personal holding firm. Two months after his return, he was reimbursed by Creations Meandres, the company that controlled Cirque du Soleil, minus a
self-assessed $4-million shareholder benefit.
His accountants claimed it wasn’t a personal trip, but rather a “stunt marketing event” to promote the popularity of the circus as well as the foundation, and as such should be deductible as a marketing or promotional expense that far outweighed the trip’s cost.
In response to this week’s ruling, a spokeswoman for Lune Rouge, an entrepreneurial firm Laliberte now heads, issued a statement.
“Guy Laliberte already paid all the taxes associated with this project several years ago, upon receipt of the notice of assessment,” Anne Dongois wrote in an email Friday. “We have read the judgment, which recognizes that part of the cost of the project is attributable to business.
“A question remains with regards to the proportion that is business and the proportion that is to be considered for, potentially, personal benefit. Various options are currently evaluated.”
In his decision, Boyle fixed the amount of the business-related portion of the trip to be about 10 per cent or $4.2 million, meaning the remaining 90 per cent of the trip’s cost – $37.6 million – was the amount of the benefit.
“Simply put, there is a difference between a business trip which involves or includes personal enjoyment aspects, and a personal trip with business aspects, even significant ones, tacked on,” Boyle wrote.
“I have found that this space trip falls into the latter category, and the tax consequences to the business income are considered and determined accordingly.”
A Cirque du Soleil spokeswoman said the organization would have no comment.
“As this is a personal matter for Guy, we will not be commenting,” Marie-Helene Lagace said in an email.
Nicolas Simard, a tax law expert and partner at Fasken law firm in Montreal, said the law means the amount owed will have to be paid in full regardless of whether Laliberte appeals.
The matter has been referred back to the minister of National Revenue for reassessment.
Simard said the lesson here is that tax agencies are conducting more and more audits, including those of family businesses.
“Taxpayers have to be mindful of the expenses paid for or reimbursed by their corporations, like vehicles, time-shares and condos,” Simard said.
“They have to be prepared to offer proper justification and offer books and records to demonstrate (they) did not personally benefit from an expense paid for by the corporation.”
Sidhartha BANERJEE Citizen news service
Laliberte shows
Quebec billionaire was not a business expense.
At Home
Take it outside
You don’t have to be a tech genius to set up an outdoor TV or projector
Melissa KOSSLER DUTTON
Citizen news service
When Karen Snyder’s daughter asked if she could have friends over for swimming and a movie, the Los Angeles mom agreed. Then she looked for a way to keep the whole party outside to avoid wet clothes on her furniture.
She was pleased to discover that improvements in audiovisual equipment meant she could easily afford and set up an outdoor theatre in her backyard.
“I was shocked at what was available and the pricing,” she said. “We could afford our own equipment and have it be portable.”
Snyder researched what she would need online, but many specialty and big-box stores employ consultants to help customers find the right products. While pulling together a system isn’t difficult, you need to consider how you intend to use it, the features of your yard and what equipment you already own that can be used outside, AV experts say.
Customers have two main options for backyard viewing: outdoor televisions and projection systems. The main challenge with outdoor viewing is attaining a brightenough picture to offset natural light, said Martha Roussopoulos, a sales manager at Backyard Theater Systems in Eden Prairie, Minn.
Televisions
Outdoor televisions are not only designed to withstand the elements, but they are two to four times brighter than regular TVs, says David Barnett, a technical services manager for Magnolia Audio Video at Best Buy in Richfield, Minn. The starting price for an outdoor television is about $2,500, but one can easily cost twice that, he said. Mounting TV sets in a covered area can improve visibility, adds Robert Silva, who writes about home theatres for the technology website Lifewire. If you don’t have a spot to hang the set, you might put it on a wheeled cart and store it in a shed or garage, he said. Silva recommends televisions rather than projectors for watching sporting events outdoors, since many take place during the day. Unlike films, which are designed for the big screen, sports broadcasts are intended for television, he adds.
Projectors
“It’s become more popular and there are a lot more options than there used to be,” she said.
Outdoor televisions are not only designed to withstand the elements, but they are two to four times brighter than regular TVs.
When purchasing a projector, pay attention to how much light it emits, measured in lumens. Snyder uses her system at her family’s Los Angeles home and their ranch in Montana, where it doesn’t get dark until 9:30 or 10 p.m. during the summer. She bought a projector “with a higher lumens output” so she can start showing movies at dusk. The family uses the system well into the fall because shorter days mean they can start their films earlier in the evening.
Roussopoulos recommends at least 3,000 lumens for outdoor use, especially if you want to start the show before dark. A decent starter projector will cost between $300 and $700.
Determine how you intend to play movies. Some projectors have built-in disc players. Others have HDMI inputs so you can connect them to a disc player, game system or laptop. Some have smart TV functions and can stream movies.
with it, Silva said.
Screens
As for the screen, it can be as simple as a white bedsheet pulled taut, Silva said. However, a growing number of manufacturers are making free-standing screens that can be easily assembled for home use, Roussopoulos said. The screens, which usually collapse and roll up for easy storage, range in price from $250 to $1,700. They come in a wide range of sizes and include all the necessary tie-downs to keep them in place.
Speakers
While outdoor moviegoers likely won’t expect a theatre-quality experience, it’s helpful to have something to amplify the sound, Barnett said. Consider using a set of speakers from a laptop computer or stereo system, Roussopoulos said. She often sells speakers from public address systems to accompany projectors. Snyder bought an inexpensive sound bar that connects to her projector.
The experts don’t recommend wireless speakers because they often operate on a delay that puts a movie’s sound and picture out of sync.
Customers wishing to show movies outside will need to do some homework on the variety of projectors, screens and speakers now available, Roussopoulos said.
If you intend to stream content, be sure you have a strong Wi-Fi signal outside your home. When shopping for a projector, remember that it’s likely you already own a device for playing movies that will work
The Big Supermarket Shop can pay off
Fall is in the air, and with it an urge to get organized, clean up sloppy summer habits and knock our schedules into shape. One way to feel like you’ve got some semblance of order at home is to master The Big Supermarket Shop. Many people are intimidated by the idea of a big weekly food shop. Too much to grapple with at once. But the payoff can be significant. A few pointers:
• Make a master list of staples you always want to have at home, and organize it by area of the supermarket (dairy, baking in-
gredients, produce and so on). A well-organized list saves you trips to the market, and also time spent zigzagging through the market, retracing your footsteps. This list is especially useful to have on your computer, so you can easily edit it every week.
• Before you hit the market, check the master list against the contents of your fridge, freezer and pantry. Stocked up on chicken broth? Take it off the list. Running low on quinoa? Onto the list it goes. You’ll also save money and aggravation by not buying another carton of milk because you couldn’t remember if yours was full or almost empty.
• Meal plan before you shop. This habit saves time, money and stress all week long. Pick out the recipes you want to make
Putting together a backyard movie system involves a bit of trial and error, but there’s a lot of good information available online and at stores to guide you, Silva says.
“It’s sort of an experiment to see what works in your space.”
throughout the week, and then add the ingredients you need to your master list, in the appropriate categories.
• Take time to get your pantry into shape so you can see what you need. Group like items together – all of the pastas, tomato products, grains, condiments, etc. – to make them easier to find.
• Shop the sales, before you leave the house. Most markets post their weekly specials on their websites, and this is a very helpful thing. Make note of what non-perishables are on sale, and see what you want to really stock up on. Or you may want to buy some usually pricey perishables to freeze, like a beef tenderloin or some frozen jumbo shrimp. And if you see that
pork loin, for instance, is on sale, that might inform your meal planning for the week.
The Big Shop is not a perfect science. But purchasing more in one fell swoop is just an easier way to get through the week. Yes, you will have to go to the market again, because you will inevitably run low on orange juice, or have an unexpected influx of teenagers wipe out your snacks, or need to pick up a piece of fish to cook later in the week. But there will be fewer of these supermarket pit stops, which is a lovely thing. Finally, give yourself some time to get into the rhythm of it. Start with your list of basics, add on from there. And by all means, get some help unpacking the car.
Children watch a movie on an outdoor theatre setup during a backyard birthday party in Concord, Calif.
Rene
Flossie
Louie
Loretta Auger Jan 12, 1931 - Apr 23, 1999
William (Bill) Auger Oct 10, 1917 - Feb 24, 2001
Michelle Auger Dec 18, 1975 - Jan 7, 2015
Flavian Joseph John Ghostkeeper 1952 Dave Rennie June 26, 1927 - July 19, 1999
Beatrice Ghostkeeper Jan 15, 1954 - Dec 16, 2001
Brian Ghostkeeper Oct 31, 1982 - June 25, 2005
Simon (Spooks) Ghostkeeper Apr 4, 1935 - Mar 14, 2002
Raymond (Dooley) Ghostkeeper Sept 30, 1932 - Feb 24, 2004
Charles A. Ghostkeeper Dec 10, 1938 - April 14, 2012
Delores G. Ghostkeeper
Mar 31, 1945 - July 2, 2015
Linda Ghostkeeper
April 25, 1951 - May 27, 2017
Jackson Ray Miller Garnot June 8, 2007
Patricia Anne Potskin
June 10, 1951 - July 2, 2016
Marlene I. Potskin
Nov 3, 1973 - Aug 21, 2011
Madeline Delorse Potskin-Makson January 5, 2005
Betty Williams
May 20, 1927 - June 22, 2010
Al Williams Mar 31, 1926 - Aug 30, 2003
Jaqueline Charlotte Plante
June 26, 1949 - Nov 24, 2007
Frieda Renee Plante
August 27, 1967 December 8, 2015
Debra Olson
Feb 15, 1954 - Nov 23, 1983
Darlene J. Williams Nov 9, 1955 - Aug 31, 2014
Adam Williams Sept 2, 1986 - Jan 7, 2000
You are gone but not forgotten in the
35 years
Gross Revenues of $150.000 plus annually from seasonal work Lots of opportunity to expand the business. Transition support available to the right buyer Serious Enquiries Only Office 250-596-9199 Cell 250-981-1472
BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY
Established Franchise Tax Preparation BusinessMackenzieservicing and McLeod Lake area for over 30 years.
Gross Revenues of $85,000 to $90,000 Annually and Potential to
BASIL GREEN Passed away in hospital on September 10th at the age of 76 years. He is survived by his wife, Lynne Green, daughter Wanda (Dwayne), sons; Scott, Darren (Laurie) & Jason (Darlene), ten grandchildren and two great grandchildren. A Memorial Celebration and potluck lunch for Basil will be held on Sunday September 16th from 1:00 - 4:00pm at the Eagles Hall 6742 Dagg Road, Prince George. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Cancer Society and Heart & Stroke Foundation.
WILLIAM (BILL)
GEORGE BURDEN
October 27, 1934September 2, 2018
It is with the deepest sorrow that we announce the passing of our dad, Bill Burden. Bill passed peacefully with his family by his side.
Bill was predeceased by his beautiful wife, Loreta, two granddaughters: Kaylee and Shaylee, his parents: Lucille and Ernest and his two brothers: Ronald and Robert. Bill is survived by his three daughters: Marni Wheatley (Ron), Michele “Micki” Downie (Curtis), Dee Burden (Chuck) Seven Grandchildren: Kyle, Cody, Alisha (Dustin), Jory, Nathan, Bert and Andrew Seven great grandchildren: Rylee, Bailee, Gloria, William, Kayden, Maiya and Alivia.
Bill is also survived by his sister Ruth Choquette and his loyal nephew Kim (Annalise) Choquette as well as many other family members and friends. Bill was born in Prince George in 1934 where he remained until his passing. Dad and Mom wintered in Yuma, Arizona for over 20 years.
Dad’s main passions were golfing, playing pool, crib and going to the casino. His other passion was owning and operating Hub City Motors and Equipment Limited. Bill became involved with Hub City Motors in 1957 where he started out pumping gas then moved between the different departments and finally ownership. Bill was proud of his staff and always made sure they were taken care of.
Dad’s hard work and dedication made Hub City Volkswagon the icon that it is today. Nothing was more important to Dad than family and friends. Those who knew him will remember his kind heart, gentle spirit and generous nature.
Bill’s family would like to thank Dr. Preston, Dr. Da Costa and all the wonderful nurses in the FMU, his care aides and home nurses.
A Celebration of Life will be held on September 22, 2018 at the Courtyard Marriott Hotel (900 Brunswick Street, Prince George) from 1:00pm - 4:00pm. Please bring your stories and memories. In lieu of flowers, a donation to the Hospice House or SPCA would be appreciated.
He had a nature you could not help loving, and a heart that was purer than gold And to those who knew and loved him, his memory will never grow cold.
STEWARD (Gerry) beloved father, grandfather and friend, passed away peacefully on Sept. 9, 2018 in the loving presence of family. Gerry leaves behind his three children: Gerald Steward (Kelsey), Bronwyn Steward (Dallas) and Hagen Steward (Marissa) as well as his two granddaughters Aubree and Brynlee. Gerry was born on May 14, 1944 in Calgary, the eldest child of three. Predeceased by his father William and mother Phylis Steward. Graduating from UBC in 1971 Gerry pursued his life long passion of architecture. Designing structures all across BC and the Yukon, Gerry leaves behind a legacy of hard work and commitment. Gerry was also an outdoors enthusiast who would often be found at his cabin on the weekends, fishing in the summer and hunting game trails in the fall. The love of his career and outdoors was only surpassed by the unconditional love he held for his family. Gerry will be remembered forever in the hearts of family and friends. There will be a celebration of life held at the First Baptist Church, 483 Gillett St. on Saturday, Sept. 22, 2018 at 11:00am with reception to follow.
With great sadness we announce the sudden passing of Florence Brantnall. She joins her husband William Brantnall and her son Martin Brantnall. She
AP FILE PHOTO A worker climbs onto the roof of a home under construction on June 20, 2017 in Phoenix, Ariz. Statistics released by the U.S. Census Bureau show women are earning more in the workplace, but men are earning less.
Gender wage gap closing; women earning more, men earning less
Jeff STEIN Citizen news service
The gender pay gap has begun narrowing over the last four decades – and women’s earnings are now closer to men’s. But that is not only because women are doing better.
The trend is also in part because men are earning less. Earnings for men have fallen in the decade since the recession, and are even below levels for much of the 1970s and 1980s.
Men are still paid about $10,000 more on average than women, according to U.S. Census Bureau figures released on Wednesday, but the gender earnings gap has grown smaller.
From 1973 to 2017, men’s earnings fell by about $3,200, or about five per cent, in numbers adjusted for inflation. Earnings for African-American men fell even more steeply than those of white men, according to experts.
“We’re talking about a 40-year period of people working full-time who are not doing better than their fathers and grandfathers did, and are basically doing worse,” said Mark Rank, an inequality expert at Washington University in St. Louis. “It’s a really striking pattern going on over a long period of time.” Census data show that average earnings for men fell again in 2017, the first year of the Trump administration. They fell for this same group in four of the eight years of the Obama administration as well: 2011, 2013, 2014, and 2016. Women still face enormous barriers in the labour market, including gender discrimination in hiring and pay, as well
as sexual harassment. Women’s earnings are still only 81 per cent that of men, essentially unchanged from last year, as inflation-adjusted earnings fell slightly for both genders, according to the Census.
But women’s average earnings have crept upwards slowly over the long and short run, in healthy signs of progress, while those of men have not. Since 2010, average earnings have fallen by about $2,000 for men. They have risen by about $500 for women over the same period.
The Census figures published Wednesday did show an increase in median household income, which jumped to an all-time high of $61,372. But that increase appears to have been driven by an addition of workers to the labour force, which drives up overall median income even though it does not mean median earnings rise for those who are working, according to Rank.
Experts disagree about the cause of the decline in men’s earnings, with some pointing to the decline in manufacturing jobs and others citing the long decline of organized labour in America.
In the early 1980’s, close to one in every four men was in a union. Now only about 11 per cent of men are in a union, while 10 per cent of women are unionized. Several studies have pointed to a link between higher wages and union membership, which allows workers to bargain for higher wages.
“The deterioration of unions has had a rougher effect on men’s incomes because men had been much more a part of or-
ganized labour,” said Lawrence Mishel, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think-tank.
The decline of unions has particularly damaged the economic fortunes of black men. From 1983 to 2015, the wage gap between black men and white men grew by about three per cent among older men, according to research by Valerie Wilson, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute. About half of that can be explained by the decline of unionization – both in terms of fewer people in a union, and less generous wages for those in them – over that period of time, Wilson found. (1983 is the earliest year for which those numbers are available.)
“The general trend is wages have been flat or declining for white and black men,” Wilson said. “But they’ve fallen more for black men.”
Some conservatives cast doubt on the Census data showing wage and income declines, with Brian Riedl of the Manhattan Institute noting they are closely tied to volatile inflation measures that may be artificially lowering long-run earnings. But Riedl also acknowledged a troubling lack of readily available highpaying jobs for men compared to several decades ago.
“It’s certainly true that for working class males a few decades ago a high school diploma was a ticket to a pretty good union job in manufacturing, and that’s not the case anymore,” Riedl said. “But there is no great solution – no single lever we can pull – to help working class men with high school diplomas suddenly gain upper-middle class incomes.”
Household debt up, Statscan says
Citizen news service
OTTAWA — The amount households owe, relative to their income, crept higher in the second quarter, even as mortgage borrowing continued to slow, Statistics Canada said.
The agency said Friday credit market debt as a proportion of household disposable income increased to 169.1 per cent as growth in debt outpaced income.
In other words, Canadians owed $1.69 in credit market debt for every dollar of household disposable income.
The ratio was up from 168.3 per cent in the first quarter, however it was down from 169.7 per cent in the second quarter last year.
BMO Capital Markets economic analyst Priscilla Thiagamoorthy noted the increase was “well below seasonal norms” and one of the smallest second-quarter increases since 2000.
“Despite edging slightly higher in Q2, the closely watched household debt-to-income ratio appears to have finally turned the corner from all-time highs,” Thiagamoorthy wrote in a brief report.
“The key takeaway here is that borrowing cooled with the housing market as households adjusted to a slew of policy changes
including tighter mortgage rules and gradual rate hikes.”
Household debt has been identified as a key vulnerability for the financial system by the Bank of Canada, however the central bank noted earlier this year that the risk has lessened.
On a seasonally adjusted basis, households borrowed $19.6 billion in the quarter, down from $22.2 billion in the previous quarter.
The decrease came as demand for consumer credit increased, but was more than offset by a decline in both mortgage and non-mortgage loans.
The decline in mortgages came as the housing market slowed amid tighter mortgage rules and rising mortgage rates.
Rates for five-year fixed mortgages have been rising as yields on the bond markets, where the banks raise money, have also climbed higher. Meanwhile, rates charged for variable rate mortgages have also climbed as the Bank of Canada has raised its key interest rate target.
On an unadjusted basis, household credit market debt, which includes consumer credit, and mortgage and non-mortgage loans, totalled $2.16 trillion.
OTTAWA
The markets today
TORONTO (CP) — North American stocks ended the week virtually flat in Friday trading with Canada’s main stock index getting a lift primarily from cannabis stocks that offset weakness in energy and materials.
Nothing really critical came out of U.S. markets on Friday, as stronger consumer spending in July and August was muted by Chinese trade tariff comments from U.S. President Donald Trump, said Patrick Blais, senior portfolio manager at Manulife Asset Management.
“It’s a little bit more of a stable environment today, so no clear direction in terms of just marketmoving news,” he said in an interview.
In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average gained 8.68 points to 26,154.67.
The S&P 500 index was up 0.8 points to 2,904.98, while the Nasdaq composite was off 3.67 points to 8,010.04.
Some reports issued Friday were supportive of the continued strength of the U.S. economy, he said. Even though August retail sales were a little weaker, an upward revision in July numbers pointed to strong consumer spending in the two summer months.
That reinforces expectations that the Federal Reserve will probably raise interest rates twice during the remainder of the year and at a more aggressive pace than in Canada, helping the U.S. greenback, said Blais.
The Canadian dollar traded at an average of 76.73 cents US compared with an average of 76.94 cents US on Thursday.
Pope meets with U.S. bishops as more allegations arise
Julie ZAUZMER, Michelle BOORSTEIN Citizen news service
Top American bishops met in the Vatican with Pope Francis on Thursday to discuss the sexualabuse crisis that the leader of the U.S. church said has “lacerated” the church. That leader, Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of Galveston-Houston, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, was himself accused this week of covering up the actions of an abusive priest in his archdiocese – prompting questions about DiNardo’s fitness to lead the reforms.
“It’s too early to say, but just looking at the case, it looks very bad. It seems like a violation – is he the guy who should be leading at this point?” David Gibson, the director of the Center on Religion and Culture at the Catholic university Fordham said about DiNardo. “What he’s got to be seen to be doing is pushing for a very rigorous policy. Can he do that if he himself has not been as diligent, to say the least, as he should be?”
The moral authority of bishops across the United States has come under new scrutiny, after one cardinal resigned this summer and another publicly stated he might do so, and another bishop was removed from ministry by Pope Francis on Thursday. That bishop, Michael J. Bransfield of West Virginia, will face a church investigation on charges of sexual harassment.
Amid the crisis facing the church’s leaders, the bishops who met with Francis on Thursday said very little about what exactly they discussed in terms of plans for reform.
“We shared with Pope Francis our situation in the United States – how the Body of Christ is lacerated by the evil of sexual abuse He listened very deeply from the heart,” DiNardo said in a statement after leaving the meeting, which also included Archbishop Seán Patrick O’Malley of Boston and Archbishop José H. Gomez of Los Angeles. “...It was a lengthy, fruitful, and good exchange. As we departed the audience, we prayed the Angelus together for God’s mercy and strength as we work to heal the wounds. We look forward to actively continuing our discernment together identifying the most effective next steps.”
On Wednesday, as DiNardo prepared for his meeting with the pope, the Associated Press reported that a woman claims to have told DiNardo about an abusive priest in his Texas archdiocese, and that DiNardo failed to take action to remove the priest from ministry until the priest was arrested on child abuse charges this week.
The accusation only fueled the calls for increased lay leadership and for the resignation of bishops nationwide that have echoed through the Catholic church since a Pennsylvania grand jury completed a massive report last month, detailing allegations of abuse by more than 300 priests in the state. States including Missouri, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico and New York have now launched their own investigations.
Gibson called for a board of lay leaders, not clergy, empowered to investigate whether bishops are properly handling all allegations of abuse.
“The pope seems to feel that he can do it on his own here and there. But I don’t think that’s a credible way to go forward,” he said. However, some in the church believe internal investigations are still the proper way to handle the crisis.
Teresa Kettlekamp, who headed the office
of youth protection for the American bishops, and now sits on a similar commission for Pope Francis, said she believes Francis is pursuing an appropriate course of action of having bishops clean house in their own dioceses. “A lot of good people are working for the good of the cause. And hopefully investigation results will be shared fully with the public and if action is needed it will be taken as fast as humanly possible, with no foot dragging,” she said. “The truth always comes to light.”
Asked if DiNardo could continue to lead the U.S. church on this issue despite being accused of covering for a priest himself, she said she would wait “until I know all the facts.”
the allegation.
The victim told police that DiNardo told her the priest wouldn’t work with children. But eight years later, La Rosa-Lopez was still in a parish church. “I’m tired of all of his empty words,” the victim said of DiNardo, to the AP. “If he’s going to go meet with the pope and pretend that all of this is okay and his diocese is clean, I can’t stand it.”
The pope seems to feel that he can do it on his own here and there. But I don’t think that’s a credible way to go forward.
— David Gibson, Center on Religion and Culture
DiNardo is accused of mishandling the case of the Rev. Manuel La Rosa-Lopez, who was arrested in Conroe, Texas, on Tuesday on four counts of indecency with a child. Police say La RosaLopez fondled two teenagers when he was a priest at a Conroe church. At the time of his arrest, he was a priest at another church in Richmond, Texas, the police report said.
The AP said both victims, who were teenagers at the time, are now in their 30s. One victim told police that her family reported La Rosa-Lopez’s conduct to the church after he touched her when she was a teenager, and that the priest was transferred to another parish as a result. In 2010, the victim said that she saw that La Rosa-Lopez was still in ministry and met with DiNardo, who had not been in Texas when she first raised
The Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston responded in a statement that church officials considered the woman’s allegations when she first reported the priest in 2001, and that an archdiocesan review board decided to allow La Rosa-Lopez to return to parish ministry in 2004 based on the evidence presented to the board.
The only other complaint about La RosaLopez was in 2018, the archdiocese said. That victim reported his abuse to the church about a year ago, according to police, but did not meet with DiNardo until last month.
When he did, the church contacted Child Protective Services, and La Rosa-Lopez was arrested this week.
Teresa Pitt-Green, who co-founded the magazine The Healing Voices for sexual abuse survivors trying to maintain their Catholic faith, said she is “heartbroken” about the DiNardo allegations. She has worked with him and found him supportive of clergy abuse survivors.
“I’m finding myself feeling confused if it’s true, but I’m not judging anything,” she
said.
As far as whether the allegation affects DiNardo’s ability to lead the charge against abuse, Pitt-Green said, “I certainly think it challenges it. And it makes people question.”
That feeling of not knowing who to trust, she said, is especially familiar and hard for survivors who have been violated in a context that’s supposed to be holy and safe. “As a survivor, I’m very leery of what people try to present as real. And even more so now.”
On the same morning that DiNardo, facing this accusation, met with Pope Francis, the Vatican announced that Francis would accept the resignation of Bransfield, the 75-year-old leader of the Wheeling-Charleston, West Virginia, diocese.
Francis ordered the archbishop of Baltimore to investigate charges that Bransfield sexually harassed adults, the Baltimore archdiocese said in a statement; Bransfield previously has been accused of molesting teenagers and denied the accusations, according to church officials and court documents.
Bransfield is only the latest U.S. Catholic leader removed from his position due to sexual harassment and coverup charges.
This summer, Theodore McCarrick, archbishop of Washington from 2001 until his retirement at age 75 in 2006, became the first U.S. cardinal to ever resign from the College of Cardinals due to allegations of sexual abuse. He has been accused of sexually harassing two minors as well as young adult seminarians and priests.
And after the Pennsylvania grand-jury report last month, Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington has faced local and national clamor to resign.
— William Branigin contributed to this story
Faith is a meal, you need to eat the whole thing
In some ways the Gospel (good news) of Jesus Christ is like a meal that you order at a fast-food restaurant. Have you ever gone through a drive-thru, ordered a meal, opened up your bag and looked inside to discover that they only gave you the fries? No burger.
You look at your watch and think, “Do I have time to go back in there and get it?” Perhaps you didn’t and so you settled for a bad deal and a growling stomach. When it comes to the Gospel we need to make sure that we are eating (and serving) the full meal deal. You need all your
nutrition, not just some of it. Of course, fast-food meals aren’t very nutritious, but you get the point.
When people think about the Gospel they normally think of the cross. You see crosses on churches all over the place, and that’s definitely appropriate. The cross is a symbol of the forgiveness of our sins through the death of Jesus Christ.
The cross, however, is only the first part of a bigger package.
The point of the cross and of the forgiveness of our sins, in the first place, is that we would receive a new heart.
This is a metaphor for becoming a new spiritual person, especially with respect to our attitude towards God and what he wants of us.
Jesus said it this way: “Unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.”
The second, very related, purpose of the cross is that we also would be restored to a good relationship with our Creator. Jesus died on the cross to forgive our sins so that the barriers of our sin and sin-nature are
removed. When we confess our wrongs and put our faith in Jesus Christ we are then welcomed into God’s family as his children.
Aren’t you kind of getting cheaped out if your Gospel only includes the cross, but doesn’t include a new heart and living relationship with God? Or, vice versa, if your Gospel is about some vague notion of God’s love, but doesn’t deal with your actual sins and tendencies?
Preachers need to preach the full-meal deal. You need to eat the full-meal deal. It’s really a wonderfully tasty meal, and I suspect that more people would enjoy it if only they would be willing to eat it.
AP PHOTO
Pope Francis arrives in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican for his weekly general audience on Wednesday.
