Prince George Citizen September 19, 2018

Raise-A-Reader day raising funds for literacy

Christine HINZMANN Citizen staff chinzmann@pgcitizen.ca

There will be groups of orangeclad volunteers located at strategic spots throughout Prince George this morning between 7 and 9 a.m. as Raise-A-Reader once again collects funds for literacy programs in Prince George. Residents who visit any McDonald’s, Ritual Coffee, Books & Co., Denny’s, Zoe’s, the College of New Caledonia, UNBC or the Telus office on Sixth Avenue, will have the opportunity to donate to the literacy cause as volunteers offer The Citizen newspaper.

Marnie Alexander, community coordinator at Harwin Elementary School, said not only are the students recipients of grants from Raise-A-Reader, they have volunteered on Raise-A-Reader day for the last eight or nine years,

as well. Alexander and 14 students and their families can be found at the 15th Avenue McDonald’s and Starbuck’s bright and early this morning.

MLA Shirley Bond is a perennial volunteer who helps promote literacy in the province.

“I am always so impressed to see students from Harwin Elementary as part of the Raise-A-Reader team,” Bond said.

“They bring so much energy and make it a really fun morning. What a great way for them to learn firsthand about giving back to the community. We hope lots of people will come by and make a donation and let the students know how much their volunteering means.”

Bond will be volunteering with the Harwin students because she knows how important these literacy programs are to everyone.

“I try to participate in the Raise-A-Reader fundraising event

every year whether I am in Prince George or working somewhere else in the province,” Bond said.

“I love to read and I can’t imagine what it would be like to struggle reading a bus schedule or your prescription. By supporting the Raise-A-Reader program it means extra support for literacy programs and supporting children and families who may need some extra help.”

Harwin has been the recipient of numerous grants from RaiseA-Reader and last year Harwin Elementary received a $2,500 grant, Alexander said.

“The grant went in part to our Read and Run to the Sun program,” Alexander said. “The kids were raising money to go to the Vancouver Sun Run (10 km run) so it was a literacy and fitness based program.”

Children had to read 1,500 ageappropriate pages from teacherapproved material to reflect how

many kilometres Prince George is from Vancouver and back. The children had to provide a variety of projects about what they read, including book reports and dioramas.

The children also participated in a running program three to four days a week from September to April.

“It was a cool program,” Alexander said.

“It was a pilot project and it went really, really well.”

There were 20 students from Harwin and 20 students from Spruceland Elementary who went on the trip.

Part of the grant also went to a Dr. Seuss-themed literacy week at the school, which hosted a book fair that included all the students.

Part of the literacy week was a reading challenge where each student could read with a family member for 20 minutes a night, bring back the form once the chal-

lenge was met and there was a prize drawn where the winner got an iPad.

“We had great involvement in that and during Literacy Week we had guest authors come into the school to read to the children,” Alexander said about the annual event.

It’s important for the children to participate in the Raise-A-Reader fundraiser, she added.

“Even if we don’t apply for grants we promote literacy and volunteerism,” Alexander said.

“I think it’s really, really rewarding for our kids and it’s important to give back because we’ve always had a ton of community support for everything we do in our school. So I think it’s really important for the kids to give back.”

For those who can’t attend the locations where fundraisers will be, there’s still a chance to make donations online at raiseareader. com/donate.

Council lowers business licence fee in giving initial approval to cannabis bylaws

Mark NIELSEN Citizen staff

mnielsen@pgcitizen.ca

City council voted 6-3 Monday night to significantly reduce the fee the city will charge retailers for a business licence as part of passing a series of bylaws and a policy in the lead-up to legalization of cannabis next month.

Those who set up shop in the city will be charged $1,000, well down from the $5,000 staff had recommended in the name of recovering the costs related to policing, bylaw services and public education.

Coun. Garth Frizzell suggested $1,000 as an apt amount. Municipalities are seeking a 40-per-cent share of the provincial government’s excise tax on cannabis, but how much local governments will receive remains up in the air.

“On the side of not wanting to prejudice them toward keeping the money in the

provincial coffers, I want to protect us by having a high fee,” Frizzell said. “But the small business person in me is saying ‘look, this first year we’re not going to get a flood of people and we’re uncertain of what the revenues are going to be on any side,’ so my inclination... is to take that fee of $5,000 and bring it down.”

Coun. Brian Skakun followed up with a motion in support of Frizzell’s suggestion.

He called $5,000 “unfair and excessive” and dismissed the need to charge the same rate as other communities.

Council had been told $5,000 is at the lower end of what other municipalities are charging.

“We have a lot of entrepreneurs in the community that really want to step up and run legitimate businesses selling a quality product that isn’t contaminated,” Skakun said.

“We want to take some business away from organized crime and I think this is the perfect opportunity.”

If the stores prove to be putting a strain on policing, council can always come back and increase the fee, Skakun added.

At $280, liquor stores are charged significantly less and Coun. Terri McConnachie said she did not see much of a difference between them and cannabis stores in terms of cost to the city.

On that note, planning and development general manager Ian Wells said the city’s fees will be going through a review that should be ready for council by late next year.

Coun. Frank Everitt said he’d be more comfortable with $2,000 or $2,500 but was willing to go with $1,000 and “correct if needed” at a later date. Mayor Lyn Hall took the same position.

Coun. Murry Krause said the reduction might encourage owners to manage their businesses well because if they cost the city a lot to deal with, the fee could be increased in the future.

Councillors Albert Koehler, Jillian Mer-

rick and Susan Scott voted against the motion.

Koehler said he is simply “against this stuff” and suggested the fee be doubled or even more to “make it difficult for anyone to obtain this stuff.”

Merrick said the rate proposed by staff is evidence based and does not impose a significant barrier to entry given the relatively low costs businesspeople otherwise face to open a store.

“If we look at restaurants, for example, the licensing is very cheap but a commercial kitchen can cost you upwards of $40,000 or $50,000,” she said. “A cannabis retail facility would not, infrastructure wise, be an expensive business to do. You could do it out of a closet and a bookshelf.”

In all, council passed three bylaws and a policy related to cannabis through first and second reading. A public hearing on the items will be held on Oct. 1 with final readings slated for Oct. 15 if they remain unchanged.

CITIZEN PHOTO BY BRENT BRAATEN

These are the students from Harwin Elementary who will be hocking papers this morning for the annual Raise-A-Reader campagin. The school was a recipient of one of the grants distributed throughout the area.

Regional author holding signing for debut book

Frank PEEBLES Citizen staff fpeebles@pgcitizen.ca

The world is about to meet Swayzi, a teenage girl with grave problems, but a supernatural intervention and two stellar guys show her flashes of another possible outcome.

“I was supposed to die. The doctors told me I had only two months to live,” Swayzi said. “That was before I met him. Daylan. He was the miracle cure I had been waiting for. With Daylan, I was no longer the smalltown girl with that unexplained illness. I was something more. The fate of a magical world depended on my survival, and I longed to go with him. There was only one thing stopping me. Tyler.”

Swayzi is quickly becoming one of the northern region’s leading teenage ambassadors of magical parallel universes. Jenna Morland knows her best. In fact, Jenna Morland kind of is Swayzi, in that way that all fictional characters are really just manifestations from the mental recesses of their authors. She spent well more than a year hacking and hewing Swayzi out of her imagination and now Morland is ready to unveil her empress.

“I wrote something that I figured I’d want to read,” said the Fort St. John writer.

“It came out of me naturally – spilled out of me really. It took about a month and a half to write the first draft, then revising, revising, editing, editing and that took about a year altogether. I don’t regret any of the hard work.”

The hard work is bundled between the covers of her first novel, Empress Unveiled, released to the world on Sept. 4. by Oftomes Publishing. Morland, who is married to former Prince George resident Gary Morland, is coming to P.G. to see family, visit some friends, and meet the public at a book signing at Coles bookstore on Oct. 6.

What she wants to tell people like herself – who grew up flailing in English class and eschewing diaries, but still a voracious reader, dreamer of dreams and vivid of imagination – is that you can still become an author and put all those creative ideas in your mind out into the world.

“I never found English class stimulating for me. I’m still a terrible speller. But I love reading. I devour reading. I learned the structure and flow of a book from that, just

out of instincts from reading and reading and reading.”

Since she lacked the post-secondary schooling in novel-craft and publishing, she was unaware how to obtain an agent, how to approach a publisher with her book idea, or that anything in the publishing world was even attainable for someone who just sat down at her keyboard on the long nights when her husband was gone to work out in the fields of the oil and gas industry and the kids were in bed.

“I remember sending it to my sister –

nobody but her and my husband even knew I was writing a book – and she responded really positively,” Morland said.

“She told me she’d like to see it done as a book, not just a fun project for me, and so it spiraled from there.”

It curled into a book deal almost instantly. She spotted an engagement stunt on Twitter for aspiring writers, a thing called a pitch party where you have 150 Twitter characters in which to explain your book. Publishers were lined up in advance to assess the pitches, and the winners would

get to cut through to the front of the line to discuss an actual book deal.

Morland’s pitch earned the interest of the Oftones team, and the dominoes began to fall.

One of the key features in her favour, she said, was depicting her home landscapes even though it was fictional, stylized and named differently.

“I knew I wanted the setting to be northern, there aren’t many novels set up in the north (especially in the Young Adult / Urban Fantasy genres) so I wanted to take advantage of this environment I live in and portray that in the book,” she said, noting the visual qualities of northern settings.

“There are a lot of badass moments in this book, so Netflix, if you’re listening... You could do a lot with the settings if you filmed a movie version – the ocean, the mountains, the changing of the seasons, the northern lights, the snow – I think would be very cool for everybody to see.” She underscores “everybody” not just the apparent target audience of teenaged girls. She may have written an empress character, but she is no princess of a writer, she laughed. In fact, the first person who physically purchased a hardcopy (as opposed to the tablet versions available) of the book was a 13-year-old boy.

Morland self-identifies as a “Slytherin to the core” to put things in a Harry Potter context. No, not devious nor sinister.

“Yes, Slythrin has its bad people, but what they don’t talk about is the ambition and honing your energy towards a goal,” she explained. “There are many good qualities to being Slytherin like being able to take your own path, not relying on others, the strength and independence to do something out of the ordinary. That’s what I did on the book. I had no degree in literature, I had no agent, I didn’t have a list of past publications, so I had to find my own way and I succeed in that.”

Will Swayzi succeed? Her life hangs in the balance, she is torn between the affections of two love interests, and she is confronted by the very real possibility that her endangered world may not be the only world in which she could exist.

From 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Coles in Pine Centre Mall on Oct. 6, Morland will happily talk about these subjects and even hint at more pages yet to be written as the empress is unveiled.

HANDOUT PHOTO

Fort St. John author Jenna Morland will hold a book signing for her debut novel, Empress Unveiled, on Oct. 6 at Coles in Pine Centre Mall.

Hillhouse 100 years old and going strong

Christine HINZMANN Citizen staff chinzmann@pgcitizen.ca

On her 100th birthday Dorothy Hillhouse was overcome with emotion as Alex Murray serenaded her, and her closest friends and family celebrated in the party room Tuesday at the Prince George Chateau.

Hillhouse heard the first few notes of the old Scottish song I Love A Lassie by Sir Harry Lauder and immediately wiped a tear from her eye as she sang along.

Murray, in a commanding voice, continued to offer up his talent by singing Roamin’ in the Gloamin’ and Keep Right On To the End of the Road, while being accompanied on the piano by Val Stanley.

Hillhouse’s son David spoke about what fond memories his mother had of her father singing her to sleep with Lauder’s songs when she was a child.

“I had a pretty happy childhood in a pioneer home in Saskatchewan,” Hillhouse explained.

Her father was William Falconer, who came from Scotland to Saskatchewan in 1910.

“He married an English girl who came across during the First World War.”

Her mother’s name was Hilda Ash. The couple grew their farm from a quarter section and by 1928 they had six quarter sections and were able to build a brand new home.

Hillhouse married Al in 1944 and raised their only son, David.

“I only have one child but he’s a good one,” she smiled.

She has two grandchildren and seven great grandchildren she said are the loves of her life.

When Al unfortunately passed away in 2008 while they were living in Victoria, the decision was made for her to move to Prince George to be closer to son David and his family.

She’s lived in the Chateau since that time and said she’s established many good

NEWS IN BRIEF

Smokey and the Bandit takes top spot in Burt Reynolds poll

During The Citizen’s last online poll we asked “what is your favourite Burt Reynolds movie?”

Outrunning the competition was Smokey and The Bandit, which took 44 per cent of the vote and 335 votes.

Coming in a distant second was the canoe trip that went very, very wrong in Deliverance with 22 per cent of the vote and 167 votes. The Longest Yard took 14 per cent of the vote and 109 votes, while The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas took eight per cent with 60 votes.

Boogie Nights took five per cent with 41 votes and Hooper took one per cent of the vote with nine votes.

Total number of votes was 767.

Remember this is not a scientific poll. Next online poll question is “What should the federal government do after the Trans Mountain court ruling requiring further consultation with First Nations?”

friendships and enjoys her time in Prince George.

“Everyone’s so friendly here,” she smiled.

To make your vote count visit www.pgcitizen.ca. — Citizen staff

Police nab more than 200 for speeding near schools, playgrounds

Prince George RCMP have issued 208 tickets for speeding in a school zone or in a playground during the two weeks classes have been in session.

Broken down, 121 were for going over 30 km/h in a school zone, 15 for going over 30 km/h in a playground zone, 68 for going over the posted limit in school advisory areas or corridors where children frequent and four for excessive speeding – going 45 km/h above the limit in a school zone or playground zone.

All four of these vehicles were impounded for a minimum of seven days, the worst offender going 95 km/h and one of the vehicles being a loaded commercial tractor trailer unit.

One person was arrested and charged with refusing to provide a breath sample under the Criminal Code. This person drove to a school to pick up at least one child, police added. Also, nine tickets were issued for

And what’s the secret to a long life? “A good healthy upbringing and good genes,” Hillhouse said, noting her father died when he was 88 and her

using a cellphone while driving and six for failing to wear a seatbelt.

“The Prince George RCMP want to thank the vast majority of motorists that followed the rules of the road and obeyed the 30 km/h speed limit in school and playground zones,” police said.

“Pedestrians, specifically children, are vulnerable road users and require extra care so they can get to their destination safely.”

— Citizen staff

PGCF offering four more $10,000 grants

The Prince George Community Foundation will be granting four additional $10,000 grants during its fall cycle.

One grant will be given to a registered charity in each of the four indicators identified in the PGCF’s 2017 Vital Signs Report: people and work; health and well-being; gap between rich and poor; and housing. The full report is available on the PGCF website, www. pgcf.ca, along with the granting application form. Be sure to indicate that the application is for the one of the “Vital Signs” grants. The deadline for applications is Oct. 15.

— Citizen staff

Masich Place official reopening this Friday

An official grand reopening of Masich Place Stadium is set for Friday. It will start at 5 p.m., prior to a home game for the UNBC Timberwolves men’s soccer team, and will feature a variety of “Try It” stations presented by Engage Sport North to expose people to sports they may not have previously tried.

— Citizen staff

City offering quality of life grants

The city is welcoming applications for two grant programs aimed at improving the quality of life in Prince George. The community enhancement grant supports efforts to improve neighbourhoods, foster civic pride, and “grow a proud, confident, safe, sustainable and healthy community.”

Past recipients include the organizers of Candy Cane Lane, the College Heights Community Association Halloween event and the 12th Avenue garden project. Grants range from $200 to $1,000.

The contact for this program is

Marta Gregor at 250-561-7798 and the deadline is Oct. 15.

The myPG grant helps local organizations develop and implement innovative activities, projects, and events.

Eligible activities can be large or small, and activities or projects should be accessible to residents of all backgrounds, ethnicities and income levels.

The applications will be evaluated based on increasing community pride, encouraging a safe community, providing social connections for citizens, encouraging physical activity, providing opportunities for involvement in arts and culture and ensuring equity and inclusion. The contacts for this program are Sarah Brown at 250-614-7897 and Doug Hofstede at 250-561-7646 and the deadline is also Oct. 15.

— Citizen staff

Making it right

The Raise A Reader campaign does not, as a recent Citizen story indicated, directly fund the Prince George Public Library. The fundraising effort supports a number of literacy causes in the community and may, if an application is made and succeeds in the assessment process, potentially go to a library program.

mother died just before her 100th

Dorothy Hillhouse celebrated her 100th birthday at the Prince George Chateau onTuesday afternoon.

Bathtime

Hall doesn’t sign letter of support for

Frank PEEBLES Citizen staff fpeebles@pgcitizen.ca

A consortium of mayors from the northern region jointly signed a letter of support for the LNG industry. Prince George mayor Lyn Hall’s name was not on it.

Hall clarified on Tuesday that this was only due to timing. The letter did not arrive on his desk in time to properly discuss it with his council colleagues before the consortium sent the message off to the intended recipients.

The letter was addressed to the West Coast Environmental Law Association and an opponent of the recently halted Petronas/ Prince Rupert Gas Transmission/ Pacific NorthWest LNG project.

It would have sourced natural gas in the Hudson’s Hope vicinity, piped it across northern B.C.

(passing near Mackenzie and Fort St. James) on its way to a liquified natural gas shipping facility near Port Edward/Prince Rupert.

The signatory mayors issued the letter out of concern for the next LNG project that is nearing its final investment decision.

“We recognize it is your right to file a jurisdictional challenge with the National Energy Board against LNG Canada’s feed supply pipeline, TransCanada’s Coastal GasLink,” the mayors said.

“We would also like you to know that our communities are in support of the proposed LNG Canada export facility and associated pipeline. We believe that the development of this LNG export facility will bring tremendous benefits to our communities, region, province, entire nation, and even the broader global environment.

“If the LNG Canada project moves forward, it will create thousands of person-years of work for all walks of people across the North, B.C., Canada, and beyond. The development of this project

would create billions of dollars in taxes for all levels of government; which will support programs that are important to all of us, such as education, healthcare, infrastructure, and funding for environmental sustainability initiatives. If this LNG export facility is developed, it will also bring remarkable benefits to many First Nations including contract and employment opportunities, and benefit agreements.”

Mayor Hall did not disclose his personal feelings for the project, or the overall LNG industry, but said he wanted any message with his name on it, purporting to be on behalf of the community, to have all of council’s input, not just his own.

“We got this just a couple of days before it was sent out, and we got a subsequent addendum press release that said that not all commu-

LNG

nities had sufficient time to make a decision whether to participate, so we were one of those communities,” Hall said.

“We will deal with this as a council. It has been my practice that when we get requests like this, to sign onto things, that I take it to council, so that’s what I’m going to do with this one.”

The mayors who did sign onto the letter include those representing Mackenzie, Burns Lake, New Hazelton, Chetwynd, Pouce Coupe, Dawson Creek, Taylor, Northern Rockies Regional Municipality, Terrace, Fort St. John, Tumbler Ridge, Houston, Kitimat and Vanderhoof.

The letter closed by saying, “We stand united in our support for seeing the development of LNG Canada, and we will continue to voice our support for this project.”

Court orders injunction against drilling permit for proposed mine

Frank PEEBLES Citizen staff

The latest round in the battle for local gold has been won by the Tsilhqot’in Nation.

Mining company Taseko has long been the proponent of the New Prosperity Mine, a gold-copper project located at Fish Lake –known to the resident Tsilhqot’in people as Te tan Biny.

It is located south of Prince George and west of Williams Lake.

The Tsilhqot’in Nation opposed the development of the mine due to the environmental impacts it would have, and due to the company’s lack of consultation about what they wished to do on the Tsilhqot’in people’s territory.

The federal environmental assessment team rejected Taseko’s application in 2010, but the company persisted.

A revised application was also rejected in 2014.

Taseko nonetheless initiated site preparation work and got provincial permits to continue exploration drilling and reclamation permits.

This was earlier this summer.

“The court decision is unequivocal. The government of British Columbia has the authority to approve resource development work even in the face of Aboriginal opposition.

“The Crown’s obligation is to consult with Aboriginal people and to accommodate their interests where reasonable to do so. However, there is no duty or obligation to secure Aboriginal support for the work being proposed,” said Russell Hallbauer, president and CEO of Taseko Mines Limited, at the time of that provincial issuance.

The Tsilhqot’in Nation turned to the B.C. Court of Appeal to halt this latest attempt by Taseko to resurrect the project.

On Monday the court granted an interlocutory injunction against a drilling permit until a full hearing on the matter can be heard.

“We continually have to go to court to protect our cultural and spiritual sites,” said Joe Alphonse, tribal chairman for the Tsilhqot’in National Government.

“These areas should be off the table for any kind of invasive development. While this injunction grants a temporary relief from extensive drilling and exploration work, we are still calling on the B.C. government to step in and put a full stop to this drilling permit. B.C. has options available to them to protect cultural sites like these. Both the Prosperity and New Prosperity projects have been rejected by the federal government.

“To think that anything can proceed on this site is absolutely illogical.”

Taseko has not publicly responded as of press time to this latest legal development.

A crow enjoys a bath in

HALL

Smithers singer playing Artspace on Saturday

Frank PEEBLES Citizen staff fpeebles@pgcitizen.ca

New Jersey has Springsteen, New York has Billy Joel, northern B.C. has Mark Perry.

These are the storytellers of their times and places. It doesn’t mean throwing the name of their town into the lyrics to “repra-zent,” it means infusing the song with lifeblood depictions of the people you live with. Billy Joel never once sang “boy is New York ever big.” He described the newspapers people read in the morning, the kind of wine that paired with your steet-side cafe food, the fish you could catch or not catch off of Long Island, which streets weren’t safe to walk at night.

In this region, Mark Perry was one of the first to paint our picture, northern portraits, inside the lyrics of popular songs.

He has been singing them across the local landscape from his Smithers home since the radio still spoke to us in AM frequencies. He’s still doing it today.

“There is a strength to being connected to your music, living the songs,” Perry said.

He felt it in a numbing wave one day at a sold-out concert in Prince Rupert when he performed a tune called Spirit Of The North about the tragic sinking of the Inside Passage ferry in 2006. One of the fans came to him after the show and wanted to buy one of his older albums because she had lost her first copy and wanted it replaced. It was in her van on the Queen of the North when it sank. That’s how interlaced a songwriter can be when attention is paid to actualities.

“Songwriting is way more important than anything else (in the music industry’s collection of professions), so many topics that have to be covered,” he said. “This record (his brand new release called Right Here) I’ve got a song called Missing. I have a friend writing a book on the Highway Of Tears, I was talking to her – I have a previous song also called

Highway Of Tears off a previous album – and she told me ‘do you know there are more missing men than women?’ and that made my jaw drop. And my drummer told me something once that really stuck and that is it’s everybody’s job to talk about it.”

But not all his ballads are sad or heavy. He wraps his smooth, earthy voice around songs about hockey, loving snapshots about places like Port Essington and the Skeena River.

“I even have one called Go Cubs Go and its about the Moricetown Cubs, the baseball team, and if you get a chance to see the record there’s a photo of the team,” of he said. “I think, like for a lot of communities, sports gives a chance for people to all get together for something.”

Perry is a throwback to the times when folk and country music were only separated by a chord or two.

Even though his arrangements lean heavily on unplugged acoustic instruments, he sparks the electricity felt by a listener when a musician dials up so close it feels like no one else is in the room but the two of you.

This relationship is amplified by that familiarity in the subject mat-

ter. He has a knack for storytelling, so he certainly has the mechanics to pen a protest song, but he thinks those grander topics of the world would take him away from the inspirations that matter to him the most, and those are almost invariably local.

“It’s really hard to like America right now, and you’ve gotta remember there’s a lot of great people there, but it’s just too big for me,” he said. “I like real stuff that you can grasp. You live it, and it’ll come out in the song. I just want to connect honestly with people, that’s what real songwriting is. It’s always been a privilege, really. It’s such an honour and it never goes away.”

He will be bringing two accomplished musicians – Ian Olmstead on bass and accordion, Mark Thibeault on electric guitar and steel guitar – to this area for the first exposure of his new album. Perry will perform on Saturday at Artspace at 8 p.m. Tickets are $15 in advance from Books & Company or $20 at the door.

It’s an Omineca-Cariboo sandwich concert, with Quesnel on Friday at The Occidental and Fort St. James on Sunday at the Pope Mountain Arts Centre.

Swirling firestorm seen during B.C. fires

Amy SMART Citizen news service

A towering funnel of smoke and flames captured on video by a firefighter with the BC Wildfire Service is giving viewers a peek into the surreal world that crews have faced while battling some of the worst wildfires this summer in British Columbia.

In the video posted to Instagram by firefighter Mary Schidlowsky, three crew members can be seen in a tug of war against what she calls a “fire tornado,” which is sucking a hose skyward like a kite string.

“Fire tornado destroyed our line. It threw burning logs across our guard for 45 minutes and pulled our hose 100 plus feet in the air before melting it. That’s definitely a first,” Schidlowsky writes in the post.

The smoke is too thick to show it, but Schidlowsky writes that the column stretches 60 metres into the sky.

After the crew members give up on the line the twister is seen spinning at rapid speed alongside the road. One crew member throws a rock at it, in an act of

futility. Fire information officer Kevin Skrepnek says the phenomenon known as a “fire whirl” can occur when high winds interact with a fire.

“When that combines with the rising heat off the fire it can create a kind of eddy and it’s going to pick up some of the combustible gases, some of the smoke, sometimes the debris in the area as well,” he said in an interview.

Skrepnek said it’s not actually a tornado, but more similar to a water spout or dust devil that lasts a few seconds.

“Typically a fire whirl won’t be as large and won’t last as long as what you’re seeing in that clip,” he said.

The video was captured Aug. 19 near Vanderhoof while crews were fighting the Chutanli Lake fire.

Fire whirls are rare and Skrepnek said in his eight years with the Wildfire Service he has only witnessed one.

“It’s not unusual on very intense and very large fires to see them, but to see one that upclose is fairly rare,” he said.

“It’s pretty dramatic.”

Smithers-born singer Mark Perry will be playing a show at Artspace on Saturday.

Baseball been berry, berry good to Jared

Nearly 40 years ago, long before Jared Young was born and shortly after the New York Yankees defeated the Los Angeles Dodgers in the 1978 World Series, one of baseball’s most famous phrases was first said.

It wasn’t one of the many gems dropped by the legendary Yankee catcher and manager Yogi Berra. Instead, it was uttered on Saturday Night Live by one of the supporting cast in a skit that included both John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd.

“Baseball been berry, berry good to me,” was actually said by Garrett Morris, portraying the fictional Chico Escuela, a former major league all-star from the Dominican Republic who played with the Chicago Cubs. In the routine, Escuela has been hired by the St. Mickey’s Knights of Columbus for $900 to give a motivational speech.

“Thank you berry much. Baseball been berry, berry good to me. Thank you. God bless you. Gracias!” is Escuela’s entire speech in a thick Hispanic accent, to Belushi and Aykroyd’s great disappointment.

The phrase caught on, as so many Saturday Night Live lines have over the years. The Escuela character became the sports correspondent for Weekend Update in later episodes that season, repeating “baseball been berry, berry good to me” to the cheers

of the live audience.

Twenty years later, when Young was just a toddler, Sammy Sosa, a real life major league all-star with a real-life thick Hispanic accent playing with the real-life Chicago Cubs, jokingly used the line a few times with reporters. And now there’s Young, now a 23-yearold Chicago Cubs draft pick from Prince George, as remote and unlikely a town to ever produce a professional baseball player, who was named Tuesday as the minor league player of the year in the entire Chicago Cubs organization.

Baseball been berry, berry good to Jared. Everywhere he’s gone since he left Prince George for his Grade 12 year to play in the B.C. Premier League in Kelowna, he’s excelled.

While in Kelowna, he landed a scholarship to play at the tiny Minot State University, a school smaller than UNBC in Minot, North Dakota, a city smaller than Prince George.

The year after, he moved up to Connors State in Warner, Oklahoma, which, for Merle Haggard fans, is in Muskogee County, where people are proud to be an Okie from Muskogee.

Then it was on to Old Dominion University, a much larger school in the much larger city of Norfolk, Virginia. A short drive to the northeast, away from Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean into the rural interior of

the state, lies Prince George County.

The Chicago Cubs noticed this sweetswinging kid from Canada and picked him up in the 15th round of the Major League Baseball draft last year.

Leaving behind three years of academic studies towards a degree in sports management, Young went from Old Dominion to the Eugene, Ore., Emeralds in the Northwest League.

This spring, he started the season with the South Bend, Ind., Cubs, made the Midwest League all-star team and then was called up in July to play for the Myrtle Beach, S.C., Pelicans, where he continued to excel both at the plate and in various positions in the field.

To put Young’s accomplishments into perspective, he’s the only Prince George baseball player to ever play every day on a Major League Baseball farm team, never mind being named that team’s top minor league player of the year.

That honour comes with a trip to the legendary Wrigley Field in Chicago next week for both him and his proud family (including his mom Dana, a longtime Citizen advertising sales representative) so he can throw out the ceremonial first pitch next Thursday before the Cubs play the Pittsburgh Pirates in the final week of the regular season. And the ride might only be getting started for Young.

Is your work phone working?

The way we work, and how we stay connected to our tasks, has changed dramatically over the past couple of decades. The office follows us everywhere. Email addresses are created with our names and remain attached to those names long after we’ve decided to switch jobs or careers. Our employers provide us with smartphones and laptops so we can work whenever, and wherever, we are required. There are some generational differences in the relationship between employer and employee. For most millennials, the thought of starting a job without a company-issued device (or at least having the benefit of an employer paying the cost of the one they own) is inconceivable. It was a transition that members of generation X and baby boomers had to experience as technology evolved and became more attainable for businesses of all sizes.

The connection to the office can also lead to personal problems. Last year, a survey I conducted found that 56 per cent of Canadians employed full-time acknowledged that work was taking precedence over lifestyle. And 82 per cent of them wanted to have a law similar to one currently in place in France, where companies with more than 50 employees are compelled to allow workers “the right to disconnect.” This means establishing specific hours (on evenings and weekends) when staff should not send or answer emails.

Fine, we want to disconnect

from the office. But are we connected to the office only during work when we peer through our company-issued or company-funded smartphones? The answer is no.

A Research Co. survey conducted this year shows that virtually every Canadian who is employed full time and has a smartphone that his or her company is paying for is using an instant messaging service during work hours. Oddly enough, the most popular instant messaging platform is Facebook Messenger, relied upon by 83 per cent of respondents.

When we asked these employed Canadians how they are spending their time at work messaging on the devices that their employers gave them, the results are a bit shocking. On average, respondents say that 65 per cent of the time they spend on instant messaging platforms during work hours, they are interacting with family and friends for fun.

This means that just over a third of the time instant messaging occurs at work (35 per cent) is used, on company-issued smartphones, on interacting with colleagues for work-related tasks.

There are, as always, some quirky differences in the way generations and regions are messaging while at work. In spite of the criticism levelled against younger generations, baby boomers are

more likely to use their companyissued smartphone for fun and not work (68 per cent) than are members of generation X and millennials (62 per cent for each).

Across the country, Atlantic Canadians are ahead of every other region on using company-issued devices for fun while at work (69 per cent), followed by residents of Saskatchewan and Manitoba (67 per cent). Quebec, Ontario and British Columbia all came in at 65 per cent, while Albertans appear to be the most industrious (63 per cent).

There is also an interesting correlation when it comes to household income. Canadian employees in the lowest income bracket spend less time messaging on work-related tasks (31 per cent) than those in the middle and highest brackets (36 per cent and 40 per cent, respectively). In the early days of companyfunded mobile connectivity, the calls were quick and to the point. But as the price of data access has dropped across the country, so has the propensity of employees to become distracted and partake in activities that are not related to their work, particularly with how easy it has become to text anyone, anywhere.

There is no easy solution for the situation that the survey delineates, and the effect that the large numbers of non-work-related text messages may have on productivity requires further study.

— Mario Canseco is president of Research Co. and writes a column exclusive to Glacier Media newspapers.

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Home in Prince George for the month of September after the Myrtle Beach Pelicans didn’t make the playoffs, he was told to rest before heading to Arizona for fall and winter strength and conditioning camps, staying in shape and preparing himself for spring training. He no doubt has his eyes on making the Cubs’ AA team in Tennessee or even the AAA squad in Iowa in 2019, the last stop before playing for the big team in Chicago against the very best pitchers and hitters in the world.

Wherever his baseball journey takes him next or even if, God forbid, this is the highlight of his professional athletic career, there’s no taking away his accomplishments so far. He’ll always be the 2018 minor league player of the year for the Chicago Cubs and he’ll always be the guy who got to throw the ceremonial first pitch at a game at Wrigley Field. As great as that is, however, Young is hungry for more.

Lucky for him, he’s got a whole city cheering him on. And the hoots and hollers from the Citizen office are his mom Dana, watching his plate appearances during an afternoon game on a live online feed in between her calls to clients and drawing a crowd at her desk when her boy crushes another double into the gap.

Editor-in-chief Neil Godbout

—

Governing by

any means necessary

Before delving into the Torontonian Provincial-Municipal Circus that’s draining the oxygen from all other civic elections across the country, I have a question to ask: is there any part of the Constitution Act of 1982, including the most important sections of the Charter, that has not been misconstrued, abused or turned on its head since repatriation? It depends on who you ask, but from my point of view, the sacred treatise has been twisted into pretzels for years.

On behalf of all Status Indian laymen, how we have been accorded the right to trump infrastructure is unjust; and on behalf of all gun owners, we know what our rights are, going all the way back to 1688, even if Supreme Justices are inexplicably illiterate beyond the late 20th century; and on behalf of all social conservatives, from Morgentaler 1988 to TWU 2018, legal experts have shown how badly reasoned these decisions are.

One day, your nemesis will force you to live by the repercussions of your ideology and actions, perhaps even using your own favorite tools of torture for poetic justice.

And so it is with no small amount of schadenfreude that I watch the people of Canada’s most important Klatch – the elites, the leftists, and the handwringing centrists – all squirm and chorus together, as their precious Charter is weaponized against them.

I’ve said it for years, but I’ll say it again: now you know how the rest of us feel – welcome to outrage and powerlessness. I hope you learn to sympathize with your fellow citizens – we’ve felt this anger for over 30 years.

Of course there is a fundamental difference at the bottom of it all –the ruddy-faced man with the bad hair and monosyllabic last name is right: the Notwithstanding Clause is there, clear as day, to be utilized by those leaders and governments willing to enact it.

Doug Ford has the right to de-charter the City of Toronto, never mind just shrink its council size. The political issues of such a decision are not for judges to wax philosophical about, but for common citizens to make felt by Ford at the ballot box or in the streets. That is how democracy works. The premier’s opposition could have outflanked him; instead

they have displayed themselves as petulant children, refusing to play by the rules of the game. Furthermore, so long as Ford’s government stands behind him, a message is being sent to the activist community, their friends in the legalist industrial complex, and sympathetic governments in between the three coasts: I am not afraid to use any means necessary to execute my agenda – just like you. Ford was elected on a platform that might as well read “time to burn the rats out of their holes.” His base has charged him with visiting their fury upon those whom they blame; add to this his own personal vendetta for the bullying of his tragicomic brother, His Worship the late Rob Ford, by persons living in glass houses, and we ought not to be surprised at the decision to utilize the Notwithstanding Clause to make it clear “there’s a new sheriff in town.”

And what’s the moral of the story, in case anyone is unclear about it? One day, your nemesis will force you to live by the repercussions of your ideology and actions, perhaps even using your own favorite tools of torture for poetic justice. Thus, it may be wise to adhere to at least the silver rule: don’t do unto others what you would not endure. That doesn’t fit inside of certain movements today, but maybe that’s a sign you should rethink your political allegiances. In the end, I agree with anyone decrying this state of affairs as “beneath the dignity of Canadian democracy!” Indeed it is, but we’ve been in this infernal muck for much longer than the Ford government; we were better off before activist judges and enumerated rights, before a large part of our economy was built on rent-seeking, pseudooutrage in media and law. Of course we could turn back to our heritage of sober and judicious self-government. But that might mean admitting progress is not inherently good, just as tradition is not inherently bad.

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MARIO CANSECO Glacier Media

Guest Column

NATHAN GIEDE

Right of Centre

Bridge in Saskatchewan collapses hours after opening

HYAS, Sask. — A rural politician in eastern Saskatchewan says he’s at a loss to explain why a newly built bridge collapsed just hours after opening.

Reeve Duane Hicks said the Dyck Memorial Bridge in the Rural Municipality of Clayton looked good on Friday morning when it opened to traffic.

But by 4:30 p.m. the same day, part of bridge deck had collapsed into the Swan River below.

“The company did not build a bridge to fall over. We sure didn’t buy a bridge to fall over,” Hicks said.

“Nobody expected this.”

No one was injured and the builder, Can-Struct Systems Inc., has hired an independent firm to perform tests. Both the company and municipality met on Saturday night to discuss the issue.

Greg Anderson, a bridge inspector with Can-Struct, did not respond to requests for comment.

Hicks was in Yorkton, Sask., when he received a call around 2 p.m. Friday from the town’s foreman who said the bridge wasn’t looking right.

So Hicks picked up a local counsellor and went to inspect the bridge himself and noticed that it had a compression in it.

He received a call from the fire department soon after saying that the bridge went down.

Canadian Pussy Riot member possibly poisoned: doctors

Citizen news service

OTTAWA — Foreign Affairs

Minister Chrystia Freeland says she is taking a personal interest in the possible poisoning of a Canadian member of the Russian protest group Pussy Riot.

German doctors have been treating Pyotr Verzilov, a Pussy Riot member, since he arrived in Berlin on the weekend from Moscow.

One physician told reporters on Tuesday that claims Verzilov was poisoned are “highly plausible.”

But doctors don’t know how it could have happened or who might be responsible.

Dr. Kai-Uwe Eckardt of Berlin’s Charite hospital told reporters that Verzilov’s condition is not life threatening.

Freeland said Tuesday that she spoke with Verzilov’s mother on Friday and assured his family he will have the government’s full support because he is a Canadian citizen.

“Pyotr’s situation is one that our government is following with very close interest and it is one that I am personally very closely engaged in,” she said. “This is something we are monitoring very closely and we will act appropriately.”

Freeland has been a strong critic of the Russian government of Vladimir Putin for its invasion and annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula four years ago, its meddling in foreign elections and for the poisoning of a former Russian spy and his daughter in the British town of Salisbury.

Russia has banned Freeland from travelling to the country because of her past criticism of Putin in writings when she was a journalist.

Mother of baby who died at B.C. daycare claims negligence

Citizen news service

VANCOUVER — The mother of a baby who died at a Vancouver daycare describes the details of what she experienced that day in a lawsuit filed in B.C. Supreme Court. The statement of claim filed Monday alleges baby Macallan “Mac” Saini choked on an electrical cord and died because he was left alone.

His mother Shelley Sheppard is alleging negligence by the daycare operator, the property owners where the daycare was being operated, the local health authority and the provincial government.

Statements of defence have not been filed and none of the allegations made in the lawsuit have been proven in court.

Yasmine Saad, identified in the lawsuit as the operator of the daycare, could not be reached for comment.

The Ministry of Children and Family Development said it cannot comment because the matter is before the courts but legal counsel will review the lawsuit and “respond accordingly to the court.”

“The death of a child is a tragedy no parent should ever face, and our heartfelt condolences go out to the parents,” it said in an emailed statement.

The statement of claim accuses the landlords of allowing Saad to operate a daycare without a licence, failing to supervise operations and failing to ensure the premises were safe and suitable for an infant. One of the property owners said she

was unaware her tenant was operating a daycare on the premises when she rented it to her and declined further comment.

The second could not be reached.

The statement of claim says Mac was 16 months old when he started attending the Olive Branch Daycare.

It says when Sheppard arrived to pick up Mac on Jan. 18, 2017 – eight days after he started attending Olive Branch – a fire truck was in front of the daycare. She followed a firefighter up the stairs, it says, and she saw her son lying on the floor with a “grey pallor.”

“Sheppard observed the defendant Saad yelling and screaming and attempting to resuscitate Mac Saini in a perfunctory way. Her experience in... being present and witnessing the death of Mac Saini and seeing his lifeless body was shocking and horrifying to the plaintiff,” the statement of claim says.

The lawsuit accuses Vancouver Coastal Health and the Ministry of Children and Family Development of failing to warn parents or stop the daycare from operating after “multiple complaints” of operating without a licence and overcrowding.

Complaints were investigated in 2010, 2011, 2012, 2015 and 2016 and the lawsuit asserts the health authority identified Saad as a “moderate risk to health and safety.”

It says she was never fined and no steps were taken to prevent the daycare from continuing operations.

Hicks suspects there may have been something under the bridge that let go which caused the collapse. He said he’s not blaming anyone, because he doesn’t know what happened.

“It’s an unknown fact at this time so we cannot point fingers at anybody,” he said.

The previous bridge had been in place for more than 50 years and Hicks estimates that 50 to 60 cars pass over it each day.

The Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities inspected the bridge earlier this year and told the RM that it would need to be replaced as it was rotting and dangerous.

The bridge is mostly used by farmers, so Hicks said the municipality wanted the bridge completed in time for harvest.

The municipality put out a tender and selected Can-Struct, who had been working on the project for the last four or five weeks.

Hicks, who has been the reeve for two years, said the bridge was built to Canadian standards and the municipality has been told it won’t be on the hook for the cost of repairs.

“Obviously they have to find out what happened,” Hicks said.

“We want a bridge, they want to find out what happened to the bridge.”

Counsellors met for several hours on Monday to discuss their options. Hicks said the job will get done.

“That’s the bottom line. It’s going to get fixed.”

Ryan McKENNA Citizen news service

HANDOUT PHOTO BY DUANE HICKS VIA CP

The Dyck Memorial Bridge in the Regional Municipality of Clayton, Sask., collapsed on Friday afternoon, hours after opening to traffic.

‘Growing frustration’ in U.S. Congress over Canada’s NAFTA negotiating

James McCARTEN The Canadian Press

WASHINGTON — A prominent congressional ally of U.S. President Donald Trump fired a pointed NAFTA broadside across Canada’s bow Tuesday as Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland travelled to Washington to resume efforts to forge a new version of the continental trade pact.

House of Representatives majority whip Steve Scalise, who represents the state of Louisiana, gave voice to a sentiment some trade observers say is building among members of Congress who suspect Canada is ignoring their timetable and dragging out the talks for its own political purposes.

“There is a growing frustration with many in Congress regarding Canada’s negotiating tactics,” Scalise said in a statement that appeared timed to coincide with Freeland’s planned return to Washington.

“Members are concerned that Canada does not seem to be ready or willing to make the concessions that are necessary for a fair and high-standard agreement.”

Scalise insisted Congress does indeed want to see Canada join the bilateral U.S.-Mexico deal those two countries negotiated in Freeland’s absence last month – much to the consternation of the federal Liberal government. But it’s neither willing nor able to wait indefinitely, he warned.

“While we would all like to see Canada remain part of this three-country coalition, there is not an unlimited amount of time for it to be part of this new agreement,” he said. “Mexico negotiated in good faith and in a timely manner, and if Canada does not co-operate in the negotiations, Congress will have no choice but to consider options about how best to move forward and stand up for American workers.”

That appeared to be a response to recent indications from the federal Liberals that they won’t be held to any artificial deadlines, nor will they rush the talks to settle for an agreement that’s not in Canada’s best interests – a sentiment Freeland repeated Tuesday upon learning of Scalise’s statement.

The minister, who will resume talks today with U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, said Canada has been negotiating in good faith throughout the process, which is about to enter its 14th month.

Grocery prices expected to jump

“From the outset of these modernization negotiations, Canada has been extremely co-operative,” Freeland said. “Canada is very good at negotiating trade deals. Canada is very good at finding creative compromises. We have been extremely engaged.”

Negotiators have been working “extremely hard” and are committed to doing the necessary work to reach an agreement, she added – but they aren’t about to settle for just any agreement.

“It is our duty – it’s my duty – to stand up for the national interest and I will always do that.”

The U.S. president, who was holding court Tuesday with his Polish counterpart at the White House, repeated what by now is a familiar, if discordant, message for Canadians.

Members are concerned that Canada does not seem to be ready or willing to make the concessions that are necessary for a fair and high-standard agreement.

— majority whip Steve Scalise

“Canada has taken advantage of our country for a long time,” he said.

“We love Canada. We love it. Love the people of Canada, but they are in a position that is not a good position for Canada. They cannot continue to charge us 300 per cent tariff on dairy products, and that’s what they’re doing.”

Freeland has for weeks been cultivating the narrative that Canada is holding out for the best possible deal, but Scalise’s statement is evidence that there are those in Congress who believe the delay has been motivated by political considerations north of the border.

Ottawa has privately expressed frustration with Mexico’s decision to go it alone last month. But one source familiar with how the negotiations have progressed, speaking on condition of anonymity in order to discuss details freely, says Canada transgressed first with a surprise auto proposal last spring.

(CP) — The CEOs of three of Canada’s major grocery chains doubled down on their expectation that food prices will soon rise at their stores. Recent cost pressures on the

Mexico still wants Canada in a three-way deal – so much so that the language in the deal with the U.S. was written to facilitate a trilateral agreement, the source said. And Mexico feels their agreement works in Canada’s favour on a number of fronts.

The source also said Canada was fully informed every step of the way on the MexicoU.S. deal, noting Freeland and chief negotiator Steve Verheul were kept in the loop.

Earlier this week, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said a deal could be days or weeks away – and he also hedged a little on the grounds that the government won’t sign at any cost.

While Canada has been pushing for wording in NAFTA aimed at strengthening labour protections and gender equality, the overall negotiations are said to have stalled over Canada’s insistence that an agreement contain an independent dispute-settlement mechanism.

Trudeau has also vowed to protect Canada’s so-called supply management system for dairy and poultry products against U.S. demands for greater access by its farmers to Canada’s dairy market. Canada has offered some limited concessions on access, sources say, while also ring-fencing the supply management system itself.

Supply management has been a big issue in the provincial election campaign in Quebec, home to about half of Canada’s dairy farms. Quebec Liberal Leader Philippe Couillard has warned there will be “serious political consequences” if there is any further dismantling of the protections for dairy farmers through NAFTA negotiations.

That has some trade watchers suspicious that Ottawa may be trying to get past Oct. 1, which is election day in Quebec – and also the deadline imposed by Congress for Canada to get on board with the U.S.-Mexico deal in order for it to receive congressional approval before a new government takes office in Mexico Dec. 1.

The theory is making the rounds on Capitol Hill.

“The rumblings around Washington have been Canada may attempt to push any deal beyond Oct. 1, largely due to the Quebec election,” said Dan Ujczo, an Ohio trade lawyer with Dickinson Wright.

“Rep. Scalise is putting down the marker that these are real deadlines.”

industry, including rising minimum wages in some provinces, increased fuel and transportation costs and an ongoing trade war with the U.S., will soon result in some price inflation, said the chief executives

of Metro Inc., Loblaw Companies Ltd. and Empire Co. Tuesday at a conference in Toronto.

Metro CEO Eric La Fleche said Metro is starting to see some price inflation already.

“Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising.”

There is anecdotal evidence from the United States and Canada that they are closer to some sort of deal even though there is no concrete evidence, said Sid Mokhtari with CIBC Capital Markets. “The market does have some element of optimism for maybe the U.S. is going to have cooler heads and be able to come to some sort of resolution with Canada in particular, some sort of a NAFTA deal,” he said in an interview. Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland travelled to Washington to resume efforts to forge a new version of the trade pact.

Mokhtari figures the TSX could gain three to five per cent if a deal is reached.

The two sides are approaching a deadline this week to have a deal signed by the Mexican president before he leaves office. There are some signals from Canada, however, that a deal may take longer, which prompted a congressional ally of U.S. President Donald Trump to suggest that Canada was dragging out the talks for its own political purposes.

The S&P/TSX composite index closed up 113.73 points to 16,196.04, the largest daily gain since July 12. The index reached a high of 16,198.67 on 228.9 million shares traded. All sectors but consumer discretionary, utilities and real estate closed up. Health care led, rising 6.1 per cent, primarily due to gains from cannabis company stocks including Aurora Cannabis Inc., Aphria Inc. and Canopy Growth Corp.

The important energy sector rose 2.6 per cent as the November crude contract was up 91 cents to US$69.59 per barrel, its highest level in two weeks.

American stock markets also rose. In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average was up 184.84 points to 26,246.96. The S&P 500 index was up 15.51 points to 2,904.31, while the Nasdaq composite was up 60.35 points at 7,956.11. Investors appeared unfazed by China’s move to increase tariffs on US$60 billion worth of U.S. goods, in retaliation to the U.S. saying it will impose tariffs on an additional US$200 billion of Chinese goods starting next Monday. The Canadian dollar traded at an average of 76.97 cents US compared with an average of 76.81

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau reacts to a question about NAFTA during an armchair discussion with Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, at the Women in the World Summit in Toronto on Sept. 10.

Sports

Managing editor Neil Godbout puts the news in perspective every day, only in The Citizen

A gem on the diamond

Young picked as Cubs minor league player of the year

Ted CLARKE Citizen staff tclarke@pgcitizen.ca

Dana Young has never been to Wrigley Field. Since her son Jared got drafted by the Chicago Cubs, she’s been saying she will wait until he’s on the field before she makes her first visit to baseball’s most hallowed ground. That day is coming Sept. 27, when Jared steps onto the field in Chicago to toss out the ceremonial first pitch before the 2016 World Series champions play the Pittsburgh Pirates. Jared has been given that honour as the Cubs minor league position player of the year for 2018.

The 23-year-old awoke Sunday morning in his bedroom in Prince George to the ring of his cell phone. At the other end of the line was a member of the Cubs’ front office staff in Chicago, who gave him the news.

“It’s pretty special – I’m thrilled about it, but it’s something I haven’t put too much emphasis on, until now,” said Young. “I knew I had a chance but I didn’t know, it was a waiting game. I’m pretty excited about it. It’s the best award I’ve ever gotten.”

The Cubs told Jared they will fly him, his mom and his dad, Randy, and the rest of his immediate family to Chicago next week to see him receive his award before the game.

“It’s a pretty warm welcome,” he said. “I’ve never even been to Wrigley and now I’m a part of it. It’s pretty cool.”

Young thought the award might go to Jason Vosler, a third baseman who hit 23 home runs in a season divided between the double-A Tennessee Smokies and triple-A Iowa Cubs. He got to know Vosler during spring training doing first base drills and they became friends.

Young has had a phenomenal season, his first full year as a professional ball player. He started out in April with the Cubs’ Class A affiliate in South Bend, Ind., and went to work right away hitting the cover off the ball. That led to a promotion to the Class-A Advanced Carolina League and Young was inserted into the Myrtle Beach Pelicans’ lineup as an everyday player, covering left field and first base.

Young’s numbers speak for themselves.

In 69 games for South Bend he had a .313 batting average, .365 on-base percentage and .525 slugging percentage (total bases divided by the number of at-bats), with 10 home runs. In 51 games for the Pelicans he posted a line of .282/.341/.431, with six home runs and six steals.

In both leagues combined he played 120 games. His slash line was .300/.357/.488, with 16 home runs, 19 doubles, eight triples and 61 runs. He batted in 76 runs, tops among all Cubs minor leaguers.

Young’s fielding stats were also stellar. He played 50 games at second base for South Bend and made just four errors on 428 chances, with 399 putouts. In 32 games at first base for the Pelicans he had just one error and was flawless in eight games as an outfielder.

He won the Cubs’ player-of-themonth awards in June and July. Young is most proud of the fact he

was able to hit so consistently playing as many games as he did as a rookie. His only downtime came in mid-April when he missed two weeks with a hamstring injury.

“There’s been times during my career when I’ve been a bit of a streaky hitter, a bit up and down, and when you play 140 games if you’re not consistent you’re not going to be very effective,” Young said. “It’s nice to be a reliable guy on defence as well as in the lineup every day. The more positions you can play the more valuable you are.

“Hitting has definitely been my main thing and it’s nice to see it’s still playing for me. There’s a lot of hard work that goes into it. When you see the results for an extended period of time like I did this season it definitely makes the hard work worth it.”

At every level he’s ever played, starting in 2000 when he was just five years old playing T-ball for his BC Rail team in the Prince George East Little League, Young has shown he knows how to hit.

He left the Prince George Youth Baseball Association after his second year of midget ball with the Knights and moved to Kelowna for his Grade 12 year to play in the B.C. Premier League for the Okanagan Athletics. That led to a scholarship at Minot State in North Dakota and moves in each successive year – first to Connors State in Oklahoma, then to Old Dominion in Virginia, where the Cubs took notice and picked him in the 15th round of the 2017 Major League draft.

He left Old Dominion three years into his sports management studies to play rookie ball in the Northwest League for the Eugene Emeralds and stayed south of the border to play through the winter in the Cubs’ instructional league in Mesa, Ariz. This year, swinging for the South Bend Cubs, he made the Midwest League all-star team and was called up July 7 to Myrtle Beach, where he made a seamless adjustment to the Carolina League with the Pelicans.

Young is unique in Prince George sports history. He’s the only local ball player to become an everyday player on any Major League Baseball farm team.

The fact he’s a pioneer for his hometown is not lost on him.

“It’s definitely strange when all my teammates look up where I’m from, I kind of just laugh,” said Young. “It is pretty far away but I like it. I love Prince George, that’s where I’m from. They’re very interested in Prince George. It’s

“I try not to get too far ahead of myself because there’s a ton of good ball players in the organization. I just have to keep playing, until they tell me I can’t. I’m enjoying it too much. It’s definitely what I want to do for the rest of my life.”

Young returned to Prince George Sept. 4 after the Pelicans missed the playoffs. He’s a former rep team hockey player and an avid golfer and he plans to visit the local courses a few more times and go to a Cougars/Spruce Kings game or two before he leaves P.G. in October.

The Cubs told him to get some rest and be ready for when they want him to travel to Arizona, where he’ll be based this fall and winter attending strength and conditioning camps and working out with Cubs coaches at their spring training facility in Mesa.

“It’s a bit tougher for me to play yearround up here in Prince George so I asked if I could spend more time in the complex and they were great about it, so Arizona will be one of my spots to train,” he said.

“There’s always staff, always players around, they have a lot of people to help you with everything you need.”

Butler going strong with North Bay Battalion

spent a year out west with the Prince George Cougars in 1996-97 before returning to Ontario, begins the year fourth all-time with 1,492 OHL games coached and 702 career victories. Last season he joined London Knights head coach Dale Hunter and legends Brian Kilrea and Bert Templeton as just the fourth head coach in league history to reach 700 wins. His milestone victory came March 2, 2018 against Mississauga. “I knew I was close but I didn’t even realize I was at 699,” Butler said.

“There are so many other things going on, trying to get your team ready for the next game, stuff like that. As nice as it is, at the end of the day you want to make sure you look at the team aspect, not the individual.” Many coaches have used the junior ranks to develop their skills in preparation for a jump to the professional ranks. Butler, who has also coached Canada to silver (2002) and bronze (2001) at the world junior championship, said the OHL is where he’s meant to be.

“One of those things, there were opportunities at different times in my career and timing wasn’t right. And then you get to a point where you’re probably at an age, to be honest, you’ve made a decision and you stay

with it and keep coaching the level you’ve been coaching.

“I was looking at pro opportunities and (CHL commissioner) David Branch said to me: ‘What do you think of the career Brian Kilrea has had?’ And I said ‘pretty impressive.’ And he said ‘What’s wrong with being a career junior hockey coach?’ And that always hit home to me.”

The Toronto native added that there is something special about coaching young players. “You’re with them the five most important years of their life in the sense of moving into adulthood,” he said. “I’m proud of the guys that have made the NHL but I’m also proud of the guys who succeeded in the real world... if that’s what you’d call it.”

TOP: Myrtle Beach Pelicans/South Bend Cubs player Jared Young poses for a photo wearing his Chicago Cubs gear. ABOVE LEFT AND RIGHT: A five-year-old Young is shown in his first-ever individual and team photos as a youth baseball player in Prince George.

Sports

Lulay

out week to week with shoulder dislocation

The Canadian Press

SURREY — Yet another injury has Travis Lulay back on the sidelines.

The veteran B.C. Lions quarterback had his left shoulder dislocated when he was tackled by Montreal Alouettes defensive end John Bowman in the first quarter of Friday’s game.

The 34-year-old is now week to week.

Lulay said he’s disappointed, but feeling “pretty good” and hoping to make it back into the lineup before the end of the season.

The Lions are 5-6 with seven games left to play.

“I’m optimistic,” Lulay said after practice Tuesday. “I’ve dealt with it before. I could do shoulder rehab in my sleep. I know this thing.”

The dislocated shoulder is the latest in a long string of injuries for the long-time pivot. Four of those have come when he started in games against Montreal in September.

Lulay said he has no way to explain the pattern.

“It’s to the point where it’s hard to say it’s a fluke,” he said. “If I get the chance (to play Montreal in September) again, I might have to think about that.”

The current shoulder injury is less severe than it originally appeared to be, but the team won’t rush in getting Lulay back into the lineup, said Lions head coach Wally Buono.

“Part of this is to see how well he recovers, see how strong he gets,” he said. “And the fact that every day he seems to be better is very positive.”

Jonathan Jennings took over at quarterback on Friday and threw for 180 yards with one touchdown and one interception in the Lions 32-14 win. It was the second game in a row where Lulay started but was sidelined with an injury mid-match. Jennings stepped in both times and was able to perform in high-pressure situations, Buono said.

“The thing that’s most impressive is that when we’ve needed to get the momentum, he’s able to get a drive together,” he said.

“If standing on the sidelines has helped him see things in a better perspective, has helped him to maybe to slow his eyes and his mind down, then we’ll be better for it.”

The 26-year-old started in the Lions’ first three games of the year as Lulay rehabbed a knee injury, but he struggled, throwing for just 487 yards, two touchdowns and three interceptions.

Orioles suffer team-record 108th loss

Todd KARPOVICH Citizen news service

BALTIMORE — The Baltimore Orioles trudged off the field following a historic loss, still not absorbing that they are part of one of the worst teams in franchise history.

The Orioles lost to the Toronto Blue Jays 6-4 on Tuesday. It was the team’s 108th loss, the most in a season since arriving in Baltimore in 1954.

“You’re either playing in October or you’re not,” manager Buck Showalter said. “But these types of things make people think how far away you are. Like I said before, those things can change quickly. A lot of things can get better.”

The 1988 Orioles opened the season 0-21 and held the previous record for losses with a 54-107 finish. The overall franchise record for defeats is 111 set by the 1939 St. Louis Browns – a mark that could also be eclipsed by this year’s team.

The Orioles led 4-2 in the seventh before a throwing error by third baseman Steve Wilkerson on a grounder by Teoscar Hernandez allowed two runs to score. Lourdes Gurriel

Jr. followed with a two-RBI single off reliever Paul Fry that provided the margin of victory. Gurriel has reached base safely in 34 of his last 38 starts, batting .316 in that stretch.

“I’ve noticed that (pitchers) changed a little bit, the way they approach me, and they are a little bit more careful,” Gurriel said through an interpreter. “But I have to do the same thing on my side to make adjustments. But I hit the ball hard lately, as well. I knew that was going to happen.”

Dylan Bundy (8-15) started strong for the Orioles before being lifted with two outs in the seventh when the game unraveled. He was charged with five runs (two earned) and seven hits and six strikeouts. Bundy did not allow a home run for the first time since June 23, a span of 13 consecutive starts.

“The season ain’t over yet, so I haven’t really wrapped my head around it yet,” Bundy said about the 108 losses. “I haven’t really thought about it too much. Just try to show up to work every day and get better.”

Reliever Jake Petricka (3-1) pitched two scoreless innings. Tyler Clippard held the Orioles down in the eighth, setting up Ken Giles to

earn his 23rd save.

“Sometimes you win ugly, sometimes you win pretty,” Toronto manager John Gibbons said.

Cedric Mullins led off the first inning with his fourth home run.

The Orioles extended the lead to 4-0 off Aaron Sanchez in the fourth. Trey Mancini led off with a triple and scored on a sacrifice fly by Breyvic Valera. Mancini was initially called out but a review showed he touched the plate before catcher Reese McGuire applied the tag. DJ Stewart followed with his first career single and Chris Davis scored on a throwing error by right fielder Billy McKinney. Stewart scored on a throwing error by Sanchez.

“You run through things many times in your head about how you think it’s going to go, but that’s the great thing about this game,” Stewart said about his first hit. “You never know what it will bring you and I’m just happy I got it done.”

The Blue Jays got on the board in the fifth on an RBI single by Dwight Smith Jr. A fielder’s choice by Justin Smoak an inning later cut the margin to 4-2.

Tavares, Marner show instant chemistry

Citizen news service

LUCAN, Ont. — In the hours after the Maple Leafs signed John Tavares this summer, Mike Babcock mused about playing his shiny new centre alongside Mitch Marner.

After just one pre-season game, Toronto’s head coach must be smiling at what the finished product could eventually look like.

Tavares and Marner combined for six points Tuesday as the Leafs defeated the Ottawa Senators 4-1 in the opener of the NHL exhibition schedule for both clubs.

“They had a good night,” said Babcock, try-

ing to downplay the performance. “We got a lot of good signs.” Tavares scored his first two goals in a Toronto uniform and set up another, while Marner ripped a laser home in the third period to go along with two assists.

“It’s a start,” Tavares said. “Good to get things going and get some positive results, but we know we have a lot to work on.”

The trio of Tavares, Marner and Zach Hyman got better as the night went on for the Leafs, who were without about half their regular roster, including centre Auston Matthews and starting goalie Frederik Andersen.

“In the first period we were just trying to get the feel out there,” Marner said. “In between periods we talked a little bit about what we like to do, the second there was more chemistry on our line and we were rewarded.”

Andreas Borgman also scored for the Leafs, while Ryan Dzingel replied for the Senators, who held a 35-30 edge in shots. The game was played at the intimate Lucan Community Memorial Centre as part of the Kraft Hockeyville event in this town of 4,700 – a community some 25 kilometres outside of London, Ont., in the southwest corner of the province.

AP PHOTO

Baltimore Orioles relief pitcher Paul Fry walks off the field after the seventh inning of Tuesday’s game against the Toronto Blue Jays. Toronto scored four runs against Fry in the seventh and went on to win 6-4.

Elton John stops by Toronto record store

Citizen news service

TORONTO — Elton John surprised employees at Toronto record shop Sonic Boom on Tuesday when he strolled into the store and bought a number of vinyl albums.

Manager Christopher Dufton says he instantly recognized the legendary performer, who was dressed in black Adidas gear and black-rimmed shades.

“I didn’t have to ask,” he said of spotting John’s famous face.

“You would know, too.”

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee agreed to snap a photo with two employees.

On Instagram, the store wrote that John might be “the only knight we’ll ever have in Sonic Boom history.”

John is in the midst of his Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour, which rolls into Toronto next week. His husband, David Furnish, is also from the city.

The musician has fostered a reputation for collecting vinyl in recent years.

In March 2017, he stopped by a small Vancouver record shop where the store’s owner said he spent about $1,400.

Dufton declined to say how much John spent in Toronto or which albums he purchased.

“We’re happy when anybody walks through the door,” he said. “And it’s always cool when it’s somebody whose records we sell.”

Sonic Boom has welcomed a number of famous faces at its store in recent months.

Others include Stranger Things star Finn Wolfhard and Smashing Pumpkins lead Billy Corgan.

Emmys a weak draw for U.S. viewers

NEW YORK — Television’s biggest night wasn’t that big in the U.S. A record-low audience of just under 10.2 million people watched the awards show that kicked off a new television season on Monday night.

The Nielsen company says that’s down from the virtually identical audiences of 11.4 million from the past two years.

Michael Che and Colin Jost of Saturday Night Live hosted the awards show on NBC. Amazon’s The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel became the first show from a streaming service to win best comedy, while HBO’s Game of Thrones was the top drama.

Amazon’s

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel became the first show from a streaming service to win best comedy.

In Canada, the Emmys aired on CTV where ratings were highest since 2014, according to Bell Media.

Citing Numeris data, a network spokesperson says 1.8 million people watched the show and viewership was up 10 per cent over the previous year.

Chen leaves The Talk via taped message

Citizen news service

NEW YORK — Julie Chen announced Tuesday she was leaving the cast of the CBS daytime show The Talk a week after her husband, CBS Corp. boss Leslie Moonves, was ousted from the company due to sexual misconduct allegations.

Chen hadn’t appeared on the show during its season-opening week last week. She wasn’t on the set Tuesday, either, making her announcement via a taped message from the set of Big Brother, the primetime CBS show she also hosts.

She made no mention of the case involving Moonves. On one episode of Big Brother last week, she pointedly signed off as “Julie Chen Moonves,” when she usually doesn’t use her married name professionally.

“Right now, I need to spend more time at home with my husband and my son,” she said.

She’s been with the show since its inception nine years ago, along with co-hosts Sara Gilbert and Sharon Osbourne. Chen called the trio “The Three

Musketeers” in her goodbye message, played at the end of Tuesday’s episode.

Chen appeared to fight back tears when thanking crew members, but quickly gathered her composure.

“I know this show and the sisterhood it stands for will continue on for many, many more years to come,” she said.

She appeared to endorse Dancing With the Stars judge Carrie Ann Inaba as a successor. Inaba was filling in for Chen behind the show’s desk on Tuesday. Chen was effectively the moderator of The Talk, steering the show’s conversation.

The Talk began strongly against The View, the ABC show it is clearly modeled after, and even eclipsed its rival in the ratings four years ago. Since then, The View righted itself and has taken over first place.

It’s the second traumatic television exit that Gilbert has endured this year. The actress who’s in the Roseanne reboot also saw Roseanne Barr fired from that show for an offensive tweet.

“We love you, Julie,” Gilbert said after the message aired.

Adams calls for changes to Canada’s copyright laws

Citizen news service

OTTAWA — Internationally renowned Canadian singer-songwriter Bryan Adams is calling on Ottawa to change copyright laws to bring them more in line with provisions in the United States. In particular, Adams told a House of Commons committee on Tuesday that one section of the Copyright Act needs to be amended to give artists the ability to better control what they create.

Adams pointed out to MPs the law prevents artists from recover-

ing ownership of their creations until 25 years after they die.

He noted that musicians in the U.S. have the ability to recover copyright control over their works 35 years after signing over the rights to record producers.

The musician, known for such hits as Summer of ’69, said the change he is proposing likely would not affect how much he earns from his music.

But he said younger artists could benefit.

“I just think it’s fair” to make the change, Adams said.

A&E IN BRIEF

Bob Seger’s final tour getting a little longer

DETROIT (AP) — New dates are being added as Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band prepare for what they say is their final tour.

Promoters announced Tuesday that tickets will go on sale Sept. 28 for shows in Dallas; Houston; Cleveland; Buffalo; New York City; Louisville, Ken.; Peoria, Ill.; and Grand Rapids, Mich. Additional shows will be announced in the coming weeks for Las Vegas, San Diego and other cities. The Travelin’ Man tour begins on Nov. 21 in Grand Rapids.

Mary Poppins trailer released

(AP) — A beloved nanny is preparing to take to the rooftops of London with her magical bag in time for Christmas. Disney on Monday released a trailer for Mary Poppins Returns. The musical sequel stars Emily Blunt in the role made famous by Julie Andrews in 1964. Mary Poppins returns to Cherry Tree Lane to help the next generation of the Banks family through a personal loss. Mary Poppins Returns opens in theatres Dec. 19.

ADAMS

Elton John poses with Sonic Boom record store employees Lauren Mayer, left, and Ali Haberstroh in Toronto in this Tuesday photo from Sonic Boom’s Twitter page.

overseevariousdivisionaloperationsatourplantin PrinceGeorge,BConatemporary/contractbasisto coverincreasedworkloadsforaperiodrangingfrom 6-12monthswiththepossibilityofrenewal.You’ll assistinguaranteeingthatmanufacturingremainsa smoothandefficientprocessbymonitoring employeesandorganizingworkflowsinvarious departmentssuchaswarehousing/logistics,bottling, maintenance,andpackaging. 604-421-2119dheffelfinger@pwbrewing.com

In Loving Memory Richard Peter Stahl, age 37, died suddenly and unexpectedly in Mackenzie, BC on September 10, 2018. He is survived, loved and will be missed by his life partner, Tamara Wiese; children, Zachary, Emmitt and Elliott; step children, Rebecca and Daniel Schneider, Dillon Marcellus; nephew, Matthew Rice; parents, Ernest Stahl and Jennifer Rice; brothers, Michael Stahl, Philip (Kathy) and Taver (Camillia Brinkman) Rice. Richard was a loving partner and caring father. He will be missed by his many friends and colleagues.

Rest in peace Richard. We love and miss you.

“Oma” Rita Helene Dorothee Piontek

June 16, 1934September 14, 2018

Rita was born in Bremen, Germany. She grew up there until she decided to immigrate to Canada. First landed in Winnipeg, moved to Ontario where she married Erwin in 1960. They moved out West with their son. After a few more moves and two extra children, they settled in P.G. in 1973. Rita worked in a Day Care, Janitor for the School District to working in a Video Store. Most important, she was a Mother, Friend, to Grandmother. From baking to flowers and taking care of everybody. The last few years spent baking and taking care of Branden. Predeceased by her husband Erwin, son Harold, grandchildren Ashley and Matt, brother Peter and sister Otti. Rita is survived by her daughters Ingrid (Everett) and Brenda (Donald), grandchildren Harold (Dana), Jason, Branden, Rory, Sheala (Richard), Brandi (Steve), numerous greatgrandchildren, and great friends. Rita is also survived by her family in Germany, in-laws Anita and Jerry, niece Annetta and numerous other nieces and nephews. Everyone is welcome to join the family and friends for a viewing and a gathering and to share some stories and laughs, on Thursday, September 20, 2018 from 11:00am until 1:00pm in the chapel at the Fraserview Crematorium, 3355 Memorial Park Lane, Prince George, BC. The Celebration will continue at Rita’s (Oma’s) place. A special thank you to Dr. Raymond and staff.

We Will Miss You and Love You Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow

March 31, 2019 and hauling of all decked timber at roadside must be completed by July 1, 2019. The successful applicant(s) will be required to complete all road/block layout, road reconstruction/brushing of existing roads, develop any new block roads, harvest, load, haul,