CNC president retiring in 2019
Christine HINZMANN Citizen staff chinzmann@pgcitizen.ca
A hiring committee will be struck and a head hunter will soon be hired as the College of New Caledonia’s Henry Reiser announced Friday he will retire as president after serving his entire five-year term, which concludes in June 2019.
“President Reiser has fulfilled an ambitious mandate over the past few years,” Gil Malfair, College of New Caledonia Board of Governors chair, said.
“His leadership has resulted in three consecutive growth budgets and expansions in both programming and infrastructure.
“Henry’s experience in developing international partnerships has also helped grow the college’s reputation world-wide. But the biggest impact of his leadership has benefitted northern B.C. students in rural and remote locations who now have access to an ever-expanding range of courses delivered by DDI (digital delivery instruction).”
Reiser’s term to date has seen more than $45 million invested in new buildings and redevelopment at CNC’s six campuses. Notable in education is the start of civil engineering technology and the first intake of CNC’s sonography program, which will begin in January. It will be the second program of its kind offered in the province.
“My academic career has been extremely rewarding, and retiring wasn’t an easy decision to make as I’ve truly enjoyed my time at CNC,” Reiser said.
“I’m grateful for the support I’ve received from employees, students, the Board of Governors, donors, government and private
June 2019. CITIZEN
sector partners, and my tremendous leadership team. The past four years have been a collective effort of all employees working towards a strategic direction with primary focus on student success. This is truly what CNC is known for and I’m so proud to be a part of that.”
Reiser said he is prepared to help with the transition as the new president starts in September 2019. Reiser is retiring in Prince George and looks forward to volunteering in the community.
“Once the new president is in place, I’m going fishing,” Reiser said.
A banner occasion
A spotlight shines on the B.C. Hockey League Coastal Conference championship banner, won by the Prince George Spruce Kings during the 2017 playoffs. The Spruce Kings also had their Mainland Division regular-season and playoff championship banners in the rafters at Rolling Mix Concrete Arena for all to see on Friday night, the start of the new season for the team. The Kings took on the Chilliwack Chiefs in the game that followed. See page 9 for full coverage.
Campfire bans lifted in region
Frank PEEBLES Citizen staff fpeebles@pgcitizen.ca
The campfire bans have been banned.
“Campfire bans will be fully rescinded throughout the Prince George Fire Centre, Cariboo Fire Centre and Kamloops Fire Centre,” said Forrest Tower, a fire information officer with the Prince George branch of the BC Wildfire Service.
The lifting of the campfire restrictions took effect at noon, Friday, allowing for some weekend recreation options.
The use of fire still has some limits, though. The cooler and wetter conditions this past couple of weeks has reduced the risk of wildfire, but not erased it completely. Therefore, the following activities remain prohibited throughout the Prince George Fire Centre:
• Category 2 and Category 3 open fires, as defined in the Wildfire Regulation.
• The use of air curtain burners (forced-air burning systems).
• The use of sky lanterns.
• The use of fireworks, including firecrackers.
• The use of burn barrels or burning cages of any size or description.
• The use of binary exploding targets (e.g., for target practice).
That limits campfires to a size of no more than half a metre high and half a metre wide, and you must have suitable firefighting tools at the ready (eight litres of water and/or a shovel).
According to deputy fire chief Blake King of Prince George
Fire-Rescue Service, the lifting of the ban on common campfires applies within the city boundaries as, well. “Its been such a nasty summer for smoke and no ability to enjoy the outdoors like we like to do, so it’s nice to see the weather cooperate a little bit,” said King. King reminded homeowners within city limits that there is a set of rules for having backyard campfires. The policy is mapped out within the municipal clean air bylaw and states that:
• A recreational fire must be contained in a permanent outdoor fireplace or fire pit not larger than 60 cm in diameter that is designed and constructed to confine the fire.
• No person shall have a recreational fire if an air quality advisory has been issued. If the fire was started prior to the issuance of the air quality advisory, that person shall take all reasonable steps to extinguish the fire within an hour of the advisory being issued.
• No person shall burn yard and garden waste, garbage or noxious materials. Only seasoned wood (dried a minimum of six months) may be burned.
• All persons maintaining a recreational fire shall be competent to do so, continuously control and supervise the fire, and possess at the site extinguishing equipment appropriate for the size of fire.
• The recreational fire shall not be allowed to come within three metres of any property line, fence, standing timber, brush or building.
CITIZEN PHOTO BY BRENT BRAATEN College of New Caledonia president Henry Reiser announced he will retire in
Pops in the Park returns Sunday
Frank PEEBLES Citizen staff fpeebles@pgcitizen.ca
The forecast calls for showers of show tunes on Sunday.
There is the possibility of light rain this weekend, but the chance of Prince George Symphony Orchestra entertainment is 100 per cent. It’s time for Pops in the Park.
The PGSO always launches their new performance season with a free outdoor concert at Lheidli T’enneh Memorial Park. It typically attracts thousands of people to hear the region’s premier music ensemble have some summer fun heading into the annual autumn startup.
“The City of Prince George is very generous in their grants to us, and one of the stipulations is that we do a free show for the community,” said PGSO general manager Teresa Saunders.
“We love it. What a great fit for us, to be able to say thank you to the community by doing what we love and showing Prince George what we can do. It is a service we look forward to for a generous community we appreciate very much.”
The music is always lighter, familiar fare. This year’s Pops in the Park theme is a single word in lights: Broadway.
“All the music will have some connection to Broadway. It’s just such a rich mine to draw from,” said PGSO maestro Michael Hall.
“The music is so great, it’s so familiar to everyone, it’s composed to be engaging and interesting to a wide audience, and from a musical point of view it makes for a great atmosphere in an outdoor setting.”
Some of the material on the Pops in the Park stage will be from Les Miserables, The King & I, even the infectious toe-tapper The Can-Can.
Two special vocal guests will join the PGSO for this homage to the Great White Way. Wil Fundal and Catherine Hansen McCarthy are both well known for their musical theatre credits. Each of them will do a trio of songs.
Fundal’s selections include This Is The Moment from the play Jekyll & Hyde and The Impossible Dream from Man of La Mancha.
Hansen McCarthy will take on I Dreamed A Dream plus the Leonard Bernstein classic Somewhere from West Side Story, a play in which she once co-starred.
“I do love that song, it is so hauntingly beautiful,” said Hall. “It’s the 100th anniversary of Bernstein’s birth, so we are tipping our hat to Bernstein.”
This is a chance, said Hall, for the orchestra to have some fun and flash some different
colours for the audience. It’s also a chance to reconvene with each other after the summer break, get back on stage for some game-on adrenaline, and in some cases meet for the first time. An ensemble of that size inevitably has some new faces at the start of each new campaign.
“What we really want to do is pick up again where we left off,” said Hall. “Sometimes you want a season to be done and phew, we got through it, but last year was such a good time, we were rolling along so well as an orchestra and an organization, and now we want to carry on that momentum. It was my first full year last year with the PGSO so I was getting to know the musicians, getting to know the audience, and I’m glad the summer break is over so we can do even more of that. Our artistic side is feeling very healthy, our financial side is feeling very healthy.”
All that remains now is the weather, to define the 2018 Pops in the Park experience. The show is free of charge, people are encouraged to bring blankets and lawn chairs and there will be door prizes for some lucky attendees. The event commences at 1 p.m.
Should there be rain, the concert will still go ahead but at St. Michael’s Church at Fifth Avenue and Victoria Street.
Readers want Loverboy at next year’s Cariboo Rocks
During The Citizen’s last poll we asked “Who would you like to see at Cariboo Rocks The North 2019?” As we’re Working for the Weekend, readers said Loverboy is the band they’d most like to see at next summer’s concert, with 26 per cent and 184 votes. Coming in a close second is Chilliwack with 24 per cent and 170 votes because they Don’t Stop. Trailing behind while Wearing his Sunglasses at Night, Corey Hart came in with 17 per cent and 121 votes. Sass Jordan came in with 10 per cent and 71 votes, The Northern Pikes, with nine per cent and 64 votes, and Men without Hats, with eight per cent and 61 votes. There was a total of 719 votes. Remember this is not a scientific poll. Next question is “What is your favourite Burt Reynolds movie?” To make your vote count visit www.pgcitizen.ca
Citizen staff
Surrey Walmart closed over disease concern
SURREY (CP) — Walmart Canada says it has closed one of its stores in Surrey out of “an abundance of caution” following a small outbreak of legionnaires’ disease. Anika Malik, the company’s director of corporate affairs, says in an email that the company was contacted by the health authority investigating the source of the disease and chose to close its store at Guildford Town Centre voluntarily. Fraser Health says it has identified the bacteria that causes the disease in the cooling towers for the mall and the Walmart, but that doesn’t mean they were the source. It says seven cases of the disease have been confirmed in the past two weeks. Individuals can get the disease by breathing water droplets containing the bacteria, although most healthy people don’t develop the disease.
Conductor José Delgado-Guevara leads the Prince George Symphony Orchestra during the annual Pops in the Park concert in 2016 at Lheidli T’enneh Memorial Park.
Giving muscular dystrophy the boot
Firefighter Gerry Rodgerson holds a boot while his daughter Grace, 3, makes a donation outside Pine Centre Mall on Friday during the first day of the Firefighters MD boot campaign. Local firefighters are collecting donations in their boots to raise awareness and funds for Muscular Dystrophy Canada at various locations in the city.
Fire evacuees return home
Citizen news service
LOWER POST, B.C. (CP) — Residents of the northern British Columbia community of Lower Post are returning home, more than two weeks after being forced out by a wildfire.
The news came Thursday night at a community meeting in Watson Lake, Yukon, about 20 kilometres north of Lower Post, where most of the community’s 150 residents have sheltered since the Aug. 21 evacuation was ordered.
The Daylu Dena Council, which represents Lower Post, says although electricity has been restored to most of the community and residents can return, buildings including the health centre and First Nations office remain off limits.
Three homes were destroyed by flames the BC Wildfire Service says charred 760 square kilometres of bush.
The wildfire service says the fire is still uncontained and hot spots remain, but it is not expected to spread.
Weeks to serve second term as university president
Citizen staff
The University of Northern B.C. will renew its contract with Daniel Weeks to serve a second term as president to continue his work increasing the number of attending students, improving research support and bringing to the north key programs and facilities.
Weeks, who has been in the position since 2014, has highlighted the university in the north for the north and will now attempt to push its influence beyond northern B.C.
“I thank the many people in the university community and beyond who reached out and encouraged me to consider taking on another term,” said Weeks, whose new contract goes to August 2023. “People indicated a desire for stability and told me that they were enthusiastic about the progressive and positive steps this institution is taking.
Building and developing a university takes a tremendous amount of effort.
I’m proud of the work I’ve done in my first term, but even prouder of the relationships I enjoy with a great many students, faculty staff, alumni donors and champions. Support from them is critical to UNBC’s continued presence as one of Canada’s premier small research universities.”
A 12-member committee evaluated Weeks’ past performance. The head of the committee was UNBC Board of
Governors chair Tracey Wolsey
“Under Dan’s leadership, the university community has been encouraged and empowered to re-think the way we do things and to strengthen our commitment to Northern B.C. while expanding our reach across Canada and around the world,” Wolsey said. “We are emerging as a globally-recognized destination university and this is due
to Dr. Weeks’ determination and the tremendous support from the entire regional community.”
The committee cited several points of progress led by Weeks, including student recruitment, Aboriginal relationships, academic planning, strategic and financial planning, donor support, a new engineering program, research and facility improvement and growth.
UNBC president Daniel Weeks speaks during a conference at the Canfor Theatre at UNBC in 2015. Weeks announced he will serve a second five-year term as the university’s president.
Cooler weather allows B.C. to cancel state of emergency
Citizen news service
VICTORIA — The British Columbia government has cancelled the state of emergency it declared in August when hundreds of wildfires engulfed the province.
The government says cooler weather and progress in containing the forest fires means the powers granted under the provincial state of emergency are no longer required.
The Ministry of Forest also lifted campfire bans across much of the province as rain moved in.
The bans were rescinded in the Prince George, Cariboo and Kamloops fire centres effective on Friday.
Campfire bans will be partially rescinded in the Coastal, Southeast and Northwest fire centres, allowing fires in some zones but not in others.
However, the burning of grass, use of tiki torches, chimineas, sky lanterns, fireworks, burn barrels and other combustible devices are still prohibited in all centres.
The provincial government says there’s been a significant reduction in the number of properties under evacuation order and many residents have been allowed to
return home.
It says the state of emergency declaration was made to ensure public safety and the co-ordinated response to the summer wildfire season that has seen more than 13,000 square kilometres burned.
The wildfire season isn’t over yet with 485 fires still burning, 19 evacuation orders in place covering about 2,000 people, and evacuation alerts affecting almost 4,900 residents.
This is the second year in a row a state of emergency was declared over the wildfires, but last year’s declaration remained in place from early July to mid-September.
There is also a reprieve from the smoke from the summer wildfires in B.C. and Washington state that at its peak had spread across the country.
The Metro Vancouver regional district lifted its air quality advisory for the area and for the Fraser Valley.
Environment Canada’s forecast for B.C. said it may take a few more days to see marked improvements in the air quality for the Interior regions, while the arrival of a trough of low pressure late Thursday and early Friday brought fresh southwest winds and improving air quality over coastal regions.
B.C. cities want cut of pot profits
Amy SMART Citizen news service
VANCOUVER — The advocacy group for local governments in British Columbia wants the provincial government to fork over a 40 per cent share of its marijuana tax revenue when the drug becomes legal.
The Union of B.C. Municipalities has tabled a resolution asking the provincial government to provide local governments with $50 million of the projected provincial cannabis excise tax revenue of $125 million over the first two years of legalization.
Representatives from city councils across the province will vote on the special resolution next week during the union’s annual convention.
Vancouver Coun. Kerry Jang, who cochairs a joint provincial-local government committee on cannabis regulation, says municipalities will face new costs when non-medical marijuana becomes legal Oct. 17, including policing, administrative and staffing costs related to enforcement and zoning.
Although it’s unknown exactly how much revenue will come in from pot legalization, Jang said local governments want some of the money upfront in order to avoid having to find other sources, like boosting property taxes.
“To be honest, nobody really knows what the revenues are going to be like. That’s why we’re saying look, this is for the first couple of years to get us going and then we can look at other models afterwards,” said Jang.
The resolution proposes splitting any extra revenue above the province’s projected amount evenly with local governments.
Excise tax revenue would be distributed to local governments on a per capita basis, with all municipal and regional districts receiving a minimum of $10,000, regardless of population.
Depending on how accurate the revenue projections turn out to be after two years, the resolution suggests either continuing with the same model or considering a boost in provincial sales tax on cannabis from seven per cent to a maximum of 10 per cent and committing a portion to municipalities.
Jang said the model pitched by the union of municipalities is largely based on what
Ontario has promised its local governments.
In December, the federal government agreed to give 75 per cent of its marijuana excise tax revenue to the provinces and territories for two years, capping its own portion at $100 million.
It’s up to the provinces and territories to determine how much of its revenue to share with municipalities and regional governments.
Canadian Federation of Municipalities President Vicki-May Hamm said that the UBCM proposal is line with proposals in Ontario and Quebec, but the federation is concerned about a lack of clarity from some provinces on what revenue sharing will look like as legalization looms.
“We are concerned that a lot of municipalities are planning for legalization without a plan from their provincial counterpart for revenue sharing. Quebec and Ontario have detailed and committed plans for how money will flow to municipalities. But other provinces have not even committed money,” Hamm said in a statement.
The Canadian Federation of Municipalities initially proposed that local governments get one third, saying in a letter to federal Finance Minister Bill Morneau that the estimated $206 million annually to municipalities would be consistent with the low-end of the federation’s preliminary cost estimates.
Some provinces have already determined a different split. In March, Ontario said it would give $40 million – or 40 per cent of its projected share of federal marijuana taxes – to help cover law enforcement and safety costs associated with pot legalization. The money would be provided to municipalities upfront, beginning before legalization takes effect.
On Friday, B.C. Finance Minister Carole James said the government is forecasting very little revenue from cannabis, particularly in the first year of legalization.
“There are a lot of upfront costs around the infrastructure that’s going to be needed to be able to manage the licensing and structures in our communities, so we are continuing to have conversations with municipalities about what they see as their role and what the provincial government’s role is,” James said.
Staff work in a marijuana grow room at Canopy Growths Tweed facility in Smiths Falls, Ont., on Aug. 23. The Union of B.C. Municipalities is calling on the B.C. provincial government to provide 40 per cent of the revenue from marijuana sales to municipalities.
Trans Mountain response not just about one pipeline, says Trudeau
Terry PEDWELL Citizen news service
OTTAWA — The future of resource development across Canada depends on the federal government responding correctly to a court ruling that has stalled the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, Justin Trudeau said Friday.
The government’s response is about more than just one pipeline project, the prime minister said as he took part in what was billed as an armchair discussion at a business gathering in Ottawa.
“What we need is not just this pipeline,” Trudeau said.
“We need to be able to build resource projects of all different types with appropriate social license.”
The Trudeau government approved the Trans Mountain expansion in November 2016, subject to dozens of conditions. But the Federal Court of Appeal quashed the approval last week, citing insufficient consultation with Indigenous communities and failure to assess the environmental impact of more tanker traffic off British Columbia’s coast.
The Conservatives and New Democrats both have blamed Trudeau for the ruling, accusing him of relying on “botched” consultations to further the pipeline project, which would bring more Alberta oilsands crude to port in B.C. for export overseas.
But Trudeau said the decision must be seen in a broader context if the government is to ensure that Trans Mountain – and other resource projects – don’t get bogged down in endless court battles in the future.
Trudeau also fired back at critics who accuse his government of being unable to get large resource projects built, pointing to one major development that has already been approved in Canada, but is facing roadblocks south of the border.
“The Keystone XL pipeline has been approved in Canada for a long time and it’s bogged down in processes in the United States because, again, there are concerns that they hadn’t done enough around consultations in partnership with communities and environmental science,” Trudeau told the gathering.
“This is the way the world is going, and if we can demonstrate clarity and certainty for business through the processes to the investors, we will be able to get more built.”
The opposition parties called on the Liberal government Friday to study the Trans Mountain court decision, and use it to better define what it means to truly consider the wishes of Indigenous communities before it launches into any new consultations over the project.
The Liberals promised a new process for consultation with Indigenous communities during
the last election campaign, “and that promise was completely broken,” New Democrat MP Rachel Blaney said before introducing a motion that would see the Commons committee on Indigenous and northern affairs call witnesses to examine why the court rejected cabinet’s approval of Trans Mountain.
Her motion, along with a similar one introduced by Conservative MP Cathy McLeod, was voted down by Liberal members of the committee.
The Liberals didn’t speak to the motions and gave no reasons for rejecting them before adjourning.
Trudeau called the court ruling “frustrating” and “devastating” for communities that were relying on the employment that would come with the Trans Mountain project.
The court’s decision, and the Liberal government’s silence surrounding its plan for responding to it, has created a “crisis of confidence” across Canada’s business community,
Conservative MP Kevin Waugh told the Commons committee.
“Thousands of jobs in this country have been lost, not only in Alberta and B.C., but throughout this country,” said Waugh.
“When will we know that we have a future in this pipeline?”
The prime minister said earlier this week that his government was looking at legislative and other options as it formulated a response to the decision, including an appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada.
The government agreed in May to purchase the existing pipeline, which has been in operation since the mid-1950s, and other related assets from Kinder Morgan for $4.5 billion.
Company shareholders voted last week to approve the sale.
It’s expected to cost at least $7 billion more to construct the twin pipeline, which would nearly triple the system’s capacity from its current flow of 300,000 barrels per day.
Acid spills prompt ICBC claims
Citizen news service
TRAIL — Thousands of insurance claims have been made in the wake of two acid spills along a southeastern B.C. highway earlier this year that damaged vehicles.
Insurance Corporation of B.C. spokeswoman Lindsay Wilkins said vehicle claims related to the April 10 and May 23 spills of sulphuric acid in Trail have topped 3,000, although fewer are now showing exposure to acid.
“These are complex claims that require extra time to process as each vehicle may have been exposed to varying degrees of sulphuric acid, affecting different parts and components of the vehicle,” she said in an email statement.
Vancouver-based Teck Resources Ltd. said in a release posted on its website that the separate spills, one amounting to about 220 litres and the other of about 70 litres, occurred along as much as 16 kilometres of a busy commuter route through Trail. The spills happened after Teck sold the acid from its Trail smelter and the buyer, International Raw Materials Ltd., contracted to move the corrosive liquid by truck to two other locations in the city. The truck leaked the acid intermittently along the route, with the largest puddles at intersections where it stopped.
Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain marine terminal in Burnaby is seen from the air.
Toys in the attic
Thanks to modern technology, humans can now see their brains at work, can comprehend the billions of microscopic connections that power the hard drive between our ears and can start mapping this incredible engine of ingenuity. Unfortunately, all we’ve learned so far is how little we actually know and how difficult (and potentially impossible) it will be to truly understand the mysteries of the mind.
Reality itself is defined unconsciously by our working brains, which means that many people experience life and existence in a far different way than others. Science journalist Helen Thomson introduces her readers to several of these individuals in her fascinating book Unthinkable: an extraordinary journey through the world’s strangest brains.
The great irony is so many of us don’t think about the work the brain does without thinking, without conscious effort on our part.
Memories, emotions, breathing, the heart pumping blood and the internal organs doing their jobs, balance, direction, concentration, interpretation, reaction and so much more – all done on auto-pilot.
Yet there are some brains that do this unconscious work far differently than most. Or not at all.
touch of a hand on an arm and even their physical pain – as if it was their own.
And then there are those whose senses are jumbled. Synesthesia is a well-researched and chronicled condition but neuroscientists are constantly learning about new variations all the time, far beyond the cases of people who assign colours and mental images to sounds and/or tastes. Some see halos around people or experience their words and presence as flashes of colour.
Others hear an endless musical soundtrack playing, songs permanently stuck in their heads, and scans confirm the heightened awareness that their brains are hearing and interpreting sound.
Thomson meets a fellow who still has to remind himself that he’s alive because he was convinced for years that he was dead. Shockingly, scans confirmed that numerous parts of his brain, particularly the ones associated with sensations, feelings and sense of self and belonging, were far more quiet than the average person. With the help of medication, psychotherapy and coping
Thomson introduces readers to a woman who has no sense of direction, meaning she is perpetually lost, even in her own home. She is not crazy, nor is she stupid. She can follow verbal and written directions to any location. For some unknown reason, however, her brain fails to recognize where she is and where she’s been, so is unable to offer direction on where to go.
techniques, the man is now able to experience living, a mental act most others simply take for granted.
On the opposite end of the spectrum are people whose senses are too strong. The startle reflex is so powerful in some people that they jump in fear at the slightest provocation. Others are so empathetic to the feelings of others around them that they experience the sensations of others – the taste of their food, their emotional state, the
YOUR LETTERS
New Hydro fee another tax on citizens
How many of you are aware of the new Customer Crisis Fund charge that has been added to B.C. Hydro bills? This fee was introduced in June and I must admit I am in fault for not checking my hydro bill more closely and being aware of this charge before now.
The following was taken from their website.
“Residential account holders will see a new line item on their BC Hydro bill starting June 1, 2018 – a charge of 0.82 cents or $0.0082 per day (approximately 25 cents per month) on residential accounts that will fund the program. Only residential customers pay the CCF charge on their bills, as only residential customers are eligible to apply.
“The Customer Crisis Fund is currently a three-year pilot program running until 2021. We anticipate that it will collect approximately $5 million per year from residential customers – or 25 cents per month from each customer – to fund the program.
“If the program continues after the pilot, any unused funds will be carried into the ongoing program. The $0.0082 charge for residential customers may also be adjusted if revenues collected are found to exceed grants and administration costs.
“If the program isn’t continued after the current pilot, the BC Utilities Commission will assess how any unused funds should be directed.
“This will ensure our customers are only paying the actual cost of the program.”
What is to stop Telus, Fortis, and other providers of service from applying to the BC Utilities Commission for the same “Customer Crisis Fund Charge?”
Where will this end?
I pay my bills, but do not feel I am responsible to pay for others who for one reason or another are having difficulties meeting their responsibilities.
It is not the amount involved –what is $0.25 a month? – it is the principle and the door this charge opens. Just another way to tax the average citizen.
Linda Hohn Prince George
LETTERS WELCOME: The Prince George Citizen welcomes letters to the editor from our readers. Submissions should be sent by email to: letters@pgcitizen.ca. No attachments, please. They can also be faxed to 250-960-2766, or mailed to 201-1777 Third Ave., Prince George, B.C. V2L 3G7. Maximum length is 750 words and writers are limited to one submission every week. We will edit letters only to ensure clarity, good taste, for legal reasons, and occasionally for length. Although we will not include your address and telephone number in the paper, we need both for verification purposes. Unsigned letters will not be published. The Prince George Citizen is a member of the National Newsmedia Council, which is an independent organization established to deal with acceptable journalistic practices and ethical behaviour. If you have concerns about editorial content, please contact Neil Godbout (ngodbout@pgcitizen.ca or 250-960-2759). If you are not satisfied with the response and wish to file a formal complaint, visit the web site at mediacouncil.ca or call toll-free 1-844-877-1163 for additional information.
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While there are individuals who can train their brains to exhibit miraculous feats of memory, such as remembering the exact order of a random deck of cards in less than a minute, these are taught skills with established techniques for specific uses. Some people, however, are able to remember every day of their lives, going back to early childhood, in incredible detail because the connection between their memories and their feelings is intertwined far greater than most others. They are able to remember events, where they were and what they were doing from a random date 40 years ago because they can’t help but recall how they were feeling – physically and emotionally – on that day.
The attic is always that endlessly fascinating, slightly terrifying and always rewarding place to explore in any house and it turns out the attic between our ears is as ripe for endless examination as the whole of the universe itself.
— Editor-in-chief Neil Godbout
Stupidity a major fire
risk
By the end of June, there had been more than 560 wildfires in British Columbia.
As of Aug. 29, more than 1.2 million hectares of forest land and wildlife habitat had been destroyed. By that same date, 534 wildfires were burning in B.C., with 34 evacuation orders affecting about 3,200 people, while another 53 evacuation alerts affected about 21,800 people.
In my home state of New South Wales, Australia, intentionally or even unintentionally causing a bushfire, or even through inactivity failing to prevent a fire spreading, is a serious offence that carries a maximum penalty of 14 years imprisonment. If a person dies as a result of a bushfire, the perpetrator may be charged with murder or manslaughter, which can carry a maximum penalty of up to 25 years’ imprisonment.
Human-caused bush fires are no joke in sun-parched Australia.
In Hood River, Ore., in May, a judge ordered a Vancouver, Wash., teenager who threw two firecrackers to pay nearly $37 million in restitution over at least 10 years after he started a major wildfire last year.
Here in B.C. last year, the fine for ignoring fire restrictions was increased to a measly $1,100; even then, it was an increase of 218 per cent from previous fines. Failing to properly dispose of burning substances, such as cigarette butts, now carries a ticket of $575. In addition to fines, people found to have started a wildfire in B.C. could face one year in jail and individual fines of up to $100,000. They could also be forced to pay for the cost of firefighting.
After a fire in Barriere, north of Kamloops, caused millions of dollars in damage in 2003, Michael Barre was found guilty of accidentally starting the blaze and was fined $3,000. The same year, a Kamloops resident was also found to have started a fire and was ordered to pay the Forests Ministry $10,000 in restitution, in addition to a fine of $1,150.
A young couple hiking the trails up behind Happy Valley Road in Langford last Sunday found and, with some considerable difficulty, extinguished a cigarette butt still smouldering away in the dried bark mulch of the well-used heavily forested recreational trail. Under the circumstances we face
in B.C., it’s hard to comprehend how someone could toss a burning butt alongside a forest trail. Immediately below those trails are tens of millions of dollars’ worth of brand-new homes, many of them first-time purchases by newly married couples, much like the young couple who were out hiking and who, quite possibly, curtailed what could have been an indescribable disaster.
So let’s set aside for a moment the property loss, lives turned upside down in a day, and the possible fatal consequences to the men and women who are called in to fight the fires.
Let’s also pretend that people who smoke while they hike, camp or fish not only can’t control their addiction, but are unaware of the consequences of their carelessness and stupidity.
But these are all practical considerations. Hopefully, it was not malice that caused somebody to drop that live cigarette on a flammable bushland trail next to a new housing development, constructed substantially of kiln-dried lumber. Stupidity, as one writer said, trumps Machiavelli almost every time when you are looking for an explanation.
So if we are charitable and don’t blame malice, we are left with but an almost numbing stupidity and self-centred witlessness to explain why, out walking in the woods, somebody not only had to smoke a cigarette but couldn’t be bothered to extinguish a smoking butt.
If I learned one bitter lesson after 20 years of senior organizational management, it was that, with every best intention and no matter how hard you try, you cannot protect people from themselves.
Here’s a possible solution for reducing the number of humancaused fire disasters: Take those people convicted of carelessness with burning substances, especially in bushfire season, to the sites of what are believed to be humancaused fires. There, they could see for themselves what stupidity looks like first-hand and hear for themselves what families who lost everything have to say to them. — Geoff Johnson is a former superintendent of schools.
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Neurologist R. Scott Turner, director of the Memory Disorder Center at Georgetown University Hospital, points to PET scan results that are part of a study on Alzheimer’s disease at Georgetown University Hospital in Washington in 2015.
GEOFF JOHNSON Special
Hottest tables in Vegas nowhere near the Strip
Tom SIETSEMA Citizen news service
Avisitor to Sin City
might be tempted to stick to the corporate comfort of the glitzy hotels on and around the famous Strip. But the obvious candidates for the appetites of chowhounds can be a gamble these days. I know, having recently pushed a lot of food around on my plate at the otherwise dramatic Tao in the Venetian; tasted the great divide between the lackluster Spago in the Bellagio in Las Vegas and the ever-impressive original in Los Angeles; and gaped more at the price of admission than at any of the Chinese food I encountered at the sumptuous-but-hope-someone-else-is-paying Wing Lei at the Wynn.
News flash: “The most interesting food in Las Vegas right now is being done by young chefs off the Strip,” says John Curtas, author of Eating Las Vegas: The 52 Essential Restaurants. An observer of the scene for more than two decades, Curtas dates the dining shift to the 2007 recession, which cost many chefs on the Strip their jobs and begat a flurry of food trucks. Several years ago saw the emergence of more locally owned neighborhood establishments, especially downtown and in Chinatown. Allow me to share my winnings: ★★★
Heaping helpings of Italy
The chef and co-owner of Pizzeria Monzú, a source of Italian street food along with the implied pies, asks a question of every item on his menu: “Can four people have a taste of this and feel like they’ve had enough?”
Generosity is a hallmark of the light-filled, bighearted, Sinatraplaying restaurant Giovanni Mauro opened in March, on the site of his parents’ Nora’s Italian Cuisine, which relocated within walking distance. (“I didn’t want to let the space go,” he says.) Mauro’s signature salad – tomato, cucumber, mozzarella, onion and his beloved fennel – could fill a mixing bowl, while his pizzas (ferried to the tables by servers in Tshirts that declare “I love gluten”) could double as rafts. Size matters here, but so does flavour.
The dough holds the secret to the pies’ success. Mauro forgoes commercial yeast for a starter developed from two old strains, one based on apricots from a local farm, the other from the island of Ischia. The process takes five days, but the payoff is a crust that’s subtly sour and nutty. I’m drawn to the pizza billed as Vegas Meets Italy, a mash-up of toppings that grow in the desert (dates and pistachios) and things that speak to Sicily (prosciutto and arugula), where the Los Angeles native was raised.
Every dish has a detail or two that makes it stand out from the city’s Italian pack. Note the crackle that gives way to molten ricotta in every bite of the fried squash blossom. Lemon leaves wrapped around juicy fillings of ground beef, pork and garlic impart a hint of citrus, and lasagna is rethought using fine, housemade crepes instead of heavier noodles, plus a filling enriched with bechamel. The lasagna, a Sunday staple the chef learned to make in the old country, now lights up Vegas seven days a week.
French twists
Pea soup might sound like a humble beginning, but in the hands of the modern French chef at the sleek new Partage in Chinatown, the bowl, set in a small globe of dry ice, might as well be trying out for Cirque du Soleil. The puree is sweet and pure, green as grass, and on it floats a quenelle of lemon-basil sorbet that heightens the flavours as it melts. No one-trick pony, Yuri Szarzewski goes on to send out
food that has diners Googling his background (31 years old, native of southwest France, veteran of Parisian heavyweights L’Ambassade and Le Bristol, current contestant on Chopped) and pampers them like moneyed whales in the casinos. The soup is followed by golden fritters, kneaded from salmon and choux pastry, and presented with a sabayon of avocado and citrus; then minced squid, cooked and
served as if the seafood were risotto, with Parmesan (as well as mascarpone and pesto).
Tasting “portions,” or small plates, are the way to go if you want to sample a lot for less, although the a la carte entrees are impressive, too. The splurges include whole Thai snapper, baked with herbs in a salt crust, filleted in the kitchen and anointed with a reduction of orange juice and roasted fennel.
The chef – who arrived in Las Vegas only three years ago, with French pals who now serve as Partage’s manager and pastry chef – figures the best way to sell dessert is to put it on display. Faced with a rolling cart, diners find it hard to resist baba au rhum, which comes with a shot of the signature spirit in a plastic vial, or baked Alaska, filled with whipped cream rather than ice cream (to help it stay up all night). Heed the restau-
Every dish has a detail or two that makes it stand out from the city’s Italian pack. Note the crackle that gives way to molten ricotta in every bite of the fried squash blossom.
rant’s call – “partage” is French for “sharing” – and split something. Sure, the rents are cheaper than on the Strip, but another reason Szarzewski likes the location of his restaurant, unveiled in May, is this: “I like being the only French place in Chinatown!”
Sushi with a side of tranquility
Should you crave a meal that doesn’t involve a celebrity chef or razzle dazzle – it can happen in this nonstop, neon-lit city – you’d be hard-pressed to come up with a better break than Yui Edomae Sushi, watched over by Tokyo native Gen Mizoguchi. The curtains in the small foyer part to reveal... well, not much, just a stretch of smooth wooden counter, cut from a 350-year-old cypress tree, and a man with a knack for buying superb fish, mostly from Japan, and slicing it with precision. There are other places to sit in the small restaurant, but the best is nearest the chef, who polishes his rice daily. “Cook for me, just a few dishes you like,” I ask Mizoguchi after a night on the town. The master sends out lush, ocean-scented sea urchin from Japan and rectangles of fish – tuna streaked with fine lines of fat, pink, baby yellowtail – that taste as if they just flopped from the water onto his cutting board. The sashimi comes with a garnish of tiny fried crab that I dispatch in a single noisy bite. The restaurant takes such pride in its Wagyu beef that a server shows off its certification of pedigree – the cow’s ID number included – when a small skewer of rib-eye is introduced. The rich meat, seasoned with Himalayan sea salt and cooked over Japanese charcoal, is so tender that you barely need to chew; wedges of grill-kissed Japanese baby potato are a nice punctuation.
Tonight’s finish, a tender yellow cube of sweet omelet, bears the stamp of the restaurant: an original touch in a restaurant of quiet distinction.
PHOTO FOR THE WASHINGTON POST BY JOE BUGLEWICZ
Chef Yuri Szarzewski prepares dishes at Partage in Las Vegas.
PHOTOS FOR THE WASHINGTON POST BY JOE BUGLEWICZ
ABOVE: The lasagna at Pizzeria Monzu in Las Vegas. BELOW: Guests make their selections at Pizzeria Monzu.
Prince George Spruce Kings forward Chong Min Lee looks to make a play against Chilliwack Chiefs defenceman Brody Gagno on Friday night at Rolling Mix Concrete Arena. The Kings and Chiefs met in the BCHL season-opener for both teams.
Sports Kings start with a bang
Ted CLARKE Citizen staff tclarke@pgcitizen.ca
Right in the nick of time, help arrived for the Prince George Spruce Kings. Their rookie Nicks – Bochen and Poisson – started the new B.C. Hockey League season just the way they had it scripted in their heads, scoring the first goals of the game on the way to a 5-1 win over the Chilliwack Chiefs Friday night. With a crowd of 1,136 watching at Rolling Mix Concrete Arena, the 17-year-old products of the Burnaby Winter Club each connected on high-velocity rippers that lit the light behind Chilliwack goalie Mathieu Caron late in the first period to put the Spruce Kings up 2-0. That set the Kings up for a night to celebrate after a convincing victory over their Mainland Division rivals.
Nolan Welsh, Sam Kozlowski and Ben Brar also got in on the scoring act for Prince George. Kevin Wall’s second-period power-play goal was all that separated Prince George goalie Logan Neaton from his first BCHL shutout in his debut with the Kings. He made 15 saves as the Kings outshot the Chiefs 42-16.
No fewer than seven Spruce Kings on the ice Friday played for the Burnaby Winter Club midget prep team coached by program director Mako Balkovec and that pipeline continues to pay dividends to the Spruce Kings.
Bochen, who played 12 playoff games for the Spruce Kings last spring, teed off a puck Ben Poisson left for him on a platter and with Dustin Manz running the screen in front of Caron the puck sailed low between the goalie’s legs for a 1-0 lead.
“That’s definitely the best feeling I’ve ever had, scoring the home-opening goal,” said Bochen, a native of North Vancouver. “We played really good and it was just a great way to start the season. It’s an amazing feeling playing here.”
Bochen suited up for five regular-season games last year and scored his first goal in his second game, against Nanaimo. The second of his career came on a Kings’ power play at
14:45 of the opening period and less than two minutes later it was the younger Poisson’s turn to cash in. He got free with the puck in the high slot and let it go over Caron’s glove for his milestone BCHL career-first.
The Kings were sporting a new-design black third jersey with red across the top and white trim and they came out flying, generating three quality chances in the first minute. Caron was sharp and had to be because the Kings kept coming and used quick feet, physical force and smart sticks to win most of the possession battles.
After being under siege, chasing the puck in their own end for large chunks of the first period, the Chiefs did a better job of getting their bodies and sticks in the way to break up rushes and there wasn’t nearly as much time or space for the Kings to operate.
The Chiefs were on the power play early in the second period when Wall picked up a rebound and dragged it wide across the crease to tuck the puck in past Neaton.
The 19-year-old Neaton, a six-foot-three, 190-pound Michigan native who played in the North American League last year in Fairbanks, Alaska, didn’t get a lot of work but was solid positionally, handled the puck well and didn’t allow many rebounds.
The Kings padded their lead in the third period. Ben Poisson, Nick’s two-years-older brother, started the play with a left wing rush. He tried to go wide as he skated in on the net but the puck skipped off his stick and he had to chase it behind the net but regained possession and fed a pass to Welsh, standing just off the post. Welsh spotted a piece of net and put the puck in high over Caron’s shoulder.
Kozlowski, acquired earlier this week in a trade from the Coquitlam Express, played left wing on a line with Nick Poisson and an energetic Corey Cunningham and was rewarded 12:58 into the third period. Poisson won the offensive-zone face-off and put it on the blade of Kozlowski’s stick and he snapped it in. Brar capped the scoring late, set up by Ben Poisson, the third assist of the game for the Kings captain.
Bochen also drew an assist for his second point of the game. The Kings outshot Chilliwack 20-4 in the third period.
Brar and Bochen have been invited to NCAA campuses next week. Bochen is heading to Princeton Monday and Brar will visit Arizona State, where former Kings goalie Evan DeBrouwer is beginning his college career this season.
“It’s just a great feeling when people are interested in you, just thinking where you’re going to go next and preparing for the next step,” said Bochen.
LOOSE PUCKS: The rematch at RMCA is set for tonight at 7 p.m… The Spruce Kings put up three BCHL banners to commemorate their run to the BCHL final last season. The team also hung flags in tribute to the members of the Humboldt Broncos junior A hockey team who lost their lives in the bus accident last spring and to equipment manager Malcolm Poburan, who died of cancer in April… The Chiefs have just seven returning players from last year’s RBC Cup national champions. One of their new defencemen, a familiar face around Prince George rinks, is 17-year-old BCHL rookie Colton Kitchen. Kitchen grew up in P.G. and played all 40 regular-season and six playoff games last season for the Cariboo Cougars major midgets.
UNBC women kicking for real in Kelowna
Ted CLARKE Citizen staff
The real season begins today for the UNBC Timberwolves women’s soccer team. UNBC kicks off the U Sports Canada West season this afternoon against the UBC Okanagan Heat in Kelowna, then has a Sunday date in Kamloops with the Thompson Rivers WolfPack.
The Timberwolves are coming off a 3-7-4 season in which they made the Canada West playoffs for the first time in their six-year university soccer history. Considering they’re one of the youngest teams in the league, the T-wolves will be hard-pressed to repeat as postseason contestants in Year 7.
They have just two fifth-year players, defender Kylie Erb and midfielder Madison Emmond; one fourth-year veteran, midfielder Julia Babicz; and three third-years, midfielder Paige Payne, and defenders Ashley Volk and Mara McCleary.
“We made the playoffs with a very senior team, and it’s a bit different story this year,” said head coach Neil Sedgwick, entering his third season behind the T-wolves bench.
“But it’s an exciting group because there’s a lot of young enthusiastic players that have grown over the past year. They’ve come into the program and have created a fantastic culture of supporting one another and challenging one another and we’re excited to see where that will go during the season.”
Sedgwick saw plenty of encouraging signs in
the preseason from his players and is confident this year’s group will avoid some of the pitfalls which led to a winless 0-12-1 season in 2017, Sedgwick’s first year at UNBC.
“We have more diversity than we’ve had in the past,” he said. “We have players who can control the game and slow things down and we have a number of players who can play it fast and change the look of the game.
“You need to defend well from the beginning. We (emphasize) that with every team. That’s the piece that takes you a long way and is the foundation of your growth throughout the season. We have a little more pace up front because we’ve been able to move players around to those (forward) position, plus we have some good depth at midfield and good experience in the centre midfield with both our first-year players an our returners.”
UNBC has six first-year players and 10 second-years, including forward Sofia Jones, who scored 17 goals last season playing for a junior college team in San Francisco. Jones also has college experience as defender. see GOALKEEPERS, page 10
Upper states case for spot on Cats’ roster
Ted CLARKE Citizen staff tclarke@pgcitizen.ca
Tyson Upper caught Mark Lamb’s eye. Fortunately for Upper and the Prince George Cougars, Lamb was on a talent hunt at the time.
It happened over the summer in Calgary while Lamb, the Cougars general manager, was watching a group of players scrimmage at Edge Academy, where the 16-year-old forward has been excelling in the school of hockey the past four years.
Lamb added Upper to the Cougars’ 50-player protected list and invited him to training camp and when he arrived, everybody watching among the Cougars’ brass couldn’t help but notice the kid. He played left wing on a line with seasoned WHLers Ilijah Colina and Josh Curtis and they emerged as one of the top lines in camp.
His exceptional training camp earned Upper a seat on the bus with the Cougars on their first pre-season road trip last weekend and in his second game, against the Rockets in Kelowna, he had two goals and an assist in a 4-2 triumph.
If he hasn’t been told he’s made the team already, that day is coming. Upper is back in a WHL rink this weekend for game action in Langley, where the Cougars play the Giants tonight and the Victoria Royals Sunday afternoon.
“He came in here and he took advantage of an opportunity,” said Lamb. “He’s a real good skater, he’s got good hockey sense and he’s a late ’01 (birth year), which fits into a category we’re kind of weak at right now. He’s come in and won himself a job so far.
“That was a real good line (Upper-Colina-Curtis) and you could see he could play with those types of players. We put him on that line and we switched him off (Upper played with Arjun Atwal and Czech import Matej Toman in the preseason games) and he didn’t miss a beat. Hopefully he can keep it going.”
Upper also played in Kamloops a week ago, a 5-0 loss to the Blazers. He said it took time to get over the jitters playing against his first WHL opponents.
“It was like a dream come true, just playing in front of the fans and stepping on the ice for the first time,” said Upper. “You’ve got nerves for the warm-up and the first one or two shifts and then you step back into your game and realize it’s just a hockey game you’ve done thousands of times.
“The first game was a bit tough but I think I really picked it up the second game. I got to play with my speed a bit more and the team really clicked better. We got a good forecheck going and we got good structure in the D-zone and worked better as a team.”
Upper has adjusted well to his new surroundings, joining a Cougars’ squad that unloaded its veterans at the trade deadline last season and has been in rebuilding mode since the January trade deadline. — see COUGARS, page 10
Goalkeepers a strong point for Timberwolves
— from page 9
The T-wolves will lean heavily on their two second-year goalies, Madi Doyle and Brooke Molby. Both played enough last year to get a good taste for the high-calibre shooters they will encounter in the Canada West conference.
“They’ve grown quite a bit over the last year and they continue to get better,” said Sedgwick. “They’re highly-motivated and they work well together. They push one another and challenge one another and support one another like two goalkeepers I’ve never seen before. They’ll be strong this year.”
The Timberwolves have had a few practices at their new home at Masich Place Stadium and will get their chance to play there for the first time on Friday against Regina.
Today’s game in Kelowna starts at 1 p.m.
Cougars consider Upper a ‘huge surprise’
from page 9
“I’m having so much fun here, it’s such a good organization,” he said. “Playing hockey every day here is so much fun and the guys are great. (Colina and Curtis) are smart hockey players and they play with speed so it’s really easy to play with them and we worked well together.
“When Mark told me he listed me I knew I had work to do coming into camp being a listed guy, first year. I had to show what I could do and I’m just glad it all worked out.”
Standing five-foot-10 and weighing 165 pounds, Upper has added some size since turning in a productive season last year with the Edge Academy midget prep team. He generated 11 goals and 29 points in 33 regular-season games, as well as three playoff points in four games.
“Playing hockey every day while focusing on school really helped my development and it was so crucial to get me ready for this level,” he said. “I’m a smart hockey player who can play with speed and I’m good at seeing the ice, so I’m good at making passes and plays.”
Upper can play any forward position and that adds to his value with the Cougars. He turns 17 on Dec. 23.
“I’ve always played guys older and stronger than me – a lot of people don’t like having a late birthday but I’m really happy I do because it made my development so much better up to this point,” he said.
“The coaches here are unbelievable, they help you with every detail. They want to make us better hockey players and they want to win. Our end goal is to win. If we don’t win, we’re going to know we went out there working hard. We’re going to be the hardest-working team this year.”
got that day already circled on his calendar. Cougars head coach Richard Matvichuk expects Upper will be there to play in front of his friends and family.
“He’s doing the right things – he’s a huge surprise for us and he’s a great kid, just the way he carries himself,” said Matvichuk.
He’s strong on his skates and he protects the puck very well. If he keeps doing what he’s doing, the future’s bright for him.
— Richard Matvichuk
Upper was first listed by the Edmonton Oil Kings and they let him go. The Grande Prairie Storm owns his junior A rights.
The Cougars play the Hitmen in Calgary, Upper’s hometown, on Jan. 25, and he’s
“The offensive ability and the way he skates and the way he sees the ice is really good for us. So far he’s deserved to be here and we’ll just keep evaluating as we go through.
“He can skate, there’s no doubt about it. He’s strong on his skates and he protects the puck very well. If he keeps doing what he’s doing, the future’s bright for him.”
The Cougars have 27 players still on the preseason roster, including NHL camp participants – defenceman Joel Lakusta (St. Louis Blues) and winger Jackson Lep-
“We’ve been training since the end of July, and I think we are all ready to go,” said Volk.
“We have had a lot of games this preseason, which is fortunate. We need to play our game, first and foremost. It’s important to keep calm, even though it is the first game of the season. UBCO plays a very similar game to us. They will try to keep control of the play, just like we do. They have a lot of technical players, so we will have to use our tactics and press in order to play around them and through them.
“I think it is super-important to start the season off on a positive note. It would be great to have a good outcome in both these games, so we can progress through the season and feel confident in our playing style and our ability – just build on what we started last year.”
pard (Tampa Bay Lightning) – who left for their pro camps on Monday. The Cougars host Kamloops in their only home exhibition game at CN Centre next Saturday. The Cats open the season in Victoria, Sept. 21-22. Their home opener is Sept. 28 against Kelowna.
• The Cougars announced Friday that Brett Connolly’s Stanley Cup celebration and the live and silent auctions of Washington Capitals gear Connolly brought to CN Centre for the event Aug. 20 raised $16,000 for a scholarship fund started by former Cougar captain Brock Hirsche. The Brock Hirsche Memorial Pronghorn Hockey Award at the University of Lethbridge is a scholarship awarded annually to a Pronghorn men’s hockey player who displays leadership while promoting men’s health awareness.
Hirsche, a former teammate of Connolly’s who played four seasons with the Cougars, died in April at age 26 of testicular cancer. Hirsche skated for the Pronghorns for three seasons, from 2013-16, and was captain of the team in his final season.
CITIZEN PHOTO BY JAMES DOYLE
My ball
Michael Henman of the UNBC Timberwolves keeps the ball from Vaggeli Boucas of the Trinity Western University Spartans on Friday night at Masich Place Stadium. The Spartans led 2-0 after the first half but the game ended in a 3-3 draw.
Injury knocks Lulay from game
Citizen news service
VANCOUVER — Veteran B.C. Lions
quarterback Travis Lulay has been sidelined with another injury.
The 34-year-old left the Lions’ matchup with the Ottawa Redblacks at the end of the second quarter Friday after he was sandwiched in between hits from Ottawa’s Rico Murray and J.R. Taval.
The Lions said on Twitter that Lulay was being evaluated by medical staff for an “upper-body injury,” and he did not return for the second half, replaced by Jonathan Jennings. Now in his 10th season with the Lions, Lulay went into the game having thrown 1,696 yards, seven touchdowns and four interceptions in six games this season. He missed the first game of the season
while rehabbing a knee injury suffered last season, then dressed as Jennings’ backup for the next two games before reclaiming his starting spot in mid-July. Jennings threw for 487 yards, two touchdowns and three interceptions in B.C.’s first three games of the year.
The Lions went on to win 26-14 and improved to 4-6 overall. They are struggling to stay in the race for a playoff spot.
Serena chasing piece of history
Brian MAHONEY Citizen news service
NEW YORK — For Serena Williams, there was no “wait until next year” during the last U.S. Open.
In the past, whenever a Grand Slam tournament ended without Williams holding the trophy, there was always the belief she could simply win the next one. She was the best player in the game, maybe the best ever, and she was going to be a favourite as soon as she showed up again.
But she wasn’t thinking about tennis at this time last year.
She was thinking about survival.
That’s what makes this such a memorable run to another U.S. Open final, where she will play first-time finalist Naomi Osaka of Japan today, with a chance to win a record-tying 24th Grand Slam singles title.
Williams lost in the Wimbledon final, but has given herself another chance even faster than perhaps she could have imagined last September, when she would have four operations following the birth of her daughter, Olympia, during the Open because of complications related to blood clots.
“To come from that,” Williams said,
“in the hospital bed, not being able to move and walk and do anything, now only a year later, I’m not training, but I’m actually in these finals, in two in a row.”
She has won six of her 23 major titles in New York, and with a victory would equal Margaret Court’s record. On the other side, the 20-year-old Osaka could be the first Grand Slam singles champion from Japan and the youngest women’s champion at the U.S. Open since Maria Sharapova was 19 in 2006.
Osaka wasn’t even a year old when Williams played in her first U.S. Open in 1998. She dreamed when she was younger of playing Williams in a Grand Slam final, earning her chance with a Williams-esque waltz through the draw in which she’s dropped just 28 games over six matches.
“At the same time, I feel like even though I should enjoy this moment, I should still think of it as another match,” Osaka said.
“Yeah, I shouldn’t really think of her as, like, my idol. I should just try to play her as an opponent.”
They played in March in Miami, when Williams was early in her return to tour and Osaka had just won Indian Wells, a
significant victory for what remains her lone professional title. Osaka won 6-3, 6-2, but both players know there’s not much to take from the match given the timing.
“I mean, I was breast-feeding at the time, so it was a totally different situation,” Williams said. “It was what it was. I mean, hopefully I won’t play like that again. I can only go up from that match.”
She has, and she’ll be only one spot out of the top 10 in the rankings if she wins after she was barely in the top 500 in March.
But Williams is much more interested in major titles than rankings. She hasn’t won one at the U.S. Open since 2014 or anywhere since the 2017 Australian Open, when while pregnant she became women’s tennis’ oldest Grand Slam champion at 35.
She will turn 37 on Sept. 26, unsure when she’ll fully get back to the player she was before her health scares.
But even if it’s not today, she believes it will happen.
“I just feel like not only is my future bright, even though I’m not a spring chicken, but I still have a very, very bright future,” Williams said.
Bad knee ends Nadal’s title defence
Howard FENDRICH Citizen news service
NEW YORK — Rafael Nadal felt the pain sear into his right knee early in his U.S. Open semifinal, on what he called “a bad movement.” It was a familiar pain, one that he’s dealt with off-and-on for years.
The defending champion looked up at his guest box and indicated something was wrong. He tried to continue. Eventually, he could not.
Nadal stopped playing after dropping the opening two sets Friday night, putting Juan Martin del Potro back in a Grand Slam final for the first time since winning the 2009 title at Flushing Meadows.
“That was not a tennis match at the end. Just one player playing, the other staying on one side of the court,” Nadal said. “I hate to retire, but staying one more set out there, playing like this, would be too much for me.”
On Sunday, No. 3 del Potro will face No. 6 Novak Djokovic, who advanced with an emphatic 6-3, 6-4, 6-2 victory over No. 21 Kei Nishikori in the second semifinal.
“I don’t know how it looked, but it felt really good,” said Djokovic, who reached his recordtying eighth final in New York as he aims for a third U.S. Open championship and 14th major title. “Great intensity, great focus, good game plan. Obviously easier said than done. You have to execute the shots.”
Del Potro was leading 7-6 (3), 6-2 after two hours of play when Nadal shook his head and said he had to retire, becoming the first man in the half-century professional era to do so during a semifinal or final at the U.S. Open.
“Of course, it’s not the best way to win a match,” said del Potro, who hugged Nadal when it was over. “I don’t like to see him suffering on court today. So I’m sad for him.”
The No. 1-ranked Nadal has a history of tendinitis in his knees, and he’s often cited that when withdrawing from tournaments. He was visited by a trainer at the changeover after the match’s seventh game and tape was applied below the joint. At the next changeover, though, Nadal pulled off the tape.
After the third game of the second set, he had a medical timeout so the trainer could massage his right leg and once again apply tape. Nothing helped.
Nadal’s movement was clearly limited, and by the end, he was walking with a bit of a hitch in his gait between points. At one juncture, he approached the chair umpire to complain about a late call from a line judge and mentioned in passing that he was going to have to quit. Soon enough, he did just that.
Nadal said he didn’t know what kind of effects might have been lingering from his quarterfinal victory over Dominic Thiem, which lasted five sets and nearly five hours. He did have some knee issues earlier in the tournament, when he had it taped during his win against Karen Khachanov in the third round.
Pillar hits walk-off homer
TORONTO (CP) — Kevin Pillar hit a solo shot in the 11th inning to give the Toronto Blue Jays a 3-2 walk-off victory over Cleveland on Friday night at Rogers Centre. He turned on a 2-1 pitch from sidearm reliever Adam Cimber (3-6) for his 12th home run of the season. The no-doubt blast was his second career walk-off home run.
Reliever Danny Barnes (3-2) recorded one out for the victory. Cleveland, which entered play with a magic number of seven to clinch the American League Central title, fell to 80-61. Toronto improved to 64-77.
Travis Lulay of the B.C. Lions eyes a receiver during Friday night’s CFL game in Vancouver against
George Uko and the Ottawa Redblacks. Lulay was injured in the second quarter and left the game.
McCartney shows he’s still yearning, learning
Jeff KAROUB Citizen news service
Paul McCartney, Egypt Station (Capitol)
Let’s get the titillation out of the way: yes, Paul McCartney has a song on his new album in which he sings, “I just want it fuh you,” but it certainly sounds like something else. Maybe it is. And, no, the septuagenarian knight isn’t just now discovering his randy roots – there are numerous examples throughout his Beatles and solo careers where McCartney was bringing the sexy bacca. Just what was it that he wanted to do in that road?
Now, can we get past that? Because, honestly, what’s most impressive is not what the 76-yearold sees – or sings about – when he turns out the light. The best news is that one of the world’s greatest pop songwriters can still break some sonic ground and unearth gems six decades into his career. Fuh You, for all its juvenile smarm and charm, might be what gets listeners in the door but it’s nowhere close to the best thing on Egypt Station.
For starters, candour of another kind that sets this collection apart.
I Don’t Know has the hallmarks of classic McCartney, with its stately piano, Beatlesque drum and melodic bass. But lyrically he trades his trademark optimism for regret and rumination: “I’ve got so
many lessons to learn,” he intones. “What am I doing wrong? I don’t know.”
Happy With You offers Blackbird-style finger-picking and foot-tapping. Yet the man who was jailed in Japan for pot possession now sings, “I sat around all day, I liked to get stoned. I used to get wasted but these days I don’t because I’m happy with you.”
The master song-crafter is not above a little inscrutability. In the open, folky expanse of Confidante, he sings to a former friend or lover, “In our imaginary world where butterflies wear army boots and stomp around the forest chanting long-lost anthems.” It’s a callback to his fallen, former bandmate, John Lennon. It even sounds like something that might have come from an eyeball-to-eyeball songwriting session with Lennon. If more cheek is what you seek, it can be found on Come on to Me. It’s a McCartney-by-numbers, piano-pounding bluesy rocker with a solid melody and groove. “If you come on to me, will I come on to you?” he sings amid four-onthe-floor drums, harmonica, brass and sinewy bass. It leaves a trifle more to the imagination, which might be best for family listening. There is some well-trod ground here: Hand in Hand and People Want Peace come to mind. As he sings in the latter, “I know that you’ve heard it before.” One could,
Station, the latest release
one of his stronger solo works. I suppose, do worse than go on about peace and love but they don’t add much to his canon. Still, revelations abound. Do It Now is a best-of-McCartney compilation in one song, with regal keyboards, major-minor modulations, counter-melodies and a sweet McCartney choir that manages to be accessible and experimental. It also offers a revealing lyric about what drives him well past 64: “Do it now while the vision is clear, do it now while the feeling is here. If you leave it too late it could all disappear.”
Despite Repeated Warnings is the collection’s opus: the cautionary tale – about a captain who has his own agenda and ignores the will of his people – begins majestically, then out of nowhere comes a sonic shift that would give Uncle Albert and Admiral Halsey a start. Driving rock, guitars and soulful horns call to mind his mid-’70s best, and it goes even faster and rockier before powering down again. Egypt Station proves McCartney is not done. Nor should he be, when he can take some
Paul
stands
MCCARTNEY
risks, capitalize on his strengths and, at times, rival the heights of strongest solo work. Come for the adolescent yearning, but stay for a rewarding, mature ride with stops old and new. It’s certain to offer something, um, fuh you.
Vaughn charged with DUI
MANHATTAN BEACH, Calif. (AP) —
Vince Vaughn has been charged with drunken driving.
Los Angeles County prosecutors announced on Friday that the 48-year-old Wedding Crashers actor is charged with three misdemeanours: driving under the influence of an alcoholic beverage, driving with a blood alcohol level of .08 or higher and refusing to comply with police.
Authorities say Vaughn repeatedly refused to get out of his car when officers asked him at a sobriety checkpoint in Manhattan Beach on June 10. Police say he failed a field sobriety test, and a blood test later showed he was over the legal limit.
He is scheduled to be arraigned on the charges on Monday.
Klum, Gunn stepping off Runway
SANTA MONICA, Calif. (AP) — Heidi Klum and Tim Gunn are leaving Project Runway.
Amazon Prime Video on Friday announced the supermodel and fashion consultant are helping to develop a new reality fashion series, which will combine content with commerce.
Few details were released, but the company says the show will appeal to a “global audience who are entertained by competition” and will create a “shoppable experience.”
In saying “auf wiedersehen” to Project Runway, Klum said in a statement the show will always have a special place in her heart after 16 seasons.
Gunn said he’s excited to be part of their next “fashion adventure.”
Amazon Studios head Jennifer Salke says she believes the pair will find a larger audience on the Prime Video runway.
Prime Video is a premium subscription streaming service.
Woods fan of Kaepernick ad
NEWTOWN SQUARE, Pa. (AP) — Tiger Woods says the Nike Just Do It ad narrated by Colin Kaepernick is “a beautiful spot.”
The two-minute ad highlights superstar athletes LeBron James, Serena Williams and others, and touches on the controversy of NFL player protests during the national anthem.
Woods has been endorsed by Nike his whole career.
Speaking from the BMW Championship, Woods said Nike is “trying to get out ahead” and “do something special.”
The spot aired during the first ad break in the third quarter of the Eagles-Falcons NFL game on Thursday night.
Aretha items up for auction
NEW YORK (AP) — More than 30 dresses and accessories worn on stage by Aretha Franklin are going up for auction.
The Queen of Soul died at age 76 in Detroit on Aug. 16. Julien’s Auctions says the items include a red sequined dress Franklin wore at Radio City Music Hall in 1991, a knit jacket she appeared in with President Bill Clinton at the National Medal of Arts ceremony in 1999 and a denim jacket given to crew members of The Blues Brothers.
The items will go on display between Nov. 5 and Nov. 9. at the Hard Rock Cafe in New York.
The auction will take place in person and online on Nov. 10.
AP PHOTO
Egypt
by
McCartney,
as
Carell not just a comedy king anymore
Michael O’SULLIVAN Citizen news service
As the death march through movie-awards season begins in earnest this month, with the Toronto Film Festival now underway, it will be hard to miss the actor – once a staple of comedy and now the star of two heavy, high-profile and potentially prize-worthy films – over the coming months.
First up: Beautiful Boy, a true story starring Carell and Timothée Chalamet (Call Me by Your Name) as a father and son struggling with the younger man’s methamphetamine addiction. One of Toronto’s most anticipated offerings – based only on an April CinemaCon sneak peek of an emotional scene between Carell and Chalamet – the film left critics buzzing about the Oscar prospects of its two stars (along with director Felix Van Groeningen and screenwriter Luke Davies). The film is scheduled for an Oct. 12 commercial release.
With Carell’s startling metamorphosis in 2014’s Foxcatcher, the funny-man began a journey away from a reputation carefully honed on The Daily Show and in such hit movies as The 40-Year-Old Virgin.
Then, in December, Carell anchors Welcome to Marwen, in which he does double duty. Using a mix of live-action and motion-capture performance, director Robert Zemeckis’s fact-based film features the actor as both traumatized beating victim Mark Hogancamp – the subject of the 2010 documentary Marwencol – and Hogancamp’s alter ego, a G.I. doll. The doll appears in animated Second World War fantasy sequences set in a miniature Belgian village that Hogancamp built as a form of art therapy.
A third movie – as yet without a firm release date –features Carell in a supporting role as Donald Rumsfeld. That still-untitled biopic, based on the career of former vice president Dick Cheney (Christian Bale), reunites the two actors with their director from The Big Short, Adam McKay. With Carell’s startling metamorphosis in 2014’s Foxcatcher, the funny-man began a journey away from a reputation carefully honed on The Daily Show and in such hit movies as The 40-Year-Old Virgin. The Washington Post’s Ann Hornaday called his creepy, Oscar-nominated performance, as convicted murderer John DuPont, a “breakthrough.”
The New York Times wrote: “Mr. Carell’s physical transformation is perverse, hypnotic and a touch distracting, and you may find yourself searching for the familiar face behind the pasty skin and large prosthetic nose that juts from John’s face like a cruel joke. Little by little, with long stares, an old man’s shuffle and strange phrasing, Mr. Carell transforms the character from a figure of ridicule into something truly grotesque.” That transformation seemed to announce to the world: Stop laughing and take me seriously.
In 2010, when Carell announced his early departure from the Emmy-winning TV series The Office, after seven seasons of playing the buffoonish manager of a paper company, the actor insisted that he just wanted to spend more time with his family. In hindsight, it is hard to imagine that the dramatic realignment of his career was not planned, although Carell himself denied that, in a 2015 interview with me, when The Big Short came out.
Defying people’s expectations of him as a comedian “wasn’t something I did on purpose,” he said. “You never know if it’s going to work or if people are going to buy it.”
More recently, Carell has had major roles in last year’s Battle of the Sexes – as aging tennis player Bobby Riggs (very well received) – and Last Flag Flying – as a grieving father who has lost his son in Iraq (not so well received). He also reprised his role as the cartoon supervillain Dru in Despicable Me 3. Carell – still part clown, now part tragedian – may or may not be telling the truth when he says there was no conscious decision to re-brand himself. But one thing is increasingly clear: whatever he’s selling these days, a whole lot of us are buying.
PHOTO BY FRANCOIS DUHAMEL-AMAZON STUDIOS
Timothée Chalamet as Nic Sheff and Steve Carell as David Scheff appear in a scene from Carell’s new movie, Beautiful Boy.
Goldblum’s fame transcends his work
What is it about this 65-year-old man that he, as time marches on, has inspired so much good will and an almost overwhelming fan base?
For those who don’t know, Jeff Goldblum is one of the rare celebrities whose fame seems to transcend anything he’s actually done – and inexplicably grows with age. That isn’t to say he doesn’t boast an impressive résumé, but for legions of young fans he’s become what The Washington Post’s Elahe Izadi cleverly dubbed a “beloved living meme.”
The internet was abuzz – more than usual – with Goldblum chatter Thursday, because he announced the release of his debut jazz album (yes, you read that correctly) shortly after shocking everyone with a surprise visit London’s St. Pancras railway station on Wednesday to tinkle the ivories for commuters. Even fellow celebrities were shocked. Tweeted an (extremely chill) DJ Jubilee: “WHY WAS JEFF GOLDBLUM AT ST PANCRAS TODAY I WAS ALSO AT ST PANCRAS TODAY.”
That’s right, the man once known to a generation of youngsters as the chaos theory-spouting Dr. Ian Malcolm from Jurassic Park is releasing 14 tracks of cool jazz. The mere fact that Goldblum plays jazz is one of his many delightful qualities that fans have clung onto. That he’s releasing an entire album of the stuff, with comedian Sarah Silverman handling vocals on the 1920s tune Me and My Shadow, is just icing on the cake.
The record, titled The Capitol Studios Sessions, will drop on Nov. 9. Perhaps more importantly, it presents us with a good opportunity to dive into his unique brand of fame.
The internet contains multitudes, among them the ability to transform regular people into viral versions of themselves. Goldblum is one of these phenomena, much like fellow actor Bill Murray.
Lately, it feels as if – to borrow a few overused terms – Goldblum is “having a moment” or that we’ve reached “peak Goldblum.” The jazz album and surprise performance are only the tip of the iceberg.
For nearly a decade, the man, the myth, the legend has inspired an overwhelming number of memes. Many focused around a sexy shot of the actor from Jurassic Park, in which he lies on his side like a swimsuit model, black shirt unbuttoned to reveal a firm, tan and slightly cut torso heaving beneath. Then, in July, slightly obscuring the iconic Tower Bridge in London was a eight-metre, 150-kilogram statue of Goldblum-as-Malcolm stretched out in that sultry pose. London natives and visitors alike flocked to the statue to snap Instagram pics, shared under the hashtag #JurassicJeff.
It seems as if no one can ever get enough Goldblum. Just last week, a Twitter user shared a few images from a thrift shop he recently visited – which filled every single picture frame they had with an image of the actor. Sadly for all the other Goldblumites out there, the location of said shop was not disclosed. The tweeter did, however, inspire a Wired columnist to post a photograph of his office restroom. Perhaps you can guess how it’s decorated.
So, what is it about Goldblum?
He’s always been well-liked. Actress Glenn Close once called him “charm personified,” adding: “The demented smile, the verbal agility, the jerky yet somehow graceful way he moves. A lot of arm stuff. The most charming thing of all? That he’s a wonderful husband and father.”
“He makes you so damn happy to be alive,” onetime girlfriend Laura Dern added.
But why does the internet love him so much?
We may never know, but it certainly seems like he stokes the fires of such eccentric fandom. For one, he’s leaned into on-screen absurdity in the later years of his acting career. He injected Thor: Ragnarok with some seriously surreal, off-kilter energy as the fabulously dressed Grandmaster (who, in one deleted scene, appears to make out with alien tentacles. He’s also portrayed any number of kooky characters in Wes Anderson’s recent films.
He’s also appeared in all manner of oddball comedy shows, from Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt to Inside Amy Schumer to The League. In a classic Portlandia sketch, he plays a dude who sells artisanal knots to hapless hipsters – and gives a far better performance than the sketch requires.
And, while he reprieved his iconic Malcolm for Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, even that smacked of a winking inside joke. Though the film’s promotion heavily featured Goldblum, the actor barely appeared in the film, save for giving a speech to Congress in the opening and closing moments of the movie. Goldblum, in other words, seems up for anything. For all of this, people love him. Amid all this jazzy news, one Twitter user painted a pretty telling portrait of how the man’s fans view him with a single tweet that serves as something of an adage in these strange and tumultuous times: “Always be yourself. Unless you can be Jeff Goldblum. Then always be Jeff Goldblum.”
Travis M. ANDREWS Citizen news service
August job numbers ‘a mixed bag’
Andy BLATCHFORD Citizen news service
OTTAWA — Canada’s seesawing employment report posted particularly volatile numbers last month that showed big, midsummer gains had essentially been wiped out by August.
The economy lost 51,600 net jobs last month in a decrease that helped drive the national unemployment rate to six per cent, up from 5.8 per cent in July, Statistics Canada reported Friday in its monthly labour force survey.
Last month’s drop, fuelled by the loss of 92,000 part-time positions, largely eliminated July’s healthy net increase of 54,100 positions.
However, August also featured a notable bright spot: the number of full-time jobs rose by 40,400.
“A little bit of a mixed bag, but definitely not quite as bad as the headline would suggest,” TD senior economist Brian DePratto said of the August jobs report.
“Another messy one, to be frank... It’s always a noisy report, but it seems like the last few months have been particularly noisy.”
A closer look at the August data revealed even more turbulence in the month-tomonth numbers.
Ontario lost 80,100 jobs last month after gaining 60,600 in July – with both data points almost entirely driven by swings in part-time work.
The August decrease, a drop of 1.1 per cent, was by far the biggest decline among the provinces.
It helped bump Ontario’s unemployment rate up to 5.7 per cent, from 5.4 per cent.
DePratto said it’s difficult to determine the cause of July’s “odd, significant spike” in Canada’s most-populous province.
Some commentary, he noted, had connected the jump to a summertime hiring boost in the university sector that many expected would recede in the subsequent months.
But DePratto said the August drop didn’t reflect any significant reversals from earlier increases because the losses were concentrated in areas like construction and professional, scientific and technical services.
“Unfortunately, by and large, it looks like statistical noise,” he said.
Royce Mendes, director and senior econo-
mist for CIBC Capital Markets, summed up the jobs report in a research note to clients as “Now you see them, now you don’t.”
He described the Statistics Canada employment report as “always volatile and at times implausible.”
“While you can’t put too much faith in any one reading from the (labour force survey), there’s certainly nothing in the report to suggest that the economy is racing ahead,” Mendes wrote.
Mendes doesn’t expect the results to be enough to prevent the Bank of Canada from raising its benchmark interest rate in October, although if the economy remains in a
“lower gear” he believes governor Stephen Poloz will need to follow a more-gradual, rate-hiking approach thereafter.
The central bank will also pay close attention to more signs Friday that wages are softening in Canada despite the tightened labour market.
The report showed that average hourly wage growth, which is closely watched by the Bank of Canada ahead of rate decisions, continued its gradual slide last month to 2.9 per cent after expanding 3.2 per cent in July and 3.6 per cent in June.
Compared with 12 months earlier, Canada’s overall employment was still up 0.9 per
Unemployment rate by province
OTTAWA — Canada’s national unemployment rate was 6.0 per cent in August. Here are the jobless rates last month by province (numbers from the previous month in brackets):
• Newfoundland and Labrador 14.4 (15.4)
• Prince Edward Island 9.3 (9.5)
• Nova Scotia 8.4 (8.0)
• New Brunswick 8.3 (7.5)
• Quebec 5.6 (5.6)
• Ontario 5.7 (5.4)
• Manitoba 5.8 (6.0)
• Saskatchewan 6.7 (6.6)
• Alberta 6.7 (6.7)
• British Columbia 5.3 (5.0)
cent following the addition of 171,700 jobs, including 326,100 full-time positions. In August, the data also show the economy lost 38,000 public-sector employee jobs last month, while the private sector shed 30,700 positions. By industry, the goods-producing sector lost 30,400 jobs last month in a decline led by notable losses of 16,400 positions in construction and a drop of 9,200 in manufacturing. The services sector shed 21,200 jobs in August after shedding 22,100 positions in professional, scientific and technical services.
B.C. expects surplus, economic growth
Dirk MEISSNER
Citizen news service
VICTORIA — The British Columbia government is forecasting a growing budget surplus and economic growth that will lead Canada in the coming year despite dropping real estate tax revenues and declining property sales.
The latest budget update released Friday forecasts a budget surplus of $669 million, which is $450 million higher than was projected in February’s budget. Finance Minister Carole James said B.C.’s economic growth projections of 2.2 per cent this year and 1.8 per cent in 2019 are among the highest in Canada.
James said she welcomed the most recent Finance Ministry data showing reduced revenues from property transfer taxes and sales declines since April.
“I truly believe B.C. has to move away from an economy that is built on speculation in real estate to a more sustainable approach,” she said at a news conference.
The financial update for the first three months of the fiscal year includes a decline in property transfer tax revenue of $250 million as property sales dropped by 19.4 per cent from April to June.
Opposition Liberal Leader Andrew Wilkinson said he sees jobs losses and a sputtering economy in the near future.
“Carole James is admitting that the only NDP plan is to shrink the real estate part of the economy, reduce the value of people’s houses and have a dramatic drop in the construction sector, and nothing is going to change in terms of affordability because prices are staying where they’ve been,” he said.
James said the most recent numbers do not show declines in property prices.
“The biggest risk to B.C.’s economic growth right now, one of the biggest risks, is the issue of unaffordable housing,” she said.
“We aren’t able to attract employees. We aren’t able to retain people in business because of the increasing price in housing.”
Last February, the province’s NDP government tried to ease the province’s housing crisis with a budget that introduced a new tax on property speculators, higher taxes on foreign home buyers and plans to create 114,000 affordable housing units over the next decade. The latest financial results “show that the housing market is moderating and we’re seeing strong growth...” James said.
A worker grinds a piece of metal in a factory in Quebec City in 2012. Statistics Canada says the economy lost 51,600
jobs
August, but the number of people employed full-time increased by 40,400.
At Home
“Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising.”
— Mark Twain Call
Lighten your load Blogger
Jura KONCIUS Citizen new service
Maryland mom Jessica McFadden has a pretty good laundry routine going with her family of five – until the new school year, with its additional gym and activity clothes, begins. McFadden, who writes the blog A Parent in Silver Spring, has one child who brings dirty clothes to the laundry room, one who folds the clean clothes and delivers them to each bedroom, and one who is a master sock sorter. But once school starts, the laundry routine gets retooled to accommodate the increased volume of sweaty tap class outfits, damp swim team uniforms and smelly taekwondo clothes.
“I go bonkers each fall,” McFadden says. “I have to get the kids into the routine of emptying activity bags and gym bags in the laundry room.”
It’s a challenge to collect everything and keep it moving through the system, she says.
In September, after the lazy days of summer, the McFaddens and many other households reevaluate how they do chores. Now might be a good time to go over how laundry is done in your home. Is one person (maybe you) doing too much? Are kids participating enough and are you educating them about the process?
Do your clothes look super clean or might you do better with a different detergent? Could your laundry room be better organized? Are you getting the odours out of your workout clothes?
Many of us are in a rut, doing laundry the same way for years. It may be the same way our parents did it. But our cleaning needs –and options – have evolved.
Decades ago, having one official laundry day a week was a popular routine. But today people own greater quantities of clothes; do more, smaller loads; and take fewer things to the dry cleaners.
New buildings are increasingly installing washers and dryers in each apartment as an amenity. If renters don’t have to schlep dirty clothes to a communal washer in a dusty basement or laundromat, they will probably do laundry more frequently, tossing in a load before work or bedtime.
“Modern lifestyles have gotten more hectic, so people are doing laundry more often,” says Brian Sansoni, a vice president at the American Cleaning Institute, a trade association for the cleaning products industry. “It’s not just for Saturdays and Sundays anymore.” Sansoni says there are many ways to update and upgrade clothing care.
Although cotton was the most common fabric in the laundry basket years ago, now there are many different materials, such as athletic-wear fabrics that can be tricky to clean and keep odour-free.
Jeanne HUBER Citizen news service
Q: I live in an old house. I finished the attic stairs and living space with white synthetic carpeting. After several years, the edges of the stairs, especially where the risers meet the wall, have turned almost black. The carpet edges in the room also are turning dark. Vacuuming doesn’t budge this discoloration, and neither does carpet cleaner. It just looks dirty. Is there a solution?
A: You have what folks in the carpetcleaning business call “soil filtration” and what energy-efficiency experts often call “ghosting.”
Where the risers meet the wall and under the baseboards at the edges of your living room, air is moving through gaps because of air pressure differences caused by temperature variations, wind or fans running your heating and cooling system. The carpet is filtering that air quite effectively, trapping enough tiny carbon particles to build up into stains.
The particles could come from tobacco smoke, a fireplace, incense, gas water heaters or furnaces, even pilot lights. When Building Science Corporation, a consulting company in Westford, Mass., studied the problem, it identified candles as a key source and blamed the candle industry for not warning consumers that the smoke could stain carpets.
to go large
“As technology improves and some of the fabrics out there undergo changes, it’s important for consumers to take a fresh look at their washing conditions, their detergents and their usage habits,” says Pamela Lam, vice president of research and development for All laundry detergent. What worked a decade ago may not be the best solution today. Some newer products contain odour removers, some give clean clothes a special scent and some have no scent at all.
Organized and attractive laundry rooms can make the process more enjoyable, according to Leslie Yazel, editor in chief of Real Simple magazine. Yazel says fall is a good time to clean out your laundry room and remove everything that isn’t related to clothing care so it doesn’t become “a giant junk drawer.”
When she lived in a rowhouse with a dedicated laundry room, she used a lemonadestyle dispenser for liquid laundry detergent and poured it directly into a measuring cup. Other organizing tips from Yazel include keeping a Mason jar on a shelf to hold loose change that comes out of pants pockets and installing a trash can with a cover so dryer lint doesn’t blow around the room. If you have been hanging your air-dry clothing all over your bathroom, install a telescoping valet rod for that purpose. (Your family will thank you.) More tips for laundry rooms are included in the new book The Real Simple Method to Organizing Every Room.
You should also consider changing how you transport piles of dirty and clean clothes around your home. About 86 per cent of households sort laundry before
Edges of a room are especially prone to the stains. Thick carpet padding covers most of the floor, but there usually isn’t padding at the edges. Instead, there are tack strips to hold the carpet in place. Air can seep around the tack strips better than it can push through thick carpet padding. Builders today often install caulk, foam or another material between the sill plate (the bottom of the wall framing) and the subfloor to minimize drafts and air leaks, but an older home such as yours would not have that.
Unfortunately, the sooty particles are not easy to remove. Pete Diehl, owner of Pristine Tile & Carpet Cleaning in Freder-
icksburg, Va., said he’s found that only a cleaner designed specifically for removing soil filtration works, and even that is not always effective. He uses Prochem Filter Out, available from cleaning-supply companies such as Jon-Don, which sells it for US $15.26 a quart. Other brands also supply these cleaners. Matrix Soil Out Filtration Soil Remover is US $11.56 a quart at Jon-Don. Edge cleaning is expensive because the
washing, according to statistics from Henkel, a manufacturer of laundry and home-care products. Women (90 per cent) are also more likely to do so than men (75 per cent). Yazel and her husband keep two hampers going at the same time: one for whites and one for colours. That way sorting is done in advance.
McFadden, who does at least eight loads of laundry a week, says she’s always looking for ways to make chores easier for her family. Finding products that multitask is key. She swears by the Ikea Fyllen collapsible mesh laundry hampers (she owns seven), which can hold dirty clothes and be used as baskets for sorting.
“I love having a bunch of these so it doesn’t matter who has which basket, as they rotate around the house,” she says.
cleaning solution needs to be scrubbed in by hand with a soft brush or a carpet grooming tool and then extracted, ideally with a unit mounted on a truck outside.
Cleaning edges of carpets is harder than cleaning the main expanse of a room because of maneuvering the carpet-cleaning tools.
Diehl’s usual carpet-cleaning fee is US $100 for the first room and US $25 for additional rooms. But when he needs to remove filtration stains from edges, he adds US $50 more per room.
Edge stains are so common that when potential customers call and inquire about rates, one of the first questions he asks is whether they have a situation like yours.
“People think it’s just dust and it isn’t,” he said. You don’t say what type of carpet fiber you have, other than calling it synthetic. If it’s nylon, you’re in luck. “It’s my favorite,” Diehl said. “It cleans best for us.” Once the stains are removed, they will probably come back unless you address the underlying causes. To stretch the time between cleanings, eliminate sources of fine carbon particles as much as you can. If you burn candles, give that up. If you smoke, maybe this will prompt you to quit.
Beyond that, there isn’t much you can do except vacuum regularly. Use the crevice tool to clean along baseboards.
When it comes time to replace your carpets, seal gaps between the floor and baseboards with rope caulk or expanding foam, or call in a company that specializes in sealing drafts.
RAYMOND GORDON
JUBB
August 17, 1949September 3, 2018
Raymond passed away peacefully with family by his side. He was predeceased by mother Joyce, father Gordon and sisters Mary Lou & Diane.
Ray is survived by his best friend, soul mate and loving wife Beatrice, daughter Cecelia (Roger), sons Randy (Sandy), Ivan (Dana), Rob (Erin), grandchildren Tori (Craig), Nicholas, great grandchildren Jack, Bentley, Ryker.
Ray was also loved by many other grandchildren and great grandchildren Angela (Jamie, Addison, Aiden), Justin (Ashley, Madalyn, Sandra Rae, Elena, Abigal), Keenan, Kaisley, Ashley (Kevin, Isabelle, Alex), Macaulay, AJ & Talia.
The family would like to thank the amazing staff at Gateway Complex Care. You all are truly angels in uniform. Thank you for always making Ray feel he was home. You were all his friends and became his family. No service by request. In lieu of flowers, please make a donation to BC Children’s Hospital or Ronald McDonald House.
Dr Eldon Edward Lee
May 5, 1923 - September 3, 2018
What an Incredible Life!
Eldon Lee was born in Happy Valley, Chico, California to mother, Shirley and father, Edward Lee. At the age of 6 he moved to a ranch in the Cariboo, along with his brother Todd, his mother and her extended family. Years on the ranch during the depression were not easy. However, their strong faith in God carried them through.
From being home schooled to graduating Magna Cum Laude from Seattle Pacific College, he went on to pursue his medical degree at the University of Washington (1955), and completed a specialty in Obstetrics and Gynecology in Vancouver and Birmingham, England.
In 1962, Eldon became the first, and for many years the only, OB/GYN north of Kamloops. After delivering thousands of babies it is only fitting that he passed away in the wee hours of “Labour Day”. In recognition of his tremendous contributions to the medical community, he was installed as a life time member of the Canadian Medical Association in 1995 and inducted into the Northern Medical Hall of Fame in 2009.
On August 22, 1952 Eldon married the love of his life, Marjorie Cartmell in a ceremony performed by her father, Brigadier Arthur Cartmell. During their marriage they embarked on many adventures including international travel, family time at Lee Cottage on Cluculz Lake, Thanksgiving weekends at Squawk’s Lake, and family reunions in the Cariboo. Along the way, 6 children joined their adventures. After 66 years of marriage, Eldon and Marjorie still exemplified their love and respect for each other.
Eldon embraced many passions in life. He was a cowboy rancher, RCAF bomber pilot during WWII, hunter, author, Greek scholar, and Sunday school teacher. He enjoyed a variety of sports including being the star goalie of the PG Doctors hockey team back in the 60’s and 70’s. As Eldon got older he turned to more thrill-seeking adventures - an Ultra Light plane and then an ATV (his last quad ride was a couple of days before he went into the hospital). Eldon and Marjorie were steadfast in their faith in God and were longstanding active members of St Giles Presbyterian Church.
Eldon will be dearly missed by his wife, Marjorie; Children: Vickie (Art) Brown, Barbara (George) Cruwys, Peter (Christine), Stuart (Michelle); Grandchildren: Sarah, Laura, Ben, Elicia, Brianna, Erin, Amy, Mike, James, Jonah, Emersyn; Great Grandchildren: Taylor, Kayden, Evan, Mya, Olivia, Robert; as well as many extended family and friends, and his beloved dog Chryssie. Predeceased by mother Shirley, brother Todd, sons Gerry and Robert.
A Celebration of Life will be held on September 15, 2018 at 3:00 pm at St Giles Presbyterian Church, 1500 Edmonton Street. Reception to follow.
Thank you to Drs Dan York, Heather Smith, Mike Moran, Tim Olmstead and the nurses and support staff on 3 North for the excellent care and compassion you provided to Eldon. Eldon was a strong supporter of the UNBC Northern Medical Program should you be considering a donation in his memory. GODSPEED!
The Family of John Siemens July 03, 1941 - August 1, 2018
Would like to say a “Special Thank You” to all of the first responders and hospital staff that were so kind to us on the day of our father and husband’s passing. Thank you to everyone for all the love and support shown for John on his day of celebration with family and friends.
Colin Wilson August 31st, 1933September 7th, 2018
In the early morning hours of Friday September 7th Colin Wilson passed away peacefully surrounded by his family after a short, but courageous fight with cancer. Colin is survived by his wife and soulmate
Anne the love of his life through 62 years of marriage. Also left to grieve are his son Al, daughter Fern Russell (Gary), daughter Colette and daughter in law Lorette Wilson (Harry). Colin was predeceased by his eldest son Grant Wilson, daughter in law Miranda Pastore, five brothers and two sisters.
Colin biggest joy was his grand children
Catherine Aasen (Richard), Megan Baxter (Steve), Miranda Wilson, Hailey Russell, Courtney Howard, Sam Russell, Bradley Howard and great grand children Madelen, Lucas, Owen and Quinn.
Colin was born into a farming family in northern Saskatchewan, but in his teen years got the bug to follow his brothers and moved west to Prince George in 1949 and Anne soon followed in 1955. “Red” was a career truck driver who owned his own logging truck then gravel truck. There wasn’t a road in the North that Colin hadn’t hauled on or help build.
After his retirement Colin went to work part time with his friends at Kode Contracting. Colin loved to help people and had a mechanical gift that he shared with neighbours and friends. There wasn’t a week that went by where you wouldn’t hear Colin on the phone saying “just bring it up to the shop and I’ll have a look”.
Over the years Colin and Anne were blessed to have so many great neighbours and amazing friends. Anne would like to invite everyone to a Celebration of Colin’s Life this Tuesday September 11th, 2pm to 4pm at Elder Citizens Recreation Association, 1692 10th Ave, Prince George. In lieu of flowers, please make a donation to the Elder Citizens Recreation Association.
Lizzie Stewart Norrie Kohlert (née David) was born in Kirriemuir, Angus, Scotland on February 8, 1945. She immigrated to Canada with her family in 1954. Norrie married Bob Kohlert at St. Paul’s Lutheran in Yorkton Saskatchewan. They made their first home in Outlook, but continued following Bob’s career to Swift Current where children MichaelAnne and Paul were born, Edmonton, Victoria, Prince George, back to Victoria, Regina and finally back to Vancouver Island to stay.
Norrie was an active supporter of all the kid’s activities and travels, opening her home to many young people who considered her their second mum. After the kids were grown, Norrie started a career with Deine’s Microfilm in Victoria and established an office in Regina where she spent 12 years and retired as manager in 2001. She was active at the “Y” in Regina. Health problems followed Norrie for many years, but she always portrayed a positive attitude toward life and accepted the challenges with patience and courage. Each day was a blessing in her books. The recent wildfire smoke in the air caused some difficulty breathing and Norrie was admitted to the Saanich Peninsula Hospital. On the evening of August 24, 2018, her lungs failed and Norrie peacefully and quickly left this life.
Norrie was predeceased by her parents Ann and Stewart David, and leaves to mourn her husband of 52 years Bob Kohlert; daughter Michael-Anne Noble with son-in-law Wade Noble and grandson Steven Arthur; son Paul Kohlert with granddaughter Alexis Rose and her mother Tammy Hoban; sisters Ann Oudekirk and Shona Carlson (Rick); brothers Ron and Blayne (and families); sister-in-law Judy Niebergall (Lorne); brother-in-law Ken Kohlert (MaryBeth); nephews Jeff Niebergall (Tyra), Clinton Oudekirk, Colin Niebergall (Kathy) and Ian Kohlert; and niece Emily Kohlert.
The family wishes to express their appreciation to all the Doctors and Nurses that cared for her in Regina, here in Victoria at the Royal Jubilee and Saanich Peninsula Hospitals, and especially those in the Victoria Community Dialysis Centre in Victoria.
A memorial service will be held at the Lutheran Church of the Cross on Saturday, September 15, 2018 at 1pm. In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be made to the Kidney Foundation of Canada. WWW.CAREFUNERAL.COM
FOUCHER, Carmen Noëlla Grace (LeFebvre) born July 8th, 1944 in Edmonton, AB and passed peacefully at home on August 31st, 2018 with her children by her side. Carmen is survived by her daughter Bernadette Kipping, sons Daniel (Sandra Morris), Philip (Denise) & Michael (Trish Schiedel), grandchildren, Jared Kipping (Kelly Pratt), Kendra Kipping (Jeremy Goertzen), Marc Foucher (Sarah Rollins), Conrad Foucher (Erika Aspen), Celine Foucher, India and Amara SchiedelFoucher. Also survived by her siblings and in-laws Henri LeFebvre (Cecile), Dolores Baza, Alan Collie, Richard (Louise), Suzanne, Noel (Judi), Alain (Susan), Florent (Sandi) Foucher and Jeannine (Lance) Allard and many, many nieces, nephews, cousins, and close friends. Predeceased by husband Alain Foucher, parents Louis and Marie-Ange, baby brother Jean Paul, sister Patricia, brother Louis and sister-in-law Bernardine. Carmen retired from BC Hydro after 25 years and then became active with the Power Pioneers. She was a CWL member for 55 years and it played a major role in her spiritual and social life. Carmen was a devoted wife, mother, sister, grandmother and aunt. A visitation and prayer service will be held Friday, September 7th at 6:30 pm at St. Mary’s Catholic Church (1088 Gillett St.). Funeral Mass will follow Saturday, September 8th at 11:00 am. Please feel free to leave messages of condolences at carmenfoucher.weebly.com. In loving memory of Carmen, donations to the Prince George Community 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.
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 Motors 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. 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.
DUTCHAK,Eileen
September10,2017
IfIcouldhaveawishcometrue,adreamthat’d cometopass,I’dasktospendadaywithyou,and praythatitwouldlast.I’druntoyouandholdyou close,we’dlaughandsmileagain.I’dlistenso intently,asyoutoldmehowyoubeen.Whentime wasupI’dholdyouclose,notwantingtoletgo, you’dsmiledandtellmeseeyousoonandsomehow Iwouldknow.Thatwhileit’sveryhardtowait,one daythetimewillcome,I’lljoinyouthereforever more,whenItooamcalledhome.Mywishmaygo ungranted,butitalwayswillbetrue...I’dtrademany ofmytomorrowsforoneyesterdaywithyou.
and Arlene;
Jim
MIL Bonnie
best friends Cliff and Cindy, and many other family and friends, and his dearly loved pal, his dog Gunnar.
and Doug
Lorne was born in New Westminster and grew up in Prince George, BC. He was a family man who spent his days working hard to provide for his wife and children. He would be the first to tell you that a roof over their heads and putting food on the table was priority.
Lorne and Rhonda shared 25 years together and have three daughters who are their pride and joy. Lorne was so proud of his wife, Rhonda, and would share often what a wonderful woman he thought she was. His love and kind heart will forever be missed and will remain in her heart and memories forever.
Lorne was a very proud father and loved his four daughters very much. He would always challenge them to think and plan. Sometimes those talks would end in them leaving the room, but he knew that they had heard him and that was all he wanted. He delighted in giving a scare any chance he got, they didn’t like it, but he got so much joy from it and the worse the scare the louder his laugh. His love, patience, kindness, advice and the teasing will be missed by them all. Along side his dad Len and brother Doug, Lorne was well known in the trucking industry. When not on the road, you would often find him visiting at the Hart Wheel Inn sharing a coffee or a meal with his trucking buddies and friends. At home, he was an avid news watcher and if you wanted to know anything about world events; he was your guy. His friendship and his knowledge in many things will be sadly missed. The family would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone for their continued love and support. A celebration of life will take place on October 13, 2018 at 2:00pm at the Blackburn Community Hall.
MERONIUK, Lorne SteveJuly 14, 1964 - August 22, 2018 - It is with great sadness that Lorne’s family announce his sudden passing on August 22, 2018.
Lorne is survived by his loving wife, Rhonda; four beautiful daughters, Jessica (33), Ceyanna (22), Keira (18) and Addison (12), granddaughter (Danyrhys) (10); his father and mother, Len
brothers,
(Shelly), Darrin
(Corrina),
Wager,
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Currencies
OTTAWA — These are indicative wholesale rates for foreign
provided by the Bank of Canada on Friday. Quotations in Canadian funds.
Don’t have a cow NAFTA talks hung up on dairy issue, Kudlow says
The markets today
TORONTO (CP) — Canada’s main stock market closed at a three-month low Friday amid a weak jobs report and reinforced trade concerns following a presidential tweet threatening more tariffs on China.
Friday’s session was a bit of a roller coaster ride, with U.S. President Donald Trump’s statement that he’s prepared to impose tariffs on another US$267 billion in Chinese imports having a negative impact, said Cavan Yie, portfolio manager at Manulife Asset Management.
The potential tariffs would be on top of tariffs Trump has said he will slap on US$200 billion worth of goods that ignited retaliation from Beijing on U.S. goods.
“Whenever there is some uncertainty on tariffs and how much and how soon markets kind of react pretty violently,” he said in an interview. In addition to China, uncertainty remains over NAFTA as negotiations resumed this week between Canada and the U.S. with the possibility that any deal won’t come until the end of the month.
Intensifying trade wars could potentially accelerate the inevitable end of the bull run, Yie added.
The S&P/TSX composite index closed down 10.67 points to 16,090.27, after falling to a low of 15,994.32 on 225 million shares traded.
The decrease was led by base metals and telecom services sectors, which each fell by less than one per cent. Financials, health care, industrials, consumer discretionary, consumer staples and utilities were also down.
Information technology, gold, materials, energy and real estate were up on the day.
The trading week ended with a report that Canada lost 51,600 net jobs last month that drove the national unemployment rate to six per cent, up from 5.8 per cent in July.
The negative labour figures were fuelled by the loss of 92,000 part-time positions, but the creation of 40,400 full-time jobs. In the United States, the unemployment rate stayed at 3.9 per cent, near an 18-year low. However, wages grew more than had been forecast.
In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average was down 79.33 points at 25,916.54. The S&P 500 index was down 6.37 points at 2,871.68, while the Nasdaq composite was down 20.18 points at 7,902.54.
WASHINGTON — The vexing issue of securing more American access to Canadian dairy remained a major obstacle in NAFTA negotiations as Canada’s lead minister on the continental trade pact departed the U.S. capital Friday.
Larry Kudlow, the director of U.S. President Donald Trump’s National Economic Council, laid that out in the plainest terms possible during a televised interview Friday morning, hours before talks ended between Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland her U.S. counterpart, trade czar Robert Lighthizer.
Freeland had come to Washington this week in an attempt to break the impasse in the 13-month renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement, which was started at Trump’s behest.
A senior government official, briefing reporters on background, said Freeland was departing Washington on Friday night, but would keep in touch with Lighthizer. Canadian and American negotiators would continue to meet, the official added.
Canada and the U.S. are trying to agree on a text that could be submitted to the U.S. Congress by month’s end in order to join the deal the Trump administration signed with Mexico last week.
In addition to dairy, the two countries still have to resolve differences on culture and the Chapter 19 dispute resolution mechanism.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has said Canada could be willing to be flexible on dairy, but Kudlow suggested Friday that Canada isn’t offering enough.
“I think the United States would rather have a trade deal with Canada, but it has to be a good deal, right? And the word that continues to block the deal is m-i-l-k, OK?,” Kudlow said on the Fox Business Network show Varney & Co. “I’m just saying, ‘Let go. Milk, dairy, drop the barriers, give our farmers a break and we can fix some other things.’ So I want to predict.
I’ll just say Bob Lighthizer is doing a great job and the president is encouraging it.”
Freeland wasn’t talking specifics this week, having made a deal with Lighthizer not to negotiate in public.
As she emerged Friday from her latest meeting with Lighthizer, she said the talks had entered a “very intense” phase of “continuous negotiations.”
Officials are meeting “24-7” and “when we find issues that need to be elevated to the ministerial level, that’s where Ambassador Lighthizer and I need to talk,” Freeland said, adding that “there continues to be a lot of goodwill and good faith on both sides. The atmosphere continues to be constructive.”
Freeland departed the headquarters of the United States Trade Representative for the Canadian Embassy for several hours of consultations. Officials announced her departure from the U.S. capital as its balmy, humid skies erupted into a fierce thunder storm.
It was part of a familiar rhythm that has taken hold this week during her time in Washington – back and forth between the two locations, while officials continue the nitty gritty negotiations, and Trudeau is kept in the loop in Ottawa.
The U.S. wants Canada to open its dairy market to greater American access, as it has
Toronto still confident about Amazon HQ bid
Paola LORIGGIO Citizen news service
TORONTO — Canada’s most populous city remains confident it has what it takes to snag Amazon’s second North American headquarters a year after the online retail giant launched its search for a new home base.
With Amazon expected to make its decision by the end of the year, Toronto’s mayor said the city – the only Canadian contender to make the short list – is uniquely positioned to host the company.
“We put forward a strong bid that highlights the fact that the Toronto Region has emerged as a global centre of innovation and technology because of our talented, diverse and inclusive workforce,” John Tory said. “There is no other region in North America that can boast the same talent, the same quality of life, the same vibrancy and economic strength. We made that point to Amazon in our pitch and in person when they visited us here.”
Ontario’s new Progressive Conservative government, meanwhile, said its plans to reduce corporate taxes to 10.5 per cent from 11.5 per cent and to reduce government red tape would signal to potential investors that the province is “open for business.”
Amazon’s announcement that it sought to open a second North American headquarters drew a landslide of proposals from municipalities keen to draw the $5-bil-
lion investment and the 50,000 jobs it is expected to create.
Canadian cities large and small sent in bids, but only Toronto made the cut, and the city must now compete with American contenders such as Los Angeles, New York City, Philadelphia and Atlanta.
In the bid it submitted last fall, Toronto highlighted its diversity as well as its comparatively lower business costs. It also touted its infrastructure and low crime rates.
While recent high-profile gun violence could tarnish the city’s image as a safe destination, it is unlikely to affect the outcome of the contest, said Gabor Forgacs, a professor at Toronto’s Ryerson University who specializes in tourism and business.
“It doesn’t help our image, that’s for sure, but in a relationship like a possible Amazon location for a big office, I don’t think it’s going to be a decision influencer,” he said.
“You look at comparable sized North American urban conglomerates, we’re still considered very safe, and that didn’t change.”
Negotiations over NAFTA have stirred tensions between Canada and its southern neighbour, but those disputes probably won’t have a meaningful impact on Amazon’s decision, he said.
The ongoing political turmoil in the U.S. could come into play, however, and would probably weigh in Toronto’s favour, Forgacs said.
done in two previous major trade agreements, with the European Union and in a re-booted Trans-Pacific Partnership.
The latter deal offered 10 other Pacific Rim countries access to 3.25 per cent of Canada’s dairy market – and most analysts predict the U.S. will settle for nothing less in NAFTA.
Trump also wants Canada to scrap its twoyear-old pricing agreement that has restricted U.S. exports of ultra-filtered milk used to make dairy products.
Both those issues are non-starters for the Canadian dairy industry, which makes the subject particularly politically charged in Ontario and Quebec.
The hope is for a trilateral agreement in principle that Congress can approve before Mexico’s new president takes office on Dec. 1. Trump is threatening to move ahead on a deal that excludes Canada, but he also needs a win on trade ahead of midterm elections in November that will test his ability to keep control of Congress.
“We do love Canada,” Trump told supporters at a rally in Montana on Thursday night.
“They’ve treated us pretty badly in trade for the last 40 years, but that’s OK, it wasn’t my fault. We’re going to make a fair deal with Canada, just like we did with Mexico.”
Trump reiterated his desire to rename the 24-year-old continental trade deal after his “historic announcement” with Mexico.
“We’re replacing NAFTA with a beautiful new brand, because it’s a much different deal. It will be called the U.S.-Mexico trade deal,” he said to partisan applause.
Trump said he thinks Canada will join the deal, but if Canada won’t he can live with that.
Mike BLANCHFIELD Citizen news service
CP PHOTO Dairy cows walk in a pasture at Nicomekl Farms in Surrey on Aug. 30.
NAFTA talks between Canada and the U.S. are hung up on U.S. access to the Canadian dairy market.
‘Watershed moment’ for Pope Francis?
Chico HARLAN Citizen news service
ROME — For some, the accusations sending tremors through the Catholic Church are a concerted and dubious attack by ultraconservatives on Pope Francis. For others, the accusations are a credible attempt to expose the depths of the Vatican’s struggle to deal transparently with sexual abuse. But at the centre of the divided church is Francis, whose reputation is being challenged by the unverified accusations that he and other Vatican higher-ups had known for years about the sexual misconduct allegations against a now-resigned cardinal, Theodore McCarrick.
One week after the release of a scathing 7,000-word letter from Vatican ex-ambassador Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, Vatican watchers say Francis – who has yet to directly address the veracity of the accusations – is facing the greatest challenge of his papacy.
Some Catholics have criticized him for what they describe as an insufficient response to the crisis. A few bishops have suggested that he call an extraordinary meeting to address sexual abuse in the church. And he faces pivotal decisions about whether to release abuse-related documents or greenlight a who-knew-what investigation into McCarrick – with the possibility that such a probe could point fingers back to the Vatican.
“I think he’s aware that the wheels of history are turning,” said Austen Ivereigh, a Francis biographer. “This is a watershed moment, and how he responds –how the entire church responds – is crucial. We could easily go the Trump route where as Catholics we start tearing into one another with mutual allegations. This is what happens at times of tensions. I think he, as the church’s spiritual leader, is trying to guide this as a process – hold the church together.”
But some say Francis has not yet done enough. In a letter that had collected nearly 30,000 signatures, a group of Catholic women wrote that Francis’s earlier remarks about Viganò’s letter – when he’d said the document “speaks for itself” – were “inadequate.” The editors of America magazine, a Jesuit journal, wrote that the pope was perhaps trying to “stay above the fray rather than dignify a venomous ideological attack.”
“Nonetheless,” the editorial said, “the pope’s refusal is an insufficient pastoral response for a church that is deeply wounded.”
At a mass on Monday, Francis made what many interpreted as an oblique reference to Viganò.
“With people lacking goodwill, with people who only seek
scandal, who seek only division, who seek only destruction, even within the family: silence, prayer,” Francis said.
No matter how the Vatican handles Viganò’s accusations, it is facing a much broader problem, with sexual abuse scandals unfolding in several countries. Even before the letter, a Pennsylvania grand jury report lifted the lid on systemic clerical abuse within the state, accusing more than 300 priests of sexually abusing children over seven decades.
Bishop Philip Egan, from the diocese of Portsmouth in the United Kingdom, wrote to Francis suggesting that he convene an “extraordinary synod” – a church meeting – that could discuss accountability and potentially lead to changes in canon law.
In the United States, bishops are considering calling for a Vatican investigation, conducted with expert laypeople, into how McCarrick was able to climb the ranks of the church despite rumors about his behaviour.
“The recent letter of Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò brings particular focus and urgency to
Is religion obsolete?
In a recent letter to the editor, dated Aug. 18, a local writer deplores the role and effect of religion in society and our nation. He blames religion for its negative impact on Indigenous people. But while applauding the idea of a special national holiday to honour them, suggests that religious organizations should be charged “…for damages and costs, all their assets being forfeited to government.”
The writer goes on to berate religion as “just a bunch of people that prey on the minds of the weak and the vulnerable,” that “religions have been the cause of most wars….” He states that “the reality of life is that you are born, live and survive, then you die and turn to dust and dirt.”
Since this sentiment is common, it should not remain unanswered.
The irony is that the writer unknowingly expresses a religious view by speaking of what he thinks is ultimately important in life. In his case, his belief is that he is his own god, something expressed poetically by William Henley in Invictus when he wrote, “I am the master of my fate, the captain of
A few bishops have suggested that he call an extraordinary meeting to address sexual abuse in the church.
this examination,” said Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. “The questions raised deserve answers that are conclusive and based on evidence.”
Viganò’s letter, released by several conservative Catholic outlets, laid out the purported details about more than a decade of the Vatican’s handling of McCarrick. One of Viganò’s key assertions is that Pope Benedict XVI, several years before his abdication, levied sanctions against McCarrick, forbidding him to lecture, travel, or celebrate mass publicly. But that assertion is belied by McCarrick’s actions during the final years of Benedict’s papacy, when he appeared on Meet the Press, traveled overseas, spoke at fundraisers and
my soul.”
In truth, whether they acknowledge it or not, everyone in the world is religious. They have a belief about life that assigns some significance to it. In the case of the writer, life consists only of what one sees. He is what we would call a materialist or religious atheist.
But like opinions about many things in life, not all religious views are equally valid. Religions need to be studied for their basic assumptions, their explanations concerning all aspects of life, and their views on human life and dignity.
A comparative study of religions will include their respective views on the origin of the universe, the
news conferences, and met with Benedict at the Vatican.
On Friday, a journalist at the National Catholic Register, one of the original publishers of Viganò’s letter, cited a source close to Benedict who said the sanctions were “just a private request.”
Some of Francis’s allies have since suggested that Viganò’s claims are falling apart.
Viganò has declined numerous requests for comments. Cardinals mentioned in the letter as being able to corroborate Viganò’s claims have declined or not responded to requests for comment.
In the letter, Viganò made other accusations, too, including that he notified Francis in 2013 about McCarrick, telling the new pope that the Vatican had a “dossier this thick” about him. Viganò says Francis nonetheless made McCarrick his “trusted counsellor.”
A debate has since broken out over an event not mentioned in the letter: an encounter in 2015 between Pope Francis and Kim Davis, a Kentucky county clerk who briefly became a conservative cause celebre for her refusal to issue marriage licenses to same-sex
natural world and human life. It will speak to their ideas about the reason for the existence of good and evil, as well as human destiny.
Are their arguments on these matters reasonable in the light of honest research and debate?
What teachings or supernatural revelation do they hold to be authoritative and why?
How were sacred texts originally given so that we may determine if they are reliable and trustworthy?
Are they accurate – consistent with our best understanding of science and history?
What do the various religions say about deity?
And finally, what do they say about the value of human life?
couples. The debate about their meeting is something of a proxy battle over the trustworthiness of both Viganò and the Vatican. The Vatican has long said that the pope’s meeting with Davis was not meant as an endorsement of her views and that it was orchestrated by Viganò, who was working at the time as the Vatican’s ambassador in Washington. Viganò last week provided his account of the meeting to LifeSite News, a conservative Catholic outlet, saying he had gotten the pope’s consent for the meeting.
Two former Vatican press officials responded, with one acknowledging that Viganò had spoken with the pope and his advisers the night before the meeting. But he also said the “responsibility” for the meeting was on Viganò.
The meeting “was organized by (Viganò) who inserted it in the context of the Pope’s many and quick greetings at his departure from the nunciature,” wrote the Rev. Federico Lombardi, a former Vatican spokesman. “This certainly did not allow the Pope and his collaborators to realize the significance of this meeting.”
It’s true, even within Christianity, that some religious notions can be skewed and misleading. Then too, there is the matter of genuine adherence. Yet, it’s important to recognize how religion is foundational to the structure of any society. In Canada, for example, it’s a fact that we owe many of our freedoms and blessings to the influence of Christian thought. That is why a great deal of care needs to be taken, not only to preserve the importance of religion, but to encourage its best scholarly investigation. And though accuracy is no substitute for devotion, neither is devotion necessarily a measure of religious integrity.
ED DREWLO Second Wind Ministries Clergy Comment
BLOOMBERG PHOTO BY TAMARA MERINO
Pope Francis smiles at supporters outside the Vatican Apostolic Nunciature in Santiago, Chile, in January 2018.