Wednesday, August 29, 2018
Serving the Hub of the North since 1960
Volume 58 • Issue 35
CBC North Country will soon return to the airwaves with new radio host in Thompson BY IAN GRAHAM
EDITOR@THOMPSONCITIZEN.NET
THOMPSON RESTAURANTS DROPPING PLASTIC STRAWS NEWS PAGE 3
FOURTEEN NEW FACES ON NORTHSTARS CURRENT ROSTER SPORTS PAGE 7
SETTING LAKE COUPLE ON TOP OF THE WORLD NEWS PAGE 8
CBC North Country, the Thompson-based show that was last on the air March 31, 2017, former host Mark Szyszlo’s last day on the job after more than 30 years behind the microphone, will soon return to the airwaves. The new host is Ramraajh Sharvendiran, a Toronto born and raised Sri Lankan Tamil who first got involved in radio broadcasting in university and also had a five-year career in public health. The new North Country, which will also see CBC concentrate on producing more digital content from Northern Manitoba, is expected to be back on listeners’ radios in September, shortly after Sharvendiran, who became an associate producer with CBC Radio in Toronto in 2017 and is currently working with the public broadcaster in Winnipeg, makes his move up to Thompson. CBC Radio has not had a regional presence in more than 16 months and in the past few years, listeners have been used to not hearing local programming much of the time, since the former host also took a sabbatical from the job for much of 2015. Sharvendiran got into radio broadcasting while studying communications at York University, where he produced and hosted a weekly show called Queer Currents on the college radio station CHRY 105.5 FM. He then created and hosted a daily morning show called Morning Mixtape on CJRU 1280 AM and got involved on the news side as the producer of a weekly current affairs show on CKHC 96.9 FM. He was named one of the most influential Tamils of 2015 by Tamil Culture.com and previously served as the men’s health co-ordinator at the Alliance for South Asian AIDS Prevention, which provides HIV/AIDS, sexual health and support services for South Asian communities in the greater Toronto area. That there is a show for the new host to take over at all is thanks to a public outcry back in 2009 when the CBC announced that its Thompson operation as well as its one-person bureau in La Ronge, Sask. were among 800 positions being cut in an effort to save $171 million. That prompted Churchill NDP MP Niki Ashton to spearhead a campaign to save the northern stations, bringing the issue up in the House of Commons and presenting a petition with 1,300 signatures just days before the CBC’s May 15, 2009 announcement that the programs were no longer on the chopping block. Szyszlo came to Northern Manitoba from Ottawa and started out as a freelance radio journalist before being named host of the noon-hour North Country show and later taking over the regional morning show as well. He was – and Sharvendiran will be – the only CBC journalist in Northern Manitoba, which at one time had as many as 12 public broadcasting staff, including a TV reporter and a radio reporter based in The Pas.
Incumbent chief Marcel Moody re-elected to lead Nisichawayasihk Cree Nation by a majority in three-candidate election BY IAN GRAHAM
EDITOR@THOMPSONCITIZEN.NET
IMPAIRED DRIVER BLOWS TWICE LEGAL LIMIT
NEWS PAGE 11
Thompson Citizen photo courtesy of CBC Ramraajh Sharvendiran is the new host of CBC Radio’s Thompson-based North Country program, which is expected to return in September after being off the air since former host Mark Szyszlo retired in March 2017 after a three-decade radio career in Northern Manitoba.
Marcel Moody was elected to a second term as chief of Nisichawayasihk Cree Nation (NCN) in the Aug. 22-23 election, beating out former chief Jerry Primrose by a margin of more than 500 votes. Moody, who became chief when Primrose stepped down in 2014 and
then was elected to a fouryear term that summer, took 960 of 1,684 ballots cast, about 57 per cent of the total. Primrose received 407 votes and William Elvis Thomas, who has run for chief numerous times but never been elected, captured 304. Four new councillors were elected, including Cheryl Moore, who cap-
tured the most votes among council candidates with 704 and will therefore serve as vice-chief under the Nisichawayasi election law. The second- and third-highest vote totals went to incumbents Willie Moore (607) and Ron Spence (587). The other three newcomers are Jackie Walker with 567 votes, Jeremiah Spence with 564 votes and Cheyenne
Spence with 551. Cheyenne Spence finished with just 28 votes more than seventh-place finisher Shirley Linklater, one of three incumbent councillors, along with Joe Moose and Bonnie Linklater, whose re-election bids were unsuccessful. The other councillor from last term, Patrick Linklater, did not seek re-election. Only 49 per cent of
NCN’s 3,431 eligible voters cast ballots in the election. Of the 1,684 ballots cast, 72 per cent were in Nelson House, 14.5 per cent in Thompson, nine per cent in Winnipeg and about three per cent in Leaf Rapids. NCN has close to 4,000 members living in Nelson House, South Indian Lake, Thompson, Brandon and Winnipeg.