Fouldsy's Kamloops Blog: Columns

Opening a passbook and stepping into a glorious past

2011-12-30T14:55:00.000-08:00

The bills were wrapped around themselves, tight like a prairie tornado, forming a perfect funnel in the old plastic drinking cup

Lean over, close one eye and squint into the paper crevasse and an overlapping sea of coins stared right back at you.

Onto the Scotiabank counter it plopped, the cup of cash and two cheques constituting the entire net worth of my 10-year-old son — $212 in all when added to the $25 already occupying the savings account at the bank.

We know this because of the trusty and nostalgia-inducing passbook, that magical flip-open booklet that, to this day, is still inserted into a machine and updated with a font that transports generations of Canadians back to their childhoods.

Through the advent of ATMs, telephone banking, Internet bill-paying and smartphone deposits, the simple but effective passbook has persevered, bringing that special smile to every kid whose eyes widen when seeing the ink magically increase their wealth.

At 10 years of age, two-hundred bucks is Warren-Buffet wealthy.

For me, saving money began with seeing Anne Murray star in TV commercials for the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (never CIBC).That led to my first luxurious gold-laminated square passbook that fit perfectly snug in its plastic cover.

Many was the time my paper-route cheques were deposited in the bank of the Canadian Snowbird, with my golden passbook duly updated.Many more were the times my paper-route money was withdrawn, to be spent at nearby Toys ‘N Wheels on such necessities as DoodleArt, Hot Wheels models and bouncy balls.

That fancy Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce passbook got as much wear and tear as Murray’s big album of the era, New Kind of Feeling.Its hit single was Shadows in the Moonlight, which could aptly describe how hard it was to find my savings, spendthrift that I was.

Today, however, the passbook that has succeeded my dog-eared version is as rigid as the economy circa 2008.It has been firmly in the black since early last year when the account was opened with the exchange of $25 for an NHL-themed savings can and accompanying mini-poster listing all Stanley Cup champions through 2010.

Whereas I itched to withdraw, my son withdraws from the itch to withdraw.

Alas, that initial $25 deposit grew in 11 months to . . . twenty-five dollars; such is life in the era of historic-low interest rates.

I try to explain compound-interest ratios to my son, but the fact his $25 has gained no interest in a year increases the danger of making any kid lose interest in the art of gaining interest, something in which the current economy has no interest in making interesting

Back in the day of Anne Murray and my golden passbook, I tell my boy, the interest rate as posted mirrored the digits on a thermometer in Kamloops in the middle of the summer.

The swollen numbers were good and bad, I tell him — good if you had money in the bank; bad if you had a mortgage about to be renewed. Back then, it was more bad than good as more people had mortgages due than had money in the bank — from one recession to another, only the interest numbers change.

But, the rite of passage that is the bank savings passbook endures, through prosperous and hard times, from the pre-debit-card age of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce to the cutting-edge era of confusing acronyms: CIBC, TD, RBC, BMO, ISCU, to all of which I can only exclaim OMG! in exasperation

Let’s keep passing the book and fuelling the font that funnels something more valuable than money — memories — into our all-too-hectic lives.

Behold! The events of 2012 brought to you right now

2011-12-26T13:17:00.000-08:00

Newspapers are faced with brutal late-December deadlines that have staff trying to slap together multiple editions at once.
Many papers will plan ahead and compile stories of the year.At KTW, we have taken to emulating Sports Illustrated in creating our popular Where Are They Now? year-end editions, in which we revisit stories and story subjects from the past year (and, in some cases, the past few years) and update the reader on the situations now.
It’s far more interesting than simply rehashing the year that was; unfortunately, it is far more time-consuming and, when considering subjects to cover, there are always far too many to tackle.
So, while we catch up on other stories on our newspaper's website, I will put on my best Carnac The Magnificent (who? Ask your parents, kids) turban and forecast the future.
What to expect in 2012?
Read on:
• The John Cummins-led B.C. Conservative Party continues to do well in the polls and, by December 2012, his upstart right wingers are neck-and-neck with the NDP in voter popularity, far ahead of the imploding B.C. Liberals, with the provincial election five months away.Kevin Krueger blames the NDP.
• Kamloops city council continues to mandate conservation measures onto residents. When taxpayers complain the various new green initiatives are draining their wallets, a certain city councillor offers to help ease the burden by dipping into handsome profits realized from owning shares in oil-sands and mining ventures. The irony is not lost on anybody.
• In June, the Vancouver Canucks again face Boston in the Stanley Cup championship and again lose in seven games. Fans again riot. Kevin Krueger blames the NDP.
• The B.C. Teachers’ Federation escalates its job action in the spring by refusing to use chalk. When the B.C. Public School Employees’ Association points out most chalkboards have been phased out in favour of smartboards, the BCTF regroups and declares a boycott of schoolyard hopscotch.
• In yet another attempt at cutting costs in the health-care field, the Interior Health Authority follows the closure of sexually transmitted infection clinics by redirecting (IHA communications-officer-speak for “closing”) its six oxygen clinics for people with asthma, emphysema, chronic bronchitis, occupational lung disease, lung cancer, cystic fibrosis and congestive heart failure.When asked about the impact on patients, Interior Health Authority communications officer No. 347 cites a duplication of services as she points at all the free oxygen in the air around us.
• The Kamloops Blazers’ fantastic season is tarnished by a shocking first-round playoff loss in March to the Prince George Cougars. Majority owner Tom Gaglardi flies into the Tournament Capital from Dallas and bans all Radio NL staff from speaking to club members because the station had the temerity to broadcast the losses.
• City council receives an award from Green Space BC for having the largest amount of parkland/green space in the province. Council celebrates by purchasing the Kamloops Golf and Country Club and turning it into much-needed walking trails and green space.
• On Dec. 21, 2012, to the surprise of skeptics everywhere, the Mayan calendar is proven correct and the world as we knows it ends in a fiery flash of bright light. A dying population is heard using its last breath to blame the pre-Columbus Central American peoples. Kevin Krueger blames the NDP.

Lightfoot a lyrical Lazarus

2011-11-23T22:31:00.001-08:00

Yes, Gordon Lightfoot could have sauntered onto the stage at Interior Savings Centre on Tuesday night (Nov. 22), told a funny tale and lip-synched to his legendary hits by miming his strong, spectacular voice of 30 years ago.

He didn’t.

That kind of singing scam is best left to the Ashley Simpsons, Britney Spears and Madonnas of entertainment, acts whose lyrics and careers are compelling Archie comics next to Lightfoot’s Tolstoy tenure.

The icon turned 73 on Nov. 17 and, during Tuesday night’s concert at ISC before a disappointingly small crowd, his voice often sounded every bit as old as the mouth through which landmark songs were sung.

However, that’s exactly as it should be.

Lightfoot has lived a tough, tough life for more than seven decades and vocal-chord strain on hits like Rainy Day People and Sundown only added to the raw reality of finally seeing Canada’s greatest songwriter of all time performing in Kamloops.

Remember, Lightfoot is the lyrical Lazarus of Canadiana, coming back from the dead in February 2010 to tour again (or so the major media told us as they jumped on a hoax Twitter post lamenting the great man’s demise).He was hit with an abdominal aneurysm in 2001 and lapsed into a six-week coma. He suffered a stoke onstage in 2006 was performing again in nine days.

Heck, hearing Lightfoot rasp his way through Summer Side of Life while confined to an iron lung and being read last rites would be eminently preferable to being subjected to the inanity of LMFAO, Radiohead, Kanye West and the rest of what passes for music these days.

Lightfoot and his oh-so-tight band — Carter Lancaster on lead guitar (replacing longtime Lightfoot mate Terry Clements, who died in February), Mike Heffernan on keyboards, Barry Keane on drums and Rick Haynes on bass — led an adoring crowd through the Lightfoot years.

From Carefree Highway to Let it Ride to Early Morning Rain to Baby Step Back — Lightfoot may not have been as strong in his delivery, but the Kamloops crowd was mesmerized for the entire 90-minute show.

Following a 20-minute intermission, Lightfoot hit his stride, his voice seeming to take command as he opened the second half with The Wreck of The Edmund Fitzgerald (sung 12 days after the 36th anniversary of the sinking of the now-famous Great Lakes freighter, with Lightfoot reminded the crowd the song is “a true story from start to finish.”)

His voice continued to build through Clouds of Loneliness (a heart-shattering song Lightfoot noted was written for his “second ex-old lady”) and If You Could Read My Mind.

It was Lightfoot’s first performance in Kamloops, though he twice reminded the audience he had been in the Tournament Capital once before — when he spent about 30 minutes at the airport en route to one of four Stein Valley Festival benefit concerts in the early 1990s.

And, twice Lightfoot thanked the audience for “coming out on a Tuesday night.”

“Thanks for coming!” one fan volleyed back, to which Lightfoot smiled, bowed his head in his inimitable humble way and sang another timeless song that can only make you smile and sigh.ENCORE — Bill Jaswal of Jelly Events and Promotions brought Lightfoot to town and, judging by the crowd, it might have been a tough night for the promoter.The floor was full, but not very many of the bleacher seats in the half-bowl setup were occupied.But, that’s all the more credit to Jaswal.Booking Lightfoot transcends marketing and profit. Booking Lightfoot is important as he is, essentially, history on tour.As with small but devoted crowds showing up at ISC for fellow legends George Jones and Randy Travis in past concerts, such bookings add to the foundation of seminal concerts in Kamloops.Here’s hoping these momentous acts keep coming through the Thompson Valley.

Kamloops election 2011: Dewey almost defeats Truman

2011-11-20T22:19:00.000-08:00

He was dismissed as an afterthought, an entertaining sideshow to this civic-election campaign, someone who would have no effect on the mayoral race.
Indeed, moments before results began appearing on the screens at city hall on Saturday night, election, night, John O'Fee was saying as much to Jim Harrison on Radio NL's election-night broadcast from council chambers.
O'Fee, an extremely astute political observer who easily topped the councillor polls in 2008, said what all of us were thinking: Brian Alexander (and fellow forgettable mayoral candidate Gordon Chow) would have no impact in a race that Peter Milobar would win with ease.
Well, someone forgot to tell the electorate — and, to the detriment of Dieter Dudy, someone forgot to tell 251 people who voted for Alexander.
Four days before election day, Alexander told KTW he was asking his supporters to vote for Dudy in a bid to defeat Milobar.
Had those 251 Alexander voters done so, Kamloops would have awoken on Sunday morning to the most-stunning political upset in B.C. on civic-election day, with Dudy leading the city by virtue of a 15-vote win.
Alas, befitting Alexander's quixotic pursuit of life, liberty and the pursuit of freedom on terms other than those dictated by society, 251 of his supporters did just that and, in effect, handed Milobar a second term.
Brian Alexander as a modern-day Ralph Nader in Kamloops? Believe it or not — yes.
In fact, it can be argued that Gordon Chow's decision to run helped Milobar hold off a determined Dudy, if one was to accept the 441 votes for Chow were, in fact, 441 votes against the status quo, against Milobar.
After all, the fifth mayoral candidate, Frank Stewart, withdrew to throw his support behind Dudy. Had Alexander and Chow done likewise by the Oct. 21 deadline, the news stories today may have been heralding a new political era in Kamloops.
As it was, Milobar won a second term by garnering 9,391 votes to Dudy's 9,156 votes. Milobar has 48.8 per cent of voter support, which is a heck of a lot more than that enjoyed by our provincial and federal governments.
The voters' itch for change was evident in the councillor race as well, as fully half of city council under Milobar is new.
John De Cicco was the lone incumbent to lose — and he fell hard, finishing 11th and 800 votes behind Nelly Dever, who captured the eighth and final council seat in her second campaign.
Newcomers also include Ken Christian (who ran away with the election to the surprise of nobody, based on his school-trustee experience), Donovan Cavers and Arjun Singh (who isn't technically new since he served a term between 2005 and 2008).

DISTAFF DOMINANCE: Kamloops has long been known as the bellwether riding in provincial elections, having elected a government MLA since B.C. became a province. Today, the Tournament Capital may be well known for its preponderance of female politicians.
Of the 26 city councillor candidates, only seven were female; however, five of those were elected, creating a 5:3 female/male ratio among councillors.
Twenty-one people (14 females and seven males) ran for nine seats on School District 73's board of education. Elected were seven females and two males.
Comparing councillor make-up in like-sized cities, Nanaimo elected two females and six males, Chilliwack elected one female and six males and Prince George elected eight males.
Regionally, Merritt elected one female and five males; Clearwater elected one female and five males; Barriere elected four females and four males; and Salmon Arm elected three females and three males.

Duck! Here comes Dr. Don'tLittle!

2011-08-09T21:27:00.000-07:00

Call me Dr. Don’tlittle.
As in, don’t even think about wildlife, much less try to approach an animal.
A 24-hour visit to Loon Lake near Clinton last week confirmed yet again I succeed only on grating on the Great Outdoors and all its inhabitants.
From my arrival on Thursday morning at cabin No. 9 at Loon Lake’s Marigold Resort to my departure on Friday morning, I succeeded in killing a fish I was trying to save, maiming and likely murdering a plump, pheasant-type bird that was minding its own business and possibly suffocating a duck or two that were resting peacefully next to me and the campfire.
And, this carnage resulted in not a speck of meat to eat, save for the hamburger patties I brought along from Save-On-Foods.
The plan was to take my two kids — as unfamiliar to the Great Outdoors as their dad —to the lake to visit my oldest brother, who had rented a cabin for a few nights and who is very good at catching trout.
The kids would swim in the lake, we’d roast marshmallows at night, we’d marvel at the thousands of stars and, maybe, finally, I’d learn how to fish.
That learning curve got steep right away when one of three rods my brother has set up for trolling in the rented pontoon boat began bending.
“Fish on!” he cried, rushing to start reeling it in.
He made sure there was indeed a bite and handed me the rod.
Here would be my first chance to actually reel in a catch.
It was easy. Just turn the handle fast and watch dinner get closer to the boat.
Just then, the spinning reel thing came off the pole and I was left holding the rod in my left hand and the reel thing in my right hand.
My left hand jerked, confirming the fish was still attached to the hook.
At that point, I ceded control to my brother, who, while re-attaching the spinning reel thing to the rod, noted in his 51 years on earth, he had never seen such a thing happen.
“If I sat here for a month and tried, I couldn’t possibly do what you did,” he said of my fishing prowess.
So, it was left to him to bring into the boat a fish that would surely inspire future stories around the campfire.
Up it came to the surface.
I managed to grab it and hold it to the floor of the boat, at which time the fish was declared too small to keep.
So, back into the water it would go — once I removed the hook. Which was stuck in its mouth. Which was gaping desperately for air. Which caused the whole fish body to convulse. Which made my hand skip and further twist the hook into the poor thing’s jaw/mouth/lip.
By the point, the fish was barely moving and I had a scene that made Saw look like a Disney film.
Between the blood and the slime, my brother finally managed to remove the hook and I tossed the little guy back into the lake, whereupon he promptly floated on the surface, having succumbed to my hooking penalty.
As the little fish floated, a shadow crossed the boat. That shadow was an eagle, who scooped up the fish with his talons and flew away, without even a thank you.
That night, while roasting marshmallows in a campfire at the lake’s edge, I asked my brother if the ducks around us can eat the fluffy white balls of sugar. He thought I was kidding and answered in the affirmative, only to ask what the heck I was doing after I tossed a marshmallow to the ducks.
Apparently (and I found some information on this subject later on the Internet), sticky foods like marshmallows and peanut putter can create all sorts of problems with the duck’s bills and throats.
So, as a duck grabbed the marshmallow and swam away, attempting to consume the sticky square puffy white thing, I could only imagine my toss leading to duck suffocation.
My rampage didn’t end that night, unfortunately.
The next day, having packed up and still feeling horrible about the fish and duck, the kids and I set off down Loon Lake Road, heading home.
A few hundred feet ahead, there were three birds sitting in the middle of the road. Having always seen birds fly up and out of the way as soon as my vehicle approached, I thought nothing of the feathered trio.
Two black bodies with wings did indeed swoop up, across my field of vision and to a tree at the side of the road.
The KA-CHUNK! sound and hardy bump under my front tire that followed told me the third bird didn’t take flight.
I looked in the rearview mirror to see a horribly wounded pheasant-type bird hobbling madly to get to the side of the road.
I didn’t stop. I couldn’t.
Images of too much blood and guts and slime and constricting duck throats raced through my mind.
I just had to get back to the city.
My brother was following about 10 minutes behind and, knowing nothing of my third attack on wildlife, called me when he arrived home in the Lower Mainland.
He was leaving Loon Lake, he said, when he came across a wounded bird by the side of the road being pecked at by a crow and being watched by a hawk in a tree.
He stopped to scare away the crow, but didn’t know what he could do about the pheasant-type bird. He didn’t have a box in which to place the bird. And, if he did, where would he take it?
So, he had to leave my victim to the laws of nature, laws that should have as the eternal first commandment: Thou shalt not allow Foulds to leave the city limits, anywhere, at any time.
My apologies to my victims.
I promise to limit my fishing to the card game, my ducks to the rubber ones in the tub and my foul to watching baseball.

Fogerty remains fantastic

2011-07-15T11:25:00.000-07:00

When the Vernon Kin Club volunteer selling beer tickets taps you on the shoulder and expresses a desire to cut off your head so she can get a better look at the singer on stage, you know the concert has been a roaring success.
The forthright manner in which the otherwise amicable lady asked me to take a step to the left mirrored the no-frills, straight-ahead musical style swamp-blues legend John Fogerty brought to the Motoplex Speedway and Event Park near Vernon on Thursday night (July 14), courtesy of Goodman Media Inc. of North Vancouver.
Yes, she couldn't help but groove to the tunes as she exchanged blue five-dollar bills for white tickets that turned into red and white Bud cans.
And, she wasn't alone as about 4,000 fans made the trek to the racetrack to soak a 25-song, 90-minute performance sandwich that had Creedence Clearwater Revival classics Hey Tonight and Proud Mary bracketing more CCR material, Fogerty's solo creations, Roy Orbinson's Pretty Woman and a kick-ass version of Little Richard's Good Golly, Miss Molly.
As always, Fogerty showcased his signature voice, which has not diminished even a single octave since CCR began churning out all those hits nearly 50 years ago.
And, as always, the 66-year-old delighted in showcasing his picking prowess, changing guitars as often as Christy Clark changes her mind on policy decisions.
The result was an energized crowd spanning the age spectrum — there were grandmothers swivelling their hips in the grandstand, moms and dad swaying near the stage and kids dancing on the racetrack's finish line.
Fogerty knows how to play to a crowd — keep the music rolling, pause to thank the crowd for singing along, toss kudos to his bandmates and let the songs, not special effects, lead the way.
Through the night, he offered a few tidbits of information. He prefaced Who'll Stop The Rain by noting he wrote the song after CCR played a middle-of-the-night set at the monsoon-ravaged and muddy Woodstock festival in August 1969.
While introducing Have You Ever Seen The Rain, Fogerty said it is one of his favourites to sing, offering that it reminds him of his eight-year-old daughter, Kelsey.
Why? Because she likes eating vanilla ice cream with rainbow sprinkles on top and, he said, the song features a rainbow.
He did all this and more with boundless energy despite the fact the Vernon stop was a solo sojourn out west. Fogerty played Ottawa two nights before and was to play Toronto two days later — all this travel coming just weeks after he played in Russia for the first time.
Opening act Colin James was, as usual, solid, though many fans were still snaking their way through the lineup to get into the speedway when he started his set.
James played for exactly one hour, delivering an array of hits, including Voodoo Thing, Five Long Years and Just Came Back.
Like Fogerty, James is all about the guitar and the crowd roared its lusty approval.
The concert was held at the venue best known for car racing (with the biggest race of the year, the NASCAR Canadian Tire Series A&W Cruisin' The Dub 300, hitting the track on July 23) and formerly known as the Sun Valley Speedway.
With a fat moon wrestling passing clouds for a view from above, the concert could not have hoped for better weather — not too hot, not too chilly.
The venue's location is sublime as the large open space tucked off Highway 97, surrounded by tree-filled rolling hills, helps create excellent ambience and fantastic sound.

ENCORE — Here's Fogerty's set list from the show, as best as I could follow. He posts all set lists on his website. The Vernon set list had not been posted as of this writing, so we can not yet compare for accuracy:

John Fogerty set list

Thursday, July 14, 2011

Motoplex Speedway and Event Park, Vernon:

1) Hey Tonight

2) Green River

3) Who'll Stop The Rain

4) Lodi

5) Born On The Bayou

6) Looking Out My Backdoor

7) Down The Road I Go

8) Somebody Help Me

9) Midnight Special

10) Gunslinger

11) Don't You Wish It Was True

12) Long As I Can See The Light

13) Have You Ever Seen The Rain

14) Pretty Woman

15) Keep On Chooglin'

16) Rambunctious Boy

17) I Put A Spell On You

18) Rockin' All Over The World

19) Down On The Corner

20) Good Golly, Miss Molly

21) Old Man Down The Road

22) Bad moon Rising

23) Fortunate Son

24) Around The Bend

25) Proud Mary

Wondering what a Kesha is as Bob Dylan clowns around

2011-02-19T12:39:00.000-08:00

If you ever want to measure to the precise millimetre the width of the generation gap that stretches like the Grand Canyon between you and your offspring, the Grammy Awards offer the perfect gauge.
My 12-year-old daughter and I sat down on Monday night to watch Sunday’s show.
She PVRd it, which was known as “taping” a show back in the day. But, PVRs (personal video recorders) don’t actually have tape on which to record the TV shows.
They have hard drives that store information, which confuses me as much as a debate over Betamax and VHS leaves my daughter with a blank look on her face.
The Grammys gave us a potpouri of singers, a few with which we were familiar and more than a few that had daughter and I emulating characters in a Farley Mowat book.
“Who’s that?” asked I as an apparently sentence-fragmentally obsessed man named will.i.am presented an award with someone named (“Who’s that?”) Nicky Minaj.
“Who’s that?” asked my daughter as the legendary songwriter Kris Kristofferson introduced the iconic (“Who’s that?”) Barbra Streisand.
Oh, we both know all about Lady Gaga. True, until Sunday night, I thought she was Madonna 2.0. I then watched the 60 Minutes profile on the woman formerly known as Stefani Germanotta and came away surprisingly impressed with her talent.
And, of course, we both know Justin Bieber when we see him — and one can see dozens of Justin Biebers in Aberdeen Mall on any given weekend, ubiquitous as his hairstyle remains.
But, the new and old clashed at the Grammys in Los Angeles, as it did with dad and daughter in a living room in Kamloops.
The highlight of the night, from this dinosaur’s perspective, was watching a terrific trilogy that began with Mumford and Sons dazzle with The Cave, followed by the Avett Brothers shine with Head Full of Doubt, topped off with both folk-roots bands backing up Bob Dylan as he grooved and croaked through a wildly thrashing rendition of Maggie’s Farm.
Dylan looked old and sounded older but, miracle of miracles, he was smiling and gyrating and seriously digging the tune.
Having seen Dylan in concert five times, his performance at this year’s Grammys was perhaps the first time I have seen him seem appear happy.
Critics have panned his performance. Me? I rank it as brilliant.
My daughter?
“He looks like a retired clown!” she cried as Dylan came strutting out, parting the Avett Brothers and Mumford and Sons like a musical Moses as he grinned his way to the mic.
I looked at Dylan more closely and she was right.
Dylan sang and he was hoarse and he was coarse and his voice was as gritty and growly as old tires on a gravel road.
In other words — perfect.
“How do you like his voice?” I asked my daughter.
“It’s old,” she says. “He sounds like Krusty the Clown from the Simpsons!”
I paused and listened a bit more.
He did sound a bit like the cartoon clown. Still brilliant, in my mind.
There was a singer from Canada named Drake (that’s me asking “Who?”) up for an award.
He, like every other nominee on this night, lost to Lady Antebellum’s Need You Now, the one song among all that has bridged the generation gap in that incessant radio play on all genres has dad and daughter praying to God never to hear the tune again.
But, back to Drake, a person I had never heard of, unless we are talking about The Drake from Seinfeld, in which case I can relate. Dear daughter has no idea what lame dad is rambling on about and mentions, with a giggle, that Drake’s real name is Aubrey.
Mick Jagger then came sashaying across the stage, looking and sounding as fantastic as ever.
“Is he Kesha’s father?” my daughter asked. “That’s the rumour.”
I’m still wondering what a Kesha is.

It's Christmas — or not.

2010-11-30T18:03:00.000-08:00

Perhaps the Gold Trail school district has the right idea.
Of the province’s 60 school districts, Gold Trail — which covers Ashcroft, Cache Creek, Lillooet and Lytton — is the only one that refers to the school break in December as “Christmas/Winter vacation.”
Apparently, the folks in Gold Trail are steps ahead of their peers, who continue to allegedly offend by calling the break “winter vacation” or “Christmas vacation”.
This annual controversy over whether to abide by Canadian custom and refer to the Christmas break as the Christmas break bubbled over again last week in Chilliwack.
In that conservative eastern Fraser Valley enclave, school trustees voted to erase “winter vacation” from the official designation and call the two-week school break “Christmas vacation” (and I applaud them for doing so).
That common-sense decision riled up the Chilliwack teachers’ association, which, as usual, jumped in to defend those who might be offended by the “C” word — even if nobody has been offended.
In any event, this ridiculous rite of winter got me thinking.
So, having no real life outside of work, I went online and checked the websites of all 60 school districts in B.C. to determine how popular Christmas remains.
(I did this while casting glances at the Monday Night Football match between San Francisco and Arizona. Cruising school-board websites was infinitely more exciting).
Of the 60 school districts in B.C. 42 call it “winter vacation”, 16 deem it “Christmas vacation”, one (Burnaby) simply refers to a “break” and Gold Trail encompasses both.
(The complete list is at the bottom of this column).
So, while Chilliwack’s decision results in ridiculous indignation from the local teachers’ union, Vancouver’s penchant for remaining secular no doubt irritates those who see Christmas as having become something more than a religious holiday.
There are many — Christians, Muslims, Sikhs, atheists — who hang lights in December.
The box at the store does not say “winter lights” and I am sure those hanging the strands are not afraid to call them what they are.
But, back to Gold Trail and its rather wise lexiconic decision.
School board chairwoman Valerie Adrian told me the “Christmas/winter” reference was agreed to by the district’s calendar committee, composed of trustees, parents, teachers, CUPE workers and representatives from the First Nations community.
“ We want to be inclusive of everyone,” Adrian said.
“We do have a lot of people who are atheist, Christian, Seventh-Day and those who have native spiritual beliefs.”
There will be those who will see Gold Trail’s compromise as another setback for Christmas — and I can see that point of view.
Anything that appears to dilute a holiday that is as culturally significant to Canada as Ramadan is to Saudi Arabia will quite understandably be criticized.
But, it does honour Christmas, so Gold Trail is well ahead of 43 other school districts — including Kamloops-Thompson, which regrettably hangs with the politically correct crowd — on the common-sense scale.
However, if Gold Trail has ensured its school break is called “Christmas/winter vacation”, what do its schools call those fantastic plays and concerts performed by students?
“Well, some call them Christmas concerts,” Adrian said. “It’s for the kids. If they’re putting on a Christmas concert, we don’t want to go in there and tell them they did something wrong.”
Amen (can we still say that?).

IT'S CHRISTMAS OR WINTER VACATION, DEPENDING ON YOUR LOCALE:

• WINTER VACATION
SD 73 (Kamloops)
SD 87 (Stikine)
SD 82 (Coast Mountains)
SD 59 (Peace River-South)
SD 57 (Prince George)
SD 52 (Prince Rupert)
SD 50 (Haida Gwaii)
SD 49 (Central Coast)
SD 27 (Cariboo-Chilcotin)
SD 83 (North Okanagan-Shuswap)
SD 8 (Kootenay Lakes)
SD 20 (Kootenay-Columbia)
SD 10 (Arrow Lakes)
SD 23 (Central Okanagan)
SD 22 (Vernon)
SD 53 (Okanagan-Similkameen)
SD 58 (Nicola-Similkameen)
SD 48 (Sea to Sky)
SD 47 (Powell River)
SD 84 (Vancouver Island-West)
SD 42 (Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows)
SD 39 (Vancouver)
SD 40 (New Westminster)
SD 46 (Sunshine Coast)
SD 93 (Conseil Scolaire Francophone)
SD 71 (Comox Valley)
SD 78 (Fraser-Cascade)
SD 79 (Cowichan Valley)
SD 68 (Nanaimo-Ladysmith)
SD 70 (Alberni)
SD 62 (Sooke)
SD 37 (Delta)
SD 38 (Richmond)
SD 34 (Abbotsford)
SD 36 (Surrey)
SD 67 (Okanagan-Skaha)
SD 75 (Mission)
SD 44 (North Vancouver)
SD 63 (Saanich)
SD 61 (Greater Victoria)

• CHRISTMAS VACATION:
SD 33 (Chilliwack)
SD 28 (Quesnel)
SD 81 (Fort Nelson)
SD 60 (Peace River-North)
SD 91 (Nechako Lakes)
SD 54 (Bulkley Valley)
SD 19 (Revelstoke)
SD 6 (Rocky Mountain)
SD 51 (Boundary)
SD 85 (Vancouver Island-North)
SD 72 (Campbell River)
SD 43 (Coquitlam)
SD 64 (Gulf Islands)
SD 45 (West Vancouver)
SD 35 (Langley)
SD 92 (Nisgaa)

• Christmas/Winter Vacation:
SD 74 (Gold Trail)

• Break:
SD 41 (Burnaby)

editor@kamloopsthisweek.com
chrisfoulds.blogspot.com

Has the B.C. Conservative era begun?

2010-11-23T18:33:00.000-08:00

The B.C. Conservative Party has long been relegated to the political fringe, along with every other party in B.C. that hasn’t been blessed with the names Social Credit, Liberal and New Democratic.
John Cummins and a list of notable names from the political past are hoping the 2013 B.C. election brings the Conservatives in from the wilderness, where they have been sitting in exile since 1952.
There are many who dismiss the B.C. Conservatives as a non-factor and, considering the recent past of the party, such skepticism is understandable.
In August, 12-year party member Blake Mackenzie resigned from the provincial executive and quit the party in protest of what he called an unelected group running the Conservatives.
(That would be the aforementioned stable of notable names, officially called the tactical advisory group, including former Reform/Canadian Alliance/Conservative firebrand MP Randy White, former B.C. Social Credit premier Rita Johnston and former Newfoundland and Labrador Conservative premier Brian Peckford).
That was followed in September by the resignation of FightHST organizer Chris Delaney. And, of course, there was that odd intraparty battle that led to the 2009 resignation of leader Wilf Hanni and a number of board members.
But, as Cummins — the Conservative MP from Delta — told a small gathering in Kamloops this past weekend: That was then; this is now.
Yes, a slew of political parties have proclaimed the same during the past few generations that B.C. has been dominated by a right/left, two-party structure.
But, maybe, just maybe, the provincial Conservatives have emerged (again) at precisely the perfect time.
It has happened before, of course.
In Lotusland, Rome falls every now and then.
It happened in 1952, only one year after the legendary W.A.C. Bennett left the B.C. Conservatives and joined a new entity called the Social Credit League. He defeated Kamloops’ Phil Gaglardi by one vote in 1952 to become the leader of this new party and premier of a minority government.
Perhaps there was a reason Cummins invoked the name of Bennett often during Saturday’s sermon to those 16 Kamloopsians who braved winter roads to hear the B.C. Conservative word at the Yacht Club on River Street.
It happened again in 1991 when Gordon Wilson led the B.C. Liberals out of the abyss and Social Credit breathed its final few breaths.
And, Cummins and company are counting on Rome falling again, this time in the form of those B.C. Liberals in 2013.
Only sixteen people showed up on the weekend, which could be seen as ripe ammunition for those ready to dismiss these provincial Conservatives.
But, the meeting was eerily similar to political gatherings I covered in the early 1990s in the Fraser Valley, when a group of populists got together to tell Canada “the West wants in”.
Those meetings were for a wacky group called Reform and they attracted few, and those few were usually of the silver-haired variety.
It, too, was waved away as an irrelevant political pest.
From the late 1980s to mid-1990s, Reform grew meeting by meeting, word-of-mouth by word-of-mouth, until it became a 52-seat force that shaped the political map of Canada.
Without Reform (which was born via the fall of another Rome, the federal Progressive Conservatives), there would be no Conservative government in Ottawa.
Cummins is adamant this B.C. Conservative Party is a new party, though Mackenzie isn’t shy about claiming the party has been and continues to be infiltrated by B.C. Liberals who know it’s not safe to remain on a sinking ship.
If this is true, it would be unfortunate, though hardly surprising — after all, what is the B.C. Liberal Party but a new name and new colour consisting of former Socreds?

Recall effort ignores intent of legislation

2010-11-23T18:30:00.000-08:00

Terry Lake is among the first of three Liberal MLAs facing a recall campaign and, when contacted by KTW reporter Jeremy Deutsch, the first-term provincial politician sounded mighty miffed.
As well he should.
The FightHST forces — led by former premier Bill Vander Zalm and peripatetic putative politician Chris Delaney — stunned many by succeeding in their petition to send the hated tax to a vote.
But I’m betting they alienate far more and, ultimately, fail in their ill-advised campaign to recall Liberal MLAs.
Opposing the harmonized sales tax — or, more properly, the questionable manner in which it was introduced right after the 2009 provincial election — and the recall campaign are different beasts.
The former was launched because Vander Zalm and Delaney and their many volunteer canvassers convinced enough British Columbians that the HST should be eliminated.
They argued the Liberals had not been truthful with the public during the May 2009 election campaign. They accused the Grits of waiting until an election victory to spring the tax on a surprised public.
This debate will never end and one can listen endlessly to Finance Minister Colin Campbell and to Vander Zalm and Delaney and peruse all those FOI documents and still not know the truth.
But . . . but . . . it is safe to say more people don’t believe Premier Gordon Campbell and the Liberals when they claim they only began considering the HST after the election, when the federal government gave Victoria a tight timeline to join Ontario on the HST team.
However, the FightHST recall campaign — which begins with targets on Ida Chong (Nov. 22) and Lake and Don McRae (Jan. 3) — does not honour the intent of the recall legislation, which is to hold accountable MLAs on their specific records.
When Kevin Falcon was simply an NDP-hater with visions of becoming a Liberal MLA running through his head, he launched a campaign in 1999 to recall all 40 NDP MLAs.
He justified the blatantly political effort thusly: “They have no legitimacy to act as the voice of the public because they were elected on the basis of a lie.”
Falcon — who today is the health minister, dreaming of how he might look in the premier’s office — surely can see the irony in that comment.
After all, there are at least hundreds of thousands of voters who would argue Falcon’s statement of 11 years ago applies to his governing Liberal party today.
They could point to the HST or the laughable disparity in the projected budget deficit and the actual budget deficit.
Thankfully, though, Falcon’s transparently politically motivated effort failed miserably — as should the current FightHST campaign.
Regardless of how much one might despise the governing party, it cannot be argued the B.C. Liberals have not done what they are required to do under existing legislation.
The anti-HST petition was successful and the Grits had two choices: Send the matter to the legislature for a vote or send the matter to a provincewide referendum, to be held on Sept. 24, 2011.
The Liberals chose the latter (the date of which, incidentally, is entrenched in legislation created by the NDP), therefore fulfilling their responsibility.
If anything, the Grits went beyond when Campbell said a simply majority in next year’s vote (and not a super-majority) will suffice.
As such, the recall campaign reeks of a group that is acting like a spoiled brat — and one that is dangerously overestimating its hold on public opinion.
The Liberals have done some nasty things — lying about selling BC Rail, lying about not tearing up health-care contracts — but their actions on this legislation is not one of them.
The recall efforts will likely fail.
But, more importantly, these failures will seriously damage FightHST momentum as September 2011 approaches.

Gordon Campbell: From sour cream to a sour political endin

2010-11-23T18:20:00.000-08:00

It was a Friday night at Finnegan’s, a pub in Abbotsford, and Gordon Campbell was having a good time.
In town for a B.C. Liberal event with local MLA Michael de Jong, Campbell and fellow Opposition Liberals and aides had repaired to the pub for post-banquet festivities.
Indelibly marked in my mind — and that of many others who contacted me this week to recall that night — is Campbell jumping from table to table, stopping by ours to tell a story or two and share a laugh and a beverage.
While parked at our table, he reached over and helped himself to a perogie sitting amid a plate of appetizers.
But he missed on the first bite, leaving a dollop of sour cream on his left cheek. He continued chatting before returning to his table with his adopted scoop of sour cream. It remained for quite some time, even after he had returned to his table.
No big deal. We laughed. He laughed.
But, that night. His cheek. The atmosphere. It all struck me then and does now as being one of those classic halcyon days of politics. They were heady times and the political pulse was positively electric.
The New Democrats were in a death spiral under Glen Clark and Campbell, de Jong and the rest of the Liberals knew it was only a matter of time before the Grit coronation would occur.
The tale from then to now has been well-told: The NDP self-destructs amid repeated scandal-induced resignations by premiers; Campbell leads his Liberals to a landslide victory in the 2001 election and follows that win with two more triumphs in 2007 and 2009; Campbell breaks his promise to not sell BC Rail and to not tear up health-care contracts by doing both; Campbell lowers personal income-tax rates to the lowest in the country and admirably reverses his stance on native land claims; Campbell introduces a controversial carbon tax and, finally, a tax that becomes his political poison dart — the HST.
Truth be told, it was Gordon Wilson’s desire of Judi Tyabji that opened the door for Campbell to become one of only four B.C. premiers to win three terms (alongside W.A.C. Bennett, his son, Bill Bennett, and Richard McBride).
Had the married Wilson not fallen for one of his MLAs and torpedoed his job as Liberal leader, who knows where Campbell would have wound up following his successful stint as mayor of Vancouver.
But Liberal leader he did become, which led to a remarkable run as premier, which led to an inglorious exit amid the lowest approval rating of any premier in the history of the province.
Still, immediately following his announcement this week, speculation of a successor was attached to many pundits labelling Campbell one of the greatest B.C. premiers.
And that is an argument that has significant merit, single-digit approval ratings, BC Rail corruption trial questions and HST aside.
He dragged B.C. from a have-not province to a North American economic juggernaut. He established the province as a leader in combatting climate change. He has done more than any other provincial leader in land-claims settlements and negotiations. He championed the right of citizens to vote on radically altering the electoral system — even if it would not benefit his political party.
Campbell did much to historically alter the provincial political landscape. And he did much to tarnish his image and that of his party, as the BC Rail sale and subsequent scandal and his drunk-driving conviction in Hawaii demonstrated.
Then again, Bret Favre holds the NFL career record for most touchdown passes and most interceptions.
To be great, you have to take chances.
Campbell certainly did the latter; history will determine if he is the former — though the evidence points to him being spoken of in the same breath as the Bennetts, McBride, Thomas Pattullo and John Oliver.
For now, though, the legacy is that of a man quitting as his world collapses, the HST stubbornly sticking to the outgoing premier as did that slice of sour cream back in the thrilling beginning, when Campbell was laughing, relaxed and ready for his promising future.

How is your money being spent? Good question

2010-11-23T18:15:00.000-08:00

Cathy McLeod spent $512,000 of taxpayer dollars on various MP duties in the last fiscal year, including almost $110,000 on travel.
But did our Conservative member of Parliament use that $110,000 to fly herself between Kamloops and Ottawa?
Was the $110,000 used to pay for family members to travel with her? Was that travel budget restricted to airplanes? Were any flights to places other than Ottawa and, if so, where?
Perhaps McLeod will tell you, because she will not tell KTW.
McLeod spent $24,647.34 on renting a place (and associated expenses) in Ottawa and on per diem expenses.
How much is her rent, which you fund? How much cash, if any, was spent on meals? Any beverages included in the per diem you grant her?
Perhaps McLeod will tell you, because she will not tell KTW.
The figures for all 308 MPs are part of the Individual Member’s Expenditures Report, released by the Board of Internal Economy on Oct. 28.
The report breaks up the expenses into six categories, from travel and printing to advertising and employee salaries.
But the breakdown is far from complete and, in fact, remains short of what Liberal MP Michelle Simson of Ontario has long published on her website (michellesimsonmp.ca).
McLeod’s 2009-2010 fiscal-year expenditures of $512,000 include a host of expenditures, taken from the $340,000 given to McLeod as her budget and $172,000 given by the House of Commons.
These ranged from $214,000 for employee salaries and service contracts, to 74 bucks for equipment rentals.
In-between is everything else, including telephone and Internet ($13,500) printing ($46,400) and hospitality ($2,800) costs.
Now, nobody is claiming there is something nefarious to be found in McLeod’s expense statements.
In fact, the first-term MP seems to be very honest and committed to her job.
When I penned an editorial, criticizing the fact MPs were able to get their hands on high-demand tickets to the Olympic Winter Games, McLeod called me and accepted my challenge to give away the Canada-U.S. hockey tickets in a draw among minor hockey players in her riding.
More than four-hundred kids entered and for that she should be congratulated.
But the issue is not whether McLeod or the 307 MPs are siphoning taxpayer money; the issue remains how that money is being spent.
It probably is being spent appropriately, but we should be privy to every penny.
“Without being 20 or 30 pages worth of minor issues, I think having the auditor-general come in and having more detail is certainly what we were asked for,” McLeod told KTW when asked about the Individual Member’s Expenditures Report.
“To get into every sort of dime for a coffee — which actually I don’t submit for — but, I mean, the auditor is going to make sure that’s all done, so I think it’s a good balance. You’ve got some pretty detailed breakdown. We have an auditor doing a report. We’re in a good place.’
That’s just it, though — we should be looking at 20 or 30 pages of the most minute purchases. We need to “get into every sort of dime for a coffee.”
I am sure Nova Scotia Progress Conservative MLA and cabinet minister Len Goucher didn’t think expensing an Xbox 360 Dance Dance Revolution Universe video game to that province’s taxpayers was a big deal, but it is.
It’s theft from taxpayers.
Unless we can see how every penny of every expenditure is detailed — in the budgets of all 308 MPs — how are we to know the Dance Dance Revolution isn’t being practised right now on a constituency office between Victoria and St. John’s?
MPs resisted a deep audit and consented to this compromise.
Why? If there is nothing to hide, and if it taxpayers’ money, there should be no debate — and McLeod should offer up all figures.
The public should be as privy to details as the auditor-general.
After all, it’s their money.

We love that cable company!

2010-09-14T14:49:00.000-07:00

The morning games were entering the fourth quarter when the simple touch of a button solved an hours-long mystery.
The dilemma had our friend out of breath, frustrated and contorting himself over couches and between tables as he worked as feverishly as the most dedicated cablevision repairman.
It seems everybody has horror stories when it comes to behemoth companies that have a monopoly or dominates a market.
Sometimes, though, the best horror stories are the ones that can at least entertain you.
A visit to the Coast on the weekend led to a few hours on Sunday at a friend’s house, where chili to eat, beer to drink and a smorgasbord of football to watch was advertised on the message board of our 10-year-old online keeper fantasy football pool.
Those who arrived found nothing to eat, cold coffee to drink and blank TV screens to watch.
Our friend had just purchased NFL Game Ticket, a $160 investment that promised unfettered access to every NFL game, via the tube.
Of course, that promise — like that of chili and beer — was broken right as the first games of the season kicked off at 10 a.m.
Two TVs were set up in the living room, but the NFL Game Ticket matches graced a screen as black as the Raiders’ home jerseys.
No problem, thought our friend.
He would call the cable company and have the problem fixed remotely.
One hour and 40 minutes later, as his beloved Steelers were playing somewhere behind that dark TV screen, his call was connected from the on-hold queue.
Our friend explained the problem, described his setup and asked for help.
He was asked to disconnect a splitter cable over there. He was asked to rejig a cable over there.
Before long, he was stretched out behind the TVs, his cellphone squeezed between his ear and shoulder as he unfastened a cable, beads of sweat forming on his chin.
He was then grunting as he stretched over the couch to reach the Internet connection, in the process perfecting Dan Aykroyd’s Saturday Night Live refrigerator repairman-pants fashion.
He did this. He did that. He tried this. He tried that.
He was told he needed a high-definition television to receive the games.
He was then told he didn’t need high-definition television to receive the games.
It was at about this time we suspected our pal had walked into an outsourcing nightmare.
The cable-company techie was running out of ideas and, apparently, tossing out anything that came to mind.
Our friend was told the rainstorm could be affecting the signal.
“Lightning?” we heard him ask as he peered outside. “I don’t see any lightning.”
The techie was obviously now reaching for something, anything.
“Sun spots?” our friend asked. “But there’s a monsoon outside. El Nino? Really?”
When it was suggested Bengal tigers have been known to chew through cable wires, we kind of suspected the techie with the perfect Surrey accent was actually sitting in an office somewhere in Bangalore, tossing darts at an excuse board and probably watching a riveting game of cricket.
It was now past noon when our friend, having done more physical labour this day than in recent memory, wiped his brow as he stood before the darkened portal to the NFL.
One of us couch-dwellers, stomach grumbling and coffee cup empty, then pointed to a little button in the corner of the cable box: “Hey. Maybe you gotta reset it or something.”
Our friend, who stood before the TVs looking like those Kenyan marathoners after finishing 42 kilometres — albeit with a bit more heft — relayed that bit of information to our techie in Bangalore.
He nodded, reached down and pressed the button.
Voila! The NFL in colour! And we could even catch the final two minutes of the games.
Technology is a wonderful thing.

editor@kamloopsthisweek.com
chrisfoulds.blogspot.com

The smile says it all: The HST will not be killed by the Liberals

2010-05-04T16:28:00.000-07:00

The HST is here to stay and even a successful petition drive by the Fight HST group won’t change that reality.
Such was made crystal clear on Friday, April 30, following Finance Minister Colin Hansen’s latest stop in Kamloops to defend and promote the harmonized sales tax.
Hansen was asked after his speech about the fallout if the FightHST canvassers manage to obtain the required 10 per cent of eligible voters’ signatures in each of the province’s 85 ridings.
If the petition is successful, a committee of the legislature, composed of Liberals and New Democrats, will make a decision: Send the matter to referendum, in which the question is deemed successful if approved by 50 per cent of voters in two-thirds of the 85 ridings, or table a bill.
Here’s the reality, though: The referendum is non-binding. It can mean nothing in the end.
As for tabling a bill to effectively kill the HST?
“That’s the only obligation — to table it,” Hansen said. “It then doesn’t have to be processed beyond that.”
And here is where Hansen clearly laid out the fact any such bill will simply die because his Liberals will not use their majority to make it legislation.
“You can’t, in a democracy, have 10 per cent of the population forcing the government to change tax policy,” he said. “It does have to lead to a process that leads to majority decisions.”
He was then asked whether the FightHST canvassers are engaged in a provincewide exercise in futility.
“Uh (pause), you’d have to ask the HST opponents that.”
Make no mistake. The HST will not
be killed, even if every British Columbian signed a petition, urging to B.C. Liberal government to do just that.
Hansen spent most of his time at the Kamloops Chamber of Commerce’s luncheon at the Coast Canadian Inn decrying what he dubbed the “misinformation” of the FightHST campaign.
And there is that, from erroneous figures related to what the HST will cost consumers to erroneous items in a list of goods and services affected.
(I asked Hansen why his government does not simply publish a comprehensive list of all goods and services and how they are affected, or not, by the tax. His reply: “To come up with a comprehensive list of goods and services would be an extremely long list. Think about how many words are there for goods and services.” He said the provincial government has on its website information on how to determine the tax status of goods and services).
But, without a doubt, what we learned from Hansen’s visit is the campaign against the HST is indeed an exercise in futility.
As is any attempt to separate reality from the political bubble in which the finance minister appears to reside.
During a Q&A following his speech, Hansen had a remarkable answer to a question from the business crowd that truly illuminated how desperate politics can become.
The question: Why is former B.C. finance minister Carol Taylor opposed to the HST?
Hansen’s answer: “She’s not.”
That his blatantly dishonest answer didn’t result in an outcry (or at least some guffaws) speaks to the fact he had a captive, converted crowd on his hand.
To be clear, Taylor is opposed to the HST. You decide. Here’s what Taylor said about the tax last week:
“This particular tax takes the tax off businesses. It takes $1.8-billion off of businesses and puts it on consumers,” Taylor told CTV. “But I think the bigger issue is that [Premier Gordon Campbell] promised that they would not, they would not, do the harmonization of the sales tax. And then, right after the election, decided to do it. There’s a feeling of having been deceived by the government that people elected . . . It’s quite brutal . . . The B.C. Liberals are sure on the losing end of this.”
I asked Hansen why he would tell the audience Taylor was not opposed to the tax when her comments clearly show otherwise.
As usual, he gave an answer that had nothing to do with the question.
So, I tried again.
Finally, he confirmed he had read the transcript of her remarks.
But, he added, Taylor never said specifically she was “opposed” to the tax. And he offered a smile that said he knew that I knew that he knew that this is politics, where the truth is never the truth, but a variety of fiction massaged and manipulated for the masses.

HST is scaring people toward death

2010-04-27T13:57:00.000-07:00

You might say the HST is scaring people to death.
Or, at least, propelling them to book their funerals now and save the increased cost of dying under the new tax as of July 1.
While Finance Minister Colin Hansen prepares for this Friday’s visit to Kamloops to once again defend his government’s duplicitous introduction of the tax; while an assortment of Liberal backbenchers send carbon-copy letters to editors extolling the virtues of the HST; while various business groups heat up fax machines with HST-positive arguments involving tax inputs, the opposite is happening in the real world.
Take the venerable Schoenings Funeral Home in Kamloops.
The business has been running radio ads, reminding listeners the cost of booking a funeral will rise by seven per cent as of July 1.
With a minimum funeral service charge of $2,200 and a standard funeral hitting about $10,000, pre-bookings before July 1 will save consumers a lot of money.
“It’s amazing how many people are taking advantage,” Schoenings owner Paul Wright told me.
But what about the B.C. Liberals’ mantra that the HST will see a drop in the price of goods and services?
Here’s what Hanson has said (and will likely repeat during his visit to Kamloops this week):
“In the future, there is not a single good or service that should not be priced lower.”
Is that so? Will that happen?
“I can’t see it, really,” Wright said. “I’m anticipating my costs going up.”
It’s a bit humorous, really, reading the Liberal MLAs’ pro-HST form letters to editors and contrasting them with the real world.
There’s Kamloops Blazers head coach Guy Charon in another ad, imploring fans to buy their season’s tickets before May 1 so they can save on HST costs.
There’s the Kamloops Minor Hockey Association, gearing up for a significant increase in registration fees due to the HST.
There’s Sun Peaks Resort, reminding people in yet another ad to buy season’s passes now — to save on HST costs.
(In yet another infuriating move, the HST will actually come into effect on May 1 for any services purchased to be used after July 1. This includes symphony season’s passes, flights that depart after July 1 and gym memberships).
Wait! If Hanson and the Liberals are to be believed about the cost of goods and services going down under the HST, why are a plethora of businesses and non-profit groups urging people to buy now or face higher costs under the HST?
Could it be that one side isn’t telling the truth?
Consider that the B.C. Liberals began contacting Ottawa on implementing the HST two days after winning the May 12 election, yet claimed it wasn’t in their plans during the campaign.
Consider Liberal MLAs will point to the Atlantic provinces as an HST success story. But are the Grits telling you implementation of the HST in Newfoundland saw the sales tax decrease to 13 per cent from 19 per cent, or that the sales tax in the three Maritime provinces dropped to 13 per cent from 18.7 per cent?
Meanwhile, here in B.C., the new tax that was hidden from voters until the Liberals secured victory will see sales tax increase in all manner of sectors.
The cost of getting a haircut, the cost of keeping your kids in sports, the cost of dying — all will increase.
Consider that those letters to the editor from B.C. Liberal MLAs boast odd declarations, such as this from Cariboo-Chilcotin MLA Donna Barnett: “The HST resulted in a $5-billion business advantage for Ontario, creating many jobs.”
Since Ontario won’t adopt the HST until July 1, that’s quite the ESP on the HST.
Consider that, while the B.C. Liberals and businesses standing behind the HST point to economist Jack Mintz’s report that the HST in B.C. will result in 113,000 new jobs in the next decade, Mintz produced a report in Ontario two years ago that predicted a loss of 38,000 jobs in that province under an HST.
I know this point has been repeated but, at the risk of apathy striking voters, it needs to be hammered home again and again: The electorate was misled by this government and that is something that should never be forgotten.
The petition campaign to force the B.C. Liberal government to kill the HST or send the matter to a referendum has been an overwhelming success just three weeks into the three-month window afforded such an initiative.
Canvassers have already doubled the 10 per cent of voter signatures needed in Kamloops-North Thompson and are now focusing on Kamloops-South Thompson.
The numbers across B.C. are so surprisingly strong that your B.C. Liberal government will be spending your precious dollars mailing pamphlets to each home, telling you why the HST is a great idea.
Next time you run into your local Liberal MLA, you might want to ask why this mail-out campaign wasn’t done before last year’s election, so voters could have had a chance to factor in the wonderful effects of the HST before they entered the voting booth.
This is all so depressing that we need some levity. So, I offer a tale that has been gaining momentum in cyberspace. Enjoy:
Pinocchio, Snow White and Superman are out for stroll and come across a sign: “Beauty contest for the most beautiful woman in the world.”
“I am entering!” says Snow White.
After 30 minutes, she comes out and they ask her, “Well, how’d ya do?”
“I won first place!” says Snow White.
They continue walking and come across another sign: “Contest for the strongest man in the world.”
“I’m entering,” says Superman.
After 30 minutes, he returns and they ask him, “How did you make out?”
“I won first place, too,” answers Superman. “Did you ever have a doubt?”
They continue walking when they come across a third sign:
“Contest for the greatest liar in the world.”
Pinocchio enters the contest.
After 30 minutes, he returns with tears in his eyes.
“What happened?” they ask.
“Who the hell is Gordon Campbell?” asks Pinocchio.
Voters from both Kamloops ridings wishing to sign the HST petition can go to Caffeine Downtown, at 476 Victoria St., Mondays to through Fridays, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
editor@kamloopsthisweek.com
chrisfoulds.blogspot.com

Anger isn’t about the tax — it’s about being misled by Liberals

2010-04-27T13:52:00.000-07:00

How will Finance Minister Colin Hansen get the vast array of spin doctors in Victoria to put a positive slant on a B.C. Liberal tax resulting in higher costs to play minor sports?

The dreaded harmonized sales tax won’t be a wallet-draining reality for another few months, yet the effect of the new tax is already being felt among minor sports organizations in Kamloops.
While the Kamloops Minor Hockey Association is facing another $38,000 in costs due to the HST, everybody knows who will be paying the tab.
How many families will decide they can no longer afford to enrol their kid in minor hockey once the HST increase is factored into registration fees?
How many more families will hang up the skates when, in 2012, that HST hit is accompanied by a six per cent hike in user fees at the city level?
(To cut through the rhetoric about the HST, consider that the City of Kamloops realizes its impact and has wisely deferred for two years that six per cent increase.)
And where does this extra tax on kids’ sports fit in with the B.C. Liberals’ campaign promise of May 2009 “to lead the way in North America in healthy living and physical fitness”?
Finance Minister Colin Hansen has taken pains to repeat the B.C. Liberal mantra that goods and services will be cheaper in the summer of 2011 than they are this summer because of the HST — a claim that may or may not be true, though you can bet this writer and many others will be keeping meticulous records of purchases from July 1 onward.
A wager for a cup of coffee says the finance minister is wrong.
But how will Hansen get the vast array of spin doctors in Victoria to put a positive slant on a B.C. Liberal tax resulting in higher costs to play minor sports?
When contacted by KTW, Kamloops-North Thompson Liberal MLA Terry Lake was under the assumption Kamloops Minor Hockey would not be affected by the HST because it would be receiving an HST rebate.
Not so.
Charities and qualifying non-profit groups are eligible for the rebate.
Qualifying non-profit groups are those that receive at least 40 per cent in government funding.
The KMHA does not qualify; nor does any other minor sports group of which I am aware, which means the HST will directly result in parents spending more to have their kids play a variety of sports in which organizations must purchase venue time from the city.
This isn’t extra cash to buy equipment or contribute to ice or field costs.
This is extra cash as a direct result of a tax grab — and that is what should boil the blood of an already overtaxed populace.
We deserve to hear a Liberal MLA — any Liberal MLA will do — stand up and tell his or her constituents how such a move is justified.
We deserve to hear from a Liberal MLA — surely there must be at least one courageous enough among the 49 elected 11 months ago — willing to admit the HST was conceived as a lie and was born as a result of a $1.6-billion bribe dangling from Ottawa.
Apart from the claims and counterclaims as to whether the HST will cost us or save us money, the electorate should never forget how this tax was introduced.
On his own Facebook page, Hansen dismissed accusations his party broke a promise, arguing his B.C. Liberals simply answered surveys during last May’s election campaign, answering that it “did not contemplate the adoption of the HST.”
He then goes on to say the party changed its mind after its election victory due to Ontario’s decision to go to an HST system.
Yet Ontario indicated in January of 2009 it was looking at the HST system and confirmed such a move in March of 2009 — two months before the B.C. election.
Hell, my cat knew about Ontario’s decision 13 months ago, and he only subscribes to the weekend Globe and Mail.
That means Hansen and his Liberals are either incompetent or strangers to the truth. Pick your poison.
I realize this has been reported widely, but it bears repeating until it is lodged in our heads as instantly retrievable data, considering Hansen seems to have a new HST-implementation excuse each time he passes through a town to speak at a business meeting.
There is a reason the campaign to kill the HST has resonated so strongly with voters.
It is not simply because it’s a new tax. It goes beyond that.
It infuriates voters because they know they were not told the truth, they know the HST was not something the B.C. Liberals suddenly decided on after the election. They know not one sector of the public was consulted.
They know they were played like a fiddle.
And Lake and Hansen and Kevin Krueger and Gordon Campbell and every one of the remaining 45 B.C. Liberal MLAs know we know it, yet insist on carrying on such a transparent facade.
And that is what is most galling.
editor@kamloopsthisweek.com
chrisfoulds.blogspot.com

This is their 1972, their 1987

2010-03-02T12:25:00.001-08:00

It was, quite possibly, the quickest dressing-room undressing in the history of sport.
The time was 11:50 a.m. and the vaunted initiation D Kamloops Nailers (a nickname in honour of generous sponsor Western Roofing) had just skated off the ice in Winfield, having gone undefeated in four games at the big tourney.
And while the final game, a 2-2 tie, was a classic (the host Winfield Bruins took a shot and the puck crossed the goal line just as the final buzzer sounded; maybe a second or two after the final buzzer sounded, according to some Kamloops observers), there was a bigger game to get to.
Canada was about to face off against the United States for the gold medal at noon.
That gave moms and dads about 10 minutes to help their kids rip off the hockey equipment, help the kids get dressed, help the kids grab the myriad bags, sticks, trophies and water bottles and rush everything to the vehicles.
From there, it was a matter of finding the Turtle Bay Bar and Restaurant to catch the biggest game since 2002 in Salt Lake City.
That about 30 parents and their hockey-crazed kids managed to get all that done in a span of 10 minutes is a testament to puck love — and a rather astute decision by a savvy parent or two to call ahead and reserve space for the big game.
Much has been written about the gold-medal game and what it means to Canada.
It is fascinating to read the interpretations from south of the border and compare them to the prose from newspapers in the land of the gold.
Perhaps the Globe and Mail had the best explanation and the national newspaper used nary a word to convey it.
Monday’s paper was published with what we in the industry call a wrap.
The paper was literally wrapped in a huge wide-angle photo taken a second or two after Sidney Crosby beat Ryan Miller in overtime and became his generation’s Paul Henderson and Mario Lemieux.
The photo is stunning. It shows Crosby’s jubilation, Miller’s dejection and the shock of the loss on the faces of the U.S. players.
It also shows a sea of red as the crowd in GM Place rose as one, virtually every person raising both arms in that famous and instinctive post-goal pose that is hockey.
Take the wrap and spread it out and one can spend a lot of time poring over every aspect of the moment — the screaming fan, sans shirt, in the second row, the fan jumping up in the top row, the kid in the Canada cape levitating off the stairs, the fan next to the glass busting out a gold-medal yelp.
There are so many details captured in that one click of the shutter, but they blend into a red and white montage of two arms in the air.
That is the image that will stay with me and, I would think, most of the 22 million Canadians who were watching Crosby score the overtime winner.
Sitting at the back of the room, I saw the backs of the heads of nine boys, sitting like ducks in a row, balancing their lunches on their laps with their necks upturned as they watched Canada battle the U.S.
Seven minutes and forty seconds into overtime, I saw eighteen little arms shoot up at 90-degree angles simultaneously.
They now have their 1972.
They now have their 1987.
I would bet the dreams of many of those eight-year-old boys that night included them in the starring role of a gold-medal game, carrying Canada to glory.
They will forever remember exactly where they were and what they were doing on Sunday, Feb. 28, 2010 when the legendary Sidney Crosby scored the goal of their generation.
And, yes, their kids might tire of hearing their dads describe the scene at Turtle Bay back in the old days.
Until they experience their 2010, of course, and the national obsession continues its remarkable cycle that defines a country.

A father's pride rises as the tears fall with the Leafs

2010-02-26T11:26:00.001-08:00

The proudest moment of any dad is when their children arrive in this world. The feeling upon laying eyes on that little being is beyond description and truly life-changing.
I have just experienced the second-proudest moment of any Canadian dad — for the first time, my boy cried his eyes out after his favourite hockey team blew a big lead and lost.
My own eyes nearly welled up with pride as he sat up on the couch and looked at me — fat, juicy, perfect cartoon-like teardrops falling from his cheeks like rain from above on a winter’s night in Vancouver.
All I could do was hug him to my chest, silently welcome him to the fraternity and try to explain why the team he loves can make him feel like the world has ended.
My son, you see, is a Toronto Maple Leafs fan, and I explained his particular allegiance will likely mean more tears than cheers.
(My first bout of hockey bawling came on April 12, 1980. I was 11 and the Buffalo Sabres had just eliminated the Canucks in the preliminary round).
He’s only eight, but my boy knows all about the Maple Laughs, as some call them. He realizes they last won the Cup the year before I was born.
He understands he is in Canuck country here in Kamloops.
But still he wears the crisp, white and blue (tear-streaked) Maple Leafs jersey when the squad hits the TV screen.
Still he sleeps in his flannel white and blue Maple Leaf pyjamas.
Still the Maple Leaf logo (painted by his mom) stares down from the bedroom wall.
And, yes, still the flashing GO LEAFS GO lamp is plugged in and flashing on his dresser.
It wasn’t always so.
When kids are younger, they attach themselves to logos.
When he was four, my son was a Calgary Flames logo fan. Then he gravitated toward the Oilers patch. The Canadiens’ ‘CH’ intrigued him as he turned five, while his sixth birthday saw him adopt the ferocious San Jose Shark as it chomped on a hockey stick.
Hence the impressive roster of ever-shrinking NHL jerseys in his closet.
However, in the spring of 2008, about two months before his seventh birthday, I laid down the hockey law:
On June 5, you will turn seven, I told my son. You are becoming a big boy. You have played Peter Puck hockey and are about to join minor hockey.
It’s time to pick a team for life.
He agreed and set about making the most important choice a boy will make.
He did his research. He started with the logos. He checked the history of the teams online. He pulled out his atlas and globe and saw where each city was located in North America.
He chewed it over. He slept on it.
About a week before his seventh birthday, he had it narrowed down to three teams.
On June 5, 2008, my son woke up and declared his allegiance to the Toronto Maple Leafs.
Why? The logo had a lot to do with it, I suspect. But he really liked their goalie, Vesa Toskala. He also liked how Alexander Steen played. And he liked that the Leafs are Canadian.
I asked him if he was certain, reminding my boy there was no turning back, no option to jump on the Canucks’ bandwagon when the Leafs fall, as they tend to do on an annual basis. He was certain.
And so his love affair with the Maple Leafs began, as it did with hockey.
We don’t think about it often, but the game has given fans our own language, phrases that mean nothing unless you are versed in the lexicon of steel on ice.
When I speak with my son and mention a player gunning for a “Darryl Sittler night,” we both know we are referring to that magical game of Feb. 7, 1976. When my son tells me a player got a “Gordie Howe hat trick,” we both know what was accomplished.
When I refer to the “Original Six,” and he mentions the “Cup,” (always cap C), there is no need to elaborate.
“Butterfly” has nothing to do with a winged insect and “numba fowa” will always be “Bobby Owa!” — from generation to generation.
And, when your team inexplicably blows a 3-0 lead at home on Hockey Night In Canada and loses 5-3, we all know tears must be shed.
It’s a Canadian rite of passage.

Not quite an environmental armageddon

2010-02-23T15:37:00.000-08:00

It is understandable opposition will arise when a company such as the Aboriginal Cogeneration Corporation proposes to use gasification technology in Kamloops to rid the world of creosote-treated railway ties.
Creosote and incineration — even when done in a manner the experts have deemed as safe — are bound to spook some people.
Objecting to the ACC proposal is democracy in action and, in a way, it is encouraging to see so many people tuned into their community.
However, the nasty byproduct of such activism is the blatant disinformation being peddled in the effort to stop the Winnipeg-based company from starting the gasification process on its Mission Flats Road property.
Since the Ministry of Environment issued a permit for the plant to operate, we have been subjected to mass hysteria, with ludicrous claims of a pending environmental Armageddon giving new meaning to hyperbole and exaggeration. This has been delivered via letters and phone calls, via faxes from opposition groups and through a Facebook group attempting to gather signatures for an online petition.
Here are some claims echoing through the Thompson Valley that smell far worse than anything that might be expelled from the ACC gasification facility:
• Other communities have rejected ACC’s plans, so why should Kamloops be saddled with the venture?
The only other community remotely involved, as far as I know, was Ashcroft, and Mayor Andy Anderson told me the issue never reached council level as the private landowner and the ACC could not reach an agreement for lease of land in 2007.
• The Ministry of Environment (MOE) has ensured there will be no toxins or emissions escaping from the plant based on no hard scientific data.
Nowhere in permit 103943 does the MOE claim “there will be no toxins or emissions escaping.”
Of course there will be emissions, but they will be miniscule — equal annual to a single wood-burning stove — and monitored with extreme scrutiny. The list of compounds being sampled is comprehensive and unprecedented in Kamloops.
Add to that a web-based camera to allow MOE officials to view visible haze and monthly reports and it is difficult to understand how ministry officials can be criticized.
• Kamloops should have a say in what goes on in our city, not a company from Manitoba and not a government that doesn’t live here.
Actually, Kamloops does have a say in zoning regulations and the property on Mission Flats Road is properly zoned. And the ministry staff approving this project do live right here in Kamloops. Would the MOE’s Jason Bourgeois sign off on a project if he felt its operation would endanger the lives of his family? Would anyone?
• There is no other facility like this anywhere in the world.
Not quite true. There are plenty of similar gasification projects throughout the world. The proposed facility in Kamloops would feature the most modern technology to date.
Then there are various tenuous links being used in the battle.
The Facebook site criticizes Environment Minister Barry Penner for an alleged double-standard as Penner opposed the proposed Sumas Energy 2 power plant about a decade ago.
That was a 660-megawatt power plant that would have supplied power to a half-million homes. The Kamloops proposal is a two-megawatt biomass facility. The comparison is ludicrous.
There is the attempt to compare the ACC proposal to an environmental nightmare in Louisiana.
The Bayou Bonfouca site manufactured creosote and stored untold thousands of gallons of the stuff for nearly a century.
Again, the comparison is ludicrous.
There are those who lament Kamloops’ reputation will suffer because of the facility, an ironic sentiment considering the protests are precisely what has informed outsiders of the project.
I trust the MOE data. I trust the monitoring plan. I trust this proposal is superior than letting railway ties pile up from coast to coast, with the possibility of creosote leaching here and there and everywhere.
Others will disagree, even after digesting the same research.
But, can we dispense with the hysterical misinformation and scare tactics and focus on the facts at hand?
editor@kamloopsthisweek.com

Ridley Bent is telling some damn fine tales

2010-02-02T21:34:00.000-08:00

By Christopher Foulds
He grew up listening to urban music and wanting to become a rapper while chasing his dreams of skiing for a living.
But it was the crooning of two generations of country stars that led to a cowboy hat on the head that now turns out some of the best lyrics in music today.
“It was Brad Paisley and George Jones on a trip to Tofino that really got me into country,” Ridley Bent recounted minutes before he took to the stage at this year’s Merritt Mountain Music Festival.
Bent’s music is weighted heavily on lyrics and the man who now calls Winnipeg home pens songs that tell tales — tall, sad, funny, irreverent, profound.
He cites Lyle Lovett as a fellow singer with whom he would like to share a stage — and it makes sense, considering both share a talent for telling stories that are linked to damn fine music.
Through his songwriting and his stage presence, Bent is equal parts Hank Williams Sr., Lovett, George Jones and every other classic country storyteller.
Compared to the generic, mass-produced schlock from Nashville that plagues country-music radio airwaves today, Bent’s creations evoke a style that is legendary and lasts.
Go ahead. Drop a few bucks and download Buckle and Boots (‘That rough-stock truck stop has still got my pictures up, so that’s where I eat my beans’).
Or Nine Inch Nails (‘I got her tool collection, she got my working man’s blues, she got my Tom T. Hall, I got her Husker Du’).
Or Suicidewinder (‘I said I’m Johnny Cash when I’m drinking, I’m the Clash when I’m thinking . . .”).
Now, compare this richness with the vanilla stylings of Rascal Flatts, an abomination and aberration — granted, a very popular aberration — on the country-music scene, a band that is to country what Christopher Cross was to pop in the early 1980s.
Lots of sales, lots of awards, lots of money — and a whole lotta grimacing when looking back.
While Bent may never reach the stratospheric heights of popularity currently occupied by the wafer-thin offerings of many alleged country acts, he has already surpassed them in the realm of importance.
How he does what he does is a question posed to every artist.
How does Bent come up with such spectacular songs, again and again, be it on his latest album, Buckles and Boots, or his debut creation, Blam?
“Sometimes a line in a book becomes a song,” he said.
“Sometimes there’s a chord in the guitar that makes you go, ‘Ooh, that sounds good.’
“Sometimes you just want to tell a story.”
Some of those stories are somewhat autobiographical.
Some aren’t.
“I just imagined myself as a rodeo star,” he said of the eponymous track from Buckles and Boots.
“I’ve never even ridden a bull. I’m past that stuff.”
With a new album in the works — most of the songs are done, including Yukon Belle, which he performed in Merritt — the popularity of Bent is growing.
He played Merritt on opening night (Thursday), yet had to be in Evansburg, Alta. the next day and in Winnipeg the day after that.
As for his bad luck in Kamloops last month (Bent was to headline the June 17 Country 103 show in McDonald Park, a concert that was cancelled due to a lightning storm), he is hoping to take his tales to the Tournament Capital soon — and mentioned he wouldn’t mind sharing those stories at a venue like Cactus Jack’s Saloon.
Here’s hoping management of the country bar are reading this.
For more on Bent, go online to ridleybent.ca.

Having a ball with a baker's dozen of pure energy

2009-06-26T21:44:00.001-07:00

When Boy No. 7 decided to see where the bowling balls came from — by pushing one back down the automated chute and freezing two lanes — we thought the zaniness had reached its apex.
When Boy No. 3 wanted to see how far Boy No. 4’s hat could fly down the lane — and followed the chapeau down the freshly waxed corridor — we thought we’d get some kind of reprimand.
And when the last of 13 boys, all Grade 2 balls of squealing energy, finally traded rented bowling shoes for beloved scuffed sneakers and wandered into the sunlight with their parents, we realized just how exhausting the past two hours had been.
It was his eighth birthday and, at his age, our son has now lived exactly half his life in Kamloops.
So, to mark the occasion, he chose an old favourite — Falcon Lanes in Valleyview — to celebrate the fact his age now matches the luckiest number in most of Asia.
As with most previous birthdays, plenty of invitations was sent out — 12 in all, each one placed in his little hands as he set off to school one sunny morning.
But we figured we’d be lucky to receive six or seven confirmations.
There is our son’s legendary forgetfulness — our scatterbrained offspring once left the living room to take a much-needed pee and, somewhere in those 12 steps between couch and commode, managed to forget to hit the bathroom in favour of building a complex Lego motorcycle for the next hour.
And there is the everyday amnesia of Grade 2 boys, in whose backpacks can be found enough dated papers to create an impressive archive.
(If you have one of these creatures, go now and poke around his backpack. Yes, that is indeed the kindergarten poem he was supposed to show you two years ago. And, no, I don’t think that fuzzy round thing is still edible.)
Besides which, our boy’s birthday party landed smack in the middle of the annual mini-soccer tourney, a three-day extravaganza that saw us driving brother and sister to a mind-boggling number of games, some at the exact time and at inexact locations.
Surely our 1 p.m. birthday party would mean far fewer than a full roster of birthday invitees.
Nope.
Much to our son’s delight, all 12 boys appeared — and this dirty baker’s dozen made Lee Marvin and his crew look squeaky clean in comparison.
Oh, they are wonderful kids, each and every one.
But, as I quipped to a mom who mercifully picked up her son five minutes earlier than planned, the War On Terror would have easily been won had Bush, Blair and company managed to lock bin Laden and his brood in a roomful of eight-year-old boys
Al-Qaeda’s official flag would now be white — and waving.
As we watched the 13 boys interact, it became a fascinating study of alpha males and sensitive souls, quiet leaders and eager followers, class clowns and cut-throat competitors.
Add sugar-laden drinks, pizza and birthday cupcakes and it became a live-action sitcom of 13 monkeys fighting over birthday presents, stealing sips from each other’s slushees, daring each another to go deeper into the girls’ washroom and one-upping one another with the latest karate/judo/taekwondo move gleaned at martial-arts class that week.
And every second at maximum volume.
It is innocence embraced and energy as pure as anything delivered by nature.
Frenzied would be the description as it happened; inspiring would be the descriptor after the fact.
Dare we do it again when our boy turns nine?
Absolutely — but are there any bowling alleys in Afghanistan?

When they look in the mirror, they should see a Mountie

2009-06-26T21:42:00.003-07:00

The caller was agitated, irritated, breathing hard and swearing up a storm. He was at the end of his rope and wanted me to know about it.
The origin of his angst was the Abbotsford Police Department and its adopt-a-criminal program of the mid- and late-1990s.
He was one of the repeat criminals cops in the Fraser Valley city had targeted — and he had had enough.
Between venomous vitriol directed at specific Abbotsford Police officers, and at yours truly for reporting on their decision to babysit the city’s criminal irritants, the man who could not go straight told me his life in the Bible Belt was untenable.
“I’m getting out of here and moving to Alberta,” he said between spastic verbal jerks of profanity.
When I relayed his consternation to a detective I knew, the cop was all smiles, for the adopt-a-criminal program’s aim was simple: Get the street-level ne’er-do-well to go straight or pressure him to seek the city limits and carry on to a new hometown.
In this case, my friend on the phone said he was packing his stuff, grabbing his girlfriend and leaving the city he called a “hellhole.”
As reporter Tim Petruk details in today’s cover story, a similar program in Kamloops has resulted in a dramatic reduction in reported crime.
In fact, Darryl Plecas, a renown criminologist at the University of the Fraser Valley, raves about what Kamloops cops have done.
And what the local Mounties have done is give notice to that irritating minority that causes the majority of problems for the rest of us who choose to go about our day-to-day lives actually working for a living.
Insp. Yves Lacasse, a cop’s cop who won’t bullshit a reporter — handing out compliments and criticism with equal vigour — is bang on when he notes the aggressively proactive approach taken by city cops is not harassment.
It is, he said, about protecting the community.
Lacasse is right.
Too often the public feels the judiciary system at the court level is too lenient on criminals.
At least Kamloops Mounties are active, not passive, in breathing down the necks of repeat offenders, staying so close the street-level crook will either change his ways or pack his bags.
That the prolific-offender program has worked so successfully in this era of civil rights advocacy makes it all the more impressive.
We want Mounties knocking on doors of career criminals at three in the morning.
We want Mounties paying special attention to that insanely expensive Escalade cruising through the neighbourhood during the witching hour.
We want Mounties rubbing our shoulders at the nightclubs as they do a gang sweep.
We want this so Kamloops doesn’t disintegrate into the cesspool of crime that has swallowed my former hometown of Abbotsford and many adjacent Lower Mainland communities.
The murders of two Kamloops men this past week are likely gang-related, despite what the official word says.
We need Mounties to keep pressing criminals — petty, street-level urchins and gangsters alike — like a vice.
Of course, this has to be done within the parameters the law.
Like anybody, police officers can screw up — they did when Tasering Robert Dziekanski at Vancouver International Airport and something is still not right about the official story surrounding the shooting death of Ian Bush in the Houston RCMP detachment.
But, if it’s your house getting burglarized for the umpteenth time, if it’s your daughter getting beaten down by the river, if it’s your son they’re digging from the earth, you’ll know why this full-court police press is crucial to maintaining some sense of sanity in a world that appears every day to get just a little bit crazier.

False Grit

2009-06-26T21:42:00.001-07:00

Fewer and fewer voters are bothering to trek to the polls, as recent elections have shown.
Why? Many theories abound, but perhaps the most salient reason is that voters are sick and tired of the deplorable actions of such candidates as Mary McNeil, the B.C. Liberal flag-bearer in Vancouver-False Creek, who proved that gutter politics has no measurable depth.
It was McNeil and her campaign that led to the resignation of her NDP opponent, a young man named Ray Lam, for having the temerity to act as young men act.
In case you missed the latest example of despicable, dirty political gamesmanship, here’s a primer:
Lam is in his early 20s. He is gay and serves on many gay-rights boards.
On his private Facebook page, Lam had posted photos, two of which were taken four years ago, when he was in his late teens.
One photo shows Lam joking with a woman, on whose breast his hand rests. The woman is not offended.
She is taking part in the revelry and smiling. Another photo shows Lam, wearing a shirt and underwear, standing next to a man and behind a woman who is seated. The woman is grabbing a piece of Lam’s underwear and all are goofing off for the camera.
That’s it. Teenage hijinks and harmless private fun that can in no way be described as offensive or demeaning.
Somehow, these private Facebook photos fell into the hands of the Liberal camp, and McNeil jumped on them in a pathetic attempt to score cheap political points.
“Voters expect and deserve a high standard from their elected officials,” McNeil huffed in a release. “The photos clearly do not meet that standard. Mr. Lam should explain what kind of message he is trying to send. These photos are offensive and demeaning.
“This is someone who is running to represent the people of Vancouver-False Creek in Victoria, at a time when we have really critical issues, like crime and the economy. You need to show you have good judgment.”
She demanded an apology from Lam, who instead stepped down, to be replaced by another NDP candidate.
But it is McNeil who owes Lam and all voters an apology. It is McNeil who should be walking the political plank for engaging in such crass political opportunism.
The photos are “offensive and demeaning”? Lam needs to show “good judgment”?
Is she serious?
If four-year-old pics of a teenaged Lam having fun with friends are “offensive and demeaning,” how would McNeil describe photos of her party leader, Premier Gordon Campbell, grinning vacantly at the camera in a mugshot following his 2003 arrest for driving drunk in Hawaii?
Lam needs to show “good judgment”?
Which of the following demonstrates worse judgment — posting private photos on your private Facebook page showing you are like any other teenager or driving drunk?
Last I checked, only one of those two options could kill an innocent bystander.
Before I get castigated for revisiting Campbell’s six-year-old DUI guilty pleas, it is relevant since Campbell himself foolishly waded into this non-controversy by making asinine holier-than-thou comments about Lam’s pics.
“They were totally inappropriate pictures and the NDP has some questions to answer for,” said the Liberal leader, apparently unaware of the old pot-kettle-black analogy.
Bottom line is the photos, offensive or not, were on Lam’s private Facebook page, viewable to only those who were invited to view them.
Obviously, a Lam Facebook friend gained access and passed the pics to the Grits.
This is akin to a Liberal campaigner stealing a semi-risque photograph from Lam’s photo album at home and giving it to McNeil to use as cheap ammunition in the race for MLA.
Yes, this sorry, sordid affair exposes the character of a candidate, one whose judgment should be called into question.
And that candidate is not Ray Lam.

She doesn't McLeod the issues

2009-06-26T21:40:00.000-07:00

Cathy McLeod is not a superhero MP.
She is not the political messiah. She is not a martyr to the cause of better governance.
The Kamloops-Thompson-Cariboo Conservative MP is simply an honest woman, a regular Josephine who happens to have that rarest quality among politicians — when asked a question by a reporter, she offers up an answer devoid of political bafflegab and spoon-fed sentences from party elders.
When Kamloops This Week reporter Jeremy Deutsch asked McLeod what she thought of her party’s current ads that harshly criticize Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff, she responded.
And, like many a Canadian with common sense and an aversion to predictable attack ads that add up to empty political calories, McLeod said she isn’t a fan of such creations.
I decided to play the story on the front page because it is a rare day indeed that a backbench member of Parliament suggests her own party’s advertising campaign against an opponent isn’t her cup of tea.
Had McLeod responded to Deutsch’s question the way we have become accustomed to in these parts — McLeod’s predecessor, Betty Hinton, would have waxed eloquent on the production quality of the marvellous television moments, regardless of their crassness — the story would have likely been placed inside the newspaper.
And I am obviously not alone in feeling McLeod’s comments — as sensible and honest and benign as they were — would be considered fairly significant news in the political world.
No sooner had the story broken in KTW and on our website than it was being repeated across the country — in the Toronto Star, in Maritimes newspapers, in various blogs.
Even the Liberal Party of Canada jumped in, quoting the KTW story in a press release it sent out on Wednesday.
(Of course, the federal Grits, staying true to the dominant Central Canada view of Canada, mixed up our riding with a large animal, alleging McLeod is MP for Kamloops-Thompson-Caribou).
But this attention to mild and honest comments uttered by a well-respected rookie MP speaks to the sad state of politics in Canada.
That honesty spoken with taste and thought is seen as revolutionary, as avant-garde, as outside the norm, is depressing.
There are those out there, such as Michael Crawford, the local candidate in last fall’s federal election, who, while lauding McLeod’s courage to speak out, nevertheless believe she will soon be the target of a miffed Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
Reporters who cover Parliament Hill have long told about Harper’s micromanaging tendencies, so it would not be a surprise to learn of a rap on McLeod’s wrist, courtesy of the Prime Minister’s Office.
Then again, Harper isn’t exactly consistent when dealing with MPs who shy away from being sickening sycophants.
Nova Scotia MP Bill Casey voted against his party’s budget — due to what he perceived as inequities in how it treated his home province in the matter of oil revenues — and was promptly booted from caucus.
Casey became an Independent folk hero.
Ontario MP Garth Turner was booted for blogging party details and for daring to criticize certain aspects of the Conservative party.
But Saskatchewan MP Tom Lukiwski was spared in 2008 after a 17-year-old video surfaced, showing him denigrating homosexuals.
Interestingly enough, Lukiwski secured the Conservative nomination (and subsequent MP’s seat) only because his predecessor, Larry Spencer, was tossed for opining homosexuality should be outlawed.
Perhaps stating one is not a fan of one’s party’s attack ads is more serious a crime as blogging about what happened in a committee meeting.
Perhaps it is less of an offence than casting criticism on the gay lifestyle.
In the new Conservative Party of Canada, it’s hard to read the rules when they seem to be forever shifting.

Sudden-death comes to NHL — and to our ballot boxes

2009-06-26T21:39:00.001-07:00

The provincial election campaign officially began Tuesday, though it has, in reality, been underway for some time. The proof is in the flurry of re-announcements of previous funding announcements.
The National Hockey League playoffs officially begin on Wednesday, though they have, in reality, been underway for the past few weeks for players wearing sweaters in Anaheim, St. Louis, Nashville, Montreal, Manhattan, Miami and Buffalo.
Interestingly enough, there are many similarities between the quest for Lord Stanley’s Cup and the push for political power:
Home-ice advantage: In the NHL, players in the Eastern and Western conferences sacrifice every ounce of sweat, every drop of blood and every gasp of breath as they fight to finish in the top four positions to ensure an extra game at home.
In the election, home-ice advantage means the NDP could run a rutabaga in Vancouver-Mount Pleasant or Nelson and win, while the Liberals could stick a campaign button on a potato in Abbotsford and West Vancouver and automatically gain a pair of seats.
Rule changes:
These 2009 playoffs are not your father’s post-season.
There is no red line, there are two referees (which is one too many) and the Cup journey will stretch into June.
And talk of further changes continue: Bigger nets?
New fighting regulations?
In the election, there are strange WHA-type forces promoting a change in how we elect our MLAs, via something called STV.
It is about as confusing as calculating the NHL’s salary-cap rules and proponents point to the fact such notable countries as Ireland and Malta use STV — which is sort of like holding up the New York Islanders and Phoenix Coyotes as shining examples in a persuasive argument to improve the NHL.
Third man in:
In the NHL, when two players square off for a consensual fight, a third man interfering in the disagreement is automatically ejected.
In the election, we call that third man the B.C. Teachers’ Federation, which, while gang-tackling the Liberals as they tangle with the New Democrats, continues to profess it is apolitical — even as millions of dollars in donations to the NDP spill from BCTF pockets in its skirmish with the Grits.
Interference:
In the NHL, a player is penalized for interfering with another player who does not have the puck. In the election, the Liberal party was partially penalized for depriving British Columbians of the right to voice their opinion via advertising.
In other words, voters hadn’t even left for the arena before being crosschecked on their doorstep by an anti-democratic Liberal goon.
We say partially penalized because the court ruling striking down the Draconian law came long after it was already in effect during the pre-campaign period.
In essence, the Liberals served about 30 seconds of the two-minute penalty.
n Beware the bulletin board: In the NHL playoffs, players are very careful not to say anything inflammatory about the opposing team, lest the provocative quotes land on the enemy’s dressing-room bulletin board, thereby providing said opponent an emotional edge.
In the election, identical discretion is employed. Unless the politician’s name is Kevin Krueger.
Or Harry Lali.
Ah, spring is here and we will live and die, cheer and cry as our team disappoints and thrills, teases and kills in its epic struggle against adversity to hoist a trophy that has become as fabled as the finest fairy tale,
Oh, and there will also be 85 politicians sent to Victoria, a group that, soon enough, will have voters wishing for the political equivalent of the NHL lockout of 2004-2005.

‘Hey, Mats! Are you happier when you win or when you lose?’

2009-05-14T23:36:00.000-07:00

Apparently, local Liberal candidates Kevin Krueger and Terry Lake do not like some of the questions being tossed at them by some election-campaign forum organizers.
And who can blame them?
Loaded anti-Liberal attacks posed by NDP-affiliated groups can get exhausting during a tough campaign.
But none of those questions can possibly be as tiring as the inanity that masquerades as sports journalism during the hockey season.
Before the puck drops, between periods and after the final buzzer, NHL players and coaches are buttonholed by TV types and subjected to what has to be the most insipid line of interviewing known to mankind.
I have watched these interviews with extra attention since the all-star break.
Save for Hockey Night In Canada’s Elliot Friedman, who is beyond a doubt the premier hockey interviewer on TV (anybody who watched him question Boston’s Michael Ryder and Montreal’s Saku Koivu following Game 3 of that series in Montreal will know what I mean.), the whole lot of the men and women with microphones in NHL arenas possess about as much depth as the New York Islanders’ offence.
Athletes are often castigated for uttering cliché after cliché, but, as the immortal Casey Printers once noted, it is hard to make chicken salad when you are handed chicken- - - -.
Consider just some of these “questions”:
* A guest host on CKNW’s Sports Talk show, simulcast nightly on Radio NL here in Kamloops, has Vancouver Canuck Mats Sundin as a guest seven days ago tonight as the Canucks await their second-round opponent.
“It must feel good to be back in the post-season,” is the question/statement tossed at Sundin, who missed out on the playoffs during his final few years in Toronto.
Indeed, it must feel good, though was it a question or a statement? And are we anticipating the slim possibility the big Swede will confess it actually does not feel good to be playing in the post-season?
* Here’s Joey Kenward, radio play-by-play man for the Western Hockey League’s Vancouver Giants, filling in for John Shorthouse during a March 11 Canucks-Ducks game in Anaheim.
Vancouver clawed its way back from two one-goal deficits, only to lose in overtime. At the time, the Canucks were in a fierce fight for a playoff spot.
Kenward spoke to Vancouver goalie Roberto Luongo following the loss.
“Tough pill to swallow for the team after battling back, only to lose like that in overtime?”
Is there a bizarro world in which losing a game in overtime after fighting back all game is a good thing?
* A week later, on March 18, Vancouver defeated Dallas at home to run the club’s home winning streak to 10 games.
That prompted these two gems — posed to Ryan Kesler — in a media scrum following the game.
“Ten in a row at home. Does it matter?” and “How important is the two points at stake against the Blues two points from now?”
If only Kesler had dismissed winning a lot of games as being overrated. If only Kesler had opined that gaining points are not that important when fighting for a playoff spot.
After that same game, another brilliant question posed by Sportsnet’s Dan Murphy to Canuck coach Alain Vigneault: “Five on three — that was a big kill for you.”
Aside from offering the only answer in the universe that exists in response such a specious statement — “yes” — Vigneault went on to say Luongo “had to make a big save and he made it.”
I apologize if your head hurts right now. But, one more.
* Sundin was injured in the St. Louis series and missed the final two games, which elicited this insight from an intrepid reporter: “We all know you’re playing for the Cup. How disappointing is it [to be injured]?”
And we wonder why athletes talk about giving 110 per cent, state “it is what it is,” make such sage observations as the team that scores more will win and muse about taking it one game at a time?
Some day we will see a plethora of Elliote Freidmans. God willing. If we take it one telecast at a time.

Let 'em bleed — and other ways to deal with gangsters

2009-03-21T22:26:00.000-07:00

In October 1970, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau proclaimed the War Measures Act in response to terrorist activities of the Front de Libération du Québec (FLQ), a group committed to the independence of Quebec through bombings, the kidnapping of two politicians and the murder of one — Pierre Laporte, Quebec’s minister of labour and immigration.
Trudeau saw a situation out of control and took control, suspending civil liberties to ferret out and arrest terrorists within the FLQ.
If Trudeau could do it then, Prime Minister Stephen Harper can do it now — let’s have the enactment of the War Measures Act to deal with the gangsters of B.C. and beyond.
Here’s what should happen, if you can stay focused amid the predictable din sure to follow from the usual cadre of police-bashing civil libertarians more concerned with the rights of killers and their supporters than the lives of innocents:
* When there is a shooting, the police will continue to respond. If, however, those injured are known gangsters, they forfeit medical attention.
A gangster gets ambushed outside his home? Tough break, but we have honest, working folk waiting for hours in the ER department. Why should they be inconvenienced and shoved aside so doctors can patch up bullet wounds on the dregs of society?
* Shooting victims not initially known as gangsters but whose association with gangsters led to their being shot will be compelled to tell the cops what happened.
Staying mum or being coy means they foot the medical bill.
* Gangsters driving vehicles worth more than the GDP of a Central American nation and loaded with more armour than a knight in shining will be hauled out forthwith and handed a bus pass.
Said vehicles will be donated to the Canadian Armed Forces for use in their work in Kandahar, Afghanistan.
* While police forces such as the department in Abbotsford have decided to tail gangsters 24 hours a day, they are doing so not for the protection of these cretins, but for the protection of innocent people who might catch a bullet fired at the gangster by another gangster.
Under the War Measures Act, gangsters being tailed will pay 100 per cent of the costs of the surveillance — including all electricity bills associated with closed-circuit cameras trained on their homes.
* All gangsters and associates of gangsters will be subject to daily reviews of their income by the civil servants at the Canada Revenue Agency. In other words, employment receipts will be produced on demand to prove that tripped-out Escalade and thousand-dollar tab at the high-end steakhouse were earned legally.
When, inevitably, receipts cannot be produced, said gangster will be steered toward the nearest McDonald’s and reminded about the aforementioned bus pass.
* Canada Revenue Agency officials will also conduct detailed income-tax reviews of all known gangsters. If done properly and aggressively, the results can be enlightening.
Remember, Al Capone went to the clink on tax-evasion charges, not because he was convicted of murder.
* If the police search a known gangster’s home and find enough weapons and drugs to finance a division of child soldiers in Liberia, conscience-barren defence lawyers will no longer be allowed to argue the technicalities of a search warrant in a bid to have their smirking clients walk free.
In other words — those guns and all that coke mean jail time, tough guy, regardless of why or how the cops found the stash in your crib.
* When known gangsters are arrested and jailed, they will not be housed with members of their same gang.
Instead, gangsters will be assigned cellblocks according to the residency of rival gang members.
With any luck, they will sort out their differences permanently and we can save some coin on further justice-system measures.

When gang killing are nothing more than fender-benders

2009-03-17T14:36:00.000-07:00

On a routine day back near the turn of the century, I awoke as usual, bade farewell to the wife and little kiddies and jumped into the car.
As I headed to work on my usual route, I came across a most unusual scene exactly one kilometre from my home.
There, at the bottom of busy Townline Road hill in Abbotsford, was a gas station squatting behind yellow police tape.
Perched over the sidewalk was a mangled telephone booth.
And, directly across from that twisted mess of glass and metal sat an impressive-looking car, pressed up hard against a telephone booth.
The lifeless body of the kid inside had already been pulled out and taken away. He was 19 or 20, barely out of high school.
At the time, the murder wasn’t common, but neither was it surprising.
Increased prohibition only leads to increased violence — always has and always will.
On that corner in the Fraser Valley, a young man was shot to death at three in the morning while sitting in his car, which was parked next to the gas station.
To the shock of nobody, it turned out drugs were involved in the murder.
He was selling or buying. Maybe he ripped off someone or was being ripped off.
It doesn’t really matter.
He was dead and his parents would ache with a pain unknown to most. His friends would gather at the corner and pile flowers atop flowers.
Our stories on the murder and investigation would grow shorter and shorter, until they stopped altogether.
The tale would become as cold as his body as we chased another shooting — and another, and another.
And, as those young bodies piled up year after year, news of another young man being murdered was met with a sigh rather than shock.
There was a time in the early 1990s that bank robberies were the big news in Abbotsford. If a robber hit the Royal Bank, it was front-page news.
Then these robberies became more common, quick hold-ups done by junkies desperate for some cash to feed their addiction.
Soon enough, if a robber hit the Royal Bank, it was met with a collective newsroom yawn, with the story pared down to a brief and included in the assortment of police snippets somewhere inside the paper.
Bank robberies had become the criminal equivalent of fender-benders — they happened so often that they ceased being news and became predictable space filler.
This may be how the media soon views the wave of murders in the Lower Mainland, the killings of young men belonging to the various gangs fighting for the profitability made possible by prohibition.
There are simply so many shooting deaths that the shock factor has long subsided — two more slayings in one night this past week? Hmmm . . . how’d the Canucks do?
From Vancouver to Chilliwack, it’s a shooting range, with the powers-that-be promising to get tough on these gangsters by spending more money to get more cops on the street and more prosecutors in the courts and a new prison built.
And the big-city dailies, looking for an angle outside of the daily “gang-shooting murder,” find a former gang member now getting his life in order, or scores an interview with the wife of an innocent man caught in the crossfire.
But none of this is new, not the pledge by government to get tough on crime, not the promise to build more cellblocks to house these thugs, not the media’s progressive coverage of the carnage.
Cast your mind back to the 1980s, when Russian gangs took on the Hells Angels. Shootings and car bombings followed. Think back to the mid-1990s, when Bindy Johal and the Dosanjh brothers courted criminal celebrity before being escorted by a bullet to the hereafter.
Today’s craziness is nothing new and it will subside soon enough, just as it has before, only to return in another decade or so — the innocence we see in kids today becoming the ignorant martyrdom of tomorrow.
And mothers will weep.
And fathers will seethe.
And the government of the future will promise a crackdown.
chrisfoulds.blogspot.com

A season with a remarkable set of seven-year-olds

2009-03-17T14:35:00.001-07:00

It's six-thirty on a Saturday morning. You are tired and your head feels woozy as AC/DC screams at you, lead singer Brian Johnson growling that he is, indeed, “TNT.”
No, you’re not crawling home from a night on the town.
Instead, you are ridiculously sober as you lace the last skate, snap the final chinstrap and rise from the kneeling position, your knees creaking in the bone-chilling cold of an old hockey arena.
Around you, energetic seven-year-olds grab their gloves and sticks and lend their voices to the hard-rock chorus.
Seven-year-olds singing AC/DC before dawn on a Saturday morning? Maybe you are drunk.
Actually, you know you are a hockey dad and no longer a nightclubber when you crave coffee and quiet, rather than hard rock and liquor, on the weekend.
Alas, the 2008-2009 edition of the Kamloops Bulldogs took their final skate Wednesday at Memorial Arena, with only a year-end party standing between the hockey and soccer seasons.
And what a year is was — especially for minor-hockey virgins like myself.
There are countless boys and girls in Kamloops right now, five, six or seven years old, just itching to become part of the Kamloops Minor Hockey Association.
My son was one of them last fall when, following a couple of essential sessions with the Peter Puck program and not far removed from skating on his butt, he begged me to let him join minor hockey.
I relented — but it was already two weeks into the season. A call was made. Room was available. Registration was completed.
Voila! The boy was now a Bulldog and was to report to the Brock arena on a Wednesday evening in October.
But when my son took his first tentative step onto the ice during that initial practice, I was certain we had made a mistake.
These kids were good. They were fast. They did crossovers with ease. They skated backwards effortlessly. They dipsy-doodled like pros. Heck, one or two even employed a Savardian Spinnerama.
And they were (allegedly) only seven!
Turns out my anxiety wasn’t shared by my son, who simply tried his best and kept doing so throughout the year.
No, he wasn’t going to be the superstar centre or the stalwart defenceman, but he did fall in love with goaltending and, quite frankly, shone in net when he played.
Think Richard Brodeur mixed with a bit of Mike Palmateer.
That there were a handful of kids on the team also at the beginner level helped my son not be overwhelmed by the artistry on the ice displayed by teammates like Alec, Kaden and Eric, all three of whom will soon be familiar names in newspaper summaries of rep games.
But the key to keeping all kids interested in the game, to ensuring their spirits are always lifted, to maintaining the momentum accumulated practice by practice and game by game, is the coaching staff.
And the Bulldogs have a staff on which a coaching manual could be based.
Darcy Erichuk, Darren Dempsey and Ed Bertuzzi are damn fine hockey players in their own right, but they are even better motivators.
One need only watch a practice or game to see what good coaches do.
They don’t bark or yell at seven-year-olds.
They don’t tell players how to do a drill.
They demonstrate.
They speak with a player, not at the child.
A word of encouragement here, a tap on the helmet following a shift, an explanation on the bench during a break in the action — even something as simple as a nod acknowledged by a Bulldog out on the ice.
Together, these actions resonate deeply with a kid who knows his skill level may not be up there with the best players on the team — but, if the coach says he can do something, then he’ll try until he can no longer skate.
Of course, minor hockey entails the planning skills of Martha Stewart.
There are parents to round up for game duties. There are out-of-town tournaments to plan. There is the massive year-end tourney to consider.
And there are the hundreds of little things in-between, including answering myriad e-mail inquiries from parents.
This job usually falls to the team manager and those who help her. In our case, Tara Erichuk was that person, whose diligence in organization led to the quip that her spice rack must be alphabetized.
Yes, and likely according to sweet, sour and salty placement of taste buds on the tongue.
Unbelievable organization makes life all that much easier for frenzied parents hauling their hockey stars to and fro in the bitter cold.
After the final game of the year, coach Dempsey said something special about each player in the dressing room — words that surely welled up the tear ducts of even the most macho of men.
As the year ends, I am left with equally enduring images: of Kobe trying to catch an opponent and flashing his dad a cheesy grin as he skated by; of the explosive applause that echoed through the arena following Mackenzie’s first goal; of Kaden and his scoring celebration that makes Alexander Ovechkin look dour by comparison; of Alec dancing in the dressing room in his beloved Under Armour after games, win or lose; of plucky Tye, who broke his leg midway through the season but never missed a game afterward, even travelling to Kelowna to cheer on his Bulldogs; and of little Atticus drowning in his goalie gear as he becomes the target of the end-of-game doggy-pile.
They say hockey is life in Canada.
It can be. And that’s a great thing.

Their very own moon landing

2009-03-01T09:16:00.000-08:00

The next newspaper I see that has Obama on it, I’m gonna take a pen and write on it: Why should Canada care!?”
So uttered my seven-year-old boy as he wandered past a newsstand, Barack Obama’s countenance staring at him from the cover of virtually every publication within reach – newspapers, magazines, books.
When your second-grader cries “Uncle!” at all things Barack, you know Obamamania is officially out of control.
Sure, the election in the United States of the first president of African-American heritage 144 years after the end of the Civil War effectively outlawed slavery south of the border is big news.
But, as my son wonders, why isn’t “our president” on all the magazines?
Our prime minister, I remind him.
Yes, he remembers the name is Stephen Harper, but he has heard far more about the 44th president, which is to be expected given the torrent of coverage in the past year.
Obama has been lightning-hot since he mesmerized millions with his stunning keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention.
The neophyte senator-cum-most-powerful-leader-in-the-world is without a doubt charisma-laden.
He can deliver a speech like few others.
It has been noted he has a presence that evokes the magnetism of that rarest of politicians – Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Pierre Trudeau, Ronald Reagan.
The first president of African-American heritage, a man with a golden tongue, a leader following arguably the most reviled U.S. president in history – all reasons enough for this past week’s inauguration ceremony on Washington, D.C. to become our children’s generation’s Summit Series.
As kids in classrooms across Canada set aside social studies in 1972 to listen to Foster Hewitt describe Paul Henderson’s landmark goal in Moscow, students in Kamloops and beyond on Tuesday were instructed in Inauguration 101 – direct from D.C.
Obamamania knows no boundaries.
It seizes magazine covers and page after page in newspapers.
It captures, too, the minds of boys and girls more accustomed to sorting through Sidney Crosby’s stats and emulating Hanna Montana’s fashion.
The mania was on display in my daughter’s class, where the nine- and 10-year-olds were connected electronically to the million or so in Washington to witness a historic day.
This event, she was told, is her generation’s moon landing.
Hyperbole?
Perhaps.
But she was lapping it up – and the interest generated in current events is magical. The kids watched the ceremony and listened to Obama’s speech – and they really listened, apparently, considering the playback offered by my daughter after school.
Her favourite line?
“...we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.” – Obama’s message to totalitarian states.
Of course, this overkill has presented the new president as the political messiah of the new century, to the extent he will “end war,” according to my fourth-grade optimist.
I don’t argue.
She has her hope and need not be burdened with a history lesson on the likely future of Iraq or the futility of trying to tame Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, my boy is waiting for the day when a visit to the magazine rack brings him face-to-face with someone – anyone – other than the prez.
Just in case, however, he is packing a pen on his next trip to Chapters.

Repatriate little Omar? By all means — to Afghanistan

2009-03-01T08:52:00.000-08:00

The great thing about a newspaper is the varying opinions found within.
The great thing about being an editor of a newspaper is being able to not only offer those disparate views, but also respond to them — especially when certain opinions are simply wrong.
No, that doesn’t quite compute in the technical sense.
How, you may ask, can an opinion be “wrong”?
Here’s how: when it involves that darling of all things anti-American, Omar Khadr, the boy soldier, the victim of we infidels of the West, the poor soul who has been treated so harshly by the dastardly George W. Bush administration.
Why, the matter can be set right if only little Omar and his fractured psyche are brought back to Canada from that terrible place called Guantanamo Bay and swathed in a blanket of welfare payments while fed a steady diet of CBC newscasts, Toronto Star editorials and the anti-Canadian/pro-al-Qaeda rantings of his family, who remain clothed and fed thanks to the social system of the country they so despise.
Yes, I have written about Khadr before. Who in the media hasn’t?
But I return to the subject once again this week lest the more gullible of KTW readers happened across my colleague Dale Bass’s column on Friday, which all but offered the terrorist free room and board.
(Now, before the local chapter of the Dale Bass Fan Club makes a left turn en route to this office in order to pelt me with a mass of Little Red Books, rest assured Bass is a big girl who can take a bit of criticism for what she writes. Just ask some of the Mounties downtown).
Bass has a heart of gold and is sympathetic to many good causes.
But, for some reason, she sees the rescue of Khadr as one of those ventures our prime minister should be pursuing.
What can I say? Nobody’s perfect.
There are critics who have bemoaned the fact Prime Minister Stephen Harper did not discuss the Khadr situation with President Barack Obama during the latter’s brief visit to Ottawa last month.
Reports say the two leaders met for about 30 minutes.
It would be safe to assume that, even if Harper and Obama had 24 straight hours to discuss policy, the fate of little Omar would be slotted in the 25th hour.
A review of the facts:
• Khadr was not a child soldier, not even if the rules of the Geneva Conventions and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child are considered. He was 15 when he decided to join terrorists in their zeal to kill Americans in Afghanistan.
• Whether Khadr threw the grenade that killed Sgt. Christopher Speer (funny how this casualty is rarely mentioned by name by those fighting to save little Omar) is irrelevant. He was involved on some level in the fighting on July 27, 2002.
And, remember, while Khadr might not have thrown that grenade, he just might have.
That’s what a trial is intended to reveal.
• Khadr is not a Canadian in the sense I am a Canadian.
He is a Canadian of convenience.
Oh, he was born in Ontario.
But his father and mother preferred to take little Omar and the rest of the brood to Afghanistan and Pakistan, where they could all better be versed in the ways of killing Westerners.
Oh, they returned to Canada now and then — whenever they required free medical attention to patch wounds inflicted when trying to kill people like us.
• Khadr was captured at the tail end of a firefight between terrorists and United States soldiers.
He was not kidnapped from his home on Canadian soil, nor was he intercepted a la Maher Arar.
Khadr was captured in a fight against American soldiers while in Afghanistan.
If little Omar’s defenders want him pulled from Guantanamo, perhaps they can collect enough change to return him to where he and his family belong — in Khost, Afghanistan, where he was captured.

Ink-stained fingers follow historic event

2008-11-14T22:13:00.000-08:00

The line snaked around the building in Washington, D.C., this past week, with those waiting determined to stick it out and do what they came to do.
No, they weren’t there to cast a ballot in the most historic election in the history of the U.S.
They were lining up the day after Barack Obama defeated John McCain.
They were there not to cast a ballot, but to cast their eyes on the headlines — these news junkies were waiting to get their hands on the post-election Washington Post.
The Nov. 5 edition carried the headline — “Obama Makes History” — and included a 22-page special section on the election.
“I got 10!” a lady cried out as she emerged from the from of the line, showing TV news cameras a stack of crisp, crease-free Posts bundled in her arms.
These are not necessarily collector’s editions — there are too many copies distributed these days — but there is something, something, about an unsullied newspaper detailing the historic event that took place the previous day.
It is something that cannot be experienced while watching the historic moment occur on television in real time.
It is something that cannot be appreciated while listening to the historic moment on the radio.
It is something that cannot be fully absorbed while following the historic moment on the Internet.
It is something you must touch and hold and smell and plunk down on the coffee table, where you can see it from across the room, the bold Helvetica or Goudy or Franklin Gothic standing tall while declaring the solemn importance of the moment captured within the blocks of type and photographs arranged so perfectly across the smooth expanse of newsprint.
There are moments, such as Obama’s presidential victory, that elicit such demand for the morning-after newspaper.
Right now, think about significant events in your lifetime — the attack on Pearl Harbor, the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the resignation of Richard Nixon, the hostage-taking at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, the explosion of the Challenger space shuttle, the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Chances are, memories of these events will include the headlines in the following day’s newspapers.
The collection of such editions has long been a personal hobby.
Included in my very modest collection are Vancouver Sun editions the day after President Kennedy was killed and the day after man walked on the moon, a Chicago Tribune edition the day after Robert F. Kennedy was murdered and a Civil War-era Massachusetts eight-page newspaper detailing a Vermont regiment’s departure to Virginia.
And, of course, numerous papers dated Sept. 12, 2001.
So it was that Kamloops This Week photographer Dave Eagles volunteered to scour the city Wednesday for newspapers reporting Obama’s monumental win.
He managed to secure copies of the National Post, Globe and Mail, Vancouver Sun, Vancouver Province and Wall Street Journal.
We are still awaiting word on deliveries of Wednesday editions of the New York Times and Chicago Tribune.
It is difficult to hold in hand newspapers from across North America and the world when living in relative isolation in Kamloops.
There is, however, a fascinating alternative available on the web.
At newseum.org, front pages of newspapers from around the globe are there for the viewing.
From the Huntsville (Ala.) Times: “Yes, He Did!”; from the Billings (Mon.) Gazette: “Obama’s Time”; from the Springfield (Mo.) News-Leader: “Change Has Come”.
And, from dozens and dozens of newspapers, a one-word headline — “History” — which sums up succinctly and powerfully the political era into which we have all stepped.

Snuffing out growthism in these changing political times

2008-11-14T22:08:00.000-08:00

On Tuesday, barring a political catastrophe of epic proportions, voters in the United States will make history when they elect that country’s first black president.
But whether a president is black or white, or male or female, seems to matter not to the next generation.
However, if Barack Obama or John McCain were blind or midgets (or is the correct term “little people”?) — now, that might get the single-digit-age set chattering.
More on that in a moment, but first . . .
Obama is just another politician to my nine-year-old daughter, a guy who keeps dominating her Yahoo! news headlines as she checks her e-mail for urgent messages from friends regarding plans to see High School Musical 3.
Ask her about Obama and she’ll mention lots of people turn out for his speeches. She’ll say he’s younger than the other guy. She’ll note he defeated Hillary Clinton to get to where he is. She might even observe that Obama has reaalllly long fingers.
But I doubt very much the colour of Obama’s skin would even register.
To my generation and generations past, that the Americans are on the verge of electing a black man as president is monumental.
That it is monumental in 2008 illustrates how far we really have not come, but still, it’s a start.
Gender, race, sexual preference and religion remain extremely important to many voters, much to the bewilderment of others.
Perhaps it’s the fact the media never tire of making note of gender, race, sexual preference and religion that these insignificant matters remain significant blather.
Maybe Obama’s election will knock down the colour barrier once and for all. Maybe a four- or eight-year term will let us focus on candidacy curiosities other than the hue of one’s epidermis or the god to which one prays.
Such as, say, height and vision.
This election, and the Canadian election before it and our civic vote in two weeks, is not lost on the kids.
My daughter keeps up on current events generally via the headlines on Yahoo!
(Sure, she also peruses this paper, but, like her Yahoo! site, she rarely delves past the headlines).
And, so, there I will be during the week when my fledgling newshound will corral me to ask about all sorts of stories she has come across, some goofy (such as the man who gave birth) and some tragic (such as the beheading incident on a Greyhound bus).
But, this month, Yahoo!, like most media outlets, has been dominated by political talk.
My daughter knows who George W. Bush is.
She knows he will be replaced by either McCain or Obama.
And she was sort of rooting for Clinton when the Democrats still had a race.
However, even though it has been explained why the election of a black man to the White House is a historic occasion, there are some questions posed that make you sigh at the tenderness of those in the autumn of their pre-teen years.
“Can a blind person or a midget be president?
That’s the question that nearly resulted in a mouthful of tea to be expelled from my mouth on a quiet night last week.
“Can a what be a what?” I asked.
My potential political pundit in pigtails repeated her question.
Why, I asked, would that be an issue?
Well, she said, how would a blind president read all that stuff he has to read? And, if a president was a midget (little person?), how would he reach all that stuff he has to read if it’s up on a shelf?
Vexing questions, to be sure, and, oddly enough, a heck of a lot more relevant than questioning a candidate’s competency based on pigmentation of his skin.
Fear not, for the curious one was introduced to the wonderful world of Braille before the next Yahoo! headline rolled across the screen.
And a quick primer on the ability of humans of all heights quickly extinguished any germination of growthism in her character.

So a man walks into a Kamloops barbershop ...

2008-09-22T19:53:00.000-07:00

After a recent haircut left the back of my head looking like the pattern on Charlie Brown's shirt, I decided it was time to go back to basics, find the fundamentals, seek out simpler times.
So, with my seven-year-old son in tow, I found a parking spot on Victoria Street and spotted my destination: a traditional barber shop in downtown Kamloops.
I had bribed my son to come with me by promising a stop at Zack’s for some old-fashioned candy.
We’d even sit down inside and share a root beer, I added.
But first, I told him, I need a haircut and I want you to see a real barbershop.
Well, we couldn’t have picked a better day to waltz into the striped-pole world of conversation, that elusive and disappearing art that is being elbowed aside by IPods, Blackberries, cellphones, televisions and simple distrust of our fellow man.
Three barber chairs sit in a row.
The one closest to the door seats a man with a nice head of grey/white hair.
He is being attended to by the head barber, a man who has shorn millions of locks and who is indeed a veteran of the clipper world.
The middle chair is empty, soon to be occupied by me.
The last chair is inhabited by a man who is as comfortable in the barbershop as he would be in his easy chair at home. Really, I was expecting Andy and Barney to walk in any minute — followed by Aunt Bee with a steaming apple pie for all of us.
The man next to me has no interest in a haircut.
But he sits in the barber’s chair, quite possibly the most comfortable invention for the back end known to man.
He holds a newspaper in his hand, swings the chair away from the mirror so it faces the six people in the small shop and, between glancing at headlines, opines on all manner of subjects.
An older fellow is on the bench opposite, not in the shop for a haircut, it doesn’t appear, but rather there to shoot the breeze, to trade jokes with the veteran barber, to treat the barber shop as it was meant to be treated — as the community water cooler.
Suddenly, the fluid conversation is cleaved by the abrupt sound of downtown traffic as the door to the barbershop opens.
In walks a man. Lyle is his name,
He says he’s in town and wants to drop by and say hello.
He pushes open the door, smiles a gentle smile and tosses a quip toward the veteran barber: “Didn’t think you would still be alive!”
Everyone laughs, even the barber who should be dead, apparently.
Lyle talks about this guy and that gal.
“You remember her, right?”
“Oh, yeah, yeah . . . where is she now?” the barber replies.
Lyle spins a tale about the gal.
Someone asks Lyle where he’s living now.
“Oh, still in Prince George,” he says, noting with a wistful look in his eyes that the Northern Capital isn’t growing nearly as fast as Kamloops.
That sparks a spontaneous discussion among the others regarding the number of beer parlours in Prince George in the 1950s.
Words become the buzz of bees.
After a few calculations, it is decided Prince George had, at that time, one pub for every 500 people.
“Kinda like churches in Abbotsford,” says my barber, a lovely gal with hands of dexterity.
“Or Abbotsford,” adds the older gent on the bench, the man here for conversation, not clippers.
“Man, they have a lot of churches.”
A brief but noticeable silence falls, into which Lyle steps to make his exit.
When the door eases shut after he leaves, everybody looks at everybody else.
Then my barber speaks: “You have no idea who he is, do you?” she says to her boss.
“None whatsoever!” he replies, creating yet another round of guffawing from those in the room.
“He asked how so-and-so is doing. I said fine!”
To be clear, there is nothing disrespectful in the laughter.
Quite the contrary — a stranger walks into a barbershop and begins talking as though he has been a regular in the joint for years.
And the barbershop crew treat him as though he has been a regular in the joint for years.
Down to earth, speak your mind, get in the chair and go ahead and grumble.
That’s the kind of place it is, the kind of place we need.

Vote for Stephen Harper: He’s really, really, really sorry

2008-09-22T19:48:00.000-07:00

Cathy McLeod, the unknown, appointed Conservative Party of Canada candidate for Kamloops-Thompson-Cariboo, has been virtually invisible during the first week of the federal election campaign.
And that might be sound strategy in light of the public-relations disaster that has afflicted her party’s leader, Stephen Harper.
The Conservatives are running under a few campaign slogans: Leadership. For Canada is one. We’re Better Off With Harper is another.
Based on the first week of campaigning, the Tories could have run under a third catchy tag: We Apologize. Yet Again.
While Harper did his best to compare his platform with that of Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion, he was forced time and again to offer a mea culpa to the voting public for the goofy sins of his campaign staff.
And when he wasn’t agreeing that his staff’s actions were “inappropriate,” Harper was busy changing his mind on televised leadership-debate rules.
It can only get better for the incumbent prime minister, with the election exactly one month from today.
In the first week of the campaign, Harper has had to deal with a Tory staffer with animation skills who managed to have a puffin defecate on the shoulder of Dion for all the World Wide Web to see.
He has had to step in and suspend another staffer who told reporters the father of a slain Canadian soldier in Afghanistan was a card-carrying Liberal.
The father had gone public with his disappointment in hearing Harper’s pledge to quit Afghanistan in 2011, a pledge the dead soldier’s father opined rendered his son’s death as being one in vain.
And Harper has had to put on his Spanky hat and join with NDP Leader Jack “Alfalfa” Layton in agreeing to close down their He-Man Woman Haters Club and consent to having Green Leader Elizabeth May join them in the Oct. 1 and Oct. 2 televised debates.
No, it has not been a great week for the Conservative leader.
Dion is the only other person who can possibly be prime minister when the votes are tallied on Oct. 14, but his problems include his carbon-tax plan and, quite frankly, his weak English-language skills.
Let’s face it: Barack Obama’s popularity is rooted in his phenomenal oratory skills. If Obama wasn’t as talented with his tongue, we just might be watching Hillary Clinton tackle John McCain this fall.
Dion can have the greatest ideas in the campaign, but when he builds himself up in a frenzy and attempts a verbal Muhammad Ali jab, it comes across as a clumsy Gerry Cooney combination.
This is not to say a candidate should be judged on his or her speaking skills. But, in reality, many voters will base their decision on the televised debate, and Dion will be at a disadvantage in the English-language version.
It’s too bad, really, for he is a fine man. Then again, perhaps this writer is biased as Dion is the only one of the five party leaders to have sat in my office at KTW to be interviewed.
Locally, the situation is much, much quieter.
A week in, NDP candidate Michael Crawford has been the most active, which is not surprising as the Thompson Rivers University instructor seems to campaign during elections, between elections, after elections — all the time.
His signs are aplenty, he appears on bridges, he weighs in on provincial issues. He is everywhere.
Liberal candidate Ken Sommerfeld is eclectic, to say the least, and the local lawyer made his presence known via a campaign kickoff in downtown Kamloops.
Green candidate Donovan Cavers was also front and centre when he occupied a sidewalk at Fourth and Victoria to garner signatures on a petition to have his leader included in the televised debates.
One day later, there was no need for petitions.
And McLeod?
She may be waiting for her party to purge itself of inexcusable gaffes before leaving her political cocoon.
She has 31 days.

In this young election, the fashion is flip-flops

2008-09-22T19:47:00.000-07:00

Summer is definitely not over yet — and this observation is not based on the forecast that calls for brilliant sunshine and temps in the high 20s through the weekend.
Rather, we are aware summer will hang on for quite some time by virtue of the preponderance of flip-flops across this great nation of ours.
Don’t look down at the feet of your neighbours, dear reader; rather, search for those oily creatures looking stiff in casual attire as they promise you the moon while crossing every hair on their disingenuous body.
The flip-flops to which I refer are the about-faces already being practised by politicians in this very young federal election.
No sooner had NDP Leader Jack Layton — the man of the people, the man Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion mocks as Jack Obama Layton — reasserted his strong opposition to including Green Leader Elizabeth May in the televised leaders’ debate than he changed his mind.
No sooner had Conservative Leader Stephen Harper — looking very Fred Rogers-like in his now-ubiquitous sweater and suddenly craving casual breakfasts with reporters — reportedly threatened to boycott the televised debates if May was included than he, too, changed his mind.
And Layton and Harper found themselves supporting what they had so recently argued firmly against — the inclusion of May — within hours of each other on Wednesday.
By the time the group of Canadian networks behind the debates had announced May’s participation, the ink on the debate-inclusion petitions handed out in downtown Kamloops Tuesday by local Green candidate Donovan Cavers was barely dry.
The French- and English-language debates will go ahead on Oct. 1 and Oct. 2 with the four national parties — the Conservatives, Liberals, New Democrats and Greens — and the Bloc Québecois, the party that has candidates only in Quebec and whose political goal is to destroy Canada from within (unless you’re Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Danny Williams, in which case that last statement should be targeted at Harper and his Tories).
Standard elocution
Locally, the reaction to the debates debate was more or less predictable.
Cavers, as mentioned, was on city streets this week, seeking signatures for a petition to have his leader included.
Liberal candidate Ken Sommerfeld was with his party in always supporting May’s participation, no doubt because a strong Green showing at the polls will hurt the NPD the most.
While May has stated her admiration of Dion, Harper has said he believes she will actually endorse the Liberal leader before the Oct. 14 election.
New Democrat candidate Michael Crawford was refreshingly ambivalent about the issue when KTW reporter Jeremy Deutsch contacted him prior to the sudden change of hearts by Harper and Layton.
And Crawford was spot-on in suggesting that rules should be clearly in place for future debates as to which party leaders can take part.
And Conservative candidate Cathy McLeod?
Well, like every Tory candidate who has ever run for office, the response could very well have been pulled from the leader’s mouth.
About the local forum . . .
While the debates seem to have been finalized on the national scene, here in Kamloops, our paper, along with the Kamloops Daily News and CFJC-TV, will be hosting a federal election forum at Thompson Rivers University.
The tentative date is Wednesday, Oct. 8 and will likely feature questions of the candidates from the media and public.
Daily News editor Mel Rothenburger, himself a former civic politician, will moderate, along with an as-yet-to-be decided co-moderator.
Stay tuned for more information

Will you give youth a chance on election day?

2008-09-22T19:46:00.000-07:00

It happens almost every civic election.
Youth arrives with determination, ideas and energy and is invariably kicked aside by voters more comfortable with familiar names than exciting refrains.
The November vote may result in more of the same, with a lamentable number of voters heading to the polls to re-elect monikers from memory.
And two of this year’s younger councillor candidates are more than aware their civic political aspirations will run headlong into the single-most formidable obstacle — name recognition.
“Let’s face it, municipal politics is all about name recognition,” says 26-year-old Ainsworth Lumber worker Adam Lupasko.
“I could have the greatest ideas in the world, but if I don’t campaign or don’t get my name out there correctly, it isn’t going to help me.”
Adds 21-year-old Kevin Skrepnek, who toils at a retail Telus store during the day: “I think everyone wants to see youth involved, but, at the same token, when they walk into the ballot box, sometimes they prefer to err on the side of what they see as experience.”
So, what do 20-something candidates do when faced with such a venerable problem?
They put aside their laptops, log off of Facebook, shut down YouTube and do what generations of aspiring politicians have done before them.
They pound the pavement.
Lupasko says he’s going door-to-door to spread his message.
Skrepnek will be doing the same.
Yes, both have embraced the Internet. Lupasko’s considerable platform can be viewed by logging onto Facebook.com, then searching groups for “Lupasko”, while Skrepnek’s political ideals will soon be available at skrepnek.ca.
But both realize that, even in the year two-thousand-and-eight, with all the razzle and dazzle of this mind-boggling technological age, nothing beats a little of that human touch.
“There is, of course, your Facebook, your YouTube, there’s stuff to get your name out,” Skrepnek says.
“But to make that kind of concrete connection, you still need to understand the issues of the voter one-on-one.”
Will shaking hands and jawing about such mundane issues as sewage treatment and transit be enough to convince voters to do more than simply place marks next to names they see in the media day after day, week after week?
Well, Lupasko and Skrepnek are hoping so.
After all, they aren’t running to fill in the slots on the ballot from ninth on down.
Still, the enthusiasm of a fledgling political campaign is tempered by the reality of a municipal election.
“It’s a huge hump,” Lupasko concedes.
“In a way, it’s sad, but, you know, if I don’t make it in this time, at least I’ve got my name out there for next time.
“You have to pay your dues, in some respects.”
***
Neither whippersnapper has decided on which mayoral candidate to back.
Veteran Coun. Peter Milobar is heavily favoured to defeat non-incumbent challenger Murphy Kennedy.
Why?
Well, there’s the name recognition, not to mention the priceless number of contacts Milobar has amassed as city councillor and chairman of the Thompson-Nicola Regional District board.
But there is an interesting connection between Kennedy and Lupasko.
Seems both have similar romantic tastes, as it were, as Lupasko met Kennedy about eight years ago.
At the time, Lupasko was dating a fine young girl — while Kennedy was courting her mom.

Eternal and invinicble — until they square off with stupidity

2008-09-22T19:45:00.001-07:00

There was a time when “gangs” were nothing more menacing than a group of teens trying to emulate what they had just witnessed at the town cinema after watching Warriors, that classic 1970s flick about a street gang in New York framed by a rival gang with a weasel for a leader.
Today, it seems gangs are proliferating at a rapid rate as high-school students greedy for the easy money to be made courtesy of Canada’s ludicrous prohibition laws are too blinded by the bling to see their life span shrink.
It’s hard not to see why the UN Gang grew into a vicious force from its humble beginnings as a few sketchy teenagers in an Abbotsford high school from which I graduated.
Petty crime buys some smokes and beer for the weekend and leads to a realization that too much cash can be made dealing pot and harder drugs to even bother with delivering pizzas or washing dishes to make a few bucks.
So the teens who started a “gang” and dubbed it UN are now mostly dead or in jail or about to die, while they recruit more and more young and naive souls to do some dirty work for easy money.
The cycle repeats itself and the 856 Gang sprouts in the fertile Fraser Valley, while the Independent Soldiers spread into the Interior, setting up shop in Kelowna, Kamloops and Prince George.
Pick a city anywhere in B.C. and its been affected by one criminal gang or another.
In Kamloops, a new group has emerged, though how organized it is up for debate.
Right now, the so-called Family Affiliated appears to be composed of mainly petty criminals going nowhere fast in life.
After all, what serious criminal organization boasts about its illegal activities through 100-plus photos online?
Stupid? Of course.
Then again, it’s unlikely any of these gun-toting, money-counting, axe-bearing, gang-sign-flashing peeps is on the enrolment list at Thompson Rivers University.
However, this is how the UN Gang began down in Abbotsford — and it is today about as psychotic a group as can be imagined.
There are about 120 gangs in the province, according to the Organized Crime Agency of B.C.
These range from the venerable and well-known Hells Angels to the new kids on the block, the increasingly violent UN Gang, the 856 Gang in the Fraser Valley (so-called because the group of youths grew up and live in the 856 telephone exchange area of Aldergrove and east Langley), the Independent Soldiers (known to be in Kamloops) and Redd Alert (also with a Kamloops connection).
What is truly maddening is the fact these teens and young men and women are seemingly unable to see their future through the mass of killings that dominate the headlines.
True, you are eternal and invincible when young, but how many murders of your peers does it take to convince you this career path probably doesn’t have longevity?
And maybe these kids are too young to realize just how silly they sound when mimicking inner-city Los Angeles in staid Kamloops.
Here’s a message on the Family Affiliated Facebook site that speaks to this immaturity:
“Family Affilated is the back bone to having respect for their bros and hoes, stomping out the goofs and rats, making are hood to be known to many and giving back to all those who have given to them and taking back what they know is rightfully ours!!!! Love respect death before dishonour.”
There are many reasons why teens go bad and embrace gangs.
Our drug laws make it worthwhile in their minds. The fact is, prohibition is the best way to foster criminal activity. Always has been, always will be.
And family life enters the equation.
One can’t help but wonder just what happened to these kids. Where are their parents? How was their upbringing?
Easy money. Looking cool. Acting tough. All are desirable to youths who have nothing else.
In the meantime, it’s good to know the local Mounties are on top of this particular motley crew.
And, hopefully, exposing this “gang” will help brighten the judicial spotlight on it.

Send the entire Khadr clan to Guantanamo

2008-07-19T19:56:00.000-07:00

July 19, 2008

So, Omar Khadr sobs a few sobs, utters a few woes-are-me and we are supposed to demand that Prime Minister Stephen Harper rescue the poor child from Guantanamo Bay?
Based on the wailing from the anti-American left in Canada, don’t be surprised to see the terrorist appointed to the Order of Canada.
Maybe then Dr. Henry Morgentaler will return his award in protest, thereby completing the ludicrous circle.
Omar Khadr is not a child soldier.
He was 15 and decided to follow his father and the rest of Canada’s first family of the jihad to Afghanistan to try to kill soldiers who represent the values of a society that allowed his family to denigrate all that we value, while sucking back taxpayer dollars of those they despise.
He is charged with killing U.S. Army Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Speer by lobbing a grenade during a battle.
Khadr denies doing this, of course, but the fact he was on the terrorist side of a battle against Canada and her allies should be more than enough to strip him of his citizenship.
We routinely criticize the Canadian judiciary for its leniency in sentencing teens who commit the most atrocious acts on our streets, cognizant that a 15-, 16- and 17-year-old know full well right from wrong.
Yet Khadr is referred to by many as an innocent child soldier who is the victim in this saga.
Wrong.
A child soldier is a nine-year-old in Sierra Leone, pumped full of heroin and handed a machete with which to wreak havoc.
Khadr was a 15-year-old who made the decision to become a terrorist and wage war against Canada and the rest of the West.
His sister, Zaynbar Khadr, watched the video of her brother — footage that is five years old and carefully edited by his legal team to extract maximum sympathy from those who refuse to see the truth.
She told Global News: “I don’t know what to expect from the Canadian government any more. I don’t expect them to be very nice.”
No, WE don’t expect them to be very nice.
Any real Canadian would expect the Canadian government to be anything but nice to a murderous clan that has proven in action and in words that it detests the very country in which its members are, unfortunately, considered citizens.
However, by allowing the Khadrs to remain in Canada, by allowing public money to be funnelled to this hateful family in the form of welfare payments and by allowing our public health-care system to spend precious dollars caring for Abdulkareem Khadr (Omar’s older brother by three years, who was paralyzed in a 2003 firefight with Pakistani forces. The clan’s father, Ahmed, was killed in the battle), the reality is Canada is being nice to a group of people that is Canadian in ink only.
How a family that declares its admiration for Osama bin Laden (who reportedly attended Zaynab’s wedding), spent as much time bouncing around terrorist training camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan as it did on Canadian soil and conveniently “lost’ plenty of passports can be considered Canadian is a mystery only gullible sympathizers can unravel.
Much has been said about the need for Canada to pressure the U.S. to follow rules set down by the Geneva Conventions.
A proposition: When a Canadian citizen travels around the world to join terrorists in a bid to kill soldiers of his own country and its allies, rules such as the Geneva Conventions do not apply.
Omar’s mom, Maha Elsamnah — yes, the woman who admitted to celebrating when the World Trade Center towers were attacked, the woman who waxed eloquent about how wonderful it would be to watch her offspring die as martyrs to the cause — watched her son as he wept in the video.
“My son is calling for me and I’m sitting here,” she told CBC.
In a perfect world, Omar would be calling for her and the rest of the treasonous Khadr clan as they sat together in a cell in Guantanamo Bay.

IPod, therefore I am

2008-07-19T16:36:00.000-07:00

June 21, 2008

“But where does the music go?” was my questioning refrain every time my daughter slipped impossibly small headphones (called earbuds, I later learned) into her little ears and pressed a button on her MP3 player, a hand-me-down from her mom.
She, all of nine and the one I turn to when I need to change the ringtone on my cellphone, would roll her eyes and vanish into a world of Miley Cyrus as Hanna Montana (or is it the other way around?), confident her nerdo dad was just playing with her.
But I really wanted to know: where does the music go?
To be clear: I am not a complete Luddite.
We use state-of-the-art Macintosh computers here at KTW. We design the paper using a layout program called InDesign, which we seem to upgrade every year.
I have managed to almost master my PVR at home, which means I have confounded myself and succeeded at recording television shows without using a videocassette — which, to me, is akin to enjoying a meal without recalling whether you ate.
Still, after I record 30 Rock or a daytime Euro 2008 game, I am wondering: where does it go if not onto a tape?
That question plagues me more now that I am the owner of an IPod Shufffle, the smallest and most affordable IPod player on the market, which landed in my palm as a gift last weekend.
Oh, I know the music that gets transferred onto my IPod, and the TV programs that are saved onto my PVR, are all “information” that is “stored” onto “hard drives.”
But these are all just words to me.
I understand eight-tracks. I can see the tape.
Ditto for cassettes.
The grooves are visible on a record and I can bend the vinyl.
CDs and DVDs are a bit futuristic, but at least I can see and feel the smooth, shiny discs.
They are all “things” that carry music or movies, “things” that you insert into something else to watch or hear.
They are all tangible in a 20th-century kind of way.
Not so this new world order of IPods, PVRs and various other data playstuff.
I am told music and TV programs and almost everything else in life connected to electronic data is simply ones and zeros organized in such a way as to produce an end result that might be Michael Ballack’s game-winning goal Friday that sent Germany to the semifinals of Euro 2008, much to the dismay of the ones and zeros that showed up on my TV screen as the failing Portuguese side.
Or the ones and zeros mixed it up a bit more and flowed out of my IPod headphones as Billy Bragg singing The Great Leap Forward.
These ones and zeros are remarkable buggers.
Still, it is a bit unnerving to know a musical device no larger than two quarters can hold up to 240 songs and send into your ears music with the astonishing clarity of a symphony peforming next to you.
The last time I had access to mobile music was back, back, back when I was a courier in downtown Vancouver, lugging around my trusty bright yellow Sony Walkman.
At the time, it was considered radically small — it could almost fit into one hand — and was revolutionary in that it had a number counter on the side, which helped me fast forward to a particularly good Dylan tune as I rode up and down the elevators in the big city’s business world, oblivious to the suits huddled about as I lost myself in my own private concert between the first and 30th floors.
Of course, the Sony Walkman was nothing if not communal, which explains why many a stockbroker would exit the elevator humming Positively Fourth Street.
The IPod, on the other hand, is a music miser, sending the wearer into a paradise of pop, a cloud nine of country, an arcadia of alternative — while shutting off the outside world.
Pop in the earbud headphones and not a sound escapes.
You’re a walking groove immersed in song.
To the passerby, however, you have Tourette’s and some kind of skinny wire crawling out of your shirt collar.
But these IPod things are amazing.
I have gone from puzzling over my daughter’s oval MP3 player to becoming attached to my IPod almost 24 hours a day.
Jim Morrison was right for his time when he lamented man’s descent from participant to spectator: “We have metamorphasized from a mad body dancing on hillsides to a pair of eyes staring in the dark.”
Today, we are a pair of ears listening alone.
But that’s not my lament — it’s a celebration, especially when these ears can escape in peace to Nirvana with the Replacements, Tobie Keith, Cat Stevens and Guns ‘N Roses without anybody telling me where to go while I still wonder where the music goes.

Listening to things that go ‘why’ in the night

2008-07-19T16:34:00.000-07:00

July, 5, 2008

It was during an extremely rare deep sleep — and, I later realized, only 20 minutes into my slumber — that the questions began bombarding me from the pitch darkness of the bedroom doorway.
“Daaaad! Do hurricanes come to Kamloops?”
Funny thing is, I didn’t even flinch.
There was a time when a loud question about natural disasters suddenly attacking my senses after midnight would be enough to have me scrambling from bed, convinced a serial killer had finally chosen me to be next.
Alas, when you are a father of two kids, and a father with a chronic case of insomnia, you tend to get used to even the most bizarre occurrences in the witching hour.
And so it was that my seven-year-old boy’s disembodied voice was peppering me with questions about hurricanes, tornadoes and the specific differences between the two that I segued from sleep to alertness without even lifting my head from the pillow.
I didn’t even question why my boy was standing out of sight in the middle of the night, firing meteorological queries my way.
I did wonder, however, in my perpetual bizarro world, whether Mark Madryga ever gets roused from bed with his little guy asking questions about newspapers.
In any event, there I lay, wishing desperately to recapture that elusive sleep of the rested, while mumbling answers to questions regarding wind speed, geographical tendencies and extent of damage.
He remained in the dark, having bounced up the steps from the downstairs TV room — where he had been camping out with mom and sister to escape the heat — with questions that simply needed to be answered.
At seven, he is the sun of our family universe and we do indeed revolve around him — so, if he’s prowling the house at midnight with a question to ask, it stands to reason in his mind that I must be as awake and curious.
And so I mumble answers:
No, Canada is rarely hit by hurricanes. Yes, Carolina gets a lot of them. Yes, that is why their hockey team is called the Hurricanes. Yes, I did tell you about the tornado in Edmonton. Yes, I was scared. No, I have never been in a hurricane. Hundreds of miles an hour — both of them. No, I don’t know whether a hurricane could beat up a tornado.
After trying to answer questions while also failing to cling to the last bit of sleep I would know that night, his mom mercifully came up the stairs and scooped up our wee weatherman.
This, I thought as I lay in bed, wide awake and resigned to a night lacking in z’s, is what happens when a sudden and fierce thunderstorm rolls through Kamloops on Canada Day, just as a group of families and their kids are getting ready to enjoy a barbecue.
The wind that night in Aberdeen was strong enough to clear the table of drinks, forceful enough to prompt four grown men and women to struggle in their battle to prevent a canopy from flying to Chase and fast enough to turn downtown Kamloops and the valley below into a rolling coil of brown soup.
And while the adults tried to save the meat on the barbecues from tipping, the drinks and chips on the tables from spilling and the pool toys on the deck from hopping the fence, the kids were taking full advantage of nature’s amusement park.
They were in their element, all smiles and screams as they ran full-force into the gales that shed nearby pine trees of their dead needles.
The storm snapped the heat wave instantly, bringing relief to a oven-baked city and blowing so much more fantastic fuel into the imagination of at least one seven-year-old.

We hate your NDP/Liberal/Tory-sympathizing paper!

2008-07-19T16:28:00.000-07:00

JULY 12, 2008

Anonymous seems to be a popular nom de plume lately.
First, there was the phone message from a chap who said he lives in Rose Hill.
He was calling to express his disappointment that this newspaper would dare to continue covering union-led protests relating to the near-collapse of the forest industry, which has included the decision by Weyerhaeuser to shut down its 40-year-old sawmill here in Kamloops.
The caller didn’t think it wise for us to publish photos of “the three stooges” — his description of three male protestors who dressed up like Conservative MP Betty Hinton during a recent demonstration outside her Hillside Drive office.
“I am sick of NDP propaganda coming into my home via your paper,” said Mr. Rose Hill.
I wish he would have left his name so I could have introduced him to Mr. NDP, who called earlier this spring with accusations I run a Liberal newspaper, and to Mr. Liberal, who checked in last year to rail about our “right-wing rag.”
Then there was the call this past week from the mother of a young soccer player who was at the centre of a mini-controversy during the Kamloops Youth Soccer Association’s Father’s Day Tournament.
We published a story that detailed another mother’s concern about how the association dealt with an incident in which her son was tackled, then kicked in the stomach.
Kari-Anne Flatmark told us she was concerned with the fact the boy who kicked her son, 10-year-old Alex, said in his apology that he had done so as retribution for a tackle Alex initiated on a teammate.
Flatmark opined the offending boy should have been punished, adding “if it was my son, I would personally punish him.”
Well, the mother of the boy called, sans name, and left a message that disagreed with our decision to run the story.
She added a comment about how much good is done by volunteers in the KYSA, noting that wasn’t in the article.
Interestingly enough, KYSA mini-director Mark MacKenzie touched on the same point in his recent letter to the editor on the subject.
“Instead of taking an opportunity to promote youth sports and the volunteers that make it happen, you chose to fill up two pages of your paper with a non-story dropped on your lap from one, obviously biased, point of view,” he wrote.
Of course, MacKenzie was told there were other parents who expressed concern about the incident, but declined to go on the record due to the fact their sons play in the KYSA.
And he was told by me the article elicited a number of calls from other parents who were unsatisfied with the association’s response to similar concerns of rough play.
To argue the KYSA and its volunteers do fantastic jobs — and they do — is akin to complaining that a story on flooding in the winter didn’t mention that it is hot and dry during the summer.
Of course the KYSA is home to dedicated volunteers. All minor sports are.
My son is blessed to have been taught the beautiful game by two of the best coaches I have had the pleasure of meeting and watching work — Peter Nixon and Dave Sandulescu.
And KTW and every other media outlet in Kamloops never stops promoting the positives in minor soccer.
Just count the number of photos, stories and briefs in any given season.
But that doesn’t mean the media should ignore the very real concerns of parents whose children play the game.

A LOAD OF HOT AIR
Got a call from former KTW reporter Markus Ermisch, who is now working in Calgary.
He was happy to have received $300 courtesy of Gordon Campbell’s vanity tax on carbon.
Ermisch noted how bizarre it is that his family, living in the very province that is the poster child for global warming, would get 300 bucks to spend on a “green” initiative.
So, how will Ermisch spend his portrait of Robert Borden?
“My $100 portion should cover the next oil change, which is long overdue, as well as the next tank of gas. Love that Campbell.”

The year ahead: You read it here first!

2008-01-23T13:46:00.001-08:00

The year is almost over, and the stories, quotes and photos of 2007 have been replayed in this and other publications around the world.
But what will happen in 2008?
Glad you asked.
Herewith is your guide to Fouldsy’s crystal ball, where I shall predict all things great and small — well, small, for the most part, really small — in the city known far and wide for its belching pulp mill, its council’s obsession with saving the planet one tax dollar at a time and its propensity to accidentally figure prominently in national and international news stories:

n Following yet another bloody crime on the North Shore, coupled with the media’s coverage of said crime, North Shore Business Improvement Area general manager Peter Mutrie calls a press conference to dispel what he calls the “ink-stained wretches’ mendacious meanderings of murder and mayhem that are mere myths.”
Alas, the February press conference is cancelled when Mutrie is mugged while leaving his Wilson House office on Tranquille Road.

n In March, federal NDP candidate Michael Crawford suggests that Conservative MP Betty Hinton will be moving to Vernon permanently, where she will launch a bid for that city’s mayor’s chair.
Hinton will reply that Crawford is sputtering nonsense and that her left-leaning opponent is way off-base.
In June, Hinton will announce she is visiting Vernon for an “indefinite period of time,” and confirms she has offered to help run the city, if voters wish.
n In April, Kamloops Coun. Arjun Singh returns from a The Earth Is Dying And It Is YOUR Fault conference in Tirana, Albania.
He immediately calls a press conference underwater at the Tournament Capital Centre, explaining that he has vowed to do everything humanly possibly to curtail his carbon footprint on the planet — including curbing his exhalations.
Oddly enough, Singh’s speech in the deep end of the Canada Games Pool contains clarity and electrifying elocution lacking in his weekly utterances at city council meetings.

n In May, the City of Kamloops decides to proceed with the Spirit Square project by choosing Interior Savings Centre as the site, much to the chagrin of North Shore boosters who desperately wanted the square to rise north of the Thompson.
Coun. Tina Lange infers that public safety in the area of Kamloops “that isn’t really part if Kamloops” was a major factor in the decision.
So incensed is NSBIA general manager Mutrie that he summons the city’s media to a press conference, where he promises to “lay my loquacious lashings onto the layabouts who dare to leave my dear neighbourhood on the lip of livability.”
Alas, the press conference is called off when Mutrie ambles down Tranquille Road to find his vehicle has been stolen.

n In June, city council commissions an out-of-town firm to create and print a calendar to promote the planned Spirit Square project.
Unfortunately, the calendar requires a revised printing when the original 30,000 copies arrive with pages and pages promoting the genius of Norman Greenbaum and his protege, Doctor and the Medics.

n In July, Kamloops Blazers majority owner Tom Gaglardi announces via a one-word press release — “gone” — that assistant coach and assistant general manager Shane Zulyniak has left the club.
No further information is forthcoming.

n In August, Mayor Terry Lake ramps up talk about the need for universal water meters as another hot summer seizes the city.
Reminded that Kamloops exists in a semi-desert area prone to long periods of days without rain, and that there exists a swollen snowpack thanks to a cold, snow-filled winter, Lake pauses . . . then begins his re-election campaign behind the catchy slogan: “Who needs water when you have a Lake?”

n In November, the Kamloops RCMP detachment files a $5-million lawsuit against itself in an effort to raise enough funds to pay out damages sought in various lawsuits it is facing.

editor@kamloopsthisweek.com
chrisfoulds.blogspot.com

Tribute to Conrad Crittin: A true gentleman

2007-12-31T14:53:00.000-08:00

He was always smiling.
And he was usually sweating, at times like a boxer entering the 12th round of a fight.
Then again, Conrad Crittin could perspire like a pro while playing poker.
Or while golfing.
Or while simply breathing.
But it was his smile that endeared the big guy to me.
And it’s that smile that I will really miss, because it was attached to one of the finest guys I have ever had the pleasure of knowing.
Chances are nobody reading this knew Conrad.
But, man, I wish you had, because, as a mutual friend remarked the other day, Conrad was, well, a gentleman — a “gentleman” in the sense of the word as it was meant to be used.
Conrad died last week.
He was 53.
He was riding the motorcycle he loved when a vehicle turned in front of him, ending the life of one of the good guys.
There are gatherings today in Saanich and Winnipeg, where friends and family will talk about Conrad.
Chances are they will touch on his gregarious nature, his innate ability to make you think you had known him for years within minutes of meeting for the first time.
Check it out.
Look at the smile.
That’s him beaming in the picture to the right. That’s Conrad holding my niece, Madeline, at Christmas last year. That’s the smile that rarely if ever left his face every time I was with him.
He was genuine, a trait that is sorely lacking in people these days.
Conrad was in my younger brother’s wedding party a few years ago.
We stayed up until dawn at my brother’s place the night before the wedding and, when it came time to don our monkey suits, none of us were in any shape to complete the highly technical task of attaching the boutonniere to the tuxedo jacket.
Enter Conrad and his thick yet deft fingers By the time he was finished, we all looked like a million bucks — a group of severely hungover million bucks, but a million bucks nonetheless.
Unfortunately, poor Conrad was sweating quite profusely by this point and could barely affix his own boutonniere, what with his wet fingers and all.
I asked how he knew his way around a tuxedo so well.
His answer? In 1982, he bought a tux. Not for a wedding, but to wear to the World Series, which Conrad and a friend decided on the spur of the moment to attend.
But they wanted to do it in style, so they bought tuxedos and flew to Milwaukee, where they took in a couple of Brewers-St. Louis Cardinals games and enjoyed the Great American Pastime in style.
That was Conrad, a man who was not presumptuous, but who knew how to do things with class.
He was also a guy who couldn’t stand discrimination or racism.
During my brother’s bachelor party, a guest thought it was funny to blurt out racist comments about blacks.
Most people pretended to ignore the ignorance.
Conrad told the miscreant to shut up. And he was serious. It might have been the one time I didn’t see him smile.
When Conrad was killed last weekend on a sunny day on Vancouver Island, I really hope he was smiling when it all ended.
Heck, I know he was sweating, but I want to believe he was smiling.

A brother's billionaire quest continues

2007-12-31T14:52:00.001-08:00

What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas — unless you are on a quirky quest to meet, greet and be photographed with the world’s best-known billionaires.
Ten years ago this month, my fiance and I and about 15 friends and family flew to Las Vegas, where, on June 14, we were married at The Las Vegas Wedding Chapel by Elvis Presley, or a facsimile thereof.
It was fun, short, exciting and a hunk-a-hunk-a burning ceremony, after which we all decamped for the lounge at the Aladdin Hotel (naturally, since it was the location of The King’s nuptials with Priscilla Beaulieu in 1967) for champagne and drinks and slots and more drinks.
For our 10th anniversary, my wife surprised me with a return trip to Sin City, and a half-dozen family members tagged along.
We arrived in the 109 F heat on our anniversary date, and proceeded to walk miles and miles and miles over the next four days as the Las Vegas in which we were married bore virtually no resemblance to the Las Vegas a decade later.
The construction scene resembles B.C., with billion-dollar hotels underway here, hundred-million-dollar renovation projects over there and brand new resorts worth billions right over there.
It is excess taken to heights unimagined.
But it is far from tacky.
You can walk through an early morning Venetian marketplace inside the aptly named Venetian.
You can escape the suffocating Vegas heat of the cramped Strip and enter the under-renovation Planet Hollywood casino (the former Aladdin) and within minutes find yourself in a Middle East locale, complete with fluctuating temperatures to mirror a sweeping skyscape so lifelike that it makes the real sky outside look fake.
One stroll through The Wynn, where my little brother stays often and plays his beloved Texas Hold ‘Em, confirms class from floor to ceiling.
Then there is the massive lake and dancing fountains outside the spectacular Bellagio, not to mention the peerless Caesar’s Palace.
But it was at The Wynn where we return to the billionaire bit that started this column.
While my little brother was winning big at the poker table (he would later place in the money in his first World Series of Poker event at the Rio), my older brother learned of an intriguing poker event somewhere else in the Wynn.
It seems Steve Wynn hosts a poker game each June to which heavyweights are invited. Word was Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Sting and NFL quarterback Tom Brady were playing.
So off went my brother in search of the game, despite my prediction that he was wasting his time.
If the richest men in the world were playing poker, how likely would it be that my brother would get near them?
The security, I added, would likely rival that afforded the president.
Well, as the photos to the left show, Foulds the elder somehow got to them, which means he would make a damn good assassin, if he would just put his mind to it.
He already snagged Richard Branson a few years earlier
While both men at the Wynn were gracious and regular folk, according to my brother, he did try his hand at charity with Buffet.
“Hey, Warren, can I have a million dollars?” he asked.
Buffet smiled at him.
“Well, I thought I’d give it a shot,” my brother added. “I mean, how many people ask you for a million bucks?”
To which Buffet replied: “A hell of a lot, kid. A hell of a lot.”
Needless to say, my brother still has his day job.
Jimmy Pattison has been warned.

Keep the NFL south of the border

2007-12-31T14:51:00.001-08:00

In Barfly, one of the greatest and underrated films ever put to celluloid, Faye Dunaway’s Wanda asks Mickey Rourke’s Henry: “Don’t you hate cops?”
To which Henry replies: “No, but I seem to feel better when they’re not around.”
Henry’s sentiment is precisely what Canadians should adopt when it comes to the possibility of the National Football League coming to Toronto.
The NFL is the most successful sports league in North America and, along with the English Premier League of soccer and Italy’s Serie A soccer league, among the most lucrative sports leagues on the planet.
The NFL is peerless when it comes to promoting its game and convincing fans even the most pedestrian matchup is The Game Of The Century.
The league can make St. Louis and Miami sound like a clash of titans.
But the NFL is not the Canadian Football League, which, in each respect save for the marketing acumen, exceeds the NFL on every square inch of the field.
The CFL has original rules that are far more fan-friendly than the bastardized version played south of the 49th.
The CFL has a history that far exceeds the NFL and a trophy — the Grey Cup is now 95 years young — that makes the Vince Lombardi Trophy (that’s the shiny thing awarded to teams that win the Super Bowl) look like a midget toddler.
The names seem to change weekly, but it appears as though Ted Rogers (of Rogers Video and Cable fame) and Larry Tanenbaum, minority owner of Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment (owner of the Toronto Maple Leafs, Toronto Raptors, Toronto FC, Toronto Marlies and a slew of real estate properties) are as close as they have ever been to convincing the NFL to consider placing a franchise in Toronto.
Whether that means an expansion team or a relocation of the Buffalo Bills (who will play two regular season games a year in Hogtown, beginning next season) remains to be seen.
Diehard football fans in Toronto would fill Rogers Centre (SkyDome) to the rafters for a mean-nothing exhibition game, so it’s a given an NFL team in Toronto would not be wanting for fans.
Toronto is, after all, the largest American city in Canada and simply exists to follow every U.S. trend — and the NFL is a huge trend. The NFL in Toronto would do nothing for the rest of Canada. A Toronto team doesn’t translate into “Canada’s Team.”
The NFL in Toronto would not kill the CFL, but it would deliver a serious wound, which is why any self-respecting CFL fan should be acting now to tell CFL commissioner Mark Cohon and his NFL counterpart Roger Goodell that the NFL should stay south of the border.
Los Angeles needs a squad and the league needs the second-largest TV market. San Antonio has a stadium and the desire for a club. Seattle would like a team (my regular joke, being a Seahawk despiser).
There are also Facebook groups dedicated to keeping the Yankees and their inferior four-down brand of pigskin.
“Say no to the NFL coming to Canada,” “Keep the NFL out of Canada,” “Keep the NFL out of Canada and keep the CFL alive,” “NFL doesn’t belong in Canada” and “No, I don’t want the NFL in Canada” are some of the groups that have been created.
Could be that letters to Cohon and Goodale and groups like the Facebook initiatives will do little to stop Toronto from plunging a stake into the heart of the Canadian Football League.
But for anybody who has ever felt the goosebumps crawl up their arms and tingle climb up their back at a playoff game in B.C. Place Stadium, it’s the least we can do.
Yes, the NFL is great — in America.

Sure, that Crosby kid's good, but . . .

2007-12-31T14:50:00.001-08:00

So you’re getting old. We all are.
There you are, cruising through life, fit as a fiddle, with blazing speed and so much time ahead that you cannot even begin to imagine the finish line.
Then you wake up and you have become your dad.
You still feel 25. Heck, you think you even look 25 (or 30, tops).
But the old man has invaded your body.
You notice that you utter his peculiar groan/grunt when you lower yourself onto the couch, as if it’s a high-aerobic act.
You notice yourself flexing your knee because, after just 20 minutes sauntering around the field with your six-year-old son’s soccer team, the pain reminds you of the time you sprained your lateral collateral ligament.
Of course, that was back when you were young and childless. And you could limp into the bar and describe to your buddies how you mangled your knee playing hockey.
And it was a true story and it elicited understanding, even admiration.
Somehow, explaining how you screwed up your 39-year-old knee by simply jogging around and field and kicking at a soccer ball with fans of Max and Ruby doesn’t carry the same manly lore.
You find yourself repeatedly telling your kids the identical tales your dad told to you when explaining why you had to do something.
Sure, you change minor aspects of the wisdom, such as the current country of woe (‘Do you know that kids in Mongolia would live for a week on those three peas on your plate?”), but the eye-rolling from the kids remains the same.
You have always been cynical of do-gooders, of those who always seem to be trying to save the planet.
So was dad, referring to Paul Watson with expletives and refusing to see the connection between air pollution and his three or four vehicles.
But then he notices the weather is all wonky, and he notices the summers are different and the falls aren’t the same, and he notices the winters are nowhere near as cold as when he was younger.
And he concedes there just might be something to this global-warming thing.
You remain skeptical of some of the outlandish claims made by Al Gore, but as you walk your kids to school on Walk To School Day, you find yourself inexplicably enraged by the sight of two fully loaded Hummers dropping their kids off at school.
You are your dad again.
Yes, all the aches and pains and grunts and groans seem to be hereditary — but there is nothing that binds you to your pop more than the National Hockey League.
You suffered through years and years and years of hearing how that Gretzky kid was all right, but he wouldn’t have lasted a period in the Original Six.
You listened politely on Saturday nights as you were told the fleet-footed Oilers, and later the peerless Penguins, would have been treated as a meal by Howe, Ferguson, Lindsay and Richard.
Then you wake up at 39 and watch as Gagner, Nilsson, Stastny, Steen and Tambellini hit the ice.
But these monickers represent the offspring of the players you remember watching only yesterday.
Your brain is telling you these guys are Dave Gagner, Kent Nilsson, Peter Stastny, Thomas Steen and Steve Tambellini.
But your younger contemporaries know them as Sam Gagner, Robert Nilsson, Paul Stastny, Alexander Steen and Jeff Tambellini.
Suddenly, 1994 really seems like more than a decade ago, although you could have sworn it was just last season that Pavel Bure performed his double-overtime miracle and Kirk McLean made that unbelievable save in Calgary, that Greg Adams beat Felix Potvin in overtime and Nathan LaFayatte hit that Game 7 post in Madison Square Garden.
You’re getting old.
And you notice this Crosby kid is pretty good.
But Sidney would have been a third-line plumber, you tell your six-year-old hockey fanatic, had he played in the halcyon days of the 1980s . . .

Egad! I've been outed! But was I ever in?

2007-12-31T14:48:00.000-08:00

Evidently, I am a lesbian. Had no idea. Was feeling fine.
Sure, I threw out the bad joke now and then about being a lesbian trapped in a man’s body (bada-bing!), but that’s about it.
So it came as a complete shock to hear my eight-year-old daughter declare me one with Ellen Degeneres, Rosie O’Donnell, Billie Jean King and most of the WNBA.
It was a routine autumn morning as I drove my observant offspring and her six-year-old brother to school and made my way to the newsroom.
As usual, the questions from the back seat were blitzing toward my two ears like a Gatlin gun during the Civil War.
If you’re eight or six, there isn’t enough time in the day to get all your questions answered.
And who better to toss your queries at than dad or mom?
On this day, I am the target and, for some reason, my daughter is discussing the practice of “two boys getting married.”
They can, she assures me.
She read it in the newspaper, where it said “gays” can be married.
Of course, the definition of marriage varies greatly between the fragile minds of eight-year-old daughter and six-year-old boy, but suffice to say, both agree there is plenty of kissing involved when two people tie the knot.
“Boys can get married,” she repeats matter-of-factly, a statement that elicits guffaws from her brother, apparently displaying an early gravitation toward the Conservative Party of Canada by ridiculing such a notion.
When boys get married, I am told by my persistent daughter, they are called “gays.”
True, I reply, before reminding her of the true definition of “gay,” back in the old days, when the world was black and white and kids actually played outside after school because we didn’t have computers and GameBoys.
She knows the word really means “happy.”
In fact, she tells me “gay” is a homonym.
But something is confusing her — I can tell as I glance in the rearview mirror and see the crinkle she gets between her big brown eyes as her mind is mulling something over.
“What is it called when two girls get married?” she asks.
“Uh, they are called, uh, lesbians,” I reply, wondering why this 0.8-kilometre drive can accommodate so much information.
“But that’s what you are!” she exclaims.
And this is where I nearly drive off the road. There I was, a man pegged as a lesbian by his ever-loving daughter.
“What???” I ask incredulously.
“You’re a lesbian, right?
“Why would you say that?”
“Because you can’t sleep. You’re a lesbian because you’re up all night.”
Ah. Right.
To a mind that is still a sponge and continues to grow and take in all sorts of incredible information, “lesbian” just might sound like “insomnia.”
So, just to confuse her a bit more, I toss out my favourite joke of all time:
“What do you get when you cross a dyslexic agnostic with insomnia?”
I get a blank stare from the daughter who apparently thinks too much.
“Someone who stays up all night wondering if there’s a dog!”
Nobody gets the punchline, though the boy starts asking about this dog I mentioned, and who owns this dog and what kind of dog it is.
Then he wonders if there is a hockey team called the Dogs because that would be a “cool” name, almost as good as the Flames.
I agree.
And, just as I welcome this digression to a manly discussion of skates and sticks and goals and bodychecks, the one who says I am a lesbian pipes up again.
“What’s agnozzzic?” she asks.
“Agnozzic?” I reply, momentarily distracted as I rack my brain for hockey teams with “Dog” in their nicknames.
“The guy who stayed up all night in your riddle. You said he was agnozzic,” detailed-oriented daughter says.
“Oh, agnostic,” I reply.
She thought I was a lesbian because I can’t sleep at night, now dear daughter wants an explanation — as we pull up to the school — of what it is to be agnostic.
At this point, I feel dyslexic in the explanation department and thank Dog when the car door opens and the kids skip off to class.
editor@kamloopsthisweek.com

A morning mired in the web of da feet

2007-12-31T14:47:00.001-08:00

You say your sweet kid's going through the nightmare of dealing with a bully at school?
Well, you haven't truly experienced the perplexity of parenthood until your daughter tells you, matter-of-factly, that she needs new "outside" shoes at school because her original pair have been stolen by a rather aggressive arachnid.
That's right. A spider - "THIS BIG!" says my seven-year-old, eyes as big as the semi-circle formed by her skinny little fingers - has apparently muscled its way into one of her scuffed black running shoes at school and will not leave.
The fact an eight-legged freeloader has chosen my daughter's dogs to set up home is interesting, to be sure.
But not as interesting as a seven-year-old's reaction to, and explanation of, the new tenant.
"Let's go!" I say one morning last week. "It's time for school. Put your shoes on and get your coat."
She bounces down the stairs, pigtails flopping and backpack jiggling.
And she reaches into the nether regions of the closet, pulling out a dusty pair of what appears to be tan . . . clogs?
I'm not sure if I missed the notice on Netherlands Day at Aberdeen elementary, so I ask.
"What are those and why are you wearing them?"
To which my daughter replies, nonchalantly, as though she was chatting about the weather: "Oh, a spider moved into my shoes at school, so I hafta wear these."
"A spider has what?" I reply, mindful of the clock ticking toward the first bell, but obviously intrigued as to the rest of the story.
"Well," says my daughter, looking down to slip on her clogs, which compel her to shuffle, rather than walk, toward the car, "when we came out for lunch yesterday, a spider THIS BIG crawled into my shoe and is living there now.
"It probably has a web and everything, so I hafta wear these.
"And mommy needs to get me new shoes 'cause the spider has mine."
No surprise. No bewilderment.
No reason to get upset.
Like all things mundane in life, this is one: sometimes, your shoes will be co-opted by Charlotte.
It's life. It happens.
Just like that.
You are born. You become a little girl. You go to school. You lose a baby tooth. You play with friends. You learn to read and write. You lose your shoes to a spider. You fight with your little brother. You go to birthday parties. You listen to your teacher. You try hard at swimming and skating lessons. You prepare for Grade 2.
All of the above being sensible events to a seven-year-old, one not worth more analysis than another.
So off to school we go, me carrying the Lil' Bratz backpack, my Shoeless Jolene offspring stutter-stepping across the parking lot like it's closing time - clunk, shuffle, stumble; clunk, shuffle, stumble.
Of course, when your morning begins with a tale of a shoe spiderjacking, chances are events will continue to unfold accordingly.
Having offered to "shake that spider" out of her shoe - and, perhaps, give it a good spanking, too - we approach the scene of the crime (or, at least, contravention of some obscure part of the Residential Tenancy Act).
"Where do you keep your shoes?" I ask as I place her backpack into her locker and scan the pair of shoes lined up in the hallway outside her classroom.
"Right there," she says, pointing to the line of shoes. But her runners are nowhere to be seen.
Not in the hall, where she last saw the spider take up residence; not in any locker; not in the school's lost and found.
Maybe, I think to myself, the spider really was THIS BIG.
After all, her classmates attest to its size.
"Oh, it was THIS BIG!" they tell me, each one forming different-size circles with their hands and fingers.
Again, interestingly enough, it is the spider's girth - and not its decision to sublet the shoe - that truly fascinates the kids.
Alas, her footwear appeared the next day, sans spider, and soon enough the clogs were back in the closet.
Which reminds me - if you know an eight-legged homeless sort looking for a pad with a rear sundeck and wooden floors, give me a call.

Hockey is a game of X's, O's — and whys

2007-12-31T14:45:00.001-08:00

Based on diagrams in dressing rooms across the country, hockey is a game of X's and O's.
When you trek into an arena with your grade-school daughter and son, however, you quickly realize it's also a game of whys.
"Why do they look like robbers?" asked the boy during our first visit to see the Kamloops Storm defend the integrity of the Tournament Capital, as his five-year-old mind watched the three stripe-clad officials warm up.
"Why are they stopping?" asked the girl during yet another offside call.
"Why is that man putting the puck in his mouth?" the boy asked, wide-eyed and pointing to the player's bench, where, yes, a player was indeed testing the frozen rubber with his teeth during another break in the action, which, of course, prompted the girl to ask, again: "Now why are they stopping?"
As any parent can attest, bringing the kids to an event can generate more questions than posed in a game of Trivial Pursuit.
And answering queries about the coolest game on earth can be mighty difficult.
When the seven-(and a half, she will point out, as she flashes a smile that looks like Stonehenge, such is the jumbled mass of incoming adult teeth vying for space with the Chiclet-sized baby whites)-year-old daughter asks for an explanation of the tag-up offside rule, explaining the meaning of life seems like a snap.
The questions come in a flurry, making dad feel like a goaltender facing a perpetual five-on-three power play.
"Why is the Kamloops man in the penalty box?"
"Why is the referee doing that with his hands?"
"Why can't we have another chocolate bar?"
The questions never end.
Just when you feel like committing a bench minor so you can get two minutes' respite in the sin bin, salvation arrives in the form of a buzzer and the roar of an engine.
Thank God for the Zamboni, a California-born machine whose contribution to the great game of hockey has been to give parents a much-needed rest between periods as much as it has been to create a shimmering sheet of endless shinny possibilities.
The Zamboni crosses genders in its appeal to kids.
Boys and girls, toddlers and pre-teens, they all simply sit in awe as the perplexing machine performs its predictable ritual three times a game.
And the kids need not question what is actually the one thing at a hockey game that should be eliciting questions.
How did Frank Zamboni first get the idea for the machine? Why is it shaped so oddly? How fast can it go? How, exactly, does it work? Do you need a licence to drive one? How many exist?
These are my whys, but the kids have no need for answers.
They are content to sit and watch the grand old ice cleaner do its thing, accepting, it seems, Zamboni as Zen. It just is.
And the Zamboni driver?
Well, he's Superman, Spider-Man, Batman. He's every superhero wrapped into one, the object of envy in the pre-teen set.
But the Zamboni's job is soon done, and the game resumes.
As do the questions, which become less concerned with the on-ice action as the clock ticks past the bedtime hour.
From the girl: "Why does the clock go backwards? How come our clocks at home don't do that?"
From the boy: "Why is there a net up there? It looks like a giant spider web - (pause) - are there spiders in here?"
Which leads to the obvious follow-up: "If there were spiders here, would they eat the players? Or would they be good spiders?"
Meanwhile, the Storms, as the boy calls them, have scored again to take a 4-2 lead over archrival Sicamous.
The kids know enough to clap when this happens - and to boo and hiss when the "bad Eagle guys" score, as their dad beams with pride - almost by rote.
But the goal this night is not to fill the net, but to fill their minds with answers.
With a week to recover, we are ready for another night of X's, O's - and the all-important whys - this weekend.

Katrina was tragic — and the Hip knew it

2007-12-31T14:41:00.000-08:00

It was, of course, foretold by Nostredame, the 16th century Frenchman seen as a prophet or seer by some and as a wingnut by the sane
Yes, the devastatingly destructive hurricane Katrina was on the psychic weather radar 400-odd years ago, and the horror in New Orleans may have been averted had the powers-that-be simply realized the following quatrain predicted the carnage of the storm
"The year seven of the great number being past
"There shall be seen the sports of the ghostly sacrifice,
"Not far from the great age of the millennium,
"That the buried shall come out of their graves.
True believers point to the first line as landing us here in 2005, the seventh year including 1999, which is the great number. They link the NFL Saints to "sports of the ghostly sacrifice," noting most saints are martyrs
The third line, the Nostradamites say, is self-explanatory, while the final sentence, say they, proves their man predicted the problem one encounters when a category 3 hurricane meets a city built below sea level
So, had President George W. Bush and the FEMA folks simply paid more attention to Michel de Nostredame and less attention to Saddam Hussein, the tragedy in the Big Easy would have been minimized, right
Not so fast, my salivating psychic pals
Apparently, even studying Nostradamus would have been futile because a greater entity was involved
That's right - hurricane Katrina was thrust upon New Orleans by no less a force than God Himself in order to purge wickedness from the famously decadent city, according to a happy little website called RepentAmerica.com
In the eyes of Rev. Bill Shanks, pastor of New Covenant Fellowship of New Orleans, the creator came down on New Orleans because of its abortion clinics, its annual Mardis Gras celebration and the yearly Southern Decadence gay pride event
"New Orleans now is abortion-free. New Orleans now is Mardi Gras-free. New Orleans now is free of Southern Decadence and the sodomites, the witchcraft workers, false religion. It's free of all of those things now," Shanks is quoted as saying
And only a few thousand innocent people not involved in abortions, not involved in Mardi Gras and not involved in Southern Decadence had to be sacrificed
Makes one wonder what the hell they did in Southeast Asia to incur such wrath last Boxing Day
Makes one yearn for the good old days, when people were merely turned into pillars of salt for pissing off the Almighty
Well, it is the age of collateral damage and all that
Still others dismiss alleged 16th century seers and God as having anything to do with hurricane Katrina
However, Mother Nature isn't blamed, either
Nope. To this group, Katrina was a regular storm - until mortal forces of evil (read: Bush and his band of Republicans) used technology to create a massive hurricane to unleash on the Gulf Coast
Why? According to the wacky Conspiracy Planet website, it's all about covering up malfeasance in Washington and lining the pockets of the prez and company
An excerpt: "Did the Shadow Government decide to sacrifice an entire city, New Orleans, to cover up the coming news of Bush fraud and bribery and in order to further rig the price of oil? Weather engineering includes the blow-up of small hurricanes into large ones. The technology is zealously denied by so-called meteorologists and physicists, but it exists anyhow.
They're serious
Nobody could make this stuff up
Except, of course, the crowd that believes in the Illuminati, black helicopters in Montana and a federal Conservative victory in our lifetime
Surprisingly, to my shock and patriotic dismay, I have yet to hear that hockey puck rock forecast the disaster in the South
For conspirators needed only to plug in the Tragically Hip's seminal 1989 album, Up To Here, and listen to the third track, aptly titled, New Orleans Is Sinking, to have gauged the future
"My memory is muddy, what's this river I'm in
New Orleans is sinking and I don't want to swim.
Farfetched? Perhaps.
But if Canadian musicians can sing about tragedies past (Gordon Lightfoot's take on The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald), why not of disasters to come>
In any event, it beats crediting Nostradamus, or blaming God.

Alas, Les Expos have struck out

2007-12-31T14:39:00.001-08:00

With apologies to Ernest Lawrence Thayer:
"Oh, somewhere in la Belle province, the freeze is now in sight;
Loria's laughing somewhere; at the Big O hearts are light;
In D.C. men are laughing, in Milwaukee Selig does shout;
But there is no joy in Montreal - our beloved Expos have struck out."
Yesterday, Youppi clowned around Olympic Stadium in Montreal for the last time.
As Canada's team (don't even think about mentioning those inferior Toronto Blue Jays) got set to play its last ever game at home, Major League Baseball had confirmed that the Expos will be moving to Washington, D.C. next season.
The ironies of this sad situation are many:
n Montreal played its last home game last night against the Florida Marlins, the Miami-based team owned by the duplicitous and dastardly Jeffrey Loria, the man who - along with evil stepson David Samson - had purchased the Expos a few years ago, only to run the team into the ground in an attempt to move the franchise. When that gambit failed, the suspect art dealer managed to convince MLB to agree to a club-swapping deal that resulted in Loria getting the Marlins and the Expos becoming an orphan in the custody of the remaining teams.
n The demise of Les Expos comes exactly 10 years to the month that Montreal won its only World Series.
Well, OK, a player's strike wiped out the season, with commissioner Bud Selig officially cancelling everything on Sept. 14, 1994. But when the players went on strike in August, the Expos were the best team in baseball, with a peerless record and a dominant roster riding fate's fastball to October glory.
But for the strike, baseball's multi-flagged championship trophy would have anchored an October parade down Rue Ste. Catherines.
n Montreal is moving to Washington, D.C., which happens to be the home of the last Major League Baseball team to pull up bases and venture to greener outfields.
In fact, Washington holds the dubious distinction of losing two major league teams within a decade. In 1971, at the end of their second stint in the nation's capital, the Washington Senators moved west to Arlington, Tex., where today they are known as the Rangers. The original Senators had abandoned Washington in 1961 to become the Minnesota Twins.
n (Here's where left wing conspiracy theorists can lunge for the home run):
Montreal is moving to Washington, D.C., which, as mentioned above, was the original home of the Texas Rangers.
The Rangers were once co-owned by a gent named George Walker Bush, a man whose lifelong wish was to become MLB commish.
"I never dreamed about being president," Bush once said. "I wanted to be Willie Mays."
When the commissioner dream died, Bush settled for being governor of Texas and, later, president of the United States.
Now Bush's hometown - the very place that gave birth to his beloved Rangers - is getting a big league ball club.
Coincidence?
Think again, when considering this quote from the man whose foreign policy may be debatable, but whose trade of Sammy Sosa to the White Sox is not.
"It's hard for me to envision a 'true World Series' (one played with teams from around the world) at this point in time. More likely, American teams will attract more foreign talent, like they've done in the Caribbean."

Snoopy losing his Joe Cool to technology

2007-12-31T14:37:00.001-08:00

Snoopy's not cool?
Say it ain't so, Charlie Brown!
Ah, but according to my five-year-old daughter, the enduring Peanuts characters, led by that coolest of canines, just can't compete with today's fare on Treehouse, YTV and Family Channel.
There I was on Tuesday, cleaning up after dinner and telling said daughter and her younger brother that bed-time would be extended an hour so they could join me in watching A Charlie Brown Christmas.
Oh, the boy loved it, for he isn't quite hip to the differences in animation that separates Snoopy from Shrek.
But to his sister, watching Snoopy snatch Linus' blanket, then steal a kiss from Lucy - all to the addictive Peanuts theme song - was akin to going to the dentist.
"This is from the fifties!" she complained, using her now-ubiquitous reference of disdain for anything not modern by her standards.
"Look!" she said, a frown on her face and her arms crossed. "Their lips don't move when they talk! And they don't have teeth!"
"But," I countered, "you like to watch Bugs Bunny and Tweety Bird. That's also 'from the fifties.'"
Apparently not, according to the pop culture guru I have spawned.
"No, it's not," she replied. "Bugs Bunny is from this world!"
As good 'ol Charlie Brown himself would say, "Oh, brother."
Charlie Brown's dog has survived for decades.
That loveable beagle from the Daisy Hill Puppy Farm has become a cartoon favourite for generations of kids.
How could my own flesh and blood not warm to Snoopy, Pigpen, Schroeder and Sally, and instead - while still in kindergarten - prefer Lizzie McGuire, Spongebob Squarepants and other less-than-traditional fare?
How can Peanuts be a boring cartoon "from the fifties" when they are as fabulous to her dad today as they were when he was her age? Call it progress, I guess.
Yes, progress has chipped away at Charles Schulz's magnificent creation.
My "fifties"-disdaining daughter can handle a computer mouse with the dexterity of a Microsoft employee, giving her untold treats at myriad kids' Web sites.
She wrinkles her nose and considers I may be fibbing when I tell her we didn't have computers when I was a little boy.
She asks me what my favourite show was on "five-six" - her way of referring to channel 56, Treehouse - when I was her age.
And her mouth opens in astonishment when I tell her our TV topped out at channel 13.
We read books every night; finally, an activity that can link generations without technology interrupting the process. That is, until we open a Leapfrog book. And she cannot begin to understand how her dad lived without one of these cool talking books when he was a little boy.
So, too many fancy options have, apparently, rendered Snoopy and company irrelevant, in the mind of a five-year-old.
But, as he appeared on my sweatshirt and lunchbox in Grades 1, 2 and 3, Snoopy will forever be Joe Cool to me.

The great Bob Hope dies — again

2007-12-31T14:36:00.001-08:00

The first time Bob Hope died, a Vancouver TV newsreader called it "tragic news."
She didn't say what the legendary comedian thought about this.
It seems he was too busy eating breakfast at his California home to worry about his demise.
The date was June 5, 1998. The lunchtime news was on and the newsreader looked down at a piece of paper thrust at her, and back at me through the camera - all this while in the middle of a story outlining yet more deaths in yet another earthquake in Afghanistan.
"This just in," the newsreader imparted, clearly jarred from the comfort of following words on the teleprompter.
"We have tragic news from Los Angeles. Comedian Bob Hope has died at the age of 95."
This California "tragedy" dutifully followed by the all-important quick inhale, brief smack of the lips and slight shaking of the head that is intended to convey to us, the Great Unwashed, that this particular newsreader is personally saddened by the death of a man who has eluded the Grim Reaper for more than nine decades; a man she likely has never met.
Ah, but the newsreader's heavy heart would be lightened considerable the next day when the world learned that the great comedian had not, in fact, died, despite the best attempts of that marvel known as the Internet.
It may seem ghoulish, but the lifetime accomplishments and disappointments, trials and tribulations, feats and scandals of almost every single famous person in the world can be published within seconds of their deaths.
This information is written and waiting in computer banks in newsrooms all over the world - call them on-deck obituaries - to be published the moment said famous person perishes.
It may seem creepy, but the public demands information NOW.
What better way to satisfy that thirst than to have one's entire life updated to the nanosecond?
Anyway, it seems that on that June 5, 1998, some computer wizard at Associated Press accidentally posted the prepared obituary of Bob Hope on the AP Web page. An editor from some paper in the U.S. saw it, got excited and used it as gospel.
Before you could say, "Stop the Internet!", the "tragic" news of Hope's death was downloaded, printed and thrust at the befuddled newsreader in Vancouver.
We are quite sure news this week of the death of Bob Hope is accurate.
But, still, there remains absolutely nothing remotely "tragic" about the death of any 95-year-old (or centenarian, for that matter), much less a very wealthy, incredibly famous man who had the unbelievable good fortune of having his wife join him as they miraculously dodged death as they approached the century mark.
(Unless, of course, the 95-year-old or 100-year-old Bob Hope died mere hours before science announced a cure for aging and death.
Now, I guess that would be somewhat tragic, yet comical, in a Bob Hope/Bing Crosby road movie sort-of-way).

Normalcy is but a putt away

2007-12-31T14:35:00.002-08:00

Amid the loopiness that is the world at this moment, a weekend of sporting bliss is exactly what some of us need now and then.
And this past weekend, the gods of trivial pursuits gave their Canadian couch congregation the pure, unadulterated, vicarious thrill that sliced through the rhetoric of Rumsfeld and drove past the depressing diagnosis of yet another SARS case, leaving us with a flesh and bone Mighty Mouse staking his claim as one of the greatest golfers in the world.
There are always those who point to world crises and back at what they see as the utter banality of pro sports and wonder how anybody could pay attention to such insignificance while wars rage and disease spreads.
What they fail to realize is the answer lies in their argument.
It is precisely because of man’s determination to enslave himself in a shroud of misery that diversions such as spectator sports are not only welcome, but absolutely essential.
For one afternoon, through the historic fairways of Augusta, countless duffers and non-golfers alike in Canada had a chance to connect with a fellow countryman and his quest to tame what is among the most difficult rides in all of sports.
And when Mike Weir, all 155 pounds of the Ontario-bred southpaw, waited as the great Tiger Woods slid that magical green jacket on to his slender shoulders in a small town in Dixie, even the most cynical had to see the majesty of his feat.
Those who did not, could not or would not are no doubt fretting as we speak, obsessing over the latest global calamity.
They can have their Blitzer, al-Jazeera and bunker busters. For one weekend at least, I’ll take birdies, Amen Corner and the Butler Lodge.
No, Weir’s accomplishment Sunday – and the sheer thrill in the manner in which it came about – is not more important than the latest news to emerge from Iraq.
It pales in comparison to what scientists have yet to uncover in their study of the coronavirus.
But for an average schlep barricaded inside a suburban house by sheets and sheets of rain on an April Sunday afternoon, Weir’s wild ride gave one hope – gave one a jolt – to believe that the bland routine of life amid the cacophony of battles and politics can be thrilling in itself.
And, if those darn clouds would only part, normalcy is but a putt away.

Of God, Baby Jesus and Amen

2007-12-31T14:35:00.001-08:00

It has been the end-of-day ritual since she was able to sit up and help turn the pages of one of those baby books with cardboard-like binding.
We would take her out of the bath and give her a bottle of milk, then sit on the couch and read the bedtime story. Dr. Seuss’s Green Eggs and Ham was a favourite, but didn’t come close to Are You My Mother? for the sheer fun of making strange noises with our voices: Choo-choo! Vrooom! Quack! Quack! and Moo!
At 2, she moved to a “big girl bed” from the confines of the crib, which also necessitated graduating in the book department.
We traded Goodnight Moon for sillier stories, trading point-and-speak pages for honest-to-goodness tales of how Wednesdays can be wacky, not to mention the mess that mounts if you give a moose a muffin.
Then, in the blink of an eye that passes between birth and pre-school, esoteric questions began fermenting in her four-year-old mind.
One week, she’s fascinated with the possibility there really is a dinosaur who works with Daddy.
The next, she’s positively indignant at the thought: “Da-deeeeee!” she says, rolling her eyes – and her e’s – in exasperation at just how sadly misinformed her pop can be.
“Dinosaurs died a long time ago!”
Pre-school arrives and the world explodes with new stuff.
Twice a week for an entire school year, she is now a “big girl,” going to school like the older friends with whom she plays every day.
And, somehow, somewhere within this new world, the question of our very existence, the question that has forever consumed mankind, has entered her sponge-like mind – and, as any parent who has been there will attest, it’s enough to make you rediscover the wonder that is a smile.
At the same time, the naked innocence of the queries are enough to break your heart in two.
And so it was Monday night, following a quick reading of a Berenstain Bears adventure, that we turned off the lamp, clicked on the night light and hunkered down to perform her favourite ritual.
Yes, we are praying.
She and her mom started doing it months ago, so I carry the torch when I become storyteller.
She begins each prayer, every night, with the exact same line:
“Dear Jesus . . .” and ends each prayer, every night, with the exact same line: “In Baby Jesus’ name. Amen.”
In between, she gives thanks for “the sunny day,” for “playing with her friends,” for her “baby brother” and for her “mommy and daddy.”
But on this night, she has questions. Oh, she has questions.
“Is Amen Baby Jesus’ last name?”
“No,” says I, treading carefully since the big question is far from being resolved in my mind. “It kind of means, ‘thanks’ at the end.”
“Is Baby Jesus a boy?”
“Yes.”
Of course, the questions only get more difficult for a dad who doesn’t quite know what the heck he believes and struggles daily with the Big Question.
“Is Baby Jesus God?
“Um, well . . . yeah . . . God is Baby Jesus’ daddy.”
“Is God in the sky?”
“Yes, he’s in the clouds. He’s in heaven. He’s everywhere.”
“Is God a girl? I think (she pronounces it ‘sink’) God’s a girl.”
“Uh, er, well, maybe. But I think he’s a daddy. Baby Jesus is a little boy and God’s his parent, his daddy.”
“Then Amen can be the mommy?”
“Exactly.”

The Drink That Stole Christmas

2007-12-29T23:37:00.000-08:00

Compared to our family tradition, the Grinch was a veritable Santa.
But we had more fun than a village full of Whos after finding a heart for the grouchy one.
Growing up in a home where the front door — and various bottles — were open to one and all, the festive Christmas season had a tendency to take a turn for the wacky every so often.
“Every so often” being a euphemism for “annually.”
Actually, Christmas at the Foulds abode wasn’t that bad, though the memory of each Yuletide year as I passed through the ’70s and ’80s remains obscured by the haze of cigarette smoke and the wonderful din of Elvis Presley’s Blue Christmas and Moody Blue albums — the latter being an actual blue vinyl album, which remains a marvel to this day in relation to MP3 players and IPODs that have all the creativity of a square peg.
And so it was that Christmas just wasn’t Christmas until the tree got knocked out by family or friend — or both — with the help of a tag-team partner named Shmirnoff or Labatt.
The tree always survived — what doesn’t kill you makes you flocker — as did the bond between the battling brothers, sisters or best friends.
As we grew out of our teens and into adulthood, the socializing aspect of the holiday superceded the gift-giving focus.
And it wasn’t long before, on any given Dec. 25, sister #1 would be offended by something brother #3 did or said, which would be followed by a defence of brother #3 by brother #2, which would compel brother #4 to offer his two cents, which would then be challenged by sister #2, whose comments would be taken to task by brother #1.
Of course, mom, ensconsed in her throne on the nook, would attempt to mediate, her voice competing poorly with Elvis in a battle for attention.
“Chris! Darryl! Leah! Ricky, Shane, DEB!” she would shout until she finally nailed the name of the kid she wanted to yell at.
And it was always the last name to leave her lips.
But The King would invariably drown her out, resulting in a dialogue that would simply confuse the mess even more.
“Debbie! Stop being so selfish! Decorations of red on a green Christmas tree. And Shane! Don’t be so mean to your sister! That’s when those blue memories start calling. You kids shouldn’t fight so damn much! You’ll be doin’ all right with your Christmas of white. Now, Leah! Get me another drink!”
As usual, we didn’t know if we were being yelled at by Elvis or serenaded by mom.
And dad?
Well, dad would be in his easy chair in the living room, mere feet from the tortured tree, watching the football game and shaking his head.
When you quit drinking and smoking at the same time decades earlier, who needs reality TV when you have the family Foulds during the holidays?
And this is why brother #1, Rick, decided the ever-present star just wouldn’t do for our tree.
No sir.
The battered foilage that spread its protective awning over assorted presents and withstood prodigious party pugilism deserved a crown befitting its stature.
And thus was born The Drink That Stole Christmas, a breathtaking green and red martini glass, complete with an olive, hand-cut from hardy construction paper.
The Drink That Stole Christmas spent many a December atop the tree in Casa Foulds, its malleable body suffering the stains and rips and assorted assaults dished out during a routine Christmas.
I pulled it out of a box a few years ago, not long after mom died.
It was in pretty good shape, as is the clan over which it presided.
Though we siblings rarely see each other today — flung as we are around the continent — when we do manage to get together, it is comforting to know a drag-’em-out fight is a near-certainty.
Just add Elvis and eggnog.
Merry Christmas.