september 17, maple ridge-pitt meadows news
TRANSCRIPT
Seeking liberation
Council to decide on Harris Rd. pool. p13Radio Haney
Maple Ridge diff erent by default. p6
Photographs of a girl being raped at a Pitt Meadows rave are spreading across on the In-ternet.
The 16-year-old was gang-raped in fi eld by fi ve to seven men – some adults and other teens – at “Another Night in Bangkok,” a party held on a
farm at 12993 Harris Road, Fri-day night.
A 16-year-old boy was arrested Tuesday for distributing child porn.
He allegedly took photographs of the rape on his cell phone and distributed them to friends, who then posted them to Facebook.
Police have fi led a report to Crown for charges against him, which have yet to be laid.
The gang-rape and distribu-tion of graphic photographs has shocked even seasoned investi-gators.
“The very public discussion
about this victim and the tak-ing and subsequent sharing of photos depicting this rape is disgusting, morally corrupt and criminal,” said Sgt. Jennifer Hyland, the offi cer in charge of Ridge Meadows RCMP’s serious crime unit.
Police knew the party was set to take place and checked on the event Friday night, but found nothing amiss.
A previous party called “A night in Bangkok” had been hosted at a barn on the same property two weeks before.
Police said the people who
live in the home had allowed two young men to use the prop-erty for a party, for which they charged $10 in advance and $15 at the door.
The registered owners of the property who own lots of farm-land in Pitt Meadows said they had no idea the party.
16-year-old boy arrested for distributing pictures
THE NEWS
Girl gang-raped at Pitt rave
Colleen Flanagan/THE NEWS
Dave Ius is going to Cabo San Lucas for a new MS treatment not available in Canada.
Mornings for Dave Ius are bitterly slow.
After overcoming the crushing fatigue that attempts to pin him to his bed, he walks cautiously from his bedroom into the nearby kitchen in his small one-bedroom apartment in Maple Ridge, grasping at the walls and counters to steady himself.
His hands shake.His legs shake.His eyes struggle to focus on
his surroundings.“Everything is methodically
planned out,” he says, sighing as he carefully lowers himself into a chair, then digs into a yogurt container full of granola, his fingers trembling as they clumsily clutch the spoon.
Ius suffers from mult iple sclerosis.
See MS, p3
See Rape, p10
Friday, September 17, 2010 · Serving Maple Ridge & Pitt Meadows · est. 1978 · 604-467-1122 · 50¢www.mapleridgenews.com
Gardening
The return of the bud bloomers.p33
Opinion 6
Radio Haney 6
Parenting 30
Acts of Faith 32
Home&gardening 33
Community Calendar 55
Scoreboard 61
Index
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b y M o n i s h a M a r t i n sstaff repor ter
Contributed
RCMP Sgt. Jennifer Hyland and Insp. Derren Lench speak at a press conference about a rave in Pitt Meadows where a 16-year-old girl was gang-raped. Police want anyone who attended the rave to contact investigators so they can get a clear picture of what happened at the event and afterwards.
S t o r y b y R o b e r t M a n g e l s d o r f
While his mind has remained sharp, his body has turned against him. The disease triggers the body’s auto-immune system, forc-ing it to attack the body’s nervous system, specifi cally the protective covering that wraps around the nerves of the central nervous sys-tem, called the myelin sheath.
He is one of close to 75,000 Cana-dians with the disease – one that presently has no cure.
Though not considered fatal it-self, the disease can cause chronic pain, bowl and bladder failure, muscle spasms and speech diffi cul-ties.
“It isolates you,” says the divorced father of three. “I have a lot of fam-ily, so I’m one of the lucky ones, but some people with this disease, they aren’t so fortunate.”
Suicide is not uncommon for MS sufferers as their symptoms wors-en and they lose control of their own body.
However, a new medical proce-dure is providing hope for some MS sufferers, like Ius, but whether that hope is founded remains to be seen.
Developed by Dr. Paolo Zamboni, a professor of medicine at the Uni-versity of Ferrara in Italy, the new treatment, called “the liberation procedure,” represents a radical departure in how MS is under-stood.
According to Zamboni’s theory, the auto-immune response is trig-gered by iron deposits in the brain. Constricted veins in the neck, par-ticularly the internal jugular and azygos veins, prevent blood from properly draining from the brain, instead causing blood to pool, which in turn leaves the deposits of iron.
Zamboni dubbed the condition “chronic cerebrospinal venous insuffi ciency”, or CCSVI, and its treatment, which was fi rst per-formed on his own wife, is rela-tively simple. Similar to an angio-plasty, the liberation procedure involves infl ating a small balloon inside the constricted vein to clear the blockage and allow for proper drainage.
In Zamboni’s initial trial, which was neither controlled, nor ran-domized, 65 MS patients underwent the procedure, with more than 70 per cent showing decreased MS symptoms.
Zamboni’s theory has turned the generally accepted understanding of MS on its head, suggesting the disease is a vascular condition and not a neurological one.
“Basically, it’s a plumbing prob-lem, instead of an electrical one,” says Ius.
For many MS sufferers like Ius, the procedure offers the potential
to get his life back.“I started crying,” Ius says of
when he fi rst learned of the proce-dure nearly a year ago. “I couldn’t believe it. It fi t so perfectly, and made perfect sense.”
Ius was eight years old when he fi rst noticed his symptoms. It was early summer, and he was play-ing in the front yard of his family’s home in North Vancouver. Sud-denly, he couldn’t feel the ground beneath his feet, and his world started spinning and he fell to the ground.
Ius called to his mother, who chalked up the dizzy spell to a fe-ver.
“Why would you ever think it was anything else?” says Ius. “MS is the
furthest thing from your mind.”As Ius grew older, the episodes
became more frequent, and more frustrating.
A feeling like an electrical pulse would shoot down his legs periodi-cally. His fi ngers would go numb, and he would experience a sensa-tion like a large belt being pulled tight around his midsection. He began having trouble with depth perception, and would suffer bouts of vertigo.
As a competitive athlete, the ef-fects became apparent whether he was boxing, skiing, playing base-ball or tennis.
“I’d be playing tennis, and I would swing at the ball, but it was two feet in front of me,” he says. “I didn’t know what was happening to me.”
By the time he was 17, his life was falling apart.
Working as a joinery apprentice in the shipyards of the North Shore, he began accidently hitting himself in the hands, and once fell down an open stairwell. A skiing accident shredded the ligaments in his left knee. A motorcycle accident sent Ius over the handle bars when he couldn’t hold a turn. A car accident left him in constant pain.
“Everyone around me was losing confi dence in me,” says Ius. “So I tried to mask it, with booze and drugs.”
It didn’t work.His body was failing him and
he was powerless to do anything
about it. In the back of his mind, Ius suspected it might be MS. His sister Teresa had suffered from MS for years.
“I was in denial,” he says.But when, at the age of 26, Ius was
fi nally diagnosed with the progres-sive form of the disease, all he felt was relief.
“It was a huge relief to be diag-nosed,” he says.
He fi nally had answer and under-standing of what was happening to his body.
“But there wasn’t anything they could do for me.”
Thanks to the liberation proce-dure, for the fi rst time Ius says he has hope for recovery, as well as an understanding of the disease itself.
But while the procedure is con-ducted in private clinics in more than 40 countries worldwide, and is available through the public health care system in Kuwait, it is current-ly unavailable in Canada.
In order to undergo the proce-dure, Ius is paying close to $15,000 to fl y to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico to have it performed in a private clinic next month. The surgery takes less than an hour, after which he will spend the next 10 days recuperat-ing under observation before fl y-ing home.
He is one of a growing number of MS sufferers who are leaving the country to have the procedure.
Mark Semple president of Pass-port Medical, a Maple Ridge-based
company with offi ces in Vancouver that specializes in medical tour-ism, estimates that more than 98 per cent of the company’s business has come MS sufferers seeking the liberation procedure, with more than 200 customers fl ying to Costa Rica for the treatment in the past few months.
“By Christmas, I imagine we’ll have had around 600,” says Sem-ple.
He has personally witnessed 40 patients undergo the procedure, and has seen the positive results fi rst hand.
“I’m not a snake oil salesman,” says Semple. “I have to manage people’s expectations somewhat, because this is not a cure.”
Although the procedure corrects the fl ow of blood draining from the brain, it does nothing to remove the iron deposits themselves.
“When someone who was bound to a wheelchair gets up and walks, you can’t tell me that it’s a placebo effect,” says Semple. “I’ve seen miracles.”
However, clinical trials in Canada could still be years away.
While Zamboni’s initial fi nd-ings, published in the Journal for Vascular Surgery last December, concluded that the pilot study war-ranted a subsequent randomized control study, the Canadian Insti-tute for Health Research decided two weeks ago it was premature to conduct such clinical testing in Canada.
“There was unanimous agree-ment from the scientifi c experts that it is premature to support pan-Canadian clinical trials on the proposed liberation procedure,” said Dr. Alain Beaudet, CIHR pres-ident.
“There is an overwhelming lack of scientifi c evidence on the safety and effi cacy of the procedure, or even that there is any link between blocked veins and MS.”
In an effort to help provide that evidence, the MS Society of Canada and the United States have provid-ed $2.4 million to fund preliminary research into CCSVI so far.
‘Problem is plumbing, not electrical’
Colleen Flanagan/THE NEWS
(Above) Steve Robinson, left, and Dave Ius both have MS and meet regularly to discuss it; (below) Robinson’s T-shirt.
MS from front
See MS, p4
“There was unanimous agreement from the scientific experts that it is premature to support pan-Canadian clinical trials on the proposed liberation procedure.” Dr. Alain Beaudet, CIHR president
One such study is be-ing conducted at the University of British Columbia’s MS clinic by neurologist Dr. Tony Traboulsee, who is seek-ing to develop a gold standard for the process of radiological scanning to detect the blocked veins, according to Su-zette Jay, spokesperson for the MS Society of Canada’s B.C./Yukon branch.
“MS is one of these ar-eas where Canada can be a world leader,” said Jay.
“Canada has one of the highest MS rates in the world.”
Jay said she expects preliminary reports of the fi rst round of re-search to be available in about six months.
For many frustrated MS sufferers, that’s too long.
“Everyone in the world is doing it except Canada,” says Ius. “The medical community in Canada has put up a brick wall.”
Last month the prov-ince of Saskatchewan, which has the highest per capita rate of MS in Canada, promised to fund clinical trials, pend-
ing research proposals. Earlier this week, the
province of Newfound-land and Labrador agreed to fund research to study MS sufferers who opt to receive the treatment out-of-coun-try.
“We’re eager to take part in clinical trials to test the idea. After all, we want a cure, and we want it now,” said Jay. “There are many people on staff who have MS, or have loved ones with MS.”
However, she noted, there is an established procedure to be followed to research any new medical procedure or technique, and that will take time.
“We understand that it’s not happening as fast as some people would like, but [the research] is going as fast as it can,” she said.
While the MS Society of Canada doesn’t en-dorse the treatment, it has set up a web page to help walk MS suffer-
ers through the decision of whether to leave the country for surgery.
Should the procedure prove effective, there could be a huge econom-ic benefi t.
Many MS sufferers are on long-term disability and require thousands of dollars of medications every month, costing the government millions of dollars.
However, there is far from consensus in the medical community as to whether Zamboni’s theory has merits.
The scientifi c journal Annals of Neurology warned in March of this year there could be risks involved with the libera-tion procedure.
“At present, invasive and potentially danger-ous endovascular proce-dures as therapy for pa-tients with MS should be discouraged until such studies have been com-pleted, analyzed, and debated in the scientifi c arena,” stated the policy piece, penned by a group leading North American and European neurolo-gists.
According to the MS Society of Canada, com-plications from the sur-gery include possible heart attack or stroke from the dislodging of blood clots, as well as bleeding, bruising, and infection.
The results of a Ger-man study published last month in Annals of Neurology downplayed the connection between CCSVI and MS symp-toms. Of the 56 MS pa-tients in the study, all but one had normal cranial blood fl ow and drainage.
“Our results challenge the hypothesis that cere-bral venous congestion plays a signifi cant role in the pathogenesis [de-velopment] of MS,” the study stated.
For Ius, the contro-versy underscores the importance of moving to
clinical trials as soon as possible.
“We need to fi nd out,” he says. “One way or an-other, we need to know if this works, or if we shouldn’t be getting our hopes up.”
Ius went on long-term disability more than 10 years ago, and he hopes that after the procedure he might be able to re-turn to work someday, and get back into the sports he grew up loving to play.
The athletic streak runs in his family. His cousin Chris was an Olympic boxer. His son Matt played for the Ever-ett Silvertips and Chilli-wack Bruins of the West-ern Hockey League.
“To play tennis again,” he says. “That would be amazing.”
Ius’s friends and fam-ily held a fundraiser last weekend to help raise money for his pro-cedure. More than 150 people came out for the event, held at a friend’s house in Maple Ridge, helping to raise more than $10,000.
Ius meets almost daily with other local MS suf-ferers at the Starbucks at Westgate Mall in Maple Ridge. There the liberation procedure is a near constant topic of conversation.
Lance Bannister is headed to Costa Rica next month for the proce-dure. He owns a graphic design and marketing fi rm in Vancouver, but has had step back from the business as his symptoms worsened in the past two years.
“I’m looking forward to working again,” says Bannister. “I have a 14-year-old son, and I haven’t been able to be in his life as much as I would like in the last year.”
Steve Robinson was diagnosed with MS in 1980 and is currently trying to raise the more than $10,000 needed to undergo the liberation procedure in Costa Rica.
Robinson, who co-founded the Alouette Field Naturalists, now gets around on a custom-made tricycle which he has fi tted with a small motor, so he can cruise along the dikes in Pitt Meadows.
“It almost sounds too good to be true,” says Ius of the procedure. “But right now, it’s all we have.”
MS from p3
‘It almost sounds to good to be true’
Colleen Flanagan/THE NEWS
Steve Robinson with the bike he rides on the dike.
Help SteveDonations to help with Steve Robinson’s procedure can be made to account No. 6872 at Envision Financial in Maple Ridge.
THE NEWS/opinion
Last week Maple Ridge News reporter Phil
Melnychuck reported a good fi rst get-to-gether at trying to get views on what should happen in Albion fl ats.
His story noted Mayor Ernie Daykin as saying 24 people at-tended the fi rst meet-ing Sept. 7 and seven the day after.
Radio Haney feels the meeting may have been ‘good,’ but clearly there was nothing good about the attendance numbers.
Some readers may recall the heady days of the 2005 offi cial community plan meet-ings and how much airtime has been given to the Albion fl ood plains by politicians, district staff, commentators, letter writers, the community, Smart!Centres and their gang of supporters since. In the context of all that has preceded the current area planning meetings for the fl ats, 27 people is disappointing. Seven is outright pitiful.
Those familiar with process like this in our district will not be surprised. In time, the public will claim that it was invited or did not know, as they have done in the past. The district, for its part, will say that it did all in its power.
With a population approaching 80,000, I am ever surprised by the low turnout for many, not all, of these types of meetings.
In the event that Smart!Centres gets its way – and I have no doubt it will – some of
the many thousands who live in the neigh-bourhood will applaud the fact that they no longer have to travel to Pitt Meadows, Surrey or Coquitlam to shop. Others will bemoan the construction traffi c, fol-lowed thereafter by the complaints about increased shopping traffi c and general congestion more familiarly associated west of our burgeoning dormitory town.
Coquitlam centre “now available in Al-bion” will be the cry, and the outcry.
The idea is to have an Albion plan by the new year.
Mayor Daykin, predictably – and sensibly – noted that his priority was to get good public involvement from average people, and not only the “build a mall group” and “the don’t cut down a tree group.” Well, Mr. Mayor, that is a priority shared by us all, except, of course, the build-a-mall bri-gade and the last tree standing stumpers from Pitt Meadows to Maple Ridge. Not a dike in sight, but I feel certain the Pitt Pol-dergeists will soon be haunting the Albion Area Plan.
Now then, Mr. Melnychuck’s report also mentions the fact that all committees that advise council were invited.
The Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows Agri-cultural Association was also invited. I wonder what they make of this hullabaloo in the Albion?
As a past member of two advisory bodies, I happen to know that they number many persons. I wonder how many from all these bodies were attendance? With a grand total of seven at the second meeting, it is safe to say not many.
Also absent from the meeting were Resi-
dents for Smart Shopping and the chamber of commerce, though both were invited. That in my opinion is very odd indeed. Conspiracy theorists sharpen your pencils.
Mr. Melnychuck‘s report also states that Leslie Sofarelli, with Residents for Smart Shopping, which wants a mall in the area, added she hasn’t heard if her group will be invited to the brainstorming (charette) process that takes place Oct. 20 and 21. I have some advice for her. If you are not invited, just show up.
Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows Chamber of Commerce president Jeremy Bekar, an astute and fi ne fellow, thinks just like me (if I may so). He would like to see Euro-pean-style community squares for public events, with stores around the perimeter and parking behind the stores. Fabric roofs such as those used in Canada Place in downtown Vancouver could offer protec-tion from the elements. They may also hide that mess of a 19th Century industrial park in the Albion south of the Lougheed from view.
Mr. Bekar brightly observes that the Albion is not far from the downtown and could create synergies with downtown. He’d like Maple Ridge to be different from other municipalities. In some ways, it already is, if you get the drift of my net.
Claus Andrup is a former member at large of the Maple Ridge Community
Heritage Commission, the Maple Ridge Economic Advisory Commission, and
former President of the Maple Ridge Historical Society. He has lived in Maple
Ridge since 1994.
Diff erent by default, get my drift
Don’t hit sendIngrid RiceNews Views
Published and printed by Black Press at 22328 – 119th Avenue, Maple Ridge, B.C., V2X 2Z3
Question of theweek:
Should Premier Gordon Campbell resign over
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Yes: 84% – No: 16% (99 votes)
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A 16-year-old girl was gang-raped at a Pitt Meadows rave on the weekend.
The act, committed by between five to seven men, some teenagers, others adults, is vile and depraved.
But it’s the events that took place during the rape and those that followed it that make you even more nauseous.
A 16-year-old boy photographed the rape, then proceeded to distribute the pictures to friends who posted them on Facebook.
They have been shared, police said, with stu-dents as young as 12.
Although police have arrested the teen, the photographs called “graphic, sexual and dis-gusting” by police, continue to spread like wildfire.
Investigators say they have reached as far as Mission, Port Coquitlam, Port Moody and oth-er sleepy suburbs across Metro Vancouver.
As soon as copies of the photos get removed, others repost them, along with comments about the girl being a willing participant.
Police say the teens don’t seem to understand that the act they are viewing is “rape.”
Why is that? Has this electronic age of sexting and living
lives online for the world to see blurred what’s right and wrong?
Anyone who has possession of these photo-graphs right now needs to know they are child pornography.
If you share them, you could be arrested and charged.
Hit delete, not send.
– The News
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Ser ving Maple Ridge & Pitt Meadows since 1978
THE NEWS
Radio Haney Claus Andrup
EDITOR, THE NEWS:Re: Pitt football needs
more Friday Night Lights, (Letters, Sept. 15).
To council and school board members:
It has just come to my atten-tion that the soccer use of the new Pitt Meadows secondary turf fi eld is not actually used for any team games, instead it is for ongoing training/clinic sessions for those elite soccer players who can pay $200 for the high-end, extra practice and instruction.
I have been involved in youth sports for more than 35 years and understand the challenges involved in sched-uling and distributing access to limited resources.
I am very disappointed in the choices made in this mat-ter.
It would seem to me that money appears to have spo-ken again.
The Pitt Meadows varsity football team hosts four or fi ve home games per season and want to play them on Friday nights. Five dates per year for one team to get the exposure they deserve dur-ing games – league games – against opponents who do have preferred access to their home fi elds.
I wonder how they view the fact that Pitt cannot ac-cess their own fi eld on Friday nights because some soccer players want it for practice. Rather pathetic, really.
This particular group of players is made up mostly of the initial junior varsity team who helped start this new program four years ago.
They and their parents, with guidance and leadership from Pitt Meadows second-ary and Rich Goulet, worked very hard to put a program together and to sustain it.
Many of these local young pioneers will graduate this year. They would love to be able to experience that which they worked so hard to achieve, a Friday Nights
Lights experience for their school and their community and to build a legacy for play-ers who come behind them.
This team and their par-ents have so much more to offer the school and this com-munity than any group of $200-a-head soccer players ever will.
They can practice any-where, anytime.
The Friday Nights Lights experience is only available at a certain time and on a very few certain dates.
I implore you to change your minds about this field allocation for this year as soon as possible to assist in building that special leg-acy for the community.
MARK NEWLOVE
PITT MEADOWS
Letters to the editor should be exclusive to The News and address topics of interest to residents of Maple Ridge and Pitt Meadows. Include full name and address, as well as daytime phone number for verification. Keep letters to 500 words or less. Letters may be edited for length and clarity.
@ E-mail letters to [email protected].
Letters welcome
EDITOR, THE NEWS:Re: Pesticide bans do
nothing to protect public (Letters, Sept. 8).
I wonder if your read-ers remember the tobacco industry telling us that their product was safe to use. Even scientists (hired by the industry) told us that tobacco was safe.
Mr. Hepworth, president
of CropLife Canada, rep-resents the pesticide in-dustry, and so, of course, he would like us to believe that pesticides are safe.
The review of products by Health Canada is large-ly based on information submitted by the produc-ers of pesticides; would they submit information to Health Canada that would
prohibit there use?Regulatory agencies ap-
proved DDT, Thalidomide, VIOXX, DES, etc. And then these products were discovered to be unsafe and they were withdrawn from sale, sometimes after disastrous effects. We are in the process of discover-ing the harmful effects of cosmetic pesticides and
would like to prevent any more disastrous effects.
Should we believe the Canadian Cancer Society, which has nothing to gain from banning cosmetic pesticides, or Mr. Hep-worth, who represents an industry with something to lose?
SHEILA PRATT
MAPLE RIDGE
EDITOR, THE NEWS:Re: Pitt medical growop bylaw in place (The News, Sept.
10)Back in July, I sent Pitt Meadows city council a letter, im-
ploring members to re-consider their bylaw against medical marijuana grows. In that letter, I told them that if they con-tinued down the path of discrimination they were on, I would exercise every fi nancial and legal resource available to me to fi ght against their callous disregard for the Canadian Char-ter of Rights and Freedoms.
What they have done is shamefully unconstitutional and will undoubtedly be overturned in due course at the expense of the taxpayers.
The laws of Canada (MMAR section 34(1)) plainly state that a “holder of a designated-person production licence is autho-rized, in accordance with the licence, to produce marijuana for the medical purpose of the person who applied for the licence.”
That means what they are doing is no more illegal than growing tomatoes and cucumbers.
Would the residents of Pitt Meadows support a ban on ur-ban vegetable gardening?
Furthermore, section 15(1) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms states that all individuals are “equal before and under the law and have the right to the equal pro-tection and equal benefi t of the law without discrimination.”
With a lawyer on council, it irks me to think that this was not discussed before the passing of this grossly unconstitu-tional and discriminatory bylaw.
Fortunately, the laws of Canada protect us from such tyr-anny. See you in court.
CARL ANDERSON KAMLOOPS
EDITOR, THE NEWS:In response to the premier’s so-called solution to the HST
tax referendum next year, can’t people see that he’s just ty-ing to buy some time? The real issue, if I can remind our populace out there, is that he lied to you to get re-elected. And, he should resign and get the hell out of offi ce now. Let’s restore democracy in our province and not allow this crook to deceive us any longer.
JOHN MCKENZIE
MAPLE RIDGE
What about ban on vegetable gardening?
Let football have Friday Nights
Time for premier to resign
Do we believe those with something to lose?
THE NEWS/files
The Pitt senior football played its only Friday night game last week.
THE NEWS/letters
More than trees and lakesFrom: J, posted on www.mapleridgenews.com.Re: Municipalities look at building $5 million tourism centre (The News, Sept. 15).Until there is the infrastructure to attract visitors, a larger info centre is a waste of money. You may have the farms, but do they offer tours at con-sistent times? You have bike trails, but do you have a bike rental company available? Is there a company to offer bike tours? “Wilderness, wetlands and farms” describes almost every municipality. Wildplay is a start, but you’ll need more actual tourism products, not just trees and lakes.
Emperor’s clothesFrom: Christian Cowley, posted on www.mapleridgenews.com.Re: Ridge the next South Bronx (Letters, Sept. 15).Sometimes it takes an outsider to state the obvious before the locals will accept the truth – the emperor’s clothes is an allegory that is oh so close to all of here in Maple Ridge.
EDITOR, THE NEWS:Re: Council offers take
on census (The News, Sept. 15).
I read in total amaze-ment the article explaining how council is upset with the change in the Canadian census long form. It was hu-morous to think that census data had infl uenced any de-cision made by this or any past council.
Upon reading the quote given by Coun. Linda King that the change “could hin-der council’s ability to make informed decisions regard-ing housing and land-use,” I almost fell off my chair.
How could the disastrous situation that we now have regarding these two is-sues get any worse, let alone the suggestion that by sim-ply making answering the
census voluntary will make any substantive change for Maple Ridge residents.
What a perfect argument in favor of changing the census than to suggest that the sorry state that we fi nd ourselves in today is the re-sult of data used from the census.
Instead of spending time discussing totally nonsensi-cal issues, council would be
well advised to spend it’s time trying to fi nd ways to improve our transit options, reduce road congestion, im-prove the commercial tax base, increase shopping opportunities, reduce the costs of running this mu-nicipality, and especially reducing our ever escalat-ing taxes.
GRAHAM MOWATT
MAPLE RIDGE
Maple Ridge not aff ected by census data
It’s been 31 months since the North Alou-ette River fl ood task force recommended a hydrology study that would look at the ebbs and fl ows of the river and serve as a baseline for any strategy to man-age it and ease the con-cerns of residents.
They are still awaiting for that study.
So Dian Murrell asked Maple Ridge council Tuesday what is is go-ing to do about it.
The fl ood situation in the area has dete-riorated rather than im-proved, she added.
And although heavy rains have held off the last few seasons, people who live around 224th Street and 132nd Av-enue get nervous with the onset of winter.
Last year, residents measured a sandbar be-neath the 224th Street bridge and told the dis-trict there’s not enough clearance between that and the bridge. They were told to wait until the hydrology study was complete.
“When will the hy-drology study be com-plete enough to be of use in resolving the is-sues for the residents of the fl oodplain, such as
the sandbar removal?” Murrell asked council.
The contract to do the study was awarded in 2007 and was to be done in three stages, said Murrell.
She pointed out the district’s website says the fi rst two phases were supposed to be done by October. But the varying deadlines are confusing. “That’s one of our frustrations. It’s been going on for a
very long time.”Public works man-
ager Frank Quinn, though, explained that a partnership the dis-trict hoped to join with another agency for the study fell through, re-quiring the district to proceed on its own, de-laying the study.
“The good news is we’re nearing comple-tion of the fi rst phase.”
The land north of 132nd Avenue is a fl ood plain and water regu-larly swamps the roads during heavy rains.
Murrell said the Alou-ette Valley Association recently met and wants the fl ood task force, formed in 2007, re-as-sembled for at least one meeting.
Quinn said the hydrol-ogy study should go a long way to solving the problems.
He said in a letter to Murrell that the district also has plans to replace both the bridges at 224th and 232nd streets and notes the issues are
“multi-jurisdictional.”Murrell also has con-
cerns about soil being hauled on to nearby farms and how that will affect drainage of water around her property on the east side of 224th Street.
She’s written the dis-trict about one farmer bringing in soil and was told that a report from a hydrological engineer was required, showing that the soil won’t af-fect surrounding prop-erties. But to do that, the owner’s consultant needs information from the yet-to-be-completed hydrological study. The district has said previ-ously that all the rules are being followed on that property.
Yet Murrell wonders why applying for a per-mit seems to excuse an applicant from penalties for hauling soil without getting a permit.
“They just don’t seem to have any answers as to what’s going on down there.”
Still no answers about North Aloutte fl ooding‘Flood situation has deteriorated’
THE NEWS/files
Dian Murrell (right) wants the Alouette River Flood Task Force to meet again.
b y P h i l M e l n y c h u kstaff repor ter
It was attended by hun-dreds of teens and young adults, was taking place at the rental house.
Police only found out about the rape when a high school student came forward with images of the act in progress.
A Facebook page about the party helped with
the police investigation. It has since been taken down.
Investigators contacted the victim as a result of the images and she was examined by a nurse specializing in sexual assaults, who found in-juries described as “sig-nifi cant.”
But photographs of
the rape and comments about victim being a will-ing participant continue to spread via Facebook.
Some of the photo-graphs have been shown to students in Maple Ridge and Pitt Meadows who are as young as 13.
“They are spreading like wildfi re,” said Hy-land.
“Make no mistake, this girl was raped, likely drugged and abused by numerous people. The posting and viewing of the photos is continuing to victimize this young girl and her family and needs to stop.”
Hyland said anyone sharing the photographs is distributing child porn.
Investigators can iden-tify some of the men in-volved through the pho-tographs, but are urging other witnesses to the rape to come forward and “do the right thing.”
“Regardless of what some believe they were watching, this was a rape,” said Hyland.
Police want anyone who attended the rave to contact investigators so they can have a clear pic-ture of what happened at the event and after-wards.
A man who lives in the house on the property where the party took place said the house is rented by fi ve people and one of them may have given permission to the men to host the rave in the barn.
“We’ve had parties there before and there has never been any prob-lems,” he said, adding he did not attend the rave.
• Anyone with any in-formation is asked to call RCMP at 604-463-6251. To remain anonymous call CrimeStoppers at 1-800-222-8477. CrimeStoppers will pay a reward of up to $2,000 for information leading to an arrest and conviction.
An admitted drug deal-er accused of brutally raping and threatening a woman with a sword was found guilty of the crimes Wednesday in New Westminster Su-preme Court.
Justice Terry Schultes found the sex that took place between Victor Jo-seph Reis and the victim, whose name is protected by a publication ban, was not consensual.
“I fi nd [the victim’s] testimony was truthful and accept her evidence,” Schultes said.
Reis was charged with sexual assault using a threat or weapon and unlawful confi nement on Aug. 25, 2008, four days after the rape.
The court heard the 38-year-old victim was on a drug binge Aug. 22, 2008 and met Reis after she purchased heroin from another dealer at Northumberland Court,
a notorious downtown Maple Ridge townhouse complex, known widely as “The Ghetto.”
She ended up in Reis’ basement suite and told the court he proceeded to cook powered cocaine into crack in front of her.
Then he turned on a pornographic video. She told the court Reis then grabbed her by the wrist and dragged her to his bed, where he demanded she take off her clothes.
She was then raped repeatedly, forced to per-form oral sex as well as threatened with a small metal baseball bat and sword.
She said Reis angled the blade of the sword against her neck as if he was going to cut off her head.
He tied her hands with a TV or VCR cable and also used it to tie her hair in a pony tail.
He also fi red a paint
ball gun, showed her a pellet gun and a photo-graph of himself posing with Hell’s Angels.
She described him as “psychotic.”
In between the rapes, he sometimes calmed down and told her about his personal life. He even read to her from a book about pit bulls.
After raping her, he fell asleep but the victim said she was too scared to leave. She fi nally left when a man she was ac-quainted with knocked on Reis’ door.
Reis, though, denied the sex was forced.
He said he was a drug dealer who only dealt crack to support his hab-it. He told the court he never struggled with her and told her she could leave after they had sex.
He said the child-sized baseball bat was in his home because he plays baseball and that he col-
lected knives and swords. He claimed the photo-graph with the Hell’s Angels was one with childhood friends with whom he has no criminal involvement.
Five people – a drug dealer and four addicts – testifi ed on Reis’ behalf, telling the court the sex between him and the vic-tim was consensual.
Justice Schultes, how-ever, did not accept their testimony.
“Overall [Reis’] evi-dence struck me as a fab-rication,” Schultes said.
“I do not believe it, nor do I fi nd the witnesses called on his behalf be-lievable.”
“This verdict was reached after a very careful consideration of all the evidence,” Crown prosecutor Winston Say-son said outside court. “It is a verdict that is just and supported by the evi-dence.”
Sayson, however, would not allude to the sentence he would be seeking.
“This is a type of crime that usually attracts a sig-nifi cant jail sentence.”
Drug dealer guilty of rapeJustice believes victim over claims that sex was consensual
Rape from front
Photos of rape spreading like wildfi re: police
There’s a hole at the bottom of the pool, and what to do with it will be up to Pitt Meadows Council to decide.
The aging Harris Road outdoor swimming pool is leaking more than 25,000 litres per day, ac-cording to a Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows Parks and Leisure Services Com-mission report authored by facilities operations manager Mike Millward.
The pool normally costs $22,000 to oper-ate for its two-month season, independent of labour costs, and those costs are sure to be high-er because of the leak, he said.
A temporary gas hot water tank was brought in to help heat the water, while extra pool chemi-cals were required to treat the increased vol-ume of water needed.
“The totals are not in yet, but we know they will be higher,” said Mill-ward.
His report originally called for the parks com-mission to endorse the permanent closure of the pool. However, the
commission decided Thursday to instead forward the report to Pitt Meadows council as information, leaving the direction up to its mem-bers.
One option could be to attempt to fi x the broken piping under the pool.
“If that is the route council wants to go then we will look into that,” said Millward.
He could not say how much that option was likely to cost.
Harris Road pool was built in 1945, and under-went renovations in the 1960s.
“It’s been around for a long time, and its served
the community well,” said Millward.
The pool has been leak-ing heated chlorinated water into the ground for years, but the leak has grown from 8,300 litres per day in 2008 to more than 25,000 litres now, and amount rough-ly equal to 1.5 million litres over the course of the outdoor pool’s two-month season.
Geotechnical work performed in 2008 found that the pool was struc-turally safe, and there was no danger of a sink-hole forming.
The pool passed in-spection earlier this year, prior to being
opened for the season on July 1.
Parks and leisure ser-vices proposed an indoor aquatic centre replace the aging outdoor pool in its draft master plan, which was presented to both municipalities ear-lier this summer, and to be voted on this fall.
The preferred option would include a shal-low leisure pool with an eight- to 10-lane, 25-me-tre competition pool. The plan suggests splitting the municipal portion of the cost for the $15-18 million project between the City of Pitt Meadows and the District of Maple Ridge.
Council to decide on Harris Rd. pool
THE NEWS/files
The Harris Road outdoor pool is leaking 25,000 litres of water a day.
b y R o b e r t M a n g e l s d o r fstaff repor ter
Construction has be-gun on a bigger and brighter library for the City of Pitt Mead-ows.
The library will move into the first of three towers of So-laris at Meadows Gate, a development by RG Properties at the cor-ner of Harris and Ford roads.
The books, comput-ers and staff will occu-py the second floor of the new development, next to city hall.
The relocation will allow the library to almost double in size, to 12,200 square feet from 7,500.
“The staff do such a great job with what they have now, but they are going to be able to do so much more with a larger space,” said Coun. Deb Walters, who attended a ground breaking ceremony for the proj-
ect and got a tour of the Solaris towers on Tuesday.
Once complete in 2011, the library will have a computer lab, study area, children and teen areas, a space with seating that allows patrons to take in the view from the corner of Harris and Ford Roads, and a multi-purpose meet-ing room.
The new location will also have self-serve check-out stations, helpful for people who
need to borrow stuff in a hurry.
Council has approved a 10-year lease with RG Properties.
The current library building will be used for other municipal needs.
The Solaris devel-opment also has 150 underground parking spaces, doubling the parking at the Pitt Meadows civic centre.
Walters was also pleased with the al-most-complete 10-sto-rey Solaris towers,
which offer breathtak-ing panoramas of the Golden Ears Moun-tains, Mount Baker and unobstructed views out to Burnaby.
“The design is just right for Pitt Mead-ows. It compliments our downtown nicely,” she said. “It will be a nice synergy with the recreation centre, city hall and the library.”
Condos not bought during a pre-sale for the development are expected to go on the market in October.
Pitt library project breaks ground12,200 square foot facility will open in 2011
Colleen Flanagan/THE NEWS
Pitt Meadows councillors Doug Bing, Deb Walters, Gwen O’Connell and Tracy Miyash-ita look at a 3-D model of the Solaris at Meadows Gate development. The new library will be occupy the second floor of the shortest building.
b y M o n i s h a M a r t i n sstaff repor ter
Despite reports of MPs taking free fl ights to for-eign destinations, cour-tesy of national governments or lobby groups, Randy Kamp hasn’t taken up any of the of-fers.
After fi rst being elected in 2004, Kamp (Pitt Meadows-Maple Ridge-Mission) had a few invitations, mainly when he was in opposition until 2006, but he’s never accepted any.
“No I haven’t gone any of those,” he said Mon-day.
Over the years, there’s been one or two trips to Israel and Taiwan that some his colleagues have gone on, but Kamp never felt inclined. He said he’s been too busy with his job as parliamentary sec-retary to the Minister of Fisheries Gail Shea to go on those trips.
He has had to do three or four overseas trips on behalf of Fisheries and Oceans Canada, but ex-penses for that were cov-ered by the ministry.
“Those have all been when I’ve been repre-senting the minister. Those are paid for by Department of Fisheries and Oceans.”
Kamp said he’s heard of colleagues who went to Israel and Taiwan.
“They’re not vacations, that’s for sure.” MPs re-turn with a good sense of the region and coun-
try, “so there is some benefi t to them.”
According to a Sept. 8 report by CBC News, MPs received almost $2 mil-lion in free trav-el and gifts from national gov-ernments and lobby groups, between 2005
and 2009. The report said that in 2009, 54 MPs, or nearly one in six, ac-cepted sponsored trips, with Israel and Taiwan the most popular destina-tions.
Kamp said he’d won-der if it was appropriate for cabinet ministers or MP secretaries to accept free trips. Being at the cabinet table, they could infl uence government decisions.
“But for backbenchers, I’m not sure that’s an is-sue for them or not.”
Of those who took the trips, he said he didn’t see anything particu-larly subversive going on there.
Kamp said there’s also the National Association of Parliamentarians that gets government money to attend overseas confer-ences from time to time.
No free flights for MP Kamp
Kamp
b y P h i l M e l n y c h u kstaff repor ter
Police are investigat-ing a suspicious fi re that burned the side of a house in west Maple Ridge early Wednes-day.
The blaze started with a loud boom around 10:30 a.m. in the 20300-block of Walnut Crescent.
A neighbour said the explosion was loud enough to be heard streets away.
When she looked out-side, she saw fl ames surging up the side of
her neighbour’s house.Her husband and a
neighbour from across the street grabbed gar-den hoses to douse the fl ames while she called 911.
The neighbour said “an elderly woman” with a scarf on her head, in slippers, was seen leaving the scene.
The Maple Ridge Fire Department called the blaze “a close call.”
The fi re spread two storeys and almost reached the roof of the house.
It started in a pile of wood.
Police are investigat-ing to determine what started the fi re.
Maple Ridge house fi re ‘suspicious’Old woman in slippers seen fl eeing the scene
Firefighters try to enter the top floor of a house
at 20389 Walnut Crescent after an explosion set the side of the house
on fire. Bob Gosse and another near-
by neighbour put out the fire with
garden hoses. No one was home at
the time. The fire is being treated as
suspicious.
Colleen Flanagan/
THE NEWS
The fi rst community forum on the Albion fl ats takes place Sept. 29, but Smart!Centres is holding its own get-together 10 days before that for anyone who wants to see big box stores along Lougheed Highway and 105th Av-enue.
The public’s invited to the Golden Ears Win-ter Club this Sunday from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. for a “family fun event,” where Smart!Centres representatives will discuss important dates for the municipal consultation that takes place this fall.
“We need your help to communicate to district staff and the consultant that you too share this vision,” Smart!Centres says on its Albion shop-ping website.
Dave Major, with Smart!Centres, says the idea isn’t to replace the District of Maple Ridge’s process.
“It’s basically going
to be spelling out how to get involved,” Major said.
Smart!Centres will be reviewing the key dates of the district consultation. “Every-thing will be as per how the district has laid out already.”
He didn’t want to say if there’s more or less support for a mall in the area. Mayor and council have also been invited.
The district has al-ready had two meet-ings as part of a round of consultations this fall, which will result in an Albion plan by the new year.
The fi rst public event of the consultation takes place Wednes-day, Sept. 29 at the Arts Centre Theatre, from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m.
That’s where people can drop in and hear a presentation that will be given twice that eve-ning.
Then on Oct. 21, from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m., also at the ACT, another open house takes place to review the brainstorm-ing or charette process that took place two days prior.
However, background
information on the Al-bion area that will be used in the consulta-tion, has yet to be post-ed on the website.
A staff report from August said seven stud-ies, dealing with such as issues as impacts on agriculture, drainage, the environment and transportation, were expected by Sept. 1.
Those will be posted by the end of Friday on the district’s website (www.mapleridge.ca) so people can thumb through them prior to the public meetings.
A Twitter account also will be activated Friday.
The district will take online input and writ-ten submissions and
consider them as it prepares its plan. Any questions that repeat-edly arise will be ad-dressed on the web-site.
Brothers John and Steve Wynnyk also own several hectares in Albion fl ats.
While they’ve start-ed a housing project near their homes on 240th Street, John said they’re more interested in the 16 hectares they own in Albion.
“We own a consider-able amount of land in that area and that’s the part that’s impossible for farming now.”
John said the raising of the elevation of land around their fi elds has turned theirs into a drainage basin that fl oods often. He says their land is now 2.5 metres lower than sur-rounding land, making it diffi cult to farm.
“I’m in a basin now. We have got the lowest land in the Albion fl ats because of all the fi lling in the Albion fl ats.”
He favours removing his land from the Agri-cultural Land Reserve and would like to see commercial and resi-dential development.
Smart!Centres holding Albion meetingTakes place Sunday at curling rink
b y P h i l M e l n y c h u kstaff repor ter
“We need your help to communicate to district staff and the consultant that you too share this vision.” Smart!Centres
A year from now you can vote yes or no to the Harmonized Sales Tax.
And if 51 per cent of the people vote no, it’s gone, Premier Gordon Camp-bell said Monday.
But Maple Ridge HST fi ghter Ron Sward doesn’t believe a word.
“He wasn’t going to sell B.C. Rail, either.
“He said [in the 2009 B.C. election] he didn’t have HST on the radar.”
So Sward, who collected names for the Fight HST campaign in Pitt Mead-ows and Maple Ridge, isn’t waiting around and is going to make the re-call of Liberal MLA Marc Dalton the priority.
“They’re just delaying and hoping the mood will change, but they’re not going to get a chance. We’re going to do some recall damage here,” Sward said Tuesday.
The Maple Ridge branch of Fight HST wanted Dalton’s name added to the top 24 Liber-al MLAs that Fight HST had targeted for recall.
Sward hasn’t heard yet if the group, led by for-mer premier Bill Vander Zalm, would agree to that, but points out the local branch can recall Dalton on its own.
Dalton, who won Maple Ridge – Mission riding by only 68 votes, is vulner-able, said Sward.
“I think we can get him.”
According to the Recall and Initiative Act, a recall petition has to be signed by more than 40 per cent of the voters who were on the last voter’s list. But those signatures all have to be collected within 60 days. If the process is successful, a by-election takes place. Dalton has said he’d run again if that happened.
Sward, a realtor who’s worked on previous NDP campaigns, said the HST has hurt the real estate business. For new homes over $525,000, buyers have to pay the 12 per cent HST, while for homes under that it’s only two per cent.
The debate over the tax, which combines the fi ve per cent federal Goods and Services Tax and the seven per cent Provincial Sales Tax, will catch the public’s atten-tion over the next year, says Dalton.
“It’s going to be water cooler talk, because this is a very important deci-
sion for the prov-ince.”
The cost of a referendum, $30 million for an election-style vote, can be covered by the amount the province will have saved by imposing the HST for the last year, he pointed out.
Even though lo-cal chamber president Jeremy Bekar supports the HST, if the majority votes to trash it, that’s fi ne with him.
“You know what, this is democracy, so that’s what matters at the end of the day.”
Bekar, who run’s Mark’s Work Wearhouse in Maple Ridge, said the tax has had minimal ef-fect on his business since implementation July 1.
“The one thing it did ef-fect was work boots.”
“The HST is actually a good thing for B.C.” be-cause it will create high paying jobs and attract
investment, he said.
Under the HST, busi-nesses get full rebates for their HST costs.
NDP MLA Michael Sather doesn’t know what the referendum means for Campbell’s future as Liberal leader and wonders why the referendum is scheduled for a year from now.
“The thing is, we could do it this fall. We don’t have to wait until next fall.”
Sather said he’s con-cerned that the Liberals could fudge the wording of the referendum ques-tion.
The protracted timeline could also interfere with any of the party’s plans for a new leader.
People on Maple Ridge streets also had their doubts.
“I’d like to see it gone too,” said Uta Schwarzenau, in sales.
“It doesn’t mat-ter to me, I could
care less,” said Kenny Erickson, from Maple Ridge.
But taxes need to be paid to get things done, he added.
He said he’d probably not vote in the 2011 refer-endum.
Angie Aucelluzzo didn’t sign the fi rst anti-HST petition because she didn’t think it would make much difference anyways.
“It should be nice not to pay the HST, because it’s a big chunk.”
She plans to vote No.“I’d be surprised if they
actually follow through.”
HST raises lots of questionsAnd Fight HST group still wants to recall local Liberal
b y P h i l M e l n y c h u kstaff repor ter
Aucelluzzo Schwarzenau
The Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows News has earned second place in the 2010 Suburban Newspapers of America general excellence con-test.
The News, which has a circulation of more than 30,000, came sec-ond in the second larg-est circulation category (22,501-37,500) for non-daily papers.
“Mixes local news fea-tures with the essential local news nuggets. Strong news coverage,” wrote the judges.
“The photography on the front is artfully lit, colourful. Inside layout is strong.”
The News came third in the SNA general ex-cellence competition in 2009 and 2008.
Also last year, The
News collected three awards in the Suburban Newspapers of America editorial contest.
The News came fi rst in its circulation class for best local election cover-age, second for best edi-torial page, third for best young people’s cover-age, and also earned an honourable mention for best sports writing.
SNA is a non-profi t,
professional trade as-sociation specifi cally serving the suburban and community newspa-per industry in the U.S. and Canada. It has more than 2,000 members.
Earlier this year The News earned a blue rib-bon award for general excellence from the Canadian Community Newspaper Associa-tion.
The News second in North America
The City of Pitt Mead-ows announced a new business awards pro-gram promoting sustain-ability on Thursday.
The “Going Green Business Awards” will reward local businesses for implementing and encouraging green prac-tices within Pitt Mead-ows.
“We have a lot of great local businesses that are doing some innovative things to go green, and to encourage their cus-tomers to go green,” said Laurie Darcus, city direc-tor of corporate services.
“Whether they’ve im-plemented a program to reduce waste or educate their staff or the pub-lic about going green, we want to recognize them.”
The “Going Green Business Awards” in-cludes three categories: Most Innovative Green Solution; Most Integrat-ed Green Solution; and Most Awareness Raised through Education/Ad-vertising/Sharing.
An award will be pre-sented to businesses with less than 10 employ-ees and those with 10 or more employees in each of the three categories.
Winners will receive a “Green Star” Business Ranking Award, a press release profi ling their achievements, a fea-tured article in the city’s “City Talks” and “Green Team” newsletters, and a brief profi le on the City of Pitt Meadows website.
• Nomination forms are available online at www.pittmeadows.bc.ca or copies can be picked up at Pitt Meadows City Hall, Pitt Meadows Eco-nomic Development Offi ce, Pitt Meadows li-brary and the Pitt Mead-ows Family Recreation Centre.
Forms can be emailed to [email protected] or dropped off at Pitt Meadows City Hall. The application deadline is Oct.15 – 3 p.m.
Pitt going green with awards
VICTORIA – The B.C. government is reduc-ing its forecast defi -cits for the next three years, based mainly on higher than expected corporate income tax revenues.
Plummeting corpo-rate tax payments were largely blamed for B.C.’s sudden plunge into defi cit last year, when a worldwide credit crisis stalled construction and in-vestment and triggered job losses across the country. A pre-election defi cit estimate of $495 million ballooned to nearly $1.8 billion in the summer of 2009.
Now Finance Minis-ter Colin Hansen says the defi cit is expected to be $1.4 billion for the 2010-11 fi scal year, a reduction of $335 mil-lion from the previous forecast. The defi cit for 2011-12 is now project-ed to be $810 million, falling to $130 million in 2012-13.
The fi nance minis-try expects B.C.’s red ink will end in 2013-14, with a surplus of $80 million.
Hansen noted that the forecast depends on continued recovery in the U.S. and world economy. Presenting the fi rst-quarter fi -nancial report, he said B.C.’s employment, re-tail and exports have all show signs of im-provement. He stopped short of attributing the improvement to the harmonized sales tax that reduced business costs beginning last July, pointing instead to corporate tax cuts instituted previously.
“We have very com-petitive corporate tax rates in British Colum-bia, and those competi-tive rates are generat-
ing some very healthy revenues for us in these coming three years,” Hansen said.
NDP fi nance critic Bruce Ralston said Hansen is painting a rosy picture that downplays the latest signals from the U.S.,
where unemployment remains high and the housing market contin-ues to struggle.
Statistics Canada re-ports that as of August, the number of em-ployed people in B.C. has climbed back up to 2.32 million, the same
level it reached in Au-gust 2008.
Retail sales in B.C. have also recovered to nearly the same level as 2008, and exports have recovered some of the ground lost in the recession, partly due to lumber sales to China.
B.C. deficit forecast improves
Black Press
Lumber sales to China are one bright spot in B.C.’s exports, which have partly recov-ered from a 37 per cent drop between 2008 and 2009.
b y To m F l e t c h e rBlack Press
This will be the last big weekend for sports anglers hoping to hook a sockeye salmon in the Fraser River.
Recreational angling for sockeye on the lower Fraser ends Sunday Sept. 19, even though there are
still millions more fi sh holding in Georgia Strait that are yet to begin swimming upstream.
The estimates of how many sock-eye are still in salt water range from six to 12 million, Fisheries and Oceans Canada area director Barry
Rosenberger said Wednesday.“We expect them to start moving
in at a faster pace,” he said.Sockeye in past years sometimes
make a sudden mass dash into the river after an extended wait off-shore – something Rosenberger
said could soon happen.The Pacifi c Salmon Commission
on Tuesday maintained its over-all run size estimate of 34.5 million sockeye returning to the Fraser.
Most commercial fi shing had al-ready been halted to protect weaker
stocks of coho salmon that are now migrating upriver.
Rosenberger said the same logic applies to recreational fi shermen.
“We want them not to be catch-ing too many coho,” he said, adding there will be no extension of the sport fi shery.
Trollers have continued to fi sh sockeye but that is expected to end soon.
Sport fishery on lower Fraser River ends Sept. 19
TransLink will relo-cate its headquarters from Metrotown in Burnaby to a new build-ing in New Westmin-ster it will share with the Transit Police in a move expected to save a signifi cant amount of money.
The new four-storey building is to be built on Columbia Street across from New West-minster’s Sapperton SkyTrain station, ad-jacent to Royal Colum-bian Hospital.
“We will actual save $430,000 a year over what we’re paying now,” said TransLink spokesman Ken Har-die, adding the savings from the move to new quarters will be worth $8 million over the life of the 20-year lease with developer Wes-group Properties.
He said the recent ad-ministrative downsiz-
ing had left TransLink with more offi ce space than it needed and the new quarters allow for a much more effi cient confi guration of staff.
The deal came at what Hardie describes as an opportune time in what is currently a tenant-friendly market.
“We got a very good deal,” he said.
The move will happen in 2013, when Trans-Link’s lease for its cor-porate offi ces expires at the Metrotower II offi ce tower in central Burnaby.
Transit Police op-erations are spread out at several differ-ent buildings in New Westminster – some of them in need of seismic upgrades – and Hardie said there was an ur-gent need to consoli-date them under one roof.
In all, the new 137 ,000 -square- foot building will house 250 Transit Police staff – in-cluding uniformed of-
fi cers and civilian staff – as well as 230 Trans-Link employees.
Hardie said 17 differ-ent sites were consid-ered.
“It was mandatory that we locate next to high-capacity transit and where we could refl ect our own broad-er regional goals, in-cluding collaborative land-use planning that encourages location of jobs, homes and servic-es near existing transit facilities.”
The building is part of a cluster of four resi-dential towers mixed with offi ce and retail space in the Brewery District redevelopment Wesgroup is leading on the site of the old Lab-att brewery.
“We wanted to have a sustainable project from a jobs, residential and retail perspective,” Wesgroup president Gino Nonni said, call-ing it a prime example of transit-oriented de-velopment.
TLink moving headquartersb y J e f f N a g e lBlack Press
Women from all over the world will gather together on Saturday to hear from author and Bible teacher Beth Moore at LifeWay Wom-en’s “Living Proof” Live Simulcast event at the Maple Ridge Baptist Church.
Beth Moore, whose books and studies in-clude Breaking Free and Esther: It’s Tough Being a Woman, have been
read by millions around the world, is known for her ability to apply bibli-cal scripture to everyday life.
Acclaimed worship leader Travis Cottrell and his Praise Team will join Moore for the event, which will utilizing live streaming video via the Internet to bring her teaching to life as she of-fers insights that touch the hearts of all women,
regardless of their age, race or denomination from a host church in their community.
Women from all over the world will join to-gether to hear a special message from Beth Moore.
The event takes place from 9:15 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Call MRBC at 604-467-9613 for ticket information. Seating is limited.
Living Proof at Baptist church
Open house
Justin Mulligan, 8,
learns how to curl with Bill
Gardner, who has 65 years
of experience in the sport,
during an open house
at the Golden Ears Winter
Club on Sunday.
Colleen Flanagan/THE
NEWS
The Tsawwassen First Nation’s land base is now valued at nearly a quarter of a billion dol-lars.
The estimate of $249 million is the fi rst valu-ation for the combined treaty lands since B.C.’s historic fi rst urban trea-ty took effect in April 2009.
That’s more than double the $120 million estimate of the value of land and cash conveyed by the treaty prior to its passage.
“I was surprised at the high number,” Chief Kim Baird said. “You don’t know the value of your lands until you actually have them ap-praised somehow.”
The valuation was per-formed by the B.C. As-sessment Authority.
She acknowledged part of the jump in land value is because the treaty transferred 200 hectares of farmland
that was then removed from the Agricultural Land Reserve and is now earmarked for higher-value industrial development, likely port-related container storage and warehous-ing.
Baird noted the 724 hectares of TFN lands include the band’s for-mer reserve lands, which also now hold more potential for de-velopment because their use is no longer tightly restricted by the federal government via the Indian Act.
Valuing land pre- and post-treaty is something of an “apples and orang-es” comparison, Baird said, but predicts the value of TFN property will continue to climb.
“It’s only going to get higher over time as we do things to improve the lands and do things to add services and infra-structure,” she said.
“It’s good to realize what assets we really do have and reconfi rm we do, in fact, own the land base.”
Half of the 405 TFN members have incomes below $30,000 a year and Baird noted some are concerned higher land
values will eventually bring higher taxes.
Baird said the Tsaw-wassen have spent much of the fi rst year setting up an ef-fective structure to govern them-selves.
They’ve also made several key decisions, including con-vening the Tsaw-wassen Legis-lature, setting budgets, passing laws and establishing a community plan.
Work is well underway to ensure the land base generates income.
Potential bidders are being identifi ed for the 40-hectare fi rst phase of industrial land develop-ment, dubbed the Tsaw-wassen Gateway Logis-tics Park.
Baird said the TFN is also preparing to launch a commercial develop-ment project that would likely include a major big box retail anchor on land along Highway 17.
“We have a memoran-dum of agreement with a retail mall developer,” she said.
“In the next month or so we’ll have a better
understanding of what kind of project would be viable.”
A s k e d whether TFN plans could include a fu-ture casino, Baird said it’s not in the current land-use plan, al-though she did not rule it out over the longer term.
“I think it’s probably a
potential project, but it hasn’t been highly sought after by mem-bers of my community,” she said. “We’re not actively looking at that kind of development.”
There have also been exploratory talks with Vancouver-based Aq-uilini Renewable En-ergy on the potential for a waste-to-energy incin-erator on TFN land.
The treaty gave the band land, cash, a share of the fi shery and self-government powers to resolve the Tsawwas-sen land claim to 10,000 square kilometres of traditional territory in what is now Metro Van-couver and the southern Gulf Islands.
Tsawwassen treaty lands soar in valueAssessment surprises TFN chief, members
Baird
b y J e f f N a g e lBlack Press
I am off this week on a five-day canoe trip with 17 Grade
9 students.If you have a mo-
ment, say a prayer for me.
I’m not worried about the canoeing or the weather, although I am always a little bit nervous about both.
What I worry the most about is what I might hear and whether I will get any sleep over a period of five days.
I’ve create this problem somewhat by altering the world of students during this trip. They are not allowed to bring cell phones, iPods or any other entertain-ment devices. In fact, the only electronics they are allowed is a camera.
Camped beside a lake, with nothing
else to do but talk to each other, they do, incessantly.
What they don’t seem to realize is that talking in a tent affords you the same listening privacy as putting your photos on Facebook, which is to say, not very much at all.
I try to remind them just before bedtime that I can hear every-thing they say so that they will show some reservation in their topics, but within a couple of minutes they are usually go-ing so rapidly and so excitedly that they not only ignore my warning, but wake any other campers in a 20-kilometre radius.
In the modern stu-dent vernacular, I am often exposed to “tmi” – too much informa-tion.
At 2 a.m., I’m re-ally not interested in what Cindy did with Sammy in the boathouse this summer.
Even more, I’m pretty sure that what Cindy did with Sammy is being grossly exaggerated and I’d like to interrupt and have a long conver-sation about the risks of gossip.
This is not the time and so I make a note to self to have a talk about gossip around the campfire the next night.
The night will be pierced, of course, by about a hundred shrieks from various students who have
heard the mice around the campsite and are sure there are bears,
moose or di-nosaurs just outside the tent. None of them will get out to investi-gate initially, but they will yell out, “Mr. Hookey, are you awake?”
I don’t answer, of course, lead-ing to their discussions of whether
I have already been consumed. Eventu-ally, a brave soul will venture out with a flashlight to assure the others, loudly and with conviction, that there is nothing outside and everyone can go to sleep. Sure, fat chance.
Usually, by about 3 a.m., an element of quiet comes over the camp, but by then my shoulders and hips are numb from the rocks on which I’m lying, and since I generally wake up very early anyway, I’m too restless to fall into that nice deep sleep that actually lets the brain get a little reboot.
Ultimately, I am not without a few moments of sweet revenge. Strange how loud and clangy the pots can be at 6:30 a.m. Strange how every hike or canoe trip has to start by 7:30 a.m., not noon. Strange how there’s no opportunity during the day to catch up on lost sleep.
I’m almost certain, by the second or third day, that I will have them begging for mercy and heading to bed by 8 p.m.
There are some who crash and burn by the second day, but there is some law of physics, I think, that says that the person with the shrillest voice, needs the least sleep and each year, by the third night, I have pulled out my duct tape and promised to use it on anyone I hear after midnight.
Of course, duct tape is good to lay around the campsite to cap-ture bears as well, and as I set some pieces outside each tent, I often hear a mysteri-ous silence come over the occupants.
Graham Hookey is an
educator and writer (ghookey@yahoo.
com).
Camping with 17 Grade 9 students
Parenting Graham Hookey
“Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the king-
dom of heaven.”How is that for a way
to start a sermon? Jesus starts his Ser-
mon on the Mount with these words and follows it up with eight more words of blessings: blessed are those who mourn; blessed are the meek; blessed are those
who hunger and thirst for righteousness; blessed are the merci-ful; blessed are the pure in heart; blessed are the peacemakers; blessed are those who are
persecuted because of righteousness; blessed are you when people insult you.
What a pleasant sur-prise. The desire to be happy is one of the driv-ing forces in our lives. But you don’t have to be around for long to realize that blessing, peace, and joy are by no means common experi-ences. Jesus’ greeting, “blessed are they,” sounds awfully strange in this world where people know so much pain, suffering, and injustice, and where people are becoming increasingly self-ab-sorbed and unfulfi lled.
Blessing is not what we fi rst expect of life. We rather expect that we will have to work hard and earn our way, and that we will encounter disappoint-ments, losses, criticism and skepticism along the way. We don’t expect much blessing. We also suspect that God might be tight-
fi sted, demanding and disparaging.
But Jesus opens the door and greets us with “blessings to you.” It turns many of our religious conceptions upside down. We suddenly realize that faith is not our feeble attempt to please God, but that we are living in response to God’s grace.
The world that Jesus invites us into is not dull, legalistic, or mor-alistic. The atmosphere is not in the least restrictive or burden-some. It is not the kind of life where a heavy-handed, demanding God keeps us on a short leash. The world of Jesus is spacious and gracious. There is wholeness and pro-found delight. We are embraced. His blessing
comes fi rst. The Beatitudes (these
sayings on blessing) are the in-troduction to Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, which is the main body of ethical teach-ing in the New Testament, the standard for Christian living. There is an interest-ing parallel between the Sermon on the Mount and the
Ten Commandments, which is the main body of ethical teaching in the Old Testament.
Both these ethical texts, the Ten Com-mandments and the Sermon on the Mount, do not start with exhor-tations and obligations, laws and demands, as one might expect. They both start with the announcement of grace. The Ten Com-mandments start with,
“I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery,” before it goes on to say, “You shall have no other gods before me ... ”
In the Sermon we fi rst hear, “blessed are the poor in spirit,” before we hear, “love your enemies and pray for those who perse-cute you.”
Why is this impor-tant?
It teaches us how Jesus is. He does not come to us with demands. He fi rst offers grace. He gives himself, then instructs us on how to live in his grace. He meets us in our poverty, in our sadness, where we lack power, where we hunger and thirst for righteousness and he offers healing, salva-tion, joy, hope, love and grace.
Gerard Booy is pastor at Haney Presbyterian
Church.
His blessing comes fi rst
Acts of Faith Gerard Booy
Imagine if you will a plant with fl ow-ers that don’t open,
at all, a stingy little evergreen shrub that produces an abundance of brightly-coloured buds from which the pollen will never see the light of day.
Such a beast exists and is now available at your local garden centre, while quantities last. And they won’t last long.
These little freaks of nature are called Bud Bloomers, a class of Calluna vulgaris, or Scotch heather, which has been the particular focus of German plant breeder Kurt Kramer.
They have been readily available in Eu-rope under the ‘Garden Girls’ brand (most of these cultivars have women’s names such as ‘Anette’, ‘Sandy’, ‘Melanie’ or ‘Alicia’) and many are patented in the United States. But they have only been marketed here for the past few years, and in very limited quanti-ties.
So why would you want a Bud Bloomer in your garden – in a phrase, rain resistance.
Bud Bloomer heathers are in full, glorious colour (with no fading) from late summer to early winter, often lasting three to four months. The buds resist severe weather, the constant rains and will tolerate tempera-tures as low as minus-10 C without incur-ring damage or browning.
By way of comparison, consider how many times you would be deadheading your winter pansies or violas during that same period of time.
Just think of the possibilities – weeks and weeks of pristine colour in a season that normally gives us little more than falling leaves and brown perennials, planters which are as colourful and attractive as the day you planted them, months ago.
If Bud Bloomers sound like a plant for you, then I would be less concerned about fi nd-ing a particular cultivar, as many are only available as generic reds, purples, pinks or whites. Focus instead on your favourite colours or tones, and don’t expect to have a second chance at buying them – I’m not kidding when I say they sell out fast.
The white bud bloomers are particularly striking when contrasted against the ever-
green black foliage of Ajuga ‘Black Scallop’ or Black Mondo Grass (Ophiopogon planis-capus ‘Nigrescens’). Purple bud bloomers pair well in containers with the gold tones of Carex ‘Evergold’, Lysimachia ‘Goldilocks’ or Hedera helix ‘Goldheart’.
The crimson-red varieties such as ‘Al-exandra’ almost seem to glow in the dark and would make a great mass planting in the foreground of any island bed or mixed border.
Two new pink cultivars from the Beauty Ladies series are ‘Salena’ and ‘Selly’, while the buds of ‘Veronique’, a pure white, each seem to be silhouetted by the contrasting dark green foliage.
The return of the bud bloomers is indeed a fl eeting late summer tradition, so if you want to enjoy it, go looking for them now.
If you happen to read this article a little late or can’t seem to fi nd any bud bloomers, there are other cultivars of Calluna vulgaris with winter or spring appeal. They include coloured new growth, winter bronzing or a complete change of foliar colour in the
cold temperatures. Speaking of which, most Scotch heathers are quite cold tolerant, being hardy to Zone 5 and even tolerating Zone 3 with some protection – all they re-ally need is an acid soil , good drainage and as much sun as possible. Here are a few of the more winter worthy varieties, along with their respective height and spread:
• ‘Silver Queen’ (40cm x 55cm) – eye-catching silver foliage is accented with pale lavender fl owers;
• ‘Firefl y’ (40cm x 60 cm) – features gold foliage (with hints of terra cotta) that turns
brick red in winter and deep mauve blooms;• ‘Kinlochruel’ (25cm x 40 cm) – large,
pure white double fl owers are followed by bronze highlights in the cold weather;
• ‘Red Fred’ (35cm x 45 cm) – absolutely brilliant red spring growth with lilac pink summer blooms;
• ‘Ruby Slinger’ (25cm x 45 cm) –the white fl owers are followed by bright yellow new growth tips in spring;
• ‘Flamingo’ (30cm x 50cm) – purple sum-mer blooms and pinkish-red spring tips make this a popular cultivar;
• ‘Spring Torch’ (45cm x 60cm) – as the name implies, vivid orange-yellow new growth provides spring colour with pink blooms following;
• ‘Hoyerhagen’ (25cm x 45cm) – the golden foliage deepens to reddish-orange in winter, while summer brings pale crimson fl owers;
• ‘Spring Cream’ (40cm x 50 cm) –the pure white fl owers are followed by creamy-yellow growth tips in spring.
Mike Lascelle is a local nursery manager and gardening author
Mike Lascelle photos
(From left) ‘White bud bloomer Calluna ‘Veronique’ in a planter with Carex ‘Ice Dance’, Heuchera ‘Melting Fire’, gold violas and variegated ivy; the glow-ing flowers of red bud bloomer Calluna ‘Alexandra’; a purple bud bloomer coupled with Carex ‘Evergold.’
THE NEWS/home&gardening
The return of the bud bloomers
Gardening Mike Lascelle
“Bud Bloomer heathers are in full, glorious colour (with no fading) from late summer to early winter, often lasting three to four months.”
VICTORIA – Don’t bother gathering up all the receipts that show the harmonized sales tax you paid on haircuts and restau-rant meals, in hopes of getting reimbursed for them a year from now.
That’s the advice from Finance Minis-ter Colin Hansen, who says it would be all but impossible to do what former premier Bill Vander Zalm’s anti-HST petition calls on the government to do.
The petition’s pro-posed “HST Extin-guishment Act” de-
mands that the old seven per cent provin-cial sales tax be rein-stated retroactive to
July 1, 2010, and that B.C. residents be reim-bursed “on a per capita basis” for any HST they paid in excess of the provincial tax.
Hansen said Tuesday that his government will undo the HST if that is what the people vote to do in a referen-dum next September, but he has no inten-tion of trying to sort through millions of big and small transac-tions.
“In my opinion, it would not be responsi-ble for any government or any legislature to commit to passing the HST Extinguishment Act as it is currently drafted,” Hansen said Tuesday.
The anti-HST petition is now scheduled to go to a province-wide ref-erendum on Sept. 24, 2011, in the fi rst use of B.C.’s 15-year-old citi-zen initiative legisla-tion. Premier Gordon Campbell announced Monday that if the ref-erendum produces a simple majority of vot-ers who want to scrap the HST, that will be done.
But it almost certain-ly won’t be done the
way Vander Zalm is demanding, after B.C. residents have paid the HST for 15 months.
Sorting through those millions of transactions subject to sales tax would be “extremely diffi cult,” Hansen said. And then there are the myriad input credits given to businesses under the HST, as well as HST rebate cheques that are now going out quarterly to about one million B.C. residents at the low end of the income scale.
NDP fi nance critic Bruce Ralston, who helped collect sig-natures for Vander Zalm’s petition, said he doesn’t know how the government will re-fund the HST costs as the petition demands. Ralston suggested an estimate of individual HST costs could be prepared for each of a range of incomes, and one-time refunds paid to everyone in the province.
Neither Hansen nor Ralston would venture a guess how much that would cost, but both agreed it would be on top of repaying a $1.6 billion in transition funds to the federal government and rehir-ing hundreds of B.C. sales tax collectors who were moved to the federal payroll this year under harmoniza-tion.
The former provin-cial tax and the new HST apply equally to many items, and ex-emptions for basic gro-ceries and other neces-sities still apply. But a range of services such as hairdressing and gym memberships es-caped the old PST, and items such as bicycles and energy-effi cient windows had enjoyed provincial exemptions that were lost when B.C. adopted the HST.
Don’t bother saving HST receipts“Impossible” to reimburse: Hansen
Tom Fletcher/Black Press
Finance Minister Colin Hansen says people will learn more about the harmonized sales tax before a referen-dum on Sept. 24, 2011.
b y To m F l e t c h e rBlack Press
Colleen Flanagan/THE NEWS
Just be-causeTara LaBelle gives her dog Swift, a seven-year-old border collie, direction as he flies through a dog agility course Sunday during Paws for a Cause at the Albion Fairgrounds. Paws for a Cause is a fundraising walk to raise money for the B.C. SPCA.
Community Calendar
Community Calendar lists events in Maple Ridge and Pitt Meadows. Notices are
free to local non-profi t groups courtesy of The News. Drop off details to 22328 119 Ave., fax to 604-463-4741 or e-mail [email protected] at least a week before the event. Include a contact name and number. (No submissions by phone.) Listings appear as space permits. For guaranteed publication, ask our classifi ed department at 604-467-1122 about non-profi t rates.
Saturday, Sept. 18• Maple Ridge Japanese
Language Association is hosting a story-telling session from 11:30 a.m. to noon at the Maple Ridge Public Library. For more information, call Astrid Stimpson at 604-945-7064.
• The Maple Ridge Public Library celebrates Eid from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Eid marks the end of Ramadan on the Muslim calendar. This celebration is a time for com-ing together as a community, and renewing friendships and family ties. Learn about an-other culture, see calligraphy demonstrations, taste delicious food and have a good time. No registration necessary. For more information, please call the Maple Ridge Public Library at 604-467-7417.
• The Maple Ridge Adopt A Block Society will be holding their annual TD Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup at 10 a.m. at Maple Ridge Park. Vests, bags, grabbers and gloves will be provided, so grab your family and come on out. We will be meeting at the picnic tables. If you have any questions please call 604-463-9699 or email [email protected].
• The eleventh annual Art in the Swamp will be held from 10 a.m. to 4:48 p.m. at 25812 Dewdney Trunk Road, in beautiful Webster’s Corners. Artists include Amar from
Afar, Margaret Cook, Corrina Cunningham, Cindi Hofl in, Beverley Peacock, Scott Schell, Claire Louise Stephen, and Rik Watson. Ten per cent of sales will be going towards the Friends in Need Food Bank. For more info, call 604-462-1399 or email [email protected].
• The popular cookbook exchange returns to the Haney Farmers’ Market. Bring a book, take a book or make a donation to the Friends of the Library. It’s Fitness at the Market with Parks and Leisure demonstrating some of the activities available to you. The Yuen Family has a display of Martial Arts. Memorial Peace Park on 224th Street in down-town Maple Ridge from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. www.haneyfarmers-market.org
Sunday, Sept. 19• The 30th Annual Terry
Fox Run for cancer research will take place at the Ham-mond Community Centre. Registration starts at 8:30 a.m. and the run begins at 10 a.m. Please come out and support this great cause.
• The eleventh annual Art in the Swamp will be held from 10 a.m. to 4:48 p.m. at 25812 Dewdney Trunk Road, in beautiful Webster’s Corners. Artists include Amar from Afar, Margaret Cook, Corrina Cunningham, Cindi Hofl in, Beverley Peacock, Scott Schell, Claire Louise Stephen, and Rik Watson. Ten per cent of sales will be going towards the Friends in Need Food Bank. For more info, call 604-462-1399 or email [email protected].
• Celebrate the last day of the Osprey Village Farmers’ Market by supporting the Food Bank and dropping your ideas and thoughts for the market season of 2011 into our suggestion box. Located in Pitt Meadows at the south end of Bonson Road. www.haneyfarmersmarket.org
See Community Calendar, p56
Community Calendar
• The Maple Ridge Community Church is celebrating its 25th anniversary with a special service at 6:30 p.m. at the Maple Ridge Alliance Church located at Dewdney Trunk Road and 203rd Avenue. A dessert evening will follow at Maple Ridge Community Church. Anyone who attended Maple Ridge Community Church over the past 25 years is welcome to attend. For more information contact the offi ce at 604-465-4211.
Monday, Sept. 20
• The Valley Women’s Network Ridge Meadows Chapter meets at the Maple Ridge Library (Fraser Room) from 6 to m8:30 p.m. Speaker Sue Clement will be talking about referral network-ing. Build your business connections and network, while enjoying a fully catered dinner. For more information or to reserve contact [email protected] or call 604-764-8877. Members $20, Non-members $23, Reservations required.
• The Pitt Meadows Garden Club is holding its monthly meeting at 7 p.m. Pitt Meadows Community Hall adjacent to Community Church (corner Harris and Ford Road). Guest speaker will be Wes Hawley, Arborist. Bring all your tree-related questions about Fall and Spring pruning of trees and shrubs. Everyone welcome.
Tuesday, Sept. 21
• The Municipal Pension Retirees Association meets at 10:30 a.m. Call Fern at 604-463-8669 for more information, or visit [email protected]
• Maple Ridge/Pitt Meadows Community Services is holding its annual general meeting at 3:30 p.m. at the Rainbow Club, 11907 – 228th Street, Maple Ridge. All interested parties are invited to attend.
Friday, Sept. 24• The HOMINUM Fraser Valley Chapter is a support and
discussion group to help gay, bi-sexual and questioning men with the challenges of being married, separated or single. Its next meeting is at 7:30 p.m. For information and location, please call Art at 604-462-9813 or Don at 604-329-9760.
Saturday, Sept. 25• Discover what Downtown Maple Ridge has to off er at
the last Downtown Maple Ridge Summer Market for 2010 from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. in Memorial Peace Park on 224th Street next to the Haney Farmers’ Market. Enjoy entertainment, kids’ activities and local vendors in a fun street market atmosphere. Call the DMRBIA at 604-467-2420 or visit downtownmapleridge.ca for more infor-mation, or if you’d like to be a vendor.
• Every year the Haney Farmers’ Market dedicates a market day to the Friends in Need Food Bank and this year is no excep-tion. Come by their booth and make a donation for the coming winter. Jeff Huggins performs. Memorial Peace Park on 224th Street in downtown Maple Ridge. www.haneyfarmersmarket.org
Ongoing• Happy Wanderers singles walking group for people aged 45
and up meets every Saturday at 9:15 a.m. at the Pitt Meadows Heritage Hall, Harris Road and Lougheed Highway. Walks take place in various areas on both sides of the Fraser River. For more information call 604-463-8874.
Community Calendar from p55
THE NEWS/sportsSection coordinator:Robert Mangelsdorf 604-467-1122 ext. [email protected]
John Van Putten/BLACK PRESS
Chantelle Biagioni dives for a save during practice under the watchful eye of sister Charmaine Biagioni during UFV soccer practice.
When Pitt Meadows’ Chantelle Biagioni watches her sister Char-maine make a nice save during a University of the Fraser Valley women’s soccer practice, there’s a fascinating moment of inner conflict.
On one hand, Chantelle feels a swell of pride – Charmaine is her younger sister, after all.
There’s also a less joyous emo-tion present, one that’s linked to Chantelle’s competitive instinct. Rob Giesbrecht, the new wom-en’s soccer coach at UFV, says he’ll pick his starting keeper on a week-to-week basis based on how they perform in training.
Chantelle, age 20, came into the season the Cascades’ No. 1 goal-keeper, and now she’s got her 18-year-old frosh sister breath-ing down her neck.
“It’s frustrating at times,” Ch-antelle admitted with a wry chuckle. “She (Charmaine) is a talented goalkeeper. When I see her doing well, I’m proud of her. But at the same time, I don’t want her to catch me.”
Having siblings playing the same specialized position is a unique dynamic for the Cas-cades. It’s also a new situation for the Biagionis, who comprise two-thirds of UFV’s goaltending depth chart along with fourth-year keeper Michela Fiordo. Because of their two-year age difference, this is the first time they’ve had the opportunity to play on the same team.
“I find we’re the same in a lot of ways,” Charmaine said, com-paring her skills to her older sis-ter’s. “But she’s definitely more
vocal and aggressive, because she’s more experienced. Watch-ing her makes me want to be more like her. I hope to play like she does.”
The Biagioni sisters are going to end up spending a lot of time together this year. They both live at the family home in Pitt Mead-ows and drive out to UFV for classes and soccer practice. They work for the same house-clean-ing company in Maple Ridge. You have to wonder if they’ll tire of each other at some point.
“We haven’t yet . . .” Chantelle begins.
“. . . but it’s still early,” Char-maine finishes with a chuckle.
Chantelle, a third-year keeper, is coming off a banner 2009 cam-paign. She was the backbone of a stingy UFV squad that allowed just 16 goals in 14 games last season, and posted six shutouts along the way.
The elder Biagioni’s perfor-mance was even more impres-
sive in light of her recovery from a devastating injury she suffered last spring.
On March 23 – five days before her 19th birthday – she shattered her heel while participating in
indoor rock climbing. The injury was supposed to
keep her sidelined for nine months to a year, but there she was in September, tending goal for the Cascades.
“I’m really stubborn,” Chantelle said. “I went off crutches at three
months, and it was supposed to take me six to nine.
“It was a challenge for me to overcome.”
The next challenge for the Cascades is making the Canada West playoffs, a feat the program has yet to accomplish in four previous seasons. Giesbrecht, an Abbotsford native who took the helm at UFV after Colin Miller joined the Vancouver Whitecaps coaching staff, is hopeful his team can build on an encourag-ing 5-5-4 campaign.
“Any time you’re part of a building phase of a program and there’s teams out ahead of you that you’re trying to catch, you have to keep instilling that belief that they can do it,” Giesbrecht said. “That’s been a bit of our challenge, and it’s something we thrive on – just continuing to encourage the girls and give them confidence that they can compete against the best teams. They’re very capable of that.”
Pitt sister act backstops UFV CascadesChantelle and Charmaine Biagioni compete for the starting goal keeper job
b y D a n K i n v i gblack press
“When I see her doing well, I’m proud of her. But at the same time, I don’t want her to catch me.” Chantelle Biagioni
Sports
Colleen Flanagan/THE NEWS
Slap shotMarkus Hourigan of the Ridge Meadows Rustlers tries to block a slapshot by a Chilliwack player during a peewee A3 exhibition hockey game at Planet Ice Sunday afternoon. Ridge Meadows beat Chilliwack 4-3.
Martial arts school vies for sports grant
A Maple Ridge martial arts school is hoping to earn the Dis-trict of Maple Ridge a $10,000 sports grant.
Tae Geuk Tae Kwon Do is cel-ebrating its grand opening Sept. 18 from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., and is en-couraging the public to come by and donate non-perishable food items for the food bank. The mar-tial arts school is taking part in a program organized by a national community sports organization called, True Sport. The group promotes community sports that are healthy, fair, inclusive, and fun, while fi ghting against cheat-
ing, bullying, aggressive parental behaviour, and win-at-all-costs thinking.
True Sport is holding a contest for sports organizations to give back to their communities, and the organization that wins, wins a $10,000, or $5,000, sports grant for the community where they are located.
Cameron Tsoi-A-Sue, an in-structor at the school, said he is hoping the community comes out on Saturday
“This would be great for Maple Ridge if we could win this,” he said.
Tae Geuk Tae Kwon Do is the home to local Olympian Ivett Gon-da, who competed in the 2004 and 2008 Summer Olympics.
Gonda will be on hand for a meet and greet at the event. There also be demonstrations and sparring.
“There’s going to be board and brick-breaking too,” said Tsoi-A-
Sue. Tae Guk Tae Kwon Do is lo-cated at 20120 115A Avenue, Maple Ridge. For more information, visit www.taekwon.ca
Offi cials neededWith hoops season just a cou-
ple of months away, the Fraser Valley Basketball Offi cials Asso-ciation (FVBOA) is searching for new members.
The FVBOA offi ciates all bas-ketball games played between Langley and Hope, and from Maple Ridge to Agassiz on the north side of the Fraser River. The association is running edu-cation and training meetings at 7 p.m. on Monday evenings at Abbotsford Collegiate, begin-ning Oct. 4 and running through the end of November. For more information, contact Paul Nivins at [email protected], or call 604-613-6391.
THE NEWS/scoreboard
PIJHL scoring leaders
Players Team GP G A PTS Michael Nardi Devils 3 3 5 8 Jake Roder Sockeyes 2 4 2 6 Christopher Busto Devils 3 3 3 6 Liam Harding Ice Hawks 3 3 3 6 Sebastien Pare Sockeyes 2 2 3 5 Cody Smith Ice Hawks 2 1 4 5 Colton Precourt Kodiaks 3 1 4 5 Kentaro Tanaka Steelers 3 1 4 5 Mitchell Smith Sockeyes 2 0 5 5 Eli Wiebe Sockeyes 2 0 5 5Thomas Hardy Kodiaks 3 3 1 4Robert Wilkinson Steelers 3 3 1 4 Jeremy Hamaguchi Sockeyes 2 2 2 4Julius Ho Devils 3 2 2 4
Curtis Rocchetti Steelers 3 1 3 4John Proctor Ice Hawks 3 3 0 3 Sam Chichak Sockeyes 2 2 1 3 Dustin Cervo Flames 3 2 1 3 Marko Gordic Steelers 3 2 1 3 Shane Harle Flames 3 2 1 3 CJ Legassic Flames 3 2 1 3 Ryan Veillet Kodiaks 3 2 1 3 Stefan Burzan Ice Hawks 2 1 2 3 Brent Fletcher Flames 3 1 2 3 Danny Brandys Flames 3 0 3 3 Mico Dragutinovic Black Panthers 2 2 0 2 Rudi Thorsteinson Sockeyes 2 2 0 2 Mike Phillipson Kodiaks 3 2 0 2 Chad Veillet Kodiaks 3 2 0 2 Richard Moul Black Panthers 1 1 1 2Bradley Parker Pilots 1 1 1 2
Hockey
Football
Valley Community Football LeagueRegular season standings
AtomTeam W L T % STK PF PA PTSAbbotsford 3 0 0 1.000 Won 3 132 6 6MR Blue 2 0 0 1.000 Won 2 48 24 4Mission 2 0 0 1.000 Won 2 58 24 4MR Gold 1 1 0 .500 Lost 1 46 30 2Chilliwack Red 1 2 0 .333 Won 1 62 94 2Chilliwack Blue 0 3 0 .000 Lost 3 24 85 0North Langley 0 3 0 .000 Lost 3 18 125 0
Bantam Team W L T % STK PF PA PTSChilliwack 2 0 0 1.000 Won 2 52 19 4Mission-Abby 1 0 1 .750 Lost 1 46 0 3Meadow Ridge 0 1 1 .250 Lost 2 13 21 1North Langley 0 2 0 .000 Lost 2 6 77 0
Junior bantamTeam W L T % STK PF PA PTSChilliwack Red 2 0 0 1.000 Won 2 71 24 4Abbotsford 1 0 1 .750 Won 1 74 36 3Chilliwack Blue 1 0 1 .750 Won 1 84 48 3North Langley 1 1 0 .500 Lost 1 48 59 2Meadow Ridge 0 2 0 .000 Lost 2 12 84 0Mission 0 2 0 .000 Lost 2 46 84 0
PeeweeTeam W L T % STK PF PA PTSChilliwack Blue 2 0 0 1.000 Won 2 77 31 4Meadow Ridge 1 0 1 .750 Lost 1 45 13 3Chilliwack Red 1 1 0 .500 Won 1 20 32 2North Langley 1 1 0 .500 Lost 1 12 26 2Abbotsford 0 1 1 .250 Lost 2 32 47 1Mission 0 2 0 .000 Lost 2 18 55 0
MidgetTeam W L T % STK PF PA PTSLangley 2 0 0 1.000 Won 2 88 0 4Nanaimo 2 0 0 1.000 Won 2 32 3 4Cowichan 2 0 0 1.000 Won 2 44 8 4Coquitlam 1 0 0 1.000 Won 1 7 0 2North Delta 1 0 0 1.000 Won 1 14 0 2Cloverdale 1 1 0 .500 Won 1 27 29 2Mission 1 1 0 .500 Lost 1 17 36 2White Rock 1 1 0 .500 Won 1 35 24 2Meadow Ridge 1 1 0 .500 Lost 1 38 7 2Victoria 1 1 0 .500 Won 1 36 16 2Richmond White 1 1 0 .500 Lost 1 39 21 2Richmond Black 1 1 0 .500 Won 1 38 24 2Chilliwack 1 1 0 .500 Lost 1 51 33 2Westside 0 2 0 .000 Lost 2 6 65 0Burnaby 0 2 0 .000 Lost 2 0 66 0North Surrey 0 2 0 .000 Lost 2 6 70 0Vancouver 0 2 0 .000 Lost 2 8 84 0
Colleen Flanagan/THE NEWS
Soaring and pouringElisabeth Harmer of Port Moody rides Whisper in the rain as she competes in the Maple Ridge Equestrian Centre’s September Classic Hunter Jumper Show Sunday afternoon.
Pacifi c International Junior Hockey League
Harold Brittain ConferenceTeam GP W L T OTL PTS GF GAAldergrove Kodiaks 3 2 1 0 0 4 13 12Abbotsford Pilots 1 1 0 0 0 2 5 4 Port Moody Black Panthers 2 1 1 0 0 2 6 11Ridge Meadows Flames 3 1 2 0 0 2 10 9 Mission Icebreakers 2 0 2 0 0 0 5 12
Tom Shaw ConferenceTeam GP W L T OTL PTS GF GANorth Delta Devils 3 3 0 0 0 6 11 6 Richmond Sockeyes 2 2 0 0 0 4 14 2 Delta Ice Hawks 3 1 1 0 1 3 9 10 Grandview Steelers 3 1 2 0 0 2 10 10 Squamish Wolf Pack 2 0 2 0 0 0 2 9