Terry Lake takes center stage

Have you noticed lately that Terry Lake seems to be getting all the ink, while Kevin Krueger is missing in action? When infrastructure money was announced, it was Lake who spoke on behalf of both of them, for example. That seems to be the way it is with a lot of things.

Likewise, Lake has been much more visible at public events than Krueger has.

People are noticing, and wondering. There are probably a couple of reasons for this.

One is that Krueger is in cabinet; Lake is not. This provides an excellent opportunity for Krueger to attend to cabinet duties while Lake takes care of a lot of the public-appearance stuff.

Second reason could be that Krueger doesn’t need profile, Lake does. The former mayor hasn’t yet carved out a niche for himself and needs the attention more than Krueger.

As an aside, Lake was there sans Krueger at the annual Canadian Home Builders Association gala on Saturday night, and what a pleasant change it was in a non-election year. At last year’s do, Lake spent his mike time pretty much endorsed mayoral candidate Peter Milobar, while Claude Richmond trashed the NDP at some length.

This time, Lake stuck to the agenda, avoiding the partisan stuff. Milobar, as usual, was low key but jocular and on topic.

Why we don’t always report suicides

Sometimes it’s good to remind yourself why you do things the way you do them. For many years now, I’ve had a policy of not publishing details about suicides. Not that we publish nothing at all, but we’re very careful about how we describe them. Sometimes, we simply pass up a suicide story.

Jim Harrison asked me to talk about the ethical issue of reporting suicides on his morning radio show, along with Charles Hays of the TRU journalism program. Charles and I were pretty much on the same wave length, preferring to treat the reporting of suicides very, very carefully.

At the Daily News, we seldom use the word suicide. If someone jumps off Peterson Creek bridge, we certainly report the story. If someone kills himself or herself in their own home, we probably won’t. In other words, public suicides aren’t ignored; private ones may well be.

There are two reasons for the sensitivity around reporting of suicides. One is the fear that it will generate copycat suicides. The other is concern for the privacy of friends and family — like it or not, there is a stigma attached to suicide.

Studies differ, but there’s some evidence that reporting of suicide details does result in more suicides. One study in the 1980s showed that when media stopped reporting suicides of people jumping in front of subway trains, the number of suicides of that nature dropped by 80 per cent. Of course, that doesn’t mean the actual number of suicides dropped; only that people stopped using subway trains to carry them out.

Some people think the media should report more on suicides, not less. This, they believe, would help remove the stigma, and would educate the public as to the reasons for suicides and how they can be avoided. I think the media can do that and still be sensitive to people’s feelings.

I remember some years ago when a prominent local resident discovered he was terminally ill. Rather than “be a burden,” or face the decline in health that would accompany his illness, he took his own life. It was an entirely rational, selfless act, but we didn’t report the details of how he died.

What would have been the benefit? Instead of being remembered for what he accomplished in the community, for all the good things he did in life, he would be remembered today as someone who killed himself.

There’s no right or wrong in how the media report on suicides, no clear ethical lines. Each medium does its best to act in deference to the sensitivities of its own community.

Do today’s teens really have it so tough?

Armchair Mayor column, The Kamloops Daily News, Sept. 25, 2009

“They don’t look happy,” I observed as we drove towards town.

I was watching students on their morning trek to high school, shuffling along as if they were on the way to the dentist. A number of them were texting as they went.

“Note the lack of cheerful countenance, the downcast looks, the reluctant gait,” I continued. “It’s as if they don’t want to be in school.”

Jacob finally bit.

“You mean, as if the education system is a conspiracy by adults to crush the life out of them, to remove any semblance of independent thinking?” he asked.

“Indeed,” I said. “It’s because we, the adult conspiracy, need a way to control them, to pound them into dust so we can reconstitute them into unthinking sheep who do our bidding.”

Jacob, now 19 and in his second year at TRU, which was where we were heading on this fine morning, corrected me.

“You are not part of the conspiracy,” he pointed out. “You are merely a cog.”

“Damn,” I said. “Here I’ve been thinking I’m on the inside, being that I’m in the media, and all. Who is the conspiracy, then, the industrial-military complex?”

“The Ministry of Education,” he said.

“Really? And how do they accomplish this?

“Have you ever noticed how polling stations are always at schools?” he asked. Without waiting for an answer, he added, “That’s so the Ministry of Education can rig the elections.”

“I think I understand,” I said. ”Polling stations are located in schools so the Ministry of Education can rig the voting to elect people who will set up the school system so the youth of our country are stripped of dignity and subjugated like slaves to do what adults want.”

“You’re finally catching on,” Jacob said.

The average parent listening in on that conversation might wonder just what they’re teaching in all those political science courses up at TRU, but Jacob and I have been having these philosophical discussions since he was about three years old.

I’m pretty sure he enjoys flummoxing the old man rather than that he believes his own stuff, but the fact remains there are a bunch of unhappy teenagers out there. Angry, even.

I don’t remember being anywhere close to that level of depression when I was that age. Of course, those were the golden years of teenagedom, of Elvis and Buddy Holly and Jerry Lee Lewis and later the Beatles. We wore the cuffs of our jeans rolled up, with white socks, a skinny white belt, suede penny loafers and a pack of ciggies snared in the sleeve of our t-shirt.

We drove old beaters, drank bootlegged beer and sometimes vodka, and spent Saturday nights tooling up and down the main drag looking for action.

And we managed to survive with the most fundamental of electronics — a console radio in the living room and a snowy black and white picture on our one-channel TV. The calculator wasn’t invented until I was out of high school.

“But things are so much more complicated now; kids have so much more to deal with!” they say.

I’m not so sure. We agonized over acne, insisted on being able to buy the right clothing, sulked if we weren’t given the total freedom we craved, cried over lost loves and longed to be popular.

As near as I can tell, that’s pretty close to the way it is nowadays, too.

Yet psychologists tell us 75 per cent of teenagers today are unhappy, and as many as 25 percent are clinically depressed.

Teenage depression manifests itself in withdrawal, eating disorders, drug abuse, self-injury, Internet addictions, even violence and suicide.

We must remember, of course, the many kids who truly have it all together and who give us real confidence in the future. And that most of those grumpy looking high schoolers we saw trudging to school the other day will turn out just fine as they work through issues of self-esteem and anxieties about the future.

Some, of course, won’t.

Jacob’s offbeat analysis is actually a very insightful abstract of how teens view the world, but I don’t think the fundamentals have changed much from one generation to another.

I stay in loose contact with a couple of friends from high school. Bill, Richard and I went very separate ways and haven’t seen each other more than a handful of times in the last 45 years. One lives in Vancouver, the other in Seattle.

We keep talking about a reunion among the three of us. We’ll golf, hoist a few (though not nearly as many as when we were young), and talk about the old days.

This was going to be the summer; it didn’t happen, as it hasn’t happened so many other summers.

Maybe some day it will, and then we’ll reminisce and tell funny stories about those wonderful days of our youth. We probably won’t talk about the nuclear-bomb-attack drills they put us through regularly in school. We won’t mention our two friends who were buried alive when a sand tunnel they were playing in collapsed. Or living with the fear of polio. Or even the debilitating loneliness when there was no one to talk to.

For no matter what it seemed like then, those times seem near idyllic now. And, of course, we had it so easy compared to young people today.

Some sales pitches better than others

Apparently Mayor Peter Milobar is unimpressed with my newspaper-hawking abilities. Which is fine, because the feeling is mutual. He apparently made a comment to a local TV station disparaging my sales technique in flogging The Daily News on downtown streets Wednesday morning as we collected donations for Raise a Reader.

His motivation, I assume, was to leave the impression that he’s a better salesperson than I am, but in fact he’s probably not used to actually working for a living, and I’m pretty sure I collected more than he did.

I’m kidding, of course. Actually, Coun. Marg Spina is the one who can upsell. While the mayor and I were bringing in toonies and loonies, she was raking in 10- and 20-dollar bills. 

All for a good cause, and lots of fun. Our City councillors (Milobar, Spina, Dennis Walsh and Nancy Bepple), and MP Cathy McLeod, deserve kudos for hitting the sidewalks bright and early to support it. In fact, McLeod and Milobar teamed up on Victoria Street for awhile starting at around 6:30 a.m., proving that local and federal politicians can co-operate.

The total effort brought in more than $4,000 in sales of the special edition of The Daily News, which parlays into more than $40,000 when matching sponsor and government contributions are added in. Every penny of which goes to literacy projects right here in Kamloops.

Words really can hurt you

Have you ever wanted something engraved, like maybe a piece of jewelry, or a gift, and felt that pang of anxiety after you’ve left it with the engraver, wondering if you made a mistake in the wording?

That’s why engravers insist on getting your signature on a piece of paper with the wording on it, so you can’t come back at them later if it turns out to be wrong.

Imagine if you submitted the wording for a very expensive bronze plaque about a foot and a half wide and close to two feet deep. And it took about a month to get done. And then it was mounted on a statue and there was a big public ceremony where everybody was looking at the plaque.

And there were three big typos in it.

That’s what happened to me, and the Friends of Phil Society that commissioned and fundraised for the statue of Phil Gaglardi now erected at Kamloops on the Square. Somehow, the final proof of the plaque did not come back to the committee as it was supposed to. Instead, the plaque came from the supplier at the Coast to the City and straight onto the statue plinthe, complete with errors committed at the foundry.

I was horrified. So was everyone else.

Now, I’m pleased to say, the new plaque has arrived and will be swapped with the one with the mistaken words. Believe me when I tell you the new plaque has been proof-read up, down and sideways.

I remember a few years ago when the new Cenotaph was erected in Riverside Park, and the plaque arrived with a grammatical error. The public came through with enough spontaneous donations to replace it.

Anyway, it will be a good day when the new plaque goes on the statue of Flying Phil and the project is finally, formally, concluded.

Please don’t forget that tomorrow, Wednesday, Sept. 23 is Raise A Reader Day in Kamloops. Volunteers will be at Starbucks, A&W and the downtown 7-11 selling copies of The Daily News in return for donations to local literacy projects.

TRU gift policy seems pretty clear

Speaking of Prada bags, TRU does have a policy on accepting gifts. It’s not air tight, but any TRU administrator reading it should have been known to turn in a free Prada bag. This is what it says:

“Acceptance of gifts, entertainment, travel, and services for personal use from people or companies who do business with TRU could impede the objectivity of faculty and staff members and create a conflicting obligation to that person or company contrary to the obligation of faculty and staff members to TRU.

“For this reason, it is incumbent on the individual faculty or staff member to initiate a discussion with the administrative head of the unit if feasible whenever the individual is about to be offered gifts, entertainment, travel or services of significant value so that the issues surrounding obligtation may be completely disclosed and approval obtained before a personal benefit is received. It is recognized that there will be circumstances in which individuals will have to decide at a moment’s notice whether or not to accept a gift. In these cases, individuals are to consult with the administrative head at the earliest possible opportunity. Administrative heads of units, in considering requests, will take into consideration the source, value, purpose and frequency of offering in assessing the case. Any potential detriment to TRU should be grounds for denial of the request to receive a gift. Tokens of appreciation of insignicant value may be accepted at the discretion of the individual.”

Of course, since then-TRU president Kathleen Scherf — the number one “administrative head” — took possession of a gift Prada bag herself, it complicates things a little. Still no word on what, if anything, TRU is going to do about the Prada bag incident.

Preaching the gospel on railway ties

Armchair Mayor column, The Kamloops Daily News, Saturday, Sept. 19, 2009

The first casualty of war, the wisdom goes, is the truth.

Is that what’s happening in the near-hysterical, and highly effective, opposition to a cogeneration plant that would rid us of a quarter-million railway ties each year, and produce hydro energy to boot?

Just asking, because I see that, in the wake of the “Kamloops victory” over cogen, opponents of technological solutions to waste are ramping up a “Zero Waste B.C. Network.”

Such groups are springing up here and there, and are more or less the brainchild of retired chemistry professor Paul Connett, who has become the poster guy for anti causes that include fluoride and gasification technology.

Connett hails from St. Lawrence University, an obscure undergraduate school with a little more than 2,000 students in upstate New York.

He was brought to town by opponents of a project under development by Aboriginal Cogeneration Corp. to dispose of excess railway ties. They are convinced the gasification process that would be used by the company would unleash cancer-causing materials into our environment.

It worked, at least for now. Connett — who doesn’t stop at claiming gasification technology is a threat to the environment, but is positive our very democratic way of life is at stake — convinced City council to oppose the project.

The reason council got in line with opponents: too many questions need to be answered. Of course, council could simply have reserved judgment until it received satisfactory answers to those questions but, faced with a room full of angry people, it decided discretion is the better part of valor.

I don’t in the least disparage those who have concerns about the cogen plan, but I do wonder if there’s an excess of hyperbole.

Some of the stuff circulating about the company ranges from insulting to bordering on racist and simply isn’t acceptable. Every cause has its extremists, so the worst comments can be discounted. However, I sense more thunder than light being aimed at the issue.

The fears about air emissions don’t appear to acknowledge that throwing railway ties into a furnace is a lot different than using a high-tech gasifier developed at the Energy and Environmental Research Center in the U.S.

In fact, the schematic for the system that would be used in Kamloops indicates no emissions stack. The proponent says solid and liquid waste could be easily handled by municipal systems.

We ran a story in June quoting Jim Bridges, a toxicology and environmental health professor emeritus at the 14,000-student University of Surrey, who said chemical emissions from incineration can be controlled.

“As a consequence, a well managed waste facility is not a concern from a health perspective. . . . Many studies have been conducted in a wide range of countries that show there’s no detectable contamination of soil, plants or animals from a modern incinerator. Nor is there any identifiable increase in dioxin level in the blood or the breast milk of local residents.”

Particulate emissions from these modern incinerators are less than from diesel-powered vehicles, he said.

Bridges’ credentials seem at least equal to those of Connett. In addition to coming out of a distinguished major university in the U.K., he’s chair of the EU Scientific Committee on Emerging and Newly Identified Health Risks, and is an advisor to the World Health Organization. He’s also written 300 research papers, edited 17 books and has served as Dean of Science at the university.

Is it in the realm of the possibility he knows what he is talking about?

Is it possible that Aboriginal Cogeneration has answers to the concerns of Save Kamloops and Zero Waste B.C.? Or is it more likely that no matter how much empirical evidence were stacked in front of them, opponents wouldn’t accept it?

I certainly am not going to become the defender of Aboriginal Cogeneration and its project — the company has as much responsibility to provide answers to people’s questions as people have a responsibility to carefully assess information that’s put to them.

With 25 million “creosote-laden” railway ties in need of disposal, it just seems to me we should be looking seriously at the best way of doing that.

While zero waste is an admirable goal, it’s not very practical when it comes to things like railway ties. If we want railways to run — and I’m pretty sure we do — we have to deal with the waste. We could simply pile them up and burn them in the open air like we used to do, or bury them, like we used to do, but neither of those methods was satisfactory.

Shall we simply hope that somebody is willing to gather up all those ties and take them away so someone else can suffer with the problem?

Whether it’s slaughterhouse waste in Westwold, garbage in the Lower Mainland, air emissions from Domtar, or railway ties in Kamloops, we’d be better served to seek real answers instead of simply to search out naysayers — like the guy from New York — who will preach the gospel according to our own bias.

Wouldn’t we? Just asking.

What we don’t need to know about Kathleen Scherf

A lot of people seem to think we the public have a right to know exactly what was behind the firing of Kathleen Scherf from her job as president of Thompson Rivers University. One of our local papers even wrote an editorial to that effect.

In our own paper, city editor Susan Duncan’s On The Run column in today’s Daily News gives an excellent insight into some of the factors taken into consideration by the TRU board of governors, but that’s probably about as much as we’ll know, and as much as we need to know.

General conclusions are that there were several things that led to the decision by the board, and that it should have been no surprise to Scherf. But unless there is a huge leak in the administrative offices of TRU, the report upon which the board based its decision will not see the light of day.

While it might seem logical that when a public servant is fired we should be told the reasons, that isn’t the way the world works. When M.J. Cousins was fired as CEO from Venture Kamloops, and when Gail Scott was more recently fired from the same position, the only comment made by the VK board was that they were leaving to pursue other interests.

That’s standard language for: “This is a personnel matter and we simply aren’t going to say more.”

There are many other examples of the same thing, and there are two good reasons. One is that the person being fired is going through a terrible time and publicly talking about minute details of his or her deficiencies would be cruel and unnecessary.

The other reason is that people who get fired from important management jobs have a right to legally challenge it if they wish, and anything the employer says can and will be used against the employer. So, details are off limits. Anything approaching the “fired” word is usual steadfastly avoided. 

What’s unusual about the Scherf case isn’t that so little is being said about the reasons, but that so much has become public. Board chairman Ron Olynyk said more than most public employers do in these situations when he indicated that the board had lost confidence in her leadership abilities.

The board of governors is going by the book, and those who long for all the tidbits will have to go without.

‘I really, really want my Mom back’

The most poignant aspect of this morning’s press conference on the 1993 disappearance of Sherri McLaughlin was the courage of the family, who attended to join RCMP in their plea for closure.

The 20-year-old Sherri disappeared in September 1993 while bicycling to a friend’s house in Brocklehurst. Police believe she was purposely side-swiped and dragged into a car. As they said today, they also believe they know who the man was — a sex offender who has been in custody for the past 10 years.

They’ve pieced together pretty conclusive evidence based on paint chips and other clues, but Crown does not believe there’s a likelihood of conviction.

Sherri’s son Stephen, who was only one at the time his mother disappeared, took the microphone briefly to say, “I really, really want my mom back. I never got to know her.” He begged the suspect to “tell somebody” about the crime.

Police spokesmen said they believe the man “has a conscience,” but so far he has refused to acknowledge any involvement.

More on our Daily News website, and in tomorrow’s edition.

Who took Sherri McLaughlin?

Just finishing up the lineup for Thursday’s edition of The Daily News, and the front-page lead will be, of course, news that RCMP say they’ve cracked the Sherri McLaughlin case after 16 years.

Anyone who was a resident of Kamloops in September 1993 has that case seared into their memories. The discovery of her damaged bicycle, the desperate pleas of her family for help in finding her, the feeling of helplessness as it became clear she would not be found.

Sherri was a young woman described by friends as outgoing and popular. Certainly not the sort of person who would have run away. At the time, her mother, Jacki White, said she had her “own feelings” on whether her daughter might have been grabbed by someone she knew.

It was a Sunday afternoon almost exactly 16 years ago when Sherri returned to her Schubert Drive home after visiting friends. An ex-boyfriend called her there, and she agreed to ride her bike over to his house in Brocklehurst.

“Police believe she rode along Schubert, turned left on Kent Avenue and took a short path that leads to Halson Avenue,” we wrote in a story at the time. “From there she may have ridden west to Parkcrest Avenue. When she failed to show up after about 40 minutes, (former boyfriend Shane) Gowans went looking for her. In the 1500-block Parkcrest, between Singh Street and Nicolani, he found her bike and backpack. The bike had been run over by a vehicle, but there was no trace of McLaughlin.”

Her brother James, quoted in the same Daily News story at the time, said “the case so far points towards somebody that she didn’t know and that it’s a matter of being in the ‘wrong place at the wrong time.’”

Thursday, police are expected to explain who they think took Sherry McLaughlin.