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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

‘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 [...]

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, [...]