Another anniversary in the 33-year-old cold case slaying of Kerrie Ann Brown

Another year has come and gone in the Oct. 16, 1986 slaying of 15-year-old Kerrie Ann Brown, Thompson’s oldest unsolved murder case, which many 33 years later still believe is surrounded be a conspiracy of silence. But it was a year that saw the most comprehensive media ever done on the case, primarily by David Ridgen, a documentarian filmmaker whose original true-crime podcast “Someone Knows Something” spent season five looking at the Brown case. “Someone Knows Something” examines unsolved cases of missing or murdered individuals, and it is produced by CBC Radio One.

Ridgen’s earlier work has been credited with reopening other cold or historical cases, which have led to arrests and convictions (Mississippi Cold Case, Confession to Murder and A Garden of Tears).  In August, Ridgen noted he was working on season six, as well “as working on a new season five episode.”

“Someone Knows Something” is CBC’s most-downloaded original title, the network said Aug. 15. In its first-ever development slate of podcast-to-television series, the public broadcaster plans to adapt five popular, original CBC Podcasts, including “Someone Knows Something” with First Generation Films, a Toronto-based multi-media production company founded by Canadian producer Christina Piovesan, for the screen as a TV dramatic series.

Ridgen’s work last year on the Brown case featured a fascinating at-length interview with a key 1987 preliminary hearing Crown witness, Sean Simmans, living in Melfort, Saskatchewan at the time of the interview, as well as shining a spotlight on the early police investigative work done in 1986 by then Corp. Dennis Heald, and Const. John Tost, the two original lead investigators from the Thompson RCMP detachment, and Marnie Schaefer, a civilian RCMP telecom operator in Thompson at the time of the murder. Ridgen also took the investigation closer to home, talking to Ian Brown, Kerrie’s older half-brother, on a trip to Selkirk with their brother, Trevor Brown (https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/1362084931649)  about his whereabouts the night Kerrie disappeared. Trevor was a year older than Kerrie.

Ridgen was also contacted by a woman in Thompson who said she remembers hearing her former boyfriend in Nelson House, Fred Spence, making reference to a white girl getting killed. Fred Spence has denied any involvement in Brown’s murder.

Schaefer, the former RCMP telecommunications operator, said she was working the night shift when the phone rang with an unknown caller around 2 a.m.

“He had said that he had just killed someone,” Schaefer recalled. “Seemed to be terrified that I was recording the conversation that we were having,” she told Ridgen.

The call came two hours after Kerrie Ann Brown vanished from the house party on Thursday, Oct. 16, 1986 – and almost 14 hours before she was reported missing.

That call may or may not have been followed up on, depending upon which RCMP officer you believe listening to “Someone Knows Something.”

Brown was slain sometime after attending a party at Doug Krokosz’s residence on Trout Avenue in Westwood on Thursday night Oct. 16, 1986.  Most of those in attendance at the Trout Avenue party were from ages 14 to 17. The party was held on a Thursday night because there was no school the next day for Kerrie and the others at R.D. Parker Collegiate. A 12-year-resident of Thompson at the time of her death in 1986, Kerrie’s family came to Thompson from Burk’s Falls, Ontario.  A Grade 10 student at R.D. Parker Collegiate, she had previously attended Juniper and Eastwood elementary schools. Her mom and dad, Ann and Jim Brown, had moved to Thompson like many so Jim could work in the mine at Inco, while Ann worked at Thompson General Hospital as a medical transcriptionist. Ann Brown died of cancer 15 years after Kerrie’s murder.

Kerrie was to walk home from the Trout Avenue residence that night with Nicole Zahorodny, who was the last person to see Kerrie at the party the night that she disappeared, but Zahorodny went back into the party for a few minutes. Krokosz, a year older than Kerrie, recalled for Ridgen trying to convince Kerrie to wait for Nicole instead of walking home alone. Kerrie asked Krokosz to find Nicole for her, he said, which he did while Kerrie waited at the stairs. When he returned some time later, Kerrie was gone, after stepping outside apparently to wait. When Zahorodny returned, Kerrie was gone. Several witnesses reported Kerrie was seen getting into a van between 10:30 p.m. and 11 p.m. Others believe she took a taxi to Brandon Crescent just before midnight. Or she may have walked somewhere from the party.

Two days after the party, Donna Covic, and another woman from the riding stable, discovered Kerrie’s nude body in a wooded area close to the hydro line between the horse stable and the golf course access roads. Her body was found on Saturday, Oct. 18, 1986, around 2 p.m. Brown had been sexually assaulted and severely beaten, bludgeoned repeatedly about the face and head causing massive injuries. A large, bloodstained stick was found at the scene.

A vehicle got stuck in the mud there and a blue and red air mattress and a black rubber floor mat were used to try and gain traction and extricate the vehicle, RCMP said publicly in 1996. Two eyewitnesses had spotted a white van and an older model mid-60s green sedan-type car at the scene just hours after Brown, who had been wearing a Pittsburgh Penguins hockey jacket earlier in the evening, disappeared from the party. Crime scene DNA samples gathered in 1986 came from at least two different men RCMP said in 1996, adding they have always believed more than person was involved in the killing.

In 2012, the RCMP began conducting a full review of Kerrie Ann Brown’s murder investigation. They rehired a retired homicide investigator, Sgt. Bert Clarke, who retired in 2009 as the commander-in-charge of the RCMP’s homicide unit in Manitoba, to assist in the review of the investigation, along with a second rehired former homicide investigator.

The two retired homicide investigators did not work on the Brown murder originally, although they were aware of it, but were brought into assist the historical case unit, which is the official RCMP name for Manitoba’s cold case squad, by bringing their expertise to the complex case by taking a fresh look at it. A daunting task given there were more than 2,000 subjects recorded and documented in the file.

DNA samples searching for suspect matches have been taken, most voluntarily, some pursuant to court orders, from more than 100 people across Canada in the decades since the crime. Administrative personnel were assigned to the case to “digitize” the investigation for present and future purposes.

The Brown cold case is the largest unsolved homicide investigation (more than three dozen banker boxes of investigative file material) that the RCMP have in Manitoba.

A remarkable letter to the editor of the Thompson Citizen appeared in the newspaper a few days after Kerrie Ann Brown’s murder. Written anonymously and signed with the nom de plume, “From her friends who want justice,” the author says in the singular that she is a 14-year-old girl and was a “good friend of Kerrie Brown.” She goes onto write – and remember, this appeared in print, published as a letter to the editor: “I have also heard that their (sic) was another murder on Wednesday [Oct. 15, 1986] and if that is true, how come we weren’t warned. I can understand trying to keep the whole thing quiet, but not warning the public just doesn’t seem right to me.” The same woman, age 20, apparently wrote a second letter to the editor six years later, signed again anonymously, but this time with a slight variation and the nom de plume being, “Her friends who believe in justice. ”

Shortly after Kerrie Ann Brown’s murder, Krokosz, Zahorodny, Brian Lundmark, now a Thompson city councillor, Vince Nowlin, who served as a trustee for School District of Mystery Lake school board between 2010 and 2014, Craig Jordan, Guido Oliveira, also a trustee, who who now chairs the finance, property and personnel committees of the School District of Mystery Lake, Kathy McGee and Janet McGee, were among those who formed an ad hoc group called “Youth for Tomorrow,” and began to raise money to create the Kerrie Brown Memorial Scholarship.

It was Brian Lundmark and Geraldine Hornan who came to the Brown residence about an hour after Kerrie’s body was discovered and told Trevor the news that a body had been discovered.

Ridgen also learned in the course of his investigation that there is no transcript of the 1987 preliminary hearing for a man charged with Kerrie Brown’s murder – the charges were dismissed by the judge due to lack of evidence.

Patrick Sumner, the only suspect ever charged to date in connection with the case, still lives in Thompson. His family moved here in 1968. He was 22 when he was charged in 1986 days after the crime with first-degree murder in connection with Brown’s murder in a case that was largely circumstantial. There were about 120 people in the courtroom for Sumner’s arraignment in 1986, while another 60 or so waited outside.

Sumner was freed four months later after being discharged by provincial court Judge Charles Newcombe without being committed to trial after a three-day preliminary hearing ended Feb. 20, 1987. Crown attorney Dale Perezowski prosecuted the case at the preliminary hearing. Richard Wolson, a Winnipeg criminal lawyer, recognized as one of the best in the country, represented Sumner. Newcombe ruled there wasn’t admissible evidence upon which a reasonable jury properly instructed could return a verdict of guilty, which is the legal test in Canadian law for committal to trial. Then NDP Manitoba attorney general Roland Penner did not exercise his discretion to issue a rare preferred indictment, which would have sent the case directly to trial, although his department considered that option. Ridgen also learned that the Brown family can’t obtain a new copy of her autopsy report to replace the one they lost. “The RCMP have told the chief medical examiner not to give it to us,” Trevor Brown said last year.

Carlton Jackson and Robert Delaronde were also looked at as persons of interest by Ridgen.

Jackson was questioned following Kerrie’s disappearance, according to her brother Trevor and father Jim, and afterwards came to their house to tell Jim that he had nothing to do with her killing. Delaronde was implicated after the fact, mainly due to the fact that he had a somewhat violent history and had hanged himself in 1992, leading people to speculate that he may have been involved, though he was also diagnosed with bipolar disorder.

Ridgen was told that Delaronde’s parents had not consented to his DNA being taken because they were worried that police would try to pin the crime on him after Sumner’s experience. Delaronde’s former girlfriend Heather McIvor also said that she had not let police take DNA from the child she had with Delaronde when police begin re-investigating the case more thoroughly several year’s after Delaronde’s death.

McIvor said Delaronde had been having a party on the night of Kerrie’s disappearance and that he had noticed Jackson and another man in attendance had left for a long time before returning.  Ridgen was told that Jackson may not have been able to remember what happened back then after receiving a blow to the head in a beating, but Delaronde’s sister told him that she had been recognized by Jackson in Winnipeg and that she didn’t notice anything off about him.

Trevor Brown first contacted David Ridgen to see if he would be interested in investigating the case in the spring of 2017, CBC says.

Ridgen, who first became involved in investigating unsolved crimes while working on a documentary about civil rights workers killed in Mississippi in 1964 by the Ku Klux Klan, said he was aware of the case before Brown reached out to him, but when he was contacted it hadn’t moved from the pile of possible Canadian crimes to investigate onto his active investigation subjects.

In early January, “Snow Day Podcast,” a local society and culture podcast, featuring Bruce Krentz, Les Hansen, George Alvarez, and special guest, Guy Hansen, which has been broadcast since early 2017, took a look at the case (https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-iiy7w-a4270a?fbclid=IwAR1DApTH4ZrfpVfx_qg2zBmlOWNQ3xbO2hx8LHcAgtt-aJfSfYmDyosiJj0#.XEdxdR4XmdM.facebook), offering an insightful discussion of the mindset, worldview, class issues, and historical issues at play among Kerrie Ann Brown’s high school peers in October 1986. It no doubt broke some previous taboos regarding what was and was not discussed around the kitchen table, and why or why not, in Thompson that long-ago fall.

Darren Lovell from Wimborne Minster, a market town in East Dorset in southwest England, has recently  written a song as a reflection about the unsolved murder of 15-year-old Kerrie Brown. You can listen to it at: https://soundcloud.com/darrenwlovell/kerrie-brown?fbclid=IwAR3Q95S43q8THHTi2Zi3mRPHjhYdYAy8NE-n5OvwlPWWGGq1EOJKdqK8PlI

Lovell says he was inspired by season five of “Someone Knows Something.”

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Friesen Historical Collection opens Oct. 16 at UCN’s Wellington & Madeleine Spence Memorial Library in Thompson

The Friesen Historical Collection, a new special collection that is housed on the Thompson Campus of the University College of the North (UCN), will officially open Oct. 16 at 4 p.m. in the Wellington & Madeleine Spence Memorial Library. Library Director for UCN Libraries Heather Smith, and Meaghan Buchanan, UCN’s archivist and Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FIPPA) officer, both plan to travel from the Oscar Lathlin Research Library at UCN’s campus in The Pas to Thompson to be on hand for the opening ceremony.

Gerald Friesen, 76, professor emeritus of history and a a retired senior fellow of St. John’s College at the University of Manitoba donated the collection. He is an expert on Western Canada, Manitoba, labour history and communication history, and taught in the History Department at the University of Manitoba for 40 years. Friesen has written extensively on Western Canadian history from a social history perspective. Friesen is the author of several books, including The Canadian Prairies: A History; Citizens and Nation: An Essay on History, Communication, and Canada; The West: Regional Ambitions, National Debates, Global Age; Prairie Metropolis: New Essays on Winnipeg Social History; Rural Life: Portraits of the Prairie Town, 1946; and River Road: Essays on Manitoba and Prairie History.

Selkirk, Manitoba historian Stephen C. Sharman, in reviewing Toward Defining the Prairies: Region, Culture and History, which contains a selection of the papers presented at a conference of the same name held at St. John’s College in September 1998, and edited by Robert Wardhaugh, a Canadian political and regional historian at the University of Western Ontario (UWO), also now commonly known as Western University, in London, Ontario, whose research interests include the era of Mackenzie King, federalism, the Second World War, political parties, political culture, the 1920s, and the Prairie West, wrote of Friesen’s paper, “Defining the Prairies: Or Why Don’t the Prairies Exist” that he challenged “his readers to re-examine their understanding of Prairie identity, rural, agricultural and nostalgic in the light of new political and economic realities.” Sharman’s review appeared in the peer-reviewed journal Manitoba History Number 44, Autumn/Winter 2002-2003, published by the Manitoba Historical Society since 1980.

“The rural agricultural world still exists but it is now overshadowed by an urban and industrial world,” Sharman noted in reviewing Friesen’s paper. “Nostalgia reminds us of our roots but the Prairies belong to a new world of Western Canada which includes British Columbia. Friesen concludes: “It is time to take stock of a new west. It is time to leave behind the imagined prairie region. The new ways of thinking about this part of the country are the result of changes in western economy, in the structure of government, and especially in the cultural and communication contexts of contemporary life.” With this challenge to an accepted understanding of prairie identity, the book begins, writes Sharman.

Friesen was born in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. He graduated with a B.A. Honors in history from the University of Saskatchewan in 1965.

He received his masters’ degree from the University of Toronto in 1966 and his Ph.D. in 1974. Friesen began teaching at the University of Manitoba in the fall of 1970. In 1976 he was the recipient of the Dr. and Mrs. H.H. Saunderson Award for Excellence in Teaching

Friesen was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2002 and served as president of the Canadian Historical Association from 2003 to 2005.

Friesen has also served on the executive of the Manitoba Historical Society and Société Historique Saint-Boniface, as well as treasurer of the Manitoba Federation of Labour’s Education Centre.

He served as a board member board for Canada’s Visual History/L’Histoire Visuelle du Canada (National Museum of Canada and the National Film Board) and as an advisor to CBC’s Canada: A People’s History film project.

Friesen has spoken at the Centre for Human Rights Research annual “Critical Conversations” seminar series at Robson Hall on the University of Manitoba’s Fort Garry Campus on “Residential Schools and Saskatchewan Cree Collective Memory” as part of a seminar on “Residential Schools: Memories and Histories.”

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Donna Wilson: True stories, some names withheld to protect the guilty

Donna Wilson decamps from Paint Lake and Thompson to Sanford on the LaSalle River, 15 minutes southwest of Winnipeg, this Sunday, where her lovely parents, Dorothy and Jack Dyke, have lived for several years now. After more than six years at the helm, today marks her last official day as general manager of Quality Inn & Suites Thompson, although she gave up her office a couple of weeks ago for her longtime number one, assistant manager Destinee Perry, to move up to the big chair as general manager.  Both have been with the hotel since 2013.

Donna Wilson. She knows everyone in Thompson. True fact, or pretty darned close.

Now, you’ve probably heard a lot over the years about Donna’s decades of volunteerism and service on what sometimes seems like every community service not-for-profit board in Thompson, including her signature annual cancer-fighting event, Relay for Life every April, followed closely in recent years with her involvement in Thompson Playhouse, as president,  and sometimes in the director’s chair, after making her directorial debut in 2011 with Dixie Swim Club, and since 2009, her Old Fashioned Christmas Concert every December in R.D. Parker Collegiate’s Letkemann Theatre Her “Out & About” column, summed up pretty much in the name, has run occasionally in the Thompson Citizen since 2007.

For years, Donna, and her good friend, Wally Itson, who retired as principal of R.D. Parker Collegiate in 2014, and then wound up running Thompson Gas Bar Co-op, would emcee many community events together annually, as well as providing sideline coverage for Paul Andersen’s Shaw Cable TV coverage of the Nickel Days Parade in June and Santa Claus Parade in November.

“Growing up I hadn’t heard much of cancer other then my mom mentioning her friend Daphne who had died of it,” Wilson said in connection with her Relay for Life involvement on her Canadian Cancer Society personal web page in 2012. “Then that word came around again when my best friend Cindy’s mom was diagnosed. It was pretty traumatic for us. Cancer took over her life. Years later my mom lost another friend, Regina.” Started in 1985 by Dr. Gordy Klatt, a colorectal surgeon in Tacoma, Washington, Relay for Life was first held in Canada in 1999. Relay for Life made its debut in Thompson in 2001 and has been held since then annually, with the exception of 2008 when it was postponed for a year because of extensive renovations to the C.A. Nesbitt Arena.

But many local readers know these things. Some will also have noticed Donna very gradually scaled back on sitting on some of those board and other public gigs she would do in recent years, knowing moving day was only a few years off, and giving the various boards plenty of time to recruit. I also saw a somewhat quieter, more reflective Donna, after her younger brother, Eric, was paralyzed after falling off a roof in Palm Springs, California in February 2017. Eric survived, but it was far from a given he would at the time. Today, he has made an amazing recuperation through lots of hard work by himself and with dedicated therapists, the support of family and friends, and God’s abundant grace, but becoming a paraplegic is a life-changing event for Eric and his family and friends. And for Donna Wilson, her family is EVERYTHING. Has been since the day she first became my boss and soon friend way back on July 4, 2007, and long before no doubt. Since Eric’s accident, Donna has become a fierce advocate for wheelchair users; want to know why you should observe painted lines and signage in a parking lot? Donna will tell you, probably on her Facebook page, what it means to wheelchair users when drivers don’t. She’s all in.

Donna has been an outstanding boss for seven of my almost 12 years to date in Thompson at two different jobs, and a friend for the entire dozen years. Through whatever quirk of fate, I may have worked for Donna longer than any other employee in Thompson over the last dozen years when you total both the newspaper and hotel jobs. No one, and I mean no one, throws a Christmas staff party like Donna! And no one, but no one, I suspect, has stories like those of us who have worked in both the newspaper and hotel industries in Thompson. Most of which, of course, aren’t suitable to be re-told publicly. To protect the guilty.

Donna, as I have said publicly many times, is the best boss I have worked for. People work for people, not positions, at least if they stay long, just like they leave bosses, not jobs, although I have joked with Donna more than once at the hotel, please don’t move next-door to Minute Muffler on Moak Crescent because I’m not sure I’m up to working in a muffler shop. But I did work for Donna for more than three years as editor of the Thompson Citizen and Nickel Belt News when she was general manager (we started within weeks of each other in June and July 2007). I arrived knowing a lot about print journalism across the country, but next to nothing about Thompson. Donna was my remedy for that. She could unfailing predict in our meetings which story was going to explode when we published it, even if I thought it was innocuous, and which stories would fly OK, even if I thought they might be controversial. The amazing thing is she always had my back. If a hard story needed to be published in the public interest, we published it. Always. She never spiked stories even when she knew local advertisers were going to be sending her into damage control mode, ringing her phone off the hook first thing the morning the paper hit the street.

Mind you, after I wrote a fairly hard-hitting editorial in October 2008 about Spirit Way and delays in Phase 2 of expanding the 27-foot wide rockface sculpture to see five more wolves mounted, making it an additional 80 feet wide, which would have meant the largest rockface sculpture in Canada, Donna limited my vacation starts to leaving after my editorials were in print. You see, Jeanette and I had conveniently enough hopped on a plane for a short vacation, as she was running in the Prince Edward County half-marathon in Southern Ontario, after the editorial was written but yet to be published in print (the paper didn’t go online until the following year in June 2009.) When the paper hit the streets, it was a case of, as the late singer-songwriter, Warren Zevon, once so appropriately put it, “Send lawyers, guns and money. The shit has hit the fan.”

Lesson learned: Never, ever criticize a volunteer effort in Thompson unless you are prepared to delay the start of your vacation.

“You are one stubborn man but we always managed to work it out and I’m so happy to have you as my friend” Donna wrote several weeks ago. “Donna wrote that you are stubborn,” Jeanette laughed, thinking it an amusing and not untrue statement. While I never changed my mind about the rockface editorial, and continue to stand by it almost 11 years later, I did come to have a bigger picture view of Spirit Way in general over the years, and in particular Volker Beckmann, who might well be considered kind of a stubborn guy himself at times. I would go onto write several editorials praising Volker as a “visionary,” and suggesting Thompson could use a few more visionaries like him. As recently as May 25, I wrote on Facebook, “While we don’t see eye-to-eye always, or agree on some issues, Volker is a much needed and often under-appreciated visionary (“Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in his hometown”: Luke 4:16-30). Well-deserved recognition in the Manitoba Legislature from Thompson PC MLA Kelly Bindle, causing me to do what I might have otherwise thought unlikely; share a YouTube video from the Manitoba PC Caucus.”

Before I met her, Donna had done a good-length stint as a morning show host for Tom and Sue O’Brien over on Cree Road at what was then Arctic Radio CHTM-610 AM. She also ran Ducky Promotions, and later, Beautiful Plus Fashions, on Fox Bay.

Between leaving the paper in 2010 and becoming general manager again, but this time of a hotel, Donna indulged her love for all things Newfoundland and Labrador, her home country (oops … province) serving up her own signature dish of “Uptop Fries,” featuring French fries, topped with dressing, onions, bologna and gravy, at Nanny’s Diner-Baking Catering at Westwood Shopping Mall. “Back home in St. John’s my father used to always talk about being on the boat called the Uptop, so I named the dish after the boat,” said Wilson. She also once worked as a cook at the old Highway Inn here, and wrote her own cookbook, which she sold for charity in 2010 to help raise funds for A Port in the Storm in Winnipeg.

She operated Nanny’s between December 2011 and May 2013, when she was recruited by Dr. Alan Lagimodiere, a veterinarian, and since 2016 PC MLA for the provincial constituency of Selkirk, and Al’s wife Judy, to run the Quality Inn & Suites Thompson. The Lagimodieres are among the Accommodations North ownership group which owns the Choice Hotels Quality Inn & Suites Thompson franchise.

Discretion is of paramount importance in the hotel business, so alas no juicy hotel stories to share here. Not that they don’t exist, just not here. Donna calls them our “headshaker” memories … like that time a guest stepped off the elevator at 5 a.m. and was … ah, yes, you can’t work together at a hotel and a newspaper and not have a few headshaker memories.

But newspapers are a bit different, as tell-all beasts, so I suppose one  brief remembrance of things past wouldn’t be too far out of line perhaps.

We needed one of our reporters one morning for a deadline story. He was a talented reporter, but he liked to stay very late at the paper most nights, obsessing over multiple drafts and rewrites of his stories before turning them in, making sure they were just right. More like a novelist then your typical first draft of history type journalist. This, of course, sometimes meant he was very sleepy. Too sleepy to make it into the office the next day for 8 a.m., 9 a.m. or even 10 a.m. Unable to raise him on the phone, we drove over to his apartment, and tossed pebbles at what we figured was his upper-floor window to rouse him, which we did eventually. This was a career first for me. In 25 years of journalism, I had never before tossed pebbles at a reporter’s window to rouse him or her from sleep. He indicated he’d be ready shortly, and buzzed us through the security door into the building. So far so good. Except in the lobby we somehow mixed the apartment numbers up, and wound up banging on the wrong door it turned out.  That’s odd we both thought. No answer. Surely he couldn’t have fallen back to sleep after just buzzing us in. And that would be right about the time the door slowly opened, and we were looking into a very darkened apartment. And a woman, unknown to me, standing in her doorway looking very sleepy and confused.

The woman, of course, was not unknown to Donna Wilson. “I’m sorry,” Donna gasped. “We’ve got the wrong apartment.” Without missing a beat, the woman stepped out of the shadows into some hall light. “Would you both like to come in for a cup of tea, Donna?” the woman asked. Turns out she was a police matron for the RCMP holding cells, and had just recently gone to sleep after working an overnight shift. But she had known Donna for years, and thought maybe we were just drooping by, although Donna hadn’t known until that moment the woman lived there at the time. Or we wouldn’t be waking her up.

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Thompson gets a nice bounce up to 132nd spot in annual MoneySense survey released June 8 after its worst worst-ever finish in 177th place last year

Every spring for the last 11 years, Toronto-based MoneySense magazine has published a closely watched annual survey, which ranks cities across the country from best to worst places to live in Canada – both overall and in specific categories.

In this year’s survey published nationally June 8 in the summer issue of the magazine, Thompson got a nice bounce back up to 132nd spot in 2016 after its worst worst-ever finish in 177th place last year. MoneySense also ranked eight more cities and towns this year, meaning the list has grown to 219 communities in its annual snapshot of Canada.

Thompson has a history of bouncing around, both up and down from year to year, in the numbers. In 2014, we finished in 121st place out of 209 cities ranked, while in 2013 finished 164th out of 200 cities ranked, it’s second-lowest ever ranking.

Ottawa, as well as Burlington and Oakville, also in Ontario, followed by St. Albert, Alberta, and Boucherville, Québec, finished one to five in that order in this year’s 2016 rankings for “Canada’s Best Places to Live.” Winnipeg slipped to 29th spot from 24th last year, while Brandon took a big dive down 82nd spot from 26th last year.  Brandon had finished 42nd in 2014 and 91st in 2013. Steinbach continued to tumble this year, ranked at 170 compared to 149 last year, after finishing in 85th spot in 2014 and 61st place in 2013. Portage la Prairie improved marginally to 168th place after finishing in 170th spot last year, compared to 144th in 2014, while Selkirk was in 169th place, down from 155th place last year.

Staying on top is a tough gig with the ever-fickle MoneySense. Last year, the magazine ranked Boucherville, Que., a suburb of Montreal, just across the St. Lawrence River with a population of 43,000, as the best place to live in Canada, after Boucherville had finished sixth overall in 2014.

“We’re seeing low unemployment, high incomes, affordable housing, [and] solid population growth, which are some of the key areas we look at, along with good access to transit and a vibrant arts community,” said Mark Brown, MoneySense reports and rankings editor in June 2015, explaining Boucherville’s topping the survey.

This year, Boucherville slipped back down to fifth place.

MoneySense is published seven times a year by Rogers Publishing Limited, a division of Rogers Communications in Toronto. The “Best Places to Live” survey continues to grow in terms of number of cities compared. There were 123 cities compared in 2007; jumping to 154 in 2008 and 2009; increasing again to 179 in 2010 and up to 180 in 2011, and then in increments of 10 to 190 in 2012, 200 in 2013, 201 in 2014 and 209 in 2015. Thompson finished 103rd in 2012. We were 43rd in 2011, finished 58th in 2010, in 88th place overall in 2009, a year after the city’s highest ranking of 19th place overall a year earlier in 2008. Thompson ended up in 25th place in 2007.

MoneySense estimated Thompson’s unemployment rate has decreased over the last year from 6.56 per cent to 5.1 per cent. “Average value of primary real estate” was pegged at $197,812 here this year. Median household income came in at $90,738, while average household discretionary income was calculated at $50,202.

MoneySense says its survey “is the most comprehensive data-driven snapshot of Canadian cities you’ll find anywhere.”  There are 35 separate categories being measured. They include factors such as household income, population growth, unemployment rate, cost of housing, crime rates, number of rainy days, number of doctors per 1,000 residents and the percentage of the population that walks, bikes or takes public transit to get to work.

Brown says, “While we can’t gauge many of the elements that people enjoy in their cities, the nearness of family, the friendliness of neighbours or even great sunsets, we have measured what can be measured and compared what can be compared from towns and cities across our provinces and territories.”

In 2014, Brown noted, “Critics of our best places ranking routinely point out that we don’t incorporate intangible considerations – like the best scenery or hottest attractions – into our methodology. It’s true, we don’t take any of these things into account. Out east, for example, the Nova Scotia community of New Glasgow doesn’t place highly on our ranking, despite being home to some of the finest river and deep-water fishing spots in the country.

“But such characteristics – no matter how appealing – aren’t the point of this exercise,” said Brown at the time. “This isn’t the best places to visit, it’s the best places to live. If you’re going to plant roots somewhere we think there should be good access to medical care, low crime, good public transportation and, yes, nice weather. Above all, the best places in Canada have to be affordable. That’s why measures like housing prices, employment and wealth are particularly important, and are given the greatest weighting in our methodology.”

In fact, New Glasgow was dead last in 219^th place again this year in the MoneySense survey. That’s after being dead last year, finishing 209 out of 209. New Glasgow finished in 198th spot out of 201 places in 2014, after finishing 196th in 2013 out of 200 spots. It also finished last at 190 of 190 in 2012 and 180 out of 180 in 2011. In 2010, it managed to creep out of the cellar to rank 177th out of 179 after finishing dead last also in 2009 at 154th out of 154 places. In 2008, New Glasgow was 151 out of 154. The Census Agglomerate for New Glasgow includes New Glasgow, Stellarton, Trenton, Westville, Merigomish Harbour, Fisher’s Grant, Pictou Sub Division C and Pictou Subdivision. B.

You can check out the full 219 rankings in detail at: http://www.moneysense.ca/canadas-best-places-to-live-2016-full-ranking/

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Thompson tumbles in worst-ever finish: Drops from 121st to 177th place out of 209 cities ranked in annual MoneySense survey released June 1

Every spring for the last 10 years, Toronto-based MoneySense magazine has published a closely watched annual survey, which ranks cities across the country from best to worst places to live in Canada – both overall and in specific categories.

In this year’s survey published nationally today, Thompson tumbled in its worst-ever finish to 177th place from 121st place last year out of 209 cities ranked in 2015 in the annual MoneySense snapshot of Canada. Thompson’s previous lowest placing in the survey was in 2013 when it finished 164th out of 200 cities ranked.

Last year, Thompson moved up from 164th to 121st place. In this year’s MoneySense “Canada’s Best Places to Live’ ranking, Thompson was one of six Manitoba cities included in the survey. Winnipeg was 24th on this year’s list of 209 Canadian cities, down from its 19th place ranking last year, 16th spot in 2013 and 10th place finish in 2012. Brandon continued to gain ground in this year’s MoneySense rankings, moving up to 26th place from 42nd last year and 91st in 2013. Steinbach also took a big tumble this year, ranked at 149, compared 85th spot last year and 61st place in 2013. Portage la Prairie dropped to  170th spot from 144th place last year; it finished in 160th place in 2013. Selkirk was 155th.

The magazine ranked Boucherville, Que., a suburb of Montreal,  just across the St. Lawrence River with a population of 43,000, as the best place to live in Canada. Boucherville had finished sixth overall last year. “We’re seeing low unemployment, high incomes, affordable housing, [and] solid population growth, which are some of the key areas we look at, along with good access to transit and a vibrant arts community,” said Mark Brown, MoneySense reports and rankings editor, in explaining Boucherville’s topping the survey

MoneySense is published seven times a year by Rogers Publishing Limited, a division of Rogers Communications in Toronto. The “Best Places to Live” survey continues to grow in terms of number of cities compared. There were 123 cities compared in 2007; jumping to 154 in 2008 and 2009; increasing again to 179 in 2010 and up to 180 in 2011, and then in increments of 10 to 190 in 2012, 200 in 2013, 201 in 2014 and 209 in 2015. Thompson finished 103rd in 2012. We were 43rd in 2011, finished 58th in 2010, in 88th place overall in 2009, a year after the city’s highest ranking of 19th place overall a year earlier in 2008. Thompson ended up in 25th place in 2007.

MoneySense estimated Thompson’s unemployment rate has increased over the last year from 5.5 per cent to 6.56 per cent.

While 10.9 per cent of Thompson residents travel to work by walking only the most miniscule numbers commute to work by bicycling or using public transit, MoneySense found. In the case of bicycling, only 0.7 per cent of Thompson residents bicycle to work, while even fewer – 0.3 per cent – use public transit to travel to work.

MoneySense says its survey “is the most comprehensive data-driven snapshot of Canadian cities you’ll find anywhere.”  There are 34 separate categories being measured. They include factors such as household income, population growth, unemployment rate, cost of housing, crime rates, number of rainy days, number of doctors per 1,000 residents and the percentage of the population that walks, bikes or takes public transit to get to work.

Brown says, “To identify the Best Places to Live in Canada we rank each community across 34 separate categories to get a detailed picture of what life is like in each community.”

Last year, Brown noted, “Critics of our best places ranking routinely point out that we don’t incorporate intangible considerations – like the best scenery or hottest attractions – into our methodology. It’s true, we don’t take any of these things into account. Out east, for example, the Nova Scotia community of New Glasgow doesn’t place highly on our ranking, despite being home to some of the finest river and deep-water fishing spots in the country.

“But such characteristics –  no matter how appealing – aren’t the point of this exercise,” says Brown. “This isn’t the best places to visit, it’s the best places to live. If you’re going to plant roots somewhere we think there should be good access to medical care, low crime, good public transportation and, yes, nice weather. Above all, the best places in Canada have to be affordable. That’s why measures like housing prices, employment and wealth are particularly important, and are given the greatest weighting in our methodology.”

In fact, New Glasgow was dead last in 209th place this year. New Glasgow finished in 198th spot out of 201 places last year, after finishing 196th in 2013 out of 200 spots. It also finished last at 190 of 190 in 2012 and 180 out of 180 in 2011. In 2010, it managed to creep out of the cellar to rank 177th out of 179 after finishing dead last also in 2009 at 154th out of 154 places. In 2008, New Glasgow was 151 out of 154. The Census Agglomerate for New Glasgow includes New Glasgow, Stellarton, Trenton, Westville, Merigomish Harbour, Fisher’s Grant, Pictou Sub Division C and Pictou Subdivision. B.

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Louis Riel: 21st century hero to the Métis of Manitoba; Rogers Hometown Hockey tour set to roll into Thompson, Manitoba’s hockey hotbed

Louis Riel, the Métis leader hanged for high treason on Nov. 16, 1885 at Regina, was the driving force behind Manitoba becoming Canada’s fifth province and is thought of by many as to be the “Father of Manitoba,” the only Canadian province born in blood. Does that history matter today and what legacy has it left Manitobans? “Welcome to Winnipeg: Where Canada’s racism problem is at its worst,” Maclean’s, Canada’s national magazine, headlined its lead story Jan. 22.

Not all Manitobans, of course, share that view of Riel as victim of colonial racism by any means. But history has a way of refining our judgments and dampening or softening excessive passions. Thus, the 19th century’s traitor can be reasonably seen as the 21st century’s hero as we take a longer and more inclusive view of our collective history.

Up here in Thompson we apparently don’t have a race problem, although a regular-season hockey game last Sunday between the Thompson King Miner Midget “AA” and the Norway House North Stars was ended by officials with Thompson leading 4-2 with 8:53 left in the second period when the North Stars, who had already had a player and coach ejected, left the ice following an altercation between their goaltender and a Thompson player at the same time that a scuffle erupted in the stands, soon leading to a parade of RCMP officers in their cruisers escorting players from both teams safely out of the C.A. Nesbitt Arena at the Thompson Regional Community Centre (TRCC), after racial slurs may or may not have been uttered whiles moms and dads scrapped in the stands with their counterparts from the opposing team. Older guys in Thompson remembered decades ago similar incidents where they said they had to be escorted out of places like Norway House or Cross Lake in similar circumstances. Seventeen-year-old King Miner right winger Lucas Hanlon apparently self-identified himself as Métis to the Winnipeg-based Aboriginal People’s Television Network (APTN) in making two points: he didn’t think the Feb, 8 fracas in Thompson was about race, and, in any event, there are a lot of aboriginal players on the Thompson team.

Thompson is atop of the midget AA league standings, with a 13-4-3 record for 29 points, the same as the second-place The Pas Huskies, who have played one more game than Thompson. The King Miner’s next scheduled game is tomorrow when they are due to play the Split Lake Eagles in Split Lake.

 “I am a Metis player myself,” Hanlon reportedly told APTN “We have a lot of aboriginal players on our team,” he said. “We have just as many people with aboriginal roots in our community as anywhere else.”

Hanlon said he didn’t hear any racial taunts hurled at the Norway House players. He said the Norway House fans called him “white trash.” He said racial slurs are hurled by both sides during games. “You get kind of used it from playing against those teams for so long. It happens both ways. I personally don’t because I come from both backgrounds,” he said.

A player for the Norway House North Stars team and two parents told APTN National News Feb. 10 that some “Thompson fans hurled racial epitaphs at the Norway House team.” They also said one player was confronted by three Thompson fans, two men and a woman, who used racial slurs, and claimed one Norway House player had his helmet cracked by a slash to the head.

Hanlon told APTN he “didn’t see anyone get slashed in the head with enough force to crack a helmet: that’s reassuring. However, he was very likely on to something – something that really matters to Thompson residents, both aboriginal and non-aboriginal, when Hanlon said many in the “Thompson hockey community are now worried the planned Rogers Hometown Hockey tour stop scheduled for the community on March 7 and 8 may be scuttled because of the bad press stemming from the weekend’s incident.” It was announced last September that Ron MacLean, who has played straight man to Don Cherry on Coach’s Corner for years, will be here in 3½  weeks as part of the Rogers Hometown Hockey Tour, presented by Dodge and Scotiabank, for a weekend of hockey festivities and to host a pre-game show followed by a viewing party for a March 8 Calgary Flames-Ottawa Senators game that will be broadcast across the country.

The tour, which began last Oct. 11-12 in London, Ont., is criss-crossing Canada, stopping in Manitoba three times – it was in Selkirk for its second broadcast and in Brandon last Nov. 30 – before making the late-season trip to Thompson.

Other activities leading up to the weekend-capping broadcast will include meet-and-greet sessions with NHL alumni and local hockey heroes, a Hockey Night in Canada viewing party, a KidZone with hockey-themed activities, skills and drills competitions and live performances by local musicians, as well as ticket and merchandise giveaways.

MacLean will host a half-hour pre-game show live from the Sportsnet Mobile Studio in Thompson prior to the broadcast, and will also make appearances in intermission and post-game shows. Included on the broadcast will be interviews with local guests and grassroots hockey stories.

Should Thompson residents be worried about bad press press from the Thompson King Miner Midget “AA” and Norway House North Stars game Feb. 8 jinxing the arrival of the Rogers Hometown Hockey tour March 7? Probably not, even given the fact there are a couple of inconvenient stories from APTN now circulating on television and online, including, “Manitoba RCMP escorted First Nation hockey team from rink after game took racial turn” at http://aptn.ca/news/2015/02/10/manitoba-rcmp-escorted-first-nation-hockey-team-rink-game-took-racial-turn/ and “Metis player disputes race played role in Manitoba hockey fracas” at http://aptn.ca/news/2015/02/11/metis-player-disputes-race-played-role-thompson-man-hockey-fracas/

But long before APTN broke its two stories, Tuesday, 48 hours after the game was over, there already had been hundreds of comments and a number of photos on the emerging story on social media, mainly Facebook, by Sunday at 7 p.m., just hours after the melee at the hockey game. “Facebook,” as former Thompson Citizen and Nickel Belt News columnist Donna Wilson, who is now the general manager of Thompson’s Quality Inn & Suites on Moak Crescent, but who also still writes for the paper occasionally, has observed many times since 2010, “is how Thompson gets its news.”

RCMP also seized video of the game from veteran Thompson Shaw TV producer Paul Andersen, who tweeted in his own inimitable style, “19 years of broadcasting hockey games, I have never had my footage become ‘exhibit c’ in the court of law,#norwayhousevsthompson.”

Louis Riel Day falls this year next Monday on Feb. 16. In 2008, the NDP provincial government invited Manitoba schoolchildren to name the province’s newest statutory holiday, commencing on the third Monday in February in 2009, and 114 schools responded with suggestions: of that number a dozen suggested Louis Riel Day or some close variation.

Other suggestions included Neil Young Day, Family Get Together Day, February Fun Day, (The) Polar Pause, Duff Roblin Day (Duff’s Day), Our Parents Need a Break Day and Magical Manitoba Monday.

Riel was born at Red River Settlement on Oct. 22, 1844 and educated at St Boniface. A Roman Catholic, he studied for the priesthood at the Collège de Montréal. In 1865 he studied law with Rodolphe Laflamme, and he is believed to have worked briefly in Chicago and Saint Paul before returning to St Boniface in 1868.

Without re-telling the entire history of the Red River Rebellion, or Red River Resistance, as it is also known, here or the North-West Rebellion in Saskatchewan 15 years later, the abridged version is that in 1869, the federal government, anticipating the transfer of Red River and the North-West from the Hudson’s Bay Company to their jurisdiction, appointed William McDougall as lieutenant-governor of the new territory and sent survey crews to Red River.

The Métis, worried about the implications of the transfer and wary of Anglo-Protestant immigrants from Ontario, organized a “National Committee” of which Riel was secretary. The committee halted the surveys and prevented McDougall from entering Red River. On Nov 2, 1869, Fort Garry was seized by the committee, which invited the people of Red River, however, both English and French- speaking, to appoint delegates.

When armed resistance, led by John Christian Schultz and John Stoughton Dennis followed, the federal government postponed the transfer planned for Dec. 1, 1869. Riel issued a “Declaration of the People of Rupert’s Land and the Northwest” and on Dec. 23, 1869 became head of the “provisional government” of Red River.

Meanwhile, a force of some of those who had escaped from Riel’s men earlier, mustered by Schultz and surveyor Thomas Scott, a Protestant Presbyterian Ontario Orangeman, gathered at Portage la Prairie, but were quickly rounded up by the Métis, who imprisoned them again at Fort Garry. Riel appointed a military tribunal, presided over by his associate, Ambroise Dydine Lépine, of St. Vital, to try Scott for treason. Scott was convicted, sentenced to death and executed by a firing squad in the courtyard of Fort Garry on March 4, 1870.

In Ontario, it was Riel, however, who was widely denounced as Scott’s “murderer” and a reward of $5,000 was offered for his arrest. In Québec he was regarded as a hero, a defender of the Roman Catholic faith and French culture in Manitoba.

Anxious to avoid a volatile political confrontation between Ontario Protestants and Quebec Catholics, never mind Manitoba’s Métis, Conservative Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald tried to persuade Riel, who had gone into voluntary exile in the United States, to remain there, even providing him with funds.

Instead, encouraged by supporters, Riel entered federal politics and won a seat in a byelection in October, 1873 and was re-elected in the general election of February 1874 and re-elected for a third time in the Provencher constituency in a September 1874 byelection. He was expelled from the House of Commons before taking his seat. Riel and Lépine were convicted of murdering Scott in October 1874 and sentenced to death, but Governor General Lord Dufferin commuted the sentences in January 1875 to two years imprisonment. A month later, Prime Minister Alexander Mackenzie’s Liberal government granted amnesty for Riel and Lepine, on the condition that both remain in exile for five years.

Early in 1885, then living in present day Saskatchewan, Riel seized the parish church at Batoche, armed his men, and formed a provisional government and demanded the surrender of Fort Carlton. The North-West Rebellion lasted from March 26 to May 12 before Riel surrendered at the Battle of Batoche and on July 6, 1885, he was charged with high treason.

Riel was convicted, and the federal cabinet, with Macdonald again as prime minister, declined to commute the death sentence imposed by Lt.-Col. Hugh Richardson, a stipendiary magistrate of the Saskatchewan District of the North-West Territories. Riel’s body was sent to St Boniface and interred in the cemetery in front of the cathedral.

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