Christmas columns of yesteryear still light the darkness of December

It is Christmas 1996. I am working as the managing editor of The Kingston Net-Times, during the pioneering days of Canadian online journalism. From day one, we published no print edition and our local stories in that groundbreaking digital newspaper were updated on the fly throughout the day, but there were few bells and whistles, as very, very few of our online readers had cable broadband internet in 1996. Who remembers dial-up?

On Christmas Day 1996, I was called at home by a father who read us online and wondered if we could take a few minutes to put up the famous “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus,” letter to the editor and the editorial response for his young daughter.

The letter and editorial had long been in the public domain. So we did. On Christmas Day.

Eight-year-old Virginia O’Hanlon wrote the long-ago letter to the editor of the New York Sun, and the quick response was printed as an unsigned editorial Sept. 21, 1897. The response of veteran newsman Francis Pharcellus Church has since become history’s most reprinted newspaper editorial.

A decade later, editing the Thompson Citizen and Nickel Belt News weekly newspapers here in Northern Manitoba, I resumed publishing the “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus” letter to the editor from 2007 to 2013:

Dear Editor:

I am eight-years-old. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says, ‘If you see it in The Sun it’s so.’

Please tell me the truth; is there a Santa Claus?

Virginia O’Hanlon
115 West Ninety-fifth Street
New York

In his editorial, Francis Pharcellus Church replied:

Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except [what] they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! How dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies! You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if they did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

You may tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world, which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

No Santa Claus! Thank God! He lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, 10 times 10,000 years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.

Above the reprinted editorial I would append a bold-faced and italicized introduction, which read:

“Editor’s note: Eight-year-old Virginia O’Hanlon wrote a letter to the editor of the New York Sun, and the quick response was printed as an unsigned editorial Sept. 21, 1897. The response of veteran newsman Francis Pharcellus Church has since become history’s most reprinted newspaper editorial. We, at the Thompson Citizen, are pleased to be part of that tradition and republishing it at Christmas has become an annual hallmark of the festive season for us here as well since Dec. 19, 2007. Merry Christmas, one and all.

John Barker.”

You can also read it in full here at: https://www.thompsoncitizen.net/opinion/editorial/yes-virginia-there-is-a-santa-claus-1.1367424

While at the Thompson Citizen and Nickel Belt News, I also much enjoyed re-printing for a number of years Garwood Robb’s “A special gift from years ago” as a guest “Soundings” column on the editorial page around Christmas:

“My first teaching assignment was in Thompson in 1968. Mary was a student of mine. She was from an extremely poor and dysfunctional family who lived on the edge of town about a quarter mile from the town’s railway station.

“On the last day of school before Christmas holidays many of the students brought me gifts. Mary never had any money and quite often came to school without lunch. The family was so poor that she shared boots and a winter coat with her brother. One day Alvin got to wear the coat, the next day Mary. For her to bring me a gift was special. It was small wrapped in Kleenex and tied with a piece of dirty string.

“When I opened it, there was a beautiful gold tie bar with a bright red ruby in the centre. In those days men had to wear suits and ties everyday to class. I thanked her for it while reassuring the other students that Mary had not stolen it. In actual fact she had; from the principal’s desk, the previous day.

“I offered to give the tie bar back to the principal in the New Year after I had worn it several times so Mary could see that I liked it and appreciated her gift. Mr. Baxter replied, “If Mary thought so much of you that she had to steal a gift from the principal, then I can surely give up the tie bar.” He offered me the cufflinks too. I refused.

“Mary was a loveable child, 12 years old in Grade 4. Students failed in those days and she had been held back several times. She lived with her mother and her two brothers, one older, one younger in a dilapidated weather-beaten shack. Money and food were always scarce for her family. Quite often I would see Mary begging for money on the street in front of the Thompson Inn on a Saturday night. After Christmas when I returned to Thompson I brought back a doll for Mary from Eaton’s. I secretly sent it home with her so the other girls in my class wouldn’t be jealous and so they wouldn’t say anything to hurt her. Mary had never had a doll and even at 12 that was all she wanted.

“The following winter while the children were home alone, fire destroyed Mary’s home in the middle of the night. Mary and her two siblings perished in the blaze.

“Every Christmas for nearly 40 years when I decorate our Christmas tree I unpack that gold tie bar with the red ruby and hang it in a very prominent place on the tree.

“Somewhere out there on Christmas night there is a shining star of a little girl who had a heart of gold but never had enough chances to show it.”

The column was first published in the Grandview Exponent, which serves the communities of Grandview and Gilbert Plains in the Parkland region of Manitoba, on Dec. 20, 2005, and later republished in Garwood Robb’s blog, “In My Own Words,” which is no longer available online at http://garwood2009.blogspot.ca/2009/12/memory-from-long-agorevisited.html  but can still be read at https://www.thompsoncitizen.net/opinion/soundings-4274851 

Garwood lived on Centennial Drive East in Thompson and taught at Westwood Elementary School from September 1968 to June 1972 when he moved to Winnipeg.

Two of my other favourite columns that would find their way into print at Christmas in the Thompson Citizen and Nickel Belt News were David J. Thompson’s “The night the lights were lit!,” which tells the story of Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, and the humble origins of the modern co-operative movement:

“On Dec. 21, 1844 the Rochdale Equitable Pioneers Society opened a small store in England with five items and little fanfare. Thus humbly began the modern co-operative movement. Let’s step back into that time to get a sense of how co-operative history was made.

“In the summer of 1843, a 31-year-old Charles Dickens journeyed to Lancashire, to see for himself how life was lived in the industrial north of England. To feed his insatiable journalistic curiosity, he visited a workhouse in Manchester to see how the poor were surviving the “hungry forties.” Dickens was taken aback by the terrible conditions he saw in the midst of the burgeoning wealth. In the bustling heartland of the Industrial Revolution he saw the two Englands of rich and poor.

“The next day, speaking to an audience of well-to-do aristocrats and mill owners at Manchester’s prestigious Athenaeum Club, he urged the audience to overcome their ignorance which he said was “the most prolific parent of misery and crime.” Dickens asked them to take action with the workers to “share a mutual duty and responsibility” to society. On the train back to London, impacted greatly by the poverty and misery he had seen, he conceptualized A Christmas Carol. He began writing the classic Christmas story a week later and completed it in six weeks. Since the book was published on Dec. 19, 1843, Christmas has never been the same.

“On the eve of revolutions throughout Europe, Dickens counselled that hearts must hear and eyes must see for society to change. In Dickens’ mind, the Bob Cratchits and Tiny Tims of the world would have to wait for the Ebenezer Scrooges to literally go through hell before heaven could be made upon Earth. Dickens later returned to the Lancashire mill towns to gather information for a later novel Hard Times. Dickens solution in much of his writing was the voluntary transformation of the rich and powerful.

“However, for Dickens, A Christmas Carol was semi-autobiographical reflecting his father having been in debtor’s prison and the suffering within his own family. It was also a social commentary on the tremendous conflicts transforming British society from top to bottom as a result of the Industrial Revolution. However, Scrooge’s peaceful transformation was not repeated enough by a self-interested industrial aristocracy. Five years later, revolutions occupied centre stage in much of Europe.

“In the summer of 1843, at the time Dickens visited Manchester a group of Bob Cratchits and their spouses were meeting regularly just 11 miles away in the nearby town of Rochdale. One of the Pioneers, John Kershaw recalled a key step in organizing the co-op,” A few days before Christmas, 1843, a circular was issued calling a delegates meeting to be held at the Weavers Arms, Cheetham Street, nearToad Toad Lane.” At that meeting, the Rochdale families decided that rather than wait for the mill owners to do something for them they just better do it for themselves. It took the determined mill workers almost two years before they had collected enough of their meagre savings to open up their small co-op. Their immediate aim was to get better quality food at decent prices and give some of them jobs. Their ultimate goal was to use the co-op’s profits to create their own community where working and living conditions would be better. Amongst the “satanic mills” they would build their “New Jerusalem.”

“The winter solstice on Dec. 21 was the longest night of the year. Under the old Gregorian calendar, Dec. 21 was also Christmas Day. The co-op opened almost one year to the day after the publication of A Christmas Carol. However for the members of the newly formed co-op called the Rochdale Equitable Pioneers Society the holiday season would not be one of gifts or gaiety but of consternation and caution.

“On that Saturday night at 8 p.m., a small group of the Rochdale Pioneers and their families huddled together in the shop to witness the store’s opening. The temperature was below freezing made worse by the damp in the almost empty warehouse at 31 Toad Lane (T’Owd is dialect for the old Lane) in Rochdale. Outside on the busy lane they could hear the clattering of wooden clogs on the cobbled streets. The tired mill workers were hurrying home to find warmth from the winter’s chill. As the church bells across the street struck the appointed hour, the founding members heard each chime with beating hearts. Then, James Smithies went outside and bravely took the shutters off the windows. With the final shutter removed and a few candles bravely lighting the store’s bay windows the modern cooperative movement began. This little shop in Rochdale, England would be its lowly birthplace and these humble hard working families its founders.

Thompson’s column is also available online at: https://www.thompsoncitizen.net/opinion/the-night-the-lights-were-lit-4279065

The other column that I quite enjoyed reprinting was “The Gold and Ivory Tablecloth” by Howard C. Schade, the pastor between 1935 and 1940 of the Second Reformed Church in Coxsackie, New York, between the Catskill Mountains and Hudson River. “The Gold and “Ivory Tablecloth, perhaps more allegorical than literally true, was originally published in the December 1954 issue of Reader’s Digest magazine. Schade wrote:

“At Christmas time men and women everywhere gather in their churches to wonder anew at the greatest miracle the world has ever known. But the story I like best to recall was not a miracle, not exactly.

“It happened to a pastor who was very young. His church was very old. Once, long ago, it had flourished. Famous men had preached from its pulpit, prayed before its altar. Rich and poor alike had worshipped there and built it beautifully. Now the good days had passed from the section of town where it stood. But the pastor and his young wife believed in their run-down church. They felt that with paint, hammer, and faith they could get it in shape. Together they went to work.

“But late in December a severe storm whipped through the river valley, and the worst blow fell on the little church, a huge chunk of rain, soaked plaster fell out of the inside wall just behind the altar. Sorrowfully the pastor and his wife swept away the mess, but they couldn’t hide the ragged hole.

“The pastor looked at it and had to remind himself quickly. “Thy will be done!” But his wife wept, “Christmas is only two days away!”

“That afternoon the dispirited couple attended the auction held for the benefit of a youth group.

“The auctioneer opened a box and shook out of its folds a handsome gold and ivory lace tablecloth. It was a magnificent item, nearly 15 feet long, but it too, dated from a long vanished era. Who, today, had any use for such a thing? There were a few half-hearted bids. Then the pastor was seized with what he thought was a great idea.

“He bid it in for $6.50.

“He carried the cloth back to the church and tacked it up on the wall behind the altar. It completely hid the hole! And the extraordinary beauty of its shimmering handwork cast a fine, holiday glow over the chancel. It was a great triumph. Happily he went back to preparing his Christmas sermon.

“Just before noon on the day of Christmas Eve, as the pastor was opening the church, he noticed a woman standing in the cold at the bus stop. “The bus won’t be here for 40 minutes!” he called, and invited her into the church to get warm.

“She told him that she had come from the city that morning to be interviewed for a job as governess to the children of one of the wealthy families in town but she had been turned down. A war refugee, her English was imperfect.

“The woman sat down in a pew and chafed her hands and rested. After a while she dropped her head and prayed. She looked up as the pastor began to adjust the great gold and ivory cloth across the hole. She rose suddenly and walked up the steps of the chancel. She looked at the tablecloth. The pastor smiled and started to tell her about the storm damage, but she didn’t seem to listen. She took up a fold of the cloth and rubbed it between her fingers.

“It is mine!” she said. “It is my banquet cloth!” She lifted up a corner and showed the surprised pastor that there were initials monogrammed on it. “My husband had the cloth made especially for me in Brussels! There could not be another like it.”

“For the next few minutes the woman and the pastor talked excitedly together. She explained that she was Viennese, that she and her husband had opposed the Nazis and decided to leave the country. They were advised to go separately. Her husband put her on a train for Switzerland. They planned that he would join her as soon as he could arrange to ship their household goods across the border. She never saw him again. Later she heard that he had died in a concentration camp.

“‘I have always felt that it was my fault, to leave without him,’ she said. “Perhaps these years of wandering have been my punishment!” The pastor tried to comfort her and urged her to take the cloth with her. She refused. Then she went away.

As the church began to fill on Christmas Eve, it was clear that the cloth was going to be a great success. It had been skillfully designed to look its best by candlelight.

After the service, the pastor stood at the doorway. Many people told him that the church looked beautiful. One gentle-faced middle-aged man, he was the local cloth and watch repairman, looked rather puzzled.

“It is strange,” he said in his soft accent. “Many years ago my wife, God rest her, and I owned such a cloth. In our home in Vienna, my wife put it on the table”, and here he smiled, “only when the bishop came to dinner.”

“The pastor suddenly became very excited. He told the jeweller about the woman who had been in church earlier that day. The started jeweller clutched the pastor’s arm. “Can it be? Does she live?”

“Together the two got in touch with the family who had interviewed her. Then, in the pastor’s car they started for the city. And as Christmas Day was born, this man and his wife, who had been separated through so many saddened Yuletides, were reunited.

“To all who hear this story, the joyful purpose of the storm that had knocked a hole in the wall of the church was now quite clear. Of course, people said it was a miracle, but I think you will agree it was the season for it!

“True love seems to find a way.”

Schade’s column is also available online at: https://www.thompsoncitizen.net/opinion/the-gold-and-ivory-tablecloth-4275996

You can also follow me on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/jwbarker22

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Farewell, Keith MacDonald: A proud New Brunswicker, but also a proud Thompsonite, who helped make us a better community to live and work in

Keith MacDonald died a couple of days ago. That’s a big loss for his family and friends, of course, and my condolences to them, but it is also a very big loss for all of us here in the wider Thompson community, as Keith was tireless in both his work and many volunteer efforts in helping to make Thompson, Manitoba a better place to live. And he did it in a sort of low-key way with considerable humility.

I moved to Thompson in July 2007, a couple of years after Keith had arrived, and my first memories of him were serving as general manager of both the Burntwood Hotel and Thompson Inn (TI) for Winnipeg’s Manfred Boehm, who owns both hotel properties. These were nickel-fueled economic boom years for Thompson, and planned new hotels were on the drawing board. By 2010, Keith was also president of the Thompson Chamber of Commerce, and combined with his hotel management experience (which dated to back home in Moncton, New Brunswick and working as a young man for Keddy’s Motor Inns, and later for Inns of Banff), he shared valuable on-the-record insights with me about market dynamics at a time when Thompson would get 150 new hotel rooms and two brand-new hotels between 2011 and 2013.

Back in 2010, in addition to the Burntwood Hotel and Thompson Inn, guests could find accommodation at the Days Inn, Meridian Hotel, Country Inn and Suites (now known as Thompson’s Best Value Inn & Suites), Interior Inn, Mystery Lake Motor Hotel and Northern Inn & Steak House. The Interior Inn, which had burned down while under construction in October 1967, but was rebuilt, burned down again on New Year’s Day 2018, but is being rebuilt again. Choice Hotels’ 70-room Suburban Extended Stay Hotel, now known as the Quality Inn & Suites Thompson, opened in May 2011, followed by the 80-room Best Western Hotel, less than a year later in April 2012.

Another memory I have of Keith from that period is in his role as Thompson Chamber of Commerce president, as well as general manager of the Burntwood Hotel, barbecuing some choice steaks for a dinner to mark the chamber’s 50th anniversary year, out on the asphalt parking lot of the hotel, on a summer day so hot you could have fried eggs on the pavement. Such summer days are pretty rare in Thompson, so you perhaps tend to remember them. Keith, sweating over the flames, while getting smoked a bit himself in the grilling process, was, as always, the genial host. Having spent a good part of his working life in the hospitality industry, Keith was the consummate hotelier.  I also recall being at a Spirit Way gala with Jeanette about a year earlier on Nov. 12, 2009, at the North Star Saloon in the Thompson Inn, where Keith  bartended himself that evening, and had the place shipshape for the event.

Keith left the hotel business and became the property manager for the City Centre Mall in May 2011, a position he held until April 2018. While I had a number of interesting chats with Keith on any number of local issues during those seven years, one that stands out was from just after he left mall management. There were quite a few retail store vacancies at the time, so I asked him how close he thought City Centre Mall was to the tipping point where it becomes a so-called “dead mall.” Keith replied that he thought the two anchor stores, Wal-Mart and Sobeys/Canada Safeway, would both be fine, but said he worried about the future of the smaller bricks-and-mortar retail stores, national, regional and local, that fill up the space between the anchor stores in the mall. With such a competitive online shopping environment, Keith said he thought the future of such space in City Centre Mall and many other similar malls across North America, would be more about storefront government offices, along with dentists and perhaps other healthcare professionals, than it would be about retail stores and shopping.

While Keith spent most of his working life in the hospitality and retail service industries, he also studied civil engineering at New Brunswick Community College (NBCC) in Moncton between 1980 and 1982, and worked as a hydrographic surveyor for what was then Public Works Canada, and is now known as Public Services and Procurement Canada.

His volunteer service was considerable and diverse. It ranged from serving as treasurer of Spirit Way; active in leadership as president with both the Lions Club of Thompson and Rotary Club of Thompson; acting chair of the Thompson Zoological Society, and a passionate advocate for the Boreal Discovery Centre; serving as the Thompson Chamber of Commerce representative on the Thompson Regional Airport Authority board of directors; and serving as a board member of the Addictions Foundation of Manitoba (AFM).

Keith’s final gig pretty much brought him full circle as he became, as he described it, the inaugural “non-executive director” of the new Thompson Hotel Association in April 2018, a not-for-profit entity managed by a board of directors and ordinary members of the corporation, who are any proprietor who is actively engaged in the operation of the business and pays accommodation tax to the City of Thompson, acting as a lobby group for local hotels, with a mission to develop a stronger tourism presence in the area, and to get “heads on pillows.”

You can also follow me on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/jwbarker22

 

Northern Manitoba: Orange Crush for the NDP

Steve Ashton, minister of infrastructure and transportation, and Thompson’s NDP MLA since 1981, making him the marathon man of Manitoba politics, did what every political analyst and commentator in the province believed was impossible. He lost the supposedly safest NDP seat in Manitoba to Progressive Conservative rookie Kelly Bindle by 210 votes. “Bindle received nearly 45 per cent of the vote compared to a little over 39 per cent for Steve Ashton and 16 per cent for Liberal candidate Inez Vystrcil-Spence,” wrote Thompson Citizen editor Ian Graham in his online election night story. “Ashton took 68 per cent of the votes in the 2011 election, more than double the total of the PC candidate Anita Campbell.”

The turnout in Northern Manitoba was the lowest in the province. Here in Thompson, where the weather was sunny and 21.2°C, way above the normal daytime high of 6°C, voter turnout was 38.12 per cent, with only 3,865 of 10,138 eligible voters casting a ballot. Thompson had 21 rejected ballots and 20 voters declined ballots. The turnout here was about 20 per cent less than the provincewide turnout of 58.86 per cent.

There have only been 13 provincial general elections since the Thompson constituency was created in June 1969. Progressive Conservative Labour Minister Ken MacMaster, who won the seat in the Oct. 11, 1977 election, and held it for four years until 1981, was the only Tory to ever hold the seat before Bindle. Before MacMaster, Ken Dillen, who ran against Ashton as a Liberal in the 2011 election, held the seat for the NDP from 1973 to 1977, while Joe Borowski held the seat in 1972-33 as an Independent NDP, and from 1969 to 1972 as an NDP member. Borowski defeated former Thompson mayor Tim Johnston’s father, Dr. Blain Johnston, by seven votes in the Feb. 20, 1969 byelection in the old provincial constituency of Churchill, which included the town of Thompson. He went on four months later to win the newly-created constituency of Thompson in the June 25, 1969 general election.

Ashton had won nine consecutive elections between 1981 and 2011 before going down to defeat in 2016 in his bid for 10 in a row. For that, he can thank mostly Premier Greg Selinger, first for increasing the PST in July 2013 by one per cent from seven per cent to eight per cent without a referendum, less than two years after promising voters in the 2011 election campaign that he wouldn’t raise the tax without a referendum, and secondly for the premier desperately clinging to power as his popularity plummeted, still hanging on futilely after beating former health minister Theresa Oswald by 33 votes on the second ballot of a leadership campaign vote in March 2015. Ashton, who also ran against Selinger for the leadership in 2009, was dropped from the 2015 race after finishing last on the first ballot. While his own party couldn’t quite get rid of Selinger, Manitoba voters as a whole proved themselves as being more than up for the job, dispatching the NDP from power for the first time since the last millennium, although the premier has the consolation – if it is any – of holding onto his own St. Boniface seat.

Long-victorious politicians like Steve Ashton almost always only lose their seats when the tide turns against their party in a huge way, and they’re swept out, along with most of their colleagues. Nothing personal, more or less, although there has been an undercurrent in Thompson since the 2011 election that perhaps now was the time for “Steve to go.” Go in the sense that maybe after more than three decades, it was time for Steve to stand aside. Most Thompsonites would likely have preferred to see Ashton make that call on his own to retire on top, rather than be turfed at the polls, but rare is the politician from any party who knows when it is time to go and exit gracefully.

Brian Pallister’s Progressive Conservatives, which take office May 3, won 40 of the 57 seats in the Manitoba Legislative Assembly in Tuesday’s landslide victory, tying a record for most seats set way back in 1915 when Premier Tobias Crawford Norris’ Liberals also won 40 seats in the Aug. 6 election in a legislature with 47 seats. The Manitoba Legislative Assembly has had 57 seats since 1949. The NDP won 37 of the 57 seats in the 2011 election but only 14 this time.

Ashton was first elected to the Manitoba legislature at the age of 25 in the Nov. 17, 1981 provincial election, defeating MacMaster by 72 votes in a race that has entered the realm of local political folklore, as the April 19, 2016 provincial election no doubt will as well.  Ashton garnered 2,890 votes to MacMaster’s 2,818 in the 1981 election. Liberal Cy Hennessey finished dead last with 138 votes. At the time of his first election, Ashton was involved in an Inco strike as a member of Local 6166 of the Steelworkers. Ashton still gets a kick out of pointing out his shift boss voted him for him, saying he would make a better politician than a miner.

Chris Adams, vice-president of Probe Research, and an adjunct professor at the University of Winnipeg in the Department of Political Science, who has served as an election desk analyst for various media outlets in Manitoba, suggested to Winnipeg Free Press multimedia producer Kristin Annable the results of Tuesday’s provincial election in Northern Manitoba, including in the neighbouring Kewatinook constituency, formerly called Rupertsland, where another veteran NDP cabinet minister, Eric Robinson, also went down to defeat, to Liberal challenger Judy Klassen from St. Theresa Point First Nation, show the core of the NDP  is more damaged than previously thought. Even in The Pas and Flin Flon constituencies, the NDP barely clung to their seats. Adams, who has written extensively on Manitobans’ voting patterns, said he was surprised at Ashton’s and Robinson’s defeats. The NDP’s core electorate is based in inner-city Winnipeg and Northern Manitoba, he said.

Damaged core for the NDP is right. Think engine room and a warp core breach on the USS Enterprise (NCC-1701),  a Federation Constitution-class starship, and you’ve got the provincial NDP picture for Northern Manitoba right now.

My own election prognostication, while accurate for the province as a whole, also missed the shifting ground in Northern Manitoba. Two days before the election, I wrote: “If the pollsters are correct, the provincial NDP, which have won four consecutive majority governments dating back to 1999, are about 48 hours away from being turfed from power, having been at the helm since 1999, with Pallister and his PCs easily forming the next majority government.

“Frankly, that wouldn’t surprise me at all. That’s how democracy works. Every political party and every politician has a best-before date. The NDP may be rapidly approaching shelf life expiry. Certainly, even if they somehow manage to hang onto power Tuesday, it will be as a very marked-down electoral product in most of Manitoba. Not so here in Northern Manitoba methinks. Perhaps it is the cold climate, but I expect the NDP to have an extended shelf life here, illustrating for the first time in this millennium perhaps the political divide that can exist between north and south in Manitoba at times, although the 31 Winnipeg constituencies will likely be the wildcard that decides which party will govern in the 57-seat legislature, not, alas, the four loyal orange Northern Manitoba constituencies of The Pas, Flin Flon, Kewatinook and Thompson.”

Just how thoroughly NDP orange Thompson was surprised me when I first moved here in 2007. Thompson is a place where I discovered not only did many members of the local Thompson Chamber of Commerce support the NDP, some were even on the local NDP provincial constituency executive! Nowhere else had I lived in Canada where the NDP had that kind of support from Chamber of Commerce folks. Past mayor Tim Johnston ran against Ashton as a Liberal in 1995 but was himself a card-carrying NDP member and loyal Ashton supporter by the time I arrived in Thompson nine years ago. That Ashton had a lock on the local political establishment was indisputable. In 2008, Louise Hodder, district supervisor of the Thompson Assessment office for Manitoba’s Department of Intergovernmental Affairs at the time, served as president of the Thompson Chamber of Commerce, while a card-carrying NDP member. Hodder, who is also a certified municipal administrator, was later appointed by an order-in-council of the provincial NDP government as the $88,000 per year resident administrator of the Local Government District (LGD) of Mystery Lake on Jan. 28, 2013.  Margaret Allan, a former CBC Radio producer and manager of the Thompson Chamber of Commerce back in 2008, was also an ardent NDP supporter. The Thompson Chamber of Commerce NDP membership affiliations – even a single one – would be considered remarkable in much of the country. Here, it was just considered good business. Thompson really was a different world.

Mind you, Kelly Bindle, who was recruited by Pallister’s Tories to run surprisingly successfully against Ashton in what turned out to be a classic David-and-Goliath contest, is far from an unknown in Thompson, albeit he is a political novice. Bindle is a popular small businessman, who after the 2011 provincial election wound up taking over Carroll Meats, which had been closed for more than a year, on March 15, 2013, when Dave Carroll retired for health reason, renaming his business Ripple Rock Meat Shop. “Before I started I didn’t know anything about butchery,” Bindle told the Thompson Citizen in 2013.  “Part of the deal in buying the place was getting trained by Dave [Carroll]. I purchased all the assets and part of the deal was he would train us and help set it up.” Bindle, who is also a civil engineer and in 2006 opened his engineering consulting firm Bindle Engineering Limited, which he still works at, spent more than three years before that working for INCO in Indonesia before returning to Thompson, after growing tired of the isolation of sitting in an office behind a computer all day.  Bindle’s late father, Otto, first came to Thompson as one of the pioneers here in 1959 to run the Thompson Inn, or TI, as locals usually call it, as well as the Burntwood Hotel, across the street almost, and later owned Thompson Bargain Furniture. His mother, Grace, a retired teacher, is a well-known member of St. James the Apostle Anglican Church in Thompson, and a former Thompson Volunteer of the Year, an award established by the City of Thompson, as well as a Thompson YWCA Women of Distinction recipient.

Ashton, a native of Surrey in England, came to Canada at the age of 11 with his family. His dad was unemployed, he noted in April 2008, when they arrived in Toronto in 1967, and they moved the same year to Thompson. A graduate of R.D. Parker Collegiate in Thompson and the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, he received his master’s degree in economics from Lakehead University in Thunder Bay and is an economist. He was president of the University of Manitoba Students Union in 1978-79 and lectured in economics for the former Inter Universities North in Thompson and Cross Lake.  Ashton’s wife, Hari Dimitrakopoulou-Ashton, has taught mathematics in the business administration program in the Roblin Centre at Red River College in Winnipeg, and is from Alexandroupoli in northeastern Greece originally. She moved to Thompson with him in December 1979. Also an economist, Dimitrakopoulou-Ashton has lectured at the post-secondary level in economics, management and women’s studies. She authored Women Entrepreneurs in the North, and as well is a former trustee with the School District of Mystery Lake (SDML), as his son, Alexander, who chaired the SDML for two years during a turbulent period several years ago. He did not seek re-election when his four-year term expired in October 2014. From 2009 to 2014, he was employed at University College of the North (UCN) in Thompson as a civil technology instructor. He spent last year in Denmark working on a master’s degree in urban planning and management at Aalborg University.  Steve Ashton’s daughter, Niki, is serving her third term in the House of Commons as NDP MP for the federal riding of Churchill–Keewatinook Aski after besting Liberal challenger Rebecca Chartrand by 912 votes in last October’s federal election. She was first elected to Parliament in October 2008 and re-elected in the May 2011 election. A former instructor at University College of the North (UCN), she is married to Ryan Barker, who moved here with her, and is now a local school teacher and Juniper Elementary School-R.D. Parker Collegiate school connector from Mayerthorpe, Alberta.

Ashton also has two family members who are doctors in Northern Manitoba. His brother, Dr. Martin Ashton, is based in South Indian Lake, and his cousin, Dr. Sarah Ashton, is stationed in Oxford House.

While Steve Ashton has lived and breathed Manitoba politics for seemingly his entire adult life, he also some other interests that while still political, are not Manitoba specific. He is the chair of the Canadian Committee for the Restitution of the Parthenon Marbles, seeking the return of the sculptures from Britain to Greece. He’s a delegate to the International Association for the Reunification of the Parthenon Sculptures, speaks Greek and has written on the political culture of Greece.

The Temple of Athena Parthenos on the Acropolis of Athens is the symbol of the Golden Age of Greece and of the ideal of democracy. It is considered an integral part of the identity of the modern Greek nation and a monument of worldwide significance. Lord Elgin in 1801 removed several of its sculptures, which are housed in the British Museum in London. In 1982, Greece petitioned the British government for the return of these sculptures. The Canadian committee was formed in 2000.

The Tiger Dam controversy “that has dogged Ashton was also a likely factor in his loss,” Adams told Kristin Annable April 19.

“Ashton has faced months of allegations surrounding his attempt to secure a $5-million, sole-source contract for Tiger Dam flood-mitigation equipment.”  Annable wrote. The company involved was represented in Manitoba by Winnipeg restaurateur Peter Ginakes with whom Ashton “had a strong personal and professional relationship,” she said. Ginakes owns the Pony Corral Restaurant & Bar on St. Mary Avenue in downtown Winnipeg. He and his family have been in the restaurant  business in Winnipeg since the 1950s, owning popular eateries such as the Thunderbird Restaurant, Rib Shack Restaurant and Lounge and the  Town & Country. Ginakes had donated two years before the 2011 floods to Ashton’s unsuccessful leadership campaign in September and October 2009 to become Manitoba NDP party leader and premier, after Gary Doer stepped down to become Canada’s  ambassador to the United States in Washington. Outgoing Premier Greg Selinger took almost two-thirds of the ballots cast and sailed to victory in the two-way race with 1,317 votes to Ashton’s 685.  None of Ashton’s cabinet colleagues – some who had sat around the cabinet table with him for a decade – supported his bid to become premier in 2009.

Ashton did not serve in the cabinet of Howard Pawley for the seven years he led the NDP in Manitoba as premier from 1981 to 1988, but Ashton easily won re-election in Thompson as an MLA 1986, 1990, 1995, 1999, 2003 and 2007. The NDP were defeated in the provincial election of 1988 and Ashton served for a time as house leader for the NDP in opposition. He also served at various times as the NDP’s labour critic, health critic, and led the unsuccessful fight against the PC’s privatization of MTS in 1997. He finally made it into cabinet in October 1999 when Doer appointed him as minister of highways and government services. Following a cabinet shuffle in September 2002, Ashton became minister of conservation. In June 2003, he was also made minister of labour and immigration with responsibility for multiculturalism and administration of the Workers Compensation Act. In November 2003, he was named as the province’s first minister of water stewardship and in 2007 was shuffled to the post of minister of intergovernmental affairs and minister responsible for emergency measures.

Ashton asked  Ron Perozzo, recently retired Manitoba conflict-of-interest commissioner, for a formal opinion on Ginakes’ contribution to his 2009 leadership campaign in June 2015, as the Tiger Dam controversy continued to swirl. Ashton asked Perozzo for an opinion on whether the restaurateur’s contribution to his 2009 leadership campaign created a conflict of interest.

Perozzo said it had not.

“In my opinion, a contribution to a leadership contestant made in accordance with the terms of the Election Financing Act would not be a fee or commission paid to a person for representing the interests of another person,” Perozzo said in his report last July 15.

Carson City, Nevada-based US Flood Control Corporation markets the Tiger Dam system, which bills itself as an alternative to sandbagging prior to a flood, and consists of elongated flexible tubes which maybe quickly stacked, joined end to end and filled with water. International Flood Control Corporation of Calgary is the Canadian subsidiary, which Ginakes acted as Manitoba Tiger Dam distributor for. Tiger Dam’s pyramid-shaped structure forms a barrier to protect buildings, resort properties and any other structures prior. The tubes can be filled with a two-inch pump, a fire hydrant or even a garden hose. The tubes are capable of being stacked up to a maximum of 32 feet high and linked together seamlessly for miles. They can be virtually any length and take any shape. Each tube weighs 65 pounds dry and 6,300 pounds when filled with water.

These temporary engineered, interlocking, flexible tubes are then drained of water which flows back into the river when the flooding subsides. The result is a reusable system that protects property without the need of sandbags. When the floodwaters recede, the tubes can be drained within minutes, rolled up and reused again and again.

Manitoba Ombudsman Charlene Paquin said in a Jan. 7 report Manitoba Infrastructure and Transportation (MIT) did not have sufficient reason to try to purchase the Tiger Dam flood-fighting equipment  in 2014 without going to tender. Her report into the attempted purchase – which didn’t go through and was then sent to tender in December 2014 in the form of a Request for Proposal (RFP), which was subsequently not awarded – also found that Manitoba Infrastructure and Transportation did not do enough research and analysis into whether the particular type of flood-fighting equipment that the Interlake Reserves Tribal Council (IRTC) wanted for the Interlake Emergency Operations Centre was the best way to fight flooding.

“No MIT staff we interviewed knew of research the department had conducted or considered regarding the flood protection needs for First Nation communities in the Interlake region of the province or for the purchase of $5 million of Tiger Dams, despite the guidance in the PAM [Procurement Administration Manual] to do ‘research and analysis’ in the first stage of the procurement cycle,” Paquin said in her report.

“Our understanding is that the department did not conduct this research and analysis because IRTC had already stated to the department that it wanted a specific brand of water-filled barriers and because it was directed to prepare a submission accordingly. We are not satisfied that IRTC requesting specific equipment is sufficient justification for the department not to follow the guidance in the PAM that encourages departments to provide research and analysis regarding what goods or services should be purchased.”

Manitoba Infrastructure and Transportation submission to the Treasury Board Secretariat in Manitoba Finance proposed waiving a competitive bidding process because it felt the sole source exception – one of four acceptable circumstances under which untendered purchases for more than $50,000 can be made – applied. “Individuals we spoke with at MIT indicated that departmental staff did not agree with waiving a competitive procurement process,” wrote Paquin. “However, as noted previously, the department was directed by the minister of MIT [Steve Ashton] to draft a submission that proposed an untendered contract for Tiger Dams. The department indicates that the direction supported IRTC’s request for this equipment because IRTC had this equipment in its inventory and had experience using it.”

While Paquin determined that Manitoba Infrastructure and Transportation did not conduct sufficient research and analysis to support the type of flood-fighting equipment to be purchased, she also said “overall the investigation found that legislation and policy related to tendering were followed.” You can read the 35-page Report on Flood-Fighting Equipment for the Interlake Emergency Operations Centre: The Tiger Dams Proposal is on the ombudsman’s website at: https://www.ombudsman.mb.ca/uploads/document/files/ombudsman-report-on-flood-fighting-equipment-en.pdf

The Interlake Reserves Tribal Council  (IRTC), which currently is comprised of the Dauphing River First Nation; Kinonjeoshtegon First Nation; Lake Manitoba First Nation; Little Saskatchewan First Nation; Peguis First Nation; and Pinaymootang First Nation wound up purchasing the Tiger Dam equipment using federal funding instead.

Just four days before the provincial election, OmniTRAX Canada filed a lawsuit April 15 against the province, along with Selinger and Ashton, named as individual defendants, alleging they interfered last December in the sale of Hudson Bay Railway to a consortium of 10 Northern Manitoba First Nations, led by Mathias Colomb Cree Nation, by disclosing confidential financial information about OmniTRAX Canada to consulting firm MNP LLP and Opaskwayak Cree Nation (OCN) at The Pas.

The claim states at the time OmniTRAX Canada was exclusively negotiating the sale with a consortium of 10 northern Manitoba First Nations led by Mathias Colomb Cree Nation. “The unlawful and wrongful conduct of the defendants as aforesaid amounts to a deliberate, high-handed, wanton and outrageous interference with the plaintiffs’ rights,” OmniTRAX Canada claims in their court filing in the Manitoba Court of Queen’s Bench. The alleged breach of the March 2015 non-disclosure agreement “compromised and threatened the plaintiffs’ negotiations for the sale of the plaintiff’s business and assets thereby interfering with the plaintiffs’ economic relations and causing the plaintiffs to suffer loss and damage,” OmniTRAX Canada claims in the court filing.

OmniTRAX Canada entered into a deal last December to sell the Port of Churchill and Hudson Bay rail line to a group of First Nations led by Mathias Colomb Cree Nation.

OmniTRAX Canada has not said how the alleged disclosure of the financial information to Opaskwayak Cree Nation affected the deal.

“Based on internal reviews already undertaken, the government intends to deny the allegations,” Shane Gibson, a government spokesman, said in a statement.

The allegations by OmniTRAX Canada have yet to be tested in court before a trier of fact.

OmniTRAX Canada is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Denver-based short line railroad, which owns Hudson Bay Railway. OmniTRAX in turn is an affiliate of The Broe Group, owned by Pat Broe, who founded the company in Denver in 1972 as a real estate asset management firm.

OmniTRAX created Hudson Bay Railway in 1997, the same year it took over operation of the Port of Churchill. It operates more than 1,000 kilometres of track for freight service in Manitoba between The Pas and Churchill. OmniTRAX Canada, Inc. bought the Northern Manitoba track from CN in 1997 for $11 million. It took over the related Port of Churchill, which opened in 1929, when it acquired it from Canada Ports Corporation, for a token $10 soon after buying the rail line.

Via Rail Canada also rents the use of the track for passenger service along the Bayline to Churchill from OmniTRAX Canada. Along the Hudson Bay Railway Bayline between Gillam and Churchill is Bird, Sundance Amery, Charlebois, Weir River, Lawledge, Thibaudeau, Silcox, Herchmer, Kellett, O’Day, Back, McClintock, Cromarty, Belcher, Chesnaye, Lamprey, Bylot, Digges, Tidal and Fort Churchill.

The Bayline reached Churchill on March 29, 1929.

You can also follow me on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/jwbarker22

 

Rick Oberdorfer, longtime president of Thompson Unlimited’s board of directors, and veteran directors Don Macdonald and Manisha Pandya all resigning as of Jan. 1

Three  veteran members of the board of directors of Thompson Unlimited (TU) submitted their resignations to Mayor Tim Johnston after a board meeting July 29, including Rick Oberdorfer, longtime president of TU. Oberdorfer, Don Macdonald and Manisha Pandya have sat on the board since the economic development corportation was founded. Their resignations are contained in an Aug. 5 letter to Johnston, which was released a public document by the city Sept. 22. The letter was received by the city Aug. 7.

While the resignations were intended to take effect when received an approved by council resolution, Johnston told a regular meeting of city council Monday night that he had spoken to all three after receiving the letter and asked them to stay on until Jan. 1, giving a newly-elected council, which takes office at noon Oct. 23, a chance to get under way before a change of such magnitude.

In their Aug. 5 letter, Oberdorfer, Macdonald and Pandya write: “The members all feel that it it is time to give others the opportunity to participate in this board.” They go on to say in the two-paragraph letter: “It has been a great learning and growing experience and we will all miss working with Thompson Unlimited.”

Johnston, who is not seeking re-election Oct. 22, is the City of Thompson’s external committee appointment to the Thompson Unlimited board of directors.

On Dec. 31 each year, through the recommendation of the legislative and intergovernmental affairs committee and approved by resolution, council appoints a member of council to external committees for the following year. The role of the committee representatives to external committees are to represent city council on the committee; if necessary, to seek clarification from council of its position with respect to the committee; and to report to council on activities and decisions originating from committee meetings.

Johnston noted Gord Wakeling, interim general manager of Thompson Unlimited, had also offered his resignation. Wakeling recently sold his house in Thompson and moved to Winnipeg, but at Johnston’s request is remaining on in the post on a contract basis until Jan. 1, the mayor told council. In fact, Wakeling’s job at Thompson Unlimited was advertised last summer, resulting in a short list of several candidates. That hiring has now been postponed until the new council assumes office next month.

Before he retired last year, Wakeling had served  for 21 years as chief executive officer of the Communities Economic Development Fund (CEDF) here, the only provincial Crown corporation headquarted in Northern Manitoba. Wakeling joined Thompson Unlimited as interim general manager last December after the resignation of development co-ordinator Betty Landego – one of two employees at that time, along with Roxie Binns, who worked half-time but left the position for health reasons and moved to Winnipeg.

Mark Matiasek, who had been general manager of Thompson Unlimited since February 2008, was let go when his contract expired late in 2012. Thompson Unlimited’s budget for 2012 projected revenues of $354,900 – $250,000 of which was the annual operating grant from Vale – and projected expenditures of $449,950 for a deficit to be funded from its reserve of $95,050. The budgeted amount for wages and benefits in 2012 was $190,000 or approximately 42 per cent of the total expenses. Matiasek teaches sociology as an adjunct professor in the Business Administration program here at the University College of the North now.

Oberdorfer owns the A&W franchise on Thompson Drive North.  Pandya is a chartered accountant and partner with Kendall & Pandya.  Macdonald, who is making a run for a trustee’s seat in the Oct. 22 municipal election, is fisheries manager for the Northeastern Region here in the  Fisheries Branch of the Water Stewardship Division of Manitoba Conservation and Water Stewardship.

Other members of the board of directors of Thompson Unlimited include Manfred Boehm, of Winnipeg,  who operates Boehm Management Ltd. and Boehm Hotel Corporation, and owns through companaies controlled by him both the  77-room Burntwood Hotel and  45-room Thompson Inn, both of which are for sale and listed with Colliers. Asking price for the Thompson Inn, or TI as it also known as, is $2.5 million. Both hotels also house beer vendors. Boehm, and his business parner, Ted Bloomer, also own the historic Ramada Marlborough hotel in downtown Winnipeg.

Rounding out the board of directors are Jim Beardy, director of community and technical services for the Keewatin Tribal Council (KTC); Steve Spuzak and Kevin White.

Thompson Unlimited found itself embroiled in controversy last year after Oberdorfer, in his official capacity, based on “input from three business owners,” who remained unidentified, wrote a three-page letter to Johnston and city council dated Aug. 8, 2013, outlining what he describes as “to follow are concerns and suggestions.” The letter became a public document on Sept. 9, 2013 when it was officially received as correspondence during a regular council meeting.

Essentially, many of the 15 points in the letter raised downtown issues that were widely perceived to be a racist attack on the local aboriginal community. The situation became so heated the full board, including Oberdorfer, signed a letter to the editor, published in the Thompson Citizen Sept. 18, 2013, saying, “First and foremost, we truly regret any distress this may have caused to the people and organizations of our region.” The board stressed that the letter “read  into the minutes of the Sep. 9 meeting of mayor and council and which reflected comments that were provided to Thompson Unlimited. These comments in no way represented the views or opinions of Thompson Unlimited, its staff, the board of directors or its chair.” It ended its letter to the newspaper by saying, “Again, we accept responsibility for the way in which the results were presented and we truly regret any undue offense it may have given. We will take steps to ensure that our actions in the future will be more considerate and mindful of others.”

Thompson Unlimited, the city’s economic development corporation, was established in 2003 with $2.5 million in funding over 10 years, first by Inco and later Vale, to assist with diversifying the economy in Thompson for the post-mining era. It did business until 2005 as Thompson Community Development Corporation, which remains its legal name to his day.

Thompson Unlimited’s funding was slashed in January 2013 by 80 per cent – or $2 million – to $500,000 over four years under a new five-year municipal tax and funding agreement with Vale Canada Limited for Jan. 1, 2013 through Dec. 31, 2017, which replaced an expired eight-year agreement between Vale, City of Thompson, School District of Mystery Lake and Local Government District (LGD) of Mystery Lake.

Thompson Unlimited got about 70.44 per cent of its total indirect funding through Vale in 2012. Last year it was to receive $250,000; followed by $100,000 this year; $100,000 again next year; and a final $50,000 in 2016. Technically, Vale earmarks the money for economic development and provides it to the City of Thompson; it does not directly hand over the money to Thompson Unlimited.