As Pete and Raymond Zaworonok look to retirement, will Crazy Petes carry on?

The brothers aren’t getting any younger. Pete Zaworonok is 77. His younger brother, Raymond is 72. Neither are in the best of health these days. So retirement looms, with Pete planning to relocate permanently back to his longtime home near Nelson, British Columbia, while Raymond’s home is in Calgary. Until recently, the brothers would often takes turns commuting back to their Alberta and British Columbia homes for months at a time, while the other brother remained in Thompson minding the store, Crazy Petes, their legendary eclectic small-town hardware-like store, at the corner of Hayes Road and Seal Road, with one of this, and two of that. On rare occasions, I’d come into the store while the brothers were together during a brief overlap.

Back 10 years ago, Jonathon Naylor, then the editor of The Reminder in Flin Flon and a freelancer for the Winnipeg Free Press, wrote a piece for the Free Press that nicely captured what Pete and Crazy Petes is all about:

“Need a campfire tea kettle or some high-end embroidery thread? How about a home potato chipper or military toys you thought were banned?” Naylor wrote. “A movie poster from 1991’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II or fishing tackle that looks designed to snag a whale?

“It’s all here, along with gas and a car wash,” Naylor wrote on June 20, 2013.

Pete, who was born in Germany, was living in Edmonton when, in 1967, he accepted a job as a technologist for INCO, now Vale, here in Thompson. After a decade, he left INCO to go into business for himself, running his own insulating company before operating what Raymond June 7 referred to as the brothers’ “three profit centres”: the original car wash and gas bar, along with the store he added to them to make a business trio in 1979. The car wash wasn’t open last Wednesday as a water line was still frozen up, Raymond said. Pete actually was in Thompson, but home recuperating from some aorta trouble a few months ago, he added. Raymond has had some prostate trouble of his own.

Truth be told, Pete and Raymond are two of the most creative business guys that I have ever met. When it came to customer loyalty cards, such as Aeroplan and PC Optimum Points Reward cards, Crazy Petes had the broadest definition of what constituted groceries than it has been my pleasure to discover.

Pete one time explained his marketing strategy to me by way of an illustration. He had some old cowboy belt buckles quite literally gathering dust on the shelves for years, not selling at all. One day, he simply doubled their price and they started to sell like hotcakes. The store has a collection of local indigenous music cassette tapes and CDs you won’t find anywhere else.

I have done my bit over the years to promote the wonders of Crazy’s Petes far and wide. With mixed results, I admit. In April 2022, the former University College of the North (UCN) Thompson campus librarian, Monica Mun, came back one day after making a trip with a pet to the vet, and mentioned to my then boss, former library technician Andrew Conner, that she had just seen lots of RCMP cruisers outside Crazy Petes store. “Isn’t that the place John was talking about?” she asked Andrew. At that point, Andrew may well have been advised to reply, “John who?” But he didn’t. Andrew, hailing from the Alex Murdaugh Lowcountry of South Carolina, shares something of that outlaw streak, or at least admiration for same, that I admittedly have.

I suspect we’re not alone. Hence the sympathetic notoriety enjoyed by some bank robbers, including John Dillinger, Clyde Barrow, Bonnie Parker, Butch Cassidy, Harry Alonzo Longabaugh, better known as the Sundance Kid, Pretty Boy Floyd, and Edwin Alonzo Boyd, or say someone like D.B. Cooper, who with his audacious skyjacking, jumped into history on Nov. 24, 1971 – the day before American Thanksgiving – with several parachutes and $200,000 in $20 bills from of Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 305, a Boeing 727 jetliner flying over the Pacific Northwest, en route from Portland, Oregon to Seattle, Washington. Cooper, an alias, disappeared into the late autumn, as he bailed out into the rainy night via the plane’s rear stairway, which he lowered himself, somewhere near the Washington-Oregon boundary in Washington State, probably near Ariel in Cowlitz County, or possibly around Washougal or Camas in Clark County. Never to be seen again.

Any resemblance to Pete and Raymond, of anyone mentioned here, is, of course, coincidental, and if necessary, fictional, too.

Raymond says there have been some potential buyers sniffing around, wanting to take a look at the books, but no serious offers as yet. It strikes me as unlikely that a new buyer would replicate or maintain Crazy Petes inventory, all inseparable, I suspect, from the Zeitgeist that is the Zaworonok brothers.

Pete and Raymond.

Gone Fishin.’

Almost.

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The Summer of 1953: Winnipeg’s American Cold War radiological testing over the ‘Gateway to the West’

Books assigned UF500-515 Weapons systems Library of Congress subclass call numbers are few in number here in the Wellington & Madeleine Spence Memorial Library on the Thompson campus of the University College of the North (UCN) here in Northern Manitoba. So I tend to notice when a new one comes in for placement near the end of our stacks in the compact shelving at the back of the library. In January 2018, a slim 211-page book titled Behind the Fog: How the U.S. Cold War Radiological Weapons Program Exposed Innocent Americans, written by Lisa Martino-Taylor, arrived. My handwritten “Date Due” notations in the book says I have borrowed it nine times between then and June 30 of last year. While it is not the most most compelling prose ever written, the subject matter is compelling, at least in small doses.

Martino-Taylor is a public sociologist at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. She has worked on issues of heavy metals poisoning in Herculaneum, Missouri, testified before congress in Lima, Peru about the lead poisoning of children by the Doe Run Mining Company in La Oroya, worked with residents near Times Beach and in Ellisville, Missouri regarding dioxin and PCB contamination related to Agent Orange production, and organized and engaged in ethnographic research in Ferguson, Missouri.

Martino-Taylor earned her doctorate in sociology at the University of Missouri-Columbia and researches issues related to social and environmental justice, inequality, social movements, elite deviance, and U.S. military development and testing of chemical, biological and radiological weapons. She serves on the Board of Directors of the Radiation and Public Health Project in New York.

She uncovered the information when she accessed American military documents that were previously classified. And it wasn’t just Americans exposed to the radiological weapons program testing inked to weaponry involving radioactive components meant to attack the Soviet Union. The United States Army secretly sprayed six kilograms of zinc cadmium sulfide onto unsuspecting residents of Winnipeg from U.S. Army planes between July 9, 1953 and Aug. 1, 1953. The U.S. Army returned 11 years later and repeated the experiments in Suffield and Medicine Hat, Alberta.

Canadian municipal governments had no knowledge of these experiments, according to documents obtained by Martino-Taylor. Instead, they were fed a cover story by the Pentagon.

“In Winnipeg, they said they were testing what they characterized as a chemical fog to protect Winnipeg in the event of a Russian attack,” Martino-Taylor said. “They characterized it as a defensive study when it was actually an offensive study.” Winnipeg city council approved the plan by the U.S. Army Chemical Corps to examine radiation fallout and conduct “chemical and cloud dispersal during the summer of 1953 at a meeting on Feb. 2, 1953.

The tests were to explore combining biological and chemical weapons with radiological components to form combination weapons. The zinc cadmium sulfide acted as a fluorescent tracer which would help the U.S. Army determine how radioactive fallout from a weapon used on the Soviets would travel through wind currents, Martino-Taylor said.

Canada participated in the open-air Winnipeg and later Alberta experiments as part of a tripartite agreement with the United States and Great Britain. 

In an Oct. 13, 2017 editorial headlined, “We were Cold War guinea pigs” the Winnipeg Free Press asked, “Was the health of Winnipeggers harmed? A critical question, given that the three weeks during which Winnipeg received its secret carcinogenic shower were in July, a time when many Winnipeggers were outdoors with bare skin exposed, backyard gardens were growing vegetables that were later consumed, and the chemicals would have landed in swimming pools frequented by swimmers.

“The answer seems to be that it’s likely, but not certain, the health of Winnipeggers was not seriously affected by the dusting of zinc cadmium sulfide.

“There’s been extensive research on the possible health effects of the tests because Winnipeg was only one of 33 areas in Canada and the U.S. chosen as a target for the experiment. In the late 1990s, the effect on humans of the tests was thoroughly studied in the U.S. by a committee of the National Research Council, the operating arm of the National Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Engineering. It is a private, non-profit organization. It’s not connected to the U.S. military.

“‘After an exhaustive, independent review requested by Congress we have found no evidence that exposure to zinc cadmium sulfide at these levels could cause people to become sick,’ committee chair Rogene Henderson said when the report came out in 1997.

“But the committee also noted it was unable to perform follow-up studies to track the health status of those exposed because it would be extremely difficult to identify the people who were affected and to determine their past exposures to zinc cadmium sulfide. Even if they were found, there is a lack of data on their health before, during and after exposure. And it would take a huge sample of exposed residents to detect even a small increase in health problems.

“Copies of the complete report are available online under the title “Toxicological Assessment of the Army’s Zinc Cadmium Sulfide Dispersion Tests.”

“While Winnipeggers may be relieved that the 1953 tests likely didn’t physically harm them or their relatives, we’re left with the unnerving realization that the U.S. military felt entitled to spray chemicals secretly on Winnipeg. One can only hope such secrecy is a relic of the Cold War, and future tests would be conducted only with fully informed consent of the allied countries.”

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Demagoguery and demonization pass for discourse and civility vanishes from the public stage

Consider the headlines for Sunday, July 17, 2016: CBS News is reporting in a July 16 its headline “W.Va. lawmaker: Hillary Clinton should be ‘hung’ on National Mall.” The story goes onto say, “A member of the West Virginia House of Delegates is causing a stir after tweeting that Hillary Clinton should be ‘hung on the Mall in Washington, DC.’

“CBS affiliate WOWK-TV reports that Michael Folk, a Republican legislator who is also a United Airlines pilot, posted a tweet Friday night saying: ‘Hillary Clinton, you should be tried for treason, murder, and crimes against the US Constitution… then hung on the Mall in Washington, DC.’”

Meanwhile, Charles P. Pierce has a July 14 piece in Esquire magazine, headlined, “This Isn’t Funny Anymore. American Democracy Is at Stake.” The subhead reads: “Anyone who supports Donald Trump is a traitor to the American idea.” Pierce writes at the top of the story that not “until Wednesday did we hear clearly the echoes of shiny black boots on German cobblestones.”

Really?

Is this the best we can do in terms of civics and public discourse in 21^st century America? Call anyone we disagree with a traitor and perhaps for extra outrage allude to Hitlerism and Nazism? Is demagoguery the only currency we traffic in for what passes as ideas?

We stand at a dangerous international moment in history when an intersection of events conspire to resurrect Fascism on a scale not seen since the 1930s.

But the American republic can survive this difficult historical moment. Right-wing populism is not centralized authoritarian Fascism.

If Donald Trump wins the presidency in November, the world won’t end. I may not much like a Trump presidency, but the Supreme Court and Congress will not be dissolved [although Trump will probably make several nominations for upcoming vacancies on the bench that will make me wish the court had been dissolved. But that’s OK; Republican life appointments to the highest court in the United States often prove over time to be stubbornly independent, demonstrating you couldn’t have asked more from a Democratic appointee. It’s kinda complicated.]

Trump’s also unlikely to push the hot-war nuclear button, should he find himself ensconced in the Oval Office next January.  Want to know what was really dangerous? The dance Democratic President John F. Kennedy, the living Legend of King Arthur and Camelot, had with Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev during the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. That was the almost the end of the world as you knew it. Right then and there. Not Donald Trump hyperbole.

There are plenty of examples in recent American history before where the crème de la crème cluck their tongues in displeasure at the electoral wisdom of the hoi polloi [think Brexit for the current British equivalent.] So what? Minnesota didn’t wind up seceding to Northwestern Ontario and amalgamating Duluth with Kenora when pro wrestler Jesse Ventura was elected and served as governor of Minnesota from January 1999 to January 2003.

California survived when Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Austrian-born American professional bodybuilder and movie actor wound up getting himself elected to serve two terms as governor of California from November 2003 until January 2011.

And speaking of California, an earlier Republican governor, Ronald Reagan, also a movie actor, went on from the statehouse to the White House, elected to terms who served two terms as president between January 1981 and January 1988. Each time – when Reagan, Ventura and Schwarzenegger were elected – Henny Penny cried out the sky was going to fall. It didn’t.

I was living in Somerville, Massachusetts in November 1980 when Ronald Reagan was elected president.

I had been working as supervisor for Cambridge Survey Research where I oversaw telephone call center employees for Democratic National Committee (DNC) pollster Pat Caddell’s firm in Cambridge, Massachusetts during the 1980 Jimmy Carter-Ronald Reagan presidential election campaign.

We lost the election. Big time. I well remember going to work a few days after, late in the afternoon, riding above ground aboard a subway car on the Red Line “T.” The November sky was a foreboding steel-gray, with leaves all fallen now from the trees. And there it was, as we headed into Harvard Yard, giant spray –painted graffiti on a cenotaph proclaiming “Ray-Gun” had been elected.

As it turned out, Reagan did have a fondness for his Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), nicknamed Star Wars. But the dreamed-for global missile shield didn’t come to fruition. Instead, Reagan, along with Mikhail Gorbachev, general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, managed to end the Cold War with perestroika [restructuring] and glasnost [openness] becoming part of the everyday vocabulary of Americans by the late 1980s, rolling from their tongues as if they had been saying the two Russian words forever.

Demagoguery, while deeply disappointing as it is being manifested by Trump and his supporters, is neither new nor fatal to American politics. It is also not surprising when people feel that politics is a rigged game they can’t possible win at under the normal rules of the political elites.

As I wrote earlier this year, “In an age-before-Trump, you need only to look back to the 1930s and the Canadian-born “Radio Priest” Father Charles Coughlin, from Hamilton, Ontario, later based at Royal Oak, Michigan in the Archdiocese of Detroit, and the anti-Communist and equally anti-Semitic Christian Front he would be the inspiration for in November 1938.” It was the age of demagoguery in American politics. And it was the year 1938.

Although he didn’t personally belong to the organization, and denied that he was anti-Semitic. Historical opinion is divided on whether, or to what extent, Coughlin was anti-Semitic, but it is an uncontested fact his weekly magazine Social Justice reprinted in weekly installments in 1938 the fraudulent and notoriously anti-Semitic text, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a Russian forgery first published in 1903 that purports to expose a Jewish conspiracy to seize control of the world.

Coughlin’s radio show was phenomenally popular. His office received up to 80,000 letters per week from listeners at its peak in the early to mid-1930s. By 1934, Coughlin was the most prominent Roman Catholic speaker on political and financial issues in the United States, with a far broader base of popular support than any bishop or cardinal at the time, with a radio audience that reached tens of millions of people every week. Historian Alan Brinkley wrote in his 1982 book Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin, and the Great Depression that by 1934 Coughlin  was receiving more than 10,000 letters every day” and that “his clerical staff at times numbered more than a hundred.”  Coughlin foreshadowed modern talk radio and televangelism.

In addition to his anti-Communist stance, and leaving himself open rightly or wrongly to accusations of antisemitism, Coughlin wasn’t the only clergyman to at least also flirt and even dance at times with Spanish fascism, German National Socialism and demagoguery in the United States in the late 1930s. American Protestant clergyman Frank Buchman founded Moral Re-Armament (MRA) in 1938, as an international moral and spiritual movement with Europe rearming militarily on the brink of the Second World War. “The crisis is fundamentally a moral one,” he said. “The nations must rearm morally,” Buchman said in London on May 29, 1938. “Moral recovery is essentially the forerunner of economic recovery. Moral recovery creates not crisis but confidence and unity in every phase of life.”

Buchman had earlier also founded the Oxford Group, in some important ways the predecessor to Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). Both the Oxford Group and Moral Re-Armament, under Buchman’s leadership, faced similar charges to what Coughlin did at times; and again, like in the case of Coughlin, historical opinion is divided, but on the evidence it is clear the German Nazi leadership was wary of Buchman and denounced Moral Re-Armament, which went onto do significant post-war reconstruction work in West Germany in the late 1940s, after the Second World War ended.

Only historical amnesia prevents us from remembering 1938. We barely know their names today, yet Coughlin had tens of millions of radio listeners in the United States, while Buchman influenced political elites worldwide.

And the legacy of Moral Re-Armament, close to home here in Northern Manitoba, is not insignificant. Just largely invisible.

Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Keewatin-Le Pas Archbishop emeritus Sylvain Lavoie, whose archdiocese includes Thompson, toured during university for seven months with “Up with People,” founded by American J. Blanton Belk in 1965, as a conservative counterweight to attract young people during the turbulent Sixties.

Belk was expected to be the heir apparent to Peter D. Howard, a British journalist, who succeeded Buchman as leader of Moral Re-Armament in 1961, but Belk broke away to incorporate Up With People as a non-profit at the encouragement of then Republican U.S. president Dwight Eisenhower, who urged Belk to distance himself from Moral Re-Armament.

And Winnipeg-born Bob Lowery, for years the Winnipeg Free Press’ Thompson-based correspondent, in a life before journalism and living in Northern Manitoba, and immediately after the Second World War ended in 1945, had joined the Moral Re-Armament crusade to help rebuild war-torn Germany, staying there for more than 20 years until 1969.

During the Second World War he had served with the Royal Canadian Voluntary Reserve. Lowery had earned a philosophy undergraduate degree from the University of Manitoba in 1937.

Robert Newton Lowery was inducted by then governor general Roméo LeBlanc as a Member of the Order of Canada in 1996. In the citation accompanying the honour, LeBlanc noted Lowery was “known for his love of the North and has demonstrated genuine concern for the residents of northern Manitoba, working to redress social, economic and cultural differences through his involvement in all aspects of community life.”

In 1997 he was recognized with a Silver Eagle Outstanding Citizen Award from the Indigenous Women’s Collective of Manitoba. A park is also named after him here in Thompson.

He had moved to northern Manitoba in 1969, the same year he left Moral Re-Armament in West Germany, and become a correspondent for the Winnipeg Free Press, based here in Thompson.

In 1982 Lowery published the book The Unbeatable Breed: People and Events of Northern Manitoba in collaboration with photographer Murray McKenzie.

Lowery retired in 1997. He died at Norway House on Dec. 17, 2000.

As Mitchell Kalpakgian noted in a July 6 essay headlined “Fanatical Ideas and Reasonable Convictions” in Crisis Magazine, a self-described “voice for the faithful Catholic laity” published in Manchester, New Hampshire, “A fanatic is a person obsessed with one idea, a monomaniac ruled by one dominant compulsion that governs all his thoughts and actions. He is enslaved by one predominant passion that dictates all his motives and decisions.”

While their ideas might differ, it is that fanaticism not Fascism that rules this American historical moment.

Quoting G.K. Chesterton, the Catholic convert and apologist, Kalpakgian notes in a chapter entitled “The Maniac” from Orthodoxy, Chesterton explained that the fanatic’s thinking is too “rational” in the sense that he ‘overlooks many other considerations and ignores other evidence that surrounds him.

“The fanatic’s extreme mental concentration on one thing leads to madness at the expense of openness to larger universal truths that lead to wisdom … To think with rabid intensity on one subject consumes the mind to an unhealthy degree of concentration.

“It warps a person’s mind, making him pay undue attention to one matter and ignore objects of larger importance. The fanatic makes himself the center of the universe as only his passions count.”

Wrote Chesterton: “Are there no other stories in the world except yours, and are all men busy with your business?”

Kalpakgian writes that to be “haunted, obsessed, and enslaved by one rigid idea ultimately distorts a person’s humanity. A fanatic lives and dies for one thing only, whether it is revenge, money, work, pleasure, or fame. To think like a monomaniac eventually leads to thinking only with the head and without the conscience or the heart. Ironically, the overworking of the mind on one narrow subject breeds some degree of insanity.

“The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason,” writes Chesterton.

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Debating nomenclature: Premier-designate or premier-elect – or neither? – Plus who’s who in Order of Precedence for Manitoba

On May 3, the Province of Manitoba will have its first change in political party in power as Her Majesty’s Government here since Oct. 5, 1999, when former NDP premier Gary Doer took office. So the arrival of premier-designate Brian Pallister, whose Progressive Conservatives won 40 of the 57 seats in the Manitoba Legislative Assembly in the April 19 provincial general election – 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 – is a pretty big deal as these things go.

Actually, for those wont to split hairs, Pallister is not really the premier-designate or premier-elect, some strict constitutional constructionists might argue. It’s just a convenient shorthand journalists in particular use to describe the leader-in-waiting-who-would-be premier (that’s my way-too-long-term). Philippe Lagassé, an associate professor of public and international affairs at the University of Ottawa, and a fellow with the Canadian Global Affairs Institute, whose work focuses on defence policy and the Westminster system, notably on the relationship between Parliament and the Crown, explained it this way last May in the Montreal-based Institute for Research on Public Policy’s digital edition of the magazine Policy Options Politiques: “What should we call the leader of a party who we expect will be appointed premier or prime minister but who doesn’t hold the office yet? … Unfortunately, premier-elect doesn’t make sense, constitutionally speaking, because first ministers aren’t elected.

“Voters elect representatives who sit in legislatures, not first ministers or governments. Nor do legislatures elect first ministers. Premiers and prime ministers are appointed by the Crown. Of course, those appointments are made based on the first minister’s ability to hold the confidence of legislature, but it’s an appointed office nonetheless.

“Premier-elect inaccurately describes how the first minister will come into office.

“The next term that’s used is “premier-designate.” I’m not a fan of this title, since there’s no actual office of premier-designate and I think is needlessly confuses things. That said, the term has been used internally within Canadian executives for administrative purposes for nearly a century, and vice-regal secretariats across the country have decided that it should now be used publicly.

“However, premier-designate is meant to describe a particular circumstance. A party leader is premier-designate only after the Crown has invited them to form a government.

“It’s equally important to note that, after this invitation has been issued, the incumbent premier is still premier. The premier-designate is merely preparing to be appointed premier and to advise the Crown on who should be appointed to ministerial offices.

“The premier-designate only becomes premier after the incumbent premier resigns and the Crown formally appoints the premier-designate as the premier.”

Lagassé concludes, “Unfortunately, there’s no good short hand term that accurately reflects our constitutional realities. As boring as it is, it’s best to simply refer to them as the leader of party X who is expected to be appointed premier or prime minister.” Aside from how the matter of how we should refer to the leader-in-waiting-who-would-be premier, there is also the issue of who’s who in the Order of Precedence for Manitoba even after we begin calling him Premier Brian Pallister sometime on Tuesday. The Order of Precedence for Manitoba is determined by the Federal-Provincial Relations branch within the Manitoba Department of Finance.

A sequential hierarchy, the Order of Precedence for Manitoba is not necessarily an indication of functional importance, if that isn’t too indelicate a way of putting it, but rather an indication of ceremonial or historical relevance, with some overlap, as might be expected, between the functional and the historical and ceremonial. Premier Pallister will be number two on the list, preceded only by Lt.-Gov. Janice Filmon, the wife of Gary Filmon, the last Tory premier of Manitoba until the election of Pallister earlier this month.

Manitoba joined Confederation as the fifth province – appropriately enough smack in the middle of 10, time-wise, as well as geographically – on July 15, 1870. The Manitoba Act, which created the Province of Manitoba, was passed by the Parliament of Canada, and received royal assent on May 12, 1870. Manitoba’s official flag, the Red Ensign, bearing the provincial coat of arms, was given royal approval by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in October 1965, and officially dedicated and unfurled for the first time on May 12, 1966. In 1986, May 12 was designated as Manitoba Day.

Manitoba has been the home of some of the most important, often colourful and eclectic, and at times controversial who’s who of Canadian history. Almost any such list would include Métis leader Louis Riel, considered by many to be the “Founding Father” of Manitoba; Nellie McClung, the controversial feminist author, social activist and politician; writers Gabrielle Roy and Margaret Laurence; J.S. Woodsworth, Methodist minister, community activist and Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) politician; Los Angeles-born Stanley Knowles, United Church minister, social gospel movement activist, CCF politician and parliamentarian; Progressive Conservative premier and senator Duff Roblin; former governor general and NDP premier Ed Schreyer; Doer, also Canada’s former ambassador to the United States, as well as a former premier; newspaper editor John Wesley Dafoe; journalist E. Cora Hind; and Canwest’s Izzy Asper.

Add filmmaker Guy Maddin; spymaster Sir William Stephenson; cable TV pioneer and philanthropist Randall Moffat; and Olympic speed skater Cindy Klassen, to that list too.

In addition, to the important and famous, there are also the quirky and unique things that make Manitoba, well, Manitoba. Things like the nine “disorganized” municipalities of Armstrong; Birch River; Chatfield; Fisher Branch; Kreuzberg; Piney; Sprague; Stuartburn; and Woodlea, now absorbed into Rural Municipalities (RM’s). When the Depression arrived in the 1930s, municipalities were faced with a sudden drop in tax receipts and many were forced to accept administration from the provincial government. Nine municipalities, located in the Interlake and southeast corner, allowed their government to lapse completely and have never reappeared in their old form. Even rarer than “ghost towns,” these former municipalities are, in effect, “ghost” municipalities, notes the Manitoba Historical Society.

So what makes the Order of Precedence of Manitoba so important? Well, for one thing it, it is useful for determining where dignitaries are seated at formal official dinners hosted by the Keystone Province in the capital of Winnipeg – or by analogy up here in Thompson – figuring out which table should go first and whose at the front of the line at a St. Lawrence Parish Hall social, Kokanee, or rye and Coke, or both in hand, for a midnight lunch of kielbasa, rye bread, Old Dutch barbecue potato chips, dill pickles and cheese.

So yeah, kind of important.

And so, ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, the Order Precedence of Manitoba, after Her Honour, and the premier, whose official title by the way is “president of the executive council of Manitoba,” better known as the premier and his cabinet:

• Chief Justice Richard J.F. Chartier of the Manitoba Court of Appeal;
• Former lieutenant-governors of Manitoba or surviving spouses in order of seniority in taking office;
• Former  presidents of the executive council of Manitoba in order of seniority in taking office;
• Members of the Privy Council of Canada resident in Manitoba by order of seniority of taking the oath of office;
• Members of the executive council of the Province of Manitoba in relative order of seniority of appointment;
• Chief Justice of the Court of Queen’s Bench Glenn Joyal;
• The Speaker of the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba;
• The puisne judges of the Manitoba Court of Appeal and of the Court of Queen’s Bench in relative order of seniority of appointment;
• The Leader of the Official Opposition in the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba;
• The Archbishop of St. Boniface, Albert LeGatt;
• The Bishop of Rupert’s Land; Donald Phillips;
• The Archbishop of Winnipeg, Richard Gagnon;
• The Metropolitan of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church;
• The Metropolitan of the Ukrainian Catholic Church:
• The President of the Manitoba Conference of the United Church of Canada;
• The chair of the Manitoba Conference of the Presbyterian Church in Canada;
• The Chair of other representatives persons of the following denominations as indicated below and whose person will be signified to the clerk of the executive council from time to time: Lutheran Church; Jewish Rabbi; The Mennonite Faith; The Baptist Church; The Salvation Army; The Pastors Evangelical Fellowship;
• Members of the House of Commons resident in Manitoba by order of seniority in taking office;
• Members of the legislative assembly of Manitoba in relative order of seniority in taking office;
• Provincial court judges in relative order of seniority of appointment;
• Magistrates in relative order of seniority of appointment;
• Members of the local consular corps in relative order of seniority of appointment;
• Mayors, reeves and elected local government administrators in relative order of date of taking office.

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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.

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Tall Tales omit Costa Rica: Why was Brian Pallister trying to sell us a bill of goods?

Down to the wire. Strange days: Manitoba – Decision 2016.

Winnipeg Free Press columnist Dan Lett nails what is likely to be the last and strangest issue (and that’s saying something) of Manitoba’s soon-ending provincial election campaign in his April 15 column (http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/special/provincial-election/pallisters-decision-to-mislead-people-about-time-spent-in-costa-rica-is-inexplicable-375787341.html) about Progressive Conservative leader Brian Pallister misleading Manitobans as to how often and when he is visiting his vacation home in Costa Rica.

As Lett writes of the Tory leader’s Costa Rican visits, “They are odd not because of the frequency or duration of his visits. Pallister is a self-made man of means who should not be judged or criticized for having the resources to own property in a tropical paradise. They’re odd because, for reasons that are not readily apparent, he won’t respond truthfully when he’s asked about the frequency and duration of his trips.”

The Costa Rica Star reported April 16 (http://news.co.cr/records-reveal-brian-pallisters-assets-in-costa-rica/46690/) that a public records search of Costa Rica’s Registro Nacional reveals that Pallister owns three properties in Costa Rica through a Costa Rican holding company, Finca Deneter Doce S.A., of which he is president. Pallister’s Finca Deneter Doce S.A., in turn “owns three pieces of real estate in the highly sought-after coastal district of Tamarindo, in the northwestern province of Guanacaste,” writes Timothy Williams of the Costa Rica Star.

“One property is registered as measuring 2.26 acres, with a taxable value of ¢62.8 million Costa Rican colones, or about $118,000 USD; a second property of 5.6 acres with a taxable value of ¢3.3 million, or about $6,000 USD; and a third property of about 5.4 acres with a taxable value of ¢5.3 million, or about $10,000 USD,” writes Williams.

“It should be noted that in Costa Rica,” says Williams, “the ‘taxable value,’ or valor fiscal, is oftentimes only a fraction – sometimes 10 cents on the dollar – of the market value of a property, in the case of real estate.

“Pallister also controls a second Costa Rican holding company in which is registered a 2007 Toyota LandCruiser Prado with a taxable value of ¢16.4 million (about $31,000 USD) and a 2007 Honda TRX680 All-Terrain Vehicle, with a current taxable value of ¢2.2 million (about $4,000 USD).”

While there is no pubic scandal here, or suggestion of other impropriety, such gratuitous lying about his private whereabouts to me raises a troubling red flag about the character of the man, if nothing else, and his fitness to hold public office as premier. While the 2013 decision by Premier Greg Selinger to increase the PST 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, has come back to haunt him ever since and will likely cost the NDP significantly on Tuesday, at least there was the stated rationale by Selinger and the NDP that as the post-flood provincial picture after the floods of 2011 came into focus not long after the Oct. 4, 2011 election, revenues from the increase would fund infrastructure across the province, including roads, hospitals and flood-prevention structures, which it has. In other words, a political calculus was made, with voters getting the final says on how it all adds up April 19. It’s hard to see where the political calculus is in Pallister lying about Costa Rica. What end does that serve?

Perhaps this end.

Some academics in the area of neuroeconomics and business marketing to consumers have described deceptions such as Pallister’s on Costa Rica as falling into a category of lies involving self-benefiting deception where people are known to lie as a form of impression management to protect their public self or to protect their private self-worth.

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.

But the question remains: Why was Brian Pallister trying to sell us a bill of goods? And if he’s lying about something so seemingly inconsequential as when and for how long he was in Costa Rica, is there a larger bill of goods at stake, if he were to win the election, and how does that auger for him holding sacred the public trust as the next premier, the president of the executive council of Manitoba?

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Only historical amnesia prevents us from remembering 1938

It was the age of demagoguery in American politics. And, no, it wasn’t the 2016 Republican Party primaries and caucuses. It was the year 1938.

In an age-before-Trump, you need only to look back to the 1930s and the Canadian-born “Radio Priest” Father Charles Coughlin, from Hamilton, Ontario, later based at Royal Oak, Michigan in the Archdiocese of Detroit, and the anti-Communist and equally anti-Semitic Christian Front he would be the inspiration for in November 1938, although he didn’t personally belong to the organization, and denied that he was anti-Semitic. Historical opinion is divided on whether, or to what extent, Coughlin was anti-Semitic, but it is an uncontested fact his weekly magazine Social Justice reprinted in weekly installments in 1938 the fraudulent and notoriously anti-Semitic text, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a Russian forgery first published in 1903 that purports to expose a Jewish conspiracy to seize control of the world.

Coughlin’s radio show was phenomenally popular. His office received up to 80,000 letters per week from listeners at its peak in the early to mid-1930s. By 1934, Coughlin was the most prominent Roman Catholic speaker on political and financial issues in the United States, with a far broader base of popular support than any bishop or cardinal at the time, with a radio audience that reached tens of millions of people every week. Historian Alan Brinkley wrote in his 1982 book Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin, and the Great Depression that by 1934 Coughlin  was receiving more than 10,000 letters every day” and that “his clerical staff at times numbered more than a hundred.”  Coughlin foreshadowed modern talk radio and televangelism.

In addition to his anti-Communist stance, and leaving himself open rightly or wrongly to accusations of antisemitism, Coughlin wasn’t the only clergyman to at least also flirt and even dance at times with Spanish fascism, German National Socialism and demagoguery in the United States in the late 1930s. American Protestant clergyman Frank Buchman founded Moral Re-Armament (MRA) in 1938, as an international moral and spiritual movement with Europe rearming militarily on the brink of the Second World War. “The crisis is fundamentally a moral one,” he said. “The nations must rearm morally,” Buchman said in London on May 29, 1938. “Moral recovery is essentially the forerunner of economic recovery. Moral recovery creates not crisis but confidence and unity in every phase of life.”

Buchman had earlier also founded the Oxford Group, in some important ways the predecessor to Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). Both the Oxford Group and Moral Re-Armament, under Buchman’s leadership, faced similar charges to what Coughlin did at times; and again, like in the case of Coughlin, historical opinion is divided, but on the evidence it is clear the German Nazi leadership was wary of Buchman and denounced Moral Re-Armament, which went onto do significant post-war reconstruction work in West Germany in the late 1940s, after the Second World War ended.

We barely know their names today, yet Coughlin had tens of millions of radio listeners in the United States, while Buchman influenced political elites worldwide.

And the legacy of Moral Re-Armament, close to home here in Northern Manitoba, is not insignificant. Just largely invisible.

Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Keewatin-Le Pas Archbishop emeritus Sylvain Lavoie, whose archdiocese includes Thompson, toured during university for seven months with “Up with People,” founded by American J. Blanton Belk in 1965, as a conservative counterweight to attract young people during the turbulent Sixties.

Belk was expected to be the heir apparent to Peter D. Howard, a British journalist, who succeeded Buchman as leader of Moral Re-Armament in 1961, but Belk broke away to incorporate Up With People as a non-profit at the encouragement of then Republican U.S. president Dwight Eisenhower, who urged Belk to distance himself from Moral Re-Armament.

And Winnipeg-born Bob Lowery, for years the Winnipeg Free Press’ Thompson-based correspondent, in a life before journalism and living in Northern Manitoba, and immediately after the Second World War ended in 1945, had joined the Moral Re-Armament crusade to help rebuild war-torn Germany, staying there for more than 20 years until 1969.

During the Second World War he had served with the Royal Canadian Voluntary Reserve. Lowery had earned a philosophy undergraduate degree from the University of Manitoba in 1937.

Robert Newton Lowery was inducted by then governor general Roméo LeBlanc as a Member of the Order of Canada in 1996. In the citation accompanying the honour, LeBlanc noted Lowery was “known for his love of the North and has demonstrated genuine concern for the residents of northern Manitoba, working to redress social, economic and cultural differences through his involvement in all aspects of community life.”

In 1997 he was recognized with a Silver Eagle Outstanding Citizen Award from the Indigenous Women’s Collective of Manitoba. A park is also named after him here in Thompson.

He had moved to northern Manitoba in 1969, the same year he left Moral Re-Armament in West Germany, and become a correspondent for the Winnipeg Free Press, based here in Thompson.

In 1982 Lowery published the book The Unbeatable Breed: People and Events of Northern Manitoba in collaboration with photographer Murray McKenzie.

Lowery retired in 1997. He died at Norway House on Dec. 17, 2000.

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Origins: How ‘Soundings’ came to be

Almost 12 years ago – on Thanksgiving weekend 2002 – asked by my immediate supervisor, Terry Kruger, then co-ordinating editor for Northern News Services Limited (NNSL) in Yellowknife, who has been manager of communications there for De Beers Canada Inc (DBCI) since January 2010, to come up with a concept and a name for a new column to showcase our staff writers, I chose “Soundings” as both the idea and name. I was a news editor at NNSL at the time. For those not familiar with the name Northern News Services Limited or NNSL, let it be said that publisher Jack Sigvaldason, known simply as “Sig” by everyone who knows him, runs the finest group of fiercely independent community newspapers North of 60 in Canada and perhaps anywhere in the Circumpolar Arctic for that matter.

Sig is originally from Winnipeg. He joined the Winnipeg Free Press in 1952, working in advertising and editorial, then with Stovel Advocate publications working on their business publications. He started his own advertising agency, Sigvaldason & Associates, in 1957 where he worked in advertising and public relations, which included a daily radio show and writing newspaper features. Then from 1963 to 1969, Sig worked for the Baker Lovick ad agency as an art director, copy chief, radio and television director, creative director and a columnist for an agricultural paper.

In 1969, Sig moved north with his family to Yellowknife to be editor of News of the North. The Northwest Territories has never been the same since. Established in 1945, News of the North covered the 61 communities in the Northwest Territories, a 1,4-milion square mile region North of the 60th parallel.

Two years after he arrived, Sig was fired from News of the North in 1971 for antagonizing the territorial government (GNWT), the federal government, city council, the Indian Brotherhood of the Northwest Territories and Inuit Tapirisat of Canada. Oh, yes, and the majority of advertisers also. There is an old truism in journalism that if a journalist hasn’t been sued and fired, they’re not doing their job. Sig has always done his job.

Within 90 days of his firing as editor of News of the North, Sig  had started the Yellowknifer, still the must-read paper of the territorial capital, with Jack Adderley, who had been fired also from News of the North. The Yellowknifer’s mission statement, according to the first editorial, was to combine “having a ball with making a buck by providing a local fun paper crammed with news and pictures concerning Yellowknife personalities and events at least once a week.”

In March 1972, they started Northern News Services, which now publishes the Yellowknifer, two editions of News/North, a western edition for the NWT, and an eastern edition for Nunavut, where stories are also translated into Inuktitut syllabics, and the weekly Deh Cho Drum, from Fort Simpson, Inuvik Drum in Inuvik, and Kivalliq News from Rankin Inlet, with all the papers going through final editing and production in Yellowknife before being printed there.

There are now more than 100 NNSL staff working in six locations in three time zones.  As a news editor, it wasn’t unusual to find myself calling the Mackenzie Delta bureau of News/North in Inuvik or the South Slave bureau in Hay River, both located in the same Mountain Time (MT) zone as me in Yellowknife, and then making a call to Darrell Greer, editor of the “Kiv” in Rankin, where it was an hour ahead in the Central Time (CT) zone. While my job responsibilities didn’t require me to have to call the Iqaluit bureau of News North as often, I quickly learned that calling the bureau at 4 p.m. there was a hit-or-miss proposition since it was 6 p.m. for them in the Eastern Time (ET) zone. Geographically, simply as a matter of longitude, the Nunavut communities of Qikiqtarjuaq, Pangnirtung, Clyde River – and Iqaluit – should all be in the Atlantic Time (AT) zone anyway, but for general convenience, they’re not.

Seven years after Sig was fired from News of the North, he bought the paper, kept the staff and changed the name to News/North.

As for Soundings, as I wrote in a first anniversary column in October 2003, “I borrowed a Maritime oceanic term, Soundings, to name the weekly column because we wanted our diverse group of staff writers — reporters and editors — to find their depth and have a space to muse on things that mattered to them, but they may not otherwise get to write about.

“The words you read here do not necessarily reflect the corporate opinion of this newspaper as the editorial does. These words are the writer’s opinion. Getting personal has not merely been tolerated; it’s been actively encouraged.

“A year later,” I wrote in 2003, “both the name and purpose of the column have stuck. And giving voices to otherwise anonymous news editors has sometimes struck a chord with readers … This is a sometimes cantankerous cohort of reporters and editors who are passionate about journalism under a unique, iconoclastic proprietor. In other words, it’s a journalist’s newsroom and hence a pretty good place to work. ”

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Newspapers turn to Augmented Reality (AR)

Remember Virtual Reality (VR), the computer-simulated environment that can simulate physical presence in places in the real world or imagined worlds? Sure you do. Or at least one derivation of it known as simulated reality, as long your virtual memory goes back as far as Sept. 28, 1987 and “Encounter at Farpoint,” the pilot episode for Star Trek: The Next Generation, written by D.C. Fontana and Gene Roddenberry, and the first appearance of the Holographic Environment Simulator, better known simply as the “holodeck.”

Data, who was fond of Sherlock Holmes, loved it and in later episodes would often play the 221B Baker Street detective in holodeck programs, often accompanied by Geordi La Forge in the role of Dr. Watson. Prior to the late 24th century, Federation starships were not equipped with holodecks. In 2151, the Starfleet vessel Enterprise NX-01 encountered a vessel belonging to an alien race known as Xyrillians, who had advanced holographic technology in the form of a holographic chamber similar to the holodeck, which Starfleet developed two centuries later. A holo-chamber was also later installed aboard a Klingon battle cruiser, given to the Klingons by the Xyrillians in exchange for their lives.

Here in the 21st century, most current virtual reality environments are primarily visual experiences, displayed either on a computer screen or through special stereoscopic displays, but some simulations include additional sensory information, such as sound through speakers or headphones.

Some advanced, haptic systems now include tactile information, generally known as force feedback, in medical and gaming applications. As for the origin of the term “virtual reality,” it can be traced back to the French playwright, poet, actor, and director Antonin Artaud and his 1938 book The Theatre and Its Double, where he described theatre as “la réalité virtuelle.”

While newspapers have added a lot of bells and whistles to our various online “platforms” in recent years, they’re not quite at the Holographic Environment Simulator or holodeck reality. Yet. But they do have something new now called Augmented Reality (AR). And it’s not science fiction. The technology makes use of the camera and sensor in your smartphone or tablet to add layers of digital information – videos, photos, and sounds – directly on top of items in your newspaper.

Vancouver-based GVIC Communications Corp., which operates as the Glacier Media Group and owns the Thompson Citizen and Nickel Belt News here in Northern Manitoba, launched Augmented Reality for editorial and advertisements throughout its Lower Mainland media properties in British Columbia in February 2013, year, teaming up with Dutch businessman Quintin Schevernels’ innovative Layar application, which can be downloaded on your iOS or Android smartphone or tablet. The Winnipeg Free Press also launched its own Augmented Reality (AR) last September with Blippar, a British first image-recognition smartphone app.

“Western Canada’s  largest local media company is pleased to announce the enterprise wide launch of augmented reality throughout its Lower Mainland, British Columbia properties,” Glacier said on Feb. 7, 2013, adding it was the “First company worldwide to build augmented reality into its digital sales platform.”

Layar, with over 35 million downloads worldwide, is the world’s most downloaded AR app, and continues to grow at an average of almost a million downloads per month. It operates as image recognition software invisibly tagging images, logos and icons with codes to allow the augmented reality components to appear instantly on a reader’s smartphone or tablet while scanning the AR content.

The Toronto Star and Bermuda Sun are among other publishers and newspaper using Layar.

Rather than a Quick Response Code (QR) matrix barcode in print, Layar provides the ability to link to multiple assets; watch video/listen to audio/share the content on social networks and even buy a product – right from the page, eliminating the gap between print and digital.

Maybe we won’t have to wait until the late 24th century after all for the Holographic Environment Simulator.