: Action!

What’s a sasquatch doing

on the grounds of |
Heritage Park Museum?
\NEWS A5 |

Hockey hotbed

| Scholarship lures local
standout player to a most
unlikely of hockey locales
‘\SPORTS B4

Transplants

One woman recovers,
while a younger woman
; readies for a new organ
-\COMMUNITY B1

$1.00 PLUS 7¢ GST
- (81.10 pius 8¢ GST
outside of the Terrace area) |

VOLS. '‘NQ.:19"

By SARAH A. ZIMMERMAN

‘THE FOUR-YEAR closure of the former

Skeena Cellulose sawmill énds Aug. 29

, when new owners Terrace Lumber Com- 7

pany (TLC) are to start operations.

Word began to spread last..week ‘as
officials from the company,settled on a
firm date and as laid-off workers were
contacted. —

“Tam very excited,”
ager Terry Bennett.

says mill man-

The mill will run one eight-hour shift |

per day, consuming the month-plus in-
ventory of logs already in its yard.
The mill’s planer won’t start operating

until at least a week after the: mill itself
resumes operation.
“The sawmill cuts the logs into rough
ee then we have to dry it and plane,
’’ Bennett explains. The mill site is.
equipped with five dry. kilns which re-
move the moisture from the rough cut”
wood before it goes to the planer for fin-
ishing.

a “We need the sawmill to run a week to
10 days before we can start the planer.”

The company: has already contacted
the United Steelworkers union to recall
workers that were laid off in 2001 when
the mill closed down.

catch cut
By DUSTIN
QUEZADA ;
LOW NUMBERS of-sock- .
eye salmon “in the Skeena
River’ have forced the De-
partment of. Fisheries and °
_, Oceans (DFO) to halve the -
” number. recreational anglers .

can catch in a day from two
to one.

The most senior workers ‘are | being”
, called first, says that union’s second vice-

* president. and business. agent, Surinder —

Malhotra. °

When the mill shut down, 160 union-
ized employees were laid off.,Many of
those people have moved away or found
other employment locally.

Malhotra couldn’t pinpoint how many
of those workers plan to come back to the
operation.

“They ‘ have moved away and they

may not be coming back to work, that’s ;

why. the company is phoning people to
see who is avilable to come back and who

Sawmill to o Aug.

is not,’ * Malhotra says.

it plans to operate the mill on a one-shift

basis for the next eight months. and then-
assess its log supply to see if ‘adding a ~
second shift is feasible at that time, Mal--

hotra says.

“This is good news for the town too,
not only for the membership — ‘for every-
body, we have suffered long enough,”
Malhotra says. -

Still to be. nailed down by the TLC is
a substantial long term and continuous
source of logs.

The wood already in “the yard has”

~ Company officials have told the union

been* bought from small operations and*
does not come from Tree Farm Licence

‘| which had substantially fed the mill un-:

der previous owners Skeena Cellulose.
That company, which had been fi-

nancially supported by the former NDP»
government, shut down operations here,

at another mill in the Hazeltons and at its
Prince Rupert pulp mill in 2001 when its,
money ran out. ©: °°

TLC purchased the mill after New
Skeena Forest. Products, which: had
bought it from bankrupt Skeena Cellu-

' lose, itself went under.

- Cont'd Page A2

Eye of the peholder boas

FOR ANIMALS, it’s ‘something they’ ve

licked.

For humans, it’ s something in which to

find art.

This weekend’s Skeena ‘Valley Fall

Fair is once again holding a salt block —

competition to sée which animals ° have

the best artistic abilities.

The laid-back event has taken place

for the last couple of years, and animals -

of all sorts-have been the unwitting win-

animals to the Thornhill Community .
Grounds this Friday night before the fall ,

fair begins on Saturday.

The.animal artwork will be judged, by

members of the fall fair committee and

they'll be looking to see which salt blocks "
have the best design or most sculpturing’ -.

look. Salt blocks ‘can only, be licked by
animals; no human carving is allowed.

. Prizes will be given tothe owner of 7

the animals who made the best salt sculp-

’ The restriction will run
“until Aug. 31, but that could
change says a department
official. .

“We're monitoring ‘the
recreation restriction,” says
Steven Groves, DFO’s area
chief resource manager.
“We’ll conduct daily tests.”

As for the reason for the — Ex

low returns of the species,
Groves says it’s a little early
to tell. »

“The numbers leaving
Babine Lake were normal,
but they’re coming back
low,” he says of the four
to five-year-old adult fish
that left from the lake to the
ocean in 2000-01.
_Groves says ocean sur-

vival may be the key to the

declined numbers.

Fisheries managers cite” &

low survival on the ground

due to lack of food, high ff

mortality rates due to other
predators and fluctuations in
ocean conditions as possible

reasons for the poorest sock- .

eye return in years. -
This year will see rough-

ly 600,000 sockeye return to. .

the main stem of the Skeena,

half of the DFO’s forecast...

In’a good year, the river

sees a return of two million :

sockeye.

While the coveted Species
is down in adult fish, many
three-year-olds, or Jacks,
have exited the ocean.

Meanwhile, coho salmon
are up in, numbers and the
river is home to a bumper
crop of pinks — five times the
greatest run ever recorded
here.

Those high numbers may

be balancing out the lower |

number of sockeye, says a

staff member at Misty River

Hunting and Tackle.
Cont'd Page A2

“| Honoured -

BUD Kirkaldy, a longtime Terrace resident and Royal Canadian Legion Branch
13 member, is on his way in to a tribute in his honour put on by the legion on
Saturday, Aug. 13. Many friends joined in the living tribute to Kirkaldy, who has
been diagnosed with terminal cancer. — ‘DUSTIN QUEZADA PHOTO

‘merce,
-Development Authority and

ners.

Farmers can bring their salt blocks
that. have been licked or bitten by their

ture.

And for more information on the fair
please turn.to Page Al5.

4 Conference centre
| rearing its head

By SARAH A.

. ZIMMERMAN
THE CITY’S second sheet
of ice plan is facing’ another
wrinkle, says a city council-
lor just days before a deci-
sion must be made to BO

- ahead or scrap the project. -

Marylin Davies says peo-
ple tell her they favour go-
ing to referendum to borrow

_ money'to add a conference
centre to the project.
As it is, the second sheet

of ice plan is $2 million short

__ of the $8.5 million needed. .

« Davies informally polled
roughly 50 Terrace residents
and asked the Terrace and
District Chamber of Com-
Terrace Economic

the Terrace Tourism Society
what they believed. should
be done about the ice plan..

_ “Y’ve only had one person
say junk the whole plan,”
Davies said. “The other feel-
ing has been that we need
some sort of ‘conference

“ centre and we should look
‘at borrowing and go with a

larger facility.

_“T could not have been:

surprised more;” she said.
The exisiting plan to build

. abare bones second sheet of

ice, change rooms and lim-

ited seating on the north side

of the current arena is al-
ready a scaled down version
of an original proposal.

person . who »

Marylin Davies —
“Council meets Aug. 22 to
decide what to do.
This isn’t the first time’a
conference centre has been
proposed. In the 1990s, two

referenda were held onthe —

issue of whether or not. to

borrow money for a .com- -

bined conference centre and

second sheet of ice. Neither .

went ahead.

The conference centre
idea was then nixed to make
the second sheet of ice more

‘affordable. It has since lan-

guished, pending construc-
tion of the second sheet of

ice. Davies says she’s ap- _
- prehensive about the idea of
borrowing money to make ~
“the project go ahead. ,

“I’m a very old school |
thinks. -you
should. not. use your next

to last dollar,” Davies said.
“My main concern is. tying
up city funds to ‘the ‘point
where you don’t have emer-
gency money left.”

The respondents ‘to her

informal poll were’ mostly -

local business people in their
40s and 50s, Davies said.

_“That’s. the generation.
coming. behind » me,” she —

said, adding that ‘generation

' -may be more willing to bor-

row money regardless of al-
‘ready high 'personal debt.

“This is spilling over into-

what they are thinking.”
Davies does not plan to
make a motion at the up-
coming. council meeting to
recommend the city borrow
money, but she believes
more input must come. from
area residents.
“I am ‘still collecting in-
formation, because I want to
do it from an informed coun-
cillor’s position,” she said.
If council
go head with the second
sheet of ice project, build-
ing would likely. start in the
spring of 2006. .
Much of the pressure to
get underway this year — and

to raise more money quickly .
— was relieved earlier this

summer when the city, ‘re-
‘ceived a two-year extension
on.a-$2 million federal-pro-
vincial infrastructure grant
commitment.

MLA wants gov't to end blockade

decides - to

A LIBERAL MLA is pushing for legal
action to end a. blockade preventing
resource companies from exploring the
coal and coalbed methane potential of the
Klappan area northeast of here.
_ Bulkley Valley-Stikine MLA Dennis.
MacKay says the blockade by Tahltan |
who oppose the direction their leader-
ship is taking on resource development
could very well contravene sections of.
the criminal code.

“J think it’s time the province take a
close look at what a couple of renegades
are doing there,” said MacKay of the road

blockade which first went up in mid-
July. ; “A

“As I read it, Section 43 of the code
on. intimidation, says it’s an offence for
someone to compel a person from doing
what they have a lawful right to do,” said
MacKay. oe .

Ontario-based Fortune Minerals and
Shell Canada both have permits from the
province for the former to explore the
Klappan for its anthracite coal mining
potential and for the latter to determine
if there are commercially-viable amounts
of coalbed methane natural gas.

Both have work plans for this year but
both have had those plans halted or abbre-

viated because of the blockade set up just .

off of Hwy37 north of Tatogga Lake.
“These people don’t have the support

of the duly elected Tahltan leadership

and the. leadership doesn’t condone this

action,” said MacKay.

He said Fortune and Shell have been
given permits and permission to work in
the Klappan by the province and have ar-
rangemens with the elected Tahitan lead-
ership to do so.

“Just because people don’t sup-

port what we're doing as a government

. doesn’t mean they can do this: It’s some-

thing we’re going to have to take a stand
on eventually,” MacKay continued. .
“The part that’s so frustrating is that
when I went up into that area just recent-
ly with [mines minister] Bill Bennett we
went to the Eskay Creek mine and 30 per
cent of the workforce is Tahltan.”
MacKay said he’ll be pressing his

point with the province’s top two law.

enforcement officials, attorney-general
Wally Oppal and solicitor general John
Les.

This isn’t the first time MacKay has.
’ Pressed his government to take action

when it comes to blockades. -

In the legislature in 2003, MacKay
questioned cabinet ministers several
times as to why his government allowed a
native blockade of a B.C. Forest Service
road that halted logging in the Hazelton
area after permits had been issued.

“How does that encourage respect
for the law, and how does that protect
citizens and communities from crime? To
me, a roadblock is a crime,” said MacKay
on April 9, 2003.

ate