Province
Family narrowly escaped death from carbon monoxide Page 2
Lifestyles
Retirement not for babysitting - so get rid of the kids. Page 5
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Nation
Director of prison says Lortie no threat to society. Page 6
Browns control Bledsoe to advance to face Steelers. Page 9
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PRINCE GEORGE
Citizen
MONDAY, JANUARY 2, 1995
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SURGERY SET FOR BABY DIEGO
by Canadian Press
OTTAWA — Children of divorced parents threatened by poverty and constant battles over child-support payments will have a tougher warden looking out for them in 1995.
In the next few months, Ottawa plans to announce a comprehensive package to improve the system of awarding, enforcing and taxing child-support payments after divorce.
Justice Minister Allan Rock has already hint^l what the package will include. '*-*
■ A formula, to be included in the federal Divorce Act, to guide judges setting child-support payments.
■ Measures to help the provinces crack down on parents — mostly dads — who default on support payments.
■ Modified tax rules.
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Two local women die in collision
Citizen staff
Two Prince George women were killed in an accident Saturday morning, about 35 kilometres west of the city on Highway 16.
Tracey Shelke, 25, who was driving a 1992 compact car, and one of her passengers, Brenda Young, 23, died in a head-on collision at about 9 a.m. when an older passenger car coming toward the city crossed the centre line and struck their car, report the RCMP.
The other passenger in the compact car, Maria Doig, 26, was taken to Prince George Regional Hospital, where treatment continues.
The driver of the vehicle which crossed the centre line, Walter Johnny, 33, of Vanderhoof, is in critical condition, on life-support equipment, at Prince George Regional Hospital.
Currently, parents collecting the money must pay income tax.
In Canada, 40 per cent of new marriages end in divorce. There were 77,000 divorces in 1991 and some 30,000 children were involved in custody settlements. In nearly 27,000 cases, custody was granted to the mother.
The federal, provincial and territorial governments have worked for five years on a family law committee to solve tricky problems of child support.
Their third and final report will be reviewed and discussed by justice ministers at the end of January. And Rock has already promised to amend the Divorce Act if everyone agrees.
First, the provinces, territories and Ottawa want a fair formula to cover the cost of raising children and generally remove the discretion of judges to set awards based
on personal motives.
“The judge is usually tempted to reduce the amount of support because he or she believes that it really cannot cost that much for two children or because the payer simply should not pay so much,” Rock said in a recent speech.
Second, the family law committee is also developing a national strategy to enforce child support collection. Measures would include more grants to help track debtors and improved co-ordination to catch parents who skip a province.
In Nova Scotia alone, deadbeat dads owed nearly $9 million in 1994.
The third move is for fairer tax rules once the Supreme Court of Canada decides on the case of Susan Thibaudeau. She’s the divorced social worker from Trois-Rivieres, Que., who fought the way her support payments are taxed.
NOW’S TIME TO BUTT OUT
VANCOUVER (CP) — If your goal for 1995 is to kick the cigarette habit, now’s the best time to try.
More smokers quit puffing in January than in any other month of the year.
That upbeat news comes from Dr. Frederic Bass, director of the B.C. Doctors’ Stop-Smoking Project. A fount of knowledge on smoking cessation, he urges determined quitters to make one really strong, all-out effort.
“Give it everything you’ve got,” he said.
Frequent half-hearted attempts don’t do the trick, he said.
‘There’s fairly good evidence that it’s not a good strategy to keep trying, time after time.”
One in four British Columbians smokes, and the habit has disastrous health and fiscal consequences.
Tobacco causes 30 per cent of cancer deaths, 25 per cent of heart-disease deaths, 15 per cent of strokes, 60 per cent of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, 10 per cent of hospital days, six per cent of physician visits, eight per cent of motor vehicle accidents, 40 per cent of fire deaths, 20 per cent of low-birthweight infants, between i5 per cent and 30 per cent of all Canadian deaths, and 100 per cent of deaths from secondhand smoke.
Tobacco use also has a harmful effect on provincial treasuries. Richard Rees, who heads the B.C. Health Coalition, says smoking imposes a Si-billion economic burden on B.C. each year, far outweighing the $480 million the government collects in tobacco taxes.
Nicotine is the major alkaloid, or nitrogen-containing substance obtained from plants, in tobacco.
A survey, done in B.C. last year, found that 18 per cent of smokers are ready to quit. Sixty-three per cent are thinking about it, while 19 per cent don’t have plans to stop.
PROPERTY
ASSESSMENT
SECTION
INDEX
Farcus
Ann Landers .. ......5
Bridge........ .....13
City, B.C...... ... .23
Classified......
Comics .......
Coming events . ......5
Crossword .... .....15
Entertainment . ......8
Horoscope..... .....14
Lotteries...... ......7
Lifestyles......
Movies .......
Nation........
Sports......... ...9-11
Television..... .....14
World........ ......7
58 07 0010C
“I know he’s a cookie — but we’re an equal opportunity employer.”
Citizen photo by Dave Milne
New for 1995, day-old Caitlyn Munger was Prince George’s first baby of the year.
1995’s first baby welcomed
Citizen staff
A smiling Trina Gamot of Prince George is the mother of the city’s first baby of 1995.
Caitlyn Munger helped her family usher in the New Year at 6:58 a.m. Sunday at the Prince George Regional Hospital. The seven pound, one ounce (3,236 grams) girl joins 19 month-old Latisha as the second daughter of Bill Munger and Trina.
While most adults were celebrating New Year’s and bringing the year in with style, Bill and Trina checked into PGRH around midnight. It was earli-
er than expected, he added.
“It was supposed to be Jan. 4 but she came early,” Bill said today.
Just minutes after Caitlyn’s birth here, Quesnel welcomed its first baby of the year with the arrival of Christopher James Penner. Penner tipped the scale at eight pounds, three ounces (3,800 grams) to signal a string of New Year’s births in Quesnel.
Aside from bragging rights, Trina, Caitlyn and the Mungers win more than $670 in coupons and gift certificates.
The prizes are donated by local businesses.
Gov’t gets tough on child support
Mill sets new pulp mark
Citizen staff
Northwood Pulp and Timber beat its old production record to a pulp Saturday night.
Its previous record pulp production for a year was 491,787 tonnes, in 1988.
When 1994 ended at midnight Saturday, the company’s pulp mill in Prince George had produced 501,112 tonnes for the year.
A lot of things went into setting
the new record, says company spokesman Bill Theessen.
The market for pulp had to be strong to create demand.
“It took the combined efforts of a lot of people working together, hard,” Theessen said today.
And the company has made a number of improvements over the past few years which are now paying off, he added.
These include process improve-
ments which get more pulp from a given quantity of chips, and a number of small improvements like modernizing the infeed to the digester where chips are cooked to soften them and break them down into fibres.
Those fibres can be made into long-fibre kraft pulp, which gives paper its strength when mixed with other types of pulp.
Ban on abortion clinic protests?
SouthamStar Network
VANCOUVER — Attorney-General Colin Gabelmann may ban all protests at Vancouver abortion clinics in the wake of two deadly attacks in the U.S.
Gabelmann said yesterday the B.C. government “will do everything legally possible” to protect clinic workers and patients.
He said that may include creating “bubble zones” around the facilities that even peaceful protesters would be forbidden to enter.
If such an “area injunction” can pass the legal test, it will be drafted, he said.
Gabelmann said the shootings Friday at two abortion clinics in the Boston suburb of Brookline, which
killed two clinic workers and wounded five others, have added a new sense of urgency to security efforts in B.C.
“There is a fear in the community now,” said Gabelmann.
“The events in Boston show there are a lot of crazy people out there, and we don’t want anything like it to happen here.”
Surgery to remove the last working kidney from a Prince George toddler will probably happen this week, the boy’s father said.
Diego Carpino is resting at the Children’s Centre of the University of Minnesota Hospital in Minneapolis in preparation for a transplant operation. Frank Carpino, Diego’s dad, said everything has gone fine so far.
Bom with a rare disease that reduces the body’s ability to take on nutrients, the Carpinos received word just before Christmas that the province would fund the $200,000-plus operation.
City residents and businesses have rallied around the toddler since learning of the family’s plight. A local company supplied a jet to take the family to the U.S.
“The trip was just great,” Frank said today from Minneapolis. “We are just getting set up.
“We are discussing when we are taking the kidney out.”
Diego will be on dialysis equipment after surgery.
It could be two months before he’s ready for a transplant with one of Frank’s kidneys.
Residents of the city and immediate district will find the 1995 Property Assessment Section for Prince George and area included in today’s Citizen.
The 1995 supplement has been expanded to include the rural areas around Prince George and lakefront properties around nearby lakes.
Rural residents will receive their sections in the mail later this week.
NORTHWOOD OPERATION
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