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CITIZEN
Serving the Central Interior since 1916

PRINCE GEORGE

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 3, 2003

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Man gets 7 years for killing prostitute
Citizen photo by Dave Milne

EVENING GLITTER -- Holiday lights sparkle in The Gateway along Victoria Street on Tuesday night as cars streak by in this time exposure photo taken near 20th Avenue.

City can't stop NHA move to school
by MARK NIELSEN Citizen staff Turning Meadow elementary school into office space for the Northern Health Authority won't be subject to a public hearing at city hall because the land is already zoned for the use, city planning manager Dan Milburn confirmed Tuesday. However, representatives of the city and the school district will meet before this year is over to talk about the future of other closed schools in the wake of the controversy that flared up over the issue. And city manager George Paul said the pending rewrite of the city's zoning bylaw will include a review of the P-1 designation, which allows not only for schools but other public institutions. A consultant is about to be hired to do the rewrite, which is expected to be completed in a year. Representatives of the city, the school district and the NHA held a press conference on the issue Tuesday, the day after council voted to meet with the school district. The school district recently reached an agreement with the NHA to lease the school for five years for about $100,000 a year, beginning Dec. 1, and house 40 to 60 administrative staff there. But the proposal has met with opposition CHAMBERS from nearby residents who claim the use is not appropriate for the area. Residents also hope the school may be reopened because all the lots in a nearby subdivision have been sold and more homebuilding is expected next spring. However, school district superintendent Dick Chambers said there will still be room at Heritage elementary school to absorb additional students from that area. "We don't see any time in the foreseeable future that Meadow school will be reopened," Chambers said. Had the NHA's proposed use required rezoning, the issue would have gone to a public hearing before city council, and residents were already gearing up to convince councillors to stop the deal -- a petition against the move was in Monday's agenda package. Behind the scenes, the NHA had forwarded a written description to the city for review by staff and legal counsel, leading to the announcement Tuesday. NHA and school district representatives billed the deal as a win-win -- the school district will get some money, a building will no longer be empty, and the NHA will get some needed office space. The NHA will also make such moves as maintaining the playground and fields at the school for the neighbourhood children. "We want to be good neighbours," NHA chief executive officer Malcolm Maxwell said.

by KAREN KWAN Citizen staff A Prince George man has been sentenced to seven years in prison for beating a transgender prostitute to death last year. B.C. Supreme Court Justice Peter Rogers said the severity of Dale Eliason's attack on Fabian (Faye) Paquette and his violent tendencies calls for a longer-than-average sentence. Sentences for manslaughter range from a suspended sentence to life in prison, but the most common penalty for "conventional" cases are between four and six years, court heard. Eliason, 37, asked not to be sent to either of two specific prisons on the Lower Mainland, fearing he will be attacked, but the judge said the decision is up to the correctional service. Following a trial in October, Rogers found Eliason attacked Paquette in a "rage" when he discovered she was really a man. Paquette, 42, was born male but was partway through a sex-change process, and had female breasts along with male genitalia. Eliason claimed Paquette came at him with a knife in an unprovoked attack, and that he was only trying to defend himPAQUETTE self. Paquette's battered body was discovered Feb. 5, 2002, stuffed inside a van in the back lot of an auto-fabrication shop on First Avenue, where Eliason worked a welder. Defence lawyer Al Nordling said Tuesday he planned to appeal the conviction and sentence. In arguing for a conditional sentence that would allow Eliason to serve his sentence under house arrest, Nordling had said his client was willing to take treatment for drug and alcohol abuse, as well as anger management. However, Rogers said it was "significant" that Eliason didn't seek counselling while on bail for the past year-and-a-half. Cecile Henry, Paquette's older sister, said she's relieved her brother's killer won't be allowed the freedom of a conditional sentence. "Even though I didn't approve of my brother's way of life, he's still a human being. He still had every right to live," she said outside the courtroom. Henry added she has forgiven Eliason, because she believes forgiveness is the first step toward healing. Eliason has one previous conviction for violence -- for assault causing bodily harm in a 2001 attack on a man in Edmonton. Crown counsel Carl Gustafson had argued his history shows he's incapable of or unwilling to control his anger, and therefore poses a danger to the public.

Duchess Park spared closure TODAY
SPORTS
Cougars creamed
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INDEX
Annie's Mailbox . . . . . . . . .19 Bridge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .23 Business . . . . . . . . . . . .30-32 City, B.C. . . . . . . . . . .3,5,6,13 Classified . . . . . . . . . . .20-23 Comics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .26 Crossword . . . . . . . . . . . . .26 Entertainment . . . . . . . . . .27 Horoscope . . . . . . . . . . . . .23 Lifestyles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .19 Nation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7 Sports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8-12 World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14,15

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by PAUL STRICKLAND Citizen staff About 400 people in Vanier Hall cheered as school trustees voted 5-1 Tuesday to keep Duchess Park secondary school from closing. Trustee John Rustad was the lone dissenter. Michelle Marrelli withdrew from discussion of the closure. She declared a potential conflict of interest because she has a child attending John McInnis junior secondary school, one of two junior secondary schools the board put on the closure list Oct. 28. Afterwards, trustee Lyn Hall proposed but later agreed to table until early January a motion for a two-year moratorium on further school closures in the district. "I'm getting very close to saying, `Enough is enough'," he said after the meeting Tuesday evening. Bryan Mix, school district secretarytreasurer, said figures for the district's November ledger should be tabulated by Thursday. The province provided information last Thursday on an extra $43per-student grant to districts that the education ministry had been holding back in case of unexpected increases in enrolments, as well as a smaller amount to compensate the district for an enrolment drop of greater than one per cent. Mix said he would crunch out a financial projection to June 30. During the meeting trustees said this kind of financial projection would be useful to the board in deciding if it can afford to declare a moratorium on closures.

Send beetle wood to Iraq, mayor says
by GORDON HOEKSTRA Citizen staff The latest idea of how to utilize some of the massive and growing amount of beetle-infested timber in north and central B.C. comes from Mayor Colin Kinsley. Kinsley would like to see the timber used to make wood products that could be shipped to Iraq -- in lieu of monetary aid -- to help rebuild the war-torn country. Kinsley said desks, windows and door frames were torn out of schools in the anarchy that followed the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime. Wood from the beetle-infested lodgepole pine could be milled to produce wood for the desks, window and door frames, as well as building housing for aid workers, he said. The housing could also be used to market wood-frame construction in Iraq, noted Kinsley, who hasn't crunched any numbers on how much wood could be needed. The mayor said he has been talking to the B.C. and federal governments, but hasn't had a response.

Citizen photo by Dave Milne

Carmen Hansford, a Grade 10 student at Duchess Park secondary, spoke to school trustees during a meeting at Vanier Hall on Tuesday. Hall and district superintendent Dick reconfiguration and the amalgamation Chambers said that if a special meeting of secondary schools in the Bowl should were called in early January to deal a include all secondary schools in that moratorium on closures, Hall's motion area of the city. could be brought back to the table for This would allow the board to considaction. If it passed, it would have the ef- er all options in time to allow for a 60fect of cancelling school-closure consul- day public consultation period before a tation meetings scheduled for Jan. 12 Feb. 3 meeting to make final decisions and 13 at Lakewood and John McInnis Rustad reasoned. junior secondary schools, respectively, After Tuesday's meeting, Rustad said and end consideration of the closure by- he had talked to Hall about his idea of a laws for those schools for the duration of moratorium on school closures Monday the moratorium, they said. night, but by then it was too late to canRustad asked board chair Bill Christie cel the special meeting or withdraw the to call a special meeting for to consider a motion for Duchess Park's closure. "We possible bylaw to close Duchess Park had to go through the process," he said. secondary. -- See related story on page 3; He said a debate over secondary grade editorial on page 4

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