Prince George Citizen December 5, 2018 by Prince George Citizen

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Wednesday, December 5, 2018 | Your community newspaperr since 1916

CITIZEN PHOTO BY BRENT BRAATEN

Work continues Paving began on Tuesday along the section of Queensway excavated to allow the installation of a new sewer line along Lower Patricia Boulevard.

Bad weather had role in Bear-proof garbage cans driving death, judge finds pilot project coming Mark NIELSEN Citizen staff mnielsen@pgcitizen.ca A judge described a series of “sad and tragic” events in sentencing a former semitruck driver for his role in a collision that cost another man his life. On the night of Nov. 24, 2016, Robert Nicholas Boyko was already contending with poor weather as he headed east on Highway 16 from Prince George only to see it get even worse as he crested a hill. Instead of snow, he suddenly had to contend with “more of a sleet or slush which made the road very slippery,” B.C. Supreme Court Justice Cassandra Malfair said in her decision. Even though Boyko was already travelling 20 km/h below the posted 100 km/h speed limit, he attempted to further slow the rig. But his actions did not help. “Any attempt he made to slow only caused either the tractor or the trailer to lose control and start sliding sideways,” Malfair said. “When he got to the bottom of the hill he again tried to slow the vehicle and I accept he tried several different methods of trying to slow the vehicle without losing control of it. He was unsuccessful.” The rig jacknifed and collided with a pickup truck driven by Darren Price, who died at the scene. Boyko subsequently turned in his class one licence and has not driven commercially ever since. He “suffers from nightmares and stress and trauma and continuously remembers or relives the accident in which he was simply just unable to bring his vehicle under control,” it was also noted. Malfair accepted a joint submisson from

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The rig jacknifed and collided with a pickup truck driven by Darren Price, who died at the scene. Crown and defence counsels and fined Boyko $2,000 and prohibited him from driving for three months for driving at an excessive speed for conditions under the Motor Vehicle Act. Price’s family was in the courtroom at the time of sentencing and Malfair acknowledged their loss. “Of course, the death of Mr. Price is very troubling and tragic to this family, and when horrible accidents like this happen we all want to find somebody to blame, but in criminal court we do not really punish results,” she said. “We have to look at people’s conduct and the badness of their behaviour, the evil of their intentions, the recklessness of their actions, the thoughtlessness of what they did. “In this case we have a horrible state of very bad winter roads, and Mr. Boyko admits he was going too fast for the conditions, but he was slowed down already, it came on very suddenly, and he tried and his efforts to slow kept getting met with losing control of his vehicle. “That is what we have to punish him for today, and I am very, very sorry for your loss, but I do not think that the joint submission would bring the administration of justice into disrepute and it is not contrary to the public interest and I will accede to it.” The sentence was issued in July.

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Frank PEEBLES Citizen staff fpeebles@pgcitizen.ca Three hundred new garbage cans will be rolled out to local curbs in the spring. They are designed to be bear-proof. If the pilot project works, said Sean LeBrun, the city’s manager of parks and solid waste, more of the cans will be used in the parts of the city with the most bear problems. “We will work with the Conservation Officer Service and Northern Bear Aware to determine the places where the highest concentration of calls comes from, where the most bear-human conflict occurs,” said LeBrun. “I think we will focus these household bins one specific area to see if we make a real difference with this new option. Those discussions have already started. We have narrowed some neighbourhoods down but there is still some discussion that needs to happen.” “You would think, with all the obvious bear populations in and around Prince George, that people by now would be smarter about garbage, but people here are quite careless and something has to be done about it,” said Sgt. Steve Ackles of the region’s conservation service. “There are no bear problems. There are only human problems. If you take the garbage food source habituation out of the mix, the numbers would plummet,” of bears needing to be destroyed for public protection. Ackles was an early supporter of the City of Prince George’s interest in these in-

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novative garbage cans. These new can designs should greatly reduce the incidental attractants, said LeBrun, but people would still need to be conscientious about their behaviours. These cans are a proactive way to help that behaviour out. “They look basically like the garbage cart we currently use. They come from the same supplier, they are just beefier. They are more skookum and there is even a bear pictured right on it,” LeBrun said. “The best part is, it stays locked, seven days a week. On collection day, you don’t have to unlock it and open up that threat. The mechanism automatically unlocks when it’s inverted or easily opens if you have thumbs.” The cans are three times as expensive as the conventional garbage carts being used, but saving the life of a bear and/or a human greatly outweighs that factor, said LeBrun. “We put the same thinking into the bear-proof civic litter containers we have citywide,” he said. “They cost more money, too, and we started with the areas of greatest concern for bears, on trails and along the rivers first, but gradually we have been covering the city with them. It’s an ongoing issue but we recognize that its important that we have a bear-proof municipal solid waste system because we do live in bear country. If the data supports it, the goal would be to add these cans little by little each year starting with the areas of higher risk and move in gradually to cover the whole city.”

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