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Saturday, July 6, 2019 Your community newspaper since 1916

CITIZEN PHOTO BY BRENT BRAATEN

KidsArt Dayz at Canada Day Plaza Michelle Hersey, right, Ta-Da Lady from The Nylon Zoo, leads children on a parade through Canada Games Plaza Friday morning at the Two Rivers Gallery BMO KidzArt Dayz. There is art making galore with dozens of hands-on stations for children of all ages to enjoy. This free celebration of creativity continues today from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Murder trial presented with Facebook evidence Mark NIELSEN Citizen staff mnielsen@pgcitizen.ca Steps were taken Friday during a B.C. Supreme Court trial to draw a link between a man accused of participating in a double murder and an alleged nickname. On the banner of Perry Andrew Charlie’s Facebook page is a stylized drawing of the word “Unique,” the court heard from two RCMP officers who testified separately. Charlie is facing two counts of first degree murder and one count of attempted murder with a firearm in the deaths of Thomas Reed of Burns Lake and David Franks of Prince George. He is also charged with attempted murder with a firearm in relation to Bradley

Knight, the soul survivor of the Jan. 25, 2017 targeted shooting. Co-accused Seaver Tye Miller and Joshua Steven West have each pleaded guilty to two counts of second-degree murder and Aaron Ryan Moore to two counts of criminal negligence causing death and await sentencing. Crown prosecution is theorizing that a hit had been ordered on Franks after he had offended someone in the local drug scene. On Friday, Prince George RCMP Staff Sgt. Kent MacNeill testified he came across the Facebook posting in the hours after the shooting when RCMP had pulled over a van carrying two of the four. Charlie was later apprehended at the Caledonia Trailer Park. Then the plain clothes commander of the

detachment’s serious crimes unit, MacNeill indicated going on social media was among the first steps he had taken in the effort to track down Charlie. Evidence from the social media platform also showed Charlie was Facebook friends with the other three. Following MacNeill, RCMP Cpl. Jeff Bingley took the witness stand. Now in Kamloops, Bingley told the court he was stationed in Takla Landing north of Fort St. James for two years, ending in the fall of 2014, and knew both Charlie and Miller, both in the course of his work and in passing. He said Charlie was in the community about half the time he was there and Miller less so. Bingley recalled a moment when he and

a friend were going through Facebook on a computer and noticed Charlie’s Facebook page. Like MacNeill, he noted a banner with the drawing. It was “one of those things that sticks in your mind and pops out umpteen years later,” Bingley said. In earlier testimony, Timothy Lee, who had been driving the van that had allegedly carried the four to the scene of the shooting, referred to someone named “Unique” sitting behind him. Bingley also testified that it appeared Charlie and Miller were friends. He noted a time when he saw them in the Takla Landing potlatch house sitting beside each other and talking. The trial continues Monday.

City bracing for summer closures at pulp mills Postmedia Businesses across Prince George are bracing for spillover effects from the temporary closure of two key employers as the woes of B.C.’s forestry sector deepen. A weeks’ worth of production cuts at Canfor’s sawmills in the region, due to shrinking timber supplies and poor markets, have robbed the pulp facilities of the residual wood chips that are their raw material. So Canfor Corp. last week announced the temporarily suspension of operations at its Northwood and Intercontinental pulp mills, two of three pulp-and-paper

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facilities it operates here, in phases that will cost some 760 employees three weeks’ to a month’s work over the summer. “Whether or not it’s a month, eight weeks, or whatever it might be, those are lost wages for those folks,” said Mayor Lyn Hall, “and that will impact them and their families.” And the impact will be felt across swaths of the city’s business sector from suppliers to the big mills to shopping malls that cater to workers and their families, said city economic development manager Melissa Barcellos. Canfor spokeswoman Michelle Ward said the curtailment will

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begin next Friday with the suspension of operations at its Intercontinental mill, which will remain closed until Aug. 12, and affect some 241 workers. Its bigger Northwood mill, with 518 workers, will shut down Aug. 15 and remain closed for three weeks until Sept. 9. In total, the closures will reduce Canfor’s output of pulp for paper production by 75,000 tonnes out of its 1.1-million-tonne-per-year capacity. “The company intends to resume full production at Intercontinental and Northwood in September,” said Ward, Canfor’s director of corporate communications.

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Ward said employees have the option to use banked time off during the curtailment or be laid off to seek employment insurance claims. Ward had no additional news about further curtailments but Hall said the community, where forestry is still a significant presence, is trying to look farther into the future. “The piece for us is what’s next,” said Hall. “We know the curtailments are short-term, but what’s next after the short term?” The 760 workers affected by the summer mill closures represent a noticeable chunk of the estimated 9,000 direct and indirect jobs in

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Prince George’s workforce of some 53,200 — about 18 per cent of overall employment. Forestry consulting firm Wood Markets Group, in a report released in May, estimated that up to 12 Interior B.C. sawmills will have to close over the next decade due to the reduction of timber in provincial forests owing to the decade-long mountain pine beetle infestation and successive years of damage because of wildfires. Since then, Tolko Industries announced the closure of a sawmill in Quesnel, with the loss of 150 jobs, and elimination of a shift at its Kelowna mill at the cost of another 90 jobs.

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