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Thursday, November 8, 2018 | Your community newspaper since 1916

CITIZEN PHOTO BY BRENT BRAATEN

If the shoe fits... Winter Boot Drive organizer Alisha Tobin looks for the correct size of boot during the event at the Fire Pit on Wednesday. More than 60 pairs of boots and hundreds of socks were donated for those in need.

Store that survived wildfire destroyed City drops in Maclean’s

most dangerous ranking

Frank PEEBLES Citizen staff fpeebles@pgcitizen.ca

Citizen staff

The Grassy Plains Country Store & Restaurant in the Lakes District west of Prince George somehow survived one of the most devastating wildfire calamities in B.C. history, then promptly burned to the ground Wednesday morning. Even in the heat of the moment – perhaps because of the moment’s heat – it was an irony not lost on the dozens of residents who responded to the Southside blaze. One of them, Xandria Ahlbrand, hadn’t even showered off the black smoke before she was planning fundraising efforts for the owners, Fayth and Gary Martin. “All they did through the whole wildfire summer, was give and give and give,” said Ahlbrand. “They worked themselves exhausted, they didn’t charge a penny to anyone, and they contributed in every possible way, all summer. Every day, those firefighters had a buffet of free food, they had lunches to go, they had all kinds of supplies, and so did anyone who was in need from the evacuations. The Martins were heroes. That’s the only word for it. And now, they have been hit with this terrible loss so we have to show them that they are really appreciated, that we love them for what they did, and for this to happen to them is just crazy. And we’re going to help. We’re not a community over here, we are a family.” Ahlbrand is unsure if the store and cafe had insurance, but she knows that the losses are inevitably larger than such policies will cover.

Today’s Weather Hi -2° Low -8° See page 2 for more details and short-term forecasts

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HANDOUT PHOTO BY MIKE ROBERTSON

The Grassy Plains Country Store & Restaurant in the Lakes District burned down on Wednesday. The Grassy Plains Store, after all, was the unofficial headquarters of the widespread, rural and geographically isolated Southside community in between Francois and Ootsa Lakes. The only way into that region other than resource roads is the Francois Lake ferry. Ahlbrand and her mother Catherine Van Tine Marcinek were driving to work at about 8:15 a.m. and noticed too much smoke coming from a rooftop vent. They pulled in and joined another passerby who had noticed the same. Before long, the black smudge also had traces of

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CROSSWORD SPORTS MONEY CLASSIFIEDS HEALTH

flame coming out the vent, and soon the large interior was engulfed in flames. The store also had an apartment occupied by a mother and two children. The growing cluster of onlookers checked the suite, found it empty, and moved next to clear out the adjacent buildings (one of them was a meat processing operation less than six feet from the store). They found some garden hoses and used them in vain as they waited for the Southside Volunteer Fire Department to arrive. “They did really good work,” said Van Tine Marcinek. — see ‘IT WAS GREAT, page 3

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Putting people over politics EDITORIAL 6

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Prince George has been ranked 21st in Maclean’s annual ranking of the most dangerous places in Canada. That’s down from ninth last year and due largely to a change in how the magazine reaches its conclusions. “Every year, Maclean’s combs through crime statistics to rank the most dangerous places in the country. This year, we added a new measure we think is equally important – whether crime is getting better or worse in a community and how quickly,” wrote Claire Brownell in a story posted Monday on the magazine’s website. “We looked at 237 urban centres across the country, calculating the difference between their most recent crime severity indexes – a measure used by Statistics Canada that accounts for the seriousness of crimes as well as their number – and their crime severity indexes five years ago.” Statistics Canada actually ranked Prince George 11th in crime severity for 2017 with a score of 174.68. But since 2012, the number rose 23.86 points. By comparison, Pembroke, Ont. saw its CSI rise by 33.59, good enough for 11th spot in the Macleans ranking, even though the total stood at 91.17 for 2017. The CSI for No. 1-ranked Wetaskiwin rose 100.63 points to 257.54. The new method follows on a tweak made last year, when the magazine decided to include towns with populations as low as 10,000 for the first time. In the past, the rankings had included only the 100 biggest cities in Canada. The full rankings can be found at www.macleans.ca/canadas-most-dangerous-places-2019/.

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