President Obama

In ten days, Barack Obama will become the next President of the United States.
One can only imagine the emotional bedside meeting he recently had with his dying Grandmother as he stands on the edge of history.
His challenges will be considerable. Around the world, the Bush Doctrine (the hit 'em before you they hit you philosophy) has earned the US a reputation as an agressive, arrogant, greedy bully.
Obama has two wars to deal with and an economic debacle that began on Wall Street and has now spread to the entire globe. Outside the US, Obama is seen as hope for a more intelligent and kinder America.
Can he do it? Will Americans let him do it? Is he on track for a landslide victory on November 4th? Will the world be better off with Obama at the controls? Much depends on the American people themselves. If they want him to succeed, they will all have to look deep into their own behaviour and pattern of beliefs -- as Shakespeare wrote "the fault lies not in our stars,dear Brutus,but in ourselves."

Oh Stand, Stand By Me

I try to keep my blog on a professional level, but today I am going to depart, slightly from form.
Everyday, I wake up and check the markets. What's the Dow doing? What's the TSX doing, the Nasdaq? Whats happening in Europe? My heart soars with the rallies and sinks with the selloffs. I have been investing in the market since I was about 27. I grew up poor on 15th St. in Saskatoon -- I like to joke, we were so poor our street couldn't even afford a name. I have ridden out some scary times in market. I reported on market crash of October 87 from the floor of the TSX, before it was computerized and there were still traders on the floor--investors thought it was the end of the world. Sound familiar?
The last 6 weeks, like everyone,I have been watching my portfolio shrink -- make that shrivel!
The market is full of fear. Mutual fund redemptions are soaring. What is really happening is hedge funds are dumping their stocks and people who bought on margin are being forced to sell -- And the market is going to keep falling until those leveraged buyers are squeezed out of the market. A few other things have to happen too, and it will take at least two years to recover.
We've had at least a dozen 'market meltdowns' over the last 5 decades -- and every one was followed by a raging bull market. It's true.
Everytime the market goes through one of these, mutual fund redemptions soar, and as soon as it rebounds mutual fund sales climb. They sell low and buy high everytime.
Now, will it be the same this time? Will I be able to count on the market to rebound, will it Stand By Me again?? --- Here's Ben E. King

W -- The Movie

There is nothing new in Oliver Stone's story of the George W. Bush and his 8 years as President of the United States. But what Stone does is put a frame around the whole mess and hang it on the wall for us to consider. Bush Jr. will be regarded, without a doubt, as the worst President the United States has ever produced. Stone reveals Bush Jr. as an impulsive, irresponsible testoterone-case who strutts his way through life to mask his insecurity. His silver-spoon arrogance and access to privlege makes it difficult for him to learn from his errors. Above all, he just didn't work very hard at being President. He seemed to prefer watching football to reading briefing notes. In fact he put more effort into becoming President than he did to being President. His legacy, 2 wars and a historic economic mess that threatens the whole world.

Something I realized as I watched the movie last night. In real life, you really never see Barbara and George Bush with their son. Old George and Barbara may not want to hang with Jr. that much -- you know what I mean?

Whom The Gods Chose to Destroy, They First Drive Mad

I think we can all understand how battered and bruised is poor Mr. Dion these days. It must be crushing to see yourself as the man who lead the Party into the Valley of Death on October 14th. His decision to stay on as Party Leader is based on emotion, not logic. He's trying to put this thing right for his own private reasons, not for the good of the Party or protect the next leader from noxious attack ads. It is hard to imagine he will have the authority or credibility to lead the Liberal caucus through debates on the economy in the house or control Liberal MPs on the hill. One of his jobs is face the media daily and communicate the Party's direction and decisions. He will likely experience difficulty there too. As revered as Pierre Trudeau is, remember there was a time he too was considered a liability and Party President, Iona Campagnolo took Pierre out for lunch gave him the news that it was time for him to go. If they did that to Pierre, they will be bloody minded enough to do to it Dion. They gave him chance to commit harikari, and sadly he didn't accept. It is kind of like he is on Canadian Idol and the judges tell to stop, but he just keeps on singing louder and louder and louder and refusing to leave the stage.

That's Stornaway in the upper left, the official residence of the Leader of the Opposition.

They Forgot to Call Dion!

Liberals spent the whole weekend trying to figure out who would be the Interim Leader after Dion stepped down.
This morning, Dion announced he would be staying on until a new leader is elected at the next Party Convention! Looks like someone forgot to phone Dion and tell him he was leaving now. I am sure the party will be in touch with him soon, very soon. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if they were waiting for him in the parking lot outside the National Press Building after his newser today.
The word is that Dion rejected the advice of his team during the campaign and that is one of the things that ultimately lead to his stubble and fall. He spent the weekend 'secluded' at home. Maybe he didn't answer the phone eh?

Thomas Friedman

Thomas Friedman is one of my favorite Journalists and Authors. He is one of the few people I have heard making sense these days about the American economy. He's an op ed columnist for the New York Times and has written extensively about the global economy. (The World is Flat is a good start if you like to read what he has written.)

Everybody seems to think Barack Obama is going to the next President of the United States and he will the guy saddled with straightening out the mess. Talking about the US election and the economy recently Friedman suggested that the rallying cry of this election should be "Invent Baby, Invent". In other words, the US economy is in cardiact arrest. It needs to start creating wealth instead of living on borrowed money. It needs to be revitalized and rebuilt. It is time to stop saying crazy things like "the fundamentals are strong" ..or "the American worker is the most productive worker in the world". This is not true -- It is time to get to work and start developing new industries, new ideas and new wealth. Let's hope, that Obama knows that--or that someone tells him and tells him fast.

Who Dunnit?

There is a world of hurt out there --- and everyone is looking for villians -- was it the banks, was it government regulation, was it Wall Street? The answer is yes, yes and more yes.

Most of my work at the moment is for an American legal news website. I have interviewed dozens of lawyers who are currently filing lawsuits on behalf of Americans who have had their life savings wiped out by a financial debacle that never should have happened.

Here are some FACTS.

The Banks -- A verdict of 1.5 million dollars was recently leveled against the Wells Fargo bank after a woman was suckered into a mortgage she couldn't afford. Banking employees worked on COMMISSION -- They received $2000 for every mortgage someone signed. The mortgage salesperson inflated the woman's salary, savings and mislead her about the actual mortgage lending rate. No lawyers are required to participate in real estate deals in the US. The woman objected, saying the information was incorrect. "Don't worry, we can fix that later," Wells Fargo said. The woman never moved into the house because she knew she couldn't afford it. She ended up selling it a year later for 90,000 less than she paid for it. The bank didn't care if she defaulted because it was repackaging mortgages and selling them to other financial institutions, that then in turn sold them as Mortgage Backed Securities to other unsuspecting Americans.

What can we learn from this -- Bank employees should not work on Commission -- Lawyers should be involved in all US real estate transactions.
-- If you're the lender -- then you have to hold the mortgage, they can't be resold.

Wall Street--Yup. Their finger prints have been found on the gun. Your financial investment advisor has a legal responsibility to advise you properly. Instead, many sold high-risk investments to older Americans and told them they were as good as money the bank. A Florida lawyer recently described the case of an elderly woman whose nestegg has been so depleted she will be forced to move out of a very comfortable nursing home to a state nursing home.

Government -- I hear right wing commentators screaming that communists are
taking over the government. Oh my. Yes, it is true that the Clinton administration and the Bush administration encouraged home ownership. Nothing wrong with that, it is a sign of a healthy society. The problem is there was no regulation -- and they left the door open to unscrupulous lenders to qualify anyone for a mortgage. New government regulations are needed.

People -- An Arizona lawyer who specializes in bankruptcies (he is very busy) talked to me about his clients. Very, very few know the difference between a variable rate mortgage, a fixed rate mortgage or an interest only mortgage. There is no lawyer required to look over a mortgage before someone signs and as a result many people had no idea what they were doing.

Culture -- There is a strange notion that we all ought to have more than our parents had. We have forgotten how hard they worked to get where they are. So folks think that those stainless steel appliances and granite countertops are some kind of birth right. Many, many people simply reached beyond their means because they think it there for the taking. Wrong.

Greed -- We worship at the feet of the Gods of Consumerism. Enough is never all you need. We seem to want more and more --- and are willing to use credit to get it -- at any cost. What a price we are paying.

No Country For Old Liberals

We've heard not a single word from Liberal Leader Stephan Dion after delivering the party's worst election performance since Confederation--even the Green Party finished ahead of the Liberals in four BC ridings. You can hear the sound of nails being pounded into the scaffolding as it is readied for the noose to be slipped around the neck of Monsieur Dion. Certainly, Mr. Dion's unspectacular performance during the campaign was part of the Liberal Party's problem--his obvious inability to connect with Canadians or to communicate the economic benefits of his carbon tax.

But here's the deal. The Liberals have been a party in decline for decades. Pierre Trudeau lost the west years ago with surly epithets like "why should care about your wheatfields?". Remember that one? It is nothing short of a miracle that Ralph Goodale keeps winning in Regina. The party hasn't been able to count on votes in Quebec since 1984 and the Mulroney's years, quicky followed by the iron grip of the Block. And Ontario has been slowly slipping out the party's reach--losing seats to the Conservatives and this time to the NDP in northern ridings of the province.

Who dares to grab hold the helm on this sinking ship is in for an ocean of trouble.
It's time for the Liberals to "rethink baby, rethink."

Fuld Flailing

“Is it Fair?”

A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you are talking real money!

Reality TV fans tuned in today to watch the public flailing of Wall Street fat cat and CEO of now defunct Lehman Brothers. Between 2000 and 2008, Richard Fuld Jr. admitted to the House Committee in Washington took home $350 million and presided over a company that paid out millions and millions in bonuses to other executives who rode to work in helicopters. While many Americans are wondering how to hang on their homes and watching their 401K get the stuffing kicked out them, Fuld has two vacation homes, including a 14 million ocean front estate in Florida, a multimillion-dollar art collection.

“You did well, when your company did well and you did well when your company wasn’t doing well,” said House Committee Chairman Waxman. “You have lots of money and now your shareholders have nothing.”

Fuld was repeatedly asked and asked many ways if this was fair compensation?
He bobbed, weaved, dodged, and never really answered the Committee’s question about the touchy subject of executive compensation that so enrages people, especially these days.

The man who presided over the biggest bankruptcy in the history of the world told the Committee looks as exhausted as Lehman Brothers. He started out with the company in 1966 as a junior employee, did his business degree at night school and wound up as the CEO. If the ending of the story wasn’t such a nightmare, it would the very essence of the American dream.

Of course, for Fuld, who still managed to end up with a big bag of marbles, it is still a pretty good tale.

House Prices

Kamloops Real Estate: Time for a Reality Check

Okay enough everybody!

It is time for a reality check---stop watching those wacky TV shows where a couple of guys who don’t know a hammer from a garden hoe, buy a dump, paint a few rooms, hang a flat screen TV on the wall and then flip the place for twice what they paid for it.

The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation’s latest housing market report says, in so many words, the party is over and the bar is closed. Rising mortgage rates, cautious consumers, declining housing starts and increased supply of houses on the market is bringing real estate price increases back to earth.

According to CMHC, the double-digit growth in housing prices that British Columbia has experienced over the last four years will slow down return to a rate more inline with inflation. CMHC’s mortgage rate forecast calls for 5-year mortgage rates of 7.12 percent in 2008 and 7.42 per cent in 2009.

Add in a few other facts of life these days, like the high cost of gas and rising prices for food and you can bet your sweet petunias that home buyers find a half million dollar mortgage a little less enticing than they did a few years ago.

So what’s the situation in the ‘Loops?

Well, a few years ago, you could buy a decent property in a nice neighbourhood for $170 thousand. Barring an outbreak of Ebola virus in Kamloops, those days are most likely, gone, vanished, over forever.

“We are not going back to 2003 market prices,” says Louise (Ziggy) Morash from Remax Reality in Kamloops. Morash looks at the Kamloops region with the steely eye of someone who has been in the marketing and sales business for 20 years and watched the city grow like an Okanagan wildfire.

Prices have more than doubled in Kamloops since 2004. The upward movement in house prices nothing less than astounding. The average house price in Kamloops at the end of the first six months of 2008, according to CHMC statistics , was $392,753. That is a smoking red-hot increase of 18 per cent from $332,841 compared to the same period in 2007.

After what Morash describes as “some banner years” in the Kamloops market, things have definitely changed. “There used to a lot of multiple offers for almost anything that came on the market,” she says “Now houses can sit on the market for 30,60 even 90 days, but if they are priced right, they are selling.”

The Canada Mortgage Housing report says MLS sales are down about 50 per cent in the first half the year in Kamloops. That would make it one of the slowest real estate markets in B.C. at the moment.

However, Bob Gieselman, the president of the Kamloops Real Estate and District Association says you have to consider the big picture when evaluating current market conditions. “I think the market is leveling off, but you really have to consider what has been happening here since 2004 to really fairly evaluate the situation,” he says.

Gieselman is an agent with Royal LePage and been working the real estate business for 30 years. He’s seen the ups and he’s seen the downs in the Kamloops real estate market. “At the end of every cycle, the price always ends up higher than where it started.”

It’s true that the number of houses for sale in Kamloops has ballooned what you really have to look at the number of houses sold. “It is exactly the same as it was in 2004,” he says.

It may also be true that some people have rushed their homes onto the market because they are worried that house prices may retract. Despite the fact that CHMC says housing sales are slowing, and there is downward pressure on price increases, CMHC says house prices will continue rise. For the Kamloops market, it is predicting that the average home price in the city will be in the $400 thousand range.

As an agent, Morash feels that the market slow down is ‘a good thing’, as Martha Stewart would say. “I didn’t always feel comfortable working with people in the kind of crazy market we had. People felt rushed into buying houses that sometimes weren’t really what they wanted,” she says. “In the next few months, things will balance out and it will be a better experience for everyone.”

Sellers, used to seeing those 20 percent year-over-increases, in market values may need a little wakeup call after years of hearing about offers that routinely come in well over asking price. ““We are in a period of attitude adjustment in terms of the sellers,” says Louise Morash, “Sellers have to lower their expectations at little.”

And, buyers may have to have get a hold of themselves too. “We’ve seen people come in and make offers on properties $100 thousand or $150 thousand under asking price,” says Gieselman, “But that just isn’t the situation we are in at all.”

Remember those two guys, the house flippers, looking to make a year’s salary in 3 months by fluffing up houses, putting some fresh flowers in vase on the dining room table and filling the house with the smell of fresh cookies? Well, they could find that instead of making a bundle, they end up losing a bundle.

www.brendacraig.ca

www.brendacraig.ca

Famous Speechwriters

Some famous speechwriters include: Theodore "Ted" Sorenson, who wrote speeches for John F. Kennedy; Richard Goodwin, who wrote speeches for Lyndon B. Johnson; William Safire and Ben Stein, who wrote for Richard Nixon, as did Pat Buchanan; Peggy Noonan, speechwriter for the Reagan administration; and Judson T. Welliver, who wrote for Calvin Coolidge. Welliver is considered the first official presidential speechwriter. Alexander Hamilton is thought by some to have written speeches for George Washington.
Former Wall Street Journal editorial writer William McGurn replaced Michael Gerson recently as chief speechwriter for President George W. Bush.
Jason DeSanto teaches courses in speechwriting at Northwestern University, having served for more than a decade as a political speechwriter, debate strategist and communications adviser. He has written for United States Senators, members of Congress, and the Democratic National Committee. Most recently, he was a senior adviser and chief speechwriter for Illinois Governor Rod R. Blagojevich. David Frum, the son of the late Barbara Frum, one of Canada's best and brightest broadcasters, worked as speechwriter in the George Bush Jr. Administration. David Frum is credited with the now famous phrase, "the axis of evil".

Speechwriting Rules

And I would now like to CALL UPON OUR GUEST SPEAKER

By Brenda Craig
Speechwriter, journalist and editor
bacraig53@hotmail.com

You graciously accepted the invitation, and at the time it seemed like an opportunity to prove you’re at the top of your game, poised and thoughtful. Maybe you’re the president of a company, a community leader or involved in politics or the executive director of a business organization or the president of a college or university.

But now, that invitation is fast turning into a trip on the Titanic.

When you arrive at the event, you discover you’ll be last on the list of speakers. You’re sitting there listening as speaker after speaker touches on the points you planned to make. Suddenly it’s your turn and you’ve got five dangerous minutes ahead of you. The audience is tired. They have been mortally wounded by the previous gang of dull speakers and you’re about to finish them off by repeating what they have already heard.

The audience is looking up, they’re looking down, and they’re looking at the exits! If they get up and actually start to leave, you think you just might actually faint right on the spot.

If you were Tommy Douglas, one of the country’s natural born orators,
you’d know what to do. If you were Ronald Reagan, another gifted communicator, although he had some very talented speechwriters to help him when the going got tough, you would likely never have fallen into that trap.

Here are some rules of the game you can use to avoid some common
‘Podium pitfalls’.

“Know the batting order”

Knowing your place in the in the lineup makes a big difference to your game plan.

Take for example, the case of the speaker who found out at the last minute that he was the grand finale. Always ask, and in fact demand to know where you are going to be. Are you the opening act, or are you wrapping up the day.

If you are last, arm yourself with an interesting story to illustrate the points you want to cover. No one is likely to have the same story as you, and it’s the end of day, kept it short. You’ll be a beam of sunshine on a cloudy day.

“Tell Stories, Never Jokes”

Experienced speechwriters usually advise clients to avoid telling jokes. It’s very ‘risky business’ because there is an excellent chance, you will offend someone in your audience. A botched joke can stick to you for years.

What you can do is tell engaging stories. Think of employees who went the extra kilometer for the company, think about the day someone’s idea turned things around. Draw on those events that inspired you, or helped you see something more clearly and then share it with the audience. Ask your senior staff to brainstorm for interesting stories with you.

Use them to start your speech. Use them to make your speech more human and evocative and engaging. And use that story to drive home your message when you’re the last speaker of the day.

“Who am I talking to please?”

Effective speakers always know their audience. Think about who is sitting in those chairs. Do they have children; are they business people like you? What are they expecting to hear from you? What is the purpose of the meeting? Is the company on a roll, or are there some ruts in the road? Speakers who consider their audiences avoid errors of tone.

“Thanks very much, ladies and gentlemen, distinguished guests etc.”

We’re living in a busy contemporary world. You don’t have time, they don’t have time and it’s not necessary to greet everyone in the room before you begin to speak. Just say, thank-you. And then boot up that speech and hit enter.


“We think about 20 minutes should do it”

Twenty minutes! Twenty minutes. Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, delivered to 15,000 people and considered one of the great speeches of all time was, only two minutes long.

‘Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty…

It was so short the photographer later complained he didn’t have time to get a picture of Lincoln speaking. If they insist, that it’s 20 minutes or nothing, take nothing. Twenty minutes is too long. A speechwriter usually tells clients, a good speech takes about 1-2 hours per minute to write.

“The Message”

Premier Gordon Campbell recently became canon fodder for Vancouver columnist, Vaughn Palmer, after what he described as a particularly unfocused speech delivered to the Canadian Club in Ottawa. It was a rapid fire list of all the things the government of British Columbia was going to do. It had so many messages, the columnist said no one knew what Campbell wanted the audience to take away.

The reality of course, Campbell has an excellent story to tell. British Columbia's future has never been brigher, never been more sure. But the good news was, you couldn't, shall we say, see the 'forest for the trees'.

The problem was Campbell’s speech broke one of the fundamental rules. Stick to one or two key messages. You’re going tell your audience what you want to say, you’ll say it, tell them you said it and then say it again. You want to be completely in charge of the takeaway message.

And before I go.

Delivering a speech can be a wonderful exhilarating experience, if you’re prepared. You can really prove you are a person in charge of the moment. You can use as it call to action, a way to focus your employees, a way to influence your peers and enjoy yourself at the time. Just follow some of the fundamentals.

* * * * * * * * *

Land of the Big Thirst

Spouting Off About Water…
Brenda Craig
Published in Thompson Life Magazine
June 2007

bacraig53@hotmail.com

There’s been a lot of ‘spouting off’ about the idea of ‘pay as you spray’ mandatory residential water-metering. The nasty truth is, the flat-rate system is a contributing factor to our dubious honour as the number one water hogs of the Nation.
According the city’s Utility Director, David Duckworth we suck up “20 times the national per capita average”. On hot days, when other Canadians use 800 liters a day, we gulp down 2500 liters per capita.

There’s something quite serene about our semi-arid climate with the sage-tufted hills, even if our 270 millimeter annual rainfall (just under 11 inches) does put us in league with Alice Springs in Australia’s outback, the lower edge of the Sahara region of Africa and some areas of Nevada (think Mojave desert).

Considering we’re about 3 inches shy of official desert status, the city’s flat rate for residential water consumers has been thought of as a necessity. Providing low-cost water was a way to keep us from turning into a ‘brown town’, in other words, everyone could afford to keep the lawn green.

Unfortunately un-metered householders can be real drips, and can be frequently seen dusting off the driveway with a hose instead of broom or letting sprinklers miss their targets hour after hour after hour.

But it’s midnight at the oasis, mes cher porcs de l’eau.

Sometime around the end of June, Kamloops City Council will get a yet to be written report on the 100 households that took part in the city’s Voluntary Water-Metering Project. That report may provide council with enough ammo to give the lock-and-load order on mandatory metering. Kamloops Utilities Director David Duckworth says the report will say that “at least 50 per cent of householders saved money while the other 50 per cent paid more”.

Kamloops need to conservative water is more about avoiding costly infrastructure improvements than a shortage of water at the moment. But more importantly, it lacks fairness. As one clever observer says, it’s like a motorcycle and semi-trailer gassing up at the service station and both paying the same amount. Huh?

Utilities Director David Duckworth admits that meters could cause some ‘brown spots’ in town. Any move to mandatory metering will require public education and creative thinking. Maybe it means rebates for xeriscaping or installing underground sprinkler systems, and new developments should come with water saving elements like come with small drought resistant lawns, plants and trees and built in sprinkler systems.

I read something the other day, when I was de-welling about the greatness of water. An American president, Dwight Eisenhower, on a visit to Canada in the 1950ies, looked around and said “you (us Canadians) should remember that really great water is one of your greatest assets. But when you’ve got a lot of it, you don’t think about it.”

He must have been talking about Kamloops. My, the hills are green.



Brenda Craig is a writer and broadcaster, turned speechwriter and media consultant. She now lives and works in magnificent Kamloops, British Columbia.
http://www.thespeechwriter-canada.com/

Kamloops Sex Trade

The True Story of Tranquille Road …
By Brenda Craig
For Thompson Life Magazine Summer 2007

In the alley behind the barbershop, two women are dragging on smokes as they take a rest from their sex-for-dope lives in the shade of a leafy tree, while a couple of skinny guys in baseball caps and sunglasses are dealing drugs behind a dumpster. Down one of the side streets there’s a young man on the sly, checking for unlocked doors into a boarded up office building.

Further on I meet Jane (not her real name), a 34-year-old sex-trade worker hanging out behind a rundown old motel called the Royal Apartments, but the locals call it “Mutantville” because it has a history as a giant flophouse for druggies, sex-trade workers and whoever needs a cheap place to live.

Her steely blue eyes look tired and sad. She’s wearing a red sleeveless T-shirt and blue jeans; a crack pipe — her most valuable possession — sits on the ground beside her. Yes, she’ll talk to a reporter for a minute, she says.
How did Jane get into the sex trade? “Well, I just got mixed up with the wrong guy in Kelowna. Started using cocaine. And now I am addicted to four or five different drugs,” she says but adds she doesn’t do crystal meth, “It puts holes in your brain.”

Jane has a $600 a day drug habit, which she supports with money she makes as a sex-trade worker.

“It’s not hard physically,” she says. “It’s mentally hard. You’re up one minute feeling like a queen and then in the morning you feel bad, that’s the hard part.”
Jane grew up in Kamloops and has a daughter who lives with her family. She describes them as being Christian and hopeful that she gets straightened out.

But in the meantime, Jane has nothing to do with them or her daughter.
She knew the girls that were arrested in the June busts, but wasn’t among them. “I was out of town for two days. Can’t get me, I just keep moving,” she chuckles.
Jane has tried to kick her habit, she just completed 20 days in the House of Ruth, a women’s shelter on Maple Street that provides counselling and temporary housing. It is one of the few places she can go for help with her addictions.

Unfortunately, the road to change is a long one fraught with ups and downs. “I knew I was gonna relapse,” she says “but there was nothing to help me.”

Not so Tranquille Road

It’s ironic that a road named Tranquille is embroiled in a bitter turf battle between the people who live and own business there, and the sex-trade workers and drug dealers who live on and work the streets.
Residents complain about crime and prostitutes turning tricks in their yards, while frustrated shop owners blame prostitutes, addicts, homeless people and people with mental health issues for scaring away customers.
A neighbourhood watch group regularly patrols the streets trying to chase away johns that troll for dangerous delights. On the flip side, outreach workers are out there offering support to marginalized persons by assisting them in finding affordable housing, helping sex-trade workers get off the street and possibly reconnect with family, and helping people develop skills so they can find jobs.

In response to complaints from city residents and business owners the RCMP has initiated red zones to try to remove the “undesirable” elements from this North Shore neighbourhood and downtown Kamloops. A red zone is an arbitrary boundary that gives the courts power to tell people where they can and cannot go.

And despite the highly publicized two-day crackdown by RCMP on prostitution in the neighbourhood in early June (that resulted in street prostitutes being arrested and ordered to stay away), Kamloops’ infamous sex-trade area on the city’s North Shore is still humming along.

Tranquille Busted

In May the Kamloops RCMP identified prostitution and drugs as part of their crime-reduction mandate. They started with a crackdown on sex-trade workers and followed that up with two additional undercover operations to bust drug dealers and johns.

In the first week of June the RCMP set up a two-day undercover sting operation targeted at sex-trade workers in the city’s two red zones (North Shore and downtown). “The operation took 10 hours to plan and then another 10 hours to arrest 17 prostitutes,” says Insp. Yves Lacasse.

The crackdown made homeowners and business people feel better. One restaurant owner “came over and he thanked me. He hugged me in fact. And another customer came and shook my hand,” says the inspector who makes a point of patronizing local area businesses on the North Shore.

But Lacasse is a realist. He admits that despite the arrests, and despite an order that those arrested not go anywhere within what is now called the red zones, within days, some of the women arrested were back on the street, working again.

Who’s Neighbourhood is it?

“Is it the taxpayers’ neighbourhood or is it the junkies neighbourhood?” asks Peter Mutrie from the North Shore Business Improvement Association (NSBIA). “The taxpayers are taking it back!”

Three years ago, Mutrie and the NSBIA started hammering away, trying to create a better environment on the North Shore and rebuild the community.
“Starbucks turned up their nose at me at a convention four years ago, now they have a little kiosk over at Safeway,” says Mutrie. From his perspective the sex trade and everything that goes with it is gouging the life out of a potentially vibrant neighbourhood.

The City of Kamloops has a plan to create a market village in the Tranquille area using the latest in urban design to build streets that encourage people to be there. Mutrie and the NSBIA are working with business owners to brighten up properties in the area and have hired the very people that some folks want to eject to work on landscaping and painting projects.

People that need a hand have signed on to help spruce up the neighbourhood in two separate programs: the Social Enterprise Program, for landscaping, and the
Job Creation Partnership, for painting.

The Social Enterprise Program is organized by the community development committee of the NSBIA together with the ASK Wellness Centre. The project is aimed at building a sense of community by bringing together business and property owners, agency workers and neighbours in an effort to beautify prominent corners along Tranquille. Both Service Canada and the City of Kamloops are helping with funding, and business owners are paying for materials. Ten people have come forward to spruce up the neighbourhood.

The Job Creation Partnership is a Federal program under which the NSBIA applied for a four-person crew to paint six buildings to create an interesting visual change along Tranquille. Eligible persons are those on an unemployment insurance claim. The NSBIA provides project development and admin while building owners ante up funding for materials.

Both projects are aimed to improve the area’s appearance and build community relationships as well as community pride. They also build a business case for the merchants along the affected strip as consumers, residents and business owners find the area becoming more appealing.

Homeowner Deserts the Hood

“One man complained about sex acts happening on the church steps. We don’t want this (area) to become like East Hastings Street, in Vancouver,” says Insp. Lacasse. “This is not acceptable behaviour in this community. Anybody’s community.”
“You need to bust the johns and you need to give the prostitutes help,” says former Tamarack Avenue resident Robert Lee from his new home in Logan Lake. After watching the prostitution and drug problems in the area get worse and worse every year, Lee finally gave up and sold his house in June.
“It was quite the sight” on Tranquille Road, says Lee. “All the time you could literally see drug users and prostitutes walking across the street, waving, trying to ask people for dates and stuff.”

Although he liked the street where his family lived, he didn’t like the sight of prostitutes along Clapperton and Tranquille Road, on his twice-daily trip to drop-off and pickup his kids at school. “It was just a little too much,” he says.

She’s Not a Criminal

The RCMP round up of prostitutes has been both praised and disparaged, but everyone agrees some of the women are in desperate need of help.
Natilia James, 19, suffers from fetal alcohol syndrome and has a mental age of about five reported the Kamloops Daily News (June 14, 2007) on the court proceedings that followed her June arrest with 16 other sex-trade workers. “When the time came to impose a sentence, (Judge Stella) Frame stopped speaking, as if momentarily lost for words, as if suddenly overwhelmed by the circumstances of an offender without much hope. Her hand came to her mouth, then to her eyes as she broke into tears. She left the bench, saying she needed a break,” wrote Robert Koopmans.

Bob Hughes, executive director of the ASK Wellness Center, says, “She (Natilia James) represents why we need something done. This is unacceptable. She is barely able to function in society. She doesn’t deserve to be in jail. She is not a criminal. She is a social disaster!”

The ASK Wellness Centre provides support for persons with HIV and hepatitis C, and to the people in the community who are marginalized: sex-trade workers, people with mental health problems, drug addicts and homeless people.
The window in Hughes’ office overlooks Tranquille Road. With a $750,000 a year budget his staff of outreach workers is in contact with most of the road’s marginalized, doing everything from needle exchange to finding food, shelter and health care.

Kamloops has become a big city with big city problems. According to the RCMP, the city is home to 55 known sex-trade workers. But depending on the time of year this number can rise as high as 80 to 90 as prostitutes from elsewhere arrive, work the streets for a while and then move on.

On one particular day, says Hughes, an outreach worker picked up 50 needles in the alley, went back three hours later and picked up 50 more. But he doesn’t think rounding up prostitutes and throwing them in jail solves the problems of the women themselves, or the community as a whole.
“Women who are picked up as sex-trade workers — should they be pushed through the criminal justice system or a health-care system?” asks Hughes. “Well I would believe, based on my knowledge of this community, that people are in favour of assistance and help.”

New Hope

Arjun Singh, an energetic, Kamloops city councilor is talking so fast he’s out of breath. “We don’t have enough social housing, we have wait lists. We don’t have enough detox opportunities.”
He’s part of a group looking at the North Shore Improvement Plan and the recent debate of sex trade in the area and says, “We are at a crossroads. We have ladies on the street who don’t want to be there, defiling themselves, and it’s affecting our community.”

But getting help to sex-trade workers and others with drug addictions is a complex task. “People’s initial need is for safety and some supportive place to live,” says Carol Savage, manager of Addiction and Residential Services for Interior Health.

When it comes to dealing with addiction problems Savage operates on the housing first idea and right now she says “its bleak.... Landlords can have pretty high standards in what they will accept in their lower rent housing, so the people who are really struggling, who are difficult, who go in and out doing drug runs, they are having a really hard time right now.”

The rental housing vacancy rate in Kamloops was 0.5 per cent in April 2007 according to Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation’s Rental Market Statistics Spring 2007 report, and the average rental rate for a bachelor suite was $513.

Savage is part of the Kamloops Initiative Project, which involves BC Housing, social agencies, the RCMP, Interior Health, the NSBIA and others working to come up with a plan to help both the community and the sex-trade workers and other marginalized groups.

The John Howard Society is building Georgian Court, a new low cost housing project on Fortune Drive. Construction started July 23 of this year and the building is expected to be ready for tenants Aug. 15, 2008. Of the $7.9 million budget, the John Howard Society contributed $870,000. Georgian Court is a 48-unit complex made up of one-bedroom suites. Ten of the apartments will be fully furnished by the society.

In addition to this complex, the society owns five other buildings and is currently putting together two more building proposals for housing in Kamloops.
Including Georgian Court the society owns and manages 186 apartments. It has become the largest non-profit housing provider in the city. It accommodates low-income single individuals, seniors and low-income families. Georgian Court will be a transition-housing complex where people can live for up to two years. In the future, the society hopes to build a 50-unit, one-bedroom apartment complex that will house the individuals who move through Georgian Court, says Dawn Hrycun, CEO of the John Howard Society Thompson Region.

The House of Ruth has received funding to expand its services and will build eight new apartments for women and children at its Maple Street location. The project will also include a new 10-bed emergency shelter, which will accommodate more women and will reach out to street level women who are homeless, says Tim Larose, executive director of New Life Mission, which operates the facility.

With $1.8 million loaned from the province along with $180,000 in annual operating funding, the mission will house women recovering from drug and alcohol problems for up to two years while they learn life, job and parenting skills. The facility is intended to fill a void in housing that currently does not allow for long-term recovery. When complete, the new building will bring the inventory of beds from 18 to 24 as well as the eight two-bedroom apartments for women and children.
“I’m not saying things are perfect,” says Hughes “but I have never felt the sense of optimism around what the government and community is prepared to do to help these marginalized people.”

One of the big issues, apart from housing, is a way to connect sex-trade workers with the help they need says Hughes. “We want a regular sex-trade workers addictions program. We want to be able to have housing available, access to medical treatment, help them get income assistance, peer support, to reconnect with family, and say we care, not by making you go to jail, but make sure you get some help.”

It took old Tranquille Road a long time to get so far down. It could take a while to see real improvement. But when is finally comes together, “it will be a win for everyone in the community,” says Singh.

And the NSBIA’s Peter Mutrie, who has carried the torch for the community, believes that in three years Tranquille Road will have a very different tone.


Unsolved Murders

There have been three unsolved murders of sex-trade workers in Kamloops since 2003.
Denise Heather Hamill, age 31, was found in the Thompson River on Aug. 1, 2003. It took several days for the RCMP to identify the victim. The local media assisted by showing jewelry from the victim, which helped to identify her. She is believed to have been murdered elsewhere and her body dumped into the river by the killer. She was a sex-trade worker who was known to police. Hamill’s mother says her daughter was a happy go-lucky person as reported in the Kamloops Daily News (Aug. 16, 2003).
Shana Labatte, age 30, was found near the beach at Weyerhaeuser on March 23, 2004. She is believed to have been murdered elsewhere and her body dumped where it was found. The mother of two was a sex-trade worker and known to police. She was addicted to drugs and separated from her children, but missed them terribly and wanted to straighten her life out, according to a report in the Kamloops Daily News (Oct. 28, 2004).
The badly beaten body of Sherri Lee Hiltz, age 44, was found in a vacant lot on Surrey Avenue on April 8, 2005. She was a sex-trade worker and was known to police. A mother and recovering addict, Hiltz once wrote a letter to the Kamloops Daily News (appeared Apr. 28, 2000) after an incident in a dentist’s office to remind people “they shouldn’t be so quick to judge others.”
Anyone with information on any of the murders is urged to call Kamloops RCMP at 828.3000 or Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-TIPS(8477).


Red Zone Arrests

Results of the Kamloops RCMP mandate to reduce drugs and prostitution this summer in the city’s two red zones (North Shore and downtown):
17 sex-trade workers arrested during two-day undercover sting operation first week in June
38 people arrested during two-week undercover operation targeting street dealers in early July
22 johns arrested during two-day undercover sting operation in late July

The Mean Business

Table for How Many?

By Brenda Craig

Published in the Kamloops Business Magazine May 2008

The chef and owner of Bistro 326, Ryan Clark is talking fast, very fast. He’s on his flip phone and there’s a food supplier with him right now in the restaurant. He’s placing his order for the next week and he’s interviewing for wait staff and chefs later in the day and he’s got catering job for group Rocky Mountaineer tourists in the evening, but he can make some around 11 am to talk. It's only nine in the morning and this guy is zooming.

“I’m 29 and I’ve been in the restaurant business since I was 14, my wife and I have twins at home, another baby on the way and a dog and we’re renovating at home” says Ryan Clark. He’s got dark spiked hair and looks pretty cool in his back chef’s jacket, black trousers and black rubber shoes.

He leans forward, sitting very secure on a leather parson’s chair, his arms resting on one of the restaurant’s marble top tables. “This used to be a schnitzel house” he says “but we got a good deal on the lease and it’s got really big kitchen that any chef would love to have” he says.

And it has definitely been ‘de-schnitzeled’ since Ryan and his wife Brook took over. Giant framed mirrors hang on the modern sea foam coloured walls and a dozen or so sixties retro style lights give the room a bit of mood. In word, it’s kind of hip. It’s not Yorkville, but it definitely has style.

“We started with four staff and now we have 16” and Clark says
“I haven’t had a paycheck in 4 years, but my wife’s an accountant so
she makes everything work.”

Clark’s Bistro 326 on Kamloops Victoria Street is now in its 3rd year. Most restaurateurs are pounded into steak tartar before the first 12 months so by industry standards, the Ryans have cooked up a minor miracle.

If You Can’t Stand the Heat, Get Out of the Kitchen

It is easy to get burned badly in the restaurant business according to
Leonard Nakonechny from The British Columbia Restaurant & Food Services Association. “It’s a mean world” he says with heavy emphasis on the ‘e’ sound in the word mean.

Nakonechny runs a sales and marketing business in Vancouver, but he grew up in Kamloops, worked at Chapters View Point Restaurant as teenager and has been involved in restaurants one or another for the last twenty years. “The general rule is” he says “if you’re in business after five years, you’ve made it, before that it is a staggering amount that goes under.”

The BCRFA represents about a third British Columbia’s 11,000
restaurant owners, everything from cafes to fine dining. According its statistics, about 8 out 10 restaurants go flat as pancake before the can
get established.

“It is amazing, how many people don’t have a marketing plan, or a business plan.” and says Nakonechy “I think it is knowing who you are from a brand proposition, what are you going to be known for that’s crucial.”

Kamloops has a very small number of restaurants compared to Vancouver or Victoria, but the Kamloops City Hall’s business licensing office records show there are currently about 280 establishments that serve food in the city.

Over on the north shore, Mervo’s restaurant would have to be considered your basic diner. It’s burger and fries, bacon and eggs all the way. “I started working in a Greek restaurant and they didn’t think my name sounded greek, so they called me Mervo” he says.
He real name is Merv Shull. It hard to see much difference between the way he looks and his customers. On this particular afternoon Shull has a real estate agent waiting to talk to him because he is planning on selling up and moving to Thailand to retire with his wife after 25 years in the business. He interrupts our chat to wave say thank you and good bye to a couple of regulars that come in for lunch every time they come down from Williams Lake.

“When you’re a small operator you have to be involved with the
people, I used to have a pizza place and if I wasn’t working some people wouldn’t order.” Merv Shull turns and to greet another regular. “Hi Tom, be with you shortly.”

It may seem obvious but along with some pretty good business
sense and the necessary marketing plan, successful restaurant owners have to have the right personality.

“The people who want run a restaurant are people people, they can
talk to anybody,” says the BCRFA’s Nakonechny, “They are very good actors in the sense that can put a profile on with any particular guest.”

Kamloops restaurateur Martin Creutz Lechleitner at one point owned four restaurants in Kamloops. Frustrated by staff shortages, Creutz Lechleitner cut back to two establishments, the Amsterdam in Valley view and The Commodore Café and Lounge downtown. Before he took over the Commodore location last year it was fondue house. Creutz Lechleitner says “people’s tastes are changing in Kamloops.” He says his at the Commodore customers are “people from bigger cities, Vancouver, Calgary and Seattle, people who move here for retirement, they have been around and they have higher expectation levels.”

If you happen to thinking about buying Mervo’s on Tranquille or getting into the restaurant racket, Leonard Nakonechny from the BC Restaurant & Food Services Association has one more bite of food for thought. Make sure you investigate kitchen. “That’s were all the money is, the heating vents, the ducts” he warns. Having to repair or rebuild it is recipe for failure. And he says “most restaurants run a line of credit.” If you can’t pay your suppliers, they won’t deliver and your restaurant will be done like dinner.

Kamloops Tourism

By Brenda Craig
Published in the Kamloops Business Magazine May 2008

The seat belt sign will stay on throughout most of 2008 according to the Canadian Tourism Commission as industry rides out some heavy turbulence in many of the country.

Part of the problem is the pumped up Canadian ‘petro buck’, It’s like a bird in engine of the Canadian tourism and hospitality business and according to Canadian Tourism a lot of travelers are striking Canada off the list of affordable destinations preferring places with more favorable exchange rates.

But thanks to some bold marketing, interesting geography
and some new travel trends, Kamloops and its honey of a climate is doing an end run around a serious descent in one of Canada’s most valuable industries.

"A Hot Destination"

“We are absolutely bucking the trend,” says the CEO of
Kamloops Tourism office, Lee Morris. “Over the last two years we have averaged 6 to 7 per cent growth in overnight accommodation stays, so we are actually tracking a head of what you will see provincially or nationally.”

The loonies’ drag on the tourism and hospitality business has been practically invisible for the Kamloops market mostly because “70 per cent of the visitor traffic that overnights in a hotel here is from British Columbia”. Those overnight stays, according to BC Tourism put brought 57 million dollars into the Kamloops economy last year and tourism and hospitality is among the top employers in the city.

“At least 40 per cent are leisure travelers” says Kamloops Airport Manager Fred Legacy, as rhymes off the latest stats on passenger traffic at the local airport. “Last year 200,611 people passed through the terminal” and “Passenger traffic has increased every month for the last 23 months and it’s heading for 24,” says Legacy.

A long time player in the travel business, Legacy says there are several reasons for his busier than ever airport, but he graciously applauds the efforts of the Kamloops two-year-old Tourism Office. “They’ve done a great job of marketing and connecting people with things to do when they do come here,” says Legacy.

"The Sweet Spot"

Not only is Kamloops getting around the notion that Canada is an expensive place to play, it’s developed a reputation on the lower mainland, northern BC and Alberta as affordable. “we’re know as good value” says communications officer Miles Prodan from Okanagan Tourism Office “with lots to offer people who want an active vacation”.

Kamloops maybe have a near desert climate, but it is fertile
ground for outdoor fun and very attractive to what Prodan refers to as the “zoomers”. They’re an off shoot of the baby boomers that can be found at ski resorts, lakes, spas, guest ranches, motorcycles, RV parks, houseboats, 5 star hotels, wine festivals, golf courses and just about anywhere their imagination, money and good health will let them go.

Palm Springs North

“Palm Springs North?” sounds good to Ian Hansen from Sun Rivers Golf Course, but he thinks it’s a little early to slap that label on Kamloops. However, Score Magazine recently identified Kamloops as premium Canadian golf hot spot. The city can claim more than a dozen courses, 8 of them championship courses, within 30 minutes of Kamloops. “We’ve always had quality product, but with the additional of Talking Rock and Tobiano we’ve moved up a level”. And he says “you’ve got diversity and quality and you can come here and play six or seven different kinds of courses and not have the same experience twice and we’re definitely seeing an increase in visitors.”

If there’s an ‘oops’ spot for the Kamloops tourism and hospitality industry for Kamloops it’s the lack of upscale hotel accommodation admits, Kamloops Tourism’s Lee Morris. “It’s been recognized for a long time that we need a 4.5 hotel in Kamloops.” And as always, Morris says Kamloops needs to keep an eye on competitors. That hefty Canadian dollar goes pretty far south of the border and the challenge for Kamloops Tourism office is to make sure people keep coming to B.C.

And says Morris “there is a serious labour shortage for everything from housekeeping staff to hotel managers.”

Generally speaking, those aren’t really bad problems to
have in the tourism and hospitality industry these days.

What's A Speechwriter

Speechwriter
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A speechwriter is a person who is hired to prepare and write speeches that will be delivered by another person. Speechwriters are used by many senior-level elected officials and government executives, governors, and the president or prime minister of a country. Speechwriters are also used in the private sector, to write speeches or presentations for company presidents and Chief Executive Officers.