January 30, 2008 Vol. 33 No. 26

Early retirement too good to be true

I wanted to let everyone know I am tendering my resignation today. I must say I have thoroughly enjoyed my 11 years at the Okotoks Western Wheel, but to be honest something better has come up.
It is not that I was actively pursuing other opportunities, because I had every intention of spending the rest of my career in journalism at the Western Wheel.
My life plan changed Thursday. Everything was thrown for a loop with what appeared to be just another e-mail. However, as I clicked through the e-mails this one caught my attention. After all, when an esteemed barrister from across the pond seeks you out one cannot help but pay attention.
Barrister Richard Williams has asked for my help. Me, John Barlow. Out of all the people in the world, Mr. Williams sought me out and found me tucked away in Okotoks, Alberta.
I was compelled to answer his distress call and now I am heading to Germany to start a new life.
It is going to be difficult to leave this newspaper which has been my second home for more than a decade. It is also going to be an adjustment leaving Okotoks as I have come to love this community and all the wonderful people who have made Okotoks one of the most vibrant and thriving towns in Canada.
Unfortunately, when opportunity knocks I believe one must answer –– life is simply too short.
So, I am going to Berlin to claim my inheritance from a long-lost relative, Mr. Andreas Schranner who was apparently a successful businessman and real estate mogul.
Initially, I was concerned Mr. Williams had the wrong person as I am a third generation Canadian and my family roots are planted firmly in England and Holland - no Germans that I know of in the family. Lots of Russells, Garnets and Williams, but no Hans, Fritz or Schultz.
However, Mr. Williams assured me that he would pass me off as Andreas Schranner’s second cousin’s uncle’s half-sister’s brother-in-law’s nephew's son.
You see Mr. Schranner deposited 14 million pounds Sterling in a financial institution with Mr. Williams. Unfortunately, Mr. Schranner, his wife Maria, and their daughter Eich along with her husband Christian and their two children perished in an Air France flight that crashed en route to New York.
Apparently, Mr. Williams was a bloodhound trying to track down other members of Mr. Schranner's kin, but to no avail. That was until he found me.
Now, Barrister Williams has assured me 20 per cent of Schranner’s $14 million fortune or $2.8 million if I can help him procure the funds from the financial institution. Of course, Mr. Williams gets 40 per cent, but I think that is only fair –– he did send out an email you know. Another 30 per cent will be given to charity (my thought is an orphanage in Torrington for orphaned gophers) and the remainder will pay expenses for the transactions.
With $2.8 million I will likely send my children off to boarding school and my wife shopping to West Edmonton Mall.
Me, I am going to be too busy with my new business. You see, I am going to buy the Saskatchewan Roughriders and I will be the new coach, GM and starting long snapper.
All I have to do is send my name, phone number, address and a copy of my passport to Mr. Williams and then wait for my money.
I must be very special that Mr. Williams picked me.
Oh my goodness, I just got another e-mail, this one is from Nigeria and someone else is asking me to help get $20 million from another estate in the Congo. Man, I should take another look at my family tree. It looks as though my grandma was waaaaay off. Or, perhaps, these people see I am a trustworthy person. That or incredibly stupid. Don’t answer that. You won’t be laughing when I am sipping a Pilsner in my luxury suite at Taylor Field (or Mosaic Stadium)on 10th Avenue in Regina. It will even have its own bathroom, sweet suite.

Editorial -

Climate plan not enough

It’s about time Alberta adopts a plan to take steps to reduce the province’s greenhouse gas emissions. However, it’s unfortunate to see the plan fall short of the mark.
Premier Ed Stelmach announced his plan last week, which weighs heavily on the use of carbon capture technology to account for 70 per cent of the total reductions. Under the plan, emissions will be cut in half – 200 megatonnes – by 2050, which is 14 per cent lower than 2005 levels.
However, emissions won’t start to decline until 2020 as the plan calls for 20 megatonnes to be cut by 2010 and an additional 50 megatonnes by 2020. So, Albertans will have to wait 12 years before they start to see any improvement. It’s a long time to wait while countries like China and India continue to build their economies - and continue to spew greenhouse gases into the air. This is precisely why a concerted effort on the part of the international community is needed. Canada, and particularly Alberta because of this province’s role as an energy powerhouse, need to play a leading role.
It’s good to see Stelmach taking a leading role in pushing for the development of carbon capture and storage technology. If successfully developed and implemented, it’s this type of technology that could help developing economies build their economies without harming the environment.
The Province has said that 30 per cent of total emissions reductions will come from improving energy efficiency and developing alternate sources of energy. Alberta should aim higher to improve energy efficiency.
In the end, there are few details about how the plan’s targets will be reached. There will have to be a mechanism to ensure that everyone is keeping up their end of the bargain. This is what would determine whether we meet the targets set out, and whether they are 40 years in the future or sooner. Hopefully sooner.

Letters to the Editor -

Police work important

Dear Editor,
Re: Don Devore’s Jan. 23 Letter to the Editor
After reading Mr. Devore’s letter, I felt compelled to write a response. Mr. Devore starts his letter with the common argument found in debate all over this country. I respect, perhaps not agree with entirely, his opinion on police methods and their need to be controlled and scrutinized. However, my respect turned to anger and disappointment as I read on.
With two immediate members of my family serving in the RCMP, I cannot fully express my outrage at Mr. Devore’s seeming lack of knowledge and respect for this profession. Yes, they do speed traps and chase juveniles. Police officers also respond to domestic calls where children are abused, neglected and suffering. They respond to horrific accidents where three children and their parents were killed by a cement truck. Police officers have the heart wrenching job of informing family members that their loved ones are now gone forever. Please remember these officers are also someone’s parent, spouse or relative. The country is deeply saddened when we hear of a police officer’s death while on duty — we must never forget Mayerthorpe!
Shame on Mr. Devore for such ignorance of a profession that does protect him every day whether he wants to admit it or not! A sense of safety and peace of mind we are all privileged to have due to members of all those services that put human lives and public safety first!
L. Brown
Okotoks

Police are heroes and people

Dear Editor,
I read with dismay Mr. Devore’s letter of Jan. 23.  My father was an RCMP officer for 25 years. He put his life on the line many times for the people of the communities he worked in. He did not run into burning buildings, true, or fight the Taliban in Afghanistan. Nevertheless, he was, and still is, a hero to the many people he helped. 
I don’t know if Mr. Devore would knock on a next of kin’s door to tell them a family member had died, or deal with drunk belligerent drivers who would just as soon drag you down the highway as look at you, or answer a call about a domestic dispute where weapons might be involved?  Or patrol, alone, in your cruiser waiting for the person who didn’t want a ticket and chose to tell you with a gun? And may I remind the people of Mayerthorpe or the members killed in Northern Alberta? Were you there Mr. Devore?
Mounties are people too. There are good ones and bad ones, just as there are good people and bad people and I hope that you do not judge the human race the way you judge our police force. 
As for “showing up at the scene...long after the perpetrator has left” the police force is short of staff, just like almost every business in Alberta. If the force is so glorious and easy and not at all dangerous, why are the young people not lined up to become a Mountie?
I have had run-ins with the police here, via automobile accidents, and I have found them to be courteous and professional. As for vandalism, that is an unfortunate problem of bored youth and if the Mounties did not chase them down then everyone would be up in arms about it. 
A case of darned if you do and darned if you don’t.
In closing, I would like to say that perhaps we need to take a balanced approach to looking into the methodologies of the police force, which is, in part, done by an independent civilian committee (Public Complaints Commission).  Just don’t paint everyone with the same brush, please.
 Stacey Wiebe
Okotoks

Kleibrink wins, Kleibrink wins! Hooray! The Shannon Kleibrink ladies curling team from Okotoks did it the hard way but in the end last Sunday afternoon they held the trophy as the Alberta winning team that will represent Alberta at the Scotties Tournament of Hearts in Regina. The Tournament of Hearts will be played from February 16 to the 24th. We can hardly wait to cheer on Alberta and especially our own Shannon Kleibrink. It wasn’t easy as they had to come from winning the C event and put four wins together for the Championship. Check out all the details starting on our Sports front, and thanks to the Wainwright Chronicle newspaper for sharing your photos with us. * * * * * * WOW check out our 2007 Baby feature in this week’s Wheel. We definitely live in a young community as the number of babies featured just keeps growing every year. Congratulations to all the new baby parents in the foothills this past year. * * * * * * Baby it’s cold outside. Frozen water pipes, cars that won’t start and no tow trucks available are the order of the day with temperatures down in the minus 40s. Let’s hope this is a minor setback and the mercury starts climbing back up soon. We have been blessed with a pretty easy winter up until now. Good news is that it gets light earlier in the day already and you can really notice the difference at the end of the day. My son was telling me that a friend is up north in Fort Nelson, I believe, where the temperature is sitting at minus 50 at the rig and they are working. Oh my I feel warmer already. * * * * * * Nice to see this morning that our dollar is once again above the US currency. I know it brings several problems along with the high Canadian dollar but something in me just likes it anyway. Minus 40, high dollar, what the heck are we doing here? We should be in Florida soaking up the sun and turning in our golf game! * * * * * *

Eppure Si Muove

The Pope's words have come back to haunt him, and so they should. The authorities at La Sapienza University in Rome had invited him to come and speak this week at the inauguration of the new academic year, but the physics department mobilised in protest. It was at La Sapienza seventeen years ago that Pope Benedict XVI, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, declared that the trial and conviction of the astronomer Galileo by the Inquisition in 1633 for asserting that the Earth goes around the Sun was "rational and just."
The scientists took this to mean that Ratzinger sees religious authority as superior to scientific inquiry, and seized the occasion of his return visit to make a fuss about it. Radical students then took up the cause, festooning the campus with anti-Pope messages, and on Tuesday the Vatican announced that the visit was off. It's a tempest in a rather small teapot, but he has stirred up a series of such tempests over the years.
Last year, during a visit to Brazil, Pope Benedict declared that the native populations of the Americas had been "silently longing" for the Christian faith that arrived with their conquerors and colonisers, and that in no way did it represent the imposition of a foreign culture. Indigenous groups protested bitterly, but he stood his ground.
In 2006, speaking at the University of Regensburg, he quoted with seeming approval a 14th-century Byzantine emperor's comment: "Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."
When Muslims protested, Benedict took refuge in the claim that he was just quoting somebody else, not saying it himself. (You know how those quotes from Byzantine emperors just pop into your mind unbidden.) His defence of the Church's treatment of Galileo all those years ago was done in just the same style: an outrageous proposition delivered in what he seemed to think was a deniable way.
Galileo was the first man in Italy to build a telescope, with which he discovered the moons of Jupiter -- and the sight of them rotating around their much larger planet set him to thinking about the relationship of the Earth and the Sun. Copernicus had published his book asserting that the Earth rotated about the Sun more than half a century before, but a "Copernican" had been burned at the stake for his heretical views in 1600, so Galileo approached the matter carefully. On the other hand, unlike Copernicus, he had a telescope, so he could SEE what was going on.
When he published his book in 1632, it was banned. In 1633, he was interrogated in Rome under threat of torture, and condemned for "following the position of Copernicus, which is contrary to the true sense and authority of Holy Scripture." He recanted his views to save his skin, but they sentenced him to life imprisonment anyway.
But there is a story, perhaps untrue, that as Galileo was led away he muttered defiantly under his breath "Eppure si muove" ("And yet it moves"). True or not, scientists see that scene as the great defining moment in the conflict between authority and truth -- or, if you like, between faith and reason. Clearly, so does Joseph Ratzinger, which is presumably why he felt compelled, back in 1990, to take one more kick at Galileo.
Speaking at La Sapienza, Rome's most prestigious university, he declared that the Church had been quite right to try and punish Galileo. Or rather, in a typical Ratzinger ploy, he quoted the maverick Austrian philosopher Paul Feyerabend, who said: "At the time of Galileo the Church remained much more faithful to reason than Galileo himself. The process against Galileo was reasonable and just." God knows what Feyerabend actually meant by that, but that was the quote that Ratzinger chose to use.
If you pay attention to what Pope Benedict has been saying all these years, it's clear that he does see Catholicism as superior to other religions and faith as superior to reason. There is nothing surprising about this. After all, he is the head of the Catholic church, and many if not most committed Catholics do believe these things.
But he does go a little farther than most, believing that "Error has no rights" (in the old Catholic phrase) and that "error" is whatever the Church said it was at the time. In the circumstances, you can see why the scientists at La Sapienza University were not all that keen on a return visit.

Wrong people forced to pay for others

Dear Editor,
We would like to know what idiots in the Alberta Transportation Department decided to invoice the Blairmore Fish and Wildlife for damaging an outhouse while they were in the process of rescuing the puppies that were thrown down there and left to die.
Shouldn’t the ignorant people who threw the puppies down the hole get the invoice for repairs? Hats off to the rescuers, but to Alberta Transportation, get real and invoice the culprit who started this whole mess in the first place.
No matter what department of government pays, it will be passed on to the taxpayers. We certainly don’t mind paying our tiny portion, but it is the principle.
Maybe the individual or individuals responsible for invoicing Fish and Wildlife should be thrown down an outhouse hole and left there until the fertilizer in the hole stimulates growth in the common sense area of their brains.
Donna and Terry Shields
High River