Over the next couple of weeks, we're going to be asking for your input through four online polls on our home page (pgcitizen.ca) about who and what were the biggest local newsmakers of the year.
This morning, we'll post the first poll, which asks you to choose the local story of the year. And the nominees are:
Interior wildfires, evacuees in Prince George
Spruce Kings banner, league final playoff run
Opioid, fentanyl crisis
City of Prince George managers wages, overtime
Next week, we're going to ask who you think the local artist of the year was. And the nominees are:
Andrew Burton (CBC Poetry Prize finalist)
Jack Grinhaus, Lauren Brotman (Theatre NorthWest, Hedda Noir)
Carla Joseph (Art battle, Northern Indigenous Artists' Collective)
Shelby Meany (Cabaret, Legally Blonde)
On Dec. 23, we'll post the third poll, asking who you think the local athlete of the year is. And the nominees are:
Ethan de Jong (Prince George Spruce Kings)
Vasiliki Louka (UNBC Timberwolves basketball)
Brett Connolly (Stanley Cup winner, Washington Capitals)
Jared Young (Chicago Cubs minor league player of the year)
Sarah Beaudry (Winter Olympics, biathlon)
Finally, on Dec. 28, we'll ask who you think the local newsmaker of the year was. And the nominees are:
Brett Connolly
Dominic Frederick (Lheidli T'enneh First Nation chief)
Shelby Meany
Kyle Sampson (Cariboo Rocks The North, city councillor)
Jared Young
We'll share the results from all four polls on Jan. 2, in the print edition of The Citizen, as well as on our website. On that day, we'll also name the most-read Citizen articles online in 2018.
In the meantime, the Canadian Press sent out its annual poll this week to newsrooms across the country, asking editors to pick Canada's newsmaker of the year and news story of the year.
For newsmaker, the nominees were:
Colten Boushie (Indigenous man killed trespassing on a Saskatchewan farm)
Viola Desmond (human rights activist, first Canadian woman to be featured on a regularly circulating banknote)
Doug Ford (premier of Ontario)
Chrystia Freeland (foreign affairs minister, NAFTA lead negotiator)
Francois Legault (premier of Quebec)
Bruce McArthur (alleged Toronto serial killer)
Rachel Notley (premier of Alberta)
Donna Strickland (Nobel Prize in Physics winner)
Justin Trudeau (prime minister)
Humboldt Broncos hockey team (16 players, staff killed in bus crash)
The choice was obvious. While all of those individuals made headlines and many of them sparked national debates, the Humboldt Broncos tragedy was felt across the country. In the immediate aftermath, the team and the community were flooded with financial and emotional support. Later in the year, the survivors, many of them dealing with paralysis and other lifelong injuries, inspired Canadians with their stories of resilience and optimism.
For the news story of the year, the nominees were:
Fredericton shooting
Extreme weather
Ontario politics
Humboldt crash
Indigenous justice
Pot legalization
Toronto van attack
Toronto outdoor shooting
NAFTA negotiations
Quebec election
To be blunt, most of this list is a joke, partly because of the predominance of regional stories that had little to no impact on the nation as a whole and partly because of the absence of three of the year's biggest stories.
The Federal Court of Appeal slamming the brakes on the proposed TransMountain pipeline expansion, ruling that the federal government did not adequately consult affected First Nations and assess potential environmental impacts was huge. So was the announced $40 billion LNG project across Northern B.C., which Trudeau rightly declared as the largest private sector initiative in Canadian history. If anyone in Quebec or the Maritimes wonders how either of these stories affects them, they need to ask where the money for their provincial equalization payments from the federal government comes from.
And not considering the opioid crisis, which has led to more than 3,000 overdose deaths across Canada in 2018 alone, in communities large and small, including Prince George, is just a ridiculous oversight.
Those three stories easily overshadow most of CP's nominees.
The Quebec election? Please.
The Humboldt crash was significant, Indigenous justice remains a huge, ongoing national issue and the NAFTA negotiations were significant to the country as a whole but the real game changer and The Citizen's pick for news story of the year was the legalization of pot.
Canada is only the second country in the world to legalize marijuana and the provinces will spend years sorting out the legal implications while municipalities will sort out to what extent retail sales and cannabis production may or may not happen in their respective communities. The RCMP and other police forces across the country are faced with the immediate problem of detecting and charging cannabis-impaired drivers. Expect numerous legal cases in the years ahead on a variety of fronts, from what constitutes a reasonable impairment test to the selling of edibles.
And that's just the law.
Cannabis legalization will bring about significant cultural and social changes to Canadian life in every province and community - some positive but many negative - in the same way that alcohol and gambling have.
Refocusing back on Prince George, we hope you take the time to vote in our online polls on the local news story, newsmaker, artist and athlete of 2018.
We can't wait to hear what you decide.
- Editor-in-chief Neil Godbout
