Let's talk about snow days and whether we should declare them
Let's talk about snow days and whether we should declare them
Plus, a daughter speaks out. And a look at who spent how much in the local election
‘I don’t want my dad’s death to be for nothing’
Imagine being 14 and your dad dies in police custody. Two years later, investigators find evidence of wrongdoing on behalf of five police officers. They stay on the job.
The next year, your uncle dies in police custody. Two years after that, investigators find evidence of wrongdoing from a cop in that case.
And the year after that, manslaughter and obstruction of justice charges are finally approved in the death of your dad. The police are, with one exception, still on the job.
That is the case for 20-year-old Lily Speed-Namox, who in the years since losing her father has lent her voice to raising awareness around the issues of policing and racialized communities, saying, “I don’t want my dad’s death to be for nothing.” Here is her story.
Hey, big spenders
Arthur Williams of the Citizen took a look at who spent what in last year’s council and school board elections and it turns out spending lots of money doesn’t seem to be a guarantee of anything. I’ll also note that Cameron Stolz, who was a city councillor but didn’t get re-elected after it turned out he wasn’t paying his taxes but has run since didn’t provide his financial disclosures by deadline.
Let’s talk about snow days
Over 30 cm of snow fell over three days, mail delivery was cancelled, buses got stuck, ambulances got stuck. But though police urged people not to drive if they didn’t need to, a snow day was not declared:
But when it’s actually dangerous to drive, which we were being told it was… maybe declaring a state of emergency wouldn’t be the worst idea?
Ultimately, unless you have a plow for every block, at a certain point there’s gonna be so much snow crews can’t catch up until it stops. And that’s what happened here. But a snow day is not declared.
Who could take the lead on this? I’d argue the school district.
I actually wrote about this five years ago when the Prince George District Teacher’s Association said that by keeping schools open, the district was putting school staff in a risky position of having to get to work when they should be bunkering down. And by having staff come in, there was a sense that students should come in, and if students are going in then, yeah, the parents should go to work because why can’t they if the kids are and it’s a chain reaction that leads to people feeling like it’s not really that important to not drive anywhere because no one is actually closing anything down.
The counteragument is that you don’t want schools to be closed altogether if/when students do show up because they can’t just sit outside. But there’s probably a middle ground where staff who can safely get in keep the school open for shelter purposes but the message is that there won’t be classes, don’t come in if you can stay at home. It happens elsewhere — and I certainly remember having one or two days like this during extreme cold events when I was a kid.
But honestly, this is probably why it won’t happen:
Quick news
UNBC is launching a two-year nursing program at the Wood Innovation Centre.
A text alert system for toxic drugs has been set up in the city.
RCMP arrested a man with a knife near Peden Hill elementary.
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