Archives for April 7, 2018

When you order a drink at some P.E.I. restaurants, it may arrive without a straw.

It’s all part of an international push to reduce the number of single-use plastic straws ending up in the garbage.

The Red Island Hospitality Group operates four restaurants in downtown Charlottetown, P.E.I., and are already phasing the straws out.

“We’ve already begun to roll it out slowly where we ask the guest if they’d like a straw or not,” said Steve Barber, co-owner of the Red Island Hospitality Group.

“We will eliminate the ask on the 8th [of April]. We’ll definitely educate the guests as to why we’re doing so and the benefits on not using a plastic straw.”

Plastic straws are one of the 12 most commonly found items on Canadian shorelines. Restaurants and bars around the world are working hard to reduce the number used.

“Plastic straws seem very unnecessary in the long run,” Barber said.

“More or less the drink tastes the same whether it comes out of the glass or the straw. If we can eliminate such an unnecessary piece of garbage, it would be great to do so.”

Barber said the decision to stop offering customers straws came after a recent visit to Banff, Alberta, where he had noticed the local #StrawsSuck campaign had really taken off.

He decided to make the change at the Group’s four restaurants; Hunter’s Ale House, Charlottetown Beer Garden and Seafood Patio, The Factory Cookhouse and Dancehall, and John Brown Richmond Street Grille.

Barber said it’s an environmental move that will some save money.

They plan to eventually use the savings to swap over to the slightly more expensive paper straws, for when customers do request one.

“I mean, clearly, if we’re not serving as many straws it is going to cut down on the amount of waste we have,” Barber said. “It should be fairly significant.”

Other Island restaurants are also planning a straw free operation.

Lobster On the Wharf plans to reduce the number of straws they use when they open in May for the summer season.

“Drinks that you might expect to get a straw in, like whether that’s a highball glass or whether it’s a pop or water, we are not going to serve straws automatically,” said Steven Larkin, owner of Lobster On the Wharf.

Larkin estimates the seasonal business can go through 15,000 to 20,000 straws during the six months of operation.

“It’s really an easy way to try and do something to lessen the impact of the business on the environment.”

Larkin said it wasn’t a financial decision but was the right time to do it.

He said straws would still be available for those drinks that may be difficult to drink without one.

“There are those people who have different sensitivities or maybe they need a straw to drink their beverage in general. We are not going to sit there and question that, you know, we will just accommodate that.”

The sale puts an entirely new spin on the notion of ‘art appreciation’

When the National Gallery of Canada auctions off one of its two Marc Chagall paintings next month, it will not only raise the money to buy what gallery director Marc Mayer says is a more significant work of art, it will make millions of dollars in profit.

Mayer tells CBC that the gallery’s La Tour Eiffel was bought back in 1956 for just $16,000 — roughly $146,000 in today’s dollars. The expectation is that when the painting is auctioned next month by Christie’s, it will fetch anywhere from US $6 million to $9 million (that’s $8 to $11 million Canadian). Some believe the painting could fetch even more.

It’s the kind of return that gives new meaning to the term ‘art appreciation’.

We need some money fast. And this is the last stop. We have tried everything else.
– National Gallery of Canada Director Marc Mayer

“We were trying to match stickers in this case because we didn’t want to risk not raising enough money with smaller, less significant things,” Mayer said in an interview airing on CBC Radio’s The House.

“We thought (of) one thing that we can live without, that would not be a national tragedy, and I don’t think selling this particular painting by Chagall is a national tragedy … All of the people who had the responsibility to weigh in on this … the eight people with PhDs in art history who are part of the process of deciding this, agree.”

Mayer acknowledged that not everyone agrees. When CBC News broke the story of the sale this week, the outgoing head of the Canadian branch of the International Association of Art Critics called the sale an act of “monumental stupidity” and said it should be stopped.

“Future generations will not forgive the gallery for that loss,” Ninon Gauthier said.

Mayer said La Tour Eiffel spends most of its time in storage because the gallery considers the other Chagall in its collection — Memories of Childhood — to be a better example of his work and historically more significant.

“We are trading up for something that we think is significantly more important in art history and would never leave the walls,” he said. “It would not be a secondary work to one that is more important. It would be unique in our collection.”

Mayer would love to say more about the mystery painting the gallery is working to acquire because, he said, “it’s a wonderful story.”

But he said he just can’t. Can’t say who the seller is, can’t say what it is about the painting that means it just has to be part of the gallery’s collection — or whether the artist is even Canadian.

What he does say is that the gallery has the right of first refusal.

“There’s a painting that’s about to leave Canada. We have it on good authority that it’s gonna leave Canada and it has been offered to us, and it’s been offered to some foreign museums who would buy it in a heartbeat. And we don’t think it should leave Canada.”

It’s the first time, to his knowledge, that the National Gallery has had to sacrifice one artwork in order to buy another. Normally, private donors can be counted on to chip in, or to buy a significant piece outright to give to the gallery.

That didn’t happen in this case.

“We need some money fast,” Mayer said. “And this is the last stop. We have tried everything else.”

Mayer said he can’t just spend the gallery’s entire $8 million annual acquisitions budget on one work of art because he has six other collections to curate.

He also said it would be inappropriate for him to ask the government to increase that budget — even though the amount hasn’t changed for 17 years — or to kick in money for what he sees as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the National Gallery.

Mayer did tell the government about his plans.

“They understand the process by which works are acquired,” he said. “And they wished us good luck.”

Mayer said he doesn’t think he’ll need it when the Chagall goes up for auction next month.

Donation is largest single gift in Antigonish university’s 165-year-history, says president

Amelia and Lino Saputo Jr. are donating $10 million to upgrade and expand health and wellness facilities at St. Francis Xavier University, where their son will graduate with a business degree this spring.

It’s the single largest donation the Antigonish, N.S., university has received in its 165 years, president Kent MacDonald said on Friday.

The Saputo family runs an international dairy products company and is headquartered in Montreal. The business tripled its size after it went public in 1997, dominating markets in Canada, the United States, Argentina and Australia. The family ranks among the top 25 richest families in Canada.

MacDonald said the family developed an affection for St. FX during visits to their son.

“They’ve made it known that they’ve fallen in love with the university. St. FX is a special place. They’ve seen what it has done for their remarkable young son, and his friends and people they’ve met,” he said.

“They’ve seen while most universities are trying to grow, we’re doing everything we can to stay small. Amelia and Lino have surprised us with this incredible gift and on behalf of the entire St. FX community, we are so grateful.”

The money, which comes from the Saputo family foundation, will be distributed in five stages over five years, MacDonald said.

The gift will create the Amelia and Lino Saputo Centre for Healthy Living as well as provide better sports facilities for students, faculty and residents of communities in the area.

“We’re able … to be ready to host the Canadian Special Olympics in Antigonish on our campus this summer. It’s going to be wonderful to see nearly 1,000 athletes from across the country come and join us,” he said.

“And our recreational fitness centre is simply too small for the demand of our students so we’re going to be increasing that [to] three times the size of our current space.”

An auxiliary gym will also be expanded for university and public use and the locker rooms at sports facilities will also get much-needed renovations, he said.

“We’re doing these renovations in a five-stage plan. Our commitment is not to borrow any more money, to try to live within our means, to raise money, then build so their flow of funds to the university aligns perfectly to our building schedules.”

MacDonald said the improvements will benefit area residents and create jobs for people building them.

“St. FX is not an island. We are there to serve the broader public as well. This is going to be a major investment for northeastern Nova Scotia, not just Antigonish and Antigonish County.”

The university hosted a sold-out fundraising dinner on Friday night, with the Saputos in attendance. Four hundred tickets were sold at $250 a piece.

Large donations

St. FX has been the recipient of large donations over the past few years.

In 2015, the university received an $8-million private gift from Jeannine Deveau, who graduated in 1944. The school committed to match $5 million of the gift, bringing the Jeannine Deveau Educational Equity Endowment Scholarship Fund to $13 million.

In October 2016, former prime minister Brian Mulroney announced the creation of the $60-million Mulroney Institute of Government at the university.

About $30 million came from the federal government and another $5 million from the Nova Scotia government, while the rest came from private donors. Some had controversial backgrounds including Canadian-British billionaire Victor Dahdaleh — the middleman in a massive international bribery scheme — and Wafic Said — a Syrian-Saudi billionaire and ex-arms broker — who contributed a combined $5.5 million to Mulroney’s legacy project.

Money for biomass projects, IT upgrades, and an educational garden

The federal government has announced $2.1 million in new spending on 11 economic development projects in the Beaufort Delta and the Sahtu.

Liberal MP Michael McLeod announced the new money for “sustainable economic development” on Thursday in Inuvik. The money comes through the Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency (CanNor). The money will add to earlier money the organizations themselves and the territorial government spent on the projects.

A media release issued Thursday listed where the money will be spent:

• $230,000 to the Children First Society in Inuvik for a new biomass boiler and solar heating system in its facility.
• $163,200 to the Tulita Dene Band to upgrade its IT system.
• $202,000 to the Norman Wells Land Corporation to develop a block land transfer area development plan that describes what development can happen on land in the block transfer lease agreement the land corporation owns.
• $533,000 to the Ulukhaktok Community Corporation to expand the Kayak Centre.
• $56,000 to the Rat River Development Corporation to develop a biomass industry in Fort McPherson.
• $750,000 to the business arm of the Deline Gotine government for three different projects.
• $26,722 to Aurora College to improve the Western Arctic Research Centre’s educational garden
• $114,000 for a feasibility study on expanding commercial fishing activities in the Mackenzie River Delta.

Jozef Carnogursky, president of the Nihtat Gwich’in Council, said the group received the $114,000 in funding for the fishing study in December and has already started exploring how a small-scale commercial fishery could be developed in Inuvik.

“If you go into Northmart here, you won’t’ find any local fish,” he said. “We are hoping that this project will help gear toward providing local fish to people.”

Patricia Davison, the executive director of the Children First Society, is hoping the funding for the facility will help cut costs.

“We hope to realize an annual saving of $30,000 annually and of course that will be $750,000 over the project life-span of the systems,” she said.