Verbatim

*Oct 2008*

This is a soundscape that I made for my radio journalism class. It follows some interesting characters through a drunken night in Parrsboro NS.  It has a few flaws, but I’m still rather happy with it.  Saturday Night in Parrsboro

*November 2007*

The game is Rum Runner. You put in your coins, place your bets, and take a chance on winning something. Every so often a message appears on the screen. “You almost won $250” it says, or some other amount of money. The chance of winning is small, as everyone knows, but it doesn’t stop people from playing. And it certainly hasn’t stopped people from losing.

And losing a lot. VLT’s are a big source of revenue for the government in New Brunswick, and all that money has to come from somewhere, but it isn’t from the pockets of winners.

The government isn’t the only one to profit from these machines – the owners of the restaurants and bars that have them also get a percentage of the money from the machines. But that’s going to change by 2009. Under a new government policy, restaurants will lose any VLT’s that they currently have.

The idea is that VLT’s should only be in age-restricted areas, like bars and casinos. Restaurants aren’t age-restricted, so they shouldn’t have video lottery machines in them that can be accessed by underage kids.

So, the government is going to take all VLT’s out of restaurants in the province, while largely leaving alone bars and other establishments that are open to people over the age of 19.

But how will this affect those restaurants that are losing their machines?

Kathy Evans is the manager of Pizza Twice on Priestman Street.

“Well, we only get a small percentage of the revenue to begin with, but we will be losing some revenue, so we’ll just have to find ways to recoup that,” she said.

Sites that have VLT’s only get 20 per cent of whatever amount comes out of the machines, while the government keeps about 60 per cent. The rest goes to the Atlantic Lottery Corporation.

Pizza Twice is between two high schools – Fredericton High, and Ecole St. Anne. The bulk of their business comes from the lunch hour rush of students looking for a slice of pizza.

“I always have to keep an eye out that the kids who come in here don’t try and play the machines, not unless they’ve got the money to pay the fine we’ll get because of it. So, I guess that it’ll be a relief that we won’t have to watch out for them anymore, once they take them out.”

There aren’t many people who come to Pizza Twice just for the VLT’s, Evans says. But those who do are about the only thing she’ll miss when the machines are gone.

“The regulars who come here are usually nice to talk to, especially on slower days, but when they [the VLT’s] are taken out, they’ll probably stop coming. That would probably be the only sad thing about losing them.”

(more…)

*September 2008*

You may have never heard of the Canadian Action Party, but if you vote in Fredericton this election, you’ll see them on the ballot.

Ben Kelly is the fifth candidate in the riding of Fredericton for this federal election season. He’s a member of the Canadian Action Party, and at 21, is the youngest candidate in Fredericton.

“I started to get politically active in high school,” says Kelly. “One of my co-workers at Brewbakers introduced me to the Canadian Action Party, and their platform, in late 2006.”

Since then, Kelly has been working with the CAP party little by little until about a year ago, when he decided to become their potential candidate in Fredericton for the next election. One of the big reasons he got involved with the CAP party is that their platform focuses on issues that no other party in Canada is talking about.

The CAP platform revolves mostly around monetary reform. Namely, they want the bank of Canada to loan the government the money to pay off the $500 billion in debt that Canada has accumulated since 1974. Kelly says the government is currently paying $60 billion a year just to service the debt, or keep it at the same level.

“That’s a lot of money that could be used for other things,” he says.

The CAP proposes using the bank of Canada to create money to pay off that debt, a plan that has drawn criticism. Creating money that isn’t in demand would lead to inflation, but Kelly says that since the money is used by the government only, that it wouldn’t cause inflation.

(more…)

*February 2008*

The delay in the start of the semester at St. Thomas caused a lot of grief for students, and many are hoping for some money to help them make it through the extended semester. A committee of students and
university officials is now looking at how best to compensate students for the stress caused by the recent faculty strike.

By the end of March, the details of the faculty contract will be decided, and the university will know how much money it has left to give to students. The negotiation of the faculty contract, which caused a lockout/strike for the month of January, has gone to binding arbitration and will be resolved by mid to late March.

“It’s too soon to say how much money students will be getting. Universities in this region that have gone down this road usually give in the range of a couple hundred dollars,” said Jeffery Carleton, director of  Communications for the university.

The students union is predicting that students can expect to receive about $200 in general compensation.

“There’s no set amount yet, we’ll have to wait until the binding arbitration process finishes until we find out how much money is left for students from the faculty salaries that were essentially saved during the

lockout and strike period,” said Duncan Gallant, the vice president of education for the students union.

(more…)

*April 2008*

Even two years later, the name Kerry Martens makes people shake their heads in disgust and walk away. When asked what happened, the typical response is “the deal just fell through.” The stories in the newspaper said the same thing, because everyone had the same story.

The people of Parrsboro, Nova Scotia, are unwilling to discuss what really happened to the town in 2006 because of shame. They’re embarrassed that a town full of people were fooled by one “fast-talking city slicker” from British Columbia. They’re embarrassed of how naïve they were to believe the outrageous claims of Martens.

And, they’ve all become so cynical that if a legitimate business tried to move into the dying community, they wouldn’t trust it for a second.

Miles Willigar has lived in Parrsboro all of his life. He claims to have known from the start that Martens wasn’t what he claimed to be, although he couldn’t divulge how he knew.

“I knew within ten days of him coming to town, that he was a fraud. But nobody wanted to hear it. When people really want something to be true, you can’t make them see otherwise no matter how hard you try,” he said.

It was the summer of 2006 when Kerry Martens came to Parrsboro, a town that had been shrinking for many years, and offered hope. He claimed that he would build a factory in the town, with jobs for 1500 people, which would more than double the town’s population.

Andrew Wagstaff is a journalist who has been working in and around the Parrsboro area for more than 13 years. He says the Headz Games affair was “devastating” for the community.

“It happened at a time when the town was really struggling for a future direction – population was dwindling, employment opportunities were few and far between, and young people had no choice but to move away to look for their careers. Tourism was the only industry that had shown promise for the area, and it’s been in the toilet since 9/11, and factors such as high gas prices and the high Canadian dollar have made it difficult to recover,” said Wagstaff.

Martens was the CEO of Headz Games, a company that manufactured a variety of board games, called Griddly Headz and was licensed by NASCAR among others. It wasn’t a company that anyone had heard of, but that didn’t seem to matter. What did matter is he promised 1500 jobs with an entry level salary of $12 an hour, improved infrastructure, housing developments, and all without a dime from the government. Which is, of course, exactly the kind of development the government likes to hear about.

Government officials were on hand when the announcement was made. After the smoke cleared at the end, their statement was the same as what people in Parrsboro said: “it just fell through.”

But of course it didn’t just fall through. That would imply it was something that was legitimate from the start.

(more…)

Below are three promotional video’s that I made for St. Thomas University in Fredericton, NB.  They were all done during welcome week 2008.  After I finished my work I gave them to the university.  The music was put in by the university, not me.