A woman from a big city is sent to a small winter town for work and finds herself so charmed she decides to stick around.

Except make it meta.

That’s the topic of today’s newsletter, but first:

• New research from UNBC suggests pyschopaths may not be able to tell when someone is in pain.

• RCMP are investigating the third suspicious death in as many weeks downtown.

• The city of Quesnel employees who refused to get vaccinated and then sued the city have lost their jobs.

• Natural Resources Canada published a study on the effectiveness and costs of heat pumps using Prince George as a test city. I haven’t dug in yet, but it looks like it may be a more viable option than I previously understood it to be.

• Once heralded as a “gem” that put the city on the map, the Four Seasons pool is gone. Pour one out for a real one. As a bonus, here’s the story of the time Pierre Trudeau charmed the city with a swim at the Four Seasons pool.

• UNDU and the Omineca Arts Centre are partnering to give unsheltered people somewhere to go on Sundays. That it is left to volunteer organizations to do this when we have temperatures below -20 C is… not ideal.

• James Steidle interrogates our need to cut down more forests for more subdivisions.

• A 200-year-old headdress is being returned in a ceremony at the Exploration Place this Saturady.

• Here’s another attempt at explaining wind chill.

• Here’s another attempt and deciding whether a wet cold is colder.

• Here’s another reason to love the northern cold: the awesome sun dogs photographed all over the city yesterday. Thanks to Chuck Chin, Zoë Meletis and Mark Karjaluoto for the thoughts and shots.

A very meta Christmas

Story number one:

Story number two:

Story number three:

Two of these are direct-to-streaming Christmas movies filmed in Prince George and one of them is the true story about how story number one led to the creation of story number three.

Back in the winter of 2021, Barker Street Cinema — a partnership between Norm Coyne and James Douglas — set about filming A Great North Christmas, story number one about the LA attorney sent to Prince George for the holidays. It starred Laura Mitchell, the actor who was so charmed by the city during her time here that she came back to direct story number three, which is called Meeting Mr. Christmas.

Here are the trailers for both movies:

And here is the story of Laura Mitchell falling in love with Prince George:

Your results may vary when it comes to Hallmark-style Christmas films but if you are going to watch one, it might as well be one where MP Todd Doherty tells the film’s hero she has work due on the 26th of December “is that going to be a problem” and the Caledonia Nordic Ski Club masquerades as a luxury resort (a good idea if you ask me) and former city councillor Cameron Stolz walks in the background and downtown Prince George is done up to look like Christmastown, U.S.A. (tbh, downtown Prince George at Christmas really is nice, especially 4th Ave.). It is cool to see well-known landmarks through the eyes of a director invested in making it look nice!

And there is another angle to this: The return of Christmas movies to Prince George is part of a master plan to help make Prince George a film destination again, after a brief period in the late-90s/early-2000s when big budget films like Double Jeopardy, Dreamcatcher and Reindeer Games (kind of a Christmas movie?) brought major actors including Ben Affleck and Ashley Judd to town.

Anyways, Meeting Mr. Christmas is still apparently exclusive to the Chicken Soup for the Soul streaming channel (?!?) and I cannot figure out if you can get that here (I don’t think so) but after a debut on U.S.-streaming last year, A Great North Christmas is now available for rent or purchase on Apple TV.

Have a great weekend!