So yesterday, CKPG reporter Caden Fanshaw posted:

Here are those posts, closer up. (Note: I visted her LinkedIn profile myself to verify these were there — they were, but now her profile seems to be either deleted of completly private. I found a couple of posts tagging her, but they are dead links. Likewise, the Facebook posts you see lower down in this letter are now gone).

After that, people started digging into her Facebook as well, and it didn’t take much to find similar posts, including a false story about people getting vaccine microchips in their hands.

And look, I’m not going to litigate these. Odds are if you are a person who views the above as sound sources of information, you’re no fan of mine, so do with this what you will, as Fanshaw says. However, I will point out two small points and one larger one:

1. This provides new insight into Weber’s recent comments to the Prince George Post about not speaking to media: Which is pretty fascinating when you see one of her preferred sources of information is Candace Owens telling us COVID was a cover for governments to usher in a new world order (again, your mileage on this may vary):

2. As Fanshaw points out, “Why does this matter, well we've been trying to get clarification from Weber on where she stands in relation to SOGI. She dodged the question at least twice in this interview.”Which brings me to my third and largest point:

Weber was elected with very little scrutiny, and very little public support

In 2018, the province converted the Prince George school district to a ward system, giving Mackenzie and the Robson Valley one trustee each, while the remaining five seats go to Prince George. This was a controversial move at the time and it was opposed by the elected school board of the day, because as they pointed out more than 95 per cent of the district’s population is Prince George, which means the city would now be severely underrepresented on a per capita basis. The province went ahead and did it anyways.

Weber was elected in January 2022 when she received a whopping total of 76 votes in a byelection which, for comparison, is just one more than the person who finished last in the corresponding Prince George byelection, and then received zero votes in the October 2022 election because no one opposed to her.

Again, for contrast, the person who got the least votes in Prince George received 2,192 votes — that’s 28 times more than Weber got to be elected — and now she’s the chair. The person who got the most votes came in at 5,659 — 74 times Weber’s.

We’ll come back to this but the result of all of this is Weber came into her position pretty much unknown, at least in Prince George — I’ll presume folks in Mackenzie know her better — because she didn’t have to campaign, she didn’t have to go to any of the public forums and, frankly, because her election was a foregone conclusion when nobody ran against her, which meant the media in Prince George focused on the candidates here, where there was actually a choice to make.

And: It is well possible that if Weber campaigned on a platform of opposing a new world order putting microchips in people’s hands and advoating doctors be sent to jail for life, she would have been elected. There have certainly been candidates who’ve run on similar platforms elsewhere and mustered up votes. But a. She didn’t run in the most recent election, she was acclaimed and as a result, b. her views were not widely known by the public.

The questions are, now that these posts are out there — they are being shared on Twitter and Facebook, etc — will she address them and, more relevantly to the people who live and vote in Prince George — how will the rest of the school board react? Erica McLean, Craig Brennan and Corey Antrim have been silent through the unexpected departure of the superintendent and the subsequent resignation of two of their colleagues. Weber may not have been responding to media requests for interviews but she did, at least, hold a scrum at the end of the last board meeting and answer questions. There is nothing preventing the Prince George representatives, who received many, many more votes and represent many, many more people, from doing the same. This convention of deferring to the chair is just that — a convention, not a rule, and not one that prevents board members from speaking as individuals. Beyond that, the school board chair is chosen by the other trustees, who all ran independently. They are the ones who have decided to make Weber the public face of their board, they are the ones who are deferring all media requests and public statements to her, and they are the ones who decide if they want to continue with her at the helm — and whether they feel that doing so reflects the values of the 5,000+ voters who gave them their positions, versus the 76 who voted for Weber.

The birthday party experts

OK, let’s take a break and watch this vintage commercial for Bubba Balloo’s:

Lots of nostalgia for this place going around right now!

Quick news:

• The Rotary Spray Park is open for the year.

• The weather may be unseasonably hot but that doesn’t necessarily mean the wildfire season ahead is dire.

• Likewise, the flood risk is about normal for this time of year.

• Remember when it was revealed (again by Caden Fanshaw!) that mayor Simon Yu owns a derelict building in downtown Prince George? He says he’s finally fixing it up.

• Here are the latest restaurant hazard ratings. They’re improving!

• 21 tickets issued in latest RCMP speed blitz.

• Foothills students to plant 1000 trees.

• Quesnel preparing for pool referendum.

• George Harris named executive director of Two Rivers Gallery.

• Vanderhoof Mayor concerned following lengthy Nechako Lumber curtailment.

• B.C. reaches revenue-sharing, land-management deals with McLeod Lake Indian Band.

• Mom pleads for return of memorial cross honouring late daughter, who died from toxic drug overdose.

• 'Adventures in Healthcare' program returns for Prince George high school students.

• Theatre Northwest to debut Where You Are to cap off production season.

• It’s bear season.

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