Trail of Destruction Totals Nearly $20,000

DYNAMITE EXPLOSIONS PUNCTUATE WILD HALLOWEEN SPREE IN CITY

By Larry Emrick

Prince George is recovering today from one of the wildest and most destructive Halloween celebrations on record.

In a night of violence, puncuated by the rumbling explosion of dynamite charges, unruly gangs of roaming youths smashed windows, pelted cars and buildings with eggs, overturned at least three vehicles, and blocked traffic in the downtown area.

At least one street fight was reported to police and a young woman was terrorized when youths broke the windows in her Second Avenue home.

The first hint of trouble came as early as 6:30 p.m. and before the crowds were dispersed and the outbreak curbed policed handled fifty complains of rowdyism and violence.

At one time three police officers were kept busy answering telpehones.

The outbreak reached near riot proportions when youths, egged on by screaming girls, marched through the downtown area smashing windows and hurling rocks at cars.

Armed with cartons of eggs the uncrontrollable mob splatted store and office front and fired them at one another.

At least three dynamite explosions puncutated the mayhem although no one was reported injured. The explosions were detonated in South Fort George, Connaught Hill and on Second Avenue.

The vehicles were turned over by roving gangs and uncounted numbers of cars were pushed onto sidewalks and lawns.

The convertible top of a sports car was slashed while parked on the lawn of the Provincial Government Building in downtown Prince George.

A 22-year-old man who threw a rock at a patrolling city works truck was fined $200 when he pleaded guilty to a charge of causing wilful damage when he appeared in city magistrate’s court. Police identified him as Kenneth Patrick Olson.

Meanwhile, in other ares of the town children and teenagers armed with soap smeared cars and windows in the best Halloweed tradition. Others, wieldy spray paint cans, splatted fences and walls.

Police in both the city and district reported fires started although damage was not serious. One fire was lit on the back porch of a McIntyre Crescent home.

Police took 40 young people into custody at the height of the outbreak but most were released into the custody of their parents. Spokesmen for the city RCMP detachment said today that charges are contemplated against some.

Roaming youths stole the chairs from the lobby of the Canadian Legion on Seventh Avenue less than 100 yards from the police office but they were recovered.

There was no report of looting from stores where windows were broken although it is believed that the gang armed itself with 30 dozen eggs stolen from Tabor Lake Poultry farm on the Giscome Road.

Shop owners to several areas of the town picketed their establishments to ward off damage but other businesses were less fortunate and suffered heavy damage from broken windows. A police officer reported twenty stores in a four block area with broekn windows and several large plate glass windows in the downtown department stores were shatted by rocks. At least one city resident reported the windshild of his car smashed and several residents reported windows smashed in their homes.

Although no official damage estiamte has been prepared to date, unofficial estimates place the damage at from $15,000 to $20,000.

“Apparently the professional protesters are becoming worked up today about all the equipment and BC Housing is wondering if we should back off because the optics are bad.”

Thanks for allowing us to finally address that incorrect assumption. That email was referring to a group of protesters (Identified by another agency) that were travelling from one site to another in Vancouver. It was not about our local advocates. If' you'd like to discuss that inaccurate reporting you are welcome to address us directly at [email protected]…

It was based on a phone call where it was suggested "professional protesters" may be headed to Prince George. It was not in reference to any of our local advocates. That is the trouble with trying to create a story out of emails without the benefit of context or an interview.

The first thing you should know is that Prince George has had an active poetry scene for more than 40 years now. It was touched off in about 1970 by the arrival of Barry McKinnon, who is now regarded as a major Canadian poet with a precision-tuned sensibility that is as tough-minded as it is generous. In 1970, McKinnon wasn’t much more than a pencil-necked recent university grad getting his first teaching gig. But from the beginning, McKinnon was full of all the right kinds of energy: he loved teaching poetry, wasn’t interested in power, prestige or an academic career, and more or less instantly felt at home in Northern B.C…

McKinnon was educated at UBC and Sir George Williams (now Concordia University) in Montreal, where he took classes from, among others, Irving Layton. Once in Prince George, McKinnon used a deceptively simple method of making his work as a teacher effective: he created books. Folk hero and developer Ben Ginter had donated an old letterpress to the college, which Barry discovered in one of the college out-buildings.  He got it working and turned it into a teaching device, and then, when the college began to move itself toward industrial development stupidities of one sort or another and found McKinnon’s activities morally worrisome and administratively irritating, he found another letterpress in Barkerville, which he moved into the basement of his house. Whenever a poet came to town, McKinnon—usually with the physical collaboration of the poet and his students, would print up small letter-press monographs or broadsides for the occasion.  Many were beautifully produced, and nearly all were at least interesting. Meanwhile, the students learned that poems were made, that both composition and production were linked, and most of them went away enlightened, whether they turned into poets themselves, or went out in the world to do other things.