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  Sometimes, it’s the simple things people say that stay with you. When I got my first newspaper job (mumblety-mumble years ago) in High Prairie, Alberta, I went to a couple of meetings my first week. At one of the meetings, I talked to a couple of different people, but since it was just a social event kind of thing, I didn’t bother taking notes. A few days later, I was at the second meeting, and one of the same people from the first meeting came over to chat. I, of course, was drawing...

For Prince George hockey players Nicolas Braaten and Jacob Ross, it’s been a busy month. The two, who played together on the Pee Wee Tier 2 Cougars this past season, were together again, but this time in Europe. “We were in a tournament in Calgary,” Jacob says, “at the Alberta Challenge Cup. We didn’t even know about the team.” After the tournament, Canadian Explorers organizer Peter Lumir sent the families of the two boys a letter, asking if they would be interested in being part of the...

  Three hours after being introduced as the new coach of the Prince George Spruce Kings, Chad van Diemen was on the ice at the Coliseum. Van Diemen ran practice sessions Friday afternoon for the six teams of players participating in this year’s Prospects Camp. “(General manager) Mike (Hawes) had sent me a schedule for the camp,” van Diemen said Monday, after the camp was over, “and the rosters for the teams. “I knew some of the players from our work with them, and I recognized some of...

The newest coach of the Prince George Spruce Kings was ready to get to work Friday morning. “We’ve got a great group of returning players,” Chad van Diemen told a media conference at the Prince George Coliseum on Friday, “and we’ve got the Prospects Camp starting today to look at filling out the roster.” General manager Mike Hawes said van Diemen, who spent the last six years as the associate head coach and assistant general manager of the Powell River...

Everything he’d worked for had led up to that one moment. When Cole Abou-Tibbett, 17, won gold in his junior male second degree black belt under 62 kilogram division at the Taekwon-Do Nationals in Regina last November, he knew it had all been worth it. “I’m not sure some people understand when I tell them what that is but that [win] meant I was the number one fighter in my weight class in Canada. “So I definitely had a feeling that all the training I’d done to this point had been like a...

On the ice, the season is over for the Prince George Cougars. Off the ice, it’s a different story. “I’m in the office now,” coach Mark Holick said Tuesday. “We’re putting an end to this year, getting ready for the Bantam Draft in May. “We’ll probably be in the office until the end of June or so, then take some time off.” The season ended for the Cougars on Saturday night, as they dropped a 5-4 overtime decision to the Victoria Cougars, losing the first-round WHL Western Conference series...

  For future Prince George Spruce Kings, it starts now. The club’s annual Prospects Camps kicks off today (Friday) at the Coliseum and runs through Sunday afternoon. More than 100 players will officially register starting at 10 a.m., at which time they will also be assigned to one of six teams for the weekend. Team practices will start at noon, and the first of a series of intra-squad games starts at 4:30 p.m. with Team Grey playing Team Red. Teams Black and Gold take to the ice at...

Sometimes the biggest discovery is what isn’t there. “We were totally surprised that the U1 wasn’t there,” says UNBC Professor of Chemistry Dr. Stephen Rader. “U1 has always been found in other organisms.” U1 is a specific type of small nuclear ribonucleic acid (RNA), which Rader and his team of researchers found wasn’t in red algae. The group was looking for new ways to study gene splicing. “Red algae refers to the pigments in them, not the actual colour,” Rader says. “They are actually...