The Vancouver Sun from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada • 25

SECTION LOWER MAINLAND, B5 WES' the MARCH 6, 1999 EDITOR: CI IRIS ROSE 605-2137 E-MAIL cnisc a pacprcss.soulham.ea The Vancouver Sun TP1 AN ESSAY: Even as it softens the rough edges of human excess, snow is the life blood of -j our province. Agriculture, the fisheries and tourism depend on the annual snowpack. Out oi- ti mi WEST SASKATCHEWAN FIVE PREMIERS TO MEET ABORIGINAL LEADERS REGINA The big meeting between Canada's premiers and top aboriginal leaders will go ahead March 22, a month after it was postponed because only three premiers could attend. But the turnout isn't looking much better this time around, which is likely to anger some native leaders. Organizers have managed to cobble together five premiers for the annual meeting on aboriginal concerns, The Canadian Press has learned.

Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario and Nova Scotia have agreed to attend the conference here to discuss the new social union framework and other major issues, sources said. Phil Fontaine, national chief of the Assembly of first Nations, said he's disappointed but hopes more premiers will get on board. Canadian Press i ii ii in 'iii" r' mm Art M.j 1 1 a 1 I hJ.li 2 1, A World curling champ stays home to play wife, mom Losses and fate forced her to watch the Canadian women's championship on television. DAVE MARGOSHES SPECIAL TO THE SUN REGINA Call it God, call it fate, but something didn't want Sandra Schmirler Prince Edward Island last weekend. First there were those bad throws of hers a few weeks ago that knocked her top-of-the-world rink out of the Saskatchewan curling championships for only the second time since they began their domination of women's curling in 1991.

Then there was the CBC strike that kept her out of the broadcast booth where she'd been contracted to do colour commentary at the Scott Tournament of Hearts the Canadian national women's championship of her sport. That meant watching the big show from her own living room, with husband Shannon beside her and baby Sara on her lap not such a bad deal, actually. The skip of a three-time world cham- Eion curling quartet, which also appens to be sole owner of an Olympic gold medal in that sport and ovemhelming choice for the 1998 Canadian Press team-of-the-year award, is just as happy being home playing wife and mom Sure, she gritted her teeth a few times as she watched upstart Saskatchewan champ Cindy Street get edged out by 'more experienced players but, hey, that's life. And, this being Next Year Country, she knows sbe'lj be back. 1 'I'm 'disappointed that we're n6t there," Schmirler remarked one day last week, as Street and her team were battling for contention.

"But we didn't play well enough, and we lost to a really good team. I feel really good for them." That kind of philosophical attitude comes easy for Schmirler, who values her life as a normal, SEE SCHMIRLER, B3 hi It I L- 11 1 1 11 WINTER'S VISTA: Beyond the temperate pocket of the Lower Mainland, winter landscapes here on fine British Columbia between the equinoxes. It is snow that fuels the engines ol our economy with water released from frozen reservoirs. Snow is not a nuisance but that essence that defines us BRIAN SPROUTSpqciaMo ThcSurf Highway 3 west of Creston de And yet there are 43 place-names in B.C. that refer to snow, a category exceeded only by those names referring to rock.

Snowdrift, Snowslide, Snowsquall, Snowwater. The list goes on, reflecting a powerful reality that somehow fails to impinge at Granville and Georgia. Snow is vital to the economic well-being of the province and not just because it's the engine of a booming winter tourism and recreation industry. It's critical to forestry, to the fishery, to rural agriculture and suburban horticulture and to hundreds of communities that rely on surface runoff to replenish their reservoirs with potable water. Snow serves as a kind of precipitation bank, releasing cool water into the rivers during long hot summers, rivers that SEE SNOW, B3 ALBERTA BUSINESSES JOIN FORCES OVER GAMING INDUSTRY RED DEER A group of business people have formed a legally recognized society that will be the voice of the gambling industry in Alberta.

Interim president Frank Sis-son said 20 people representing establishments with video lottery terminals, casinos and bingo halls met here earlier this week to write bylaws, define group objectives and elect an interim board. They are ready to register the Alberta Gaming Industry Association as a society, he said. The group began to gel last fall before municipal elections that, in many towns, included "plebiscites on banning VLTs. Some saw the group's formation as reactionary, but the VLT question showed a need for the gaming industry to create an association that would promote its interests and police itself, said Sisson. The interim board will meet here April 14.

Red Deer Advocate MANITOBA NEW ADVOCATE FOR CHILDREN APPOINTED WINNIPEG The provincial government has appointed a new children's advocate, less than a week after the last one was laid off. Janet Mirwaldt will take over the job March 29. Mirwaldt said she has been with Winnipeg Child and Family Services for about 10 years. She was chosen from a pool of candidates that included Wayne Govereau, the advocate for the last six years since the position was created. Govereau said earlier this week he was laid off last Friday and has accepted a severance package after rejecting an offer of alternate employment.

Last year, after stating the child welfare system was underfunded, Govereau accused the government of looking for a way to muzzle him. Winnipeg Free Press II FOKO. V. Ami MAJOR LEAGUER: Highlanders pitcher Russ Ford, on a 1911 E98 Caramel card. o.

less landscape of winter. "My country, it is the winter," sang Quebec's popular poet laureate Gilles Vigneault in a folk anthem that speaks to so many because it's true for so much of Canada. Indeed, beyond our tiny patch of warmth, what Voltaire dismissed as "a few acres of snow" fans out from Hope to Kelowna and onward into a frozen province the size of western Europe. From there the snowfields extend into the Arctic territories and across the pole itself, 40 million square kilometres of snow. There is snow at the bottom of Canadian glaciers that is more than 50,000 years old, snow that fell during the last great ice age, perhaps upon the first human beings on this continent.

In fact, in his book Blame It on the Weather, Environment Canada's senior climatologist David Phillips calculates the total number of snowflakes that have fallen over the history of the planet it's a mind-boggling 100,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000. "It snowed and snowed, the whole world over, snow swept the world from end to end," writes one of Boris Pasternak's winter-bound characters in Dr. Zhivago. "A candle burned upon a table, upon a table, one candle burned." Perhaps it's this sense of huddling in our own small Eden in the midst of entropy, some sense of that Russian poet's warm globe of candlelight crowded by snow and darkness, that generates the self-absorbed ignorance toward conditions in the rest of the province that so many British Columbians from beyond Hope profess to feel radiating from Greater Vancouver. Ford was born in Brandon, Man.

in 1883, and moved to Minneapolis when he was 10. He broke into the big leagues with a bang, racking up 26 wins against only six losses in 1910. The catch was, his best pitch was illegal. Ford discovered the "emery ball" by accident in 1908. He threw a wild pitch, which careened off a concrete grating.

He got the ball back, and his next pitch had a wicked curve that seemed to drop off the face of the earth. Ford noted the ball was scuffed, and soon perfected the art of doctoring a baseball with emery paper hidden in his glove. To conceal his secret, he pretended to be throwing a spit-ball, which was then legal. In 1912, Hassan tobacco issued two cards of Ford throwing his "spitball." If you can find one, it'll probably cost you $60 to STEPHEN HUME VANCOUVER SUN Snowdrops shine like tiny pearls of light in West Coast gardens. Already the assumption of imminent spring resonates in conversation throughout the temperate bubble inhabited by Lower Mainlanders.

And yet, a few scant paces beyond south-coastal B.C., the creeks are clad in ice, a record snowpack deepens and the mountains groan and rumble with avalanches. The snow falls on Greater Vancouver, too, but for all its temporary inconvenience it passes quickly as a shadow and we consider it a seasonal oddity. We go up into that other country to work or play but somehow it's always imagined as distant, exotic, even dangerous. Some of us leave on an afternoon hike and never return, swallowed up in the measure Baseball Russ Ford, a pitcher for the New York Highlanders, was the first Western Canadian to be featured. JOHN MACKIE VANCOUVER SUN On June 25, 1908, a left-handed pitcher named Bert Sincock took the mound for the Cincinnati Reds against the Chicago Cubs.

It was Sincock's first and only major league baseball appearance, and he didn't make it past the fifth inning in a 7-0 loss. Sincock is among thousands of forgotten players. He would probably be of no interest except for being born in Bark-erville, B.C., on Sept. 8, 1887. This makes Sincock the first major league baseball player born in Western Canada.

Details on Sincock's career cards immortalize some early pros BRYAN SCHLOSSER SANDRA SCHMIRLER: Missed competing in last weekend's Tournament of Hearts. the 20th century. Sadly, his career with Oakland only lasted a week. California card dealer Mark McRae says Oakland signed Claxton on the pretext he was of American Indian descent, and not black. Some racist fans spotted Claxton talking with and kissing his (black) wife, and complained to Oakland's management, which then released him.

It took three more decades before Jackie Robinson broke through baseball's colour barrier. Claxton's card has soared in value since his story was portrayed in Ken Burns PBS-TV series Baseball. McRae said there are only about 30 known examples of Claxton's card. He sold one several years ago for $35, but recently auctioned another for $2,700. jmackiepacpress.southam.ca 605-2126 $225 US.

There are several other Ford cards as well, including a 1911 E98 Caramel Card. Steve Verkrhan of Clean Sweep Auctions in New York has one for $50 US; closer to home, one might turn up at the 10th Annual B.C. Sports Collectors Trade Show, today and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at the Croatian Cultural Centre, 3250 Commercial Drive, Vancouver.

Another old baseball card to look for is a 1916 Zeenut card of Jimmy Claxton, who was born at Wellington on Vancouver Island and grew up in Tacoma. Claxton never made it to the majors: Zeenut cards featured players from the Pacific Coast League (Claxton played for the Oakland Oaks). But he is a landmark figure in baseball, because he was the first black player to appear on an American baseball card in TRUE WEST A brief historical guide to events that have shaped Western Canada (and life) are virtually non-existent, which is fitting, given his birthplace is now a ghost town. Most of the two-dozen or so Western Canadians to make the big leagues have faded from memory. But some have achieved a bit of immortality via the staple of sports collectibles, the baseball card.

The first Western Canadian on a baseball card was one of the best and sneakiest Russ Ford was a pitcher for the New York Highlanders (who later became the Yankees) from 1910 through 1913. He also played for Buffalo in the rival Federal League in 1914 and 1915..