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For the week of Oct. 15, 2023:

Host Bob Mackin welcomes the return of Mario Canseco of ResearchCo and Andy Yan of the Simon Fraser University city program for the third quarter edition of the MMA panel.

Two years until the next scheduled federal election.

One year until the next scheduled B.C. election.

One year after Vancouver and Surrey got new mayors.

Plus, headlines from the Pacific Rim and the Pacific Northwest. 

CLICK BELOW to listen or go to TuneIn, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Podcasts.

Have you missed an edition of theBreaker.news Podcast? Go to the archive.

Support theBreaker.news for as low as $2 a month on Patreon. Find out how. Click here.

 

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For the week of Oct. 15, 2023:

Bob Mackin

The Crown prosecutor in the B.C. Supreme Court trial of Kasimir Tyabji-Sandana told a B.C. Supreme Court judge and 10-member jury in Powell River on Oct. 11 that he was wilfully blind when he chose to have sex with an underage girl in September 2016. 

Tyabji-Sandana, the 35-year-old son of former Okanagan East BC Liberal MLA Judi Tyabji, is accused of committing sexual interference of a person under 16 and invitation to sexual touching of a person under 16. If convicted, he could face a maximum 14 years in jail.

Powell River courthouse (Provincial Court of B.C.)

In his closing arguments, prosecutor Jeffrey Young said Tyabji-Sandana knew the girl was 16 and that he “willfully blinded himself to the fact that [she] was under the age of 16.”

“That is to say, that Mr. Tyabji-Sandana was aware that he should inquire about [her] age, and deliberately decided not to inquire because he simply preferred not to know,” Young said.

Young said that if the jury finds Tyabji-Sandana had an honest, but mistaken belief that the girl was 16 years or older, he was still required to take all reasonable steps to confirm her age.

“This is the second pathway to finding Mr. Tyabji-Sandana guilty,” Young said. “If you find that the Crown has proven beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Tyabji-Sandana did not take all reasonable steps to ascertain her age, it would suggest that you must find him guilty.”

He said there is no “magic number” of reasonable steps nor is there an exhaustive list on which to rely, because it depends on the circumstances of the case.

“Mr. Tyabji-Sandana was 28-years-old when he touched [her] and invited her to touch him for a sexual purpose. [She] was actually 15-years-old when this took place. Any reasonable person, any reasonable person, in those circumstances that Mr. Tyabji-Sandana was in, would have taken very significant steps to ensure that they knew the age of [the girl].”

A key piece of evidence was an email from late August 2016 in which Tyabji-Sandana sent her a link to a Justice Canada website that said the legal age of consent is 16. Young said it is important to note that there was no subsequent discussion of age nor did Tyabji-Sandana simply ask the girl for her age.

Defence lawyer David Tarnow pointed to the same email as a reason to acquit his client because it was among the contradictions in the Crown’s case. 

The alleged victim, who is now 22, testified that she told Tyabji-Sandana after their first kiss that she was 15, but her statement to police said she thought she told him that she was just “young.” She also did not reply to the late August 2016 email, which Tyabji-Sandana had titled “good news.”

Kasimir Tyabji-Sandana (left) and Judi Tyabji (Instagram)

“How about telling Mr. Tyabji that I’m, like 15-and-a-half, stop?” Tarnow said to the jury. “Why isn’t there a reply?”

He also told the jury that had she told Tyabji-Sandana her true age, then he would have stopped seeing her because she was too young. 

Tarnow called Tyabji-Sandana a “most-reasonable young man” for researching the age of consent and called it “the most-reasonable step.”

“He honestly believed that she was 16, he told you why: a mature, ambitious, smart, grown woman, looking for credits to graduate, he checked the law to confirm 16 was okay,” Tarnow said.

Tyabji-Sandana originally met the girl when she came to volunteer on Tyabji and then-husband Gordon Wilson’s sheep farm in January 2016. Tyabji and Wilson, the former BC Liberal leader, both testified that they assumed the girl was a senior high school student. 

Young called Tyabji’s testimony evasive and argumentative. “This is not the hallmark of a credible witness,” he said. 

He also said Wilson was also not an unbiased witness and that they both did nothing to investigate the age of the girl. 

Wilson testified that he had a policy against anyone under 16 working on the farm, but, Young said, “he relies upon a rule that is neither shared with anyone nor anything is done to enforce it.”

Justice Peter Edelmann is scheduled to instruct the jury on Oct. 12 before it begins deliberations. He dismissed two jurors on Oct. 6 for undertaking independent research about the case, contrary to his instructions to ignore anything about the case when outside the courtroom. 

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Bob Mackin The Crown prosecutor in the B.C.

Bob Mackin

North Vancouver’s Ciara McCormack has had quite the year. 

The veteran soccer player urged a House of Commons committee to call a public inquiry into amateur sport abuse and corruption, witnessed former teammates play in Ireland’s debut match at the Women’s World Cup in Australia and returned to play for a team in a national women’s league at age 43.

This week, she became the CEO and co-owner of Limerick, Ireland’s Treaty United FC.

Markets Field in Limerick, Ireland (Treaty United FC)

“I know what soccer should be, I know what it looks like in its best form, I know what it looks like in its worst form,” said McCormack, who blew the whistle in 2019 on a disgraced ex-Whitecaps and national team coach’s return to the sidelines, leading to Bob Birarda’s 2022 jailing for sexual assault. 

“It’s quite a unique perspective and, hopefully, one that I can leverage to make it a great experience for the players, make it a great experience for the community.”

McCormack has Irish citizenship through her parents, and made eight appearances for the national team from 2008 to 2010. Without a Canadian professional women’s league (one is in the works for 2025), she reached out to a former teammate, Treaty United FC coach Marie Curtin, and signed on as a defender wearing number 13 last winter.  

McCormack, who holds a master’s degree in sports management from the University of Connecticut, approached the volunteer-run club’s board and asked if investors were welcome. Then she contacted her former Yale University classmate Riley Senft and made a proposal to the Senft family office, Tricor Pacific Capital Inc. 

“Everything that their organization’s about in terms of being people-focused and building partnerships and doing things the right way, it just was an amazing fit,” she said. 

Coincidentally, Tricor chair Rod Senft’s wife, Jean Senft, is the Order of Canada recipient who exposed collusion among her fellow Olympic figure skating judges in 1998. 

“She’s an absolute role model,” McCormack said. 

Treaty United includes women’s premier league and men’s first division squads and academy developmental teams for teenage girls and boys. Home pitch is 1,710-seat Markets Field in the city of 102,000, Ireland’s third largest after Dublin and Cork. Neither McCormack nor Chuck Cosman, Tricor’s principal of diversified investments, would reveal the size of the investment. 

Cosman said the Limerick community, the club and the Football Association of Ireland all greeted them with open arms. 

Ciara McCormack (Treaty United FC)

“For us, it’s non-traditional to the types of investments we’ve made in the past, but nonetheless, no different than that we’re partnering with great people and doing everything we can to support them on their journey, creating the vision they want,” Cosman said.

“When Tricor makes investments in companies, we don’t do it with any sort of short-term or exit horizon, like we really are focusing on a long-term relationship with Ciara and the midwest community of Ireland, and building a club we can be proud of.”

McCormack said, with Tricor’s backing, she hopes to accelerate the path to professionalism that the league and team are already on. She was initially struck by players on the women’s team training only twice-a-week. 

“The last time I trained twice-a-week, I was about 11, playing rec soccer. So immediately coming in, you’re looking at it thinking, wow, if they’re doing this well training twice-a-week, how much better could they be training four times a week?”

McCormack sees great potential in increasing revenue from season tickets, club memberships, corporate sponsorships and youth development camps. Her goal is to multiply attendance in 2024, which hovers around 800 for men’s matches and 200 for the women’s team. 

“I think there’s a huge opportunity for us now with full-time staff, running things right off the bat, where we have the time to go out and build the relationships.”

She said the league record for attendance at a women’s club match is 1,500. “We’re going to beat that the first game, that’s my goal.”

The men’s team’s kickoff in February is auspiciously timed for the anniversary of the day that changed McCormack’s career and sparked a discussion about protecting athletes. 

“Exactly five years to when I wrote the blog, to the actual day, which is again, a pretty crazy, end-of-a-chapter kind of thing,” McCormack said. 

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Bob Mackin North Vancouver’s Ciara McCormack has had

Bob Mackin 

Taxpayers are spending up to half-a-million dollars on the former BC Hydro CEO hired to facilitate the transition from the Surrey RCMP to the Surrey Police Service.

Ex-BC Hydro CEO Jessica McDonald (BC Hydro)

A statement sent by Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General communications director David Haslam said Jessica McDonald’s maximum $500,000, two-year contract covers her fees and expenses. The contract began July 24, five days after NDP Solicitor General Mike Farnworth ordered City of Surrey to proceed with the controversial “cop swap.” 

In an interview last month, Surrey’s pro-RCMP Mayor Brenda Locke called the appointment “awkward,” because McDonald is also a 2022-appointed director on the board of major City of Surrey contractor GFL Environmental Inc. (TSX:GFL).

The Toronto company began a seven-year, residential garbage hauling contract last April worth at least $17.6 million annually. Locke said in an interview on Sept. 21 that city hall lawyers were looking at McDonald’s potential conflict of interest, including whether McDonald should register as a lobbyist. 

“This strategic advisor, we never had any input on the person and we had no input on the terms of reference,” Locke said at the time. “If we had, I’m sure that our staff would have done a review.”

Rather than returning a reporter’s phone and email messages last week, McDonald contacted the Ministry. On Oct. 6, Haslam sent a prepared statement that denied McDonald influenced Farnworth’s decision and said her role on the GFL board has no impact on the Surrey transition.

Coun. Brenda Locke (Surrey Connect)

“The City of Surrey has reviewed the issues raised in your article of Sept 21,” according to the Ministry. “Following legal review, city staff have communicated that it is their view that acting both as strategic implementation advisor on the Surrey policing transition and as a director of GFL Environmental does not place Ms. McDonald in a conflict of interest. City staff have further stated that Ms. McDonald is not required to register under the city’s lobbyist registration policy by virtue of these roles, as suggested in your article.

“The director of police services has requested that the city formally confirm these conclusions to put this issue to rest.”

In his leaked Oct. 4 letter to Locke, director of police services Glen Lewis claimed Locke’s statements about McDonald’s dual roles undermined her assignment. Lewis also blamed Surrey city council and staff for delaying the transition. 

Locke did not respond for comment, but acting city manager Rob Costanzo would only confirm that McDonald does not fall under the city’s lobbyist registry, which applies to developers. 

“Communication I may have had with any external entity, the province, Jessica McDonald or otherwise, I’m not going to disclose that to the media,” Costanzo said in an interview. “However, the core of the question, can we indemnify her? That’s really the crux of the issue, and no, the city cannot indemnify an individual who’s not a representative of the city in the capacity of an employee, an officer of the city or an elected official. That has not happened.”

Professional corporate director McDonald was deputy minister to Premier Gordon Campbell from 2003 to 2005, at the same time as Locke was the BC Liberal MLA for Surrey-Green Timbers. Campbell promoted McDonald to head B.C.’s public service from 2005 to 2009. She oversaw the start of Site C dam construction during her 2014 to 2017 tenure as BC Hydro CEO, which ended when the NDP came to power in July 2017. She also chaired Canada Post from 2017 to 2020. 

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Bob Mackin  Taxpayers are spending up to half-a-million

Bob Mackin 

The son of a former BC Liberal MLA admitted in B.C. Supreme Court on Oct. 10 that he never verified the age of the girl that he had sex with in September 2016.

Judi Tyabji (left) and Kasimir Tyabji-Sandana (Facebook)

Kasimir Tyabji-Sandana, son of former Okanagan East MLA Judi Tyabji, is accused of committing sexual interference of a person under 16 and invitation to sexual touching of a person under 16. If convicted, he could face a maximum 14 years in jail. He testified that he believed the girl he dated was 16-years-old. 

“It seems like I didn’t directly ask for that,” the 35-year-old said under cross-examination before Justice Peter Edelmann and the 10-member jury. 

Tyabji-Sandana said that he learned the girl’s true age was 15 when he was shown evidence disclosure at his lawyer’s office after he was charged in 2020. But, in court, a Crown prosecutor showed him a direct Facebook message in which the girl had earlier written: “I was 15, I had no life experience, I was so lost.”

He originally met the girl, who is now 22, when she volunteered to work in January 2016 on the sheep farm co-owned by Tyabji and her then-husband Gordon Wilson, the ex-Powell River MLA who led the BC Liberal Party from 1987 to 1993. 

Tyabji-Sandana denied the alleged victim’s testimony that she told him she was 15 after they kissed for the first time in the summer of 2016. Had he known, he said he would have stopped, apologized and been ashamed. A month-and-a-half later, he looked up the age of consent law on a Justice Canada website, to confirm it was 16. 

“You knew that you were kissing someone who you believed to be underage,” the Crown prosecutor said.

“At the time of that kiss, it sounds like I made a mistake there, for sure,” Tyabji-Sandana said.

He also told the court that he believed she had not previously had intercourse because she had told him so. 

The relationship did not go beyond fall 2016. Tyabji-Sandana sought her out two years later and they met again for dinner in Gastown when she was studying at the B.C. Institute of Technology and he was seeking entry to the University of B.C. law school. 

“We just talked about life, innocuous things, and at no point was there any mention of any concerns regarding the legality or illegality of our time together,” he said. “We barely talked about our relationship. We barely even talked about what had happened at all.”

Powell River courthouse (Provincial Court of B.C.)

Tyabji-Sandana described it as a “very benign dinner,” but they did not see each other again.

While he testified that he knew she had a birthday sometime between the end of her volunteering on the farm and when they met again on Canada Day in 2016, he said he was unsure of her high school grade. Her June 2016 email to him said she had skipped Grade 9 English, completed Grade 10 English in fall 2015 and was planning to study Grade 11 English in fall 2016. Tyabji-Sandana agreed that a student entering Grade 10 would typically be 15-years-old. He also said he discussed giving the girl driving lessons because he understood she did not have a driver’s licence. 

Wilson, Tyabji-Sandana’s stepfather, told the court that he reluctantly allowed two high school girls to volunteer on the sheep farm in order to achieve credit towards their Grade 12 graduation. He said they seemed “very self-assured, very assertive young women” and had “no doubt” they were in senior high school.

“My default is to say no, because there are rules in the province about young people working on farms, which I have to be mindful of because of liability,” Wilson told the court. 

Under cross-examination, Wilson was asked why he did not demand government-issued identification to verify their ages before they began the taxing, potentially dangerous work.

“I’ve been a parent of five teenage kids. I know that, routinely, kids will embellish their age, and there’s a whole industry out there producing fake IDs, so they can go where they shouldn’t go and do what they shouldn’t do,” Wilson said. “What I’m more interested in is, what is their motivation?”

Crown and defence lawyers will present closing arguments Oct. 11 and the jury is expected to begin deliberations the next day.

Edelmann dismissed two jurors on Oct. 6 after they admitted they had conducted what he called “independent research” about the case. 

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Bob Mackin  The son of a former BC

For the week of Oct. 8, 2023: 

It’s no secret, thePodcast host Bob Mackin’s favourite album is 1991’s Achtung Baby by U2 and favourite concert tour U2’s ZOO TV. He saw it four times in 1992.

U2 debut “Atomic City” at Sphere in Las Vegas on Sept. 29, 2023 (Mackin)

Lady Luck helped win the ticket lottery for U2:UV Achtung Baby Live at Sphere, the world’s most-talked about concert venue in the world’s biggest spherical building. 

On this edition, hear sounds of music and technology history from the Sept. 29 grand opening of Madison Square Garden’s $2.3 billion Las Vegas bet that is revolutionizing the concert experience. 

Plus, headlines from the Pacific Rim and the Pacific Northwest. 

CLICK BELOW to listen or go to TuneIn, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Podcasts.

Have you missed an edition of theBreaker.news Podcast? Go to the archive.

Support theBreaker.news for as low as $2 a month on Patreon. Find out how. Click here.

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For the week of Oct. 8, 2023:  It’s

Bob Mackin 

One of the leading voices of the 2010 campaign against cigarette smoking at Vancouver parks and beaches does not expect many people will be caught breaking the province’s ban on illegal drug use in certain public places. 

On Oct. 5, the NDP government tabled Bill 34, the Restricting Public Consumption of Illegal Substances Act, which is aimed at moving use of fentanyl, heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine and MDMA away from the public eye and into local overdose prevention sites. In January, B.C. decriminalized possession of 2.5 grams of hard drugs for personal use under a federally approved, three-year project.

(CDC)

The proposed law covers playgrounds, pools, parks, beaches, sports fields, bus stops and entrances to business and residential buildings. It would empower police to direct a person to stop the drug use, order the person to move elsewhere or arrest the person and seize the substance.

Jack Boomer, director of the Clean Air Coalition of B.C., said enforcement of the anti-smoking bylaw is passive and complaint-driven, which means signage will be key in helping slowly change behaviour under the new law.  

“Will it make a difference over time?” Boomer said. “People become aware that this is just the thing that you don’t do.”

Despite the proliferation of vaping and legal marijuana, not a single person was cited over at least four-and-a-half years for violating Vancouver’s Parks Smoking Regulation Bylaw. Freedom of information requests about enforcement between Jan. 1, 2019 to Aug. 2, 2023 came up empty. 

“Park Board staff have confirmed there are no responsive records as no tickets were issued under the specified bylaw,” said the response. 

The 2010 staff report said outdoor smoke could be just as harmful as indoor and the vast majority of park users polled were in favour of a no-smoking policy. The initial bylaw implementation focused on education and awareness.

“Staff further advised the board that many jurisdictions across North America have successfully implemented similar policies with high levels of compliance and the few cases of non-compliance that is anticipated can be addressed by park rangers and bylaw officers,” said the report. 

Sarah Blyth, executive director of the Vancity Overdose Prevention Society (OPS), was vice-chair of the Park Board in April 2010 and part of the unanimous vote for the anti-smoking bylaw. She said her main concern at the time was garbage and the risk of wildfire. 

The province declared a public health emergency in April 2016 due to the rise in fentanyl-related deaths. An October 2022 report from the B.C. Coroners Service said that between 2016 and 2021, smoking opioids became the leading mode of consumption province-wide, increasing from 29% to 56%. Meanwhile, injection fell from 39% to 20% during the first five years of the crisis. 

“People will need a place to go, we need solutions, we need outdoors, the safe, clean outdoor spaces,” Blyth said. “We need to continue to connect people to resources. So if they’re asked to leave a space, getting them to come to an office is important. But we don’t have really enough outdoor spaces for people.”

After her 2008 election to Park Board, Blyth advocated for safe places to skateboard after numerous complaints about skateboarders on streets, sidewalks, plazas and outside businesses. The city now now has nine dedicated outdoor facilities. She said the same thinking is needed to accommodate drug users when Bill 34 is passed.

“You need to build something for people to go to that they can connect to recovery and resources,” Blyth said, adding that OPS sees up to 900 people a day. 

At least 12,929 British Columbians have died from opioid use since April 2016, making it the leading cause of death for people aged 10 to 59. Almost two-thirds of those who have died in 2023 consumed drugs via smoking. 

The City of Vancouver and Park Board communications departments said in a statement that they are “closely monitoring changes in provincial regulations and taking the time to consider next steps.”

As for the lack of tickets for smokers at parks and beaches, if education fails and escalation is needed, the city said Park Rangers may seek help from the Vancouver Police Department or Conservation Officer Service as needed.

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Bob Mackin  One of the leading voices of

Bob Mackin 

The Powell River sexual interference trial of the son of a former BC Liberal MLA paused Oct. 6 when two jurors were sent home for disobeying the judge’s instructions. 

The case will continue Oct. 10 with 10 jurors.

Peter Edelmann (Edelmann law)

Kasimir Tyabji-Sandana, 35, was scheduled to continue testifying in his own defence before B.C. Supreme Court Justice Peter Edelmann and the jury. The son of former Okanagan East MLA Judi Tyabji is accused of committing sexual interference of a person under 16 and invitation to sexual touching of a person under 16 during the second half of 2016.

The two jurors, whose names were not disclosed, conducted what Edelmann described as “independent research” about the case. 

“One of the pieces of information that was shared to some of you was that a Canada-wide warrant was issued for Mr. Tyabji-Sandana,” Edelmann said after the jury was recalled at 3:49 p.m. “This is a good illustration of the dangers of information being presented outside the courtroom and its potential for misuse.”

Edelmann called the issuance of a warrant and laying of charges routine and not unusual for such a warrant to be executed in another province. Tyabji-Sandana was the subject of a Canada-wide warrant for his arrest in 2020. 

“While it might make for an interesting headline, to an informed observer, the information about the issuance of a warrant adds nothing to the information about the laying of the charges,” he said.

Powell River courthouse (Provincial Court of B.C.)

Edelmann proceeded to tell the remaining 10 members of the jury that their duty is to decide whether Tyabji-Sandana is guilty or not of the charges before the court. That there is a charge is not evidence, nor is it a relevant factor to consider when they decide the outcome. 

“All persons charged with an offense are presumed to be innocent under our law. This means that they do not have to prove their innocence,” the judge said. “In my final instructions, I will remind you that you should disregard anything you have read or heard in the media or any other source outside the courtroom in coming to your decision in this case.”

Edelmann reminded the jury to not use the Internet or any electronic device about the trial in any way, not talk about the case with any friends or relatives, and not communicate with anyone involved in the case. 

“You may, of course, give a polite greeting to somebody you see around the courthouse, but do not talk about the case with anyone except your fellow jurors.”

Edelmann reiterated that he is the sole judge of the law in the trial and that they are the judges of the facts.

“Therefore, it is important that you accept the law from me without question. You must not use your own ideas about what the law is.”

On Oct. 5, Tyabji-Sandana testified that he did not know the girl he had sex with in September 2016 was 15-years-old, because he was under the belief that she had turned 16 earlier in the year. The alleged victim had testified Wednesday that she told Tyabji-Sandana she was 15 when they kissed for the first time. 

Tyabji-Sandana originally met her in January 2016 when she volunteered to work on the farm co-owned by Tyabji and then-husband Gordon Wilson, the former Powell River-Sunshine Coast MLA who led the BC Liberal Party from 1987 to 1993.

Tyabji testified that she did not ask the girl for her age, but assumed she was in senior high school because she had arrived with forms to gain volunteer work credits toward graduation. 

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Bob Mackin  The Powell River sexual interference trial

Bob Mackin

Former BC Liberal MLA Judi Tyabji admitted at her son’s Powell River sexual interference trial that she did not check the ages of two high school girls that volunteered to work on the family sheep farm in January 2016.

Kasimir Tyabji-Sandana and Judi Tyabji (Instagram)

One of them was 14 at the time and her complaint to police resulted in Kasimir Tyabji-Sandana being charged in 2020 with sexual interference of a person under 16 and invitation to sexual touching of a person under 16.

Tyabji-Sandana, 35, pleaded not guilty in B.C. Supreme Court to the allegations, which date back to the second half of 2016. The maximum penalty for conviction is 14 years in jail.

Tyabji testified Oct. 5 before Justice Peter Edelmann and a jury that she only recently discovered the girl’s age from Tyabji-Sandana’s defence lawyer. She assumed that the girl was a senior in high school because she arrived with a clipboard and forms to be signed to confirm hours worked. 

“If we knew the age of the person, then we would not let them work under age of 16,” Tyabji told the court. 

“The only reason that we let these girls on the farm is we were helping them get credits for graduation.”

The girl eventually found a paying job at a grocery store in April of 2016. Tyabji-Sandana contacted her by email and they sparked a relationship that summer. 

In his opening statements, defence lawyer David Tarnow emphasized to the jury that his client was not charged with sexual assault and that consent was not an issue for the trial. Instead, it was the age of the alleged victim.

Tarnow asked Tyabji-Sandana, who testified in his own defence, what he would have done had he learned the girl was 14 when she began volunteering on the farm.

“She seemed nothing like a 14-year-old that I’d known at any point in my life. I guess I would’ve told my parents that she was 14,” Tyabji-Sandana said. 

“My dad [former BC Liberal leader Gordon Wilson] would’ve been pretty upset, because he doesn’t want people that young working or volunteering on the farm. It’s the rule that he has, he’s really stodgy about it.”

Tyabji-Sandana said that he was under the impression at the farm that she was “like 15-ish, 16-ish” because she was well-spoken, ambitious and “had seemed grown.”

“Between the time that her volunteering on the farm had happened and when we linked up again, her birthday had happened.”

Later in the summer, anticipating that their relationship was turning sexual, Tyabji-Sandana decided to confirm the minimum legal age for sex by Googling “age of consent B.C.” Instead of the assumed 18-years-old, the Justice Canada website said it was 16.

“I thought that was good news, because I thought [she] was 16,” said Tyabji-Sandana, who was 28 at the time.

He testified that he asked her in-person if she had seen his email about the law. “I don’t remember her exact words, but it was discussed and there was no problem.” 

Tarnow said people might wonder why he did not also check her identification.

“I had no reason to think she was young. I don’t know why I would have ‘carded her,’ because I’m not a bouncer at a bar,” answered Tyabji-Sandana.

They had sexual encounters at his apartment in September 2016, but he said their relationship eventually fizzled out. 

Under cross-examination, the alleged victim, now 22, was adamant that she told Tyabji-Sandana that she was 15 after they first kissed, though she admitted they later discussed advancing their relationship. While Tyabji-Sandana wanted to have sex with her, she said she did not want to have sex with him.

Tarnow suggested it was “incongruent” for her to have not explicitly told Tyabji-Sandana that they should not have sex after he sent her the link to the Justice Canada website about age of consent.  

“A lot of my life I have suffered from depression, anxiety and it was a time in my life where I did not feel as though people cared about me,” she said. “And Mr. Tyabji-Sandana fostered the friendship and made it seem as though he did care about me and he was the only one that cared about me.”

The trial continues. 

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Bob Mackin Former BC Liberal MLA Judi Tyabji

Bob Mackin

Still haven’t seen the Sistine Chapel, but staring at other, modern ceilings has brought me great wonder and joy.

As a schoolchild, it was the Planetarium’s Star Theatre, with robotic projector Harold, under the ceiling of the venerable H.R. MacMillan Space Centre in Vanier Park. Field trips about the solar system and space travel, the Pink Floyd laser light show and even a 54-40 record release concert left me speechless.

U2 surrounded by Nevada Ark inside Sphere on Sept. 29 (Mackin)

Omnimax, a Canadian innovation, was a teenage mindblower that I discovered on a family trip to the giant “golf ball” at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas. When Vancouver got its shiny silver geodesic dome in 1985, I was among hundreds of high schoolers who volunteered to wave flags for the one-year countdown to Expo 86 at what is now Science World. 

Even when the newly lit roof is fixed and the theatre reopens in East False Creek, it won’t hold a candle to the biggest new bauble on the Las Vegas skyline, which I experienced on opening night on Sept. 29. 

A band from Dublin that once called itself The Hype came to celebrate 47 years together by creating more hype. U2, even with drummer Larry Mullen Jr.’s temporary replacement Bram van den Berg, and the band’s home for at least 25 “Atomic City” shows lived up to the hype. And then some. 

I’ve attended hundreds of concerts, indoors and outdoors. In bars, theatres, hockey rinks, football stadiums, parks, beaches, mountaintops and valley floors. But Las Vegas’s newest “showroom,” the $2.3 billion, 18,000-seat Sphere, redefines concerts. 

The experience began next door in the Venetian Resort, at the two-floor Zoo Station: A U2:UV Experience museum, theatre, lounge and gift shop celebrating U2’s pioneering 1992 and 1993 ZOO TV tour that, oddly, didn’t sell out its stop at the Silver Bowl stadium.  

“The future of live entertainment, or at least a portion of it, will be more and more immersive. Fans are looking for more backstory, more engagement and beyond just sitting in the seat and attending the show,” said Andrew Luft, vice-president of partnerships at Vibee, the Live Nation-founded destination experience company. “They want to be consumed by everything they can.”

Sphere is all-consuming. The world’s biggest spherical building, at 111 metres tall and 157 metres at its widest. You could hypothetically squeeze the Hotel Vancouver inside. The Exosphere, as the exterior is called, was designed and manufactured with Montreal’s SACO Technologies. It’s covered by 1.2 million LED “pucks” capable of displaying 256 million colours. Ad space sells for $450,000-a-day. On the eve of Friday’s concert, between acting as a giant pumpkin or the full moon (under the real harvest moon), ads were already in rotation for ABC’s Dancing With the Stars and the new Trolls movie. 

Las Vegas Sphere, Sept. 29, 2023 (Mackin)

Inside, the 160,000 square foot, 180-degree wraparound screen with 16K x 16K resolution pairs with a 170,000-speaker, 3-D audio system designed by Berlin, Germany’s Holoplot.

A prototype opened last year in Burbank, Calif. A second Sphere is planned for London. If smaller ones don’t mushroom like the Omnimaxes and Imaxes did in the ‘80s and ‘90s, then copycats are inevitable. Venues, promoters and ambitious artists will be under pressure to meet the Sphere-driven demand for optimal audio and video. Expect the concert-going experience to be vastly different by the end of the decade. A rising tide lifts all boats, as they say. 

When the venue opened after 6 p.m. — two hours before scheduled showtime — ticketholders roamed the atrium and rode the escalators, bathed in the cool blue and violet hues of spherical light fixtures, soothed by ambient sound textures from U2’s 1991 “Achtung Baby” sessions. In the centre, a rotating “U2:UV Achtung Baby” light sculpture became a selfie pit stop. 

Inside the amphitheatre, a sense of awe and anticipation for the new take on U2’s avant-garde tour. 

Thirty yeas ago, cubic video walls and TV screens of multiple sizes flanked the stage, backlit by the headlights of suspended East German Trabant cars. This time, deceptive minimalism. The stage was a giant turntable at the foot of the 76 metre screen that appeared like the walls of a subway tunnel until the light broke through early in the opener, “Zoo Station.”

Industrial Light and Magic, which counts Vancouver among its six studios, helped bring the spectacle to life. During “Even Better than the Real Thing,” the screen became the canvas for Toronto-raised Marco Brambilla’s kinetic, kaleidoscopic tribute to Elvis Presley, “King Size.” Later, it was Es Devlin’s “Nevada Ark,” a collage of dozens of the state’s endangered species in all their glory, that appeared covered every inch of the screen during the climactic “Beautiful Day.”

U2 debut “Atomic City” at Sphere in Las Vegas on Sept. 29, 2023 (Mackin)

For the two hours in between, the screen displayed flickering embers, a flag of fire in the night sky, a flag of smoke during a daytime scene, a multitude of insects at dusk and aurora borealis. The Las Vegas skyline from the perspective of Sphere looked deceptively live. 

As an usher asked fans to sit amid the “Rattle and Hum” acoustic interlude, a technician strolled the aisle past my upper level seat eyeing a diagnostics dashboard on his open laptop, ensuring everything was just right. 

Ironically, one of the most-stunning scenes didn’t involve the screen at all. It was the projection of the band, including close-ups of instruments, onto the turntable stage during “Acrobat,” the penultimate song on “Achtung Baby,” and 15th of the night’s 22-song setlist. “You can dream, so dream out loud…” Bono sang over the Edge’s caterwauling guitar.

As the historic opening night wound down, Bono gave special praise to James Dolan, the Madison Square Garden Entertainment boss behind the Sphere dream. One of the biggest bets ever made in Vegas.

“You’re one mad bastard,” he said. “Thank-you for this wondrous place.”

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Bob Mackin Still haven’t seen the Sistine Chapel,