The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Winnipeg - Manitoba could become the first province to go cold turkey and ban smoking wherever people work, indoors or out, with no ifs ands or butts. In an internal report, the government has been urged to bring in a phased-in ban. Smoking rooms would be allowed for a year, then eliminated and followed within three years by a complete ban of smoking indoors or outdoors at any workplace. Stan Struthers, the government-appointed committee chairman, is non-committal, but opposition members suggest a ban is coming and only the details remain to be worked out. Yellowknife - Joe Pandev lost his dad 11 years ago when a bomb set deep in the heart of Yellowknife's Giant gold mine exploded, killing nine miners. Now, a massive civil lawsuit launched in 1994 finally goes to trial in a specially built courtroom. Pandev just wants the whole matter to end.m "When it drags on for such a long time, the emotion gets deadened," he said from his home in Yellowknife. The families of the deceased miners are claiming millions in damages from a number of defendants and third parties, including Royal Oak Mines and its then-president Peggy Witte, the territorial government, the mine union, the company providing security at the mine and Roger Warren, the man convicted of setting the blast.
