PHOTOS BY RICHARD LAM/VANCOUVER SUN
ABOVE: The Chhachhi home home theatre has 10 leather recliners and lights that automatically dim when a movie starts playing.

RIGHT: The Chhachhi family, (from left) Sharon (mom), Tesh (dad), Brion and Munzil sink into the leather recliners and enjoy a movie in their fabulous home theatre. RICHARD LAM/VANCOUVER SUN Brion Chhachhi uses the centre control panel in his dad Tesh’s $250,000 home theatre.

When Vancouver entrepreneur and movie buff Tesh Chhachhi wants to show his friends what owning a real home theatre is all about, he fires up the DVD of Blackhawk Down.

The spacious theatre’s six rear seats have transducers placed under them, so that the chairs actually vibrate with the lower sound frequencies.

“It feels like you’re in the helicopter itself,” said Chhachhi, whose sumptuous 17-by-27-foot, 10-seat pleasure palace of a cinema in his Shaughnessy home recently won the Custom Electronic Designers & Installers Association (CEDIA) award as the best in home theatre in the $200,000 to $240,000 US category.

On the 110-inch screen — perforated to allow speakers to be placed directly behind it — the colour from the ceiling-mounted projector is clear, clean and sharp. And the surround sound, no matter what the scene, is impeccable.

“Some of our friends say this has better colour separation and better sound than any of the theatres in town,” said Chhachhi. “Before this, we had large TVs, but nothing comes close to this experience.”

Agreeing with this assessment are Chhachhi’s wife Sharon, who likes to watch Hindi movies, and their 19-year-old son Brion and 15-year-old daughter Manzil.

The front four seats of the theatre — designed by Vancouver’s La Scala Home Cinema and Integrated Media — are equipped with controls for XBox and PlayStation video consoles. This means that Brion can have friends over to play games or even compete with others over the Web.

As for the price, Tesh Chhachhi said he wasn’t thinking about that when he started out. But he admits he always likes to buy the best.

“The project simply took on a life of its own,” he said.

What we’re describing here is not your next door neighbour’s theatre-in-a-box — toted home from the local electronics outlet. Nor is it something set up by your aunt’s boyfriend’s cousin who used to be a cable installer and once took a correspondence course in audio.

This is true upper-level home theatre, where prices of $250,000 are common, and climbing — although they make up only five to eight per cent of the work done for clients by people like La Scala and their Vancouver rival Sound Plus as well as another top firm, Beyond Audio, in Kelowna.

While you can get a something more than a basic home theatre for as little (relatively speaking) as $15,000 to $20,000 — and on up — it’s these showcase jobs that really show what today’s technology can do.

And each step up the quality ladder means a sizeable jump in cost, said Mark Blackwood custom sales manager at Sound Plus, who has a lengthy track record of award-winning theatre design on the West Coast, including working on a $600,000 US demo project for Magnolia HiFi (now Magnolia Audio Video) in Seattle.

“To go from the $20,000 to get a better theatre it would cost you $40,000,” said Blackwood. “And at about the $250,000 level its a diminishing return — where you’re getting about five per cent more performance and spending over double what you would have for a $100,000 theatre, to obtain the best.”

Surprisingly, while it’s initially the size of the screen and the potential for eye-grabbing spectacle that seizes the imaginations of deep-pockets clients, the sound is usually the element that ends up making the biggest impression.

“You go and hear theatre-in-a-box and you think, man, that’s great,” said Marilyn Sanford, president of La Scala. “But in a dedicated theatre it’s an entirely different film. You hear things you never heard before, nuances and footsteps and whispers.”

And, said Beyond Audio owner Mike Ohman — whose company recently was awarded the audio visual contract for the British Columbia Welcome Centre at the Turin Winter Olympics — it’s the audio that clients comment on a year or two down the road.

Recently, he went to visit half a dozen clients whose home theatres he had installed.

“Every single customer, all they could talk about was how good the sound was,” Ohman said. “Originally, all they wanted to talk about was how big the picture was.”

Ohman tells the story of an experiment by a manufacturer. Two rooms were set up with exactly the same video equipment — including screens of the same size. One room was equipped with a $1,500 sound system and the other had audio equivalent to the quality of the video.

“Eighty-five per cent of the people said they liked the system with the larger picture — even though the pictures were identical,” Ohman said.

Blackwood, who designs theatres for Intrawest’s resort properties, said that surround sound should be diffuse and enveloping so that those in the theatre don’t localize where the sound originates. Otherwise, it detracts from the experience.

“Your ears are such finely tuned instruments that you’re distracted from what the main purpose of the film is and that’s the voice or the dialogue of the movie,” he said.

Although not all sound equipment is THX certified — the standard developed originally by LucasFilms — the designers use THX as a reference.

“It’s sort of the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval,” said Blackwood. “If you do the room to the THX specification, you usually have a pretty good sounding room.”

When it comes to screens, the industry standard is the Stewart, from the Los Angeles-based company that provides the screens for the Academy Awards and has been making screens since shortly after movies began to talk.

“Back then they recognized that they were battling poor lighting sources and unevenness of surface and so forth,” Owen said. “When they spotted the home theatre thing starting to come on, the needs were the same.”

While the Chhachhi family has a cathode ray tube projector — necessary when using a perforated screen and still regarded as offering the best picture — the latest technology for projectors is Digital Light Projection (DLP), developed by Texas Instruments.

“The average projector for us is probably around the $15,000 to $20,000 range to really do it well,” Sanford said. “A lot of people say, gee, I can go out and spend $2,000 for a projector or $100,000. Why would I ever do that if I can get it for $2,000?”

The answer, she said, is that you need a projector that suits the size of the screen.

“It’s horsepower for clarity of the picture and the detail that you’re going to get,” she said.

Sometimes clients think they know what’s best for them in terms of equipment because they’ve been reading reviews in home theatre magazines, Ohman said.

“Those magazines exist solely to advertise equipment, so they’re not really a great resource. We get to try maybe hundreds of products a year, so we’re really the first line of defence. We filter out the equipment that doesn’t perform as advertised or doesn’t have a good track record of maintenance and longevity.”

As well, new clients often have to be discouraged from their obsession with mammoth screen size, said Mark Owen, a Vancouver based manufacturer’s representative for home theatre equipment, who also consults with the designers on projects,

“The most common error people make is they say ‘I want the 120-inch screen’ and the next thing we have to ask is, ‘How big is your room?’ ” Owen said. “And we point out to them that when you go to the movies, you don’t choose to sit in the front row.

“There’s this tendency to want to go really large, but, you know, that’s why you engage a professional designer to assist you.”

When it comes to the larger theatres, designers from the likes of La Scala, Sound Plus and Beyond Audio most often work with new houses under construction, where they have a chance to have input from the beginning of the project, some of which have been known to last as long as five years.

This means they can provide the homeowner and the contractor with complete room designs, wiring diagrams. placement of speakers, materials to be used and the like and there are far fewer problems with having to improvise solutions later on.

“Anything to be successful needs to be planned properly in advance,” said La Scala designer Patrick Tasci. “You do need to adapt as things change, because they always do, but by having a plan that everyone can follow we can just draw it up on paper and give it to the builder.

“We’re not just meeting on site and saying, I need something over here and it needs to be about five feet high.” said Tasci. “Honestly, that used to happen.”

These days, Tasci said, there’s accountability for everyone involved.

“And things tend to be built to a higher standard when there’s accountability.”

While dedicated theatres — those self-enclosed spaces devoted entirely to the movie watching and other audio video experiences — have been the norm for the past few years, fashions are always changing.

Originally, customers went for designs that almost replicated the theatres of the the commercial cinema chains,

“Initially, what we were promoting was a miniature professional theatre in a person’s home, including theatre seating and even a popcorn machine because it was kind of fun,” said Owen. “Some people were doing fake ticket kiosks in their lobby and so forth. They had movie posters up and marquees and so forth.”

That quickly changed, said Owen,

For one thing customers soon realized that movie theatre seating isn’t really all that comfortable. And that mean they started to go for electronically controlled lounger-type seating , where the adjustable chairs can cost from $2,500 to as much as $4,000 and designs that can emphasize things like classic wood panelling.

“Now we’re into what do I really want and how do I want to watch in my theatre,” said Owen” So now we have two, possibly three, incarnations.”

The first of these is the dedicated home theatre with adjustable chairs.

“The second one would be a media room,” said Owen. “And the media room we differentiate only slightly because, typically, it’s going to be used for more than just watching movies.

“You might use it for surfing the Web. You might use it for video games for the teens and pre-teens and you might use it just for regular sports watching and so on.”

The third category is the multi-use room, where there might be a bar at the rear or a pool table.

“I know some folks who are really heavily into poker and they’ve put a poker table at the back,” Owen said. “Maybe they’re watching the Eric Clapton concert, which doesn’t require your complete attention. You can look over and say, ‘Isn’t that a great song or isn’t that a great guitar solo and then you can go back to your game.”

One of the most important elements of any home theatre these days, say the designers, is the ability of the family — especially the less technically adept –to actually use it, something that could cause problems in the past.

“Like I say to my clients, you have have a $1 million home cinema, but if you can’t turn it on and off properly or really experience it, it’s like having the car without the key,” said Tasci.

These days this problem is solved by providing clients with simple-to-use keypads, that are self-explanatory when it comes to operating the theatre.

The designers, all members of CEDIA — which certifies those who take its educational courses –emphasize the need to hire someone who knows what they’re doing when they put together a home theatre.

“Certification and educational programs can really elevate the market,” Sanford said. “We’re concerned that there are bad people out there, and it tarnishes everybody.”

Sanford adds that top-level designers also offer after-market service.

“You can call us 24 hours a day seven days a week and someone will get back to you in 15 minutes,” she said.

Another necessary element, adds Tasci, is the showroom and, in the case of the larger companies, full-size demo theatres.

“Can you actually demonstrate your work,” said Tasci. “There’s a lot of people who can’t. It speaks volumes to the dedication people have in the industry if they can recreate the product for the client before they actually sign a cheque.”

© The Vancouver Sun 2005

Every month in B.C. something approximating 25,000 sets of strata minutes are produced.

Add to this more than 100,000 bylaw filings, 30,000 strata plans, thousands of transaction certificates and forms and financial statements, and we have a potentially large margin of error in documentation.

One New Westminster strata recently discovered that its bylaw amendments in the Land Title Registry had been filed incorrectly, under the wrong designation number.

Each strata has a designation number that identifies its filing information, location, strata plan and bylaws.

However, in the course of filing new swimming-pool bylaws, council members of this strata — let’s call it LMS1234 — inverted the numbers. For the sake of argument, let’s say they wrote LMS4321 instead.

The error was subsequently amended with the correct filing and co-operation of the Land Title Office. But there was an alarming moment when the other strata — the actual LMS 4321 — discovered they had bylaws referring to swimming- pool hours, when they had no pool. What other mixups could occur? Many.

Strata Law: Bylaws, strata plans, schedules of unit entitlement, voting rights, conveyance transactions, easements, right-of-ways and restrictive covenants are all items that are filed through the Land Title Services. Bylaws may be voted on but are not enforceable until they are filed. Once filed, they become effective. The Strata Property Act, the Land Title Act, the Real Estate Development Marketing Act and Real Estate Services Act all play an active role in filed documentation and requirements for strata corporations. Information that’s incorrectly filed can lead to unenforceable bylaws, incorrect information certificates for sales, improper fining and penalties, all of which can drag the strata into costly legal battles.

Tips: The Land Title Services do not check or validate whether the contents of your documents are correct. Registered strata plans and voting schedules frequently have addition errors, and bylaws and forms are frequently filed with incorrect information. Check and double-check your forms and records before you file.

Tony Gioventu is executive director of the Condominium Home Owners Association. Contact CHOA at 604-584-2462 or toll-free 1-877-353-2462 or e-mail [email protected].

© The Vancouver Province 2005

CREDIT: Bill Keay, Vancouver Sun Former Vancouver Sun and Province writer Lee Bacchus, who has returned to his first love — photography — since taking early retirement, holds his picture of the Vancouver Art Gallery from an angle that captures the building’s neo-classical architecture.

A Chinatown fish vendor. CPR tracks taken from the Main Street overpass looking west. Cambie and Water, looking south, in Gastown. Lions Gate Bridge is captured from North Vancouver for Lee Bacchus’s postcard series. Yaletown highrises blend to the point where the viewer can’t tell where one ends and another begins Photos by FRANK HERZOG In 1957 (above, left) False Creek residents had a stunning view of the North Shore mountains; by 2004 a wall of concrete, steel and glass is mirrored in the waters of False Creek.

In a better world, Lee Bacchus would be a world-famous writer. But it was not to be, and so now the former Vancouver Sun and Province writer is working on option No. 2: becoming a postcard mogul.

Bacchus, 55, has teamed up with childhood buddy Brian Graham to produce a new series of Vancouver postcards that evoke classic early 20th-century postcards.

The dozen black-and-white photos in the series feature fresh views of familiar sights such as the Vancouver Art Gallery, Lions Gate Bridge, Chinatown, Granville Island, Siwash Rock, Gastown and Yaletown.

Bacchus turns out to be as talented a photographer as he was a writer. His shot of the art gallery is from an unexpected angle that captures the building’s neo-classical architecture against a backdrop of other buildings (the Hotel Vancouver and Cathedral Place).

His Yaletown photo features several highrises whose glass windows blend together so that you can’t tell where one ends and the other begins. His shot of Siwash rock is utterly timeless, and so beautiful someone had it blown up into a four-by-five-foot print for their office.

Bacchus has been a serious photographer since he was a teenager. When he took early retirement a couple of years ago, he turned to photography to fulfil his artistic bent.

Both Bacchus and Graham collect old postcards and like to take photos of the city. So when Graham suggested they do a postcard series, Bacchus agreed.

“This is the era of e-mail, so postcards have taken a dive,” he says.

“But we both collect postcards, and we like it as a kind of people’s medium. It’s an art form that belongs to everyone, and we like that. And we thought there’s room in it to do stuff that isn’t schlocky.

“The idea was to do it as if you had a relationship to the city, instead of just doing it as a tourist might see it. We hope that people who live here might like these as well.”

A good example of their approach would be a picture of the Canadian Pacific Railway tracks, taken from the Main Street overpass looking west. The photo is a mini-history of Vancouver: it’s got the railway tracks, Gastown and a forest of modern steel and glass skyscrapers, all in one shot.

Finding views like this turned out to be a lot more work than Bacchus expected. He figures they took 3,000 digital shots of local landmarks. Once they settled on the right spot, they hauled out a Wehman field camera (a folding view camera) to take the actual photos.

The Wehman is a modern version of the kind of camera that early photographers would have used. It takes large eight-by-10 negatives which give you incredible detail, but it’s heavy, time-consuming and costly: $2,000 for the camera and $20 a picture ($12 for film, $8 for processing).

“This was insane, really, getting up at 4 a.m. with this camera and hiking around,” says Bacchus.

“One day we were on the Granville Bridge trying to shoot the Yaletown development. We’ve got this camera, which is huge — it blocks the whole sidewalk — and all of a sudden this fleet of water trucks comes by, spraying water.

“We’ve got this $2,000 camera with the film in it, and we’re thinking ‘They’re going to turn the water off, right?’ And they keep coming and the water’s not going off. It was a Harrison Ford movie. He comes flying after the trucks in this car, which is being pulled by the camera car. And it’s supposed to be raining, so they’re spraying all this water and we get soaked.”

Once they had the right images, they took them to Printworks, a printer in Japantown. They got 12,000 postcards, greeting cards and bookmarks for $1,800, and then set about flogging them to stores such as Chapters, which has agreed to take some.

The postcards are published under the nom de plume Lucien Frank (the first names of their sons), because “photo by Lee Bacchus and Brian Graham” is too unwieldy.

It also references the great Vancouver photographer Leonard Frank, whose beautiful early postcards provided inspiration for the series.

Bacchus is also selling prints of the series for about $100 (e-mail [email protected] for information).

And in case you were wondering, no, he doesn’t miss writing.

“I don’t ever get the impulse, other than to write a letter to the editor,” he says.

“But I miss venting, when you get that chance to pop off.”

© The Vancouver Sun 2005

Looking at the mountain of yellow sulphur on the north side of Burrard Inlet, the churn of ferries, fishboats and freighters, the industrial-zone shore, the buzzing float planes and the loading cranes, you’d be forgiven for assuming the inlet is a marine dead zone.

And that’s not to mention the tonnes of toilet water that get flushed into the inlet from outfall pipes and the former oil refineries perched on the water’s edge.

So it’s hard for the casual observer to imagine that anything more is alive in all that muck than a few tumour-laden finned things, some clumps of mutated seaweed, and perhaps a version of the Loch Ness monster snuggled down in a nest of petrochemical sludge on the seabed.

But that casual observer would be so wrong.

True, the inlet has been called “the most polluted body of water in Canada.” The herring that used to be so numerous in the 19th century are long gone. There have been reports of fish with liver tumours.

But there is life — lots of it — beneath the surface.

The surf smelt still come in sufficient numbers to support a small but dedicated band of net fishermen. When federal Fisheries manager Jeff Johansen goes for his lunch-hour walk around Coal Harbour these days, he sees young salmon, likely from the Capilano River, cruising the shoreline in search of food.

And when divers went into the water into Coal Harbour near Canada Place, they found 11 forms of algae, three kinds of anemones, two brands of tube worms and two more of sea cucumbers, and a whole collection of sea stars, including the purple, the pink, the mottled, the leather, the blood, the vermillion and the sunflower. There are two types of barnacles, acorn and giant, the coonstriped shrimp, and six types of crabs: red rock, Dungeness, hermit, box, decorator, and longhorn decorator, an evocative name that calls up an image of a Finding Nemo-style crab character with a cowboy hat giving advice on Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.

Along with those, there are mollusks such as the mossy chiton and the frosted nudibranch, and fish — tube snouts, surfperch and sculpin.

“To be honest, the inlet is quite productive,” Johansen says.

And it’s now the job of the people building the $565-million convention centre expansion on the Coal Harbour shoreline to make sure they provide a pleasant home for all these critters in, around, and underneath its million-plus square feet of concrete — sort of like providing nice gravel and a castle for your aquarium-living goldfish, only on a grander scale.

And a more formal one, as well.

The hope is that the surprising abundance of life in the inlet can be increased through habitat improvement measures built in conjunction with the new centre.

It took Johansen, who was the manager of major-projects review until recently, and convention-centre planners, led by marine biologist Rick Hoos from EBA Engineering, two years to work out the exact details of this downtown sea life revitalization

It will also cost several million dollars to put in place everything that was agreed to.

It’s not what Fisheries originally wanted. The department tried to get the convention-centre people to buy a piece of land along the shore in another part of the inlet and rehabilitate that.

But, as Vancouverites know, waterfront land is pricey and sometimes impossible to get at any price.

So, eventually, negotiators agreed to accept the second-best solution, which was to rehabilitate the environment right on the spot.

The easiest part is the reconstruction of the shoreline.

That’s what grademan Bruce Kuhn has been working on for the last couple of weeks.

Kuhn is the guy out there in the white overalls who guides the gravel-shovellers into sculpting the perfectly graded shoreline, the grown-up version of sandcastle-building. Working from a complex set of diagrams and using what looks like an exceptionally long white yardstick (which is actually part of a system that includes laser beams emitted from a camera-like object sitting on a tripod nearby), Kuhn ensures that the slope of the shore all the way around the site is a perfect two-horizontal-to-one-vertical grade.

Once the slope has been smoothed to that geometric ideal, a filter cloth will be laid over it, then smaller stone, then large rocks, known in the trade as rip-rap.

A casual observer might think these are just any old big rocks. But, as with everything else, their size has been carefully calibrated and agreed to by vast teams of experts from fisheries and the convention centre.

“If you have smaller rock, you don’t have the large [crevices] that fish like,” says Johansen. “And the bigger rock also provides more surface for things to grow on.”

It’s the same kind of shoreline that was reconstructed along the seawall all the way west to the Bayshore Hotel.

But the convention-centre site will be adding more features besides that shore reconstruction.

Underneath the building, an intertidal zone will be constructed.

The ground from about the mid-point of the site to the shore under the building will be scraped down another two metres so high tides will wash into it. More special stone will be put down. And small water-draining channels will be dug out to ensure water doesn’t stay under the building and get stagnant.

So while conventioneers are watching their power-point demonstrations on more effective ways to think positively and network in the office, below them will be a moist little underworld where crab, shrimp, mussels, barnacles and anything that likes living in the 100-per-cent-no-sunlight universe will be scuttling (or lying rather inertly) around.

Another little world will be specially constructed off the tip of the point of land closest to Canada Place, the only piece of shore that will stick out past the boundaries of the convention-centre floor.

Originally, there hadn’t been anything beyond the big-rock treatment planned for that point.

But then the convention centre’s roof design changed in that northeast corner.

The city’s urban-design panel, in its first, largely negative review of the design, suggested the building be given more shape and drama on the waterfront by having the roof edge swoop up at the northeast corner.

That meant that it stuck out farther and cast more shadow.

Working in consultation with Jeff Marliave from the Vancouver Aquarium, fisheries and the expansion planners agreed that, in compensation, the project would also include a cluster of boulders on the point and an artificial reef in the water.

“Marliave said if we did this, it would create really neat habitat for rockfish, wolf eels and ling cod,” says Hoos. “There aren’t many places where these fish have suitable habitat.”

It will be even more fish-seducing once the expected forest of bull kelp grows up from the reef.

Finally, and this was the biggest negotiating point of all, the project builders agreed to build a first-of-its-kind series of concrete terraces along the bottom edge of the building.

To you, it might look like an odd series of steps cantilevered off the building, coming from nowhere and going nowhere along the waterline, serving no particular purpose.

But this “marine habitat skirt,” which was produced after several brainstorming sessions among engineers, planners, project managers, and fisheries people, serves several purposes, besides soaking up $3 million to $5 million in construction costs.

It made the city’s design team happy, because it acts as a kind of concrete venetian blind, hiding the pilings that the convention centre will sit on.

“The city really didn’t want this thing that was perched up on sticks — it would look ugly,” Johansen said.

It also helps with security. The post-9/11 era has produced a couple of changes in the building. One of them was a desire to ensure that access to the underside of the building would be restricted.

And finally, it makes baby salmon happy, along with crabs and seaweed.

Between March and August, Burrard Inlet is actually a daycare centre for young salmon from the rivers and streams that run into it. Because Coal Harbour is shallow, they like hanging around there, snacking on things they find close to the shore, while they’re in their teenage phase.

The ledges, which involved negotiating to make special pre-cast concrete with artfully designed irregularities, tide-pool-creating dips and rough spots, will provide a place for slimy things to grow, which encourages other forms of sea life that salmon like to eat.

So with the ledges, “we’re making sure they have continued groceries,” says Hoos.

So after spending all these millions of dollars on carefully constructed shorelines, reefs, marine skirts and the like, what will be the improvement besides the abstract satisfaction of knowing that we human beings aren’t systematically destroying the planet?

Well, as it turns out, no one can say definitively.

After Burrard Inlet was identified repeatedly in the 1970s and ’80s as a hotbed of pollution, the wheels started to grind slowly toward trying to clean it up.

A special collection of experts monitors what happens in Burrard Inlet and another reviews most building projects to assess their impact on marine habitat.

But no one can say exactly what has happened in the past couple of decades, beyond a general sense that things are getting better.

“I’d like to think that we’re progressing,” Johansen said.

But, like parents, those who are spending millions to get just the right kind of rock and irregular concrete and those who are monitoring Burrard Inlet, have to operate on a little bit of faith, hoping that a lot of care and attention will produce good results 20 years later.

© The Vancouver Sun 2005

CHICAGO — Here’s some medical news you can trust: A new study confirms that what doctors once said was good for you often turns out to be bad — or at least not as great as initially thought.

The report is a review of major studies published in three influential medical journals between 1990 and 2003, including 45 highly publicized studies that initially claimed a drug or other treatment worked.

Subsequent research contradicted results of seven studies — 16 per cent — and reported weaker results for seven others, an additional 16 per cent. That means nearly one-third of the original results did not hold up, according to the study in today’s Journal of the American Medical Association.

“Contradicted and potentially exaggerated findings are not uncommon in the most visible and most influential original clinical research,” said study author Dr. John Ioannidis, a researcher at the University of Ioannina in Greece.

Experts say the study is a reminder to doctors and patients that they should not put too much stock in a single study and understand that treatments often become obsolete with medical advances.

“A single study is not the final word, and that is an important message,” editors at the New England Journal of Medicine said in a statement about the study.

The refuted studies dealt with a wide range of drugs and treatments. Hormone pills were once thought to protect menopausal women from heart disease but later were shown to do the opposite. Contrary to initial results, vitamin E pills have not been shown to prevent heart attacks.

Contradictions also included a study that found nitric oxide does not improve survival in patients with respiratory failure, despite earlier claims. And a study suggested that an antibody treatment did not improve survival in certain sepsis patients; a smaller previous study found the opposite.

Ioannidis acknowledged an important but not very reassuring caveat: “There’s no proof that the subsequent studies … were necessarily correct.” But he noted that in all 14 cases in which results were contradicted or softened, the subsequent studies were either larger or better designed. Also, none of the contradicted treatments is currently recommended by medical guidelines.

Ioannidis’s study examined research in the New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet and JAMA — prominent journals whose weekly studies help feed a growing public appetite for medical news.

Not by accident, this week’s JAMA also includes a study contradicting previous thinking that stomach-lying helped improve breathing in children hospitalized with acute lung injuries. The new study found they did no better than patients lying on their backs.

Dr. Catherine DeAngelis, JAMA’s editor, said she included the study with Ioannidis’ report to highlight the nature of medical research. “The crazy part about science and yet the exciting part about science is you almost never have something that’s black and white,” she said.

© The Vancouver Sun 2005

As couples prepare to take their trip down the aisle this summer, financial planners are reminding them to update their financial plan for the future.

Thousands of couples make trips to the florist, caterer and dressmaker in planning a wedding, but a visit to a financial planner to help lay out a strategy for the merger of two financial households should also make the list, investment advisers say.

“It seems like when you’re getting married it very often strikes people to start looking more to the future,” said James Kraemer, a certified financial planner with TFI Services in Winnipeg.

“They’ve never had a plan before, and it’s his and hers and separate plans and more living for the day rather than for the future.”

The key for them is establishing a financial plan based on their mutual goals that should include discussing what can be uncomfortable topics, such as wills, powers of attorney and health-care directives, Kraemer said.

Having those fundamental documents in place can save heartache if something unfortunate happens, he added.

“Sometimes you have to take them back from the wedded bliss and say, ‘Here’s the reality of the situation: You could walk out the door and something could happen, so we have to plan for all eventualities, not the least of which is a long and healthy life for both of you,'” Kraemer said.

Whether the wedding is a quick trip to city hall or an elaborate affair, the marriage that follows normally involves a merger of finances.

And while the couple may think they are soulmates, their portfolios, levels of risk tolerance and investment strategies may need more than matrimonial bliss to come together successfully.

Ron Harvey of Money Concepts said it is not uncommon for one spouse to be more aggressive in his or her investment strategy, while the other will be more conservative.

But priorities such as saving for and buying a home, estate planning, life insurance and planning for children are often common.

Harvey, a certified financial planner in Ottawa, says it all comes back to having some goals, a financial plan to achieve them and then sticking to that plan.

“I always start with, what are your dreams and goals,” he said. “Not having that plan means you tend to live much more for today. You become much more vulnerable to the credit society.”

Harvey said the biggest worry for many couples is the lack of money when they are starting out. But most people can find $50 a month to get started, he said.

“So if you forgo the cost of one and a half cases of beer and throw that into an investment plan for yourself, it’s amazing what will happen to you down the road,” he said.

Harvey said the key is to take the money right off your paycheque before you ever have a chance to spend it on something else.

“It doesn’t exist in terms of other ways to spend it and yet it continues to grow,” he said.

© The Vancouver Province 2005

Company energizes film industry with portable power

Trinity Power takes electricity from local utility and adopts it to the user’s needs

Marke Andrews

Vancouver Sun

Monday, July 11, 2005

CREDIT: Steve Bosch, Vancouver Sun Todd Johnston, manager of business operations for Trinity Power Corporation, and Amanda Kent, sales and marketing manager, atop and surrounded by their portable power generators.

In his 18 years working in the film industry, Dan Janelle saw a growing need for portable electrical power that would be cheaper, cleaner and quieter than diesel-powered generators.

So the former Bridge Studios employee, along with business partner Todd Johnston, formed Trinity Power Corporation in 1999, offering portable substations that can take electricity directly from the local utility and adapt it to the voltage needs of the user. The sci-fi feature film Mission to Mars was the company’s first contract.

What began as a two-man operation six years ago now has six full-time employees plus more when things get busy (the company currently has 11 people working out of its Coquitlam headquarters). Its 2005 production credits include feature films X-Men 3, Underworld II, Fire Wall, The Fog, Antarctica, Mem(o)re, Pacific Air 121, Final Destination III, Deviant Behavior, Zixx: Level II and the television series Stargate Atlantis.

“We saw the movie industry going in a direction that required greater and greater applications of power, and requiring mobile power,” says Janelle, technical operations manager at Trinity Power. “It was a good pooling of our resources and our talents to formulate a company that could offer a range of quality service and viability.”

From two productions in 1999 (the feature Double Jeopardy was its second production), the company jumped to 13 films and TV shows the next year. Halfway through 2005, it has 11 productions either finished or in the works.

If a production only needs a unit for less than a day, it is cheaper to use a diesel-powered generator. However, the costs balance out after 24 hours, and the longer the production runs on BC Hydro power, the cheaper it is. According to Trinity’s figures, a production requiring 1,200 kilowatts of portable power for 10 days (240 hours) will spend $16,260 for a Trinity unit, and $72,000 on diesel generators.

“It doesn’t take very many days of running a large diesel generator to burn up a significant amount of cost,” says Johnston, Trinity business operations and development manager.

The largest production they were involved with was the 2003 feature Chronicles of Riddick, for which Trinity replaced 96 generators worth of power with 96 400-amp switches — a total of 8.5 million watts. Chronicles of Riddick gave the company 11 months of work.

Trinity, which designs and manufactures all its own equipment, will never say no to a small job, knowing that it may lead to bigger things down the road.

“We have never turned away business, no matter how small, because some days those people will become the big guys in town,” says Janelle.

In addition to being cheaper, Trinity’s stackable units take up less space than generators, do not pollute and do not make any noise, always a consideration on a film shoot.

Stewart Bethune, production manager for X-Men 3 and last year’s Fantastic Four, which also used Trinity, says the cost savings are good, but he uses Trinity because of what it can do.

“They have a lot of experience doing these large movies, and they’re the prime game in town,” says Bethune. “We need such a tremendous amount of power, and they can supply that power. They’re a great company.”

The movie business accounts for only one-third of the company’s business. Trinity also supplies portable power for construction sites and for entertainment and sporting events, among them the Vancouver Folk Festival, Golden Spike Days, the B.C. Summer Games and the Molson Indy race.

Trinity has supplied power for Sonic Environmental Solutions Inc., which has been cleaning PCB-contaminated soil on Annacis Island, and has jobs in Edmonton, Calgary, Colorado and Wyoming. Trinity is also looking at industrial applications of their systems in China.

“When we started Trinity, it was two guys with all our equipment in our basements and job sites,” says Johnston. “Now we’ve got a 5,000-square-foot warehouse, a half-acre yard and a 2,000-square-foot office. We’re busting at the seams and we don’t know where we’re going to put it all.”

They won’t disclose their financial figures, but Janelle says the company has doubled its gross revenue every year since 1999.

“I guess if we were a public company, our shareholders would be happy,” says Janelle.

© The Vancouver Sun 2005

OTTAWA — Curries not only make skin sweat, they may protect against skin cancer, according to the latest study on the anti-cancer prowess of turmeric.

Published today in the journal Cancer, the study found curcumin, the pigment that gives turmeric its yellow tint, keeps the deadliest skin cancers from dividing and growing and stimulates apoptosis — an intracellular death program that causes cancer cells to kill themselves.

The finding hasn’t been tested in animals, let alone people, but it is the latest to suggest the centuries old and “dirt cheap” Indian folk medicine may help treat and prevent cancer, researchers say.

Curcumin is already being tested on patients with multiple myeloma, an incurable bone marrow cancer, as well as pancreatic cancer. Researchers at the University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston also hope to test the compound on breast cancer patients after last month reporting that curcumin stopped breast tumour cells from spreading to the lungs in mice injected with human breast cancer cells.

University of California, Los Angeles researchers reported in January that curcumin destroyed the sticky brain plaques linked with Alzheimer’s disease in mice. Others are testing it on diseases as diverse as cystic fibrosis, alcohol-related liver disease and inflammatory bowel disease.

“We are taking one tumour at a time and reporting the effects of curcumin,” says Bharat Aggarwal, of the department of experimental therapeutics at the University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center and a co-author of the study. He’s also co-founder of Curry Pharmaceuticals, a North Carolina company whose mission is to develop a synthetic curcumin for “multiple pharmacological pathways.”

The native of India — who himself pops 500 milligrams of curcumin supplements per day — says populations with curcumin-rich diets have dramatically lower rates of breast, prostate, lung, colon and other cancers.

The anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties of turmeric — a herb native to southern and southeastern Asia that belongs to the ginger family — have been known for ages.

Traditional Indian medicine has used turmeric powder for everything from coughs and sore throats to diabetic ulcers, sprains and rheumatism.

© The Vancouver Sun 2005

CREDIT: Debra Brash, Victoria Times Colonist The ambience of a bygone era is preserved in the restored drawing room of the 11,000-square-foot mansion in Victoria’s Rocklands.

CREDIT: Debra Brash, Victoria Times Colonist The grand hall needed little retouching by the new owners.

Not everyone finds their way home by getting lost, but that’s what happened with Bob and Anita Frederickson. The couple was looking to downsize from their 3,500 square- foot home, and on their realtor’s advice, headed out to an open house in Victoria’s upscale Rockland district.

As they made their way up the drive to the open house, they were surprised to find it a mansion. A little puzzled, the couple poked around before phoning the realtor.

“We were at the wrong house,” says Bob, a neuropharmacologist, with a laugh. The mansion, however, was on the market, so the realtor whisked down to Rockland and opened the house to the Fredericksons. What they saw turned their downsizing plans into a counterspin.

“I walked into this room, and immediately realized this place had to be saved,” says Bob, standing in the house’s grand hall, The grand hall is on par with Craigdarroch Castle.

The house, built for lumber baron William James Macaulay and his family, was the second to be built in Rockland shortly after Victoria’s famed landmark. The grand hall is a masterpiece of Scottish baronial craftsmanship from Victoria’s most celebrated architectural era, with a towering stained glass window, untouched cedar paneling, massive fireplace and fir floors beneath a 24-foot high ceiling. The room is resplendent in intricately detailed wood finishing, including Ionic columns, carved transom screens and bead-trimmed arches.

And while Craigdarroch has served many purposes from a convalescent home to a military college, the Macaulay house has always remained a single-family home, quite a feat for a 113-year old edifice that stretches out more than 11,000 square feet. “We expected to find it broken into a tenement house, but it has been owned by only five families,” says Bob.

Discarding their downsizing plans, Anita and Bob purchased the home and started the house’s restoration and renovation at the foundations by having the home seismically upgraded. “We thought we were starting on a three-month renovation, but it turned into three years,” says Anita. And when Bob muses aloud, “How long was the painter here,” Anita laughs and says, “He became part of the family.”

The lot had been subdivided years earlier, altering road access to what had originally been the home’s back door, forcing a trade in function and traffic flow within the home. “That forced us to tweak the back staircase,” says building designer Archie Willie.

Willie allowed for a grander passageway by eliminating the turn-around landing in the back stairway, carefully dismantling the existing wood cladding and rebuilding it in a straight line. The added length was accommodated by expanding the house’s footprint.

Interior designer Laura Steele of NewSpace Interior Design recommended hand-printed Thibault wallpaper to complement the wood finishings. The covered porch features a stamped concrete base, arts and crafts detailing, and sandstone pillars drawn from the same Island quarry that supplied Craigdarroch’s stones.

“As much as possible, we wanted everything to be of the era,” says Bob. They filled the house with auction finds — elegant fir, cedar and mahogany furnishings sized on a grand scale. The kitchen’s fir floor had been covered with linoleum that was fixed with such a strong adhesive that the planks had to be lifted and taken outside for planing. Some of the kitchen’s original white lacquered cabinets, fitted with library pulls, are paired up with new cherry cabinetry finished in a modified shaker style and topped with granite counters in smoke, umber and russet hues. A spacious island serves as a comfortable centre for informal gatherings.

CREDIT: Debra Brash, Victoria Times Colonist The kitchen maintains its old-fashioned attractions — but with stainless steel and polished granite.

CREDIT: Debra Brash, Victoria Times Colonist The cedar-panelled walls rise 24 feet to the ceiling and a massive fireplace dominates the sitting area.

CREDIT: Debra Brash, Victoria Times Colonist Three tables are joined together to fill the vast and very formal dining room.

The new woods are complemented with the original fir floors, and a rustic antique table surrounded by bobtail-back Windsor chairs, all auction finds. The walls were wainscotted in a cream-coloured beadboard for a genteel country look. Aluminum windows were discarded and replaced with mullioned windows reminiscent of the house’s era.

A butler’s pantry, complete with extra dishwasher for quick cleanups after large gatherings, leads to a ballroom-sized dining room, fitted with three dining room sets from Chintz. “We couldn’t find a single table large enough for the room,” says Anita. An antique sideboard of German oak mirrors the style of the grand hall with fruited and beaded carving, arches and miniature ionic columns.

The walls are adorned with beaded Swarovski crystal sconces, salvaged from the basement. “I didn’t know what they were at first; they were coated in dust,” says Anita. “I almost threw them out.”

The house has many sitting rooms, each with its own distinctively-tiled fireplace ranging from watery blues to earthy umbers and ochres. The grand hall’s fireplace is bordered with a brandy-hued ceramic kick. And that’s only the first floor.

“It’s a labour of love for them,” says Willie, who is already planning the second-storey renovation.

finds. The walls were wainscotted in a cream-coloured beadboard for a genteel country look. Aluminum windows were discarded and replaced with mullioned windows reminiscent of the house’s era.

A butler’s pantry, complete with extra dishwasher for quick cleanups after large gatherings, leads to a ballroom-sized dining room, fitted with three dining-room sets from Chintz. “We couldn’t find a single table large enough for the room,” says Anita.

An antique sideboard of German oak mirrors the style of the grand hall with fruited and beaded carving, arches and miniature ionic columns.

The walls are adorned with beaded Swarovski crystal sconces, salvaged from the basement.

“I didn’t know what they were at first; they were coated in dust,” says Anita. “I almost threw them out.”

The house has many sitting rooms, each with its own distinctively tiled fireplace ranging from watery blues to earthy umbers and ochres. The grand hall’s fireplace is bordered with a brandy-hued ceramic kick. And that’s only the first floor.

“It’s a labour of love for them,” says Willie who is already planning the second-storey renovation.

© The Vancouver Sun 2005

VICTORIA — To inspect or not to inspect? It shouldn’t be a question.

Here’s some advice for buyers bypassing home inspections: Don’t be a fool.

Making an offer conditional on home inspection is one of the best tools buyers can employ to safeguard their real-estate investment dollars.

But first you must inspect the inspector’s credentials.

Look for a home inspector who is registered with the Canadian Association of Home and Property Inspectors. You don’t want to rely on someone who has the savvy to put out a business card and not much else when it comes to advice on a home purchase.

CAHPI inspectors must pass written exams and conform to industry standards of practice. Your inspector should have insurance against errors or omissions. A properly qualified professional is unlikely to make serious errors, but it’s better to have insurance against an expensive mistake.

Or you can go the extra mile and hire a professional engineer to assess your home structurally. Years ago, we had a home inspected by professional engineer at a cost that was about 2.5 times higher than a regular home inspector. It turned out to be money well spent. He pointed out a structural flaw that would in time translate into repair bills that might have outstripped the purchase price of the home. When we asked him if we should buy the house, his response was: How much do you want this house? If you love it and can’t see living anywhere else, buy it, but with your eyes open. We passed on the house. Remember, the ultimate decision and pricetag for repairs will rest with you.

A home inspection report is not a to-do list for the seller. According to HouseMaster Inspectors, people often ask inspectors “who should make the repairs,” and “should I buy this house?” The role of the home inspector is to provide their opinion of the home’s condition at the time of inspection. Buyers should look to their real estate professionals and lawyers to answer other questions.

Remember that a home inspection is not a pass/fail test, but an opportunity for the prospective buyer to learn what they’re getting into on their investment. Some buyers are willing to invest in a sizable renovation; others may only be looking for a home that they will occupy for only a few years and may want a trouble-free house.

Remember that a home inspection may reduce the risk in buying a home, but it cannot entirely eliminate it.

Ignore the inspector’s advice at your own peril. A house’s defects can only worsen as they deteriorate through usage and age. Address outstanding concerns as soon as possible.

Your real estate agent or mortgage adviser can usually recommend three home inspectors in your area, or you can find one through the Canadian Association of Home and Property Inspectors at www.cahpi.ca.

© The Vancouver Province 2005