Knox — Christmas season a good time to release bad news

Jack Knox is a former Kamloops journalist who writes for the Victoria Times-Colonist.

COLUMN — The week in news so far:

• North Korea is being blamed for a cyberattack that scared Sony Pictures into pulling The Interview, the Seth Rogen comedy about a plan to kill Kim Jong Un.

Unfortunately, it’s too late for North Korea to be offended by Terms of Endearment, Beaches, Mamma Mia or The Bridges of Madison County.

• If you have to break bad/controversial news, best do it while everyone is preoccupied with Christmas shopping.

This week the provincial government A) released its report on the botched health firings, B) approved the Site C dam, C) released an audit showing how a B.C. Lotteries plan to save $20 million cost $25 million instead, and D) shuffled embattled cabinet minister Amrik Virk to a new portfolio. No truth to the rumour that Seth Rogen was named minister of international trade.

• When Alberta’s Danielle Smith defected to the governing Conservatives with eight of her Wildrose Party MLAs, one of the floor-crossers was familiar to Victorians.

MLA Bruce McAllister was a CHEK News reporter and anchor (it was called CH at the time) from 2001 to 2004 before moving to Global Calgary.

No truth to the rumour that Ed Bain will take over as Wildrose leader.

• It will cost Saanich taxpayers $480,000 to turf the municipality’s head administrator, who got the boot simply because the new mayor wanted change.

Best Twitter response came from the guy who asked what he had to do to get a deal like that. Clearly, he said, he has been annoying the wrong bosses. “All I got was more night shifts.”

• Washington-Havana relations might be thawing, but don’t expect cigars to flow from Cuba to the U.S. any time soon — good news for Victoria cigar shops catering to tourists who enjoy the mildly illicit thrill of buying smokes that are legal in Canada, but not ’Merica.

“I don’t see any immediate effect on us,” said Gautam Arora of Old Morris Tobacconist on Government Street. Likewise, Aemon Bayat of Fort Street’s Cuban Cigar Shop noted that while the White House might extend diplomatic relations, lifting the trade embargo will require the co-operation of Congress, a trickier proposition. For now, there’ll be only a minor change: U.S. visitors to Cuba will be able to bring back up to $100 worth of tobacco and liquor.

A hundred bucks won’t buy a lot, at least not in Canada. A single Cuban cigar might average around $20 here. A box of 10 Cohiba Behikes will run you $1,200.

Tourists snap up the forbidden fruit, though. “In the summertime, when we have all the cruise ships, I’d say 95 per cent of our Cubans go to Americans,” Arora says. Victoria’s Goodfellas Cigar shop estimates Americans buy maybe 40 per cent of its Cubans.

American naval officers and fighter pilots seem particularly fond of them. Business booms when U.S. aircraft carriers visit with their flight crews on board. “We love them,” Arora says. “They actually clean us out. A lot of the captains buy. Admirals come and buy.”

Customers include celebrities. Pamela Anderson was in the Cuban Cigar Shop last week, Bayat said.

“She bought some Cohibas, which are the best of the best.” Billy Connolly and Diane Lane have bought cigars there, too. Hellboy’s Ron Perlman is a repeat customer at Goodfellas, while Bill Clinton’s driver came shopping when the ex-president was in town, says owner Luigi Silletta.

“We had Nick Nolte in this year,” Arora notes. Bill Cosby poked around Old Morris in 2010, but kept his wallet in his pants.

“He found the Cubans were a little too expensive.” (Maybe he was anticipating legal bills.) John Travolta, Kid Rock and Dennis Hopper have all picked up cigars at Old Morris, while Wayne Gretzky and Kiefer Sutherland stocked up on stogies at the same time a few years ago. Way back, John Wayne took away some Cubans, promising to pay later, but never did.

If the massive American market is ever thrown wide open, some fear the subsequent demand will push prices through the roof, or that Canadians will shop for their Cubans in the U.S., where tobacco taxes are far lower.

For now, though, it’s Victoria si, Yanqui no.

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