; V V.. € think maybe ‘Video 5 Ste:

owner ‘Jim Wold is on to something. He ‘recently
mounted three canoes on the roof of his establish-
ment — probably visible from the offices on the
_second floor of city hall, although not from the public
works building —- to draw attention to the fact that
unusually heavy rainfalls tend to fill his shop with
water, a circumstance he blames on the public works
department. °
Whether the city is to blame or not for Wold’s
watery misfortunes, the canoes certainly add some-
thing to an otherwise featureless roof line and
present a concept that might be applied elsewhere in
the city. |
- We could, for instance, perch a foundering
representation of a ship, its hull made of torh-up
lottery tickets, on the roof of the library to remind
the populace that even the most benevolent of
projects can be torpedoed by inertia and the unex-
pected. Tying up a garbage scow on the Skeena down
near Bobsien Crescent runoff point might illustrate
the limited imagination of authorities when faced
with a problem for which there is no statutorily
prescribed solution.
Moving westward down the valley, we visualize
a full-scale model of the Exxon Valdez atop Kitsum-
kalum Mountain, a governmental problem that sank
years ago but continues to pollute the tax bills of
property owners. From that point a maritime disas-
ter more real than symbolic, the MK Bay Marina,
may be just visible on the southern horizon, a view

Terrace Review — April 3, 1992

. unchstructed, for now, by Orendé-like uprisings.

Returning to the downtown core and continuing
with the nautical - theme, we might consider
mounting a smashed .sextant or other ruined

‘navigational tool on a pedestal at the intersection of

Kalum St. and Greig | Ave, to commemorate the
triumph of confusion in traffic control; the demand
for equally pertinent representations. at a large
number of other points in the city with interesting
ways of creating collisions, however, might create an

. onerous expense.

Nothing less than a. ‘monumental mock mine
field, fashioned perhaps as a flying buttress of
hydrogen balloons, would do for the Sande Overpaas.

No such municipal flotilla would be complete
without a Marie Celeste, and what else would serve
here but the Good Ship Convention Centre itself?
The spectral and: invisible entity could be moved
about in secret by public works crews, materializing
on occasion at the corner of Kalum and Park just
long enough to fire another salvo at the sinking MLV.
Library Expansion before vanishing again. .

And finally, across the calm, green and waveless
expanse of George Little Park we have the stoic.
bunker of the $40,000 washrooms, an eminently
suitable base for the fabled Toilet Ship of Thomas

Pynchon, hatches fastened with padlocks for which

the keys have been permanently lost, secure forever |
against child molesters, graffiti scribblers and
sodium bombs.

We could become a destination tourism attraction
for ship fanciers of all nations; Terrace, home of the
northern boat people.