See It...

by Stephanie Wiebe

Shoveling snow is not my idea
of a good time. When faced with
the crummy job of clearing the

driveway, I think about all the
other, more important things I
could be doing with that time and
energy — like writing a novel,

_ cleaning the house, exercising, of

saving the world. Not that I
would be doing those things, but
I could.

My husband feels the same way
— it’s a family attitude, actually.
We drag the kids outside,
grumbling and whining, and
everyone grabs a shovel and
we're all miserable, shovelling
together. After the first five
minutes, somebody usually

. whines about frostbite or child
labour laws, and someone else’s
back aches, and we’re all quite

~ cranky about the annoying

inconvenience. Surely this must

' make us a close family.

The frustrating thing about
snow is knowing that it’s really
just water in another form, and if
only the weather would warm up,
we wouldn’t have to shovel it at
all, Thinking this way, one tends
to wonder if the substance we’re
shoveling truly exists. But it does,
and sometimes it’s pretty heavy.
It’s actually better not to think —
just keep shoveling.

We make no pretense of
enjoying this. If the snow is light
and not too deep, the family’s
mood is sober, but tolerable. But
when the snow is wet and deep,
we're an ill-tempered bunch.
Particularly when certain small
children are caught throwing
already-shovelled snow back onto
the driveway. We do not treat
such infractions lightly, no matter
how cute the violator appears.

When the driveway is finally
cleared to a satisfactory level, we
yace back into the warm house
like rabid animals on a rampage.
Wet boots and gloves are thrown
haphazardly onto the floor, and
damp jackets are tossed over |
chairs as each of us heads toward
salvation: blankets, robes, and hot
chocolate. Slowly we thaw, and

The Way I

become a nice family once again.

Until the plow comes by.

Generally around the time
we've forgotten about the
driveway and the snow, when the
hateful memory of shovelling has
faded, comes the sound of metal
grating against asphalt,
resounding through the
neighbourhood. Often, this

dreadful sound will attract the

children to the window, like lint

’ to black sweaters, and they'll

press their horrified faces against
the cold glass, just in time to see
the snowplow push two feet of
newly compacted snow and ice
across the driveway — and
family life becomes crummy once
more,

Some people can ignore it.
They just drive over the hump of
hard snow, oblivious to the sound
of the car’s muffler scraping
against the ice, Others have
trucks that can easily clear the
mound, or they exist as
pedestrians, managing to leap
over the ice-blockade without
falling clumsily on their derriercs.
The city plow doesn’t affect their
lives at all. These people miss
out on the close miserable family
experience that we share during
these winter months.

1 often wonder, in years to
come, which tender moments my
children will recall of their
childhood and growing years. |
have a horrible dread that they
may forget all about the cookie
baking, days at the lake and the
silly family games; and
affectionately remember these.
wretched snow shovelling
episodes: "Gee, sis, remember
how Mom used to mutter and
Dad used to cuss? Remember
their cranky distorted faces and
their terrible threats when we
whined about hypothermia?
WEREN’T THEY AWFUL?!?"

Thank God, there’s no pictures
of THIS in the family photo
album. We can always say they

‘dreamed it.

Schools to provide
art for Northern

‘’ In anticipation of the upcoming
Northern B.C. Winter Games, local
schools are encouraged to partici-
pate in a Northern B.C. Winter
Games school decorating contest.
All schools in Terrace and Thom-
hill can participate, but only those
schools hosting events will be
jadged.

City of Terrace Freeman Vesta
Douglas has volunteered to co-
ordinate the contest. She is also
gaihering together 8 panel of
judges to visit the schools arid
judge ¢ach school’s: efforts of
Wednesday, Jan. 30 during achool
hours. ‘The prizes (consisting of

B.C. Winter Games

$100 for first place and $50 for
second place in each category) will
be awarded to the junior category,
consisting of all primary and ele-
mentary schools, and the seniors,
including Caledonia Senior
Secondary, Skeena and Thomhill
Junior Secondary Schools. The
Awards Ceremonies will be
announced in the very near future.

The schools are to be decorated
in each one’s collective interpreta-
tion of a "Winter Games theme".
The classrooms may be decorated,

‘but the focus should be on the

overall decoration of the school
including hallways, entryways and
the venue sites (eg: gymnasiums).

Drunks don’t seem deterred 7
by hazardous road conditions

Terrace -RCMP charged two
. people with impaired driving in the
early moming hours of Sunday,
Jan 13. Cpl. Gary Moritz stated in
a press release that the drivers
were checked when their vehicles,
stuck in the heavy snowfall from

investment, but that won’t be for
some time to come."

~ Squish then went into more detail
on some of the matters alluded to
by Jovial. "Pulp mills in this pro-
vince have a guaranteed supply of
chips at a price far below the
world price," he explained. "They
pay $35 8 cubic metre for some-
thing that’s worth $90 and costs
the sawmill $40 a cubic metre to
produce.

"This is fine for an integrated
company that owns both the saw-
mill and the pulp mill... They only
swap a loss in one set of books for
a profit in another. But for the
independant mill, it amounts to a
direct subsidy to the pulp industry
and it’s something that investors
like Mr. Jovial can’t afford to
absorb. It’s time the pulp industry
started carrying their own weight
by paying a fair price on the
domestic market.

"But the situation has much
greater implications that will some
day soon affect you much more
directly. By assuring the pulp
industry a guaranteed source of
wood chips. below cost, we’re

that evening, were freed and driven
away as police approached. Moritz
expressed incredulity that anyone
would drink and drive in view of
the hazardous road conditions that
night. ;

"It was difficult enough driving
on city streets in a sober state, let
alone in combination with alcohol
impairment," he said.

On the same night three men

encouraging the construction of
even more pulp mills and dis-
couraging the introduction of a
value-added component. And by
building more wood-hungry pulp
mills, B.C. is going to run out of
trees even sooner than it otherwise
would.

"Consider this. If the B.C. pulp
industry had to pay $90 a cubic
metre for chips, they would be
forced to include a value-added
component to their mills. This
would mean paper mills... and
even more jobs. In time, it would
mean paper recycling in this pro-
vince and more jobs still.

"And you can take this scenario
one step further. If the paper was
produced in B.C., and it was used
entirely by B.C. publishers, the
total value of a pulp logs harvested
would stay in this province. We
would finally be getting the value
we deserve out of low grade logs
and it would also have the effect
of slowing our rate of harvest. In
other words, it would delay, per-
haps even prevent, the fall down
effect."

tat

were charged with violations of the
B.C. Liquor Act after a routine
patrol check of the Thornhill Com-

‘munity Hall. Police say there was

apparently a youth dance in pro-
gress at which minors were con-
suming alcohol. Two of the
charges involved minors in pos-
session of liquor, and the other
was for consuming liquor in a
public place.

| Forestry Insights === Continued from page A7

Squish then ended his presenta-
tion: “If we can export chips — or
better still get fair value on the
domestic market — then as an
industry we will make the profits
we deserve, which means paying
more taxes to the provincial
government, and we will be able
to offer the job security forest
workers in this province deserve.
Thank you very much."

With this, each member of the
audience was left to ponder their
next move, Were Jovial and
Squish on the level? And if they
were, would it make any diffe-
rence if an individual citizen was
to voice their opinion to the
government?

This whole affair with Jovial and
his new sawmill is fictitious, of
course. But if you had been there,
what would you do?

Once you’ve decided whether
Jovial should be allowed to export
pulp chips or not, phone the Ter-
race Review at 635-7840 and let
us know what you think. It could
make a difference to what happens
to Jovial in coming weeks.

Editor’s note: The tables below are modifications of the tables which accompanted

last week’s Forestry Insights. They have been
revenues and production costs brought about by

in Milton Jovial’s proposed sawmill project.

Product

Revenue

reworked to reflect changes in
the inclusion of kiln dried lumber

Annual Profit or Loss, Export Chip Sales

Cost

Commodity lumber

$22,017,440

$16,883,840

Value added

$6,745,600

_ $1,597,120

' Hog fuel

$324,000

$324,000 $0 |

Chips — saw logs

$7,200,000

$7,400,000

Chips — pulp logs

$18,000,000

Revenue

| $54,287,040 | $42,954,960 | $11,392,080 |

$16,750,000

$22,017,440

$16,883,640

$6,745,600

$1,597,120

$324,000

$324,000

$2,800,000

$5,400,000

$7,000,000

$11,750,000

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