Page A4 — Terrace Standard, Wednesday, September 9, 1992 5 TERRACE STANDARD) - ESTABUSHED APAIL 27, 1988 Rod Link Registration No. 7820 4647 Lazelle Ave., Terrace, B.C., V8G 188 Phone (604) 638-7283 Fax (604) 638-8432 Serving the Terrace area. Published on Wednesday of each week by Cariboo Prass (1969) Lid. at 4647 Lazella Ave., Tarraca, British Columbia. Slorins, photographs, illustrations, designs and typestyles in the Tarrace Standard are the property of the Copyright holders, including Cariboo Press (1969) Ltd., its ih lustration repro services and advertising agencies. Reproduction lit whole of in part, without written permission, is spectlically proniblted. S CNA Authorized as second-class mail pending the Post Office Department, for payment cf postags in cash. Publisher/Editor: © Advertising Manager: Mike L. Hamm . Production Manager: Edouard Credgeur Jaf Hé Mapel ~ News/Community; Malcolm flaxtar ~ Nows/Sports Rose Fisher — Front Office Manager, Carolyn Anderson — Typésettar - Arlene Watts — Typesatter, Susan Credgeur — - Janet Viveiras — Advertising Consultant, Sam Colller — Advertising Consuitant, - ; Charlsne Matthews — Ky MAOTAN om my oe a og ys patina asi aca ei Wspaatas COM Circulation Supervisor cONA — Composing/Darkraom, ‘ WERIFIED: CIACULATION CONTROLL EQ ~ Special thanks to all our contributors and correspondents for their time and talents. EDITORIAL Dive, dive, dive! Governments and the like are similar to submarines. They are pretty impressive when travelling on, the surface and mag- nificent when steaming into port. But let. there be any trouble on the horizon or some kind of mission .to perform, those in government sound the ‘alarm, head for the bottom and rig for silent running. They. can’t be dislodged. even. with the. most. powerful of depth charges. Consider the provincial government’s approach to the Nisga’a land claims talks. It’s been extremely reluctant to get into any detail on exactly what is going on. To be sure, the province is just one of three parties involved, It, the federal government and the Nisga’a Tribal Council each have their. own agenda to pursue, Yet the provincial agenda excludes the very people the government.is supposed to serve... Consider -the refusal of the province to release an analysis of the Cassiar Mining Corporation done last fall. Information in _ information initiative. that analysis was. used as the basis for the province to deny the company any more money. That. resulted: in the company _ going into receivership, the ‘loss of 400 well paying jobs, the death of a town and — the turning into nomads of 1,100 people. All this must be balanced ‘against the provincial government’s new freedom of- It’s designed, so says the government, to peel away the layers — to better enable citizens to find out how the government works and how it makes decisions. Yet as long as governments retain the right to keep secret whatever it decides should be kept secret, the effort may be only a bunch of hoopla. The role of a government is to serve the people it represents, For that to happen, the people place their trust in a government. Trust — and disclosure — that isn’t given in return simply builds suspicion and fear. Plainly speaking How many. times have -you’ve been driven to anger when trying to decipher a legal or government document? ‘The Plain Language Institute, a- non-profit. society: funded ‘by the: ministry’ ‘of the’ attoriiey' gent i tures last yea - dal anitthe Law ‘Foundation ofB:C;,'Has a’ four-year mandate to suggest ways in which legal, government and business lan- guage can be revamped .so an average citizen can make.sense of it. The institute’s first’ report.is due out in "September, and-judging by initial response from lawyers ‘and bureaucrats, it should contain a wealth of suggestions. The society,. however, wants to. extend its mandate. tvell beyond March, 1993 and is Seeking. 1 eat of funding. With expendi- “Late, the" society: is not a cheap operation. Officials should have a clear look at what’s being accomplished before extending the society’s lifespan. One thing that is sure to irk taxpayers even more than. mind- . -tumbing legalese’ is precious dollars wasted on needless studies. (100 Mile Free Press) © A fair challenge For 17 years I've lived next | door to the- fair grounds, yet I’ve. never attended a Skeena Valley Fall. Fair: My excuse? Proximity robs ‘the fair of its allure, mystique, adventure. Bifocals To a country kid, . North . Battleford’s August. exhibition beckoned from final exam lime onward, the: way the West lured settlers. Getting Through by Claudette Sandecki § of nearly half a million dol-.. there was only half ihe fun. The trek over. 30 miles of gravel highway took at least — an hour, more if a tire or- other vital part s succumbed along the way. We were ‘lucky to arrive home before midnight, And it was next thing to a.miracle if every. cow, horse, and pig remained confined to its respective Pasture or pen, Unlike today, farm families didn’t zip into town thrice dai- ly attired willy nilly in torn jeans and .raggedy sneakers. We dressed. We com- memorated the . occasion by lining up on he Chev pickup’s running board while Mom and Dad cach took our picture with ‘a box camera. It might take until, Christmas to shoot the other. six ex- posures:if-our social schedule was hectic, Then the film was: mailed to Farmer’s Studio in Saskatoon for developing: Pic- ture taking: then : ‘allowed : nO relakes. ‘ Cash‘was hard: to. come bys: particularly’ ‘before harvest. Selling. oven-ready’ ‘fryers. sand fresh: vegetables to North Battleford: ; much of: our fairday: expenses. ce Chickens we butchered in the.’ late. afiernoon - before ‘fairday. and kept. cool; hung down -a s well in a bucket. Peas — os much as a washtub — we picked at sunrise, and shelled before breakfast fairday. We carried a- lunch of cucumber and tomato sand- wiches, and | weiners. Homemade bread was a dict staple, but for fairday, thinner sliced, uniform shaped store ’ bread packed better. We took . along drinking water in the green thermos jug Dad used - while fencing or harvesting. Our parents and two young- est rode in the cab; we three older kids sat in the box-with our backs to the cab where Mom could rap her knuckles at us when.we misbchaved, - protected from tain or cold’ by a-’ Clydesdale-scented horse: blanket. and. a canvas tarp . smelling of wheat bin. During the three day exhibi- tion, Saskatchewan Highways ~ tackled its year’s improvement with zest. Alter bouncing and ‘choking over miles of dusty washboard, we'd be directed by. flagpersons -detour, maze, or- kept lined up. : for: 20 minutes in the°broiling. through a while. packers ° ‘packed. a Fresh tar was a given, » Within... city. ‘limits, “traffic crawled; clogged. by out-of- towners accustomed. © to _ foods, traversing ficlds and pastures unimpeded by stop signs, pedestrians, and parade bar- riers. North Battleford’s fair was, medium-sized. Yet touring all the exhibits from handicrafts, and horticulture to barns filled with pampered livestock added up to more - yardage than Rocket Ismail’s season tolal. Invariably, we arrived home in the dark, tired, cold, with feet aching and blistered by new school shoes. Still, as we pecled off sockees glued to broken blisters, we looked for- ward lo next year. . Skeena Valley Fall Fair doesn’t attract me that way. Now, if they could arrange .a gravel detour, or fresh tar... FORTUNE ON THOSE SCRATCH AND Wins !! You are the victim Hl 1 About that eh &.. org bi _ bes i Of bid hoax. Zunde] ~The supreme court heart ng _ ever happened... . The best defence remains the truth © VICTORIA — There he stood, a pathetic representative of homo sapiens, flanked by two goons who bore a striking resemblance to the nasties that used to knock down doors in Nazi Germany and haul Jews off to the waiting cattle trains. What I despise most about Ernst Zundel is not so much his obvious hatred of Jews. That I could deal with. There will always be racists. But Wwhate angers.me most about lis that he brings out - the worst in ‘otherwise genile and well-meaning people. Zundel’s greatest crime is one thal is not covered by the _, Criminal Code, and that is his assault on tolerance. Zundel is living proof that hatred begets ~. hatred. ~The 1988 Zundel trial, and : : ‘=the way he exploited the “media, had me so tied up in knots, I said in a column that it was'a damned shame any law- yer would even be willing to defend him. That position earned me a well-deserved rebuke from numerous readers who liked Zundel no more than J did, but pointed out to me that every- body, no matter how heinous their crime, is entitled to the best defence possible. And here we are again. The - Supreme Court of Canada has naequilted Zundel of his 1988 conviclion when it ruled that the law under which he was prosecuted was unconstitu- tional. The seven-member court tuled that the obscure _ Criminal Code provision against publishing false news violates the constitutional . guarantees of free speech, and in a four-to-three vote, the justices ruled that there was no ‘reasonable justification for such a violation of the Charter . of Rights. Zundel and his Nazi goons celebrated the decision as a victory. But that wasn’t enough for him. He immedi- ately launched into a diatribe about the danger to free speech in this country. "Tn the U.S., he said, the Supreme Courthadruled. From the Capital. by Hubert Beyer unanimously in favour of free speech, whereas our Supreme . Court supported free speech psonly. be. a narrow. four-to- “ON... tiny minority, probably at par; “with the supporters of the flat Margin, How dare he? We know what Zundel and his ilk do to free speech wherever they have a chance to unleash their racism. We know what they did in Germany, and we know - " what they do in Bosnia- Herzogovina. Yet I cannot help but wonder whether the Supreme Court decision wasn’t a wise one. . Once I get over my initial reaction, which would prefer Zundel to be sent on a long holiday to some Siberian tourist spot, I would suggest that it’s probably a tot safer to allow people like Zundel to — peddle their venom in public than make him some sort of martyr in the eyes of his fal- lowers. I believe.strongly that Cana- dians in general will be no more misled by the rantings of - people like Zundel than the vast majority of Germans in what was formerly Communist Bast Germany, . There, a minority of neo- Nazis and other thugs are _ engaged in.a violent campaign “ against refugees and foreign- -ers in general. But when about 150 of them went on a racisls . rampage last weekend, they ' prompted no less than 15,000 people of goodwill to stage a "peace march in support of tolerance and compassion. Zundel says the Holocaust was a hoax perpetrated by Zionists lo force Germany to pay huge financial reparations. Well, obnoxious and painful as the racists views spread by © Zundel and his like must be for those who lost loved ones to the Nazi genocide, they can take comfort in lhe knowledge Heyiti Ay LUCKY oy! Loox! Someone DROPPED AN UNUSED TICKET IN THE Stow! ‘mankind, _mandatory part of history _ that the world knows better! The Zundels and the Jim. ~ Keegstras will always be a earth theary. It is society’s-re-' “sponsibility to make sure that the world will always remem- ber what happened in — Germany. ' Rather than prosecuting ihe. few twisted individuals. who. - would rewrite history, we should concentrate on keeping. - alive the memory of that ter-. rible chapter in the history of - The Holocaust must be a. courses at every school.. Parents have a responsibility to teach their children what - ' man’s inhumanity to man is: capable of. . But let us not give. people 7 like Zundel the satisfaction of posturing as victims of an as- saultonfree speech, = The Supreme Court judge- — ment may have been a travesty in the eyes of many, and I can understand that any Jew con- * siders it a slap in the face. But allow me to make a case in favour of the judgement. Inherent in prosecuting and jailing people like Zundel is the real danger that comes — with precedents. What will we’. do next? Prosecute those who. — openly deny the existence of God? I’m sure some of the ©... more fundamentalist and radi-~ cal Christians, would embrace :” that thought quite happily.” The best weapon against ~ racism of any Kind is the truth.» oe For every racist like Zundel ~ there must be a thousand, ten. -: thousand, a hundred thousand cf people willing to standup for the truth, That is the way, the’ only way, to deal with the * . Zundels of the world. LOSE: BECAUSE HIS Luck IS BOUND To CHANGE!