A4- The Terrace Standard, Wednesday, May 31, 2000 ESTABLISHED APRIL 27, 1988 ADDRESS: 32710 Clinton Street Terrace. B.C. « V8G 5R2 TELEPHONE: (250) 638-7283 * FAX: (2350) 638-8432 “TERRACE PUBLISHER: ROD LINK EMAIL: standard@kermode.net Not again JUST SEVERAL weeks after the children and families ministry and the Terrace and District. Community Services Society failed to set the stage for the introduction of a teen detox centre on the bench, the same kind of thing is happening. again, This time it is Coast Mountains School District and its idea to shift the students from Parkside Elementary and replace them with those who at- tend the alternate school and its teen learning centre, To be clear, this is-not a done deal and much weighing of the pros and cons needs to be done, Yet the decision to investigate the possibility of doing so was made in a closed meeting of the school 1 district. But the word, as it invariably will always do, leaked out. And when it did, as the children and families ministry could very well have told the school district had it learned its lesson concerning the detox centre; the results are not good. Instead of.a straight forward statement after the school district made its decision, word of the Parkside plan had to rumble through the schoal’s parent community and its teachers. Nobody likes to be kept in the dark. So when, this kind of decision does come to light, the right information is almost always lacking. Those af- fected naturally feel something bad is about to happen and suspicions, both right ones and wrong ones, add fuel to the ramour mill. What makes both the detox centre and Parkside plan particularly unpalatable is that each concerns public sector bodies. As such there should be a high standard of-public reporting and accountabil- ity to the people who pay the freight and who rightly’ ‘expect to be fully and completely involved in how these public sector bodies operate. Anything less places the end result in jeopardy and leads to circumstances that should have been avoided from the start. | oe Lots of lots ABOUT THE most interesting rumour to surface last week was the one concerning Hull and Sons. Now that it has bought the Co-op property on_ Greig, word circulated that it would be the new home for the company’s chipper. Not so, What is so is that the company now owns a prime piece of downtown real estate. Instead of it being regarded as a sign of bad economic times, the land becomes an economic opportunity. The same applies to the lot on the corner of La-’ kelse and Emerson where an Esso station was and the lot on the corner of Hwy16 and Kenney where the Chevron station once was. All this means that liabilities have been turned into assets, ready for the next round of develop- ment, 1998 WINNER CCNA BETTER NEWSPAPERS COMPETITION PUBLISHER/EDITOR: Rod Link ADVERTISING MANAGER: Brian Lindenbach PRODUCTION MANAGER: Edouard Credgeur NEWS Jet? Nagel » NEWS/SPORTS: Christiana Wiens NEWS/COMMUNITY: Alex Hamilton FRONT OFFICE: Darlene Keeping CIRCULATION SUPERVISQR: Carole Kirkaldy © ADVERTISING CONSULTANTS: Sam Bedford, Mark Beaupre & Stacy Swetlikoff TELEMARKETER: Stacy Swetlikoff DARKROOM/COMPOSING: Susan Credgeur AD ASSISTANT: Kulwant Kandola SUBSCRIPTION RATES BY MAIL: $54,88(4$3.85GST) per year: Seniors $48.62 (+$3.40G5T); Out of Province $61.69 (+§4.32GST) Outside of Canada (6 months) $151.60 (+$10.61GST) MEMBER OF € 8.6. AND YUKON COMMUNITY NEWSPAPERS ASSOCIATION, CANACIAN COMMUNITY NEWSPAPERS ASSOCIATION : poi iarc AND *# CNA - B.C, PRESS. COUNCIL Tite komen tov Poth Serving the Tetace and Thomhil area Published on Wecnesday of each week at 3210 Cimton Street, Terrace. Brilish Columbia. V8G 5R2. Stones, photographs. illustrations. dasigns and typeslyles in Ihe Tertace Slandard are the property o! the copyright holders, incluging Candoo Press (1969) Ld, its illustration repre services and advertising agencies. /... Be Repredutloh in whola arin pat. “without wien permission, is Specifically prohibited. Authonged ag second-élags mail feriding the Pos! Otlice Oapanment, lor payment of postage in cash. Special thanks to all our contributors and correspondents for theit time and talents AT WORKED WITH = | i o . WELL... HE TROJANS... Dosanjh VICTORIA - The wheels fell of the NDP wagon some time ago, but last week, the empty, directionless carriage threa- tened to disintegrate and was saved, temporarily, only when the beleaguered premier, Uyal Dosanjh, in a desperate mea- sure, recessed the legislature for a week. The government's majority in the legislature is slim at the best of days, but when several NDP MLAs were absent and the premier away on business, the government nearly lost a vote, which would have resul- ted in demands that it resign and call an election. And that’s not the only trou- ble Dosanjh faces, [t's been three months since he was elected leader of the NDP and became premier, but he -has been unable. to close the deep rifts caused by the leadership race.. .., While most NDP MLAs are supporting him, or at least not opposing him, a handful refuse to march in tune. First and foremost of the re- bels is Glen Clark, the man Dosanjh succeeded, and in whose downfall Dosanjh is be- lieved to have had more than a supporting role. And who can blame Clark? He resigned under intense iS headed for trouble FROM THE CAPITAL | HUBERT BEYER pressure from his own party and caucus over allegations that almost a year later are still unproven, Did he or did he not try to influence the awarding of a casino licence -to a friend? Nobody knows, And:until ‘the RCMP make public the results . of their investigation, we won't know. Méanwhilé, one of the cornerstones of our justice sys- tem, the presumption of inno- cence, appears not to apply. And so one ticked-off Clark is happily punching holes into Dosanjh's ship of state, as if it needed any more to sink. Clark is working on 16 pri- vate member's bills, all of them guaranteed to embarrass the government. Last week, he participated with great gusto in the debate of the budgel es- timates, asking all sorts of pro- bing questions of ministers, a task traditionally reserved for the opposition. ~Clark has, of course, still allies who remain loyal to him, Moe Sihota being the most loyal. standing, there never has been any love lost between Sihota and the premier: The antipathy: the two have felt for one anather was raised to new heights asa results of Dosanjh's questionable — some believe illegal .~ leadership campaign tactics’ which in- — volved mass signups of mem- bers of the Indo-Canadian community: and . fund-raising from federal Liberals. » ~ Tsaid before the convention at which Dosanjh was elected leader that ‘a: phony” member“ ship drive, stacking the vote, . will result in a phony. premier, - phony in the sense that his au- thority will not be ‘acknow- ledged by all of his ‘caucus or, | indeed, all party. members. And that is exactly what - has come to pass. I have cov- ered many a leadership cam- » _ paign. The losers were invari- ably disappointed and hurt. But if the contest was fair, the wounds healed. The wounds from the last ‘Their common Indo-Canadian.roots natwith-~ NDP leadership campaign are festering and will not heal until the party® chooses anew leader. “Dosanjh has many good qualities that serve him well’as premier, He is ‘intelligent. He't is. unassuming : and not: “given: to is--defeated and - bluster. “He: is’ conciliatory and < prefers consensus to confronta- ~ tion,:as manifests’ itself. in his > dealings — with: the federal gov- “ernment: © , It isn't, however, what he does “as party leader and pre- mier but-how: he: got there that causes all his troubles now. He's reaping what he sowed. Dosanjh may have averted. disaster this time by sending the "MLAs home for ‘a week, but potential disaster will con- day, he will lose an important vote ‘inthe House, tr And if, by some miracle, he- -manages ‘to, hang on to: power until “next year, the “day of reckoning will come on -elec- tion day, ‘whichever: day that - “may be, ‘On that day, the NDP will get its most humiliating defeat ever. Beyer can be reached aa Boe om. a bl hubert@coalecom.com;: Tel (250) 381-6900; Web hapciwww, hubertbeyer.com She has the doorknob blues SOME THINGS around the house you expect to replace every few years ~ the electric coffee maker, the vacuum broom, the bulb in the refriger- ator, But not doorknabs, Doorknobs are a part of a door, a room, a building, They’re taken for granted. Until recently | never heard of doorknobs falling off. ] grew up in a two-storey house built in 1912 by my Swedish immigrant grandfa- ther on his Saskatchewan homestead, A qualified car- penter who worked his way from Chicago to Maniloba building grain elevators, he used top grade materials for his house. That included door- knobs held together by a screw © tightened into a square metal shaft the size of a pencil. My family lived in Grand- pa’s house until my parents sald the farm and retired in THROUGH BIFOCALS CLAUDETTE SANDECKI 1968. In those 56 years, I don’t recall a doorknob loosening, . falling off, or requiring repair. Modern doorknobs show no such commitment to duty. In- side of a few years they can quit working. For instance, a doorknob in a Smithers bunga- low failed after only 4 1/2 years. It happened to be the bath- room doorknob and it impri- soned an 85-year-old couple for five days and four nights before police rescued them, By then his: blood pressure was 70/34 and. he needed help breathing. Both were treated in hospital for six days. I suspected the old couple had ignored signs of a failing doorknob, But after last Satur- day’s occurrence in my home, I’ve scuttled that notion, My husband carried the kit- chen waste out to the garbage - can after breakfast. On his way’ back into the house, when he pushed the door closed behind him the doorknob fell lo the . floor. This doorknob i is Jess than 7 1/2 years old. a All that holds it to the other knob is an eighth inch of. metal flared to wedge it inside the central portion, Any. schooler .in a minor. tantrum see Mr) Sac) > SIRS le mee WHA ; Ba RAPLINE TOURS BUT--/] CoMIMow IW DECEMBER-/| IT AFTER YouR Fo ml oN / || AGENT. Np Ty : 34 | [4 YY ee ! peo ll 7 | ~~ (0) fo”) . - oe oul Mag Sag, Lae Bl)