} “a Aa. - The Terrace Standard, Wednesday, March 9, 2005 TERRACE _ STANDARD. ESTABLISHED APRIL 27, 1988 * no PUBLISHER: ROD LINK . _ ADDRESS: 3210 Clinton Street Terrace,'B.C..° V8G 5R2. , TELEPHONE: (250) 638-7283 - FAX:.(250) 638-8432 | WEB: www.terracestandard.com EMAIL: newsroom@terracestandard.com . The road ahead IT WAS quite the party. More than’500 people ‘gathered in the mill yard. There were speeches "by: politicians and business leaders attesting to -what can happen when there is a common cause. There was food and applause. People mingled and through out, there was a tremendous outpour- ing of goodwill. Was this the Feb. 24. welcoming party for the ‘Terrace Lumber Company to’ celebrate its forma-. tion and pending. purchase.of the Skeena Cellu- - lose/New Skeena Forest Products mill? Right location. Right mill; Wrong date. This particular party took place on Sept. 29, 1988, the official opening of Project Starship, the $42 mil- lion effort by Skeena Cellulose, the subsidiary _ of Repap Enterprises of Montreal, to construct a. _'State-of-the art sawmill. . With 180 employees and an annual payroll of $7 ‘million back then, Project Starship provided | the foundation for an economic surge of activity ‘which, at its height through the early 1990s, saw " .a 100-plus homes a year being built in the Terrace = area. _ That 1988 party was a testament to the idea of control by one corporation over the economic well-being of an area. The Terrace mill was mar- ried to the pulp.mill in Prince Rupert. Together with two mills in the Hazeltons, one in Smithers and the gradual ‘acquisition of a large quantity of ‘northwestern wood, Skeena Cellulose’ s fortunes | - were irrevocably | tied to those of this region.. ment to separate wood supply from mills puts the As we now know, that wasn’t such a good idea. . Bigger was not better. Skeena Cellulose’ s 1997 flame out caused, in part, by the financial melt- down.of parent Repap, set this region back de- cades. The NDP’s $500 million atternpt’ bétween 1997 and 2001 to recreate the company didn’t work. And neither did the attempt of the last years by New Skeena Forest Products. There was to be no outside saviour. Which makes the Feb. 24 party all that more meaningful. In many ways the Terrace Lumber Company returns the city to the days of local _ control where people who make decisions'do so_ knowing that the outcome affects themselves as much as anybody else. It also involves workers - who. are to become direct economic participants through payroll deductions. The City of Terrace also has a stake, the third time a government has done so in the history of this sawmill’s lineage. The decision by the provincial Liberal govern- - ‘Terrace Lumber.Company into play as a purchas- N er and stimulator of a local log market. Easy sailing? Not by any means. There’s a long ‘to-do’ list before opening day. But if the end of the road was to be the auctioning off of the mill, we are now at the start of another road. There’s no turning back. - PUBLISHER/EDITOR: Rod Link \ ADVERTISING MANAGER: Brian Lindenbach PRODUCTION MANAGER: Edouard Credgeur _ NEWS: Sarah A. Zimmerman 7 COMMUNITY: Dustin Quezada NEWSPAPERS NEWS/SPORTS: Margaret Speirs COMPETITION FRONT OFFICE: Darlene Keeping en CIRCULATION SUPERVISOR: Alanna Bentham ADVERTISING CONSULTANTS: Bert Husband, Susan Willemen AD ASSISTANT: Sandra Stefanik PRODUCTION: Susan Credgeur SUBSCRIPTION RATES BY MAIL: $57.94 (+$4.06 GST)=62.00 per year; . Seniors $50.98. (+$3.57 GST)=54.55; _ Out of Province $65.17 (+$4.56 GST)=69.73 - Outside of Canada (6 months) $156.91(+10.98 GST)=167.89 MEMBER OF B.C. AND YUKON COMMUNITY NEWSPAPERS ASSOCIATION, ‘a CANADIAN COMMUNITY NEWSPAPERS ASSOCIATION WCN. CNA. AND COMMUNITY NEWSPAPERS B.C. PRESS COUNCIL (www. ocpresscouncil.org) Atie settee Serving the Terrace and Thornhill area. Published on Wednesday of each week at 3210 Clinton Street, Terrace, British Columbia, V8G 5R2. Stories, photographs, illustrations, designs and typestyles in the Terrace Standard are the property of the copysight holders, including Cariboo Press (1969) Ltd., its illustration repro services and advertising agencies. - Reproduction in whole or in part, without written permission, is specitically prohibited. Authorized as second-class mail pending the Post Office Department, for payment of postage in cash. 2002 WINNER CCNA BETTER Special! thanks to all our contributors and correspondents for their time and talents . positive . developments. | ater INTO “4 THE GRAVY TRAIN WAS HIP =e SCANDAL: | CIRICEOS | BuT iT / WASN'T ALL » A WALK IN THE “PARK... 1 REALLY \ GOT WALLOPED VICTORIA - It’s hard to see much evidence of the federal Liberal’s BC Dream Team in. the new budget. Overall, the Liberals seem to have cobbled together’ a budget with a little something for everyone, although the fine print shows the impact will be smaller, and slower to come,’ than you might at first think. But this was the first-bud- get that should have borne the fingerprints of the Liberals’ highly touted Dream Team, _ the high- profile MPs like Ujjal : -Dosanjh and David Emerson “who were recruited to make sure B.C. matters. And despite :the: promises, there were relatively few signs that the province has registered in Ottawa. There a couple of clear Vancouver-based Asia Pacific Foundation gets $50 million, a one-time chunk of cash that’s intended to make it self-suffi- cient. The foundation should continue to help B.C., and Canada, take advantage of op- portunities for trade and other ties with Asia. And UBC got an extra $50 million for Triumf, the cutting: edge particle physics research centre. But the budget had noting — specific for pine beetle aid, as finance minister Colin Hansen noted. The infestation is a nat- ural disaster on the same lev- el as the collapse of the East Coast cod fishery. . That failure resulted in more than $1.5 billion in federal aid to the. communities affected. The situation isn’t as dire here, The | FROM THE CAPITAL PAUL WILLCOCKS' in part because there are other opportunities for forest work- ers and their communities. : But B.C. still faces an im- mense crisis. Once the infesta- tion has run its course - which will end with the death of 80 per cent of the province’s lodgepole pine - forest com- munities face a couple of de- cades with very little timber to harvest. . Action is needed now to prepare for the coming crunch in 12 to 15: years. The province has taken rel- atively small first steps, prom- ising $101 million over four years, Only $16 million of that is for economic development work; the rest is for reforesta- tion. That’s not nearly enough, Pe) and the province’s slow start . is in part due to the hope that money will be coming from Ottawa. Emerson is in a good posi- . tion to understand the issue. He’s industry minister, the top political minister for the prov-- ince and the former head of -Canfor. . ~ Emerson says ‘the federal , ‘Liberals haven’t forgotten the problem, and is continuing to work with the province and — “ments needed in B.C. industry on the best’ way to ‘help.. But words are one thing, and action — and money ~ are another. There were hints of more specific news for the province still to come... a British Columbia has been lobbying to have the. Otta- wa-based Canadian Tourism Commission, an °$85-million — Crown corporation, move to” Vancouver. That wasn *t announced, but the commission got a $25-mil- lion funding increase, which could help pay for the move. Emerson is the minister re- sponsible, and should be able- to deliver. The federal budget also failed to come up with any of the money Prince Rupert has: been seeking to take its port to the next level. There is a big increase in money for border security, and infrastructure. But the emphasis, according to the budget documenis, is on security, not money for proj- ects like Prince Rupert’s port. It’s not fair to expect the federal government to rain dol- lars down on B.C. We’ ve seen the huge waste ‘of money in other federal economic devel- © opment programs, which leave taxpayers poorer and produce few results. But the pine beetle infesta- tion is. a foreseeable natural ‘ disaster. It can’t be halted, but Feds ign ore pine beetle attack — we can act now to reduce the impact on communities, busi- nesses and families. The fed- eral government has an obliga- tion to act. And there are other invest- . that would’ benefit’ not just the province, but all Canadians. © Paul Martin made a person- al commitment to recognize: legitimate needs in the prov- ince, and reduce our feeling of distance from.a disinterested ", federal government. ~.The budget shows he has much more work to do. -. Footnote: The lack of feder- . al help in the pine beetle crisis should have British Columbi- ans questioning the province’s decision not to use some of this year’s surplus - more than $2.2 billion - to establish a leg- :.acy.‘fund: to help forest com- munities deal with the coming . crunch. The provincial Liberals should be happiest with the latest poll results. - The Mustel Group poll found the Liberals had the sup- port of 46 per cent of decided voters, with the NDP standing at 40 per cent. Most of the Liberal gains in this poll came from male vot- ers outside the Lower Main- land, likely because they have seen an improving economy. One-third of Liberal support- _ers said they favored the party because they prefer its ‘eco- nomic policies. One-quarter. of NDP sup- porters said they were onside because they don’t like the Liberals. willcocks @ultranet. ca tsa close shave indeed | IN THE past month Ive had occasion to visit two Van- _ couver specialists for day sur- . gery tests at St. Paul’s Hospi- tal, on the recommendation of a local doctors. Instructions for the visits varied from one ' ‘department to the other. The vascular surgery depart- ~ ment leaves you to find your own . hotel accommodations ‘in Vancouver. If you have the luxury of family to put you up _ and drive you to your appoint- ments, you are lucky. Cardiac surgery, on the | _ Other hand, supplies you with a list of nine hotels handy to St.. Paul’s ,offering rooms. at reduced rates for patients and their families. All nine hotels cluster around St. Paul’s. Closest is the Century Plaza Hotel, ‘separated from the walk-in emergency entrance only by a narrow Comox Street. It’s as close as walking from Shor- pers to Safeway. Any patient who must de- ‘pend upon buses or taxis to travel from and to the airport would do well to consider staying close to the hospital. THROUGH BIFOCALS CLAUDETTE SANDECKI Besides less taxi travel, spous- eS OF family have the benefit of returning to their hotel room to rest during those tedious, anx- ious hours when the patient is undergoing examination and family are more of a nuisance than a comfort. To register at a reduced rate you simply provide the hotel with your government approv- al number taken from the pink Travel Assistance Program ap- plication given to you by your Terrace doctor. The pink form reduces what you’ll pay for your airline ticket and allows to you to alter your flight res- ervation at a moment’s notice - without penalty. . Regular daily rates for these nine hotels range as high as $250. At this time of year, the..Century Plaza’s medical referral rate for a room with: two double beds or a king size bed is $79. Our eleventh floor room was the quietest I have ever experienced. The only indoor sound was that of the next room’s wake up call from the front desk. The two hospital depart- ments have individual rules of preparation, too. Vascular surgery shaves your operative site as part of their pre-op routine including taking your blood pressure, pulse, and blood for lab tests. Cardiac surgery expects you to shave yourself the night be- fore your admission guided by written instructions and a line drawing. What fun! Both departments want you to be prepared to rest for up to 12 hours following your procedure. Vascular surgery, though, discharged me as ' fast and they could remove the ' LV.... needle from my hand. Cardiac surgery keeps you * there until you can success- . fully walk about for.at least 15 minutes without causing any bleeding from the eight _inch long incision. For this reason they ask you to bring along slippers and a dress- ing gown. If you must buy a dress- ing gown in Terrace, look for a bathrobe. Our department stores say ‘no’ if you ask whether they stock dressing gowns. Century Plaza serves “excel- lent food at reasonable prices. And so does the fourth floor hospital cafeteria, in a sunny atmosphere with a panoramic view of rooftops and moun- tains. My experience has always been of hospital caf-. eterias buried in the basement with concrete block decor. St. Paul’s expects you to sign in at 7 or 7:30. Walking across the street beats the wor- ry of traffic, road conditions, and early rising.