B6 - The Terrace Standard, Wednesday, June 11, 1997

TERRACE STANDARD

DAVE TAYLOR |

HE HAS a _ beautiful

pares

SKEENA ANGLER -”
ROB BROWN

Road rash

drive around Terrace is filled with
irritations. I have to step gingerly
around the swamp in front of my
home to avoid tracking muck into
my car. The swamp is there because there’s no
sidewalk and inadequate drainage on. the street.

Since I’ve had some near misses, I drive care-
fully past the intersection of Munthe and West-
view, which is a dangerous spot because the
visibility is poor and because there is a yield
sign where there should be a stop sign.

After successfully negotiating that juncture I
bump along the road to Anderson where I tum
right, taking care to avoid the pit surrounding
the storm sewer. If I’m off to town, [ll go
straight, stopping at the tricky corner of Munthe

Avenue and Kalum Street where I look for on- °

coming, uphill traffic between the bullet holes
in the mirror that hangs half shattered from the

pole on the far side of the intersection, In fair- .
ness, City Works has done its best to reduce the ®

hazard at the top of the hill. Now that he’s
passed away and his property has changed
hands, the City has managed to get rid of the
late Judge Smith’s beloved spruce trees which

all but obliterated the view down Kalum and ,

made any turn truly treacherous.

It’s the same story all over town. Potholes
abound, some large enough to swallow a com-
pact car. Everywhere the. pavement looks as if
it’s been caught in the grip of a seismic event of
some significance. There are lanes where there
shouldn’t be, ..There are. dangerous comers
without lights and placid corners with them.
Sidewalks are almost nonexistent in the residen-
tial areas, while large sections of the town suffer
from inadequate drainage. Let’s face it, the in-
frastructure is a mess. ;

I started thinking about why this is so ~~ and
why it shouldn’t be so — early this spring, on
the day of the last snowfall. My daughter and I
were driving north on Highway 16 when we
were caught in a fall of the kind of wet snow
that turns instantly to slush when it hits the
‘road. As the road conditions worsened 1 began
casting about for a place to turn around, As
usual, none of the pull-outs were plowed, We
passed a car that had recently carcened off the
road into a deep, steep ditch. A logging truck

‘roared by, covering us in a wake of slush. Be-

fore the little oriental wipers could clear the
windscreen, they were buried in slush from an-
other truck. Another sped by, then another, and
so it went,

Neither of us knew of the planned parade and
protest by truck loggers but we knew something
large was afoot when we returned to Thornhill
and saw hundreds of trucks spanning half a
mile. ‘““Awesome,”’ said Cait, and I had to admit
it was indeed. Later we emerged from Petland
to see the parade in motion. As truckers
streamed past honking and bearing signs in an
impressive show of heavy metal we watched
from the sidewalk.

‘A merchant standing next to us wondered out

_loud if this was sustainable, “Imagine those

trucks filling up with logs every day,”’ be said.
On the way to the marshaling spot at the arena
we ran into a veteran logger going the other
way. I asked why he wasn’t going to join the

protest. ‘'This has happened six times since I’ve.

lived in Terrace,’’ he snorted,

It should be patently obvious to anyone who
has lived in Terrace or any other lumber-driven
town in our fair province for that matter, that
the great cyclic swing — the big boom and the
big bust —- is just one of the many undesirable
aspects of corporate forestry. The signs along
the logging roadsides welcoming us to TFL 1
should say ‘‘Welcome to the Plantation’, be-
cause, for the most part, the big time benefi-
ciarices of what we laughably call our forest

‘resource are big corporations who care squat

about us when it appears times are toughening.
They are the masters. We are the wage slaves.

As I watched the protesting truckers, I
couldn't help think how much better off we
would be if our forests were controlled by small
operators who had access to locally, or even
provincially developed secondary manufacture
of wood products.

The: other thing that becomes glaringly evi-
dent each time the citizens of this community
are shaken by the fickle forces of international
markets over which we have no control, is the
fact that one hell of a lot money — billions of
dollars made by mining the forests surrounding
us — has passed through this town and only a
small portion has remained.

If we, and all the residents of B.C, were get-
ting a falr retumn from our trees there would be a
aldewalk in front of every house. Kids would be
playing in parks instead of the parking lot at
McDonalds, and the streets would be as smooth
as the second sheet of ice.

home, a beautiful wife
and three healthy chil-
dren.

He runs a successful op-
tometry practice and is a
former world record
holder.

But never tell wheel-
chair athlete Paul Clark
he’s lucky.

“It’s not luck, it's work,
he says. “Ie takes a lot of
time and hard work to train.
It takes a lot of work to raise
your kids right. It takes a lot
of work to run a business.
These things aren’t easy.”

Clark is sitting in a wheel-
chair in the dining room of,
his home on the bench. It’s
just after breakfast on his
day off. Two of his children,
two-year-old Emma and
five-year-old Thomas are
playing in the living room,

Unfortunately, this won't
be his home for much
longer.

Tn a litde over a month,
Clark and family will move
to Kelowna, and Terrace
will lose one of this city’s
most inspirational figures.

Clark has lived in Terrace
for 16 years. Over the
course of three of those
years in the late 1980s, he
set and reset world records
in his wheelchair class in
the 800 metre, 1,500 metre
and 10 kilomtere races.

But it’s his world-record

‘time in the 42 kilometre

marathon that really gets
him smiling.

“Tt was the thrill of my
life,’ he says. ‘‘That’s the
only one that was a real
world record to me.”’

Clark says the race was
especially important to him
because he won it in an
open class.

Clark’s back is broken
fairly high up, so he can’t
control his stomach mius-
cles. That makes it some-
what harder to control the
chalr and in most races he
was put in a lower class
with riders with a similar
disability.

Local hero heads south

FORMER WORLD record holder Paul Clark is off to the Okanagan to be closer to family.

came Dad. He's only raced
once since.

‘I wasn’t recouperating 4s
well from back surgery as I
would have liked,”*’ he says.
‘With that and my new
family, I didn’t have the
time to train.”

Clark has since become a
real family man. On. this
morning, Thomas and
Emma periodically dash
from the living room to leap
onto his lap or show him a
new toy. .

And even when Clark has
his back turned to them, he
wheels around at the
slightest whimper to make
sure the only thing that’s
been bruised is 4 young ego.

“Nothing is more impor-
tant to me,’ he says, turning
back to the dining room.
“They're the ones I do
everything for — that’s why
I’m not racing right now."

In a strange way, Clark
may have the cold war part-

“¢ was incredible. The marathon ts such a

special race. It requires

mental fitness as well

as physical fitness.” -Paul Clark-

But in an open class, all
the riders are grouped to-

‘gether, and one day Clark

beat them all.

It was a beautiful day in
Japan during the Fall of
1998. Clark set a blistering
marathon pace with a fellow
Canadian rider and the two
wheeled neck and neck until
the last kilometre. That’s
when Clark pulled ahead ta
take the win and the record.

‘Tt was incredible,”’ Clark
says. ‘‘The marathon is such
a special mace. It requires
mental fitness as well as
physical fitness,’’

A year later, Clark’s first
child, Josh, was bom and
the world record holder be-

Kell

A CHAMPION in the making, Heather Kelly takes a
flying leap on a ptactice run.

ly to thank for his family
life.

The 1980 Olympics for
the disabled were supposed
to be held in Moscow. But
that was the year of the
boycott — so the competi-
tion was moved to Holland.
And that’s where Clark met
his future wife, Karen.

Karen was also Clark’s
first patient.

After he graduated from
medical school in 1982 she
visited him in Terrace.

“T discovered she was
really far sighted,’ Clark
says. ‘The joke was I'd
send her back to Holland
with these really — thick,
coke-botile glasses so no

one else would want her.
Now I have her and she’s
totally dependent on me —
she needs me to get her con-

tact lenses.”
Clark wasn’t always so

confident. He broke his
back in 1973 — a 15-year-
old trying to learn how to
ride a motorcycle, Suddenly
the young, impressionable
boy had to learn to cope
with a whole new life.

“Up to that point I had al-
ways just assumed everyone
was treated equally,’” he
says. ‘‘But I soon found out
people in wheelchairs are
treated differently.

“The hardest thing for me
when I was first in a chair
was being in a grocery store
with parents and their kids,
The kids would ask,
‘Mommy, why is that boy in
a chair?’ and’ the parents
would say, ‘Shhbb,’’’ Clark
says, pressing a finger to his
lips. ‘‘That’s so sad. But
that’s how kids learn to see
people who are disabled.’’

A year after the accident,

Clark was back at school. .

Just like most youths, he
was unsure of himself. And
Clark’s new disability mag-
nified his adolescent in-
security,

But he grew up fast.

“T}l always remember
this one day when I was just
hanging around in the music

room,’* he says. ‘‘The
music teacher says to me,
‘Don’t you have a

girlfriend?’ I said no, and
was extremely embarrased, 1 .
thought, who would want
me — a 16-year-old in a
wheelchair?

“But she said, ‘Well,
there's nothing wrong with
you. You don’t have a huge
wart of your nose or any-
thing to scare people away,’
[realized then that the chair
is just a chair. It’s some-

centi-

Track and Field
Championships in Burnaby
May 30-31.

And it’s not something
she’s going to forget.

“They weren’t very much
ahead of me,’* she says.
“Next time [ want to medal
and I’m willing to work for
it,’

The 15-year-old Skeena .

Junior Secondary student
was the only Terrace youth
to attend the meet, And she
cerlainly made her mark.
Matched up against a field
of older, more experienced
compelitors, Kelly easily
slipped into the top half. Of

oe mere ee ee i a eemetihetitenematn meine tm mmm oct mcucume ca

thing to ride in. It’s not
seary.”? ,

Maybe that’s where Clark
got his determination to
succeed — a determination
that made him push himself
in racing. ;

“T wanted to be the best
and [ expected myself to do
well,” he says. ‘But you
can’t achieve that without
support and J got it from my
wife. Karen is my mentor.
She’s amazing.” Dole

Clark’s career may not be
over yet. He still has his °
racing chairs, and next year
he turns 40 and enters a dif-
ferent age class.

“Its always with you,”
he says. ‘‘The dreams and°
desires arc always there, no
matter what age you are.”

Clark wheels out into his
large, grassy backyard and
helps Emma into a swing.
The yard is something Clark
says the family will really
miss when they leave.

In fact, Clark says he will

miss many things about Ter-
race. — although he admits
biking or wheeling around
town can be more than a
litile scary at times.
“Terrace is a wonderful

--place,” he says. ‘‘It has

wonderful people and it’s
been good to me, but we
want to be closer to our
families.’’

On July 14, Clark will
head for the Okanagan. The

. drier «weather will make

training easier, should be
decide to start racing again.

“The wet makes it harder
to grip. That’s always been
a battle in Terrace,’’ he
says. Then after a pause he
adds, ‘‘But maybe that’s
what made me good,”’ *

Clark will continue to own
his optometry office here
and a local street has been
named in his honour.

And that’s only fitting,
since it’s people like him
that have made this city
good.

DAUGHTER EMMA gets a push from Dad.

kicks butt in Burnaby

THIRTY SEVEN
metres.

Thal’s all that separated
Heather Kelly from a bronze
medal at the 1997 Provincial

32 competitors, she placed
12th in the Long Jump and
14th in the Triple Jump.

‘‘Almost all the jumpers
were in Grade 12,” she
says. “‘By then I should be
much better. There’s a lat of
room for improvement.”

Kelly takes track and field
seriously, Actually, she
takes all sports serlously,
and she’s certainly involved
inher share,

Kelly plays volleyball,
basketball, lifts weights,
jogs, and does both long and
triple jump..

‘It’s kind of hard to fit
school and band in there
too,” she says. “‘But if I had
to pick one, it would be el-
ther basketball or track.’’

Long jump isn’t exactly
something you can practice

in the snow, so Kelly has
been lifting weights all
winter and practicing her
jumps on mats in the gym.

**Mostly I just tried to stay
in shape,”’ she says.

Ironically, Kelly may have
received inspiration from
someone who was actually
insulting her,

“This guy from Kitimat
said to me, ‘You know,
you're going to get
slaughtered,"’ she says.
‘That made me mad. I real-
ly wanted to prove that I

could compete, 1] was
determined to finish in the
top half.’*

Kelly says she will con-
tinue to train throughout the -
summer, foe :