A4 - The Terrace Standard, Wednesday, February 2, 1994

TERRACE

STANDARD

ESTABLISHED APRIL 27, 1988

ADDRESS: 4647 Lazelle Ave., Terrace, B.C. © V8G 188
TELEPHONE: (604) 638-7283 * FAX: (604) 638-8432
MODEM: 638-7247

_Tripped up

IT’S HARD nat to be cynical these days about
governments. They spend big bucks on big

strategies designed to massage and manipulate .

information for their own purposes. While some
of this can be regarded as a game, there’s no ex-
cuse when it comes to the province’s economic
mainstay — the forest industry.

Several weeks ago. citizens were treated to the
sight of environment minister Moe Sihota and
forests minister Andrew Petter smacking logging
companies around, Shock and horror abounded
in comments on the Tripp report. The crime was
doing a lousy job in the bush, said the two minis-
ters, and it must stop. Even the logging com-
panies mentioned in the report symbolically
placed their heads on the chopping block for a
public execution. -

All of this really had little to do with what hap-
pened in the bush. Rather, it was another step in
the provincial government’s public relations
march toward its new forest practices code.
Legislation for the code is on the top of the
priority list when the legislature sits this spring.
A carefully conceived laying of the groundwork
is needed to tum this into one of the govern-
ment’s shining lights as it prepares for the next
election.

But what the two ministers did not say and
what was not readily apparent is that the report is
old news. The essential details of the bad logging
practices were known as long as @ year ago.

In this district, the Tripp report’s findings were
in the hands of the forest service and of the com-
panies affected in February 1992. There’s even
been enough time for the forest service and the
companies to hold seminars designed to prevent
the bad stuff from happening again.

And that’s what’s wrong here. There’s a public :
relations war going on between companies, the «

government and environmental groups. Alliances
shift according to the particular political agenda
ofa particular issue. Caught in the middle of this
is the public, an innocent victim to the machina-
tions of spin doctors and purveyors of secret
agendas.

The overall impression is that the public is
being left purposely uninformed until some
slickster decides a few crumbs here and crust
there fits some grand master plan. It’s not the
kind of thing to inspire faith in our elected lead-
ers.

A puzzler

SOMEBODY FROM Mars would be puzzled
about two recent decisions affecting young
people. The first is the new ban on selling tobac-
co products to people under the age of 19. The
other is conditional approval to spend $350,000
on a daycare centre for teenage mothers going to
Caledonia.

Our Martian is left with the overriding impres-
sion that it is fine for young people to have sex
— it’s just that they won’t be able to smoke
afterward.

There’s no question that steps to curb smoking
among young people are welcome. Measures
taken now will have benefits later on in the form
of reduced health care costs, for instance.

But the provision of a daycare centre at a high
school is another matter. There’s a nagging feel-
ing that it will somehow legitimize or make
simpler the process of teenage pregnancies.
Ge

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PUBLISHER/EDITOR: Rod Link

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‘My congratulations a

Vou ae now Canadian
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in a hole for $28000.
like all therest ofUs...

A pilgrimage back in time.

DUSSELDORF — It was a
sort of pilgrimage, I suppose,
visiting the old, albeit not fa-
miliar places where I grew up,
and immersing myself in
nostalgia.

T had been back a few times,
but never long enough to
revisit the places where I spent
my childhood years, became a
teenager and then the young
adult who wanted to spend a
couple of years in Canada to
improve his English and made
the New World his home in-
Stead.

Thave only dim mentories of
pre-war Dusseldorf, Oeeting
images of ice cream and
oranges, my. brother. on a-bike

-- and my father in uniform. The

Dusseldorf I remember well
was nothing like that. It was
sinister and chaotic. It reeked
of death and destruction.

We lived in the city centre,
two blocks from the main rail-
way stalion. Nothing I found
Teminded me of the city I grew
up in. The glitier and opulence
of Dusseldorf today is nothing
short of spectacular,

I recall some scenes from
1945. Only about 35,000
people lived in what had once
been a city of 600,000. Ac-
cording to official estimates,
95 per cent of the city was

destroyed by the cnd of the.

Wal.

FROM THE CAPITAL.
HUBERT BEYER

We lived like rats in cellars.
There were no street lights.
Electricity, where it was avail-
able at all, was rationed to

three hours a day.’ In the

Streets, rubble from destroyed
buildings made passage dif-
ficult. Burn-out hulks of street
cars rusted here and there.

I come to Kaiser Wilhelm
Strasse 10, the building in
‘which I grew up. I try to find
the entrance to the cellar where
we sought safety from the
bombs during the first couple
of years, but a jot has changed,
and it’s no longer there, I recall
onc horrible night, when the
downtown area was subjected
to carpet-bombing,

Downtown Dusseldorf was
being consumed by flames,
Fire storms raged through the
streets. The air in our cellar be-

came filled with smoke and we
had to break through several
half-brick wails that connected
each cellar with the one next-
door.

When we finally emerged,
the air outside was so hot you
could hardly breathe, The
asphalt on the streets was bail-
ing. Some unfortunate souls,
who had panicked and tried to
cross ihe street, were stuck in
the asphalt, human torches,
burning to death.

I walk a few blocks and

come to Kurfuersten Strasse 8,
the place we lived afier the
war. Where I remember noth-
ing but the facades of buildings
that ‘had been destroyed by
‘phosphor ‘bombs, there are
new, beautiful structures, The
wounds of the earth, churned
up and turned over by bombs,
have healed.

From here, it’s a short walk
to the Marien Kirche, the
Church of St Mary’s, our
parish church. Although its
main wails and twin spires
were left standing after. the
war, the inside had been com-
pletely destroyed.

My thoughts go back to the
day, I think it was sometime in
1947, when the bells were
repatriated. Towards the end of
the war, the church bells had
been confiscated to be melted
down for munitions. They

4

were found after the war, in
some warehouse, and brought
back.

I visit my old school, one of
the few that were still half in-
tact after the war. Here is
where I got my first decent
meals, following a peried of
post-war starvation. Thanks to
the Marshal Plan, schools
received enough food to feed
kids one square meal a day,
enough to keep them alive.

I feel like I should stop
passers-by and tell them of my

thoughts, but I realize that
most of them wouldn’t have a
clue of what I'm talking about.
I feel like telling them about
the years of terror and destruc-
tion, when people prayed for
deliverance, saying they would
Tather starve than live through
one more air raid.

And when the war was over
and people were slarving, they
longed for normal times when
mothers wouldn’t have to cry
because they couldn’t feed
their children.

But as I said, most people
wouldn’t know what I’m talk-
ing about, which is a pity, be-
cause a dose of humility and
gratitude can't hurt anyone.
Next morning, I take my leave
of Dusseldorf, taking with me
a lot of good and bad
memories. My pilgrimage is
over.

Mother to adult daughter,
“I'm getting awfully chilly,
don’t you think you should
put a sweater on?”
“Mothers and Daughters’’
by Liza Donnelly.

Television reporters ar a
tough bunch, Besides stamina,
agility and balance, they must
possess healthy arterics to
ward off frostbitien ears.

It’s common to see a TV
reporter, bareheaded as a
teenager, dodging snowflakes
the size of bathroom tiles.

Can’t they don a bonnet ...
for my sake?

I realize TV reporters work
bareheaded even outdoors te
accommodate an umbilical
wire running up the back of
their neck to an earpiece that
keeps them in voice contact
with the anchor desk.

Both wire and earpiece must
be kept hidden from viewers.
But couldn’t they compromise
by feeding the wire through a
blanket stitched hole in their
coat collar?

Seems not.

THROUGH BIFOCALS.
CLAUDETTE SANDECKI

THIS MUST BE
MARTEN'S TRAIL) \TO MUSH ALONG

During a record-breaking
cald speil in Yellowknife when
locals bundled up like bank
robbers — only mouth and
eyes showing — there was
CEC’s Erle Sorensen, micro-
phone frozen to his mitt, fur-
irimmed parka hood non-
chalantly shucked over his
shoulders.

In: Miami, David Halton
brought us up-to-the-minute on
Hurricane Andrew’s progress
while he clung like Velcro to a

t

looped light standard, hair un-
ruffled.

And in Newfoundland, per-
ching like a Toyota on a com-
mercial crag, Brenda Craig
told us of another Maritime
disaster as growlers dotted the
harbour below.

Do reporters seek these haz-
ardous assignments because of

extra pay? Or — since the

Charter of Rights and Free-
doms — is this management’s

‘ only legal form of misery? El-

ther way, I wish television
would put a lid on it.

On-site broadcasts are usual-
ly staged before some land-
mark representative of the
story. So a . parliamentary
reporter stands hip deep in an
Ottawa River snowbank. For a
General Motor layoff, the
backdrop is a gritty wind-
whipped parking lot. Or we
heat a tale of timber piracy
from a medal swimmer teeler-
ing a boom log in the Fraser
Tiver.

Cerlainly on-the-spot report-
ing adds credibility and fresh-

SO HOW FAR
To HitS CABIN!

fess. So much freshness
oftentimes wind roaring past
the microphone drowns their
voices and the creaking of my
arm hairs standing to attention.

These outdoor venues save
budgets, no doubt. No desk.
No studio space. No costly in-
terior decorating, Just a camera
crew, miles of electrical cord,
and Margaret. Thatcher hair-
spray bought in bulk.

Television reporting should
be an Olympic event. A
decathlon.

Except for anchors, whose
greatest on-camera exertion is
clicking a ballpoint, reporters
have to be in top physical con-
dition. How else could they
sprint to meet deadlines,
wrestle equipment away from
unwilling interviewees, dive
for cover in combat zones and
political skirmishes, and climb
lo the tops of cranes to report
lighting competitions among
construction crews?

The Olympic uniform would
of course, include protective
headgear.

SHOLULP
GET THERE
TOMMORROW!

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