a ee Page 4, The Herald, Thursday, June 4, 1980 daily. TERRACE/RITIMAT herald General Office - 635-6357 Citeulation - 435-6357 PUBLISHER EDITOR - Greg Middleton i. CIRCULATION ~~ 1 ‘TERRACE & KITIMAT 635-6357 Published every weekday at 3212 Kalum Street, : Terrace, B.C. A member of Varifled Circutation. Authored as second class mall, Registration number , 1201. Postage pald In cash, return postage guaranteed. ; NOTICE OF COPYRIGHT The Herald retains full, complete and sole copyright In any advertisement prodvced and-or any editorial or photographic content published In the Herald. Reproduction is not permitted without the written — permission of the Publisher, «=~ Published by Sterling Publishers - Calvin McCarthy | oa (LETTE | THE EDITOR RSTO , Dear Sir: . | want to take this op- portunity to thank you for your coverage of our clinic in support of Better Speech and Hearing Money (May 9 and May 28). Certainly many take speech: and hearing for granted, and have no con- cept of the frustration created by a communication disorder. ; _It is hoped that those who experience speech, language or hearing difficulties will meet with greater un- derstanding as more people are made sensitive to their “needs. Thank you again for drawing this to the altention of the public. . Sincerely, Myrna Fisher * Speech Pathologist Skeena Health District By GORDON HARDY Landlords and tenants are two ancient categories of people whose relations with each other are often strained, or even downright nasty. In this province the Residential Tenancy Act attempts to, keep the fisticuffs out of the landlord-tenant relationship by setting up rules governing the duties of both sides with respect to payment of rent, security deposits, eviction and so on. It only applies to residential premises, not commercial ones. Itdoes apply to illegal suites and to mobile home pads. The act is enforced by two legal tribunals whose operations | were merged this year. The Rent Review Commission keeps e mi an eye.on rent Increases, making sure they don’t go above the ‘rent ceilings sét out by the government. The Rentalsman, - looks after all the other disputes that so frequently break out between landlords and tenants. B,C. was one of the first provinces to have such tribunals and, according to B.C. Rentalsman Jim Patterson, their success has lead Quebec and Ontaria to set up similar bodies. When landlords ‘and tena nts are at loggerheads over an issue, and cannot work it out by themselves, the Rentalsman and his assistants will first try to mediate a solution, Failing this, the Rentalsman makes a decision on the issue. It’s not to be taken lightly - it is a legel offence, punishable by fine, to disobey a Rentalsman's order, This also applies to an order by the Rental Review Commission. . One of the first to feel the bite of the new laws was Stefano Maeri, a Vancouver landlord, who was fined $600 in 1975 for an illegal rent increase. He was ordered to return a further $609 in illegal rent. Patterson, who is also a member of the Rent Review Commission, commented at the time that landlords were not taking the new laws seriously. Ownership of the property has in the past given landlords the upper hand, as the very name implies, but cases like the one involving Macri have made Jandlords pay more attention to the rights of their tenants. According to Patterson, “The message is clear - we're regulating the landlords and they’re the ones who dislike us the most.” Allan MacLean, a Vancouver lawyer who often takes tenants’ cases, disagrees. He says, “My personal opinion is that they (the Rentalsman and his officers) are fairly sympathetic to landlords.” MacLean is critical of the mediation role payed by the Rentalsman: “TI think that he sometimes mediates people’s rights away without telling them what their rights are first.” “1 don't agree,” replies Patterson. ‘‘The landlords accuse us of the same things. That middle - making both sides ’g one of the joys of being in the mad.” “It's disturbing how many times we look at a dispute only to discover that the parties have never talked to each other,” he says, “If somebody is being silly but is technically right, a lawyer might want to tell Lawyers like to argue.” It's a game in which both them to go ahead and fight. sides occasionally yell “kill the ump!"’ But the ump, who gets about 2000 disputes a month, shows no signs of leaving the field. If people are sometimes unhappy with his decision, or those of his officers, they can appeal for a second look at the case. And if anyone really objects to the final ruling of either the Rentalsman of the Rent Review Commission, he can appeal it tocourt. “If you want to have a decision reviewed by a judge,” MacLeatr says, “you've got to act very quickly. You've only got 15 days to appeal from the dat of the decision, nol necessarily the date you become aware of it”. The landlord-tenant relationship usually begins when doth sides sign a written legal contract, the tenancy agreement. This is a step recommended by the Rentalsman. Prior to that, the law permits landlords to ask the tenant for references, often a former landlord and current-employers. . The tenancy agreement sets out in detall the conditions of the tenancy - the amount of rent, when it is due, whether pets are aliowed and so on. The conditions must be reasonable ones. In doubtful cases, the Rentalsman could be called in to make a decision. A provision in the agreement that the tenant not smoke or drink alcoholic beverages, for example, is not a reasonable one. Landlords are not permitted to require their tenants not to smokeor drink. Nor {s it reasonable for landlords to demand that tenants not put election signsint: ‘* windows. A classic case took place during the 1979 provincial election when a landlord with a huge billboard for one political party objected when his tenant pla ced a small sign for a rival party in his apartment window. The landlord backed down when the issue hit the newspapers. ; But W.C. Flelds, the cantankerous comic who claimed to hate children and dogs, would be pleased to know that B.C. landlords are permitted to tell their tenants they aren’l allowed to have pets or children. Thia wos criticised in 1977 by the B.C. Human Rights Commission as discriminatory. It claimed the no-children provision allowed by law crealed a special hardship for - single parents, given the shortage of rental accommodation. _ But Patterson explains that the provision is designed to protect the right of olher tenants lo enjoy peace and quiet, two conditions rarely found around healthy children, - Lack of By STEVE MERTL LAKE LOUISE, Alta. (CP) — Even railwaymen are sometimes puzzled at how their predecessors who drove the line across Canada and through the Rocky Mountains could accomplish such a singular engineering _ feat in so short a time, Well, Mike Wakely has an answer: They didn’t have to submit their plans to a brace of governments, a clutch of commissions and a herd of interest groups. But Wakely, 63-year-old tegional engineer in. charge of upgrading CP Rail’s. Rocky’. Mountain mainiine between Lake Louise, Alta., and Kamloops, B.C., isn’t calling for a return to the good old days. For one thing, the 19th- century railway builders ignored the ecology and dumped their dirt and debris anywhere. For another, the stresses which railway beds had te undergo in the 1880s and early 180s wouldn't unsettle most main motor-vehicle highways today which handle just as much axle weight and sometimes more.. Like . many. -of his colleagues, Wakely does marvel at the old main line clinging to the sides of the Rockies; hacked out by men with picks, shovels and dynamite. But that was then | and this is now. ‘In the old days, says Wakely, you could get away with poorer roadbeds ‘because they had to handle little- more than 30-ton boxcars. om “The day we open this line we've got a 118-car coal train coming at us with axle loadings of 263,000 pounds,” says Wakely, gesturing “at the recently-completed TappenNotch Hill section of red. tape the r ANALYSIS" | his doubletracking project | west of Salmon Arm, B.C. The project is the first phase in improving ihe grade and quality of the roadbed to increase westbound capacity on the main line. ; ‘The size of track the road bed must support has more . ‘than doubled to handle the . much heavier trains, says Wakely, so stability is essential. “In those days they threw a little mud between the ties and they were gone,” he — says. If that was tried now, “in no time at all the track is going to: start pumping. You're going to get dif- ferential settlement and you're going to be In the ditch.” : . And environmental ‘con- cerns were non-existent for the railway pioneers. 7 *Let me give you a for ine stance,” he says, “Say the Trans-Canada Highway wasn’t there and this was virgin ‘country .and this wasn't a national park, ~ “we'd have no difficulty locating a waste area. We'd. . probably just develop a waste area adjacent to it: (the line) and push all the muck into it. In time the thing would reseed itself, ,it would grow trees and so on.” Railway construction projects. now are heavily restricted, he says, and the governments: and agencies concerned are fed data every step of the way on the line’s environmental impact. s Wakely, with CP Rail since 1937, think’s that’s a good — thing. “7 think our forefathers didn't appreciate it. There - was a hell ofa lot of country, so what are we really hurting . (they thought)? We dump a little dirt here and a little dirt there. "“[ guess their philosophy was OK for those days but it's a different. ball. game now.” There are also area - residents to be concerned with now, Near Salmon Arm, CP Rail ran into opposition when it had to buy some farmland, . And if human intervention isn’t a. stumbling block, there’s still Mother Nature, Contrary to popular con- ception,. the mountains: ‘aren’t the major problem in -mountain railway-building, Rock is a stable, predictable and easily readable -sub- ‘stance, . ' The trouble comes in swampy areas where ex- cavations can become a literal and financial quagmire, . - For example, the second phase of the. upgrading project, about — eight kilometres of new track west of Lake Louise, called for extensive cutting through sandy, gravelly soil. When they went in Wakely says they discovered much of the soil was useless. for track construction and will have, to be dumped, ‘with other material trucked in to is completed next year. - . In the first phase, west of . Revelstoke, the engineers ran ‘into . almost. two kilometres of swamp on the only possible route -for the - -~ The greatest athlete new line. Wakely’ says the beg contained peat more than five metres deep and - almost'50 metres of uncon- ‘ solidated silt'and clay below “I felt if we were going to go through that without some type of treatment we were going to have a hell of a time,” he-says: “We were just going-to have to build unacceptable slopes, with 550,000-to 600,000 cubic yards of material.” oe Freezing the ground was rejected as too. temporary a solution and chemical stablization was. considered poteritlally dangerous: to a nearby salnion stream, The solution was electro- osmosis, a process whereby the ground is electrified by driving giant electrodes into the soll at; regular intervals. Leo Casa Grande of Boston University, who pioneered the process for construction work in. pre-war Germany, acted as consultant for the $2-million project. Wakely says the results — were remarkable. “This process seems to fionize the soi] and keep it together,” Wakely-says, “It also keeps away from excavations. “Although it did cost us a hell of a lot of money I'm rather proud of that project," he says, noting that itreduced the amount of dirt _ which had te be moved by about two-thirds. “There's nothing really | impossible. It's a money and time situation. If there is some instability, there's always a solution.” ‘ replace It before the project ” , WADE | by RODNEY WADE]. _, Meanwhile, of the slime.of ordin ‘in sponsoring long di . the vogue and the visua _ cesses, marking them wit! Public relations flacks for universities and larre corporations have grown. fat upon the manna dispensed by the video delty. But television is a false god, values are moulded by the requirements of the ratings. Brian Budd, a soccer player with the North American Soccer League, has won four ‘consecutive ABC Battle of the Superstars — 4 non-event wherein a variety of sports compete In a But word has been leaked that ves want Budd banned from tions. They feel his level of fitness and performance is humiliating. They want to see & winner emerge from a ‘North American sport’ such as football or hotkey. - . That the players of such sports should be touted as -athletes, men to be revered for their fine physical " gondition, is ridiculous. Hockey players — as a species — give the impression the most developed parts’ of their anatomy are arms, tongues and throats, The the groundwater | representatives of “smorgasbord of games. ABC network executi further competi Sy BIOLOGICAL SENTISTS URE DON'T LAST LONG IN BOILING WATER... 4 ’ Sonate We ‘worthy of the term ‘athlete’ the. - ‘same example -of - the gods — the world has ever seen Is Muhammad Ali. In an age where television diminishes. the huge, enlargens the tiny, dignifies theirrelevant, Alih * towerin, ‘He remains a sports’ Gulliver surrounded by kinaesthetic Lilliputians, Where once. Olympus was the sole domain of an elite — heights are now aver-populate acting the part of the winner. The word ‘champion’ has ‘Hall of Fame’ so devalued an honor, that greatness would seem within the grasp of armchair athletes. ‘World's Record” is synonymous with the herculean task of utilizing properly within the space of one hour as many toilet rolls as possible. The Guinness Book of World Records has much to answer for. _ There are records which crawl each week from out, ary mortaldom. Colleges delight stance urination contests, nose blowing tourneys, gum-gobbing gymkhanas and a host of other novelty events. Winners — world champions! — are announced with a pandemonium of press ._ releases. - . . Television, much-besotted handmaiden of the new, Ny exciting woos such ex- h the seal of acceptability. trivializes the important, . a asremained acolossus,a- spiritual strength. hecome commonplace, a brazen.image, whose right arm raises the glass, the throat swallows beer -and the tongue is used to-utter profanities whenever a fair-minded referee, opposing team player, member of the viewing zoo, some mere car park attendant or little old lady dares to contradict his opinion of an alléged infraction. In the matter of physical condition — or being — hockey players are.in league. as . tiddly-wink — flickers. “Time was when hockey and football players were held up as examples to youth of all that is decent in | society. Gordie Howe, is the last living example. These were men to be revered not only for their. fine physical condition but also for their sage advice, EG _ |; morally uplifting words to be hammered in stone lest Auto union has ideas on it { BACKGROUND | By JULIET O'NEILL ANAHEIM, Calif, (CP) — The Canadian section of the United Auto Workers has submitteda policy to the union's convention making wideranging demands on the federal government aimed at easing unemployment, especially in the atuo in- dustry. Highlights of the policy in- clude calls for legislation to avert or delay plant closings, a better deal for Canada under the auto pact with the US. and a full-employment strategy to take greater advantage of the energy industry. The policy also calls for the federal government to reduce interest rates, lower taxes for lower and middie- income earners and impose selective price controls claiming it.is time for cor- porations to make some sac- rifices. . “The UAW believes the government's continued policy of asking workers to tough it out is still invalid,’ says the policy called A Program For Canada, It ks among a package of reso- lutions some 3,000 delegates will debate at the convention, which started Sunday and ends Friday. The nearly 300 Canadian delegates were scheduled to meet Tuesday evening to discuss the policy before it comes up for debate among all delegates later in the - week. It contains a proposal for legislation to avert or delay . plant closings that is vir- tually identic to a proposal by U.S. delegates that was endorsed following sometimes bitter debate. The participants in the debate revealed deep anger and despair among the victims of mass layoffs in the auto indsstry n both sides of the .border, prompting UAW president Douglas Fraser to. urge auto workers to steer their emotions against the U.S. Congress and the Canadian Parliament, not against themselves, “We've got to keep ra sing hell until our volces are heard and the jobs of our members are protected," Fraser said at the close of bate. He estimates one in three auto workers have been laid off for-a total of almost 300,000, about one-lenth of them in Canada, mostly in Ontario. Bill Marshall, a St. Cath- arines, Ont.-based UAW international representative, cited these plant closings in Canada: the Ford casting ‘plant, the Chrysler. V-8 engine plant and hhe Bendix parts supplier plant—all in Windsor, Ont. — plus parts plants owned by a variety of companies in the Ontario communities of St. Cath- arines, Sarnia, Stratford, Brampton and Parry Sound. : “Any contemplated layoffs, transfers of operations: and or plant closings should, by law, require ‘ample _ pre- Hotification to the union, the workers and- the gavern- ment,” says the Canadian proposal. , “Companies should be re- utred to justify their decision and to examine alternative production uses for the plant beforebeln permitted to close. . “In cases of. shutdowny companies must be. com- pelled to give workers transfer rights to other. locations and to provide a relocation allowance. "Those left jobless by such closings should be entitled to adequate severance pay and retraining at ihe expense of the company and legislative safegurds are needed to protect pensions and make parent corporations liable for funds." In -the meantime, the policy says the federal government should resurrect the Transitional Assistance Benefits program which provided auto workers laid off in the 1960s with up to three years of financial aid — up to 75 per cent of their regular Balary. Employment Minister Lloyd Axworthy has” established a-study group to consider that proposal but auto workers here are saying they feel pessimistic about the chances of getting that much ald. _ The Canadian program re- states the union’s long- standing call for a better deal for Canada under the 1965 Canada-U.S. auto pact, The program contains no ‘priase for the Liberal government, saying that the effecta of the 1975-74 wage and price controls program are still being felt. future generations should err from the One True Path of sportsmanship exemplified by these great men of athletics. But not so today. For the real athletes in modern times are runners, swimmers, cyclists, cross-country skiers and Muhammad Ali. . One doés not train one’s body to such a high level of physical response, one does not produce such fine tuning of the system, through the action of swinging a hockey stick at another player’s head, twirling an egg- - shaped ball on the end of a finger, swilling beer, or ‘swearing at, and attacking bodily, officials, opposing ‘team players and members of the crowd. Truly great athletes are not only in good condition, they have an extra ingredient, This factor is best characterized in the life performiance of one man: a supreme athlete engaged in a pure sport. Muhammad Ali has displayed qualities of greatness only the en- vious could decry, ; For sheer courage and valor only Ali can wear today Sixteen years. ago he won the laurel crown of the champion. He is a Victor Ludorum, a champion over all others, in all games. A star of such magnitude these others — however, ad- mirable their conquests, awe-inspiring their feats — _ pale into insignificance. . the world heavyweight boxing title. He successfully defended it until in the turbulence of the mid-nineteen sixties the title was stripped from him by petty officials. He had refused to fight in Vietnam, a moral decision based on his religious convictions. Where others might have withered under the cen- sure of a war-torn society, Ali grew stronger. For- bidden to fight professionally, he kept in shape, pummelling his body, willing it to remain in champion condition, enduring pain and deprivation when it seemed all was lost. For six years he fought through the courts seeking justice. And, because he was right, he wor. He was free to box again. - ; . But now he was well into his thirties. Experts said he had no chance. This view was buttressed when Ali, a man who had never before suffered a defeat lost a fight, Experts said he was finished. Other lesser men, might well have buckled under this negative defeatism, given into the envious -will of the losers, those whose inadequacy is a bitter fire fuelled to a raging flame by the exploits of great men. Ali refused to accept the old adage that athletes in their thirties are doomed to endure a slow, inevitable decline. He persevered. And at last after several at- tempts he regained the world title. But this was not the end, He defended the title successfully on numerous Deeastons, lost to Leon Spinks, beat Spinks and retired. Now, tothe fury of some sports writers Ali — closing on 40 — intends to take back that which is his, This summer he will fight Mike Weaver — a man who is champion by virtue of a lucky punch at the end of a * fight in which he had been massacred on poi _ John Tate. , points by Ali’s contributions to young people are another story —a Side of the man few realize. These acts alone mark hint with a decency worthy of a place on any child's pedestal, But, in the end, it is his courage, his unquenchable spirit, his committment to excellence and victory — afd his sports achievements +- that make Muhammad Ali the greatest athlete the world has ever known, these heady ° d with-legions of losers * ’