Ad - The Terrace Standard, Wednesday, November 25, 1998

TERRACE:

STANDARD

ESTABLISHED APRIL 27, 1988

PUBLISHER: ROD LINK ‘ADDRESS: 3210 Clinton Street Terrace, B.C. * V8G 5R2 TELEPHONE: (250) 638-7283 * FAX: (250) 638-8432 EMAIL: standard@kermode.net

We're still here

FOR THOSE keeping track, it’s been two years since the first bad forest industry news hit the area. Repap (also known as Skeena Cellulose) began its slide into financial oblivion by delay- ing yet again payments to contractors and businesses. And West Fraser announced it was closing its mill here temporarily.

Repap’s problems had as much to do with high- level corporate jiggery-pokery as anything else while West Fraser found itself with high costs and minimum returns. What was fascinating is that the bad news came a full year or so before the general forestry meltdown elsewhere.

Now, two years later, Skeena Cellulose and its contractors are still,in business thanks to the provincial government providing financial stability. West Fraser has scaled down its mill operations and is looking for innovative ways to keep its loggers in the bush.

The good news is the area has avoided the large scale permanent closures and massive layoffs which are now afflieting other forest-dependent communities. '

The one hope is that since our troubles came first in the province, we might therefore be the first to climb out at the other end.

To be sure, jobs have evaporated and there’s probably still some ways to go before the indus- try here recovers. But the point is that skilled employees remain in the area and the mills aren’t rusting away. In today’s B.C., that has to say a lot.

Hey. dude

IF THERE’S any kind of civic medal for dogged determination, it should go to city councillor Rich McDaniel and his coalition of busines- speople, service clubs and young skateboarders for their absolutely stubborn pursuit of a skateboard park.

As the cost of the structure keeps rising, Mr. |

McDaniel and company keep plugging along, raising money and soliciting work-in-kind in the goal of providing young people with a recrea- tional alternative to getting into trouble.

Now some may not agree with what’s been going on, but none can doubt the effort that is being put into the project.

Just two weeks ago another obstacle was placed in their path — the estimated $80,000 to remove dirt and then backfill the suggested location bes- ide the arena. That’s a lot of money by any stan- dards and even more so considering the overall condition of the economy.

The cost sparked yet another debate between Mr. McDaniel and his council colleagues. And it also sparked a public display of temperament from Mayor Jack Talstra. He does this rarely and it usually happens when a project needs one last a civic kick in the fanny to succeed.

With that in mind, count on council to figure out this particular problem and for the skateboard park to see the light of day.

| ye 1998 WINNER

IER TER ERS

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Liberals divided over

VICTORIA - In less than a month, following the Parksville- Qualicum by-election, the B.C. Legislature will meet to debate and, because the government has superiority in numbers, pass the Nisga’a Treaty.

Pil be very interested to see how some of the liberal Liberals will reconcile their leader’s posi- tion with their own and how, in the end, they will vote.

A lot of arguments, some very spurious, have been made in favor of either scrapping the treaty and starting over again, or submitting it to a province-wide referendum which, the antago- nists hope, would amount to the same thing.

“While the government has,

, foolishly-I believe, spent a huge - amount of money.on selling the - Nisga’a Treaty to the public, the °

official opposition has trashed it, admittedly at a much lower cost to the taxpayers.

Mounting a massive radio, TV and newspaper advertising campaign in favor of the treaty was not a very bright idea. Wasn’t there anyone in the vast amy of government information experts brave enough to point out the obvious? - a government with only 11 per cent of the pub- lic’s support shouldn’t try to sell anything to anyone. .

_FROM THE CAPITAL ~

HUBERT BEYER

I’m sure some people who might normally have supported the treaty are against it for no other reason than that it has been concluded by the Clark govern-

. ment, Reminds me of a story an old arid long-dead friend and col-’

league, Jim Brahan, told of his father. All his life, Jim said, his dad, an Irishman of fierce tem- per, lived by the motto: “If the government’s for it, I’m agin’ it.”

The Liberals, to some degree, are motivated by the same sentiments.

After all, as their designa-

‘ tion — Her Majesty’s Loyal

Opposition - implies, they feel obliged to oppose just about any- thing the government proposes.

.

But not every Liberal MLA might agree with Campbell. There’s Val Anderson, for instance, who, as a man of the cloth, has developed quite a reputation for championing the

‘poor, the underdog.

I can think of a dozen or more Liberals who don’t share their leader’s feelings about the Nisga’a Treaty, privately, that is. So far, they haven't publicly dis- tanced themselves from Campbell on this issue, but come the vote, they’ll have to stand up and be counted.

Mind you, the fact that Clark has called for a free vote in the legislature, should go a long way towards assuaging guilt feelings by those Liberals who decide to support the treaty.

Campbell has been slam-

ming the treaty from the begin- ning. Sure, the Nisga’a “deserve a treaty as matler of social jus- tice and practical necessity,” says Campbell, but not this one.

“Aboriginal people have rights under the constitution that need to be clarified and codified, preferably through negotiated treaty settlements,” he says, but rejects the Nisga’a Treaty out of hand.

For more than a hundred years, the Nisga’a have been try-

treaty

ing to negotiate a treaty settle- -

ment in good faith. For more

than a hundred years, they were .

ignored and humiliated. And when, at long last, the two senior levels of government, at the

eae

.

extreme urging of the courts, -~

have reached an agreement with the Nisga’a, Campbell wants to

teat it up and go back to the bar-

gaining table.

Perhaps the Liberal leader _

wants ‘o interest the Nisga’a in some fine blankets and colorful beads.

For what it’s worth, the e-

mail [ get from readers is usually. ~

a good indicator of how people feel about important issues. If they disagree with me, they let me know, in very certain terms.

I have:-written -several.col-.

‘umms in support of the Nisga’a.

Treaty, and the response runs about 70-to-30 in favor. What’s

more, opposition to the treaty is ~ centred in the south, whereas in | the north people are more inter- — ested in resolving the uncertainty _

of land ownership, which has been a great disincentive to investment.

I, for one, look forward to he tatification of the Nisga’a Treaty.

And I look forward even more to - seeing how may Liberals will -

support it.

Held hostage by offenders

CHILD ABUSERS and our laws to curb them leave us all helpless to rescue a Jost, cold, or crying kid.

Recently neighbourhood parents drove past a first grader walking to school coatless in cold rain, not because they were heartless or lacked room in their cars, They all felt at risk of prase- cution if they invited him into their vehicles,

And on a= rainy, chilly Sunday morning in June, a three- year-old strolled main street through Murfreesboro, Tennessee for thirty minutes while cars and trucks whizzcds past him. Roy Pawelski had crawled out of a first floor win- dow while his father slept.

A farmer, Jerry Lokey, driv- ing ‘west through the cily of 50,000 in his pickup noticed barefoot Roy,

Lokey realized the boy was at risk of being run over. Lokey

a sits eed

THROUGH BIFOCALS CLAUDETTE SANDECKI

also realized if he touched the kid, picked him up, or put him in his truck, he could be charged with abduction.

Only three weeks earlier police in Nashville, 50 kilome- tres. away, had issued an all- points bulletin looking for a “man ina van”.

What to do? Lokey decided

BECAUSE TVE

WATCHED OVER

4 GENERATIONS ON THIS vf (RARUNES |

to drive alongside Roy like a cow shielding her calf.

When Roy came to a four land highway, he ignored the red light; so did Lokey. Traffic on the green light slowed to swerve around Lokey’s pickup.

On the other side of the intersection, Roy stopped to look at a truck in a parking lot. That’s when Lokey hailed a woman tuming her red car on to Main Street. Lokey asked her to say with him until help arrived,

She phoned police on her cell phone, but she, too, refused totouch Roy. She joined Lokey’s procession.

Finally, Viola Russell, look- ing out her bedroom window, spotted the creeping cavalcade. In bare feet and housecoat, she ran out, scooped shivering Roy off the pavement, and cuddled him in her driveway until police artived,

another officer berated him. Whether or not incidences of child molestation have increased, we cerlainly hear of them daily. Last Monday kids came home from Copper Mountain Elementary School with a note

warning parents a nine-year-old :

boy had been dragged down an alley the afternoon before while walking on Eby Street about 6 pm. After a spirited struggle, the boy managed to flee from a tall, thin man wearing black with his face covered,

To protect our children, we

warn them not to walk alone, not” to be out after dark, never to get close to a stranger. Molesters .’

have made us all fearful to live, to be kind to each other, to enjoy freedom.

Then a judge in Ontario

places a ban on publication of an

offender’s name because the

poor pervert might commit sui-.

One officer praised Lokey; cide out of shame! AND THATS T] BiG BEAR County § MY HOMAN!!] | Hee sKoox!! Bur TOWN FUNNY THING IS L

Aim //. NEVER HAD Ay PROBLEM WiTH ONE.

pou wa-b. Ee