Poor maintenance blamed in fatal crash

GRANBY, Que. (CP) — A combination of mechanical Jefects and a lack of maintenance may have caused a bus accident in which 40 people lost their lives near Eastman, Que., last August, expert wit- - nesses indicated at a coroner's inquest Wed-

nesday.

Edouard St, Gelais, chief mechanic with the Quebec transport department, told the inquest the 1956 General * Motors coach in which the.

people died should never

have been on he road because its air braking system was worn and had leaks, Most of the victims

“were mentally or physically handicapped.

- Roger Potvin, an engineer and former professor at the University of Laval, who examined the bus, said the braking system was in proper working order on only one wheel, Even then, the

SEARCH

FOR BONES ON

|) BELLA COOLA, B.C, 4(CP) -— RCMP were searching today for the remains of an infant be- Heved buried in a shallow grave near the Noopum River, 65 kilometres west of this remote northern } British Columbia com- munity.

The search follows the discovery earlier this

week of a human skeleton at the site. RCMP Supt. Scotty

Gardiner said there were indications the victim died about five years ago. The body had been in

cinerated.

He said about 350 pounds of debris, in- cluding soil and foliage in the area where the skeleton was found, have been moved to Vancouver for tests.

Gardiner said police went to the site fallewing a telephone tip fram an Tuntdentified woman in

Vancouver. es

He said four persons had lived at the site.

Bella Coola is on an inlet about 450 kilometres northwest of Vancouver.

Strike continues

BURNABY, B.C. (CP) -- Clerical and technical employees at Simon Fraser University continued their rotating strike action Wednesday, but the uni- versity administration is not considering locking them out, said Bill Youle, SFU’s -personnel director.

wheel would have worked properly for cnly 20 seconds with full pressure applied on the brakes.

The passengeré— members of a group for the handicapped from Asbestos and their relatives and volunteer workers— died Aug, 4 when the chartered bus in which they were returning home from a theatre in Eastman ap- parently lost its brakes ona steep hill, drove through a T- intersection and plunged into Lac D' Argent.

It floated for about 16 minutes but only seven people, including the driver, managed to escape. Earlier testimony showed the driver, Denis Martel, thought the bus was on solld. ground when infact itwas floating in 15 metres of water about 75 metres from shore.

Potvin and St. Gelais also made reference to the bus’s

hand emergency (parking)

BCTF

beake which had not been working for more than. a month before the accident.

Potvin also said a rubber craved: fo. have slipped appea ve slip from its proper place and could have caused loss of air pressure from the brake system.

He said a part in the ac- celerater linkage was missing. Earlier testimony from three survivors established that the bus, owned by Gilles Bolduc of Kingsey Falls, near Asbestos, and driven by Martel, Bolduc's brother-in- law, stopped twice on the way from Asbestos to East- man while the driver checked what appeared to be a sticky accelerator.

St. Gelais indicated that the emergency brake, if working properly, would only hava alowed the bus and not likely stopped it.

leader

slams move

PENTICTON, B.C. (CP) — The president of the British Columbla Teachers Federation. (BCTF) said Tuesday it is politically expedient for the provincial government to turn the school tax limelight on echool boards. \

Pat Brady told a meeting of city teachers that the recentlyannounced increase in the school mill rate in-

Fourth bomb explodes

SUDBURY, Ont. (CP) — A 1978 van owned by an Inco Metals Co. supervisor was destroyed Tuesday by a bomb blast outside a com- munity centre in nearby Copper :

, Sudbury regional: police

say the van, owned by Marcel St. Amour, was valued at $9,600. No one was injured in the explosion but several windows in the centre were shattered and a car parked next-to St. Amour’s van was damaged.

It was the fourth bombing in the area in the last year.

In November, 1977, two ex- plosions at an Ontario Hydro transformer station cut power to 10,000 homes and businesses in the ares. One month later, Inco's copper refinery was closed for 24 hours after three explosions damaged equipment.

In September of this year, two explosions damaged four Inco trucks parked near the Inco general engineering

The university was in a building

legal position to lock out the 600 employees,

Pollce have not arrested any suspects.

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dicates the Social Credit government wants to place more responsibility for education and collection of school taxes on local school hoards.

“The BCTF firmly believes that the provincial government must assume a larger share of the costs of public school education in B.C. from kindergarten to Grade :12,’" Brady said. “This will have the effect of reducing the burden on local property taxpayers,

Brady said that in 1978 the gross operating budgets of schools in the province went up by an average of 8.5 per eant, The provincial shareable portion of education costs went up by 10 per cent and land assess- ments increased by nine per cent,

“But the provincial property tax for education went up 16 per cent,’’ he said, “and when one looks at this, it becomes evident much of the burden for increased achool taxation must lay with the province.”

“WE-79100

HIDDEN PAPERS COME OUT

MINEHEAD, = England (Reuter) Builders refurbishing a London office stumbled across a hidden cu and found documents linking the names of politician Jeremy Thorpe and the former male model who claims they were once homosexual lovers, 4 court was told Wednesday.

Thorpe, 49, and three other men are appearing at a preliminary, hearing into charges that they plotted to kill the model, Norman Scott.

The state has alleged that Thorpe, former leader of the Liberal party, feared his career would be ruined by Scott, who was claiming publicly to have been seduced in 1961 by the pol- iticlan.

The court has been told that Peter Bessell, at the time. one of Thorpe's close friends and a Liberal member of parliament, was asked to look after the Scott problem. He has been a major Crown witness. against Thorpe at the hearing. .

In 1974 Bessell’s business failed, aud he went to live in the United States. Builders moved in to refurbiah his office in London's fashionable Pall Mall street.

In statements read to the court Wednesday by prosecutor Peter Taylor, two builders described finding a black document case hidden in a concealed cupboard in the ceiling. There were letters, account books and cheque stubs—some of the material relating to Thorpe.

A letter from Scott to Ursula Thorpe, the Liberal Jeader’s mother, was among documents:

A statement to the court from the newspaper said its legal department kept copies of the documents, which were given to Thorpe,

The magistrates are sit- ting to decide whether Thorpe and his co defendants should stand trial on. conspiracy ‘charges for plotting an abortive attempt to murder Scott.

’ The state case is that: an

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Concedes gap narro

OTTAWA (CP) — Op- position Leader Joe Clark

’ predicted Wednesday that he

will lose at least part of his latest wide lead in opinion polls over Prime Minister Trudeau’s Liberals before next year's election.

Liberals agreed.

“The gap will narrow,” Clark said following the release of November Gallup poll figures showing Progressive Conservatives with a lead of 10 percentage points over Liberals.

Conservatives held 45 per cent support among decided voters, up three percentage points from October. Liberals had. 35 per cent, down two percentage points, The New Democratic Party drew 18 per cent support, a rise of one percentage point. Others remained steady with two per cent.

The poll showed 29 per cent clightly fe umlecided, down

ightly from 32 per cent in October

- “We have bottomed out,” said Senator Keith Davey, Liberal campaign chairman, echoing statements he made a month ago when his party was ‘two percentage’ points higher in the polls.

Senator Al Graham, Liberal party president, noted that Conservatives held the same 10-percentage- point lead in January, 1977. By June that year, the sit- uation was reversed, Liberals held 51 per cent support. Conservatives had 27 per cent.

“Who is ta say history won't repeat itself?"

Davey said the latest poll figures are probably gut of date and that they reflect public feelings in th weeks following Oct. 16 by@&ctions called to fill 15 empty federal ridings. Liberals lost 13 of the 15.

He was confident party fortunes had turned around, and that Trudeau would again lead Liberals to vit- tory in next election, .

There is no doubt that we were In a slide," Davey said. “But we are no longer in it.”

Wally Firth | (NDP- Northwest Territories) described his party’s one- percentage-point rise in the

polis as.‘' a nice Christmas |.

present,” The poll was taken Nov. 2-

. Auto Sensor cooking—just touch a sing!e contro!

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The Herald, Thursday, December 7, 1978, Page 5 . aya

JOE CLARK

4, after a federal-provincial constitutional conference organized by Trudeau, but before the last federal budget and the prime minister’s latest cabinet shuffle.

The results indicate Clark's Conservatives could have won a majority government if an election had been held last month. In the July, 1974, election Liberals won 141 seats in the 244-member Commons with 45 per cent of the vote, Conservatives won 95 seata with 35 per cent.

Liberal ministers Judd Buchanan and Bud Cullen agreed that the latest polls indicate Clark may have trouble risintaining political momenta, in the months

remaining before the mext election.

Buchanan, treasury board president and the govern- ment’s chief political minister in Ontario, em- phasized that public opinion has been extremely volatile in the last year.

Liberals and Con- servatives could trade leads in the polls within the space of a month, he said, adding that federal election cam- paigns last 60 days.

Buchanan said he ex- pected Liberal popularity to dip further than it did.

“We have a good op- portunity to turn it around before the next election.”

Cullen, employment and immigration minister, sald he would have been worried

oy if Liberals had slipped to per cent in the polls. But per cent appeared

a 38 .

a ta

factor, gave Liberals. plen to work with. sT

The current low Liber standing apparently will npt affect Trudeau’s leadership of the party,

“The prime minister anxious and determined lead the party in tha, negt election,” Buchanan.i-saip.

Clark said he is not,gverfy worried about his .parfy peaking too soon before. election. But Conservatives did haye work to do to in- crease alipport in Quebec where they have tradition-

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