Saturday, December 5, 1992 @ PAGE | = = = ?P Dave McCullough Publisher Scott David Harrison Editor Bob Proctor Marketing Manager Mickey Read Composing Room Foreman Warren Chernoff Accountant Mary Ann Fullerton Circulation Manager OurViEWS Adrian RAESIDE No apology needed eing politically correct must B: a tough thing... just ask Ed Conroy. Against his better judgement, the Rossland-Trail MLA issued an apology to the Regional District of Kootenay Boundary for speaking his mind. The rookie MLA felt forced to back-pedal after he chastised the RDKB and the Trail school board for approving an asinine plan that will see area children adopt B.C. Transit buses as their mode of transport. It wasn’t Conroy’s criticism that got him in hot water, instead, it was his selection of words. Angry that some 300 school children were being used to make up for the economic shortfalls of the district’s transit system, Conroy told the. board “to get off their fat asses” and come up with a more effective plan to handle declining ridership. He was right and Conroy has nothing to be sorry for. As the local MLA and a former school trustee, Conroy was looking after the interests of some 300 children who have suddenly been displaced because a school board wants to save $48,000 a year and a regional district wants better usership figures. Trail children are being treated as guinea pigs in this economic experiment. They were given no vote, no voice and no alternatives. If the local MLA isn’t going to stand up for these displaced children and give the RDKB exactly what it deserves, who is? HEH NOTHING LIKE LIMLE ay LIME FELLAH? GOOTCHE GOO a , Lttiguyy (1 Parents look for peace of mind Going to school in the far between. Even in 1990s isn’t like it was 30 years ago. In a whole lot of ways. Like getting there. I remember taking the city bus (I grew up in Vancouver) to school in Grade 1 - a distance of several miles (this is pre- metric). And not just one bus. I had to transfer. That meant getting off and walking across a busy street to another bus stop and waiting for the bus along with a crowd of other Ron NORMAN Comments from the Crossroads Vancouver. And they were virtually non-existent in small towns like Castlegar. But no longer. While we may be better off than Vancouver or Kelowna, we are no longer immune to the kind of things that occur in the larger centres. That’s why a local mother has asked the Castlegar school board to review its security measures at area schools. people. I was all of five years old. My parents didn’t worry; my older sister was with me. She was eight. Can you imagine parents today allowing that to take place? I can’t imagine my parents doing that now, but it was a different world we lived in back then. Sure, there were weirdos (a nice ’50s word) out there — and we were told not to talk to strangers — but they were few and In a written submission to the board, Cindy Fry has called for a special committee to examine “the critical issue of school security. “I would think the committee could be made up of representatives from the following groups: parents, administrators, teachers, noon-hour supervisors, bus drivers, the school board, the RCMP, and any other concerned parties.” please see NORMAN page 7 S treet TALK Burt Campbell Publisher Emeritus L.V. Campbell Aug. 7, 1947 Feb. 15, 1973 Joe Bell Castlegar “I don’t think the public can spend too much money.” Anna Crowe Castlegar “There are never enough facilities.” Pete Jansen Castlegar “If there are waiting lists — no.” Pat Rilcof Castlegar “We need more support for women who are victims.” Question: Are there enough facilities in Castlegar for women who are victims of violence? Peter Plotnikoff Castlegar “There’s room for expansion, we need a transition house.” @ Saturday; Dééembe? 5, 1992 \ Other VIEWS! Please address all letters to: Letters to the Editor Castlegar News P.O. Box 3007 Castlegar, B.C. V1N 3H4 or deliver them to 197 Columbia Ave. Letters should be typewritten, double-spaced and not longer than 300 words. Letters MUST be signed and include the writer's first and last names, address and a telephone number at which the writer can be reached between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. The writer's name and city or town of residence only will be. published. Only in exceptional cases will letters be published anonymously. Even in those cases, the name, address and phone number of the writer MUST be disclosed to the editor. The News reserves the right to edit letters for brevity, clarity, legality, grammar and taste. Letters tcoWHE EDITOR English language panders to a minority Yes, English is changing, as do all languages, sometimes for the better, sometimes not. One of the changes not for the better is the introduction of “chairperson” and the even worse “chair” in place of the long established and more euphonious “chairman”, the word around which Ron Norman has written his thoughtful column of Nov. 28 on. This and other similar changes have been foisted upon us by militant members of the feminist movement who feel that women are being slighted by the suffix “man” in words and phrases such as “spokesman,” man-eating tiger and Norman’s “chairman.” This is not so. Under “man,” my unexpurgated Oxford Universal Dictionary gives as its first meaning “A human being = L (Latin) homo... now surviving in general or indefinite applications in the sense ‘person’, (eg. with every, any, no...). In this sense the word comprises all of the racial groups of mankind, all individuals wherever they may choose to place themselves in what we have come to see as the sexual continuum. Clearly, the changes are not required, even in the name of “inclusive language”. It is a pity that we have so passively accepted this mayhem on our language: we have lost more than we have gained by allowing 1,000 years of the evolution of our language to be set aside by a few with so little understanding that they see discrimination or exclusion where there is none. To pander to this minority we must now live with awkward and not full descriptive names such as “The Museum of Civilization” instead of the original accurate and elegant “Museum of Man”. To one who is inclined to take a charitable and egalitarian view of mankind this is an abomination. Fred Marsh Castlegar The Adult-Seniors Housing Door-to-Door Canvas has now the indicates the level of interest in shortage of suitable Hard-working canvasser force behind survey’s completion diligently and were so time to complete and return a been completed. We distributed 3,000 survey forms and had 780 completed forms returned, which represents 28 per cent of those surveyed responded. This is a high percentage of response which, I believe, housing in Castlegar — not just for seniors, but for everyone. We also believe that the high level of response from the community was a direct result of the quantity and calibre of our volunteers who worked so persistent in collecting data. Their hard work proves that the only effective way to reach people is by direct means. We would like to thank the volunteers in this community for their great efforts on behalf of seniors. We would also like to thank all those who took the survey form. It is your interest that will ensure that, ultimately, Castlegar will get the housing for seniors it so greatly deserves. Elma H. Maund Project Manager Seniors Housing Needs Project Coverage appreciated, but not entirely accurate I appreciate recent coverage that promotes greater public awareness on substance abuse and its impact on our communities. I would like to clarify some of the statements from a Nov. 21 article in The News titled “Cocaine Use On the Increase” based on an interview with me. It is difficult to conclude whether or not cocaine use is “on the increase”. There are no surveys specific to cocaine use by Castlegar’s general population and thus no specific indicators of current use trends locally. Substance abuse problems are present in the following order of prevalence: alcohol, cannabis, cocaine and, to a lesser extent, prescription drug misuse and opiates. Hallucinogenics are involved in less than one per cent of presenting problems. There are no surveys specific to cocaine use by Castlegar’s general population and thus no specific indicators of current use trends locally. - David O’Brien It is not accurate that I was “disappointed in the community’s effort”. I did express regret that treatment priorities have made it difficult to promote more Drug Awareness Week activities. I would like to express my comments on positive trends, such as the remarkable success of the CounterAttack program and the reduction in drinking and driving, and the movement towards healthier lifestyle choices. I did not suggest that adults “must start acting as models for... young people”. It is important to examine our own behavior, but I would like to note that the community certainly has many existing strengths and positive models as well. David O’Brien, BSW ADP Counsellor, Castlegar Norman continued from page 6 Fry would like to see the board implement a district-wide securi- ty program. “This program would have built-in provisions for communica- tions and carefully-thought out protocols for dealing with specific problems should they arise.” For instance, the school princi- pal, parent, teacher and RCMP would know exactly whom to con- tact and what to do. “Having such a security plan in place would be very reassuring to parents and children and could someday save a child’s life,” Fry She proposes that the board be- gin by examining its present secu- rity system. From there she moves on to suggestions. Some — like a closer liaison with the RCMP and a check-in system making it difficult for someone to enter a school unno- ticed — make sense. Others — such as installing a video system in schools similar to those in banks and having a paid guard at each school — are a bit off the wall. After all, we’re talk- ing about elementary’ schools here, not the Kent maximum se- curity prison. . But it would be wrong to try to dismiss Fry as simply a paranoid parent, if for no other reason than the attempted abductions at the Nelson schools last month. Those incidents weren’t isolat- ed. Since the start of the school year, similar occurrences have been reported at three other ele- mentary schools in three different Interior communities: Salmon Arm on Sept. 23, New Denver on Oct. 18 and Revelstoke on Oct. 27. RCMP say it’s unlikely the inci- dents are related to the Nelson case. So these things occur with more frequency than they did 30 years ago and perhaps more often than we are generally aware. Recognizing that is the first step. Doing something about it is the next step. “It’s easy to rely on a system which has been in place for years, and was adequate for the times,” she says. “We have seen school curricu- lum drastically revamped and im- proved in order to meet society’s changing needs — let’s make sure our schools are secure for the year 2000.” Fry’s submission has been re- ferred to the board’s policy com- mittee for recommendation.