SS ee Castlegar News September 30, 1987 os astie BUSINESS ‘FOUR-EYE' FASHION NEW FAD TORONTO (CP) — Not long ago, men in glasses were called “four eyes” and bespectacled women were told that “men seldom make passés at girls who wear glasses.” The optical’ business has been revolytionized since Dorothy Parker issued that bit of wit Where glasses were once considered an unattractive necessity, men and women now create wardrobes of frames and lenses to suit different moods and occasions. Shades are being worn day and night, regardless of need, and colored contaet lenses are being bought for purely cosmetic purposes, Even people with perfect vision are sporting non. prescription fakes in horn-rims to try to look intellectual and serious, “Eyewear has become a fashion accessory,” says Tommy Hagerstal, ‘manager of Ontario operations for Montreal-based Essilor Canada. “People used to feel that it was something they were forced to have — and certainly something that they didn't want to spend a lot of ntoney on. Now things have turned around and it has become something they want to have.” ‘STAGGERING’ “The increases in the business over the last several years — over the last 18 months alone — have been quite staggering,” said Frank Sims, regional manager of Stan- dard Optical of Toronto. “And I think we've only scratched the surface.” With more than half the population requiring some form of correction lens, the Canadian optical market is worth $800 million a year, “The market has doubled since 1976,” says Leo Robert, editor of Eyecare Business, an American trade magazine. “It's a much bigger business than most people realize. And the good news is that the baby boom generation is just beginning to reach the age when they are most likely to need vision correction. Observers say much of the upturn has to do with a new aggressiveness in the industry. Also important are technical refinements that have increased the number of stylea available. Plain plastic, in a limited range of shades, was once the norm for frames. Now, a variety of materials permits more colorful and ereative design. NEW LOOK Lenses, meanwhile, are being made lighter and thinner, coated to make them non-reflective, and tinted in colors from brown to pink. Imperial Optical, a Toronto-based manufacturer and distributor, is looking to carbon and titanium frames to boost sales, says Brad Clark, frame division manager. The carbon models, made of a mixture of nylon and carbon fibres, are almost 40 per cent lighter than con- ventional plastic. Titanium is lighter and stronger than traditional metal, and can be worked to have a finer appearance. Clark also has high hopes for a new. handmade wooden frame, to be introduced early in 1988 at a price of $500-$600. This spring, Esgilor Canada began offering a gold- and-diamond Cartier frame priced at $17,000. Although Essilor has not sold any of these, Hagerstal says, they have drawn attention to éther lines — including other Cartier frames at $6,000 to $12,000 and Essilor plastic and metal frames at $100 to $250. Hong Kong likes Toronto TORONTO (CP) — Oscar Wong Wrapped up @ multi- pean are npsting ty miler Sy at fond Property for a group of investors from ong. The next morning, the lawyer hopped on a’ plarie for the Orient to help some rich families resettle and invest their money in Toronto. A few blocks away from Wong's office d Clive and Mafkborough, which aren't fn the habit of selling land. Development of most vacant parcels is already in the works. That has left investors looking at other commercial centres in and around the city where there is no shortage of opportunities. Miller-says Hong Kong investors have been the most in Miller contemplates a rosy future for deals and develop- ments among the sea of skyscrapers and vacant. parcels in and around Toronto — a lot of it with foreign money. Looking out the window of his 18th-floor office, Miller, who puts together big real estate deals, says it’s a little like playing Monopoly. But Parker Brothers, inventors of the popular board game, probably never imagined the volumes of money these guys are talking about, Like Wong, Miller will soon be on the toad to Tokyo, Singapore, Bangkok and Hong Kong, talking to investors with millions of dollars who want to put their cash into one of the hottestygeal estate markets in the world — Toronto. Tororfto and its immediate outskirts have turned from a large city of d i into a and international metropolis in the last few years, say officials in the real estate industry. ‘ASTRONOMICAL’ “The amount of money coming into Toronto is ab- solutely astronomical,” says Wong. “And you really haven't seen anything yet.” Foreigners are banging on brokers’ doors looking for prospects, says Tony Arnoldi, who runs one of the city’s major commercial real estate firms. “I had groups from England, Holland, Germany and Arabia in the last two weeks,” says Arnoldi. “The dollar numbers are staggering. They just blow. me away.” But while Europeans havg been increasing their in Toronto, most of the new investors are BUT INTEREST STRONG Branch lines downplayed SASKATOON (CP) — Strong interest in taking over abandoned railway branch lines by private in- terests won't likely become reality in most cases, says the man studying the issue for CP Rail. Charles Pike, a senior management consultant, said Monday a great deal of in- terest in developing regional carriers is being shown, both from within Canada and from the United States. “Nationally, we have had nine to 12 discussions with people interested in regional carrier operations in parts of CP territory,” Pike said in a telephone interview from Winnipeg. “Several of those inquiries regard prairie lines,” he said. “They vary from lukewarm to cool.” Bill C-18, which on Jan. 1, 1988, will create a new national transportation agency and dissolve the Can- adian Transport Commission, will make it possible to sell lines to regional or short- line carriers. But Pike said there are several “serious impedi- ments” to the spread of re- gional carriers in Canada. He said new National Transportation Act regula- tions on the selling of branch lines have not been released and, until they are, no con- crete action can be taken. And the Canadian Labor Relations Board has ruled that national unions have succession rights on branch lines. Unless the ruling, now be- fore the Federal Court of Appeal, is overturned or cir- eumvented, it will be more difficult to get regional car- riers started. Pike said VIA Rail, the na- tional passenger rail service, has not said how it will react to regional carriers in parts of its territory. A transport commission official in Saskatoon said the railways have not tendered branch-li pte Orientals from Japan, Hong Kong and Taiwan whose pockets are bursting with money. No one keeps an accurate scorecard of how much foreign money is pouring into Toronto but people in the industry say the figure is in the billions annually and growing. As a result, the city’s ownership map has changed significantly. But it's still hard to get a firm idea of how much commercial real estate has moved to foreign hands. That's because the directors of a numbered Ontario company may well be from a foreign country or Canadians related to someone with a lot of money in Hong Kong, says Miller, who works for Coldwell Banker, the world’s largest plications this year. The new act will make Short-line or regional car- branch-line abandonment riers can be viable, Pike said, “more expedient” for | the by providing personalized railways when it becames service and more effective law in the new year, he said, use of equipment than nat- and it is reasonable \ to ional carriers. assume the railways will wait He predicted there will be until 1988 before making new much discussion but “few abandonment applications. real opportunities realized.” I want to see viable regional carriers set up and will not recommend losers to CP Rail.” Pike said it would not be in CP Rail’s interest to sell off branch lines to groups unable to operate them efficiently or which would be bankrupt shortly after the sale. “You need more than en- thusiasm to run a railway.” Newsprint price soars NEW YORK (AP) — Major North American newsprint producers have begun noti- fying customers that they plan to raise prices as much as 6.6 per cent on Jan. 1, flustering newspapers that swallowed a price increase just three months ago. A 6.6-per-cent increase would put the price of news- - PHOTOGRAPHY DAYS - - -= print at $650 a tonne, up from the present $610 US a tonne. Bowater Inc., the largest U.S. newsprint producer, is believed to have been the leader in announcing the price hike. Donald D'Antuono, the company’s vice-president of investor relations, confirmed customers are being notified of a price “change.” William Hee, purchasing manager for Gannett Supply Corp., a subsidiary of Gan- nett Newspapers, Inc., said he was notified of increases late last week by Bowater as well as CIP Inc, a Mon- treal-based unit of Canadian Pacific Ltd. Asa young | injured by a falling tree and, as a result, lost his leg. With help from the Rehab Clinic Team of the Workers’ Board, he received a prosthesis and was ‘ial real estate firm. , PRIME STRETCH Wong says it wouldn't surprise him if Hong Kong money is behind most of the average-sized shopping plazas in and around Toronto. People from Hong Kong own most of a prime stretch in the downtown along Yonge Street near the Eaton Centre, he adds. Industry officials say there's not much real estate action left in the core because most buildings are owned by financial institutions or major developers like Olympia and York, Cadillac Fairview, Tridel, Campeau, Trizec, Bramalea ~ and Toronto in anticipation of the British colony returnihg to Chinese rule in 1999, “Billionaire families have sent sons, daughters, nephews and nieces as an advance guard,” he says. “They have made major inroads into our market — real estate being their preferred choice.” ° Investors find Toronto the most economically stable and diversified city in the country, with a proven record of resilience when times get tough, Miller explains. It’s also the country’s financial centre and it’s clean and safe by world standards. JOINS RANKS Toronto has joined the ranks of New York, Chicago and Los Angeles in North America and Tokyo and London abroad as great cities, Miller notes. Wong says rich Oriental investors have easily emigrated to Canada in recent years under entrepreneur or investor classifications which require a minimum of $250,000. Some prefer Canada to the United States because there's less red tape. FRANCHISE OPPORTUNITY Join the largest Canadian owned tax preparation service and share its success. Petsonal Tax Services provides: * Financing for Capital Assets and Supplies * Capital for Tax Refund Buying * Tax Courses and Quality Control Systems * On-going Supervision to Aid in Your Success * Supplies and Advertising Support * Proven Management information Systems Explore this seasonal business op- Porfunity by contacting: Personal Tex Services (8.C.) Limited Attention: Boris Styba 204, Seven Oaks Mail 32900 South Fraser Way 1-(604)-852-4977 HE FACED THE CHALLENGES ...AND WON. , Clare Murray was hobbies of gol! Hundreds of British Columbians have faced the challenges of disabling injuries tion . and won. The Workers’ Compensation has the people and pi to and skiing. trained in its use. Working with a WCB help train the injured worker. As aB.C. Rehabilitation Consultant, Clare has undertaken training as a computer programmer. He has also returned to his =-71 ee | at E rt -- Fields I... 310 Columbia Avenue, Castlegar * 365-3255 3 Thursday to Saturday + r i] | Oct. 1 to Oct. i] ie i] i] . 7 ! Saturday, 10 - 1; 2- 4:30 | wl PHOTOGRAPHY HOURS 1258 e ed you can help a disabled worker yourself WCB's vocational rehabilitation services. advantage of the D CoLumBiA By FELICITY MUNN Press MONTREAL — He shrugs, he gestures, he fiddles with his pen. The radio studio fills with smoke from the cigarette giued between his fingers. Rene Levesque is back, and for the first time in years he's on the other side of the microphone. The former Quebec premier has returned to his old calling of journalism by signing on as a political com- mentator for Montreal radio station CKAC. At 6 p.m. every weekday, he settles in with radio host Jacques Proulx for a 15-minute chat about current affairs. He has also been appearing on the odd TV notably as an expert commentator on the francophone summit in early September for Telemetropole, a privately owned Montreal TV station. Two years out of power, Levesque at 65 is as comfortably rumpled as ever, his seamed, expressive face wreathed in smoke from the ever-present cigarette, his grey hair marching in strands across the top of his head. The sense of restless energy is intact in a hurried interview in English at the studio door. So, clearly, is the rambling speaking style that once bemused and be- fuddled reporters during his nine years as premier: WRITES A BOOK “The first thing I did was disappear completely for close to a year — I wanted to write a book (last year's Memoirs) — which I thought was the best way to become at least somewhat forgotten because I'd had enough with the rush and all the stress of public life. “And after the book was done — you can't clutter up bookstores — so I thought I should go back to my old trade — try, anyway — andl go back to my old trade which was basically a reporter and news analyst and things like that.” Former premier back | as radio commentator Levesque began his journalistic career asa Second World War correspondent attached tothe. American military. He later convered the Korean War, but he first. became widely known in Quebec in the late 1950s as host of Point de Mire, an international affairs program on Radio-Canada, Cigarette in one hand and pointer, in the other, he stood in front of a map and explained the world to. becoming a household name in the process. In 1959, a protracted, bitter producers’ strike at life. . JOINS LIBERALS Enraged by the Diefenbaker government's in- difference to the strike, Levesque became a spokesman for the strikers, and the next year he was by Jean Lesage's Liberals to run as a star candidate in the Levesque quit-the L‘iberals in 1967 and founded the Parti Quebecois in 1968. Defeated in both the 1970 and 1978 elections, he went back to journalism until the PQ swept to power in 1976. These days, the former premier seems bent on keeping busy without tying himself down to any long-term projects. DOING ENOUGH “Until Christmas time I'm doing a bit of TV and five times a week on radio — I think it’s quite enough,” he said flatly. “I was committed for years and years and years on end at the same job (as premier) all the time. I mostly enjoyed it, but right now I want to have what's called temporary jobs.” Levesque, who's complained more than once that has become Oi enable’ hiss te b vet EE Tan polities should 04 below the surtace sf ces Mite enpatinet tha (belps),” he said with ve stories sometimes that help explain things because a lot of things happened along that way that I can remember, and I've done & lot of ing. 1 “So sometimes it might give a little more substance to what could become very easily just another quickie on Since he resigned as premier in. October 1985 he's received a lot of offers — “too many,” he ‘noted with a shrug — such as jobs writing newspaper columns. “You can't start running around like mad, you have to pick and Once his radio stint ends at Christmas, he has several other projects. in mind, Another book, for instance: ‘ “But not . The first.one that 1 wrote is just barely off the shelves, and it sold ina way that tome was stupendous (French and versions of Memoirs have together sold 200,000 copies), so I'm not going to bother people too often. “But I've got a few ideas, I've got. some pages jotted down here and there, and eventually it'll jell.” memoir? Bi raat »" he replied, for onee briefly. “May- A final shrug, a quick enigmatic smile, and Levesque’ to another commitment was gone down the corridor it, leaving 2 trail of cigarette smoke behind him. be Carmaking undergoing incredible changes Editor's note: The Canadian auto industry, with sales of $44 billion last year, is undergoing a major overhaul in response to competition from foreign carmakers. This story, Part 1 of a three-part series, looks at changes im the industry. By TONY VAN ALPHEN TORONTO — The McLaughlin Carriage Co.'s calendar in 1906 featured a happy couple in a horse-drawn buggy, trotting by a hapless car in a river. Two years later, the McLaughlin calendar depicted a couple speeding off on their honeymoon in — surprise! — a car. A buggy languished nearby. Sam McLaughlin had abruptly changed the focus of his family's pioneering firm, the forerunner of General Motors of Canada Ltd. He had seen the light: Either change or the world would pass him by. like that is happening to the whole auto is ited “It's a different world than it used to be and there’s no turning back to the old way of doing things,” says George Peapples, president of GM Canada. ‘Motorists are getting wider selection, more reliable cars and improved service’ Gone are the golden days of the 1960s and "70s when the big U.S.-based automakers — assured of fat profits and market share — would joke that if you scratched a Japanese car, you'd see a beer. can label. Plants to assemble foreign cars and produce the parts that go into them are popping up at a dizzying rate, North A 7 are by their old methods, attitudes and plants to-stay in business. SEES BENEFIT becoming so complex and expensive that do-it-yourselfers will find it much tougher to make a repair on their own. OUTPACES DEMAND While consumers may benefit, a dilemma looms for and GM has shut 11 U.S. plants, and several parts companies in Canada have either closed or are on the yerge: of doing 80. Analysts and economists caution that nothing is assured in the current of cut-throat Yet, they add, the changes to Canadian industry will reinforce its position a a strong player on the international stage. “What we're doing doesn’t mean we're out of the woods, “Over the next10 years, we're on track to becoming one of the mest automotive countries in the world, ranking up there with the Japanese, West Germans and Americans.” “There will be winners and ‘losers, and not just > Canadian suto industry is becoming more crowded. Japan's Suzuki — in s joint venture with GM — Toyota and Honda have poured more than $1.2 billion into new assembly’ plants im Ontario, while Hyundai is investing $300 million in Workers now go to. Japan to learn how to build cars — a reversal from the 1950s and 1960s when the japanese came to North America for lessons. While the Canadians know. what they're up against in American and Ji other new players could pose.a threat, warns economist Paul Kovacs. It's a boon to easingly quality who suffered through a generation of cars that were ready for the junk yard after only « few years on the road: Motorists are getting wider selection, more reliable cars and improved service from dealers as companies fight for customers, analysts say. Pat Curran, a spokesman for the Canadian Automobile Association, adds that although average prices probably won't drop, may de “People are still shocked when they see prices,” says Curran, noting the average cost of a new car is about $14,000. “They have been going up about 10 per cent annually — a lot more than wages — in recent years so the competition and better efficiency should help keep them n. gow Further, better-built cars — along with more compre. hensive warranties — will mean fewer maintenance and repair bills for consumers. There's a negative side for the one-third of motorists. who like to tinker with their cars, say analysts. Parts are a ‘that produce cars more cheaply are ‘trying to squeeze into the lucrative North American market. : can “Whether we will be able to is unknown.” For the Canadian ¢conomy, the stakes are extremely high. One Canadian in séven has a job tied to the car_ Spot of weekend hikers this -Sedhocn Pate ns Sits me by posteard