cé December 30, 1987 Aaguat (cont'd ) APPROXIMATELY 70 people join in a peace march from the Castlegar courthouse’ to Zuckerberg Island in recognition of the 42nd anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. Many of those who join in the walk believe the only way to end”a nuclear threat is to band together as a public message to world leaders. A “MR. UTILICORP™ mannequin is burned in effigy as over 300 people rally in a South Slocan park to condemn the sale of West Kootenay Power and Light to Missouri-based UtiliCorp United. Groups from across the province listen to guest speakers and hear songs all sharing a single message: keep WKPL Canadian. THE NEW City of Castlegar display sign is nestled into place at the Highway 3 Interchange. Inscribed into the back of a huge log, the sign is slipped into the former space of the old Expo "86 sign. CASTLEGAR city council approves a $40,000 grant which will see the CP Rail station physically moved to property located adjacent to CPR land. Once it is moved, the Heritage Advisory Committee (under the auspices of a society) will lease the station from the city for a nominal fee and run the station with the help of grants. THE $650,000 revitalization plan for downtown Castlegar is scrapped because the plan is too rich for the approximately 30 property owners involved. The president of the Downtown Business Association says it is a case of simply not signing up the number of property owners required and suggests more businesses downtown could help get the plan off the ground. TRAIL receives good news as Cominco and striking office and technical workers reach a tentative agreement in the labor dispute that has kept the city’s major employer behind picket lines for 114 days. The deal comes just one day after Cominco and United Steelworkers of American local 9705 meet to discuss a union proposal to send the 17-week-old labor dispyte to binding arbitration. THE CASTLEGAR and District Development Board is awarded an $86,000 job development grant to provide forestry training and work experience for eight long-term unemployed people in the Castlegar area. Seftender CONSTRUCTION of a new 60-bed long term care facility for the Castlegar and District Hospital is approved by the health ministry. The $4.3 million expansion will add 25 extended care beds and 35 intermediate care beds to the hospital. Government approval covers only 60 per cent of the cost, with the remaining 40 per cent to be picked up by the Central Kootenay Regional Hospital District. ENROLMENT at Selkirk College is up by at least 60 per cent over last year says the college registrar. He adds that more and more people are going or returning to college because of the bleak economic situation, especially in the West Kootenay. A SPOKESMAN for the Pesticide Control Board in Victoria confirms that a B.C. Environmental Appeal Board has granted C.P. Rail permission to spray its tracks in Castlegar, Trail and Nelson with the herbicide Spike 80W. The spraying is scheduled to begin next spring, but Regional District of Central Kootenay contemplates further action to stop the spraying. RCMP SGT. Jack Keddy takes over as head of Castlegar's RCMP detachment, replacing Staff Sgt. John Stevens who recently retired. Keddy says his first objective is to familiarize himself with the community and the people of Castlegar and develop a working relationship “with the best interests of the community in mind.” AFTER A 17-week shutdown, all Cominco workers who walked a picket line are back on the job and the company hires new people. The hiring is the result of the construction of Cominco’s new $171 million modernized lead smelter currently underway at the Trail plant. A TOTAL of 60 Castlegar residents run, walk, cycle and even skateboard to raise $366 in the seventh annual Terry Fox Run at the Community Complex. Number of partici- pants is down from last year, a trend reflected across the country. FOUR MEN involved in the Dixie Dee Powers pyramid scheme are sentenced to six months in jail. Judge Ron Fabbro says the “essence” of the sentencing is that all four men had full knowledge they were involved in a scheme and they knew the money collected “would be used to pay off old investors.” The scheme netted some $3.2 million. WEST KOOTENAY Power and Light Co. Ltd. announces a five-year plan to improve its plants. The invest- ment involves $105 million and includes a new $33 million HOUSEKEEPING . . . Scottish director Bill Forsyth used the Castlegar CP Rail station as the fictional “Finger- bone” station in his movie Housekeeping, shot in the West Kootenay last winter. natural gas turbine generator in the Okanagan Valley which a spokesman says will result in a significant saving for West Kootenay’s 100,000 residential customers. CASTLEGAR’S new $445,000 library officially opens its doors, with a guest list that includes past librarians and an audience of 160 strong. THE LONG-AWAITED Keenleyside Dam generating project could be underway within a year or two, Ald. Len Embree tells Castlegar council. Embree says at the annual Union of B.C. Municipalities convention in Vancouver, Energy Minister Jack Davis responded positively to the $860 million project, and is “very aware of the project and the Columbia River and the treaty.” Octhber CASTLEGAR school district looks at spending $2 to $3 million to upgrade Stanley Humphries Secondary School to make it safe for students. With provincial funding not yet available, the district digs into its own pockets to pay for an architect to study the necessary restorations and additions to the school. CASTLEGAR council, waa}s)ioq bighways ministry to build a second highway from Highway 3 to Celgar Pulp Co. and Westar Timber's Southern Wood Products sawmill. Mayor Audrey Moore says & second route is essential because of CP Rail's plan to abandon its Castlegar to Midway line, and feels council should insist that CP Rail pay for part of the new route. EIGHTEEN people, including three children from countries ranging from Czechoslovakia to Thailand, are sworn in as Canadian citizens at a ceremony in the Castlegar provincial court house. SIXTEEN inside posta! workers set up a picket line outside the Castlegar post office as part of an ongoing nation-wide strike, but violence erupts when a half dozen supervisors flown into Castlegar from Vancouver try to guide a mail truck through the picket line. THE PAGE and Wosley famili¢s of China Creek form a company and manufacture handmade, soft-sculptured dolls which they hope will be the biggest thing to hit the toy shelves since the Cabbage Patch phenomenon. Their “Mesome Wares” doll is to be introduced to the province on ballots being cast. Because only five candidates contest the five vacant school board seats, all are elected by acclamation for three-year terms. AT THE first board meeting in Trail since the official sale of West hootenay Power and Light company to Missouri-based UtiliCorp United Inc., directors decide to hold customer rates at the 1986 level for another year. THE HISTORIC CP Rail station is moved from the site where it sat for 70 years, across the railway tracks to a new location at the corner of 18th Ave. and 8rd Street. A large crowd gathers throughout the day to watch the historic move and many longtime residents reminisce about their train trips through Castlegar. CASTLEGAR finds itself embroiled in a second gas war in less than a week as prices of fuel drop almost 12 cents a litre to 89.9 cents at most service stations. THE CASTLEGAR and District Multicultural Society begins work on a community “peace park,” located on a southwest slope of a hill overlooking Highway 3A and the Kootenay and Columbia rivers. Volunteers start to lay out the shape of a huge white dove which will be visible to the community and tourists. RESIDENTS in Thrums and Shoreacres are upset about CP Rail using nearby sidings to store tanker cars carrying dangerous goods. More than 200 residents sign a petition objecting to the storage of toxic chemicals such as sulphur dioxide at the sidings. THE FED government announces plans for a new vandal-proof wharf for Robson, as part of its million dollar harbor revitalization program. A minimum of $165,000 will be spent to rebuild the lower timber section of the wharf which will bring the facility up to safe operating standards. CP RAIL abandons its controversial herbicide spraying program within the City of Castlegar, but won't say if it plans to spray rail lines outside the city limits. CP Rail superintendent says the plans were shelved “mainly because the mayor expressed her concerns to us and the concerns of council.” MAYOR AUDREY Moore sweeps back into office for a sixth consecutive term as Castlegar mayor, beating challenger Nick Oglow by 288 votes. Lawrence Chernoff tops the aldermanic poll with 1,467 votes, followed by Terry Rogers with 1,465 and Albert Calderbank with 1,004. The one-year aldermanic seat is taken by Bob MacBain. CASTLEGAR council votes unanimously to award itself a pay raise, with annual indemnities for the mayor and six alderman to jump 2.5 per cent this year and 3.5 per cent in 1988. Mayor Moore is to receive $8,777 this year, while aldermen get $5,160. CITY A huge jump in circulation and programs since moving into the new library, Castlegar and District Library Board asks Castlegar council for a 10 per cent increase in the city’s library grant — or a total of $102,000 for 1988. Decencber THE PROVINCIAL Ministry of the Environment suspends all of CP Rail’s active pesticide use permits for Castlegar, Trail and Nelson after finding evidence that the rail company may have violated the Pesticide Control and Waste Management Acts 12 times. A TANKER truck carrying gasoline crashes on the Blueberry-Paulsen Highway, spilling 16,000 litres of fuel of oil into Blueberry Creek. The community of Blueberry hooks into an emergency water supply from the City of Castlegar, when its water intake valve is shut off to prevent tainted water from getting into the Blueberry system. THE WEST Kootenay National Exhibition Centre is in serious financial trouble. Acting director Helen Lees says that although the NEC is always in need of funds, “this time it is different.” The NEC board agrees to keep the centre open, but cuts its operating hours and eliminates staff wages. The board itself continues to work on a volunteer be “totally satisfied” with contractor will have to “correct it.” 1987 belonged By RON SUDLOW VANCOUVER — Hair slicked into a ducktail, Bill Vander Zalm boogied with his wife, Lillian, late into the night at a 1960s-style bash at the Social Credit convention. For British Columbians, the frantic dance-floor scene was 1987 in a snapshot. The first full year in office for the premier with the toothpaste smile kept the province rocking at a jitterbug pace. “Hang on to your hats because you ain't seen nothing yet,” Vander Zalm told the legislature as it began summer recess. “The best is yet to come.” In British Columbia, 1987 was the year Rick Hansen came home, the Queen visited the province and Common- wealth leaders met in Vancouver. The latest terrifying toll of the AIDS virus lurched through urban chatter; those in the | Interior witnessed slow progress in native land claims; and all British Columbians waited to know the fate of the awe-in- spiring rain forests of the Queen Charlotte Islands. British Columbia's year belonged, however, to the man living in a theme- park castle who took on Big Labor and introduced government by gut feeling. SET THE TUNE By the end of the year, not all Lotuslanders were dancing to Vander Zalm's top 10 lyrics of confrontation, privatization and decentralization, even if the chorus was, to use his favorite word, faaaaaaantastic. “He hasn't as much as consulted with his own cabinet on many issues he has brought forward,” declared Ken Georgetti, president of the B.C. Federation of Labor. “He operates like he's the king of B.C. rather than the premier.” It was a stormy year for the former tulip-bulb salesman and devout Roman Catholic who worships the work ethic and opposes abortion but tolerates slot-machine gambling on government ferries to Seattle. Having promised consultation instead of confrontation, Vander Zalm sparked a big rumble with labor by bringing in a bill to boost government's power to intervene in contract disputes. At the same time, he allowed 26,000 teachers to form unions but stripped powers from the B.C. Teachers Fed- eration, prompting angry teachers to cut classes for one day in April. BIG WALKOUT And on June 1, for the first time since 1976 when wage-and-price controls sent workers into the streets, a general strike took tens of thousands of British Columbians away from work. Most public services were shut down, along with key industries such as forestry and mining. The strike cost the economy an estimated $100 million. More walkouts are in the wind for 1988 as government employees map strategy to fight Vander Zalm's plans for both privatization and decentralization that could see as many as one-third of the 35,000 public servants transferred or absorbed by the private sector. “We're heading towards more potential for confronta- tion in the industrial relations setting,” said Georgetti, as federation members remained steadfast in their boycott of the Industrial Relations Council created by the government. The Social Credit government's plan to sel] some Crown corporations and government services — including almost all Highways Department operations — is to get under way in the spring of 1988. But increasing opposition could delay implementation of the plan. READ THE PULSE The premier, meanwhile, has no apologies for his style of rapid changes without full explanations. “We have no polls,” he said with the assurance of 46 seats in a 69-seat legislature and no general election until at least 1990. “I do like to get out and sort of read what it is people are saying and decide how it is we are doing on various issues and, overall, I get a pretty good reading.” When the Vancouver School Board produced a video on AIDS, it was panned by Vander Zalm as a long ad for condoms. “It repeats I want to have sex but I don't want to die, I want to have sex but I don't want to die,” said the premier, coining a phase often invoked as Vancouverites tried to forge a new sexual and social order to deal with the deadly virus. HANSEN HOME If politics produced controversy but few heroes, Rick Hansen came home just in time. Cheered by thousands, Hansen wheeled into Vancouver after two years of being to Vander Zalm a Te : g x _ ye ¢ \ pow GENERAL STRIKE . . . More than 5,000 West Kootenay workers joined tens of thousands across the province in a one-day general strike June 1. wedged into a low-slung wheelchair for a painful yet rewarding odyssey through 34 countries. “I strongly believe it’s time for us to redefine the term disability,” said the 30-year-old athlete whose spine was broken 15 years ago in a pickup truck aecident. His Man-in- Motion tour raised more than $20 million. A few months later in the cool sunshine of early October, Hansen left his wheelchair briefly and used crutches to proceed down the aisle with Amanda Reid, the auburn-haired physiotherapist who toured the globe with him. Hansen married Réeid-the'same weekend 45 Common- wealth leaders headed to V for a conf soon divided by Britain's refusal to support intensified sanctions against white-minority South Africa. The conference, which turned downtown Vancouver into what looked like an armed camp, cost Canada $10 million for security alone. All dignitaries, including the Queen, Prince Philip and Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, left the city without incident. Thousands of police watched closely, however, as some 3,000 Sikhs demonstrated peaceably against Gandhi and called for a separate state of Khalistan in the Punjab. He quipped later at a cocktail party that they could have their state — as long as it was in DRAWS REFUGEES Earlier in the year, four B.C. Sikhs were convicted of attempting to murder a Punjabi cabinet minister. And Vancouver became home to 70 of the 174 Sikhs who landed on a Nova Scotia beach and claimed refugee status. The city also became the end of a pipeline for thousands of Indian Fijians and Hondurans seeking refugee status, prompting a former B.C. Supreme Court judge, J.V. Clyne, to question whether Canada was losing its “white” com- plexion. * ; The Vancouver Stock Exchange plunged with other markets in the October stock market crash. But the forest industry rebounded, with many companies reporting record earnings déspite the 15-per-cent softwood lumber export tax and new provincial government timber-cutting fees. NAMED A PARK After extended between Ottawa and Victoria, loggers lost the rich timber of Lyell Island to a national park reserve in the Qneen Charlotte Islands — a park celebrated by environmentalists and by Haida Indians who claim it as their homeland. ; Still in the courts is the province's largest native land-claims battle over the Ness River valley, in north- western British Columbia. The Gitksan-Wet’suwet’en band is seeking an area slightly larger than Nova Scotia. That and other land-claims hearings before B.C. courts appear certain to drag on through 1988 without settlement. The mining giant Cominco Ltd. had the province's most costly individual strike, a 17-week walkott by 2,600 employees in lead and zinc operations at Trail and Kimberley. Meanwhile, the $80-million sale to a U.S.-utility of West Kootenay Power and Light, a Cominco subsidiary, prompted protests from the Kodtenays to the Okanagan. The post-Expo year brought floods of tourists to what is marketed as SuperNatural B.C., but holidays turned to tragedy for some. Twelve white-water rafters died on four rivers and seven helicopter skiers perished in an avalanche. GOLD IN YUKON The discovery of a $60,000 gold nugget in the Yukon broke records but there was no northern political gold for the Conservative party. New Democrat Audrey McLaughlin snapped nearly three decades of Tory control by winning a federal byelection after the resignation of Erik Nielsen. Also in the Yukon, the NDP claimed a majority over the Conservatives in the territorial legislature when Danny Joe won a February byelection. The byelection became necessary after the resignation of Liberal Leader Roger Coles, who sold cocaine to an undercover RCMP officer. By year’s end, Vander Zalm's charm and n appeared unscathed despite political headaches as the B.C. legislature resumed sitting in late November. A few weeks . earlier, Cliff Michael had become the fourth B.C. cabinet minister to resign in 1987 over conflict-of-interest incidents, Leadership es conventions for both opposition in siti Celestia soudied te ayw, follcined lesdine foc NDP and the Liberals. Mike Harcourt, the affable former mayor of Vancouver, brought little fanfare to the NDP but began a quiet crusade to rebuild it. The task of resurrecting the provincial Liberals fell to Gordon Wilson, a community- i. instructor and hobby farmer whose party hasn't elected anyone since 1975. Meanwhile, Speaker John Reynolds was forced to close ; the public prayer room in the B.C. legislature building when an assortment of worshippers couldn't. agree on who is the real God or whether God is a woman, : ; “We made a tactical error when we made it more publie than I had intended,” said Ray Jansen, spokesman for a fundamentalist Christian group which had been put in charge of the prayer room. : Se ee ee eee