OPINION

WEDNESDAY, March

Ky

“,
jar Sun

Ld.

by Sterling
, BC. hebinrhiey Lender renmn gti

It’s all a matter of fact

There are valid reasons why
candidates seeking public office
are required by law to disclose the
costs of their campaigns, and per-
haps more important, the contribu~
tions that were made to them by
individuals, businesses or any

editorial comment

Upcoming budget
meeting will show the
human side—or lack
thereof, of city council

cost

ere’s much more to running | a city
than setting devel
dealing wi with waste water issues or

establishing a new parking bylaw.

While these are infinitely important for a
city’s overall fiscal and infrastructure health,

there’s also a h side to

1 poli

‘i-

tics—one that involves paying close attention
to the economic needs of those organizations in
the community which define and enhance

b> od ‘Ss way of life.

such as these: like the Fes-
ie ‘Gommittee, the local library or Castlegar
Community Services, who rely on City Hall for
financial assistance in carrying out their ser-
vices to a growing community, whether it be on
a daily basis, as in the case of the library or
Community Services, or in the form of an
annual festival that promotes everything that’s

—. about our community.

y or

ions and others

ion om them have made their annual visit to city
council: appearing as delegations to explain

their contrit to cc

y life,

annual budgets, and make an official funding

request.

Because the mayor and majority of a

‘First, it serves to keep people
honest. Second, it out-right con-
firms or denies any conflict-of-
interest that might be brewing
between the persons holding public
office, and the person or group
who helped finance their way
there.

People agree to finance cam-
paigns for two basic reasons: they
agree with the candidate's philo-
sophical beliefs and truly believe
he or she will work hard to main-
tain or improve the community's
quality of life, or, they are expect-
ing a special future favor out of
city hall.

Anyone who believes Castlegar
is immune to such back-door poli-
tics, that it can't happen here,
should take off the rose-colored
glasses. After all, politicians are as
human and therefore are as vulner-
able to temptation in Castlegar, as
their peers are in Vancouver.

It's also fair to say however, that
those local candidates who accept-

ed contributions to their
did so based on economic need
more than anything else.

From flyers to placing ads in a
local paper, running a campaign
can be expensive

even in Castlegar,
not to mention all-
consuming of the
candidate's time
and energy.

And, as long as
candidaics who do
accept contribu-

Sharlene
Imhoff

tions make it clear

they are only responsible to those
marking ballots and not cheque-
books, the donation can be accept-
ed with a clear conscious.

There was nothing surprising in
the candidates’ disclosure forms:
particularly that Mike O'Connor
received contributions from a nurn-
ber of long-ti

tributed substantial amounts on
two different occasions.

After the election, O*Connor
recommended that Mr. Thind sit on

folio that keeps her busy almost
every day of the week.

Maybe it's her gender, but out of
all the councillors, Binnie is cur-

the city’s Di P Cc i
sion. If it was
solely up to the
mayor to place
someone on a
committee, the
scenario would
indeed smack of
municipal govern-
ment

But because Mr.

Thind’s position on the commis-

sion hinged on the approval of an

entire city council, there is nothing
to suggest wrongdoing—after all,

Mr. Thind only contributed to

O'Connor's campaign, and not

those candidates for city council.

Another interesting though not

The ones owned and operated by
those residents who were tired of
the Audrey Moore show, and are
ripe to expand their own services
in a community that would be

was made by
City Councillor Brenda Binnie,
whose contributions all derived
from major unions.

So are they expecting something
in return? Perhaps. But Ms. Bin-

more ig to new develop
mient.

While perusing Mr. O'Connor's
list of contributors, one name in
particular caught my eye—RHC
Realtor Harry Thind, who con-

nie’s per on council thus
far in no way suggests she has
strings tied to anyone—much less
any union.

The lone female on Castlegar’s
city council; she has a tough port-

rently ing the most ili
when discussing an issue,

She's also a good listener—a
trait she needs as a mom, but likely
perfected during her extensive
work with the very same unions
who financially backed her in this
election.

Municipal politics, especially at
this level, is really the remaining

of true di y—the
kind where people still answer
from their own heads and hearts,
rather than ‘toe a party line’ when
asked to take a hard stance on a
contentious issue.

Castlegar'’s new city council is
made up of seven people who have
definite philosophical differences,
and for the most part, strong per-
sonalities.

It means the community is well-
represented, and that a decision
will not be made quickly. And
because the public can easily
access information that details
who supported who, it’s unlikely
that any quick decision on politi-
cal hand outs, particularly at the
municipal level, will ever go
unnoticed.

My Turn

Censorship and prejudice

I've often wondered how one
gets to be a Minority. It begins
with people who are in’a Majority:
they say they"know who they are,
and people in the Minority some-
how don't resemble the Majority.
It is a matter of resemblance, of
belonging: the difference is
marked by the things we pick we

landscape, climate and history fit
them$elves as best they can—
never perfectly well—to their
Teality, just as we fit ourselves to
our own corner of the world.
When we consider that land-
scape and history are not only
external and largely observable,
but also internal and largely pri-

through our senses, alth
may work over some of Sexe
things: ideas for example.
Everybody has ideas about Jus-
tice and one of these is that many
people should be treated more-or-
less equally. Where you draw the
line though, varies from place to
place and time to time. I'm a
member of a Minority, myself:
I’m one of the poor, oppressed
people with size 10 1/2 feet.

lors are new, their response to d

have nervously stepped forward to make ane
pitch has been one of subdued and uncomfort-

able silence. Followed by a curt ...““We’ll con-

sider your request with all the others in our
deliberations.”

budget

While council can hardly state a yes or no
answer for a funding request right there and
then, a little pleasantry and overall tact would
not be out of order. After all, these organiza-
tions exist because people need them, and those
people who work in these functions, either as
paid employees or volunteers, should be appre-
ciated by council for the hard work they do.

For the first time since becoming elected,

city council will face the public and p
where tax dollars

iny when it

h im Canada can I find a
size eight shoe that'll fit me. I'm a
victim of sizeism.

If your response to my situation
is a plain, honest ‘Bullshit’!,
you're right too. We 10 1/2 shoe-
sizers are not up against the same
kind of treatment as people with
different skin colors, mother
tongues or same-sex partners—
although you'd do well to recog-
nize that in more than one time
and place foot-size has been the
measure of status and control by
one one group over another:
women's footbinding in China,
from Sung to the end of Empire;
and our own Western choices, still

d in fc : O who will

—

its

will be spent and why. At the same time, the
organizations who appealed for financial assis-
tance will discover whether their efforts as a
ion before council were successful.

The public budget meeting will take place
April 11 in the Fireside Inn Banquet Room. It
will be an opportunity to question spending,
and learn how city council’s budget affects

every one of us directly.
See you there!

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date. No contingent orders accepted. Printed in the U.S.A.

shoe your pretty little feet/ and
who will glove your hand/ and
who will kiss your ruby lips/
When I am gone? The standard
doesn’t have to be reasonable: it
only has to be there.

Why make divisions and differ-
ences? Evidently it suits us to do
so. We describe ourselves by a
limited set of guidelines any fool
can plainly see; then we conclude
that, because we are human, the
fewer of those guidelines someone
else follows, the less human, the
less one-of-us he or she is—and
what a fine scapegoat to carry our
faults

Unless we stand quietly, at least
in our minds and look at the world
closely and carefully, we miss
some very important clues to
being human.

All the steady differemces we
see between ourselves and people
who live different from us are also
there for reasons, and most those
reasons—not all of them, never all
of them—have origins we can dis-
cover. people with a different

hu

it picture of the
world, my own, individual histo-
Ty—we can guess that there will
be differences for which we will
not find and perhaps shouldn't
need to find reasons.

We're all different from each
other: which is remarkable,
because there’s nothing unique
about it. Guy opened the panel
mentioning “Celebrating differ-

ences’; this is also simply accept-_.

ing each other, even those 10 1/2
shoesizers.

We're left with a loose end,
though: how to celebrate, for
éxample, the Adolf Hitlers, the
Clifford Olsens of the world. This
brings us, not by so crooked a
path, to the issue of Censorship.
Which di are val

may be part of the precess of Jus-
tice and now really share some
hint Of-unjust experiences other
had forced them.

Second, if the Justice is real,

social power is there to follow up
the idea, the bad: advice that
injures. {

The pornographer does not
injure by uttering corrupt images

our pi are porary until
our community comes into bal-
ance. If we doubt that it will, it is
our Justice and not the Minority
that is to blame for that doubt.
Most important: links between
us all become more visible. We
are not really that different and
what ‘affects some does affect all
sooner or later, and in way we
Ttannot we

of 2 the injury lies in the
void he fills, in the determination
of most to create nothing powerful
and good in the realm the pornog-
rapher serves wretchedly.

There is an unwholesome con-
tagion in the pursuit of prejudice
and censorship. Once I have con-
di d one thing bi:
what is to refrain me from con-

all have in common is each other.
If our society is to live on, I
think we will see more uncomfort-
able adjustments in many social
and-economic areas for awhile, if
there is to be a lively balance.
Now, what about C i

ything else? The sar-
donic Quaker jest sums this up:.
‘All's heretics bound for Hell save .

ip appear
when the powerful—even the

There is an eld, Common Law
principle here, the example of
suppressing the person who yells
fire in a crowded theatre that is
not burning: one should not speak
ways that put other people to

even safe; and which are danger-
ous and rightly to be

risks; and nobody
will disagree with that.
Yet

Prejudice and Censorship beth
name differences that are pre-
sumed harmful and that must be
controlled. Our present is

action serves to protect powtal
People and institutions from rea-
sonable questions. People who call
for fear

in knowing where and how to
draw lines.

Presently some popular ideas
challenge us to to think a little
more carefully.

One asks: if everyone is entitled
to equal treatment, why should
members of Minorities receive
what we perceive as conces-
sions—in other words, why
should the Majority suffer? Why
should women with lower qualifi-
cations be hired before men in
some work areas? Why should
Native Canadians win unusual
privileges in hunting, fishing and
land use?

People who put these questions
in this form have already chosen
their answers: we ignore the histo-
ry and the imbalances other peo-

spe-
cific: people ‘who call for freedom
of speech fear the general loss of
freedom.

We often don’t bother to distin-
guish between worthy ideas and
misleading ideas. To be a 10 1/2
shoesizer is also a tiresome dis-
traction from the real problems of
the work at hand. I'm afraid we
are not dealing with these issues as
clearly and directly as we attempt
to deal with issues of prejudice.

People who ban the utterance of
an unpopular idea must doubt their
Power to deal with it in any other
way. They necessarily fear and
envy the ability of others to recog-
nize the idea's danger or foolish-
ness, or deny anyone's ability to
overcome it.

I know there are some really

ple have Quite

we in the Majority’ perceive that
we apparently suffer now and we
don’t like it one bit.

How do we learn that, if our
ideas about Justice are really
worth anything, they are now
working: a pendulum can swing
back to the centre where it should
be? We can either seem oppressed

horrible and advice to be
found. I don't know that these
alone, unaccompanied by other
forms of compulsion, can injure
anyone who thinks carefully and
Clearly.

The problem is with.those other
forms of compulsion. someone
who speaks poisonously but with
great authority of role—a politi-

Ives—-or we can
several things: first, that we too

Cian, a a pastor, a par-
the

Y P P ea
threat, a possible loss of the power
they must possess.

Where these reactions have
been present in the past, those
who are their targets may some-
times take opportunity to respond
in like way: it is what history has
taught them. I’ve come to have
some doubts about our political
and related classes of power. I
don’t believe the old cliche about
power always corrupting people;
but also I don’t see large lumps
of power having much long use,
unless power is used for creativi-
ty, for healing: it’s good for that.

Nor do I see people being
taught much about how to recog-
nize it, to manage it sagely and

,to use it productively. Electri-

cians, locomotive engineers,
pharmacists and cooks know
about power and habitually han-
dle it pretty carefully; politicians
and journalists do not so good a

job, yet we listen intently to’
them and how much deep interest

do we take in the powers of the
Arts?

I can't give advice in this mat-
ter: I believe everyone needs to

be her and his own advisor. The?
only honest advice I should give’

is that we listen and think as”

carefully as possible whenever
any idea Or person comes by to
convince us.

If we know someone is going
to be hurt by that idea or person,
we know what to do: find or
make a better idea, find a better
person. Leave the old one to per-
ish or to grow wise.

Doctor Mark Mealing teaches

ent—does d.

hropology at Selkirk College.

Wednesday, March 23; 1954

The Castlegar Sun

Letters to the Editor

san BSS

It’s time to look at the regional picture

Dear Editor:

In response to Joe Tatangelo’s letter in
the March 16 issue of the Castlegar Sun,
I would like to correct some of his mis-
conceptions.

Unfortunately, in the original article in
the Castlegar Sun and Trail Daily Times,
it was omitted that I am President of the
Medical Staff of Castlegar and District
Hospital and thus speak as their represen-
tative. At no time did I claim to speak for
any specialists in the West Kootenay.

— It is interesting that the $14 million

Dear Editor:

I would like to comment on the letter
under Our Tum by Rudy Baff in the March 2
issue.

The way he presented his comments

originally budgeted for capital improve-
ments to Trail two years ago is now less
than $5 million.

One wonders if stalling the regional
decision making process is designed to
allow additional capital improvements to
Trail. This may be perceived as improv-
ing Trail's “right” to a regional hospital

The $10.5. million figure for proposed
additions to Castlegar is accurate
Adding a third floor requires no change
to the present building other than rein-
forcing stair wells for earthquake protec-

to believe as we choose. The word of our
Lord Jesus Christ, which transcends all reli-
gion and race or prestig,e is the answer to all
controversy.

The world does not like to hear the subject
of d in any argument of

regarding suicide was
done. en ee oe

victions di
Godless,

day aor pear peogrti er
system at all levels, some of it sanctioned by
our government.
Mr. Baff spoke clearly his convictions yet
with a sensitive regard for one’s religion.
The issue of taking ones life is not a subject

Confluence
of Bridges
excellent
reading

Dear Editor:

I thoroughly enjoyed the let-
ter by Tom Parkin entitled A
Confluence of Bridge’ in your
March 16 issue.

It describes the development
of paddle wheelers, railways
and bridges in the early years.
The building of the C.P.R.
bridge over the Columbia River
in 1902 and the subsequent
building of the railroad station
was the beginning of Castlegar.
And, oh yes, the swing span is
stilt there today, but old-timers
tell me that it was never used.

1 wish to make a correction
regarding Waterloo Landing.
Also know as Waterloo, it was
located on the east bank of the
Columbia River in the vicinity
of the D-D riding stables

He built a house and other
accommodation for himself and
others who were engaged in cut-
ting wood for the Trail smelter.

A few miles to the north the
village of Montgomery was
located.

See BRIDGES .

Take a closer
look at the

announcement

Dear Editor:

Now that Premier Harcourt
and his entourage have gone
home, we should take-stock of
what_the March 4 Cominco
announcements really mean to
the West Kootenay. Does it mark
the beginning of a new era in
which business deals replace
sweetheart deals between Victo-
ria and multinationals? Judge for
yourself.

* The B.C. government’s 1987
investment of $55 million dollars
investment has been written off.

° elon ied dl two aaa will be
paid to Cominc:
to use water British Columbians
already own.

Seven million dollars in annual
‘water taxes will be forgiven.

* West Kootenay Power cus-
tomers will continue to pay mil-
lions more for Cominco i

released Com-

inco from its obligation to supply
WKP with its surplus two years
ago.

right and ‘wrong and the Bible has been
largely rejected as foolishness, but the last
word in any’ dealing in life is a question of its
moral ;
Allin all, I and.a good many others
uphold the contents of Mr. Baff's article
Although he differs from my own Christian
specifics, bible-believing people can do

Here are tw

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work out of one hospital, That wif} be the
first decision to be made by the Hospital
Planning Council.

As a split-site hospital is eco-
nomically non-viable, the decision will
be the single-site location—again Castle-
gar appears to be the logical ehdice.

Castlegar’s support of this concept has
nothing to do with “power™ or local eco-
nomic issues, but simply what is the best
location for the best, most economic,
patient care for the entire population of
the West Kootenay. When will Trail start

tion.

All bathrooms are wheelchair accessi
ble, all rooms are large and each bed has
oxygen and suction, A parkade built on
our present parking aréa is included and
requires no land purchase.

When will all the petty arguing over
past decisions regarding the airpon and
Selkirk College stop? Trail should appre-
ciate the huge provincial subsidies
received by Cominco.

It is very clear to us in Castlegar that
all specialties in the West Kootenay must

‘Baff’s comments. frank, sensitive, and on target

nothing less than congratulate him for his

y. God is our maker, our
keeper and redeemer and we are not our
own, but bought from death by the price of
Christ's blood.

The answers to life's puzzles are not easy,
but we dare not presume to improve upon
God's will. We appreciate Svend Robinson's
desire. to show kindness for Sue Rodriguez
by being with her to the end, and we say in
kindness to him that the same God to whom
he would pray for healing is the one who
orders the life and death of us all.

We cannot tinker with God's order

foolish the wisdom of this world.”

the issue of assisted suicide.

large.

OThe #1 Selling Minivan
is continuing to improve, even after ten years
at the top. Over 4 million buyers can’t be wrong.

Owner's Choice.

whether we agree with His process or not for

‘We must not let our government dictate
who may assist in the death of any of us. So
please Mr. Robinson, think seriously about

Mr. Baff, your letter was pure truth writ

George James,
Castlegar

to look at the regional picture?

Trail has been busy playing their polit-
ical games—hiring lobbyists, using Ken
Georgetti, etc., etc—everything but try-
ing to participate in a regional decisi
It is time that they accept the terms of
#eference of the Hospital Planning Coun-
cil, stop the stall tactics and-get back to
the table.

I believe they are very worried about
the eventual decision.

Sincerely, «

Ron Perrier, M.D

standing of the prudent—hath not God made

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