OPINION
Castlégar News

PAGE A4, WEDNESDAY, MARCH 20, 1991

MEMBER OF THE B.C. PRBSS COUNCIL
ESTABLISHED AUGUST 7, 1947 TWICE WEEKLY MAY 4, 1980
WEEK 12,
LV. CAMPBELL — PUBLISHER, AUGUST 7, 1947-FEBRUARY 15, 1073
PUBLISHER - - Burt Campbell
EDITOR — Simon Birch
PLANT FOREMAN — Peter H.
yitalle wr Lee parr
NAGER —

EDITORIAL

Park proposal
a great idea

That’s a nice looking park plan Castlegar city council unveiled
Tuesday night for the vacant land between the Inland Gas Park and
Zuckerberg Island along the Columbia River.

The proposal, which city administrator Gary Williams described
as ‘‘very tentative’’ at this point, includes a lake, soccer and ‘ball
fields, docking facilities for boats, a visitors’ centre and an am-

re. The appr

28 hectare (70 acre) park also has

enough room for a proposed Columbia River interpretive centre.

The new park — tentatively called Twin Rivers Park — would be
connected to the existing Zuckerberg Island Park,

Just levelling the area and planting grass would be an enormous
improvement to the disaster area the property has become as a result
of the idiots who insist on using the area as an unofficial garbage

dump.

But the park idea shows a great deal of imagination and vision,
not words associated with past planning in Castlegar, and reflects the
type of beautification project necessary to put an end once and for all
to Castlegar’s reputation as an ugly city.

And, at the same time, the project would ‘add recreational
facilities the city will need as it grows.

Mayor Audrey Moore is right when she says Castlegar is lucky
because it hasn’t-lost its riverfront property to other uses, which is of-
ten the case in other cities where commercial and industrial buildings

blight waterfronts.

Twin Rivers Park is an excellent idea and deserves support, even
if it does take as long as a decade to complete.
We hope the people of Castlegar agree and throw their support

behind the project.

VIEWPOINT

Party's effect

questionable

By STEVE MERTL

VANCOUVER — Government in
waiting; spoiler or non-entity.

The B.C. Pacific party is only a
couple of weeks old but it’s already
Promising to run a full slate of 75

candidates in the next
election.

There have been no polls so far,
but on paper at least there couldn't
be a better time for the new party to
emerge.

The governing Social Credit party
appears stunned and adrift as
Premier Bill Vander Zalm faces in-
creased pressure over his involvement
in the sale of his Fantasy Gardens
theme park. It’s the subject of a con-
flict-of-interest investigation.

The disgruntled former Socreds
who set it up tout the new party as a
free-enterprise alternative to the
Vander Zalm-led Socreds, as well as
the feared New Democrats.

The fledgling party thinks it. can
attract Socred supporters who can’t
bring themselves to vote for the
NDP, in an election that the five-
year-old Socred government must
call by this fall.

The Socreds currently hold 43
seats to the NDP’s 26 in the
legislature, which-expands to 75 seats
under redistribution.

But veterat observers of British
Columbia’s often bizarre politics
don’t see a stampede of unhappy
Socreds to the new party. A couple
wonder if it can even be a spoiler in
the inevitable NDP-Socred electoral
showdown.

“The major problem with this so-
called party is it’s got the cart before
the horse,”’ says writer David Mit-
chell, the unauthorized historian of
the Social Credit party.

The party, whose initials Mitchell

provincial

terms as ‘“‘unfortunate acronym,”
ought to have good prospects in the
growing political vacuum. But the
Socred government has to fall first,
he says.

‘Assuming the Social Credit
government goes down to defeat, the
conditions will be extremely good for

| party,’’ Mitchell says.

requires an NDP victory,

something the Socreds won't publicly
concede

Political scientist David Eirikson is
blunter about the “Pacific party’s
chances.

“I don’t think they can win
anything,” says the University of
British Columbia professor. ‘They
don’t have much credibility at the
moment.

“I don’t think it’s likely to play
much of a role, even as a spoiler.”

Political observers such as
Eirikson and University of Victoria
colleague Terry Morley. consider the
organization amateurish and
politically naive.

One newspaper columnist — after
teeing off on the party's last two
initials — pointed out that many of
its potential supporters can’t see the
Pacific Ocean from where they live.
It reinforces the view the Pacific par-
ty isa Vi area

EVPHORIC

ONTHEWAREATH MADAS-HEL

SERENE. FRENZIED

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Robson should pay

Going through my files recently, I found a
copy of a letter I wrote to the Castlegar News at
the time the Socreds closed the Castlegar-Robson
ferry.

Our newly elected Premier Bill Vander Zalm
had visited Castlegar for a few hours after landing
at our airport. He was booed at the airport,
Stanley Humphries secondary school, the hospital
and at our new library — no wonder, a month
later the Robson ferry shut down for good. At
least Vander Zalm had the decency to apologize,
according to the editorial in last week’s Castlegar
News. I did not see any apologies from the local
yokels.

Now these same residents along the Columbia
River are begging our government for another
bridge over the river. If a bridge is built where the
ferry was, the Socreds should raise the taxes of
Robson residents to coincide with Castlegar
taxpayers, or charge them a yearly rate for the use
of the bridge. Computers would easily take care of
that situation.

The free ferry across Kootenay Lake should
have applied a toll as soon as the Salmo-

Creston Skyway opened. That ferry was there in
1920 and is still free. Ridiculous! Lower Mainland
residents pay nearly $100 for a round trip to

district children. Occupational therapy is provided
to the Hobbit Hill Centre on a weekly basis by the
Children’s Development Centre.

The eighth annual telethon was widely
advertised that all funds would go directly towards

provide jobs in return for access to the people’s
trees. By altering forest licence contracts, the
Vander Zalm government has doomed B.C.’s
forestry sector to a never-ending cycle of
economic boom and bust.””

the Children's Di Centre’s progr
equipment and operational costs.

We feel that Katrine Conroy, coordinator of
the Child Care Centre in Castlegar, must be
unaware as to the sole purpose of our annual
telethon.

We very much support the Castlegar
expansion of the Child Care Centre and wish it
every success in its endeavor to increase its
services.

The Children’s Development Centre at this
time is making headway towards its new facility
which will provide many new services for the area,
as well as the existing programs.

Lillian Michallik
Executive Director
Children’s Development Centre

Trail
Boards wanted

Take a look at some of the logging on private
land in the Slocan Valley. Scenes of utter
devastation forthe ‘sake of livelihood?

No, more like greed and total lack of

i There will be with soil

Vancouver Island and Gulf Islands di on
vehicle occupancy, besides waiting in tine for
hours before boarding the ferries in the hot
summer sun, and windy, cold winter months. I
know, I've been there many times. They still pay
the tolls and accept it. Every year, the toll rate
goes up.

Women know more about budgeting than
men ever will. My male hairdresser always tells me
I should have been a politician instead of a wife,
mother of five, and grandmother of 19, plus two
great-grandchildren, :

I could be sitting pretty by now with senators,
making $159 a day. Those old senile senators

would wake up and sit up and take notice of this
who has b all her life,
and knows more about budgeting than Michael
Wilson and his cohorts.
Fern Schwartzenhauer

Castlegar
Castlegar benefits

1, and many other readers, found the article
that appeared in the Trail Daily Times on March
13 (‘Telethon Did Not Benefit Castlegar’’) to be
very confusing.

I would like to clarify this very misleading
article.

The Children’s Development Centre is the
only Child Development Centre in all of the East
and West Kootenays. Our physiotherapy and
i therapy departments provide weekly

More important, the Pacific party
has no high-profile leader — no
leader at all — and not one Socred
caucus member or cabinet minister
has defected

But the riding-level Vander Zalm
dissidents who speak for the new
Party probably have ties to bigger
fish, such as Grace McCarthy, who
quit Vander Zalm’s cabinet in July
1988.

Steve Mertl
Canadian Press.

writes for The

services in the Castlegar area to 17 disabled
children — four of them are receiving direct
services at the Hobbit Hill Children’s Centre in
Castlegar

erosion for years to come. Now imagine the same
kind of logging for the rest of the valley. What
would be left to “‘share?’’ The stumps and debris!

Would anybody want to live in a valley which
is mostly clearcut from end to end? Would your
kids?

If some of the private land logging is any
indication of things to come, it’s high time to join
the concept of community forest boards so that
logging, hunting, recreation and tourism can exist
without anyone being disadvantaged.-All across
B.C. the need for community control becomes
apparent and that is why the public demands
changes to forestry practices.

The creation of parks is not responsible for
the slump in the forest industry, but management
and government is. We simply don’t employ
enough people in ‘‘value added”’ industries or
intensive silviculture and research.

Even though the annual allowable cut (AAC)
went up and up, the employment rate went down.
More trees cut, but less jobs. There is something
wrong here and it boils down to higher corporate
profits with fewer benefits to

logging practices in the Slocan
Valley would ensure economic stability and
prevent a division in the community. Let’s not
polarize but work together on making decisions.
We need long-term solutions. We.need a
community forest board.

Gunter Retterath

Winlaw

Skier helped

It seems more and more rare to hear about
the Good Samaritans in the community. However,
while skiing at Red Mountain, | was fortunate
enough to meet up with one of these ‘‘unsung
heroes.’’

I was skiing down Red Mountain and took a
tumble and he stopped to make sure that I was
OK.

While waiting for the ski patrol, he
straightened out my ski pole and then followed me
down the mountain with my equipment. After
putting my equipment back into my car, he then
offers take me to the hospital.

2 fever, I had to go to the hospital by
ambulance and I never got to say thank you to
this person for his kindness and concern.

It is my hope he is reading this and knows
that I am very grateful for his efforts, It is people
like this who make things easier and prove that
society is not all bad.

Thank you for giving me this opportunity to
say thanks and for giving me the chance to
recognize the people who add a little to the area
and to the ‘‘Home of Champions.””

Eiona Morgenthaler
Trail

Tube not liked

I do not like the new TV guide On The Tube
for these reasons:

The printing is small — you need a
magnifying glass to read it.

The ink makes your fingers black after you
turn the pages.

You use more paper with this TV guide than
the other one.
Marion Bullanoff
Winlaw

Of all the logging ever done in B.C., half has
been cut in the last 11 years. It is obvious that this
rate cannot be sustained. Selective logging and
better silviculture management would create more
long-term jobs.

The world is running out of wood. Eastern
Canada has changed from an integrated forest
industry to a predominantly pulp and paper
industry in a very short period of time. We don’t
want that to happen here.

Trees from B.C. are valuable and should not
be just a commodity on profit sheets of

The annual telethon which is by
the Knights of Pythias produces revenue to allow
the Children’s Development Centre to provide
operational costs and services to Trail and district,
Castlegar, Slocan Valley and Cranbrook.

The two programs which benefit the most
from this annual telethon are the Speech Therapy
Program, and the Outreach Physiotherapy
program which directly services Castlegar school

Forest licences have to
be granted with conditions to ensure job security.

No corporation can be allowed to shut down
a sawmill and yet keep the licence for timber
extraction as it happens now, thanks to the

is.
NDP forest critic Dan Miller is right:
“The secret deletion of the job-protection

Please address ail letters to the editor
to: Letters to the Editor, Castlegar News,
P.O. Box 3007, Castlegar, B.C. VIN 3H4,
or deliver them to our office at 1974 s
Columbia Ave. in Castlegar.

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 whith 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 without the writer's name.
Nevertheless, the name, address and
telephone number of the writer MUST be
disclosed to the editor.

The. Castlegar News reserves the right
to edit letters for brevity, clarity, legality,
grammar and taste.

clause frees forest of any to

LOCAL NEWS

TAPES TELL STORY

d werd. president of the Castlegar Chapter of the ies Disabilities
C.., ts four taped books to Souy: Wearmouth, Castlegar Library's head
Ld The brary di 1 articles and books on learning disabilities

for the benefit of the pelea

B.C. Socreds take aim at Ontario New Democrats

VICTORIA (CP) — Ontario's
NDP government may be thousands
of kilometres away but it's becoming
a favorite target for British Colum-
bia Premier Bill Vander Zalm and his
Social Credit government.

With an election looming, the
Socreds have apparently dusted off
and put a new twist on their longtime
cry of ‘socialist hordes at the gate."’

In the first days since the B.C.

lature resumed sitting, Ontario
Premier Bob Rae’s six-month-old
NDP government has come under as
much fire as if it were just across the

“Go visit your NDP colleagues in
Ontario and see the disaster there,”’
Vander Zalm said in debate over job
Protection legislation.

“AS a matter of fact, I think
there’s something the NDP opposite
ought to know,” he added, waving
his arms like an evil-bashing
preacher.

“Hitchhikers in Ontario will go
whichever way. That's the situation
in Ontario where the NDP has only
been the government for mot too
many months. It’s a total disaster.”

With little explanation, ministers

Predict the dire consequences of billion ahd $8 billion. And the D,

what they call the Ontario model.

Elwood Veitch, a week into the
job as finance minister, was ducking
questions on whether he can balance
a 5
“I can only confirm what | heard
on television from the minister of
finance in the province of Ontario —
I think his nickname is Pink Floyd
(Laughren),"’ said Veitch, the
veteran politician known to most as
‘Slim.

“He (Lauighren) said that next
year the deficit in that province
would be somewhere between $6

leader of the O;
wants to make Ontario his model.””

As Vander Zaim faces ‘an election
this year, nominated candidates have
quit, party and riding officials have
left im frustration and Socred
dissidents have started a free-
enterprise party.

Opinion polls suggests the Socreds
haven’t been within 10 percentage
points of the NDP in the last three
years. Ontario polls, however,
suggest NDP popularity there is run-
ning about 60 per cent.

Vander Zalm insists one New

. rrnetEt yin: teauabs ike paieds ‘be
against another there doesn't
to be a great deal of difference,”’ he
said. ‘‘Obviously, the (Ontario) NDP
are a living example of NDP gover-
nments, so it’s natural that one
‘would refer to it.”

Health Minister John Jansen

“What we're saying to you is a

to revive the NDP-scare
owing
They paint New Democrats
everywhere as spend-happy socialists
who bungle economies to the chagrin
of taxayers.

Maverick Socred Jack Kempf took
some of the steam out of the scare
when he suggested it no longer is
relevant peoyicr B. pa New
files

is as as the

and there
are “ valightly pi pink socialists’ on both
sides.

For his efforts he was almost
tossed out of the Socred caucus.

Vintners set up classes

for lovers of wine

By JOHN CHARTERS

You have, or would like to seve
your own grape vines and make your
owh estate wine and have fun doing
it? You are in luck!

Just recently the Worshipful Com-
pany of Selkirk Vintners, which is
dedicated to the growing and nur-
turing of grapes and the making of
wine in the West Kootenay region,
created that opportunity for you.

At a “‘brainstorming”’ session and
social meeting held in the faculty
lounge of Selkirk College, the vin-
tners put forward two main concerns
and suggestions.

First, that a broader membership
is needed for the cooperative care
and cropping of the 19-year-old
vinyards at the college campus in
Castlegar and the making and
sharing of the wine made from their
grapes. This is, and always has been,
both a learning and social activity.

Second is the need for hands-on
training and theoretical education in
viniculture. and making wine at a
practical level for those interested, as
well as some of the more formal and
theoretical aspects of the art —
history, biology and cuisine of wine.

With the assistance and
cooperation, therefore, of the con-
tinuing education department of the
college, Dr. Peter Wood has drawn
up a program of four learning
sessions for all comers beginning
today.

This program, under the direction
of a number of experienced instruc-
tors, is intended to be as broad and

practical as possible, of interest both
to the beginner and to the expert. It
Starts with The Spring Care of
Vineyards, continues to The Summer
Care of Vineyards, in late June,
followed by Harvesting and Han-
dling the Crop, in October.

These sessions take place at the
college and emphasize the more prac-
tical aspect of making -wine. The
fourth session in November will be
essentially theoretical and include the
history and biology of wine, cooking
with wine and crafts associated with
the vines.

Interested people may enrol in all
or selected sessions of the program.

Since the making and appreciation
of wine has always been essentially a
social activity, a social committee
headed by Albert Calderbank,
assisted. by Bunny Charters, Eileen
Hughes and Karen Pullm: was
convened to take care of this essen-
tial aspect of company activities.

Since last year’s wine-tasting party
at the Sunfest celebrations was an
unqualified success, Jack Yolland
has agreed to head a committee to
organize a similar event this year.

Following the business _meeting,
the members then enjoyed a con-
siderable choice of refreshments
together with generous samplings of
the 1989 vintage prepared by master
vintner Ben Thor-Larsen, together
with some estate wines.

People interested in enrolling in
one or more of the training sessions
are asked to contact Denise Chernoff

of the Selkirk College continuing
education department. Those wishing
to join the Worshipful Company of
Selkirk Vintners should call John
Mansbridge, head librarian at the
college.

Forestry
forum
Sunday

NDP constitutency president Klaus
Offermann has announced that the
local NDP executive is holding a
forum called Where is the Middle
Ground: A Forum on West
Kootenay Forestry Issues, March 24
from | p.m. to 5 p.m, at the Savoy
Bingo Hall in Nelson.

“*Forestry issues have been isolated
too long in an atmosphere of
animosity and crisis management,"’
Offermann said in a news release.
“We want to get a whole lot of
people in the same room and hear
their answers to the same question.
That question is one that everybody
is asking these days: Is there some
common ground? We think there is
and we think it is about time
somebody said so.""

Speakers invited to the forum run
the full spectrum from conservation
groups to loggers.

“*So far the reaction has been very
Ppositive,"’ said Offermann, who will
himself be speaking on behalf of the
IWA-Canada members in the West
Kootenay

Speaker will be given five minutes
to address the question: ‘‘Is there
middle ground, and how do we get
there"’ from their perspective.

CASTLEGAR
CHAMBER OF
ENTRE COMMERCE
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