Wednesday, October 23, 1991 PAG InNtON Op Plant Foreman Mark Davis Advertising Manager Warren Chernoff Accountant Heather Hadley Circulation Manager Burt Campbell! Publisher Emeritus Feb. 15, 1973 OurViEWS AdrianRAESIDE Lingering thoughts Dave MuCullough PUBLISHER Now that the excitement of B.C.’s election campaign has started to recede, a few lasting impressions are worth bearing in mind during the next three to five years: * The inexplicable choice by the Social Credit Party of an unelectable Rita Johnston as their leader, wasn't ‘ily a bad choice on her own merits, although we'll never know what she might have been capable of had she not been carting around so much excess political baggage. She definitely — and obviously, to outsiders — represented a strong link to a part of British Columbia politics that a majority of voters could no longer stomach. Like the federal Liberals who chose Jean Chretien to lead them in Calgary, Socred leadership delegates found themselves swept up in an emotional, irrational tide. It may now have destroyed their party. © The amazing rise of the Liberal Party. Liberal leader Gordon Wilson knew he had a shot at snagging support from droves of conservatives who could no longer bring themselves to vote for the Socreds, but who would be loath to vote Socialist. His problem? Nobody knew him from Adam. The solution? A good performance in the televised leadership debate. That’s exactly what he achieved, although the magnitude of his triumph over Mike Harcourt and Rita Johnston wasn’t apparent until polls started forecasting an astonishing Liberal surge. * The majority's fear of 1 SuRED Tans Legacy Yr of Cold War chilling ust 300 kil the wind blows, ‘Som the Canada/U.S. bor- der, lies a bleak stretch of desert that has become one of the most lethally contaminat- ed spots on the face of the earth. Deep beneath the cac- tus and sagebrush lies the soiled heart of the Hanford nuclear reservation, a legacy of the Cold War which has be- come the nuclear age’s most dangerous, persistent and costly from Ottawa _|Pole ae superiority. Now, with the collapse of the Cold War and a stand-down in nu- clear readiness, Hanford has outlived most of the threats which first gave it purpose. The most persistent ene- my may now be Hanford it- self. Decommissioning the nuclear reservation may prove to be an unresolvable dilemma. It is home to 63 per cent of all high-level nuclear waste of all high-level nucle- ar waste in the United States The 1,450 square kilometre site near Richland, Wa., just south of British. maim for thousands of years. — some of which can kill and aimbj. Mike Harcourt ran an effective and conservative campaign, and his record as a leader is pretty respectable, and the voters were totally fed up with the Socreds, so he should have had little trouble capturing a huge majority, right? Wrong. Despite the fact that he had just about everything going for him, Harcourt couldn’t. convince most’ voters to support him. In fact, he didn’t even come close. please see McCullough page A6 isa child of the Manhattan Project, the frantic race against the Nazi war hi Below the desert lies hidden a nuclear rs d which ins a bi to develop the first atomic bomb. In 1943, the U.S. military constructed three production reactors to process the high-grade plutonium needed for initial tests and later used in the atomic blasts which vaporized Hi- roshima and Nagasaki, bringing an end to the war with Japan in 1945. Afterwards, Hanford became a keystone in the Cold War race against the Soviet Union for of irradi lear junk. Bulld dump trucks and freight trains, spent nuclear reactor and other radi ve debris were buried there when they became too contami- nated for use. Some of the radioactive plutonium stored on the site has a half-life of 24,000 years, the time it takes to decay to one-half of its original vol- please see KRISTIANSEN page A7 or all intents and purpos- es, the Social Credit Par- ty is dead. What hap- pened? How could a party which governed British Columbia for 37 of the last 40 years disintegrate like this? For part of the answer, we have to travel back in time to the leadership convention at Whistler in July 1986. Twelve candidates sought the leadership of the Social Credit Party, a post vacated earlier that Hubert BEYER Report from Victoria year by Bill Bennett. The front Vander Zalm to slip by them. The next day, I ran into Duane Crandall. Crandall was then the publisher of the Golden Star which ran my column. He was also a del- egate at the convention. He had voted for Vander Zalm. What did I think of the out- come? I told Duane I was con- vinced that the man they had cho- sen as leader would destroy the Social Credit Party. He didn’t be- 1986 convention provides some answers sulted in the ouster of Vander Zalm. Rather than joining the palace revolt, old-timers like Grace Mc- y, Tony Brummet and Claude Richmond decided to sit it out. In the er ood. the 2 temaly feud wr nba the petit sg conthans to runners were Grace McCarthy, Brian Smith and Bud Smith. Yes, there was Bill Vander Zalm, but expert observers gave him little chance of succeeding. As a cabinet minister, Vander Zalm had proven to be too much of a loose gun. Beyond that dazzling smile, there was little substance. But history took an unexpected turn. Determined to keep the brass ring from each other, and iaded by the delegates’ sudden re- alization that Vander Zalm’s proverbial charm was pers = d ticket to I Carthy and the two Smiths ied of self-inflicted al failings ‘and lack of | trtibuted to Vander Zalm’s person- ew @ Wednesday, October 23, 1991 Other | EWs 7 Please address Or deliver them to 197 Columbia Ave. Letters should be typewritten, double-spaced and not longer than 300 words. include the writer's first and Letters toWHE EDITOR — give wrong idea him what his intentions were, and he said he just wanted some pictures. We then suggest- ed that he wait until the crusher came and sien tots Bickores and explaic: how the sie . recycling industry works. From that we see he has shown the public. some FF hectic acoder part We are disappointed in the poor insight of this reporter, not only did he not ask any pontoon rena he literally told our Se upave yard for cars and ja dull aad deptonaine place .. what an insult. Ernie’s Towing has been in the community of "A Grave Yard of Cars." for 16 years towing unuseable cars from your yards in order to keep our community beauti- ful. Since 1980, Ernie and Stuart Ady have with our satellite computer parts system. At Ernie’s we have the most modern office = with the lastest in computerized inven- tory systems. The cars in our so called grave- yard are in age of 1980-1991 which are all in neat rows. At Ernie’s Towing we are proud of our astnees Se our seeenareve are road to work in our so-called graveyard. We work hard to keep on top of the latest aprsbopenanis in our Thope this reporter will have alittle in- sight the next time he steps into Cause for concern This is an open letter to the parece way who shot my cat. One of your neighbors heard shot and although we cannot pi the source this time, next time we may. When your action was reported to the RCMP, they were not amused. They are con- cerned that someone shooting at a cat or oth- er animal within the city limits may inadver- tently hit a child or other passerby. Judging from the hole where the slug entered our cat, you were firing generally horizontally but slightly up. As the time of day was during a period when many people are out and about, it may have been lucky for someone that our cat stopped the slug. If heard a hot on Oct. 18, or business and uses his own view and ideas. ituart Ady hears one in the future, please call the RCMP. Ron Ross Si Ernie’s Towing & Salvage Castlegar McCullough continued from page A6 That tells us that a coalition of the right, involving the Liberals and the Social Credit party, would be capable of mounting an impressive charge in the next election. It’s absurd to suggest at this stage that Harcourt will lead a one-term government, but conservatives, by whatever name they go, must surely find comfort in the fact that although conditions were absolutely made to order for a socialist landslide, the New Democrats couldn't even claim a simple majority. ¢ The promise by Ed Conroy to seek compromise and co- operation in solving local problems. “I want to work towards seeing what can be done through the co-operation of everybody involved — companies, government, unions and municipal councils,” he said in the aftermath of his resounding triumph. That’s a good start for a neophyte, and bodes well for the development of some lasting improvements to the local economy. Unfortunately, the challenge is massive, as Conroy himself noted. The area’s largest and third-largest employers — Cominco and Westar — face uncertain futures, and Conroy has his work cut out for him if he hopes to patch together a successful alliance. He has definitely earned the right to tackle the job, and we wish him every success in his efforts. Kristiansen continued from page A6 ume. Assuming it takes 10 half- lives to render the stuff harmless, it will take a quarter of a million years to eliminate this environmental threat. Conceivably, the Hanford site could become one of the last artifacts of our civilization. A further 200 million litres of high-level waste and radioactive sludge sit in 177 underground tanks buried in tank farms located only 13 kilometres from the Columbia River. Most of the liquid was pumped out after it was de- termined that 66 of the tanks leaked, pouring millions of ra- dioactive brew into the soil. In addition, billions of litres of liquid radiotoxins have, through the years, been purposely dumped on to the desert. Some of the con- tamination has entered the water table and the deep subterranean aquifers. was due to be processed into plu- tonium before the reactor facilities were shut down. Gasoline drums containing 828 dead beagles used in radiobiology experiments were recently dis- posed of at the site along with 16 tonnes of their radi ive feces, mation, evidence is now emerging that portions of the Pacific North- west, possibly including areas of southeastern British Columbia, may have been extensively con- taminated by intentional atmo- spheric releases of radioactive from Hanford. The emis- giving a whole new meaning to the term, “nuclear dump.” But what is most startling about the Hanford story is what Some is creeping towards the Columbia River. Other “swimmi pools” temporarily house 2,100 tonnes of nuclear ractor fuel that has, until ly been left un- told. Through recent access to pre- viously classified military infor- sions were heaviest during the war emergency, but continued for at least two decades after the war ended — possibly doing damage to people living downwind from the production centres. More on this in future columns. Beyer continued from page A6 charged | with breach of trust, and Soered John Ball, had to resign over his association with Nazi hate- monger Ernst Zundel. Even Rita Johnston's campaign realized that the So- cred label was a detriment to the campaign. Most of the Socred elec- tion ads urged voters to elect “a Ri- ta Johnston government,” deliber- ately leaving out any association ac reckon en root. The destruction of the So- cial Credit Party I had warned Du- ane Crandall about five years ear- lier was completed on October 17, 1991. But as I mentioned earlier, that’s only part of the explanation. There is another factor that con- tributed to the demise of the Social adly a government d. It’s that of the voter which de- feated W.A.C. Bennett's Social Credit government in 1972. The third factor in the utter de- struction of the Social Credit Par- ty didn’t enter into the picture un- til the second week into the cam- paign, when an already badly led Socred electi hi got further derailed by Liberal Leader Gordon Wilson's unexpect- ed surge in the polls. Hard on the heels of the televi- sion debate, the Liberals overtook the Socreds in the polls, providing a political home for disillusioned was so pronounced that the NDP would have garnered an over- whelming victory even if the Lib- erals had not been a factor in the election. As it turned out, the Liberals simnply provided an outlet for those voters who would have registered a protest vote against the Socreds ; by switching to the NDP. Had it re- dat y race, those Socreds who were reeling at the propsect of having to vote NDP. Much will be made in the weeks and months | to come of the split terprisé) vote, but that would be a wrong interpretation of what happened.The public’s dis- h with the S d votes, however reluctantly, would have gone to the NDP. In the final analysis, the Socre- ds destroyed themselves, albeit with a litttle help from the Liber- als. And thus ends a chapter in BC. history.