Wednesday, PAGE: inion S OurVWiEWS AdrianRAESIDE A day to remember ec. 6, 1989 is a day that will De down in infamy all across Canada. 3 On that day, Marc Lepine savagely walked into a Montreal university, separated the men from the women, and proceeded to open fire. Fourteen engineering students, all women, were brutally murdered that day during a killing spree that has become known as‘ the Montreal Massacre. What Marc Lepine was thinking that day when he entered Ecole Polytechnique is unknown. And it will probably never be known. The only thing known is that this deranged killer shouted “you are all a bunch of feminists” as he pulled the trigger time and time again. The 14 precious lives are gone forever, but the painful memories are not. On Dec. 6, the Castlegar Women’s Association will hold a brief candle- light vigil outside city hall at 6 p.m. to commemorate one of Canada’s darkest days. The brief ceremony is one of hundreds taking place across Canada. As Canadians, we must stand up against violence against women and violence in any form. Friday’s vigil deserves our support. As a community, it gives the men, women and children of Castlegar an opportunity to unite and denounce violence against women. It’s the least we can do for the 14 lost lives and the hundreds of other that go unnoticed. Home is where my It’s Sunday afternoon. All my boxes are unpacked and I get my first phone call — it’s Mom. After glowing about my new Home Sweet Home, my Mom briefs me about my childhood Home Sweet Home — a modest, but comfortable two-storey house in Courtenay on Vancouver Island. Understand. I get attached to things rather easily. Whether it be an old p. HARRISON ) Harrison “" Comparison I remember my first year in that house, I feared everything — the squeaky floors and the howling of neighborhood dogs. Those fears lasted for about a year, the identical time I graduated. into the same bedtime category as older brother Tom. Tom helped ease my over-active imagination, pointing.out that the saueakv floor was merely my father tip- toeing to the fridge to hockey jersey or the two teddy bears that I have traipse around the country, things become mine for life. Imagine then, when I discovered my childhood home — er, my parents’ home — may be up for sale. How dare they. The mere suggestion of selling that Gail Crescent pseudo-mansion sent shivers up my possessive spin. The memories, the magic, the mystery — that house holds it all for me. satisfy his toast and peanut butter craving. A ritual he still practices today. As for the howling dogs, those became less threatening when I was allowed to get one of my own — Zack. I took about two years to get settled in that home, but from then on, it was my place. Our place. please see Harrison page 27 Circulation Manager Burt Campbell Publisher Emeritus L.V. Campbell ‘Aug. 7, 1947- Feb. 15, 1973 Street TALK Steve Simonen Robson “It’s terrible. You can see black specks in it. We boil it.” Dwayne Glendinning Castlegar “It doesn’t bother me. It’s fine.” Question: Are you satisfied with the quality of drinking water in your area? Gerri Stilwell Nelson “If you let it sit, the chlorine starts to show up.” Tony Innes Castlegar “It seems to be alright.” Maralee Tycquet Blueberry Creek “Usually it’s pretty good.” i heart is | . Dec. 4, 1991 OtherVIEWS | Please address all letters to Letters to the ditor Castlegar News P.O. Box 3007 Castlegar, B.C. V1N 3H4 or deliver them to 197 Columbia Ave. Letters should be 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 which the writer can be reached between 9am. andS p.m. The writer's name and city or town of residence only will be published. Only in exceptional cases will letters be published Mulroney puts dollars before cents The Mulroney government has always suffered from bad timing. With the country still reeling from the-impact of the GST, the recession and free trade, the government has just announced another proposed hike to unemployment insurance premiums. Unemployment premiums will be raised — again — by another 7.1 per cent on Jan. 1. This proposed increase comes only six months after the government raised the premiums by 24 per cent. But it’s suicidal to suggest another increase at a time when the economy is still shaky and employers are still laying off workers. We have been told by Mulroney and company that we are on our way to economic Lyle KRISTIANSEN However, unemployment still hovers around 10 per cent, and the predictions are that it will stay that way for most of 1992. October’s loy t rate Employers are now responsible for 60 per cent of the UI budget, and it’s small and medium businesses who will most feel the impact of the premium increases. Industry has already had to swallow the July increase and now they’re being nailed again. Analysts fear some may resort to increasing prices to recover these and other costs, which in turn may boost inflation. Small businesses have the most to lose. Their profit margins are squeezed and many are losing money. Some are getting to the point where they can’t cut costs anymore and still stay in bckased d rose to 10.3 per cent, with 10,000 more Canadians out of work. Now 1,420,000 people are out of work. ‘orab with 50 employees, averaging $20,000 each in salary, the cumulative effect, of increases to their UI premium payments since 1989 translates into an increase in payroll cost of nearly $15,0000 overall. Clearly the federal government is out of touch. The feds like to believe that ies are ‘str ining’ to become more ‘competitive.’ It couldn’t be further from the truth — they are cutting costs just to survive.Consumers are only spending when companies offer discounts: We are not going to get out of this recession if taxes and fee increases keep coming our way. Canadians need help now. How can they help the federal deficit if they cant help themselves? In their fanaticism to try and balance the books, the Mulroney government just might put this country out of business. Health report leaves questions unanswered Aheadline in this morning's pa- per caught my eye. “Anguished MD meets soldier saved in hell.” The story was about a U.S. Army surgeon who saved the life of a horribly wounded soldier dur- ing the Vietnam War and spent the next 23 years filled with an- guish over whether he did the right thing. In 1968, Kenneth McGarity’s helicopter exploded after taking a hit from a_ rocket-propelled grenade. Dr. Ken Swan amputat- ed both his legs and supervised other doctors who tried to repair severe eye, arm and head injuries. His colleagues criticized him for not allowing the boy to die. Recently, Swan succeeded in tracking down the boy and found a happily-married family man who hopes to help others over- come disabilities such as his, be- ing blind and having no legs. McGarity is 43 years old now. He lives with his wife and two daughters 180 kilometres south- west of Atlanta and is immensely grateful to Swan for pulling him through 23 years ago. “If he hadn't stuck all the pieces back together, I wouldn't have this wonderful wife and these great children,” he said. Later in the day, I got a phone call from a reader, James Har- grave, who lives near Mission, who asked for my thoughts on what the recent Royal Commis- Report from Victoria Hubert BEYER sion report on health care referred to as the “right to die with digni- ty.” Hargrave followed up his phone call with a letter he sent me by fax that same day. In his letter, Har- ° grave voices concern that rather than just advocating the adminis- tering of pain-killing drugs such as morphine, even at thé risk of shortening the patient's life span, the report actually recommends active euthanasia, the killing of a terminally-ill patient. “In this domain, things are changing so rapidly that our soci- ety has not been able to react. We have the Nancy Cruzon case, Li- on’s Gate euthanasia cases, a nurse for administering a fatal dose of potassium chloride,” Hargrave says. “Initiative 119 in Washington, the private member bills on eu- thanasia put forth in Ottawa, AIDS victims aiding other AIDS patients in suicide, and now, in B.C., the Royal Commission on Health care suggesting that active euthanasia be allowed,” he adds. “As a society, we must take the time to consider what our values have been and are to be. To do that, we need accurate informa- tion. Understanding or portraying in a superficial manner, issues of such a critical nature does not help us to realize the immense and far-reaching implications of our decisions,” he goes on to say. Hargrave is an optometrist and, therefore, involved in the health care system. And although he will never be called upon to make a life-and-death decisions, he feels compelled to take a stand on the issue of euthanasia. Hargrave sees similarities be- tween the abortion debate and the euthanasia debate. He fears that both abortion and euthanasia take life where it should be nur- tured. " Regardless of where you stand on either issue, Hargrave is, of course, right when he says that they need thorough airing. For my taste, the Royal Com- mission report was altogether too vague and esoteric with regard to euthanasia. Couching the issue in solemn phrases such as “the right to die with dignity” doesn’t change the impact of what the report rec- ommended: — doctor-assisted death. In that context, I keep thinking about the recent testimony of one doctor who appeared before a fed- eral committee dealing with the question of euthanasia. The main advocates of the right to die with dignity, she said, are healthy people whose death was a long way off. Nobody, she said, was asking the dying. She said she cared for more than 4,000 dying people during her career as a physician, and not one of them had asked her to speed up their death. A dying person, she Said, doesn’t want death to come earli- er, but relief from pain and “a com- panion along the way.” And, as Hargrave pointed out, there is a world of difference be- tween easing a terminally-ill pa- tient’s pain at the risk of shorten- ing his or her life, and ending a patient’s life, even if the patient requests it. Those of us whose death is still in the realm of hypothesis, cannot possibly imagine what a dying person wants. And any contribution we make to the euthanasia debate is, there- fore, also a very hypothetical one. We'll be_ discussing this issue for some time to come, and I’m not sure whether there is an answer that will satisfy everyone, but I agree with Hargrave that discuss it we must. Even in those cases, the name, address and phone number of the writer MUST be disclosed to the editor. The News reserves the right to edit letters for brevity, clarity, legality, grammar and taste. Harrison page want my parents to move. They don't even want to move. The sad: truth is the four-bedroom home that looked so tiny when I That home holds mountains of memories for me and the thought of it mot being there in the coming years pains me. was Maybe I'm too sensitive, but I don't puberty has become too big for my Mom and Dad. I agree. going through alive It is said that a home is what you make it and are all wonderful when you can point to a hole in a door and-laugh about the chair that was flung at it during a sibling dispute. The four walls became As a family of seven, not counting Zack and cats George and Rex, we made that home come that ~ Memories are wonderful thing. They more a a haven for every family argument and every family joke. The thought of four new walls isn't all that appealing. Sorry folks, Home Sweet Home is a place — not an idea.