4 - Wednesday, May 13, 1987 - North Shore News

Bob Hunter

@ strictly personal ®

IT’S TOO bad the Navy didn’t contact me before they
sent out that ship with a contingent of female sailors
aboard, amid a swarm of lusty young males.

Sailors’ wives at home have
complained bitterly about this
co-ed shipping arrangement,
fearing the worst: shipboard
romance.

Officers who should have
known better allowed
themselves to be quoted as say-
ing that while there might be
some hanky-panky on board,
the Navy didn’t expect it to im-
pair the functioning of the ship
or the day-to-day discipline of
the crew.

Well, I sat back and laughed
for quite a while when I read
that, let me tell you.

I was involved with a famous
local ecology outfit back in the
mid-’70s when we chartered an
ex-Navy minesweeper and
headed out into the Pacific in
pursuit of bad guys, much as
the real Canuck Navy is
‘pretending to do now with an

. imaginary enemy, although we
“ were after a different kettle of
fish, so to speak.

The big question for us then,
as for the Navy now, was: how

_ do you break down the barriers
of sexism and still run a tight

ship?

We had been warned
repeatedly by veteran fishermen
that it was nearly suicidal to br-
ing women along on a boat.
This sounds like rampant
chauvinism, but it was based on
solid, horrible experience at sea.

Sooner or later, on a fishboat
at least, if there was a woman
on board, the men would start
fighting over her.

Faced with sexual advances
on all sides, sooner or later the
woman would be forced to
select a partner, just to keep the
others off her case, if for no
other reason. And this would
enflame the rejected suitors.

There was one exception to

this rule. That was if the cap-
tain’s wife came along. Nobody
would mess with her. Some-
times another crew member's
wife could be brought along
too.
. The main issue was
everybody knowing clearly who
was officially with whom right
from the start.

‘As an organizer accused of
sexism — as the Navy brass are

now — I gave in over a decade
ago to feminist pressure and
agreed to have women on board
as crew members on_ this
chartered minesweeper 1 men-
tioned.

The scheme we finally hit on
was to mingle the crew along
the lines of a commune more
thun separate quarters. Women
crew members were allowed on
board with the stipulation that
they had to be paired off with a
male.

The reason it was slanted this
way, rather than a mostly-
female crew bringing their
boyfriends, was simply that the
only qualified people we could
find to run a ship were male.

A positive side effect of this
was that we got a lot of couples
volunteering to join, which left
us with roughly six women at a
time on board, along with 20-
or-so guys.

And it worked! That is,
mainly it worked.

We simply built double bunks
and parked the couples
together. Nobody had much
privacy, but that was the way it
was. :

At least it was clearly
understood which people were
mated. So there were the ‘‘mar-
ried’? males and the bachelor

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males.

The result was a kind of fam-
ily atmosphere, rather than the
raw and monotonous macho
craziness that sooner or later
possesses any group of males
left on their own too long. Very
nice.

Until...

The woman who was sleeping
with the engineer decided to
change partners and sleep with
the captain. Well. There was
the captain, the most essential
person on board, nearly having
a fist fight on the back deck
with the engineer, the other
most essential person on board.

From the point of view of
ship efficiency, it was a low-
scoring situation caused, you
could say, by too much scoring.

Communication between
bridge and engine room went to
zip.

Good luck, Navy!

| know, you can see, from
experience that wornien make
just as good sailors as men, in
many respects much better. For
instance, there is less danger of
them all going off and getting
drunk when you hit port.

But as long as the sexes are
around each other, you are go-

ing to have additional friction, °

that’s all.

It’s not the women’s fault, if
there is sexual tension, any
more than it is the men’s.

it’s just that we’re ALL such
animals.

Mayhe the mistake we made
was the double bunks...No
room for three.

WY District
dog bylaw
given nod

THERE WASN'T a woof of op-
position from the gallery Monday
as North Vancouver District junior
council doggedly pursued the
passage of an amending bylaw to
the Dog Tax and Pound Bylaw.

._ The move defines District of
North Vancouver Parks Depart-
ment regulations controlling canine
use of municipal parks and recre-
ation areas.

District areas are divided into
four usage categories for all dogs
except seeing-eye dogs. . The
categories are: parks. where dogs
are prohibited;- parks where dogs
are permitted on leash from Oct. 1
to April 15; parks where dogs are
permitted on leash; parks and
other areas where dogs are permit-
ted without leash but under con-
trol.

“All homeowners will be receiv-
ing a copy of the regulations,’*
said junior ald. Andrea Wicbe.
“With this bylaw we are coming to
grips with this problem at hand of
dogs and their owners.”’

Junior. ald. Alexandra: Carr
questioned the inclusion of ‘Lillooet
Road under two different usage
categories. ‘‘Which part of the dog
is allowed to be in Lillooet Road?”
she asked. .

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