6 ~ Wednesday, November 25, 1987 - North Shore News THE VOICE OF NORTH AND WEST VANCOUVER News Viewpoint th fe Display Advertising 980-0511 Classified Advertising 986-6222 Newsroom 985-2131 Distribution 986-1337 Subscriptions 986-1337 Publisher Managing Editor Associate Editor Advertising Director Peter Speck Barret! Fisher Noel Wright Linda Stewart = a ty a ip orern ; we wo North Shore News, founded in 1969 as an independent suburban newspaper and qualiheed under Schedute Ni, ° ry Paragraph Ili of the Excise Tas Act, +5 publisned each Wednesday, Ftrday and Sunday by North Shore Free Press ai? Or7g ru €s SUNDAY * WEDNESDAY * FRIDAY Ltd and distnbuted to every door on the North Shore. Second Class tail Registratian Humber 3845 Subscriptions, 1139 Lonsdale Ave. North and West Vancouver. 325 per year Mating rates available on teques!. Submissions are welcome bul we Cannot accept responsiality for unsobcited matenal including manuscripts and pictures which should be: accompanied North Vancouver, B.C. V7M 2H4 by a stamped, addressed envelope SEi MOREDOM AND apathy almost killed democracy in Saturday’s North Vancouver City i aldermanic elections. A measly 13.3 per cent of approximately 22,000 eligible voters braved a cold and rain-drenched day to make their marks at focal polling stations. With those kinds of numbers it’s possible that any semi-popular clown with just over 1,200 voters in his or her back pocket is worth a seat in the city. Democracy does not work without the active par- ticipation of those it may serve. As a result, the turfing out of three of the six in- cumbents may simply have come down to where their names were positioned on the ballot sheets. It is interesting to note however that the failed in- cumbents Hall, Kroon and Blair all shared the pro- Park and Tilford development Save the Gardens slate in the 1985 election. Did Park and Tilfurd come back to haunt them? The frustration is that we'll never really know. With their absence from the process, a pathetically silent 86.7 per cent majority of voters said loud and clear that they do not care what goes on in the com- munity. Nevertheless, the few who have spoken have asked for and received a changed council revitalized with fresh blood and hopefully some fresh insight. Taking the weak numbers to heart, the new council should work on strengthening connections with its public to ensure that the aldermen filling the seats in municipal hall are true representatives of the will of the many and not simply servants of a few. 1987 North Shore Free Press Ltd. All tights reserved. 58,489 (average, Wednesday Friday & Sunday) SDA DIVISION if by the absentee voters? won for the first time by NDP- backed candidates. ‘Or did non-voting supporters of AS THE DUST SETTLES in North Van City politics after Saturday’s election shake-up, more than a few people are trying to decipher the electorate’s message. “One thing can be said right away: with a meagre 13.33% (well under one in seven) of eligible voters bothering to cast their ballots, the substance of the message is pretty flimsy. It suffic- ed, however, to dump three of the five incumbent aldermen veterans Ralph Hall and Elko Kroon along with Allan Blair — and replace them. with an- ti-developer newcomers Frank Morris, Sil! Bell and . Barbara Sharp, the two latter being members of the local NDP farm team. Leftwing Alderman John Braithwaite again topped the poll. Eas mates. RALPH HALL...accident victim? ALDERMEN-ELECT Bil) Bell and The vacant sixth seat went to stockbroker Rod Clark, a former alderman who's also strongly criti- cized previous council development policies. If, by some statistical miracle, the 13% who made it to the polling booths accurately reflect the view of City voters as a whole, it sug- gests a sharp turn to the left in public sentiment. In that case,the warning message could be directed not only to would-be suburban the City’s defeated incumbents simply sit on their hands, confi- dent that someone else would elect their man again anyhow? If so, Messrs. Blair, Hall and Kroon may derive some slim consolation from being accident victims rather than ‘rejects. Such accidents easily hap- ‘pen whenever enough voters ' begrudge five minutes of their time developers but equally to Premier | on polling day. NDP voters seldom Bill Vander Zalm, headstrong rush to ‘‘privatize’’’ and ‘‘decentralize’’ has even some! of his party faithful worried. Such certainly seems to have been the message to the Premier from the seven municipalities where the mayor’s chair was recaptured or Barbara Sharp...NDP farm team- lady? whose / begrudge it. Whatever the answer, Mayor Jack Loucks will preside for the next three years over a markedly leftwing councif. Ralph Hall’s pragmatic cominon-sense approach to issues will be particularly miss- ed. And — despite the advent of Barbara Sharp re-elected Alderman Stella Jo Dean, now entering her 20th year on council, is likely quite often to find herself a lonely middle-of-the-road fady. FREE TRADE — all you ever need to know about it — was presented last Friday by Capilano MP Mary Collins to a packed breakfast meeting sponsored by the North Van Chamber of Com- merce in Cheers Restaurant. Alas, she was able to add little to the Great Debate. Despite a spirited re ‘al of the free trade gospel according to Mulroney and the glossy one-kilo kit she handed out, Mary's au- dience came away with nothing they couldn’t have read or heard already from champions of free trade: i.e., that it would be a great thing for Canada. Being also believers in motherhood, they clearly had no trouble with this basic proposition. But the question of what’s in the fine print — all of which even Ottawa hasn’t yet seen — remained unanswered. The Tories don't really have to sell the public on a broad concept that most folk like anyhow. Their big problem at the moment is seek- Noel Wright ® wednesday world ® y ing support for signing on the dot- ted line before all the details are known. Canadians sense there could be quite a difference between the free trade ideal and the ultimate reality of this specific pact. They want to know EVERYTHING it contains and so far neither Mary nor anyone else can tell them. eee POSTSCRIPTS: Recent ‘‘Science Day”’ at Simon Fraser University saw scnior students from Hand- sworth, Seycove, Sutherland, St. Thomas Aquinas and West Van Secondary among the more than 550 who were given a day-long sales pitch for the science pro- grams offered on the campus. The annual event included a lecture by gold medal physicist Dr. Tony Ar- rott plus lecture tours of the phys- ics, chemistry, biology, kinesiology, math, engineering science and computing science departments ... North Shore dele- gates to last week’s national con- ference of Girl Guides of Canada in Mississauga, Ont., were North Van’s Anne Barkour and West Van’s Babette Brown ... Though final figures are not yet available, John Lakes reports a noticeable increase over last year in North Shore business donations to the United Way following the efforts of the Special business campaign team he organized this fall ... And North Van Kiwanians can now boast their own spiritual adviser in the person of the newest member te join the club — Rev. Ray Mur- rin, rector of St. John’s Anglican Church. sat WRIGHT OR WRONG: The fellow who says he’s too old to learn new things probably always was. photo submitted TWO HEADS BETTER than one at SFU’s Science Day...visiting high school seniors Rod McLeod (}) and Jay Sutton try out cylindrical mirror images in the physics department.