WORTH THE BATTERED BANK ACCOUNT Cruising — wonderful, marvellous, fantastic There’s no doubt about it! I'm going to be driving old “Lemonade” for another five years but who cares? Instead of a new car, we just spent a whole pile of money on a family vacation - and what a vacation it was! For the next few weeks, please forgive my overuse of the words “wonderful,” “marvelous” and “fantastic.” But, bear in mind that I've been travelling around quite a bit over the last dozen years and it takes something special to get me to haul out my superlatives. Every winter, the five McCreadies throw some shorts and = swimsuits in satchels and head for Hawai. This year, one of our daughters spent six months in a body cast recovering from_ spinal surgery. So much _ for Hawaii. trayel- wise by Barbara McCreadie Unfortunately for Brian's bank account, that gave me a few more months to plan something else for us to do. “What do you think of this?” l asked, nonchalantly tossing Brian a_ brochure’ from Princess Cruises. ['d circled the two-week Trans-Canal program. Humming the theme from “Love Boat,” I went on about my business. A few weeks later found a rather dazed husband writing out a cheque in favor of Princess Cruises for the sailing from Puerto Rico to Los Angeles through the Panama Canal. Just to round things off, I added a few days in San Juan at the beginning and a few more days in Disneyland at the end. Then the complications developed. Did you know that it’s almost impossible to get from Vancouver to uerto Rico in one day? Any way you plot the route - via Los Angeles, via Chicago, via New York, you can't get a connecting flight on the same day. O.K., so we add another day. Then, Victoria had to have her birthday on the 24th of May. giving all Canadians a holiday. Got any idea what that does to airline reservations? Add another day. More dithering around with the hotel in San Juan. If your travel agent ever tells you that he’s having dif- ficulty getting the _reser- vations you want in Puerto Rico, believe him. I had a devil of a time and didn’t get confirmation until the morning of our departure. By this time I was checking out the idea of three days in the local bus station. But the best was yet to come! Travellers on Caribbean cruises require EITHER a passport or birth Nessie’s Quebec cousin MONTREAL, (UPC) - The Lake Champlain Monster? How about Pohenegamook, Quebec’s Loch Ness? Sounds like a pitch for tourism or just a_ wild imagination but, according to two researchers, creatures witnessed in the province's lakes by thousands of people deserve a closer look. “We weren't interested in finding lake monsters. We were interested in the sighting of lake monsters by people,” said Claud Gagnon, a University of Quebec philosophy professor who collaborated with French “folklorist” Michel Meurger to produce Monstres des Lacs du Quebec (The Monsters of Quebec's lakes), a 320-page book released Thursday by Editions In- ternationals Alain Stanke. “But when you compile all the evidence, you ralize there must be something there because the stones are all so similar,” Gagnon told a news conference “Is 1 an appantion? Or 1s it an animal that has adapted WE HAVE THE LOWEST RETURN AIR FARES FROM VANCOUVER so well to his environment that he can hive’ there without us knowing about it?” Gagnon and Meurger spent six months tracking down eyewitnesses who say they have seen oversized creatures and another six months combing old books and newspapers around the world for accounts of sightings. In all, monsters have been reported at 20 Quebec lakes. After comparing eyewitness accounts and photographs with local stories, native Indian and European legends, Meurger said most of Quebec's monsters aren't unusual. “There are many hypothetical opinions,” Meurger said. “We cannot overlook the psychological opinion, that it could be imagination, We look at the pictures and we don't know if it's a monster Simone Roy-Laliberte, one of six people at the news conference wio claimed to have witnessed lake mon sters, said she was in her car delivering mail by St. Francois Lake in southern Quebec when she saw “a big, big fish, something enor- mous in the middle of the lake. It was going very fast. It had the back fin of a fish, and it went into the lake and plunged underwater. I don't say I saw a monster, but I know I saw something.” The authors plan to use sonar and _ photographic equipment next month to search for the huge fish with a horselike head often sighted in St. Francois and nearby Aylmer Lakes. While the authors said the book presents evidence without drawing con- clusions, Gagnons said unknown creatures haunting waters in Quebec and elsewhere are an_ eenie possibility. “After our investigation, you have to use more imagination not to believe than to beheve,” Gagnon said. “We didn't write the book to prove that there are Phe question of monsters belief is one the readers will have to decide.” Among the monsters presented in the book are Champ, a beast which since 1819 has had 132 reported sightings on Lake Champlain near Port Henry, N.Y., and Ponik, the so-called Loch Ness of Quebec seen only as a sithouette with a huge dorsal fin in 1974 at Lake Pohengamook, near the Maine border. C7 - Sunday, May 30, 1982 - North Shore News certificate as proof of Canadian citizenship. Fine. Brian's passport is expired but he’s got a birth cer- uficate. Or, at least he HAD a birth certificate. Three days before departure, he started looking for it. Gone. Lost. Strayed. Stolen. Nothing. I placed a frantic call to Victoria - thank the Lord he wasn't born in Halifax! The procedure for getting an emergency rush job on a birth certificate is this: 1. Prepare a statement including full name date and place of birth parents full names mother’s maiden name 2. Sign the application 3. Include five dollars - make cheques payable to “Department of Vital Statistics” (six dollars if you have time to have it mailed back.) WAIKIKI Air Only WAIKIKI $599 14 Days, Arr & Hotel LAS VEGAS $249 5 Days, 4 Nights, Air & Hotel RENO $229 5 Days, 4 Nights, Air & Hotel TORONTO Air Only MAPLE LEAF TRAVEL 736-3555 Rog. Agent 157-3 $399 $295 Holiday inn. Bains Travel Lito prices starting at $270.00 Cad. per person. 2 sharing at the inctudes: Airfare via CP Air, your choice of Hotel for 2 nignts, & transfers from air- port to hotel and return. For more details, contact: Bains Travel Ltd. Capliano Mall 935 Marine Drive, North Vancouver 980-0351 The application must be in the Victoria office - 1515 Blanchard St., before eight o'clock in the morning if you want the finished product by four the same afternoon. We sent Brian's application by special courier service on Tuesday afternoon, it was processed Wednesday and we had it here by Thursday morning. Like I said, it was the best family holiday we almost didn't take! imagine... 22 nights accommodation, in- cluding taxes, all air fares, and departure taxes, 19 breakfasts, 19 dinners, some lunches, all airport to hotel transportation, baggage transfers, ail sight see- ing { entrance fees, services of our own tour escort a touch... of INDIA & NEPAL Tour A - Sept 17 - Oct 11 1882 Tour B — Feb 18 - Mar 13 1983 Leaving from Van., B.C ONLY $3966 CDN. For information & Reservations CALL 669-5124 tower travel OCEANIC PLAZA 1066 W. HASTINGS ST. VANCOUVER, B.C. 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