6 - Wednesday, September 26, 1990 - North Shore News atten ipaiaain ae dane, TLE, ; i as toeerne, LO ML a INSIGHTS foam fet Gort (ie wt NEWS VIEWPOINT Emission admissions ly area residents in North Van- couver about noise and air pollution from Neptune Bulk Terminal’s waterfront facility appear to have finally been heard by the Greater Vancouver Regional District (GVRD). Last week the GVRD, which normally would have issued Neptune a two-year pollution control permit, issued the North Vancouver bulk-loading facility a permit for just six months. It is a move clearly designed to pressure Neptune to keep its word to North Van- couver City Council and install a series of pollution contro! devices. Coal dust emissions represent Neptune’s largest pollution-related problem. But Neptune president John Wilicox has said his company has spent close to $3 Rie CONCERNS by Clover- million on pollution control devices. And Neptune, he said, will have completed its pollution control program by Oct. 15. and is confident the GVRD will then extend the company’s pollution permit. While it is encouraging to see Neptune taking major strides in controlling its pollution, municipal, provincial and feder- al authorities should increase their monitoring of Neptune ssd all of the North Shore’s heavy waterfront industries. As illustrated last week by an accident at Howe Sound Pulp and Paper’s Port Mellon mill, where 500,000 litres of par- tially treated effluent escaped into Howe Sound after a new $27-million effluent treatment system failed on its first day of operation, the latest in environmental technology does not always work. LETTER OF THE DAY ‘Silent majority’ applauds Collins Dear Editor: We, the undersigned law- abiding tax-paying citizens ap- plaud Doug Collins’ Sept. 12 col- umn: Order of Canada in order for no order in Canada. This man has the courage to write about what so many of us, “*the silent majority,”’ feel. We are sick to death of the sub- ject of Oka — the blockade of Publisher Associate Editor .Peter Speck Managing Editor Timothy Renshaw Noel Wright Advertising Director Linda Stewart roads, bridges and rail lines, not to mention the display of fully automatic weapons, the type ban- ned for private ownership in Canada — but mostly by our elected government’s inability to deal with the problem. If we were to form a ‘‘Second Nation’’ and blockade in a similar fashion we would certainly be in jail by now for civil insurrection. What exactly is the government TNE VOICE OF NORTH AND WLYT VANCOUVER SUNDAY - WEDNESDAY + FHIGAY North Shore News, founded in 1969 as an independent suburban newspaper and qualilied unde: Schedule 111, Paragraph itt of Ine Eacese Tas Act, is published each Wednesday, Friday and Sunday by North Shore Free Press Lid and distributed to every goor on the North Shore Second Class Mail Registration Number 3845 25 per year Mailing tates avadable un request Subinissiuns are onsibility for Sand pictures: e which should pe accompanted by 4 stamped. addressed Subscuptions North and West Vancouver, weicome but we cannot accept te unsahcited materai including manus envelope 1139 Lonsdaie Avenue, North Vancouver, B.C. V7M 2H4 59,170 (average. Wednesday Friday & Sunday} Fey SDA ONISION afraid of? V. Hester Lee Hester Dave Tobias West Vancouver Brian McCrea D. Stevens R.W. DeWolfe Maria Osswaid North Vancouver Alex Wilson Burnaby Display Advertising Classified Advertising Newsroom Distrioution Subscriptions Entire contents ©) 1990 North Shore Free Press Lid. All rights reserved. 980-0511 986-6222 985-2131 986-1337 986-1337 985-3227 North Shore owned and managed ——$—$———$ [No fantasy to beat a Fantasy Gardens story! THE LATEST Vander Zaim ‘‘scandal’’ (who owned how much of Fantasy Gardens?) poses a number of other rele- vant questions that are NOT being asked. Don't expect them to be asked by the Vancouver daily which splashed the story last Saturday — the first question being to its edi- tors: Why NOW? If, as also reported, Bill Vander Zalm's 83 per cent share of the husband-wife business has been on public record since 1986, why did it take the newspaper’s sleuths four years — until the eve of an expected election — to dig it up? Vander Zalm says he assumed the 1986 legal paperwork for his resignation as director of Fantasy Gardens and transfer of control to his wife automatically transferred his shares to her as well, which was why he regularly referred to her as the ‘‘owner.”” He claims only now to have found he was mistaken and that the shares re- mained in his name. Make what you will of his ex- planation — noting that busy people DO sometimes make honest mistakes — it’s pertinent to ask, in this particular case, whether the number of paper shares he held was really any of the public’s business. Joint ownership with one’s spouse of a ‘*mom-and-pop”’ operation is very different from holdings in big public corpora- tions — a legitimate concern of conflict-of-interest zealots. Check with the divorce courts. When a husband and wife who’ve worked together to earn a livelihood split up, with no prior tegal contract, judges regularly award each 50 per cent of the value of their joint effort. Surely that concept applies also to non- divorced couples? If it does, who can deny Bill’s and Lillian’s right to discuss the business of Fantasy Gardens — which never had a cent of public money — in the privacy of their boudoir? And since any decisions would obviously be family ones, of what importance to anybody else was Bill's titular shareholding? Finally, a question about OURSELVES as employers of our elected servants. MLAs in B.C. get some $49,000 a year (one third tax-free for ex- penses), cabinet ministers about $89,000, the premier under $100,000. Ministers and, in prac- tice, government MLAs cannot continue to hold private jobs. Level for fevel, many top business and professional people earn appreciably more. As the economy’s human dynamos, their talents are also exactly whai we need for efficient government. But why abandon a career near its LILLIAN Vander Zalm ... min- ding the store. Noel HITHER AND YON peak for a sharp drop in income with a mere four-year ‘‘contract”’ from us voters? And with per- sonal hassles of the Fantasy Gardens variety as the only other guarantee? So mostly they shun the public life. The wonder is that, with odd exceptions, the personal calibre of the ministers, MPs and MLAs we do get is as goad as it is. They should be judged solely by the job they do — not by media fantasies about private affairs which in no way conflict with their public duty. kee TAILPIECES: Hoping for a po- litical hole-in-one is North Van District aldermanic candidate Don Davis, retiring North Shore Public Golf Course Society president, who says his campaign will focus on pushing through the proposed Northlands public golf course ... The Children’s Hospital will be the beneficiary of the giant garage sale being held by Royal Bank staffers Saturday, Sept. 29, from S to 2 on the bank parking lot, 212 Lonsdale. Go, buy! ... Many happy returns to our birthday girl of the week, Associate Defence Minister and Capilano MP Mary Collins who — though you might never guess it — has today, Sept. 26, graced the planet for exactly half a century! ... And tomorrow, Sept. 27, welcome to the ‘‘Golden 50th Club” North Van’s Bill and Edna London whose family tree extends back into early North Shore history. az£e* WRIGHT OR WRONG: Treat your friends like family — and your family like friends. a MARY Collins ... guessed how long? who'd have