6 - Wednesday, January 17, 1990 - North Shore News VIA RAIL shows Tories don’t understand Canada THE STEADY dismantling of Canada, this time with the VIA RAIL cuts, sparked a roar of emotional protest last weekend from the Atlantic to the Pacific. In this age when the majority of all personal cross-country travel is by air let’s accept right away that — aside from the 2,761 lay-offs — the cuts will do little direct damage to the economy. The freight trains vital to our export trade will still rumble aiong that coast-to-coast steel ribbon. VIA’s six million passengers a year can still ride across Canada on the Super-Continental, though now only three days a week and gazing at inferior scenery. Every major city except Regina, Fredericton and Charlottetown still has SOME passenger service. The tourist routes through the Rockies remain. That said, however, VIA RAIL is yet another monument to the Mulroneyites’ self-serving FRED van Aggelen dant. priorities and arrogant flouting of national sentiment. The cuts will save $291 million over FIVE YEARS, an average of $58 million a year or less than one-fifth of one per cent of the estimated 1989-90 deficit of $30.5 billion. Meanwhile Ottawa has tax money galore to buy the votes of special interest groups that should rightly rely on private funding. Examples include annual averages of some $600 million in regional subsidies to supposedly free-enterprise business (in 1987, the equivalent of $102 million to General Motors alone for a plant in St. Therese, Que.); $243 million for the Official Languages Pro- gram; $150 million for arts and culture; $95 million for *interna- tional research,”’ multicult, labor education and radical feminists. A mere six per cent lopped off just these few items could have saved VIA RAIL. Why can a government that happily blows $1.2 million to promote bananas on the French Riviera, study Philippines seaweed and open a Bamboo Information Centre in China no longer afford The Canadian? {t’s because today's Tory lead- ership, dominated by parochial, power-hungry Quebec politicians, simply cannot grasp the unique personality of this vast and re- markabie land: the world’s only nation forged BLOODLESSLY by steel — 3,000 miles of Canadian Pacific steel. Nation-forging creates certain basic values quite distinct from the shifting values of everyday politics. ist Canada the Tories’ destructive L.A. lesson know: the purpose of schools is to educate. But T HERE IS one lesson every schcolgoer should some teachers and students at Carson Graham INSIGHTS Meech Accord and their flawed free trade deal already threaten those basic values, And now, as a spendthrift government bills of f the most tangible and cherished 105-year-old symbol of Sir John A. Macdonakl's national dream to save a paltry $58 million a year, Canadians from St. John’s to Vie- toria are rightly outraged. ifthe Mulroneyites can’t under- stand why, they are beyond ail hone. tek WRAP-UP: Congrats to 50-year West Van resident Fred van Ag- gelen, past prez of West Van Lions and now elected chairman of Lions Zone A10 covering the Capilano to Pembetton area ... If you have Grand Master ambitions, be in Park Royal South at 10 a.m. Saturday, Jan. 20, for the exhib- ition match sponsored by Per Danielsen between West Van Chess Club and The Park Royal Regulars ... Apologies to Marjorie Gagnon and her ‘‘Old Girls’’ group of retired nurses (WEDNESDAY WORLD, Jan. 3). Her letter told us they ‘‘work in pairs as Reservers and Telephoners on a rotation basis’? — which we misinterpreted as meaning volurteer work for the hospital. Not so. She merely meant they phone other members and book tables for their lunch dates. Sorry about that, readers ... And from the Better Late Dept., warm greetings to Alida Van Essen, for six years coffee hostess five morn- ings a week at West Van Seniors’ Centre, who celebrated her 90th birthday yesterday, Jan. 16. In 1989 alone she put in 473% volun- teer hours! WRIGHT OR WRONG: When you walk towards the light, the shadows are behind you. i; Tue Last She. ate INTERNATIONALLY ACCLAIMED DI Desmond Hoebig (left) and New Brunswick pianist Andrew Tunis, per- form Friday, Jan. 19, at the Centennial Theatre in the North Shore Community Concerts series. SV am | ee os UO, Vancouver-born cellist Secondary School seem to have missed this fundamen- tal point. A proposal for a four-day field trip to Los Angeles for a group of graduating Carson students was presented to North Van School District 44’s board last week. The board is being asked to approve the May 18 to 21 field trip for about 120 students and four teacher sponsors, even though it is not being organized for any educational reasons. Instead the trip, which would cost $465 a head, is being arranged ‘‘as a means of special recognition for members of the praduating class...during the school’s 25th anniversary.” No one can blame the Grade 12 students for wanting to celebrate their graduation year; celebrating the school’s anniversary is laudable, too. And everyone knows that travel is an enriching experience. But school-sponsored field trips are meant to be educational experiences not time fer rest and relaxa- tion. Holiday junkets to suntan at the beach and tour the sights of Hollywood should not be sanctioned by any school board. if the focus of the trip is to explore fhe many art galleries and museums of Los Angeles or any other educational mandate this trip would be justified. But as it stands the students must fearn a hard lesson. Fun-in-the-sun holidays are not part of a school’s curriculum. If the students cannot organize the trip without the support of the school and school board they should get their heads out of the clouds and celebrate their grad year closer to home. a9 WS WN Le N \ : S VAS: RRR = LIME mg “UHH LAE Publisher Managing Editor Associate Editor Peter Speck Barrett Fisher Noel Wright Advertising Director Linda Stewart fF VOICE OF NOITTH AND WALLS VANCOUVER SUNDAY + WEONESDAY » ¢HDAY North Shore News, founded in 1969 as an independent suburban fewspaper and auallied under Schedule "1 \ 1139 Lonsdale Avenue, Paragraph Il of the Excise Tax Act, 1s published eac Wedeosday. Fuday ard Sunday by North Shore Free North Vancouver, B.C. 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