4 - Friday, May 1, 1987 - North Shore News

Bob Hunter

® strictly personal ®

IT SEEMED like a good idea at the time. Let’s go over
to Tofino and take the boat ut to see the Grey whales.

A short time after we booked,
somebody noticed we'd be travel-
ling on the Easter weekend.

We are such fools, we didn’t
think much about it. ‘‘We do
have reservations on the boat?"*
was all J asked. My wife should
have known better — she braves
the tide of steel twice a day, four
times a week.

But she doesn't get out on the
ferries that much. Besides, she’s
a local girl. She remembers when
it used to be a big thrill ta climb
into the family car and roar out
into the countryside.

Driving was a joy back then.

Years ago, I too used to ex-
plore the B.C. countryside. 1 go
back to an era when you had to
take a terrifying logging road
over a jagged ridgeback of naked
granite to get to Long Beach, be-
fore the feds took over and ruin-
ed everything.

But I got out of the habit. It
was getting just too hairy out
there on the highways. I almost
died several times. I have rela-

| tives who wound up in hospitals,
one of them crippled for years,
because of traffic accidents.

With babies to take care of for
the last many years, my wife and
I have been somewhat nest-
bound. So we haven’t been pok-
ing our noses out into the
maelstrom of carnage out there
on the road that much anyway.

It was a shock to check it out

sonst

84 38/mo.*

by mistake on Good Friday, 1
tell you.

When the system overloads
nowadays, it crunches to a halt as
though a great Iron Wheel had
been clamped down from the
sky. °

As a freelancer, I set my own
days and hours, even if I have to
position them around a
workload. I’m not boxed into X
number of hours a week in a
shop or warehouse or office. I
can sweat and suffer at virtually
any hour of the day or night.

As a result, the modern
Western phenomenon of The
Weckend is something | manage
to mostly avoid. It’s like that
other great nemesis of urban ex-
istence, the Traffic Jam — only
longer.

If you are careful and lucky
and not above at least slightly
compromising your mortal soul,
it is possible to live around here
and not spend any time involved
in either the Traffic Jam or The
Weekend. But you have to be
perched safely off to the side in a
niche, like a writer or gnome or
cat burglar.

And it helps to have a boat or
a bike or an ultra-light, some
alternative to the automobile.

Otherwise, as far as I can see,
travelling by road is a nightmare
around here. I can’t believe peo-
ple are so starved for escape from
the city that they are willing to

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pay the price of having to join al

vast metallic army of slugs in-
ching its way along the Upper
Levels.

The image also comes to mind
of lemmings feeding themselves
to huge NMoating crab pots and
being taken away to sea.

I thought we were being pru-
dent by leaving home at Il a.m.
to catch a 1 or 2 p.m. ferry at
Horseshoe Bay. We got stopped
about two or three miles east of
the Eagleridge turn-off. That’s
where the lineup began.

Of course, you smile and ask,
where has this guy been? But
watching a major calamity com-
ing is like trying to keep tabs on
the growth of your kids. You
think you're keeping up with
them, then wham! Oops, you re-
alize they've taken another quan-
tum leap,

It’s that
breakdowns.

Virtually every effort I have
made to leave the metropolitan
area in the last year or so has
turned out to be a horror show.

Getting stuck in the rain inside
a flooding Vincent Massey Tun-
nel, thereby missing my Victoria
connection, was every bit as
frightening and infuriating as
hanging out bumper to bumper
in a winter Westerly high on the
Lions Gate, not enjoying the
view.

By the way, air travel has
become almost as infuriatingly
bottlenecked as the ironically
nanied ‘‘freeway.”’

And SkyTrain is proving to be
an expensive example of bad
planning.

way with major

The fact is, we are experiencing |

paralysis on our transportation
grids. Things are getting worse
instead of better.

English teachers to meet

THE NATIONAL Council of
Teachers of English will be holding
a major regional conference in the
Hotel Vancouver from May | to 3.

Greater Expectations, English
for Everyone will feature
workshops, exhibits and speakers.
Subjects scheduled to be covered
will range from cooperative learn-
ing in the classroom to innovative
courses in literature for young
adults.

Keynote speakers include An-

drew Wilkinson from the Universi-
ty of East Anglia, Sheila Fitzgerald
from Michigan State University,
The English Journal editor Ken
Donelson and University of
Sydney’s Ken Watson.

Among the Canadian writers
scheduled to read excerpts from
their various works will be W.D.
Kinsella, Peter Trower and Maria
Fiamenco.

For more information call Geoff
Madoc-Jones at 291-4432.

Pililities

HOT EL AND RESTAURANT
MANAGEMENT EDUCATION
IN SWITZERLAND

Admission requirement ts: Between 18 and 25 yrs.
International Baccalaureate, Fluent in English.
As from 1988 all courses also in FRENCH.

You are cordially invited to an introductory seminar
on May 04 at the Four Seasons Hotel at 7 pm.

For further information contact:

SITC TETE DE RAN

International Training Centre for the Hotel,
Restaurant and Leisure Time Industries
CH 2208 Tete-de-Ran

ra. 921-7045

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