YOU PICK up odd pieces fof information as you move about. Some of them have a clear, apparent con- text. Some don’t. A lawyer I was talking to the other day, who has a home overlooking Georgia Strait, tells me that when there are fishboats out on the water, he often hears rifles going off. In other words, the fishermen regularly pick off harbor seals. Perfectly aware of just how uppi- ty the public gets when somebody blows away a marine mammal these days, West Coast fishermen have apparently taken to quietly popping off seals whenever they see them. Of course they'll deny it. But I believe that the lawyer was right. On a similar note, an Indian friend tells me (hat during last summer’s IWA. strike, while sports fishermen down here were venting their spleen because of alleged fishing violations by In- dians along the Capilano River, unemployed loggers up at the ¥ north end of Vancouver Island were -systematically poaching from rivers on Indian reserve land. The poaching by loggers was so bad at Wass Lake that the escapement rate for salmon, which should have been about 120,000, was cut in half. For the benefit of the rednecks, it should be noted that the Kwaikutl Indians of Alert Bay had spent a small fortune of their own money, which could otherwise have gone into desper- ately-needed housing, to restock the river leading into that lake. THE FOLLOWING people ap- peared in’ North and West Van- couver. provincial courthouses recently to face various criminal charges laid against them. ; Before. Judge J.B. Paradis in North Vancouver provincial court March 9: . Ralph Biggar, 22, of Vancouver and Christopher Michael William, 23, of North Vancouver were both ‘fined $50 after they pleaded guilty to separate charges of failing to appear for scheduled court dates. BLACK JACK (LIBERAL RULES) ROULETTE . Boe TABLES) . eM “EARLY BIRD - BONUSES’’ Bob Hunter ® strictly personal ® Moreover, they had forfeited their right to take fish for food from the river for several years now in the hope of building back the salmon stocks, decimated by decades of logging, overfishing and minetailing spills. One IWA strike — and poof, there goes all the Indians’ effort out the window, thanks to poaching that nobody does anything about. And sports fishermen down here think they have something to whine about! see A few months before the Oerlikon defence contract scan- dal blew up in the face of the Tories, I happened to be having a conversation with Werner Oesch, a spokesman for Aerlikon Aerospace Inc., the new Cana- dian company which was patched together last year to front an in- ternational consortium which had won a contract to build a $650- million anti-aircraft system. Headed by the giant Swiss- based Oerlikon-Buhrle Corpora- tion, the consortium’s assignment was to have the new system in place around Canadian airfields in NATO by the end of 1987. It was back in August when I talked with Oesch, an officer in the Swiss Army on loan to Aerlikon to help Canada update its artillery. He was cheerful and op- timistic. Everything seemed to be going smoothly, he thought. They were learning the ropes. No, there would be no actual fa- cilities built in Western Canada. He didn’t know why not. Local politics. Of course, since then, a federal Dale Victor Manderschied was fined $75 after the 19-year-old Burnaby man pleaded guilty to trespassing on property of North pancouver’s Saskatchewan Wheat ool. Before Judge J.D. Layton in North Vancouver provincial court March 4: Ann Murphy was fined $25 after the 50-year-old North Vancouver woman was found guilty of leaving the scene of an accident. cabinet minister has had to resign after being caught flipping land where Aerlikon’s defence plant was going to be built in Quebec. It has been revealed that several top-echelon Canadian military officers have quit and gone to work for the consortium. Perhaps worst of all for the Swiss weapons people, early tests on the defence system have shown a glaring deficiency: it doesn't work in fog. Hopefully, nobody will attack in bad weather. What has all this got to do with taxpayers’ bucks? Well, I got a hint of the answer just before Christmas during a trip to Ottawa, talking to highly placed political sources. The gist of it was that Bob Coates, the Tory defence minister who got bounced from his ministry after being seen in a West German nightspot where there was a girlie show, was a victim of a deliberate set-up. The military brass wanted to get rid of him. Sure, he’d restored the old uniforms to the different services. But he was stubbornly resisting aggressive pitches by various arm dealers to invest heavily in high-tech mili- tary toys. Rather than being indifferent civil servants obeying their politi- cal master’s every word, the mili- tary chieftans in Canada are in bed with the arms manufacturers. They see no problem in juniping from the government side to the board room, taking their insider expertise with them. Surprise, surprise! There's a military-industrial complex at work in Canada too. RENOVATIONS BATHROOMS and KITCHENS —— Ts CABINETS | 15% off — Estimates 987-3055 Showroom 153 W. 3rd Ab, OcKWOO0Od * Exclusive Waterfront Estate 4.8 acres. ° vest Vancouver's largest selection of fully serviced level building ots. ¢ Acres of natural gardens, ponds, streams, waterfalis & trees © On-site swimming pool, hot tub & sauna . * Walk to the beach, boat moorage, golf & tennis ® Downs Archambault designs avaitable or build for yourself « Located at Bachelor Bay only minutes to Park Royal, Downtown, & the new Caulfeild Shopping Mall. Homes from $259,00 - lots from $115,000 OPEN SAT. & SUN. 1-5 PM OR BY APPT. | IVAR FOSSEN OFFICE 294-1771 Home 926-0473 § NACEL PROPERTIES Pager 680-4521 NORTH VAN WEST VAN 1343 LYNN VALLEY RD. 2558 HAYWOOD AVE. 985-1784 ’ 922-2613 = a 1 Marine tr. ey’ Ha ave.| x ;