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NEWS photo Mike Wakotield

STREAKING IN TONGUES

WITH THE sold-out Roiling Stones concert only a day.away, and scalpers’ prices still sitting in the $200-
$500 range, some people will do anything for a prime pair of Stones tickets. Five nearly-naked people rode
around in 2 black limousine with C-FOX Morning Show hosts Larry and Willy Monday morning, making
various stops along the route as part of the Streak in Tongues for Stones Tickets contest. The three men and
two women, wearing only Rolling Stones tongue-and-lips logos over their most private parts, were taken to
the Vancouver City Police Department, the Vancouver Art Gallery, the Lions Gate Bridge, the North Shore
SeaBus terminal (pictured above) and other public places. For their efforts...the much sought-after tickets.

WV library launches
fund-raising campaign

ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND dellars donated by British
Pacific Properties helped kick off the West Vancouver
Memorial Library’s fund-raising campaign Sunday.

Peter Finch, president of British
Pacific Properties, accepted the
community’s thanks expressed ty
campaign chairman and master of
ceremonies John Humphries.

“With that kind of leadership in
the community, how could we
possibly fail?’? Humphries said,
adding that the library’s goal of
$4.75 million should be reached by
the end of the year.

The library, which will circulate
more than 765,000 items this year,
desperately needs to be expanded
and rencvated. Plans call for new
structures both east and west of
the existing library, a pavilion on
top of the present parking deck,
and a complete reorganization and
modernization of the existing facil-
ity,

Construction, which is scheduled
to take about two years, should
begin next February. West Van
Mayor Don Lanskail told ‘a¢
gathering that the municipality has
allocated $1.2 million to the pro-
ject and will match every dollar
raised in the community, including
the $100,000 from British Pacific
Properties, up to an additional
$1.2 million.

Lanskail read from the official
proclamation that ‘‘the West Van-
couver Memorial Library con-
sistently provides the best, most
heavily used public library service
available to any community in
Canada,” adding that ‘‘the results
of this project will make this
community an even better place to
live.””

Business .............. 419
Classified Ads..........48
Dr. Aauth...... . 44
Editorial Page...........6

By PATRICK RAYNARD
Com ie Wri

“We are a very literate com-
munity, and the library is one of
the hearts of West Vancouver,’’
Lanskail said.

Reverend Tom Oliver, minister
emeritus of West Vancouver Unit-
ed Church, gave the invocation. A
library, he said, is ‘ta place where
little children first come to realize
the amazing wonder of this
world,’’ and where all persons can
grow in ‘‘vision and imagination’’
into their senior years.

John Reynoids, MLA for West
Vancouver-Howe Sound and the
Speaker of the legislature, told the
News that a funding application
has just been sent to GO B.C. and
that he has already met with
Claude Richmond, minister in
charge of lotteries, to encourage
provincial support.

“This is the best library in
Canada for the best people in
Canada,” Reynolds said in his
speech.

Former chief librarian Elizabeth
Musto told the gathering that when
she presided over the library’s
original 2,000 books 39 years ago,
she had to shelve them with the
full cover facing outwards so they
would look as though they were
filling up space.

-—“The 12,000 citizens of West
Vancouver built the original
library (in 1949-50) and our dream
was to make this the best public

Lifestyles..............43
Horth Shore Now.......21
Sports ................ 13
TV Listings............32
What's Going Qn........38

library in the world. Today’s
38,000 citizens will make that
dream a reality.’? Musto said to
warm applause.

Musto joined present chief li-
brarian Jack Mounce in cutting
ribbons that released a 12 ft. by 20
ft. balloon sculpture bearing a
banner that read ‘‘Specia! Edition:
the excitement is building.’*

“West Vancouver citizens have
always insisted on and expected a
level of library service unique in
Canada, and the library nas expe-
rienced a constant growth because
of this,’? Mounce said, adding that
space is now so limited that 15,000
items have had to be housed in
off-site storage.

The all-day celebration, which
took place under a large tent on
the library’s parking deck, was co-
ordinated by Barney Ellis-Perry.
Several musicians, singers, writers
and puppeteers provided enter-
iainment throughout the after-
noon.

Humphries also recognized,
among others, the following
guests: West Vancouver aldermen
Patricia Boname, Rod Day and
Mark Sager; carnpaign vice-chair-
man Joanne Houssian; and Val
York (representing Capilano-Howe
Sound MP Mary Collins).

Humphries pointed out that two
members of the campaign’s advi-
sory committee, Alf Watts, Q.C.,
and Lt.-Col. George Smart, par-
ticipated in the sod-turning for the
original library in 1949.

Glen Boy is directing the cam-
paign from an office on the
prernises.

For more information on dona-
tions, call 926-2013.

WEATHER

Wednesday, sunny with
cloudy periods. Thursday,
mostly cloudy. Highs near
10°C.

Second Class Registration Number 3885

3 — Wednesday, November 1, 1989 - North Shore News

Politicians slam
local realtors
for promoting
property in Asia

LOCAL POLITICIANS have expressed concerns over plans
by area realtors to take local residential, commercial and
investment property listings to a Canadian housing exposi-
tion in Hong Kong later this month in light of the current
affordable housing squeeze on the North Shore.

Approximately 100 realtors from
Realty World Canada, including
four from its Realty World-
Hemisphere franchise on the North
Shore, are among those who have
thus far signed up for the trip to
the Nov. 15 to 19 Canada Housing
and Living Expo °89 in Hong
Kong.

The exposition is being orga-
nized by the Wealth Trade Group,
which is made up of eight com-
panies in Hong Kong, Macau and
China, to help Canadian realtors
tap the growing Canadian real
estate market in the Far East.

Booths at the show are $3,500
each, and realtors are paying
$1,500 each for the trip.

Realty World Canada
spokesman Naomi Copeland said
response to the trip has ‘“‘been
tremendous, really outstanding.’’

The main purpose of the trip,
she said, was to ‘‘bring awareness
of Realty World to the Hong Kong
market.”’

Mike Kotylak, one of the four
realtors from the North Shore’s
Reaity World-Hemisphere who will
be attending the show, said it will
be his first trip to Hong Kong.

As of Monday, he said, he and
fellow Realty World-Hemisphere
realtor Mike Barzal had signed up
four listings ranging from $199,000
up to $895,000 and were working
on another half dozen to take with
them when they leave Nov. 12.

ry

By TIMOTHY RENSHAW t
News Reporter

North Vancouver City Ald. Bii!
Bell, who recently focused atten-
tion on the problems of the North
Shore’s homeless, said listing Ca-
nadian properties in any country
outside Canada placed increasing
pressure on local housing prices.

“| have some real concerns,’’ he
said. ‘‘A lot of people can’t afford
to buy houses here and that
disturbs me. This will force prices
up even further.’*

But Real Estate Board of
Greater Vancouver spokesman
Anne Broadfoot said that while
Hong Kong buyers consider prop-
erty values low in the Lower
Mainiand area compared with
those in Hong Kong, ‘‘they know
what the values of property are
here”? and are not likely to over-

pay.

She pointed out that owners set
the selling price for their proper-
ties, so if they are indeed inflated
“it is the owners and vendors that
are creating the problem.”

Maggie Chan of North Van-
couver’s Sutton Group-West Coast
Realty recently spent a month in
the Hong Kong and Taiwan areas
marketing listings for her local
clients.

But while she made valuable

“A lot of people can’t afford to huy houses here and that
disturbs me. This will force prices up even further.’’

Vee 7

Response to classified ads run in
the News, advertising ‘“‘top dollar
for your home”’ at the Hong Kong
exposition, he said has been
strong.

There has, he said, been
some negative feedback from peo-
ple upset that local properties are
being marketed at the exposition.

But Kotylak said there is no rep-
resentation being made to prospec-
tive clients that their properties will
be sold for inflated prices in Hong
Kong.

“That would be stupid,” he
said. ‘“What we are saying is mar-
ket value.”

Kotylak added that other local
real estate firms have had branch
offices in Hong Kong for years,
and if people from the North
Shore or other areas of B.C. want
to sell their property in Hong Kong
they can do it regardless of
whether they sell those properties
in special expositions.

“It’s just another way to mar-
ket,’’ he said.

But North Vancouver District
Ald. Ernie Crist said Friday people
from other countries should not be
allowed to buy property in Canada
without entering the country.

Allowing it, he said, artificially
drives up the price of real estate in
the country through speculative
buying ‘‘so that our own young
people living in Canada cannot af-
ford to buy homes here.”’

He said the practice was
especially wrong ‘‘when we have
an acute housing problem here. If
a member of our own fire depart-
ment or RCMP can’t afford to buy
a house here in North Vancouver

something is seriously

— North Vancouver City
Ald. Bill Bell

contacts in the area, she said the
people she met were more interest-
ed in discussing immigration than
real estate.

During her trip, she organized
an exhibition of 40 listings, mainly
apartments ranging from $150,000
up to $709,000, Sept. 23 and 24 at
the Regent Hotel in Hong Kong.

Chan, who speaks various
Chinese dialects, eventually sold
three of those listings and managed
to cover her expenses.

But those sales, she said, were to
her own clients in the area and not
to the general public.

“It was not easy,’’ she said, ad-
ding that people in Hong Kong
know Vancouver well and are very
unlikely to pay more than the price
listed on the Vancouver market for
any local property.

According to Employment and
Immigration Canada figures,
22,802 permanent resident visas
were granted to Hong Kong
Chinese by the Canadian consulate
in 1988. Of those, 5,033 came to
B.C.

From January to June of this
year, 10,147 permanent resident
visas were granted to Hong Kong
residents, 2,350 of those have set-
tled in B.C.

In its pitch to interest Canadian
realtors in its upcoming housing
exposition the Wealth Group states
that ‘‘many of the Hong Kong
Chinese investors are either
emigrating to Canada or are
potential emigrants....These in-
vestors are prepared to buy top
quality real estate and are anxious
to take advantage of the invest-
ment opportunities currently of-
fered by the Canadian property
market.”*