KITSILANG WEST Base officer Jim Schelienberg says the Coast Guard has responded to 54 in- clidents since its move to West Vancouver in July. Coast Guard ponders staying at temporary West Van site. - Search for permanent home for destroyed Kits base continues THRRE MONTHS after fire destroyed the Kitsilano - Coast Guard Base at False Creek, the search and “rescue operation remains in its temporary home at a ' federal fisheries lab site in West Vancouver. Canadian Coast Guard of- . ficials visited the base earlier ws mont?) to assess the facili- Veaid Kit silano West Base of- ficer iv: charge Jim Schellenbe “ts “They're = still talking abe ut it in Ottawa and they're tvving to justify - whether saey should or shouldn’t bui‘d another base at all. The department would like to’ double-use’ sites it already haz — like us end fisheries us- ing this site. But 's this the best place for Kits base or is False ~ Creek the best place for Kits base?” A permanent Vase could conceivably be placed on fed- “ ezal land elsewhere in the area. “Any government. dock is theoretically ours and they can . Put us there,”’ Schellenberg sai Schellenberg has tracked the marine incidents his crews have responded to since moving .o West Vancouver. Crews responded to 54 incidents from: July 10 to Oct. 6. He found that 67% of the cails were equidistant: or closer to the False Creek location. * Thirty-three per cent of the calis were closer to the West “Vancouver base. Most calls originate in an area between Stanley Park and the university endowment Jands. - In an average year, Kits ceast guard crews respond to 30 incidents involving people jumping from local bridges. Burrard Bridge posts the eer ee a ny a aa a nD Sa EY SE TP SE OE FS @ High Profiles 8 Cocktails & Caviar By Michael Becker News Reporter highest number of bridge- jumping incidents. Added Schellenberg, “On windy days it’s overturned windsurfers and sailboats and people going aground. Full moon time of the month we see the people that are a little un- balanced sud want to jump. That’s a definite cycle.”" Proximity to Vancouver bridges, a concentration of marinas and three hospitals made the original location ideal, said Schellenberg. The Kits base was readily accessible to the public. It also included a helicopter landing pad. Whil: the West Vancouver location is closer to the centre of the base patro! area, which includes Howe Sound, public access is limited and a helipad at the site is cut of the ques- tion. “One of the main reasons we can’t have a helicopter where we are is because the fisheries and oceans experiments are quite sensitive to noise and vibration,”’ he said. Replacement cost of the Kits base to its former configura- tion is estimated at approxi- mately $8.3 million. While Kits coast guard rescue specialist Will Hopper fought the July 7 fire that destroyed the Kits base he thought about the orphaned Expo-vintage McBarge floating index @ Horoscopes Wi Lifestyles S§ Miss Manners Second Class Registration Number 3885 restaurant moored in False Creek on the other side of Burrard Bridge. : “} thought that’s a great idea — to buy McBarge and convert it into a new Kits coast guard base. The place looked really neat and it fit right into the area.”’ Added Schellenberg, ‘‘And for a matter of a couple of hundred thousand dollars, you could probably renovate it.”’ Schellenberg misses the in- teraction with the public his czew had at its former location. “The boating public doesn’t get to see us anymore. We don’t have the profile here — we're locked away. At the old Kitsilano base we saw about 10,000 people a year — school tours, open houses, during Sea Festival, the children’s Christmas cruise, we had so many boaters in False Creek dropping by for information and courtesy examinations — we're not there anymore.’’ The Kits base, an operation that began as a Second World War airforce crash-boat base, was the country’s busiest search and rescue base before it went up in flames. Meanwhile the West Van- couver base requires a floating breakwater to shelter coast guard boats now exposed to southern, southeastern and eastern winter winds. Schellenberg estimates a breakwater weculd take about two months to build. If a storm sets in before a breakwater is built, the crew will be on the move again. “Storms can last for two or three days here, which means that we would be on board the boat for that length of time. We would have to stay on board to monitor the radio and would shift all boats to either Fisherman’s Cove or Horse- shoe Bay,’’ he said. Monday, periods of rain, Tuesday cloudy with showers, Highs 11°C, . Lows 5°C. Sunday, October 27, 1991 — North Shore News - 3 ‘Truck seized in wild WV police chase Woman flees after alleged attempt to use stolen card A FAILED transaction at a Park Royal department store Oct. 18 culminated in tense moments on Lions Gate Bridge when a fleeing female suspect commandeered a passing truck and held the driver at knife point. According to a West Vancouver Police spokesman, the incident began at approximately 4 p.m. when a woman attempted to use a stolen credit card to purchase three $50 gift certificates at the Bay store. A routine check iden- tified the card as stolen. A security officer approached the suspect. The woman allegedly told hin. that her identification was in her car and she proceeded to leave the store. Meanwhile a man intervened on her behalf, telling the guard tha: he would stay with the security officer while the woman went to the car. Store staff followed the woman. Attempts to stop her were unsuc- cessful and she rode off in a car driven. by another woman. The security officer and a_ store employee pursued the vehicle, which eventually stopped on Pipeline Road beneath the Lions Gate Bridge. The security guard attempted to apprehend the suspect. She allegedly bit him in the left forearm and threatened him with a steak knife that had a six-inch- tong serrated blade. The guard backed off. According to the police, the woman continued to the bridge deck where she stopped a man driving a truck, jumped into the By Michael Becker News Reporter vehicle, allegedly held the driver at knife point and demanded that he drive on. The West Vancouver Police had by this time contained the area. A respohding officer found that the woman had locked the doors of the truck stopped on the bridge. He broke through the passenger window, disarmed and arrested the suspect. The abducted driver was unharnied. Meanwhile at approximately - 4:30 p.m., the man who had left. the scene at the Bay was spotted by police near Clyde Avenue and Taylor Way. The police arrested him after a brief foot chase. Maureen Ann Sheppard, 24, of Surrey, faces nine weapon, theft, possession of stolen property and unlawful confinement related charges. Maureen Feiler, 38, of Surrey, faces a charge of driving while prohibited. Marvin Gene Cavanagh, 42, of Surrey, faces two charges of possession of stolen property. As a result of the investigation police recovered licence plates stolen from’ New Westminster. Competition challenge delayed to new year Hearing on sale of News to reconvene in January THE SOUTHAM Newspaper Group (SNG) must wait un- til the new year to complete its opposition of a federal competition bureau order to sell.the North Shore News, the Vancouver Courier and the Real Estate Weekly chain. SNG and the bureau have been before the federal competition tri- bunal at Vancouver Federal Court since Sept. 4. ' The hearing, which ran for its scheduled eight weeks, was recess- ed on Friday until Jan. 13, 1992 because Tribunal members have prior commitments and a number of witnesses have yet to testify. The hearing stems from a May 1990 series of deals in which SNG took a 63% controlling interest in Lower Mainland Publishing Ltd., 3 holding company for a group of community and real estate news- papers, including the Courier and the Real Estate Weekly. In January 1989, SNG purchas- ed 49% of the North Shore News. SNG acquired the remaining 51% of the News in February of this year. The bureau contends that SNG, which also owns the Vancouver Sun and Province through its sub- sidiary Pacific Press, wili substan- ually lessen or prevent competi- tion for retail advertising on the North Shore and the west side of Vancouver through its ownership of the News and the Courier. By Bob Mackin Jr. Contributing Writer The bureau also alleges that ownership of the Real Estate Weekly chain will substantially lessen or prevent competition for. residential real estate advertising in the Lower Mainland. But lawyers for SNG used tes- timony by retailers and advertising executives to show that daily and community newspapers compete amongst themselves for some of the same advertisers, but also face competition from other media like radio, TV, direct mail, Yellow Pages and outdoor signs. LMPL chairman and Montreal Gazette publisher David Perks testified Oct. 16 that SNG made the acquisitions to safeguard the dailies’ market share, which had fallen substantially with the rise of community newspapers. Perks also said Pacific Press caused SNG a great deal of con- cern because of its high-cost, low-profit nature and volatile labor situation.