Bob Hunter ® stricily personal ® IT USED to be that there was The Family Album. It was a special object, kept in a special place, and only brought out, as a rule, on special occa- sions. It had thick black paper and a cover so heavy the only way to open it was slowly, as though lif- ting a great lid on to a storehouse of treasures. The album used to be probably the family’s most important belonging. It told you, after all, who belonged. It was, in fact, a true anthropological record. I'm quite Jucky. I’ve got three family albums: my father’s, his; father's, and my mother’s. “Until the invention of the camera, only the very powerful could | afford portraits.”” It is the album bequeathed from Grandpa that is the most fascinating and infuriating, of course. With my father’ gone and his surviving brothers and sisters liv- ing far away, it, is impossible for me to identify , any of. the people in the pictures. They deserve their’ obscurity, of course.,.Of the hundreds of sepia photographs that survive, none have any names written on them. None! It is’ as though nobody ex- pected the photographs to outlast everyoné. With , no experience themselves of how long pictures could endure, they probably ex- i pected the stuff to turn to dust — like them. ‘ ‘ Staring at. their faces, all I j know is that they are my ancestors, / Some of ;the pictures go back to the 1890s. There is one face that quite lit- erally haunts me. It is the nameless’ face of the man who appears;on the first page of the album. He looks so much like me it is almost like looking at a mir- ror. / } It turns out that, physically at any rate, I] am a genetic clone of someone now long dead. That gives me a good warm feeling. It makes me feel that I do after all belong to an identifiable stream of humanity. Until the invention of the cam- era, only the very powerful could /afford portraits. It was a rare thing for. commoners to be painted. The importance of documenting a_ king’s lineage through- likenesses probably predates writing. Now we have all acquired roy- You can own a tax shelter with 1987/88 it's too late, tax deductions to 564,000, an immediate $7,000 tax credit, and § weeks of personal use in the Caribbean or British Columbia. And you get to choose from 30, 35, 38 or.41 foot.C&C's. ° Vancouver V6H 3W7, alty’s once-exclusive handle on immortality. We can study ourselves, maybe even learn from our progenitors’ mistakes. In’ my grandfather’s — entire album, I note, there isn’t a single snapshot. Every picture was taken in a studio. People still went to the camera. My father’s album, which begins in 1921, is strikingly dif- j ferent. Someone in the family had bought a camera by then. Maybe they all pooled in. Whatever, the camera has been dragged home. From here on, it will be carted to picnics and along on holidays, as it becomes the most popular non-essential invention of all time. Of course, with only one cam- era in the entire family, a lot of group shots got taken. 1 guess we are at a similar juncture in terms of video cam- eras today. / Instead of there being a Family Album, there is a Family Video Library. The video home camera has only been around for three years, yet we have already accumulated a dozen tapes. Sharing the same camera, my wife’s folks have ac- cumulated another dozen, at least, themselves. A few tapes have been handed out as gifts. There are weddings and Christmases and birthday parties | and Easter egg hunts and boat trips and general hippity-hopp- ing-about hither and yon, many long pans and slow zooms, a lot of people talking all at once into the mike. I wouldn’t think of erasing a second of it, no matter how banal. If nothing else, I’m sure that someday the slime-guys from Alpha Centauri will be poking through the ruins of Earth and find this one surviving family video library, and on this they’ll have to base their analysis of human history. The theory is that on family gatherings, I should be able to herd squads of relatives into the TY room and leave them gawk- ing at tapes of themselves and the kids and us all at last year’s bash, and the year before, and the year before that. | In fact, I'd have to leave them there all day, just to catch up. But you can’t leave relatives {in L the TV room that long. You have to try harder than that, if you?re going to be nice. We're starting to need a Fami- ly Video Library Editor. That’s something The Fainily Album never needed. Boy, a thousand years from now, are we ever going to have a lot of video tape! I don’t envy | those guys from Alpha Centauri. There’s a lot of raw material here to go through... Call us before (604)669-3361, or send us your business card for a brochure, 181 Maritime Mews, WV needs more seniors housing A WEST Vancouver task force has identified subsidized housing for needy seniors as the most critical housing issue facing the municipality’s politicians. In its preliminary report, tne housing task force urged council to begin assessing suitable sites for a seniors’ project because “the de- mand is immediate.’* The report calls for a ‘‘modest’’ ; seniors housing project of 40 10 60 units ideally with a maximum building height similar to surrounding uses. Graham Stallard, Policy Planner for West Vancouver, said a project with 40 to 60 units would probably clear up about a third of the pres- ent problem. He estimated in an ‘‘inspired guess’’ that about 250 needy seniors are on waiting lists for sub- sidized housing. But he said about 1,000 seniors ‘‘are in a very tight spot’? because they live on less than $12,000 yearly and use one third of their income for rent. ‘We could probably clear up the immediate problem. with three pro- jects on nine single-family lots,”’ Stallard said, adding the task force recommended that size project because it is the minimum that is economically feasible. According to a recent Greater Vancouver Regional District study the number of people over 65 will rise significantly over the next two decades. In West Vancouver, according to the study, the number of people over 65 will increase by 25 per cent by 2001, while the number of peo- ple over 85 will increase by 50 per cent over the same period. Saas By KAREN GRAM Contribunne Writer The prospect of seniors housing has raised the ire of many West Vancouver residents recently because they fear such projects are “the thin eage of the wedge’’ of multi-family dwellings in single- family areas. A project proposed by the West Vancouver United Church was recently rejected by council because it was ‘too bulky’’, stan- ding four storeys high on two lots. Stallard said subsidized housing is problematic because developers cannot afford the inflated prices of apartment-zoned land. “The only way is to buy single- family zoned land and get it rezoned,’’ he said. But he hastened to add that although the problem 12 Exposures $395 Process & Prints all inclusive is significant, residents will not be overwhelmed by condominiums. “It's three or four projects, not 40,"" he said. TREATS specializes Pr the manufacture and sales of a delicious variety of high volume, rapid ternover, baked specialties and frozen delights. APPLICATIONS are now being accepted for a Bakery-Cafe Franchise to be focated in a successful North Shore Shopping Centre. & established reputation with 85 operating stores in Canada & excellent profit potential & nO experience necessary & full training/ongoing assistance For further information regarding this opportunity, call or write Franchise Director: Triadon Investment Group Inc., 1025 Marine Dr., North Vancouver, B.C. v7P 186 (604) 986-9197 Reprints D4° Passport Photo 11 or ae 4 pictures $5.98 same nevatives an ONE HOUR SERVICE 3%x5 4x6 5x7 “oar Disc film any one size Second Set at Time of Developing 12 Ex. 3%x5 | : OBE 4x6 1.98 5x7 2.98 1.98 2.98 3.98 24 Ex. From Same Neg Reprint 1-5 49Cea. 58° ca ' 1,95 \ 36 Ex. 2.98 3.98 4.98 5x7 8x10 11x14 16x20 From Same Neg Reprint 11 & more 24° ea. 3% ea. 49' ea. From Same Neg Reprint 6-10 35° ea. A&' ea 85‘ ea. | | ‘ Enlargements trom 35 mm Film only ~ CUSTOM PRINT 3.75 8.50 13.95 18.95 STANDARD PRINT 1.95 5.47 : + " On Custom Print Choice of matt or gloss paper. Cropping, dodging, color correction available by request 2027 LONSDALE, NORTH VANCOUVER TY OVER 20 YEARS EXPERIENCE 989-3535 .