A6 - Sunday, October 31, 1982 - North Shore News There is little evidence that quasi-political parties at the municipal level add anything to the quality of local government. The shenanigans in the City of Vancouver's council -- with its constantly warring NPA, COPE and TEAM factions -- certainly don’t support such a theory. For that reason the collapse of the leftwing North Vancouver Voters Association as a force contesting the November 20 North Van District council elections is to he welcomed. We would be équally happy to see its recently organized rightwing opponent, the Taxpayers Association for Good Govern- ment: (TAGG) disappear from the scene -- with the disintegration of NoVVA at council level there is no longer any reason for TAGG's existence. The same goes for the West Van Electors—Association;— presently that municipality's only political group with paid membership. Such groups are launched and built up by sincere, well intentioned citizens who, nevertheless, miss the main point about local government. That point being that its policy and legislative options are strictly limited by senior governments. The Municipal Act and the Schools Act confine the independent powers of local governments -- “creatures of the province” -- within tight boundaries. The primary need.at this level, therefore, is to elect competent, cooperative INDIVIDUALS who will each give of his or her best to the prescribed administrative process. In tiny governing bodies of five to seven members partisan political divisions are a dangerous folly. Naked appeal ‘Running for state governior in the current U.S. elections. is') a nude ‘candidate in California and, in Minnesota, an exotic dancer.who wants to make thrice-weekly sex mandatory. Such individualism may be a little TOO naked for Canadian voters -- but we do sometimes wish our own candidates would take their job of appealing to us a little less seriously than they take themselves. THE VOICE OF NOETTH AND WEST VANCOUVER sunday news north shore new 1139 Lonsdale Ave., North Vancouver, B.C. V7M 2H4 ‘ Display Advertising Classified Advertising Newsroom Circulation 980-0511 986-6222 985-2131 986-1337 Publisher Peter Speck Associate Publisher Robert Graham Editor-in-chief Advertising Director Noel Wright Tim Francis Personne! Director Mrs, Berni Hilliard Circulation Director Brian A. Ellis Office Manager Photography Manager Donna Grandy Terry Peters North Shore News, founded in 1969 as an independent community newspaper and qualified under Schedule fil, Part It, Paragraph tl of the Excise Tax Act, ia published each Wednesday and Sunday by North Shore Free Preas Ltd and distributed to every door on the North Shore. Second Class Mail Registration Number 3885 Entire contents © 1982 North Shore Free Presa Ltd. All rights reserved. Subscriptions, North and West Vancouver, $25. per year Mailing rates available on request e No responsibility accepted for unsolicited matenal inctuding manuscripts and pictures which should be accompanied by a slamped addresaad anvelope VERIFIED CIRCULATION 64,543 Wednesday; 64,093 Sunday sm & THIS PAPER IS RECYCLABLE Bane, , CHRISTIAN ANGLE By JAMES A. TAYLOR Her name was Debbie, she said on the telephone. She wanted us to save 25 percent on our grocery bill. A consultant would come around to our house to help us assess our family’s food needs for the next six months. Then, if we wanted to, we could buy all our meat, vegetables, dairy products, fish, chicken, — anything at all that comes packaged and frozen - at substantial discounts and have it delivered right to the house. She sounded = quite pleasant, much more human than most of the people who make these telephone calls for carpet cleaning, driveway paving, and home insulation. Most of them won't admit they're trying to sell you anything. Debbie was honest about what she was doing. And after I volunteered to trot down- stairs, to peek into our freezer to see how full it was, she became quite chatty. I learned that she liked her work. She believes in what she’s doing, and because she’s paid by the hour, she can choose her own working hours to suit herself. Usually, she works evenings A HIGHER. CALL is reportedly the reason why 25-year-old Mark Sager suddenly became the most interesting dropout of the year.last Tuesday. The West Van_ school board chariman (youngest in Canada) was all gung-ho last Monday morning when he dropped by at The News to officially announce his candidature for a West Van aldermanic seat in the November 20 elections, then hied himself off to file his papers by the noon deadline. However, the Munici Act allows candidates (lik buyers of hardware from door-to-door salesmen) a 24- hour cooling-off period. So lo and behold, by noon Tuesday. the word came through that. Mark had pulled out and wouldn't, after all, be running for anything local this year (his school board term expires in three weeks). According to our virtually infallible spies, the Higher Call had come from Premler Bill Bennett's office in the form of a proposal for Mark to spend the months im- mediately ahead rallying the youth of the boondocks to the Socred cause, just in case there should be a spring election. If you're in) your mid- twenties, in good standing with your party dues and your mind has long been sect on Higher Things, that's the -- that's when people are home. “It does mean I can't get involved -in many community activities, ” admitted. But she goes to church, Sunday mornings. — That’s when I did it! I asked her if she had ever been as persuasive, phoning people about her faith, as she was about her frozen f fish fillets. She thought I was some kind of nut, and hung up. Yet why not? The fact is, very few people have ever called me to ask how full my 7 faith is, the way Debbie did about my freezer. No one © she” Yet I rather liked Debbie. Why is it that. for-her,tike—- most-of us,.it’s easier to.talk about fish fillets than faith?. - from my home.congregation has ever offered to come around to my home to assess" my spiritual needs for the next six months. Why not, I wonder? We will) recommend ‘brands of fertilizer, ballpoint. pens, or razor blades to our friends, quite enthusiastically. But we won't-talk about our faith unless we're pretty sure the other person agrees. © Occasionally, of course, some hard sell represen- tatives of a fundamentalist | sect or church will come door to door. I find them as obnoxious, and -their sales spiel as memorized, as the guys who hustle vacuum ae i . gs . Pete ts ~ cleaner demonstrations, (lames A. Taylor is a Toronto writer on religious subjects associated with thé - United Church of Canada.) > yoqghund “LOOK, HOOPER, when I said you were worth your weight in gold, it was only, $50 an ounce.” by Noel Wright kind of invitation you don't answer with “regrets” -- even for the offchance of an aldermanic seat. Do your stuff and there may be an MLA's seat in a crash-proof riding awaiting you ... oe @ NUMBER ONE all the way is West Van Blue Bus driver Aubrey Shellard who makes his last trip today (Sunday) before retiring after more than 37 years service -- and earlier five years as a deckhand on the old West Van [erries. Aubrey holds the No. t shift, is No. 1 in seniority, No. | in safety (35 years without a chargeable accident) and No. 1 in popularity with fellow drivers. The latter have arranged an event in his honor at 14th and Marine when Aubrey steps down from the driver's seat for the last time at 12:25 p.m. this noontide. Stop by if you're passing... eo ¢ @ Senior News photographer Elisworth Dickson is always on the lookout for clegant North Shore pads to feature in his “Home Of The Week” seri If you'd like to show off ,ours (architects and interior designers also please note), give Elsworth a ding at 985-2131. * * # HITHER AND YON; Vancouver's nationally renowned Hadassah Bazaar, this year featuring “Everything Under the Sun” from three giant auctions to food, fashion shows, housewares, handicrafts and B.C. Lions celebrities -- goes this Wednesday = and Thursday at the PNE from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Billed as the biggest two-day bargain in town ... Babysitting ladies of St. Stephens at 22nd and Gordon in West Van are looking for more customers. They charge only $3 to look after your two-year-old upward (including cookies and juice) Wednesdays or Fridays from 9:30 a.m. to 12 noon. For info call Marg Moody at 922-5966 ... Later. when Junior gets to six, you can always send him to the “Compukids” course at West Van's new Computer Learning Centre, 1850 Marine, to master microcomputers. Quite a bit pricier than St. Stephens at $95 for 10 sessions, but then you wouldn't want Johnny to grow up a8 a computer illiterate, would you? one SCRATCHPAD: Parade marshal in charge of West Van Legion's Remembrance Day ceremonies at the cenotaph this year is John Brooks. Tho marching veterans and massed bands assemble at 10:20 a.m. on the Safeway parking lot at loth and Marine .,. Extra busy people this month are Dong Allan and Helen Egleston, municipal clerks respectively of West Van and North Van District — they take on the additional chore of returning officers for the November 20 elections ... Congrats to an old friend of the distant past, West Van's Fred Moonen, MacBlo v-p for govern- mental: affairs, who's just been elected by acclamation as 1982-83 chairman of Simon Fraser University board of governors ... The same again to bright North Van students” Jeffrey Dawson, Susan MacDonald and Deanna Cant, and West Van dittos Vivian Joan McAdam, Anne Morrison and Lesli Jane Speight -- all of them winners of $500 president's regional entrance scholarships at U of Vic ... If you fike to start your day with the special brand of humor dispensed by West Van's Monty McFariene, you can now pick him up 5:30 to 9 a.m. Monday through Saturday at 1470 on the AM dial - that’s the cosmopolitan station CJVB Worlecombe Island homesteader Faye McCrae has nothing but bouquets for the crew of the Bowen Island ferry who recently (and most cheerfully) held up the boat for 25 minutes while their engineers tried to get her stalled car going again And many happy returns (strictly non-political, of course) to birthday boy Mayor Derrick Humphreys of West Van who’ passes another yearstone November 6 ... oe @ WRIGHT OR WRONG: Funny how most people learn more from a good scare than from.good advice.