wee tee beeen ey mista HN SEE pe pe [ ! ‘= : ‘Occasional rain’ and wind Sunday,. showers Monday. “BRASS: 15 on Sunday. ‘Brass and conper shopping WINNERS: A team of blind kowlers took second place in a fournamer?. d ference, a-series of », workshops organized by the 2 North Shore -branch of the ‘United Way’s Children and his. is the ‘message that ‘Ken Low’ delivered in a two- . : dress.to a mixed au-_ Coane nity “School. The speech’ opened the ‘North ‘Shore’s’, first’ youth con- Youth Services Committee . designed to address the. host of ‘problems, facing today's | young people. Workshops dealing with everything from adolescent suicide’ to youth rights were held all day Fri- day at North Vancouver's “YMCA, 440 Hendry:Avenue. Low,‘ ‘from’ the ‘Action Studies Institute of Calgary, NEWS photo Terry Peters : SAM SAYS SO LON After 35: years with the North ‘Vancouver City Fire Department, Assistent Fire Chief, Sam Brisdon, tests the waters of retirement ‘with the fishing rod he was given as a farewell gift by fellow firefighters. Alberta, said that the knowledge explosion now rocking the Western World has thrust a freedom upon society that it as yet does not know how to deal with. - Schools, he ‘said, are ‘‘fac- tories of bureaucracy”’ that teach people only how to take orders in preparation for fac- ‘tory and office occupations. “The problem,’’ he said, 4s that 80 per cent of the jobs ‘we are. now doing will disappear within 20 years. So we have millions of kids in America and Canada desperate for people to tell them what to do."’ As yet, society docs not know what to tell them, he 3 - Sunday, April 21, 1985 - North Shore News ‘HELPERS: 35 A blind MS victim is grateful to volunteers. said, ‘‘the approach of education has been to try and make good sailors by making them good map readers. The problems is, being a good Saiior requires much more.” Today's youth has. therefore been left to sink or swim in’ a sea of world knowledge that is now doubl- ing every eight years. The subsequent confusion among today’s youth over society’s values and where and how they are to test their abilities in order to discover their own powers, he said, has resulted in’ the ‘dramatic rise of teenage drug abuse, suicide, and aimlessness. “Society,’’ said Low, “* is Business......+...22 Entertainment ..... 23 Ufestyles.........35 Mailbox...........7 Sport .....es 00000 19 Travel. .......24..34 increasingly placing teenagers in a caged environment, by eliminating the risks they can take and the responsibilties they are subject to. Teenagers are consequently starved for challenge. Without it and without a way to test their powers, they will fall apart.’’ Low concluded by saying that today’s teenagers are the frontiersmen on what will. be the most exciting period in man’s history. “Human beings have to learn how to do things never done before, they have to create new activities, new oc- cupations. So we need each other more than ever. No one can do it all on his own,’?” ' note ASSISTANT FIRECHIEF RETIRES After 35 years its “THIRTY-FIVE YEARS in the fire prevention business is enough to burn anybody out, but North Vancouver City Assistant Fire Chief, Sam Brisdon, who retired on April !2, has no regrets. ‘| By TIMOTHY RENSHAW “ft has been an extremely rewarding. exciting career,’' he smiles. Firefighting has changed since Brisdon first started, June 4, 1950, everything from its technology and technique to its philosophies and even the fires themselves, “Back then, we had masks, but hardly anyone us- ed them, in fact, if you did you were considered a bit of a pansy. We called some of those old captains ‘smokeaters', because they - just ate the stuff up. But the ‘smoke was cleaner back then,’’says Brisdon. The host of plastics and other synthetic materials that are used in modern home construction, he says, have transformed once tolerable | smoke into potentially lethal gas. As NVCFD’s resident training officer, Brisdon has been responsible for keeping new recruits and the rest of North Vancouver’s firefighting force aware of the latest in such hazards and. the necessary technological solutions. “He’s one of the best training officers in the pro- vince, if not the best,’ says North Vancouver Fire Chief, “of course, he always wore his hat crooked.” Brisdon explains that this peculiarity was the result of his first fire: ‘It was a house fire in the middle of the night. They gave me the hose {time to go fishin and pointed me in the right direction, then turned the water on. The pressure threw me I0 feet forward and ten feet sideways. A gutter from the house flew off in the ac- tion and hit me in the head. I’ve had a crooked hat ever since.” The most spectacular blaze in Brisdon'‘s career, however, was the ene that levelled the Burrard Terminal Grain Elevator, October 3, 1975. Firefighting, says Brisdon, is much more a profession now than it was when he started. Hazardous chemical spills and the plethora of modern combustible materials have placed ever greater demands on firefighters, he says. “Training is the key. If you. haven't got it, you don't have anything.”* Brisdon plans to retire to his Sheraton Lake retreat in B.C.’s Caribou country.