6 - Sunday, November 24, 1985 —- North Shore News Editorial Page __ News Viewpoint Final warning G marten up within five years or hand over your whole business to the private sec- tor. That will be the ultimatum to Canada Post if Ottawa accepts the advice of the government committee charged with pro- bing the national disgrace that our postal system has become. The committee's report is encouraging news for the community newspaj:2r industry which (inclvding this paper) is being robbed by Can- Post of millions of dollars in advertising revenue. Ever since it was established, the Crown cor- poration has been vigorously promoting third- class unaddressed householder mail (‘‘admail’’) at artificially low rates, thus luring away from newspapers the flyers that provide up to 30% of their revenues. This economic damage threatens the existence of many community papers employing thousands of people throughout Canada. Adding insult to injury, the robbery is be- ing bankrollted by the taxpayers, including the injured papers themselves. Householder ‘‘admail’? now comprises 27% of CanPost’s total mail volume, yet generates only 5.4% of the cozporation’s revenue. This losing proposition is obviously being subsidized by revenue from first and second-class mail — to the detriment of those services — and behind that by the taxpayer who picks up the annual tab.of hundreds of millions for the corpora- tion’s overall deficit. At the very least, CanPost should be forced to compete fairly with newspapers by charg- ing rates that cover the true cost of delivering **admail’’. Far better from the viewpoint of its suffer- ing first-class users would be for CanPost to abandon ‘‘admail’’ entirely and get back to its primary job of moving REAL mail fast and dependably from A to B. For its long neglect of that job the final war- ning now looms. a Prize word! Pe Selnar, Vancouver’s ‘‘Bachelor’’ of the Year, will have to wait until his divorce comes through in January - before collecting his prizes, but. he’s already won the distinction of changing the English - Janguage. Embarrassed Pageant promoters have now decided a bacheler is someone ‘eligible for marriage’. So never again trust that stuffy old Oxford dictionary that defines a bachelor as an ‘“‘unmarried man’’ — period! ‘THE VOICE OF NORTH AND WEST VANCOUVER Display Advertising 980-0511 Classitied Advertising 986-6222 Ff Newsroom 985-2131 : ‘ Circulation 986-1337 DAY» WEONKESDAY + FRinay Subscriptions 986-1337 4139 Lonsdale Ave., North Vancouver, B.C. V7M 2H4 publisher: Peter Speck advertising director operations mgr. Berni Hilliard Linda Stewart editor-in-chief managing editor Noel Wright Nancy Weathertey North Shore News, founded in 1969 as an independent suburban newspaper and qualitied under Schedule lit, Part ti, Paragraph ill of the Excise Tax Act, is published each Wednesday, Friday and Sunday by North Shore Free Press Lid and disitibuted to every door on the North Shore Second Class Mail Regisiration Number 3885. Entire contents «= 1985 North Shore Free Press Lid. AW nights reserved Member of the B.C. Press Council =P 56,245 (average, Wednesday SDA DIVISION Friday & Sunday) THIS PAPER IS RECYCLABLE ERNEST HEMINGWAY never met him, more’s the pi- ty. It might have left us with yet another literary master- piece. He’s Hemingway's kind of guy. He built a lumber empire over half a lifetime and saw it almost wiped out by fire in hours. A year later he was building a second equally suc- cessful lumber empire. He converted a former rum- running schooner into the world’s first self-loading barge. As a towboat operator, he invented a raft that sharp- ly reduced losses of logs at sea. As a wartime construction boss, he devised new butldoz- ing methods to build fighter plane airfields in record time. As an hotelier, he turned an Hawaiian island into a Cana- dian tourist mecca. As a politi- cian, he exposed high-level in- dustrial bribery that sent a cabinet minister (a jail for five years. Today this senior West Van gentleman, born in a miner’s cabin in the Yukon, gets much of his fun from entertaining deserving groups aboard the “Cape Beale’? — a vintage 70 ft. fishboat which he’s loving- ly remodelled with his own hands into a luxury cruiser. He skippers it with the nimble ease of a 20-year-old. This Thursday (Nov. 28) Gordon Gibson Sr, — ‘Bull of the Woods”’ in his auto- biography — celebrates his Bist birthday. Many happy returns of the day, Gordon. If only Ernest were still around to drop by with his notebook...! x * * VIDEOTAPE will be the material used for a monument during his lifetime to West Van’s Roland Dibnah. One of the immortal ‘Few’? who won the 1940 Battle of Britain against the overwhelming odds of Hitler’s Luftwaffe, Squadron Leader Dibnah was featured (you may recall) in a Remembrance Day column two weeks ago by colleague Doug Collins. Today’s item is that Vancouver video pro- ducer Peter Kellington, with top cinematographer David Geddes, will make a TV docu- mentary on ‘‘Dib’’, to be shot at his and wife Frankie’s West Van home, and on 1940 battleground locations in Noel Wright e sunday brunch e NEWS photo Noel Wright “RIGHT OR WRONG, I'm still the Skipper!’ ... stripe- shirted Gordon Gibson Sr. keeps an eye on his helmsman while entertaining guests aboard his cruiser ‘‘Cape Beale'’. England and Europe. We need more such monuments to Canada’s top often unsung heroes. xk ke *“CODSWALLOP” may be your for psychic phenomena and occultism, as it once was with North Van's Geof Gray- Cobb, star of the CBC-TV show ‘Beyond Reason’’. Originally a no-nonsense - journalist, he became fascinated with the occult while researching an article for “*Midnight’’ magazine. Discovering in himself talents he once dismissed as phoney, he studied tarot cards and palmistry, has since published several parapsychology books and likes‘to help others ex- plore hidden strength in them- selves to cope with. life’s pressures and problems. Geof the convert was scheduled to HITHER AND YON: From photo submitted SOMETHING SPECIAL for Christmas craft shoppers ... West Van fabric artist Sybille Zaslove displays her painted silk. speak at 7 p.m. Tuesday (Nov. 26) in Lynn Valley Library about ‘‘Miracles for Fun and Profit’’, but has had to cancel due to illness. The event will be rescheduled for a later date. xk k OO CLEAN UP your act, West Van, is the unspoken message from Cubmaster Robert Pellatt. On the evening of Nov. 7 his 3rd West Van Cubs walked along Marine from 21st to 13th, filling 35 plastic bags with garbage from both sides, including litter from the sidewalks and walkways of businesses. ‘‘It was surprising that our community had that much garbage polluting the streets of our beautiful home,’’ comments Mr, Pellat mildly. { can think of other comments — not all of them fit for a family newspaper! Photo submitted MUSIC JN OUR SCHOOLS ... (1 to r) Melloyds Rupert Grant, Michael Viens, Cameron Grant and John Payre prepare for a date with Carson Graham. India with love comes the latest exhibition by Canada’s leading impressionist painter, Daniel Izzard of West Van, who spent two summer months there committing the people and life of the sub- continent to his canvas. To be opened by Indian Vice-Consul Gurinder Singh, it runs from next Thursday (Nov.28) to Dec. 4 at the Harrison Gailery, South Park Royal ... Showcase feature at the up- coming Circle Craft Christmas Market (Dec. 3-22) on Gran- ville Island are striking painted sitks by West Van fabric artist Sybille Zaslove ... The Melloyds vocal quartet of John Payne, Michael Viens, Rupert Grant and Cameron Grant — themselves a product of music in secondary educa- tion — wind up their 1985 ‘Music in our Schools” con- cert tour next Friday (Nov. 29) at Carson Graham. Ticket info 688-6965 ... That same evening San Francisco astrologer Milo Kovar, well known to North Shore “star science”’ buffs from his annual visits, lectures at 7 p.m. in the International Plaza ... And apologies to Richard Steele (“give Stantey Park to Van- couver for its birthday’’) whose phone number our busy gremlins screwed up in last Sunday’s BRUNCH. His cor- rect number is 988-7462. xk &k WRIGHT OR WRONG: As soon as the second person ap- peared on earth, the rights of the first were halved. So divide YOUR rights by today’s total population and that explains everything. ¥ . DANIEL IZZARD ... India with love. GEOF GRAY-COBB hidden strengths. _ MILO KOVA science update.