JESSICA MAHON, 1, meets a friend at a recent visit to Maplewood Farm in the District of North Vancouver. NO INJURIES AN oat explodes in 18-FOOT pleasure boat exploded, burned to the waterline and sank Friday at about 6 a.m., just after it was filled with gas at the Fisherman’s Cove marina Esso station in West Vancouver. “Flames covered the whole boat,’’ said Esso station attendant Bill Hodgson, who was only a few feet away from the 1973 Las Vegas when it exploded. ‘‘As soon as it happened I turned off the pumps.”’ Two North Vancouver men in the boat jumped to safety after the explosion. The men had just pushed the boat away from the barge and started the 120-horsepower _ in- By STEPHEN BARRINGTON News Reporter board motor when the explosion occurred, and with prevailing con- ditions, the burning boat drifted farther into the harbor. Using a nearby private pleasure craft, West Vancouver firefighters were attempting to put out the blaze using a portable pump, when the burning boat sank. “In this case they’ were lucky they weren’t tied up (at the gas barge),’’ said West Vancouver Fire Department Lieut. Gerry Mc- Cuaig. ‘Against the gas barge there’s a possibility (of it also cat- ching fire).’” The blaze is now under in- vestigation, and one possible cause of the explosion is a vapor leak, in which leaking gas vapors would have ignited when the engine was started. No details were available to press time Friday on the boat’s condition. Investigators will be unable to examine the boat unless the vessel is raised. Coliform counts close Panocrama DEEP COVE’S Panorama Beach has been closed to public swimming for the second time this year after test results Thursday showed fecal coliform counts again exceeding ac- ceptable public health levels. North Shore senior public health inspector Rick Kwan said Friday fecal coliform had jumped back up to 238 units per 100 millilitres of water. Beaches in the Greater Van- couver Regional District are con- sidered unsafe for swimming if fecal coliform exceeds 200. Panorama was originally closed June 10 after coliform hit 270. The closure lasted 47 days, with col- iform counts rising as high as 600, before the beach was reopened Ju- ly 26 when the count dropped to 130. Kwan said he did not know why the test results had again risen over 200. North Shore Health Department Chiorine treatment From page 1 Geoff Marsh, GVWD assistant superintendent of quality control, said the levels of such pollutants found in North Shore reservoirs “fare all basically nondetec- table...below .1 parts pér billion.”’ Though man-made pollution in the Lower Mainland area has in- creased the natural acidity of area rainfall from 5.5 to 5 on the pH scale, Marsh said it is difficult to determine the effect on local drinking water from acid rain. “But,” he said, ‘‘we don’t have any indication that there is any spillover of unwanted materials (into reservoir water).”’ Marsh said chlozine is added to GVWD water ina .9 parts per mil- lion ratio as a disinfectant against coliform and possible fecal col- iform pollution fram warm-blood- ed animals that frequent the North each again investigators and North Vancouver District engineers have been trying to track down the source of the beach’s pollution since the original closure. Panorama was also closed to public swimming in 1985 and 1986. Following saturation water testing of Deep Cove harbor last month, investigators hit coliform readings ranging up to 5,000 from two creeks and a storm sewer feeding into the west side of the harbor. Investigation of that pollution continues. 3 - Sunday, August 21, 1988 - North Shore News reunites mom and daughter ‘“¥ DIDN’T know you were lost,’’ an old girlfriend kidd- ed Carol Taphorn during a long-distance telephone con- versation. A West Vancouver resident, the friend had seeu an article in the North Shore News stating the Red Cross was looking for Carol Anne Bright, born in Somerset, England, in 1940, and at one time a student in West Van- couver, As girls, the two women had been friends at West Vancouver Senior High School, and had kept in touch, even when Carol Taphorn, nee Bright, moved to Quesnel and then Williams Lake. This phone ca!’ was one of many events that ultimately con- nected Taphorn with a family member she had sot seen or heard from in 42 years — her mother. As described in the March 11 News article, the International Red Cross operates a Tracing and Family Reunion program that aids immediate family members who have become separated by war, interna? conflict or natural or man-made disaster. With af- filiated Red Cross and Red Cres- cent societies in 147 countries, the organization is uniquely suited to conduct international searches. Tephorn’s mother, 66, lives in England, and initiated her re- quest through the British Red Cross. The search took just under two years, “The Red Cross kad my bis- thdate wrong. I was born in 1941 (not 1940) so they reached a dead end for a while,” said Taphorn. Taphorn left England in 1946 with her father. Her parents had divorced when she was three years old, and Taphorn’s father, a Vancouverite in England with the Canadian Armed Forces, returned to Canada with his daughter and settled in West Vancouver. Taphorn never had contact with her mother again. ‘‘I only knew what my father told me, and that was not a lot,” she said. Her father remarried when she was 10, She attended Hollyburn Elementary and West Vancouver junior and senior hugh schools. In 4957 Taphorn married and mov- ed with her husband to Quesnel and Williams Lake. “Tf as a teenager I was mad at my parents, | would think: ‘I’m going to find my reat mother and go and live with her,’’’ said for drinking water Shore watershed areas. The level, he said, is similar to or below chlorine ratios used in other Canadian municipal water systems. Marsh said bacteria in raw, un- treated water and its possible build up or regeneration within the water system could pose a public health problem. Because chlorine added to North Shore water dissipates to virtually nothing by the time it reaches outlying municipalities, Marsh said the GVWD will in the next week initiate a pilot rechlorination pro- ject in Newton. Under the project, water will be rechlorinated to the same .9 parts per million levels added at North Shore reservoirs. Chioramine, a mixture of chlo- rine and ammonia that has been used as a disinfectant extensively in other North American municipal water supplies, will also be tested as an alternative to straight chlo- rine. By LYNN SACKVILLE News Reporter Taphorn. ‘‘But I hada’t thought of her for a long time. I had come (to terms with it myself.’’ Then ofter ‘‘42 years of silence’ she received a phone call from the Red Cross, who traced her at her mother’s request. “It came like a bolt of light- ning,”’ said Tsphorn. ‘‘It was a great shock. There’s no way of describing it except it’s like someone kicked you in the stom- ach.’’ . Taphorn censicered for tree days before atiowing..the Red Cross to release her whereabouts to her mother. But she said, ‘I didn’t want to become old and regret 1 hadn't.” Shortly afterward she received a letter froim her mother. “And I wrote back with great difficulty. Where do you start? It was a tough letter to write,”’ said Taphorn. ‘It took four or five hours one Sunday morning. I had a stack of paper beside me — you’d think I was trying to write a novel.”’ Mother and daughter are now corresponding regularly. ‘‘Haif of me still doesn’t believe it,” said Taphort. “I found out I’m not an only child. I have some siblings, all living in England.”’ She said it is apparent from the letters that she and her mother are from two different cultures. “4 was born in England, but I'm Canadian. We have a whole dif- ferent way of life here.”’ And she is intrigued to see the hereditary influences this unknown mother has passed down. ‘‘My mother is coming across in her letters very much like my youngest daughter,"’ she said. ‘‘It’lt be interesting to see if I’m like her at all.’’ Taphorn’s mother asked her if she might come to Canada to visit. “I wrote back, yes, if she really wanted to,’’ said Taphorn. Her mother arrives in Vancouver on Oct. 7. ‘7 have no idea at this point what's going to happen. At my age I don’t need a mother any more, but she’s still looking for a daughter. Hopefully we can be friends,’’ she said. defended An attempt will also be made to reduce the natural acidity of North Shore water by adding sodium carbonate at the Newton site. Marsh said chloramine is less ef- fective initially than chlorine alone, but has a longer life and is therefore more effective in the long run. The acidic nature of local water, which is virtually pure rainwater and snowmelt, is corrosive to plumbing.