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Editor-in-Chief .

Peter Speck

Display Advertising 980-0511
Noel Wright

Classified Advertising 986-6222

Newsroom 985-2131 ;

Distribution 986-1337 Managing Editor .. .. Barrett Fisher

Subscriptions 986-1337 Advertising Director. . _ Linda Stewart

<a = - North Shore News, founded in 1959 a5 an independent SLUuTban newspaper and qualified under Schedule Ii, Paragrapt Il of the
SUNDAY + WEONESDAY « FRIDAY Lecite Tas Act ts Dublshed @ach Wednesday, Friday and Sunday by Morin Shore Free Fress Lid and distnbutted tp avery dour on
4139 Lonsdale Ave. thay youn Shore. Second Class Mail Registration Number 3885 Subscrptions North and West Vancouver, $25 per year Malling tates

. avadadle on request Subenissins are welcome Dut we Cannot accept tenponsibelity f Hicited ma ny

North Vancouver, B.C. V7M 2H4 fra getures amen should be sccompaned by a stamped, aadtessed etesloge nn Un vonetied matenal mcucig manusene

Ambulance alert
or the Vander Zalm government and many other
British Columbians ‘‘privatization’’ now has the
same aura as motherhood.

Rightly so in most cases. In a free-enterprise
economy it’s not the job of government to compete in
the marketplace with private business.

The latter’s profit motive normally encourages effi-
ciency — often lowering prices and improving service
for the customer — as well as relieving taxpayers of a
liability. Thus, the theory.

Most times it works, but not EVERY time. Free
enterprise has its failures, too — as witness BCRIC
and Dome Petroleum. Victoria took: over the ferry
system because the private secto: didn’t deliver. Con-
versely, ICBC has become a success story, and the Li-
quor Distribution Branch rates as a model of profit-
oriented marketing efficiency.

Rumored (so far without denial) to be on the
privatization list is the provincial ambulance service. If
it is, the Premier should think again. Hard.

The service, manned by highly trained paramedics
who’ve saved untold lives in its 13 years of existence, is
widely envied as the best on the continent.

It’s nonsense to assume that ambulances operated
for profit would avoid the abuses of the bad old pre-

_1974 days — high, widely varying user fees; inade-
quately trained attendants (if trained at all); ill-equip-
ped vehicles; patients dunned for money on the way to
emergency; drivers who waited for a full load before

Entire contents ©
1987 North Shore
Free Press Ltd. All
rights reserved.

58,489 (average, Wednesday bom
Friday & Sunday) SoA" pvision

delivering to hospital. In business a buck is a buck.

Tell your MUA this is one clock that CAN’T be put
back without risking human lives. Victoria should
confirm without delay that its ambulance service stays.

KEEPING YOUR COOL, using your wits and a nose for
news form the personal stock-in-trade of a good TV cam-
eraman. Plus camera-craft and an artist’s eye.

An outstanding combination of
all five has brovght North Van’s
Doug Baird, a seasoned CBC
NewsCentre cameraman, the
prestigious Roy Tash News Film
Award for an unforgettable Sun-
day’s work last January. At 8:15
a.m. he was called out to cover a
hostage-taking in the Kingsway-
Boundary area. f

A terrifying seven-hour standoff
followed between police and a
distraught estranged father holding
a gun to the head of his 10-
month-old son. When the father
eventually carried the child. out of
the house there was a struggle for
the gun, with two shots fired and
the child rescued unharmed after
being dropped to the ground.
From a vantage point in a
neighbor’s house, under difficult
and dangerous conditions, Doug

captured the entire drama in ex-
clusive video pictures. They were
chosen for the trophy from over 30
Canadian entries.

Doug’s other recent credits in-
clude the Los Angeles Olympics,
Expo 86, Gzowski & Co., Venture,
Midday and Marketplace. For the
professional he is, Sunday,
January 4, 1987, was all in the
day’s work. :

ees

CLANSMEN AWAKE! Did you
know that if your name is White,
Whyte, Biack, Blackie, Brown,
Brownie, Lamb, Luke, Luck, For-
syth, Douglas or Turner, you’re a
member of the Clan Lamont —
one of the oldest in Scotland? In
that case the newly formed Cana-
dian Clan Lamont Scciety urges
you to contact it and make

‘photo submitted

AN UNFORGETTABLE SUNDAY...North Van's award-winning TV

“eye’’, Doug Baird.

Noel Wright

yourself (for $16) an honest La-
mont in time for this year’s Inter-
national Gathering of the Clans in
Nova Scotia. Write to membership
chairman Angus MacKaracher
(yes, he’s a Lamont too!), 159

» Union St., Apt.12, Bedford, N.S.
B4A 2B8 — and get yourself
measured for a kilt.

nso

WRAP-UP: Making sure of Gold-
en Anniversary sunshine, former
long-time North Van_ residents
Bruce and Catherine Carmichael,
both 80, celebrated their ‘‘50th’’
during a recent six-month vacation
in Australia at the home of daugh-
ter and son-in-law Lynn and
George Cordell of Coffs Harbour,
N.S.W. ... St. Clement’s Anglican

@ Sunday brunch ©@

{

Church is tooting its publicity horn
loudly in next Saturday’s Lynn
Valley Days parade, reports Hugh -
Leggatt. Some 60 car-borne pa-
rishioners will be ‘joining the
parade, while youth group
members work the crowd with en-
try forms for a contest to win a
ride to church in Bill Fane’s 1936
Rolls Royce ... And Rick Hansen
is the latest subject of one of
Canada’s top artists. West Van’s
Dasiel Izzard has contributed
drawings of the Man in Motion for
a United Way brochure.

ae
WRIGHT OR WRONG: As Mark
Twain said, get your facts first and

then you can distort them as much
as you please.

photo submitted

MAKING SURE DOWN UNDER...Sun-loving ‘‘Golden’’ celebrants

Bruce and Catherine Carmichael.

NEWS photo Terry Peters

“THANKS FOR BEING THERE!”’...Dave Tomlinson (r) of the Army, Navy and Airs Force Vets presents
North Van ambulance unit chief Tim Jones (1) with hand-held radios donated by the AN&AFV and Fraternal
Order of Eagles 2638. Looking on, Millie Turvey of the Eagles and Reno Gatto of the Vets.

- Terror all in the day's work

‘Dear Editor:

_ | admire Mary Collins and her”
committee on: the irradiation of
food for their good old-fashioned
common sense and guts. The
committee headed by Mrs. Collins
wants a moratorium on the process
termed ‘‘food irradiation”’ so that
it can be determined whether it is
safe. Rather than plunge ahead in-
to a technology that would yield
revenue for the atomic energy
department of government (a
department of dubious value to the
taxpayers), she has placed health
concerns above financial concerns.
Her committee will be attacked by
the ‘‘eminent scientists” and people
with a vested interest in the pro-
cess. These people will scoff wt
Mrs. Collins’ safety concerns and
try and discredit her and the com-
mittee. But on analysis of this so-
called safe process, why do the
concrete walls of buildings housing
it have to be six feet thick? Surely
the bad wolf won’t huff and
puff and blow that strange little
building down with its ‘‘safe’’ little
pile of Cobalt 60 housed in it. The
supporters of this weird little tech-
nology are the same types of peo-
ple that tell you how safe X-rays
are as they place a lead shield over
you and then run out of the room
to take the picture. That’s another
strange little ‘safe’? process.

We should support Mary Collins
and her committee and question
this technology further. After all,
the eminent scientists and vested
interest groups against the com-
mittee are the same _ illustrious
types that advocated fluoroscopes
(X-rays) in shoe stores, close
observation of nuclear detonations

See Science
Page 7