6 - Friday, O>cember 19, 1997 - North Shore News north shore news VIEWPOINT Mass transit meaning of public transit seems to be getting lost. In fast week’s tempest between a bus driver and a mother of a two-year-old boy, there was, of course, two differ- ent versions of the story. The mother said the driver told her to shut her kid up or get off the Bus. _ The driver said he suggested that the woman stay behind to settle the chiid and get the next bus in 12 minutes. Either way, something’s wrong. Take the driver’s suggestion. Leave a tired and hungry toddler and his mother behind because passengers can’t stand the crying. Nice. Next, will a little old lady be asked to stay behind because she might take too long to get on the bus and keep the passengers from appointments? Should boisterous teenagers be dress funny, speak weirdly and might upset sensibilities? Does a smelly old man get sprayed with perfume before boarding? No. It would be nice if everyone were a model of civility, but buses are public transit. You pay your money and get on, assuming you don’t break any laws. Yes, the child might have been loud. Yes, people might have been uncomfortable. But that child had every right to be on the bus. Not everybody is between the ages of 18 and 65. Some people will be joud, slow, smelly, old or disabled. They alf need a ride and public transit should provide it. It’s not a plastic world. denied entry to buses because they Yet. THE North Shore News Free Speech Defence . Fund keeps on growing. To press time Thursday, donations from over 2,059 News readers and free speech supporters to the fund stood at $145,397. Legal fees expended thus far by the News have already exceeded $200,000. All funds received will help defray the legal costs faced by the News in its battle with the Human Rights Tribunal over 2 complaint laid against the news- paper and its columnist Doug Collins by the Canadian Jewish Congress. The hearing into the matter, which began on May.2%, concluded on June 27. The decision from tribunal chairman Nitya lyer was hanced down on Nov. 12. Full coverage of the decision appeared in the Nov. 14 News. lyer found that Collins’ column was not hateful, but also ruted that, while the legislation under which the News was prosecuted infringes upon the Charter’s guarantee of free expression, it was constitutionally valid. Extra copies of the News’ Free Speech Supplement, which was originally published in the Aug. 20 News, are available at the News offices. Another excerpt from the thousands of respondents to the cause: 900 “It seems to me that free speech and personal free- dom definitely are being forbidden, not only in Canada, but also in the U.S.A. ... Keep up the battle. It is for all mankind you struggle. Without free speech and personal freedom we become cattle.” - —~ Edward J. Sytes of Fredericksburg, Texas aa Donations to the fund can be sent to: 1139 Lonsdale Ave., North Vancouver, V7M 2H4. Cheques should be made out to the North Shore News Free Speech Defence Fund. — trenshaw@direct.ca Norte Shore dew, tounsied mn 1969 25 an (dependent suburban newspaper 3nd quabted under Schedule 111, Paragraph 121 of the ‘Excise Tax Act, is published each Wesnesday, Friday and Sunday by North Shose Free Press ‘Und. and distributed to every duor on the North Our courts cook up Pizza Canada A judge is a law student who marks his own papers. — H.L. Mencken MENCKEN, thou shouldst be living at this hour, and in Canada, not in Baltimore, U.S.A. Because here the Very Top Nine Law Students in Ortawa decided last week that the Top Law Students in B.C. were wrong, they having only partly agreed with the Top B.C. Supreme Court Law Student, Mr. Justice Allan MacEachern ~~ in legal parlance, the mere “trial judge” — who J think had largely got it right after 374 punishing days of hearing evidence in the Gitxksan- Wer’suwet’en case claiming an area the size of Nova Scotia. Nope. MacEachern was wrong. You could almost hear the sneer in the Supreme Court of Canada judgment fast week as the good folks in Ottawa set to rights British Columbia’s wicked mistakes. Ironic, that. You see, as some authori- tes will quietly say, young B.C."s failure to negotiate treaties with the native people actually had an element of enlightenment — because such treaties, like the ones signed in the distant past in older provinces, were essentially military treaties imposed by the victors on the van- quished. But B.C. came into the picture later. The European settlers here did not fight the Indians. They did not, as the French and British did on the eastern seaboard, Comptr 905-2131 (133) Photography Manager Classified Manager 985-2131 (168) 906-6222 (282) exploit (or be exploited by) Indian tribes in their old quarrels with other tribes. There was nothing like Britain’s granting of land in Canada to the Iroquois for their loyalty in opposing the upstart American colonists’ revolution, and .«« to compensate for loss of their homelands in upper New York. Sorry about that litte les- son. The fact is that Europeans took over British Columbia without bloodshed. That wasn’t sweet, fair or legal of them, as we now accept — injecting the sensitivi- ties of the i290s into the consciousness of the 1850s. (What cheap fun for the living — arrogantly judging the dead.) Ironically, they passed the problem of aboriginal rights and tide along to us. Bur that was then, and this is now. And what is this now? Now is virtually back to square one. Now is rejection of MacEachern’s ruling that aboriginal title had been extinguished at the time of colonial settlement. Now is more horrendous legal bills. Now is not even the faintest glimmer of the light ar the end of the runnel. And now is a new factor: Ortawa’s Supreme Court has not only acknow!- edged aboriginal title and the Indians’ right to be consulted about use of their traditional lands; it has created an entirely new order of testimony — oral evidence, the stories passed on for generations by Indians, who of course had no written lan- guages. MacEachern rejected such testi- mony. My interpretation is that the court says LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Letters must include your name, full address & telephone number. VIA e-mail trenshaw @ direct.ca aller Managing Editor 985-2131 (116) Entire contents © 1997 North Shore Free Press Ltd. All rights reserved. we have avo levels of citizenship at the most soicmn level of the Canadian polity: The witness who has to produce docu- mentary evidence in court, and the citizen who only has to recall parental stories, This in a legal system that has largely rejected the goofy concept of “recovered memory,” or, as its critics called it, false memory syndrome — “memorics” of childhood abuse that were largely implant- ed in the minds of troubled people by psy- chologists with an agenda. But I really regret it if what 'm writing seems unkind to the Indian people. I believe chat the court decision widens the between aboriginal and other e, mt disaster for all Canadians, an expansion of what I call affirmative apartheid. We are ensuring that strained relations will continue berween the Indian peopie and the ROBC (Rest of British Columbia) for as long as the sun shall rise and the grass shall grow. (But also among Indian tribes. The p d Nisga’a treaty gives rights to the Nisga‘a withheld from other bands; three bands claim rights to the Vancouver area.) And if these unique tights af the First Nations people are enshrined, what barriers, legal or logical, remain against the claims of the Second Nation — another separate and unique people with a vividly remembered past, the Quebecois? How then can Jacques Parizeau’s fulminations against “the eth- nics” be dismissed as racist rantings? I sadly believe the soft thud you've just heard is the collapse of federalist Canada’s arguments against Quebec separatism, and the dawning of a Pizza Canada of quarrel- ing races and bitterly disputed turf. I wish I could have produced a merrier Christmas column. HOWECOTREACHEUS! Adveinistration 995-2131 Disptay Advertising 990-0511 985-6982 905-6222 985-2131 986-1337 985-1435 985-2104 985-2131 (114) Andrew McLredie - Sports/Coramunity Editor 985-213¢ (147)