A2-~- Wednesday, July 14, 1982 - North Shore News by Bob Hunter The quiet cleanup I THINK that the earth’s biosphere may already have been saved, and what we are involved in now is simply a 200-year mop-up operation. That's not to belittle mop- up operations. It’s one thing to shoot a_ rapids. It’s another to bail like crazy afterwards, otherwise you'll still sink. There is a lot of “bailing” to do on this planet. But the crucial environmental turning-point, I believe, has already occurred. This is an odd thing for me to say. I spent the Seventies making my living as a gloom and doom prophet. Somebody once called me “the Chicken Little of Canadian journalism.” One headline-writer put the utlimate nihilistic headline over one of my _ stories: DOOM LOOMS. But now in the Eighties — barring nuclear war, of course — it seems to me that what really looms is a Golden Age unlike anything humanity has yet achieved. I'm not being flip. In the last few years I’ve done more travelling than ever. I've discovered that instead of getting worse, in some very basic ways at key locations the world is getting to be a better place. The first strong hint of this unexpected turnabout came a year ago last April, when I took a boat trip down the River Thames. The Thames, you must appreciate,- was the first great river to be utterly polluted by the Industrial Revolution. Illustrations from that period show a WAR has been declared on North Shore rats by the North Shore Health Department, which has launched a summer-long rodent control project staffed by two students. Problem areas in the three municipalities funding the program will be identified through = neighborhood surveys Infested properties will be inspected and help NOW OPEN garbage-littered waterway across which skeletons of animals and men _ are clambering. . Even back in the mid- Sixties, when I lived in London for a year, the Thames was a foul, chemical stew, biologically dead. Yet by 1981, it had been cleaned up and re-stocked with fish. ['d read about this phenomenon, but didn't really believe it until I found myself being invited to join several other people in a swim. In the Thames! Well, it was great. The water was chill and clean. | - didn't break out in a rash or come down with any hideous diseases. Then, last November, I found myself walking around downtown Tokyo with an old chum who had lived there a decade ago. The sun biazed down on us. The sky was a blue lens, blindingly bright, without a trace of cloud. My friend was astonished. What had happened to the Tokyo he used to know — the one with emergency oxygen tanks on the street comers, where people went about wearing face masks to save themselves from choking to death? There were people still wearing masks, to be sure. But that was because they had colds and didn’t wish to spread their germs. The fact is, Tokyo's will be given in rat-proofing homes. The students, Susan Flathman and Trevor Walden, will place a special poison bait in rodent burrows and tunnels under the supervision of the vector control officer, Bert Engliemann. North Shore residents can also” assist by reporting rodent sightings If rats are famous pollution is essen- tially a thing of the past. Like London, Tokyo has _in- stituted “smokeless zone” regulations. And they have taken hold. I happened to have lived in London during the winter of 1963-64, when the last great Killer Smog struck. Since then, London has cleaned up its atmosphere, too. Clean air in Tokyo? Fish in the Thames? Was this a trend? I wasn’t sure until I landed in New York a short time ago, It had been twenty years since my only previous visit to the planet's greatest city, but the memories of gritty air, awful water and skyscrapers vanishing into the smog were vivid. This time, I noticed that the rooftops of all but the very largest buildings have been covered with trees and gardens. This has had a fantastic softening effect on the urban horizon. Nature has been allowed back in. New York now has something of the aura of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. This part of America, has, indeed, been “greened”. The water was delicious. The grit was gone from the air. If these three great cities have succeeded in reversing the tide of pollution, then the battle is far from lost. In fact, I think the darkest hour was somewhere in the Sixties. And somewhere in the Seventies, unnoticed, sweet victory came. ore rats beware on or near thew property, homeowners are advised to remove harboring places such as woodpiles or overgrown vegetation and food sources like compost, pet and bird food For further informaton, or to report rat sightings, residents should call the vector control officer at 948 S231 CANADIAN PORTA-SIGN MFG. LTD. 1439 Hunter St. North Vancouver Today's signs at very low Prices PORTABLE SIGNS-RENTALS & SALES *® Rentals *« Sales * Service * Sign Maintenance & Cleaning * Plastic & Neon Signs * Portable Signs For prompt personal service call Hans Tigchelaar or 24 hrs. 684-9620 PM 984-7512 strictly personal N. Shore unemployed figures ‘horrendous ' FROM PAGE A1 work. Total payouts during June by the North Shore Em- ployment Centre, which covers the Sunshine Coast and Pemberton area as well as North and West Van- couver amounted to $2.94 million (an average of $462 per head) compared to approximately $1.1 million in June [981]. Lawson said most of the dramatic increase in both payments and claim ap- plications resulted from “mass temporary layoffs by major companies.” West Van Mayor Defrick Humphreys expressed shock when told of the figures. The situation, he said, was “horrendous” but he warned that people can't expect miracles from Ottawa to improve the economy. “Things will improve,” Humphreys predicted, “as soon as confidence returns to the slumping manufac- turing sector.” Meanwhile, he urged local residents to support com- munity businesses by “purchasing at home”. - Outgoing West Van Chamber of Commerce president Mike Nicell pointed out, however, that its difficult to patronize local merchants “if people aren't earning money, because they don’t have the dollars to spend.” — “the retail businesses here are in a slump and it’s very serious for those affected,” Nicell said. He forecast an even greater rise in the local unemployment rate as a result of merchants being unable to pay massive 1982 increases in business property taxes. “Horrendous” was also the word used by North Van- couver City Mayor Jack Loucks when told of the figures. . He commented on the unemployment picture and the economic crisis causing it: “One has the choice of being a doomster or a naive optimist,” and added: “Quite frankly, you wonder if it can get any worse.” He feels the key to a turnaround is a change of attitude between management and labor, with the two sides forming a mutual trust of one another and cooperating together. “Confrontations seem to be the rule of the day,” he said. “There has got to be give on both sides.” Summing up the bleakest jobless picture since the 1930s, Lawson emphasized that “our number one priority (at Canada Em- ployment Centre) is not to have jobs go unfilled — and although -people are con- cerned about being out of work, we'll help them in whatever way we can.” \ N. 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