4 - Friday, January 18, 1991 - North Shore News

Russian vodka leaves bad taste
in a democratic mouth

WV lane
gets name;
mail
delivery

to follow

WEST VANCOUVER
DISTRICT COUNCIL

DR. MARLENE Hunter
has moved closer to winning
the privilege of receiving
mail deliveries following a
decision Monday night from
West Vancouver District
Council to provide the lane
where her office is located
with a name.

By Maureen Curtis
Contributing Writer

What is now called Ambleside
Lane runs parallel to Marine
Drive between 13th and 19th
streets.

The street, which runs south of
Marine Drive, was upgraded as
part of the Ambleside Revitaliza-
tion project, but had remained
without a name until Monday
night.

Since she moved into an office
near the lane at the rear of 1830
Marine Dr. tast February, Hunter
has received no mail delivery.

While it did not occur to Hunt-
er to inquire about the mail
delivery before securing the office,
she soon discovered that Canada
Post does not deliver to unnamed
lanes with undesignated street ad-
dresses.

As a result, her receptionist has
had to stand in line at the West
Vancouver post office for up to
45 minutes every day to pick up
any mail being sent to the doctor’s
office.

“Patients might be concerned
about a physician that only has a
post office box,’’ Dr. Hunter said.

She then thanked council for
taking the steps necessary to rec-
tify the situation.

But Capt. George Murrell,
president of the Ambleside and
Dundarave Ratepayers, complain-
ed that ‘‘Ambleside Lane’? was a
bit nondescript and that ‘Irwin
Lane’? might have been more ap-
propriate.

ANN VAN OEVEREN —

ROYAL LEPAGE is pleased to
announce that ANN VAN OEVEREN is
the top producer for 1990 in the
ESPLANADE BRANCH. ANN is a
member of the Real Estate Board's
Medallion Ciub and has also achieved
Roya LePage’s PRESIDENT’S GOLD
AWARD. Congratulations and
continued success Ann, we are proud
to have you with us and we wish you a
super 1991!

Residential Real Estate Services
116 West Esplanade 985 8231

GOODBYE, Moskovskaya.

1 will not lament your depar-
ture. I will not miss your cool
embrace.

And you did not, unlike a cer-
tain person Peggy Lee sang about
in my youth, particularly go to my
head.

By now, reader, you may well
think: ‘‘Serves him right, the old
rogue! Him always going on
about the sanctity of the family,
and all along he was having this
affair with, sounds like a bit of
Russian fluff, on the side.””

Sorry, I’m much too lazy an old
dog to go chasing cars any more.
And what womar would look
twice at — how did some reader
describe me a while ago? — A
haughty man with a paunchy face.
Or something like that.

Anyway, the exit of Moskov-
skaya, though unmourned, is not
without its significance.

Moskovskaya is indeed a Rus-
sian. But she’s a vodka.

She is the only Russian vodka
I’ve ever bought. She may be the
last.

You see, | re-imposed sanctions
on all Russian goods this week.
My trade embargo is back with a
snap.

These personal sanctions are
among my quaint eccentricities.

PH give you the whole list some
time, if you can stay awake for
them. But for now, the point is:
the Republic of Trevor Lautens,
With Just a Touch of a 13th-
Century Monarchy, has slammed
the door on Russian goods.

Pity. The door hadn’t been

JAN 18-2

opened fong. Just long enough, in
fact, to buy this one bottle of
Moskovskaya vodka.

The remarkable thing is that it
was bought at all.

I'm not much of a vodka
drinker. Rye and gin are my up-
fall. (Haughty men never fall
down when drinking.)

And when I do drink it, I buy
Canadian, as I do any time I have
a choice. The brand is Silent Sam,
it’s distilled in Alberta, and it
serves the purpose just fine, thank
you, the purpose being a drink
before dinner. (Haughty men dis-
dain drinking after dinner, if
they’re me.)

But, as alert readers will have
guessed, I made this concession of
buying a Russian vodka some time
— quite a while — after the world
announced that the Cold War was
over.

Now, if you turn to your
leather-bound, gilt-edged copies of
The Collected Works of T.
Lautens, you will note that my
last word on the subject of the
Cold War was one of considerable
skepticism that it was in fact over.

My verdict was: maybe,
perhaps. But I was far more
cautious in my judgment of
Mikhail Gorbachev than, say, the
Nobel Peace Prize committee.

Gorbachev, said I, writing in
another publication before
discovering the joys of an affec-
tionate relationship with the North
Shore News, had only recognized
what could no tonger be ignored.
That was to his great credit. He
noticed the parade was leaving the

Trevor
Lautens

GARDEN OF BIASES

Soviet Union behind. And that
he'd better be quick about joining
it.

But, as Gorbachev’s writings on
perestroika — restructuring —
made clear, he was not clutching
Jeffersonian democracy to his
breast, or surrendering to Wall
Street. Indeed, he invoked Lenin,
not Jefferson, let alone Milton
Friedman and the economics of
the so-called *‘Chicago boys,”’
who put Chile on its feet after the
disasters of Salvador Allende.

He wrote, with praiseworthy
candor, that the sclerotic Soviet
economy urgently needed restruc-
turing. But his goal of course was
a stronger Soviet Union — not
necessarily, as one or two shrewd
dissenters from the chorus of adu-
lation in the West noted, a good

thing for the democracies.

In the years since, Gorbachev
has managed or mismanaged to
move the Soviet Union halfway to
everything. Halfway to a free
market — enough to frighten and
impoverish the pensioners and to
dislocate the old party-run
bureaucracies without creating a
new class of hot-shot en-
trepreneurs to lift his bulky coun-
try out of the slough and put
more food on the table.

And halfway to democracy. It
has been, certainly, a huge
halfway. The changes in Europe
in 1989 mark a great historical
divide.

But this week the other half —
the undemocratic half — fell like
a boot. On Lithuania. And the
other Baltic states, Estonia and
Latvia, at least felt the toes.

Well, Gorby, nobody said it
would be easy. And you aren’t the
first person in history to open
Pandora’s box and to let out far
more than you bargained for.

Still, tanks are tanks. And
maybe all who proclaimed the end
of the Cold War should have con-
sidered that the real test was if
and when the temperature got
back to normal in the Baltics.

It hasn’t. And, at a time when
world attention was somewhat
diverted elsewhere, you did the
dirty on the M.

About a year ago I zelented. I
treated your vodka like a stock. I
bought it on expectation. Now
I'm dumping it on confirmation.

Goodbye, Moskovskaya.
a a

LIMITED TIME
MITED AVAILABI IT

PARK SHORE BMW’S SPECIAL EVENT
NOW PROVIDES YOU THE OPPORTUNITY TO OWN
A BMW AT AN ATTRACTIVE & AFFORDABLE PRICE

23,800

PARK SHORE MOTORS

BMW 3181S

LOW KM DEMO ST#071

99,990

PRICES DO NOT INCLUDE GST. AND PST.

OPEN
THIS SUNDAY

1500 Fell Ave., North Vancouver

BMW73S5iLA

LOW KM DEMO ST#055

THE ULTIMATE DRIVING EXPERIENCE

985-9344