LONDON. about. vetting people: out of. their cars: andon | . to-the:buses, it should take:a long hard look . me - transplanted to Saudi Arabia | at West. vancoprer's S independently, operated 7 F in spirit, if not in name. A firm: of. London shop- Th ‘West ‘Van Blue ‘Buses are so. popular | we they're. finding it hard to.cope with the | B crowds, ‘wanting to.use them. Ridership i isup 7 x "last year. Passengers’ are being — ‘passed _ up. by full buses and are having. | trouble getting a seat, or even getting on and ‘a off, when the driver stopsforthem. oa Ridership" is expected to. increase by - another. 20% next year and Municipal that a consortium ‘of. Saudia Saudi Arabia. a - On top of all this, the Blue Buses are even a financial success -- in comparative terms. B.C. Hydro transit covers only 35% of its costs. from the farebox. ‘West Van's system covers: AT%. “ ‘Efficient operation, friendly local ‘drivers _ who greet many of their fares by name, loyal _ passengers who know a good deal when they See it, and excellent park-and-ride facilities, now filled. to capacity, are all part of the .| success ‘story. Why can’t it be repeated by other transit systems? ‘ .“he answer, possibly, is that big is not . always better: -- but small is often heautiful. - Insensitive With the court trial of “Dog Lady” Doris Orr on. charges of contravening a North . | Mancouver ‘City bylaw now set for May 1980, “we are précluded from further comment on the charges themselves. Nevertheless, the heavy volume of support expressed for Mrs. Orr -- together. with frequent criticism of the North Van SPCA< -- indicates all is not well with animal care on the North Shore. Why does City council -remain so insensitive to calls for an im- provement in the situation? The writers of the many letters backing ~ Mrs. Orr which have poured into THE NEWS since August can’t be all wrong. By airily dismissing their viewpoint the City Fathers are showing themselves not only shortsighted but discourteous. Harrods, we've done projects in the Middle East, .SO we said no problem.” One thing the store won't have, though, is the name-or the familiar yellow logo of the London emporium: A spokesman for Harrods _ said, “We have no con- nection with the project whatsoever and no comment apart from that. We first heard about it recently and there’s been no approach to us. Obviously they can't use the name and logo, they’re copyrighted.” governable country. Much can happen, of course, between now and February 18, but as of this date we face the distinct and «dismal possibility of batuing to the polls through snow and ice only to wind up with Canada’s second minority government in nine months. . Worse still -- and irrespective of whether the Conservatives or the Liberals ,emerged as the technical winners -- such a result would again reflect the sharp division of interests within vy sunday north shore opposed to a national basis. 1139 Lonsdale Ave., In short, Quebec vs. the news yo aaa” ouver, B.C. West—with Ontario calling (604) 980-0511 the final shots for what its - ; voters conceive to be to the NEWS - ADVERTISING CLASSIFIED CIRCULATION immediate advantage of 980-0511 986-6222 ' 986-1337 their own province. Not exactly the rosy picture of Confederation that the Publisher Poter Speck Founding Fathers had in Associate Publisher Editor-in-Chief Advertising Director mind. Robert Graham Noel Wright Eric Cardwell- The numbers speak for Classitied Manager | Production themselecs. u & Office Administrator Tim Francis STANDOFF are Beri Hillard Faye McCrae Quebec has 75 seats in the enlarged 282-seat House of Mans Ing Editor News Editor Photography Commons. The Prairies and Andy raser Chris Uoyd Ellsworth Dickson B.C. have 77° seats. Quebeckers, almost to a mo tay A Chen aeator Accounting Supervisor man, are brought up at their mother’s knee to vote Liberal and last May. North Shore News, founded in 1969 as an independent communi- ty Newspaper and qualified under Schedule Ml, Part Ill, Paragraph Il! of the Excise Tax Act, is publisned each Wednesday and Sunday, oy North Shore Free Press Lita and distributed to e door on the following the time-honored tradition, they gave the Grits North Free Prose A cist vory or © 67 of their seats to only two Shor on a58 § Registration Num 885 Subscriptions $20 per year Entire contents © 1979 North Shore for the Tories. There is Free Preas Ltd Allrights reserved presently no sign of any VERIFIED CIRCULATION < significant change in this Situation, 40,603 48, ears G@ona SR"s | »e The Prairies and B.C. are Wodnesday Senet? not too far short of an Sua solid atthchment t THIS PAPER IS RECYCLABLE equally solid attachment to the Conservatives who won 98 of the 77 seats there seven . million ~ . (UPL. TE Harrods, the ‘British : If tl department * . store Synonymous» with elegance. | and good taste, is about to be © “fitters - and designers, ‘City. - Industrial Ltd., said recently businessmen had hired. ‘the. company to produce. a copy. of Harrods, on about a half- scale ‘size, in the sands Of “They. wanted the Same atmosphere, the. general Manager: Terry’ Lester says more. vehicles look, ve merchandise,” said -- and increased services are vital if the system City. Industrial- export Te is to handle the extra load. director Philip Morris. “We've done work = for. the country on a regional as_ ‘The Jocation has not’ been disclosed, at ‘the request. of | which ' : ‘reportedly includes. mem- — bers. of the. Saudi royal : the consortium, - family. >. ? Virtually all the depart: ments, including the famous” “food halls) - will be duplicated, with and winter ‘Sports ‘goods. Certain other concessions must be made to. the Saudi *: climate and laws. The new ‘store will -be. entirely air- conditioned, with less ‘ - window glass to cut down-on women ~ can't . heat. Since work there, all the shop assistants must be male. Displaying clothes will also call for ingenuity. No mannequins of either sex are permitted under Saudi law. But the stock should be very similar, Morris. said, since the Saudis plan to buy as many items as they can in the United Kingdom - possibly from Harrods. = is any longer a months ago. The Liberals got just two (one of them a squeaker), while the NDP, as the spoiler, grabbed the other 17. At the moment there's nothing to suggest that the Tories will lose their firm grip on the West. They could even improve it if they managed to knock off the two bothersome Liberals and a handful of fairly marginal New Democrats like S.J. Robinson in Burnaby, Mark Rose in Mission-Port Moody and Terry Sargeant in ‘Selkirk-Interlake, Manitoba. In which case you could look to an almost straight 50- 50 stand-off between western Conservatives and Quebec Libeals in those 152 parliamentary scats representing nearly 60% of Canada's population. Aside from the three seats in the Yukon and Northwest Territories (presently two Conservative and one NDP), that leaves Ontario and the Maritimes. QUESTION MARK Short of a major political phenomenon, one can largely disregard the latter. The Adantic provinces have a well-deserved reputation for being remarkably set in their political ways. The 32 seats from Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, P.E.]. and Newfoundland were divided last May between 17 for the Tories, 13 for the Grits and two for the NDP. One of two switches are always possible, but Maritimers as a breed have rarely shown) much “front “the “sand a - upward”. Work-should begin. -shortly, he said,-“with the - opening ‘tentatively set for — ; late. 1982: or early 1983. 1 some | obvious exceptions like pets. wie eee ene tig ete SS fg anne TS A” On this date... -In 1777 Geo rge Washington and the Con- tinental Army began a winter encampment at Valley Forge, Pa. In 1972 the splashdown of Apollo 17 ended America’s moon exploration program. ad enthusiasm for upheavals or landslides. It’s a very different. story with volatile Ontario whose voters have a_ record of changing sides dramatically from one federal election to the next. In 1974 they gave the equivalent of 63 of the province's present 95 seats to the Liberals and only 25 to the Conservatives, Last May saw an almost complete reversal -- Conservatives 58, Liberals 30. Politically, Ontario (and especially Toronto) remains the nation's question mark. To say that Prime Minister Joe Clark and his party have lost ground in the 12 out of 23 vital “Metro Toronto ridings they took in May is something of an un- derstatement. They are seen as championing = Alberta's interests over Ontario's on energy prices, brenking an election. pledge to reduce taxes and watering down the mortgage deductibility In 1974 Nelson Rockefeller was confirmed by Congress as U.S. Vice- President after a six-hour debate in the. House. His appointment followed. the . Watergate scandal and Nixon's resignation earlier in the year. Should Toronto rule ‘canada? One ‘uncomfortable - question raised by the forthcoming February 18 federal election is whether Canada “from sea to sea”, as envisaged by the Founding Fathers, scheme. And ‘Toronto’s influential Jewish ‘com- munities are mad at Clark for backtracking on the Jerusalem embassy issue. DISGUST Other things being equal, therefore, you might well be tempted to put your money on an overall Liberal majority come February 18, based on Ontario's disen- chantment with the Tories. But a lot of things are very far from being equal in this election. Last May Ontarians decided to try Clark because, like the solid West, they were fed up with Trudeau. Despite their current beefs, there's as yet no evidence that large numbers of them are prepared to re-embrace the Liberals’ recycled leader so soon after rejecting him. Across the country there. are also many reports of public disgust over the action of the Liberals and NDP in forcing an unwanted and unnecessary midwinter election at a further cost of $60 million or so to the tax- payer. This again could translate into extra seats here and there for’ the Conservatives, thus working to offset any losses in On- tario. Nevertheless, if you recheck the numbers, even these unusual election factors still look dangerously like adding up to another photo finish -- unless a miracle happens far the Tories in Quebec, or for the Liberals west of Kenora. Meanwhile, relying for stable majority government on the fiekte self-interest ol Toronto voters also seems a pretty poor way to run a nation “from sea to sea.”