4 ~ Sunday, August 320, 1987 -

AS THE free trade

reports futile, rounds, | think of Pat Carney.
of the price of public service.

Guys like me—and my fellow
columnists, reporters, editors
and publishers—have it easy.

Pat used to have it easy, too,
when she was a columnist. She
could rant and rave like the rest
of us without having to take on
much responsibility.

But something made her get
into politics.

I know the bug. | was seized
by it a few times in my life.
Once, I was ready to run for
mayor of Vancouver and was
saved that ordeal in the end on-
ly because my crazed lawyer
didn't get the papers filed on
time.

Another time, Dave Barrett
asked me to join the NDP. But
as | quickly discovered, the par-
ty inembership card required
that I not say anything in public
that would contradict party pol-
icy.

I was young enough then to
be stunned. How could I, as a
journalist, possibly do that?

Why is it, | wondered, that in
a democratic society, we are
aiways being, pressed to keep
our mouths shut, to swallow
our feelings and beliefs in the
service of some higher cause?

The company you work for
generally doesn’t want you to
be yapping about its inade-
quacies in public, any more
than the government wants civil
servants to spout the truth
about what they sec.

Despite its grand freedom-
or-death design, ours is a socic-
ty where most institutions
determinedly impose a gag on
their members.

i1 doesn’t matter whether it’s

talks go into their final,

North Share News

Bob Hunter

@ strictly personal @

by-all-
And | think

your union, your church or
your boat club. They all have
ways of reminding you that
your duty is to them first, the
rest of the world much later, if
ever.

The oniy worse form of
bondage than a job is elected
office.

Mavbe Pat Carney didn’t
know that. But that’s untikely.
She had covered City Hall, the
legislature, Parliament, and had
hung oui for years as the coun-
try’s most successful business
columnist with the real movers
and shakers, getting to know
powerful people on a first-name
basis.

Depending on who you talk
ta, there are either a hundred or
a thousand people running this
country. That is, exercising ef-
fective control over the public
and political moods at a na-
tional level.

That doesn't mean for a
minute that the planning com-
mittee members in every district
in the country lack authority, it
is just that their influence is
strictly limited in range, like a
traffic cop’s.

Pat knew as well as anybody
that getting into a political par-
ty’s bed meant that she was go-
ing to have to go along with one
grope toward some kind of New
Jerusalem of re-election, no
matter how much she might be,
intellectually, above petty par-
tisan considerations,

Also, she was going to lose
that wonderfully irreverant,
fearless media voice she once
had, wherein she could
thunder—without bringing on

$600,000 MOUNTAIN OVERHAUL
installs new chair

Seymour

AFTER CHANGING ownership
June 15, Mount Seymour Resorts
Ltd. (MSRL) has embarked on an
expansion program that will see six
new ski runs and a $600,000
chairlift added to its present
operation.

The expansion was given final
approva! by North Vancouver
District Council Monday night.

The new runs will be in higher
elevations of the mountain and will
be available from the new
Brockton Point chairlift, which
will begin where the Mystery Peak
chair currently ends.

The new 1,100 foot double chair,
which can handle 1,200 skiers per
hour, will raise skiing elevation by
another 80 metres.

Seymour’s director of skiing
Alex Douglas said the installation
of the new lift was part of a long-
term plan to ‘“‘go higher where

there is better snow. The snow line
on North Shore mountains gets
higher and higher each year, but
we have the advantage of being
able to go back where there is
more and better snow.”’

-in addition to providing access
to better snow, the new chair,
Douglas said, would allow
Seymour to extend its ski season in
to May.

The new chairlift is expected to
be ready for testing by Oct.

Ticket prices at Seymour will in-

the apocalypse.

We all know in our bones
how dreary office of any kind
can be. And how repressive.

Goud grief, all you have to
do is get yourself elected to the
board of directors of any one of
the thousands of little societies
that esist in this province, and
you find that one of your main
objectives in life becomes the
keeping of your organization's
nasty little secrets.

For a trained observer like
Pat Carney, stepping from
behind the typewriter to in
front of it must have involved a
deeply-felt groan. She knew full
well the inadequacies of the
communications system she was
going to have to communicate
through.

It might be the best in the
world (although it isn’t), and it
would still be painful. Every
time I see a politician cornered
by a thistle-patch of
microphones, | cringe from the
sheer brutality of it all.

For Pat, who is perfectly
capable of gentle amusement,
to submit herself—and her
great inner dignity—to such an
ordeal, must have involved
either a kind of selflessness that
most of us aren’t capable of, or
an awesome certainty of mind
which [ frankly don’t think
many writers really enjoy,
although we fake it like mad.

For her to take on the
challenge of shepherding a free
trade deal through with the
United States is beyond
anything except legend.

This will take another col-
umn, but I want to explain why
I virtually pray that Pat
Carney, against staggering
odds, succeeds.

crease for the 1987-88 season. An
adult weekend day pass will, for
example, go from the current $16
to $19,

Seymour was privatized in 1984
and its ski facilities taken over by
MSRL.

Earl Pletsch sold MSRL to Ed-
ward and Louise Wood in June.

In 1985, MSRL invested $1 mil-
lion in a major overhaul of the
mountain’s operation that included
installation of a new 1,400-foot
Mueller double chair.

OUT OF TILLEY’S

INTO

ETOBICOKE

AFRICAL

Amightily-respected film documentary com-
pany. Asterisk Productions, has a special in-

terest in developing countries.

It chooses

equipment with a reputation for ruggedness.
Writer Producer Heather MacAndrew tells us

that

“Tilley Hats, Shorts, and Pants surviv-

ed red dirt, rough roads, and tong hours in
the sun. Another torture test for Tilley
Endurables"’.

What a joy it is, nearly every day, to receive
letters from people in faraway places describ-
ing how well their Tilley stuff is holding up.

David Springbett. Girector (C}, and
Len Gilday. Cinematographer on
location in Kenya

Drop in, Phone or Write.
Mon.-Sat. 10-5;
Thurs, Fri, til 7

But our adventure wear is for arm-achair
travellers too!

Barbara Tilley
1559 Pemberton Ave.,
North Vancouver

980-2631

Hudson steams back

THE ROYAL Hudson steam train
can last indefinitely if maintained
well, the president of Royal Hud-
son Steam Train Society said) Fri-
duy.

The J7-sear-old sieam) machine
was taken out of service July 29
after a crack in the main driver
bearing was discavered. “You
can't go to the hardware store and
buy a past -— we had to manufac-
ture one,’ said the society's presi-
dent Ron Treend.

A casting for the bronze bearing
was made and a shipyard with
large enough machinery did the
milling. Installing the part is a
one-day job and the Royal Hudson
is expected to be back on track to-
day (Sunday).

Treend said the

train hadn't

been off duty for vears and the
new bearings should be good for
another 30 years. The repair is
estimated to cost: between $5,000
and $10,000,

The locomotive is scheduled tor
a trip this February to the Winter
Olympies in Calgary. “it will be a
two-day uip with an overnight
stop in Revelstoke because the
train has no. sleeping compart-
ments,"” Treend said.

A trip to Squamish aboard the
Royal Hudson costs $20 round trip
and can be enjoyed until the end of
September. ‘‘It's the best deal in
town.”” Treend said. Profits go te:
the non-profit society and are used
for upkeep of the vintage
locomotives.

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