a

j
i

4 - Wednesday, May Wi,
| .

I JUST finished a flying
tour of Canada, promoting
my book about flying.

itis not freedom we're talking
here. It is a decision made by con-
senting adults to jointly push a

_ book. Work. Ah yes, even writers

have to work sometimes.

Still, Iflove Mying as much as
ever. I'm one of those people suf-
fering from the opposite of /
aecrophobia. I'm an acrophile. Get. f
me up there among the clouds. is

That's the part I like best — the’
moment when you come : fh
whooshing down to cloud-level ; y :
and start slam dancing through;; -
those levitated popcorn mount:
ranges. Cloud-hopping. Into ay
cloud. Out. Much like skin-diying
along a reef, ignoring the Lav of
impenetrability. Better than being
a bird. y /

Half the country, it turned out,
was under cloud cover. There were
tantalizing glimpses’of purple
prairies and navy blue forests and
gun-mietal grey lakes. Acliingly
lovely. Vast enough to swallow
dozens if not hundreds of ordinary
little countries, ./- ik

Except, there is something om
wrong this time about the-color,.
Indeed, abou the weather,

¢B.C.1 rior; the ‘walled-
in kingdom ringed by mountains,
», drovightihas, already begun.
‘ In Edmont toh, they joke that the
chinook has, sieved north, It is as
at atime ‘of year

Normal?, What's normal any |

_ longer? asin line creeps

“further.nofth every year. The...
Greenhouse Effect, people agree,

-with an uneasy look La

“And try to smile.

479 BELLEVUE (at 26th ST.
WEST. VANCOUVER .: 925-

{988 - North Shore News,

‘Bos Hunter

© strictly personal ©

IVis, alas, anything but a inke.
As I was being driven from the
Halifax airport to a hotel, | notic-

fed'that half the evergreens along
the highway were as dead-looking

as the winter birch themselves. Yet

there was no sign of a fire having
_/struck. A few of the grey skelctons
of trees might have been hit by

/ lightning, okay — but not 50 per
/ cent of them.

“Tie publisher's sales ©
representative who was driving
me around ... remarked —- as
lightly as he could —. about how
people in New Brunswick were
Starting to ‘have trouble. ~
collecting on their insurance if
the cause of damage fo their
automobiles could be identified —
as being acid rain. ,

It was a wet, cold day in mid-
April. The mercury-vapor lights
along the harbor were on carly. .
We crosted a bridge that looked
exactly like the Lions Gate bridge.

1 could see that Halifax's skyline
had changed somewhat since | last aan

saw it in the mid-70s: a few fancy
glass towers; a Xerox building like /
an immense science-fiction prop ;
rising Phoenix-like out of the sec-/
tion of dock which had once been
levelled by the famous’ explosion /

: The publisher's sales repre- i
sentative who was driving me /
around, an otherwise chipper |
British chap, remarked — as light:

ly as he could — about how people .

‘in New Brunswick were starting to
have trouble collecting on their i ine
surance if the cause of damage to -
their automobiles could be iden-

“tified as being acid rain.

‘A weird feeling came ov

2

Hooked at the new cavpred gl: ASS
pedestrian overpasses linking the
downtown shopping malls. These
sort of things are being built
everywhere across Canada. The
West Edmonton Mall is but the .
most spectacular example. Win-

- nipeg has likewise gone under-
ground around Portage and Main.
Toronto and Montreal too.

lt had seemed to me ai first that
this impulse to burrow and cree!
covered links between the buildings
was a response (0 the cold.

Yet now it seemed appallingly
precognitive. The urge isn't so 74
much to escape the ice as the rain
from hell.

. Safely inside my hotel, J found
myself staring in horror at my
shoes a couple ; of hours later. They
were stained by’ the sait left on the
sidewalks. At least. I think it was
sall.

| There had been traces of snow
on the northern slopes of the low
hills‘around Halifax — black-laced _
snow. {t had scemed more than
nonnally soiled. There was an
ash-like tone. Was that perchance
* what had got on to my shoes ~
not salt at all?

I found myself compuisivety
scrubbing my shoes and even going
down to the lobby and buying -
some shoe polish.

I tried to tell myself that it was
just ecological paranoia on my
part, but I found inyself unable to
stop looking at an oil painting of
y Halifax i in winter back in the Great,
"Age of Sail. “y

.. The snow was white, The
’ evergreens in the background were

vibrantly green and alive: The

_ water, was blue — not lifeless grey.’

We don’t notice it in B.C, much,

“but the rest of Canada is rotting -

i away, folks. More on ‘this later ©

t

For 2.Weeks ”
lose 6 ths.)

con, In Aud Ask”.
_ About the VB Card a
2 SBONUS VALUE

“Deta ails available at clu

’ before

Family court legal aid)
funding gets support —

MORE LEGAL aid should
be available for maintenance

. and child support hearings

in family court, North Van-
couver City Council | said
Monday.

The motion calls for the Union
of B.C. Municipalities to ask the
Attorney General “to provide
funding to ensure that there is legal
counsel available to family court
applicants where lack of sufficient
income to afford private legal
counsel is clearly demonstrated."

Only two out of 107 appearances
North Vancouver family
court ‘were sepresented by legal
counsel during six months in 1987,
according to a Courtwatch com-
mittee report, cited by Ald. Frank
Morris, who proposed the motion.

“Two out of 107 is: damned
few,'' said Morris.

The Statistics Canada, poverty
line, which was $10,500 income per
year in 1986, is not a sufficient
measure |
someone needs legal aid, he said.

Aid. Barbara Sharp,
seconded the motion, questioned
whether it went far enough!

Court costs are $800 and lawyers

cost $125 per hour, she ‘/said.

money?*"

to determine | whether

wh 9

“How are you going to determine
who docsn't have enough

fe

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