6 - Sunday, June 7, 1992 - North Shore News NEWS VWiEWPOINT Both sides now worms having been reopened, it is time to ditch traditionally parochial visions and examine the issue from a fresh viewpoint. North Vancouver District Ald. Joan Gadsby exhumed the age-old debate about amalgamaiing North Vancouver City and District during a June 1 district council meeting after saying that amalgamation had of late been on the lips of numerous district residents fed up with paying more and more municipal taxes. Amalgamation, she argues, would pay economic dividends through the consolida- _tion of municipal, police and fire services and the coordination of municipal plan- ning. It would also eliminate one municipal council. City Mayor Jack Loucks, however, has T HE municipal amalgamation can of long oppesed amalgamation. He argues that bigger is not always better, that city residents get yood value for their municipal tax dollars now, and that they would get short-changed in a farger amalgamated city/district. The arguments from beth sides are not new. Talk of amalgamating the city and district began almost immediately after the city broke away from the district in 1907. Modern-day discussion of the issue began in earnest in October 1957. Three amalgamation votes have been held since: in 1947, 1968 and in 1971. Arguments until now have revolved around what one municipality would gain or lose in amalgamation. But it’s time to consider instead what North Vancouver as a whole would gain or tese from amalgamation. NEWS GUOTES “Twenty minstes after mom and baby were taken to hospital, ker sister won the bonanza bonus — that’s worth $1,000. How do you like those odds?”’ Bonnie Lilley, a St. Thomas Aquinas Bingo Association member, on the birth of a baby at the bingo hall. “At one point I had seven lawyers tribulations of trying to raise $5.8 million to finance and produce an American-style feature film in B.C. “Some have tried to separate health from social services, from education, from housing; I found that impossible. 1 can’t separate them, because I think health is a lot more than not being sick.’* panic with comedy — our biggest fear is that everyone wil) just sit there.” North Vancouver producer Raymond Massey, on producing the comedy film, Impolite. “If { were to be cynical about this, I can’t sce 14 politicians voting themscives down io seven. Mr. on the phone at the same time. kealth care. My counselling skills really came in handy.”’ First Pacific Pictures president _Aerock Fox, on the trials and Publisher Peter Speck Managing Editor . . . Timothy Renshaw Associate Editor Noel Wright Advertising Director ... Linda Stewart Comptrotler Doug Foot North Shore News, founded in 1969 as ‘an Newsroom independent suburban newspaper ar:d qualified +» Shore. under Schedule 111, Paragraph NI of the Excise Tax Act, is published each Wednesday, Friday and Sunday by North Shore Free Press Lid. and disttibuted to evety door on ihe North Shore. Second Ciass Mai! Registration Number 3885. Subscriptions North and West Vancouver, $25 per year. Mailing rates available on request. Submissions are welcome but we cannot accept casponsibility for unsolicited material including manuscripts and pictures which should be accompanied by a stamped, addressed envelope. V7M 2H4 Justice Peter Seaton, on “— just hope everybody else out there finds it funny. That’s the Disptay Advertising Real Estate Advertising 985-6982 Classified Advertising 986-6222 Fax {ee VONES 0 NOMTTH anh WEST wuNCOUYER SUNDAY + WEDNESDAY - FRIDAY 1139 Lonsdale Avenue, North Vancouver, B.C. But then I’m not 4 cynic.”’ North Vancouver District Ald. Paul Turner, on the question of amalgamating North Vancouver District and City. Distribution 986-1337 Subscriptions 986-1337 985-322 980-0511 Printed on , if 10% recycled Administration 985-2131 MEMBER Shi ES 985-2131 qeremenes ane 61,582 (average circulation, Wednesday, Friday & Sunday) -Entire contents © 1992 North Shore Free Press Ltd. All rights reserved. Classroom thug now challenges society values VIOLENCE. THE more we reject it mentally, the more of it we get physically. Could this mean it is inseparable from the human society and that benign counter-violence may sometimes be the only solution? The question is prompted by a disturbing addition to the daily horror stories of murder, mugg- ings, beaten women and abused infants. Teenage and pre-teen violence is on the rise in Canada’s schools — in numerous cases terrorizing students and teachers alike. For quite a time inner-city New York students have been routinely frisked for weapons at the school door by armed police, but now thc rot has spread much closer to : ome. In May a 15-year-old Calgary student stabbed a 13- year-old boy to death. Last week two different Surrey parents removed their daughters, 11 and 13, from school for good after Grade 6 girls threatened to kill them with knives. Elsewhere recently in the West, a principal has been kicked in the back, a bottle smashed over a teacher's head and a policewoman thrown to the ground. School bullying has progressed from old-time fist fights to savage beatings with hockey sticks or baseball bats. . The great majority of school- agers, kindergarten to grad, still grow up as decently behaved kids. But modern society’s intellectual condemnation of ANY form of *“‘violent”’ action has made parents and schools helpless in dealing with the small minority of rebellious, violence-prone youngsters. That they are often the producis of bad home condi- tions doesn’t Jess the very real threat they pose. With corporal punishment strictly banned, teachers are strip- ped of any effective control. Suspension — their sole sanction in such cases — is a laughable penalty for classroom and schoolyard thugs simply biding their time until they can drop out. Parents today can be hauled in- to court for child abuse if they dare to discipline violently defiant offspring the same natural way a mother bear cuffs an unruly cub over the head — with a harmless old-fashioned spanking on an ex- posed posterior. The result is that our well- meant rush to protect the young from physical pain, regardless of the circumstances, is now failing to protect society as a whole. The outlawing of responsible and benign “‘violence”’ by caring parents and teachers is now “MAKES HORSE sense,” says Barney, HITHER AND YON breeding far worse viclence — of a type almost unknown when the strap and the flat of dad’s hand were accepted correctional methods — by irresponsible, vicious kids destined to become irresponsible, vicious adults. So back to our opening ques~ tion. If society cannot exist devoid of viclence, who should be allow- ed to use it? Teen terrorists, woman beaters and ruthless crirn- inals? Or parents, teachers and police? TAILPIECES: Longtime West Van Kiwanian Ros Westcott, 81 and legally blind, is visiting his old golf club in England — the only surviving member to have won its prestigious Spring Medal three times. The club invited him to mark its 200th anniversary this month ... Lyon Valley Services holds its annuai general meeting Tuesday, June 9, at 7:30 p.m. in recCentre Lynn Valley. Potential new members welcome ... Atten- tion all crafts people — North. Van Arts Council wants you at the 13th annual Folkfest Craft Fair, June 18-27. Cali Elia . Parkinson, 988-6844 for info ... And from 2:30 to 8 p.m. tomor- row and Tuesday, June 8-9, give . the gift of life at the Lions Gate Hospital biood donor clinics. — eoe WRIGHT OR WRONG: Telling a lie is like eating a first cherry. You can never resist another one. Maplewood Farnn's much-loved steed, as North Van Rotary Club president Rick Graves (left) presents North Vancouver Mayor Murray Dy’reman with the club's $25,000 donation to the Maplewood Historic Pask project.