6 - Friday, May 25, 1990 - North Shore News industrial evolution ECENT NEWS holds out more optimism than pessimism for the North Shore’s waterfront dustries. Articles in the Wednesday News outlined the various plans and projects for expansion along the waterfront. vitality of the North Shore waterfront despite the continuing reduction of activ- ity at Versatile Pacific Shipyards Inc. and the ill-advised rejection Tuesday night by North Vancouver City of Nep- tune Terminals’ propos? to expand its potash storage capacity. Major facilities such as Vancouver Wharves Ltd. and Lynnterm are in- vesting millions in. increasing product handling and storage capacity. Coupled with the recent announcement that North Vancouver-based Vancouver Shipyards Co. Ltd. has been awarded the $17.6-million contract to build an &5- vehicle ferry for the B.C. Ferry Corp. and predictions of a record year for grain shipments through B.C. ports, the ex- pansion projects confirm the continuing And while some would argue that ex- panded waterfront industry means more pollution and less residential access to the North Shore’s harbor, what it really means is more jobs and continued eco- nomic stability for the North Shore and the rest of the Lower Mainland. The setting enjoyed by North Shore residents is a product of nature; the area’s relatively high standard of living is a product of commercial and industrial activity. Bus riders disgust NV reader Dear Editor: I write this letter in disgust and disbelief towards the attitudes of both women and men on our public transit system. No longer do we see people offer their seats to pregnant women, not to mention our elderly citizens. My sister is in her seventh month of pregnancy. Every morning she tides the bus downtown and has to stand amongst the businessmen sit- ting comfortably. Never do these men or women offer their seat to my sister, but they do make sure not to have eye contact with her. They seem to pretend they don’t notice her stomach sticking out in- Publisher ..... Associate Editor ......Peter Speck Managing Editor Timothy Renshaw Noel Wright Advertising Director . Linda Stewart North Shore Naws, founded im 1969 as an independent suburban newspaper and qualified under Schedule 111. Paragraph {1 of the Excise Ta Act. is publishea eacn ednesday, Friday and Sunday by North Shore Free Press Lid. and distributed to every door on the North Shore. Second Class Mail Registration Number 3885. Subscriptions North and West Vancouver, $25 per yeis Mathng cates available on request. Submissions are weicome Gul we cannot accepl tesponsibility tor to their faces. There have been some mornings when she is standing on the bus feeling like she has to throw up. She has stood trying to decide where she shouid get sick. I tell her she should aim towards the lap of one of the selfish ‘*gentlemen’” sit- ting down in front of her. 1 heard of another story recently where a pregnant woman gave up her seat on a bus for a very elderly maa. She was also seven months pregnant, and when she stood up for the elderly nan she said aloud, “It is pretty sad when a pregnant woman has to give up her seat for an elderly person because no one SHE VORCE OF PHT OF AND WEST VANCOUVER SUNDAY + WEONESDAY » C1DAY 1139 Lonsdale Avenue, North Vancouver, 8.C. V7M 2H4 59,170 (average, Wednesday Friday & Sunday) unsolicited maternal including manuscnpls and pictures a which shouid be accompamed by a stamped, addressed envelope SDA DIVISION Display Advertising Classified Advertising Newsroom Distribution Subscriptions Fax else will,” I just don’t understand why our society has become so selfish. Pregnant women are not looking for sympathy, but just remember the extra 25 pounds and the sciatic nerve that sends shooting pains down many pregnant women’s legs. So please, next time you see 2 pregnant woman or an elderly per- son standing on a bus, offer them your seat. You will make someone very happy. People used to do it — why not anymore? Lorraine Youds North Vancouver 980-0511 986-6222 985-2131 986-1337 986-1337 985-3227 MEMBER Let private |'sector help THE WHOLE idea of Canadian government financial aid to Eastern Europe raises the question of just who is conver- ting whom, and to what. “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs,’’ was originalfy penned by Karl Marx and became one of the main tenets of communism. Now it is we supposed capitalists who stand ready to implement it ona global scale, as if it were a moral imperative of our system. After 70 years of communism in the Soviet Union and 40 years in Eastern Europe, the people have finally gotten the message that their system doesn’t deliver the goods. Part of the reason it took them so long to reach this conclu- sion is the aid that the West has been giving them over these many decades. Loans and grants of Western money, and an ever-in- creasing transfer of Western tech- nology, made it look as though communism worked... PROPERTY RIGHTS Poland and Hungary have rush- ed to proclaim themselves democracies ... (but) what the Poles and Hungarians — and many in North America — don’t seem to understand is that gov- ernments, whether elected or not, do not create wealth. At best, they enforce a system of property rights that allows individual en- trepreneurs to create wealth. At worst, they consume and squander wealth through bureaucracy, regu- lations and wars. Most of the time, governments merely shuffie wealth around from one group of citizens to another, keeping a cut for themselves. There’s no reason to believe that a group of elected Polish paper- pushers can create a bigger eco- nomic pie than the previous group of non-elected Polish paper- pushers. They'll simply slice it a little differently. In adopting Western-styte social- ist democracy as their ideal, east European reformers have swallow- ed the myth that socialism can work so long as people get the right to vote every few years. After all, socialism appears from their point of view to be working in much of western Europe and to a 30-YEAR memories ...some of graduating class of 1960 look over By KAREN SELICK Guest Columnist large degree in North America. But in the West, wealth redistribution is a comparatively recent and small-scale develop- ment, introduced after we had al- ready built up a large capital base. That cushion allows us to engage relatively painlessly in a lot of economic foolishness which emerg- ing eastern European economies will be unable to mimic without excrutiating pain. There is already evidence that our infrastructure — roads, rail beds, bridges and utility systems, the sine qua non of economic growth — is starting to crumble into disrepair, even as we boast of our growing ‘prosperity’ by poin- ting to bread-and-circus items like subsidized domed stadiums and nationai museums. You can eat only so much of your seed capital before you have nothing left to plant. If we waste a lot of ours by sen- ding it off to eastern Europe, where they stil! don’t seem to un- derstand the difference between eating it and planting it, we will simply hasten the day of reckoning for both East and West. There’s nothing wrong with in- vesting privately in Eastern Europe, provided investors are willing to bear the expenses and risks themselves — that is, without trade missions and loan guarantees financed by the Canadian govern- ment. Ultimately, it can only be private, profit-seeking investment, not government-to-government transfers, that helps Eastern Europe in any permanent way. If we really believe that free markets will work for Europe, let’s prove it by letting them work in Canada. Deregulate. Eliminate trade barriers. Abolish subsidies, both to consumers and producers. Excerpts from Karen Selick's column “Right Thinking’’ in The Lawyers Weekly on Prime Minister Mulroney's announced $42 million in aid to Poland and Hungary. NEWS photo Stuart Davis ihe West Vancouver High School old yearbooks. The class is having a ceunion Saturday, May 26 at the Hollybura Country Club,