© - Sunday, January 20, 1991 - North Shore News ITS OX. .JLL WAIT FOR THE PRIVATIZED HIGHWAYS MAINTENANCE CREW TO GLEAR THE ROAD. wanes we Att tyy INSIGHTS LAIN THE PRWATIZED HIGHWAYS MAINTENANCE. CREW. “Vense, “Utepyy Mey Vy oom by, : NEWS VIEWPOINT Potash pus ASKATCHEWAN’S Minister of Energy and Mines made it abundant- ly clear Tuesday night what the repercussions of limited potash storage and shipping facilities mean to local port facili- ties: lost business. And in times of recession and interna- tional turmoil, lost business is serious business. Rick Swenson told the 350 people at- tending Tuesday night's public hearing into the proposal by Neptune Bulk Terminals Ltd. to build a new potash shed along the North Vancouver waterfront that Saskat- chewan, the world’s largest petash pro- ducer, needs better Vancouver port facili- ties if it is to service the growing interna- tional demand for potash. Without improved facilities at Neptune, Saskatchewan, he said, will have to look elsewhere, perhaps even to the United NEWS QUOTES OF THE WEEK States for help in shipping potash. Area residents and members of North Vancouver City Council have raised and continue to raise concerns over en- vironmental fallout from an expanded Neptune potash operation. The concerns are valid: no industrial expansion should proceed without the proper pollution-con- trol systems being put into place. But Neptune, a major North Vancouver waterfront industrial operation that paid over $1 million in taxes to the city in 1990, has provided ample evidence that it is get- ting serious about the environment: the company has invested $9 million on poilu- tion-control devices and has its own en- vironment director. Major industries can no longer afford to do utiness without considering the en- vironment, but, for its own good financial health, North Vancouver cannot afford to let its vital waterfront industries disappear. Is only the world’s boy scout in step? EXHAUSTED BY non-stop TV overkill on the Guif Crisis, I'd vowed to swiich to some more lighthearted topic today — maybe Lithuania, Harcourt as premier or condom machines in kindergartens. But one important little point still cries for comment in the bat- tle being waged between our doves and hawks over Canada’s proper contribution to the United Na- tions. Ever since Lester Pearson won the Nobel Peace Prize for his mediation in the Suez crisis 34 years ago Canada has en- thusiastically played the role of the world's boy scout — as a UN peacekeeper in world trouble spots from Zaire to Cyprus and the Middle East itself. I would be the last one to deny that it’s been a useful and positive role. In a typical scenario, UN negotiators have helped bring the warring parties in @ local conflict to their senses and stop fighting. That done, small military units from Canada and other neutral nations — all wearing those sanitary blue ‘‘UN Forces’’ berets — have moved in to see that everyone kept the rules. It has rightly earned for Canada the reputation of an international Mr. Nice Guy — reliable, unbi- ased and trustworthy. As Eric Nicol once quipped, ‘‘showing favor to none and oopiks to all."’ With seldom more than a few hundred personnel at most involv- ed — and not in an offensive combat role — the military costs have been minimal and the politi- cal gains very substantial, both at home and abroad. And that’s the way Jean Chretien, Audrey McLaughlin and the chanting **peace’’ hordes across the land want to keep it. By actually FIGHTING to elim- "err as “*T still think, to a large degree, they still see it only as a threat to that hell-bound faction of society that includes homosexuals, drug addicts and prostitutes, and they figure the province would be bet- ter off without them anyway."" Peter, a former North Van- couver resident who has AIDS, on what he says is the the provincial government's abdication of its du- ty to educate the public about AIDS. ““It is time for some creative solu- tions from teachers." West Vancouver School District 45 school superintendent Doug Player, on the need for teachers ta moderate their contract demands. Publisher Associate Editor Peter Speck Managing Editor Timothy Renshaw Noel Wright Advertising Director . Linda Stewart “{ don’t know whether people would realize how things would completely blow up there surgical strike, really, we're not conducting an appendix operation here. You're getting rid of the whole patient — the ecologicat fallout, never mind the hundreds of thousands of people killed. Nobody in their right mind could possibly contemplate this.*’ North Shore peace activist Betty Gritfin, on the madness of a Per- sian Gulf war. “When you get a job tike this, you basically say goodbye to your friends." LG73’s Dean Hill, on being an early-morning radio personality. 3008 VONCE OF WCET AND WEST VANCOUNLY SUNDAY + WEONESDAY - FHIDAY North Shore News, Jounded in 1969 as an independen: Suburban newspaper and qualitied under Scneaule 114. Paragraph Ilt of tne Excise Tax Act. 1s punlishes eac:. Weanesday, Friday and Sunday by Nortn Shore Sree Press Lid. and distributed to every goor on tne Nortn Snore. Second Class Mar Registration Number 3885 Subscriptions Nortn and West Vancouver, $25 per year Mailing rates avaitabie on request. Submissions are welcome but we Cannot accept responsibiny for unsolicited matenat inc'uding Manuscripts and pictures e whith should be accompanied by a Stampea. aadressed envelope. 1139 Lonsdale Avenue, North Vancouver, B.C. V7M 2H4 59,170 (average, Wednesday Friday & Sunday) SDA CiviSIOn Display Advertising Classified Adverising Newsroom Distribution Suoscriptions “The taste of seaweed without the joy of sushi.”* North Shore News photography manager Terry Peters, assessing Super Blue Green Algae after his first few days of using the latest in health supplements. “tt seems trite to say, but (in the past), we were closer to our parents and grandparents and didn’t have all the distractions. Plorytelling was a part of family ife.** Vera Rosenbluth, the author of a book that offers practical tech- niques for interviewing and documenting stories told by family members, on ithe value of Storytelling and its rarity in mod- ern life, 980-0511 986-6222 985-2131 986-1337 986-1337 985-3227 LESTER Pearson ... patented Canada’s Mr. Nice Guy image. ie: Ss DE WAYNE Fulton ... maestro harpist serenades North Van. Noel Wright HITHER AND YON inate a major and highly danger- ous war threat —- instead of waiting to supply probation-of- ficer services after someone else has done the dirty job — Canada’s Mr. Nice Guy image will be ruined, they wail. The gut fact they totally ignore is that the UN Charter envisages not only stamping out brush fires by diplomacy but also dealing by any means necessary, including force, with meriaces capable of engulfing whole regimes, conti- nents or even the world in all-out war. Saddam Hussein is the UN’s first challenge on that frightening scale. Worldwide recognition of its urgency has been shown in unan- imous Security Council backing for the UN resolutions against the Iraqi dictator and voluntary con- tributions of over 850,000 military personnel, plus warships and. thousands of planes and tanks, by 28 nations. Are they ALL out of step ex- cept the noisy disciples of Jean Chretien and Audrey McLaughlin? And if the world's boy scout — for 40 years the UN's loudest booster — sat this one out, would his Mr. Nice Guy image be worth even the cloth in a UN beret when it’s all over? The U.S. too has howling **peace’’ mobs from, New York to San Francisco. Yet a Washington Post poll shortly after the first raids on Baghdad found 76 per cent of Americans backed the UN action. Where was Canada’s Dr. Gallup when we needed him last week? eoe POSTSCRIPTS: Unconfirmed -- and undenied — for the moment are rumors that the West Van Post Office at 17th and Bellevue will close down al] customer ser- vices except boxes this summer and become simply a letter-car- riers’ depot like its North Van counterpart at E. Ist and Lons- dale. ‘‘I've no official informa- tion,” says its manager, ‘‘al- though I’m aware of the North Van situation.’’ Stay tuned or Ine ternationa!ly acclaimed harpist DeWayne Fulton, performs Wednesday, Jan. 23, for North Shore Community Concerts at the Centennial Theatre. . oee WRIGHT OR WRONG: Never lend money to friends. It ruins their memory. NS i