nerth shore news

VIEWPOINT

ISEX Sats

" EAVE it to the Girl Guides tc
eturn some sanity to this new
age of hysterical inclusiveness.

Too bad the Boy Scouts don’t share
the same good sense.

The national council of the Boy
Scouts of Canada recently veted to
become a fully co-ed organization.

In other words there will henceforth
be girls in what before 1992 was an
exclusively male domain.

For the past six years, girls have been
allowed in Boy Scout troops, but the
decision to include them in those
troops has been made at a local level.
Now it’s a national policy to include
one and all. Thus we no longer have
the chauvinistic Boy Scouts of Canada,
we have instead the neutered Scouts
Canada — your human rights industry
hard at work on your behalf.

But the Girl Guides of Canada have

simply said no to similar foolishness.

Boys have never been a part of the
Girl Guides and never will be.

Thank God for that.

The organization, which provides
invaluable instruction to girls in life
skills from female role models, believes
in the simple philosophy that the
fessons and skills taught in Girl Guides
are best learned in a single-sex environ-
ment. The Human Rights crybabies be
damned.

Girls need role models of their own
gender to develop into well-adjusted,
useful women. Boys need role models
of their own gender to develop into
well-adjusted, useful men.

Organizations that have the courage
of their convictions and common sense
to maintain those principles in the face
of modern unisex society deserve sup-
port and applause.

cee Se bans cey pa pe
CP OReVE Whee é 4 eee mt

Weighty News issues

Dear Keaders:

RW. Pearson of North Vancouver recently wrote us to
complain that our Nov. | issue weighed only 4 02., but carried
20 oz. of flyers. “Is this really the voice of North and West
Vancouver — junk mail, advertising flyers and minima! news?
(The issue] was massive in size, but vou have obviously lost
your focus on what your obligation is to your ceader.”

The world of publist:ing and advertising has changed a lot
over the last few years. It used to be that our advertising reps
(and the publisher) could talk to almost any advertiser on the
North Shore and have a reasonable expectation of selling
advertising. But the complexion of merchandising has
changed, and what we have now is a chain-dominated rarket-
place, with fewer independent merchants that we can talk to
one-on-one. Decisions are made in Toronto, Calgary and Los
Angeles.

Chain store merchandisers are attracted to flyers. They print
them by the millions, and they send them to us by the truck-
load. At the North Shore News, we have a love-hate rela-
tionship with flyers. We love the revenue and it reduces our dis-
tribution costs, Bur flyer pages are not ad pages. Every ad page
in the North Shore News pays for about a third of'an editor-
ial page.

Flyer advertisers don’t participate in North Shore News
readership. Many of them feel that using the News’ excellent
distribution system is cnough, and that when their flyer comes
into your houschald you will read it.

That's not the case in about 80% of North Shore house-
holds, for the average flyer. In about cight jiouscholds out of
10, the flyers are unopened and unread — discarded and recy-
cled. But in 92% of the North Shore’s households and apart-
ments, the North Shore News is gone through from cover to
cover, every issue. We have invested 30 years and millions of
person-hours to earn that readership and respect, and advertis-
ers who only buy flyers don’t necessarily get their message in
front of our readers. Our in-paper advertisers reach a lot more
people than the best-read flyer distributed on the North Shore
does. One would think it would be simple to show that to the
advertisers. It isn’t.

Peter Speck

north shore

: North Shore Hews, founded in 1969 as an
independent suburban newspaper and quattied
under Schedule 111, Paragraph 111 of the
Excise Tax Act is published each Wednesday,
Friday and Sunday by North Shore Free Press,
Lad. and distributed to every door on the North
Shore Canada Post Canadian Pubeations Mai

* Sales Product Agreement No. 0087238

Mading rates available on request.

Barbara Ema
Distribution Manager
986-1337 (124)

Nisga’a OK

THERE’S nothing too wrong
with the Nisga’a Treaty, if seen
as a single isolated deal. There’s
a lot terribly wrong with it as a
“model” for all
future treaty-mak-
ing.

To summarize: the
Nisga’a people get 2,000
sq. km. of land in a
remote area of northwest
B.C. where only 100 or
so non-natives live. The
band also gets $312 mil-
lion over 15 years. The
resident Nisga’a popula-
tion of some 2,500 will
have a form of self-government exercising
more powers than a municipaliry, with
non-native residents denied any vote in
electing it and ineligible to stands for
office.

Still, no big sweat maybe, jus this
once. After waiting more than a Century,
the Nisga’a have shown great patience
and dignity at the negotiating table. It’s a
relatively uny, faraway corner of the
province. In practice, the chances of any
non-native being seriously inconve-
nienced seem almost nil. So why nor let
the Nisga’a have their settlement and
enjoy it?

But when it comes to the other 50-
odd claims still to be negotiated —
including Greater Vancouver and heavily
developed areas like Prince George,
Kamloops and the Okanagan, where two-
thirds of British Columbians live and
work, the Nisga’a Treaty as a “model”
becomes much more ominous.

PETER SPECK
Pubiisher
$85-2131 (101)

Jonathan Beil

Creative Services Manager
98S-2131 (127)

61,582 (average curculation, Wednesday, Friday & Sunday)

Stephenson
Classified Manager

Photography Manager
988-6222 (202)

985-2131 (160)

Comptroller
985-2131 (133)

Entire contents © 1997 North Shore Free Press Ltd, Ail rights reserved.

The so-called principles guiding the
BC Treaty Commission include a masi-
mum land giveaway not exceeding 5% of
the province's total land area — which
works out at 46,487 sq.km. Deduct the
Nisga‘as’ 2,000 sg.km.
and we're left with an
average land transter to
cach of the other 50
aboriginal claimants of
$90 sq. kim. But since
another Treaty
Commission principle
says “private land is not
on the table,” the land
portion of settlements
in built-up urban areas
would clearly be mini-
mal.

So how is that going to play in our
own neck of the woods? Presumably our
Squamish and Burrard band neighbors
would be quick to grab such morsels of
public land as Ambleside Park (which
they already half own), Waterfront Park
and Cates Park. Over town, Stanley Park,
Hastings Park and Jericho. All ripe for
profitable real estate development by our
native fellow-citizens — why not 1,000
acres of highrises covering a deforested
Stanley Park? King-size subdivisions cov-
ering Ambleside and Cates Parks? A
native-run shopping mall with “big box”
stores on the PNE grounds?

However, this still falls far short of the
average 890 sq. km.land “entitlement”
for each remaining claim. So cash in lieu
— likely masses of it — will be demand-
ed. And don’t fall for the ploy that B.C.
pays only one-fifth, while the feds pay the
rest. Does nobody in B.C. pay Ortawa
income tax?

hither
and yon

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Nie

— but not the process

Meanwhile, what about native self
government in urban areas populated
almost entirely by non-natives? Taking
the Nisya’a deal, are we, for example,
talking about replacing the three North
Shore councils with Squamish and
Burrard band councils elected solely by
aboriginals, with the other 98% of the
population disenfranchised? If not, what
kind of self-government ARE we talking
about?

These questions, as crazy as some may
sound, have not ver been answered, They
obviously must be, if the Nisga’a Treaty ts
indeed seen as a “model” for future set-
tlements. Exactly which parts of it are to
be copied in future treaties? And what
will be substituted tor those parts that
cannot be copied? [n short, both native
and non-native B.C. citizens are entitled
to 2 much more precise list of the princi-
ples enshrined in the treaty for future use,
BEFORE it is graven in stone for all
time.

Today’s treaty opponents are not
bashing the Nisga’a. They are challenging
the faceless Treaty Commission bureau-
crats and their NDP masters who would
deny us our most basic democratic right
— the right to know, and approve in
advance by referendum, the road they're
leading us down.

oa0a
MANY HAPPY RETURNS of romor-
row, Dec. 7, to West Van birthday girl
Renate Griffiths ... And ditto that day
to West Van Kiwanian Brock Webber
(whose date we flubbed last week!).
Oca
WRIGHT OR WRONG: Stress is when

your mouth says “yes” and your gut says
”

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The North Shore News is published by North Shore Free Press Ltd., Publisher Peter Speck, from 1139 Lonsdale Avenue North Vancouver, B.C., V7M 24

a

Sanity