4 - Wednesday, March 18, 1987 - North Shore News ; ¥ - - . : f. ae es Bob Hunter © strictly personal ®@ YOUNG PEOPLE in British Columbia are living through not just another Great Depression, but maybe something worse, like the start of a Dark Age. It feels like it sometimes. Our economy has gone to wrack and ruin. The quality of life is falling off at nearly every level you look. The air is dirtier. The water is dirtier. The beaches are crowded. The traffic jams are worse. We've nearly squandered one of the richest resource bases anyone ever had. We aren’t keep- ing up with the really fierce com- petition that has developed out there in the world. Worst of all, stupidest of all, instead of helping our kids more, we're making it tougher for them. It's tougher to get an education. And it is damn near impossible to get a job. This is the 1980s. 1 remember seeing the pictures in Popular Mechanics magazine back in the *50s that showed us what the future was going to be like. By the 1980s, there was sup- posed to he regular rocket service to the mcon. There would be colonies ca Mars. Everybody would be flying around in their own atom-powered family helicopters. Every home would have two-way TV telephones at the very least. What happened? Oh, we have a few geodesic domes here and there. But no one has walked on the moon for over a decade. It’s like the Space Age came and went. The vaunted nuclear industry is collapsing, along with the ozone 5 layer. Our natural environment has been raped, continues to be raped. There are long awful line-ups at the food banks. The post office doesn’t work as well as it used to. The banks make you wait. The trains barely run, let alone run on time. The forest industry is described as being in its sunset phase. There are too many fish boats after too few fish. The mining industry, our other great source of income, is making sounds about folding up completely. The shipping industry is comatose. We never did develop much of a manufactufing sector and now the lack of economic diversity is coming back to haunt us in the form of the highest unemploy- ment rates anywhere in Canada, except for Newfoundland. And, generally, all we get by way of leadership is bread and circuses, i.e. welfare and Expo. No one says, ‘‘Go west, young man’’ any more. It's go east or go south. Run for it. Vancouver actually has the highest unemployment rate of any city in Canada — 15.1 per cent. And it is followed by Vic- toria, with 14.6 per cent out of work. Back in the ’50s, and even the 60s, we were living in an odd lit- tle Golden Age, without realizing it. Or at least a renaissance. If I got bored with a job, | quit, yet the longest I ever stayed unem- ployed was two weeks and that was because I felt like taking ‘it easy. ; There were jobs for the pick- ing. They weren’t great jobs, but bringing a pay cheque in was an easy thing. In fact, life was soft. ; Mysterious death ruled an accidental drowning THE mysterious disappearance of North Varicouver resident Albert Kornelius McAuley seven years ago in Quesnel Lake has been rul- ed an accidental drowning by a Burnaby coroner's jury. The 60-year-old McAuley ‘went missing the night of Oct. 13, 1979 when he fell or jumped from a friend’s boat while the two were ’ fishing near the lake's shore. * The North Vancouver man’s body has never been found. McAuley’s fishing partner John Townend, a parapalegic, admitted he was operating the boat while in- toxicated and told the inquest McAuley. disappeared suddenly over the side of the boat. He said he assumed McAuley had either fallen overboard or decided to swim to shore. A’ neighbor of Townend’s ‘ testified hearing loud voices and the sound of a boat suddenly ac- celerating that night. | AFRICAN VIOLETS °°? 4’ pot | DAFFODILS Fresh cut | CINERARIA Vivid Daisy-like Flower 10... 19° $499 5”’ pot It sure isn't now. fF would be afraid to be a young man now. I'd have to be tough and lean and alert for every advantage, instead of being a wooly-headed dreamer, which it was possible to be back when I was a teenager. An economist once explained to me that, having been born in 1941, it was almost impossible for me to flap completely. { ar- rived just nicely ahead of the baby boom, thank you. This meant that for every job, there were only a few of us com- peting. Once the baby boom crested, the number of people chasing the number of jobs just kept mushrooming, while economic growth came to a glacial halt. There are older people who have trouble grasping this. They complain bitterly about the slov- enliness and lack of ambition on the part of the current younger generation, but the fact is that in the years since the Second World War Canada has been going downhill, relatively speaking, as a major industrial Western power, It leaves so much less room for youngsters today to manoeuvre that it amounts to a national tragedy of lost opportunities. Why hasn't Canada surged for- ward into the future instead of slipping back into a Dirty Thir- ties-like economic stupor, especially here in B.C. I find it all too symbolic that the two worst pockets of unemployment in Canada today are Newfoundland and B.C., the | East Coast and the West. The centre is certainly not holding us up, is it? It’s just caking care of its own ass. . Vancouver itself has virtually become a huge outport, as the dying Newfoundland coastal villages are known. St. John’s itself, for so long the unemploy- ment capital of the country, has just 10.3 per cent of its people out on their duffs. That's surely an historic shift worth recording. itis easy enough to say it could be worse. The fact is, it could also be a helluva lot better. Dispute halts sailing THE CREW of a Liberian- registered tanker scheduled to sail from North Vancouver’s Neptune Terminals Saturday is demanding two weeks wages and holiday pay from the ship's owners before its members will agree to return to the Philippines. International Transport Federa- tion (ITF) inspector Gerry Mc- Cullough said the A.M. Carrier's owners have offered to pay the ship’s 15-member crew 20 per cent of those wages in Canada and the other 80 per cent when they are back in the Philippines. tihdePARTS & SERVICE But crew members, who halted the ship’s departure Saturday to protest what they said were low wages and inadequate food, want all wages owed to them paid before they leave Canada, McCullough said. Monthly wages paid to an able- bodied seaman aboard the tanker were $276 per month, he said, with $1.30 per hour overtime after a 48-hour week. McCullough said the comparable wage for able- bodied seamen under ITF contract is $821 with $11 per hour overtime after a 40-hour week. On the North Shore since 1955, 1 PARTS & SERVICE FOR MAJOR APPLIANCES Parts Dept. open 900 to 5:30 Mon. to Fri., Sat 9 to 5 Major appliance in-home service Is aS Near as your phone 1629 Garden Ave., North Vancouver 987-2251 Vacuum cleaner parts or bring your cleaner in for servicing. Bou dary 332 North shore Largest caren Centers! NORTH VAN 1343 LYNN VALLEY RD. 985-1784 & Y eee ae iynn valley 3 Road e. WEST VAN 2558 HAYWOOD AVE. 922-2613 | Haywood Ave, ar aN £ Bl x 4 | Marine Or.