— ee = eS LIFESTYLES 39 - Sunday, June 17, 1990 - North Shore News There's a lesson to be learned from younger folk WHEN YOU have achieved your three-score-and-plus, you may find you’re nussing something. Some of your buttons, sure, but other stuff, too. Like whistles. It used to be rather entertaininy io flirt with a construction site or a passing 18-whecler Those pleasures have now been replac- ed by respect. Give me whisules any time. Oh, respect can have its uses, true. [t sometimes gcls you a seat on the bus, or fills the air with the sound and smell of scorching brakes as you tentatively totter across the intersecticn. [t's also useful on those occasions when we want to sound off on ‘now, when 1 was a boy,”* or ‘‘if 1 were you,”’ and another good onc. *‘you don't know how lucky you are.”’ What we old-timers really want is a sort of hypodermic with which to inject our hard-earned truths. We'd fill the thing with serums marked ‘‘relax’’ and “friendly.” ‘‘Enjoy,, we would jab. ‘‘Lighten up,” jab, jab. What pains us most is that we know we're responsible for the calculating view you have of the world. We brought your genera- tion up in the pattern of our own upbringings, which reeked of straight-laced interdictions and blatant prejudice. We'd been patterned after standard British sun-never-sets superiority, of narrow-minded Calvinism. Some of our parents were rebel Europeans terrified of this endless country, endlessly cold, and therefore doubly protec- tive. We ourselves grew up rigid and now mourn the connections we spurned. How rigid are we? I.ct me tell you a story. It happened in Victoria, where rigidity has its home. A pleasant couple lived on a pleasant street where everyone vied in a genteel way in smal] gardening. Therefore our friends spent a lot of weekend time constructing and maintaining a rocke) adjacent to the public sidewalk. They noticed that every after- noon that they squatted with their backs to the street, tussling with trowels, an cldesly gentleman would pass. He always wore a dark suit, a black Fedora, and carried a black umbrella over his arm whilst he puffed on his pipe, shuffling past them, a*sorbed in a thick book. He didn’t acknowledge their presence, if he even realized it, nor they his, except to glance at one another and cock an eyebrow. They were strangers isolated in their own affairs. One day in midsummer, engag- ed in grooming the flourishing rockery, the kneeling wife looked Help’s at hand HELP’S AT Hand, a_ weekly feature by the North Shore In- formation and Volunteer Centre, answers questions about and diseusses such topics as govern- ment policies and programs, benefits, consumer and legal rights, taxation and public ser- vices. Answers published in this col- umn are intended only as a gener- al guide and should not be applied to specific individual cases without further consultation. see Question: My children and I became Canadian citizens in 1986 after we had been in Canada for three years. I applied for and received 3 Canadian passport im- mediately because I was planaing a vacation in China, but I did not apply fer passports for my children. My elder son, now 17 years old, is planning a trip abroad this summer efter he graduates from high school. He has just realized that he has lost his Canadian citi- zenship card and that his British passport ran out last month. How does he set about getting the cor- rect documentation so he can travel? Answer: Your son can apply for a Canadian passport or renew his British passport, but he should definitely apply for a new citizen- ship card. The loss of a citizenship card is a serious matter which must be reported to the police. To apply for a Canadian pass- port, your son will first have to go to the Court of Canadian Citizen- ship, Sinclair Centre, 200-757 W. Hastings St., Vancouver, tele- phone 666-3971, and fill in a form asking them to do a ‘Search of the Record" and pick a form for a replacement Citizenship card. An appointment will be made for him to return when the search is completed. The charge for a replacement card for a minor is $15 (if he had been 18 years or over the charge would have been $40). The citi- zenship court will want to see the police file to be sure that the loss was reported. After attending his appointment at the citizenship court, your son will be given a letter to take with him when he applies for a Cana- dian passport to prove that he is a Canadian citizen, and a receipt to show that he has applied and paid for a replacement citizenship card. The passport office will then be able to supply him with a ‘limited validity’? passport one that lasts only 12 months rather than the normal five years. When his replacement citizenship card ar- tives, he can take it to the pass- port office and, for a further $5, have his passport extended to a five-year validity. You can pick up forms to apply for a Canadian passport at most Post Offices. You will also be given written instructions on how to fill in the form, and what documentation and size photographs you will need. The renewal of a British pass- port is currently taking # mini- mum of six weeks. You can get the form for passport renewal from the British Consulate Gener- al, 800-1111 Melville St... Van- couver, telephone 683-4421. The cost is $30 plus $7.50 postage. cae The North Shore Information and Volunteer Centre, a United Way agency, is located at 1060 Roosevelt Cres., North Van- couver, B.C. V7P 1413, telephone 985-7138. This column is prepared with financial assistance from the Notary Foundation. up briefly as her nostrils caught the approaching tobacco fragrance. She immediately drop- ped her head and nudged her husband, saying, ‘‘Durling, the old gent’s on fire." Darling took one brief, herrified ELEANOR GODLEY ¢ the vintage years © look and whispered back, *‘Good heavens, so he ist’? What to do? The old chap seemed quite oblivious to the smoke that spiralled upwards from the depths of his black umbrella and carried on reading and sucking on his pipe. “~ think,’ said Darling, ‘‘that the dottle from his pipe must have fallen into his brolly. Should we call the fire engine?" “How can we?’’ answered his wife, with perfect logic. ‘We've ror met. We don't know his name.”* They watched him out of sight, smoke still wreathing his bulk. Once during the week that follow- ed they did say to one another, ‘‘1 do hope he's all right."”. When they again took up their positions with their backsides to the public, they smiled in’ relief when they heard his accustomed shuffling at the usual hour. Good, he was all right and hadn't suffered anything but the loss of his umbrella, which, they both noted quietly, had been replaced by a navy-blue one. When we were taught to abjure commerce with strangers did it re- ally include folks on fire? We greatly regret the paranoia and suspicion that we may have laid on you, but we plead extenuating circumstances. The world went to war on a very broad scale two times after we were born, to sav nothing of countless other frights and alarms. There was a depression that wrung all the juice out of our youth, just when we were ripe for knowledge and adventure. Those were grey-sky times, patched-shoe times, when a loose quarter in the pocket bestowed the excitement of choice. And so we were smothered by cautious circumspection and positive poverty. We lived in black and white times — jot: and your children have it in technicolor. No point in blame at this late date, and really we feel lucky just to have lasted long enough to see it different. But we expect a fot of you in a new world where wars are considered unacceptable, where resources and manpower can be mated for the benefit of all, where people will bring up children to embrace their com- monality without worrying about origins or color or status. A world where you don’t have to be in- troduced before offering succour. You've got a world-wide view on revolutionary change. We should live so long.