6 — Friday, August 21, 1998 — North Shore News

illian Guess makes for good

copy. But her time in the
spotlight is about to end.

The flamboyantly outspoken
North Vancouver woman was
found guilty of obstruction of jus-
tice in June, but has had some two
months to think the whole affair
over. Thursday saw the start of her
sentencing hearing and unfortu-
. nately for those who have come to
despise the amount of coverage she
has received from every medium
imaginable, Guess has spent little
. time thinking and a whole lot talk-

“She has done the rounds, from
rs Sam Donaldson to Maury

north shore news

VIEWPOINT

ight dims

‘while she was serving on a jury at his

trial.

Her own trial was a sensationalist’s

dream: wiretap evidence filled with sex-
ual innuendo, sporadic outbursts from
Guess and, of course, the daily Gillian
Guess outfit watch. Reporters fell over
themszives attempting to sway Guess
to break her lawyers’ instructions and
comment on the case. The effort was
always worth it because she always had
something to say.
. Her frankness may have offered
immediate gratification to Guess and
story fodder to reporters, but in the
‘ong run she was also digging her own
grave. Her daily digs at the justice sys-
tem she portrayed as having turned on
her are, no doubt, still ringing in the
ears of the judge who holds her fate in
his hands.

- She can kiss the spotlight goodbye.

RESPONGIB! TY

, Business willing to sell dem

heaches and beer beckon.

gy article on. slow. play at Northlands, I

but think of the sig ed at courses in the .
Scotland: “A Pane of golf shall be com:

and:15 min:

tase it made the mistake of: conhing into a resi-
often conser=:
happy. We. have -expaaded itito *

for food It scems‘all

they tO Oirs. -
a ives of’ animals were valued and
man. life seems.to be. As our popu-

Iedes we ‘had besr quit thinking of ourselves: and

of the species on this carth a:chance of a fu
wv much Mr, Grindrod: defends his decision i it
ethically. wrong,

Bed. life was caliously snuffed out. - Tonilly

art Shore tows, tounded in 1960.38 20

.. -rather too theoreti
poetical) to win muc!

"WHAT price principle?

In the not-so-distant past that ques-
tioa would not have seemed as “square”
as I suspect it does in this age of wide-
spread public cynicism, despondency,

enation, and instant or
faster gratification (which

“just as quickly is con-
‘sumed, now on to the
» Mexe).

Principle was then not
so quickly assumed to

: have — like everything
. else — a price tag.

When'l (bone 1934)

was a boy, and our brave
: yours, men and women’
“were fi

ting what now

looks li the last morally unambiguous
war, princi te was high in hearts and

min ¢ whole world of the Allies —-

:. ‘alive in speech and song, and expressed

unblushingly.
Of ca course principle was as often
ood example, a.

betrayed. . Recently, for :
‘clip from a war movie showed a unit of ° -
«the U.S. Army with the usual represes.ta-

tive and stereotypical figures —~ including

a black soldier.’

In the rea! war, there was no such

thing. The U.S. fought the war segregat-

at, ‘betrayed as it was, principle was
acknowledged as a beacon that had wide-
spread acceptance and would gradually be
made flésh — as expanded liberty and

Tights proved in the postwar period —

and hot just something that pocts and
theorists talked about.
This piece ‘itself.is, I- know, sounding
(perhaps even 0
attention when

ee

indepondent suburzan |

wenden Schedule 111, (sragraph 151 of the. -
* Baca Tax Act, is published eath Wednesday.
Frigey and Sanday by Nort Shore Free Press
Li and distributed to ery door on te Noth
Shore. Canada Post Cansdian Publice..ns Rid

But it takes some external stimulus to

kickstart my little mind, such as it is, and

that stimulus is the Nisga’a treaty.
‘The issue is being passionately argued
precisely because it

. involves a clash of princi- .

ples.
: if you have been paying
attention, you know that
: in certain ways the

Nisga’a will be a nation -

apart, based o Nisga’a
ain which the Ni
garden .— in which the isga’a
people will have rights in
fi biases their territory that will.

not be held by the: non-’

Nisga’a, incleding other Indians.

n short, 2 :ss-than-equal citizenship,
an abandonment of “onc person, one:
vote” for “one vote if you have the right
ethnic makeup : and less than a (full) vote.
if you haven't.”

My view is: If this nation negotiates,
connives; agrees to the diminution of ': ~
even one pevson’s citizenship on the Basis

of race or blood, it has made'a retreat < .
from democratic principle as massive as if

it! had deprived millions of full citizen”
ship.

‘And then we aren’t so far after, all
from the hypocri of that old movie with
the black soldi rh ighting alongside the
white.

So who would willingly ; agree to the

abandonment of that’ principle in order to
* (make peace wi

ith the Nisga’a, with anoth-
er 50-odd treaties to come modelled after
Nisga’a?

I think I know. Business.

Not alf business, but a luc of business-

treaties.

They, and their so is
municipal councils —
in the smaller towns w
rests on resource

{— and eve
* teried’ ‘with rapt (a

bership — ethnicity :

Indians won-a claim (fo
rights on land th

gave them the

ing $370,000-

where. Much
towns and citi
So someon
So what? -”
What price principl

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