6 — Friday, December 16, 1988 - North Shore News INSIGHTS Come on, dear ladies — everyone loves imports! OH DEAR, YOUR SCRIBE BLEW IT. No invitation from Maureen Harvey or Winifred Rose for mince pies and egg- nog this Christmas. A fellow has to watch his language with ladies like these! As reported last week (helpfully, I'd hoped), Maureen and Winifred wanted to organize a North Shore War Brides Club. But now, the local WBs are coming after Wright in force, meat choppers in hand. I'd already been slapped on the wrist by one of them for uninten- tionally implying that they’d chas- ed Canada’s 1940-45 boys in khaki and blue, who brought back home some 48,000 of them wearing wedding rings. The exact opposite was true, the lady said — it was our overseas warriors who chased the British, Dutch and European girls. On a point of order I’m sure she’s right. However, her protest was mild ‘4imports.”” Personally, I've always thought of imports as something highly desirable. After all, we buy Japa- nese cars and computers, Korean VCRs, Hong Kong suits and jew- elry, and Italian Guccis by the freighter-load. Then again, all this free trade stuff from Brian Mulroney during the election cam- paign made ‘“‘imports’’ sound a - particularly nice, warm, welcome word. Something very good for the country, especially when it comes in duty-free. True, the definition in the Con- cise Oxford Dictionary — which some of the WBs apparently pack- ed with their trousseaus — is a lit- to call Maureen (926-8066) or Winifred (988-1671) about joining their War Brides Club. And take comfort in the thought that 11l never be asked to be a guest speaker there! tee TAILPIECES: Last chance this weekend to enjoy the expanded 1988 Carol Ships program, whose 7U or more vessels will have done up to 10 sailings in as many days -— a far cry from the single ship with eight carolers which started it all in 1961. Tomorrow, Saturday, it’s the turn of North Van’s Seymour area, with the cruise-past at Cates Park. The final show Sunday is along the Ambleside and Dundarave shoreline. Re watching out at both places from 7:15 p.m. onward ... Conceptual plans for Lions Gate North Enhancement Project — the long overdue facelift of our drab, uninviting ‘‘front door’’ at the north end of the LG bridge being masterminded by North Van architect Joe Cantafio — go toa public meeting for community input in January. Next, hopefully, a start on the ac- tual work, subject to funding from the five governments involved ... For those moved to help survivors of the Armenian earthquake (tax NOEL RIGHT © friday focus @ receipts issued), the numbers again for information or pledges are 261-7411 or 276-9627 ... And apologies to Grouse Mountain’s Valerie Lang for the goof which omitted her name last Sunday as a participant at the National Tour Association convention. ett WRIGHT OR WRONG: Money, we know, doesn’t bring happiness — but it can work wonders for misery. tle cold and curt: IMPORT a. imported article or commodity. That's all it says, period. One suspects some glum-faced protec- tionist wrote it in the Dirty Thirties — long before VE-Day, the GATT and the Boy from Baie-Comeau. If the word-man could have seen Downtown Toyota and Radio Shack today, his definition of im- ports would likely have been a lot more enthusiastic. Like the way Wright feels about you war brides who are now demanding his innocent head on a platter. In the wartime marriage market — pardon the analogy — you were the bridal Sony’s and Mercedes of the day. No wonder you were imported in such quan- tities. So my apologies, ladies, if ! didn’t make ail this clear. Mean- while, if you qualify, don’t forget compared to that of the WBs who’ve been phoning The News to vent their fury over being called MAUREEN HARVEY ...no egg- nog for Wright! “FAMILY” TIES ...North Van Bank of Commerce manager Bill Heffernan and Brooksbank student Chrissy Sakhrani put up the latest school art. Bank and school have ‘‘adopted’’ each other — with an ongoing school art exhibit at the bank and visits to the schoo! by bank staffers to explain how banks work. — Hospitals need help HE PROVINCIAL government needs an im- mediate solution to the immediate problem of bic-hazardous hospital waste. Thus far Lions Gate and other area hospitals have been left to unload increasingly complex garbage into a waste streain unequipped to accept it. Allocating funds to help hospitals deal with today’s garbage is a start, but it is by no means the end of problems surrounding tomorrow’s garbage. LGH has been obliged to ship all its bio-hazardous refuse to an incinerator in Washington State ever since the hospital stopped burning the material in its own incinerators, which cannot burn the waste and still meet air emission standards. Waste disposal costs at the hospital have conse- quently jumped 272 per cent in one year: from $44,000 in 1987 to $120,000 in 1988. But a funding shortfall is almost the least of the hospital’s probiems. Its waste disposal service faces the dual threat of be- ing halted at the border if American authorities decide Washington should stop accepting Canadian waste, or of being suspended by local garbage transfer stations if bio-hazardous wasie accidently ends up in the regular waste they process. A new $75 million GVRD incinerator in Burnaby still has no approval to burn bio-hazardous garbage, so hospitals are left with an expensive and unreliable system of disposing of highly complex and extremely unpleasant material. An addition to redefining which hospital waste is truly hazardous, the province must either establish a central incinerator for all bio-hazardous waste or provide hospitals with the funds to upgrade their incinerators to do the job. 980-0511 986-6222 985-2131 986-1337 986-1337 985-3227 THI VOICE OF HOPTH AND WEET VANCOUVER: ‘north.shore. Display Advertising Classified Advertising Newsroom Distribution Subscriptions Peter Speck Managing Editor. . . Barrett Fisher Associate Editor Noel Wright Advertising Director . Linda Stewart North Shore News, founded in 1969 as an independent suburban newspapet and qualitied under Schedule 111, Paragraph 1 of the Excise Tax Act. is Published each Wednesday, Friday and Sunday by North Shore Free Press (td. and distributed lo every door on the North Shore. Second Class Mail Registration Number 3885 Publisher SUnDAT MEONESDAY = FRIDAY 1139 Lonsdale Avenue, North Vancouver, B.C. 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