6 - Sunday, April 8, 1990 - North Shore News

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Viqoeo ine-(oms .

allusion to the shipwrecked $680

million Polar Class 8 contract in Thursday’s throne speech was politically astute but ultimately empty.

Sunk by the federal government in its February budget, the Polar 8 is dead, and its resurrection would be a miracle of religious proportions.

And while Stan Hagen, B.C.’s minister of regional and econemic development, led a West Coast delegation to Ottawa last month to discuss the project, con- tinued pursuit of the Polar 8 is a largely fruitless exercise.

Because it has become painfully ob- vious that little help for the ailing West Coast shipbuilding industry will be forthcoming from the feds, the provin- cial government should concentrate, in- stead, on its long-term plan ‘‘to renew

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and bolster’? its ferry fleet, which was also announced in the throne speech.

One of the largest in the world, that fleet could provide an ongoing source of employment fs; West Coast shipyards.

But if tae provincial government’s ferry plan is to help local yards, it must allow for a ore constant schedule of vessel construction and maintenance to avoid the chronic boom and bust ship- building cycle, it must refrain from sen- ding contracts out of province and it must attempt to coordinate its contracts with any that might come from the fed- eral government.

Exhuming the dead Polar 8 is merely a public relations exercise.

Versatile Pacific and other North Shore shipbuilders need more than polit- ical rhetoric if they are to survive as vital shipbuilding entities. :

“He does have a driving record. I submit it is not a bad driving re- cord. I submit it is not overly bad. He’s a young man. If he has a problem, it is his lead foot.”’ Defence attorney Wesley McHarg, commenting on the driv- ing record of his client James William Bergen, convicted of dan- gerous driving causing death in a Feb. 18, 1989 accident that resulted in the death of 21-year-old Anthony Kiss of North Vancouver.

‘| went out and compared tap water to pure water and I was just disgusted in the quality of the tap

Canadian Springs Water Co. co-owner Glenn Bailey, commen-

Publisher

Associate Editor

Shore.

envelope

Peter Speck Managing Editor Timothy Renshaw Noel Wright

: Advertising Director . Linda Stewart

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ting on the state of Lower Mainland fresh water.

“So it’s not goiag to be for the average family. It’s going to be for a new market as far as North Van- couver goes — for that executive class.’”

North Vancouver District fand agent Don Sigston, describing the district’s new high-priced Braemar development.

“If the district feels there is a market in that price range in that area, they are dreaming.”’

Sutton Group-West Coast Real- ty real estate agent Rosario Set- ticasi, commenting on what he says are the high prices for the Braemar

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development lots.

“Citizens groups and the electorate didn’t ask us to consider this. We wouldn’¢ have to defend such an increase if we didn’t vote for it.”

North Vancouver District Ald. Murray Dykeman, opposing a 20 per cent salary raise for district aldermen.

“We certainly encourage the film industry in West Vancouver, and we hope you win an Oscar."’

West Vancouver Mayor Don Lanskail, giving his blessings to the company producing a Disney film that will be shot at West Van- couver’s Park Royal Shopping Centre.

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MEMBER

Good guys and gals the headlines miss

THE WORLD JIS A SAD MESS, if judged only by what the popular media mostly tells us. And yet every day, thousands of individuals — undiscovered by the media — get on quietly with cleaning up their own tiny corner of it.

So over to Kingston, Ont. — famous for its institutions, eight of which happen to be prisons.

Another is its stately 149-year- old Queen’s University, where Bonnie Fenton, daughter of West Van's Keith and Eola Fenton, is a fourth-year linguistics student. She’s also no stranger to life in jail.

What she remembers most about her first time in a penitentiary are the sounds. Bang, slam, bang. Doors slammed and then locked behind her. ‘‘There were five, I counted them.’”

Two hours later on that night in 1988 the doors reopened to let her out — but not the man she’d gone to help. That was the start of her two years to date with ‘‘Frontier College,’’ a national literacy pro- gram that matches jailbirds with volunteer tutors.

She’s one of more than 50 such volunteers among Queen’s stu- dents.

By now she’s tutored four dif- ferent inmates — using newspa- pers, crosswords and games to help them learn reading, writing and math skills that they never, for some reason, picked up in school.

The native language of she three of them is Spanish and this has led to a lot of fun — not least when she used everyday colloquialisms like ‘“‘that makes sense’’ before realizing that the phrase made no sense at all to her student.

Once she explained the meaning, it became a favorite joke between them.

Her biggest thrill came when her last Spanish-speaking student began to put English sentences together correctly without prompting, ‘‘I’d ask him, why did you do that? He’d reply, ‘because it sounded right.’”

Bonnie herself has learned more than how to teach literacy. Her in- itial nervousness quickly evaporated when she found pris- oners were aiso human beings with

ne

“MID” Hughes . day girt.

BONNIE Fenton ...cleaning up her corner. '

concerns like her own. She now feels entitled to an opinion on penal issues like paying inmates for work and whether long sentences lessen crime. |

**We talk a lot about things like family,” she says. ‘‘] have an in- sight that a lot of people don’t have. I can say, well, I was in there and that’s not what it’s like.””

But there’s more to Bonnie’s story than helping a few cons along the road to rehabilitation.

It’s also ihe story of the thou- sands like her — missed by the headlines — who work to make their own bit of the world a nicer place for others.

And THAT's a comforting thought this Paim Sunday.

nar

TAILPIECES: Coming up April 20 is the big night for ethnic Brits — and all who think like them: the annual St. George’s Day roast beef dinner with toasts, entertainment and dancing in the B.C. Club on the Plaza of Nations overtown. More later about what's happening in this now thriving corner of the . Canadian mosaic, but to make sure of tickets you’d better call St. George Society president Anne Haigh of North Van pronto at 987-8900... Circle next Sunday, April $5, on your calendar for the Howe Sound Lions grand rain-or- shine Easter Egg Hunt in West Van’s John Lawson Park, with fun galore for kids from one to nine and their parents starting at ! p.m.... Many happy returns of tomorrow, April 9, to 82-year-old West Van pioneer Mildred ‘‘Mid”’ Hughes... Tuesday it’s happy bir- thday wishes to North Van's Frank Decker... And also on that day send anniversary greetings to North Van's Harold and Edie King.

eke WRIGHT OR WRONG: As the wise mother whale warned her off- spring: ‘‘It’s when you're spouting that you're most likely to be har- pocned.”’