The Marth Store Kews is published by North Store Free Press Lid., Publisher Fetes Speck, from 1139 Lonsdale Avonse Worth Vanceever, 8.C., V7M 2K4

PETER SPECK Publisher 985-2131 (101)

i

Compsroiler 95-2131 (39)

must include yo address & telephone number. @ direct

wena pt ae 4

citculation, Wednesday, Fray & & Suniay)

© 1997 North Shore Free Press Ltd. All rights teserved.

Bullets for brains

| AST Friday’s sickening murder in a crowded North Vancouver cine- ma should have us all more than just a little bit disgusted.

Law-abiding folk seem to have fallen into the trap of thinking that as long as the bad guys are victimizing each other, a certain level of criminal warfare can be tolerated.

We turn numb as we are increasingly exposed to incidents of gang-related, drug- connected, drive-by and home-invading crimes of slayings, robberies, kidnappings and casual parking-lot beatings.

In the case of the violent acts associat-

1. THE MONEY Must BE FRESHLY LAUNDERED AN?

DISINFECTED

2. if MusT BE

STACKED IN BUNDLES OF UNMARKED $100. GILLS

ZN

Sy

ONE

ed with the shadowy Persian Pride, the fights are being taken into public places.

We are all potentially at risk now.

The bullets shot into a house in the 100-block of East 17th Street in October could have easily found an unintended target.

The bullet with Mani Rezaci’s name on it might have hit his brother or any- one else near Rezaei on Station Street in Vancouver in November.

The bullets for Mohammed Mirhadi didn’t hit anyone else seated near him in the theatre. We can be thankful for that minor miracle.

3. 17 Must BE WRAPPED IN PLAIN RECYCLED PAPER

4, iT MUST SE DELIVEREP TOA

OG TE NDP SETS UP GUIDELINES FOR ACCEPTING CORPORATE DONATIONS.

“CAN I help you, sir?” cried a friendly | clerk hurtling past me in the other direc- tion and suddenly throwing on her brakes. And I wasn’t more than 30 feet (9.144 metres)

into the place.

Before I knew it I had been personal- ly accompanied and delivered into the hands and care of another equally smil- ing, upbeat clerk in women’s wear, nightgown division.

(Oh, there’s a subplot to this story. Let’s just say that as I was being shown the various styles, 2 woman I know, also absorbed in looking at night- gowns, almost bumped into me coming around a clothes rack, and I was relieved te discover that it was my wife. Yes, we'd been gravely discussing, nightgowns that morning, and ... well, I’m glad we had, otherwise she might have suspected me of buying the nightgown for someone else's wife. Flattering, at my age, and weight.)

-_ The point is that this scenario, this smothering of attention, this warm (and highiy satisfactory) service, took place at Eaton’s Park Royal just hours after the announcement that the 128-year-old Canadian institution was, for all practical purposes, bruke.

Broke. Did $1.7 billion worth of business last year at its 87 stores. But it owes two banks $160 million, owes creditors $150 million, has borrowed $550 million from a finance company at whopper rates about 2% higher than the norma! bank rate — like a doubtfil-risk person who has to pay a

garden of biases

premium for his borrowing —- and has sought court protection until June 30 when this mess will have to be sorted out.

Serious? How'd you like to be an Eaton’s sup- plier, like the “little guy” who pkoned CBC’s Cross-Canada Checkup saying his company was owed $44,000, probably won’t get it, probably will collapse?

Would you like to be Larco, Eaton’s landlord at Park Royal, where Eaton’s had plans to expand into the Zeller’s space vacated just after Christmas? (At some malls across Canada tenants have lease clauses allowing them to leave if the “anchor” ten- ant closes shop.)

Yer the clerks I encountered on my nightgown quest (I got a nice blue one) radiated confidence, even team spirit, certain that Eaton’s would emerge safe and whole.

Sure hope so. I’m an Eaton’s person. Like mil- lions more. A lot of armchair quarterbacks are sud- denly finding faule with Eaton’s methods. Prices “too high.” “Nothing interesting” in the store (said one birdbrain of a 1960s-type woman on the radio — I shuddered at her awful cliche, “Yknow what I’m sayin’?”).

Well, the next day I took my wife (and that nightgown) to Seattle and paid very close attention to the way they do things at big, famous stores like Nordstrom and the Bon Marche.

The clerks look like flocks of young, freshly scrubbed, Sunday-best guys and dolls from the cornbelt looking to be discovered by a Hollywood producer circa 1950. Hordes of them, And they fall on you like extremely nice crows, instantly striking up a degree of friendly intimacy that my wife and I don’t share after 17 years of marriage. (OK, that blue nightgown and the trip to Seattle were for our anniversary, Didn’t mean to tell you, reader, You wrung it out of me.)

And the prices are way up there. Eaton’s has far

As long as these young fools with bul- lets for brains continue to be at large in our community we are not safe in our public places.

The police have their suspects. They have been trouble as teens on the North Shore. Our kid-glove Canadian justice system has coddled them along their criminal way. .

They are vicious and bold. They must feel untouchable by now.

It’s time for us to reclaim our streets. Let’s pour on the police resources and catch these guys. Let’s put them away. We couid all use the peace.

meio x Place tolls on Cypress road

Dear Editor:

The NDP government is consid-- >:

ering charging tolls on a new Lions Gate Bridge. a The NDP government. is. off- loading to. West Vancouver the cost of maintaining the road’ to the. Cypress ski area. os eae The proposed $4 million Cypress. ski area development will reduce the’ sewer capacity of West Vancouver. : : Perhaps West Vancouver’ District: should considex’ charging tolls‘ on. the road to Cypress and user fees to...

rmit the Cypress development to: | ..:

ook into the district sewer system. : Donald Wilson ; at “West Vancouver -

MAILBOX POLICY

LETTERS to the editor must: be legible (preferably itten) an include your. name, hi I address and* telephone number. 20. 28s

-Eaton’s beats fang-and-claw hardness.

.I walked into the store and...

more sale prices. Far better value, granted a nar-" >~ rower range of glittering choice. a

Not to complain. The Americans do this, and __ so much else, superbly. I even had to admire, ina ~ horrible way, the expertise of the waiter at the'13 Coins, an oasis I’ve visited for 25 years, who esca-" lated our need for a glass of simple house Chianti” into a $23-US bottle of better stuff after an

evening of Seattle Opera (and how much better its” -

house is compared to Vancouver's dull and dated QE Theatre)... - -_ cg

Yet there’s an underlying fang-and-claw hard-,- - ness under this matey approach that docsn’s sit ; well with our more reserved, shading into boring, Canadianness. oo

I prefer the Eaton’s style — and I especially was warmed to hear a former employee saying that. .- when she worked there as a young student she was: told to never curn down a charitable request. -

There was even a tradition in Ireland that an Irish’ - immigrant on his uppers in Canada could turn for ~ help to Eaton's (founder Timothy being an Ulsterman himself).

But apparently, “Americanized” (or global- ized?) after all, we’re apparently swept up by the glitzy, the new, the trendy. I’m totally repelied by the vast big-box stores — shopping in warehouses — with their air of mean, desperate humanity, democracy turned into the graceless demos, civi- lization retreating into savage hordes of hungry scavengers pawing through heaps of cheap disgust- ing goods for pitiful bargains, homo consumeris whose language is atrophying into “Y’know what I’m sayin’?”

— The North Shore News believes strongly in free- dom of speech and the right of all sides in a debate to be heard. The columnists published in the News pre- sent differing points of view, but those views are not necessarily those of the newspaper itself.