The

AN OPEN line phone caller this week was more profound than he reslized when exasperation got the better of him.

Incredulous at the constitutional agreement reached by the first ministers, he asked, ““Were they all suffering from something like The Stockholm Syndrome?

He referred to a phrase added not only to popular colloquialism, but also to the lexicon of the most noted forensic psychiatrists and psychologists.

The condition relates to hostage

’ incidents and criminal abduction. -Amid the crucible of unbearable anxiety, victims held at gunpoint, or with knives at their throats, frequently seem to develop a perverse affection toward their captors

With their lives, food and even

" bodily functions under the control of the abductors, the syndrome begins to grow. Every small ‘courtesy or kindness from the

‘criminal earns a grateful response.

‘. Besperate to win favor, the hostages frequently find.

R themselves believing the pro-

a. paganda, as the wrongs of the

~ world are cited by the perpetrators to justify their heinous behavior. ~.) Soon, the police and the authorities — trying to win their freedom — are seen as the enemy.

T have negotiated three hostage incidents. One of these — still a landmark incident in Canadian

_ penology — became a Canadian example Of the Stockholm Syn-

_ drome before that phrase had

~ entered the language.

"This was the incident that ended in the tragic death of Mary Steinhavser.

Gary Bannerman

OPEN LINES

There was no doubt that a sex- ual incident had occurred between one of the three criminals and one of the 16 hostages (not Mary, as incorrectly speculated in a dread- ful motion picture about the case).

So intense was the psychological trauma that many of the hostages never went back to work.

The Stockholm Syndrome: fa- miliar territory.

Enter the premiers, native lead- ers, territorial representatives and the prime minister. They begin a week with a desperate determina- tion to reach agreement.

Years of debate, hideously ex- pensive task forces and commis- sions, the false promise of the

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, ‘North Vancouver City Council: Next meeting Monday, Sept. 14.

: North Vancouver District Council: “ Next meeting Monday, Sept. 14.

‘west ' Varcouver District Council: Next meeting Monday, Sept. i4.

~ DEVELOPMENT os PERMITS

All agenda items are restricted by

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space. For a complete listing of West Vancouver agenda items, call 922-121 after business hours for recorded information. A com- prehensive agenda is also available at the West Vancouver public library. Comprehensive agendas for North Vancouver City and District are posted at the respec- tive halls and are also available at the public libraries.

previous Meech Lake agreement, and a July 7 accord led to the mid-August finale.

For the first time since the col- lapse of Meech, Robert Bourassa was in attendance.

A number of factors hovered hauntingly over the proceedings. The financial cost of indecision was incalculable. Every aspect of Canadian life has been debilitated by the process.

The public had grown bored, angry and intolerant of the ex- travagant patronage-ridden constitutional exercises.

The leaders knew as they started the first meeting that failure was not an acceptable outcome.

Day after day they poured through a parade of items, each day a topic in itself. Each day there had to be a press conference announcing agreement, and a move to the next step and the next topic.

The people in the room had far more in common than their areas of difference. But they were hostages to a process.

They rowed bravely onward, fully aware that they were piloting a leaky boat over dangerous reefs.

Incorrectly, some of them assumed that any deal was preferable to no deal.

Britisn Columbia's two foremost constitutional authorities, former provincial ad- visor Mel Smith and the eloquent, internationally renowned Edward MceWhinney, were genuinely stun- ned by the weakness of the British Columbia position.

Dr. McWhinney, whose exper- tise in international law has long been established from postings at the United Nations, New York University and from his current base at Simon Fraser University, says the dea! is far worse than what exists at the moment and in- ferior to the Meech Lake agree- ment,

He does not see Quebec as the villain, He told me his guess is that Bourassa likely went home surprised by the generosity of the process, with far more than fie expected.

McWhinney blames a weakness of federal leadership.

He said the big winner is not Quebec, but Ontario.

Not only has the central pro- vince an increased stranglehold on

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Sunday, August 30, 1992 - North Shore News - 9

Parliament, it can add to that an economic clout the rest of Canada can only fantasize about.

“Bob Rae outsmarted everybody,’ McWhinney said.

The eastern press has savaged Mike Harcourt. He has been described as ‘‘the laughing stock’’ of the constitutional process.

He should not be concerned about that verdict.

The legendary Premier T. Duf- ferin Patullo, fighting an arrogant Royal Commission on Domi- nion-Provincial Relations in 1940, accused the commissioner and Winnipeg Fress Press editor John Dafoe of ‘‘error, misconstruction, misinterpretation, misrepre- sentation, falsification, lying and libel.””

Premier W.A.C. Bennett was christened ‘“WACKY” after his journeys east.

After premier Dave Barrett’s first boisterous performance in Ottawa, Pierre Trudeau devas- tated the image of the new B.C. representative: he circulated the opinion that Barrett was incapable of completing a sentence without using the ‘‘f?? word at least twice.

Toronto media unanimously

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middle of the road is a dangerous place

predicted Bill Bennett's defeat in each of his three elections.

After his tough budget trim- ming, he was ‘‘Attila of Lotus Land.” This was conveniently forgotten when British Columbia developed the only healthy economy in Canada. We have never looked back.

They feasted on Bill Vander Zalm., It was a gift. At last, a British Columbia eccentric who DID self-destruct. They were eager to pluck the next turkey.

Harcourt’s dilemma is unique, however. His predecessors were ridiculed for their powerful — even obsessive — hometown chauvinism. Harcourt has quickly developed a Benedict Arnold rep- utation: too eager to please, a famb among the wolves.

He ought to have remembered a comment of Aneurin Bevan, one of British history’s greatest orators, and a democratic social- ist: ‘*‘We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run down.”’ ESSEC T

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