a

j i

4 - Wednesday, May Wi, | .

I JUST finished a flying tour of Canada, promoting my book about flying.

itis not freedom we're talking here. It is a decision made by con- senting adults to jointly push a

_ book. Work. Ah yes, even writers

have to work sometimes.

Still, Iflove Mying as much as ever. I'm one of those people suf- fering from the opposite of / aecrophobia. I'm an acrophile. Get. f me up there among the clouds. is

That's the part I like best — the’ moment when you come : fh whooshing down to cloud-level ; y : and start slam dancing through;; - those levitated popcorn mount: ranges. Cloud-hopping. Into ay cloud. Out. Much like skin-diying along a reef, ignoring the Lav of impenetrability. Better than being a bird. y /

Half the country, it turned out, was under cloud cover. There were tantalizing glimpses’of purple prairies and navy blue forests and gun-mietal grey lakes. Acliingly lovely. Vast enough to swallow dozens if not hundreds of ordinary little countries, ./- ik

Except, there is something om wrong this time about the-color,. Indeed, abou the weather,

¢B.C.1 rior; the ‘walled- in kingdom ringed by mountains, », drovightihas, already begun. ‘ In Edmont toh, they joke that the chinook has, sieved north, It is as at atime ‘of year

Normal?, What's normal any |

_ longer? asin line creeps

“further.nofth every year. The... Greenhouse Effect, people agree,

-with an uneasy look La

“And try to smile.

479 BELLEVUE (at 26th ST. WEST. VANCOUVER .: 925-

{988 - North Shore News,

‘Bos Hunter

© strictly personal ©

IVis, alas, anything but a inke. As I was being driven from the Halifax airport to a hotel, | notic-

fed'that half the evergreens along the highway were as dead-looking

as the winter birch themselves. Yet

there was no sign of a fire having _/struck. A few of the grey skelctons of trees might have been hit by

/ lightning, okay — but not 50 per / cent of them.

“Tie publisher's sales © representative who was driving me around ... remarked —- as lightly as he could —. about how people in New Brunswick were Starting to ‘have trouble. ~ collecting on their insurance if the cause of damage fo their automobiles could be identified — as being acid rain. ,

It was a wet, cold day in mid- April. The mercury-vapor lights along the harbor were on carly. . We crosted a bridge that looked exactly like the Lions Gate bridge.

1 could see that Halifax's skyline had changed somewhat since | last aan

saw it in the mid-70s: a few fancy glass towers; a Xerox building like / an immense science-fiction prop ; rising Phoenix-like out of the sec-/ tion of dock which had once been levelled by the famous’ explosion /

: The publisher's sales repre- i sentative who was driving me / around, an otherwise chipper | British chap, remarked — as light:

ly as he could — about how people .

‘in New Brunswick were starting to have trouble collecting on their i ine surance if the cause of damage to - their automobiles could be iden-

“tified as being acid rain.

‘A weird feeling came ov

2

Hooked at the new cavpred gl: ASS pedestrian overpasses linking the downtown shopping malls. These sort of things are being built everywhere across Canada. The West Edmonton Mall is but the . most spectacular example. Win-

- nipeg has likewise gone under- ground around Portage and Main. Toronto and Montreal too.

lt had seemed to me ai first that this impulse to burrow and cree! covered links between the buildings was a response (0 the cold.

Yet now it seemed appallingly precognitive. The urge isn't so 74 much to escape the ice as the rain from hell.

. Safely inside my hotel, J found myself staring in horror at my shoes a couple ; of hours later. They were stained by’ the sait left on the sidewalks. At least. I think it was sall.

| There had been traces of snow on the northern slopes of the low hills‘around Halifax — black-laced _ snow. {t had scemed more than nonnally soiled. There was an ash-like tone. Was that perchance * what had got on to my shoes ~ not salt at all?

I found myself compuisivety scrubbing my shoes and even going down to the lobby and buying - some shoe polish.

I tried to tell myself that it was just ecological paranoia on my part, but I found inyself unable to stop looking at an oil painting of y Halifax i in winter back in the Great, "Age of Sail. “y

.. The snow was white, The ’ evergreens in the background were

vibrantly green and alive: The

_ water, was blue — not lifeless grey.’

We don’t notice it in B.C, much,

“but the rest of Canada is rotting -

i away, folks. More on ‘this later ©

t

For 2.Weeks ” lose 6 ths.)

con, In Aud Ask”. _ About the VB Card a 2 SBONUS VALUE

“Deta ails available at clu

’ before

Family court legal aid) funding gets support —

MORE LEGAL aid should be available for maintenance

. and child support hearings

in family court, North Van- couver City Council | said Monday.

The motion calls for the Union of B.C. Municipalities to ask the Attorney General “to provide funding to ensure that there is legal counsel available to family court applicants where lack of sufficient income to afford private legal counsel is clearly demonstrated."

Only two out of 107 appearances North Vancouver family court ‘were sepresented by legal counsel during six months in 1987, according to a Courtwatch com- mittee report, cited by Ald. Frank Morris, who proposed the motion.

“Two out of 107 is: damned few,'' said Morris.

The Statistics Canada, poverty line, which was $10,500 income per year in 1986, is not a sufficient measure | someone needs legal aid, he said.

Aid. Barbara Sharp, seconded the motion, questioned whether it went far enough!

Court costs are $800 and lawyers

cost $125 per hour, she ‘/said.

money?*"

to determine | whether

wh 9

“How are you going to determine who docsn't have enough

fe

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