\ peo <

= | a Injured pooch

plucked from Mit. Seymour

Aicheel@nsnews.com

._(NSRT) and airlifted off «the mouatain by. helicopter. “The emergency response kicked

after” the dog’s owner, John Lovel of Richmond, told the police -would foot the bill-to do

as necessary to help his

ler; Nina.

The dog had slipped on icy rock

and ‘tok a 70-foot (21.3 m) tum- SRT, search manager Ron

said the team has conduct- {rope-rescue retrievals of dogs.

T's usually

eas ind _ Stranded on

ogs:washed into the.

: _ Owner pays $1,300 for chopper time

“Michael Becker

approximately 40 team voluateers. Royston termed Saturday’s response, “a very limited call out. There were eight or nine people involved.”

A second dog also slipped and fell over the mountain cliff at about the same time as the Rottweiler had. It was recovered by its owner.

Said Royston, “Ice on rocks is particularly difficult for dogs te get a erp on because of their claws.”

The injured Rottweiler was moved to the helicopter on a stretcher.

“In this case, because the dog.

was stunned by the fall, it was pret- ty docile,” Royston said. The dog suffered some internal bleeding and a concussion.

‘Royston spoke with Lovel on Sunday night. “He said the dog is in good shape.”

Said NSRT leader Tim Jones: “We treated the dog like we would a patient,” Jones said.

The dog’s owner. paid $1,300 for approximately one hour of heli- copter time. He also donated $100 to the NSRT,

NEW3 photo Paul McGrath

NORTH Shore Rescue Team member Adam Webb assists injured Rottweiler Nina while its owner John Lovel comforts the

dog.

“The dog meant a lot to this individual. He was very apprecia- tive,” said Jones. He said the team’s response to assist the injured dog at Mount Seymour did not impair the rescue group’s abili- ty to handle other potential emer- gencies. “We can do back to back calls. I think chat it falls within our mandate to do this (rescue dogs).

“The main thing is that this individual had no hesitation about paying the bill. A lot of us are dog owners. We would have done the same thing.”

On Sunday afternoon the team was put on stand-by alert for a missing hiker on the Grouse Grind. The hiker was eventually located by Grouse staff.

Fifteen minutes after the call went out to the team from Grouse Mountain, the NSRT received a call from the West Vancouver Police.

Someone had spotted flares on Black Mountain, above Sunset Beach in West Vancouver. Twelve team members came up empty handed after searching the area unal 12 p.m. .

+x, costs “in the order of $220 million.”

repurt caills for the construc- fa new Second ows Crossing as part of

ras ipgra a tanned over the next 15

ui el to the. recently : fedecked bridge, with total capital

: provincial study suggests (06-2016 as the time frame for the new crossing id related metwork improvements, but notes that * “timing would depend on North Shore growth

id development patterns.”

According to the report, titled Assessing The Options. and dated March 1997, interchange improvements on the Upper Levels Highway should proceed in a five- to seven-year time frame before a new crossing is built.

“Provincial consultants conclude conditions on the Trans Canada Highway are “satisfactory” west of Taylor Way, but that “conditions deteriorate as one approaches the Second Narrows Bridge.”

They recommend improvements at the Capilano, Lynn Valley, Main and Fern Street/ Mt. Seymour Parkway interchanges and say improve- ments should be completed “if possible ... before

" -work begins on the Lions Gate crossing, particu- ~~ farly at

¢ Fern/Mt. Seymour interchange.” Noting that additional capacity will be needed

at the Second Narrows, even with a substantial

increase in transit use, the consultants evaluated:

- M@ widening the bridge to eight lanes by building

a separate structure adjacent to the existing pridge;

® building a four-lane bridge adjacent to the Second Narrows, but connected to the municipal road system rather than the Trans Canada;

= aenew bridge connecting Mountain Highway ‘with Renfrew Street in Vancouver. :

The Renfrew Street connector was ruled out by the consultants on the basis of costs estimated in 1995 dollars at $325 to $350 million — $150 million more than improvements to the Second Narrows. :

The information was relayed to North Vancouver District Council stonday by engineer- ing staff, who had been asked to report on the sta- tus of provincial planning for the Second Narrows bottleneck.

The commuter traffic snarl-ups at the Parkway and Dollarton connections in and out of Seymour have been much cited as reasons to delay develop- ment in the growing eastern area of the distict.

Staff told council that the Lower Mainland Highway System Report (for which Assessing the Options is a summary of technical studies) is a highway development strategy that provides for coordinated development of public transit service, the regional highway network and major munici- pal streets in the Lower Mainland.

Begun in 1994, the report is a co-operative effort of six provincial and regional organizations: the BC Transportation Financing Authority; the Ministry of Transportation and Highways, the Greater Vancouver Regional District; BC Transit; the BC Ferry Corporation; and the Agricultural Land Commission.

The report states that its integrated approach is intended to reflect policies, plans and priorities

INTERCHANGE sites on the Trans Canada Highway are earmarked for long overdue upgrades before any possible expansion of the Second Narrows Bridge takes place.

that have been adopted by the various levels of government as part of the regional planning process.

Other major road upgrades envisioned in the report include:

W@ a new two-lane tunnel at the George Massey crossing, an HOV (high occupancy vehicle) lane on Highway 17 and new interchanges on the same route;

@i a new four-lane crossing of the Fraser’s North Arm near Queensborough;

I development of the South Fraser Perimeter Road by 2005 that would include a link between the Patullo Bridge and the Trans Canada Highway, an expressway between the Patullo Bridge and the Annacis system, and an upgrade of River Road in Delta to expressway standards or the construction of a parallel expressway;

@ three-lane construction of the Trans Canada Highway between Cassiar and Grandview and diee-lane plus HOV-lane between Grandview and Surrey; and

@ further crossings of the Fraser to connect Highway 7 with the Trans Canada.

The provincial report was referred to the dis- trict’s newly formed Transportation Advisory Planning Committee for review by Dec. 15 in the hopes that council can lobby for completion of the Trans Canada interchange upgrades before work on Lions Gate gets underway.

NORTH Vancouver won’t have Warren Kinsella to kick around any more.

The failed Liberal candidate for the North Vancouver federal seat has sold his Mahon Avenue home, rented a bed and breakiast room in Toronto, and gone back to, in his words, “the salt mines of the jaw 1

insella’s springtime election batdle with North Vancouver MP Ted White typified ugly politics as both men sought the high ground but often found them- selves in the trenches, threatening legal action during hastily called press confer- : ences and * chastising cach other in newspa- per columns.

For every charge Kinsella made over White’s ties to the radical West- erm Canadian Concept party, White’ and his supporters - ried with their own allegations that Kin-sella, an author and lawyer with esvablished Ottawa ties, was parachuted into North Vancouver by the federal Liberal party ‘to take on the incumbent Reform candidate.

On June 6, North Vancouver voters White the nod, as he

imed 26,404 votes to Kinsella’s 18,348

According to White, three days after the defeat, Kinsella list- ed his North Vancouver City home on the market.

It would take over five months to sell it. ;

“Yeah, we finally. sold it,” Kinsella said yesterday morning. “Took a pounding on it, too.”

if he was out of politics, the Calgary native said he was, adding that it wasn’t so much his decision ‘as his wife’s: “Oh yeah, Suzanne would leave me if I went Kinsella has b

i a ed a jol

with a Toronto aw frm, and is living on an interim basis in a bed and .

“I’m not sure where he’s working,” Ted White said from Ottawa yesterday. “I had heard it was for a Liberal-owned company. I szem to recall him saying some- thing like he was going to bring up his family in North Vancouver and it was best place in the whole of Canada to be. He must be very disappointed having te go back to Toronto.”

Asked if Kinsella’s move from North Vancouver surprised him, White said: “A lot of people were halding their breath to see if he would get a reward somewhere, and he didn’ get a patronage appointment, so I don’t know if where he’s gone is a reward or not.”

But White hasn’t seen the fast of his federal foe. Tomorrow, starting at 9:30 am. at Vancouver’s Plaza 500 Hotel, the Reform MP will be testifying as a witness at a B.C. Press Council hearing into a Kinsella complaint against the North Shore News. and retired columnist Doug Collins.

candidate Warren Kinsella