DAY IN JAIL, $1 FINE TO BE APPEALED BY CROWN
Man set forest fire so he'd get paid
The
 20‘ Copy Vol. 22; No. 161
mzen
 Friday, August 18, 1978
 Prince George, British Columbia
by AL IRWIN Citizen Staff Reporter
   Regional Crown Counsel Peter Ewert will appeal the decision of a provincial court judge, which he says is “a licence to burn down B.C. forests to create employment.”
   Ewert was referring to the decision of Judge R. S. Munroe, who Wednesday in Mackenzie sentenced a 19-year-old man to one day in jail, and fined him SI, for setting a forest fire July 5 near Fort Ware.
   Bernie Seymour admitted he started the fire to create employment for his village, Fort Ware, 300 km north of Mackenzie.
   Ewert said he was “dismayed with the decision, and the reasons behind the decision".
   In reaching his decision, Judge Munroe said the starting a fire was "certainly a very serious offence, but “the government takes a sort of two-faced view on this, talking with a double tongue, a split tongue.”
   "On one hand they don’t care what happens up there, (unemployment) ... on one hand they are making work for people in other places.
   "The government is looking for its revenue (from the forests) but I say the government spends revenue making jobs elsewhere, and I say of course that they (government) take a dim view of anyone who takes it upon themselves tf) make jobs.
   "The government on the one hand has suffered damage ... but 1 say the people up in Fort Ware say they have also suffered damage, as well as the trees, and they may have a right
 to them (trees) the same as the government. That is a matter that is still in contention.”
 The judge said that "the circumstances up at Ware are different from circumstances in a city or anywhere else” and noted the reason Seymour gave for lighting the fire was so that "we could eat good”.
 The judge said there’s a long standing history of lighting forest fires to gain employment, and employment was what
to fight it
  would enable the accused and his people to "eat good”.
  He also said it was a well-knowrn fact that a burned-over area would improve moose hunting, and this could be another reason for setting a fire.
  In sentencing Seymour, the judge said the man had little education, was easily led, and probably didn’t realize what was happening.
  "He was looking forward to work. This thing is a very special case. I say it is a very serious case. I say I must impose an imprisonment and a fine”.
  "He will be sentenced one day in jail, and a fine of $1.”
  A second man, Morris Davie, also of Fort Ware, will appear in Mackenzie provincial court Nov. 21 on charges of arson and conspiracy to commit arson, laid in connection with another fire, set in the area on the same day.
  A juvenile has also been charged with arson.
  Court was told the three set separate fires to create jobs in Fort Ware.
  The resulting forest fire destroyed 14 acres, and cost S30,000 to extinguish.
  The court was told Seymour was paid S60 for fighting the blaze.
POSTAL DISPUTE
Back-fo-work law promised
TODAY
A
This u’eek:
Killed:.............................0
Injured:........................17
Arrested as impaired:21 This year:
Killed:...........................10
Injured:......................519
To same date, 1977:
Killed:...........................16
Injured:......................501
 Hospital employers hit
 -1 The B.C. Hospital Employers’ Association has come under heavy fire for fighting an arbitration award. Page2.
 Around the world next? r
 • Three U.S. adventurers who became the first to cross the Atlantic Ocean in a balloon say they would like to float around the world in 30 days. Page 5.
 Medal time in Penticton
     Prince George collected two medals the opening day at the B.C. Summer Games in Penticton. City athletes are in good position to win more medals today. Page 7.
 Index
Bridge................................29
Business............................14
 City, B.C..............2,3, 12, 13
Classified.....................25-33
Comics...............................21
Crossword........................27
Editorial..............................1
Entertainment............16-21
Family.........................22, 23
Horoscopes.......................43
International......................5
National..............................6
Religion.............................42
Rolling Stone...................20
Sports.............................7-10
 Television...................18, 10
Wenzel column................13
c
THE WEATHER
   The forecast for Prince George today and during the weekend is for cloudy skies with showers and a risk of thunder showers.
  The forecast high for today and Saturday is 18. Today’s expected low is 9.
  The high Thursday was 22, the low last night was 10, with 1.8 mm of precipitation. On this date last year the high was 27, the low 11.
D
NOW HEAR THIS
 •	A beer drinker of note says he’s drinking more now than before the brewery strike. ‘‘Every case you drink now could be your last,” he says, "so you drink with gusto.”
 •	A man visiting here from Flin Flon Man., has this fish story to tell. His son, an enterprising lad, was fishing in a lake there during the town’s Trout Festival. A seagull with a fish in its moutn flew over the boy’s boat, and dropped the fish in the water nearby. The boy pulled the fish out of the water, took it to the official weigh-in, and won $25 and a trophy.
 •	The fall issue of the Beautiful B.C. magazine now on the newsstands gives Prince George a good treatment as a bustling city, and the birthplace of zany sports like snow-golf and the annual skiers’ sandblast down the cutbanks. But there’s one small error in the article - the sandblast will be held Aug. 27 — not in September.
 •	The news of balloonists crossing the Atlantic didn’t surprise one local resident. "I know' a lot of people who got farther than that on hot air,” he commented.
  TORONTO (CP) -Postmaster-General Gilles Lamontagne said Thursday he is prepared, in the event of a postal strike, to bring in legislation forcing employees to remain on the job.
   The 23,000-member Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) withdrew from conciliation negotiations Wednesday, raising the possibility of a national postal strike next month.
    Lamontagne said the union’s demands would mean that a postal employee would only have to work 2\'i hours a day.
   He said the Canadian economy cannot support the union’s unrealistic demands.
    "The union continues to ask for a 30-hour week with pay for 40 hours, one hour of paid lunch, two hours of rest and half an hour of travel time between rest and work areas, representing a 2 li-hour work day,” he said Thursday.
   The minister said the employees have been offered a 13.2-per-cent increase over 18 months, bringing the basic annual wage rate to $15,604 from $13,809.
   Lamontagne called on the union to return to the bargaining table and he said that in the six months since negotiations began, the union has not changed one of its demands.
   “I think the government should take any recourse possible to stop a strike because I don’t think the business people, the Canadian people, can suffer a strike.” Jean-Claude Parrot, president of CUPW, said he did not believe the government would legislate against a strike unless he heard another cabinet minister confirmed that such a move would be considered.
    "I do not think the government was crazy when it gave us the right to strike,” he said. "How can Lamontagne take that right away?’’
       * ★ * Problems at P.O. analyzed
 Southam News Services .
   OTTAWA — A secret study that may have influenced Prime Minister Trudeau’s decision on Crown status for the post office says recurrent postal deficits dictate rate increases, service cuts and more effective management.
    ‘‘The financial difficulties indicate the need for increased rates, reduced costs, improved productivity, curtailment of services, increased volumes, more efficient and dependable service, stable and positive labor relations, and effective management,” the study states. Commissioned by the postmaster general and the minister of labor last April, the Crown corporation feasibility study was in government hands at least one week before Trudeau’s Aug. 1 announcement.
   But authors, J.E. Uberig, assistant deputy postmaster general, W.P. Kelly, assistant deputy minister of labor, and A.J. Darling of the privy council office, admit their laudable goals often conflict.
   Service cuts would reduce costs, they explain, but could produce reduced mail volumes and aggravate labor problems. Increased rates, they also note, might encourage alternative delivery systems.
Hydro seeding
MORE QUARANTINED
Citi/en photo ity Du\e Milne
 For highways worker Dave Aldridge, seeding the raw dirt banks bordering provincial roads has come a long way from walking around with a hand seed-spreader. The hydro-seeder Aldridge is operating pumps out a grass-clover-fertilizer mixture with water at 600 gallons a minute. About 70 pounds of the seed is sprayed on every acre of roadside that needs dressing up with grass. The grass not only looks better but also prevents erosion of the dirt banks.
Polio experiment launched
Patients refused at VGH
   The Canadian Press
   While a polio quarantine expanded in eastern Ontario on Thursday, the family of Ontario’s first confirmed polio victims in the current outbreak was participating in an international medical experiment.
   In Kingston, Ont., medical officials said about 100 persons were placed under quarantine in their homes following contact with a confirmed carrier of paralytic polio.
   Dr. Vera Soudek, city medical officer of health, said the carrier, a 20-year-old Kingston resident, was tested at the health unit last week after he came in contact with residents of Oxford County, where the
 first case of polio was discovered.
   The resident had been in voluntary quarantine waiting to see whether he was a carrier.
  Meanwhile, blood samples from the Van Vliet family of Norwich, near Woodstock, have been sent to the National Centre for Disease Control in
 Atlanta, Ga., for an experiment on natural immunization.
    Dr. Marjorie Pollock told the Woodstock Sentinel-Reviewon Thursday that she was in Norwich on Wednesday for about an hour in connection with the experiment.
   Dr. Pollock, a virologist,
 said the experiment is a new study on the body’s immunization system.
   ‘‘The blood specimens will be used as part of a larger study,” she said. “That’s all I’m going to say.”
See also page 24
'Unscrupulous7 PM feared
  OTTAWA (CP) - Liberal MPs and senators accused the cabinet Thursday of trying to give itself the potential to wield dictatorial powers in a new constitution.
  Addressing a joint
 SenateCommons committee studying Prime Minister Trudeau’s constitutional proposals, Liberal Senator George van Roggen said the cabinet wants to abolish the Senate and set up a form of government
SEA CREATURE SIGHTED
Nessie, meet Chessie
  HEATHSVILLE, Va. (AP) - Undulating, gliding through the dark water, raising its head, then diving. Nessie of Loch Ness fame? No, it’s Cheasapeake Chessie, the sea serpent of Cheasapeake Bay.
   A handful of people have reported sighting strange creatures in the bay and a bit upstream in the Potomac River.
   The descriptions match, if not in size, at least in general appearance. They bear a striking resemblance to the fabled monster of the Scottish lake.
   Donald Kyker, a retired Central Intelligence Agency employee, reported that on July 25 he and his wife, Ann, saw a creature about 10 metres long and about as round as a telephone pole. He said it stuck its head out of water and then dived.
   “It wasn’t a scary type thing,” said Mrs. Kyker. “I’m sure I saw it."
  John Merriner, head of the ichthyology
 department at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, said the creature described by Kyker “is one hell of an animal to be in the bay.”
   Merriner said the institute will question Kyker before the week is out.
   Myrtle Smoot and her husband, who live in Annandale, were at their summer cottage just down from Kyker’s home.
   Kyker telephoned the Smoots to tell them what he’d seen, and when they looked, there it was, heading toward the bay.
   Mrs. Smoot said that within an hour they saw three more — one big and two small — heading upriver, and they frightened her.
   Her husband shot one of the monsters in the neck, she said.
   ‘‘It rose out of the water and disappeared. Having children and grandchildren who swim and ski, we wanted to find out what it was. We didn’t know whether it was dangerous, and we figured if we could get one, we could find out what it was.”
 that could render the House of Commons impotent “under an unscrupulous prime minister”.
   The British Columbia senator said a potential dictator could grab power by opening Parliament for only a few days a year under the proposed constitution.
    Liberal MP David Collenette (York East) complained that the proposed constitution would permit governments defeated by a non-confidence vote in the Commons to continue operating.
   Marc Lalonde, federal-provincial relations minister, said the government now can continue after a defeat in the Commons and cited examples in both Canada and Great Bri-tian when government’s legally refused to step down.
   The government can also only open Parliament for a few days each year under the British North America Act, the existing constitution.
    Liberal Senator Daniel Lang said one of the underlying philosophical themes of the the constitutional proposals is,an increase in cabinet’s powers at the expense of Parliament.
   Lalonde termed Senator Lang’s arguments erroneous.
  VANCOUVER (CP) - A committee of doctors at Vancouver General Hospital (VGH) says the institution has been forced to close its door to potential patients because of recent resignations by nurses.
   The information was contained in a summary report released Thursday by the Quality of Care Appraisal Committee at VGH.
   The committee began an investigation last week into the hospital’s problems, which have since resulted in a government takeover of the institution.
   Dr. R. E. Robins, chairman of the committee, said in a news release all patients at the hospital are receiving adequate care, “some patients have been denied admission due to the lack of nursing staff.”
Talent
drain
seen
   OTTAWA (CP) — A government decision to freeze the CBC’s budget next year may lead to an irreversible talent drain from Canada, the Canadian Council of Filmmakers complained in a telegram Thursday to Prime Minister Trudeau.
   Kirwan Cox, Toronto-based chairman of the council representing 14,000 film production workers, said the freeze next year—part of a program of federal economies—strikes at what he described as the backbone of cultural development.
   The council said cultural development should not be viewed as a luxury.