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today in brief
THE FIRST cheque from a survivors’ relief fund has gone to the widow of the McDonald’s restaurant gunman. Page
BLUEGRASS music will fill the air in Prince George this weekend. Page
ADVANCES in radar design enable police to foil lead-footed drivers who rely on radar detectors to warn them of oncoming speed traps. Page
BRIAN AND THE BOYS, an ugly tale of of people who inhabit an underworld of drunkeness and drugs, poses some serious questions. Page
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HERMAN
X7
"What do you want on your hamburger?”
Index
......35
Business.......... ...32,33
City, B.C. ...3,9,11.12,25,30
Classified......... .. .16-23
Comics ........... ......26
Crossword........ ......18
.......4
Entertainment .... ...26-29
......35
......19
....2,10
.. .26,27
.......5
Neighborhoods ____ .......8
......18
Heritage homes page 8
The
Prince George
Citizen
Sadrack says
Wednesday was the hottest July 25 on record. The high Wednesday was 32, beating the previous record of 28.5, set in 1978. But temperatures in the 30s are not going to continue today.
The weather forecast for today is for cloudy skies with frequent sunny periods. There should be a few rain showers and thundershowers in the evening. The high today will be about 25 and the low about 10.
Sunny skies with clouds in the afternoon and a few rain and thundershowers are expected
/n
Friday. The high should be about 25.
Wednesday’s overnight low was 12, there were 13.5 hours of sunshine and no rain.
35c
Thursday, July 26, 1984
BBBHB
CLINICS TO TEST
r
HEROIN
by MARGARET MUNRO Southam News
VANCOUVER - Within days, 4.5 kilograms of pure heroin will be secretly ferried into Canada, the first legal importation of the drug in 30 years.
It will be distributed to nine medical clinics where 1,000 dying cancer victims will put the narcotic to the ultimate pain-killing test.
The trial, sponsored by Health and Welfare Canada, is described by federal authorities as the only rational answer to the highly emotional heroin therapy debate.
It should, they say, prove once and for all whether heroin can make the final days of some cancer victims more tolerable.
The two-year trial could lead to the reintroduction of heroin for treatment of pain associated with not only cancer but also severe burns, nerve disorders and childbirth.
“If it proves useful, I don’t think we could justify it’s use for cancer only,” says Dr. Ian Henderson, director of the federal bureau of human presrip-tion drugs.
In the interim, the trial is both focusing and fuelling the debate: concerns mount over possible theft by illicit drug dealers and arguments rage over the need for the $l-million trial.
Dr. Kenneth Walker, a Toronto doctor who syndicates a medical column under the pseudonym W. Gifford-Jones, calls the trial “an unnecessary sham and a complete waste of money.”
It probably won’t prove a thing because many of the doctors running the trial are against heroin’s use, says Walker, whose campaign to have heroin reintroduced as a painkiller flooded Health Minister Monique Begin’s office with 15,000 letters in 1982.
On the other side of the debate are doctors, nurses and pharmacists who handle narcotics daily and worry that addicts and drug dealers will be tempted to rob not only hospitals but also cancer victims. (The 4.5 kilograms bought from a British firm for $15,000 has an estimated street value of $4 million.)
Federal officials such as Dr. Jacques LeCavalier take the position that “you don’t deny those who need drugs for fear of law-breaking addicts."
He and the doctors involved in the trial are, however, taking extreme precautions.
The perceived threat is so great that patients in the trial will be confined to hospital when they arc receiving heroin injections. Normally terminally-ill patients can take their narcotics home.
LeCavalier, director of the federal bureau of dangerous drugs, says there have been no reported cases of addicts robbing patients of their proscribed narcotics. “But please don't give them any ideas.”
Many drugs used in Canada today are just as potent and addictive as heroin. But none carry the mystique of heroin, which was banned in most countries in 1955 in a worldwide effort to curb its illicit use.
“It’s the mythology that makes heroin a risky thing,” says Henderson.
TORIES WOULD PLUG LOOPHOLES
ENGLISH EDUCATION DISPUTE
Court quashes Quebec law
by Canadian Press
OTTAWA — The Supreme Court of Canada rufed today that children of Canadians educated anywhere in the country have the constitutional right to an English-language education in Quebec.
The ruling overturns two clauses of the province’s Charter of the French Language that restricted Quebec English schools to the ofspr-ing of Quebecers educated in the province.
The court said in its ruling that the Constitution’s so-called Canada clause, which guarantees minority language education across the country, is “incompatible” with the Quebec language charter, known as Bill 101 and that the Quebec language law’s restrictions on Englisn-lan-guage education are “inoperable.”
The decision also said that restrictions on English-language education in Quebec “are not legitimate restrictions” under the federal Charter of Rights.
“It is inconceivable that the restrictions that Bill 101 imposes on rights relative to the language of education could have been considered. . .as being confined to ‘the limits that can. . .be justified in a free and democratic society.’ “ the high court said.
Section 23 of the federal Charter of Rights and Freedoms stipulates that the children of English- or French-Canadians anywhere in the country have the right to an education in their mother-tongue where numbers warrant.
On Feb. 1. the provincial charter was changed to allow English 4 *
schooling for children coming from provinces where Quebec judges that French-language schooling is equivalent to the educational facilities provided Quebec anglophones.
The ruling concludes a two-year court battle pitting the Quebec Association of Protestant School Boards and the federal and New Brunswick governments against the Quebec government.
The school board association had asked the Supreme Court to decide whether school boards operating English-language primary or sec-
ondary schools in Quebec are constitutionally obliged to admit children educated in other provinces.
It also asked if that was so, did the government of Quebec have to provide funding for them as it does for children who qualify for English schools in the province.
The third question asked whether the French-language charter’s restrictions “are of no force and effect.” The court only ruled on the first question because written and oral arguments were not made on the others during the proceedings.
bu 11eti n
OTTAWA (CP) — The Bank of Canada rate dropped by more than a quarter of a percentage point Thursday to 12.98 per cent from 13.24 per cent last week.
While welcome, the decline in the trend-setting rate is not expected to cause the chartered banks to drop the prime rate they charge their best customers, currently set at 13.5 per cent.
Economists and moneytraders attributed the rate change to a stabilization in the Canadian dollar on international money mar-
party.
“That is not good enough for Canadians.”
Turner played his major card by stressing the issue of competence, a point on which the polls suggest he rates strongly with voters. He said he had more experience than either Broadbent or Mulroney and that made him better qualified to be prime minister
Broadbent accused his two rivals of talking in vague generalities, saying they wanted "to con people” into believing they would bring in workable policies to deal with difficult problems such as unemployment and discrimination against women.
kets.
ANALYSIS, PAGE 5
Three searches under way in area
Separate searches arc being conducted in the Prince George area for three missing persons.
A Prince George RCMP spokesman says a man was reported missing Wednesday night from an area near the Salmon Forest Road, 37 kilometres north of Prince George.
The RCMP say a party of people were fishing in a boat in a small lake in the area. They passed their campsite in the boat and thought it would be faster to go to shore and get their vehicle and drive it to that location, instead of going back to the campsite.
About 9:30 p.m. the man went to get the vehicle while the others in the party waited for him. But he did not return. Police say the other people waited for him all night.
According to police, a woman in the party said the vehicle was parked less than half a mile from the lake.
RCMP report police officers were at the
scene today and preparing to search if necessary.
RCMP say Steven Crosina, 37, of Prince George, missing since Sunday in the Herrick Creek area, about 65 kilometres northeast of McGregor, may have drowned.
Crosina was in the area fishing with two friends, Dave Robinson and Eugene Stanyer. According to Robinson, he and Stanyer last saw Crosina on the north side of the creek.
Robinson and Stanyer walked along the creek fishing and when they returned Crosina was gone. They searched the area and took their boat across the creek to the campsite but Crosina was not there either.
Police have been searching the area since Monday. RCMP Inspector Ralph Falkingham says the “indications are he may have drowned.”
Today a boat and dragging equipment will
be used in Herrick Creek. Falkingham says the ground crew has been called off and only the creek is being searched.
Meanwhile, an independent search for 17-year-old Tom Marsden, lost since July 8, began today near Summit Lake.
A group of about 15 people was scheduled to re-inspect areas already searched by the RCMP and volunteers from July 9 to 20.
The new group, formed by members of the Foursquare Gospel Church, is under leadership of Marty Bellwood.
Bellwood early said he intends to recheck what he considers to be prime areas in which Marsden might still be wandering. Other areas will be checked lo satisfy hunches and to investigate suggestions by psychics.
Marsden was reported seen last sometime July 8. walking on roads about 24 kilometres from the Hart Highway.
Tax-dodge action promise
Pallbearers carry the coffin of Carrie Jane Gray fol- made a freeman of the city in 1971. During the service
lowing service Wednesday in Knox United Church. Rev. Lance Morgan called her “a defender of the peo-
Last rites Two hundred politicians and residents, for whom she pie” whose tough exterior concealed a loving heart,
was always an outstanding spokesman, attended the Story, page 3.
funeral of the former alderman and mayor who was citizen photo by Brock Gable
by JOHN FERGUSON Southam News OTTAWA — Conservative leader Brian Mulroney pledged Wednesday to close loopholes and impose a “handsome” minimum tax on tens of thousands of wealthy Canadians who now pay no income tax at all.
Mulroney said during a two-hour televised debate among the three major party leaders that he considers it unfair that people can go for years without paying any tax at all through skilful manipulation of tax loopholes.
“I think that it's unfair that an individual not pay a minimum tax,” he said. “He should pay a handsome tax reflecting the kind of advantage he gets out of the country.”
Mulroney said that many clauses in current laws that allow individuals to escape tax by investing in certain sectors of the economy “will have to be reviewed and changed."
Mulroney’s remarks were the newest and most concrete promise oi any of the three leaders during their English-language debate as the three clashed, as they did Tuesday in the French debate, over patronage, the economy, the size of the federal deficit and Liberal leader John Turner’s patting of women’s backsides.
The most lively and bitter exchange, once again, was between Turner and Mulroney over the string of patronage appointments Turner made on the eve of the election call Turner maintained, as he has all along, that he had no choice in naming 17 Liberal MPs to lucrative jobs ranging from the Senate to federal boards because of a promise to former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau.
“I had no option," Turner said, arguing that had Trudeau gone ahead with the appointments himself he would have lost his majority in the Commons.
“You had an option sir, to say no,’’ Mulroney interjected. You chose to say yes to the old attitudes and the old stories of the Liberal