PRIME MINISTER Brian Mulroney pointed his finger at the press last week while reflecting on his party’s misfortunes. This week Peter Cowan of Southam News points back. The Saturday Forum. Page
SIMON Reisman says it costs him $250,000 to $300,000 per year to be the prime minister’s chief trade negotiator. Page
SUPER FOWL are almost comp Orleans.
preparations )lete in New Page
"If I don't cure your amnesia you get double your money back."
Index
City, B.C......... ........3
.. .P2.18
Entertainment .. ....10,11
......P2
New Adventure . ......P4
....13-15
Travel .......... .P12.P13
*P---Plus Magazine
Sade page 11
Sadrack says
Sadrack’s wearing his kilt today while the wind blows high and the wind blows low on this Robbie Burns’ Day.
The wind gusting from the south should keep temperatures above zero this afternoon but it will remain cloudy overnight and with intermittent rain or snow forecast for Sunday.
Today’s high is expected to be 2, the low -3, with a high Sunday of 3.
The high Friday was 1, the low was -2, there were .6 cm snow and .2
Details page 7
hours of sunshine recorded.
This day last year the high was -1, the low -8, it was dry and 7.7 hours of sunshine were recorded.
Sun sets today at 4:38 p.m. and rises Sunday at 8:07 a.m.
* <
today in brief
The
Citizen
Prince George .JHL JL Saturday, January 25, 1986
Skipping “double dutch” are (from left) Burnaby students Sherry Widnall, Grade 7; Cheryl McMur-ray, Grade 7 and Melanie Mitchell, Grade fi, while
coach and teacher Bill Chambers turns two ropes in opposite directions.
Citizen photo by Lisa Murdoch
Advice too good to skip
by BERNICE TRICK Staff reporter
Using the same basic skipping steps Muhammad Ali once used to become a world boxing champion, a “demo team” from Vancouver is showing Prince George students how to become precision skippers.
The eight-member team is touring Northern B.C. to promote the Skip-Rope-For-Heart program, which teaches the value of cardiovascular exercise at a young age.
as well as raising funds year round for heart foundations across Canada.
In Prince George, about 15 elementary schools have been participating in the program, but after watching the Burnaby team from Parkcrest elementary, there is much interest in establishing a local demonstration team.
The visitors, using special light skipping ropes, perform solos and team routines using boxer, can-can
and Highland fling steps to perform straddles, cross-overs and jumps to music.
Last year in B.C., 300 participating schools raised $300,000 through pledges for heart research and public education.
All funds raised go to the provincial heart foundation with the exception of five p?r cent which is kept by individual schools to use as seen fit.
Grocery stores open tomorrow
by MALCOLM CURTIS Staff reporter
Sunday shopping has arrived in Prince George.
Although the province has authorized police to enforce holiday shopping laws, six supermarkets plan to open here tomorrow.
The action may pave the way for department stores to stay open seven days a week also, although none have publicly made such a decision.
Overwaitea Foods, Extra Foods, and Canada Safeway have announced they will open, providing city shoppers with a service that many other British Columbians have taken for granted for some time.
The lead was taken Friday by Canada Safeway’s Massey Drive store which advertised in The Citizen they would be open Sunday. Overwaitea’s four outlets at Spruce Street, College Heights, Hart Highway and Spruceland, and Extra Foods at Pine Centre Mall followed suit.
The action follows‘the decision last week of a Chilliwack provincial court judge who ruled the Holiday Shopping Regulation Act unconstitutional in throwing out the case against four Overwaitea stores that stayed open on a Sunday in late 1984.
The judge said the provincial act violated freedom of religion guaranteed in the constitution. The province said it will appeal the decision.
The act requires municipalities to hold a referendum before allowing full shopping on the Sabbath.
City residents voted in favor of allowing hardware, sport and larger convenience stores to stay open an extra day in a referendum three years ago. But a vote on full Sunday shopping has never been held here.
Canada Safeway decided to open on Sunday based on the information it had on the Chilliwack case, said Don Bell, company public relations spokesman in Vancouver.
“The judge said that unless there was a successful appeal his decision renders the law invalid across the province,” Bell said Friday.
“Prince George is a place where a number of customers have come to us and indicated they would like to shop on Sundays.”
Many such customers said they were from outside the city and would like to spend the weekend here, said Bell, who added that opening an extra day should be good for the area’s tourist industry.
Two-thirds of Safeway stores in B.C. are open seven days a week.
“Extra Foods is here to serve the people and we have to do what we nave to do.” said Al Comeau, owner of the Pine Centre Mall supermarket.
The management at Woodward’s Food Store, Patricia Boulevard, is taking a wait-and-see approach.
The chain is opposed to Sunday shopping, “but if our market share is threatened we have no alternative but to open up an extra day,” said Jim Hesketh, food store manager.
An attorney-general spokesman said earlier this week the ministry is asking police around the province to enforce the shopping act until an appeal is heard.
Prince George RCMP said they will investigate any complaints received about tomorrow’s store openings.
“If we feel a charge is warranted we will pass on the information to the local Crown counsel who will then decide whether a charge will be pressed,” said Staff Sgt. Lyndon McLean.
McLean said he has not recieved any information from the attorney-general’s department.
Mayor Elmer Mercier sees department stores in the city ultimately opening on Sundays, something which he says he is not philosophically opposed to.
The mayor believes if seven-day-a-week shopping becames an accepted way of life here, the hotel and motel business should get involved providing daycare facilities and amenities for visitors from outside the city who come here to shop for the weekend.
“It’s bound to give Prince George more business, but it’s going to be at the expense of other communities.”
Department store managers have not publicly made any plans for Sunday shopping.
U.S. LUMBER SALES
Bill losing steam
An analysis by KEN BERNSOHN Staff reporter
The long simmering Canada-U.S. lumber dispute has entered a new phase.
Both Americans and Canadians involved in the issue feel that the Gibbons bill, long considered the major threat to put a tariff on B.C. lumber going to the United States, has little chance of passage at this time.
Instead, the major action has changed to the formal U.S.-Canada lumber trade talks which will have their next session the week of Feb. 10.
It’s expected that thev’ll take place in Vancouver, and that negotiators will — for the first time in more than a year of dispute — actually visit a Canadian sawmill.
“In early and late spring of 1985,
bulletin
A Vanderhoof resident was killed early this morning after being struck by an east-bound CN train, RCMP report.
The accident took place at about 2:10 a.m. and the unidentified person was apparently-walking on the tracks, police said.
No name was released pending notification of kin.
it looked like the Gibbons bill was going to breeze through the House of Representatives and perhaps the Senate,” said Herbert Fierst, a lobbyist in Washington, D.C. for the Council of Forest Industries.
“But now it’s January of 1986 and the bill has only passed a subcommittee of the house ways and means committee by one vote.”
It hasn’t come before Congressmen for a vote, yet, Fierst said in a telephone interview from Washington.
“The emotional atmosphere of protectionism has been somewhat dissipated since mid-year. On balance there’s less of a prospect the Gibbons bill will make it through to law.”
At the first formal talks in more than a year, Jan. 20 in San Diego, The Coalition for Fair Lumber Imports — the major group against Canadian free entry to the U.S. market — had more than a dozen members and experts present.
At the meeting, each side went through the ritual of restating its position, then discussed the questions that need answering.
Just what is a natural resource subsidy? What’s the effect of timber harvesting regulations on log prices? What's the level of expenditure on forest management in various areas and how is it financed? What other expenditures do governments make in the forest and why?
Love to dance? Here's your big chance
by ARNOLD OLSON Staff reporter
If vou're like Leroy from P'ame or the girl from Flashdance — you love to dance but have no specific training — you have a chance to audition to dance before Prince Charles and Princess Diana.
If you love dancing and have had training, that’s just dandy. They want you, too.
Open auditions — a cattle call, just like in the movie A Chorus Line — will be held Tuesday from
6 to 11 p.m. at Vanier Hall for a roval performance, which will help signal the opening of the B.C. Festival of the Arts in Prince George. May 4.
“This will show the 1.500 com-
petitors who come here for the festival there’s a lot of talent up here.” said Karen Maides, the person in charge of the show.
“It has now become a royal performance,” she said.
Dancers won’t be paid money, but will be rewarded in a coin of a different realm — the pride in having been chosen to perform before royalty.
“It’s an important audition. Everybody wants to perform before the prince and princess.”
She has called for open auditions because she wants people who love to dance and can feel the music more than she wants people who have learned to move to music.
“Those who have always
danced” are the ones she wants.
“The Leroys (people such as the illiterate black lad with phenomenal dancing talent in the movie Fame) will get a chance. Because he could dance from the heart, he could really dance.”
She wants and needs male dancers.
When told somewhere in town is a young lad who was seen alone, practicing break dancing in a school yard, she said. "That's the kind I want.”
The lower age limit is 13 but no upper limit exists.
The slim, dark woman sparkles with enthusiasm as she talks about her pet project. She seems to brim with confidence.
The confidence that she can
work with the untrained as well as the trained is well established. She did so when she formed the small group called Tantara, which used new dancer Craig Forrest. The two girls and Forrest built a good name for itself both here and throughout B.C.
“We dragged him off the street,” she recalls with a laugh.
Just because she’s willing to take the untrained is no reason to expect this project to be undemanding. Her attitude toward performances doesn’t allow that.
“When you go on. you are a professional. People pay to see you and they expect a good show."
She demands her performers give all they’ve got. be neat in
appearance, keep their costumes in top shape and come off the dance area wringing with sweat.
“You should be exhausted because you have given everything away. If you get tired, you draw your strength from the audience because they’ll be rooting for you.”
She seems to have planned a relaxed schedule of rehearsals: Once a week to start, then twice a week and perhaps going to three times a week as production date looms.
She anticipates students will audition and will set the schedule so it won’t interfere with their studies.
“School comes first.” she says,
but she expects them to put in a lot of practice on their own.
She seems to have a crystal ball when she predicts, “Nobody who’s on stage before Prince Charles and Princess Diana will have missed a rehearsal.”
Those who miss rehearsal will be dropped.
The only thing the dancers will have to worry about will be their dancing. Costumes and makeup will be provided.
“These dancers will be treated like professionals."
Applications for auditions are available at the College of New Caledonia, where Maides works, the B.C. Festival of the Arts offices and at the major dance studios in Prince George.
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