today in brief THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE in this country who have lost jobs are too young to retire and too old to start a new career. The result is long-term unemployment that shatters their lives. The Saturday Forum. Page RONALD REAGAN’S campaign for military aid to Nicaragua’s contra guerrillas is opposed by almost every government in Latin America. An analysis. Page 12 HIRMAN "You shouldn't have told him it was your birthday." Index Ann Landers.............6 Bridge..................19 Business.............10,11 City, B.C...............3,7 Classified............16-20 Comics ..................8 Crossword...........P2.18 Editorial...............4,5 Entertainment.........8,9 Family..................6 Gardening.............P16 Horoscopes.............19 Movies............P12.P13 New Adventure .......P14 Sports................13-15 Travel..............P5,P6 •P—Plus Magazine Dream bout page 13 Sadrack says Today will be cloudy with sunny periods. Cloudy skies with occasional light rain is forecast for Sunday. Temperatures should reach highs near 10 today and 8 on Sunday with an overnight tonight low near -3. There is a 10-per-cent chance of precipitation today, rising to 20-per-cent tonight and 70-per-cent Sunday. Friday’s high was was 12 and the low was 3, with no precipitation and 7.2 minutes of sunshine. A year ago today the high was 2, the low was -4 Details page 7 with 2 cm snow and 1.2 hours of sunshine. Sunset today is at 6:27 p.m. and sunrise Sunday is at 6:06 a.m. Tim Flavel, Lloyd Suel and Gary Campbell walk the picket line at Canadian Tire Friday for what could be the last time in a lengthy labor dispute with management. Story, right. FREE TRADE SURVEY Public support fading TORONTO (CP) — A majority of Canadians believe Canada and the United States should have a freer-trade arrangement, but support for the plan is continuing to slip as the two countries prepare for negotiations, a poll conducted for the Toronto Globe and Mail suggests. The poll by Environics Research Group Ltd. suggests support for freer trade between the two countries has declined to 54 per cent from 58 per cent in November and from 78 per cent in April 1984. At the same time, The Globe says, public opposition during the past 21 months has doubled to 35 per cent from 17 per cent. Indecision on the issue has also climbed to 11 per cent from five per cent. The survey, conducted between Feb. 19 and March 5, was based on a sample of 2,054 adult Canadians. Samples of this size are estimatd to be accurate within a margin of about plus or minus two percentage points. 19 in 20 times. Previous surveys were conducted using the same methods and similar sample sizes. Forty-six per cent of Canadians polled think freer trade with the United States and other countries would mean a stronger Canadian economy, but 36 per cent do not think it would be strengthened and 18 per cent have no opinion. On the other hand, 43 per cent think freer trade would result in higher unemployment in Canada and only 38 per cent disagree. Nineteen per cent cannot say how freer trade would affect unemployment. Thirty-eight per cent of the Canadians believe freer trade would erode Canada’s cultural identity and 40 per cent think Canadian political independence would be in jeopardy, the poll suggests. In each instance respondents are divided, with 41 per cent disagreeing that freer trade would erode Canada’s political sovereignty and 40 per cent doubting it would hurt cultural identity. EARTHQUAKE SHAKES PRINCE GEORGE The f^Z^Z *=k“n Prince George JBL -1- JL -H- Saturday, March 22,1986 EMPLOYEES VOTE TODAY Marathon CanTire strike ending by MALCOLM CURTIS, DIANE BAILEY and ROBERT FREEMAN Staff reporters Desk drawers flew open, chandeliers swung and buildings swayed as an earthquake measuring 6.0 on the Richter scale rumbled and shook Prince Geoi ge Friday afternoon. The‘quake, occurring at 3:57 p.m., was believed centred about 200 km east of Prince George, said Bob Horner, seismologist from the Pacific Geoscience Centre in Victoria, which monitors earthquake activity in the west. Horner said the earthquake, described as moderate but capable of doing damage, may have been the most severe ever recorded in Central B.C. The last similar one centred near here was in 1918 near the Alberta-B.C. border. RCMP reported no major damage, but some older buildings were affected in a minor way. A door-frame in the older Columbus Hotel, Third Ave., was twisted ajar several inches. A BC Tel employee in the repair department said some telephones in the city were temporarily out of order as circuits overloaded shortly after the earthquake with people curious to know what happened. Employee? in the top floors of the Canada Permanent building, the tallest in Prince George, rushed for elevators as the building began swaying. “I was walking towards the word processor and you could feel the floor start to vibrate,” said Peter Rogers, a lawyer on the 10th floor of the building. Rogers said the building shook four to six inches horizontally for at least 20 seconds, desk draws opened, dishes fell and hanging plants swayed. “Secretaries were running around clutching people,” he said. Rogers said the building is reinforced with steel and he wasn’t too worried. He said three-quarters of the staff on the tenth floor left the building. Rosalind Gratton, who was in her log home near Willow River, said the earthquake was “pretty scary.” She said she and three other people were sitting in the living room when they heard a rumbling noise. “It just dawned on us all at the same time it was an earthquake,” she said. “The logs were just snapping and cracking, just like they sound when they are breaking off in the wind,” she said, adding there did not seem to be any permanent damage. The fish tank was rocking and spilling water out the top and a television set fell off its stand, she said, estimating the tremors lasted for 30 or 45 seconds. Gratton said she talked to some neighbors later and found they were just as frightened. "Everybody was almost at the point of hysteria because it was nothing like any of us ever experienced.” In Upper Fraser, most of the stock was shaken from grocery store shelves, and people in the street lurched for something to hold on to. The shock also caused a minor electrical fire at the local school. The earth movement sent plumes of dust into the air from the Nechako cut-banks overlooking the city. Tremors were reported in places as far afield as Edmonton, Smithers, Vernon, Williams Lake, and Kelowna. The Richter scale is a measure of relative ground movement and energy release. To put Friday’s earthquake in perspective, the Pacific Geoscience Centre said it was 100 times smaller, in terms of ground movement, than the one that rocked Mexico City that destroyed buildings and claimed more than 5,000 lives last year. by DIANE BAILEY Staff reporter Picket lines may finally come down at Canadian Tire as workers vote today on a tentative agreement to end the long and bitter dispute that has kept them off the job for more than two years. Tom Steadman, owner of the Prince George store, said in an interview Friday that a tentative agreement was reached late Thursday and a ratification vote was scheduled for this morning. He said the agreement came after an intensive round of negotiations that began Dec. 28 and involved both him and Bryan Denton, president of the Retail Clerks Union. Steadman said Saturday morning that the issue of a union shop, the major stumbling block in the dispute, was sent to binding arbitration late Friday. He said the B.C. Labor Relations Board ruled that all new employees hired at the store must become members of the union and current employees will have a choice. “I can’t tell you the details because I don’t have them yet,” he said. Steadman said the contract calls for a five-per-cent wage increase in 1986, in keeping with the existing wage plan at the store. The current benefit package is also in place. He said although there was no economic gain, the union had never made wages and benefits the issue. “They were not trying to gain anything.” Provisions have been made for nine of the original striking employees to return to work and two more cases have been sent to arbitration, Steadman said. All current employees will retain their jobs and their working hours and the returning workers will be fit in according to the seniority clause, Steadman said. In general, the agreement is one that neither side is “100 per cent thrilled with,” he said. But he said reservations are outweighed by the fact the strike is coming to an end. “It has been a long and hard dispute and both sides, I think, are very glad the whole thing is over.” Retail Clerks Union president Bryan Denton would not comment as he entered the meeting with workers at the Yellowhead Inn this morning. “I really can’t comment until I discuss it with the members,” he said. The Retail Clerks Union marked the second anniversary of the strike last Dec. 5, when it walked out of first contract negotiations over the issue of mandatory union membership. The Retail Clerks insisted on a union shop, saying it meant job security for their members. But Steadman said he believed the Rand Formula, in which union membership is voluntary with all workers paying union dues, was the best solution for the Prince George store. The issue placed a philosophical wall between the two sides. On one side, Steadman attempted to carry on business as usual in the face of a boycott, called in March 1984 by the B.C. Federation of Labor against all B.C. Canadian Tire stores. On the other side, workers trudged the picket lines every working day for 27 months in a grim determination to see the fight through. When the strike started, a store official said about half of the 90 employees were on the job. On the picket line, numbers gradually tapered off until, by December 1985, about 10 of the original employees continued to picket. Gasoline prices drop by a cent Gas prices in Prince George took another dip Friday as stations followed Imperial Oil’s lead by dropping the price of a litre by one cent. The cost of a litre of regular leaded gas is now 51.7 cents, down from a high of 57.7 in mid-February. Prices have fallen in response to public outcries in the wake of plummeting world oil prices. 15 killed on massacre anniversary by VICTOR MALLET LANGA, South Africa (Reuter) — At least 15 people were killed during a day on which black South Africans commemorated 89 deaths in two massacres spanning a quarter of a centu-ry. Police clashed repeatedly with protesters marking the anniversary of killings in Sharpeville, south of Johannesburg, on March 21, 1960, and at Langa in the eastern Cape a year ago. Police said 10 blacks who died Friday and another three killed overnight were victims of black-against-black clashes in townships, and two black policemen caught up in a fight between rival Zulus were killed in Kwa-zulu tribal homeland. The police said the three overnight victims were killed in the eastern Cape, taking to 1,360 the death toll in two years of South African racial violence. A black woman was burned to death in Adelaide after a tire laced with gasoline was placed around her neck — a traditional punishment for collaborators with the white majority. The burned body of a black man was found in the same area and another woman was burned to death when a house was set on fire, the police said. At Langa, where police shot dead 20 black people last year, security forces fired teargas into a crowd on its way to join tens of thousands of others at a memorial service in a township nearby. In the Indian ocean port of Durban, witnesses said police with whips and teargas charged 1,000 students marching on the U.S. Consulate to mark the Langa anniversary and that of the massacre of 69 protesters at Sharpeville. Police said they arrested 118 protesters in Durban but later released 55 youths with a warning. The witnesses said downtown Durban was crowded with shoppers who watched in horror as police charged. The main street of the whites-only city was littered with text books and shoes dropped by fleeing marchers. Seven mutilated black bodies were found at Guguletu near Cape Town after what police described as a fight between black radicals and conservatives. Three people were burned to death near East London in Capo province and Soweto township outside Johannesburg. More than 1,350 people have been killed in two years of disturbances. March 21 has been a day of bitterness for black South Africans since the Sharpeville killings, when police shot and killed 69 people protesting against laws restricting the movement of black people around the country.