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The Prince George
Citizen
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 1986
■j ('©iC
40 CENTS
Turner's fighting back 5 Campaign for English only 8
Lions defuse Bombers 9
Ann Landers .......15
.......20
City, B.C. ... ........2
.......18
........5
.....9-11
.......14
“
IWA rebels want B.C.
shutdown
by Canadian Press
VANCOUVER — Some members of the International Woodworkers of America are becoming frustrated by the strike against forest companies that has put them out of work for more than three months.
“There’s a fair bit of frustration and a fair bit of criticism of some people,” union leader Jack Munro said Sunday.
He was commenting after about 400 union members on Vancouver Island called for a complete shutdown of the British Columbia forest industry.
To emphasize their point, they picketed two operations of Whon-nock Industries to prevent fellow
Drug tests favored, poll shows
MONTREAL (CP) - Almost two-thirds of Canadians support drug testing for people with public responsibilities, like politicians and teachers, a Gallup poll published today shows.
And just over half of the 1,038 people interviewed early last month said employers should have the right to test all employees to find out whether they take illegal drugs.
The poll was conducted about two weeks after Prime Minister Brian Mulroney’s Sept. 15 announcement that drug abuse has become an epidemic in Canada.
Gallup said the results are accurate within four percentage points, 19 times in 20.
Interviewers asked: “Do you agree or disagree that people with special responsibility for Canada, like politicians or teachers, should be medically tested to find out whether or not they use illegal drugs?”
Sixty-four per cent agreed with drug testing for such people, while 30 per cent disagreed and six per cent didn’t know.
In response to another question, 52 per cent agreed that “employers should have the right to test everyone they employ for the illegal use of drugs.”
OIL REFINERY
union members from going to work.
The pickets, who also shut down the Western Forest Products mill in Port McNeil where they work, say the union policy of picketing selected mills is unfair because strikers have to scrape by with $75 a week in strike pay while union members who are working are earning $650 a week.
About 20,000 of the 30,000 woodworkers’ union members have been on strike since July 24. The dispute is centred on contracting out of work normally performed by union members.
Until recently, Whonnock operations have not been picketed because that company has agreed to a contract clause suggested by the union on contracting out of work.
“We feel the policy is unfair, especially in isolated areas,” said Murray Cantelon, a 38-year-old logging trucker and spokesman for the union dissidents. “It’s morally wrong that people next to you are working and you are not.”
Munro said union members who are working are contributing $5 a day to help the strikers.
He said union leaders reviewed their strike strategy last week and decided to stick to it because they didn’t want to renege on contracts with companies who are supporting the union’s position on contracting out.
Three mediation attempts by the provincial government — including one by Premier Bill Vander Zalm — have failed to settle the dispute.
Gov't pays up for legal fees
OTTAWA (CP) — Cabinet has authorized $350,000 in public funds to pay legal fees of former industry minister Sinclair Stevens at the judicial inquiry into allegations he broke conflict-of-interest guides.
Cabinet documents released today show cabinet approved payment ex gratia to that amount last week. Ex gratia means cabinet was not obliged to pay.
Prime Minister Brian Mulroney ordered the inquiry by Ontario Justice William Parker in May after a disclosure that Stevens’ wife Nor-een obtained a $2.6-million loan from a businessman closely associated to an Industry Department client.
$1 sale applauded
CALGARY (CP) — Petro-Canada is delighted with a deal to sell the mothballed Come By Chance refinery to a Bermuda-based firm for $1 and “other valuable considerations,” Petro-Canada spokesman Judy Wish said Monday.
Wish said in a telephone interview the other considerations agreed to will see the buyer, Newfoundland Energy Ltd., assume the refinery’s debts. She said the amount of debts to be repaid is being negotiated by the trustee in bankruptcy and Newfoundland Energy.
Wish said the refinery closed in 1976 with debts of $700 million.
The Crown corporation bought the refinery in 1981 for $15 million and has spent about $26 million to maintain it. The sale means Petro-
Canada would save about $10 million in dismantling costs.
Wish said Petro-Canada, which didn’t need the refining capacity, sold the facility to Newfoundland Energy so it could be reactivated.
Boston engineer Ken Brown, who heads Newfoundland Energy, has agreed to spend $70 million to rehabilitate and upgrade the 13-year-old plant.
The province will buy the land and docking facilities and grant both to Newfoundland Energy.
The refinery, which can produce up 100,000 barrels a day, will begin refining oil from Nigeria and elsewhere by the end of 1987. Under the provincial government’s energy deal with Ottawa, the plant will get first option on crude from the Hibernia field.
H
E
R
M
A
N
COFFEE
"\ bought the first cup last Tuesday.
Popular
show
Mr. Dressup and his friends Casey and Finnegan entertained children of all ages during his two performances at Vanier Hall on Sunday. During the con-
Citizcn photo by Lisa Murdoch
certs, sponsored by Studio 2880, a total of 1,620 people saw the popular CBC children’s show favorite, who was in Prince George for his second visit.
FREED HOSTAGE'S PLEA:
'Gotta get them home
t
by Associated Press
WIESBADEN, West Germany — David Jacobsen, a U.S. citizen freed fiom 17 months of captivity in Lebanon, appealed today for action to free remaining American and other foreign hostages in Lebanon, whose circumstances he described as desperate.
“Those guys are in hell, and we’ve gotta get them home,” Ja cobsen said of those still held ca tive by Moslem extremists in Le anon.
Jacobsen, 55, who in a videotape released by his captors several weeks ago had criticized the Reagan administration for what he termed inaction on the hostages, also said he was proud to be American.
The director of the American University Hospital in Beirut, who was freed Sunday, arrived at the U.S. military air station in Wiesbaden aboard a Lear jet chartered by the State Department after he was flown out of Beirut to Cyprus aboard a U.S. military helicopter.
He gave a brief news conference at the airport in Larnaca, Cyprus, before flying to West Germany, where he will undergo a physical examination and be debriefed by U.S. authorities. Some of his family members are expected io fly from the United States to Wiesbaden for a reunion with Jacobsen before they go home together.
“The best things in life are free, and by God they are,” the bearded Jacobsen told reporters upon arrival in Wiesbaden at about 11:30 a.m.
Earlier, in Cyprus he said: “To Jean Sutherland and the daughters, to the family of Terry Anderson and familes of the other American hostages, and to all the other hostages, I would like to just give you a message, a message that served me well.
“It is the last verse of the 27th Psalm: ‘I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord and the land of the living. Trust in the Lord. Have faith. Do not despair. Trust in the Lord because there is goodness.’”
He added: “Keep faith. The guys will get out because of guys like Terry Waite.”
Jacobsen was accompanied by Anglican churcb envoy Terry Waite, who has been acting as a negotiator with Moslem extremists holding hostages in Lebanon.
Jacobsen was met in Wiesbaden by U.S. ambassador in West Ger-
NOW HEAR THIS...
■ A city resident got the “royal” treatment on a recent trip to Albuquerque, New Mexico when he popped into a well-known car rental firm. The hostess asked for his drivers’ licence, looked at it, flustered, turned red and stammered, “You mean you’re Prince George . . . a member of British royalty.” Has anyone from Prince Rupert or Prince Albert made the same claim?
many, Michael Newlin, and the head of a specialist team that came from Washington to assist with his return home.
Jacobsen was abducted on May 28 last year by Islamic Jihad, or Holy War, group — a pro-Iranian extremist organization which is holding two other Americans hostage.
Islamic Jihad says it holds two other Americans, journalist Terry Anderson of The Associated Press, kidnapped since March 1985, and American University dean Thomas Sutherland.
Waite, an emissary of Archbishop of Canterbury Robert Runcie, was reported to have shuttled around Lebanon, Syria and Cyprus since Thursday in an effort to free foreign hostages in Lebanon. It was not clear what role he had in Jacobsen’s release.
At least 20 foreigners, including six Americans, remain missing, feared kidnapped by extremist groups in Lebanon. A seventh Syrian-born naturalized American is also missing but it is not known whether he was kidnapped.
See also page 8
B.C. food bank tally regarded as disgrace
VANCOUVER (CP) - A new itudy shows the province is home to more than 50 food banks — more than the rest of Canada combined.
“It’s a disgrace,” said Sylvia Russell, director of the Vancouver Food Bank.
British Columbia is regarded as a disaster by some 300 social workers, politicians, government officials. teachers and religious leaders meeting at the three-day conference in Toronto.
“And w! jn people from the Mar-itimes, with all the problems they have, are shocked by what they hear about B.C., you realize we’re in really bad shape,” Russell said from Toronto.
Russell said her organization would probably turn people away this winter. “It looks like a pretty bleak winter for a lot of people, especially if it is a cold one.”
The Vancouver Food Bank started handing out several hundred bags of food a month when it opened about three years ago. Now, it routinely distributes 3,000 food hampers a month.
“There are a number of children in this country going to school who are unable to study, unable to learn, because they have no food in their stomachs,” said Graham Riches, a University of Regina sociology professor who’s studied the problem.
Figures from a June report by the Social Planning and Research Council of B.C. show more than 70,000 people in the province needed handouts
Michael Claque, executive director of the research council, said there are a growing number of people who have lost their jobs, exhausted their savings and unemployment insurance and are now unable to exist on welfare.
UIC claims soaring after Expo
VANCOUVER (CP) - Unemployment insurance claims have soared in the last few weeks as service industries laid off employees needed only during the Expo 86 boom, says a spokesman for Employment and Immigration Canada.
Bill Ross, Employment Canada’s district manager for Greater Vancouver, said this week that claims are now running about 15 per cent above average from “service areas” such as hotels, restaurants and rental car firms.
“In fact, everything that was associated with the world’s fair party is now showing up significantly,” he said. “We’ve been swamped with business in the last few weeks.”
But Ross said employees of Expo itself have filed fewer claims than expected.
Employment Canada set up a mass unemployment insurance claims-taking operation for departing Expo employees in early October. But it attracted only 2,000 of a projected 8,000 to 10,000 fair employees expected to register for benefits.
.. .and in tomorrow's Citizen. ..
Tuesday’s Citizen includes the story behind a Canadian developer’s takeover of one of the largest retail chains in the United States.
Also planned:
■ Mississippi Delta-style blues may be better known, but North Carolina has its own way to play.
H Coverage of today’s Prince George city council meeting.
Born on the wild frontier?
It seems Prince George’s battle to change its image in the world is all uphiil.
When Prince Charles and Princess Diana were here, the British press hooted that our fair city was a refuge for open-mouthed mountain men and lumberjacks, known only for its tattoo parlors, bars and manufacture of chopsticks.
Mayor Elmer Mercier has often taken the Vancouver and Eastern Canadian news media to task for its frequently folksy interpretations of Prince George.
Mercier has said on more than one occasion, the only time the national media pays any attention to Prince George is when the mayor chases a moose down the main street.
New, some of our neighbors to the south have further embellished the picture.
A New Jersey publicist, writing a press release on local boxer
SPONAGLE
GRIZZLY
George Sponagle, suggests he has gone to the U.S. to get away from the wildlife.
The 19-year-old welterweight is now being managed and trained in the U.S. where he hopes to get more exposure in the bigtiine world of boxing.
“When he’s not tracking down grizzly bears and moose near his home in Prince George, B.C., George Sponagle participates in less hazardous activities — like
boxing,” says PR man Joe Chessa-ri.
“Think about it. What would you rather do?” he writes. “Scrimmage in the woods with an 800-pound Kodiak (a species of large grizzly bear found on Kodiak Island, Alaska) or trade harmless punches in the gym with a guy whose weight and eating habits are more comparable to your own?” Sponagle, whose uncle was the Canadian middleweight champion over 10 years ago. “has done a little of both,” says Chessari.
“The willingness to hunt bear and moose is more or less a trait he inherited from his environment. The willingness to put on boxing gloves came from family background.”
You’re going soft, George.
While you’re pummelling sparring partners in Paterson, N.J. we’ll be here tackling bears and caribou — like real men and women.
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