Tire Prince George
Citizen
TUESDAY, AUGUST 6,1991
                                                                             51 CENTS
                                                                               (Plus GST)
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Phone:562-2441 Classified: 562-6666 Circulation: 562-3301
 HIGH GAS PRICES TOP LIST
Tourists air beefs about city
    Visitors to Prince George complain more about the high price of gasoline than anything else, according to a recent tourist survey.
    Although the survey conducted by the North by Northwest Tourism Region contains other complaints as well, gas prices lead the way and arc discouraging Americans from returning, said Jack Hooper, manager of Prince George Tourism.
    “Gas prices are terrible,” writes a Tennessee tourist.
    “Gas prices are too high and will keep visitors away,” says a Vermont resident.
    “Gas and tobacco prices are way too high,” writes someone from Washington State.
    “Gas and alcohol are too high. Will think twice about returning to B.C.,” remarked a visitor from California.
    “Canada, gas and GST is very
  expensive. We’re cutting our trip throughout B.C. short,” said travellers here from Austrailia and New South Wales.
    “I share the concern of higher gas prices affecting residents and visitors alike, but we live in a democracy and that’s free enterprise in action,” said Hooper.
    “People are paying 56 cents a litre, and as long as they’re willing to pay it the prices will likely stay there.”
    “However we can’t point the finger at gas prices and GST as the only culprits. It’s a combination of factors including a recession in some U.S. states. People aren’t going anywhere this year,” Hooper explained.
    Numbers of European tourists are also down due the recent Persian Gulf war which played havoc wilh international flight reservations.
    There are other complaints as well such as “Smog, smog, smog” and “Prince George smells”.
    On the brighter side, visitors praise the beautiful scenery, the cleanliness of the city, the quality of city parks and staff and information received at tourist booths.
    Overall, highway traffic has deceased by 30 per cent to the end of July while tourism as a whole is down 12.5 per cent in Prince George compared with the same period last year.
    But Hooper says a prime difference last year was the July 1990 B.C. Summer Games held here.
    To date, B.C. residents account for the greatest number of the 29,500 tourists who came through Prince George in the first seven months of this year, compared with 32,500 during the same period last year.
Statistics reveal
economic gain
                                                                                                                     by Southam News
    OTTAWA — Statistics Canada’s leading economic indictor rose for the second straight month in May, the agency said today, a sign that the economy continues to recover from the year-long recession.
    After a 14-month decline, the indicator rose by a robust 0.7 per cent in May, following a marginal 0.1-per-cent gain in April and a 0.6-per-cent drop in March.
    The leading indicator is a basket of 10 key economic statistics — from retail sales to stock market prices to the supply of money — that reveal underlying trends or shifts in economic activity.
    Eight of the 10 sectors posted gains, compared with only five in April, as improvements spread to the manufacturing and services sector and U.S. economic activity.
    The housing index continued to show strength, rising by 6.3 per cent, an improvement that compares with the recovery in housing after the 1981-82 recession.
    “Furniture and appliance sales remained slow, however, possibly due to weak sales for new homes,” Statistics Canada said. “Sales of other durable goods and employment in services rose slowly, in line wilh labor income.
    “Manufacturing continued to recover from the sharp drops registered early in the year. New orders for durable goods rose for the first time since August 1990, led by auto exports to the United States and construction materials.”
    Orders for business materials remained weak, however, and manufacturing employment sagged in June, the agency noted.
    Businesses continued to pare
  away at inventories in May and there was no increase in the average work week, suggesting factories are still operating well below capacity.
    'The Toronto stock market posted a fourth straight gain in May and the supply of money, which oils the wheels of commerce, rose for the second month in a row.
    The U.S. leading indicator also grew in May and preliminary figures suggest it posted another gain in June. A U.S. recovery is essential for a continued recovery here.
    While the latest figures suggest the recovery should continue, other statistics, such as a 10.5-per-cent unemployment rate and continuing record-high bankruptcies, reveal that recovery’s weakness.
Driver drug tests urged
                                                                                           by Canadian Press
   VANCOUVER         —   British
 Columbia’s police chiefs will seek tougher laws to allow them to test drivers for drug use, says a spokesman for the Vancouver police department.
   That follows the results of a
  year-long study that showed drugs — both prescription and illegal — are present in more than one in four drivers killed in B.C. motor vehicle accidents.
     “This is a bigger problem than we thought and it deserves a great deal more attention — we’ve been
Search for boy continues
    The search for an eight-year-old Prince George boy missing since Wednesday evening when he accidentally fell into the Bulkley River at Morricctown is continuing.
    Morricetown is about 320 kilometres northwest of Prince George. Smithers RCMP said Cole Van Koughnctt was playing his with stepbrothers on the riverbank shortly after after 8 p.m. when he lost his footing and fell into the river near a large fiat rock used for
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 salmon fishing known as Idiot Rock.
    His parents, Mr. and Mrs. William Van Koughnctt of Prince George were camping at the Morricctown campsite when the accident occurred.
    A search of the area by police, PEP (provincial emergency program) volunteers in which both a helicopter and an airplane were used has failed to turn up any sign of the boy.
 5830? 00100
                                                                                                     "I know it's a dog license! He was driving."
  so focussed on alcohol,” said Insp. Harold Brittain.
    “We’ll be lobbying government, through the B.C. Association of Chiefs of Police, to make the necessary changes to the law.”
    Drugs were present in 28 per cent of 120 samples, said Wayne Jeffery, the RCMP’s head toxicologist in Vancouver. But drugs don’t show up on police breath-analysis devices.
    “If a driver has a low blood-al-cohol level but seems grossly impaired, the police have to let him go unless he either consents to a blood test or admits taking the drugs,” Jeffery said.
    The local president of Mothers Against Drinking Drivers said police need new laws.
    “We have to make sure the police have the tools to detect those impaired by drugs,” said Sally Gribble.
    Jeffrey said drugs figured in a much higher percentage of accidents than he had forecast.
    “I expected to find drugs in about 10 per cent of the cases — but they turned up in 28 per cent of the 120 samples I’ve received from the coroner,” he said.
    Jeffery is heading a province-wide study of blood samples taken from drivers killed in traffic accidents.
    “I’m finding high levels of THC (he active ingredient in cannabis) and a variety of pharmaceutical drugs like tranquillizers, narcotics, barbiturates in substantial quantities,” Jeffery said.
    In the 120 road deaths in B.C. since the study began in November, Jeffery found mind-altering drugs in 22 per cent of the samples, and a mixture of drugs and alcohol in another six per cent.
Kamloops forest fire rages
    KAMLOOPS — The air over Kamloops turned acrid with smoke and tinder-dry trees became blazing torches as the biggest fire in British Columbia burned about 12 kilometres north of the city.
    More than 80 firefighters from across the province joined crews from Kamloops forest district during the weekend to fight the 500-hectare fire.
    District fire protection officer Jerry Hunter said Monday about 100 firefighters were on the job, with 35 of them working through the night to complete a guard around the fire.
    The fire, which was reported at
 4:30 p.m. Friday, started less Lhan half a kilometre from Highway 5 near an access road to a microwave tower. It burned through sagebrush, grass and stands of Douglas fir and ponderosa pine on land belonging to the Kamloops Indian Band, rancher Terry Devick and the provincial government.
    Devick said he was up all night Saturday and Sunday after the fire ripped through 40 hectares of his property south of Rayleigh. Devick said he didn’t lose any cattle in the blaze, but will have to replace at least three kilometres of fence.
    “It’s rangeland — it’s really dry, early-grass country, ’ he said.
     Fire bosses initially estimated the size of the blaze at 200 hectares but revised that figure upwards after smoke cleared off Saturday.
     “It’s bigger than we thought,” Hunter said. “It was a combination of wind, slope and dry fuel that made it so large.”
     Hunter said firefighters are concentrating on controlling the blaze and will look into how it started once the fire is under control.
     “It appears to be man-caused,” Hunter said. “As to the exact cause, we’re still investigating that.”
 They have their own
 Top: Ostrich can startle passersby on Buckhom Road. Below: Maureen Schulting feeds her unusual pets.
                                                                                                          Big Bird
                                                                                                          by KEN BERNSOHN Citizen Staff
    Michelangelo and Raphael are a lot more stand-offish than either the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles with the same names, or the Italian painters who first made those names famous.
    And the local residents with the famous names are a lot taller than either the turtles or the painters. Michelangelo is just over seven feet tall, while Raphael is a tad under six feet, but he’s still a growing boy.
    If they’re not used to you, they run, in a straight line, and can’t see fences. But there is a way to change their attitudes quickly. Show up with a head of lettuce. Ostriches are not neat eaters and will beak you in the process of dining. They’ll also remove earrings, hair clips and anything bright.
    Just ask John and Maureen Schulting. They’re raising Michelangelo and Raphael plus three emus, two horses, five dogs and some parrots on their 16-hectare farm on the Buckhom Road about 20 minutes south of downtown Prince George.
    “They can handle temperatures down to minus 15, then we put them in the garage for the winter,” John said.
    “The heat from the house keeps it warm enough for them.
    “They weighed 100 pounds when we got them last January,” Maureen said.
    “Now the biggest one — the female — (Michelangelo) weighs 250 to 300 pounds.”
    The big birds, hatched in Montana, were raised in Edmonton to the age of five and a half months, then brought to Prince George.
    Ostriches, which protect themselves by kicking wilh their powerful feet, aren’t suitable for house pets. Although they eat “Ostrich Grower” mix, they just require too much space and are too unfriendly. However, Raphael and Michelangelo don’t have to be friendly. At the moment they have two duties: their main job is to keep growing.
    Ostriches can start laying eggs when they’re two years old and can produce 80 to 120 eggs a year by the time they’re four. The Schultings intend to breed and sell the big birds, which have become quite a fad in the U.S.
    “A lot of people grow them for their feathers, for dusters,” John said.
    “In the states people are looking at them as an alternative to beef with red meat and low cholesterol.”
    However Michelangelo and Raphael have nothing to fear. John and Maureen say they couldn’t slaughter the birds, and that would wreck their other job: looking picturesque, so when people drive by they slow down to get a good look at the dignified birds.
    Although the emus are related, they’re birds of a different feather. Emus grow to only five feet tall, 100 pounds, and are a lot friendlier than ostriches.
    Although the black birds hiss at dogs, they’re fascinated by humans, considering anything bright edible, including your wristwatch.