Page 10 February 1982 Cassiar Courier GOOD ee LAKE NEWS| MOCCASSIN TELEGRAPH...... ** Don and Cheryl! back after a vacation touring West- ern Canada. Cabin a little cool, Don? Jack! We understand you had a very short vacation! A lot of driving and no fun is not good for one’s constitution. ; Irene — can’t you find the entrance to the camp? It is that section that is plowed out, if you were wondering. You know — between the snowbanks. Funny place to park a car!!! ** Singles Club .......Help.... bers.... New Year's bash turned into one giant box- ** ** ing match, and no referees. Cause unknown ....... nO females to fight over. Rocky -- | guess it doesn’t pay to help damsels in dis- tress..... does it? Why didn’t she help you out when ** you were stuck???? ** Bob, your Uncle Lou from Dease Lake said not to worry about working with the steamer crew, you won't shrink if you get wet. ** Welcome back, Graham. Squeaky is back .... Rocky knew that Moose lose their antlers annually; but did not know they were used locally as danger- ous projectiles. Be sure to duck, Rocky. Christmas lights in Gastown ....That’s right — this was the first year for Xmas lights in Gastown. The powerplant installed there was in Operation and some residents had Xmas lights for the first time in Good Hope Lake’s north village. Ghost Town is not a ghost town after all, as Howard Vance and family have moved. into Good Hope Lake’s South Village. Still a lot of empty houses on Sesame Street. Word has it that the singles group had a real poeeeip knock-em, sock-em New Year's bash but, fun was had by all. : Carey is back from Red Deer, Hazel. ** Charlie Chief had the family out to visit at his trap- line cabin at Camp Creek over the holidays. Nice to ~ #% ae He H* see all those smiling faces, again. ** \We hear that an.ex-resident of Good Hope Lake had a heap big explosion in his bathroom. Good thing it wasn’t in the kitchen, eh Brian? Next time leave your propane bottle outside!!! ** “Remember — for. every mile of road there are two miles of ditches.....it’s a real challenge to stay out of them for some drivers. ''B.C. PHOTO | B.C. PHOTO B.C. PHOTOS CAN NOW OFFER A CUSTOM FRAMING SERVICE FOR MOST ARTWORK AND } 4 PHOTOGRAPHS. WE HAVE METAL FRAMES IN STOCK AND SAMPLES OF WOODEN FRAMES 4 AVAILABLE FOR SPECIAL ORDERS WE ALSO SEEL PHOTOS OF CASSIAR AREA OR WILL ENLARGE YOUR OWN PHOTOS 374 McDAME STREET PHONE — 778-7568 + ¢ +. BILL AND CECILE PRATT + 7 oe HOME, WERE OPEN > —> — ~— ©— —- — o-oo oo om IN CASSIAR - LEE CORAN - 205 SMITH STREET PHONE 778-7456 WED & THURS 6.30 - 9p.m. OTHER TIMES BY APPOINTMENT ONLY SS SSIES FES Oi THE KEY TO YOUR INCOME TAX PROBLEMS. -| .we need some female mem- > — 2. 2. > iy aoe Sigual NED SOMEBODY, TOM EVERYBODY, BILL ANY— BODY and PETE NOBODY were members of the com- munity. : EVERYBODY was too busy to take an active part in community affairs. ANYBODY wanted to become active but was afraid to take part because he might be criticiz- ed. SOMEBODY. wouldn’t speak to him so NOBODY came to the community meetings. 3 Really NOBODY was the only decent one of the four. NOBODY came to the meetings. Once when we badly needed EVERYBODY, EVERY— BODY thought ANYBODY would do it and SOME- BODY thought EVER Y BODY would do it. Guess who did it finally .... ..... NOBODY. A new member joined the community. EVERYBODY thought SOMEBODY should ask him to come to the meetings. ANYBODY could have made an effort. Guess who finally asked him cass. NOBODY. Guess what ........:....NO CHIEF ELECTED YET. TO ALASKA | HORSEBACK A couple of issues back we carried a brief write-up on Brad Petty, a Watsonville, California resident, who set out on a six month horseback journey from Watsonville, California, to Fairbanks, Alaska.. We have since heard from Mr. Petty and would like to pass these facts along to our readers. ; Brad Petty got his idea of riding a horse to Alaska 30 _ years ago when he was a college student. He said it took 30 years to put it into effect because he had'to retire first. So the 60 year old retired school teacher saddled up his nine year old half-Arabian and half quarter horse, loaded up all his gear on his pack horse, a twelve year old half Apaloosa and half-quarter horse:, and headed for the Land of the Midnight Sun. The three travelled a total distance of 3,675 miles. The journey lasted 181 days. He carried with him about’ 200 Ibs. of gear, including a tent he slept in about 30 nights.” His horses had to be shod 12 times. He had them shod once while resting at Good Hope Lake. He spent most nights in camps, homes and: other accom- modations along the way, supplied by people he met dur ing his journey. Brad Petty had this com mentzhe wished | to pass along. “’Erom Kitwanga to the Alaska Highway |: never ‘had anything but warmhearted hospitality: from truck drivers, highways crews, business people and all the people that live along the pew ants Gael et Highway. If never forget that experience.’ If all goes. well, Brad. Petty plans to return to Fairbanks this spring, pick up his horses and return to Watson- ville, California on horseback. Hats off to Brad Petty and Happy Trails from. Cassiar Country. PoLiceE — We are proud to report that there were no impaired driving charges laid over the entire festive season at Good Hope Lake. There have been reports of several chimney fires in the area. Please ensure that your pipes and chimney are cleaned regularly and that the damper is working properly. — SNOWMOBILE SAFETY _ Know your machine, its bimitations ana its Renal book Never brake your machine with your foot: Jumping obstacles is dangerous Do not attempt a Wilderness trip until you are a cap- able driver with experience to make minor repairs Check ice thickness and. beware of deep slush Carry a new spark plug, extra fuel, drive ‘belt, rope and necessary/spare: parts a ; On Safaris, never travel alone, use Rene ‘*Buddy System’’. Hk Resist. the urge to follow game nace Oon..a snow- mobile. Animals such. as moose, deer and caribou ~ have no:energy to spare for unnecessary running in. the hard winter months. ati: NEW FACES Rob Tucker, is the new road foreman for the Good Hope Lake — Cassiar area. Rob transferred from Tattoga Lake, where he was road foreman for the past five years. He worked out of Dease Lake prior to his appointment - Tattoga Lake. - We welcome Rob, his wits Sheri, five year old daughter Danielle and son Robbi, three years old, to Good Hope Lake. ; Rob enjoys hunting, fishing and snowmobiling and is ‘looking forward to working here at Good Hope Lake. and meeting the residents of Cassiar Country. Welcome to Good Hope Lake, Rob; Sheri, Danielle and Robbi. RS - Cassiar Community Club McDame Ski Hill Opens McDame Ski Hill started the Downhill Skiing season on Tuesday, wAnuary 12, The new ski hill operator is Frank Cserey and the hours of operation are: TUESDAY THRU SUNDAY. ~ 1:0 Due to the late opening, memberships have been reduced and ae asfollows: < First member — $60 00 Second member — $40 00 Each additional member — $20 00 Day passes are as follows: Adults — $6 00 Students — $3 00 Pre-Schoolers — $1 00 Pre-schoolers rust be accompanied by an adult. rst ott bins Aseiresireh er. (eq wisges Ski instruction and ski race team will commence on Jn. 18 : os NORTHERN B.C. WINTER GAMES The Northern B.C. Winter Games for 1982 will be held in Quesnel on February 5, 6 & 7. This year, the Cassiar Community Club will be travelling to Quesnel together with the athletes from Faro; The Faro athletes will be arriving on Tuesday, Feb. 2, over- night in Cassiar, and then they will leave on Wednesday morning, © with the Cassiar athletes. Both contingents will overnight in Smithers and will arrive at Quesnel on Thursday afternoon. This © year Cassia is represented in badminton, led by last year’s Gold medalist in the Boys under 19 category — Olava Santos. It is also represented in co-ed volleyball, cross country skiing, downhill skiing, table tennis and wrestling. The group will be coming back on Sunday and will arive in Cassiar Monday night. Best-of luck to all the ahletes. ST. VALENTINES DAY. The CCC lounge will be holding a St. Valentine's Day Dance Saturday, February 13. There will be fresh flowers for all” the ladies and aspecia surprise. SCHMOO DAZE ’82 Hey, just to remind all you fun lovers that Schmoo Daze is about two months away. This year’s theme is Medieval Times and the festivities will last eight days, starting Saturday, March 27 to April 3. A lot of old favorites, as well as new events, will be on again — Outhouse races, schmoo races, snowshoe baseball, Carn- nival Ball, and indoor soccer tournaments. Right now we wre look- ing for more new and exciting ideas from you. Remember, this Carnival is for you. If you can come up with any ideas or: would like to help, please contact the Rec Centre. Cassiar Courier February 1982 Page 11 by John Wong Cassiar hustled down again Each year, the B.C. Games put on two extravaganzas known as the B.C. Summer and B.C. Winter Games. The ideas of the Games are supposedly to gather the B.C. athletes for provincial- wide competitions in different sports. In order to ensure the Games have the top athletes, besides the ones who are ranked provincially or nationally, the Games divide the whole Province in- to 8 zones, according to the proportion of the population. Berths are allotted in each sport and athletes are to compete against each other for the berths. Fair enough. However, if one takes a look in Zones 7 and 8, one notices the two zones occupy half of the Pro- vince, which means for the athletes in these two zones to compete against each other some must travel a long way, and unfortunately Cassiar lies in one of these two zones — Zone 7. To give you a picture of Zone 7 — it lies to the south of the Yukon B.C. border, west to the Alaska — B.C. border and the Pac- ific Ocean (including the Queen Charlottes), south along the Kiti- mat region and east bound by the Liard Rockies Region. It is a huge area without a highly developed road. Now that we have talked about the vastness of the zone, let's look at another factor. The distance that the Cassia: athletes have to travel to compete in the zone playoffs involves a lot of time. ’ The locations of the zone playoffs are determined by the sports governing bodies. These administrations will take the following in- to consideration. when they select the zone playoff location — ac- commodation, availability of gynV/rink space, availability of local Officials and ACCESSIBILITY. So, generally speaking, the play- offs are held in the southern areas where there are a cluster of towns. The major centres listed in the B.C. Games Rules Book for Zone 7 are Burns Lake, Houston, Kitimat, Masset, Port Clements, Prince Rupert, Smithers, Stewart, Terrace and Vanderhoof. If we just look at the closer centres, we will find that Stewart is 537 km., Smithers 760 km and Terrace is 735 km. These are all one way distances on back roads. If the zone playoffs are held over a weekend (which is usually the case), our athletes have to travel all - day Friday, compete to their best potential, if they are not travel- weary already, and then home very late Sunday night and to work on Monday morning. We have heard how professional athletes com= plain about travelling and they travel by plane! Do we really ex- pect a group of amateurs, some of them students, to do what the professionals can’t? Another factor in preventing Cassiar from participating in the B.C. Games is the money concerned. In both the Yukon and the Northern B.C. Winter Games, Cassiar Resources, through the Cont munity Club, splits with the athletes the cost of travelling and ac- commodations half and’half. Usually this ends up by being more than half due to unexpected cancellations and costs. For some- one who works, in addition to paying the way, he/she is looking at lost wages. For students they miss school. For example, to get to Quesnel to the Northern B.C. Winter Games the group leaves Wednesday morning and will not be bac k until the following Mon- day night. It must be realized that the athletes must sacrifice some things. If anyone is keen enough to compete in a higher level of competition, he/she must be prepared to give up something in re- turn. However, to ask anyone to take time off twice, loss of pay twice - maybe we are asking too much. For an adult athlete who goes to the zone play-off, wins, and goes to the B.C. Games, we are looking at probably 7-days minimum at $11.04 per hour (rates for general labor) — $618.24 in his personal loss! The amount goes higher with the job class. If we forget about the money now and just consider the level of competition. There are basically three situations: 1. If the Cassiar athletes are way better than the others, then there is no problem. The athletes lose $618 each and go to the B.C. Games. 2. If the others-are better than Cassiar, then we are looking at 3 days lost wages, again at $11.00 per hour, which comes to $264.96 and the athletes stay home. 3. If the competition is fairly even, then besides the sure lost wages of $264.96, we are at a distinct disadvantage because ~ of after-effects of the travelling that the Cassiar athletes have to do.They may just lose the tournament because they are travel-weary. Now, is it a pity to sacrifice your income and lose your chance to go to the Games because of the travel- ling. Unfortunately, most of our teams fall into the “both sides are equal’ category, again because of our isolated location. Teams in Cassiar very seldom go to competition, and if they do, it is usually in the Yukon, where their situation is the same. In most cases in these competitions with teams from Yukon, Cas- siar has usually come out on top, which means that there's a def- inite need for better competition. At this moment in Cassiar, the reason why the teams are doing well is because of the experience of coaches and athletes before they moved here. If they are not kept in touch with the progress of the others, then in a few years our level will drop. j So you say “Big Deal. So what if we don’t have any sports teams?” We'll, for the diehard competitors, their sports is a way of life. For those who are isolated and bored, it provides them with a hobby which is not only physically, but mentally good for them. For the young, sports provides a means for wanting to progress, to achieve better, to gain self confidence, respect, dis- cipline and comradeship. Sports can enrich an individual's life. About three years ago the Community Club appealed to the northern B.C. Winter Games about our situation and asked for an exemption to the zone play-offs and to participate as an invitational town, i.e. the standings of our athletes’ achieve- ments would not be counted on the total scores of each zone. The Northern B.C. Games is based on the same system as the B.C Games: Zone play-offs to advance to the Games and then inter- zone competition at the Games. The -Northern B.C. Winter Games Society accommodated our proposal to enable us to compete in the Games. During the course of the three years Cas- siar has obtained 4 Gold medals, 3 Silver and 1 Bronze in these Games. Not a bad achievement for a town of 2,000 competing against towns usually 3 or 4 times its size! We thought that for those Gold medalists, maybe the next step would be a provincial games, like the B.C. Games, However, after several phone calls with the Games Society earlier in 1981, in particular Mr. Ron Butlin, General Manager of the B.C. Games all we get is a “sympathy for our situation, but.......'" We were asking the same kind of accommodation as the Northern B.C. Winter Games Society has given us. But the answer isan uncom- promising “NO WAY”. Wee To cite an example, for the 1981 B.C. Winter Games in Trail, we asked for 3 berths in the squash competition. The B.C. Winter Games Society said that it was up to the Regional Dir- ector who hosted the zone playoffs if he would let us in without having to compete in the zone playoffs. The Regional Director then, in turn, phoned the B.C. Squash Racquet Association to see if we could compete without having to. go through the zone playoffs. It so happened that there were a number of vacancies which another zone could not fill. The B.C. Squash Racquet As- sociation, wanting to promote squash in the Province, gladly said that we would compete. We selected three of our top squash players, told them to bypass the Northern B.C. Winter Games competition, to give other squash players a chance to compete. The blow came when we received a phone call from the B.C. Squash Racquet Association vice-president, half apologizing em- barrassingly to us, that we cannot compete in the B.C. Winter Games because of “rules and regulations’’ set up by the B.C. Winter Games. This phone call came after the Northern B.C. Win- ter Games. We phoned the B.C, Games office and were told flat- ly that we cannot compete for another zone (with the under- standing that the other zone was not filled at the time we were allotted the berths). To us that was contradictory to the Goals listed by the B.C. Winter Games in their Rule Book, not to men- tion the disappointment of the 3 players involved. These goals: - Stimulate enthusiasm and participation in amateur sports. in-order:to achieve -a higher level of physical fitness through- out the Province: 2. Increase interest and participation in those sports presently in astage of development in some areas of the Province. "3. Stimulate playoff activity in all parts of the province to deter- mine Zone representation and to host the maximum number of sports possible at the Games competition. ' 4. Foster in British Columbia athletes the incentive to improve ‘and develop a sense of Provincial. Each year the B.C. Government pours hundreds of > thousands of dollars into these Games. Where does this money: “come from? It is tax dollars and the taxes paid by Cassiar res- idents are amongst the highest i in:the Province, Given the reasons Conunues on eouey 16 5 OF