Page 2 June 1983 Cassiar Courier Oops — We goofed! In our May issue of the Cassiar Courier, inadvert- antly some of the pictures of the Cassiar Hospit- al Board were mixed up. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. DON BEST — 1 YEAR DIRECTOR Secretary-treasurer — Stikine School District RAY HAMILTON — 1 YEAR DIRECTOR Teacher , Snowridge Elementary School DOUG KERR — 1 YEAR DIRECTOR Principal, Good Hope Lake School School District No.87 budget finalized by Owen Corcoran The Ministry of Education has notified the School District that its 1983 Budget has been finalized. The Operating Budget has been set at $3,994,071 which is $3,223 less than the final budget submitted by the Board. The Operating Budget of $3,994,071 contains the 1982 Operating Surplus of $184,685; a grant of $184,856 for actual student population growth (1982 over 1981) and a grant of $37,406 for the anticipated student popu- lation 1983 over 1982. The surplus and the grants rep- resent a total injection of $406,947 into the 1983 Operating Budget. IMPACT ON LOCAL RESIDENTIAL TAXPAYERS Local residential taxpayers must meet the school dis- trict’s share of the Operating Budget - an amount of $212,985 (6.02% of the operating costs). As well, they must meet the school district’s share of the Debt Service and Capital Costs and Non-shareable Capital Costs - on the amount of $57,944 (5.1% of that total cost). The district’s share in the total budget - ie. operating costs plus debt services and capital costs is ($212,985 + $57,944) $270,929 which is 6.06% of the district’s total cost. This $270,929 cost is exactly the same as the district’s share of the total budget in 1982. However, because the district’s assessed value dropped, the mill rate is slightly higher for 1983. Operating Budget mill rate 82.2474 Debt Services mill rate 22.376 104.6234 NET RESULT 95% of Residential Taxpayers in S.D. No. 87 will meet their assessment with the Home Owner’s Grant. A NOTE OF CONCERN -- to the District is the fact that since September 1982, the District’s student popu- lation has declined from 620 to 580, a drop of 40 stu - dents. These students represent an approximate loss of $240,000 in the 1984 Budget and this factor could cause financial headaches next year. ees eer rere reese Dear Readers, Fifteen months ago | was hired by the Ministry of Human Resources to work as a Social Worker in Cassiar. | had just taken a Masters Degree in Counselling Psychol- ogy at UBC and had a years experience as a marriage & family counsellor. | fully expected to put this education and experience to use in the community of Cassiar. Unfortunately, this was not to be the case and | was informed by the local office not to tell the Cassiar Courier or townspeople that | had the above credentials as | would not be doing any counselling. Six months passed and | realized that 90% of my time was confined to maintaining welfare in the surrounding communities. As this consumed less than 1 week a month of actual work, | was motivated to find a way to offer counselling and social services to the community of Cassiar. A written proposal was made to the local office stat- ing that as | had too much time on my hands, | would like to offer the following services to the community; individual and group counselling with pregnant teens, establish a homemaker service, organize licensed daycare, lifeskills and vocational planning for teens, individual marriage & family counselling, behaviour management workshop for parents of pre-schoolers, parenting skills, assertiveness training for women, and research available group homes. The general response to the proposal was negative, many reasons given, not the least being that if these programs were started, they would have to continue, I want to work and the local office was not prepared to do this. Another being that it was a time of restraint and it would look bad if we offered programs other offices could not. The prevailing philosophy was and still is that the least amount of service given is better than no service at all. | disagree! A second proposal was written requesting permission to set up a private counselling service for individual, marriage & family counselling within the community accommodating evening and weekend sessions for those on shifts. This request was denied by the Regional Office stating that counselling of this sort would be in ° conflict of interest as | was supposed to be counselling in the local office. As the last 15 months have been spent trying to alle- viate boredom, it has become apparent that efforts to utilize my time and experience for the benefit of Cassiar is strongly discouraged. Your money as taxpayers and my time as a professional is being misused and it is for the above reasons that | have submitted my resignation as of June 30, 1983. A request has been made by myself to the Ombuds- man, the Minister of Human Resources, Grace McCarthy, Al Passarell, MLA for Atlin, and the Execu- tive Director, Dick Butler to look into the situation in the local office of Cassiar and ascertain why these services are being denied to the community. A written request from yourselves to the above mentioned advo- cates will ensure that as taxpayers, you are receiving the social services that you are paying for. Susanne Dadson i Social Worker, Ministry of Human Resources, Cassiar, B.C. Cassiar Courier rebuttal Following is a letter sent to the chairman of the Board of Trustees for School District No. 87 (Stikine), by the Courier staff. While the staff prefers to deal with problems privately, it was felt that since the minutes of school board meetings are available to the general public, then the public should be made aware) of our feelings on the matter. f 2 re i Mrs. Sherry Sethen, Chairperson, School District No. 87 (Stikine), Box 190, Cassiar, B.C. Dear Sherry: It has just been brought to our attention that at the Stik- ine School Board meeting on January 29, 1983, the Board was in agreement that the “Indicators of Management Per- formance” statistic report had been portrayed in a biased and negative manner in the February issue of the Cassiar Courier. We should point out that this report was presented in to- tal as received in a provincial government press release and this was prefaced by a statement from the B.C.S.T.A. We Passarell retains Atlin seat Al Passareli defeated three other candidates, Bobby Ball, Social Credit, Burgess Longson, Independent, Paul Brohman, Independent, to retain the Atlin seat in the Legislature for the NDP. The final results were: Passarell, NDP 1587 Ball, Social Credit 1208 Longson, Independent 105 Brohman; Independent 84 assume that most people would interpret it as such. How- ever, any areas which we felt warranted further explan- ation were put to you in an interview, published in the same issue. You may remember that we asked you to read the transcript of the interview before publication in order to ensure that we had not misinterpreted any of your statements and to determine whether you wished to add or delete anything — a courtesy not extended by most newspapers. It is unfortunate that we made an honest error in placing the article directly under Mr. Corcoran’s byline on the School District page. However, in the March issue we pub- lished a letter from Mr. Corcoran disassociating himself from the article, as well as his own lengthy interpretation of the report. We feel very strongly that this was not reported in a neg- ative and biased manner, as we offered NO opinion of our own-— biased or otherwise — and we would request that the statement agreed to by the Board be retracted at the next Board meeting. Yours truly, Lee Coran and Kerry Jones, Cassiar Courier Staff. Cusac to start milling in June Two shifts per day are working towards completing ‘the seven foot by seven foot tracked main haulage level at the mine. This is to reach the Hot vein which is 900 feet from the portal, and 150 feet below surface. The 50 ton per day concentrating plant, under the supervision of Doug Redden, will hopefully be in full operation by June 1. Cusac presently has a surface stockpile of approximately 800 to 1,000, grading between 0.25 and 0.30 oz. gold per ton. : A contract has been set for a minimum of 4,000 feet of diamond drilling to test for extensions of the Hot and Freddy veins and further testing on the Dino vein. RCMP NEWS ACCIDENTS DURING APRIL — 3 ACCIDENTS SAME PERIOD in 1982 — 34 KEEP UP THE GOOD DRIVING! ACCIDENTS TO DATE IN 1983 — 19 CASSIAR Bits & Pieces Being a good fisherman runs in the Woodrow family. Frank Woodrow stopped at Stewart on his way here from Castlegar and took away a 115 pound halibut. Of course it kept getting bigger as the story was told, so a “Liars Licence” was supplied by Jean Lister. Frank has the pictures to prove it though. Good fishing Frank!!! This issue we introduce anew food column “Thoughts on Food’’ contributed by those great guys over at the Cafeteria. It is with sadness we bid farewell to a long-established column “Dining by Candlelight’? but the author, Terry Farrell, has gone on to greener pastures! Can you imagine losing a one-of-a-kind, orange camper van in Cassiar? Must be some logical _ explanation, eh E. dna! Ron Schmidt received an “‘Honourable Men- tion’ for his contribution to CBC’s ‘Quirks and Quarks’. Another Cassiarite, Helen Mason, won the CBC Sunday morning “Headlines”. What is really amazing is that this letter reached Toronto in less than a week! Smiles to the Warehouse group, who all quit smoking on May I! It may start.a chain re- action. Our condolences to Sue O’Mura, whose father passed away suddenly in Toronto. Anybody know why Marvel Nitti was throwing her meat around in the store recently? Overheard in Cassiar the other day — “will the real, Ray Hamilton, please step forward!” We have just learned that Les Watkins passed away on January 25, 1983. Les and his wife Hilda, came to Cassiar in the 1950's and Les worked as a Powerhouse Operator and Main- tenance Clerk until his retirement on July 31, 1974. Our condolences to his wife, Hilda. Luc Prevost was the lucky ‘Jackpot’? winner at the bingo sponsored by the Blue Valley Figure Skating Club. The jackpot consisted of an area rug, 5 piece Samsonite luggage set, propane bar- becue, 10 speed bicycle, Cuisinart and a return trip to Vancouver via CPA. A few years ago we said “farewell” to Bob and Violet Wilms when they retired to Prince George Now we are pleased to welcome them back. Bob at age S1, is planning on doing some mining on his property. It was nice to see Marge Ash back in town for a visit, as well. She drove up from Prince George with Bob and Violet. George Flake spent a few days in town, attend- ing the RCMP Ball and visiting with old friends. Seems he’s going to be making another visit up this way in June. Welcome to Ferne Pope from Kitsault, who has recently joined Lem McVane. Where else but in Cassiar can you drive a little down the Stewart road and find 3 suckling pigs on spits in 3 different locations, all on one weekend! The Cassiar Chub Club, now has a membership of 38, and in the one month since it began, the total weight loss has been 120 pounds. One comment over- heard recently was “even Perriard’s pants are looking baggy’. The Club meets every Wednesday at 6:30 p.m. at the Secondary School and new members are wel- come. Congratulations to Vesna and Goldie Kavaz, who were married in Cassiar on May 16. For the last month, Cassiar residents have been ad- miring the lone snow goose in the ponds by the tailings pile — nice change from the ravens we usually see. JAMES LECKIE James graduated from F. H. Collins High School, Whitehorse, Yukon, on May 13, 1983. He plans to go into medicine and will be at- tending the University of Alberta. BORN TO. Alana and Eric Stump, a son, James Earl, 7 Ibs. 14% oz., on May 13, 1983, at Cassiar Hospital. Lisa and Ed Spetch, a daughter, Jennifer Ann, 8 lbs. 14 oz., on May 19, 1983, at Grace Hospital, Vancouver. THANK YOU On behalf of Northern Lights College, | would like to thank everyone who participated in the courses and a special thanks to the instructors who gave their time and effort to make the courses interesting and inform- ative. The free advertising donated by the Courier, W.S.T.V. and John’s newsletter is also much appreciated. Ellen Corcoran SSS SSIES CASSIAR DENTAL CLINIC WILL BE | CLOSED DURING THE MONTH OF JULY Se Se oe On Cassiar Courier June 1983 Page 3 Erickson Creek Column by Pat Lewis Beaton We saw a swan the other day. It was beautiful (no long string of adjectives needed here. Simple beauty, simple words). We were standing on the bank of the Dease River at Might Moe’s place. A dog scared up a flock of geese who flapped their wings then settled again on the water. Following them was this beautiful white swan. As she rose above the river, she was silhouetted by the charred forest across the Dease. — It too was lovely — a patchwork of black, brown and green. Arthur Fisher was with us. Arthur is the Director of Mining for Erickson, based in Vancouver. He had the honour of catching the first grayling at Mighty Moe’s this year! We were glad to see that last year’s forest fire did not do any irreparable damage to Mighty Moe's. His place by the Dease is an institution in our area! Ah, Summer! Summer at Erickson sees an increase in our already fast pace. An extensive surface diamond drill program is underway. Due to good conditions, John Schussler and his D & J Drilling Company were able to get the program going early this year. Our three man first aid team is practising for the division competition which will be held before this paper returns from the press. Good Luck to Coach Joe Hebert, Jim Bondesen, Gary Moffat and Tom Williams. Erickson also recently hosted forty geologists and one engineer from the University of Alaska and the Royal School of Mines in London, England. Mine Manager Al Beaton said the sound of geologist’s hammers under- ground will never ring louder! Tuesday, April 19, 1983, Tanya Susann Harris and Andre Ralph Tischler were joined in holy matrimony by Rey. Bob Harrold in the Logan Lake Community Church, Logan Lake, B.C. The wedding was attended by approximately 40 people, including Andre’s parents Lothar and Irma Tischler from Cassiar. on Bruns Telegraph Creek B.C. Ph. 771-3351 elegraph Creek Dease Lak WHEELS, SKIS & FLOATS DHC~ 2 BEAVER CESSNA 180 CESSNA 185 CESSNA 206 Sight Seeing Fishing Trips Winter & Summer st ny