50th Anniversary by North Shore News Features

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Congratulations on Your 50th Anniversary North Shore News

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Celebrating 50 years of North Shore News Today we publish a very special feature for all of us here on the North Shore, celebrating 50 years of community news publishing. From our humble beginnings in 1969, through to today’s digitally disrupted world, the following pages tell our story, all of ours. For the past 50 years we here at the News have toiled to tell your stories. We have run your birth announcements and obituaries. We have celebrated personal and community milestones, birthdays, engagements, many happy stories and many that were not. We have worked hard every week to listen to your stories and tell them in the pages of our paper (and of course now on our flourishing website). Our goal has always been to reflect community’s views and news in an unbiased and trusted way. We have stirred debate and we have hosted forum. Over these 50 years we have chronicled much change in our community and our world. We continue to do so every day with the same care, integrity and diligence we always have. We look forward to staying on that course, in print and via all the digital channels, for many, many years to come. In today’s special edition we take a look back at some of those events and memories. We reflect on where we have come from and where we are headed

and, most importantly, we celebrate our role in our great community and all of our current team and vast cast of alumni, and the work they have accomplished. Just as importantly, we celebrate our community’s history and the roles that so many of you have played in helping to build such a resilient, caring, welcoming, inclusive and incredibly vibrant community. My own story with the NS News started in the year of our founding, 1969.

I was a newspaper carrier for the Citizen newspaper in West Vancouver when Peter Speck’s North Shore Shopper came along and soon thereafter put me out of my first job, as the Citizen went out of business.

After a stint as a zone manager for the Penny Saver in Victoria during my university years, I took a hiatus from the newspaper business until July 1991. That year I spotted an employment ad in the North Shore News for an advertising representative. Never did I imagine that fateful review of our classified pages would lead to a significant turn in my career path. After eight months in classifieds I had the opportunity to step into the position of retail advertising manager with the News where I remained, through some pretty interesting years, until 1997. In 1997 I bade farewell to Peter Speck and the troops at the News and set out to make my own mark with a start-up paper, the Coast Reporter, on B.C.’s Sunshine Coast. Over the ensuing years, the Coast Reporter was sold to Glacier Media and they kept me on to oversee their many newspaper holdings across Western Canada. In 2011 we came full circle with Glacier buying the North Shore News (and a number of other Lower Mainland papers), and I was once again involved with my hometown paper. In 2015 I took over the helm at the North Shore News as only the third publisher in its colourful history. It has been my pleasure and privilege to serve our North Shore

communities since then and likely for many years into the future. We’ve still got so many stories to tell, but in these pages you’ll find many of our favourites from the past 50 years. So get a cup of coffee (tea or whatever your choice is) and settle in for a great read, great memories and wonderful reflections and musings on our history, together here on the North Shore. We hope you enjoy the read!

Peter Kvarnstrom North Shore News publisher

PHOTO/COVER PHOTO PAUL MCGRATH

Welcome to our story!

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Radiator mechanic heats up newspaper biz PETER SPECK North Shore News Founder

It’s hard to tell of the beginning of the North Shore News without some embarrassment because the birth of this newspaper was made possible by my prior business failure. I can’t really explain it unless I tell the whole story.

For me the 1960s were more or less a disaster or– as Zorba said, I think, a calamity wrapped up in a disaster; or is it the other way around? I was an enterprising young radiator mechanic. I worked for Carey Lockwood, of NorEst Radiators. He was a kind of father to me, and took me in as an apprentice in 1957, age 17, and taught me the radiator trade. I married in 1961, age 21. My wife was from Lynn Valley and was 20. It now seems to me that we were so young. Everyone rushed to be engaged or married. There wasn’t the time to look around, to find out what other opportunities life offered, both in terms of career and long-term relationships. We seemed to think that this is what you did; you got married as soon as you could and had children, and somehow this is how you found yourself and got happy. It may be true, but these days my children are grown up and the patter of little feet in my home is rare. I live with my dogs now. I joke that if I had only started North Shore News founder Peter Speck raises a glass in 1989 in with dogs instead of children and realized recognition of two decades in community news publishing and the sale of how much easier dogs were I might never his newspaper to Southam that year. FILE PHOTO got around to having children. Just a joke.

I love my kids and grandkids. I quit my employer and went out on my own in the auto radiator trade. I was 22 . I knew nothing of real budgeting and very little about a lot else. And I had no money. To make a long story short, my small proprietorship was a calamity inside a disaster, which was my marriage. Too much of my cash and time went to the Avalon Hotel, or the Olympic, or the St. Alice. Entirely too much beer or whatever. It’s easy to pick out some of my mistakes in retrospect.

I didn’t charge enough, was loose with my cash, didn’t promote enough, had no working capital to start with, and most importantly, was afraid to let my guard down and ask for advice. I didn’t have a budget. And drank and came home late sometimes. The result was that I didn’t do a good job of providing for my little family. I was neither a good provider nor a good enough husband or caregiver or father, and I lost them for a long time and missed them a lot.

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A May 1973 front page of the North Shore Shopper shows the staff hard at work, including “founder and patriarch” Peter Speck, top right.

A taste of ad sales for local weekly and a thirst for more From page 5 SARDINES AND CEMENT PLANTS By 1966 my first marriage and my business were both over. I had been dimly aware of the possibility of bankruptcy from Day 1 of my radiator shop. No capital meant Damocles’ sword was hanging over my head and the pressure from creditors was uninterrupted toward the end. I went into the trustee’s office with fear and dread, and emerged feeling so incredibly light. It felt as if my shoes didn’t touch the floor. I had about $1,200 bucks left over after the bankruptcy. That let me rent a tiny two-room suite in the Capilano Highlands and pay my rent for a few months. I am a North Shore person, though born in Montreal. I’ve lived all of my life here. And I love the place. My father was a West Van resident. Born in England, he came to Canada at age eight and lived with his parents in one of the West Van houses they rented from 1911. He got a degree in pharmacy, became a drug salesman and travelled across the country from coast to coast by rail, peddling his products. My mother was from Montreal and very French. How and why they got together is a mystery but they did, and my late sister and I were a result. The two of them were not a good match, there was much bickering over my father’s drinking, and money and other things, and they split up after my sister’s birth, 1942 or so. In 1947 mother brought us (mainly French speaking) children to West Van at my father’s pleadings. We ended up living in a beachfront cottage at 27th and Bellevue, which made quite an impression on this seven-year-old. I

went to Pauline Johnson, which was not French immersion, as it is now. (By the way, more to demonstrate inflation than to mourn, the cottage came for sale in 1950. It was offered to my parents for $4,900. Same lot now? Ten to $15 million.) My parents opted instead to buy a Norgate Park rancher for $7,800. My mother said she didn’t want to deal with any more rats, and besides, everyone knew that you got rheumatism if you lived too close to the sea.

The grub in the Powell River camp was fantastic and I was sorry when that job ended. I went back to looking for work every day, but as they say: sometimes chicken, sometimes just feathers. The hand didn’t always get to the mouth fast enough and I lost 40 pounds in the first year. It was a good thing, diet wise, but harsh and of course there was no money for beer. I remember a week where my entire diet was a can of sardines, a sleeve of crackers and half a jar of peanut butter. I ate my meagre provisions with a small spoon and was grateful for them.

I guess the point of telling this is that there was no other place than the North Shore to run away to, for me. Bankruptcy notices appeared. I couldn’t hide. But really, nobody really cared. Except my ex-wife’s uncle, Jim Bezanson, who got stiffed for ten grand, and he never said a word about it until my discharge came and I was able to repay him. It took me about 10 years. The three years after I went broke were pretty exciting, to put a happy face on what was a grim daily struggle, a hand-to-mouth existence.

I swept chimneys, dug ditches, cleaned oil stoves, cut firewood, dismantled old vehicles, worked on a sewer crew in the British Properties, lived for a few months in a construction camp in Powell River and did ironworker jobs in a cement plant, in Delta. That’s just what I can remember. I did a lot of looking for work.

NO MONEY AIN’T FUNNY In 1968, tired of the day labouring lifestyle, I asked a friend what else a person could do for a living that involved some creativity. He said “Do you think you could sell advertising?” and directed me to the Lions Gate Times weekly newspaper in West Vancouver, at 16th and Bellevue where I met and was hired (straight commission only) by Claude Hoodspith, the owner and publisher. There were two weekly newspapers on the North Shore at that time: the Times, of West Vancouver, which had about 6,000 paid subscribers, and the Citizen, in North Van,

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with about 14,000 paid. There were about 45,000 addresses on the North Shore, and an advertiser in both papers could not reach half the community. Claude exploited this by publishing a yearly “progress edition,” which was to be distributed to all North Shore addresses, and my job was to sell the ad content to businesses.

I learned the newspaper business quickly at a time when printing technology was striding ahead after several centuries of lead type. The Times, under the guidance of Joe Oetter, their printing foreman, had a foot in the past with a functioning linotype machine; a hot lead machine dating way back, used much like a typewriter but casting in hot lead the body type; racks of old-style movable type for headlines, and new typesetting machinery that printed the new cold-set type that was taking over so fast. They didn’t use the linotype much anymore but I saw it working once or twice. The Progress edition went pretty well. I loved the new life. My tongue-in-cheek motto to myself on hard days was “Well, I am clean, dry, and mostly indoors,” which was a refreshing change from my most recent employments. Being new to the ad sales business, I had no preconceptions. I did a lot of my selling on the phone and didn’t make too many basic mistakes. I learned quickly. The Times employed a

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crusty Brit as editor. On production nights Sandy Sanderson would send me out for a case of India Pale Ale and I assisted and observed. Claude appeared pleased, so much so that he told me I was making too much money and put me on a modest salary. My motivation took a serious dive and I parted company with Claude. I took my parting paycheque just before Christmas 1968 and went home and considered my future. But sulking doesn’t pay for rent and groceries. I remembered that the prospective advertisers I had been talking to over the couple of months were more interested in the whole North Shore. I began to consider a total market coverage advertising vehicle, and went back to Claude to ask him if he would like to do it. He declined. I resumed sulking. My money ran out completely after Christmas. I pondered that paid circulation papers could not net all that much after all the costs involved: churn, distribution, bundle delivery, supervision and the like. My guess was that the circulation revenue was not that relevant and the draw to advertisers was more in the assumption that readers were

After selling his first round of ads, founder Peter Speck had enough to buy “a pair of shoes, a car full of groceries, and a bottle of Scotch.”

more likely to be influenced if they paid for the paper. My feeling was that I didn’t need that, and if I could put a good-looking paper on every doorstep, then people would read it – whether they paid for it or not. And, thank

God, they do. To prove that was quite an issue. I got a map and began to total up the post office routes in the Capilano Highlands where I was then living. There were then about 6,000 residential and business addresses. I found a printer, got a quote for a 6,000-run tabloidsize newspaper, and found an advertising distribution company and got a quote for distribution in the Capilano Highlands area. Then I hemmed and hawed. When you’re really out of money there is a lot of friction. Everything is difficult. A few litres of gas can be a big obstacle. If you don’t have the dollars, things can be done; but it is very hard at times. Having to buy a car battery can be a big blow to a hand-tomouth person. The great Spirit came to me, one evening, when I was sitting on the hearth at home, at the end of a long day. I was daydreaming of owning a waterfront farm, a dream since teenage years, and a kind voice told me to follow my dream, and there was no one else in the room. One frosty January morning, early 1969, my significant other, on her way to her job at Eaton’s, gave me 50 cents and told me that she thought I had nothing to lose by trying. It was very reassuring. I was down but not out. And what did I have to lose if the adventure failed?

See First page 65

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Paper faces down tough tests in new media world

Blazing a new path at North Shore News

BRENT RICHTER brichter@nsnews.com

If Peter Speck oversaw the golden age of newspapering on the North Shore, it was his successor Doug Foot who was at the helm when the winds of change blew in.

Firefighters battle an early-morning blaze that destroyed the North Shore News offices at 1139 Lonsdale Ave. in February of 2005. PHOTO MIKE WAKEFIELD

Changes in editorial sensibilities, the rise of the internet, the Olympic Games coming to town and a catastrophe that nearly left us in the ash can of history. After joining the News as a controller in 1987, Foot rose up to general manager and, later, publisher after Speck’s retirement. As publisher, Foot said it was time to modernize the editorial outlook of the paper. One of the first things to go was the Sunshine Girl, sometime in early 2000 “just because its time had come.” “Let’s face it. Could you imagine having it now? The world changes and you’ve got to move along with it,” Foot said. Foot grits his teeth and rolls his eyes when recalling columnist Doug Collins. An Archie Bunker with none of the redeeming qualities. Though he didn’t fire Collins, Foot told him he’d have to be “less radical.” “Try and find some new subjects. His subjects were the femmes and the teachers and Jews,” Foot said. The newsroom had already gone digital in its production, except for the final and most critical step. When the paper was ready to go

See Foot page 10

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“You don’t think about it every day, but you do still think about it. You hear a fire engine and it brings back memories.”

Doug Foot, now retired, recalls the challenges and triumphs after he took over as publisher of the North Shore News following the departure of founder Peter Speck. PHOTO MIKE WAKEFIELD

upporting s r o f s w e N orth Shore N u o y k n a th Shore. r Th o N e h t n o nd families a s unity is t n m e d m u o t c s e h t n and pulse o e g a r e v o c Your s us all. t ﬁ e n e b t a service th a valuable

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Foot steps in as paper’s new publisher From page 9 to the press, it wasn’t a matter of uploading files. Physical “flats” were still delivered by hand to the printers. “There was no pushing a button electronically and there was no backup whatsoever. So we lived in fear. If that taxicab didn’t make it or had an accident or they got destroyed, we were really in trouble,” Foot recalls. “I didn’t ever want that to happen on my watch. I’d, most of the time, stay until the paper went to bed. … Lots of times, Christmas Eve or whatever, and I’d be waiting for the last piece to see the paper through.” The paper never did miss an issue, although one day in February 2005 it came very, very close. FIRE! Foot remembers getting the call at 6 a.m. on Feb. 10. North Vancouver City Fire Department crews were already at the scene, but the longtime News office at 12th and Lonsdale was beyond saving. “I’d be lying if I said I still don’t think about it. That was a long, long time ago,” he said. “You don’t think about it every day, but you do still think about it. You hear a fire engine and it brings back memories.” News staff were shocked, but Foot made it clear, there would be a newspaper out the next day and deadline was approaching. The North Shore Credit Union offered up their boardroom as a makeshift newsroom and sales office. Employees cancelled plans and vacation days and worked until 4 a.m. Not seen by the wider community, the staff were already suffering headaches after transitioning to a new layout

software that – guess what – wasn’t working. “It was just pandemonium to get it all done. … Then we had to get up on Friday morning and do it all over again for our Sunday paper,” Foot said.

“While I think it was one of the worst experiences of my career, it was one of the best experiences of my career as well.” No one was hurt in the fire. The North Shore News never missed an edition. But there was a bigger loss: 10 to 15 years of photo negatives and digital backups, now gone for good. The fire was ruled to be arson but no suspect was ever arrested. Two days before the building burned, managing editor Terry Peters recalled taking a threatening phone call from someone unhappy with an article in the newspaper’s online archive. “You don’t know what I’m capable of,” the caller told him. There were also indications it was an inside job. According to police who originally investigated the arson, whoever set the fire likely used a key to get through two security doors at the building’s back entrance shortly before 5 a.m. The perpetrator went upstairs and turned off the security alarm by punching in the correct code numbers on the first

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try. Almost an hour passed before the arsonist started to pour gas — including under the door of the computer server room and around the editorial offices — and the time fire alarms were triggered. Foot isn’t one to carry regrets but the fire clearly remains a sore point for him. “I was really hurt by the fact it was arson and we still don’t know who did it. We still don’t know why they did it. I’m still really hurt by the fact the RCMP did their investigation but they never came to any kind of conclusions. They actually gave up on it. I think they could have done more,” he said. “Because we don’t want to live in a community where somebody can do that.” Insurance covered the News’ losses and the paper found a new home at 15th and Lonsdale. But the bigger threat to the business was still looming.

NEWS, DISRUPTED nsnews.com went live in 1995, one of the first community newspapers with a website in B.C., Foot recalls. “As far as the sales department, the attitude was ‘Yeah, I don’t really see how that affects us.’ In the newsroom, there was certainly hesitation that it was going to be more work. Why are we going to do it? Who is going to read it? All that stuff,” he said. “We weren’t quite sure what we were doing or why we were doing it, we just knew this was something that was going to be the way of the future.” It wasn’t until the spring of 2006 when the news business model first started showing some vulnerability,

worldwide, Foot said. “Up until then, the web hadn’t really affected us. We had a website. We weren’t making any money on it. We weren’t trying all that hard and it wasn’t really affecting newspapers’ bottom line or the way they do things. Then Craigslist came along,” he said. “From then on, newspapers kind of realized this is the first onslaught. There could be several more. We need to start planning.” Part of that was reminding customers that a classified ad carried more credibility than an anonymous free ad on the internet. At the time, Craigslist was rife with bad deals, con artists and flakes. (It still is.)

50TH ANNIVERSARY ISSUE looking for, Foot reasons, and newspaper ads have a way of creating demand for products and services readers also didn’t yet know they were looking for. And the only way to create that kind of demand is to reach a wide market not already holed up in a niche.

“Right now, if you want to get to the majority of the people – because of the wonderful readership that the North Shore News has and not to a specific group – I still don’t think there’s a better way to spend your money,” Foot said, who still advises clients to buy in print to get a return

on their investment. OLYMPIC GLORY When the 2010 Winter Olympics arrived in Vancouver, the North Shore was a big part of it, with Cypress Mountain hosting

See Olympic page 13

“We would try to make sure our classifieds were clean and we checked them out and followed up on complaints – all the things that we could do. “That helped short term,” he said. Real estate advertising was next for disruption. Then car ads. Niche websites became destinations for niche markets, and advertisers went with them. People go to print news to find things they didn’t know they were

Managing editor Terry Peters and publisher Doug Foot dodge hoses as they salvage whatever records they can following a fire at the North Shore News office in 2005. PHOTO MIKE WAKEFIELD

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We are thrilled to be sharing our 50th anniversary with the North Shore News. Congratulations to the NSN for 50 years of impeccable support to the North Shore community. Here’s to another 50 years of mutual success and service to the North Shore-Congratulations from Fawcett Insurance We enjoy this milestone with the founder, our dad, Wilfred Fawcett. Together Jeff & Cindy have continued the family involvement in the community they love to support. We would like to thank our current & former staff of Fawcett Insurance for their loyalty & 50 years of professional service and community support. Are you insured? We Make Sure!! JEFF FAWCETT 106-1169 Mount Seymore ymor Road, North Vancouver

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Supporting artists in our community. Thank you North Shore News for contributing to our vibrant arts community and proďŹ ling our talented artists on the North Shore.

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FANS Distinguished Artist Award Recipient - 2017

About FANS For 24 years, FANS has been supporting local artistic creation through its endowment fund and annual artist grants program. FANS also recognizes exceptional artistic achievements with its annual presentation of the Distinguished Artists Awards. We are proud to have North Shore News as a sponsor of our annual FANS Tribute to the Arts Event.

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Olympic Games bring the world to North Shore From page 11

snowboarding and freestyle skiing events – even though the weather was unco-operative. Foot determined the North Shore News would start publishing a daily supplement in addition to its three regular issues. He set up a night shift for reporters and production staff, who could get all the day’s event results written, edited and packaged by 4 a.m., printed and distributed by the next morning. There was a semi-serious offer of cots for staff to sleep on. Foot remembers it as a time of great fun, in the newsroom and out. “To Vancouver, it was absolutely incredible,” Foot said. “The Olympics, as you know, on the North Shore was a frickin’ disaster. At Cypress, they had to close some of the events because it rained and it was so wet and slushy, and they had to haul in all the snow. … Other than that, it was fantastic. It was a big, giant party. It was a party on the North Shore.”

CHANGE OF HANDS Foot was the boss for many years, but even bosses have bosses. In 1989, the North Shore News got its first corporate owner when Speck negotiated for the historic Southam Inc. and Madison Publishing to purchase the paper. Later, Conrad Black’s Hollinger Inc. came along, and through a series of transactions, in 1996 came to own all of Southam’s

assets including Lower Mainland Publishing, of which the North Shore News was the flagship paper. “Those guys went to jail,” Foot said with a laugh. When Hollinger fell apart, its assets were sold to CanWest in the early 2000s. That lasted until 2010 when Postmedia bought bankrupt CanWest’s empire. With each transaction, running a newspaper became a little less fun, Foot said, particularly during Postmedia’s tenure. “That was pretty difficult because it was all about cutting costs,” he said.

“They were fighting a losing battle because every time they cut the costs, their revenue went down and they were chasing it all the way down.” In 2011, Glacier Media stepped in and purchased Lower Mainland Publishing, including the North Shore News and its sister papers, the Burnaby Now, Royal City Record, Richmond News, TriCity News, Surrey Now, and Vancouver Courier.

“I was actually quite happy when we got sold to Glacier because Glacier, that’s what they did. They had a bunch of community papers. We were still in the same industry, facing the same issues, but at least these guys cared about community papers and knew something about them,” Foot said. In January 2015, Foot went corporate and left the News to work in Glacier’s head office. Soon after, Peter Kvarnstrom, who was already the president of Glacier, took over as publisher of the North Shore News. It was something of a homecoming for Kvarnstrom who started in the business as a classified ad sales rep at the North Shore News in 1991 and later founded his own paper on the Sunshine Coast.

Frank Karucz takes part in the Olympic torch relay in West Vancouver. The Olympics were a defining moment for many Vancouverites, as well as the North Shore News. PHOTO PAUL MCGRATH

TOMORROW’S EDITION The changes and challenges in the news business, regardless of medium, are no secret to anyone. Sitting behind his desk, Kvarnstrom said the core of the business doesn’t change. “We as the North Shore News need to recognize that our core asset is our engagement with our audience and our audience continues to engage with us in a significant and relevant way. Both online and in print,” he said. “As long as we continue to focus on an audiencefirst strategy, we will continue to be relevant to our audience, we will continue to serve this community for many, many years going forward. In print and online.” !

WELCOME TO THE 50 CLUB! Congratulations on five decades of telling North Shore stories, from all of us at Capilano University.

WHO KNEW GIVING BACK WOULD FEEL SO GOOD!

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Shedding some light on the Sunshine Girls JEREMY SHEPHERD jshepherd@nsnews.com

She’s an insurance adviser who writes poetry.

In mid-conversation, Me-An Laceste asks: “Do you, by any chance, have love letters?” A businesswoman, dancer and world traveller, Laceste is hunting yesterday’s passion locked in ink and pulp. Words that make you blush. Letters that carry a memory of the match you could never strike. She wants to inspire an appreciation for love letters in the next generation of unrequited romantics and undiagnosed poets, she explains. In 1993, Laceste was a Sunshine Girl in the North Shore News. For 30 years, the Sunshine Girl was standard issue in the North Shore News. The photo – sometimes suggestive, usually not – of a smiling woman or teenage girl dominated one-quarter of a news page. “Oh my gosh, to be young again,” Laceste marvels, looking at her beaming black and white face preserved in a photo album. When Laceste posed, the paper encapsulated her life in two declarative sentences. “Her favourite singer is Sade,” the writer offered. The other sentence noted Laceste likes: “diversity in culture, hats.” It was like the paper cropped out Laceste’s life to make room for her face. To be fair, Laceste offers, she still likes hats. “I’m wearing a hat right now,” she laughs. She must’ve been bold back then, she says. And young. “I’m still young at heart,” she adds. But while the former Sunshine Girl is still youthful, the Sunshine Girl feature is an artifact from an era when the sun never set on questionable taste.

Last month Me-An Laceste had a fun photo session with the same photographer who took her Sunshine Girl photo back in 1993. PHOTOS PAUL MCGRATH

John: John: I want to hold a mirror up to life. I want this to be a picture of dignity! A true canvas of the suffering of humanity! LeBrand: But with a little sex in it. John: A little, but I don’t want to stress it. – Sullivan’s Travels, 1941

Happy 50 ! th

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As thunder follows lightning and regret trails a third martini, criticism stalked the North Shore’s new newspaper in 1971. Why, readers wanted to know, was this newly launched paper stuffed with advertising? To that query, the paper’s founder and publisher Peter Speck offered four words: “No ads, no eats.” To carve out a share of the market, Speck’s fledgling paper co-opted an idea pioneered by tabloid merchant and future Fox News master of the universe Rupert Murdoch. From the time the ink dried on his first edition in 1970, Murdoch’s newspapers were notorious. “No self-respecting fish would want to be wrapped in a Murdoch paper,” Chicago columnist Mike Royko once declared. To boost circulation, Murdoch put partially clothed pinup girls on page 3 of Britain’s Sun newspaper. The idea spread. In Toronto and Calgary, newspapers offered an unflinching view of crime and politics. Only now with a little sex in it. It was a “sign of the decline of journalism,” summarizes Peg Fong. Fong, a Langara journalism instructor, had a front row seat for that decline when she was a child working at her family’s corner grocery store in Calgary. Some customers grabbed the Calgary Herald. But when it came to the Calgary Sun, the men stopped, flipped to page 3, and looked. “If they liked what they saw, I sold a newspaper,” Fong remembers. It was a little puzzling, Fong recalls.

“I never aspired to be on page 3. I always wanted to know: ‘How did you find them?’”

WHAT BOYS LIKE In 1983, everybody wanted to be a Sunshine Girl. “That was what everybody wanted do,” Angie Schoening emphasizes. “Everybody.”

50TH ANNIVERSARY ISSUE

Shoening remembers being 15 or 16 when her photo was taken. “I was trying to be all professional,” she says, describing her white lacy shirt and black pleated pants. “I looked so mature,” she says, her voice dissolving into peals of laughter. At the time, she thought being a Sunshine Girl might advance her career. “My mom was trying to get me into modeling,” she says. “It was a little stepping stone in my mind [and] in her mind.” The interval between photo shoot and publication was excruciating. “I was on pins and needles, dying to see it,” she says. “The week my picture was in the paper I was very popular with the boys.” Katherine Spong was about 19 or 20 when she was persuaded to be a Sunshine Girl by the paper’s newest photographer. “I got talked into it because Terry Peters was a personal friend,” she remembers. Spong is naturally introverted but, she says, she trusted Peters. “I don’t know if I would’ve done it with anybody else.” Peters took photos of Spong in Bridgman Park. “He knelt in dog crap when he was taking the picture,” she says. “I laughed my ass off about that.” The photos were revealing, Spong remembers. “A little more risqué than I’d expected,” she summarizes. Her family teased her after the photo was published. Everyone seemed to recognize her. But then, she points out, everybody already knew her. “That’s when it was a small town.” Spong lives in Prince Rupert now. “It reminded me a lot of North Van when we were kids,” she says.

Sometimes the Sunshine Girl even made it onto the front page, as in this 1977 issue.

See Sexism page 16

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Sexism systemic in the 1970s From page 15 Looking back, the Sunshine Girl feature seems light and fun. “There’s so many more important things going on in the world than having some young thing in the paper,” she says. “In my case, it was good for a giggle.” SEARCHING FOR SUNSHINE The North Shore News headline demanded: “Are you photogenic?” Below the headline was a recruitment pitch for women “17 years and confidence. older” with poise and confidence. For some girls and young women, being a Sunshine Girl came with prestige, and perhaps, one wondered, chauffeur service? North Shore News photographer Wakefield remembers waiting for Mike Wakefield a model one evening. He called. “Are you heading over now?” he asked. “I’m waiting,” she told him. “What do you mean?” “You know, the Sunshine Girl cab.” The Sunshine Girl cab? Wakefield eventually realized she must mean the Sunshine Cab company – which didn’t have a thing to do with Sunshine Girls.

An ad from 1979 says that the North Shore is ‘blessed with a great many attractive women,’ urging prospective Sunshine Girls to apply with ‘a recent photograph.’

“It hasn’t come to pick me up,” the model reiterated. Wakefield sighed. “I don’t think it’s going to.” SENDING THE RIGHT MESSAGE At 11 years old, Maria Spitale-Leisk hadn’t watched any R-rated movies or seen any steamy TV shows. The only provocative images to make it past the doorstep of her conservative, “church on Sunday, Catholic school” Blueridge household were in the North Shore News. At her parents’ urging, she wrote a letter to the editor.

The North Shore News “is the best paper I have ever read, but there is one thing that I think needs improving. The Sunshine Girls are showing off too much of their bodies,” she wrote in 1990. Nearly 30 years later, former North Shore News reporter Spitale-Leisk wonders if she sounded like a narc. “Oh, there’s the killjoy,” she laughs. Now webmaster for North Vancouver School District, Spitale-Leisk remembers what was largely a “kid-friendly” publication.

There were great photos and stories about people she knew. And then, there was the Sunshine Girl. “As a child, it was a jarring contrast to see these provocative images share a space with pictures of kids playing in the park,” she recalls. “I just felt it didn’t belong in a community newspaper. It wasn’t the Daily Mirror.” It wasn’t about shaming anyone who posed, she says. “The sexist tone of the feature was sending the wrong message to young readers,” she explains. “If you fit our beauty criteria then you deserve to be in the spotlight.” She was proud to see her letter in print. “It felt empowering as an 11-year-old to have my voice heard,” she recalls. Still, it would be almost a decade before the North Shore News scrapped the feature. BIKINI OVERLOAD In the 1970s, the North Shore News referred to local governments as “city fathers.” Council coverage was provided by, “Heather Jeal, girl reporter.”

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One 1979 edition showed three women in bathing suits (four, if you include a fitness centre’s ad) over three pages. Coverage of the destruction of squatters’ homes at Maplewood Mudflats refers to a resident as “Pretty” Colleen Wallace. Cindy Goodman was a 20-year-old aspiring photog when she walked into the North Shore News office in 1987. They were looking, as always, for more Sunshine Girls. “I thought, well, that would be a good in,” she says. The likes/dislikes conversation quickly segued into a photography discussion with Terry Peters, who was handling the hiring. The housing market was booming and the North Shore News needed real estate photos. Luckily, Goodman just happened to have handy a portfolio of her photos. “Do you still want to pose for Sunshine Girl?” Peters asked. “I said, ‘Sure!’ So I did, just because I was young and dumb,” Goodman laughs. She was a Sunshine Girl. And for the next 32 years, she was a staff photographer.

SUNSET By the 1990s, the Sunshine Girl supply line was getting longer and harder to maintain. Local girls didn’t want to pose anymore, Goodman says. The reason so many models listed “bad drivers” as a dislike is because they were trucking in from Abbotsford, Langley and Richmond. In 2000, the paper offered a paean toward equality with the Sunshine Boy. Readers met Adam, a history buff who disliked standing still, spiders and research papers.

50TH ANNIVERSARY ISSUE

But despite those efforts, the feature seemed increasingly anachronistic. Women weren’t content to be seen. Or at least not just seen. In May of that year, Sunshine Girl Michelle listed her likes as: “returning the environment to its natural state.” By the end of the year, the Sunshine Girl died a “natural death,” Goodman grins. “We didn’t miss it at all.” Peg Fong echoed that sentiment. “There is no place to show women on page 3 of a major print newspaper,” Fong says. “Maybe that’s too definitive definitive but I don’t care. . . . You do not need to show women and exploit women that way.” There are other ways to attract readers, she suggests. “Do good journalism.” The Sunshine Girl was something different, Me-An Laceste reflects. And maybe it could be different again. “It’s not bad news, it’s not a political issue, nothing but: ‘Oh, look at that smile.’” Maybe, Laceste says, the Sunshine Girl could come back. The accompanying write-up could be longer. And the “girl” could be an 80-year-old woman. It would send a message that growing old can be a beautiful thing, she says. After posing in the North Shore News as a teenager, Schoening embarked on a short, somewhat unhappy modelling career. “People being very critical of you and I was like, ‘Screw you.’” Still, she loved being a Sunshine Girl. “I have nothing negative to say about it at all.” She works as a HandyDART driver these days. She has a son and a daughter.

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The paper briefly featured Sunshine Boys alongside the girls before the section was scrapped entirely.

In honour of our 50th anniversary, every week we are doing a #ThrowbackThursday post on our Instagram page. Here and there throughout this feature you will see some of the posts we have done. To see all of them and much more, follow us! northshorenews

Her daughter, she notes, is at the same age Schoening was when she was a Sunshine Girl. And would she be OK with her daughter posing? “I could ask her,” Schoening replies. “She would be a perfect Sunshine Girl. She’s gorgeous.” !

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Newsroom Memories NAME:

Terry Peters POSITION AT THE PAPER:

Photographer, Managing Editor YEARS AT THE NORTH SHORE NEWS:

1978-2015

CURRENT POSITION:

Retired

I started working for the North Shore News in February 1978. I was hired as a photographer and had no idea that this was going to become my career, which lasted until I retired 37 years later as the managing editor, in May 2015. In 1978 the News was a small local paper that was changing the way community papers operated with its free distribution model. I was there near the beginning and was able to have a part in its growth. As a photographer I was fortunate enough to have an incredible range of experiences. I met the Queen and Prince Philip, I flew with the Canadian Forces Snowbirds, I walked underneath the harbour in the water supply tunnel from North Van to Stanley Park, and many more cool things. Over the years I photographed hundreds of craft shows, elementary school plays, high school football games, and even Sunshine Girls. The joy of being a newspaper photographer is the access you are given. It doesn’t matter whether you are walking under the stage to pop up at

the front to photograph the Rolling Stones or you are heading into a seniors centre (which coincidentally the Rolling Stones now belong in), you are given a glimpse behind the scenes and invited to tell a story of what you saw. I have always thought of my role as a storyteller and was grateful that over the years I was allowed to share so many stories. Later as managing editor I was able to work with a group of incredibly talented writers and

50TH ANNIVERSARY ISSUE photographers and guide the direction of the paper’s content. The News has always excelled at telling those stories that make up the rich landscape of this amazing community. I worked with a wide range of characters, from the well-loved like Bob Hunter and Ellsworth Dickson, to the frequently despised Doug Collins. They each brought a different perspective. As a team, the News could not be beaten and no greater proof of that was the attempt to shut us down by the arsonist who soon discovered he’d only destroyed a building and not the idea. We rose above that and never missed publishing a single paper. It was my greatest reward to be able to lead the editorial department through that time. From humble beginnings to the best community newspaper in Canada, the News has grown with the community it has represented for 50 years. !

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50TH ANNIVERSARY ISSUE Newspaper carrier Harrison Taylor delivers 78 copies of the North Shore News in his neighbourhood twice a week. PHOTO PAUL MCGRATH

Walk a mile (or five) in a paper boy’s shoes JANE SEYD jseyd@nsnews.com

Harrison Taylor is pulling a wagon loaded with the North Shore News up a leafy tree-lined street.

It’s a mix of heritage homes and older ranchers on tidy lots, interspersed with much bigger houses where the old ones got torn down. It’s also a neighbourhood with hills, which as a newspaper carrier, Harrison is well aware of. “You wouldn’t notice if you’re driving,” he says. “You notice if you’re walking.” The wagon trundles up East Queens Road, past houses with rose bushes where he’s known the neighbours for years and a large new house where he doesn’t. “The people who live there, we never see them at all. We’re not even sure people live there,” he says. Harrison has lived all 13 years of his life in this neighbourhood. His paper route takes him past the church hall where his older sister once attended a Montessori preschool and just a few blocks away from Holy Trinity Elementary, where he just finished Grade 7. Near the corner of this street, there’s a house where a big tree crashed down across the roof in a windstorm. “It was crazy,” says Harrison. A port-a-potty left from the crew that came to fix the roof still stands at the end of the driveway. This afternoon, neighbour Anne Patterson is out with her dog Sophie, enjoying the

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sprinkle of warm summer rain. “A bit of rain is good,” she says, eyeing the gardens. Harrison is “the best carrier,” she says. “The paper is always there. It’s not thrown on the driveway.”

“I don’t think anyone’s going to have a bad word to say,” she says. “If they do, send them to me.” Harrison rounds the corner and is up a block and on to East Kings Road. As one of 60 kids who deliver the paper and 31 adult newspaper carriers, Harrison is part of a small army who get the North Shore News to about 37,000 houses and 13,000 apartments on the North Shore twice a week, on Wednesdays and Fridays. Papers start arriving from the printer at the newspaper’s Brooksbank warehouse in the middle of the night, and the first adult carriers and delivery agents – who will drive bundles of papers out to the younger carriers – start arriving at 4 a.m., says Paul Watson, distribution manager at the News. Adults with a car can deliver between 500 and 3,000 papers in a day. Most kids have a route with between 40 and 150 houses. “The easier and flatter the route, the more children will apply,” says Watson.

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Harrison usually starts his route around 4 p.m. When he comes home from school, several stacks of zap-strapped newspaper bundles are already waiting on his porch. There are 78 houses on Harrison’s route. Friday’s paper is smaller, says Harrison, and usually fits in four bundles, while Wednesday’s is fatter and comes in five bundles. On Fridays, on the sections of the route he walks with a newspaper bag, “I’ll put 20 papers in my bag instead of 15,” he says. “On Fridays the papers have less ads.” The News gives Harrison a sheet noting which houses to deliver to, which don’t want the paper and who’s away this week. But as an experienced carrier, Harrison has most of that in his head already. “I know a lot of people very well,” he says of his neighbours. When he started the route about three years ago, “I started because I wanted to make a bit of extra money,” he says. He had a couple of friends who were newspaper carriers. One split the paper route with siblings. Another “had a very flat route,” says Harrison. This is not one of those. “I’m really hilly in this area.” Equipment for the job is simple – a newspaper bag and a wagon or cart to pull the newspapers around in. Like many jobs, it’s not like it is in the movies. “When you see it in the movies, it’s usually someone on their bike going really fast,” says Harrison, sounding slightly exasperated. Kids in his class have asked him if that’s how he does his paper route. “I’m like, ‘How would I do it on my bike?’” When he first started the paper route, his dad helped him the first few months to figure out a route. The trick is to be efficient, and make sure you’re pulling as little weight uphill as possible. Also, “we don’t want to back track,” says Harrison. Papers tend to be lighter in the summer, which is good, says Harrison, because that’s when he’s pulling the wagon up hills in the heat.

Come fall, however, they will fatten up again, get heavier and be filled with more flyers. “Black Friday is usually the worst. And Christmas,” he says. “Black Friday they double stuff all the papers (with flyers). It takes a lot longer.” If you want to know the state of the local economy, a newspaper carrier knows. Kids who deliver papers make eight cents a paper plus extra for flyers and door hangers. For delivering a light summer paper on a route like Harrison’s, young carriers make around $10, twice a week. In the fall they make more. Then there are tips, especially at Christmas. “This year I made $250 in tips,” says Harrison.

50TH ANNIVERSARY ISSUE

Carriers an integral part of North Shore News

The best tippers are people who chat with him or the ones who used to be carriers themselves. “They know the experience,” says Harrison. Delivering the paper has also led into some other work around the neighbourhood, like shovelling snow in winter. There’s also been talk of babysitting and dog sitting and picking up the mail for neighbours. “One house wanted me to water their plants while they are away,” he says. “And my dad recently bought a lawnmower so I might start mowing lawns.” Harrison heads down the gentle slope of East Kings Road lined with chestnut trees. He goes past one house that has cool decorations at Halloween including figures that jump out at you and move. There’s a poster on a telephone pole for a missing black kitten named Lulu. “One time I

The weather doesn’t always co-operate. Harrison Taylor didn’t let snow stop his paper deliveries as he set out in the snow on Feb. 28, 2018. PHOTO SUPPLIED CARLA D’ANGELO TAYLOR

saw a missing parrot poster,” says Harrison. He’s seen raccoons in the neighbourhood before. “At one point there were cougar signs up here, cougar warnings,” he says. But he never saw one. Wildlife on his route is mostly limited to birds and squirrels, which scold from the high

branches of the trees along the street. “I’ve seen owls,” he says. He comes up to a large grey house where a cacophony of barking erupts from inside as he walks up the steps.

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If you deliver the news, you’re going to face dogs From page 21 “It has these two huge dogs. They bark really loud,” he says. “They jump and belly slam the door.” For newspaper carriers, dogs are an occupational hazard. Harrison says a dog bit him once, though it wasn’t serious. He takes most of the dogs in stride. Just around the corner is another dog house.

“The first time I walked up their driveway, their dog was going crazy,” he says. “The next day there was a sign saying do not enter that way.” The sign is still very much in evidence, along with two more “Beware of Dog” signs, one in black and one in red, to underline the point. “There are a lot of dogs on this route,” says Harrison. A warm slightly overcast day like today is optimal for paper delivery.

“The best weather is not really hot. Maybe 15 degrees or something,” he says. It doesn’t always work out that way. In North Vancouver, there is a lot of rain. And during the occasional winter cold snap, it can be hard to pull the wagon in the snow, he says. The hills can also get slippery. In winter, Harrison starts his paper route a bit earlier and wears reflective vest and visor. Some a reflective drivers aren’t paying attention for pedestrians, he’s learned. “They’re not busy streets at all so they just think they can go really fast.” A small stretch of 29th Street – where cars are quickly zipping by – is one of the busier ones on his route. But Harrison only does a couple of houses here and he doesn’t cross the street. Luckily, his route also stops before the dreaded 29th Street hill. Back on East Queens, he’s hit the sweet spot on his route – a row of townhouses. It was a woman who lives in one of these who gave him his biggest ever $50 tip at Christmas. Also, “They’re

nsnews.com north shore news WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 14, 2019 close together,” he says. “You can do them quick and fast.” There are a few houses on the route that Harrison doesn’t deliver to but he doesn’t know the reason. Usually, it’s something practical. Only once in a while do people cancel their papers because they’re upset about a story or an ad, says Watson, the distribution manager. A scantily clad lingerie model in an ad once raised some hackles. So did a photo of people involved in a cancer fundraiser wearing T-shirts telling cancer rather rudely just what it should do to itself. Readers were not amused. fig Harrison passes a fig tree hanging green fruit over a fence, and carports stacked with recycling tubs and garbage carts. There’s a boat parked in a yard where he often stops and talks to a man who works on projects in his carport. Garden gnomes stare back at him from near the back door. Houses here are at and close on the fl flat together. “This part is really nice,” says Harrison. “Then I have to go up this huge hill.”

This part of Lonsdale is the busiest street he walks on his route and also the steepest. He pulls the wagon up past the Queen’s Cross Pub, a gas station, a realty office and a daycare where a 7-11 used to be. That’s where he used to see an odd guy hanging out in the parking lot sometimes, hoodie pulled up to shade his face. He told his friend’s dad, a police officer, about it. “He might be a drug dealer,” says Harrison. “I don’t know.” “They were going to build condos there but they didn’t,” he says. “Now they’re repainting it.” We pass another missing cat poster. Dobby, a Siamese described as “shy and cautious,” has been missing for over two weeks. Back on East Kings, he passes a house with a wading pool in the front yard, where kids flying down the driveway on their sleds almost took him out once. The two-storey, 1960s-era house across the street with a curtain drooping from a basement window has recently sold for $1.3 million. The realty listing described the street as an “excellent sought-after neighbourhood.” To toss or not to toss is an issue most carriers have to figure out. For starters, there’s a way to hold the paper – grabbing from the outside, so the flyers are pointing in toward the fold. Holding it the other

Newspaper carrier Harrison Taylor uses a wagon to pull a load of papers on his route. PHOTO PAUL MCGRATH

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way means the flyers will spill out. That’s a rookie move. A man on the street stops Harrison, asking if he has an extra. “Do they let you throw them? We used to throw them,” the man tells him. “I was a Province carrier.” He tucks the paper into a neat firm rectangle, showing Harrison how to prepare for a toss, demonstrating a bit of newspaper origami still vivid after many decades. “You know, sometimes when you’ve gotta go up eight steps, sometimes it’s easier,” he says. “We used to do it on bikes. That goes back to the ’50s.” A lot of people tell Harrison how they used to deliver the papers. For the most part, Harrison is still in the non-tossing camp. “I think it’s just disrespectful to do it,” he says. “If I throw it, all the ads fly out.” He prefers to tuck the papers under a mat on the porch if possible. “I make sure it pokes out a bit so they see it.” There have only been a couple of times when he had to stop delivering – once when he had pneumonia and once when he broke his leg skiing. “I was in a wheelchair for two months,” he says. His dad filled in until the newspaper got a temporary replacement and included notes explaining what happened. It was right after Christmas and he’d just earned some big tips. “We didn’t want them to think I took their money and just left,” says Harrison. He approaches the corner of St. Georges Avenue and East Queens and the last house on his route. A cat named Gypsy lives around here,

50TH ANNIVERSARY ISSUE

says Harrison. She’s friendly. And not lost. At this point he’ll often check to see how long it took him to do the route. Doing the papers usually takes anywhere from an hour to an hour and a half, depending. “When I first did it, it took two and a half hours,” he says. “It’s taken me two hours on days when it’s heavy and I can’t run.” It’s about an eight-kilometre walk from beginning to end. “My dad measured it on his app,” says Harrison. But he’s also gotten faster and fitter doing the route.

Fifty minutes is his record doing the papers on his own. Once when a friend helped out, “We did it in 30 minutes.” There are qualities that come in handy as a carrier, says Harrison. You need to be friendly. You need to have willpower. You need to be fit, “so you don’t get tired out.” You need to have a good memory for the houses. He’s learned a lot about the neighbourhood as a carrier, he says. He’s gotten to know his neighbours in a way he didn’t before. Next year he’s in high school, so he’ll just wait and see how it goes. “It’s my first real job ever,” he says. !

Black Bear Neighbourhood Pub owner Ron Slinger proudly shows off his display of North Shore News Readers’ Choice Awards. The Black Bear has won its category in the annual vote every year since the Readers’ Choice Awards were created 23 years ago. PHOTO PAUL MCGRATH

Readers pick their favourites

What’s the best place to get a pedicure on the North Shore?

Who brews a mean cup of coffee? Who can I trust to babysit my kitten? Anyone know a good hiking trail? For the past 23 years the North Shore News has helped provide answers to questions like these – and many more – with our annual Readers’ Choice Awards. Each year we accept nominations and tabulate all the votes – keeping

a keen eye out for ballot-box stuffing – to give readers a chance to pick their favourite shops, restaurants, service providers, and much more. More than 4,000 people voted in 133 categories for the 2019 edition of the awards. Look for our plaques hanging in shop windows and on restaurant walls all over the North Shore to discover who has been given the stamp of approval by our discerning readers. !

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Newsroom Memories NAME:

Timothy Renshaw POSITION AT THE PAPER:

Managing editor

YEARS AT THE NORTH SHORE NEWS:

1990-2000

CURRENT POSITION:

Managing editor at Business in Vancouver

A decade of living dangerously Editor’s dispatch from the 1990s North Shore News movable feast. Warning to readers with food allergies and sensitive stomachs: some items on offer could prove difficult to digest. Appetizers, entrees and daily specials include fashion-forward Sunshine Girls, thick-skinned columnists, dour press council decisions and raw censorship debates. For some, there might also be a few just desserts. In short, that North Shore News movable feast on most days was a robust and spicy meal. The editorial kitchen was therefore similar to other commercial kitchens preparing dishes for a diverse audience: hot, oft-times chaotic, air thick with the danger of egos being bruised from unpasteurized diner feedback. Not a place for the faint of heart. Nor likely would it have

been a place permitted to remain uncensored were it somehow to be airlifted into the social media age. Consider, for example, the aforementioned Sunshine Girl feature. Its origins predated my editorial watch, but it really began to offend the easily offended in the 1990s. Maybe they were upset that not all of the girls featured were from the North Shore. Truth be told: some were from out of town! And some were, shall we say, less inhibited than the girl next door. The News by then was becoming a lightning rod for local and regional controversy on several fronts, so the writing was on the wall for the Sunshine Girl feature. Even the addition of a Sunshine Boy could not save it. Best, perhaps, that it was sent packing by the forces of enlightenment. Hymns from their community newspaper choir book preached

THEN

views held by those not much interested in thinking for themselves. But, of course, the conductor at the head of this controversial choir of edgy opinion spinners was News founder Peter Speck. No room in this space to discuss the complexities of working for Mr. Speck. Let’s just say that, for him, running a community newspaper was as much about fighting bad bills and hounding tax-happy governments from office as it was about making money. That made things uncomfortable for editorial kitchen staff; especially for an editor who was also working a restaurant beat that included reviews of local hospital food and digesting threats of legal action over dining reviews that were not always four-star approvals. It also generated a string of press council hearings targeting the News and later a costly human rights tribunal that drained company financial resources and divided opinions within and without the newspaper.

The newspaper’s readership became a large part of the movable feast here. It put its money where its newspaper’s mouth was by contributing roughly $200,000 in volunteer donations to help fund the three-year fight against the tribunal’s attempts to criminalize opinion. That will likely never be duplicated here or anywhere else in this age of under-thinking, over-reacting and information degradation. Nor will the run of drama, debate, vitriol, vilification and adulation that was directed at the North Shore News in the 1990s. It was a rich and raucous meal. I’m still digesting it. !

Deep Cove’s First Impressions Theatre began in 1983 and the North Shore News has stood by and supported it since the beginning. Our community newspaper, the North Shore News has been unwavering in its support of the non-prot groups and community events of the whole North Shore.

2019-2020 Season ~

what community is all about.

neighbourhood harmony and cohesion. No argument there. Harmony and cohesion are far less taxing on editorial kitchen blood pressure. But ensuring that Anti-Saloon Leaguers and other selfrighteous meddlers don’t outlaw debate over difficult issues requires more than harmony and cohesion. A bit of bare-knuckle boxing, for starters. So there was more than cheeky Sunshine in News pages back then. The paper employed at various times during the 1990s a stable of columnists who kept readers plugged into that debate and aware of how easily lost their hard-won freedom of expression can be. Stable stalwarts included Greenpeace original and environmental activist Bob Hunter; author, longtime daily newspaper columnist and former member of Parliament Paul St. Pierre; former provincial court judge Les Bewley; radio hot-liner Gary Bannerman; independent MLA David Mitchell; right-of-centre feminist Ilana Mercer; eloquent Vancouver Sun columnist Trevor Lautens; News eminence grise Noel Wright; and, of course, Doug Collins. Wright, it should be noted here, was integral to the development of the North Shore News’ persona. The former public relations man, photographer, linguist and senior intelligence officer with the British occupation forces in post-war Germany was big on debunking

Thank you, North Shore News for decades of support !

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50TH ANNIVERSARY ISSUE

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Do you remember Deep Cove’s Theatre West?

A note of interest, First Impressions Theatre evolved out of the ashes of former Deep Cove theatre group Theatre West. That group was headed up by Peter O’Rourke, Annice Quentin and Warde Ashlie, among many, many others. Theatre West operated between 1980 and 1983, it also depended on the North Shore News to help get word of its productions out.

50TH ANNIVERSARY ISSUE

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WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 14, 2019

Newspaper reporters can’t stop inquiring A look at ‘streeters’ on the North Shore

BEN BENGTSON bbengtson@nsnews.com

North Shore News reporters have asked Jacquie Perrault about dodging mobile objects at least twice in her life.

Back in June of this year, she was stopped on her break while walking along Lonsdale Avenue and asked if she thought it was time to discontinue teaching dodgeball in gym class following recent academic research that suggested the popular ball sport was a tool of oppression. This wasn’t a new experience for Perrault. Thirty years earlier, when she was in her early 20s, she had been stopped by a different yet equally inquisitive reporter on Lonsdale who sought her point of view on objects in motion as well. “The question at the time I’m sure – I’m positive – is they were trying to prohibit skateboarders going down the sidewalk at the time and they asked me what my opinion was,” says Perrault. The reporters who stopped Perrault on both occasions, that time in the late 1980s and once again in 2019, were doing what’s referred to as “streeters” – essentially, journalism shorthand for going out into the community and getting people’s opinion on a subject. Notepad and pen in hand, the reporters were tasked with doing streeters in order to include the responses from the public, alongside a small mug shot of those

The Inquiring Reporter feature, in which we ask people stopped randomly on the street about topics of the day, has been a part of the North Shore News opinion page for most of the paper’s 50-year history.

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interviewed, to feature in a longstanding News section called Inquiring Reporter. “What impresses me most of all is you would ask a teenager a question, yet you would also turn around and ask a 50-year-old the question,” says Perrault. “I think it’s great in that it’s completely unbiased and it looks over all generations and also grabs a good demographic … of who’s walking up and down Lonsdale” and elsewhere on the North Shore. The News has been running the Inquiring Reporter feature, generally as part of the

newspaper’s viewpoints and opinions section, for decades. As the story goes, 50 years ago Peter Speck founded a once-a-week news flyer called the North Shore Shopper. By 1975, the Shopper officially became the North Shore News – and Inquiring Reporter was rolled out. Through perusing decades’ worth of Inquiring Reporter questions, it’s evident reporters have galvanized the public with topics ranging from the light-hearted and fun, to the serious and sensational. Sometimes the

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 14, 2019

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questions were – and are – focused on a local North Shore angle. Other times they deviate from North and West Vancouver entirely to cover a topic that’s making national or international waves. The answers from the public can run the gamut from the enlightened to the jokey – it all depends on the person answering and the question being asked. In 1979, reporter Ellsworth Dickson, observing the new phenomenon of people, for whatever reason, deciding to voluntarily run around their neighbourhoods in what he deemed the “fitness craze,” ventured to ask: “How do you keep fit?” for that week’s Inquiring Report question. The responses he received back were generally kind, warm and thoughtful when it came to his fitness query, though one young man did fire back: “This fitness craze is for the birds; I like booze and sex.” Ah, the ’70s. Jump forward to 2008. The News’ Stephanie Mosley asked, “Would a tax on disposable cups change people’s behaviour?” “I would hope so,” responded Sheabon Smith from North Vancouver. Maybe Smith and other respondents, if they could have

50TH ANNIVERSARY ISSUE

The look of glimpsed the future blessing or a curse?” One Inquiring Reporter has in that moment, perceptive reader from changed over the years, would have been North Vancouver responded: but much has remained relieved to see that “I think they are a curse the same, like constant our environmenbecause they put a lot of questions about traffic and tal discourse has people out of work.” the environment. largely moved away ### from disposable coffee cups and onto Like anyone’s life, a lot has banning plastics straws changed for Perrault in the 30-plus and stumping for reusable years since an eager reporter first shopping bags. Or maybe they stopped her on the street and sought her would see it as not enough, given today’s point of view. Perrault was born and raised on news of pipelines and wildfires? the North Shore, but moved to Squamish five Another blast from the past: “Locals are years ago. When she was stopped on Lonsdale tired of the traffic problems …” stated Martin all those decades back she was a starry-eyed Millerchip in his write up for his Inquiring student at Capilano College studying comReporter question for that week, “Has BC mercial art, though for the past 28 years she’s Ferries outgrown Horseshoe Bay?” The year worked in the health-care field at Lions Gate was 1999. Hospital. All three respondents for that week, 20 “It’s possible I was a waitress at the years ago, claimed they avoided the charming time,” she reflects, comparing being part of seaside neighbourhood due to overcrowding a reporter’s “streeters” then versus now. “It’s and congestion. Some things never change. kind of ironic because I would say in terms of But some things do change. In 1977 the Lonsdale, it was probably within the same two Inquiring Reporter asked: “Is the computer a

blocks that I was stopped 30 years ago [and now].” She doesn’t remember who the reporter was who spoke to her 30 years ago, though she does remember responding to the skateboarding question that she “didn’t seem to think there was a problem” when it came to fourwheeled cruisers traversing sidewalks. Her perspective, to a degree, has changed with time; she can see now how “there would be a bit of a problem,” especially for older adults and others, if walkers and skateboarders were compelled to dodge one another on busy sidewalks. Laws, bylaws, and attitudes shift – and there’s always the chance she’ll feel differently about dodgeball tomorrow than she does today. (Unfortunately, Perrault’s more-thanadequate response to the dodgeball query didn’t make it into the News after the on-scene reporter’s recording equipment mysteriously muzzled her answer over a string of white noise and traffic sounds.) However, one thing she can say for sure has changed between then and now is the neighbourhood. “Lonsdale was a lot different than it is now,” she quips. But one thing that hasn’t changed is Perrault’s passion for local news. “I pick up the North Shore News whenever I’m working here,” she says. “It’s a great local newspaper.” !

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50TH ANNIVERSARY ISSUE

Learn the lingo of the North Shore News

Our newsroom has its own peculiar language passed down through the ages

weekend edition. The name remains, even though the stories never appear on page 3 anymore. “Brent’s on the Page 3 schedule for this week. Looks like he’s pulling another all-nighter.”

LAYNE CHRISTENSEN lchristensen@nsnews.com

Every workplace has its jargon.

TURBO A printout of a photo with a caption for layout. Takes its name from the make of a long-forgotten newsroom printer used to output news photos. “Hey Mike, where’s that turbo of the Cut crash?”

“DOGS, BEARS, TREES” Frivolous [and not actual] formula for story selection during the dog days of summer, when absolutely everyone books out of town – school officials, politicians, neighbourhood tipsters, and even criminals -- typically resulting in a news drought. Recently expanded to: “Dogs, Bears, Trees, Traffic.” Also a fairly accurate listing of the types of stories that typically generate the most reader reactions.

PAGE 3 A Focus feature story, photo essay or investigative piece planned

PHOTO MIKE WAKEFIELD

Here Layne Christensen, the current editor of the North Shore News and a longtime staffer, lets readers in on what they might hear if they dropped into the newsroom on a press day:

“DEPLOY THE PHOTOGRAPHER!” Said in jest when a reporter gets a breaking news alert. First uttered in the 1990s by a dogged reporter known to closely monitor the newsroom police scanner, in excited response to a newsworthy police dispatch. INQ REP Short for “Inquiring Reporter,” where an intrepid reporter takes to the streets to ask readers their opinions on all manner of subjects. In journalism, it’s known as a “streeter.” At the News, it’s a rite of passage for every new hire. Nothing feels better, though, than to gleefully hand Inq Rep duties over to the latest J-school intern. “Where’s Ben? He’s out doing Inq Rep. In the rain.”

A bear? In a tree!?! Deploy the er! photograph

for page 4 of our Friday print edition. Back in the day when we put out a Sunday paper, and before a newspaper redesign, the Focus feature always ran on page 3 of our

DUMMY The preliminary layout of our

Editor Layne Christensen checks a reporter’s copy for references to ‘dogs, bears, trees,’ wondering whether the story is good enough to ‘Deploy the Photographer!’ FILE PHOTO

print edition showing ad placement and what editorial “holes” are to be filled with photos and copy. Most definitely NOT what we would call the latest J-school intern. “SQUISH IT DOWN, SEX IT UP!” One editor’s directive to a stringer [freelance reporter] upon reading a lacklustre story on municipal statement of financial information reports. It means chop

some copy and find the news hook. A variant of the print journalism rule: “Keep it tight and bright.” PUB DATE Alas, not a description of hardworking newsroom employees raising a pint after the paper goes to press, but rather a notation for when the print edition hits doorsteps. Pub date is short for “publication date.” !

Cheers to 50 years of North Shore News! North Van Arts is also celebrating ...

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50 great moments from 50 years of sports

Historian Len Corben has seen it all in North Shore sport

LEN CORBEN Contributing writer

Let the debate begin.

In the 50 years since the North Shore News first hit our doorsteps as the North Shore Shopper in 1969, there have been hundreds of magical local sports moments and achievements: from world and Olympic titles to the time your team came from behind to win that special beer-league championship. It was extremely difficult to narrow down a list but, from my perspective, here are the 50 most noteworthy moments in the past half century, divided into three categories chronologically.

Undoubtedly, you’ll find some surprises and some you don’t remember or even know about.

ST GREATE TS N MOME 1. 1969 Aug. 16 – North Van’s Dorothy Lidstone wins the world archery title, demolishing the world record in the process. 2. 1973 March 1 – North Van’s Karen Magnussen captures the world figure skating championship in Czechoslovakia. 3. 1982 March 20 – West Van edges Argyle 49-48 in an emotional B.C. high school boys’ basketball final, two weeks before WV coach Brian Upson succumbs to cancer. 4. 1985 March 23 – Linda Moore’s North Van rink wins the world curling title in Sweden. 5. 1986 May 31 – Sentinel defends their 1985 B.C. high school track and field championship with a sliver-thin half-point win over nine-time champion Burnaby Central 100 to 99.5. 6. 1989 March 11 – Windsor repeats as B.C. high school AAA girls’ basketball champions 91-53 over Cranbrook’s Mt. Baker in one of the most lopsided finals in tourney history.

Len Corben started working in the sports business in 1959 as a columnist with the North Shore Citizen. Here Corben lists 50 of the greatest moments of the past 50 years of North Shore sport. PHOTO MIKE WAKEFIELD

7. 1993 July/August – Lynn Valley Little Leaguers become the first North Shore team to reach the World Series in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, after an 18-1 record en route to the Canadian title in New Brunswick. 8. 1999 June 19 – Ex-North Shore Winter Club player Brett Hull scores the most controversial Stanley Cup-winning goal for the Dallas Stars

with his “foot-in-the-crease” marker in triple overtime. 9. 2004 Feb. 27 – In a game for the ages between the two top-ranked B.C. high school basketball teams, host Argyle edges Handsworth 72-71 in a game featuring a long delay after Argyle’s Scott Morrison breaks the rim on a dunk and Handsworth’s Tyler Kepkay hits a buzzer-beating

three-pointer to send it into overtime. With only one local team going to provincials, Argyle triumphs there with four victories by a whopping average margin of 21.5 points. 10. 2010 Feb. 16 – West Van’s Maëlle Ricker becomes the first Canadian female to win Olympic gold on home soil … err snow … when she wins the nerve-wrecking

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snowboard cross event right up there on Cypress Mountain in front of an ecstatic throng of face-painted, flag-waving fellow Canucks. 11. 2013 Oct. 23 – Ryan Dempster, who coach Dave Empey developed with the North Shore Twins, pitches in Game 1 of the World Series for the champion Boston Red Sox. 12. 2019 March 14 – The re-established North Shore Sports Hall of Fame inducts its first new members since 1971.

DING UTSTAN MOST O VEMENTS ACHIE

1. 1970 Oct. 9 – Designed by West Van’s Joe Borovich, the Vancouver Canucks’ original stylized “C” logo – formed by a hockey stick inside a rink – is worn in the team’s first NHL game. 2. 1970 Dec. 12 – North Van photographer Ralph Bower houses a camera inside the Canucks’ goal to snap the NHL’s original “netcam” photos. 3. 1970-71 – West Van “hippiejock” Brock Tully bikes 10,000 miles around North America in six months, long before cycling is popular and other long-distance exploits by Terry Fox and Rick Hansen take place. 4. 1971 July 17 – North Van lefty Buster Moberg tops his softball career with a perfect game for Vancouver Blue Boys in Edmonton’s Klondike Gold Rush tourney. 5. 1971 – Harry Jerome and Elaine Tanner are the first North Shore inductees in Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame.

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6. 1973 May 1-Aug. 4 – West Van’s Clyde McRae walks across Canada in a Guinness world record 96 days, an unbelievable feat … or should that be feet? 7. 1975 Dec. 5 – West Van’s Greg Neeld, inventor of the “Neeld Shield” after losing an eye in a freak hockey accident (making him ineligible for the NHL) plays his first game in the World Hockey Association with Toronto Toros. 8. 1978 May 14-July 28 – After building a 42-foot dugout canoe from a local Douglas fir, Geordie Tocher sails from West Van to Hawaii in 72 days. 9. 1978 Oct. 4 – Nicknamed “Straight-Ahead Fred,” North Van’s Mark Rowan briefly holds the world speed skiing record of 198.70 miles per hour during a competition in Chile. 10. 1982 April 29 – After Canuck coach Roger Neilson raises a towel on a stick in that infamous playoff game in Chicago, West Van’s Butts Giraud and his Dog’s Ear T-shirt company sell 50,000 white towels in just two weeks for waving at games. 11. 1984 April 9 – North Van jockey Chris Loseth wins eight of the 10 races at Exhibition Park, tying the world record for most wins in one day. 12. 1985 Nov. 25 – North Van’s Bruce Barnett completes a grand slam of football championships (B.C. high schools with Handsworth, Vanier Cup Canadian title with UBC, Shrum Bowl vs. SFU, Grey Cup) when his BC Lions defeat Hamilton in Montreal.

Lynn Valley’s Blake Anderson streaks for home plate during the 1993 Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. PHOTO SUPPLIED ADAM THOMPSON, WORLD OF LITTLE LEAGUE MUSEUM

13. 1988 Oct. 10 – North Shore Metros, coached by John Mudge, become the first local team to win a Canadian youth soccer title, beating Quebec 1-0 in the U16 girls’ final in Ottawa.

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14. 1992 Aug. 1-2 – North Shore rowers Kirsten Barnes and Jessica Monroe win gold medals in both the fours and eights at the Barcelona Olympics. 15. 1994 May 21 – North Van’s Simon Pond becomes the first local player to hit a home run in the major leagues (at Boston’s historic Fenway Park). 16. 1997 – North Van’s Grant Connell retires from the pro tennis tour after winning 473 matches, including an impressive 23-9 record in Davis Cup action.

17. 1999 – Capilano College is given the Canadian Colleges men’s and women’s soccer supremacy awards for its domination over 25 years. 18. 2000 March 25 – West Van sports psychologist Kirsten Barnes is key to Oxford’s win over Cambridge in the 146th Boat Race, the first time either school has used a performance specialist. 19. 2006/2007 – Foundations in the names of Quinn Keast and

See Daredevils page 32

Congratulations on 50 years of bringing news to the North Shore!

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Daredevils, flaming divers and Muhammad Ali From page 31 Strachan Hartley begin their outstanding on-going charity work in memory of two outstanding Handsworth athletes who died too young. 20. 2010 March 13-20 – North Van’s Lauren Woolstencroft captures five skiing gold medals during the Paralympics. 21. 2013 Aug. 18-24 – North and West Van lawn bowling clubs host a superbly run Canadian Championships. 22. 2017 May 26 – Collingwood claims its 11th straight B.C. high

school AA tennis title, the longest championship streak in any sport. 23. 2017 July/August – North Shore Twins produce a season unequalled in BC Premier Baseball League history by copping all three age division titles with a combined 20-1 playoff record. 24. 2018 Nov. 13 – North Van’s Paul Kariya caps his 15-year NHL career with induction into the Hockey Hall of Fame. 25. 2018 Nov. 9/16 – Collingwood wins its sixth B.C. high school AA field hockey banner in 10 years; Handsworth its fifth AAA in eight years.

IZARRE MOST B IES R STO

North Vancouver’s Paul Kariya topped off his stellar career with induction into the Hockey Hall of Fame, class of 2017. PHOTO SUPPLIED

1. 1969 January/February – Hired as an extra for the movie Downhill Racer while on a “skibum” vacation in Europe, North Van’s Tom Kirk ends up playing the part of a U.S. Olympic skier next to Robert Redford. 2. 1969 Feb. 17 – Daredevil Dag Aabye creates an avalanche skiing down the Lions and miraculously survives. 3. 1972 April 26 – Muhammad

Vancouver Canucks goalie Dunc Wilson picks the puck out of the net after a goal by the Boston Bruins in December 1971. North Vancouver photographer Ralph Bower invented the original “netcam” concept for NHL hockey.

fight Ali, training here for his fight with George Chuvalo, visits North Van City Hall and signs the guest book including his home address and phone number. 4. 1978 Oct. 13 – North Van High’s last grad class, led by teacher Jim Martin, celebrates the school’s final year with a continuous volleyball game lasting more than 52 hours, an hour longer than the existing Guinness world record, but technically misses out on the record because they didn’t use official scoresheets. 5. 1979 Nov. 23 – Soccer’s

PHOTO SUPPLIED RALPH BOWER

Bob Lenarduzzi and football’s Lui Passaglia participate in a kicking competition at halftime of the Handsworth-Kamloops B.C. high school football final at Empire Stadium with very unusual results: Lenarduzzi wins at football and Passaglia at soccer.

North Vancouver Stories Live Here

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Coming in 2020: the new Museum of North Vancouver! Congratulations North Shore News on your 50th Anniversary! The North Vancouver Museum & Archives Commission, an agency of the City and the District of North Vancouver, receives ongoing funding support from both municipalities and from the Government of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council. Waterfront Productions is funded in part by the Government of Canada.

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WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 14, 2019

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BlueShore Financial

CENTRE FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS

CAPILANO UNIVERSITY CAPU GLOBAL ROOTS SERIES Leo Kottke Jontavious Willis Full Moon Fever: A re-imagining of Tom Petty’s iconic album Lemon Bucket Orkestra Pharis and Jason Romero Strunz & Farah Rahim AlHaj Trio April Verch Black Hen Roadshow

Throwback Thursdays

Congratulations to the North Shore News on an award winning 50 years!

I started selling Real Estate on the North Shore and marketing homes in the North Shore News in September of 1984 and have loved my job and the paper ever since. Both our looks may have changed but our commitment to the residents of the North Shore haven’t. While I’ve been opening doors on the North Shore for over 30 years the News has been landing on those same doorsteps providing every resident a trusted community news source.

CAPU JAZZ SERIES Cécile McLorin Salvant and The Aaron Diehl Trio Peter Bernstein with the CapU jazz ensembles Charlie Hunter and Lucy Woodward Tord Gustavsen Trio A Tribute to Bird and Diz Gord Grdina’s Haram featuring Marc Ribot Renee Rosnes with the CapU jazz ensembles Delvon Lamarr Organ Trio

I look forward to many more years working together.

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CAPU SPEAKER SERIES Dr. Jen Gunter Robyn Doolittle More speakers TBA for 2019–2020 Season

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Plus WINTER HARP, CAPU CLASSICS and CHORAL SHOWS and exciting theatrical performances from CAPU THEATRE and ARTS CLUB

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the North and West Vancouver school boards as co-ordinator of athletics for the North Shore Secondary Schools’ Athletic Association (1969-99) first as a reporter and “Corben’s Corner” sports columnist with the North Shore Citizen (1959-1971) and then with his “Instant Replay” sports history column in the North Shore Outlook (1999-2014). He now chairs the selection committee for the recently revived North Shore Sports Hall of Fame.

2019–2020

So that totals 49. There are plenty 6. 1980 July 19 – West Van’s Butts Giraud accidentally sets himself on more to choose from (such as Capilano fire preparing to take his winning dive Rugby Club winning the inaugural which involves a flaming leap off a Canadian women’s club championship cherry-picker at the World Bellyflop over Quebec City 34-19, which just hapChampionships at the North Shore’s old pened Aug. 4) but I’ll leave one for you to Coach House (now Holiday Inn). pick. You can let me know your choice at 7. 1982 March 20 – Legendary West lencorben@yahoo.ca. Van cameraman Bill Cunningham discovAuthor and sport historian Len Corben ers he has no film in his camera after bookended his career job with photographing the B.C. high school boys’ basketball final and awards ceremonies. West Van won the title. 8. 1984 July 28 – Bitten by a mysterious insect during the opening ceremonies at the Los Angeles Olympics, West Van gymnast Anita Butts Giraud completes Botnen is almost sidelined from one of his death defying competing. flaming dives during 9. 1985 Nov. 24 – A stolen the World Belly Flop and 1963 Grey Cup ring presented Cannonball Championships, to North Van’s Sonny Homer of a wild competition he helped the BC Lions is not found until create in North Vancouver. the season the Lions win their PHOTO SUPPLIED first Grey Cup in 21 years. BUTTS GIRAUD 10. 1986 – Amused by the power given him at a game in front of 100,000 in Mexico City when asked to signal a minute of silence for someone recently deceased, West Van referee John Meachin holds his hand up for more than 60 seconds. 11. 1989 March 17 – Despite not playing basketball, Carson Graham’s Mike McCormack wins the B.C. high school slam dunk contest. 12. 2003 Dec. 21 – Former Carson Graham Eagle Jerome Pathon scores one of the most unusual last-second touchdowns in NFL history for New Orleans Saints vs. Jacksonville, a 75-yard play involving a forward pass and three laterals.

SEASON FLEX PACKS ON SALE AUGUST 28, 2019 SINGLE TICKETS ON SALE AUGUST 29, 2019

50TH ANNIVERSARY ISSUE

GORD GRDINA’S HARAM FEATURING MARC RIBOT FEBRUARY 28, 2020 @BlueShoreatCapU

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Mountain man Tim Jones taught us to be safe North Shore Rescue leader used the News to educate the public

ANDY PREST aprest@nsnews.com

Most people in these parts know the late Tim Jones as the legendary team leader of North Shore Rescue, but here at the North Shore News we got to see a side of him that wasn’t readily apparent to the general public.

One of the most important parts of search and rescue work is educating the public so that there will be less unprepared wanderers in need of rescuing. Early on in his career, Jones realized that developing strong ties to local media outlets was the best way to get the message out to the masses. The proof is in the numbers. A rudimentary search of “Tim Jones” in the North Shore News online story archives reveals an astonishing 557 stories containing his name. And that archive only goes back to 2001, covering roughly half of his career with North Shore Rescue. You’d be hard-pressed to find any name, aside perhaps from those belonging to reporters themselves, that appears in our paper more than his over our 50-year history. Jones was always keen to give blow-by-blow accounts of NSR’s

rescues to the North Shore News. Often we’d call him up to learn about the happy resolution of one rescue only to be told that he was back out on some treacherous cliff taking part in the next rescue. He’d always get back to us, though, with an account of what happened and a tip for what the public could learn from it. Jones got so good at the drill that he could give reporters everything they needed, colourful quotes and all, without even talking to us. “It got to the point that Tim could call and leave a voicemail, anticipating all of the questions I would ask about a rescue and leave enough information that I could write a complete story without having to call him back, including the always important public safety lesson learned,” says North Shore News reporter Brent Richter. Every reporter from the Tim Jones era has a story to tell about him. I recall calling him up with some brilliant idea about an exposé about out-of-bounds skiers. “Nah, you don’t want to write that,” he answered. “Here’s your story….” He proceeded to describe in great detail some of the dangers around the growing trend of backcountry

showshoeing, and he was right: his story was 1,000 times better than the one I was cooking up and earned me my first Ma Murray Newspaper award. It was all Tim. Jones died of a heart attack in

2014 at the age of 57. The public memorial and send-off confirmed his status as North Shore royalty. He was a very important figure on the North Shore, and a treasured source for the North Shore News.

“Tim was one of the few people whose phone numbers I had memorized, we did so many NSR stories,” says Richter. “And I have, so far, refused to take his name and number off my contact list.” !

50 YEARS TELLING NORTH SHORE STORIES. 25 YEARS TELLING OURS. A story only comes to life through the magic of great story tellers. Thank you, North Shore News, for 50 years of sharing our community’s milestones, accomplishments, and happenings. Congratulations on your golden anniversary!

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 14, 2019

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50TH ANNIVERSARY ISSUE

north shore news 1969-1978

To mark the occasion, we’ve put together a special timeline highlighting a few of the biggest, wildest and most important North Shore happenings in every decade since we started publishing. We hope you enjoy these blasts from the past, before looking forward to our next 50 years together! Oct. 3: An explosion and fire at the Burrard grain terminal (formerly the Midland Pacific) kills five workers. It is the largest fire in the history of the City of North Vancouver. The facility is rebuilt and expanded by owner James Richardson and Sons.

HALF A DOLLAR AND A DREAM

MAGNUSSEN SCORES SILVER IN SAPPORO

With 50 cents in his pockets and holes in his shoes, Peter Speck founds the North Shore Shopper in early 1969.

1969

1970

1971

1973

March 4: Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, “the most eligible bachelor of international politics,” secretly weds Margaret Sinclair of West Vancouver in a ceremony at St. Stephen’s Roman Catholic Church in Lynn Valley.

June 17: The Seabus goes into operation, linking the North Shore by ferry with downtown Vancouver. The first sailing at 6:15 a.m. carries 168 people across the inlet.

1974

1975

After some back and forth, the North Shore Shopper permanently changes its name to North Shore News.

NEW RECTANGULAR LOGO

June: The new logo goes through a few makeovers, first using white letters on a green background, then one week later using white letters on a red rectangle. The basic style of the red rectangle logo remains the same to this day.

March 24: Flames engulf the brand new Centennial Ecological Centre, causing $120,000 dollars in damage.

Then

The North Shore Artists’ Guild congratulates the North Shore News on their 50th anniversary!

April: North Shore News adds a Sunday edition.

SEABUS FERRY LAUNCH

Feb. 7: Figure skater Karen Magnussen wins Silver at XI Olympic Winter Games in Sapporo, Japan.

1972

Grouse Mountain Super Skyride opens.

1976

1977

July: The new Presentation House Theatre opens to the public on the former site of North Van city hall.

DELBROOK HIGH SCHOOL BURNS DOWN Jan. 28: Flames tear through school, causing two million dollars in damage. Students relocated to Balmoral Junior Secondary for the remainder of the school year.

45 YEARS ON THE NORTH SHORE AND GROWING

Now The West Vancouver Sketch Club originated 71 years ago and became the North Shore Artists’ Guild with its current 325 members from across the North Shore. We appreciate the support along the way from the North Shore News!

Our next show

August 24-25 • 10:30 - 5 Park and Tilford Gardens www.nsartists.ca

1978

Two locations to serve you: 1343 Lynn Valley Road, North Van • 604-985-1784 2558 Haywood Ave, West Van • 604-922-2613 mapleleafgarden.ca

nsnews.com north shore news

50TH ANNIVERSARY ISSUE

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 14, 2019

north shore news 1979-1999 NORTH SHORE NEWS ADDS A THIRD EDITION 1981-1986: West Van businessman Jim Pattison works to create an event to sell Vancouver to the world, as chairman of Vancouver’s World Trade Fair, Expo 86, and takes over as CEO in 1985 for a fee of $1 a year.

Oct. 4: Iconic TV show Beverly Hills 9 begins a decade-long run with North Vancouver’s Jason Priestley co-starr all-around good guy Brandon Walsh.

April 12: Lonsdale Quay Market opens next to the Seabus terminal on the site of the former North Van Ship Repairs.

LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION! North Shore Studios (originally Lions Gate Studios) opens as a film and television production centre.

Friday edition added during an extended strike at the Vancouver Sun and Province.

1979

1980

WEST VANCOUVER SENIORS CENTRE OPENS TO PUBLIC June: The brand new facility earns the Canadian Architects’ Award of Excellence.

1981

1982

1983

1984

1985

Nov. 12: Stardust Roller Rink closes its doors and says goodbye to community faithful after serving patrons for 19 years.

1986

1987

December: Park & Tilford Shopping Centre opens on the grounds of a former distillery.

1988 MY WORK IS DONE ... OR IS IT? Founder Peter Speck sells the North Shore News to Southam Inc., staying on as the paper’s publisher.

Nov. 5: North Van’s Bryan Adams releases Reckless, featuring “Run to You,” “Heaven” and “Summer of ‘69.” The album reaches No. 1 on Billboard 200.

Morrey Mazda, Serving The North Shore For 20 Years, Congratulates The North Shore News For 50 Years Of Being A Pillar In The Community

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Fuel cell technology leader Ballard Power Systems, co-founded by North Vancouver’s Geoffrey Ballard, presents the world’s first zero emission hydrogen fuel cell-powered transit bus. It was a major innovation in the burgeoning world of fuel cell technology.

90210 h ring as .

A complaint against North Shore News’ controversial columnist Doug Collins is brought before the British Columbia Human Rights Commission for a column in which he questions the Holocaust and denounces Schindler’s List. The case is dismissed. In 1999, a further complaint citing four of Collins’ columns is upheld, and Collins and his publisher are ordered to pay $2,000 in damages.

The North Vancouver shipyards, originally opened in 1906 as Wallace Shipyard and renamed as Burrard Dry Dock in 1921, permanently close.

1990

March 15: The novel Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture, written by West Vancouver’s Douglas Coupland, is published, kicking off Coupland’s career as an author and artist as well as an unofficial spokesman for his generation.

1991

1992

1993

West Vancouver’s Point Atkinson named a National Historic Site in recognition of its crucial role in British Columbia’s marine trade.

50TH ANNIVERSARY ISSUE

1994

1995

1996

1997

1998

1999

WHEN TWO BECOME ONE NSNEWS.COM North Shore News becomes an Internet pioneer when it registers the domain name nsnews.com on the Word Wide Web and launches its first website.

The West Vancouver Court House officially amalgamates with North Vancouver, moving to the current location in the City of North Vancouver.

Congratulations North Shore News on an amazing 50 years! The North Shore News has helped Dykhof Nurseries share its long history and products with the North Shore for over 40 years! From a 62-year-old company (yup, that’s how old Dykhof Nurseries is!) to a 50-year-old company, we wish you nothing but the best in your future!

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50TH ANNIVERSARY ISSUE

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north shore news 2000-2009 August: The Odlum Brown VanOpen pro tennis tournament, previously held at the Jericho Tennis Club, moves to West Vancouver’s Hollyburn Country Club. It has been held there every year since except for a one-year hiatus in 2017.

Sept. 20: The new $36-million City of North Vancouver library opens as part of a redeveloped Civic Centre. A new City Hall soon follows.

April 23: The 700-foot-long Burrard Dry Dock Pier opens. Along with a waterfront walk, it affords public access to the formerly industrial waterfront for the first time in a century.

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

POWER PLAY The Lonsdale Energy Corporation (LEC), owned by the City of North Vancouver, begins delivering services to the Lower Lonsdale area.

NORTH SHORE NEWS OFFICES DESTROYED BY EARLY-MORNING ARSON

2005

2006

2007

January: After temporarily setting up shop in the Telus building on East Eighth Street, the North Shore News gets a new permanent home on 15th Street, just off of Lonsdale Avenue.

2008

2009

CAPILANO COLLEGE GRANTED UNIVERSITY STATUS April 25: B.C. government changes institution’s designation following a review of the province’s post-secondary system.

Feb. 10: Blaze damages newspaper’s computer server and photographic archives. News team works through the night to get paper out next day.

Celebrating 67 years 3 generations of family dentistry on the North Shore Congratulations

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to the North Shore News on reaching this Milestone Anniversary! A proud supporter, personally and professionally, for over 46 years as a North Shore resident and business person.

WOLF KLEIN

604.728.9199 NORTH SHORE REAL ESTATE EXPERT YOUR PERSONAL ADVISOR SINCE 1973

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 14, 2019

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50TH ANNIVERSARY ISSUE

north shore news 2010-2019 Oct. 13: The Gordon Smith Gallery of Canadian Art opens in the new North Vancouver School District building on Lonsdale Avenue.

CANADA’S TOP COMMUNITY NEWSPAPER June 7 : The North Shore News is named Best All-Round publication among newspapers with a circulation of 25,000 or more at the 2019 Canadian Community Newspaper Awards. It’s the latest of hundreds of “Best Newspaper” and individual awards claimed by the paper at the provincial and national level in its 50-year history.

SHIPYARDS FRIDAY NIGHT MARKET Feb. 12: Vancouver hosts Winter Olympics. NSN publishes daily Games edition.

2010

2011

July: The Shipyards Friday Night Market debuts on North Van waterfront.

2012

2013

2014

2015

2016

2017

LOW LEVEL ROAD AND SPIRIT TRAIL OFFICIALLY OPEN

February 5: Grouse Mountain open The Eye of the Wind, a 1.5-megawatt wind turbine that supplies 25 per cent of the resort’s power while also providing guests with a mountaintop observation deck.

2018

2019

NORTH SHORE NEWS LAUNCHES WEEKLY CHINESE EDITION

March 19 :The new roadway runs through what was once Moodyville enhances rail and port operations and addresses community safety and traffic challenges.

July 5 : Featuring stories from the English paper translated into simplified Chinese characters, the publication runs weekly until June 2019. September : North Shore News office moves to the Capilano Business Park on West First Street.

MAËLLE RICKER WINS GOLD Feb. 16: West Van’s Maëlle Ricker finishes first in snowboard cross at Cypress Mountain, becoming the first Canadian woman to win Olympic gold on home soil.

THANK YOU! Dear Riders, Partners, and Volunteers. Thanks to your support, we have raised over $94,000 and had a record number of cyclists this year with 244 participants. We couldn’t have done it without you!

Karl Stittgen

Karin Bunzeit

Stittgen Fine Jewelry is Vancouver’s pre-eminent custom jeweler with deep roots within this city that go back over half a century. Karl Stittgen arrived from Germany in 1952, and established himself as a jeweler in West Vancouver, a block away from our current location. Karl Stittgen’s bold yet elegant jewelry designs and his distinctly European flair live on. To this day, the Master Goldsmiths at Stittgen Fine Jewelry draw inspiration from Karl. We carry on Karl Stittgen’s tradition with designs that are timeless, elegant and unique. Indeed, our Master Goldsmiths, like Karin Bunzeit, make some of his signature pieces to this day, using the very same techniques that allow each piece to be truly one of a kind.

9th Annual Rotary Ride for Rescue June 8th, 2019 Tim Jones Memorial – Cypress Mountain Hill Climb Presented by

Our goal is to bring a personal connection and soul to the commoditized world of jewelry.

SUPPORTING NORTH SHORE RESCUE & ROTARY HUMANITARIAN PROJECTS Partners

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THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR ALL THE SUPPORT TO RIDERS AND OUR PARTNERS & SPONSORS PRESIDENT 2018-2019 Ardath Paxton Mann

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PRESIDENT ELECT 2019-2020 Matt Gul

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Newsroom Memories NAME:

Robert Galster POSITION AT THE PAPER:

Proofreader, page designer, fill-in editor, news reporter YEARS AT THE NORTH SHORE NEWS:

1994-1999

CURRENT POSITION:

London Bureau Chief, Newsweek

I was fresh out of journalism school and willing to do anything and everything. Consequently, I ended up with the best education imaginable as I filled in for reporters, page designers and editors before, eventually, getting the job I wanted: news reporter. For some reason I ended up with a desk just outside the door of NSN founder and then-publisher Peter Speck. An imposing and self-assured man, he made me nervous as hell. He would periodically come out of his office, hoist a leg onto my desk and offer words of wisdom. During one of these (one-way) chats, he looked off into the middle distance and pronounced: “Robert, there are no problems in this world, only opportunities.” After that, he would periodically drop by and land me with opportunities to wrestle with. At one point, I was filling in for the features editor and responsible for, among other things, finding and editing stories for the massive

quarterly Home and Garden section (ad sales were brisker in those days and these things would routinely run at 20-plus pages). Not long before it was due to go to press and my job mostly done but for some proofreading, a major advertiser pulled its ads. This left a gaping hole in the centre of the supplement. And I had nothing to put there so, thinking on my feet, I wrote a few hundred words on the plight of trees on city streets from the perspective of the trees, which to my mind had much to contend with. Even if they survived the pollution and life in the concrete jungle, there was always the chance they’d run into a chainsaw. I completed this harrowing firstperson tree tale with a graphic of Marine Drive with massive overgrown trees crowding out the car dealership signs in an apocalyptic image illustrating a world that played fair. This earned me an invitation to Mr. Speck’s office. He was concerned with my state of mind, making no secret of the fact he suspected that I was

50TH ANNIVERSARY ISSUE depressed – had to be to write that “plea for trees.” But alas, this was no problem, and it was my opportunity that the paper had just secured a counselling service for staff. And I was going to be its first client under instructions to report back on the level of service and whether it was worth, I gather, the considerable price tag. It was fine. As was I. During another fill-in stint, this time for the fashion editor, another late ad pull left me to contend with a hole. It should be noted I knew even less about fashion than homes and gardens. I was determined to avoid controversy lest any more opportunities come my way. I settled on a piece extolling the virtues of vertical stripes. “If you have hips to hide...” it began. Looking back, I knew less still about stripes. And hips! !

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50TH ANNIVERSARY ISSUE

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Life clicks into place for NSN photo trio

Three gems combine for more than a century shooting North Shore

With more than 100 years between them as North Shore News photographers, the trio of Paul McGrath, Cindy Goodman and Mike Wakefield has captured the images of countless North Shore residents.

She photographed six ballerinas with their slippers dangling off the edge of a bench at Anna Wyman’s dance school. But more than that, she caught six kids full of tranquility, impatience, innocence, humour, distraction, consternation, and a hefty dollop of sass. Click. An Emily Carr graduWakefield had no ate, Wakefield intention of wasting his photographic talent. “I’m an artist,” he remembers saying. “I’m not working at the North Shore News.” Two days later, after some persuasion from his mother and girlfriend, he got hired as a darkroom tech. He’d take the job, he decided – but only until he got bored or found something better. “And I never did,” he muses without a ghost of regret. Listening to Wakefi eld Wakefield tell stories is like trying ight of a to chart the fl flight moth. His anecdotes are

JEREMY SHEPHERD jshepherd@nsnews.com

Walk off West First Street into the North Shore News offices and – just to your left – there’s a moment.

The photo shows a baseball player in mid-stride after smacking the winning homerun. His teammate is holding the game hero’s jersey like a cowboy gripping the scruff of a jittery thoroughbred. And in that moment, with everyone’s face full of fireworks, a shutter winked. Click. The moment after was good. The moment before was fine too. But that crack-of-light click captured by Paul McGrath ... that was THE moment. For more than 30 years a team of three photographers – McGrath, Mike Wakefield and Cindy Goodman – documented triumph, heartbreak, and beauty on the North Shore a split-second at a time. “If everything worked out and all the gods were with you and you captured that moment, it’s the best feeling,” Goodman reflects. With camera around her neck, Goodman would coax, cajole, and chip away at who you’re trying to be until she found out who you are.

PHOTO MIKE WAKEFIELD

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random and roundabout but somehow full of light. There was the time he cruised to the old Shipyards site in his Dodge Dart Swinger. There was a half-soused woman who asked if he could, “hic,” fix her washing machine,

Wakefield recalls, winking suggestively. And there was a 101-year-old man. Wakefield’s snapshots of Bob Hope, Sophia Loren, and Charles and Diana were fine, he says. But James Burton is the one he still

101-year-old James Burton sneaks a kiss from his sweatheart, Susan. PHOTO MIKE WAKEFIELD

50TH ANNIVERSARY ISSUE thinks about. “The best photo I’ve ever taken,” Wakefield says. “And I probably had the least to do with it.” Burton, 101, was being awarded France’s Legion of Honour for his service in the First World War when

Wakefield met him. Wakefield – as he always does – got chatting. There would be a grip-and-grin photo later but maybe, he suggested to Burton, they could get an “insurance shot” first. Burton asked if Susan, his wife

of 70 years, could be in the photo. Susan had Alzheimer’s, so they would have to go to the care unit, Burton explained. They went.

See No feeling page 44

The North Shore Twins can’t contain their excitement following one of their many triumphs. This exuberant image now greets visitors to the North Shore News office. PHOTO PAUL MCGRATH

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No feeling quite like capturing the moment

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From page 43 Burton eased Susan into a chair, adjusted her collar, and combed her hair. “I never said a word to them,” Wakefield recalls. Susan gripped her husband’s hand. She smiled. Burton kissed his wife’s hair. Then he looked up at Wakefield. “We are ready for our photo,” he said. He’d already taken it. Click. Following layoffs earlier this year, Wakefield is the only full-time photographer left. “We got along pretty well, the three of us,” Wakefield says. Goodman nods.

“Working with Mike and Paul is the most fun I ever had in my life,” she says. “Of everybody in my life, you two are the ones that I am the most myself with.” “We’re the last photographers you’re ever going to meet,” Wakefield says. “You don’t realize until it’s finished, or close to finished, how good it really was.” And then a reporter walks into the room and says something about a photo assignment this afternoon. Wakefield shrugs. “I gotta get back to work.” Click. !

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North Vancouver judges Doug Moss and William Rodgers don their robes shortly before both retired from the bench in May 2018. PHOTO LISA KING

Fave photos by Lisa King and Kevin Hill

Sophie Young sits atop a painted bronze figure that was part of a public art display in Rey Sargent Park, in July 2014. PHOTO KEVIN HILL

THANK YOU

50 YEARS

For supporting our hospital and making a difference in our community.

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Nine-year-old Oscar Robindell competing in Deep Cove Daze pie eating contest in August 2018. PHOTOS CINDY GOODMAN

Fave photos by Cindy Goodman

Barbara Ann Martindale performs at the Chartwell retirement residence’s annual Seniors Star event showcase at Capilano Mall, June 20, 2013.

Carson Graham Eagles’ Max Goodman in a muddy rugby semifinal against Handsworth in 2017.

Congratulations North Shore News on turning 50 this year I remember when you were born! I was five years old when your first edition was released. Fast forward 10 years, you were the one I turned to when looking for my first job. You were with me when I got married, when I bought my first home, and when I started my family. You could say we’ve grown up together. At View Optometry, children’s eye exams are fully

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You have been alongside me in advocating for children with autism, and you have been an important part of my life as a school trustee. Here’s to you, NSN, and to your next 50 years… Happy Birthday!

Cyndi Gerlach

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North Shore Baseball celebrates its opening day Sunday, April 8, 2018 at Chris Zuehlke Memorial Park in North Vancouver. PHOTOS CINDY GOODMAN

Anti-pipeline activists suspend themselves from Ironworkers Memorial Second Narrows Crossing the morning of July 3, 2018.

Sisters Olina (11) and Alexis (9) Newton play in the spray to cool off at Mahon Water Park in June 2013.

CONGRATULATIONS North Shore News on 50 great years! Congratulates the North Shore News on its

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Come celebrate

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We are fortunate to have an excellent, award-winning local newspaper serving the communities of North and West Vancouver. Thank you for your unwavering support of our annual Author and Dinner Fundraising Event. We wish you continued success in the years to come.

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Guitarist Henry Young performs a Jazz Vespers concert at St. Stephen’s Church in May 2014. PHOTOS MIKE WAKEFIELD

Kaeden Conrad of Lynn Valley Elementary competes in the Grade 5 boys 4x100-m relay at Swangard Stadium in the district track and field meet in May 2014.

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Four guests view the sculpture The Witness Blanket at Capilano University by Master Carver Carey Newman in October 2014. PHOTOS MIKE WAKEFIELD

Fave photos by Mike Wakefield

Photographer Ralph Bower displays some of his awardwinning work in 2018.

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A dancer from the Mexican Dance Ensemble performs at West Vancouver’s Bridge Festival, a two-day celebration of cultural diversity and community, in June 2019. PHOTOS PAUL MCGRATH

Fave photos by Paul McGrath

A young parade-watcher gets a direct view of the marching band approaching on Lynn Valley Day in June 2018.

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CONGRATULATIONS to the NORTH SHORE NEWS on their 50th Anniversary! Working together in our Commmunity... Royal LePage Sussex and the North Shore News were involved in many endeavours together over the years - from our commitment to the newspaper ‘Real Estate’ section, where we held a majority of the pages, as well as anchoring the weekly back page, to the beginnings of the Harvest Project and the Blue Bag sponsorships... giving back was a credo common to both establishments.

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Parham Esfahani lifts his two-year-old golden retriever Zoey in celebration after he won a dispute with his strata council forbidding large dogs, in May 2018. PHOTOS PAUL MCGRATH

Grace (12) and George (3) Owen get airborne at Boulevard Park in the first snowfall of 2012.

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Newsboxes get new life as little libraries

ANDY PREST aprest@nsnews.com

Here’s the story of a creaky little crew, once bound for the scrap heap, now ready for something new!

Some might call them square, but for decades these metal boxes sat on street corners all over the North Shore, ready to spring open and offer up the news of the day. But over the years those boxes got beaten up, broken down and just plain rusty. “The future is in plastic,” the boss man said, ordering the metal North Shore News boxes swapped out, one by one, to be replaced by plastic models that lasted longer, needed less maintenance. “What should we do with the old boxes?” the workers asked, hearing the rusty wails of the sad sheet metal. “Take ’em to the dump!” came the cold reply. But that couldn’t be the end of it. There had to be something they could do to save the boxes. Maybe if they fixed them up a bit, they could find those steel sentinels somewhere new to stand. And so they scrubbed and sanded, cleaned and cleared. Then they sent the word out.

Wanted: Happy homes for old North Shore News newspaper boxes. Perfect for

neighbourhood little libraries. Books included! Pick ’em up, paint ’em up, fill ’em up, and then share the love with the little readers in your life. But would anybody bite? Would anyone want a creaky old box, worn down from years of being inkstained and left in the rain? Ding. A hit! “I’ll take one!” the nice lady said. Ding. Another hit! And another! Within a day there were dozens of requests, more requests than boxes. They were going back out into the world, ready to be repurposed, refreshed, refilled – the perfect perch to place little literary treasures to be discovered by little curious hands. “Goodbye friends!” the boxes called out to each other as their new families bungeed them into the back of their Subaru wagons and Tacoma trucks. “Let’s show them our mettle. And remember, it’s what’s inside that counts!” !!! Deep Cove’s Michelle King was one of those who answered the call and picked up an old newspaper box. She led a group of volunteers, all parents from Sherwood Park Elementary, who repainted it to its original red and stocked it full of books, many kindly supplied by the North Vancouver District Public Library.

For added fun, they put a chalkboard on the back for kids to share their news of the day. “The best measurement of the little library box’s success is the flow of books moving through,” says King, who threw a block party to introduce the neighbourhood to the new library. “We check on it regularly and there are new books being left all the time. It’s rewarding knowing that it’s being used and enjoyed.” The little library has even encouraged neighbourhood kids – led by King’s son Grayson Carroll, age 8, and his next-door neighbour Sam Bailey, age 9 – to create a new book club. “It is wonderful to see the kids come together over their love of books and reading,” said King. “It fosters a sharing of ideas. I hope the library box provides access to books that might inspire new readers or maybe remind others how enjoyable it is to disconnect from their devices and read.” So far there are nine North Shore News little libraries, a project spearheaded by photographer Mike Wakefield and editor Layne Christensen, spread across North Van and West Van, with more to come as more metal boxes serve up their final issues. If you see an old metal newspaper box in an interesting spot, take a look inside. You might find a newspaper. Or you might find something new. Either way, you’re in for a good read. !

Tom and Sam Bailey team up with Grayson and Isla Carroll to discover the treasures hidden inside their new little library. PHOTO MIKE WAKEFIELD

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Congratulations to the North Shore News on your 50th anniversary !

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Newsroom Memories NAME:

Bob Mackin POSITION AT THE PAPER:

News reporter

YEARS AT THE NORTH SHORE NEWS:

1990-2000

CURRENT POSITION:

Publisher of thebreaker.news

A typical damp North Shore day in February 1990. A nervous, shy 19-yearold intern from Langara journalism walked into a funky office building at 1139 Lonsdale and climbed the creaky wooden stairs. I grew up reading and delivering the North Shore News. Now I was becoming part of the team publishing the tabloid. A journey that lasted more than a decade, interrupted by stints in Maple Ridge and Richmond. Barrett Fisher was leaving the editor’s chair to Tim Renshaw. One of his first decisions was to put me to work. Pages were still cut-and-paste and photographs developed in chemical-laden darkrooms. Bulky computer terminals began to displace typewriters. I sat near founder/publisher Peter Speck’s office. A great storyteller in his own right who told me Greenpeace held some of its first meetings a few steps away; co-founder Bob Hunter, one of my favourite News columnists, gave me an interview right there one day, during a book tour. Tim’s second-in-command was the late Michael Becker. His smile and

laughter always kept the newsroom bright. They often sent me out to do the Commercial Avenues business feature and even Inquiring Reporter streeters. Assignments ranged from Horseshoe Bay (the first BC Ferries Fastcat journey) to Deep Cove (Dan Culver, the late Everest climber). From Lonsdale Quay (the Old No. 5 Ferry that became the Seven Seas floating seafood restaurant) to the Peak of Grouse (2001 Mountain Bike World Championship). I developed a habit of turning vacations into business trips, such as a 1999 jaunt to Ottawa to shadow local MPs John Reynolds and Ted White around Parliament Hill, and a visit to Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum that included the opening reception of Bryan Adams’ photo exhibit with the North Shore rocker himself. His mum Jane was so delighted her world-famous son got noticed by the local newspaper that she wrote me a thank-you note. Adams cherished his privacy, but Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic described his West Vancouver home studio to me after coming north to mix the Seattle band’s posthumous live album.

50TH ANNIVERSARY ISSUE Famous ex-North Vancouver mother Margaret Trudeau came to Mount Seymour one day with future prime minister Justin to promote avalanche safety, just over a year after another son, Michel, died snowboarding. Miraculously, another mother avoided tragedy after she dropped her daughter from the Capilano Suspension Bridge, a breaking news story that gained worldwide attention. A Davis Cup tie came to the grass courts on Hollyburn, the biggest local event of Grant Connell’s career. Clint Smith’s hockey career was more than four decades over, but he felt like a kid again when I invited him to pose with the Stanley Cup at North Vancouver City fire hall. His name was on the replica from his time with the 1940 New York Rangers. A community paper is only as good as the people in the community. Too many to name, but three pop out. The seemingly eternal North Vancouver City Mayor Jack Loucks. Visionary recreation director Gary Young, who asked Sport BC’s John Mills “how about an Olympics for Vancouver?” And the late paramedic Tim Jones, the tireless leader of local heroes North Shore Rescue. Oh, and then there’s the retired Terry Peters and the tireless North Shore News photography team, and the North Shore Indians lacrosse team and its old-timers, like the late Squamish Nation elder Simon Baker. And how could I forget Nardwuar? I could go on forever, and that’s the point. Is there a better place in the world to begin a newspaper career, or a better paper to do so with?

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Congratulations North Shore News on 50 years... here’s to 50 more! Proudly serving North Vancouver

Holly Back

Jordan Back

City of North Vancouver

District of North Vancouver

COUNCILLOR

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Chief Dan George teaches understanding Chief Dan George was a leader of the Tsleil-Waututh Nation as well as a beloved actor, musician, poet and author. He was born in North Vancouver in 1899 and died in 1981. The following column, reprinted in its entirety, appeared in the North Shore Free Press – an early iteration of the North Shore News – on March 1, 1972. Though these words were written nearly 50 years ago, they still resonate today as Canada ventures into a new age of truth and reconciliation while also grappling with a global climate emergency. BROTHERHOOD AND UNDERSTANDING: THOUGHTS BY CHIEF DAN GEORGE

I am a native North American. In the course of my life I have lived in two distinct cultures.

I was born into a culture that lived in communal houses. My grandfather’s house was 80 feet long; it was called a smoke house and it stood down by a beach along the inlet. All my grandfather’s sons and their families lived in this large dwelling. Their sleeping apartments were separated by blankets made of bulrush reeds. But one open fire in the middle served the cooking needs for all. In houses like these, throughout our tribe, people learned to live with one another; they learned to serve one another and they learned to respect the rights of one another. Our children shared the thoughts of the adult world and found themselves surrounded by aunts and uncles and cousins who loved them.

My father was born in such a house and learned from infancy how to love people and be at home with them. And beyond this acceptance of one another there was a deep respect for everything in nature that surrounded them. My father really loved the earth and all its creatures. The earth was his second mother. The earth and everything it contained was a gift from See-see-am … and the way to thank this great spirit was to use his gifts with respect. I remember, as a little boy, fishing with him up Indian Arm and I can still see him as the sun rose above the mountain top in the morning … I can see him standing by the water’s edge with his arms raised above his head while he softly cried …

“Thank You. Thank You.” It left a deep impression on my young mind. And I shall never forget his disappointment when once he caught me gaffing for fish “just for the fun of it.”

Chief Dan George addresses a group of children at Lynn Valley Library in 1971. This column written by George in 1972 appeared in the North Shore Free Press, an early iteration of the North Shore News. PHOTO SUPPLIED “My son,” he said. “the Great Spirit gave you those fish to be your brothers, to feed you when you are hungry. You must respect them. You must not kill them just for the fun of

it.” This, then, was the culture I was born into and for some years the only one I really knew or tasted. This is why I find it hard to accept many of the new things I see around me.

I see people living in smoke houses hundreds of times bigger than the one I knew, but these people in one apartment do not even know the people in the next and care less about them.

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It is also difficult for me to understand the deep hate that exists among people. It is hard to understand a culture that justifies the killing of millions in the past wars and is, at the very moment, preparing to drop bombs to kill even greater numbers. It is hard for me to understand a culture that spends more on wars and weapons to kill than it does on education and welfare to help and develop jobs for mankind. It is hard for me to understand how men not only hate and fight their brothers, but even attack nature and abuse her. I see my white brother going about blotting out nature from his cities … I see him strip the hills bare, leaving ugly wounds on the face of mountains. I see him tearing things from the bosom of mother earth as though she were a monster who refused to share her treasures with him. I see him throw poisons in her waters, indifferent to the life he kills, and he chokes the air with deadly fumes. I know that my white brother does many things well, but I wonder if he has ever really learned how to love. Perhaps he loves the things that are his own but has never learned to love the things outside and beyond him. This is not love at all! For man must love all creation or he will love none of it. It is the power of love that makes him the greatest of them all … for he alone of all animals is capable of love. My friends, how desperately do we need to be loved and to love. When Christ said that man does not live by bread alone, He spoke of a hunger. This hunger was not the hunger of the body … it was not the hunger for bread. He spoke of a hunger that begins in the very depths of man … a hunger for love. Love is something you and I must have. We must have it because our spirit feeds upon it. We must have it because without it we become weak. Without love our self esteem weakens. Without it our courage fails. Without love we can no longer look out confidently at the world … Instead we turn inwardly and begin to feed upon our own personalities and little by little we destroy ourselves. You and I need the strength and joy that

comes from knowing that we are loved. With it we are creative. With it we march tirelessly. With it, and it alone, we are able to sacrifice for others. There have been many times when we all wanted so desperately to feel a reassuring hand upon us … there have been lonely times when we wanted a strong arm around us … I cannot tell you how deeply I miss my wife’s presence when I return home from a trip. Her love was my greatest joy, my strength, my greatest blessing. I am afraid my culture has little to offer yours. But my culture did praise friendship and companionship. It did not look on privacy as a thing to be clung to, for privacy builds up walls and walls promote distrust.

50TH ANNIVERSARY ISSUE crawled away into the forest to bleed and die alone. The only thing that can truly help us is genuine love. You must truly love us, be patient with us and share with us. And we must love you with a genuine love that forgives and

57 forgets ... a love that forgives the terrible sufferings your culture brought ours when it swept over us like a wave crashing along a beach … with a love that forgets and lifts up its head and sees in your eyes an answering look of trust and understanding. !

This is brotherhood; anything less in not worthy of the name.

My culture lived in big family communities, and from infancy people learned to live with others. My culture did not prize the hoarding of private possessions; in fact, to hoard was a shameful thing among my people. The Indian looked on all things in nature as belonging to him and he expected to share them with others and to take only what he needed. Everyone likes to give as well as receive. No one wishes only to receive all the time. We have taken much from your culture; I wish you had taken something from ours, for there are some beautiful and good things in it. Soon it will be too late to know my culture, for integration is upon us and soon we will have no values but yours. Already so many of our young people have forgotten the old ways. And many have been ashamed of their Indian ways by scorn and derision. My culture is like a wounded stag that has

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WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 14, 2019

News you can trust . . . most of the time The North Shore News editorial team prides itself on dogged reporting, getting to the bottom of what’s really going on at city hall, provincial court or anywhere in between. We’re looking for the truth. Well … most of the time we are looking for the truth. One day a year, however, we might take a few liberties, add in a touch of creative embellishment. Or, perhaps, we’ll completely make something up. Media organizations have a long tradition of running fake news stories as April Fools’ Day pranks, and we here at the News sometimes can’t resist a good whopper. The North Shore News used to publish three times a week, now two, meaning that we don’t have a hard-copy paper hitting the streets every April 1. But when we do, you might need to read with a little extra scepticism. One year we wrote about West Vancouver’s new “housing reduction strategy,” a policy to eliminate houses to give current residents “a little more elbow room.” Funnily enough, the next census revealed that West Vancouver actually

did have a net loss in the number of dwellings that year. Other early April exposés revealed a plan to put turnstiles on backcountry trails, a Mount Rushmore-like sculpture featuring B.C. premiers on Eagleridge Bluffs, and a new North Shore municipality dubbed the District of East North Vancouver. Below we’ve reprinted a story, written by reporter James Weldon, that we published on the front page on April 1, 2007. It came in quite a convincing package, complete with a very official-looking illustration drawn up by one of the paper’s graphic designers. This one fooled a lot of people, including a provincial minister who left us an angry phone message only to call back later with a more sheepish response. Would you have been fooled? Give it a read, and try to decide where the reasonable becomes the ridiculous.

PROVINCE CONSIDERS WATERFRONT BYPASS ; FASTER TRAFFIC MEANS FEWER EMISSIONS James Weldon April 1, 2007

The North Shore’s commute may soon be getting a lot easier with the province’s approval this week of a preliminary plan for the North Shore Greenway, an east-west arterial connector along the North and West

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WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 14, 2019

Vancouver waterfront.

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The plan, described by the Ministry of Transportation as a “bold new vision for green transit,” will allow traffic to pass rapidly and unimpeded past the Lions Gate and Ironworkers bottlenecks to the Sea-to-Sky corridor. At its eastern end, the four-lane thoroughfare will ultimately connect to a suspension bridge over Indian Arm, tentatively planned for 2015. By smoothing the flow of traffic through the area, the new bypass will reduce idling, cutting North Shore greenhouse emissions dramatically. “We’re putting drivers in the fast lane to a cooler planet,” said a ministry official, who asked not to be named because of the plan’s preliminary nature. The project will have other less obvious benefits also, said the official. By eliminating many of the mature trees in North Shore parks -- including one stand of old growth, which he described as “outdated” -- the road will likely halve the area’s native fauna, a major source of carbon emissions. “If we want to reduce our greenhouse output 33 per cent by 2020 (promised in February’s Speech from the Throne), we have to take bold action now,” said the official. “And this is nothing if not bold.” The loss of parkland, including parts of Cates Park, Ambleside Park and the conservation area at Maplewood Flats, will be made up with an equivalent expansion of North Vancouver’s industrial zone. While placing high-speed traffic

between residents and the beach will result in a moderate erosion of pedestrian security, the loss will be more than balanced out by improved driver safety on a 90 km/h freeway with few major bends or intersections. The ministry is hoping to get expropriations and other administrative details out of the way quickly, to have the North Shore portion of the P3 project complete before 2010. “Not that it’s for the Olympics,” added the official. The process should be further accelerated by the elimination of the usual community consultation, in accordance with the new structure of TransLink. Despite appearances, the Greenway will not run contrary to the province’s commitment to public transit, said the official. By channelling traffic to the waterfront, space will be freed up for the North Shore’s handful of buses to access commuter routes. “It’s similar to the logic of starving funding to the Evergreen Line in favour of expanding highways,” said the official. Fast-tracking that project or other mass transit proposals would have been “an environmental catastrophe.” North Shore developers contacted by the News expressed cautious support for the proposal. While it is unclear how it will impact them -- if at all -- several have submitted requests for density bonusing “just to be safe.” The plan’s final draft is expected one year from today: April 1, 2008. !

50TH ANNIVERSARY ISSUE

Another April 1 front page featured an audacious plan to put massive metal turnstiles on all North Shore trails. The photo illustration from former managing editor Terry Peters really took this one over the top.

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50TH ANNIVERSARY ISSUE

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 14, 2019 WED

1969 WAS AN INCREDIBLE YEAR. NOT ONLY DID THE NORTH RTH SHORE R PRETTY SHOPPER PUBLISH ITS FIRST EDITION, BUT SOME OTHER AMAZING THINGS HAPPENED THROUGHOUT THE YEAR. HERE ARE A FEW HIGHLIGHTS:

THE APOLLO 11 MISSION SENDS HUMANS TO THE MOON FOR THE FIRST TIME Astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed the Apollo Lunar Module Eagle on the moon on July 20, with Armstrong becoming the first human to set foot on the moon, followed soon after by Aldrin.

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SESAME STREET AND MONTY PYTHON’S FLYING CIRCUS both air their debut episodes.

THE INSTANTLY ICONIC WOODSTOCK FESTIVAL is held over three days in August near White Lake, N.Y., featuring many of the biggest musical groups of the day.

THE JUNE 28 STONEWALL RIOTS of 1969, in which a group of gay men, lesbians and drag queens at a bar in New York resisted a police raid, mark the start of the gay rights movement in the United States.

In any constitutional climate, the administration of justice thrives on exposure to light – and withers under a cloud of secrecy. - Supreme Court of Canada in Toronto Star v. Ontario

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5 BEST ALBUMS OF 1969 1. Elvis Presley: From Elvis in Memphis 2. Led Zeppelin: Led Zeppelin II 3. The Rolling Stones: Let It Bleed 4. The Beatles: Abbey Road 5. Led Zeppelin: n: Led Zeppelin

Farris congratulates The North Shore News for 50 years of shining light on things that matter.

25th Floor, 700 W Georgia St. Vancouver, BC | Phone: 604 684 9151 | Email: info@farris.com FA R R I S .CO M

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 14, 2019

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50TH ANNIVERSARY ISSUE

Ricker makes history on Cypress Mountain

Golden run brings cheers, tears and near deadly deadline panic to newsroom

ANDY PREST aprest@nsnews.com

My favourite story as a North Shore News sports reporter also very nearly gave me a heart attack.

We all know that West Vancouver snowboard legend Maëlle Ricker claimed gold at Cypress Mountain in 2010, becoming the first Canadian woman ever to earn an Olympic title on home soil. The story, of course, was front page news in our paper the next day. What readers don’t know, however, was that the story almost didn’t make it onto the page. It wasn’t quite a “stop the presses!” moment, but it was as close as I’ve ever come. As a relative newbie on the sports reporting scene back in 2010, I wasn’t able to secure one of the much-coveted but hard-to-come-by media accreditations for the Games. That forced me to get a bit creative with the coverage, catching what I could from TV broadcasts and adding colour from sources on the scene. Ricker was dominant in snowboard cross in the years leading up to the Games, making her one of the favourites coming into the competition. It didn’t start out well, however, as some bad weather made the course treacherous for the morning qualifying runs and Ricker crashed on her first time trial. Then the weather got worse, and there was debate about whether or not they should skip the second round of qualifying altogether and just go straight to the final, a move which would have bumped Ricker out of the race for gold. Eventually the second qualifying runs were

held and Ricker blasted to the third best time of the day. That on-course delay, however, not only caused stress for Ricker but also for our news staff, as we were now pushing up hard against our mid-afternoon print deadline for the Wednesday paper. Any more delays and the story would have been too late to get in the paper, leaving a big hole on our front page. Ricker held up her end of the bargain though, and the gold medal final was glorious.

I know reporters are supposed to be unbiased, but there was a massive roar and even a few tears in the newsroom when our local star flew off that final jump and landed a spot in the history books. But now the pressure was really on – 20 minutes until our drop-dead deadline. Gah! I quickly called two contacts on the mountain: fellow North Shore Olympic snowboarder Drew Neilson, who was stationed up at the starting gate to help Ricker get the jump on the competition, and team trainer Anthony Findlay, who was at the bottom watching with the crazed Canadian fans.

Maëlle Ricker celebrates her Olympic gold medal victory on Cypress Mountain in 2010. Weather delays pushed her golden run up against a hard news deadline. FILE PHOTO Neilson described the peculiar “Deerfield Posse Sign” that he and Ricker exchanged just before the race, an homage to a North Vancouver apartment called The Deerfield that Neilson once shared with Ricker and other friends. “You take your right hand and you pound your chest, you pound your heart, and then you put the horns on your head,” Neilson told me about their cute little pseudo gang sign. Meanwhile Findlay had a hard time describing exactly what he’d seen at the bottom of the course. “I couldn’t [see]; I was crying,” he said. “She is the best in the world – she proved that today.” Great quotes! And now, time to write! I’ve never typed so fast. With editors breathing fire

down my neck, I had just enough time to throw in a probably-too-cheeky lede (“West Vancouver native Maëlle Ricker moved a mountain yesterday”) and get that thing on the page and out the door before getting strangled by the people running the printing press. To this day I still get chills anytime I watch that race and hear announcer Jamie Campbell scream “Here in Vancouver, Maëlle Ricker’s Olympic dreams have come true!” I felt honoured to share the story with our readers, even if it left me in a quivering puddle following those frantic few minutes. It was a golden North Shore sporting moment we’ll not soon forget. Reporter Andy Prest took over the sports beat soon after joining the North Shore News in 2007.

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50TH ANNIVERSARY ISSUE

We asked our readers:

How do you use the News? Thank you to all who took the time to send in their submissions. Here are just some of the wonderful sentiments that were shared with us. d ave foun h I , s r a 5 ye r over 2 o f t ing is iv t in provid nity ac t u e s m s a m o le c al g aluab As a loc s relatin e to be a v u s s is w t e u N n abo th Shore ormatio f ics in l the Nor a u t cal polit fac lo / n t n I . a s v hood e/rele ighbour e n accurat r u o ars – f life of r the ye e o v y t O li . a r u e t mat to the q lectronic always, e t f o o n t t n u e adv ften, b s, with the “facts” o e d a re New c o e h d S t s h t a r p No y in the ch as the u d s s especiall r e p keywor pa s o w d e o n t l a y abilit of loc ion with the versions g n ontribut lo c a t s – e s d n o am blicatio o make t nks e those pu m d ble cere tha a in n s e e A v . a d rhoo g–h e searchin neighbou r u o who hav f in f a e t f s li s f ew ality o Shore N h t r to the qu o N t as ur lives. p o d d n e v a o t r imp rren to the cu hat have t s ie r o t es ted to th contribu Kost ~ Corrie

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 14, 2019

y story regarding how I’ve used the North Shore News in the past starts in early 2008 when I began writing descriptions of some North and West Vancouver hiking trails that I had come to know well over a period of several years. I approached the North Shore News with the idea of doing a weekly hiking column featuring these trails. Then-managing editor Terry Peters agreed to run the newspaper column during summer 2008 and again, on nsnews.com, during summer 2009. I will be forever grateful to Terry Peters and the North Shore News for giving me this opportunity, as those columns ultimately became the genesis of a 2010 hiking book called “Off the Beaten Path: A Hiking Guide to Vancouver’s North Shore.” The 2010 edition was followed by an expanded second edition in 2014. Total sales to date exceed 5,500 copies, enabling literally thousands of local hikers to discover new trails to explore. Without the go-ahead by Terry Peters in early 2008 I likely would never have reached the point of thinking about writing a hiking guidebook. ~ Norm Watt

I have used the North Shore News in my English conversation group. Local articles are relevant and have useful information for English language learners. ~ Wilma Mcpherson

Congratulations Corrie Kost! You are the lucky winner of a $100 gas card!