The Gazette from Montreal, Quebec, Canada • 6

Montreal. Tuesday. May 23. 1989 Last paper dollar won't be worth plugged nickel, collectors say TORONTO (CP) Call It the lame buck. After 123 yean of use and abuse, the low.

iy Canadian one-spot will be a dead duck on June 30. That's when the government issues its last paper dollar and begins rounding up and ocstroving the estimated 313 million green- bring as little as Hirsch says the current 1973 edition the common greenback with the Queen on the front and the Ottawa River and Peace Tower on the flip side probably won't ever be worth much more than the 1989 price of a cheap lottery ticket. "In 10 or 20 years, kids are going to laugh at paper dollars like the 25-cent bills they issued in the 1920s." Okay. What about the 1 coin, the It's a first-edition, right. Maybe it'll be worth something someday.

"Ha," says Hirsch. "The government made so many loonies about 200 million are already in circulation they'll never be worth anything." final editions isn't unusual. It happened when the British recently withdrew their one-pound notes. It also occurred In Australia when that country buried its buck. Watson adds even after the dollar coin officially replaces the bill, paper dollars will always be accepted as legal tender.

But the most valuable bills are usually first-edition banknotes or examples of an especially short-lived series. In the 1954 edition, for example, signatures of the Bank of Canada governor and his deputy were changed five times before the bill was redesigned several years later. A bill with the right combination of signatures can fetch more than 11,000, says Hirsch, while others from the same year As of July 1. banks and trust companies have been ordered to return all dollar bills to one of the Bank of Canada's nine regional offices in exchange for the coin equivalent Once they fall into the hands of the central bank, they'll be pressed into huge paper shredders and turned into landfill. "After a while, you think of money as Just a lot of paper," says Bill Watson, deputy agent at the central bank's largest regional office in Toronto, where 200 million bills of all denominations were destroyed last year.

Across Canada almost a billion pieces of paper money were turned into mulch by the government in 1988. Watson says boarding bills especially owner of the Rare Find coin shop In downtown Vancouver. "I don't think hoarding them will ever produce a profit for anybody." "As a rule, the last Issue of any currency Is the least valuable." adds Klaus Hirsh, who's been dealing In dollars and cents for two decades near a busy downtown Toronto intersection. "I wouldn't save it." sneers Hirsch. leaning on a glass showcase packed with rare coins and paper money from around the world.

"But there are always people out there who hoard them. "Most of the time, they eventually spend it in a year or to when they get short of cash." in circulation. But. as the countdown begins, Bank of Canada officials estimate 30-45 million dollars could escape the grinding teeth of gov-. crnment shredders.

Some of the bills will simply be lost. others will be scooped up by dians banking that the bucks will eventually worth more than their face value. "It's i futile effort," says Paul Margolis, Hundreds march to protest Ottawa arms show B.C. nurses work to rule to press demands VANCOUVER (CP) Administrators at some British Columbia hospitals worked through the holiday weekend as unionized nurses refused to do any work not directly related nursing care. But the impact of the ban designed to demonstrate the resolve of -If 2j 4 i- around the world, organizers say.

Some 400 companies from 16 countries will set up booths to display their weapons, communications equipment, tents and computerized simulators. The exhibition is held every two years. But this year, Ottawa city council decided it will no longer rent municipally owned property for the show. The Defence Department is a major participant, although the federal government no longer organizes the event In the Commons on Friday, Mary Collins, associate defence minister, said the exhibition was a cost-efficient way to bring the department up to date on the latest in training technology. But the demonstrators said ARMX promotes the arms trade, and thus, promotes killing.

They say Canadian weapons often end up in the hands of some of the world's worst human-rights vio-' lators. 'We can stop war "If we can stop the arms trade, we can stop the arms race and if we can stop the arms race, we can stop war," said Leonard -Johnson, head of the peace group Project Ploughshares. The protest was led by a rough- -looking group, many dressed in black leather, with their faces covered with bandannas. Behind them came members of peace groups and political -movements, waving placards, singing protest songs from the 1960s. As they marched, youngsters -ran alongside, stopping now and again to scribble "Stop ARMX" on the sidewalk in chalk.

OTTAWA (CP) Waving black flags and chanting anti-war slogans, some 1,500 peace activists marched yesterday to protest ARMX '89. the international arms exhibition opening today. The demonstrators, from tots to teens to seniors, halted holiday traffic as they marched from downtown to Lansdowne Park, site of the controversial trade show first organized in 1983. Denounce arms trade At the 'park, they gathered in an area cordoned off by police and listened to speakers denounce Canada's involvement in the arms trade. Nearby, a dozen people in the exhibition stood quietly in the late afternoon sun and watched.

"My message is for the people in there," yelled Natalie Turner of the Student Christian Movement of Canada, pointing to the stadium. "We don't want to see our planet destroyed by bombs, by garbage and by hatred." Today, members of the Alliance for Non-Violent Action say they will block the entrance to Lansdowne Park, and leaders expect some will be arrested. Richard Sanders of the Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade, said Canada's reputation as a peacemaker is called into question by its involvement in ARMX. The demonstration will "show the world that the statement that Canada is a peacemaker is a myth," he told protesters before the march began. "Canada is anything but a peacekeeper." The three-day trade show, sponsored by the Toronto-based Baxter Publishing is expected to draw as many as 15,000 buyers, sellers and soldiers from tit Co V' guie l.suu-memDer u.u nurses union to win a new contract seemed to be sporadic.

"At a small hospital like this, we Eretty well do everything," nurse orna Durant said in an interview 'yesterday from St. Bartholomew's "Hospital in the tiny Fraser Canyon community of Lytton. "We're always giving out the diet food trays, answering the phones almost impossible not to do these things." The ban on non-nursing duties, instituted Sunday, could be a prelude to further job action as the union and the Health Labor Relations Association, bargaining agent for 144 hospitals and institutions, return to the 'bargaining table today. After issuing strike notice last following a 94-per-cent strike mandate from its members, the union said there would be no withdrawl of services before it assessed the outcome of today's talks. The nurses want a 33-per-cent raise over one year, benefits 43 per cent on a negotiable timetable and more say in how they Iperform their jobs.

The hospitals not tabled a wage offer. The kind of work being refused by 'the nurses includes housekeeping, switchboard work, sorting records, beds, washing equipment and serving food when no dietary 'staff is available. -4 r- 1 CP Young demonstrator wears protest stickers in spikes of his hair yesterday. Manitoba officials believe Impaired-driving charges hit record Bow forest fires set to create jobs in impoverished areas never came and people eventually realized it." He said he believes the proportion of accidents involving alcohol is about 60 per cent. In 1987, the average number of impaired driving charges across Canada was 500 offences per 100,000 residents.

Alberta was the leading province in charges with 830 offences per 100,000 people, while Quebec trailed with 397. Ninety-two per cent of the people charged with impaired driving in 1987 were men, the figures show. "My own feeling is that these public-awareness programs seem to have been working," said Holly Johnson of the Ottawa-based Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics. "But although the message is getting through to the great majority of people, there still is a group of chronic offenders." John Bates, president of the lobby group People to Reduce Impaired Driving Everywhere, said the figures are a function of the strictness of enforcement by Canada's police forces. "The much-vaunted government crackdown TORONTO (CP) Impaired driving has fallen to its lowest level since national figures were first collected 15 years ago, says Statistics Canada.

In 1987 the last year for which figures were available about 128,000 people were charged with impaired driving offences, a 21-per-cent drop from the peak year of 1981 when 162,000 charges were laid. It was the fourth consecutive annual decline, reflecting increased efforts by police, community groups and governments to stop drinking drivers, observers say. $1 -billion grain subsidy was unnecessary, report suggests WINNIPEG (CP) Each spring in Manitoba, Mother Nature pro-f vides the fuel but man provides the spark. While many forest fires in the province are the result of careless-'; ness and poor land management, Natural Resources Department cials believe some fires are set merely to create jobs or provide en- tertainment. "We do have, in certain communi-! ties, strong suspicions that there's "employment behind what's going on," said Bill Medd, the department's head of fire management.

There have been 329 fires to date in 1989, an increase of 150 per cent from last year, said Harvey Boyle, director of regional resources. The issue of deliberately set fires has become a major concern this spring as RCMP and natural resources investigators probe a suspicious fire near Ashern, 140 kilometres north of Winnipeg. Arson has been officially listed as 11 kln.A tknf IninnJ ments was sufficient to provide a safety net for fanners without Ottawa's extra billion. A copy of the report, prepared by the consulting firm of Deloitte Has-kins Sells Associates and submitted to Agriculture Canada last year, was obtained by Ottawa researcher Ken Rubin under the federal Access to Information Act. The stabilization plan, mainly fe-derally financed, provided for fanners in 1987.

Federal officials said the Sl-billion subsidy was to compensate farmers for low grain prices caused by a trade war between Europe and the United States. But the report says revenue from grain prices and stabilization pay katchewan farmers. But the report to the Agriculture Department says the payment "may not have been needed" because most prairie grain farmers were already scheduled to receive large payments from the Western Grain Stabilization Program, the newspaper said. About three-quarters of the western grain farmers were eligible for subsidy and stabilization payments. TORONTO (CP) A federal report suggests a $l-billion federal subsidy payment to Canadian grain farmers in 1987 may have been unnecessary, says the Toronto Globe and Mail.

Prime Minister Brian Mulroney promised the $l-billion subsidy in October 1986, two weeks before a Saskatchewan provincial election. It was distributed to grain growers in 1987 with almost half going to Sas seems to be more fires," Medd said. "Where economies are strong, you see less fires." RCMP Cpl. Ken Morrison of Pine Falls, on the east side of Lake Winnipeg, said it is well known in the community that fires are set to guarantee summer jobs. "We know that there is a high probability that some of these fires were set for employment," Morrison said.

"But to prove who deliberately set the fires is another thing." Near some communities, dry meadows and light bush can create a cottage industry, said Medd. "It's almost to the point where the fine fuels on some of these communities have become a renewable resource. They grow every year, they burn every spring and we pay them to put out the fires." There is also concern about people who set fires for fun. Conservation officers have witnessed instances in remote communities where small fires are set so residents can watch water bombers put them out, he said. "We know we've found children that have lit fires because they want to watch a water bomber or helicopter," Medd said.

Three years ago, after a spate of small unexplained fires around Norway House, department officials removed all water bombers stationed at the nothern community, ending the fire problems. However, deliberate fires account for only part of the huge number of human-caused fires every year. Open camp fires, along with farmers who burn their fields, are other prime causes. OFFER I SPECIAL Ol ul Bin i McGill CARRIER PAYS YOU $500 pther fires to destroy more than square kilometres of timber. men were seen lighting fires in ditches south of Ashern.

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