The Vancouver Sun from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada • 3

Qt Vanrourcr Sun GREATER VANCOUVER A3 Technicality puts land deal up in air -f I'. 2 flV immm mM mm'mmf V' wpTOi -J r- ii fef Jtllf 'i IM pRsK MA piisiwy liiaiiisiaifliiaipW til mk tp-i 7 ra rr IrWWii mmmmmym mU 0 lvfAt vrH-iv'v! r- i By MICHAEL BOCKING Some directors of the Greater Vancouver regional district said Tuesday a change in the composition of the district board means Delta landowner George Spetifore may be denied permission to subdivide his farm property and realize millions of dollars in profit. The property was recently excluded from the agricultural land reserve by the provincial cabinet, which overruled the B.C. Land Commission, setting off a storm of controversy over preservation of farmland. Now, the GVRD directors have discovered that due to a technicality in the complicated procedure governing farmland exclusions Spetifore must reapply to the GVRD and to Delta municipal council for a zoning change before he can start subdividing.

The new application is necessary because the district's official regional plan was revised in the period between when Spetifore made his original rezon-ing request and when the cabinet ruled for the exclusion. And it's not certain that the regional district will change the zoning, even though the board allowed a bylaw approving such a change to pass three readings early last year. The composition of the current GVRD board is different from last year's board, and the recent political controversy surrounding the issue could sway some votes. Surrey Aid. Bob Bose, a new member strongly opposed to removing farmland from the reserve, said the different makeup of the board could easily mean Spetifore's property will not receive a regional plan amendment.

Added Vancouver Aid. Harry Rankin: "It is only the crassest government which would overrule the agricultural land reserve." However, Delta Mayor Ernie Burnett (also a GVRD director) insisted the issue is only a technical detail. "It makes very little difference unless the majority of the directors have changed their minds," he said. GVRD board chairman Allan Em-mott said he didn't know if the cabinet can overrule the GVRD if the board rules against Spetifore's interests. Lane switch in tunnel speeds flow of traffic Sttv Botch photo WEST VAN DAINTY faces off against North Van Voracious in spaghetti-eating race to kick off 1981 Kinsmen Mothers' March Tuesday.

West Vancouver Mayor Derrick Humphreys, left, lost out to North Vancouver District's Mayor Don Bell in the contest. ACCUSED IN YABLONSKI SLAYING Interview left him 'a mess Three lanes of traffic moved north through the George Massey Tunnel without a hitch during today's morning rush-hour the first day of a lane switch described by highway engineers as "contraflow." Northbound traffic in the fast lane was diverted smoothly into one of the two southbound lanes of the tunnel under the Fraser River on Highway 99. Cars travelled near the posted speed with only a row of orange lane markers separating the opposing flow in the western tube of the tunnel. There was no backup for traffic approaching the tunnel at the peak flow time of 7:30 a.m., when cars normally are crawling at slow speeds for hundreds of metres. Neither was any backup reported at the Oak Street Bridge end of the highway.

Department of highways engineers said the Knight Street turn-off from the three-lane section north of the tunnel was drawing off enough of the northbound traffic to avert congestion at the bridge. However, the lighter southbound Lobby hit by A smoke bomb that went off Tuesday in the lobby of a building at 1199 West Hastings housing the United States consulate was to protest alleged American involvement in El Salvador, a city police spokesman said today. He said a typewritten communique was found in the lobby linking the action to "the Reagan administration and its murderous campaign to quash the El Salvadorean liberation movement." No one was injured when the device ignited in the lobby of the building sending billows of dense black smoke through the lobby. Damage was traffic was slowed because two lanes had to merge into one. The new traffic pattern began following months of work on the approaches, as a means of unstopping the bottleneck of commuters from Delta and points south.

Three lanes of northbound traffic will be designated between the hours of 6 a.m. and 8:30 a.m. on weekdays, unless the weather is foggy. In that event, radio notices will be broadcast to commuters and the routings will revert to the normal two lanes in either direction. Normal two-lane traffic will be routed through the tunnel in the afternoons.

Highway department officials were waiting anxiously at 6 a.m. to see how the new traffic flow would work. Two tow trucks and a wrecker were poised at the north end of the tunnel, and another tow truck was standing by at the southend. Highway patrolmen and RCMP traffic police rolled back and forth through the tunnel, keeping an eye on things, but there were no incidents during the morning rush. smoke bomb Two other smoke bombs unignited were found later on the second and third floors of the high rise building the same floors occupied by the consulate.

A fire department spokesman said it appeared the bomb was ignited by someone setting a paper bag on fire on the concrete floor. He added: "We just got there and it looked like an incendiary device lying on the floor. Somebody had put a bag down and walked out." An estimated 12,000 civilians died last year in the course of the bloody civil war being waged in El Salvador. said, adding that Harrison likely erased the tape by simultaneously depressing the record and fast-forward buttons on the tape recorder. Nielsen agreed with suggestions by Clarke that RCMP were prepared to use every technique, including browbeating, polygraph testing, hypnosis, an undercover officer in police cells, electronic eavesdropping and the 'Mutt and Jeff" hard line, soft touch routine on Harrison.

Harrison's trial had resumed Tuesday following a ltt-day fitness hearing. The jury deliberated only 20 minutes before finding the accused to be sane and fit to stand trial. The body of Yablonski, a 40-year-old mother of three, was found Feb. 3, 1980, six months after she disappeared early Aug. 3, 1979, from the 7-Eleven store in Abbotsford, where she worked the graveyard shift.

Nielsen agreed with Clarke that when Harrison, 28, was grilled March 14, 1980, he was not given the standard warning that he had the right to remain silent. On one occasion, the accused threw his hands in the air, fought back tears and rolled himself into a fetal position, staring blankly at the wall and ceiling, the policeman testified. Nielsen agreed he repeated questions up to a dozen times and played on Harrison's emotions by showing him a 7-Eleven emblem and pictures of Yablonski and a closeup view of the site where her skeletal remains were found. "You started suggesting he should imagine how they (remains) got there. You wanted him to get his imagination going," Clarke suggested.

Nielsen agreed, adding "I also hoped he would give me a confession." Questioned by Hogarth, Nielsen said that while Harrison was being driven to Abbotsford for questioning March 13, 1980, he managed to undo his handcuffs by using a small metal object he had fashioned from a ballpoint pen ink refill. He agreed with Hogarth that Harrison was "cunning and crafty and loved to lead policemen on." The trial continues. By WYNG CHOW RCMP used everything short of physical violence to break down a man suspected of murdering Abbotsford gtocery store clerk Shirley Jean Ya-blonski, a defence lawyer contended Tuesday. lLawyer Jay Clarke suggested during cross-examination of Const. Henrik Been Nielsen that police employed eVery technique short of physical vio-; leiice, injecting a truth serum or using electric shock treatments in efforts to break down Terrance Douglas Harrison, i used the techniques we felt would be in our favor to get a confession from.

Terry Harrison," jeplied Nielsen. The police witness told the B.C. Su-'preme Court jury in New Westminster that after the gruelling three-hour interview concluded, the accused was "a psychological mess." Nielsen agreed with Crown counsel Dong Hogarth, however, that Harrison was not reduced to such psychological 'elly" that he didn't have the mental alertness to cleverly erase the taped interview after the policeman left the room. The accused then laughed about his feat and getting the best of police after he was taken back to his cell, Nielsen TV babies just don't bother ICBCHITS EMPLOYEES The Insurance Corporation of B.C. is taking disciplinary action against 14 employees who may have used insider knowlege of last November's rate increases when they cancelled their car insurance premiums.

The company is also planning to drop the heavy hand of its displeasure on about 30 agents who allegedly violated various corporation regulations in a last-minute selling rush Oct. 31. ICBC spokesman Bev Penhall said each of the 14 employees cancelled his insurance in the week before the rate increase announcement was made and renewed the coverage at the old rates. On an average premium, Penhall said, the manoeuver would have saved about $90. Penhall said each employee will be asked to pay the difference between the old rate and the new rate and will have placed on his file a letter of reprimand.

Jewel theft probed City police are investigating the theft of about $60,000 worth of jewelry from the home of Vancouver lawyer Robert Allan on Monday night. A police spokesman said a thief entered the house at 1781 West 62nd, ransacked it, and then left with the to read tant to the many secondary school students for whom English is a second language. When you can write simple declarative sentences, your options are infinite. You can garnish, expand, polish and improvise. You can work for lean, punchy Hemingway prose or Victor Hugo's complexity.

I asked my writing students to read Hemingway's The Old Man And The Sea and try to cut 100 expendable words out of it. Try it. Hugo was in another writing world in Les Miser-ables, he has an 823-word sentence. JAZZ IS THE MOST FREE-wheeling form of improvisional music. Count Basie's piano solos are based on a subtle left hand and a right hand that barely sketches the melody in one- and two-finger pecks.

Dave Brubeck creates an enormously complex combination of Bachian block chords with the left hand and soaring orchestrations with the right. But both of them are brilliant soloists because they both understand the dynamics and flow of melodic creativity. They know the music. Arthur Miller's Willie Loman boasted that he was a good salesman, not because he had a great product, but because he knew his territory. That leads us to the failure of secondary-school English teaching.

The kids are being taught the words, but they don't know the music. They are not being taught that sentence-writing is just putting one word behind another in logical sequence. You have to know the territory. So many university freshmen are failing English because they have been taught a failed system. jaw Mi 1 vsMt' iLmmm BOYD 'f A Witnesses sought Vancouver police are asking for witnesses to a fatal accident Saturday morning.

Dave Pritchard, 25, of 602 1660 Barclay, was riding a bicycle at 7:50 a.m. in the 1400-block Kingsway when he was crushed by a garbage truck. Witnesses are asked to call 665-2296. taught us a forbidden system called parsing. The old British school system used parsing to teach Latin.

Garner used it to teach the elements of sentence structure. It involved a form of recitation in which every word in a sentence was isolated, analysed and its relation to all other words in the sentence was established. At first, it seemed impossible. I remember those moments of agony, standing by my desk, parsing a sentence like "The dog chewed a bone:" "Dog common noun, third person singular, neutral gender, nominative case, subject of the verb chewed. Chewed transitive verb, active voice, third person singular, indicative mood, past tense.

Bone common noun, third person singular, neutral gender, objective case, object of the verb chewed." Hour after hour, sentence after sentence, never knowing what in hell I was talking about. And then came the glorious day. understood it. It all began to make sense (and sentences). Suddenly it was as logical as following the plan for a model airplane.

Parsing was phased out because some of it is redundant and individual recitation is time-consuming. But, dammit, it worked. Once we learned the functions of nouns and verbs, and their little DENNY WE PRESENTED THE DOCU-; mented evidence yesterday that al-; most half the freshman students at UBC lack the essential reading and composition skills to pass a basic English exam. That's not news; sim-! ply a new record; the failure figure in the freshman exam has escalated overthepastfouryears. We tried to make some points: That high school graduates, even honor students, can't put thoughts on paper because they and their teachers are products of the McLuhan-electronic switchover.

Kids figure any story can be told in 26 minutes because that's how tele-l' vision does it. So why bother to read a big book? Television's babies don't I- read, so how can they be expected to l' write? In subtle ways, the B.C. school system has let itself be McLuhan-ized and has de-empha-l- sized the importance of grammar and composition teaching. I'm glad Pop Garner got tome be- fore McLuhan. Garner is in that great classroom in the sky, marking entrance exams and cursing in Swahili at misplaced modifiers, I can make a living in writing, not because I was touched at birth with pixie dust, but because my stolid I- nind was walloped in Grade 7 by William S.

Garner, the man who I taught me to write coherently. i POP (AS WE CALLED HIM, OUT of earshot), was an elderly man who had been demoted from the second- ary system to the small elementary school I attended. He spoke many languages including perfect English and half a dozen African dialects. He used the strap generously, had no use for school board administra tors and, against their directives, he pals, the pronouns, adverbs and adjectives, we had the grammatical nails and lumber to build sound, sensible sentences. With a little help from our prepositions and transitions, we bred our sentences and whelped paragraphs.

It was a grand learning experience. FIVE YEARS AGO, I TAUGHT creative writing to adults. There was no way, in eight weeks, that I could teach them parsing, so I compressed Pop Garner's system into what I called the Boyd Theory of Parts Department Sentence Structure. Imagine that you are assembling radios. You have a work bench and a wall filled with compartments that contain the components of a radio: Tubes, wires, transistors, coils, plates, tetrodes, switches and cases.

You can be taught by rote to link components to produce sound. But when you know why part A connects to part and why sound is produced, only then are you capable of perhaps producing a superior radio. Sentences are built the same way, by reaching into the bins for nouns, verbs, modifiers. A pattern of logic must be followed in the assembly or the sentence won't work, any more than a misbuilt radio will make music. The teaching of step-by-step sentence structure is doubly impor i -a'v- "It sure beats woking." i GREATER VANCOUVER TRANSIT SYSTEM For details see our ad on page B6 ErsT eery.