The Vancouver Sun from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada • 23

I THE COMMENTARY PAGES SATURDAY.DECEMBER 2, 2000 THE VANCOUVER SUN A23 COMMENTARY EDITOR: CHRIS ROSE 605-2137 Crosepacpress.SOUtham.ca No time to age gracefully -it mil- I I in. They are just trying to exhaust me with all their lawyers. They drag us on and on and on. But I'm not going away. They should know that 1 TERRY JACKS Musician and founder of Environmental Watch NICK DIDLICKVANCOUVER SUN Terry Jacks' longest season The Port Mellon pulp mill tries to beat down an environmental crusader, but the former pop star won't back down.

0f aside," he says. "We are now at a time when we are supposed to be raising standards, not lowering them. The ministry of environment's mandate is to protect the environment. What's being protected here is not the environment but the shareholders' pocketbooks." On May 7, 1997, Jacks advised Liz Lilly, the province's deputy director of waste management, of Environmental Watch's intention to appeal the decision to vary the permit. The pulp mill's lawyers challenged Jacks' right to do so on grounds Environmental Watch could have no standing because it was not a person.

Lilly agreed, but granted Jacks standing as an individual and extended the time required to launch the appeal. It was the spring of 1998 when the pulp mill argued before the Environmental Appeal Board that Jacks should have no standing there. The EAB disagreed and upheld the deputy director's decision. But before any hearings could occur, the pulp mill appealed to the Supreme Court of B.C. The case couldn't be heard until spring of 1999.

The B.C. Supreme Court also ruled against the pulp mill, upheld the deputy director's original decision and granted Jacks' costs, but he points out that by then four years had passed and not for another 19 months would he be able to take his simple argument before the EAB. "So now, in the year 2000, 1 am finally appealing the original amendment," he says. "They are just trying to exhaust me with all their lawyers. They drag us on and on and on.

But I'm not going away. They should know that." This solitary gadfly's insistence that mill owners be held to account for pollutants measured in parts per million must be enormously irritating to those who run a huge industrial complex that uses more electricity each day than the entire province of Prince Edward Island. Yet there's also something ennobling about the simple drama of one lonely citizen insisting against all odds that in a democracy we must all be accountable, no matter how big and powerful Bhumeislandnet.com Jacks says he didn't take the tip at face value. Instead he filed freedom of information requests with the provincial environment ministry for data comparing emissions from pulp mill stacks with the levels set under the pollution permit granted by Victoria. The bureaucrats led him on a merry chase, he says.

But he persisted and he finally got the statistics he sought. "I looked at them and I said: 'It's confirmed. They are out of compliance. So I decided I was going to do a private prosecution." He launched his case, only to have it taken over by the attorney-general's department, then under the jurisdiction of now-Premier Ujjal Dosanjh. This has been a recurring pattern for the provincial government when private citizens seek to hold polluters accountable to the provincial laws that ostensibly govern them In recent years, Victoria has taken over and then stayed a number of private prosecutions, including several launched by commercial fishing interests against polluters in Burrard Inlet.

This time, Jacks says, he was told the province had taken over the case because it would be difficult for him to win and, in any event, it wouldn't be in the public interest to carry the prosecution forward. "So they stayed the proceedings," Jacks says. "Typical, you know." In the meantime, the pulp mill had applied to the province's regional waste manager for an amendment to the permit with which it hadn't been complying. On April 29, 1997, the amended permit PA-3095 was issued, part of it providing for specified levels of emission for sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxide. "The permit now lets them do legally what was illegal before," Jacks says.

"Now they are allowed to emit three times as much sulphur dioxide and twice as much nitrogen oxide yet now they are in compliance with their permit." But Jacks argues that Section 11 of the province's Waste Management Act is explicit. A manager may amend a permit "for the protection of the environment." No other reason is given. "I want the change to that permit set Stephen Hume All these honours are a manifestation of Jacks' other life, the one that saw his music soar into the international stratosphere more than 16 million records sold from two releases alone, according to the B.C. Encyclopedia. The singer refuses to talk sales numbers although he will admit to the fact that a quarter of a century later his 1974 single, Seasons in the Sun, still ranks as the best selling release by any Canadian pop star.

He's produced for bands like Chilliwack, the Beach Boys and individual recording artists like Nana Mouskouri. Somewhere along the way, he segued from glitzy entertainer into crusading citizen, founding a small group called Environmental Watch and morphing into a pitbull nightmare for big corporate polluters. This day he's up to his eyeballs in homework from his big, black binder, prepping for an appearance before the province's Environmental Appeal Board in Vancouver next week. His lawyer, Susan Fraser, is out for a lunch-hour run at the moment, but all morning they've been sweating down the long and tortuous paper trail that brought them to this point. The story began five years ago when a call from a shift worker at Howe Sound Pulp and Paper in Port Mellon tipped Jacks that the mill was not in compliance with its emission permits for sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxide.

Sulphur dioxide is a colourless but foul smelling gas that contributes to acid rain, damages vegetation, and may cause coughs, asthma, bronchitis and eye irritation. Nitrogen oxide is another prime contributor to acid rain after it mixes with other chemical compounds in the atmosphere. Both are strictly controlled across North America. Trevor Lautens This is about old parents with young childrea A tiny demographic slice? a charter member of this group, once thought so. But then there's my 1947 Purple De Soto Theory, which goes: You are a car collector.

You hunt out a 1947 purple De Soto. The owner paid, you drive away, smugly certain that you have the last 1947 purple De Soto in captivity. Three blocks away, you pass a 1947 purple De Soto. Moral: Nobody is so rare. I run into scads of old parents with toddlers at their knee a proud and, generally, happy club.

Look closely and you can spot us: Greying fathers, mothers often significantly younger, and both of us handling children with a different, tenser air that distinguishes us from indulgent grandparents merely on duty for an afternooa And young in talk: RESPs more often than RRSPs, the vocabulary of sleepovers, the crippling bill from the orthodontist. For all the pose of old-grump and thorn-stick-shaking in this space, I am among the closet young-spirited 261 days younger than Jean Chretien, not even at the high noon of life, it's only about 10 a.m., lads. And not tamely to be tagged Yesterday's Dad, you young whippersnappers. My "little" ones are 10, 12 and 15 (another just turned 25, the oldest a mature 4L But those are two other stories). The Old Parents' Club members share this: We are not old.

We are not allowed to be old. My children force me to be younger than many a man a generation behind me. Not for me and my wife, did I mention her, the heartbeat and unruffled optimist of the house? the luxury cruise, Palm Spring winters, eternal golf, let alone Accordion Band Thursdays at Jubilant Acres Rest Home. The kitchen window sill is lined with the armies of Warhammer. Pokemon lingers.

I know when The Spice Girls arrived, flourished, vanished from kids' radar. And Mr. Bean. For me, Harry Potter is an open book The Biggest's the 15-year-old's room is decorated in Teen Weird. The Littlest is mad about horses, trots me through The Usborne Complete Book of Riding Pony Care frequendy, waits resdessly in a lineup for riding lessons.

The Middlest wears a T-shirt that says "Canada IS Hockey," and at 12 has shoulders like a defencemaa They can't fully grasp that they are aunts and uncle to my grandchildren aged seven and four. Art Linkletter ask your mom who he wasis was right: Kids say the darnedest things. Few of which bear repeating, though forever cherished by their parents. Aged four, the Littlest and I watched a movie. After a few minutes I said: "This is boring." She replied without looking sideways: "Only the talking." Getting older, she reflected the angst of the Zeitgeist "I think I'm in a good mood, but I'm not positive." The Middlest has a quirky way with words.

He summed up the show This Hour Has 22 Minutes: "It's basically teasing the news." Older now, he recently displayed his pants with gaping knees: "These tattered clothes are a symbol of my slavery." Falls flat on the page, eh? But any parent can provide the music and gestures in their secret ear and eye and heart. When the Littlest leaves the nest I will have served 52 years of fifth-rate fathering. But I will be only 76, and Jean Chretien just in his sixth term as prime minister. The prospect fair shimmers, no? lautensaxionet.coin house. Regular screwdrivers and pliers, for example, require users to bend their wrists.

"You can exert more force when your wrist is in a neutral posture," says Smiley. "That's true of handling any tools, but tools are not generally shaped that way. Your hand has to adapt to tools, rather than tools to your hand." This becomes critical when we're stressed or tired both of which are increasing, studies show. "We're really pressing the limits," says Smiley. "It leads to falling asleep, accidents, inappropriate behaviours.

A lot of road accidents have to do with typical human limitations. The big one is inattention. People want to pay attention, and really try to, but if they're doing something really automated like driving, it's difficult to pay attention constantly. There can be distractions and if you're distracted at a critical moment when somebody ahead slows, or a pedestrian appears, you have an accident" True "accidents" though are rare. In most cases someone, or some badly designed thing or process, is to blame.

The theory is fine, but since few of us design highways or medical procedures, what can we do as Individuals? Personally, I'm going to slow down on badly designed roads. I'll even ask my health care providers if they've taken human factors into account. I'm going to make a symbolic start by tossing out my veggie peeler. diottepacpreiajouthuiici Letters are on B6. PENDER HARBOUR To the west, beyond the dark whaleback of Texada Island and across the pewter-coloured Strait of Georgia, the kingly bulk of Mount Arrowsmith and the uplands of Vancouver Island's snowbelt already glitter with early winter.

There's an eagle riding the up-drafts and just off this deeply notched shoreline about 80 kilometres northwest of Vancouver, the surface of the sea is etched with bizarre patterns, a series of immense cat's paws swirling first this way and then that. "There's a confluence of winds here," my host is explaining. "They come from the northwest down Malaspina Strait, funnelled in between Texada and the mainland. And they come up Georgia Strait from the southeast. Right here is where they mix." The view from Terry Jacks' light-filled house, all dazzling white walls and tiled floors, is even more stunning than the eclectic art collection he's assem- bled over the years.

But these days, what he can't see occupies more of this middle-aged pop star's attention than what he can. Behind him on the kitchen table is a massive black binder. It bristles with scores of indexing tabs intended to guide him through the arcane maze of administrative documents, scientific reports, bureaucrats' letters, counter-letters, legal briefs and information summaries that have come to characterize what began as a simple question: "Is it okay for bureaucrats to arbitrarily change environmental rules to benefit corporate shareholders at the expense of the environment those rules are supposed to protect?" he wondered. It led to a puzzle that's taken half a decade simply to get before the Environmental Appeal Board for an answer. On the wall beyond the kitchen, two gold records hang above the vintage 1949 Jukebox complete with original graffiti scratched into the paint Around the corner there's a platinum disk.

Who knows where the nine Juno Awards are in the welter of plaques, trophies, certificates, statuary and other prizes that clutter his trophy room? The life Peeling carrots a while ago I became distracted. Within that split second of inattention, I managed to peel some skin off my finger. Ouch. My peeler, a clumsy thing in the first place, allowed for no margin of error. It is badly designed but not important in my larger scheme of things.

After all my finger healed quickly and, well, I just don't expect much of kitchen implements. They're hardly matters of life or death. Roads, surgical procedures and methods to detect cancer, however, are matters of life and death. And too often they contribute to death rather than life because, like common tools and a plethora of other things from the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant to the program functions on a VCR human foibles haven't been considered seriously enough in their design. I know, I know.

This sounds ridiculous. But consider the evidence, and hear out the experts. Imagine: You're driving on a road built decades ago. Your lane enters an unlit tunnel and at the same time curves. Physiologically, human eyes require several minutes to totally adjust to the darkness, and so you fail to fully comprehend the curve of the road and drift over the centre line.

This is no problem as long as there are no oncoming vehicles. If there are, you have a high chance of a head-on collision. You're in Florida, voting in the presidential election. You stare, confused, at the ballot. Is that the line for the party of Al Gore, Ralph Nader or George W.

Bush? Flummoxed, con- and death principle of design: Humans are fallible Sick Children accepted full responsibility for the death this fall of a teenager during a supposedly routine operation. Seventeen-year-old Sanchia Bulgin died hours after surgeons removed her gallbladder. Said Dr. Alan Goldbloom, senior vice-president of clinical and academic affairs at the hospital: "We've identified errors during her care here both at the (physician) level and at the nursing The fact is, people make mistakes. "I'm only humanl" we say.

Yet too often we design our lives, our gadgets, processes, procedures, even life-and-death equipment, with a hearty belief that everyone who will use them will do so flawlessly. "Most tools are not designed for use by humans," says Dr. Alison Smiley, a human factors consultant who teaches at the University of Toronto. Ergonomics offers a solution: Account for human factors In design, and make mistakes hard to make. For example, say experts, two people should go over a check-list before performing a dangerous task, such as administering a potentially lethal drug.

Teams should be assembled and trained based on ability to work together. Things should be designed so they don't fit where they're not supposed to. An example of good design a few years ago, while leaded fuel was being phased out, was the gas receptacle on new cars that was deliberately built too small for nozzles for leaded fuel. On the surface, it all seems just common sense. The evidence shows it's 1 not common at all, hence the developing discipline of human factors analysis or ergonomics.

Economists examine how peculiarities of human behaviour collide with procedures or designs, setting us up to err. "It's about understanding human limitations," says Smiley, a member of the Canadian Association of Ergonomists and chair of its new certification committee, which so far has certified 27 Canadian specialists with backgrounds in psychology, kinesiology and engineering. The discipline's roots go back to the Second World War, when American psychologists and engineers were asked to reduce errors on militar assembly lines. It was reinvigorated in the U.S. in the 1970s after a series of high-profile aviation mishaps, and is Increasingly commonplace in areas like road design, aviation and the operation of nuclear power plants.

The Greek word ergonomic refers to the science of work. Often we see It in relation to computer desks or chairs, and furniture-makers are Increasingly marketing their products as "ergonomic" whether they are soundly designed or not. To see why ergonomics Is growing, consider the ghastly vehicle crashes or medical horror talcs so frequently in the news. Check out the internet site www.baddesigns.com for pictures of scores of really dumb designs (and a few chuckles). But you don't have to go far to see badly designed items.

Look around your I Deborah Jones scious of the line behind you, you quickly punch your best guess then go home to watch as the confusing design of the ballot becomes grounds for legal actions in the election. Early this week, a report was released about the deaths of 12 babies who had surgery in a Winnipeg hospital. The report said the majority of the infants could have lived, but for errors made. Imagine if one of those babies were yours. Imagine wondering if your child would have lived, had the hospital's medical procedures been designed to screen out human errors.

Some victims of bad design don't have to imagine anything. Last June, the parents of a young girl settled their suit against the B.C. Women and Children's Hospital. The hospital admitted that a string of unfortunate events in 1998, many plagued by human errors, resulted in a doctor injecting the cancer-fighting drug vincristine into the seven-year-old's spinal column instead of intravenously. She died.

Shockingly, her death was one in a scries of similar deaths in North American hospitals. Just recently Toronto's Hospital for 1.