SPRING - SUMMER ’88 CLEARANCE “All Sale Stock Must Go” Kaufman “Defrosters” Waterproof Boots 3 styles $49" $69" Reg. $75.00 Reg. $95.00 Naturalizer Fall Style Shoes ah...............................$39" • Some $19.99 Shoes left - many narrow sizes Naturalized _I SHOE SHOPS • PARKWOOD MALL 564-8304 Members of the Canadian Airborne Regiment will literally drop in on Canadian Forces Station Baldy Hughes Friday and Saturday. The parachute drop involving about 150 from the regiment, which is part of the strategic services force based in Petawawa, Ontario, is part of a national exercise to assure immediate response in the defence of Canada, Lightning Strike 88. The air drop in the exercise will be followed by an attempt to expel inflitrators (played by Canadian Forces personnel from Baldy Hughes) who are supposed to have taken over part of the base itself, according to the script. For most Prince George residents, the exercise will be invisible. Those living west of the city centre may see part of the air drop, about 20 kilometres from Baldy Hughes. The only sounds of blanks being fired will be at Baldy Hughes itself, according to acting commanding officer Captain Neil Knapp. BASEfTO BE 'INVADED! Local news The Prince George Citizen — Wednesday, January 27, 1988 — 3 BOB MILLER 562-2441 City editor Local 503 EUROPE FOR 18 - 35’s TREND FOR B.C. SAWMILLS: Pay in full by Feb. 15th and SAVE up to *275 per person Singles! Travel by Motorcoach! Stay in camps! Have the security of the group. CALL NOW! Sam Sm Ivud 3 .Hies Downtown 564-7000 Parkwood 564-8700 Pine Centre 564-9700 nrp a Grade 12 Duchess Park student, shows his relief after, complet- home to study for his next two tests, scheduled for later this week. Meanwhile, AO ing yet another exam. But his mood probably won’t last long as he heads back inside, his fellow students were buried in exam papers Tuesday. More bucks per board foot by KEN BERNSOHN Staff reporter When the provincial government brought in its new forest policy Sept. 15, one aim was to force sawmills to make higher value products, instead of just lumber. Some firms already were. But now the rush is on. TCompanies all over the province are talking to us about added-value products, especially proposals for “finger-jointing” from the Southern Interior,” said a senior bank executive in Vancouver who asked not to be named. Brink Forest Prodticts in Prince George was one of the firms pioneering finger-jointing — a process which connects short pieces of lumber to form long pieces which are straighter and better than normal lumber for some uses. The reason more companies are interested in added-value wood products is simple: timber rights. Under new forest policy, companies with short-term, volume-based cutting rights will be able to exchange them for long-term, area-based tree farm licences but they’ll lose five to 10 per cent of the rights in the process. Under legislation proposed for the spring session, there’s a way around this: produce added-value. wood products and the goverment won’t cut back as much. Already about 2.2 billion board feet of specialty wood products — not boards at the lumber yard — are produced annually. This includes wood imported from overseas and processed in B.C. to make door stock and similar items. About 70 per cent of this is made by 131 independant secondary manufacturers in the province, according to Jack Biickert, director of the B.C. Forest Service’s strategic studies branch. “We’re looking at wood for bud-dhist prayer calendars which are in many Japanese homes, for small wooden boxes used for packaging seafood and other foods,” he said. “The biggest opportunities we see are in hemlock on the Coast and lodgepole pine in the Interior.” The 30 per cent of the specialty products from large firms are mostly produced by MacMillan Bloedel, the only forest company with a long-term research commitment, and Sauder Industries, which has been producing door stock, mouldings and other non- lumber products for decades. Sauder imports some of its wood and processes it here. In Prince George, Noranda Forest Products added to its product line without new manufacturing facilities by offering products produced by Woodland Windows in Prince George. Woodland also owns Scana Industries, which produces specialty products for Ikea furniture. Northwood, a member of the Noranda group, is also doing experimentation, according to Mike Madrigga vice-president of wood products. “The difference in price 'can be $450 to $650 U.S. instead of $200 -$300 per thousand board feet,” he said. However, Madrigga wouldn’t specify what products were being looked at. “You develop a product and you’ve got two years at most before it becomes a commodity,” he said. A more traditional, new sawmill approach is being used at Gregory Forest Products in Fort St. James. The mill has been changed to produce specialty products for the English market, with aid from both the provincial and federal go- Lowest bidder didn't win School District 57 trustees voted Tuesday to stick with the familiar when it comes to garbage collection. Central Interior Disposal was awarded a two-year contract to provide garbage service to schools in "the city limits and as far south as.'Red Rock with a bid of $1.85 per cubic yard or about $46,592 per yepr. The city of Prince George offered a bid which was $980 lower, but the trustees were reluctant to change companies after receiving “excellent service from Central Interior for the past eight years,” school superintendent Jim Imrich toEd the Citizen today. In a close vote, trustees Adrienne Radford, Bob Viergever and Katherine Hough voted yes, while trustees Ann’McQuaid and Bob Holtby opposed the motion. School board chairman Roy Stewart excluded himself from the vote due to a conflict of interest and trustee Doug Walls was absent. Imrich said the board’s decision is a bit unusual because the “usual practice is for the school board to award contracts to the lowest bidder.” ★ ★ ★ Trustees received the B.C. Ministry of Education’s new Passport to Education Program Tuesday which is designed for high school students to earn and accumulate money credits towards post secondary education. The program begins this term for Grade 12 students who can earn $275 to be paid on their behalf by the Education Ministry tc government approved colleges, universities and technical institutes. O’ver four years, students can earn up to $800 toward higher education, but they must qualify for the program. Only the top 30 per cent of students in each grade will be selected by school administation to participate. School District 57 superintendent Jim Imrich said selection of students will be based two-thirds on academic performance and one-third based on citizenship. Revived mall plan worries residents vernments, and there’s high market demand. On the Coast, at least four remanufacturers are now doing further processing under contract to large companies, according to Peter Drake Of Woodbridge, Reed and Associates. “When they’re doing this work, it’s different than the traditional view of the remanufacturer,”, he said. “They’re no longer seen as jackals at the dump turning scrap into usable products.” The Ministry of Economic Development in Victoria and the Council of Forest Industries are looking at expanding the overseas markets for B.C. higher value wood products from both COFI members and small firms, according to Chris Nelson of the economic development ministry in Victoria. “We’re also working with foreign companies looking for specialty products which can be made here.” Westar is taking a different approach at its Kitwanga sawmill, which specializes in export products. Hand-selected, color-matched lumber, called “royal grade,” is being sold for a premium price. Another way to add value is to sort wood by species, with lodgepole pine going to Europe and spruce going to Japan, according to Drake. “This is much more possible than there was a few years ago, now that log sorting for Linck equipped sawmills (ones using German-built, European-style equipment) is becoming.more popular. There’s more money than in selling the usual SPF (spruce-pine-fir mix).” Other new sawmills to extract higher value are either on the drawing board or under construction across the north, according to Andy Porter, president of Porter Engineering, a firm specializing in hign technology control systems in Vancouver According to Porter, new sawmills in Quebec are now utilizing more of the tree than sawmills here, and moving twice as fast as B.C. mills. Seymour subdivision residents have called a meeting tonight to discuss revived plans to rezone Century Garden Apartments to allow a strip mall on Central Street. Residents persuaded city council to overturn a rezoning application in the fall of 1986 by the owner of the apartments, which comprise 100 aging townhouses. Doug Wedman, through his company Northern Freehold Ltd., had proposed to build a 6,700-square-metre shopping centre on the site. But after Seymour residents raised concerns about increased traffic and A major commercial intrusion into a long-settled residential area, council turned down the proposal. Now, Wedman in partnership with another developer, Peter Matthews of Interwest Equities, has come up with another proposal. The new plan is to rezone some of the townhouses to develop a smaller strip mall, leaving some of the apartments as a buffer. Interwest, known as Blackbird Holdings until* last January, has been involved with convenience store and donut shop malls elsewhere in the city. Council gave second reading to the revised rezoning application last fall but a public hearing date has not yet been set. Erica Connor, Seymour residents’ spokesman, said the developer has not contacted people in the neighborhood about his plans and concerns remain about disruptions to the residential area. the meeting will be held at the Seymour elementary school gym at 7:30 p.m.