Sports stars meet:
The front page photo featured 20-year-old Wayne Gretzky meeting injured Lynn Valley freestyle skier Jim Milina, 18, after an Oilers/Canucks game at the Pacific Coliseum. Milina, the senior men’s provincial Freestyle Skiing Champion, suffered a life-changing spinal cord injury during a performance at the Toronto Ski Show in 1981 and was in treatment at G.F. Rehabilitation Centre. Eighteen years after the photo was taken Milina, a quadriplegic, paralyzed from the chest down, would climb Mount Kilimanjaro (jimmilina.com).
Cove Cliff ruckus:
Alderman John Lakes wanted the draft of a Deep Cove community plan presented to North Vancouver District at a Monday night council meeting sent back to the drawing board. He was most concerned about a proposal to use Burrard View Community School’s property for a townhouse development to help fund the construction of Cove Cliff Elementary.
Movie armory stolen at Cleveland Dam:
Forty-nine weapons (including three 12-gauge police model shotguns with folding stocks, three .44 Magnum Smith & Wesson revolvers, 14 .223–calibre fully automatic 20-shot Colt M16’s, 11 .223–calibre 20-shot Colt semi–automatic AR15’s, three .223–calibre Heckler and Koch 20-shot semi–automatics, two 7.62 Marimont fully automatic M60’s, one tear gas gun, 11 Italian 20-shot AP74’s and one 12-gauge double–barrelled shotgun) were stolen from a locked truck at Cleveland Dam during location shooting for Sylvester Stallone’s film, First Blood. The company had just arrived in Capilano Canyon after shooting for three months in Hope, B.C. Except for the AP74’s the weapons were all operable, according to the RCMP.
Playing time running out:
Time was running out for 6,000 soccer players to get in a full schedule “in what was the worst winter season in 10 years,” according to NSYSA president Janet Petersen. Field permits would expire April 1 and most grass fields had been closed since mid-November due to heavy rain and snow.
