Opinion

FACE TO FACE: Should out-of-bounds skiers and boarders pay for their rescue? S ebastian Boucher, an Ottawa snowboarder, is being billed $10,000 by Cypress Mountain to help defray his recent rescue.

On paper, the net worth of thousands of Tri-City residents has either climbed slightly or dropped a bit thanks to changes in property values calculated by BC Assessment. Are these changes anything to worry about? Not really.

"I 'm interested in your thoughts on Thursday's elections," I asked, interrupting a conversation on widespread unemployment in Nepal . The three local men at my table, highly opinionated entrepreneurs, responded with blank stares.

School District 43 got the equivalent of a lump of coal in its Christmas stocking from Education Minister Don McRae last month. The bad news came in the form of a Dec. 3 letter requiring all school districts to find 1.

Christmas has come and gone and the Boxing Day sales are now in full swing. There was a time when the week surrounding Christmas Day was one of visiting friends and family, attending church and feasting. Now, the traditional holiday of Dec.

The Editor, I wanted to say thank you to a woman I never met. I was going to the Royal Bank in Port Coquitlam this morning to use the instant teller.

With Christmas spirit oozing from every pore, your Face-to-Face columnists are this week, arm in arm, for our annual Christmas truce column.

The Editor, Re. "Talking taxes to councils " (Letters, The Tri-City News, Dec. 14). This is in response to two letters you published about planned property tax increases in Coquitlam and Port Moody.

Santa Claus looked at the images from Metro Vancouver traffic webcams at his home computer up in the North Pole and couldn't believe what he was seeing: An entire region blanketed in, oh, about an inch of snow , and traffic had come to a standstill.

The Editor, Re. "Offices, not hotel rooms" (The Tri-City News, Dec. 14).