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The Citizen, 1997-06-11, Page 5Arthur Black THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, JUNE 11, 1997 PAGE 5. 12 years of oohs and aahs In the future, everybody will be famous for 15 minutes. Andy Warhol Christina Hance is only 36, but she's already had 'way more than her allotted 15 minutes of fame. She's been famous for 12 years. Twelve years of oohs and aahs from crowds, of popping flashbulbs, and spontaneous applause from total strangers. Twelve years of waiting limos, fawning shopkeepers, five-star hotels and front row centre seats at the theatre. Twelve years of being a world celebrity. And she's sick to death of it. You've never heard of Christian Hance? Don’t feel bad. You have heard of Princess Diana, right? Well, Christina is a dead ringer for Princess Di. No when she gets out of bed in the morning, you understand. Christina has to work at it a bit. She dyed her mousy brown hair the same shade as Di's and got an identical cut. She learned to tilt her head just so, and to smile that famous, shy, half-smile. She also got herself a set of boob implants to complete the effect. International Scene _________________________________________________________________________________ By Raymond Canon Foreign ownership in Canada The recent, and not so surprising announcement that the venerable T. Eaton company was filing for protection under Canada's bankruptcy laws brings up once more the perennial question of how harmful foreign competition is for Canadian businesses. I say this because one of the causes for Eaton's downfall is claimed to be the entry of the American retailer Wal-Mart into our country. However, Wal-Mart is only one of the examples used when an aggressive foreign company enters our country with dire results for some of our domestic firms. I don't want to get into any argument about Eaton’s except to say that it appears they brought on most of their problems themselves. However, their decline into the protective bosom of the courts was accelerated by stiff competition from such Canadian firms at Zellers and the Bay. There are a number of things to be kept in mind before one comes down loo hard on foreign companies doing business in Canada. First of all, it is a two-way street. Would it surprise you to leam that, on a per capita basis, Canadians have a higher dollar value in American holdings than the latter do in Canada. If you read the American press, you will soon note that Americans constantly complain about Canadian firms selling such things as grain, lumber, potatoes and locomotives, to name a few. When I was in Erie, Pa., not too long ago I came across a letter to the editor from a union president complaining that work was being taken out of the Erie plant of General Financially, it was a brilliant career move for Christina. Before her Princess Di makeover, Christina was just one of a million London shop girls. Single mother. Part-time stripper. Going nowhere. Then, in 1986 she entered and won a Princess Di Lookalike Contest on British TV. Since then. Christina's been on magazine covers and billboards from Land's End to John O' Groats. She's worked Trade Fairs, shown up in food commercials and been 'presented' at parties and corporate functions from the Middle East to South America. And it paid well. In her Princess Di persona,Christina earned up to $15,000 a day. But it wasn't much fun. "A lot of jobs were set up as if I were the real Diana" she says. "I travelled in limousines and private jets and was even given a bodyguard. I lived the life of a princess for a day and then went home to do the washing up. I fainted in a studio once because I was so tired. They just picked me up, made me a coffee and told me to carry on." Being a Princess Di clone wasn't so hot in the romance department either. "There are some men who only want to sleep with me so they can imagine I'm the real Diana. I've been out with men who say, 'Go on, do the voice', or, 'Can you dress up as Di when we go out to night?' I find that really bizarre and it's insulting." Electric with a loss of about 100 jobs. Where was the work going? To Peterborough, Ont. where GE said it could be done more efficiently. Ask the Maine potato farmers what they think of their Canadian competition and you are likely to hear a string of four-letter words. These farmers got so mad that they dumped loads of potatoes at every cross point between Maine and New Brunswick. In the aircraft industry the biggest single producer of turboprop commercial planes in the world is DeHavilland of Toronto (owned by Bombardier and the Ontario government). Bombardier has, in fact, turned Canada into the fourth largest exporter of aircraft in the world, an achievement which led, in part, to the bankruptcy of the venerable Fokker Aircraft company of Holland. The word "awesome" comes to the fore when you ask foreign competitors what they think of Bombardier's achievements. Sometimes it is hard to tell what is Canadian and what is American. Not too long ago Tim Horton Donuts was one of the success stories in this country. In a recent move Tim Horton sold out to Wendy's but, as the main part of the purchase agreement, became the biggest single shareholders in Wendy's, with even more shares than those held by Dave Thomas, the founder. Does that make Wendy's (or Tim Horton's) an American or a Canadian company, or both? For your information Harvey's, Swiss Chalet and KFC are the only Canadian- owned among the major fast food chains. McDonald',s for example, is wholly American owned and dominates the market here. Should we, therefore, boycott it? This is not to say that there are no situations where Canadian firms suffer unfairly. The most frequent example is when Has Christina ever encountered the woman she imitates? Only once, and it wasn't pleasant. "I was appearing as Princess Di in a video and we were shooting at the gates of Buckingham Palace," she recalls. "The real Princess Di drove out the gales and shot me a look that was pure daggers." And that wasn't the only unpleasant experience Christina Hance has had pretending to be Diana, Princess of Wales. Do you remember that mini-scandal in which The Sun newspaper published a grainy photo they claimed showed Princess Di and her riding instructor doing some off-trail bareback riding in a hotel room? Well, it wasn't Princess Di's riding instructor. And it wasn't Princess Di either. The guy was some pom video actor. The woman was Christina Hance. It's hard to say from talking to her, just how 'innocent' Christina is in all of this. She took the money. And she couldn't be so dim as to not realize that many of her assignments were on the sleazy side. Still, she's had enough and she wants off the celebrity merry-go-round. "I'm going to let my hair grow natural and I'm going to slob out," she says. So she's going to shed the Princess Di exoskeleton she's been wearing for the past 12 years. And hope like hell the world appreciates whatever's underneath it. foreign companies are guilty of dumping products onto the Canadian market with a price that is lower than what they charge al home. There is also the recent situation where Canadian publishers have to complete with split-run American magazines which can sold here with much lower production costs than those experienced by the Canadians. In short, in a global economy that is becoming more and more the norm these days, you succeed only if you take your core products and manage to sell them on international markets. You have to be careful how much protection you put in place to shelter domestic industries to avoid any retaliation. I have always maintained in my economics classes that Canadian firms, when faced with strong foreign competition, actually do quite well and the early studies of the free trade agreement with the United Stales bear this out. We have increased our exports to the U.S. considerably more than they have to us. When American firms come to Canada, in most cases they have to offer products or services which are equal to or better than those provided by Canadian firms. Canadian firms who take the challenge in a resolute manner are usually able to hold their own or even increase their market share. When we have a justifiable complaint, we should, of course, "stand on guard" but in the long run we have, to date, been able to give us good as we take. A Final Thought Good judgement comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgement. The means of survival I get a great deal of pleasure from baseball — especially watching it. The subtleties of a thinking game, the balletic moves of precision plays carried off well, coupled with my insatiable curiosity in people and what makes them tick, arc laid out on a level playing field for my perusal. Watching a kids' game is always enlightening. Young people with different personalities, but a common desire, converge on a diamond to have fun and even better win. They play as a team, yet, at any lime throughout the game, they can individually be thrilled by triumph or abashed over an error. What I find fascinating is how each handles it. You have the cocky jock, a banty rooster who struts on the wins, and easily sheds blame under a confident bravado. There is the insecure under-achiever, who takes the weight of each error onto his already burdened shoulders, so solidly that even a major accomplishment can only lighten it somewhat. There are the determined, the laissez-faire; the intense, the casual; the serious, the jokers; the weak and the strong. Watching them you see how people react to and deal with the things presented to them in this mystery we each live. As a temperamental pitcher who can't handle unfair calls, there are those among us, who can't accept that life isn't always going to treat them the way they believe is just. As a flighty fielder who gives up when the going gets tough, there are those among us who see adversity as an excuse to throw in the towel. And as a dedicated catcher who stands his ground when a behemoth has rounded third and is coming straight for him, there are those among us who will not give it up for any challenger. I recently spoke with someone who had become a surrogate mother to three girls, whose biological mother had died. They were raised first in an abusive home, then in a broken home, virtually ignored by the father who gave them life. They were later sexually abused by their step-father, pul into foster homes, then left alone, while still just teens, with the passing of their mother. Today, one is embarking on a career in medicine, one is happily married with a family of her own and the third is at teachers' college. My friend said that while their mother had always accepted her lol as inevitable, the girls determined early that they would not give in. There was never any self-pity, just a gutsy determination that they would survive on their own terms. People cope differently with the hand they are dealt. I know for many years of my youth I was ready to lay blame on oLhers for my behaviour rather than face the responsiblity on my own. One of the most important things I've learned, and with which I'm still struggling from time to time, is that my happiness is in my power, and only my power. The game may not always turn out the way I had hoped, I may make some errors along the way, get hurt or treated unfairly, but I control how it all makes me feel and what I do about it. Survival is, after all, getting up just one more time than you fall down.