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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Huron Expositor, 1961-08-17, Page 2.a Since 1860, Serving the Community First Published at SEAFORTH, ONTARIO, every Thursday morning by McLEAN BROS., Publishers Vt o ANDREW Y. MCLEAN, Editor •p Member Canadian Weekly Newspapers Association 4� n n i Ontario Weekly NewspaRers Association f O Audit Bureau of Circulations Subscription Rates: f t .i U ' Z Canada (in advance) $2.50 a Year % Outside Canada (in advance) $3.50 a Year ``r a U i 0 SINGLE COPIES — 5 CENTS EACH Authorized as Second Class Mail, Post Office Department, Ottawa SEAFORTH, ONTARIO, AUGUST 17, 1961 Driver Testing May Check Traffic Toll There can be little objection on the part of any thinking citizen to a pro- posal being advanced by the Ontario Government to provide for the testing of Ontario drivers at regular intervals. If the slaughter on Ontario highways is to be reduced, it is imperative that those drivers who are disabled or otherwise handicapped, to a degree that interferes with their ability to drive safely, be identified. There seems no better way to weed out such potential- ly dangerous drivers than to provide' for regular examinations. Standards that have prevailed since the days when licenses were first intro- duced won't do in today's driving con- ditions. There are more ears today, and they move at a much faster speed. Driv- ing on today's highways, at today's speed,. requires a fast mental reaction, a steady hand and, above all, a know- ledge • of recognized driving procedure. And, of course,' drivers themselves change, Some improve their driving techniques but, unfortunately, many develop bad habits. Increasing age means sometimes physical impairment and slower reactions. .Rt -testing would discover many of these defects and save bad drivers from becoming the in- nocent cause of an accident. However, if the re-examination pro- gram is to prove wholly effective, the Department of Transport must adopt a more realistic attitude towards making testing facilities available. It is most unreasonable that resi- dents in Seaforth, far instance, who are to be tested, should be required to go to Clinton on stated occasions and dur- ing business hours. If the applicant is an employee, the result is the loss of a half day's pay ; even if wages are not at stake, the inconvenience and cost in- volved should not be necessary. Is there any reason why persons qualified to examine drivers could not be appoint- ed in each town? Such an arrange- ment worked satisfactorily for many years. Surely it could be brought up to date to suit today's requirements. But it is not enough to sit back and regard a program of drivers' examina- tion as being the answer to all our driv- ing problems. Unfortunately, the reck- less driver, the driver with the "I -don't - care -attitude" will not be discovered by examinations. Too frequently such menaces are good drivers, familiar with the rules of the road, but are possessed of a mental outlook that makes them even more dangerous than, for instance, a physically handicapped driver. Con- trol of such drivers can only be achiev- ed by a more intensive police patrol and by the strongest application of demerits. It is the presence on our highways of such irresponsible drivers, and the urg- ent need to cope with them, that adds weight to recent requests by the OPP for funds with which to enlist addi- tional traffic officers. Publish Results? The Bowmanville "Canadian States- man" feels that individual results of high school examinations in all grades should be published. Apparently the principal of the Bowmanville secondary school did not agree with this. He sug- gested that the results were "the priv- ate property of the individuals and the parents concerned, but the general public was not entitled to this informa- tion." The Statesman, however, gives its point of view as follows: "We do not agree that any principal or group of teachers should have the power to de- cide arbitrarily that the results will not be published because he or they con- sider them private property, or for some other reason. Our laws are based on custom and precedent which suggest quite strongly that the public expects and is entitled to have information of this type. In most places, the school officials are eager to have the results published -because they are proud of the achievements of the students under their tutelage. "Based on the number of 'phone calls we have received at The Statesman the past week from parents complaining because complete exam results were not published, we believe the vast majority of citizens are not interested in keen- ing results secret and private. They want to know what is going on." Nothing New Philosophers have long argued that there is nothing new under the sun. A case in point is the new insignia which Canadian National Railways has chos- en as its trademark. The flowing script of the "CN", already emblazoned on some equipment, is acclaimed as a modern touch. It is also as ancient as an old hieroglyphic sign of Sinaitic ori- gin to which it bears an easily discern- ible resemblance, — Halifax Chronicle V one chance in 90 of being polled • during his lifetime for his opinion, the station he listened to, or the book he read. Readers of this newspaper express their opinions every issue — either they buy it or they don't. It's as simple as that. ONLY THE HURON EXPOSITOR provides audited circulation in the SEAFORTH AREA. With Russians rocketing smugly around the earth, and the Berlin crisis calling forth belligerent announcements from all concerned, the only escape for the shy, sensitive person these days is into fairyland. So let's. Once upon a time there was a lady who had no use for pets. She rolled her eyes in horror at the thought of a dog in the house. Her lip curled at the very mention of eats. She look- ed with equal disgust upon budgie birds, hamsters, guinea pigs and rabbits. * * * I admired this lady for her forthright attitude. When her kids begged for a pet, she'd snap, "Over my dead body!" She stated flatly that pets were stupid, useless and dirty things. Her children were disconsolate, but resigned. It wasn't that she was afraid of animals. I've seen her reach right out and touch a dog, on, several. occasions. Some people would have thought she was pushing the beast away, but she always claimed she was pat- ting it. I've seen her, while she sat chatting with cat -own- ing friends, scratch a cat's stom- ach with her foot. Occasional- ly, if the friends left the rboin to make tea, the cat would wind up at the other end of the room suddenly, but she'd never ad- mit to kicking it. * * * About four years ago, some- thing happened. This lady suf- fered one, of those emotional back -flips common to the sex. Next thing he knew, she was cornering her husband, and urging that "every boy should have a dog" and that "we're de- priving the kids of a precious experience." He was rather half-hearted about the whole thing, as he was no dog -lover, and besides, he was always leery of these sudden enthusiasms, as they in- variably cost him 'a'Tot of mon- ey, grief or abuse. However, that Christmas there was a coal - black Spaniel pup under the tree. He was named Playboy by the ecstatic children. * * * • He was the epitome of all the evils that accompany small pupils. He merely smirked at efforts to train him, and left his trademark with equal dis- dain on linoleum, hardwood floor and rug. He howled like a lovesick tomcat every night for weeks. He ate the toes off the lady's new Italian shoes. He had lice. He needed shots. He jumped up on the lady and tore pets. It was too much to bear So last winter, the lady's daugh- ter, taking advantage of a day when her mother was out of town, arrived home with a scrawny little stray kitten. Her dad didn't have the guts to kick the thing out into the snow. She'd counted on this. Her mother didn't, either, when she got home. She contented her- self with raising general hell and blasting the dad for not getting rid of it. * a * The kitten was named Piper, and he thrived. Once in a while, it crossed the father's mind that the creature might be a girl, but, as usual, he avoided the issue and hoped for the best. Came the spring. One night the father let the young cat out for the usual, and he vanished, though the dad stood there, in his underwear, call- ing, for half an hour. In the morning, kitty turned up, red - eyed and ruffled. For the next couple of weeks there was a lot of activity around that house. In the day- time, the little girl defended her pet with a broom against. the white, brindle, black and purple cats who haunted the yard and seemed to want to fight with,.Piper. At night, the family felt like a hunting par- ty in the jungle, crouched about the campfire, while the hyenas howled all around. * * * In a few weeks, the whole thing was obvious. The kids went right on calling Piper "he," but it was plain that the boy kitten was- a female cat. Guess who was elected to strangle, or drown, the fruits of her labor. Yes, the father steel- ed himself against coming catri- cide. At this point, a new charac- ter enters our story. The boy in this family had a birthday com- ing up. The lady, in another of those mental somersaults, de- cided they'd surprise him with a pup. There was a mad scram- ble, but the pup—a coal -black Spaniel—was there on the birth- day, and was promptly named Playboy the Second. * * * With the advent of the pup, poor old Piper was pushed into he background, despite her ondition. There was some fear hat she'd have a miscarriage, ut of sheer pique. But they eckoned without the sense of ramatic timing inherent in thc regnant female. In the middle f the night, while the family as staying with friends at a ottage, she began to have her ains. She managed to keep most f them up all night. The lady nally closed her eyes about x, with no news yet from the aternity ward, which was the at of the car. At seven a.m., e was awakened by a shriek om her daughter. "Piper's aving her babies! The first ne's white! It looks just like dinosaur! Within seconds, ev- ry kid in the vicinity was on e spot. They stood around in circle, watching the whole erformance, and cheering each ew arrival to the echo. The ystery of birth is no longer a ystery to them. c t 0 r d p 0 w her stockings or scratched her legs. She hated him. Time passed. The pup, very fi slowly, acquired some sense, a si handsome presence, and a per- m sonality to match his name. He se learned to swim, to run from sh big dogs, and to snarl at little fr ones. He accompanied the kids h to school. He went shopping o with the lady. He called on her a husband at his place of busi• e ness. th a p n m m * :it * Just about the time he was old enough to start going with girls, he was killed by a truck. The kids were inconsolable. The mother suddenly discover• ed that she adored the pup, wept bitterly, and her eyes fill- ed with tears every time his name came up for months. That was to be the end of * * * There is no moral to this story. But I couldn't help thinking, when I was home last weekend, ;that it was rather odd for my wife, who hated pets for v:eag N Th. *Ja, "Pay no attention --.that's hist the method they use to beat' you down on our f d%in.r By REV. ROBERT H. HARPER ONE SPOT ABOVE ALL A poet who wrote that God, who gave all men all earth to love ordained that for every man one spot should be loved above all.. And so a man of our Country turned from the glam- our of Paris and climbed to bis garret and wrote, "Home, Sweet Home." Another, who had represented our Country in foreign capitals and had seen many places of renown wrote that what he wanted was to find a ship west- ward bound, to plow the rolling sea, to a blessed land beyond the ocean bars. For when it comes to living, there is no place like home. There is an old story of an Irish immigrant who landed in the United States and h i s ecstasy in being in the land of the free, flung his hands wide and one of his hands struck in the face of a passerby. The re- cipient of the blow strenuous- ly objected to the treatment, whereupon the Irishman asked if this was not the land of the free. The injured party replied that this is a land of freedom all right, but that the newcom- er's freedom ended where his nose began. So we may well believe that any man's freedom in this Country, whether an Irishman or not, ends where another man's nose begins. To insure this, don't put your nose in the other fellow's business. Just a Thought: If we are to really appreci- ate the "golden years" of life we must prepare the way by building a storehouse of good works and good will during the productive ages. When Was. Labrador's Boundary Finally Determined? Not until 1927, when the ju- dicial committee of the Privy Council, to which the matter had been referred in 1920, de- fined the boundary between Quebec and Newfoundland as it is now shown on maps publish- ed by the Canadian govern- ment. The origins of the dis- pute as to the boundary line go back as far as the Treaty of Paris in 1763 and lie in the ambiguous phraseology that was used in documents describ- ing .the responsibilities of the governor or Newfoundland fol- lowing the signing of the treaty. years, to be dancing attendance on two children, a self-satisfied cat, three kittens and a brand new pup. By the way, does any- body want a Idvely kitten? Your choice of white, purple or brin- dle. Sex, male, I think. It ap- pears that the kitten -drowning deal for dad is postponed in- definitely. A MACDUFF OTTAWA REPORT UP -SERVICE ONLY OTTAWA — Although East and West press on with their deadly game of "chicken", the collision course set for Berlin, Canadian authorities continue to be as complacement as ev- er about taking measures that could spell the difference be- tween life and death for mil• lions of Canadians. For 15 years now the world has possessed the means of its own destruction, a means so terrible, so beyond human comprehension, that the mind rebels at thinking about it. Perhaps this very revulsion, this refusal to face up to hard and bitter facts has been re- sponsible for the current pub- lic attitude toward efforts to provide for the defence of the civil population, almost com- plete indifference. For the most part, the atti- tude that has developed is completely fatalistic — if war comes, it comes and death will inevitably follow. This was the attitude first made clearly evi- dent by the citizens of Coven- try, whose gallantry in the face of German bombings during the last war is beyond question. It is the attitude that seems to have infected many people in the West, and perhaps in the East as well. Confronted by massive public apathy; together with the mas- sive expenditure that would be required to do the job proper- ly, Canadian Goyernments for years have done little more than pay lip -service to civil de- fence. •. • T h e Conservative Govern- ment has done a great deal to sort out this almost hopeless muddle since it came to office, four ' years ago, Although re- sponsibility at the Federal lev- el is still badly divided, the de- cision to turn over the main operating task to the army pro- vided a major civil defence or- ganization and injected a new sense of purpose and determ• ination into Government ef- forts. It set up an Emergency Mea- sures Office in .the Privy Coun- cil under the control of the Prime Minister and provided a staff to begin working out the infinite number of problems presented by the requirements of civil defence. But if the situation is im- proved, there is still lacking any sense of urgency on the Government's part, or, for that 'matter, any convincing proof that it really believes civil de- fence is something worth tak- ing seriously. About two years ago the civ- il defence organization finally carie 'to a decision over an is- sue the planners have debated for years: whether to prepare for the mass evacuation of tar- get areas or have the civil pop- ulation sit tight in some kind of shelters. Because of the immense prob- lems of evacuating a huge metropolitan area quickly and later providing food and shel- ter for the hundreds of thou- sands of people who have fled to the countryside, there were always those who opposed this course. With the advent of the intercontinental ballistic mis- sile, providing the North Am- erican continent with 20 min- utes warning of an impending attack at the most, plans being prepared for the evacuation of municipal areas were quietly filed away. • But the planners were not idle. Out of the Emergency Measures Office of the Privy Council came "Blueprint for survival number one," plans of a Government -approved base- ment fallout shelter for the do- it-yourself enthusiast. This was followed in the fullness of time by further booklets and pamph- lets on what to do in the event of an attack, what to store in the fallout shelter in the way of emergency supplies, etc. Mock exercises were held by Civil Defence Officers across the country. The Cabinet, or that part of it that could spare the time, repaired to a special em• ergency shelter to preside over the mock disaster. But still the public refused to take civil, defence seriously, perhaps because it was stiII not getting the kind of leadership and direction it had a right to expect from its own Govern- ment. Certainly the Government has not begun to practice what it preaches. No member of the Cabinet has built a shelter for his own family, nor have some of the senior officials of the Civil Defence organization. No decision has yet been taken by the Government about building shelters for those living in housing which it rents' to the families of servicemen and oth- ers. Over the past decade and a half the West has relied on its powers of massive retaliation to serve as a deterrent to war. Measures to protect the civil population tended to be regard- ed as partof passive defence programs. As East and West move clos- er to the brink than ever be- fore, however, the idea is slow- ly sinking in that Civil Defence is ` an essential part of the West's deterrent power. There is little doubt that the adoption of an intensive civil defence program would result in the savings of millions upon millions of lives in the event of an . attack. Engaged as they are in an adult version of the juvenile game of "chicken", it is the task of the Western pow- ers to convince Russia of its absolute determination not to ' yield Berlin, •even at .the risk of all-out war, in the hope that it will change its course before the West is forced to do so. But we can only convince the Russians we' mean business if we have the means of providing for the civil defence of our pop- ulation either through shelters, evacuation --or both. They are far less likely to be convinced that the United States, for ex- ample, is prepared to plunge in- ' to a nuclear war that would mean the death of over half its population for the sake of 2,- 000,000 people in Berlin, no matter how bellicose President Kennedy becomes. IN THE YEARS AGONE Interesting items gleaned from The Expositor of 25, 50 and 75 years ago. From The Huron Expositor August '14, 1936 Ten additional miles of ex- perimental roads are being con- structed in Huron County this year, because a stretch built last year is giving good satis- faction. Mr. John J. Jacob, manager of the Huron County Home, this week shipped to Stratford 16 hogs off the Home farm. Misses Helen Muriel Ballan- tyne, Cecelia Geraldine Mac- Donald and Margaret Ruth Kalbfleisch were graduates of Scott Memorial Hospital at the graduation exercises held on the beautiful lawns of the hos- pital. Seaforth officially changes its manner of parking on Main St. on Monday, when the town council passed Bylaw 377, of 1936, to permit angle parking at the sides of the street. A large number of interested players took part in the hore- shoe tournament held at the horeshoe grounds on Wednes- day evening, when prizes went to William Young and Robert Pinkney. Mr. Horace Rutledge, of Wal- ton, has accepted the position as relieving agent at Innerkip. Mrs. Taylor, of near Walton, suffered a painful injury on Monday, when both hands were caught in an electric wringer. Miss Mary Buchanan, Reg.N., formerly instructress of nurses at Memorial Hospital, St. Thom- as, has been appointed superin- tendent of Niagara Falls Hos- pital. * • * From The Huron Expositor August 18, 1911 Mr. Thomas Sherritt• has im- proved the appearance of his fine farm dwelling to the east of Hensall by, having the brick- work repainted a nice red, with trimmings, the work being done by John Steacy. Mr. Milne Rennie, who has been in the employ of Small - man & ,Ingram, of London, for some time, has returned -to Hen - tall - Ind intends reentering business with his brother, Er astus Rannie. The turnip crop in the area is almost a complete failure owing to the continued dry weather. Misses C. Pinkney and L. Hammett are attending the millinery openings in Toronto this week. Col. Alex Wilson is in Toron- to this week attending the rifle matches, and goes from there to Ottawa. Dr. F. J. Burrows has pur- chased the Barteliffe property on the corner of Goderich and West William Streets, adjoin- ing his own property. Mr. V. N. Diehl, of Stanley Township, has a mare 'which on Thursday gave birth to quite a curiosity, in the shape of a three-legged colt. Mr. Sam Houston, 6th conces- sion of Tuckersmith, pulled an extra large mangold, which was of the yellow intermediate va- riety, and measured 20 filches one way and 36 inches the other. * * From The Huron Expositor August 20, 1886 At a meeting of the town council, held on Wednesday ev- ening of last week, Dr. Scott was appointed Medical Health Officer for the town. After an absence of over a year in the Old Country, Mr. James Nichol returned home on Wednesday. Mr. Fulton has sold his cot- tage on North Main Street to Mrs. McTavish, of the cream- ery, for $650, and is now er- ecting another house on the adjoining lot. Mr, Hugh Chesney, of Tuck- ersmith, has been selected as a judge of livestock at the To- ronto Industrial Exhibition. At a meeting of the Public School board, held on Saturday evening last, seven applications were received for the position of teacher for the new room, to be opened after the holidays, and we understand that Miss Grace Elder is the fortunate applicant. Mr. John Sproat informs us that for several days this sea- son a flock of white cranes were hovering around the riv- er in the vicinity of his brick- yard. One of his sons shot one, and it measured four feet from the point of the bill to the tip of the tail, and weighed 11%, pounds. They are a very rare bird. ` Mr. William Cash, McKillop, is having an immense ditch"dug from his farm to neer Win- throp, where it enters into the creek there. Any man who looks up his family tree is apt to get out on a limb. THE HANDY FAWLY YOU NEED A NEW WASE BASKET IN YOUR ROOM JUNIOR -NIS OLD ONE'S aA MESS BY LLOYD BONIMMIOVE JUNNtORAS PLAN PORNAUTICAL WASTE '1 A5KET a • • 4 • 4 • • • • • • r